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A few weeks ago Amazon delivered a Ninja Foodi air fryer/pressure cooker into my grubby little paws. Since then I have had a fistful of fun cooking just about everything in it! Hot dogs come out exactly like baseball park wieners, and I'm getting the hang of baby back ribs. This past week a friend told me that you can cook steak in it. I didn't believe it at first but I put a rib-eye into it a few nights ago. The steak was cooked perfectly medium throughout, with a spot-on warm pink center.
Okay well that's all good... but what about making chicken in the air fryer?
My first attempt, had I posted photos of it to social media, would have gotten me banned from Facebook on grounds of violating community standards. It was the worst culinary exercise that I have ever tried. The meat itself was juicy and edible but that was only after you got past the... crud... that was supposed to have been the crispy skin.
But never let it be said that I am deterred. Part of the fun of cooking is that you get to experiment. And hey, even my first ever deep fried turkey came out of the pot more than a little burned.
So a few nights ago I gave it a second try. Had a pack of eight drumsticks and that made for three experimental batches in the fryer. I played around with technique and on the third batch... the chicken came out exquisite. Cooked beautifully, crispy outside... and the taste was pure Southern delectable.
Batch #3 - the best product - is the two pieces on the upper right of the plate
With everything else going on right now, I thought it was time to post something more upbeat and educational and fun. So if you've got an air fryer, here is how I made air-fried chicken:
INGREDIENTS:
Chicken (I used legs but you could do this with breast or whatever)
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups buttermilk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons paprika
1 tablespoon salt
Before doing anything else, open up the fryer and spray the basket with a thorough amount of cooking spray or oil (vegetable, canola, olive, etc.) THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!! I discovered that this keeps the chicken crust from sticking to the basket.
Mix the flour, black pepper, paprika, and salt thoroughly in a bowl.
In another bowl mix the buttermilk and eggs (making sure you've cracked the eggs and poured the inside yolk into the bowl... just making sure you're paying attention ;-)
Wash each chicken piece thoroughly. Pat dry. Then drench the piece in the bowl with the buttermilk mixture. When thoroughly covered place piece into bowl with flour mixture, rolling it around until it's completely covered. Place chicken piece on sheet of foil or cooking sheet. When enough pieces have been covered in flour mixture, spray cooking spray/oil on the pieces. Place pieces with sprayed-side down into the basket. Close fryer and turn on 350 degreees at 16 minutes. Halfway through cooking time open the fryer, spray chicken, and turn over. Cook for the remainder of the time. Remove from fryer... and enjoy!
EDIT 3:06 PM EST: Just for the heck of it, here's a pic of the air-fried steak from the other night:
The notion of "racial justice" is a wrong one. The problem is that to have any kind of justice at all there must be a baseline standard against which to compare and contrast and ultimately judge. "Racial justice" does not really possess that. Which race is the standard? Black, white, Hispanic, Polynesian, Brazilian... what?
I will posit that "racial justice" introduces far more problems than it solves. It elicits and encourages envy and anger. Sometimes wildly misplaced envy and anger. And we are seeing the fruit of that anger right now.
Yet obviously there is an issue. There has been one and always will be so long as human nature endures.
If "racial justice" is the wrong idea to pursue, then I would suggest "racial neutrality". Which is much more open ended and challenging. Racial neutrality emphasizes that all races are equal across the board, without respect or condescension toward anyone. It is not just an outward goal to strive for, but an inward reflection of how one perceives and interacts with all people.
Personally, I would rather have racial neutrality than have racial justice.
Then again, all my life I've seen all people as equal anyway. I have never understood racism during that time and I can't understand it now, however form it takes. So what do I know?
Let me preface this by stating from the start: I know fully well that bad cops exist. There is a city in North Carolina that I am forever going to loathe going through because of one incident that involved both city police and county sheriff's personnel, and that was almost twenty years ago (oh the perils of being a puppy-eyed cub reporter getting knocked around by the world for the first time). I believe that there are few things as bad as any member of law enforcement who consciously betrays what it means to take an oath and puts on the badge. And this blog has chronicled law enforcement abuse so many times that it's gotten its own tag.
In short: I get it.
But I'm also grateful for being able to still appreciate that the good cops far outnumber the bad.
Three situations come to mind as I write these words. One happened not too long ago, and it revitalized my trust and confidence in the members of law enforcement in general. Two of its representatives assured me that an incident I brought to their attention would be pursued as much as possible, and I have taken their word on that. The second involves the prank video I made four years ago of a rocket launcher destroying that "new statue" in Reidsville, North Carolina's downtown area. Two police officers came to my front door (fifteen minutes away from town!) to ask about it. There was no warning issued, they seemed pretty amused by it actually. It was just that apparently someone reported it to Homeland Security and they had to follow up on it. They were confident that I was harboring no real explosives and a good laugh was had by all.
The third situation regards my having severe enough mental illness that I have had to be taken into custody numerous times by members of law enforcement.
Yes, I have had to be handcuffed. I have had to be put into the back of a police cruiser or sheriff's vehicle. I have been frisked for potential weapons and escorted under guard into hospital emergency rooms. All of these and more. And not once have I felt like my dignity as a human being was violated. Every officer involved in those sporadic situations has behaved with utmost respect toward me and I hope that I reciprocated that to them.
(There is also the matter of how many times during the course of my current profession, that I have witnessed law enforcement officers interact with some of the most neglected people in our community. That alone has brought about renewed appreciation for their efforts.)
Right now there is a lot of commotion about cities disbanding their police forces. Travis Yates, writing at the website Law Officer, has penned a heart-rending essay about why that will sooner than later not be necessary. Because members of the law enforcement community are finally becoming so discouraged by what they must deal with that they are now actively asking young people to reconsider going into the profession.
