Confession of a Gummy Bear Addict

I'm what most people would call an uninformed voter. I lay claim to this description because a.) I don't watch TV, b.) I don't read the newspaper, and c.) I rarely vote for anyone unless I have heard of them (which isn't often). I realize this is an important right and duty of a citizen of this fine country, and that I should take it seriously. But I've got so many more pressing things to do. Like trying to decide which record to play.

The government seems like an extremely complicated thing. I've tried reading articles online about this issue or that issue, but they all require A LOT of background knowledge of both the issue and the "system" that created the issue. This could be the legal system, the criminal system, the economic system (is that a real term?), etc. Local politics are the worst. I have no idea what people are talking about, mostly because city governments sometimes don't look anything like the federal government (which gets the most press and which I know the most about - from high school civics).

So, mostly I'm just running through life without a clue as to how it is run by the wheels of society and its laws. For example, the price of gas. Most people are really frustrated and a little ticked off because it's getting more and more expensive each day. I have no idea what is causing this, but I did come across this post that attempts to explain it in terms I can understand. If I think about this in non-emotional terms, I understand that the world changes and that isn't under my control.

I suppose if I vote for this person or that person, then it will all be better or worse. One thing is certain, though, it won't remain the same. Since I'm a librarian, I suppose I should be able to find some news sources to scour and start to think critically about the points of view they are representing. This might require some background reading on one of those systems I referred to earlier. Then I could spend some time and read up on political candidates and see what they promise and compare it to their earlier efforts. After doing that I could cast a confident vote based on my well-researched opinion and judgment of those vying for employment by me and everyone else. Or I could go re-read The Prisoner of Zenda, instead, and marvel at all of the swordfights and escapism.

I have a few friends who work directly in the field of politics and I mean no disrespect to them. I'm not encouraging laziness or ignoring our responsibilities to society by meaningfully participating in it. Most days, though, I'd rather go running or watch a movie than spend time thinking about why everything is the way it is. I have a tough enough time trying to resist the call of the gummy bear.

Unidentified Creatures in Hawaiian Shirts

I saw two movies this weekend about aliens. One was good and the other was so-so. I won't name the titles, lest I ruin them for anyone. But aliens make for some good speculative fiction, even if it isn't well told. I find that our fascination with other-worldly beings is an expression of hope that we aren't alone in the universe, and that we aren't the worst.

Think about it. The majority of aliens are monsters who try to eat us up. Rarely are they cool beings who want to be our friend or give us hugs, take pictures, and then keep going to their vacation spot on Rigel 4. It must be our predisposition to fear what we don't understand. And we all know that fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to the dark side. So we make our space friends out to be baddies who probably don't have souls and just want to blow us up like some kind of faceless Mongol horde. Their motives are reduced to animalistic instincts for survival and territorial superiority.

If beings contact Earth by direct means, such as flying near it in saucers or whathaveyou, then I wonder if they are bent on evil. We could prepare for the worst. But if another species has perfected interstellar travel, which we haven't (yet), then would they be so predisposed to malevolence? What would NASA do? If we found life on another planet, would we want to just stop and say, "Hey dudes, what's up? We're from Earth; do you like playing cards?" Or would we discover if they posed any kind of credible threat and try to set up shop and figure out some sort of trading scheme that would ultimately benefit us at their expense? That's what the 17th century Dutch would have done.

So, I wonder if those little dudes that came from the skies and found in New Mexico were sinister or not. Did they deserve such bad treatment from us? I bet they were just lost as hell and the dad didn't want to ask for directions, and you know how that goes. Then they find themselves all crashed and dissected. I guess the moral of my story is: always ask for directions when you get the chance!

Something

It's late and I'm tired. But I have an afterthought post.

This evening one of my colleagues and I had a pleasant philosophical discussion about the woes of today's society. It makes me feel like a crusty old curmudgeon when I talk about things these days, as if I've lived many decades of mistakes-filled years leading to a wise, old beard full of white hairs. The truth is that I'm just as dumb as the next twenty-something, but I still calls it like I sees it.

