My Favorite Music

I often struggle when asked, often casually at a conference for work or when trapped on some shared mode of movement like an elevator, "Hey, what is your favorite music?" Or "What kind of music do you like?"

And its because I don't dive deep on music like say I would a book or a game. Or keeping fish tanks. I just listen to the stuff I liked when I was a kid. I fortunate those bands still play albeit the sound has changed to the point where "Well, its not for me." Then anything I have picked up because I heard it on a show or on the radio. One time, while stuck in the sleepy hills of the Firelands region of Ohio, I stumbled on what I assume was a Christian rock station. And there was an honest to God song that sounded damn good and went...."The Beast is coming. So you better start running. But we don't need arms to fight! We believe in Christ!"

It kicked ass! I then googled it up and found 1) I totally misheard the lyrics and 2)Its Mirrors by Archers Rise and yes I do listen to it at the gym.



Maybe I feel awkward because everyone else seems so hyper aware of what they like. People issue things on vinyl and secret album drops. This is my Spotify mix. Meanwhile I am slumming it listening to music on free YouTube.

Part of it is that music and sounds fire off distinct day dreams for me. A song I really like is Disintegration by Jimmy Eat World. Its very much so a song about addiction (I think?) and distrust and relationships broken by it. I have no experience with this but there is an incredible instrumental piece in it where guitar strings build towards a crescendo while a drum beats in a come hither tone. Then Jim Adkins starts crooning "Stay on my side tonight" And its supposed to be painful but what I imagine is...



***The video should begin at that part. If not its around 4 minutes in***


An armor clad heroine, on a hanging parapet on Cleveland's Terminal Tower (Or imagine any tall building in a city), coming up from a half crouch. Below here is Public Square. Its early winter. Sometime before Christmas but right around Thanksgiving. And while Cleveland has a sleepy downtown its busy because its the holidays and people are skating in the square and ducking into the casino.
She checks her gear one more time and rocks in her hand a collapsible baton that splits apart and weaves out a length of braided high impact cabling. Its like Daredevil's billy club. Ok, it is. Because he is awesome.
And a car comes into frame coming off the Detroit-Superior bridge. It has the mark. And the car knows it is hunted. It cuts someone off and almost hits a construction barrel as it ducks between two buses. And it stays between them as it plods along the street thinking the random innocents will reduce their chance of being caught. And then the car makes the left turn around the square so it comes right in front of the tower. And 82 something stories over the heroine jumps off an dives towards the car which is idling and enveloped in the white haze of chilled car exhaust. And up in the air, the cold wind cuts at the heroine's face. She closes her eyes partially out of comfort but also to focus because she has telekinetic powers (Did I mention that) and she is snapping window panes behind her. The mark in the car can't hear over the idle of engines and the sheer height but she is trailing the cabling and a cloud of shimmering shards behind her. She thinks of the property damage but if this is successful she will get away. And if not then she will be dead so why does it matter. And the song hits that crescendo at the end and she loops the cabling over a lower parapets and begins to bow her swing so she is right over the car. She lets go and sends the shards flying so it eviscerates the tires of cars around the mark. They won't be able to zip away or even try to rattle away on rims because the whole intersection is snarled and angry. Then she breathes in a sharp, short breath and focuses to cushion her landing onto the car roof. The mark whelps in the car and reaches for a gun but he is panicked at it snags on the seat belt. She draws her weapon by spooling back the cabling with the simple flick of a button and then....

The daydream/memory stops there as the song tapers off into its lulling end.

So I have a lot of those. And they are not always so adventurous. I envision myself doing stacks and stacks of paperwork to the Bassnectar Remix of Ellie Goulding's Lights. There is another Jimmy Eat World called Authority Song that when I hear I actually imagine a musical number in the tiny coffee shops I worked in after college. They mention a jukebox in it and I think of someone twirling a partner towards the stereo so she taps it and fires up. I push a lot of paper and pay a lot of bills at my job and I will fore myself up playing Kanye's Feedback which is anything but a song about clerking and running POs. But he says "Wake up baby, wake up! Time to get the paper!"

And, to close, I adore video game soundtracks, chill wave, movie scores, even the music from the old stool Toonami intros. The 08th MS Team intro is pure fire! Its the descending violins for sure. But because its all adventuring music!



Maybe the only song I can take in as a pure thing is Pursuit of Happiness by Kid Cudi. Which is funny since I am super straight edge, never been in a gun fight, am quite fussy and cantankerous, but do roll with the Midwest and do often scream out "Fuck That"

9/11 Post

As the day is appropriate then here is what I was doing on 9/11. Names have been changed for anonymity.

I was a senior in high school. Because I took several AP courses between 9 and 11, I actually had 2 free periods plus lunch that year. That is about 2 hours of a 7 hour day just doing nothing. I mostly did homework or read. I was notorious for completing assignments early so I could have more time to do fun things like read or watch TV/movies. Play Magic The Gathering, Magi Nation or PS2. HS for me was peak media imbider even before binging or "I can do what I want I'm an adult" time.

