Friday, 06 May 2011

While working by myself for some time in the lab today, I decided to turn on NPR. I don’t normally listen to that station at work, since it’s too distracting to communicate with co-workers while trying to pay attention to a story but, like I said, I was alone today. Unfortunately, though, NPR was having their membership drive – in which they dedicate about 20% of each hour to telling listeners how awesome they are at producing the other 80%. Then, after listening to this repetitive self-congratulatory advertising for several minutes, they ask how much it’s worth to you. I eventually had to just it off.

In the afternoon, I picked up Owen from school and we headed over to the local theater to catch a showing of Rio. This ends what is, I believe, the longest spell of not going to the theaters that I’ve experienced in my entire life. I hadn’t sat down in a movie theater in over nine months – since just before Isla was born. Anyway, yeah, Rio. Decent flick. It’s definitely not a Pixar, that’s for sure, and many of the plot developments could be spotted about a half hour away. There is some groan0inducing rapping, a pointless venture through the Carnival Float Contest, and a tired recycling of they-think-they’re-so-cool side characters. It’s directed by Carlos Saldanha, who directed the first Ice Age film, and it even began with a short filmlet featuring the squirrel from that franchise. Incidentally – that filmlet was funny, but how over-done is it that that squirrel can never find a good place to hide his acorn? Are there no other ideas from the Ice Age/Rio team? Additionally, Rio stars (the voice of) Jesse Eisenberg. After not even hearing of this guy at all four months ago, I have now, in short order, seen three of his films. It appears he plays only one character. Perhaps, like Jack Nicholson, he’ll be able to parlay this into a multi-Oscar winning, decades long career.

Still, Owen liked it and even declared that he wished to own the movie on DVD. I told him it’s not on DVD yet, so he said maybe we could come see it at the theater next Friday. I said, “Well, why don’t we just wait until Xmas, and I’ll but it for you then.” He said he wanted it for his birthday, and then I had to remind him that his birthday is only 8 days hence, and it’s highly unlikely Rio will be available on DVD by then.

I also watched the latest episode of Community today (it aired yesterday). Since this week’s episode was only the first of a two-parter, I think I’ll hold off until next week to write about it. However, at the moment, I think this latest episode, “A Fistful of Paintballs,” is the worst one so far – worse, even, then last week’s entirely mediocre train wreck.

Saturday, 07 May 2011

Today, for the first time in my life, I ventured inside a YMCA. Jennifer has come up with the idea of joining the Y for health and fitness reasons, so we decided to look into it. I filled out a questionnaire while she was talking with one of the employees. Among other things, it asked where I first heard about the YMCA, but none of the listed options said “Village People song,” so I left that part blank.

We also stopped at a party store, too, today. We purchased lots of items for Owen’s upcoming birthday party and, wow, all those little things add up pretty quickly. We were trying to find a few things that were Star Wars-related. We found some, but…it’s odd how much of the paraphernalia deals with the fighting aspect of Star Wars. I mean, why can’t they have plates with C3PO and R2D2 on them, or Yoda grimacing for the camera? Most of the Star Wars party supplies showed Luke and Vader fighting, or some ship blowing something up. I guess it is called Star WARS, and so maybe I shouldn’t complain.

Thursday, 05 May 2011

So here was my very full day – very full despite the fact that I didn’t even go to work. I’ll try to be brief…

This morning, I took Owen to school. This is normally Jennifer’s job but I hardly ever get to do it, so I figured I would do it today. After driving past a for-sale house to see if I liked its location (I didn’t), I arrived back home and Jennifer, Isla, and I took off to go brunch at IHOP. Here’s a stupid thing about IHOP: my wife ordered a meal that came with meat, but she asked the waitress if it would be possible to substitute the meat for something else, such as fruit. The waitress said she could do that, but she’d have to charge a dollar extra. My wife said that was stupid, since fruit costs less than meat (I was considering swapping my strawberry waffles for meat waffles in order to save a buck). The waitress said they had a no-substitution policy, which pretty much means its a we’re-not-gonna eat-there-again policy.

Just before noon, I drove to the state capitol. I’m happy to report that there was plenty of on-street parking, though I thoughtlessly arrived with no quarters for the meters. I rolled down my car window and asked this guy if he had change for a buck, and he said he was just leaving his spot, which still had a half hour on the meter. He also gave me four quarters for my dollar. However, it turns out each quarter only adds ten minutes to the meter, so I still needed more coins. I ran up to a woman (conscientious of the fact that I once scared the crap out of lady doing this once before) and requested a paper-for-coin swap.

