beauty in the trees
passin by me at high speed
pickin up the boys

no sunshine in days
but all the clouds are swirlin
sparkles all over

and my cup is full
and it’ll be full again
and I think that’s great

We LOVE the new Beatles RockBand. It’s something the whole family can play.
Jake and I are both music geeks, anyway….and now we’ve managed to pull the kids into it.

Sad part is…they already know the songs.

Reminder:
We love The Beatles.
We ARE NOT The Beatles.

Enjoy!

See you guys in a few days… we have some…uh… stuff to do
: )

Thursday a week ago the Oak Ridge Observer reported that Alex Moseley, the always bridesmaid, never bride political man about town, who recently lost a bid to be the Anderson County election chief, and who less recently lost a bid to to the Tennessee House of Representatives, has decided to throw a referendum out there because the Oak Ridge City Council recently voted to opt out of Tennessee’s recent law allowing concealed carry gun permit holders to go packing in city parks.

Now, for those not in the know, what you do in Oak Ridge when the local government doesn’t do what you want is to:

a) Go to the website of one of the local newspapers and leave halfway incoherent comments indicating how the town is crashing and burning

b) Start a referendum to try to overthrow the decision

This worked fantastically in keeping shopping out of Oak Ridge back in the halcyon days of ought six, saving us from the scourge of using abatements on the tax money that would have come in on a big ass shopping center, leaving us with the (preferred, obviously) no tax money coming in from the no shopping center that came up because the referendum was successful.

Therefore referendums=problem solved.

With that I boldly submit my own referendum.  Now, I might need some help with the legalese, and the fact that there isn’t really anything to appear, necessarily, but those things are just details:

We, the undersigned voters of Oak Ridge, pursuant to a stronger and more productive community, hereby protest the lack of assistance being made by the City of Oak Ridge in finding relocation for those whom have deemed Oak Ridge an unacceptable place to live.  We request immediate grant funds be placed, preferably from the election and city rehabilitation fund, to be immediately made available to allow for these poor bastards to get the hell out of town.

Something like that. See, theres a reason I’m not in politics.

Except now apparently, Mosely’s not allowed to do it?

Weak.

Yeah, I know, this is late. I was busy.  Um.  Yeah.

Game on, people.

Oooooooo yes, Rock Band fever is fixin to hit the Bennu household.  And those in the know, know that it’s gonna hit big.

Because damn, who doesn’t like the Beatles?  Jackasses, that’s who.  And if there’s anything more fun that listening to the Beatles, its faking playing Beatles music with plastic instruments!!! Hell yes!

But seriously, even if being a plastic musician doesn’t appeal to you, just look at the craft and beauty put into the game coming out:

OPENING CINEMATIC

TRAILER #3

Now tell me that you’re not crying just a little bit.

Yep.

Now, here’s how its going to break down:

That’s right.  Pre-ordered this junk yesterday.

What?  Who said we’re broke?

Because it came up as a discussion on the last post, I decided to share with you guys how your little monster gravatars are generated.

It has nothing to do with
personality

or how big your heart is

First, it’s a “gravatar” and not an “avatar.” What’s the difference?

An avatar, in the computer world, is (according to Wikipedia)

An avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games,a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. It is an “object” representing the embodiment of the user. The term “avatar” can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.

A gravatar is

Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally-unique avatars which was created by Tom Werner. (Gravatar)

On Gravatar, users can register an account based on their email address, and upload an avatar to be associated with the account. Gravatar plugins are available for popular blogging software; when the user posts a comment on such a blog that requires an e-mail address, the blogging software checks whether that e-mail address has an associated avatar at Gravatar. If so, the Gravatar is shown along with the comment.

MonsterID is a plugin that runs within our blog that randomly generates little monsters for each of our commenters based on the information such as the users email address, ip address, etc. SOOOOO…. since that info is consistent with YOU throughout your internet on-goings, your little monster will be the same on any blog you participate in (it FOLLOWS you), IF the blog uses the MonsterID plugin.

