Random Observations VII No Witty Subtitle

Yes, I know what you’re thinking, “Didn’t we just have one of these?” You would be very correct. But I have so many odd stories I’ve found recently, and in the past year plus, coupled with an overwhelming deluge of random thoughts running through my bean that I need to shuffle them out. Sometimes I think my head feels funky because of the backlog. So let’s clear the baffles and take a gander at our weird, wonderful planet. As always, this is your world.


Let’s kick it off with this little gem I found a while ago. The second I saw it one thought ran through my mind. No wonder I don’t like going to work.


Ok, my cat sometimes acts like a nut job too, going on tears through the house or screaming at the top of the steps. Someone explain to this Cro-Magnon man that if you want to calm the cat, feed it and it will do what cats do naturally. Go take a nap. I’d ask why he thought this would be a good idea, but I think it’s rather obvious. Stay in school kids.


Is it just me, or does anyone else out there want to punch Justin Case in the face? He just seems so smug.


Did I miss a memo? Since when did sex stop selling no matter the product?


The perpetrators in this story get high marks for originality; I mean who thinks of forcing someone to eat his own beard? Was that a deleted scene from Se7en? But they lost all credibility and belong in the slammer not for assault, but for stupidity. Who pays $250 for a used lawnmower? I’ve been to Lowe’s, you can buy a new one for less.


I do feel bad for the guy who had to eat his own beard though. It will severely impact his registration for Beard Team USA. Come on, you know you want to see the Rollie Fingers mustache make a comeback.


Another blast from the past I could not pass up. I know some directors want realism in their films, but this seems to be a bit much. If this had happened on a Michael Bay movie, the guy probably would have turned himself in.


I wonder what my skull looks like, especially since when the time comes when it will be accessible, I will be decidedly unable to see it. And no, x-rays do not count. Does anyone else think about this?


As if my illogical distain for Beantown was not fuelled enough by their NFL team, I find this odd article. Something tells me Norm and Cliff never had to reserve their seats.


For those readers who, well, like to read, here’s a fascinating link. Be prepared to lose a few hours perusing through the articles. It can become addictive quite fast.


Are you planning on going to the London Olympics? Then feel good you will be able to interact with a multitude of cultures without setting off an international incident.


I still don’t care what the astronomy community says; Pluto will always be a planet to me. I’m with ya distant little buddy!


To paraphrase a classic movie speech: Imagine you're a deer. You're prancing around. You get thirsty. You spot a little brook. You put your little deer lips down to the cool, clear water - BAM. A fuckin' bullet rips off part of your head. Your brains are lying on the ground in little bloody pieces. Now I ask you, do you give a fuck what kind of ammunition the son-of-a-bitch who shot you was using?


Hey, I recycle more than most, averaging a big bag of recycling every week. I work to reuse things until they can be used no more. I turn off lights in rooms no one is in and reuse the same glass as to not dirty new ones and create more dishes. But I draw the line at hot showers on cold mornings. I’ll give those up as soon as big wig environmentalists stop traveling to environmental events in private planes, which are a much bigger problem than me taking an extra few minutes to wake up in the morning.


This still cracks me up. I wonder if she were referring to talking to him like he was the idiot boy hired for odd jobs around the house. Will she ever stop pimping those kids?


Call me old fashioned, but I will always hold dear to email, despite what Facebook says. These new fangled kids with their texting and their twitting, bah humbug I says!


Why am I hearing the Magnum P.I. theme on a mascara commercial? Why does it feel so very wrong?


I loved this story earlier this year. It’s just an amazing tale of survival, determination and the will of the human spirit. But knowing our world, I must say I’m surprised Coleman has not come out with a new survival cooler.


Has anyone seen Sarah Palin’s Alaska? I have not, but I love how she claims in the ads she’d rather be out there in Alaska than in some stuffy political office. Yet even as she says that, she is also talking about a potential presidential run in 2012. And now she has a new book out where she blasts American Idol and their untalented contestants, as her untalented daughter clodhops on Dancing With The Stars. Yeesh, why do I know about these people and their lives?


You know what; there is a satisfaction that comes from doing something for yourself. I think we've forgotten that in our society.


A Star Wars comedy show with Seth Green prominently involved? Hey count me on board, I still laugh at the special Robot Chicken Star Wars episodes. But I think this writer is nuts. If he thinks this is the worst Star Wars related media idea, obviously he does not remember the Star Wars Holiday Special very well.


I think this is the final proof needed to track the entomology of the phrase, “busy as a beaver.” Move over, Great Wall of China!


This is sad, and a definite end of an era in television and film production. I watching television shows that said Filmed in Technicolor. Boy the world surely does move on from the past faster now.


I would like to bring up a small linguistic point that has been bugging me for some time. The slang for refrigerator is f-r-i-d-g-e and not f-r-i-g. Frig is a slang curse word and when you use it, you could completely change the meaning of your message in very odd ways. Just tryin’ to help.


Here’s another oldie, but too good to pass up. I know I’ve had a few bad drive thru orders in the past, but calling 911? Do we need to sit people down and explain once again that 911 is for actual emergencies and not perceived ones?


Tron Legacy? Really? Who was clamoring for this film other than this guy?


And finally, I leave you with this piece of advice. The first rule of lady fight club is you do not tell the cops about lady fight club. My one question from this article is why did she want them to fight? It makes my head hurt.

