16 Facts About Cleanliness’s Everyone Thinks are True

September is World Candle Month. Established in 2013, World Candle Month joins candle devotees around the planet. I think this year it is helping to remember September 11, as today is Patriot Day in the USA.

Well, let’s get out from under that debris.

In other parts of America, Nashville Tennessee author Jeff Goins retired at the end of the summer this year, having for ten years presented courses online, to get writers blogging. Books by Jeff Goins include his 2015 bestseller, The Art of Work. That book explains many expressions of work, by which to inspire readers.

While I didn’t officially join up with his courses, it is almost ten years now since I partook in the some of the free advice he proffered, like how to brainstorm ideas for your blog. Some of Goins’ blogging strategies I, in fact, applied. I have never made blogging anything other than a hobby, but when I read on Facebook Jeff’s retirement announcement, I was again interested to read what he had to say.

The agreeableness Mr. Goins has fits a way of composing books that is both unique and open. His books include The In-Between and his first book, in 2014, You are a Writer. The title of his first book reminds me of adventure books where the reader assumes the identity of someone else (here it would be… a writer).

Goins was a musician who worked in marketing, before he realized that he wanted to be a writer.

Photo by Matt Bango on StockSnap

Jeff Goins’ retirement helps make this post a fresh start for me. https://www.amazon.com/Jeff-Goins/e/B005BH1OB6%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Since 2012, the work I have done has been assisting with the upkeep on the grounds of a cemetery.  For years, my father, whose business it is to operate this cemetery, would bring around breakfast, a Cinnabon and coffee.  https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited/

Photo by Richard Revel on StockSnap

Why Cleanliness’s are More Tempting than a Cinnabon

With autumn here I have opted to reflect on different kinds of cleanliness.  Seeing the world for its contrasts is a twisted conviction.  There are shades of dark in pretty much every circumstance.

Why would I think about cleanliness in the autumn time this year?  While usually it is spring when people turn their attention to cleaning, like the contrast of light and dark, autumn needs some cleaning off, too.

Likewise, many people choose cleanliness in some areas and not others.  Some people have a knack for cleanliness in most areas; some people have cleanliness in only a few (or even none).  I found, on insider.com, an article by a Zoë Ettinger, whom I suspect is very clean.

16 cleaning myths that are only making your home dirtier–Zoë Ettinger Mar 7, 2021
https://www.insider.com/cleaning-myths-making-your-home-dirtier

In case she were to at any point know about me, I am simply attempting to communicate her recommendations.

1

“Fade cleans, without question, everything.” Don’t let the dirt settle. That resembles life settled to pieces, just space-separated. If you sit in the dust, you become it.

2

“Quill dusters eliminate dust.” Let the quill remain, but don’t make it your only tool. My, you could add a candle.

3

“Paper gives the glass without a streak sparkle.” You can’t wipe an unstreaked sparkle on glass. Therefore, why not let the sparkle streak?

4

“Vinegar is a generally useful cleaner.” Vinegar is best for fish and chips, and not for cleaning the table.

5

“Hairspray can be utilized to eliminate ink stains.” Hairspray can make or break a good time! Ink will set unless you take measures to remove it.

6

A candle will melt if you leave it lit. Let the ink stain, perhaps, become found art.

Photo by Burst on StockSnap

7

“You should wash everything on cold.” To remove a stain, start with cold water.

Boiling water can set stains, like milk, egg, or blood. It cooks the protein. Boiling water works best on slick stains, like mayonnaise.

8

“Deodorizer helps clean the air,” an aroma. Lighting a candle would achieve the same end.

9

“String mops are the best approach.” If it is not too evident to say here, a string mop requires a bucket.

10

“You should finish wood regularly.” Finishes shield wooden surfaces and show up more.

Wood finish is not the same as painting, for painting subtly conceals a wooden surface while a finish completes it. Philosophical point.

11

“Vacuum, then, at that point, dust.” The vacuum will contaminate considerably more than you.

12

“You can wash your sheets like clockwork.” A more natural routine can deliver better results.

13

“Your dishwasher cleans itself.” Plain and simple, it doesn’t.

14

“Your clothes washer cleans itself.” It doesn’t.

15

“All green cleaning items are protected to utilize.” You need green cleaning as much as on all the other things you ensure.

From the standpoint of being a professional, in being green for your buyers and representatives, and also when creating your business’ impression, green cleaning is held to decrease contaminations. It doesn’t always cause the same medical issues brought about by non-green cleaning.

