19. February 2010 by Frank.

My memory is full of gaping holes since the stroke.  Large parts of my pre-stroke life are completely gone.  My current short-term memories are rather limited, to say the least.  I generally have to rely on some random stimulus to get access to some forgotten memory.

I realize there’s nothing particularly unique about that, it works that way for pretty much everyone.

But what do you do when detailed events, including names, don’t elicit any response at all?  I believe I mentioned it back when it happened, but my father was reminiscing about my early teen years in the neighborhood.  He was rattling off names and describing how the whole neighborhood came over to our house to play football and other games because we had quite a bit of land out back complete with a pond full of fish.  I recognized a lot of the names because they were neighbors for many many years.  But I couldn’t come up with a single memory about doing anything with any of them.

Nothing.

My dad covered several years but I drew a blank for the entire period.  It was as if he was talking about the experiences of some other person.  It was an awkward conversation.  And it was weird.

Especially weird since I do think of myself as a different person than I used to be.  That guy I was as a teenager doesn’t exist anymore. (Big surprise.)  That guy I was up until the ripe old age of 43 doesn’t exist anymore.  (Here’s where the weird comes into play.)  I have some similarities to him but I’m not him.  Why should I expect to be able to access his memories?

That’s why I tend to use the same stories over and over, I’ve got limited material to work with.

It’s also why I tend to go in random directions with this blog.  Often I’ll read something which triggers memories which I tend to write down before I forget them again.  Kind of like LSD flashbacks to the 60’s and 70’s.  Of course, I try to encourage that by having random PINK FLOYD songs come up on Pandora while I’m trying to write.

Music is one of the few things that my memory gaps don’t seem to cover.  Although I have to admit I really don’t understand why I used to like URIAH HEAP so much.  Similarly, I’m not sure if it’s memory or maturity which makes me wonder how I could ever have thought BLAZING SADDLES was actually a funny movie.  I guess that’s not really abnormal.

I used to read a couple of hundred books a year but in the last 12 years I’ve only read a handful.  (I still read a lot but it’s almost all online.)  Music is still important but I used to buy two or three albums a week.  Now I might buy a disc every year or two whether I need it or not.  Movies have remained the most consistent from the old man to the new man.  I still prefer science fiction/fantasy/action/adventure to everything else although I indulge in quite a few musicals and (gasp) chick flicks.  My taste in TV shows is the same as movies but I don’t have a clue what night or network anything I like is on.  I don’t watch TV on my television, I watch a few shows on HULU.

The thousand pound gulley cat in the picture, however, is religion.

I was fully planning on becoming a full time preacher.  I was even convinced that in order to do that I might have to start my own church.  Gung ho doesn’t begin to describe my attitude.  I was a fanatic of the first degree.  Nothing could stop me including multiple setbacks thrown in my way by other preachers intimidated by my style and passion.  I was so into living by faith that I nearly killed myself by refusing to take essential medicines to control my blood pressure.  I was an all or nothing type.

I still am.

I don’t understand this wishy-washy, agnostic, I’m not quite sure, stuff.  You are either a believer or you’re not.  Hot or cold.  Lukewarm will get you spit out, read your bible.  You don’t actually think that you can believe just a little just in case and be able to fool god into thinking you’re the real deal?  You don’t actually think just saying the magic words without any real conviction will get you in and keep you in without requiring all the other obedience necessary?

Seriously, folks, according to the bible, god has shown up in undeniable ways before and people still didn’t believe in him.  Study out some old testament Hebrew history.  If god were to show up today all over the earth at once, billions of people still wouldn’t believe he was really god.  Because if any little preconceived notion about him proved wrong, you would reject him; you would not automatically accept any new evidence, no matter how powerful.

Quite a few atheist bloggers like to claim no real atheist isn’t willing to be persuaded by some real proof.

Nonsense.  Jesus was god’s best statement to mankind.  Here’s a guy wandering around for three years speaking a few words of wisdom and performing some relatively minor magic tricks.  Supposedly the religious leaders didn’t recognize him but the common people did.  Those same common people turned right around and called for his condemnation when stirred up by the priests.  Those same common people did not rise up and save him from the Romans. 

