When the circle goes full

One of my favorite television shows growing up was Melrose Place. It was the first show I became truly addicted to. The premise of the show was all the characters that lived in this apartment complex down the street from Beverly Hills 90210. They all had dreams and aspirations, some further in their careers than others. I remember season one every episode either ended at a bar named Shooters where they all shared a beer and a laugh or at the courtyard pool where the ladies lounged and the men swam. By season two they were all suspecting someone was cheating with their boyfriend or girlfriend, husband or wife, Shooters was shown only when the dirt was being dished, and most of the boring characters had been written out. By season three they were all conspiring a homicide of some sort and the pool was responsible for half the casts deaths. It was a hell of a lot more interesting show once they starting whacking people. Without Michael Mancini that show would have been cancelled two episodes in.

It was interesting when they tried to bring that show back. I never watched the new version even though I believe Michael Mancini made a few appearances. It's tough to go back. The cast is always changing, the plot lines are not as engaging, and the good actors left or were fired years ago. The actors who got a taste of fame in the first couple of seasons of the old Melrose saw that fame disappear immediately when they tried to branch out into "real" acting roles. People wanted the soap opera and after they introduced Sydney no one even remembered the blonde that Michael was married to before. Her storyline was kind of a sad afterthought. The people that left the show for greener pastures and Hollywood feature films occasionally appear on a Lifetime movie reruns from the early 2000's. Luke Perry left Dylan McKay in 1995 to pursue his "professional" career only to gratefully jump back into his role in 90210 three years later.

People leave and come back, sometimes to great success and sometimes to epic failure. Michael Jordan left the Chicago Bulls after three titles to go play baseball. He was the only one to return from a sudden retirement to reappear even better in winning three more afterwards. Most returns aren't as successful. That same Jordan's disastrous Washington Wizards comeback proves there is a limit. Allen Iverson's return to the 76ers was a failure and he is now waiting tables in Istanbul somewhere, possibly at a bar called Shooters. Jason Giambi's return to the Oakland A's was a disappointment as are most returns by sports hero's when their careers have faded from their glory days. Not many athletes return in their prime, they usually return in a former caricature of themselves like Ken Griffey Jr's in Seattle. We look at their brilliance from yesterday and unfairly compare them to it, full well understanding they can't be that player they once were but also saddened that they are not.

When political leaders return it can be just as nostalgic. People gather behind a candidate from their youth and hope to recapture those same feelings they once had. As if the person they are supporting has not changed with age themselves and that conditions remain the same. Time changes everyone and events change, when the candidate is steadfast in their old ways we punish them by telling them they are not adaptable (even though those where the qualities we admired). When they do change with the times we punish them by saying they are not the candidate we remembered at all and are selling out for their own interests. They are in a situation they can't possibly win because the past does not equal the future, good or bad.

It does, however, feel good to be back in familiar territory. There is something to be said of past success equaling the potential for future success. It's not a bad thing to be comfortable. We can't all be leading men in the movies. There needs to be that Michael Mancini that watches all the new characters walk in through those doors at Melrose with big dreams and aspirations and who watches those same people fade out into the sunset in pursuit of their own starring roles somewhere else. Hopefully it is not on a street corner in West Hollywood.

Hoax is a twelve point word in scrabble

You could blame the folks that listened to the radio on October 30, 1938 of being naive. Aliens were not attacking the world, contrary to Orson Welles War of the World's radio broadcast. Six million Americans listened to the CBS radio show and it was reported 1.7 million of them actually believed it was happening. So prolific was the success, that over 10,000 news articles were written and even Adolf Hitler used it to reference the excess of democracy and decadence. This was a radio broadcast and a gullible public swallowed it up wholesale. Surely we are smarter now...these seventy two years later. We wouldn't get sucked into anything so foolish as a social trend promotion and blindly follow a trend without doing our own research. After all we have the Internet now right?

Those folks in 1938 didn't even have television. How were they supposed to know? We aren't just blind mice are we? Grab the cheese. We're idiots folks. Face it. We have become so addicted to the Internet and social media we just blindly follow whatever the mass is selling or telling us. What's in? What should we buy? Who's cool? What's the picture we are supposed to post on our profile? Cartoons? Sure...it sounds good. Never vetting, never researching, just blindly associating and off we go. If everyone you knew jumped off the bridge would you do it? Well did they post it on Facebook?? Maybe...

