Category Archives: Thought

fans

April 22, 2015 6:05 AM , 2 Comments ,

The Star Wars trailer came out the other day. Don’t know if it will be a good movie or not but the initial signs are positive.  Movie trailers are not a huge event to most people but to devotees of the series, it was highly anticipated.

Nowadays trailers usually come out on YouTube and people on YouTube will film what’s called reaction videos.  Basically videos of their initial and genuine reaction to the trailer.  I could waste hours watching these. I find it somewhat fascinating to watch these. I was also shocked that so many people made these videos already.

I like watching not only the reactions but in particular I also like to note the diversity of the fan base.  Not all Star Wars fans are pasty skinned, fat, glass wearing nerds.  The phenomena that is the Star Wars series runs the gamut through all races, genders, and economic backgrounds and is worldwide.

It’s somewhat difficult to explain the appeal of this series.  I mean it’s one thing to say that it all has to do with cool special effects and space movies and fighting but I feel that there must be more here.  These are a series of movies that people have memorized all the lines and regularly quote these lines to one another during conversations.  I don’t mean that they quote just memorable lines but they will quite literally quote each and every line to one another no matter how innocuous  the line.

I don’t think that happens with any other series, even with venerated series like Star Trek.  Something about the themes, the ideas behind the story reaches out and touches individuals no matter what their background or situation.  They can relate to a character in the story, they can relate to the feeling of struggling against a system that feels oppressive, they can relate something of their own particular situation to what they see up on the screen.

Something else I noted watching all these reaction videos was the number of female fans that posted reaction videos.  Nerd and science fiction culture has had to take a long and hard look at itself with regards to the ingrained discrimination towards female fans this last year.  It has been a painful but most necessary process.  We who have proclaimed ourselves to be the oppressed underdogs fighting against a system that discriminates against us.  We have been guilty of the same sort of oppression against female fans.  A lot of the old guard nerds have asserted that female fans are not as passionate about science fiction or that they just “don’t get it”.  I think this puts that argument to rest.

Just one more to make the point.

 

 

Posted in: culture, entertainment, fans, life in general, movies, pop culture, thought

plans vs pipe dreams: Knowing the difference and leveraging them anyways

April 20, 2015 6:39 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Just as we also have carefully thought out plans, we also have pipe dreams.

We all have those wild and crazy ideas that would be nice to achieve but we “know” just won’t ever work.  These are ideals that we may dream about at bed time or just after lunch one day.  You can think and even see them but the rational part of your mind knows that they’re impossible so it discounts them as just impractical fantasies and generally forgets about them.

On the flip side we have those carefully worked out plans that we think and re-think all the time and we “test out” and know will work because we’ve put in the time to manage expectations and to make sure they can be implemented before anything happens.  We work and live through these every day.

Obviously, it’s bad to get hung up on a pipe dream and obsess over it to the point that you can’t function.  Unfortunately I see this type of behavior too much among some of my peers.  Obsessing about some material item, over some sort of achievement, over some love that got away from them.  Many people chase these unattainable goals to the point that they disregard some or all other important aspects of their lives.

On the other hand it’s equally as bad to just live out a carefully scripted and planned life.  If you only live a planned out existence you may find that opportunities that suddenly appear and offer themselves to you will be ignored or denied because they don’t fit in with your current plans.  You may find that you deny yourself an advantage or may find that your original plan may actual be detrimental to you just because it didn’t fit in.

I think most people can tell what a plan looks like.  A pipe dream is more difficult.  We can often fool ourselves into thinking an outlandish pipe dream is really a reasonable plan.  If we sit down however and look at it carefully and analyze it bit by bit we can often see the faults in the “reasonable plan” and see it for what it really is.

But like I said above, living only a planned life can be equally bad for you.  So how can we live a balanced life where we keep our hopes and dreams alive but allow our plans to carry us ahead?  We have to strike a balance.  Live the daily life within our plans but always keep those pipe dreams at hand.  Don’t totally deny them or discount them.

Even if you do chase after your pipe dream and ultimately fail, the journey, the process of trying to achieve that pipe dream may yield unexpected benefits, may open up new vistas and worlds that you didn’t previously know about.

Pipe dreams are sometimes the only things that can keep us moving forward when things are tough.  Learn to control them, learn to tame them.  But never let them die.

Posted in: advice, goals, life in general, motivation, opportunities, plans, thought

Being an adult

April 16, 2015 6:51 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Two of the hallmarks of being an adult.  Taxes and signing papers.  I did both this week.

