Posted inEntertainment

“Meet the Fockers” and “Napoleon Dynamite”

My problem with “Meet the Fockers” started right at the ticket booth when I slurred my words as I said, “Two for Meet the, um, Foh, um, kickers.” I’m not usually shy about swearing, phonetically or otherwise, but for some reason I froze when I got face-to-face with the sweet young female thing behind the counter at Salem’s Movieland. We saw this film Christmas Eve, along with a handful of other family- and friend-less losers who had nothing better to do that evening. Fortunately Laurel suggested that we see “Meet the Fockers,” or I would have had to endure her…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Tsunami disaster weblogs

Courtesy of the BBC’s “The World” program, here are some weblogs that are reporting on the South Asia tsunami disaster and soliciting aid for the area. There’s an intimate immediacy to many of the bloggers’ postings that is missing from the newspaper, radio and cable stories Laurel and I have seen/heard. Donate what you can through those weblogs, Northwest Medical Teams, or one of the charities kindly publicized by Google. If there ever was a time to become one world, this is it. http://desimediabitch.blogspot.com/ http://www.tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/ http://www.worldchanging.com/ http://www.ramdhanyk.com/
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Posted inHome life Writing/Weblogs

I’m losing all sense of proportion

While clearing blackberries today with my new best friend, a cordless chainsaw, I thought about how I’m losing all sense of proportion. Thank heavens. I just hope I can keep going until every last bit of proportionality is lost. I feel like I’m halfway there, but the fact that my mind can spit out an expression like “halfway” shows how far I have to go. This afternoon I took a break from the blackberries to eat some lunch and get the mail. A letter had come from a book reviewer to whom I had written a plaintive query: “Why haven’t…
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Posted inFamily

I paparazzi myself

The guy sitting outside the Coffee House Café this morning looked familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. Gucci jeans jacket. Oliver Peoples designer eyewear. He looked like he belonged in Hollywood rather than Salem. I couldn’t tell exactly what he was saying on the cellphone, but I thought I heard “If you can’t get Leonardo and Julia for less than 30 mill, I’m out of this deal.” Or, maybe not. After I snapped the first photo, the guy smiled, motioned me closer, and took off his dark glasses. Now I recognized him! It was me. I just didn’t feel…
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Posted inFamily

A Christmas memory

I'm not usually all that sentimental, but I wanted to share a 1985 Christmas memory of my mother this 2004 Christmas Eve. I posted it on my Church of the Churchless weblog. Life everlasting and joy. Christian or not, this is a message we all need to be reminded of. I'm thankful to the memory that did just that for me.
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Collected Christmas Letters of Brian and Laurel Hines

[Note: all our Christmas letters, 1995 to 2025, are available below. I update this post annually with the newest creation.] “A man’s soul is revealed through his Christmas letters,” it has been said (by me, just now). So I’ve decided to express my essential self this holiday season not by going downtown and volunteering at a soup kitchen, but by sitting at my laptop and converting my past holiday missives into PDF files that can be admired by the world. Or, at least, the few people who find them on this weblog. Previously these Collected Christmas Letters of Brian Hines…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Washington Supreme Court gets it right

Finally! A Supreme Court gets it right in an important election dispute. According to wire reports the Washington Supreme Court has ruled that more than 700 King County ballots should be counted, which likely will favor Christine Gregoire given the left-leaning tendencies of that county. Of course, if her purported eight vote statewide lead (without the additional ballots) holds up, this ruling may be moot. I got hooked on the live coverage of the Supreme Court hearing this morning on C-Span. Good arguments by both sides, but I thought the Democratic Party attorney was particularly smooth and persuasive. Not quite…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

The mysteries of Google ranking

How Google ranks web pages in a subject of great interest to those who care about such things. Unless someone is completely ego-less (which I’m certainly not), this includes most people who desire that others see what they put on the web. So attempts to fathom Google’s mysterious page-ranking methods abound. Here’s an example. Today I found something interesting. I’d be interested to hear from anyone with more knowledge in this area of Googleology about whether my experience truly reflects a Google Law of Ranking. Is my conclusion in this post correct, that changing the wording of a Google excerpt…
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Posted inHome life

