Life is complicated

Do you ever feel sorry for someone whom you probably should not? I am a bit of a soft heart, so it is kind of easy for me to feel sorry for people. However, I find that not everyone is this way.
For example, I had felt sorry for Paris Hilton. I realize that in many respects the abuse that she has taken and the embarrassment she has endured are largely due to her own actions. However I still feel sorry for all the trouble and ridicule that has been heaped upon her.
I have argued this with family and co-workers alike. I admit, I've got a tough sell here. Many times people in Paris' position (hehe) deserve what they get, it is said. It is a work of their own doing, and they have to reap what they sow.
Whereas, I can not disagree with this on its face, I do still feel sorry for people who are constantly ridiculed, no matter the cause.

Another person to whom I have begun to feel sorry for as of late is Britney Spears. Much like Paris, she's brought a lot of this on herself, but you got to believe that she would do much better if she had a parent (or two) who were/had looking/looked out for her, or if she had a good friend, husband, pastor, girlfriend, doorman, blogger, whatever that she could trust to give her good advise. Advise like "Don't marry that loser!" or "Put some clothes on". Simple, plain advise.

She is a great example of the phrase 'life comes at you fast', and in that vein of thought, I would like to introduce you to a blog I came across called Indexed, that, if you like XKCD, you will like Indexed as well.
In particular, it had a blog that referenced Britney and her troubles of late.

Great Wolf Lodge

Whew...what a few days.
We took our lives into our hands yesterday and ventured into "Enemy Territory", also known as Ohio.
I know, I know...you're saying to yourself "NOOOO! Why would you risk life, limb and points on your driving record to go into Ohio?"

In general I would agree. Ohio is not a destination...it is a nuisance...it's a thing to be endured, driven thru and avoided if at all possible. However, it is also the home of The Great Wolf Lodge.

My wife, somehow, convinced me that I'd LOVE to spend a few days at a waterpark...where there is water...in a park. I've been to waterparks before, but have never been all that impressed. Now, I'd have to drive for 2 hours to get to one, and, did I mention it was in Ohio?
Well, she worked her feminine wiles on me (again) and the result was we ended up in Sandusky yesterday afternoon.

You know the bugger of it? It was a lot of fun. The kids enjoyed it, Kim enjoyed it, and yes I enjoyed it. This place is a waterpark with an emphasis on both Water and Park.
Kim snapped a picture of the kids, just before they were about to get pummeled with 1000 gallons of water.

Number one reason to NOT speak publicly!

I've been speaking publicly in church for over 10 years. In all that time, this has been one of my biggest fears....I kinda feel for this guy, but it IS funny!

Invasion of a bunch of girls

Girls girls, everywhere are girls!
Seriously.
Everywhere.

This has happened once before, and it looks like history is repeating itself!

One of my daughters best friends, two of my four five six nieces and the three daughters of one of our families best friends...plus my daughter.

My wife tells me that it was my idea to invite them all over but I seem to remember saying something about taking the boys to a hotel too....she doesn't remember that part.

So there are six girls under the age of 12 in my house.

Yeah, I know...I'm a Saint.

Anyway, one of the coolest things that happens over here when we got all this sugar, spice and everything nice is a little thing called Dance Dance Revolution (DDR). DDR is cool and if you've never tried it, you should.
Whereas it's not as sick as Guitar Hero, it's definately worth a roll.

I said all that to say this...my little niece, Claire, talked me into playing a game with her...and my darling wife snapped this photo....heheheh.

What do you do?

I've read that "Writers write."
I don't know if I want to be a 'writer' but I do know that would like to be a better writer than I am now. That's a big part of the reason why I started this blog. It's a place where I can get some thoughts out of my brain as well as try to see if I have a 'voice', what that 'voice' sounds like and if I have any talent at this.

Part of the reason why I have this desire is because I read. I read things that, after I read them I think: 'Wow, that's cool. I wanna be able to do that.'

I've point to Wil Wheaton a bunch as part of my inspiration for this. One of his inspirations, John Scalzi wrote something that I really enjoyed reading and figured I'd point you to it. It's called The Exisitential Plight of Chester Chipmate

Also, for those of you who would also like to write a bit better, either for enjoyment or for other reasons, here's something else he's written.
1. Writing Tips for Non-Writers
2. Advice on writing
3. How much you should write each day

Half As Much As Tomorrow

On my way home from work yesterday, I heard a comedy skit by Bill Engvall yesterday on the way home from work called Now That's Awesome.
In it, Bill talks about how, because of the 90's, we overuse the word Awesome.

I'd have to agree.

There are few things that I've seen that truly earn that term.
Yosemite National Park....Awesome
The birth of my children....Awesome
Seeing God work in the lives of family and friends....Awesome.
Those have all inspired awe and wonder in me like few other things.

What has been the most awesomest part of my life for the longest is my wife.
She's awesome. In every way.
She's been a major part of my life since is was THIRTEEN YEARS OLD. I'm 38 now...you do the math.
In that time, we've broke up a few times, made up even more times, been mad at each other and been madly in love at others. Through the entire time, she's been my center, my compass, at times my conscience, and at other times the reason I've been in trouble.
Everything I see in her I admire/love/lust after/harken to/etc. more today than I did on the day we got hitched. Hopefully when we're old and she's grey (I'm already there) I'll be able to say the same thing.

