Almost a month ago, I lamented the fact that one of my favorite blogs, Mental Multivitamin, had gone behind “closed doors” by switching to an open-to-invited-readers-only status. Today, M-Mv is back, and I’m happy for that…but now I’ve got a pretty good idea as to what the reason was for Mrs. M-Mv’s temporary pulling in of her cyber-welcoming mat. The tone of this post, coupled with the tone of this one, makes things regrettably, awfully, and soul-searingly clear.
I would like so very much to be wrong in my supposition, but when she writes this:
Life, though not as we knew it, does go on, although for a while there, I would not have been able to tell you how. And now all I can say is that it just does.
Well…I just don’t think I’m wrong. Thus, as one who has seen a son go before me into the good night, I can only say, I am so, so sorry, and that I wish Mrs. M-Mv and her family peace, such as they may find.
The Road goes ever on and on Out from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, Let others follow it who can! Let them a journey new begin, But I at last with weary feet Will turn towards the lighted inn, My evening-rest and sleep to meet.
Well, we’re less than six hours away from a new year, as I write this. It’s tradition here at Byzantium’s Shores for me to end up a year’s posting with this quiz, so here we go…but all things considered, 2010 was not a bad year for me, at all. Some things could have been better, but that’s always the case, and on balance…I like where I am heading into 2011. (I’m gamely resisting the fact that in general, it’s been the odd years lately that have been offering up various arse-kickings…but I’m not the superstitious type.)
So, the annual quiz for the end of the year!
Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Some yes, some no. Which is pretty much the way it always is. I learned more about the technical aspects of my job, and I have hopes that this will position me for a “jump up the food chain” at work sometime in 2011. I read quite a bit, but I never feel like I read enough. And I fell off the wagon a bit in terms of the “fitness” thing. But that’s a wagon easily reboarded, I think.
The one area I’m disappointed in myself is writing. I did not write enough, not by a longshot. That needs to change. I do have a new project, though, which is nice.
Did anyone close to you give birth?
You know, try as I might, I can’t think of anyone who did! Weird, huh? No one really close, anyway. I do have online friends who had babies. But no major births in the immediate vicinity of the Family Unit.
Did anyone close to you die?
No. This is where I tend to get nervous about the upcoming odd year.
What countries did you visit?
In the real world, the USA and that’s it. In lands of imagination, I visited lands far and wide. Worlds far and wide, actually! And that’s the way I like it.
What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
As noted above, I’d like to finally take the “next step” in both my career at The Store and with my writing “career”. I’d also like a router. (The woodworking kind, not the computer kind. Got one of those.)
What was your biggest achievement of the year?
This wasn’t a year for big achievements. It was, instead, a year for keeping the ball in motion, all the time. I think. I’m not actually sure where I’m going with that metaphor…hmmm….
What was your biggest failure?
Maybe one of these years I’ll just admit to myself that The Promised King is never going to be “finished”…but I don’t want to admit that, so I’ll keep pretending that it’s just on a hiatus and that I haven’t really moved on to stuff I’d like to do more than this story notion that I’ve nursed since college.
What was the best thing you bought?
I didn’t buy anything major at all this year! Just little stuff. Like the dragon incense burner that’s on my desk right now; that thing is crazy cool. (I’ll take pictures.) I bought quite a few books. Maybe the best thing I bought was a Christmas gift for The Daughter. She absolutely loved the movie The Phantom of the Opera, so I went to eBay and tracked down a replica of the actual music box from the movie/show. That was pretty cool.
Whose behavior merited celebration?
The Wife and the Daughter, obviously.
And the 2010 Buffalo Bills, whom I expected to be awful and who probably were (they’re 4-11 going into the final game), but they proved to be scrappy and tough and hardworking, all the things I was hoping they’d be. Except for winning.
And soon-to-depart-her-current-office House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She made a lot of great things happen. Yes, as a lifelong liberal Democrat I had hoped for more, but I have to admit that they did get a great deal of amazing things accomplished.
Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Tea Partiers: that coalition of standard Republicans and…standard Republicans. They are a scary, scary bunch of people.
Where did most of your money go?
Food, bills, books.
What did you get really excited about?
Guy Gavriel Kay had a book come out! Carl Paladino did not become Governor! The Wife and I took our annual trip together to Ithaca! The Family and I took a trip to Pittsburgh!
What song will always remind you of 2009?
