The Charlie Brown Factor

08:50am

     I’ve been at work for almost two hours now.  I’ve gotten everything prepped, new software has been downloaded and is now installing.  My laptop is pissing me off because it keeps pausing and stopping every few minutes.  I’ve turned off everything that’s running in the background, all the groovy things that I use in my day-to-day operations, and it still keeps doing it.

     Usually during this time I’d be checking the news sites and stuff.  Keeping up on what’s going on in the industry.  Seeing what kind of new disasters are striking the world.  Aside from a tropical storm off the coast of Texas, I’m not aware of much.  I don’t actually like reading the news because it’s depressing.

09:23am

     Time to stalk the vending machines and see if I can’t hunt down something to eat.

09:36am

     An Apple Strudel Pop-Tart.  Yum.

12:38pm

     I have opted not to eat lunch today.  Not a normal lunch, anyway.  Instead, I will be trying to whittle down this four pound bucket of Red Vines.

12:52pm

     Eating a bucket of Red Vines is not a good idea, no matter how hungry you are.  Moderation is the key.

14:06pm

     Part of my job is doing a little bit of web surfing here and there, to make sure everything is working correctly.  Usually I do a round of established sites that I normally visit.  Sometimes I get creative.

     Today I thought it would be amusing to read some articles about candy bars on Wikipedia.  Chocolate bars led to the York Peppermint Patty, and that led to Peppermint Patty from the Charlie Brown comic strip.

     While I could read and write well enough when I was a young child, I never really exercised the skills.  While my older sister was reading through books like a wiz, I would spend my time reading comics.  Not comic books, like Spiderman, but comics like B.C., Wizard of Id and, most importantly, Charlie Brown.

     I collected Charlie Brown paperbacks.  I knew what I had, what I had read, and could even tell you which book a strip came from if I were shown it.  I would also choose the books carefully because the paperbacks were collections from other, larger, books that I had never seen.  I would try and pick books that didn’t come from a larger work that I already had books from.  I was a Charlie Brown paperback expert.

     This annoyed my dad to no end, because he thought I should be reading real books.  My older sister would snort derisively at my choices, as we left the bookstore, clutching the newest Anne McCaffery or Alan Dean Foster novel.

     As I got older and the strip grew older I came to like it less, noting more of a religious flavor in the strip.  And, like any kid, I didn’t think it was “cool” to like it very much.  But even now, if I’m not feeling well, I would like to just curl up in bed and read Charlie Brown strips all day long.  Sadly, it’s nothing I can do now because I no longer have all of my books.

     It’s unfair, though, to look down at this.  I’m mostly happy with the person I am today and I couldn’t say with confidence that I would be this person if I had not read so many Charlie Brown strips.

     It was in those strips that I got an introduction to philosophy, religion, manners (specifically, other characters made Charlie Brown feel like crap – why would I want to make people feel that way?), the meaning of different holidays, that people should open their hearts more to kids who may be less privileged.

     At a young age I knew what depression was, because C.B. would often say he was depressed.  This, in turn, helped me deal with depression as a child because I knew what it was and could find a way to deal with it. 

     Charlie Brown, and the rest of the gang, helped me get through life.  Not in a drastic, dramatic way but in a long, slow, helping period.  It’s when I read the old strips and remember things that were going on when I read them previously that I remember just how it was that they were helpful.

     Of course, I picked up a few negative qualities also, I’m sure.  A lack of confidence here and there, although that could be attributed to other circumstances as well.  But maybe, if Charlie Brown had been a bit more assertive, I’d be a bit more assertive, too.  We’ll never know.

     Either way, Charlie Brown has made an on-going impact on my life, and I don’t know that I would want to give that up.

Friday the 13th

And here it is, Friday.  Except today is also Friday the 13th.  It’s no big deal to me, though; I’m just happy it’s Friday.

So I got the new camera and have been dragging it around with me just in case I get a chance to snap a few pictures of something interesting.  I never did, though.  Yesterday I went to the grocery store.  There had been a bird there that would use the display birdbath that’s set up outside the door.  I could walk right past her and it wouldn’t bother her unless I tried to take a picture with my cell phone.  I hadn’t seen her in a long time, so I left the camera at home.  Predictably, the bird was there having a bath.

