Another Lost Wiikend

"Hi, my name is Velvet and I'm a Dance Dance Revolution Addict."

Yes, I have fallen off the gaming wagon and have been under the influence of Wii. What fun. It's really nice to be able to indulge in video gaming without the couch potato-ness that comes along with it. Sure, there are all sorts of standard video games to play on it, but we've been getting a lot more mileage out of Wii Fit, Wii Ski, and the ironically named Active Life: Outdoor Challenge.

Ah, and then there's Dance Dance Revolution... it's a pretty well known game in the arcades, but for those of you who have never seen it, you stand on a square floor pad that has four arrows on it: a left arrow, a right arrow, a front arrow, and a back arrow, all in their respective positions. You choose a song from a list and a pattern of arrows comes streaming up from the bottom of the screen as the song plays. When the arrows reach an area on the top of the screen, you step on that respective arrow on the floor pad. Simple, right?

Well, when we first started playing, we thought that we might have gotten the wrong game in our package because there sure wasn't a whole lot of anything that looked like dancing happening. Had we gotten the black market copy of another game? Perhaps we got Stumble Stumble Revolution, Hop Trip Revolution, or perhaps Desperate Off-Tempo Toe Stab Revolution. It looked like we might have been drinking and dancing which may just be illegal in this state.

At our wedding, our future brother-in-law decided to get out on the dance floor for some group dancing (my hat is off to him for getting out there, I assure you) and ended up doing a dance that we later dubbed "The Hoparena"; it's like The Macarena, only it looks more like hopping arhythmically and touching yourself in random places. I can honestly say that we have now been doing a version of the Hoparena with the best (?) of them. What a shame, then, that we're actually getting better at this. We must have found the Dance Dance Revolution game disc was somewhere in that case after all.

I have discovered one thing, though: there's a "Golden Moment of Dance Dance Revolution". This is the kissing cousin to the Golden Moment of Pool, which is when things are flowing smoothly, you're playing really well, sinking every shot, and then you take just one more sip of your beer/drink... and your pool playing night is OVER. And so it is with DDR, too.

Well, I suppose even us addicts have to take a break sometime.

Irony

So, I was sitting in the waiting room of the mammography office one day, filling out the usual pre-torture, personal/family medical history questionnaire, when my attention drifted to the satellite radio music being piped in over the tastefully concealed speakers in the ceiling.

I listened for a few moments until it dawned on me what I was hearing.

"You make me feel... you make me fell... you make me feel... like... a... na-tur-al.... wo-o-man..."

I chuckled to myself. They couldn't possibly be serious.

New Year, New Post, New Blah Blah Blah

Well, here it is 2009 and I start the new year surrounded by a seemingly endless, post-holiday, ADD wonderland of Nintendo Wii games and more Legos than should be allowed in one family. Not to say that it's bad; on the contrary, we're doing the lion's share of the Lego construction (boy, what hard work for us to play with build all those Lego sets) and the Wii is not for the kids, it's for the grown-ups. Maybe we'll let them play with them if they're reaaallly good... for the next few years or so. Hey, they're bound to hate us for something eventually, so it may as well be for something that we have fun doing.

But back to the present day. We've been celebrating the fresh start of a new year since man created calendars and it's a time of hopefulness that lasts at least for a week or two until life returns to normal and we realize that nothing has really changed. It's not a useless time, though. It can help us reflect on what's been going on in our lives, too, and what we can dream will happen during our next ride around the sun. I suppose we can also think about how we can learn from our mistakes and do better next time.

I don't bother to make any resolutions because, well, I know myself far too well. It would just be something to feel bad about breaking and who needs that? I'd rather be happy. But I have been thinking about the new year and reflecting on the past year a little. It's been... interesting? Educational? Frustrating? I suppose that I've pretty much spent most of my life really, well, "inside" my head, a bit too reflective and philosophical for my own good, but I'll spare you much of the details of what I've found there.

