Buy Anxiety

Well I made it, but just barely.  It took copious amounts of chocolate and a drink or two to distract me, but I survived Black Friday without leaving the house.  It wasn't pretty though.  There are claw marks on the door-jamb...
I still have doubts.  I have to catch my breath if I let my mind ponder what I must have missed out on.
And I most certainly missed out.  Look at the extreme--if I had camped out at the local Best Buy a week ago I might have scored a free I-Pad or something from management--some bozos pulled it off elsewhere, I saw it on the news.  I could have bought a dvd-tv combo with 120 Hz refresh and backlighting for a song; practically stolen a TomTom GPS for $59, or a palm-held Video camera for $49.
What?  What's that you say, I didn't need those things?  Fool!  Of course I didn't need them, I WANTED them!  I mean, they were so cheap.  God help me, they were CHEAP.   And, and, there would have been countless impulse buys to be had!  It's the wonder, the awe, the... the OPTION, dammit!  Who knows what all I missed.
Besides the crowds, that is.  Oh, and the lack of items because of the minimum number kept on hand for the flyer ad.  Yes, that...and the traffic, too; and lack of parking.  And getting up early--ugh.  But especially the unruly crowds, yes there have been a few of those. Some disagreement over the last Cabbage Patch doll on the shelf, etched into my brain long years ago.... Ah, perhaps that lady has forgotten the, er, momentary ugliness that transpired as my wife clenched her fist and beamed certain doom toward all present. Or was that me doing the beaming?
It's no use, even the uncomfortable memories don't dim the knowledge of opportunity lost.  At some point, I will doubtless buy something for significantly more than I might have spent on that unctuous day.  I will somehow have to live with that certainty, and reconcile myself to the loss of some other important bauble I will now not be able to afford.  Curse this consumeristic universe!  I buy, therefore I am... but, if I don't buy?

Ok Ok, I watched your damn commercial

We should pay for the things we enjoy as a result of the work of others.  I acknowledge there is no free lunch, it simply makes no sense to believe otherwise.

So consider the "free" homepage and e-mail offered by various internet services.  My homepage has been MSN forever; initially I paid $10 a month for MSN Premium with services I never used; but it felt right that I should pay something for the e-mail and the news feeds. Fast forward and, with times so tight, I dropped the paid service (I don't think they even offer it anymore).  Surprise, the free version didn't lose any of the functions I used.  In fact, there was no useful difference between before and after.  But now, some guilt creeps in as to how the good people who daily administer this service are recompensed. Wait, of course, it's the advertisements!

Parts of my homepage and e-mail are always streaming an ad. And when I surf, I might roll the mouse over a cleverly concealed popup activator that easily defeats my paid-for blocker.  OK, I can handle the distraction and occasionally, I even get the message--I really should check that pesky credit score.

I try to avoid video clips though.  Hey, what up with sitting through a 30 second pitch for 2 minutes of content?  But often the story I want isn't in print.  I'm just gonna have to get it from Matt Lauer.  So, after 32 seconds of a blue bear singing to his toilet paper roll whilst picking pieces of tissue off his ass (kudos there, Charmin), I'll get the Today Show version of a hot story.  God forbid it should refer me to another video; wherein I ponder "Can 15 minutes with GEICO can save me hundreds of $$?"  Oh silly me, "Does a bear s%#* in the woods?"   Not blue bears, according to Charmin.

Oh yeah, take that bitter, over-sized horse-pill. I owe SOMETHING to "pay" for this info; no free lunch, balance in the cosmos, Yin and Yang--and all that.  BUT...

Lately, I take more medicine than I "need." Worse, take medicine with no payoff.  Often the commercial plays and only AFTER do I get a message that the content is "temporarily unavailable."  Say what?  Why you dirty rotten...

And don't get me started on BING, the intelligent search engine.  Well, if you insist.  All these teasers in the corner of my home page are not stories, but searches, and hidden within their links are important messages, like that one thing that can give you washboard abs.

Yes, I could ignore BING but... Lady Gaga and Vladimir Putin did WHAT?  Oh man, click on that puppy, I gotta know...  Ummm, ah yes, BING has given me a short blurb, and I have only to CLICK ON 8 HI-LITED  #%&*@  KEY-WORDS TO GET THE WHOLE STORY, EACH OF WHICH DIRECTS ME TO NUMEROUS $%#&@ ABBREVIATED ARTICLES WHICH.... I knew I should've stayed off BING.

