A New Media War Brewing?

Colbert vs. Beck? I hope so! And potentially in the vein of Jon Stewart v. Jim Cramer/CNBC. I've long thought Glen Beck to be a complete wanker, and now that he has moved his show to Fox News Channel it has all but confirmed those thoughts. How did he manage to keep a show on CNN for so long anyways?

Running through Digg the other day I came across this Colbert Report clip that had become quite popular. In it, Colbert makes a complete mockery of Glen Beck and his career posturing on 9-11: the fake tears, sad looks, wiping eyes, the 9-12 project and let's not forget the quotes about how Glen Beck hates 9-11 victim's families.

If Fox News and Glen Beck take offence to Colbert's piece the way CNBC took offense to Jon Stewart's rant from the other week, we could have another awesome show down coming up between Colbert and Beck.


This is taken just north of MN HWY 1 and Tettegouche State Park on the Superior Hiking Trail. Can't remember the name of the lake but I believe it is on the approach to WRELC.

One More Day

I have now officially passed 200 blog posts. I took over 3 years to do it. I started in September of 2005, I think. It seems like a lot, then I look at the length of time this has been out there and wonder why there aren't more.

I have one day of 98% mobility left. I spent 3 hours adjusting the damn brakes on my road bike and tuning it up into a generally rideable condition. Now it's really late and I will be hard pressed for the energy to pedal in the morning =) I'll get 30 miles of biking in before I won't be able to bike at all for weeks. Guess I'd better enjoy it!

Wednesday is surgery and I'm not really looking forward to it. Hopefully, I will be glad about this whole ordeal in the fall. The pain will be gone, the physical therapy will be done with, I'll have been biking all summer and have a strong healthy knee on which I can play Ultimate.

Good-bye hard earned vacation hours! And Happy St. Patrick's Day. If you are into that sort of thing. I couldn't care less. Or actually I could: Easter is coming up shortly.
Lake Pepin at Frontenac State Park, November?, 2008. Looking across to Maiden Rock, WI.

Under the Knife

March 18th! ACL reconstruction surgery. Can't say I'm looking forward to a week off work. Nor the physical therapy to follow.
Superior Hiking Trail. There would be these massive storm fronts that move in from the West. Sometimes they passed without a fuss, other times... we got wet. If they passed overhead without letting off precipitation they would break up over the lake and let the sun shine through.

Ice Flow

Minnehaha Falls. Minneapolis, MN. I have no idea why a caterpillar machine is down there.

Am I in the United States?

My president speaks complete sentences, and is of mixed race. There are orders coming out of said president's office closing down prisons that hold people without trial and check the wages of the highest earners on his staff. Word on the street is the war in Iraq is ready to enter a new phase: the beginning of the end. Pinch me, I am dreaming. For this is unreal.

My front tire went flat yesterday riding home - right as I rode up to Hennepin Ave station. I don't want to sully my road bike and have been rather lazy to walk over to the bike store by my house to buy a new tube so I have been using my car to get around. I hate the thing. Ice builds up on the inside of my winshield so that I have to use the scraper to get it off. And that barely works.

I signed up for a photography newletter that assigns a weekly homework assignment and offers tips, tricks and other ideas. I figure if I read about it and am reminded by it, perhaps I can keep up with my resolution. I was walking through downtown during lunch today through one particular building and realised I have to come back and shoot some photos - it has a rather unique interior (Butler Sq. Building). I remember walking through it with my dad as a kid getting to the Target Center via the skyways. It still looks impressive!

Here are some cool things I found on the interwebs today:
Obameter: Tracking Obamas promises.
Zip (de) Code fun!

Things to do this week: get my library card. I've been stalling on that for 2 months after not having on since junior high.

Wolf Creek Waterfall at Banning State Park, MN.

Resolute in my resolutions

Here we are well in to 2009. Happy New Year btw. 2008 went by awfully quick but it was by and large a pretty sweet year. I spent nearly half of it unemployed. I spent nearly all of it with a torn ACL but tried hard to let that not affect what I did with my leisure. It was a bad year for blogging. Looking back I was pretty god damn lazy with posting and content (as Dan rightly pointed out at the end of the year). While getting ready for the countdown at the party we went to, I thought about what I could do for 2009 resolutions. I don't make all those bullshit get-in-shape self-promises I know I'm not going to fulfill. Here was what I came up with:

1. 5000 VMT. The average car owner drives 12,000 miles. That's ridiculous, unsustainable and can't continue into a future of depleting fossil fuels. (I hope I have made my thoughts on that crystal clear over the last 4 years!) I won't put more than 5,000 miles on my car this year. That's 400 miles/month or 100/miles a week, roughly. I'll track them on a spreadsheet and everything. As of 1 January, 2009 there was 184,050 miles on my car. When 31 December, 2009 rolls around I should have less than 189,050 on it (if it even lasts that long!).

2. PotW. Picture of the day. I got this from someone else, who's friend takes at least one picture every day. I'm not going to be that gung-ho about it and probably knock it back to a picture of the week. I have a nice camera, and will be getting a better lens so there is no reason not to let it sit under my bed. This is a good reason to get it out and use it!

3. Limit the # of flights I take. There are a few places I'd like to travel to this year (L.A., London, Oregon?). I know a few years back I took over 25 flights in an 18 month period. This is also something that is not sustainable and won't be able to continue into the future ala resolution 1. I've heard both good and bad about long distance train service in the US but it can't be any worse than the Ghan in Centralia. And I think I can get a coupon for the daily out to Seattle with companion fares.

4. Fix my knee. Doable with my knewly acquired health insurnace.

5. Expand my garden to grow a good portion of food during the 2009 growing season. The only thing that really worked out last year was basil (which remains as frozen pesto and a slowly dying plant in the kitchen) and jalapenos with absolutely no heat to them and tiny, funny shaped onions. It was a steep learning curve in extremely poor soils with lots of rodents attacking my small garden at night. This year I will try my hand at square foot gardening, planter boxes for herbs, peppers and other small plants and a few stalks of corn.

A very low Gooseberry River. Taken from the Superior Hiking Trail bridge. September 2008. You can see the storm coming in from the West. It rained on us about an hour later as we hiked down to the visitor center for water and electricity.

Same ol', same ol'

If you haven't been to the Brudaimonia lately, go have a look. Its been a hot summer and the posting has been off and on, but Jeff and I have put up a few decent posts lately. A lot of the time I read articles, op ed pieces and other commentary and think that an issue doesn't need to have another post written up about it. I've realised this is not so! So I'll get on that and just maybe there will be a few more posts on our quality rag.

I've finally gotten my Australia photos, developed, scanned, uploaded, tagged, titled and described on Flickr. They are pretty much in completely random order. I appreciate comments on them! So let me know what ya like and what ya don't like. There are also Europe pictures and some from around the states too, but those have been up for a while.

I settled in quite well over the last three months. Still feeling a strong urge to leave again, but not in the near future. So for now I go to my boring job, train for the marathon in October, try and find my ultimate skills that disappear over winter and working holidays, paint my dad's house when it isn't hot and humid (so, never) and flush my money down the drain on automobile expenses. One day I think I'll move out to live on my own and find a longer term job in Minneapolis and the next I'm thinking head to New Zealand come April '08 and the next day, who knows where, or what. NYC? So that's what I'm up to.