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I was watching VH1’s Top Twenty Video Countdown this morning and saw Pink’s video for the song “Sober.” I’ve always rather enjoyed Pink’s work. Her songs have a distinctive edge and the woman herself has style and moxie. She seems to be the sort of woman that could beat the crap out of any man who would dare to give her shit.
Why I didn’t see this Frankensteining the Talent Pool combination before, I just don’t know, but it would be fascinating to watch Pink and Trent Reznor work together. Like Pink, Reznor also looks like he’s willing to successfully end any fight he might get into.
It isn’t just the personal attitudes exuded by Pink and Reznor that make me think they might make a good team. The subjects of their angst-ridden songs share similarities, plus they have both exhibited a sense of humor within the realm of their creative work.
Yep, the more Pink videos I see, the more I think this could work. That, or she’d take Reznor to the mat and give him a serious noogie.
The big news in central Minnesota today is the snow. On Twitter, Minnesotans have been calling this event #snowmageddon. Yes, that describes it well. When I woke up this morning and peeked out my window around 7:30, the snow was falling, but not heavily – hardly any accumulation.
By the time I went out to start the car, I had a bunch to dust off and when I was done, I had more to dust off. When I arrived at work, it was time to shovel. We have a long, large sidewalk to clear. It took me 40 minutes to get rid of 2 inches worth of accumulation and by the time I was done, you guessed it, I had to shovel again.
School closed early, so the kids were home just after noon. Our director told us to close the museum at noon, too, so I was home by 1 p.m. Happily, I discovered our children had already shoveled the walk, so I didn’t have to.
Meanwhile, Hubby had to deal with a dead car. It died, literally stopped while he was driving, when he got to the city where his college is located. He put the car in neutral and turned it off the main road. Then he called me at work (I had just gotten in) and together we formulated a plan. He had me look up a bunch of phone numbers so he could let the local police department know he was in a 90 minute zone, call his professor to say he wouldn’t be in class, and call a garage to deal with the repair.
Six hours worth of waiting, plus $870 for a tow and distributor assembly, and he was finally on his way and none too pleased about how his day had gone. He had signed up to volunteer at the local food shelf this evening, and even though he was exhausted by the day’s events, he went to fulfill his duty. He got to come home early because #snowmageddon kept people from venturing out to use the food shelf’s services.
Spring is sounding real good about now.
I’ve been thinking about parenting lately, considering what makes a good parent versus what makes a lousy parent. I like to think that Hubby and I are good parents, but we aren’t the best people to ask about that. The ones who really know are our children, and even they won’t be the best judges of that until they are older and looking back. Right now, with our children being in their teen years, we’re just dorky and embarrassing and we’re fine with that.
We have long had a parental philosophy that states the objective we are trying to meet with our children. That philosophy: We want to raise our children to become independent adults who contribute to society.
I don’t know if other parents have this sort of philosophy, or, if they do have some sort of objective, whether they’ve ever tried to articulate it. I only know that having articulated our philosophy, our parenting flows directly from that.
If our objective is to raise independent adults, then we want our children to have the ability to make their own decisions and question authority, even our authority. That means they are allowed to disagree with us. They have to do it respectfully, which is part of showing them how to be contributing members of society, but we welcome any disagreements they have with us because it shows that they are capable of independent thought.
Our philosophy also leads us to believe that our children get to decide the direction of their lives, not us. We won’t be insisting they become doctors or dental hygenists or museum curators, even though pushing unwilling children into a family profession is considered acceptable by plenty of parents. I have to wonder what parental philosophy (stated or unstated) is behind this forcing of occupation. Is it that children are property and parents, as property owners, demand total control and obedience?
Another natural outgrowth of our philosophy is that independent adults have to take responsibility for their actions. If they do something dumb, they have to take the consequences, whatever they might be. Of course, if they are to be contributing members of society, it’s very clear that we won’t abide by them undertaking some criminal activity (political protests not included, of course). We have often told our children that if they are caught doing something illegal and they’re found guilty, we’ll still love them, but we’ll be visiting them in jail.
