Category Archives: Mundane

Unrevised Fragments of a Day Lived on Four Hours’ Sleep

September 13, 2012 By in Comics/Lit, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

1. Last night’s entry took twice as long to construct in print as it should have, even though it was two-thirds written in my head before I sat down. I hate when that happens, even if I’m satisfied with the results.

2. When I have to be at work supernaturally early to compensate for a late afternoon appointment, next time I need to remember to go to bed earlier. Such responsibilities means less time for evening writing, not more.

3. My average for the last decade-plus has been six hours’ sleep per night. I don’t recommend it, but my body complains and groans in those rare evenings when I try to exceed seven.

4. I failed to mention 9/11/2012 also marked my twelfth anniversary with my current employer. I’m certain I’ll never forget my start date or my first anniversary there.

5. The only thing I like about driving to work supernaturally early is the sparse traffic. All straightaways and no logjams make me a happy driver.

6. Jerk turkey is no substitute for jerk chicken. For want of mayo, my food-truck lunch was less remarkable than I’d hoped.

7. My son does not approve of dental hygienists who stab at his gums without mercy.

8. Part of tonight was spent on a surprise visit to the vet. Our dog Lucky tore a rear paw-nail and left cute but revolting bloody prints in several different places. His poor, injured paw is now swathed in a blue bandage that covered an inner gauze bandage. His blue bandage remains firmly in place at the moment, but somehow he yanked the gauze out from inside it with his teeth, like a little Dog Henning.

9. My son and I aren’t finding Super Paper Mario nearly as charming as Paper Mario: the Thousand-Year Door was, though the former’s version of the Pit of 100 Trials was a more refreshing challenge. After completing all 100 levels, your prize is a magical sprite that allows Mario and friends to run faster than normal. In all other Mario games we’ve played, super-speed was one of Mario’s first abilities he has in the game, not one of the last.

10. I’m sad that Kieron Gillen’s epic Journey into Mystery run will be concluding, but the final arc/crossover “Everything Burns” is full of action, shocking surprises, and characters making disappointing decisions that I wish they’d reconsider, even though they’re thoroughly logical given the course of events. I’m already preparing for the days when I’ll have to live with fewer misadventures of Kid Loki, his frenemy Leah, his bird-half Ikol, and his lovable homicidal fire-breathing hound Thori, but the team is certainly going down in flames in style. It’s scary seeing Kid Loki slowly beginning to grow back into his previous, less awkward, far less innocent self.

11. So far Harbinger remains the best of the Valiant relaunch, though the sanguinary madhouse that is Bloodshot isn’t too distant a runner-up.

12. The only news story that caught my attention today was about Pat Robertson cracking anti-Muslim jokes in much the same way that my third-grade classmates would crack “Polack” jokes back in 1980. Our family doesn’t watch The 700 Club, but we attended an episode taping during our 2008 road trip to Virginia Beach. The show’s host Terry Meeuwsen was gracious and amiable, but Robertson kept his distance from the studio audience, all eight of us. It’s sad to see the distancing continue.

13. Even when I’m only half-conscious, apparently I can still write lists.

Waiting Patiently for My Annual Day of Stillness to End

September 12, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , 2 Comments

My mom’s generation had “Where were you when Kennedy was shot?” My generation has “Where were you on 9/11?” Since this blog wasn’t around last year at this time, restating my own anecdote for the record — probably just this once — might be prudent.

That day, I was at work sorting daily reports when someone cranked the volume on our quiet morning up to 12. Three hours into my shift, we were all panic and no work. This, plus the fact that I work in one of the tallest buildings in the city, was reason enough for our superiors to let us take the rest of the day off, just in case every American building over ten stories tall had been targeted for destruction. Fortunately nothing happened during the next hour that I spent gridlocked in the employee parking lot, waiting my turn to head for the hills.

Once I escaped and finally arrived home, I turned on the TV news, of which I normally watch an average of thirty minutes per year. With the TV feed kept on in the background to provide a steady stream of information, misinformation, endless speculation, live interviews with the shell-shocked, and endless repeats of all of the above, I served in the best way I possibly could at that particular moment: I spent the entire rest of the day and all of the evening online, talking to anyone who needed someone to talk to, sifting for incoming details faster than TV reporters could communicate them, and monitoring the myriad reactions at the geek message board for which I was a volunteer moderator at the time. As crowd-control jobs go, Internet moderating is less about physical stress, far more about emotional stress during times of unprecedented national trauma. Whether the members needed comfort, sought to make sense of anything, wanted to share updates as they occurred, felt like practicing their rhetorical bluster, or thought this was the perfect time for inappropriate jokes (way, way too soon — thank you so much, insensitive cool-kids), I stuck around to do my part as needed, however minuscule it was in the Grand Scheme.

While others suffered, while still others rose above to do their part in response, I was at home joining and sorting the chorus of those whose first response was to register their horror on the Internet for all to see. Hours passed while I kept waiting for a few moments of calm that might allow me to excuse myself from the fray, long after fatigue set in. The existing records confirm I was online till well after midnight. I broke a personal record for simultaneous IM chats, having carried on six such conversations at one time while still tending to the board. That was my day. Poor, put-upon, still-breathing me, having to type and type and type for the sake of others while buildings crumbled and societal paradigms quaked.

Every 9/11 since then, I’ve spent doing the opposite of that.

Every 9/11, I keep my online communications to a bare minimum. No grand pronouncements, no attempts at punditry, no prolonged conversations, no PhotoShop tributes, and very few laughs. A combination of throwing myself into my work, spending time with loved ones, consoling my coworker whose birthday is 9/11, and offline prayer is usually activity enough to hold me until the clock rolls over to 9/12, the anniversary of not much in particular.

It’s my way of deferring to those who treat the day with utmost, outspoken reverence. It’s my way of avoiding those who tire of the reverence and insist on bleating about their impatience. It’s my way of observing the truth to be had in Psalm 37:7.

It’s also my way of commemorating the Way Things Used to Be, noting The Way Things Have Been Ever Since, and dearly wishing they were the opposite of that.

Missing Blog Post Vexes, Frustrates, Makes Eventual “Complete Works” Anthology Impossible

September 11, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , 3 Comments

I’m fanatical when it comes to keeping my littler possessions organized so I lose as few things as possible. I’m well aware my memory and concentration skills aren’t improving with age, despite how much I wish the opposite were true. If everything I own is filed and placed according to a system, then — theoretically — when those memory lapses happen, my system should direct me to where the lost object should be, if I’m on top of my filing.

