Day 3485

Janet and I went an saw Yesterday at a matinee this afternoon. We are both retired, but it still seems weird that we can just go see a movie whenever we feel like it. I liked the film. It was basically a romcom with a happy ending and lots of great music. I grew up with The Beatles and they were one of the main reasons I learned to play the guitar and was in lots of enthusiastic but inept bands during high school and college. Despite this background, I had forgotten just how many amazing songs The Beatles actually wrote. There are literally hundreds of great Beatles songs. For someone who was a freshman in high school when I Want to Hold Your Hand hit the airwaves, Yesterday was a pleasant trip down memory lane. I completely forgot that the whole premise of the movie was ridiculous.

I like going to movies in the afternoon. The theater is usually empty and you can sit anywhere you want. Ticket prices are a little lower, although they still seem high to me. We got the discounted daytime, senior citizen rate and still paid about $10 a ticket. I remember paying $5 not that long ago. OK. Maybe it was a long time ago. I wonder how movie theaters survive. Why go to a theater when you can watch the same thing on iTunes for half the price?

It is still ridiculously hot. I wear twice as much clothing now because I have to change every time I take a walk. Sweating has become a way of life. I think we have had worse heat waves in the past, but it is so humid this year that it feels even hotter than it actually is. I thought we were going to get some rain today, but one big storm system went to the West of us and then a little while later another one went to the East. Normally this would be great news. Now I'm not so sure. A nice gentle rain would cool things down. Let's not go crazy though. No more downed trees or power outages. We've had enough of those.

I watched the last episode of Chasing the Moon tonight. Seeing this back-to-back with Yesterday made me nostalgic for a time in history that I don't expect to see again any time soon. Sure, there was a lot of social unrest in the sixties. This was the era of Vietnam and campus protests as much as it was  a time of moon landings and the Beatles. The jarring memories have faded away though. I think this is human nature. We like to remember the positive things. The space program faltered for a while after the Apollo program ended and of course The Beatles broke up. These things existed though. They happened. I like to think that if we could do something once, we can do it again.

I often wonder how you keep dreams alive. I've certainly had plenty of big dreams that have faded away. Probably everybody has. It's easy for the problems of daily life to slowly grind you down one inch at a time. I mostly think about paying bills, high cholesterol, rush hour traffic, and roof leaks. Every once in a while when it is very late and very quiet, I still have dreams though. Can I reach them? Do they even matter? I guess you'll have to keep reading to find out.

Keller is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 2413

When Dash and I were out on our walk this morning, we passed a message written in chalk on the sidewalk. It got me wondering what hope actually meant to me. I hope that Dot will be with us for another year. I hope that Janet stays healthy and happy. I hope I won't run out of money before I die. My hopes are pretty basic and almost exclusively centered around the small world I live in. I never hope for world peace or a winning lottery ticket. That's rainbows and unicorns stuff. I'm a realist. If you've ever been a part of a dysfunctional family, or a member of a homeowner's association you understand how difficult it is to get along on even the most basic level. Neighbors become mired in petty arguments about barking dogs and trees on the property line. 50% of all marriages end in divorce. If our cities and states and individual countries are so divided, how can we ever expect the entire world to come together. It has never happened in human history.

My sister is a historian and one of the smartest people I know. I remember her telling me once that one of the most productive periods in history was when the great Italian city states flourished in Europe. These small city states were extremely competitive and were constantly at war with each other. Since the city states were so small, they couldn't do much damage on a global scale. The competition between the states was good. It created great wealth and played a major role in the Renaissance. Art, science, and philosophy all flourished during this period of time. It was only when countries got larger and decided to expand their influence by conquering other countries that the world started to get screwed up. The rise of the British Empire probably caused a lot of the problems we see today.

Humans are not a friendly species. Great White Sharks and Cobras are puppy dogs compared to us. This is why I've never been a fan of globalization. To survive, we need small redundant systems, so that if one element of society fails, it doesn't take down everyone else with them. The Internet is a redundant system. If a server goes down, information will bypass the trouble and find another route to its destination. There is no master hub that controls the entire Internet. Politicians don't seem to understand the beauty of this model though. They keep trying to make things bigger. The United Nations, The European Union, NATO, and it appears even The United States of America, all appear to be completely unable to bring people together on any lasting basis. I have very little hope that we are ever going to get it right.

None of this really bothers me though, since I seldom venture more than five miles from my house. My philosophy has always been "I'll leave you alone if you leave me alone." As long as the Zombie Apocalypse doesn't begin until five years after I'm dead, I'm fine.

I got an early start on my chores today because it was so hot outside. When I was using the automated checkout aisle at the grocery store, I couldn't get the bar code reader to work. It would beep when I pointed it at items in my cart, but nothing would show up on the register. This must be a common problem, because it didn't take long before an employee noticed me trying to read the UPC code on my strawberries over and over again and came over and rebooted the machine. Turn it off and then turn it on again seems to be the universal solution for everything these days. It's really too bad we can't just reboot the entire world.

Jewel is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1645

I've got to come up with a new game plan. Much of what I do these days doesn't even matter. I still like to think that I'm clever and essential, but I've become much more of a convenience than a necessity. If I didn't get out of bed tomorrow, few people would even notice. This bothers me. Shouldn't I be following my dream? I don't know. Following dreams has become a tricky business in a world where dreams and passions have become synonymous. I am a dispassionate person. I like to do useful things. Appealing to your emotions? Not so much. Unfortunately, advertising is all about appealing to your emotions. I probably should have been a physicist or a mathematician instead. Years ago, I used to be a good documentary filmmaker. I didn't have an agenda. I just took pictures of what I saw. Documentaries have changed like everything else though. Most current documentaries are all about emotion. The filmmaker wants to win you over to a certain point of view. Even street photography has an agenda now. I find the only thing that's safe to photograph these days are flowers. Ironically, people seem to like these photographs because they evoke some sort of emotion in them.