The former of course comes around every year and can’t be avoided.  At least no one has come up with a plausible way yet.  With a primal regularity I’ve been going through the process since I was 17 and I expect to have to do this around 50 more times before I’m done.

The latter involved reading and signing a bunch of papers to first transfer ownership of my old car as part of a trade in deal and then of course paying for my new car.  I don’t quite remember how many papers I had to sign for my first car but I’m sure it wasn’t this many.

Neither of these was a glamorous and in fact they were rather monotonous events but I find that a good portion of being an adult really involves just getting on with taking charge of all the little niggling details of life.  Kids usually go on and on about how cool things will be when they’re adults but really they don’t realize what it takes to keep things going as an adult.

One of my pet peeves involves being at a party or a gathering with an artist or a speaker or someone who has just done something impressive and someone complimenting that person by saying “I want to be you when I’m an adult”.  Firstly because the person usually saying is an adult but mostly cause this really misses the mark of what it is to be an adult.

Being an adult mainly involves accepting responsibilities, putting up and keeping up with a lot of tiny but important details, and just managing to outlast life when things get tough.

Sure there are lots of cool things you can do when you’re an adult.  But if you want to do those cool things it usually means you have to do many other things you would rather not do.  It means not just grudgingly but almost gladly accepting that these details are at the heart of what it means to be an adult.

Being an adult means responsibility.

Posted in: aging, life in general, thought

Lessons from the twilight

April 6, 2015 6:22 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Back in the 80s nerd culture was just beginning to coalesce.  I had no clue what a nerd was or that I was one.  I just did what I did and assumed it was natural.  Part of that nerd behavior was watching old 50’s and 60’s sci-fi TV shows obsessively.  I could and maybe I will at some time in the future write obsessively about other shows but I have to give a special nod to one TV show in particular, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone.

Serling was an odd character.  Although physically small (he was only 5 foot 4 inches tall), he aggressively pursued athletics and later went into the paratroopers during World War 2.  Dismissed as lazy in his studies by his teachers he came out of the war and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Literature at Antioch College.  Repeatedly turned down by his future wife for being a playboy, he continued to court her until she agreed to marry him.  Basically a guy that went out and did those things that people said he couldn’t do.

He brought this same type of restless energy into his radio career and then into the new medium of television.  He pushed and pushed until he got the pilot show approved for the Twilight Zone.

Twilight Zone itself was a show that dealt mainly with modern polemics and age-old questions more than most shows of the era and indeed more than most shows nowadays.  The idea that the show dealt with silly or spurious topics is false.  Racism, classism, the “rat race”, death, redemption.  All of these would be recurring themes in the show.  Serling would usually begin the show with a short introduction to the topic and would also add some closing thoughts at the end of the show.  The viewer would be drawn in and encouraged to think about the topic rather than to sit back and be amused by some mindless entertainment.

 

 

Every once in a while I will stumble across one of these episodes and sometimes I can draw some parallels to what’s going on in my life at the moment and yet again I think to myself what a brilliant man Serling was.

Three episodes resonate with me at the moment and I have to admit they have resonated with me in the past as well.

 

Walking Distance

A busy executive from New York City stops by a gas station in the middle of nowhere.  While he has the oil changed in his car he notices that the town that he grew up in is nearby and decides to visit it.  He finds that he has somehow gone back in time and sees himself as a child.  He desperately wants to stay in the past but his father confronts him and tells him that he can’t and that maybe life wasn’t so bad after all.

 

Nervous man in a four dollar room

Jacky, a failed gangster, sits in a cheap hotel room trying to make a decision as to whether to murder an innocent storekeeper, as ordered by his gang boss, or quit his life of crime and reform.

As he thinks, the reflection in the room mirror talks to him.  The reflection reminds him of all his past failures and stresses Jacky’s inherent character flaws and weaknesses.

As the conversation progresses Jacky becomes increasingly anxious and frustrated.  The reflection finally challenges Jacky and tells him that he wants to take over.  The two struggle for control.

The gang boss arrives in the morning to see why Jacky hasn’t carried out the murder.  Jacky beats up the boss and throws him out telling him that he’s through with crime and also noting that his new name is now John.

 

The Changing of the guard

An elderly professor learns that he will soon be forced to retire.  Looking back on his career he believes that his time has been wasted and that he has not made any impact.  He considers committing suicide.  As he does, the phantoms of some of his past students emerge.  They relate what they did in life and how he was the inspiration for their lives.  In the end the professor realizes that he did make a difference in people’s lives and decides to accept his retirement.

 

 

These are some of my favorite episodes.  I find myself turning back to these over and over again when life gets tough, when things aren’t going my way, or when I find myself at a loss as to what direction to take.  The past should stay in the past, a life can be redeemed, and we are the sum of our experiences, all of them.