One free period had a fair amount of my buddies in it. We were the geek clique. My senior class was small, 45 kids and roughly made up of 6 or so cliques

Puerto Rican Mafia "cool kids who were native islanders"

American Mafia "cool kids who were not from the island"

Stoners/Surfers

Geeks

Weirdos

Too cool for school kids

There were kids who could struggle both. I had/have a good friend named Chen who was a geek. Got me,into Magic and board games. His dad made us our own WW2 inspired tabletop game. But he was also supremely cool and also from PR but ethnically Asian so he was cool in both mafias!

Geeks and weirdos had some cross pollination. Geeks liked talking about Dragon Ball Z. Who would win? Piccolo or RGoku?! Weirdos wore those Drgaon Ball Z polyester button ups short sleeved shirts.

Anyway...this first free period only had 5 other seniors in it. None were my pals. None were enemies mind you. We just left each other alone.

I was reading in the back of the senior gazebo, what was our senior lounge. This was PR so our school did not have hallways. Instead it had a community college vibe with 2 story tall conrete buildings and some ground level double wide type structures around the central quad. The senior gazeborested over the exposed roots of a small glade of trees so it looked always craggy and knotted. Full of mystery and potential.

From the edge of the quad and up from a small slope came a girl in my sensor class, Raquel, who was the Principal's daughter. She told the gathering of us in the gazebo (it was actually 3 small gazebos joined. 3 little hexagons) "I heard in the office, something happend in New York with a plane."

Oh...whatever everyone said or thought. I did. How is that many different from some disaster 2 states over?

The bell then rings and everyone pours out. I had to walk clear across campus (over by the elementary school) for college algebra. I did not have many friends in this class becsuse mt school,had 2 tracks: smart or not smart. I did well in all classes save math. So college algebra was the "normal" math for seniors and "Pre Calculus" or "Calc AP" was the smart track. Because I got Cs in math this jacked up my schedule but I thank my mom for insisting the principal make this happen. Had no interest in failing because of "whats normal." But my friends were in calc AP and I here albeit, again, it wasnt bad. Just sucks to not take classes with close friends.

On the way down I heard people chattering about what they heard. Which is odd since it had happenrd when were in class and this before peoole were mass texting. Everyone had cells but we talked. Or played Snake!
A pair of 7th graders said it was Russian fighter jets. Most people assumed accident. I wad curious but also it was nothing in my world. I was not apathetic. I likked keeping abreast of the news but it was just that. News.

We did math class and then I went to AP English Lit. This had 8 kids in it. A lot were my friends. Neat! However that day all but me and Chen were out on a field trip to the art museum. So it was a gimme class. We told the teacher "Hey, can we go to the library and watch the news. Something big happened." The teachers refused but knowing it was BS to teach Ellison's Invisible Man to 2 kids she said "I'll go to the office and see for myself"
She did and came back 1 minute later (her room was right next door) and said "Oh my God! Go!" And she bolted from the room something I had never seen a teacher do.

We went up the small slope to the library to see a big screen TV rolled out onto the floor and a gathering of varioue teachers and students. And there I saw it.

I dont recall much of what happened the rest of the day. I had a friend, Barry, who had an aunt in NYC who was worried. Just a lot of speculating and "wow, thats life." cartoon network stopped airing the OG Mobile Suit Gundam for some reason after the attack and I remember being "wtf".

We lives thousands of miles from it. PR is part of the US for sure but to me and my family it was just news, horrible news, but just that. That is the thing about PR. Its liie America until it is not. See the Hurricane Maria phenomenon or how "the real America" never seems to be a place anyone lives.

I am not a fan of the "world changed" that day. History is living and fluid. The violence and repercussions of that day were felt before, during and now after. However, neither am I an "armchair woke folk." No one deserved to die that day regardless of what our country has done or how warped an ideology the hijackers had.

On this day I think of that day in HS and the books I was reading at the time (Passage to India, X Wing novels) and the girls I tried to talk to. I think of my mom buying a special edition of the newspaper from the street corner barker, soemthing I had only seen in movies. I think of books I read since then...Ghost Wars, The Bin Ladens, Charlie Wilson's War. My college freshmen roommate who was Muslim and Bangladeshi anf admitted to maybe not coming to the states after that. The volunteer groups I used to manage on the subsequent anniversaries. I think of tales still going on but also etched on people. Tales also lost with the victims.

Masterpiece

Warning that this post gets nerdy!  And I admit to 2 fictional character crushes!* 

This October, Magic (MTG) is going back to Ravnica in the Guilds of Ravnica set. The hype is strong for the set. It usually is for every fall release (which in the MTG world is akin to summer movie blockbuster season) but this one is high because people love Ravnica. I didnt play when it first came out but I get. The world (about the size and equivalence to a planet in our real world) is one giant city. And a city built and rebuilt onto itself with green spaces, junkyards, halls, plazas, markets, etc. It is layered with stories moving across and vertically as the cityscape changes.

