Category: Serious Stuff

Okay, people. Two houses on the drive between my place and, well, the rest of the world, have Christmas decorations up. I don’t mean tinsel. I mean major freakin’ department-store-scale displays.

Quick date check: it’s at least a couple of weeks until Thanksgiving. I remember seeing one of the aforementioned Christmas displays lit up on Halloween night as I drove little E home from trick-or-treating.

It’s bad enough that the stores decided that Christmas starts at 11:59pm on October 31st. When did the rest of us start buying into this? Since when does the average family in middle America take its holiday decorating cues from the retail giants?… Read more

A friend of mine sent me a link to an article about a group of scientists from Zurich using unusual means to actually obtain an image of a molecule. The story is fascinating stuff.

The comments…less so. It’s just the latest in a long line of incidents I’ve witnesses that has convinced me that the much-vaunted “Web 2.0” paradigm has fallen short of the sales pitch on the outside of the box. Perhaps it’s less than democratic of me to take a big number two all over Web 2.0, whose underlying mantras seem to have been “let everyone comment on everything” and “rely on users to generate new content,” but from what I’ve been able to tell, the experiment has not yielded a resounding success. … Read more

…poor old Walter Cronkite went and died on us at the age of 92 on Friday.

Once upon a time, I wanted to be a reporter when I grew up. At a very early age, in grade school, I was inflicting home-made newsletters, none of them really reporting anything of any consequence, upon my classmates. In junior high, I quickly found my way into the journalism department, and by the time I was off to high school, things had gone really well – the junior high paper had gone from, for all intents and purposes, a typewriter thing to a computer layout thing. Granted, the computer was an Apple II, and the software used had to be all but abused into doing anything that looked really impressive (not unlike my experiences with the Avid many years later, come to think of it), but it was an enormous amount of fun. My friend Robert and I poured a ridiculous amount of effort into it all, and I was under the impression, by the time we got to high school, that we were rock stars. Just a little bit.

High school was a good deal more challenging – as often happens in the transition from junior high, even if you thought you were a rock star, you were lucky if anyone thought you were a roadie now. Still, the same pattern repeated itself, in a slightly more compressed time frame – our junior year was awesome. Our senior year was, on the other hand, a nightmare – we turned out three papers because the department was broke. I doggedly stuck with journalism as a major going into college, but by the end of my first year, this thing that everyone had assumed that I’d be spending my life doing was gone; journalism wasn’t my major anymore after what I’ll simply refer to as a spirited debate with the department advisor about writing down to a third grade level for a college paper (in short: I refused to do it).

Oddly enough, I wound up still working in news – in a way. Nearly ten years later I was writing and producing news promos. It wasn’t being a reporter, but by that time I’d found my calling sitting behind a computer and making stuff look cool.

One thing I remember from my very, very brief stint in college journalism, however, was the semester that was spent on journalistic ethics. You did this semester before you were allowed to write a single thing for the school paper. If you didn’t ace ethics, you were outta there. At the time, even though I did well with that semester, I thought this was a bit draconian: some perfectly good writers fell under the axe because they didn’t score better than a B in ethics.

Now I wish every freakin’ college journalism department in the nation operated that way.

The news media landscape today is something I find deeply troubling. Entities that in the past were reasonably impartial have, for lack of a better term, chosen sides. I’m not a big fan of “news” that leans heavily conservative or heavily liberal, because either way, there’s a slant, there’s a spin, and you’re no longer in the same room with the truth. It’s down the hall somewhere, having inconvenient bits lopped off in the edit.

This is completely at odds with what I knew halfway through my freshman year of college: that you don’t infuse a news piece with your opinion unless you have specifically been entrusted with that duty by the management. That you don’t just present one side of the story. That you don’t just regurgitate the official press release with no further research. That you don’t treat people accused of something as if they’ve already been convicted. And that you don’t play to the lowest common denominator and let tragedy or weeping victims – who have had enough by the time a camera was stuck in their faces – stand in for the full human impact of an event.

What happened to that kind of thinking? Are we about to bury it with Walter Cronkite? Is no one having to run a brutal, semester-long gauntlet of journalistic ethics in school anymore? Or is everyone going into that field now going in with the understanding that the public wants pundits more than it wants the truth?

What’s scarier is that, after the past decade or two, there’s a very real possibility that, indeed, that is what the public wants. In today’s media landscape, Cronkite might find himself shuffled off-stage because he couldn’t pop the ratings numbers. These days, outfits that are charged with telling us the truth are axing trained reporters to save costs – and inviting the public to send in camcorder “reports” in their stead.

I didn’t have the chance to grow up with Walter Cronkite narrating the mind-blowingly major stories of the ’60s, but he was enough of a rock-solid presence in the ’70s that a kid like me could watch him in action and say, “That’s what I want to do when I grow up.”

