I think I'm almost done...these ones are political, so I'm going to put them after a page break. (I also use some language.)
The personal blog of author Kelly Sedinger, chronicling the adventures of one overalls-clad wanderer.
Showing posts with label Ask Me Anything 2011. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ask Me Anything 2011. Show all posts
Monday, March 28, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
More answers!
Wow. Glaciers move faster than this. Anyhow, from Mr. Jones:
Name something that you will never do in your life that others often aspire to do in theirs. And you are comfortable with this.
For instance, I am confident I will die never having visited Egypt or learn to ski, and I'm quite okay with that.
There are lots of things I have zero interest in doing. Firing a gun, for example. No interest in it at all. I'd like to do a small amount of "world traveling", but not too many of the usual places: Paris, Greece, Tahiti, the Bahamas, et cetera. Ballroom dancing? Yeah...not especially. Maybe, but not really.
I'll almost certainly never toss a really nice basket in a pick-up game. Nor will I hit a home run. I'll likely not learn to ice skate, own a motor boat, swim in the Mediterranean, or attend a Super Bowl in person. And...I'm fine with all that. Really. I think. (I'd sure like to swim in the Mediterranean....)
An anonymous reader emailed in this one:
Do you try new authors often? Do you try new genres of books? Is reading only for amusement, or do you read to do something else (educate yourself generally, learn something in particular, ...)?
Good questions! No, yes, both. Next!
OK, more seriously. By "new" authors, do we mean "new" to me, or "new" as in, "Here's the incredible first novel by Joe Sevenpack!" I do both, really, although I tend to do both in my own sweet time. More the former than the latter, though.
I often read authors who are new to me, although they're not new to most people who read in the genres I tend to read now. A good example is Andre Norton: I'd never read her until just a couple of years ago, and I still have only read a couple of her books (and liked each one). I have authors whom I love, like any reader does, but I'm not really the type to obsessively read everything an author has written, nor (with one exception) do I have any authors whose books are sufficiently important to me that I grab their books as soon as they're published. (This would be Guy Gavriel Kay, obviously.) I haven't even read all of Tolkien yet!
Mainly I tend to be all over the map with regard to my reading. I like to switch genres after a book or two, for one thing, although I do tend to read more fantasy in the colder months and more SF in the warmer months. I also like to switch up my lengths, too: if I've just finished a doorstop of a novel, my next book is likely to be a smaller one. This tends to mean alternating newer works with older ones, as the newer ones tend to have the heftier page counts.
I also like to read classic literature, which I will often read alongside whatever genre book I'm reading at the time. Part of this is a desire to "better myself", to challenge myself with something classic or difficult or whatever, but part of this is also a shift in my actual taste, as I'm finding classic works engaging in a way that I never felt when this stuff was required reading. The most recent example of this is A Tale of Two Cities (which I need to blog about one of these days -- that book astonished me, well and truly).
In terms of genre, I do tend to stick to SF, fantasy, and (less frequently) horror these days. Occasionally I'll hear about some book in another genre that sounds interesting, but I don't really venture outside the bounds of my preferred areas too often these days. Mainly this is because I find that the genres I prefer are so rich within their boundaries that I don't really need to step outside them for variety's sake. With fantasy, I can read a big fat book about quests and such, or I can read a book about the magic in a modern urban setting, or I can read stories that mash those things together. I can read mysteries and war stories and love stories without ever leaving fantasy. Ditto SF -- and in some cases, such as Peter F. Hamilton's enormous duology consisting of Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, in which, over the course of about 2000 pages, you get mysteries, espionage thrillers, wars involving massive starfleets, wars involving planetside guerilla tactics, love stories, and ideas about what a star-spanning human culture might look like.
I do find that I'm not reading as much nonfiction as I used to. I should probably change this up a bit, as non-fiction tends to be where a lot of cool story ideas come from. My problem with non-fic is finding some that is vibrantly and interestingly written. Dry writing puts me off faster than anything.
More to come. There is light at the end of the Ask Me Anything! tunnel!
Name something that you will never do in your life that others often aspire to do in theirs. And you are comfortable with this.
For instance, I am confident I will die never having visited Egypt or learn to ski, and I'm quite okay with that.
There are lots of things I have zero interest in doing. Firing a gun, for example. No interest in it at all. I'd like to do a small amount of "world traveling", but not too many of the usual places: Paris, Greece, Tahiti, the Bahamas, et cetera. Ballroom dancing? Yeah...not especially. Maybe, but not really.
I'll almost certainly never toss a really nice basket in a pick-up game. Nor will I hit a home run. I'll likely not learn to ice skate, own a motor boat, swim in the Mediterranean, or attend a Super Bowl in person. And...I'm fine with all that. Really. I think. (I'd sure like to swim in the Mediterranean....)
An anonymous reader emailed in this one:
Do you try new authors often? Do you try new genres of books? Is reading only for amusement, or do you read to do something else (educate yourself generally, learn something in particular, ...)?
Good questions! No, yes, both. Next!
OK, more seriously. By "new" authors, do we mean "new" to me, or "new" as in, "Here's the incredible first novel by Joe Sevenpack!" I do both, really, although I tend to do both in my own sweet time. More the former than the latter, though.
I often read authors who are new to me, although they're not new to most people who read in the genres I tend to read now. A good example is Andre Norton: I'd never read her until just a couple of years ago, and I still have only read a couple of her books (and liked each one). I have authors whom I love, like any reader does, but I'm not really the type to obsessively read everything an author has written, nor (with one exception) do I have any authors whose books are sufficiently important to me that I grab their books as soon as they're published. (This would be Guy Gavriel Kay, obviously.) I haven't even read all of Tolkien yet!
Mainly I tend to be all over the map with regard to my reading. I like to switch genres after a book or two, for one thing, although I do tend to read more fantasy in the colder months and more SF in the warmer months. I also like to switch up my lengths, too: if I've just finished a doorstop of a novel, my next book is likely to be a smaller one. This tends to mean alternating newer works with older ones, as the newer ones tend to have the heftier page counts.
I also like to read classic literature, which I will often read alongside whatever genre book I'm reading at the time. Part of this is a desire to "better myself", to challenge myself with something classic or difficult or whatever, but part of this is also a shift in my actual taste, as I'm finding classic works engaging in a way that I never felt when this stuff was required reading. The most recent example of this is A Tale of Two Cities (which I need to blog about one of these days -- that book astonished me, well and truly).
In terms of genre, I do tend to stick to SF, fantasy, and (less frequently) horror these days. Occasionally I'll hear about some book in another genre that sounds interesting, but I don't really venture outside the bounds of my preferred areas too often these days. Mainly this is because I find that the genres I prefer are so rich within their boundaries that I don't really need to step outside them for variety's sake. With fantasy, I can read a big fat book about quests and such, or I can read a book about the magic in a modern urban setting, or I can read stories that mash those things together. I can read mysteries and war stories and love stories without ever leaving fantasy. Ditto SF -- and in some cases, such as Peter F. Hamilton's enormous duology consisting of Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained, in which, over the course of about 2000 pages, you get mysteries, espionage thrillers, wars involving massive starfleets, wars involving planetside guerilla tactics, love stories, and ideas about what a star-spanning human culture might look like.
I do find that I'm not reading as much nonfiction as I used to. I should probably change this up a bit, as non-fiction tends to be where a lot of cool story ideas come from. My problem with non-fic is finding some that is vibrantly and interestingly written. Dry writing puts me off faster than anything.
More to come. There is light at the end of the Ask Me Anything! tunnel!
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Answers! More answers!
The Ask Me Anything! 2011 cavalcade marches on...although at the pace I'm setting for getting these replies out, it's probably more of a "mosey" than a "march".
Anyway, a reader who prefers to remain unidentified poses these:
When you are pressed for time, what do you do less of to compensate?
It depends on what I'm doing in terms of being pressed for time. If I'm at work and time is running short, then I have to prioritize my tasks, usually according to what degree of inconvenience it will be to a particular department in The Store if they don't get a certain job done that day. Of course, Management at The Store can weigh in heavily on this...if any of the store's highest ranking management persons directly tell me that Job X must be done by the end of business today, then barring something emergency-like happening, that's what gets shunted to the top of the priority list.
