I don’t feel especially guilty spending part of my tax return on a huge HDTV (at a fraction of the price listed on the link; I’m not stupid) and turning my living room, which also got a refresher with some paint and new shelves which really opens up the space, into a screening room to rival some small art house auditoriums I’ve seen.

Why?

Because everybody also got new bikes and helmets, and right now, I’m thinking more about long family rides through the neighborhood (like the one last night) and hitting the trails at some local parks than I am about sitting on my keister watching movies.*

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* This could easily change once my wall mount arrives and IKEA gets the comfy chair I want back in stock.

Just because I wax philosophic sometimes doesn’t mean that I can’t revel in the completely frivilous sometimes.

For example, after reading a couple of reviews from Iron Man 2 press screenings, I’m getting a little more excited than what is probably appropriate for the release, particularly based on the hints of the post credits stinger scene habitually included in all the Marvel flicks, tying the film universe together:

…actually, it would be more fun if we got this, but honestly, it’s probably better saved for The Avengers.

Over the years, I’ve met a few people who claim that they’d love to go back to high school and do it all over again. When I meet these people, I wonder (sometimes aloud) whether they’re mentally ill.

Because honestly, except for the couple of people at the top of the pecking order (and perhaps not even for them), high school, as a social environment, sucked pretty hard. For most of us, it was a malodorous morass of hormones, insecurity, sociopathy, and general unpleasantness, broken up with occasional bits of respite in the form of fun activities with friends and, if you’re lucky, a couple of lightbulb moments in class that help you see the world from another perspective. Still though, pretty much a pile of crap with a few sprinkles on it; not something I’d voluntarily repeat, and if someone says they would, I’m immediately suspect.

Here’s my reasoning: Whether they’re looking to re-live their “glory days” or are operating under the “if I knew then what I know now” fallacy, it’s a case of wanting to move backwards, and life doesn’t and shouldn’t work that way. Time, at least the way beings like us are able to perceive it, only moves in one direction, and it waits for no one. And, it’s the process of living and learning and growing as time marches on that shapes who we are as people.

A serious desire to want to go back and get a cosmic do-over* indicates a lack of self-worth on the part of the individual, and an unwillingness to do something about their perceived problems in the here and now, where it might actually make a difference.

Not that I don’t understand the feeling; some days, I’d like nothing more than to hijack a TARDIS, go back to 1990, find my fifteen year old self, kick his ass for being so narrow minded, tell him that none of this crap is going to matter in a couple of years anyway, and to back away from the hair metal and maybe get to know the cute bookish girl in english class who listens to a whole lot of R.E.M. a little better.

But, I recognize this as a fleeting fantasy, and nothing more.

I sometimes entertain this fantasy because, really, when I was fifteen, I was kind of a milquetoast dork with low self-esteem, awful taste, way too little perspective, and way to many NiceGuy™ tendencies.

Looking back, I kind of hate** teenage me.

But then, as an adult, I kind of think I’m supposed to hate him at little bit.

However, at the same time, I recognize his importance and relevance to the formation of the person I am today. His issues, bad choices, and failures eventually led to my becoming, well, Me, and for that reason, I have to at least respect him as an embarassing necessity.

It’s because he tried and failed at all kinds of things that I’m able to take today’s setbacks in stride. It’s because he missed a few school assignments and suffered the consequences that I learned to manage my time more effectively. It’s because he was so inept at teenage romance that I learned some lessons about what not to do and eventually ended up in a healthy and fulfilling relationship. It’s because of his finding a couple of things that he enjoyed and was good at that I eventually let go of a lot of self-doubt and developed the assertiveness and confidence to pursue further education and a career that is, more often than not, lucrative and rewarding.

It’s because that unpleasant teenage me managed to live through the high school experience and learn something from it, then moved on from it out into the larger, much cooler world to have more experiences to learn from that I ended up being the person I am today, a person I’m actually somewhat happy being.

