The Life-Changing Nothing

There is a neat website, Making Light, that repurposes or originates their own content, and I was led to it by another interesting website, bOINGbOING.net. The article that led me to Making Light is by a fellow named Peter Kleisler. I really hope his American Cargo Cult gets wider dissemination, because it takes an excellent look at the American Way of Not Thinking Too Much, and articulates it all really well, and in nice, short, punchy sentences that I can use for my own ends.

But that's not what I'm writing about today. Making Light also had a story about how a small thing can change your life. The story is about a guy (speaking to a high school audience), how he killed his best friend while driving drunk. And that when he got back to school, he was pretty much shunned by everyone. At a point where he was thinking of ending it all, one of his fellow students casually offered him a stick of gum. "The gum," he said, "saved my life."

So Making Light suggested a topic: how did something small change your life? For me, it was a movie. I was living with two guys, paying a tiny rent to stay in a small bedroom while I worked my way from $4.10/hour all the way up to $4.35/hour as a gas station attendant.  I was twenty-five years old, no prospects, not much education (on paper), and neither ambition nor any sort of belief in myself. I wasn't suicidal so much as terrified. I wouldn't have had the courage to pull the trigger, any more than I had the courage to go out and do something with myself.

The Cotati Cinema ran two screens and charged a $1. Which, even in the mid-eighties, was a bargain. On my two days off (in the middle of the week), I went to see Runaway Train, with John Voight and Eric Roberts as escaped convicts (in Alaska) who get themselves locked in the back end of a four-engine stack, whose conductor has a heart attack after opening the throttle up. The engines basically go off on their own, and the two convicts are stuck trying to figure out what to do, and how to get off without being recaptured. Rebecca deMornay does a decidedly non-sexy turn as Sara, the Hostler Helper, and she's the only one on the train with any knowledge of how they work. The movie is preachy in many ways, but I hadn't heard any of these sermons before.

Manny (John Voight): Whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger.

And

Sara: Hold me. I don't want to die alone. 
Manny: We all die alone. 

I don't know why, but a lot of this stuff that Manny spouted during the movie really inspired me to re-think my own capabilities. To look at myself, not from my father's perspective, but from no perspective in particular. To come out from under the layer of filters I was living in.

I paid my fare to see that film four times in the next week.

Unenthusiastic Exclamations of Delight!

So, today, I read in Ironic Times (required reading of the staff at The Situation) that the word "meh" has entered the dictionary. (and yet my spellchecker still annoys me)

So glad you asked.

This is apparently a word used to describe a lack of interest or enthusiasm for a thing or task.

Yes, folks - the English language has evolved yet again. We've moved from "whatever" to "meh." Not that I mind, it's certainly easier to say: 

"We need to do laundry." "Meh." 

"Bush is still in office." "Meh."

But it does speak of deeper meanings. The word "w00t!" made it in, and I happen to think that's a good thing. Made-up words are finding their way into the actual lexicon of English. Unlike the French, who decided some time ago that not only was creating new words beyond their capacity, but that using other people's words for them ("television," "sexy," etc.) was also bad.

The French don't "watch TV," they "look at the box with lights," or something like that, I guess. At least the Germans (not what one would think of as a country known for it's flexibility of thinking) came up with a cool name for TV: Fernsehen, or far-seeing.

And while we're willing to come up with new names for things we already had names for, we still don't adapt well to change, unless it's something everyone has either done, or seen on das Fernsehen.

Oh, well.

Or in other words, meh...

Class-y

I'm in college again. And even my College is changing it's name to University. Which is sort of odd, but perhaps I get better props for going to an on-line University than just an on-line College.

Ah, well, a degree in journalism is worth little, but it will be nice to have the alphabet soup after my name. In three or four years. I did relatively well in my math class, while pretty much hating it. A 3.4 for not communicating much with my fellow students, and doing my proofs incorrectly. Hard to know what the prof wants, when you don't get to see them in person. Biology is probably next.

How to dissect a frog via the Internet...

I have lately made contact with old odd friends. John H. (+ Sheila) from Sonoma and Santa Rosa Junior College, hiya! It's interesting to communicate with people who've grown a long way apart from one, but you never know, we may still have the old spark of friendship that existed so long ago. I've gone back once or twice to visit old friends, and it never seems to be the same from the way it was before, but I always have hope. Fortunately, I still have Boegle and her Ler, as well as Lemur and Chickenfeet, and Daubentonia. I miss all of them, and occasionally I get to see them, but it's way too rare.

And I'm jealous that Boegle got to see 007 before me...

Inappropriate Spokesperson Name

One of those things. When discussing a particular aspect of your business that you find distasteful, try to find a spokesperson whose name doesn't immediately make you think of that distasteful issue. In this case, iPhone porn and its proliferation onto the new iPhone 2.0. In an issue of Time magazine (possibly the one on newsstands now), this quote really, well, sticks out:

"Apple spokeswoman Jennifer Bowcock says..."

As I said, maybe you could find someone whose name doesn't, well... you know...

Steve Klein

Steve Klein 01,
originally uploaded by wireout.

Finally found a pic of the fellow who owned Lansdale. I have at least one more I'll be posting in the next coupe of days. This wasn't the one I printed for the show.

Larkspur Train Drawbridge

Larkspur Train Drawbridge_01,
originally uploaded by wireout.

More images from my dark past.

Little Girl and Dog

Little Girl and Dog,
originally uploaded by wireout.

Fun, some of the memories jumping out at me. I'd never forgotten this picture, one of my best with humans in it. As you will see from my other pictures, I was usually better with inanimate objects.