My experiencing self and remembering self don't talk

My latest binge watching craze on Netflix has been the TED videos.  And no, these are not videos of my brother Ted. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design. And the videos are a series of experts on various topics condensing years of study into a 20-minute presentation.

The beauty of the TED videos is that you can binge watch television and delude yourself that you are at least expanding your mind. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were a TED video on that very topic.

A holiday from holidays

Blogger's note: For my British friends, when I say holiday, I am not talking about a vacation. I am referring to days we celebrate special occasions.

It's just the day after Easter and I have to say that all of the holidays we have anymore just blur into each other. It's this hyped up continuum of days we need to celebrate. You go from Halloween to Veteran's Day to Thanksgiving with Christmas nipping at the turkey's tail. Then quickly there is New Years.  Martin Luther King Jr. squeezed himself in there followed by Valentine's Day. President's Day parades by merging Washington's and Lincoln's birthdays. Then St. Patrick's Day staggers by followed closely by Easter. Now they are hyping Mother's Day followed by Memorial Day, then Father's Day and the 4th of July. There's not much in August (other than my son's birthday). Then September is back to school (which is really not a holiday). And finally we're back to Halloween.

Ghost towns

My latest Netflix's binge watching was a Ken Burns series from PBS on the history of the West. Or more specifically, the American West. I'd like to say that it has made me proud to be an American, but unfortunately, the history of our country really doesn't make you feel good about mankind in general.

For one, we as a civilization royally screwed the Native Americans from day one.  So it only seems fitting that they exact revenge by selling us cigarettes, fireworks and geriatric come back bands via Native American casinos.

Old MacDonald had a farm

First, it isn't very politically correct to call Old MacDonald, "Old" MacDonald. But I'm sure generations of children wouldn't have bought singing a song about Senior Citizen MacDonald or Middle-aged MacDonald having a farm. Regardless, it is clear that MacDonald wasn't young. And not being young, it was necessary to remind him what animals he had on his farm and what sounds they made. Because having worked the farm most of his life would mean very little to younger people coming along with new ideas of how a farm should run. And the assumption would logically be that since Old MacDonald didn't follow the latest trends in social media, he was incapable of making sound decisions on running his farm.

Running the green (3.1) mile

Let me get this straight, I don't consider myself a runner. I don't believe I have ever found myself in "the zone" nor have I had an adrenalin rush from running. I am what I would describe a "reluctant runner." So when I say that I ran in the annual St. Patrick's Day Dash in Seattle yesterday, I don't want anyone to get the idea that it is something I do on a regular basis.

This was my second 5K run. I used to think a 5K was a long distance but technically it is only 3.1 miles.Still, when you are running in the pouring rain uphill, 3.1 miles seems like a long distance. It seems like a long distance indeed.

I grill, therefore I am

Some people meditate. Some people pray. Some people sit on the pot and ponder.

I grill.

And I don't just grill in the summer. I grill all year round. Shoot, I'd grill every day if I could. Because to me, the closest thing you come to sitting around the primal fire pondering the magic of fire and charred meat is the modern day gas grill.

It helps that grilling time is also a time I usually enjoy a glass of brandy as well. But it is part of the warming ritual, because I often grill on my deck at night when it is raining, snowing or just plain cold. I flip on the overhead electric heater, fire up the grill, line up the meat and sit back to reflect. Sometimes I'll tune in my starred music list from Spotify (which lately consists of some pretty haunting melodies done in a kind of fusion blue grass style).

Hey mister, throw me some beads

I was in New Orleans last week during the first week of Mardi Gras. It has been one of those things that I always wanted to do. Oh, I've been to New Orleans several times, just never during Mardi Gras. The last time I was there was the March before Katrina. I was pleased to find that pretty much nothing has changed in the French Quarter in the nine years since I was there before.

But enough about the past. I can now say that I have truly experienced not one but at least six Mardi Gras parades. And I've got to admit that, despite the crowds and the waiting and the inclement weather, it was pretty darned fun.

Guess who won the Super Bowl!