My reason for going downtown was to attend the Day of Reason – a secular response to the ery unconstitutional Day of Prayer. I had to walk through a sea of fundamental Christians on the way into the capitol, so I stopped to film some of it (’cause that’s what I do!).

When I got into the capitol, I sat down in the first seat I saw. A guy sitting next to me said he recognized me from my photo in the Humanist. He said he keeps my article on his fridge for when Witnesses come to his door. And, guess what, some Witnesses did come to his door a couple of months ago. When he saw them approaching, he quickly reviewed the last paragraph of my article, wherein I offer suggestions on what to say to Witnesses. He asked them the questions. The first one (who do you shun?) they flatly denied, the second one (if I join can I hold dissenting opinions?) made the woman at his door cry, and the man took the Watchtower back. Oh well, poor Jared and Crystal. Maybe they’ll think about their cult a little bit now.

Anyway, the Day of Reason featured a presentation from a lawyer who fights for separation of church and state, and a state representative (Phyllis Kahn, who seems almost as cool as Steve Simon).

Afterward, I left in a hurry to get back to my hungry, hungry meter. I had to pause for a moment, though, to film some more of the people bowing down on the capitol steps. There was something oddly appropriate about fundamental Christians with their eyes closed and asses in the air.

Here’s the footage I shot. I added in some scriptures, to keep it real god-based: WATCH THIS VIDEO.

After stopping briefly at home, I took off for my University. There, I dropped off my big project to the professor’s office, then attended a “Poster presentation.” I had to attend one of the many “Honors Day” events today and write about it for class. The most interesting poster had to do with a study on how to tell the difference between bones that have been manipulated by animals and bones that have been manipulated by humans at archaeological sites (ask me in person). What did this have to do with my class? I have no idea, but I have to write about it just the same.

I then drove to Owen’s school and picked him up. He and I paid a visit to Tea Source, a store that’s a lot like Teavanna, only about half the price. Then we went to Patina to look for a gift for Mother’s Day. While inspecting the jewelery, one of the staff members said, “Are you guys shopping for Mother’s Day?”

Owen said yes, but I joked and said, “No, I just like to spend my free time looking at women’s jewelery.”

The lady laughed, but then said that I would be surprised how many men do come into the store just to do that very thing.

That evening, the four of us went for a walk (Isla free-loaded a ride in the stroller). We stopped at Mississippi Market to buy ingredients for tacos. It was, after all, Cinco de Mayo.

Monday, 02 May 2011

So, I was talking with one of my new co-workers today and, at one point, we began talking about movies. As we discussed some recent films we’ve seen, we eventually began talking about actors. She mentioned a movie with Robin Wright. Robin is probably best known for playing Forrest Gump’s wife in Forrest Gump, but whenever I hear her name, I automatically think of The Princess Bride.

“I like Robin Wright,” I said, “remember, she was Buttercup in The Princess Bride.”

To my surprise, my co-worker said she’d never hear of The Princess Bride. When I expressed this surprise, she responded with, “Well, I don’t have any kids.”

I then explained that it’s not a kids’ movie, and supported this by saying I originally saw the film when I was a teenager and that I loved it long before I became a parent (I hate that saying “a parent” sounds like “apparent”). I said it wasn’t animated, and then my co-worker asked if it was the movie that starred Anne Hathaway. I then explained that, no, she was thinking of The Princess Diaries. I said, admittedly, the movie has a poor title, but it’s not a “princess movie,” nor does it dwell heavily on a royal wedding (that’s just the catalyst).

Anyway, I’m not picking on my co-worker or anything like that. I just think it’s amazing that a self-described movie-lover such as herself had never seen or even heard of The Princess Bride. I encouraged her to immediately rectify this situation.

Tuesday, 03 May 2011

So, as I’ve mentioned here before, I’m attempting to keep a running tally of the money I find during the year. If you don’t recall me discussing that, perhaps you should read this blog post.

Now that the year is one-third over, I figured I’d provide an update.

So far, I’ve found $3.72. This is, of course, far lower than I would’ve liked to have found by this time, but it’s still a decent haul; I’m well on-track to beat my goal of finding one hour’s worth of minimum wage during the year.

There are many days in which I found absolutely no money, including a thirteen-day gap from February 17th to March 2nd. The most I found in any one day was 52 cents (on April 2nd). The most popular place to find money is just outside on the ground, though that’s quite a large area. If I include only specific places, both our apartment’s laundry room and the floor at my job’s cafeteria are pretty much gold mines in this area. I have also found money while at college, while pumping gas, at Half-price Books, and at Mississippi Market.

