Tag Archives: blogging

The Sock Nest Monster

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A Snail's Pace

Where do missing socks go? I don’t know how many times that I have gone to fold my laundry and ended up with a single leftover sock. What happened to the other half of the pair? People have theorized that modern washers and dryers rend them down and they become dryer lint. They become de facto sacrifices to the god of washing.

A more fanciful explanation holds that socks are actually the physical manifestation of an intelligent alien life form. They are able to re-energize themselves by siphoning off some of the bio-mechanical power that is expended through walking. Once sufficiently energized the pair will enter the laundry cycle, and somewhere between the washer and dryer, one of the pair will teleport back to the mothership to report. Its mate remains on earth to continue watching and of course be found after laundry. This theory, while really out there, does explain how a once missing sock can mysteriously reappear.

This morning, in our bedroom closet I discovered a colony of truant socks. This nest of missing socks were living at the back of the closet. They were all covered in closet lint. I suspect that this sock colony was actually a sock nest of cannibals. I belive that the so-called closet lint is really the remains of less fortunate socks, socks that thanks to this sock nest monster will never be seen again. Unfortunately, because of the coating of closet lint, I was compelled to drop these fiends into the laundry chute, repeating the cycle.

The regular reader might have noticed that this has been a slow news week here at RegenAxe. Otherwise would I really be going-on about socks, missing or otherwise? Maybe my life has slowed to a snail’s pace, or maybe I’m just suffering from writer’s block. Which ever one it might be, I’m sure that it will pass soon enough and I’ll return to more interesting and exciting blather.

Totally Crickets

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Fork and Shadow - An Art Project

Thank goodness it’s Friday, and it is Good Friday at that. Anne and I are looking forward to a quiet Easter holiday. It will be just the two of us. I think that we’ll go out for Easter dinner. It will be less fuss and could be cheaper than home cooking. The weather forecast looks good, so there will be cycling. There is also the annual Easter car show in Forest Park, this is always worth attending.

This Friday night is date night, dinner and a show with my sweetie. We have tickets to the Rep. They are performing their last show of the season, Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors”. It should be a fun show, there will be more on this subject later. Now where to dinner?

This week’s blogs have been about TED, the census and the boys. All pretty good posts, if I do say so myself. I expected a big response from the census post, except for Jay, it was totally crickets. [OK, Jane just barely managed to slip in under the wire.]

So, what’s been happening here in the Lou? Anne worked an election on Tuesday. There wasn’t much on the ballot, just one bond issue for a new county courthouse that passed. I am sorry to say that I didn’t even bother to vote, but Anne did. Election officiating is pretty tough work. Anne gets up at four, is there by five and doesn’t return home until after seven. She came home hoarse from talking all day with the other election officials. Anne corrects me on the ballot; there were junior college trustees to select. This assumes you knew who to vote for. Anne further said that one of the trustee races was neck-and-neck. Are there that many informed voters, or is this just an example of statistical averaging, half vote for the first and half vote for the last.

For me, the Prius has been beeping at me. None of the idiot lights come on, so I don’t know why it feels the need to sound off. I brought it by the dealer, for its scheduled checkup. I mentioned the beeps and they could find nothing recorded on the computer. Today, it again beeped at me. I was driving along and it just beeped. As cryptic as it is, at least beeping counts for feedback these days. Chirp!

lorem ipsum

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MAGNAT-DEBON

Miscommunications, garbled conversations, unintelligible blog posts, these are all products of the digital age, or rather its unintentional by-products. Sometimes though, pains are taken to purposely confuse a message and this can lead to unintended consequences. The case of the phrase, “The world wonders”, is a famous example of this.

“The world wonders” was a phrase used as security padding in an encrypted message sent to Admiral Halsey, during WWII. The full message was, “Where is Task Force 34? The world wonders.” The padding words were intended to be without meaning, and were added to hinder Japanese attempts at cryptanalysis, but were mistakenly included in the decoded message handed to Halsey and interpreted by him as a harsh and sarcastic rebuke. Halsey dropped his pursuit of a Japanese carrier task force and turned back.

Growing up, there were various techniques that could be employed to obfuscate the message. If you were old enough, you could hide your meaning from younger siblings, by spelling out the words. This method had a limited shelf life, but on the other hand, it helped to encourage your younger brothers and sisters to learn to spell. Next up was pig Latin.

Ownay oughthay, erethay areway automatedway igpay Atinlay anslatorstray atthay areway availableway orfay eefray onway ethay ebway.

