My brother says he tried to vote after work but that the polling place had everyone bunkered down and he couldn’t vote. If this thing passes, he might get to go later, but we’re coming up on an hour before polls are supposed to close. I haven’t heard if they’re going to remain open longer. They probably should, because many of them have been busy all day. It’s getting really loud out there…

Brief video tucked below the fold: (more…)

I didn’t know until reading this that Cafe Francisco, the coffee shop pictured in my blog header, closed in September.

Some items of note:

The state of Oklahoma celebrated its 100th anniversary on Friday. It became the 46th state in 1907.

The road between Oklahoma City and Colorado Springs is incredibly flat, and wide open. This is a big country, in case you didn’t know, and lots less cluttered when you leave the cities. Even the sky is bigger out here.

Michael Brown, the former head of FEMA, has returned home to Colorado, where he now hosts a 3-hour weekend talk show on Denver’s Newsradio 850 KOA.

On Saturday, his subject was Thanksgiving, and the PC police in Seattle who want the holiday to be treated as a time of “mourning.” Bonus fun fact: Brown’s grandfather, named Charlie Brown (no joke), was a Cherokee Indian.

So how is he as a radio host? I’d have to say Brownie did a “heck of a job.”

For next time: a visual pun!

But at least Willie, Herman, Carol and John aren’t out panhandling. Good grief.

The Memphis Advertising Federation’s Pyramid Awards are this weekend, but was the artist who created this image going for something disgusting like this (sneaking it past the committee a la TIME magazine), or something more innocent?

Today is John Wayne’s 100th birthday. Above is a shot I took of his birthplace in Winterset, Iowa, when I was home for a visit in 2003. The house is smaller than it looks from the front; see side view below the fold. (more…)

While the rest of the blogosphere has moved on to scoffing at John Edwards’ star-stuttering appearance on Meet the Press (why wasn’t Mike Huckabee’s interview considered first in the “Candidates 2008 series,” by the way?) and poking fun at his less-than-stellar blog hire, we’re still laughing at the National Review headline, “There Are Two Americas; John Edwards’ New House Takes Up Almost All of One Of Them.”

The Edwards home is apparently the largest and most valuable in Orange County, North Carolina. Have you seen it yet?

What’s perhaps more remarkable is that Edwards has actually produced a book titled Home: The Blueprints of Our Lives.

Does it get any better than this?

Home. The place that helps to define how we see ourselves and how we choose to make our way in the world — the blueprint of our lives.

After seeing the photo, people had already started to question Edwards’ sincerity when it comes to poverty and environmentalism; it can’t help that if appears fixated on homes and considers them a fundamental aspect of our existence.

Incidentally, one of the featured homes is Danny Glover’s.

This was the view outside our door this morning. Er, not. But that’s what the news told us to expect. No snow yet. Not even ice.

UPDATE: Ok, so they were off by one day. I can’t believe they close all the schools for this.