While trolling through the Google referrals to this blog I came across something that I have to admit is a pretty bright idea: “the night writer”, a do-it-yourself light-up graffiti tag consisting of light emitting diodes, lithium battery cells and magnets:

The night writer extends the functionality of LED throwies by allowing a writer to catch a tag in lights. It’s cheap, easy to make and writes 12-inch glowing letters 25-feet in the air on any iron or steel surface…if you stand on a turned over garbage can.

While this use is suggested for graffiti I think it could easily be used as a distinctive and temporary way to support a cause or candidate, promote an event, decorate your house for the holidays or turn your car or van into a part-time billboard. I’m sure you can think of many other uses as well (if so, leave a comment).

The details are provided by the web-site Graffiti Research Lab, which says it is “Dedicated to outfitting grafitti artists with open source technologies for urban communication.” Despite the logo for this blog (which was originally created in a cruder form for my freelance writing business in the early 90s) I don’t endorse defacing public or private property (unless it’s your own) with spray paint. This light-up form, however, is a very creative idea and ultimately removable since it’s affixed with magnets. The link above provides simple instructions for creating a “tag” or whatever word or message you might want to display. All you need are inexpensive items such as foamcore, packing tape and the afore-mentioned LEDS, magnets and batteries — and a ferromagnetic surface.

Depending on weather conditions and the size of the batteries your message is self-sustaining for two weeks or so.

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Somewhere in my business career I came across a quote that goes something like, “Writers don’t like to write. Writers like to have written.” I can’t remember who said it or where I saw it, or even if I’ve got the wording absolutely correct, but I certainly understand the sentiment. Sometimes I’ve gotten more of a charge from clicking the “Finish” button and posting something here than I did when I got the idea for that post in the first place. The reason wasn’t because the post was especially profound, but just because I was “done”.

One of the reasons I started blogging, however, was to reinvigorate my writing chops. While I certainly wanted to voice my opinions on politics, faith and other matters there was fundamentally a desire to get back to the fun of stringing words together in a way that was at least stimulating to me; to recall the feeling of having a line or paragraph well up from the keys under my fingers so that I asked myself, “Where did that come from?”

I also love it when I experience that same sensation while reading someone else’s writing in the blogosphere. I like to stay current on events but as much as I love a good snark or appreciate a well-crafted, sharp-edged political commentary or a vigorous fisking of some inanity, my “aha!” moments usually come when I read someone who’s just letting the words flow simply because he or she can.

That’s what’s happened with a couple of recent visitors and commenters who have caught my attention, and I’d like to direct your attention their way as well: Plain Simple English and Plein Air Sketches. You’ll find a comely assortment of witty observations and piquant insight but most of all I think you’ll find, as I did, simply a joy and delight in applying the craft. Do check them out.

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Sheesh. Time to update the old “About” section again. Didn’t I just do this a year ago?

Oh well, thanks for everything, Mom and Dad!

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Cue the John Facenda music (Bwa-dup bwa bwa ba ba bwa-dup bwa bwa) and voiceover:

“There was no March wind to blow through the Board room like a blitzing linebacker, yet the woolen-clad warriers huddled behind their laptops and lattes, squinting with steely eyes at spreadsheets and rosters while their wingtips pawed restlessly at the thick carpet. Normally there is a kind of brotherhood between the personnel directors and caplogists even though they are men who wear their team colors in silk around their necks. Though the grunts and screams of the playing field are replaced for them by the clicking of calculators and the ringing of cellphones, they know what it is like to be bloodied, to see the red ink pooling at the bottom of a ledger and they share the mutual respect of all those who wield the long knives. But not this day as two teams that didn’t like each other squared off: the purple Norse raiders against the predatory birds with their hawklike eyes on the ledger. This time there would be no talk of pensions or pinot noir, but of poison pills and guaranteed money. This time it was personal as they fought in the trenches for the prime real estate known in the NFL as cap space.”

So the Vikings tricked up an unmatchable offer to get restricted free agent and prize left guard Steve Hutchinson from the Seattle Seahawks and then the Seahawks turn around and do the same to get Nate Burleson away from the Vikes, even going so far as to make the total dollars in their offer identical to what the Vikings paid Hutchinson. I guess that’s an accountant’s way of saying “in your face” and you can bet there’s some playful towel snapping going on in the ‘hawks corporate locker room tonight.

Net it out, though, and you essentially have a trade where the Vikings get Hutchinson and a third-round pick for Nate Burleson and you’d have to say the Vikes got the better end of that deal even though Burleson is a talent. What you also have is the Vikings with, unofficially, a first round pick, two seconds and two thirds in this year’s draft as a result of recent deals. They’ve also indicated they’re looking at packaging some picks in order to move up, ostensibly for a chance to draft one of the top three quarterbacks (or, in my opinion, linebacker A.J. Hawk). If they are thinking of making a trade for a QB, however, I’ve got a better and cheaper option for them than going after Leinert, Young or Cutler.

