Category Archives: Life In General

Home not away from home

July 29, 2015 6:31 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Bizarre situations hold no terror for me anymore.  I just accept them as fact and roll merrily along with them.  I mean if you find yourself in a weird or off-putting situation why work yourself up over it?  Just look at it as matter of fact and get on with your day.

I decided to finish the remodeling project on my house.  It has taken 3 years to get the floors done but finally it will be finished.   Don’t even ask how much it cost me but finally it’ll be done.

Part of the problem is that in order to do it I had to abandon my bedroom and my home office to let the men work.  One gets used to having things just so and to have your daily routine suddenly totally wrecked can be disconcerting.  Still we need to soldier on, don’t we?

So after a week of cramming things into plastic storage bins and shuttling up and down the stairs I finally got moved out.  My plan was to work from the dining room and sleep on the rough finished bedroom upstairs but those plans went to hell almost immediately.

The men had to bring in lumber supplies and nearly squeezed me out of my dining room office.  They took apart the bed and stuffed it into a corner and said they might be done in 3 days.

The office dilemma was easy to cope with.  By crawling over my boxes I could get into my office chair and work.

The sleeping arrangement however was unexpected.  So I found myself having to leave the house and sleep at a nearby hotel.  Walking distance from my house.

It’s bizarre to see the neighborhood from a different perspective.  The same area but from a different angle.  The spatial relationships are off for me. The local main street is much closer and the supermarket is farther away.

I wouldn’t call it a cheap motel.  But it’s definitely…. lived in?  It’s one of those places with a kitchenette in the room and the hallway alternates smells of tobacco where someone has surreptitiously smoked or the pungent aroma of someone that’s made up a curry on the little stove.  Mostly inhabited by out of towners that came in for a seminar or training session at the hotel or families traveling the country or just people displaced for one reason or another.

Jogging in the morning takes a different perspective.  The relative distances have to all be recalculated.  And of course I have to go home to work every morning.

Bizarre.

But I can look upstairs each evening and I can see the work progress.  I hope to have some pictures up soon of what I think will be a major improvement in my living condition..

 

Posted in: hotels, Houston, life in general

The unreality of reality tv

July 27, 2015 6:53 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Back in the early 00’s I think it was we had the heyday of the reality TV show.  The premise was simple enough.  Throw out the script, bring in non-actors and put them in a situation and film what they do.  Not an original concept but fresh enough for American and then worldwide audiences to be captivated.

Here at last, or so went the conventional thinking, was unfiltered real drama.  No proscribed happy endings, no cliché lines, no predictable results.  Things would happen as they would and be delivered unapologetically to an audience that could either take it or leave it, and take it they did.

Network execs were overjoyed.  Not only were the shows a huge hit but they didn’t have to pay writers, actors, or directors to film this stuff.  A shoestring budget with a golden return.

The first show of the trend centered around filming people out in the wild but soon there were imitators peeking into the lives of people in a house or traveling around the world or trying to find true love.

This then morphed into reality competitions trying to find singers or actors or models and filming the real lives of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances (dangerous jobs, unconventional lifestyles, extremely rich). This programming vein seemed to be endless.

However some disturbing incidents took place.  Some episodes seemed to be filming the interpersonal conflicts that arose here and there and while that might happen normally some viewers started noting how the cameras always seemed to be in the right spot at the right time to capture those moments.

What’s more sometimes some of the “stars” of the shows left for various reasons and would decry the show online as “made up” or “staged”

The talent competitions seemed to be running on empty as well.  Some clearly untalented people were winning competitions and really not living up to their potential.

This programming trend is running towards the end of its course.  A few die-hard shows still continue on more than a decade later but less and less new shows are coming in.  The writer, the producer, and the director (specially the writer) are coming to be appreciated again and more conventional shows are claiming the top rating slots.

I’ve pretty much switched off my set in the last couple of years and have missed most of this.  I felt for a long time that the networks have pretty much tried to engage the lowest common denominator and have created low brow entertainment for the masses.

These reality shows are the ultimate expression of that.  They really don’t provide any insight or challenge a thinking person at all.  They are merely amusements for the brain to kill off an hour or two.

I hope that as these shows die off that we can reverse the trend and that with the last decade or so that new writers will be able to create and produce content that will once again turn television into a medium that will challenge as well as entertain.