Do you really think if he appears again that all the atheists, Hindus, Muslims, etc., are going to rise up and proclaim him king?  Now that there are actual explanations for how things work and technology has reached a point that it would appear godlike to any primitive person, do you really think any of god’s simple tricks are going to be sufficient proof?

I look at religion now and all I see is superstition.  Primitive fear.  Ignorance.  How could I have devoted myself to it for so long?  I first accepted the message when I was at the absolute lowest point in my life.  I had no resistance to the appeal of someone who would forgive me, cleanse me, make me whole, and become my best friend.  Why do you think they use funerals to preach their salvation message?

How can so many people be so blind to the fairy tale aspect of their holy word?  God gets so disgusted with sin that he wipes out all life except an impossible collection on an ark which includes people who are still sinners.  It took no time at all for sin to reclaim the world.  Bad plan there, god.  But we are also told that Jesus was the lamb slain from the beginning, he was the eternal plan for salvation.  If that’s the case what purpose did the flood serve?

Or how about the tower of Babel?  Do you really think they could have built a skyscraper taller than anything that exists now back in those days?  God was so threatened that he came down and confused the languages of men to stop them.  We have probes going to other planets and my computer can operate in multiple languages.  You can carry a little device in your pocket that will let you translate languages.

That may have impressed some primitive goat herders but what’s the big deal now?  I’ve been on the moon Pandora which was cool as hell, but it was all technology.  Think about it, we have moving pictures (with sound!) that come right out of thin air and we think absolutely nothing of it.  It’s perfectly normal and no big deal.

God would have to pull off the biggest stunt ever to convince the whole world and even then it would not do it.  But read your bible.  God doesn’t work that way.  His miracles and his power keep getting smaller and smaller in his own book.  His followers keep getting more and more simple minded.  God makes appearances in grilled cheese.  That’s not exactly big time proof.

I look and I wonder.  Why didn’t these things jump out at me back in the day?  Why didn’t the absurdity strike me?  Why didn’t I question the things I was taught?  The man of god said that god’s word said that’s how things are and I believed it. 

If only I could remember why I was so gullible.

Posted in interpretation, technology, humor, listen, hearing, religion, emotion, education, stroke | Print | 4 Comments »

8. January 2010 by Frank.

This is the fifth post I’ve written in the last two weeks but it is only the first post I’ve posted out of all of them.  Why?  Because I didn’t like the direction they were going. 

That direction was “nowhere”.

Not that they weren’t interesting, mind you.  They were just too much a reflection of my curmudgeonly anti-holiday / anti-tradition rantings that I do every year at holiday time.  In other words, I was following my own tradition of griping about other people’s traditions.  And, somehow, that just seemed wrong.

I do expect to get an earful of new material next week when I attend an “end of the world” seminar with a friend.  I’ve never heard of the speaker at all but I do know he’s Seventh Day Adventist so I have a pretty good idea of the direction he’ll be heading.  Yes, I know, I’m a glutton for punishment, but sometimes this sort of thing can be amusing if not informative.

I was always a fan of end of the world science fiction and that didn’t change when I became a christian.  I just traded mankind, aliens, and natural disasters for god, the devil, and demons as the cause of worldwide destruction.  The christian variations on the theme weren’t nearly as entertaining as the science fiction stories but I gave them more weight because they were based on the bible.  And since the bible was the word of god they had to be true and accurate.

Yeah, right.

I read multiple dozens of such books back in the 1980’s.  They were full of all kind of dire warnings and predictions stated with much bravura and unquestioned certainty; after all, god’s prophecies never fail.  Well, that was 30 years ago and hardly any of those declarations came to pass.  In fact, the average science fiction story by some hack writer was far more accurate in its predictions than anything the christian hack writers ever came up with.

One such book I remember was “When Your Money Fails” by Mary Stewart Relfe.  Not that it was a good book worth remembering.  It was a book full of all sorts of actual photos of diabolical mark of the beast money fantasies.  Well, at least, they were actual photos until you got to the last page where the author admitted they were all fakes (in very very very small print) designed for illustration purposes.  What’s remarkable is that there’s a website for this right here.  I only looked at the first page but can anyone say conspiracy theory?

