Winter

I may have mentioned that I’m originally from New Jersey but now live in Austin, TX. When the holiday season rolls by, starting at Halloween, there are some things I miss.

One of these is Autumn, when the leaves change color and drop off the trees, the loud whispering that comes when the wind blows over the dry leaves on the ground.

But I also miss the winters and, as much as I hate driving in it, the snow. The late night silence as snow falls. Back when I was a kid, the neighbors had a light in their backyard. It looked like an old gas lamp. There were woods behind our house, too. And when we got a pretty good, deep snow, I imagined it looked like Narnia. At least, how I remember it from reading the books.

There can be something magical about snow that may not be noticable until you’re in a place where it doesn’t snow. Or, in my case, where it might snow but not enough to be interesting.

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The Big Four-Oh

     So, you’re sitting around one day with your friends, maybe.  Then some old clunker goes driving by.  Maybe it’s an old Cadillac.  One of those tan ones, with the rusted panels.  The trunk lock is missing, along with a headlight.  It bangs down the street past you, backfiring and spitting out brown exhaust. 

     You and your friends watch it, amused by the sight of such an old, dilapidated piece of crap rumbling along and you wonder how it manages to keep running because, let’s be honest, it’s almost 40 years old now.  Forty years old.  Wait, a minute, you think, I’m 40 years old!

     And your mind casts back to the things that are breaking down in your house.  The toaster is dead, at five years.  The curtains are ten years old and your wife is sure it’s time to replace them.  You have a 20 year old computer that your kids routinely laugh at.  All these things are crap now, garbage.  And the oldest thing is half your age!  And it’s considered ancient!  A car is generally considered a “classic” at 25 years.  Oh, me oh my!  Time for you to putter around the house shooting out exhaust.

     Today, November 2nd, is my birthday.  I was born in the year 1968, 40 years ago.  Four decades ago, I was brought forth unto the world.  Ten years shy of half a century.

     The world has gone through a lot of changes in forty years.  Computers have gone from the size of a warehouse building, completing calculations in days or weeks, down to being in tiny MP3 players and decompressing Britney Spears songs on the fly.  Televisions have become to dump the tube and gone LCD or plasma.  Cars have gone from being complex mechanical objects to hyper-complex mechanical objects with computer controlled bits.  Airplane travel has turned from a semi-enjoyable experience to the worst method of travel next to the bus.

     But, that’s all right, people tell me.  40 is the new 30!  According to who?  And how does that make much of a difference?

     Although, to be frank, I don’t feel forty.  I make goofy sounds to my bird.  I talk to my cats and believe they understand me.  I like most of the music my kids listen to.  And, in a little while, I’ll be booting the kids off my computer so I can play Fallout 3 (which I got as a gift from my mom; thanks mom!).  I don’t have aches and pains when I get up in the morning.  I could run down the street if I were chased by a dog.  Meh.  I don’t see much of a difference yet.  Inside, I’m still the young guy who wants to do a lot of stupid stuff.  The only difference is that I’ve been on this planet going around the sun 40 times.

     So, maybe it’s not so bad.

    

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.

GoE: Searches I

My weblog is hosted on WordPress.  My main blog, anyway.  The other blogs are kind of mirrors of this one since I use Windows Live Writer most of the time.  The other blogs are hosted on LiveJournal and Microsoft Live.

Anyway, WordPress is (I think) where most of the action occurs.  Although it’s also the only one that really shows me what’s going on.  One of the handy tools it has is to show what search criteria was used to reach the site.

I’d like to take a moment here and address some of these searches.  Somebody was looking for something specific and they got here; the least I can do is provide some kind of answer.

So here we go.

