Simple Tricks and Nonsense

Okay, I know nothing is more tedious than somebody talking about their dreams, but I had one last night that I still haven't managed to shake off, even after being up for several hours, so I'm afraid I'm about to become one of those boring people who blather on about their dreams as if they actually matter to anyone but the person doing the blathering. Sorry, everyone, but I've just got to get this out of my head.

I dreamed I was at some kind of townhall meeting where President Obama was appearing in person. It was a small and intimate gathering where everyone was guaranteed up-close-and-personal contact with him, and we'd all been told he would answer any question we wanted to ask him. Any question about any topic at all. So I was wracking my brains trying to come up with something good, something original, something hard-hitting and penetrating and relevant, a question that would stand out from all the mundane bullshit everyone else was asking. I wanted to give the president a chance to satisfy his critics on both the Left and the Right, to defuse the rising hysteria and ignorance and anger that is sweeping this nation and make everything all right again, for everyone. I knew he could do it if only he heard the right question, the magic query that would send his thought processes cascading down just the right pathway. And it was going to be my question that would do it. It was all on me.

So what, you may be wondering, was my question? My brilliant inquiry that would restore the glory of the Republic? Well, when my turn finally came, and the president stood before me and shook my hand and looked me in the face, I asked him... man, I hate to admit this, even though I'm the one who brought it up...

I asked him which of the Star Wars movies was his favorite.

I've been haunted by this all morning...

Posted by at 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Does everybody remember that episode of M*A*S*H where the Army mistakenly declares Hawkeye dead, and he's so fed up with everything that he decides to just go with it? In the episode's climax, he delivers a little speech to BJ about how he just doesn't care anymore. He says something to the effect of, "It doesn't matter if I'm here or not. The wounded will just keep coming. Trapper went home and they keep coming. Henry got killed, and they keep coming."

I know just how he feels. Yes, this is another complaint about work. Click away if you've gotten bored with those. I need to get this stuff off my chest, though, even if nobody is interested in reading it.

Continue reading "Trapper Went Home, Henry Got Killed" »

Posted by at 3:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Summer took its own sweet time arriving this year, with a cool, rainy spring that extended halfway through June. Then came the Work Apocalypse that's kept me cooped up at the office during the daylight hours for the last six weeks or so, the peak of the hot weather in these parts. And I haven't had a lot of fun on the weekends lately, either, due to a string of misadventures and the general sense of exhaustion that comes from working too damn much. As I result, I feel like I've missed out on the whole season.

Oh, the high temperatures are still topping 90, but if you're paying attention at all, there's no question we've passed a turning point. The "monsoon" rains that usually hit around the first of August have come and gone, and in their wake, the days have lost their furnace-like intensity, like a fire that's been banked for the night. The mornings are getting cooler, and there's a mellow quality to the air that always reminds me of the smell of pencil shavings, and leather jackets, and pretty co-eds in plaid wool skirts.

Normally, back-to-school time is my favorite part of the year. The cooler weather suits me better than the scorching dog-days, and it makes for lovely top-down driving conditions. And I like the golden-hour sunlight that starts to predominate as the earth tilts toward autumn. But this year, the approach of fall just makes me sad. It's coming too soon. I resent having the summer stolen from me by circumstances beyond my control. And I keep thinking of something I once heard an aging movie star -- I think it may have been Cary Grant, or maybe it was Michael Caine -- say to Johnny Carson about savoring every summer, because he didn't think he had many left. Not that I expect to kick the bucket anytime soon, but we humans do only get a finite number of summers, don't we? It's some kind of tragedy to have to piss one away in a haze of indistinguishable and unfulfilling days spent in the belly of a relentless corporate machine.

But then, I guess we're not supposed to think that way if we're lucky enough to have a job in this economy. God, I'm getting tired of those three words, "in this economy." Seems to me that they're turning into a convenient excuse for a lot of BS we wouldn't otherwise be willing to put up with...

Posted by at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've taken a lot of crap over the years for choosing to express my masculine identity via an obvious -- and in these parts, at least, uncommon and frequently mistrusted -- visual signifier, i.e., a beard. As I've discussed before, I've experienced a fair amount of rejection because of it. But more often I've been met with simple puzzlement. Many of my fellow Utahns can't conceive of why a person would want to have fuzz on their face, and saying that I just want to be myself rarely satisfies their curiosity. Well, now I have something else I can say the next time some well-meaning conformist asks the inevitable:

And if that's not enough for you, there are nine more reasons where that one came from. Thanks to my fellow beardite Andrew Sullivan for pointing me there.

Posted by at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Aren't we a pair, raggedy girl?

Posted by at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The other day, my dad, watching me make a sandwich while my kitty-boys twined themselves around my legs and tried to coax me into dropping some lunchmeat into their greedy, adorable little paws, made the following quip:

"Anyone who thinks they're ready to be a parent ought to try living with three cats first."

You know, every once in a while, Dad displays a startling level of insight.

***

(Incidentally, have I mentioned I have three cats now? I didn't set out to become a crazy cat guy or anything, but the way this situation developed... Basically, this new female cat showed up in our barn a couple years ago. She was obviously young and, although a bit stand-offish, much friendlier than the usual transient barn cats we get around the Bennion Compound. Our working hypothesis is that she had been somebody's pet, rather than a feral animal, and some jackass didn't want her anymore and dumped her, and then she somehow found her way to us. Well, there are a lot of other cats in the neighborhood and it didn't take long before the poor thing was knocked up and very, very confused and unhappy. As I said, she appeared to be young, and possibly didn't understand what'd happened to her. In the past, when the feral cats who hang around have had kittens, my parents and I haven't found them until they were already mobile and quite wild. In this case, mother and children were accessible, and irresistible in the wake of Shadow's death not long before. Three of the kittens ended up imprinting on me. Evinrude, Hannibal, and Jack -- a.k.a. my kitty-boys -- are now indoor-outdoor cats who pretty much have the run of the Compound, while their mother mostly stays out in the barn and wants as little to do with her brood as possible. And somehow, just like that, I'm a crazy cat guy.

I won't mention Mom and Dad's two cats, who bring the grand total around the Compound to six. Shadow would no doubt be appalled if he knew his territory had been overrun with the other kind. And yes, animal activist types, they've all been fixed.)

Posted by at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Scanning around the TV dial this morning while eating my Post Cherry Almond Crunch -- I highly recommend that stuff, by the way; it's available in jumbo boxes from Costco -- I had quite a range of viewing options. I could have watched Good Morning, America blathering about Chelsea Clinton's wedding; The Today Show blathering about Chelsea Clinton's wedding dress; The Early Show on CBS blathering about some missing kid whose stepmom is the prime suspect in his disappearance; or Pork Chop Hill, an old war movie starring Gregory Peck and featuring Norman Fell -- a.k.a. Mr. Roper from Three's Company -- in a supporting role.

Guess which one I ended up watching?

Posted by at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I was seven years old, my parents and I embarked on that great American ordeal -- um, that is tradition -- that figures so prominently in the lore of many families, the California Road Trip. Naturally, given my age at the time, I was utterly preoccupied by the mystical siren-song of Disneyland, but we also hit a lot of other attractions along the way, some well-known, some not so much, and a few that were masterpieces of good old-fashioned roadside kitsch. In the latter category, I'm thinking of the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum, located on the legendary Mother Road, Route 66, in Victorville, CA. Not that I knew what Route 66 was back in those days. I didn't know what kitsch was either, and I certainly didn't know who Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were. But my parents did -- Roy and Dale were as much a part of my mom and dad's childhoods as Captain Kirk and Spock were to mine -- and they were as giddy as kids themselves when we pulled our 1970 T-Bird into an empty parking lot in what seemed to me like the hottest, most desolate place in the world. (This was years before I visited Phoenix!)

The museum didn't look like much from the outside, merely a plain, warehouse-style building with a tremendous statue of a prancing horse out front. I would soon learn that the statue was of Roy's famous pal Trigger, and its pose mirrored the one exhibit I still clearly remember from our visit to that place: the taxidermied remains of the real Trigger, standing on display like a life-size action figure on a collector's shelf. There were other mounted animals there as well -- Roy's dog Bullet, and Dale's horse Buttermilk -- but it was Trigger that commanded all the attention in the room, even from an ignorant kid like myself.

Continue reading "Happy Trails" »

Posted by at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As you may have gathered from recent entries, I've been really busy at work lately. Really damn busy. So busy that my coworkers and I have been referring to the situation as "The Apocalypse." I just reached my five-year anniversary with my current employer -- this job has now officially become the longest-running one I've ever had, and I hope I'm not jinxing myself by mentioning it -- and in all that time, I've never seen it this crazy. Late nights every night for two solid weeks, sometimes very late nights, and a six-inch stack of paper in my inbox that never seems to get any shorter, no matter how many hours I put in. Just call me Sisyphus, I guess.

I was even planning to go in last weekend to try and get on top of some of it, but my rebellious body had plans of its own, which consisted mainly of vomiting so hard I could feel my stomach itself clenching. Not the muscles and flab that the world sees in the vicinity of my waistband, but the actual internal organ. The visual image that came to mind once everything finally relaxed was the nurses on M*A*S*H squeezing one of those black respirator bags shut, and the way it slowly refilled after it was released. I initially thought I had food poisoning, but I've since decided it was very possibly a reaction to the stress I've been under recently.

In any event, this Apocalypse thing has made me rather grouchy -- possibly you've noticed? -- for all kinds of reasons, not least of which is the effect it's had on my blogging. I know that sounds stupid and superficial and some of you are probably thinking I have messed-up priorities, but the fact is I derive a lot of personal fulfillment from this particular hobby, and I keenly feel its absence when I'm unable to do it. Blogging reassures me that I haven't completely surrendered my writing ambitions and allowed whatever gifts I may have to wither away, that I am still, somewhere deep down inside, the brash, romantic twentysomething that I think I liked far more than my 40-year-old self. Blogging is also a necessary escape from the mundane demands of what I do for a living, my own little fiefdom in which I don't have to satisfy account managers or clients or legal departments or the faceless editors of the Chicago Manual of Style. Here, I am in charge, and all I have to do here is satisfy myself. And hopefully my Three Loyal Readers, assuming you're still out there.

During times when the scope of my life spirals inward to the point where I can't even manage to keep up on this, let alone anything more important... well, then I feel entirely justified to gripe about not having much of a life. Don't misunderstand. I enjoy what I do for a living, I really do. But I'm not the type who can survive for long doing nothing more than working, commuting, and sleeping. Some people may love their jobs that much, but I am convinced they are an extremely lucky minority to which I do not belong.

All of which is a needlessly long explanation for what you're about to encounter below the fold, assuming you haven't already clicked away to greener online pastures. Yes, kids, it's a meme! Not as worthwhile as a coherent essay about an actual topic perhaps, but it's something I can putter at for two minutes here and there during my busy-busy-busy days over the course of a week or two. Which is exactly what I've been doing with this particular meme throughout the Apocalypse.

For the record, I snagged this one from SamuraiFrog a couple months back but I'm just now getting around to using it. I've said that entirely too much lately.

So... are we ready? Okay, then, let's begin...

Continue reading "Filling the Gap with Meme" »

Posted by at 6:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

My friend Karen posted this cartoon the other day. I was amused.

It's probably just as well we no longer live in the culture depicted here, though. The way things have been going at the office the past couple of weeks, my ashtray would be overflowing, my bottom desk-drawer full of empties, and my vision blurry from drink. It's blurry now, but that would be from working until 10:30 last night and coming back in first thing this morning. Alas.

Posted by at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yeah, I can relate to this at the moment...

UPDATE: Hm. My sidebar appears to chop off the right side of the comic strip. Sorry about that; I figured it would float over the sidebar like video clips often do. If you just click on the cartoon, you'll be taken to the Official Dilbert Site, where you can read it in all its glory.

Posted by at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yes, I am still at the office at 8:23 PM. For the third time this week. With more yet to come. Grrrrr.

Anyhow, the big air-conditioning unit that's mounted above my cubicle just shut down for the night. While the silence is a blessed change from the constant white noise, there's also something deeply sad about it. The suddenly unmoving air seems to somehow absorb the sensation of life and activity that usually permeates the old cube farm, and it starts to feel like we're nearing the inevitable end. Like when the Titanic's lights went out just before everything really went to hell.

Or maybe it's just sad that I'm here late enough to witness the energy-saving protocols going into effect. As I said earlier, grrrr.

Posted by at 8:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Several of the blogs I follow have been commenting on an interactive map doohickey that lets you chart the people moving into and out of any part of the US you may be interested in. Naturally, I selected my home county, and this was the result I got:

As usual, click the image to enlarge it. If it's not clear what you're looking at, black lines indicate people moving into the area, while the red lines are folks who got the hell out of Dodge the same year. The heavier-weighted lines represent the number of people moving between any two destinations. One caveat: the statistics used are all two years old.

Notice where most of those black lines -- the inbound lines -- seem to originate. That's right, the newcomers to the Salt Lake Valley are coming in the largest numbers from Southern California, thus appearing to validate one of the most enduring memes of Utah folk wisdom over the past couple of decades: the "Californicator."

Continue reading "Damn Californicators!" »

Posted by at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, I just took a phone call from someone who identified himself as a freshman in the College of Humanities at my alma mater, the University of Utah. I knew instantly that it was a plea for money; I've fended off quite a few of them over the years, and I can recognize the signs before the caller even finishes identifying themselves. Yes, I'm one of those bad alumni who don't give back. I rarely have any spare cubits to give, and, depending on what kind of mood I'm in at the moment they call, I tend to have a somewhat jaundiced opinion of my college education, and of the expectation that I ought to provide the place with any more funding than I already gave during my five years as a student there.

Continue reading "Insidiously Clever" »

Posted by at 9:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Only a few days ago, I had a spat with my mother because she thinks I don't get outdoors enough anymore, that I spend all my time -- or at least too much of my time -- sitting at the computer. She may or may not be correct about that -- and yes, I know how ridiculous it is that my mommy is still telling me to go outside and play at the age of 40 -- but either way, I can relate to this cartoon by Dave Coverly:

See more of Coverly's work here, if this sort of thing pushes your snicker-button. My thanks to Sullivan for posting this first.

Posted by at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You know James Dyson, the British guy who was so concerned about standard vacuums "losing suction" that he invented his own super-high-tech model with no bags or filters, which creates a hurricane-force vortex inside a stylish yellow chassis by tapping the hellish power of a tiny black hole? Well, okay, his vacuums aren't really powered by black holes -- damn it all, that would be cool! -- but you know the guy, right? It seems that Jaquandor isn't impressed with his latest venture, a bladeless room fan that costs $300:

Seriously, if he's that big a techno genius, he needs to use his abilities for stuff that's actually, you know, important. ... This guy is like a supergenius with OCD who has decided to use his abilities to rid the world of all of his personal little pet peeves rather than advancing our world toward its ultimate goal of unlimited energy, flying cars and jetpacks, spaceships coming and going all over the place to our colonies throughout the solar system, and a Super Mario game that doesn't make me feel stupid. We don't need bladeless fans! Ye Gods, man! Let go of your anal retention and use your powers for good!

I myself have no ill will toward Mr. Dyson, even though I think anyone who's willing to lay out 300 clams for a fan obviously makes too much money, but I can't help but admire any rant that builds toward the expression "Ye Gods." Oh, and the stuff about flying cars and spaceships to the colony worlds is good, too...

Posted by at 5:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Scene from the park-and-ride lot at the train station this morning: a pretty but heavyset early-twenty-something woman, whose obvious black dye-job and purple eye shadow fairly screams "I shop at Hot Topic," is sitting in her car. Her door is open, and one leg is extended outside, her shiny-black, patent-leather, stiletto-heeled shoe resting flat on the asphalt. It looks like she's wearing lavender tights under her black jeans. She is seemingly spellbound by whatever she's listening to on the stereo. It's not music; it's a male voice speaking. I'm thinking she doesn't seem to be the NPR type, so an audiobook, perhaps. As I get closer, I pick up the speaker's rhythm and enough individual words to confirm my theory. Definitely a story being told, definitely an audiobook.

Then I hear two words in particular: "Bella" and "Edward."

Of course. I can't help but snicker.

Posted by at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you've probably figured out that I'm not exactly a "glass is half-full" kind of guy. I don't consider myself overly negative or pessimistic (although I've certainly been accused of both by friends and family), but I do have a painful awareness of the worst-case scenario, if that makes sense.

That's why I find the late Christopher Reeve so endlessly fascinating and, to employ the shopworn cliche, inspirational. He was a guy who ended up in the worst imaginable worst-case scenario, and yet somehow, he endured. No, that's not quite correct; he rose above it. Not only did the accident that paralyzed him fail to destroy him, it actually made him a better human being. And his accomplishments after the accident were at least as impressive and important as the ones he'd achieved before it.

Consider the following list, taken from an article about Bret Michaels and other celebrities who set examples of courage and dignity in the face of potentially devastating health problems:

In his “Still Me” memoir, the cinema “Superman” recounted his rehabilitation, admitting that initially, he considered suicide because he thought his life was over. However, he:

• wrote two best-sellers,
• directed two telefilms,
• produced and starred in a remake of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,”
• received multiple Emmy nominations for his acting and directing work,
• traveled across the United States giving speeches,
• established the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation to speed spinal cord injury research and aid sufferers,
• co-founded the Reeve-Irvine Research Center,
• was instrumental in pioneering a new form of therapy that has accounted for a number of paralyzed patients becoming able to walk again,
• made the cover of Time,
• won a Grammy,
• and shattered ratings records for CW series when he guest starred on “Smallville.”