I have one assigned pile for bills; one stack of Post-It notes scribbled with either to-do-lists or writing ideas that occurred to me at work; one area under the monitor for filled pocket notebooks; one assigned organizer slot for the pens I prefer to carry with me; a separate dumping drawer for pens that don’t fit the criteria; and one assigned organizer slot for my wallet, keys, and absolutely nothing else (any items carelessly dumped in this slot are immediately removed and strewn on the counter). My computer directories are set up in similar fashion, even if they make sense to no one else except me. When I want to locate something, the card catalog that I’ve turned our house into can simplify the process and lighten the mental burden.

When I lose things anyway, I try to remain calm. Misfiling can occur, regardless of safeguards. Tantrums will not summon lost items from their hiding places or their kidnapper hideouts, whichever the case may be. Most lost objects turn up sooner or later. Sooner would be better, but isn’t always possible. To a certain extent, computers are usually easier to manage than physical reality because they’re equipped with search functions that can reveal files that have been misplaced or saved in the wrong folder. I’ve spent the past few days looking around the room for a Search field in which I can type “Lowes receipt from last week” in hopes of locating a little slip of paper that I know is here somewhere, which I need to return some unnecessary, overpriced grass seed. No such luck — whatever construction company cobbled together this non-futuristic hovel of ours totally failed to install a search engine for the occasion. A wider, more thorough manual search may be necessary, but may be fruitless and really boring to conduct, so I’m continuing to procrastinate the manhunt for now.

Unfortunately some losses are beyond our control and must be accepted, whether memory is at fault or not. I’m trying very hard to focus on that right now because I was reviewing my past blog entries the other day, all the way back to Day One when it was just me and my muse hanging out together, and discovered that one of my early posts has vanished. I only recall deleting a post once (#46, according to my stats page), but I immediately reposted it a few minutes later once the issue that was aggravating me had been resolved. This, on the other hand, was not an intentional deletion on my part. This was either random computer error or an evil act of sabotage. I’m guessing the former, but I have no evidence to disprove the latter, except for the complete lack of tampering with anything else (which is circumstantial at best, and still leaves the door open for far-fetched conspiracy theories).

Through the miracle of Google Cache, I was able to retrieve a fraction of the purloined post:

Avengermania Fuels Nostalgia for Early Whedon Works Like “Cabin in the Woods”
Posted on May 6, 2012

After waiting an eternity’s worth of hours after opening day, I finally saw Marvel’s Joss Whedon’s The Avengers. At last I can rejoin the Internet, already in progress. By and large, I was a happy camper through most of the

That’s all that remains of the body of the victim. I have no idea when or how its silent elimination occurred.

Through additional searches I can tell the original tags included “movies”, “The Avengers”, “Avengermania”, “Joss Whedon”, “ancient gods”, and “Primeval Part 2”. From memory I can testify that it was a spoiler-filled, mixed-feelings piece about my issues with Cabin in the Woods, including a special appearance by Bat-Hulk to serve as a spoiler buffer. Thus does the forensic trail abruptly end.

I’m 75% certain it wasn’t the greatest post I’ve ever written. It was born in the very, very early days of MCC, when my daily traffic was still in the single digits, therefore likely to have drawn no ire or aroused any attention from other humans. Nevertheless, its absence is driving me batty. A few jokes I barely remember have all gone to waste, and I may never know why. Random computer error seems a more likely culprit than malice aforethought, but it’s no more comforting, and doesn’t even afford me the option to plot revenge against something or someone (or at least daydream about said plotting). Then again, I’m not sure the annoyance of such a trivial loss would fade any faster if I had a confirmed target to blame, so perhaps it’s just as well.

I’ll let it go in another day or so, but for now it remains a disappointment. If I never find that Lowes receipt, at least that unwanted grass seed can be returned for store credit. If I never find the rest of that lost Cabin review, my only recourse for recovery would be to watch the movie a second time and recreate it from scratch.

I’ve managed to retain the happy memory of Fran Kranz in action, but I’d rather let the rest go, including my own lost efforts.

How Not to Drop Out of College Twice

September 6, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 13 Comments

Like anyone with a working Internet connection, from time to time I find myself completing online surveys about various companies or products, whether for fun, for freebies, or in hopes that the survey will include an essay question that you can use as a soapbox to unleash a thousand-word tirade about the last time their services ticked you off and ruined your day. “That’ll show ’em!” you think to yourself as your carefully crafted vitriol is forwarded to the survey company and assimilated into the results database containing hundreds of thousands of other surveys, someday to be skimmed by a distracted HR rep who might raise an eyebrow at your poison-pen screed, if you’re lucky.

Every such survey has the obligatory section whose questions are designed for demographic pigeonholing of your results. I don’t mind revealing my ever-advancing age, blissful marital status, or complete lack of Hispanic bloodline. My least favorite question is always, “What is the highest level of education you have completed?” It sounds simple and uncomplicated, especially if you earned a degree. Sometimes I wonder if those who attended graduate school and/or who hold multiple degrees receive a little bonus from the survey company in return, to thank them for bolstering the results with certified demographic classiness.

Mine is the humble ignominy that requires me to check “Some college”. It’s always a multiple-choice question, never a write-in field, so you can’t fall back on the standard glib answers such as “school of hard knocks” or “school of life”, joke answers such as “Rock ‘n’ Roll High School” or “Hogwarts”, or even obscure answers such as “School of Fish”, in hopes that someone in the survey company will agree how cool a song “3 Strange Days” was. Every time I spot the bland, undecorated phrase “Some college” on a survey, I wince for a second and have to shake off the reminder of a young adulthood that wandered astray.

Continue reading →

The Day an Empty Chair Ruled the Internet

September 1, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , , , , , 62 Comments

Empty Obama Chair, Clint Eastwood's arch-enemyBehold the face of America’s newest sensation. LOLcats, Kardashians, and the horrors of something calling itself “Honey Boo Boo” all took a back seat to the poor, defenseless chair that withstood a tongue-lashing from Academy Award Winner Clint Eastwood at the closing of the Republican National Convention, which in turn drew an awful lot of press to cover any number of foregone conclusions.

I refuse to watch the video on principle — the principle being, partisan politics don’t interest me. This keeps me shut out of a lot of online discussions and ensures no one will ever pay me a steady income to become a TV pundit. I’m fine with that, but it usually means I have to go slink off into a dark corner and find ways to entertain myself until politics go away.

My admittedly secondhand understanding of the situation, then, is that the 82-year-old director was invited to close the ceremony with no small amount of star power, somehow mistook the chair for President Barack Obama, and attempted to bully it until it cried. I’ve yet to confirm if anyone involved in the incident referred this peculiar condition to Dr. Oliver Sacks.

