Last week, my mom got a Kindle. Although it took her a few days to start using it (she says new technology intimidates her at first) she is now extremely into it and has been reading up a storm. I've been thinking lately about traditional paper books, and whether they have a place in the future. I'm going to just weigh out some pros and cons here between paper books and electronic books.
Storage Space
No doubt about it, this is one of the biggest reasons to get a Kindle or some other e-reader. If you're limited in terms of storage, a single tiny machine a little bigger than a novel but much thinner is much more attractive than shelves of books. It's also the way to go for portability. My inner collector still loves having lots of books, though.
Cost
A lot of ebooks are being sold for almost as much as - or even more than - physical copies. This is greed. An ebook requires no publishing, no shipping or handling, no warehouses to be stocked in. It's a digital file, and has far, far less overhead for the company. They should be significantly less expensive.
Other ebooks are cheap or free. Free is always a good price. You can get paper books free (or incredibly cheap) as well by visiting libraries, yard sales, and the like.
There is also, of course, the cost of the reader itself. A Kindle can be bought fairly cheaply (Amazon makes their money on ebooks, not readers) but it's still a pretty decent investment to make before you can start reading. Something to keep in mind.
Visibility
This is something most people my age don't think about. My mom loves to read, but she has difficulty with small type. The Kindle came to the rescue with an adjustable font size, allowing my mom to read clearly once more. It made her very happy to be able to read again, and it's something I thank the Kindle for. It's also something paper books utterly fail at, because A) not every book has a Large Print edition and B) you can't make your existing books into Large Print books with the press of a button.
Book Selection
The number of books that only exist as ebooks is growing and will continue to grow. Think back to the early 2000s, and how movies were released on both DVD and VHS for a while, but more and more movies were DVD only over time. However, at the same time, there are movies that came out on VHS in the eighties and nineties but were never rereleased on DVD when the new technology came. I think this will be the case with books - there will never be an electronic version of every paper book ever made, therefore paper books are not completely irrelevant and may be very useful in certain situations.
The Cloud
For those who don't know, "The Cloud" is shorthand for storing things on the Internet instead of on your own computer or owning a physical object.
This is something I've been hung up on for a while. Something I think is very important - if I pay for something, I want to own it. I don't want the company to be able to edit or remove it. I don't want to be charged a fee for continuing to own something. I want to be in control, not the company and their cloud. After they sell something to me, I should have the right to do as I wish - to lend it out, to read it over and over, to resell it.
For the same reason, I've been wary of the recent popularity of digital game downloads (although I've bought a few I couldn't get any other way). Services like Microsoft's Xbox Live Arcade and Nintendo's Virtual Console are neat and all, but should something happen to my video game system, the games stored on it are gone. I want to have a physical object, like a cartridge or disc. It is much more reassuring and solidly mine. I also hate that digital books and games can't be resold. I can't go to a garage sale and buy a used ebook. This movement towards digital and intangible things can crush the resale market, a market I have frequently relied on for both books and games as a way to buy things cheaply.
Conclusion
I've said before that I generally embrace new technology. This is true. I think ebooks have great potential. But I want to be the sole owner of things that I pay for, and so I personally believe that paper books will remain relevant to me as long as I live, even if they don't to anyone else.
That said, I may browse my mother's Kindle and see if there's any free nonfiction books about animals...
Showing posts with label Personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Personal. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
The Magazine Onslaught
Magazines used to be a nifty media form - every month, you'd get a book in the mail all about a certain topic, and you'd keep getting new issues throughout the year. It was a nice feeling of familiarity. You'd get to know the authors' names and look forward to recurring sections with excitement. You'd learn new things. You'd discover stuff you'd never heard of, and find out more about things you did.
Today, the Internet has neutered magazines much the same way it has newspapers. For magazines, the situation is actually worse - even the most frequently published magazines are weekly, while newspapers are daily. This means newspapers are more nimble than magazines when it comes to news. Of course, the Internet obliterates them both in speed and scope.
When I was a kid, I loved magazines. I subscribed to quite a few over the years. Here's a quick look at what I grew up reading.
Your Big Backyard
This was my first magazine. Your Big Backyard is aimed at young kids, and is about animals and nature. My mom correctly guessed that I'd enjoy the subject. I don't remember much about Your Big Backyard since I was so young when I received it.
Ranger Rick
This is the "big kid" version of Your Big Backyard. Once I'd proven my reading ability, I was upgraded to it. I subscribed to Ranger Rick for several years and loved every issue. I remember one night one of my teachers visited my house. She'd been cleaning out her home and had found a whole bunch of Ranger Rick magazines from the late 1980s. They were in great shape, and I eagerly claimed them. The magazines stayed with me for years.
Highlights
1996 was the Year of the Magazine for me. While I had only Ranger Rick before this time, in 1996 I suddenly was subscribed to a half-dozen magazines. I can't recall exactly why my mom enjoyed giving me so many, but I'll guess that it was lots of cheap and fun reading material - and I always loved reading.
Highlights is a classic children's magazine. Memorable for including a wide variety of content, from standalone short stories to modern-day news pieces to the guidance offered by Goofus and Gallant, Highlights was a grab bag of stuff that could vary wildly in terms of catching my interest from issue to issue.
Boys' Life
The only one of my magazines that catered exclusively to my gender was always viewed by me as the most "adult" of the lot. While it was certainly well within my reading level, it talked about some slightly more advanced subjects and included stories about things like the novel Brian's Winter - which is about a boy stranded alone fending for himself.
The two regular sections I recall best are the comics and the section near the back filled with old-school advertisements similar to those from old comic books, where gimmicky toys like x-ray specs are peddled to the kids. I never ordered anything, but I sometimes daydreamed about it.
Disney Adventures
As you might guess, this magazine (which was printed small, like how TV Guide used to be) had a Disney theme, although it talked about other things as well. The first issue I ever got featured Jurassic Park: The Lost World on it. There was a contest inside to win a life-size statue of the famous raptor dinosaurs featured in the series. I entered, and as you probably guessed, lost. I don't know where I would have put a life-size raptor anyway.
As time went on, the comics at the back of the magazine got bigger and bigger, eventually taking over roughly half or more of each issue. I mostly preferred the articles, and lost interest in the magazine as a result.