Oh well.  My creative juices just aren’t flowing today.

Just Another Manic Monday

Another Monday morning brings another week.  It happens all the time, doesn’t it?

All through life I’ve been told, and have read, that one shouldn’t put human attributes on animals.  That they don’t have feelings, they don’t “think,” and they act purely on instinct.  Mostly I think this is garbage, a way for scientists to shield themselves from the experiments they do on them.  For instance, yestserday I was on the computer and sending instant messages to my mom.  I had Zoey, an African Gray parrot, on my shoulder poking at my ears.  Eventually she travelled down my arm and tried to eat my mouse, mousepad, and keyboard.  I put her back on the cage and she promptly went back inside, sat on her perch with her back to me, and made very sad noises.  Noises like, “Awwwww,” “step-up,” and “peek-a-boo.”  But very, very sadly.  I felt like absolute crap at that point, and I don’t believe for a moment that it wasn’t intentional.

My Linux installation kind of fell apart this weekend, but I fixed it.  In fact, I fixed it real good.  I found another overlay for installing KDE 4 from SVN and got 4.1 installed.  It works great. I don’t get a lot of glitches when I have compositing turned on, and that’s a major plus.  Otherwise, it all worked good except I couldn’t get the Utilities and PIM stuff compiled.  I’ll try again in a few days and see if it works then.

A Slow Sunday

Last night I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I was afraid to see it because I thought it would be really terrible.  Like, new Star Wars trilogy terrible.  Thankfully, it was pretty good.  Good enough that I wouldn’t mind seeing Harrison Ford take one last outing as the swashbuckling archeologist.

What I wouldn’t want to see is Shia LeBouf taking over the series.  I don’t think his character is all that great and, more importantly, the 1950’s and 1960’s are not good decades for an Indiana Jones adventure.  The beauty of the 1900’s-1940’s is that the world was a lot more mysterious and unexplored.  By 1960 there isn’t a lot of mystery left.

Going back to a Young Indiana Jones or finding an actor that sort of looks like Ford and filling in the bits between Temple of Doom and Raiders of the Lost Ark would suit me better.  I don’t know how resistant other people would be to that, though.

Eureka, the Sci-Fi channel show, will start its new season in July.  I’m looking forward to it because I love the show.  I hope they keep up the good work.  I don’t remember how the last season ended.

One of the best things about being a kid in the 1980’s was sneaking into the television room and watching movies on HBO that you weren’t supposed to be watching.  It could make any movie seem like a cinematic masterpiece just because you weren’t supposed to see.  To a teenage boy, seeing an R-Rated movie, especially if it had nudity in it, was like finding the Holy Grail.  I suppose that’s sacrilegious, but it’s true.   I don’t mention that for any particular reason, just because it sprang to mind.  Okay, for some reason I just remembered about a movie called Joysticks that was pretty horrendous.  But it seemed good at the time.  Actually, I don’t even remember how bad it was because I haven’t seen it since, oh, 1983 or so.

Did you ever write or type a word and it looked like it was spelled wrong even though you’ve used it hundreds of times before?  In the previous paragraph I used the word “weren’t” twice and it looked so totally wrong I had to look it up to make sure it was right.  Weird, huh?

Otherwise, it’s been a slow Sunday.  Oh, fashion designer Laurent is dead.  He’s quite famous, etc.

That figures.  I forgot to post this, so now it’s a Monday post.  Derr….

Finally Friday

It sucks waking up to bad news.  This morning I turned on the laptop to see that Harvey Korman had died.  Harvey Korman was a comedic actor who, it seemed, I almost always saw on TV or a Mel Brooks film.  A childhood staple sadly gone now.

I guess the Mars Phoenix is humming away happily.  I haven’t really seen too much about it, just the initial pictures it sent back.  It looks a bit sandy up there.  And rocky.  I wonder how difficult it would be to erect a strip mall and, maybe, a suburb?