Wikileaks is posting classified information. Is it harmful, sounds like it could be. It puts international relationships at risk and endangers operatives in other countries. We have so far managed to diss several heads of states and have shown our true feelings about supposed international partners. Now the Wikileak founder is on the run for rape charges. He is threatening to release even more classified documents. There is a nuclear option that he will unveil if he is captured or tried for treason. This is a colossal story involving every country we deal with and I'd bet 85% of the general population is more aware of the final BCS standings, the new Harry Potter, or this Facebook campaign where you all put up pics of your favorite cartoons only to discover it wasn't to help promote child abuse at all. No one vetted. Everyone just followed. We have to assume what we are being fed is the truth right? No one would intentionally lie to us? I mean, we're all too smart now right? This is the information age after all. Of course no one told you that information flowing in from a million channels into a billion computers worldwide is often never truly vetted. We just absorb it and spew it out as fact.

I bet more people are upset over the Facebook hoax that they will learn about in the next few hours they were a part of then the WikiLeaks story which exposes everything said and done regarding national security and foreign policy between countries we go to war with or against. Maybe we need to socialize our important media. Maybe we need cartoon anchors on the news telling us what we need to retain, what is important. Get the Situation to explain basic finance and talk stocks on CNBC instead of Kramer. Get Snooki to talk about what is going on in North and South Korea and the financial situation in Europe. I loved the SNL clip about TMZ and Wikileaks being combined below:




This is maybe hyperbole. Maybe this all falls on deaf ears because we are over saturated with our jobs, personal lives, the social media, to actually absorb what's important, what we really need to know. It doesn't mean we have to be negative, or gloomy, or live in fear. It just means we have to be more educated than the new life forms we are finding on this planet. When scientists discovered bacteria that is thriving and living in Mono Lake in California we can now assume that life can exist on this planet without oxygen. This bacteria feeds off of arsenic. Which makes it possible that life can exist in this solar system. Alien life.

Orson Welles didn't believe that so many people would take his broadcast seriously. Out of six million listeners, 1.7 million, a little less than 1 out of every 3 listeners actually took the bait. We haven't grown any more intelligent, less gullible, or more observant in the last seventy years. They just have more access to us.

A lemon, some tart fruit, and a change in direction

Sometimes life gives you lemons, then you make lemonade, and you drink it, and then you get rushed to the ER because the lemon was poisoned. Maybe after they've pumped your stomach can you reflect on how to better approach lemons. Throw them away. I can't turn lemons into a beverage, not when they are busy being pelted at me by an angry mob. Or maybe they are raining down on me like the frogs in the movie Magnolia. Giants lemons just pouring down on me. Sometimes that is what life feels like, a constant downpour of tart fruit.

After my car broke down and I steered it safely to the side of I-5 I sat back and reflected. I thought about a great quotation on Facebook I saw recently from my old manager: "Life isn't happening to you, life is responding to you." Holy cow, what message am I sending out there? Life has been kicking my butt. I drove home to visit family and on my trip back I am two hours from home, but breakdown and seem years away. I sat in my car looking up at the mountains surrounding Lake Shasta and pondered. Were past decisions a reflection of my current events? Sure, I could have taken better care of my car, but even the Audi dealership I took it to in Fresno told me I was fine. I had some things fixed but when that check engine light fired up, and the battery light flashed, and my engine roared, and that damn steering wheel locked I was looking down the turn at a steep drop through a gazillion beautiful Douglas Fir trees. Those trees led into a gorgeous blue ice cold Shasta Lake. That arrival would only be delayed if the car didn't first flip over and project me through the windshield into a macabre Tim Burton holiday ornament.

