The Jackson Cascades Falls has got to be one of the oddest city attractions I've seen. Odd, but cool in a kitchy retro sorta way.The park is located in Jackson, Michigan -- Birthplace of the Republican Party, and home of the largest prison in the world. OK, not necessarily facts that would sell the place to tourists, I suppose. However the city has recently completed a really great artist "colony" in their old armory and they've got the Cascades. (more pics at my flickr site )The Cascades. Basically some old guy had a bunch of land, and decided to make ...

1. The DNC is going well, I think. They're really making the case against McCain, which isn't really too hard. Hey, who was that young firebrand who gave that great speech last night, anyway? They should nominate him for President someday. Oh. Wait. They did. *le sigh*2. We hung out with The Goddaughter and her daddies last night. Always great fun, and we got to see the Jackson Cascades. A truly odd attraction. I'll post pics later.3. Still haven't sold my truck. If you know anyone local who wants a great Ford F150 for only $2K, send 'em my way.4. ...

Three random, completely and totally unrelated items:1) "A recent study of 475 University of Michigan undergraduates ages 17 to 26 found that 27 percent of the men and 14 percent of the women who weren't in a committed relationship had offered favors or gifts -- help prepping for a test, laundry washing, tickets to a college football game -- in exchange for sex. ON the flip side, 5 percent of the men surveyed and 9 percent of the women said they'd attempted to trade sex for such freebies."2. This week is student move-in week at U of M.3. I ...

We watched a bit of the Democratic National Convention last night. Well, I watched it while Brian worked on computery type stuff. When I asked him if he'd like to watch it, his response was, "Do I have to?"I think it was a line from the West Wing in which some network executive, who is arguing that the networks don't want to cover the political conventions says to a presidential advisor, "You somehow make choosing the leader of the free world boring!"Yeah, pretty boring. I was thinking of some ways to both continue the charade that something interesting and/or important ...

Last week was the Chelsea Fair, one of the fun things about living in a small, Midwestern town. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to make our annual trek to gorge ourselves on Elephant Ears. So, if the fair was last week, that means the Chelsea Fair Parade was on Saturday. For the first time in years, we didn't get a chance to watch the parade because we ended up walking in it. (We feel like such real, live Chelsea-ites now!)We walked with the Democrats, supporting our MI Congresswoman, Pam Byrnes, and our Democratic candidate for US ...

There's a new game coming out for the Nintendo Wii: Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine.I have no idea what the game play is like, but if it lets me attack that talentless hack Bobby Flay, I'm buying a Wii just to play it. (The only thing better than going after that talentless hack Bobby Flay would be bludgeoning Rachel Ray with a bag of frozen, chopped onions.)Actually I'd like this game much more if it were the original Iron Chefs and the original judges, particularly the elderly Rosanjin scholar, Masaaki Hirano, who would effuse, after tasting my ...

A recent study published in the journal Biology Letters suggests that dogs may be able to empathize in some way with humans. The clue? Yawning.You know how you can "catch" a yawn from someone else? It was previously believed that only yawning humans and some yawning apes demonstrated that yawning ability, but this new research on yawning dogs suggests that dogs can catch a yawn as well.I decided to repeat the experiment with our cats, yawning in front of them over and over until it elicited a yawning response from them, which I figured would demonstrate that they're empathetic as ...

What exactly is the definition of "doddering old fool"?John McCain (n. jän mc cān) American politician. "Justice Ginsberg, Justice Breyer, Justice Souter, and Justice Stevens."The four justices he wouldn't have appointed to the US Supreme Court. Note: He voted for the confirmation of Ginsberg, Breyer, and Souter. ...