Analog

I am the car that was only meant to get you through college. I wasn't meant to drive you to manual labor or part-time jobs. My hesitance to pull away from a stop is like the economy. My endless repairs are as plentiful as underwater mortgages and as heavy as your student loans. My lack of maintenance is like not funding two wars: costly and painful. My foreign label reminds you that "free trade" means more local jobs moving overseas. Your lack of funds for me is like your own lack of health coverage. So long as "buying local" means "shopping at Wal-Mart", so long as big cars and big houses exceed the size of what is truly needed, so long as "job creators" are held in higher regard than the unemployed, your country shall suffer. The worth of a nation is its ability to care for its weakest citizens. Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels. But I'm just a car, and I'm not taking you to anymore part-time minimum wage jobs

The Litton Minutemaster is straight from 1981! 2 ft across by 18 in high by an amazing 18 in deep, it weighs only 50 lbs! Set the inaccurate dials and sliders to take up to 10 min to REHEAT your food. Remember, even abhorantly slow by today's standards, you'd still choose it over actually cooking with a stove! Buy it now!

Les Paul died in 2009, but the musician and inventor is not forgotten.  Credited as the man behind the Gibson solid-body electric guitar, he was a skilled player in his own right.  To celebrate his musical life, Google has created a playable logo! Click on the picture above to start playing.  For those who don't know who Les Paul was, I've included a couple of YouTube videos below.

I haven't felt like I've had anything good to say lately ... or nothing of any significance to anyone other than me.  I tend to like my life that way.  However, while catching up on the news, I heard some angry dogs and the fierce clacking of something hammering the pavement of the street in front of my house.  It was this: A deer turns past my car (pictured below) and runs up the alley. Well, actually, that is what I saw once I got my camera up to the door.  I was amazed!  It took me a bit to get my shoes, my phone, and my camera lens cap and ran off like a track star.  2 blocks up and 2 blocks over, I caught up with the panting deer.  It had gotten trapped in the backyard of 1004 S. 16th St.  Several neighbors had gathered by the time I got to the driveway around front to take more photos.  I then alerted the homeowner and called the police.  Their advice was to leave it alone but no one was coming.  I suppose it would have been different had it been a bear.  Here's

I recently heard two articles that shed some light on the origins of phrases many of us use throughout a year.  It's funny how you don't need to know where they came from in order to use them.  In a sense, it's like not knowing where your groceries are grown or your car manufactured.  Back on April 18, NPR recognized the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.  Later, the Writer's Almanac for the 23rd recognized the birthday of William Shakespeare.  Both highlighted phrases familiar to me — and perhaps you — all these years later. In the King James, you can find: apple of your eye (Deut 32:10, Zech 2:8) at their wits' end (Psalms 107:27) bite the dust (adapted from Psalms 72) the blind leading the blind (Matthew 15:14) broken heart (Psalms 34:18) by the skin of your teeth (Job 19:20) by the sweat of your brow (Genesis 3:19) a drop in the bucket (Isaiah 40:15) the ends of the earth (Zechariah 9:10) fall by the wayside (Matthew 13:4) heart's desi

My own 1936 Royal brand typewriter, recently home-repaired. I heard last week about the death of the typewriter, that the last manufacturer in India was stopping production.  I thought this seemed odd, but being that it was on NBC Nightly News and that it was all over Twitter (#RIPtypewriter) that surely , the old machine was dead.  Nope. While looking for more information about the end of typewriters, I found an article from the Chicago Tribune that told me what I thought was true: electric typewriters are still being manufactured.  I'd seen enough around offices to know better than to believe they would simply disappear.  The truth is that manual typewriters are no longer being made.  So if they stopped making stick shift vehicles, would you be so quick to tout the death of the automobile?  Not likely.  Possibly this has more to do with the smart-phone-using, ever-tweeting population that wants to believe we're "out of the stone age."  Unfortunately, while m

