If this picture doesn’t put a smile on your face, then a smile just simply can’t be put there. (It’s perfectly work-safe – Stephen Hawking free of his wheelchair at last, at least for a brief time.)… Read more
I don’t get into too much serious stuff of a political bent on my blog because, well, frankly, it’s not that I don’t have my opinions, but there are other people who are so much more eloquent than I am, and they can back it up with all this “research” stuff that I’m sometimes not that good at. But I thought I’d chime in with a little environmental note.
I recently killed our lawn mower. This is not something I’m proud of. I was a doofus and forgot to check the oil after it sat out for the winter. My bad. Yes, you’re right. Not just bad but just plain stupid. (Remind me to tell you what happened to my Corsica sometime. Me and combustion engines just don’t dine at the same table.)
So my wife called me today as she was window-shopping for lawn mowers, and she only half-seriously mentioned that she was looking at a solution that consumed no fuel and produced no pollution. My equally half-serious response was “We’re getting a goat?” No, that wasn’t it – we could get a manual, non-electric, non-gas-powered push mower. To her surprise and mine, I said a very emphatic “YES.” She warned me “You’re going to be getting your exercise trying to move this one around,” to which I almost replied “Uh, honey? Have you actually seen me lately? More exercise isn’t a terribly bad thing…” But I look at it this way: the one we have earmarked as the one to Buy Real Soon (as opposed to Buy It Now) has a grass collection bag. With no motor, those cuttings won’t be coated in oil, and can be fed to horses. With no motor, there won’t be any more ear-splitting engine sounds that leave me with huge headaches. And last but certainly not least, with no motor, that’s one less vital device to require gasoline, which has gone up 80 cents a gallon over the past six months. (Uh, hello? Congress? You lovely folks who I helped to vote in last November? With all due respect…this is one of those things I was hoping you’d find some ways to fix…not that I’m saying Gonzalez doesn’t need to be fixed…before he has puppies or something.)
So: an unpowered push-mower it is. (And yes, you can bet I’ll get some pictures of this puppy in action, just for the sheer curiosity value.) My little contribution to making this tiny corner of the world that I supposedly (on paper) own a better, cleaner, quieter place. Just you wait, someday when he’s old enough to mow the lawn, my son is so gonna thank us for this decision. (In the same way that every son thanks his father when the mower is thrust into his hands for the first time – with unprintable words muttered under his breath as dad walks away. 😆 )… Read more
Some random, unrelated notes from today:
In what must be the 6 and 9/10th sign of the Apocalypse, I walked into a national chain store in Fort Smith, Arkansas today and bought a Doctor Who action figure right off the peg. Not a special order or anything like that – it was already there. I hadn’t picked any of these up since I got a couple of loose Cybermen last fall from someone on eBay who had already imported them, so I was just utterly stunned. I’m under no illusion that this means that Fort Smith is stepping up in the world; I’m sure they wound up here because they never left the pegs in the Hastings in Little Rock or Tulsa. 😆 One final note: as difficult as it is not to win yourself some snickers or at least weird looks when you’re 30-something and bellying up to the checkout counter with an action figure, a new layer of difficulty is added when the figure in question is a baroque, frilly-costumed Clockwork Man from The Girl In The Fireplace. Trust me, funny looks are guaranteed…and despite that, I hope they get the Ood, Cassandra and/or Captain Jack figures that I’m missing. My trip to northwest Arkansas has been delayed until next week, so maybe I can check any Hastings stores that might be lurking up there. Inasmuch as a store can possibly lurk.
After I went there and went to get dinner to bring home, I stopped to get gas at one of the ubiquitous Murphy Oil stations perched next to Wal-Mart Supercenters. There was a youngish guy ahead of me, I’m going to say 20 or so, who was tweaking. He was extremely agitated, cursing up a storm for no readily apparent reason, and got pissed at the girl working the checkout booth when it turns out he didn’t have enough money for a pack of cigarettes. He then turned to me and asked if I’d buy them for him and I just shook my head. I had half a thought about offering to buy him some nicotine patches instead, but it’s just as well that I didn’t say a word, because he then proceeded to go off on me. Of course, I can already hear the argument that he needs his next pack of cigarettes as much as I need a Clockwork Man, but y’know, if I hadn’t been able to afford that…I wouldn’t have gotten it. And I sure as hell wouldn’t have asked anyone else to pick up the tab for me for something that isn’t exactly – okay, not exactly and not remotely – essential to my continued survival. (I’m sure the jury is still out with my wife about whether or not I needed a Clockwork Man, but hey, at least he’s not gonna damage my health. 😆 )
I’ve finally started getting GreenhouseFX.tv put together. A lot of what I’ve put on there so far is copied over and modified from the original 2002 version of the site. The list of services is still in “flux” – there are a couple of things under “what we do” that I won’t, in fact, be doing. It’s not ready for prime time yet, but hopefully in about a week it will be.
