Jack Bauer is coming between us...

I'm furious. Absolutely livid. Positively seething. Over what, you ask? The first season of 24.

See, I'd always avoided watching the show, even though the previews made it look exciting, and I found the format intriguing (each episode covers one hour of the hero's life, so the 24 episodes in a season cover one day). But no, I said, I don't want to get hooked on a TV show. I spent some of the best years of my life glued to the set instead of living. I was a huge fan of thirtysomething, Cheers, reruns of Gilligan's Island, you name it. I missed way too much of my kids' early years, and I didn't even know it -- or worse, care.

Then one year I gave up TV for Lent. My wife persuaded me it would be good for the family, and it was. I began to look forward to coming home to see her and the kids, instead of the latest episode of Seinfeld; staying up to talk with her, instead of watching reruns of M*A*S*H. Oh, I'd occasionally catch an episode of The Simpsons, or (for the brief time that we had cable) an EWTN show with Fr. Groeschel.

But for the most part I avoid TV shows like the plague. What about Survivor, you ask? I can live without it. Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Not me. Friends, maybe? Who needs 'em? American Idol, perhaps? Nope. "We don't go in for idolatry at my house," I tell people.

So I was a bit surprised when my wife, the same woman who helped free me from the shackles of the Boob Tube, suggested we rent the first season of 24. A friend of hers recommended the show and she wanted to check it out. Really? I said. Sure, she said. Okay, I said. And we proceeded to watch four hours of the most intense, gripping, pulse-pounding who-done-it shows ever made for television. I was hooked. So was she. My son borrowed the entire first season from his friend, and we watched it together, up through the 10 AM to 11 AM hour.

Then she got sick, and I had to take the kids on a campout last weekend without her. And guess what? Tonight she told me she's going to ask our son to borrow the second season from his friend. "But we haven't finished watching the first season," I said. "Oh, um, I have," she said. WHAT?! WHEN?? "Last weekend. I got tired of reading. So I watched the rest of it." Without me. I was stunned. And without asking or even telling me! I was speechless. In fact, she's known how it ends for SIX WHOLE DAYS... and said NOTHING to me!! I'm beyond shocked. I feel betrayed.

I told her I'm going to stay up all night tonight and watch the rest of it. "And be non-functional tomorrow?" she asked. What's the alternative? She offered to tell me how it turns out. She doesn't understand that half the fun of a show like this is watching it unfold and trying to figure out what's going to happen before it does. Who Jack can trust and who he can't. Will his wife and daughter and David Palmer live, or die? Will Jack be forced to become what he most hates? "You know," she said, "it drags sometimes, they really draw it out." Yeah, so? Lots of good stories do that. It's called building suspense. "Don't complain to me that it drags!" I yelled. That's like telling a one-eyed man it's no fun to watch a 3-D movie because the glasses feel funny. But you saw the depth effects, right?

I realize this is all old news for most, if not all of you. But I'm caught in Jack's web of intrigue and feel like my guts have just been ripped out... by the person I thought I could trust the most. And it's killing me. I hate that I'm so angry about this, but I can't help it.

By the way, don't tell me any details about how the first season turns out. Or future seasons, for that matter. I want to find out for myself how Jack makes it through his day. Even if I have to do it alone.

UPDATE: Okay, I've cooled off. Got over my upset -- unlike Jack Bauer, I was able to sleep on it. I decided it would be better to have the Coupon Queen tell me all about the show -- even though she has a notoriously bad memory for details about such things as movies and TV. As she said, it's good practice for her.

She told me about what happened up until the 10 PM hour, which, she said, is when the series really goes into overdrive. (I found this a little difficult to believe, having watched the first 11 hours of it... but decided to take her word for it.)

So tonight we watched the last two episodes of season one together, and I have to say, I was completely blown away by the last two hours. Not to mention, she actually did a good job of filling in what happened between 11 AM and 10 PM, so I had to ask very few questions.

And, I must confess, I grieved with Jack at the end. I watched the alternate ending, where Jack's wife Terri lives, and while it was nice to see them all reunited, safe and sound, still... it didn't have the same emotional impact. Tragedy has a way of uniting us to a character in a way that triumph just can't. You know, maybe that's why we can identify with a Savior who had to die for our sins. Because we know, we absolutely know, that He faced the same things we do, that He can identify with us, and that ultimately, He loves us enough to go through death with us.

And that is no small thing.

Old Operating Systems Never Die...

This was wild. The ATM at my workplace was frozen on a welcome screen (in spanish, no less) and nothing happened when I slid my card or pressed any buttons.

