Do you know who’s inspiring? Mr. Russell Brand on his political channel right now has become inspiring. As he often introduces his videos with this tidbit, I think he has four and a half million subscribers. I believe that Mr. Brand’s become the largest political channel on Youtube, and he has no taste for politics. Remarkable.
When I tried to describe the man’s “rebrand” (see what I did there?) to my sister Kaite, I wrote that Brand is shallowly savaging the establishment. I was trying to get a handle on whether she’d take an interest. It isn’t shallow, or at least I don’t think so. Brand’s Youtube material is provocative–when he does a good video, he’s talking for near on fifteen minutes, and he keeps on being pretty interesting the entire time.
I think he’s doing shows in the UK the next five months, as well.
I guess that’s inspiring because Brand is presenting that he has answers–he’s like a very schooled hippie. For a long time, I only knew of him as a comic actor, but, by now, I’ve heard that he near led a revolution on Youtube, waging war on UK political figures. That said, after his last “rebrand,” he returned as a less direct combatant, probably a safer stance to take. By comparison, I am not a funny guy, although I can get sneers in a heartbeat. You know what, though, like one of my uncles said, it’s a free country.
I’m an introvert, where people enjoy different kinds of social life, with none of my interests. I guess I’m different. When I see Mr. Brand has hit the nail on the head, I quickly become engaged by it, and I want to hear what’s gone on and what Brand’s thoughts on the matter amount to.
My intuition tells me my favourite toy, as a child, was a plush Ernie toy, Ernie, the resident of Sesame Street who graces the TV sets of viewers.
Sesame Street-and I suspect it continues to run–is the public television series with both people and puppets as residents and visitors, on an unusual street, where it is normal to teach life skills like counting and spelling. I am not sure I gleaned a lot of learning from watching, but, when I was small, it could be I did. We had a set of Bert and Ernie dolls in our house.
Bert and Ernie usually disagreed on how they should be living. I am not sure there is a pattern that emerges from accepting that these two blokes live together in a weird, weird world, but perhaps one does. Anyway, I don’t think I am as small and round as Ernie, nor do I lend myself as much to being as silly. I suppose I’m silly much of the time, anyway, but I don’t think Ernie was a role model for me, just a toy that resembled a person.
I had a fair bit of intelligence, as a child, and I’m not sure I played with the Ernie doll as much as it kept me company, when I was entertaining my lonesome, in my childhood bedroom. It is, like I said, only my intuition that informs me of this. I am trying to be honest in the face of a somewhat challenging question about a childhood toy.
I don’t know what the likes of psychiatrist Sigmund Freud would have made of my bond with Ernie, but I don’t recall taking him out of the house, or anything like that. I think he merely kept me company when circumstances dictated that I be on my own.
It seems Mr. Mark Saltzman was asked if Bert & Ernie are gay. It's fine that he feels they are. They're not, of course. But why that question? Does it really matter? Why the need to define people as only gay? There's much more to a human being than just straightness or gayness.
When better to reflect on lunacy than when listening to Echo and the Bunnymen? That must have been a great five years in music. EastEnders cues it, usually on the stereo in the Queen Victoria.
I’m starting on what I hope is a humourous note, that what Spotify calls “early alternative” survives well and good on its own, forever having shaped itself into fashion like shells in the seaweed.
The Wolfman
Pivoting from TV soap to horror, like The Wolfman, perhaps, satisfying his need for power by drinking the contents of what could be a steaming glass cylinder. He is transformed, haplessly, into the guise of a monster, in order to confront what will transform him. That is wisdom imparted to me back in high school by the head of the English department.
One of the challenges, when I went to school in the 1990s and in the 2000s, was to comprehend the reading teachers assigned me as a student of theirs. To this day, I try to read the occasional paper to keep my mind energized–papers of errata, I sort of think of them. I am interested in how an education for our present Gen Z could relate to what will be going on in the minds and hearts of young people.
Today is my parents’ anniversary. I believe that my mother sometimes reads my blog, and I guess that is sort of stereotypically embarrassing, but I thought of some of my observations, and how they may seem naïve, even at my present age, when I try sometimes to explain how it was to be young, and naïve, when perhaps I’ve never really shaken that naivete. How can that be?
I resolve not to think about it too much. My mother can see something I value negatively some of the time.
I once read the observation that social media is like having a giant billboard showing you traffic on the highway, a plain strange metaphor. My Facebook timeline nowadays occasionally recommends me posts from the site for blogTO.
blogTO
The Facebook timeline, in case you’re new to Facebook, is the piece of your Facebook page that shows posts from both people you’ve befriended and from pages that you follow.
In addition to being a good read, blogTO appears tidy on Facebook, and likewise fresh on TikTok. https://www.blogto.com/ …if you want the link.
