Ok, I am writing this at the request of Cousin Phil (and hopefully not to his regret), because I had lunch with him today and said something to him that prompted him to ask me to write a review of his book on Amazon. As you can probably already tell I'm not a scholar. I also have never studied or been involved with anything Indian, and have done yoga only once. The yoga teacher was very nice and lent me a spare floor matte. The floor was freezing cold. I did the whole class, but had no idea why I was doing anything, and it didn't make me or my body feel any different and I said, "never again." A friend explained "chakras" to me once. Although it seemed somewhat meaningful at the time, I've since forgotten what they are. I have been on a quest my whole life, but my answers came from people, movies, every day life, stage shows like "Hair." I've been telling people ever since I saw "Hair" (1968? 1969?) that the "Age of Aquarius" is upon us. I always knew this was a time of Great Awakening. But I had no idea someone documented its path! That's what Phil did. He took my life and documented its path. It is SO fascinating. If you are someone that has lived in the West, he has probably documented yours too. This book is like a self-indulgence. I'm learning all about me and my culture (and since I had been on Mothership most of my adult life I need to!). What a pleasure. Oh, by the way, as I told the author at lunch today, I have only read the acknowledgments, intro, and first 3 pages so far, but I looove his book (honestly, I only started reading it this morning because I knew I was having lunch with him and wanted to discuss his book). But I could hardly put it down! In fact, as soon as I finish this up I'm going back to reading it. So, Phil told me, "My friend said the same thing. I told him, I hope you continue to enjoy it. After another 50 pages he called me and told me he was still enjoying it. After more pages he called me and told me he was still enjoying it. He did that till he got to the end." So, I have faith that even I will actually enjoy Phil's book all the way to the end also! If not, I will come back and change my review. That being said, this book is relevant for anybody in the West that has ever wondered, "Hey, what's going on? What's happenin', man?"Ed note: The end of the story that I didn't want to put in the review was Phil's friend emailed him that he finished the book, and Phil emailed back, "Wait til you get to the index!" and the friend asked him if he should read the index? Phil's theory is that humor gets lost in email.
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Don’t let the title scare you!
I wrote this review on Amazon.com today, entitled"Don’t let the title scare you!" for American Veda, which also tells you what I did today, with a slight editing note that I did not include in the review:
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
How Times Have Changed!
I knew throughout the 90s and 00s that I would always and forever need Word, or a word processing program. Even before pc’s I hadn’t lived without word processors. In the 80s they weren’t household items, so I wrote at work. I published little poem books with xerox copies of my original drawings on whatever proprietary equipment I was using at the time, so they couldn’t be transferred to any other equipment, and were all outdated within a few years, so unfortunately the stuff I wrote in the 80s never made it through the dozens of conversions technology demanded through time.
One of the most regrettable losses was my collection of Vydec (http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/vydec-1800) animation. I searched the internet for Vydec and Vydec operator, but nothing comes up. It occurs to me now that I was really remiss for never taking any pictures of me and my fellow Vydec operators in our natural setting. It is lost to history.
The Vydecs I used were huge consoles. They were NOT those cute little desk machines with a slim smiling model standing next to them, that come up on a search. And there were big rooms of these consoles. Oh, I've worked at small companies that had just one or two Vydecs, but the large law firms had huge rooms of them with shifts around the clock. Many times you just sat down to start your shift picking up where the previous operator left off, just sat down and threw the printer paper in for the next page, or continued revising right on the screen where he/she left off. The machine was large and noisy and hot and surrounded your body. None of my image searches turned up a proper Vydec. You could see upper bodies if you were standing up, but once you sat down the other operators disappeared. All you saw was your console, unless you did a back bend or slid your chair out to converse, which we often did. One operator I remember wore the closest to a bathing suit that appropriate work attire would allow, and always brought a change of shirt, because she sweat so much. I was always cold so the Vydec warmth suited me. Anyway, we'd get bored and create animation on those things. There was no internet in those days, my collection was painstakingly hand collected from each operator’s station. But by the 90s there was no longer any way to play a Vydec disk, so I threw them out, never suspecting they might be a useful addition to a Vydec museum some day.