Instead of the absolute worst timing and fateful moment occuring, my car was steerable to the side. I was able to pull over. I sat in my car, once again, grateful. It's only a car. The damage may be severe, but they were damages I could live with. I looked up at those Douglas Firs engulfing the mountains surrounding and watched as the fog creeped over the tops of them making their images softly fade out into white. I was calm. The tow truck took an hour and a half to greet me, but I sat patiently. The rental car place did not come through and as frustration began, I settled it. I ended up holing up in a Ramada Inn off the freeway like a man on the run, but I wasn't running anymore. If this was what life has to offer, I can face it. Of course my family,  my poor parents who stressed more than me over the ordeal while they sat eating their second Thanksgiving meal, they continue to prove to me how lucky I truly am. When I called them they went to work like a high powered PR team cleaning up some A-list movie star's latest TMZ mess. They make the Wag the Dog team look like amateurs. And yet unfortunately the mess is not an event, more like my current affairs of my life. Before I could count to ten I was on their AAA policy. Before I could count to fifty they had a auto body shop to take the car mapped out. Then a rental car was ready to be picked up and when that fell through, that "on the run" special at the Ramada Inn. They did more dialing than the tea party for Bristol, or every 80's movie fan for Jennifer.

A great friend came today to pick me up. She was like an angelic vision as she pulled up her large Toyota truck. She could have topped one of those decorated Douglas Firs, just not Tim Burtons. Her positive vibes immediately washed away the subdued melancholy. I was no longer resigned to my destiny, I was optimistic it was still of my choosing. An email potentially offering me my old job, was further proof of the shift in climate. Life may respond to us. Maybe I was bringing these events upon me, but these are not major crisis's. They are minor. Good people do exist, they bail you out of hard situations with their incredible outlooks on life. Karma does exist. It has to. That or we turn those hard-pelting lemons into meringue pie with some whip cream on top, smile at the absurdity of it all, and throw them back.

Happy Thanksgiving

Tomorrow, if you are lucky, you will be sitting across from people you care about eating turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing, yams, and whatever else your family or friends traditionally cook on this day. My family cooks German sausage along with the traditional fare; we have a chocolate turkey for desert. Of course that is along with a ton of pumpkin pie.


I’ve celebrated with family and friends on this day all over the west coast. When I lived in Seattle and was unable to make it down south for Thanksgiving I celebrated it at friend’s houses. One friend smoked a turkey and failed to start it until the middle of the day. It wasn’t finished until 10 pm. We ate everything but turkey and finally got to the turkey as a late night snack. I’ve experienced a vegetarian Thanksgiving with cousins, and even had one or two turkey TV dinners in my time. I think it was the Hungry Man dinner with corn and potatoes when neither family nor friends were an option. Those by far were my least favorite ones, although I did usually talk to family and experienced their gathering if only through the phone.

I am appreciative of the ability to be down home this Thanksgiving and seeing family face to face. Obviously I think about our soldiers overseas, not just Iraq, Kuwait, or Afghanistan, but South Korea and parts of Europe and their sacrifices. It’s not the Mondays or Wednesdays that are the hardest to be overseas and away from family, it is the Thanksgivings and the Christmas’s. Being away from family on those days is definitely a lot more difficult. I know that doesn’t always seem the case if you are chatting up your crazy uncle or nutty brother or sister-in-law but that is the truth. You get them for a couple of days a year and most of us can handle one or two days of it, and may even look forward to the bizarre exchanges.

Four hundred years ago 50 Pilgrims sat across from 90 Wampanoag Indians and ate venison and water fowl. The Pilgrims were celebrating a bountiful harvest and showing off their gun power. The Indians were interested in the new visitors and obviously not aware of the waves that would follow to one day build factories and shopping centers where everyone could buy a frozen Hungry Man dinner and a flat screen television to watch a parade and football.

We may not be experiencing our most ideal Thanksgiving tomorrow. Maybe we’ve been unemployed in forever. Maybe we lost someone close to us recently. Maybe we are undecided of where life is taking us. And maybe we are sitting in room with complete strangers. Thanksgiving though is more than the food and present company; it is memories of our past and promise of our future. Its tradition and tradition lasts.

We can build new memories and appreciate less than glorious moment’s years later with a fresh perspective. We can give thanks to another day on this planet and give thanks for another day to remember and another day to plan. If we had a bountiful harvest we can appreciate and give gratitude for that. If we did not, well we can give thanks that we have the opportunity to sow the garden and fields again next year and plants crops again. Many people in other countries don’t have the vast resources that we do, the opportunities we do, the fortunes we do. Thanksgiving is above all else appreciation for life, however you got to this great land..whether by ship, by stork, or by God. Eat whatever you like, just please no stuffed stork.