So that's neat. But it also has gangs! Well, guilds. Each guild is made up of a 2 color pair in the game. This is hard to explain without knowing the game but...the game has 5 colors and your deck can be 1, 2, 3,4 or all 5 of those. Players refer to their decks, often, by the names within the game for those colors. So...instead of saying this is my blue and white deck one can say..."This is my Azorius deck." Its branding but also fun since you can identify as a color identity. Its like a horoscope or a Myers Briggs but for Magic. Like I personally identify as Bant (White, Blue, Green) and it is why I am always one of those "do the right thing" type people. Albeit the amount of yelling I do with my kids may make me a bit Boros or Jeskai

This is also the 3rd time we have gone to Ravnica so people who like that world (and people really keen on these guilds) are excited to build on it. No other world has gotten that many go arounds. MTG's original plane, Dominaria, had many years of exploration but that is before MTG committed to making planes with clear identities.

Not that MTG (technically their parent company, Wizards of the Coast, subsidiary of Habro) needs more hype but they teased masterpieces.

What are those? 

Masterpieces are cards not technically in the set but still available in packs of it. They were featured in the last few (about 3 years) big sets and they helped boost sales. They have district art, framing and often were big money cards. It was like a Golden Ticket type promotion. And rare...like 1 in every 1000 packs. For context a whole box of packs has 36. 

I only ever opened 2 from the first time they did this. One was a gorgeous Sol Ring...a card with a lot of MTG history and a lovely $300 retail value. 

For Ravnica 3, MTG has masterpieces. It is not magical items or locations but planeswalkers. This is unique to the game but they are powerful wizards/warriors with the ability to travel between the planes of realtiy at will. Like Quantum Leap! The game treats them like superheroes and villains and the story is set around their adventures.

Ok...so cool...alternate art versions of key characters. Lets go!

Well...the good news is you can buy all of them in one swoop! Neat...no more luck of the draw. Bad news...well the whole set is $250 and only available in a limited print run from the Hasbro store. MTG has had other collectors only type products but you have been able to get them on Amazon or most importantly your local game store. So while these are in the same vein as the other masterpieces they don't have that treasure feel. And I have never used the Hasbro store but I hear that it is a clunker of a website akin to how I used to register for classes in college. Can I wax my modem to try and make it go faster?

A lot of time and energy has been spent on why this move feels bad by people supremely more talented than I. I suggest reading/watching them. Mine is more personal

One of the fancy planeswalkers is Elspeth. Specifically, Elspeht Knight Errant. For certain chracters there are different versions based on their time/place in the story. 

Here is the card:

And here is high res full art by artist @zack_stella

OMG...i'm in love. 😍 Well I have always been since learning about her character. She is one of my fictional character crushes. No, its not weird! As a younger man I had a major crush on Sailor Moon. Its not weird It's not. Stop laughing. Ok, it can get weird. This is the Internet and Rule 34 but its not that here.  How is it different than liking the werewolf guy from Twilight. Is that still a thing? Stop laughing.

She is a bad ass knight who escape her home home world after it was invaded and has fought trying to keep those people off other planes. And her story has ups and downs with wins and losses and...then...they killed her off. Fuck. Why?!?!?!? If you notice in the art she has has a hole in her armor where the God of the Sun (who betrayed her after she saved him) stabbed her. It's all quite the Greek tragedy (which makes sense since this happened on a plane inspired by Greek myths) and lame. She got "refrigerator-ed" and, yes, I know she will come back one say. The art hints at it since she is in the underworld and the gold mask lets her come up to the living world but....when!? Or ever!?

But look at it! The eerie colors and general smoky dreary sfumato of he underworld cut by the fire of her torch and the glint of the mask. She is coming back! YAASSS! She usually wears a hood (Hoods make any character 100% times more bad ass. Nothing is better than pulling up a hood and running into battle!) but she looks good without. She obviously has been through a lot (note the fraying on the sash and the damn hole where the Sun God betrayed her) but she will come back! YAAASSS!

I hope...😭

Stop laughing! Laugh at the other posts!

All that said she is an awesome character. Bad ass and looks good without the "female armor" trope. She isn't fighting plane hopping monsters in a bikini. She isn't fighting to save a boyfriend. She isn't a token girl character. SHE KICKS ASS! She is awesome and I want that card but I need a combination of $250 and luck on 10/3/18 when these go on sale. Considering that I could get 2 whole boxes of the latest set and still have about 50 bucks leftover spending that at my local store (Or that I would have $250 to drop at one time on MTG) it is a pipe dream. On the secondary market the cards will likely be even more. Nearly double. And there are other versions of Elspeth and other printings of Elspeth Knight Errant with lovely artwork to. And no I don't use her in any of my decks but I may make a kitchen table casual white weenie deck and all her versions would rock in it. 

*Its Sailor Moon and Elspeth if you dont want to read all this. Don't @ me!

Some prose...Heat Wave

I was looking through some old journals and found I write a fair piece about the weather. This makes a decent amount of sense since many of these journals date back to when I was in college and would hang around the woods reading and writing. And I took maybe 3 naturalist writing classes (only outpaced by how many Science Fiction classes I took. One in Writing Dept, One in English Dept, and another as an experimental interdisciplinary course) and then a Field Bio course where we had to jot down many observations. Maybe I will transcribe these one day. That said I  am often inspired to write by weather. Which I know...thrilling. You talk about the weather either when the conversation has died or it IS the conversation. Or when you are just trying to pass through or making the most banal of casual conversation. So either...

1) "Oh, hot enough for ya. Hehehe. Ok, bye!"

