Who knew Shaun White had a sister?

Or that she's a Swiss curler?

Is she trying to look like Michael Jackson?

Either way, I'm still convinced she had her costume on backwards last night. It just looks wrong.

What the...?

I've had many thoughts throughout these Olympic Games, but I've managed to keep most of them in my head. This one, though? Needs airing.

Why on earth would you need a fire extinguisher on a sheet of ice? Were the short-track skaters so fast, they set frozen water on fire?

Weekly Update

Dear Internet,

Half of Minnesota is a snow bank right now, and the other half is one giant pothole.

My two favorite times of day? Lunchtime and Bedtime? Their ranks (at least in my book) are swapping places. I'm tired. Bedtime is now my favorite time of day, followed closely by lunchtime.

I wish I had more time for you these days, Internet. Well, maybe. I'd take more sleep first.

~Minny LinnEy

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I wonder which of the 4 MN Justices are the ones in loveless marriages.

New Law Would Ban Marriages Between People Who Don't Love Each Other

(Um, obviously, this is a joke, for those of you who are going to rush to the phone to call in to your representative or senator. Don't. But I do love being a "real mecca for loveless couples.")

Olympic sport or Immigration Checkpoint?

I read this article by a US snowboard cross athlete (which I read mainly because, well, really. Who could possibly resist a piece with the title "Nate Holland Thinks Your Pants Are Too Tight"?), and when he used the term "boardercross," I couldn't help but think it sounded like an immigration issue. Oh, don't you love those homonyms?

In other Olympics news, Internet, you might have heard that the Games started on Friday. Anyway, I'm not sure how we did it, but good roommate K and I fit about 25 people into our apartment on Friday night to "watch" the opening ceremonies. I use the term "watch" very loosely because it was really about eating and talking and betting. How do you bet on opening ceremonies, you ask? Oh, trust me, Internet: it's possible. We decided to make the opening ceremonies way more interesting by trying to guess how many athletes each country would be sending. Have we taken that competitive nature too far when we're gambling on non-sporting events? (Think back to Seinfeld, people. I believe Kramer had a problem with the gambling. Maybe a big problem.) Maybe. But a good time was had by all.

A Case of the Mondays.

Internet, I have a lot of random thoughts. Let me share some of the recent ones with you.

1. When one is driving on the freeway in the middle of a snowstorm, one should try to change lanes while under bridges. There is less snow barricading you from the next lane, whether you're going 10 or 60 mph. Just sayin'. Why not make it easier on yourself, and give yourself less chance of spinning out? (Also. You will spray less snowy mixture on all the cars immediately behind you, and maybe freak them (read: me) out less when you cut in front of them (me) and start fishtailing because your small automobile can't quite get over the enormous drifts between lanes.)

2. I went to church Saturday night (not my usual time), sat in a different section close to the front of the sanctuary (weird!), wore jeans (don't do that often at church), and listened to a different preacher than normal (while ours is on annual writing leave). It was strange, everything about it. And then I didn't even really sleep in on Sunday (which seems to me to be the whole point of Saturday evening services), so now I'm wondering if it was worth it...

3. I pulled a personal record for a 2k on the erg on Friday night (Yay for Me! Also, Lame for Me! Who is boring enough to work out on a Friday evening? Yeah, that would be yours truly...), only to suffer ginormous blisters at the U of M rowing tanks on Saturday afternoon. I don't think I will be able hold the erg handle for a couple days without some serious cracking and bleeding (even with that delightfully brisk invention known as new-skin).

4. Shopping for clothes only two or three times a year (if that) has disadvantages: if all your clothes are falling apart, then you have to replace everything, and That. Takes. Forever. But the thought of going shopping more often to do it a little at a time (instead of buying 4 suits, a bunch of sweaters, some button-downs, and a variety of other stuff all in one fell swoop) sounds like death by a thousand paper cuts. (And add that to the blisters, suffered on the very same day, was almost more than I could bear.)

5. Session technically started last week, but it feels like we've already been at it for a month already. (Death by a thousand committee meetings. And those bills do leave some nasty paper cuts.)

How to Give Meaningful Purpose to Bad Bills at the MN Legislature

I'm sensing a trend. OK, two trends, really.

I recently picked up a couple of books at the library, and I noticed something: completely by accident, I chose two titles that have spiderwebs on the front covers. Wasn't this whole spider title and/or cover art a trend, oh, 15 or 18 years ago?

