Every #spring a St. Patrick’s Day

Happy St. Patrick’s Day.  I’m a Canadian every other day of the year.

When I was a boy, my godmother bought me a coffee table book celebrating Ireland.  It followed that in grade school, I thought to turn a work assignment about other countries into homework on the subject of Ireland.   I flipped through the book to do the research (that I could do at that age) for the teacher.

St. Patrick

The photos in the book illustrating Irish women helped shape my attitudes to the fairer gender, as well.  I briefly visited the UK in the fall of 1999, but I didn’t go to Ireland.

There is a friend I know whose parents are Irish.  This friend is not fond of the English, despite what I know from grade school about the role the English played shaping Canada.

At the same time, this person has a different understanding of how the Irish fared in history than I have got.  That said, when my mother asked me the other day whether I am prouder of Dublin or Belfast, I found myself answering Belfast.  Until then I didn’t know I felt that way.

I was born in 1977, two days before St. Patrick’s Day.  My mom and dad named me Patrick, after my father’s late brother Patrick.  This uncle died when he was a young man, in a motorcycle accident (he was riding).  My name remembers this Uncle Patrick of mine, and of my brother and sister.

My mom and my father’s mother had a bond.  When my mother was young, the two women would speak to each other privately having a coffee or Coca-Cola together or the like.

Another time In grade school I was instructed to ask questions about the family line. I brought to my paternal grandmother the question of the origin of our name.

I never knew my paternal grandfather.  He’d died before I was born.  I suppose I assumed we are an Irish family.

My grandmother let me know that the surname she took when she married is Welsh, of all matters.  At that age, I was not aware that Wales is a principality of Britain, or otherwise knew anything about it.

Many years later my brother took a strong interest in the Irish.  He went backpacking there with one or two of his friends.

He later researched our family line, and he learned of many of our living relatives in Ireland.  I am sure it is an Irish family, whether the surname is Welsh.

I work for my father as a cemetery groundskeeper.  When we were at the cemetery yesterday, handling a funeral, for which we were responsible, to my surprise, as we wrapped up our clean-up, we saw a hailstorm!

Louth United Church and Maple Lawn Cemetery

The spring solstice ahead:  it doesn’t feel like it.  Last week my father reminded me of the old expression, “In like a lamb, out like a lion.”  That’s what my father was predicting for the month of March here.

About Ireland, I know it is hard when times are tough, and I am empathetic of others experiencing suffering.  If you are Irish or love the Irish, God bless you.  It’s your chance this day, as it is every year, to be Irish.

I hope you’re having a great day.  Naturally, you are welcome to “like” this post, to follow my blog and/or to comment.  Thank you for having an interest.

The cemetery where I work with my father is on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited  My duties for the work I do are nominally tied to the posts I publish in this blog.

Mermaid’s February 2019 WordPress Tea Party

The very courteous Little Mermaid returns, for another tea party. Her theme, this month, is making confessions. The tell I want to bring, to the party, is how roadblocked, I’ve been, by Zork.

I know I am in a sense very old. Have you played Zork? It’s a game where you explore a dungeon and combat monsters.

Your commands for playing Zork typically consist of two words apiece, often a verb and a noun, short and sweet.  It commands hours of your time if you are among the dedicated.

Did you run Java? It once boasted a solid three billion devices did. I’d sit, sometimes, on the main page of a Java site, to read chat remarks.

Photographer:
Elliott Chau

In college, a savvy young woman from Scarborough got to know me a little. Her name was Julie, and she was a singer. I’m sure she knew nothing about Zork.

All the same, Julie was outright a rock star on Livejournal. Her email was routed by beer.com, appropriately fashionable for that subculture.

When she wrote, ”it’s called myspace, and there are millions of brilliant people,” I was taken aback. I’d played Zork, in a retro edition. Facing the myspace site, I had a silent question.

“How do I move to the next room?” It was weird. Years later, Christmas, 2016, my very smart nephew referred to that, nonsense in the distant past.

I remember, because of Rogue One, a Star Wars Story. About IRC, “Justacrap,” my brother’s boy pronounced with scorn. Discounting me?

For wasting time with websites? Can you believe that? Sure, I made friends one way or another, but those people are now gone.

It wasn’t the sum of my activities, I guess. Truth be told, I was rotten at Zork, too.

The tea parties are great. You can find that blog here: https://thelittlemermaid09.wordpress.com

Mermaid’s November 2018 WordPress Tea Party

“Tea parties” have been at the forefront of The Little Mermaid blog the last five months.  These are blogging challenges that span the entirety of each month.  These are free and encourage participants to blog on a specific theme along with the rest of those joining in.

This month The Little Mermaid has asked her participants for their thoughts on travel.  Where have you traveled? the Little Mermaid asks.  What’s the best part?

