Welcome to 2010

And so the Earth completes another circle around the Sun bringing us into the year 2010.

I, for one, am glad to see 2009 leave.  It’s been a horrible year for me.  2010 doesn’t look like it’ll be much better, but at least it still has a few months to redeem itself.

Traditionally, New Years Eve is a time to make resolutions.  A person finally figures out what kind of changes need to be done in life and then spend the next twelve months making it happen.  Sometimes they don’t last long but, sometimes, they manage it.

The year 2010 is another Arthur C. Clarke year.  If I remember correctly, this year Jupiter is supposed to turn into another sun so that beings on its moons can begin to evolve.  I wouldn’t have anything against this but I wonder what it would do for night time around here.  Considering 2001 didn’t happen quite like it did in the book and movie I’m guessing I won’t have to worry about it too much.

2009 didn’t seem like a good year for celebrities, either.

Some celebrities that died in 2009:

1. Bea Arthur
2. Billy Mays
3. Brittany Murphy
4. David Carridine
5. Dom Deluise
6. Ed McMahon
7. Ted Kennedy
8. Farrah Fawcett
9. Henry Gibson
10. John Updike
11. Karl Malden
12. Les Paul
13. Lou Albano
14. Marilyn Chambers
15. Michael Jackson
16. Natasha Richardson
17. Oscar Mayer Jr
18. Pat Hingle
19. Patrick McGoohan
20. Patrick Swayze
21. Ricardo Montalban
22. Ron Silver
23. Soupy Sales
24. Walter Cronkite

Those are just the ones that I know.  I have to confess that there are a couple on that list I didn’t know about until I looked it up.

I didn’t know Bea Arthur died.  I always thought she’d make a good Granny Weatherwax.  On the other hand, I thought John Updike died years ago, so I guess it all balances out.

But now it’s time for a new year to start and people can make new beginnings for themselves.  It’s just too bad that doesn’t matter to everyone else in the world.  Your company isn’t going to say, “Hey, last year was pretty bad so let’s start from scratch today!”  And if your spouse was mad at you on December 31st, they may still be mad at you on January 1st.

The best I can do right now, though, is to wish everyone a decent 2010.  May your lives get brighter.

On Halloween

     Halloween was my second favorite holiday when I was growing up.  Halloween meant being able to dress up as your favorite hero (or villain) and not having to worry about people thinking you were nuts.  It meant eating as much candy as you could cram into your gullet.  It meant being able to walk around at night, in the dark. 

     A Halloween night in New Jersey was generally quite chilly.  Breezes caused the fallen leaves to rustle and fly around.  Wood smoke from fireplaces lent a certain taste in the air.

     It was a magical night.

     It also occurred two days before my birthday.  By the time I was over being sick on candy it was time to be sick on cake and ice cream.  But that was all right, because I’d have plenty of new stuff to be sick playing with.

     Back then, having a costume that was made was bette

r than a

store-bought costume.  It showed ingenuity, intelligence, craftiness, and creativity.  To buy a costume was a cop-out.  Of course, most purchased kids costumes consisted of a mask of some characters face and a plastic smock that announced who you were supposed to be, as if Casper the Friendly Ghost actually had his name printed on his chest.

     And it didn’t matter if the costume wasn’t an exact replica of whoever you were supposed to be.  Imagination filled in the gaps.  That Boba Fett rocket pack was a shoe box and a red “L’eggs” top, but to everyone that knew who Boba Fett was, it was a rocket pack.  Kids who had

parents that were really good had a problem.  While their costumes were wonders to behold, and everyone would admit that the costume was awesome, there would still be a hint of resentment in there.  It could be too good. 

     Why did it matter?  Because in the 1980’s and before, you were allowed to go to school in a costume.  You were expected to show up in costume.  Complete with mask, if necessary.  And everyone had fun, and there would be a parade so that the parents could see how cute everyone looked (God knows why, though; those same kids would be knocking on your door in a few hours anyway).

     Now, it seems that if you don’t buy a costume then you suck.

If you try and make one then you’re too poor to buy one.  And if your pre-teen daughter doesn’t look like a prostitute then you’ve got problems. 

     Does it matter, though?  To me, it looks like less and less kids go trick-or-treating every year.  Even in neighborhoods where kids are abundant, nobody seems to walk around that much.  Even to me, an adult who does nothing but pass out candy, Halloween has turned into a disappointment.

