I spend the larger part of my active, productive day doing shit I don't give a rat's ass about. My "career" has been about working for things I'm indifferent to. So ... when do I get to work on something I actually care about?

Ah ... there's the question we're waiting for the thin guy to answer.

This is me showing Alma how to create a blog entry.

So who's the moron now? At least George still has a job.

Due to Grey Cuo entertaining, there was no time to update Piddleville. Heavens! There was no time to take in any new DVDs! Not that anything interesting came out this week. At least, not anything I gave a rat's ass about. But later this week? Who knows ...

Okay, I like this design fine except ... 1) it doesn't look like the rest of Piddleville and, 2) why would you put the dates in a column on the right, which is the last place anyone would look for them? Cute but dumb.

And everytime I post something I have to republish the entire archive! Damn!

Blah blah blah ... This is me trying to fix this damn blog.

Would someone please tell me where the eensie-teenie images I uploaded for The Burble went to? Ooooo ... This Internet thing is such a fickle so-and-so! I wish I'd stuck with pens and stamps!

Pens and stamps! That may be the name of my next enterprise ...

Once again, I am trying another template. Frankly, I don't like any of them.

I have made a template change. But this will be temporary, I think. I don't really like the available templates (teeny fonts, for one thing), but I lack the mental capacity or inclination to create my own (except for the simple one that was here before). But ... what the hell. I wanted a change.

It's a cold and snowy weekend. Therefore ... loads of movies on DVD. I'm about to head out to pick up a few ...

From my position of lofty ignorance beyond the U.S. borders:

Why do Republicans now control both houses? As with elections in other democratic countries, the parties that win tend to be the ones who talk the talk we want to hear. And it’s not just a question of what is talked about. It’s also how it’s talked about.

To use an extreme analogy, when someone’s house is on fire it’s difficult to get them to discuss the condition of their lawn.

“Would you cut your grass, please?”

“You idiot! My damn house is on fire!”

He’s right. The other guy’s an idiot. It’s not that the U.S. is in such a dire situation, such as their house being on fire. But there is definitely a perception that something akin to this is their situation. Republicans spoke to this perception; Democrats did not. And so we have the results of the recent election.

It’s also a leadership question. Bush is perceived to be a strong leader, thanks largely to world terrorism. The Democrats have … have … well, I’m not sure who the hell they have. But it’s a bad hand to have going into an election.

When the political landscape in any country adjusts to favour any one party to a great extent (such as the U.S. now, Canada with the Liberal party, the province of Alberta with it’s provincial Conservatives), it often says more for the lack of credible alternatives than it does for the heavily preferred party. Not all the time, but it does more often than not.

The Democrats have quite a bit of building to do now. For everyone’s sake, let’s hope they get their heads out of their bums, get a sense for where the world’s population, and especially the U.S. population, is and begin to speak to them as a credible alternative and not simply as the cranky guys who lost.

Without balance, we all tend to go overboard and this is the risk now with such a dominant Republican party in power.

Improvements behind the scene ... Sort of. I've added a couple of chips of memory as well as Windows XP over the weekend. Yes, the system works much better now - faster, fewer crashes. And this is good. The downside is my Outlook is screwed up (and God knows where the disc is to restore it), Zone Alarm works only occasionally and there are several other issues ... like little Microsoft pop up screens I could do without. Grrr ...

Anyway ... there was also time to add more reviews to the Movie Room. Have a gander.