I have to agree with Mr. Yates, on every point. And if Minneapolis commits to its plan to abolish its police department, then it truly will become "Mogadishu on the Mississippi": a lawless realm of total anarchy. Give it a year and it will not resemble the Minneapolis of today... and I don't mean that in a good way either. It is not a situation that will be remedied by bolstered social programs and increased bureaucracy.
It's an eye-opening article, and it made me reassess my own perspective on those who put on the uniform. It also led me to discover Blue Line Bears: an endeavor by a young lady in Florida to provide teddy bears to children of those who have fallen in the line of duty. I was so impressed by the effort that I reached out to them to thank them. There's an option to make contributions on their site and I'm going to ask that any readers of this post consider that.
As for the people of Minneapolis and other cities: you would do well to read Mr. Yates' words and ponder them deeply. And then if you are still led to do so, go ahead with your plan to abolish the police force wholesale.
I've posted this photo before. It seems more timely than ever.
This picture ran in newspapers across America in the winter of 2012. It depicts a family friend and fellow farmer, John, along with my father Robert Knight.
This photo hangs on the wall in my office at my job. There is rarely a day when I don't stop to admire it. It says so much, without saying a word.
In its own way, it says everything that I'm feeling led to say. Without a single word.
Some additional notions that I have been pondering, though I said earlier that there would probably be nothing more that would be remarked upon:
1. The death of George Floyd was a tragedy, make no mistake about it. But it was not necessarily a racially-motivated death. It is now coming out that the officer who knelt on Floyd's neck already had an established history of troubling behavior in his role as a law enforcement agent. It is altogether possible that Mr. Floyd's ethnicity didn't even figure as a consideration in the officer's mind, as well as that of the other officers involved.
Not everything is about race. Or needs to be.
2. The handling of George Floyd's death was a matter germane to local jurisdiction and that's ALL as far as it should have gotten. There should have been proper investigation, including objective autopsy (there are now two autopsies with different results competing with one another). Such a matter as this demands that there be as objective and thorough an examination as possible, with regard toward all parties involved. The people of Minneapolis deserved no less. The family of George Floyd deserved no less.
But of course it became a viral video, one that the media picked up and ran with, and now... well...
3. Speaking of the the media, it is 10,000% culpable in this disaster. There is likely not another situation in American history where the news media has been responsible for precipitating so much devastation. But as is also 10,000% of the time there will be no holding anyone in the media accountable. And speaking as a former journalist, what I have seen is beyond the pale. These are not the actions of those in a profession devoted to seeking and reporting the truth of the matter. I can attest without reservation that too many in the journalism racket are actually proud of the mayhem that they have helped to unleash.
Incidentally, I am never going to chalk myself down as a fanatic for the guy, but the media is trying to perpetuate the claim that President Trump's visit to the church a few days ago was preluded by confronting protestors with tear gas and rubber bullets. We now know that this did not happen, according to United States Park Police.
4. Impartial handling of the case has been rendered impossible. Mob justice has prevailed. Anything going forward is going to be poisoned with the threat of more rioting and violence. It is going to be impossible to empanel an impartial jury after this debacle. Because no juror will want to have it on his or her conscience that he or she voted "not guilty" in a case after a full and fair presentation of evidence, if said presentation merits a not guilty verdict.
In short: the rule of law in the George Floyd case - figuratively speaking - has been strangled.
5. Scott Adams - the creator of the Dilbert comic strip - has made a brilliant observation in his video podcast: the "black leadership" presuming to speak on behalf of all African-Americans is for all intents and purpose without a rudder and has NO idea what it is trying to accomplish. For all of the rioting and calls for social upheaval, there is not a single solid idea that has been put forth from these "leaders" about how to accomplish it. As Adams put it, nobody in the crowd seems to have a typewriter or a pencil to capture any ideas that come to mind. Adams further remarked that there is currently no leader approaching the caliber of Martin Luther King Jr. I am compelled to agree with him on that.
6. Much of the reaction to the Floyd murder... and again, something that may not have been racially motivated at all... has been either out of fear or out of political opportunity or both. For God's sake, LEGO has now jumped into the fray and telling its stores to not display sets depicting cops or the White House.
I am going to draw flak for proclaiming this, but I'm not going to jump on this particular bandwagon. It is mob mentality, it is madness, and someone's got to say it dammit.
7. The mob mentality we are now seeing is too much like what transpired during the French Revolution, when "the wisdom of the crowd" wrought anguish and worse upon the innocent. Thankfully it is not at the point of beheadings and mass drownings. Not YET anyway...
8. An example of that last point is what has happened to Grant Napear, the longtime announcer for the Sacramento Kings. Napear merely tweeted that "all lives matter" and for that he was driven from his position.
9. I am going to state without hesitation that all lives do matter. That all human lives are precious and sacred. Indeed, I will posit that the Founding Fathers had it all wrong: it's not "all men are created equal". It should be "all men are created sacred".
10. The last words my grandmother spoke before she died were "I love everybody."
That's not a bad way to live, when you think about it. Too bad that the way things are going, saying those words will probably be soon worth condemning over.
Some are seriously suggesting that the looting taking place in the
"protests" (note: they are not protests, they are bouts of purposeless
violence) are justified because "white people looted" for thousands of
years and that's "loot" that now fills the museums.
Which is the most ridiculous thing that I've heard all month and believe me, I heard ridiculous this past month.
99.99% of the inventory of museums has been found in archaeological expeditions, or donated, or otherwise legally
obtained. In the vast majority of these there was no present legal
owner of the property, because said owners were long dead without any
identification.
What is
happening now however, across America, is outright theft of private
property, whether it belongs to a store or to individuals or is in the
custody of legitimate government. It is being done by people who have
no respect toward the notion of ownership.