National Geographic Kids
This one was a little later than the others, I think - I remember getting issues from 1997, not 96. It was mostly about science and nature, as you'd expect from National Geographic. I don't remember too much about it, though.
Nickelodeon Magazine
This was the first of the tidal wave of magazines to show up on my doorstep. My first issue was from October 1995. Nickelodeon Magazine grew to become my favorite of the many magazines I subscribed to. It covered many different topics, had a comics section in the middle, and frequently featured some sort of punch-out gimmick or prank label to have fun with.
The Magazine Extinction
As time went on, I got fewer and fewer magazines. When 1997 rolled around, I elected to drop Highlights and Boys' Life but added National Geographic Kids. Before 1998, my mom came to me one day. She was hard up for money, and told me that to save money she had to cancel my magazine subscriptions. I could keep only one. It was easy to ditch Disney Adventures and National Geographic Kids, but that left two: Nickelodeon Magazine and Ranger Rick. After some thought, I decided it was time to say goodbye to Ranger Rick, leaving me with only Nickelodeon into the next year.
A couple years later I told my mom to cancel Nickelodeon Magazine as well. I don't remember why, but my guess is that I wanted to help save her money and was getting bored with the magazine, so I offered it as a sacrifice.
Electronic Gaming Monthly
In 2003, I was a young teenager with no magazine subscriptions. However, I'd gotten into the habit of buying EGM, a video game magazine, off of the shelf every now and then. First, I bought one in 2000 because it had a news story on a new Pokemon game. Then, in 2001, I got another that talked about Nintendo's new video game system, the Game Boy Advance. As time went on I bought issues more frequently before finally deciding to go for it and get a subscription as a birthday present.
For several years I looked forward to getting EGM in the mail, but I noticed a problem. Slowly, features were being removed from the magazine. First the cheats section vanished, with a note saying that it was on the EGM website now. Then, interviews were truncated with messages at the end saying that there were more questions on the website. When the monthly comic strip left as well in 2007 I grew disillusioned with the magazine and opted to take them up on the offer of just finding everything about video games online - except I didn't use their website because I had been a member of a different one since 2003. By the end of 2007, I was no longer a subscriber. Incredibly, EGM went out of business just a few issues later - although it was later brought back.
It's been a long time since I last subscribed to a magazine, but time and technology marches on. The age of magazines is over, and magazine companies are making the move to online - or dying out completely.
Today, the Internet has neutered magazines much the same way it has newspapers. For magazines, the situation is actually worse - even the most frequently published magazines are weekly, while newspapers are daily. This means newspapers are more nimble than magazines when it comes to news. Of course, the Internet obliterates them both in speed and scope.
When I was a kid, I loved magazines. I subscribed to quite a few over the years. Here's a quick look at what I grew up reading.
Your Big Backyard
This was my first magazine. Your Big Backyard is aimed at young kids, and is about animals and nature. My mom correctly guessed that I'd enjoy the subject. I don't remember much about Your Big Backyard since I was so young when I received it.
Ranger Rick
This is the "big kid" version of Your Big Backyard. Once I'd proven my reading ability, I was upgraded to it. I subscribed to Ranger Rick for several years and loved every issue. I remember one night one of my teachers visited my house. She'd been cleaning out her home and had found a whole bunch of Ranger Rick magazines from the late 1980s. They were in great shape, and I eagerly claimed them. The magazines stayed with me for years.
Highlights
1996 was the Year of the Magazine for me. While I had only Ranger Rick before this time, in 1996 I suddenly was subscribed to a half-dozen magazines. I can't recall exactly why my mom enjoyed giving me so many, but I'll guess that it was lots of cheap and fun reading material - and I always loved reading.
Highlights is a classic children's magazine. Memorable for including a wide variety of content, from standalone short stories to modern-day news pieces to the guidance offered by Goofus and Gallant, Highlights was a grab bag of stuff that could vary wildly in terms of catching my interest from issue to issue.
Boys' Life
The only one of my magazines that catered exclusively to my gender was always viewed by me as the most "adult" of the lot. While it was certainly well within my reading level, it talked about some slightly more advanced subjects and included stories about things like the novel Brian's Winter - which is about a boy stranded alone fending for himself.
The two regular sections I recall best are the comics and the section near the back filled with old-school advertisements similar to those from old comic books, where gimmicky toys like x-ray specs are peddled to the kids. I never ordered anything, but I sometimes daydreamed about it.
Disney Adventures
As you might guess, this magazine (which was printed small, like how TV Guide used to be) had a Disney theme, although it talked about other things as well. The first issue I ever got featured Jurassic Park: The Lost World on it. There was a contest inside to win a life-size statue of the famous raptor dinosaurs featured in the series. I entered, and as you probably guessed, lost. I don't know where I would have put a life-size raptor anyway.
As time went on, the comics at the back of the magazine got bigger and bigger, eventually taking over roughly half or more of each issue. I mostly preferred the articles, and lost interest in the magazine as a result.
National Geographic Kids
This one was a little later than the others, I think - I remember getting issues from 1997, not 96. It was mostly about science and nature, as you'd expect from National Geographic. I don't remember too much about it, though.
Nickelodeon Magazine
This was the first of the tidal wave of magazines to show up on my doorstep. My first issue was from October 1995. Nickelodeon Magazine grew to become my favorite of the many magazines I subscribed to. It covered many different topics, had a comics section in the middle, and frequently featured some sort of punch-out gimmick or prank label to have fun with.
The Magazine Extinction
As time went on, I got fewer and fewer magazines. When 1997 rolled around, I elected to drop Highlights and Boys' Life but added National Geographic Kids. Before 1998, my mom came to me one day. She was hard up for money, and told me that to save money she had to cancel my magazine subscriptions. I could keep only one. It was easy to ditch Disney Adventures and National Geographic Kids, but that left two: Nickelodeon Magazine and Ranger Rick. After some thought, I decided it was time to say goodbye to Ranger Rick, leaving me with only Nickelodeon into the next year.
A couple years later I told my mom to cancel Nickelodeon Magazine as well. I don't remember why, but my guess is that I wanted to help save her money and was getting bored with the magazine, so I offered it as a sacrifice.