Mostly, though, I'm fairly good about identifying which tasks need to be done today and which can wait until tomorrow. Another factor is which tasks realistically can get done today and which have to wait; if it's after 2:00 pm and I'm in the last hour or two of work, anyone who comes to me with a job that I know is going to take more time than I have left gets put off to another day. So it comes down to considerations like "How badly are they affected if they have to wait for this?" and "How much time do I have to do this in the first place?"
Other times, though, the time crunch is felt at home. In that case, I'll identify what's likely to take the longest chunk of time out of the time I have available to me, and either focus on that specifically, or eliminate it if there are other things that are more important to get done.
What really destroys me, in terms of time management, is -- surprise surprise! -- the Internet. I get sucked into timewasters online with appalling regularity, and it can get downright depressing for me to realize just how long I've been clicking this link and reading that site without doing any writing, or reading the stack of books from the library, or what have you. What I'd really like to do (as I mentioned in another answer) is set up my home network so I can disconnect the laptop from the Internet when I need to buckle down and write. Yeah, I can just flip the Wi-Fi switch on the computer, but it's too easy to flip it back to ON again, reconnect, and launch a browser, "just to check the e-mail".
What do you like to cook the most? Who in your home does the most cooking? (And who does the clean up afterward?) Are you teaching your daughter to cook? (And does she enjoy it, if you are?)
I love to cook! Love it. I tend to focus on one-dish meals: casseroles, baked pasta dishes, soups, stews, and the like. Making multi-item meals tends to flummox me a bit as I often misjudge how long one item is going to take whilst cooking the other(s), so I end up with one dish completely done while another finishes up. This frustrates me. My ideal is to serve when everything's done at the same time, and when this fails, I get a little grumpy.
I suppose I actually cook more than The Wife does, simply because her job has her working nights five days a week, so I'm on "dinner duty" on the days she's not here, plus I'll often end up cooking on one of her two days off as well, if I feel like cooking or if she informs me that she doesn't feel like cooking and therefore I'm either cooking or buying the pizza. Those nights are when I tend to branch out and try new recipes, anyway, because The Daughter is a bit on the finicky side which makes experimentation when it's just her and myself a tad limited.
(Incidentally...I've been really in the mood to make my own fried chicken for a while now. I think I'm gonna have to scratch that particular itch fairly soon, sometime in the next month.)
The Daughter has started learning about cooking, partly out of interest at home and partly out of a Home-Ec style class she's taking at school. The other night she made her own quesadilla for dinner, when she didn't like what we were having. Now, it wasn't the most exciting quesadilla in the world -- sliced sandwich ham and cheddar cheese -- but still, she cooked it. Cool! (Now if I could just get her to realize that onions are awesome, and that salad is wonderful.)
Have you viewed any TED talks? What ones (or types of talks) do you like, if you have?
No, I haven't, and I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this. I totally should watch some of these. Going back to the time management thing -- there's a lot of stuff I want to do, but I never "get around" to it mainly because of a complete lack of planning. I need to make strides in this area, big time!
More answers to come!
Anyway, a reader who prefers to remain unidentified poses these:
When you are pressed for time, what do you do less of to compensate?
It depends on what I'm doing in terms of being pressed for time. If I'm at work and time is running short, then I have to prioritize my tasks, usually according to what degree of inconvenience it will be to a particular department in The Store if they don't get a certain job done that day. Of course, Management at The Store can weigh in heavily on this...if any of the store's highest ranking management persons directly tell me that Job X must be done by the end of business today, then barring something emergency-like happening, that's what gets shunted to the top of the priority list.
Mostly, though, I'm fairly good about identifying which tasks need to be done today and which can wait until tomorrow. Another factor is which tasks realistically can get done today and which have to wait; if it's after 2:00 pm and I'm in the last hour or two of work, anyone who comes to me with a job that I know is going to take more time than I have left gets put off to another day. So it comes down to considerations like "How badly are they affected if they have to wait for this?" and "How much time do I have to do this in the first place?"
Other times, though, the time crunch is felt at home. In that case, I'll identify what's likely to take the longest chunk of time out of the time I have available to me, and either focus on that specifically, or eliminate it if there are other things that are more important to get done.
What really destroys me, in terms of time management, is -- surprise surprise! -- the Internet. I get sucked into timewasters online with appalling regularity, and it can get downright depressing for me to realize just how long I've been clicking this link and reading that site without doing any writing, or reading the stack of books from the library, or what have you. What I'd really like to do (as I mentioned in another answer) is set up my home network so I can disconnect the laptop from the Internet when I need to buckle down and write. Yeah, I can just flip the Wi-Fi switch on the computer, but it's too easy to flip it back to ON again, reconnect, and launch a browser, "just to check the e-mail".
What do you like to cook the most? Who in your home does the most cooking? (And who does the clean up afterward?) Are you teaching your daughter to cook? (And does she enjoy it, if you are?)
I love to cook! Love it. I tend to focus on one-dish meals: casseroles, baked pasta dishes, soups, stews, and the like. Making multi-item meals tends to flummox me a bit as I often misjudge how long one item is going to take whilst cooking the other(s), so I end up with one dish completely done while another finishes up. This frustrates me. My ideal is to serve when everything's done at the same time, and when this fails, I get a little grumpy.
I suppose I actually cook more than The Wife does, simply because her job has her working nights five days a week, so I'm on "dinner duty" on the days she's not here, plus I'll often end up cooking on one of her two days off as well, if I feel like cooking or if she informs me that she doesn't feel like cooking and therefore I'm either cooking or buying the pizza. Those nights are when I tend to branch out and try new recipes, anyway, because The Daughter is a bit on the finicky side which makes experimentation when it's just her and myself a tad limited.
(Incidentally...I've been really in the mood to make my own fried chicken for a while now. I think I'm gonna have to scratch that particular itch fairly soon, sometime in the next month.)
The Daughter has started learning about cooking, partly out of interest at home and partly out of a Home-Ec style class she's taking at school. The other night she made her own quesadilla for dinner, when she didn't like what we were having. Now, it wasn't the most exciting quesadilla in the world -- sliced sandwich ham and cheddar cheese -- but still, she cooked it. Cool! (Now if I could just get her to realize that onions are awesome, and that salad is wonderful.)
Have you viewed any TED talks? What ones (or types of talks) do you like, if you have?
No, I haven't, and I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this. I totally should watch some of these. Going back to the time management thing -- there's a lot of stuff I want to do, but I never "get around" to it mainly because of a complete lack of planning. I need to make strides in this area, big time!
More answers to come!
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Continuing the Answers!!
Yeah, I gotta pick up the pace here...but time to resume clearing out the Ask Me Anything! 2011 queue.
SK Waller asks:
If you could play any instrument in a symphony orchestra, which would you choose, and why?
Easy: I'd play the trumpet, because that was my instrument, and I was pretty damned good at it too, if I do say so myself.
A history, which I've probably told before: I joined band in fifth grade, and played the French horn my first year. I wasn't very good, but then, it was fifth grade and my first attempt at a musical instrument. The next year I switched to the trumpet. I don't know if this was my idea, or my teacher's, but it happened. I was a bit better at the trumpet, but still, I rarely bothered to practice with the effect that I sucked.
On to seventh grade, where I continued to suck at the trumpet. In seventh grade, I was in the Junior High Band, with the eighth graders; up above that, ninth and up, was the Senior Band, the students of which were not tolerant of students who sucked. Neither were the eighth graders, for that matter. So it was that about halfway through seventh grade, I decided that I was really no longer interested in being filed away by all the other kids as "one of the sucky ones". I started practicing, and getting better, and stopped sucking. Sucking, well, sucked.
Over time I became fascinated by the symphony orchestra, and the brass section in particular, to the point where, for a time, my career ambition was to be a symphonic trumpet player. To me, there was nothing quite so thrilling as a big symphonic passage where the trumpets soared above it all. My musical hero, trumpet-wise, was never Maurice Andre or Wynton Marsalis; it was Adolph Herseth of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (Get just about any Chicago Symphony recording from the 1950s on, and you'll hear Herseth playing the principal trumpet part. Track down a Mahler 5th by the CSO -- Solti's live recording is amazing -- and you'll hear some astonishing trumpet playing amidst the greatness of the rest of the orchestra.)