What’s the worst part?  What tips might you offer up to someone grappling with wanderlust?

The furthest-reaching of my travel experience was done in my life in the nineteen nineties.  I have traveled to the United States, to the United Kingdom, to France, and to Belgium.  These are the countries where I have gone, done in my adolescence and later in my early twenties.

The best part was the excitement of going to locations completely new.  For example, when I was going to the United States, passing through Detroit, seeing Walt Disney World in Orlando (and cheating a touch by going through Universal Studios, too).   Spending a little time in Chicago, staying with family in Nashville, visiting a friend in Portland, Maine, lodging in a traveler’s stop in Memphis, visiting New Orleans, visiting New York, all this was great.  I was seeing a little more of the world.

One of the happiest times in my life was my twenty-first birthday, an important birthday if you are an American, in Memphis, Tennessee.

I would say I was taking a “walkabout” on that birthday, and it made for several nice weeks.  My father’s brother-in-law thought of the label for what I’d done.  He mentioned it to me at the wedding of one of my cousins, at the reception.  The gentleman, my godfather, mentioned to me what he said was spoke about by aboriginals in Australia, a country I’ve never seen.

Years earlier, spending days at Walt Disney World in 1991 was a fine time. The members of my particularly as my immediate family went aboard “Star Tours,” an interactive cinematic ride like being in a Star Wars spaceship.

It was very exciting as come 1987 I’d got to VCR-record a tenth-anniversary television presentation of Star Wars on Fox. At that age, ten, Star Wars was my favorite film.

The worst part of travel, I’d offer to say, is the end of the “moment” when the time for travel ends, as it generally does, and it becomes time to return to more ordinary things wherever you are spending your life.  For me, I live life in the gritty small town of St. Catharines, in the Canadian province of Ontario.

What I know at my age, which is something like an unfulfilled forty, is that if you are in the midst of wanderlust, you should listen to the word itself and observe what is the best part of life in most circumstances–the people you meet and how they take to you.  I know I have not had the luckiest of experiences in my travels.  I felt unprepared for Nashville, my handsome friend in Portland eventually killed himself, I believe, despite his promise and ambition as a musician, the lodge in Memphis finally burned to the ground, where I’d left friends behind, my idea to hustle in New York led to me being escorted out of a nightclub where I had thought to pose as an NYC resident.

These weren’t great times, especially when I returned to St. Catharines from New York and my girlfriend was angry with me when I told her how it had gone.

When I saw London, England, though, in 1999, when Y2K was only months away, it was exciting, but even with my experiences in America under my belt, I felt quite the novice with only a little money in my pocket and quite clearly to locals a foreigner.  My embarrassment deepened in Paris, the City of Lights, when I realized I was in my youth and seeing the Arc de Triomphe de l’Étoile.  I knew it would never come again, and I’d been learning French since the third grade and could barely communicate in it–it was as if my aspirations were quickly coming to naught, and I was overwhelmed by the absurdity.

Photographer: Bruce Mars

I didn’t spend much time in Belgium, but I liked it a little better than France, enjoying chocolate and also seeing grim war trenches from World War I when Belgium soldiers defended their nation from Germany.

Eventually, my younger sister married a Belgium gentleman.  That was a nice occasion.  Here is a photo I took at the wedding ceremony.

My sister’s wedding

The photo of myself I am showing is of a time in 2003 in a hotel in St. Catharines. I was meeting up with the friend who had introduced me to MySpace (before it blew up to become entropy) and speaking, as intended, of American writer Charles Bukowski, the beauty of whose work she wanted to impress upon me.

She and her boyfriend were gracious visitors.  It was, again, a “moment.”

Image: Julie Rippl

I am grateful to The Little Mermaid for thinking of these tea party posts that are interesting for me and for other bloggers on WordPress to organize new blog posts.  If you are a touch keen on this, feel free to “like,” to follow, and/or to comment.  I wish you well if you travel yourself, and, what’s more, I wish you luck if you have a blog.

All the best.

10 Reasons Radical Success is the Weakest Link Part II

Updated January 13, 2022

September 24, 2018, the Stereogum music history website posted to Facebook about the fiftieth-anniversary release of The White Album.  The Beatles Announce 50th Anniversary “White Album” Reissue With Previously Unreleased Tracks

I think of The Beatles being a radical success in music history, given the enormity of their popularity, even decades later.  However, how does that view of The Beatles relate to contemporary ideas about success, and how it is won?

I have ten reasons I’m suggesting that success like what The Beatles enjoyed is actually a weak link in terms of what it means for the individual to pursue preconceived notions of success and how it is misleading.  The first four were presented in a previous blog post.  The remaining six are presented here.