Maybe this merciless haranguing was the most hilarious improv set of the year. Maybe it was an unmitigated disaster, like the time Anne Hathaway and James Franco hosted the Oscars. Maybe I’ve misread and Obama was actually standing off-camera on the other side of the chair, or had been shrunk with Pym particles and was resting comfortably under the chair. All I know for sure is that this spirited but one-sided argument took over my Twitter feed Thursday night and effectively shut down all other topics and memes. On Facebook, the empty chair emerged from its humble beginnings in Nowheresville and became the talk of the town, superseding the usual daily barrage of Photoshop yuks and Zynga proclamations. This week, NASA launched a rocket bearing twin probes to study the Van Allen radiation belts (the real story here being: believe it or not, NASA is still in the launching business), but that link has now been kicked off all front pages in favor of headlines about verbally abused furniture.

Some people have joked about its unintentional symbolism. Others applaud the moment as Eastwood’s best comedy gig since the flicks he made with that annoying orangutan. Someone naturally registered “Invisible Obama” as a Twitter alias. Rest assured our nation’s crack Photoshop gag specialists rushed to fill the chair with repurposed images of Kermit the Frog, the Sad Keanu meme, and Lord knows what other variations I’ve missed. The Internet plans to milk this new, inanimate media personality for all it can, until the Chair gets greedy and begins demanding large paychecks to make forgettable cameos in terrible films.

Nothing I could write about anything right now could hold an audience’s attention a fraction as much as that now-legendary empty chair’s misadventure has. I’ll just shut up and let the video roll below for the truly, insatiably curious who missed this unique spectacle. I did watch a few seconds of it just to confirm that, of all the versions uploaded, the Wall Street Journal‘s version had the best screen resolution, but that’s as far as I went.

I salute you, empty chair. Enjoy your fifteen minutes, and try to be kind to us little people during your wild ride on the shaky wooden coaster of fly-by-night stardom. Remember, today’s celebrity is tomorrow’s Goodwill bargain.

So Long, Mr. Armstrong, and Thanks for All the Steps

August 26, 2012 By in Mundane, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Neil Armstrong, 1930 - 2012When the crew of the Apollo 11 flew their previously voyage to the moon and took those fateful first steps on the Moon on behalf of all humankind, Neil Armstrong was 39, Buzz Aldrin was three weeks short of 39, and Michael Collins was three months short of 39. When I was 39, I took my first step in Manhattan. They win.

It should go without saying how easy it is to be impressed and intimidated by the monumental nature of such an accomplishment, and at what seems like such an early age, all things considered. It’s no surprise that all other Internet news was therefore benched and ignored today when word was received that Neil Armstrong just passed away at age 82.

Over the years, our family has encountered a smattering of examples of what Armstrong and other astronauts made possible, particularly the vehicles and tools they used to break all those barriers and dare the impossible.

The Rocket Garden at Kennedy Space Center, Florida, 2007. Some were unmanned; some very much weren’t. If the moon landing hadn’t happened, I imagine much of the later flights would’ve looked very different, if America had bothered with them at all in that depressing, isolationist alt-timeline.

Rocket Garden, Kennedy Space Center

In 2009, the Field Museum of Natural History offered us the chance to remote-control this li’l simulated Mars Rover. If Armstrong and His Amazing Friends hadn’t reached the Moon, it’s safe to say landing anything on the surface of Mars would’ve remained a science fiction pipe dream, and Curiosity would have never existed (to say nothing of the effect on curiosity with a lowercase ‘c’).

Mars Rover, museum RC version

At first I thought about truncating this entry and centering solely on this image of an Apollo spacesuit (also from KSC, 2007), which seems more solemn than any astronaut ever ought to be.

Apollo Spacesuit @ Kennedy Space Center, 2007

On second thought, I decided I prefer this heads-held-high tribute from the Kansas Cosmosphere, June 2012 — a fitting expression of admiration for those great deeds, emboldened by the hopes that someday they’ll inspire and be followed by deeds even greater.

Ad Astra per Aspera

May God bless you and keep you, Mr. Armstrong.

Aurora.

July 21, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , 3 Comments

Obvious things first: my prayers tonight are for everyone in that theater, that community, and all connected circles shaken by the emotional shockwave from this tragedy. This much I know and can do, if nothing else remotely useful.

Our family stayed in Aurora three nights last week, arriving on July 8th and leaving on the 11th. From our hermetically cultivated hotel zone near the airport, it seemed harmless at the time.

I can’t say we’ve never considered seeing a movie while out of town. If our employers’ vacation calendars had worked out differently, if our excitement for The Dark Knight Rises had matched our giddy anticipation for The Avengers, if I were amenable to one midnight screening as an exception, and if we’d been eager for another anecdote to add to our vacation saga…

Or if James Middle-Name-Surprisingly-Not-Publicized Holmes had decided against a comic book theme for his master plan and had rescheduled for an earlier date in another crowded but more pedestrian location — say, the 16th Street Mall on July 10th…

Or if another equally lost soul in some other town had carried out the same plan at some other showing…

And so on. There but for the grace of God, and all that. When we determine in hindsight that our odds of sudden death, for one indefinite time span, had improved without our knowledge or permission from trillion-to-one to several-billion-to-one, there’s a pointless split-second frisson of fearful relief that obscures all statistics and gives me pause to think, “That could’ve been me!”

For the fourteen [EDIT: now twelve? The count changed overnight] who passed away at that fateful midnight showing, the dozens more wounded, and the even more countless traumatized…it was them. Against all odds, at the whim of an apparently unchecked mental case who’s unfathomably distant from God’s grace himself right now, who, when surprisingly captured alive (how rare is that in these cases?), allegedly called himself “the Joker”. Under the circumstances I’m reminded less of the Bat-villain and more of Private Joker from Full Metal Jacket.

All his random targets wanted was a night’s entertainment, nothing more than the simple pleasure of the cinema, one of an infinite number of simple pleasures now denied them evermore. At least the brutal murderer of Thomas and Martha Wayne allowed them to finish their movie before committing his monstrous act.

Those in the immediate area are in a position to help, to intervene, to be there for the victims. Those of us further away can only react. We pace back and forth awaiting the opportunities to bless them from afar (monetary donations? song tributes? kind words? DKR multiple screenings in their honor?) and meanwhile do what we can with what’s at our disposal. Meanwhile, we’re haunted by the same college ID photo of the worst person named Holmes ever, his now-ironic smile plastered on millions of sites far and wide as the new poster child for the Face of Evil. Personally, I’d much rather be treated to a mugshot with him frowning, scuffed-up, and repentant. I can dream.