When my dad and I agreed to do business together, in what might have been 2011, we wanted a Facebook page. The church on the cemetery grounds had disbanded in ’06, so a good five years had gone as the church fell away from that. We decided not to let the cemetery go as well.
It hasn’t been that long that I’ve been thinking about blogTO. The individual who first brought it to my attention is our dear Pam, one of my mother’s cousins, and a true Toronto resident.
Pam shares blogTO posts typically to reflect how she feels about the weather, or how construction in the city is, or how her interest in TIFF goes. Our last face-to-face was at my maternal grandmother’s eightieth birthday party.
I have lived in a burb my whole life, with the exceptions of brief visits to other parts of the province, that the province Ontario, as well as a once-in-a-lifetime vacation to Florida, and visits to my godparents in Tennessee, a 1995 visit to friends in British Columbia, school in Kingston, Ontario, and, in addition, beginning to really learn in England, when I was awarded a bursary to do a semester overseas, during which I even briefly saw Paris. If I were a priest, you might compare that semester to a sabbatical. I felt like Victor Frankenstein, I fancied.
Frankenstein
I wrapped up my schooling with a year taking classes in Niagara-on-the-Lake, a very picturesque town nearby where I live. I could get a bus from the bus terminal to the campus twice a day, there and back again.
I have also travelled independently, to the Atlantic, the Prairies, and to Portland, Maine, as well as to NYC and to New Orleans, the latter perhaps for the jazz. These trips were all brief excursions. Thereby my impressions of the world were formed.
I felt overwhelmed during my first year of university, starting that up. It was mad to be young the year of Y2K. That was the fear, mostly mythical, that computers synchronized to midnight on January 1, 2000, would all crash, given that their computer infrastructure wouldn’t be able to handle the transition from the twentieth century into the twenty-first.
Dad and I have a little cemetery that would be cared for only by the municipality if my dad never had taken the steps to bring it under his care.
blogTO is a tourism blog for the city of Toronto, helping people find out what things they can do if they visit or if they live in Toronto. When I was but twenty-nine years old, I inquired with Ontario March of Dimes, in Niagara Falls, if I would have any luck in a tourism job, an entry-level job.
My contact at March of Dimes was scornful at that moment, given my reported age, and the nature of my request. In a way, I never lived that down. I have regrets, of course.
It is just that it was a difficult lesson to accept that the decade of life that was my twenties was almost completely finished.
My loving sister, Kaitlyn, encouraged me to try my hand at writing for the campus newspaper in our city. I wrote what you might say amounted to a portfolio of work, ten columns of film criticism that I wrote for the paper, coming out of my own pocket. She’s another girl to who I owe an apology.
Mind you I had the community support of assistance, with the rent, and funds allotted to maintaining a lifestyle. The thrill, and there was a word that a high school teacher had taught me that made it desirable, the word rush, was having to go see a film, typically, the Friday night, and then review the movie within twenty-four hours or so after the lights came up.
My mother was happy I was kind of following a dream, but I really was nothing, and nothing came of it. I was but an amateur.
Since then, the last several years I have done some more writing. I made a few bucks working for a mill, but discarding that perhaps shows foresight as my present advantage is that I can treat any theme I want at any time I want, rather than doing that rush I tried my hand in, to get credentials established. The chief activity that’s been on the productivity chart for me is the last ten years or so helping out my father operate the cemetery, with additional help from family and friends, like Dave and Gerard.
I have translated some of my “journalling” skills into helping keep us in the loop on Facebook, which my sister, thinking of herself as an “early adopter” of the social media platform, encouraged me to join perhaps in the year 2010–at the moment I am not completely sure when I got started. It may have been around the time David Fincher delivered his stellar film The Social Network. I enjoy that film, as do many others.
Kaitlyn’s been the real deal–when she was yet a single girl, she had a position as a bona fide newspaper editor. Kudos to her.
Lake Ontario
Twenty years before, about 1990, the soon-to-be-famous author John Gray finished his first book, which he titled What You Feel, You Can Heal. I remember that John Gray referred to taking your twenties to discover who you are, to find yourself. I wanted to quickly again establish, with this post, where I am at, which I do from time to time to keep it centered, I think.
I’m well older than that. In 2021, another famous figure, Jordan Peterson, himself a former university professor, has been bold enough to ask if university life will be finished.
It won’t surprise me if blogTO has his number.
You’re welcome to bang that “like” button, leave me a comment, or to follow the blog if any of that appeals to you. Thank you for flying with me, on WordPress. These are only the beginning of the days I am trying to take my work more seriously than I have in the first while, when I feel I had a learning curve.
https://twitter.com/findingenvirons?lang=en The latest Tweets from Patrick coholan (@findingenvirons). Rock music fanatic. Award-winning book lover. Introvert. Small talk evangelist. Internet fan.