     So, what happened?  I would say fear got the better of everyone.  Schools don’t want costumes or masks in school in case someone goes nuts and shoots the place up.  We’ve all lived with the Halloween candy scares: apples filled with razor blades, candy corn and other candies injected with drugs.  Don’t eat anything home made, like popcorn balls or candied apples because you never know what’s inside of it.  Trust only candy that’s still in a big company wrapper.  And even then, inspect it for tampering. 

     But now we’ve reached a whole new level of fear.  Kids being abducted, kids shooting other kids, and other horrors that we’re inundated with throughout the years that just builds, and builds, and builds.  Maybe our communities aren’t as close knit as they used to be.  Do you know your neighbors?  Do you see them often?  Is the limit of your interaction a half-hearted wave while you’re mowing the lawn?

     It’s another piece of Americana that has slowly eroded.  Or maybe it never really was that way in the first place.  The problem with history is that the more you know, the less different everything seems to be.

Happy Fathers Day

I know, it’s a day late.  But better late than never, right?

Yesterday, June 15th, was Father’s Day.  Many people don’t like Father’s Day.  Or Mother’s Day, or Valentine’s Day or any other day.  It’s not a holiday, the logic says, it’s a commercialized pseudo-holiday.

And they would be right.  But does that make it wrong?  As a single young guy, I would say, “Hell, yeah, that makes it wrong!  Fight the Man!  Down with commercialization!” 

As an old married guy with four kids, I see it a little bit differently.  I see it as a day when everyone can reflect on what dad’s do and just say, “thanks.”  Gifts, really, aren’t necessary.  Not that I want to give mine back, no I don’t.  But it doesn’t have to be about the gifts.

See, Hallmark might create the holiday, but they don’t make it commercial.  We do that.  We think we have to buy a new pack of golf balls, a tie, and a grilling apron that says “Kiss the Cook!”  and give it to our dads. 

Maybe a phone call or a letter or dropping by and seeing if the gutters need cleaning out would do just as well.  Or saying, “Hey dad, you know all those times you took me and my friends to do whatever and you really didn’t want to, but you did it anyway?  Well, I never said thanks so I want to say it now." 

We’re always so busy bitching and complaining about everything that we never, ever, look at the positive side of things.  Or the easy solutions.

You want to stick it to Hallmark for making these holidays just to sell greeting cards?  Then don’t buy a card; sit down and write a letter.  Write something more than, "Dear mom/dad/wife/husband, I love you, signed, me," and stop letting those sappy, crappy cards try and capture how you feel about someone.  Get off your ass and go see them, call them on the phone.  You don’t need to choose a pre-fabricated, mass-produced poem to tell someone how you feel about them. 

If you don’t want to buy a gift, or can’t afford to, they’ll know that and it won’t matter.  If you feel like you need to get them something, then do something for them.  Clean the gutters, mow the lawn, rake the leaves, push them back into their easy chairs when they try and get up to do some work and take care of it for them.

These holidays don’t have to be a curse, they can be a blessing.  A day that you stop saying, "I’ll call tomorrow" and actually call.  Use it as the final reminder, not as a looming threat to your credit card.

April Fools

Today is April Fools day and I haven’t done anything. I haven’t seen anything

good, either. This is probably a good thing.

In case anyone is interested, I’ve gone ahead and set up another Garden of Entropy. This is my own, though. An honest-to-goodness, got-my-own-address and everything.

It’s a little bare at the moment, but I’ll be sure to work on it in my spare time. The blog and forums are already in place, though.

The downside to this, of course, is that this place is finally getting a little steam. I’ll just let things work out as they may. I think it’ll be easier all around that way.

Something that doesn’t appear to be a joke is that they’ve made a re-make of the original “April Fool’s Day” movie. A “straight-to-video” movie. It can’t possibly be any good.

Merry Christmas

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, and also a happy holiday whatever it is you happen to be celebrating this year. Personally, I wouldn’t mind doing a little Saturnalia celebrating. It’s been getting a lot of press this year.

I wonder if this is going to start a trend towards a more non-secular Christmas period so people stop fighting over holiday decorations. Seriously people, children don’t spend this much time fighting over the holidays, why do adults do it?

It’s been a tough year so far so I’ll be pretty happy when it’s over. Only a few more days to go until that happens.