16

“Using more laundry detergent is always better.” An excess of cleanser will leave buildup.

You’re welcome to like the post, to follow, or to comment.

I am ending with the band Deerhunter’s video for their 2018 LP Why Hasn’t Everything Already Disappeared? That’s Bradford Cox singing, with very few close-ups in the presentation. Reputable indie rock. Enjoy World Candle Month.

MCMLXXVI Rock and Roll Heart

It feels like spring is here, this day in May. It’s been a cultural revolution.

Microsoft teases a ‘next generation of Windows’ announcement ‘very soon’

https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/25/22453222/microsoft-windows-next-generation-announcement-sun-valley-build-2021-keynote

One evening, the other day, I’d got to feeling, oddly, like how I did when I was an unfulfilled young person, feeling regret at letting time go, without, you could say, stopping to smell the roses.

Two weeks ago, the YouTube channel for IGN posted the Indiana Jones trailer commemorating forty years since Raiders of the Lost Ark made its premiere in 1981.

#IndianaJones

Darth Vader and the Death Star

It was kind of weird to think about a related film, The Rise of Skywalker, being in theatres an entire year in the past. Things have certainly changed.

Song Lyric Sunday is is a blog hop organized by Jim Adams. For Sunday, December 20, Jim’s prompts include: “circle.”

https://jimadamsauthordotcom.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/the-shape-im-in-2/

A blog hop is a social experience, a little fun if you blog.

About music, to be a famous musician is a powerful fantasy. I regard exciting music or any sort of expert musicianship.

The prompt circle reminded me of the late, great Lou Reed’s song Vicious Circle, on the album Rock and Roll Heart. In 1976, Reed’s first album with Arista Records followed the records he did for RCA after The Velvet Underground ended, and was kind of immediately enjoyable for a casual listener, though Reed seems to flirt again on Rock and Roll Heart with self-destruction, not unlike what a depressed but notable musician can be like. Rock and Roll Heart is the seventh solo studio album by Lou Reed, released in 1976. Heart is the seventh collection by Lou Reed. It was his first for Arista Records after record magnate Clive Davis safeguarded him. There’s a TV interview with Reed in Australia recorded around 1975, just before he made Rock and Roll Heart, where Reed seems unhappy.

Reed tries a joke about the tyrant Adolf Hitler, calling him a great organizer. The interviewer admonishes him. I think Reed was obliquely referring to Andy Warhol, who once managed him as a musician.

Reed is a championed rock guitarist and singer who is seldom rivalled, given the influence of his personality. He is gone, but when I was in college, one long-haired, heavyset history teacher taught us a little about him, calling Reed “the godfather of punk.” In the library, I found a little book about subculture, music subculture in the nineteen seventies, and I put energy into understanding it.

Lou Reed’s New York

Because of the acclaim of The Velvet Underground, that was after they ceased making music together, as a group, songs of theirs began to be popular.

When in the year 1999 I went into the HMV store in New York City, the international chain of CD shops where you went if you wanted music, in the days when you bought music on physical media, the Velvets were well-advertised, as in giant letters in the store announcing, “The Velvet Underground.” You knew it was their town.

Years before I was born, Lou Reed had a Top 20 hit, contributing to the new popularity of both Reed, and, consequently, the Velvets. The most popular song by Reed is a song I first heard on FM radio, cruising the streets of my town, probably for no particular reason, or for no good reason.

Lou Reed a Life by Anthony DeCurtis

I didn’t know who that singer was, on the radio, until I heard the song again, as though it were still 1972, in some kind of Doctor Who-type parallel universe. I still didn’t know whom it was singing like that, but eventually, a friend of a friend listened to me describe the song, and he knew who it was, given a moment (between thought and reflection).

I was in a circle, then, being a kid in high school, dealing with pressures that are specific to what I think is most kids’ experience. It wasn’t vicious, by the way, just sayin’.

The song Vicious Circle could be about having social pressures, like specific patterns ingrained in you to run up against a wall. The song is less up-tempo than most of the songs on Rock and Roll Heart. I am not sure the better part of Reed’s listeners would embrace music like his, if they didn’t feel, at least from time to time, that the intrigue about the music was coming from a place touched by despair.

There are stories about Lou Reed, when he was the frontman of the Velvets, like that he played Woodstock in ’69, but nobody could hear the sound. I don’t think the Velvets did play Woodstock. They broke up amid tension.

