So . . . what did you all get for Christmas? And why, or why not? And why, as we age, do we want, more and more, for Santa Claus to be real? Are we so shallow that by being plied with gifts our loyalties could be so easily bought, hopes so easily aroused, neural pathways so deeply etched?
I got nothing. We agreed. I am left with no new camera, and no new guitar. My old guitar--and I'm down to one acoustic guitar now--which I purchased in 1972, is finally starting to warp. After all these years of abuse, it is now slowly but surely becoming unplayable.
It's OK. I am still very lucky. Sure I am adrift in a world sans Santa after having spent my childhood a mere victim of exuberant post-war marketing, but I have my health. Didn't that used to piss you off when old people told you that? Little did we know, mainly because we had all those toys, perhaps.
I'll probably buy another guitar before too long. I'm too used to having one around. They never lie hidden in the case at my house. My Alvarez is hanging on a guitar stand so I can pick it up and play it any time I walk by if I want. I have been doing that for decades. My playing is surprisingly amateurish.
Friday, December 27, 2019
Sunday, December 22, 2019
This is the season when we normally think about what happened during the past year, and maybe how to either make it stop, or how to keep it going in the coming year. Or even think of something new. It gets more difficult every time. So much has happened in 2019 that it seems like a ve-eeery long year, indeed, and a lot to consider.
I live in Kansas City now. I got here at the end of July, about four and a half months ago. You might or might not remember I left Kansas City just about a year before. In between, I lived in Chico, and then Tucson. I don't judge, but I did decide that I wouldn't want to live permanently in either place. California in particular was very disappointing, but mainly only because I kept comparing it to my memory of it in the Fifties, Sixties and very early Seventies. A good lesson--things sometimes get worse, or perhaps I mean evolution does not necessarily equate with improvement. Tell that to the Neanderthals.
It sounds like I'm dissing California. Maybe I am, but let me explain. After living in what most Californians would call "the Midwest" since the 70s, I learned that regardless of what east and west coasters might think, all the stuff in between is what America is. For good or aught. Sure things are changing, and the coasts have their influence, just as any region does (more or less,) on the changing culture, but, like Texas, perhaps, they can do what they want but they shouldn't pretend they have the right to hijack the rest of the country.
I might add about here that I am a self-identified Liberal. Just thinkin' out loud.
Anyway, I'll stop here. Might as well try to figure out if a moderate Democrat is the exact same thing as a moderate Republican, which, if you think about it, is exactly where the dialog should be--not way over to the left, or to the right, where the statistical outliers all stand and yell at the middle.
What I have really learned, I think, is that life isn't just where you live. What would I have written about this morning if I had never moved anywhere?
I live in Kansas City now. I got here at the end of July, about four and a half months ago. You might or might not remember I left Kansas City just about a year before. In between, I lived in Chico, and then Tucson. I don't judge, but I did decide that I wouldn't want to live permanently in either place. California in particular was very disappointing, but mainly only because I kept comparing it to my memory of it in the Fifties, Sixties and very early Seventies. A good lesson--things sometimes get worse, or perhaps I mean evolution does not necessarily equate with improvement. Tell that to the Neanderthals.
It sounds like I'm dissing California. Maybe I am, but let me explain. After living in what most Californians would call "the Midwest" since the 70s, I learned that regardless of what east and west coasters might think, all the stuff in between is what America is. For good or aught. Sure things are changing, and the coasts have their influence, just as any region does (more or less,) on the changing culture, but, like Texas, perhaps, they can do what they want but they shouldn't pretend they have the right to hijack the rest of the country.
I might add about here that I am a self-identified Liberal. Just thinkin' out loud.
Anyway, I'll stop here. Might as well try to figure out if a moderate Democrat is the exact same thing as a moderate Republican, which, if you think about it, is exactly where the dialog should be--not way over to the left, or to the right, where the statistical outliers all stand and yell at the middle.
What I have really learned, I think, is that life isn't just where you live. What would I have written about this morning if I had never moved anywhere?
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Hmmm
"˙ǝןʎʇs ʇɐq" 'sǝןʞuɐ ʎɯ ɯoɹɟ buıbuɐɥ ǝןıɥʍ ʇsod boןq ǝɹıʇuǝ uɐ ǝʇɐǝɹɔ uɐɔ ı ɟı ʇno puıɟ oʇ ʇuǝɯıɹǝdxǝ uɐ ʎןǝɹǝɯ sı sıɥʇ
Tuesday, October 22, 2019
The Pay Wall
I like browsing around in Google News, scanning headlines and clicking here or there on links to interesting looking articles. More and more, once I go to a website like the New York Times or the Washington Post, I encounter a paywall, which keeps me from reading the article until I sign up for a paid subscription. As if I had enough money to buy a subscription for every web site that I encounter this way. It would cost me hundreds of dollars a month.
I know. We used to pay for newspapers delivered to the full gutters of the streets in front of our houses, or somewhere near the base of our driveway. We would read them while eating a bowl of cereal (your routine may vary,) and do the crossword puzzle. But that was the paper from our home town. It was understandable that we were all willing to pay by the month to have it delivered to our doorstep, or even somewhere vaguely on our property.
