Late Boomer's Den

  • Gaming, the drug I resist because I can’t

    Tenacious D – Video Games

    Who needs drugs when you can trick people’s brains into making their own drugs?

    I used to use OK Cupid in my lonely old bachelor days. I got a few nice dinner dates out of it, but they had gaming features that kept you on the site. Veeery counterproductive if you wanted to find a mate.

    People thought they could trade up from an 80 percent to a 90 percent match, so you kept seeing the same faces pop up over and over. After meeting my wife, it really seemed like bullshit. My wife and I are practically opposites and we’re stuck together like magnets.

    I have actively prevented myself from becoming a gamer, because I don’t think I can handle it. I had issues with simpler games before. I got tendonitis saving the Princess in Mario 3 (twice). I thought Angry Birds and Wordfeud were gonna get me fired. Bathroom breaks can only be so long till the boss notices.

    When I first discovered Reddit, I let that take over my life. I became addicted to “karma” and spent hours upon hours trying to figure out how to get more of it.

    I finally broke the cycle by nuking my account and getting another one I didn’t care much about. Downvote away…. Same way I kept those apps from getting me in trouble. Deleted the apps.

    I also saw a marriage break up because of World of Warcraft, so however legit gaming might be these days, I just can’t.

    I know my weaknesses.

    Language learning app Duolingo uses gaming features to keep you motivated and it has helped me learn a fair amount of Spanish. I was able to have a basic conversation with a Venezuelan after just under a year.

    But again, I have to face it. I have other activities that need my attention. And early arthritis in my thumb…

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  • Stay away from my dots!

    Sooner or later it was going to happen. An older boy would ask, “What’s worse than a tornado or a hurricane?”

    “I dunno. What?”

    Older boy grabs one of your nips. “A Texas titty twister!” That hurt!

    You only fell for that once, then started plotting, cuz you had to pull that on some other kid. Nipples were fair game if you were a boy.

    There were other variations. A boy might grab your nip unexpectedly and shout, “Whistle or lose it!” Try to do that sometime. Not easy.

    That was a classic, like, “Watch me suck my spit back in,” from the boy sitting on your chest.

    There was an older kid in Boy Scouts who liked to grab your nipple and not let go until you sang all the words to “Mickey Rat” (Old episodes of the Mickey Mouse Club were still showing in reruns.)

    He was one of those semi-bullies who turned cool as he got older. He was driving without a license at 14, that was cool in my book.

    My wife didn’t see the humor in that, although I pointed out it was a boy only activity.

    Though I once heard Arnold’s ex Maria Shriver say on air that her brother pulled the Texas Titty Twister on her when they were kids.

    Happy (?) memories, but stay the hell away from my nipples. I did my time.

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  • Thought bubble warfare

    Charles Platt’s 1979 interview with Phillip K. Dick

    Phillip K. Dick is a fascinating figure for me. Terribly unstable yet visionary. He said several profound things during the above interview by Charles Platt. I was especially intrigued by the part about how someone with a powerful psyche can invade the psyches of others.

    He admits to being easily persuadable. While undergoing “attack therapy” he found himself agreeing with statements about himself he knew to be false. Exactly the same mechanism used to extract false confessions and create cults and totalitarianism.

    It gave me an image: Comic book thought bubbles, floating around invisibly, taking form in the actions of people.

    It’s interesting to think about political and cultural changes not as people & countries making decisions, but more like clouds of psychic energy, traveling through the airwaves, through the Internet, through advertising and political campaigns.

    Battling it out and making alliances. Merging and splitting apart. Some more powerful than others. Many small ones, gradually absorbed into larger ones.

    I’m not a New Ager. I don’t believe in “psychic energy” per se. It’s mostly a metaphor, but a hell of a strong one.

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  • Why clean house when you still have hidey holes?

    I hate cleaning house, but sometimes it’s got to be done.

    I have a rule of thumb: If it takes more work to step over the piles than to pick them up, I pick them up.

    Dad had to threaten us with a spanking to get me and my siblings to clean our room. “It better be clean when I get home from work or else!”

    So we got home after school and immediately began wasting time, watching Gilligan’s Island or whatever was on. Until suddenly we realized Dad would be home any minute. The dogs’ ears perked up when the Ford pickup got close. Two minutes’ warning.

    So it was into the bedroom, throw the toys into the closet, make the beds and get done just as Dad was pulling into the driveway. In the nick of time. Just enough to make it look like we made an effort. Just enough effort to dodge a whipping.

    And Dad of course marched right to the closet and said, “OK. Now clean the closet.”

