stevendkrause.com

… then I would want a library like this. This, which I discovered via boing-boing, is the personal library of zillionaire Jay Walker (among other things, he came up with the idea for Priceline.com apparently) as described in this article in Wired. Read all about it. I’d pay an entrance fee just to see what it’s like in person. Un-freakin-real. I’d Who said it isn’t good to be the king?

As it is, I’ll have to settle for my mancave with ikea fiberboard shelves. I do have more snow globes than this guy does at least.

This is the sort of email a married couple made up of English professors send each other– specifically, my literary wife to me Wednesday. In this poem/note, “man cave” refers to the basement, which also serves as my sprawling office/headquarters. “Electric guitar” is an item I often add to lists Annette is putting together, inspired by some friends from the past who used to do something similar.

matoes

This is just to say
that I have taken the last
can of tomatoes.

They were sitting,
inexplicably,
atop a pile of paper
on the ping-pong table
in your man cave.

You were perhaps
saving them for dinner tonight,
or reminding yourself
to make a shopping list:

tomatoes,
milk,
electric guitar . . .

And yes, finally, yes
a Costco trip is in order.
Perhaps
this Saturday.

Lord only knows Joe Biden knows how to say some pretty dumb things, but you have to give Palin credit for so many dumb things in so few interview opportunities. Here’s some greatest hits from Talking Points Memo:

And of course tonight’s VP debate is going to get huge ratings. But I would suggest that most people watching tonight (myself included, at least up to a point) are less interested in seeing how this debate impacts the race since it is still McCain versus Obama. Rather, I think most people will be watching today to wait for/hope for the crash, and the crash from either podium.

After the debate:
The winner was your candidate, though some of the polls posted later on Daily Kos suggest a bit of a win for Biden. To me, it was a tie; it was just cars turning left again and again.

I had to run a few errands and/or wanted to stall on starting commenting on student essays, so on my way home, I swung by the new Whole Foods in Ann Arbor– or, as the web site says, Cranbrook, which is really the name of a shopping center on the other side of Ann Arbor. It’s a good location for the chain because it’s close to lots of upscale west AA neighborhoods, and it’s also reasonably close to Saline and Dexter. But since we live completely on the other side of town, this visit to the Food (W)Hole was more or less just a field trip.

So, what’s the new store like? Why, it’s like a grocery store–or, to be more specific, it’s another location for one of the “world’s leading natural and organic grocer and we’re passionate about healthy food and a healthy planet,” a place that is “lucky to have a whole bunch of smart, passionate people doing incredible things in areas like organics, supporting local growers, green practices, fair trade, micro-lending and all kinds of food related stuff.” Pretentious? Sure. Am I a loyal customer? You bet.

The new store is pretty much the same as my regular Food (W)Hole: the usual large seafood selection and grass-fed or otherwise organic meat selections, supplements and herbal things, a coffee bar area, etc. Besides the layout (the space is much more narrow and long), I noticed at least four differences with this new store:

• An even larger prepared/take away food section, and one that features a special gelato and ice cream counter. This strikes me as kind of funny because this strip mall also features an Old Country Buffet. So now you can fatten up either for cheap or for not cheap.
• A sushi counter, where you can get fresh (and not packaged earlier that day) sushi. I suspect Will will require a visit.
• A wine/beer/cheese tasting bar. I’m not quite sure about this arrangement (I didn’t ask and I wasn’t around long enough to find out), but it appeared to me that you could buy a glass of wine or a beer on tap and from our own Arbor Brewing Company (made in Ypsilanti), and then perhaps continue your shopping. This is what this video says about a store that opened in Rochester Hills, MI with a similar wine bar arrangement.
• A rule against taking photographs: at the store’s entrance and next to the “no smoking” and “no roller blades” signs was “no photography.” Now, perhaps this is a policy at all Whole Foods, as this photo and the discussion about it suggests. One of the reasons discussed here says this is so other stores can’t steal design ideas, but it seems pretty easy to get around this. I mean, just go in and look around.

  In any event, I was feeling naughty, so while sitting at the coffee bar at the front of the store, I took this picture of the store behind me with the little camera on my laptop:
  

  
  
  
  Remarkably revealing, isn’t it?

The only down-side of the store for me was the wifi access in there was very spotty, but I suspect that’s something they will work out later.

By the way, I took the picture at the top of this entry after I left. How about my timing in capturing the transportation used by a typical Food (W)Hole customer?

