Tomorrow
Posted by nopa in Ruminating on June 23rd, 2009
I’m currently riding an Amtrak train from Kzoo back to the other side of the state to buy a van from my Mom. I have access to the complete internet because my phone works as a broadband-speed modem (even while traveling 80mph in a giant metal tube), I have multiple weeks worth of music in my pocket that I’m listening to (including such trash-pop icons such as Kelly Clarkson, Peaches, and Lady GaGa), and after I’m done with this post, I’m going to read about What to Expect when I’m expecting (or, my wife in this case).
I’ve been thinking about what it’s going to mean to be a father a lot lately, as is probably expected from someone who recently realized that he’s definitely, for sure, not sterile. Will I be a good father? Will I be able to help this little bundle of cells that is, as I type, growing “arm nubs” become a generally well adjusted, contributing member of society? Will I have any frame of reference to discuss anything with my child? That’s the big one there… I’m terrified that I won’t know what to say, how to say it, or what important things I need to listen to. I’m sure that throughout my childhood and adolescence I gave my parents all sorts of clues as to what was actually going on in my life and I’m sure that my interests made it increasingly difficult for them to talk to me.
Oh sure, when I was younger all I wanted to know about was dinosaurs and explosions in movies. But after about 9, I wanted to know not if Messrs. Stallone, Schwarzenegger, or Van Damme would be O.K., but rather what ratio of various explosive substances made it so that they were O.K.. I didn’t want to know just how to play a video game, but I wanted to read the entire DOS/Windows manual (and I did. No really. On vacation. Because I’m cool). I fear that I’m going to become the old and jaded out of touch parent that (I always felt that) my parents were.
All in all, of course, they really did a good job by me. They let me learn my lessons in my own way, in my own time (sometimes in my own lots and lots and lots of time), and I just want to make sure that I’m going to be able to do that for my little Baby K.
-Jon
Still Thinking…
Posted by nopa in Uncategorized on June 10th, 2009
I’m still trying to figure out exactly what I’m going to be trying to do here. I think that I may, in fact, retire the blog to start a new one with a purpose that is more than just listening to myself try to be witty. Except, that’s all the new one would be with a so-called mission statement, so that’s kinda pointless, and I’d loose many years worth of archives. So we’ll see. But more than that, right now, I’m thinking about how in the world I’m going to try to keep myself organized.
I have a habit of sending myself notes about things that I want to follow up on. Ideas that I might want to follow through on. Crazy ass shit I see on the street I don’t want to forget. The thing is, I send this stuff all into my e-mail, and then I don’t really go through it anymore after that. It’s not organized except as being labeled as notes to myself. I’ve thought about implimenting a personal database of schtuff but devonThink and Circus Ponies Notebook were lacking a key feature. The ability for me to add crap easily, while on the go, and look it up when I was bored. Meaning: they didn’t sync with my phone.
Thank the good lord for Evernote. Mobile app? Check. Tags? Check. Ability to search images for text for later searching? Check. Magic? Check.
-Jon
P.S. Holy crap. To do lists within notes? Sync’d to-do lists from my phone to the web to my computer has been a dream. A wild fantasy. Good crap. I might be in love.
Dreamweaver
Posted by nopa in Uncategorized on May 16th, 2009
I Had some seriously strange dreams last night. The first was that I was in the Veronica Mars universe in ROTC… I was all Army-ing it up when all of a sudden the focus shifted to Wallace Fennel. He was busy getting out of a huey (that’s Army talk for Helicopter) that was hovering over a river. He had on a safety harness and was still clipped on to the chopper when something got caught in a poorly placed series of wheels and gears on the side of the huey and started pulling in the line that was connecting him to the chopper. For some reason he had forgotten he was still attached until the moment when the line went tight… He fought against it, hard, and it finally snapped off him, swung around the pivot point where it was getting pulled from and the carabiner that was attached to his harness came back with incredible force and went right through his helmet and killed him… … in the dream it was extremely graphic and my dream-self puked.
Then I had a dream that B and I were going out of town… we had gotten everything ready to leave, and slept in the car. But then in the morning we had to use the bathroom, so we went inside and the couch was gone. So was the table in the kitchen. So we made out for a few seconds, then my dream self realized that the furniture was missing and I started to freak out. At which point B ran upstairs, I followed… and of course we were then in my house from high school. We were trying to get it ready to sell, and our realtor was there — crying.
I’m not sure what it means, but I’m pretty sure it means that I had some messed up subconscious that likes to mess with my conscious self.
