I was up early this morning, leaving my brother’s house to drive the 25 miles to my mom and dad’s where I left the girls. It was strange weather last night – weirdly lit upside-down dinner roll clouds scattered around clear patches, followed by tremendous and sudden thunder and lightning, but very little rain. At 6:30 this morning there was fog as I set out on the highway.

The gray mists made it easy to imagine I was out at sea. Occasionally the hulking shapes of semis would appear out of the gray like freighters bound for distant ports. I had Ray Lynch’s Deep Breakfast CD turned on, and as the song “The Oh of Pleasure” played it seemed as if the lights of approaching cars came out of the fog in the same way the ethereal notes of Lynch’s melody emerged from the rhythm.

Fog is unpredictable. At one point ahead and well above me it cleared for few moments and I could see the top of a telecommunications booster tower, it’s transmitters standing out like oversized ears, but I couldn’t see the base of the tower. It was the type of sky where I could easily imagine God opening a trap-door, like in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, with beams of light radiating, to pronounce a mission for me (but first, “stop grovelling.”)

Perhaps a mission is what I need. The fog and the familiar road I was driving were a little too apt a metaphor. I knew pretty much where I was and where I was going and what was immediately ahead, but everything else seemed so mysterious. This was the road I chose, but maybe I ought to check out my GPS – God Positioning System – to make sure I’m on the right track. As I’m thinking this, I recall what Cheeseburger Brown said earlier this year in his excellent “The Darth Side: Memoirs of a Monster” illumination:

“Just because you cannot see the path, doesn’t mean it isn’t under your feet.”

Amen.

I’m on the road Monday and Tuesday due to another trip to the ancestral stomping grounds. I have a new post in my head that I’ll be mulling as I drive Tuesday; more details Tuesday night.

One of the great things about subscribing to Netflix is being able to queue up a season’s worth of a television show and watch every episode without commercials. This was a great way for me to watch Band of Brothers, and now my family and I are hooked on the first season of Lost.

We’re not big television watchers for the most part. I mainly watch sports or ESPN with some news channels thrown in, while my girls are into Spongebob Squarepants and Kim Possible. My wife never turns the set on. We haven’t made it a point to watch a particular show every week since Star Trek: The Next Generation and Mystery Science Theater 3000 went into syndication. It’s not that we’re anti-tv (well, maybe my wife is), but we usually have so many things going on that making it a priority to be in front of the set at a particular time each week isn’t practical. I know, some of you are saying “Tivo”, but I learned a long, long time ago that if I don’t have time to watch something in the first place I’m probably not going to have time to watch it later either. How long ago did I learn this? Well, I paid six hundred dollars for a VCR to tape all those shows I was missing, so that should tell you something. (I thought that maybe with all the time I saved by microwaving my food I could watch all the tapes that were piling up. Didn’t happen. I think I may still have some Miami Vice episodes in the back of the entertainment center that I haven’t seen.)

Anyway, the commercials for Lost looked interesting so I put the DVDs of the first seven episodes in my Netflix queue a couple of months ago. They arrived last week and since then the family has been completely absorbed – even my wife! The ever-sophisticated Mall Diva really likes the show and Tiger Lilly is engrossed, except when she’s hiding her face behind me during the really intense scenes.

What I like about it is the strong ensemble cast without any superstars, which makes it easier to identify with the characters. The plotting and pace are brisk, and while the writing uses a few tried and true conventions there is enough mystery and novelty to keep you off balance and trying to figure out what’s going to happen next. Probably the most brilliant decision the producer and writers made was to tell stories within the story about the different characters through flashbacks. This serves the purpose of adding depth and backstory to the characters while keeping the story from being “trapped” on the island with the same scenery over and over. It also allows for special guests to appear in the show, which adds further variety and even some nice surprises (Hey – it’s Veronica Hamel! I haven’t seen her in ages! I think there might even be some Hill Street Blues tapes in the entertainment center as well!)

