South African Hippo Suffers Death by Doltishness

        A hippopotamus died today in South Africa after it stumbled into a pool at a game conservation lodge and suffered exhaustion from the efforts of trying to climb out.  The hippo got stuck in the pool on Tuesday and conservation lodge workers and animal activists waited anxiously for the arrival of a veterinarian that was to supervise the lifting of the hippo to safety with a crane.  I just don't get this story.  I'm not sure if the writer from the Associated Press is an idiot, but the people who were supposed to be helping the hippo were definitely short some brain cells.

        I mean, obviously the hippo was in distress, I don't see why they need a vet to tell them that.  It's not like these people were just bystanders, with no knowledge of animals - they work in animal conservation.  Some of the quotes illustrate my point about the diminished intellectual capacity of those involved.  "'He was not as perky this morning, more agitated, like he was irritated. I think because he wanted to get out of the pool. That's my personal opinion,' said Ferreira."  No shit?  I wonder how long one must study animals to be able to recognize that being stuck somewhere that you can't get out of, surrounded by people who refuse to help, is irritating?  Ferreira is the lodge manager, by the way, as in, the person in charge.  The activists and lodge workers tried to blame the vet, Dr. Alex Lewis, and vice versa: "When journalists questioned Lewis about not arriving earlier, he said he couldn't have saved the animal because it was in such poor condition already.  Lewis said he had advised the owners of the lodge to feed the animal in order to make it strong enough for the rescue."  So, let me get this straight.  Not only did these people stand around just watching this hippo struggle, they didn't even try to feed it?  What?!  I mean, that seems like the only thing in their power to do that would have made this animal a bit more comfortable.  So, basically, the way I see it, this hippo was murdered.  It didn't suffer exhaustion.  It suffered stupidity.  People should be ashamed of themselves.  

U.S. Tennis Ump Serves Husband Overhead Smash for Breakfast

http://gma.yahoo.com/u-open-referee-charged-killing-husband-coffee-cup-204916663--abc-news-topstories.html

        70-year-old tennis referee, Lois Ann Goodman, was arrested for murder today in New York City, where she was supposed to officiate the U.S. Open.  Back in April, Goodman called Los Angeles police and reported that she had found her 80-year-old husband dead at the bottom of the stairs; she told them that she guessed he had had a heart attack and fallen.  Earlier this month, Alan Goodman's death was ruled a homicide; the cause of death being multiple injuries to the head.  The murder weapon?  According to the arrest warrant, it was a coffee cup.

        If convicted, Goodman faces life in state prison.  LAPD detectives say they know the motive but report that sharing it with the public may affect the case.  If Lois Ann Goodman is anything like me in the morning, the motive could have been something as simple as irritation that her husband was taking too long in the bathroom.  I think she should plead temporary insanity - I don't think anyone should be held responsible for anything they do or say before 9am.  I feel for this woman; I have definitely been guilty of homicidal thoughts in the morning, hell - this morning I considered killing someone.  I can picture her standing at the counter, mug in hand, waiting for those last little irritating drops of coffee to finish coming through the filter.  Her husband was probably complaining about something - the dry-cleaners messed up the crease in his pants again - whatever - and she just snapped.  I completely understand.  I think I'm going to have "Free Lois Goldman" T-shirts made and sell them to help raise her bail.    

Can Anyone Save the Dark Tower?

        The Dark Tower series by Stephen King is an epic quest for redemption: Roland Deschain, the gunslinger, travels through time and other worlds to save the Dark Tower, and his own soul in the process.  He is the ultimate anti-hero - his ka-tet (quest-mates, if you like) start the journey as hostages, but become much more than mere friends.  It is impossible not to hate him a lot of the time - he does unspeakable things, yet speaks of them with no emotion.  But he is actually a loving man with a fragile soul and a desperate need for forgiveness. This series, the crown jewel of Stephen King's extensive canon, incorporates elements of old western movies and stories, along with the magical fantasy of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings.  Pop culture allusions abound - from the 1960s ("Hey Jude" pours out of jukeboxes at various points throughout the series) to the 2000s (a golden snitch from the Harry Potter books saves the characters at one point).  The story plays with the ideas of meta-fiction along with various philosophical ideas, such as the concept of Eternal Return, resurrected in the western world by Friedrich Nietzsche.  In other words, it is a complete hodge-podge of awesomeness - to say that adapting these books for the screen would be a difficult undertaking is a gross under-exaggeration.  It would be damn near impossible to convey every wrinkle in the fabric of this masterpiece.  Which is why the films have never been made.  There wasn't much talk of it even, until the past few years.
        In 2009 I, along with millions of others, rejoiced to hear that J.J. Abrams (director of the hit show Lost and the recent Star Trek movie) had bought the rights to the series for nineteen dollars and was planning to adapt it into a television series.  Nineteen is a number of great importance to the story, so I thought that was really cool.  He had announced that he was planning on getting started after Lost was all wrapped up.  Alas, less than a year later he announced that he was scrapping the project.  Disappointment abounded among fans of the Dark Tower series everywhere.  Until the next year, when the venture got picked up by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer and Akiva Goldsman.  They have decided to turn the books into a combination movie and television series.  Something that has never been done before.  So the seven books would be adapted into 3 films which would be bridged by 2 television miniseries in between each.  An amazing concept, which has proven difficult to shop to studios.  

