Lit City Blues

Yes, The Upload Project is back- because apparently, all I did when I was in college was burn CDs. When we cleaned our crap out of the Parentals' Basement I found so many burnt CDs. The vast majority of which are untitled- and all of which are a total mystery to me. The CDs that I went through in round one were like a trip back to graduate school in Mankato. These CDs: they're a trip back to my undergraduate years, if not before that and it's... weird. But anyway, the Mystery Basement CDs have begun. Enjoy, I guess? CD #1, Untitled, with five repeats The Clash- Revolution Rock Kanye West- All Falls Down Remy Zero- Save Me 311- Amber James Brown- Sex Machine All-American Rejects- Swing, Swing Steve Miller Band- Jungle Love The Cure- Labyrinth Bloodhound Gang- Mope Janet Jackson- Escapade Peter Gabriel- Games Without Frontiers Dire Straits- Water of Love Bruce Springsteen- No Retreat, No Surrender Duran Duran- (Reach Up For The) Sunrise Rush- The Spirit of ...

Hey, we've got a Kindergartener now! So that means that when it comes to these off year school board and school bond elections, I kind of have to do my homework and give a shit a little more than I have in years past. (This isn't to say that I didn't care before, it's just that now, I've got some skin in the game, as it were...) $191.5 million is on the line on September 12th and the yard sign derby (i.e. the totally unscientific survey of yard signs as I drive through where ever I'm driving) seems to be relatively evenly split. I see 'Yes' signs and I see 'No' signs. It's hard to tell where this is going to land- there are a number of fault lines worth exploring here and whichever combination of factors can come together to swing this thing one way or the other. There's geography. The center of gravity of the district is shifting to the northwest as North Liberty, Coralville and Tiffin all drive population growth. There's people ...

Watched On: Netflix Released: 2014 Starring: Jennifer Aniston, Adriana Barraza, Anna Kendrick, Sam Worthington, Felicity Huffman, William H. Macy, Chris Messina Rotten Tomatoes: 48% Pick: The Missus' The Missus and I managed to sit down and watch a movie together for the first time in what felt like a long time and after some searching and discussion, the Missus mentioned that she had always wanted to watch the Jennifer Aniston flick, Cake so we found it on Netflix and gave it a go. The movie centers around Claire Bennett (Aniston) who, as the movie opens is struggling with chronic pain in the aftermath of a car accident that killed her son and imploded her marriage. When another woman, Nina (Kendrick) in her support group commits suicide, Claire develops a strange fixation on figuring out why she killed herself- since Nina had a husband and a son. Claire is unpleasant to her housekeeper, Silvana (Barraza), sleeps with the gardener, gets herself kicked out of her supp...

We're dipping back into the 'Lost Archives' for once again this week, this time zipping over to South Asia and one of my favorite flags, the flag of Sri Lanka : Adopted on May 22nd, 1972 as the civil and state flag, it's known as- surprise, surprise- the Lion Flag, because, well, there's a big ass lion with a big-ass sword on it. The Lion and the sword stands for the bravery of the Sinhalese. The four Bo leaves in the corners that surround the lion stand for he four main concepts of Buddhism ( Metta , Karuna , Mudita and Upekkha ). The two stripes stand for the main minority groups- the saffron stripe stands for the Tamils, the green one for the Muslims. The maroon background stands for the majority Sinhalese. The gold border stands for the unity of Sri Lankans. There's a lot of irony to be found in this flag, given what I know about the history of Sri Lanka. Honestly, the flag is sort of the ideal that should be striving for in many ways- given the fact t...

This was an incredible, thought-provoking book that's an actual science fiction utopia as a posed to a dystopia and more importantly described a future which is both believable and plausible to imagine. Science fiction always works best for me when it deals in ideas and Cory Doctorow is putting himself right up besides Neal Stephenson and Kim Stanley Robinson as a writer of ideas worth reading and thinking about.  Walkaway imagines a future where, thanks to 3D printing, technology exists that can provide anyone with just about any material need they can imagine- including food. Given that, it's not surprising that an increasing number of people are choosing to reject the society of jobs and money and just walk away from it all. After Hubert and Seth meet Natalie, the zillionaire's daughter at a 'communist party', a techno-rave up in an abandoned factory where the young and hip print their drugs and toys and dance the night away, they get the idea to walk away ...

I took Sunday and Monday off sometime in January. I had a crazy notion to throw the kids in the car, drive to Omaha, crash with the in-laws for a night (on Sunday) and then Monday, drive a little further and put ourselves smack dab into the path of totality for the eclipse. It didn't work out that way, of course. The Missus couldn't get the day off (the first day of school is Wednesday, and since the Elder Spawn is starting Kindergarten that's considerably more important than a mad drive halfway into Nebraska for a solar eclipse.) And then the fact began to loom in my head that it would be a lot of driving with a 5 year old and an almost 2 year- by myself. Then stories about traffic began to leak... it was going to be a gridlock! And did I really want to drive all that way for 2 minutes of totality the kids might, maybe, go 'oh cool' at and then want to go home? I decided no. We were set to see 92% of the eclipse. I could get the Younger Spawn down for a nap,...

I'm dipping back into the archives this week for another 'Lost Week In Vexillology' this time featuring the last flag of Central America on my list- last, but very much not least, we've got the flag of Belize. A relatively new flag, as flags go, the flag of Belize was adopted on September 21st, 1981 which was the country's very first independence day. From 1870 all the way up through 1981, the country was a British colony known as British Honduras.  It features the Coat of Arms at the center and the colors blue and red. We'll get to the Coat of Arms in a second, but let's deal with the colors first. Belize (like the Seychelles and Panama and a few other countries out there I can't remember) struck a political compromise with their two main political parties at independence. The People's United Party (PUP) had colors of blue and white- which were originally proposed for the flag, but surprise surprise, the United Democratic Party wasn't ab...