Others with greater
minds than mine have remarked that private property ownership and the
right to have that, are among the most basic elements of a free society.
Take that away and there is no regard for anything that follows. And
we are seeing that happen now in cities throughout America: the throwing
aside of respecting the property of others, watching the anarchy and
madness that inevitably follows.
I'm old enough to remember the
riots that broke out in Los Angeles following the Rodney King case
verdicts. Thousands of buildings were set on fire, many innocent people
were killed. Those weren't "protests" either. Those were acts of
violence absent any responsibility or regard for human life. Among the
buildings destroyed were many owned by African-Americans as well as
Caucasians. The ONE exception was stores and other buildings that were
owned by those of the Korean community. Why were they spared? Because
the store owners LITERALLY took to the roofs of their property and held
vigil with handguns, rifles, and whatever other firearms they possessed.
THAT is where the rioting and mayhem is taking us. If some will not
respect the property of others, then the owners of that property are
justified... more than justified even... to protect said property by any
means necessary. Up to and including potentially depriving others of
life. If property is the product of one's own efforts and sacrifice,
then that person WILL be forced to defend it by any means necessary if
his or her back is pressed against the wall.
I don't want to see it come to that any more than any other sane human being would.
What we see happening now however, is not sane. And the perpetrators
are fast compelling those who respect law and property to consider
taking measures that would be regrettable for all involved.
It really does seem like just yesterday when we were slathering that fake blood all over Chad's legs, andmaking a springtime drive on the Blue Ridge Parkway look like blizzard in the Colorado mountains. And turning a cousin's living room into Skywalker Ranch. So much happened since then and yet, our cast and crew became a family that has endured. More than endured even. And for that, I'm thankful that this project got seen through to the end.
Yes, it has indeed been fifteen years since the release of Forcery: that Star Wars fanfilm parody of the Stephen King movie Misery. I'd wanted it to be ready before Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith but it didn't quite make it. Still, it was late May of 2005 when it was first unloaded onto the Internet and about a year or so later it was "serialized" (because of time restrictions at the time) onto YouTube. And then everyone could behold the tale of George Lucas (Chad Austin) being held captive by Star Wars-obsessed uberfan Frannie Filks (Melody Hallman Daniel).
I will be the first to admit: it looks a little dated now. We shot it with a couple of standard definition camcorders, and I did my best to color grade it to look more cinematic. The car going off the road in the blizzard well... no doubt someone could CGI that easily today. And there is one effect that I wish we could do over again because it would be ridiculously easy to fix and that's my faulte entirely. Sometimes I wonder if it could have been edited better but again, that's on me.
All the same, quirks and all, Forcery was a little film that could. And it made its way from the living room of a few friends' houses to the big screen and some bigtime media recognition. Clips of Forcery were heavily featured in the acclaimed documentary The People vs. George Lucas and I've been told that some of it was even shown on Japanese television (which would be one of two times that this blogger's work has been on TV in the land of the rising sun... but I digress). Knowing that's your lifelong best friend being projected onto the screen at Cannes: it was more than a little startling. Like, "we did THAT?!?"
But most of all, Forcery was a binding and bonding experience for those who came together to make it happen. It would take reams of virtual paper to chronicle all the good that came of it. And I'm too infamous already for writing long stuff, but here's one example that took place a few years ago. Know this though: that I am now and will forever be proud of the effort that so many made to turn this little film idea into a reality. THEY are the ones who Forcery is accredited to, far more than it ever could be to me.
Anyhoo, Happy 15th Birthday to Forcery! And if you want to see it right now now now, you're in luck! You can watch it in fairly large scale via the Forcery page on this blog and some nice chap uploaded it to YouTube. So strap yourself in and prepare for fifty-four minutes of a film that some said couldn't be done and others said should not have been done. They don't count though (but that's another story :-P )
And one last bit of fun: I turned what is arguably the most-quoted line of dialogue from Forcery into an animated GIF. Feel free to use it elsewhere :-)
It seems like an entirely other world ago now. When the wait between new episodes could be not just weeks but months away. There was no "binging" a series on a regular basis. And streaming television was still yet to come.
I was in a different place also. Still reeling from a divorce. Wrestling with the worst symptoms of manic depression. Alone. Confused. And, well... lost. Looking for a purpose, as John Locke was.
There had never been a television series like Lost. And there never will be again, ever. At least, there never can be for me.
The medium has changed too drastically. Viewer expectations have become too impatient. The audience demands definitive answers, when once upon a time such a thing as "exercise for the reader" was a treasured virtue. To be sure, some series - such as The Walking Dead and Game Of Thrones - followed admirably in the wake of Lost. But those are basic and premium cable, absent the restraints of broadcast network television.
And as frustrating as "The Iron Throne" was to many Game Of Thrones fans, it only remotely approached the level of controversy as did Lost's final season leading up to "The End".
Always live together, and you'll never die alone.
Lost's series finale came ten years ago tonight. It capped off six years of a phenomenon that had engrossed millions, fueled so many classroom and workplace discussions on the mornings after, and unleashed countless online forums where fans dissected everything from the sounds of the Smoke Monster to Egyptian hieroglyphics. From those frantic first moments of Oceanic Flight 815's wreckage on the beach of an uncharted island Lost was mythology painted with a broad, broad brush. And it was going somewhere, was set to give us closure. Right? Right?!?
But here we are, ten years later, and the fans seemingly more galvanized than ever about "The End" and what preceded it.
Me? I thought "The End" was not a perfect episode, but it didn't have to be. It was as fitting a conclusion to Lost as there was likely to be. And while we will forever be debating whether there was some master plan that was followed - with every element having an appropriate reason and backstory behind it - it must be admitted, however begrudgingly, that "The End" was pure Lost. And really, would we have wanted it to be any different?