Whether we mean well or seek cheap laughs, reacting is all we can do with those moments when we’re not simply praying (a better use of time, all told). The Onion has predictably turned meta about the situation (better them than me), but what other options for action are available to the common man? After all, if a million monkeys at a million typewriters can recreate Shakespeare according to bad homilies, perhaps a million rubberneckers with a million pet theories can bang out The Aurora Massacre: the Definitive Narrative and Final Commission Report with the same finesse and relevance as A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Simians.

Ads for The Dark Knight Rises have been pulled from various media. Some consider them unnecessary reminders. The film is certainly not starved for publicity. Christopher Nolan has released a dignified statement of well-spoken volume.

Photoshop tributes are already worming their way through Facebook, as are several commemorative pages — some in honor of the deceased, some alarmingly in honor of the assailant, surely a new folk hero to the spiritual descendants of Beavis and Butt-Head. Several Colorado residents also named James Holmes have had to post disclaimers for the benefit of prurient looky-loos poking around the wrong profiles.

Discussion on the Facebook page of the Indianapolis Star turned quickly away from courteous regrets to loud questions about just why the heck parents were bringing babies and children to a midnight showing. Somehow this now matters. Something has to, after all. Perhaps shaming the parents in hindsight will result in justice.

All over Creation, self-styled pundits are already fishing for root causes, insisting on using every tool at their disposal — no matter how primitive, dulled, or unsuited for the job — to plumb the depths of What Just Happened, catch what they think is The Reason Why, and ultimately present to us What It All Means on a platter with garnish. Most of them will be wrong and their dishes will taste bitter.

Even outside TV and news sites, debates naturally abound as to which evil medium can be blamed. Who do we need to persecute to ensure this kind of tragedy never happens again until the next time it happens again? Movies, because of their immediate proximity to this flagrant lapse in sanity? Video games, because First-Person Shooters make it easier than ever for deranged young men to stockpile a real-life arsenal unsupervised and unsuspected? Comics, because they’re a smaller field that for decades has been much, much easier for poorly informed journalists to beat up? Music, because of artistic expressions of unhappiness and F-words?

Of course it can’t possibly be a combination of factors, poor parenting, or isolated incidents of unhinged minds latching onto the things lying around them for inspiration, patterning, and designing for death. No, every horrible thing has only one cause (and you can’t just say “Satan” because, y’know, that would open the wrong door), and we must hunt that one cause down, sue it to pieces, and legislate it into so much pabulum. If an artform gives a killer all these ideas, then clearly the solution is to render the entire artform as bland and stupid as possible. That way, no one will ever get ideas, never again. It’s the only way to be sure.

So much of the babble and din is and will be about the mitigating factors, the blame, the why of it all. At this point, do we need to know why? Can we even truly know why in any earthly sense? Why do we need to know why? If we can make sense of it, if we can somehow explain it, will it hurt less? If the parents of the casualties can be convinced to think, “Oh, okay, now I get it!” would the funeral arrangements become any more festive or colorful?

Right now I’m not in a position to need to know why. I sincerely don’t think it will help, and I’m not interested in hearing other people filibuster about gun control, or video game control, or video game gun control. I do know from my insignificant perspective that, Lord willing, I’m still seeing the movie Sunday afternoon. If I stay home and wait for the Blu-ray release, Buck Private Joker wins.

Until then, and for some time afterward, my prayers will continue for the lives lost and for those they left behind. I pray especially for those in a position to step up and offer aid, comfort, healing, and whatever else is needed by those who sorely need it most in this trying time.

Lord, may they rise.

My Geek Demerits #3: Speaking and Writing Without Cursing

July 1, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , 4 Comments

Full disclosure: I wrote 75% of the following piece in March 2012 in response to a question from a good online friend who finds it odd that I don’t use profanity, except in very rare cases when milder ones appear in proper nouns such as Hellboy.

I was raised in a household whose adults never used them in front of me. Like all children raised in such atmospheres, I learned them anyway from the neighborhood kids. I tried them out occasionally, and eventually developed a finely tuned on/off switch inside my head that worked instinctively whenever I entered or exited polite company. All throughout my young-stupid-male years, from high-school until my mid-twenties, they occupied one of the largest compartments in my communication toolbox.

When I changed career tracks in 2000, it didn’t take long for them to disappear from my spoken-word vocabulary. Not only did I want to project a more professional image, whether on the clock or off, I also found I was much more relaxed and less angst-ridden once the frustrations and disappointments of my previous job were lifted off my shoulders. In the twelve years since, I’ve uttered precisely one profanity aloud — one day as I walked around Monument Circle and came mere centimeters away from being flattened by a speeding white kidnapper van barreling around a corner flagrantly disregarding us pesky pedestrians. Losing momentary control of my tongue seemed a preferable alternative to losing control of my bladder.

For a time, my online interactions were a different story. Harsh language remained a part of my online communication because, frankly, it seemed like everyone else around me was doing it. Whether on Usenet or on message boards, it served as a necessary defense against the other dysfunctional participants and/or a badge to prove you were part of Team Internet. After spending much of 2002 rethinking my life in a number of serious philosophical ways (to put it with gross inexactitude), eventually I phased Carlin’s Seven Words and many of their lesser sidekicks out of my online responses and works as well.

The why of it all is a combination of thoughts and decisions accumulated over time.

When explaining this to my online friends, I started with the simple standard of the words labeled “profanity” as comprising the specifically designated section of the English language that is the immediate go-to choice of the ungodly and the unprofessional. Also from the Department of Other People’s Typical Responses, there are Bible verses to be cited. I’m actually terrible at memorizing Scripture for a convoluted reason that could comprise a short essay in itself, but Colossians 3: 8-10 comes closest to nailing what occurs to me from the basic Christian standpoint.

Beyond those, I naturally added bullet points about why I don’t cuss anymore:

* People use it too often when they want themselves to be taken SERIOUSLY, when in fact they’re basically just being hostile. They use contempt as a cheap substitute for confidence.

* People admire them, especially the F-word, for their ridiculously flexible use in nearly every part of speech, to describe, modify, or reductively summarize just about anything that comes to mind, regardless of whether they’re being complimentary or derogatory. I’m of the opposite mind. A word with unlimited uses effectively becomes meaningless and cries out to be replaced by more vivid descriptors. The English language is a sophisticated system with plenty of alternatives, especially if it’s being used as a needless synonym for “very” or too shorthand a dismissal of a bad person, place, or thing. If I’m fully conscious of what I’m writing (as opposed to blithely typing on the fly for everyday back-and-forth with others), I try to avoid ubiquitous multi-purpose words like “make”, “do”, or “get” on similar principle.