Posted in: life in general, television

making do with what you have and making what you have do

July 25, 2015 6:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

It’s not about having what you want it’s wanting what you have.

This is a popular old saying and long ago I used to think this was made up by people who had it all and didn’t want you to have anything.  Then I changed my mind and decided that there was wisdom here.

Now though, I’m wondering.  Wondering whether it’s not having what you want, that’s right out but neither is it wanting what you have.

I mean if you just wanted what you have you’d never get anywhere now would you?  A little bit of ambition is a good thing as long as it doesn’t go overboard and morph into avarice or greed.

It’s more to do with wanting what you have and then taking it and fiddling with it till it’s more like what you wanted or taking what you have and fiddling with it so you can get what you want.

We are the thinking animal after all.  We live not just on this physical plane but in an abstract world of ideas and concepts.  We look at trees and rocks and don’t just see trees and rocks but houses, and wheels, and roads and fire and whatnot.

Very possibly this is a unique gift among animals, maybe not but very possibly.

The thing is though that sometimes we become so frustrated with the process that we begin to despise what we have and focus on what we want and really warp our perspective.

Sometimes those plans just aren’t going to pan out and that thing that we want is out of reach.  Then we have to take a deep look at what we have and decide to ourselves that we can accept this as what we want or that we can use this to get something else we might want.

It’s never clear-cut is it?

Posted in: life in general, speculation, thought

Why do sighs feel so good?

July 23, 2015 6:55 AM , Leave a Comment ,

You’ve just come out of a frustrating meeting or you’re in the middle of a difficult work out session or concentrating on a complicated project and you?

Sigh

No, it doesn’t make everything better and you don’t feel 100% again but somehow you feel a little more refreshed, a little more relaxed and you’re able to continue on.  Why is that?  It’s nothing more than an exaggerated breath after all.

Maybe it’s just the act of pausing to refresh yourself.  A brief nod to the body to acknowledge that it’s tired.

Maybe it’s just a break in the routine that let’s you mentally reset yourself so you can go on.

Or maybe it’s the extra intake of air that comes in to replenish the oxygen supply.

Whatever the reason it seems to be a time proven technique for allowing you to continue working.  The physical sigh works great but I think the mental sigh should not be disregarded.  At times your mind needs that mental sigh to clear away your thought process and let you go on working.

It doesn’t have to be something involved like meditation or time-consuming like reading a book or an article.  Just a brief thought about something banal, something whimsical.  Just a tiny pause to untangle the knots that we all tie ourselves up in.

It’s not just alright to do these things, sometimes it’s necessary.

Posted in: advice, attitude, life in general

What it all means

July 19, 2015 6:40 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The big science news of the week was the probe New Horizons passing by the dwarf planet Pluto.  About the most controversial aspect of this mission was whether Pluto should qualify as a planet or needs to be in another category.

Despite all the cheer-leading by NASA and the news media the mission itself doesn’t exactly capture the public imagination.  The probe flew by the Pluto.  It didn’t orbit it even once.  It certainly won’t land on the planet and scoop up Plutonian dirt.  Pluto itself hasn’t proven to be a big surprise either.  It’s still a giant rock covered by snow and ice in the middle of a dark nowhere. The pictures were nice but again nothing unexpected.

So how is this supposed to affect the average human back here on Earth and what if anything can we hope to gain out of it all?

Well, if you said not a hell of a lot then you’re right.  This mission won’t make the price of bread go down or solve the middle east crisis or even get your laundry cleaner.

But what it does do is close the book on the first part of our exploration of this solar system.  We have now done the preliminary exploration on all 8 (or 9) planets that we have.  A task that has taken nearly 60 years to accomplish has been done.  This voyage by itself took nearly a decade and depended largely on precise physics and navigational calculations.  We have now proven conclusively that those can work even in deep space and even by a robot working alone.

The mission itself was done on a shoestring budget.  I think I saw someone mention that a Hollywood blockbuster had a bigger budget than this mission.  The control personnel for the mission came from a University so the experience and know how to do this sort of research is diffusing outside the big government agencies.

No, this was not a big epic mission.  Nothing earth-shaking came out of it.  But it is a crucial step on a road that will one day make this a space faring species and lead us to the next great moment in human history.