Charmingly, The Little Mermaid is an enduring animated Disney feature, but also a WordPress blogger who the last few months hosted “tea parties.” Each month for the entire duration of the month a theme goes into play on her site which gets bloggers interacting with each other having had written along the same lines. This month’s theme, October’s, is happiness.
I’ve joined the last couple of months, and this is my third go-round as a participant in the tea parties. I decided today would be the day I would finish up my post for the challenge.
This may seem counterintuitive, but many lifestyles that were stigmatized in previous decades have experienced the joy of stigma lifting.
However, I experience depression, I guess–but I have lots of happy hours, too, so I don’t completely know what to think about that.
Although attitudes change, I know my father loathes the thought that I would speak of such a thing as depression. In fact, that I publish something like this might bother him. That being said, I am trying to be honest with some enthusiasm about a delicate subject of conversation.
It bothers many people. Troubles of that kind can strike virtually anyone. I would suspect it conceals innate unhappiness and is often a response to external troubles.
I don’t perceive there is a terrible stigma around depression. However, it is not the best idea to make small talk about the problem. Complaining rarely works much of a beneficial result.
Channeling your energy into a positive outlet can be the experience that reverses the more difficult symptoms of a common malaise, depression. Everyone knows that happiness is much preferable.
As I explained, The Little Mermaid is an established blogger who this month thought the theme of happiness would fit her tea party series. Her posts invite networking for the love of blogging. Happiness, I think, for me, is satisfaction.
I believe people ought to be happy. That’s what I reflect upon when I’m thinking of such a matter.
Photographer: Javier Molina
Happiness is a mellow joy, I would extrapolate. The decisions opted in the course of one’s day help the individual experience what’s happy for that individual. Youtuber Jenna Marbles has thought about it. My Dogs Try On Halloween Costumes
A guilty pleasure.
I might think of happiness being connected to straight-up artistic endeavors. There are numerous hobbies that spark happiness, like loyalty to a pastime, such as to baseball, to hockey, or to the NFL.
Friends and family are other enriching aspects of happiness. Sometimes, though, you have to sit on the sidelines, waiting for another opportunity to step up to bat.
In this hemisphere, we’ve seen the summer come and go again and now, where I live that is, the temperatures will get colder and colder. We have Halloween to look forward to, which for a lot of people is literally a “scream”. I suppose that’s a pun.
Wednesday this week I asked how winter time is for a volunteer where I work. He told me in turn how little pleasure he gets from the severity of the winter season. I said a little to try to cheer him up, but his feelings about the season were steadfastly downbeat.
It helps, I would venture to say, that if you can narrow down your interests to just a few to focus on, I believe, you may get a better outcome. That way, you are more invested emotionally in what you pursue. Therefore the rewards spent in delving into your passions are rewards that you have generated in your life and reflect sincerity.
You don’t necessarily want to just trade your time for money, which is a basic approach to your work that might not be completely serving you best. I realize you probably have the responsibilities of being part of a family that necessitates and requires you to work at making some kind of living. It is just that if you can do something radical and retain everything you need, and I know that’s not easy, but if you can, I believe it is more fulfilling than if you don’t.
You shouldn’t look back at what you have accomplished and feel there is nothing more you should do. You need to keep growing every year of your life, I believe.
I write this blog because written content continues to have value in 2018. So does video content and audio, as you probably know, probably more so. I wish I had more opportunities to expand what I can do where content is concerned that is assembled myself and published.
Blogging’s one of my favorite hobbies. My efforts are almost entirely done for free and yet I don’t wish to cease them.
I wish I had clearer intentions about what I am doing. Maybe I can explore how to get to a more promising level of achievement without sacrificing the parts of the tasks that I enjoy the most.
One last thing: I was speaking to a young man and admired his research ability for searching the Internet. He told me he was sure it seemed special to me but he clarified in that conversation this month that everyone similar to him, his age, is equal to him in terms of the ability he has to research. I suppose that is true, but I hadn’t been aware of that.
I think one of my draws is that I can do research, but perhaps I need to stop and think that my niece in Grade 3 may now be similarly competent at doing research to my own ability. It’s incredible.
While the preceding example is an exaggeration, I remember that when I wanted a sales job years and years ago, I was asked to take a pen-and-paper test to demonstrate my competence as a computer user. Given my weak results writing the test paper, the office showed me the door. I didn’t get the job because I couldn’t prove that day, all that time ago, that I was adept with a computer.
I may not have been much good then, but I hope that by now, much later in life, I am better outfitted to better qualify for any kind of work that needs me to prove I am tech-savvy.
