Posted inCurrent affairs

Kerry voters are smarter than Bush voters

I vowed to let the past presidential election pass from my mind as much as possible, so I could devote my brain cells to immediate important matters—such as watching the Golden Globe Awards tonight. However, reading a quote from Bush’s interview with the Washington Post in today’s paper has gotten my indignation fired up again. When asked about whether anyone would be held accountable for mistakes and misjudgments such as (1) not being welcomed as liberators in Iraq, (2) not finding weapons of mass destruction, and (3) problems in the post-war process, Bush said: “Well, we had an accountability moment,…
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Posted inDogs

Serena needs “Extreme Makeover, Dog Edition”

Laurel has started to call Serena “Frankendog.” The stitches she got last night at the Salem Emergency Vet clinic do indeed have a Frankensteinian quality, but we’ve been told that she should be left with only a slight scar. Serena got hurt when she ran into the metal roof of our well enclosure. Caught up in the spirit of our litigious age, I’ve been wondering whether the Buddy Glow Ball that I was throwing in the dark for Serena to retrieve contained a consumer warning on the original packaging: “Caution. While this dog toy is designed for nighttime play, do…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Follow-up: Salem City Council shenanigans

In mid-December I wrote about two members of the Salem City Council and the Mayor having been accused of a conflict of interest cover-up. Jim Randall, Dan Clem, and Janet Taylor didn’t report receiving contributions from William Colson, a local developer, before hearing testimony on changes to the city’s annexation code that would benefit a Colson project. Today the Statesman-Journal reported that the city’s Board of Ethics found that Randall and Clem did indeed violate Salem’s ethics laws. Taylor got off only because mayors are required to disclose contributions received in the past two years, whereas for councilors it is…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Majnun, madness, and blog writing

Bloggers want to know that people read what they write. I’ve followed with interest Betsy’s (“My Whim is Law”) passionate call for comments on her posts, and Michael’s (“Michael J. Totten”) desire to have an accurate count of how many visits are made to his blog. I too am happiest when I am noticed. Every morning I peruse the daily statistics TypePad keeps on my two weblogs, my spirits rising when a post reaps lots of clicks and falling when the world fails to beat a path to my HinesSight and Church of the Churchless doors. And yet…the madness of…
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Posted inCurrent affairs

Fred Meyer’s “Questionable Content” sign

I don’t quite know what to make of this sign that I saw affixed to several shelves in the book and magazine section of the South Salem Fred Meyer store. It reads: “From time to time, certain publications contain material that may be offensive to you, while being acceptable to others. It has been our longstanding policy that you determine what is acceptable, and what is not, by what you purchase or refuse to purchase. Your opinions and views on personally offensive products are welcome. Your refusal to buy any product for personal or religious reasons is always respected and…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Home life

Laurel escapes Botox bungler

It isn’t exactly Silence of the Lambs, but Laurel does feel fortunate that she got out of a Salem doctor’s office safe and sound. The doctor, Jerome Lentini, has been accused of using unapproved drugs for Botox treatments. When Laurel saw the front page story about Lentini in the Salem Statesman-Journal yesterday, she said “I knew he was a sleaze!” Laurel had gone to see him around Christmas not out of an interest in Botox, but because he was listed as an “anti-aging” doctor (I note he now has been removed from the listing, as he should be; the preceding…
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Posted inEntertainment

Vote! Everyone! Now!

Periodically there is a vote that is so important, it determines the state of our civilization. My friends, such a vote is at hand. It is your civic duty to cast your ballot—hopefully exactly as we advise. I am speaking, of course, about the Oregonian’s comics survey. Laurel is a serious student of the comics, just as I analyze in depth the sports section each day, rejoicing when I note that the Trailblazers have a worse record than the Clippers. I pay much less attention to the comics, leaving it to Laurel to show me worthy amusement that falls outside…
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Posted inWriting/Weblogs

Laurel gets published

“I’m at LifeSource and I can’t believe it!” So began Laurel’s cell phone call to me this afternoon. I immediately thought that, for the second week in a row, our regular “save us a loaf” order for Alpine Bakery’s 2 Seed Sourdough Whole Wheat bread hadn’t come in (great bread, by the way). But no, it was good news. Laurel had picked up the January issue of Salem Monthly from a stand outside of the store and her “Religion Should Unite, Not Divide” article had been published! This was a surprise, as the Salem Monthly folks had never responded after…
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Posted inEntertainment

Most beautiful woman in the world

A dream “60 Minutes” program for me last night featured two wonders of the world: a marvelous search engine, Google, and a gorgeous Indian actress, Aishwarya Rai, who CNN says has been named by a British magazine as the most beautiful woman in the world. You won’t get any argument from me. And not only beautiful, but unbelievably charming also. Her interview with Bob Simon, who really lucked out to get this “60 Minutes” story rather than, say, a piece on nuclear waste disposal, was a marvel of feminine charm. Several times Simon, rarely tongue-tied, could barely get any words…
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Posted inDogs

Oh great, our dog is fatter

I have some bad news for the throngs in the blogosphere who have been anxiously awaiting an update on our dog’s weight reduction program after reading my initial "Oh great, our dog is fat" posting six months ago. Serena just got a new Pet Health Report Card, and things aren’t going so well. All because of me, supposedly. The green highlighting on the Report Card was put there by Laurel to grab my attention. And the “so no more cheese!” entry in the “Weight (Abnormal)” category also can be attributed to Laurel, since the only way the vet could have…
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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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