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Monday, December 31, 2018

Send in the clowns


I would be remiss if I didn't finish out the year with a blog post, which makes this number 66 for the year and the most posts I've written since 2011.

If I'd written 666, it would explain the above photo.  Suffice it to say I was just clowning around.

But I digress.

I finished watching a documentary on Netflix last night called, "The American Meme." It essentially pointed out how miserable (and miserably rich) social media stars like Paris Hilton, a large man who goes by the unpolitically correct name of Fat Jew and another Instagram star whose name escapes me. But his millions of followers tuned in to see him get blackout drunk at parties he hosted that included scenes of him pouring champagne over women's breasts and butts.

All of the social media stars bemoaned that millions of people adored them but they were essentially lonely.

Sad clown.

The irony to me was that the only one of these celebrities I'd ever heard of was Paris Hilton. And it occurred to me once again how really old I am. Though I think I'm glad I wasn't born in this generation having never known what it was like not to stare blankly into the digital desert and wonder if that's all there is.

So I suppose ending 2018 on a grateful note that perhaps it is a good thing that Dizgraceland has never discovered is a good thing. Other than the vast amounts of cash it would bring in, it would just be a major annoyance to have people idolizing me and hanging on every word I wrote.

Happy new year.


Thursday, December 27, 2018

Misty, water-colored memories


Well, another year is almost ready to slip into the ending credits and roll off the screen. It has been a busy and in some cases, an expensive year. I had to replace the engine in one car and actual replace our other car. I also had to have a new fence installed around our yard.

On the bright side, I finally earned a character skin (what the avatar looks like) in Fortnite that looks like me: Sergeant Winter. Okay, as my son informed me, he looks like me if I could grow a full beard and actually had muscles, but at least he isn't a man-bun wearing Millennial.  And we both have white hair.

I actually have become fairly adept at playing Fortnite and have been accepted by all of my son's 10-year old friends who play on our squad. I have accepted many challenges and can emote with the best of them. I will be sad when Fortnite is replaced by the next trend and Sergeant Winter and I are forced into retirement to sit around in easy chairs recalling our past glory.

But I digress.


Tuesday, December 11, 2018

All retch and no vomit



I've been watching YouTube videos of British philosopher Alan Watts' lectures lately. Actually I am just listening to Alan Watts since he died in 1973 before the world captured every moment with a digital camera. Watts was one of the first Western philosophers to embrace Zen Buddhism (and kind of understand it).

In one lecture Watts used the phrase, "He was all retch and no vomit." I realized it was a intellectual version of "all hat and no cattle."

And why am I listening to lectures by a dead British Zen philosopher who died at age 58? Because I have to have something to do in between playing matches on Fortnite.

Oh, and I'm passing through one of my soul searching phases. I've also been meditating for ten minutes a day using an APP called Calm. And I went on a crystal craze for a bit, surrounding myself with various quartz crystals.

I think I'm over that, though.

I have also been watching alot of TED talks, too.