I missed the England-Ecuador match this morning because I had to tend to my daughter’s now-confirmed strep throat (thanks, doc, for not ordering the antibiotics Friday when I you saw her and said it was probably strep but we’d have to wait for the culture to grow; now she’s two days behind being cured). But [...]

I hate shopping for clothes, including shoes, because so-called fashion these days is stupid. It’s either all the same or too expensive (like the Euro stuff I like but can rarely find/afford). Plus these damn malls give me headaches and depression. That’s why I prefer secondhand or out-of-fashion places. I needed a new pair of [...]

Right now Japan Time the Irei no Hi (Memorial Day) services for the war dead of the Battle of Okinawa are being held in the Peace Park at the base of Mabuni Cliff, where the battle effectively ended on June 23, 1945 with the suicides of the two commending officers, Lt. Generals Ushijima and Cho. [...]

Europeans are so cool. If you missed this NPR piece, Dutch World Cup fans sporting orange lederhosen with Bavaria Beer logos and lion tails on them were forced by FIFA officials to remove them if they wanted in to watch the match because Budweiser has “pouring rights” at the match venues and Heineken is the [...]

You should know the hit “Fade into You” if you know any of these three from Mazzy Star (what a great name):
Fade Into You (from So That Tonight I Might See):

Be My Angel (from She Hangs Brightly):

Take Everything (from Among My Swan):

Parkour practitioner (”traceur”) David Belle teams with France’s top martial artist Cyril Raffaelli to infiltrate a seemingly all-male (and all-bulked-out male) 2010 Paris ghetto (Banlieue 13, of the title) to defuse a stolen neutron bomb. That’s about the size of the plot of this Luc Besson-written and Pierre Morel-directed action flick. The main attraction, however, [...]

I had my camera with me on the road again the other day and came across the Liberal Mobile. It had un-Tennessean bumper stickers all over it. My favorites:

Rays of hope in the Bible Belt…

The House That Was Blue is now red, festively so. In the process of getting it painted I received a live lesson in immigrant labor relations. Last year when Boss Man (white) did an estimate for me he signaled — as a selling point(!) — that his crews were all white, in contrast to the [...]