Sisters

Reproduction was an amazing thing.  Take Elenora and Gertrude for instance, two sisters born of the same mother, but, complete opposites.  Elenora wore her dark brown hair, almost black, short, often with a ribbon across her scalp, thin and white, to hold down the damned curls which almost always escaped out at the bottom in a nest-like tangle  She perferred simplicity in her dress, not accessories, just dress with a simple pattern, like stripes, and, with muted colors, garments which belied her need for constant attention.    She did wear bracelets, one on each arm, high above her wrists, a habit she had picked up after attempting to read the Greek translations in her father's library, but only getting as far as the illustration plates in the leather bound books.  She bought them from a jeweler, Mr. Goldberg, one of the fewish New York jews who had lived in their town, who had a shop down on Main Street, and who had said that they had come from Greece by way of a Greecian immigrant, that he could not verify the story, but that he was told by this Greecian immigrant that they were antiquities of the ancient kind, (like there was any kind of other), obtained near a Greek temple of Diana, the Huntress Goddess.    And when she wore them, she felt like the disciple of the Goddess Diana, empowered, emboldened, often chastised by her mother by her brash comments, times when she commented about how shameful it was that the boy next door walked outside with only his undershirt untucked and a pair of pants, and no shoes.  When she wore the bracelets, she was imbued with divinity and strength and did not need a man.  Certainly, the men in town had no need for her.  She had this tendency to keep her head down, so that her thick eyebrows shaded her brown eyes, and made her face seem more rounded, her nose much shorter and thinner than it really was.  It was until she had reviewed those illustrated plates in the tomes in her father's library, seen the hairt men and women with dark curly hair and thick eyebrows, whose bodies were thicker, more athletic, muscular, did she feel more at ease with her own body image.  She had placed herself within a framework of being, and, being placed there adopted everything that was that was the frameword, to the simple stylized lines found on the pictured urns, to the facial expressions of the figures contained thereon.  One work she had managed to read, being that the words were not so difficult, and there was so little of it to read was the works of Sappho, though she missed the point of the words entirely, did not understand their context because she had skipped over the long, exasperating explanation by the academic in the front of the book.  Instead, she embued the words with her own meaning, finding bits of her own life to fill in the experience gap that existed between her and the woman who existed all those years ago who wrote the words.  One evening, her father caught reading the words, sternly took the book from her in a terribly angry way, as if she had violated some sacred family secret, like finding her birthday presents before her atual birthday or getting into her mother's jewelry box.  But the experience made her interest in the book all the more powerful, seductive, and Sappho called to her often, inciting in her a scandalous lust to have the book in her hands, to read its pages, to unfold it, and delve deep into it.  And she often felt dirty afterwards as if she had done something to bring shame not only to her self but her family as well.    Her father seemed to know that she was continuing to revisit this text, attempted to subvert her romance with it by moving the tome other hidden places around the house, but Elenora always seemed to know where it was hidden, as if it called to her from the desk drawer, behind the book shelf.  Funny enough, Elenora's mother never commented on the affair, seemingly blissfully unaware of the whole sinful matter.  If Elenora frustrated her father, her sister Gertrude was the apple of her father's eye.  Were as Elenora's skin was dark and a bit patchy, Gertrude's was porceline with faint blushes of rose in all the right places, like on the cheeks.  And whereas Elenora's hair was wild and untamed, Gertrude's light brown hair had a tightness to it, controlled, placed just so.    Gertrude was not given to smile as much of Elenora.  Her mother associated this with Gertrude's sisters devilish grin, which seemed to hide devilish intentions, something that Gertrude attempted to eschew as much as possible.  Instead, she always seemed to have a look of longing on her face, a visage of looking far into the distance, waiting for something to come along, whatever it was.  Elenora thought her sister looked a lot like the image of one of the women in illustrated on the plates in her father's books, a woman whose hair was pinned up upon her head, much like how her sister wore it, a rounded base with a small ball of hair on the top, with a delicate face, thin eyebrows, and that same longing look, as if she had been passed over for something, as if, once born, had lost control of her life.  The woman's name, according to the plate was Helen and she live in a place called Troy.  Apparently, Helen had been quite a beauty, if the subtitles to the plates and the titles to the chapters were any indications, for she had started a war among nations.  Gertrude had not started any wars between any nations, but her beauty had given the local boys something to fight about, for they would come hang out on the front lawn of the two story wooden house she and her sister lived in with their mother and father, and rough housed each other in various feats of strength.  