        Ron Howard's home studio, Universal Pictures, deemed the project too risky and expensive a while ago.  Yesterday afternoon it was announced that Warner Bros. also passed.  I was very sad to hear it, but placated by Howard's attitude toward continuing efforts to make the Dark Tower series into movies.  Entertainment Weekly's website reported that "Howard remains somewhat optimistic, invoking the Dark Tower's term for "destiny" and its philosophy that fate keeps leading one in similar directions until a lesson is learned.  As fans expressed sorrow that his project seemed to be coming to an end, the director tweeted, 'Don't give up on us yet.  Ka is a wheel.'"  That floored me, because it tells me that Ron Howard gets it.  These books are special - hard to explain, difficult to define, so far-reaching in plot and setting, but with characters that are so rich and textured that they remind you of people you know.  I have to see this story on screen before I die.  So an idea that has been touted by many fellow bloggers of late, is one that I have also adopted as the ultimate solution.  Three words: Home Box Office.  HBO has done a fantastic job with another literary masterpiece, Game of Thrones.  That series is only up to six books and has a cast of over a thousand characters; a sweeping epic like the Dark Tower would do very well as an HBO series, I think.  Well, it seems like the fate of the story is in good hands with Ron Howard, for now.  In the story, someone gives the gunslinger very good advice at one point: "Let the word and the legend go before you.  There are those who will carry both."  Hopefully Ron Howard is one of those.                                  

Smartphones: Technological Tethers

        The newest issue of Time magazine is a special report about the rising use and importance of smartphones.  "The Wireless Issue: 10 Ways Your Phone is Changing the World" features a global poll that sheds light on the use of smartphones and attitudes toward them in "all age groups and income levels in eight countries: the U.S., the U.K., China, India, South Korea, South Africa, Indonesia and Brazil" (32).  The cover for this issue is exceedingly cool - a mosaic of 288 Instagram photos sent via mobile from Time readers in 120 countries.  The report is expansive, covering areas from the impact smartphones are making on elections, charity work and purchasing to their elevated use in spheres such as journalism and education.  The part that interests me the most though, is the section entitled: "Your Life is Fully Mobile," which investigates the effects of smartphones on people's everyday lives.

        Nancy Gibbs, the writer of this article, brings up some points about phones that I have been pondering for a while now.  I used to be one of those people who had a phone, but basically just for emergencies - it didn't have internet or the ability to play music or take pictures.  Sounds like a fate worse than death, I know.  I would frequently forget to charge it or even to bring it with me when I went out.  Then, about six months ago, I got the iphone.  Now I sleep with my phone, it sits next to my plate while I eat; sometimes I just hold it in my hand, even though I am not expecting a call or email.  One of the points that Gibbs focuses on is the rapidity with which this obsession with smartphones has occurred.  "It is hard to think of any tool, any instrument, any object in history with which so many developed so close a relationship so quickly as we have with our phones.  Not the knife or match, the pen or page.  Only money comes close - always at hand, don't leave home without it.  But most of us don't take a wallet to bed with us, don't reach for it and check it every few minutes..." (32). According to the global poll, 1 in 4 people said they check their phone every half hour and 1 in 5 admitted to checking it every five minutes; a third of those surveyed claimed that being away from their phones for even short periods of time gave them anxiety.   

