One Fish, Two Fish

I won a live goldfish last night at the Rockingham County Fair, at the insistence and using the money of Sarah Mac. The game was simple: toss a ping pong ball into a little cup, win a fish. I won.

We then went to PetSmart to get some fish food and a companion fish for the one I won. Today, I made a trip to Target and Goodwill, found a new, larger vase and some decorative stones to put in it. I also found some fairly unattractive accouterments to complete the aquatic landscape for my two new friends, a semi-creepy ceramic bear holding a watering can, and a small dish reading "MAN'S BEST FRIEND" on its side. Each cost about 35 cents. Here is a picture of the two fish:



The orange one is from the fair. The dark one is from the store. They are both female, we think. I have not named them yet, so if you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments. My ideas so far are Sasha and Malia and Franny and Zooey, but I don't love either of those.

I had planned on keeping them in my office at work, but that's probably not a good idea as they would be in the dark basically everyday after 5 p.m., and I would have to go in on weekends to feed them. Probably too much effort. So guess they'll live here, for now anyway.

So far they seem ok. I think I fouled the original water with too much fish food, so I bought a gallon of purified water and changed it out. They appear to be enjoying the new toys, too. I believe they are using the toy dog dish as a swimming pool. Here's the entire landscape:



UPDATE: The gold fish est muerto. She must have been diseased and/or mishandled by the carneys. :(

Tangled Up With Boys In Blue

Apparently, Bob Dylan was stopped the other day by two police officers in a community in New Jersey, wandering through a low-income, minority neighborhood a few hours before he was scheduled to perform a show.

That's pretty cool unto itself, that the Father of Folk Rock (and megamillionaire) would rather wander aimlessly through a rough New Jersey neighborhood than party or take part in other showy business while on tour. But what makes the story amazing is that neither the first officer who responded to a call that an unknown white man was wandering through the 'hood nor the second officer who arrived for backup knew who Dylan was, even after he identified himself!

Nothing came of the incident, as the officers returned the singer-songwriter to the hotel where he was staying and having his identity confirmed by employees there (he wasn't carrying any ID).

No definitive word was given on Dylan's purpose for being in the neighborhood. Reported weather conditions may indicate that he could have been seeking shelter from the storm, and unnamed witnesses alleged his jacket may have been blowing in the wind. The reported dialogue between Dylan and the officers was abbreviated for press, though anonymous sources have speculated that upon identifying himself and seeing the young officer struggle to place the name, Dylan may have responded cordially, "Don't think twice, it's all right." The exact location of the incident was also unreported by police, and media members failed to confirm the address as being positively 4th Street.

Here's a link to the real story. http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#2wXIst/www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/08/bob_dylan_stopped_by_cops_whov.html?ft=1&f=103943429/

VOTE

It's been a while since I've posted on here, and even my facebook and Twitter output has been almost nil over the past two weeks, due to my nice vacation, which I suppose I will end officially tomorrow by attending a university event for two hours. I think that will be a nice way to ease back into work, right before the weekend.

But the last time I checked my Twitter feed for any significant length of time, I found a link to a Guardian poll asking people to vote for their favorite TV show of the "Noughties", or 2000-2009. I did vote, for LOST, but the poll is now closed, and the results were ridiculous. At the time of my vote, LOST was doing respectably, with 3-4 percent, and my second choice, The West Wing had a few percentage points as well. They both trailed a show called QI, which I'm guessing must be British (I've never heard of it) and long-time BBC favorite Dr. Who. So, clearly the poll reflected the tastes of UKers, which is ok, since the Guardian is a U.K. publication. But the final results were absurd, clearly becoming a personal battle between fans of two shows with which I am not familiar, The Wire and Top Gear, which finished 1 and 2 with each pulling in more than 40 percent of the vote. So what was once an interesting poll was ruined.

I'm much more interested in what the smaller group of people that reads this blog thinks. As I mentioned, I would have to pick LOST as my number 1, though TWW is second only in a veritable photo-finish. The only other show that was within a whiff of those two for me is Arrested Development, which is hands-down the best comedy of the 2000s, but due to its relatively short run and comedic genre, in comparison, it just lacks the epic gravitas the first two carry so strongly for me.

Coming up with even a Top 10 list would be difficult, but other favorite shows from the past ten years that come to mind immediately would be Weeds, The Office, The Daily Show, Colbert Report, Late Night with Conan O'Brien, Chappelle's Show, Good Eats, Iron Chef (original), House M.D., Friends, This Old House, The Simpsons, Family Guy, Survivorman, Man vs. Wild, American Dreams and Dirty Jobs. I might even have to throw Alias in there, though I may be slightly biased from having watched that entire series within the past few months.

I'm probably pretty well defined by my demographic, a male who was in either high school or college for eighty percent of the 2000s, with picks such as LOST, The Office, the late-night shows, FOX cartoons and the hour-long documentary segments of masculinity defined that are Dirty Jobs, Survivorman and Man vs. Wild. But I've got at least one PBS show there, a brainy food show and a couple respectable dramas, so I don't feel too fratty.