The third and fourth of the Velvets’ records were more straightforward as rock albums than the first and second albums. I believe in 1968 they performed in Hamilton, Ontario, but if so, that was likely the Velvet Underground’s only show in Canada.

Lou Reed’s hit in 1972 includes the B-side Vicious (not Vicious Circle). Four years after that, after Reed was back to being a struggling songwriter, Reed with Vicious Circle was possibly pointing to his choice of making a livelihood as a rock singer, because Vicious Circle points to the song Vicious, and the 45 format itself is circular in shape, music being on vinyl discs, records. There is a hint of weariness in Vicious Circle.

There is a Bowie song, too, with the word circle in its title, and I know there’s a reference to him in the title of Vicious Circle in all likelihood.

Reed had a great sense of humour, I read in college, the Velvets’ drummer Moe Tucker remarking on that about Lou Reed.

Reed expounded on experience in his music, including thoughts about sex and culture. Reed did much of his very best music with the Velvets, who were John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Moe Tucker, and Doug Yule.

Everything Lou Reed did music-wise is very acceptable, I think. The Velvet Underground is a legendary band. Many an amateur rocker knows whom the Velvet Underground are, and get songs like What Goes On, and Sweet Jane, west coast surf type stuff.

I used to wonder what Reed intended for the fate of his music.

I think with Rock and Roll Heart Reed was trying his hand at again being a straightforward rock musician. I would venture to guess that he was a pretty hot musician, trying to move into AM Radio with the record Coney Island Baby, but had simultaneously conveyed the ability to fail with his 1975 noise opus Metal Machine Music.

Metal Machine Music sort of seems easier to take as an experimental ambient noise album, but I take it fans of the artist would have wanted more rock songs, not something altogether weird like Metal Machine Music. Wikipedia says, “In 1979 Reed said ‘Saying ‘I’m a Coney Island baby’ at the end of that song is like saying I haven’t backed off an inch. And don’t you forget it.'”

Photo by Emanuele Bresciani from StockSnap

Reed lived a long life, until October 27, 2013, passing away at the age of 71. When I was In college, I didn’t believe Reed’s image as a street-weary rock musician, compared to who he was. I don’t have any acquaintance with it all, however.

Thanks to Jim Adams for the December 20 word prompt circle.

https://www.facebook.com/findingenvirons

https://about.me/patrickcoholan

Vicious Circle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfceMTlEq7s

You’re caught in a vicious circle
Surrounded by your so called friends
You’re caught in a vicious circle
And it looks like it will never end
‘Cause some people think that they like problems
And some people think that they don’t
And for everybody who says yes
There’s somebody who’s staring, saying don’t

You’re caught in a vicious circle
Surrounded by your so called friends
You’re caught in a vicious circle
And it looks like it will never end
‘Cause some people think that it’s nerves
And some people think that it’s not
And some people think that it’s things that you do
And others think that you were cold, when you were hot
They think that that is what it was about

You’re caught in a vicious circle …

Surrounded by all of your friends

FOWC–Collaborate

I follow a blog called Fandango, which keeps the custom of single-word prompts bursting at the seams, with the single word prompts WordPress once presented, having reached a conclusion around the time I began composing these.  Tonight I looked in thinking I might benefit from such a suggestion, and I saw that Fandango’s word tonight is the word “collaborate.”

    The word means work jointly, or, alternatively, cooperate traitorously.

    I was taught both connotations to cooperate when I was in college.  In the sense of collaboration with a distinguished painter, I learned that in Film 101, and in the sense of collaboration with the colonizers, I studied that in business law.

    Film 101 identified for me a few ideas which had interested me since I was a child, like why did names of people run up the screen at the end of a movie.

    That film professor was a young, tall, handsome man, who explained that those end credits identified that the film was the collaboration of those people’s work.  He told us in the school auditorium that the film wouldn’t have been finished without the help of all of those people.  I’d once inaccurately assumed that the most renowned people with their names on a film were the ones who chiefly ran the show.

    Until college, I don’t think I’d considered that all of those people were important, not just the ones with star power.  It was an advantageous exercise.

Photographer:
One Idea LLC

    It is too bad that schools everywhere have closed their doors at present.  Although I personally was only an average student, I think of the problems in the future created simply by making school unavailable at the present time.  I have heard of school debunked, of course–Gary Vee, for one, I’ve heard on video overlooking school in favour of an entrepreneur getting started making a living.  I’ve heard him say on camera, as he says so many things, that if a young person’s parents do pay for that individual to go to post-secondary, that person had certainly better make the most of it if it is at the expense of the parents.