        There is no question that smartphones make our lives easier - there are no longer any excuses for not keeping in touch with friends, family and work  - and way more importantly - there is no longer any excuse for not knowing things.  Whatever societal implications come with this obsession, one thing that is sure to dwindle is general ignorance.  Everyday questions like, "what kind of flower is that?" and "who was the lead in that movie again?" can be answered in seconds with barely an interruption in conversation.  Phones definitely make our lives easier, but at what cost?  Gibbs writes that "in the U.S., close to 9 in 10 adults carry a mobile, leaving its marks on body, mind, spirit. [...] Thumbs are stronger, attention shorter, temptation everywhere: we can always be, mentally, digitally, someplace other than where we are" (32). This is the biggest problem, I think.  Having my phone on me at all times gives me the ability to avoid any situation - boring dinner discussion, strangers who for some reason want to chat while they wait for a train or elevator, a long wait in line.  But this supposed need for escape becomes a habit, and speaking only for myself of course, I don't feel the need to wait until I am bored to pull out my phone anymore.  Next time you are out to eat, look around at the other patrons.  Almost everyone is on their phone, and the few that aren't have a forlorn, yet anxious look on their faces like they are missing an essential piece of themselves.  It's disturbing when you consider the attachment that a majority of people have to their phones.  The smartphone "is a form of sustenance, that constant feed of news and notes and nonsense, to the point that [...] many people would pick their phone over their lunch if forced to choose [and] three-quarters of 25-to-29-year-olds sleep with their phones.  Gibbs closes her article with an ominous yet thought-provoking question: how much of our lives and work and relationships is left to be completely transformed by our obsession with smartphones?
**Check out the whole special report and all the details of the global poll:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601120827,00.html

The Profundity of Perseids

Mount Evans, Colorado, 2012

        So I stayed up as late as I could to watch the Perseid meteor shower last night.  I love shooting stars - even more than I love rainbows - I know, everyone loves shooting stars and rainbows - it may be the most hackneyed thing I have put to "paper."  Yet, the fact remains, a meteor shower may be my favorite thing ever.  I looked up some information on this meteor shower - on wikipedia - yes, I know, not the most reliable source, but for things like this it is usually reasonably accurate.  "The Perseids are so-called because the point from which they appear to come, called the radiant, lies in the constellation Perseus.[...] The stream of debris is called the Perseid cloud and stretches along the orbit of the comet Swift-Tuttle. The cloud consists of particles ejected by the comet as it travels on its 130-year orbit. Most of the dust in the cloud today is around a thousand years old. However, there is also a relatively young filament of dust in the stream that was pulled off the comet in 1862.^[3] The rate of meteors originating from this filament is much higher than for the older part of the stream."  I think this kind of stuff is so cool - watching a meteor shower is like a form of time travel - what you are seeing actually already happened - it's really strange to think about.  It's also kind of mind-boggling to consider that with all the advancements that have been made in the knowledge of space, people have been enjoying the Perseid shower the same way I did last night for 2000 years.  So, anyway, the shower's peak was actually Saturday, but the clouds were unforgiving.  The best time to watch is as close to dawn as you can get, but the lighter the sky, the harder it is to spot the stars.  I couldn't stay up nearly that late, as I had to work today, but even as early as 1am there was quite a bit of action.  Just in my small patch of sky, I saw 38 shooting stars from 1-2:30, and probably six of those were really impressive.

        I have watched the Perseid shower every August ever since I can remember.  It's funny, I have watched it so many times, but last night I realized that I have never watched it alone.  I've always had at least one person there - I used to watch with my dad and my sister, more recently my little sister, my boyfriend, friends - I do my best to spread the word of the magic of meteor showers.  I believe that it's the only event that can make you feel so small and utterly insignificant, yet for a short time you are connected to the vastness of space in a way that we seldom are.  It's an event so big that most of the world can watch it, but every time someone sees a shooting star it makes them feel uniquely special.  Have you ever watched someone see their first shooting star?  It's pretty cool.  I have a twelve-year-old sister, and a few summers ago I was visiting my parents in Illinois during the Perseid shower, so we watched together.  It's so flat and there are so few trees there that the sky seems bigger - and that year was a good one, I remember.  I had to spend the whole night shushing her loud exclamations of "Wow!  Shannon, did you see that one?!  This is so cool!"  Not to forget all the questions that came with the discovery - "Shannon, where do they land?  Can shooting stars hit planet Earth?  I bet it would hurt to get hit by one.  Ever wonder what they would look like from a plane?"

Sky Over Hungary, 2012

        Last night I waited as long as I could and then grabbed my beach chair and my ipod and trudged up a hill in our yard in the dark.  I laid the chair almost flat - trust me, if you look up at the sky for any length of time without something to lean back on, you will barely be able to move your head the next day - and snuggled into the chair in my pj's and sweatshirt like I used to when I was little.  I found some classical music on my ipod - Vivaldi and Mozart and the like - and it was absolutely lovely.  Vivaldi and Mozart are a much better soundtrack than the noisy cosmic commentary of a 10-year-old.  The temperature was a little brisk, but refreshingly so, and I could smell Autumn lurking just around the corner.  It was a magnificent display of the sublime - and enjoying it alone was galvanizing in a way that is difficult to explain.  There is another meteor shower coming up, so if you missed Perseids - and I doubt anyone got to see the peak with all of the clouds - be sure to make a note on your calendar about the Orionid meteor shower, which will peak on October 21st.

