Why the hell is this one wandering around my front yard at ten till ten in the morning?
Aren’t raccoons supposed to be nocturnal
StandardWhy the hell is this one wandering around my front yard at ten till ten in the morning?
What does a drowning person look like?
StandardGah!
StandardStupid, time-consuming video games and with their short term rewards.
I buy my video games used…
StandardMost of the time, anyway.
I also rarely see movies in the theater (unless it’s something for my son) and I don’t belong to Netflix or Blockbuster so I don’t rent DVDs. When I see movies (with a few exceptions) they’re borrowed from the library. And yesterday I saw the rebooted STAR TREK DVD sitting there on the shelf, so I snagged it.
Let me say upfront that I’m not a Star Trek devotee. The original series was mostly good. The Next Generation was mostly good after it worked the kinks out. Voyager was a bore and Enterprise couldn’t hold my attention. My favorite out of all of them is DS9.
So, understand that I’m not going to be all yay or nay based on the changes to canon…
Hoo boy. People liked this? Spoilers in the rant below. Continue reading
Five things for a Friday
Standard1- You know what’s annoying? Being unable to find a link to an article that you wrote about in your own blog. [added later: found it!]
2- I have a brilliant idea for a multi-million dollar invention: the ultimate alarm clock. Here’s how it works. At the time you want to wake up, it uses orgone energy electromagnetic waves to stimulate the dream centers of your brain. You have a dream where you wake up after the time you were supposed to be at work, and the blind dream-panic wakes you up for real, even in the dismal hours of the morning. Multi-million dollar invention, I tell you.
3- In keeping with my usual computer game protocol, I captured Hill 400 in Call of Duty 2 earlier this week. Soon I can try out Prince of Persia. Maybe tonight. Or maybe I’ll watch movies. Or do both. It all sounds good, as long as my entertainments are all several years old and cheaply acquired.
4- Remember my previous post about stress and my recent inability to write? Well, on Wednesday night I heard Bill Clinton talking about the US World Cup victory over Algeria. He did sound seriously ill (I blame the vuvuzelas) but he praised the team’s “mental toughness.” To paraphrase from memory: Every high level competition, from a championship game to a big election eventually comes down to mental toughness.
I like that! I like “mental toughness” better than “discipline” because the latter sounds like a lot of hard work, but the former sounds like something you just have. I went to bed thinking about it, and woke up on Thursday morning trying to imagine myself as a writer who was also a tough guy–stress doesn’t get to me! I can sit down and do the work whenever I have to, just like a professional athlete! Professional!
Then I opened a book and started reading.
5- That book I mentioned in number four above? It’s The Ivory Grin by Ross MacDonald, and although I’m only halfway through it. Still, it’s FANTASTIC! Maybe what The Buried King needs is not some new mental attitude but a new mental model. Thank you, dead author!
6- Bonus sixth thing! I’m deeply annoyed that day job is too busy for me to read this article of social influence and obesity. Reading it at home is going to seriously cut into my time-wasting time.
Randomness for 6/25
Standard1) via Robin Bailey, this video about a guy who’s mom “beat the gay out of him” is crazy funny. It seems so real at the start…
2) Kitten wearing a tiny hat eats a miniature ice cream cone.
3) Next step: cub burgers. You know what surprises me but shouldn’t? The free-range lion “farm” (not ranch?) in Illinois. No one would believe it if they read it in a book.
4) Steve Martin’s Tour Rider leaked! So funny, and I so want to steal this idea for my upcoming non-existent book tour!
5) Cormac McCarthy’s Toy Story 3.
6) Reality TV artists create book cover designs, prove they are not book designer.
I know I’ve been posting a lot today. I know
StandardThis article has been open in my browser all day and I don’t know quite what to say about it. So I’m just going to talk.
Here’s the short version: Fundamentalist Christian minister blames a tornado on gays and months later is outed as gay himself.
I know what you’re thinking: “Harry, around here we call that ‘Tuesday.’ What’s the big deal?”
Here’s the thing: The guy wasn’t caught traveling through Europe with a rentboy.com guy, he wasn’t arrested with a gay sex worker, he wasn’t involved in a long-term relationship with another dude. He was in a 12-step group therapy program to deal with his sexuality, and the writer who outed him attended the therapy sessions under false pretenses.
Not that I have much faith in the “therapy” he’s undergoing. Using an addiction protocol [1] to manage your sexual desires? That makes me suck air through clenched teeth. It sure seems to me that it’s the wrong way to go. I wish the reverend could find a therapy that would help him make peace with who he is, not try to suppress it.
But that’s not really my call. He has to pursue the path that he thinks is best. And those private moments when he is in a supposedly-anonymous group, trying to work out his issues… well, they should have remained private.
Easy for me to say, right? I’m not gay and haven’t been villified the way gays have. I haven’t been blamed for everything from Katrina to 9/11 to pedophilia. I haven’t had to endure that bullshit. I recognize that the reverend’s words are hate speech and the people who outed him consider him an enemy.
I just wish they could have given him the space to work out his private demons in peace. I also wish he could have the public space to stand in front of his congregation and say: “I believe gay sex is a sin, and I believe in loving the sinner but hating the sin. But I know how difficult it is, because I struggle with these feelings myself.”
I don’t know. I don’t have any simple answer here. I just don’t like the whole situation.
Bookslut
StandardThis was no boating accident!
StandardQuick question regarding a conversation going on elsewhere: Have you ever walked into the wrong theater at the multiplex (or put the wrong disk in the DVD player) and watched a whole movie that was different than what you thought you were seeing?
This question is prompted by a grandmother and 8yo who sat through the first 15 minutes of GET HIM TO THE GREEK before deciding that they weren’t seeing TOY STORY 3 and leaving the theater. Also by a group of older women who watched all of TRANSFORMERS unsure if it was the chick flick they’d been planning to see.
I’m trying to get a grasp on this. I know that sometimes people don’t see things they don’t expect to see. I know that people try very hard to make shoehorn things into their pre-existing mental models. I also know that people in a group are less likely to jump up and say “This is wrong!” that people who are alone.
Once, I sat through ten minutes of a history channel documentary wondering when they were going to tie the subject of strip mining to the show on ancient Rome I was expecting (wrong night and I’d missed the opening).
But GET HIM TO THE GREEK?? Once Russel Brand dropped his first f-bomb, wouldn’t you get it? I just don’t understand. Has anyone had this experience?
Randomness for 6/23
Standard2) The rule, usually, is “Don’t read the comments,” yes? But look at this post about a delicious salad sandwich and then scroll down to the fourth comment by “Brownhornet”. WTF? I don’t understand that at all.
3) A trailer for all Academy Award Winning Movies. This is funny.
4) So is this: The angry police captain. Seen via the-isb.
6) Want to have a good-looking kid? Talk to the sperm (and egg, supposedly) donors at beautifulpeople.com. Money quote: “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”
7) “Do you think the author wanted you to learn something?”
“No screaming.”