By the way, this month, October, is Inktober. I don’t have tattoos, but an interesting interpretation is to apply the month’s emphasis on “ink” to how it applies to old-school tabletop roleplaying. An ink-drawn map is often part of a tabletop RPG.
D&D game in a window display
The game I am most interested in is Pathfinder, so occasionally this month I am returning to Pathfinder game materials to read rules of the game with the idea in mind that the game is usually played with ink-drawn maps. I’ve never played the game properly, but even reading some of the rules sometimes helps put me in a state of mind I enjoy.
Thank you for visiting my post. Of course, you’re welcome to “like,” comment, and/or “follow.”
In December my brother and his wife and kids gave me an unusual gift, a puzzle celebrating The Beatles’ music on The White Album.
The Beatles
The puzzle is unusual mainly for the fact that the cover of The White Album is entirely the color white, which makes the puzzle an exercise in assembling puzzle pieces all the color white. It is as if the wrong end of a game of chess game came down on you.
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 individual success and how it is misleading. Four are presented here.
Photographer:
Suzy Hazelwood MONOPOLY FOR MILLENNIALS MAKES NPCs CRY The YouTube channel Geeks + Gamers fascinates me. When Jeremy announced that he had fallen prey to a phishing spoof six weeks ago, I wanted to describe the problem in this post. Jeremy was distracted at the moment and made a rookie error, surrendering control of Geeks + Gamers for seventeen minutes until he could get it back in order. A second oversight occurred, when Jeremy neglected to secure his Google AdSense funding for the channel after the spoof. When he realized that an entire month’s worth of monies designated for Geeks + Gamers was stolen, he finally revealed what happened: My YouTube Channel Was Hacked, Money Lost – Learn From My Mistakes I’d been paying attention to Geeks + Gamers because I feel it protests and dissects conventional scholar on media. The Geeks + Gamers team typically tackle major film projects like the DC universe on film, or more often the Disney Star Wars trilogy, as though the success, usually financial, of studio film output speaks to the conclusion that if a film is not fun, that if it doesn’t “work” in terms of being appealing to an audience, the film is not so much a radical success as it is a weak link.
It didn’t matter to Jeremy that The Last Jedi is another splendid blockbuster in terms of the money it made for Disney; it was to him a complete letdown and something that was a disservice to the favorite films that remind him of his childhood, the Star Wars films. Disney Has Concerns About Star Wars After The Last Jedi It is interesting that while ostensibly the financial success of a film doesn’t mean the film is magical for Jeremy, when it comes to his YouTube channels, Geeks + Gamers and others, it is certainly a problem when a month’s loot is stolen, by cyber-crime means. I wish Jeremy and the other members of Geeks + Gamers hadn’t had to go through that.Halloween with Geeks + Gamers was interesting for the fact that Jeremy argued that very bold criticism of what he does with Geeks + Gamers had been declared, criticism that included the idea that “code words” were being communicated to Geeks + Gamers subscribers that subscribers should launch literal hate and violence at targets which Geeks + Gamers usually defame, a video you can watch here: NPC Star Wars Writer Continues To Lie and Spread False Information Jeremy responded firmly that Geeks + Gamers is in no way is supportive of violent attitudes in any situation, and further that Geeks + Gamers made no attempt to “boycott” the recent Star Wars film Solo, a position I’d heard Jeremy take before in a discussion how Solo ws lacklustre in terms of box office returns.
All this keeps me quite rapt about what this YouTube channel is saying about the Star Wars films–Geeks+ Gamers plays a role in backlash concerning the Rian Johnson Star Wars film The Last Jedi.
For Geeks + Gamers to become a successful YouTube channel, it meant starting from basics and building a subscriber basis and becoming a success, with people watching the videos and comment and so on. If Geeks + Gamers were reviewing music, instead of films, and it was fifty years ago, perhaps they would have spoken about The White Album. Instead, they are speaking out, frequently, about The Last Jedi, in a way which makes it completely clear that they regard Episode VIII of Star Wars as rubbish.When I watched The Last Jedi when it arrived on Netflix, I enjoyed it and even felt moved. The mods of Geeks + Gamers had no such experience. Instead, they despise the film and regale in making that clear rather than taking a positive spin on something that’s an extension to something they loved in childhood.I would guess that Geeks + Gamers take such a broad interest in film criticism that they feel they can succeed with a successful YouTube channel. The idea of success they have is different from the idea of success that’s reflected in something like the fiftieth-anniversary of The White Album, or in the success of the blockbuster The Last Jedi.
