Happiness Is…..

Finding that sweet spot on your wadded up jacket being used as a pillow and falling fast asleep on the plane.

Happiness Is…..

Waking up in the middle of the night, expecting it to be almost time to get up and finding you still have 4 hours of sleep left.

Firefly

Here in OKC we have a HD channel from Universal. They play, in excellent HD quality the movies and TV shows produced by Universal.

One of those shows is Joss Whedon’s Firefly. I happened to attempt to keep up with this program when it originally aired. But as has happened with many a good show that the networks don’t have faith in it got canceled.

Well, I have recently started watching it again. I must say that it was a very good show. I wish it hadn’t died.

I must say. George Lucas said that Star Wars was supposed to be a Western in space. What Joss Whedon created with Firefly really is a Western in space. You have people using 20th Century ballistic weapons, riding horses and wearing western-style clothing. But they fly spaceships.

I know that Joss Whedon put out a movie a while back called Serenity in order to tie up loose ends, but I cannot figure out why people didn’t want to watch this show.

This show was definitely nothing like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but I didn’t find some entertainment merit out of it.

Oh well, maybe the day will come soon when a show can still be successful but not rely solely on the network airtime to be successful. That way a good show, with a solid fanbase can still be made

Good Sportsmanship

I had the pleasure of watching my nephew play basketball this past Saturday.  His team won and won big, but we will never know what the actual score was because the league has a rule that the score can never be more than 10 points apart.

After the game the kids go to the back and get their stickers for “best defense”, “best offense”, “Christlike behavior”.  In actuality every kid walks away with some kind of “award”.

I don’t know how I feel about this.  I played recreation league sports when I was my nephew’s age and I don’t remember such rules being in place.

I pretty much was always on a losing team.  Fortunately, we didn’t lose every game, but we lost alot.  I personally think there is a lot to be learned from losing and even more from losing big.  How can you know that you suck if you cannot look up at the scoreboard and see a 100-20 loss?

Also, I don’t think every kid should get an award for just participating.  I think it really dilutes the specialness of the other, real awards for real accomplishments.  I struggled to get awards for being most improved.  I felt better about the accomplishment because I knew the number of awards were limited.

What’s the point of sports if everyone walks away a winner?

Maybe this is why the United States is losing it’s edge in the international community.  Could it be the fact that we coddle our children and make them feel all special and warm and they are all winners be taking away their drive to be better than everyone else?

Whitney & Osama?

So I’m listening to one of my podcasts earlier this week and it was mentioned that Whitney Houston has decided she’s had enough of her husband Bobby Brown and is leaving him.

Am I the only one that finds it interesting that within a couple months of the world finding out that Osama Bin Laden has a craving for Ms Houston that she’s leaving her man.

Could it be that Whitney decided that she’s had enough of the 80′s bad boy and now wants to make sweet, sweet love with the current ultimate bad boy?

What would you do?

Nancy and I went to the movies on Thursday. What the movie was isn’t important since it doesn’t really have anything to do with this entry.

Before the movie we were being bombarded with the ads that now have become a part of the pre-show before the previews. One of the ads was for a new show coming on NBC this Fall called Heros. It appears to be about a bunch of people who find out they have special powers. One of the people, a teenage girl, finds out that irregardless of what she does to herself she cannot get a scratch. She is impervious to harm.

Yeah, this is a comic book like premise, but it got me to thinking. What would I do if I suddenly found out that I could not be harmed?

Would I still be scared of my own shadow and afraid to take risk or would i done a mask and cape and fight the things that go bump in the night or worse would i become the thing that goes bump in the night?

Phonebooks

I got another phonebook dropped of at my doorstep. I wonder how many trees are cut down to make the paper that is used to compile all the phonebooks printed in the United States in a calendar year?

I cannot think of the last time I’ve used the phonebook. I just simply go to one of the many online searches and find what I’m looking for. I’m kinda partial to http://www.smartpages.com but I’m sure there are others.

