Category: Life

Geez, Louise, but I’ve never head the condition of my garage better than this:

Because that’s my theory as to what hoarding really is: Reified potential. What might have been, in physical form. Again, n=1 here, so take this for what it’s worth, but the hoarder in my life has elaborate justifications for every single item she’s got, and they’re all of the “I’m gonna” type.

All those newspapers? I’m gonna make a scrapbook. The empty perfume bottles? I’m gonna turn them into wind chimes. She fancies herself an artiste — she even introduces herself that way — although the only actual art she’s ever produced is a series of sketches… from back in high school, which was a long time ago. They’re buried at the bottom of a big stack of sketch pads, all filled with nothing but “gonna.” I’m gonna start sketching street scenes. I’m gonna start tomorrow.

As you might remember, gentle reader, when I moved to palatial Nogglestead, I was spending a lot of time with a couple of toddlers and watched a lot of craft shows like Creative Juice and That’s Clever and hitting lots of garage sales where I bought a bunch of craft materials and things to do inexpensively. And although I did some woodburning and made a couple of clocks and other things, my purchasing ran ahead of my doing, and the completed projects piled up in a couple of boxes when I ran out of people to whom to give things. I’ve held onto broken things, stereo equipment or small appliances, that I’m hoping to fix.

I mean, for a partial example, here are some shelves:

What do we have here?

• 8-Track Tape shells I bought at a yard sale and gutted with hopes of making cell phone cases out of them. But phones have gotten too big for that.
• A bunch of wooden plaques and objects for wood burning.
• A colander missing a handle. Whatever will I do with that?
• A bunch of glass bottles that I’d hoped to cut the tops off of and turn into candles. Or to etch and make into little lights.
• Green pipe cleaners, or whatever the modern equivalent is. I think they’re designed to look like coniferous needles. Clearly, I was gonna make Christmas decorations with them.
• Various bits of old light fixtures. For my art, when I get to it.
• A vast collection of woodworking and repair guides. For when I get serious about those hobbies.

And that’s just one set of shelves. Not depicted: The boxes full of beads for making jewelry, the 1960s dressers that had been with my beautiful wife and I since our respective childhoods, the cookie sheets that I started painting with chalkboard paint but never finished (which have been on improvised tables in the garage for years now, buried under other accumulata), old computer monitor bezels that I intend to make into whiteboards, various découpage materials, a box of old National Geographics we got when my mother-in-law downsized which I will probably never look at but cannot discard or cut into découpage material, and so on, and so on.

The Nogglestead library is a bit the same way. The stacks contain more books than I can read in my lifetime, and I still buy more (but no longer by the dozens as when I would really go nuts at book sales). Very aspirational in that I’d like to read them all someday. But at least I can generally find something to read when I finish a book.

We’re fortunate enough that we have a large house for all the books, records, videos, and the personal relics that make up the other half of my semi-hoarding kind of life. As you know, gentle reader, my family, or at least the family that I had contact with in the latter part of my growing up, has mostly passed away. So I am loath to part with anything that I have received as part of their legacies, from the figurines that were on the living room shelves in the housing projects, trailer parks, and beyond (and which appear on the cover of Coffee House Memories) to the little tchotchkes that my grandmother has given us over the years (a little boy doll and train music box when my first son was born and a motion sculpture later) and beyond. Without people who remember my history to validate my existence or correct my stories as needed, I rely on these little icons to remind me of where I come from.

Regardless, the I’m gonna does capture the essence of a lot of crap around here and a very cluttered garage.

I guess I have three choices:

1. Do instead of gonna.
2. Go all Marie Kondo and clear the crap out.
3. Die and leave it for my heirs to sort out.

C’mon, man. You know which one I’m going with. The Nothing.

It’s Nogglestead’s plate:

I came upstairs this morning to find an inverted plate on top of a napkin just inside the door to the deck.

Now, normally, I would attribute this to the boys, who would never think of littering outdoors but let wrappers, empty bottles, and anything else fall from their hands wherever they are inside our house. But they’re on their band trip this week, so they’re not around.

I would attribute it to the cats, especially the kittens, but the plate would probably be too heavy for them to carry by mouth, and there’s nothing nearby for them to have knocked it down.

So it must be that my beautiful wife put it there for some purpose, and as I do not know what that is, I cannot pick up the plate.

She’s in a long business call right now, so I still have plenty of time to let my imagination go wild. Is there a dead mouse or bug beneath it? Something she does not want the cats to get, and she did not have time to clean it up before her call?

Cruel blogger that I am, I might not bother to update this post with the solution so you’ll never know. Or, as likely, she will pick it up before I ask her about it, and I will forget about it until I read this post some years hence, at which time I might bring it up and she will be unlikely to remember.

(Chesteron’s Fence explained.)