Anyway, here I am today, barely conversant in Mac, happily typing straight into my blog. My fingers are constantly reaching for all my macros, and Word’s built-in keyboard bells and whistles, which is frustrating and annoying, but that’s because I use them every day keeping my finger memory alive. Once I retire and use only my Mac, that will stop. I see myself traveling really light, and no longer even owning a desktop computer. And I do have a word processing program on the Mac anyway. It’s a free office download that is perfectly adequate for my needs (I would have downloaded Word for Mac but the reviews for it were terrible).
So, these days I hardly use word processing programs. I write directly into my blog, or I’m in email writing brilliant thoughts to somebody that get cut and paste into my blog. Holy crap. Look at me keep up with technology!
One of the most regrettable losses was my collection of Vydec (http://www.ricomputermuseum.org/Home/equipment/vydec-1800) animation. I searched the internet for Vydec and Vydec operator, but nothing comes up. It occurs to me now that I was really remiss for never taking any pictures of me and my fellow Vydec operators in our natural setting. It is lost to history.
The Vydecs I used were huge consoles. They were NOT those cute little desk machines with a slim smiling model standing next to them, that come up on a search. And there were big rooms of these consoles. Oh, I've worked at small companies that had just one or two Vydecs, but the large law firms had huge rooms of them with shifts around the clock. Many times you just sat down to start your shift picking up where the previous operator left off, just sat down and threw the printer paper in for the next page, or continued revising right on the screen where he/she left off. The machine was large and noisy and hot and surrounded your body. None of my image searches turned up a proper Vydec. You could see upper bodies if you were standing up, but once you sat down the other operators disappeared. All you saw was your console, unless you did a back bend or slid your chair out to converse, which we often did. One operator I remember wore the closest to a bathing suit that appropriate work attire would allow, and always brought a change of shirt, because she sweat so much. I was always cold so the Vydec warmth suited me. Anyway, we'd get bored and create animation on those things. There was no internet in those days, my collection was painstakingly hand collected from each operator’s station. But by the 90s there was no longer any way to play a Vydec disk, so I threw them out, never suspecting they might be a useful addition to a Vydec museum some day.
Anyway, here I am today, barely conversant in Mac, happily typing straight into my blog. My fingers are constantly reaching for all my macros, and Word’s built-in keyboard bells and whistles, which is frustrating and annoying, but that’s because I use them every day keeping my finger memory alive. Once I retire and use only my Mac, that will stop. I see myself traveling really light, and no longer even owning a desktop computer. And I do have a word processing program on the Mac anyway. It’s a free office download that is perfectly adequate for my needs (I would have downloaded Word for Mac but the reviews for it were terrible).
So, these days I hardly use word processing programs. I write directly into my blog, or I’m in email writing brilliant thoughts to somebody that get cut and paste into my blog. Holy crap. Look at me keep up with technology!
Ship of Fools
This entry is for any Mothership friends who happen to find their way here. You know who you are.
"Mothership" is my personal euphimism for "leap of faith,"a common theme in my drawings. I lived most of my life not only on the edge, but falling off it...
... and those that offered their hand to me on those rough and ragged edges are part of my heart always, and I'm here for you too and will always care. You know who you are.
"Mothership" is my personal euphimism for "leap of faith,"a common theme in my drawings. I lived most of my life not only on the edge, but falling off it...
Monday, January 3, 2011
An Amazing New Battery Experience
This morning started like any other first work day of the year, except that my car wouldn't start. As inconvenient as that was, if one's car breaks down the best place to do it is in one's own parking space at home. The weather being what it is, I was informed by the towing service that the wait would be an hour. I called work to let them know I'd be late, and I had barely hung up when the tow guy arrived.