**Fun fact - William Shakespeare is credited with the invention of the phrase, "shooting star":

 "With the eyes of heavy mind, I see thy glory, like a shooting star, Fall to the base earth from the firmament!"  (Richard II)  He is also credited with: good riddance, bedazzle, all's well that ends well, all that glitters is not gold, laughing stock, the naked truth - only a few of dozens!  

Telekinetic Orgasms: Alchemizing the Mundane

     http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/06/strange-sex-woman-more-than-15000-orgasms-video_n_1746368.html?utm_hp_ref=women&ir=Women

        This article is very short and so is the video clip, but I think the implications of the concept are more important and far-reaching than the author gives credit for.  This woman can have orgasms by using only the power of her mind - the video shows her supposedly achieving orgasm just by sucking on her husband's finger or eating food in a sensual manner.  Apparently, this is known as "non-genital" orgasm. The article mentions that there is no way to prove if she is having an actual orgasm or just putting on airs, but let's assume for the moment that she isn't pretending.

        One line in particular really gets me and is the point that I want to consider further - her quote: "'The thing about non-genital orgasm is, really, you can train yourself to cum from anything,' Sheri said proudly."  Now, I'm not even sure where to start.  I guess I will begin with the first thing that comes to mind when  I read those words, and that is this middle-aged, very normal-looking (I know, whatever that means) woman sitting at her kitchen table trying to train herself to orgasm from eating rice pudding or something.  The next thing that jumps out at me when I read it, is the "from anything" portion.  For just a moment, let's allow ourselves to consider this idea at greater length.

        Now, the article doesn't mention if men can learn this impressive skill, so I will just consider women for a bit.  Imagine that there were classes or seminars that instructed women in this "training;" (and this woman, Sheri, is a sex educator, by the way) so if women could orgasm from anything at all, we could train ourselves to make the most menial, undesirable tasks happy little highlights in our day.  We would skip to the grocery store for the tedious drudging through endless aisles of crap; dishes and laundry would become transcendent experiences to be looked forward to, not dreaded.  The commute to work would no longer offer time for only thinking or reading; and long lines at the bank would become slightly akin to orgies.  There would be a lot less nagging and complaining.  Everyone's house would be immaculate.  Life would undoubtedly be pretty damn good.  If anyone hears anything about this woman teaching a class or a seminar, please, let me know.

**"Strange Sex" keeps it weird every Sunday at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.

Finding a Written Time Capsule From 2009

        Sorry I haven't written in quite a while.  I was having trouble coming up with a topic for the past few days - actually I've been spending a lot of time seriously considering starting a novel, which is pretty funny because I've been saying that for years.  Case in point, I was looking for an old journal to start jotting some notes down in today and I found one that only had writing on the first few pages.  I started reading what was there and was shocked to see that not everything was crap.  There is a laughably bad poem, which is honestly against my better judgement to put here, but in the interest of full disclosure I will.  Actually, it's hilariously awful so it does possess some value, if only comedic.  The second piece is pretty good, I think, and it's a true account of a day I vividly remember.  The third piece is a journal entry that made me smile because it is fraught with the exact thoughts I've been having for the past week or so.  So here goes, I'm not changing anything, just typing them as they appear in the journal.  I should also add that no one has ever seen these, very few people have ever seen my personal writing - the few times that people have opened my various journals throughout the years, (almost always by accident - they are usually just looking for paper) I have irrationally freaked out.  I realize that I have to get over that if I ever really want to write, which it seem that I do.  I will probably greatly regret this in a few hours.
        May 23, 2009
    "Suspended Disbelief"
Watching a drop of water swell.
A drop on the outside of a glass.
A drip coming off the faucet.
It gets bigger and bigger.
It looks pregnant, I wait for it to give birth.
In its shining, mirrored surface, I see things.
Parched peasants in third world countries.
Oil slick blemishes on the beautiful face of the sea.
Dead fish flowing in the current of a river.
Acid rain ravaging majestic maples.
Tsunamis swallowing pristine beaches.
Waves crushing levees, demolishing cities.
The world's most abundant resource, $2 a bottle.
A planet more than halfway covered with water.
Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink.
In its round, waxing surface, I see things.
I see myself.
I am thirsty.