Walter Cronkite should be remembered in the same breath as Edward R. Murrow as a member of a generation of journalists who truly raised the bar for their entire profession. But who is there to provide my son’s generation with that same spark of inspiration by way of integrity?… Read more

A few days ago I mentioned that one of my debit cards had been compromised by parties unknown who had apparently gotten into Forbidden Planet International’s customer database. This was a frustrating and somewhat frightening experience; since that debit card was tied to my Paypal account, any money that came in for DVDs or eBay auctions would just evaporate as the thieves tried to spend whatever they could on the card. The good news is that there just wasn’t a lot of money there; they managed to rack up four fraudulent charges, and only two out of the four were major – and even then, they were amounts that a lot of people wouldn’t describe as major. But hey, when that’s your source of income…it’s kinda major. … Read more

My dad dropped by for a visit on Friday morning; I kept Evan out of day care for the morning so they could get a little bit of time in. Unfortunately, as hard as this is to believe, Evan was just about on his worst behavior ever before my dad got into town – he was a total terror. I think a lot of that was down to his daily routine of going to day care right after breakfast being disrupted. We went to pick up my dad at the Alma Cracker Barrel while my stepmother ran errands elsewhere, and came back to the house. After a little bit, I had to let my dad down – Evan really needed to go to day care, run off some of this energy, and be with kids his own age. I know my dad was upset by this, but the kid’s got a routine…and at this age it’s all about the routine and familiarity. That and I was just tired enough that I was ready to hand him off for a bit. But my dad was bored to tears after we dropped Evan off – and then I found out why.

Apparently, one of Dad’s neighbors, or the clubhouse, or somewhere, someone has a Wii. And he’s played it. And he loves it. And he thought that if anyone on this planet was going to have a Wii, it’d be me. I kinda disappointed him on that count too. (Hey, I’d love to have one – maybe soon. I hope.) I just thought it was funny that someone came to my place expecting to play video games and found the experience a total letdown. 😆

[nocrosspost]One thing we discussed quite a bit was my stepmother. She’s always a topic of conversation – hell, in this family, she’s kinda like the elephant in the room that everyone does talk about. Thing is, she’s recently been diagnosed with cancer, she’s starting chemo, and so on. When she first broke this news to me a month or so ago, she instantly got incredibly hostile with me – saying stuff like “Well, I bet this is the best moment of your life, huh?”

No, actually, it’s not. I saw my mother go through that, and lose the fight, when I was only 14. And while I’ve never gotten along with my stepmother, I wouldn’t wish that fate on her. On anyone, at all, no matter what they’ve done. So no, it’s not the best moment of my life. I have not been waiting for it. I don’t think it’s any kind of poetic justice.

Which made it all the more amazing when my stepmother showed up later in the day. My wife came home from work and we snuck my dad off to our favorite local eating establishment, the Red Rooster (anyone who happens through the Alma and even so much as breathes a word about dropping by to see me gets a sales pitch for the Red Rooster, mainly because I don’t miss a trick in looking for any excuse to go eat there); my stepmother called to find out where Dad was so she could pick him up, and showed up shortly afterward.

We invited her to have a seat and have a bite, on our dime even, and she told Dad he needed to get his stuff in to-go boxes because she was running a high fever and needed to go see the doctor, now. While he did that, I started to ask her how she was feeling, and said I hope she’s taking it easy, and she started YELLING at my wife and I, in the middle of the restaurant, “AND NEITHER OF YOU HAVE EVER CALLED TO SEE HOW I’M DOING.” And then started in with the cursing.

I should point out that, cancer or no, the lady has always been a psycho – to be honest, I hesitate to extend the definition of the word “lady” to include her – so while it was embarrassing, it was perfectly in character for her and the only reaction I could really come up with was rolling my eyes and smirking. Really. That’s all I could do.

Anytime I talk to my dad, I ask how she’s doing. My main point of interest here is that I hate it that he’s going through this a second time, losing another wife to cancer. I don’t think anyone ever imagined a scenario where she’d be gone before he was, seeing as he’s in his 80s and she’s in her 60s, but now it’s become a real possibility. It’s not one that anyone looks forward to, least of all my dad, so yeah, I have honest concern for her well being.

But through all the years I’ve known her, this woman has never given me even the slightest indication that I was someone she’d want to hear from unless it was absolutely necessary…so I have also kept my distance. She was a black-hole-like influence on my teenage years, sucking all the life out of the family until I was finally able to get the hell out on my own, so she’ll just have to forgive me if I don’t call or write except to check on my father.

And as for her public display…I think at this point, everyone who knows her rolls their eyes and smirks. Terrible given her present plight? Maybe. But her reactions say more about herself than anyone she’s trying to denigrate in public – and her reactions also reveal a lot about why I strongly suspect nobody is calling to check on her too much.

