Ones and Zeroes

Stumbled across this:

http://ds106.us/

Then this:

http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/back-to-basics/

Which led to this:

or this:

Open Doors Closed Doors

Did you smell it this past weekend? Were you up early enough? If you woke early this past Saturday morning, in the northeast US anyway, you probably had a certain aroma fill your olfaction caves. This smell was mixed with a cooler than usual air. This smell reminds you of two things: Fall and Football. Yes my friends, both are on their way.

They say early man had a far more sensitive smell than us current homo sapiens. Tis still a powerful sense though isn’t it? How that scent can transport me back to early Saturday mornings at Highland Field in my game day uniform, teams all around: The Johnson Dragons in their yellow and gold, the Decker Vikings in their purple and white, the Oakdale Red Raiders in Red, and your hometown favorite Portage Bears in blue and white (with the only mesh jerseys in the league I might add!). The concession stands are being set up, warm ups commencing, parents pacing, butterflies fluttering not in the air but in stomachs. So many boys and families learning life lessons all under the guide of chasing an oblong ball covered in pigskin. You don’t have to be Archie Bunker to say those were the days. 

Those certainly were the days and this nostalgia hits me every fall. Nostalgia is bittersweet for me because it co-occurs with guilt. Yes, I feel guilty when I yearn for the past because I realize that in some way shape or form I am not appreciating my present. 

As a busy family man though, I don’t have too much time for nostalgia…or guilt, there is too much to do, including the zoo on Sunday. But this Sunday zoo trip we were mixing it up a little. We were meeting a family with two kids ages 9 and 5. My oldest will be 3 in late November. Our two new friends really took a liking to our toddler and had a ball showing him around. I found myself enjoying the freedom of not constantly engaging him and adoring watching him interacting with his new friends. But then it hit me, he is going to have friends and they are going to engage him, they are going to entertain him, make him laugh, play kick the can with him, and play sports with him (should he choose, including possibly Pee-Wee football). And in a flash, the moment became bittersweet, kinda like nostalgia, because while new doors are opening, as they must, some are closing behind us, as they must. 

How good was my Pee Wee football team you ask?

Watson and Crick

I think it was back in junior high school circa early 1980's when I would come home everyday and head straight upstairs to my brother's room (actually a littler larger than a crawl space in the attic) and power up the sofa sized stereo and listen to Led Zeppelin II in it's entirety. While doing this I would just analyze the album cover inside and out, finding something new every day.

Flash forward to present day. I recently did the canvas art thing and made a few from pictures of heavy equipment for my son.

A picture is worth a thousand words and the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

I wonder if he'll like Zeppelin?

On the wall:

Van Morrison

I had a Van Morrison fixation for quite a long time recently. Enough to name my last band Common One after his so-named album.

Here he is at his best. Few things are sublime: the word is overused. This is sublime.

Let It Go

Let It Go

Cast:

Customer
Psychic
Wife of Psychic
Daugther of Psychic - Abby

Setting: Customer enters psychic’s business and pays for a future telling session.

Customer: Hi, I’d like to have my future told please.

Psychic: Velcome. Tank you for comink. $45 please and I tell future. Cash only pleez.

[customer hands over $45]

Psychic: Let us embark to future tellink room.

[psychic parts hanging bead curtain and enters darker room with two chairs on opposite sides of a purply lit gazing ball]

Psychic: Pleez seet. [points to chair]

[customer sits, psychic sits in opposing chair]

Psychic: Before vee get started pleez to tell me vhy you vish to have fortune seen.

Customer: well I met a woman and I want to see if she is the one.

Psychic: Ah, tank you. Let me look. I Stare into dees. I vill see future. Future not clouded. Future clear. Clear as bell. Comink, future comink clearer, I see…

Wife of psychic [blurting in from another set of bead curtains]: Hey Larry did you pick up the dry cleaning!?

Psychic: Excuze pleez. Honey, I am vit customer.

Wife of psychic: But did you pick up the dry cleaning?

Psychic: Honey, vit customer, running business here pleez.

Wife of psychic: It should have had the red blouse in there. I want to wear it to book club tonight. We all read The Notebook. Again but who cares. I think it is better than fifty shades –

Psychic: Honey, pleez. Fortune tellink here. Me and dis man need privacy.

Wife of Psychic: Is it on the back of the door.

Psychic: Yes.

