Inundated by Media – Podcast
It may come as a surprise, but I talk to myself a lot. Over time, I’ve noticed that I’m not designing things in my head nor focusing on world building or testing dialogue with the mirror in my bathroom. Normally, it would be healthy, or at least considered healthy, that I have ceased speaking to myself. Except, I leverage these moments to figure out things for my writing. A ton of ideas have poured from me when I just let the train run off the rails.
Therefore, it is a problem that I am not doing these crazy things anymore. At first, I thought it was because I had become self-conscious about appearing insane. Then I realized what it really was… podcasts. Instead of letting my brain do its own thinking, I was blocking it out by playing a podcast. I had lost the ability to sit by myself in silence and just think. Now, I listen to history podcasts and learn from them, but I stopped just having ideas flow from me.
As such, I have ceased my podcast consumption at home and I’ve immediately benefited from having my mind do its own thing. It’s a shame, I truly love learning and podcasts are a very easy way to do that, but I also like letting my mind think instead of be squawked at.
Get that Weed Out of Here
I fish regularly, and for the life of me, I have no idea why seaweed is called seaweed when I am fishing in a freshwater lake. We aren’t in the sea and I am not sure if it is technically a weed. Then again, plant life in the ocean is also called seaweed (sometimes kelp or something else), but I always hear water plants that grow below the surface referred to as SEA weed. Why do we have such confusing names for things?
Obvious we should just call it water grass: problem solved! No questions here!
Small Questions | Pandas
I’ve seen Sparkles (Post about my cat: Meet Sparkles) do some incredible things. She is truly an inspiration for evolution’s ability to produce a serial killer. For example: leaping six feet in the air and landing without making a noise or when she catches bats out of the air. I am awe struck by her ability to climb anything with her claws and her capability to understand what is safe to use as a perch.
Then, you juxtapose her incredible feats with a panda and your brain will break. I’ve seen a panda pee on another panda, it just lays there and takes it, another panda poop an avocado of a turd onto another panda’s head, it also just lays there and take it, and I am stuck wondering: “how are these animals still alive?” Okay, so those aren’t great examples of the panda as a failed evolutionary experiment. But just search “panda falls” and you will be greeted by mind blowing moments where pandas fail to do basic tasks… like climb a tree (a necessary function of an animal that eats… leaves). If aliens showed up tomorrow, they would go and see a panda – at which point – they would leave our planet because Earth clearly hasn’t evolved enough for intergalactic politics. Listen, I know they are adorable and cute, but they are also a giant failure of an animal. Their camouflage is black and white… and they live in bamboo forests.
Perhaps, I am being too harsh on the panda. But my simple question is this: How have pandas survived this long?
~Theodore, asking the hard questions. (I also didn’t research pandas, so I know there are reasons they are still alive but I don’t care, I just watch too many videos of pandas failing to climb trees or randomly fall out of trees).
Ahhh Yeah Baby – Sextant Time
When technology breaks, it can be disastrous – planes can fall from the sky, votes can be manipulated, your vibrator data could be pilfered (true story and it was done on purpose), and all other sorts of weird things. On my drive home recently, I noticed that I was driving North (but I should be traveling South as I am coming from the North), and I nearly had a heart attack: “How long had it been since I had left the gas station?” “How much back tracking had I done?” “Shit snacks on a turd cracker, I can’t believe this is happened.” Then I calmed myself, I hadn’t made a mistake.
I looked up and found the Sun: it was off to my right and it was late afternoon. With that quick assessment, I was transported back in time and leveraged my hiking/camping knowledge to correct the compass in my car – I was traveling South. But boy was it weird constantly looking down at the compass and seeing it tell me the exact opposite of what I was doing at that time.
It was unnerving, surreal, and uncomfortable. Everything I did, I thought I was doing wrong. So then I thought about, when did I choose technology’s answer over my own? Clearly I have deduced that the technology in my car was incorrect and that the Sun (which has been doing it far longer) was giving me the appropriate information I needed to make it home. Not only that, all the signs indicating I was traveling the correct direction. Yet, seeing that little N each time I looked down provided me a healthy dose of anxiety.
