Sometimes I’m actually pretty impressed on just how smart my little puppy really is.
For example, we just got back from our walks that haven’t been nearly as frequent as either of us would like as of late. Nonetheless, she knows all of the signs to look for when we might be going for a walk, and I’m not talking about when I grab her leash. No, Cleo knows that when I grab a certain pair of shorts and go into the bathroom, that that’s a hint, and when she sees me reach for the bottle of talcum powder, that’s a hint.
And when I’m putting on my tennis shoes?! Oh holy christ, that’s most certainly a hint that we’re going on a walk very, very soon!
Today was even a step further yet, though, because I was putting my shoes on at my computer desk, which I’m wont to do, and I couldn’t help but notice that when I focused on just tying my shoes, Cleo behaved herself and waited patiently, but if I’d reach for the keyboard to check Facebook first or something, she’d go nuts and start whining, much like she does pretty much any other time she thinks we’re on our way out the door!
I guess I was impressed that she keyed in on when she knew I was doing something for her … now if I could get her to follow suit for the other signs that we’re going for a walk instead of just whining like crazy until we’re out the door! Then again, I suppose she’s still learning, but it’s still kind of neat to be able to observe that she is learning. 😉
I don’t really understand it myself, but lately I’ve sort of had an interest in … of all things … gardening.
😐
I think the idea came about as I’ve been reading that hobbit book that I mentioned the other week. It seems like a very hobbit thing to do – growing ones own food, and although it’s not like I have any intention to host the feast of a million feasts or even really save any money on vegetables or anything, but at the same time I guess I thought it might be fun to eat something that I actually grew myself.
Coincidentally, I happened to come across this neat, little gardening kitat Lowe’s over the weekend…
It came with both cucumber seeds…
…and tomato seeds…
…and I don’t know if anything will actually come of it – it’s not like I’ve exactly got the best track record with plants or anything, but we’ll give it 7-10 days and see if we don’t have some sprouts!
Mind you, I have no idea yet what I’m actually going to do if they do grow as suggested, but let’s just start with seeing if I actually remember to even water them regularly and we’ll go from there…
I probably won’t be blogging as much here over the next couple of months, though exactly to what degree I’m not entirely sure yet. The simple answer is that I’ve just got a lot of creative projects on my plate for 2013 and if I want to see them all through, I’m really going to need to stay on track and at this point I’m a little behind with the first one that I’m working on already.
Of course, I also have some other projects (like the ones in the header of this site?!) that have fallen a bit behind to differing degrees, and I want to remedy all of that in time, too.
I wish I could say more because I’m really very excited about the potential for some of these … this could end up being a pretty big year for me if one or more of them “hit,” but we all know that I can’t go letting the cat out of the bag just yet… 😉
So I’m sure I’ll still have plenty of posts here – random videos that I find amusing, blurbs about fun stuff that I do on the weekends, and even the occasional political rant when I simply can’t manage to otherwise avoid it, but at the same time hopefully my posts do die down just a little bit because if they do, that might just be a sign that I’m actually getting some of my other work done, too.
I’m a huge proponent of Wikipedia, so I really love videos like this that help to show off just how diverse the user base that edits the 5th largest website in the world really is. It’s really amazing to think that over 18 million users edit just the English articles on Wikipedia alone, with everyone contributing to the articles that they themselves are the most knowledgeable and passionate about…
…whether you’re talking about photography, or baking, or nuclear weapons, or white water kayaking! 😉
You might’ve guessed that these potential changes to the BSA’s anti-homosexuality policy have pretty much dominated my mental bandwidth over the last couple of days. It can be really frustrating to be faced with so many people with such discriminatory views seemingly hard-coded into their DNA, but I’ve also read plenty of comments to show that there are many, many people who are strongly in favor of ending these hate-filled policies, too.
Here’s a great clip from gay scout who worked for ten years at his local scout camp, from entry level all the way up to Program Director. I know that I would’ve been happy to teach alongside him – the man raises some really great points that are certainly worth a mere four minutes of your time…
The foremost responsibility of an Eagle Scout is to live with HONOR. To an Eagle Scout, honor is the foundation of all character. He knows that “A Scout is Trustworthy” is the first point of the Scout Law for a good reason. An Eagle Scout lives honorably, not only because honor is important to him but because of the vital significance of the example he sets for other scouts. Living honorably reflects credit on his home, his church, his troop, and his community. May the white color of the Eagle badge remind you always to live with honor.