I'm not ever going to become a Pollyanna who always looks on the bright side of life. That's just not me. And frankly I despise that simplistic aphorism about what you should do when life hands you lemons, because oftentimes those lemons are too small and hard to squeeze enough juice out of them to make any damn lemonade. But this list definitely suggests that you can find some use for the little buggers. Even if it's just turning throwing them back at the smug jackass who gave them to you in the first place...

Posted by at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jaquandor pointed me last night at a nifty tool that helps you visualize the scale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster by overlaying a satellite image of the oil slick on top of the landscape of your choosing. This is what resulted when I entered Salt Lake City as ground zero:

For my non-local readers who don't know the geography of this area, the big blue splotch in the upper left is the Great Salt Lake; the smaller blue splotch to the south, the one that's mostly covered by the oil slick, is Utah Lake. In between those two lakes is the most densely populated area in the state, what we locals refer to as the Wasatch Front. As you can see, the oil would cover most of that area -- two valleys, two counties, two major cities and all the 'burbs in between. It looks like the city of Ogden to the north might be spared, but it'd have oil lapping at its borders. And the slick has intruded into the Tooele Valley to the west, and that long eastward-bound pseudopod has taken out Park City, home of the 2002 Winter Olympics, and crossed the border into Wyoming. In other words, this damn thing is big. Mind-boggingly big.

Keep in mind that the image of the oil spill was taken May 6, four days ago; it has surely grown since then. How can we possibly fix something like that?

Posted by at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You'd never guess from the songs I've been waxing nostalgic over in my Friday Evening Video segments, but sometime around my junior or senior year of high school, I developed a serious affection for the music of the 1950s and '60s, better known as the oldies. I don't remember what, precisely, triggered my interest in the stuff my parents used to listen to, but I suppose you could probably blame my car, my '63 Ford Galaxie, as much as anything. You see, my old Cruising Vessel had only a stock AM radio, and there wasn't much music on the AM band by the late '80s. When I was bombing around the valley with the top down, pondering the unfathomable mysteries of growing up -- i.e., girls -- I had a choice of either the oldies station or the country station, and at that point in my life, there wasn't any question of which I was going to prefer. I ended up building a lot of my identity as a young adult around that car, and by extension, around that music.

One of my favorites artists from that period was Roy Orbison, a strange-looking man who had an even stranger voice. Everyone knows him for "Oh, Pretty Woman," of course, but the larger percentage of his work tended to comprise haunting, melancholy tunes about loneliness, heartbreak, insecurity, and longing -- in other words, the perfect soundtrack for your teens and early twenties, when nobody understands you and every perceived slight is a tragic thing that hits you like a baseball bat in the gut. I recall many evenings when I was driving along the dark roads on the south end of the valley -- there wasn't much traffic then, and not a lot of street lights either, so it often felt like my big old car was gliding through deep space -- with the air temperature turning brisk against my face and arms as I passed irrigated fields then warming again as I left them behind. The dashboard lights bathed the car's interior in a greenish light, and Roy Orbison's "In Dreams" or "Only the Lonely" was fading in and out of the static-y background noise like messages from another dimension. Eerie... and, as I noted, perfect.

As fate would have it, Roy was experiencing something of a comeback right around then. In 1987, he recorded, along with George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne of the Electric Light Orchestra, and Bob Dylan, the astounding Traveling Wilburys, Volume I -- there's not a bad cut on that album -- and his older music was starting to turn up in movies. In November of 1988, he releasedrecorded a solo album called Mystery Girl, which spawned his first all-new hit in years, "You Got It." His star was definitely rising again. And then, right at the end of 1988, when I was a sophomore in college, Roy Orbison died unexpectedly of a heart attack. I remember being really depressed that I'd lost him just as I'd discovered him. It didn't seem fair, somehow.

I also remember thinking that he was quite old.

Well, I've just been reading a retrospective on Roy -- NPR has named him one of its 50 Great Voices -- and it turns out that his age upon his death was all of 53 years old. Fifty-three. I don't mind telling you, I'm a little freaked out by this realization, both because 53 no longer seems old to me, and also because I was such a dunce back in '88 as to think that it was. I'm going to have to ponder this whole thing for a while, I think.

In the meantime, go check out that article. It's an interesting read, especially if all you know about Roy is that he did the theme song for some Julia Roberts movie...

Posted by at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

So what the heck is going on down there in the Gulf of Mexico, anyhow? How can a fire on a big steel platform that's standing above the water lead to an oil leak of apocalyptic proportions under the water?

If you, too, have been asking these timely questions, check out this handy video that explains such mysteries in only about one minute:

Well, I thought that was pretty interesting. I guess I imagined the oil was leaking directly from the wellhead, and never considered the associated piping, which of course makes for a much bigger problem.

One interesting sidenote: that video came from Al Jazeera, the Middle Eastern news network. It seems they have an English-language division, which I did not know. I'm learning all sorts of things today. My thanks to Sullivan for posting the video and sending me down that particular rabbit hole.

Getting back to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, if you're interested in some numbers, check out this chart at Information is Beautiful. Among other fascinating -- if deeply sobering -- factoids: The spill already covers an area roughly the size of Jamaica, and we may have less than 30 years of easily obtainable oil remaining to us. I don't know about you, but I don't relish the idea of adopting a Mad Max-style existence for my 70th birthday.

One final link: For a peek into the bowels of hell itself, here's a gallery of incredible photos showing the final hours of the Deepwater Horizon's fight for existence. I have to confess a perverse attraction to disasters like this. I imagine watching that thing heel over and fall into the sea would've been an awesome -- in the original, non-1980s sense of the word -- spectacle...

Posted by at 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before I could fix a nice brunch for The Girlfriend yesterday morning, I had to make a quick run to the store for a couple of items. Grocery shopping early Sunday morning is always an interesting experience. There's not much life yet -- most people are home cooking breakfast for their own loved ones, or else in church, I guess -- but the life you do encounter seems to embody so much despair, longing, resignation, and, sometimes, outright agony. It's a peek into the torments of the suburban damned, I tell you. In just eight short minutes, I saw:

• A young single father with a four- or five-year-old child in his cart, probably on a weekend visitation, standing in the cereal aisle as if paralyzed by the vast range of possibilities, torn between visions of being the cool dad who gets the kid the cereal that turns the milk purple and contains a nifty prize, and the responsible dad who makes the child eat something that's good for him. Or at least something that won't cause the boy's mother to throw another hissy fit and emasculate him in front of her parents yet again, as she's done nearly every week since that disastrous prom night when she promised him everything would be all right because you can't get pregnant on the first time.

• A visibly hungover guy, ashen-skinned behind very large, very dark sunglasses, pondering the selection of refrigerated fruit juices, wondering which would be least likely to make want to vomit again. Or would at least provide the least offensive visual effect when he inevitably went down on his knees before the Porcelain God for the sixth time in the past eight hours.

• A Latina woman with a cart completely filled with family-size bags of tortilla chips, on sale this week for the incredible price of $1.29 a bag. She knows she's surrendering another little piece of her heritage to the behemoth consumerism that defines modern America, and she feels a minor pang of guilt at the way so many of her family's traditions have already been cast onto the rubbish heap, but damn, that's such a bargain! And anyway, who wants to spend all day bent over a hot oven, making tortillas and cutting them into quarters for baking?

• And finally, the grim-faced woman with the too-orange tan, the too-pale hair that comes from a bottle, the fine lines around her eyes that no amount of Oil of Olay seems to fill in, and last night's sweat-stained blouse and nylons with a run in them, doing the Walk of Shame after waking up in a dilapidated single-wide with a paunchy guy who'd looked much better the night before. A fresh pack of smokes won't make her 19 again, but she hopes it'll at least take the stale tequila taste out of her mouth.

And just so you get the full effect, all this human drama was set to the tune of Fleetwood Mac's "Sara," as wistful and mournful as adult contempo shopping music has to offer.

Of course, my interpretation of things may have had something to do with being hungry and not having had any coffee yet. I tend to see things through a glass darkly in my pre-caffeinated state. But you have to admit that that state tends to produce better stories...

Posted by at 9:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Aside from one intensely unhappy week back around 1995 or thereabouts, I have proudly worn a full beard for two decades now. That's not an easy thing when you live in a community that places a high value on conformity, and where the local ideal of how a respectable male is supposed to look hasn't changed significantly since the Eisenhower Administration.

I've had girls tell me they wouldn't go out with me because I have a beard.

I once had an interviewer ask me to shave it off in exchange for a minimum-wage job working essentially alone in a warehouse, where nobody would ever see me. I've had other interviewers who haven't said a word, but who've visibly lost interest in me as soon as they got a good look at my face. On one memorable occasion, I was told not to even bother filling out an application until I came back "presentable." (I told that doughy-faced spud-nugget what he could do with his discriminatory and frankly chickenshit application process.)

And I've put up with sidelong glances and silent disapproval from countless fellow Utahns, who can't say why, exactly, but just know that there's something wrong with men who have beards.

The irony, of course, is that many of this state's founders were impressively bearded themselves. No less a figure than Brigham Young sported a mustache-less Quaker-style beard in his latter days (forgive me, I couldn't resist). Presidents of the Mormon Church Lorenzo Snow and Joseph F. Smith -- not to be confused with his uncle, the Joseph Smith who founded the Church -- were both approaching ZZ Top territory with their lengthy neckwarmers. And Brother Brigham's righthand man, the infamous gunfighter Porter Rockwell, would've fit right in with the Allman Brothers Band. But I guess that kind of glorious hirsuteness went out with polygamy and the coming of statehood.

If I sound bitter, well, it's sometimes hard not to be. After all, I'm a nice guy, and I've always kept my facial fuzz neat and clean. My beard is a symbol of my individuality and masculinity, and also kind of a family tradition to boot -- my father has worn a beard most of my life, as did my uncle Louie, the one who died from ALS. And damn it, I just like how I look with it better than the way I do without it.

I've long comforted myself by rationalizing that the rampant beardism I so often encounter is just a parochial Utah thing, that things are surely different out there beyond the Zion Curtain. And you know what? I was right:

A recent study in the Journal of Marketing Communications found that men with beards were deemed more credible than those who were clean-shaven. ... The researchers say the implications of their findings could extend far beyond advertisements. For instance, male politicians might want to consider not shaving because the "presence of a beard on the face of candidates could boost their charisma, reliability, and above all their expertise as perceived by voters, with positive effects on voting intention."

More credible? Charisma, reliability, and expertise? Now that's more like it! But perhaps you're not yet convinced. In that case, consider this chart:

You'll have to click on it to blow it up large enough to read; be prepared to scroll, it's pretty big. And after you've clicked and pondered, then tell me you don't have a new-found respect for my beard. Go on, just tell me. Because charts prove everything, right?

Posted by at 11:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I thought this was funny, if somewhat uncomfortably close to the mark for those who were quite convinced they were going to lead extraordinary lives when they grew up and are recently feeling more and more disappointed in themselves. Not that I would have any idea what that's like, of course...

Source, via.

Posted by at 2:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As we go about commemorating what happened in Oklahoma City fifteen years ago today, I'd like to point out a few things that have been forgotten (or intentionally obscured for political reasons) during the intervening years:

Terrorism is a tactic, not a creed, a religion, or a race. Terrorists do not all come from a specific country or speak a specific language. Other people who happen to share a creed, religion, race, or language with terrorists are not necessarily terrorists themselves.

Terrorists cannot be identified merely by the way they look. Indeed, they are most effective when they look just like us. Sometimes, they are us.

Terrorists don't resort to terrorism because they're afraid of a "fair fight." Terrorism is a technique employed by those who don't have the resources to effectively combat a larger, better equipped military force. Terrorists are not cowards. They may be desperate and/or misguided, they may be lacking what we would think of as honor, they may even be insane, but they are most certainly not lacking in courage. And thinking of them that way only underestimates them.

The point of terrorism is not specifically to kill people, but to make the survivors afraid, to make them lose the will to continue doing whatever it is the terrorists don't want them doing. The best way to deny terrorists their victory is to "keep calm and carry on."

Most importantly, there is no way to stop terrorism per se. You can stop a particular terrorist plot or terrorist group, but terrorism itself is an idea, and you can't destroy those. If we exterminated al Qaeda to the last man, if we finally decided to go all-in and turn the entire Middle East into radioactive glass, it wouldn't mean that there would never be another act of terrorism.

Just some food for thought as we remember those who lost their lives to the most destructive act of terrorism perpetrated on US soil until 9/11/2001. May they rest in peace.

Posted by at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I planned to write yesterday evening about the gorgeous weather we're having this week, and the pleasant lunchtime walk I took and the nostalgic mood it engendered... you know, my usual sentimental drivel. But then the earthquake struck.

No, I'm not kidding.

Continue reading "What a Night..." »

Posted by at 12:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After a stressful week at work that included the passing specter of layoffs (thankfully averted) followed by one night when I was at the office until 10:15 PM, as well as a busy calendar of late that's left me feeling behind on a lot of household chores, errands, and projects, I decided to take today off and try to catch up. Or at least catch my breath.

I awoke this morning a bit later than usual, feeling atypically refreshed. There were blue skies outside, my adoring kitty Blackjack was at my feet, and I was all ready for a hot breakfast and a cup of good coffee, precursors to an excellent and productive day.

Savoring the warmth of the mug in my hand and feeling a mild sense of pleasant anticipation, I took my first sip of go-go juice. There was something... odd... about it. I took another sip. Odder still, but I still couldn't place it. It was an aftertaste, something vaguely floral. And it seemed to be getting stronger, too. On the third sip, I started to think... lavender maybe? Yes, definitely lavender. Lavender with... ylang-ylang essences, whatever the hell they are... dish soap, in other words! I hadn't rinsed the basket from the coffee maker well enough the night before and I'd just brewed an entire pot of Peet's House Blend premium roast with lavender and ylang-ylang essences.

I may not be at work, but a Monday is apparently still a Monday.

Posted by at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

As Jaquandor notes, this question-and-answer doohickey (he calls them "quiz things," I've always heard them called memes, and I'm not sure which is more appropriate) starts off with pretty innocuous stuff, but then becomes quite a bit more inflammatory starting at question nine. I'm feeling kind of feisty today, though, so I figure what the hell. Be warned that if you choose to read on, you may learn more about me than you really want to know. I won't be held responsible for any blood-pressure spikes that may result.

Continue reading "Meme of Controversy" »

Posted by at 5:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It's pedal-to-the-metal at the office this week, and I've been almost as busy at home with a little -- okay, a big -- renovation project that I'll elaborate on another time. In the meanwhile, let me entertain you with this really awful sight gag/pun based on the unexpected juxtaposition of popular music and typography (whoever came up with this has a sick, sick mind):

We can thank Sullivan for this horror show.

And now back to the regularly scheduled grind...

Posted by at 1:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

I'd like to give a quick kudo to my friend Diane Olson, who I mentioned in passing during last week's lengthy pity-party about my gout.

Diane is a copywriter at the ad agency where I work, but before that, she was a journalist and a staff writer for Catalyst magazine, a Salt Lake alternative monthly. She had quite a run there, stirring the muck, sticking it to The Man, earning a number of awards, and even having a creepy Silkwood moment or two while investigating what really goes on at Utah's infamous Dugway Proving Ground. (Trivia note: Stephen King was inspired to write The Stand after he heard about some of the scary crap that happens out there.)

These days, Diane's only work for Catalyst is a regular column called the Urban Almanac, a monthly compilation of timely factoids about what's happening in the natural world right outside our patio doors, as well as tips for how readers can improve their gardens, their diets, and their connection to something more authentic than the suburbs. I know Diane gets a lot of satisfaction from her column, but she's often said she'd hoped to do more with her writing (a familiar lament among us word-slinging types).

Just last week, quite out of the blue, as they say, she got a message from her editor at Catalyst; it seemed that someone from a local publishing house was trying to track her down. They want to turn Diane's Urban Almanac into a full-blown book, an illustrated hardcover, no less. Whereas the Catalyst version is region-specific for SLC, the proposed book will be more global (or at least national) in scope... and they want it by October.

Diane is understandably over the moon about this, especially the way it just fell into her lap during something of a low moment, and I'm very happy for her myself. (Also a little jealous, but we won't tell her that.) I'm already on the list for an autographed copy. And who knows... depending on when the finished volume hits the stands, it may make my Christmas shopping much easier this year!

Posted by at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Lileks made the following observation this morning:

Was amused to read that Kids Today have stopped blogging, more or less; they’ve moved the blurtage over to Facebook, which makes much more sense. The web is the Great Heaving Sea; Facebook is an auditorium. Tumblr is a flea-market. Blogs will either be for writers, or communities gathered around a particular ideology or subject, or ace aggregators who can spit out 30 unique links a day.

I'm not sure what he was reading, and I must admit I'm not very aware of what's hip and happening these days, so I'm wondering... is this true? Has blogging been revealed as just another fad that's nearly run its course? I have noticed that many of the personal blogs I visit seem to be petering out, and I'm painfully aware that my own output has fallen in recent years. Also (and this is possibly unrelated), I've noticed I don't get near as many comments as I used to. But I've attributed that to people's circumstances, i.e., I assumed everyone was busy, not that they're losing interest in blogs. Certainly my interest isn't waning. This silly little virtual kingdom seems to fill a genuine psychological need for me, and I get pretty cranky when I can't find enough time in my day to keep up with it to my satisfaction.