I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge that, after 38 years, the Seahawks have finally won a Super Bowl!  Back in 2006 I had to watch Pittsburgh (aided by some pretty bad officials) pluck that Lombardi trophy out of our grasp. But now it comes to roost in a city most of the country doesn't even know exists.

Light from dead stars

No, this isn't a post about Elvis. We watched a 3-D film at the Pacific Science Center IMAX last Saturday about astronomers who study the far reaches of the universe using super big telescopes. And they made the point that, because the stars they were viewing were so far away, the light they were seeing was from millions of years ago and the stars themselves likely had died long ago.

Far out.

When do new years get old?

I believe new years are like new cars. They lose much of their value once you drive them off the lot. But there doesn't seem to be a definitive moment when it is no longer a new year and just the year. I presume they become the old year once a new year begins.

No one seems to wish you a, "Happy Old Year." I bet Hallmark would make a card for Happy Old Year if they though there was some money in them.

But I digress.

The world finally ended for Harold Camping

If you follow my blog (and I recommend that you leave at least a car's length between us if you do) than you know I have a special place in my heart for Harold Camping, the pompous ass evangelist who wrongly predicted the end of the world in 1994 and twice in 2011.  And though I don't like to speak ill of the dead, I will make an exception for Harold. Because Harold, aged 92, died yesterday and finally met his maker.

I know that I know nothing

"I know nothing, I hear nothing, I see nothing." --Sergeant Schultz, Hogan Heroes

Knowing that you know nothing is attributed to Socrates by Plato, but no one seems to know if that is true or not. Which kind of confirms the premise that no one knows anything. So does the Internet and Fox News.

It is one of the ironies of aging (along with hair growth in random places) that experience finally teaches you that you know nothing. I have, in fact, become an expert at knowing nothing. I can now state with confidence when asked most questions that I haven't got a clue. I take comfort now in my lack of knowing. When someone asks me for directions, I can  respond, "I don't know," instead of pointing and gesturing and conjecturing and sending the person off to god knows where because I don't want to admit to not knowing.

The source

Я помітив, багато людей з України, відвідайте тут. Чому? Як ви знаходите мого блогу?

 According to Google, a large number of visitors to my blog are from the Ukraine. And they are finding my blog via Ukrainian sites about caviar and other unrelated topics. I don't mean to look a gift visit in the mouth, but I have a feeling there is some spam trick that the Ukrainian sites are using via search engines to create this phenomenon. Because I have never posted anything about caviar. I don't like caviar. I don't particularly like fish.

Who's to blame?

No, I'm not talking about the mess in Washington D.C. (it's quite obvious it's the Republicans and their rabid Tea Bag fringe of mouth breathers). I'm talking about who's to blame for who we are.

I get a bit tired of listening to people blaming their parents, especially since I am now a parent and understand it is a job that no one is really ever trained for and just when you think you are getting the hang of it, your kids move into their next stage and the job description completely changes anyway. Though I'm sure my kids will blame me for an uncontrollable urge to shout out, "Hay is for horses because pigs won't eat it" every time someone starts a sentence with "hey."

Confessions of a binge watcher (or why I'm going Ga Ga)

"Binge-watching, also called binge-viewing, is the practice of watching television for longer time spans than usual, usually of a single television show. Binge-watching as an observed cultural phenomenon has become popular with the rise of online media services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime with which the viewer can watch television shows and movies on-demand."

--Wikipedia 

Hi, my name is Tim and I'm a binge watcher.

 It started with getting Amazon Prime. I started watching seasons of My Haunted House and then Hauntings on my Kindle. Then I got a Smart TV and watched the first three seasons of Glee. That's when I discovered they won't let you watch the latest season on Amazon Prime for free. So I watched the first season of Smash only to discover you couldn't watch the second season for free. So now I am watching the first season of Under the Dome. And I can imagine I won't be able to watching the second season for free.