Well…OK then. Watching last season’s Celebrity Apprentice made me like Bret Michaels a whole lot, and then he had some major health problems. And then, he won Celebrity Apprentice. And then, two days after that, on the finale of American Idol, this happened:
This moment made me cheer…and I don’t even like “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”. But that song will be forever associated with the year that Bret Michaels came back in a big way.
Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Happier, I think.
Thinner or fatter?
Sigh….
Richer or poorer?
About the same.
What do you wish you’d done more of?
Writing! And reading. And listening to music. And watching movies.
What do you wish you’d done less of?
I probably should have eaten less. But it was all oh, so good….
How did you spend Christmas?
Opening gifts, going to church, eating a turkey dinner, watching Elf and episodes of The Big Bang Theory.
Did you fall in love in 2010?
I fall in love every day!
How many one-night stands?
As if I’d tell. I’m a gentlemen. (And it was zero, anyway. I’m married, don’t you know!)
What was your favorite TV program?
Castle, The Big Bang Theory, The Amazing Race, Survivor (damn show finally wore me down), and Arthur. Because Arthur is awesome, and I’ll have words with anyone says otherwise. (And still Firefly, Star Trek, and I’m rewatching The X-Files.)
Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don’t hate. Hate is a bad emotion. But there are sure a lot of Teabagger-Republican types with whom I could have happily dealt never knowing about….
What was the best book you read?
GGK’s Under Heaven.
What was your greatest musical discovery?
This wasn’t really a year for musical discoveries. Maybe Alexandre Desplat, a film composer who has come on the scene the last bunch of years.
What did you want and get?
I wanted books, and got ’em. I wanted pizza a whole bunch of times, and got it! I wanted time with The Wife, and got it (although not nearly enough). I wanted some new hand tools, and got ’em. I wanted to hear the Buffalo Philharmonic live, and I got to do that; I wanted to make more food from scratch or at least try new recipes, and I got to do that. I wanted to hold The Wife’s hand, have The Daughter teach me to play videogames, laugh a lot, wear overalls, learn more about carpentry and other maintenance jobs at work, read more space opera, and go sight-seeing around the very town in which I live; I got to do all those things. And I wanted pies in my face, and I got those, too.
What did you want and not get?
Well, we’re starting to feel as though it’s time to look beyond apartment living. That’s all I want to say about that. And my car, faithful and trusty steed that it’s been, is a 1992 granny-mobile. I’d love to be able to replace it soon.
What were your favorite films of this year?
Of films that came out this year — Unstoppable and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part One. I rarely see movies the year they come out anymore.
What did you do on your birthday?
We celebrated my birthday with our annual trip to Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival. This wasn’t actually on my birthday, but a week later. Had we gone to Ithaca for the Apple Harvest Festival on my birthday, the Festival would have been disappointing, as it wasn’t held on my birthday. Hence the delayed celebration.
How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007?
Oh, come now. All overalls, all the time. Well OK, not all the time. But my manner of dress hasn’t changed much at all in years, and I see no reason to change it now. I have zero use for what is “fashionable”.
What kept you sane?
Laughing; reading; writing; discovering that even though we’ve been together in one way or another for almost twenty years, I still have ways of getting to know The Wife; singing loudly in the car when I’m by myself; torturing The Daughter with awful puns (something my father did to me, coincidentally enough!); geeking out to Star Wars and Lord of the Rings. And take it from me: if you ever feel that maybe you’re taking yourself too seriously, have your spouse or significant other hit you with a pie. It’s awfully hard to take yourself seriously when your face is dripping whipped cream and coconut custard.
Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Stana Katic. Melissa Rauch. Jenna Fischer (although her show is limping along). Tina Fey. Lisa Edelstein. Hugh Laurie. Crystal Bowersox. Jeff Probst. Nathan Fillion. Barack Obama. And that woman in the Geico commercial, the one with the little piggy that cried “WEEE WEEE WEEE” all the way home. Seriously — she’s on screen for something like eight seconds total in that ad, and she totally and convincingly conveys her enormous weariness with driving this annoying shouting pig around.
What political issue stirred you the most?
The health care bill, I suppose. Global warming, too.
Who did you miss?
I miss everybody who’s gone, even for a little while. I miss you folks when you don’t comment for a bit, or when my traffic’s down, or when I’m in a posting funk and not writing much. And I miss my characters when I’m not writing about them.
