"It's really the cat's house---we just pay the mortgage."

~~Unknown

And I'd give up forever to touch you
Cause I know that you feel me somehow
You're the closest to heaven that I'll ever be
And I don't want to go home right now
All I can taste is this moment
And all I can breathe is your life
Cause sooner or later it's over
I just don't want to miss you tonight
And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
And you can't fight the tears that ain't coming
Or the moment of truth in your lies
When everything feels like the movies
Yeah you bleed just to know you're alive
And I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
I don't want the world to see me
Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am
I just want you to know who I am

recipes to enjoy:

Rudolph's Cookie Kisses:
http://www.santas.net/rudolphscookiekisses.htm

Santa's Victorian Candy Canes:
http://www.santas.net/santasvictoriancandycanes.htm

from: The Fresno Bee, Nov.8, 2009

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Los Angeles---A Seattle team has collected a $900,000 prize in a NASA-backed competition to develop the concept of an elevator to space---an idea spurred by science fiction novels.

The team's robotic machine raced up more than 2,950 feet of cable dangling from a helicopter.

Powered by a ground-based laser pointed up at the robot's photo voltaic cells that converted the light into electricity, the LaserMotive machine completed one of its climbs in about three minutes and 48 seconds, good for the second-place money.

The three-day contest required competitors' vehicles to get to the top, with rewards possible for completing climbs at two levels of speed. LaserMotive could have claimed $2 million if its robot had climbed faster.

The contest is intended to encourage development of a theory that originated in the 1960s and was popularized by Arthur C. Clarke's 1979 novel "The Fountain of Paradise."

Space elevators are envisioned as a way to reach space without the risk and expense of rockets.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

from: The Fresno Bee, Oct. 26, 2009

by Dana Hull (San Jose Mercury News)

SAN JOSE---California'a effort to regulate the energy efficiency of televisions has sparked an enormous backlash from the electronics industry, which is banking on consumers' love affair with large and multiple TV sets to defeat the proposal.

A newly formed coalition called Californians for Smart Energy, which represents small home theater businesses and larger electronics manufacturers, is fighting hard against the proposed regulations.

"Do you really want unelected bureaucrats telling you what kind of TVs you're allowed to buy?" asks the group's Web site.

California has 35 million televisions---about one for every resident of the state. The California Energy Commission, which could vote on the proposal as early as Nov. 4, says that TVs, as well as DVD players and cable boxes, now consume about 10% of a typical home's electricity. But the amount of electricity that TVs suck from the power grid is rising because of the growing popularity of power-hungry flat-screen LCD and plasma TVs, and because many households have more than one television.

The proposed standards would apply only to new TVs with a screen size of 58 inches or less sold in California after Jan. 1, 2011.

The love affair between Americans and their televisions is well-documented. Nielsen Media Research has found that the average American home has more television sets than people; half of all homes have three or more TVs.

The Consumer Electronics Association argues that the new regulations are unnecessary and will limit consumer choice.

"The television is the hearth of the modern home," said Doug Johnson, senior director of technology policy for the CEA, who flew to Sacramento from Washington to lobby against the proposed regulations last week. Johnson and others also argue that the regulations, if approved, will cost California jobs and much-needed dollars as consumers rush to Nevada or online retailers to buy the TVs they want.

Adam Gottlieb, spokesman for the energy commission, dismissed the notion as scare tactics.

"If you take a road trip to Reno, you'll be able to buy a TV that costs you more money in your utility bill," said Gottlieb. "Why would someone go out of their way, and spend gas that costs $3 a gallon, to buy an inefficient television?"

For you DM. ;)

How can I foget
the day we met
When I saw you from afar
then you became my shinig star

This is the place we came to
the place where I saw you
you saw me
we came together never to undo

How can I forget your smile
in such a short while
Your face I will never forget
how can I forget
Can I forgive and forget?

How can I forget
with all you've left behind
How can I forget
with all the memories I find

You'll always be here
never far from me
You'll always be near
in my mind and in my heart

~~Lina

from: Aug. 18, 2003

Preview: http://abc.go.com/shows/v

Enjoy! ;)

from: L.A. Times, Calendar, Oct. 15, 2009

by Richard Fausset

Strange Things Happen
A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies
Stewart Copeland
HarperStudio: 330pp., $19.95

---------------------------------------------

The rock singer Sting may be a man of furtive cool, mystical tantric talents and exotic, globe-spanning tastes, but it was his affable drummer who could always boast the more intriguing back story.

Sting, ne Gordon Summer, was the son of an English milkman and hairdresser. Stewart Copeland---supplier of the fussy yet propulsive rhythm that was a hallmark of the Police---was born in Alexandria, Va., in 1952, the son of Miles Copeland Jr., a Middle Eastern operative for the CIA, and archaeologist Lorraine Adie, who worked for British intelligence during World War II.