We’re not against using other people’s behavior as an example in getting across our parental philosophy to our children. One time, as I was driving my kids, then of elementary school age, to school, we saw some kids throwing rocks at a stop sign. I was furious with the behavior and immediately lectured my children, telling them that I never wanted to hear of them doing such a thing. I specifically told them that we, as tax payers, had helped pay for that sign and that defacing the sign meant that these kids didn’t understand who had paid for it or what the costs were to replace it. I don’t think young children typically get tax lectures, do they?
Obviously, if we were willing to give our children tax lectures when they were in elementary school, that means we believe they are capable of understanding complex issues (with explanations appropriate to age level, naturally). This is a direct outgrowth of our philosophy. If we treat them as though they can understand particular adult issues, then when they become adults, they will have a greater knowledge base to draw upon, which will help them to be independent.
If you are a parent, do you have a parental philosophy or certain objectives you are trying to reach in raising your children? If you don’t have children, but you would like to some day, or if you work with children, what sort of parental philosophy would you adopt?
Queen is one of those all-around stellar rock groups whose music stands up nicely to the test of time. Such stylistic range, such tight compositions, such showmanship and harmonic voices. Really, there isn’t a bad word I can say about this band. I do, however, regret that Freddy Mercury’s life was cut short. Dang! That’s a loss that left a Grand Canyon-sized hole in the music scene and society.
I was listening to Queen yesterday and their song Radio Ga Ga cycled through on my iPod. As the lyrics reached my consciousness, particularly this section …
Let’s hope you never leave old friend
Like all good things on you we depend
So stick around ‘cos we might miss you
When we grow tired of all this visual
You had your time – you had the power
You’ve yet to have your finest hour
Radio – radio
… I couldn’t help but wonder what Freddy would think of the internet and YouTube and MySpace and the release of music for free. Would he continue to pine for the days of radio, or would he embrace the new?
I like to think he’d have gotten a kick out of all of the hoopla, that he’d have enjoyed the zany menagerie of apps and the ability of fans and musicians to have direct contact with each other. Maybe he would have taken up tweeting. Of course, if Freddy were tweeting, he’d be giving Stephen Fry a run for his money in the followers department.
I was all set to upload my Greenville book to Cafe Press this morning, but I ran into another glitch. When I attempted to load the pdf document of the book pages, the Book Preview screen wouldn’t give me a view of the pages. Instead, I got a 404 – File not found server error. Major bummer. And the silly thing is that I had already uploaded my book file and was able to preview it this morning, but I found an error (horrors!) on one of the pages, so I had to delete that file, fix things, and upload again, wherein I ran into this error.
I looked for an answer on Cafe Press, but couldn’t find one, so dialed them up. I have to say, whenever I’ve had to call Cafe Press, I’ve been met with gloriously helpful and friendly people. The lady I talked to this morning, Rebecca, took a look at my problem and suggested I send the pdf to Cafe Press and they would see if they could upload it or figure out the problem. At this point, it’s a waiting game. An impatient waiting game! I’m chomping at the book to get Greenville available.
At least I was able to design the spine of the book this morning, so that’s something.
The Hubby, kids and I are continual watchers of the Discovery Channel, so much so that we have seen certain reruns several times. A couple of our favorite shows are all about wilderness survival: Man vs. Wild with Bear Grylls and Survivorman with Les Stroud. The point of both shows is similar. The grizzled gentlemen go to some inhospitable place and show viewers how to survive using what can be found on the land. The big difference between the shows is that Bear Grylls goes with a camera crew, whereas Les Stroud heads out for a week without a camera crew, which means he has to set up each camera shot himself.
I got to thinking, wouldn’t it be interesting to put the two guys together Frankensteining the Talent Pool style and see what happens? Les could really teach Bear something about hauling camera equipment and the tedium of retracing his steps in order to take a shot and then retrieve the camera. Bear could show Les how to eat what’s in bear shit.
Would these guys get along, or drive each other batty?
