Sometimes I can’t really believe I’ve been writing this column, (and publishing my Xanga blog) for almost nine years! You know, that’s a long time! I’ve been going back to some random earlier columns to check what differences, if any, have occurred when I compare the long ago (mid 2000s) to my current situation in 2013. I won’t say everything is looking rosy through my glasses, but they’re looking more rosy collectively than they have at any time in the past nine years.
HEALTH: In Dec. 2004 I was seeing a neurologist for the pinched nerve in my back. In June 2008 I found out my 16 year old hip replacement needed repair. Sept. 2010 was a few months after my 2nd cataract surgery, and I hoped I didn’t have any other unforseen health problems coming up in the future.
As 2013 begins in earnest, most of my health problems have abated. I’m working out so much that I need to get heavier weights. I throw my 5 pound free weights around like they’re made of tinfoil. I’m planning on getting a weight bench soon, and work out on my legs and thighs as well. Good weather is around the corner, and then it’s down to the pool for laps! My next targeted “problem” to hopefully be fixed is with my teeth. After having four tooth pulled over the past nine years, and only two “replaced” (with a temporary bridge which doesn’t fit correctly now) my front teeth have “bucked” so bad that I can almost put the tip of tongue through the space between them. My poor parents are spinning in their graves, I’m sure. They put so much money into my mouth after the car wreck when I was 14 and busted my jaw. I possibly need not only implants but braces as well. My yearly physical is coming up next month. I just got over my 2nd cold this season (after bragging that I didnt’ get sick for two years, what goes around comes around.)
WEATHER: Jan 2005 found me musing about the worst storm season in SoCal in years, announcing the death toll at 10 and hoping I’d be able to put the top down on the car at some point in the future!
My blog is always filled with musings about SoCal storms during the winter. There seems to be more and more of them each year. Great opportunities for my “cloudscape” photos when the storms pass. (Check my Facebook timeline “wall” for some neat current cloudscpaes.) This past weekend was gloomy. However the weekend before that found me in Riverside taking photos of railroad trains. I do promise myself to take a Mini Vacation to the desert this spring to get photos of the wildflowers. Unseasonable rainfall makes for pretty flowers!
ENTERTAINMENT: In Mar. 2005 I surmised that “watching TV” as an entertainment choice for me was passe, because with my Tivo DVR, Netflix DVD account, and Hi Def monitor, I chose exactly what I wanted to watch, and when!
In 2013 I seem to be reading more than in a while, thanks to my Kindle Fire. Just finished one Stephen KIng book and am working on another. I did get lots of blu rays over the Christmas season, mainly classic films I already have on other formats. I cancelled three TV shows from my DVR schedule. No time to watch “procedurals” which just seem to waste time solving the same crimes with cookie cutter cops in the same requisite 47 minutes every week. I am excited about the new season of Smash, however. And I absolutely love Nashville.
As soon as the sun comes out, I’m usually turning off the HDTV, grabbing the camera, and going out to take pictures.
WEALTH: In Dec. 2009 I made a note to increase the number of dependents on my 2010 W4. I’d just bought my house and was living perhaps more frugally than at any time previous.
I’m itching to relate my latest financial news, but don’t want to jinx anything yet. Let’s just say the light at the end of my debt tunnel is about to become pretty bright.
LIVING AND HOUSING:July 2008 found me contemplating housing choices following the death of my friend and roommate Joel.
Next month I’ll have been at “my little house” for four years. This may be the year I build my enclosed porch! I’m thinking of putting up a fence around my back yard to keep the critters out! I had to spend over 500 bucks on a new heater fan in December. Home ownership is a bear, at times. (when something goes wrong that is) I’m spending more time at the clubhouse. I call the seating area on the stage (which I usually find empty except for me) my “third” living room. (The second one is my carport, where I have seating and tables set up) I stop my daily walk to spend about 45 minutes at the clubhouse reading. (When the weather gets better, I’ll be spending that time next to the pool on a chaise lounge.)
WRITING:Jan 2006 found me announcing my plans to write a short story called “The Copper Locket”. I wrote that story about four years later.
I began a fictional short story a month or so ago. The subject matter isn’t “nice”. (I’m reading too much Stephen King perhaps.) I’ll be posting as soon as I finish, but don’t really think of either FB or Xanga as story platforms anymore. (Funny about how blogging, for me and a select group of readers/correspondents anyway,) was always about writing. I never get that sense too much when visiting Xanga blogs nowadays. (with a few rare exceptions.)
I might utilize the “timeline” feature on Facebook to “publish” chapters of my memoirs in the years the events happened. Also I’m planning of resurrecting my over a decade old personal website sometime this year. www.allthingsmike.com has pretty much been a “legacy” website for the past three years with no updates. That could change soon.
TRANSPORTATION: I whined about my 10 year old car “falling apart” when I had to get a new water pump in Mar. 2010.
My new car loves her shiny new “Moon” hubcaps. Next is the subwoofer/amplifier set for the stereo. I was looking at window tinting places in Boyle Heights a couple of weekends ago. Mitsubishi already wants to sell me a “new” new car. Heck, it seems I just got the Lancer yesterday. Actually, it’s over a year old now!
SOCIAL LIFE: In Jan. 2011, I had 5 different visitors over to my house in the course of one day! But I complained that I couldn’t seem to meet any women who didn’t smoke cigarettes.
The social scene I initiated with “younger people” in their 20s-40s in 2011 didn’t work out too well. I shall blog about it someday. I joined the social club at the park last month and attended one meeting so far. I plan on adding one of my special dishes to the next potluck. I figure if I can cook for one, I can cook for 10 or more. Just add bigger portions! As I age, I don’t really care that much about socializing anyway. I would like to perhaps get in touch with my two siblings this year. Each time I’ve made advances in this area in the past I haven’t been rewarded much. Neither Bro nor Sis ever seem to want to get in touch or keep in touch. I guess they have their own lives. I am planning on going to a dance with my ex gal Liz at the Reagan Library in March. A swing dance no less. Will have to practice those Lindy Hop moves!
XANGA: In Dec. 2004 I was imploring people to leave comments on my latest ElectricPoetry post because I was afraid it would fall off the front page of my blog without having any comments. In Feb. 2006 I contemplated shutting down my writer’s group “The Internet Island” because it wasn’t as popular as I’d wanted it to be. June 2011 had me bowled over that one of my comments on somebody else’s blog had received 5 recommendations!
I guess these days it’s great to get 10 comments on a post. I’ve been lax in “returning comments” but I don’t really “socialize” on Xanga these days like I used to. Most of the blogs I seem to visit have a political or social “point of view” or people simply post stuff they found on the internet. I never can seem to comment about other stuff. If someone is creative, then they can post their own stuff. But everyone isn’t creative, and some people like to post every day. Well, as I stated earlier, I “hung around” with writers and ran a writer’s group almost a decade ago. I still pretty much use Xanga for the same exact things I used it for in 2004, 2005, etc. etc. etc.
Xanga may have “changed’ but I haven’t. Just not a lot of time in my life at present to “catch up” with the folks who leave me comments. (I actually do pretty good, but I’m not “perfect”. Who is?) Some of these “catch ups” aren’t appreciated anyway. One blogger recently replied that ”I didn’t know how to comment” cause I read multiple entries and summed up each one (datestamped of course) in a long letter/comment I posted on their current entry.
Frankly, I’m going to do what I’m going to do. As I’ve been doing, and will continue, till the life force is sucked from this aging but still vibrant body and I’m allowed entry, along with all humankind into the soul filled Universal Existence of which I’ve been writing for over a decade.
Until next blog, News and Notes is closed for the month!
Last night, (even though I was still pretty sick from the SECOND cold I’ve caught this season, my nose looks like Rudolph’s) I took a series of photos of myself dressed up in my “button hat” to replicate a photo I found from an old (1987) VHS videotape of me in my “button man” uniform, in which I used to dress when “clubbing” with my late friend Tom back in the late 70s, early 80s in Hollyweird. (We frequented Rockabilly music venues, a frenzied form of early 50s rock and roll music popularized in the 70s and 80s by groups and artists like Rockpile, The Stray Cats, James Inveldt, and Robert Gordon.