Sometimes the competitions would get so intense that they crossed the line of the playful and into the realm of the serious, where blows would be exchanged, perhaps black eyes would be dolled out.  Elenora recalled on more than one occasion when her father had to go out on the front lawn to split two tomcats swinging wildly at each other while her mother desperately called their parents.  At such times, Elenora would sit at the window at the front of the house watching the battle engage while her sister unaffected by such displays would go to her room to take up some past time or another.  While Elenora was a fan of simple dress, found elegance in plain style, her sister perferred the ornate.  Gertrude always accessorized, almost gaudily, using the flowers from her mother's flower garden outside to accentuate her looks.  A large pink rose bloom was often placed on her dress in between her bosom, which she believed was not ample enough, looked too much like the flat chested flappers she was horrified by.  She often carried in her hands other flowers which she grasped on to when she visited others.  A tactile person, she would incessantly rub the stem of the flowers, rub the petals of the flowers, in a nervousness.  The effect of it all was to give one the impression that she was impermanant, that like the flowers that she wore in her hair and bosom and held in her hand, that she would eventually wilt and die away once Spring and Summer faded into Fall and Winter.    Despite being so different, the sisters loved each other dearly, loved each other for the other's quirks.  Whereas the angelic Gertrude was always trying to dissuade Elenora from participating in mischievousness in attempt to save her soul, or at least, to give her the opportunity to attract a man who might come to find her suitable enough to marry, if not to love, Elenora was constantly probing Gertrude for her devilishness, because Elenora was vain enough to believe that all persons had devilish side, a side of their personalty which, damned be the right thing, wanted, desired, craved exploiting life.  And this battle was fought on a daily basis.  Elenora would wake up in the morning, telling her sister that they would be going to the river to go wading in the water with the neighborhood boys, and Gertrude would say that they should stay in and work on their needlepoint or point out that their mother had been working rather hard on putting together the cakes for the church bake sale and probably needed a break and that they should do the cooking for the family tomight.  This was a competition that was encouraged by their father who felt like the influence that the sisters had on each other, the little tussles over societal ground, the prim and proper versus the adventurous and outgoing made each them a better person.  When little spats erupted between the sisters, as he was wont to call them, their father left them to their ends, even when their mother who detested any dischord in her peaceful home pleaded and begged for him to get involved, appealed to his sense of decorem in the neighborhoo.  What would the neighbors think about the couterwauling of the two girls?  If he didn't set an end to this feud between them, they would drift away from each other and eventually from the family.  Elanora would freed from her sister's reuctance would escape into the city to become a working girl, a fashion model, an actress in the movies, find refuge in the city of sin where the evils of an urban lifestyle lie, where her devilish side would turn her in to a hedonist.  And Gertrude, who without Elenora, would not venture outside but find refuge in their home, take root their such that she would never find a man to marry, and she would become an old maid despite her beauty    Their father was not inclined to accept his wife's dim view of the situation.  For their father saw them as two large planetary objects, large and bright in their own accord, with a strong gravitional pull on each other, each exerting their force on the other, so strong a force, that they can not slip from the other's grip.  And so it was that the little spats were had with periods of silence between the two of them, when the home was tense and uneasy, but then Gertrude, who had a tendency to see the foolishness of such silly disputes, about whether they were going to the social held at the local community center or the church, or whether they were going to stay in, were petty in light of the fact that they were sisters, and she would approach Elenora and apologize for being such a recluse and for her shyness, recounting the many virtues of her sister, repeating over and over again how lost she would be without her.  And in her own way, Elenora would also express the same, maybe not saying it out loud but by petting her sister's rosy cheeks, the ones she jealously coveted, and then kiss her on her forehead.  And so long as there was nothing which exerted a greater influence than each other, than the two sisters would always be there for one another.  Their father had seen the future, foretold that the sisters would find two men who loved them for their own idiosyncracies, who would understand that nothing could come between these two sisters, their love for each other stronger than all outside factors, would accept living next door to their in-laws.  They would grow old together, their children growing up together, in this same small town that they now lived.    But it should be noted, their father was not a diviner, could not read the stars, and little did he know what influences were out there.  However, he would soon find out.  

