Comment-Free Blogging

I recently watched the movie Julia & Julie on TV. The film is about two people. One is Julia Child and her early days in cooking, leading up to her first cookbook publication in the late 1940s. The other person is Julie, a woman who in 2003 decided to make every recipe in Julia’s cookbook over the course of a year, and write about her trials and tribulations in a blog.

As a guy who has a blog, I found this idea of Julie’s blog to be a bit puzzling, and perhaps simply improbable, although the movie was supposedly based on two true stories. See, Julie was putting a year’s worth of significant effort into an undertaking for the single purpose of describing it in a blog. How would anyone every come upon this blog? How would it ever get any readers? I have wandered around the internet, and I have come upon free, personal blogs with various themes. Some are cat-oriented blogs, some are car blogs, and some are food blogs. A lot of them haven't even a single comment at the bottom of their various entries from some would-be reader, and those that do have a comment or two seem to be from friends or relatives. Many, and in fact probably most of the blogs I have come upon are non-active. They have been forgotten by their creators. My guess is that they have been abandoned because they never found a reader. Now these blogs are like cyber ghost towns with a last entry in, for example, June of 2006.

As hard as it is to believe, I actually put some effort into my nitwitty blog. I mean, I come up with something to write about, usually jot down the idea so I won’t forget it, and then when I get to my computer, start in on the blog entry. Once I’ve written the entry, I’ll proofread it several times and make small, and sometimes even wholesale changes to it. The average blog entry takes me about an hour, all told. I think of it as a hobby. I would never go through any real hardship with the idea that I’ll tell the world about what I’m doing via a blog. No one reads an ordinary person’s blog. And I mean it really can be pretty much no one. And of course without a single reader, word-of-mouth is not possible, so “no one” usually remains no one.

So as I was watching Julia & Julie, I was wondering; who would brutalize himself or herself with a difficult task simply to write about it in a blog? Also, by the end of the movie, Julie’s blog had thousands of readers. How did that happen? For me, the whole blog-thing hurt the credibility of the movie. It just did not seem realistic. 

I’ve recently discovered that my blog has a feature that will not only give me the numbers concerning my readership, but in what country the readers reside. Over the last month I have had six blog entries and a total of four readers. That’s less than one reader per blog post. Of the four readers last month, one was in the United States, one was in Germany, one was in Russia, and one was in Latvia, of all places. That Russian reader must really be a fan. The months that I have but a single reader, that person is usually the reader in Russia.

I wonder if Julie’s blog was read by anyone in Latvia. It would be nice to think that it wasn’t. 

Finding Coins On The Ground

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I found a dime earlier today in a parking lot. The dime was scratched and scuffed up. It had been out there a while. Since it was still worth ten cents, I tucked it into my pocket.

When I was a kid, walking down the street, I would gleefully pick up a penny that someone had unknowingly dropped onto the sidewalk. I remember finding a nickel on the blacktop of my elementary school playground. I was about 10 years old and the find was significant enough that over fifty years later I still vividly remember it.

I have a friend who is truly poor. He will pick up a lost penny each time one appears. I haven’t picked up a penny in forty years. Part of that has to do with my improved financial state adulthood as brought me, but I think a lot of that has to do with the dwindling value of a penny. I will still pick-up a nickel, but it is very close call. If I’m walking down the street and I get a glimpse of an abandoned nickel as I’m passing by, I will not halt my stride and return to the site of the coin. I’ll just keep walking. If I’m standing at an intersection, waiting to cross the street, and I look down and see a nickel at my feet, I’ll reach down and retrieve it, assuming I have nothing in my arms hindering my downward bend. To me, the displaced nickel is right on the cusp of going the way of the displaced penny.

A few days ago I was about to put some money in a vending machine when a quarter slipped out of my hand, hit my foot, and was catapulted into the darkness under the vending machine. Ten years ago I would have gone to my hands and knees, looking for the quarter. Nowadays I give a brief look, shrug my shoulders, and chalk up the quarter as a loss, the cost of doing vending machine business.

Speaking of vending machines; I’m sure billionaire Bill Gates uses them occasionally. I have wondered what he does when he gets change from one. Does he reach down into the coin return and retrieve his forty cents? Figuring that Gates was worth $0 at birth, I wonder what his lifelong per second income is. If I were good at math I would be able to figure it out. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill Gates is worth something like $5.00 for every second he has been alive. Mathematically speaking, I’m sure Gates takes a financial loss whenever he bothers to fetch money from a vending machine coin return. So, does he bother?