UPDATE: Apparently, the unneutered kitten marked his territory by the door. His neutering is in a couple of weeks, and it cannot come quickly enough.

I was at a conference this week, and one of the stars of the show was one of Boston Dynamic’s Spot robot dogs.

As you know, gentle reader, in the grim future, the last remnants of humanity use dogs to spot infiltrator terminators:

Very clever of Skynet to send its agents back in time to get humanity to replace real dogs with robots before it unleashes the terminators. Very clever indeed.

Bill Walton facing backlash for using a derogatory term on broadcast.

I always wonder if the news story will mention what the offending word is. If it’s really, really, double plus ungood, no. But if it’s only a single plus ungood or less, it will, and it did:

During halftime of Arizona State’s eventual 77-72 win over USC on Thursday, Walton — who serves as a broadcaster with ESPN — used the “m-word” while complimenting the in-game host.

“He does not need a little chair because he is a giant in a world full of shriveling m—–s,” Walton said.

Walton then turned to his broadcast partner, Dave Pasch, and joked: “Speaking of shriveling m—–s, what is your name again?”

The m-word. Time will be there will be too many words to be the letter word. But fortunately, when all dictionaries are electronic, they will update automatically.

In the meantime, comrade, if you see one of these offensive cars:

Remember to bash it with whatever is at hand. For s- – – – – j- – – – – -!

Suggested for me, because apparently Facebook thinks I’m impressionable:

Wow, 1825 miles in 24 hours. Which is, what, 76 miles an hour for 24 hours straight with no breaks to, I dunno, fuel the motorcycle?

I thought maybe it was a joke I didn’t get, an actor from a movie or something, but this guy is in the American Motorcyclist Association Hall of Fame, and the Web site mentions his feat.

So if it’s on a Facebook suggested post (why the motorcycles all of a sudden? Did I like a post about hockey, so I must like all sports with helmets?) and the Hall of Fame Web site for an organization I’d never heard of, I guess I have to admit the very small chance it might be true.

Don’t trust the government when it says:

“If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down…even if you feel the friendship has run its course⁣,” NPS [the National Park Service] tweeted Wednesday.

C’mon, man. If the friend is already slower than you are, don’t waste your time and energy pushing them down. Just outrun them.

If your friend is faster than you, though, it’s worth the second or two to hip check them to the dirt before or as you take off.

(Link via Blackfive’s Facebook feed; it looks like Blackfive.net has been dormant for almost four years now.)

Last month, I posted about Hollywood Squares with Paul Lynde in the center square.

Guess who showed up in my Facebook feed last week?

Sure, sure, coincidence. I mean, where doesn’t a comedian who died forty-plus years ago pop up in the 21st century?

Day before yesterday, I texted my brother “I need a side hustle. What do I like to do that can make money?” (Because, gentle reader, blogging ain’t it.)

Yesterday, someone whom the algorithms had determined I don’t interact with because I don’t interact with her shared a cartoon about side hustles.

And the algorithms for some reason decided I should see it.

With each of these posts, I am less joking and more serious.

I run the risk of divulging biosecurity information that is undoubtedly already on the Dark Web, but today is a special day for me.

Not an extra special round number on the end–that was last year–but my beautiful wife asked me yesterday if I had any especial memories from my birthdays.

My birthdays are generally low-key affairs mostly now because there aren’t many who think beyond posting “Happy Birthday” when Facebook reminds them of the day. I could actually only come up with, on the spur of the moment, a few:

• On my tenth birthday, I got sent to my room during my own birthday party. Not by my mother or by my mother’s friend, the former country and western singer (one single to her credit) who came with her boys, our friends. No, this was a friend of that friend who was somehow along, perhaps to help manage a gaggle of kids with my newly-separated mother. Annemarie, her name was. Perhaps still is, but that was a long time ago. I probably deserved it, but I’m still indignant.
• On my 26th or 27th birthday, my new girlfriend wrapped a little gift for me that was “Two bookshelves too big for [my] car” spelled in Scrabble tiles along with handwritten “Now don’t forget to unwrap your girlfriend.” Perhaps this is not so much a memory as a personal relic, as I still have the cardboard and Scotch-taped tiles in a box. I still have the girl, too, I should note.
• We had a pretty big party on my 30th birthday with my co-workers and some of my beautiful wife’s co-workers, including the Libertarian candidate for Senate who kept up with me and El Guapo, beer for beer. And I almost put out Dennis’s eye showing some others how high our tan tabby could jump by whipping an elastic cat toy back and forth about head height. Unbeknowst to me, Dennis was about head height at about the range of the back part of the back and forth.

