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Posts for the date of Thursday, April 10, 2003
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 8:48 AM |
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Run! It's a Glacier!
UPDATE ON CD DRIVE: I’ve replaced the drive. Oddly enough, none of the stores had one that was a 12X or below (I’m not gun-shy). A friend has kindly offered to burn a replacement copy of the disc that blew, so I don’t have to buy a full new boxed set to get it back. (The RIAA will be coming soon to pick us both up because we are now responsible for their hemorrhaging sales.) Someone has actually suggested that the RIAA blew up my disc in a DRM effort. Interesting theory . . .
Lately I’ve been having the urge to write, direct, star in and write the musical score for a big-budget action film. I want to be the white, pudgy version of Mario Van Peebles. Except with better hair.
Naturally, I need to have a story idea, plus an entire plot. To add further complications, I also need to come up with some plot holes in order to make it feel like a real action thriller.
I’ve decided that the best route to go is the traditional Natural Disaster movie. We haven’t had a good one for quite some time. Sure, there was Twister. And I love seeing a flying cow as much as the next guy, but as far as a movie with actual science and special effects that actually look better than a blurry dirt spot with pieces of wood flying around it, there hasn’t been one. There have been recent films about forest fires (that would be Firestorm starring Howie Long, no less) volcanoes, meteors, comets, floods, big holes, and swarms of mutant spiders. To be honest, there aren’t many left.
But I found one.
GLACIER: Coming Eventually to a Theater Near You
The film will be located in a small Rocky Mountain town. That there isn’t currently significant glacial activity there is beside the point, and quite honestly if you’re looking for hard science why are you watching an action film? Before the credits roll you see two men in circa 1860s clothing climbing up a rocky slope. They’re looking for gold, or something valuable. Maybe they’re in search of the ever-elusive Rocky Mountain Monkey. The screen says “Holy Hill, 1864.”
They get to the peak of whatever it is they are climbing they stop and take a drink. One guy looks off over into the distance and sees an expanse of white.
“What’s that,” he asks.
“Don’t know,” his friend replies.
They continue on their way, the camera moves over the expanse of white and the music swells menacingly. Then you have your opening credits.
PRESENT DAY the screen says. The town is a bustling place; people are doing whatever small town people in movies do. Making jam or something. You see, it’s a movie small town. So not only does it have the quaintness of small-town living, but they also have an art gallery, eight coffee houses that sell rare Columbian blends and a swanky hotel where our hero and heroine can go and have disaster sex at some point.
So, the camera is panning down the idyllic scene of kids playing, cars driving and waving. Imagine the opening of Blue Velvet before the guy has a stroke and the beetles devour the screen. When, suddenly it spots that expanse of white. And it’s CLOSER! Not impending doom or anything, but it’s significantly closer. Pretty close. Close enough to see anyway.
Cut to the town hall where our hero is beseeching the city government to DO SOMETHING about the glacier because it is coming and it can destroy the city.
“Tell us, when do you estimate the glacier will be an imminent danger,” the mayor asks.
“Well,” our intrepid hero says, “A couple centuries? Maybe more. But the resulting changes to topography could have devastating effects on that skate park that Old Man Jenkins is building south of Pritchett Road.”
“My GOD”, the mayor says, “this is serious. We’re out of donuts.”
Then there is mass confusion. Everyone fights over the artery clogging goodness of the last Krispy Kreme and, like all government institutions, chaos reigns over who will pay for the next dozen.
Our hero leaves and heads out to the glacier. A note about our hero. He is wholly unoriginal. He is a combination of every movie scientist. Geeky, but not nerdy. Dashing but down to Earth. Always wears some sort of khaki. Wears glasses for dramatic effect and, naturally, can bag amazingly attractive women because in this world men who understand physics are viewed as sexy, not as pale, basement dwelling freaks with bad skin.
He goes out to the glacier and talks to it.
“I know you’ll kill us all someday. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not me. Or my children. Or my children’s children. Or my children’s children’s children. But you’ll kill somebody and I aim to stop it.”
He goes back to town and finds an amazingly attractive and fabulously well-to-do female in his office. She’s the daughter of the mayor, a bit of a bad seed, but that’s how our scientist likes ‘em. They banter, they smolder. She says she believes him. She believes in him when no one else would. They go back to the swanky hotel for disaster sex.
Finally they set up camp at the glacier to measure its movements. It’s crazy and dangerous, they know. But that’s the type of people they are.
Eventually their measurements reveal that the glacier has actually retreated by a foot. There is much rejoicing. But it is short lived. Flash forward to two years later. It has advanced by two feet. Everyone screams. For centuries.
