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Cold weather

It’s been a little brisk in these parts, with night temps falling around or below zero Fahrenheit, and windchills measured in the negative teens or lower. I love this kind of weather. Not forever, mind you, but for a season it is a wonderful thing. The air is marvelously clear so the light of the full moon is possibly the brightest I have ever seen. I actually took a book outside a few nights ago to see if I could read it by moonlight. The answer was yes.

When I mentioned to a friend recently about what great hiking weather this is, he looked at me sideways like I was out of my mind. Of course, he hasn’t really spent much time outside, certainly not in this weather, so he doesn’t understand that you simply adapt. You dress for it, you adjust your movements accordingly, you take your time and remain mindful of what’s happening to your face, your fingers, your toes. You plan for contingency and you proceed with caution but not fear. The reward is great as you can hike a trail you have walked many times in warmer weather, but find it an entirely new experience – almost a new world.

Plus, I just really like it when I get icicles hanging off my beard.

Books

Went off on a short Louis L’amour jag recently sucking up three of this tales in short order, the best being Matagorda. He is a fine storyteller, though I am slightly puzzled by the use of the term “sky-pilot” to refer to a Christian Minister. Not puzzled as if I don’t know what it means. Puzzled rather by his consistent use of it in all three books, as if it were a common term in use our west during the latter half of the 19^th century. I don’t recall ever hearing it before.

I am also re-reading The Silmarillion. Assistant Village Idiot recently posted on how the language in TS differs from the language of either the Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. This has made in less accessible to some, who are put off by the formality and complexity of tone. It seems archaic and musty to some. I find that I love it. It has a sense of majesty, an epic quality. It reads more like ancient history, skirting over novelistic detail but if you accept it for what it is, and stop expecting a novel, it seems to me that that ceases to be a problem. Silmarillion captures that sense of “Northernness” that C.S. Lewis wrote of.

Leno vs. Conan.

Whatever. Ditch them both. They are stiffs. Bring in Craig Ferguson instead. Now that boy is funny. Moreover, sensible people are all in bed anyways. 

Monsters vs Aliens

Watched Monsters vs. Aliens with my kids this weekend. Funny stuff. Gotta love B.O.B. My youngest and I had a conversation about which character we resemble the most. Apparently, I am most like Missing Link. Go figure. 

B.O.B. is the funniest one though.

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Toyota

I think I may end up owning a used Toyota sometime in the next few years. I’m guessing that there will be a lot of them available cheap. If it starts to run away with me, I figure I can just shift the thing into neutral, stop it, get out, and watch the engine rev up until it explodes. Should be entertaining.

Alternatively, while exiting the vehicle, I can ‘accidentally’ re-engage the transmission and watch the empty car plunge over a precipice to its complete destruction. That will not only be entertaining, but might be covered by insurance.

Work, Anagnoresis, and Parapeteia

I have a good friend who is a high school teacher. More specifically, he is a Tech Ed teacher. Those of you who are my age or older may wonder what it is that a Tech Ed teacher teaches. According to my friend, Tech Ed (for Technical Education) is the latest phase in the evolution of what we used to know as “Shop.” In my time, it was more formally knows as “Industrial Arts.” This was where kids who were not on a college track learned basic vocational skills usually relating to some kind of trade – metal working, engine repair, wood working and carpentry, machining or drafting, etc. Apparently, these sorts of things are no longer taught in High School. Apparently, schools now seem to want to prepare everyone to go to college. 

OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but I think not by much. My friend actually expressed his concern about this at one point. He said, “It used to be that you could graduate from High School and have a good part of the skills you would need to build a house. Not anymore. I’m not sure where someone goes now if he wants to learn to be a carpenter.” 

It is an irony, perhaps, that for all it’s talk about equality of opportunity and diversity, it seems to me that today’s educational establishment is actually becoming much narrower, and trying much harder to fit a wider rang of people into a much tighter channel. I suspect this the case because of a certain prejudice that is overlooked – a prejudice against manual labor. It has become an accepted perspective to view manual labor as almost the equivalent of slavery. It is assumed that if someone digs ditches, paves roads, frames houses, fixes cars, cuts trees, or any number of other forms of actual physical work, that they are most unfortunate, and that the only way to improve their lot is to leave behind their work and become a part of the new information economy. Hence the term “Tech Ed.” It basically means training in the use of computers. 