Lost In Time

I saw this recent article about Willow Smith, the nine year old with the hot new song. To say I had zero surprise this was the offspring of uber celebrities Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith would be an understatement. Celebrity children tend to follow their parents into the family business. But it bothered me that she is doing it at such a young age.

I kept thinking as I read the article, what kind of childhood is this for a little girl? She should be playing with Barbie dolls, not laying down vocal tracks. She shouldn’t be doing the talk show circuit, but playing dress up with friends. Where are all the moments she’ll remember fondly when she has kids of her own, like tea parties or story time, getting to stay up late for the first time or even sleeping in? Her memories will be of celebrity parties, and she’ll have to stay up late and stories will be about sleazy agents and demanding record companies. That’s no way for a child to grow up.

But the more I thought about it, the more I reminded myself that everyone has different experiences in life, and those experiences make us unique and interesting to others. And since she is growing up in a very different environment than I did, perhaps this is normal for her. Normal, after all, is a very relative term when it comes to life experiences.

But as I pondered how different life experiences shape us, and started mentally strolling through some of mine, I hit upon a stunning revelation, at least for me. The article did not have an impact on me because I had a real issue regarding her supposed lost childhood. It struck me because I found myself missing my own.

The thoughts of childhood and those fumbling teenage years brought back many a warm memory. Sure, more than a few embarrassing, awkward or sad ones filtered in as well. But mostly I felt myself feeling warm and happy, reliving past joys, fun experiences and laughing at myself through the panes of time as I saw the fumbling mistakes only one of youth and inexperience can make.

And as I reveled in those warm memories, something dawned on me. I finally began to understand why and how people get stuck in the past. It’s not that they do not like, or understand, society as it stands today. But rather the things of the past, such as music, television, movies, technology or a variety of other things act as physical markers in time to help transport them back to times filled with innocence, joy, discovery and happiness before the realities of the world dulled everything.

As an example, growing up I could never understand why my parents loved to listen to just, well what was considered at the time, oldies music. Now mind you, thanks to their love of classic rock and roll and pop, I developed a great taste for those tunes, and a better appreciation of all kinds of different musical genres. But to just listen to that music seemed odd to me. In my opinion, there were all kinds of good music coming out every day, and many other great songs, artists and albums that came out long after the music of their choice. I chalked it up to them just being stuck in the past, and I vowed to never let that happen to me.

But my realization showed me my parents weren’t stuck in the past, well maybe a little bit, and it’s not that they did not like any current music. But that music was part of their formative years as young adults. It helped convey them to a time in their lives they felt strongly about, and made them feel good. It is a marker to memories of their lives.

I know, how it took me this many years to figure out such a simple truth to the human experience is beyond me as well. But perhaps I just needed to gain some knowledge and wisdom of having a few years under my own belt for it to truly dawn on me. To have other markers transport me back as well and realize I am doing the same thing I vowed never to do.

Now, mind you I still listen to some current music. But not with anything approaching the voracity I once did. And more often than not, I tend to gravitate toward songs and artists that I once had high on the play lists of my youth or ones nowadays that remind me of favorites from the past. And if truth be told, I do not listen to music everyday like I once did. I love my Ipod, but I mostly use it when I’m doing outdoor lawn grooming.

And see, that statement sums it up. I fully embrace modern society but still cherish and relish those past markers that mean so much to me. Often I wish I had an Ipod when I listened to music constantly. But instead I had a string of Walkmans, ever present on my person. When I recently heard Sony is no longer making the product, I felt a bit nostalgic and sad. Thinking of Walkmans made me think of running to class in college, tunes blasting loud enough to shake loose mortar, or rocking out doing homework in high school during a break from my fast food job. It was a marker in time for me, and clearly brought into focus memories from my past.

As people get older they do not eschew current fads, trends, music and the latest and greatest because they do not like it. They do it because time is no longer a luxury. Commitments, responsibilities, career and family take the place of those once dearly held things. And no matter how good a song is, or how moving a movie may be, none will have the same emotional impact upon you as one that you heard or saw during that fresh time in your life when you were first discovering the world and growing up. It’s why we hold those things dear, and how we get “stuck in the past.”

Like most people today, I enjoy the modern conveniences our world has to offer. I love being able to check the weather, read email and look up information on the fly all from my Smartphone. And how amazing is it to watch anything on an HD television, with such clarity of picture and graphics and animation one never thought possible? But I miss the simple pleasure of tuning into one of the three big stations early in the morning, huddling around to see if I would get a free snow day as the crude graphics scrolled on the bottom of the screen or hanging around the kitchen to talk to friends on the wall mounted rotary phone. Ha, it was a big deal when we got a button phone, now my phone is a touch screen. Although, I have found that I am not the only one with a nostalgic feeling toward telephones, or with a love for modern technology.

As technology, and the world at large, moves forward and bigger and more fantastical things come into our lives, more of what was once so important to me and I held dear moves further into the past. This is not a mind blowing revelation, as it has happened to every creature that has walked the earth since the dawn of time. But for me, now I understand better why people hold onto the past.

There is comfort there, things make a little more sense, you see the mistakes you once made and the triumphs that made you feel on top of the world. Who you once were is there, young, idealistic and hopeful. It’s sweet and innocent and tinted just the right shade of rose so everything looks fantastic.

Perhaps the approaching holidays make me nostalgic, or perhaps I’m just a bit tired of fighting just to get by. But I wouldn’t mind spending a few days back when all I had to worry about is whether my galoshes would survive another sledding season, and not that I need to take the trash out before going to work.