Housekeeping Notes

Briefly noted, I’ve culled a bunch of the links I previously had in the right-hand sidebar. They no longer served much use for me, and I imagine most of my Loyal Readers are getting their bloggage through an aggregator these days anyhow. If there was something over there that anybody used regularly, just let me know and I’ll put it back.

Sharp-eyed readers may notice some new links among the ones that I kept. “My Flickr photostream” and “My Amazon.com listings” ought to be self-explanatory.

Stashmatic is a database site for cataloging one’s collectibles. I actually signed up with the service several years ago, around the same time I discovered LibraryThing, but I’ve never found the time to do much more than play with it a little. Which means the “stash” I’m linking to represents only a tiny, tiny sliver of the fabulous Bennion Archives, and not the comprehensive accounting I dream of someday having. Even so, I thought what’s there might still be of interest to someone.

“My DVD Collection” remains dead, as I still haven’t found a suitable substitute for DVDSpot.com, the late, lamented movie-cataloging service I enjoyed for only about a year before the Internet gods pulled one of their capricious tricks and shut the thing down. One of these days, somebody will build me a decent alternative. In the meantime, I’m keeping the placeholder.

Finally, let me call your attention to a new arrival in the “Pimpin’ My Friends” category (formerly “Miscellaneous Coolness”): Pretty Little Pixel is the portfolio and business site for a terrific graphic designer of my acquaintance, Stephanie Swift. We both share a fondness for old-fashioned signage, and she does this neat-o thing where she transforms ordinary photographs of old signs into striking works of art. I’m proud to say she’s given the treatment to some of my own photos, and I have my eye on a couple of her pieces that’ll be perfect for my kitchen, when I finally get around to remodeling it. Hop on over and check out her work. It’ll add some nostalgic color to just about any setting!

Jul282010

When the Coast Is Clear

Today marks 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and touched off an environmental catastrophe. The last I heard, the cap over the broken wellhead was still holding, and BP expects its relief well will intercept the original hole within two weeks and then they’ll hopefully be able to plug the damn thing for good. But millions of gallons of brown goo are still sloshing around in the Gulf or settling into the sediments at the bottom, and it’s going to be there for years, if not decades or centuries, to come. So this seems like an especially appropriate and poignant time to post the following music video. It’s a clip from the free concert Jimmy Buffett gave in Gulf Shores, Alabama, on July 11, which was broadcast live without commercial interruption on the CMT network and which I finally got around to watching just last weekend. (Thanks to The Girlfriend for recording it for me, since I am one of those Luddites who only watches the TV channels I can pull out of the airwaves for free.)

This is the finale of the show, a reworking of Jimmy’s 24-year-old ballad “When the Coast Is Clear.” It was always a melancholy song — originally it was about the end of summer and the self-reflection brought on by the change of season — but these new lyrics are downright heartbreaking. Watch for the pretty girl at about 2:10 who looks like she’s fighting back tears. I was, too, and I’ve never been anywhere near the Gulf Coast…

I know we need the oil, and I’m a far cry from a treehugging environmentalist — anyone who reads this blog knows how much I love driving my cars — but there’s going to come a day when people will realize just how damn shortsighted and clumsy our civilization has been, how much damage we’ve caused to ourselves and everything around us. After Deepwater Horizon, I think maybe that day is close. I just hope we can live with the regret.

Jul232010

For No Particular Reason…

…here’s a nice photo I recently ran across of the delectable Jane Seymour, circa 1978:

Jane Seymour as Princess Farah in Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

I believe this was taken on the set of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, which starred John Wayne’s son Patrick as the swashbuckling hero of the Arabian Nights. I don’t think I’ve seen that movie since middle school, probably, but I found Jane’s appearance in that one, ahem, memorable. I’ve always liked her.

Anyhow, I finally got myself a day off — I think perhaps the Work Apocalypse is easing up at last — so I’m puttering around the house today, catching up on various chores I haven’t managed to take care of for the last several weeks. I’ll be back later with an entry or maybe even two. In the meantime, Jane will keep you company… be a gentleman (or a girlfriend) and buy her a drink or something, won’t you?

Jul192010

I’ve Learned Something

So, after traipsing this weekend with The Girlfriend and her 17-year-old niece through every clothing store in two malls that are oriented to young, pretty people, I have scientifically determined that Hollister Co. has the best music, kind of a quasi-retro surf-rock thing. They also have exactly the leather easy chair and ottoman I want for my living room, cunningly distressed to look like something found at random in an antique store… except that the same exact chair turned up in two different Hollister stores. Go figure.

Jul182010

Filling the Gap with Meme

As you may have gathered from recent entries, I’ve been really busy at work lately. Really damn busy. So busy that my coworkers and I have been referring to the situation as “The Apocalypse.” I just reached my five-year anniversary with my current employer — this job has now officially become the longest-running one I’ve ever had, and I hope I’m not jinxing myself by mentioning it — and in all that time, I’ve never seen it this crazy. Late nights every night for two solid weeks, sometimes very late nights, and a six-inch stack of paper in my inbox that never seems to get any shorter, no matter how many hours I put in. Just call me Sisyphus, I guess.

I was even planning to go in last weekend to try and get on top of some of it, but my rebellious body had plans of its own, which consisted mainly of vomiting so hard I could feel my stomach itself clenching. Not the muscles and flab that the world sees in the vicinity of my waistband, but the actual internal organ. The visual image that came to mind once everything finally relaxed was the nurses on M*A*S*H squeezing one of those black respirator bags shut, and the way it slowly refilled after it was released. I initially thought I had food poisoning, but I’ve since decided it was very possibly a reaction to the stress I’ve been under recently.

