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No one is really sure why “The Naked People” statue came to the Music Row roundabout a few years ago. I’m sure our reaction was similar to the one I’m about to describe below when it was first unveiled, but the locals have come to just accept / ignore it’s existence and get on with life.

Apparently Nashville’s “powers that be” decided we needed something to mark the foot of Music Row, an area just outside of downtown that is home to many of the Nashville based country, gospel, and Christian music companies. And what better way to honor Nashville’s historic music tradition than confusing residents with a circular intersection and a 40 foot tall statue of naked dancers? According to the artist, the sculpture “Musica” uses dancers to convey the “physical expression of music” bursting forth in “celebration and exuberance”. Whatever. Remember, this is Nashville, the home of country music… Johnny Cash would just roll his eyes. A statue of a broken down pickup truck, a sad coon dog, and beat up guitar would have captured the spirit of the city better.

But anyways, yesterday as I’m leaving work and about to enter Nashville’s most perplexing intersection, I see this little old car creeping along on the roundabout. He’s going terribly slow. I wait for him to pass me, glance at the license plate and see he’s from out of state. Georgia. I figure he’s as baffled as I am as to where to exit the never-ending circle road.

Then I look closer. The driver is an older guy – gray hair, glasses, and there’s this shocked expression on his face and his eyes are glued to the drivers side window. Peering up, he’s taking in for the first time, with dropped jaw, the naked people. I can hear in my mind exactly what he’s thinking… “what in the world is that???” He continues to drive around the roundabout, making a full revolution – not just once, but twice, with mouth open staring up in utter amazement.

Welcome to Nashville my friend. The Country Music Hall of Fame is ahead on your right.

I came across two disturbing news stories today and one unsettling experience. This left me feeling, well, quite dissettled:

First, Iceland is bankrupt and it’s government has failed. I had read that the country’s banks were going bankrupt in October, but it seems as though things have really taken a turn for the worse today with the Prime Minister resigning and “disbanding the government”. I don’t even understand what that means – disband the government. This makes me sad.

Second, Steph and I are fans of celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. Yes, he’s got a bit of a foul mouth but his shows – Kitchen Nightmares and Hell’s Kitchen – are fantastic, and the guy has a culinary gift. That said, recent reports seem to indicate that there have been some financial issues creeping up on him, including two years of back taxes past due and the imminent sale of two of his under performing London restaurants. The report goes on to stir up a storm about supposed marital infidelity, but the facts here seem a bit contradictory. All that to say, I wish the best for Gordon and his family and I’m hoping the reports error on the side of the sensational, and that he comes through all of this in weeks to come.

Finally, I ate at Taco Bell today. As I’m waiting for my three crunchy tacos a guy who has ordered a single burrito proceeds to start a hissy fit at the counter because his order was not placed on a plastic tray. He picks it up, goes to sit down at his table, and then returns to the counter with his wrapped burrito where he engages in an argument with the cashier about how “I ordered this for here and you’re supposed to put it on a tray! I paid for a tray! So put it on a tray!!” He smacks the burrito down on the counter and waits to be given the greasy, brown plastic tray he deserves. The cashier proceeds to hand him a tray, and gingerly places the burrito on it. Weird.

Thanks for reading about my dissettling day.

We have a cat. His name is Linus. He’s two years old now.

Recently he started the bad habit of making incredible amounts of noise beginning every morning at 4:30 AM in the form of meowing, scratching, pawing, and general cat-play. It’s incredibly annoying, to the point that Steph and I are losing significant amounts of sleep because of our crazy cat.

Without going through all the details, suffice it to say we’ve tried everything to quiet him down. We let him roam the house – he makes noise. We lock him in our bedroom, he makes noise. We lock him in a different room, he poops on the floor because he’s bitter.

The most annoying of his traits is his incessant pawing on our closed bedroom door – believe it our not, this keeps us up the most. So we made a little investment the other day. While perusing through Petsmart, amongst all the cute little well behaved puppies and kitties, we picked up a feline torture device known as “The ScatMat“.

This handy little tool, when rolled out on the floor, sends 9 volts of electric current through the feet and/or paws of any trespasser who steps on the mat. For the last three nights we have rolled out the ScatMat in front of our bedroom door, and I must say… works like a charm.

Night #1: About 20 minutes after we rolled it out he started sniffing around and investigating the mat, and finally he ventured onto it. Hair on end. Tail puffy. Jumped straight up in the air about a foot, ran into the wall, and dove under the bed, not to make a peep for the rest of the night.

Night #2: We read that for effective “training” we should try covering the mat w/ a sheet or towel so that eventually we can remove the ScatMat and simply leave the towel on the floor as Linus will have associated the shock with the sheet, not the mat. To work effectively through the pillowcase we threw on the floor we had to turn the power up one notch. Oh my. He hit the thing at about 5AM and it sounded like he had climbed halfway up the wall in shock. Once again, not a peep for the rest of the morning.

Night #3: Linus has now picked up a new trait when entering or leaving the room. Regardless of whether or not the pillowcase is on the floor he now jumps a full three feet through the door frame in attempts to “clear” whatever is shocking his little paws. He steers clear of the door from now on, has settled himself down, and Steph and I have been sleeping wonderfully.

And that. my friends, is how you train a cat.

Over the last few months, a strange pattern has developed on the blog of my friend Uncle Tim. It’s sad, really, to see how a once prolific writer has simply disappeared from the blogging world.

Unfortunately, Tim is in denial of all this. He feels that the blogging world has up and left him – that no one out there is writing anymore, when in fact, he’s the one who has forgotten how to turn his computer on. Posts have been pretty minimal from Uncle Tim the last few months, and I miss his gluttonous musings on food and his incessant whining about cats.

I took it upon myself to demonstrate graphically how Tim’s bloggings have changed over time, and the visual impact is startling:

So Tim… if you’re out there, somewhere, reading this… come back.Post about how you’ve been binging on chocolate and beer over the the last two weeks since the Biggest Loser finale aired, and how you’re just not going to be able to control yourself until next season. Post about how you’ve somehow conned society into buying plastic Frisbees from you in order to make a living. Post about how you kidnapped your neighbor kid’s cat last week and taunted it with a pen light until 3:00 in the morning by making it run off the edge of your balcony.

Sincerely,
A Concerned Subscriber