Lessons aren’t confined to books.  Wisdom may be found in the oddest of places and we should never discount knowledge no matter where it comes.  Even if that places happens to be in The Twilight Zone.

Posted in: life in general, review, television, thought

relax

March 27, 2015 6:08 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’ve been running full tilt this year.  Been keeping busy as much as possible and trying to get things done and trying out as many new activities as I can in my spare time.

I’ve been programming my spare time, mainly the weekends, for the last few months and I’ve been able to see and do a lot of cool and fun stuff these few months.

But inevitably you are going to get a weekend that you’re not going to have anything to do.  Now to clarify, I always have some chore or some thing to accomplish but I generally have more spare time on the weekends, generally in the evenings, to do something and I’ve been putting that to good use.

Like I said however, you’re going to roll into one of those weekends where either nothing appeals to you particularly, or the timing doesn’t work out, or you just don’t feel like doing anything in particular.

Unprogrammed time.  It happens.  In a way it’s a good thing.  Just a chance to let things settle down and let your mind relax.  We all need that sort of weekend from time to time.  At first I was a bit anxious about it as I thought to myself “come on, I have to have some “thing” to do”

But really this is just one weekend out of hundreds.  Maybe this will give me a chance to reflect, to take turn off the smart phone and just think, or at the very least just hit the reset button on my mind and start fresh on Monday morning.

Putting pressure on myself to have something to do is good in most cases but becoming fixated on that notion is not.  Using this time to really relax is a gift I should embrace.

 

Posted in: attitude, habits, hobbies, life in general, plans, rest, thought

LaMOEs

March 7, 2015 7:00 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Dystopian fiction is one of my favorite forms of science fiction.  The exploration of circumstances after a major civilization collapses and how people deal with it.

Not so much for the actual catastrophe that causes the world to collapse but rather how people deal with the catastrophe afterwards.  How do we go on?  The last man on earth (LaMOE) scenario.

Some people turn feral and break every rule to survive.  Some people roll up their sleeves and get to work trying to put things back together.  Some people just curl up and die.  I think it’s somewhat telling how some people choose to cope after a catastrophe and in a similar vein I think it’s telling which scenario that people want to read about.

I picked up a short story anthology about apocalyptic fiction the other day.  Most of the stories followed the first option.  The mindset of the characters in the book was that the rules and social mores of the old world had been swept away and that anything was now justified in the name of survival.

But is it true?  Do we all revert to some more primitive state when pressured by catastrophe?  For the most part I am going to say that this is not true.  We’ve seen some examples of catastrophes around the world in the last few years and for the most part people seem to want to cooperate and to rebuild rather to pillage and loot and lookout only for themselves.

In some cases of course it did prove to be true that people would act pretty savagely to keep themselves alive but for the most part people realize that cooperation and compassion will do a lot more to insure their own survival that brutal self-interest.

I think it’s millions of years of being social and cooperative creatures that has brought us to the point where we no longer see things in stark and brutal terms and see that our own survival is more closely tied to one another than to trying to be that last people left alive.

Posted in: fiction, thought

Poetry

March 1, 2015 6:27 AM , Leave a Comment ,

No, this isn’t a poetry entry.  Just some thoughts on the subject.

I went to a poetry reading the other day and they had two poets reading from some of their latest books.  I regularly attend readings by a local group called Inprint, which brings notable authors to Houston.

One poet struck a particular chord within me.  His poems dealt with his relationship with his father who had recently passed away.  His words so eloquently expressed his feelings as he dealt with his loss with a minimum of diction.  Yet even though he didn’t write down all that much the few words that he did write down beautifully expressed his sentiments and the feeling of the moment.

It has always amazed me how poets can work with words and weave them so intricately and so expertly and even though I work with the same media that they can make something so elegant and so concise whereas I feel that my writing is at best a ham-fisted approach to distill and convey a message to my readers.

Their approach, their technique, can be likened to a delicate ballet whilst mine is merely clumsy clog dancing.  I have to admit that I have always been envious of that but not jealous.  I know deep down inside that I am no poet.  While I can admire their craft and appreciate what they have written I know it’s not something that I could ever do.  So I don’t resent their talent and ability to express themselves so eloquently.

My talent, if indeed I do have any talent, lies in clumsily expressing myself in a more pedestrian and unremarkable prosaic style.  Presenting the facts, all the facts, before the reader and lending them my sense of the scene as I see and guiding them through the action.