I found money on February 2nd (1 cent), March 2nd (1 dime), and April 2nd (that 52 cents I mentioned above). Sadly, my second-of-the-month streak died out yesterday. So far this month I haven’t found anything, in fact.

Wednesday, 04 May 2011

Someone posted this video on a blog of State Representative Steve Simon giving his view of the proposal to put a marriage-defining amendment onto the state constitution:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXpOA3jPC04&sns=fb

Simon’s argument is brilliant. Assuming is basic premise that the god of the Christian bible is real and that he created the universe (a premise I’m willing to accept for the sake of Simon’s argument), then it’s difficult to find a flaw in his comments.

Of course, if I was still a Jehovah’s Witness I would take issue with this video. Well, perhaps I wouldn’t even watch the video in the first place because the government is just UNDER SATAN’S CONTROL!!!!! AND GOD WILL DESTROY THEM ALL VERY SOON!!! (at least, that’s the ‘good news’ we used to tell people). But, assuming that I did watch the video, I would just ‘reason’ that Simon has it wrong: god doesn’t create people gay, he just lets people be born with any and all sorts of defects and traits and we have to muddle through until he comes along and murders 99.9% of humans and then lets all the righteous people live on into paradise. There, in paradise, he will correct any imperfection we may have, whether we are blind, missing a limb, or even if we’re gay. I would reason that just as some people have a tendency towards alcoholism and need to curb this behavior in order to win god’s approval, so the homosexuals need to curb their bad behavior in order to live according to god’s standards.

Of course, this is about as fucked up as any ‘reasoning’ can be.

For one thing, nearly all ‘defects’ in the congregation were recognized as such and were accommodated. To my knowledge, no one was discriminated against if they were deaf, or paraplegic (just to give a couple of examples). No one thought they were some weird deviants. To the contrary, such differences were, as I said, accommodated: sign language was provided, as were wheel chair ramps. About the only defect that was discriminated against was the poor souls born penis-less. We called them “women” and we wouldn’t let them do anything except clean the building and knock on doors…’cause those jobs sucked anyways and so we normal humans (i.e., those having a penis) wanted all the help we could get.

Second, homosexuality was viewed as pretty much the most grievous sin there was. When I went on the Oprah Winfrey Show, for example, my grandfather said he didn’t mind that so much (as if I was seeking his permission), but that I better never go on Rosie O’Donnell’s show. He didn’t like her because she was a lesbian. Oprah, incidentally, has, for years, lived with a man to whom she is not married, and is therefore equally culpable as per the bible, but somehow her sin wasn’t as bad.

Third – and here’s the key point – the government is and should be separate from religion. Regardless of the Witnesses’ low opinion of gays, they don’t ever have to perform any gay weddings if they don’t want to (and they won’t). However, the government should not stipulate against such marriages if the only argument put forth is a religious one (and it is). In fact, Witnesses should welcome a legalization of gay marriage, as it will make their religion stand out even more from mainstream America and it will help prove to them that this whole world is SATAN’S!!!!!!

Friday, 29 April 2011

Today I participated in a highway cleanup. My employer sponsors the event and, even though it didn’t come with a free meal like it did last time, I still like the opportunity to get outside and wear a fluorescent vest.

I participated in my company’s cleanup in 2004 and 2005, but, for various reasons, I haven’t done it since. In 2006, for example, I was vacationing in Florida. In 2008, I think I called in sick that day.

Here’s a fun fact: highway trash essentially = cigarette butts. The butts formed the majority of the items I picked up today (not in volume, but in quantity), and I didn’t even bother to pick up about half the butts I saw. There were the other predictable bits of trash: McDonald’s wrappers, plastic bags, beer cans, drinking straws, and car bits, but it seemed as if no piece of litter could be tossed onto the side of the road without at least adding two or three cigarette butts. This shatters no stereotypes I have about cigarette smokers.

Saturday, 30 April 2011

This evening, my wife and I watched the movie Children of Men. I had heard good things about this Oscar-nominated flick; alas, they were all untrue.

Children of Men was a confusing, disjointed story. It began well; I enjoyed seeing how the world would be different if there were no people under 18 years of age – such as (and my wife notice this before I did) the proliferation of pets in the absence of children. It soon devolved into a mess. Who is fighting who, and why? A couple of times, my wife paused the movie to ask if I knew what was happening; I would conjecture a guess, but then just declare that I didn’t even care anymore.