Be very afraid of those embedded microchips.

Something far more plausible and disturbing is the retina scanners that deliver up tailored to the individual advertising in the movie MINORITY REPORT.  One of my blogs back in the day allowed for advertising so I put Google’s Ad Sense on it (this was when they first started promoting it).  It scared me to death when it started displaying ads that were about the exact same subjects as my current posts.  It didn’t take long to understand the technology behind it but it was quite eerie at first because I had never seen anything that uncanny.  Tailored advertising is here; tailored to the individual isn’t that far off.

Be afraid of that.  Especially if advertising works well on you.

Conspiracy theories seem to abound these days but they are really nothing new.  It’s when they are tied in with religion and right wing politics that they become really scary.  Because, unfortunately, otherwise ordinary people eat this stuff up.  The last time I went to one of these seminars there were over a thousand people there.  The one next week is in a much bigger building.  Even though I can’t remember the guy’s name I fully expect the place to be packed.

Don’t worry about me.  I am already practicing my eye rolling and covering my laughter with sneezing fits.  Not sure what to do if snoring occurs.

Posted in communication, technology, humor, interpretation, listen, education, hearing, signs, religion | Print | 4 Comments »

22. December 2009 by Frank.

With an 83% rating on RottenTomatoes, AVATAR, James Cameron’s latest masterpiece can best be described as awe-inspiring.  In 3D.  I don’t know if it has the same impact in 2D (apparently it does, a friend tells me he thinks it is the best movie ever made and he only saw the 2D version).  I wish it was convenient for me to go see it on an Imax screen in 3D, I would probably be trying to think of more superlative words than mere awe-inspiring.

I’ve seen 5 or 6 digital 3D movies and while the technology is impressive (very mild headaches instead of bleeding eyes) the movies themselves really gained nothing by the third dimension.  Cool but hardly worth the extra expense.

AVATAR is completely different.  It is what you would expect 3D to be, real depth and actual physicality.  The movie takes place on the planet Pandora which is the most real, super detailed, living, breathing sci-fi/fantasy world ever created.  I never once felt like I was not in a real place.  Pandora is real, fantastic, and totally alien.  The overwhelming size of everything, from the towering heights of the Hometree to the seemingly miles deep vistas of canyons, waterfalls, and floating sky islands, staggers the imagination.  The incredibly vibrant colors of the various flora and fauna are beautiful to behold.  I saw one review mentioning that he/she thought Cameron had invented some new colors, I think that’s probably true, I’ve never seen anything that looks so breathtakingly gorgeous.  Did I mention how real it was?

I never once thought I was looking at computer animation, I was completely immersed in the planet Pandora.  Nothing seemed to be just a gimmick like every other 3D movie ever made.  There weren’t any sharp pointed objects leaping out at you just to startle you.  The film uses 3D like it was natural, it’s just how you see things.  It created incredible heights and amazing depths, none of which seemed forced or faked in any way.

The story is very simple.  There isn’t anything wrong with that like some critics imply.  It’s simple and powerful.  I don’t think a complicated or convoluted plot would have been appropriate with the sensory overload the lush gorgeousness of the planet produced.  Consider the basics of any epic fantasy and it’s all there.

It works because the Na’vi are real characters.  They are real people with intense expressions and emotions which are beautifully portrayed by their facial expressions.  One of the big complaints with computer animation is the eyes, until now no one has gotten them quite right.  You’ll never even notice in this movie which means they look entirely natural.  I never felt I was watching special effects moving around.

I bought everything that was happening as if it were all real.  Filmed on location with some great native actors.

I’ll have to see the movie several times before I get all the words and the names figured out.  I definitely want one of those flying dragons for my very own even though it would try to kill me to let me know it chose me.  Again, I never thought of them as special effects.  The Na’vi’s relationship with the animals was very intense and personal.  Once bonded, no one else could ride it.  They were equally bound to the forest and all the other life that abounded there.  Very native American in many ways.

To say that the final battle is spectacular is a vast understatement.  You will not be cheering for the humans and their advanced spaceships and weaponry.  Their motive is simple greed and that greed justifies what amounts to genocide.  It’s disgusting, watch their faces when they get their marching orders and then watch closely when they realize what they have done.  Truly epic.

