Blah Blah Blah Blah

Europe


Men

This was back, maybe 1990. I was sitting in The Rat at school talking with some friends. I don't remember the conversation, "The Impact of the Hegellian Dialectic on Cinemaphotography in the Post-Modern Era" or maybe "Who could kick Rocky VIII's ass?" or perhaps something else. A point in the conversation came when I found myself struggling to come up with a particular name. I had heard the couple in the booth behind me talking and doing a quick personality analysis I decided I could have success. I leaned around the tall booth back. The girl was directly behind me and the boy facing. He looked uncertain. I directed my gaze towards the girl... "What's the name of that actor?" The boy looks at me with an aggressive gaze. I was talking to his girl. (grunt)(grunt). "The blonde one." He gives me a dirty look. I was talking to his girl. I was clearly stupid. What kind of lame ass question was that anyway. I was talking to his girl. (grunt)(grunt). "Kiefer Sutherland," she replies without missing a beat, the lightest hint of "he's so dreamy" in her voice. "Thank you." As I return to my booth I catch the look of stunned bewilderment on his face. I was talking to his girl (grunt)(grunt). And being bizarre. And clearly stupid. And she was playing along. How did she know? How could she know? I was talking to his girl. (grunt)(grunt)


The Little Things

Elmo makes me happy.

Parents

Kid - Look, a light saber!
Parent - Yeah, but it's not a cool one.

Or was it the other way around.


Quotes

At the Grand Canyon - "Mommy, why is everybody looking at the deep?"

"He's got long hair." "No, he's French."

"It's a good job," said Scott, "You get to plant grass."

"He was driving down the highway and hit an elk. The elk came in through his windshield. No good can come of that."


Food Trends

"Focaccia" is Italian for "sponge".


Education

It should surprise no one that the best lawyers are supported through school by their parents and the best engineers are provided for through merit scholarships.


Photographs

So I'm looking at this book. Is a book with pictures of a far off and exotic land. And almost all it has in it is pictures of people. What the heck? If I'm going to travel half way around the world and up into potentially lethal altitudes, I'll be taking pictures of pretty and or interesting stuff. People are people. They are just as annoying and stupid in Tibet as they are in Cleveland.

I saw some people at the Grand Canyon. They had traveled thousands of miles across the ocean to be there. They were obviously friends or family. They took pictures of each other, point the camera away from the Canyon. "And here's Binkie standing in front of some non-descript pine trees. I think that was near the Grand Canyon." Yeah, two feet away! What a great picture of Binkie. I just do not understand.


Paranoid Gits

I wrote myself a note. Says "Big business is not Big Brother." Don't remember what it means, but I'll bet it's true.


The Cinema

So, there I am. Sitting in a theater, waiting for the film to start. It's a small screen and a half wide theater. What's playing in the other half wide next door? Same film. When's it start? Same time.

After they spent all that time building googolplexes, they seem to have realized that they only want to show a few different movies at any given time. There's a new movie out now, and I can't see it because two films are showing on four screens each and the marginal thing I want to see can't get a screen. It's all lame.


Driving

The automobile horn is a "signaling device". Most common thing for it to signal seems to be "I can't drive well." Seriously folks, if your first response to any difficult driving situation is to lean on the horn while blithely driving right on into trouble you should consider taking the bus.

You want to pull out in front of me? OK, but please either do it or don't do it. Do not half do it. If you don't do it, then you are a good person. If you do it, then you are an asshole but at least a conscientous one. If you half do it, then I'm smaking into your driver side door and in through the window with my head in your lap.. And while I'm there, I just might bite.

"Driving While Congenitally Impaired"


Spelling

Spelling is not a skill. Sure, there's a lot of rules. But then, there's a lot of exceptions to the rules. And then there's the just plain non-sense. Spelling English is memorization and guessing.


HTML 2000XS

Not sure how old this is. Interesting to compare it to the state of the world today and some of the progress that has been made. Seems an adequate warning : Gruhn is not a harbinger of things to come.

All I have are some pictures and some words. I'd like to be able to arrange a page a little more rigidly. I want any browser to be able to read it. I'll stick with simple simple HTML for now. Wait for the fights to finish. The web isn't a platform. I'm not writing an amazing application. I just want to show my pictures and offer some help. Too much energy is being spent by the big boys racing each other to be the first to prove just how much effort they can waste. HTML sucks. Let's use it for what it is. If we wanted something different, we'd use X.

Superiority

It's hard being the only person on the planet who isn't a moron.


Lame Image Aspect Requirements

As I browse the web, I find galleries of images. They ask for submissions. They set requirements on not just size, but also on aspect ratio. "Send your 640x480 image..." etc. As if that were the only shape worthwhile pictures could be.


STrek Fans

Trekkie - like it sounds, a diminutive sqeeky little thing that obsesses about a tv show.

Trekker - a person who spends months walking the Himalayan mountains obsessing about personal metaphysical growth. (Yeah, so what if they're all a bunch of airy hippies, that's not the point this time around.)

Get it right.


Home Page

Yeah, what's with this 'home page' term anyway. Do I have a home page? Sure. Is it my whole collection of HTML pages? I don't think so. Some people seem to. I'd rather call it a "web space". Somehow, "home book" just didn't seem right.


Sleep

I can think of two reasons why I avoid going to bed. One is that I am afraid of what I will find as I lie awake waiting for sleep. The other is that I know that sleep only leads to mornings and all the attendant joys of greeting the day.




Maintained by Peter M. Gruhn