Category: Ramble

Just writing stuff about things, and things about stuff.

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Press Your Luck

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There was this show, pretty big-time in the 80s, called Press Your Luck. My dad absolutely loved this show, and so did I: it was basically a run-of-the-mill pure luck-based game where you spin a wheel to win cash and prizes. No skill involved as I remember (except for that one guy who memorized the pattern of the game board and won literally tens of thousands of dollars before they booted him). Just push your button and take your chances.

In retrospect, I’m not sure why we loved this show so much, except for one thing: the Whammies. Every game show of the era had its way to rob you of everything you had won in a moment’s bad luck — the bankrupt slice on the Wheel of Fortune, the wager-what-you-will spots on the Jeopardy board. Press Your Luck had the Whammy. Now, the Whammy took your money, but it was worse than that. The Whammy was this little turd-looking gnomelet in a banana-colored superhero cape who, when you hit the wrong square on the board, would swoop in and take your money. Not because he was a thief, but because he was an idiotic asshole. He’d drive a car in, lose control, and wipe out, taking your cash with him. He’d fly in from the sky, come in too hot, and punch a hole through the ground, and your cash would drain out.

But there was no great equalizer to this game. You couldn’t rely on trivia knowledge to save you from the Whammy. No amount of literary or linguistic savvy would ward him off. (Come to think of it, the show had female Whammies, too — which was actually rather gender-conscious of them for the time, though having a female turdlet character is a dubious gain for the women’s movement). If you wanted to win, you had to brave the Whammy.

I never realized what a perfect metaphor for life this show was. As prepared as you might be, if you want to achieve anything, you have to brave the Whammy. You could write the best book, be the most talented actor, paint the best picture, or, to quote a certain presidential hopeful, “have the best words,” and no small part of your success is still going to hinge on luck.

The Whammy of the real world might not take your money, but he (or she!) might very well take your dignity, your hope, your self-esteem, your dreams.

Luckily, the real world is not Press Your Luck, and we have our pockets literally bulging with free spins and re-spins — if we only have the guts to press the button.

 

 

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

The Weekly Re-Motivator: Expiration Date

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Consider a tree. Nourished and nurtured and planted in fertile soil, it can flourish and tower and bear remarkable fruits. Neglected and sheltered and forgotten about, it withers and crumbles and gets overrun with ivy or tree cancer or tree-eating beetles or something horrifying like that.

Just so with the creative brain. Given room to grow, freedom of expression, and a steady diet of inspirational art, the brain grows stronger, desires to create for itself, and spawns incredible creations. Left to fester, the brain shuts down, gives up, stops trying.

Creativity must be tended, just like a tree, or that crappy vegetable garden my wife and I tried to plant a few years ago. We didn’t know anything about anything when it came to growing actual food, and figured, you know, the human race has been handling this gardening thing for millennia; how hard can it be, right? Bloody hard, as it turns out; not to mention the fact that neither of us actually has the patience or the drive to actually maintain the thing. What, you mean it takes more than a sunny spot, a few holes in the ground, and some foolish optimism to grow food in your backyard? To hell with that!

But of course it does. You’ve got to monitor that crap. Track the pH levels in the dirt. measure the amount of water in the soil. Pull weeds. You know. Effing work at it.

And if not tended properly? Those fruits wither on the vine, or worse, they shrivel up and die before their tiny little seeds can even germinate.

And so it is with creativity. Ask any writer or artist or whatever where their ideas come from, and their answer will probably be something like: it’s not finding the ideas that’s hard, it’s deciding which ones are worth my time that’s difficult. I’m not even that much of a writer, and still the thought will cross my mind at least once a week — sometimes once a day! — hey, I should write a story about this or that would make a really cool turn in my novel or man, I wish I’d had that idea three months ago on that other project.

But these ideas are like the produce at Aldi: they have an expiration date measured in hours, not days. Your brain serves them up from wherever ideas come from. (The black hole in the back of your brain? The quantum tunnel that connects your brain to every other brain in the world? Narnia?) They land on the shelf where your conscious mind peers at and ponders over them like an aging bachelorette on a diet. And whichever ideas don’t get put in the cart? Whichever ones don’t get spun pretty quickly into tonight’s dinner or slapped into the deep-freeze of your ever-expanding Evernote file? They go brown, they turn spotty, and they end up in the dumpster out back.