But this is the Internet. There are thousands of web sites that provide information of some sort, and the customary way of reading them is to browse. People are always referring to "browsing" the Internet. It doesn't seem reasonable to buy a monthly subscription to a site just because one stumbles across it via a link somewhere. I'm not saying all this stuff should be free. Just that it's a goofy business model.
Of course if I love a certain site and I read something on it every day, I suppose I might want to get a subscription. As it is, though, when I click on a link supplied by Google or Facebook and it leads me to a news article, say, that throws up a paywall after showing me a couple paragraphs, that seems more like an advertisement for that web site, and not a useful link at all. Just more click-bait. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I say this all the time, but what's maddening is that I already pay for the medium that is bringing me this junk.
I'll end this with the idea that I already understand these companies aren't required to give out free stuff. It only seems that way because that's how the Internet started. And it all seemed great at the time--but not that great.
I want to add that the two sites I specifically mentioned, NYT and WP, probably are worthy of any reasonable subscription fees they might levy, and they're not the only ones. It just really gets funny when other, perhaps lesser well known, sites have the nerve to even act like they should get money from anyone for subjecting them to their misspelled headlines, horrid grammar and sloppy and ill-conceived articles. That would be like me charging you to read this blog. Please.
I know. We used to pay for newspapers delivered to the full gutters of the streets in front of our houses, or somewhere near the base of our driveway. We would read them while eating a bowl of cereal (your routine may vary,) and do the crossword puzzle. But that was the paper from our home town. It was understandable that we were all willing to pay by the month to have it delivered to our doorstep, or even somewhere vaguely on our property.
But this is the Internet. There are thousands of web sites that provide information of some sort, and the customary way of reading them is to browse. People are always referring to "browsing" the Internet. It doesn't seem reasonable to buy a monthly subscription to a site just because one stumbles across it via a link somewhere. I'm not saying all this stuff should be free. Just that it's a goofy business model.
Of course if I love a certain site and I read something on it every day, I suppose I might want to get a subscription. As it is, though, when I click on a link supplied by Google or Facebook and it leads me to a news article, say, that throws up a paywall after showing me a couple paragraphs, that seems more like an advertisement for that web site, and not a useful link at all. Just more click-bait. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I say this all the time, but what's maddening is that I already pay for the medium that is bringing me this junk.
I'll end this with the idea that I already understand these companies aren't required to give out free stuff. It only seems that way because that's how the Internet started. And it all seemed great at the time--but not that great.
I want to add that the two sites I specifically mentioned, NYT and WP, probably are worthy of any reasonable subscription fees they might levy, and they're not the only ones. It just really gets funny when other, perhaps lesser well known, sites have the nerve to even act like they should get money from anyone for subjecting them to their misspelled headlines, horrid grammar and sloppy and ill-conceived articles. That would be like me charging you to read this blog. Please.
Sunday, September 29, 2019
Views
The following pictures were taken, at various times, from the rooftop of my building downtown.
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| East |
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| North |
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| West |
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
buh bye facebook
I deleted my Facebook account about a month ago, which means that about now all my data has gone away. That's the theory. Paula at Light Motifs did this and wrote about it, which inspired me at the time but I was only able to build up the nerve lately to perform my own FBectomy. What finally pushed me over the edge was when I attempted to remove my deceased wife's account from Facebook. I couldn't remember her password, so I was instructed to produce a death certificate before they would remove the account.
This is, of course, the height of arrogance on their part and a tremendous invasion of privacy. Perhaps it's all our faults, but Facebook has gotten the impression that it is important. We may assign importance to it, or not, but the reality is that it's just a web page, and I refuse to give them the information on a death certificate.
Maybe I overreacted. At any rate, I pulled my own account and I suppose my wife's account will just sit there. It's not all bad. Some of her Facebook friends remember her by posting comments occasionally, and birthday messages, which is harmless and probably even beneficial.
Maybe there is such a thing as Internet Feng Shui. I do not miss Facebook at all, and the Internet seems just a little brighter and airier now. I think that every now and then it's good to consider what kind of garbage and negative crap we are letting into our brains, and try to minimize it. I'm pretty sure humans were not designed to deal with this much outrage and angst and engineered stupidity.
It's all been said before.
This is, of course, the height of arrogance on their part and a tremendous invasion of privacy. Perhaps it's all our faults, but Facebook has gotten the impression that it is important. We may assign importance to it, or not, but the reality is that it's just a web page, and I refuse to give them the information on a death certificate.
Maybe I overreacted. At any rate, I pulled my own account and I suppose my wife's account will just sit there. It's not all bad. Some of her Facebook friends remember her by posting comments occasionally, and birthday messages, which is harmless and probably even beneficial.
Maybe there is such a thing as Internet Feng Shui. I do not miss Facebook at all, and the Internet seems just a little brighter and airier now. I think that every now and then it's good to consider what kind of garbage and negative crap we are letting into our brains, and try to minimize it. I'm pretty sure humans were not designed to deal with this much outrage and angst and engineered stupidity.
It's all been said before.
Wednesday, August 14, 2019
Hack Schmack
As promised, here is my well considered rant about the use of the term life hack:
We've all seen them. You usually run across them in Google search result pages, revealing seemingly mysterious ways you can do things, like "10 Ways to Amaze Your Friends Using Only a Spent Toilet Paper Tube." Stuff like that. There are two categories of these things. One (1): ways someone just thought up to do things that you would never need to do, nor want to, using things that normally get thrown away, like how to keep your computer mouse cord from slipping off the corner of your desk using common office supplies stolen from your company--these are usually just click-bait, and, two (b), things that if you are alive and have been paying attention, you would, or should, know anyway.
