Wholly inappropriate and f-ed up books I read as an impressionable youth.
First up is “Flowers in the Attic”
Feel free to join in. I just ordered my copy. It should arrive Monday.
Author Archive
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New Book Club
November 12, 2009 by EDubya
Category Day to Day, That Was Then | Tags: | 5 Comments
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Aim High Coconut Monkey
November 11, 2009 by EDubya
There was a bar adjacent to my grandparent’s family room. It had two tall stools in front of it that held great peril in that irresistible siren song of climbable household peaks. There is something about an unsteady and unstable piece of furniture that calls to children and compels them to risk life and limb and possibly blood blisters on their baby lips in order to conquer them. I was powerless against the stools.
I didn’t dare go near them when my grandfather was home. He was an imposing figure. I don’t remember him ever not being bald, and he had a ruddy complexion that gave away his father’s origins in Boyle, Ireland. He would stand behind that bar and smoke his pipe, wafting distinctly fruity smoke throughout the house. Leaning with his wire rimmed glasses three quarters down the bridge of his nose, he read the paper and surveyed the family with keenly critical eyes. The gaze was unparalleled in its judgment and ruthlessness.
When he was out, I haunted those stools. I perched myself, and greedily took in the contents of that bar, knowing that my time for study came sparingly. On the right wall were several shelves holding cocktail glasses, Guinness coasters boasting our family name, and a brown monkey with ivory white teeth that was carved out of a coconut. I felt terrible urgency to hold that monkey. Always, but always, on top of that bar was a matchbook with the words “Aim High – Air Force” printed on the outside. He must have had hundreds of those matchbooks. Aim High.
I grew up knowing that my grandfather had retired from the military and was working his second career at Lockheed. Later, when I knew what the military actually was, I found out he had served in the Air Force. Still later, I was told he served in the Army Air Corps in WW2 and had been stationed on Saipan. He was a navigator. He didn’t readily speak of his time during the war, but as he got older, Parkinson’s disease weakened his defenses, and he became less steadfast in his intimidation and more forthcoming with details. Sometimes he talked about how terrified he had been heading out on missions. He would sit and munch on peanuts to distract himself and when the flak would get really thick, he would forget to swallow them. That visual always stuck with me.
Long after he died, I was researching my family history and came across a source for military personnel records and his name was listed. I sent away for the file and made another discovery about my grandfather. Reading through the paperwork, I learned that he had actually trained as a pilot, before becoming a navigator. It turns out he had a mishap and crashed a plane on landing. The photo showed some nose damage, but not much. It was because of this incident that he was drummed out of pilot training, not for the damage from the crash, but because he got out of the plane and proceeded to kick the shit out of it with that same temper I got to know forty years later as he leaned on that bar in his family room.
**from the archives. (Happy Veteran’s Day!)Category That Was Then | Tags: | 1 Comment
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Yeah, that’s a good place to lay.
November 10, 2009 by EDubya
Category Day to Day | Tags: | No Comments
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Wishbook, How I Miss Thee
November 9, 2009 by EDubya
I’ve always felt that I had about the best timing for a birthday possible. Mine is in June, which means that growing up, I never went more than six months without a crapload of presents. From the parental perspective this is a pretty sweet deal as well. You have six months to think up good present ideas inbetween festivities. Two of my own monsters are not so lucky. We’ve got one birthday right before Thanksgiving and another right after Christmas. That’s a long dry spell. More importantly (because it is *my* problem) that is a lot of pressure to come up with good ideas all at once.
bah.
These kids also have a pretty big family, so ideas must also be provided to aunts and uncles. I’m just not very good at ideas. That’s a lie. I’m pretty good with ideas, but I’m GREEDY as all get out with them. I want to be the one giving them the awesome present that will define their childhood, like my growing up skipper doll or my white plastic record player.
You know how I managed to acquire those two magnificent gifts? The Sears Wishbook. I basically used it as my own personal shopping list. I just circled what I wanted, and sometimes it would magically appear. What I didn’t realize at the time, was that this was probably as good a deal for my folks as it was for me. They never had any question what I wanted. It was right there. Circled. Multiple times. In pen. With a big “E” next to it. By the way, some benevolent soul on Flickr has managed to scan several Sears Wishbooks of that era in their entirety. If you are so inclined, you really should check them out. It is such an outstanding trip down memory lane. Here’s 1977, 1979, 1980, but he’s got tons more.
There is no equivalent now for the Sears Wishbook. We get tons of catalogs, sure, but they just aren’t of the same weight. Anyway, on Sunday I had this idea that I would take the kids to Toys R Us, and bring a notepad and we would walk around doing basic recon on what kinds of things they might like for Christmas. No surprise, they were totally into it. I ended up with some really good ideas, written in pencil, in my own little wishbook.
Category Day to Day, That Was Then | Tags: holidays,kids | 3 Comments
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Saturday Art Show
November 8, 2009 by EDubya
Much time was spent Saturday morning drawing an assortment of monsters for the art show in our kitchen. Along with the monsters, there was a variety of sculptures made from brightly colored hexagonal wood, which I believe was a past Christmas present that never saw the light of day after opening.
As in all good galleries, there was an expectation of some level of decorum.
After the two ticket holders were allowed entry, a couple new rules were added.
The new caveats: “No Excessive Laughing” and “No Photos”.
