political humor, weather

Thoughtless Friday

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Today was a typical spring day on the high plains of Colorado – cool temperatures and howling winds. L barely made it out of the mountains for a meeting in Denver due to the snow and wind. Then she had to battle the wind all the way out here. Needless to say she was a bit frazzled by the wind when she got here this evening. The wind and breeze heralds a temporary cooling down and maybe even some moisture. We can but hope.


Today I was reminded of some of the better political symbolism I have seen in recent times. One of the high points of my day. I do have to wonder if the wind today wasn’t caused by all the political hot air flowing between the political parties. Election season is going to be really ugly given the early start to all the TV adds. I think they should just run the funny name change and call it good. Enjoy!

mama kat, writer's challenge

Ten Alternate Realities

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Time once more for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Challenge. (Which I wouldn’t miss in spite of my scarcity earlier in the week.)

This weeks topics:

1.) List of 10 things blogging has taught you.

2.) “Oh please make this a topic for Writer’s Workshop. Pick your favorite song and record your own personal bathroom concert series. I’ll totally do a concert series, I bet I could get my hubby or brother to join in. Now I just need a song… (inspired by Kerri from I’m Just Sayin)

3.) “Sometimes when it’s hard to see with the eyes I’ve been given, I strap on my camera and pray for new ones. I did that yesterday. It helped.” (inspired by Emily from Chatting At The Sky)

4.) “let he who hath no sin cast the first stone…” Is there anything you have judged prematurely, only to find yourself walking in the same shoes later? (inspired by Stephanie from This Blessed Life)

5.) List your top 10 “Spring Trends”. (inspired by Tricia from Desperately Seeking Silence)

#1 – Ten Things Blogging Has Taught Me

  • Bloggers come and go; rare is the 3+year blogger.
  • Newbies are always welcome.
  • A touch of graphical panache helps the words go down.
  • There is no predicting what will be popular with readers.
  • Taste is a individual thing.
  • Subject matter can compensate a lack of writing skill, at least temporarily.
  • Interesting blogs (to me) feature lives and interests disjunct from my own.
  • Blogging takes a back seat to life and work for most of us from time to time.
  • Blogging is addictive in the sense of feeling guilty when you haven’t written for a few days.
  • Powerful blogs are emotionally raw and uncensored. The rest of us have to be amusing or erudite to make up for lack of raw.

#2 – Bathroom Concert

Given that I am not even allowed to sing in the shower here by myself, there is no chance of me singing and exposing the world. I want at least some people to remain amidst the living to read this blog. {*grin*}

#3 – Camera Eyes

My approach is a bit different. When I can’t see with the eyes I have, I put on a new pair of eyes in my imagination and look at the world in a new light. I find that is usually very helpful. With a camera, you can only look at what is really there in a different way; with your imagination you can look at what isn’t really there in a way that illuminates what is really there in a different way. One might say that they are two different means to reaching the same end – a different way of seeing reality.

#4 – Getting Stoned

I don’t know if I have ever cast the first stone and then been stoned myself, but I have certainly had moments of utter non-understanding and cluelessness towards others. There is one judgment that lingers powerfully; friends and I have discussed it several times over the years.

When we were young, we often thought of some of our classmates/friends as weird, wild, flighty, or just plain out there. This judgment was often made without much deep thought or attempts at understanding. Now more than 40 years later and with additional information in hand, we realize that many times they had home and life situations that made them the way they were.

Somehow you always assume that everyone has a life like yours, free of abuse and exploitation. Unfortunately, that isn’t always true. I doubt that it would have changed anything, but I rue making those judgments and not being able to spot the underlying problem. Even one understanding friend could have made all the difference in dealing with the problem they faced. It might have kept those who took their own lives amidst the living.

At least there is hope that it *is* getting better.