What's truth

I was watching The Last Samurai the other night and was caught up in the words and symbolism of the film. I've seen it a couple of times before and the idea of Tom Cruise as a Samurai is pretty ridiculous if you don't allow yourself to get caught up in the charade. I got caught up into it. There were a few scenes and lines that stick out with me. The one line in particular is when the Samurai chief Katsumoto asks Cruise if man can change his destiny. Cruise says, "I think a man does what he can, until his destiny is revealed." Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Learn and you will grow.

We don't live in a very honest time anymore. Words are merely that, sometimes I wonder if it is all fiction. We tend to do what feels good at the moment with no consequences or recourse and worry about hurt feelings later. Only if we are caught. It's not quite an honor system. I think if we went by the honor code in school we would all give ourselves A's. We "tried" hard. That should count, right? We gave it "effort." So for our effort we should be rewarded even though we didn't get the results. That's our instant gratification world we live in. We want the fame, the wealth, the love, and we want it in the past tense because it should be happening..now!

What is truth? Is it what we decide it is at the moment? Is it what feels good to us today? Does it change to our ever changing moods and whims? Can we go back and say we "tried" therefore we accomplished? Maybe schooling nowadays teaching us that it's only effort that counts anymore. That if we try and fail we are still winners. No we are not. Let's be honest. We are failures. If you don't succeed try again. Sure, but try better. Change what you are doing. Don't do the same thing and then be surprised when it doesn't work. We either adapt and move on or we are toast. There is no award for repeated failure. No matter what they try to sell us.

Maybe people just need constant ego stroking. Maybe people can't handle the effort of making something real so they build up all these so-called "walls" that only the things they want to hear goes through. I am not sure. I know that where we are today as a country and as a society is due to immediate gratification. Maybe it's televisions fault, the Internet, our teaching system, or ourselves for blaming anything other than our own efforts. We look for excuses instead of accepting responsibility. We are all culpable.

I don't begrudge people falling out of love and moving on with their lives. I do begrudge lies. Nobody wants to feel guilty though. They want to continue the mirage that it was not their fault. They want a clean conscience to wake up to. It's fine, accept when you are wrong, admit it, be honest, then it's clean. Or carry that guilt with you like backpack full of bricks. One lie begets another, and then another. Pretty soon you are writing fiction novels. Don't worry baby, yours won't outsell mine.

Chasing a sunset

A sheen of gray fog coats the sky today. The orange and yellow leaves drooping off the tree limbs, about to take their descent to the damp and cold floor below. It's as if they are suffering a hangover from the way the sun shone down upon them yesterday and the way they gleaned in the light, their colors radiating in a lush fall day that Charlie Brown comic strips were made of.

It started as a lot of mornings have lately. I woke up dejected. Once again unsure of what the day had in store for me but upset that I had failed to get out of town the day prior. I had to meet with some classmates on a group project, so I was stuck in town. The drive to Ashland though told me today would be different. The colors too vibrant and sprinkled and even my perpetual melancholy was not strong enough to withstand the force of it.

When I made the walk through campus and felt the air hit my lungs I started to get that drive I have been missing. As if my engine has been running in second gear and I finally shifted into third. The group was waiting in the library and I knew that the project is going to fall into my lap. My two group mates are Japanese exchange students and my other group partner has been a group no-show. I sat with my two project mates realizing that if I don't lead then we are going to be cast into driftlessness. My next two days, today included, will be researching business forecasts and projections. I'll be building a model for a successful business and running cost analysis. If there could be a drearier way to spend a weekend, I could not imagine it. After leaving our meeting with renewed and well-acted vigor I decided upon a car ride. Sure, I would have to get cracking on this fun business project but today the sun would not let me.

My first destination turned out to be the animal shelter. It was on the way from Ashland and when I saw no cars of volunteers and the sun's glow too enticing I pulled in. There was no reason that a shelter dog shouldn't be able to enjoy in a day like today, it was made for football and dogs playing catch. An hour and four dogs out of the kennels later I left the scene. I get more walking the dogs then they do. Seeing their joy in playing ball or rolling around on the grass instills it in me. Simplicity. Enjoy the simple things. Don't focus on what isn't, focus on how happy you are about what is. Sure, it is difficult seeing the sad dogs and the dogs that have been there too long, but if my fifteen minutes of attention to them in the yard keeps them from going cage crazy for another few days then I feel like I've done a good deed. Someone will come along and do the real work of rescuing and adopting them.