It's kind of funny. I learned to do things by watching people, perhaps acting in my behalf in response to me asking them how to do something, or maybe by trial and error, or, you know, just looking at it and figuring it out--the normal way we all learn things. If you can't figure something out, you ask someone. But now, with the Internet, you Google it, and your answer is called a "life hack." Whoop-de-do. Hack is what you do when you break into someone else's computer system--you sneak in using devious means and then do something you shouldn't. You "win" because you did something that someone else does not want you to do. Good for you. But, how to change a flat tire, or what to do to keep your iron from clogging up from using the steam setting, those are thing that, really, it's OK to do. We encourage you to. Just fucking learn to do it, like everyone else in the world did, and you're good to go. No big deal. No laws broken, no winners, no losers, just getting along in life.
Because even though the Internet seems to be telling you otherwise, the truth is that you are, most likely, average, or very close to it, as we all are. Granted, some of us are stunningly average, but otherwise, just normal people, some good at some things, some good at others.
OK, end of rant, which (as poorly written as it was,) started out intending to show how smart and cynical I am but wound up demonstrating that I'm trying to get along in a world full of twenty and thirty-year-olds when I'm, like, a thousand.
But seriously, it has something to do with all the toys they got for Christmas when all I had to play with were sticks. Maybe some dirt.
We've all seen them. You usually run across them in Google search result pages, revealing seemingly mysterious ways you can do things, like "10 Ways to Amaze Your Friends Using Only a Spent Toilet Paper Tube." Stuff like that. There are two categories of these things. One (1): ways someone just thought up to do things that you would never need to do, nor want to, using things that normally get thrown away, like how to keep your computer mouse cord from slipping off the corner of your desk using common office supplies stolen from your company--these are usually just click-bait, and, two (b), things that if you are alive and have been paying attention, you would, or should, know anyway.
It's kind of funny. I learned to do things by watching people, perhaps acting in my behalf in response to me asking them how to do something, or maybe by trial and error, or, you know, just looking at it and figuring it out--the normal way we all learn things. If you can't figure something out, you ask someone. But now, with the Internet, you Google it, and your answer is called a "life hack." Whoop-de-do. Hack is what you do when you break into someone else's computer system--you sneak in using devious means and then do something you shouldn't. You "win" because you did something that someone else does not want you to do. Good for you. But, how to change a flat tire, or what to do to keep your iron from clogging up from using the steam setting, those are thing that, really, it's OK to do. We encourage you to. Just fucking learn to do it, like everyone else in the world did, and you're good to go. No big deal. No laws broken, no winners, no losers, just getting along in life.
Because even though the Internet seems to be telling you otherwise, the truth is that you are, most likely, average, or very close to it, as we all are. Granted, some of us are stunningly average, but otherwise, just normal people, some good at some things, some good at others.
OK, end of rant, which (as poorly written as it was,) started out intending to show how smart and cynical I am but wound up demonstrating that I'm trying to get along in a world full of twenty and thirty-year-olds when I'm, like, a thousand.
But seriously, it has something to do with all the toys they got for Christmas when all I had to play with were sticks. Maybe some dirt.
Tuesday, August 13, 2019
Time
Time slows when there is more going on. This is the basis for "Internet time," wherein if someone doesn't answer your email within three days, you suspect that they may be dead. I think something like this happens while driving, because we all know how long those 15 second red lights last. Also, try this while driving (have someone hold your beer): glance at your watch and note where the second hand is, then watch it until it moves. It should only take one second, right? It's amazing how long that seems to take--not if you're waiting for a red light, but if you're driving along. (If you own a Rolex, this won't work. It has to be a quartz-timed watch.) Perhaps it has to do with hyperfocusing. So, same with the Internet. Apparently. This is also my basis for explaining the eternal summer vacations when you were in grade school. OK. I guess, also the watched pot. (Millennials: this is a reference to the old adage, a watched pot never boils, from back when phones had round dials and what you are calling "life hacks" were simply known as "life.")
Note to self: write a blog post ranting about the use of the term "life hack."
So, my point is, damn, I arrived back in Kansas City less than two weeks ago? I moved into my apartment four days ago? A lot has happened. Same with the last year--it's been now.
One of the things that happened to me was that since I had to finally reduce all of my belongings to a pile of stuff that would fit in my admittedly small SUV, I got rid of a few too many things. I did the best I could--when I drove to KC I had so much stuff in the back of my Ford that if I opened the tailgate, something would fall out. So at one point during packing, I decided my desk top computer "tower" was too damn big, and I've been wanting to get rid of it anyway, so I took the hard drive and an expensive video card out of it and threw the tower part away. I hope I can figure out how to get all the pictures off the hard drive . . . Bottom line, I am using the Macbook Air.
Note to self: you could write a long blog post about trying to switch from Windows to OS--what is it now?--High Sierra, you could write that, but don't bother.
Also I have no furniture again, so I watch TV while sitting on the floor. Seriously, I really am too old for this. It is not just an adage, it is the awful truth. Getting furniture is on my list. Also--the age thing--getting someone to deliver said furniture right to my living room. That would be a plus.