– The Charge of the Eagle Scout
I mentioned last night that the main comment thread over on the BSA’s Facebook page was getting pretty ugly, though the more it’s dragged on it made me wonder just how much skin in the game the various combatants were coming from. In particular, I was curious about the Eagle Scouts, frankly because I’m an Eagle Scout myself and I think all of this exclusionary talk is atrocious, so I decided to do a little impromptu survey and started capturing any of the comments where the author identified themselves as an Eagle Scout.
On one hand, I’m incredibly shocked and taken aback by so much negativity and bigotry coming from the mouths of fellow Eagle Scouts…
But thankfully on the other hand, it wasn’t all negative…
I haven’t been able to get this song out of my head since the wife and I watched Return of the King Friday night!
I don’t know why, but the soundtrack in particular really moved me this time around – I love this happy hobbit tune so much, I think I could just put it on a loop to play in the background around my house – you know, for some added ambiance when I’m laying around smoking a bit of pipe weed after a long day or perhaps settling in for a late night snack or three by the fire… 🙂
Earlier today, the Boy Scouts of America posted a media statement regarding their controversial policy of not allowing homosexuals to participate in the Boy Scouts. It was really a pretty empty statement where they’re “discussing potentially removing the restriction,” and later they recant even further by citing that the local groups that charter every scout group would still have the freedom to regulate their own members as they saw fit, basically meaning that if your local scout troop is sponsored by an LDS Church that is still emphatically anti-gay, you’re still out of luck. I honestly don’t even know why they would post such a non-statement statement unless they were just trying to stir things up and rally supporters of their existing discriminatory policies…
…which might actually be the case because boy, is there one ugly comment thread brewing about this on the BSA’s Facebook page tonight! I found myself getting sucked into it there for a while, then I finally took a break to go walk the dog and decided that it might be more productive for me to write down some of my thoughts here instead. The truth is, I’ve been finding myself more and more passionate about the issue of gay rights lately, and so I guess I wanted to take a few minutes here to talk about why this one in particular hits so close to home.
I grew up in the Boy Scouts – probably spent 14 years of my life from 1st grade until a year after I graduated from high school actively involved in Scouting, and admittedly about double that if you subscribe to the mantra, “Once an Eagle Scout, Always an Eagle Scout.” I had a lot of great times through all of those years doing all sorts of things that I can’t really imagine doing if I hadn’t been involved in Scouts – camping out in a snow bank in -20 degree weather, learning to SCUBA dive and diving in the Florida Keys, spending 5 years teaching ecology at summer camp, hosting lock-ins at the local Sportsplex – the list just goes on and on.
That said, there were also some less than fun times – namely near the very end of my involvement, learning that several of the adult leaders who I had grown to respect and admire over the years had been through affairs with other adult female scouters, all of which ultimately ended their marriages of many years. I don’t really want to say any more than that, but I’ve got to be honest that still as an adult today, it’s left a bit of a stain on what I know in my heart was otherwise still a great experience for me growing up…
When I look at gay rights, I guess I kind of think of it as the human rights movement of my generation. My parents and grandparents had the rights of African Americans, and ancestors before that struggled for Women’s Suffrage, but over time society finally came to its senses and decided that those groups deserved the same rights as the rest of the population, and hopefully within my lifetime gay people will also be able to say the same. And how this all circles back to the BSA for me is that, for an organization so directly responsible in shaping the morals that millions of boys and men have grown to live our lives by over the years, discrimination of anyone for any reason simply has no rightful place amongst its tenets. Any justification of these beliefs is irrelevant – we should not be teaching our boys that hate is acceptable. Period.