Streaming services

1. Netflix is the leader of the pack, I believe, for video streaming.  They devote an enormous budget to original content and their selection of existing content is good.  That said, Disney is in the streaming video service market.  Netflix in my region is compatible with my Tivo, as are other video streaming services.
   The selection of videos on Netflix is good.  I want to step out of the chain of logic to ask if that implies that Tubi, a free video streaming service also compatible with my Tivo is a weak link.  Netflix is a completely enjoyable experience and Tubi is likewise an extra addition to the Tivo I use.
   It isn’t too hard to say which could be better assessed to be a radical success, in the future.  That said, while Netflix has been successful remaining ahead of the curve, Tubi is probably under far less pressure.  Does Tubi’s relative weak link status mean that it isn’t a success?  It is free to use.

   

   Photographer: Rawpixel.com

2. Going forward with the theory that radical success means enormous difficulty, consider the contender that could grab much of Netflix’ market share, Disney.  Disney is unlikely to be going anywhere, given its weight as an entertainment brand, being known for its films, television, toys and theme parks.
   

Which of the two, Netflix or Disney, will be more of the radical success–that a good streaming service can be?  Or will they both amount to great success?  Disney has built in family appeal, given its products are for both adults and kids alike.  Netflix has been building that kind of appeal from scratch, but persistently.  Will either Netflix or Disney be a weak link?  It seems important to me that entertainment be good, when it is accessed, or experienced.

Netflix has a reputation for spending extravagant amounts of money on shows and films.  Disney already has an enormous built-in capacity for success in the future, in addition to plans for its video streaming service.

 Will Netflix Ever Actually Make Any Money?

Photographer: Jakob Owens

3. I started this post by saying there is a fiftieth-anniversary release of The White Album coming 11/9.  From what I understand about music streaming services, Spotify has a great conversion rate bringing customers from free use of Spotify onto the premium version.  I would ask, if taken to task, whether Spotify will be a “weak link.”

From everything I can say, music with Spotify is magnificent.  It seems to be an awesome service.

It is understood that The Beatles essentially recorded The White Album live to 8-track tape, and for everything they’d done in the name of their music, they were in fact recording music that would be a bit of a farewell to their fans.  If less scrutiny was being given to the music emerging on The White Album, would The Beatles have lasted longer?  And recorded songs for longer than they did?  I think it is possible, for when something is intended to be “perfect,” it is often a departure the way a pinnacle climbed must then be descended.

US Politics 

4. If you are following my argument, you might guess that the weak link I’m referring to is the former President of the United States, Donald Trump.  An example of someone about who there is much to decry that could be a weak link is the President.

As he is someone who was a TV star, I think it is worth mentioning here the radical success that he is known for enjoying and how at the same time the President has mounting problems that he is both a radical success, being wealthy and commanding power, but also a “weak link” in that he could bring down the whole show if he is not effective.  President Trump has a knack for appearing with ferocious emphasis again and again in the news, and yet he faces so much criticism and real-life repercussions and consequences that I think he makes a great example of a “weak link” who is at the same time a radical success.

The President brings to mind so many components and elements of radical success gone wrong that it is becoming clearer all the time that the President of the United States is an extremely divisive man. Donald Trump Says China Remix

 

Photographer: Diego Jimenez

Motivated to Entrepreneurship

5. The ninth reason I want to assert that a weak link can be very much undermining is the idea that if you begin to succeed as an entrepreneur you can find yourself under more pressure than you ever anticipated facing.  Making money is many people’s idea of success, but you usually have to put in years of work to make your dreams come true.  And in this scenario, ironically, you yourself could be the weakest link if you don’t meet obstacles well.

Unless you keep improving, day in and day out, you could end up being the weak link in your organization simply owing to the fact that your luck could change.  If you have found a strategy that makes you King Midas, turning everything you touch to gold, if all of a sudden your luck changes, you may now be suddenly be faced by weakness.  The Secret to Self-Motivation | Gary Vaynerchuk’s GREATEST Motivational Speech Ever! 

Aerial view of computer laptop on wooden table

You need to keep improving and being good.  Everything that took you somewhere is behind you; you have to continue to make great decisions.  I suspect you’ll see for yourself if you falter.

6. The final reason I want to take back to Geeks + Gamers.  If you have someone, like Jeremy, who is comfortable discussing games, films, and sports, an articulate individual, who sees success coming from YouTube, from a Facebook group, from Twitch I suppose, who challenges who is at the top, as with The Last Jedi, I think it is a philosophical note to say that if you are at that pinnacle, there is any number of reasons your descent will be hastened by those who come after you.  You have to reach that pinnacle in excellent form; and you have to leave it in such a way that it endures, that there could be a fiftieth-anniversary, that there could be another billion-dollar blockbuster, that there could be a second term.  This is all vital, from a philosophical standpoint, what must be done if radical success, like the kind that spreads all around the globe, is to be achieved and then preserved. CLICKBAIT : A YOUTUBE STORY

If you have read this, please feel free to “like,” “follow,” and/or comment.