OR

2) "IT IS A FUCKING HURRICANE OUT! GET INSIDE!"

OR

3) ***You just told her you don't get why you can't refer to women as "females"*** "So....um...hot enough for ya?"

But Romanticizing it? On a blog? Well this one for sure....

___________________________________________________________________________

The city rolled into Labor Day with a heat wave. In newer buildings or retail spaces it is chilly with each door swing throwing walls of angry air at each other. The heat stifling, the cold ramped as far as the coils can go. I tend to poke around in older buildings looking for a piece of scrap or earshot of interesting conversation. The bricks feel warm and the splintered beams of wood seem to crackle, each hole open agape and hurting. In darker/cooler spots, usually a bathroom, the porcelain sweats especially around the bottom of toilet bowls. I once owned a rabbit who did not like the heat and we would allow to free roam around the house. He would curl around the basin of our toilet which was a wide commercial model somehow placed in an apartment (It was a cheap apartment) and wick away the heat and moisture onto his fur.
Climbing through the tall grass of an overgrown lot I noticed the window AC running in the house behind me. It hums placidly making a family happy but I followed the fat dew drops from the corner to the ground. There they smash with the consistency of the oil splatter of a frying pan creating a tiny thick clump of grass where everything else is willowy tendrils in a patch of brown-yellow. The side of the house has peeling paint and crumbling grout between the windows and maybe if were not so oppressively hot out I could feel the nimble cold escape from the cracks. But today it feels like everything else lost in the heat that one can drink.

The Kitty Cat Game

I tend to be a "yelling" type dad. I am a quiet person but do come from a loud culture where it is OK to berate kids in public. I have never berated my kids in public but we have done lots of "We need to go the car" or "Come here" and then its the usual awkward hissing negotiating in corner of a restaurant booth or crouched in some abandoned aisle of Costco. Usually the aisle with the school supplies by the jewelry, where they also sometimes have oddball video games.
I also tend to lose my cool and never get physical but yeah get dramatic. Taking away toys is a premium strategy and I have often said "You will never see motorized Thomas again. He goes in the trash!" and then fake toss him in the garbage like you fake out a dog playing fetch. I did once smash some plastic happy meal toy because the kids were going apeshit over how (even though they each had the same one) the others was better. I also once popped a balloon they were fighting over because fuck be QUIET!

This is where I have I love my kids and they do wonderful in school. My son began kindergarten and all the teachers are "He is so great. He always listen to directions the first time and is so sweet" Well I am glad he is good at school because he is a pain in the ass at home. I would be mortified it is was the other way around, however.

Nothing gets me into a major angry dad yelling mode than the "Kitty Cat Game." It is the only thing outright banned in our house. I rather my kids smoke a pack of  cigarettes and cat call people in the street then play the "Kitty Cat Game." Would you kids rather play Russian Roulette? Or Desert Bus?

What is the "Kitty Cat Game?"

Well it starts as roleplaying where my kids get on all fours and pretend to be kittens. It always begins 'Oh, Im a little kitty! A little baby kitten" and then drop down (regardless of the flooring. I don't know how they have not busted knee caps Kyrie Irving style yet) and start to mewl and meow. And its pretty damn convincing. My son does a purr meow combo that i want to sell to a foley mixing studio but I pretty sure they got cats covered.

This then proceeds to the kittens either need to play or get in trouble. Both end in tears and yelling.

The Play Option is...the kittens roll balls and find "yarn" (usually a toy. Oddly enough Paw Patrol vehicles are top choices) and whip them around the floor. The kittens start playing in their own corners but slowly gravitate towards each other until they are in middle of the floor and then "accidentally" the toys get mixed up and the kids/kittens outright brawl for it. Oh, the brawl begins innocently. "That is my toy pretend ball of yarn! Wah! Meow! Hiss. Im going to jump on your back!" Which is what a cat would do (Save for the talking) but then it becomes a tangle of toddler arms and legs.

The Trouble Option....the kittens go on an adventure! We need to go to Grandpa's House. And as soon as they start..."Oh no. We fell into a mine" or "A scary bear has trapped us" and the kittens are frozen in fear save that one kid rolls into the other (For comfort you see) and it then becomes a God damn brawl. The peril can go on for a bit and even when we, as parents intervene, (Don't worry kittens. Daddy will save you from the mine) they just get right back into trouble. "Thanks for saving us from the mine, Daddy! Kittens are back on the road to Grandpa's! Meow meow...oh no fell into the mine again!" So it can take a while for it to build to a climax.

This makes it sound very BDSM and i think my son's peril fascination is due to this but then I remember feeling certain ways in certain scenes of Sailor Moon and I am aghast at the Hundred Years of Solitude sense of how families can never escape themselves. We are doomed to become our parents. My son also likes earthquakes and disaster news coverage so it could also be much more technical in terms of its mischief level. Rescue 911 was one of my favorites shows as a child.

All the brawls end the same with me or the wife needing to separate the mass of toddlers. My son likes to bite (Is this part of the cat game as well?) but he only bites us (Again the "good at school" phenomenon) and all my kids love the passive aggressive jab of "I don't like you anymore. You are not my friend." I really wish sometimes my kids would just call me "stupid" because that kind of verbiage makes me wonder if they are growing to grow up to be little master manipulators. I don't want my kids to be Ben Linus from Lost.

