Profoundly lost

"Vanity of vanities! All is vanity."

Ecclesiastes

One of the beauties (and sad things) about getting old is my memory isn't worth crap.  Why this can be a beautiful thing is that I can read blog posts I've written from a few months ago and not remember I've written them. And then I can marvel at how profound they are. So profound, that I originally going to title this post "Lost and profound," but then discovered I'd already written a post called "Lost and profound" back in September 2006.

See what I mean about the memory?

Living in a digital world

Living in a material world
And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl
 --Peter Brown & Robert Rans, "Material Girl."

 I think Madonna should remake this song with these lyrics:

Living in a digital world
And I am a digital girl
You know that we are living in a digital world
And I am a digital girl.

 Because material things no longer matter. No one wants a big car, big home, fancy watch, diamonds or designer clothing any more. Prestige now depends on how many followers, virtual friends, likes, retweets, favorites, hits, views, click-thru's, and pins you have.

What the fuck is wrong with the world?

I say this as I type on my laptop streaming my latest binge watching on Netflix (Gilmore Girls...don't judge) and check my Smartphone. I've got Twitter, Facebook and two e-mail accounts open. I'm bartering on Craig's List, watching on eBay and finding the cheapest deal on Amazon with free shipping with Prime. I pause to like a photo on Facebook posted by a friend I haven't seen in person for at least five years.

I have honed my ADD to be able to flit through my Twitter stream stopping only briefly to see which childhood star has aged poorly (duh, which hasn't). Come to think of it, has anyone truly aged well?

I don't read books anymore. I download them on my Kindle Fire. I still don't read them because I'm too busy playing the weekly Angry Birds Friends Tournament. And then only when I'm not respawning on Mindcraft (using pointers given me by my six-year old) while listening to my Amazon Prime music from the Cloud (because Spotify makes you listen to commercials and Pandora is so 2010).

It is hard to believe that I am Baby Boomer.

Mind fog

The airport of my mind is socked in with fog right now and not too many planes of thought are landing. It is one of the symptoms of whatever crud I have come down with, likely spawned on a 5 and a half hour flight from Washington D.C. last Friday. Thus the airport analogy.

I am normally a pretty healthy person. My two young children are constantly coming down with coughs and sniffles bred at the Petri dish of a public school. But up until now, I have managed to avoid coming down with anything serious.

I'm not bringing you down, am I?

"I'm not bringing you down, am I?
--Marvin the robot, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

I will confess that I have this fear that deep down (or not so deep down) I am a Marvin, especially in my blog. I harbor paranoid thoughts that people become regular readers and then irregular readers (readers who stop reading my blog very often, not readers who have a touch of constipation) because they get turned off by negativity.

Now granted Marvin had the brain the size of a planet and I'm not saying I have the brain the size of a planet...well maybe Pluto now that it has once again achieved near planet status although a dwarf planet. I don't consider myself superior to other people except for most Republicans and right-wing Christians. Oh, and people who shop at Walmart on a regular basis. I also consider myself superior to anyone who would wear a Utilikilt.

On being cool

At the risk of repeating myself, yet again, I've been thinking about being cool. I wrote about it several years ago in a post called "Way Past Cool." And I made it pretty clear that I don't think it is possible to be cool by design. But I have always wanted to be cool.

I grew up in Idaho in a lower-income, working-class family. Neither of my parents had gone to college. We lived in a small rambler build in the early 1950s. I had two brothers. Although I wasn't aware of it at the time, there wasn't a great deal of discretionary income. My father worked in a  hardware company warehouse and my mother juggled a variety of jobs over the years (school lunch cook, house cleaner, convenience store clerk and several years working at a company that produced plywood panels for mobile homes).

Ten things never to say or do in an elevator

I have made it clear on many occasions that I am not big on small talk. I tolerate basic courtesies such as saying hello and asking someone how they are doing (provided they don'take this as open-ended invitation to actually tell me how they are doing). But that's pretty much where I draw the line.

 Unless there is a hurricane or tornado headed my direction, I don't want to talk about the weather. And after the Superbowl, I don't want to talk about the Seahawks for several months.

 But it is in an elevator that I really don't want to engage in small or large talk, especially with strangers. The only worst places I can think to strike up a conversation with a stranger is when you are sitting in a toilet stall or changing your clothes in a locker room at the gym.

An elevator is a small, enclosed space that is intended for vertical transportation, not conversation.

Write like there's no one reading and other tips to achieving obscurity

Since my forays into social media began, I have woefully found myself pandering to the trends and topics that I thought might increase my followers, likers, friends, readers, pokers (which is a bit disturbing) and whatever else you call strangers who interact with you on the Web. I have done so thinking I would engage the masses and become THE next blipping hashtag trend. And I have failed miserably.