Of course, it's not all fun-and-games for symphonic trumpets. As much as I love Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven, the trumpets of their day were limited instruments and thus were not used for much more than providing some harmonic oomph at strategic points in the score. So the trumpet players spend a great deal of time counting measures, playing a few notes, and then counting more measures.
I did get to be a symphonic trumpet player, in college. Those were some of the finest memories of my college years.
Along the same lines, Kerry asks:
Can you describe that unique smell of the ACS band room (circa 1988-89) WITHOUT using the words "brass," "moldy reed" or "feet"?
Oh, wow. Ummmm...wow. That's hard. Really hard.
At Allegany Central School in the 1980s (and before that, obviously), the band room was located at the extreme end of a long wing that extended off the right hand side of the building, so getting to band involved a fairly long walk, past the Industrial Arts room ("shop"), past the Agricultural Arts area (a subject that was taught by the single most uptight teacher I've ever had), past the Chorus room, finally into the Band room.
The band room had a lot of character, which is to say, it was pretty much of a mess.
The room was oblong, running north and south. One entered the room from the northwest corner; the band itself gathered facing the east wall, with the band director (Mr. Beach or Mr. Roosa) standing on the podium, facing west. At the back of the room, along the west wall, were two practice rooms. (For those who have never been musicians, a "practice room" is a little room, maybe five feet square, where you practice. I always detested practice rooms and avoided them at all costs. You can't judge the sound you're making with your instrument when you are working in a room the size of your bathroom or a large closet.) The south wall had a big shelf loaded with musical instruments, and a bunch of file cabinets which contained sheet music.
Now, the instrument shelves were full of instruments. Some belonged to students in the band; others belonged to the school. Many of them were complete wrecks. Others were on the way there. The school's Sousaphones wouldn't fit on the shelves, so they sat in a pile on the floor. Yup.
Along the eastern wall, at the band director's back, were more cabinets. These contained records, tapes, more sheet music, and basically music-related crap of all kinds. There was a dinosaur stereo system that nevertheless sounded freaking awesome. I loved going to the band room during a study hall and cranking that stereo with whatever I could get my hands on. There was a tuner (a gizmo that, well, tells you whether or not your instrument is "in tune" -- i.e., producing the notes you play at the correct pitch. If musicians aren't "in tune" with one another, the group will sound awful.), and there were a whole lot of goofy posters, some of which were humorous and some of which were music-related. One of these posters I've always remembered: it had an ape of some sort sitting on the ground looking pouty, and the caption was "Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits." Early LOLCat, I assume.
And there were the other usual suspects: crappy chairs; music stands in various states of disrepair (getting the non-wobbly stands was quite the perk of being higher on the band food chain); percussion instruments taking up most of the north end of the room; more cabinets containing more sheet music; et cetera.
But Kerry's asking about the smell. It was a pretty unique aroma. I wouldn't say it was a horrible smell, but...well, it wasn't entirely pleasant, either. My main recollection of the odor is one of petroleum, in various forms. Valve oil, used by trumpet and horn players to lubricate their valves. Slide oil, used by trombonists to lubricate their slides. Various oils and jells used by instrumentalists of all types to lubricate...well, you'd be surprised how much lubrication is involved in the general day-to-day functioning of a wind instrument.
There was also the smell of musty paper, owing to all that sheet music around. It was kind of like the used bookstore smell, but not as pleasant. And there was the fact that for a lot of band members, the band room served as a "second locker", which meant that there were occasionally things that you would normally find in someone's locker floating around. Some of these things smelled...bad.
I haven't thought about the smell of the bandroom in quite a long time, but I do remember it. It's one smell, or set of smells, that I've never encountered since.
More answers to come, I promise!
SK Waller asks:
If you could play any instrument in a symphony orchestra, which would you choose, and why?
Easy: I'd play the trumpet, because that was my instrument, and I was pretty damned good at it too, if I do say so myself.
A history, which I've probably told before: I joined band in fifth grade, and played the French horn my first year. I wasn't very good, but then, it was fifth grade and my first attempt at a musical instrument. The next year I switched to the trumpet. I don't know if this was my idea, or my teacher's, but it happened. I was a bit better at the trumpet, but still, I rarely bothered to practice with the effect that I sucked.
On to seventh grade, where I continued to suck at the trumpet. In seventh grade, I was in the Junior High Band, with the eighth graders; up above that, ninth and up, was the Senior Band, the students of which were not tolerant of students who sucked. Neither were the eighth graders, for that matter. So it was that about halfway through seventh grade, I decided that I was really no longer interested in being filed away by all the other kids as "one of the sucky ones". I started practicing, and getting better, and stopped sucking. Sucking, well, sucked.
Over time I became fascinated by the symphony orchestra, and the brass section in particular, to the point where, for a time, my career ambition was to be a symphonic trumpet player. To me, there was nothing quite so thrilling as a big symphonic passage where the trumpets soared above it all. My musical hero, trumpet-wise, was never Maurice Andre or Wynton Marsalis; it was Adolph Herseth of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. (Get just about any Chicago Symphony recording from the 1950s on, and you'll hear Herseth playing the principal trumpet part. Track down a Mahler 5th by the CSO -- Solti's live recording is amazing -- and you'll hear some astonishing trumpet playing amidst the greatness of the rest of the orchestra.)
Of course, it's not all fun-and-games for symphonic trumpets. As much as I love Mozart and Haydn and Beethoven, the trumpets of their day were limited instruments and thus were not used for much more than providing some harmonic oomph at strategic points in the score. So the trumpet players spend a great deal of time counting measures, playing a few notes, and then counting more measures.
I did get to be a symphonic trumpet player, in college. Those were some of the finest memories of my college years.
Along the same lines, Kerry asks:
Can you describe that unique smell of the ACS band room (circa 1988-89) WITHOUT using the words "brass," "moldy reed" or "feet"?
Oh, wow. Ummmm...wow. That's hard. Really hard.
At Allegany Central School in the 1980s (and before that, obviously), the band room was located at the extreme end of a long wing that extended off the right hand side of the building, so getting to band involved a fairly long walk, past the Industrial Arts room ("shop"), past the Agricultural Arts area (a subject that was taught by the single most uptight teacher I've ever had), past the Chorus room, finally into the Band room.
The band room had a lot of character, which is to say, it was pretty much of a mess.
The room was oblong, running north and south. One entered the room from the northwest corner; the band itself gathered facing the east wall, with the band director (Mr. Beach or Mr. Roosa) standing on the podium, facing west. At the back of the room, along the west wall, were two practice rooms. (For those who have never been musicians, a "practice room" is a little room, maybe five feet square, where you practice. I always detested practice rooms and avoided them at all costs. You can't judge the sound you're making with your instrument when you are working in a room the size of your bathroom or a large closet.) The south wall had a big shelf loaded with musical instruments, and a bunch of file cabinets which contained sheet music.
Now, the instrument shelves were full of instruments. Some belonged to students in the band; others belonged to the school. Many of them were complete wrecks. Others were on the way there. The school's Sousaphones wouldn't fit on the shelves, so they sat in a pile on the floor. Yup.
Along the eastern wall, at the band director's back, were more cabinets. These contained records, tapes, more sheet music, and basically music-related crap of all kinds. There was a dinosaur stereo system that nevertheless sounded freaking awesome. I loved going to the band room during a study hall and cranking that stereo with whatever I could get my hands on. There was a tuner (a gizmo that, well, tells you whether or not your instrument is "in tune" -- i.e., producing the notes you play at the correct pitch. If musicians aren't "in tune" with one another, the group will sound awful.), and there were a whole lot of goofy posters, some of which were humorous and some of which were music-related. One of these posters I've always remembered: it had an ape of some sort sitting on the ground looking pouty, and the caption was "Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits." Early LOLCat, I assume.
And there were the other usual suspects: crappy chairs; music stands in various states of disrepair (getting the non-wobbly stands was quite the perk of being higher on the band food chain); percussion instruments taking up most of the north end of the room; more cabinets containing more sheet music; et cetera.