** I would like to note here that this was my last attempt at poetry, and will probably remain so, for obvious reasons. **

May 23, 2009
"The Forest in Full Renaissance"
        It was a day in mid-April, and it was ninety-five degrees.  I decided to take a hike.  I was excited to be able to be in the woods when it was this warm and not have to share it with the mosquitoes; but I was disappointed because my favorite part of Spring is its smells, and I thought with the heat the aroma of the forest would skip right over Spring and leapfrog into Summer.  To my delight, I realized when I got there that I had been wrong.
        As I entered the trail I could smell all my Spring favorites - flowering trees and bushes, new grass and wet, warm earth.  The sunlight was coming through the canopy in shafts like spotlights.  It was about noon and, with the sun at its zenith, the new ferns and wildflowers on the forest floor were basking in the limelight.  It had recently rained, and the peculiar quality of the light rendered the light-green baby leaves of the trees in stark contrast to the almost black-colored bark of the still-wet trunks.  All of this mixed with the palpable stillness of the unusually intense heat to create an environment reminiscent only of magical places like the Hundred-acre Wood or that enchanted forest on the other side of the wardrobe door.
        The air around me as I trekked up and downhill, maneuvering around small boulders and stepping over rotted logs, was close and warm, but not overly humid.  The sharp rhythm of a woodpecker sounded startlingly close, but I could not spy the musician, although I searched the treetops all around.  Other birds sang on the branches above me as I walked, and as I came upon no one during my hike, I felt that this special magic of magnified Springtime had been created just for me.
        I rounded a curve in the trail, and the glittering, rippling surface of a pond unfolded to my right.  I stopped for a moment when I reached it, watching the gliding reflections of the clouds in the mirror of the pond.  I could hear the waterfall I knew was on the other side; and although that was normally my favorite part of these trails, it was getting hotter by the minute it seemed, and I was getting tired and thirsty.  I took one last look that encompassed the blue sky with its billowy clouds, the pond, slightly chopped by the breeze, and the magical new growth and vibe that was the renaissance of the forest, and turned onto the shortcut that led to the parking lot.  It had been a experience that had assailed all the senses with unexpected surprises.

June 10, 2009
"Short Story"
        For some reason I fear this form of writing.  I don't know why.  Short stories are some of my favorite pieces to read, and I want desperately to be able to write a good one.  I've been working on my writing for a few weeks now, thinking about writing for much longer than that.  It was very difficult for me to get started, I almost had to force myself.  Once I began, I fell into it pretty easily, and I'm actually proud of my first two pieces - one a poem and  the other a short piece of nature writing.  These were the first two ideas I had and I actually got them out on paper - the first time I've done that and it felt great.  I feel a little self-conscious about the writing while I'm doing it, and I don't know why - re-reading them now I like a lot of the images I thought were silly and I think I conveyed the concepts I wanted to.  This summer and this book are going to be writing workshops for me.  My goal is to create as many forms of writing as I can and practice, practice, practice.  These first two attempts weren't terrible, actually I think they weren't even bad, but I need to get to fiction.  That's what I want to write and what seems so difficult for me to write.  The short story is tricky because you have to focus everything into a small window, but I think I shouldn't have trouble pulling that off.  I'm having trouble thinking of a plot that's worth writing and reading about.  I have the shadowy outlines of a character in my mind - female, about my age, unsatisfied with life - but that's as far as I'm getting.  I'm reading Stephen King's On Writing, and he says that ideas for stories come from the collision of two previously unrelated concepts, but that's not happening and I don't have time to wait.  So I think I'm going to attempt a loosely autobiographical piece for practice, and I hope that doesn't make me a sell-out.  Maybe a more original idea will come to me while I'm using my shitty little life for some inspiration.

        Okay.  That didn't hurt as much as I thought it would, but it did hurt a little, I must admit.  So this journal entry is a snapshot of my mindset about three years ago, and its startling to me because it is simultaneously so similar to and so different from my thoughts these days.  I was a bit more pessimistic back then - not much but a little - I don't think my life is shitty and little anymore.  Also, when I wrote this I obviously thought a lot more highly of that awful poem, which makes me laugh.  The parts about writing fiction are all still true, however.  I still can't think of a plot worth writing and reading about, and right now I have the shadowy outlines of a character remarkably similar to the one I described then.  Interestingly, though, the next few pages of the journal contain notes for a short story about a female character that isn't anything like me, and it takes place in the 1960s.  It was really cool to find that journal and to read those words, on today of all days.  Feels providential or something.  I learned two important lessons from finding these pieces and reproducing them here: 1.) that I did, and still do, use the word "actually" entirely too much and 2.) that the girl who wrote that, and the girl who writes this, has a desperate need to write fiction.  It's a gnawing feeling that won't go away.  I can't really explain it.  The closest that I can come is to quote the magnificent Maya Angelou: "There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

50 Shades of Grey - The Latest Watermark in Poop Culture

        So, as everyone who hasn't been residing under a rock for the past few months is aware, the "novel," Fifty Shades of Grey is taking the nation by storm.  I am more ashamed than I can put here in words that I purchased this "book," and read almost 200 pages of it before I threw it away.  Just looking at the line I just typed makes me feel a little queasy.  This was hands down the most horrendously written piece of filth I have ever seen.  This lady, E.L. James makes R.L. Stine look like William freaking Faulkner.  Remember R.L. Stine and Goosebumps?  At one point in the nineties he was turning out a piece of crap, 200 page book every two weeks.  Seriously.  And he is WAY better than James.  I wasted money on a lot of his books too, but I was eleven.  So, now that this "book" has permeated the literary world with the foulest of stenches, it has moved on to infect   theater.  

