Erick Legue

Do you believe there is intelligent life on other planets?

I believe there is a possibility, but I think the odds of intelligent life on any two planets meeting are almost nil.  Many people point out there are endless stars, and possibly endless planets among those stars, of which a small percentage may exhibit conditions that support life, but they do not take into account the vastness of time.  The idea that two civilizations develop spacefaring technologies at the same time to facilitate a mutual peaceful exchange in this universe is silly to consider.  Would the two food-pyramid kings of their respective planets be able to coexist, or would we need to establish superiority?  Economy also seems to put a damper on interplanetary travel and exploration; why leave the planet, when the alternatives are so inhospitable and travel is so expensive?  How would we treat progeny that grow up in the weak gravity of other planets, grandchildren who would be crushed by earth's gravity?  I'm staying put, and I hope the intelligent life--if there is any--stays put as well.

Yesterday my wife and I were sitting around wishing the closest non-chain restaurant wasn't in Louisville.  Then, I remembered the Gondolier, the Italian restaurant that opened on Ring Road in Elizabethtown, KY.  This place opened some time back, and we had always talked about checking it out but never actually did.  I was shocked by this place's menu, which is practically a live rendering of the La Cucina Italiana, a deep catalog of great italian dishes, and we're excited by the prospect of sampling more and more of this menu.  I had the Baked Veal Parmesan and Melissa had her litmus test Alfredo shrimp, full of generously-sized shrimp (especially given seafood availability here in Elizabethtown).  After rereading the menu after the meal, we found they offered calamari appetizers, which, along with the stuffed canolli are definitely on my to do list for the next time we visit.

What's your favorite restaurant?

I'm going to have to cheat on this because I have three, but each for different reasons.  You can call me pedestrian if you want, but for me not dropping a paycheck on a meal is enough of the experience to take five star restaurants out of my lineup.  I've been to some amazing restaurants, like the uber-trendy Mercer Grill in NYC, but if I paid for my meal on my old navy salary I would've been eating on ship everyday thereafter for lack of money.

• Florio's Italian Ristorante, New York City, good Italian food at a great price.  I was in the navy and in New York for fleet week, and my buddies and I were hunting for authentic italian fare in Little Italy.  Walking past Florio's a delightful old man called out to us and started chatting us up about our time in New York.  We asked him about the food and he got so excited talking about it, he started talking in Italian.  We new this was the place.  Our table's wine was on the house and everyone was so friendly, the food delicious.  After eating there's a well-stocked cigar bar with a huge selection of fine smokes.
• Old Spaghetti Factory,  Honolulu, Hawaii, yeah it's a chain, but this one is great.  It's right down from the big theater and all the shops in Hono, and there's a bar you can have drinks at while you're waiting for a table.  Sure beats sitting on a wooden bench outside listening to a loudspeaker.  The staff is very good and they have a fun, friendly attitude.  I recommend the Baked Chicken Greek-Style with Sphagetti and Mizithra cheese.
• Norm's Chicago Dogs, Elizabethtown, KY.  I love this place.  These hot dogs come with massive toppings and are the best, bar none.  The best thing is the owner, he's got this swagger like the 'butcher' from Gangs of New York.  One time I guy picked up a big order of dogs and he looked at them before leaving, and remarked that there wasn't any ketchup on them.  The owner, without batting an eye, said, "That's right.  No ketchup on a chicago dog." and left it at that.  No sorry, sir, you here's some packets of crap to ruin your dogs with or there's some at the end of the counter.  Just that.  "No ketchup on a Chicago dog!"

The net-to-brain interface is one step closer to fruition with the advent of Google Reader, from google labs.  At first  on hearing the description, I thought, oh, another run of the mill rss reader.  At the time I'd been using Thunderbird to read news feeds I foolishly downloaded onto my hard drive, as if all the spam email wasn't enough.  I've since chucked the bird and gone back to web-based email and rss reading.  The great thing about reader is the interface.  Unlike most readers, where you sift through folder after folder of feeds from different sources, Google Reader allows you to save all your subscriptions, and you can click on all links, and a steady stream of articles is displayed in a viewer.  You can 'star' or tag interesting articles for later use, and to advance through the stream you just hit the space bar and it pages-down.  The great thing is, the paging stops as soon you let off the space bar, so when you get fifty articles about something you don't care about, just hold the bar down and fast forward through the boring feeds until something catches your eye.  As Jean Shepherd once said, it's not the big headlines that tell us about life, it's the small bits of trivia and curiousities that tell us about what's realing going on. 