The mods of Geeks + Gamers don’t seem to see The Last Jedi as a success at all because they despise it so much. Their YouTube channel extrapolates messages like that Star Wars has been mostly reduced to rubbish, or that the DC comics universe could similarly face a death grip in the cinema. I believe I had misunderstood Geeks + Gamers with my belief that Geeks + Gamers doesn’t desire or see any value in success at the level of the “blockbuster”; instead they expound on problems in entertainment which is compromised by identity politics in the entertainment that they criticize. Now that I understand some more about Jeremy’s point of view, it has me feeling a touch more informed about how identity politics show up in entertainment.
To them, The Last Jedi is a weak link. They wouldn’t aim for that kind of success in their own lives, for example. It is notable, having learned of their misfortune with a phishing spoof, that their success has been compromised by their own position as a good-sized YouTube channel.
Photographer: Rawpixel.com In addition, an example of underhandedly reacting to what’s been said on Geeks + Gamers is the shout-out they gave Mike Zeroh after film director Rian Johnson mean-spiritedly called out Zeroh who is devoted specifically to exploring what’s going on in Star Wars. The Mike Zeroh channel is Zeroh’s speculation about “behind the scenes” in Star Wars. In the initial days of shooting Episode IX of Star Wars, Johnson, reflecting on Twitter about what he was accomplishing with his Star Wars film, referred to YouTube’s Mike Zeroh as being a zero, although Johnson later apologized.
It is the same kind of weak link that exists when Geeks + Gamers tackles Star Wars because for all the enthusiasm Mike Zeroh puts into anticipating Star Wars, Mike Zeroh has personally explained that he feels The Last Jedi is a poor effort. Mike Zeroh Vs Rian Johnson… Thank you Rian Again!!!
I was amused by The White Album puzzle game I got from my brother and his family. I am also grateful for the opportunity to share these opportunities. I am glad if you have read this. You’re welcome to “like,” to “follow,” and/or to comment.
A blogger on WordPress had a great idea for a splendid blog post and I want to indulge it–WordPress blogger The Little Mermaid is having her second-ever “tea party.”
The Little Mermaid, on one hand, is a Disney film character, who you have probably seen in the animated feature if you have an interest in Disney. My own family has the videotape of the film because I have a younger sister. In Disney’s The Little Mermaid, Ariel, seeks her escape from the sea, but, furthermore, The Little Mermaid is the name of a blogger who has had a delightful idea, that being to host WordPress “tea parties.”
The Little Mermaid writes that her first tea party, last month, was open-ended in terms of what content she wanted to read, but for August, The Little Mermaid has invited participants to post about books they enjoy, about which I thought I could circuitously add something to the conversation.
I am late in any case, but I’ve joined in by enjoying some of the tea party guests’ blog responses and by weblogging the August invite to the tea party and tweeting it.
As to what books I might read, most often I enjoy nonfiction, on such a subject as the business behind Google, for example, or of the blockchain. Another kind of book I enjoy is the type that references techniques and strategies for personal change and success. I like both physical volumes and books on my Kindle.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the accessibility of books in 2018 is completely staggering. If you are a full-ahead author on the Internet I think you know that Twitter has seen a gold rush of self-published titles.
DIGITAL GOLD
The last book I got to read is not of this kind, however, not an eBook. It is, in fact, a book that is near-academic, but interesting all the same. The title is DIGITAL GOLD, written by Nathaniel Popper. It is the story of the development of Blockchain and Bitcoin.
The blockchain is, I understand, a mega-trend. I wanted to come to an understanding of what blockchain is about. The blockchain is the process of cryptocurrency mining that could dramatically affect the long-term value of data currencies like bitcoin.
Photographer: Icons8 team
All about bitcoin’s origins and its eventual emergence and success, Popper’s book interested me quite a bit. I found it very satisfactory.
The Stranger
Reflecting in a different light, my favorite book isn’t nonfiction; it’s instead a famous novel. Its appeal is legendary. I have read it a couple of times, the perennial favorite The Stranger by the late Albert Camus.
This novel of Camus’ is an existential novel, in terms of its thematic elements, with the plot about a man who grieves his late mother in a markedly strange way, which you might characterize as embittered and perhaps confused, too.
Existentialist fiction usually tackles questions of the meaning of life, such as in The Stranger, looking at why the main character’s grief is necessary and how it is that it’s enacted in the character’s specific manner after his mother’s death.
Casino Royale
Reflecting again more on what makes a good novel, I think I’d argue that the most overrated book I ever read is Casino Royale, by the late Brit Ian Fleming. Casino Royale, Fleming’s first novel about MI6 agent James Bond, 007, is the spy appearing in the film adaptation of the Fleming novel starring Daniel Craig as 007. While Casino Royale is certainly an agreeable read, to think that with its publication one of the most successful film franchises ever would result, including film roles by several actors playing the character James Bond, leads me to characterize Casino Royale as perhaps indeed overrated.
