I've spoken before about RSS.  It's a lot to go into right now, but the short version is that RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication.  It's useful because it allows you to "subscribe" to the content from websites that you visit often, rather than have to actually waste visiting those websites when you're not really sure there's anything new there.  If you'd like to know more about RSS, check here or here.

Beware this trap:  Don't subscribe to SO MANY feeds that you give yourself overload.  It's important to constantly prune your feeds.  You're subscribing to feeds because there's so much CRAP out there that you want the stuff you really want to read to come to you.  Therefore, it behooves you be sure that the stuff that comes is quality.  If you become dissatisfied with what you're getting, get rid of it. 

That being said, Yahoo! offers a service that lets you aggregate multiple feeds into a single feed, and I've created such a feed of stuff that I enjoy reading.  I have decided to share it with you.  Keep in mind that I'll constantly be pruning this feed, but for right now I'm pretty happy with it.  You can subscribe to it here.  It's called "Feed Your Mind".   The content is varied, but consistently interesting in my opinion.  Mind that I don't call something "interesting" lightly.  The items that come through here should (hopefully) be thoughtful, insightful and enriching.  If you come across anything that you think would be a worthy addition to the "Feed Your Mind" feed, please let me know.

Enjoy your reading.

Know What I'm Sayin'??

Let me just say first that the title doesn't really do this movie justice.  Not that I can come with anything much better at the moment, but I'm 100% positive that the title could be much better.

That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie.  I'm trying to come up with some movie metaphors for it, but I can't really come up with any right now.  I'm reminded of that Movie Spy Game. The previews for that movie showed lots of action, but when I saw the movie I realized that all of the action was in the form of flashbacks, and the actual core-plot contained very little action at all.    The trailers for Michael Clayton implied action (at least to me), but this wasn't really an action movie.  It was more of a suspenseful legal drama.  Although, there weren't ANY courtroom scenes.  Cool, huh?

The movie starts out with a gripping perfect-pitch opening monologue from a character who we don't even meet until 10 or 15 minutes later.  I really wish I could find the script of that monologue, so that I can read through it again.  A really good piece of writing.

From there, it just takes off.  It's fast-paced, without being frantic, and somehow, it judges, without being judgmental.  Clooney is human and believable.  Perfect role for him. 

I really don't want to go any deeper into it, but trust me, it's well worth your time.

Know What I'm Sayin'??

Total randomness:  Remember Tahitian Treat?  The red stuff?

How about I saw this lady buying some at the Kroger the other night.  I realize that Kroger was mentioned in my last post, but since it's less than a mile away, I'm okay with being there a few times a week.  There's a Publix there too, and I'm sometimes in there twice in one day.

Anyway, this lady was buying Tahitian Treat.  The worst part:  She wasn't buying a 2-liter bottle.  This chick bought a 12-pack.  Crazy.

Remember that?  John Grisham?  A Time to Kill?

Damn that was a cold-blooded line.  Samuel Jackson REALLY captured it.  That whole book was pretty good.  Had me mad and almost crying at the same time.

Or what about The Runaway Jury?  About the guy who's been going around trying to get on the juries for these huge court cases against the cigarette manufacturers?  He KNOWS the manufacturers are tainting the jury, so he starts manipulating the jury himself? 

The Firm?  That one STILL has me wary of the corporate machine.  Creepy.

The King of Torts - after I read that one I was an authority on class action suits - at least until I married an attorney and by extension, gained a whole slew of lawyer-friends.

All these legal thrillers, right?  What about the others?  The non-legal thrillers?

A Painted House - What?

Bleachers -  Apparently, it's about football.  I'm not pressed.

I was walking through Kroger the other day, and I saw his latest - Playing for Pizza.  Another football book.  A QB doesn't hack it in the NFL, and ends up moving to Italy to play for a team that just wants "An NFL QB".  Snore.

Come on, John.  Stick to the legal thrillers.  Better yet, don't.  I'm don't  even care anymore.  I'm not even sure why I'm writing this.  Bah humbug.

Know What I'm Sayin'??  No?  I don't care.  That one line IS cold-blooded, though.

1. A 14-year-old girl keeps getting in trouble (presumably at school).
2. The girl's single father gets SO frustrated that he can't think of any suitable punishment for her. What does he do? He essentially puts her in a minimum-security jail.
3. On Friday evening, he lets her go to the bathroom, then locks her on the 2nd floor balcony of their apartment, and THEN he leaves home for the evening, returning about 5am.
4. He leaves her out there for most of Saturday and Sunday.
5. He periodically lets her inside the house to use the bathroom.
6. He leaves her a ladder so that she can get down from the balcony in case of an emergency.
7. At some point during the weekend, she actually uses the ladder. She goes down from the balcony, goes to the leasing office, and gets a spare key so that she can use the bathroom. She then gets a neighbor to lock her back on the balcony, and return the key to the leasing office so that her father doesn't get angry.
8. On Sunday, the father was arrested for cruelty to children and reckless conduct.