What's wrong with you, Cracker Barrel

September 25th, 2013

I have constantly prayed to God that he provide me with the will to be diligent-Not that I ever thought that I was particularly lazy, only that I should Show more initiative about doing what (need to do.  For example, 1 use to come home after a long day at work tired, exhausted, so tired and exhausted that I just wanted to take off my work clothes and sit For a while.  Ultimately, my suit, shirt, and socks would end Up on the floor or on top of a ever growing pile of other clothing,  The right thing to have done would have been to put the dirty clothes in the dirty clothes hamper and to hang up my suit on a hanger in the closet,  And the truth is it is easier to take all my work clothes off and leave them on the Floor.  But diligence my friend required that l hang up my suit and put the clothes in the dirty clothes hamper.

This seems to be true both about little things like clothes, dishes, trash, as well as the big things.  Ultimately, diligence is personality trait, acharateristic which is about integrity and getting things done.  I yang up my suits now when I get home from Work, in the closet and place my dirty laundry in the , dirty laundry hamper. l don't feel any better in doing it.  But I feel like I am a more effective person.  And really, when it comes down to it, as Benjamin Franklin said,"A stitch in time Saves nine,"

Observations on an Internet Nation

I remember when I was younger, shopping was done in stores, and I mean, physical stores, where you had to go through the front door and purchase items from an actual shop clerk, who had some idea of what kind of products they had in the store.  Of course, when I was younger, I shopped with my parents, and most likely with my mother.  Most of the time shopping was for clothing, though there was always shopping for Christmas and school supplies. 
I remember that the shopping was always a labored affair.  One particular incident comes to mind when I think about shopping with dear old mom.  I don't recall the store.  Probably it was one of those stores that opened only for a short time and then went the way of the dodo.  I remember it was in one large room filled with those round fixtures which clothing was hung along with the clothing hung on the walls.  I remember having a blow-up with my mother about some particular clothes that I wanted.  It was embarassing because I wanted some particular shirts or pants or something or other, and mom had other things in mind.
There were so many choices to fight over, or, at least I thought there were.
This was at the time when there were very few cable channels, and what channels there were, there wasn't a lot of prime, original programming.  But people wanted it.
I recall these things because with the advent of the internet, things have changed.  We have have been bombarded with a number of choices and options.  The day of stores with limited selection have disappeared.  It used to be you could walk into a Barnes and Noble and look for a book that you wanted, and, perhaps, that store you walked into might have the book, and then again, it might not.  And perhaps they could order the book, but then it would get to you three to four weeks later.  There selection was limited.
Similarly, if you wanted to buy an album that was old or not popular, the likelihood was that it had to be ordered.  I know that I had to order the music a few times.  But know, iTunes and Amazon have made it simple to order the music.  In fact, things have gotten to the point where you don't even need to have a physical media on which the music, book, movie comes on.  It can be sent to the computer on which you were looking for the music, movie, and/or book. 
The problem in all this is that in having access to all this material is that it takes time to sift through the items.  If I want to buy a nook book for my Barnes and Noble Nook, I spend at least an hour looking for a book deal.  The shear number leads me to believe that there is something out there that I am missing, that if I don't find it, I will miss out on the deal, something in our modern American culture is impermissible.
What is even worse is that after finding the deal, after buying the deal, instead of finding the intrinsic value of having it, the simplicity and ease with which the item was obtained decreases its apparent value.  I can't tell you how many times I have had the opportunity to buy a great novel and passed it up because it was too low.  Why would they put such a book on sale that low?  And then I miss out. 
The sad thing about it all is that because there is no correlation between the face value of the book and the merit of the content of the book, the novelist, the musician, the director, the actor lose out.  They perhaps get a reputation unwarranted. 
It would be easy enough to say, "Give every book, album, or movie a chance."  The problem with that is that there is too much material out there for us to do that.  I have wondered how many books, movies, and albums come out each year.  But obviously too many to spend time testing the merit of each.  In the end, we have to rely on something to give us some idea of the value of the books content. 
Most of the time it is the price.  Although websites provide rating and reviews both by consumers and professionala reviewers alike, such reviews are unrealiable, unreliable because we are not alike.  What I like certainly what other like.  My opinion of good writing, good charater development, good plotting, is not the same as others.  In fact, I often purchase books when others have said they dislike the samme
So, what the internet has created is not simplicity and ease but more complexity and time consumption.  The internet essentially increased the stress of shopping.

