Both M. Night Shyamalan’s The Happening and Atlanta filmmakers Jacob Gentry, Dan Bush, and David Bruckner’s The Signal deal with a group of people under siege by an apocalyptic case of the psychotics. One of the film’s signal sends humans into a suicidal mode, while the other film’s signal sends them into a killing mode.  In The Happening, it is discovered that the signal being transmitted is organic and the humans’ one way to survive is through technology; in essence, the ability to contact one another through television and radios.  In The Signal, radios and televisions are the messengers of the deadly signal and one of the central characters claims he was spared the whole psychosis of this signal by the sunlight; thus, making nature a helpful aspect in The Signal. Read the rest of this entry »

Since TiVo came into my life, I have been pleasantly oblivious to most of the TV commercials that used to waste my time with whatever they were trying to sell and whatever “clever” way they were trying to sell it. And I must say, I am now quite happy to use the remote control to speed right through these ads and get back to the show. But sometimes, I get distracted and forget to press the fast-forward button. Recently, during two such lapses of TiVo awareness, I was subjected to two ads that got my attention, and my goat. Read the rest of this entry »

The Yats are driving home. We couldn’t keep up with the big forearmed
Midwestern women on the sandbag line. But we held our own.

Our levee, the Sny, the world’s largest, is in tact at this point. The
biggest threats to it in the days ahead will be rain and muskrats. It
was muskrats that took out the levee in Missouri on Wednesday night.

Let me conclude our first relief trip to America’s heartland with a
final round of dissimilar and similar. Dissimilar first.

The level of organisation and communication between state and local
goverment, along with charitable agencies, is astounding. Local
organisers spent considerable time with us on Friday morning reviewing
their disaster reponse manual - knowing full well that being from New
Orleans we’ve never seen such a document before. They promised to
send to us on CD ROM. We’d pass along a copy to “Our Mayor” if we knew
his Plano, TX mailing address. Read the rest of this entry »

Gov. Bobby Jindal has vetoed the legislative pay raise.  He did it this morning (Monday). Details have not yet been revealed, but what’s clear is that, in the minds of most voters, he did the right thing. Did he do it for the right reason? That is, was this truly a principled response to a legislative excess, or was it purely in response to political pressure? I vote for the latter. If he were acting out of principle, he would have acted a lot more forcefully — and a lot sooner. More later as additional information and analysis is available. At a minimum, he has taken this matter off the map for now, and taken lawmakers off the hook. 

By: Jeremy Alford

Rep. Elbert Guillory, an Opelousas Democrat, has requested $450,000 in taxpayer money for a nonprofit group that teaches young people homemaking and workforce skills.

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