I think that the Boy Scouts of America are better than this. In fact, I know that the BSA is better than this, and so in a way I suppose it’s a little personal for me because in my own view of the organization I still have that ugly stain that I remember from my final days and frankly, I’d like to see something a little more meaningful take its place in how I see Scouting as a whole now today as an adult. Just like it wasn’t all of the leaders who were having extramarital affairs, it’s also not all of the leaders who are so stubbornly holding onto these bigoted and hate-filled beliefs, but it still presents a very ugly perspective on the Scouting movement right now that makes former scouts like me admittedly a bit reluctant to want to sign my own children up for Tiger Cubs when the time comes if they’re still clinging to ideals that don’t represent the same words that they lead the boys in reciting each week to kick off their meetings…
So if it sounds like I just won’t let up when it comes to gay rights, especially with regards to the Boy Scouts’ support or at best neutrality towards anti-gay membership policies, know that I want to see the group that I grew up with grow itself to move beyond such negativity and focus on enriching the lives of our nation’s youth, not reinforcing mentalities based on hate and discrimination. That’s not what the BSA is supposed to be about … or at least that’s not what it was ever about for me.
I had to spend probably 25-30 hours plastered in front of the computer doing busy work from Friday through tonight, but it was that kind of work where you can have stuff playing in the background without completely botching it up. Now normally I’d just flip through YouTube videos when I’m working on something like this, but knowing that it was going to be so time consuming, I figured that I couldn’t really afford to keep flipping over to the other computer to pick new videos every couple of minutes!
Instead I ended up going through a huge stack of full-length movies – some on DVD and some online (and it still amazes me how many feature-length movies can be found on YouTube – seriously, how many legitimate 2-hour long uploads do they get that they can’t filter for that a bit better?!). Anyways, here’s what I watched…
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Loved the books, and I didn’t think that the movie was as horrible as everyone else seemed to think that it was. Martin Freeman is fun as Arthur Dent and Zooey Deschanel hadn’t quite hit her so quirky I’m obnoxious-phase yet, and Mos Def is just cool. Decent start to my two-day marathon…
Monty Python and the Holy Grail – Honestly haven’t watched this movie since high school, when I kinda swore off watching it because I had friends who could recite the entire movie from memory anyways. Funny movie, though … makes me feel guilty for not being better versed in the Monty Python universe.
Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog – Not as long as the previous two, but very hilarious and it’s got a great soundtrack to boot! “With my freeze ray I will stop.”
War Games – I was starting to run out of options of what I could find freely available on YouTube – it was either this, Armageddon, The Sixth Sense, or a handful of 3rd rate movies that happened to be in Spanish. Still a good movie, though I probably wouldn’t go too far out of my way to watch it these days.
GoBots: Battle of the Rock Lords – Last YouTube video of the night – can you tell?! I actually really liked the GoBots because that’s what I got instead of Transformers, and I still think I got the better end of the deal. I just wish some more of the cartoons were readily available these days because this movie was kinda dumb … what I really wanted was the GoBot movie with the Power Suits and The Last Engineer, but I’ve searched and searched and can’t seem to find it anywhere!!!
Ocean’s Eleven – This classic remake kicked off day #2 of my work session. I wanted to start with Office Space, on account of having to work on the weekend, but couldn’t find the disc. I’ve always loved Ocean’s Eleven, though – it’s funny, it’s lighthearted, nobody gets killed, and you don’t feel that bad about Benedict getting robbed because he’s kind of a jerk anyways! Sad that they tried to keep the magic going and failed miserably with two more sequels, but I don’t let that affect the first one for me because it’s one of those movies that I’ll pretty much watch any time it comes on TV.
Uncle Buck – “You should see the toast – I couldn’t even fit it through the door!” “If that’s true we’re going to really have to start brushing our teeth…” “He’s cooking our garbage!”
Kris and Scott’s Scott and Kris Show – I affirmed the last hour of my work by revisiting this project from earlier in 2012 (or was it 2011?). Goofy show, though I get the impression that it was too expensive to bother making a second season of it, which is kind of a shame because I think any time we find ourselves with more Scott and Kris (or Kris and Scott), it’s ultimately a good thing.
Earlier this month after accompanying me to see The Hobbit on New Years Day, a little out of the blue my wife surprised me by remarking on the ride home that she was interested in giving the Lord of the Rings trilogy another shot. I guess she had tried watching them years ago but things just never clicked and she ended up getting bored with them, and ever since I’ve always gotten a lot of grief whenever my beloved trilogy comes on TV … until now!