        Yes, you heard me correctly, the turd, Fifty Shades of Grey  has been turned into a short musical by AVbyte. It depicts what the makers see as the "three camps in this whole "50 Shades of Grey" phenomenon: camp "I love this book," camp "this book is garbage," and camp "I'd never tell anyone, but I'm secretly reading and liking this book" (huffingtonpost.com).  I agree with this, and at least my camp is represented.  Thank god it isn't hitting any actual theaters - yet.  But I honestly don't feel confident that it won't happen.  I always knew that there was way too much stupidity per capita in this country, but these days it seems like an epidemic.  So let's all keep our fingers crossed that this literary chancre doesn't metastasize - well, beyond Hollywood, that is - because the movie is coming, folks.  Yikes America!

Demoscopology at the Beach

        I spent this past weekend at the beach with great friends.  The Delaware beaches are the best I've ever been to, (not that I've been to that many) - not too crowded, but just populated enough for good people-watching.  I am an avid people-watcher.  I recently adopted the term demoscopology for this odd hobby when I came across an interesting entry in the Urban Thesaurus: "Demoscope -\dē-mäs-skōp\ - To covertly examine the interactions of human subjects in a natural setting" (urbandictionary.com).  When I go out to eat, I'm way more interested in what is going on at other tables - I like to listen to conversations - even if, actually especially if, they are personal.  I've watched and listened to strangers break up, get engaged, all that milestone stuff that people usually do in restaurants.  I even listen to people talking when they are just walking by - like at the mall or a flea market or something.  Sometimes those are the best - little nuggets of strange conversation without any context.  Once, at a diner, I eavesdropped on a conversation that lasted longer than an hour.  I actually asked my boyfriend not to talk to me until we got in the car.  A little mean, I know, but this one was gold.  It was a meeting between two older men who had never met before.  One was writing a book about aliens and UFO's, and the other man was saying that his dog had been abducted from his yard the day before.  The writer asked the guy if he had looked for his dog and he answered that he knew exactly where he was so there was no point in searching.  The writer said that he was exactly right and and that canvassing the neighborhood for the dog would be a waste of time.  This was the most interesting point in the conversation, and the only part that really stuck in my memory, but it was good stuff.  The beach is the best place for people-watching, I'm not exactly sure why.  Maybe because of the exhibitionism that goes on at the beach, and exposing more of yourself than usual in public seems to do strange things to people.  It makes some self-conscious while it makes others overly confident.  This makes for odd behavior that is entertaining as hell to watch.

        Beach demoscopology is divided between two major areas.  First area of interest is the sand - where you first encounter all the different types of people on the beach.  There are the people embarrassed to show too much skin - they stay pretty stationary and fiddle with their suits a lot.  Then there is the group that obviously wishes they were wearing less clothing - they stroll up and down the beach and play games like volleyball and Frisbee, so as to show off their rippling pecs and abs.  Then there is the group that hates the sun like poison but are on the beach anyway.  They pitch tents in the sand, wear long-sleeve shirts and smear their faces with zinc oxide.  Then there is the flock of elderly women who just don't care anymore and are going to enjoy the beach no matter what they look like - maybe for the first time in their lives - these ladies are usually my favorite.  A few years ago I got a great picture of a group of 4 ladies standing in circle, trying out belly dancing moves that one had learned in a class.  Don't know what happened to that picture.  A real tragedy.                                                                                                          
        The second, and much better area of interest is the water, of course.  This is where people don't feel as self-conscious and inhibited.  They splash around and act like little kids, or the couples get really randy.  The boogy-boarders are always good for a laugh.  It's fun for anyone to watch complete strangers wipe out and go skidding down the beach on their chin.  Good wholesome fun for all.  Then there is everyone's favorite - the wave induced wardrobe malfunction.  I was the victim of this over the weekend for the second time in my life - almost as embarrassing as the first.  Everyone knows what I'm talking about - people -usually girls, due to the fact that suits these days are made with and held together by materials akin to dental floss - jump through a wave that pulls their bottoms down (or off in extreme cases) and gives tops a mind and agenda of their own.  A few years ago I was on a family vacation on Chincoteague Island in Virginia.  So I'm splashing around in the water, jumping waves with my sisters, when one knocks me down and I stand up - facing the beach with most of my family on it - sans top!  I was completely unaware of the fact until my uncle made a strange hand gesture and I look down to find my chest exposed and my top floating in water a few feet away.  Great.  Everyone promised they didn't see anything, but I know they were lying.  To this day, I still can't figure out if the witnesses being family made more or less humiliating.  This trip, I fell victim to the other kind of malfunction.  I didn't completely lose my bottoms, and my butt was facing the water this time, but I definitely gave a few people a free little show.  I'm going to invent a bikini that comes with suspenders to prevent this kind of thing from happening.  Maybe I will become a millionaire!  Fingers crossed.