It really is a form of ritualized combat but I am not having any of it. No one is crowned king or queen after it ends.  I rather them say "Daddy, can we go beat the hell out of each other with sticks in the backyard?" then engage in the "Kitty Cat Game"

 Every August I have these stretches where i get 12 hours of sleep in a 4 day span and we are in the thick of it. To stay awake I drink a lot of water (An old '"Indian" trick as I was told by a girl I knew in high school) and listen to music since I am past the point where caffeine has any effect on me beyond the Pavlovian need to drink it.

Sheepishly I heard a song on a mix that really got me jazzed. It sounded so damn true. WTF is this song?! And then I saw an ad for the new Mission Impossible movie and I was "Oh yeah it has that pseudo tense percussion! Did they make this for the movie? WHO IS IT"

It's Imagine Dragons...🤷 Friction to be specific from an album called Smoke and Mirrors that came out 3 years ago. I could swear it was made specifically for this movie.

Hey, I ain't throwing no shade. If/when I sign I sound like a series of metal bowls spinning on the floor of an haunted asbestos mine. And...hey they make hits and pay the bills. One of my favorite bands is Linkin Park and in college I did not like being chided by all the hippies and hipsters in town over their phony sound. That is great you love zydeco and blue grass but not so much for me.

But...it was a surprise. Like those commercials where they are "This coffee must be gourmet!" and then they pull back the curtain and they say "You think that but its actually Walgreen's brand Nice! Breakfast Blend" Well...you got me indeed.

Any Key

My job (and I know I said I would not talk about work but this is harmless) often involves having to explain to people "technology." And it reminds me of an adage someone I worked with (Well it was a client but whatever) said..

"All it takes to be an expert is knowing more than your audience"

So then I'm the specialist albeit internally I am "Huh!?"

One thing is that the word "technology" as short hand for anything "computer" irks me. A spear used to hit a wooly mammoth is technology. But most people also aren't maniacs who blog so I get it. Its also trifling and petty. Like those people who say "Well we are not really a democracy. We are a republic." Yes, I get it John Birch Society person! You know what I mean.

Anyway this often finds me having to describe things in an easy to understand way. For example, my father in law (and no I don't work with/for him. I know I started with the work thing but bear with me) asked me to explain what "Twitter" is. And that is a tricky one. He once asked me to explain what a podcast was and I said it was like  pay per view radio show. And that worked!

For Twitter I stuck with the radio motif and said "It is like hitting scan on the radio console. You get a tiny taste of everything. But you can set your scan to hear only those stations you want and those stations sometimes play music other stations played. Like station 1 says 'Hey check out what station 3 played!' so they play it also. And its always going"

And damn that seemed to work!
.

Old Telephone

My mom has saying when something is very dark. Or dirty like a really grimy greasy thing. She will say...

"That things is blacker than an old telephone"

I used to think it was because all the old rotary phones in old time PR were that shiny black color. Like the kind of black that Felix the Cat is. Does anyone remember or ever hear of Felix the Cat?
But I realized it is because those phones are all grimy and covered in years of sweat and skin caking onto the cradle and receiver. Like it is probably white underneath but it is black now an taking a simple rag to it will cut a streak down the middle. Like people will be "Holy shit. This stuff really cleans. Thank you, Magic Erarser! Fuck you, you filthy damn old telephone!"

My mother also has certain English words she uses in Spanish conversations. For about 20 years I honest to good thought that when she said something was dirty she was actually saying "This thing is guilty!"

Like it is so damn dirty that it needs to go to court.

But no...it is a guttural mispronunciation. of "Filthy"

Why she chooses to say this instead of something in Spanish is beyond me but it is part of her lexicon.

How To Breathe Underwater

Around the summer of 2008 and into the first half of 2009 I seriously looked into joining the armed forces. Like a lot people at that time, I was unemployed so I can't say it was 100% stars and bars but I have maybe only 3 major regrets in life and not serving my country (In some capacity. Maybe Foreign Service?) is one of them. The fact I got to muddle all this while hanging out and playing emulated ROMs of Pokemon is testament to all those who have served. 

I had narrowed it down to either Army or the Coast Guard. I thought that because I had a college degree that maybe I could go down more of an officer path but that is based on pretty much nothing but guessing. 

None of this came to bear fruit but I remember on the Coast Guard recruiting page in the FAQ that there was a legit question (A frequently asked one!) that was "Do I have to know how to swim?"

I can imagine all the variables. Did this person not read the sign? Was the boat on the web page or recruiting center something so foreign, so alien, like Spanish ships breaking the horizon of Hispañola in 1492, that they could not fathom it? Or did they have huge stones. Like, "Whats the big deal if I don't know how to swim. I will out hustle all of y'all." Is it a prank that happened so much that someone had to begrudgingly put it up there on the website? Does the Coast Guard want people that ask that? Can someone say "Eh, a little" 

Recruiter: Son you know how to swim, yes?

Guy: Eh...a little.

Recruiter: A little?

Guy: Yeah, like it depends. Play it by ear.