2004 Hinesland Christmas letter

This year we made a major announcement in our Christmas letter: we’ve declared our psychic independence from the United States of America. Now that we have a full ten acres of south Salem land to establish our Hinesland realm on, the post-November 2 world we found ourselves in begged for an enclave where truly wise environmental, cultural, and spiritual values—namely, our own—could be practiced. The full story of Hinesland, or at least as much as can be conveyed in a single page, is in our 2004 Christmas letter. Most of these were mailed out today to those on our Christmas…
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Posted inHome life

We embrace artificiality

Artificial or real? We are not the only ones to struggle with this question. Pamela Anderson has bounced back and forth, so to speak, in her own answers. But Laurel and I are happy that we’ve stuck with our artificial choice, the 10 foot tree that has graced our living room for three Christmases. It was difficult for us to make the break from the previously-alive Noble Firs we used to buy from a South Salem lot. Now, we’re happy that we did. If you’ve been considering making the switch to an artificial tree, perhaps the case study that I…
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Posted inMiscellany

Over-indulgence

This is the season for over-shopping, over-eating, over-drinking, over-decorating, over-socializing, and over-warning about over-indulging. A picture emailed to us by a neighbor, Frank Haynes, wonderfully captures this over-the-top spirit. With equal abandon may we all throw ourselves into our own purrfect pleasures this holiday season. Postpone the guilt until January (2050).
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Salem City Council shenanigans

I always feel like applauding a watchdog group that barks noisily when our so-called “public servants” are engaging in some shenanigans. So I will: clap, clap, clap to Friends of Marion County and their hard-working president, Roger Kaye, for catching the Salem City Council in what appears to be a conflict of interest cover-up.

Yesterday the Statesman-Journal reported that revisions to Salem’s annexation rules would be put on hold until January as a result of Roger’s efforts. Some background: In 2000 Salemites voted to approve annexations of land into the city. Presently city rules require that developers tell people how they plan to use the property that they want to have annexed.

This makes sense. Before voting on whether to bring a parcel into the city, wouldn’t you want to know what was going to be done with it? An ugly commercial strip mall is one thing; a creatively designed sustainable community is quite another thing.

However, now that more conservative city council members have replaced the progressive Mayor Swaim-era councilors, common sense is giving way to corporate interests. The council has been considering making changes to the annexation rules that would much reduce the information given to voters about a proposed development.

That’s fine, so long as the changes are made in an aboveboard manner. But Friends of Marion County revealed at a Monday City Council meeting that several councilors, plus Mayor Janet Taylor, have failed to disclose that they received substantial donations from the Colson & Colson Construction Co. which—no big surprise—would benefit from a revision to the annexation rules.

I’ll include a copy of Roger Kaye’s letter to Mayor Taylor and the City Council for the interest of Salem land use junkies. Laurel is a board member of Friends of Marion County and has been following this issue, along with other Measure 37 related matters. The battle is just beginning over whether short-term financial gain or the long-term public interest will be the centerpiece of land use planning in Oregon.

We hope very much for the latter. But this will only happen if elected officials vote to do the right thing, rather than what will bring them the most campaign contributions.