This isn’t to say that the person I am at thirty-five doesn’t still have issues; in the twenty years since that bundle of insecurity and bad taste walked the earth, I’ve had more than that person’s lifetime to amass a whole bunch of new ones, as well as a lot more experiences, providing both successes and challenges, which I continue to deal with. Life is, like most things, a process; if you’re doing it right, you’re not finished growing and developing until your biological functions cease***; there’s always something new to see, learn, or experience. I can’t fathom the idea that somebody would seriously wish to go back, or simply decide that they’re done learning and experiencing, and just let life pass them by for the rest of their alotted time****.

So, in 20 years, will fifty-five year old me look back at the thirty-five year old who’s writing this and do one of those sympathetic head shakes and wonder “what the hell was I thinking?” If he’s still around, Probably. But at the same time, I suspect that while he might consider me naive, provincial, and posessed of embarassingly bad taste, he, like me, will not regret having those experiences, because they helped to shape the man he’s become.

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* those never work anyway; paradoxes always unravel themselves in the end, at least according to Novikov

** If teenage me were around today, he’d totally dig Nickleback and Kid Rock, and such things cannot stand.

*** And nobody truly knows what, if anything, comes after that, so there’s no use worrying about it when there’s so much LIFE out there to concern yourself with.

**** I’ve met some of those cases of arrested development; people who are, for the most part, exactly the same person in their thirties as they were when I knew them as a teenager. And boy, are those people tedious to be around*****

***** Amost as tedious as those people who decide that they know all they need to know, and scoff at anyone who tries to continue to learn more about the world around them well into adulthood. Also: am I actually allowed to footnote a footnote?******

****** What the hell, I’m going to do it again anyway, in order to make the point about how frustrating I find it that many people also expect me to be the same person I was at a given point in the past, and then get angry with me for having the temerity to grow, change, and evolve. A lot of those people are the same people covered in the last two footnotes.

It’s Friday, or thereabouts. It’s been a long, tiring week. Here’s some music.

1. “Whip Smart” – Liz Phair
2. “Martian Girl” – The Aquabats
3. “Nun Fight” – Paul and Storm
4. “For You” – Barenaked Ladies
5. “In The Sun” – She & Him
6. “In That Quiet Earth” – Genesis
7. “Thinking of You (live)” – Katy Perry
8. “You Ruined Everything” – Jonathan Coulton
9. “Computer Assisted Design” – TMBG
10. “Leslie Ann Levine” – The Decemberists

The eldest is working on a poetry unit at school these days; part of the assignment is to bring in lyrics from songs they like and examine them for poetic devices. My kid picked number five:

In this respect, I think I’m growing a good one.

A while back, I talked a little bit about the concept of helicopter parenting, and why I reject the concept as ill-advised, and generally not at all good for kids’ development.

What concerns me today isn’t the concept itself, but how it came about. Once again, I shall point to Lenore Skenazy over at free-range kids, the guru and general focal resource for this topic, for putting a focus on all this, and getting me thinking.

The question here is “Why have people shifted toward this kind of parenting today?” When previous generations were children, it was common for them to entertain themselves outside for hours, with the general direction of “come back home when the street lights come on.” People who were raised this way, or raised their own children this way, would not consider it proper for today’s kids to experience similar circumstances. Instead of giving kids a little bit of freedom to develop independently, they overschedule and over-structure, and “hover” (like helicopters!) over their kids at all times, in the fear that they’ll be abducted or wounded by playground equipment or mauled by a rabid raccoon or someting. They do so because they claim that things have changed; that the world is a more dangerous place now.

Of course, statistics don’t support this; the crime rate in the United States has been declining significantly since it’s peak in the late 1980s; in fact, “the streets” today are much safer (in terms of the violent crime rate) today than they were thoughout the 1970s and 1980s.

So, why are people today so convinced things are so much scarier and more dangerous than they were in decades past, even when they’re not?

Not surprisingly, I have a couple of ideas.

Continue Reading »

Like most sci-fi types out there, I’ve been deriving quite a bit of enjoyment out of the new season of Doctor Who with Doctor number eleven, Matt Smith. And now that the States have caught up with the UK and the premeire episode, “The Eleventh Hour,” has officially aired over here, we can talk about it.