I have become pretty active over on Facebook, but that's hardly an adequate substitute, at least for me. Facebook is like sending a postcard to let someone know your latest port-of-call on that big road trip; it's a form of contact, maybe it's even a little revelatory, but it's hardly a conversation.

I don't know what Tumblr is.

And despite the best efforts of my friend Gillilan, I simply have no interest in Twitter. The 140-character limit strikes me as arbitrary and too constraining, and I don't see how it could allow anything but the most superficial of observations. (Hmm, there I go talking like one of those mythical "writers" again.) I hate the text message-style abbreviations that seem obligatory in that medium (again, it's the 140-character limit). Hell, I don't even like the terminology associated with Twitter. The name itself, and the verb "tweeting" are so cutesy-poo, and I hate cutesy-poo. If anything, Twitter is what strikes me as faddish, not blogging. But then, the arbiters of cool never seem to consult with me on these things, and I know I'm almost always the last one clinging to things that everyone else has long since abandoned.

So tell me, Loyal Readers, is blogging on the way out, aside from a handful of specialized sites and a few long-winded die-hards like myself?

Posted by at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

May I just briefly mention how really frakkin' weird I feel every time I think about the fact that I'm actually walking around in the year 2010?

It's the curse of being a Gen-X sci-fi fan, I guess. Thanks to all the silly stuff that obsessed me as a kid and a teen, there are certain dates that hold a powerful resonance for me and probably don't faze ordinary people in the least: 1999... 2001, of course... and now 2010. Still to come are 2015, 2019, and 2029, the Year of Darkness, in which Skynet comes up with its dastardly plan to end the human resistance once and for all. In the case of that one, I think I'll forgo my usual lament that the real future doesn't match the cinematic version...

Posted by at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hear ye, hear ye (I've always wanted to say that):

My lovely Girlfriend, who has slaved tirelessly and with very little recognition for a wholesale carpet dealer for the past 10 years, was this afternoon elected to the position of Vice President of the Utah Floor Covering Association, an industry trade group concerned with, um, floor coverings. And the industry that trades in... floor... coverings. Ah, hell, the truth is I have no idea what the UFCA actually does, but I imagine I'm going to be learning much more about it over the next year. Anne has already informed me that I'll be required to make myself available as her arm-candy for occasional functions, and she will likely be doing some business-related traveling as well. (The travel may or may not include me, depending on our respective schedules.) And, as if all this wasn't exciting enough, she will most likely ascend to the presidency itself in only a year.

I'm very proud of her. I don't know that this is going to be a game-changer or anything, but it's bound to be a very interesting experience for her, and a good resume' builder. And besides, "Madam Vice President" has kind of a sexy ring...

Posted by at 3:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I had such plans for my annual holiday break. I was going to blog. A lot. I was going to sort through a couple thousand digital pictures I've taken over the past year and be brutal and efficient about deleting all the sub-par ones, and then I was going to Photoshop those that needed it and post the whole lot of them to Flickr. I was going to set up the digital picture frame my parents gave me for Christmas a year ago, and I was going to send long-overdue and just plain long emails to several people I haven't contacted for a while. I was going to give my house a thorough cleaning, and go through my clothes and pull out a bunch of stuff I no longer wear and give it to charity, and I was going to sit in the sun streaming in through the window and read a fat novel and sip hot cocoa. I was going to listen to a whole mess of podcasts I've got saved on the computer and go to some movies, which, believe it or not, I haven't really managed to do for the past couple months. I thought I might even take a nice drive up to Park City one afternoon and try breathing some less-smoggy air for a change. And when all that was done, I was going to actually write... not the lame-o crap I do around here all the time, but real writing, creative writing. Fiction, in other words, the stuff I used to think I was going to spend my life making.

And just how many of all those planned activities do you suppose I accomplished? Well... I managed to do a couple of memes for the blog. Yay me.

So what did I do over the break? I visited friends on Christmas Eve. I had a very rare stress-free Christmas Day with my parents. I spent an afternoon with my buddy Jer, who I only see a couple times a year because he lives in Vegas, and I enjoyed the annual reunion dinner with The Dudes, i.e., my buddies from the old multiplex days. I also enjoyed a New Year's Eve video party with a different subset of friends I like to call The Usual Suspects. (Geeks that we are, the evening's viewing selection was 2010: The Year We Make Contact. Of course.) And then I did penance for that party all the next day. (I've decided that champagne doesn't agree with me; every time I drink it, I end up with one of those headaches that sits right behind your retinas and threatens to explode your eyeballs any time the treacherous daylight sneaks through a chink in the window blinds.)

I helped The Girlfriend's parents organize and store their Christmas decorations, and was rewarded with a little road trip out into the hinterlands for lunch at one of those small-town greasy spoons I love so well, a place called the Stockton Miner's Cafe (sorry, no web presence that I could find). I hung some framed photos that have been sitting on the living-room floor for several months. And I managed to see a movie, Guy Ritchie's take on Sherlock Holmes. (For the record, I liked it. Well, I liked the story and the performances, at least -- people who are screaming about revisionism don't know their Holmes -- but I am never going to get used to the modern way of putting together an action scene. Undercrank the camera, freeze for a moment, then overcrank and smash cut to something else, all shot in close-ups so you can never see where anything is in relation to anything else... ugh. The action in Sherlock is a lot more intelligible than the messy fights in those damn Bourne movies, but I still long for a nice steadicam shot once in a while.)

And all that stuff was great, it really was. But now, as Ray Liotta says at the conclusion of Goodfellas, it's all over, and I'm back at work in the comma mines and feeling like a tremendous failure for not crossing off a few items on that "to-do" list...

Posted by at 9:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I see that Ilya and Brian have already beaten me to the annual "twelve sentence" meme, in which you repost the first sentence of the first blog entry for each of the previous 12 months. Not wanting to be left behind, here are my twelve:

Continue reading "Twelve Sentences" »

Posted by at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In response to ABC News' exclusive photos of the explosive rig worn by the so-called "crotchbomber" -- who failed to bring down Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day, but did manage to burn the hell out of his own legs and, presumably, genitalia -- Xeni Jardin over at Boing Boing remarked:

What better way to round out this scorched and shitty decade than to gaze thoughtfully into the charred, soiled underpants of a stranger. A troubled young man who seems to have hated America only as much as he hated his own junk.

I wholeheartedly concur. This entire decade has been pretty much end-to-end suck. Don't believe me? Check out Newsweek's retrospective video (not embeddable, unfortunately) and refresh your memory. From hanging chads in 2000 through 9/11, the Iraq War, Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, and government-sanctioned torture; the PATRIOT Act; the TSA and its increasingly ridiculous "security measures"; the break-up of the space shuttle Columbia; Hurricane Katrina; the rise of reality television and the belligerent vapidity that came with it; the general bellicosity that seems to have infected even the simplest public discourse; increasingly corrosive and seemingly intractable political partisanship; a truly frightening resurgence of religious fundamentalism all across the globe, and the outright renunciation of science by a shockingly large percentage of Americans; the proud-to-be-ignorant anti-intellectual attitude displayed by far, far too many people in a country that used to value education and expertise; the crashing economy; all the talk about global warming and peak oil; the general sense that The World As We've Known It is coming to an end; and a constant societal undertow of fear, uncertainty, and disillusionment, all leading up to the recent death of Patrick Swayze (which, even though I haven't blogged about it, really bummed me out) and finally this dumbass with the bomb in his shorts. Not to mention the inexplicable popularity of Napoleon Dynamite and Family Guy. Is it any wonder that I am ever-more consumed with nostalgia with each passing year, if this is the 21st century?

On the positive side, I read somewhere that Google Books now has a fine selection of back issues from the old Weekly World News tabloid, so that's something at least. Bat Boy, save us from our despair!

Posted by at 11:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Like most American boys growing up in the 1970s, I was a regular reader of Mad magazine, and one of my favorite segments of that august publication was the "Spy Vs. Spy" cartoons that appeared in every issue. I loved SvS so much that I recall I even tried drawing a few of my own on the backs of brown paper grocery sacks. (They were neither funny nor particularly well drawn, thus ending my nascent interest in becoming a cartoonist.) This little adventure of the familiar black-and-white anti-heroes, which throws in a couple of beloved movie characters for good measure, cracked me up:

Remember to click for full size!

(Via.)

Posted by at 3:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One evening a few years back, The Girlfriend and I went downtown to see the lights at Temple Square.

I should probably explain for my out-of-state readers that Temple Square is the geographic heart of both Salt Lake City and the LDS faith. Practically the first thing the Mormon pioneers did when they arrived in this valley in 1847 was to pick a spot on which to build their temple. The early settlement, then the city that rose from that, and eventually the layout of the entire valley radiated outward from that one place. Today, the original temple grounds, which include the temple itself and several other buildings surrounded by a high stone wall, comprise an entire city block, Temple Square. And every fall, the church begins decorating the grounds -- as well as several adjoining properties -- with literally millions of Christmas lights. The switch is thrown over Thanksgiving weekend, and the lights stay on every night until New Year's Eve. It's an amazingly beautiful spectacle. And best of all, it's open to the public, regardless of faith, and it's absolutely free to get in. I doubt if there's anyone in this valley who hasn't experienced it at least once, and most everyone I know goes every year.

The particular visit I'm thinking of was on a bitterly cold night just before Christmas Eve. Anne and I were reasonably comfortable in heavy coats and the long underwear we'd bought for our Yellowstone snowmobiling weekend, but our exposed faces still tingled painfully in the frigid air. We were surrounded by hordes of similarly dressed people, all looking like chubby little marshmallow men (and marshmallow women and children) in their layered clothing, all of them buzzing happily about holiday parties, shopping left to do, and the other lighthearted things people talk about this time of year.

Not one of them was paying the slightest attention to the man seated on a mud-encrusted five-gallon bucket in front of the diner on the corner just south of Temple Square.

Continue reading "A Christmas Story that Has Nothing to Do With BB Guns" »

Posted by at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hope you all found something nice under your tree!

Posted by at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The title pretty much says it all, doesn't it?

I first spotted a somewhat abbreviated version of this mammoth meme at SamuraiFrog's Electronic Cerebrectomy, but Jaquandor tracked down the full enchilada a few days later. Seeing as how I'm an exhibitionistic masochist, and that I have nothing better to do on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, I shall, of course, do the long one...

Continue reading "Epic Christmas Meme" »

Posted by at 6:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a bit of an Anglophile and an unrepentant nostalgic, I've been bummed in recent years to learn that the iconic red telephone box is fast disappearing from the British landscape. The culprit is, of course, advancing technology -- who needs a public phone anymore when everyone is carrying a personal one in their pockets? American phone booths are an endangered species as well, but they don't carry the same weight of cultural symbolism as their UK counterparts; I doubt anyone identifies an American-style booth with America itself, while, to many people around the world, the red phone box fairly shouts "Great Britain."

One of the many highlights of my visit to England in 1993 -- one of the experiences that drove home the fact that, yes, I was really there, in another country for the first time in my life -- was encountering one of those familiar boxes I'd seen so many times in movies and television programs, seeing it standing there on the street fulfilling its function, not a tourist attraction but simply a part of somebody's everyday life. The thought of them heading for the scrapheap of history brings an inevitable pang.

Fortunately, there are efforts afoot to save at least some of them. British Telecom (BT) has instituted an "adopt-a-kiosk" program that allows communities to buy the boxes for a nominal sum (all of one pound) and then use them for whatever purpose they wish. Some towns elect to keep them functional, with a working pay phone; others have turned them into "street art" or touristy photo spots. But the best idea I've run across yet was one small village's inspired decision to repurpose their local phone box as a tiny lending library. As I understand it, it's an informal, community-driven operation in which the residents donate books they have read and take ones they haven't, so the inventory is constantly changing. (I guess it would actually be more accurate to call it a book exchange, rather than a library.) The box has room for about 100 books, as well as CDs and DVDs. The village now has a valuable community resource, the citizens are fully involved, and a little bit of history is still standing. And that's what I call cool.

Wish this sort of thing happened more often here at home.

Credit where it's due: I first read about this on Boing Boing. And there's a more detailed article about the Adopt-a-Kiosk program here.

Posted by at 6:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

I should be taking advantage of my day off to write something meaningful, like a short story or a screenplay outline, or notes for a novel I'd like to write, or even just a recap of my DC trip or a half-dozen other blog entries I've been putting off, but I'm feeling pretty lazy, intellectually speaking, so I think I'll just swipe a Thanksgiving-themed meme from Samurai Frog:

Continue reading "Thanks-meme-ing" »

Posted by at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...but this is pretty much how things look around the Bennion Compound right now:

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

So I guess you'd call that a successful Mass Consumption Day, right? Hope yours was as well...

Posted by at 7:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I was planning to do a whole string of Halloween-themed entries last week, followed by some long-overdue business (such as a tribute for the late Patrick Swayze, whose premature death moved me to a surprising degree) this week. But, as it seems to do with distressing regularity these days, work has simply overwhelmed every other aspect of my life lately. Busy, busy days, a few late nights at the office, and a major truckload of job-related stress and anxiety haven't left much time or energy for anything else.

A few days ago, however, feeling the need to get something posted up here for the sake of my own sanity, if not the pleasure of my Three Loyal Readers, I thought to fall back on the ol' reliable of the blogosphere, the not-quite-an-entry exercise that you can noodle at a little bit at a time whenever you find yourself with five free minutes. Yes, that's right, kids, it's a meme. This particular one is courtesy of Jaquandor.

So, without further ado, let the meme-ocity begin!

Continue reading "The "Handy Substitute for an Actual Entry" Meme" »

Posted by at 12:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After I finally got out of work last night, I was standing on the TRAX platform at the Gallivan Plaza stop, the heart of what little activity there is on downtown Main Street following the end of the business day. I was waiting with a dozen or so fellow commuters and passing the time by watching pedestrians across the street. That particular block is a rich environment for people-watching; there are always a few homeless folks around, and usually a mob of scruffy teen and twentysomethings who seem to have nothing better to do than sit on the big planter boxes in front of Sam Weller's and be obnoxious. You also see a lot of beautiful people along that stretch of sidewalk, thanks to a popular nearby club called Keys on Main, and the interactions between the clubgoers and the miscreants are often pretty entertaining.

The street show on this particular evening starred a young woman, a redhead dressed in the shortest miniskirt I've ever seen outside an Austin Powers movie. And if that wasn't enough to grab the attention of any heterosexual male with a pulse, she was also wearing thigh-high, patent-leather, lace-up, platform-souled boots that made her legs look about 175 feet long. Think of Julia Roberts strutting down Rodeo Drive in that scene from Pretty Woman and you'll get the idea.

As noteworthy as the woman herself may have been, though, what really made me smile was the reaction she was getting from, well, everybody. I guess she was killing time waiting for Keys to open or something, because she walked from the club down to the corner and back several times. And every time she did, the heads of every man on the block -- including, I'm not too proud to admit, my own -- very obviously turned to follow her.

It was like watching a slow-motion tennis match.

Posted by at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In yet another sign that I worry too damn much, I started thinking yesterday afternoon that people might not get what I was trying to say in my "Cool Quiet, and Time to Think" entry, and hurt feelings could result. So I went back and added an addendum to try and clear the air. Problem solved, right?

Ha, no! You obviously don't know me as well as you believe. Because today I've been thinking that no one really goes back to a blog entry they've already read, and perhaps there's someone out there right now who read that thing before I got the addendum written and is even now sitting in a funk somewhere, getting angrier and/or more depressed with every passing minute because they think I don't want to hang out with them. Which most assuredly is not true. But how is this person to know that since they haven't gone back and re-read that ego-busting, anti-social, curmudgeonly, leave-me-alone rant to see the bit where I say, "it's not you, it's me?"

So, in the interest of soothing my own conscience as well as any potentially ruffled feathers, I now present, in its entirety... the addendum:

[Addendum: It occurs to me that my various loved ones and friends could possibly misinterpret the "social engagements = obligations" remark above. So, to be clear, I am not complaining about the time I spend with people or their desire to spend time with me. These are good things in my life that I have no wish to give up or change. My frustration basically stems from a lousy work/life balance. I have a good job that I like, but my office's long business hours, coupled with the time I spend commuting, place me home on most nights somewhere between 7:00 and 7:30. After I eat dinner, I have maybe an hour in which to try and be productive before my brain completely fogs over, and most nights productivity doesn't happen anyway for one reason or another. So I end up feeling more-or-less constant pressure to get caught up, and guilt because I'm leaving too many things undone or half-finished... and me being me, I tend to beat myself up for not doing a better job of managing it all better. And then it's time for bed and -- lately, at least -- a really lousy night's sleep, and then it's up and at 'em to repeat the whole cycle over again. I've been keeping this schedule for over four years now, and it's starting to really grate. You wouldn't think working a mere hour or two later than most everyone else would make that much of a difference, but it absolutely does. Social activities are virtually impossible on a work night, and my body -- never a paragon of athleticism, I must admit -- has gone completely to hell because any kind of exercise regimen is just too damn hard to squeeze into an already tight schedule.

