Forest Service Road 6530 is also called Rapid River Road.

I drove up it today, hoping to find some pictures. I found a couple, but they never work out quite as well as you think they will. Maybe it’s time to buy a new gadget so I can take better pictures. Har.

This road borders the Henry M. Jackson Wilderness on the southeast corner. There’s a trail I’ve been wanting to hike for quite a while, up through a creek drainage and then across a high meadow to a couple small lakes, Peach Lake and Pear Lake. Maybe I’ll get to it one day. And take fruit salad.

The day started out gray and overcast down here in the low lands. I decided to set out anyway, because even if it wasn’t clear up in the mountains, I would still be on an adventure. Luckily, it cleared up long enough for me to take some pictures. Literally: I stopped the van to take a picture, and the sky cleared. Then I quit, and it got cloudy again.

There’s also a phenomenon whereby you think you’ve taken a million pictures, but you’ve really only taken a dozen. You get three different kinds of coverage of a thing, and maybe a couple brackets (longer and shorter exposures as proof against blowouts), and it seems like you’ve been shooting all day and you wonder if you brought the spare media card, but it’s really only been ten minutes and the pictures-left readout says ’135.’ I got home with maybe thirty frames.

Next trip: FS 63, to its terminus at the edge of Glacier Peak Wilderness. Who’s up?

‘Nightwatch’ is a horror/action movie that’s got serious street cred, coming atcha from Moscow, almost exclusively by word of mouth.

It’s a big epic tale, and it’s the first of a trilogy. The first sequel is already out, called ‘Daywatch.’

Basically: The forces of light and darkness are held in stasis by a truce, and this truce is about to be broken. Then all kinds of hell will break loose on the Earth, and so on and so forth.

There isn’t as much pure gore or pure creep-out as I thought there would be. It’s an action movie, primarily, with a hero trying to do the right thing. There’s plenty of stuff to be disgusted over, and more than a couple of chills, however.

Really, though, unless you have ADD, you’re not going to keep track. It moves at breakneck pace, with important characters introduced as secondary characters during fight sequences, and so forth. You need a score card to keep up, but there’s not a free moment to consult such a card anyway. Don’t blink, you’ll miss a plot point. Somehow, however, there’s just enough after-the-fact exposition to keep you righted.

Severn Darden, by the way, is not in this movie. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, however, is.

This is a shout-out to all my homies in WA…

Or something like one. I’m contemplating moving my banking to a local credit union. I’m tired of getting screwed by my bank; I’d rather my money support my local economy rather than some rich guy in Nebraska or wherever the usury laws are non-existent.

So if any of you out there reading this are members of a credit union in Washington state, let me know if your experience has been positive. There’s also the issue of referall bonuses which we might work out.

I found a web site to aid in searching for credit unions, CU Matchup. It lists a few in WA, including Community 1st, King County CU, Seattle Metro CU, and Sound CU.

Anyone have any experiences to share? Would it be a grave mistake to change over?

Speaking of the ruling against Bush’s illegal surveillance regime… I want to point out Bush’s response.

“I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live,” Mr. Bush said in a question-answer session at Camp David, Md. “I strongly disagree with that decision, strongly disagree. That’s why I instructed the Justice Department to appeal immediately. And I believe our appeals will be upheld.”

Now, there are a couple of things to note about this. The first is that Bush simply does not understand the nature of the country in which he lives. Court rulings apply to him, just like anyone else. As the ruling pointed out: We don’t live in a country ruled by hereditary kings.

The second is that the Justice Department is supposed to protect *us* from *him.* The DoJ is supposed to prosecute those conducting illegal activities, and in this case, that’s Bush. He’s the lawbreaker here. The DoJ is not supposed to appeal on his behalf; it’s supposed to *oppose* the appeals of criminals, which it has prosecuted based on the law.

Here’s something else Bush said (ibid):

“We believe, strongly believe, it’s constitutional,” the president added. “And if Al Qaeda is calling into the United States, we want to know why they’re calling.”

Now, recently we had a sort of terrorism scare based on an investigation that was going on in Britain; the so-called liquid bomb scare. This investigation was a criminal investigation, and law enforcement in Britain operated inside the law and with warrants. The US side of the investigation was conducted with FISA warrants, the very thing Bush is claiming to be a stumbling block to ‘fighting terrorism’ effectively.

So one wonders why Bush is so adamant about not needing these warrants. What is he hiding? That’s the ironic question that might be answered in 30 years when it’s declassified or whatever. But for now, the safest assumption is that he, and other officials, are abusing their power. They’re obviously not actually preventing terrorism; the liquid bomb scare wasn’t anywhere near being actualized, and in fact making it public was pre-mature. It’s pretty safe to assume that the timing of this big splash in the media with this going-nowhere terror plot was motivated by a cynical desire to knock Ned Lamont out of the news cycle.

I say it’s a safe assumption, because that kind of thing has happened before.

Which van has the prettiest new shocks?

And which van has the prettiest new hoses and distribution unit?

Oh, wait… Which was the new one? I hope I didn’t get them mixed up.

FU and your H2.

Right on. (Watch the video.)

I say (sort of) good news, because this federal court ruling against Bush’s illegal wiretapping means that Bush is wiretapping illegally. It’s good news that someone’s finally putting the brakes on it, but not good news that it’s already happened, and someone somewhere has already sucked all this information out of the populace and stored it somewhere, and will no doubt make use of it.

All about life, in chart form.

Also: ‘The Wonga Coup‘

Digby has the lowdown on “special interest terrorism,” the FBI’s new euphemism for lefty activist groups.

I hate to be shrill, but here comes the fascism, folks.

‘The Weather Man’ is a Nicholas Cage vehicle of a movie, which is quite good. It has a lot of interesting observations about life, all of which arise out of the characters’ world rather than the writer’s. There’s nothing phony or preachy.

It’s not a happy movie, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s funny, and in addition to being funny, it does one other thing really well: It lets you believe you’re wiser than you are. You get to laugh at the man who thinks he can pull all these problems together and solve them in a few short months so he can impress his dad who just got diagnosed with cancer and has a very short while to live. You do this even though you might try the very same thing.

The general theme is that of narrowing down over time, getting better with practice, and finding the success you can with what you’ve got. It’s not a ‘Hollywood ending’ kind of movie; it’s a things happen, and our main character gets better at dealing. And I think that’s much more hopeful and enlightening (and useful) than a story where everything all works out magically.

Worth watching.

I picked it up mainly because of the cover art: A man in a suit carrying a bow and arrows down a crowded urban street. Also the Gore Verbinski factor; Gore’s got his game on lately.