Friday Ramble: To be or not to be

It has been an oddly busy week. Mostly because I've chosen to get a few diagnostic tasks done with my old PC here. She's done me good service in the nearly 7 years I've had her and I can see the old girl is starting to fade. A tweak here and a tweak there seems to be keeping her going. No death panels for this girl. Only life sustaining measures.

Its possible that she will be my last PC. Possible. I am definitely migrating over to Mac but there are a few things I can only do with a PC, so a netbook might be in my future, as they are eminently affordable. At home I can start with a Mac mini. I'd like something portable and easily hooked up. I like to write and because of so many restrictions at work, I can't write there and have my work be anywhere but at the office. That kind of sucks. I also can't blog there as anything, ANYTHING remotely bloglike is blocked. And I do want to keep writing.

I think I'm supposed to keep writing. At least that's what one of the little voices in my head is telling me when I think about the second half of my life and what I want to do with it. I still want to be a paid, working actor. It still burns as a desire, and I'm starting to understand how my ADHD has played into my lack of a career. So I think I have to find a way to get both going again.

I understand there are now ADHD Coaches. People who help keep people like me get focused, remain focused and accomplish things. Like an airline pilot keeping his jet on course. I'm looking into that, thanks to an article my ex wife sent me.

You know, its entirely possible that I will have this all worked out by the time I keel over at the age of 120. Will I be too old to play Hamlet by then?

Reasons to be Grateful, Part 3

I missed the last two Sundays on this post. I'm not sure what happened, but I often find Time getting the best of me.

So here goes.

I am grateful that I have employment. It's not the greatest job in the world and its not what I really want to be doing with my life, but it has its upsides and I like the people I work with and the view from the office. It's been slow lately and beyond November we don't really know how secure the job is, but I'm glad to have it nonetheless.

I'm grateful that despite complications, my ex wife and I get along very well. It makes difficult terrain, for the most part, easier to navigate. It definitely beats hating your ex. When we take my daughter up and back to college I ride along in her fiancee's car. We all actually enjoy each other and we all adore my daughter. Its nice to have that bond, even though I envy the fact that he lives with my kid and I don't. Bottom line, love is a great binding element.

I'm grateful that I have a place to live. Again, not ideal, but a place to live that is clean and has a very nice kitchen. A roommate whom I see rarely but who is a nice guy and a damn fine cook with a great sense of humor. Living here has made a few aspects of my life easier to get a handle on. It's also given me the opportunity to rediscover Brooklyn and its many charms.

I'm grateful to reconnect with some old friends on Facebook. People I've fallen out of touch with and missed and glad to see again. I hope they are as happy to see me.

Thanks, Thanks and ever thanks.

A Friday Rant.

The other day I got mildly involved in a tweet argument with a right-winger from California who was seriously challenged in the area of vocabulary and context and all around general intelligence. I blame it on TooMuchPerfection.

I won't go into detail because in the end, its pretty silly. TMP made a random comment and apparently this guy was trolling for key words and decided to go after her. The details are in her blog, linked above. Suffice it to say we felt it necessary to school him not only in the error and rudeness of picking an argument with a random Tweetstranger but also in the meanings of the words equivocate as opposed to equal, subterfuge as opposed to spin, the difference between your and you're, etc.

At one point this guy ranted that all liberals ever do is correct grammar when they have no real arguments and then insisted that he used the words exactly right within the context of the conversation. He went silent after I reminded him that context does not change the definition of a word. It didn't occur to this putz that there might be a legitimate reason for his continually being corrected. It didn't occur to him that he might have more credibility if he spoke his native language with some sense of, oh I don't know, knowledge?.

Look, I don't have an issue with people being right wing per se. Cliched as it sounds, a couple of my best friends are full on Conservatives, one of whom still insists that Nixon was framed. He remains one of my most treasured friends and favorite people. When we argue, it can get heated, but never silly. For one, he knows his vocabulary and grammar better than I do, for another his opinions, for the vastly most part (yes I know that's a vile phrase) are rooted in facts. Conservatives and Liberals need eachother, because without opposition, both sides go off the deep end.

In general, I don't agree with the conservative viewpoint, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect it as a theory and there are certain issues I am in agreement with. For the record there is a lot in the liberal viewpoint that I think is ridiculous too. I just happen to agree more than I disagree with it.

But here's the thing. Over the last couple of decades, the bat shits have taken over the Right.

Joe Klien in his excellent piece this week talks about this to a greater extent than I will go into here.

But for every Andrew Sullivan, there is a Betsy McCaughey (believe me, we here in New York have been subject to her bullshit rantings for decades. It's amazing to watch her spew the same self aggrandizing lies she did 15 years ago. Watch the video, then read the Atlantic article to get some insight into why she can't be trusted on anything), for every David Brooks, there is a Rush Limbaugh, also a Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Glenn (I poisoned Nancy Pelosi) Beck and Sarah Fucking Palin.

Until Conservatives stop yelling and screaming nonsense about Socialism, stop making stuff up, stop letting whackjobs speak for them, start learning from the dictionary, they will not only be the party of No, but the party of No Credibility.

