Easy to Please
Some people need constant attention or never-ending reasurrance that everything will be all right. All it takes to please me is a new computer.
I was talking to Jill the other day about computer names; she noted that I call my computers “machines” instead of anthropomorphizing and naming them like people do with cars and bombers.
I guess this is part of my philosophy about not seeing a computer as having sentimental value. To me it’s just a power tool.
But I think that will change with this new laptop. To keep up with geek tradition, I name thee Spock.
I Know This to be True: From now until the earth is enveloped by the sun, there will always be mopey teenage boys wearing Led Zepplin t-shirts.
I spotted another one today trailing behind his soccer mom. No pic because I was slow on the draw with my cam.
I think they actually existed even before Led Zepplin existed. I think they existed before t-shirts existed.
TV
Last night I stretched out on my livingroom floor in front of a whirring box fan and read and thought.
When you want to change something, all you need is consistency. Small, consistent actions lead to huge, seachanging results.
For instance, I read somewhere recently that in order to reduce your TV viewing time, you should only turn the TV on to watch the show you are intending to watch. After you are done, immediately turn it off. Do not channel surf, and do not turn the TV on unless you intend to watch a particular show.
If you have TiVo, this practice is even easier. Turn the TV on, watch a recorded show, then turn it off.
I used to like to have the TV on in the background because the noise and visuals made me feel like there was another person in the room: A loud, often annoying person that would try to sell me things every twelve minutes.
This made me feel less alone.
But I think that this has gotta stop. The well-known problem with TV is that it’s a passive activity. An old saying goes, “Never waste your time by staring at a dog’s butt.”
Thinking about it, watching TV is probably the most passive activity that exists in my life.
Reading is much more interactive because it requires my vivid imagination to bring the novels, short stories, and Dear Penthouse letters to life. Playing Xbox360 is also pretty interactive because it provides various creatures that must be intelligently gunned down.
Even sleeping is more interactive because of my crazy attending-a-lecture-with-no-pants-on dreams.
And writing (or creating anything really) is the inverse of TV’s passivity — it is 100% active, because you are creating something from nothing.
Yeah, see, I’ve thought for a long time that TV gives the illusion of life, just like it gives the illusion of someone else in the room. The mirror in a bird cage. The problem is that you can spend your entire life in front of it, watching other peoples’ lives play on it and never feeling the need to get up and stop farting into the couch.
Yep, no more channel surfing for me. Just gotta be consistent about it.
So anyway, my current favorite TV show is this show called MythBusters on the Discovery Channel.
It’s a show in which two beardos take urban legends and test them using scientific experiments and explosions. Here are the things I like about the show:
- It has a high science content.
- There are frequent explosions.
- There’s an Asian guy on the show.
- There’s a cute lady on the show:
- The show is shot in the San Francisco Yay Area, home of your humble narrator and the original Rock!
- I like beardo antics.
I like science and I like explosions. This show is my happy place.
One last thing — to figure out whether a TV show is good for you, here’s a useful rule of thumb: Would admitting that you watch it get you beaten up in middle school?
If yes, then it is probably good for you. Watch and enrich your mind.
If no, then it probably only exists to pound your free will into submission, thus making you an easier target for commercials.
For example, Nova, anything on the History Channel, or the Charlie Rose Show will definitely get you beaten up in middle school.
They got rid of Tech TV because it was getting kids killed.
Melting
So hot… So very, very hot…
Yesterday was my thinking day. I spent a few hours thinking at the Hammer, then went to Borders to think some more but it was too crowded (filled with air-conditioned air moochers!) so I had to come home and think here.
I got some good thoughts down on paper. I just wish it was cooler. But hanging out in the shade with a liter of Diet Coke does a lot to get the brain hamsters running.
Recommended: The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri
This book makes the idea of being trapped in a loveless marriage seem extremely cool in a Dashboard Confessional kind of way. Also, it makes me hungry, what with all the talk of delicious food and the chopping of delicious food too.
The prose floats nicely too. A great summer read.
Also Recommended: Battle for Middle Earth II for the XBox 360
The video game where you can command giants to crush hobbits with massive boulders. There’s nothing more satisfying than that, is there?
The animations in this RTS are brilliant — especially when dudes get knocked on their keesters by cavalry and the aforementioned flying boulders. Plus you can zoom into your buildings to see lil’ orcs sawing wood and stoking the fires of their evil military machinery.
Yes, this is the only blog in the world that reviews both Pulitzer Prize winning short story collections and Xbox video games.