#5 – Spring Trends

Fashion advice? From me? I don’t think so.

campaign, skinput

Two Completely Unrelated Topics

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This evening was interesting. The county Republican caucus is Saturday, so it was time to finish calling all the delegates to see if they had any questions for me. That is one of the things you get to do when you are running for a partisan office. L joined me in calling the ~150 delegates over the last two evenings. The hard part for me is not to talk too long: most people enjoy talking. I suspect a lot of that is because we all know each other out here in the rural west. That makes it just neighborly to ask how the wife and kids are doing and if the fields are looking good and …

On a completely different topic, I saw an article on the skinput system today and cannot decide whether the idea is brilliant or just plain spooky. For those too lazy to read the article (and/or too spooked to watch the video therein), the basic idea is to use a body mounted projector and the sounds produced by tapping on your skin to turn your body into the latest version of the touch screen. As a physicist I was intrigued by the applied science of using longitudinal and transverse propagation of waves in and on the surface of the body to deduce the point of tap. Amazing.

So what is your opinion? I still much prefer the direct skull electrode readers, but then I am a closet fan of Frankenstein too.

My idol!

book review, compromise, fashion, marriage, singing

Failure To Be Asked and Compromise – What a Mix

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This weeks topics:

1.) Ask someone who loves you what one of your weaknesses is.
(inspired by Summer from Le Musings Of Moi)

2.) “I need all the help I can get and if repeating something healthy and inspiring to myself several times a day helps, then I’m going to do it!” -What affirmation makes you feel better? WELL THINK OF ONE.
(inspired by Shanna from Smiles, Miles, and Trials)

3.) I Wanna Be MADE! You remember the MTV series where nerdy high school kids are made to be popular and what not? If you could be MADE into anything…what you be made into?

4.) I’m reading a book about dogs and kids…it says you may need to compromise some of your dog standards when choosing a dog that will fit every family member’s needs. I think that’s like marriage. What did you compromise when you married?

5.) Why didn’t they ask you? Write a list of 5 or 10 sentences that begin with the words ‘No one ever asked me’; then, write about one of them in detail, or use them all in a poem, or use several in a personal description of yourself.
(writingfix.com)

I’m going to go with #4 and #5 this week.

#4 – What did you compromise when you married?

I like to listen to music, preferably loud, as I drift off to sleep. L on the other hand is one of those people who requires near absolute silence to fall asleep. (Once asleep, she is impervious to most noises). You can see where this is going. It was one of the bigger compromises of married life for me to accept the no-noise-of-any-sort-at-bedtime rule.

Even now, more than 34 years later, I still miss listening to music at bedtime. There is something so soothing about listening to Led Zeppelin or Pure Prairie League as you drift off to the land of nod. Any Jackson Browne ballad acts as a soporific for me. Just about any tune to stop the continuous running of the brain is a great sleep aid for me. Call it the primitive power of music if you will.

Now it is an entirely different battle for silence at night. The combination of L, Molly (the dog), and me snoring is enough to wake the dead. There is nothing worse than waking up in annoyance at someone snoring only to realize that the snorer is you. Add into it the occasional bursts of night time flatulence from Molly and you can truly enjoy a premier sleeping experience at our house.

Maybe I can convince L to let me listen to music just to drown out the snores at night? It’s worth a try! (Of course, it won’t do anything to the olfactory effects from the dog, but as they say: half a loaf is better than none. Maybe Bizarro got it right in reverse.)

#5 – No one ever asked me

No one ever asked me …

… to be the centerfold in their magazine.
… to be the cap-person on their human pyramid.
… to join their ballet company.
… to serve as their fashion consultant.
… to run the anchor leg of the race.
… what I wash first in the shower.
… if I have ever crawled through a window.
… to retrieve something fallen into a narrow crevice.
… to sing for them.

We can eliminate the interest of some of these right off the bat. Regular readers already know why no one asks me to sing. (The curious might want to read this entry.)

Retrieving things from a small area is out for the simple reason that my hands are large. “How large?”, I hear you ask. Well …

I have never been asked if I have crawled through a window because unless it is a patio door, it isn’t going to happen. I have been asked numerous times to hoist someone up to the window – does that count?

I wash my head first in the shower, then the body, and then finally shampoo the hair (what there is left of it). Just seems like the logical way to go. I almost always shower rather than use a bathtub. Might have been too much exposure to the humor of my dad’s railroad work colleagues when young. They were fond of asking the semi-rhetorical question “Why would I want to wash my head in the same water as my @**?”