He may have been an idiot savant, I'm not sure. Several times I wished I had a cell phone that worked at home (and I will be getting one this month!!) so I could record this guy. I told him I was a little freaked out because this is the first time I ever had a car with a chip in the key and I was afraid the chip had gone out. He put my key in the ignition, turned on the lights and saw they came on weakly. That told him it was the battery. Genius. I will definitely remember that trick the next time my car won't start. Then he dove under the panel inside the car, came out and told me what he did there was check the battery setting to make sure it would automatically save my settings. Wow, was I impressed.
I told him how impressed I was with his towing service so far and he started telling me the entire local history of towing. Apparently his shop has won awards and beat out all the local competition, and he started listing off all the local towing yards that had once existed and no longer do. In my head I was going "oh my god, I've run into my doppleganger in the towing industry." He started telling me he has been up since 5 am and he's really tired and this job was really better than the last job. I asked him what his last job was like and he just repeated, "this job is better." I kind of got the image of him working on a semi in a monsoon. I was reminded of my own complaining about the last document I just worked on.
I could relate to this guy's struggle through the underbelly of the towing world to the heights of the towing elite. He has towed everybody. He's impounded the stars. He towed 4 presidents. He could easily do this in his sleep, and pretty much did, mentioning several times how tired he was. I have been known to wake myself up swaying at the keyboard, myself. While he's telling me these tall tales he was also explaining why his batteries are better than anyone else's. I tried to tell him he lost me at nickel and cadmium, but I'm sure he's right, it really makes a difference.
He recommended if I ever needed to use battery cables to turn on the lights first. This will prevent, for example a charge from a big towing truck, overloading the circuit and burning out any small components of the computer. Yeah, I'll remember that. Then he brought out some wires and started attaching them to the battery and I asked him if he was going to turn on the lights first? No, because he was only taking measurements from the engine. He said the funniest things, but he was funny the way Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man was funny - he didn't get the point of humor. But when he recommended something I told him I always follow the recommendations of competent people, and he did appreciate that.
Then he showed me the printout of the tests of my car's engine and pointed to each graph and chart and said, "this tells me your *blah blah* is like new," and enumerated various engine parts and how and why they were still "like new." Yay, my 5 year old car is like brand new and as I said before, my credit union rocks!!
He may have been an idiot savant, I'm not sure. Several times I wished I had a cell phone that worked at home (and I will be getting one this month!!) so I could record this guy. I told him I was a little freaked out because this is the first time I ever had a car with a chip in the key and I was afraid the chip had gone out. He put my key in the ignition, turned on the lights and saw they came on weakly. That told him it was the battery. Genius. I will definitely remember that trick the next time my car won't start. Then he dove under the panel inside the car, came out and told me what he did there was check the battery setting to make sure it would automatically save my settings. Wow, was I impressed.
I told him how impressed I was with his towing service so far and he started telling me the entire local history of towing. Apparently his shop has won awards and beat out all the local competition, and he started listing off all the local towing yards that had once existed and no longer do. In my head I was going "oh my god, I've run into my doppleganger in the towing industry." He started telling me he has been up since 5 am and he's really tired and this job was really better than the last job. I asked him what his last job was like and he just repeated, "this job is better." I kind of got the image of him working on a semi in a monsoon. I was reminded of my own complaining about the last document I just worked on.
I could relate to this guy's struggle through the underbelly of the towing world to the heights of the towing elite. He has towed everybody. He's impounded the stars. He towed 4 presidents. He could easily do this in his sleep, and pretty much did, mentioning several times how tired he was. I have been known to wake myself up swaying at the keyboard, myself. While he's telling me these tall tales he was also explaining why his batteries are better than anyone else's. I tried to tell him he lost me at nickel and cadmium, but I'm sure he's right, it really makes a difference.
He recommended if I ever needed to use battery cables to turn on the lights first. This will prevent, for example a charge from a big towing truck, overloading the circuit and burning out any small components of the computer. Yeah, I'll remember that. Then he brought out some wires and started attaching them to the battery and I asked him if he was going to turn on the lights first? No, because he was only taking measurements from the engine. He said the funniest things, but he was funny the way Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man was funny - he didn't get the point of humor. But when he recommended something I told him I always follow the recommendations of competent people, and he did appreciate that.