Others will have already written with more eloquence about "The End". But on this occasion, I thought it might be fun to share some of the theories I've had over the years about Lost. A series that we will forever be theorizing and conjecturing about. Why not add my own into the mix?
First off...
WHERE was the Island? How can it move?
I don't believe the Island was something "movable". It had a solid geological basis somewhere and we can know that because of its volcanic origin. But I do think that access to the Island was something fluid and malleable. It's the approach to the Island that is constantly moving. Going back to the quantum physics that the DHARMA Initiative boffins were messin' around with, the Island is somewhat "superpositioned" in the real world. It might be geologically located in the midst of the Pacific, but the access points to it change from time to time so that someone flying over the Atlantic might come upon one of the "windows" that Eloise described. Or arrive at the Island by boat in the Mediterranean (as Claudia and her people did). So think of the Island as a fixed point, with spacetime warped around it seemingly haphazardly. Going back again to what Eloise told Jack and his friends however, the windows through the warp could be calculated (with the help of an Apple II computer and that really strange Foucault's pendulum down at The Lamp Post station).
So no, the Island itself was not moving. But how you came to the Island certainly was!
How old is the Island? When did the Egyptians, the Romans etc. get there?
The Island itself is probably a few million years old, give or take an eon. But we're wondering how long people have been coming there.
A major clue comes in "The End", when Desmond enters the Heart of the Island. See those characters carved in the walls and on the "cork"? Those are Phoenician: predating ancient Egypt. It can be surmised that the Heart of the Island was primarily the work of this earlier culture. As for what purpose: who knows. But they're the ones who are ultimately responsible for all of the crazy on the Island.
The Egyptians came some time after, and they built the statue of Taweret, the wheel chamber, etc.
Then came the Roman castaways of which Claudia was one. And who gave birth to Jacob and his brother.
Wait... it was the Man in Black and the Romans who built the wheel, right?
The Man in Black and his compatriots were building a wheel, not THE wheel. Not the one that we see Ben Linus turning in the fourth season finale.
The evidence? The Egyptian hieroglyphics on the wall of the chamber. The fact that Mother destroyed the Man in Black's own chamber before he could finish his wheel.
Are you saying that Jacob and the Man in Black came after the Egyptians were on the Island?
Yup.
That's impossible! The Egyptians had the Smoke Monster in their wall carvings. So the Man in Black was before they came!
The Man in Black and the Smoke Monster were two different entities.
Work with me here. We ARE theorizing after all...
The Smoke Monster has long, long been part of the Island's place in the scheme of things. Way before the birth of Jacob and his brother. The Smoke Monster is a tangible representative of evil itself and that evil must always be contained. Just as Jacob told Richard when he was showing him that bottle of wine: the Island is a "cork" keeping the bottled-up darkness from spilling out. And for a time, whether by the Phoenician culture or the Egyptians, that representative was held back.
Until Jacob threw his brother into the Heart of the Island. Which was the catalyst for everything that came after.
Entering the Heart killed Jacob's brother. We can know this after the tearful farewell that Jacob gave his brother and the Mother. Jacob didn't treat the Smoke Monster as if it were a new incarnation of the Man in Black. But what happened at the Heart did free the Smoke Monster from captivity. And Jacob would spent the next two thousand years trying to make up for his mistake.
What would happen if the Smoke Monster got off the Island?
Hell would come to the world.
We got a glimpse of it with Sayid, after he was resurrected in the corrupted water at the Temple. It was "the sickness" that had been spoken of before, and now we know what it did: it darkened the heart of the infected. As Lennon translated from Dogen, Sayid had been "claimed" by the darkness. And later on Sayid described how he couldn't feel anything: that he had become emotionally deadened.
Now imagine that same deadening happening to millions, if not billions of people across the face of the Earth.
Jacob was right: the Island was a cork and it was holding back something that if it became free, it would spread.
Maybe "The End" didn't make it clear enough but those were REALLY high stakes that Jack was playing for when he fought the Smoke Monster's Locke form.
What is the meaning of "the numbers"?
Ahhhh yes: 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42. And how mad we did get trying to figure those out.
The answer is at once ridiculously mundane and metaphysical. And it helps to bear in mind the Valenzetti Equation that was written about on the blast-door map. In The Lost Experience real-life game at the time, it was revealed that the numbers are factors in the Valenzetti Equation: a formula calculating how long manking has before driving itself into extinction. One of the purposes of the DHARMA Initiative was to change at least one of the factors, and thus stave off that extinction.
Basically, the numbers are intrinsic to the fabric of the universe. THAT is why they keep showing up. They surface because... well, it's their nature. And DHARMA is trying to change the numbers and consequently, the universe itself.
So the numbers are at once pretty boring and also utterly fascinating.
Who was that in Jacob's cabin?
My gray matter has discombobulated itself a zillion ways from Sunday trying to figure out who it was we briefly saw in that chair when Ben took Locke to the cabin. And later the same figure apparently appeared very briefly when Hurley found the cabin.
It wasn't the Smoke Monster-as-Christian Shepherd, we can disregard THAT possibility by process of elimination. And it obviously wasn't Jacob himself. Even though it seems that Jacob was using the cabin at some time or another, given the dialogue when Ilana and Bram arrived with their group.
I've no idea who it is and the showrunners probably never knew who it's supposed to be either. It's almost a disappointment, albeit an intriguing one.
What DID happen at the Swan site?
Basically, Daniel screwed up with his calculations. And the Island proved him wrong: changing the variables did not affect the past. Jack, Kate, Sawyer etc. had to be on the Island in the present day, and the Island brought them there. That's the best that I can come up with.
What about the polar bears, the "Hurley-bird", the source of the DHARMA food shipments, some other stuff?