Basically, I'm tired of getting home so late and never managing to accomplish anything, night after night after night. I'm tired of not having a life. I know everyone says or feels that to one degree or another... but I personally feel it very keenly. It's not healthy, either physically or psychologically. And lately the situation has been exacerbated by a lot of other things -- my birthday, the problems with my car, the realization that certain ambitions are becoming more unlikely to pan out and that I'm not the man I used to think I was going to be -- and, well, I just need to scream once in a while. Thoreau never imagined blogs, or he might have written that "quiet desperation" line differently... ]

Interestingly enough, I'm writing the comments which surround this copy block at 6:08 on a Friday night in the middle of a deathly silent cube farm. Yep, you guessed it, I'm stuck late at work again, waiting around for other people to do their jobs so I can do mine. Meanwhile, my stomach is rumbling, it's getting dark outside, and The Girlfriend is at home waiting for me.

Point proven.

Sigh.

Posted by at 6:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Despite the best efforts of a couple of well-meaning and enthusiastic friends, I still do not get the appeal of anime, i.e., Japanese animated films. I also don't get -- aside from a handful of titles -- manga, or Japanese comic books.

But I very definitely do see the appeal of Kirsten Dunst dressed in some kind of anime princess outfit as she wanders the streets of Tokyo's infamous geek mecca, the Akihabara district:

Yeah, now that's a pretty sight. Kirsten hasn't exactly lived up to the hype of a few years ago that painted her as the Next Big Thing, but I like her. And I really like her in this get-up. The short skirt and the stockings are nice, of course, but weird as it sounds, I'm really grooving on the blue hair. I don't know, it just works for me.

From what I can discern, this photo is a behind-the-scenes candid from a video shoot. An artist named Murakami, in association with Hollywood director McG, filmed a short starring Dunst for an exhibition at the Tate Modern in London. Modern art is, of course, something else I do not get. But whatever, I can live with it if it gets me pics of Kirsten Dunst in a tiny skirt and blue hair. More photos and info here; original source for this here.

Do I have to go back to work now?

Posted by at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

There was an episode of the original Star Trek in which the Enterprise encounters another starship whose entire crew has been killed by an alien disease that sucked all the water from their bodies and then crystallized the remaining chemicals that comprise a living organism. The visualization of the end result was typically cheap, but reasonably effective: empty uniforms sprawled across consoles and heaped in corridors, with piles of what looks like rock salt spilling from the shirt collars and cuffs, pant legs, and boots. I think I've noted before that the one thing the original series had that none of the spin-offs or the recent reboot movie has managed -- or even attempted -- to capture was a deep sense of eeriness. Space was weird in the classic Trek series, and sometimes it was pretty damn spooky. The idea of the rock-salt disease gave me a major case of the willies when I was a kid, and those empty uniforms are an image that has stayed with me all these years.

Case in point: When I got off the train tonight at the end-of-the-line station, I noticed a little one-piece jumpsuit thingie of the sort worn by babies draped over a low fence that runs along the edge of the platform. Now, obviously what happened is that someone dropped it, and a good samaritan placed it in an obvious spot in case the owner came back looking for it. But I have to admit that for just a moment -- a brief, vertiginous, irrational moment -- I glanced downward, to see if there was a pile of white crystals on the ground below the jumper's collar opening...

Man, am I a geek or what?

Posted by at 11:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

With any luck, I'll get around to writing an actual blog entry later today, but for now, let me share something that amused me this morning, from the always reliable Lileks:

It’s MEA weekend, which is when the schools close down for two days to have a convention, or a caucus, or go the Caribbean and talk smack about this year’s crop of brats, I don’t know. Don’t recall these when I was a kid, but things were so different in my day that the teaches not only smoked, but smoked indoors. They had a lounge off the cafeteria, and a blue fog rolled from it all day long. Any kid who went in there came out like a doughboy after the mustard gas rolled over the lip of the trench. That’s if you dared to go in there. I remember doing so once, and everyone stiffened. You would not have been surprised if the English teacher rose, held out his hands palm-first, and used repelling beams to drive you back.

Harold! You revealed your power!

I know, Rhoda, but he had violated our lair. It had to be so.

I always admire James' skill at finding the perfectly evocative phrase, and the mental picture of my bald, bearded, bespectacled, and imperious AP English teacher Mr. Bridge firing repulsor beams from his hands at an interloping student... well, that's something that's going to stick with me for a while.

In other corners of the InterWeb today, I also enjoyed Scalzi's appreciation of one of the coolest characters ever to grace the silver screen, the mighty Chewbacca. I knew from an early age that Chewie was nothing more than a tall, very thin man in a fur-covered suit, but unlike a lot of other cinematic aliens, I've always accepted him -- even to this day -- as exactly what he appears to be. I believe in Chewbacca in a way I don't quite believe in, say, E.T., if that makes sense. For my money, Chewie and the monster from Alien are the two best-realized, most authentic non-human creatures ever put on film.

Finally, take a look at these amazing pictures taken just offshore from Sunset Beach in LA; I had no idea sharks leapt out of the water like dolphins...

Posted by at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I started thinking a couple weeks ago about what, if anything, I wanted to write here on the blog regarding my 40th birthday (which was Tuesday, in case anyone is compiling a dossier). I've tried not to be a drag about it, but if you've been paying attention, you've probably picked up on the fact that I'm not too happy about reaching this particular milestone. My reasons are pretty unremarkable, even cliche'd, mid-life crisis stuff, which means they're probably utterly pathetic and boring to anyone who isn't me. So I won't bother to elaborate on them, beyond simply saying that I've been struggling for a while with a nagging sense that I've wasted a lot of time, energy, and money on unimportant crap instead of forging the life I used to think would somehow just happen. I realize that nobody's life turns out the way you imagine it will when you're a child or a teenager or even a college student, but it seems like a lot of folks at least end up in the right ballpark, even if they're not actually pitching the game. I don't feel like I have, and I know I've got no one to blame but myself. And that's not an easy thing to admit or accept. Even worse, I'm afraid I may have missed the window of opportunity, passed my peak without even realizing it had arrived, and now a lot of what I've always wanted simply isn't going to be possible.

But I said I wasn't going to bore you all with that stuff, and honestly, I'm not nearly as concerned with it now, two days after the calendar page turned over, as I was earlier in the summer. My depression and angst seemed to peak last week sometime, and I was actually in a pretty good mood on my birthday itself. For this, I thank my friends and loved ones, who all realized I was having a hard time and did their very best to cheer me up. My coworker friend Diane surprised me with brownies and some nifty Bettie Page collectibles on Monday. My former coworker friend Amber surprised me with an Amazon gift card. Then there was the flood of good wishes from my various acquaintances on Facebook (I've been somewhat dubious of the sincerity of social networking "friendship," but I have to admit that each wall posting from old coworkers and classmates gave me a genuine boost). Anne, my lovely Girlfriend, was wonderful, of course, as were my parents. Anne's and my friends Dave and Sarah brought me a delicious homemade cheesecake.

And then there was the "present" I received from my old buddy Cheno. I don't know how funny this will be to anyone who doesn't know "The Dudes" -- i.e., the guys I worked with at the multiplex way back in the day, who are still somehow, improbably, my friends -- but it cracked me up:

In case you don't know what I look like, I'm the dashing bearded guy in the middle...

Posted by at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)

Reading the Sunday funnies yesterday brought me to an important moment of self-realization.

No, really.

You see, yesterday's edition of "Get Fuzzy" turned on a disparaging reference to the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men, a series that seems to be deeply loathed by a not-insignificant number of people. I like it, myself; it's not remotely deep, but I find it is consistently laugh-out-loud funny, at least to my sensibilities, and I'm frankly baffled by the level of ire I often see directed at this amiable -- if admittedly crass -- little show.

So I was thinking all of these things about Two and a Half Men and suddenly it struck me.

OMG... I like crap.

The things the sophisticates, connoisseurs, intellectuals, and hipsters generally decry as lowbrow, superficial, or -- how I have come to loathe this word! -- cheesy are often the things I most enjoy. And in turn the things that make them gush with enthusiasm and sweet, sticky joy tend to leave me, well, unimpressed. Consider the evidence:

Continue reading "I Like Crap" »

Posted by at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

As she did last year, the lovely Mrs. Jack sent text-message updates on my buddy's Lotoja progress throughout the day. If anyone reading this is interested, he crossed the finish line in Jackson Hole at 7:31 PM, with a final time of 13 hours, 43 minutes, 22 seconds, landing him in 279th place. (I have no idea of how many riders there were this year, so his position doesn't mean much, I guess.)

Jack's time was just ever so slightly longer than last year's, which was 13:39:58. I haven't spoken to him yet, so I don't know if he had issues with wind or what happened. Still, I remain impressed with his accomplishment; I doubt if I could pedal a bike much farther than a couple of miles, let alone the distance he covered in a single day. Well done, my friend!

Update (Sunday morning, 10:11 AM): I just heard from Jack, who informs me that the time I had on record for last year was incorrect. His time in 2008 was actually 14:00:55.138, so his performance this year was a significant improvement! Kudos, once again, and sorry for the mix-up!

Posted by at 11:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friend Jack is going to ride in the Lotoja Classic bicycle race tomorrow, his second time participating in this 206-mile endurance event. (You can find last year's coverage here.) I'd like to wish him luck, if he happens to be sitting up too late for someone who has to pedal a bike up and down mountains in the morning, and may the wind be at his back. Or whatever bicyclists say to each other. I'll be away from my computer all day tomorrow, but I'll be getting text-message updates on Jack's progress, and I'll report the results when I get the chance...

Posted by at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In my office just a few minutes ago, I overheard someone say, "Oh, to be a lexicographer."

You've got to admire that level of individuality in one's career dreams...

Posted by at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I got a bit of a start this morning when the local news reported that a woman who more-or-less matches the description of my friend Cheno's wife had been hit by a car while jogging only a couple blocks from the Cheno home. I know Mrs. Cheno is a runner, and even though the age of the still-unidentified victim was said to be 10 years too old, I wondered if the police and TV reporters might have made a mistake and it was really her being loaded into a LifeFlight helicopter. Being the paranoid, er, concerned friend that I am, I felt compelled to make a quick phone call, just to be sure. Whoever the unfortunate jogger was, it wasn't Mrs. Cheno.

Which is great news for me and my friends, but I feel bad for the anonymous woman who's in the hospital while her own friends and family go blithely about their day with no idea that someone they care about is fighting for her life right now...

UPDATE: The Tribune is reporting that the jogger has died from "massive head trauma." The police believe they've identified her and are awaiting the arrival of a husband for confirmation. Jesus... I can't begin to imagine getting a phone call asking you to come verify the identity of a mate you'd shared breakfast with and kissed goodbye only a few hours earlier.

As weird and potentially disrespectful as this next thought may sound, I find myself wondering what she was listening to on the iPod she was wearing at the time of the accident. Years ago, I wrote a short story in which someone dies in a traffic accident while the most ridiculous and overblown pop tune I could think of at the time -- Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" -- played on a jukebox in a nearby bar. It must happen all the time, when you think about it, people dying to the sound of inappropriate, silly, or offensive music... especially nowadays when music is so ubiquitous in our all-entertainment-all-the-time culture. It's a haunting image for me... you're running or walking or shopping, whatever, preoccupied by the mundane thoughts and daily business that eats up most of our lives, listening to the stupid pap that we all have on for background noise while we dream of the cool things we'll do one of these days, if only we can get through one more day of the usual rut, and then spang!, it's all over. No glamour, no meaning, no big resolution, no swelling soundtrack theme and slow dissolve to the next scene, only the Archies crooning on about sugar and honey. It reminds me of an old episode of M*A*S*H, oddly enough, the one where one of Hawkeye's paramours goes for a walk after their tryst and steps on a mine, and the last words in her diary are that her head is filled with thoughts of him. And another episode of the same show, in which Margaret sums it all up: "It never fails to amaze me. One minute you're alive, the next you're dead."

Things to consider on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon in early fall...

Posted by at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I ought to be in bed, catching up on sleep. I can't remember the last time I got a full eight hours' worth. But instead, I sit here in the wee hours of the last day of the last weekend of summer, clicking my way across the Internet, in search of... what? Enlightenment? Absolution? Distraction from the existential horror of it all? Maybe I'm just trying to stave off the inevitable advance of the calendar for just a few more minutes.

Here's a song that's been running through my head for a good part of the day. The lyrics are typically Zeppelin-esque mumbo-jumbo, but the tone captures my mood pretty well...

Posted by at 1:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Overheard during my lunchtime walk: Kansas' "Dust in the Wind" emanating from the open door of a tavern near my office. How depressing would it be to park yourself in a dark little hole that smells of sweat and mildew, drinking beer and listening to that existential dirge while a beautiful late-summer afternoon unwinds just a few steps away? Even I don't have that much appetite for melancholy self-reflection...

Posted by at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

So, I'm driving to the train station this morning, and at some point I glance off to my left and see... a black and white cow wearing light blue pajamas. Walking on its hind legs, no less.

For just an instant, I had the thought that the Monday-morning hangover really isn't worth it anymore.

Then I realized I was simply passing Chick-fil-A, and there was some poor teenager sweating away his shift inside that cow's plush innards. I really hope the whole week isn't going to be like this...

Posted by at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Stephen King's monumental fantasy epic, The Dark Tower, takes place in a world very much like our own, a parallel Earth that shares many attributes with ours, except that this other world is dying at some fundamental, metaphysical level. Entropy is accelerating; time no longer flows at a steady rate; most machines have ceased to function. Societies are failing and human behavior is changing for the worse, becoming barbaric and even monstrous. Even geography has been altered, with distances between places increasing, or their locations actually shifting around. Some of the inhabitants of this alternate Earth -- the ones who are still rational, anyway -- speak wistfully of what things were like "before the world moved on."

I think that's a wonderful phrase, evocative of so many things: loss, alienation, resignation, the sense of big changes occurring in spite of an individual's actions or feelings. Perhaps most of all, it speaks of the melancholy recognition that something important has slipped away from you while you weren't paying attention. My friend Jack uses the phrase all the time; it was very much on my mind yesterday.

Continue reading "And the World Moves On" »

Posted by at 8:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Via Boing Boing, a delightful and unlikely vacation photo:

To see the full-size image and read the tale of how this couple ended up as impromptu nature photographers, go here.

Silly as it is, this story really made my afternoon...

[Update: Well, I suppose this will surprise no one, but the "Crasher Squirrel" has already become an Internet meme. As usual, I'm 20 minutes behind the curve...]

Posted by at 2:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

And just for the heck of it, here are a couple more images I find amusing, both ganked from Samurai Frog.

The first is Rumer Willis, daughter of Bruce and Demi Moore, as she appears in Sorority Row, yet another remake of a movie from my early adolescence (admittedly not a very good movie, but I'm just getting sick of all the remakes on general principle):

I'm not any kind of fan of Rumer's -- as far as I know, I haven't seen her in anything -- but this pic struck my fancy because, well, the apple hasn't fallen very far from the tree, has it? Click to enlarge, for the full effect, and tell me if you don't see what I mean.

And now here's one that's kind of dumb but made me smile anyhow:

And with that, I guess I'm going to go find something to do outside for awhile... have a good one, everybody...

Posted by at 3:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

There have been a couple of memes floating around Facebook recently for which I've been repeatedly tagged, so I finally caved to the pressure and did them yesterday. I'm now republishing them here in a somewhat longer and embellished form. Why? Well, what else have I got to do on a Tuesday afternoon?

Continue reading "New Memes" »

Posted by at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Even though I'm frequently chagrined by reminders that I was born and bred and still live in the most right-wing state in the union, I've realized in recent years that I do, in fact, have some conservative tendencies. Definitely not in political or cultural terms, but at least in the sense of not liking change for the sake of change, and of valuing things and aesthetics that many folks would happily scrap in the name of "progress." In that spirit, here's a flavor of conservatism that I can actually bring myself to support:

Continue reading "The Conservatism of Cola" »

Posted by at 2:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (13)

Just something Lileks said this morning that struck me:

The worst thing about Depression isn’t the sense that you’re ac-centuating the negative, it’s that you’re seeing things the way they really are, stripped of the illusions you use every day to divert yourself from the Yawning Maw of Futility. It’s the wind that blows off the snow and reveals the stone.

Posted by at 11:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I think I mentioned recently that I'm coming up on my fortieth birthday in a few weeks. (If I didn't, hey, kids, guess what? I'm turning 40 soon!) I'm not real happy about it. In fact, I'm trying my damnedest not to drive everyone within earshot crazy by having a stereotypical breakdown and mid-life crisis -- there are few things as disheartening as realizing you're acting like a total cliche -- but I have to tell you that it's pretty tough maintaining an air of cool, collected indifference toward your advancing age when you start receiving junk mail from the AARP. That's the American Association of Retired Persons for you young people who may not know of it.

Now, I do occasionally receive mail that's intended for my father. We share the same first name and we did share the same address for a very long time. So my first thought when I spotted the AARP's logo on the business-size envelope in my hand was that it must be something for him. But no, it was plainly addressed to "Mr. Jason Bennion." Which would be me. No room for error there.

Compelled by morbid curiosity, I slit it open... and discovered within an official membership card emblazoned with the same pre-printed "Mr. Jason Bennion." The accompanying letter instructed me how to register my membership and described the fabulous benefits I can receive by doing so today.