As it stands, on my birthday, we sometimes go out to dinner (a steak house last year), sometimes we eat in. Sometimes there’s a cake. Sometimes not. I get a little gift, the boys wish me a happy birthday, and that’s it. My aunt who died in 2019 was the only one to send me a card outside of my insurance agent and my dojo. I’ll get Facebook greetings and an automated mention on my employer’s Slack. But I won’t see anyone today aside from immediate family who will wish me a happy birthday.

Which means this will not be a birthday I will remember except when clicking through old posts and coming across this one.

Please click each image containing a violin:

But what if one is a viola, which looks almost exactly the same as a violin but it’s bigger? Without perspective and side-by-side comparison, you can’t be sure.

But, c’mon, captchas are just guessing games these days, ainna?

So I posted on the Professionalbook:

The Problems of Having Senior in Your Job Title, Part XLIV:

On a popcorn-style Scrum with default layout of 9 tiles, when you finish your update and say, “Dan to block,” and you look at the other tiles and realize none of your co-workers has ever seen Hollywood Squares.

I included an image I found on the Internet:

My beautiful professional wife said she only knew three of the names, one from Wesson Oil commercials and two from The New Scooby-Doo Movies cartoons.

Alors! I knew most of the celebrities in the squares above:

• Robert Blake, Baretta and the priest in Hell Town, later charged with killing his wife (twenty years ago). I’d forgotten that he was acquited.
• Phyllis Diller, comedienne and, like me, former resident of Old Trees, Missouri, where she lived in the part with the really big houses.
• Rich Little, the impressionist.
• Karen Valentine, actress from the show Room 222 and some Disney movies–I had to look her up.
• Paul Lynde, comedian and best known to me for being the center square on Hollywood Squares. I said to my wife that she probably could not hear his voice in her head, but I can–I saw him most recently in a skit on The Dean Martin Show.
• Mac Davis, the singer best known for “Hard to be Humble“. My wife didn’t know the singer, but she hears a rendition of it frequently when I sing “Oh, Roark, it’s hard to be humble,” to the cat.
• Anthony Newley, a British singer of some sort. I had to look him up.
• Florence Henderson, Mrs. Brady and so on. Which includes Wesson Oil commercials.
• Robert Fuller, who I looked up, but I would have recognized him in a clearer picture–he was the head doctor in Emergency!, a television program my sainted mother loved.

So I knew seven of nine.

But they’re too old and too trivial for modern trivia nights, which include no history questions and where pop culture began in the 1980s or later.

It’s weird, though: My pop culture trivia knowledge extends a bunch to the decades before I was born–by the time they were on Hollywood Squares, these stars were in the coasting tail end of their careers, but I knew them. Perhaps because they were in reruns when I was young, but also perhaps because I wanted to make a good showing in Trivial Pursuit, that new fashionable game in the 1980s, where the questions aimed at the thirtysomething crowd would have included these actors and performers from their childhoods and youth. The adults didn’t generally let me play, though.

But I can still try to impress you, gentle reader.

I’ve posted about how Facebook ads have shown up for things I’ve only talked about here and here recently (and probably incessantly in the more distant past).

Now Facebook is just trolling me by showing this suggested for you:

I would be happy to learn that at least Facebook algorithms were reading this blog, but most likely they just heard me talking about these advertisements in person.

Yeah, sometimes I get a little less than bloggy.

Just one of those periods where my blogging is more intermittent than most.

Back soon lest you fear I’m not keeping up with the 2023 Winter Reading Challenge.

Well, I make almost every moment maudlin anyway.

This week, on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, we had a pretty good snowstorm here at Nogglestead. Initial predictions were for 1 to 12 inches of snow, depending upon when the temperature dropped below freezing. Eventually, we got about four inches of wet, packable snow here.

A couple miles to the south of us and all along the Highway 60 corridor, the route I take to Poplar Bluff to see my brother, they got a foot of snow and have been out of school all week. As is happened, my boys only got one day off of school, although the school had prepared them to be off the rest of the week.

As the temperature had flirted with the freezing point, it was good, warm, packable snow. We rarely get measurable snowfall here–once or twice a year most years–and it tends to be of the colder, finer-flaked variety.

So I knew this might be my last chance to have a snowball fight with my boys.

I mean, I’ve had a couple of snowball fights with my children over the years. Intermittently, and probably not every year, as we have had years with little snow indeed.

I don’t remember having a snowball fight with my father, but we must have tossed a couple of snowballs each others’ way once, ainna? The late 1970s were pretty snowy in Wisconsin, but although I remember epic snow forts built on either side of the sidewalk leading to our apartment in the projects and a snowball fight between us and the kids from the next apartment, I don’t really remember much about my father from that era. He was working, drinking and philandering, or hunting most of the time. So the boys will remember me better, I hope.