Here is the grainy image from the 1987 tape. I still had my red velvet jacket then. After posting the photos on my Facebook page (I’m starting to actually “use” FB for non Xanga posts, so you can “friend” me there if you like.) I got a lot of positive feedback. So I figured I’d post the selection here on Xanga as well.
I always followed the beat of my own drummer when it came to dressing up and going out you have to understand. (I wish I had some photos of Tom in HIS getup. He weighed over 300 pounds and towered above me at over 6’6″. I think his was a TWENTY gallon hat!) Nobody who encountered us forgot who we were. That’s for sure.
Here I can be seen standing beside a self portrait, in pencil, I drew from a photograph back in 1983. Tonight I decided, right before bedtime (which is coming right up) to try my “hand” (the one which tends to go to sleep when I use it because of nerve damage) at creating another self portrait.
This only took about 20 minutes to draw. It’s in ink, which is a lot less forgiving than pencil, since it can’t be erased.
I won’t say it’s perfect. But I’m exercising my artistic tendencies these days (all of them) during this “my year” of 2013. (The hat should be larger.)Oh well, off to bed. G’night Xanga. My “diet” of cough medicine and acetaminophen seems to have chased this cold away. (Hey, at least it’s not the flu.) So it’s off to work in the morning.
A few weeks ago I thought I was going to begin my new year’s Photoposts with a trip to Riverside County and a visit to both the March Field Air Museum (planes!) and the Orange Empire Railway Museum (trains!). A storm had just passed, and the skies were filled with wonderful fluffy clouds. After spending a few hours at March Field, I hit the 215 freeway, but turned toward home instead of toward the train museum, when another storm drenched Riverside County. It was so bad I got off the freeway in Anaheim and took surface streets cause I couldn’t see the lane dividers on the highway. I returned to the OERM this past Saturday, and spent about five hours there.
Instead of using 215, I drove south on I-15, got off on Route 74 south of Lake Elsinore, and drove past some wonderful rockscapes.
It was early morning, not a lot of folks around. This is mainly ranchland. I didn’t know if I were trespassing but there weren’t any signs. My car is parked at the side of the road on the right.
I just loved the little house on the hill in this shot. I’m in the town of Meadowbrook, on the way to Perris.
A telephoto shot of the little cabin. I think I left the charger for my Sony Cybershot camera plugged in to the wall at a hotel on Catalina Island last May. I hadn’t been able to find it, and most of my 2012 Photoposts were comprised of photos taken with my Olympus. I bought a cheap charger on Amazon.com and have been taking Photo Expeditions pretty regularly since December.
This is the reception area of the Orange Empire Railway Museum. It’s actually a train station for the mining town of Pinacate. I got a $12.00 pass, which allowed me to ride all the moving trains, and to go “backstage” to some of the car barns which aren’t usually open to the public. I’m glad I missed the museum last time I was in Riverside, cause this last weekend was a special event!
The photo above this of the station was taken while riding the Pacific Electric Red Car you see here in this shot. I also rode the train behind the Red Car, which had two antique restored passenger cars and a baggage car hooked up to it.
The docents are all friendly, dressed in their best locomotive gear (this guy has railroad track patterned suspenders) and they relate the history of rail travel in the Western U.S. and especially California, while we’re riding down the rails. This is the interior of the Red Car streetcar. At one time the Yellow Cars (Los Angeles Transit Company, around downtown L.A.) and the Red Cars (Pacific Electric Company, all over the southland, even out to San Bernadino) provided inexpensive urban travel all over Southern California.
The front end of a Yellow Car being boarded for it’s trip around the Train Museum. The OERM was founded in 1956 by a group of rail enthusiasts to save the Red and Yellow cars, mainly, as the Southern California Freeway System started to make them “obsolete”. (Pretty fanciful, seeing as now the State is spending billions of dollars to re-establish mass rail transit in the area.) I first visited in 2005, and posted photos here on the blog back then, but with the still photo function in my videocamera. The museum has hundreds of rail cars from a vast variety of sources, in various stages of restoration.
Another Yellow Car, from last century’s “teen” years, inside the car barn dedicated to the L.A. Transit System cars.
I actually remember seeing these “modern” rail cars roaming the streets of Downtown Los Angeles back in the late 50s when we moved to SoCal from Idaho. I’ve never left. Although the only place I can see the trolleys again is out here in Riverside County!
Inside the restored streetcar shown above.
Vintage trucks dot the grounds.
Last time I shot this area, there were about five electric buses in a row. This is the last one which hasn’t yet been restored.
There were more rail cars in this area, outside the Red Car barn, in 2005. I like taking shots at this museum which look like they could have been taken anywhere. Note the spider web of electric lines above the tracks.
I’m on my back, amusing the folks on the guided tour, to get this shot of another old truck by the side of the road.
The Title Card of my previous Webshots Gallery, in 2005, featured “Old 942″, one of the powertrains for the Chicago to Los Angeles run called “The City of Los Angeles.” I kept asking where this engine was kept. I found it back in the back of the museum, fully restored, with new paint.
Worth the trip just to see this gal in all her glory. I went inside too. Note the ladder.
We got to see a “backstage” tour of the new car barn housing a lot of cars and engines which are being ready for restoration. Passenger rail travel in Southern Cal has dropped off considerably since the glory days at the turn of the last century. (late 1880s to early 1950s) One of the docents told me there are plans to run a Metrolink line (current mass transit trains) from L.A. to Perris at the Perris station, and then trains from the museum would run from there. I hope they do this in my lifetime. It would be neat to ride the rails from home to the museum. Heck, I’d become a docent perhaps! I’m thinking about becoming a member anyway.
A “modern” streetcar which used to run on the streets of Chicago in the 30s.
“Old 331″ is one of two restored early teens Red Cars which were purchased by MGM studios in the early 50s. This one is thought by many to be the streetcar Gene Kelly jumps on while evading autograph hounds in the film “Singin’ In the Rain”.
I spent quite some time just looking at the vintage advertising for lots of American products which are no longer manufactured or made!
A Pullman rail car out at the edge of the museum grounds. You never know what you’ll see wandering around.
This is a rail car which was turned into O’Neill’s Diner” in the 40s. A freeway overpass was built over where the diner used to be, and the museum trucked it over here soon after, where it’s been ever since. I was hoping they’d restored it and served food inside, but no luck this time out.
I finished my day with a visit to the Middleton Toy Museum on the grounds. I had a long talk with Rob, the docent who was watching over the Museum, housed in these baggage cars. There are hundreds of toy trains, and meticulously hand crafted train cars made out of balsa wood and card stock, all behind glass.
I’ve limited this post to 25 shots. Visit myFlickr site for all 356 high quality photos! (It’s taken me a while to get used to how photos are stored on Flickr, but I’ve now got 9 photosets there, and am about to recreate all my photo folders from the defunct Webshots Galleries on my Pro Flickr account. (that’s almost 10,000 photos in over 100 themed folders. It’ll take a while. More “trips around town” can be found right here on Xanga byCLICKING HERE on the Photopost tag.As I get time, I’m going over the old photoposts and enlarging the photos presented to 580pixels, and “finding” the photos which have been missing on some of the posts since Xanga changed to the “new” photo editor back in 2008 or so, eliminating the image link structure to a lot of 2005-2007 posts.
In my yard, downloading free books to my Kindle wirelessly!
The 1960 George Pal version of H.G. Wells “The Time Machine”, includes the following exchange. George, the time traveler, arrives in the year 802,701. He is amazed by the idyllic world of the future. But puzzled by the lack of communication among this world’s denizens. He has a need to find out what happened. The Time Traveler: “Do you have any books?” Young Eloi man : “Books? We have books.” The young Eloi man leads George to the rotting remains of a library. He picks up a book and it crumbles in his hands.
