I must get an 
octodog frankfurter converter!!!
In James Howard Kunstler's Eyesore of the Month pages, he uses blunt language to describe the landscape that the traditions of commercialism and the automobile lifestyle have left as their legacy. In October he said
The tattooed eagle stradles a lumpish, deflated earth (perhaps punctured by its talons) before the ranks of Humvees waiting for buyers who can take advantage of the special corporate tax break for vehicles over 6000 pounds (nice work Karl Rove!). Notice, the setting is one of those innumerable places not worth caring about which someday will add up to a nation not worth defending.
His book The Geography of Nowhere was an important factor in our choosing to buy a house in a functioning neighborhood where we could walk to work and our children could walk to a neighborhood school.
This afternoon I went to an Apple support seminar to talk about MacOS 10.3. The rep gave his demo and then people asked about a variety of issues. For a fair number of them, the Apple guy acknowledged they were bugs that we should contact him about, if we wanted them fixed. Relatively few of the problems affect us, actually.
Tonight a bunch of us are getting together to watch both extended edition DVDs of LOTR. Everyone has been sick, so I don't know who is going to show up. It should be fun. I haven't seen the extended edition Two Towers yet, but Phil said it was good: they can more fully develop some characters that are given short shrift in the theatrical release. Before I do that, however, there may be just enough time to build Muppyville accounts for everyone.
We're a quarter through the first disk. "Keep it secret! Keep it safe!" It's wonderful to see the DVD projected with a large-screen projector. Only 4 or 5 of us have actually shown up, but we're all enthusiastic! We should probably do this more often. Tom Hoogendyk just arrived, but he went down to the BCRC to work on his paper without distractions. Can you believe it? We have all the lights turned off, but with my wonderful back-lit keyboard, I can still type reliably.
Have you ever noticed that with the ice and snow of Caradhras on his beard, Gimli looks exactly like 
? Watch for it!