I was going to put a poll up with some TV shows to vote on, but that would be way insufficient. Just leave your thoughts in the comments.

A few more Comic Con LOST tidbits

Here are a few more interesting things from the LOST Comic Con presentation I didn't include in my last posting.



The above video is a clip of an episode from a faux-ABC TV series from the 80's called "Mysteries of the Universe." According to an ABC press release I found today, the video is the first of five such episodes that will investigate the shadowy Dharma Initiative. From the release:

Once thought to be Lost, this all-new explosive documentary project provides a full-scale investigation into the so-called "Dharma Initiative." Through interviews, research, eyewitness accounts and more, the short-form series attempts to uncover the truth behind this shadowy organization, including the possible existence of a secret society with links to covert locations around the globe, including a South Pacific island, which is the subject of intense speculation, but whose whereabouts have never been confirmed.

The other parts will be released and viewable at abc.com/lostmysteries one per month through November:

*Episode 2 Tuesday, August 4, 2009
*Episode 3 Tuesday, September 8, 2009
*Episode 4 Thursday, October 15, 2009
*Episode 5 Monday, November 16, 2009

Those will be interesting to watch. There were a few other neat faux-promo videos played that some speculate reveal the answer to the big question after the season 5 finale, but I personally don't read too much into them. I think they're more for fun.

Comic Con

For the past several years, the producers of LOST have been one of the most popular exhibitors at the Comic Con Convention in San Diego. The audience of that convention dovetails nicely with their hardcore viewer base, so it's no surprise ABC pulls out a lot, if not all, the stops to make sure their presentation doesn't disappoint. Yesterday I read this New York Times piece about how much planning they put into their panel this year, equating such efforts with campaign rallies to prime voters to get to the polls in September.

Below I'll put some videos that should capture most of the presentation. NOTE: These will contain major spoilers for anyone who's not yet surpassed season 5.

LOST Panel Part 1
LOST Panel Part 2
LOST Panel Part 3
LOST Panel Part 4


But perhaps the best part of the presentation was edited out of the above links--a montage of fan-created videos the producers showed. It's the embedded video at the top of the page, and the last part is hilarious. It shouldn't reveal too much in terms of spoilers.

Wonder Bob

I had a mild case of insomnia last night. I just wasn't tired. Possibly from over-stimulation from staring at electronic (computer, TV and movie) screens most of the weekend, or just not being tired from lying around watching golf all day. In any case, I was searching the late night tube for something to ease me off into sleep.

Passing up such terrible offerings as "Ace of Cakes," Fox News' "Redeye" and "Dance Your Ass Off" (or whatever it's called), I landed on a ceremony held to honor Michael Douglas with a lifetime achievement award. This in itself seems so ridiculous as to merit a blog post unto itself. Perhaps I'm just too young to appreciate Douglas's work. I know he's won two Academy Awards before my time, but I know him best as President Andrew Shepard from Aaron Sorkin's "The American President," a movie most distinguished in the fact that its leftovers led to Sorkin creating "The West Wing."

That was actually one of the films they mentioned in honoring him (Martin Sheen made some speech about it, which was fitting as he played Douglas's number 2 in "TAP" and later President Josiah Bartlet in "TWW.") It was an ok film, but not the stuff lifetime achievement awards are made of. Another film of his cited was the 2000 box office flop "Wonder Boys." Now, I have not seen the film, and it carries a more-than-respectable 83 percent fresh rating on rotten tomatoes. Certainly, box office success is not always an indicator of a film's quality, and "WB" may very well be a good one. But after having read a summary of it on wikipedia, I was struck by its similarity to a film I have seen, the critical and commercial flop "Smart People." Both focus on washed up writers on the faculty of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.

While honoring "Wonder Boys," Bob Dylan made a surprise appearance playing his song, "Things Have Changed," which he apparently penned at the special request of the film's producers. The video above is the performance, which at least in my late night stupor, seemed almost incomprehensible. I think I caught a rhyme of the words "shogun" and "son of a gun" in there somewhere, but I'm not sure. I haven't rewatched it to verify. His almost complete lack of annunciation combined with an extra-gravelly growl made it nearly impossible for me to tell what he was saying, which was disappointing, as the director of "WB" said in a taped interview that the lyrics had significant meaning to the film. Oh well. The more entertaining part of the clip is seeing the slumpy old Douglas try to nod his head (side-to-side) in rhythm with the happy-Nashville-hop of the song while his young, pretty wife Catherine Zeta Jones sits comfortably upright next to him. Silly all around.

On The Merits of Routinaeity

After recently being diagnosed as suffering from a moderate case of blog fade, I am attempting to get back to the routine of semi-regular posting. I just returned home from the office, as I do five days a week, and have done for the past ten-and-a-half months. Today, I left at around 2 p.m. These summer days, I typically depart around 2 or 3 in the afternoon, due to my limited remaining fiscal hours, and the limited remaining worthwhile PR work to be done.