Electronic Gaming Monthly
In 2003, I was a young teenager with no magazine subscriptions. However, I'd gotten into the habit of buying EGM, a video game magazine, off of the shelf every now and then. First, I bought one in 2000 because it had a news story on a new Pokemon game. Then, in 2001, I got another that talked about Nintendo's new video game system, the Game Boy Advance. As time went on I bought issues more frequently before finally deciding to go for it and get a subscription as a birthday present.
For several years I looked forward to getting EGM in the mail, but I noticed a problem. Slowly, features were being removed from the magazine. First the cheats section vanished, with a note saying that it was on the EGM website now. Then, interviews were truncated with messages at the end saying that there were more questions on the website. When the monthly comic strip left as well in 2007 I grew disillusioned with the magazine and opted to take them up on the offer of just finding everything about video games online - except I didn't use their website because I had been a member of a different one since 2003. By the end of 2007, I was no longer a subscriber. Incredibly, EGM went out of business just a few issues later - although it was later brought back.
It's been a long time since I last subscribed to a magazine, but time and technology marches on. The age of magazines is over, and magazine companies are making the move to online - or dying out completely.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Why I Use AdBlock
My Internet browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox. This browser allows downloading of "add-ons", special applications that add new functions and features to the browser. The most popular of these is AdBlock, a program that automatically removes and disables advertising on the Internet. Even the commercials played before some YouTube videos are taken out. Thanks to this, I have seen virtually no advertisements online for about three years now. Why did I do this? I have three reasons.
The first issue is a fairly personal one: I have been resistant to advertising since childhood. Through a few stumbling blocks in my early years where a toy seen on TV turns out to be not as fun in reality, I grew hardened against advertising claims, and began to treat ads as always lying and exaggerating in order to secure my money or my parents' money. For years now I have only trusted advertising to mean one thing: "This product exists". While sometimes impressed by given statistics, I prefer to research the product first to see if their claims are true. Since ads use fine print and exaggerated hype on every topic from usefulness to effectiveness to features to pricing, I can't trust them for anything except "this product exists".
While advertising may not work on me, that seemed like all the better reason to keep it around. It helped pay for the websites I visited, and some of them need the help. So why did I turn off the ads? There were two important things that made me use AdBlock. The first reason was that advertisers were trying too hard. Much of the advertising on the internet isn’t alluring, just annoying. Pop-up windows that take up most of the screen get in the way of your content. Pop-under windows make your taskbar flash with a new window alert, and require closing. Commercials interrupt your video experience and cause more loading and buffering. Flashing animated images can hurt your eyes and distract you from the website’s text. But worst of all, my absolute least favorite type of ad, is the ad with sound. Frequently I would be browsing a page, listening to music in another window, when my experience is ruined by a voice at high volume prattling on. "Congratulations! You've won a free Macbook Air." I knew darn well that I didn’t win anything and that the "free" Macbook was probably buried under a pile of nonsense "offer forms" and paying for shipping and handling, so in addition to interrupting my browsing and drowning out my music the ad was also insulting my intelligence. These ads frequently made me consider AdBlock, but I was always hesitant to finally pull the trigger.
The last straw was the proliferation of what are essentially cybercriminals in advertising. These are the ads that cause viruses to be downloaded onto your computer. Normally, they weren’t a problem, because all I needed to do was not click the advertisement. However, when browsing one of my regular web destinations, I noticed a news post where the administrators were apologizing for an ad their advertising service provided that could cause viruses to download to a user's computer just by them loading the ad, not even clicking it. With my computer at risk, that was the final straw, and I immediately got off the site and did not return until I had downloaded and tested AdBlock.
Through harassment, unwanted pitches, loud interruptions, and cybercrime, I was left with no option but to use AdBlock, preventing any website from ever getting advertising dollars from my visits. This is what happens when an industry seems to be built on frustrating and hurting its consumer base: The smart ones tune out entirely.
The first issue is a fairly personal one: I have been resistant to advertising since childhood. Through a few stumbling blocks in my early years where a toy seen on TV turns out to be not as fun in reality, I grew hardened against advertising claims, and began to treat ads as always lying and exaggerating in order to secure my money or my parents' money. For years now I have only trusted advertising to mean one thing: "This product exists". While sometimes impressed by given statistics, I prefer to research the product first to see if their claims are true. Since ads use fine print and exaggerated hype on every topic from usefulness to effectiveness to features to pricing, I can't trust them for anything except "this product exists".
While advertising may not work on me, that seemed like all the better reason to keep it around. It helped pay for the websites I visited, and some of them need the help. So why did I turn off the ads? There were two important things that made me use AdBlock. The first reason was that advertisers were trying too hard. Much of the advertising on the internet isn’t alluring, just annoying. Pop-up windows that take up most of the screen get in the way of your content. Pop-under windows make your taskbar flash with a new window alert, and require closing. Commercials interrupt your video experience and cause more loading and buffering. Flashing animated images can hurt your eyes and distract you from the website’s text. But worst of all, my absolute least favorite type of ad, is the ad with sound. Frequently I would be browsing a page, listening to music in another window, when my experience is ruined by a voice at high volume prattling on. "Congratulations! You've won a free Macbook Air." I knew darn well that I didn’t win anything and that the "free" Macbook was probably buried under a pile of nonsense "offer forms" and paying for shipping and handling, so in addition to interrupting my browsing and drowning out my music the ad was also insulting my intelligence. These ads frequently made me consider AdBlock, but I was always hesitant to finally pull the trigger.
The last straw was the proliferation of what are essentially cybercriminals in advertising. These are the ads that cause viruses to be downloaded onto your computer. Normally, they weren’t a problem, because all I needed to do was not click the advertisement. However, when browsing one of my regular web destinations, I noticed a news post where the administrators were apologizing for an ad their advertising service provided that could cause viruses to download to a user's computer just by them loading the ad, not even clicking it. With my computer at risk, that was the final straw, and I immediately got off the site and did not return until I had downloaded and tested AdBlock.
Through harassment, unwanted pitches, loud interruptions, and cybercrime, I was left with no option but to use AdBlock, preventing any website from ever getting advertising dollars from my visits. This is what happens when an industry seems to be built on frustrating and hurting its consumer base: The smart ones tune out entirely.
