Live & Direct from Nowhere in Particular...

...sort of. They added some (over)stylized color sketches to the screen saver this week.

Well, after I told it to reshuffle it was at least. When I got in the car, it started with Jimmy Olsen's Blues by the Spin Doctors. Nice choice. But then it went on to some other crap, so I went back to the main menu & hit Shuffle. Then it played:

• Edie Brickell & the New Bohemians -- Nothing
• Eric Clapton -- Hard Times
• David Bowie -- Little Wonder
• Jonny Lang -- I Am

Then I pulled into the driveway.

The music, plus the top down, plus taking Northwest Highway home so I could take my frustrations out on the loud pedal really helped my mood.

I hadn't wandered over to Mike Matas' blog in a while, which is ok, cos he hasn't posted in a while. But I was perusing my logs again & saw some links from his blog to mine (from the trackback from my previous post), so I thought I would take a look.

Wow. He has an amazing panorama he took from atop the ridge between Silicon Valley & the Pacific. The dog pic is great too. Jim would probably like that one.

& Happy Birthday, Mike.

So, it's about that time again. Time to plan & register for Summer & Fall. So I pull out my degree plan. Fire up the browser. Head on over to utdallas.edu. Wanna know what I found? For Summer & Fall there are a whole 2 courses in the evenings from my degree plan. 2. That's one in the Summer (Understanding Film) and one in the Fall (The Literature of Fantasy & Science Fiction). Both cool courses, I'll give you that. But as far as I've found so far, that's it.

So, I was thinking, maybe I'll take a PE class. Nope. The only evening class in Summer or Fall is Open Water Scuba this Summer. Not really my thing. There is a Yoga class this Fall that would be cool, but it is from 4:00pm to 5:15pm Wednesday & Friday. That's a bit early to leave work 2 days a week. Even if I am off every other Friday.

So, plan C. I need a Social & Behavioral Sciences elective. I found 2 that I like. Both are offered in the evenings this fall. Intro to Gender Studies and Youth Crime and Justice. Would you believe that they are on the same night as the LIT class?

I just tried Plan D. OK, lets search by class start time. Guess what, that doesn't work. Just lists all the classes. I am not happy. Though you probably guessed that by now.

Link: http://www.MillionForMarriage.org/

Online petitions are generally meaningless since they are so easy to fake, but it makes people feel like they are doing something, so more power to them.

The HRC has a petition for marriage up. I'm sure it's been going on for ages, but I just came across it in my wanderings, so I thought I would share. They are up to 711,134 as of when I signed. Only 288,866 to go!

What a surprise.

I was listening to Jerry Doyle's talk radio show tonite on my way home from work. Usually he annoys me, but once I heard a bit of the topic, I decided to keep listening. It turns out there was this radio host on a station in St. Louis named Dave Lenihan. He was talking about Condoleezza Rice and how qualified she was to be commissioner of the National Football League when he said:

She's been chancellor of Stanford. She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that. I didn't mean that. It was just a slip of the tongue. She's definitely got all the attributes to be commissioner. I'm really sorry about that.

When he was talking to Jerry Doyle, he said that he had intended to say that "it would kind of be a coup in the NFL" and that coup & in sort of slurred together. Having listened to the audio I do think it was a slip of the tongue if an odd one. Though I think it might have been better if he hadn't caught it until he made it to the end of his sentence, so there would be more context to give an idea of the intent of what he said. Stopping the way he did removes that and the sentence as he said it really sounds like he was trying to describe what an African-American was to someone from the back woods of the south that still only knew them as 'coons'. Like saying "She's a lion, which would kind of be a big cat" or something.

Jerry was trying to argue the fact that people such as Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan and even Bryant Gumbel intentionally use racial slurs and make racist comments without being chastised or fired or branded as racists. What he didn't actually say, most likely because he was trying to be more subtle, was that it is impossible for any of them to be racist. They are black. And it seems, in the US, being black means you can say all the negative things you like about anyone you want, especially white folk. Oh, Jerry was also a bit wrong, I did a little research and it turns out that there was a bit of drama surrounding Gumbel's comment, though I don't think he was instantly fired.

Mr. Lenihan also said that he has been cast as a racist and Klansman and various other things in on air comments on the radio station since he was fired. If that is true, I would say he probably has pretty decent a character defamation suit on his hands. He may not get his job back, but he might be able to retire.

The moral of the story? If you are a white morning show host on a station in the racial powder keg that is St. Louis that has only had the job 2 weeks don't screw up.

The screen saver revealed another sketch today...