Wife of psychic: Thanks, so you have Abby tonight and you promised to watch Frozen with her and then bake cupcakes and read Beauty And The Beast. Don’t forget.

Psychic: Yes honey. Pleeze to leave now. Thank you.

[customer shifts in chair and harrumphs]

Psychic: Apologies accept pleez. Back to future. Let me stare again into ball, let me see…yes, yes…I am seeink a voman, a voman of great beauty, she is in vedding dress, she is laughink, she is dancink vit man but dees man’s back to me…

[customer, eyes agape, fidgets…]

[child peeks head out from behind bead curtain]

Abby: Daddy, what kind of cupcakes are we making tonight?

Psychic: Abby, vee have spoken about daddy’s verk time. Pleez, dad verking now.

Abby: Can we make chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles?

Psyhic: Abby, dad verking. Pleez, later. [smiles at customer]

Abby: But I need to get things ready. The movie starts at 8 which means we have to mix the cupcakes by seven because they have to bake and then cool and then we have to do the icing and you promised we would rehearse the songs before the movie. We are going to sing during the movie right? You did learn the words right? Daddy?

[Pychic looks at customer]

Customer: Gonna Let It Go are ya?

Psychic: Abby, daddy has learned verds to sonks but vee vill not sink unless you pleez leave.

Abby: But what kind of cupcakes? You like chocolate right daddy? Do you want your favorite icing?

Psychic: Yes, cream cheeze frostink pleez. I do love zee cream cheez frosting.

[customer rolls eyes]

Abbie [screaming]: Mommy, we’re having the chocolate with cream cheese frosting and daddy said he learned the words!!!

[mom rushes in]

Wife of psychic [singing]: Don't let them in, [daughter joins in singing] don't let them see, Be the good girl you always have to be, Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know Well, now they know! Oh and can you do a load of towels tonight?

Psychic: Pleez! Verkink here! No more interruptions!

[Abby and mother leave]

Psychic: Ok, let us get back to future gazink…-

Customer: Never mind. No way in hell I’m getting married!

[customer leaves humming Let It Go]

SNL

You think you are better than me?

Mustache of Light

Are things meant to be? Is there a destiny that works regardless of the supposed free will that humans possess? 

People act as if they have free will when it suits them and wrack it up to destiny when it suits them.

Ahh humans, nothing if not inconsistent.

Well consider what you would think when you are going about your business on a typical Monday night after a long day of work, kids to bed, when the wife says from the top of the stairs, “there’s a bat in our room.” Really? Really bat? I just wanted to do the dishes and go to bed but you are going to hang there in the room where I, my wife, and our 4 month old sleep. The damn dominoes that fell after this: prolonged strategy regarding extermination/execution of bat, adrenaline fueled push broom wielding execution of bat, call to pediatrician, call from department of health, storage of bat in refrigerator next to poppy seed buns, 8:00am handover of bat to testing center, call from department of health advising inconclusive rabies testing due to bat brain (no pun intended) being too “smooshed”, vaccination planned, 3 hour stay at hospital concluding with six shots for me, five for my wife, and two for our four month old...with more shots to come next week.

Wasn’t this just meant to be? How can the events roll out like this so perfectly/imperfectly without them being planned from the beginning of time? Isn’t humanity’s supposed free will forever on the sidelines waiting for a chance to get in the game and do something? The events are out there doing their thing on the field and there isn’t a thing your free will can do from the sidelines. Just sit and watch the game from the bench and hope your ass doesn’t go numb.

I don’t know about the logic of destiny but I do try to be consistent and if this imperfect bat and rabies vaccine is destiny then so is my mustache of light. You see, driving home from the hospital, six Despicable Me band aids on left arm and both legs, baby asleep in the back, toddler quiet and tiring out, I experienced a mustache of light. A car, at just the right distance behind me, at just the right speed, with just the right angle and just the right power of headlight, shining into my side rearview mirrors positioned in just the right way, reflected the light to just the right position above my top lip…to make a mustache of light. For a good 1 or 2 miles or so down the highway I possessed a perfect Magnum PI era mustache of light, glowing, bulbous, stuck above my lip. All the special effects in the world couldn’t have produced a better mustache of light.

So think what you will of destiny. Just be consistent if you believe in it. You can’t have it both ways. If it’s destiny, then it’s destiny all the way down, not a matter of degrees.

Sometimes you are in the Emergency room, sometimes you have a mustache made of light.