Category: growing up

Time To Update The Rules

So you know this whole schoolyard game called roshambo, also known as rock-paper-scissors?

Yeah. I played it on the schoolyard. Years ago there was a lively night in Las Cruces where a drunk cowboy accused my best friend of cheating at rock-paper-scissors. She wasn’t cheating, he was just so drunk that his reflexes were slow, and she could see what was coming.

Plus, he kept throwing rock. Nothing else. Just rock. Sorta hard to sort out that strategy.

But that’s history. Let’s get current.

Recently in my internet wanderings, I read someone’s blog post discussing how maybe rock and paper and scissors aren’t the best choices in this game.

I wish I could recall where I read this so I could give credit. It was a quick piece, but for some reason the points stayed with me.

Ok, so basic rules, as we all know:

Rock beats scissors since rock smashes scissors. Good, ok, I’m on board.

Scissors beats paper since scissors cuts paper. Ok, yup.

Paper beats rock, because paper covers rock.

: cue the sound of squealing brakes :

What now? Paper covers rock and thus renders it ineffective?

Not so sure about that. I’m onboard with broken scissors and cut paper, but the logic doesn’t follow to paper covered rock.

I’m pretty gall damn sure that if I cover a rock with a piece of paper then huck that rock offa someone’s dome, it’s STILL going to cause damage. Paper has done *nothing* to render the rock useless or ineffective.

All I know is that in the heat of the battle I’m taking rock or scissors with me because no sissy piece of paper is going to save my hide! I need something with some heft!

This game has been flawed for YEARS!

So I propose some alternates. How about rock-scissors-machete?

Rock beats scissors since rock can smash the scissors.

Machete beats rock because a super sharp machete can either deflect the rock or maybe cut it?

Then scissors beats machete? Ok, this idea is starting to break down. Maybe scissors can cut the handle covering off machete thus leaving it very slippery?

No? Ok.

Let’s try again.

Rock-scissors-plastic explosives?

Rock smashes scissors.

Scissors cuts up plastic explosives, thus making it less powerful.

Plastic explosives blows the bejeebus out of rock.

See. That works. And it makes a lot more logical sense. We can even keep the hand gestures the same. A flat slab of plastic explosives could look kinda like paper. It really works!

Wow, I’m brilliant. A certified GENIUS! (or simply certified).





Image from Wikimedia and used under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.


This week’s Theme Thursday was posted a day early, so I dove in. This week’s theme is “paper.”


Asked and Answered

It’s a hot summer afternoon and the late day sun is baking the concrete and the asphalt and the children in the backyard.

Even the grass is hot under bare feet as the mercury climbs over one hundred degrees and the town swelters.

From somewhere over the Sandias, a mass of clouds, not there ten minutes ago, begins to move and swirl and pick up momentum.

Blackening like a fresh bruise, the clouds grow darker and more imposing right in front of your eyes.

Before moisture is wrung loose, the clouds must announce their presence with all the showmanship of a meteorological Liberace.

Gaudy lightening forks across the sky, splitting into tongues, lapping out for opposite minded currents.

One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three Mississippi. Four….

An Earth shattering crack shakes the house on its frame and the thunder sounds like the hand of God is ripping the sky asunder.

The cloud’s fireworks rage on, putting on a dry show while pent up demand for the rain grows stronger.

We’re all waiting in anticipation for what Mother Nature has to offer. In the desert, her moisture offerings don’t always make it all the way to the ground before evaporating.

The maddening effect of 7% humidity.

The wailing wind rushes through the streets lifting corners of shingles and twirling tree tops like green haired Troll dolls and rattling every window.

Howling in its intensity, the wind takes patio tables and trash cans and everything not nailed down and turns it on end. Over end. Over end.

Dogs stop howling and begin whimpering, begging to come in.

Children who were brave enough to face the lightening and thunder now race inside as pea sized hailstones on the force of the wind are pile driven into sun burnt skin.

“Ow!” they shout and race for cover.

After the showy display of hard frozen pebbles, the storm is ready to give up its cargo.

Rain, big heavy drops begin falling. No, not lightly first and then harder. Nuance won’t do.

The skies open up and the angels pour buckets out of the clouds and oh holy sh*t is the rain pouring down.

For ten minutes the world is coming apart and you hope the roof holds the walls hold the windows hold and “oh please don’t let that be a tornado.”

And then as quickly as it started, it’s done. The boiling clouds move on, intent on playing out their performance in another town another state another day.

The skies turn blue and the sun picks up where it left off, blazing down on the world below. Quickly, the wet ground starts to warm up.

Ozone lingers in the air and the drying rain gives off a smell of wet, hot concrete and moist earth.

The odor is fresh, clean, pure, natural.