OK. I am down to two guitars, having shipped my son's Fender Stratocaster to him in Seattle, so that helped, but again I note that while you may think a guitar is not a particularly large instrument, you would stop thinking that if you had to put two of them, in their cases, in a car. Special care was taken so that when I opened the tailgate, neither guitar was what fell out onto the pavement. Usually it was a box of computer cables and small accessories that would roll far away if given half a chance.
Well, time's a wastin' and I have another list of things to do. Anyway, all is well.
Note to self: write a blog post ranting about the use of the term "life hack."
So, my point is, damn, I arrived back in Kansas City less than two weeks ago? I moved into my apartment four days ago? A lot has happened. Same with the last year--it's been now.
One of the things that happened to me was that since I had to finally reduce all of my belongings to a pile of stuff that would fit in my admittedly small SUV, I got rid of a few too many things. I did the best I could--when I drove to KC I had so much stuff in the back of my Ford that if I opened the tailgate, something would fall out. So at one point during packing, I decided my desk top computer "tower" was too damn big, and I've been wanting to get rid of it anyway, so I took the hard drive and an expensive video card out of it and threw the tower part away. I hope I can figure out how to get all the pictures off the hard drive . . . Bottom line, I am using the Macbook Air.
Note to self: you could write a long blog post about trying to switch from Windows to OS--what is it now?--High Sierra, you could write that, but don't bother.
Also I have no furniture again, so I watch TV while sitting on the floor. Seriously, I really am too old for this. It is not just an adage, it is the awful truth. Getting furniture is on my list. Also--the age thing--getting someone to deliver said furniture right to my living room. That would be a plus.
OK. I am down to two guitars, having shipped my son's Fender Stratocaster to him in Seattle, so that helped, but again I note that while you may think a guitar is not a particularly large instrument, you would stop thinking that if you had to put two of them, in their cases, in a car. Special care was taken so that when I opened the tailgate, neither guitar was what fell out onto the pavement. Usually it was a box of computer cables and small accessories that would roll far away if given half a chance.
Well, time's a wastin' and I have another list of things to do. Anyway, all is well.
Friday, August 9, 2019
Moving In Day
It's Friday morning, moving day, in Kansas City. The sun is just coming up--I just pulled up the shade of the motel window so the sun is pouring into the room now. It is moving day. It will not hurt my feelings to move out of this "extended stay" motel, but it wasn't so bad. Could've been worse, like the Econo-Lodge I looked at first, the one with the room that looked like the last occupant might have committed suicide in it. You couldn't blame him.
There's not much to say. I bought a futon mattress and a wooden bed frame, which I will pick up this afternoon after unloading the contents of my little SUV. I got my renter's insurance, got my checkbook right here. I set up the Google Fiber, got my little self-install kit on the floor of the back seat. When I move into the apartment I will furnish it, initially, with the bed I just mentioned, and a small table and two chairs that I managed to fit inside my car when I left Tucson, and that's about it. I have a TV with no stand.
When I moved from Chico I donated all my kitchen stuff to Paradise fire victims, as well as some of my furniture. The last few times I moved, I got rid of stuff each time. I am now down to one well-packed carload. Once the owner of a mountain of shit, I am down to this, a small pile of stuff, a whittled down spear point of . . . ego? It's sort of an improvement.
But now I have to get going. Really. And I'm getting hungry.
There's not much to say. I bought a futon mattress and a wooden bed frame, which I will pick up this afternoon after unloading the contents of my little SUV. I got my renter's insurance, got my checkbook right here. I set up the Google Fiber, got my little self-install kit on the floor of the back seat. When I move into the apartment I will furnish it, initially, with the bed I just mentioned, and a small table and two chairs that I managed to fit inside my car when I left Tucson, and that's about it. I have a TV with no stand.
When I moved from Chico I donated all my kitchen stuff to Paradise fire victims, as well as some of my furniture. The last few times I moved, I got rid of stuff each time. I am now down to one well-packed carload. Once the owner of a mountain of shit, I am down to this, a small pile of stuff, a whittled down spear point of . . . ego? It's sort of an improvement.
But now I have to get going. Really. And I'm getting hungry.
Tuesday, August 6, 2019
How I Spent (am spending) My Summer
Just about a year after I left Kansas City to live in Chico, California, I am now back in Kansas City, Missouri. It was like an adventure--a very disorganized adventure, one fraught with errors and lapses in good judgement, but here I am. I suppose without errors and lapses in judgement, adventures, by one definition, would never happen.
Once in Chico and getting settled in nicely, the neighboring town of Paradise experienced what turned out to be one of the most devastating wild fires in recent California history. Nearly a hundred people died, and an entire town was wiped out, displacing something like 50,000 people. On the second day of the fire, the smoke, at first high above Chico, began to settle toward the ground and of course proved irritating and smelly to everyone. I had friends in Tucson, Arizona, with whom I was going to spend Thanksgiving, and though it was still three weeks out, they invited me to come down early to avoid the risk and the smoke. I did so.