Or is it like the "Contents may be hot" warning

Trainer: Ok, everyone lets get in the pool to test our survival skills

Guy: Woah, woah. No one said anything about swimming.

Trainer: ...I think it is obvious in the name

Guy: That could mean a lot of things. How am I supposed to know. 

Trainer: Ok, then you are fired

Guy: No, you will be hearing from my attorney. 

In writing this blog I had to look and it is still there! 

Some Prose-Summer

This is inspired by a Tweet I sent earlier in the summer of 2018.

Summer is my favorite season. Many will claim to like fall because we have done a great job of coalescing sweater weather lovers online. Some will say winter because of sleds and snow but I feel it is really because of Christmas (ie stuff) or just to be iconoclastic. I think no one cares about spring, which is sad but it is certainly the number 4 in my seasonal ranking.

Summer embodies life and means food and growth. When we lionize fall and winter we are lionizing seasons of fall and death. Hence, why my earlier point that its too bad spring gets such a minor role. It is rebirth! The Phoenix coming from the fire. But, does anyone care about spring?

Summer is my favorite season because professionally it has always been a difficult one. In my previous work it meant smoldering in a warehouse. In my current work it is beyond the wall busy, a frantic rush where we are both making the rug and yanking it out from underneath us. This has made me appreciate my favorite summer feeling which is standing in or by a yard with tall unkempt grass. The sun is high and the heat baking and dry so that you can feel the distinct layers of clothes on you. Your socks peeling away from your shoes in the heat. And there is a snicker-snack cadence of bugs zipping through the high grass and chirping. Maybe the long, shrill blast of an annual cicada. A feeling of teeth in the grass that can slink up and then go back to ground when they realize how stifling the heat really is. And I feel this sometimes from my car, the windows rolled down and the broken AC blasting hot air because I still run the fan. Or I will feel it on foot and get closer to the whole scene. That little scene, often quite suburban and easily shattered by a passing car or overhead jet, epitomizes summer. The only thing better would be if the sky behind me is that scary blue-black bruise color. A thunderstorm also brimming and ready to unwind in a single snap.

Another Internet Paw Patrol Rant

My daughter loves Paw Patrol. Being younger than her brother she has had to endure many of his decisions and he often has the bully pulpit on what we watch and do. So she doesn't get to pick much even when we intervene but Paw Patrol has always been steady. Like my son for Thomas the Tank Engine it is all encompassing. Sets on sets on sets.

I have been around the Parent's Internet and noticed many funny asides on Paw Patrol.

What is the deal with Ryder?
Where is Ryder's family?
How are the funded?
Can't anyone in Adventure Bay help themselves?!
WHO PICKS UP THEIR POOP!?

Watching a recent episode I had an epiphany that Ryder, the shows 10 year old human boy protagonist, is not some kindly do-gooder. Instead he is a straight up micromanaging martinet. The dogs have all this gear and smarts (They are dogs that can talk and operate cars!) and yet he is always the one giving orders down to such a granular level that the dogs are just vectors. I know he gives his little mission briefing in every episode but this is different. This isn't "Oh, we got a water rescue so I need my amphibious guys like Zuma and even Rocky has a boat rig now" No, it is down to the sub atomic level fussy.

"Everest, use your snowboard to save the penguin!"
Ok, what else is she going to use? Her unicycle? Would she, or any of the other 6 Pups, just let it die?

"Marshall, use your hydro jet to attach this tracker to the Air Patroller!"
Ok, so...1) That silly. Have Skye FLY IT UP THERE! and 2) Maybe if you weren't busy bossing them around your crew could figure that out?

"Zuma, use your buoy to save that kitten from the bay!"
Arf arf arf! Oh ok... I was going to use my anvil to help it sink faster!

Considering Paw Patrol is Adventure Bay's only problem solvers you think Ryder would want to make it less centralized. What happens if he leaves? Grows up? The pups have been set up to fail by not knowing how to do anything.

Back, Again!

 I have returned? What is different this time? Well, Twitter happened and I love Twitter. The President of the United States loves Twitter so why not me? I understand it is all just one giant swamp of comment section digitally ramming into another toxic comment section but do I love it so. And the thrill from those likes. Even just 2 makes me high five the nearest person which is usually a cat. I have been unsuccessful in training my cats to high five btw.

So, I wanted someplace to type longer pieces since I am verbose and suck at making Twitter threads.

If you have been here before then mostly the same save for a few changes:

• I changed jobs and while I often talked about my old one I will not about my current one. Don't worry its not top secret or anything but learned some lessons along the way. I work at a public school. Maybe I may mention a favorite teachers but all good and sealed away. I practice my work rants in the car driving back home so the people in the car next to me can look at me and say "That's a winner!"
• I am less concerned about the tags and links than before. With time I can clean up some more.
• No more or very little fiction writing. While I still express myself every day through writing and those lessons helped (Continue to influence me) I never had much success or the discipline to push through. I got old and fat(ter) and married and had kids and then couldn't prioritize the scribbling.
• Maybe a bit of written asides or poetry. Crappy poetry of course but wouldn't that be neat. Whenever I think of poems I think of a girl I had a creative writing class with who wrote that she as going through a break up and that "her skin could not heal. Like the wet grass it is whole but makes for divots with even the lightest pressure." It was better in college and yay for poetry and quick little writes.
• I'll try to be funny
• It will be random. You like bloviating on writing on post, then a mom joke, then something about the Magic the Gathering? Oh we got you! 