We talked about civilization and how we, as a society today, may not entirely think of others when springing into action. This goes beyond mere selfishness, which we all can agree includes taking forever to get around and making the rest of us miss the previews, but involves people living for themselves. I'm very guilty of this, too.

One of these ideas is making money verses making something of yourself. A lot of decisions made by people, young and old, are made on the account of money and how much we can gain by doing something. It is an end to justify all means. I need to make dolla-dolla bills, y'all, so I can buy my sweet laptop, so I can get online wherever I want, so I can look for the second job I need to score so mo' money, because I needs that HD TV. Well, I don't want to make this into an anti-capitalist rant, or sound like we all need to stop being such consumers. I'm a proud American, after all, and I love the hundred different brands of bottled root beer that our society has made.

However, the idea of making something of ourselves struck me as old-fashioned. My colleague was referring to gaining skills, a trade, wisdom, life, and compassion, through the important institutions of education and service to society. Once we learn how to do something, we are obliged to put it in use for the service of everyone else. We also must learn what's important to do in relation to others and what we like best out of all of that. It's one thing to charge people money, and tons of it, to fix their leaky faucets or represent them in court, it's another to feed off of their misunderstandings and ignorance like greedy extortionists (you hear me credit card companies!). I mean, no one says when they are a little kid, "I want to grow up and profit by exploiting college kids and the elderly with their lack of knowledge of compound interest and global economics."

Life sure isn't as simple as my current beef with Bank of America, but I think we would all be in better shape if we asked ourselves from time to time, how am I making something of myself for me and for others?

The Stage of Death

Has this ever happened to you? You watch a movie and, depending on the subject matter, want to be just like the protaganist. Or you're simply in the mood for whatever has been going on.

For example, Don Juan DeMarco; after watching that, I just want to be a ladies man extraordinaire. Or when I finish watching Singing in the Rain, I want to be a dancer like Gene Kelly. And when bullets stop flying, cars stop smashing and fists stop punching in the Bourne series, I want to tour the world whilst evading the US government.

So, what's it like when I watch something like The Phantom of the Opera? You can bet I want to travel around the catacombs beneath Paris, raising all kinds of hell! Which brings me to the main subject of this post: creepy old theatres.

What's the deal with old theatres and creepiness? They seem to go hand in hand, like peanut butter and bananas, or pretzels and milk. Old theatres have a kind of depressing, lost-innocence, other-worldly, historical mustiness about them. If they haven't been constantly renovated, then at some point they will have been officially forgotten by time and left to the ravages of dust and mildew and paint chips. When it happens, it happens quickly. The elements all break down - the lightbulbs become more dim, the metal finishes fade, the carpet wears thin, and the pictures look evil. It's like some goth kid's dream.

Also, I'm talking about stage theatres, which might have shown some films in their day, but had lots of dramatic or comedic acting played upon them, too. Actors are a notorious profession for having exciting (read: morally questionable) lives. Lots of drama involving the sexes and high principles must have plagued their ranks inside and outside of the theatres. Egos, girlfriends, and money all took part in duels of ambition, lust and greed. There can be no doubt that ghosts often frequent these stages, back rooms and, hopefully, cellars. And those ghosts couldn't have died in a good mood.

So the next time you and some chums are wondering what to do on a cold, dark Saturday night, why not make some cookies and go exploring an old theatre with some flashlights and six hours of horror movies fresh in your brain?

Man, all of those people sure give me the creeps!

Watch that first step

Land 'o Goshen! I saw two prancing deer skitter across the road today on my way to work. This is unusual because they were running through a particularly urban part of town. This is in the Medical Center, where hospital buildings abound and natural wooded areas are scarce. It was like they escaped from a zoo truck or something, because their normal habitat shouldn't involve running across six lanes of traffic and through a CVS parking lot. Poor little guys/gals; I hope they made it home safely, wherever that might be.