While there I made the decision to move from Chico to Tucson. California was once my home, way back in the Sixties and early Seventies, but it had changed and was, is, not the pleasant place it was then. Too expensive, too crowded, bad tax laws, congestion, and so on. The weather was nice, though Chico might give Tucson a run for its money regarding heat, at least during the peak of summer. And I met a nice lady in Tucson with whom I got along very well. It seemed like a good decision.
Tucson and the Sonoran Desert were interesting places--great places to visit, but I have to say, not to live in. At least in my opinion--and one's own opinion, when deciding where to settle, is arguably the most important gauge.
At the same time, as relationships move along their sometimes seemingly predestined courses, as this one did, we all know they either smooth along fairly and mostly nicely for long periods of time, or veer off a cliff. And you can't dial them back, as we also all know. When it was over, and I found I had no compelling reason to live in Tucson, I left. With nowhere else to go, I came home. I guess I have to say it.
The first interesting thing was Guthrie, Oklahoma. I stopped there for the night while traveling back to Kansas City. I never knew Guthrie existed. It is a very pleasant small town north of Oklahoma City (far enough north to . . . uhm . . . allow it to be pleasant) once the state capitol, now a well preserved little town with great architecture and a kind of Americana feel to it. Huh. Funny I lived in Oklahoma City for two years, in the Eighties, mostly disliked it, and never knew about this place.
Second thing: dreading the return of humidity after leaving Arizona and returning to the Midwest, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it felt OK. Arizona is dry, when not in the "monsoon season," but in the summer, temperatures routinely pass the 100 degree mark, the 110 degree mark, and even higher, and the dryness, while purportedly making the heat more bearable, comes with its own unpleasantries, like making your skin turn to leather, or parchment, let's say. UV indices are scary as well. When told I was moving to Arizona, people would say,"Oh, great! Do you have a dermatologist yet?" Huhng? No, do I need one? Yes. Anyway . . . Midwest humidity, while not ideal, is OK since maybe the temperature is 90. Big deal.
So here I am. I found an apartment downtown, but I haven't moved in yet. I'm still at an extended-stay motel in Independence, which is the town east of Kansas City. But my apartment, once I move in, will be convenient--close to the heart of downtown, but not directly in it, and close to the River Market area, where I once lived and have friends, and, once again, close to a streetcar stop--a plus, here, because it is still free and its route pretty much makes everything downtown within walking distance.
So here I am. As lost and aimless as ever. Stay tuned.
Once in Chico and getting settled in nicely, the neighboring town of Paradise experienced what turned out to be one of the most devastating wild fires in recent California history. Nearly a hundred people died, and an entire town was wiped out, displacing something like 50,000 people. On the second day of the fire, the smoke, at first high above Chico, began to settle toward the ground and of course proved irritating and smelly to everyone. I had friends in Tucson, Arizona, with whom I was going to spend Thanksgiving, and though it was still three weeks out, they invited me to come down early to avoid the risk and the smoke. I did so.
While there I made the decision to move from Chico to Tucson. California was once my home, way back in the Sixties and early Seventies, but it had changed and was, is, not the pleasant place it was then. Too expensive, too crowded, bad tax laws, congestion, and so on. The weather was nice, though Chico might give Tucson a run for its money regarding heat, at least during the peak of summer. And I met a nice lady in Tucson with whom I got along very well. It seemed like a good decision.
Tucson and the Sonoran Desert were interesting places--great places to visit, but I have to say, not to live in. At least in my opinion--and one's own opinion, when deciding where to settle, is arguably the most important gauge.
At the same time, as relationships move along their sometimes seemingly predestined courses, as this one did, we all know they either smooth along fairly and mostly nicely for long periods of time, or veer off a cliff. And you can't dial them back, as we also all know. When it was over, and I found I had no compelling reason to live in Tucson, I left. With nowhere else to go, I came home. I guess I have to say it.
The first interesting thing was Guthrie, Oklahoma. I stopped there for the night while traveling back to Kansas City. I never knew Guthrie existed. It is a very pleasant small town north of Oklahoma City (far enough north to . . . uhm . . . allow it to be pleasant) once the state capitol, now a well preserved little town with great architecture and a kind of Americana feel to it. Huh. Funny I lived in Oklahoma City for two years, in the Eighties, mostly disliked it, and never knew about this place.
Second thing: dreading the return of humidity after leaving Arizona and returning to the Midwest, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it felt OK. Arizona is dry, when not in the "monsoon season," but in the summer, temperatures routinely pass the 100 degree mark, the 110 degree mark, and even higher, and the dryness, while purportedly making the heat more bearable, comes with its own unpleasantries, like making your skin turn to leather, or parchment, let's say. UV indices are scary as well. When told I was moving to Arizona, people would say,"Oh, great! Do you have a dermatologist yet?" Huhng? No, do I need one? Yes. Anyway . . . Midwest humidity, while not ideal, is OK since maybe the temperature is 90. Big deal.
So here I am. I found an apartment downtown, but I haven't moved in yet. I'm still at an extended-stay motel in Independence, which is the town east of Kansas City. But my apartment, once I move in, will be convenient--close to the heart of downtown, but not directly in it, and close to the River Market area, where I once lived and have friends, and, once again, close to a streetcar stop--a plus, here, because it is still free and its route pretty much makes everything downtown within walking distance.
So here I am. As lost and aimless as ever. Stay tuned.