Photographer: Lukas
Casino Royale is about the spy 007 targeting an enemy’s gambling habits in order to complicate the enemy’s financial resources at the casino tables, thus rendering him less effective an enemy. That Ian Fleming wrote the enemy as a Russian, I believe, is prescient of today’s turbulent world scene.
Fleming was drawing inspiration from the historical Cold War, and that is why the sign is there, that Le Chiffre, the name of the villain who 007 challenges at the card tables in Casino Royale, is Russian. Even the other day, August 21, the Trump administration’s Paul Manafort was demolished for his thieving and his conspiring with Russian political agents.
What You Feel, You Can Heal
To go on, The Little Mermaid tactfully asks in her August tea party blog post the question of which book most distinctly impacted your life. It is of a personal nature, to name a book that positively impacted you, but I think of What You Feel, You Can Heal, John Gray’s first book, published in the nineteen-nineties. When I was a twenty-something I sat in at a conference to hear a speaker give his thoughts on wellbeing. The gentleman gave advice on dealing with personal difficulties–he recommended John Gray.
Opening paragraph for my What You Feel You Can Heal eBook
Gray’s best-known book (and there are a series of them) is Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, a book about relationships. You know the speaker at the conference referred to social relationships suggesting something like that. It isn’t Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus that interested me, although I subsequently read that one a couple of times. Gray’s first book, What You Feel, You Can Heal, is about goalsetting through one’s lifetime and other matters of positive productivity, impacting me much more substantially than Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus.
John Gray, though young when he wrote What You Feel, You Can Heal, is recounting what he learned before emerging as an author. He fleshes out his view of several stages of life that Gray observes in many other people, all at once in What You Feel, You Can Heal, bringing these ideas together to form this book.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Science fictions novels (the photo has been pixelated)
One last note: although it may seem juvenile, while not expressly for young adults, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by the late Douglas Adams, and the four novels Adams wrote to follow his success, are the books I would most earnestly recommend to someone new. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is funny and strange, a blend of science fiction and humor.
Both in the novel and in the film adaptation, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is the story of hapless Brit Arthur Dent, who hitchhikes to the stars the day that the Vogons, who are dimwitted, horrible monsters, demolish the Earth. From there it is up to Arthur to get by in travels through the skies.
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” is a resource Arthur has to comprehend his troubles: the Guide is an encyclopedia describing everything in the universe. It is as if Douglas Adams, though writing for comic purposes, foresaw the development of the world wide web.
I have enjoyed The Little Mermaid’s tea party and I wish her well, as I do everybody else who thought to join in. I appreciate every opportunity I have to contribute, and when there is some response to something I have written, I am always flattered. You are welcome to “like,” follow, and/or comment as you see fit. See you in September!
WordPress commemorated fifteen years Sunday. It is a hideout for bloggers of all levels of ability and interests. It’s only been in the last couple of years that I’ve improved as a blogger.
Juxtapose is putting together things for a result greater than the sum of its parts. Today’s Prompt is the word juxtapose.
I thought of the photos that for the three months between January and March 2018 I “employed” as a header. https://twitter.com/findingenvirons ….
Winter 2018 @findingenvirons header photo
I did the juxtaposition with a paint program. I used other sources and mixed them into a juxtaposition.
You can see a photo of the late Roger Moore and Grace Jones. Jones is thriving these days at age seventy. The photo dates to 1985 when they were starring in A View To A Kill.
Some of the pictures were downloaded from StockSnap. That’s a site for getting stock photos for free. They’re not typically thought of as art.
The comic I found on Pinterest. Although Pinterest confused me, I would have liked to get to know it. The photo of the wallet was pilfered from some random website with the help of a friend.
Internet images should be used responsibly, but once in a while, something turns up that I want.
I tweet the link to a new post for when someone will want to see it. I also tweet trending content, Tuesdays, and Saturdays. It is quiet but rewarding.
Tonight is a full moon. If you are interested, you’re welcome to “like” it, “follow” the blog, or leave a comment, as you see fit. Thank you for having a look at my blog.
Today’s WordPress prompt is the word guilty and it is enticing because so many concepts of “guilty” can be elaborated upon and it is a theme that affects everybody who is human. I mean guilty in the sense of bearing an emotional hardship. That is, the state of mind that can afflict one after a wrongdoing.
When my maternal grandmother was alive, in her golden years, her daily ritual was to rise at seven in the morning and to read the local paper. If she hadn’t been able to sleep enough, she rose at that hour regardless, not one to shirk from duty.
She said my late grandfather often told her she had a “guilty conscience,” that was keeping her from a good night’s sleep, but, she said to me candidly, there was nothing she’d done to be feeling guilty. It was a joke between them.
You might think of guilty thoughts for not showing enough kindness to your mother, for example, or for acting in a manner disconnected from your values or moral code, if you have such a thing.