Trade a second and a third or whatever combo it takes to get Matt Schaub from the Falcons. Originally a 3rd round draft pick two years ago, the kid can flat out play and is probably a better quarterback for the Falcons system than Michael Vick. He’s big (6′-5″, 235 lbs.), runs well (he just looks slow compared to Vick) has a strong arm and best of all has shown poise even in his rookie year. He’s also played in nothing but the West Coast offense going back to his college days at Virginia. His salary this year is $385,000, and he already has NFL regular season experience (including 3 TDs and nearly 300 yards against the banged up Patriots last season). I’ve liked him for awhile but didn’t think the Falcons would even consider parting with him until I read this. It won’t be cheap to get him in a trade, but he’d still be a great value.

Any of the top three college QBs is going to cost $20 million and take at least a year to develop. Schaub could compete for the starting job this year and, based on what I’ve seen of him in two regular season and one pre-season game, “gets it” better than Mike McMahon, though they are similar players physically.

Granted, I don’t have the film resources of the Vikings brain trust, but it’s a lot more interesting to think about him playing for the Vikings than it is to read about board-room grudge matches.

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The “Dazed and Confused” team of Barry from Water Cooler Wisdom and Dan from Northern Alliance Wannabe, the Mall Diva and myself staggered to an amazingly low-scoring 16 point tie for first place in Thursday night’s trivia contest at Keegan’s.

Booya! Free drink (or dessert, in MD’s case) tickets and entries into the drawing for the trip to Boston. Best of all, though, was sitting across the table from Ben, Kevin, Scott and Chris and rubbing it in (or, in MD’s case, wagging her finger).

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“I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!”
— Patrick Henry

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… so very tired.

I’ve been on-line all night trying to convert frequent flier miles into a couple of family trips. Success was ultimately achieved. But. Must. Rejuvenate.

Blogging resumes Thu…

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I don’t remember exactly what links I originally followed last week to get there, but once I stumbled into the Wide Awake Cafe I knew it was a place I’d want to come back to often. Proprietor Laura Lee Donoho stands ready to help visitors wake up and smell the coffee, writing on any number of topics (warning: cat blogging), but with more than a little focus of late on military matters where she has some family history. In fact, she had the best post I read today about the Richard Belzer-Ileanna Ros-Lehtinen showdown on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, using her personal experience to compare the education of “ignorant” soldiers and officers with that of junior college drop-out Belzer.

What uneducated soldier in Iraq? The lowliest private has been through training that is challenging both physically and mentally. Most NCOs in the military have graduated college. All high ranking officers are constantly educating themselves not only through the military but academia. A vast majority of the officer corps have completed at least one Masters Degree. The military services encourage and in fact require the members of the military to pursue higher education. It makes for a sharper edged military. For example, my husband, a United States Military Grad has not one but three Masters Degrees.

What really makes her blog a comfy place, however, are the great graphics. This is one of the most inviting and distinctive-looking blogs I’ve seen in more than a year of cruising the blogosphere. (This is a good opportunity to say that it is refreshing to see more and more creative designs showing up online. People, let’s put those tired Blogger templates back in the toy box and graduate to something more reflective of the personalities that make up this wild world.)

Anyway, stop by the Wide Awake Cafe and see what’s on the menu; I’m pleased to add her to my blogroll menu as well.

Update:

It looks like Hugh Hewitt has stopped in to the cafe for a cuppa as well. I sure hope there’s room for everybody.

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… Daunte Culpepper.

I’ve been a Culpepper supporter since his second year in the league, but even I’m feeling a bit relieved that he’s gone after the bizarro past few months. Some folks around here didn’t like his turnovers or his decision-making, and there are a few no doubt who didn’t like his color, but in his time with the Vikings he was definitely head and shoulders above all but one or two quarterbacks in the league. I was even going to make him my first round draft pick in last year’s fantasy football draft but the guy in front of me got him (which turned out to be a lucky thing for me and perhaps discounts the rest of my analysis).

There’s no question that Culpepper’s play was subpar this last season even before the “Love Boat” and the injury. He had two good games against weak opponents and four games that ranged from dismal to wretched. Whether it was because he didn’t have Randy Moss, Matt Birk or Scott Linehan (or all of them), the distractions of off-field personal issues (as a married guy he had to have had some issues at home both before and after the boat trip), or because he was trying to do too much to overcome the rest of the team’s deficiencies, the results weren’t there. Yet two years ago he was nearly the league MVP. For all the criticism of his fumbles and inteceptions, the accuracy statistics for his career are first rate. I don’t think he’d have had a problem adapting to the West Coast offense which, for all its short and intermediate passes, still needs the threat of a quarterback going deep.