Little tiny victories like this is what leads to great accomplishments down the road.

Posted in: life in general, science, technology

Attitude is everything

July 17, 2015 6:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

 

“When a cat is at the rat hole, ten thousand rats dare not come out” – Master Wang

 

 

We all have challenges to deal with in this life.  But how much harder do we ourselves make life when we have the wrong attitude?  Conversely how much easier does life get when you adopt the right frame of mind?

The cute little video above illustrates this point perfectly.  From a small feline full of attitude and just sitting to a nervous dog that looks at only the perils involved in the situation to the conclusion where the dog faces his fear and decides to go ahead and risk the worst possible fate.

But you say that’s just animals.  Animals can’t think.  They can’t reason and aren’t as advanced as humans.

I say “Aren’t they lucky?”  Humans are at least ten times worse at such things.  Our psyche tends to warp and tangle up our thought process till we’re left immobile and helpless by our fears.  In some ways our supposedly advanced nature is actually a handicap at times.  We can be our own worst enemies and our harshest critics.  Add in the human imagination and some paranoia and you’ll never set foot outside ever again.

We can however choose the route that we take through life.  The above example provides three such paths.

Firstly is the path of the scared dog.  We can look at life as a series of insurmountable challenges, and every decision fraught with danger and potential risk everywhere.  We can see each step as a potential calamity and always go looking for the easiest and safest path to go through life.  You’ll make it but your trip won’t be very long and it won’t be very interesting and you’ll often find yourself stopping and yielding to others.

Secondly is the path of the cat.  If you begin with the right attitude you can see life as something that is owed to you.  Something that you own and have every right to, then you can enter into any situation and act as if you’re the master of all you see. Now, this path can only get you so far.  Bluster and bravado are great but they aren’t substance.  However you can get substance along the way to back up that bluster and get really far in life.

Lastly is the path of the brave dog. After seeing all the perils ahead and considering the risks you proceed on anyways.  You’ve carefully measured the potential down side of the situation and decide that you could live with the possible disaster.  You won’t always be successful and you won’t escape unmarred but you will get through in the end because of your determination.

“He ponders the dangers inherent in the advantages, and the advantages inherent in the danger.” – Ts’ao Ts’ao

 

Which is the path for you?  That I can’t tell you.  That depends on your situation just as much as it does on your mental attitude.  All I can tell you is that you can’t make a wrong choice or a right choice.  But you are free to choose.

 

 

Posted in: attitude, life in general, psychology

The problem with restaurants

July 15, 2015 6:23 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Most of the week my food comes from My fit foods.  I discovered these prepackaged fresh meals a couple of years ago and they’ve really helped me by preparing fresh and healthy meals without me having to hunt in the supermarket for something to eat or in desperation turning to fast food joints. They’ve really have helped me not only cut calories but also cut the time I waste on preparing food.

Notice I said most of the time.  I have to admit that the selection can get a bit monotonous at times.  It sometimes gets to be that I’ve memorized the menu by heart and I start pestering the staff as to when the new menu will come out.  So sometimes I will take the time to make something at home.

But the weekends come and I find myself getting a little stir crazy.  I work at home and I find that I see way too much of the house sometimes.  So I go out to do something on the weekends (or sometimes the weeknight, but mostly the weekends).  Inevitably this will involve eating at some restaurant at some point.

Deciding where to go becomes a chore.  Someone in the group had Thai yesterday so that’s out and someone else hates Italian and someone wants spicy but not too spicy.  This turns into a UN treaty session with concessions given here and promises made there until some deadline comes up and everyone decides upon the least favorite but least objectionable choice.  We have peace in our times.

After that comes the problem of finding some place to sit.  Of course everyone in Houston wants to be out at the same time and wherever we go there’s usually a line or some sort of wait and you usually end up sitting by the kitchen or the bathroom and as it is so popular every other table is a family table with screaming kids.

Then comes the hard part of sorting through the menu.  You find yourself with the dilemma of wanting to eat food “A” but it comes with side dish “B” and they absolutely won’t do substitutions or you get a mountain of carbs in every spoonful no matter what you order.

Of course if you plan another activity later on you suddenly find yourself on the clock trying to shovel food in your mouth to make it to the thing (show, play, movie, party) on time.