Unofficial Church Army

This week’s WordPress photo challenge is, oddly enough, about your personal moments of distraction when you are about practicing your self-discipline (i.e., when you are working). I help a little with operations at a small cemetery in Ontario, in the city where I live.  We care for the grounds, etc. (you can find us on the Internet here).

However, to be totally honest, but it could be therapeutic, I am completely distractible by my own thoughts, which typically drift to my activities on the Internet, not so much Internet dating or the like, but being active on the Internet, and, more often, accessing music on the Internet.

It distracts me to no end and I begin to wish for it.

It is a terrible practice when I am expected to be solemn.  I regret this and try to conceal it.

However, for example… there is a church in front of the cemetery which disbanded in 2006 (you can find Louth United on Facebook here). One of the things that preoccupy is music by a band that was classic in the 1980s, The Church (see the similarity?  There’s a church. I think about the song Under the Milky Way).

Even my mother has encouraged me to stop that.  However, I feel I am nearly part of the Church Army.

In fact, the other day I saw the band’s tweet announcing their North America tour of 2017.  Even though there is only one stop in Canada, and it is far west, in Vancouver, I thought I would put this in place because if you are in the United States, in a major center, here is when The Church is back in your town.

2017 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR

I’ve thought about the possibility that I am doing a disservice to the religious, by speaking of The Church, which clearly utilizes ideas about space and time in its music, which is somewhat heretical in the sense that ideas of that kind typically preclude a normal interest in God. It really isn’t like that. Steve Kilbey, who sings Under the Milky Way, knows quite a bit about Christian history, as I’ve observed in his blogging on The Time Being.

Other than that, he’s a major recording artist who has a classic song from the 1980s and he’s thoroughly cool. I have that interest in him that I can’t shake, and it’s been years (feels like my whole life) that I’ve been feeling happy when I remember to play songs by his band The Church.  I realize that this is a far cry from what’s hip in my stretch of the sea, but I am consistently wowed by all the intellect, talent, and creativity that goes into Kilbey’s music, with and without The Church.

For example, Starfish from 1988, which includes Under the Milky Way, is full of great music that betrays that it’s a staple of the 1980s, but also a little more removed from stylistic touches that dominate most music of its day.  There was tons of tacky music in the 1980s.

Look at the tour poster for The Church in 2017 in North America. You can find The Church on Twitter here. If you are interested in any of this, feel free to ‘like,” “follow,” and/or “comment.”

Thank you for visiting and good luck this autumn.

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Verbal Confirmation: Assigning a Speech Label

For a long time WordPress hosted The Daily Post, a prompt to help WordPress users get something published. The Oct 1, 2014 Daily Post, Verbal confirmation, can be explained by delineating what you’re saying, showing the precise position of (a fringe or limit).
I do a little work for my father at a small cemetery, in our care.  https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited
We have a ledger outlining in orderly fashion who rests where, in the cemetery. Maple Lawn Cemetery delineates other aspects of my life. I like to delineate. Social media delineates people, in the sense of them characterizing qualities they have.
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/twitter-lists
When I feel like going on Twitter, I typically take a half hour of time, and I glance over what people have been tweeting. The different declarations of this and that is lively, and remarkable. When someone tweets a great recommendation of an article, it is good fun.
There is more in life that you can delineate. Compartmentalizing tasks on an ongoing basis is delineation. You can change from one objective to another, by delineating each objective.
I don’t play cards, but another instance where you can delineate is a hand of Solitaire. If you play Solitaire, you know you delineate a deck of cards into piles. The challenge of the game, I imagine, is how chance itself rules the game.

Peanuts

“To be observed, a response must affect the environment — it must have an effect upon an observer or upon an instrument which in turn can affect an observer.”– Skinner, B. F. (1969). Contingencies of Reinforcement: A Theoretical Analysis
Points of interest in a travel situation can be delineated. When somewhere new or far from home, you can explore a little, and many do, by delineating spots you can go. In January of 1991, my parents took me and my brother and sister to Florida, driving from here to Orlando. 1,952 km · Moderate traffic · 22 hr 34 min
With only a little time and energy, you can enjoy the sights and sounds having delineated what is near to you. To many people, that is rewarding, and you will have stories to tell back home. I would like to feel that the verb to delineate characterizes me.

Both productivity and efficiency interest me. Every Monday morning I try to spend an hour on YouTube, watching videos, to motivate myself. Ironically, I don’t place a lot of importance on spending time in full force, or with efficacy, and that kind of thing. I just like to think about it! I like to delineate.
Thought and action may well be the name of the game for delineation. That is why I choose, as my favorite verb, to delineate.

April 7, 2019 #WorldHealthDay