Ponderings and Musings

It was 11 years ago this weekend that Earl and I decided to head down to New York City and join up with other bloggers for “GB:NYC4”, or “Gay Bloggers:New York City 4”. Before the days of Twitter, with Facebook confined to college campuses at the time and with MySpace trying to gain traction, folks were writing personal and professional blogs and sharing their thoughts through the medium on the Internet. This was before we got in the habit of communicating in 140 280 characters or less and it was before we tried to reduce our thoughts down to dancing, leaping, and squirming emojis. Back then an emoji looked like this: 🙂

I still use 🙂 and nothing more. I am not an emoji kind of guy.

Going through my photos of the event and remembering the nice time we had with this great group of people back in 2007 made me miss the days when I was sit down and actually write something of substance on this blog. It was back before Obama, so I would wretch on W from time to time, but I liked to think that I had a fairly breezy attitude toward life. Of course, I was 11 years under (38 at the time), the country wasn’t being smothered by this plague called Trump (he was just a nuisance trying to grab airtime any way he could), and the future still felt like it could be brighter. We were still a month away from the dawn of a smartphone in every hand. People were flipping open their phones, plunking messages on a physical keyboard, and taking photos with cameras.

Are we any better off today?

I’m still friends with a few of the folks shown in the picture and I try to follow along with the few bloggers that still update their blogs (JoeMyGod being an exception to the blog abandonment trend, of course, because he still blogs a lot and he does a nifty job at it). As much as I wretch about Facebook, it’s become nearly an indispensable way to maintain contact with those in other parts of the world.

It’s a shame that decently composed discussion has given way to the burps and bleeps of today’s Internet experience.

Seeing these pictures and remembering what life was like just a little over a decade ago has helped me smile a bit more this weekend. It’s also inspired me to try to blog more; I’ve been lazy in the month of May. I think my 30-day personal challenge for June will be to blog something of substance at least once a day.

Who knows, maybe my efforts will catch on and someday we’ll get back to speaking in complete sentences without crazy emojis jumping off the page.

🙂

Tuned Out.

A few years ago when we started visiting Chicago on a regular basis, I noticed a trend of folks tuning out the world around them by wearing headphones. They wore headphones everywhere. On the train. While shopping. While walking their dog. While talking to an airport ticket agent. Everywhere you looked, people had some flavor of headphones over or in their ears. Occasionally you could hear what they were listening to, as the loud volume spilled out around their listening gear.

I’ve never really subscribed to this sort of thing.

I enjoy music. I enjoy listening to music on a really good set of headphones that are designed to highlight the nuances of that which I’m listening to. One of the reasons I enjoy my Apple AirPods is the awesomeness of the sound quality. The first time I listened to music by The Carpenters or Abba on my AirPods I was shocked at how easy it was to hear the intricacies of the music, both the instrumental and vocal contributions. Being able to tune out the world and lose yourself in your favorite music can be a magical experience. Personally I find it most magical when it is enjoyed on an occasional basis.

I am too curious about the world to tune out everything around me as a regular habit.

I’m writing the blog entry on a United flight from Chicago to Rochester, New York. We are on an EMB 145. Like most of the smaller airliners (and smaller airplanes in general), it can be quite loud. Many of the my fellow passengers have headphones on.

I like to hear every nuance of the airplane.

I walk between 40 and 50 miles in a week. I’ve started cycling again. I can’t imagine walking, or especially riding a bike, trying to navigate the streets of Chicago with a set of headphones shoved over my ears. There’s too much to hear to tune it out. Why tune out the experience of life?

Some folks prefer to be in their own little world, doing their own thing, oblivious to those around me. As long as they don’t become obnoxious through being oblivious, I’m fine with that.

But life is short, and I want to hear every second of it.

Rules.

Earl makes fun of me because I try follow all rules. I rarely cross the street against a light. When I use a crosswalk I stay within the painted lines and I make my way solidly on the sidewalk before heading left or right. While driving I make 90° turns to left or right. I stop if the light turns yellow. One exception is the speed limit, I drive with the flow of traffic, regardless of how far above the speed limit it is moving. Purposely driving the speed limit when everyone is whizzing by you is dangerous for everyone on the road.

As a pilot I have flown an airplane for hundreds of hours. As an airline passenger I have flown hundreds of flights. I still put down whatever I’m doing and pay attention to the safety presentation. Even though I might know every nuance of the airplane I am on, I still pay attention and give the flight attendants my undivided attention. I do this for a refresher of the particular airplane I’m on but I also do this to set an example to the others around me. If the airplane makes an off-field landing, I don’t want to be the one carrying my bag down the slide or wearing my oxygen mask incorrectly. I know where my exits are and how far away they are from me o every flight. I also know where every exit is located in any hotel I stay at and how many doors are between my room and my exit.

One of my biggest philosophies is “always be aware of your surroundings”. Following the rules, and throwing in some common sense from time to time, will get you far in life.

Some say life is boring when you always follow the rules. I enjoy life, and will probably enjoy it longer, because I took the time to follow the rules and look around at the world surrounding me.

I had a glass of red wine with dinner last night. While waiting for Earl to return from the wash room, I tweeted a musing as to whether Americans are drinking more since the election of Trump to the White House. I know I’ve been drinking more alcohol since Trump took office. It helps take the edge off reality.

Honestly, I’m very curious is to whether this is an actual ‘thing’ or just my own perception. We hear about increases in Opioid addiction, alcoholism, dependency on other substances. I know I smell a lot of pot on the street. Is this related to a societal shift that was bound to happen regardless of who occupied slot 45? Is life just getting more and more stressful as we realize that life isn’t as we depict it to be on social media?

I’ll have to find some studies on this. I find it quite interesting.

Cheers!

April Fools’ Day is my least favorite holiday, and I use that term loosely, of the year. I’m happy Easter also fell on April 1 because that helped quell some of the idiocy that typically lets loose on the Internet for April Fools’ Day.

People use to engage in clever April Fools’ Day jokes and pranks. A few decades ago there was a radio station, WKGW, that called themselves KG-104. The morning show announced the United States had switched to “Metric Time” and while my clock said 8:45, they announced the time as something idiotic like “it’s 2:75” as they went into a commercial break. The commercials then revolved around this prank, for example, an electronics store announcing you could bring your VCR in for reprogramming to accommodate the new Metric Time standard. It was a clever gag and probably the only time I’ve ever enjoyed an April fools’ Day prank.

In April 1999 Earl and I were working on opening a fast food restaurant in a local mini-mall. I had left my radio career to pursue this venture. We had sunk all of our savings and our blood sweat and tears into this business. I can still vividly remember Earl’s voice as he called me up to tell me, “it’s all burned down. All of it. We lost everything. They think it was faulty wiring.” A few beats later he said, “April Fools’!”.

Hardy har har har.

I don’t know if my resistance to April Fools’ frivolity was amplified by Earl’s joke of 1999 or from the license some took with pranks back when I was in high school: lighting a classmate’s jeans on fire, flushing a nerdy kid’s head in the toilet or pouring water into an Apple IIe to “make it spark”. Maybe I’m just overly sensitive, but in a world where people take great glee in playing stupid pranks to get YouTube revenue I guess I just don’t see the fun in pranking folks and then screaming “April Fools!”.

That being said, I did tweet a geek prank of my own tonight:

I’m excited about Kmart buying Walmart.

No one bought it. I guess I’m not very good at this sort of thing.