Sharing my artwork :-)

Here is one painting I did last week, one of the first I've ever finished on canvas.
The other is copy of Dali's "Persistence of Memory" in chalk on our drive-way.
Thanks for looking...

Quit smoking, Grab a bottle of beer...

Alcoholism is an interesting "disease". It can take the most loving, caring, wonderful people and turn them against themselves. It destroys the lives of not only those who are the abusers and the family and friends of the abuser. Alcoholism kills thousands every year through automobile accidents, liver disease, home accidents(like fires), and dozens of other "side effects" of being drunk or the adverse effects of alcohol on the body.
Everyone in this country comes down so hard on smokers and as a smoker I understand addiction and why it's so bad for me and those around me. But why don't we get a bigger spotlight on alcohol abuse and the millions of lives it has destroyed. I don't see movie studios say anything about taking alcohol out of movies, the commericials that make it look like drinking as being a great pass time, and a million other places that alcohol abuse is actually put in a positive light. Yet there have been petition to take cigarettes out of movies to keep kids from learning the habit from their favorite movie stars. It's so terribly back-asswords...
Outside of guns and the atom bomb I'd put alcohol as one of the worse inventions of man.
I've known two major alcoholics in my life and watched them struggle with the decision between family and the bottle again and again. And I can't even begin to express my frustration at all the times I've seen tears that lead to nothing and promises broken.
That's it, that's all I've got to say about it. It makes me want to scream...

My Brain Hurts

Choices, choices, choices.....
I think we have too many of them nowadays. Almost everybody I know does the whole "What do you want for dinner?", "I don't know what do you want?", conversation every time they get hungry. You can pick Chinese, Korean, American, "New Age" health food, Italian, etc, etc, etc.
And this doesn't only apply to food. My wife and I have Netflix with the out at a time option and we still have a hard time keeping up with all the movies coming out. My daughter actually started crying one time when we took her to the store with her allowance and told her to get whatever toy she wanted(within her price range of course). She started crying about halfway through looking around the toy department. She said she couldn't choose and this was enough to make her break down and cry.
In this world of a billion choices we live in it's no wonder we almost always feel overwhelmed.
Choices are great and all but sometimes the best option is to limit yourself to just a couple of "favorite" options, whether it's a new DVD you want to buy, what your going to eat for dinner, or the bazillions of other choices we make in a day, and stick with our original "gut" choice.

Finally Read It

So I finally read "Twilight", the first book in the series. And for a "teen" novel it's not too terribly bad. It's definitely not Stephen King, Michael Crichton, Anne Rice, etc. level of writing but it's still a fun book to read.
I'm not quite sure why it caught on like it has besides the writer, Stephenie Meyer, hitting that particular genre market at the right moment. As there are dozens of people writing teen vampire novels now with the success of her book, hoping to cash in on this genre boom, there are plenty of these style of books to read now.
I'm more of an Anne Rice fan myself but seeing as she isn't writing anymore vampire novels I guess if I need to fulfill my need for a okay vampire book I'd probably read more of these "Twilight" books.
My wife is a big fan of these books and she told me about Stephenie Meyers refusal to finish writing her newest "Twilight" book because chapters got leaked on the Internet. And to me this sounds a bit egotistical on her part and like a marketing ploy on her publishers part. It's silly, she needs to get over it, if it is not indeed a marketing ploy, and get the book out. The leak will probably make more people go out and buy the book just as is common with new movies nowadays.
Any how, I liked the book. It was a bit too romance novel for me at time and lacked in some details. But all around a fairly good book. I've seen the movie and I thought it was pretty good too. The movie lacked some of the historical details of the book, which was the probably one of the more interesting parts of the book. But I get they can't put everything from a book into a movie or the movie would be like 6 hours long. This book is definitely not going to be one that is studies in any college classrooms 30 years from now or probably even remembered by the people who are obsessed with it right now. But it's a fun read because like most pop music it has a nice beat. I give "Twilight" a score of 5 out of 10 Josephs World points.