    In fact, I wouldn’t mind hearing what Gary is saying about the present catastrophe.  I have seen GaryVee video titles on YouTube recommending that business enterprise on the Internet is as yet a practical road for what’s to come.  Good luck to the young people of today, then–they need it.

    My college business law class took some of the wind out of my sails at the time.  There were a lot of definitions run past us that seemed important yet awfully complicated for beginning young people.

    In a day in the classroom, the gentleman who taught us gave us a TV recommendation, of all things.  “Watch Law & Order,” he said to us.  For a long time I did, not having had such a title dropped on me in a setting like that previous to the day he did.

Photographer:
Leeroy

    He was joking about the difficulty he was imposing on us.  Thanks for that, I think now.  Although for a while I was a fan of the show, you know you don’t get the time back.

    There was just so much of it–when did I ever find time to work?

    The synonyms for collaborating, both join forces and fraternize, were thus equally handled by the well-meaning but slightly eccentric business law teacher.  Some business education is important.

    I appreciate Fandango’s prompt tonight.  Good luck with staying safe.

You’re welcome to follow or to comment.  Remember to respect the space of everybody in it.  A lot is counting on it!

https://fivedotoh.com/2020/03/20/fowc-with-fandango-collaborate/ #FOWC

11 Freaky Reasons Teen Tv Shows Could Get You Fired

1. Did you know you had to leave that at home when you took the job? I’m afraid you might have to. That being said, let us proceed.
2. The problem-solving skills of a teen sleuth would benefit the team, but trying to emulate those same skills, in the office, will get you a reboot.
3. The radiant physical beauty of teen heroes and heroines often softens the hearts of even the fiercest opponents, while your limited charms, in the office, will bring up excuses.
4. The ability to resolve a dilemma in three-quarters of an hour, TV time, is completely impossible to replicate in the office. Three-quarters of an hour is the time it takes to install an operating system update that covers special keys, for languages of other continents, or an app checker that asks if it does check apps and the updated catalogue of word processor fonts.
5. TV reprobates who are secretively pulled in by bravery and beguile, that have envisioned frightful closures for interfering adolescent heroes, and have gone the mile to complete such business, don’t measure up to how your supervisor is five to seven minutes late every morning for a ten-minute opportunity involving those last wisps of transmission that still don’t light the psyche.
6. Spending your dollars for the drive, trying to forget genuine youngsters applauding, your data bill at home in the back of the kitchen drawer– leaves you mentally stranded until you are miles away, each day you show up for the privileges of cubicle life.
7. Instagramming shock, in light of a most recent debacle of separation gossip, places you in the washroom crying, holding a paper towel to your face while attempting to quit hyperventilating.
8. Remembering hands to your cheeks, in the wake of being checked for hang-ups, has you on the ground, showing you further inadequately made a decision that demonstrates those no-longer-so-charming goons truly came from that side of the tracks.
9. Getting back on your feet, your jacket is torn, which while for you is quite embarrassing, to turn up back at the office in such a state, the more chivalrous task of lending a friend an intact garment, translates poorly between what’s on TV, and what your understanding is of the psychological underpinning of those same gents, who just turned your boxer briefs into a flowerbed.
10. You’ll be back for that most recent five minutes of compromise throughout the show after work’s accomplished for the afternoon, a valiant effort to promise your supervisor that you won’t be in the vacant office much longer from when the last youngsters got terminated in the few hours on the clock that you expect to fill without one final fix of physical magnificence, and the sort of ability that simply the best and the most splendid have in general, which also excludes ensuring the addresses in the BCC: bar of the unforeseen doesn’t end up a large portion of an inch higher in CC:– Unlike real life, which stops the last minute of the same day that began the same time following your coffee, the TV episodes promise a forty-minute resolution, not the selfsame resolution that must be repeated dozens or hundreds of times over as part of reality.
11. They said that could never happen in the course of teenage heroism, celebrated with such a passionate kiss that you can do yourself, of course, as soon as you find another job.

Photographer:
Kristin Hardwick

I hope the jury isn’t out on this one. It’s a little bit of fun. You know who your friends are.

Feel free to like the post, comment on it, and/or follow the blog. Adieu.