June 2nd, 2012

There is something depressing about losing weight.  I mean, in the end, dieting is all about losing parts of yourself, dumping the spare tire around your middle, or as I come to see it, a dysfunctional fanny pack without a zipper, hollowing out your cheeks, which looked at one time like chipmunk cheeks. 

Shedding weight is something akin to starving, which has so many depressing images attached to it.  The Budhist monk protesting the occupation of his country, the concentration camp internee sustaining on pieces on the mere scraps he can find, poor children from a Charles Dickens novel.  To see yourself in the mirror should bring happier thoughts, a tough challenge to accomplish, getting healthy.  But, in the end, it is so tempting to view it as compulsory negative, compulsory in the sense that it seems never ending, negative in the sense that you hate being in the loop while hate the current shape and size of your body.

And then there is the comments that come with losing weight.  Of course, there are those people who feign happiness for you.  They say things like, "You are starting to lose a lot of weight.  I barely recognized you."  Or, "You're going to have to start buying a new wardrobe."  Of course, there is always the ones who state, "How are you doing it?"  The comments are nothing more than veiled jealousy, hidden attacks at a person who has been able to exert some control over their urges to eat, to do something about their negative feelings about self-worth. 

And you know this, because when you try to discuss with them your transformation, the hard work you've put into losing pounds, they either turn-off or make excuses for their own inability to lose weight.  They claim that they do the same thing that you do, stop drinking sodas, restrict their caloric intake, exercise more, but, for all their work, their body won't let them lose they weight.  What they are really trying to say is "You are lucky that you have a body that allows you to lose weight so easily," as if the hard work and focus was nothing more than the randomness of genetic disposition. 

And then there are those whose disbelief in your willpower, who doubt your desire to improve your health, who believe that the only way that anyone can lose the weight you have is to be sick.  They always begin asking you if you are alright.  When you tell them that you are, they look at you with disbelief, as if you are on drugs, because no one loses weight that fast on purpose.

And then there are those that are just flat out tired of your losing weight, and others noticing it, who can't bear to see you suffer.  And so any comments remotely related to your weight loss is responded to with

Never mind

Never mind the neWS, that keeps you awake at night with its violence and stories about fear and death

Never mind the politician who never quite know the truth but only half -truths told to them by "yes" men

Never mind what they tell you at school because they don't know themselves but. are really there to make sure you don't roam the streets during the day

Never mind the police who are only human after all but on the other side of the barrel Closest to the trigger

Never mind the musicians and athletes who tell you in what they Say and what they do that the only thing in life that matters is gold and women

Never mind your parents who are too embarrassed to admit that they understand what you are going through or even that they know what they are doing

Never mind the 10% percent who talk to you with their hands in their pockets to keep a close tab on their wallets

Never mind the 90% Who want you to hand overall your belongings as if you ever had ownership over them anyway

Never mind your friends who won't by your Friends next week because you have become boring

Never mind your girlfriend or boyfriend because behind those pretty eyes lies a deep pool of doubt that they are with the right person

Never mind such arbitrary things Such as time and day of the week

Never mind Science with its irratating need to always be right

Never mind religon with its irratating need to always argue

Never mind art inaccessible and incomprehensible

Never mind this poem with its platitudes and bad advice

Grocery Store Pet Peeves

It seems like I spend the majority of my time complaining about things.  As my wife is always quick to remind me that I take pleasure in making sure that I dislike that which the public has loved.  She says, "Everyone loved Shakespeare in Love.  Everyone except you."  True enough, I define myself by what I do not like or find fault in, rather than what I do like or that which is meritorious. 

However, there is something to being allowed to disdain reprehensible activities, to look down on social behaviors which are negative and deserve condemnation.  Too often, people engage in activities which are not only morally bankrupt but also impact others with no regards.  Take for instant a litterer whose chucking an empty cup obtained from a fastfood restaurant out of his truck because he has not the patience or motivation to find a trashcan either at home or another commercial estalishment negatively impacts a wide variety of people.  Certainly, aethestically, trash on the roadway is displeasing and tends to encourage other litterers to throw trash on the ground.  Further, trash draws rodents and other varments and creates other health problems.  Certainly, I should not be faulted for disliking litterers.

