So, the post I wrote tonight was about new parents, and I think it is hilarious, but way too many of my friends and family who read this blog are new parents and would think it was too dark. That said, please enjoy a not-at-all-dark post written in haste about rainbows and sunshine:
The pretty pink puppy pranced and preened and pulled the purple pouch properly placed prehind the poncho.
"Why I do declare!" said the child-friendly southern character. "We shall all eat like kings tonight."
And they all returned to the cottage where they were encircled in the loving embrace of a family that totally had control over the child rearing situation and were not at all paralyzed by the fear that they do not know how to raise children and never had dreams that they had ruined their child's life that caused them to wake up screaming as often as their infant did. (whoops some of it snuck right in there).
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Friday, April 30, 2010
Outlying
So, I haven't been taking the time to write well, but myself from past wrote me and said the blog should be updated twice a week, whether the post was ready or not. There was a reason for this at the time but I can't remember what it was. So there's no real writing today, just an outline:
Topic: Driving in the Rain
Possible titles: Slipping into 3rd, Hydro Racing, Wokking on Water (doesn't really fit this one, but it's such a good title I might need to write a post just to fit it)
True Message: Be careful when driving in the rain.
Humorous Theme: to Deliver Message: No one should get out of bed when it is raining.
Possible References: Noah's Ark, Leader of the Pack, Hurricane Katrina, Singing in the Rain, Mr. Limpet.
Topic: Driving in the Rain
Possible titles: Slipping into 3rd, Hydro Racing, Wokking on Water (doesn't really fit this one, but it's such a good title I might need to write a post just to fit it)
True Message: Be careful when driving in the rain.
Humorous Theme: to Deliver Message: No one should get out of bed when it is raining.
Possible References: Noah's Ark, Leader of the Pack, Hurricane Katrina, Singing in the Rain, Mr. Limpet.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
What? No Post? And so she died.
No post tonight. My cousin's wife just went into labor and I'm on brandy and cigar duty. Which I feel is not a real responsiblity as no one in the family drinks or smokes (although we do not yet know the baby's preference). But I wanted to be involved so I think they made up a job for me. I'm also bringing my hotplate so I can boil water in the waiting room. They still do that right?
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
No Continuum For Old Men
“Where we’re going we don’t need Rhodes” the famous line by Doc Brown that caused a whole island of Greeks and thousands of puffed up scholars to bow their heads in disappointment. Some maintain that the line should actually be written “Where we’re going we don’t need roads”. And they defend this interpretation with various lines pulled out of context and a whole myriad of conspiracy theories with which I will not bore you. What I think we can all agree on is that the Back to the Future movies set the advancement of time travel back decades.
The common portrayal of time travel in our media is all wrong. You can’t achieve it with electrical circuits, complex equations, and discontinued car models. Time travel is an organic process and is one of the most basic functions of the human body. It is a coping technique developed by our ancestors millennia ago. Fight, flight, or flux.
Think about one of the most tragic events of your life. Your body realized that your mind could not cope with all the emotion in that instant so it opened a portal in the space-time continuum and sent many layers of those emotions to your future selfs* to smooth the consumption of pain over time. This is why one event can make you feel sad for years and years after the event.
*Actually not “selves” here because I just decided that when talking about multiple instances of one’s own self the plural will be “selfs”.
It is a widely known (yet closely guarded) fact that most heart attacks are caused by a shock the mind or body experienced decades before. The body just sent too much of the original shock in one packet, so when the future self received it was overwhelmed. Because emotions have such little mass, they are easier to send into the future. Emails and blog posts also have small amounts of mass. I have some small mastery of time travel, so as a demonstration, while I wrote and posted this on Sunday evening per my goals, it will not display until Tuesday night.
One of the problems is that sometimes the emotion isn't the only thing that gets sent to the future. Sometimes memories get sent off too. So you might forget something until years later when the emotion hits. Once I forgot how to tie my left shoe. I went around for years with a shoe lace on my right foot and Velcro on my left until the day I remembered what it felt like when my dog died, and all of a sudden I remembered that the rabbit goes around the tree and through the hole, and from then on I could wear two big-boy shoes again.
Author's Note: That last paragraph is sort of funny, but doesn't really fit in with the theme of the piece.
Author: And you think an impromptu conversation between the author and his notes does?