Friday, February 10, 2012
All About Game Shows
When I was a kid, I went through a lot of different phases. The Asperger's symptom of "special interests" applies to me in that I would get really into something for a while, then grow bored and try something else. While in the throes of an interest, I'd read about it, or watch it, or collect it, depending on what it was. Some interests I came back to over and over every so often, while others I've dropped. I've had many special interests over the years, from dinosaurs to politics. One of my shorter-lived interests was the game show. When I was around ten years old, I took a liking to watching game shows, trying to answer the questions, and hoping people could win big. Here are my thoughts and memories on some of the most memorable game shows of my childhood.
Legends of the Hidden Temple
I should clarify that my ten-year-old game show watching was not the first time I watched game shows. The difference was that the first game shows I watched were specifically targeted at kids - Nickelodeon used to show lots of game shows, and I followed most of them. Legends of the Hidden Temple was my favorite of the group. This game show had an awesome setting that looked like ancient ruins in the jungle. The two competing teams of kids were chosen from a pool of possible team names, so there were recurring teams, but you didn't see the same teams every time. I think there was a Purple Monkey team, a Silver Spider team, and a Green Parrot team, among others (all animals you'd find in jungle ruins, of course). Adding to the spectacle was the character Olmec, a giant talking tiki head who explained the rules of each game.
After one team got enough points to beat the other team, the main event happened - a kid from the winning team was sent into the "hidden temple" itself - an obstacle course with different paths every episode. Temple Guards (hired staff) lurked in the temple, and would try to catch the kid before they could reach the goal. Winning the earlier games gave the team medallions they could use as "extra lives" to hold off a guard attack. The whole thing was extremely reminiscent of a real-life video game, and that's why I was so interested in it. It was a hard game, too - kids escaped the temple rarely enough that it was really thrilling when they managed to win!
Jeopardy
This was probably the first "adult" game show I ever watched. I remember thinking the "phrase your answer in the form of a question" rule was weird, and chalked it up to being Jeopardy's attempt to stand out from the pack. I generally wasn't very good at playing along on Jeopardy, so I got really excited when I knew the answer to a question. Or is that the question to an answer? Silly Jeopardy.
Wheel of Fortune
I liked Wheel of Fortune because the puzzles, being word-based and gradually revealed, were fun to try and solve. I always got upset when someone hit Bankrupt, though. I felt so bad for them.
The other thing I remember from Wheel of Fortune is the constant applauding. Everybody would clap every time the wheel was spun. And the wheel spun a lot. I recall making fun of the overeager applause more than once.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire
This was the game show that got me into watching game shows in the first place. I heard a lot of excitement over it when it premiered around the turn of the millennium, and I followed it fairly regularly for a while. Although I didn't enjoy how drawn out the show sometimes got (especially when they had to end the show on a tough question because they were out of time), I loved the fun questions at the beginning, the excitement of watching people win big sums of money, and especially the atmosphere.
Out of all the "adult" game shows, Millionaire had bar none the best presentation. Jeopardy was studious and techy with its wall of screens. Wheel of Fortune was glitzy and fun. But Millionaire was serious business. The enormous stadium, the dramatic lighting, and the music. Goodness gracious, the music. It made you feel like the world was at stake. I got the idea to look for Millionaire's music on YouTube this morning, and I found it. It inspired me to write this post.
Here's a few tracks from Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
The 100- to 1000-dollar questions
The 2000-dollar question
The 64,000 dollar question (they actually use slightly different songs for these high-level questions, slowly increasing the pitch to make it more dramatic)
The million-dollar question
Contestant gets the million-dollar question correct
Contestant gets the million-dollar question wrong (it's suitably tragic)
Legends of the Hidden Temple
I should clarify that my ten-year-old game show watching was not the first time I watched game shows. The difference was that the first game shows I watched were specifically targeted at kids - Nickelodeon used to show lots of game shows, and I followed most of them. Legends of the Hidden Temple was my favorite of the group. This game show had an awesome setting that looked like ancient ruins in the jungle. The two competing teams of kids were chosen from a pool of possible team names, so there were recurring teams, but you didn't see the same teams every time. I think there was a Purple Monkey team, a Silver Spider team, and a Green Parrot team, among others (all animals you'd find in jungle ruins, of course). Adding to the spectacle was the character Olmec, a giant talking tiki head who explained the rules of each game.
After one team got enough points to beat the other team, the main event happened - a kid from the winning team was sent into the "hidden temple" itself - an obstacle course with different paths every episode. Temple Guards (hired staff) lurked in the temple, and would try to catch the kid before they could reach the goal. Winning the earlier games gave the team medallions they could use as "extra lives" to hold off a guard attack. The whole thing was extremely reminiscent of a real-life video game, and that's why I was so interested in it. It was a hard game, too - kids escaped the temple rarely enough that it was really thrilling when they managed to win!
Jeopardy
This was probably the first "adult" game show I ever watched. I remember thinking the "phrase your answer in the form of a question" rule was weird, and chalked it up to being Jeopardy's attempt to stand out from the pack. I generally wasn't very good at playing along on Jeopardy, so I got really excited when I knew the answer to a question. Or is that the question to an answer? Silly Jeopardy.
Wheel of Fortune
I liked Wheel of Fortune because the puzzles, being word-based and gradually revealed, were fun to try and solve. I always got upset when someone hit Bankrupt, though. I felt so bad for them.
The other thing I remember from Wheel of Fortune is the constant applauding. Everybody would clap every time the wheel was spun. And the wheel spun a lot. I recall making fun of the overeager applause more than once.
Who Wants to be a Millionaire
This was the game show that got me into watching game shows in the first place. I heard a lot of excitement over it when it premiered around the turn of the millennium, and I followed it fairly regularly for a while. Although I didn't enjoy how drawn out the show sometimes got (especially when they had to end the show on a tough question because they were out of time), I loved the fun questions at the beginning, the excitement of watching people win big sums of money, and especially the atmosphere.
Out of all the "adult" game shows, Millionaire had bar none the best presentation. Jeopardy was studious and techy with its wall of screens. Wheel of Fortune was glitzy and fun. But Millionaire was serious business. The enormous stadium, the dramatic lighting, and the music. Goodness gracious, the music. It made you feel like the world was at stake. I got the idea to look for Millionaire's music on YouTube this morning, and I found it. It inspired me to write this post.