I tried to watch the premiere of Painkiller Jane on Sci-Fi tonight. I’m not familiar with the comic that it’s based on, so I can’t vouch for how faithful it is/isn’t to the source material, but overall I found it just left the taste of apathy in my mouth. Kinda like…I dunno. Dark Angel Minus The Barely-Engaging Backstory.
Tomorrow I’m going to get some dog food, as well as some new cat food that we’re going to see if the kitties like. We’re going to start out mixing it into their Iams dry food, but hopefully we can wean them off the Iams completely, very very soon. The food we’re getting is from an outfit that grows its own ingredients rather than buying them in bulk from, oh, say, Menu Foods, especially since it seems as though damn near everything Menu is putting on the market is either already on recall, or is about to be recalled. The fearsome threesome have checked out just fine so far, and I’d like to keep them that way.… Read more
Poor old Vonnegut – I hate to admit to being so ill-informed, but even when that book of essays came out a year or three ago, I assumed it was posthumous.
I know a great many folks compared Douglas Adams to Vonnegut over the years, often enough that Adams railed against it if reminded. Which is one area where I have to disagree with my favorite author – if I had written any fiction that was compared to the works of Vonnegut, I would’ve hung it up right then and there just in case my next project didn’t live up to that praise.
Vonnegut’s work was informed by an edge of bitterness that, at least until “Mostly Harmless”, Adams just didn’t have (and even in “MH,” Adams didn’t deserve to claim that bitterness). Bitterness and yet just a smidgeon of world-weary hope that maybe humankind might gets its act together and learn the folly of its ways – it was such a weird mixture, and I’ve never run into anything quite like Vonnegut’s writing. I doubt I will again. I’ve been really bothered by my inability to write an obit for the news section that came close to even being in the same solar system as an adequate send-off. I’m going to write it off as me being tired and just not quite able to process the news.
I figured out how to beam new wallpapers and MIDI ringtones into my wife’s phone via infrared from my phone. Talk about a convoluted way of doing things – her phone isn’t bluetooth capable. Oddly enough she didn’t want any Katamari Damacy music or “Xanadu” as ringtones!
In news that will stun absolutely no one, the “video game characters” theme seems to be out the window where the baby room is concerned. I knew that idea was going to last about 10 minutes tops (and I wasn’t even the one who suggested it). Ah well. Guess I’ll just keep that little idea about painting the baby room to look like the interior of the TARDIS to myself…
I’m a little scatterbrained and burned out mentally right now, so you’ll have to forgive me for not having more to say at the moment. During the course of the day, it really hit me how damn tired I’ve gotten after the almost completely sleep-free Week Of Worrying, and I’m looking forward to crashing this weekend, with my head on a pillow and a bed full of warm kitties.… Read more
So I got an e-mail the other day, claiming I could win a Nintendo Wii if I answered a few questions – no purchase necessary. I decided to do an experiment. I created a new e-mail account on my server and signed up under a different name for this survey, answered the questions, and was told I could expect notification soon “if I won”.
I then walked away and left that e-mail account for exactly five business days.
I checked the account today. Lo and behold, no frii Wii. But there were about 1600 new messages, all of them spam, some of them get-rich-quick and MLM schemes, and even a small but obvious amount of porn spam.
For anyone even thinking about clicking on one of those tempting offers, just let this be something for you to think on before clicking “Yes! I would like my complimentary walrus polishing kit!”
