Did you ever get to know Bob Ross? Did he ever help you experience the Joy of Painting? Sometimes I miss that man, his warmth and patience, his willingness to explore mistakes as creative input.
I’m happy to see such works as this one that let me know that I wasn’t the only one he touched so deeply.
Sure it is a parody – but they say it is the sincerest form of flattery.
Back in the 90s I listened to a band called Pure, and in my recent attempts to digitize my collection (I’m at the S’s now, hang in there contest entrants!) I have revisited their album entitled Generation 6 Pack.
A witty enough title – I appreciate it more today than I did back then.
Therein lies a song called Denial, that, frankly, nailed a feeling back then. A general growing mistrust of technology and popular culture (yes I know, a rare indie band theme). Listening to it riding through Richmond’s Nature Park this morning caused me to pause: those boys had hit it on the head and, dammit, they were still right!
A decade later and could these words not be written today?
One day I went out walking
To find a butterfly
Screaming in an empty room
A man shot the sky
My heart beating faster
I think I’ll go read my book
The faster we go, the less we know
A book sure sounds good
Denial
Denial
Seems like the faster we go
The less we see
The less that we know
Denial
Passing by the drugstore
I see this girl inside
Flippin’ through a magazine
To see how she should be
I stare a little closer
No one seems to mind
That sad-happy look she’s giving up for a while
Denial
Denial
Seems like the faster we go
The less we see
The less that we know
Talk about denial
Seems like the bigger the lie
The more you try
And the less you ask why
Denial
Heading down the seawall
Going back to my home
I see a friend who’s always hurtin’
We talk for a while
Smiles are always nervous
Chances are that we’ll laugh
Spill our guts, hurry up
Time’s running fast
Denial
Now were they just precient, or has the world not really changed in a decade. We only get 10 of these thing, max, and have we really used this one to its fullest potential?
Oh, one more thing. This is Bike To Work Week in Vancouver. if you’re local, consider trying it out.
Yes indeed, we’re making a list and checking it twice. I wrote previously about a neat interface on the Internet for finding name frequency data at a site called the NameVoyager, and I still value the site’s data. But another site has taken things a step further, and not only provided frequency data but also recommendations. You can pick a few seed names and see what else comes up. It is called Nymbler (thanks for the tip Darcy!)
Want to see our short list? Yeah, me too. We’ve narrowed each sex down to 20 or so names that we don’t dislike. Is our future child’s name on the list? Hard to say. There are a few I really like but Alisa’s nose wrinkles every time I mention them. So those don’t look so viable, if you catch my drift.
Ah, this is the fun part! It is merely deciding the very first and strongest impression your child will make on people, even in their physical absence. No problem.
So back in early fall I was looking for a nice surprise gift for Alisa’s graduation. I knew she wanted a subscription to Us Magazine, so I made a quick little joke about her being able to rot her highly educated brain now that she had graduated. I made a mistake though, I subscribed using an online magazine vendor: MagazineCity. I shopped around a little and found 3 online sites that offered Us, and chose it because it was cheapest, and had no negative reviews that I could fine.
Well hello Google, come index this page, because this is one heck of a negative review!
I was told to expect a delay of 5-6 weeks after paying them before seeing the first issue. There was administrative stuff I knew, and I was sure they were bulk subscribing to Us itself to get the lower rate and so had to wait until Us got its gears in motion.
In early January (5 weeks in) I decided to throw a quick question to their customer service contact just to make sure things were on track. I received an automated email back stating that because I was an international customer and it was a weekly magazine, I should expect a longer wait time as Us was slower in their international deliveries. About 6-8 weeks.
Ouch I thought, 2 months after paying them I could expect my first issue? Maybe saving money wasn’t such a good idea here, though the subscription cost was about half what Us itself wanted. So I decided to see what would happen. I did receive an actual human response to my inquiry a few weeks later (!) stating that my subscription had been submitted very soon after I placed the order, and that I simply had to wait. The customer service rep (Heather) said that if we didn’t see anything by the end of March that I should give their service number a call. “March!” I thought, why would it take that long. That’s just silly, but I kept the email just in case.
I love poetry for its ability to capture ideas, thoughts, and ramblings in simple, succinct texts. This minimalist approach to language can result in great thoughts all crammed in to short little quotes, like this one attributed to poet Edward Arlington Robinson:
The world is not a prison house, but a kind of kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”
It’s a real shame – it really is. My own daughter turned two on May 5th and I didn’t get a chance to blog about it. What’s that? Why didn’t I get that chance? Well, it seems my cable Internet went and got broken on Sunday, the day of her party.
Several visits by the cable provider later and we’re back in action.
So here’s a belated wish going out to my lovely little girl. I assure you pictures of the party and the ceremonial cake sacrifice will follow.