Probably some vague spoilers here…proceed with due caution:

As for the new Doctor and his companion, Amy Pond, I like them. Quite a bit, actually. He’s got a proper Whovian eccentricity about him (“…definitely a madman with a box”), and his chemistry with Karen Gillan is quite good. While the relationship is still obviously developing, I’m not getting the mooney-eyed “Doctor’s my boyfriend” vibe, which is, to be honest, nice (I liked Rose/Billie Piper, really, I just wish she’d GO AWAY).

…And yeah, she’s cute:

But that’s not important here.

Plotwise, the episodes have been consistently good (though I don’t think we’ve gotten a great one yet), but the more interesting stuff is going on in the background; seems like there’s more groundwork laid down beyond the RTD practice of wedging a word or phrase (“Bad Wolf”, “Saxon”, etc) into every episode; the underlying arc (and it could be described quite literally as an arc of sorts) is laying some serious and subtle backstory.

However, the biggest mystery to me comes back to Amy once again; specifically, where, or, actually WHEN is she from? It’s not entirely clear, and difficult to extrapolate, given that all the markers and trappings don’t line up.

When we first see Smith’s Doctor, he’s hovering over London (where we get a pointed view of the London Eye, placing him no earlier than 2000); “End of Time Part II” ended, presumably, in Winter 2005 when Tennant was stalking saying goodbye to Rose before regenerating, and wrecking the TARDIS. I’m guessing this is where things initially pick up in “Eleventh Hour.”

Then perspective switches to young (roughly 7-10 years old) Amelia, and it’s Easter. So, some sort of time jump happened, though the duration (months? years?) and direction isn’t known. After the shenanigans of cooking all that food and “fixing” cracks, the Doctor heads out for a quick five minute trip, and returns “12 years later.”

The bulk of the episode happens here; time markers include mostly modern (if late model) cars, camera smart phones (a Blackberry Storm is featured prominently), laptop computers with wifi, browsers, and web cams, and call-outs to twitter, facebook, bebo, and all that other social networking rabble.

So, “modern day,” right? Not necessarily.

During one of the “notice everything” sequences (which seems to be a recurring theme under The Moff) in “The Eleventh Hour”,the camera lingers a bit on the ID badge of nurse Rory Williams, contemporary and childhood friend of Amy. Note the issue date (click to embiggen):

“Issued: 30/11/1990”, with a current-looking photo. Assuming is age is within a couple of years of Amy (21 or so at this point in the episode), and that it takes three to five years of training to become a nurse in the UK, this badge can’t be more than five years old. Definite evidence of this episode taking place at some point in the 1990s (and finally wrapping up two years later, launching the rest of the series).

Still this doesn’t account for all the technology inconsistencies. And, the fact that in episode 3, Amy doesn’t recognize a Dalek; she’s never seen them. It’s been established quite explicitly that in the “prime” Doctor Who timeline, the Daleks are common knowledge to the public (given the events of “Stolen Earth/Journey’s End”), and this awareness played a significant role in the backstory of one of the characters in “Waters of Mars.” Amy is simply not from 21st century earth, at least not the version we’ve seen thus far in the revamped series.

I guess the most plausible explanation is “alternate timeline/universe”; that’s kind of what I’m expecting. We’ll see how it plays out. The whole “crack in the universe” motif/device seems to support it. In any case, I like when serial entertainment gives us all these little inconsistencies and breadcrumbs to follow; it keeps me watching. After all, I always wanted to get an honest-to-goodness No-Prize from Marvel comics, but could never find an inconsistency that was clearly not an error.

Oh well – for futher reading, the guy over at bleeding cool has all kinds of other stuff on this as well; as more episodes roll out both in the UK and abroad, we’ll see more speculation (especially when River Song and the Weeping Angels come back this weekend), as if there isn’t enough already.

The question nobody’s asking, though, is why aren’t there any ducks in the duck pond?

Over the weekend, President Obama sent the directive down to the HHS department to come up with new rules to extend hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners (or, for that matter, whoever the patient dicates). The new rules, spelled out here, once implemented, would apply to any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding (that would be most of them).