This misguided philosophy is essentially the pervasive problem of Gnosticism. It’s a tough weed that almost derailed the early church, and is so hardy that it still finds ways to sprout in the bare ground left behind by modern materialism. Somehow the material physical world has become distasteful to the educated people who hold the knowledge of power. The soiling of the hands with real matter is left to ignorant and unfortunate who either don’t know better, or are unable to rise up out of that condition. 

Beyond that, it raises a more concrete problem. It leaves us asking how, if everyone is busy writing computer programs or assembling or managing banks of servers, who will manufacture the circuit boards, build the buildings that house them, or mine the coal and burn it to power those electronic machines?

Mike Rowe, co-creator and host of the Discovery Channel program, Dirty Jobs, addresses this whole question with eloquence and wit. Anybody that can actually talk about how they personally experienced a clear anagnoresis and parapeteia while castrating sheep is worth listening to.

 

Guilty Pleasures

A few weeks ago, a friend asked me what my guilty pleasures were. She was specifically referring to music, but it’s an especially fascinating question when you apply it to other areas. I define a guilty pleasure as something that you really like, but you don’t like to admit it. The reason for your reluctance to own up to your cravings really doesn’t matter much, but it is instructive. For instance, there are some things I keep quiet because they don’t really fit in with a certain image I have of myself…ok, a certain image I like to project of myself. Sometimes it’s just that you know that your pleasure is a lowbrow thing. In some cases (not mine) you just feel that it’s somehow morally wrong.

Of course, if it actually is a matter of morality, one should just stop doing it. But the kind of guilty pleasure I’m talking about is more a matter of taste.

And as we all know De gustibus non est disputandum, especially since Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur. So here is my basic list.

MUSIC
This is an easy choice. My guilty pleasure is ABBA. I listen to an ABBA tune once, and I can’t get those crazy Swedes out of my head. And I LIKE that I can't get it out of my head. Catchy tunes, scintillating harmonies, hooky hooks. And none of them could actually speak a word of English. You gotta admire that on some level.

I also like Gilbert and Sullivan and Burl Ives. I would have to include Sugar Sugar by the Archies. I can't help it, I like it.

BOOKS
I have to admit a certain fondness for most anything by Bernard Conrwell, especially the Richard Sharpe series. But those aren’t too bad really. Cornwell is a fine storyteller, does first rate research on his historical settings, and one comes to love his characters. If I truly come clean about actual guilty pleasures, I would have to admit that I have enjoyed any number of Dick Marcinko’s Navy Seal stories. The writing is horrible, the storytelling is completely formulaic, cliché-ridden and predictable – but I still enjoy it. For my money, it's hard to beat hard drinking, foul mouthed, bad ass former soldiers going renegade to save the world from being overrun by Tangoes. Guns, bombs, blood and dirt. That's some good reading right there, you betcha.

MAGAZINES
I have always been fond of Reader’s Digest, even as a kid. My kids seem to be picking that up as well.

MOVIES
I remember as a kid going to see a film called the Devil’s 8 in a Saturday Matinee at the Scenic Theater. I suppose it really wasn’t a good movie for kids to see, and I had never heard about it since. It was a total B movie (maybe even a C) but it made such an impression on me that I never forgot it. I can’t remember any of the plot, just that there were good guys, bad guys, lots of cars racing and flying through the air and guns. It was like, the coolest thing ever. I just looked it up on IMDB, and here are the tag lines.

They're the dregs of the prisons... scum of the chain-gangs... welded into a shock squad to smash an Underworld Empire the law can't touch!

All they had was a skill for violence and nothing to lose but their lives!

Nice! I’m sure my mother would have been proud.

On a more up to the minute note, I will say that I have no problem whatsoever viewing movies commonly pigeonholed as ‘chickflicks” with one proviso – that they are actually good stories. When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle are two that come to mind that I thought were pretty enjoyable. I wouldn’t rate them as best movies ever, but I enjoyed them because they were good stories about likeable people, well told. I did not cry at any of them, but I did laugh a lot.

TV
For some time I followed the Highlander series. Immortal sword wielder defeats other immortals by chopping off their heads and receiving their power into himself in an orgy of lightning, thunder, screaming and roaring. Totally ridiculous. Lots of fun.

FOOD
I never feel guilty about food. Ever. I eat what I want, and I don’t eat what I don’t want. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. Just means more for me.