The pregnant woman needs to get to safety, that’s the basic gist so, in that time-honored movie cliche’, she has to travel through hazards that are way worse than where she came from (leading me to wonder why she didn’t stay put). I think she was worried that the Brits would treat her and her baby like freaks, or maybe force them to do things against their will, but early on the movie makes a point of showing that this is a danger the whole world is facing, so it’s not clear where she’s running off to.

Near the end of the movie, while she’s in the worst possible place, guess what? That’s right, she goes into labor. Her water breaks while she’s on a bus. This is another movie-birth cliche’: gravid women have absolutely no idea they’re nearing the end of their pregnancy until the water breaks, and the water always breaks before anything else happens (okay, maybe – MAYBE – the woman stands up and announces she’s feeling funny).

Squirreling away in a shit-hole of a hotel room in the middle of a war zone (a war zone that they traveled to!), the laboring woman and her male companion (not the father) begin preparations for the birth. The man looks for clean water, which makes sense, and the woman lies down, spread-eagled, on a dirty mattress. Yet another movie-birth cliche’: no matter when or where the woman is, when she feels the baby is coming, so immediately has to lie down on her back like a subservient woman. Man, the medical community has really indoctrinated women well. So well, in fact, that that this woman – who has never before been pregnant, nor has she seen any other pregnancy or births in her life – still feels the need to lie down. Stupid.

Once the baby is born (and the woman can’t do it without the man’s help), she says that they need to cut the cord. The man begins looking around the room (presumably for a shoe lace), but states that “there’s no rush,” which, to me, was a rare instance of the scriptwriters actually researching the rare, obscure topic of childbirth before putting pen to paper.

For the next twenty tedious minutes, as the trio navigate the middle of a battlefield, the woman somehow manages to not hemorrhage. The baby, meanwhile, spends most of this time crying, which is nearly as annoying as a constant dog bark or car alarm. The new mom isn’t sure how to quiet her crying baby, which is too bad, because the crying could lead to their being found out and killed.

Later, the trio are aboard a row boat and the baby is still crying. The man suggests the woman place the baby up on her shoulder and pat her back.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a lame-ass movie even without the trite, predictable birth scene. I just think it’s sad that only 18 years after the last baby is born women have forgotten what their breasts are for. Too bad. ‘Cause my guess is that that baby was crying because no one was feeding it anything.

[Also see the recent episode of Community for another example of the Hollywood-only-has-one-birth-story-to-tell policy.]

Sunday, 01 May 2011

Today, I listened to two audio files my friend Ryan sent to me.

Here’s the first one: Every #1 Song, part 1.

Here’s the second one: Every #1 Song, part 2.

Basically, the creator of these files took a snippet from every song that went to #1 “EVER” and spliced them together in chronological order. He did a pretty good job, too, there’s about 2 to 10 seconds of each song, and it melds (usually) smoothly into the next one. When possible, he took a section of the song where the title is spoken, for example, at one point we hear “No I gotta cut loose, footloose,” which is certainly a more appropriate sampling of “Footloose” than “Eighty hours, for what?”

Despite the claims on the page, it’s not EVERY song – for some reason, part two ends with Whitney Houston’s version of “I Will Always Love You,” which was the final #1 song of 1992. Perhaps there will be a part 3 that consists of the last 20 years, which would be great, because I’m aching to hear a snippet of the Black Eyed Peas “Imma Be.”

Also, it’s funny to notice the different length of the songs. For “Hey Jude,” for example, there’s barely enough time to hear the title being sung – I’d say there’s about 3 seconds of the song. Later, for a certain Barbara Streisand song, the file lingers for 15 seconds (or maybe longer) as Babs spits out the two lines leading up the title. Also, some songs are instrumental, so I wasn’t always sure if a new song was playing or not.

While listening, I followed along in my copy of The Billboard Book of #1 Hits, just so that I could ‘check them off’ as I went along. Oddly, the file skips over a few songs. Not sure why. I couldn’t detect “Sixteen Tons,” for example, and it also missed playing  Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be the Day.”  At several points, the clip reverses the order of two or more songs, too, and I’m not sure why that is.

Overall, it was a fun listen. It brought back many good memories, and a couple of times I found myself thinking, “Oh, so that’s how that song goes…I didn’t know that was a number one song.” If you have time (and it does take time), take a listen.

Wednesday, 27 April 2011

Today, for the first time, I was the Toastmaster. That means that I hosted the meeting – calling up people as their turns arrived, and then thanking them afterward. April marks the first time since I joined the club that I have gone an entire month without giving a speech, but that’s just fine because I’m busy with school now that the semester is wrapping up. In fact, the agenda for the two Toastmasters’ meetings in may was passed out today and I was happy to notice that I am not scheduled for a speech at either meeting. I mean, I still plan to attend, of course, but it’s difficult to write up a competent speech when I’m busy with school.