I'm not gonna get all sappy and such here in my blog (you're welcome), but I do want to convey here the truth of Spiral Starecase song....I can honestly say I love my wife more today than I have ever loved her before, and fully intend on loving her more in the future than I do today.

That's Awesome.

Back in the day...

So, in my last post, I may have seemed a bit, um, hmmmm, cheesed. I wasn't really; I was just kinda fed up with all the cold weather crankiness.

While I was in the mood to reminisce, I happened to be surfing around the usual haunts and for whatever reason, a memory popped in the old cranium.
So, I jumped into the WABAC (for those of you under 30, that's pronounced way-back) machine, also now known as You Tube and did a search.

When I was young, I had a huge affinity for cheesy Japanese TV.
Godzilla, Gamera, Jet Jaguar....I could watch them all day.

I remember going to my local dollar show when I was a kid to watch Godzilla vs. The Mechanical Monster back to back to back. It was awesome!

As you can imagine from this, I was a huge babe magnet. But on the rare Saturday Nights that the hotties weren't banging down my door to go out with me, I could even be found watching KUNG FU THEATER!

One of my favorites of the entire genre was Ultraman. (In a superjet he comes from a billion miles away....Loved it loved it loved it).
I would come home from school, and jump on Channel 20 to get my fix. First there would be Johnny Sokko and His Flying Robot (another Japanese TV show), Ultraman, Get Smart, Batman and if dinner was late, The Green Hornet. But when I was outside with my buddies, the super hero I wanted to be was Ultraman.

So, back to my story, I hit You Tube up for some Ultraman and FOUND IT!!! I watched the very first episode, from 1966. It was exactly as I remembered. The episode was broken up into three parts, but it was awesome.

I think one of the things I like so much about those kinds of shows is how serious the actors tried to be, but how utterly silly they actually were. The dialog was terrible, the special effects were hideous, the monsters were ridiculous and the premise was silly. Perfection.

I don't like to live in the past. There's no future in it. But I do like to visit now and then, and for people that grew up like and when I did, You Tube is as cool as 8mm Super, Slide Shows, Photographs and the like to help remember.

I also don't really like to think of the hours that I wasted sitting in front of the TV. There were lots of them. I could have been solving world hunger, inventing the cure for cancer or at the very least doing my homework.

However, those hours paid off in the many hours I spent with my buddies pretending to be an outer space man, a caped crusader, a masked hero with a cool side kick (and no matter what you say, having Bruce Lee as a sidekick is as cool as it could get), and all those other really neat and really cheesy superheroes of my youth.

I don't really know what that buys me now-a-days, but for a half hour the other day, when I was watching the Science Patrol fly in the planes and shoot at the bad monster, well, it was cool and I had a grin on my face the whole time.

Now, I'm gonna have to find some time to check out Johnny Sokko….NOW ROBOT!

Waxing Nostalgic Debunked

If you live most anywhere in the Northern or Eastern parts of the good ole' US of A, you may have noticed that it's been a bit cold of late.
Just a bit.
The first two days of this week were cold enough to have many, not all, schools closed in Southeastern Michigan.
The Windshield* factor hit minus 20 in some cases and school administrators felt these dangerously low temperatures would be a danger to those kids who walk to school or had to wait outside in the cold/dark mornings for the bus.

This produced quite a ruckus around here. I've heard more 'When I was a kid' comments over the last few days then I can stand. It seems that people are up in arms over the schools being closed because they don't EVER REMEMBER having days off of school because of the temperature.

There are two things about this that is irritating.
1. Just because they can't remember it, doesn't mean that it didn't happen. I can vividly remember once when school was cancelled the night prior because of the weather forecast. When the morning came, the promised snow was no where to be found but we still had the day off.
Unless you lived in parts of the state/country where deep cold and heavy snow are a constant, you got days off when the weather was bad. Period. Just because you don't remember it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.

2. Lets suppose for a second that it's true and people didn't have those days off of school. That 'back in the day' parents did send their kids to school when it was a trillion below zero. Is that supposed to impress me? All that means is that parents took unnecessary risk with their children's lives for no real reason. Missing a day or two of school for the kids because of the weather will have ZERO effect on their education in the long term, but the POTENTIAL damage for children who have to wait out in the cold weather 20 minutes for a bus that may or may not come can be terrible.
I realize that it's only potential damage, but still, is it worth it? Not to me.

Back in those same days, parents didn't cover up electrical sockets, didn't lock-up poisonous kitchen chemicals and didn't have gates up over stairways. For the most part, we all survived. Does that mean taking the precautions that we do now are silly? Of course not. Oh, and for those who didn't survive...only a little precaution; a plastic 5 cent cover, a simple drawer lock, a wooden or plastic gate, would have made a huge impact on their lives.

People often wax nostalgic for the halcyon days of their youth, when in actuality things were rough then too, they just choose to forget. You often hear about the longing for the 'Cleaver' experience or the 'Ozzie and Harriet' life.
Actually, those days had their own sets of trouble that I wouldn't want now. So many stay at home moms had such serious depression and were so over-medicated that the Rolling Stones wrote a song about Mothers Little Helper.
Rape, which happened way too often, was rarely reported because of the impact on the family.
Out of wedlock pregnancies resulted in the young mothers being ostracized and their children being labeled bastards!
Oh let's go back!