Author's Note: I don't think so, but I think you'll put it in anyway. I think you do it everytime the content is about to get more personal than you want it to and you want a quick way to end the post.
Author: What do you know? You're just a note, you're not even a full post.
Author's Note: Hey man, words hurt. Especially if you are made of words. That would be like me throwing another person on top of you.
Author: I'm sorry man. You're great. You're a great note.
Author's Note: Would you say I'm really important?
Author: Yeah man, you're really important. I couldn't do this without you.
Author's Note: Would you say that I'm a "Key Note".
Author: See, that's why I love you.
The common portrayal of time travel in our media is all wrong. You can’t achieve it with electrical circuits, complex equations, and discontinued car models. Time travel is an organic process and is one of the most basic functions of the human body. It is a coping technique developed by our ancestors millennia ago. Fight, flight, or flux.
Think about one of the most tragic events of your life. Your body realized that your mind could not cope with all the emotion in that instant so it opened a portal in the space-time continuum and sent many layers of those emotions to your future selfs* to smooth the consumption of pain over time. This is why one event can make you feel sad for years and years after the event.
*Actually not “selves” here because I just decided that when talking about multiple instances of one’s own self the plural will be “selfs”.
It is a widely known (yet closely guarded) fact that most heart attacks are caused by a shock the mind or body experienced decades before. The body just sent too much of the original shock in one packet, so when the future self received it was overwhelmed. Because emotions have such little mass, they are easier to send into the future. Emails and blog posts also have small amounts of mass. I have some small mastery of time travel, so as a demonstration, while I wrote and posted this on Sunday evening per my goals, it will not display until Tuesday night.
One of the problems is that sometimes the emotion isn't the only thing that gets sent to the future. Sometimes memories get sent off too. So you might forget something until years later when the emotion hits. Once I forgot how to tie my left shoe. I went around for years with a shoe lace on my right foot and Velcro on my left until the day I remembered what it felt like when my dog died, and all of a sudden I remembered that the rabbit goes around the tree and through the hole, and from then on I could wear two big-boy shoes again.
Author's Note: That last paragraph is sort of funny, but doesn't really fit in with the theme of the piece.
Author: And you think an impromptu conversation between the author and his notes does?
Author's Note: I don't think so, but I think you'll put it in anyway. I think you do it everytime the content is about to get more personal than you want it to and you want a quick way to end the post.
Author: What do you know? You're just a note, you're not even a full post.
Author's Note: Hey man, words hurt. Especially if you are made of words. That would be like me throwing another person on top of you.
Author: I'm sorry man. You're great. You're a great note.
Author's Note: Would you say I'm really important?
Author: Yeah man, you're really important. I couldn't do this without you.
Author's Note: Would you say that I'm a "Key Note".
Author: See, that's why I love you.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Dream in the Afternoon
This is an excerpt from a dream I had after staying up all night reading short stories by Ernest Hemingway. It's not meant to be written in Hemingway's style, more in the style of one trying to recall a really depressing dream after a lot of really depressing stories.
The two men sipped their coffee or whiskey slowly as they watched the sun rise or set. They were either outside a cafe in Madrid or a hotel in Marrakesh. You know, some place that men stayed after the war. Men who were too changed to ever go back to the lives they led before. Men who wrote for the newspaper because writing was a masculine thing done by masculine men.
They were also raging alcoholics. They would have liked the idea of the AA meeting, but not the idea that no one drank at them. They liked the idea of men pouring out their feelings to other men, but only if they were both killing themselves with liquor.
They were each sleeping with the other one's wife. Somehow this was all the wives' fault. But maybe this wasn't an issue really because I think they were divorced. The waitress brought them some more of whatever it was they were drinking. They weren't really interested in her until they saw her wedding ring. She saw them noticing the ring and they all rolled their eyes. They all knew that now they would both fall in love with her and she would fall in love with both of them and there would be all kinds of sneaking around and probably someone ends up killing her husband. And in the end she just runs away and the men find themselves back at this table drinking again.
Oh yeah, and at some point they go out on a safari. So this is probably in Marrakesh. They also have automatic pistols, but they're never loaded until they start drinking heavily. Probably one ends up shooting the other one and we never really know if its an accident or not. The whole world is an accident really.
Also, at some point some tourists come through and everyone really looks down on these people because the tourists think that life is pretty good and they think they're happy and they're totally oblivious to what is going on around them. Newspaper men are totally going to sleep with their wives.