Wednesday, June 12, 2019
WIP
This morning I re-wrote the preface to ONE of my projects for the third time. In my mind, the preface needs to be right since it is going to point to the rest of the book, set the tone, define the parameters, and so on. The other prefaces failed to do these things. I think.
The thing is, I found and purchased another book also written by an ex-employee of the phone company. I won't judge it, but say that it is a smallish volume consisting of about 40 chapters, each of which is a vignette, a funny or poignant story involving a phone company worker and a customer. Except they are not really funny, nor particularly poignant. I always knew that I wanted the subject matter in my phone company book to appeal to non-phone-company people, and not to other employees, ex, or otherwise. So, it's a little hard to gain the right perspective. I think that the authors of this book were stretching just a little bit--so, when people say, man, you ought to write a book, it's not necessarily always good advice.
Anyway.
The thing is, I found and purchased another book also written by an ex-employee of the phone company. I won't judge it, but say that it is a smallish volume consisting of about 40 chapters, each of which is a vignette, a funny or poignant story involving a phone company worker and a customer. Except they are not really funny, nor particularly poignant. I always knew that I wanted the subject matter in my phone company book to appeal to non-phone-company people, and not to other employees, ex, or otherwise. So, it's a little hard to gain the right perspective. I think that the authors of this book were stretching just a little bit--so, when people say, man, you ought to write a book, it's not necessarily always good advice.
Anyway.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Progress of a Sort is Made
Having recently begun writing my book about the . . . er . . . good times at the phone company, I find I have already run into a problem. (Besides discovering a proclivity for writing in the passive voice too much.) I remember when I left the company on my last day, carrying my little cardboard box with its meager contents to the elevator for the parking garage; I was happy. Glad to get the fuck out of there. Now, a little over ten years later, after nurturing all those happy thoughts--not unlike the ones you carry concerning "happy days" at high school, when the truth was it was years of tedium combined with injustices and petty annoyances (P.E. is so-ooo stupid) --I find, upon a little digging, that most of my time at the phone company was unpleasant.
I suppose, like life, when you're at work the happiness is in the fleeting moments. Otherwise, nobody really likes having to sell half of their waking hours to a soul-less corporation and then take orders from someone whose authority seemed to have come from some inscrutable, random process having more to do with politics and ass-licking than any real qualifications for "managing" subordinates. Yeah, the phone company likes the word subordinates. Don't get me started. They also, when referring to a mistake during a safety review, call that a deviation. When the union once tried to refer to dangerous neighborhoods as "red zones," the company started calling them "awareness zones." See what I mean? Drives you nuts.
Without any other clues, I decided to begin the book by dredging up stories in a more or less chronological order. That has its pitfalls, I'm discovering. In a random universe (such as ours) chronological order is actually chaos, and some other kind of imposed order might make more sense.
But it's a place to start. The problem is that in re-remembering the succession of events of my career, I find myself remembering a lot of unpleasant things--things about which one might reasonably say they would "never want to through that again." Yet, here I am.
But it's not so bad, I guess. Yet still bad enough so that if I am to continue, I may have to come up with a good reason to write this book--a purpose, you might say, to help me maintain my momentum. I don't want readers to cringe, but truth is a worthy pursuit in writing, if it's not boring.
I suppose, like life, when you're at work the happiness is in the fleeting moments. Otherwise, nobody really likes having to sell half of their waking hours to a soul-less corporation and then take orders from someone whose authority seemed to have come from some inscrutable, random process having more to do with politics and ass-licking than any real qualifications for "managing" subordinates. Yeah, the phone company likes the word subordinates. Don't get me started. They also, when referring to a mistake during a safety review, call that a deviation. When the union once tried to refer to dangerous neighborhoods as "red zones," the company started calling them "awareness zones." See what I mean? Drives you nuts.
Without any other clues, I decided to begin the book by dredging up stories in a more or less chronological order. That has its pitfalls, I'm discovering. In a random universe (such as ours) chronological order is actually chaos, and some other kind of imposed order might make more sense.
But it's a place to start. The problem is that in re-remembering the succession of events of my career, I find myself remembering a lot of unpleasant things--things about which one might reasonably say they would "never want to through that again." Yet, here I am.
But it's not so bad, I guess. Yet still bad enough so that if I am to continue, I may have to come up with a good reason to write this book--a purpose, you might say, to help me maintain my momentum. I don't want readers to cringe, but truth is a worthy pursuit in writing, if it's not boring.
Saturday, May 11, 2019
It's November Somewhere
At last I can say I am working on a book. Surprisingly, perhaps, it is not the one about Laslo and the strange goings-on at the Busy Bee Cafe. Maybe later. This is about the phone company. What happened is I stumbled across two books written by ex-employees, and in the way this sometimes happens, I thought to myself, shit I can do that.
Turns out it's not quite that easy, but it seems to be going along OK. At least I can say I'm writing at a rate that would have me winning NaNoWriMo, so there's that. I know it's only May . . .
At the moment, even though I am throwing down words, I still am not quite sure what I want to do with this. One thing I don't want the book to do is to devolve into a rambling mess of "funny" phone company stories--you know, the ones with cockroaches in the phones, or with crazy drunk employees violating safety practices, stuff like that. The problem is sometimes it requires too much setup to tell these stories, as I have found--strange as it may seem--the general public does not know how the phone company works and therefore why some of my stories are so brilliantly pithy and ironic or whatever.