This is the kind of thing that one would think would be a no-brainer; however, it isn’t; some hospitals, have, in the past, have barred visits by same-sex partners (see paragraph nine in this piece) who’ve taken the extra legal step of having medical power of attorney documents drawn up (an extra step that wouldn’t be necessary, if states allowed these couples to, y’know, get married or something).

In a way it makes me really sad that people (be they not only gay, but widowed w/o kids, or a member of a celebate religious order, if I understand the directive correctly, and I’m pretty sure I do – read the memorandum) can’t, as a matter of course, have their chosen loved ones, partners, or families present with them in these situations, even if they aren’t granted a specific title in a narrowly-defined legal manner. However, I’m not going to let the general messed-upednes of American society as a whole tarnish the fact that I’m glad this particular problem is finally getting fixed.

‘Twas a weekend, I guess. Notable, for one or two things at least.

First, we took in a ball game, watching the new minor league team in town, the Flying Squirrels, defeat the Reading Phillies 2-1 on Friday night. There’s a contradition that I don’t quite understand at work here: I’m bored to tears watching a game on television, but I love going out to the ballpark. In any case, Friday night was a great night for a ball game.

Saturday morning/afternoon was perhaps the busiest bit: Some friends of ours are chasing the career train south to North Carolina, and couldn’t take their fish with them, so we agreed to take them in. This involved moving half-a-dozen oddly-stocked fish (including an angelfish with a diameter, not counting fins and tail, almost that of a softball) from one end of the Richmond metropolitan area to the other, along with their tank, stand, and life support system, and getting things set back up on the other end without killing anybody.

A bunch of buckets, a long car trip, some heavy lifting, and a whole lot of syphoning later, I think we managed it; everybody’s still alive, and looking reasonably happy. I even had some time to redecorate:

So, there’s that; there are now almost fifty gallons of fish tank in my living room. I’ll manage; they make nice lamps.

Fish tanks, with me, for some reason, inevitably lead to carpentry. The new tank was a little small for its stand, but that stand was the perfect size for my molly tank, so I switched things, removing a bit of my home-built stand (which was originally built for a tank of the size we took in), and providing everyone proper support. This left me with a piece of lumber just about the perfect size to add another built-in bookshelf where one was missing. My books are still two or three ranks deep, but they’re no longer overflowing and causing avalanche warnings.

And, it cleared up a bunch of space in my bedroom. So, yay.

Those three letters in quotes above form what’s probably the best word to describe my general reaction toward the week. Others might be “down”, “ugh”, “damnit” and “don’t want to get out of bed today”.

Yep, been one of those kind of weeks.

1. “Riot Van” – The Arctic Monkeys
2. “Clean” – Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansen
3. “Blue Turning Gray” – Clap Your Hands Say Yeah
4. “Head Over Heels” – Go-Gos
5. “Judy” – The Pipettes
6. “Ashes of American Flags” – Wilco
7. “Little Animals” – Raveonettes
8. “Keep the Car Running” – Arcade Fire
9. “Civilians” – Julie Schreiber Band
10. “Floorplan” – Tegan and Sara

Today’s collection of tunes is, on the whole, REALLY indie rock, which is oddly appropriate, given the fact that in my spare time this week, I read all 1600+ strips in the Questionable Content archive.

Given that that was the best part of my week, dear reader, is pretty sad. However, the comic is really very good, and you should read it, if you’re of the mind.

The pack of teabaggers in the hotel lobby this morning reminded me that today is tax day. They’re apparently heading out on the Mall today to bitch about having to pay their share for roads, bridges, police officers and firefighters and all those other aspects of civilization they use every day that taxes, y’know, pay for.

I don’t get it either.

For what it’s worth, I wrapped all the paperwork up months ago and filed online anyway, but if you’re out late tonight rushing to get your 1040 of choice mailed off on time, take a moment to reflect on the fact that today is my cat’s 13th birthday. I’m sure that she’d enjoy the positive mojo, if she’s not too busy sleeping under the kitchen table, demanding more food, or being surly.