This morning, when I found the dime, I picked it up and for a few seconds thought of myself as having a bit of luck, ten cents worth of luck, to be exact. Then I began wondering how long it will be before a forsaken dime will no longer be worthy of my rescue efforts. Probably not long, unfortunately. It seems that even luck can have a rate of inflation.

Cowboys and Tarzans

The other day I had more than the usual amount of spare time on my hands, consequently I began looking up on the Internet people from my past. I found Paul Green at Facebook.

From the late 1950s to early 1960s Paul Green and I were best pals. Between the ages of about 7 to 12 we were almost inseparable. We were a mid-20th Century Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer.

One Saturday afternoon Paul stood before about three or four neighborhood kids and proclaimed that toilet water was nothing more than tap water, “just like what you drink out of the kitchen faucet”. I had never given a thought as to where toilet water came from, but it just didn’t seem right that it was regular faucet water. But Old Greenie insisted that was exactly what it was. Obviously he needed to prove his claim, so a Tootsie Roll was tossed into a freshly flushed toilet with the instruction that if Paul really believed it was clean water, he would eat the candy. 

I can still see Green’s nervous facial expression as he stared at the dripping wet piece of brown candy, then slowly, reluctantly, inserted it into his mouth and began to chew. To this day I still don’t care about the origins of the water in a toilet, but I can say with complete confidence that it is ordinary tap water.

Green and I watched a lot of television together. We would often spend a rainy Saturday afternoon watching some old movie being shown on one of the three local channels. One of the movies we saw was a western. I couldn’t begin to tell you which one it was, but I do know it made quite an impact on us two kids. We vowed to save all of our money so we could buy a ranch out West. We were going to carry six-guns, herd cattle, and after sunset, ride into town where we’d drink a little whiskey, and play some poker. For a week or so I actually saved some money to put towards this venture. I probably amassed about 9 cents.

A few months either before or after Green and I hatched the plan for the ranch, we saw a Tarzan movie and immediately vowed to travel to Africa were we would live together in the jungle. We had it all figured out. We would be two Tarzans, swinging through the treetops on vines, and using some distinct yodel-like call to summon all the jungle animals, should we need them. I liked the notion that there would be no more school.

These days I can easily see that the concept of two nearly nude Tarzans living together in the jungle might appear kind of gay. But at the time this plan was formulated, Green and I were perhaps all of 10 years old. Undoubtedly if we had retained the “Tarzan” scheme until the age of 15, it would have included at least two “Janes”, and perhaps more.

According to Facebook, Paul Green is the father of three, a grandfather of four, and a certified public accountant. I haven’t laid my eyes on him in over 40 years, but I’m sure he could still remember the kid with whom he used to hobnob. But if Paul’s Facebook photo suggests anything, it suggests that a lot of time has passed since those days, and that he, and probably we, are better off where we are because, well, we probably would be no match for a ruthless band of cattle rustlers.  

It Baffles Me

When it comes to selecting a life partner, I have always been puzzled when it comes to the question of why we choose the person we choose. As for myself, I can completely understand why not every woman on the planet would find me enrapturing. I have never followed society's guidelines concerning relationships. Heck, I break out in a cold sweat whenever I hear the word "marriage". It's been that way with me all my life. On top of that, I can get pretty silly sometimes, even annoyingly silly. On the other hand, I’d like to think that I am generally personable, considerate, and fairly even-tempered. There are a lot of guys that do not have those three simple attributes. In fact, there are more than a few men who have none of them.

Take one of my co-workers, for example. I swear the guy is almost completely personality-free. It isn’t that he is a bad-tempered guy, it that he is a no-tempered guy. One day his car was in the shop and his wife came by to pick him up. I left the building before my sullen coworker, and it gave me the chance to exchange a few words with his wife on the way to my car. I discovered that she was a very nice, very pleasant woman. In fact, I was shocked. After the brief chat I went to my car, dropped into the driver’s seat and just sat there for a moment trying to figure out what a charming, affable woman was doing going through life with what was basically a mannequin with a pulse. Maybe she just wanted to be left alone her entire life. Maybe that was it.  