Then he showed me the printout of the tests of my car's engine and pointed to each graph and chart and said, "this tells me your *blah blah* is like new," and enumerated various engine parts and how and why they were still "like new." Yay, my 5 year old car is like brand new and as I said before, my credit union rocks!!
Saturday, January 1, 2011
1/1/11
Wow. It will never again be 1/1/11. I wonder how many other bloggers or check writers around the world realized that at just the moment they wrote it? It was a “wow” moment for me. There was nothing going around the internet about it or anything. I just kind of wrote it and went Oh!
I started the new year off realizing this blog started at birth. This is the book I have always been writing since I learned to write. I have been seeking my whole life for “what relevance does my story have?” For what purpose am I writing it or even living it? I finally realized, it has no relevance or purpose! It is just what I do. I write because I think. I live because I breath. But here’s the cherry on top: if I ever DO become relevant, if anyone anywhere at any time wants to find out more about me for any reason, even after I’m dead, well, here it is, my whole life story, written by the person who lived it, right here forever on the internet! Possibly to float in obscurity forever, or maybe to collect a cult following in the Year 3015, when Chinese anthropologists in an ancient dig in an African desert discover some old internet pipes, revive Google, and co-incidentally also cause a global Facebook climax. Ooh!
So, my blog finally has a new purpose, which is basically no purpose at all! If you are reading it, you are getting cheated, because all you are getting is what’s on my mind, which basically has no social relevance whatsoever, and possibly not even any redeeming attribute. I can barely stand to think the thoughts that are on my mind, and if not for writing they would never make it out of my mind, so be forewarned that you are reading my mind’s trash, all the stuff that would leave my mind and the world forever if I didn't write it down. Ok, here we go. Are you ready?? (In southern Baptist preacher style) - Are you READY for what’s ON MY MIND!?
I’ll tell you what’s on my mind. Men. I would like to have one in my life.
So, I’ll tell you about them, as they come to mind.
John was my first. I loved him so madly I wanted to create another one of him, which was apparently something he ran into a lot. For example, women would come up to him and kiss him while we were walking down the street holding hands. I would ask him, “who was that?” He wouldn’t know. You could fill a room with women he didn’t know. Well, it was the “free love” days. Anyway, I ended up with a hysterical pregnancy after he broke up with me. I was in Canada at the time, and the Canadian socialized medical psychiatrists wanted to make a study of me and I went running outta there in a panic.
That’s the beginning and the end. There’s a whole middle, of course. I’m trying to think of meeting John for the first time, but there just wasn’t one, which makes sense because the boundaries between us, where he began and I ended, were blurry. It’s like he created me. But my earliest moment of recollection of knowing who he was, was when he was taking pictures of Lary.
Lary lived in our dorm at the time, girls upstairs, guys downstairs. John didn’t live in the dorm, he would just show up there in the dorm lounge like every student would. There was a piano and couches, and it was a place to hang out near the cafeteria. Lary would play jazz piano in the lounge sometimes, and John, who always had a camera, came into the lounge one day while Lary was playing. He jumped up on the seat, on top of the piano, did all sorts of shenanigans taking pictures. Lary just kept playing. One day my roommate and I were sitting on a bench outside of Lary’s dorm room. Lary was inside behind the window working on some art piece. We waved but he didn’t notice, so we waved harder and started laughing. His window was open, but he didn’t hear us. We waved and giggled at him like idiots for about 20 minutes, but he never looked up. So, watching John practically crawl all over Lary while he was playing the piano was pretty memorable, and people began to gather and "groove" on it.