I read an article about a pristine natural area just outside of town called Government Canyon. It's a state park and is actually pretty wonderful. It even has areas with hanging moss, precarious ledges and crazy contraptions. The article's author inserted a snarky comment about the prosaic name of the state park and the descriptive natural names of the housing developments on the way out there, fast encroaching - places such as Deer Creek, Deer Trail, Deer Ridge, Pine Trail, Sparrow Field, Eagle Crest, etc. The point of his comment was that the housing developments' names describe the (desired) natural place that they evicted to build tract housing. (Making them two stories with a generous back yard doesn't make them any less of a stamp.) But hey, people have got to live somewhere, right? However, it is silly to think that you are moving out to the country if you are living in a walled and gated community with three hundred other families up to their eyeballs in consumer debt.


I can't judge, however, because I'm sure that every generation that stretches its borders through history faced opposition from people who were very comfortable in the middle of town. It's not that they are moving out there, but that we aren't doing much to compensate for the loss of what once was. In the meantime, though, we should support our state and national parks.

One thing that I have learned from being a librarian is that people don't care about things that are free. They really don't. The other day I was giving out raffle tickets to people on campus to celebrate National Library Week. It was difficult getting people to understand that we were giving away an iPod, for free, no strings attached, all just to draw attention to the library, an embedded resource to campus. One girl in a group acted like she didn't speak English, because she wasn't responding to my offer even though she was looking right at me. One of her friends took her by the arm and cautiously guided her away from me like I was a pervert or something. Well, they didn't win the raffle, needless to say. The same thing goes for parks. They are mostly free, but sometimes charge a minor fee to recoup costs of patrolling and maintenance. If they added some dinosaurs and charged fifty bucks a pop, then I bet people would come and support them by the thousands; but as it is, there usually aren't too many cars in the parking lot.

The lack of company in a park is actually nice, because then they won't distract you from all of those leaves. However, they need attendance to justify their existence. If people keep building houses around them and no one goes, then the houses will take over and twenty years from now everyone will wonder, How come we don't have any parks? Where can we go outside and walk and play? My guess is that we'll have invented a virtual park game for Nintendo Wii and Playstation XII which will totally kick ass and no one will care.

Incredible!

Well, it has been almost a week and a half since the KU men's basketball team won the NCAA national championship tournament. It was twenty years since their last such victory. Jayhawk fans had been waiting a long time.

I can't recall why or when my family became KU supporters. We weren't ever huge sports fans, but we had to root for someone and instead of the other state schools we were 'Hawks people. So, all throughout my youth I watched and cheered with varied interest for KU sports. When it came time to choose a college, I didn't even think about going anywhere else. Sadly, though, school became more important and going to games became less, until I went to almost no basketball games my senior year. The five years after school I would catch them occasionally on TV, but I became less and less enchanted, and I can't explain why.

I moved to San Antonio and, as luck would have it, my institution hosted the final four this year. When KU beat UNC to advance to the finals, my friend Clay said he was coming down with Andy because they got tickets through his life-long buddy, Mike. We got to meet up, which was great, and they had another ticket for me. This was very fortunate and was something I didn't expect to happen. When KU made it to the FF, I figured it would be a shame to watch it on TV when I was in town for it, but how was I going to get tickets? The stars came into alignment and I felt like I did when I first went to school and saw games at Allen Fieldhouse.

Going to a game after so many years made the old memories and feelings rush back and I was again reminded how special KU basketball is to KU people. It was like I was never gone, except that I didn't know the players all that well. I kept up, though, thanks to Clay and Andy. You might think that I am a lucky jerk who didn't deserve to go when so many other rabid fans would have sold their children for a seat. Well, you'd be right. But those fans would be wrong to sell their children.