Hopefully some day, something that I write will be found worth printing and I will be able to share this with a much wider audience.  It won’t be a pretty dance of words like that of these poets but exhibited but I hope that it will be worth reading.

 

 

Posted in: life in general, thought, writing

The Summer solstice

February 23, 2015 6:38 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is a reprint from June 2007]    

We just passed the Summer Solstice.  The longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.  In today’s hectic world it has little meaning to the average person living in this interconnected, instant communications, driven life

But once upon a time it was a deadly serious business.  No one knows exactly when or where humans began tracking sunrises and sunsets.  The neolithic peoples that built Stonehenge knew of it and probably built it to track the rise and setting of the sun, so surely its older than that 5000 year old structure

Knowing when the days became shorter or longer was key to a society that had just come out of hunting and gathering.  Crops would not grow in the cold dimly lit days of Winter so knowing that the days were getting longer would be essential to knowing just when to plant crops.  To mark the importance of this priests and shamans would encourage festivals to be held on these key days

Of course nowadays with calendars, satellites, and precision timing devices it’s just taken for granted but even so we cant shake these ancient pagan roots.

The Summer festival isn’t as important to us but look at the Winter festivals.  Halloween, originally the Celtic New year marking the beginning of the dark season.  Appropriated by the Christian Church into All Saints day, or All Hallows Eve.

Thanksgiving, a thoroughly american holiday, or is it?  The day of giving thanks for the fall harvest, yet another agricultural legacy that hasn’t left us.

Christmas.  Most probably Christ’s birth date wasn’t in December, probably it was closer to March or April, however the German and Celtic tribes celebrated the Winter Solstice on the 22nd and the Church appropriated this as well

Even in Texas traces of these Winter rites are seen.  We used to have a large bonfire at my university for the texas football game every year.  Large logs were cut and stacked and on the night before the game the huge pyre was lit, thousands would stand in the cold and rain and sing and chant.  Standing in this throng of people lit by the glow of a gigantic fire I couldn’t help but make the comparison to ancient crowds circling bonfires thousands of years ago chanting in the dark.

Even Easter.  Named after the Anglo Saxon goddess of Spring Ostern.  Possibly Ostern herself was a corruption of ancient near east goddesses like Ishtar or Astarte, both goddesses of fertility and new life.

Ostern’s festival was the vernal equinox or the start of spring when crops could be planted.  The Anglo Saxons would perform a ritual on that date.  They would take out a cage made out of wheat stalks they had harvested the year before containing the corn spirit.  They would set this on fire and release the spirit to bring the world back to life after the long Winter.  A recognition of the cyclical nature of life.

We have co=opted many of the traditions of these ancestors.  The rabbit and the eggs.  The rabbit was the totemic animal of the goddess Oster.  A small bird laid its eggs in wheat fields, when hunters saw rabbits in the fields and chased them, they often found these eggs and assumed the rabbit had laid them, thus the tradition of hiding eggs was born.  The church explained the egg as a symbol of new life.  The corn spirit was left out but the idea of the rebirth of the world after a long cold winter was maintained.

The summer solstice itself may have lost much of its importance in this modern world but though we have covered ourselves with a hard veneer of technology and draped ourselves with our modern point of view we are not all that much removed from those ancestors that once lit bonfires and chanted in the middle of the night.

Posted in: myths, thought

The real pleasures of life

February 19, 2015 6:26 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Cold and rainy days are perfect for trying out quiet and meditative pastimes. I mean there’s nothing wrong with a good healthy athletic activity.  Getting the blood circulating, moving, doing something that requires hard exertion is great too, but quiet meditative moments are meant to be appreciated too.

In the past, cold and rainy days meant just logging into some online game and trying to kill a couple of hours doing some game activity that I’d done a thousand times before.  “Level grinding” is what we would call it in online circles.  Just trying to accumulate more points to get to the next level by doing the same thing over and over again.  In many ways just like running on a thread mill and eventually just as monotonous.

But there are more satisfying and profitable ways to spend a cold dreary day.  Spending time with friends and just catching up is always good.  Doesn’t require any particular space and doesn’t have to be preplanned or special preparation.

Catching up on work.  Odd I know but I’ve caught myself actually enjoying spending time on weekends trying to get ahead or trying to catch up on those projects that would be “nice to do if I had the time” and lo and behold here we are.

Spending time alone at a tea or coffee-house and instead of going for your old reliable blend (ginger green in my case) exploring and trying some of the more exotic varieties or just sitting next to a window and watching the rain fall as you contemplate the tea leaves in your cup.

