"There's a Bright Golden Haze in the Shi-i-ire"

This may be...intriguing. It looks like that a musical version of The Lord of the Rings is set to hit the London stage in 2005.

That sound you heard was Tolkien spinning in his grave again. I'm not sure I'm ready to see the Ringwraiths in tights or Balrog and Gandalf jazz dancing while singing a duet of "You Say Tomato, I Say Tom-ah-to".

"Get rid of self-conceit. For it is impossible for anyone to learn that which that which he thinks he already knows." -Epictetus

Busy weekend. Seemed like every day was filled with potlucks, parties and trips to bookstores. If you know me, you know that this is no bad way to spend a weekend.

As Karlene has mentioned, Kandy and Kip visited us here in sunny So. Cal for a few days where much fun was had. Friday was a girlie day for Kar and Kandy, so I made the boys breakfast and tended to homework duties (Josh's cursive skills have much improved since the school year). After that, Rae made the generous offer to watch the kids while I ran some errands and made a trip to Archives with Bryan. Later that night we all went to see X-Men 2 (far superior to the first one).

Saturday, we went to my friend, Rick's house and ate far too many spareribs, Korean noodle salad and kim chee. Rick had an inflatable jumpy house the size of his house so I had some fun rolling aruond in it (I defy you to stand up in one of those things for more than 5 seconds, especially when you have 10 rabid 5-10 year olds tugging on you). It was one of those weird evenings where I fell asleep at 9 PM, woke up at 10 and watched TV/goofed on the internet til 1 AM. I mean really, a nap before bedtime. I must be sick in the head.

Sunday, potluck party with Kip and Kandy as well as the rest of the Holtzendorff clan. Much fun, again, too much food and a rousing handballesque game of something like a cross between "Butt's Up" and "Football". I got rocked pretty hard.

Monday, yet another potluck party, with cigars and healthy portions of Optimator and Hefeweizen followed by a mass trip to Borders for a couple of hours. Then it was over to my parents house for a visit and a spot of dinner. A much needed wrap-up to a busy weekend.

Ahem...Language Police to the White, errr, Caucasian Courtesy Phone Please.
-or-
Why I Thank Jesus Every Day, That My Kid is in Private School.

Man, as much as I love Newspeak, this certainly seems doubleplus ungood:

"But then again you can't find anyone riding on a yacht or playing polo in the pages of an American textbook either. The texts also can't say someone has a boyish figure, or is a busboy, or is blind, or suffers a birth defect, or is a biddy, or the best man for the job, a babe, a bookworm, or even a barbarian.

All these words are banned from U.S. textbooks on the grounds that they either elitist (polo, yacht) sexist (babe, boyish figure), offensive (blind, bookworm) ageist (biddy) or just too strong (hell which is replaced with darn or heck). God is also a banned word in the textbooks because he or she is too religious.

To get the full 500-word list of what is banned and why, consult "The Language Police," a new book by New York University professor of education Dianne Ravitch, a former education official in President George H.W. Bush's administration and a consultant to the Clinton administration."

" She says a lot of people are having fun finding new titles for Ernest Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" which presents problems with every word except "and" and "the." Ravitch said old is ageist, man is sexist and sea can't be used in case a student lives inland and doesn't grasp the concept of a large body of water."

Blogger blogs are loading slow...again. Hopefully this won't last very long, but hey what do you want, it's free.

It seems that Google is also working on creating a blog-only addition to their search engine so that blog pages won't show up in regular general searches. Well, there goes 70% of my traffic I guess :-)

Next up...Google works on fixing search engine to cut out liberal media noise...and the workers rejoice.

For those of you who, like me, were scratching their head throughout this whole scene wishing that Colonel Sanders would just talk slower. Here's a transcript of the coversation between Neo and the Architect. I'm sure this goes without saying but do not read if you have not seen it yet. Unless you want too...then umm, just go ahead.