It's THAT time of year

Ah, cyber monday. And the spam falls like snow in the Cascade Mountains.

Boy, you all have been busy. There were 200 new posts waiting for me this morning. What? Don't you all have lives. Oh, wait a sec, the caller-id says Mr. Kettle is calling me back about something.

Took Mom to see the new James Bond movie. My analysis? Eh. Unless you're really into the franchise you could probably skip this one. It's a good "everything goes bang at the end" movie, but if plot holes where bunnies there would have been a stampeding herd of rabbits by the end. Plus, note to director, director of photography, and editor; you have a bunch of people with light hair and short haircuts, similar suits and builds, lots of things flying around, shooting it from extreme angles and close-ups, speeding up the footage, and editing it like an MTV video on meth does not lead to coherent story telling. Also, note to writers, "Quantum" as the name for the new baddie organization? Why? You had a perfectly respectable organization called SPECTER which you could also have reinvented (since you reinvented the main character).

On Friday we went to the Canton Museum of Art (or more appropriately, the Canton Couple of Rooms of Art), also taking Mom. The Clyde Singer show was excellent. Man, what a painter. I would say he's a modern Diego Garcia, but for the US. Part of the fun of the show were three Art Students. I pegged them as Art Students the moment they entered the gallery. Understand, there are art students and then there are Art Students. The first are fun to hang out with, the later are annoyingly conceited little twits. I've known my share of the Art Students, which I studiously try to avoid. These are the ones who know that True Art is (puh-lease). So here is this guy's work, which ranges from impressionist, cubist, realist, cartoon, and the Americana he's so well known for. More range than most other artists. And they think it's boring. Just wanted to slap some sense into their privileged rich little pinheads.

The weekend was spent putting up the outside decorations (done!, okay, well, mostly, I'm thinking of buying a new garland for the railing) and the tree. It's not decorated, but it's up. Last year we rewired the tree for multi-color LED lights, so it looks nice this year. My wife also bought a train to go around the base. We'll see how long that lasts. Many presents were also wrapped.

And now we're back at work. So far reports of Black Friday have not been encouraging. Sure, they were better than expected, but you remember just how low those expectations were this year.