Around 2001 or so, I read an article in a magazine somewhere about rapidly increasing electronic book technology. In a conversation with my roommate Joel (who was not yet Cancerboy) I predicted the “death of paper” and surmised that in “the future” we would get our reading matter electronically. The Time Machine movie supposed “talking rings” which replaced the rotting books shown to George. The film “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” had just come out, and the newspapers in the film seemed to be somewhat “electronic” with photos that moved, and articles which updated themselves. (Perhaps this isn’t entirely true in the Potter universe, but I took the idea from the article I read and ran with it.)
Joel visibly cringed. “I hope I’m not around in a world where we don’t have books.”
During the year, best selling author Stephen King, whom I’d been reading since my college days when he published his first book, “Carrie”, published an electronic book called “Riding the Bullet” which could only be read on a computer. Joel was really upset about this. I embraced the idea of reading on an electronic device. I liked to read authors like James Michener, Irving Wallace, (and King). Some of the books I read even in paperback were quite large and couldn’t really be called “pocket books.” Every time I showed Joel another advancement in electronic reading, he would cringe even more. I’d had my personal computer since 1997. Before that I owned a Brother word processor (a typewriter with a screen and a 3.2 floppy drive to electronically save one’s writing.) Joel wouldn’t own one or even look at my computer. He spent a lot of time at the Torrance Library, a favorite hangout for both of us.
Joel was one of those guys who had a need to read. He read the backs of breakfast cereal boxes when he was a kid. I was pretty much the same type, although I was more physically active than Joel when I was a child. I could be found during a lot of recesses sitting under a tree way back in the schooyard reading a book, however. I still love to read.
In elementary school, I outgrew the “Dick and Jane” books almost as soon as I opened their covers. I was reading at sixth grade level in first grade. I was introduced to the library, like a lot of kids, in the second grade. By sixth grade, I was reading adult novels. (“Studs Lonigan” by James T. Farrell, was recommended to me by my mother! It has some pretty racy scenes in it!) I didn’t go through a “young adult” period really. I favored Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Charles Dickens. Masters of literature. I was one of few kids in my high school English classes who were always called upon by the teacher to read out loud to the class. Joel and I didn’t meet till we were both in our 20s. He devoured sci fi and fantasy. He read the “Fire and Ice” novels by George R.R. Martin long before anyone thought of making a TV series called Game of Thrones.
While living with Joel in the early aughts, I found myself reading less and less physical books, and more and more stuff on the computer and on the internet. I ran poetry groups and engaged in the nascent social networking scene. I created my website to showcase my talents in writing and the arts. I joined Xanga in 2004, and for a while, most of what I read were blogs, since I wrote one. Joel’s nose was always in a physical book.
The Amazon Kindle was introduced in 2007.
My roommate died of cancer in 2008. He is not around in a world where physical books are fast being replaced by the electronic ones.
I predicted, along with the proliferation of electronic media, which is still pretty much in it’s infancy, that when I finally got my hands on an e-reader, I’d read more. When I mentioned e-readers online and in blog entries, I’d get comments from readers like Joel, who still wouldn’t embrace the technology, and “liked the feel of paper”. Don’t get me wrong. Books, with thick or paper covers, and pages which you can actually turn, will never go away. They will, like the vinyl record album, make sporadic comebacks, until they become legacy museum pieces, and specialized items sold on ebay for vast amounts of money in the “collectibles” section. I don’t care about “paper” however. It’s the words which have always enchanted me, whether in print in a book, newspaper, or on a computer screen.
I waited till the Kindle approached and surpassed the tablet computers offered by Apple. I had my eye on a Kindle Fire since they came out with this “tablet” style version, much better than a mere e-reader. It is the Apple iPad of course which started the tablet computer revolution, it it was a natural progression for the Kindle e-reader to eventually morph into a tablet. Desktop computers (of which I’ve owned more than I can remember without actually looking up the amount, since 1997) are like dinosaurs. Notebooks are even on their way out. Touch is the new technology. Graduating from smart phones (which I’ve never owned) to tablets is a natural progression. Tablets are getting smaller ((iPad mini: 7″). Some smartphones are being developed with 5″ screens! Keyboards are getting smaller. (They’re “apps” on a tablet or e-reader, and now bluetooth enabled physical keyboards can be wirelessly “attached” to the tablet to create a small notebook like computer. Windows 8 is merely an attempt to capitalize on Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android touchscreen operating systems, found in smart phones, tablets, and the Kindle. There are multiple versions of the Kindle, including a “paperwhite” version which has no visible glare from the screen. I haven’t replaced my aging desktop, but this last Christmas (armed with a $100.00 Amazon gift certificate I won in a raffle at our company Chirstmas party, I got myself a Kindle HD with 8.9 ” screen, and 32gigs of storage.
There are so many “apps” available that I’m not even treading water in that area yet. I can use my HBO Go to watch movies in full 1080p on the smallish screen. (But they’re so sharp they look terrific.) I can visit websites, and with my bluetooth enabled full keyboard, I can even add and edit blog entries. My new Kindle arrived on December 26th. I immediately “purchased” (for free) an e-book called Mastering the Kindle Fire. It gave me pointers on which free apps to download, and easily guided me on how to download my own photos and music files to my Kindle. (It even told me about a browser, which unlike the “Silk” browser embedded in the device, would allow me to play Flash files , but I’m not there yet.)
Within a few days, I’d downloaded quite a few free books. I liked having the complete works of William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens on this easy to handle device. The library started to get bigger. Eventually, I wandered over to the part of the Amazon Kindle Store where current fiction and non fiction is sold. I bought Stephen King’s novel “11/22/63″. I love the idea of serendipity. Stephen King is an early favorite author of mine who writes long novels. (853 pages for 11/22/63). He published the first e-novel back in the early aughts. The novel is about time travel. (The last physical book I read, this past summer, is Jack Finney’s “Time and Again” also about time travel.) (It might also be noted that MY first novel written in high school is a time travel tome as well.)
Some people spend their time playing games on Facebook. Some read a lot of books. Some watch TV or play video games. Some of us blog. I’m still blogging, and since this is the year I turn 60, (I’m calling 2013 my “benchmark” year) I seem to be reinvigorated and feel a lot young. (One of my “birthday poems” is entitled “30 by the Time I’m 60″) I’ve been on so many “photo expeditions” this year (and the month of January is only half over) that I’ve got four Photoposts already backpiled to post on Xanga! I’ve joined the social club at the mobile home park where I live. I’m excited about all kinds of possibilities afforded me with my “wireless mobile device” which seems to go everywhere I do. (They have to start making pockets on shirts a LOT bigger.) The neatest thing though, is that I’m reading again. Since I began King’s “11/22/63″ in late December, I’ve finished 52% (445 ‘pages’: the Kindle Fire shows how many pages in the “real” book one has read, in case they’re in a book club and want to compare notes with other readers) of the book. I’m downloading like crazy. My “digital” pile of books is pretty large.
I’m reading again. And I couldn’t be happier. If somebody could be called “old school” it’s me. Heck, I STILL don’t own a cellphone. But I have an e-reader extraordinaire, and because of it, I’m reading again. (Sadly, I may not be reading too many blogs, but I’ve been doing that for most of the last decade, and sometimes Xanga just seems like a hotbed of controversy.)
I trust Joel is reading something up in heaven.
At work I hate “paper”. Too many copies of too many documents which I can store on my puter in pdf files. I still have a vast library of physical books. I still read them. But I don’t necessarily like the “feel of the book in my hand” when it weighs a ton, and is difficult to move around. My Kindle now has 21 “books” on it’s “bookshelf”. It also has over 3000 songs and 5000 photos on it’s hard drive. I don’t need to worry about backup either, everything I get from Amazon (the majority of the books, these guys are REALLY smart) are stored on Amazon’s “cloud drive” as well. (So are the mp3 song files I buy from them, natch.)
Perhaps in heaven people memorize the words in the books like at the end of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451″. Maybe the angels have a bookstore alongside the music store where they get their harps? I hope Joel is as happy as I am, reading whatever he’s reading in the cosmic arena.
