Free-For-All Friday

For Fun
It's a MercyMe Snowball Fight! In this contest, see how many band members you can hit with snowballs (launched by your mouse). I scored a measly 173650. But I think I can improve, and I'm really gonna go for that Top 50 status in hopes of a new guitar!

President Bush and Jury Duty

Thanksgiving Continues
Well, I've almost got my blood pressure down after the PETA episode. Originally I was going to talk about being thankful beyond the holiday. As I was sitting here typing this blog, a speeding car lost control and slammed into a parked car about 15 yards from me. Fortunately no one was hurt. But it certainly got my attention and led to a little prayer of thanks.

I also received a financial blessing at work yesterday. Cuz and I celebrated at our favorite restaurant, La Carreta’s. La Carreta’s is the duct tape of Mexican restaurants. And on Thursday nights, they have live music. Isn’t it interesting how even in another language, music is still infectious?

Me and the Prez Have a Lot in Common
President Bush has jury duty in his home state of Florida. Local officials don’t expect the President to show up because of his business elsewhere. If that doesn’t work, I can let W in on another excuse: change of address. I got called up for jury duty, but because I’d moved out of the parish, I couldn’t serve.

I don’t know if “couldn’t” or “didn’t have to” is the better phrase. I have mixed emotions about jury duty. I kind of want to see the inside of a courtroom and see how the whole legal process works. And I like the idea of getting off work. But I’m also quite terrified about the prospect of deciding a person’s fate. I mean, they’re calling on somebody who obsesses for 6 hours over cookie dough or peanut butter cup blizzards (and then is wracked by guilt over the decision for the next two weeks either way). And they want me to deliberate a criminal trial?

Brown Shoe Dilemma
Speaking of obsessing over decisions, it’s been two weeks now and I still don’t have brown shoes. I’m trying the new mall today, and if that doesn’t work, I’m thinking about creating my own pair with duct tape. Duck does make a beautiful shade of brown. And I did get some practice with that stocking and all….

PETA Attacks

We know that life is full of little ironies. This week catches us smack in the middle of one. Within a week of a really special and memorable fishing trip with my Dad, PETA announces to me that Daddy is a Killer.

Can You Believe It?
My good friend Paula, the sharer of so many fun links at Ninetyandnine, has alerted me to this news from PETA. As part of their latest anti-fishing campaign, they’ve released a comic book titled Your Daddy Kills Animals, complete with a cover picture of a man ripping apart a fish. Oh, how poignant. Oh, how inappropriate for children. Oh, how irresponsible of PETA.

Ridiculous, Ridiculous, Ridiculous…
I’ve said before that I don’t think animal rights activists have any connection to reality. But I also don’t think they have any respect for people. I think they’ve gotten so caught up in their attacks that they have lost all sight of the consequences of their actions.

So besides the obvious fact that I feel their anti-fishing rhetoric is ridiculous, I think their attack on families is offensive. In what scenario is it okay to target children with disturbing imagery and your-Daddy-is-mean-and-evil “hyperbole” to undermine family roles and relationships? If I was a PETA member, I would be embarrassed.

Oh, and about animal rights…. Where are our priorities? Talk to me about stopping domestic violence. Let’s talk about reducing teen suicide. Let’s talk about counteracting crime in our neighborhoods. Then talk to me about cruelty to animals.

Decorating with Duct Tape

It’s time to return to the blog’s namesake. That’s right, it’s time for a duct tape adventure.

Christmas Decorations
I’m not a big Christmas decorator for the simple fact that I’m a.) too cheap to buy decorations and b.) too lazy to take them down afterwards. I could easily identify with a certain popular song that mentions how us rednecks keep our Christmas lights out on our front porches all year long.

Nevertheless, Roomy#1 was in a decorating mood and since she was picking up the tab (and the cleanup tasks), I was all for it. At which point it occurred to me that Christmas decorating is a job for duct tape.

An Epiphany is Hatched
In a turn of events that could only be the Lord, we each had a separate revelation that our Christmas decorating theme most definitely needed to revolve around our precious and beloved LSU Fighting Tigers.

Thank God and Wal-Mart
So we made the bi-monthly $55 Wal-Mart run. In another miracle I choose to attribute to the good Lord, Wal-Mart is currently featuring Limited Edition Purple duct tape. Please don’t trample your fellow shoppers while rushing to pick some up, as I did.