The Latest Development in My Bibliophilia

        Super bored at work again today - spent half the day looking up quotes.  Not exactly sure what my fascination with quotes is all about - I seem to enjoy claiming the thoughts of others - not as my own, but as if to say "I agree" or something.  Well, anyway, looking up quotes today gave me some ideas on how to keep myself busy, at least.  I'm always looking for things to do - if it was possible to die of boredom, I would have died many times by now.  So, I found some good Herman Melville quotes, which gave me the idea to read Moby Dick again.  Lots of people hate that book, but I loved it when I read it in school.  To be fair, I did skip some chapters - all those chapters about rope and different whaling gear are not exactly crucial to the plot.  Maybe this time around I will try to get into those chapters.  That led me to another idea - on Jeopardy! the other day, a contestant said that he had tried several times to succeed in reading 100 books in a year, and couldn't do it.  He said that the secret is to read the shortest books you can find.  I started thinking about this, and as an avid reader I don't think it would be that difficult.  I am a slow reader, and even so I manage to read an average of about 50 books a year without really trying.  In my college days, (admittedly, not that long ago) as an English major, I read six or seven books a month while taking classes - that is 60 or 70 books in 10 months - so I decided to give it a try.  I don't want to read just any old books, though, I want to read good ones.  So I looked up the New York Times "100 Best Novels of All Time" and saw that I had read about half of that list and disagreed with the placement of about half of those books, so I looked up Time magazine's list of the top 100 novels.  This list has only 17 books that I've read and I agree with the placement of all, except for Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.  That book is number 4 on the NY Times list and also appears on Time's, although those are in no particular order.  This book is about a rich, old pervert cavorting with a rebellious twelve-year-old girl - which most would agree is gross and inappropriate  - but I never would have thought it would be boring and tedious, too.  I read until there were 40 pages left and just couldn't care anymore, so I threw it away.  I am not in the habit of ever throwing books away, unless they are horrible, then I think that the garbage is the best place for them.  Life is too short to invest time in crap; along that vein, I decided that I will give each of the books on this list a fair shot and if I hate them, then I will move on to the next.

"The Bookworm," 1850 by Carl Spitzweg

     So, I'm starting with Moby Dick, which for some reason that Time and the NY Times should both be ashamed of does not appear on either list - even though I have read it already - because I had that idea first.  Then I will start with "A" on the Time magazine list and work my way to the end.  That will make 83 books, and I will decide after that what 17 others I will supplement the list with to make 100.  I bet it won't take me a whole year, but I guess we will have to see what happens.  

Musings: From Fireworks to Photographs to Facebook

        So yesterday was the fourth of July - and I did all the holiday-appropriate stuff like eating and sweating way too much, enjoying family and friends, and of course, fireworks!  During the display this year, I tried really hard to capture a firework in a picture, and it is much harder than it looks.  You have to push the button at the precise moment and I kept getting pictures of a milky, smoky sky and nothing more.  My boyfriend ended up taking some nice ones, but I wasted almost the whole show trying to get one good picture.

        That got me thinking about the fleeting moments in life that will never be captured, only remembered; and it also made me think of all the time that we all waste throughout our lives trying to wrangle our most precious moments with our cameras.  It made me a little sad to think about.  Some of my best memories are of days with friends and family that for some reason or another were never documented.  For me, and I'm sure for a lot of people if they really thought about it, these memories burn brighter than any photograph.  In this day and age, most people have cameras on them at all times; and this has enabled people to capture all kinds of images that otherwise would have been only stories.  I'm sure a lot of them are really good, but many and more of them would have been better as stories.  Isn't it fun to listen to a friend recount an experience - to see the scene through their eyes?  They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but sometimes its worth even more than a thousand, and sometimes the words are better.