But I'm only 40, for god's sake! You know, the new 30? Isn't that what all the magazines have been calling it lately? Or was that just a passing fad and they've decided 40 is over the hill after all? Whatever will make us insecure enough to buy this month's issue, right? Right?

Ah, geez... I suddenly feel the need to slip into a cardigan and pop a Geritol.

Posted by at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

One more for tonight...

The Salt Lake Tribune really needs to have a chat with its headline writer:

Skateboard attacks man over alleged fake-drug sale

Treacherous skateboards! When are the police going to do something about them! When I was a boy, you could walk down the streets without fearing that some skateboard was going to leap out and mug you, but now everything's gone to hell in a mop-bucket!

(What actually happened, of course, is that some guy attacked another guy with a skateboard. But sloppy editing gives a very different impression, doesn't it? Anytime anyone around my place of employment wonders why they need pedantic guys like me slowing down the process when they're on deadline, I'll just point them to this example...)

(Incidentally, the headline has been fixed since I first saw it this morning -- it now reads "Skateboarder attacks man..." -- but still, I think my point was made. Proofreaders... if you deal in words at all, we're your most valuable resource!)

Posted by at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ever since she was a little girl, my mom wanted to own a horse ranch with a white board fence. Life, of course, doesn't work out the way we imagine it will when we're young -- that's a truth I've been struggling with myself lately -- but she did manage to get an approximation of her dream, at least. There've always been horses around the Bennion Compound, even before I came along. When I was a kid, she dabbled a little with breeding her mares. (I learned the facts of life by watching three foals enter the world, and one, sadly, that didn't quite make it.) And yes, she even got her white board fence, across the front of a hay pasture she and Dad bought from one of the neighbors. It wasn't Southfork by any means, but it was pretty good for our circumstances.

At its largest point, our little herd numbered five head, three of which were papered Arabians. But that was long ago, and time and entropy have taken their toll. This morning, my parents had to make the difficult decision to have one of Mom's two remaining horses put down. Her registered name was Misty Dawn, a derivation of her mother's name -- Desert Mist, or more familiarly, Misty -- and her sire's, Dantu (that's pronounced Dawn-Too, for the record). But we've always just called her Dawn, naturally.

Continue reading "And Then There Was One" »

Posted by at 10:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

I've had a couple inquiries from Loyal Readers as to my whereabouts and condition; apparently, the lack of tributes for the plethora of recently departed celebrities (which, as you all know, are usually like catnip for your humble host) has them worried about me. Your concern is much appreciated, folks, but rest assured that I'm alive and doing fine... mostly. I seem to have entered into another of those periods when I'm insanely busy at work, constantly chasing around on the weekends, and too damn exhausted in the evenings to accomplish anything more thought-intensive than shoveling food in the general direction of my mouth. This has been the pattern of my life for several years now -- somehow, I've managed to land myself in an industry that booms in the summertime, right when most people are finding ways to take it easy -- but I still haven't gotten used to it, and I honestly don't think I ever will. I'm easily distracted and inclined toward procrastination at the best of times, and when things get like this... well, blogging isn't the only thing I haven't managed to keep up with. And I'm feeling pretty damn frustrated about it, too. This isn't how I used to imagine my life was going to be. It was supposed to look a lot more like this:

Glamorous space babes offering me cocktails while I pursue galactic adventures aboard my somewhat phallic-looking rocketship? Yeah, wouldn't that be lovely... anyhow, I'm taking a mental-health day tomorrow, and among all the other items on my to-do list, I hope to get a couple of those tributes written. Keep your fingers crossed for me...

(Incidentally, more images like the one above can be found here. If you're into this sort of thing. Which obviously, I am.)

Posted by at 11:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

Courtesy of Lileks:

People! It takes all kinds to make a world. I just wish sometimes they’d go off and make one of their own.

Posted by at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

If you don't happen to recognize him, that golden dude up there at the top of this entry is the Angel Moroni, an important figure in the LDS faith. Most Mormon temples are crowned by a Moroni statue; in these parts, where we have four temples in the Salt Lake Valley and two more in the adjoining valleys to the immediate north and south, they're a pretty unremarkable sight. But every once in a while, something snaps you out of your comfortable complacency and forces you to notice things that have long since faded into the background. Such as the meteorological consequences of placing a ten-foot-high statue covered in highly conductive metal on the highest point of a building that towers above its neighbors.

In other words, lightning struck this Moroni statue during one of the truly spectacular thunderstorms we had over the weekend. You can see that the electrical blast blackened his trumpet, arm, and face. It looks like it also zapped the sphere he's standing upon, or possibly the current emerged from the statue at this point as it was seeking ground. In other photos of the damage, I've seen a lightning rod protruding from the statue's head, so this bolt must've either missed the rod or else was so big that the rod made no difference. It must've been an incredible sight, if you'd happened to be looking in the right direction at the moment of impact.

This particular Moroni stands atop the Oquirrh Mountain Temple west of my house, a temple so brand-new that it hasn't even been dedicated yet. I wonder if the interior now smells, in addition to fresh paint and new carpeting, of ozone and slag?

Posted by at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

It's a bleary-eyed Friday morning here in the Proofreader's Cave, deep in the bowels of one of the glorious metropolitan skyscrapers in fabulous downtown Salt Lake. One of my fellow proofers has been on vacation this week, so I've been doing the work of two, and naturally this has also coincided with a surge in output from our shared primary account. All of which means that I've been working my tail off, I'm fried, and I'd like nothing more right now than a window seat at the Buena Vista, a steady flow of Irish coffees, and absolutely no place to be and nothing to do for the next ten hours or so.

I've kept myself sane during the week by working on the following a little bit at a time, whenever I needed to tear my eyes away from the Chicago Manual of Style. Which has been more and more frequently as I've neared this morning. I have a feeling the rest of today is going to be an uphill slog. In any event, credit for this one goes to SamuraiFrog, who, in a display of great wisdom, chose to combine two separate but similar memes that've been making the rounds lately into one big one. Henceforth, my crotchety opinions on a great many things...

Continue reading "The Love and Hate Meme" »

Posted by at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My buddy Jack Hattaway is preparing to ride in his second Lotoja Classic, a 206-mile bicycle race that runs from Logan, Utah, to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in September. This time, however, he's doing it to raise funds for the important research being done high on the hill above our fair city at the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Jack was planning to ride again anyhow, but he was inspired to make this year's race a bit more meaningful after watching a good friend battle -- and defeat -- melanoma. As it happens, The Girlfriend and I have recently had our own experiences with cancer and the Huntsman Institute -- not us, but involving people that matter to us -- so it's a cause near to our hearts as well. If my loyal readers will forgive me, I'm again going to ask everyone reading this to consider throwing in a couple of bucks for a worthy goal.

You can learn more details about Jack and why he's doing this at his donation page. I hope you'll click through and at least give it some thought.

If you're interested in the Lotoja Classic, here's the official site for that. And lastly, here is the little blurb I wrote about Jack's participation in the event last year.

Posted by at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Fourteen years ago Wednesday, Christopher Reeve -- a man I once callously dismissed as a second-rate has-been -- was critically injured when the horse he was riding in competition balked at jumping over an obstacle, and Chris was thrown. It was a mundane accident; at worst, he should have suffered only some bruises and a sore ego. Unfortunately, however, his hands tangled in the reins, which changed his trajectory so that he ended up crashing down directly on his head. We all know what happened next. Chris' neck was broken, and in a literal blink of an eye, he became the world's most famous quadriplegic.

He also became, in the years following the accident, a much better man than he had been before: a tireless advocate for medical research and an inspiration for those with spinal-cord injuries (and for people with a lot of other problems, too, and even for people with no problems at all). Chris was no saint, a point he emphasized in both of the books he wrote after the accident. He was frequently irritated by the media's insistence on calling him "a real-life Superman" (even though, for my money, that's exactly what he was). But he was a man who was handed one of the biggest lemons life can give you, and somehow he found a way to turn it into something of value, not only for himself, but for the rest of the world as well.

Chris is gone now -- he's been dead nearly five years, as strange as that is to contemplate -- and his beautiful and devoted wife Dana is, too. I'm not at all confident that there's anything waiting for us beyond this life, but if there is any kind of mercy in this universe, any sense of fairness, they are together, and Chris is free of that damned chair.

I bring all this up again because the news that so many years have passed since Chris' accident surprised me -- it doesn't seem that long -- and also because I believe Chris and Dana's lives are ones worth remembering and commemorating. So in that spirit, I going to ask everyone reading this to go visit the website for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation. Learn about the good these two managed to accomplish, and what continues to be done in their names. And if you can spare a few dollars in these difficult times, make a little contribution to help carry on their work. Or better yet, make a pledge to support the efforts of Matthew Reeve, Chris' son, as he runs in the New York Marathon on behalf of his father's foundation.

Chris didn't live long enough to walk again, but he was convinced that it was possible. I am, too. Let's help make it happen.

Posted by at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One more, because I'm just in that kind of mood. This one is courtesy of Samurai Frog.

Continue reading ""Firsts" Meme" »

Posted by at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Here's another Facebook meme, modified slightly for a bloggy format...

Continue reading "Facebook Meme: 65 Questions You've Probably Never Been Asked" »

Posted by at 6:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the grind. Hope you all enjoyed your holiday weekend. My own was somewhat... tumultuous, and far less recreational than I was hoping for when last we met. It’s a long story I don’t feel up to relating right now; I’ll just say that it involved medical stuff, and assure my three loyal readers that everything is fine now.

Perhaps there’s some lingering fallout from that story I don’t want to tell, or maybe it’s just because I’ve been off work for three days, but I’m having a very hard time getting my mental clutch to engage. Which means the ambitious blog entry I originally had in mind for today isn’t going to happen (nor is much of anything else, I suspect). Instead, I think I’m going to stay in the shallow end of the brain pool and play with some memes. Here’s one I picked up from Jaquandor:

Continue reading "Meme of Eights" »

Posted by at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I haven't done a silly Internet quiz in a while, so I happily followed Michael May's example with this one. The questions were leading -- if you're into adventure stories at all, you'll easily guess which character each question is describing -- but it killed five minutes and I'm pleased with the results:

Quiz brought to you by
Tripbase - Vacation Ideas

If you've never read King Solomon's Mines, run to the library or click over to Amazon straightaway. It's a great tale, even if it is an obvious product of its times (i.e., it's Victorian, and that includes Victorian attitudes toward race and gender), and Quatermain is an obvious inspiration for the quintessential adventurer of modern pop culture, Indiana Jones, if that piques your interest at all. There have been two film versions that I'm familiar with, the 1950 version with Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger (which is pretty fun), and the 1985 version with Richard Chamberlain and a young Sharon Stone (this one can be a certain kind fun if you're into bad movies, but be warned before you press "play" that it can't be described as "good" in any of the usual ways). And of course Sean Connery played Quatermain in the execrable film League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; he was the only good thing about that pile of steaming camel dung...

Posted by at 9:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

The Girlfriend has acquired the mildly annoying habit of stuffing straw wrappers, napkins, crumpled-up receipts, and other little bits of paper detritus into the cup holders of my beloved Mustang. It's not that big a deal, and I suppose it's really my own fault because I've always resisted hanging a trash bag from the gear shift like most people do. But still, neither of us ever seems to remember to remove this crap immediately when we get home, so it tends to build up and make my car look kinda white-trashy. And it reduces the functionality of the cup holder, too, since cups don't sit evenly on an uneven wad of junk. They tend to tip and tilt, and if they're full, they'll spill a little, which makes the cup holder and the debris layer sticky, and, well... it's just not an optimal situation, as my friend Jack would say.

So I was delighted yesterday to discover that this trash problem takes care of itself if you accelerate to 60 mph with the top down on a brilliant sunny evening. It's unclear whether it's strictly necessary to have Foghat's "Slow Ride" booming from the stereo in order to actuate the de-trashification process, but I recommend it anyhow because it's a totally bitchin' song.

***

(Incidentally, I realize I never reported on how the repairs to my car came out... there was a bit of heartburn because the body shop used a "pre-owned" door to replace my damaged one after promising to use a new one, but they did a really nice job of matching the paint and I doubt if 98% of people looking at the car could tell anything had ever happened. Still bugs me that the accident happened at all, but I guess it turned out all right.)

Posted by at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

My friend Karen points us today to a strange little website based on the following premise: "If we started a movie on the day you were born, and stretched it over your lifespan, this is where you'd be in that movie."

You enter your birthdate and how long you expect to live, select your favorite movie from a list of well-known options, and the site will show you which scene in the film corresponds to the current moment of your life. My three loyal readers can, of course, guess which film I chose... it seems I'm right at the point where Han Solo is ushering his nervous passengers toward their ticket off Tatooine.

On the positive side, the really fun part of the movie is still ahead. Hopefully that says something about my life...

Posted by at 1:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Good lord... I'm offline for a few days and Bea Arthur dies, the news media does its best to convince everyone that Captain Trips has broken out and we're all doomed, some bonehead decides it'd be really cool to photograph Air Force One over New York City without bothering to tell everyone not to panic when they see a low-flying jumbo jet being pursued by an F-16, and Arlen Specter switches parties.

You know, sometimes it's a good thing to be uninformed about what's going on in the world...

(Incidentally, my weekend road trip was grand. There was naturally a huge backlog waiting for me at the office this morning, but I'll try to find the time to jot down some travel stories in the next little while...)

Posted by at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Here in the clean light of a new morning, I realized the previous entry makes it appear that I'm in a really bad mental space. Well, I was for a couple of days, but let me assure any concerned loyal readers out there that I'm all right. I started recovering as soon as it became apparent the insurance companies weren't going to give me any hassles, and I mostly unclenched once the car went into the shop and it felt like some progress was being made. I'm still unhappy the accident happened at all, of course, and that my formerly "like-new" car isn't so much anymore. I get very attached to my things and I have a really hard time when something happens to them. But the worst of my emotional storm has passed. I just got wound up as I writing last night.

As I mentioned, the wreck was basically the final cue for a major case of the blues that's been lurking in the wings for a while. A lot of shit has been getting under my skin lately: anxiety over my job and how secure it may or may not be, irritation with all the hysterical political nonsense that's been going around (honestly, right-wing gun-lovers, no one is coming to take your Preciouses away, not even those nasty hobbitses, er, Democrats), disgust at the growing plague of panhandlers and scummy-looking kids that hang around the train platform near my office (I've got a lot of sympathy for the homeless, but enough is freakin' enough, people!). Disgust with a lot of things, really... the reinvigorated culture wars, willful ignorance and intractable bigotry, ubiquitous marketing, almost-as-ubiquitous graffiti, the lack of consideration people have for their fellow citizens, traffic, road construction that makes traffic worse, the fact that I can no longer find a radio station I really, honestly like, and a host of other complaints both large and small. I've been tired and cranky and fed up and feeling like everything went really wrong somewhere. I've been feeling, in fact, something like this:

Fortunately, I'm about to get my moment alone, and I don't even have to shoot anyone, no matter how tempting that might be. Well, alone plus one. The Girlfriend and I are setting off on a little road trip tomorrow, an exploration of southern Utah with a stop in Zion National Park, a detour to Vegas to check in with some friends we've not seen in a while, and finally, an outdoor concert starring my main man, Rick Springfield. Yes, I am a dork. No, worse, since I'm traveling over 100 miles to see him... I'm a groupie.

First, however, I've got a very important dinner date with the two people who made all this possible. Today is my parents' 45th wedding anniversary. I'm sure I am no less amazed at how long that seems than they are...

Posted by at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you listen much to National Public Radio, one of the things you notice is how the names of all the hosts don't sound much like, say, your name. There's a lot of ethnic diversity in NPR's ranks, for one thing -- on any given broadcast, you're likely to hear the voices of Lakshmi Singh, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, or Sylvia Poggioli, for example -- but even the more "regular" names just have a certain ring to them: Neal Conan (any name from the Hyborian Age is guaranteed cool, right?), Jason Beaubien, Salt Lake's own Howard Berkes, Noah Adams, Steve Inskeep... these simply aren't names you're likely to encounter in the real world. I've long lusted after a cool name, the sort of name that invites respect and conjures images of exotic lands, daring deeds, and arcane knowledge. An NPR name.

Now, thanks to the link my buddy MikeG sent me this afternoon, I can have such a moniker. The formula is surprisingly simple:

Here’s how it works: You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.

And just like that my name becomes -- are you ready? -- Regjinald St. Goar.

Regjinald St. Goar, named for a delightful little village on the Rhine River in Germany. I like it! So what's yours?

Posted by at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

How awesome is this headline that just came across my newsfeed?

FBI joins effort in hostage standoff with pirates

I find myself imagining these guys facing off against these guys in a battle royale like the world has never seen. (Personally, my money's on Connery kicking Keith Richards' butt up and down the beach.)

Posted by at 10:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Being as I am a hopeless nostalgic -- not to mention the incredibly odd mutant who actually, for the most part, liked high school -- I couldn't resist the latest meme from Jaquandor, which he titled "My So-Called High School Life." I am retaining that title, despite its derivation from a TV show I never watched, for lack of any more clever ideas.