But the town learns nothing. And after several flash-forwards the town is destroyed. But there is no mass chaos and no one dies, except from natural causes as things go. Because the people were sensible enough to realize the glaciers don’t kill people. People kill people with various forms of fire.
And in the end the only person to die in this whole experience was our hero. He slipped on a falling piece of ice from the glacier and hit is head, fell down a cliff and was shot seven times by his attractive mate because they could never see eye-to-eye on the politics of capital punishment.
Fin
Discuss Glacier!
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Posts for the date of Wednesday, April 09, 2003
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 11:40 AM |
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My Computer Hates Your Mama
I’m thinking of wrapping myself in rubber and hiding in the basement whenever there is a thunderstorm. Because, with my luck I would be struck by lightning. Not once. But at least twice.
Last evening started just fine. My wife and I both had work to do, so we decided to work at our side-by-side computers. I decided to rip some songs from a Beach Boys CD and add them to my music directory. After all, I can listen to the files on my computer, while my wife listens to the CD at work, or in the car, etc.
Everything was going just fine. I got up to get a cup of coffee as I continued my work. As I was pouring the coffee, my wife and I were discussing what sort of refrigerator we wanted for the house. Did we want side-by-side? With water and ice? Or did we want the freezer on the bottom? Those are more energy efficient. Blah blah blah.
Walking back to the computer, negotiating piles of the kid’s crap, I hear a POP! I stopped. Did I step on a balloon? Or break a toy? What the hell happened? Both my wife and I were trying to figure out exactly what I had done. We’re looking on the floor and we can’t figure it out.
Then my CD/RW drive started whirring sickly. It opened and dropped some shards on the floor. And closed again. And opened again. “I’ve been hit!” it seemed to be trying to say.
I calmed the drive down and powered the whole system down. I unplugged everything and got my tools. It was time for emergency surgery.
First I removed the drive and inspected the inside of the computer. It looks like the wound was contained. As you can see on the drive, no shards, not even miniscule, had escaped from the casing of the drive. This was good news. I wouldn’t be frying any of my internal components. Whew! It also meant that I could continue working.
Then I got out the high-techest tool that is needed in order to fix or diagnose a problem with a stuck or unpowered drive (located in the left of the frame):
I inserted the tool and popped open the drive. It was a clean incision. As you can tell, my greatest fears were being confirmed. The tray was empty. It could only mean one thing (note high-tech CD drive tool in its extended position on the right):
Finally, I started the extraction process. Or, to be more technical, I had my wife pick up the drive and shake:
Here’s the thing: I loved that CD. Here’s the other thing: It’s part of a five disc boxed set. I can’t just replace that one disc. Here’s the other, other thing: Fu(this word has been edited, as it is not deemed family friendly. Therefore we have decided to replace it with a word which we feel will be equally compelling) FRELL!
This isn’t the first time that this has happened to me. I had another disc explode a few years ago. However, I find it concerning. How, in the hell, is it possible that this happens to someone MORE THAN ONCE???
The statistics are staggering. It almost hurts to think about it. So I won’t.
But, be honest, how often has this happened to you? Never? Exactly. It’s happened to me twice.
And I LIKED that damn CD. Mother(edited again . . .Gary has some rage that he needs to deal with today)freller!
I’m going to send it back to the manufacturer. With the CD pieces. I doubt they’ll do anything. It’ll be blamed on the user. I put the CD in wrong. Or I somehow compromised the overall inherent goodness of their product. I could talk to the record company, but that would be pointless. They would sue me for pirating and put me in jail with the college kids who set up that P2P server. Worse, I’d tell them during the interrogation that the reason why they’re suffering in sales is due to the fact that 98% of the music they put out is complete (Edited) (Edited) (Edited) (Edited) (Edited) (Edited) crud. Radio is a musician’s enemy these days.
Sigh. Oh well. I’ll go pick up a new drive today. Attempt to get my old drive replaced. Sigh. Why me?
Oh crap. Is that thunder?
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Posts for the date of Tuesday, April 08, 2003
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posted by Gary O'Brien at 9:49 AM |
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Chapter Six: In Which Daddy Learns a Lesson
Being a parent is hard, hard work sometimes. You have to constantly guide your child through the pitfalls of life, lest she grow up to become the head of an international shoplifting ring and end up suing you for poor parenting practices and blaming you for her inability to love any being that isn’t covered in fur and stuffed with Styrofoam balls. Hey, it can happen.
While trying to accomplish the successful raising of a child, you often get . . . well . . . irritated. Kids confound you. They react to things in ways that you’ll never understand.
Case in point: Child splits her lip outside while playing. Blood is pouring everywhere. She comes inside, you clean her up, and she goes outside. Painless. Few tears, tough disposition. She stubs her shoe-clad toe on the way to brush her teeth in the morning and she screams for two hours, sobbing, holding her toe. When you finally say, “Okay let’s try to calm down” I swear she replies:
”Jabba mega nagala zo chabo!”