Here's a few tracks from Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
The 100- to 1000-dollar questions
The 2000-dollar question
The 64,000 dollar question (they actually use slightly different songs for these high-level questions, slowly increasing the pitch to make it more dramatic)
The million-dollar question
Contestant gets the million-dollar question correct
Contestant gets the million-dollar question wrong (it's suitably tragic)
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
More Stores I Can Never Visit Again
I've always had an interest in the slowly changing landscape of my hometown and the surrounding area. I'm interested in the arrivals of new stores and the deaths of old stores. Last time I blogged about places I once shopped at but now no longer exist, I mentioned New England Video, Blockbuster, and Ames. Here are three more places from my past that are forever relegated to the world of my memory.
Shop n' Save
Back in the nineties, we had two big grocery stores to choose from: Shop n' Save and Grand Union. Since Shop n' Save shared a building with the almighty Ames, my family would frequently visit both stores in the same day to get all of our shopping done in just one trip. We had no loyalty to Shop n' Save, though, and visited Grand Union frequently too.
I remember walking into Shop n' Save. For all intents and purposes, it was your average grocery store - the automatic doors led past a corkboard with ads and bulletins posted on it, then you grabbed your shopping cart and made your way through the produce section before wandering through the aisles. Now, for whatever reason, I strongly associate Shop n' Save with high ceilings and the color silver. Whether other stores featured just as much silver or had ceilings just as high is irrelevant to my wild childhood imagination. That's the weird thing about memories.
Shop n' Save's death was a sudden one. After the falling of Ames, Shop n' Save plugged along on its own for a while. Then, when word spread that Shaw's Supermarkets was going to move into Ames' old space, I wondered what would become of Shop n' Save. Surely two grocery stores sharing the same building was an idea doomed to fail. Apparently Shop n' Save wasn't willing to compete, because they vanished at the exact same time Shaw's showed up.
Circuit City
This is a unique one - there was never a Circuit City in my hometown. You see, even after my family discovered how easy it was to buy things over the Internet, I still liked to occasionally shop in brick-and-mortar stores. My mom hates shopping, as does my brother, but I don't mind it much at all, despite my aversion of large crowds. Shopping in a physical building provides a unique feeling, and you get a different experience with different stores. They're also good for when I don't know what I want to buy - just browsing the shelves can turn up things I didn't know existed, whereas when I'm shopping online I usually have a single specific thing in mind, or at least a particular brand (Like, I may want "a Godzilla toy" but have no further specifics).
Anyway, since I still liked to shop in real stores, and especially in the first half of the 2000s, before my mom was totally comfortable with buying online, occasionally we'd go on a road trip to more populated areas with big stores. In the early and mid-2000s, we liked to shop at Wal-Mart in New Hampshire. A little later we started going to Williston, which boasted a Toys R Us and a Circuit City, among other things.
I realize I've been talking a lot and not really mentioning Circuit City, but that's because I don't have too much to say about Circuit City itself. I got a lot of GameCube games there, and the last time I went there I got some on deep discount when the system was on its way out, although due to the distance we missed the big liquidation sales. I don't miss it much, since on our next road trip, which I think happened before they went out of business, was to the nearby GameStop. I'd completely overlooked the place and I like it a lot for buying video games, especially used ones.
Dollar Depot
Next to Ames and New England Video, this is one of the stores I have the most fond memories of. Dollar Depot, which I always knew of as just "the dollar store", had a green dollar bill for a logo. True to its name, everything inside cost a buck. I remember visiting it many a time, impressed by the variety of things I could get for only one dollar. Generally, whenever I visited, I'd head straight to the back of the store, which was where the toys were. After poring over the shelves, I generally would move on to the right-hand side of the store. This was where the art supplies and books were, and I would frequently get something here as well. My most common purchases were plastic animal toys and notebooks to doodle on. I still have a couple old, worn, and doodle-filled notebooks from the Dollar Depot, as well as many of the toys I bought there.
The most memorable Dollar Depot acquisition for me is when they suddenly acquired a horde of Pokemon figurines. These 2-inch toys seemed like genuine official products (they may not have been, but they seemed equal in quality) and they were even imported from Japan (I recall the packaging being loaded with Japanese characters and very little English). My brother and I flipped out at this tremendous bargain (Ames charged a good bit more for Pokemon toys than a buck) and gathered up a bunch before they all sold out within a couple weeks.
The reason Dollar Depot went under is simple - in 2006, Dollar Tree took up residence in our town by moving in where Shop n' Save used to be. Dollar Depot was only a few miles away, and it couldn't compete with Dollar Tree's larger selection. Dollar Depot attempted to branch out by adding items that cost more than a dollar, but it didn't last long. In less than a year, Dollar Depot was wiped out. I love Dollar Tree, and Dollar Depot had been declining in terms of stuff I liked, but I still collected plenty of fond memories of the place.
Shop n' Save
Back in the nineties, we had two big grocery stores to choose from: Shop n' Save and Grand Union. Since Shop n' Save shared a building with the almighty Ames, my family would frequently visit both stores in the same day to get all of our shopping done in just one trip. We had no loyalty to Shop n' Save, though, and visited Grand Union frequently too.
I remember walking into Shop n' Save. For all intents and purposes, it was your average grocery store - the automatic doors led past a corkboard with ads and bulletins posted on it, then you grabbed your shopping cart and made your way through the produce section before wandering through the aisles. Now, for whatever reason, I strongly associate Shop n' Save with high ceilings and the color silver. Whether other stores featured just as much silver or had ceilings just as high is irrelevant to my wild childhood imagination. That's the weird thing about memories.
Shop n' Save's death was a sudden one. After the falling of Ames, Shop n' Save plugged along on its own for a while. Then, when word spread that Shaw's Supermarkets was going to move into Ames' old space, I wondered what would become of Shop n' Save. Surely two grocery stores sharing the same building was an idea doomed to fail. Apparently Shop n' Save wasn't willing to compete, because they vanished at the exact same time Shaw's showed up.
