George Michael

Alright, I'm watching American Idol. (Don't judge me!) And here is what I want to say: George Michael is performing and (1) he looks bad. I mean bad ya'll. I'm thinking all of the public bathroom sex has been hard on him and (2) he is singing some song that no one knows. I'm sorry if you are someone like George Michael we do not want you to sing something new. We want you to sing something that everyone knows. We want you to sing "I want your sex." I would have said "Faith" or some other such song but the contestants just did that. Now I'm not saying he has to sing "Wake me up before you go go" I'm just saying know what your audience has come to hear. Particularly when you are washed up. I mean if you are someone current go ahead and sing your new stuff, but if you are George Michael or Blondie or whomever sing your hits because lets face it your newest artistic endeavor is never going to sell.

Alright that is enough of my ranting. They are about to announce the winner.

Peace

Abort! Abort! This blog has been compromised!

First before I begin the actual subject of my post I'd like to say a few things
(1) I just saw a grown adult male at the Safeway wearing a coonskin cap, complete with tail and everything.
(2) I've spent a lot of time today inviting people to my blog. I have to say I really appreciate all of you who are reading.

Now the reason for the added security. Yesterday I was at church and one of my parishioners showed up. This is the one who I wrote about a while ago and talked about going to his house for a dinner and there being a stack of porn literally 6 feet from the dining room table. And he said "I started to bring you a jock strap today." To which I thought "EWWWW" Then he said that he had read my blog. If you don't know the entry he is talking about scroll down a bit and read "The Limits of Target." Now I had been very diligent about not giving church members my blog address, because I wanted this to be a place where I could talk about anything including them. So when he said this I tried not to look too horrified as I quickly worked through all my most recent blog posts to determine if there was something in any of them that would have been particularly damaging. I don't think there was. But anyway so I casually asked him "Oh how did you find my blog." To which he said I was looking for your phone number last week and I googled you. (Now let me take a moment to say: every six months or so I give everyone in the congregation an updated mailing list or church directory with everyone's phone number including mine. And inevitably most people lose them and then don't know what numbers to call and e-mail me to ask me for so-and-so's number. Why do I even bother? Arrrgghh!!!) Anyway, I just played it cool--but secretly I was thinking oh shit now what am I going to do. So that is why I added the security feature.

I really didn't want to do it because I was pretty sure it meant people would have to get a google account and it would also take some work on my part inviting everyone. And boy did it take some work. I worked for several hours trying to add everyone's e-mail address directly to the blogger account, and I kept making a mistake somewhere because it only could be e-mail addresses and when I would try and copy and past from outlook it would include the name and brackets, all of which needed to be deleted. So I kept getting an error message. So finally I just sent out the blanket e-mail. But hopefully soon all of this will be behind us and we can go on blogging like before.

If you know of anyone who is not one of my direct friends or acquaintances who you know read the blog please pass on their e-mail addresses to me and I'll invite them. I really don't care who reads my blog as long as it is not a member of the church.

So that's it. That's the story.

Pledge time: UPDATED

I'm doing what I do every Saturday morning. I'm lying in bed listening to NPR. (This morning is a little bit different because I'm also surfing the internet looking for inspiration for my sermon tomorrow.) But here is my complaint. It is pledge time for my local public radio station. I hate pledge time. Now I'm a member of my public radio station. I became a member a few years ago because I thought I should since I listen regularly but also because I wanted a Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me! coffee mug. Wait! Wait! is my favorite NPR show. It comes on at 11 AM on Saturday mornings here. Right after Car Talk. But anyway they keep breaking in with 10 minute breaks for Greg Sherwood and whoever is working at the local host. So that means of 30 minutes of program I only get 20 minutes. But the shows aren't any shorter, KQED is just cutting out 10 minutes of program. I wish there was a less annoying way for them to get the money they need to stay on the air and provide me with my Saturday morning entertainment.

So I might write again later, but that is just me bitching. Oh my God Greg Sherwood just came back on. He was only gone 4 minutes that time. So that means this was only like 15 minutes of programming. Seriously if they do that during Wait! Wait! I am going to be pissed.

Peace out!

Okay, clearly one of two things must have happened
(1) The folks at KQED read my blog and decided not to cut into Wait! Wait! Don't Tell Me!
(2) They know how annoyed many people would have been by that.

I'm going to go with #1, because You Can Call Me Dixie Fever is sweeping the nation

Is there no justice in the world?

I got a freakin' parking ticket. Right outside my church. So here is the thing I really was parking illegally sort of. You see there are sections of the city that are marked, one hour parking, two hour parking, four hour parking. And on this particular street literally across the intersection from where the church is there is a sign that says 2 hour parking only. That is where I was parking. However, in four and half years I have never ever been ticketed for this offense. Even though I have parked there for more than two hours on many many occasions. So therefore by never ticketing for this aren't they essentially saying this rule does not matter. Now I guess one could argue that lets say I steal every day from a convenience store but never get caught that the store is essentially saying this doesn't matter. And that would be absurd. But I think I have a viable case to at least have the ticket reduced to just a warning. Because this was a $50 ticket. And it seems to me that if you are going just start enforcing a law after many years you should give people some notice.

Now for those of you who know me well you are currently asking yourself two things (1) Is Dixie really going to exert the effort required to appeal a parking ticket? and (2) Dixie was at his office for more than two hours? Well those are both very good questions. The first one I can't fully answer yet and the second one is because I was hosting my associations board meeting so part of the time was spent putting out food and attending the meeting that lasted more than two hours. But seriously I was there from 8:45 until 4:45. There have been entire weeks where I didn't spend that much time in the office.

Alright, thats it for today. It's almost time for Project Runway.

Brian