Tah-Dah
The end result of our joint creative juices is that our mantle bears beautiful garland laced with purple and gold ribbons. And as we each are creating our own stockings to express our individuality, I, of course, made my LSU stocking out of duct tape. For your viewing pleasure, here we are:

Southern Baptists and Mark Twain

While I've been happy to stay immersed in my own little family holiday land, the rest of the world has been busy.

Religious Issues
Last week the Southern Baptist Convention decreed that missionary candidates are forbidden from speaking in tongues. Since this issue is so controversial and largely rejected by Southern Baptists, any missionaries caught speaking in tongues will be eliminated from the board's consideration for missions. Click here for full story.

The evangelical in me has many comments, but I'll hold them to this: politically I'm surprised the organization would opt for such a traditional, conservative stance when the popularity of the Charismatic movement is sweeping America. My guess is that this stance will either rally the older generation or really push the younger, more open-minded(?) generation away... or both.

The Weather
We mark the end of a record-breaking hurricane season. In traffic daily, I'm reminded that my corner of the globe will never be the same, and that's nothing compared to the actual damage throughout southeast Texas and coastal Louisiana and Mississippi.

Happy B-Day
November 30 is Mark Twain's birthday. I don't by any means consider myself a Twain scholar, but his impact on American literature can't be denied. Most people either love him or hate him. (Which category do you fall in? Was he a racist, Old South figure we should ignore or a literary genius who merely reflected his culture in his art?) At the least, he left a rich library of quotes. I share one such quote now:

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.- Notebook, 1898

Turkey Day Report - Final Day

We wrapped up our holidays on Saturday night with Thanksgiving for my Dad's side. I wouldn't normally detail the play-by-play, but there were some surprises this year.

The Family Behaves

• There were no political debates and the ensuing family fracas. My brother had the nerve to mention the Clinton family just once, but after a menacing look from his older sister, he dropped it. The rest of the family gallantly relinquished comment.

Deep Frying in Dixie

• Since we've been on a food kick, allow me to share this note. In deference to the archaic Southern insistence that everything is better fried, we had a fish fry rather than traditional turkey. No surprise there. However, this year, please note our menu of deep fried entres:
  + Fried Catfish
  + Fried Redfish
  + Fried Speckled Trout
  + French Fries
  + Fried Hushpuppies
  + Fried Corn on the Cob
  
  Did you catch that last one? That's right. We deep fried corn. Definitely a first for me, and I'm still not sure yet how I feel about it. It tasted really... fried.
  

Turkey Day Report – Day II

While the rest of the world mauled each other over eight-dollar light sabers, I spent time in the great outdoors with my Dad. My Dad captures this year’s Father of the Year award hands down.

The Day Begins

• In true Alexander fashion, we missed daylight by a good five hours, but split a hot loaf of French bread for brunch with donuts for dessert.
  
• Factoid: You can’t carry too many sandwiches on a fishing trip.

Post-Katrina Marsh

• This was our first trip down to the coast since Katrina. The marina was still closed because it got 3 foot of water during the storm. But we were glad to see that most businesses along the main thoroughfares were back up.
  
• There has been much land-shifting and erosion since the storm. Canals that used to be dead-ends now connect to other canals and vice versa. The depths of canals are all out of wack, as evidenced from our broken trolling motor prop and the eighteen times we ran the boat in too-shallow canals and clogged the motor in marsh mud.
  
• It’s hard to tell what parts of the marsh are Katrina damaged or dry from the draught or dying from the short cool snaps we’ve had, but everything was a gray-brown.

My Dad the Hero

• The Dadster gave up his ritual day-after-Thanksgiving deer hunt to take me fishing.
  
• In heroic gesture #2, the Dadster let me monopolize the catch when the bite turned on. We could only get the redfish to hit one specific color lure, and we only had one of it. I tried to get Dad to take the rod, but he insisted I continue in my "Fish on!" fun every cast while he gallantly served as the “take-slimy-fish-off-hook-for-me” technician.
  
• And one of the prouder notes of the day: nothing nor no one fell in the water. (You would have to know some of our past trips to appreciate this one.)

So in a surprising twist of fate, I seem to appreciate my parents more the older I get. Funny, I think they predicted something along those lines.

This rat red was the smallest of the redfish we caught, but its extra spots made it really unique. (Redfish normally only have one black spot at the tail, so "Spot" here is atypical.)