Oh, and while I’m at it, I came across this pretty cool set of grocery store pictures when poking around on Flikr for this post.

Finally, there’s a little bit of “strike back” against the lies of the John McCain campaign and the utter confusion and flip-flops of the candidate himself. Take a look at this new ad from Obama:

Thanks to Mark Maynard for posting this; and thanks also for posting this little snippet of video that was on Huffington Post where Karl “the meaning of evil” Rove even said that McCain et al are going too far.

I’d like to see something even a more aggressive, personally. I think it would be completely fair game for Obama to go on, look straight into the camera, and say something like “John McCain and his campaign are flat-out lying and they owe me and the American people an apology for sinking to these low and desperate tactics.” Or something like that.

And something needs to be made of this too: there was a story on NPR this morning with the misleading headline, “McCain: ‘I Know Americans Are Hurting Now.” Be sure to take a listen. The stock market dropped 500 points yesterday and a slew of economists and experts have been parading through radio and TV shows saying that this is the worst financial crisis since the great depression. And yet, as this story clearly reports, McCain was muddled at best. At the same time they were running an ad about the failed economy, McCain was at a rally in Florida where he said (more or less) “I still think the U.S. economy fundamentals remain strong.” An hour or so later, he gave a different speech at a different rally where McCain repeats the phrase “our economy is at risk” over and over. Un-freakin-believable.

I found this via Henry Jenkins’ blog:

Actually, this is the winner of a contest, the Total Recut “Video Remix Challenge.” Some very cool stuff there, and some interesting ideas for video in both English 328 and (potentially) in English 516.

Here’s Will all dressed up for dress-up day at Greenhills. This was actually apparently the first of several dress-up days. I completely applaud the idea of making the kids present themselves nicely once in a while, though it did represent some shopping challenges for us. Happily, Will and I snagged the jacket, which was probably unnecessary (most of the boys just had nice shirts and ties) for $10.

It’s quite the adventure moving on to a new grade, a new school, a new system. We’re all getting up an hour or more earlier. Yesterday, Will was at his first drum lesson. Today after school, he’s going to tennis practice. And then tonight, it’s soccer practice. Oh yeah, Annette and I still have work too.

I would post something interesting or relevant, but a) I’ve been pretty busy with the beginning of the Fall term, and b) I haven’t thought of much lately that would be all that interesting or relevant. So in the meantime, why not enjoy this Scream ice cream, an image my friend Chris sent me quite a while ago?

After Pallin spoke last night, I switched over to The Daily Show, which was absolutely brilliant. Boing-boing agreed and posted this fantastic segment:

This was followed up with a chat with that night’s guest, Newt Gingrich, and the whole thing with Palin’s pregnant daughter came up. Stewart pointed out that Palin said that keeping the baby was her daughter’s choice, which, hypocritically enough, would not be a choice at all if Palin had her way. After all, she supports the most extreme of anti-choice positions where women couldn’t get an abortion under any circumstances– rape, incest, endangering the life of the mother, nothing. If Palin’s view of the world was the way things were, there’d be no choice on the matter at all.

McCain presses along in a drowsy manner. Some protesters were removed early on. His education policy sounds a lot like the failed “No Child Left Behind” to me. Everyone got very excited about “drill now,” which might have some unintended connotations.

I am typing this just as Sarah “the Moose Hunter” Palin is taking the stage at the RNC. I have braced myself for the affair with a cocktail.

I’m not going to bother any live blogging– perhaps there will be a little reflection afterwords depending on how it goes. But I thought I would instead share a few videos I came across. First, there is this one, which I came across via Daily Kos but which is a straight-up mainstream media report on Palin:

It’s been pretty interesting seeing the mainstream media going after McCain lately, especially on Palin, and which is especially ironic since McCain and the media have had quite the lovefest over the last couple years. This has been reported in a couple of places, but McCain has apparently pulled out of a few interviews with CNN over this interview by Campbell “cute as a button” Brown with McCain spokesperson Tucker Bound. Here’s some entertaining video on that:

And then there’s this funny and “not safe for work”/filled with potty-mouth parody that might be a little too true about how the Palin choice really came to pass:

You got to watch it through to the end where Palin yells out “who wants to go polar bear hunting?”

Anyway, her speech so far has been kinda boring, at least to me. I am sure she is still exciting the base, but I doubt she’s changing minds out there in undecided-land, and there seems a lot of people in St. Paul who don’t look that excited either.