But Kerry's asking about the smell. It was a pretty unique aroma. I wouldn't say it was a horrible smell, but...well, it wasn't entirely pleasant, either. My main recollection of the odor is one of petroleum, in various forms. Valve oil, used by trumpet and horn players to lubricate their valves. Slide oil, used by trombonists to lubricate their slides. Various oils and jells used by instrumentalists of all types to lubricate...well, you'd be surprised how much lubrication is involved in the general day-to-day functioning of a wind instrument.
There was also the smell of musty paper, owing to all that sheet music around. It was kind of like the used bookstore smell, but not as pleasant. And there was the fact that for a lot of band members, the band room served as a "second locker", which meant that there were occasionally things that you would normally find in someone's locker floating around. Some of these things smelled...bad.
I haven't thought about the smell of the bandroom in quite a long time, but I do remember it. It's one smell, or set of smells, that I've never encountered since.
More answers to come, I promise!
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Answers, the ongoing!
Wow, I gotta start getting the lead out with regard to Ask Me Anything! 2011. So here are a couple of sports-related questions!
Andy has this to ask:
Do you think changing up the Buffalo Bills uniforms will do ANYTHING for the team or do you think they will continue having the top five draft pick selections for the next several years?
I don't think uniforms really have any effect except for in the local sports apparel stores, where lots of fans will undoubtedly spend quite a bit of money to get the new jerseys and whatnot. Sometimes teams change uniforms and then get good pretty quickly thereafter: the Patriots in the 90s did it, and the Broncos changed to their current uniforms and almost immediately won two Super Bowls later the same decade. But usually these types of uniform changes don't result in a good team; rather, a good team results because of a new management team that changes the uniforms at the same time that they are installing a better approach to team-building.
I think that it's more likely that this year's draft will determine whether or not the Bills are drafting in the top five for years to come. If they can get at least four or five solid players out of this draft, including at least two real playmakers, then they should be able to improve fairly quickly. But if they tank on the draft, then the long years of suffering will continue. It seems kind of odd to think about it, since a typical NFL team will draft between six and nine players in any particular year via the Draft, but if you tank an entire Draft class (as the Bills did in 2007, only one player from which Draft is still on the team), it can set you back for multiple seasons.
I look forward to seeing the Bills' new uniforms -- while I didn't hate the uni's of the last ten years, I wasn't wild about 'em, either -- I'm looking forward to them drafting well even more. (I do hope that their new uni's are either their current "throwback" uni's, or just going back to the uni's of the 1990s Bills!)
Roger asks:
When will the Pittsburgh Pirates play .500 ball, and what will it take? Will they ever be truly competitive again? Has the management oversold the "we're a small market team" issue? And any comments on the passing of Chuck Tanner, manager of the we Are Family '79 WS winners?
I have zero idea of when the Pirates will be good again. None whatsoever. It truly astonishes me that a person who was born the last time the Pirates had a winning season is now old enough to drive, vote, serve in the military, see Kill Bill without a parent being along...everything but buy a beer. The Pirates have been losing longer than most people have had Internet access. Last time the Pirates won, George Bush was President. The first one.
Major League Baseball has long needed some form of revenue sharing that's more rigorous than the odd, Rube Goldberg system they have now, but after eighteen years of sucking, the Pirates don't have that as an excuse. They've been simply mismanaged for all that time. Bad scouting, bad personnel decisions, and ownership that refused to spend money...ugh.
The Pirates will need to build their farm system and develop good, young players to construct their major league club around. That's the only way they'll win again, being in a small market as they are. But it's not an impossible task; other teams have done it. (Oakland and Minnesota are prime examples; so is Tampa Bay, which has built a fantastic franchise in a town that heartbreakingly doesn't give a shit.) Small market is part of it, but the major part of it is that the Pirates' management and ownership has been resoundingly, staggeringly horrible.
More answers to come!
Andy has this to ask:
Do you think changing up the Buffalo Bills uniforms will do ANYTHING for the team or do you think they will continue having the top five draft pick selections for the next several years?
I don't think uniforms really have any effect except for in the local sports apparel stores, where lots of fans will undoubtedly spend quite a bit of money to get the new jerseys and whatnot. Sometimes teams change uniforms and then get good pretty quickly thereafter: the Patriots in the 90s did it, and the Broncos changed to their current uniforms and almost immediately won two Super Bowls later the same decade. But usually these types of uniform changes don't result in a good team; rather, a good team results because of a new management team that changes the uniforms at the same time that they are installing a better approach to team-building.
I think that it's more likely that this year's draft will determine whether or not the Bills are drafting in the top five for years to come. If they can get at least four or five solid players out of this draft, including at least two real playmakers, then they should be able to improve fairly quickly. But if they tank on the draft, then the long years of suffering will continue. It seems kind of odd to think about it, since a typical NFL team will draft between six and nine players in any particular year via the Draft, but if you tank an entire Draft class (as the Bills did in 2007, only one player from which Draft is still on the team), it can set you back for multiple seasons.
I look forward to seeing the Bills' new uniforms -- while I didn't hate the uni's of the last ten years, I wasn't wild about 'em, either -- I'm looking forward to them drafting well even more. (I do hope that their new uni's are either their current "throwback" uni's, or just going back to the uni's of the 1990s Bills!)
Roger asks:
When will the Pittsburgh Pirates play .500 ball, and what will it take? Will they ever be truly competitive again? Has the management oversold the "we're a small market team" issue? And any comments on the passing of Chuck Tanner, manager of the we Are Family '79 WS winners?
I have zero idea of when the Pirates will be good again. None whatsoever. It truly astonishes me that a person who was born the last time the Pirates had a winning season is now old enough to drive, vote, serve in the military, see Kill Bill without a parent being along...everything but buy a beer. The Pirates have been losing longer than most people have had Internet access. Last time the Pirates won, George Bush was President. The first one.
Major League Baseball has long needed some form of revenue sharing that's more rigorous than the odd, Rube Goldberg system they have now, but after eighteen years of sucking, the Pirates don't have that as an excuse. They've been simply mismanaged for all that time. Bad scouting, bad personnel decisions, and ownership that refused to spend money...ugh.
The Pirates will need to build their farm system and develop good, young players to construct their major league club around. That's the only way they'll win again, being in a small market as they are. But it's not an impossible task; other teams have done it. (Oakland and Minnesota are prime examples; so is Tampa Bay, which has built a fantastic franchise in a town that heartbreakingly doesn't give a shit.) Small market is part of it, but the major part of it is that the Pirates' management and ownership has been resoundingly, staggeringly horrible.
More answers to come!
Sunday, February 27, 2011
More answers!
Continuing the Ask Me Anything! 2001 cavalcade! (And I'm technically still accepting queries, hint hint!)
Quince has a couple of questions:
You mentioned you live in Western NY but I have never seen you post about Chautauqua. Do you have an opinion on the place and its mission?
He's referring to the Chautauqua Institute, which is located on the south shore of Lake Chautauqua in Chautauqua county. Yes, Institute, lake, and county all share the same name! The lake is about fifty miles due south of Buffalo, and about twenty miles or so at its western end due east of the shores of Lake Erie. It's a pretty big lake, with a big town called Jamestown at the eastern end. Lake Chautauqua is ringed almost around its entire perimeter by summer cottages and houses, and there are two very pleasant little villages -- Lakewood and Bemus Point -- that are your basic "summer resort towns". The whole place is actually very beautiful; we used to go to Lakewood every year for the 4th of July. The fireworks would be set off from a park right on the lakeside, and hundreds of boats would gather in the water around the park to see the show. This is beautiful in itself, but another even nicer tradition is how all of the people owning cottages on the water are encouraged to light red flares right at water's edge at 10:00 pm on the 4th, so the entire lake is ringed by red light.
But the question's about the Chautauqua Institution, to which I have never been. Ever. Why? Mainly because I'm usually busy in the summer with other things, and it costs money to do things there.
The Institution is, basically, a summer-long arts and education festival that takes place on grounds that, by way of design, hark back to the 19th century, which is when the Institution was founded. There are musical performances all summer long, including operas, chamber music, and symphonic music by a resident symphony orchestra. There are also adult education opportunities: lectures, classes, and the like.