Oh and if you decide to go out by yourself you get the occasional look from others “Why is he sitting by himself?”  Though to be honest that only happened to me once when the hostess, then the waiter, and lastly a manager came over and asked me if I was waiting for someone else to join me and none of them seemed too convinced when I said no.

Doesn’t make for the most pleasant of experiences.  But like I said, sometimes you have to break the work cycle monotony and any alteration of the routine is welcome.

My ideal restaurant would be something small, something that not many people knew about and something that prepared the meal the way that I wanted it prepared.  Come to think about it the best restaurant is at home.

Posted in: food and drink, life in general, restaurants

W.S.H.T.F #1

July 13, 2015 6:24 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  Put this in the “I don’t really have a topic even though I thought about this for the longest time so here is some filler material” category.  You might also note that I added a #1 to this as I think this may become a series of posts.  I don’t know.  We’ll see.]

 

WSHTF of course is the acronym for “When (expletive deleted) hits the fan”.  I was on YouTube the other week looking for a link for the Cowboy Bebop post and the search algorithm popped up a series of survival-preparedness videos as something that YouTube thought that I might like.  Apparently there is a whole category with this acronym.  I don’t know. I guess some people are bored and have nothing to do.

But there’s a writing topic here (for at least one post though I am already regretting this and now I’m unsure if I want to write more than one of these), so let’s plow ahead and see what happens.

For our first WSHTF scenario we will deal with the current flavor of the month, zombies.  What will you do when the global zombie apocalypse explodes and your family and friends turn into brain eating ghouls (though that’s disparaging to ghouls as ghouls are much more advanced than zombies and… never mind, another time).

Apparently this topic gets more play than you would imagine as there are various civilian groups of enthusiasts preparing for a zombie apocalypse and even some government agencies and the military use the zombie scenario as a stand in for large-scale civil disasters.

It has been argued that the evolution of civilization can be broken up into five distinct phases: Survival, Building/rebuilding, Expansion, Maturity, Collapse.  In this scenario you are either in the collapse or survival phase.  With that in mind, you can choose to handle this in distinctly different ways.

You can choose to throw out all the rules of modern society and focus on your own survival because in a society in free fall collapse you will only survive by using your wits and by being willing to throw out altruism (preferably from a tall building) and looting as many pre-disaster goods as possible while kneecapping as many people you come across and insuring that the zombies will go for them rather than you.

Or you can choose to stubbornly cling to a few choice shreds of civilization and try to maintain some semblance of law and order as well as fanning the flames of empathy and humanity to rebuild a shattered world.

I think the truth lies somewhere between these two extremes.  In a dog eat dog (and dog eat cat and dog eat human and human eat possum and I guess what I’m trying to say is just don’t turn up your nose at it, okay?) world we will have to make some hard choices in order to survive and trying to do the “right thing” may just be one of those hard choices.

Sure, sure it might be easier to hit that guy with a lead pipe and take his box of mac and cheese.  But maybe you can share that mac and cheese with your can of tuna and make a tuna casserole bake and maybe it won’t be as gross as that possum fritter you had for breakfast (I’m just saying maybe it won’t, there’s always a chance).

Sooner or later you will have to cooperate with other humans.  Why not start as soon as possible?

I could go into the specifics of machete versus katana as the best bladed weapon or 12 gauge shotgun versus AK-47 but really those are details.  The important thing in this scenario is your state of mind.  Your philosophy and world view is what you will leave behind to future generations.  Make it a philosophy that incorporates kindness, caring, and forward thinking leadership.

 

Or you know….

 

At least hire a good biographer that can edit out all the bad bits.

Posted in: fiction, humor, life in general, thought

Demons

July 9, 2015 6:36 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Plod.

 

Plod.

 

Plod.

 

Plod.

 

 

The humidity sucks the strength out of my body.  The miasma of heat and moisture hits me as I open my door and promises a miserable workout.  My legs are like two ingots of pig iron this morning and I can barely lift them anymore.  I don’t think that I’m making any progress in my fitness regimen or even in my life.

Over four years now and although I made progress at first I don’t see anymore improvement.  It’s not just my fitness but my entire life seems to be at a standstill or worse it seems to be regressing.  Things are hard.  I should just quit and give up.

 

[begin internal dialogue

 

so that’s it, is it?