Photographer:
Ermin Celikovic

How Not Knowing Where to See the 2021 Ball Drop Makes You a Rookie

Sometimes, to write a blog post, I turn to a random generator to help develop an idea. I am steadfast of the belief that “everything is a remix” and go from there.

    Several years ago, when my godmother was visiting, she observed that “it’s all been done.”

    Her mom, my grandma, a long time back, each year, on New Year’s Eve, would keep an eye on us while my folks were celebrating the New Year.  As I am the oldest, I enjoyed the privilege of staying up with my grandmother and watching the ball drop at Times Square.

    We would have a cup of tea together.  It’s been over twenty years since she passed on.

    I was reading a blog Monday night, by an NYC blogger, Beauty Beyond Bones, who reflects on everything Jesus does for her.

    The Beauty Beyond Bones blog goes live three times a week, I believe, both Monday and Thursday evenings, which are her regular event, and Wednesdays, her recipe-sharing.  Good eating is one serving of Beauty Beyond Bones’ expertise.  I doubt she would have it any other way.

    Monday, the Beauty Beyond Bones blog pointed out that while, characteristically, astrology and the Law of Attraction tend to pull in people who are searching for answers, that may not be The Way, to put a Taoist label on that kind of struggle.

    Beauty Beyond Bones put up a link Monday to an awesome webcast where she typifies her biography.  You may see her blog for yourself:

https://beautybeyondbones.com/

Photographer:
Burst

    It did occur to me that, if anybody noticed how I was handling myself, there was a good chance that I would not know that person much longer.  I presume, regardless of how much development I appreciate, I will consistently have that sense to want to be a crypt keeper.

    When I was a boy and had a different sense of the theatrical, I liked to be the Dungeon Master.  There is no shortage of folk interested in games like D & D.  The game’s monsters, the undead, and Medusa.

    Whether I can accommodate various aspects of my mental self-portrait with what is most critical, presently, is something I think about. I am trying to put this in more simple terms than is easy, in pursuit of something intangible.  It’s not an idea that comes easy.

    If you blog and you’re on WordPress, that’s wonderful!

    Get your spot for the ball drop.

Photographer:
Tommy Jepsen

You’re free to like, follow, or potentially remark.  See you soon!

Why A Winter’s Night Will Change Your Life

The theatrical release of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is two months away and today is Force Friday, a retail shopping day for Star Wars fans.

Photographer: Matt Moloney

The Rise of Skywalker is one of the biggest film releases of 2019, as you probably know. Movie director J. J. Abrams has returned, who in 2015 helmed Star Wars: The Force Awakens. The Force Awakens resumes after the original trilogy in 1977, 1980, and 1983, and the Star Wars prequel trilogy, in 1999, 2002, and 2005.

While this is familiar film history, what’s striking is that the Disney company, which now owns the brand, is launching Disney+ in November, when Star Wars will again be newly available. Disney+ is an offering of classic animated features, as well as reboots and the Avengers franchise. Both Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Star Wars: The Last Jedi were tremendous hits, but the box office failure of the expensive one-off Solo: A Star Wars Story diminished the profitability of the franchise for Disney, and the success of Disney+ would surely benefit from the continued success of Star Wars.

Disney+ will have much better chances of lasting if Star Wars is reinvigorated by another blockbuster film. There isn’t much question that Star Wars: The Last Jedi divided the fan base. Last Jedi director Rian Johnson dispelled some of the magic of Star Wars by reinventing Mark Hamill’s character of Luke as an old cynical hermit, rather than staying true to the bold Jedi warrior hero who defeats the Empire in Return of the Jedi.

Star Wars fans turned out for Mark Hamill’s reprise of Luke Skywalker after what happened in the original Star Wars trilogy, and instead, Luke in The Last Jedi nearly couldn’t be roused to continue the fight against the Dark Side of the Force.

YouTube’s Looper has tapped into a mega-spoiler: by their account, actor Harrison Ford has returned as Han Solo for a scene in The Rise of Skywalker. It’s understood that Ford had been reluctant to return to Star Wars without a movie script handling his character adequately, as the actor was absent from the cast of The Last Jedi.

There have been announcements about Star Wars that fans ate up. Prequels actor Ewan McGregor will be in the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, not for The Rise of Skywalker, but a Disney+ series picking up after the events of the prequels.