Immigrant parents could wield their native tongue, in front of their Americanized children, but this could also result in the unintended consequence of immersing the children even deeper into American pop culture and there by obtaining an analogous level of unintelligibility. Come to think of it, even native born American parents can suffer from this problem.

Finally, there is the technique of pronouncing the words backwards. I remember doing this with Anne and her cousins. I was Kram and she was Enna. I was never as good at this as Anne was, but I don’t think that she ever held a candle to the above YouTube video girl’s talent.

Sed lacus. Donec lectus. Nullam pretium nibh ut turpis. Nam bibendum. In nulla tortor, elementum vel, tempor at, varius non, purus. Mauris vitae nisl nec metus placerat consectetuer. Donec ipsum. Proin imperdiet est. Phasellus dapibus semper urna. Pellentesque ornare, orci in consectetuer hendrerit, urna elit eleifend nunc, ut consectetuer nisl felis ac diam.

In publishing, lorem ipsum is filler text commonly used to demonstrate the graphics elements, such as font and layout. The lorem ipsum text is typically a section of a Latin text by Cicero with words altered, added and removed that make it nonsensical in meaning and not proper Latin.

I guess that you could say that the underlying theme of this post is talking nonsense. This is what you get, when there is no news to report and I haven’t spun out on to one of my rants. I’ll try to come to my senses by tomorrow, but anyway, the reader should always beware.

Howling at the Wind

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Why do I howl at the wind each night? I didn’t use to do this. I like the occasional notoriety, but as I write these words,I find, it is the writing that I enjoy the most. Is it clarity of thought that the task of writing imparts? Does writing allow me to see my soul writ large? I don’t know. I began this blog on a dare. The blogger lady that kayaks called me out. I hope she does not regret her call, nor feel like the good Doctor Frankenstein, about the monster she has wrought. Back in the day, back before we had Facebook, Twitter and my blog, I spammed. I spammed my friends, because they were the only ones whose email addresses that I had. That was bad. I was bad, but I was committing just an internet misdemeanor.

Why do I howl? I hope that it is that I don’t get it. I know that it is that I can’t sell it. I guess that it is that I like it. OK, enough with this over articulated dialog. Blogging has replaced surfing, transmit over receive. More than that, blogging has caused both Anne and I to grow. I find myself searching every Friday morning’s “Get Out” section of the paper for weekend blogging activities. I think that my blogging has allowed us to grow as a couple. This blog has been a chore. It is a daily vigil. It is one that I welcome on most days and have become experienced enough about it, so that when I need to shun it, I can now deftly do it. This just happens to be one of those evenings.

Writing on the Bathroom Wall

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I’m sitting here, before the keyboard, ready to dispense another self-absorbing cotton ball of a post, and then flick it out, into the blog-o-sphere. Drawn from the plastic, not paper, bag of my life, it is all light, white and fluffy. Dipped in alcohol, it becomes antiseptic and sodden, neither of which, is entertaining.

I crave readers and obsess over the daily hit-count parade. On a good day, the moon and the stars align, and the hits, they just keep-a-coming. Other days, I wonder, if I’d get more readers, by writing on the bathroom wall.

Navel gazing takes many forms. All such gazers are by nature self-absorbed. As a blogger, I sometimes fall prey to this inward turned vision, but is that really a bad thing? I mean, this blog is really all about me, right? I try to make each post entertaining/informative for the reader, but sometimes I don’t have much news, like today. So, informative is out, let’s try being entertaining then.

Navel gazing has as long a history in entertainment as show business itself. Shakespeare farmed the play within the play, most famously in Hamlet. Theater and movies are studded with similar examples. What better theme than a once lost, company of actors banding together to put on the show. So, ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let’s on with the show!

The movie, Julie and Julia, written by Nora Ephron (screenplay) and Julie Powell (book), best captures the blog, as the show within a show. Not so much the Julia Child half, with Meryl Streep, that part is like the musical numbers that are performed throughout the show, as rehearsal numbers, but with command performance perfection. I’m speaking of the Amy Adams’ half, the Julie half, the blogging half of the show. This is where my drama lies.

It starts with Julie Powell’s moment of inspiration, “I could write a blog. I have thoughts.” Then there is the frenetic process of setting up the blog. With most modern blog host, like mine, WordPress, it is just as much fun as shopping. What theme should I choose to decorate with today? I think that I’ll choose this widget and that one over there. Eventually though, you have to start writing. There is no way around it. I went through the inspiration and shopping/setting-up phases and ran straight into the brick wall of writing.