I am sorry if your read something in the archives and think "Man, what a jabroni!" I am not going to delete them so go nuts and if you find something that makes you wonder please call me out. 

That is it! Enjoy

A note

I enjoy my job and the people I work with. That feels funny to say nowadays akin to "Hey, things ain't so bad!" but its the truth. Not there are situations or people that make me bonkers but there is no feeling of being trapped. Or playing against the people you work with or for. I spent 5 years at a place where we trying to outsmart the board and it took its toll.

That said, when I have a metaphorically kick in the balls day at work I like to look at a random thank you note I got one day that I have printed on my desk. 

Some background...

As part of my job I have to archive PTO. Not approve it but keep track of everyone's. When someone runs out the company allows other employees to donate days. That runs through me because I have to track all of this on various spreadsheets. We had one employee who ran out of days and I donated a few. As part of this I must inform people of the donation and sometimes the donor wants the grantee to know. So "Hey Cathy with a C, Kathy with a K gave you two PTO days! Hooray for Kathy with a K!"

In my case I did not want to be all "Oh hey, I donated some days to you" because that is awkward and see earlier post of the crippling terror I have in physically talking to anyone. It is why I blog instead. So let the employee know and time went by. THen she took a day and I let her know, "Don't worry. You had those PTO donations"

The employee replied...


I meant to ask you to send forward this message to the mysterious people but then forgot....can you do it now? 



To you wonderful mysterious people 😏, 

  Thanks for being awesome and thinking about my family and me! These extra PTO days bring a sense of calmness if I need to take a day off. I am so lucky to have people who care enough to reach out and donate days for me. I am truly blessed to have you in my life and am grateful to work with you. 

It emboldened my heart and I recall that whenever there is a bad day

Ever notice in a montage?

Just saw an episode of MLP:FIM with the kid where Rainbow Dash goes to a Daring Do convention and meets another super fan. Daring Do is there version of Harry Potter with a lot more Indiana Jones than magic but the author is AK Yearling so the gag carries it through.

There is a montage where RB hangs with the other Super fan and they become fast friends. In a quick bit they look at some merchandise and one is a pillow with a picture of a tied up Daring Do all bound and helpless on the ground. Its a cartoon so imagine what all those damsels Snidely Whiplash would tie up and you get the picture. At seeing this RB is uncomfortable and backs away with the other Super fan.

Did MLP just make a self referential gag about the sheer amount of saucy slash/ryona fan fiction? Cause it sure looks like it!

The episode has lots of other meta tags like how the super fan hates everything after the 3rd series. Or the cosplay that ranges from bad to so good it factors into the plot. So why not? Creators going deep on this.

Dichotomy

The island of Sodor suffers from "Springfield USA" syndrome in which it is both a backwater and the most happening place ever!

Lame: No one knows Sodor engines!
Happening: Get off the rails it is Thomas the Tank Engine, heavy on Topham Hatt's crew!

Lame: Such quaint trains. My bus will replace them all!
Happening: We got steam! We got wide, narrow, and miniature gauge rails. We got like 4 main lines. A buried pirate ship!

Lame: Oh the Duke and Duchess are coming here to summer. How nice.
Happening: We have an active dinosaur dig AND mining in the same spot. We got farms and heavy industry (smelter's yard). A chocolate factory, zoo, aquarium and cliffs, rivers, beaches, and cities

Lame: So quiet here
Happening: Disaster every damn second! Confusion and delay!

End of the day

At the end of a long day I can't wait to get home and pound  a can of fizzy water. I have become addicted to the bubbly water and while I would love to drink LA Croix all day, everyday, I'll drink whatever.

I realize this makes me super white and suburban but I can't help myself.

It's like contraband at work as well. Put it out and catch a teacher. Put out a salted caramel Kcup and you have a whole grade!

All this makes me feel like I am in the beginning of Fight Club to be significantly woke. You're not your ducking canned sparkling water....until you are.

Sqaurepants

My son has now entered a Spongebob  Square pants loving phase and I'm not sure how to handle it. I never really watched the show as it was the Nicktoon after I stopped watching and before Nicktoon stopped meaning something. It's always been there and it seem so disjointed. I wonder why can they fry Krabby Patties and have fires under the sea? At least it's not Caillou. Or tentacle porn.

Wrote this from my phone. What would have been if I had this as a younger man.

Surface

Back during the old days of the blog, there was no such thing as streaming movies. We had to do with Flash videos and endless buffering! The buffering! Many of the posts on Movies I Should Have Already Seen and the like I physically rented from local video stores or saw on TV. I did have DVD Netflix at one point but the queue was somewhat co-managed by my then girlfriend, now wife, so nuttiness was limited.