Circuit City
This is a unique one - there was never a Circuit City in my hometown. You see, even after my family discovered how easy it was to buy things over the Internet, I still liked to occasionally shop in brick-and-mortar stores. My mom hates shopping, as does my brother, but I don't mind it much at all, despite my aversion of large crowds. Shopping in a physical building provides a unique feeling, and you get a different experience with different stores. They're also good for when I don't know what I want to buy - just browsing the shelves can turn up things I didn't know existed, whereas when I'm shopping online I usually have a single specific thing in mind, or at least a particular brand (Like, I may want "a Godzilla toy" but have no further specifics).
Anyway, since I still liked to shop in real stores, and especially in the first half of the 2000s, before my mom was totally comfortable with buying online, occasionally we'd go on a road trip to more populated areas with big stores. In the early and mid-2000s, we liked to shop at Wal-Mart in New Hampshire. A little later we started going to Williston, which boasted a Toys R Us and a Circuit City, among other things.
I realize I've been talking a lot and not really mentioning Circuit City, but that's because I don't have too much to say about Circuit City itself. I got a lot of GameCube games there, and the last time I went there I got some on deep discount when the system was on its way out, although due to the distance we missed the big liquidation sales. I don't miss it much, since on our next road trip, which I think happened before they went out of business, was to the nearby GameStop. I'd completely overlooked the place and I like it a lot for buying video games, especially used ones.
Dollar Depot
Next to Ames and New England Video, this is one of the stores I have the most fond memories of. Dollar Depot, which I always knew of as just "the dollar store", had a green dollar bill for a logo. True to its name, everything inside cost a buck. I remember visiting it many a time, impressed by the variety of things I could get for only one dollar. Generally, whenever I visited, I'd head straight to the back of the store, which was where the toys were. After poring over the shelves, I generally would move on to the right-hand side of the store. This was where the art supplies and books were, and I would frequently get something here as well. My most common purchases were plastic animal toys and notebooks to doodle on. I still have a couple old, worn, and doodle-filled notebooks from the Dollar Depot, as well as many of the toys I bought there.
The most memorable Dollar Depot acquisition for me is when they suddenly acquired a horde of Pokemon figurines. These 2-inch toys seemed like genuine official products (they may not have been, but they seemed equal in quality) and they were even imported from Japan (I recall the packaging being loaded with Japanese characters and very little English). My brother and I flipped out at this tremendous bargain (Ames charged a good bit more for Pokemon toys than a buck) and gathered up a bunch before they all sold out within a couple weeks.
The reason Dollar Depot went under is simple - in 2006, Dollar Tree took up residence in our town by moving in where Shop n' Save used to be. Dollar Depot was only a few miles away, and it couldn't compete with Dollar Tree's larger selection. Dollar Depot attempted to branch out by adding items that cost more than a dollar, but it didn't last long. In less than a year, Dollar Depot was wiped out. I love Dollar Tree, and Dollar Depot had been declining in terms of stuff I liked, but I still collected plenty of fond memories of the place.
Friday, February 3, 2012
The Great Lunchbox Mystery
When I was in elementary school, for a few years I had a bit of a reputation as a mystery solver. Whenever something strange or mysterious happened on school grounds, I'd announce that I would "get to the bottom of this mystery", and that my fellow students were welcome to assist me in looking for clues. They frequently did - kids love a good mystery.
One morning, in elementary school, for some reason or another I opened the classroom's fire escape door (I believe I was placing something out there as part of a chore, but I no longer recall for sure) and was greeted with a strange sight. Before me on the concrete walk surrounding the school lay a shard of brightly colored plastic. Immediately switching to my detective persona, I announced my find and asked both the teacher and my classmates what they thought it could be. Nobody had any idea. Without leads, the case seemed closed, but a week later I got my first clue.
It was during recess in late fall. More plastic shards were discovered, these of a different color. This time there were enough to match up a few and determine what the shattered object had been. The answer was that these shards belonged to a plastic lunchbox, of a type many children had (including myself). These lunchboxes never struck me as being particularly fragile, and with this new clue the mystery had only deepened. We'd answered the "what". Now came the "who" and "why". Frustratingly, neither myself nor my friends could fathom an answer, and the mysterious box-smasher was continually claiming more victims – for months I would find familiar shards on the ground. My classmates, knowing I was trying to solve the case, frequently brought me more shards to puzzle over. The low point of the case was in midwinter, when I foolishly left my Goosebumps-themed lunchbox unattended outside, and it too fell to the box-smasher's scythe. Having my own lunchbox be claimed by the box-smasher just made me more determined. Now it was personal.
While I had a good overall record with my "mysteries", this one went unsolved, even though it was the biggest and longest-researched case I'd ever undertaken. Most of my other mysteries were simple, harmless affairs, but the box-smasher was destroying other people's property, and I would have loved so much to see my sleuthing bring them to justice. Sadly, it never happened. All I could conclude, after months of investigation during recess, was that the box-smasher was probably an older child from fifth or sixth grade. They always smashed the boxes outdoors and, while maybe scattering pieces, were very sloppy about leaving evidence behind, probably to traumatize the owner. The lunchbox thermos was never damaged, but it was sometimes missing or stolen. In late winter or early spring, the attacks ceased, and never resumed. It’s been over ten years since then, and this is one cold case that’s never going to be solved.
One morning, in elementary school, for some reason or another I opened the classroom's fire escape door (I believe I was placing something out there as part of a chore, but I no longer recall for sure) and was greeted with a strange sight. Before me on the concrete walk surrounding the school lay a shard of brightly colored plastic. Immediately switching to my detective persona, I announced my find and asked both the teacher and my classmates what they thought it could be. Nobody had any idea. Without leads, the case seemed closed, but a week later I got my first clue.
It was during recess in late fall. More plastic shards were discovered, these of a different color. This time there were enough to match up a few and determine what the shattered object had been. The answer was that these shards belonged to a plastic lunchbox, of a type many children had (including myself). These lunchboxes never struck me as being particularly fragile, and with this new clue the mystery had only deepened. We'd answered the "what". Now came the "who" and "why". Frustratingly, neither myself nor my friends could fathom an answer, and the mysterious box-smasher was continually claiming more victims – for months I would find familiar shards on the ground. My classmates, knowing I was trying to solve the case, frequently brought me more shards to puzzle over. The low point of the case was in midwinter, when I foolishly left my Goosebumps-themed lunchbox unattended outside, and it too fell to the box-smasher's scythe. Having my own lunchbox be claimed by the box-smasher just made me more determined. Now it was personal.