Here is a list, in no particular order and by no means all equal in significance, of some of my thoughts on this past year that I'll pull out of my.... um... hat right now:

-This past year has made me realize that I'm waaaay more political than I thought I was, but won't get into the nuts and bolts of it here. This space would like to remain free of politics and religion, though I have abundant opinions on both.

-Even though we know that the fairy tale is absolute bollocks, even cynics like myself sometimes reflexively use it as a yardstick for how life should be. That is, until reason kicks in. Sorry, Cinderella. The prince probably snores, is no doubt flatulent, and probably has a lot of habits that he picked up from his mother. And while you're at it, doll, you probably have a lot of annoying habits, too. Suck it up and deal.

-I did get around to spinning fire poi for the first time a few months ago, as I had said I wanted to do. I really, really liked it. I enjoy spinning poi anyway (I find it very meditative), but fire was just icing on the cake.

-My friends who don't have kids do not even remotely understand the limitations of living a family life. They won't get it until they get there (if they choose to do so).

-A good friend is worth their weight in gold and true friendships can come from really unexpected places and after even years of being acquaintances. Sometimes they finally click.

-I've come to realize that there really is a generation gap and it seems that I fell through it. I don't fit in with my peers and am having an interesting time seeing what my mindset was probably like when I was in my 20's, like many of my friends. Been there, done that, no wish to re-live it. sigh. Well, it is what it is. As they say in pool parlance, you've got to play the table. Perspective helps.

-Other people make all the difference in our lives, for better or for worse. The middle school-ish social nonsense from a handful of the people in the climbing group that I mingle with have really turned me off on climbing. I've neither the time nor the interest to relive the pre-teenish drama, gossip, back stabbing, and character assassination. It's mean and unnecessary.

-More than one young guy has told me that they'd exercise twice as hard when they get older in order to prevent middle age spread while still being able to eat exactly the way that they do now. To this I have this to say: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Okay, guys. Get back to me when you get there and we'll discuss it.

-that 2009 has the potential to be a very interesting year. Easy? Most likely not. Peaceful? Probably far from it. Prosperous? Well, let's not go into that. Still, it has the making of being something different and most likely not boring at all. And that just may be a fresh start in itself.

Here's wishing you all a healthy, safe, and Happy New Year, wherever you are. Hopefully I'll get a little time to check in on the blogosphere more than life has allowed lately and it would be nice to be mingling out here again as this interesting new year unfolds.

Mosquitos suck. FACT.

They do. They really, really do.

Yeah, okay, so nobody is a fan, but we live in an area that is so mosquito heavy that I keep forgetting what it's like to live in an area that has a normal bug level. For example, I had to do some yard work on Sunday (one of the rare days of sun that we've had in I don't know how long), so I donned my summer work clothes, put on my work shoes, and stepped out the front door. Then, in the safety of the open air, I took my handy bottle of anti-bug spray and fogged myself with a lovely, toxic cloud of DEET. Arms, legs torso front & back... I even sprayed my hands and rubbed them in my hair and on my face. Pretty extreme for daytime, eh

It's not so extreme for our neighborhood because we have to put bug spray on our legs since the deer moved into our area and brought deer ticks with them. Lyme disease is insanely thick in our area and, after finding three deer ticks on my youngest son a.k.a. "Tick Magnet", I'm not so jazzed on deer. They may be cute, but I really wish that they'd be cute somewhere else. But I digress.

Anyway, freshly soaked in toxic chemicals I headed into the yard to work.

In the sunny yard.

In mid-afternoon.

I still got MUNCHED. Desite sun and heat, those buggers made a b-line for me like starving women to a banquet table. Those aggressive, sun loving buggers found the chinks in my chemical armor, like in my armpit, a spot on my shorts where the DEET must have been less concentrated, and in a momentary gap between my shirt and shorts in the back. The desperate/brain affected ones were ready to take on my chem soaked arms, but I killed them when I could. These weren't the gently buzzing kind of mosquitos either, they attacked with the speed and gusto of attack squadrons. Of course, this wasn't unexpected. Really aggressive insect popultations aren't exactly an unusual thing in this part of the country and, as a matter of fact, one of the guidebooks for a climbing area not too far away carries this statement right in the guide book: "Don't even think of visiting in May or June, when man-eating insects abound. If you slather on enough DEET, you'll probably survive, but the blood loss will be staggering."