I’m a little dismayed to learn that someone is making a film based on “Have Gun - Will Travel,” the Richard Boone western from way back when.  I’ve been lucky enough to watch a couple (literally) of episodes.  I’d like to get all of them, but I don’t think it would be affordable.  Anyway, the new film looks like it will have Eminem as the lead.  What a travesty.

Locally Produced

Most Americans, I suppose, do their grocery shopping in a grocery store.  Probably a chain, like Krogers, HEB, FoodTown or Pathmark.  Food is shipped to each store by truck and comes from a warehouse.  Before the warehouse, the stuff was in a factory.

The rising cost of gas means that the food you’re buying is going to become more expensive because they need to cover the rising costs of shipping.

At what point would it be more cost effective to not shop at a chain grocery store anymore?  When does it make more sense to buy produce from a local farmer, or meat from a local butcher? 

When it comes down to it, though, we’re a lazy bunch.  We’d rather have everything laid out for us in one spot then go to a bunch of different stores.  Sometimes it makes sense to do it that way.  You wouldn’t want to burn up a tank of gas just to do your weekly shopping.

With the proliferation of strip malls, many of which lay unused and empty, maybe there could be a better way.  If those empty stores could be rented out to local farmers, butchers, and bakers then everything could stay local and yet still be moderately convenient.

Maybe we’d be better off in the long run.  We could have a little less chemicals injected into our bodies through our food.  Since food would have less distance to travel it wouldn’t need all the preservatives and chemicals that we eat now.  Have you ever really read the label on the food you eat?  Do you even know what half of the stuff listed in the ingredients are? 

Would it be better to buy a bunch of ears of corn from a local farmer, beef from a local cattle rancher, and whatever else?  Would the rising gas prices (especially diesel) make it more cost effective for everyone in the long run?  Would it be more environmentally friendlier?  Would it be more inconvenient?

Is this something that we could use, I wonder.  If it would help us as a society in the long run by forcing us to slow down and be a little more patient wouldn’t that be better?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I think about them when I’m roving through my local grocery store.  I wonder why beef is so expensive; I work for a big computer company and yet, across the street, there are fields with a bunch of cows in them.  Why is beef so expensive?  Why is milk so expensive?  Do we have a shortage of chickens?  Are pigs rare animals?  Is a yellow bell pepper made of gold? 

If I didn’t live in suburbia I’d try growing my own damn bell peppers.  But people are stacked on top of people and there isn’t room, even though there’s plenty of land.  Again, that’s convenience talking.  I wouldn’t be able to afford the gas to get to work if I lived further away from my job. 

At what point does all of this break?

Let’s Try Again

My “Page-a-Day” idea isn’t going so well.  I’m not even sure how long it’s been since I put a post up here.  I blame it on not being able to indent my paragraphs.  It just ruins it for me.

I haven’t been doing much of anything besides working, cleaning, cooking and working.  Although I did buy a used PlayStation 2 so I could play Ratchet & Clank again.  It’s such a great escape.

I’ve also been trying to learn to program in Lisp.  Not for any particular reason other than to be able to say that I know how.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time to do that.  Come to think of it, I don’t have a lot of time to do anything. 

That’s what life is about, though.  Sometimes doing things you don’t want to do because they need to be done.  It sucks, but that’s the way it goes. 

I also feel tired lately.  Really tired.  It doesn’t matter how much sleep I get, either.  I’m just dragged-down, ass-in-the-mud tired.  Maybe I need more iron in my diet. 

I’ve given up on my idea to make my own deep fried hot dog, a la Rutt’s Hutt.  For anything less than a full-scale party it wouldn’t make any sense, given the amount of money and trouble it’ll take to pull it all together.  I mean, I’d need special hot dogs and beef tallow.  Who can manage that?

Maybe it’s time to just stop, to step on brakes and put life in ‘Park’ for a moment.  Maybe it’s time to re-evaluate life and what’s happening.  Maybe it’s time to get out a pencil and paper and start writing a list of what’s good and what’s not so good.

It wouldn’t be that hard, would it?  To get a cup of coffee and sit on the back porch writing down a list of things that need to be changed.  Watching the cats run around, and the clouds in the east and think about what one would really like to get out of life.