Age, Bacteria, Bio, Biology, Bread, Breakfast, Bug

Which is fine and natural (not the exorbitant amount of food waste in our country, of course — but the life cycle of ideas). A few bananas go bad — it’s no big deal, the grocery store knows it’s gonna sell more bananas. But those kiwis? Those mangoes that look so good but taste so bad? The more they rot, the less the store wants to put them on the shelf.

But your brain works the same way. It serves up these fantastic ideas day after day, week after week, and the more you don’t do anything with them? The more they expire, unused, on the shelf?

The less your brain is going to serve them up.

This is why I try to write, at least a little bit, every single day. The more I write, the more I notice my good ideas when they crop up — and the more, it seems, I have to choose from.

Your creativity — your good ideas — they have an expiration date.

Waste not, want not.

This weekly remotivational post is part of Stream of Consciousness Saturday. Every weekend, I use Linda G. Hill’s prompt to refocus my efforts and evaluate my process, sometimes with productive results.

The A-Hole Runner

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A couple of times a week, I see this runner.

It’s kinda funny seeing runners when I’m out driving; once upon a time they got on my nerves (look at this guy/girl, out flaunting the fact that they’re BEING SO HEALTHY, why don’t you get on a treadmill or better yet go watch some TV and eat some chips). These days it makes me a little jealous. I could get one of those awful bumper stickers — you know, I’d rather be running or some other obsequious crap — and it wouldn’t be a lie. I see other people running, and I really do think, dang, I wish I was going for a run. Even when it’s 80+ degrees out. Something, as I may have pondered before, is wrong with me.

But not this runner.

This runner is an a-hole.

I say that knowing full well that I’m guilty of many a-hole runner behaviors myself. Holier-than-thou minimalist apologetics. Tree-huggery every-run-is-a-good-run fawning. Interminable gear-heading with all the electronics. Smug humblebrags about waking up while the rest of the world is asleep. Endless talking about all things running.

Jeez, I’m an a-hole runner.

But not as big an a-hole as this a-hole.

Because this a-hole runs in the street when there’s a sidewalk right the fargo there.

Now, look. I understand. I’ve read the scientific-sounding articles about how running on asphalt is better for your feet than running on concrete. (Apparently, asphalt will compress underfoot, while concrete won’t. Though how much it actually compacts under the paltry weight of a human is probably less than negligible.) And yeah, okay, he’s doing what you should do when you run on a road, which is to say, he runs against traffic, so that you can see him coming and he can see you coming. And yes, I will admit and can even attest that running on a sidewalk can be more hazardous than you might expect.

But all that goes out the window when you’re running down a main drag during rush hour in the dusky dawn light, where shadows are long, eyes are droopy, and everybody and their mother is texting and driving on their way to the daily grind.

This is a two-lane road serving virtually all the traffic going from our little Atlanta suburb to the next little Atlanta suburb over. Not exactly the artery of I-20, but certainly a capillary of substantial size. And too many times, I see this dude trucking along the edge of the road, head down, shuffling blithely into the oncoming traffic with all the concern my dog has for the screen she doesn’t know I closed behind the sliding glass door.

I don’t understand it. There’s no rational explanation I can find for it. The cars going North have to dodge into the oncoming South lane to avoid splattering this poor bastard, and the cars coming South have to slow down to avoid hitting the cars dodging into their lane to avoid splattering this poor bastard. The man is literally a slow-moving roadblock. He backs up traffic in both directions. I’ve seen him at various points along a 1-mile stretch, which means that mile is part of his regular routine, which means he’s putting his own desire to run in the street above the desire of possibly hundreds of drivers to use the road as intended every morning he goes for a run.

AND THE SIDEWALK IS RIGHT THERE. Literally less than five feet to his left. A quick little hop and he’d be on it, happily out of everybody’s way. Happily not endangering his own life and limb. Happily not being a total a-hole.

And yet, on he plods. With his high socks. And his fargoing white headband. And his blatant disregard for anything approaching common sense or decency.

So plod on, a-hole. But know that, even though you’re running, I’m glad as fargo I’m not you.

And that’s saying a lot. From one a-hole to another.

 

Watch This

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I’m one of those guys who still wears a watch.

I know, right? Older than old school. Positively ancient. Not only do I wear a watch to begin with, but I don’t even wear one as a fashion statement: I wear the tacky digital kinds (one of those backward primates who still thinks digital watches are neat).

