ethan

Back at work and my comments on the RNC

I'm back at work. After taking four weeks off to help take care of my new baby girl I returned to work. I'm extremely grateful that I work at a place that cares enough to allow me that much time off for Quinn. I asked my mom about it, she said when I was born it was up to the grace of the employer to even allow the father to witness the birth of the father’s child let alone take time off to help take care and bond with them. We've come a long way!

They're going easy on me at work. They gave me a couple easy shots to ease me back into work. I'm grateful for that, but I still want to do the best I can on these shots. I don't feel that distracted believe it or not. I don't think I'll have any problem balancing Quinn and work. I thought I would. We'll see what happens when crunch time comes along. Maybe it'll be tougher when I have to stay late and I can't help Allison out as much.


Also I've been trying to watch the RNC. I figured that I watched so much of the DNC that I it only be fair to watch some of the RNC as well. I have to say thank goodness for NPR's website. I can only take so much of the RNC at one time. The NPR website has video, mp3s and transcripts of all the speeches. That allows me to break it down into segments. Still in segments its hard to watch.

All I have to say is how many times can you say 9-11 in one speech? I mean come on! It's not like 9-11 is a Bush accomplishment, it's something that happened to America on his watch. Wait a second! Maybe it is a Bush accomplishment. I mean after all he did receive warnings that it was going to happen and he chose to ignore it. It is the best thing to happen to his presidency, and without 9-11 he would have never been able to become a wartime president and take away our civil liberties. Maybe it is his big accomplishment.

Also according to Arnold Schwarzenegger, I'm a Republican. Oh well.

I’m looking forward to tonight’s Daly Show, it should be a good one!

Best Picture I've seen all week:

http://www.woostercollective.com/images2/polo5.jpg

Hot and Stuff

Wow, it is hot today. 95! We're finding it tough to stay cool.

BTW, if you remember the 80's and want a good laugh check this video out, WARNING, it may produce some forehead slapping action.:

http://www.ksjs.org/media/townsen.html

MPAA's latest in theater propaganda

The MPAA has put together a website and a really long video about piracy and respecting copyrights. Apparently every time you illegally download something off the internet you hurt my job. I'm sure you all know how I feel about this stuff so I won't repeat myself. But there's something I found interesting about the video.

It has a lot of clips and soundtracks from a lot of great films, from a lot of great studios. It's an interesting college. But how did they get the rights to all that work. All of those films are Copywritten somewhere, it must have taken years to secure the rights to all of those clips! How did they do it? Or maby the studios are overlooking the copyrights in order to fight a cause. Does this mean the studios can overlook something like this? Why can't they do it for art or preservation. As soon as they feel their wallet is threatoned they can do it, but if it's for artistic reasons they fight it. Hmmmm....

The video can be found here:

http://www.respectcopyrights.org/video_download/mpaa_studio_film_300.mov

The scary website can be found here:

http://www.respectcopyrights.org/content.html


I origanly found out about this from Boing Boing:

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/08/25/mpaas_latest_intheat.html

Happy Birthday To Me…

Allison calls this past year my 30th mid life crisis year. She calls it that because I changed so many things in my 30s. She’s not kidding, this was an intense year for me. Getting married and having a baby are both great things. But I don’t advise doing them in the same year! At least I didn’t change jobs and move! That would really be the thing that pushed the wagon off the cliff. I’ve never been so stressed out and emotional in one year in my entire life. Hopefully my 31st year will be a lot milder.

I think my 31st year will be the year that I pay for everything. But you never know. I expect something big to happen at the end of December, but I don’t know what that will be. If I’m lucky I will get a bonus that will be big enough that I can fire a few credit card companies. Lord knows I’ve been keeping too many of them employed for too long. If not, then it’ll be another tough year for us. But I have faith.

Well I’m still waking up, spent last night changing diapers. Apparently Quinn is a night owl. She sleeps like a rock all day, but at night she wakes up and just wants to hang out. She looks around at things, looks at you, looks at your tired eyes that are trying to convince her that she wants to sleep. All you can do is rock her and watch bad TV. Thank goodness for Red Bull, coffee and late night TV.

Resfest is coming

Resfest, my favorite film festival, has announce their tour dates. To find out if they're going to be in your area go here:

http://www.resfest.com/

They don't announce what films they're going to show until August 17th.

I'm not sure why I like this festival so much. I think it's the way the films are selected. Resfest is pretty consistent at picking good stuff to show. If you've never been, I suggest going to some of the music video shows to get an idea as to what the rest of the festival is like. The first time I went I just bought tickets to the music videos, I ended up buying tickets to as many shows as I could. Now days I just buy an All Pass, it saves me money in the long run.

I wasn't sure if I'd be able to make this years show. I didn't want to abandon Allison with the baby as I went to a film festival (it lasts all week). But she's been encouraging me to go, she knows how much I enjoy it. I'm glad I married someone like her. I'm sure I'll pay her back one day by taking care of Quinn as she goes to something of her own.

Happy Birthday Quinn

Today I'm a father, and I couldn't be happier!

For more info see our baby blog:

http://www.packthecat.com/Baby/Blog/