Who was the best new person you met?
I “met” some fantastic folks online this year. I won’t list them, but I wager they’ll know who they are. Some are part of the goofy community of “overalls wearers” that has sprung up online; others are hardware bloggers; some blog food, others geek culture. And I met some great people in person, too. Cool people rule — be a cool person!
Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010:
I’m not sure it’s a “life lesson”, but I’ve become less afraid of screwing up this year. Sometimes you just have to plow ahead and deal with any negative consequences later. Besides, I’ve always loved learning and I’ve believed for years that we learn best by screwing up, so…bring on the screw-ups! Embrace your inner FAIL! It’ll make you better in the longrun.
And keeping the ones from years past: The Internet is made of people. Punting is for losers. Democracy works, eventually. Not all tears are an evil. Whipped cream is a miracle substance. So is ice cream. Use your library; limiting your reading to only those books you can afford to buy is madness. OpenOffice rules. Buy good tools, take care of them, don’t lend them out, and they’ll last forever. Savory or sweet, eaten or worn, from pizza to apple to coconut cream, pie is wonderful. Screw fashion; if it’s comfy, wear it. We’re not meant to be alone. No object fits in your hand so perfectly as your wife’s hand, and no object fits so perfectly on your shoulder as your child’s head. Let it be, and all you need is love.
And keep smiling, because you never know what life will throw in your face next!
Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
Here’s a song I like a lot. I like a lot of this guy’s songs a lot. It’s “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” by Jimmy Buffett.
I took off for a weekend last month Just to try and recall the whole year All of the faces and all of the places Wonderin where they all disappeared I didn’t ponder the question too long I was hungry and went out for a bite Ran into a chum with a bottle of rum And we wound up drinkin all night
Its these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes Nothing remains quite the same With all of our running and all of our cunning If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane
Reading departure signs in some big airport Reminds me of the places Ive been Visions of good times that brought so much pleasure Makes me want to go back again If it suddenly ended tomorrow I could somehow adjust to the fall Good times and riches and son of a bitches Ive seen more than I can recall
These changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes Nothing remains quite the same Through all of the islands and all of the highlands If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane
I think about paris when Im high on red wine I wish I could jump on a plane So many nights I just dream of the ocean God I wish I was sailin again Oh, yesterdays over my shoulder So I can’t look back for too long There’s just too much to see waiting in front of me And I know that I just can’t go wrong
With these changes in latitudes, changes in attitudes Nothing remains quite the same With all of my running and all of my cunning If I couldn’t laugh I just would go insane If we couldn’t laugh we just would go insane If we weren’t all crazy we would go insane
Excelsior, 2010! And bring on 2011.
(Oh, and if you’ve hung on this long, thanks for reading, whether you’ve read this blog for a long or a short while!)
It’s that time of year again: time to do some looking back before taking a big leap forward. Hooray, end of the year! So herein we have my annual summation of what I think are some pretty good posts along the way. I like to think that I had a typically good year here at Byzantium’s Shores; and as always, I met a bunch of cool new people along the way. That’s what it’s all about!
I’d call attention first to a couple of ongoing posting projects. It took a while, but I finished up with Fixing the Prequels: Attack of the Clones, and I did Ask Me Anything! not once, but twice. (And we’ll do it again in February 2011, huzzah!) I also started a rewatch of The X-Files. I’m not that far in yet, but we’ll get there in 2011. And there was The Beatles Song of the Week, which I did not do weekly. But I did a Thirty Day Challenge in thirty consecutive days! Huzzah!!
But anyway, it was a pretty fun year, and I hope that showed up in the posts!
So, let’s get to the retrospective.
2010: The first half
Click for larger version with annotated links to original photos.
“I’m a Christian. I’ve made mistakes myself. I believe fervently in second chances,” Carlson said. “But Michael Vick killed dogs, and he did in a heartless and cruel way. And I think, personally, he should’ve been executed for that. He wasn’t, but the idea that the president of the United States would be getting behind someone who murdered dogs? Kind of beyond the pale.”
You know, I don’t like Vick either. I hate what he did, and if he were to end up on the Bills’ roster, I would end my fandom almost immediately. But execution? Come on, now. And to advocate execution in the same breath of claiming to be a Christian? Tucker, I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Vick did a horrible, disgusting thing. But he also paid the price that our legal system decided to exact from him. Saying he should have been executed? That’s just silly. But then, Tucker Carlson is a pretty silly person.