Why bother? When we have what are essentially supercomputers tucked in our pockets, what’s the point of having an outdated piece of tech strapped to the wrist?

Well, regular readers know already that I’m a little bit preoccupied with time as a concept. I wrote an entire novel (still in edits — okay not in edits yet, but slated for it soon) about time-traveling teenagers. There’s no telling when that phone in your pocket will run out of juice or kick the bucket all on its own (as the technology increases, so does the crash potential). Not to mention the fact that — and perhaps I’m showing my teacher stripes here a bit — I find it enormously tacky whipping your phone out as regularly as breathing to check anything: social media, e-mail, the time, the weather. I’m guilty of enough of that without resorting to the phone to check the time several times an hour.

Further, something about my bare wrist bothers me. Hard to nail down why, but my unadorned body kinda skeeves me out. I wear all kinds of stuff, preferably the kind I don’t have to take off, just so that my naked skin isn’t just flapping in the breeze. Rings on both hands (I’m down to just one on each hand these days). A three-year-old glow-in-the-dark bracelet from a 5k. A really rather sharp man-chain necklace, a gift from my wife in our first year together. I even, back in times we won’t talk about, dabbled in earrings, and in my really dark days, an anklet. (I know. I KNOW. It was the nineties. God.)

And then there’s my watch, which is the only functional accessory in the lot.

I dunno, I think there’s something elegant and classy about being able to track the movement of time — time, dictated by the very movement of the planet around the sun, or, in a less direct sense, by the actual vibrations of Cesium electrons (and yes, okay, they’re not “Cesium electrons” but rather electrons in orbit around a Cesium atom GOD this isn’t a science class) — just with a flick of the wrist, an adjustment of the sleeve. Plus, and I know I’ve mentioned this before, I’m a teacher, and teaching types live and die by the number of minutes left in the period, so I like to have that information handy. (I am so sorry. No I’m not. Every pun is deliberate.) Seriously. Digital watches are neat.

And my watch broke the other day.

Well, the band broke. And with the caliber of watches I traffic in, that basically means the watch is dead to me, because it costs only slightly more to buy a replacement watch than it would cost to buy a replacement band, not to mention finding the right band and fiddling with microscopic screwdrivers and tiny pins and pieces that can barely be seen with the naked eye. No thanks. Plus, that battery will be going soon, for that matter, and … yeah. It’s quicker and easier to shell out $20 for a new watch than to sink time and repair into the old one. (#firstworldproblems, I know.)

How did I break the band? Fair question. Here’s my humble-brag: push-ups. Apparently my wrist bulges like an inflated python, and after — man, how long did that watch last? let me ratchet this humble-brag up a step — let’s say a few thousand reps, that thing snapped like a fat man’s belt at a Vegas buffet.

So I have to muddle through a few days, watchless.

20160816_205727.jpg
Don’t look at the tan-line too long. You could go snow blind.

And it’s painful. Because I have no idea what time it is, outside of knowing that it’s generally night or day based on the light coming in through the window. Sure, I could check the systems clock at the bottom right of my computer screen — or the digital display on the cable box — or the Roman-numeral-analog job hanging on the wall — or the other digital display on the stove — or the one in the dash of my car — or my alarm clock that shows the time TWICE (once on its face and once projected in foot-tall letters on the bedroom wall — OR OKAY FINE MY PHONE — but no.

NO.

I needs my watch.

I feel naked without it.

So naked I’m thinking of putting an anklet on my wrist.

Please, think of the anklets.

No, wait. Don’t. Don’t think of the anklets. EVER.

Harry Potter and the Unfalsifiable Speciosity

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Yes, “speciosity” is totally a word. (I googled it after I decided that I needed it. Sometimes things work out in your favor. Oh ah.)

‘I’m sorry, but that’s completely ridiculous … You could claim that anything’s real if the only basis for believing in it is that nobody’s proved it doesn’t exist!’ – Hermione Grainger, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

author J.K Rowling

Thanks to the Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe for reminding me that there are things to love about the Harry Potter books that go way beyond the whimsical. (The SGU wraps up every episode of their (really quite excellent) weekly podcast with a skeptical quote, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear this one.)

What? My commute is over a half-hour each way. I listen to a lot of podcasts these days. (To be fair, I listened to this episode while running. BTW, it’s still effington hot out there.)

Happy Sunday!