Many years ago I was set-up on a blind date with this very becoming woman. When I first laid my eyes on her I thought I was seeing an angel. The trouble was; she seemed almost completely incapable of thinking. It wasn’t that she was an airhead. Airheads have something. At one point during the evening I attempted some pretty solid self-deprecating humor. She never said a word, never cracked a smile. As pretty as she was, as far as I was concerned the evening could not end soon enough. Heck, she probably was thinking the same thing, assuming she was thinking at all.

Down the street from me a ways lives a couple consisting of an obese white woman endowed with various tattoos, and a young, muscular, black man. There is a child involved. I often see the woman sitting on their front steps chain-smoking cigarettes. I have wondered what brought the couple together, what the relationship is like, and the prospects for the union twenty years down the road. I know nothing about the relationship, they might be very happy, but I can’t help feeling sorry for both of them.

A few weeks ago I ran into a friend of mine at the grocery store. We play basketball together on Saturday mornings. He’s about forty, as is his wife, who was with him there in the store. He introduced me to his spouse and then he and I chatted for a moment or two. The guy is a smart but somewhat farcical, consequently our brief conversation wandered into the inane. Nevertheless, his wife’s kindly eyes never wavered from her husband’s face as she listened intently to his every word, and a sweet smile left her lips only when it was overtaken by a poorly suppressed giggle.

 

Point is; there are a lot of relationships that do not appear to make any sense at all, at least not to me, but then there are other relationships that seem to have found, well, perfection. It's truly baffling. 

How Much Sentimentality?

I’m about as sentimental a guy as there is. I’m big into nostalgia. I go to all my class reunions. I wouldn’t miss one. Every single Facebook friend is an ex-classmate, no family members, no non-classmate friends. As sentimental as I am, sometimes I think I can go too far. The subject comes to mind because I’m about to give some old clothing to the Goodwill, and to some of it I have a sentimental attachment. But that’s just it; I probably shouldn’t.

Take my beige suit, for example. It started out over two decades ago as an inexpensive suit. Now it is an inexpensive, out-of-style suit. The thing is; I wore it to my 20-year class reunion, which was over two decades ago. Not only do I specifically remember wearing this suit to the reunion, I have a couple of photos of me in it. So because I wore this cheap suit to a reunion, it now has sentimental value. How far should sentimentality go, anyway?

Back in the 80s I played quite a bit of golf. When the weather was cool, I would play golf in this ugly, dark brown sweatshirt. Not only do I still have this unsightly garment, but I hate to give it to Goodwill because I can remember playing golf in it with my late father. My level of sentimentality is just plain silly. Sometimes I think it can almost be a sickness.

A long-time, boyhood friend of mine recently found a piece of paper dating from our childhood. On the paper is a record of our slot cars’ elapse times, measured around a slot car racetrack. The track was set-up in my friend’s basement, those many decades ago. The date on the old, slightly yellowed paper is 11/6/65. My friend asked me if I wanted the old piece of paper. He said if I did not want it he was just going to throw it away. I have to say that I was shocked that he could even think of simply disposing of this bygone jewel. Naturally I told him that I wanted it. I have known my friend forever, and I was well aware that he has never been particularly nostalgic or sentimental, but I had no idea the scope of his deficiency. In this one area we are pole opposites.

There is a ton of old crap that I would never even consider getting rid of. Things like a junior high pennant, my high school graduation tassel, and my draft registration card, not to mention countless photos and ancient birthday cards. But I’m going to say farewell to the ugly sweatshirt and the archaic, beige suit. However I am going to keep the piece of paper with the slot car information. I think that’s a fair compromise to my unfathomable sentimentality. I can only hope that some needy man purchases that old suit, and appreciates it. Who knows, maybe some down-on-his luck guy will buy the outfit to wear at his wedding. Can you imagine the sentimentality he would have for it?

One cheap, new, beige suit

One cheap, old, beige suit

One pitiful, golfing sweatshirt

Slot car records from long ago

A bit of homely nostalgia

God and Rational Thinking

I don’t too often see myself as any great paragon of rational thinking. My thought patterns are generally fun-based. I usually think of things in the manner that allows me the highest level of cognitive amusement. But every once in a while I display some actual analytical thought.