        Is it just me, or does it seem to anyone else that we don't feel like something really happened, or that we weren't really there unless there is a picture or a video to share on Facebook?  It's like living in a weird state of hyper-reality or something - it's like, if I can't update my status and tell people that I'm on my way home from work, and have people I know "like" it and comment on it, then it's not really happening at all.  If you can't share it with your "friends" on Facebook, then it's like you're living in a vacuum where nothing you do or say matters in the least.  When did we begin to feel the need to have every thought and event in our lives confirmed by "likes" and kind words from people we don't like enough to actually hang out with in person?  Don't get me wrong, I love Facebook and spend a lot of time on it - and most of my "friends" are people I hang out with pretty regularly - but the fact that I frequent social media sites doesn't make what I'm saying any less true.  Think about it - how often do you actually talk to people on the phone these days?  I can't stand to.  But how often do you carry your phone around in your hand, waiting for the notifications from your favorite games, and of course the ubiquitous Facebook.
        Remember the days of no caller I.D., when people had huge, crappy cell phones, just for emergencies?  You know, the days when little kids played outside and there were still small surprises every day?  I miss those days sometimes.  I mean, I'm like everyone else, if I lost my iphone I would probably cry, but it just feels to me that we've lost some small things along the way.  And maybe when you think about it, they aren't so small - connections between people - the impressions we make on each other.  Think about it.  And also - the next time you find yourself doing something worth remembering, try just remembering it instead of spending the day with the camera between you and the fun - you'll be surprised at the little things you miss when you're trying to catch the "big" picture.

Homeless Cuisine Makes Transition from Street Food to Fine Dining

So this article about a homeless man scamming guests at expensive hotels made me laugh. This guy would sneak into people's rooms as they were leaving and extend their stay, rack up room service and restaurant bills, buy himself new clothes, the works! He spent $9,000 on just one guy's debit card - and on the statement he saw that the guy had purchased the best and most luxurious wines, foods and services - that's hilarious! He probably has great taste! If this guy exerted even half that amount of energy to find a job, he would probably land a pretty good one - he sounds like a resourceful and tireless worker to me. It must be really hard to go back to being homeless after a nice vacation like that - from oysters on the half shell and champagne to apple cores and the backwash in the bottom of bottles. Well, to be fair, maybe eating bologna sandwiches in county jail is a nice transition, so I guess we shouldn't worry about him too much. And we have at least this to feel good about: this guy is eating a lot better than the homeless man who was in the news a few weeks ago!
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/01/12506510-report-homeless-man-scammed-luxury-hotel-stays-at-others-expense?lite

Introduction/Kitty Identity Crisis

        So I've decided to try this blogging thing, and I guess we'll see how it goes.  I hope I end up having some interesting things to say, and that at least a few people enjoy reading it.  I'm not exactly sure what my focus will be - I've been trying really hard to narrow the scope of the things I want to write about, but I think I've finally accepted that my mind just doesn't work that way. It's kind of like a hurricane in there.  I could no sooner decide what I might want to write about a month from now than tell you what my kitten's name will be tomorrow.  That's the newest drama in my life - as you will see, it consists of a series of mini dramas, (I tell people all the time that my life should be a sitcom) - the identity crisis of my kitten.
        So my boyfriend's dad has a cat in the barn in our backyard, which ended up having four kittens a little over two months ago.  Since then, my days have been consumed by kittens - feeding them, changing their litter, playing with them, taking pictures and videos of them, etc.  I chose the one I wanted to keep right away, and I thought that it was a girl and the other three were boys.  Now, I'm no vet, obviously, but I didn't think it was rocket-science telling a boy cat from a girl, so I didn't give it any more thought.  We named her Sasha, and had been calling her that for the past month or so.
        I brought her inside right when she turned 8 weeks, even though the others are still back in the barn, because it had been the longest two months of my life and I just couldn't wait any longer.  So a few days ago at dinner, Lee's dad, (Lee's my boyfriend)  says "Shannon, I heard you calling that cat Sasha - you know that it's a boy, right?" and I told him that I thought it was a girl, but that I guessed I wasn't positive.  So after dinner, I did what I should have done to begin with, and consulted google.   I found a youtube video in which a real vet showed how to tell, and my kitten is indeed male.  Great.  I mean, I don't care, he's still the coolest of all the kittens, but now we have to rename him.  Lee says we should should just keep calling him Sasha, but like Sacha Baron Cohen - but it was confusing me and I kept thinking of him as a girl.  We called him Samson for one whole day, but I decided I hated it.  We tried Calvin for a few hours, but we have finally settled on Sal Paradise - the protagonist from Jack Kerouac's On The Road.  It suits him - he has a certain dreaminess in his eye and a wannabe philosophical air.  Let's hope that he doesn't hook up with some tom suffering from a borderline personality disorder and desert me to tour the country popping bennies and blasting jazz along the way.  I don't have the kind of money to support those kinds of habits, or I might be doing something similar myself.  So anyway, his name is Sal, for now.