Perhaps one of the places where my ire is raised most is the supermarket.  The supermarket is a magnet for socially irresponsible persons. 

It starts when you arrive when you are trying to find a parking space, driving through row after row of cars, many of them trucks to large to fit between the painted lines, whose doors you know will bang into you own vehicle if you park next to them, leaving a small ding, and maybe a paint chip as a souvenir.  You are about to give up when you notice an empty space in the next row over.  And so you race over, to claim your find only to discovery some car parked over the lines, taking up two spots, an act I might equate to a dog urinating on a tree, or your mailbox, just to let you know whose in charge.  So you find a place somewhat distance from the front door and begin walking.

You notice that there are several people who have already completed their shopping, their bags contained in their shopping carts.  After placing their groceries in the back of their vehicles, they place the cart right behind the vehicle that is parked next to them, so they have the ability to back out and leave, but their neighbor will have to move the cart, put the cart return for them.  What makes this even more egregious is the fact that the cart return is only a few feet away, as if putting the cart return would kill them.  And of course, on a windy day, loose carts roam freely in the parking lot like grazing cattle bumping up against cars. 

Then you walk inside the store, and notice the fortyish man, with able legs sitting in the electrical carts reserved for the diable, as if using the cart was a matter of right, a matter of first come/first served.  And he will ride that cart in a bumpy, noisy manner, sometimes letting his just as able children ride it around the store as if it were a go-cart, blocking aisles when stopped, until it runs out of juice in the back of the store, no where near the charging station.  Once dead, the cart is dead, it will be abandoned for more tradional means of coveyance, the cart which has to be pushed, the one they shouold have used to begin with.  Meanwhile, some elderly woman who clearly cannot walk five feet let alone a whole store has no means to go shopping.

And then there are the parents who let their children run wild throughout the store, touching everything with their sticky fingers, eating food and drinking drinks before paying for them, leaving the empty packaging on a shelf no where near where the items was obtained, but a mere two feet from a trashcan, children who tear open boxes that have to be taped back up again, making the next person to pick up the package wondering, "Is it all in there?"

Confusion Over Jane Austin

I recall having to read Pride and Prejudice in high school.  I was a young teenager at the time, living in a community designated a "bedroom community," which aways sounded a little salacious, though what it really meant was that we were a community island, house after house, without the commercial or industrial development found in Dallas and Fort Worth mere hours away from my front door. I was a male, hormonal, unsuited for understanding the late sixteenth ramblings of a woman who wrote not only of the social restraints of young women in a male-dominated period and country, but with a fine subtlety whose irony and humor are lost by the antiquated language and odd sentence structure.  It was no wonder that I read the book as I might read a scietific journal.

In college, by mere accident, I was pushed into studying English literature.  To finish my degree I had allotted to myself, I was forced to sign up for classes which focused on English literature, and partiularly that of the Victorian era and some of the eras that sandwiched it.  I was forced to read Thomas Hardy from a professor who actually had a science major.  I read Frankenstein at least four times as I earned my under-graduate degree, not to mention having to see the Universal Studios and Hammer Studio adaptations of the book.  I grew to appreciate the literature of the time, especially literature that grew out of a Gothic tradition and read on my own, without the need of a syllabus such classics as the George Elliot classic Middlemarch, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and even Charlotte Bronte's Whethering Heights.  But still, even a new found love for literature, even Victorian literature, I still could not find some spark of interest in Pride and Prejudice.

Again, the book has again entered into my life.  A member of a book club to which I belonged has suggested reading it, nothing that the anniversary of its placement upon paper and introduction to the world.  Again, I am forced to ask myself, why is it that people find this book so compelling placing it as one of the greatest novels ever written, a tour de force, so much so that high school students everywhere are subject to its torturous banality.  Of course, having matured since high school, I have conviently redrafted the question to be more introspective: why is it that I find this book, which has spawnd numerous movies adaptions, which has spawned numerous other books, much like spin-off television series, does not resonate me as other books have?