The Institution doesn't seem to be a big part of the WNY consciousness; maybe that's because it's been there for over a century and shows no signs of slowing down. It's just kind of always there. That could be a part of why I've never attended any events there (and I've only been on the grounds twice); it just never strikes me as something I should investigate for a summertime activity. And part of that may be because summer is when I'm quite busy at work, we do other things as family activities during those months, and I tend to gravitate toward fall and late winter/early spring for vacations. I have no objection in principle to the Institution; in fact, far from it. I'm glad it's there and I'm glad that it's here in WNY. Maybe someday!
Given that an ideal level of debt is zero but unrealistic for most of us, how much family debt are you comfortable carrying? By comfortable I mean not caring anymore about it then say rent or a car payment.
I suppose that the best way to look at this is by percentage of income. I didn't always think about issues like this, and the results were, shall we say, less than encouraging. It took a number of years to dig out of that particular hole, and now I'm quite a bit more careful about it. Both of us are, actually. Setting aside things like rent (which we have) and car payments (which currently we do not), I would be generally uncomfortable with any debt-to-income ratio of over 25 percent. Once it reaches that point, I prefer to start focus on paying some of it down. That's just me, however. Since my job gives me small, but regular, raises in income, I find that as long as I keep my debt below a certain fixed number, the margin gets more comfortable over time to maintain.
I don't spend large amounts of time analyzing my finances, but I've made a religious practice of putting a minimum amount of each paycheck into my savings each and every week before I do anything else at all. Then I make whatever payment I need to make that week, and whatever else is left is what I have to get through the week on. This generally works out well, although I do have to budget a bit for when I want to take a few days off from work. Unforeseen absences from work can screw things up quite a lot, but I'm lucky enough thus far that those have been infrequent, and I've been building a steadily-increasing savings buffer for such events, anyway. In recent months I've revised my approach slightly; instead of relying exclusively on cash (I don't even have an ATM card), I make a weekly payment to a particular credit card and use that to make purchases during the week. My other "major" credit card is one I'm concentrating on paying down, and I'm now designating it as the "emergency big expense" card. (Like, for example, if a car needs brakes or something like that.)
Generally I view debt as a "necessary evil". It would be nice to have none, but I don't think that's realistic. I prefer a rigorous approach to keeping debt manageable and small.
Other little money-saving things I do? I used to buy lunch at work every day, but now I only buy lunch once or twice a week, and bring my own most other days. Instead of getting coffee every day ($.99 a cup for employees), I buy a box of tea bags and have green tea most days. Even if I treat myself to an expensive container of tea ($8.99 for 25 bags), that comes out to less than $.40 a cup. That adds up. So does my long-time practice of never spending my loose change. I pay for everything with bills, and the loose change every day goes into a jar. I usually redeem a chunk of the change a couple of times a year, when we want to go for a family outing someplace, like our yearly trek to the Renaissance Faire or the Erie County Fair or something like that.
More answers to come!
Quince has a couple of questions:
You mentioned you live in Western NY but I have never seen you post about Chautauqua. Do you have an opinion on the place and its mission?
He's referring to the Chautauqua Institute, which is located on the south shore of Lake Chautauqua in Chautauqua county. Yes, Institute, lake, and county all share the same name! The lake is about fifty miles due south of Buffalo, and about twenty miles or so at its western end due east of the shores of Lake Erie. It's a pretty big lake, with a big town called Jamestown at the eastern end. Lake Chautauqua is ringed almost around its entire perimeter by summer cottages and houses, and there are two very pleasant little villages -- Lakewood and Bemus Point -- that are your basic "summer resort towns". The whole place is actually very beautiful; we used to go to Lakewood every year for the 4th of July. The fireworks would be set off from a park right on the lakeside, and hundreds of boats would gather in the water around the park to see the show. This is beautiful in itself, but another even nicer tradition is how all of the people owning cottages on the water are encouraged to light red flares right at water's edge at 10:00 pm on the 4th, so the entire lake is ringed by red light.
But the question's about the Chautauqua Institution, to which I have never been. Ever. Why? Mainly because I'm usually busy in the summer with other things, and it costs money to do things there.
The Institution is, basically, a summer-long arts and education festival that takes place on grounds that, by way of design, hark back to the 19th century, which is when the Institution was founded. There are musical performances all summer long, including operas, chamber music, and symphonic music by a resident symphony orchestra. There are also adult education opportunities: lectures, classes, and the like.
The Institution doesn't seem to be a big part of the WNY consciousness; maybe that's because it's been there for over a century and shows no signs of slowing down. It's just kind of always there. That could be a part of why I've never attended any events there (and I've only been on the grounds twice); it just never strikes me as something I should investigate for a summertime activity. And part of that may be because summer is when I'm quite busy at work, we do other things as family activities during those months, and I tend to gravitate toward fall and late winter/early spring for vacations. I have no objection in principle to the Institution; in fact, far from it. I'm glad it's there and I'm glad that it's here in WNY. Maybe someday!
Given that an ideal level of debt is zero but unrealistic for most of us, how much family debt are you comfortable carrying? By comfortable I mean not caring anymore about it then say rent or a car payment.
I suppose that the best way to look at this is by percentage of income. I didn't always think about issues like this, and the results were, shall we say, less than encouraging. It took a number of years to dig out of that particular hole, and now I'm quite a bit more careful about it. Both of us are, actually. Setting aside things like rent (which we have) and car payments (which currently we do not), I would be generally uncomfortable with any debt-to-income ratio of over 25 percent. Once it reaches that point, I prefer to start focus on paying some of it down. That's just me, however. Since my job gives me small, but regular, raises in income, I find that as long as I keep my debt below a certain fixed number, the margin gets more comfortable over time to maintain.
I don't spend large amounts of time analyzing my finances, but I've made a religious practice of putting a minimum amount of each paycheck into my savings each and every week before I do anything else at all. Then I make whatever payment I need to make that week, and whatever else is left is what I have to get through the week on. This generally works out well, although I do have to budget a bit for when I want to take a few days off from work. Unforeseen absences from work can screw things up quite a lot, but I'm lucky enough thus far that those have been infrequent, and I've been building a steadily-increasing savings buffer for such events, anyway. In recent months I've revised my approach slightly; instead of relying exclusively on cash (I don't even have an ATM card), I make a weekly payment to a particular credit card and use that to make purchases during the week. My other "major" credit card is one I'm concentrating on paying down, and I'm now designating it as the "emergency big expense" card. (Like, for example, if a car needs brakes or something like that.)
Generally I view debt as a "necessary evil". It would be nice to have none, but I don't think that's realistic. I prefer a rigorous approach to keeping debt manageable and small.
Other little money-saving things I do? I used to buy lunch at work every day, but now I only buy lunch once or twice a week, and bring my own most other days. Instead of getting coffee every day ($.99 a cup for employees), I buy a box of tea bags and have green tea most days. Even if I treat myself to an expensive container of tea ($8.99 for 25 bags), that comes out to less than $.40 a cup. That adds up. So does my long-time practice of never spending my loose change. I pay for everything with bills, and the loose change every day goes into a jar. I usually redeem a chunk of the change a couple of times a year, when we want to go for a family outing someplace, like our yearly trek to the Renaissance Faire or the Erie County Fair or something like that.
More answers to come!
Saturday, February 26, 2011
Answers, the I've lost count!
Time for a few more answers to queries from Ask Me Anything! 2011. This time out I got some questions relating to the overalls, so here are a few of those.
Lynn asks: Can you remember your first pair of overalls? Wax nostalgic.
I can vaguely remember them. I was quite little, in the preschool age, if memory serves. I wore the living heck out of those things. I don't remember the brand, but I remember that for some weird reason, I liked them tight. No idea why...especially since, for as long as I can remember now, I don't like tight clothing much at all. I recall that they had the standard buttons to which the buckles fasten, and then there were two atop the bib pocket (like on the pair of Dickies I'm wearing over there, in the sidebar photo in the "Your Humble Narrator" section), and for some reason I thought that the lower buttons were where you hooked the buckles. (Hey, I was four, and I might not have been the intellectual marvel you now know. Stop laughing!) But this practice ended up in one or both of those buttons occasionally ripping off, so my mother was often sewing the stupid thing back on. Until finally they decided that I had outgrown those overalls, and got me a bigger pair. I think.