Okay.  Slow down, stop, and start walking back home. It’s only a couple of miles and you can get there walking in an hour or so.

You gave it your miserable best and it wasn’t good enough.  Everyone knew it wouldn’t be. You knew it wouldn’t be.  No one will blame you.  They never expected much out of you anyways.  All those things that you think people whisper about you behind your back?  That you’re fat, you’re ugly, you’re talentless, you’re worthless.  They’re all true, aren’t they?

You told yourself long ago that eventually you’d quit.  You never had it in you to succeed and you never will.  All those plans and ideas you had were pointless fantasies.

Better to have tried and lost and all that nonsense, right?

All those people around you that succeed, that are living their dreams, that actually do something.  They’re just better than you are.

No one is going to fault you for quitting.  You won’t let them.  You’ll cocoon yourself away in a digital shell in your room for the rest of your miserable life and die alone one day and life will be better for everyone else.

Don’t even think about trying anymore.  Continuing on is pointless.  When you try there will always be pain, there will always be struggle, there will always be exhaustion. 

It. Does. Not. End.

So quit now.  You’re not making any progress.  You’re just wasting everyone’s time.  Just stop plodding along like a fool.   

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      ]

.

 

..

 

 

…

 

 

 

Plod.

Plod.

Plod.

Plod.

Posted in: life in general, motivation

Birthday lessons

July 5, 2015 6:57 AM , Leave a Comment ,

We celebrated America’s 239th birthday yesterday.  To most people it’s a chance to get off work and relax. Most of the population doesn’t sit back to consider the declaration of independence or the revolutionary war or the impact and meaning of these to their lives.

The few people who are paid to do this, social commenters, political writers, and those that make a living speculating about such things will usually crank out the same series of articles every year.  Either the founding fathers were God-fearing capitalist patriots trying to forge a new form of government in a howling wilderness or they were atheist, proto-marxists throwing off the shackles of oppression and  creating universal suffrage for all.  Most of the written pieces fall somewhere along this continuum with some detours delving into the issues of women’s suffrage or slavery. Depending on what websites you visit you will see one opinion voiced more than the other.

Of course not one of these views is wholly correct.  The founding fathers were a mixed lot of idealists and scoundrels, laissez faire capitalists and anarchists, land owning gentry and yeoman farmers, church elders and worldly men.  Each group had its own agenda and reasons as to why they wanted to break away from London’s control and the only thing they had in common was a realization that they would need each other’s support to achieve independence.

One thing that they all recognized however was the need to do something new and radical.  To post a logical declaration of grievances against their existing government and provide a sort of logical proof for the need to break away and to form a new government of their own.

I think that has been a vital part of the American character since before the start.  The urge and ability to try something new and not shy away from it just because it wasn’t something that had been done before.  Of course innovation and new thinking can occur anywhere in the world and at any time in history but I think it’s rare that it has ever been so widely accepted as it was in the early American era by such a large population.

I think it was a side effect of the excitement of being part of a new nation in a new land that allowed people the freedom and flexibility to think about new forms of government, the willingness to gamble on new ventures, the acceptance of new technologies, that sense that over time the nation would “improve” itself and that technology would leverage us all into a new golden age.

I find that somewhere along the way we lost that vital spirit.  Perhaps as early as the late 19th century but certainly after World War II.  We went from being a nation excited and curious about the possibilities and challenges of the future to being a nation in love with a past that for the most part didn’t exist in one way or another.  From being excited at the prospect of change and new thinking to being terrified of the idea and demanding that we stay in a social and mental limbo.  From pulling together in common cause to blaming each other for past and current woes.

Rather than trying to solve situations to find the maximum benefit for all of us we have balkanized our populations into competing and often hostile camps that could maybe pull together and benefit each other but for the most part practice mutual antagonism as a sport.

If we continue on our current route I am certain that we will not see another 239 years.  I don’t see us going past another 100 years.  Either our own inertial forces will rip us apart or competing nation states will begin using our confusion against us and will feast on our self-made misery.

We should respect the past and learn from our mistakes and follies if at the very least to honor the sacrifices of those that came before us.  But we should also remember that they made those sacrifices not for us to stay in the past but to progress forward and up into a better tomorrow.

 

Posted in: birthdays, culture, current events, holidays, life in general, myths, politics, speculation, thought