While I had a good overall record with my "mysteries", this one went unsolved, even though it was the biggest and longest-researched case I'd ever undertaken. Most of my other mysteries were simple, harmless affairs, but the box-smasher was destroying other people's property, and I would have loved so much to see my sleuthing bring them to justice. Sadly, it never happened. All I could conclude, after months of investigation during recess, was that the box-smasher was probably an older child from fifth or sixth grade. They always smashed the boxes outdoors and, while maybe scattering pieces, were very sloppy about leaving evidence behind, probably to traumatize the owner. The lunchbox thermos was never damaged, but it was sometimes missing or stolen. In late winter or early spring, the attacks ceased, and never resumed. It’s been over ten years since then, and this is one cold case that’s never going to be solved.
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Holiday Surprises
I know it's a little late to be writing about Christmas (or really, REALLY early, depending on how you look at it) but I wanted to share a few memories of the holiday season that showed how my mom can occasionally get the best of me and surprise me with a gift I didn't expect.
Christmas 2000
It was customary during the great unwrapping of gifts for my mom to direct me to certain presents and steer me away from "the big one" that was to be saved for the end. The "big one" this year was a Game Boy Color video game system. However, as I was looking it over, I was hit by a horrible realization. We had gotten video game systems in the house before, and they had always come with a free game included so you didn't have to buy anything else. However, the Game Boy Color was packaged alone. Not only that, but the video game I wanted the Game Boy for in the first place wasn't here, and there were no more presents under the tree. I tried to explain the situation to my mom, and she just casually strolled over to the tree, reached into the branches, and pulled out another present. It was the game I wanted. You win, mom.
Christmas 2007
This year I was very interested in getting a game for my Nintendo Wii system. My mom said she'd try to get it. Along the way, she decided to try the old "they were sold out" trick. When she opened a conversation with me by saying "About that game you wanted..." I jumped to conclusions.
You see, this game was made for more than one system. I thought she had accidentally bought the PlayStation 2 version of the game instead of the Wii one, which was useless since our house did not have a PlayStation 2, never mind that I'd heard the Wii version was much better. I imagined she may have gotten the PlayStation 2 game because it was ten dollars cheaper, not noticing that it was for the wrong system. When I asked as much, she agreed. "Yeah, that's what happened. Sorry. You'll have to wait until after Christmas when I can return it." Of course, she'd gotten exactly what I'd asked for, and I wound up getting duped again. By a plot I'd come up with FOR her, no less.
I have to stop assuming my mom is a complete dullard when it comes to video games. She is generally aware of how they work and what you need to play, but she's tricked me more than once by feigning ignorance.
Christmas 2000
It was customary during the great unwrapping of gifts for my mom to direct me to certain presents and steer me away from "the big one" that was to be saved for the end. The "big one" this year was a Game Boy Color video game system. However, as I was looking it over, I was hit by a horrible realization. We had gotten video game systems in the house before, and they had always come with a free game included so you didn't have to buy anything else. However, the Game Boy Color was packaged alone. Not only that, but the video game I wanted the Game Boy for in the first place wasn't here, and there were no more presents under the tree. I tried to explain the situation to my mom, and she just casually strolled over to the tree, reached into the branches, and pulled out another present. It was the game I wanted. You win, mom.
Christmas 2007
This year I was very interested in getting a game for my Nintendo Wii system. My mom said she'd try to get it. Along the way, she decided to try the old "they were sold out" trick. When she opened a conversation with me by saying "About that game you wanted..." I jumped to conclusions.
You see, this game was made for more than one system. I thought she had accidentally bought the PlayStation 2 version of the game instead of the Wii one, which was useless since our house did not have a PlayStation 2, never mind that I'd heard the Wii version was much better. I imagined she may have gotten the PlayStation 2 game because it was ten dollars cheaper, not noticing that it was for the wrong system. When I asked as much, she agreed. "Yeah, that's what happened. Sorry. You'll have to wait until after Christmas when I can return it." Of course, she'd gotten exactly what I'd asked for, and I wound up getting duped again. By a plot I'd come up with FOR her, no less.
I have to stop assuming my mom is a complete dullard when it comes to video games. She is generally aware of how they work and what you need to play, but she's tricked me more than once by feigning ignorance.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Stores I Can Never Visit Again
I'm only 22 years old, but that's still old enough to have visited places that no longer exist. As I've grown up, my home town and the surrounding towns have changed. There are a number of places I visited as a child - some very frequently - that closed their doors later, and I genuinely miss some of them.
New England Video
This was a local video rental store that was a very popular destination for me and my brother from the mid-90s up until the early 2000s. While I enjoyed renting the occasional VHS tape from the kid's section (most frequently a Disney film or Garfield cartoon), the main reason for me to visit New England Video was the extensive collection of video games for the Sega Genesis system. I grew up with the Genesis, and it was a big part of my childhood. There are a number of games for it that I closely associate with New England Video because I rented them so frequently. Later, around 1999, my family got a Nintendo 64, and we rented games for that very frequently as well.
In the mid-2000s, New England Video began to falter from my perspective. They started selling off their collections of Genesis and N64 games, and my brother and I took advantage to pick up some of our old favorites. However, their selection of games for the next set of video game systems was lacking. It was a stark contrast to the all-star lineup of awesome games they had for older systems, and it was worrying. Another problem was that I wasn't and have never been a huge movie buff, so their VHS collection and their new DVDs weren't attracting me either. Without game rentals, I cared little for the store, and we stopped visiting around 2005. New England Video technically still exists (although they've moved twice, once when I was still visiting and once after), but I haven't been inside in years and it's not the store I grew up with anymore. I have, however, passed by it frequently, and it has one of those signs out front with the interchangeable letters that talks about movies you "won't find at RedBox". Exclusivity or not, RedBox and NetFlix are killing the video rental store, and I can't imagine New England Video hanging on much longer.
