The Pax Family Singers Are Back

The Pax Family Singers are back and preparing for the World Tour.

Somethin's Burnin': Spring Comes to Philadelphia on January 30

Break out the tomato plants and the petunias. Roll up the sleeves. Get out the Slip-N-Slide. Spring has hit the Northeast with a wallop, where it was 60+ degrees today. ON JANUARY 30. IN PHILADELPHIA.

Now, I was walking around the city in my shirt sleeves like half of the people in Philadelphia. And it felt great. I do wish it were spring. But dang, January 30? It used to be Mother's Day before we could plant the tender annuals. Now we can move it up to Groundhog Day. Wahoo! I'll have my oceanfront property before I know it. In Philadelphia, PA.

UPDATE: Vince wrote something in the comments that I thought was great. I'm moving it here so everyone can see it:

This calls for a neologism to describe the feeling of anxiety tinged with fear and foreboding (for ourselves and future generations) that we involuntarily get when it is unseasonably warm in the middle of winter.

• Globalwarmaphobia
• Crabinaboilingpotsyndrome
• Handbasketerrors

George W. Bush Speechwriter

This George W. Bush Speechwriter can amaze your friends for hours.

New Sponsorship for iFlipFlop: Eggo FlipFlops

I woke this morning to the scent of chocolate and vanilla wafting upstairs. One of the Young iFlipFlops was toasting Eggo FlipFlops. Yum. Chocolate on one side, vanilla on the other. Hooray for iFlipFlop's corporate sponsorship efforts.

For those of you who haven't read our sister site, iLie, you should know that George Bush, Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay have extended their stints as spokesmen. (Jack Abramoff brokered that deal for iLie LLC).

In Case I Ever Want To Role Play the 15th Century

I was looking for a picture of a Flemish hat today and stumbled across this Historic Enterprises website that offers re-enactment garb. I thought this red shirt, a 15th Century doublet, was spectacular. I think I'll skip the matching hat, though. The leggings, too.

A little voyeurism

Okay, really it's just a bunch of webcams, but having the word "voyeurism" is a way to drive web traffic, kind of like typing "Pamela Anderson" in the title.

Bob Casey: Republican in Democrat Clothing

Watch out, Democrats, when you let the wolf guard the sheep. Every once in a while one of your friends turns into dinner. Which makes the Pennsylvania Democratic Committee's push to get Bob Casey elected as the "Democratic" senator for the state all the more odd. What kind of decent Democrat advocates for the Anti Choice crowd? What kind of legitimate liberal says a firm shift to the Right on the Supreme Court is okay? Not my kind. More like a wolf in sheep's clothing. That's Bob Casey. Yesterday, Bobus Lupus endorsed Samuel Alito for SCOTUS. BooMan and Philly have the details. UPDATE at 10:40am: Even more about this at Philly.

I say Vote for Chuck Pennacchio in 2006. He wrote yesterday:

Today’s 10-8 party line vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee in favor of the Alito nomination sets the stage for a test of the U.S. Senate’s willingness to protect our constitutional rights. Judge Alito’s record clearly demonstrates that as a Supreme Court Justice he would increase the power of big corporations and the executive branch as he would weaken privacy rights, employee rights, minority rights, and our system of checks and balances. I challenge Bob Casey Jr. to join me in opposing Judge Alito’s nomination and supporting all legal means available to prevent his confirmation. This includes the use of a filibuster if necessary. Here are some of the reasons that I strongly oppose the Alito nomination:

• His refusal to recognize specific limits on the President’s power to authorize others to "ignore the law” with regard to warrantless wiretaps, torture, and other issues (see Hearing transcripts 86-88 and 193-194, Jan. 10, 2006).

• His dissent in Doe v. Groody that further demonstrated Judge Alito’s disregard for Fourth Amendment rights in that he would have allowed strip searching a ten year old girl and her mother without a warrant.

Chuck's not sheepish. Let's get real Democratic leadership, not someone who will eat his own.

A couple good laughs this morning

These good laughs are courtesy of The Smedley Log:

Grandma vs. The Mercedes

I Got Friends With Low Wages

LOL. Thx, Howard.

An Apple a day...

...keeps the doctor away. Apple conversion complete. Take me to the Mothership.

Pax Romano Maximus: Life Well Lived

Pax wrote a very compelling post about La Vida Romano. I've read and re-read it a couple of times now. And got to puzzling about how I might distill my life into 30 paragraphs - what to put in, what to leave out, what more I wish I had to write. Well done, Pax. Well done.

Jonesing for Jones

Miss LiquidTreats and I had lunch at Jones recently (we sat just to the right of the fireplace).. Tremendous. Comfort. Food. I had the split pea soup. She had split pea soup. We split an order of Thanksgiving Every Day. We nearly split our sides laughing at all the food. And I could have split my pants eating the spiced apples. Mmmmmmmm.