There is definitely something about the book which works against the grain of an American male.  As has been noted by more studied persons, there is a theme running throughout the novel, idealization of the nobility and gentry, an idea so antithetical to the American ideal of self-made men, who were an amalgamation of the democracy so inherit in the American conscience and the idea of the entitled person who earned his social status by hard work.  There is even contained in the book a subtle disdain of stature through hard work, a kind of honor in being born into your place in society. 

This is repulsive to me, repulsive not so much that it eschews the commercial successes of the American male, even if the successes were gained through shady means, but that it fails to depict the common man, such as Dickens did.  I dislike Pride and Prejudice for the same reason I dislike the Oscars or other award shows, because it is a half-depiction missing an important, and perhaps more interesting layer of society, the worker, who had no time for leisure, who felt the boot of the weathy landower's boot on his throat as a favor.  The book is a piece of propaganda, meant to propagate an idea throughout societies that established that if you were not of a social layer, you were scum.

I am re-reading Pride and Prejudice.  I appreciate the language, the themes, as banal as they are.  I recognize that Jane Austin accomplished something much more than many woman of her time could do.  And through said appreciation, my question has changed yet again.  This time, my question is: why is a woman with such a talent for writing, with all of her wit and humor, wasting her timie writing about trivial matters such as the effects of marryig or not marrying in the late 1700's?

Five Traffic Pet Peeves…

I remember when I first obtained my license.  This was back in the day when to get your license you actually had to take a driver’s education course.  I took it during summer.  I remember how utterly bored of the class I was.  Mostly, it was about scaring us to death through the use of ancient films with over dramatic actors, films of the like I hadn’t seen since I was in grade school. 

The one film I remember was about the dangers of driving while tired.  It featured two Afro-Americans traveling in large boat of a vehicle.  The two had been driving for a long time, which I had thought was sinister in a way.  Anyway, the driver fell asleep, and, as right as rain, an accident ensued.  I was a sick kid, and my sickness showed itself in the way that the film humored me.  “No way is this the way accidents occur.” 

Years later, I had the chance to experience the seriousness of the film, when my wife and I were forced to travel from Texas to Virginia without stop because Elvis happened to die some years early on the same weekend that we were married.  I remember at the darkest part of the night we ended up stopping at a gas station to get some coffee.  As we exited the car, hundreds huge moths twice the size of man’s fist were fluttering around us.  I’ve never been on a drug trip, but I imagine that being caught in a cloud of fist-sized moths might be something like one.

I have a bad record with vehicles.  I have been in multiple accidents.  One actually knocked me out for some time.  I would freely admit I am not the best driver.  However, I am not the worst.  There are driver’s out there that frankly get on my last nerve.   Below are five types of drivers I can’t stand.

1. Truck Drivers

In Texas, every other vehicle is a truck.  In rural areas of Texas, every vehicle is a truck.  I see how on a farm or a ranch a truck is definitely a good idea.  It is rugged.  It is large with lots of loading capacity.  It is hard to do any real damage to a truck.  I dislike those who drive trucks in the city.  In a city everything is compact, pushed in tight to fit as much as possible.  Streets are narrow.  Parking spaces are even narrower.  Somehow, truck drivers think they can fit into the tight spaces with no consequences.  Maybe they can fit into tight spaces only to find that when they open their doors, they leave little nicks in the vehicles the rest of us urbanites were smart enough to buy, little reminders of how much these people are idiots.

2. Crooked Parkers

Similarly, there are those who can’t park there car straight.  Either they can’t center themselves in a parking space so that they park too close to the vehicle on their left or right or they park in the space diagonally because they were in a rush to get in to the spot.  It makes things difficult for the vehicles around them.  The owners of the vehicles on either the right or left then have to play a game of Operation, carefully backing out so that they don’t hit into the car next to them.  There are extreme crooked parkers, usually owners of faux expensive cars, tricked-out Hondas, who park park crooked so that no one will park next to them.  These are the real pricks.

3. Slow Drivers in the Left Lane

My wife and I do quite a bit of traveling.  I am the kind of guy who likes to get on the highway and go.  I skirt speeding driving anywhere from five to ten miles over the speed limit just to shave a few minutes off our travel time.  However, without fail, on every trip there is always some snail of a driver who insists on driving in the left hand lane at the same rate of speed as the person in the right hand lane.  What result is a stock pile of cars in the left hand lane all wanting to get around this slow car.  Get a few slow cars in the left hand lane and you get yourself into a maze, the challenge is not just to get around the barriers but at the right time for fear of boxing yourself in.

