Peers, Petroleum and Peter

Ah, vacation at last... a whole week of doing as little as possible. We’ll see how long that lasts. Oh, and the word of the week is paraphernalia.

June 21 – Digging Downstairs

 A good portion of time today was spent on two things: digging through the basement storage to clear some room, and working on a radio drama script( the initial rough )to be fleshed out as the week goes on. The basement thing went fairly well; I was down there for well past four hours finding things, re-packing other things into smaller boxes and generally figuring out what stays and what will go. The go-pile is unfortunately composed of things mostly with little intrinsic( or sentimental )value, so disposing of them at the local swap meet down the hill is probably my best bet – even eBay won’t net much for most of it.

One of the things I won’t be cutting down too much on is my book collection, though I have been very good in the last year in NOT collecting much of anything, despite my nagging hindbrain seeking more wordage. I managed NOT to browse BookCloseouts.com much at all, ignoring the incredible prices on hardcovers by simply telling myself that I only collect paperbacks to save on space... and ignoring the fact that the things will fall apart all too soon with their acid-based paper. You can’t win, really – I’ll have to re-read my collection and commit it all to memory within the next twenty years before it all degrades.

June 22 - A Dying Art?

After dropping my dad off at work for noon today, I killed some time before my doctor’s appointment by browsing around Value Village. I managed to score another A&W glass mug( I’m up to three now )for my collection, as well as a Honeywell air cleaner in perfect shape! For those of you who have allergies or who really dislike dust, I recommend running one of these in your home; they really cut down on dust / pet hair, and as a bonus they provide white noise to drown out loud upstairs neighbours or nearby traffic. When I was in Niagara, we used to get the PrincessAuto catalogue at work every few months, and I’d enjoy browsing through it for all sorts of one-off deals – I managed to score 6 UPS batteries dirt-cheap, and they’ve been running well for years now. You never know what you’ll find there; reminds me of a place called Capital Iron here in Victoria, which also stocks all sorts of cool eclectic paraphernalia.

Brian sent me a link today about how the days of the novelist are numbered – bad news for my future career in writing. Thanks, Brian... that made me spend more than a few hours over at the Mountain Bean today, finishing off the first draft of a radio drama / podcast script that I’ve been working on all week. If I don’t have a future in print media, then I can ensure I keep my fingers in more than a few puddles in case one or two of them dry up – plus I might wrangle some voice-acting time in there too.

June 23 - Food and MIT

I’m not much of a cook per se, just one who can prepare basic meals in a minimum of time and who’s had to learn to make do with less since I can’t deal well with higher-fat foods for the last few years. Which in a way is good, as it’s healthier by far. So I’m always looking for ways to cut down on my prep time while still maintaining some tasty tricks in the pantry – one of the places I’ve surfed to of late is TheStoneSoup.com, where there’s a lot of great basic and intermediate advice for feeding yourself. One of the best things about the site just came out: a huge FREE e-cookbook, with meals based on no more than 5 ingredients and less than 10 minutes cook time each. How’s that for both simple and fast meals!

Since I was a kid, I’ve always wondered what it would have been like to go to MIT; I thought all you needed was to be really, really smart and you’d end up there. Shows what I knew back then; now I find out that you can study MIT coursework online for FREE, though it doesn’t grant you a degree of any kind. Still, it’s fascinating to be able to browse through some of the most cutting-edge coursework on the planet. Maybe I’ll see if they want to take me up on my study of smacking your knee to the nose: ever done that? It hurts, and can it happen again randomly? I’m sure a few dozen test subjects and a research grant would prove illuminating on the subject, as well as painful.

June 24 - Social Life

It’s strange how Life Stages work as we age – from forming our first social circles in childhood, to more complex relationships as we turn into adults and from there things just seem to go all over the place. Some people follow the traditional pattern of work, kids, retirement to the letter, others take stage Left and head away from the traditional model as fast as they can. Most of the rest of us are in between somewhere, be it for better or worse. You might enjoy a thorough look at this theory of life stages, which I admit will be too complex for some, but it provides food for thought and analyzing your own stage in life. For myself, where I am right now works for me, though I think I’d be far happier if I could just get rid of the need for this pesky day job and so focus on things that I want to do with my time. Five years from now, that may actually be attainable – we’ll see how my personal plans go from here on.