I have a choice, I know.  I could subscribe to a newspaper; dated as the info may be.  It is there at my leisure.  It will not deny me promised content.  It will not insult my intelligence with toilet tales.  Alas, I choose instead to add inertia to the decline of the printed word; such is my need for breaking news and pointless celebutante trivia.  I paid my dues, I watched your damn commercial, now give me my fix.

It really is A Perfect Day

I sit on a number of draft blog entries, waiting for the time I feel like posting them. Mostly it's because I start a thought, then can't find the right finish.  But I'm feeling a little melancholy today, so I'm finishing this one.
A couple months ago I came across an amazing music video, and wanted to find the right theme to put it in the blog.  Then something odd happened, and I didn't know if I'd ever use it--I'll explain.  It's Lou Reed's "A Perfect Day," performed by a startling array of artists.  And yes, it made western hemispheric news over a purported snub wherein Lou Reed supposedly prevented Susan Boyle from performing it, after she had made a trans-Atlantic and trans-continental flight for the express purpose of singing it on America's Got Talent.  That whole mess happened about a week after I found it on the web, and rather than let people think I posted because of that flap, I just dropped it.  But a happy ending demands attention; it turns out Lou Reed had nothing to do with refusing Boyle, and in fact, directed the video which now accompanies her version.  Its a good one, but I'll just include the link here, because I want to embed the BBC version:

http://video.aol.com/aolvideo/aol-music/a-perfect-day/661983732001

A little background:  the BBC is funded by a TV tax in the UK, which is forever decried by a tax-weary public.  So from time to time BBC puts something together to demonstrate the superiority of non-commercial driven TV entertainment--freedom of artistry.  This video however was also the BBC's centerpiece in 1997 for the charity they sponsor, Children in Need.  Check out Bowie, Dr John, and my man, Tom Jones...



The charity sold this version, and versions featuring just the men, and just the women.  Don't know where to find them now, but wouldn't they be cool?

Pumpkin Pix

I did try the fancy design after all, and it was tedious work--I'll let the viewer decide if it was worth it.

 And here's a cool sunset from a couple weeks ago--don't know why but we get some spectacular skies here.

Election Day, Don't You Dare Ruin My Halloween

Anyone who knows me at all knows I love Halloween.  One of my earliest blogs (Oct '08) explained my feelings about October 31, so I won't repeat it here.  Instead, just a few observations and reflections on this year's activities.

First, there are two pumpkins in my garage that await my carving attention.  Each year I am torn between attempting one of those amazing templates that you can buy or copy from the internet, and simply going with my instinct on the choppy scary face.  The latter always wins because the former requires more patience than I am willing to expend.  The result however has always been satisfactory, once I put that votive candle inside and turn off the lights.

Some of the neighbors are really into the season--one guy has several enormous blow-up and animated creatures in the yard; the black cat has glowing eyes and stands about 6 feet tall, and its head moves side to side.  Very cool.

At school, this was a funny week.  Jake, the 6th grader, forgot to tell me that each day was a different spirit day--hat day, camo day, etc.  This being a short week ending today, I figured out for myself it would be costume day.  Last year he was berserk about Freddy Kruger, and he did it up big; hat, face mask, clothes and claw glove.  This year he made no plans, so last night I bought him one of those cheap Groucho Marx glasses/nose/mustache combos so he'd have something to wear today.  He loved it, and put on his fedora to complete the "costume." I told him if anybody asked, he was every adult's worst nightmare, the Tax Man from the IRS.  When I dropped him off at school this morning, there were the usual witches, princesses and ball-players (somebody always wears their football or little league uniform).  One little girl had a great costume: a fake picket fence surrounded her and was full of plastic flowers.  Jeez I love Halloween.

Many TV shows have a Halloween theme this week, usually very creative.  Last night "Modern Family" was an all-out hoot, and possibly my favorite line ever uttered on a sitcom was said:  asked if a neighbor and his wife were coming over for an over-the-top Halloween celebration, the neighbor shockingly replied his wife had left him.  After a stunned and awkward moment, the crestfallen desertee said "I better go, I have a dish to wash."  Classic. And so to the point.