Also. What's up with all these mystery writers who've decided they have to add a paranormal element to their latest books?

You can take things too far.

In my orchestra, we're playing a series of children's concerts at the end of this month. You know, showcasing a young artist (a high school student who has won our music association's competition and receives a scholarship from us), introducing kids to music and its different forms and instruments, all that. Well, this year, we're doing a bit to demonstrate what different musicians and eras can do to the same theme. We're playing Beethoven's Fifth:

And then we're playing Walter Murphy's "A Fifth of Beethoven" (which many people will recognize from Saturday Night Fever):

And then while wandering through YouTube listening to these two pieces, I discovered a remix of a rearrangement, and realized, yes, you can go too far:

This last really annoys me. A Fifth of Beethoven at least keeps some semblance of the piece. The remix is just too disjointed.

And then there's this version, just for kicks (it's actually a really good performance, but I love that they're called the 3 Redneck Tenors, and now I must discover more about them):

So there are my two cents...and four clips.

Hey, even the NYT agrees with me!

Since the President of the United States felt he could ramble on without aim or much purpose last night, I claim the right to do the same in my written opinion today on his State of the Union address. In case you missed it and would like to follow along with me while I stand on my little soapbox, you can read the text here.

So last night I couldn't help but think that President Obama was a little too in-your-face with the Supreme Court Justices all sitting there. And apparently, others agree with me. (These "others" are people who probably are more knowledgeable and definitely have larger reading audiences than I'll ever have. Oh, and they write for the New York Times. Read Linda Greenhouse here. Read Jeff Zeleny here.)



Talk about long. Only two other Presidents were more long-winded: Clinton four times, and Johnson once.

And I agree with one comment from the Heritage Foundation about the messy nature of the speech: "[It] was an incoherent mess of promised tax cuts for small businesses coupled with the threat of tax hikes from his health care and energy proposals; more federal money to encourage banks to lend to businesses, coupled with new taxes on banks and individuals; the continued waste of his $862 billion stimulus plan and $2 trillion in new health care spending, coupled with a delayed and temporary spending freeze." (And that seemed to be a nice way to put it...)

Other than a few specific ideas (for example, require students' higher education loan payments to be only 10% of a person's income, and the debt totally forgiven after 20 years - or ten years, if you go into public service), everything was a generic reiteration of what we've been through and heard the last several months. Mr. President, we didn't like your bills before. One speech isn't going to get us to like your [fill in the blank - jobs, health care reform, cap and trade, whatever] bill any more than we did the last time we heard about it. The rest of what was stated was mindless dreck without much order given to it.

And furthermore. You say you want to stop running Washington like it's still in election mode? ("But what frustrates the American people is a Washington where every day is Election Day.") Well, for starters, why don't you STOP ADDRESSING THE MEDIA EVERY SINGLE DAY?! It feels like you're still trying to win an election that you already won over a year ago. Your popularity is surely going down simply because of that (let alone going down because of your unpopular policies and stances on issues). We are tired of hearing you, tired of your daily media availability, tired of your face constantly in our faces. But we know the truth: this country's politicians are ALWAYS in election mode. We are at the point where running for office is a full-time job for sometimes years before any ballots are ever cast.

IF YOU ALL HATED THE BANK BAILOUT, why did you all vote for it? (“We all hated the bank bailout,” Mr. Obama said, equating it to being as popular as a “root canal.”)

If every word Obama said was worth a million bucks, we still probably wouldn't have enough money to pay for all of what he was pushing last night.

Now, for the aesthetics of the speech: Mr. President. I would kindly suggest you put your hands down by your sides the next time you give a speech. Incessantly clasping your hands and banging them together on the podium was extremely annoying and completely distracting. Maybe that was your intent: distract your opposition from noticing the very bad words and worse policies (Saith the Prez: In Your Face, military, SCOTUS, pretty much anyone standing around besides Joe "Bobblehead" Biden and Nancy "Lizard Lips/Seal Clapper" Pelosi).

On to the other speech of the evening: Governor McDonnell, you had me at keeping the speech to ten minutes so your twin boys could go watch SportsCenter. The rest of your speech was just icing on the cake. In particular, I'm glad you were hitting home the theme of equal opportunity (as opposed to the usual Democrat idea of equal outcome). Thank you for that, Governor.

_____

This is why I should just not watch President Obama's speeches. He drives me crazy, and my blood pressure goes up.

Now, back to our reguarly scheduled, not-too-serious programming...