A few days ago I was talking to a friend and coworker who was shot while driving near a tough, gang-infested neighborhood. He was an innocent bystander if ever there were one. The bullet passed through the side of the car door and struck him in the midsection. He was able to drive to a nearby hospital where he underwent some emergency surgery to stop the internal bleeding. My coworker spent a few days in the hospital and missed about two weeks of work. When he returned he described exactly what happened. He then concluded his story by stating that God had obviously been watching out for him, and had saved his life.

I listened with interest to my friend’s narrative but when he brought God into the mix, my rational thinking went into gear. See, to my way of thinking, if God figured into the near-tragic event, then why didn’t He arrange it so the wayward bullet missed my co-worker entirely? If God’s hand was involved in the whole ordeal, my analysis would be that God was upset with my friend enough to want him wounded, but not so upset as to allow that wound to cause death. Unlike my coworker, I definitely would not thank God because a gunshot wound happened to be non-fatal. If someone were to shoot me in the foot without provocation, would I thank that person for not shooting me in the head? I don't think so. I would hold God to that same standard.

In my attempts to abandon my atheism and again become a theist, it is just that type of objective thinking that gets me into trouble. And I’d love to once again be a Christian, a real Christian, a believer, but I can’t seem to do it. My brain keeps getting in the way and ruining it.

The reality is; there is far more evidence that extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth than there is evidence of a god. There is really no evidence that there is a god, but there are photos of flying saucers, albeit dubious photos. So, logically, if a person is going to believe that there is a god, that person should by all rights also believe in extraterrestrial beings. It has to do with objective thinking, and standards of evidence.

There are a lot of positive things I can say about being an atheist. I don’t have to pray. I don’t take time out to bow to any superior being. I can eat what I want any day of the week, all year around. But I’d make all the required sacrifices if I could be emotionally comforted by a god, even if that god were just imagined. The trouble is; just when I’m making some headway into convincing myself that there really is a god, something comes along and derails all the progress, something like a non-fatal gunshot, and someone’s irrational interpretation of it.    

   

Jim Examines Olympic Competition

I like watching the Olympics. Not surprising, I enjoy The Games for different reasons than some people. Not all my reasons are so different however. Like most people, I like to see the underdog win. I don’t care if the athletes are American or not. I’d prefer the U.S. basketball team lose if the opponent is lowly Liechtenstein. It could never happen, of course, but I’d like to see it. But I am patriotic enough that I do not want an American athlete to lose if he or she is a slight favorite. If however the American is playing a decisive underdog, I’m pulling for the underdog. I guess I’m more sympathetic than I am patriotic.

I enjoy seeing a world-class athlete fail, especially if the failure is embarrassing. I’d get a kick out of a weight lifter splitting out his shorts while squatting into a press with three under pounds resting in his hands. Such an occurrence would be a real hoot. I’d probably replay it a half dozen times. On the other hand, in the subsequent interview I’d love to see that same weight lifter redeem himself by displaying some grade-A, self-effacing humor. If a world class weight lifter would ever split out his shorts while in competition and go on to make light of it, I’d be his fan forever. I’d immediately apply to be his Facebook friend.

I’m over sixty now and I still do athletic stuff. (I almost said that I am still “athletic”, but I caught myself.) I play basketball once a week with a bunch of guys, every one of whom is younger than I am, some younger by decades. Though I still do athletic stuff, I no longer compete, technically speaking. I quit competing when I was about thirty years old because I suck at almost anything resembling a sport. I am awful at tiddlywinks. I am pitiful at Twister. When it comes to athletic competition, I have always been an unfailing loser, if you can excuse the conflicting terms. Still, I have always enjoyed playing. So I play without actually competing.

If you’ll look at any big sporting event you will notice that there are usually far more losers than there are winners. In the Olympics yesterday I saw a swimming final that featured eight swimmers. Since it was a final, there were probably a number of quarterfinals races, semifinals, etc. I wouldn’t want to guess how many swimmers started off competing for those three Olympic medals. Fifty perhaps? And that does not include all the various national trials just to get to the Olympics. The reality of sports is; in the end there are more tears shed out of sadness than there are tears shed out of joy.

There are those athletes who are happy just to be in the Olympics. I’m speaking about those athletes who know that they have little chance of winning and consequently have drastically lowered their aspirations, often to the point of having no competitive aspirations at all. All I can say to these athletes is, well, welcome to my world.