Sunday, 16 December 2012

After a year in the making (primary footage was shot in December 2011), I am pleased to announce the latest Zimmerscope Filmlet…

I originally came up with this idea last fall, and I determined to film it during the holiday break between Xmas and New Year’s. It occurred to me that nearly the entire year had passed without me creating a single filmlet, and I didn’t want that to happen, so I recruited Owen to assist in squeezing in a filmlet during the last three days of the year. As it turns out, I didn’t need to bother, since I had created a filmlet already in 2011. That was Footage from the Day of Prayer, that I had somehow forgotten about.

Regardless, I now had some raw footage to work with as 2011 became 2012. In January, I edited the film. In fact, I worked on it in the car on the way home from Janesville, Wisconsin, where I had been on a business trip (I did not drive). By mid-February, it was kind of languishing, primarily because I was busy with school.

I took it up again this summer, by which time my wife’s computer suffered a full meltdown, which was too bad for my video editing because her computer was the only one equipped for scoring the filmlet.

I skirted that issue by recruiting the assistance of a friend; in November I emailed Eric and asked him if he’d be interested in putting my creation to music. Awesomely, he agreed. It took some back-and-forth finagling to get all the kinks worked out but, finally, about two weeks ago I had an amazing score for the filmlet.

Over the last few days, I’ve spent a few minutes here and there polishing it up. And, well, now it’s in the can, as they say.

Enjoy!

Sunday, 16 December 2012

 In the wake of the terrible tragedy in Newtown, Connecticut, our biggest concern here on the homefront is how best to stockpile our weaponry with a bleeding heart liberal of a president breathing down our necks to deal with this with Owen.

He’s quite anxious, nervous, and sensitive about violence and harm befalling children. He recently watched about 5 minutes of some 1970s B-movie (on TV one weekend afternoon) and saw a baby get killd in some natural disaster, and now he’s been upset about it ever since. He comes downstairs 10 or 15 minutes after going to bed and cries to us that he can’t get the image out of his head.

So…the recent murdering of 20 elementary school children would surely weigh far, far heavily on his mind.

We’ve decided not to tell Owen.

The problem is, not all parents of seven-year olds are sure to feel the same way. And that’s just fine; I’m not deriding their parenting. I’m sure some kids out there can handle this sort of news, and I’m sure many parents are probably thinking, “Well, I better tell my kid, ’cause I don’t want them finding out some other way.” But the thing is, even if mom and dad are discerning as to whether to tell their kids, I don’t think the same can be said for the kids themselves. Bottom line: there’s a good chance Owen would overhear the news on the playground tomorrow.

The other problem is, we live in the information age. We don’t blare the radio news in our house, we don’t subscribe to any newspapers, and we only turn the TV on when we have a specific show to watch (even then, we mute the commercials). But even with all that, it’s tough to keep the terrible news from Owen. Just this evening, in fact, we turned on the TV to watch the season finale of Survivor. Thanks to the NFL, it was delayed, so when I turned on the TV at 7:00, 60 Minutes was airing. …And they were airing a story about the shootings. We shut off the TV for a half hour (until Survivor was supposed to start), but then there was live broadcast of President Obama’s address…about the shootings. Two hours later, just before the host announced the winner of Survivor, he requested a moment of silence out of respect for Friday’s victims. My quick thinking wife switched to a different channel momentarily.

Anyway, Jennifer was in touch with Owen’s teacher and one of the school counselors this weekend, and the latter recommended keeping Owen home from school tomorrow. There are no plans at his school for an official meeting or discussion of the events, but it will likely be a topic on the lips of many of the kids throughout the building.

I am curious how other parents of 5-10 year olds are handling this, or plan to handle this. I checked on Facebook for some insight, but since I try not to read posts written in all caps or exceeding three exclamation marks, there wasn’t much rational content there.

Saturday, 15 December 2012

Today, Owen decided to spruce up our holiday-themed mantle. So he added a ceratopsid dinosaur with other dinosaurs sticking out from its frills. I can’t really explain it better than that, so just look at the picture:

Several hours later, Isla decided she needed to accent the decorations with something out of the Cretaceous Period. Here’s her addition:

Her’s is the one on the vey left of the photo, with its rear end closest to us. Not sure why she wanted it to face away from us, but she might have thought it wanted to look at the other stuff on the mantle. She does that with other things, too. Like, sometimes she turns the photos sitting on our shelf so that they can look at each other, and lately she’s been “fixing” the ornaments on the xmas tree so that they can commune with one another.

Also today, I submitted a short story to The St. Paul Almanac in the hopes of getting it accepted for their 2014 edition. Today was the due date, but I won’t find out if mine’s made the cut until the last day of May. So…stay tuned.

Friday, 14 December 2012

So, a while back, I was buying some merchandise at Home Depot. As I left with my bag of merchandise, the cashier began moving away from the register and started walking to another part of the store. But then I heard him say to the lady that was standing behind me, “Oh, were you buying something?” And then he walked back over to the register and the woman said something like, “Yeah, didn’t you see me?”

Maybe he didn’t. Or, more likely, he thought she was with me. I’m not sure why, though. We didn’t walk up to the register at the same time; I arrived first by several seconds. I never spoke with her and, besides, she was holding merchandise in her hands that, surely, she would have added to my pile of purchases if, indeed, we were “together.”

But maybe cashiers aren’t used to women buying stuff at Home Depot?

Today I was on the other end of this occurrence. (No, I haven’t taken a job as a cashier.)

I stopped at JoAnn this afternoon. I try to avoid this store to the extent possible, but every once in a while, I’m feeling a little too happy, and JoAnn always manages to depress the crap out of me. Actually, I just needed some buttons for my coat.