The rest of the failures can be traced to one simple fact: I am a really big klutz. When you are 6’5″ and 300lbs, you get asked to play football and rugby, not dance on stage or pose for the centerfold. {*grin*} And when you wear size 16 shoes, your ballet career is over before it even began. Likewise, unless it is a strongman competition, you are not going to be asked to tread and kneel atop anyone.

Finally, I am noted more for my sense of anti-fashion rather than fashion. After all, I have been seen in public wearing these:

I think that explains it all!

P.S. If you have ever wondered how those review blurbs for new books come about, venture on over to Eos Books – The Next Chapter and see how my review of BRAINS yesterday was blurb-a-tized. I have never seen so many ellipses in my life. {*grin*}

book review, brains, zombie

And Now For Something Completely Different

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A while back I won a pre-press proof copy of Robin Becker’s “Brains – a zombie memoir”. The coveted copy arrived and I sat down ready for a good read. Now that I have read, you get to listen to my meandering review. {*grin*}

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect since this is Ms. Becker’s first novel, not to mention one of the few zombie novels I’ve read. After all, it is difficult to picture a moldering decaying zombie fixated on eating brains as a sympathetic protagonist. I did indeed find the first few chapters an unenthusiastic read. But then I began to care about the trials and tribulations of Jack, the lead zombie. That was all it took to have me hooked.

The storyline is simple. An experimental vaccine developed by a scientist (Dr. Stein) for the military is somehow released into the wild before the “bugs” have been worked out and spreads a viral wave of zombie-ism throughout the world. We are introduced to the chaos via the narrative of Jack, a former college professor turned zombie (who just so happens to have eaten his wife early in the saga). Jack is a rarity for a zombie – he retains the ability to think. He also has a really sarcastic and snarky world view that only gets more pronounced once he turns zombie. Since he retains the ability to think, he keeps a written diary of his journey through zombieland – the very story we are reading.

As Jack navigates the battle between human and zombie and his insatiable need to eat brains, he collects a raggedy crew of exceptional zombies that have retained various skills not found in the garden variety zombie. Ros has retained the ability to speak, Guts has retained the ability to move at something other than the zombie shuffle in spite of the fact that his guts are duct taped in, Joan who has retained a deep sense of compassion for her fellow zombies and skill with a mending kit to keep them put together, Annie who has retained the ability to shoot a gun with accuraccy, and others. Along the way, Jack adopts a lady that had been pregnant when she was turned into a zombie, thus introducing the first zombie pregnancy and birth to the zombie clan. (The new born Issac serves as the symbol of hope to the gang.)

The story then becomes one of survival as the remaining humans work hard at eradicating the zombie hordes. (It seems that being shot in the head is fatal to zombies.) Along the way, the Jack’s goal mutates from simple survival to a quest for equality as the human and zombie populations shrink in the post-apocalyptic world.

Surprisingly, the story becomes more compelling as we become familiar with the band and all their foibles. The twist of allowing some zombies to retain various abilities like speech and normal ambulation serves well as a metaphor for the stuggles of the the differently abled amidst us. I was sucked into caring about the developing characters – a mark of good writing. The denouement is a blood bath, both of the zombie crew and Dr. Stein and humans. As the survivors sail off to a brave new world, I was tempted to throw the book across the room. It left so many questions unanswered.

Beyond the plot and character development, I loved all the literary allusions. The mad scientist named Dr. Stein? The alpha leader named Jack? The sharp shooter named Annie? Ms. Becker’s roots as a professor of English and writing have served her well. I also liked the rather cynical view of academia presented by Jack in his reminisces about his life in the pre-zombie state. They ring true to a reprobate like me.

This is an amusing and gripping read, especially the latter half. What keeps me from calling it a great read is the inconsistency of the zombie-ism presented. Zombies are driven to eat (brains), but they do not self repair and continue to fall apart. Thus we have a logical contradiction between the denouement of the novel and the fact that given enough time, zombies as presented here will simply rot and fall apart. It also made the birth of Issac a real contradiction in terms. How does a baby that does not grow older and is rotting grow up to be a symbol of hope?

Fair warning – like most zombie tales, this one is full of blood and gore luridly described. If that bothers you, you may not want to read this book.

Things Done Right