The two men sipped their coffee or whiskey slowly as they watched the sun rise or set. They were either outside a cafe in Madrid or a hotel in Marrakesh. You know, some place that men stayed after the war. Men who were too changed to ever go back to the lives they led before. Men who wrote for the newspaper because writing was a masculine thing done by masculine men.
They were also raging alcoholics. They would have liked the idea of the AA meeting, but not the idea that no one drank at them. They liked the idea of men pouring out their feelings to other men, but only if they were both killing themselves with liquor.
They were each sleeping with the other one's wife. Somehow this was all the wives' fault. But maybe this wasn't an issue really because I think they were divorced. The waitress brought them some more of whatever it was they were drinking. They weren't really interested in her until they saw her wedding ring. She saw them noticing the ring and they all rolled their eyes. They all knew that now they would both fall in love with her and she would fall in love with both of them and there would be all kinds of sneaking around and probably someone ends up killing her husband. And in the end she just runs away and the men find themselves back at this table drinking again.
Oh yeah, and at some point they go out on a safari. So this is probably in Marrakesh. They also have automatic pistols, but they're never loaded until they start drinking heavily. Probably one ends up shooting the other one and we never really know if its an accident or not. The whole world is an accident really.
Also, at some point some tourists come through and everyone really looks down on these people because the tourists think that life is pretty good and they think they're happy and they're totally oblivious to what is going on around them. Newspaper men are totally going to sleep with their wives.
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Commitment Issues
"Thanks" she said as I opened her car door. Was that surprise in her voice? Did people not open car doors anymore? Well, if that struck her as unusual this next part was going to leave her at a loss for words. I opened my car door for myself (see nothing unusual about me opening car doors), and I buckled my seat belt before handing her the pink ribbon pin.
"What's this for?" she asked, giving the surprised tone an encore performance.
"That's the pink ribbon, it's dedicated to raising breast cancer awareness and funding for breast cancer research."
"I know that, she said, but why are you giving me one?" She had given the surprised tone a break and was trying out an offended one.
"Our date tonight is one of their many sponsors."
"How can a date be a sponsor?" she asked, offense giving way to incredulity.
"All profits from this date will be donated to breast cancer research".
"We're going to dinner and a movie, how could we possibly make this profitable?" Having tried three separate tones already she mixed them all together for this question.
"Lots of ways, we could find stacks of cash under our chairs, get roped into a high stakes scavenger hunt, win an impromptu dance competition. The list goes on and on."
"Those don't seem very likely" she forecasted with little to no statistical background.
"Maybe not, but unlike other couples out this evening if we come into some money it goes to a good cause"
"What if dinner and a movie cost $50 dollars and you find $50 in the parking lot."
"Then the evenings a wash."
"And if you find nothing?"
"Then it's a $50 tax deduction"
"I don't think that's how that works." she advised, with no accounting or financial planning background. "We're not going to dinner or a movie tonight." Not even 15 minutes into our relationship and the unilateral decisions were already in play. "If we're going to be sponsors we're going to make some money".
"What did you have in mind?" I questioned in my customary monotone.
"I have an ex out of town with a fortune in baseball cards. We'll break in there, sell the cards downtown, and donate the money." She said this as if explaining the errands schedule, 'We'll go to the bank, then pick up milk, then drop by the redbox'. To emphasize the casual and final nature of this plan she rested her hand on top of mine.
As a connoisseur of absurdist humor I laughed, but my right arm which had been resting peacefully on the armrest and now played host to her left was confused as it was not usually a party to physical comedy.
As I prepared to turn left my right arm was abandoned as she grabbed the steering wheel and changed our course. "Right here" she said, "he lives on 7th street."
Either she was really committing to this joke, or I was going to have a pretty eventful post for tonight.
"What's this for?" she asked, giving the surprised tone an encore performance.
"That's the pink ribbon, it's dedicated to raising breast cancer awareness and funding for breast cancer research."
"I know that, she said, but why are you giving me one?" She had given the surprised tone a break and was trying out an offended one.
"Our date tonight is one of their many sponsors."
"How can a date be a sponsor?" she asked, offense giving way to incredulity.
"All profits from this date will be donated to breast cancer research".
"We're going to dinner and a movie, how could we possibly make this profitable?" Having tried three separate tones already she mixed them all together for this question.