Photographer: Daniel Petersen
My favorite ideology of the “guilty” is the enforcer’s code of pursuing the guilty, as in the police procedural shows on television and which find people who cross the line of good conduct into being “guilty” of wrongdoing meeting unforeseen fates, typically in handcuffs.
It is curious to look at “guilty” in that sense of having done wrong defiantly, for gain, as it was for my grandmother to watch evening television of that kind, the actors playing enforcers and criminals together, unfolding typically in the course of one evening of entertainment. It will always be a choice pastime, I believe.
Today’s WordPress daily prompt is a gift, I think; there are simply so many ways to explore the weight of being guilty that I should think there will likewise be a wealth of posts highlighting the idea.
Findingenvirons is a name I devised to capture an interest in a kind of abstract engineering, to be an engineer without the baggage of the hard work and expertise that goes with being a true engineer. It’s a name I use for Twitter and for WordPress.
Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt is the word explore and by labeling my blog and Twitter account findingenvirons to indicate engineer is to indicate explorer. In the days before Windows 10’s Microsoft Edge browser, you could take to the Internet as it’s most commonly understood with Microsoft Internet Explorer, and my compound word findingenvirons is kind of a hangover from those days, pointing to a territory of the imaginary kind.
You know what Pathfinder is, the tabletop RPG that brings players together to collectively invent fantasy adventures designed by rolling dice? That’s kind of how I intend findingenvirons to be, too, an interest in how it is to show an interest in gaming, however, as things were when tabletop Dungeons & Dragons ruled the RPG market.
My game plan is to draw inspiration from the WordPress Daily Prompts, so that I am in check with other WordPress bloggers who want to be thinking of the same concept, and to put a finger on a fledgling interest in the weekly WordPress Photo Challenges, when they inspire me personally, so that my blog becomes like a WordPress pamphlet, not unlike the blogs of others but also with a unique fingerprint that it is made by my hand.
I’m in operations at a little not-for-profit and anyone doing that kind of thing or in business for themselves ought best to have a blog. Mine’s an amateur operation, but I feel it’s working and I’m not sure I need to grow it in the present.
Maybe in the future, but for now, I want to let it spread its little roots at its own pace. I see the urgency in others, but I don’t feel it for myself.
Do you have an inkling what influencer marketing is?
Influencer marketing, I guess, is when a brand with an expansive and powerful Internet presence helps a newcomer gain exposure by sharing the smaller brand under the umbrella of the major brand who is widespread across the world wide web on several channels.
When the Hulu video streaming service was becoming a monster, I know they experimented with following various Twitter peeps in order to help make themselves a household name.
Hulu among other Twitter followers
Now I see commercials on TV for Hulu that make it seem all the more like a juggernaut, but for some time they were most alive in my mind as the entity on Twitter that seemed to be joking around all the time waiting for all those people to start transplanting their attention to Hulu instead of all the other options for video entertainment that likewise wanted consumer dollars in exchange for a wild consumption experience of the most dynamite video to be found.
Hulu kept adding all kinds of classic TV shows to their roster line-up, and beginning with The Handmaid’s Tale began to fill its slot of originals with more and more series, like Marvel’s Runaways.
It felt to me like the underdog Hulu challenging the king of paid content, Netflix, for a portion of its subscriber base. Who had the best originals, Netflix with its incredible budget and seeming out-of-control finger on the market with a business model set to break all records?
But what happened… this is surely a simplistic interpretation of what was actually experienced… the Harvey Weinstein effect rocked the entertainment industry and pretty soon many respected actors were back to the drawing board.
I am not an analyst, but are these two events connected in any tangible way?
Netflix established an extraordinary budget for its current and future programming, all growing from a point of origin that was one particular Netflix original that was historical for being the first there was. It was House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey.
Spacey came under stern criticism and was let go, costing Netflix a ton and generating at least a little bad publicity.
With their very first entry as a Netflix original series becoming a distraction, I felt I was seeing Hulu rise up in response and setting their sights on becoming a major competitor in the wake of the scandal around Spacey.
It can’t have been that direct a transition, I don’t think, but I would infer that with the breakdown of Netflix’ House of Cards at a critical time, when Hulu was beginning to launch its new originals, I think it certainly meant the time was right for Hulu to begin to market itself more traditionally, rather than with its jovial influence marketing that resembled stunt tactics. Maybe Hulu still does play with influence marketing, I’m not sure, but all of a sudden it seems like all the more professional a brand than it had been previously when it was a minor competitor to the juggernaut Netflix.
Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale also demonstrated its penchant for winning many major awards and on top of that, it carried with it a feminist zeitgeist that was all the more effective in the face of the Weinstein effect that was leaving men everywhere clutching their walking papers.