When it comes to fiction writing, I’m getting out of practice. I haven’t written any substantial fiction since I finished Greenville last May/June. I’ve started several stories, but haven’t completed them. When I pick them up and reread them, I feel as though I’ve lost the emotional impetus that got me going on them.
This is the trouble with attempting to self-publish. There’s all this stuff – layout, editing, cover design, ordering ISBNs, website design, etc. – that takes time away from fiction writing. It’s why writers like to find literary agents and publishers – so they can continue to write while all of this other stuff is happening with their books.
The benefit of self-publishing is that I got to learn all of this stuff first-hand, plus I maintained complete creative control over the product. That’s nothing to sneeze at, however, it still leaves me with the dilemma of how to get myself back into writing fiction.
… Wait for it ….
The inspiration for this post came from my husband, who adopted digital technology a few short years ago under duress. He regularly sputters and spurts about these confounded contraptions (computers, mp3 players, printers, what have you), even though he can maneuver his way around several of them quite handily.
For him, there are several points of contention. He has a very logical brain, but has discovered that often, the way websites or applications are designed is highly illogical. Remember how you have to push the “Start” button on Windows XP in order to stop/shut down the computer? That kind of illogical, which he finds all over the place online.
Another issue is the lack of standardization between websites, apps and file formats. Why is the log-in/log-out link not in the same place, or at least really obvious from website to the next? On one shopping site I use, I can easily find the log-in, but logging out meant having to follow some obscure link that it made no sense to follow.
When it comes to music, this lack of standardization is readily apparent between iTunes/iPod and everything else. Obviously, this lack of standardization is all about keeping proprietary control over products. In retaliation, some music download sites, like SpiralFrog, don’t work with the iPod. To this, Hubby says, “Remember how you could put a CD is ANY CD player and hit play and the thing would play?”
A further issue is language. The digital realm is full of obscure language that leaves mere mortals scratching their heads. “Ur so pwned, u stoopid N00b!” Even when not slipping into geek-speak, language usage for attempting certain actions can be puzzling. Hubby was trying to copy new music downloads from his computer to his mp3 player and kept having to deal with “syncing,” which, if you’re used to mp3 players, IS copying music from one device to another, but why is it called “syncing?” Why a fancy term when the easier one still works?
But perhaps the biggest frustration Hubby has with technology is how it keeps changing. That, actually, is my biggest frustration with it too. Just as you’re getting into the groove of a new application, someone gets the bright idea to redesign it and you’re in learning mode all over again.
According to the article “The New Reality: Constant Disruption” on Harvard Business Publishing, when there was a large technological advance in the past, say, the automobile, there was a flurry of innovation when the advance was first made, but over time, the innovation settled down enough so that society and business could assimilate the advance. This has not been the case with digital technology. The change has been continual and unrelenting, forcing all of us to hang on for dear life in order to keep up.
What this means is that we never get a chance to really learn how to use all the features of the tech we adopt. Which means we can’t ever get comfortable enough with technology in order to learn how to push it for our own creative ideas or productivity. Which means many of us are stuck in a perpetual state of sputtering and spurting.
Trent Reznor has written a farewell letter of sorts at nin.com. In it, he discusses how Nine Inch Nails is going on a tour with Jane’s Addiction and then it will be “time to make NIN disappear for a while.”
In discussing his respect for Jane’s Addiction, Reznor had this to say: “Fast forward to the present. Corporate rock STILL sucks. A friend tells me they saw the original Jane’s lineup play a tiny show in LA that was unbelievable. I break out my Jane’s records and am amazed by how vital they sound. These guys were the real deal and in this current climate mostly dominated by poseurs and pussies it was refreshing to hear something that sounded dangerous, volatile, beautiful and SINCERE.”
What makes the “Corporate rock STILL sucks, poseurs and pussies” parts of this statement highly ironic is that Reznor has been hanging out in the same studio as Britney Spears. You can’t find many musicians as mauled and molded by corporate rock as Spears, yet Reznor is reported to have said the experience has been a “treat.” So, then, who exactly are the “poseurs and pussies” Reznor is referring to?
Puzzling.