Nothing Much At All

I like having my own web site.  It’s fun to muck around with it and remember how to write HTML and CSS stuff.  I like making changes, trying to come up with something interesting (and someday I’ll do that).

It annoys the piss out of me, though, that something works properly in Internet Explorer but not Mozilla Firefox.  It really annoys me.  I suppose I’ll figure a way around it, but I’m not even sure of that. 

I’ve been totally lax lately, I know.  I’ve just been mega-busy this week and haven’t had time for writing.  I don’t have much time right now, either, but I’m doing it.  I’ve added something else on the “To Do” list.  It’s encouraging that my “To Do” list is getting longer, but it’d sure be nice to actually be able to get to it.

The problem with not having much time is that you need to choose what you want to do with the time you have.  I can’t decide to finally finish BioShock and write up a new satire piece.  It’s one or the other.  And that kind of sucks.

I’m just about done with BioShock, though, so it’ll be something to take off my plate.  Then I’ll have to go back to finishing Oblivion.  If I finish that, then I’m done with games until Fallout 3 comes out.

Come to think of it, I haven’t been playing games very much lately.  What a shame that is.

The Destiny of Millions

Good morning, everyone.  It’s been quiet here for the past few days.  I’ve been very busy and haven’t had time to do anything.  This isn’t an especially good thing but, as the saying goes around here, having a job at all is good.

I’m quite determined to set aside time for myself in the evenings where I can just write.  The Jonathon story is flinging around in my brain.  A re-write of “Have Gun Will Travel” pokes its head in on occasion.  My massive novel involving a lot of high-tech science-y stuff is still percolating.  So many things that I would like to get to.

Then there are the items that I just like to do, such as “Hi-Tech Nostalgia” and “Movie Trailer Reviews.”  Speaking of which, Speed Racer…  looks worse and worse to me every time I see the commercial.

Anyway, the weekend is coming up and I think it’s time to start taking things seriously. 

100th Post

Hello everyone.  This is the 100th post to my WordPress blog.  It may be the longest running blog I’ve ever had.  This is quite an achievement because I usually lose the password long before this point.

I’ve wracked my brain trying to come up with something really blockbuster to make it stand out, but I can’t.  All you’re going to get is this drivel. 

Some of you may have noticed I put up a piece of fiction.  It’s currently in three places, but that’s not important.  What is important is that I’d like to tack on a piece here and there until it’s done.  I’ll also be revising it because I know it needs some changing.  Everyone is free to comment or criticize.  I wouldn’t be putting it on my blog if I didn’t want anyone to say anything about it.

Another item of interest is that I now have Gardenofentropy.com.  It’s very plain right now.  I was going to have everything on there, but I’ve decided to only keep my forums and fiction blog on there.  The regular blog will always lead back here.  Someday I hope to get to the 200th post.  I’m free and loose with the forums and, probably, the picture thing, so go ahead and look at it.

I think I’ve done a fairly decent job of writing down at least one thing a day.  I know I’ve skipped a few days, but I’m doing better than I have previously.  Some days it just can’t be done.  I’ll try and do an extra days work when that happens.

Some things are still in the works.  High-Tech Nostalgia Part // is still in the pipeline.  I’ll continue with Jonathon.  There’s a couple of other things rattling inside my brain box that I’ll be working on.  And you never know when I might get some extra change and throw up another Vending Machine Food Review.  That’s the second biggest draw that this blog has going for it.  The first is a picture of a kitten.

WordPress shows me what people searched for to get here.  I’m amazed at some of the things that lead people here.  For instance, today “orange kitten fluffy” is at the top of the list.  Anything with “orange” and “kitten” will be the highest ranking search.  I was surprised and happy to see that a couple of people searched for “Rutt’s Hut.”  Some poor soul searched for “erin grey clothes off video buck rogers.”  I didn’t think she had a nude video, but I suppose I could be wrong.  The rest of the searches have to do with gardening and strawberry milkshakes.

As usual, I always look forward to comments.  They’re what keep me going.  That and knowing that someone, somewhere, has read some of this junk.  I’m also happy to take requests.  I’m not sure what that would mean, exactly, but I’m open to hearing about it.

I hope you all have a nice weekend.  Or at least a nice Saturday and Sunday.