A year later Hulu unfollows
These days when I see the TV ads for Hulu I smile.
I think the video streaming market is mad, but it is interesting to see that there have been many measurable changes in it in the last several months as Hulu grew into its mode of expansion and gained tons of credibility.
It will be interesting to see if there are more upstarts as entertainment continues to change.
Today’s WordPress Daily Prompt is the word inkling.
Not to be idle, and also to say farewell to 2017 and to welcome 2018, I am doing the free WordPress course, ten days long, called Developing Your Eye, to help me get a little better as a photographer. Honestly, I am a week late, but there has been holiday fun, the intense winter weather, and other reasons to procrastinate.
To complete the exercise for Day Six of the course, I took to the idea of solitude. How I thought to illustrate solitude is to show the vantage point of a walking trail up the street from where I live, between an elementary school where some of my education took place when I was little, and a gospel chapel on the other side of the trail.
A gospel chapel the last day of the year
While I don’t attend the chapel, this point of origin symbolizes for me the distance between my home now, to the road to where my parents live, and where I spent my teenage years and most of my twenties. Down the street I live alone. The solitude is having left where I resided in my younger years.
On the path beside the gospel chapel
In 1978 DC Comics gave us the big screen adaptation of the Superman comic starring the late Christopher Reeves–I realize the film belongs to a generation older than mine. Superman, reflecting on his power, travels north to his Fortress of Solitude to find answers about his fate and his obligation as a hero.
The silver screen images of Superman’s Fortress of Solitude became so iconic that even in the present Henry Cavill version of the Superman saga the recreated Fortress of Solitude in his films strongly resembles the design of the 1978 film with Christopher Reeve. The nineteen seventies Fortress of Solitude has been translated to the current Superman films with a similar design that remembers Superman on film in the seventies and eighties.
Why does the caped superhero require solitude? Solitude can permit a person to approach life with his own direction, unimpeded by the feedback of others.
The town here is small but it is a city–it is never that lonesome. There is contact with people each and every day.
It doesn’t mean that I don’t cultivate an attitude of preserving solitude, and I imagine it shows in the style of the blog I write and in the appearance of the photos I take. I imagine many humans likewise treasure their solitude, particularly in that as adults there are so many demands and requirements for living in a Western culture that we have little choice but to conform.
When there is an opportunity for solitude, in contrast to what we are tasked with doing in the course of day-to-day work, solitude becomes extremely valuable, at least in small measures. In other words, silence is golden.
I realize it is ironic I am writing that when blogging can be seen as a search for a community (and WordPress is an inclusive community). Blogging is a given in this day and age–if you have even a basic amount of computer literacy, it is not surprising if you are blogging.
If you are doing business, and you personally have some computer literacy or otherwise a member of your team is computer-literate, you should have a blog. Even as I assert my blog is not making me money, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to pursue it. I suppose I am trying to have my cake and eat it, too, but I have the solitude that I think makes me truer and I am likewise active at participating in the Internet, which is millions and millions of others.
I don’t think foregoing solitude is the answer, but I respect those people for whom blogging is not just satisfying as an opportunity to make discoveries, but who profit financially by being business-savvy with the blogging that they do.
I am extremely late working on this free course from WordPress to help me get better as a photographer. With the extreme winter, the busy holidays, and the relative difficulty of thinking how to proceed, at last, I am ready to make a post with the next exercise in photography at the ready and on the Internet. Day Four of the beginner-level WordPress course “Developing Your Eye” asks participants to reflect with a photo about bliss–this is what I have for you.
Landmark Cinemas at the Pen
One of the cool things I got to experience when I was a boy was watching a film, and for a long time, we didn’t have cable television in our house (I suppose it’s lucky we had electricity–joking, of course, we certainly did)… but I did get to visit the movie house and it opened what I expect will be a lifelong cycle of happiness creating memories that contain a component of elusive bliss.
I can remember without being aware of much else famous movie titles that I got to see, and I suppose the end result of a childhood like that is an adulthood rich with “geekdom”–that movies continue to light a casual passion in my life and I remember to enjoy them. They light a bit of freedom that should be cherished amid the changing times that sweep by all. The movies remain an institution of great cultural impact and richness.
My photo today is of the exterior of the commercial cinema in the mall in the other end of town, and, as previously mentioned, the winter weather so far this year is fierce–you can see the swirling snow. I nearly came home with less clothing than I’d worn.
Blogging with WordPress is an amazing hobby–I am consistently impressed by the visitors who leave “likes” on the posts which are of a passing grade. I hope that by the end of this course in photography I have improved as a photographer and I hope blogging takes me into 2018 with aplomb and continues to serve as a communication tool by which excellent connections are forged. Thank you!
Photographer:
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