It was a very small campus. I did not realize at the time I applied to this art college (I was just looking for a way to leave home) that it was known as a school for rich kids. My roommate was rich. But it was a very small campus of about 500 students, all studying art. And I was doing a drawing assignment one day on this small campus when John came over, stood a while, complimented my drawing, then sat down next to me and we maybe engaged in some idle chitchat, I don’t remember. He left after a few minutes. It was an unremarkable event that I most likely would not have ever remembered again if not for what happened some time later. And, I’m not sure if it was weeks or years later, honestly.
… and I’m realizing this could get to be a long story that will have to be continued.
I started the new year off realizing this blog started at birth. This is the book I have always been writing since I learned to write. I have been seeking my whole life for “what relevance does my story have?” For what purpose am I writing it or even living it? I finally realized, it has no relevance or purpose! It is just what I do. I write because I think. I live because I breath. But here’s the cherry on top: if I ever DO become relevant, if anyone anywhere at any time wants to find out more about me for any reason, even after I’m dead, well, here it is, my whole life story, written by the person who lived it, right here forever on the internet! Possibly to float in obscurity forever, or maybe to collect a cult following in the Year 3015, when Chinese anthropologists in an ancient dig in an African desert discover some old internet pipes, revive Google, and co-incidentally also cause a global Facebook climax. Ooh!
So, my blog finally has a new purpose, which is basically no purpose at all! If you are reading it, you are getting cheated, because all you are getting is what’s on my mind, which basically has no social relevance whatsoever, and possibly not even any redeeming attribute. I can barely stand to think the thoughts that are on my mind, and if not for writing they would never make it out of my mind, so be forewarned that you are reading my mind’s trash, all the stuff that would leave my mind and the world forever if I didn't write it down. Ok, here we go. Are you ready?? (In southern Baptist preacher style) - Are you READY for what’s ON MY MIND!?
I’ll tell you what’s on my mind. Men. I would like to have one in my life.
So, I’ll tell you about them, as they come to mind.
John was my first. I loved him so madly I wanted to create another one of him, which was apparently something he ran into a lot. For example, women would come up to him and kiss him while we were walking down the street holding hands. I would ask him, “who was that?” He wouldn’t know. You could fill a room with women he didn’t know. Well, it was the “free love” days. Anyway, I ended up with a hysterical pregnancy after he broke up with me. I was in Canada at the time, and the Canadian socialized medical psychiatrists wanted to make a study of me and I went running outta there in a panic.
That’s the beginning and the end. There’s a whole middle, of course. I’m trying to think of meeting John for the first time, but there just wasn’t one, which makes sense because the boundaries between us, where he began and I ended, were blurry. It’s like he created me. But my earliest moment of recollection of knowing who he was, was when he was taking pictures of Lary.
Lary lived in our dorm at the time, girls upstairs, guys downstairs. John didn’t live in the dorm, he would just show up there in the dorm lounge like every student would. There was a piano and couches, and it was a place to hang out near the cafeteria. Lary would play jazz piano in the lounge sometimes, and John, who always had a camera, came into the lounge one day while Lary was playing. He jumped up on the seat, on top of the piano, did all sorts of shenanigans taking pictures. Lary just kept playing. One day my roommate and I were sitting on a bench outside of Lary’s dorm room. Lary was inside behind the window working on some art piece. We waved but he didn’t notice, so we waved harder and started laughing. His window was open, but he didn’t hear us. We waved and giggled at him like idiots for about 20 minutes, but he never looked up. So, watching John practically crawl all over Lary while he was playing the piano was pretty memorable, and people began to gather and "groove" on it.
It was a very small campus. I did not realize at the time I applied to this art college (I was just looking for a way to leave home) that it was known as a school for rich kids. My roommate was rich. But it was a very small campus of about 500 students, all studying art. And I was doing a drawing assignment one day on this small campus when John came over, stood a while, complimented my drawing, then sat down next to me and we maybe engaged in some idle chitchat, I don’t remember. He left after a few minutes. It was an unremarkable event that I most likely would not have ever remembered again if not for what happened some time later. And, I’m not sure if it was weeks or years later, honestly.
… and I’m realizing this could get to be a long story that will have to be continued.
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