Seeing that unencumbered joy that those dogs felt from being in their cage made me realize I had to get out of my own. I had to see the sun set on the ocean. I hadn't been to the coast in months. There is something about the ocean that awakens me and settles me. I think I've put many symbolic images in my head from my visits to the beach and the ocean. I can remember growing up as a child and visiting the California coast. My family would take trips to Morro Bay and Pismo Beach. The house we rented in Morro Bay was a tiny little yellow house with no television. I read old Archie comic books from the 50's and 60's that were in the children's bedroom. We went deep sea fishing and would float in the fog soup into what felt like the middle of the ocean on a small fishing vessel catching bug-eyed red snappers and halibut.

Years later there would be the Oregon coast and the rocky shores and green soaring redwoods. I thought the central California coast was pretty but it has absolutely nothing on the beauty of the Oregon coastline. On a bright sunny day the water looks like diamonds. The views so beautiful that you wish it would never end. You can take the photographs and even the smiles of those in them, but time does diminish the feelings. When you revisit those places it has both a calming effect and a hollowing one. The moment is there, the beauty, the balance, but life changes us and the ocean stays the same.

I chased a sunset yesterday. I drove for two plus hours in my car in a pursuit of a feeling. My journey was my destination. When I got there the sun has sunk below the sea. Yet what remained was just as breathtaking. The sky was a colorful painting of the bottom half of a rainbow. It was traces of a gorgeous sunset that might have been but wasn't seen. It was memories. The waves crashed and the sky grew darker. The traces of yellow light fading further and further away. Washed away by the ocean of the night.

Adios Facebookers

I'm leaving the playground. I appreciate keeping up with friends and family but that is what email is for. My narcissistic cravings will have to be fulfilled somewhere else, I'm getting off the Facebook juice. I appreciate those of you who have read and commented on my blog. I'm still going to keep writing, but maybe not so much on my blog. I'm writing a novel of short stories and I will keep in touch with those friends and family that want to reach me. My email will be at the bottom of this blog.

I'm proud of a few things. I'm proud of growth. I'm changing some aspects of my life, and that is positive. I'm making better decisions and only letting in the positive. Life is too short to surround ourselves with bad karma. I feel like I've been a good person in my life. I may not have always made the best decisions but I never intentionally hurt anyone and always tried to be supportive of people. I know that I have probably made judgements on people. That is gonna stop. We can only keep track of ourselves, that is enough work. I think I've always been harder on myself though than anyone could have ever been on me. I'm still working on that, but we always do that to ourselves.

I feel blessed to be where I'm at in life. I know there is so much to look forward to. I know that the best is yet to come. I haven't peaked. I'm still learning and growing. I will miss the posts of wisdom that many of my friends post. So many of you all have tremendous depth, it's a shame that it gets washed away by the visual aspects of this media. I know I've written some blogs I felt were truly moving only to see no responses. That I would be upset over something so juvenile as not having a red tick on the top of my Facebook page tells me it's time to go. It's like I'm a monkey and I'm waiting for my recognition treat. I don't need that.

This place has been taking too much of my time, my focus, and it's not really filling. It's junk food. It's TMZ. It's ESPN. Sure, in small doses it's ok, but a daily dose and I have cavities in my brain. There are more important things I can do with my time. This would be studying for my degree, reading novels, writing, actually visiting with my friends and not just posting on their status. Oh I know, I will miss those elaborate posts about "what's for dinner" or "what movie you are currently watching" but I will try to survive. Maybe I will use my imagination and envision it myself. I am as guilty as anyone of posting meandering meaningless junk food on here, but I will be one less contributor. I'm going cold turkey..just in time for Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I hope all of my friends have a wonderful one. Remember to give thanks to what is truly important, our family. Sure, our friends are important, and I love my friends, but family will always be there. Friends do change and life changes. People we believe will be there forever may not feel the same. People grow apart, but family is forever. If you are strained from a relative, be the bigger person and reach out. Even if the feeling is not reciprocated, you will feel better. That's all we can do. We can improve ourselves and hope that one day that person realizes how much we care they may get to that point themselves. If they don't then we have moved on, but we made the effort. Alright enough of that, adios, arivederchi, peace, siyanora and ciao :)