OK, well, what I am really trying to say is, I don't want the book to appeal only to other people who have worked at the phone company, full of the types of stories that we used to tell each other in the morning while we prepared to get in our trucks and go to work. Those were mostly lies anyway. So we're left with stories that might be meaningful to what the military would call the non-cognizant agent. Stories like cockroaches in phones, and crazy drunk employees violating safety practices.
Seriously, what I am trying to understand since I retired is how during my entire career the technology and methods evolved and changed faster and faster until it almost overtook me. Which is also called, getting old, I guess, but I can't help but think it didn't used to be like this. At least, so much. When I was pretty new to the company, I saw old guys retiring and it seemed like they pretty much did the same work their entire careers. With me, things kept changing--of course I changed along with them, but in the end, it quit being fun.
And, as always, there is the thing about writing that I always encounter. It is that my "writer's voice" is much better when I'm blogging than when I'm sitting down seriously trying to write. I really need to get past this. Perhaps I should stop being so serious. I mean, my entire life, being serious has never really served me that well. I'm not sure what that says about me, or about the world.
Turns out it's not quite that easy, but it seems to be going along OK. At least I can say I'm writing at a rate that would have me winning NaNoWriMo, so there's that. I know it's only May . . .
At the moment, even though I am throwing down words, I still am not quite sure what I want to do with this. One thing I don't want the book to do is to devolve into a rambling mess of "funny" phone company stories--you know, the ones with cockroaches in the phones, or with crazy drunk employees violating safety practices, stuff like that. The problem is sometimes it requires too much setup to tell these stories, as I have found--strange as it may seem--the general public does not know how the phone company works and therefore why some of my stories are so brilliantly pithy and ironic or whatever.
OK, well, what I am really trying to say is, I don't want the book to appeal only to other people who have worked at the phone company, full of the types of stories that we used to tell each other in the morning while we prepared to get in our trucks and go to work. Those were mostly lies anyway. So we're left with stories that might be meaningful to what the military would call the non-cognizant agent. Stories like cockroaches in phones, and crazy drunk employees violating safety practices.
Seriously, what I am trying to understand since I retired is how during my entire career the technology and methods evolved and changed faster and faster until it almost overtook me. Which is also called, getting old, I guess, but I can't help but think it didn't used to be like this. At least, so much. When I was pretty new to the company, I saw old guys retiring and it seemed like they pretty much did the same work their entire careers. With me, things kept changing--of course I changed along with them, but in the end, it quit being fun.
And, as always, there is the thing about writing that I always encounter. It is that my "writer's voice" is much better when I'm blogging than when I'm sitting down seriously trying to write. I really need to get past this. Perhaps I should stop being so serious. I mean, my entire life, being serious has never really served me that well. I'm not sure what that says about me, or about the world.
Monday, April 1, 2019
The Last Open Road
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| Middle of nowhere, somewhere north-east of LA |
It was an unplanned trip. I got a call from the property management company in Chico to tell me they found a renter and I could get out of my lease, so I moved a May trip up to March to expedite the process. Then I got an email as we were driving out of Arizona: the guy backed out. Don't repeat don't drive to Chico. I did anyway, so now I'm out and if they find a new tenant to take the lease over, the place is ready and they can just let me know what they did. Apartment leases suck. I signed this 25 page document and only now am I finding out what all is in it. It's all bad . . .
Now that I'm really in Arizona, and have my drivers license and car tag and everything, it is my fervent hope that I can start working on my book. I have two ideas now. All is well. Except I'm not feeling all that ambitious. In my defense, the last few months have been insane and I'm tired.
Still plugging away, though.
Note: Arizona does not require a front license plate, so now my white Ford has a big, basically useless, black plastic rectangle screwed down smack in the middle of the body work in the front of it. (No, I wouldn't call it a bumper. It's just sort of a front area that you can fix if it gets crushed by a bird or a Fiat 500 or something.) I took the plate mount off to reveal three ragged holes where the screws had been attached, so I just shook my head and put the mount back on. Googled it. It's a thing, apparently. There are solutions, all of them either expensive or time consuming, laid out in excruciating detail by the Internet's obsessive/compulsive car community. I looked on Amazon for white duct tape and I'm really kind of amazed that there is no such thing. Home Depot has little white plastic snap on buttons I could use to cover the holes if I am willing to drill them out to a larger size and render them (the holes) useless for anything else. Surewhynot.
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| Rush hour somewhere to the south of Edwards Air Force Base |
Thursday, March 14, 2019
A Non-Food Article That Ends in a Review of a Restaurant That is No Longer in Business
The trouble is, sometimes I don't feel all that spiritual about food. For more or less a month I have been sort of thinking about what I could write about that could go inside a food magazine. I get nada. I don't know anything about cooking: stirring browned hamburger into the Kraft macaroni and cheese is getting sort of cutting-edge frisky. (Wow. Tastes like a little cheeseburger in each bite!) And I'm no restaurant critic; usually, I'm just tickled pink if I don't get food poisoning. If the coffee's bad, and it sadly sometimes is, I easily revert to outdoor camping standards and ask only that there are no little sticks floating around in it, or a dead fly.