Those got answered in "The New Man In Charge": the eleven minute "mini-episode" that was included in Lost's home release. Here it is if you've never seen it. It's pretty much the very last moments of the Lost mythos that were produced.
Who was David? Jack never had a son in life. Why does he have a son in the "flash-sideways" afterlife?
Of all of my theories, this is my most favorite. Because not once have I ever, ever seen anyone who has come up with this...
David Shepherd is the son of Jack and Kate.
Dylan Minnette was perfectly cast as David. I mean, just look at the features he shares with Jack and Kate. Especially Kate's eyes. And Jack's hair.
But how and when did David come about? Ahhhhh... now that IS an interesting question and the answer is an astounding one.
Before leaving for the Ajira Airlines flight, Kate came to Jack's home and was pretty adamant about the two of them making love. I believe now that doing so was part of the plan: that Kate had to become pregnant
Because... what did Eloise tell Jack, Kate and the rest? That they had to replicate, as closely as possible, the conditions of the original Oceanic 815 flight. Which, among other things, had a pregnant young woman aboard.
Kate was proxying for Claire, who was nine months along with Aaron at the time of the Oceanic crash. Locke's dead body was proxying for that of Christian and now it was Kate who was a stand-in for Claire.
Nine months later, after Kate and the other survivors returned home, she gave birth to David. And it was in the flash-sideways that Jack got to be the father he never had the chance to become in life, to his own son.
That is where David came from. He wasn't some "figment" of the flash-sideways. He was flesh and blood, and presumably lived a long life and then was united with the father he never knew.
That's my VERY longtime theory about David Shepherd. And I'm quite proud of it.
And the voices?
The Island's mega-electromagnetic qualities "trap" the souls of some. The ones who can't "move on". But as "The New Man In Charge" implies, such people are not beyond the realm of helping. And that's the very best that I can come up with. Okay smartie pants, what about...
I would love to be able to figure out the reason for the Egyptian characters on the Swan Station's countdown clock: the one that turns red and black if the numbers aren't entered in time (some have translated it to mean "cause to die"). Why did women who conceived on the Island die during pregnancy (a fate Sun avoided after escaping and giving birth in the outside world)? How exactly did that lighthouse - the thing that spied on more people than Alexa - work? Who was...
Look, I am not going to attempt to answer ALL of the mysteries about Lost! That's for others to work out on their own. Who am I to deprive others of intellectual exercise? Just watch the show and suss it out for yourself! Besides, it's more fun that way.
Anyhoo, here's saluting you, Lost. Gone, but NEVER to be forgotten.
Those were the words of one Harry Truman (no relation to that Harry S Truman) in the days prior to the eruption. Truman had a lodge on the side of Spirit Lake, in the shadow of Mount St. Helens. He lived there with twenty-some cats, and I guess being almost ninety years of age he was just too stubborn to listen to geologists who were screaming at him to get out of the area. That giant building bulge on the north slope of the mountain didn't seem to impress.
A few days later, an earthquake triggered the lateral blast on the north flank. The entire top of the mountain and the north slope were blown away. Harry Truman and his cats are now somewhere 300 feet beneath ash and rock that eventually formed a new Spirit Lake. In all the eruption killed 57 people, including volcanologist David Johnston. His camp was directly in front of the blast area. Johnston's final frantic words over his radio: "Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!"
That was forty years ago today, May 18th 1980.
Back in 2012 I got to visit Mount St. Helens. Standing at the Johnston Observatory (built on the site where the gifted young geologist had made his camp), looking across the still-blasted wasteland and into the crater, thinking about how much taller St. Helens used to be...
It was utterly humbling. The photos I had seen could not compare to seeing the thing up close. And St. Helens is still considered active. Every so often a plume of steam or ash rises out of the crater. Another eruption someday is still altogether possible. Just as eruptions are possible on nearby Mount Hood and other peaks in that part of the Cascades.
We propose nothing in the sight of nature. That is what came to mind as I looked into the maw of what is still deemed to be a fairly medium-size volcano. Pinatubo's eruption in 1991 was much worse and sent global temperatures dropping. Krakatoa did much the same and in fact, its eruption was heard from thousands of miles away.
And on that Sunday morning in May the world indeed beheld that mountain dared blow up on old Harry.
Happy Fortieth Anniversary to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, premiered May 17th, 1980 at the Kennedy Center and then wide release a few days later.
Now and probably for all time, the very best installment of the entire Star Wars film franchise.
I'm still choosing to be coy about where fate landed me after I left North Carolina almost four years ago. Even so, I still keep an eye on my old home state, and I'll forever be proud to have been a son of the Tarheel State (even if my basketball proclivities lay toward Duke, but I digress...).
Right now I'm sitting in some abject disbelief at North Carolina's governor Roy Cooper insisting on keeping the state closed for all intents and purposes. Neighboring states like Georgia are slamming the doors wide open for businesses large and small. South Carolina places of worship have begun to crank up for regular services. So far none of these places have recorded a rise in COVID-19 cases. If anything the infection rate is dropping.
There is good reason for that. We are definitely on the back side of the coronavirus situation. "Shelter in place" deterred the virus from spreading when it was most contagious. It served its purpose and it served it well. But there is very little good that will come out of continuing this hunkering-down. Viruses of the airborne vector - like COVID-19 - tend to follow a very defined track of lifespan over the course of a few weeks or months at most. To be brief about it: the virus has been mutating into strains that are less contagious and hostile to human physiology. As I like to put it they are "mutating downward", not up and into worse strains.
So what would I recommend to North Carolina, and to the United States as a whole?