Is the phone book obsolete?

Dogs And Cats

I tend to have these spells where I think about life, the universe and everything and I do most of this thinking the same place I think most red-blooded males do their thinking……in the restroom. Afterall, it’s pretty much the only place within one’s home that a married man has peace and quiet to do that serious thinking that he needs to do. Yes, we have tinkering in the garage, swinging iron on the links, or mowing the lawn but those all involve leaving the conforts of the home.

Well, as I said I’ve been doing some thinking and observing as of late and I suddenly noticed something about dogs and cats I don’t think I ever noticed before.

As I said, I have been doing doing alot of this thinking in the restroom and that usually involves closing the door so as to not disturb those around you. Well, there has been a few times where I haven’t shut the door all the way. Sure enough within seconds of shutting the door, the dog is pushing his head through the crack and looking around. As soon as she spots me you can almost see the look on her face saying, “Oh, there you are. All is right in the world”. The thing that always makes me laugh is that I literally just walked into the bathroom and she comes looking for me. It reminds me of when I’m at my brother’s house and his children want to always know where I am. I also have noticed that my brother’s kids are always wanting to play and especially with their uncle. It’s always, “Uncle Ray, will you play with me?”. Well, I’ve noticed the dog is also like this. It’s always, “Will you pet me?”, “Will you throw the ball?”, “Will you run in the backyard with me?”.

It’s these traits I love about our dogs and other dogs my friends take care of.

Now onto cats. I only know a few people with cats, but the personality traits seem to be the same. They could care less if you were there. You could be gone a week and when you announce your presence back at home, they just look at you with a look that says, “You were gone? I didn’t notice.” If you start playing with them and they get irritated, I can almost see them as little Joe Pesci’s from Wiseguys,
“But, I’m funny how? Funny like a clown? I amuse you? I make you laugh?”. Then they proceed to beat the crap out of you.

The Luckless Bastard

My brother and I were having one of our usual length conversations on the phone about life, the universe and everything.

He had his usual hour long talk with my wife and then she handed the phone back to me.

He wanted to let me know that I was a luckless bastard. I got such a good woman for a wife that I couldn’t have found her with the aid of a fistfull of 4-leaf clovers.

BTW, according to my wife, he feels the same way for himself

Can you truly protect the stupid from themselves: Part II?

I was thinking about the previous post I had written with this title and I was starting to think to myself. In regards to the MySpace controversy, who is really the stupid person to be blamed? I remember when I was in Junior High and High School. I did all kinds of stupid things to try and be popular or maintain what position I had within the “inner circle”. MySpace has added a cyber component to what I had to deal with as a youth. Granted, I was still acting stupid, but I had adults (like my parents) telling me I was being stupid. In the case of MySpace, who is really telling these kids what they are doing could have long standing harm? You don’t want to be 40, running for office and someone publishes pictures that used to be on your MySpace account of you sucking on a beer bong or smoking a big ole “fatty”. Nothing is permanently gone when it’s on the internet. Companies make a fortune extracting bits of data that the user thought they had “deleted”. As far as I know, most of the warnings are coming from school administrators and advisors. It might as well be an adult from Charlie Brown talking because very few kids hear a word coming out of their mouth.

I’ve found podcasting awhile back and listing to a bunch of technology based one:
This Week in Tech (TWiT)
What’s New Now
Diggnation
The Daily Source Code
KFI Tech Guy (Leo Laporte’s Radio Show)

All of these can easily be found with iTunes. They have a lot of stuff that may go over people’s heads but they also talk about the things that are quickly becoming trends either good or bad. Maybe the parents who are unaware of the dangers are the ones that need more education. I work in the IT Industry and know how hard it is to stay on top of things but I think the computer and internet was viewed by many adults as being as innocuous as the Television Set. But I view it to be far more dangerous. You wouldn’t just hand your kid a gun and tell them to “have at it” without some serious instruction about the safe handling of a firearm and even then you may not let them handle the firearm without supervision.