My overalls memories don't start becoming more clear until high school and college, when I started wearing them in public. That resulted in a few conversations of the "Huh, I didn't know you wore overalls" type...and then, people pretty much stopped commenting on them. Of course, this was Iowa, where seeing people in overalls isn't exactly like seeing rogue pachyderms in Central Park.
And a reader named Jenny sent in a bunch of detail-related queries:
Enquiring minds want to know:
Button fly or zipper fly - which do you prefer on overalls?
What's better on the sides of your overalls, 2, 3, or 4 buttons? Whatever
your choice, why is that better than the others.
Buttons: copper, nickel or other? Which is better?
Last question. If you were a late twenties gal like myself, who
unfortunately missed the overalls glory years of the 1990s, what brand
would you recommend which you can actually get today?
I have to admit that I don't have a whole lot of preference on details like this! The type of fly doesn't matter much to me...unless it's a fake fly entirely, in which case I've purchased a pair of overalls from an eBay seller who doesn't know a man's pair from a woman's pair. Yes, this has happened. I thought I'd scored on an awesome pair of white Lee overalls, only to have them turn out to be women's overalls. The Wife now owns those. They fit her a lot better, anyway.
Side buttons -- thinking about it, I've never owned a pair with four buttons. That would seem a tad like overkill. Most of mine have two; three was more prevalent on pairs from places like Gap and Old Navy, back in the 90s when overalls were popular. I used to own six or seven pairs from Gap, but I scaled that back when I lost quite a bit of weight a few years ago, and now the only Gap overalls that I own are the ones pictured in the sidebar pic at the bottom (the one where I'm wearing the green tie-dyed hoodie). Those have two side buttons, actually, as do my Dickies, Lee, and Key overalls. Generally I leave the top pair of buttons unfastened, for comfort reasons.
As to the metal comprising the buttons -- I generally don't care about that, either. My Gap overalls have silver hardware; my Dickies mostly have dark bronze-colored hardware; my Lee and Key overalls have gold hardware. Again, no real preference here.
I will say, though, that in general I like overalls that look functional; like they're actual workwear or could be. The "busier" they look, the less I like them (which is why I don't own any pairs by Liberty; there's just too much going on there on the bib). I just like them basic, and comfortable.
As for recommending overalls for women, well...I know they're starting to show up in stores again now, but I don't really know what brands are out there. Personally, though, I'd just recommend going the vintage route. Clothes from the 90s could be considered "vintage" now, right? I'm putty in The Wife's hands when she wears a pair of these Old Navy overalls, and my favorites ever on her are these Gap ones. Or you could go really vintage, as this blogger did, with great results.
And remember, in my opinion, overalls are "flattering" -- for a different idea of what "flattering" means.
More answers to come!
Lynn asks: Can you remember your first pair of overalls? Wax nostalgic.
I can vaguely remember them. I was quite little, in the preschool age, if memory serves. I wore the living heck out of those things. I don't remember the brand, but I remember that for some weird reason, I liked them tight. No idea why...especially since, for as long as I can remember now, I don't like tight clothing much at all. I recall that they had the standard buttons to which the buckles fasten, and then there were two atop the bib pocket (like on the pair of Dickies I'm wearing over there, in the sidebar photo in the "Your Humble Narrator" section), and for some reason I thought that the lower buttons were where you hooked the buckles. (Hey, I was four, and I might not have been the intellectual marvel you now know. Stop laughing!) But this practice ended up in one or both of those buttons occasionally ripping off, so my mother was often sewing the stupid thing back on. Until finally they decided that I had outgrown those overalls, and got me a bigger pair. I think.
My overalls memories don't start becoming more clear until high school and college, when I started wearing them in public. That resulted in a few conversations of the "Huh, I didn't know you wore overalls" type...and then, people pretty much stopped commenting on them. Of course, this was Iowa, where seeing people in overalls isn't exactly like seeing rogue pachyderms in Central Park.
And a reader named Jenny sent in a bunch of detail-related queries:
Enquiring minds want to know:
Button fly or zipper fly - which do you prefer on overalls?
What's better on the sides of your overalls, 2, 3, or 4 buttons? Whatever
your choice, why is that better than the others.
Buttons: copper, nickel or other? Which is better?
Last question. If you were a late twenties gal like myself, who
unfortunately missed the overalls glory years of the 1990s, what brand
would you recommend which you can actually get today?
I have to admit that I don't have a whole lot of preference on details like this! The type of fly doesn't matter much to me...unless it's a fake fly entirely, in which case I've purchased a pair of overalls from an eBay seller who doesn't know a man's pair from a woman's pair. Yes, this has happened. I thought I'd scored on an awesome pair of white Lee overalls, only to have them turn out to be women's overalls. The Wife now owns those. They fit her a lot better, anyway.
Side buttons -- thinking about it, I've never owned a pair with four buttons. That would seem a tad like overkill. Most of mine have two; three was more prevalent on pairs from places like Gap and Old Navy, back in the 90s when overalls were popular. I used to own six or seven pairs from Gap, but I scaled that back when I lost quite a bit of weight a few years ago, and now the only Gap overalls that I own are the ones pictured in the sidebar pic at the bottom (the one where I'm wearing the green tie-dyed hoodie). Those have two side buttons, actually, as do my Dickies, Lee, and Key overalls. Generally I leave the top pair of buttons unfastened, for comfort reasons.
As to the metal comprising the buttons -- I generally don't care about that, either. My Gap overalls have silver hardware; my Dickies mostly have dark bronze-colored hardware; my Lee and Key overalls have gold hardware. Again, no real preference here.
I will say, though, that in general I like overalls that look functional; like they're actual workwear or could be. The "busier" they look, the less I like them (which is why I don't own any pairs by Liberty; there's just too much going on there on the bib). I just like them basic, and comfortable.
As for recommending overalls for women, well...I know they're starting to show up in stores again now, but I don't really know what brands are out there. Personally, though, I'd just recommend going the vintage route. Clothes from the 90s could be considered "vintage" now, right? I'm putty in The Wife's hands when she wears a pair of these Old Navy overalls, and my favorites ever on her are these Gap ones. Or you could go really vintage, as this blogger did, with great results.
And remember, in my opinion, overalls are "flattering" -- for a different idea of what "flattering" means.
More answers to come!
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Time for a couple more answers from Ask Me Anything! 2011.
Cal asks:
What other major cultural events (movies, books, TV shows) did you totally avoid? I know DUNE is one and I won't discuss that further. Personally I never have seen 'E.T'. I never wanted to see 'Titanic' but that one slipped through when I got caught up in the sinking of the ship. I only saw LOST the last year and caught up in a few months.
Interesting query! Cal continues to be incensed that I haven't read Dune yet, but it's on my 2011 reading list, and will probably be near the top of my batting order once I get in the mood for SF again. (I tried Dune once, ten years ago, and I got through about fifty pages or so before I finally got frustrated with having to look something up in the glossary every third sentence. It made the reading really choppy.)
But for big pop cultural touchstones that have eluded me completely? This does happen, actually -- happens quite a lot. When I went to college in 1989, I delved into my classical music studies pretty hard core, with the result that most of the pop culture from those years completely went under -- or over -- my radar. I kept up with some of the popular movies of the time, but music? Books? Forget it. There's a wonderful Internet quiz site, Sporcle.com (Warning: that site is second only to Cracked.com as a timewaster) that a couple of friends of mine at work like to play on when we're on lunch. When we do a music quiz -- such as, say, "#1 Song from Each Year in the USA" -- I invariably cannot supply any answers past 1990. The vast majority of pop music of the last twenty years has passed me by.
Mostly it comes down to "Do I want to see/read/hear this? Or don't I?" And often times, if the answer is "Yes", it then comes down to "DO I want to see/read/hear it now, or can I wait a while?" Lots of times I'll simply elect to wait a while and take a "I'll get to that when I get to it" approach. The Harry Potter series was into its third book by the time I got in on the act; I only just saw The Godfather all the way through for the first time less than two years ago. I rarely decide that something is sufficiently important for me to experience it at the moment of its popularity. Sometimes this leaves me a bit at odds with the warp and weft of pop culture and the references to it that fill discussion (for instance, until just a couple of weeks ago, I had no context for the line "The Dude abides").