Here's some interesting links I've found recently:

• This google video contains a nature documentary on the 'Pika', the animal from which 'Pikachu' is derived.  I had no idea it was based on a real animal.  It's disgustingly adorable
• Website stencil revolution offers stencil templates designed by artists
• Boing Boing linked to a giant insect that appears to be eating Germany in Google Maps
• Boing Boing also linked to a matchstick model of Hogwarts academy, from Harry Potter
  

 

I was going to drive to work Friday night and it was raining, but little did I know what was in store.  I knew when it rained hard that the poorly-thought out underpass leading to I-65 to Louisville becomes a small river, so I took the alternate route to Louisville, but as I headed down highway 31, visibility cut down to about fifteen feet and soon I felt like my car was driving more like a motorboat, with jets of water shooting up both sides.  I pulled into a parking lot and turned back to higher ground. 

All the lights went out on the highway and soon phone service went out.  I called into work and called home to tell my wife, and on the way back

I saw a little neon up to its windshield in water. 

Melissa, bless her heart, wanted to see for herself.  This is classic flood stupid behavior, but our apartment was quite safe and we drove out but found the path to the highway flooded by a rising creek, a cadillac forded part way in but stalled.  We turned into a shopping center parking lot to see a minivan and a strip mall flooded, including a dentist's office my mom frequents.  A small torrent rushed out into the parking lot of a small fruit market and drive through of a bank and the adjacent road to the highway was cut off.  We snapped some phone cam pictures, only to find our other way back home blocked by more water.  We had to wait out the storm in the dry part of the lot until the flood waters receded. 

I've never seen Elizabethtown flood this badly.

If you could only save one thing in a house fire (thing, not person), what would it be and why?
Submitted by donnunn.

I would 'save' the mattress.  Most fires fizzle unless a mattress or couch starts to burn.  If your house continues to burn, you could take the mattress to a friend's house to sleep on.  That's my smarmy answer.  My sentimental answer is my wife's scrapbook.

What time period would you have lived in, if you could have lived at any time?

Time is really only a way of perceiving things, a way of differentiating or delineating the space between events.  Just as you can zoom in or out on the graph of a cyclic wave, so too, is the matter of time a matter of perception based around loose concepts like the length of an average day's available sunlight and the convenience of being able to divide those hours by numbers like two, three, and four.  I think I have met only two people who could survive being transplanted in another time.  Usually those who seem to lament about living in the past seem the least likely to make it.  You can wax poetic about the past, but it's taken us this long to think that maybe concepts like racism aren't such a good thing.  It's taken us this long to begin to question the idea of dying for nationalism.  Most people today can't survive without air conditioning and refrigeration or fast food.  People watch videos on their mobiles to keep from getting bored.  Time is irrelevant.

In just a few hours my wife will go to the hospital to find out whether she is carrying a boy or a girl.  I'm so excited, and anxious, I feel great like I've never felt before.  This is a huge landmark in my time line, I think, whether or child will be a boy or a girl.  We have mentally prepared for either event.  I suppose the split between boy and girls isn't so much the butter-or-guns divergence it once was, but it's still quite a profound difference in our potential futures.  Interesting to think about, definitely.  I know we will be so happy either way.  Last night I read the introduction to Thoreau's Walden to her belly.  I don't know what the baby actually hears, but it was good for all of us, I think.

I just got a voicemail of my little baby-to-be's heartbeat from Melissa.  I'm so excited and happy, and tomorrow, I find out whether it's a boy or girl!  I love you so much sweetpea!

"I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the tie that binds
Because you're mine, I walk the line"

Melissa and I rented two wonderful movies a few days ago, the Johnny and June Carter Cash biopic, Walk the Line, and the Squid and the Whale.  Johnny Cash is often viewed in an approachable way, the man in black seems dark and sullen but in many ways is the everyman who made his mark and never forgot where he came from.  In contrast to the flash-over substance cutesy hook lines of today's pop-country, Johnny Cash's song is part gospel, part blues, part rock, and ultimately, a lament of mans' condition in the world.  The movie depicts a lighter side of the story but hints at Johnny's troubles but highlights his remarkable understanding of Christ's compassion and grace in a world that was puritan, uncaring, and judgemental.

The love story of Johnny Cash's unabaiting love for June is endearing and brings out the best and sometimes the worst in Cash, but in the end that love makes him become the man he has to be to gain her trust.  The mistakes we make in the past are sometimes forgiven but unfortunately hard to forget. 

Melissa and I watched the movie and she felt the baby kick and guided my hand to feel it move, and I was overcome with joy.  My eyes teared up with happiness and love of the life we are bringing into the world.  I only hope I can teach our child to know grace and compassion and love; what else is there?