• orange kittens – I have one picture (that I know of) on this site that features an orange kitten.  This kitten has brought over 350 people to this blog.  This is both a boon and a curse to me because I put a lot of thought into my blogs and to get the most traffic because of a cute, fuzzy orange kitten irks me.  On the other hand, it brings people here and maybe, just maybe, has caused folks to visit on a constant basis.
• dr pepper indiana jones contest – Then there’s this Dr Pepper contest.  I think in the short time I’ve posted about it, it’s been the second most popular reason for people to come here.  This has little to do with me because I think I’ve only complained about the lack of decent “low-range” prizes.  But (again, on the other hand) it’s brought a whole lot of people here and it’s amazing to me that I can be on the front page of Google if someone searches for it.
• parrott on shoulder – Yes, we have a parrot.  And yes, she rides on my shoulder all the time when I let her.  It’s an interesting experience and I recommend it to anyone, even though it’s not something you’re supposed to do.
• my dr pepper bottle cap says uwin – Good for you!  Hopefully by now you have gone over to the Dr Pepper website and entered your code, which you need to do to redeem your code.  It’d be great if you won, say, a screen saver or computer wall paper.
• milkshake poptarts – The Strawberry Milkshake Pop-Tarts are another big draw to the Garden of Entropy.  I’m not sure why, but it did encourage me to try other strawberry milkshake flavored items.
• my uwin cap dont work – Bummer!  Make sure you’ve got the correct contest.  The current one is the Indiana Jones promotion.  The last contest was just a “1-in-6” thing that wasn’t tied to anything.  That one is old and outdated, just like that Dr Pepper may have been.
• cat destructive licking – My friend, Dave, has de-clawed cats.  I mention this because I’d never heard of cats having destructive licking properties but he mentioned last week that his de-clawed cats do lick the corner of their scratching post to pieces.  I’m not entirely surprised since a cats tongue is very rough for the purpose of stripping meat from bones.  I suppose this could be a reaction to having their natural defense ripped from their feet.  Personally, I’m against having cats de-clawed.  If you’re worried about your furniture then don’t get a cat.
• gentoo after kde 4 problem install black – This is a problem that I had using the 4.0 version of KDE.  It has not happened to me since I upgraded to the 4.1 beta.  The way I got around it was to either turn off compositing or, if I really wanted the special effects, to wait for the black screen to show up and then hit CTRL-F8.
• parsippany nj – Parsippany, NJ, is my home town for most of my childhood.  If you’re looking for something in particular you should ask because I really don’t talk about it that much in the blogs.  It was a place where I got real pizza, real bagels, and delicious Dunkin’ Donut’s coffee, which is denied me here in Austin, TX.
• 2008 challenger – I love the look and idea of the new Dodge Challenger but I’ll probably never get one unless you happen to be a wealthy philanthropist who found my site and is ready to buy me one as per my wish list.
• kde4 trashcan – If you’re looking for a trashcan on the desktop of KDE 4, it’s a plasmoid (or whatever they’re called).  A widget.  If your distro has the widgets, you’ll need to add the trash can widget to see it on the desktop.
• cookies and cream pop tart – I never mentioned it in my blogs (well, I don’t remember it) but this Pop-Tart is disgustingly sweet and I can’t eat it.
• chef chased by a pickle – I found this search term pretty funny.  I’m assuming someone forgot the name of the arcade game, “Burger Time.”  A classic.
• where are the strawberry oreo cookies – I see them at Wal*Mart all the time.

So those were the more interesting searches for last week.  There’s a whole lot more, but mostly they’re kitten, Dr Pepper, and Pop-Tart related.  I hope this has been of some help to somebody.

What the devil?

I like to pretend I’m a writer, so I’ll cruise around Writers Digest and see what’s going on there.  These days they have members of their staff blogging, and one of the blogs was about blogging.  I’d link to it if I could remember which one it was.

Anyway, one of the tips about a good blog is to come up with an interesting, probing, question to get your readers to leave comments and become involved.

I see I have a problem.

Well, to be honest I have a lot of problems.  But specifically, I have a problem with blogs.  Like, barely one person comments.  I’ve already come to the realization that I don’t really have anything to offer.  I don’t “photoblog” or provide step-by-step cooking instructions.  I don’t do weird experiments with tinfoil and baking soda.  I don’t have my own TV show or a book.  I’m not a self-help guru.  I’m not a reporter.

I’m just some guy.

A clever guy.

So, after sitting here quietly and thinking to myself I have developed a probing question for my readers (if I have any; for all I know all my hits are search bots) to comment on.

And here it is:  Why are you reading this?

Now I expect an answer, even if you just found this page by mistake.  Just write that down.

Don’t forget that you can also visit GardenOfEntropy.com and check out the forums and pictures.

Too much, too quickly

I’ve been using computers since I was a kid.  One of the greatest things about computers has been word processors.  I remember reading articles about how it was so much better to use a word processor than a typewriter.  The very best thing about using a word processor is that when you make a mistake you can go straight to the error and fix it.  You don’t need to re-type a page, or a line, just go straight to the mistake and fix it.

And yet, after years and years of using computers and word processors, if I make a mistake, I will backspace the entire line and re-type it to fix my mistake. 

Why is this?  Why can’t I just move the cursor to a word that’s spelled wrong and just change it?  One of the many things that’s wrong with me.

I wonder, sometimes, if we’ve grown too fast too quickly.  If having a world full of huge corporations, mega-malls, tiny computers and other things is more of a burden than a blessing.

You could open a store today, perhaps your own grocery store.  If you were in a spot that had people around and it was far enough away from a large chain so it was more convenient for people to go there then you’d probably do fine.  But it’s only a matter of time before a Wal*Mart or Super Target, or HEB, or Kroger’s, or something moves in.  Then that will become more convenient because they’ll carry more items at cheaper prices than you’d ever be able to charge.  Soon after you would be forced out of business. 

People demand convenience, at any price.  There are even convenience stores designed to be convenient.  They’re small, carry a very limited amount of items, and are grossly expensive.  But they’re usually built into a gas station so you can get gas and that bottle of ketchup you forgot to get.  There’s no sense going all the way to the grocery store just for one item, but if it’s down the street that’s fine.  There’s no reason for someone to do without until the next big shop when you can get it at the corner for only twice the price.  It’s okay to pay double the amount for something as long as it’s only an item or two.

So we demand convenience and we are impatient.  We don’t care how much it costs unless it costs too much.

But do we have too much, too quickly?  Can we really afford iPods, cell phones, GPS units, and all the other things that we like to have because it makes life more convenient?

American workers are protected.  There is a minimum wage that a worker will get.  But it would be too expensive to manufacture an iPod in the U.S., so that work is sent to another country.  Now the American worker makes no money at all.  Maybe even loses her job.  All for an object that plays music.  Multiply that by everything else that we use on a daily basis and you really need to start wondering if iPods, or any MP3 player, is really that important.