Two weekends in Nashville

I've been in a bit of a funk lately, and my DSL has been going down every five minutes, give or take. So between those things, my blogging willpower has been pretty dismal. That said, here's an all-at-once update. After the marathon week at work, my brother did show up last weekend. The summer camp where he was working is done for the year, and he's now on a tour of the south before heading back to work at Urban Promise for the school year. This was his first time in Nashville in several years, and we made it count. Activities included:

• Dinner at Jack's Barbeque on lower Broad, followed by a trip to The Grande Ole Opry
• A trip to the farmer's market for vittles, followed by a kebab cookout and a DVDs-I-already-have movie night.
• Me going to work while he went hiking at Fall Creek Falls.
• Heading to Davinci's for pizza, followed by the Saucer, where we watched Olympics and waited many moons for our beer to arrive.
• Brunch at the Pancake Pantry
• Wandering around downtown and going to Hatch Show Print -- where I made friends with the staff and got to explore behind the scenes a bit. (Maybe some pictures to come if I can ever stay online long enough to upload them.)
• Electric guitar shopping at Valley Arts. My brother was a music major, and already has a string bass, an electric bass, and an acoustic guitar. But he lacked an electric guitar. My parents had agreed to buy him one as a graduation present last year, but hadn't actually purchased it on account of not knowing anything about guitars. It had been languishing until now, and we figured Nashville was probably a pretty good place to be in the market for that sort of thing. Alas, we discovered that he could save $40 of outrageous Tennessee tax by shipping it back to Maryland, so I didn't get to play around with it. Maybe over the holidays...
• Ate dinner at the Sylvan Park Cafe, home of the best Southern comfort food in Nashville. Then tore around town despterately trying to buy a 6-pack of GooGoo Clusters, because...
• The Nashville Sounds were having "buy one ticket get one free when you show up with a 6-pack of GooGoo Clusters" night. Even when you add in the extra gas we spent driving around, it was still a good deal. (Hint: the little yuppie market in Sylvan Park and the Eckerd on West End were both found lacking. The Foodland on West End is the place to go for all your GooGoo needs.)
• My brother wanted to leave at the crack of dawn on Wednesday, since he was heading for Roanoke next, and that's a good day's drive. Only problem was that he had been driving, and we forgot that I had abandoned my car at the office after work on Monday. So I also had to either leave at the crack of dawn, or walk to work. Normally walking to work in return for an extra hour or two of sleep might be a good deal. But since it was pouring rain, I decided to take the ride instead.

So that was my exciting last weekend. This weekend I basically did very little productive, but many different things...

• Started a book on the personalities behind the development of the atomic bombs in the 1940s and 1950s. Interesting, but not a quick read. Still going on that one.
• Puttered around the house.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Did a bit of laundry.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Watched The Killing Fields off my ReplayTV
• Went out to brunch with a friend at The Red Wagon.
• Drove around aimlessly.
• Browsed at CompUSA but bought nothing of substance.
• Went to Border's, bought a travel book about South America, a photography book, and a Kafka anothology.
• Read The Metamorphesis for the first time.
• Wondered what that guy was smoking, anyway.
• Wished my DSL was working.
• Went to see The Corporation at the Belcourt. It was thought provoking. The filmmakers are dead on in their diagnosis of the problem with big corporations, but they failed to offer workable solutions. As this review points out, governments can make just as big a mess of things as big companies.

  <soapbox>Another thing that grated on me a bit were slightly snide comments by the narrator regarding "pollution tax credits" and related programs that give companies a market incentive to behave responsibly. Rather than present these as a way to charge companies for the externalities that they're responsible for, the narrator breathlessly proclaimed that "corporations even want to own the air we breathe!" This really misses the point -- that these programs reinforce the idea that the environment is a shared resource, and people should have to pay if they mess it up.</soapbox>

  Anyhow... I recommend seeing this if you get a chance.

So that's what I've been up to. Whee.