I suppose I should mention the "Succeeding Holiday Encroachment" phenomenon.  As we all love to marvel at the rapidity with which that most commercial of holy holidays hits the stores, I think we have a watershed this year.  At the local CVS, you can find Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas merchandise on the aisles simultaneously.  K-Mart also.  Frankly, I think Thanksgiving is only in there to remind people of Black Friday (the massive sales event).  Another shameless plug for my favorite holiday, Halloween is the ONLY holiday for which blatant commercialism is absolutely appropriate!

Last comment--the coming election is sucking attention away from Halloween.  Don't do it, Election Day.  Stop it, right now.  Boy, you are really ugly this year, with possibly the most egregious mud-slinging ever.  What happened to the issues?  Aw, screw it, attack ads have a proven track record, so that's where we are spending those hidden-donor and corporate campaign funds.  There must be A LOT of $$ in the coffers.  Thanks a lot, Supreme Court.  I am struggling about whom to vote for, because I only know the skeletons in the closets of the candidates, not their stand on issues.  Wait a minute.  OK, skeletons are appropriate for this time of year--maybe politics is finally getting into the spirit of the season.  And politics are scary...suddenly it makes sense why Election Day is always so close to Halloween.

Jeez, I Keep Finding This Stuff

Confession:  The main reason I can't resist embedding videos here from time to time is it makes it easy to find those that I want to see again.  A close second, I also find some that I want to share out of pure perversity.  So here are two, one from each category, hope you enjoy.

First, a charming little remix ditty from the movie Up.  Ummm, if you have not seen this Disney/Pixar inevitable classic, be forewarned (as I was not), the first 10 minutes are hard to watch--at least for me, gut-wrenchingly bitter-sweet.  In fact, I don't ever want to see that segment, ever again.  Not ever. Yeah, how does Disney manage to... darn those people...Nevermind, I am going to stop talking about it RIGHT NOW.
Sorry.  Actually, it necessarily sets up the rest of the movie.

OK, this clip was put together by Aussie DJ Pogo, and I believe he said it took him 2 months of sampling words to get the chords right.  To me, it sounds like something Sade might have sung if she was, you know, like, happier.  It's worth a listen if for no other reason than it's the closest you're going to get to hearing Ed Asner sing.



Now for the perverse.  More intellectually-charged than a Kardashian Family Reunion; more thought-provoking than a BassMasters TV marathon; more topically cogent than SpongeBob Squarepants--I present the artistic medium known as... the "Long-form Advertisement."  Slightly reminiscent of SNL's skit "The Continental," this could not have been creepier if Christopher Walken himself did it.  File this one under "Idon'tseewherethisisgoingohmygoddidhejust..."

10 Things You Didn't Know About Your Parents

There must be a million things we don't know about our parents. Even if they were teens when we were born, they must have had years of grown-up experiences before we even cared to know. If my dad were still here, I'd ask him a lot about WWII, and my mom too--she was a Naval Officer, a WAVE. I'm sure there is plenty we DON'T want to know... but I thought it might be interesting to come up with 10 things my kids either didn't know, or didn't know the whole story, about their mom and/or me.
So here is a list, in no particular order:

1. My eyes each see colors slightly differently, probably because I mishandled a UV light when I was 11.
2. Before we were married, your mom volunteered helping patients at a free medical clinic in Gainesville, FL.
3. At age 14, I almost got my family kicked out of an apartment building after walking on the edge of the roof.  It was about 10 stories up.
4. Your mom was a Store Detective at AAFES in 1979-80, and was a natural at catching shoplifters.  After receiving threats from some people she caught, she switched to working in the warehouse--her shoulders and arms got so muscular she had to buy new shirts.
5.  She spent her first AAFES paycheck on me--to buy a Fairchild video game, it was one small step above "Pong," but state-of-the-art at the time--we were the hit of the neighborhood.
6. Also in 1979, we owned a green moped and your mom rode it to and from work.  I think it was a Honda.
7. My parents started me on 3 musical instruments in school before the last one "took;" first piano, then flute, finally trombone.
8. When your mom owned a craft consignment business in Michigan, she sometimes secretly bought the artists' work, to encourage them when business was slow.
9. Your mother used to have a random tooth positioned in front of her right upper canine; I loved her for it, she, of course, hated it.  As a couple, it was our first major expense to get it fixed.
10. I flunked my first written drivers test in Florida at age 17--misidentified a traffic sign.  Then I barely passed the actual driving test, so naturally, my first job after High School was as a car parts delivery driver.