My Great-Grandfather Is Smiling In Heaven
I come from a family of notorious tinkerers. My great-grandfather, Mort Mason, was a lover of all things mechanical; my dad spent part of his inheritance in 1983 on a computer that’s outstripped by most modern calculators; and my brother has probably broken more computers than many people will ever own. Messing with things is in my blood, and although I sometimes resist its siren call, necessity will drive me to my birthright.
Case in point: I obtained a very large Samsung DLP HD television from work a while back. It was given to me on the grounds that it made a loud and distacting humming noise that was no longer acceptable during meetings with clients. I suspected this was a bum fan, but ultimately the noise didn’t bother me, so I took the TV and used it happily for many months. Then the noise became, shall we say, banshee-like in quality. It could no longer be masked by increasing the volume, and I despaired. But deep in my veins, the tinkerer’s blood flowed more quickly.
I found out on the internet (friend to the tinkerer as well as common folk) that this particular run of Samsung televisions had been cursed with faulty bearings in the color wheel, the part responsible for the dazzling array of brilliance on a DLP tv that one comes to expect in high definition. These faulty bearings wear down and then grind against one another at a rate of 9000 rpm, which, as you may imagine, is a horrific whine. The part could be replaced by a qualified technician for four to five hundred dollars. Or… you can replace it yourself.
After ordering a new color wheel to the much sweeter tune of $80, I dove upon the inner workings of my television with savage delight, wrenching components from their cozy housings so that I might slay the wailing color wheel that Samsung had left tainted in so many televisions worldwide. It took me just under two hours, using knowledgeable instruction from the web as my spirit guide. But as I resealed my television and took a short breath as I pressed power, I knew I had saved myself upwards of $300. A new sound accompanied the picture: a soft, dainty whirr, so far removed from the angered howling of the former color wheel.
I played some crisp, colorful PS3 in celebration, knowing that despite advances in technology, the tinkerer’s blood will not be cowed by circuit boards or internal stickered warnings. We ask that the professionals might step aside, so that we might do it our damn selves.
So… anyone wanna play Rock Band 2?
Help me, intarwebz
So I’ve got a bunch of rewards points stockpiled on my credit card. Here is my dilemma. Should I:
(a) be responsible and replace my pillows and duvet, which are old and definitely need replacing, and are possibly full of anti-sex mojo, which would explain a lot?
or:
(b) be irresponsible and buy a Muppet?
These are the times that try men’s souls.
BMI: Addendum
Over the Christmas holiday, I was rankled yet again by the inappropriate use of BMI (body mass index). As I mentioned in my previous discourse on the subject, BMI is a guideline for entire populations, not individuals. So imagine my surprise when Wii Fit told me I was significantly overweight due to my high BMI, and saw fit to change my Mii into a chubster. Guess what, Wii Fit? I’m not a spry Japanese man. I am an oversized American man of Scottish heritage, and my feet don’t fit on to your precious fucking balance board.
I’m especially disappointed with this application of BMI as a lot of kids play Wii Fit. BMI doesn’t take into account the physiques of children, which are markedly different, and apparently Wii Fit doesn’t take into account the physiques of Americans. Now, I don’t want to defend the US too vigorously, as we are a fat, fat country. Oh my are we ever rotund. But this is creating a weight problem where there is none. People are differently shaped. People from different parts of the world, doubly so. So maybe Nintendo takes a few extra days of programming time to come up with a slightly differently way to measure how overweight someone is for the sake of accuracy. Because now my Mii is much fatter than anyone on my brother’s Wii, and let’s just say that’s not necessarily the case in real life (sorry bro).
Resolutions: Resolution
I took a look at my New Year’s Resolutions from January of this year, and decided to weigh in on my achievements relative to my stated intentions. I normally don’t make resolutions, but something spurred me this year to do it, so I thought I might as well comment on how they turned out.
-Get better at guitar (defined as being able to play and switch between basic chords freely, etc.)
Did not accomplish. No time. So sad. Did learn to program Game Boy for musical purposes though.
-Get better at bass (defined as actually recording stuff)
While I didn’t record much this year, my bass playing has improved much thanks to my stint with The Stems, and I feel a lot more confident musically in general.
-Get better at improv (defined as doing more small-group improv, etc.)
I definitely did a lot more improv this year. It wasn’t necessarily small group improv, although Bent/Lind (as well as Davenport/Struthers) made its debut and is going to receive much more attention come January (via a Dynamic Duos improv class at the Magnet). But I did have a seven-month run with The Spin, some great shows with Farebeater, continuing the joy of Thank You, Robot, as well as taking musical improv classes and a truly excellent 501 class that spawned yet another group, Daddy. I don’t know if I’m “better,” per se, but I certainly put in some hours.