Maybe it's because I am a Baby Boomer and not a Millennial. Though according to a quiz I took on Facebook, I am more Millennial than Millennial's are. Or maybe I came to the social media party late with a box of wine. More likely, I think it is that I have begun thinking of my blog posts as content versus me just writing whatever the hell I feel like and not caring whether anyone reads it or not.

Magic moments

"This moment isn't going to define this team."
--Pete Caroll, Head Coach of the Seattle Seahawks

Not to belabor the fated final call of the Seahawks on Superbowl Sunday, but I was struck that both Pete Caroll and Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson have made public statements that they weren't going to let their lives, futures, or careers be defined by that one moment when they passed instead of running the ball. Pete Caroll even went so far as to state that it wasn't a bad play call, just a bad result (i.e. the ball was intercepted and they lost the Superbowl).

You've got to love that kind of point of view. As Caroll pointed out, if the pass had been successful, no one would have given it another thought. The Superbowl would have been won. The Patriots would have slunk away whining about them being the better team anyway and we wouldn't have to rehash that one moment over and over. And if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

This too shall pass (even if they shouldn't have)

In the grand scheme of things, the Superbowl is just a blip on the cosmic radar. Despite all the hype, it is really just a game and an opportunity to see major (and some not so major) companies' advertising budgets go up in smoke for a 30-second spot. But I couldn't help but take it a bit like a kick in the stomach (or parts south of it), when the Seahawks lost the Superbowl in the last 30 seconds or so because of a bizarre decision to pass the ball when they were on one-yard line with major momentum behind them.

But that would be second guessing a coach who has much more experience at these things than I do. I am pretty sure he was probably thinking they weren't expecting them to pass. They were very likely expecting Beastmode to pop some Skittles, grab the ball and try to avoid getting got (which I'm betting would have been successful and I'd be writing a completely different post here).

Buttered rolls and responsibilities

It is not often that I am able to spout an original pun. I've whined before about Googling my original ideas only to find out hundreds if not thousands of people have already had them. But I am proud to say that I think I am the first one to use the pun, "rolls and responsibilities" on purpose. I think it would make one bitchin' name for a socially responsible bakery.

I am staking claim to this pun after a Google search that turned up 73,900 references to "rolls and responsibilities." Now I didn't scroll through all 73,900, but after going through the first three or so pages that all of the uses of "rolls and responsibilities" were made by people whose intentions were to refer to "roles and responsibilities." Of particular note were pages by firearm safety program supported by the NRA and one called "Rolls and Responsibilities of Academy Governors" out of the UK prepared by education advisor consultants (who might want to rethink their career paths).

So now I hereby claim "Rolls and Responsibilities" as my sole pun. No other shall be the first.

Talking trash and Sisyphean tasks

Garbage Man (sung to the tune of Rocket Man by Elton John)

I filled my trash bags up last night, alright.
Pick-up hour, six a.m.
But the Garbage truck won't be by 'til ten.
I hate taking trash out so much, just ask my wife
I carry it out at a snails pace
Cause the bag ain't light. 

And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time
'Til trash time brings me 'round again to find
I can't believe all the garbage we produce at home
Oh, no no no...I'm a garbage man
Garbage man taking out the trash out here alone 

Can't believe all the waste you generate when you have kids
In fact it really starts to smell
And no one would pick it up, if you didn't.
And it's recycling, I don't understand
Why don't they pick it up, every week?
A garbage man, a garbage man 

And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time
'Til trash time brings me 'round again to find
I can't believe all the garbage we produce at home
Oh, no no no...I'm a garbage man
Garbage man taking out the trash out here alone 

And I think it's gonna be a long, long, time
'Til trash time brings me 'round again to find
I can't believe all the garbage we produce at home
Oh, no no no...I'm a garbage man
Garbage man taking out the trash tryin' not to bitch and moan. 

Now, I think it's gonna be a long long time
And I think it's gonna be a long long time
And I think it's gonna be a long long time
And I think it's gonna be a long long time

This song came to me the other night when I was taking the trash out on a cold and rainy night. I seem to make an inordinate number of trips to the trash can with bags of trash. This is even after the even more inordinate number of trips to the recycling bin. Trips to the yard waste receptacle have subsided with the advent of winter.

Twitter me this, Twitter me that

A few year's ago, I wrote about Dan Zarrella's book about contagious ideas. In his book he reveals a list of words and phrases that analytics have shown get the most retweets on Twitter:

"you, twitter, post, blog, social, free, media, help, please retweet, great, social media, 10, follow, how to, top, blog post, check out, new blog post"

I kind of poo-pooed the book, but ironically my post about it is probably my most read. So maybe Zarrella was onto something.

