Borders is closing and it's all my fault.
I share in that fault though. I'm one of millions of Kindle owners who, joined with Ipad users and the rest, are pulling the publishing world into the digital age whether they want to or not. So no big surprise that Borders is calling it quits.
The truth is though that I LIKE books. I suspect that folks my age and older (47 currently - check back later) and perhaps those from a generation earlier will always have a printed page bias. It's a tactile thing which a computer screen cannot give us. I still remember wanting a home library with shelves and shelves of books. I like the smell. I like handling those old books with brittle pages and wondering who else has read them.
Libraries, though, will soon be a thing of the past. They will become mostly WiFi spots with a few picture books hanging around. The traditional library will become something more like a museum. And so goes progress.
I wonder if those ancient cave painters shook their heads at the stone tablet advocates who, in turn, decried papyrus scrolls as being a short term fad. Soon, I'd imagine, we'll have the words just beamed directly into our noggins so that there's nothing to hold at all. Gonna be a bleak day for bookmarker companies, for sure.
Monday, July 25, 2011
Friday, July 15, 2011
As If It's Not Bad Enough
Yesterday I had to go to a funeral.
She was a vibrant young woman of just 32 years. The type of person that just made you say "wow" after meeting. You wanted to be near her. Folks hung on her words. Fun. Classy. A positive influence wherever she went.
Modern medicine couldn't save her though and the First Baptist Church of Podunk was filled to the rafters with family, distant relatives, friends, coworkers and damned near the whole county. As it should have been. Podunk is smack in the middle of gnat country here in the south: it was hot and it was buggy, even inside the church.
So there we were, sweating and swatting and swaying uncomfortably on our feet because it was standing room only in the back while, just to make things worse, were three ministers who spent more time talking about some dude named Jesus than they did about the life of the beautiful person we were there to mourn.
The phrase 'ad nauseum' applies here. We wanted stories about her youth. We wanted anecdotes from friends. We wanted remembrances from her family. We wanted to grieve and mourn and cry and feel just a bit better, if not a bit melancholy, when it was all through. Instead it was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
"I feel it would be an absolute SIN if everyone here today has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior," they preached and, in my opinion, missed the point entirely. Which is a damned shame. Bad enough we just lost a loved one.
Which made me think that perhaps we shouldn't leave the preaching up to the preacher. Folks make their own wedding vows. All of us have considered our epitaphs at one point or another (I'm going with "I'm With Stupid.") So why not write our own service script? Not just a eulogy but the whole entire service? I think I'm going to open mine with a joke - you know, that one about a bar.
She was a vibrant young woman of just 32 years. The type of person that just made you say "wow" after meeting. You wanted to be near her. Folks hung on her words. Fun. Classy. A positive influence wherever she went.
Modern medicine couldn't save her though and the First Baptist Church of Podunk was filled to the rafters with family, distant relatives, friends, coworkers and damned near the whole county. As it should have been. Podunk is smack in the middle of gnat country here in the south: it was hot and it was buggy, even inside the church.
So there we were, sweating and swatting and swaying uncomfortably on our feet because it was standing room only in the back while, just to make things worse, were three ministers who spent more time talking about some dude named Jesus than they did about the life of the beautiful person we were there to mourn.
The phrase 'ad nauseum' applies here. We wanted stories about her youth. We wanted anecdotes from friends. We wanted remembrances from her family. We wanted to grieve and mourn and cry and feel just a bit better, if not a bit melancholy, when it was all through. Instead it was Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.
"I feel it would be an absolute SIN if everyone here today has not accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior," they preached and, in my opinion, missed the point entirely. Which is a damned shame. Bad enough we just lost a loved one.
Which made me think that perhaps we shouldn't leave the preaching up to the preacher. Folks make their own wedding vows. All of us have considered our epitaphs at one point or another (I'm going with "I'm With Stupid.") So why not write our own service script? Not just a eulogy but the whole entire service? I think I'm going to open mine with a joke - you know, that one about a bar.
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
A Thoroughly Researched Observation of Neal Schon
Seriously, I've given this a lot of thought and consideration. I've spent countless seconds working on this post regarding Journey's guitar virtuoso, Neal Schon. Although, for the sake of this blog, I primarily used three sources:
1. A spot he did for a local radio station in which he lingered a little long and much too hard on the word "rock" as though he was being tough.
2. A copy of Journey's latest release in which the guitar work is a bit more pervasive and heavy than one would want.
3. Watching a Journey concert on Palladia - see #2.
Based on these three sources, I'm willing to state, unequivocally, that Neal wants desperately to be a hard rock guitar hero and not be forever associated with a chick band.
Not that there's anything wrong with a chick band.
Listen, if it weren't for "Don't Stop Believing" I'm pretty sure I would have never achieved second base (and a big lead towards third) with Theresa Crooks back in ninth grade. I suspect had the radio station followed up with "Open Arms" instead of "My Sharona" I might have been looking at home... So, hey, mad props to chick bands like Journey, without them some of us guys would have never had a chance.
Besides, while you've been reading this, Neal's made more money on the royalties from that "na, na, nana" song than most of us will earn in a lifetime. And perhaps that's what you should focus on, Neal. You helped countless young men come close to realizing various illicit fantasies while making what I assume must be a butt load of money. All in all, not a bad legacy, I say.
(In order to preserve my blogging integrity, I feel I must confess that any base running with Theresa Crooks is purely my fanciful, wishful thinking. In fairness, I spent enough time imagining various bases occupied by Theresa that I feel like I do have some basis to make such claims. So please, Theresa, grant me a little poetic license here. Thank you.)
((And, yes, I know, it's a weird subject to continue a blog that's been dormant for quite some time. But you should expect that out of me. As long as I can remember the log in info, this blog is "not dead yet."))
1. A spot he did for a local radio station in which he lingered a little long and much too hard on the word "rock" as though he was being tough.
2. A copy of Journey's latest release in which the guitar work is a bit more pervasive and heavy than one would want.
3. Watching a Journey concert on Palladia - see #2.
Based on these three sources, I'm willing to state, unequivocally, that Neal wants desperately to be a hard rock guitar hero and not be forever associated with a chick band.
Not that there's anything wrong with a chick band.
Listen, if it weren't for "Don't Stop Believing" I'm pretty sure I would have never achieved second base (and a big lead towards third) with Theresa Crooks back in ninth grade. I suspect had the radio station followed up with "Open Arms" instead of "My Sharona" I might have been looking at home... So, hey, mad props to chick bands like Journey, without them some of us guys would have never had a chance.
Besides, while you've been reading this, Neal's made more money on the royalties from that "na, na, nana" song than most of us will earn in a lifetime. And perhaps that's what you should focus on, Neal. You helped countless young men come close to realizing various illicit fantasies while making what I assume must be a butt load of money. All in all, not a bad legacy, I say.
(In order to preserve my blogging integrity, I feel I must confess that any base running with Theresa Crooks is purely my fanciful, wishful thinking. In fairness, I spent enough time imagining various bases occupied by Theresa that I feel like I do have some basis to make such claims. So please, Theresa, grant me a little poetic license here. Thank you.)
((And, yes, I know, it's a weird subject to continue a blog that's been dormant for quite some time. But you should expect that out of me. As long as I can remember the log in info, this blog is "not dead yet."))
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