Reopen. End shelter in place. Ask that those who are most susceptible and concerned about COVID-19 to remain in self-isolation for the next few weeks or even months. But as for everyone else it should be business as usual again. It's almost purposefully infecting the virus into oblivion as the much-ballyhooed herd immunity kicks in. It won't fully eradicate the virus, but it will put us on track toward ending the threat much faster and more reliably than waiting for an effective vaccine which may never come or will arrive, at earliest, a year and a half from now.
We have shied away from the virus. Now it is time to begin aggressively confronting it when it is most vulnerable. And it is time to begin an aggressive return to life as we knew it before COVID-19 became a cultural byword for microbial horror. This isn't the Spanish influenza. This isn't even polio. But it has been a pandemic and we can be proud of ourselves for staving it off before it became something far worse... and for the very first time in history. Western medicine has prevailed magnificently in this regard.
And now is the time to declare victory. Let there be jubilation in the streets and the bars and the barber shops and the churches! Let's see some real leadership - in North Carolina and across America - boldly proclaim that we've beaten this thing.
Otherwise, the cure will go down in history as worse than the disease. It's already well on track for that. Time to let real healing begin, throughout our country.
Maybe
I'm sharing too much with this post. But it hasn't been anything that I
haven't divulged already to some, if only to "get it out of my head" or
else lose my mind.
Only in the past few years have I come to
realize how much my own mother was a monster. There were moments when
she could be sweet and loving, but now I wonder if that was just a show.
That was the side she showed most people. But a few of us saw her for
what she really was: Bitter. Hateful. She had, as one close friend
told me, "a kernel of cruelty". She seemed to enjoy humiliating me in
front of others, especially friends and sometimes co-workers. She did a
lot behind my back to sabotage my chances for happiness... up to and
including things she was saying to my former in-laws before my ex-wife
and I were married. God only knows what that would have been without her interference. I certainly would have been a better person with life in general if He had given me a better woman as a mother.
It is the memories of my mother that are most
at the heart meat of the therapy that I have been undergoing.
Thankfully, those have been working and working terrifically. They take
the sting out of the memories. They are making me assured that it was
never "me" that was bad. It was that woman, who called me "retarded"
and would blow cigarette smoke into my face and who blamed me for her
own lack of relationship with God. It was that woman who would slap me
in public, who threatened to smear human feces in my face, who never
gave more than hugs bereft of any empathy. Mom was, I see now, a highly
functioning psychopath and someone who was NOT a Christian at all. And
that is what hurts more than most: how she turned God into a weapon to
beat me over the head with, not a God who is loving and merciful and
looks past our faults and frailties. Mom never forgot my fault and
frailties. I don't think she forgot them with anyone.
My mother
was the kind of woman who ruined the funeral of an uncle I was close to.
No, really. She literally ruined a funeral. All for her own selfish
sake.
But I was expected to love her, because "she's your
mother". Now I understand that love can never be demanded. It must be
EARNED. Including for one's own parents.
My life would not be so
screwed up all along, had there been a TRULY loving and caring mother
in my life. One who was sincerely beautiful in spirit. But as it is,
she was not that and she poisoned that house and everyone within it.
And I'm thankful that I got to see Dad happier than he had ever been
before, in those final years before his own passing.
Why am I sharing this?
If you have a true and sincerely loving mother, or you did have one, be
thankful. NEVER stop being thankful for that. Thank God every day
that He blessed you with her. There are some of us who never got to
have that, and it seems we will never stop asking Him why did He trap us
with someone like that. Many are the days when I wish that I had just
died in the delivery room, as I almost did. Instead He gave me to a
woman who should never have been a mother in the first place.
If
you are not like me, then you should consider yourself very, VERY
blessed indeed. Because, like I said, some of us didn't get to have
that. And I for one am as envious as can be that other people got to
have that loving mother.
That's all that I'm going to say today.
On this Mother's Day, if she is the kind of mother that God intended
for them to be, let her know how much you appreciate and love her for
that. If she is no longer here, thank God that He let you have that.
And maybe you never had that kind of mother. Perhaps there are other
women who have become like true mother figures in your life. In that
regard, I have been immensely blessed. THEY are the ones I prefer to
think about on this Mother's Day. They are the ones who stepped up to
bat and showed me what real motherhood is all about.
I know of what I speak. I know what was missing from my life. I pray that no one else has to know that kind of vacuum.
Thank God for your mother, if she is or was the kind of mother that a woman in that place is meant to be.
That's all I know to say about the subject. Don't expect me to write about it again. I've said what God was leading me to say. And that is enough.
Work with me here. It's way too late at night, I can't sleep and this is the kind of thing I think about at this hour.
Here's the problem: "Does a shadow have mass, and how much does it weigh if it does?"
Remember how in Peter Pan, when Pete loses his shadow and has to sew it back on when he finally catches it? That's how this started (though why I was thinking of Peter Pan so randomly is beyond me). So if Pan loses his shadow, and it gets away from him and he has to catch it and attach it back to himself, then...
Logically, the shadow must have mass. Because Pan couldn't take hold of it if it didn't have mass. Except it's impossible for a shadow to have mass, right? Right?!
Okay, let's look at this from the angle of physics. What is a shadow, exactly? It's the absence or diminishing of light upon a surface because an object is between the surface and a source of light. There is no "there" there for a shadow. It just is. It's the effect of an object with mass absorbing light energy.
But for more than a century now, we've known that per Einstein's equation E = mc2 that energy and mass have an equivalence. Matter is energy and energy is matter. And among other things the addition of energy to a system increases the mass of that system. So in our situation the light hitting Peter Pan is increasing his mass (although almost insignificantly so).
The system being discussed here is Peter Pan, his shadow, and the light cast upon the local environment. The surface of Peter has increased mass and so does the wall (or whatever) that the light is hitting. The shadow however is not absorbing energy.