    Easy peasy. Just push everything under the bed. Until one day Dad got wise, swiped a broom handle under the bed and pushed it all out in the middle of the floor. “Now put everything where it goes. Don’t just dump it in the closet!”

    Dad figured out the problem: three channels of bad TV for us kids to waste time and fight over. He finally got fed up and banned us from watching TV until he got home. “If you don’t have time to do your chores or your homework you don’t have time to watch TV.” He pulled out the channel dial and took it to work every morning.

    All it took was a pair ofneedlenose pliers and the bad TV-watching shenanigans continued.

    Then it escalated. Dad began taking the electric cord to work.

    Luckily the mixer cord fit. So we watched TV  till we got nervous, then crammed everything under the bed like always.

    Dad got so frustrated he nailed a long piece of paneling to the bottom of the bed frame so nothing except maybe a sheet of paper would fit.

    When our strategy changed to piling it up between bed and wall, he kind of gave up. The man was a fearsome spanker, but I don’t think his heart was in it. Being a drill sergeant took time away from what HE wanted to do after work.

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  • What the hell is ‘woke-ism’?

    I’m an old white guy and I am very confused about the word “woke.” It’s one of those new slang words that just popped up and now it’s everywhere. I know where it came from, but I am very confused about where it’s gone.

    I can’t make it very far through a social media thread these days without seeing “woke” used as a complaint about something I had no idea I was supposed to be worried about.

    If I could just address one question to my fellow white folks… I would just like to know this: Where the hell did you even pick that up and how did it turn out to be this huge catch-all word?

    “Woke” is an AAVE word (African American Vernacular English). A dialect most people who look like me don’t speak. There’s not a damn thing wrong with having a dialect. We all have one – I grew up in the country and most of us certainly did.

    I know this because I first heard it in Dear White People, a show on Netflix that white people tend not to watch. Ironically enough. I like to watch things I suspect weren’t targeted at me. I like seeing things from new angles.

    Us white folks always pick up black slang. Gradually our dialect changes. It’s the way languages work.

    I enjoy listening to AAVE. If you’re into hip hop you can hardly miss it. I’m sure it’s a good percentage of my vocabulary by this point. But the way we use it sometimes…

    In Dear White People, a character asks, “Are you woke?” And it sounded strange at first, the way all new slang always does, but it in the story it meant “Are you aware of the unfairness of the system?” It seemed obvious. I went, huh, picked up a new word, and moved on.

    “Do you hate white people?” or “Do you want to bring down Western Civilization?” never once popped into my head. It was just a new one for the file, like “no cap” or “ish.” (That last one is clever as shit.)

    So you would think woke-ISM would mean, the process of seeing through the unfairness of society. Sounds pretty based to me. Who in hell, except for the wealthiest capitalists, thinks this society is fair – for any of us?

    How the hell did seeing through the system and trying to reverse it become a catastrophe? Seems like it would be the other way around.

    I remain confused.

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  • Boss God of the Gaps

    You know how everyone gets to define God however they want? Here’s a definition I’ve been toying with: Boss God of the Gaps.

    That’s an amusing thought, because it is kind of a cop out to just say “God” whenever you don’t understand something. So many “unexplainable” things have already been explained by science that it seems pointless.

    But what if it’s true, just not the way science deniers think? What if you take it all the way? Maybe God is the last unknowable thing.

    Maybe it’s way more important than all those things we can discover, as mind-blowing as some of them are. Perhaps it’s reality itself, the glue that holds everything together.

    Would that imply any kind of consciousness? Who knows? It’s unknowable, just like consciousness.

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  • Near-sighted? I know a fun game you can play

    Me after I sat on my glasses.

    Me in the ladies’ glasses I had to wear for two weeks.

    Sometimes I like to play a game where I lose things and try to find them with my glasses off. It’s like a scavenger hunt. It’s especially fun when I hide my glasses which I can’t see without.

    Strangely enough I discovered that my wife’s prescription is practically the same as mine, minus the astigmatism. That came in really handy when I accidentally lost the game by sitting on my glasses. As if I needed another sign that we were meant to be.

    Since I know I have th at option, the game is less of a challenge, so I have a rule that if I have to put on her glasses, I lose. They might not look good on her but they’re damn silly on me.

    While ago I tried to turn on the living room light by mashing on a packet of gluten-free soy sauce. in this house you turn on the light and the ceiling fan with a little plastic doohickey. With my glasses off, I couldn’t tell the difference.

    I won the game even though I had to hunt all over the room, because I didn’t have to put on those silly red glasses.