* They’re an easy way to cut yourself off intentionally from a wider audience. If you only want to be read by people exactly like you, it’s your privilege as an artist to cater to them as you see fit. If you want to be read by anyone not like you, realize that there’s a cultural demographic out there whose thoughts on this subject are more simplistic than mine, but who’re less likely to cut you the necessary slack to tolerate your indulgence. Puerile direct-to-DVD family movies turn a tidy profit for a reason, and it’s not because they’re being used for skeet shooting.

* Conversely, no one worth paying attention to will reject a given work for not having enough cursing. I’ll grant you that substitutes like “frag”, “frick”, “frig”, et al., are aesthetic abominations, but most works — well-liked classics, even — managed for decades without resorting to lowest-common-denominator-speak. I’m not convinced All About Eve would’ve been twice as epic if Bette Davis had talked more like Sarah Silverman. Or take something as recent as Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol, which had more colons than profanities. Amazingly, it didn’t suck and moviegoers flocked to it. I can also add an extra paragraph about the adult virtues of the average exemplary Pixar film as generally quality material that never lacks for emphatic dialogue.

* I would be lying if I said I limit myself to reading or watching G-rated material. And yet, it’s one thing to recreate a harsh reality (The Wire, Saving Private Ryan) or achieve a specific artistic effect (Glengarry Glen Ross, Reservoir Dogs). Sadly, not everyone is David Mamet or David Simon. Precious few people are, in fact. It’s another thing altogether to use it just because it’s ostensibly “funny” (see: countless R-rated comedies that don’t understand the concept of the punchline) or just, y’know, expected. “Everybody does it” is not only one of the worst excuses for doing anything ever, and among the absolute best methods for perpetuating stupidity, it’s also inaccurate. When overused in a movie or other work, each word becomes like a jarring CD-skip to my ears. After too many CD-skips, I tend to lose my concentration and interest. I prefer not to provide the same disservice to others, whether they share that issue or not.

Bottom line for me personally: nowadays I’ve found I can accomplish my aims well enough with tone, expression, vocab, craft, and occasionally volume if need be. I’m not forced at gunpoint to use profanity as a crutch any more than I’m required by law to work the words “esophageal” or “blunderbuss” into conversation every day. But that’s just me.

Colorado Wildfires Threaten Lives, Destroy City Blocks, Ruin Vacation Plans

June 30, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

My family’s thoughts and prayers are with those in and around the countless areas still being ravaged by wildfires nationwide, who will be coping with the aftermath for what I pray is a much, much shorter time frame than it feels. I can’t begin to imagine the gravity of living face-to-face with such a situation. The online reports and footage have been heartbreaking to hear and see in every area that’s reported them.

In the case of Colorado Springs, our humanitarian interest contains the slightest tinge of selfishness.

Every year we devote our family vacations to embarking on a road trip to a different location, then posting summaries photos and travelogues for our online friends. One nice advantage to living in Indianapolis is its four outbound interstates that provide convenient access to any number of states within twelve to sixteen hours of driving. Last year we dared to make our first foray into astonishing New York City; the year before that, Philadelphia and other places along the way; two years ago, our longest road trip thus far, out to Rapid City, South Dakota; and so on back to 1999, when we started small with an out-of-town comic book convention.

This year we’re planning on taking our very first steps into Kansas and Colorado. In all our vacation history, this may be the first time a natural disaster requires us to rethink our plans.

Our original itinerary began with a straight shot across I-70 from Indy to Topeka to Denver. After spending sufficient time there, the next step would be a left turn on I-25 to visit the wonders of Colorado Springs, then heading down and to the left for Cañon City, doubling back to the Pueblo vicinity, then heading home by daring to venture east through the southern half of Kansas without benefit of interstates and hopefully without a surprise stopover in Children of the Corn Town.

Now that some of my MapQuest routes are on fire, some detours may be in order. The official website for the Colorado Springs hotel where we have reservations says they’re closed for the time being. Google Crisis Response (yet another previously unheard-of extension of the sprawling empire of ConGoogleCo Dynamic) has a convenient map tracking wildfire progress. I’m not sure if its 8-bit graphics are advanced enough to incorporate real-time updating. All I know is, where Colorado Springs should be, the ostensible halfway point of our road trip now looks like a Missile Command base that someone failed to protect from enemy bombing. CNN.com reported as of 9:47 p.m. Friday night EDT that the wildfire was 25% contained, but I’m not convinced that a 75%-contained fire the size of a ZIP code qualifies as a supervised fireworks display.

We have a week until takeoff. We have limited time to decide how to go forward, how much of the area to circumnavigate in advance, how much of our vacation to improvise as we go, and whether or not it’s appropriate to approach a scene of chaos and destruction while wearing a Hawaiian shirt and wondering in obnoxious, stentorian tones where to find all the kookiest roadside attractions.

At the absolute very least, I resolve to stop whining about our local weather this week, which has only been figuratively combustible rather than literally so. I plan to be extremely grateful we didn’t schedule our vacation two weeks earlier. Some charitable effort might also not be out of the question. Whether that’s on location or from afar remains to be decided.

Chairs: the Silent, Comfy Killer (and other scandalous forms of filler)

June 8, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , , Leave a comment

My wife and I are still old-school enough that we still have the newspaper delivered twice a week. The Sunday edition of the Indianapolis Star has grocery coupons, occasionally meaty stories of local interest, and Bill Amend’s FoxTrot. The Thursday edition has a weekly section with a few pages focusing on our side of Indianapolis, a thorough list of indie films opening Friday in large cities that will never see the light of day in Indy, and the wicked insight of the current bearer of the proud Miss Manners mantle.

The Sunday paper is still the heaviest newspaper of the week, but once I’ve finished perusing the worthwhile parts, the bulk of it doesn’t take long to plow through. I don’t shop through the classifieds. I don’t like sports. Their home decorating tips are for nicer houses and neighborhoods than ours. Letters from readers are partisan overreactions of gut feeling without the burden of spending five minutes researching their topic first. And the Procter & Gamble coupons always offer chintzy discounts on the same dozen overpriced products our household never uses.