So here I am. By rejecting the world of emotional persuasion, I am left with some pretty boring tasks. I don't have to do these things, but I like to stay busy. When I'm busy, I don't have time to think about the nature of existence. I hate questions like "Why am I here" and "What was I meant to do." Maybe that's why Andy Warhol was one of the heroes of my youth. Andy wanted to be a machine. He approached things very mechanically, yet he managed to have a rich and interesting life in the process.

If you have read this far, you already know that I wasn't busy enough today. I didn't question my existence though. I went to the gym. I still can't figure out why the gym is so much busier on weekdays than on weekends. It is counterintuitive. The weights and machines I like were still open though, so I had a good workout. On the way home, I went to the grocery store instead of the guitar store as I had planned. That's where my head is at these days. I can't think much further than dinner.

Dash goes back to the cancer center for a monthly checkup tomorrow. He's just getting some routine blood tests and possibly a chest x-ray, but I'm worried about his tail. Dash got his bloody tail at the cancer center in the first place. He is so happy to see the other dogs that he wags his tail constantly in the doggie day care area where he stays until the staff is ready for him. Since the area is relatively small, he is always banging the tail against a wall or a door.  Now that I'm finally getting his "happy tail" injury to heal, I'd hate to start all over again. Hopefully, he'll be a bit calmer when we drop him off for his exam tomorow.

I could probably go to the gym every day this week if I wanted. That's how slow it has been.

Bali is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1037

I was somewhat reassured after visiting with my financial advisor this afternoon. When I backed off and took a longer view of things, I realized that I wasn't in that bad shape after all. What the hell. I don't have any debts and I still make enough to pay the bills. I really shouldn't complain. The hard thing for me to deal with is that I've always been a saver and it used to be so much easier to tuck a little away for a rainy day. I miss the 1980's when 10-year Treasury yields were over 12% and the conventional wisdom was that the value of your house would go up forever.

Times sure have changed. Treasury yields are at a 112 year low and I don't even want to talk about the housing market. You can't give up though. My advisor and I put stop loss orders on several positions that have done well this year to lock in gains. We talked about what to do if Obama won. And what to do if Romney won. In either case, there would definitely be things to take advantage of and other things to avoid. I like to be prepared. What I don't like is living in a world of diminished expectations for the foreseeable future. I would love to see a return to the overwhelming feeling of optimism that prevailed when John F. Kennedy was president. We need grand dreams like we had back then. It doesn't need to be going to the moon, but it needs to be something equally grand. I think those kind of dreams died when Kennedy was shot in Dealey Plaza and never returned again.

I used to have grand dreams. My grandest dreams actually took place while I was asleep. I could fly and travel through time long before I even heard of Dr. Who. Now my dreams are pathetic. I'm usually just lost in a hotel somewhere, looking for my luggage. I wouldn't call my waking hours pathetic, but there are definitely on the dull side. I take pictures of flowers. I walk dogs. I make a little money to pay the bills. There are no more plans to win an Oscar for best documentary anymore. There are no plans to make any films at all. When conversations veer off into one of those "what are you passionate about" discussions, I don't even feel like talking.

Maybe if I were passionate about dog training like some folks in our Wednesday evening class, Dash might be winning ribbons again. I'm not very competitive, or very passionate. I just go to these classes because it's good for Dot and Dash to be around other dogs. Socializing with other dogs helps keep ours happy and well adjusted. The training exercises themselves are silly though. A lot of things in life are just silly.

Lucky is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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Day 1023

When I go to the post office, I park at a nearby strip mall and walk the final 100 yards to mail my letters. I do this because there is a traffic light at the intersection leading to the neighborhood shops. There is no light at the post office and it is much easier to go home again when I can turn left. I've been parking at this strip mall for years now and continue to be amazed at how quickly the shops change hands. A theater where I once saw 101 Dalmatians is now a small grocery store. A pizza place is now an MRI imaging center. Most of the retail stores have been replaced by restaurants. The restaurants themselves get replaced by other restaurants with disturbing regularity. The video rental store on the corner is just empty. I guess nobody rents video tapes anymore. I can't help thinking that each of these stores was somebody's dream. So many broken dreams, and this is just one little neighborhood strip mall. I'd like to see a little more permanance in this world, but I'm not holding my breath anymore.

I finally managed to get Linux running on my computer this morning. I now have access to thousands of open source programs that I'll never ever use. The problem yesterday was all my fault. I just wasn't typing things correctly in the terminal command line. Now that I've solved this mystery and have Linux running side by side with my Mac OS, I'll probably just forget about it. That's what I did last time anyway. I'm sure I'll use Gimp from time to time, but since I know Photoshop so much better, it's hard to see the point. Basically, it was just a slow day yesterday and installing Linux gave me something to do.

We missed most of the presidential debates this evening because we were at dog training class with Dot and Dash. That's just as well. I have a hard time even listening to politicians anymore. Everybody is saying what that they think people want to hear, instead of what they need to hear. I'm getting tired of the whole charade. When the majority of the population is spending more than they earn, it's no surprise that the entire country is in trouble. A little restraint on everybody's part would do wonders. It doesn't matter is you are an individual, a family, a city, or a country. You just shouldn't spend what you don't have.

I hope I feel better tomorrow. I've been dragging around all day with no energy whatsoever. I almost feel like I've got the flu or something, but it's not even flu season. Maybe I just didn't get a good night's sleep last night. Dot and Dash are active dreamers and their paw slapping dog dreams woke me up at two hour intervals. I'm hoping things will be a little calmer tonight.

Hobbs is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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