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Posted inEntertainment

Sex, politics, and “Survivor”

Last night’s final episode of “Survivor Vanuatu” proved that all the hours we invested in watching this Mother of All Reality TV Shows were well worth it. I don’t think Laurel and I have missed a single hour of Survivor since the series debuted. I’m sure that there are lots of PBS watchers who look down on our viewing habits, but I’ve found that most people who criticize Survivor haven’t watched enough of this show to know what they’re talking about. You won’t get a better practical education in group dynamics and politics than by observing how eighteen aspirants for…
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Posted inHome life

We get heavy into Christmas

Something possessed us to head off to the “Holiday Market” at the State Fairgrounds this afternoon. I was deathly afraid that this event would be akin to a Greens Show, which I’ve worked hard at avoiding my entire life. But Laurel assured me that it was sponsored by the Salem Saturday Market—so likely would be more artsy-craftsy than cutesy-decorationsy. Actually it was a bit of each. We wandered around in our usual holiday spirit. Meaning, each of us looked for stuff that we wanted for ourselves. We do give some gifts to other people, but we also believe in the…
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Posted inEntertainment

“Shrek 2”

Movie companies who are making a comedy should hire Laurel to do their pre-release audience testing. She is not usually a laugh-out-loud woman, so when she chortles exuberantly while watching a movie, that’s a good sign this is a comedic hit. "Shrek 2” is one of just a few films in my recent memory that have earned the Laurel Laughed! Stamp of Approval. Another was “South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut.” But Shrek 2 has to get the smiling nod over South Park because using farting jokes to induce a laugh is like using chocolate cake to get someone to…
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Posted inBooks Philosophy

The mystery of suffering

Why do we suffer? There’s no better question to ask, because a search for the answer leads into the deepest mysteries of life, death, God, existence, body, soul, meaning, purposelessness—the whole shebang that philosophers ponder, mystics meditate on, scientists study, and preachers pontificate about. Bill Long’s recently-published book, “A Hard-Fought Hope: Journeying with Job through Mystery,” examines suffering through a biblical lens, the book of Job. Yet Bill, a Salem resident and friend of mine, doesn’t take a traditional religious approach to understanding Job. He starts by laying out a legal complaint against God, Ruler of the Universe on behalf…
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Posted inMiscellany

Congratulations to new black belt Dave

Here’s a photo of Dave Jones (in the blue gi) and the rest of our motley Pacific Martial Arts dojo gang. Dave was awarded a well-deserved black belt by Sensei Warren Allen (in the middle) last Saturday. He’s expert at a variety of weapons and a highly skilled ground/jujitsu fighter. Plus, a great guy with a laid back personality and some cool tattoos. My description of ourselves as “motley” is a compliment. When I got home and looked at the photo of (from left to right) Bob, Dennis, Warren, Dave, me, and Mike (kneeling), I realized each of us is…
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Posted inMiscellany

Stupid me, I follow my own advice

Jeez, after I installed Windows XP’s Service Pack 2 on Laurel’s computer and got to view the dreaded Blue Screen of Death on a restart, I cursed, “Who was that damn blogger who wrote a post called ‘Feel the fear and install SP2 anyway’? I’d like to wring his freaking neck!” Then I remembered: it was me. This brought the object of my rage wonderfully close to hand, but as soon as I started to strangle myself I felt a strong urge to forgive. Which I have. Anyway, it is Microsoft whose neck should be wrung, notwithstanding the difficulty of…
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Posted inFamily

Images of Venice and Florence

Here's a glimpse of Venice and Florence through the camera lens of my daughter, Celeste Vos, and her husband Patrick. I've selected six photos from their Ofoto album that struck my eye. A self-portrait of Celeste and Patrick at Venice's Piazza San Marco. What a great-looking couple! Don't you think it's time for them to reproduce their obviously exemplary genetic heritage into the form of a child (and grandchild)? This father thinks so. Celeste lost at night in the streets of Venice. I like the gloomy atmosphere of this photo. Having been lost in Venice myself back in the late…
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Posted inPhilosophy

Wisdom from a boy with AIDS

"Do all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place you are." These are the words of Nkosi Johnson, a South African boy born with AIDS who died at the age of twelve with more wisdom than most of us accumulate in a much longer lifetime. I heard Jim Wooten recite Nkosi’s mantra as I was driving home tonight. Wooten has written a book about Nkosi and the South African AIDS crisis, “We Are All the Same.” The title is how Nkosi ended his speech to an international AIDS conference. I don’t know much…
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