Word of the Day Blogging: Pleonastic

Pleonastic: Using or containing an excessive number of words: diffuse, long-winded, periphrastic, prolix, redundant, verbose, wordy. See excess/insufficiency/enough, style/good style/bad style, words.

Sent to iFlipFlop by the WordMensch from 48Facets. He wasn't pleonastic. His note said, "New fave word." Beautiful.

Recalls one of my favorite phrases: Thank goodness for the man, who when nothing else needs to be said doesn't spend 15 minutes proving it.

The Wendy's chili scammers get the finger

The man and woman who plotted to scam Wendy's by saying she had found a finger in her chili were sentenced yesterday to 9 and 12 years in prison respectively. What would be really great: If they fed them chili for three meals a day for that entire sentence.

Global warming is not my friend

I bought a really great winter coat this year. But I've been able to wear it only once. BECAUSE IT'S TOO HOT IN PHILADELPHIA THIS WINTER. While I like mild winters, the fact that it's going to be 51 degrees this afternoon in mid January makes it a bummer for me and my toggle coat. Heck, I may just have to go with the "I'd rather look good than feel good approach" and wear the coat here in Fort Lauderdale, Pennsylvania.

Colbert: I Have a Dreamsicle

Last night Stephen Colbert ended The Colbert Report with an I Have a Dreamsicle speech that was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I laughed out loud all by myself. I haven't found the video feed yet, but when I do I'll post the link. Precious.

UPDATE on 1/21: Very cool that Gwydion sent this link. This is too good to miss.

Let Freedom Ring

Excerpted from the full text of Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech:

And so let freedom ring - from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring - from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring - from the heightening Alleghenies of
Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring - from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring - from the curvaceous slopes of California.

But not only that.

Let freedom ring - from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring - from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring - from every hill and molehill of Mississippi,
from every mountainside, let freedom ring!

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual,

"Free at last, free at last.

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

(I reposted this from one year ago. I think it still holds. Others have some very good material on this very important day: Pax, Albert, and Howard.

Body Mod, or Proof That I'm Hopelessly Uncool and Happy to Stay That Way

Image source

You got your standard ear piercing. Your tragus piercing. Your daith piercing. Your septum, nostril, and high nostril piercing. Your lowbrets, labrets, and smiley piercings. Nipples and navels. Foreskins and frenums. Clits and hoods. T-bars and uvulas. Inverse piercings and flesh coils. And I missed them all - I'm blissfully unmodified except by too much fried food and too much time in Aeron chairs. But my buddy, BH, didn't miss out.

I was just introduced to BME, the body modification e-zine. Check it out. And, as BH says, "Remember when long hair freaked parents out?" Take a look and tell me you don't end up squandering an inordinate amount of time looking at the thousands of pictures.

BTW: I'm quite sure I'll never have the urge to have my frenum pierced. The closest I've ever even come to a piercing is when I accidentally stapled my index finger when I was in second grade at Immaculate Conception.

Pax's Wholesome Blogging

This photo started out with the best of intentions: To take a picture of a Pax's Wholesome Foods store in NYC for Pax Romano. But the rain and the phone cam conspired with the jerkiest cab ride ever to produce this yellow blur. But if you shake your head left and right at 127 Hertz and tilt the computer at to 353 degrees it's as clear as a bell. Like Pax's writing. And his brilliant cadre of commenters. See for yourself. And I'll try to hold the camera still...I did once earlier but was trying to improve on the shot. Here's a better idea of what I was going for.

Today is Friday the 13th, Triscadecaphobia Be Damned

Today is Friday the 13th. And while I do have acrophobia, I am amazingly free of triscadecaphobia, or what some call paraskevidekatriaphobia.

33 seconds in a New York taxi

I took a ride this evening from Penn Station to 50th & 3rd in New York City. I made a little video with my Treo that you can look at here. The way I was getting thrown around in the back it felt like the trip took 33 seconds, when a normal ride at that time of night should take about 33 minutes. Wahoo!

Rindelaub Row Demolition Starts

Rindelaub Row demolition started last night. I walked past there yesterday and the buildings we intact. This morning, there's rubble on 18th Street. Here's a quick snap from my Treo. I'll go over later and get some real shots with the D70. New construction on its way.

Buca di Beppo Blogging

Food. Lots of food. Buca di Beppo in Center City Philadelphia. Know what Buca di Beppo means? Joes' Garage. Now you can amaze your friends.

It's the end of the Treo 650 as I know it, and I feel fine

I own a Treo 650. Bought it about six months ago. And about two days after I bought it rumors started swirling about a new model. What's new? That's my Irish luck. Buy a new piece of hardware and have it outdated in days. So, I spent the last few months bummed about the Treo 700w being introduced. Well, the new Verizon-supported Treo 700w is here. And from what I read, I can rejoice! Yeah. The reviews are in...and they're not great.