Continue reading "My So-Called High School Life Meme" »

Posted by at 10:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There was another round of layoffs at work today, a big one. Looking for the positive aspects, it did take out a couple of people who've been thorns in my side, but also a few more friends, which really sucks. As before, I remain reasonably confident that my own job isn't going anywhere any time soon. However, watching the slow parade of the unfortunate march one by one into the HR office and then back to their cubes to collect their personal effects with a blank-eyed escort hovering nearby... well, I can think of grimmer sights but I prefer not to. The worst was seeing a sweet, soft-spoken man in his fifties struggle to control his tears as he took down his Ghosts calendar and laid it carefully into the top of a packed bankers box. I didn't speak to him, didn't say goodbye, and I wish I had. I was oddly embarrassed, as if I personally had done something to him merely by not getting my own phone call from HR. I think I can imagine what he was thinking, though. At his age -- not quite old, but a long way from the eager-eyed hipsters fresh out of college who swarm through our industry like goldfish in a pet store -- he was probably imagining how he's going to look in a blue smock with "Welcome to WalMart" printed on the chest.

Not quite as iconic an image as that famous portrait Dorothea Lange captured 73 years ago, but it haunts me just the same...

Posted by at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)

Yesterday over on Facebook, I was tagged by Kelly -- better known in these parts as Jaquandor -- to do a meme about my life as a geek. I of course complied immediately, because, well, it's a meme. I'm reposting the results here, with some tweaks to the formatting and a few comments that I've reconsidered:

Continue reading "Geek Life Meme" »

Posted by at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've been trying for over a week to find a suitable entry point into a touchy subject, to craft some kind of narrative or something, but everything I've tried has turned out sounding glib or melodramatic or was otherwise not the right approach. So I'm just going to get straight to the point.

You may have seen the recent item about two female junior-high-school teachers in Bountiful, Utah -- that's a sleepy bedroom community just north of SLC, for our out-of-state friends -- who were arrested for allegedly having sex with one of their students, a 13-year-old boy. Stories like this are not uncommon these days and I usually just tune them out because they seem to me more like a topic for The Jerry Springer Show than legitimate news. But in this case, my ears pricked up because, as it happens, I know one of the accused.

Valynne Bowers is an old classmate of mine. Bingham High School, Class of '87. I used to ride the bus with her, back when she was a teenage girl named Valynne Asay. I shared classes with her. I saw her only 18 months ago at our 20-year reunion. I consider her a friend. And because she is my friend, what I'm about to say will probably be dismissed as misguided loyalty. Take it that way if you wish. But the truth is Valynne's situation brings together a lot of thoughts I've had over the past decade or so about America's neurotic attitudes toward sex and young people.

Valynne has pleaded not guilty, and I choose to believe that until it's proven otherwise in court. But even if there was no question that she did it, I could not bring myself to condemn her. And no, it's not just because she's an old friend. It's because I believe people have reasons for doing what they do, even the things that society frowns upon, and especially when those things involve sex. Sex is complicated and irrational, tied up in equations of self-esteem and power that aren't always as black and white as we like to pretend.

Continue reading "Sympathy for the Devil" »

Posted by at 12:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Like the title says, "Blarg." I feel like I've been dragged sideways through an old-fashioned keyhole, then shaken out and tossed over the back of a chair like a pair of unwashed Levi's. Which is my colorful way of saying that the past week has been unusually rough. I'm utterly drained, in just about every way you can think of: physically, intellectually, emotionally. Soon to be financially, too, thanks to that tax situation I mentioned a while back.

So what's been going on that's so terrible? Well, for one thing, there have been a couple of items in the news this week that have hit me like a solid fist to the belly; they'll be getting their own blog entries when I get the chance to write them up. I've also had to contend with my semi-annual journey into the Black Hole of Depression; it hits every year around this time, probably as a result of the gloomy, final sputters of winter, as well as the usual annual reminders of things I prefer to keep to myself. Let's just say that every so often, I notice I'm a long, long way from being the man I used to believe I was, and the life I used to think I was destined to live. I can't help but imagine my 21-year-old self would be incredibly disappointed in my 39-year-old self, and that really gets me down.

The big problems this week, however, have been health-related. The Girlfriend and I have both been sicker than dogs, and, in her case, things got bad enough to require a trip to the emergency room.

Continue reading "Blarg" »

Posted by at 4:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

"Oh, how I love the future. How else would I be able to relive my past?"

--Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer

Posted by at 1:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

You know, there's something curiously satisfying about listening to dusty old CDs while you do long-neglected household chores...

Here's one of my rediscoveries, Bonnie Raitt performing "Angel from Montgomery," a beautiful, sad, authentic song I loved back around 1990 or so and then somehow forgot about until today:

It's a huge cliche, of course, but they really don't write 'em like this anymore. At least, not that I ever hear.

Posted by at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A health-related PSA seen on a placard on the train last night:

Breathe Easier
Get Screened

Their is a good chance it will save your life.

Their is a chance? I can't tell you how much that hurts...

Posted by at 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just reposting a couple of things I saw out in the 'sphere today that resonated with me.

Continue reading "A Couple of Somewhat Related Thoughts on Nostalgia, a Tangent, and Something That Has Nothing to Do With Anything" »

Posted by at 4:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Have you ever come slightly awake early in the morning -- not fully conscious, just somewhat aware of your surroundings -- and known that everything is just perfect: The sheets are smooth and soft beneath you, not tangled for a change, the room temperature and ambient light levels are optimal, and you don't even have the urge to pee. After a moment, you begin to sink back into a deeper layer of sleep, like a U-boat that's popped up for a look around and is now submerging into the cool, quiet darkness, and you can sense that you're experiencing the most restful, contented sleep you've had in weeks...

And then the bloody alarm clock goes off and sends your heartrate into the stratosphere.

Yeah, that was how I started today. I've had a headache ever since.

Sigh.

Posted by at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Really, the melding of pose, composition, lighting, and caption is just sublime:

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Posted by at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've never seen a Jim Jarmusch film, and frankly his stuff doesn't sound like anything I would enjoy -- I never have developed much taste for artsy independent cinema that "breaks many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking"; I happen to like traditional Hollywood conventions, thank you -- but I did find the following Jarmusch quote interesting:

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to."

Authenticity as opposed to originality. Makes sense to me. I knew at an early age that much of Star Wars was ripped off from Flash Gordon serials, Dune, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories, and yet somehow those elements recombined into something wholly new and, at least before it became a brand instead of merely a movie, terribly exciting and pleasing.

This quote was happily yoinked from Roberson's Interminable Ramble... which handily proves the point, if you think about it.

Posted by at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of Utah's best-known and best-loved public figures, the businessman Larry H. Miller, died yesterday afternoon at the age of 64. He'd been in poor health for some time and had recently had both legs amputated at the knees due to complications from his Type II diabetes.

Continue reading "In Memoriam: Larry H. Miller" »

Posted by at 2:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nothing to say, really, I just thought this was a cool picture. You can find more mermaids and other interesting stuff at the photographer's blog.

Posted by at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I kinda hate to admit this, but a while back I finally bowed to the inevitable and allowed myself to assimilated into the Facebook collective -- feel free to look me up over there if you're into that scene.

If you've never played there, Facebook has its own version of the memes that drift around the blogosphere, and over the past few weeks I've been tagged approximately 432,000 times for one called "25 Random Things About Me." I'm cross-posting the list I came up with here, for anyone who may be interested. (Long-time readers may already know some of this stuff; it's not easy to come up with entirely original material all the time...)

Anyhow, meme-age below the fold:

Continue reading "Facebook Meme: 25 Random Things" »

Posted by at 3:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I don't know if 2008 was actually more eventful than other recent years, but '08 certainly felt more... I don't know... frenetic? That's not quite the right word, but it's in the neighborhood. Certainly '08 was more exhausting than other twelve-month blocks of time. I recall experiencing more moments of feeling utterly drained and used up in the last year than in the entire decade preceding it. Of course, that could be simply of my inexorable trudge toward middle age. I am 39 years old now, and I'm finding, to my horror, that I just don't absorb the hits as well as I used to. Or it could be that the hits lately have been more intense...

Continue reading "Long-Overdue Year-End Wrap-Up... Now with Extra Hyphens!" »

Posted by at 6:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Depression II, the sequel no one wants to see, has finally premiered at a business near me. Meaning that 13 of my coworkers, including some people I consider friends as well as colleagues, got laid off today. I personally escaped the ax, and I feel reasonably safe given my position and current workload, but damn it's been a lousy day. The way these things are handled in this liability-conscious and paranoid age tends to drag out the process over several hours, and the constant sense of dread, the wondering if your phone is going to be the next one to ring with the call to come up to HR, is utterly exhausting. The metaphor that kept coming to my mind is the Curse of the First Born scene from The Ten Commandments, when the Hebrews hunker down in their homes while the evil green fog slinks through the streets outside, killing unnamed extras by the dozens. If another round of this seems imminent, I'm seriously tempted to paint my cubicle with lamb's blood.

After a day like this, nothing is really very funny, but this LOLcat struck me as... appropriate:

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I imagine a lot of my coworkers are in this condition right now. Me, I'm just worn out. Off to bed...

Posted by at 9:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

It's kind of a silly thing to be thinking about now that we're nearly a full month into 2009, but with the untimely passing of Shadow, the Bennion Family Border Collie, as well as various other distractions during my holiday break, I never got around to doing my customary year-end wrap-up entries. I really dislike loose ends, so if you'll bear with me for being so horribly untimely, I'd like to do some catch-up work now.

First up is a meme I first did back in December of 2007. Brian and Ilya are treating this like an annual tradition, so I guess I will now as well.

The instructions on this one are simple: repost the first sentence of the first blog entry in each of the previous year's 12 months. I guess the idea is to try and see if there's any kind of pattern or recurring obsessions or something. So, without further ado:

Continue reading "End of the Year Meme" »

Posted by at 11:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When you are driving through a snowstorm and resting your elbow on a frozen turkey that's on the seat beside you, your whole body tends to feel cold.

And now you know. And knowing is half the battle.

Posted by at 12:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Like everybody else in the country, I've been captivated by yesterday's news story about an airliner ditching in the Hudson River after hitting a flock of birds during its ascent phase. The amazing part of the story is, of course, that all 155 people aboard the plane survived with only minor injuries.

Now, whenever these sorts of events happen, the survivors, witnesses, and press inevitably start throwing around the word "miracle." I know there are a lot of people out there who believe in genuine, literal miracles, i.e., times when God personally intervenes in order to save lives. I don't. I'm an agnostic -- I don't deny the possibility of a God, but I have a very hard time believing He plays much of an active role in what goes on down here on this little rock. However, I acknowledge that many of my fellow Americans disagree with me on this idea, and when you come right down to it, describing positive outcomes as "miracles" is one of those things that's not worth getting worked up over, even if I personally find it tiresome.

Still... I've got my limits.

Continue reading "Praise Where Praise Is Due" »

Posted by at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Karen pointed me to "The Blogadilla Swedish Furniture Name Generator," from which I learned what I would be called if you could buy me at a certain well-known furniture store the size of your average housing development:

I look comfy, don't I? Wouldn't you just love to assemble me in your home today? If you buy now, I'll even throw in an order of those yummy little meatballs they sell in the cafeteria...

Posted by at 4:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For some reason, my coworkers keep emailing me the following:

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I'm really not sure why...

Posted by at 1:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received an email this morning from a concerned loyal reader, asking if I was all right. It made me realize that I overplayed my hand a bit in that mysterious post yesterday, and possibly I've caused some people to worry unnecessarily. So even though this isn't the long entry I wanted to present on this subject, I've decided to go ahead and release the news that's weighed so heavily on my mind for the last week:

Shadow, the Bennion Family Border Collie, whom you may remember has been fighting cancer off and on for about two years, died on December 30.

He had completed his second round of chemotherapy about seven weeks earlier and my parents and I believed him to be at last cancer-free. He was, however, afflicted with some side effects from the chemo as well as the usual complaints of old age -- he had arthritis in his hips, among other problems -- and in the final week of his life he was struggling against what the vet initially believed to be a bronchial infection. The antibiotic treatment for that illness seemed to be having little effect, though, so he was scheduled for an ultrasound last Tuesday to explore other possibilities -- the worst scenario being a third attack from the damn cancer. But he didn't make it to that appointment. Instead, he passed away in the night before, in my mother's closet, where he'd always gone to hide when summer thunderstorms darkened the sky.

I know that not everyone likes animals or keeps pets, and that some who do view them as little more than furniture. All I can say to those people is that that's not how my family does things. The Bennion animals have always been a very real part of this family, and Shadow was even more so than any other pet we've ever had. We all lived together under the same roof in his early years; later, he divided his time between my parents' house and my own. (If you don't know, I share property with my folks in an arrangement I like to call "the Bennion Compound.") He was a constant presence around here, and for my dad especially, a constant companion. Dad took that dog with him everywhere, and Shadow's death has hit him very, very hard. I'm grieving for my father as much as for Shadow.

I'm still going to write that tribute I mentioned yesterday, the one that's been so difficult for me to start. I want to tell a few stories, and hopefully give you some idea of what a remarkable and wonderful being Shadow really was, and why it's so difficult to say goodbye to him. For tonight, though, I thought it best to clear the air. To anyone who may have gotten the wrong idea yesterday, I'm sorry to have worried you. What can I say? I do have a flair for the melodramatic at times.

Here's one final thing, a memorial card that my lovely Anne made up for my parents to send to their friends:

As always, click to embiggen. If you're interested.

Posted by at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

For those looking for your first fix until regular blogging resumes, here's a quiz courtesy of Konstantin:

Ghost Rider? I'll confess to not having much familiarity with this character, aside from the Nicholas Cage movie and glimpses of the classic comic-book covers in my Cool Older Cousin's room when I was a kid. (The COC had lots of stuff that I found both enticing and a little bit scary, which of course is why I thought he was so cool in the first place. My dim memories of his interests are like a catalog of early to mid-70s teenage macho: Ghost Rider and Doctor Strange comics, Bruce Lee posters, kung fu throwing stars and dumb-bells, heavy metal album covers, beaded curtains and blacklights... it was all so arcane and eerie and wonderful.)

Anyway, I've always thought that Ghost Rider was at least visually awesome, so I can live with this. What're your results?

Posted by at 2:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

One of my three loyal readers sent me an instant message this afternoon which said, essentially, "update your damn blog already." So I guess I ought to pop in and explain that, no, I have not been run over by a monorail, kidnapped by Somali pirates, or deported to the Phantom Zone to spend eternity sandwiched between Ursa and Non. Not that being sandwiched with Ursa would necessarily be a bad thing. I used to have this Superman II program book with lots of glossy pictures, you see, and I thought she was much more interesting than scrawny old Lois Lane, what with those slits on the arms and legs of her outfit.

But I digress, and I haven't even gotten started yet.

The thing is, something happened over my holiday break that I want to write about, and it's turning out to be a difficult entry for reasons that will become clear when I finally post the thing. I don't mean to be cryptic -- many of you out there already know what I'm talking about -- it's just... I want to do justice to this topic, and it's taking time to get it right. Or to get it at all. I don't have writer's block exactly, but it's... well, again, it's just not an easy thing to write.

I'll try to throw out some bones to satisfy those who need a Bennion fix, but just be aware that I'm rather preoccupied by this one item right now.

Posted by at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here's a random bit of flotsam I've been intending to post for a while, a really cool photo of the great silent-film comedian Buster Keaton taken late in his life:

I found it over at Booksteve's Library, where it's theorized that this image has something to do with a number of beer commercials Keaton made for television in the 1950s. (Ironic, considering Keaton was an alcoholic.)

As I said, I've been meaning to post it anyway because I like Keaton and I like the moody, noir-ish atmosphere captured in the pic. But it's got some special significance to me tonight, as I sit alone with my thoughts in a dark and quiet house. I'm feeling pretty moody myself, for reasons I'll explain later. In the meantime, just enjoy this uncommon look at a genuine Hollywood legend...

Posted by at 12:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you drive due west from Salt Lake City, past the Great Salt Lake and out across the West Desert, you'll arrive in an hour or two -- depending on how heavy your right foot happens to be -- at a dusty outpost town called Wendover. Well, technically you'll find two Wendovers out that way, because the town straddles the Utah-Nevada border. On the Nevada side, a handful of casinos and other, ahem, adult businesses lend West Wendover a certain glitz and affluence. Wendover, Utah, on the other hand, is much quieter, darker, and sadder, a fading remnant of more important days.

Continue reading "People Annoy Me" »

Posted by at 5:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

...first thing after a foolishly late night of debating politics with an old friend followed by very little sleep:

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McMuffin anyone?

Posted by at 8:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hope everyone reading had a nice Christmas or other mid-winter holiday unique to your tradition and preference. My own was unexpectedly good, with much more contentment and much less angst and drama than in years past. Of course, the weather sucked. Seriously, after three days of more-or-less constant snowfall and four sessions of driveway clearing, you can have your winter frickin' wonderland. (God, my shoulders are sore.)

My corporate overlords have kindly granted me the next week off, so, among lots of other projects I need to do around the house, I hope to complete some unfinished blog entries that have been hanging over my head for a while now. Stay tuned...

Posted by at 9:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My lovely Girlfriend has informed me that yesterday's entry may fall into the dread category of "Too Much Information." To anyone whose sensibilities were offended by my description of my physical symptoms, I apologize.

Still... I thought the hand-cranked egg beaters were a pretty powerful image. Sometimes I actually believe I might be one of those writer fellows you hear so much about...