I love me some John Scalzi, but that creates problems for me because as much as I loves me some John Scalzi, I loves me some George Lucas way more. And John Scalzi most certainly does not love him some George Lucas much at all. Today Scalzi responds to someone who is responding to a four-year-old post of his, which leads me to look at that four-year old post itself. And now I really wish I hadn’t. Because…well…it’s crap. Crap of the “My opinion of [Item X] is fact” crap. And I think, largely, that Scalzi wrote the original post because he thought of a new way to speak negatively about Star Wars, which is a pastime he rarely fails to engage in when the opportunity presents itself.
How else to take this statement:
Star Wars is not entertainment. Star Wars is George Lucas masturbating to a picture of Joseph Campbell and conning billions of people into watching the money shot.
He goes on to describe the entirety of Lucas’s output in Star Wars in lots of negative ways, including maintaining his “masturbation” imagery by use of the adjective “Onanistic”. OK then.
Here’s the thing, though — Scalzi seems to make some odd assumptions regarding the concept of “entertainment”. Take this, for example:
There is nothing in the least bit “popular” about the Star Wars films. This is true of all of them, but especially of Episodes I, II and III: They are the selfish, ungenerous, onanistic output of a man who has no desire to include others in the internal grammar of his fictional world. They are the ultimate in auteur theory, but this creator has contempt for the people who view his work — or if not contempt, at the very least a near-austistic lack of concern as to whether anyone else “gets” his vision. The word “entertainer” has as an assumption that the creator/actor is reaching out to his or audience to engage them. George Lucas doesn’t bother with this. He won’t keep you out of his universe; he just doesn’t care that you’re in it. To call the Star Wars films “entertainment” is to fundamentally misapprehend the meaning of the world.
There are an awful lot of assertions here, with no evidence or citations to back them up. No working definition, for example, of what we’re even talking about with respect to “entertainment” is forthcoming. But on what possible basis can George Lucas be said to not be “reaching out to his audience to engage them”? You can argue all you want that he’s not successful in his efforts, but that’s not remotely the same thing as saying he doesn’t try at all.
Or take that word “popular”, in Scalzi’s first sentence above. Again, no definition is given, so I have no idea what Lucas could have included in a Star Wars film that would satisfy Scalzi’s desires here, but…well, as far as I can see, this is still false. Sure, Jar Jar Binks was a deeply unpopular character, but is that because Lucas openly decided to include something unpopular, or was he trying to include something that he hoped would be popular? Given that the “goofy sidekick” has been a standard element in storytelling since, well, forever, I think the latter is more likely. Ditto in Attack of the Clones, when Lucas tried to include another trope that has been deeply popular throughout the years, the youthful romance. Again, you can argue that Lucas failed — but failure is not synonymous with not making the attempt in the first place. (Again, I’m assuming Scalzi’s meaning here, because he doesn’t clarify matters at all.)
Then there is this:
What’s interesting about mythology is that it’s the residue of a teleological system that’s dead; it’s what you get after everyone who believed in something has croaked and nothing is left but stories. Building a mythology is necrophilic storytelling; one that implicitly kills off an entire culture and plays with its corpse (or corpus, as the case may be). It’s one better than being a God, really. Gods have to deal with the universes they create; mythmakers merely have to say what happened. When Lucas started Star Wars with the words “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…” he was implicitly serving notice to the audience that they weren’t participants, they were at best witnesses to events that had already happened, through participants who were long dead.
I’m sorry, but this is deeply, deeply silly. It just is.
Storytelling is, by its very nature, not participatory. At all. I have never, not once, been a “participant” in any movie I’ve ever seen. I wasn’t a “participant” when I saw Casablanca. I wasn’t a “participant” when I saw Titanic. I wasn’t a “participant” when I saw The Lord of the Rings. I wasn’t a “participant” when I saw 3:10 to Yuma. I wasn’t a “participant” when I saw…you get the idea. And this isn’t just true of movies: how would I “participate” when reading The Pit and the Pendulum? How would I “participate” in Rendezvous with Rama? How would I “participate” in The Once and Future King? or Maus? or Pride and Prejudice? or Old Man’s War? Was I supposed to think of myself as a “participant” in any of these?