Perhaps, I need to cut out the technology and get back to the basics. Time to buy a sextant. (Secondary note: Sun is a pronoun, there should be no the before it, but I know people are used to seeing “the Sun” in text. I’ll write about my issues with “the Sun” but for now, know it pains me to write that).
Seven Minutes – Bend the Truth
“Every cigarette you smoke takes seven minutes off your life.” As a kid, hearing this from presenters at school frightened me – my dad was a smoker (I still am, cause I am a big dum dum). At the time, I wasn’t a smoker, but I was concerned that my dad was shortening his life span. I was young and had zero concept of statistics or narrative. So I assumed these presenters were some how capable of calculating that the seven minutes was coming off the entire life span of a human. So the average smoker was taking years off the end of their life each month.
As I grew older, I thought about it (didn’t research it) and came to a conclusion – “The motherfuckers lied to me”. I don’t like being lied to and I was pretty sure there is no way to know how long a life span is (with 100% confidence), but you would have to know: a human’s lifespan, the amount of cigarettes smoked, and then you would be able to calculate the total length of lifespan someone had lost. With these pieces of data, you just divide by the amount of cigarettes, and boom, seven minutes becomes the amount of time you lose off your life when you smoke.
My dad is my hero, he always has been because of the sacrifices he made for my family (my mom is also my hero, but she gets her own blog post about how she killed snakes to protect her kids). So, when someone told me my dad was literally knocking off seven minutes with each cigarette, I grew sad; I didn’t want to lose my dad sooner because of his horrible habit (the irony that I smoke is not lost on me).
Now, while I hate that someone instilled that fear in me, I am grateful because it became the first instance where I learned how you can use words and truth (bended) to trick someone. The seven minutes they are talking about comes from the length of how long it takes to smoke a cigarette. So it isn’t you shortening your life, it is you wasting seven minutes of your life to smoke a cigarette (but I usually smoke and read so that doesn’t impact me).
Either way, I need to quit smoking. Maybe tomorrow…
The Wolf and the Seven Little Kids
Then the wolf ran to a baker and said, “I have hurt my feet, rub some dough over them for me.” And when the baker had rubbed his feet over, he ran to the miller and said, “Strew some white meal over my feet for me.” The miller thought to himself, “The wolf wants to deceive someone,” and refused; but the wolf said, “If you will not do it, I will devour you.” Then the miller was afraid, and made his paws white for him. Yes, that’s how people are.
~Brothers Grimm
Two things before I begin: 1) this project was launched based on the post: “Project Grimm” if you want to know more about the format go read that post, and 2) an update to that post: my friend doesn’t call satchels man purses, rather, he calls them purses. Now that the housekeeping is done, I will jump into the analysis, so click [Read More] only if you don’t care about spoilers.
Blog Project – New Category: Project Grimm
Recently, I realized that I had too many backpacks; I only use two, but I have all of the ones from my childhood. Throughout time, I have slowly shifted them out of use and ended up with my current configuration (a messenger bag (man purse as my friend calls it) and a backpack that can carry two laptops (corporate work and writing work – I keep my functions completely separated for obvious reasons)). So, while cleaning, I was pleasantly surprised to find that my old college backpack held a treasure I had been missing for some time: Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales. I had looked for this leather bound volume for a year (picked it up for seven dollars on sale (I would never buy a leather bound book unless it was cheap as they are a pain in the ass to hold while reading), bought one for myself and the friend who calls messenger bags man purses but that isn’t relevant). While reading tonight, I realized that I love the morals of these stories and found a weird dichotomy playing out in my mind (there was the moral for the good characters, but also, a moral for the villain).
