way cool

Make sure you scroll down and click on images for side by side comparisons.

http://themonsterengine.com/art.html

predictions

Best picture: The Departed

Best director: Martin Scorsese, The Departed

Best Actor: Forest Whitaker, The Last King of Scotland

Best Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen

Best Supporting Actor: Mark Wahlberg, The Departed

Best Supporting Actress: Jennifer Hudson, Dreamgirls

Best Original Screenplay: Letters From Iwo Jima

Animated Film: Cars

Best Foreign Film: Pan's Labryinth (Mexico)

Which picture will win the most Oscars? Letters From Iwo Jima

How many Oscars will it win? 7

haiku review - oscar nominees - part iv

Letters From Iwo Jima

subtitles dissolved
intense depth of character
a new perspective

second star on the right, and straight on 'till...recall

Let's rewind to the beginning of the week for our lunch menu.
Monday: Snow day! So the girls had Mac and Cheese for lunch.
Tuesday: Salmonella and jelly sammiches!
Wednesday: Salmonella and jelly sammiches!
Thursday: E had the school's hot lunch of Jambalaya, and since K shuns tasty real food, she got...you guessed it...a salmonella and jelly sammich!

Yep we've been scoopin' out and consumin' the 'ol 2111 cereal number all week long.

My Dad had a "what you should do if you've got a jar info sheet" for me when I brought the girls home. I asked K how she was feeling and she said she had "a little sore throat today." Thankfully not a sign of the Sam or the Ella. They seem fine but, sheesh, they say symptoms can develop up to 72 hours after consuming it.

That's it. Only healthy lunches from now on, lots of spinach salad...oh wait...

Frickin' peanutbutter.

spillage

I could write about Roo walking into the kitchen yesterday, his head dripping with the shampoo he dumped all over it.
"Bath?" he inquired.

I could also write about the Tupperware cereal container that slipped out of my hands and fell on the counter in just he right way for it to burst open showering Cheerios everywhere.
"Cheeeeeohs!"Roo exclaimed.

But what I'm going to write about is my experience Monday morning. Freezing, frigid, ten below zero with the wind chill cold Monday morning. Tom had taken the girls to school, I was running late with Roo, and I had forgotten to warm up the car. As I opened the van door to hoist Roo in, I was startled to see what my mind registered as tan rocks all over the floor.

I was flummoxed as I buckled him in. What the hell was that stuff? Then I saw this, and two others just like it:

Yes, the day before I had had another spill, that of two twelve packs of soda falling off the back seat in just the right way to burst themselves open and send twenty-four cans of Pepsi and Diet Rite cascading across the floor.

I thought I had fished them all out...not so much.

It was pretty amazing how the cans busted at the seams and sent projectiles of frozen soda all over the interior. I really wish I could have seen it. Some of it formed a pool and froze between the two front seats. I worked diligently for a good twenty minutes with an ice scraper and a broom, and I got most of it out.

"Mommy doing?!?!?!?" Roo asked repeatedly.

And you wonder why I didn't want to captain that oil tanker.

haiku review - oscar nominees - part iii

Babel

crash with subtitles
questionable decisions
quite stressful to watch

On a side note, I made the most likely insignificant observation that all of the settings in this film ended in the letter "o": Tokyo, Morocco, San Diego, Mexico.

"don't think about thinking, it's not on the test"

I found two parodies of testing in schools that I found really interesting.

The first is a song by Tom Chapin. You can read the lyrics and listen to it here:

http://members.aol.com/chapinfo/tc/mp3.html

This next one was actually a comment posted on another blog.

No Child Left Behind - The Football Version1.

1. All teams must make the state playoffs and all MUST win the championship. If a team does not win the championship, they will be on probation until they are the champions, and coaches will be held accountable. If after two years they have not won the championship their footballs and equipment will be taken away UNTIL they do win the championship.

2. All kids will be expected to have the same football skills at the same time even if they do not have the same conditions or opportunities to practice on their own. NO exceptions will be made for lack of interest in football, a desire to perform athletically, or genetic abilities or disabilities of themselves or their parents. ALL KIDS WILL PLAY FOOTBALL AT A PROFICIENT LEVEL!

3. Talented players will be asked to workout on their own, without instruction. This is because the coaches will be using all their instructional time with the athletes who aren't interested in football, have limited athletic ability or whose parents don't like football.4. Games will be played year round, but statistics will only be kept in the 4th, 8th, and 11th game. It will create a New Age of Sports where every school is expected to have the same level of talent and all teams will reach the same minimum goals. If no team gets ahead, then no team gets left behind. If fans do not like this new law, they are encouraged to vote for vouchers and support private teams that can screen out the non-athletes and prevent their children from having to go to school with bad football players.