We had good seats and could see all of the action on the court with ease. We weren't close enough to hear the bounce of the ball or see any sweat fly, though. I won't go into game's details, but in the lead up to when Mario Chalmers hit the game-tying three-pointer, we all went from sad, to tense, to hopeful, to elated, all in about eight seconds. I can't recall a time in my life where I've been to an event at which I jumped up and down and hugged other grown men at the same time. I would have embraced strangers in crimson in blue if I wasn't surrounded by friends. It was terrific. Seeing pictures of Lawrence right after the game tells me that everyone there thought it was terrific, too.

All in all, it was a very fun experience, and my thanks to Clay and Andy, and especially to Mike Lage for coming through with a ticket for someone who didn't deserve one, but who is very appreciative.

Rock, Chalk, Jayhawk!

Expectations

A while ago I went to the mall and saw an Orange Julius stand. It had been a long time since I had stepped foot inside those insidious traps of consumerism and depression, so I had immediate memories of me as a happy child, yet to be jaded by the horribleness of wandering around in an enclosed structure looking for something that isn't found inside (dignity). When I had these memories, I recalled the great taste of the Orange Julius. It was different than anything we could get at a grocery store, so it was always a treat when we conned our parents into buying one. The fact that they didn't always give in made it even more valuable. So, standing at one in my late twenties, I had a giant chasm of time to create this legend in my mind. I was literally salivating at the thought of its creamy orange-ish goodness. But after I bought and tasted it, all of that immediately went away. It tasted like the lady had used cyanide instead of their patented powder. In fact, I threw most of it away because I couldn't stand to swallow it. Also, I didn't want Dead by O.J. on my grave stone.

Admittedly, I rely on my id a little too much. Often I impulsively react to stimulus similar to the above without thinking about the previous circumstances. Or I arrive at unrealistic expectations for something because I really want them to be that way. The first time I visited Italy I hoped that Venice would be exactly like it was in the Sylvester and Tweety cartoons. Boy was I wrong; at the least the part I visited. Had I thought about it like a grown-up and not an eight-year old, then I would have separated real life from a cartoon. But my expectations were dashed and I moped around for a few hours upon arrival. If I could time travel, I would go back and slap that younger version of me. No wait, I would go back to the Venetian era which would fulfill my expectations! Duh.

Sometimes having the wrong expectation can lead to a positive. Like going into a movie and thinking, this will probably be worse than Wild, Wild, West, but I guess I'll go anyway, and then realizing that I, Robot was way better than the previews made it seem. In that case, I wound up liking something that I normally would have thought was a piece of crap if the trailer was made like Superman Returns (which conversely couldn't live up to the hype I had in my mind).

It's tough to settle down the old mind and get a decent set of expectations for something on which you have very little information. When I go to the grocery store, in any country really, I pretty much know what to expect because I've been thousands of times in my life. But I didn't know how to psyche myself up for moving to a different state away from everyone I know. I only had Cast Away as a point of reference. [By the way, my experience has been much better than Tom Hanks'.] Dates are another iffy expectation experience. Having gone on a lot helps, but each person is going to be new and different, and you can't know too much about them unless you read their diary or Facebook profile.

This is why it is important to pay attention to wise-ass remarks made by our elders when we screw up constantly. Remember that old guy in It's a Wonderful Life? When George Bailey was hemming and hawing and being all shy around Mary Hatch, he said, "Why don't you kiss her instead of talking her to death...Oh, youth is wasted on the wrong people!" Well, he was right. They've got the straight dope on how stuff works in life, so we can have a little more knowledge in the can when it comes time for making expectations. Then maybe we won't act like dumb eight-year olds when it comes to impulse buying juice drinks in the mall. Or other important stuff.
I thought the Meteor Crater would be cool like Dinosaurs and Chocolate Milk. But it sucks like Jurassic Park III, Amarillo, TX and rotten egg sandwiches all at the same time.