Now, just for fun, I’m going to go lower the limit on that e-mail account to something like 40 K, and set an autoresponder up. 😆 In the meantime, I hope this has opened someone’s eyes.… Read more
On the subject of tonight’s Lost…BWAH HAH HAAA! I’ve been privately asking myself “who the hell are Nikki and Paolo?” ever since the casting announcement, and I took a perverse pleasure in tonight’s episode asking the same question, answering it, and closing the books on those two with what has to be some of the blackest humor I’ve seen this side of…well…anything currently airing on FX. I know these two met an utterly gruesome fate, but at the same time, it was hysterically funny precisely because they had been so far back in the background as to almost become furniture. It’s no slight against the actors, but…wow. One wonders if there were bigger plans at one point and this was the course correction, or if this was the producers’ early April Fools’ gag for us. 😆 Seriously, between the promo for this episode leading everyone up the garden path with an Others connection that just wasn’t there, and a certain someone from a certain gritty space opera vanishing from the credits for a bit, I’m enjoying some of the ways that the current crop of producers are using their shows’ “meta data” (for lack of a better expression) to screw with our heads, and not just the allotted story time of the episodes themselves. It’s rather fun. Sorta like this episode. And how perverse is it to lock down Billy Dee Williams for what amounts to a teensy tinsy cameo? One imagines that his agent might be told that he’s got a lot of guts to offer him the next job after what he pulled…
I see that Arkansas’ first choice for a new head basketball coach after the ouster of Stan Heath didn’t take the bait. I don’t wish Frank Broyles any ill will as the outgoing athletic director, but I worry that this will be his legacy to the U of A’s basketball program: the last two coaches have been treated so poorly (though I’d argue that Nolan Richardson did plenty of damage to himself as well) that they may have trouble finding a choice candidate. Maybe not even someone with a career record like one winning season at Kent State. I guess we’ll really be able to tally the damage if players start defecting to other schools.
By the way, the other day as I was walking past my linen closet, I heard music playing inside. Guess what I heard when I opened the door? … Read more
It’s hard sometimes to explain why we mark certain anniversaries, year after year. Especially to people who happened not to be there, and happened not to be us.
20 years ago today, we lost my mother. A strange thing to observe, I suppose. On or around this date, I pay a visit to the cemetery and make sure that her headstone isn’t damaged (or those of any of the other relatives nearby), dust it off as best I can, spend a few quiet moments to contemplate, and then leave. A bit odd, I suppose, but it’s not like I dwell on it year-round in preparation for a few minutes out of that one day.
It’s been in the back of my mind for the past few weeks, though, I’ll admit, largely because of my own impending parenthood. A bit of sadness that my child will never know one of his grandmothers. The thought that my mom, who would new be approaching retirement age, would be a grandmother. The thought that I’ll be approaching retirement age when my own child graduates high school – assuming, of course, that fate doesn’t check me out early.
I was 14 when my mother died of cancer. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that smoking did her in – sooner or later, everybody quits smoking. It’s just up to you whether or not that coincides with when you quit breathing. She couldn’t quite kick the habit, and the damage was already done. Sometimes, in the years immediately after her death, it seemed like the whole family consisted of people who couldn’t wait to get away from each other, and more than once the thought occurred that she was the glue that held it all together.
Or perhaps that’s giving a little too much credit. Without going into details and without getting “emo” about it, she had as many flaws as the next person, including a volcanic temper that I also recognize in myself, and try to fight down whenever I feel it rising to the surface. In that state, she was fully capable of saying things that would leave you reeling even after your ears stopped ringing from the sound of it being said – she could get worked up into a fury that left her incapable of censoring herself before saying something truly hurtful.
But that wasn’t an everyday thing. She did things for me that have been very much at the forefront of my mind lately, things that I’d like to do for my own child when the time comes. Knowing that I was scared to death of bad weather and the warnings that came with them, she called the local weather service office out of the blue and convinced them to let us visit and look at how they did what they did. She did this with no connections at all to anyone there. I can still get a bit worried by bad weather, but at least now I understand the process enough not to be scared stiff – both the atmospheric process and the procedures that are used by the people who issue the warnings. She aided my understanding, but I also know now that she was encouraging interests and possible careers.
When faced with my burgeoning interest in video games, something that could’ve become a very isolated activity, she decided to make them a family event – or at least a mother-and-son event. And she wasn’t a participant from the sidelines, either. It’s taken me years to get even close to her level on Ms. Pac-Man, and I’ve all but retired my Odyssey2 Baseball cartridge, because even if ever do find someone who wants to play a game with me, it just won’t be the same. Part of the reason that Fantasy remains my favorite arcade game, aside from the fact that I have still never challenged it, is simply because of the memories that I associated with it – I was badly sunburned during a family fishing trip, so I wound up spending most of my time in the little game room at the resort, and she stayed with me, partly because she wasn’t thrilled with fishing all day, and partly because she wanted to see what happened at the end of the game’s story and kept on throwing dollars into the change machine until I reached it.