Got to go now. I’m itching to read what’s on the next “page” of my e-book. And itching to experience the next phase of my wonderful life. I mentioned this in an earlier entry here on Xanga or on FB: A couple of weekends ago I went over to the Torrance Library and asked them if they have e-books to lend yet. They’re thinking about it, and do have plans for Kindle owners to be able to “check out” e-books. While I was there, I roamed the stacks, like I haven’t done but used to do on a pretty regular basis. I saw lots of books I wanted to check out right then and there. Seeing books in the stacks which I may have checked out decades ago was thrilling, to say the least. However, being able to someday access these same books electronically at the very instant I’m thinking about reading them is even more thrilling.
COMING SOON: Maneuvering through the Kindle’s vast apps library (no games for the Mikester) and more observations about using a touchscreen tablet for the first time.
You know, someday I’m going to post something creative which appeals to more than a dozen or so longtime internet friends on Xanga or Facebook. Every time I post something, there’s a bit of anxiousness, sort of like giving birth, if an old bald guy who’s never had children can even make that comparison. My videos, which I’ve been making for over twenty years, believe it or not, including the dance vids, are like my children.
I made a big deal about my last Mike’s Video Blog, but then I hadn’t made one in almost two years. I’m going to post this one “under the radar” and see what happens. It’s probably the best thing on Xanga right this moment. It’s only 4 minutes long, the length of the eclectic song I chose to accompany me. Or the song I’m accompanying. Whatever. The music is “Rafiki” by Zap Mama, from the 2005 album “A Ma Zone”. As usual, I credit the music in the video.
Somebody commented about my New Year’s vid, “A Dance to 2013″, which was edited to 21 minutes from over three hours of performance footage, that I seemed “out of breath” at times. Well, let me tell you, two years ago, I couldn’t complete a four minute song in one take. I’m in excellent shape. I’m 59, for heck’s sake. Four years ago, I was on crutches for half a year, and on a walker for half a year after that (following the operation to repair my broken hip replacement, well documented on this very blog.) . I think I’m doing pretty well. Nobody should worry. Everybody should be, well, amazed. I’m pretty damned good, and not in an amateurish way, if I do say so myself. Do I think I can dance? ABSOLUTELY.
This last year was a good year, I proclaimed, when it began But this one would be better yet, prophecy led A far far better year than most, my dictum ran Less than two weeks in, a problem huge rears it’s ugly head
Oh well, and oh crap, I’ll forget obstinate negatives Perhaps bad tidings only replace glad ones at the outset The overwhelming mania trumps all open prerogatives And my winning hands will surely collect the last bet
Debt will be paid (e’en as more debt is dished out) Summer will be bright (e’en as winter tightens her grasp) My spirit is youthful (e’en as my mirror image loses clout) I’m still opening life’s door (e’en if I’m having trouble with the hasp)
This year will be my year, and yours, for all to share We’re going on an adventure, and maybe we won’t even get there But we’ll have lots of fun and we’ll laugh with sheer delight Nothing will bear witness that stamina should have to fight
This year is the year the debt will shrink, I think, I pray This year is the year the happy gnomes and sprites come out and play This year is the year, another year, a fresh new start If not the year I finally find the desire which rips my heart
The play’s the thing, the thing’s in play, and I play with strength of soul My year’s begun, alight, undone, and doors are open wide My health is healthy, this I know, I’m vibrant, lucky, whole I’m getting out, around, about, and can’t stay locked inside
I’ve danced through despair, and I’ve lost most of my hair But that happened a long time ago, you see My steps are less hesitant, altho’ I throw down the stare I shall whirl like a dervish, around the cosmic shivaree
January may be colder, By December, I shalt sure be older But time’s demons are dust, in God’s power and mine I trust My sure gait shall step o’er the storms lapping at my shore Imprinted on my brain it says Brave New Beginnings Again or Bust
My yearly tradition of writing a Poem for the New Year dates back to the very first one written on January 4, 1974 (at 1pm in the afternoon. Another tradition is time and datestamping all my work.) This year’s poem is a “benchmark” since I turn “the Big Sixty” during the year. Below I’ll present some other “benchmark” Poems for the New Year in chronological order beginning with the first one. (I’m not posting ALL benchmark years either, or you’d be here forever, or leave early. 1980 is a decade year, 1983 was my 30th year on the planet, 2000 is the millennium year, 2010 the last decade. I’ve skipped 1990, 1993, and 2003 MFN/ppf
Naught but compassion for a fallen soul, He looks into mirrors in order to find life. The religionists will curse you if you fail to believe…their way.
Now as we survive yet another dream year, When it has passed although we wanted to get something else done, we realize That time waits for no one even when their clock has run down.
When letters are written to wisps of smoke And I tread on fields of broken glass I look to you for peace, my God, Because without you I couldn’t keep my sanity in this world of paper scraps.
When I think of what they’ve done to you The hypocrite religionists with their dog-eared Bibles, I realize my problems are but pieces of dust in the wind
And because of You I can look upon a beautiful day and forget about problems– and hypocritical philosophies– and fields of broken glass– And I can pray.
onramp to the “freeway to nowhere” =finding meaning in the moment= Unremembered moments Under the influence under the gun under the bed Understanding later the implications of earlier misunderstandings The door ajar- the music off- the money gone last week I broke my highschool picture on a drunk- but do not remember why not even now I threatened someone with a knife and this after not drinking for two weeks Hello 1980 Hello significance I’ll change I’m positive this time My love is close this time I feel it (As I have before) I really feel it (But it wasn’t real) I really feel it
When the books are all opened, and the covers thrown back, The face of humanity will see the naked form of serendipity, wallowing in self-absorbtion, asking alms for creativity. The number is so round, so pure, so oval. In a past life one could never really grasp that humankind would arrive at this point. Intact. And in fact it is somewhat perilous, and with shaking hand, That I address the multitudes on this momentous day. A day like any other day, And yet a day, which by it’s nature will cause it to be etched in the books, Those same books, which upon opening, serendipity stares at us, Wondering what all the fuss was about anyway.
Nature wouldn’t give presents to the inhabitants. They stole everything they could get. God couldn’t abide by the inquisitive nature of man which gave cause for the fall. So upon leaving the garden one was given pause. And nobody heeded the call. In recompense, a short year hence, when the actual Millennium is nigh, Will anyone be the wiser, and will I breathe a belated sigh? Ago, now, the disheveled remains of circumstance see fit to Tell the unsuspecting populace not to worry. Youth ages, and the skin gets wrinkled. I do not feel any older, nor any wiser today. But I am glad to be alive, and glad that I could stay.
The same, pure, realization which draws the numbers, Draws the wonder from my soul, and energizes the totality with electricity. Something is brewing, something is conjuring up a delicate brew, Which, when taken from the cup of kindness, will spark a Millennial attitude. I will not have felt these feelings, nor lived this life. I will be refreshed. I will drink without prejudice, and satisfy my hunger for romance. I will bathe in the waters of satisfaction. A new dawning, a new page turned from the book. A clean white page beackoning to creativity. We are all, at once, a doomed and fallen lot, Yet we are infused with this wonder and this capacity for understanding. Humankind is the duality of the universe. One man, one woman. A thousand thousand meager understandings spark me this afternoon.
This is my poem for the new Millennium. This is my viewpoint for the stars in our souls. As the numbers seem so round and full, so does my love. Satisfaction upon being, a delicate balance fulfilled. I approach this year, this decade, this century, the Millennium, With a rapture of feeling for the Godhead’s mysteries fortold. I open my arms to this enthusiasm in the ether. And stand transfixed, ready to welcome time into my bosom again.
Always pondering beginnings Forever reworking the past to correlate with the present Watching the clock even as I deny the existence of time
Always pondering beginnings As I meet another caravan of ambulance and emergency trucks on my way out of the senior community on the way to work Was this a passing of one with whom I greet hello on my daily walks?
Another new year arrives, bringing with it a decade of possibilities Those possibilities are endless, I proclaim forever Possible scenarios do not include the inevitable Impossible thoughts will never grace the patterns of my life
Or so I am always saying, even as I think those impossible thoughts
Always rejecting negativity Forever reliving bright moments Shuffling the sadness to the back of the deck Even as aces and eights are dealt all around me
Always rejecting negativity Purging the penalties of my lifetime While celebrating the wonder of it all Yanking the yins and the yangs with a vengeance
Another new year arrives, bringing with it a new decade of deliverance Freedom from strife and procrastination Letting loose the pain of periodic unhealthiness Impossible thoughts will never impose on the possibilities abounding
Or so I try to convince myself, even as my body reminds me of impossible thoughts
Always looking for ideas Always recreating creativity Always turning on lights in the distance Always looking forward Always pondering beginnings
Since I’ve had my Kindle, I’ve read 30% (nearly 300 pages) of Stephen King’s “11/22/63″. I began “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo, “The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and am 11% into the free “sample” of the unreleased James Patterson novel “Private London”. Took a trip to the Torrance library Saturday morning (first time in about 10 or so years) to ask if anyone in the library system had gotten any ideas for “lending” ebooks through the internet. (One of my hare brained ideas.) They’re “working on it.” I was told! So I’m not writing much. I’m reading again. (There’s so much on my kindle that I really had to push myself to exit the library without a stack of books I wouldn’t have time to read. (James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan is the first novel I ever checked out of a library. That was back when I was in fifth or sixth grade. I found a 1941 edition in the stacks. The Kindle edition costs $18.99. I’ll be back. )
I have been going on Photo Expeditions. Gas prices are down (to $3.69 a gallon, a steal here in SoCal). I ventured into Riverside County last weekend and took some great shots of planes at the March Air Field Museum, with the requisite cloudscape background. I’d planned on going to see the Orange Empire train museum in Perris, and maybe take some neat photos of the rock encrusted hillsides, perhaps even go to Perris Lake or Lake Elsinore, but a sudden rainstorm of the type which causes 41 car pileups put the kibosh on those plans. I couldn’t even see the lane markers on the “91 River (freeway)” coming back into Orange county, and got off the freeway thinking I’d rather drive through surface streets with stoplights than to stop my life if I got involved in a 41 car pileup.
Yesterday I washed the car. So, of course it rained this morning. Not enough to get the car wet, which is parked in the carport. At about 9:30am, as the sky became warmer, and Mr. Sun came out from behind the rapidly receding cloudscape, I was off to Redondo Beach.
Sorry for so many ocean themed photoposts seemingly in a row. But hey, everybody has an ocean, as the Beach Boys sang, and this one is MINE. I decided to take my walk alongside the ocean. Here are the steps leading down to the beach from the end of Knob Hill Avenue.
Some surfers were catching some waves.
Being me, I climbed up on the breakwater to shoot the surfers through the rocks.
The sun glistened on the waves. I’m using my telephoto lens for this shot.
Here my footprints can be seen marking up the newly raked sand. Almost as if I were the only one there. I wasn’t of course. The sun was bright and the near freezing night temperatures fully gone by the time I took my walk. I’m using the wide angle here. I’m glad I got a new charger for my Sony Cybershot. I’d been using my Olympus, but I know the settings on the Cybershot better, and like the photos it takes much better than the Olympus. (The Sony takes photos at 7.2 megapixels, and I use them all. The Olympus is an 8.0 camera)
I decided to walk all the way to the Redondo Pier. (About a mile) Haven’t been there for a couple of years. Surprise Surprise. It’s been getting a complete makeover. This has happened a few times in my recent memory. Once after most of it was destroyed in storms during the late 80s and once after Tony’s on the Pier was burned in a fire. They rebuilt some of it (last year) to resemble the pier as it was in the late 1890s.
A wide angle view right down by where the waves crash.
Of course there are lots of birds.
The Redondo Pier is a “horseshoe pier” which circles around inside the breakfront. The blue building is “Old Tony’s” a bar/restaurant which celebrated it’s 60th birthday last year. That means it’s about a year older than I am. I used to love to eat at “New Tony’s” before it burned down, and had my “last meal” at the original Tony’s with Liz before going in for my hip revision surgery in 2009. I believe that’s the last time I was at the pier.
The Redondo Pier is the largest “endless pier” in California, and the current iteration is the seventh. This one is made of concrete. I shoot the Redondo Library (in the center of the shot) from underneath a thatched umbrella.
South toward the Palos Verdes peninusula. I love how the sunlight highlights the water. It’s almost noon.
Not too many people are out an about this early in the year. The place is packed in summer, which begins after our two or three week Spring season in March. (USUALLY. Can’t really put a finger on the weather patterns the past few “seasons”. Last year I visited San Clemente in Orange County in January. Redondo Beach is a lot closer to home. In the early 80s I lived in Hermosa Beach, the town immediately north of Redondo.
I figured I’d take a stop at the Fun Factory. This is an arcade which has been around a long long time. Ho Tei welcomes us inside “The Best” place on the pier. (I just had a bit of a scare. I’m typing this up on my home computer, with it’s 32″ screen, otherwise in the dark. I’ve bragged that there have been no bugs in my home since I moved in back in 09. A very large spider dropped in front of the screen just now. Two nights ago I was bitten by a spider on the leg, possibly while I was in bed, and just tended to my wound a few moments before coming back in here to finish my post. They’re probably in up in the ceiling somewhere, dropping down to get me. I’m having the heater guy coming in tomorrow. Think I’ll have to call the pest guy too. Ah, the joys of home ownership…..)
Now where were we? Oh, yeah. I think this painting has been around for longer than I can remember. I used to come down to the Fun Factory in the 80s to play Galaga, Centipede, Frogger, Donkey Kong, Pac Man, and Tempest!
Some of the games have been here forever.
The proprieter (as I said, not too many people around, even though it was a fantastic day) chuckled as I dropped down on my back to get this shot.
Moi. Just another clown on the pier.
Stack em! Skee ball!
Those machines in the center supposedly drop coins off a shelf, but they never did for me.
Tilt a Whirl!
I painstakingly made sure I got the tops of the pilings in this shot. This is Mr. Seagull from my title card above, flying away when I got too close for his comfort, as is his wont.
The destination sign in the courtyard of the Quality Seafood restaurant. Tokyo’s only 5451 miles away.
I like to make a stop at one of the gift shops with a particularly fun window display to get some shots “behind glass.”
Almost wish I had enough cash to buy some of these figurines for display in my home.
If you look closely, on the left, one of the Day of the Dead figurines looks like he’s sitting on a stool in front of a food stand reflected in the window. I didn’t plan this. Just a serendipitous shot as it came out of the camera.
Here is the interior of Tony’s where I had lunch. Almost took a photo of the clam chowder in it’s sourdough bread bowl, but ate it instead.
The view from my table.
Walking back to my car along the strand. This is the breakwater on which I was standing taking shots about an hour and a half earlier. Lots of folks walking about now.
A young surfer and mother walk in front of the lifeguard tower. The breakwater is in the center of the photo.
I climb the stairs back toward my car.
Almost did a little dance up the steps.
Lastly, palm trees and cloudscapes reflected in my shiny new hubcaps. I want to thank everyone who watched my “Dance to 2013″ video and left such wonderful uplifting comments. I don’t know why the entry never even made it to the top blog page at all, but it was the number one recommended entry for a couple of minutes there. I do plan to make visits, but when the day is like it was today, I just gotta get out of the house, you understand. Now it’s late and time to go watch a blu ray, make tomorrow’s lunch and go to bed. Hopefully I won’t be sharing my bed with anymore spiders.
“You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, Love like you’ll never be hurt, Sing like there’s nobody listening, And live like it’s heaven on earth.” ― (old celtic saying attributed to many including Mark Twain, William Pukey (actual words quoted), and Souza)
“I hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance…” ― Tia Sillers and Mark D. Sander, from I hope you Dance performed by Lee Ann Womack
“Dance is the hidden language of the soul” ― Martha Graham (and she should know)
“Gotta dance! Gotta Dance! / Broadway Rhythm, it’s got me, everybody dance!” ― from the Broadway Melody number in the Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly film “Singin’ In the Rain”
“Some people were born to sit by a river. Some get struck by lightning. Some have an ear for music. Some are artists. Some swim. Some know buttons. Some know Shakespeare. Some are mothers.