We now have streaming and what a great thing it is! Oh, and what a great thing it is that it happened now when I am 30 and have a family and mortgage and such. If this would have happened to a younger me then it would have crippled me. The sheer selection of movies, many of varying degrees of quality, that I no longer had to cart around or explain to the video store clerk. I can recall one of my last video rentals back home in PR. It included Fear Dot Com, Maria Full of Grace, and Gus Van Sant's Elephant. Insert your own gag. And, of course, the people I never talked to would find my comments on these films witty. With streaming, I can pick like I use to in the video store but never fear for returning them or lugging them. I also don't feel so bad stopping in the middle of boring films or movies that are just plain un-watchable if I stream them. I have the same problem with library books. I physically plucked this off the shelves and dragged it back home. I need to consume it!

Streaming also allows me to re-watch many shows from the past and realize that indeed these weren't that good (Many of the kids show I loved fit into this) or that these deserve a re-watch. I recently had an afternoon to kill (I don't work Mondays and watch my infant son those days) and re-watched Surface.

Must admit I did not watch this show during the actual run of late 2005 to 2006. I do remember there being endless commercials for it in the pre-show to movies (Regal First Look for those that go to such cinemas. I am sure other chains have similar things) during the summer of 2005. Surface came out about a year after Lost and I think all the other networks scrambled to green light sci-fi mystery type shows. Surface proves to be a decent little sci-fi show that has enough tech babble but also enough humanism to engage others. There are three main characters you can identify with and I must say that all three come across as dynamic and engaged. 

A no spoiler plot synopsis...strange happenings begin to occur across our oceans. Massive fish kills, weird weather, and a nuclear submarine goes missing. In each instance, there are reports of strange sea monsters. The plot unfurls the mystery through three main characters: Laura, Rich, and Miles. Laura is a marine biologist who saw one of the creatures while on a research trip. Rich is an insurance salesman whose brother dies during a scuba dive at the hands of one of the creatures and Miles is a teenager who finds one of the creatures and befriends it. Drama ensues as these three come together and we learn the origins of the animals and the governments bumbling efforts to control and exploit them.

Rich, played by Jay R. Ferguson, is my favorite due to the duality of his roles. As he gets closer to the truth, he gets closer to Laura and Miles, becoming a sort of family for him, but he does so at the expense of his actual family who just want things to get back to normal. He also plays a Southern man who isn't defined by either the negative or rosy stereotypes that plague that definition. He seems like truly a regular guy whose life is derailed by this spectacular fluke. I also like that this is a show where characters have to figure out how to pay for all their adventuring. I love X-Files, but yeah, didn't someone call Mulder and Scully out for all kinds of un-approved time off and travel expense?

Laura, played by Lake Bell, gets to be a real heroine who is intelligent, strong, and maternal while also having moments that challenge her. As mentioned above, when she goes broke due to some plot shenanigans she finds a job waitressing while also keeping the hunt for the monsters. I think a weaker show would have waited for a deus ex machina to justify her not doing anything. An, there are plenty of last minutes rescues in the 15 episodes, but I find this verisimilitude quite refreshing. Not so much a damsel in distress, but a main character who needs to deal with all this!

The show does a nice job of feeding a decent mix of regular resolution and new intrigue to keep you going. It was short lived (Canceled after one season. More on that below) and ended with loose threads, but you got a good sense of who/what these creatures were. The show also has a lot of skin, which makes sense for a show where much happens on the beach, but yeah. Lots of skin.  Network skin so don't get too excited but it has a pre Gossip Girl Leighton Meester and she is in a bikini a lot. And she has friends who also seem to live in bikinis. Cannot take credit for this line, but if you can't have nudity have gratuity!  I'm not complaining (I'm not made of stone, damn it!) but understand that in Surface fan service is when they put on clothes.

The show got canceled after one season due to ratings. I don't think NBC did it any favors because they cut the broadcast in two by airing five episodes and then re-airing the last ten after the 2006 Winter Olympics and their dreadful three weeks of trickle down schedule snafus. (Why the 2014 Olympics in Russia forced FX to delay Archer for 3 weeks is beyond me. FX isn't even in the NBC family!). Way to build and audience. The show also turns in the last few episodes by introducing a new semi main character (a girl friend for Miles) and going from a focus on the mystery to a focus on the government conspiracy.

I know it wasn't the plan to cancel it, but I am glad it did. The show ends with a whole new paradigm/world that we must live in. Few shows can survive total shifts/reboots and Surface would have become something completely different. The pitch for the second season would be the pitch for a whole new original series and we end on a cliff hanger, but at least one that has a bit of closure. Not something like the Sopranos ending where we go "What the hell!" Surface ends on more of "Oh my god!" This show would have made a great mini series. Knowing it just had one shot it could have tightened up some of the aspects and resolved the dangling plot threads while still ending on a satisfying bit of mystery and wonder. 

Word Play

The other day on CNN they mentioned how a criminal had "faked booby trapped" his home. What does "fake booby trap" mean? It should imply that it is not booby trapped and is safe. Or maybe it means that the traps have real setups but fake payoffs like a gun that does not fire bullets but a flag that says "BANG"" on it. You step on a spring and a recording of the fail noise from the Price is Right plays.  Or he installed them poorly? Is this like "reverse racism?" Or, "same difference," which used to drive a friends of mine bonkers in high school. It was just a two minute story I heard in passing while playing with the baby so who knows, but watch out for my un fake fake booby traps in the yard!