At the time I read Zarrella's book, I wasn't really actively using Twitter. But my day job forced me kicking and screaming into the land of 140 characters and I've recently immersed myself in the fire hose of tweets that spew through my feed each day. In the process I have tried to figure out what grabs people's attention enough that they will either follow me, retweet me or favorite one of my Tweets.

So funny I forgot to laugh

I read this article on Gawker (one of those blogs that isn't supposed to suck) the other day call Time to Retire, Dave Barry. It was written by Hamilton Nolan, a writer I've never heard of writing about a writer I'd grown up wanting to write like. And the bold statement Nolan makes about Barry is that he is no longer funny.

Okay, normally I would just shrug and say, "Whatever," after reading someone's critique of a relatively famous person. I am sure it isn't the first time Dave Barry has been told he wasn't funny. Humor, after all, is a very subjective thing. We all laugh to the beat of a different drummer.

Top ten reasons to ignore top ten lists

As someone who grew up in an era when journalism required you actually had to write about something based on facts and research, I've become increasingly appalled that news has been reduced to what you can fit into 140 characters with a link to a list that usually contains some version of a ten ranked items.

So I've come up with my own list of reasons why you should ignore any top ten list someone tries to lure you in to read (including this one):

Aftermath

There is nothing more depressing than a pile of post-Christmas morning, unwrapped gifts. This is largely due to my belief that there is a Schrödinger's cat quality to wrapped gifts. They hold so much more promise wrapped than they do unwrapped. It's not that I'm not happy with the gifts themselves once they are unwrapped. It is more the excitement they hold before you unwrap them and lose the mystery.

I think most of life is like that. The promise is always more intriguing than the ultimate reality.

But I am just wallowing in the after the holiday blues. It's the seam between Christmas and the New Year that gets me the most. The old year is crawling out the door and the New Year is smacking it on the butt screaming, "WooWoo, it's my turn!" Little does it know that it's time to whoop it up is going to be briefer than it can imagine.

Where have all the bloggers gone?

As I sift through my posts of the past in an effort find relevant content to share on Twitter (part of an experiment I'm engaged in with trying to understand social media), I've grown nostalgic reading all of the comments I used to get from fellow bloggers. Most are from my early years in blogging...2006 and 2007 were my peak years. And I've grown a bit melancholy wondering where did all the bloggers go?

I know I've harped on this topic off and on for years, but it still nags at me. It's one of those mysteries like why pods of whales beach themselves or what happened to the Roanoke Colony. Why did my little band of fellow bloggers who used to comment regularly vanish?

Art by accident

The concept that maybe great art may be more a product of accident then design was posed on my latest binge-watching obsession, Six Feet Under. If you are not familiar with Six Feet Under, you should be. It's far better than just about anything on television today. Regardless, it is an HBO series that ran for five seasons beginning in 2001. It is the story of the Fisher family and their funeral home. It is also the story of life, death and love (not necessarily in that order).

Anyway, 18-year old Claire Fisher (played by Lauren Ambrose), posits her theory about accidental art as she struggles with self-doubt in her first year of art school under the tutelage her sadistic art teacher (who is having sex with her brother's ex-fiances mother and her boyfriend...no wonder Claire is confused). The line about maybe great art being an accident struck me as profound and kudos to whomever the writer was that wrote it for troubled teen Claire to utter.

Tribute to the Elvis tree

 

Writing about the Elvis tree seems to be becoming almost as much a tradition as decorating it each year. I posted photos of me taking it down one year. Shoot, I even posted a video of it one. But my earliest post was in 2005. 

I won't go into the history again here. Click on the links above if you want to know something of its origins. Suffice it to say that it has been around my various houses for more than a decade.

Death, dying and Disney on Ice

From the title of this post, one would think it was about fulfilling some one's Make-A-Wish dream with a trip to Disney on Ice.

It's not.

Last week started off with me yet again walking into the vet's office and holding yet another of our geriatric cats as she was euthanized.  Lahaina had been diagnosed (to the tune of $600) with cancer a few days earlier. At 12, she was the youngest of our cats. I had a sense of deja vu as I held her and stroked her head while her life ebbed after the vet gave her the injections. I'd stood in the same vet's office back in July to hold my 17-year old cat Bailey while she slipped into whatever afterlife there is.

Top ten lists of top ten lists

Ten must be a magic number. Because I've sensed a pattern of tweets and "news" sites of hooking readers in by the promise of a top ten list. And it works. I inevitably get sucked into pages that promise to give me a list of the top ten foods to eat or not to eat, the top ten islands I can't afford to buy or the top ten celebrities that have aged ten years in the past decade.

I imagine some researcher or psychologist told marketers that ten is maximum number of things the ADD public can focus on before rushing off to the next list of ten. For the heck of it, I Googled "top lists of lists" and sure enough there were a plethora of top lists of top ten lists. One, Listverse, ironically, had not ten, but a dozen list of top-ten lists of top ten. They included: