Monthly Archives: May 2010

The Log Cabin

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“The Log Cabin was famous for its barbecue sandwiches and curb-service beer. You simply pulled into the pot-holed parking lot surrounding the tiny building… tooted your horn… and a waitress could come out to the car and take your order. If it was dark enough or the waitress was in a good mood… it was possible to buy a beer before reaching legal drinking age. I have no idea what kind of license allowed them to do business this way.”
Wow. This is a rare find, indeed. I have never seen a photo of the Log Cabin. I’m not sure how someone got this one without getting a serious ass kicking. The Log Cabin parking lot was dark! If the Log Cabin fry cooks didn’t invent curly fries, they perfected them. [Photo courtesy of Dennis Dean]

The president and my First Lady

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Earlier this year, Barb attended an event for President Obama in St. Louis. I’m pretty sure you only got a hug if you wrote a check but it’s still a nice picture.

I’m not thrilled with everything our president has done (or not done) but if I were, someone else would be pissed, so…

I wish him well.

Pandora: I didn’t know what I was missing

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I’m listening to Pandora more of late and with each new song/artist, I wonder at all the wonderful music and musicians I’ve never heard (or heard about). They’ve always been there, I just didn’t know about them.

It’s the same for the beautiful images on flickr, videos on YouTube and all the rest. What a pitiful trickle that used to flow through our lives. While we can never experience it all, it’s getting easier to drink a bit deeper.

Equally true for news and information, of course. How liberating to be free of the editorial decisions of a handful of editors and and programmers thousand of miles away. Not to mention that we can now contribute our own ideas and art.

How will we ever describe our pre-Internet lives to future generations? Will it be like explaining a time before electricity or indoor plumbing?

Henry’s bird feeder

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My friend Henry has started to play with video. This is his bird feeder from earlier today. A male Baltimore Oriole and a male Orchard Oriole feast on some grape jelly. With cameo appearacnes by a Ruby-throated Hummingbird.

I believe Henry shot this on his DSLR camera and it’s mighty easy to see the difference between this and video from my little Casio. Let’s hope Henry keeps making movies.

Dennis Forbis. Remember the name.

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All I know about Dennis Forbis is he is a nice man. A patient man. A forgiving man. We workout at the same fitness center and he always remembers my name. And I seem to have some sort of mental block that prevents me from remembering his. Once or twice is embarrassing. Half a dozen times is mortifying.

So tonight I interrupted his workout to snap this photo and I’m posting it here in an effort to burn Dennis’ image and name into my brain. I’m even giving Dennis his own tag: Nice Man.

Dennis, if you’re reading this, let’s have a beer. I want to know your lift story. I want vivid details that I can never forget.

God for a Day

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For most of us (well, actually, for all of us) God is a mystery. Whatever God is, I’m confident she has a fine sense of humor and might be doing something like this.

Once she knocked out the Heaven and Earth stuff and had a few people running around it occurred to her to put them in charge of the Universe. But she knew a committee was the wrong way to go. They’d come up with those soon enough.

So she decided to rotate the job. Every day, someone new becomes God, with full powers. They can create sunsets or erupting volcanoes or whatever pops into their temporarily divine heads.

And to keep things interesting, there would be no rhyme or reason to selection. Totally random.

Even if the world’s great religions figured this out, they kept it to themselves. You can’t build a functioning religion when there’s a new deity every day. Just keeping up with the artwork would be a nightmare.

Each new god could tell his friends the exciting news if they chose but, being omniscient they could see that could turn out badly. Some couldn’t resist, however.

You’d think after all this time (and all those god’s) the world would be in pretty good shape. But each new god could –and often did– fuck up the good work of previous gods.

So. If today is your day, what will you do?

Blab-o-meter

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From my “Apps I’d Like to See” folder. Begin by letting Blab-o-meter sample your voice by recording a short paragraph. The audio is analyzed up in the cloud and sent back to your device.

As you and a friend settle in at your local coffee shop, you turn on Blab-o-meter and it begins monitoring how much you are talking. You can set the app to alert you by vibrating and or playing a sound (a throat clearing; “shhhhh!” etc) when you exceed some predetermined level. 50 percent might be reasonable or, if you’re trying to listen more, set it lower.

I spend a couple of hours in a coffee shop, six days a week. Usually by myself. I’m usually absorbed in what I’m reading or doing but I sometimes become aware of how much some people dominate a conversation (if you can even call it a conversation when one person is talking continuously and the other person doesn’t say a word. I’m being literal, here).

Let me hasten to add, this might be a very acceptable arrangement for both parties. One likes to talk, one likes to listen.

Until the Blab-o-meter becomes a reality, I’d like to ask my friends and acquaintences to give me some sort of visual cue when I start running off at the mouth. Perhaps two quick tugs of your earlobe (repeated as needed). Or, you might simply reference this post, “Hey, I thought your Blab-o-meter app was a great idea!”