Posted by at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Chugging a Starbucks grande caffe mocha and then immediately going to The Old Spaghetti Factory for a gargantuan plate of spinach tortellini with alfredo sauce is a really bad idea. I had the lousy night's sleep last night -- during which my torso felt like a 50-gallon drum packed with Crisco that's being gently whipped with a set of old-fashioned hand-cranked egg beaters -- followed by the sour stomach all day today to prove it. Ugh. Off now for another swig of Pepto... hope everyone reading this is doing better than me.

Posted by at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Remember that slightly off-color item I posted last week, the one about the 130,000 inflatable novelty breasts that had gone missing somewhere between China and Australia? Well, they've been found... turns out there was a paperwork error and the plastic mammaries went to Melbourne instead of Sydney. Employees of Ralph, the men's mag that purchased the boobies, are even now frantically stuffing them into bags so the holiday issue of the magazine will go out on time.

I must confess to being somewhat disappointed. In the words of one commenter over at Boing Boing, I was looking forward to reports of these things washing ashore somewhere. On the positive side, the article I linked above says that Ralph "is expected to break the Guinness world record for the most boobs given away at one time."

It's the story that keeps on giving, I tell you!

Posted by at 10:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I can't say I'm unhappy with the results of this "Which Action Hero Would You Be?" quiz:

You Scored as James Bond, Agent 007 James Bond is MI6's best agent, a suave, sophisticated super spy with charm, cunning, and a license to kill. He doesn't care about rules or regulations and is somewhat amoral. He does care about saving humanity though, as well as the beautiful women who fill his world. Bond has expensive tastes, a wide knowledge of many subjects, and his usually armed with a clever gadget and an appropriate one-liner. James Bond, Agent 007 79% Batman, the Dark Knight 79% Indiana Jones 75% El Zorro 75% Neo, the "One" 71% Captain Jack Sparrow 63% William Wallace 63% Lara Croft 63% Maximus 58% The Terminator 54% The Amazing Spider-Man 50%

Suave, sophisticated... yeah, I like the sound of that. And I do look good in a tux, on the very, very rare occasion I'm called upon to wear one. I find it kind of weird, however, that I scored equally on Bond and Batman. What do these characters have in common, aside from access to high-tech gadgets and seemingly unlimited financial resources? Hm. Well, maybe I just answered my own question.

As for the equivalency of Indy and Zorro, well, I suppose they both use a whip, even if Zorro is better known for his swordplay. But wait, none of the questions asked about whips. And since when is The Terminator a hero? Strange...

Via Jim by way of Konstantin.

Posted by at 3:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Something occurred to me yesterday while I was watching a re-run of The Incredible Hulk on our local RTN affiliate. Well, actually it occurred to me during a commercial break: of all the "as seen on TV" crap products that used to fill the airwaves with their seductive flim-flammery during the '70s and '80s, how is it that the only one that seems to have followed us into the 21st century is the Chia Pet? Seriously, this is what turns out to be the timeless kitsch classic that endures? Whatever became of the Pocket Fisherman, Mister Microphone, and those el-cheapo plastic boxes that were supposed to let you mold snow bricks and build igloos but somehow never quite worked as advertised? I wonder about these things...

Incidentally, that episode of The Hulk was an unbelievable confluence of nostalgic awesomeness... first of all, it was The Incredible Hulk, a series I watched pretty faithfully as a kid (and yet oddly, I can't really remember a single individual plotline; of course, they were all pretty much the same plot, weren't they?). It was set in one of my favorite cities, San Francisco (even though it was obviously filmed on the Universal backlot in Burbank), and the story involved a young cop struggling to choose between the path of peace offered by his zen martial-arts instructor and the violent quest for revenge advocated by his older brother. The older brother was Gerald McRaney of Simon & Simon, another childhood fave series, while the young cop was played by none other than my main man Rick Springfield. The episode felt like it might have been intended as a stealth pilot for a vehicle for Rick, as by the end of it he's become the new master of the dojo (following the death of the old master) and a private eye who promises to take only the clients he can really help. If it was a pilot, it's too bad it wasn't picked up... it might've been interesting. Kung Fu meets The Rockford Files, maybe...

Posted by at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A few excerpts from a particularly astute piece at the ever-amusing McSweeny's called "Fifty Years of Popular Songs Condensed into Single Sentences":

Continue reading "It's All About... Well, You Know..." »

Posted by at 3:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

A pretty good laugh, courtesy of SamuraiFrog:

Paris Hilton can’t find a record label willing to release her second album. Between that and Ann Coulter having her jaw wired shut, atheists appear to be losing the argument.

In an unrelated note, the Frog also mentions that remakes have been announced this week of more movies from the '80s, specifically They Live, Romancing the Stone, and Arthur. While new versions of Romancing the Stone and Arthur sound like disasters waiting to happen, remaking They Live actually isn't such a bad idea. I just watched this one last week for the first time in 20 years (good lord, how I hate saying things like that!), and I think it's the exceedingly rare case I mentioned the other day of an idea that didn't live up to its potential and deserves a second attempt. It had a great premise (an ordinary joe accidentally discovers there are aliens among us disguised as normal human beings, and that they're controlling us with subliminal messages in our advertising and entertainment) and, if anything, the film's social commentary probably applies even more now than it did back in 1988 (people are more obsessed than ever with mass media and self-destructive materialism), but holy crap was that movie a mess. All set-up, no pay-off, and a big disappointment coming from one of my favorite directors, John Carpenter. So, assuming that They Live Redux is more thoughtful than the original and not just an amped-up FX spectacle, this is one remake I might actually be interested in seeing...

Posted by at 2:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We interrupt your regular programming for an important historical note: Today is the 75th anniversary of the end of Prohibition, the disastrous social experiment that did very little to curb the behavior it was designed to end, but did manage to make some very bad people very rich and powerful while bringing appalling levels of violence to the streets of American cities. (See also Drugs, War on.) As I've noted before, I find it endlessly amusing that my home state of Utah, home of the tee-totaling Mormons, was the one that cast the deciding vote in favor of repeal. (In a nice bit of historical symmetry, Utah was also the deciding vote in ratifying the Constitutional amendment that created Prohibition in the first place, so perhaps it was only fitting that we undid it as well.)

Continue reading "The Good Old Daze" »

Posted by at 1:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've been on quite a run of epic nerdiness lately -- you're very kind to say you hadn't noticed, but please, we both know better -- and I'm beginning to worry about alienating that segment of readers who don't know an alluvial damper from a flux capacitor. Therefore, as a favor to all you non-fanboys and fangirls out there, I promise that none of the following links has anything whatsoever to do with Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, or any of the other shows whose titles I used to scribble on my notebook covers back in elementary and middle school...

Continue reading "Drive-By Blogging 8: Son of Blog!" »

Posted by at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was just reading an interview with Dan DiDio, an executive at DC Comics, and I thought the following remark (made in reference to the challenges comics people face with some of their long-running characters) tied in quite nicely to I was trying to say about remakes in the previous entry:

You have to remember, a lot of our fan base has been reading comics 20 or 30 years now. They've seen a lot of stories and a lot of things. We're always trying to find a way to give them something new but also give them exactly what they want.

That's the same challenge J.J. Abrams is facing, isn't it? He's got to do something new with Star Trek, but he's also got to give us, well, Star Trek, or else he fails. I certainly wouldn't want his job...

Posted by at 2:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I guess the vacation is finally over when you've used the last of the little soaps and shampoos you nicked from the hotel.

Incidentally, if you're going to San Francisco anytime soon, I highly recommend the Parc 55. Its lemongrass-scented soaps are really delightful...

Posted by at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For the record, I think "Rickrolling" is one of the lamest, most annoying Internet memes ever cooked up -- as I noted recently, I don't like practical jokes and/or pranks, and this particular bait-and-switch is really obnoxious if you're trying to find something on YouTube or elsewhere and you end up with this crap instead -- but I gotta say, the big moment in this morning's Macy's Parade was inspired:

Bravo to Rick Astley for playing along, and boo to that doofus Matt Lauer for ruining the surprise. Now, how many folks watching out there in the heartland do you suppose actually got the joke?

Posted by at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hey, everyone... if you're actually reading this on Thanksgiving (which I like to refer to as Mass Consumption Day), I can only assume it's after you've all finished dinner, right? If not, shouldn't you be off, um, consuming?

Anyhow, I just wanted to drop a quick little note here: In his column this week at amctv.com, the ubiquitous John Scalzi lists all the things for which he's thankful in the realm of sci-fi movies. I agree with him on pretty much all of these items, except for the one about special effects (sorry, I'm a big fan of actual, tangible miniatures, although I concede the CG stuff is getting better all the time). I found one of Scalzi's items especially resonant:

I'm thankful I'm almost 40 years old and still want a lightsaber and a speeder bike.

My geeky ego has taken quite a beating over the past ten years. From the Great Fanboy Prequel Wars that trashed the reputation of my favorite movie series and revealed one of my boyhood heroes to have feet of clay, to the remakes of damn near every movie or TV show I've ever loved, I've had to endure the diminishing, eclipsing, or outright dismissal of things that I used to think would never go away. Things that loom so large in my personal history and psyche that I've always assumed they must mean as much to everyone else as they mean to me. I know... naive, even childish. There have been times, especially lately with all the talk about the new Star Trek, when I've felt like a damn fool for clinging to my increasingly obsolete obsessions, when I've wondered what's wrong with me that I apparently don't see this stuff the same way everybody else does, i.e., as quaint old relics that were cool in their day but are now just silly and needing to be replaced. Not to put too melodramatic a spin on it, but these times of self-doubt have been genuinely painful.

But then something comes along like that video of the dueling sailors, and I feel that old familiar rush of endorphins and I realize that, yeah, I still love this stuff, in spite of what the rest of the world may think about it. Moreover, I'm glad that I still love this stuff, that the critics and cynics haven't managed to entirely wipe out my enjoyment of it. I'm thankful indeed that somewhere deep down inside my wounded, stressed-out, overburdened, and all-too-often-exhausted grown-up mind, there is still a happy, carefree ten-year-old walking through his small, boring, rural town with a comic book rolled up in his back pocket, dreaming of slicing down trees with a real lightsaber or whipping through the fields in a vehicle that's magically floating three feet above the ground. Sometimes, that kid still finds a way to speak to me, and sometimes I still find a way to be him. And surely that's a good and even necessary thing...

Happy Thanksgiving, my friends.

Posted by at 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Every few months, some researcher somewhere releases the results of a new survey or study that demonstrates yet again how astoundingly ignorant the average American is about, well, everything: science, history, politics, other countries, and especially our own country. I never quite know what to think about these surveys. On a good day, it seems impossible to me that my fellow citizens can be so stupid, that the surveys must be biased, or filled with poorly worded questions that lead the subjects too much. Then there are other days when my grumpy-old-mannish tendencies are ascendant and it's all too easy to believe that we 'muricans are a bunch of hopelessly myopic rubes obsessed with sex, celebrity, consumer goods, and religion (these days often coincide with elections, oddly enough).

Earlier this week, political blogger Kevin Drum made note of yet another one of these surveys, this one conducted annually by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, on which "fewer than a third of the 2,500 randomly selected test takers managed to score higher than 60%." Kevin included a link to the test itself, so naturally I had to click on over there and experience for myself this brutally difficult thing that so few otherwise fully functional adults could manage to pass.

Not to brag or anything, but I scored 93%, based on correctly answering 31 out of 33 questions. And the two I missed were both "Doh! How could I get those wrong!" types of things.

Now, I honestly don't consider my all that smart or well-informed, so I am utterly flabbergasted by all the results of this survey. And also more than a little scared. Especially terrifying is the chart of "additional findings," which indicates that, as poorly as the average citizen did on this test, our elected officials -- the ones who are running the country and thus, presumably, know a thing or two about it -- did worse in most categories. For years, our society has been playing up the "ordinary joe-ness" of our politicians, voting for the guys we'd most like to have over for a barbecue, and sneering at intellectual "elites." It looks like we've gotten what we've been asking for.

One more little serving of food for thought: the aforementioned Kevin points out that "[o]ther ISI findings, by the way, include these: the more education you have, the better you do; it doesn't matter much what kind of university you went to, whether you go to church, or what your politics are; watching lots of TV is bad for your score; and reading lots of history is good for your score." All of which ought to be obvious, I suppose...

Posted by at 11:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It was nice this afternoon, unseasonably warm, and I've been feeling antsy all day because a bout of insomnia last night completely hosed my ability to focus, so I decided to walk down to the local bookstore during my lunch and pick up something I've been meaning to buy for a while. I'm used to encountering homeless people and/or eccentrics along the way, but I rarely take note of what they're doing unless they're somehow threatening.

Today, however, I couldn't help but do a double-take at the sixty-something guy in a bright blue parka who was standing in the middle of the sidewalk, his face tilted up toward the sky, arms straight out as he spun himself around and around in a tight circle, like a toddler who's just figured out how to make themselves dizzy. If you've been reading this blog for any time at all, I'm sure you know what he reminded me of:

I watched the guy for a couple of minutes, but he never did transform into his superhero identity. He must've forgotten a vital step...

Posted by at 4:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Another meme courtesy of Jaquandor. I'm such a sucker for these things...

Anyhow, this meme apparently started its life as one of those "getting to know your friends" e-mail quizzes but has now morphed into something more bloggy. It comes in two parts, a "things you've done" list followed by some questions.

Continue reading "More Trivia About Moi" »

Posted by at 4:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The other night, I dined alone at a local greasy spoon called Johanna's Kitchen before meeting a friend to see the new Bond movie. I don't often get the chance to just hang out on my own like that anymore, so I relish the experience when it presents itself. I sat at the counter like I remember the old guys doing when I was a kid, I indulged in some fine people-watching, and I savored every last bite of a mushroom-Swiss burger the size of my head.

This being the 21st Century and all, there was of course a flat-screen TV mounted above the counter. Normally, I hate that, because public TVs are almost inevitably tuned to some sporting event, and I don't care one bit about sports. In fact, I find the screaming crowds and over-excited announcers to be downright bad for my digestion. Thankfully (and unexpectedly), this TV was set to the History Channel, specifically a documentary about the Battle of Gettysburg, so I found myself enjoying occasional buzzes of recognition whenever the camera lingered on a place I recall from my Gettysburg trip earlier this year. I just love those moments when I'm able to point at a TV screen and exclaim, "Hey, I've been there!" But that's kind of beside the point of this post.

Getting at last to my point, during each commercial break in the program, there was an ad for a Civil War-themed video game. (Gotta love that synergy!) The sound was down low, so the first time the ad ran, I wasn't certain I'd heard the voiceover correctly. I paid closer attention on the next break, and sure enough, the narration said exactly what I thought it said the first time. While a computer-generated man in a blue wool coat and a forage cap runs around the screen carrying a musket, a deep, "movie-trailer-guy" type voice breathlessly proclaims, "These are the missions that flew under the radar!"

Does anyone notice anything... odd... about that particular metaphor being used in conjunction with a game set in the 1860s? Or is it just me? Think about it...

Posted by at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I'm not sure of the original provenance of the following quote -- I got it from SamuraiFrog, who didn't post a link back to the source -- but I thought it was worth passing along:

Gail Simon, current writer on Wonder Woman: “In general, I'm very skeptical of any fake irony when dealing with Wonder Woman. If we're getting some kind of post-modern satire of the Lynda Carter series, I'd rather they just pass on the whole idea entirely. Christopher Reeve showed that the noble characters work best when played nobly. Winking at the audience insults everyone involved.”

For the record, I have no particular affection for the character Wonder Woman or the old Lynda Carter TV series (although Lynda Carter herself was -- and still is -- quite yummy). I just happen to agree with the sentiment being expressed. I dislike remakes in general, but I really hate the ones that treat the original source material as a joke...

Posted by at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read last week in a couple of different places that JVC, the last electronics manufacturer still making VHS-format videocassette recorders, has stopped production of standalone VCR units. Those VCR/DVD combo players will probably live on for a while, but for all intents and purposes, this is the end, at long last, of the VHS era.

I can already hear the smart-aleck kids out there in our studio audience murmuring, "good riddance," and I suppose I can understand why. The lowly VHS tape doesn't begin to compare to modern digital media in terms of video and audio quality, it's hopelessly bulky compared to slender DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, and it's subject to wear and tear that reduces fidelity every time you play your favorite movie. Like the much-maligned 8-track audio format, VHS is something we look back upon from the comfort of our more advanced times and can't believe anyone ever thought it was acceptable or cool.

But, as I'm sure my three loyal readers are already anticipating, I've got something of a soft spot for this obsolete format, and also, believe it or not, for 8-tracks. I think people have forgotten just how revolutionary these two media really were, and we should take a moment to properly eulogize the vanguard of the media-on-demand world we now enjoy.

Continue reading "The Final Rewind" »

Posted by at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)

There are two possible explanations for this recent photo of me. One is that the very talented and way-cool motion-graphics designers at my place of employment have been having some Halloween fun with Photoshop. And the other is that there was something odd about the flu shot I had a couple days ago...

Beware the Moon!