Ultimately, it's not so much a reaction against what's popular as just a general personal commitment to going my own way.
"Joe" asks:
If its cold in a room and a woman is not there to tell him, will a man still know?
Oh, he'll figure it out eventually...such as when the glass on his beer bottle frosts over...or when all the pets are clustered around him...or when he shifts position just a little bit, and all the warm air that's clustered around him disperses!
More to come! (And if anyone still wants to ask something, go right ahead...I'm even allowing anonymous commenting on a temporary basis.)
Cal asks:
What other major cultural events (movies, books, TV shows) did you totally avoid? I know DUNE is one and I won't discuss that further. Personally I never have seen 'E.T'. I never wanted to see 'Titanic' but that one slipped through when I got caught up in the sinking of the ship. I only saw LOST the last year and caught up in a few months.
Interesting query! Cal continues to be incensed that I haven't read Dune yet, but it's on my 2011 reading list, and will probably be near the top of my batting order once I get in the mood for SF again. (I tried Dune once, ten years ago, and I got through about fifty pages or so before I finally got frustrated with having to look something up in the glossary every third sentence. It made the reading really choppy.)
But for big pop cultural touchstones that have eluded me completely? This does happen, actually -- happens quite a lot. When I went to college in 1989, I delved into my classical music studies pretty hard core, with the result that most of the pop culture from those years completely went under -- or over -- my radar. I kept up with some of the popular movies of the time, but music? Books? Forget it. There's a wonderful Internet quiz site, Sporcle.com (Warning: that site is second only to Cracked.com as a timewaster) that a couple of friends of mine at work like to play on when we're on lunch. When we do a music quiz -- such as, say, "#1 Song from Each Year in the USA" -- I invariably cannot supply any answers past 1990. The vast majority of pop music of the last twenty years has passed me by.
Mostly it comes down to "Do I want to see/read/hear this? Or don't I?" And often times, if the answer is "Yes", it then comes down to "DO I want to see/read/hear it now, or can I wait a while?" Lots of times I'll simply elect to wait a while and take a "I'll get to that when I get to it" approach. The Harry Potter series was into its third book by the time I got in on the act; I only just saw The Godfather all the way through for the first time less than two years ago. I rarely decide that something is sufficiently important for me to experience it at the moment of its popularity. Sometimes this leaves me a bit at odds with the warp and weft of pop culture and the references to it that fill discussion (for instance, until just a couple of weeks ago, I had no context for the line "The Dude abides").
Ultimately, it's not so much a reaction against what's popular as just a general personal commitment to going my own way.
"Joe" asks:
If its cold in a room and a woman is not there to tell him, will a man still know?
Oh, he'll figure it out eventually...such as when the glass on his beer bottle frosts over...or when all the pets are clustered around him...or when he shifts position just a little bit, and all the warm air that's clustered around him disperses!
More to come! (And if anyone still wants to ask something, go right ahead...I'm even allowing anonymous commenting on a temporary basis.)
Friday, February 18, 2011
Answers, the second!
Continuing the replies from Ask Me Anything! 2011 (still open to queries! Get 'em in, no question turned away! No question, turned away!), this time from Roger:
1. Do you watch a TV show/movie because one of your ROWR is in it? In particular - did you watch CSI NY before Sela Ward was on it, and do you watch it now? Also, have you noticed that she had "work done" and how do yo feel about this?
I have, occasionally. Note that I don't choose ROWR's (even now, when I choose them very sporadically -- although I'm giving thought to revising that practice, since my traffic spikes every time an episode of The Big Bang Theory airs in which Melissa Rauch appears) on the basis of just how beautiful they are, but because I saw them in something, or saw them perform something, that I really, really liked, so what attracts me to them at first (in the very mild sense of "attract") is the talent they bring to whatever they do. There are plenty of really beautiful women on shows that I hate, so I don't post about them, because I hate their shows, and that kind of "taints" them a little. (But I do make the distinction between hating the person and hating the show. That's got to be clear.)
So, the ROWR honoree has to be in something that I'm interested in watching. If Sela Ward, Melissa Rauch and Jacqueline Obradors were all cast in a new David E. Kelley legal drama, I wouldn't watch, because I can't stand David E. Kelley's shows. (I'm just picking on him because I've got him on the brain, as he prepares to destroy Wonder Woman for the new generation.)
On Sela Ward specifically: I have only watched one episode of CSI: NY since she's been on it, and I watched that one just to see what she was like on the show. But since the best opinion I've ever been able to muster for that show was "tepid" and that has cooled significantly over the last couple of years, I haven't watched any more. She was OK, but fact is, the CSI shows are basically designed to plug in any actors at all. The most character driven of them is CSI: Miami, and that's just because David Caruso has turned Horatio Caine into the most deliciously weird teevee cop of all time (excepting those on Barney Miller).
Ward has had some plastic surgery done, which does, in my view, make her less beautiful than on Once and Again, wherein she wasn't in a single scene where she wasn't radiant. But even so, Once was ten years ago, and in general, I think that the whole plastic surgery thing can be OK when it's done relatively tastefully, and I thought hers was. I certainly didn't agree at all with this Ken Levine post in which he says that now she looks like Jack Lord (I found that post in general fairly mean-spirited, actually). Plenty of women have had surgeries that make them look ghastly -- Joan Rivers is a good example, although I've always found her ghastly, so she might not be a good example).
2. If you were at dinner with George Lucas, what would you talk about, assuming that Star Wars is off limits? How would you feel if he brought up your sequel fixers?
No Star Wars? Aieee! But really, George Lucas seems to be a man with a lot of interests and who knows stuff about a lot of things, so even setting Star Wars aside, I suspect that the conversation would be fascinating.
Now, if he were to bring up Fixing the Prequels, I hope he'd be gracious about it, especially since I'm always trying to make clear that I don't write those out of a desire to bash the Prequels, but to defend them by drawing attention if I can to what's good about them. (And there's a lot.) What I suspect, though, is that he would be gracious about it. Lucas has shown quite a lot of humor over the years about his life's work; he has, to my knowledge, never really gone after any of the parodies that circulate online, nor has he gone after the various people who have done "fan edits". When Carrie Fisher took to the stage at Lucas's AFI Lifetime Achievement award and told the story where he apparently had indicated during filming of A New Hope that "there is no underwear in space", he laughed uproariously, and there is a photo out there of Lucas on the set of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wearing a t-shirt that says "Han shot first". I have a feeling Lucas would be fine with it...but man, would that be weird. It would probably take me fifteen minutes just to pull my heart out of my stomach just to discuss the subject with him!
More answers to come! And don't forget, I'm not closing off the submissions yet, so if you want to ask something, go ahead!
1. Do you watch a TV show/movie because one of your ROWR is in it? In particular - did you watch CSI NY before Sela Ward was on it, and do you watch it now? Also, have you noticed that she had "work done" and how do yo feel about this?
I have, occasionally. Note that I don't choose ROWR's (even now, when I choose them very sporadically -- although I'm giving thought to revising that practice, since my traffic spikes every time an episode of The Big Bang Theory airs in which Melissa Rauch appears) on the basis of just how beautiful they are, but because I saw them in something, or saw them perform something, that I really, really liked, so what attracts me to them at first (in the very mild sense of "attract") is the talent they bring to whatever they do. There are plenty of really beautiful women on shows that I hate, so I don't post about them, because I hate their shows, and that kind of "taints" them a little. (But I do make the distinction between hating the person and hating the show. That's got to be clear.)
So, the ROWR honoree has to be in something that I'm interested in watching. If Sela Ward, Melissa Rauch and Jacqueline Obradors were all cast in a new David E. Kelley legal drama, I wouldn't watch, because I can't stand David E. Kelley's shows. (I'm just picking on him because I've got him on the brain, as he prepares to destroy Wonder Woman for the new generation.)