These are tough bugs out here. I'll be that they drink DEET for breakfast. Citronella leaves them rolling on the floor holding their sides with laughter. We protect ourselves the best that we can if we go out in our yards in the daytime, but you take your life in your own hands if you step out at night, even to put out the trash. I secretly suspect that your family would find your dry, shrivelled remains in the driveway the next morning if you stayed out for too long.

Man, I miss the city.

The Summer That Wasn't

It may be of interest to nobody in particular that, yes, I am still alive and that I do intend to actually return to blogging after a reaaaalllly long hiatus and/or sporadic posting.

So, what the heck have I been up to? I wish that I had a good answer, but I'm afraid that it amounts to "not much". We are in the middle/late stages of "the summer that simply wasn't" where, inundated with what seems like an absurd amount of rain and thunderstorms and some uncharacteristically cool weather, there hasn't been too much opportunity to do anything recreational. I take that back... it would have been an ideal summer to play "Lightning Roulette" out in an open field somewhere. As a matter of fact, this is the first week this summer that I can remember where there are two days in a row without a chance of rain. Rapture!!! It's so weird to have lush green lawn in August when it's supposed to be a bit droughty and it's too bad that I couldn't figure out a way to send all of our overabundant wet weather to our friends who need it so desperately.

Other than that, the fire performance things have been going slowly, perhaps too slowly for my tastes as I still haven't been able to light up yet. Soon, I hope, soon. Hey, if I can channel my energies into something creative then it will be a good thing.

Good to see you here again and I hope to post again soon.

I Can't Believe My Eyes! Seriously.

Ah, yes, fraudulent digital manipulation strikes again. I'm referring to the tornado video that was being shown by news agencies that was promoted as a video of a tornado touching down in Nebraska. However, another storm chaser came forward and said that it was actually a digitally altered version of a video that he'd shot four years ago that someone else apparently doctored and submitted as their own and of a recent event. The video was allegedly flipped to appear going in the same direction and sped up, with some trees taken out and some power lines dropped in. After comparing the original to the video in question, it was pulled as being suspect.

Okay, this is a pet peeve of mine about the digital age. Back in the "old days" it was much easier to tell when a picture was doctored or faked altogether (though not always) and the movie special effects were easy to see as just that, sometimes hoaky, in-camera effects with oh, visible cables or other obvious visual tricks. As for photos, aside from some airbrushing, manipulation was a much harder thing to pull off. Now, however, photoshop and digital manipulation of video can be really hard to detect when it's used by talented people. Of course, let's stress the "talented" part. Of course, there are a lot of really bad examples of photoshop errors, like these errors courtesy of Photoshop Disasters...



Aside from these poorly doctored images, there are lots of images that we've seen that are so skillfully manipulated that we can't tell that they were manipulated and we're taking those photos all at face value as real. In other words, we're being duped. Of course I can't exactly include examples here because you can't tell that they're fakes, eh?

And then there are examples of completely fake video, like this gem. I'll admit that when I first saw this video I was sitting there with my mouth open and brows knitted, a la "wait just a blinkin' second here...".



Well, it seems pretty real, but the description of the video (here) openly claims it as a fake and gives other links like the one below. Here's a similar video made using the same software. If I'm not incorrect, the logo is from the software company. Pretty funny, yet I still feel kinda duped. You know that any schlub with the right software and too much free time is intentionally going to try to make us all look like idiots. Some may actually succeed.



Back when I was a kid, you could be much more certain that you could trust an image. Now, every photo that I see or video that I watch is automatically suspect and I don't trust it or can't look at a photo without thinking that it's been photoshopped and "improved" (a great pity for the talented photographer who actually captured an extraordinary image straight off). In this digital age, it's too bad that my children will never be able to trust a single image that they see. Pity, that.