Plus, wouldn’t you know … I think she actually ended up liking ’em this time around?! 😉
Or at least parts of ’em, anyways… 😛
So we’ve been watching one movie a weekend for pretty much the last three weeks – I would’ve loved to just sit down and run a crazy marathon to go through them all in a single weekend, but I didn’t want to push my luck! Even without watching the Extended Editions (I actually prefer the theatrical versions anyways), we were putting in something like 3.5-4 hours of couch time once you factored in a little extra for snacks and a break. The week between Fellowship & Two Towers wasn’t too bad, but I was really itching to dig into Return of the King after The Two Towers ended … probably because those are the two I tend to watch the most anyways.
For what it’s worth, though, I really enjoyed watching the entire trilogy this time around not only for getting to turn my wife on to one of the greatest stories ever told (in my not-so-humble opinion!), but it also gave me a chance to appreciate more of the nuances for myself. Like I said, I usually don’t lose much sleep if I only catch 2 & 3 around Thanksgiving when they’re on TV constantly, but I was reminded that there are still some great moments in the first installment – when we first get to meet Frodo and Bilbo and the other hobbits, or when Aragorn makes his introduction as Strider, or when Arwen outruns the Nazgul and turns the river against them trying to save Frodo after he’s been stabbed.
And of course…
I think The Two Towers is where my wife’s interest really started to pick up, though … at least that’s when she noted that Legolas never runs out of arrows, no matter how many he shoots! I suggested that maybe they were magical blah blah blah, but she wasn’t buying it … as if the wraiths flying around on dragons and the giant flaming eyeball were perfectly reasonable, but the arrows were just going too far! 😉
The Battle of Helm’s Deep, of course, is always the highlight of that one – as much as I enjoy the Ents on their own, I feel like their super slow talking is just holding me up from watching Gimli and Legolas fight over kills at the battle! But some of the scenes leading up to the big battle itself, too, are pretty great – I really love how Fellowship ends with the three committing to hunting down Merry & Pippin’s captors, so it’s noble to watch how that story arc progresses in the second movie. Eomer is always a curious one, too – so easily exiled from his Uncle’s kingdom, and yet he follows Gandalf back to pretty much save the day at Helm’s Deep all the same … what a guy!
Another scene that had slipped my mind from this one was Sam’s little speech of encouragement to Frodo during the Nazgul raid after they’ve been captured by Faramir…
And of course, what’s there even to say that hasn’t already been said about Return of the King?! The lighting of the Beacons of Gondor, Arwen’s plea to her father to reforge the blade that was broken, Elrond presenting the newly forged Anduril to Aragorn and directing him to the Dimolt road to recruit the Army of the Dead, the Battle of the Pellenor Fields, “I can’t carry it, but I can carry you!”, even the eight different endings that seem both excessive and also incredibly endearing at the same time because really, the trials that these characters endure over the course of 9 months are the kinds of things that change people … you can see it in Frodo’s eyes as he walks through Bag End and I think he even says it at one point – “there is no going back – there are some things that time cannot mend.”
Very bittersweet – like, “Yay, we saved the world!!! Ummm, now what?”
In a way I kind of feel like I fall in love with these movies all over again every time that I watch them, and this post ought to be proof enough that this time was certainly no exception! The end of Return of the King really left me wanting more last night, and as much as I just don’t have the time to go re-watch The Hobbit this weekend, I really think that I want to try and read through the books again this year leading up to the next installment of The Hobbit in December. I couldn’t even begin to guess how long it’s been since I’ve read the books – at least a decade, but probably a lot longer than that. In fact, earlier this month I picked up a neat little book kind of about the philosophy of The Shire and relating hobbit life to real life that’s been kind of a fun read … I don’t read many books these days, so I guess I’ve got to build up to it!
But maybe when I’m done in a few weeks, I’ll grab a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring and see where the written version takes me. I know that it’s out of order, but I’m thinking that if I read the trilogy first, I should be on The Hobbit this fall right around the time the new movie is coming out, so I can read the book, then watch LOTR on TV around Thanksgiving, then watch the first installment of The Hobbit on DVD, and then go see The Desolation of Smaug in the theater come December 13th!!!
So many hobbits, so much to enjoy, and to be, and to do…