My child, in anger and frustration, has begun speaking Aramaic and has become possessed by the spirits of ancient children who have also stubbed their toes. She is angry because I do not recognize that there is a slight possibility that she has cause structural damage to her skeletal system and she may be plagued with a dull ache in her big toe for at least twenty minutes.
Now, keep in mind that I’m not talking about dire pain here. She stubbed her toe. WITH her shoes on. At the most it hurt a little bit. Not screaming for an hour pain.
But that’s beside the point. I didn’t recognize the pain and, therefore, I am a bad father.
Consequently, as a parent, you fear that your entreaties to become a better person are becoming like a rhymed boredom for the child. She’s heard it. She clearly doesn’t want to do it. Much like the Brian Wilson song, you end up sounding like this to her:
Eat a lot sleep a lot brush 'em like crazy
Run a lot do a lot never be lazy
But, let’s face it. She doesn’t want to go to sleep. She feels it needless to brush her teeth more than once a day because she’ll just eat again and they’ll get dirty. Run? Screw that. Drive me to the corner bus stop. And laziness? Hell, that’s a child’s right. “My coat is on the floor. Why I’ll step over it for six weeks rather than pick it up. Oh, and if I trip over it and hit my head, YOU are to blame. You’re a parent, pick it up damn it.”
Last night we spent the evening with the in-laws for my mother-in-law’s birthday. We ate, we had cake, and we watched a video I had made. Throughout the whole thing Matilda pouted. We didn’t eat cake when she wanted. We didn’t open presents when she wanted. Her sister was featured a little too much in the videos and then, to add insult to injury, we chose to watch something in which she was not the feature performer.
Throughout the whole thing I was aware that she was jealous. Jealous that her grandparents were sharing attention. That she wasn’t the queen of the moment. That her sister was getting laughs too. This was hard on her. She has been the reigning princess for years and now this little upstart who soils herself routinely is getting attention. That little bastard. Like hell she’s a princess too. She’s a mere Duchess. Matilda is the ruling princess. And we fear to disagree.
Her concerns are valid. And, I also realized that she might not be used to this feeling of jealousy. That being jealous is a totally new emotion for her. She doesn’t know how to rationalize it, or even swallow it for later bitterness. It was a pulsing, open nerve that we kept touching over and over.
Finally it was time to go. She sulked to the door and announced, very morosely, with drama, that she would wait for us in the car (siiiiiiiiiiigggggggggghhhhhhhhh). I followed her out the door with a speech planned.
“Matilda, I understand that you are feeling a little jealous because Grandma and Gertrude were getting a lot of attention tonight. It happens sometimes! Even adults wish they were the center of attention sometimes. It makes us feel good. However when you act negatively to gain attention, you get negative attention, etc. ad nauseum.”
To her it would have sounded like this:
“Blah blah blah blah blah. You aren’t valid. Blah blah blah blah blah. You aren’t important anymore. Blah blah blah blah blah. We’re selling you to the gypsies for half a goat and some plastic beads. Blah blah blah blah blah.”
To a kid, that’s what these lectures sound like. Constant invalidation of their feelings and, in some respects they are right. We don’t mean to do that to the kid. But sometimes in trying to teach right from wrong, good from bad, positive from negative, we forget that completely valid emotions are the source of the actions. That there is a good chance that the child simply has no other way to deal with the emotion. They simply don’t know how.
But it’s the Ward Cleaver in us that makes us act like, well, adults. We understand things through words. Kids don’t. Emotions are complicated and, damn it, they hurt sometimes. They hurt a lot. As parents we tend to accidentally forget that. In our quest to teach, we forget to get on the kid’s level. We forget to see where they are coming from.
Now, I’d like to say that I was stricken by a moment of brilliance or compassion. That suddenly I was super Dad who knew that the kid needed some reassurance that she was, indeed, valid.
But I can’t say that because it isn’t true.
I did, however, for reasons unknown to me, abandon that speech.
On the porch I stopped her and said, “What’s wrong?”
She placed her arm around me, her head in the middle of my stomach and sobbed, “I don’t know!” We hugged for a little while and went back inside.
On the drive home she proclaimed, “I like daddy. He respects my feelings.”
Without even knowing it, I did the right thing. I gave the child her voice back, her sense of importance. Not by lecturing, not by explaining. But by listening and recognizing.
Looks like I was the one who learned the lesson last night. Final Score: Child 1 Father 0.
Discuss In Which Daddy Learns a Lesson
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Posts for the date of Monday, April 07, 2003
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