| Miracle on Durham Freeway |
[Nov. 20th, 2009|04:09 pm] |
Wow- I came *this* close to at least seeing a pileup on Durham freeway this afternoon.
I was coming back from lunch thru the downtown area, traffic was kinda heavy.
I was pretty much in the clear, but I could see up ahead a number of cars bunched-up, maybe
behind some slow-moving traffic.
A little silver car in the slow-lane tried to pull-out into the fast lane. I'm not exactly sure WHAT happened next, all I see is lotsa tire-smoke and the little silver car pulls BACK
over to the slow lane HARD.
Next thing I know little silver car is swerving ALL OVER the road... LOTS of tire-smoke now!
Thankfully everyone in the general vicinty had the good sense to brake like hell at this point. Which is a good thing, as little silver car ended up at a dead stop facing the WRONG WAY in the middle of the highway.
Amazingly enough everybody got stopped, little silver car turned around quickly and went on it's merry way, and no-one so much as traded any paint.
Friggin lucky! |
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| Writer's Block: Book review |
[Nov. 18th, 2009|12:07 pm] |
The Bible (ya know- separation of church and state and all that).
I guess you should include the Koran and the Talmud too just to be fair.
Oh- and anything written by Glenn Beck. |
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| Saw 'The Cult' ! |
[Nov. 17th, 2009|07:10 pm] |
Went to see the old 80's semi-metalish band The Cult at Lincoln theater a few nights ago.
Pretty good. The place was packed and we got there a little late, so I had a pretty lousy view from waaaay in the back. No opening band, so they came on pretty late (an hour after advertised), I was getting a little annoyed waiting.
Sound was good- loud but not painfully so. Sound was mixed well. Lighting was lousy- they used a lot of projected images on a screen behind the band, so the lighting ON the band was kept low. Hey guys- I came to see the BAND, not their media show!
Their singer Ian Astbury did a thing for VH-1 a few years back where he fronted for the still-surviving original members of The Doors. I've never seen the footage, they say it was a little weird (I know a guy who worked on the show).
Well, aparently it's gone to his head. He came onstage with long curly hair and a thick black beard and mustache. He was the spitting image of Jim Morrison on the cover of The Doors '13' album. Uh, okay...
But the show was good, but kinda short I thought. They leaned kinda heavily on stuff from their most recent CD which I don't have, so I didn't know those songs.
There was ample head-banging, fist-pumping and audience sing-along (shout-along?)and I even had to resort to a little air-guitar here and there.
Quite fun, I'm VERY glad I went.... |
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| In praise of old rednecks |
[Sep. 12th, 2009|12:50 am] |
No, seriously!
My dryer died a few days ago, so I bit the bullet and called a local
repair service (Bud Matthews from Chapel Hill BTW).
I nearly missed the guy- he was right on time and I was bit late...he
was about to back out the driveway when I pulled up.
So out jumps this old redneck guy with long stringy hair and a few teeth
missing. Uh-oh....
But he came on in, took a quick look at the dryer and guessed the problem
in a minute flat. He pulled a panel off the back, patched up some loose
and burned wiring in twenty minutes or so, and all was well.
Only cost about a hundred bucks at that!
He also regaled me with some pretty fascinating stories about racing old
chevies 'back in the day' and how him and buddy once built a Corvair with
a 454 cubic inch V8 in the back seat....
Old rednecks have their uses....
CJW |
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| They paved paradise, put up a subdivision.... |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|04:15 pm] |
Well, they mowed-down a little more of the woods out back of my house yesterday. They'll have a few shiny new McMansions up there in a few months.
Anyone know of a fast-growing evergreen bush that gets about ten feet high and thrives in part sun (of course there's a lot more sun back there now, too). I want to buy about a dozen....
CJW |
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| An eye-opening report from the UK.... |
[Aug. 5th, 2009|04:00 pm] |
Got an interesting and revelatory post from a friend and ex-coworker now living in England, regarding her experiences coping with the UK's big Government-Run Socialised Medicine system.
Truly shocking.... See her unedited post presented verbatum below.
===================================================================
In Britain, I have a doctor around the corner who I can see at short notice for any problem. I had my son in an excellent local London hospital where the care was superb and no one made any decisions without my explicit consent. I walked out with a healthy baby, all the pills I needed and NO BILL. I pay around $15 a month in National Insurance... my doctor is not trying to sell me anything or cover her exorbitant liability insurance. I can still purchase private health care, or go see any private doctor if I want to pay their fees. I could even have had one free round of IVF on the National Health Service! If anything, I have too much choice and too much cover, which is why the NHS is chronically short of money... so can someone please explain this utter crap about government bureaucrats making life or death decisions for patients??? It seems those at the mercy of bureaucratic insurance companies are being hassled far more than poor me with my socialized medicine!