Posted by at 4:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Well, enough of that heavy political stuff. Today is Halloween, so how about we have some fun? Just to start things off, here's a meme I found over at SamuraiFrog's place:

Continue reading "Halloween Meme" »

Posted by at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nothing irritates me faster or more thoroughly than when some finger-wagging scold takes it upon themselves to save the rest of the community from the creeping stain of immorality instead of simply minding their own damn business and letting others go about theirs. This sort of thing, unfortunately, goes on all the time here in my home state, something which I've been depressingly aware of since I was a fairly young boy. Not a month goes by, it seems, without a letter-to-the-editor from some ninny who thinks the windows of Victoria's Secret ought to be painted black, or news of yet another effort to "simplify" Utah's ridiculously arcane liquor laws. Just this week, I've encountered two major eye-rollers from the front lines of the never-ending culture war:

Continue reading "Another Episode of the Utah Follies" »

Posted by at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Frutiger 57Cn is the ugliest font in the world. It's even worse than that "futuristic computer" font from the '70s, the one you saw on doors and packing crates on Buck Rogers.

Also, my one co-worker who likes to whistle while he works is driving me batshit.

That is all.

Posted by at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Some time back in the dim mists of history -- farther back than I really want to admit -- The Girlfriend and I discovered this neat little place called The Organ Loft. I've written about it before, but for those of you who are just joining us, I should explain that The Loft is an unassuming little building in South Salt Lake wherein resides an unexpected treasure: one of the few surviving theater pipe organs of the type that were designed and manufactured in the early 20th century to accompany silent movies. Now, I'm the sort who would be satisfied if the organ had simply been preserved for people to look at, but the really cool thing about The Loft is that its owner puts it to use. Once or twice a month during the fall, winter, and spring, you can see silent movies there with live music (and sound effects!) played on the Mighty Wurlitzer, just like you would have experienced if you'd been around in about 1925.

It's great fun, and for several years, Anne and I were regular fixtures around the place. We went frequently enough that we -- or at least I, since I was the one who always made our reservations -- got to be known by name. Every time we walked through the door, the owner and host, Larry Bray, would greet me with a jaunty, "Good evening, Mr. Bennion." It was curiously gratifying to be recognized like that; it made us feel like we had a personal investment in the place, like we were in a friend's entertainment room rather than an impersonal movie theater. It made us feel like, well, somebodies instead of just run-of-the-mill nobodies, like everyone else.

Continue reading "Where (Some)body Knows Your Name" »

Posted by at 11:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Just overheard at the office: "I'm no good at instant messaging. If I was forced to think at the same pace as my typing, I'd only be fit for government work."

Posted by at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the amusing/frustrating things about what I do for a living is that few people actually understand what I do for a living. Seriously, no one knows what the hell a proofreader actually does. When I'm introduced to people at parties and the inevitable "what do you do?" question comes up, my answer is usually followed by polite nods and something like, "uh-huh, uh-huh... so what do you do?" I think most folks have a vague sense that I'm the last, best defense against misspelled words (which is certainly one aspect of what I do), but the intricacies of the Chicago Manual, the vagaries of client-specific stylistic quirks, and the transcendent beauty of the serial comma -- these are all usually quite beyond the imagination of the uninitiated. That's to be expected, though; I wouldn't know the ins and outs of an investment banker's job, either.

The thing that's really difficult for me to swallow is the confusion about the role of proofing within my own company. Just the other day, for example, one of my colleagues on the proofreading team received the following from a coworker:

Hi Proofer X* –
I know you’re slammed, but wondered if you could send a brief (2 sentence) description of what exactly the Account Y* proofreaders look for when they review Account Y* documents.

What my immediate response lacked in diplomacy, it made up for in accuracy: "Proofreaders: we keep you from looking stupid.”

My colleague immediately amended that with, "…when we’re not too busy trying to keep from looking stupid ourselves … "

Well, after a few more exchanges of this smart-alecky caliber, someone finally came up with the definitive word on what it is, exactly, that we do... and, naturally enough as it came from literary, over-educated types who always had delusions of doing something much grander with our lives, it was in the form of a haiku, which I will now share with my three loyal readers:

Despair and blackness
Send proof that it is worth it
The emptiest void

That may not mean much to the average joe, but trust me, to those of us who hunt the wild apostrophe on a daily basis, this is frackin' brilliant. Really. Didn't you catch the pun? Brilliant, I say!




* Names changed to protect the not-so-innocent.

Posted by at 10:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

How many times a day do I realize what year we're living in and say exactly this to myself?

more animals

Of course, on the positive side, there may not be any flying cars or starships around, but we're not eating soylent wafers or dodging homicidal cyborgs. That's something, right?

Posted by at 5:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I hope it isn't some kind of omen for how my day's going to go that I ran out of deodorant this morning with one pit left to swipe.

Yep, it's turning out to be one of those weeks. Hopefully I'll get a chance to write something more later...

Posted by at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The Girlfriend tends to be something of a homebody, so our Friday evenings together are usually spent curled on the couch with Taco Bell or Totino's pizzas, watching DVDs. Not the healthiest of lifestyles, I know, but pleasing in its own greasy, slothful way. Just a few minutes ago, however, she called with a rather unexpected suggestion:

She: "How about if I pick you up after work and we go hang out at Gateway?"

(For my non-local readers, Gateway is "an open-air contemporary destination" -- i.e., a shopping mall without a roof -- on the west side of Salt Lake, only a few blocks from my office.)

Me: "Um, okay."

She (after a moment's pause): "I miss people. And activity. And... and urban stuff."

Me: "San Francisco?"

She: "Yes..."

Me: "You know Gateway isn't going to compare, right?"

She (rather forlornly): "I know... but it's the best we've got around here..."

Kids, consider this a PSA on the potential dangers of leaving home. You may just find out that home isn't all that cool...

Posted by at 12:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

When Anne and I left for San Francisco, it was basically still summer around here: temperatures in the mid-80s and jackets gathering dust in the closet. We came home to find the first layer of snow on the mountain peaks and frost on the car windows in the morning. What a difference a week can make.

Since we're unquestionably into Utah's all-too-brief fall season (there's possible valley snow forecasted for this weekend), I thought it might be fun to do the Autumn Meme I saw over at Electronic Cerebrectomy the other night:

Continue reading "Autumn Meme" »

Posted by at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It sounds strange, but after spending a week in San Francisco, with its cosmopolitan and determinedly liberal -- some would even say libertine -- spirit, I kind of forgot what it's like here in the Land of Zion. Fortunately, as I've been catching up on my blog and newspaper reading from last week, I've found plenty of items that remind me of those finer details that make living in Utah so very special.

Continue reading "Remembering Home" »

Posted by at 6:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A week away from the 'nets and this is the best I could come up with? That's how it goes, I suppose. Robert, this one's for you:

more animals

Posted by at 5:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A couple weeks back when I was teetering on the edge of a major funk, my lovely Girlfriend came up with what she thought would be a sure-fire cure for what ailed me: a big plate of comfort food at one of those classic cafes I so love, those places where the regulars while away the hours at the counter over a warm cup of joe (once upon a time, they would've had a cigarette to go with their caffeine, but those days are long gone, of course) while couples and families cram themselves into Naugahyde booths with Formica tables and enjoy hearty meals of home-style meatloaf, chicken-fried steak, or a burger the size of your head.

The cafe she had in mind was new to both of us, a vintage-looking hole-in-the-wall she'd spotted while running errands, not too far from her place of employment. It sounded perfect, and I was surprised and touched by her willingness to spontaneously try some place new for my sake (Anne is generally a creature of habit when it comes to food), so in less time than it took to type this sentence, we were off on a new culinary adventure.

We had no idea what we were getting into...

Continue reading "Know Before You Go, Kids" »

Posted by at 10:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sometimes you just have to say these things:

see famous look-a-like faces

Posted by at 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's International Talk Like a Pirate Day, so naturally I had to take this "What's Your Pirate Name?" Quiz:

My pirate name is:

Dirty Jack Rackham

You're the pirate everyone else wants to throw in the ocean -- not to get rid of you, you understand; just to get rid of the smell. You have the good fortune of having a good name, since Rackham (pronounced RACKem, not rack-ham) is one of the coolest sounding surnames for a pirate. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
part of the fidius.org network

Found via Kisintin, with whom I share the same basic description. Apparently, we have similar bathing habits...

Posted by at 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Because you never know...

I could survive for 47 seconds chained to a bunk bed with a velociraptor

Posted by at 12:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

So far, it's been a crazy-busy week, which always sets me on edge and leaves me worrying that my loyal readers are even now deleting their bookmarks to this woefully un-updated corner of the blogosphere. To try and demonstrate that I've not forsaken you all and left this place to gather cobwebs, I offer a silly Internet quiz, courtesy of my friend Puffbird:

Your result for The Social Proficiency Test...

THE SMOOTH ONE

You scored a total of 32 out of 43!

Take The Social Proficiency Test at HelloQuizzy

With any luck, I'll be back later with something more substantial...

Posted by at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I walked into my place of employment this morning to find a Smart car sitting in the lobby. The rather smallish lobby. Of my 100-year-old office building. A car.

With a parking ticket on the dashboard.

Apparently it was driven right through the front door -- which is not particularly grand or spacious, I must add -- sometime over the weekend.*

You know, there are a lot of things about working for an advertising agency that frustrate the hell out of me. But there are a lot of really awesome things as well. Like finding automobiles in front of the receptionist's desk on a Monday morning...

* For the record, the door was open at the time -- no broken glass or anything like that.

Posted by at 12:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just thought I'd mention that my friend and webmaster Jack Hattaway is currently -- as in right now, even as I type this! -- riding in the Lotoja Classic, a bicycling marathon that runs from Logan, Utah, the northernmost community of any size in this state, through southern Idaho and onward to Jackson Hole, Wyoming (LOgan TO JAckson, get it?). That's a distance of 206 miles over three mountain passes in a single day; according to this Wikipedia entry, the cyclists will climb some 10,000 total feet and finish 1,800 feet higher than where they began.

Jack told me yesterday that his goal is merely to finish, not to place, and he's hoping to do it in roughly 13 hours. His lovely wife has been sending me regular text-message updates on his progress; the latest was about an hour ago, and it indicated he'd just left Montpelier, Idaho, with 136 miles to go.

I hope it doesn't sound too lame and unmanly to say that I'm very, very proud of him for even attempting this. Only a couple of years ago, he was just another overweight, out-of-shape, fast-approaching-middle-age schlump like myself. Then a series of converging issues convinced him it was time to make some changes in his lifestyle, and now he's riding in a fracking cycling marathon. It's been an amazing and inspiring transformation.

I'm rooting for you, buddy, and looking forward to posting the news of your success!

(Official Lotoja Classic website here, if anyone is interested...)

[Update: The last message from Mrs. Jack arrived at 8:21 this evening. It read, "Jack finished in 13:39:58." Incredible... way to go, man!]

Posted by at 12:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

My friend Erin posted a link to this clip earlier today, with the comment that it makes her happy every time she sees it, and "It's just nice to know, with all the divisiveness and conflict in the world today, that there are still some things that are universal."

I'll be damned if watching it didn't make me feel happy, too. See if you don't agree:

It comes from the website of a guy named Matt, who apparently wanders the world and dances. Not a bad way to spend your life, actually. And not a bad way to start a long holiday weekend after a really long week... have a good one, kids.

Posted by at 4:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Enough of the political unpleasantness for now... let us consider something far more soothing to the mind... like this delightful piece of 'net crap:

Oh, if only this video really existed... I'd know what I'd be doing this weekend for sure!

(Incidentally, there's an entire thread of similar stuff over at Fark. The idea was to photoshop Star Wars characters into other movies. Most are pretty lame, but a few generate a chuckle; this one is downright creepy...)

Posted by at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over the past few years, I've been gradually coming to terms with the fact that my tastes in media are resolutely middle-brow, at best (said epiphany being thanks in no small part to George Lucas and how often I've had to defend my continuing enjoyment of the Star Wars universe even after the Special Editions, the prequels, and now, of course, The Clone Wars). I now grok that I am not nearly as literary or snobby as I used to believe myself to be. I'm quite comfortable with the fact that I like pulp adventure novels more than "literature-with-a-capital-L," and that '80s pop-rock music moves me while jazz in all its hoity-toity incarnations leaves me cold. I can admire the paintings our culture deems "great," but I'd rather hang a vintage pin-up or movie one-sheet on my wall. I prefer the feathered-hair-and-daggett version of Battlestar Galactica to the critically acclaimed but angsty remake. You get the idea.

Even so, I've often felt the need to describe the things I really love as "guilty pleasures." To make myself look like less of a dork, I suppose. SamuraiFrog argues that I shouldn't do that anymore:

I've never liked the phrase "guilty pleasure." Why should you feel guilty about getting pleasure out of something? Look, I'm not, repeat, not saying this is true of everyone who uses the phrase, but I'm talking about the origin of the phrase "guilty pleasure." It just comes from this snobbish, elitist place that I don't like. The idea that you have to feel guilty if you like Keanu Reeves movies or Stephen King novels or something. Something that you're afraid will reflect badly on you. Because, as I've said before, some people seem to think life is only about proving that you're a little smarter than the next person.

"Guilty pleasure" is an apology. I'm sorry I like something universally considered stupid. I don't want you to believe that I can only read at a sixth grade level and that's why I like Stephen King. It's a way of revealing that you care what other people think about your tastes.
...

Molesting children and buying blood diamonds are guilty pleasures. Liking Stephen King novels is just liking Stephen King novels.

You have to admit, the man has a point...

Posted by at 10:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Just in case this situation ever comes up...

Created by OnePlusYou - Free Dating Sites

Of course, the accompanying text makes it sound like a most unpleasant minute and 41 seconds:

Congrats! You could survive for 1 minute 41 seconds !

In the first 30 seconds any fluid on the surface of your body would begin to boil due to lack of ambient pressure, this includes the saliva on your tongue and the moisture in your eyes. Your eardrums would most likely burst due to the pressure in your body trying to equalize with the vacuum outside. Unlike what some science fiction films have suggested, your body would not explode.

After the first 15 seconds you would lose consciousness. If you held your breath you could potentially stay alive longer but you risk pulmonary trauma. If you didn't hold your breath you'd pass out sooner, but your lungs might have a better chance of avoiding permanent damage.

The pressure in your veins would rise until your heart no longer had the capacity to pump blood, at which point you'd die.

Hm. Better to just splatter into strawberry jam like the guys in Outland, I think. Messy and deeply traumatizing to my fellow astronauts, but quick...

Thanks to Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer for pointing me to this particular time-waster.

Posted by at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

It's been a pretty rough week for your humble blogger -- actually it's been a pretty rough month, not counting a welcome and very enjoyable visit last weekend from Cranky Robert. I've had lots of late nights at the office recently, followed by soul-searching train rides home, surrounded by the oddballs who ride public transit after the regular commuters have all gone and wondering just which decisions brought me to this place where I so often feel like I have no life. I don't even feel like I have much of an online life, anymore -- it seems like forever and a day since I wrote anything on this blog that was really worth reading. Or since I've done much of anything else that truly matters. Did you know I used to write fiction once, about a thousand years ago in the Before Times? I like to think I was fairly good at it, too...

In any event, this self-pity party is explanation as to why my blogging lately has consisted primarily of memes, lolcats, and girlie pictures, and why you're getting yet another quiz-thing today instead of something more substantive. And this background may also explain why I found the results of the quiz -- which I've seen at Puffbird's, Kisintin's, and Ilya's blogs as well -- somewhat baffling. I don't think of myself as much of an optimist even in my happiest moments, which this bleary-eyed morning definitely is not...

Your result for The Perception Personality Image Test...

HBPS - The Optimist

Humanity, Background, Big Picture, and Shape

You perceive the world with particular attention to humanity. You focus on the hidden treasures of life (the background) and how that fits into the larger picture. You are also particularly drawn towards the shapes around you. Because of the value you place on humanity, you tend to seek out other people and get energized by being around others. You like to ponder ideas and imagine the many possibilities of your life without worrying about the details or specifics. You are in tune with all that is around you and understand your life as part of a larger whole. You prefer a structured environment within which to live and you like things to be predictable.

The Perception Personality Types:

Take The Perception Personality Image Test at HelloQuizzy

What do you folks think? Sound anything like me?

Posted by at 10:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

It was plenty cool the other night when Michael Phelps landed his eighth Olympic gold medal (with the help of three other guys whose names you probably already can't remember, the poor slobs), but there was such an air of inevitability around the event that it honestly didn't feel like much of a triumph, at least not to me. (My lack of engagement might have had something to do with the fact that I was watching the rebroadcast in the wee hours of the morning, but still, I'm trying to make a point here...)

Things were different last night when 16-year-old Shawn Johnson finally won her own gold medal on her last routine in the Beijing Games. I confess, I've developed something of a crush on this kid over the past few days. She comes across as confident and cheerful (unlike some of her fellow gymnasts, who sometimes seem as if it's all they can do to keep their eyes from going all Bruce Banner-y), and gracious to boot (I was very impressed by an interview I heard a day or two back when she seemed perfectly happy with the three silver medals she scored earlier in the week, which the media was of course trying to depict as a crushing tragedy. I believe she said something to the effect of, "the silver ones are actually really pretty," with no real hint of disappointment over not getting a gold one.) And then there's that smile... to employ the old cliche, she lights up the whole stadium when she smiles. And she was really grinning last night when the results were announced. It was virtually impossible not to share her happiness and to feel a cathartic sense that, yes, sometimes things do work out the way they're supposed to.

Now, if only I was 20 years younger so I didn't feel quite so unseemly about thinking how damn cute she is...

Posted by at 10:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

One of the few things The Girlfriend and I ever seriously disagree about is what constitutes an edible meal (and, by extension, what we should have for dinner). She's -- how shall I say this? -- v