Cultural Blah Blah Blah: Part I

I've been thinking a lot about our culture as a whole these days. One of the things that I've been amusing myself with is the whole celebrity/fame thing and I have to admit that I find the whole thing rather surreal and kind of funny. Maybe it's because I don't buy into the whole celebrity worship thing and haven't since I was still using pimple cream or maybe it's just because I've stepped back and examined the whole phenomenon from my own odd cultural vantage point way out here in Velvet Land. Either way, I guess that I find the whole thing to be kind of bizarre.

This is what I think about celebs:
They're pretty much just regular people. It's just that more people know what they do for a living.

Because we've put them on pedestals, though, they seem otherworldly, but really, they're just regular homo sapiens... well, some more normal than others. Still, so many people worship them like gods and godesses, yet we'd hate to think they have all the complaints that all us regular folks have like indigestion, gas, warts, BO, hay fever, boogers, zits, and such. (I know that it's a no brainer, but from the way that some people go ga-ga over these people, you would think that they sh*t diamonds) I know that some people would find this hard to believe, but *gasp* they most certainly have the same bad morning breath when they wake up on their multi-thousand dollar sheets. Of course, they can afford to pay people a lot of money to try to keep all these things well hidden from our view. If you think about it, they have to because we shine a harsh spotlight on them and we demand our stars to be slim, made up and styled to perfection, whilst flogging ourselves to mental illness for not being as slim or as styled. What a dilemma.

There is a part of me hates the "see the stars without make-up" shots that are out there. Some of the photos are okay and just go to show that they're not as preternaturally beautiful as we've built them up to be. Those decent photos just underscore the benefits of having professional make-up jobs. What bothers me more are the really bad pictures. You know the ones that I'm talking about, the ones that, had you had a picture taken in such unflattering light and looking like death warmed over (and we've all seen pics of ourselves like this), you tear it up and burn the negatives/deleted the files. More often than not, though, those kinds of worst possible pictures are presented as the "normal" pics for the stars. Now, that's just mean, yet there are my people who worship celebrity that will gleefully tear them apart in the media or blogland for looking just like us (or, in the case of a really horrific photo, worse).

One thing that does separate us, though, is the money issue. I certainly don't begrudge the celebs their money because I've come to realize that the reason that they get paid so much is because we're buying their "brand". Do they come across as "cool"? Do we think that they're fun to look at? Lastly, though certainly not always necessary, do we think that they're talented in some way? Then we BUY BUY BUY! We buy tickets to movies and shows, we watch their shows on TV (where advertisers pay handsomely to bombard us with ads for things we don't need), we buy mass produced, Made-in-China merchandise with their pictures or names on them. Companies sooooo realize this and are more than willing to pay astronomical sums so that this person's face is shown next to their product. And we, as a general society, buy into that! Simply amazing. Eh, maybe the money is compensation for not being able to live normal lives. Then again, maybe it's the cause of their not being able to live normal lives.

One more thing that makes me laugh is that, through the media, we've come to think that we know exactly who these people really are. There's one phrase that I've read in umpteen variations that makes me roll my eyes every time and that's when the spouse of a celebrity cheats on them and someone comes off with the comment, "How could they cheat on [him/her]? Just look at [him/her]!" Yeah, okay. Looking at someone and living with someone are two different things. Let's remind ourselves that possessing beauty does not automatically mean that people also possess good personalities or are easy to live with. Besides, what do we really know about these people? We know who they've pretended to be while acting a role or how they've marketed themselves to appear via interviews and publicists, nothing more. They could be really horrible people. Or they could actually be really nice. Until we lived in close contact with them, we know absolutely NOTHING about them. Period.

So, do I worship stars? Nah. Would I want to be one? Nope. Actors/actresses are basically meat puppets with varying degrees of talent, though I have to admit that it sure looks like fun sometimes. Still, acting isn't my thing. I don't have any musical talent, so that rules that out, too. I wasn't born filthy rich, so I can't be a celebutante. None of it matters in the grand scheme of things, though, because giving up having the option of living a normal life would be out of the question. Seeing how celebrities have to live, I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

Anyway, enough of my blah blah blah....