-Get better at skating & reffing (defined as passing my Class-R certification and being a skating ref at bouts this year)
Done. Significantly better skater and ref than I was a year prior, and hopefully I can continue the trend through 2009.
-Get my website up and running already
Hey hey! Two in a row. Now to post consistently.
-Finish a novel (any one of the three I have going would be fine, more than one: double points, finishing an existing one and starting a new one: triple points)
I did work on my novel, but not as much as I would’ve liked. Would really like to accomplish this next year. No points scored.
-Finish writing pilot with Hemlock for tv show idea
Also a bust. We need to get on that.
-Start and finish writing my frequently considered ideas for screenplays, comic scripts, etc.
The idea is that, with The Spin being over, and other commitments having scaled down a bit, I will have time to write. I have also enlisted a friend to bug me to write when she can. I am hoping this means I have at least one, if not multiple finished products to show at the end of 2009.
-Have some sex
Definitely jinxed myself on this one.
A Better HSM
High School Musical, like it or not, represents an enormously powerful and lucrative brand for Disney. I’ve tried to find numbers on how much cash that the behemoth (set to pop with its third incarnation coming to theaters today) has brought in, but no dice. I did see that the combined budgets of all three films are still under $25 million, so to say that Disney has likely made its money back on the franchise is, if anything, a gross understatement. Admittedly, the first two installments were television-only (big cost cut there), and their entire cast was essentially a non-entity prior to the first one (and are likely to still be under the same contract for this third one, hence the budget of a paltry $14 mil for HSM3). But I’m guessing the gross of the franchise is probably closing in on the billion mark faster than you’d think. More
Dirty Cheater
I’ve got a pretty long-standing love affair with video games. Although I liked playing them as much as most kids of the 80s, I think I can trace the obsession back to the fall of 1993. I was in sixth grade, and my friend Cliff bought Final Fantasy (the orig) for the NES at a garage sale for like $15. We played it for like ten hours straight – first at his house, and then Cliff coming back to my house to sleep over so we could keep playing. Computer games were a pretty big constant in my house with my programmer brother and former computer salesman father, but when I got the SNES (and later, the Playstation), my obsession exploded. If it was made by Squaresoft and released in America, I probably played and beat it at some point between 1995 and 1999.
This was more or less pre-Internet. Admittedly, I lived in a stronghold of tech nerds, so we had a modem back in 1990, when there was nothing to see, and I think I registered my first Yahoo! mail account in 1996. But when I say pre-Internet, I mean Internet as we know it now, a well-organized resource with thousands of people contributing information for no apparent gain. Which is to say, I beat most, if not all of these games, without consulting some kind of strategy guide or walkthrough. I believe I used to pride myself on the fact that I could make it through these games without resorting to buying the $15 guide most of my friends relied on. I’m pretty sure I considered that cheating. More
Moratorium: Invoking Reagan
Easily one of my least favorite subplot of the upcoming election is how frequently the Republican ticket, Sarah Palin especially, are referencing Reagan, as if he were some sort of political savior. Palin seems to think that the American people believe that had we all put our trust in Reagan, the country would be soaring on golden wings towards a prosperous future. A future that doesn’t recognize gays or minorities as having a place in our society. A future where misguided trickle-down economics, huge tax cuts for the rich, and deregulation create an economic system that does nothing for anyone who isn’t already part of America’s most wealthy.
I’m not a Reagan fan. I find the clinging by conservatives to his white-washed patrician values extremely upsetting. It speaks of self-interest, and of reactionary behavior that’s been far too prevalent in this decade. Attaching his name to your campaign could not say more about your complete disinterest in the middle class; for despite his winning rhetoric with Middle America, the middle classes bore far more of the burden during his presidency. I don’t understand why people feel the need to lionize him so, but let’s just add that to the list of things I don’t understand about politics.
But please, Republicans: A moratorium on invoking Reagan in speeches, debates, et al. You’re not winning any new fans, and even Reagan’s die-hard fans among the very wealthy are having trouble swallowing the comparison given the economic woes of late. We’re not impressed, and what’s more, your opponent’s been mentioned in the same breath with someone a little bit more impressive.
Definitive evidence of needing a haircut
Two people who had never seen me before separately came to the conclusion that I looked like David Hasselhoff.
“But like a young David Hasselhoff!” they said, trying to soothe my horrified reaction.
Damage done, ladies. Time to get this mop chopped.
More Quotations
I can’t stop quoting Joseph Campbell, but apparently he can’t stop being incredibly insightful.
Mythology is defeated when the mind rests solemnly with its favorite or traditional images, defending them as though they themselves were the message that they communicate.