Disney has also announced that Kevin Feige will do a Star Wars film. Feige’s involvement is good news for people who believe in Star Wars, as the Avengers films largely speak for themselves in terms of popularity and quality. With the promise of a bang-on Star Wars film after the Skywalker Saga, there is more reason to believe that Star Wars will again succeed, and if it does, a future with Disney+ is all the more likely.

The other spoiler from Looper is that, contrary to expectations, at least expectations I had, the Force will redeem the character of Kylo Ren when he gives up his allegiance to the Dark Side. Based on the love-hate intensity of their relationship, I held the impression that in The Rise of Skywalker Rey will defeat Kylo Ren and destroy him. The trailer for The Rise of Skywalker seems clear that the final battle will be highly personal.

If instead Kylo Ren changes his allegiance, it will make for a different future in Star Wars. Although audiences believe that the Light Side of the Force triumphs in Return of the Jedi, this time, in 2019, it is possible to think, the Light Side will, at last, have victory.

Photographer: Leeroy

If you have the opportunity to enjoy The Rise of Skywalker, I hope you have one of the best nights you have ever had in the company of Star Wars’ villains and heroes. It should be a wonderful occasion. I appreciate you very much thinking about it with me. Maybe I’ll see you again come wintertime as momentum for The Rise of Skywalker continues to build.

Passionate Ice; A Boy Desiring What Others Did Not So Much

Bruce Wayne decided as a boy that he would honour the memory of his mother and father by inventing himself as Batman and challenging many criminals in Gotham City.

I watched Justice League when it went to Netflix this month and I enjoyed it. The camaraderie between the members of the Justice League comes off as solid and the plot of the film is enjoyable. It is curious to see Superman return to life.

Some of the cool moments from my life were opportunities to see films, in movie theaters.  In 1989, cinema fans filled movie houses to see the DC superhero Batman on the silver screen.

Photographer: Bruce Mars

I had a good time.  Actor Michael Keaton’s role as Bruce Wayne, with its heroism, detachment from wealth, and indifference to romance makes the character of Batman a reinvention.  I suppose Keaton was a surprise star turn, and the subplot of Gotham City TV news anchors unable to appear beautiful on television, owing to poison in beauty products deliverered by The Joker, is clever.

Jack Napier’s transition to The Joker is memorable.  In other scenes from Batman, Billy Dee Williams of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back and subsequently in Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, appears as Harvey Dent.

The climactic confrontation of the film, at the Gotham City parade beneath a cathedral with the height of a skyscraper, is wonderful.

Photographer: Yi Ling Tan

When the creepy little video store in the shopping plaza near my home began renting to customers Batman, the store displayed tapes of the film like a phenomenon.  Shelf after shelf were full of the Batman video.  The format was VHS, the cassette for running a film with a VHS player.

I’d been to see it, but I wanted that VHS.  Christmas came, and family placed hand-wrapped videotape-shaped objects under the holiday tree.

They were VHS tapes, but what titles were they?  Us kids wouldn’t know until Christmas morning.  At the appointed time, I opened mine, and to my delight, the tape inside was Batman.

As the family opened our presents, a second tape of Batman under the Christmas tree emerged.  My mother’s brother and his wife had arranged for the gift of the movie Batman as well.  Two VHS tapes of the same film–a double.

What did my dear mother decide, you might ask?  This was a bummer.  She would quietly return a copy of the film to its retail store.

As a twelve-year-old, the price of a brand-new edition of a blockbuster film must be extravagant, I reasoned.  The VHS copy of Batman we had would belong to us all.

I suppose that taught me a lesson, like not to count your chickens before they hatch.  It was as if my uncle and aunt had felt I deserved my own copy of Batman, and Santa Claus did not.  The VHS tape of Batman was a gift, what I wanted and what I was losing.

In 1989, fate unfolded for Batman mobster Jack Napier.  The criminal mastermind falls into a vat of burning acid.  He loses the pigment of his skin and becomes molded with a permanent smile on his face.

I hadn’t earned my own copy of Batman, and I suppose the real lesson was that I should share.  It is a state of becoming tantalized by the promise of something gold and being humbled by the requirement to give it up.  Maybe we didn’t know that doubles of the Batman film were under the tree, but no contingency plan was in place.

I was cheesed.

Batman fans typically embrace the trilogy of Batman movies years later directed by Christopher Nolan, but I didn’t get interested in them.

You’re welcome to like, comment, or follow if my recollection of dealing with a hot trendy thing like the above resonates with you.

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.