To my knowledge, there’s only one form of storytelling right now in which you can participate, and that is the video game. (Which is why I think that games are a pretty exciting development in artistic terms.) Yes, there are arts and entertainments in which you can participate. You can act in a play, for instance. Sing in a choir. But there is nothing about The Bourne Identity that is more “participatory” than any Star Wars movie. The notion makes zero sense.
And besides, the disdain Scalzi is showing here for the “Once upon a time” storytelling trope here is pretty troubling. Was Walt Disney not an entertainer, then? How many of his movies start off with “Once upon a time” and follow Campbellian storytelling tropes that have been around for thousands of years? For many years, Westerns were one of the most popular film genres. And yet, every single Western ever made, by definition, was about characters long dead doing events that were over years and years before. So, come to that, is every historically-set movie ever made.
And besides that, why can’t there be multiple reasons to do something? Can’t George Lucas want to spin a story from mythological cloth and entertain at the same time? I’d bet that if you were to ask George Lucas if he wanted to entertain with his Star Wars movies, he’d likely consider it silly that anyone ever assumed otherwise. I’ve read the interviews and heard the commentaries, and I’ve heard nothing that rules out the notion that Lucas wanted to make films that would entertain people. But Scalzi’s entire argument assumes that the films do not entertain. Or, in other words: Scalzi’s entire argument assumes Scalzi’s own opinion of the films as fact.
Unfair? I don’t think so. There’s this:
Now, hold on, you say: If the Star Wars films aren’t meant to be entertainment, how come so many people were entertained? It’s a fair question; after all, there’s not a single film in the series that made less than $200 million at the box office (and those are in 1980 dollars). I’m happy to allow it’s entirely possible to be entertained by Episodes IV, V and VI, due to their novelty and the intervention of hired guns who aimed for entertainment even as Lucas was on his holy quest for mythology. Even then, however, Return of the Jedi was pushing it. I defy you to find any person who was genuinely entertained by Episodes I, II and III. Episode I in particular is an airless, joyless slog; in the theater you could actually hear people’s expectations deflate — a whooshing groan — the moment Jar-Jar showed up. After the first weekend of Episode I, people went to the prequel trilogy films for the same reason so many people go to church on Sunday: It’s habit, they know when to stand and when to sit, and they want to see how the preacher will screw up the sermon this week. You know what I felt when Episode III was done? Relief. I was done with the Star Wars films. I was free. I’m not the only one.
That line there — “I defy you to find anyone entertained by the Prequels” — now reminds me that I have read this post before, and responded to it. But I must have skimmed it before, because so much of this is silly, condescending, or both. Now I know that Scalzi’s not suggesting that all churchgoers go to church out of just “habit”, but I wonder what percentage of churchgoers he thinks do. Still, the whole exercise reeks of some kind of desperate reaching: “Since I’ve already established that Star Wars isn’t entertainment, I must come up with some other reason why people keep seeing the damn things. And that means that I must argue that millions of people are doing something for some other reason completely.”
That last bit — “I was so relieved after the last one came out! I was free!” — is just stupid. Scalzi could have been “free” of Star Wars any time he wanted to be. I decided that I was “free” of The Matrix after the first one; I never bothered watching the next two. I’ve stopped watching many a teevee series after I decided that I didn’t like it anymore. Good example: ER. I loved that show for years, but then it lost me, so I stopped watching it. It went on another five seasons after that. Did I feel “free” when ER finally went off the air, five years after it stopped entertaining me? No. Because I had, you know, stopped paying attention. The notion that people were going to Star Wars movie after Star Wars movie out of some robotic notion that they had to is just nonsensical.
But I’ve heard arguments like that before. Another good example is Titanic, a movie that has suffered as vicious a backlash since it was beloved in its initial release as I’ve ever seen. Now it’s not uncommon to hear people say that the movie wasn’t popular because lots of people liked it; no, it’s because of armies of thirteen-year-old girls who went to the movie over and over again to drool over Leonardo DiCaprio.
Maybe I’m being unfair to Scalzi, either by misreading or misrepresenting. But I don’t think so. His whole argument hinges on assumptions as to George Lucas’s intentions and a definition of “entertainment” that I don’t find well-taken. Ultimately it boils down to saying “Star Wars isn’t entertainment because I didn’t find it entertaining.”