Clearly something was going on in his relationship with the Vikings, and it isn’t a new development. Eyebrows raised as early as last November when he didn’t return to the team following his injury to hang out with the guys as they made a play-off push. Few know for sure what was going on behind the scenes, but Zygi Wilf was making the right sounds about paying Daunte his roster bonus. Daunte hasn’t said anything about what he felt about Tice’s departure, but you’d think he’d be open-minded about working for a guy like Brad Childress who knew the offense that helped make Donovan McNabb a star. Daunte’s demands for a bigger contract following his injury and bad season were so strange as to more than build a case that he was trying to engineer his way out of Minnesota, but no one really knows why.

He said something about feeling unwanted, but somebody must have really been leaving some ugly notes in his locker (or email inbox) for a franchise quarterback to feel neglected. His pouting and posturing make him look like a 265 pound crybaby (and yes, I know, Fran Tarkenton was a 175 pound crybaby), but his own estimation of his worth wasn’t much more divorced from reality than Brad Johnson’s claims that he’s still a legitimate starting quarterback in this league. (True, Johnson is efficient and won’t lose you many games, but you can measure the hang-time on his passes with an egg-timer and he needs a good defense to keep the game close so he can try and keep the other team’s defense off balance. If the team gets into a situation where it has to pass to get back into a game I don’t think he can overcome a good defense).

The issue for Daunte may be as simple as the extreme mortification of being charged in the Love Boat incident. While I was one of those outraged by that escapade (see Dead ship floating) I’d have been satisfied with a two-game suspension of all players involved even if it included the star of the team. Daunte probably could have just taken his lumps, acted contrite, and all would have been forgiven after beating the Packers again. Maybe the problem was that, thanks to his injury, it would be a long wait to redeem himself on the field and he didn’t want to sit here with that being the last headline in peoples’ minds. It is reminiscent of the sexual harassment charge filed against North Star owner Norm Green that was the last straw in his decision to move the team to Dallas.

Regardless of ability, once Daunte made up his mind he wanted to be gone the Vikings really didn’t have much choice or reason to try and keep him. Now that he’s gone, thoughts have to turn to who will play quarterback for the Purple. Johnson is not an embarassment at QB, but he’s not a long-term solution (and, given his age and lack of mobility may be an extremely short-term solution once the games start). Green Bay back-up Craig Nall has been brought in for a look because he knows the West Coast offense, but not many know much about his abilities since he hasn’t had a lot of playing time behind Brett Favre. There’s no shame in being Favre’s caddy, but there are many back-up quarterbacks out there who know the WCO and nobody’s clamoring for them. Nall is interesting, and had a strong NFL Europe season a few years back, but is unknown.

Sometimes “unknown” is a positive, however, when the “known” is too problematic. Aaron Brooks is a tremendous athlete and a free agent, but his mental melt-downs are too well chronicled and he might not be a good fit for the WCO. Brian Griese has some skill, but in my mind is a younger version of Brad Johnson. Kerry Collins? Oh, please, dear God, no. People that have only watched him play the Vikings might think he’s Superman, but against everyone else he looks as overmatched as Jimmy Olson.

One guy who intrigues me (in much the same way new Vikes running back Chester Taylor intrigued me a few weeks ago in this space) is former Cardinal quarterback Josh McCown. He’s young, big, has a strong arm and can run. He’s been inconsistent as a starter, having some big games and some bad games, but I wonder how much of that was because he truly is inconsistent or because of Denny Green’s mad genius act. McCown’s early career reminds me of Steve Young’s when he was with Tampa Bay after the USFL, and his tools make him an interesting option to bring in as a #2 that can be a future starter.

As for the Vikings latest acquisitions, Ryan Longwell is a bit of a whiner but not any flakier than your average kicker and has a history of performing in tough weather and intense situations; he should be an upgrade for the team, especially kicking in the Dome. Leber was considered to be a guy on the rise before his injury and the arrival of a first-round linebacker pick Shawn Merriman (which makes you wonder if Leber was so good why the Chargers spent a first-round pick on another linebacker). Hopefully he can run and think at the same time, a problem that has plagued the Purple’s linebacking corps for the last few years. Chester Taylor I’ve already said I like. He’s got size, speed and fresh legs and I see him as a Duce Staley (in his prime) type. Taylor with Mewelde Moore playing the Brian Westbrook role gives the team an effective tandem for Childress’s Vikings version of the Eagles offense. Even better if they end up with Hutchinson, even at that price. I’d rather they spend the money on a young, monster offensive lineman that will play at a high level for many years than throwing big bucks at a big name but high-mileage running back (I’d rather have the guy that opened the holes for Shaun Alexander than Shaun Alexander at this point). Now if they can parlay some draft choices to get into the top 10 to draft Texas defensive back Michael Hough I’ll really be impressed.

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Looked out my front window this morning. 6″ on the ground and still falling, high winds, low visibility. If you need me, I’ll be in Florida.

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