Thanksgiving — On the cheap

Thanksgiving Day is nearly here. It’ll be here in less than a week. This can be a stressful time, especially with all the work that goes into creating a lovely Thanksgiving meal.

So this year I’m going to cheap out. I figure I can cut down costs if I stick with these ingredients:

• Sliced turkey deli meat
• Loaf of bread, thin sliced (59¢ at HEB!)
• Can of cranberry “sauce”
• Can of green beans
• Box of instant mashed potatoes
• 1 Packet of gravy mix
• 1 Can of pumpkin pie filler
• 1 Can of Yams or sweet potatoes

See, you take two slices of bread, put some turkey slices on it (thin sliced is best so you can kind of crumple up the turkey and make it look nice). Open the can of cranberry “sauce” (it’s more of a jelly to me) and slice off a round and put it on the turkey. Close up the bread and you have your main course. Since stuffing is made out of bread, you get that with your turkey, too.

The green beans and yams (or sweet potatoes) can be heated up in a microwave.

The instant mashed potatoes is probably the most labor intensive portion. But here’s a tip: you don’t really need butter and milk to make it. You can do it just using hot water. If you’re hot water heater is set to high you can probably do it with tap water. You could probably do the same for the gravy mix.

No Thanksgiving dinner would be complete without dessert, and I budgeted that in. Frozen pumpkin pies are way too expensive, so we’re going to make one. It’s not really a pie, though.

1. Take two pieces of bread and cut the crusts off
2. Take a couple of spoons of the pumpkin pie filling and place in the center of one of the slices of bread.
3. Take the remaining slice of bread and put it on top of the pumpkin stuff.
4. Squish down the edges of the bread so you meld the top and bottom together while leaving a pocket of pumpkin in the center.

Et viola! You have a pumpkin… thing… for dessert. If you wanted to get fancy you could probably deep fry it. That might kill you, though. Seriously.

Obviously you can make substitutions. Changing the turkey for ham, for instance. Or the green beans for any canned vegetable of your choice. You could even go “Old World” and use pumpernickel bread. I don’t know how that would taste with pumpkin pie filling, so you may want to replace that with peanut butter and jelly.

If you have any money or time saving Thanksgiving ideas don’t hesitate to let me know.

LiveJournal Tags: thanksgiving, recipe, cheap, yuck

The Fear of Halloween

So it’s Halloween. I originally come from New Jersey. For the geographically handicapped, that’s up on the North East coast.

Halloween is great, because it’s the day when you can dress up as a pirate, or astronaut, or zombie, or whatever and play at it without people thinking you’re off your nut. Not only is it accepted, but it’s expected. And it works for adults, too. Up to a point.

To pull out the “I’m old and you have to listen to it” card, it’s a lot different now than when I was a kid. At least, that’s the way I remember it. Back then, in New Jersey, Halloween was very chilly. The leaves were changing colors. Kids were allowed to dress up in school. In fact, they encouraged it and had parades for the kids to show off their costumes. Now, it looks like a lot of schools aren’t allowing it. They definitely won’t allow masks.

Back then, there were hoards of kids roaming the neighborhood. It was better to set a chair down by the front door so you wouldn’t have to keep getting up to hand out candy. Groups of superheroes, greasers, spacemen, aliens, 1950’s poodle-skirt girls, faeries, and ghosts would appear, holding out bags and pillow cases, and then slip away into the night like a colorful fog. As the night grew older so would the kids, until you finally got the teenagers who just wanted candy and couldn’t be bothered to dab fake blood on their lips.

Even before I left New Jersey, I noticed that the amount of groups got smaller each year. Last year, I don’t think more than ten kids showed up to get some candy. They were all in costume, though. I think it’s great when parents go around with their young ones and they’re dressed up, too. But that’s very rare.

As far back as I can remember, there was always an element of fear concerning Halloween. Not the good kind of fear, where you walk with your small groups of friends wondering what that strange light ahead is on this fearful night, but the bad kind of fear. The one that makes your parents go through your candy looking for tell-tale pinpricks (and taking some choice bits for “testing”), razor blades in apples, throwing away anything homemade (I never ate a caramel popcorn ball although many showed up in my pillowcase). I was told to never go into a house, to always stay outside. I understand the reasons, but I wonder if my perception of a failing Halloween is due to those fears becoming worse.

Perhaps it’s just where I ended up living. Maybe in other areas Halloween is still the way I remember it. I’d be curious to know.