Mike’s 16th video blog is a tribute to the new year, containing a number of dance performances, plus humorous commentary. Recorded entirely on New Year’s Eve with tripods and video cams in two rooms, then later edited, directed, rendered and uploaded to YouTube on New Year’s Day. (Albeit at the wrong resolution. The proper video is now online and can be seen below.)
As I await the turning of my sixth decade of life, my energy level, health, and creativity are high. Frankly, it’s a wonder I’m not completely tired out (or dead from a heart attack) after making this. But the Mikester is “young, wild and free”. For the coming year and for eternity. It took an entire day to cobble down three hours of footage into this 21 minute vid. I know that’s an eternity for the internet, but to me it’s just a half hour tv show!
I’ve always been a bit of a ham. In fact, I think I possibly dislocated my left hip, causing both my 1992 hip replacement, and it’s 2009 “revision” because I used to end all my dance moves at clubs back in the 70s and 80s by doing the “splitz”. (On more than one occasion, other dancers in clubs would circle me, like in the film “Saturday Night Fever”, and let me perform for the floor!) I’m all healed up now, and even though I don’t dance to Gaga as promised to my blog readers years ago (Dancing Grandpa put the kibosh on those plans, sigh) I do dance to tunes by Nicki Minaj, Ellie Goulding, Benny Goodman and Taio Cruz, among others. My readership base (those that are still around and some new folks I always seem to be picking up as friends and subscribers) is pretty varied. I make an attempt to appeal to the widest audience base. I apologize in advance to anybody who might be offended, especially by the Nicki Minaj song. I tried my best to edit out the offending word but the song “Starship” was a big hit, and sorry to say modern music includes profanity. I believe I utter the word “hell” at some point. This is a New Year’s celebration, so I’m drinking alcohol, but not as much as might be assumed. I believe I credited the Glenn Miller band with the swing song “Sing Sing Sing” when in fact it’s Benny Goodman and his orchestra.
The vid ends with one of my free weight workouts, set to music. I really should have created this when I was about ten pounds lighter, but it’s the holiday season, and I gained a lot of my belly back pretty easily. Now it’s time to get back in shape.
I’m posting this without any preconceived notions. (Although I always like to point out that I’m STILL posting the same kinds of creative entries as I always have.) Xanga isn’t the site it once was. I’m not as well known as I used to be. I tagged some folks below the vid who, among others, left me some gratifying comments and positive feedback on previous dance vids I’ve posted on Xanga.
Back in the long ago year of 2007, when Xanga was competing with YouTube as a video platform, I transferred an old 1991 VHS video tape of my performance of some of my dance moves performed to big band swing music from Artie Shaw to my Video section with the video Dancin’ Fool March 3, 2007. Among the commenters who gave me positive feedback (who are still on Xanga anyway) was Linda (@an_OM_aly )
I had hip revision surgery in May of 2009. After it healed a bit, I put on my dancing shoes and posted Creative Much Oct. 11,2009. Besides dancing to the old song Iko Iko, originally performed by the Dixie Cups, I double tracked my voice and sang the song for the video. Among my commenters who marveled at my ability to heal so quickly and be able to dance were Maha (@QweenCat ), Jill (@Texasjillcarmel) and Donna (@DonnaLou).
A few years later, after promising to create a dance only video featuring Lady Gaga music, (which I never completed after a YouTube video called “Dancing Grandpa” (noted above) went viral, making any dance to Gaga from me seem like I was copying somebody instead of doing something original,) I posted “Gotta Dance Friday Aug. 6, 2011″ set to the music of Elvis Presley. Just some of the outstanding positive comments I got on that one were from Ampbreia (@Ampbreia ), Khai (@opticalnoise ), Alex (@Roadlesstaken ) and Zoe (@soulstar76 ).
EDIT: 1/04/13 7:00 a.m. Well, I sent out a MASS MESSAGE over here, and blanketed the walls of quite a few FB friends. 18 comments. (although one is a reply from me, and at least two people left multiple comments. I guess I’m not good enough for Top Blogs anymore, but I am at #2 on Top Recs. Ellen hasn’t called yet. But I’m satisfied. 28 views on YouTube (prolly from here. 4 on Vimeo last night. Not bad for a 20 minute vid. If I get enough love and support, I may even post a (much shorter) Mike’s Video Blog (Mike’s Vlog?) each and every week. Next up, a twitter feed. And I plan to post more regularly on FB. I explained my plans in this vid, but had to leave that on the cutting room floor, so to speak, too long as it is….MFN/ppf
NOTE: Playboy contributor, writer, and comic artist Jules Fieffer (whom I sort of resemble) wrote a series of comic strips with his “Dancer” character over the years, and I gained inspiration for the title card, which I drew, from his style.
Following are excerpts from my best entries for 2012. I’ve frequently told people to treat my blog like a glossy magazine. Each entry is like a magazine article. I do a lot of research for the news and cultural entries. I write prose and poetry, and I present videos and photography. No matter what happens in my life, I continue to maintain an optimistic and wholesome viewpoint. Almost everything which appears here is original and comes direct from my creativity to the blog. Included in the sample from the entry, which might not be from the beginning of the post, are links to the original entry and to the archive page from which it came. Since I didn’t blog for a couple of months last year, I doubled up on a couple of months to get 12 entries. Even then, a lot more entries I posted last year really SHOULD be here too. In my opinion, most everything I post is top drawer.
Below is a YouTube playlist with some of the current music I’ve been listening to recently. Below the video screen is the description of the playlist on my YouTube channel. You can select the next video in the sequence by clicking the little “next” button (after play on the taskbar). The list of songs is below the video. The link above takes you to the playlist on YouTube.
I’m an aging boomer who has been collecting pop music since high school. Many people my age refuse to leave the 60s-80s when it comes to music appreciation…Sometimes I miss good ol’ rock and roll, but I get pumped up by a lot of “new music” too…Nothing like Mr. Saxobeat to get me ready for work at 5am. I have over 1000 vinyl records dating back to the 60s…I still listen to all kinds of music. and I still love to dance. These are just some of the songs I liked this past year. Let us attempt to share our personal and universal goals together, in the coming year, and in the coming decade, for as long as we exist. MORE
I consider myself an intelligent, sane, meticulous, caring, sober individual. I’ve lived a long and beautiful life, interspersed with great happiness and terrible tragedy…I like to learn new things, enjoy multitasking, and though I might forget what I’m doing, in time, everything that needs to be done, gets done. I’m creative and energetic. Sometimes I’m so excited about living that I can be quite careless in my actions, caught up in the wonderful manic moment, and I’ve been told I don’t think about the consequences I sometimes cause. At other times, even sometimes at the same time, I’m depressed and angry. Upset and confused, apt to mutter aimlessly to myself, yell at others, and physically bang my head against the wall. I’ve had “nervous breakdowns” and suffer greatly. Yet I don’t think anything is wrong with me. I’m level headed and able to think things through but have a tendency to pile too much on my metaphorical plate, and I’m always letting my emotions control and overcome my common sense. Throughout my life, the seeming inconsistencies in my makeup have been either overlooked or ignored by my family, and I’ve been able to channel negativity into positivity for the most part. When the well oiled machine that is me begins to break down mentally, however, things can, and have, gotten ugly.
It seems I’m always reading about an abundance of people either diagnosed or claiming to be bipolar. I wonder sometimes if it’s become some sort of “badge” people wear.
Mother worried about my state of being all the time. I grew up sheltered and coddled. The manic form of my disease was sometimes a blessing. I learned to read quicker than the other kids. I was a self starter, and I always got good grades. I was outgoing, but didn’t mind being alone. I talked a lot, and liked to be the center of attention. But events affected me greater than other kids. “Triggers” would set me off at any time. When I was ill, Mother used to keep me away from other family members, saying I wasn’t fit to live with. MORE
Living in Southern California has some wonderful benefits, including temperate weather, rich blue skies, close proximity to both the ocean and the mountains, and a wealth of cultural diversity which makes for excellent restaurant choices…
I’m always apt to proclaim you’ve gotta take the bad with the good, and sometimes there are drawbacks to living here as well. High taxes, … California pretty much leads the country when it comes to attempts to control greenhouse gases…Because of the restrictions on fuel refining, our gas prices are a tad higher than the rest of the country…
Whenever there is a “gas crisis” … prices at the pump can sometimes spell doom for the weekly budget, esp. when one is still living pretty much paycheck to paycheck. You’ll find a lot of Priuses on the roads out here…
Last year I was forced to get alternate transportation, when the supposedly “routine” replacement parts on my 11 year old sports car started to drive my overloaded budget over the edge of reason and into uncharted territory…I weighed in with the hybrid owners. I bought my “Mock Evo” (Mitsubishi Lancer ES with manual transmission and 4 cyl. internal combustion 2.0 liter, 148 hp Mivec…engine instead of a hybrid … because prices are higher for hybrids, and further “down the road” one will need to replace the batteries which allow for the 50 mpg rating.