-Jon
Clichéd Open Letter to The Heroes Creative Team
Posted by nopa in Boob Tube, Emote!, Geek Out, Rants & Raves on May 5th, 2009
Dear Mr. Kring, etc.,
I know the whole, “Open Letter” thing is now so common it’s a joke. I’m also confident I’m not the first to voice my disapproval of Heroes of late but, dammit, I just can’t keep it in anymore. Mr. Kring, you’re killing your show.
First off: why, oh why, can you just not follow the rules you’ve set? You start off with a few people having abilities, all of them seemingly getting them from their parents. Only, if they get the same ability (Matt Parkman, Sylar) or a different one is totally arbitrary and serves only the plot. But then, why does Parkman suddenly get the crazy eyes and painting ability. He didn’t even get it from anything. Apropos of nothing, suddenly he was “a prophet.” Then he stops painting, but we don’t know if he can’t or doesn’t. So, what is it? Does he see the future? Does he not? Was it a weird manifestation of swine flu?
Second: If you make a character have strong morals, extreme ethics, and the ability to take any other ability… don’t you think he’d do something about loosing the girl he loves in a horrible dystopian future as a prisoner? Maybe he could take his time-traveling friend’s ability so that he can go save her? No? Ok, how about get his time-traveling friend to take him to the future to help? No? Maybe… mourn? Even just mention her… to anyone… ever. No? Ah-ha! I get it! Having a character make any fucking sense is apparently anathema to you and yours. Asshole.
The biggest thing I’ve been having a problem with is your immortal characters. And not just the cheerleader. Let me ask you this, why don’t you give your story some sort of emotional weight by killing off a character? What? Oh, Veronica Mars? You want to use the Veronica Mars defense? Ok, how’s about the “Who Gives a Crap” gambit? You haven’t heard of that one? Ok, it goes like this. No one gives a crap if you kill off a character you introduced that season that has no moral center and is, frankly, mostly annoying. Any other characters that you introduced only to die before you could make them interesting enough for us to care? Nope, we don’t care about them either. You have a huge cast of really interesting characters that people love. They would be well-served to be thinned out like the deer population. Kill off a few so that the others can thrive.
No, seriously. I stopped caring about these people because they are immortal like Jack Bauer; except it’s a very different show you’re running. Sure, Jack Bauer has testes the size of an elephant and can yell hard enough to get that vein in his forehead this close to popping; but he’s the show. He is the show. After 6 full seasons and most of a seventh, if he died, it’s because they were ending the show. In the universe of 24 if Jack Bauer wasn’t alive to be in the right place at the right time to do something just outside the rules, the terrorists would win. Always. In Heroes you have a bunch of people who, literally, have super powers. Show us that they are, in fact, human. Kill one and let them be dead. Don’t bring back Ali Larter to be her heretofore unknown third identical. Or, if you do, MAKE IT INTERESTING! Have Nathan have some sort of crisis of conscience about screwing this girl that looks just like that other girl he screwed. Have ice-girl have the thought that maybe Nathan isn’t really into her, but he’s really just trying to relive the crazy Vegas weekend he had with her twin that she never met. Maybe just have someone else comment on the fact that it’s really screwed up and nearly incestuous that he’s just going around boinking the triplets-McSuper.
Oh, and killing off Nathan in the Volume 5 finale? Yeah. Would’ve loved it if you had let him just, for the love of all that’s holy, let him stay dead. But no, that just isn’t good enough for you. Suddenly Matt Parkman is able to make Sylar forget who he is to the point that he’s no longer a threat. What? Where was that four seasons ago? By giving Parkman’s ability that kind of power (weird sentence, but that was seriously the best I could do) is to make the previous everything-that-has-happened-on-your-show meaningless. It could have ended the first time Matt met Sylar. Maybe stretching it out to the third… sure. But… four seasons? Blow me.
I’ll give “Volume” 5 three episodes. If you don’t let Bryan Fuller do what he does best (and that would be: Make a show that contains insane fantastical elements make sense(Pushing Daisies anyone?)) we won’t be on speaking terms.
-Jon
New Years Resolution
Posted by nopa in Bedtime, Random, Ruminating on May 2nd, 2009
So What if I’m a little late on my resolution. I’m here, I’m… wait… no… that’s not the right turn of phrase. I’m here, and I’m going to make my resolution late or not. I resolve to write more, write with a purpose and not just post things that follow this basic pattern:
- Bitch
- Bitch
- Bitch
- Mention that I pooped today
- Bitch
- More poop talk
- Bitch
- And I fart
As interesting as those posts can be, they just get… well… repetative. And lots of talking about brown. Anywyas, I’ve got a lot of work to do on the house, lots of things to do in the yard (speaking of poop — I don’t think you can comprehend how much crap my dog can create — I’m speaking 1/2 his body weight in a day), and I need to start exercising again. I’ve been a bad, bad boy when it comes to exercise. But… that’s another post. For tonight, I will vamoosh, but blog, I will be back sooner than later. That much, I promise.