Most quickly skipped are the two or three pages buried in the back of the lead section that cover recent college science studies. Usually they’re finds and results along the lines of “Study Concludes Too Much Coffee Ruins Sleep” or “Scientists Declare Coffee Drinkers Live Longer” or “Purdue Team Says Coffee Causes Tusk Cancer in Narwhals” or “Statistics Prove Coffee Improves Navel Lint Production” or “Survey Shows Coffee Causes Unnecessary Medical Surveys”. Those add little to my life and consequently receive not even the courtesy of a five-second skimming.

I always figured such pieces were a subtle form of space-filler between back-section ads. However, I was surprised to run across an online article of the same variety. Apparently, employees who sit down a lot are more likely to be sedentary and die more quickly that average:

“All-cause mortality increased as BMI increased from normal weight to overweight to obese (5.0, 6.8, and 9.4 deaths/1000 person-years, respectively). The trend was similar for CV/metabolic disease mortality (1.8, 2.8, and 4.4 deaths/1000 person-years, respectively). After adjusting for BMI and other variables (light and hard exercise, education, sex, general health, smoking status, and cardiac disease), sedentary work was associated with higher all-cause mortality and cardiac/metabolic disease mortality compared with occupations with significant walking, significant walking or lifting, or heavy physical labor.”

The conclusion reached through the miracle of science: somehow, non-exercise doesn’t give us the exercise we need to live.

Even more stunning: the article egregiously fails to warn me that I’m killing myself slowly through the mere act of sitting here, reading that article, and then typing about it. I don’t even have to be at work to place myself at risk. (And YOU, the Viewers at Home: unless you’re jogging and reading this on your cell phone at the same time, I’m enabling your own descent into the abyss. Dreadful sorry about that.) Sure, my fingers will stay healthy, but mere digits cannot support an entire arterial network on their own. Alas, if only they could. Perhaps college science should find a way to make that happen. Until that transcendent day, the lives of millions of cubicle dwellers and Internet denizens hang in the balance.

Really, though, I’m not sure how this merited posting online. Most websites don’t have space to fill, do they? At least I have an excuse: I’m distracted by the need to prepare for our road trip this weekend and should be doing other things right now. I doubt the purveyors of that special report on can say the same. If they can, awesome. I look forward to swapping Superman Celebration memories with them in person. Perhaps we should make a point of jogging in place while we share.

My Geek Demerits #2: No Smartphone

May 28, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

My wife and I share a single cell phone between the two of us. It’s a dinky LG model 300G prepaid phone with no Internet access. Its special features include a very limited wallpaper selection, a paltry library of super-MIDI ringtones, and the ability to play Sudoku. Its texting capabilities are more primitive than a Speak-&-Spell. I have no interest in writing to someone on a device that requires four keypunches to generate a single “s”.

We didn’t even buy it for ourselves. It was an anniversary gift from a well-meaning relative. Neither of us is a fan of telephones. We keep it on hand for emergencies or rare moments of convenience. I let her carry it most of the time, out of a combination of chivalry and disdain for the thing. Thankfully the minutes roll over infinitely as long as I keep purchasing additional service days. So far through disuse we’ve stockpiled over 2,800 minutes. I could theoretically call Australia and stay on the line from midnight to midnight with no concern for cost.

We know we’re an extremist minority among our under-60 peers. Today’s average American considers their cell phone an essential part of everyday life that combines the usefulness of a few different appliances with several hundred useless distractions. Much discussion has already been held in various venues about smartphones displacing landlines from many homes. I’m sure the same holds true of PCs and laptops for those casual typists who don’t need word processing, spreadsheet capabilities, or CD/DVD-ROM drives.

We realize we could afford upgrading to a smartphone if we felt the urge, but forgo it for several reasons:

* No interest in haggling over pricing, contracts, or bandwidth usage. As long as we continue to underuse, our prepaid Fisher Price toy costs me $15 per month to keep active. If we decide to drop it at a moment’s notice, the financial damage would be negligible. If someone has invented a smartphone contract that’s month-to-month for the same approximate price with unlimited bandwidth, I could see an argument for upgrading. I’d prefer to avoid a long-term commitment to a plan that charges me dozens of extra dollars just because I exceeded my monthly bandwidth allotment after five rounds of Words with Friends.

* Itsy-bitsy keys. I have sausages for fingers. I need a manly keyboard for my manly typing. Even some laptops are uncooperative. I suspect a stylus would be easy to lose and would be an insufficient, frustrating substitute for my reflexive hunt-‘n’-peck keyboard method. I could live with extra typos if I had to, but I would pretty much die without my precious capitalization and punctuation.

* QR code-scanning holds no temptation for us. Oh, no, we’re missing out on extra advertising! Curse the fates!

* Our current appliances remain fully functional. My wife is very happy with her camera. Mine could be better, but it’s not nearly obsolete enough for me to be in the market for a replacement. Our PC serves all our Internet needs with the added advantage of a screen larger than an index card, all the better for viewing movie trailers and extended, heated Comments-section debates. We’re still old-fashioned enough to wear wristwatches, so our timekeeping needs are covered. Our cheap landline still keeps ticking, too, in case we need to dial 911 without worrying whether or not we remembered to charge the phone battery.

* I plan ahead without need for GPS. When we travel, I have all our directions prepared in advance. In the event of a wrong turn or bad directions, I also bring maps in case I need to navigate the old-fashioned way, the way our ancestors managed back in the dark, primeval twentieth century. So far we haven’t failed to return home yet.

* We’re discouraged by the behavior we’ve seen in other smartphone users. We realize millions of sane, collected users exist and conduct themselves just fine. Just the same, we’d rather not risk turning into one of today’s highly visible Stepford Callers. To wit:

— Eye contact no more. As a natural introvert, I already suck at making eye contact, even with people who want me to look at them. If I start carrying around something glowing and flashy to placate me like an audiovisual pacifier, I’ll never know anyone else’s eye color ever again, let alone acknowledge that they’re worth my personal, undivided attention. (Reminder to self: wife’s eyes are brown. Probably. Should double-check that.)

— “Ladies first” is more awkward than ever. When it’s time for crowd egress through a given doorway, it’s hard to be chivalrous when a lady’s mind is in a faraway place and unaware of her surroundings. My recently instated rule for elevator dismissal is, if she’s being hypnotized by her phone, she no longer counts as a “lady” for purposes of determining order of disembarkation. I’ll excuse myself first and let the doors shut on her. Far be it from me to be rude and interrupt her very important reading. I’m sure all those Facebook-shared unfunny Photoshop gags aren’t gonna Like themselves.