Letting a lazy afternoon drift past as you get lost in a good book and not realizing or caring how time has past until you can no longer read by natural light. Something that every person should do at least once in a lifetime.

Letting the muse strike and painting or composing a new song or writing a story or whatever creative activity that you enjoy take over your focus for an afternoon.

Point is that rather than doing the same old thing during this seeming waste of time, think of this as an opportunity for you to engage your more creative and intellectual instincts.

You may just find some hidden inspiration that you never knew existed.

 

 

Posted in: activities, life in general, thought, time

Is beauty necessary?

February 15, 2015 11:21 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  This is the next in a series of writing challenges first proposed to me by Leslie Farnsworth.  Leslie has organized and expanded the challenge to include a larger group of excellent blog writers.  Once per month, one member of the group will propose a topic and we will all give our own unique take on the subject.  This latest installment was proposed by Rebecca Harvey.  You may want to look at the other bloggers listed below to see what they came up with:]

My thinking on this topic began with meditating on the topic of beauty itself.  Why does it exist in the first place?  Why are some things beautiful and some things ugly and how do we make the distinction?

We all have our preferences in life.  No matter what the subject is, no matter how public or personal, we know what we like and what we don’t like.  Generally these things have to do with the more basic and primal aspects of our being.  Those aspects that determine our survival.

Throughout evolution the beauty aspect has helped the individual find that member of the opposite gender that presented the best possible chance that one’s offspring would not only survive but prosper.  As environmental conditions change or a species moves into a new territory sometimes the requirements for surviving changes and beauty standards may change as well.  As a tangent line of thought, this may also be where fashion originates, but that’s something to think about another day.

For humans and our immediate predecessors, beauty standards dictated that our potential mates be in generally good physical condition, be larger than other potential mates, and have some advantageous adaptation to the local environment.

Of course this standard varied from situation to situation and from time to time.  Cultural norms have come to play a huge role in what we consider to be beautiful.  Some cultures will accentuate or even exaggerate some body part that is considered desirable.  Those cultures would use clothing, make up, or body modification to achieve the desired look.  These practices can of course be carried to extremes.  In certain cultures around the world being fat and having poor or no teeth was considered beautiful as it meant that the particular individual had access to excess food supplies and in particular access to sugar which for a very long time was a luxury food item.  Even though having poor dental hygiene is in fact a sign of bad health the practice continued on until the improvement of economic situations in these cultures made this a less desirable beauty trait.

As I said previously culture plays a big role in what we consider to be beautiful.  Wealth is an aspect of culture that can dictate how we or other people live their lives.  Whether we measure wealth by number of farm animals we own, or land we control, or pieces of paper we have in a bank.  Money represents power and power has always been beautiful whether we like it or not.

But do we still need the old beauty standards of good health and attractive features?  In the urban situation where most humans live,  where we no longer have to hunt for food or run away from predators or scavenge and go hungry for weeks or months at a time and where physique is no longer as important, is it still valid to judge others with those old beauty standards?  Surely if you are searching for a potential mate and you take into consideration their ability to earn wealth then a potential mate is to be judged by their ability to think, plan, and create content and thus participate in the idea economy rather than by their physical development and their ability to chop wood, or plow a field, or hunt.

That would be true in an ideal world but one thing we have begun to discover is that this human built environment has its own challenges.  Sedentary lifestyles now represent the largest danger to those living in cities.  We have access to too much food and little need to exert ourselves as vigorously as we once did.  Heart disease, diabetes, and cancers are the biggest killers of all these days.  Diseases that were previously kept in check by harder and more physical lifestyles.  Those individuals that work out and keep fit are still considered beautiful as they seem to reject the sedentary lifestyles that lead to these diseases.

A secondary consideration relating to our new economy is that you may have the best ideas in the world but if you can’t convey those ideas to large groups of other people then your idea won’t be successful.  As our means of communications are becoming more and more visual and as our minds respond better to beautiful things, even if just sub-consciously, then  we turn again to the old beauty standards.  We trust the beautiful, we listen to the beautiful, we envy the beautiful.  The ugly, not so much.  One famous example was the Kennedy-Nixon debate.  Those that listened to the event on radio gave the debate to Nixon as the more persuasive speaker but the vast majority of the population that saw the event on TV gave the debate to the younger and more attractive Kennedy.

So is beauty necessary?  I wouldn’t call it necessary as I would call it a factor to be aware of and something to take into consideration. I think we have to be aware that beauty does play a factor in our lives however much we may eschew this and even think this a banal consideration it does exist and does have the power to alter our decision-making process.

Posted in: blogs, culture, fashion, genetics, ideas, life in general, psychology, relationships, thought