"Lots of ways, we could find stacks of cash under our chairs, get roped into a high stakes scavenger hunt, win an impromptu dance competition. The list goes on and on."
"Those don't seem very likely" she forecasted with little to no statistical background.
"Maybe not, but unlike other couples out this evening if we come into some money it goes to a good cause"
"What if dinner and a movie cost $50 dollars and you find $50 in the parking lot."
"Then the evenings a wash."
"And if you find nothing?"
"Then it's a $50 tax deduction"
"I don't think that's how that works." she advised, with no accounting or financial planning background. "We're not going to dinner or a movie tonight." Not even 15 minutes into our relationship and the unilateral decisions were already in play. "If we're going to be sponsors we're going to make some money".
"What did you have in mind?" I questioned in my customary monotone.
"I have an ex out of town with a fortune in baseball cards. We'll break in there, sell the cards downtown, and donate the money." She said this as if explaining the errands schedule, 'We'll go to the bank, then pick up milk, then drop by the redbox'. To emphasize the casual and final nature of this plan she rested her hand on top of mine.
As a connoisseur of absurdist humor I laughed, but my right arm which had been resting peacefully on the armrest and now played host to her left was confused as it was not usually a party to physical comedy.
As I prepared to turn left my right arm was abandoned as she grabbed the steering wheel and changed our course. "Right here" she said, "he lives on 7th street."
Either she was really committing to this joke, or I was going to have a pretty eventful post for tonight.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Slightly more subtle than Sunday
I fear that, as a country, we have forgotten what made America great. The leaders of the late 1980s, them men in law enforcement, those who pioneered technology and space travel, the pioneers of the west, and the native americans. And of course, the one individual who combines all of these into a single entity: BRAVESTARR.
The tales of Bravestarr were told to me when I was in preschool on Saturday mornings around 6 am from September 1987 through February 1988. Those historians among you will remember that Bravestarr was the lone law man on the planet of New Texas where he and his wise-cracking mechanical horse (who was a quadruped for purposes of travel and a biped with an energy rifle for purposes of self-defense) defended the good people of New Texas from Tex Hex and his band of bandits.
I do not remember all the tales of this hero, but I sure as shooting remember a talking horse who could stand up and shoot a gun. Those lessons never leave a young boy.
So I watch the political figures of today who should be familiar with these same tales of heroism and I am disappointed in their efforts (or lack thereof). This comes to mind as I seem to recall that significant portion of Bravestarr's energy was spent on protecting miners. You see, Tex Hex and other greedy fellows were always trying to take advantage of the hard-working miners. These miners did not have the skill set of Bravestarr (Eyes of the Hawk, Ears of the Wolf, Strength of the Bear, Speed of the Puma) as today's miners do not have the skill set of the modern politician (Degree of the Law, Capital of the Political, Attention of the Media, Speed of the Puma).
The histories (if we chose to read/watch them) teach us that miners are self-reliant and proud workers, but sometimes even the strongest need help when their greatest foe is the one who pays them and should ensure safe working conditions.
The tales of Bravestarr were told to me when I was in preschool on Saturday mornings around 6 am from September 1987 through February 1988. Those historians among you will remember that Bravestarr was the lone law man on the planet of New Texas where he and his wise-cracking mechanical horse (who was a quadruped for purposes of travel and a biped with an energy rifle for purposes of self-defense) defended the good people of New Texas from Tex Hex and his band of bandits.
I do not remember all the tales of this hero, but I sure as shooting remember a talking horse who could stand up and shoot a gun. Those lessons never leave a young boy.
So I watch the political figures of today who should be familiar with these same tales of heroism and I am disappointed in their efforts (or lack thereof). This comes to mind as I seem to recall that significant portion of Bravestarr's energy was spent on protecting miners. You see, Tex Hex and other greedy fellows were always trying to take advantage of the hard-working miners. These miners did not have the skill set of Bravestarr (Eyes of the Hawk, Ears of the Wolf, Strength of the Bear, Speed of the Puma) as today's miners do not have the skill set of the modern politician (Degree of the Law, Capital of the Political, Attention of the Media, Speed of the Puma).
The histories (if we chose to read/watch them) teach us that miners are self-reliant and proud workers, but sometimes even the strongest need help when their greatest foe is the one who pays them and should ensure safe working conditions.
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