Once frightened children begin to creep outside to play in the last hours of the daylight savings time white hot summer sun that soon enough gives over to pinks and oranges. Stars begin to peek through the sky….

And all of this is meant to answer the one simple question:

“For me, the smell of childhood is…”





Image found over at kirstenkoza.com. Visit her site, she’s got some amazing storm photographs.


Apologies to defenders of good grammar. After spending all day writing under someone else’s rules and word count restrictions, a rule breaking stream of consciousness felt *really* good.


Yeah, Well You Give Music a Bad Name

Warning: Rant ahead.

I have something to say. Oh, do I have something to say.

Let’s start with the background, a blurb from the entertainment section of my local newspaper.


—————————
Jon Bon Jovi has taken aim at Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, accusing him of “killing” the music industry with iTunes.

The rocker is saddened that children no longer enjoy the “magical” experience of buying records in a store because of the ease of downloading individual tracks onto an iPod.

And he lays the blame for the generational shift in music-buying at the feet of technology mogul Jobs.

Bon Jovi tells The Sunday Times Magazine, “Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album; and the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it.

“God, it was a magical, magical time. I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’ Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.”

—————————


Dear Mr. Bon Jovi –

In my best Dan Aykroyd Chase imitation, circa Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update” in the ’70’s…

Jon, you ignorant slut.

Ok, so let’s say I’m on board with you recalling that “magical” time where one could buy an album and have NO idea, other than the photos on the jacket, what you were getting.

Let’s just agree that era was “good” for the sake of argument.

Might I just ask you if you remember something called a cassette tape? Well that sure took the shine off a vinyl album, now didn’t it?

Now…do you remember something called a cassette single?

They were pretty popular back in that crazy era called the nineteen eighties. Do you remember the eighties?

I think music buyers back then realized the value in buying only the songs they like and not having to suffer through an entire album of songs they don’t like.

Or more succinctly, having to pay for an entire album of songs they don’t like.

People might listen to MORE music if they get a chance to listen first and decide what suits their tastes.

Oh, and Jon, dearheart, perhaps all those years of bleaching your hair frizzled your brain….

Because do you remember Napster? Yeah? People were sampling single songs and downloading only what they wanted in the 1990’s…WAY before iTunes.

Do you remember that the music business was on the ropes back in the late 1990’s? The industry was talking about not making as many albums and not backing as many acts because they were not making enough money. The model, the one you wax rhapsodic about, didn’t work. That model, your ideas of “good” is what killed the music industry.

Do you know what singlehandedly saved the goddamn music industry?

Apple’s iTunes. Launched in January 2001.

By legitimizing what Napster was already doing and putting it into a reasonable for pay model, at least artists are getting SOMETHING for all those downloads of their music.

No, not good enough for you. You want me to suffer through some freaking navel gazing Bon Jovi “concept album.”

Oh Jon. I don’t think so.

Let me tell you a story. Back in the day, I took my hard earned money to a record store that used to be located on the corner of San Mateo and Menaul in Albuquerque.

That store was called Sound Warehouse, and I *loved* that record store. When I got my fresh new driver’s license at age 16, I’d drive myself there to spend my hard earned waitress wages on the music that would make me happy.

That year, everyone was chattering about this band called U2. They’d just released a very popular album called “The Joshua Tree.”

Yeah. I hemmed at hawed in the aisles of Sound Warehouse because I wasn’t sure I wanted to buy that album (on cassette tape). First of all, it was about three dollars more expensive than the other popular albums of the time.

But it was more than that…Something about it didn’t feel right. I looked at the cover, and it didn’t move me.

I talked to a store employee who assured me “yeah, it’s great.”

It would have been so AWESOME if I’d been able to sample a couple of the tunes and then I would have known….

…That I consider that album to be one of the most egregious and self-indulgent piles of crap that the music industry has ever produced.

I’m sure many U2 fans will think I’ve lost my mind, but I’m serious. I HATE THAT ALBUM and I’ve resented that I lost my money on that thing ever since.

I’m not sure how, dear, dear Jon, you can arrive at the conclusion that iTunes killed the music business.

Perhaps it just killed YOUR business because people have the chance listen to your drivel and realize is sucks long before dropping a single dime on an album.

I mean, who could forget such classics as:

“Shot through the heart/and you’re to blame/darlin’ you give love a bad name.”

Pure musical poetry there, bubba.

Now just go away, grandpa.




Story source.


I Got To Thinking Today

My dad was an engineer by trade, and had a life long interest in the power of nuclear energy. He worked at Sandia Labs during the Cold War, and was quite familiar with the devastation that could be wrought in the path of nuclear power. He was also well aware of the power that could be harnessed from one small nuclear reaction.

As the Cold War ended and Sandia turned away from creating weapons, much of their immense talent base was put toward finding alternate sources of energy. My dad had a chance to study wind, solar, and yes, nuclear energy.