This is also a woman who used to rant about cancer taking people who deserved it (by extension and implication, she was trying to include my mother in that category), back when I was living under the same roof and she was seriously into do-anything-to-break-your-spirit crap. The thought’s occurred to drag that old chestnut out and parade it in front of her now…but you know what? That’s the kind of shit she’d pull. I’m not going to stoop down to that level. I haven’t learned to be just like her; I’ve learned to be better than her.

A lot of the time I spent in Wisconsin was spent on realizing that I was no longer under her thumb, and learning forgiveness. But at the same time, some of the crap she pulled can only be forgiven so much; you can only forgive someone who’s pointed a loaded gun at your face so much. She’ll have to excuse me if I don’t bother sending flowers until they’re the kind that go on her headstone. This may be my final exam on the subject of forgiveness, and maybe I’m about to flunk it, but that particular test score is just going to have to be a discussion between me and God.[/nocrosspost]
… Read more

Every year I compile a list of my favorite and least favorite things about that year, just for giggles, and for future perspective, just to get it on the record. This year, much to the chagrin of everyone reading this, shall be no different.

The Good

1. Fatherhood. This is kind of a no-brainer, but I’ve gotten so much joy out of it this year that it’s worth mentioning again. I’m a stay-at-home dad, so I’ve been here for the first steps, the emergence of “daddy” as the most frequently-spoken word (with “doggy” coming in a close second), and the emergence of real live smiles and laughter. I’ve also been here for the tantrums and crying fits, holding the little guy down at the doctor’s office and watching him get his shots, the inevitable cuts and scrapes, having to be a big meanie dishing out discipline, and the semi-frequent suggestions from certain family members that I’m a lazy bum who isn’t doing a damn thing. There are upsides and downsides to it, but as my son has grown from a helpless little thing who requires my assistance for the bare necessities of survival into a person of his own, it’s the good things that’ll stick with me for the rest of my life. And as for the folks who think I should be getting off my butt and “getting a real job” – this is a more exhausting, demanding job than anything you’ve ever punched a clock for. It’s 24/7. There’s no vacation time. There’s no one to fill in when I’m sick. There’s no way to say “Oh, man. I just don’t feel like changing dirty crappy diapers. Can someone else do this?” Go stand at the back of the line, take a new number, and call me when you have a real, valid criticism. Especially in light of…
2. PDF DVD: A-OK. When one shoots one’s nearly-20-year broadcasting career between the eyes and stays home with the baby, one doesn’t expect to be the breadwinner – except, of course, that the way that broadcast pays in this market, I was never the breadwinner anyway. At any rate, I didn’t even really expect to contribute financially. In late March of this year, I was invited to a video and computer game-related event in OKC at the end of April, and for some reason I got the wild notion that I was going to buckle down and finally finish the eternally-in-the-works Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD that I’d been working on in fits and starts since 2004. I was going to see if, oh, maybe a couple of dozen people would buy it, either at the show or on the internet. Imagine my surprise when a lot of people bought it. As rough as the edges are on that DVD, and as much as I could pick it apart or criticize it to bits, it actually brought in a healthy amount of money this year. At first it was fun money, and then my wife ran into major vehicle problems and suddenly it was bringing in decent money at a time when we would’ve bled to death on a single income. It fed Evan, bought diapers, and fed us too, numerous times. So much for that job I need to get off my butt and go get – with the way things have gone this year, this was probably a more surefire gig than anything else I could’ve been doing. Did it bring in as much as my old TV job used to? No. I’m not going to pretend it did. But it kept us afloat and it allowed me to stay home with my son, and provided a creative outlet at a time when I easily could’ve gone crazy from being stuck at home. I’m not gonna knock that. I’ll be lucky if the second one does nearly as well, but you know what? The equipment I use to make it is paid for. The only expense incurred is blank DVDs and the electric bill. There really isn’t much risk in trying, and in continuing to find new things to do along the same lines (I’m hoping to get not only a second Phosphor Dot Fossils DVD but also a book – though on a different topic – done in 2009). I’m as surprised as anyone that I was able to make a buck (and at a critical time too) with this combination of all my silly hobbies, but I’m pleased it came about. It’s very easy, when you’re staying at home with a chaotic creature like a toddler, who can make a mockery of any attempt to impose a schedule on your day, to begin to let structure and urgency slide. I used to have a job that was wall-to-wall deadlines…and now I don’t. Having a timetable of publishing projects, either DVD or print projects, with the intention of trying to meet that timetable, introducing a new project to take up the slack when the previous one has run its course, has brought a little bit of much-needed structure back to my world.
3. Obama-rama. Maybe this doesn’t really deserve to be in third place, because it is a big deal, but speaking as someone who watched Obama speak at the 2004 DNC and instantly wished that this charismatic, obviously intelligent fellow was running instead of Kerry, I really feel like the good guys won this round. I don’t think he’s a flawless panacaea to all of the nation’s problems, or the world’s problems. But Barack Obama has a participatory view of democracy that might lead to all of us being part of that remedy. That’s the kind of thinking that I think has been lost in recent years/decades as the American political dialogue has descended into polarized, party-based cults of personality (on both sides) and discussions that now resemble an unholy marriage of pre-programmed talking points and pro wrestling trash talk. I’m under no illusion that these things will all be fixed in four years’ time…but I do have a strong feeling that we’re about to be under the leadership of a man who understands that it’s not just his job and his alone to turn things around. It takes everyone. I know that not everyone is going to agree with me on this – the smear machine was out in full force and full ridiculous ugliness this time around, to the degree that I was honestly surprised that the election wasn’t much, much closer – but in fairness, let’s give the guy a chance. And let’s stop walking around on eggshells too: just because you’re not in agreement with the future President doesn’t make you a racist. If nothing else, the next four years will force that topic into the open for deeper analysis too…and that’s probably not a bad thing.