Of course, being able to watch each episode without commercials is extra sweet. We got through the first two DVDs in the series in just a couple of days, sent them back and we’ve started on the third. We should be done with the first season in a couple of weeks. This is definitely the best way for us to watch the rare show that’s worth following. We won’t be able to watch season two as it unfolds on Wednesday nights this year, but I’ll be sure to have it in my Netflix queue well in advance of its release date next summer!

A four-blog conglomeration clawed its way into a five-way tie for first place at Keegan’s Thursday night. Calling ourselves Ineffectual Takeout, Marty Andrade, Ben from Hammerswing 75, Dan from Northern Alliance Wannabe and yours truly made it into the crowded winner’s circle with a whopping 16 points. (Tough quiz, including three questions asking how old Bob Dylan, Ringo Starr and Richard Simmons are – and “real old” didn’t count).

Tiger Lilly couldn’t make it to trivia this week, so Marty had to take up the slack by contributing the crucial answer to one of the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory questions – without satisfactorily answering how he happened to know that answer. Maybe a caller to his radio program this week can ask him again.

A couple of fun new things have hit the blogosphere in the last two days.

The biggest news, I think, is the arrival of Intellectual Takeout, a site created by the Center for the American Experiment primarily to equip or familiarize college students with conservative principals. The site features articles on a wide variety of topics and grouped under headings such as Cultural Studies, Foundations of Liberty, Economics, etc.

It is clear that a lack of intellectual diversity on our college campuses is an ongoing problem, but the majority of students lack the tools needed to confront this imbalance or are just afraid to stand up and challenge the people who hand out their grades.

That’s why IntellectualTakeout.com, a project of Center of the American Experiment’s FACT: Foundations for Active Conservative Thinking program, is designed to help students respond to the ideological imbalance on their campuses.

This groundbreaking website provides students with quick access to a menu of ideas on a number of topics including Cultural Studies, Economics, Education, Environmental Studies, Foundations of Liberty, History, and Political Science. The website also connects students with other like-minded students and alumni, and can even assist them in job searches.

IntellectualTakeout.com is not about trying to indoctrinate students to the conservative point of view. It is about exposing students to thoughts and ideas that are not readily available in college classrooms and about spurring honest and open debate on campus.

Check it out and be sure to pass the word to high school and college students you know. You can be sure to get their attention by telling them it’s something the system “doesn’t want them to know.”

The other new item is Google’s new blog-only search engine. Although Google bought Blogger, the search engine delivers results for blogs based from other services. I had no trouble finding links to the MOB and others.

Oh, one last thing that you’ve been waiting for: I’ll be at Keegan’s tonight for trivia.

CNN wasted no time in reporting that the Shaw Group, which has been awarded a couple of $100 million contracts to rebuild the Katrina disaster area, has ties to the Bush White House. In its haste to create another Halliburton-type conspiracy (Halliburton has also won Katrina-related contracts, btw), CNN’s unnamed correspondent either overlooked or under-reported a crucial detail, as Michelle Malkin notes:

The Shaw Group, a multi-billion-dollar conglomerate, is headed by Jim Bernhard, the current chairman of the Louisiana Democratic Party. Bernhard worked tirelessly for Democrat Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco’s runoff campaign and served as co-chair of her transition team. Another Shaw executive was Blanco’s campaign manager. Bernhard is back-scratching chums with Blanco, whom he has lent/offered the Shaw Group’s corporate jets to on numerous occasions.

Politics by its nature has always indulged its precocious step-children, Preference and Privilege, and this certainly didn’t start in Louisiana. Louisiana does have, however, a celebrated reputation for not just winking at such antics but even romanticizing them. New Orleans especially has cultivated the term “lagniappe,” a French-American word generally meaning, “something extra”. It imparts a wry and cultured cynicism to the transaction, as if to say, “Why, cher, cronyism is such a harsh word, and one must be mindful of one’s manners. After all, it’s really just a matter of perspective.”

I suppose a lot really does depend on how you want to look at something. Right, CNN?

HT: Bogus Gold.