====================================================================
The horror, the horror....
CJ Wilson |
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| A near-cosmic convergence |
[Jun. 26th, 2009|04:10 pm] |
Well whadda ya know- while getting on 40 this morning out of Cary I was
passed by pretty nice blue Nissan SX (or maybe it was a new Mitsubishi
Eclipse- dunno it by pretty fast) with the Lic. plate "TARDIS#0"....
Sadly to say I was NOT driving my TARDIS-I little red wagon.
Rats!
Anyone know who's car that was?
I've also been passed by a PT cruiser Lic. plate TIMELORD. I WAS driving
TARDIS-I at the time, but the PT driver apparently paid me no mind.... |
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| What a drag it is getting old.... |
[Jun. 24th, 2009|12:56 pm] |
Went to Walnut Creek last nite to see Bad Company....
It's great to see these guys touring together again- I'm hoping that
means Paul Rogers has given up his ambitions to be the new singer for
Queen. That just never made any sense to me....
The opening band was the Doobie Brothers. I don't know enough about the
Doobie Brothers to know or comment on how many of them on-stage that
nite were original members or anything. Michael McDonald was NOT there
but they had found a guy who sounds reasonably similar (and that's no small
feat- Micheal McDonald has the strangest voice in the universe) to sing his
songs. Overall they sounded about like they do on the records (yes I'm
old-school). And though I'm not a big fan- I must admit they had a bunch of
good songs that I'd forgotten they did. Pretty good preformance overall.
The crowd seemed to enjoy it.
After a reasonable break to set-up the stage again, Bad Co came on.
I must admit to being a bit of a Bad Company fanboy. I have all but one of their
albums (yes, on vinyl), even one pretty awful one. I think they were one of the
best 'new' groups of the 70's....
Hmmmm.... Let's just say time has not been kind to these guys.
They have apparently ditched their original bass player Boz Burrell- who I was
kind of looking forward to seeing, as he is an ex-member of another favorite
band of mine. But his replacement was competent, and the bass was never a really
major feature of the bands sound.
Singer Paul Rogers looked and sounded quite good... he hopped-around the stage some
and wandered out to the edge to shake-hands with some audience members. I like when
a performer does that.
Poor Mick Ralphs the guitarist looked kinda old and grey and paunchy and begdraggled.
They had hired-on a second guitarist, a guy from the band Heart, to fill-in a bit.
That's kinda sad- Bad Company was always a one-guitar band, and Mick Ralphs was always
just about brilliant.
The performance was kinda uneven. Some songs were spot-on, some not-so-much.
Paul Rogers completely botched the words on the firt verse of Rock N' Roll Fantasy.
The version of Seagull they played was either a 'new arrangement' or they
screwed-it-up badly. Mick sorta botched the great guitar-intro to Rock N' Roll
fantasy....
Dunno -the whole thing was kinda 'off'....
I'm glad they are up to the task of going out on tour again, not so sure how much
longer they should keep trying....
Sad. |
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| Writer's Block: Heavenly Bodies |
[Apr. 8th, 2009|04:24 pm] |
I just HAVE to call it 'Claire'....
You know:
"Planet Claire has pink air, all the trees are red.
On-one ever dies there, no-one has a head." |
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| Oops, I did it again.... |
[Apr. 6th, 2009|11:58 am] |
I had another of my interesting little dream-snippets this morning as I was
tossing and turning (haven't been sleeping well at all).
In it a bunch of friends and I were going out to our new favorite night-spot
"The Spacebar".
If was a sci-fi and techno-geekery themed BAR.
Their motto was "Where Geeks Interface".
The inside of the bar area was pretty standard flat-black walls and ceilings, but
with little LED stars all over the ceiling and a big honkin' model of the Millenium
Falcon suspended overhead.
There was a life-size Stormtrooper suit lurking in the corner and a remote-control
R2-D2 could deliver your drinks to your table (think sandbarge).
I don't remember the bartender being in costume, but it's certainly an option.
I believe there was small laser-tag area in the back, and small private rooms that
could be reserved from RPGing....
We were going for "cheese night"- cheesy horror and sci-fi flicks on the big projection
monitor, and free chips and cheese dip with the purchase of two beverages....