Recently, in order to complete another project I was working on, I had to run a Google image search.  The results were so odd that I just had to share them in this YouTube video. Somewhere along the way, I decided I'd be happier with the video if it looked like I'd recorded it on a VHS tape.  Why?  I don't know.  In fact, it made my usual, enjoyable experience a multiple-hour, self-imposed torture chamber.  Somewhere between my high expectations and my older, mostly no-frills video editor, I set the bar higher than the output capability of my encoder.  Translation: What looked good on screen looked like garbage once it uploaded to YouTube.   Eventually, I figured out how to trick my older computer system, my older video editor, and my YouTube account into pumping out the result I wanted.  I'll either remember that sequence for next time ... or never ever attempt that effect again. The whole point of this search was that I needed the image of several major credit

Since last summer or so, I've been purchasing new and used books.  Instead of trying to find a place for them on the shelves of my library, I got into the habit of stacking them up on the first shelf just inside the door of my office.  This has created a precarious stack that could fall.  As I finally sat down to dismantle it, I thought it would be fun to finally share my recent purchases and explain how they fit in with the rest of my library.  (Short on time?  Watch the 1 minute preview by clicking here. ) Two of these books were purchased because of interviews I heard on the WILL-AM program, Focus . You can listen to either of those interviews by following the links below: Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason / Russell Shorto, Director of the John Adams Institute, Amsterdam; Contributing Writer at the New York Times Listen here So Help Me God: The Founding Fathers And The First Great Battle Over Church and State / Fo

I just joked that the shoes Kayla was looking at would cover the tattoo on the top of her foot. Kayla is 12. "I don't have a tattoo on the top of my foot," she said. This I knew. Then she continued, "I have a tramp stamp."

I finally sat in a Chevy Camero. With all the dials and the narrow windows, I felt like I was in a tank. It made me want to drive fast and plow through walls and barricades. So if it's not bulletproof and the firewall isn't a battering ram, I don't want it. Also, the absence of push-button wings for flight or a large caliber weapon in the grill would only depress me. "Hey. Who's that really sad-looking guy driving the nice car?" I'd have returned it to the lot within a week.

Free popcorn, free coffee, and baby chickens. I'm never sure about my life in Rural America. It's like living in a petting zoo and not knowing who the animals are.

Ice on the tree in my front yard. Somewhere in out neighborhood, a chain saw is ripping through a fallen tree in the dark.  The wind howls, ice crackles, and the rain freezes in the air before it ever hits the ground.  Rumor has it that while things are bad in east-central Illinois, Chicago could see its worst winter since 1967 .  The media keeps circulating that quote, so it must be true.  Meanwhile, the governor of Illinois declared a disaster declaration before the snow even hit.  Since then, Governor Quinn dispatched the National Guard to aid stranded motorists , and the Mattoon school district has cancelled school yet again.  You would think this mighty glaze of ice would end the world.  People who poorly prepare are getting stuck while those who over-prepare suck up the remaining winter resources as though God himself deemed Illinois be buried under snow for 40 days and 40 nights.  Fear not, this too shall pass. DeAnn and Kayla text to stay warm. How are the St.Michaels

Normally, I think I'd tell you about all of the college girls here tugging down their micro dresses. Instead, you get this message. Where am I tonight?

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post wrote recently that he won't be bringing up Sarah Palin during the month of February.  (See the article here .)  Though I found it amusing, others on the Washington Post site found it horrifying to censor any subject.  Is it really censorship?  I suppose were Palin to declare her candidacy for office and Milbank refused to cover it, then it would be censorship.  However, given that Palin isn't a governor or any other public official any longer, why give her so much credit?  Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter say inflammatory things all the time, and aside from FoxNews, no one pays them any mind.  I say this isn't censorship but a reevaluation. Saturday Night Live proved long ago that making light of Palin wasn't difficult.  (See the "I can see Russia from my house" video by clicking here .)  There are 171,476 words in the Oxford English Dictionary and yet instead of using one of them, she fumbled her way into " refudiate

Waitress: How's everything looking? Me: Huge. Waitress: Huge? Me: Yes, huge. Could you find a small midget to help me eat this? DeAnn: You can't say that! Me: Oh! You're right. I'm sorry.... Could I have a small DWARF help me eat this?