To me, I'm afraid, there is seldom such thing as a memorable meal, and if it is, it usually has more to do with something that happened coincidentally at the same time as the meal, like a space station part landing in the chocolate mousse, or Uncle Ray falling off of his folding chair. What we ate, what it tasted like, what kind of presentation, that sort of thing, I'm afraid I seldom commit to long-term memory.
OK, I do remember the spaghetti races my sister and I had at the table at my Grandpa's house when we were little kids. Who can make their strand of spaghetti slide into their mouth the fastest? It was a process enhanced by a grownup twisting your ear, as I recall. In that case, I remember the food was spaghetti. I also remember the zucchini cake, even though I don't want to.
Perhaps the most memorable thing about those meals was actually just before the meal: Grandpa would pick up the salt and pepper shakers--little ceramic figurines made to look like a comical Italian married couple--and move them around and make them talk, like puppets, to each other in Italian. We always laughed at that, and the grownups laughed a little louder, and the grownups who also understood Italian laughed the loudest, until Grandma would playfully slap Grandpa and tell him to stop that.
Which brings me to the incident at Italian Gardens, sadly closed for business now, (how long?) in downtown Kansas City. One summer afternoon five or six of us wandered in off the sidewalk looking pretty hot and bedraggled, hardly dressed for eating out, loud, and hungry for something sweet. It was slow, and as the owner himself came to seat us, I said, jokingly, that he would probably want to put us far back in a dark corner because of the way we looked. He laughed, patted me on the shoulder and insisted on seating us at a table right in the front window.
That was cheesecake. It was very good.
To me, I'm afraid, there is seldom such thing as a memorable meal, and if it is, it usually has more to do with something that happened coincidentally at the same time as the meal, like a space station part landing in the chocolate mousse, or Uncle Ray falling off of his folding chair. What we ate, what it tasted like, what kind of presentation, that sort of thing, I'm afraid I seldom commit to long-term memory.
OK, I do remember the spaghetti races my sister and I had at the table at my Grandpa's house when we were little kids. Who can make their strand of spaghetti slide into their mouth the fastest? It was a process enhanced by a grownup twisting your ear, as I recall. In that case, I remember the food was spaghetti. I also remember the zucchini cake, even though I don't want to.
Perhaps the most memorable thing about those meals was actually just before the meal: Grandpa would pick up the salt and pepper shakers--little ceramic figurines made to look like a comical Italian married couple--and move them around and make them talk, like puppets, to each other in Italian. We always laughed at that, and the grownups laughed a little louder, and the grownups who also understood Italian laughed the loudest, until Grandma would playfully slap Grandpa and tell him to stop that.
Which brings me to the incident at Italian Gardens, sadly closed for business now, (how long?) in downtown Kansas City. One summer afternoon five or six of us wandered in off the sidewalk looking pretty hot and bedraggled, hardly dressed for eating out, loud, and hungry for something sweet. It was slow, and as the owner himself came to seat us, I said, jokingly, that he would probably want to put us far back in a dark corner because of the way we looked. He laughed, patted me on the shoulder and insisted on seating us at a table right in the front window.
That was cheesecake. It was very good.
Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Yeah Yeah Once Again . . .
If I'm going to pretend I have and maintain a blog, then I should probably post something here on the first day of 2019. Right? So here we go.
Let me begin by saying 2018 was a long damn year. I spent most of it living where I didn't want to be--in the River Market section of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Not that it's a bad place. It's just that I wasn't a "good fit," as they say, just before they fire you. After that stint, I moved to California, where I am right at the moment, and right after that I decided I didn't really care for the situation here.
It was an honest mistake. It's a college town, so it's fairly interesting compared to the typical central valley agricultural town in northern California, but it's also just another agricultural town. It's also a little too small to be truly convenient. As I say, it's convenient enough, as long as you don't need anything. Turns out that it is often necessary to drive to either Redding (70 miles away) or Sacramento (85 miles away) if you want anything that the typical understocked Target or K-Mart doesn't have to offer. Or health care. 'Nother story. Add to all that a general, across the board increased cost of everything, including taxes, and other than that not a lot going on, and there you have it in a nutshell.
Over Thanksgiving I met a woman in Tucson, Arizona. I know that has a certain ominous ring, but she's actually wonderful. I'm just going with the flow.
Happy new year.
Let me begin by saying 2018 was a long damn year. I spent most of it living where I didn't want to be--in the River Market section of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. Not that it's a bad place. It's just that I wasn't a "good fit," as they say, just before they fire you. After that stint, I moved to California, where I am right at the moment, and right after that I decided I didn't really care for the situation here.
It was an honest mistake. It's a college town, so it's fairly interesting compared to the typical central valley agricultural town in northern California, but it's also just another agricultural town. It's also a little too small to be truly convenient. As I say, it's convenient enough, as long as you don't need anything. Turns out that it is often necessary to drive to either Redding (70 miles away) or Sacramento (85 miles away) if you want anything that the typical understocked Target or K-Mart doesn't have to offer. Or health care. 'Nother story. Add to all that a general, across the board increased cost of everything, including taxes, and other than that not a lot going on, and there you have it in a nutshell.
Over Thanksgiving I met a woman in Tucson, Arizona. I know that has a certain ominous ring, but she's actually wonderful. I'm just going with the flow.
Happy new year.
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| I went to Seattle over Christmas. |
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