Even though my new car has a manual transmission, it has cruise control as well, and a few weeks ago, I began using it regularly on my daily commute… MORE
Catalina Island has been a tourist attraction since early in the 20th century. Possibly the most iconic structure in the small town of Avalon is the Casino, built by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley in 1929 as a combination movie theater and ballroom. The word casino always conjures up the idea of gambling, but Wrigley used the original Italian connotation of a gathering place. During World War II when radio was king as far as entertainment was concerned, the Casino was known worldwide for it’s big band broadcasts. For my first themed PhotoPost of Catalina Island and the town of Avalon, I’m presenting a series of photos featuring this round engineering marvel… MORE
“You always hear about “credit history” but never much about “credit future”. That’s because when you owe lots of money, you don’t really have much of a future….” Michael F. Nyiri, poet, philosopher, fool
2008: My new “consolidation” debt is draining $750.00 from my bank account each month, and is due a couple of weeks before rent, which keeps rising. Half the rent on the duplex I share with my roommate Joel is $900.00. The owner who bought the property two years previous has made several “improvements” including adding a second bathroom. He tried to get us to move, and even threatened eviction (for Joel’s poor housecleaning skills in his part of the house) but I cleaned up prior to the deadline and was able to get a stay of execution…
My finances are still deep in the tunnel of debt, and I can’t see any dim lights coming up around the bend…On top of all my problems, Joel’s cancer gets far worse during the summer…After his death, which wasn’t really “sudden” becaue he’s been suffering for over four years, the economy decides to take a nosedive as well…With my roommate gone, I need to make some kind of adjustment before the next rent invoice arrives. Joel’s brother cuts me a check for his half of the rent for the next month. (It’s a deal we’d discussed, but Joel kept putting off actually writing this “last rent check” for obvious reasons.)
I get a roommate just in time, but he just can’t afford $900.00 a month…Right around Christmas (he) announces he’ll be moving out. At this point, I’m in the red each and every month, and my Wells Fargo credit card, which is linked to my personal checking account as an overdraft account, is getting a workout every month…I owe about $3500.00. And at almost 18%, I’m not touching the principle AT ALL on my consolidation account. Bank of America has me in a viselike grip. I call them repeatedly, almost like a bad penny returning each month, and each month I’m told the same thing. An unemotional (on their part) NO. MORE
Xanga is about us. Ultimately. Xanga is our legacy if we wish it to be. Xanga becomes us. Our thoughts. Our deeds. Our hopes. Our stories. Our quarrels. Our fears. And our joy when we overcome them. Xanga is our friends and sometimes our frenemies. Xanga is our family. Our progeny. Our pets. Our lowest points and our highest. Xanga is our life. Our sense of humor. Our trials, tribulations, friendship, foibles, and faith.
Xanga is a “place” for most of us. Sometimes we feel at home and we return fondly. Sometimes we feel safe, or empowered, or nurtured. Sometimes we turn away. Sometimes we don’t understand something and we stay away for a while. A lot of us are “lifetime members”. A great many of us were “around” when Xanga was “THE” website that came to mind when social networking and blogging were mentioned. For some of us, the “internet” and “Xanga” are synonyms. For some, Xanga is a joke and a hasbeen. There are a lot of blogs nobody knows about however. And sometimes those blogs are the “real” backbone of “the blogging community.” Xanga is you. Xanga is me.
Xanga is Stacey Knapp.
Name: Stacey Knapp Location: Palm Beach, Florida, United States Birthday: 11/9/1974 Gender: Female Member Since: 3/16/2001 True/Lifetime
Friday, 16 March 2001Stacey Starts a Xanga Blog. Sigh, I guess this is as good a time as any to begin a new weblog. Today at my job of six and a half years, my boss brought me outside and told me that Wednesday will be my last day…
Tuesday, 15 August 2006 Stacey’s Pregnant. As of right now, I am seven weeks pregnant. So said the ultrasound on Thursday. But based on my last cycle, I am further along. Which is why I have to go to a Radiologist today to have another ultrasound done to determine dates. I also have a pulmonologist appointment. Pray for us…
Monday, 21 August 2006Stacey’s Miscarriage. We’ve begun to lose the Baby. However, I have complete peace about it. the LORD knows best…
Thursday, 04 December 2008Stacey Shows Off Her Baby Bump. I’m 35 weeks 3 days pregnant and have not posted a single “belly” photo. I gained 90 lbs after my miscarriage in 2006, (which I was planning on losing before I got pregnant but didn’t happen) I’ve only gained 11lbs this pregnancy, but look much bigger…
Wednesday, 18 March 2009Stacey’s One Huge Fear. One huge fear I have is that Lydia will have asthma. I have severe asthma. I was diagnosed at 15 months of age, and hospitalized 3 times by the time I started school. I was on medication regularly and had many trips to the emergency room. When I got to high School (I had to be cool) I started smoking. At the age of 18 I was hospitalized my senior year in H.S. The day after Thanksgiving. I was hospitalized again in the spring. This pattern followed for 10 years. At 20, 22, 24, 26, 28 I was hospitalized twice a year, and I had frequent ER visits in between at the very least 3 times a year…
Thursday, 19 January 2012 How Has Xanga Changed or Impacted Your Life? I have forged lifelong friendships with people I have met on Xanga. I am so blessed because of it! In March, I will have been here for 11 years. I think back to 20 years ago and what we now take for granted as the internet was something so furturistic sounding. I am so glad that Xanga has brought me and some close friends together…
Saturday, 17 March 2012Xangaversary Yesterday was my 11 year Xangaversary! I’ve changed quite a bit since I started blogging!…
Tuesday, 08 May 2012 Stacey Enters Heaven. This is Jody, Stacey’s sister. As many of you know, we lost Stacey on Saturday. We know that many of you would not be able to make it to any services, but I just want to let everyone know that services are being held on Friday May 11th.
This blog entry is dedicated to the memory of Stacey Knapp, typical Xanga blogger, and to her daughter Lydia, her husband Fred, and her entire family and group of friends. Tired of the brouhahas du jour I always seem to find on Xanga’s “Front Page” and among the”featured” and “recommended” content, last week I found myself traveling the less well known virtual streets and boulevards of Xanga. I’ve met so many in eight years “here” and still am amazed at all those I have never encountered. I came across Stacey’s blog, directed perhaps by the Hand of God. I don’t believe I ever visited her when she was alive. There was the news that she had died. Many times when confronted with a “new blog to me”, I will make that blog my “project” and I will read it like one would a novel, from beginning to end. Stacey was one of those bloggers who has a long Xanga history, and has pretty much lived the last third of her life in her “pages”, I began to read those pages, and immerse myself in that life.
As I read Stacey’s blog, I wanted to distill her essence, and share her story. I copy/pasted the links to “benchmark entries” as well as “typical” blog entries. This has been an amazing process. Stacey has reached down from heaven and touched my soul deeply, through her blog. The “Chapter headings” are in some instances mine, and in some instances the titles of the entries from the blog. Sometimes I might have joined passages from either end of an entry, or chosen words from the middle of an entry. Each date is a link to the actual blog entry. Stacey began blogging at the age of 26. A lot of time in Stacey’s short life was spent giving her testimonial and bearing witness to her love of Jesus. She has shared her life, her hopes, her legacy. It’s all on her blog. Xanga is Stacey. Xanga is you. Xanga is me.
