rumbleHUM

Today is Labor Day, and my employer has forgiven me a day of labor. Valerie noted that the children were still required to labor at their studies. I laboriously slept the day away, waking just long enough to eat tight meals of leftovers and to grocery shop. At the grocery store, the aisles bustled with shoppers laboring to fill their carts with choosing food and other products. They labored over the fruit displayed, twisting it in their hands to discern any blemishes, to assess ripeness. Other shoppers labored over prices, scanning coupons, running fingers over price tags. Determining the best price on toliet paper is a Herculean labor only the most educated of mathematicians would able to accomplish. Valerie advised that we had run out of cat food and that we ought to buy more. I procrastinated the purchase because I didn't want to labor carrying such a large and heavy bag into the house. When we returned home, I addressed the dirty in the sink, offering my labor to wash them. Val...

When I was in middle school and high school, so much of my identity depended upon what I surrounded myself with, including, and most importantly, my friends. I remember early days when I listened to “dangerous” music, filthy, corrupting, loud, and sacrilegious, a habit I adopted from various friends with a collection of industrial, punk, and alternative music. I watched anime because my friends watched anime; played Dungeons and Dragons and other roleplaying games because my friends did. To a teenager, who affectively lives their life mimicry, identity does not exist. As I aged, I found my own footing, preserving on to some of the tastes that I developed as a teen, but also developing new ones, reflective of truer identity. Regardless, times were different in the nineties. Mobile phones were a relatively new phenomenon and certainly not the media devices they are today. Television shows had to be watched on a actual television, as well as media events. Information was controlled.  ...

I got an email yesterday. I present it here for your full review: The first generation Nook, beautiful in its simplicity, an Ereader which utilized E-Ink Technology.  It was a selling point of product, the fact that the screen was not backlit, but that read closer to an actual book. You could even swipe on the bottom of the Nook to turn the pages, as if to give you the feel of turning the page with a wet finger. It also had a long battery life, something that the newer Samsung produced Nook’s didn’t have. Mind you, it is a dedicated ereader. Although it had the capability, it was very difficult to surf the internet on the device. Apps could not be installed on it. It came with only two games, sudoku and chess, both of which seem oddly appropriate for readers. It was light weight, could be carried in your pocket, pretty hardy, though I had to replace it once when the plastic cover cracked where you pressed to turn the page. The replacement has lasted me ever since. You could even do...

Words are powerful.  They are.  They can be wielded as weapons.  They can serve as a antidote for the most serious of illnesses.  They can move and inspire nations, countries, and the world.  Words predominate our day.  We cannot go hours or even minutes without speaking them.  Words can infect us, so much so that we repeat them over and over again, especially when they are placed to music.  We may even say them when do not mean to, or when we are not aware that that we have said them.  With such power, words ought to be utilized with precision so that meaning is clear. Amazingly, words are not utilized with precision.  I have noticed that most people have a relaxed view towards diction, i.e., word meaning.  Recently, I spoke with a pre-teen child, intelligent and well-spoken, during a dinner with friends.  The juvenile was attempting to compliment the host stating, “The dinner is tasteful.”  I pointed out that the word th...

One of the most enjoyable thing about Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass is the detailed sketches of John Tenniel whose exaggerated images of normal items highlighted how ridiculous everyday life could be.  Those exaggerated images perfectly serviced the manner in which Lewis Carroll twisted the logic of so many of everyday social norms such that between the two of them, a mirror was held up to insanity of Victorian English society and government. Positions would be reversed, turned on their head, and be turned backwards so that the positions would be rendered meaningless. I hate to say this, but the United States of America has become a Wonderland, where values held by certain political parties or by political positions have been twisted, turned around, flipped, so that they have become meaningless.  Amongst all the deformity, I have come to find myself empathizing with Alice, caught in a strange world, wanting to wake up from the nightmare or t...

I think at times I am a horrible person, and, I mean horrible.  Just recently Hurricane Harvey barreled through a number of Texas coastal cities, including Houston, causing devastation amounting to billions of dollars of damage and years of clean-up and reconstruction.  Twenty-one people have already died. The first response that a normal person ought to have is empathy and sympathy for those who are suffering.  I have a brother-in-law who lives in Houston who is right now in limbo about whether or not he even has a home to come back to.  My wife and I have reached out to him and extended our offerings of help, to clean-up his house, to watch his beloved pet cat, to have him stay with us while the way home is blocked.  I have sympathy for him, and it hurts to for me to see him hurt so much.  I can sense the helplessness in his voice when I talk to him over the phone. There is also a certain amount of appreciation of the blessing that Hurricane Harvey did no...

I wonder if its worth having an opinion anymore. Basic supply/demand economics indicates that a commodity’s worth depends upon the demand for such a commodity. The higher the demand, the more the commodity is worth. The inverse is true; the less demand, the less the commodity is worth. To a certain extent, opinions are commodities. They have value. Professions are founded on the sole basis of the value of the opinion. Doctors are often paid to provide an opinion on the proper diagnosis and treatment. Attorneys are paid for to provide an opinion on the merits, or lack thereof, of a certain case or a certain course of action. Politicians are paid for an opinion on the proper course or direction of our great nation. But, it appears that the value of an opinion has lost its value. The only reasonable explanation for the devaluation of the opinion is the decrease in the demand for opinions. In the infancy of television cable, CNN came to be channel synonymous with news. Programming centered...