The interesting thing about the name is it has a double-meaning: space/sci-fi and also
keyboards/computers.
I didn't get any real sense of what the 'draw' was for the techies, but I'm not much of
a techie myself. Anyone have any thoughts?
This is 'just crazy enough to work' if you situated it in the right location....
Hmmmmmm- maybe my post-PBS 'second career'?
CJW |
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| Politicise me! |
[Apr. 2nd, 2009|02:04 pm] |
Does anyone out there in LJ land know anyone or have contacts with political
oganizations that are keen on the whole 'public access' and 'sunshine laws'
type issues?
Looking to 'stir the pot' a bit.... |
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| The horror, the horror.... |
[Mar. 30th, 2009|10:25 am] |
Saw a most distressing and depressing scene rolling into work this morning.
Probably due to all the recent rain and high winds, a tree had fallen over
in a yard a few houses up from me. It didn't hit the house, but it did hit
the flimsy little aluminum-boat-cover type 'garage' out front, and pretty-
badly-effed-up the guy's absolutely PRISTINE and straight-as-a-pin 63 Chevy
Impala.
ARRRRRRRRRRRGH!
Couldn't tell much because the tree-crew was still cutting the limbs away
but it looked like the back of the roof was pretty well crunched.
Hmmmmm. And here I sit with a house surrounded by trees and all kinds of
old cars parked out in the driveway....
Just a heartbreak waiting to happen? |
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| question (mostly) for the ladies |
[Mar. 26th, 2009|11:54 am] |
Where's a nice 'swanky' but not break-the-bank-expensive (ie Angus Barn) resaurant
around the chapel hill/durham area that a lady would like to be taken for a nice
'special occasion' dinner?
It's a shame that I don't already know the answer to this but.... |
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| Ruminations on a large(ish) round number. |
[Mar. 23rd, 2009|02:11 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  optimistic | ] |
So I had another of my interesting little dream-snippets this morning....
In it I'm sitting watching one of those financial-planning shows on TV where
someone tries to give you a step-by-step plan for how to invest your money
depending on your age. So the guy's going; "In your twenties and thirties you
should be funding our Roth IRA to the max and invest 80% of your money in the
stock market and 20% in investment-grade bonds, yadda yadda". And I'm sitting
there with a note-pad intently scribbling this all down.
Then, IN THE DREAM, I stop and think, "Hey, what am I writing this down for, I'm
WAY past my twenties and thirties, hell, I'm pushing fifty! Hmmmm, I guess I tend
to sorta forget that from time to time...."
That little realization was interesting enough to make me literally WAKE UP.
I had to think about that a bit, but it's basically true. Made me re-think some
things I've been going thru lately.
I've made myself quite the nervous wreck here lately wondering and worrying and
fretting about work and money and investments and retirement and mortgages and bank
accounts and blah blah blah blah blah. This is all predicated on the idea that
maybe the end of my days of working might be coming up soon, and I'll have to
learn to 'coast' on the money I've saved-up so far.
BUT WAIT!
SAYS WHO?!
Like my subconscious dream-brain tells me- I feel good, I'm healthy, I sometimes
forget I'm not still thirty (or at least thirty-fiveish)!
Maybe I'm putting the cart before the horse here.... Who says I haven't got 'plenty
of good years left in me'?
Yeah! BRING IT ON!
I feel better already....
Now, where's that Roth IRA contribution form? |
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| Writer's Block: Fearsome |
[Feb. 12th, 2009|12:00 pm] |
When I was little I had a recurring dream that I was barricaded inside the house and the space aliens were RIGHT OUTSIDE trying to break in. Funny thing is- this scene was recreated ALMOST EXACTLY in the movie 'Signs'.... |
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| Non-Partisan Political Ruminations.... |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|10:40 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | optimistic | ] |
| [ | music |
| | steam: sha-na-na-na, sha-na-na-na, hey-hey, good-bye... | ] |
Okay, here's something that's been in the back of my mind since the election
that I haven't heard anyone in the media comment on at all.
I call it the "24 effect".
Has anyone commented or pondered on how much the show "24" might have hepled sort
of 'prime' the American psyche toward electing a black president by portraying
president Palmer as a really good and competent president?
You know "24" is a pretty high-rated show, and has a good viewership. And I've
even heard some pretty-die-hard conservatives say "why can't we have as good a
president in real life as that Palmer guy"....
As Mike Myers used to say on SNL, "Discuss...." |
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