the pod bay door

:: the pod bay door will be closed for a little while…but not too long. I’ve spent some time smoothing out the edges after the move to a new hosting service, and am going to take a couple of days off from blogging. I’m working a six-day week, and want to squeeze in some movies before they leave town. I can report that I’m starting to like the new workout routine suggested by the trainer I met with recently, and am feeling that I might be on the edge of some progress – good news all around. The tennis elbow condition in my left arm hasn’t improved, so I may need an MRI. I’ll learn more later this month when I meet with a sports physician again. The hearing aid jury is still deliberating – I have a few weeks to decide whether or not to purchase the Aero 211 AZ I’m using now.

This evening was particularly satisfying: I helped friends choose a starter electric guitar and amp for their daughter, who is rapidly becoming a good musician and songwriter at 15 years old. We were at Avenue Guitars, and studied two starter kits (amp and guitar), and settled on a Godin SD (black colour) and a Roland Cube 30 guitar amp. The guitar has a very sweet sound, and the amp has 8 guitar amp model channels. Everyone walked away happy, and now I want to borrow the new equipment and test it out!

I’ll be back shortly. See you then.

:: Some kind soul has posted these pictures taken in Halifax, in the aftermath of Hurricane Juan.

:: Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the world wide web in 1989. He shares his ideas of a more “intelligent” web in this interview from the BBC.

:: Spider Robinson asks, “Why are our imaginations retreating from science and space, and into fantasy?“

:: What makes you nuts? You know, the little things? Bloggers who blog about blogging on their blogs? (That one was for Keith). Bad drivers? Rude people? The provincial government? Taxation? That annoying neighbour? Tonya nicely synthesizes three things that drives her batty, and I can find some empathy in her words.

:: So the Twins beat the Yankees, and the Giants beat the Marlins already today. Now if the Red Sox beat Oakland and the Cubs beat Atlanta, all will be right with the baseball world. I grew up in Winnipeg cheering for the Twins in the 1960s. When they won in 1987, it was the first time one of my favorite baseball teams took the World Series. This time around, I’m hoping for the fantasy series: Cubs and Red Sox. The problem is, if the Cubbies and Red Sox meet in the WS, it means the world will end shortly thereafter. There has been concern expressed in years past that if the Red Sox and Cubs played in the WS, the result would be “complete and total armageddon.”

:: Proving once again the belief that the Internet is a mecca for people with way, way too much time on their hands, check out this list of every single expression Dr Zachary Smith used to describe “the robot” on Lost In Space. My favorite will always be, “you bubble-headed booby”.

:: Speaking of television, has anyone seen Carnivàle?

:: Update: Cubs win, Cubs win!

:: I’ve been immersed in Stanley Kubrick fare of late. The last two books I read were Eyes Wide Open by Frederic Raphael, who co-authored the screenplay to Eyes Wide Shut, and Moonwatcher’s Memoir – A Diary of 2001: A Space Odyssey by Dan Richter, the mime who Kubrick hired to choreograph the Dawn of Man sequence and play Moonwatcher in 2001. The Richter book fascinated me, bringing me behind the scenes of the making of this now famous sequence in my favorite movie of all time.

Tonight I watched Vivian Kubrick’s 35 minute documentary, The Making of The Shining, filmed when she was 17 years old. Stanley is featured in many scenes, including some startling scenes with Shelly Duvall. Together with these two books and the recent documentary about him, made by Jan Harlan, his long time executive producer and brother-in-law, Kubrick seems much more human to me now than he was when he was alive. The documentary is included in the DVD version of The Shining, and includes a second track with commentary from Vivian, added 23 years later, when she was 40. You can watch 90 seconds of her documentary here (requires RealOne Player). BTW, for those of you who remember 2001 well, the scene in which Dr Floyd calls Earth from the space station and speaks to his daughter, “Squirt” – she was played by Vivian Kubrick.

:: From the Life Magazine publication, 100 Photographs That Changed The World, 28 of those pictures can be seen here.

:: Are those 92″ computer screens I mentioned earlier a hoax? If so, it’s a brilliant and elaborate one, because beyond reeling me in, it has fooled Forbes (which has withdrawn the story already), and by extension, Roland Piquepaille. Piquepaille became suspicious, though, after he received a comment from a reader, and began an investigation, concluding that the site is a fake. Then again, Lisa Ciesniewski, the PR Manager for Liebermann, gave an interview a few days ago in which she said the company has 30 employees and plans to open two showrooms in LA and NYC.

What do you think? Hoax or for real?

:: My thanks to those who sent comments about my two recent posts, including those who wrote privately.

:: Me, given what I wrote below. I returned from the Y, having thought about the last entry while I was working out on the cross-trainer machine. I thought about the lyrics to Grey Day (gotta love Madness), and then H�sker D�’s These Important Years (by Bob Mould). Then I thought of the baseball playoffs, and of the delicious possibility that the Red Sox and the Cubs could end up in the World Series, which would be infinitely more interesting than the Yankees and Braves (bor-RING!!!!!) I also gave consideration to removing the entry below, but noticed that Derryl offered a comment, so it will stay.

The left-click function on my mouse isn’t working well, and I want to pound sand. Hey you, yes, YOU, tell me what is important to you. I’d love to know. Then tell me why it’s important to you.

:: It’s not these things necessarily (I still have my ’69 Tele, never had a ’54 Strat), but on days like today…it’s a Sunday, I always hated Sundays, and it’s dull and grey and dead and claustrophobic and suffocating in Edmonton today, and Sundays exist to remind you that you need to go back to work tomorrow. I was shopping at Costco just now, and every person there seemed to be in my way. We can’t relive, we can only move forward, but all too often I miss the early 70’s, which for me was the last age of innocence in my life. It’s hard to describe, but it was a time when I didn’t need to be aware of much beyond my immediate surroundings, and I didn’t have to deal with everything else that comes with being a damn grown up.

I love being able to write about “stuff” on my site, but there are also things about which I can never write. I guess that’s where a diary serves its true purpose. Today I’m smoldering with residual anger about this and that, and it gets compounded as I deal with the hearing aid (which is terribly tinny and not too useful in a movie theatre), the stuggle with the eating plan and workout regime, family issues, finances, loneliness, perceived injustices (personal and otherwise), turning 50 and staring into the virtual abyss, and so on. It’s a moment when I want to say, f*ck it all, to hell with the planet.

Yesterday I learned that someone close and important to me was beaten regularly as a child by an older brother, until she was 20, as were three of her other siblings. I think of something like that, and consider how good I had it as a kid, and how good things have been as an adult. I try to reconcile that with how empty I feel inside right now.

Despite the foregoing, I maintain a rock solid awareness and appreciation for how good things are in my life. A balance needs to be struck somehow. I’m working on it, despite feeling like it amounts to a waste of effort.

And how peachy is your weekend? (And I laugh, because as I finish this, the sun snuck through the clouds and shone on my hands and keyboard. OK, God, you win!)