With the local environment as a baseline, and the ultimate source of the mass being the sun or lamplight or some other source of light, the shadow has less mass than it would without being impeded by Peter's mass. And not only that but the shadow both exists and has a mass of less than 0. All without absorbing energy on its own. It has existence and mass because of the mass/energy equivalence of its surroundings.
Therefore, a shadow does possess mass. And despite the absence of light it does have corresponding weight.
So then, we can conclude that a shadow has weight. And said weight is dependent upon the surface it is cast upon, the area of the shadow, the size of the object casting the shadow, and the size and strength of the source of light.
Which means that in theory, Peter Pan could have lost his shadow and had to sew or staple it back on.
Well, that settles that question then. Me go back to sleep now.
Some longtime readers already know that the Gears Of War video game franchise is near and dear to my heart. One of my prized geeky possessions is a copy of the Gears of War 3 soundtrack signed by composer Steve Jablonsky Maybe it's something to do with how the first game came out on that Election Day in 2006: when my name appeared on the ballot for board of education. I didn't get to play Gears of War until a year later when I finally scored an Xbox 360 but as soon as that disc stopped loading I was totally sucked into the world of Sera, and the fight against the Locust.
Unfortunately I haven't come into possession of an Xbox One so I'm way behind on the main series, but that doesn't mean a fan has to be completely out of the loop. Last week Microsoft released Gears Tactics. It's a turn-based tactical game set in the Gearsiverse. Specifically, fourteen years before Dom breaking Marcus out of that prison. It's the countdown to the Hammer of Dawn offensive, and you play a poor shlub who gets tapped by Chairman Prescott (as posturing an a$$hole as ever) to swipe some documents before the surface of Sera gets burned.
I'm a few missions into it and so far have been enjoying every moment. Gears Tactics truly brings the spirit of the franchise to the desktop, with astounding design choices and situational dynamics. If you want a Gears Of War game, it's here: the Gears and their signature armor, emergence holes, parkouring over obstacles, charging toward the bad guys... and of course the iconic execution with the chainsaw bayonet. Movement and targeting are simple, and absent any "hex-based" spacing that the genre is often known for. In short: it's a solid translation of the typical Gears Of War game into a more casual "thinking person's" exercise.
This morning one of the local churches had a broadcast of their service from last Sunday morning. They have adapted well to the coronavirus-engendered shutdown. Several dozen choir members sang hymns together via Zoom and a father baptized his daughter in the family's bathroom tub. The sermon - delivered to an empty sanctuary - was no less potent and encouraging.
I imagine that much the same is happening across America and in other places also: churches holding virtual worship services across the Intertubes. But really, it doesn't matter where a church meets. As Jesus said, "where two or three are gathered in My name...", there is the body of Christ also.
Along those lines, there's an idea I had a few days ago and I'll pass it along to this blog's readers and anyone else...
Churches should have a "Revital Sunday" service (or "Revital Sabbath" for our friends among the Seventh-Day Adventist congregations). Yes, I know: "revital" isn't an actual word. But "revival" isn't the point. It's about a group of believers coming together to revitalize themselves and their church after such a long absence from each other. Revital Sunday could be a time of dedication and re-dedication as nothing quite has presented itself as an opportunity before. It could be a time of thanksgiving, for being delivered through some very trying circumstances. It could be a time for prayer, as so many are attempting to get their lives back on track, particularly after the enormous loss of jobs across the private and public sectors.
Revital Sunday could be a time of reflection and appreciation, and gratitude for what God has given already and what we must never take for granted, ever.
Let's back up a bit. The last time I bought a new computer was almost a decade ago. It's not that I'm a luddite or anything like that. Mainly it's that I like to get my money's worth out of something before upgrading. And also the little matter of spending a lot of that time driving across America, looking for a new place to hang my hat. With that done a new computer seemed "just right" to further stake my claim on what has become a new shot at life.
So yeah... I took the twelve hundred bucks of "coronavirus stimulus money" and plunged a chunk of it into a new rig. Completely built in the U-S-of A. Doing my part to help the domestic economy and all that. It's a super nice setup too. I should be good to go for the next five years of writing, blogging, graphics work, video editing (hint: something new may be coming sooner than later), whatever good-natured mischief that all two of this blog's readers have come to expect.
And of course, gaming.
Yesterday a copy of Fallout 4 arrived. It takes almost an hour to go through the character creation in that! But now that my 'toon is out of the vault and back on home turf (or the ruins thereof) the game proper should be about to commence. I also have been having some fun with Diablo III: a game that I once swore never to play because of the "always on" requirement. Call me a liar but, that one is also a lot of fun. And four years after getting in on its Kickstarter, I'm finally playing BattleTech: the tactical adaptation of the beloved miniatures game.
All of this in between working from home of course. Which incidentally is nowhere as enjoyable as one might imagine. This is now the third week of having to be at my... emphasis on "my"... desk every morning at 9 so that I can call patients from my living room. COVID-19 cannot burn itself out fast enough. But anyhoo...
With the firepower to handle it now in my possession, there was one item of computer gaming that I've wanted to investigate for awhile: EVE Online. That massive multiplayer thingy from the good people at Iceland's CCP Games. The one that has everyone playing on a single server and has become notorious for betrayal, backstabbing, Ponzi scheming, outright theft...
... and CCP practically encourages it. EVE Online is like a Randian dystopia writ large across the cosmos of its setting New Eden. Almost anything and everything goes. And sometimes it goes bigly. A few years ago the so-called "Bloodbath of B-R5RB" snagged major headlines for costing more than $300,000 worth of real-world money (it's based on how EVE's economy has a real fiscal correlation through it's PLEX and just roll with me here okay?).
The B-R5RB or BR-549 or whatever massacre is what piqued my curiosity. I knew: as soon as I could, I would jump into EVE and experience it for myself.