4. Automobiles that Turn on Red

There is a certain type of driver who turns at red lights only when they see that the light for the through traffic is about to turn green, and not a moment earlier.  Often, these drivers not only turn right in front of oncoming traffic, they often sneak over into the left lane, the quicker of the two lanes.  I like to think of these drivers as squirrels, only willing to go once they see a car coming.

5. Blockers

I think there are also drivers out there who get a thrill out of preventing people from getting in front of them, so much so that they will slow down when the light is green, only to escape through a red light leaving you to sit a the light.   I have noticed an overwhelming number of these drivers talk on cell phones, not realizing that they in fact are causing everyone else to sit at light that everyone could have easily driven through. 

I believe that when Dante wrote the Inferno, he probably forget one level for the sinful drivers, the slow ones, the terrible parkers, the truck drivers.  I am sure that in that level of Hell, these drivers are doomed to suffer immeasurable tortures related to their years of being awful drivers.  I hope such a place exists; it is the only thing that gets me through a red-light I got stopped at because some jack hole wouldn’t let the rest of through.

Technorati Tags: Drivers,Traffic,Slow,Park,Parking Spaces,Blockers,Elvis,Moths,Trucks

Five Shows that Never Should Have Been Cancelled…

Every year there new shows are introduced to network line ups.   Like darts, network executives shoot the television shows at the viewership-dartboard hoping that some of them will stick.  Oddly enough, a show’s success is determined on viewership, which I suspect is based on a number of factors.  One of the factors is the night which the show is shown.  For example, it is clear that currently NBC has a strangle hold on Thursday nights, a night on which the stack its comedy powerhouses My Name is Earl and the Office. 

I am reminded of the lesson of the Family Guy.  It started out on Fox on Sunday nights.  Then Fox started moving it around both its time slot and nights.  Accordingly, a viewership could not gather around the show because Fox did not give it enough stasis to gain a foothold in their lineup.  They ended up canceling the show.  Cartoon Network then picked up the show in syndication where it gathered the viewership it needed.  The shows were the same as they were on Fox.  But somehow on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim it flourished.  Thereafter, Fox picked up the show again.

There are several shows over the years that I have fallen in love with only to be disappointed when they canceled the show.  Below are some shows that for one reason or another were canceled but never should have been. 

1. Arrested Development

Before the Family Guy ever got a foot hold in the popular culture references, Arrested Development tapped into the vein.  The entire series is funny, each scene wonderfully crafted and brilliant written.  However, one of my favorite episodes involves a Charlie Brown Christmas reference.

2. Dead Like Me

This is a show I did not catch until it was too late, mainly because I did not have cable at the time it was on air.  This is a Bryan Fuller show.  Its premise is decidedly Bryan Fuller.  It is about a girl who dies an unnatural death, and, instead of going to Heaven, becomes a reaper, someone who helps souls go to Heaven.  The premise belies its comedic genius.  All of the characters are wonderfully down to Earth and real, with all of their flaws apparent and forgivable.

3. Wonderfalls

This is another Bryan Fuller show.  In this show, the main character whose life is a shambles and cannot decide what to do with her life begins to see and hear objects talk to her.  The objects guide her to do things to make things right.  Like Dead Like Me, the characters here are real and flawed, but, in their flaws, there are redemption for the characters. 

4. Firefly

The mere fact that this was a science fiction show probably made it difficult to survive.  I suspect that Fox did not do enough to promote the premise of the show.  The show echoed the Wild West that existed in the United States after the Civil War.  The show was beautifully done, and the following it did obtain are extremely loyal to it.  Later, a movie was released which also was well done.

5. Andy Barker, P.I.

This show show stared Andy Richter.  Essentially, Andy Richter played a a vanilla financial consultant who comes to occupy the office of an private eye in a strip mall.  Because of this, he is mistaken for a private eye himself.  Subtle and understated, this show was hilarious.  I don’t even think it lasted a full season.

 

Besides the lack of network support, the problem with these shows were that they were too intelligent and too subtle in a time when intelligent and subtle shows are scarce.  Obnoxious shows like Rock of Love, the Bachelor, and other shows that rely on visual stunts rather than good writing prevent shows like the above from every being established.     

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