Sometimes you wake up and yesterday feels like it was a century ago. I woke up this morning and my life and the things I did felt like they took place a couple of decades in the past. I think I had a dream that made me feel that way and it’s still lingering.
People Who Wear Monocles
Coffee and Beans
The day I have been dreading has come to pass.
My laptop is dying! The screen comes up dark, but when you wiggle the hinge it lights up again.
If it were consistent in this behavior I’d still be able to use it, but it’s pretty erratic.
I’ve had this machine for over four years and it’s served me well. It deserves to make an austere exit from my life. I should let it float away on a large chunk of ice or deliver it to Valhalla on a burning Viking ship. Or I may just throw it at a car. I haven’t decided yet.
Apartment Therapy is my new favorite blog to read. It’s got lots of great tips for interior design and living. Plus it’s pup and kitty friendly too.
I recently rearranged all the furniture in my bedroom. Lots more light, lots more storage space in there now. Plus the bed-that’s-shaped-like-a-race-car that I sleep in is now lower to the ground. Vroom vroom!
Are any of you going to San Diego Comic-Con? I would go but my Naruto suit is at the cleaners. Plus this weekend I’m going to be busy reading and having an existential crisis.
“Adam Baldwin will be there!” said Kim. Adam Baldwin of Firefly. Not Adam Baldwin of the brothers Baldwin.
Stan says that he definitely isn’t a member of the Baldwin clan, but I think that he secretly is. He just hides this link from the rest of the world. This way he gets the best of both — the notoriety of the name without the stigma of being directly related to the guy who co-starred with Pauly Shore in “BioDome”.
…
Via Poe-News, a very interesting article from Pompano Beach, FL: Seeking a new mosque, they find a cultural turf war.
A local mosque wants to relocate into a predominantly black neighborhood. But the neighborhood won’t have it:
“…That [Dozier], a 57-year-old black Christian minister, who gets teary-eyed when he talks about how he was “excluded as a young black man,” is dead set on excluding Muslims is surprising enough. But even more surprising is who supports him and who doesn’t.
Opposing Dozier: Willie Larson, head of Broward County’s NAACP chapter, and Andrew Louis, head of the county’s Democratic Black Caucus.
When the commission meeting started, opponents of the mosque spoke.
“People in the neighborhood feel less safe knowing Muslims are invading,” Dozier said.
Larson, the NAACP head, went to the podium to caution against “religious intolerance.” He quoted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
The audience booed.
“Now, I’ve seen it all,” Louis said. “Black people booing King. Just how crazy can this get?”
That isn’t very Christian of them.
“Meanwhile, residents at the Holiday Springs condominium, about 10 minutes down the road from Pompano Beach, say that they are closely monitoring the battle, ready to jump in.
“We care about what happens and are watching,” said condo activist Lee Goldman, who characterized the population in the 35 buildings at Holiday Springs as “70 to 80 percent elderly Jewish.”
Goldman recalled that, when a different mosque was built next to their condo a few years ago, she and many of her condo neighbors protested. “We saw the mosque as a threat,” she said.
But last summer — when Hurricane Wilma hit the area, knocking out electricity and trapping many condo residents in their upper story apartments — that changed.
It was then, say condo residents, that the people from the mosque next door brought water, homemade vegetable soup, spaghetti and coffee, carting it up the stairs from door to door to stranded residents, for eight days. “Those people we hadn’t wanted in our neighborhood saved us,” said Goldman.
“They wanted nothing in return,” said resident Marlene Ashkinasi.”
That’s rather Christian of them.
Innovate
I’m excited… Happy-excited. Things are lining up nicely.
Also my electronic dictionary came in — it’s almost exactly the size of a Nintendo DS Lite, which makes reaching into my bag a bit confusing. Will I pull out the dictionary or Mario Kart?? (Thanks Stan!)
The crossword solver and anagram-figure-outer is already paying dividends. And I have yet to stump it in the vocabulary area, so I’m feeling pretty good about it.
The first read word I’ve had to look up in it: Diaphanous, meaning light, translucent.
The 3rd season of Project Runway kicked off with the most diverse group imaginable. There’s the older guy making a second run at the industry, the successful punk upstart, the mother/designer; the only thing they’re missing is a supercomputer built by IBM and programmed to design clothing using mathematical precision.
My Work in Print
Year Zero
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.com
Cowboy Versus Samurai
Available from Samuel French and Amazon.comFor a complete list of books containing my work, please click here.