I walked to my car, parked in the same spot on top of the same parking deck it is five days a week, and as it has been for the past eight-and-a-half months (we moved downtown 2 months after I arrived). Heading south down the left side of Liberty Ave., I passed on the other side of the street the same young woman I passed at the same time yesterday. I know (of) her; she is a bartender at the coffee-shop-by-day/bar-by-night located just steps from the front door of our office on Court Square. She is young and pretty, though she wears heavy, dark eyeliner and has a large and conspicuous tattoo on her right arm, made evermore noticeable by her proclivity to wear sleeveless black tank tops, routinely.

I reached my car and as I sat felt the same rush of heat I did while entering my car yesterday. I flipped on the radio and heard the same song, Katy Perry's "Hot N' Cold," that was on at the same time yesterday. (It is a recognizable song, if forgettable in quality.) I turned my head to back out and felt the same crick in my neck I felt yesterday. I drove home, taking the same route I take five days a week and have taken for the past seven-and-a-half months (it took me a few weeks to determine the quickest path). I arrived at my apartment complex, stopped by my mailbox and retrieved a bill from the Harrisonburg Electric Commission, as I have done once a month for the past 9-and-a-half months (my first bill didn't arrive until my first full month of service).

I walked in and immediately changed clothes. In the winter, I would trade my dress pants for sweatpants; in summer, I tend toward gym shorts.

Yes, I've got a pretty good routine going.

The routinaeity (invented word) of my immediate post-work life is one reason why my at-work existence appeals to me. In my PR job (basically working as an in-house reporter) and my immediate previous newspaper job (basically working as a reporter in a medium perhaps most valuable for use in an outhouse), I have encountered quite a bit of variety.

I've interviewed art professors, science students, higher administrators and administrative hires; a Surgeon General, general surgeons, a major general and general studies majors; police and fire chiefs, fired police chiefs; athletes: foot-ballers and scratch bowlers; actors, musicians, stage-coaches and truck drivers; and a guy who harvested a strange-looking Siamese cucumber from his home garden, among many other interesting and different folks.

But even so, routinaeity invades. Anyone with intermediate training in literary analysis could pick up structural and thematic similarities threaded throughout most of my "news" and feature articles, especially the ones in PR. My leads are usually somewhat snappy, sometimes tangential and often form around a "this...but this" assertion.

I'll often use a little wordplay, a subtle pun here or there, and similar patterns of periodic and loose sentences. I insert words, or at least connotations, from the institutional mission statement throughout the piece, usually before ending with a nice two-paragraph shift, bringing the theme home--very similar to a couplet ending a classical sonnet. Thus, even stories so different in content as high-tech biology research and student political engagement leave a similar lingering impression (or at least that's the point).

Some would recognize it as skillful writing, at least for a PR person. I tend to view it more as a mere aptitude, (the word skillful seems to me to imply a certain degree of challenge to be overcome, which I find absent from most of my assignments.) I'll give myself credit for typically conducting a decent amount of research, or familiarization, with the material before an interview, a decent interpersonal manner and questioning style which usually can extract a soundbite similar to that which I seek, solid note-taking and a good ability to make connections between the specific information and the "bigger picture" of the mission/messaging. But none of those things are particularly difficult, nor do they require much training to master.

I hope you don't infer too much of a negative tone toward routinaeity in everyday life from this post, though. In fact, I think it's a) mostly inevitable and b) not necessarily a bad thing.

Though various theories and laws of entropy generally state that worlds, environments and societies tend to move toward a state of increasing disorder, often human behavior tends toward homogeneity (I know that many of you will probably take to task that overgeneralization, or in some other way tangentially riff upon that sentiment; such an act would follow the routine of our typical blogversations [another invented {and poor-quality} word]) And it makes sense.

Psychologically, we feel comfortable in familiar situations, because we can expect comfortable outcomes. Whether it's knowing that my parking spot will be devoid of puddles should it rain, or that my boss will heap praise upon me for a "good" story, or that I can look forward to a generally entertaining hour of low-stress entertainment on "Top Chef: Masters" every Wednesday night at 10 p.m., it's nice that a lot of things in life are relatively certain. Call it Pavlovian, call it safe, comfortable or just reassuring.

Without such common tasks falling into some kind of order, people, I think, would begin to tend toward a state of entropy. If I didn't take the same route and park in the same spot most work mornings, I could get stuck in unexpected traffic, or my car could be stuck in a low spot on the parking deck. In such cases, I might be late to work, displeasing my boss, or my shoes might get wet, displeasing my toes. Innumerable more examples exist all around us.

But also apparently innate to humans, in addition to a tendency toward familiarity, is a small part of the spirit that yearns for excitement, a break from routinaeity, adventure. Call it thrill-seeking, pioneering, broadening one's horizons. I see little logical explanation for such a phenomenon. If a creature has all its biological needs met in a certain environment, it would have no reason to leave it. So why do humans wish to explore?

Please weigh in with your thoughts. You know the routine.