— Theaters as Internet cafes, even during the movie. Setting aside the massive distraction and rudeness it presents to the rest of the audience that was respectful enough to put away their toys, I fail to understand why anyone would focus on the tiny handheld screen they carry with them 24/7 while ignoring the large screen they paid an exorbitant fee to watch just this once. If you’re expecting an emergency, a vital communication, or a chat you just can’t miss because that one friend is so totally awesome to hear from, perhaps that two hours of your time would be better spent isolated at home, waiting for the DVD release and leaving the moviegoing to the rest of us stalwart, considerate lot.

— Apps are better than family. I will never forget the time I walked into a nephew’s birthday party and saw most of the adult “partygoers” sitting in a row in the living room, all silently engaged with their phones while the birthday boy spent quality time with the only loved ones not ignoring him — i.e., a few other tykes too small to own their own phones. Just imagine a future after someone invents Baby Einstein smartphones for all ages. With such scientific progress at hand, every family gathering could possess the warmth and charm of a deathly silent study-hall period.

I realize the entry qualifies more as “human demerits” in today’s society than mere geek demerits, but my lone moment of weakness in this area is the twinge of jealousy I feel whenever comic book conventions tout their schedule apps, QR codes for exclusive materials, and other handy on-site networking tools that offer no help for attendees like us who leave their ‘Net access at home. We can see merit in that, especially when it comes to last-minute event cancellations or celeb-sighting flashmobs.

All things considered, we’d still rather do without. Despite what Madison Avenue tells us, we firmly believe we don’t have to have everything. For the sake of some semblance of integrity, I accept my demerit and will continue to appreciate what meager service we’ve gotten out of our li’l plastic push-button knick-knack, even if it can’t access Angry Birds from a single corner of the continental U.S.

Franchitti Wins 3rd Indy 500, Gives Shout-Out to Katniss Everdeen

May 27, 2012 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , Leave a comment

The Indianapolis Star has released the following preview image of the cover for Monday’s edition, a tribute to Dario Franchitti, winner of today’s 96th running of the Indianapolis 500. Franchitti accepted the customary Winner’s Circle bottle of milk, donned the standard winner’s wreath, and greeted the cameras with a three-finger salute like a proud Hunger Games Tribute.

Share photos on twitter with Twitpic

When he escaped the initial skirmish at the Cornucopia carrying only a set of car keys, the other Tributes laughed at him. LAUGHED.

Offer of Free CRT Monitor with Any Purchase Lures Zero Takers

May 21, 2012 By in Mundane Tags: , , , Leave a comment

48 hours after the fact, I remain wiped out from our nine-hour 90-degree yard sale last Saturday. Six families contributed assorted items, leftovers, and baked goods as a charity event to benefit three different needs identified by our church on local, national, and international levels. Our results exceeded our humble expectations by far will hopefully fund many a blessing in the future, but fell short of 100% sell-through.

Luckily for my overcrowded bookshelves, my set of the first eighteen Garfield collections sold in the first hour to an elderly gentleman who also carted off a second armload of children’s books. I was equally glad to pass along a Wheel of Fortune home game that we’d used only once but ultimately rejected when its questionable structural integrity began to damage our calm. My wife cheerfully chatted with the two separate families that now provide new homes for her duplicate Star Trek: the Next Generation still-on-card action figures. A pair of small boys each gave a quarter for the only other action figures on hand, a loose Nightwing and an unidentified all-gray DragonBall Z figurine with one point of articulation. A discerning music collector nabbed himself four zero-hit Oasis CDs (naturally we retained Live Forever and What’s the Story, Morning Glory?). The most surprising sale was our redundant copy (long story) of Spider-Man: the Complete Clone Saga Epic, Book 4.

The other five families had their share of victories, notably in the departments of tiny girl clothing, Disney Animated Classics on white-cased VHS, men’s tools (the hot item of the day — figuratively at first, then literally after hours of sitting in intense sunshine), the aforementioned baked goods, and extremely heavy objects.

If we do this again, next time we’ll have a better idea of what not to bring. I’m not sure why I thought a charity drive was the right place to give up old horror anthologies like Kirby McCauley’s Dark Forces and David Hartwell’s The Dark Descent. Also untouched were my dub copies of Metallica’s S&M, which wore out their welcome long ago after a second listening, but somehow evaded all my previous collection culls. My wife’s Grease soundtrack sat alone and unloved all day. My thirty-year-old copies of Bargain Hunter and Life, both still playable, went into the Goodwill sacks at closing time. The only two large-scale objects that she and I brought, our obsolete 25″ CRT TV and my ancient microwave, returned home with us perfectly functional yet rejected by all.

In fact, all things CRT wound up the biggest loser category of the day. We started at eight a.m. with eight CRT monitors and one flatscreen monitor. We ended the day with eight CRT monitors. By one p.m. we were willing to make crazy deals with the few customers bold enough to brave the afternoon heat just for roadside discounts, but no one would touch the monitors. By three p.m. one of our more adventurous companions was offering a free monitor to every customer, with or without a purchase. No luck. Imagine if the concept of “Get Eight Monitors for Just One Penny!” had been concocted years ago, perhaps Columbia House and BMG might still be in business today. Such a shame that window of opportunity has now passed. Customers were kind enough to continue making charitable donations in addition to their small random purchases, but Adopt-a-Monitor was a total no-go.

Maybe we should’ve added Garfield stickers on the sides of each one and labeled them “Collector’s Item Classics!” or even “Actual props from that one scene in Office Space!” Maybe that’s what we need to work on for our next yard sale. Maybe our problem wasn’t poor merchandise, but poor marketing.

40th Birthday Successfully Celebrated Without Alcohol, Adultery, or ’80s Pop Nostalgia

May 18, 2012 By in Meta, Mundane Tags: , , , , Leave a comment

My 40th birthday, the impending milestone that inspired me to begin chronicling the effects of the aging process on my perceptions of the world around me, has come to pass. The prophecy bespoken by no one in particular has been fulfilled!

With this brand new decade, I expect my body and mind to fall apart a little more quickly. I’ll question my life’s purpose and usefulness a little more stubbornly. I’ll gripe a little more loudly about the entertainment industry and how they cater to everyone’s whims except mine. I’ll be slightly less tolerant of those pesky kids on my lawn, though not quite perturbed enough to chase them myself. All of this assumes it the Lord’s will for me not to drive headlong into a concrete wall tomorrow morning, of course.

So far, no sign of any amplified angst.

It’s my understanding I should be depressed about aging, fussing about my hairline, and wishing I looked hot even though I’m blissfully married. None of that happened today. Admittedly, I already survived the hairline phase last year. I’m glad it hasn’t lingered. I don’t look forward to its resurgence in the future. When it comes to prices we have to pay, though, the hairline is a bargain.