A few days ago I finally installed EVE Online's client, created a character, and proceeded with the tutorial. And from the first moments the reality came crashing down that I'm in waaaaay over my head. EVE's learning curve is legendary for being steep, almost completely unforgiving. Now I have witnessed how that reputation is well deserved. The appellation this game has earned in being called "Spreadsheets in Space" is just as merited. I've played MMOs before, beginning with Star Wars Galaxies (was THAT an awesome experience or what, at least before the "new game enhancements" turned it into "Star Wars Costume Party"). MMOs aren't the typical computer game, but they're not unapproachable either.
EVE Online is a looming dark monolith of mystery and frustration. I'm looking at it and wondering if I should proceed further after eventually completing the tutorial. I can't even pilot the ship as I "normally" always have with a starcraft simulator (going old-skool with fond memories of X-Wing and Wing Commander... and didn't we have fun taunting those pesky Kilrathi back in the day). There are like 27 different windows all open at the same time demanding that I orbit or warp or swap out turrets or get a message from someone called CONCORD... who in blazes can keep up with this stuff?!?
Yet my client reported that over 23,000 people were logged in on the server when I was doing my second session of EVE tonight. More than twenty-three thousand people, all in the same sandbox. See that ship off in the distance? That's a real person flying it. It could be a guy or a woman. They could be anywhere from thirty miles away to somewhere in eastern Europe. Everything in game, apart from tutorial assets and other things of that sort, representing a player and their handiwork.
It's... fascinating. And complex. Just as real life. In that regard, EVE Online might be the most accurate depiction of human nature ever engendered by online gaming.
Intimidating. Very intimidating. But it's also oddly gripping. And, it must be said, exceptionally beautiful. The graphics are pure loveliness to behold and the background soundtrack is so peaceful that I could see using it for periods of relaxation and stress relief. EVE Online is a masterpiece in almost every way.
And it's been around for closing in on seventeen years now. That's quite a lot of other people who seem to readily defend it, despite the nature of the game.
I'm probably going to try it out some more, and maybe begin a small-ish in-game career as an explorer, or maybe a miner. Dad worked for a long time in a granite quarry, so maybe there are some asteroids out there that I can drill into and sell on the market. In the meantime, even if I don't pursue it any further, EVE Online is going to still be something that I'm glad exists. It's a testament to human ingenuity and a monument to human nature.
A little over a month ago I wrote about beginning Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, or EMDR for short. It's a therapy technique that, with the aid of a trained and experienced facilitator, I am employing to address the matter of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD and I promise that's the last acronym) that I was diagnosed with two years ago.
We are now well into the treatment, and it has begun to bloom forth some enormously positive results. That, despite the unusual circumstances that have sent this procedure onto a wildly parallel tangent. This past week was the third session that we had to conduct via video conferencing as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. COVID-19 has affected pretty much every aspect of health care in our area. The building I work in - a mental health facility - has five entrances. Right now passage is only allowed through one, and you have to answer a series of questions ("Have you been out of state in the past fourteen days?") and have your temperature taken before entry. Even then the place is eerie quiet, absent the usual presence of our patients and most of the staff: all appointments are being conducted via telephone. And then this past week the order came down that cloth masks were to be worn at ALL times apart from individual offices.
The location of my treatment is something of a "sister site" to ours. It's having the same lockdown. Hence, having to use tele-therapy, with the facilitator and I in our respective homes and working over the Internet.
How has that been working? Surprisingly well, believe it or not. Fortunately we were able to lay down most of the basic groundwork for everything that has come since, but we are still not at the real heart of EMDR: the use of light and motion to "rewire" the brain to steer away from traumatic memories. I don't know how or when it's going to work when that part of the process sis entered into.
But still, a number of tools have come about that are already helping me to aggressively counter the trauma. For example, there are two places that I can "retreat" to when things become almost overwhelming. They needed to be places that have some kind of special significance.
For my second place, I chose this:
The desert of New Mexico near Socorro, home of the Very Large Array
I spent over a month in Albuquerque around the end of summer in 2016. Had things gone the way I had hoped, I would have been able to settle down there. New Mexico is one of the most beautiful places I have ever discovered, and it was beckoning my heart the closer we got (my dog Tammy and I). The scenery, the people, the opportunities there... well, the timing didn't quite work so well on that last one. Maybe someday I will get to return there to stay. It would definitely be a sweet place to have a family.
A few days after we arrived I went looking for something I had always wanted to see with my own eyes: the Very Large Array radio telescope near Socorro. I knew what it looked like - it's been featured in many movies, particularly Contact - but to gaze upon it just from afar... that thing covers almost as much area as most counties in the United States!
It was the desert in all its wild natural beauty, magnificently married to that system of modern science. Perhaps the largest research facility of any discipline on the surface of the Earth. It was all one painting, and I was walking through it. In those moments, I felt more alive than the vast majority of times throughout the span of my lifetime.
When asked for a place of peaceful retreat within my mind, during our third session, that is what I thought of immediately: the New Mexico desert.
And other tools have come about also, including the knowledge of certain people in my life who are something like "avatars" of aspects of character: the nurturer, the spiritual side, a few others. There are more tools than I could convey about in a blog post, but you get the idea.
As I said, we still haven't gotten into the part of EMDR that many people consider to be the "real" course of treatment. But this is all still of tremendous importance. This is the foundation upon which all of that work will be built upon. And so far we've been building a strong foundation indeed, according to the facilitator.
That's how things stand now. What happens next will be impacted in one way or another by the coronavirus situation, and it's conceivable that we may have to delay the "lights-on" part of the protocol until the lockdown is alleviated. But even so, I'm feeling very upbeat by what has come so far. They are tools that can be used in the meantime and who knows, it might even strengthen the effects of the next phase of treatment.