The Bad

1. Absent friends. I hate losing old friends, especially of the four-legged variety, and 2008 was an especially painful year for that. I’d been with Othello for a long time, so while losing him was a hammer blow to my gut, it wasn’t something that was absolutely impossible. Hannah, on the other hand…that just wasn’t meant to happen. She was too young in human or horse terms. Every time I go to the farm and she isn’t there, the back of my brain just screams this isn’t right. I can’t put it any more succinctly than that.
2. Obama-rama II. Wait, what? This is also in the bad category? Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing but respect for the man. But I’ve lost buckets of respect for the tactics used by a great number of people to try to discredit him in ways that had nothing to do with his political platform, and we’re talking about quite a spectrum of folks – from friends of mine who I thought would damn well know better than to stoop to barely-veiled racism (and who damn well should know better than to try to justify it), to attention-whoring conservative radio talkers who are now acting like they’re running the underground resistance against some kind of takeover of the country. I will acknowledge this: the choosing of our next leader is important, but we need to drag this country’s level of political dialogue, kicking and screaming though it may be, back toward issues and away from bullet points and the kind of ad hominem attacks that would’ve gotten folks kicked off the debate squad when I was in high school. And even though it favored the candidate I wound up choosing, I was deeply disturbed that nearly every segment of the mass media seemed to choose sides this time around. Dear media: that’s not what you’re there for. Be a barometer of public opinion, by all means, but don’t attempt to be a political tastemaker. 2008 proved that political dialogue in this country is broken – badly broken. Now the question is – as it is with so many other current issues – are we going to collectively do something to fix it, or just sit back, watch the train wreck again in a couple of years, and fling poo at each other once more?

I consciously steered away from pop culture on my best/worst of list here; it just seems like 2008 was dealing with weightier stuff than that…and besides, there’s still the end-of-the-year podcast-o-rama thingie for that sort of stuff…though with the way my throat’s been lately, everyone’ll probably thing I’m trying to sound like House.

I also have to give a runner-up “good” mention to the discovery of Facebook. I’m reluctant to give this a berth on the list because I’m still a new convert to the book o’ the face, but I’m really enjoying it thus far; I’ve all but stopped going to Myspace. I explained it to someone else a few weeks ago this way: remember, in the late 90s heyday of pre-sued-out-of-existence Napster, how awesome it was to have this one central resource to go to where you were nearly sure to find anything you were looking for? To stretch an internet analogy to its snapping point, Facebook is to social networks what old-school Napster was to file-sharing: I’ve run into many more of my friends here, and many more people who either aren’t on Myspace or are unfindable on Myspace. Facebook doesn’t seem like it’s aimed at ADHD-addled tweens, whereas Myspace does come across that way sometimes. The goofy extra features like the virtual Star Wars figure trading app, Scrabble and D&D Tiny Adventures are kind of neat, especially when they work (I’ve gotten a few invites to things that just never seem to work for me), but even at their worst they’re not as annoying as, say, Myspace layouts drenched with virtual “bling” and busy backgrounds that completely obliterate any legible text that may or may not be on the screen. I’m hooked on the ‘book, and I’m not even remotely sheepish about it – in my situation, it’s a sanity-saving link to the outside world. And it’s just plain fun to see what old friends from school or several workplaces ago are up to, and to litter everyone’s status updates with godawful puns. Good times.

Here’s hoping everyone has a good 2009 despite all the dire predictions. Remember, by the time you’ve finished reading this sentence, the future has begun.… Read more