Buffalo is hosting the World Junior Hockey Championships right now, and one of the visiting players went on Twitter and said that Buffalo is “the worst city ever”. Now, it could be argued that he does have some small beef here — namely, it’s not exactly clear what there is to do in Buffalo when you’re a teenager visiting from out of town and you’re staying downtown, a place that, aside from a few hot spots, isn’t known for being Activity Central. But still, it was pretty insulting. You get a trip that’s paid for and then rip on your perceived lack of entertainment? Yeah, pretty rude. So screw that kid.
“My point to get across was not to put down a great host city like this. I know a lot of people put in time and effort to make this thing possible.”
So what possible rationale could there be for this kid’s Tweet other than to rip on a city he felt was boring him to tears when he wasn’t on the ice?
Lord knows, Buffalo isn’t the greatest hotbed of activity. Especially not downtown. And maybe the organizers could have factored that into the age considerations of the people they were hosting; I don’t know (Alan Bedenko has been covering this beat today). What I do know is that this kid’s a boorish ass who can’t even man up and own the words he himself put out there, so I for one don’t really care if he’s bored or not.
This reminds me of when Willis McGahee was with the Bills and was bitching about the lack of clubs around for young black men. I remember thinking, “Gee, Willis, you make a pretty nice paycheck — why not open such a club yourself?”
Every year, we acquire new Christmas ornaments. Not a whole lot of them, but we pick up four or five each year. We do an “eclectic” Christmas tree, with ornaments of all types and sizes and shapes. We have traditional ball ornaments, painted-glass Santas, ornaments made by The Daughter in various school grades, novelty ornaments bought over the years at different stores that no longer exist, ornaments that have been gifted to us through the years. I’ve never understood the folks who do an entire tree in one color or motif or theme or whatever.
Christmas ornaments, to me, are only partly about putting pretty things on a tree. They’re also about memory. Each ornament puts me in mind of something or someone special to me and my family, and as we unpack them each year, I get to revisit those people and places in my memories. That’s what Christmas ornaments are about.
Anyway, as I said, we get new ones each year. It’s getting harder and harder each year to find room enough on the tree, and it may become necessary one of these years to get a bigger tree to hold them all. As it is, we find ourselves sadly relegating some ornaments to “back of the tree” status, where we can’t see them. But do we stop acquiring them? No way. Here are the notable additions to our tree this year.
The first three are from my parents, who took a trip to England earlier this year and brought these back for us. This is Queen Elizabeth I, who on our tree looks nothing like Flora Robson, Cate Blanchett, or Dame Judy Dench.
Here is Ann Boleyn. Look how bright her eyes are, as she looks forward to long and successful marriage to King Henry VIII! It’s almost like she has no idea that her head will, not too many years hence, be separated from her shoulders. Oh, those whacky English Royals through the centuries!
And here is the King of the Britons himself, the Majesty of England, the Once and Future King, Arthur Pendragon:
Ahhh, Arthur, I’ve missed you so. I should reacquaint myself with King Arthur one of these years. Heck, I had a book in progress about him, once upon a time….
Maybe the Christmas tree wouldn’t be the first place you’d expect to see a bizarre matchup of fantasy hero versus sci-fi villain, but that’s what’s unfolding on our three this year:
Arthur doesn’t seem aware of the danger that lurks behind him! Turn around, Arthur!
A few weeks ago, The Daughter and I took a trip out to look for new ornaments. Every year I let her pick a few, in honor of the brother and sister that she lost. For the latter, she chose this pair of birds.
And for Little Quinn — whose “official” color we always took to be red — she chose this.
So there they are, the new additions to the tree for this year.
(You can see more of our ornaments here, here, and here.)
I don’t do this sort of thing very often at all…in fact, I almost never do it. I’m talking about sneaking photos of complete strangers when I’m out and about…and especially not when I’m at work. It just always seems a bit underhanded to do that, although lots of folks do it so maybe it just falls under the category of “people watching”. But anyway, I was at work the other day, wandering about The Store taking care of maintenance issues, when I saw these two guys doing their shopping, I suppose for stuff for Christmas dinner or some such. And, well, my jaw dropped, because…well….
It turns out that I’m not the only long-haired wearer of overalls in the Buffalo area. Huzzah!!!
(Yeah, could be they were just in town, visiting from someplace else. It’s not like I was gonna charge up to the guy and start quizzing him, because I’m not a creepy stalker type. Unless George Lucas, Gillian Anderson, or Sela Ward walk in. Then, all bets are off.)