Because I am clearly not busy (as my hair turns white just writing this post), I have decided to create a new goal for myself. I will read these short stories and write blogs on each one. The format is simple:
- A quote will be pulled (something that hit me in the gut and I liked)
- An analysis of the good guy’s moral
- An analysis of the villain’s moral (if I find one)
- How I felt about it
- ??? – Something I haven’t thought about at the writing of this post
I am unsure if my initial format will hold true till the end of the project, but I believe projects are meant to shift and change. The outcome that matters: I will end up reading more of these short stories and thinking about them. As my old professor used to say and I am paraphrasing: “You must read everything and from different cultures, otherwise, you are only going to write in one tradition”. His advice has led me to my current writing style: the amalgam abomination. So, look forward to these new pieces on the website (I am still writing fiction and revising my manuscripts (Bohr’s Bathos is currently on the chopping block)).
Small Questions: What Should You Never Microwave at Lunch?
So I walk into the little lunch area at work and I am grabbing some water. You know, just my fourth liter of water by lunch. My foot begins tapping against the tiles and then I get a whiff of something foul, perhaps it was fowl, but I am cannot be 100% sure of the contents of the microwave at this time. Based on the funk and the potency, my best bet was a can of tuna, but this is a hypothesis. Perhaps we will never know.
Yet, it did prompt me with some small questions:
So, are there certain foods you shouldn’t eat at work because of their funk? It it your place to tell your coworkers what they cannot eat? Or did you notice I said microwaving a can of tuna and clue into the fact that you shouldn’t ever microwave metal? Cause if you caught that piece, then you are correct. Eat whatever you want, just don’t microwave metal (no one was actually microwaving metal) but the definitely deployed a solid tuna melt funk all over that area.
Once again, Theodore Maestranzi asking the tough questions.
Reallocating my Time
It may come as a surprise to you (it shouldn’t), but I am Italian (technically, Italian American). One of my biggest regrets: I can’t speak Italian. Now, my parents speak fluently, but being the last child, I didn’t benefit from them speaking the language at home. By the time I was born, they were mostly speaking English in the home. Now, I can listen to Italian and deduce what is happening, but I can only respond in English. As such, for most of my life, I have had the desire to learn Italian. I love my heritage and read history books on Italy (in the read more section, I will actually share some knowledge I’ve gained about the ol’ boot).
So, when I made the decision to dive deep into learning the language, I quickly came face to face with the sheer amount of time needed to study. The goal is two hours a day, which means, I am severely impacting my writing/reading time during the weekdays. Between painting, learning a language, work, writing, and reading, I am beginning to burn out. As such, I will be maintaining writing/reading as I love it, but I will be (for the first time in 6 years) prioritizing something above reading and writing. The goal, at this point, is to come home from work, study a lesson or two of Italian and then use whatever time I have left to write/read/socialize. I know my output will drop, but I expect that I will be able to maintain 80% of my focus. [Click “Read More” for some knowledge on Italy]
Proper use of Words in Headlines
On every job listing I’ve ever read, there is a simple requirement: “must be able to communicate effectively”. I am finding that journalists must not have that requirement as part of their jobs. For the last couple of months, since a certain election, every single headline seems to be over reaching in terms of what has happened. For example: “Ethics Board Literally Gutted” or “Repealed Act 3192 Which Defends All Your Rights”. While those are fictitious examples, you would assume that something horrible has happened, that the actual act has taken place and the ethics board no longer has anyone one it (because they were disemboweled (unless they meant figuratively in their headline)) or that the act was repealed.
Yet, when you go into research mode, because you can’t believe you missed something so important happening under your nose, you find that nothing of the sort happened. In fact, you learn the initial steps have been taken to move towards the eventual gutting of an ethics board and that they meant figuratively. However, if you are like most people, you become despondent because your anger was so high and now you learn nothing bad has actually transpired. So you close the tabs and move onto something more pressing.
The problem arises when you eventually do see a true headline and the ethics board ends up gutted, you don’t react with anger or hatred. You have already done that, and you go about your day disgruntled that the world is falling apart. This is because you have been desensitized to the gutting already, so you don’t take it nearly as drastically. In your mind, you’ve seen this headline before so you browse right past it.
So… journalists… please use the proper wording and words when describing things in your headlines. Otherwise, we as a species will stop caring altogether… leave the sensationalism at home.