Truth is, I don’t miss my mandatory young-stupid-male years. I’m much more content as a non-young man than I ever was in any given school year. I didn’t spend today moping or waxing nostalgic or listening to ’80s hits over and over again like some of my peers do, as if old Madonna singles were like some kind of aural Fountain of Youth.

My last day at 39 was spent working and playing Final Fantasy VI with my son. My first day at 40 was spent working and dining with family at Bazbeaux Pizza. The two days weren’t radically dissimilar. Yesterday I earned virtual treasures; today, I was blessed with intangible presents and also happened to receive a few tangible ones. I stayed up late last night to confirm I didn’t turn wrinkly or crotchety upon the twelfth peal of the nearest ominous church bell.

Maybe I’m more mellow than I should be because NBC spoiled me with three solid new episodes of Community in a single night. Those alone made today the complete polar opposite of my twelfth birthday, the evening of which I spent wracked with stomach pains while on TV Bobby Ewing was killed in an accident on a show I didn’t want to watch. Fortunately my pain and his death were each temporary. I had thought the show was, too. How generous of Hollywood to knock a perfect score down to two-out-of-three some 28 years after the fact.

This song, I think, sums up my current state of complacency, however misplaced or fleeting:

Just the same, I’ll be steering clear of any and all concrete walls tomorrow. You never know which one has your name on it.

If a Ballot Has Only One Candidate, Does it Still Count as Voting?

May 8, 2012 By in Indiana, Mundane Tags: , , , , , 2 Comments

Tuesday, May 8th, is Indiana’s primary at last. It matters not a whit on the national stage, but our local elections can occasionally be intriguing to watch. Sometimes they even have ramifications.

On Election Day in November, I vote without regard for party lines because they’re meaningless to me and I wish they’d go away. Pick any belief, and you can find a supporter on either the Marvel or DC Coke or Pepsi Elvis or Beatles Democrat or Republican side. It’s an arbitrary team sport. In primaries, I’m a Democrat for the worst possible reasons.

When I registered to vote in 1992, I had the choice of registering as Democrat or Republican. End of choices. A or B. 0 or 1. Jack Johnson or John Jackson. No other parties were listed on the form, and there was no write-in blank to select a label of my own choosing such as “conscientious objector to the electoral process” or “Goonie”. At the time I was an apathetic agnostic who wanted to exercise his right to vote without any real direction or interest in the process itself. I settled on “Democrat” because gas prices had skyrocketed to an annoying $1.29 per gallon, and this persnickety, indebted college student just knew it was George Bush’s fault somehow. I had to send him a message, and listening to Jello Biafra speeches over and over on my Walkman clearly wasn’t getting through to him.

(This is why you don’t corner me and ask me to make snap decisions about topics on which I’m woefully unqualified. If I’d been the captive parent faced with the cruelty of Sophie’s Choice, I would’ve hemmed, hawed, and then gone with a gut feeling based on each boy’s GPA.)

I’ve retained the “Democrat” label to this day because participation requires a label. I’m not interested in researching my options for party realignment. No proof of allegiance is even required, just a willingness to engage in the process, for worse or for worst. Besides, the contention between Democratic primary candidates is often…um, interesting. Consider, for example, the Presidential primaries of 2008, when the only two real options remaining on Indiana’s primary ballot were Making Black History or Bride of the Monster.

Using the Indianapolis Star‘s handy online voter guide, my options for the 2012 primaries under my assigned label appear as follows, summarized as I go without preparation:

President: Obviously foregone.

US Senator: Also foregone. Incumbent Joe Donnelly is locked in.

US Representative: Four whole choices before me! At last, some comparisons to draw. The incumbent is a Muslim whose predecessor in office was his grandmother, who in turn was beloved by her district. Of his three contenders, one proudly stated on his questionnaire that he’s Christian “and not a Muslim.” One has centered his entire platform on the forthright message of “Obamacare SUCKS.” One failed to complete the Star‘s survey and obviously hates when people vote for him. I’ll have to sleep on this one.

Governor: I didn’t know this was foregone, but John Gregg appears to have no challengers on the Democrat side in his quest to catch the gubernatorial baton from the outgoing Mitch Daniels. Gregg also didn’t bother with the Star‘s survey, which may lose him my vote come November. He might lose it anyway, even if I can’t remember that slight. His opposition will be Republican U.S. representative Mike Pence (one of the few current politicians I genuinely respect) and the Libertarian candidate, Rupert Boneham from TV’s Survivor. Yes, that Rupert. Yes, really. Can’t wait to see that party started.

State Representative: Three candidates: (1) one guy who works for the Star‘s parent company in some capacity; (2) a tax attorney whose tiny profile photo faintly resembles Tracy Morgan but with dignity and class; and (3) a mother of two who has experience working in retirement communities, which probably comprise 90% of our local voting base. If they can remember her, she’s in.

County Coroner: The incumbent, Frank Lloyd Jr., seeks reelection. I don’t understand why this is an elected position. Why not just hire someone? Why require two candidates to stand at podiums and convince you why they are the one true master of autopsies? Politics, shmolitics — Master of Autopsies would be a fantastic reality show. Two coroners walk in; two bodies are pushed in; one walks out. (One coroner, I mean, not one body. Granted, that too would be good televisionin’.)

County Surveyor: Another Democratic incumbent rerun. Her resumé includes the word “pictometry”, which is new to me. For that she can stay, and “pictometry” goes on this week’s vocabulary list.

County Treasurer, and Township Advisory Board: Are all our bases belong to incumbent Democrats? Here I find two more positions in that same predicament. I propose a new rule: every office must have two or more primary contenders, or else that office is canceled till next year due to lack of interest from politician wannabes.

Superior Court Judges: Our marching orders are to vote for ten of the twelve proposed candidates. My votes will be going to one Gulf War vet, all the minorities I can detect, and an additional non-incumbent. That still leaves three unused votes, which by fiat may end up going to the youngest-looking of the last men standing. I’m sorry, but I have little else to sway me here. The surveys have far fewer questions than they did in past years. Most of the answers in this category were dry legalese and of little help for my personal discernment preferences. I suppose I could instead base my votes on whether their religion of choice is a Christian denomination or just plain Christian.

Disappointing results in hindsight: out of ten possible races, only three of them will require actual decision-making from us “Democrat” voters. See, this kind of sloppiness is what happens when I try to finish an assignment the night before it’s due. If I’d consulted the voter guide sooner, I would’ve known that only three races invite any real Internet research. Too bad the Star didn’t ask the candidates for their GPAs.