As they’re teenagers now, the last times are becoming more prevalent (and my anticipation that this is the last time is even more prevalent–I mourn far more last times than we actually have experienced so far). I mean, the oldest has been applying for jobs now. When the boys have been called to dinner and they appear reluctantly, I’ve pointed out that the times we share nightly meals together are rapidly diminishing, but they don’t know. They’ve always had dinner with Mom and Dad in the evenings. In as little as a matter of days, my oldest might be working most nights during the dinner hour, and we will only be three around the table. For maybe another year.

I suppose I need to get some new in my life to freshen things up, or at least distract me from the things that are passing away. I mean, I’ve been doing martial arts classes for almost a decade and triathlons for five years. So they’re not new, they’re old–and are among things that will be passing out of my life too soon. I’ve taken back up with writing poetry intermittently–but I’ve not had much coffee shop time in recent months–and I’m thinking about attending a couple of open mic nights in the near future.

But, in the mean time, I will post this song again.

Probably not for the last time.

I saw this at Kenny’s:

As with the aisle moving at Walmart, I had just seen that.

Like a commenter over there, I noticed the new lights on a forklift at Sam’s Club, and I thought that the lights were as much for the shoppers as for the forklift drivers to know what was a safe zone around it. But Sam’s employees still escorted the piloted forklift.

Which might be an indicator of what’s next: forklifts without drivers. Although I’m not sure that would work so well, as the layout and position of things on the shelves at Sam’s Club is in flux week-to-week and day-to-day, unlike a warehouse where an unmanned forklift might work better.

Chi and chi don’t even rhyme.

Well, that’s what English gets for borrowing words from other languages. Like squaw but without the aggrievement for fun and profit.

Lileks ain’t even humblebragging:

And apparently I am in the 1% of people my age who can do 50 pushups. I’m sure that’s absolutely scientifically and empirically true and I will hear no argument about it.

In other news, I should not challenge Lileks to a push-up duel any time soon. For although I was able to do fifty push-ups in my martial arts class yesterday, I shook my arms at the thirty and forty push-up marks.

I’m actually, apparently, working myself back into shape–I have an indoor triathlon in a month, and I’ve been trying to attend more martial arts classes these days (holidays and the school’s abbreviated schedule aside), and I’ve found that I have tired legs. I’d worry that my physical fitness ceiling has lowered as I have aged, but in all likelihood I just need to build back into it. After all, I do remember aching legs when I first started to do 5Ks six years ago (and my last was, what, three years ago? Two years ago?)

Ah, well, there are some things that money can’t buy. For everything else, there’s Advil.

By the way, back in those early days of martial arts, we put a bottle of Advil in the glove compartment in the car to pop one before class. So I suppose I am working too hard to discourage myself and to convince myself that the 2023 Winter Reading Challenge is a more important personal goal.

For The Love Of All That Is Holy, Stop Backing Into Parking Spaces:

It would not be unreasonable to assume a couple of thousand cars are coming and going from my neighborhood strip mall on a given day. Given that much traffic, there’s a basic formula for efficiency here: The time it takes to get your car into a space added to the time it takes to pull out of the space.

Now a great many drivers seem to be under the impression that, because being able to pull out of parking space when you’re already facing forward is a little quicker than backing straight out of a space, this somehow makes up for any extra time it took to back into the space. Please go to your local busy parking lot with a stopwatch. I assure you, it does not.

But, ah, my foes! And, ah, my friends! The timing of it is not what’s important. It’s a safety issue and a vision issue.

When you’re backing up, you are in an uncomfortable position with reduced vision just because you’re craned all the way around to see where you’re going–or you’re just using the context-free backup camera, in which case you’re already behaving unsafely enough that my advice won’t help you. So you have two choices as when to back up:

• When you’re pulling into the parking space. Which means the things in your peripheral vision will be stationary parked cars. Not many people on foot are going to dart between your car backing into a spot, as the space between the rear of your car and the other cars diminishes.
   
• When you’re backing into traffic from either direction and with pedestrians appearing on either side of your car and on either side of the traffic lane. Not to mention other cars backing out into the traffic lane that might be turning into the traffic lane in your blind spots.

Note when leaving driving forward, your position will generally be forward of center, which means you will not only have easier and better visibility into the traffic lane because you’re facing forward, but you’ll also have an earlier increasing field of view because you will be abreast of the edges of the other cars sooner than when you back out. When you’re backing out, you’re not only doing this:

via GIPHY

But more of your vehicle is exposed in the traffic lane before you get that increased visibility of clearing the parked cars.

Yeah, no. Pulling directly through an unclaimed parking spot so you can pull straight out is the best (mostly when the parking lines are parallel–when they’re at an angle, it’s less good as you have to cross more of the traffic lane to make sure you don’t clip the car next to you), but after that, backing into a spot is best, followed by parallel parking, and only then, as a last resort, backing into traffic.

I can’t believe I even have to point this out. But it’s a blog, and that’s what we do on blogs. Go on at length in spurious slap-fights.