In hindsight, I should have waited before I started this blog. Either that, or taken up a few more dangerous hobbies. Writing this blog, I am mining my life’s experiences at an unsustainable rate. If I was older, or had a few more life shortening pursuits, then maybe before my well ran dry, my obit, of course, published on this blog, might read, he died in his sleep, with a smile on his face, shot in his bed, by a jealous lover. 😉

The joy and anguish of blogging was captured in one moment, in Julie and Julia. I’m speaking of the scene where Julie gets her first comment. She is checking her blog at work; I would never do that. Overjoyed, she tells her co-worker, but then reading the comment, realizes that it is from her mother, who is not supportive and tells Julie so. My family has been supportive, critical at times, but justly so. I have another picture from my brother to show off with this post. I always have my muse at my back, even though I’d be glad to see her take her turn at the keyboard too.

Julie Powell’s blog was scripted from the start, 365 days, and 524 recipes. Her script gave her focus. My blog is about my life, where there is no script, at least none that I have read, just one day at a time. Both halves of Julie and Julia reinforce a core message of persistence. After ten years, Julia finishes her book. Julie spends a year in her kitchen and makes all 524 recipes. Isn’t that what blogging is all about, being there, day after day? I think so. See ya tomorrow!

This post features another photograph from Chris’s camera. This photo reprises two of Chris’s previous pictures of Cannery Row, The Fish Hopper restaurant and a mural, depicting two fishermen coming in with their catch, are combined into one shot. He photographed this as part of Trey Ratcliff’s photo-walk.

I Want You to Write a Theme

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Oh! The theme I’ve been waiting for all my life. Listen to this sentence: “A Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time”. Poetry. Sheer poetry, Ralph! An A+! – Miss Shields reading Ralphie’s theme, in his fantasy, from A Christmas Story.

OK, now it is Wednesday evening and I am still flopping around, still trying to come up with a theme for the next day’s post.  Dan?  Dave?  Chris?  Is there anyone else out there ready to come to my rescue, once again?  Actually, this searching for a blog topic is a theme, but it is also a recurring theme, so I think that I will pass on using it now.  I’m sure it will be there again, if I ever need it and certainly if I don’t want it.  I have an idea for another movie post and another photography post, but it feels too soon to use either of them and more importantly looks like too much work for tonight.  Instead, I think that I will go for one of those stream of consciousness posts, no central theme, just a little of this and of that and hopefully enough of something worth reading.

Wednesday was a pretty good day, at least for me.  Anne stayed home with a cold though.  See what comes from hanging around with those runny nosed guttersnipes?   I have an interesting project to work on this month.  I wish that I could bore you to tears with my telling of it, but I can’t, so you are safe.

NPR is now holding the sixth edition of its 3-minute-fiction writing contest.  I have entered two of the previous editions.  Entries for this round must have a character that tells a joke, a character that laughs and a character that cries.  My muse had an idea or at least a joke that filled the bill, but it is a bit lewd … 😳

A man walks into a bar.  He and the bartender get to talking and the bartender explains to the man that he has a horse, but the horse is really depressed. The man says, “For a free beer, I can make your horse laugh”.  The bartender says, “You’re on!” and the man goes over to the horse and whispers into its ear.  The horse laughs.  The bartender congratulates the man and gladly serves him a beer, but even after the man has finished his beer, the horse is still laughing and it is starting to get annoying.  At this point the bartender offers the man another beer, if he can make the horse stop laughing.  The man says, “I can do even better than that, for two beers, I can make your horse cry.”  The bartender agrees.  The man goes over to the horse again and the horse immediately bursts into tears.  Mystified, the bartender asks the man, “How did you do that?”  The man explains, “The first time I spoke to your horse, I told him that my member was larger than his.  He didn’t believe me and laughed.  Second time, I showed him I was telling the truth.”

Needless to say, with this story rolling around in my brain, there is no room for anything that might actually be entered in the contest.  I could try polling my muse again, but she is rather incapacitated.  Maybe I should have stuck with the searching for a blog post theme after all.  Sort of a theme within a theme idea, always an old saw in the theater, movies and now even blogging.

My above mental request for help, was answered and in just the nick of time.  Chris sent me this evening picture of Monterey’s Cannery Row.  Back in John Steinbeck’s day, Cannery Row smelled of fish canning factories.  Nowadays, it is a tourist attraction.  It also happens to be the neighborhood that Chris’ new, high-tech employer has set up his shop.  Not too shabby an area to work in now.  I’m guessing that he shot this picture before work, because there are no tourists on the sidewalks yet.  Am I right, Chris?  Enjoy, everyone!