The drummer-to-be grew up in Cairo and Beirut. His father was instrumental in the 1953 overthrow of reformist Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh---to leftists, a cardinal sin of 20th century American foreign policy. He was also a champion of Gamai Abdel Nasser and the Palestinian cause, journalist, adventurer and World War II-era trumpeter and arranger with the Glenn Miller Orchestra.

So when the son injected himself into the British punk scene of the late 1970s, did it constitute a fiery rejection of his father's Cold War machinations? Was his attraction to the music of the Third World a way to work out inner guilt?

It's hard to say, after reading "Strange Things Happen," Copeland's breezy memoir of life in and out of the limelight; the drummer is apparently not an inner-demons kind of guy. The original punks were always suspicious of the Police, accusing them of fake edginess. It's a charge Copeland cheerily does little to refute. In one droll chapter, he relishes the sight of Rage Against the Machine, the Che-Guevara-worshipping stadium rock band of the 1990s, chilling at the Palazzo Versace Hotel in Brisbane, Australia.

"Ha-ha!," he writes. "I remember when I used to be professionally angry."

These days, Copeland is professionally hapy. He lives in Los Angeles, composes orchestral works and plays a lot of polo. His recent reunion tour with Sting and Police guitartist Andy Summers grossed more than $247 million. If he suffered any kind of crisis, it was in the late 1980s when he realized his clothes---"an exotic collection of leather pants, hostile shirts and pointy shoes"---don't really match the man. He is a "mellow" father of four now, and "the thrill has gone from frightening the natives."

Copeland spends much of his book dwelling on this post-Police life. At best, he offers a glimpse of a creative soul that is charmed and untroubled---a rocker's analogue to Brendan Gill's lighthearted memoir of life at the New Yorker.

But while Copeland is self-deprecating enough to recount his good fortune without smugness, he grievously overestimates the irony inherent in his story. The English manor houe (or, better yet, tax exile) is as much a rock cliche as shouting "Freebird"---and when Copeland turns up among the polo set, he is, tellingly, surprised that his fellow millionaires don't bat an eye.

Another aggravation is the fashionably non-chronological blueprint of this memoir. The strategy worked well for Bob Dylan's "Chronicles, Vol. 1," but here it seems like an excuse to sidestep most of the history of the Police. Copeland prefers to dwell on his work with lesser musical lights, his film scores and yet more polo. A chapter on his time in Africa for the 1985 film "The Rhytmatist" falls surprisingly flat.

Perhaps because it is so fresh in his memory, Copeland does delve deep into the Police toward the end of the book, with a detailed recounting of their recent reunion tour that reveals a hint of the true troubled relationship that has most defined and driven him.

Copeland knows that he embodies a sort of micro-targeted mega-fame common to Southern California. Behind the drum risers, he's a Golden God, but otherwise, he's just another guy holding up the line at the Coffee Bean.

Sting, however, is in Golden Glove mode 24/7, and the trappings of that life seem to amuse Copeland to no end. The constant hubbub and pretension around the singer is "Sting world"; the meditating man at the center of it "doesn't do farewells, he just vaporizes."

Copeland holds Sting's musicianship and vision in high esteem, but he also deflates the mystique by constantly referring to him as "Stingo." Some of the best writing in the book describes what it's like to be locked in a band with a fellow headstrong musician, arguing over the intangible details that make good music great.

That was the rocky Bromance at the heart of the Police. After the success of the reunion, Copeland muses about a full re-formation, but thinks better of it.

"If you love somebody, set them free," he writes. "That's what Sting said the minute he was free from the Police the first time around, years ago. I think it's pretty good advice for right now, too."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=omx7u0ZWUAY

Enjoy!

If you're looking for a good book to read, you might consider going to a different source---the American Library Association's list of Frequently Challenged Books. After all, what better way to celebrate your freedom to read during Banned Books Week, Sept. 26 to Oct. 3 this year?

Observed since 1982, Banned Books Week highlights the benefits of free and open access to information while drawing attention to the harms of censorship by spotlighting actual or attempted banning of books across the United States.

If you look at the Top 100 Banned Books of the 20th century, you will see that many of the titles are examples of classic literature: F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men," George Orwell's "1984" and William Golding's "Lord of the Flies," just to name a few.

Also, popular: all of the books in the Harry Potter series.

As Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. said: "If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagrreable."

Books are challenged for many reasons. From 2001 to 2008, American libraries were faced with nearly 4,000 challenges:

* 1,225 challenges due to "sexually explicit" material;

* 1,008 challenges due to "offensive language";

* 720 challenges due to material deemed "unsuited to age group";

* 458 challenges due to "violence"

* 269 challenges due to "homosexuality"; and

* 103 materials were challenged because they were "antifamily," and an additional 233 were challenged because of their "religious viewpoints."

Approximately 31% of these challenges were in classrooms; 37% were in school libraries; 24% (909) took place in public libraries.

Exposure to a broad array of thoughts, ideas and material better prepares each of us--even children--to think for ourselves and make informed decisions throughout life.

So grab a challenged book title from the list and broaden your mind

from: The Fresno Bee, Sept. 28, 2009 Opinion page