I want some intelligent argument about this bill, please. And I want it now.

Also, I want the Democratic Party to grow a pair and let them drop. NOW!

P.S. I promise to write more frequently from now on.

Monday Monday

I'm taking a break from catching up on the Brooklyn/Mexican Coke hike. There's too many pics to go through and after doing 4 posts yesterday I'm cutting back til tomorrow.

Also a correction. Yesterday I said that pic is from my daughter's campus, but in fact its from a bit further east of the campus at a farm I did some apple picking in last October. Not earth=shattering, like say insisting there are WMDs when there aren't, but once I realized I'd gotten that wrong it bugged the hell out of me.

I hope you all don't mind that I have ads running on this blog. I kinda need to pull what I can in terms of cash, though I doubt there's much potential with it. Every little bit counts.

Peace,
J

Reasons to be Grateful, Part 2

Continuing what I hope will be a tradition that TooMuchPerfection inspired, what is usually a list of several things will this week be one thing, cause it is pretty major:

This week, I learned that my daughter made the Dean's List at the end of her Freshman year. (By the way, the picture I use for this blog is the view from her campus). This year started off really rocky and I know I have talked about her Asperger's Syndrome before. She nearly failed out of school altogether with a scary first semester. But like every other time she's fallen, she bounces back up stronger than ever. I'm really proud of her.

To be sure, her mother, her stepfather and I all stepped up too and got more involved, but in the end, once you're in college, its all up to you. And she pulled it off.

So this week, the thing I am grateful for is a daughter that proves herself again and again. Who is smart, funny, geeky and though not without her challenges (what child isn't) a blessing.

Plus her hugs are awesome!


I love you, Scooper.

My Sunday Walk, Part 4

Clearly on the Brooklyn side and past the river, the signs of "gentrification are impossible to miss. As you descend the walkway onto Broadway this stamp is frequent. It's a little late for the sentiment, the hipsters took Williamsburg over awhile ago. Some of the improvements have been just that, others have taken the personality out and turned Brooklyn into Greenwich Village Lite. But at least there's some place you can find a semblance of the Greenwhich Village that was. In the meantime, the city gets more and more expensive to live in.

The southern walkway descends quickly and you can see the exit signs for the southern roadway as we sink below rooftops. The cupola of the HSBC Bank ahead, I believe was once the actual Williamsburg Bank before the downtown Brooklyn clocktower.


Here we are...the odd rooftops and unique Brooklyn attitude. Fuckin aye, you name it, we got it.

You get to the bottom and here you find this awesome statue of George Washington off of Roebling Street. It's really strong and stunning to behold. Here is the NY Times article from its unveiling in 1906. It's a PDF, so you will need Acrobat Reader.

And now...on to the journey to Mexican Coke...

My Sunday Walk, Part 3

Blogger, apparently, insists that pics and text lay out so that it looks like comments are supposed to be above the picture. Fuck that, I don't work that way. I like pic comments on the bottom, so bear with me on the spacing in the wrong place.

Looking north into midtown Manhattan. It is really mind blowing to see it all out there and the vast sky beyond and above it. The East River is much more interesting and windy than most give it credit for. Technically its not really a river, but who cares.

The walkway FINALLY opens up and you can see the Tower fully and the sky above it. If you click on the pic you can get a better sense of the incredible steel work and its impressive height. Some might say that the reveal after all that overhead beaming is meant to be dramatic. If they do....they are wrong. I wasn't filled with a sense of dramatic awe. I was relieved to finally see what should be visible from the get go. I really would have ended up disliking the walk intensely over all if this hadn't happened.

These are southern views. The first shows how sharply the river turns west. At a certain angle, it seems that the river is stopped suddenly. Oddly beautiful, especially when crossing the bridge toward Brooklyn at night when its all lights and darkness. Then you turn and see the Manhattan and Brooklyn Bridges in the distance. I love this aspect of the view.

The J Train on its way to Williamsburg and eventually Jamaica Queens. When I was a kid living in Bushwick, this was my train home, though at the time it had a different letter designation to it. It remains elevated the whole way. When we used to take class trips to museums in Manhattan, the bridge had a lot of boarding that blocked the view from the train. One of my friends said they were building a new tunnel because the river water was rising so high that the bridge would be underwater in a few years. Being 6 or 7 years of age, we bought it and were terrified. That memory cracks me up.
The now abandoned Domino Sugar plant. Soon to become abandoned Condominiums under the present economy. Another childhood memory, crossing this bridge and smelling the thick scent of sugar, much like when we used to smell baking bread from the Silvercup Bakery when crossing the Queensborough Bridge.

Two more views of the plant as we venture further into the Brooklyn end. I took these because there's such a beautiful and creepy gothic feel to this structure along side the early 60s addtion that I was fascinated and charmed and thrilled by it. I am glad that they will be keeping the signage, as they did with Silvercup and PepsiCola.

A final look at Manhattan, taken from my iPhone.

To be continued...