After finding the needed buttons, I stood in line at a “cash” register. There was only one other customer there, and she appeared to be finishing up. I stood there for about 15 seconds, and then the woman ahead of me grabbed her bag and walked away…and then the cashier shut off the light to her station and also walked away. I wasn’t sure where to go, because usually, in the rare cases when I walk up to a cashier that’s closing down, he or she says to me: “Oh, I’m done for the night, but you can head over to aisle 16,” or something like that.

So, after standing there for a few moments, I walked around to another register. The cahsier there then walked away from her cash register (not sure why), and said, “I can help you over here,” and she directed me back to where I was standing.

“Didn’t she see you?” the cashier asked me, evidently referencing her wayward colleague.

“I  guess not,” I said.

“She must’ve thought you were with the previous lady,” she said.

Yeah, that makes sense. Because, since women don’t shop at Home Depot, men don’t shop at JoAnn.

Monday, 10 December 2012

 Alright, well I hope you all ( =both of you) have enjoyed this obsessively-blog-everyday thing I’ve had going steady since January of 2010, but I’m ending it when the year ends.

Of course, I’ll still blog…but just not everyday.

When I started writing about something everyday, I was under the impression that more frequent blogging would, somehow, attract more readers and more comments. Conclusion: not true.

Add to that, the fact that I sometimes have to conjure up something to write about when I just honestly can’t think of anything interesting to say. And sometimes, I do have something groundbreaking or monumental that I want to share, but I fear it will get lost in the deluge of daily blogs. My policy in those cases is often to “frontload” the blog. What I mean is, I’ll make sure I’m all caught up on the blog up through the current day, and then I’ll schedule tomorrow’s blog to publish as soon as tomorrow becomes today. Then, I just don’t publish anything for three or four days, giving my prized blog some time to languish front and center. This is a time-consuming juggling of a hobby I really should devote that much time to.

As it turns out, too, I have other things I want to write that are non-blog. Right now, for example, I need to clean up an essay I’m writing to submit to The St. PAul Alamanac(I’m hoping to get it published in next fall’s edition), I should be working on the final paper for my class, and I have a small side project known as Deliverance at Hand! that needs more attention. So…there’s all that.

Anyway, 20 days left in the month. Then I’m done with daily blogging. Enjoy, and thanks for coming.

Tuesday, 11 December 2012

Happy half-birthday to me!

 Today, in class, I had to give a presentation. We had to choose between either the play we just read (The Piano Lesson) or the book of poetry we read (Diving into the Wreck). I chose the play, primarily because it’s not poetry. Everyone who chose to write and speak about the poems was complaining today that the poems are too dense and layered and they feel like they’re drowning in ideas and information.

We had to have panel presentations, which meant we were in groups. I chose the two other people I wanted in my group. I really despise group work at school, so I was glad to have some say in who I was working with. Of course, my choices were somewhat narrowed because I could only choose from the other people who were writing about the play. Of the five other people, one hasn’t been to class in two weeks (so I wasn’t going to choose her), and two of the other people were taking their essays in directions I couldn’t tie in with mine.

Anyway, I think it went smoothly. I introduced our panel, and I extracted some arbitrary way in which our three essays tied together.

Only one more day of class remains.

Wednesday, 12 December 2012

Fun-filled fact: Bland pop singer Bruno Mars scores his fourth #1 hit as announced today at Billboard.com. It took him only two years and ten months to rack up four #1 hits, which is almost the fastest of any male soloist.

The record, still holding strong after nearly half a century, is held by Bobby Vinton, who racked up four #1 hits in just two years and six months (between 1962 and 1964). This, of course, excludes Elvis, who took just under 6 months to achieve this feat. But…that was before the chart was officially known as the Hot 100, so it doesn’t count.

Neither Mars nor Vinton comes anywhere close to the female record, currently held by Mariah Carey. She accumulated her first four #1 hits between August 1990 and March 1991; a mere seven months and one week. And, unlike Vinton, she went on to have more #1 hits after that. In fact, she has more #1 hits than any other woman, ever.

Of course, the fastest that any act has ever garnered a quartet of hit is…are you ready for this…it’s really gonna come as a shock…here it comes…ready?…

The Beatles.

Yeah, I know, it’s an amazing surprise. They achieved their fourth #1 hit (“Love Me Do”) less than four months after their first #1 hit. In fact, they could have had five #1 hits during that time, except that their song “Twist and Shout” stalled at #2, being blocked from the top by…you guessed it…The Beatles.

With such a short time remaining in 2012, there’s a tiny chance we could have another #1 hit this year, but if not, then this is it: Twelve #1 hits in 2012. That’s the first time, ever, that the number of #1 songs has matched the number of the year. Well, we’ll see. There might be a 13th hit this year, and that would wreck everything. 

Thursday, 13 December 2012

I’m relieved to report today was my last day of class for the semester.

The work for class isn’t done yet; I still have a final paper that I need to turn in by 5:00 on Wednesday, the 19th, but I can stop by anytime and just slide it under the professor’s door…so no worries.

I’ve been nervous all semester about getting to class from work. Especially this week, with the roads in rough shape from all the snow, I’ve feared the traffic would cause me to be late. And I’ve worried about my car, which, for all appearances, seems like it shouldn’t keep running, but somehow is. The car has now logged over 181,000 miles, and rust is eating it en masse, but it just keeps on trucking. Or car-ing, as the case may be.

Anyway, that’s one less stress. Thanks to my car for getting me there faithfully everyday this semester. Next semester I’ll be taking an evening class, so Iwon’t have to worry, since I’ll be leaving from home and that gives me plenty more options if there is car trouble or inclement weather.