My father pointed out to me this weekend that it’s ironic that I’m on a path to becoming a stay-at-home dad, because that’s exactly what my mom did after I was born. I had forgotten the little room in the basement that served as her home office; in later years I really only knew it as a storage room and The Place To Go If A Tornado’s Really Coming. Remembering my mother’s life – as well as the events that led to her death – have become a road map for me, showing what to do and what not to do.
After she was gone, everything changed, including me. I know with great certainty that I’ve made choices with my life – not finishing college, for example – that would’ve driven her crazy, assuming of course that she wouldn’t have stepped in to prevent them from happening at all. I was suddenly minus one parent at a fairly vulnerable age, and there were other things going on within the family that most people would assume were leading me toward disaster. I won’t spend a lot of time dwelling on that, partially out of respect for those still living, but in much the same way that my mother rebelled against more than a few commonly held ideas, I picked my own path and steered completely clear of things I regarded as bad habits. To a certain degree, that automatically made me a bit of a loner, since I was staying right away from activities that had “peer pressure” written all over them, and I’m still a bit socially awkward as a result. But I found friends within those choices, many of whom I’m still close to today, and carved out my own path.
So on this day, of all days, I find myself feeling a little bit guilty. By leaving my life when she did, my mother once again set a chain of events into motion in my life, which made me who I am today. And the strange thing is, however underfunded, overweight and unambitious as I might seem, I’m actually very happy with who I am. I really wish I could have been this content when I was 12, or 14, or 18, or 25. I look back at old pictures of myself on family outings, and I see my own scowling, sullen face staring back at me. I was already getting rebellious and sulky, and wanted nothing to do with my family. I really want sometimes to go back in time and give the kid that I was a good slap, and a warning that some things should be relished while they’re there, within reach. I didn’t have a bad life at that age, and it wasn’t until everything changed that I experienced a life that was truly worth complaining about. So, in some ways, 20 years ago today, I started to become who I am today.
That’s why, on or around this date, every year since I’ve moved back to Arkansas, I go and tend to one of the few shreds of physical evidence that proves that Alison Green once walked this earth. I know that there’s nothing left of her on that spot except the headstone. I know that. But it’s a small gesture of respect. However, it’s one that will, in coming years, be replaced by a different gesture: trying to raise a child, using what I learned from her (and avoiding some things I learned from her as well), and bring someone into the world who’s smarter and just better than I could ever be myself. Somehow, I think she’d approve – and someday, I’ll tell that child all about the grandmother they never got to meet.… Read more
I’m sitting here watching a nail-biter shaping up between the Hogs and USC at the NCAA Tournament. Well, okay, it’d really be more of a genuine nail-biter if, oh, say, the score was a little bit closer. I’m not sure if this has really gotten outside of the state, but the rumor has it that coach Stan Heath is out of a job if he loses tonight’s game. A local TV sports commentator said it best tonight: every time that rumors have flown around that Arkansas football coach Houston Nutt is considering another job, the school has issued copious denials that Nutt is leaving, as well as bending over backward to let everyone know how much they love Nutt and don’t want him to go anywhere but wish him well anyway. Now we have the rumor train rolling, saying that the school itself is going to nix Heath five years after he took over during the firestorm of the Nolan Richardson controversy…and not a single official denial from the University of Arkansas. Now, on the one hand, I can understand not dignifying an outrageous rumor with a response, but this kinda demands on – this could do some very real damage to the school (and I’m sure it’s helping the team play a better game to have this crap hanging over their heads). For the sake of argument, let’s say that Heath is indeed out (I guess we’ll know in about five and a half minutes as I write this)…what the hell kind of coaching talent can the school attract when the scuttlebutt is that you’ll be fired for not bringing home a solid wall of conference or national titles? I didn’t entirely buy Richardson’s accusations a few years ago that the school didn’t seem kindly disposed toward having a black coach on staff, but you know, I find myself re-assessing that now.
