The Gaming Generation Gap

Their is a generation gap. It's always existed in one form or another. "You call that Elvis guy a singer? Now Rudy Vallee, that was a singer!" So it's patently false to say it's a recent development. It simply takes different forms.

For myself and my kids, it's in the video games we play. Theirs are all action packed, running around, role playing games with lots of flash and dazzle and sound. Mine are, well, video poker, with nothing at stake except pretend chips earned which have no actual value.

Pacing is everything for all video games. Theirs are, as I've said, running and shooting or racing around in carts as colors and all sorts of images fly by. With online poker, every player gets dealt two cards and then waits patiently for the next deal. Then we take our turns raising, calling, or folding - always patiently - until the next round is done. Then more cards are dealt and more things - patient things, I stress - happen, until someone wins. Absolutely no chance of seizures in video poker, I guarantee you.

Of course, there is action in my games. The background of the poker room changes with the seasons. Currently there's a Christmas train meandering about a simple oval track on a table behind the dealer. It's taking its time, and not difficult at all to spot, such as an enemy hidden behind a boulder would be in the kids' games. So while they're running around defending their turf amidst the flash and brilliance of their games, I sit at mine thinking: "Look! A choo-choo! And you can see the smoke puffing out of the stack on the locomotive!

The generation gap yet exists.

Save The Date

For all of you who are interested, Sunday December 19 at 7:30 on your local PBS station will be this year's free showing of the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special. Even though we have it on DVD and can stream it (though streaming, whatever that is, is still something I can't seem to wrap my head around let alone manage to do efficiently) I still make the effort to watch it on free TV.

Part of it is only the old school guy in me coming out. Many if not most of us remember, and quite fondly, how the TV Guide served as our entertainment schedule way back when. If you missed a special you were out of luck for an entire year as to catching it again. I'm not, or at least don't intend to, argue in any way that this 'streaming' thing is wrong or bad. On the whole it really is good. Still, sentimentality...

So anyway, I'm going to watch Charlie Brown, the good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, on PBS in thirteen days. The childhood vibes come shining through until yet watching a revered show at a scheduled date such as that. Undoubtedly I will watch it again with family on Christmas Day via DVD or stream. But if you want to experience something as it once were, mark December 19 on you calendar.

Beware of Internet Purchases

You gotta be careful what you order off the internet. 

To help protect my property I ordered attack trees. They didn't work out at all. Their bark was worse than their bite.

Aren't you glad you took a moment out of your life for this?

The Evil that Men Do

The recent murders at Oxford High School in Michigan were reprehensible, despicable, and, perhaps, totally avoidable. But not avoidable for the reason too many people will leap towards.

The go-to excuse is the availability of guns. Yet while that is an understandable reaction, it is ultimately knee jerk. It fails to address a great many issues, and the first and foremost of those is that there is evil in the world. Take away every powerful, projectile firing object on earth, and you will still have evil. And it will not rest.

This does not mean that we cannot or should not fight it. But notice that we must first acknowledge it, we must admit that evil exists. Without that, all talk of preventing tragedies such as Oxford must be muted. Indeed, without that admission I don't see how we can ever possibly defeat evil.

What are we fighting, if not evil, if we are to usefully work towards avoiding future travesties of justice? You may have noticed in news reports that the parents and the shooter were called into a meeting the same day as the murders, because of alarming ideas expressed by the shooter. Yet he was allowed to stay in school nonetheless, because the school district as a core policy didn't want to deprive him of the academic and social support which formal education, in the mind of modern educators, asserts is paramount. So paramount in fact that questions of evil and evil intent are set aside. So much so that what was taken as a credible threat could not be removed from the building.

They can hardly argue that such an event was unthinkable. It happens too often, and surely was in the minds of the school people or they wouldn't have called the parents in, pulled the student from class, and had that meeting to begin with. Yet despite that acknowledgement, they could not see it within themselves to remove the shooter from the premises. They could not recognize evil, or even the mere potential for evil, preferring instead to leave it to take four lives and seriously injure many more.

We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst, C. S. Lewis wrote. Similarly, when we do not see that evil exists, we will not fight it. It is because we cannot.

Emphatically Refused Service

Among many of the old plumbers and drain cleaners who've come through the old barn there was this one, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who related the following tale.

Cloyce was in a bar, actually snaking a drain behind the actual bar. A man walked in and sat at that bar. With him were five women, whom Cloyce referred to as the guy's concubines. They each sat at the bar with the fella, so that six barstools in a row were taken. 

The bartender, a grouchy old woman who Cloyce knew as the owner of the place, asked of the man, "Whaddaya have?"

The customer folded his hands and pronounced solemnly, "I would like a Budweiser." Solemnly, mind you, as if actually making a pronouncement.

The bartender reached into the cooler, grabbed a beer, and popped the top. It was then the man added, "...and six glasses."

Cloyce said the old woman bar owner exploded. "Get outta here! I ain't selling you one beer and having to wash six glasses! Get out! Go away!" He raised an eyebrow, huffily, Cloyce said, yet the entourage left quietly.

The woman turned to Cloyce. "You wanna free beer as a tip? I'd rather give it to you than sell it to him."

Cloyce finished the job, sipping on his beer tip. All the while, he said, the bar owner crabbing about one beer with six glasses. 

Tis the Season

Now that we are beyond Thanksgiving, let's welcome Christmas.

Of all the trappings of the Holiday season, what I like most is simply listening to carols. My favorite is probably (this is one those things which changes occasionally, depending on mood) 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing'. That's greatly sentimental because the Peanuts gang sings it at the end of their marvelous Christmas special, but it's still a great song.

As we all know there's tons of celebrity Christmas songs out there, and most of them are at least ok. I just heard for example Paul McCartney's 'Wonderful Christmas Time'. It's simple and sentimental, but infectious.

The Little Drummer Boy is classic, and let me tell you that of all people Bob Seger's cover is fantastic. He really nails the song. That's one that's on my list of maybe favorite. It's that good. And Bing Crosby and David Bowie's is right up there too. Talk about cross-generational; I don't know who's idea that was but it really works.

A list such as mine can't be complete without Silent Night. It's a carol which succinctly expresses what Christmas is all about.

I might ruminate more on this as Christmas grows nearer. But, for now, it's a good start.

Young Marty Schools Old Marty

Sweet gherkins. Sweet, sweet gherkins. You know, those little pickles that are soaked in some kind of brine and come out oh-so-sweet? I have rediscovered them.

As a small child, me Mom used to say that whenever her or me Pops came back from major grocery shopping (and with seven of us rug rats there were few minor grocery trips) and set the bags on the kitchen table, I would climb on a chair and begin unloading. Not to actually help, good Heavens, but in search of the fresh jar of sweet pickles which I knew were coming. When discovered, I stopped helping and waited, patiently, I assure you, for the one of the adults in the room to stop that nonsense of putting things away and open that jar for me.

Young Marty was pretty smart, at least about some things. As I have recently come back into a love of sweet gherkins, he's surely able to teach Old Marty a bit. Although Old Marty can open the jar on his own. 

Quiet Ron.