In any event, this Apocalypse thing has made me rather grouchy — possibly you’ve noticed? — for all kinds of reasons, not least of which is the effect it’s had on my blogging. I know that sounds stupid and superficial and some of you are probably thinking I have messed-up priorities, but the fact is I derive a lot of personal fulfillment from this particular hobby, and I keenly feel its absence when I’m unable to do it. Blogging reassures me that I haven’t completely surrendered my writing ambitions and allowed whatever gifts I may have to wither away, that I am still, somewhere deep down inside, the brash, romantic twentysomething that I think I liked far more than my 40-year-old self. Blogging is also a necessary escape from the mundane demands of what I do for a living, my own little fiefdom in which I don’t have to satisfy account managers or clients or legal departments or the faceless editors of the Chicago Manual of Style. Here, I am in charge, and all I have to do here is satisfy myself. And hopefully my Three Loyal Readers, assuming you’re still out there.

During times when the scope of my life spirals inward to the point where I can’t even manage to keep up on this, let alone anything more important… well, then I feel entirely justified to gripe about not having much of a life. Don’t misunderstand. I enjoy what I do for a living, I really do. But I’m not the type who can survive for long doing nothing more than working, commuting, and sleeping. Some people may love their jobs that much, but I am convinced they are an extremely lucky minority to which I do not belong.

All of which is a needlessly long explanation for what you’re about to encounter below the fold, assuming you haven’t already clicked away to greener online pastures. Yes, kids, it’s a meme! Not as worthwhile as a coherent essay about an actual topic perhaps, but it’s something I can putter at for two minutes here and there during my busy-busy-busy days over the course of a week or two. Which is exactly what I’ve been doing with this particular meme throughout the Apocalypse.

For the record, I snagged this one from SamuraiFrog a couple months back but I’m just now getting around to using it. I’ve said that entirely too much lately.

So… are we ready? Okay, then, let’s begin…

Jul162010

Friday Evening Videos: “You Don’t Know How It Feels”

I heard tonight’s selection while driving home from The Girlfriend’s, the first time I’ve seen her all week. It was after dark and traffic was sparse, one of those times when the road seems to belong to you and you alone. The car responds like a horse that’s been penned up all winter, the windows are down and the draft whipping through them carries a sullen ghost of the 100-degree day that lived and died without your notice while you were at work. And then… a song that seems to perfectly encapsulate everything you’re currently feeling, and everything you’ve experienced over the past couple weeks:

To any of my Loyal Readers who’re still awake out there in the darkness, good night… and pleasant dreams…

Jul152010

There’ll Be No Escape for the Princess This Time

In yet another bit of inspired silliness, Improv Everywhere, that group of merry pranksters who inspired an annual tradition of pantsless public transit rides in New York and other cities around the world (including, surprisingly enough, my own Salt Lake City), strikes again — or should I say “strikes back?” — with a Star Wars-themed subway stunt:

I dig the dude who tries to figure out what the princess is reading, then has a hearty chuckle over it. And of course all the tiny handheld cameras that suddenly appear when the stormtroopers and Vader arrive. Funny how I didn’t see that coming when I used to imagine as a kid what the 21st century would be like…

This video has popped up in a lot of places recently; I got it from Sullivan’s Daily Dish.

Jul152010

Smoking While Proofing, Er, Writing

My friend Karen posted this cartoon the other day. I was amused.

It’s probably just as well we no longer live in the culture depicted here, though. The way things have been going at the office the past couple of weeks, my ashtray would be overflowing, my bottom desk-drawer full of empties, and my vision blurry from drink. It’s blurry now, but that would be from working until 10:30 last night and coming back in first thing this morning. Alas.

Jul142010

Apropos

Yeah, I can relate to this at the moment…

UPDATE: Hm. My sidebar appears to chop off the right side of the comic strip. Sorry about that; I figured it would float over the sidebar like video clips often do. If you just click on the cartoon, you’ll be taken to the Official Dilbert Site, where you can read it in all its glory.

Jul142010

Who Do I Write Like?

A number of my regular blog-reads have been playing this week with a little doodad that analyzes a sample of your writing and determines which famous writer your style most resembles. Or something. (I cynically suspect it just grabs well-known names at random from a list. But maybe not. What do I know?)

Anyhow, I can’t resist trying these things out for myself, so I plugged in my angry “Synchcronicity II” blog entry from a couple weeks ago and this is what I got:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

And you know what? That’s fine by me. In fact, it’s awesome. I’ve never felt like I had a “favorite author” the way many people espouse, no one whom I’ve felt compelled to study and memorize and read every single work by that person, but if I’m forced to pick someone, King is usually my answer. He’s vulgar, yes, and frequently self-indulgent, and when he’s off his game, he really stinks up the place. But when he’s good — and he is good more often than his detractors would have you believe — he’s brutally effective in taking readers where he wants them to go. I admire his plain-spoken prose style, his grasp of real-life detail, his ability to make the most outlandish threats seem immediate and real (at least as long as you’re under his spell), and of course his deep understanding of and empathy for lower-middle-class and working-class Americans, a demographic that’s rarely handled with a fair hand, in my opinion.

No other author makes me want to write fiction of my own the way I do after I read something of King’s (although my recent discovery Charlaine Harris comes close).

Archives