The wife and I went out tonight and blew some money. There, I’m not even gonna try to sugarcoat that. But we both kinda needed to. Got some baby books, and I raided the bargain section: a collectibles/price guide to Star Wars merchandise (slightly outdated with its circa-Attack Of The Clones publication date), a book on storm chasing (and chasers), and a biography of Neil Armstrong. (There, you now know what to expect in the book review section for the rest of this year – that, and whatever Dave, Philip and Rob happen to be reading! 😆 ) A visit to a store that I don’t normally frequent also got me very nearly completely caught on classic series Doctor Who DVDs. I’m still missing The Web Planet (and I know folks who argue that this isn’t really missing much) and The Hand Of Fear, but that’s it. (I blew Amazon UK store credit – thank you, dear readers – on the recent UK New Beginnings box set release, so when I say caught up, I mean caught up. I also spent a few minutes today entering every online contest I could find for a giveaway copy of the next release, Survival, which promises some killer bonus features, and of course it’s Othello’s favorite Doctor Who, with its killer black cats.)
Speaking of cats, Oberon is at the vet’s office overnight tonight after having his claws removed. Poor little guy. You know, it’s strange. So many cats have come through the door of this house that we’ve gotten attached to (i.e. Sampson or Gabby) or that I’ve taken one look at and said “Not the one, no, no, not the one…and this…is the wrong kitten” (i.e. Obsidian). But somehow, Obi has been the one just about from the moment I set eyes on him. Maybe it’s because the poor little guy’s such a dimwit that this automatic instinct to protect the slowest of the herd kicks in. But for whatever reason, I love the little guy and miss him pretty badly now that he’s not here for a night. He really is the Derek Zoolander of the cat world – pretty, but not exactly touched by brilliance. I’ll be happy to see his cat carrier come back through the door with him in it.
Well, the Hogs lost by nearly 20 points. I guess we’ll see what kind of mess comes with the Heath rumors.… Read more
I’ve been almost incommunicado this weekend because I’m about knee-deep in a little project that I’ve wanted to do for a while; having a baby on the way and some other recent things have brought it forward in the priority just a little bit. It’s time to clear some brush around the old family tree and take a look at it.
Using various online resources (the first of which is a page out of one of my previously mentioned “baby books,” filled out by my mother, without which I’d be dead in the water), I’ve accomplished what I think it a pretty impressive amount of work for having started a couple of days ago. One line, on my grandmother’s father’s side, I managed to get extraordinarily lucky on and trace all the way back to England in the 1300s with a fairly high degree of certainty thanks to someone else’s dazzlingly meticulous research. There’s some Scotland and Ireland in there too.
The sad thing is that there just isn’t very much solid information about the Green line. Either that, or it’s completely buried because, well, y’know, it’s such an uncommon and distinctive name, though I have managed to get as far as finding out that, unless I’m barking up the entirely wrong family tree, the Greens have been working-class and stuck in Arkansas for nearly 200 years, with allowances for minor excursions that always ended up back here within a given person’s lifetime. I’m really wanting to find out where that line comes from. … Read more
Sam ‘n’ Ella better keep away from my peanut butter cookies. I’m a mongrel for crunchy peanut butter, so this news is rather alarming. In other news, to make a completely bizarre segue into another topic, someone’s finally cracked the Tagalong Code: if you’re craving that most delicious variety of Girl Scout Cookies during those times of the year when Girl Scout Cookies aren’t available, try out Keebler’s new peanut-butter-filled fudge cookies. I forget what they’re actually called, but OMG they’re delicious. They’re still not quite perfect – Tagalongs are thinner and I like the chocolate coating better on them – but they’re as close as anyone’s gotten. (And they’re about a buck cheaper.) That said, I’m still craving genuine Tagalongs, but it looks like I missed the bus for this year’s order. 🙁
Robin Hood: Cats On Printers. The funny picture yesterday of Obi standing proudly atop my PC is not an isolated incident, so my game room has become Off Limits To Kitties While Daddy’s Away. Sad, really, because the window in there, which is all overgrown with brush, is teeming with birds year-round – it’s like Cat TV. You can find one or both of the kittens sitting in there on top of the scanner, watching the window all glossy-eyed. But when Obi jumps on top of the printer, decides that it’s a good idea to jump up and try to tag either an arcade marquee (which is damn close to the ceiling) or the Doctor Who pinball backglass (perched in the upper pane of the window in a way that isn’t precarious until someone starts screwing with it), and then all that jumping threatens to dislodge both printer and Vectrex from their slots on the shelf…well…I suppose this is just a sneak preview of things to come. 😆 My game room is going to need quite a bit of work to make it kid-friendly. Fortunately, I already have some ideas on that front, ideas which I’ll share shortly. Gaming folks with limited space and/or concerns about keeping their consoles clean of dust and other things may want to pay close attention… … Read more