Being a computer geek, I decided the thing just needed to be rebooted. So I found where the electrical cord was plugged into the wall and... unplugged it. I counted to ten and plugged it back in (half expecting an alarm to go off, followed immediately by the appearance of armed security guards...) and waited for it to boot up.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this:



I could hardly believe it! OS2/Warp? Didn't that OS die around the time Windows 95 came out? Well, apparently not. I wonder how much IBM makes from licensing OS2 on the billions of ATM's out there?

(It's times like this that make me glad for a camera-phone.)

Tag, I'm It! (And what the heck is a "meme"???)

Okay, so Connie's Daughter has "tagged" me. I thought tags were those HTML thingies that you use to make text bold, or italicized, or both! (I know they're used for much more than that, obviously.)

Anyway, now I'm "It" and I have to do a "meme." What the heck is that? Hang on a sec while I look it up...

According to memes.org, "A meme is any unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another." They go on to say that Richard Dawkins, of all people, coined the term in 1976. Since Richard and I are not on speaking terms (owing partly to the evolutionary biologist's positions that God is a delusion, religion is a virus, and America has slipped back into the Dark Ages, but mainly because he wouldn't know me from Adam), I'm not going to comment on how this game of "tagging" someone with an odd challenge doesn't really fit the definition. (Egad, this is supposed to be a fun blog, after all!)

But, since I don't want to incur the wrath of Connie's Daughter, I feel compelled to comply. Here's the so-called "meme" that's been thrown my way:

1. Pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages).
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people.

Before I quote from the book I'm reading, I have to point out the inherent imbalance and asymmetry of this challenge. Why, when the first two points use 123, do the third and fifth points use 5, and the fourth use 3? Why not find the sixth sentence (since 1+2+3 = 6) and post the next 123 words, or the next 6 sentences, and tag 6 people? And does "the next three sentences" mean to begin with the next sentence after the fifth, or is it intended to mean "post three sentences beginning with the fifth"? (Can you tell I don't really want to do this?) Really, the only thing that makes this a meme is the last point, anyway, which causes the action to be repeated. (More about this below.)

Okay, here it is, as demanded -- I mean requested. (**SPOILER ALERT** If you haven't yet read the first 6 books in the Harry Potter series, skip the next part!)

There is nothing like the trip "mile and miles" below Hogwarts we had in the first two books or the trip under the Whomping Willow or the fight far beneath the streets of London in the Ministry of Magic. We don't even get to portkey to a graveyard where most of the people present are underground as Harry did in Goblet.
But there are two underground scenes of importance -- or "one and a half" underground scenes, let's say.

From Unlocking Harry Potter: Five Keys for the Serious Reader by John Granger (of HogwartsProfessor.com fame).

Finally, I hate to "break the chain," but I'm not going to play Richard's game and be his puppet. In other words, as I alluded to above, I am not going to pass this silliness on to any other bloggers. The meme stops here. You can quote me.

The Cobbler

I was pouring some creamer into my coffee this morning and was dismayed to see it had curdled.

"Man," I said as I spooned out the lumps, "I hate having curds in my coffee."

To which The Cobbler replied, "Yeah, and I hate having Shiites in my donuts."

See, there's a reason my 18-year-old son is The Cobbler. Actually, he calls himself Shakespeare's Cobbler, after the commoner in the opening scene of Julius Caesar. He loves "cobbling" with words, just as that character puns soles/souls, and plays with the multiple meanings of the term "to cobble." (See here for the text.)

He is actually quite erudite, however, and is a dual comp-sci + theology major at Franciscan University of Steubenville. You can read his stuff on the blog Three Anachronisms.

Trammel Park Rocks!

Trammel Fossil Park is a really cool place in Sharonville, Ohio, north of the city of Cincinnati -- in fact, just outside the I-275 circle freeway!

My kids went there in September on a field trip with a homeschool group and brought home samples of fossils from the late Ordovician period. As the link above explains, there are actually four rock formations exposed and there are signs all over the place telling exactly what is there. Great for the budding paleontologist!

Amazing that we've lived here for seven years and never heard of this place until now... Yet it's less than five miles from our home! We'll definitely be back.

Update: My photo links to the NKU site were broken. They have been replaced with other images.

The Wienermobile

Here I am beside one of my favorite vehicles of all time, the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile. We were on vacation and it was parked in our hotel parking lot.

Note the hot dogs in buns for the instrument panel.

Pretending to audition for a commercial.

Well, what would your license plate say?