-Jon
The Things She Does
Posted by nopa in Family, The Things She Does on March 8th, 2009
Not as excited as I look.
I love my wife. I really do. It’s why I let her do things like this to me. There are times, however, that it gets to be too much. Those are the times I think about trying to fight her off to stop her from doing the awful things she does to me… but then, I get tired. And I let her do this. I can’t decide if I should make a website about the things she does to me or just make it part of this place. We’ll see.
-Jon
Still Searching
So, I’m still searching for the right things to say (or would that be the write things to say?!? Ohhhhh!!!!!!!! Boo yah!!!!) But, in the meantime, I had a dream that I’d like to share.
I was on the run with B and someone else. Using a grappling hook, we managed to make it to the top of a bullet train, and so there we sat… on the roof of a bullet train. It was night time, and I was tired — but I was very nervous about falling off the train — because that would hurt a lot. So, then, my eyes got really tired and I couldn’t stare at all the passing trees (that was my actual thought in the dream), and I lay down on my back next to my wife, who was staring at the beautiful night sky.
We sat there while I was giving her a lecture on the various constellations; constellations like “Mary Tyler Moore” — the well known constellation that the Aztecs saw where a woman was throwing her hat in the air. Also “Jack Sprat” — the lesser known pair of constellations of a very thin man next to a woman eating a turkey.
Suddenly, I fell asleep and thought that I was falling off the train but as I rolled, I realized that the bullet train was much wider than I though and that I could roll back and forth with no problem. Then there was a sudden, and inexplicable scene change.
The next thing that happened in my dream involved a giant invading French army led by president Nicolas Sarkozy who had employed ever weapon at his disposal to take over Canada. Apparently every weapon included the title character from the Playstation game God of War, Kratos. So, there I was, in my dream, watching the French try to take over Canada using the extra-fictional God of War from a video game (who has two swords attached to his arms connected by chains — which, at this point, he was using more for locomotion rather than to attack) when I suddenly realized that I was watching all of this from a giant command center and that I was in charge of the joint US/Canuck forces fighting off Sarkozy.
The last thing I remember is watching Kratos on a monitor attacking a tank. Then all of a sudden everyone in the room was barking and whining like my dog. And, a couple minutes later I was watching my dog poop outside — only in real life, not in the dream.
-Jon
Well, Then That Happened
So… Depending on how you look at things — I either just turned 29, or I’ve got about seven hours and 40 minutes. Either way… I’ve got 364 more days until I’m 30 (a fact which my wife — awesome and amazing as she is — will no doubt not allow me to forget). Frankly — I’m not actually all that bothered by getting old. I mean, I certainly don’t want to make a huge deal out of it, and I’m not so keen on having a huge blow-out party to celebrate my age next year, but it’s not a big thing weighing heavy on my mind.
For, I am a kid. Not just a kid at heart, but like, I’m a man-child who can’t get his fill of video games and toys. I like my dogs because they are easy to screw with (and I’ll be damned if I don’t learn to fly the R/C helicopter well enough to chase them), and they are kinda dim-witted. Yes, I am the playground bully of my house. But I’m the playground bully with all the cool toys.
Anyways, I’ve been thinking about life a lot lately, and things I want to do, have to do, should do, and… well… mostly right now I just want to play with my helicopter. Too bad it’s charging.
-Jon
P.S. Yup: this is what happens when Jon write on his blog without knowing what he’s going to say before he starts.
Stupid Sleep…
I have been having what can only be described as trouble sleeping. One way or another, I’ve been sleeping less than I want to. First it was the dogs, then it was… well… this. I just don’t get tired for way longer than I want. It’s anoying, yet, I get a lot of TV in.
Anyways, I need to get to bed — my lady is getting all sorts of teeth taken out of her head tomorrow, and I get to play nurse.
-Jon
HOLY CRAP!!!!
I’M SO FREAKING EXCITED!!! I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO HAS A CREEPY OBSESSION WITH CREEPY SOCIALIST ART!!!!!!!
Wow… I’m weird.
-Jon
P.S. Oh. My. God. I need this