Category Day to Day | Tags: | No Comments
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Innovators Stand Up and Be Counted
November 7, 2009 by EDubya
Remember when the Tech Museum of Innovation opened in downtown San Jose, and it was SO VERY COOL and a huge destination when you had friends in town? That was a little over ten years ago. Sadly, we all know that ten years might as well be 100 years in software. Sometime in the last ten years The Tech has become crazy dated, and nowhere near as “innovative” as it’s moniker would have you believe.
Some of the exhibits are still pretty cool. The earthquake simulator is a good example of that. The robot deal that spells your name out of wooden blocks…very cool. In fact, many of the more mechanical exhibits are definitely worth seeing and playing with.
But…
What the hell has happened as far as keeping current with the software exhibits? Nevermind the seemingly high percentage of these things that just. don’t. work. (hardware failures, crashes and reboots on WINDOWS 98, I might add) The things that *do* work are often hopelessly out of date. Particularly glaring is one exhibit where visitors can make their own personalized web page, with a few customizations in the colors and backgrounds, sort of like a rudimentary blog. They can even put their photo on it, snapped by an attached webcam. They can use a bar code scanner to load in the exhibits they have already visited, and then give a little summary of their experience about each of them. That sounds pretty good, right?
EXCEPT THE WEB PAGE YOU PRODUCE IS STRAIGHT OUT OF GEOCITIES CIRCA 1998.
It’s bad, friends. Really bad. Is this really representative of innovation? HERE?? We are smack dab in the middle of Silicon Valley. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a web developer and *THAT* is the personalized web page we are showing off at the Tech Museum of Innovation? WHAT KIND OF MIXED UP WORLD ARE WE LIVING IN???? I’m sure it was great when they launched it, but come on…there are a bazillion free websites where kids can set up a personalized page about a million times snappier than these with about four mouse clicks…maybe using only their FEET.
How about the spam whack-a-mole machine? Did we pick that one up at a Chuck-E-Cheese that went out of business? Why not an exhibit where kids have to design their own filter and then have hundreds and then thousands of pretend words hammer at it, complete with L33T spelling variations to demonstrate the vigilance required, and how easily a system can be totally swamped with spam? Let kids try to keep up adding new variations to their filter. It would be so much more interactive, so much more realistic, and most importantly, NOT OF THE STONE AGE. Kids are not stupid. Remember that the kids playing with this stuff probably have email addresses of their own. They’ve likely been on computers or online since they were toddlers in one way or another. Give them more value.
Let’s talk about the roller coaster build simulator. It’s pretty simplistic, but the kids dig it because after they build their own roller coaster, they can take their little barcode over and sit down in what is essentially a hard bench in front of a large tv and “ride” their roller coaster. Great! Except for the part where IT DOESN’T WORK. Two of the kids spent fifteen minutes building their coaster, and tweaking their designs only to walk over, stick their barcode in the reader and be told there was no file found. Total. Letdown.
You know what *is* neat though? The big software driven marble labyrinth where you tilt a large flat computer screen from four sides to move the marble through the maze. Oh wait…that didn’t work either. The marble was stuck in one corner.
These place needs a total reboot. Apple? Google? Ebay? Everyone? All you folks here in the valley that pave the way for the rest of the world, how can you guys let this place represent the valley in which we all live and WORK?? This is totally embarrassing. I am calling on you to get your marketing people down to The Tech and see what you can sponsor. If we want to let the museum continue to morph into a glorified lobby for the IMAX theater, great, but it’s ridiculous and sad that with all the real innovation in the valley, THIS is what we are presenting to the rest of the world.
We can do better. To quote @aaronh , “There isn’t a single thing here more impressive than the free apps on my iPhone.” He couldn’t be more right.
I don’t want to abandon this place, but I can’t abide membership renewal if this is the way it stays.
Category Day to Day, Tech | Tags: kids,rant,San Jose,Tech | No Comments
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And then Sometime Around 1945
November 6, 2009 by EDubya
Category That Was Then | Tags: | No Comments
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A Different Small, Medium and Large.
November 5, 2009 by EDubya
Grandma Jane, Aunt Ginny and Uncle Bill circa 1928
Category That Was Then | Tags: | No Comments
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Wisconsin is for Lumber
November 4, 2009 by EDubya
So while Medium and I were working on that project about our family together, I was spending copious amounts of time online trying to get myself back up to speed on the research I’d done years ago. There was, of course, more information easily accessed now than there had been when last I dug in. Among the yearbook photos, newspaper clippings, google street view of our family’s old houses, I found this on EBay.
My great great grandfather started that lumber company. I bid on it, and I bought it.
That was pretty great in and of itself, but as much as it meant to me to get my hands on this tangible artifact, this physical bridge to my long gone family, it wasn’t the best part.
When I won the auction, I paid for the apron and I included a note to the seller to tell them how excited we were to get it because the lumber company had belonged to our family. I’ve got no idea how old the apron is, but it’s old enough that the phone number on it only has four digits.
She replied with:
That’s awesome! I was selling it for my friend’s father so I’ll let him know. He and his wife are in their eighties and just moved out of their house of 50+ years into a retirement community. You could imagine the stuff that they had saved all those years. Sadly, a lot of it ended up going into a dumpster, but some items he just wanted to get into the hands of their rightful owners. So…I’m helping him.
Thanks so much for letting me know. You’ll be sure to put a smile on a nice old man’s face :)
That last bit at the end? That was the best part.
Category Day to Day, That Was Then | Tags: | 2 Comments
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Some People Call Me the Space Cowboy.
November 3, 2009 by EDubya
Some people call her “that poor cat”.She really didn’t mind. Much.
She wore it for a couple minutes. Tops.
Category Day to Day | Tags: | No Comments