I guess I'm delighted because I work in Mac world (but not for Macworld) and the new Treo is a Windows-based system. So, I can stick with my 650, which works with Apple products, and be happy that, for once, I bought right. Even though it's the end of the Treo 650, I feel fine.

What's out of place in this picture?

I was in the Ralph Lauren store last week in the Bellevue to buy a winter coat. I found a perfect one, the Toggle Coat. I'll be styling around Center City in it this week. And all winter.

While I was shopping I noticed this mannequin - and found something quite unsettling about it. I snapped a picture of it with my Treo. Can you see what's wrong in this picture?


What's out of place in this picture? If you know, please leave a note. If it's just too much work, the answer is here.

The Meme of 7

Ethereralfire tagged me with this Meme of 7. I think that since it's a 7, and it's from e-fire, it's good karma to do this one.

Seven Things To Do Before I Die

• Run with the bulls at the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona
• Visit Everest base camp
• See one of those million-dollar ideas through to completion
• Sail up the Nile - the entire length
• Learn to play Spanish guitar
• Speak Spanish fluently
• Calm the hell down

Seven Things I Cannot Do

• Be in high places and not get a flutter in my belly (acrophobia)
• Jump higher than the thickness of a credit card (see: acrophobia)
• Stuff a basketball (see above)
• Stop eating when I've had just the right amount of pizza
• Juggle
• Ski like Jean-Claude Killy (or even Jean-Claude van Damme)
• Concentrate for more than a few minutes at a time (was that seven things?)

Seven Things That Attract Me to...Blogging

• It's a good way to exercise my writing muscle
• Meeting interesting people (I really do read the people on my blogroll all the time)
• Good, quick reads
• Laughing at bloggers who think blogging is writing "wanker" and copying long passages that professional writers wrote
• Laughing at bloggers who beg for money
• Metafilter
• Meta tags
  

Seven Things I Say Most Often

• Baby (as in Blah blah blah, baby)
  
• The Lombardi Rules
• I don't think so, Tim
  
• All in (did I mention that I love the World Poker Tour?)
  
• There are 600,000 words in the Oxford English Dictionary, choose some
• Cool (hey, I grew up at a time when Cool was cool)
• Bonehead (it's a play name I call people...I know, it's not that charming)
  

Seven Books That I Love

• The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (hey, it's a 7 meme)
• I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (who I liked to call Ray Bradbury before Blankbaby showed me the light)
  
• Death in the Afternoon by Ernest Hemingway
• Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach
• Wired Magazine
• A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
• Any book by David Sedaris
  

Seven Movies That I Watch Over and Over Again

• The Big Chill (Michael: I don't know anyone who could get through the day without two or three juicy rationalizations. They're more important than sex. Sam Weber: Ah, come on. Nothing's more important than sex. Michael: Oh yeah? Ever gone a week without a rationalization? )
• The Big Easy (Anne Osborne: I've never been good at this sort of thing. Remy McSwain: Your luck's about to change, char.)
• Casablanca (Ilsa: What about us? Rick: We'll always have Paris. We didn't have it, we'd lost it until you came to Casablanca. We got it back last night.)
• Mr. Holland's Opus (We are your symphony, Mr. Holland. We are the melodies and the notes of your Opus. And we are the music of your life.)
• Dirty Dancing (Nobody puts Baby in the corner.)
• An American President (Sidney Ellen Wade: I don't know how you do it. President Andrew Shepherd: It's Arthur Murray. Six lessons. Sidney Ellen Wade: That's not what I mean. Two hundred pairs of eyes are focused on you with two questions on their minds - who's this girl, and why is the President dancing with her? President Andrew Sheperd: Well, first of all, the two hundred pairs of eyes aren't focused on me. They're focused on you. And the answers are Sydney Ellen Wade, and because she said yes.)
• The Godfather (Tom Hagen: Mr. Corleone never asks a second favor once he's refused the first, understood? )
• My Best Friend's Wedding (George Downes: The misery! The exquisite tragedy! The Susan Hayward of it all!)
• Four Weddings and a Funeral (I watched it again last night...and I know this is eight...but I have ADD...too many good parts to single out just one...but I do love the W.H. Auden poem at Gareth's funeral.)
  

I Want My Own Cool Logos for All the Holidays

Since I don't have a cadre of graphic designers to make seasonal iFlipFlop logos, I snagged this one from Google. I can wish, right? Look for upcoming iFlipFlop logos for Arbor Day, President's Day, and I-Have-Too-Much-Time-On-My-Hands Day.

Oh, Happy New Year. There's about 32 minutes left to say that here on the East Coast.