Back when I was a kid, during the 50s and 60s, the Future was bright. It was fast, technologically advanced, socially fulfilling, culturally diverse, self sustaining, and right around the corner. The future was always being predicted. You couldn’t pass a magazine rack or watch a television program without seeing images of what the future was going to look like. It was an amazing future, and it was barrelling upon us at atomic speed. I could hardly wait for the future to get here.
…I passed middle age about a decade ago, and I’ve been wondering what happened to that future they predicted. It never happened…
Rockets blew up. And they were nothing like I knew from science fiction movies. They spread a lot of big hulking waste (not to mention spent rocket fuel) around for long before they actually started to work. And fail… MORE
1.Mankind has always been conflicted about his God. From the earliest days of recorded history, man has been speaking to, crying out for, and praying to an unseen God. There are fruits of God’s labors. The entire universe exists because of Him. In whatever form God exists, man has been wondering, and he never failed to create intermediaries and idols, with whom he thought he could finally “converse” with his deity. 2.Three times God has chosen prophets to carry his word to mankind. These prophets actually “received” the “Word of God”, and taught that Word to their legions of followers. The first of these, Moses, was a Jew. He led the “Chosen People” to their “Promised Land” from slavery in Egypt. Jerusalem, in what is now called “Israel”, is the most sacred place for the race of people known as the Jews. Following Moses’ death, the stories he told, and the history he carried, was written by the scribes of the Jewish faith, and are now collected into what is called the Old Testament of the Bible. 3.The second great prophet, to whom God actually spoke, was Yeshua, called Jesus Christ, who grew up in Nazareth, and after being given the Word of God, taught throughout Jerusalem and the Middle East. The Jewish Faith had predicted a Messiah, and the apostles and followers of Jesus began to proclaim that he was indeed this Messiah. Jesus’ teachings were not held in great favor by a lot of the Jewish leaders, and his “sect” of Judaism eventually became Christianity. During his life, he was known as a healer and great religious teacher. After his crucifixion by the Romans, the small sect of “Christians” he founded deified him. Through subsequent centuries, his Word, the Word of God, translated usually in the color red in the Gospels of the New Testament of the Bible, was written down, modified, stolen, hidden, and translated into many languages. The sect of Christianity grew exponentially during the final days of the Roman Empire, and when the great Empire fell, the multitude of Roman Gods had already been replaced by the “One True God”, the God of Abraham and Moses, whose “Son” was said to be Jesus. 4. Christianity and Judaism both worship God. Judaism branched into many different and differing sects, and so did Christianity. When the Christian religion began to spread across the known world, and most of the peoples of the Western World began to be converted to it’s faith, the Jews became a minority religion, but the “old ways” and the original Word of God as spoken to Moses was preserved in the Holy Book of the Jews, The Torah. 5.Centuries passed. While the Christian world suffered during the Dark Ages, when Christian leaders subjugated most of the citizens, and grew rich, a camel trader in the city of Mecca, in what is now known as Saudi Arabia, spent a lot of his free time in the hills and caves above his desert city. This unassuming illiterate arab, Muhammad, was visited by the Angel Gabriel during one of his retreats. Here he was given the Word of God. He was the third human prophet to be visited and spoken to by God himself. The Meccans had numerous religious deities and intermediaries, in the form of idols. Mecca was a stronghold of Middle Eastern religious faith. God revealed himself to Muhammad, through a series of “Revelations”. At first the poor camel trader, who was married and led a good life, tried to ignore these revelations, which included warnings and prophecies also revealed to Moses and Jesus. It was almost as if God was repeating himself again because both the original Jewish scrolls, the Old Testament, and the later Christian Gospels, the New Testament, had by the late 6th century, been translated and changed so much to suit the leaders of society, that the original Word of God had been changed… MORE
I can’t believe my luck today. I thank Mr. and Mrs. God, the Cosmos, Kismet, The Universal Consciousness. All the planets aligned and I got possibly the best EVER photos of the space shuttle Endeavour flying over Los Angeles for it’s last trip “coming home” before stopping forever at the California Science Center installation.
I’d been waiting for the space shuttle Endeavour, strapped to the back of a NASA Boeing 747 “shuttle” to fly low over many southern California landmarks, and I especially took the day off to photograph this most excellent and once in a lifetime event. When I walked out of the house this morning, I got a couple of shots of Endeavour flying overhead. I can’t believe how good these came out.
Of course what tribute to L.A. landmarks being flown over by the space shuttle Endeavour would be complete without the Scientology building on Sunset Blvd. I kept looking to see if Tom would peek his head out of one of the windows, but he didn’t. Too bad, I could have used the money I’d get from the media for the photo op… MORE
Hi there. It’s me. The Memester, er, I mike the Meanster, er, I mean the Mikester. At the top of the dungheap of internet celebrity yet again. Tonight, on the some may say fast fading but I say “I’m a lifer, so eff off never gonna give up” Xanga service, “All Your Memes Belong to Us”, I slice and dice my way through that aforementioned internet dungheap to find the most uploaded, downloaded downlow vids, scandals, memes, and muckraking crap I can find. And I find it. So there. And I’ve got a pretty dirty gutter resistant mind, plus I’m getting old and senile, so I’m just the right type to type Xanga’s future destiny into the pages or the internet memology machine, or meh, so here goes. (Did I remember to type the word “meh” somewhere in the above paragraph?)…
…I love em. I want em. I can’t get enough of em. (Boy do doy you didi doy yo. Boy do doy yo diddy dooooo!) The original all inclusive internet meme (well, one of them anyway.) I let you know what happened to a lot of internet celebrities HERE in THIS entry (LINK) called Whatever Happened to The Hampster Dancers… MORE
In the early evening hours of December 22nd, 2011, I began a new “tradition” by creating what I call “The Mikivity Scene” in the dining room window of my house. It was only three days before Christmas, and I have never really been one for holiday decorating. In fact, I’m not really one for opening my curtains and letting anyone see the inside of my house, which, as longtime readers of my blog already know, is filled to the brim with movie and cartoon collectibles, a massive entertainment system, multiple filled bookcases. Almost every wall is covered with art, cartoon cels, and my own drawings.
After returning home, I made an attempt to trim the arborvitae in front of my house to make them look like Christmas trees. The pictures in my head were a lot more conical than the reality. You can’t really make an older arborvitae any more sculpted than the oval shape God intended for it, before beginning to cut into wood…
Close up of the right window. Betty Boop Santa plate, A 1987 Kris Mutt Target Christmas collectible stuffed dog, Santa hat on Gumby this year, plus Santa Croaker and Nutcracker Guy. Resting above Santa Betty is one of the plaques I got back in Sunday School for reciting the Christmas Story from the book of Matthew in the New Testament… MORE
Stay Tuned! Watch you inboxes. There is more high quality blogging to come in 2013 from WhenWordsCollide! (My long promised “Dance Video” is actually on YouTube, but I’m not going to supply a link, cause I uploaded it at the wrong resolution. It’s 20 minutes long, and includes singing, standup comedy, and even a cooking show! (of sorts) )
Posted: January 29, 2013 6:30 AM
I want to thank everyone who watched my “Dance to 2013″ video and left such wonderful uplifting comments. I don’t know why the entry never even made it to the top blog page at all,
but it was the number one recommended entry for a couple of minutes there. 
Ellen hasn’t called yet. But I’m satisfied. 28 views on YouTube (prolly from here. 4 on Vimeo last night. Not bad for a 20 minute vid. If I get enough love and support, I may even post a (much shorter) Mike’s Video Blog (Mike’s Vlog?) each and every week. Next up, a twitter feed. And I plan to post more regularly on FB. I explained my plans in this vid, but had to leave that on the cutting room floor, so to speak, too long as it is….MFN/ppf
I’d been waiting for the space shuttle Endeavour, strapped to the back of a NASA Boeing 747 “shuttle” to fly low over many southern California landmarks, and I especially took the day off to photograph this most excellent and once in a lifetime event. When I walked out of the house this morning, I got a couple of shots of Endeavour flying overhead. I can’t believe how good these came out.
Recent Comments