As I’ve been doing all week, today was another relaxing mix of long-dormant shows on DVD, some TV shows I’ve recorded but not found the time to watch, plus reading on the balcony in the sun( sorta; it’s been so-so this week )and a daily trip over to The Mountain Bean in the afternoon. I’ve mixed in some games as I see fit( Fallout 3 mostly )and of course there’s always time for a snooze outside – I think that’s been the best part, as it feels all the more satisfying when the howling down a few balconies away takes its own nap for the day. Dogs and condos don’t mix, and I think this one’s days are numbered, as it howls loudly at the open( !! )door of its absent owner’s condo for long hours every... single... day. Poor thing.

June 25 - Finding An Audience

You heard it here first, folks: the future of media may be... micro-media instead of the much-hyped idiom of mass-media  that’s been the way of things for the last few decades. Instead of media being blasted out to millions to chew on en masse, things in the future seem to be trending towards assembling an audience, akin to old stage performances: a limited audience, in a way. You’ll be able to simply pick what you want to watch and read, with programs helping you find similar things of interest and organizing them for you, akin to GoogleTV. Most authors will build up their audiences slowly via blogs, word of mouth and the occasional press release helped along by major websites or the like. Having an audience of thousands instead of millions may just make the Fame Game fade away, as Hollywood realizes finally that the world is changing. Again.

Here’s what I’m talking about: remember the old Dungeons and Dragons TV cartoon series? Well, I just found it has a connection to one of my favourite writers: Mark Evanier, who worked on such things as the comic Groo The Wanderer and the Thundaar The Barbarian TV cartoon. Being able to write humour for decades is a skill few can keep sharp, but Evanier’s wit remains razor( yet gentle )after all this time. I especially like the way he managed to work puns into many of the Groo comic plotlines; good ones too!

June 26 - Thoughts

Instant gratification is the name of the game these days: Betty White recently said that the old Password show failed in a recent reboot because of the modern audience’s short attention span. Mind you, a young blogger felt the need to respond to Betty White’s comments here, and he has some good points too.  Will the New Now quickly begin to change to become ‘Can you keep up with me?’ instead of ‘are you a solid thinker?’ I hope not, because multitasking is a great skill, it can’t substitute for the learned skill of decision making and the sharpening of the minds behind those actions.

Today on my FBook status I posted this:

1.5 days of vacation remaining... 1,298.5 days of things other than work I'd still like to be doing. 182 days until Christmas. And an unknown number of days until retirement, when all of the above will be mainly meaningless... who's counting again?

It just came to me, as I was sitting there in the afternoon browsing the web out on the balcony... that we spend most of our lives doing things we’d rather not be doing, in order to do the things we WOULD rather be doing. Money of course, is a major factor, but then so is fear: of failure, among other things. Myself, I’ve seen how money can’t buy happiness, and some of the happier people I’ve seen are the poorest materially – they know what they want to do in life, and gave up the frivolities that other people see as necessities. When we’re wrapped up only in what we know, we can’t see what we really want...

June 27 – Peerage

As I sat in the window of The Mountain Bean today, I saw many vehicles pass by, almost all of them status symbols of one kind or another. Giant GMC trucks with grilles the size of bathtubs, slab-sided giant Hummers, tiny svelte sports cars with their tops down and fancy SUV’s with more space inside than your average minivan. All of these driven by lone drivers, perfectly clean and immaculate – all of them screaming ‘I have money and the time to have my expensive car washed every day, nyah-nyah!’ to every passerby. What’s the point? Makes me glad I don’t have a peer group out here to keep up with!

The last word on oil spills comes from... Kevin Costner? Strange as it may seem, it looks like the actor’s experience on Waterworld may have paid off after all: He’s come up with a revolutionary way to help radically speed up the BP Petroleum oil disaster cleanup efforts. Who would have thought he could go from Hollywood disaster to disaster cleanup so easily? Kudos to him for taking a serious stance on helping to stem the flow of what is shaping up to be the worst environmental disaster in recent earth history.

I’m updating this on a Monday, as I felt my vacation really only just ended this morning – despite the fact that I worked yesterday, I was by myself and it wasn’t that busy, so I don’t count it. Off tomorrow though!