The Monster is built by the program taking your “identifiers (IP, email, etc)” and associating them with a certain “part” in a collection of body parts provided by the creators of the script.

monster

A monster may have the same “body” as another, but the arms, legs, eye, hair– or color may be different.

Neat, huh?

Thought I’d share. Hope I didn’t go too far over anyone’s head (I tried to stay “un-geeky” in my explanations)

Wildcat and I had the following discussion this morning:

• Wildcat – “Is there ever going to be a girl President?
• Me – “Maybe one day…she has to get elected by all the people”
• Wildcat – “Why don’t YOU be President?”
• Me – “I really don’t think I like politics enough to be President”
• Wildcat – “Me neither. And I don’t want to be President because they all die”
• Me – “Everybody dies, kiddo. Do you mean they get shot?”
• Wildcat – “Yeah. Except Barrack Obama is still alive”
• Me – “Yep. And George Bush and Bill Clinton and daddy George Bush… and MOST Presidents actually just die because they are old and get sick…not because they get shot.”
• Wildcat -  “YEAH. Except for George Washington. I think he died when he was old…or actually, he died because he fell off a cliff.”
• Me – ???
• Wildcat – “But I can’t remember for sure”

George Washington

I looked it up for him.

George Washington DEFINITELY did not die from falling off of a cliff.

Just in case you were wondering.

Here are some videos we’ve been slack about sharing…

Enjoy!

—————————

From our trip to the Netherlands

————————–

A “lazy” Sunday morning at our house

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Xander found something interesting in the big glass box that’s full of water (like it’s never been there before)

It’s that time of year…

Ugg. (well, part of me is like WOOO HOOOO!!!)

Luckily when Wildcat started his new school year, it was in the middle of July. There wasn’t all the crazy running around looking for specific types of scissors and glue sticks. We drove to the “local” Target (18 miles away), walked to the school supplies section, I called things off the list and Wildcat found them and put them in the cart. There was not one other soul in that section. It was awesome.

Yesterday, Dragon came home from his first day back to school with a big ol’ list of things (which we knew was coming) — aside from the $7, have-to-buy, “planner” that is specific to the school (which he already purchased), complete with a fancy holographic cover–

overdone planner

Seriously, holograms? on the front of this thing. How much did THAT cost? REally, people. Necessary cost? Hmmph.

Anyway–

My plan was to go shopping for these other items sometime on Tuesday morning, since I don’t work until later. And Monday night, we were just too plain exhausted from the day to go fight all the back-to-school shopping craziness.

Dragon comes out on the porch while we’re grilling some yummy hamburgers (oooo… <tangeant> and we had our first batch of tomatoes out of our garden- alas, they are a little bigger than golf balls, but they tasted oh-so-awesome), and tells us the he was told he needs the other stuff TOMORROW. I know that he needs it. He knows that I know he needs it. It just wasn’t gonna happen late Monday night. Sorry.

This morning, I decided to look in our “art supply” containers (put together in an attempt to “organize”…heh) — located in Wildcat’s closet (which means there is A LOT of “NOT art supply” things crammed in them, too).

• 3 – 70 pg spiral notebooks – CHECK (found 2)
• 1 – 3 ring binder with pockets, with dividers and paper – CHECK (woot!)
• pack of colored pencils – CHECK
• black or blue pens – CHECK
• pencils – CHECK (yes, some have Halloween pictures or paw prints on them- but they are still pencils)

Success.

Dragon went to school this morning with most of his required supplies (minus one spiral notebook) — the only complaint he had was about the covers on the 2 spiral notebooks — where his younger brother has, at some point, very artistically illustrated some scenes — one seems to be a mentally disturbed rabbit (reminded me of the Donnie Darko bunny) and the other looks like a Stegosaurus battling with some other kind of dinosaur (I’m sure Wildcat could fill me in on the correct name).

But you know what?

<start happily singing> We don’t have to go SCHOOL SUPPLY SHOPPING!!!! <stop happily singing>

Until next year.