Speaking of school, I may have mentioned this before, but there are assigned readings to do before each class. For tomorrow’s class, we have the biggest reading assignment yet: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. Yep, an entire book. Fortunately, I have already read this book, so I have at least a fading memory of its contents. Also, since I saw this book coming up on the horizon, I decided to secure a copy of the book on audiocassette and “read” it in the car going to and from work this week. I finished “reading” it today on my way home from work. The downside to doing it this way is that, when I come across a memorable passage to write down on the assigned worksheet, I just kinda gotta remember where it is and then look it up when I get home. The upside, however, is that I managed to “read” the entire book without taking away any time for family/work/sleep.

Thursday, 28 April 2011

Have I mentioned that, though I now work in a new department, I still have the same cube that I’ve had for over four years? Yeah, it’s true. This leads to the odd predicament wherein the people I used to work with walk by and wonder what I’m still doing squatting on their turf, whereas the people I now work with have no idea where I vanish to when not in meetings or in the lab. So, I’m kind of inhabiting a kind of purgatory right now where I both belong and don’t belong in two places.

I kind of like it.

More interestingly, we continued our discussion of Edgar Allen Poe in class today. Once again, the professor acted like he was going to share the Simpsons’ classic interpretation of “The Raven” with us, only to run out of time at the end of class.

Here’s a fascinating question:

Do we study texts like “The Raven” because we’ve studied them?

Yeah, it didn’t make any sense to me either, at first. But here’s what he meant: Does “The Raven” actually have outstanding artistic merit or some other historical importance, or do students and poetry aficionados study, read, and discuss it simply because it’s what has always been done (and, therefore, has lasting fame).

The answer, of course, is both, thought several students seemed to feel the answer fell squarely in one camp. This included one student who expressed her opinion that “The Raven,” as odd as this may sound, really isn’t that good.

The thing is, no one in class was alive when “The Raven” was first printed. They didn’t live through that time when it was first read and analyzed as new. Overall, though, the general consensus was that it was a superb poem and, consequently, it has endured through time. This leads to the fact that it gets printed in anthologies, such as the one we have for class, in which later generations get exposed to it, and they have the opportunity to like or dislike it.

Here, then, are two examples that, I think, explain this better than my previous convoluted paragraph:

I have this friend who is waaaay into music. He is proficient at several instruments; he has recorded dozens of albums, been a member of many bands, and has performed live at quite a few venues. As you can imagine, he’s also quite the storehouse of music lore – he knows a lot about the history and industry of music, so much so that he frequently cites musical acts I have never heard of.

One day, about 10 years ago, I stepped into his new bedroom, scanned the room, and announced, “I think John Lennon is overrepresented here.” He laughed, but then went on to explain that the reason why three of his eight music posters featured John Lennon was because there’s plenty of Lennon merchandise out there. And he’s correct: were he to make a list of his 100 favorite musicians, then walk into a music shop with the express idea of purchasing merchandise featuring these individuals, it’s hard to see how any musician would have more paraphernalia than Lennon (especially because Elvis would not be on his list).

You could say the same with me: Why do I have Star Wars Monopoly? Because it exists, while a version of Monopoly featuring far better films does not.

More relevant, let’s look at a list of films I’ve seen from the 1920s:

…Yeah, that’s it. A list of films I’ve seen from any year of the past twenty would be longer than this. Now take a look at the list, there are a lot of classics on here; it’s likely you’ve heard of these films or, if you haven’t, that I could give you one or two facts about the film that would make you nod and go, “Oh, so that’s why we give a rat’s ass about that film.” And that’s the point: I am living in 2011. I do not know which films are the greatest of this year, and I do not know which films from 2011 will still be considered great films in 2100. However, the 1920s were several decades ago. As such, many of the films from that time are lost, and the only ones from that era that I care to see – or, indeed, have even heard about – are likely to be the ones that have stood the test of time because, for whatever reason, they’re considered classics.

The best film from the 1920s may be one I’ve never heard of, but then it’s likely I won’t ever see it.

Same thing with “The Raven.” The best poem from the 1840s might be one that no in class – including the professor – has ever heard of. But enough people felt “The Raven” was worthy enough to be reprinted and so, today, we have it as an example of poems from the 1840s. And if any of us like it, then we continue to perpetuate the myth of importance.