On Sela Ward specifically: I have only watched one episode of CSI: NY since she's been on it, and I watched that one just to see what she was like on the show. But since the best opinion I've ever been able to muster for that show was "tepid" and that has cooled significantly over the last couple of years, I haven't watched any more. She was OK, but fact is, the CSI shows are basically designed to plug in any actors at all. The most character driven of them is CSI: Miami, and that's just because David Caruso has turned Horatio Caine into the most deliciously weird teevee cop of all time (excepting those on Barney Miller).
Ward has had some plastic surgery done, which does, in my view, make her less beautiful than on Once and Again, wherein she wasn't in a single scene where she wasn't radiant. But even so, Once was ten years ago, and in general, I think that the whole plastic surgery thing can be OK when it's done relatively tastefully, and I thought hers was. I certainly didn't agree at all with this Ken Levine post in which he says that now she looks like Jack Lord (I found that post in general fairly mean-spirited, actually). Plenty of women have had surgeries that make them look ghastly -- Joan Rivers is a good example, although I've always found her ghastly, so she might not be a good example).
2. If you were at dinner with George Lucas, what would you talk about, assuming that Star Wars is off limits? How would you feel if he brought up your sequel fixers?
No Star Wars? Aieee! But really, George Lucas seems to be a man with a lot of interests and who knows stuff about a lot of things, so even setting Star Wars aside, I suspect that the conversation would be fascinating.
Now, if he were to bring up Fixing the Prequels, I hope he'd be gracious about it, especially since I'm always trying to make clear that I don't write those out of a desire to bash the Prequels, but to defend them by drawing attention if I can to what's good about them. (And there's a lot.) What I suspect, though, is that he would be gracious about it. Lucas has shown quite a lot of humor over the years about his life's work; he has, to my knowledge, never really gone after any of the parodies that circulate online, nor has he gone after the various people who have done "fan edits". When Carrie Fisher took to the stage at Lucas's AFI Lifetime Achievement award and told the story where he apparently had indicated during filming of A New Hope that "there is no underwear in space", he laughed uproariously, and there is a photo out there of Lucas on the set of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull wearing a t-shirt that says "Han shot first". I have a feeling Lucas would be fine with it...but man, would that be weird. It would probably take me fifteen minutes just to pull my heart out of my stomach just to discuss the subject with him!
More answers to come! And don't forget, I'm not closing off the submissions yet, so if you want to ask something, go ahead!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Answers, the first!
OK, it's time to start providing answers to questions posed for Ask Me Anything! 2011. Lots of good queries, as always, and I'm actually going to keep things open for questioning right up until I post the answer to the last question I receive, so feel free to keep things going! Post questions in comments to this post, or use e-mail or Facebook message.
An anonymous reader asks:
Have you ever tried a sustained use-no-electronic-gadget (banning Internet use or TV watching, for example)? If you did, what happened? If you haven't, what's your opinion of these attempts?
The closest I've come was a three month period in 2008 when I stopped blogging. I was just burned out on the whole thing, and I needed a big-time break. Those two months went quite well; I did a lot of movie watching and I did quite a bit of writing and I did quite a bit of stuff with the family. But doing without just for the sake of doing without has always seemed a pretty odd thing to do, so I've never had a "no teevee month" or "no Internet for a season" or anything similar.
I do cut down on my Internet usage on occasion, when I think I'm not getting enough done, and I've gone so far as to look for an ethernet cable with a male plug at one end and a female plug in the other, so I could disconnect the wireless router without disconnecting the Main Library Computer (named Arwen, actually), so The Wife and The Daughter can have Internet while I concentrate on other stuff. But I haven't actually found one yet.
You live in a smaller place (i.e., not a large mansion). Does your desire to collect books cause problems? Do you have to "cull the herd" every so often?
Sigh. Yeah, it does create space issues, most definitely. And I should cull the herd more often than I do. I have a lot of books left over from my philosophy-reading days in college that I must admit I am unlikely to ever read again, for instance. Culling is hard. It really is!
I don't really buy as many books now as I used to, with the exception being the quarterly library book sales, where I generally can't help myself. I suppose I could start a small used book business for myself on eBay or Amazon -- in fact, which is better? Anybody know? I've sold books on eBay before, but I tend to be less-than-consistent with it.
And so it starts! Ask Me Anything, folks! Check out my neophyte entry in Tumblr land, too!
An anonymous reader asks:
Have you ever tried a sustained use-no-electronic-gadget (banning Internet use or TV watching, for example)? If you did, what happened? If you haven't, what's your opinion of these attempts?
The closest I've come was a three month period in 2008 when I stopped blogging. I was just burned out on the whole thing, and I needed a big-time break. Those two months went quite well; I did a lot of movie watching and I did quite a bit of writing and I did quite a bit of stuff with the family. But doing without just for the sake of doing without has always seemed a pretty odd thing to do, so I've never had a "no teevee month" or "no Internet for a season" or anything similar.
I do cut down on my Internet usage on occasion, when I think I'm not getting enough done, and I've gone so far as to look for an ethernet cable with a male plug at one end and a female plug in the other, so I could disconnect the wireless router without disconnecting the Main Library Computer (named Arwen, actually), so The Wife and The Daughter can have Internet while I concentrate on other stuff. But I haven't actually found one yet.
You live in a smaller place (i.e., not a large mansion). Does your desire to collect books cause problems? Do you have to "cull the herd" every so often?
Sigh. Yeah, it does create space issues, most definitely. And I should cull the herd more often than I do. I have a lot of books left over from my philosophy-reading days in college that I must admit I am unlikely to ever read again, for instance. Culling is hard. It really is!
I don't really buy as many books now as I used to, with the exception being the quarterly library book sales, where I generally can't help myself. I suppose I could start a small used book business for myself on eBay or Amazon -- in fact, which is better? Anybody know? I've sold books on eBay before, but I tend to be less-than-consistent with it.
And so it starts! Ask Me Anything, folks! Check out my neophyte entry in Tumblr land, too!
Monday, February 14, 2011
Ask Me Anything! (reminder the fourth)
I'll be starting to post replies later this week, but I'm still going to leave queries open for maybe the rest of the month! So if you have questions -- serious, silly, whatever -- go ahead and leave 'em in comments to this post (I do it this way just to keep them in one place; I discovered in the past that it's harder to keep track when there are questions in comments to multiple posts). Or, alternatively, you can e-mail questions to either address in the sidebar. (If you don't want to be identified when I answer on the blog, let me know; e-mail addresses will not be posted, anyway.) People on Facebook can also send questions via FB message, if that's your thing.
Friday, February 11, 2011
Ask Me Anything! (Reminder the third)
Remember, folks, I'm taking questions pretty much all month for Ask Me Anything! February 2011. Any question is welcome -- serious questions, silly questions, things you've always wondered about but didn't have the opportunity to ask, things you don't care about but want to make me write about anyway, et cetera. Just post your questions in comments to this post. Or, if you prefer, e-mail is fine (addresses are in the sidebar, but best to use the Gmail one) or Facebook message, for those on FB. Bring it on! Ask Me Anything!!!
Sunday, February 06, 2011
Ask Me Anything! (reminder the second)
Put your questions in comments here! All queries welcome on all subjects! If you don't ask a question, the Gods will weep! (And no questioning limit, either! If you think of nine questions, well then, get 'em all in there!)
Friday, February 04, 2011
Ask Me Anything! (reminder the first)
Don't forget, folks -- we're doing Ask Me Anything! this month, as is normal for February on Byzantium's Shores. Just put your queries in the comments to this post! You can also e-mail them, if you like. Address in the sidebar. Ask me anything!
Tuesday, February 01, 2011
Ask Me Anything!
Yup, folks, it's February, which is the anniversary month for this blog's kick-starting, back in 2002. It's also my traditional month for one of my favorite blogging past-times, Ask Me Anything!. This is when you readers get to...well, put questions to me. Any questions you like. Serious questions, silly questions. I will keep question-submission time open for two weeks (until Feb 15), at which time I'll start answering them. A great time is always had by all! (But keep in mind that questions may be answered in non-serious fashion. Because I tend to be non-serious!)
So, go ahead and put your questions in comments on this post. I look forward to doing this every year -- so much so that last year, I did it again in August -- and I hope this year's queries are just as fun, probing, insightful, or just plain goofy as every other year I've done this!
The mike is yours, folks: Ask Me Anything!
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