Stan Taylor

About a month ago, we (finally) got a digital video recorder. And just as I’d heard from others, it has revolutionized our television watching. I normally only watch television after about 9:00 p.m., and usually there isn’t anything on at that time that particularly interests me. Well, not any longer. I’m currently recording Futurama, Good Eats, Monk, Stargate Atlantis, Frontline, and other individual shows and movies.
But the biggest change is with the children. Anytime they sit down to watch TV, something that they want to watch–and that we approve of–is on. Samuel has not even thought about the shows we would prefer he didn’t watch.
Hannah, my little tech clone, took to the DVR immediately. After a couple of tutorials on how to keep from filling up the entire hard drive with her shows (and thereby causing other family members’ show to be deleted), she and I are co-existing with it quite well.
For me, the biggest challenge so far is allowing shows that I haven’t watched to be deleted. I feel like I am obliged to watch everything that I record.
Our cable provider, Cox Communications, charges us $11/month extra for the DVR, and so far it has more than paid for itself. We haven’t rented a single DVD since we got it. The kids tend to rent older movies, and those are shown on TV regularly, so the kids have watched quite a few movies. I watched The Big Lebowski last night, but I have to say that the version that was edited for broadcast left something to be desired. I may have to rent it so I can get the original expletives.

A few days ago, I commented on Josh Marshall’s theory that Bush’s social security privatization effort was motivated by a desire to keep the federal government from having to pay back all the money that it has borrowed from the social security trust fund. I criticized Marshall for offering a theory, but no supporting evidence.
Well, now Bush is flat-out lying about the solvency of social security, saying that it will be ‘insolvent’ in 40 years or so.
It’s projected that in forty years or so, Social Security will have start paying out more money than it receives in taxes, thereby drawing on the trust fund that it is currently accumulating.
If the federal government did not pay back the money that it has borrowed from the trust fund by that time, then the president’s statements would be true. Maybe he’s getting people used to the idea that social security will go bankrupt soon so that when he proposes not paying back the loans, many people won’t question it. It’s still just a theory with no concrete evidence, but I’m trying to make sense of the president’s moves.

Slate offers a nice peek behind the curtains at how the Linguistic Society of America chooses its Words of the Year. Some excerpts:

In the Most Euphemistic category, Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction seemed like a lock until Bill Frawley, the dean of the Columbia College of Arts and Sciences at George Washington University, suggested badly sourced, which was used by Colin Powell and others to mean “false.”
This year the strongest contender [in the Most Outrageous category] was santorum, defined (and heavily promoted) by sex writer Dan Savage—in a campaign to besmirch the name of right-wing Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum—as “the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.” We dismissed one potential problem—that newspapers wouldn’t print the term if it won—on the grounds that we shouldn’t censor ourselves. And indeed, in the afternoon’s voting, santorum did win, but many newspapers simply skipped this category in their coverage. So much for academic freedom.

It really irritated me when I heard people comparing the devastation caused by the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean to the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on September 1, 2001. Rob Cockerham puts things in the proper perspective.

For several years, we attended a church in Austin. We live in the ‘burbs, so it was a long drive (30+ minutes) and of course, nobody in the congregation lived near us. How we ended up attending this church is a long story, and we were never terribly comfortable with the congregation, not to mention the commute, so we never joined.
About 18 months ago, we decided to find a church closer to home. We attended services at the nearest Methodist church, First Methodist in Pflugerville, and at another Methodist church in the next suburb. The service at the Pflugerville church was okay, nothing to write home about, but we liked a lot of things about the other church: the senior pastor is one of the most dynamic preachers I’ve ever heard, they’re growing and have lots of different programs that interested us.
When it came time to make a decision, it came down to the following factors: the other church offered the things we thought we wanted in a church, but the Pflugerville church is our neighborhood church–our kids would be with the same kids at church as at school and in the neighborhood, etc.
I thought about this for a while and concluded that ‘church shopping’ is a bunch of bullshit because it’s all about your own personal needs and desires, not about other things, of which community ranks highly.
So, we ended up joining First UMC Pflugerville, and we’re really glad we did. For one thing, the issue of community has turned out to be correct. We’re really glad we’ve deepened our roots in our local community.
Today, I just ran across an essay that I hadn’t seen in a long time. I think it’s related to this topic: How to Find a Church, by Gordon Atkinson

I’ve been pondering President Bush’s possible motivations for his Social Security privatization push, and the only thing I can come up with is this: the private sector sees that massive pile of money sitting in the Social Security trust fund doing virtually nothing (well, except financing the federal deficit) and would really like to use it to capitalize commercial enterprises.
Joshua Marshall offers another, more nefarious, motivation: Social Security privatization is the first step in Bush’s plan to keep the federal government from having to pay back the trillions of dollars it has borrowed from the trust fund–and to destroy Social Security in the process.
I’m just as willing as the next liberal to believe that Bush is capable of such a nefarious act, but as compelling as Marshall’s idea sounds, he offers no explanation of exactly HOW privatization is the first step. When someone hypothesizes an entire chain of events that would tie the administration’s current efforts to this dastardly goal, then I’ll analyze it and see if it seems logical and fits the facts. Until then, I’m inclined to think it’s just your run-of-the-mill Republican privatization effort–granted, on a scale that’s unprecedented in American history.

Maddie protecting her Christmas rawhide from several much larger dogs

We’ve taken in two dogs from a friend who suddenly had to move away and couldn’t take them. These sweet dogs really need a new home, preferably together. If you live, or know people, in the Austin area, please put out the word.
I’ve created a web page about the dogs.
UPDATE: We found homes for both dogs.

Looking back, I’m amazed how many activities I took part in as a child and teenager.
At about age 10 or 11, I trapped fur-bearing animals to sell their pelts and mowed some yards for pay. I still cannot believe my mother helped me to skin small animals!
At age 12, I started working as a dishwasher on the weekends at a local BBQ and catfish joint. I continued working there as dishwasher, and later also as a cook, every weekend and summers until age 18. It was hard work, but the owners were very fair and I learned a lot–mostly how to work hard.
During high school, I participated in the following school-sponsored activities:

• Choir (all four years)
• Marching and concert band (all four years)
• Stage band (two or three years)
• Madrigal (elite choir–we didn’t have a class meeting; practiced after school)
• Band and choir solo and ensemble (I received a 1 at state solo and ensemble for my vocal solo my senior year, only the second such honor in our school’s history)
• I started a speech club, was its president for two years and participated in informative and persuasive speaking events
• German club: took part in various competitions, and served as an officer one or two years

In addition to those school-sponsored activities, I also tried out the following outside of school, though I didn’t stick wtih any of them for too long:

• Barbershop quartet singing with the SPEBSQSA chapter in New Braunfels
• Community theater: I got a part in one production, but the organization was such a mess that I withdrew before we got to performance
• Square dancing with a local club

On top of all that, I’m proud to say that I graduated third in my class of 170–though, to be fair, every year, two or three of my six courses were music-related (I got As), which certainly padded my GPA.

As I was stopped in traffic this afternoon, I looked over into the car next to me, and the driver was pulling ear hairs with tweezers. When he finally looked my way, I continued staring at him for a second, smirking.