Best movie ever made?

Yes.

Posted in humor, technology, listen, hearing, emotion | Print | 3 Comments »

1. November 2009 by Frank.

I spent last night in the garage of some christians.  I thought we were going to a bonfire at the home of some christians.  I like bonfires, I don’t like garage parties.  I was not thrilled.

There was a fire but none of the adults wanted to go outside and enjoy it.  Apparently a large number of teenagers had been invited but only 4 grandchildren had shown up.  This didn’t bother my wife any but I felt cheated, no fire and teenagers!  Ugh!

So what I got instead was a bad night of really pathetic karaoke.

I don’t care about Halloween in the least but there are a couple of million better ways to spend an evening.

Apparently christians have no idea what dissonance means.  Witches, skulls, pumpkins, black cats, skeletons, ghosts and Jesus talk.  Having been such a serious fundy back in the day, I could never understand this then and it makes even less sense now.  The women got involved in a big discussion about witnessing, about showing the world they had something different and better to offer as an alternative to sin and evil.  And yet there we were surrounded by the symbols of sin and evil.  I just don’t get it.

There have been any number of blog posts the last few days about an article that temporarily showed up on Pat Robertson’s CBN site and a religious magazine site that denounced Halloween candy as being cursed by witches (among other things).  Even Countdown on MSNBC had an interview about it.  Pretty much everyone agreed that the article was too far off the deep end to be taken seriously.  Apparently even the christians at CBN’s website thought so, too, because the article was taken down soon after it started getting attention.  The problem with that is that as loony toons as the article was, it was biblically accurate and right in line with fundy thinking.  God condemns occult practices, witches, contacting the dead and states that demons are real.  So what does any bible believing believer have any business doing promoting any kind of image of such things?

The selective cognizance of most christians is a staggering thing.

Friday night (before sundown) I went with my SDA friend to help him get a new computer.  I had to drive because we might have been out past sundown before we got back.  When we did get back to his place he almost decided to leave the computer in my trunk instead of carrying it in his house because it was after sundown by then.  That meant it was the sabbath and therefore no work.

Fortunately he came to his senses and realized god wasn’t going to strike him dead for it.

I probably should have taken it home with me because I could have set it up in advance for him.  He has no tech abilities at all and I am rent a geek personified.  When I realized he was seriously thinking about not taking it in his house, I nearly burst out laughing.  Some of these situations I get myself into require way too much willpower on my part.

I can’t seem to get away from this stuff.

It would be so nice to get invited to some normal, non-christian function with some normal non-christians, but I don’t know how that can ever happen since I don’t know any such people.  So I guess I’ll have to plaster on my fake smile and pretend I’m having some semblance of fun a bit longer.

Posted in humor, technology, interpretation, emotion, religion | Print | 5 Comments »

11. May 2009 by Frank.

I’m on vacation.

I have no money.

So I am doing what any creative geek would do in such a situation:  I’m testing Windows 7 on my computer.  It’s free for one year.  It’s still beta but who cares?

I set up a new partition on the hard drive with a program called gParted.  Then after 3 or 4 crashes managed to get Windows 7 to install.  It’s a nice dual-boot install so all my Windows XP stuff is still intact (I backed it all up as well.)  It is considerably faster than XP both starting and shutting down.  It’s running beautifully so far although the trial 7 compatible  antivirus isn’t registering as being turned on even though the program itself says it is.

So far everything I have tried has worked exceptionally well.  7 also has some great backgrounds and themes.  I may even put my malfunctioning digital TV tuner card (critical files kept disappearing under XP) back in to see if it will work with the new Media Center.  I tried running a couple of programs off the other partition.  One (Irfanview) ran flawlessly but the other (PaintShopPro) caused a weird error message.  I haven’t tried any games yet but that’s on the agenda.

I went to see STAR TREK Friday night and was in total geek nirvana.  I’ve been a Trekkie since I was 11 years old when the first episode premiered.  This new one is the best movie ever.  I absolutely loved it.  I can’t wait to see it again this week.

Weird repetitive keysssssssssssssssssstroke error in effect currently.

Such fun!

Posted in technology, communication | Print | 3 Comments »