Harold Camping predicted federal government shutdown

Of course Harold Camping didn't predict the shutdown of the federal government. He is incapable of accurate predictions and is likely locked up in his Christian bunker still waiting for the rapture. I just draw a parallel between Camping's repeated predictions of the end of the world and the brinkmanship of our congress people threatening that the sky will fall if they don't get there own way.

Now that the federal government is technically shutdown and "non-essential" employees are being furloughed. And irony of all ironies, this doesn't include Congress. I would argue that they are about as non-essential as you can get.

Shadow and light

It has been a year since my mother died. And though I don't really think the day someone dies should be the day that they are remembered, I couldn't help but note the milestone. I suppose I could have written something on her birthday. But somehow birthdays cease to be a milestone once the person has died. You have to preface everything with, "She would have been ___ years old today if she was still alive."

Sometimes I forget that my mother is dead. Sundays roll around and I am sitting at the table drinking my coffee and reach for the phone to make my weekly call. Then I remember that she is gone.

It's Gleek to me

Naya Rivera who plays Santana on Glee
(Courtesy of my friend Michael Hopper)

One of the advantage of having deluxe cable television is that you have so many television stations to pick from that you don't really watch any of them. So, although the television series Glee has been on the air on the Fox Network since 2009, I never watched it. Being on the Fox Network was probably the primary reason I never watched it.

I didn't really have a clue as to what it was about or who starred in it other than comedienne Jane Lynch. I assumed it had something to do with a high school glee club and that Jane Lynch was their director.

Weeping skies, breaking glass

It has been an uncharacteristically sunny summer in Seattle. So much so that when I stepped off from the train this morning I was shocked by some drizzle. How soon we forget. Because when fall comes, this is likely to be the norm, not the exception.

It actually rained a bit yesterday as well, but it more of the teasing variety that never really delivered. I was sitting down on the walkway below one of our decks picking up bits of broken glass when the drops descended. The broken glass was from one of the glass panels that line our upper deck. When we woke up on Saturday, one of them had shattered for no apparent reason. At first there was just an elaborate spiderweb of cracks throughout the panel. But later that night when I was getting ready to grill, the glass began popping out.

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to read

Year's ago, when CD's were just starting to hit the scene in the computer world, I imagined a world where books would eventually be replaced by some kind of digital reader. And since I have no way to prove that I had this idea long before Amazon existed and the Kindle hit the scene, you have only my word and faulty memory that this is true.

I recently read a blog post by Seth Godin (self-proclaimed marketing guru) about the death of book stores brought on by the proliferation of digital books. Along with the book stores going out of business, so is the publishing world that dictated for so many years who and what could be published. Because now, everybody and their dog can publish an electronic book. And trust me I've read a few books lately that seemed as though a dog had written them by licking kibbles and bits off from some keyboard in random order.

Don't get me wrong. I love my Kindle Fire and digital books. I am just sad that being a writer just isn't what it used to be. When I was 16 and got my first job shelving books in a public library, I dreamed that some day some pimply faced teenager was going to have to shelf one of my novels. Now, instead of shelving my book, the same pimply faced teenager would simply have to download it off Amazon and then only if he mistakes it for an App that contains nudity and violence.

While digital books are more accessible to a wider audience, they unfortunately cheapen the craft of writing. We used to put a value on writers. Now anyone with a computer can publish. And Godin points out that very few digital books are pirated the way music is. No one puts value on them the way they used to with paper books.

Amazon regularly offers "free" digital books for Kindle. I have found that most of the free books I download are well worth the price I've paid. Many are self-indulgent, loosely veiled memoirs masquerading as novels. Others are the first in a series that the authors are using to hook readers so they will buy the rest of the books in the series. And worst of all are the works of Christian fiction that don't state upfront that they are works of Christian fiction.

Digital books have cured me of the desire to ever write and publish a novel. They have become the vanity press for the masses. There doesn't seem to be a sense of accomplishment in publishing a digital book, especially if it is self published. It it kind of like writing a blog.

Wait a minute. Who am I to be critical of self-indulgent, self-published ramblings? It is my trademark. I wrote the book on it. Well, actually the blog.