He used to rant endlessly about how he felt people were missing the boat on the use of nuclear power to create clean energy with, generally speaking, less damaging effects. He was a huge advocate for nuclear energy as a sustainable resource.

As a kid, I often thought my dad was a wackadoodle for these relentless, passionate lectures on this topic (and others).

It’s funny how time really does make fools of us all. Now that I’m pretty close to the age my dad was when we was raising me, I find that what was once wackadoodleism becomes, “hey, he might have actually had a point.”

Earlier today, I was going through the videos, photos and new coverage of the truly horrifying aftermath of the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. I got to thinking about my old man when I saw this quote from a Japanese spokesman for the government:

“The nuclear plants have been shut down but the cooling process for the reactor is not going as planned.”

I thought to myself, “If they are able to keep that reactor from melting down, that is a huge boost to the argument that my pops made for decades.”

However, if that reactor does melt down, then all the anti-nuclear energy people will have a strong case study on their side.

I’m not sure which side of the nuclear energy debate I come down on. Honestly, I can argue both sides, and it’s a very sticky topic.

One thing I will say is that the existing nuclear plants in the U.S. are of such old technology that it’s truly frightening. The anti-nuclear power lobbies won’t allow these existing facilities to be upgraded. They want them closed, not improved.

So they stay open and get older and more outdated by the year.

And thus, the standoff rages on. That’s where my pops would start snorting, and steam would begin rolling out of his ears.

All of this is some scary news. I think that if Japan can contain and control their nuclear plants in the face of one of the worst natural disasters of recent history, then it highly recommends at least considering the latest available technology for maintaining nuclear facilities.

Maybe we don’t build any more, but we fix what we’ve got?

Oh, and while I was thinking about all of this, even discussing it with my mom via email, I glanced at the calendar.

My dad passed away six years ago last month. Perhaps worrying about the nuclear energy facilities in the midst of tragedy in Japan is an odd way to honor He Who Brought Me Forth. I suspect for him, it would do just fine.




Image is 1954 era Union Carbide ad, found several places on the web.


And Yo Mama Too!

Last week I was presented with a large amount of challenges in my young and budding career with The New Employer.

Things have gone pretty well so far, and I’ve been able to tuck a few successes under my belt. My boss seems reasonably happy with my work. I’ve even gotten a few kudos from other teams.

I’d say I’ve been doing a decent job, still learning, still growing. All in all, I’d give my performance over the past eight months a solid B. Maybe even as much as a B+

Enter the events of last week. I’ll spare you the details, but I came up against a very volatile and angry person at one of our offices in an undisclosed Asian country. I’ll be a bit dodgy about details as that seems to make best sense in this public forum.

I have to admit, honestly, I have now encountered one of the biggest bullies I’ve ever run across in my little life.

And by “biggest” I don’t mean in physical stature.

I can remember only once during my schooldays where I was bullied. A girl who was my friend in elementary school fell in with a bad crowd in mid-school. She started making threatening calls to the house. She promised to beat me up if I didn’t stop looking at her funny. (has she met me? I always look funny! I was born that way, waka-waka…thanks folks I’ll be here all week…tip your waitress…)

On one of these awful calls with me crying and my former friend acting hateful, my mom pulled the phone out of my hand and had a good solid conversation with the girl. As soon as my mom interceded, the bullying ceased.

Honestly, that’s about the worst I’ve ever had to deal with. Until now.

Who could imagine that my worst bully would arise when I’m in my forties? I sure didn’t. I thought I was past all of that B.S. once I hit adulthood.

Nope.

This gent is an angry, unreasonable man. I try to be open and work with him, and he says really awful things in return. Long hateful emails in which he calls into question me, my management abilities, the capabilities of my team, and perhaps whether I’m best suited for the role in which my employer hired me.

And every time he sends a vitriol filled note, he copies a higher level of my management team in on the action. By way of the dreaded cc field, he’s making a case to those who control my destiny that I’m a complete idiot.

Karen bashing! Yay!……. /sarcasm

Today I was looking in the company directory to get this guy’s contact information. I agreed with my boss earlier today that I’m going to call him directly to try to sort this out. The best way to deal with a bully is to face them head on, and I’m gonna do so.

I happened to notice that not only does this fine fellow live in the same country as my hardworking ex-pat big brother, he even works in the same large office towers.

So here’s the question: Am I too old to ask my big brother go beat someone up?





C’mon, how great was that movie “My Bodyguard“? Loved that movie. Just noticed on IMDB that it came out in 1980. Damn I’m old.


In case you were wondering, my boss is awesome and has been very supportive through all of this. I know that the real bodyguard lies within my boss and my amazing management team. I’ve watched my VP smack someone down before. It was brutal and final, so I’m certain she won’t let this mess go on much further.