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  • Getting my car stolen like the bumpkin I was

    Nazareth – Hair of the Dog

    After locking my keys in the car a few times in college, I found the solution: Why lock the car at all?

    I found out on the way home from school one day. I stopped by the mall to see a friend who worked in the sandwich shop. I was only gonna be a minute. Half an hour later I went to the parking lot and I couldn’t find my car. Crap. Forgot where I parked again. That happened a lot.

    I went up one row, down another, one row after another for several minutes and still no car. How could I be off by so many rows? Finally, it hit me. Someone stole my car!

    Ratt – Round and Round

    My Chevy Malibu had a faded paint job, burned oil and sometimes backfired. But it was a passable low rider car especially since it was free for the taking.

    I called the police, called Mom and Dad who had to drive an hour to get me. Police said not to be too optimistic.

    But what do you know? The car thieves were caught speeding in a school zone in the next town over. They were in jail and we could pick up my car. Sweet.

    Except my very expensive college textbooks were missing. The eyedropper I used in biology lab was brown. Someone had smoked a joint through it. Hopefully they swallowed an amoeba.

    Then more luck. A school teacher found all my books in a ditch. All I had to do was drop by her school and pick them up. They had permanent stains and my art history textbook had road rash, but they would make it through the semester.

    Also, bonus! The joyriders left me a couple of cassettes: Nazareth – Hair of the Dog (score!) and Ratt – Out of the Cellar (OK for hair metal). Still an overall pain in the ass.

    After that I kept a wire coat hanger inside my back bumper. It got regular use.

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  • Facing my pronoun problem

    I have a problem with pronouns. Sometimes I say “them” when I mean “us” or “us” when I mean “them.” I can’t tell these days. But the hardest ones of all are “him” and “I.”

    That thing I did 30 years ago, was it me or him? It sure feels like it was me, but what about the things that I would never do? That had to be somebody else…

    Change your singular pronouns and you also change your plural ones. It gets really confusing.

    Few people get to see your true face. Sometimes you don’t even see it yourself. The one you show the world is usually a mask, a persona.

    You kinda know it’s not really you, but it’s your “Sunday go to meeting” face, your “go along to get along” face. You take it off when you get home.

    (Interesting how not wearing a mask can also be a mask.)

    Identity is trickier. That’s the mask you show yourself. It might look like a “go along to get along” face, but you’ve been getting along so well, it doesn’t feel so much like a mask. Until it does.

    But as you live and learn, something changes.

    One day you the mask doesn’t feel like an “I” anymore. It becomes “him” (or her or they or it, but for me it was “him”).

    The people you considered “us” tell you it’s beautiful, but you no longer love it and it’s heavy and it chafes and you want to take it off, but you know they won’t let you.

    Gradually “us” turns into “them.” Which is rough, because in your dreams, you’re always “me” and the people you love are always “us.”

    All day, every day, we are judged for the masks we wear and judged if we don’t wear mask – especially then. Mask salesmen abound, telling us “this is the last one you’ll ever need,” if you can afford it.

    Jeff Noon, the most psychedelic sci fi writer since Rudy Rucker, wrote an interesting novel called Mappalujo about a mysterious land where masks play a major role. I didn’t understand the symbolism when I read it the first time, but I do now.

    I’ve worn many masks over the years. I identified so strongly with some of them, I refused to believe that’s what they were, even as they began slipping off. But sooner or later I had to admit it. This is not who I am.

    When enough “I’s” turned out to be “hims,” the message started to sink in: They’re all masks.

    Though it still hurts like hell when you take them off. Especially when you have no idea what’s underneath, and people you considered “us” suddenly become “them” to you. That’s the pronoun problem I wish I could solve, because I like my people like I like my music – eclectic and all over the world.

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  • Nigel and the Call of the Yard

    Nigel:Certified snack hound, being a spoiled little turd boy.

    Nigel is such a spoiled little baby. He’s an inside dog, but ever since it got warm, he barely wants anything to do with us. I can’t even get him to come in for food half the time. He just wants to be OUTSIDE.

    We rescued him and he gets to sleep inside in the air conditioning, but he’s like, “No. I want sun and I want dirt.”

    I think he missed his calling as a yard dog. He’ll spend the whole day outside, sunning if we let him. The weather has been nice, but it gets cold overnight in a desert town.

    This morning, he was shivering after I put him out to do his business, and he still wouldn’t come in.

    I had to go through the whole passive agressive tummy ritual and carry him inside. (“Oh, no, please don’t hurt me. I’m just a little guy.”)

    He eventually came in and got some lap though. He loves us. I just think he just loves outside more.

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