BlockBuster
Another video rental store. Blockbuster was late to the game, showing up around 2006, just in time for the launch of the latest wave of video game systems (The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii). Like New England Video, game rentals were what I cared about. I rented from Blockbuster a few times and discovered some good games, but I never got into it as much as I had New England Video. Within a couple years, the Blockbuster franchise was sold and renamed the incredibly silly "Moose Mountain", which sounds more like a mini-golf course or a hunting supply store than it does a video rental shop. Predictably, Moose Mountain folded in under a year.
Ames
This is the big one. This is the greatest shopping tragedy of my childhood. I loved Ames. Loved it like you wouldn't believe. It was the only full-fledged department store in town, and it was the de facto destination whenever my family needed something. Clothes? Go to Ames. Toys? Stop by Ames. Holiday decorations? Ames again. They had just about everything. This was the place my family bought a lot of things that were near and dear to me. I remember the time my brother and I came here with our savings and bought the Nintendo 64. I remember walking through the holiday aisles around Christmas time, seeing the displays of those little Christmas town figurines. I remember reading a Pokemon comic book while relaxing on a chair in the furniture section. And speaking of Pokemon, I remember buying pack after pack of Pokemon trading cards, eagerly collecting as many as I could.
In my mind, there was always going to be an Ames. It was a constant presence. Tons of people shopped there. It was the biggest fish the the small pond that was my hometown. And it was a chain - there were Ames stores all over the place, in other states, across the country! Truly, it was too big to fail.
It was in 2002 when the news spread. Ames was going out of business. Not scaling back to just the profitable stores (ours had to be profitable, there's no doubt in my mind). Going away forever. I was distraught. Ames was the best place in town for so many things! How could it vanish? Where would we go? There wasn't anywhere else in town that sold video games, and the selections of other merchandise left much to be desired. As it turned out, our town would never see another department store. Fortunately, my family eventually discovered the wonders of buying things online, and we've had little difficulty finding things to buy since.
The liquidation sale was a fun last hurrah. I was able to get a bunch of stuff for cheap. At the time, I was a big Spongebob Squarepants fan, so I got a bunch of Spongebob toys. I also remember getting a Halloween CD and Pac-Man for the Sega Game Gear. A year or two after Ames' demise, the space was filled by a grocery store (Shaw's). I still miss Ames even now, and if I had the chance to go back in time and visit any store again, this is definitely the one I'd pick.
Funny thing. I hadn't realized this until now, but this year is the tenth anniversary of Ames' demise. On August 14, it will have been 10 years since the announcement that every remaining Ames would close. Isn't that something else?
Here's a commercial Ames played to advertise their going-out-of-business sales. I only wish I'd had more money to take even better advantage of the liquidation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yr8fhtM4lk
And here's what Wikipedia has to say about Ames:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Department_Stores_Inc.
New England Video
This was a local video rental store that was a very popular destination for me and my brother from the mid-90s up until the early 2000s. While I enjoyed renting the occasional VHS tape from the kid's section (most frequently a Disney film or Garfield cartoon), the main reason for me to visit New England Video was the extensive collection of video games for the Sega Genesis system. I grew up with the Genesis, and it was a big part of my childhood. There are a number of games for it that I closely associate with New England Video because I rented them so frequently. Later, around 1999, my family got a Nintendo 64, and we rented games for that very frequently as well.
In the mid-2000s, New England Video began to falter from my perspective. They started selling off their collections of Genesis and N64 games, and my brother and I took advantage to pick up some of our old favorites. However, their selection of games for the next set of video game systems was lacking. It was a stark contrast to the all-star lineup of awesome games they had for older systems, and it was worrying. Another problem was that I wasn't and have never been a huge movie buff, so their VHS collection and their new DVDs weren't attracting me either. Without game rentals, I cared little for the store, and we stopped visiting around 2005. New England Video technically still exists (although they've moved twice, once when I was still visiting and once after), but I haven't been inside in years and it's not the store I grew up with anymore. I have, however, passed by it frequently, and it has one of those signs out front with the interchangeable letters that talks about movies you "won't find at RedBox". Exclusivity or not, RedBox and NetFlix are killing the video rental store, and I can't imagine New England Video hanging on much longer.
BlockBuster
Another video rental store. Blockbuster was late to the game, showing up around 2006, just in time for the launch of the latest wave of video game systems (The PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii). Like New England Video, game rentals were what I cared about. I rented from Blockbuster a few times and discovered some good games, but I never got into it as much as I had New England Video. Within a couple years, the Blockbuster franchise was sold and renamed the incredibly silly "Moose Mountain", which sounds more like a mini-golf course or a hunting supply store than it does a video rental shop. Predictably, Moose Mountain folded in under a year.
Ames
This is the big one. This is the greatest shopping tragedy of my childhood. I loved Ames. Loved it like you wouldn't believe. It was the only full-fledged department store in town, and it was the de facto destination whenever my family needed something. Clothes? Go to Ames. Toys? Stop by Ames. Holiday decorations? Ames again. They had just about everything. This was the place my family bought a lot of things that were near and dear to me. I remember the time my brother and I came here with our savings and bought the Nintendo 64. I remember walking through the holiday aisles around Christmas time, seeing the displays of those little Christmas town figurines. I remember reading a Pokemon comic book while relaxing on a chair in the furniture section. And speaking of Pokemon, I remember buying pack after pack of Pokemon trading cards, eagerly collecting as many as I could.
In my mind, there was always going to be an Ames. It was a constant presence. Tons of people shopped there. It was the biggest fish the the small pond that was my hometown. And it was a chain - there were Ames stores all over the place, in other states, across the country! Truly, it was too big to fail.
It was in 2002 when the news spread. Ames was going out of business. Not scaling back to just the profitable stores (ours had to be profitable, there's no doubt in my mind). Going away forever. I was distraught. Ames was the best place in town for so many things! How could it vanish? Where would we go? There wasn't anywhere else in town that sold video games, and the selections of other merchandise left much to be desired. As it turned out, our town would never see another department store. Fortunately, my family eventually discovered the wonders of buying things online, and we've had little difficulty finding things to buy since.
The liquidation sale was a fun last hurrah. I was able to get a bunch of stuff for cheap. At the time, I was a big Spongebob Squarepants fan, so I got a bunch of Spongebob toys. I also remember getting a Halloween CD and Pac-Man for the Sega Game Gear. A year or two after Ames' demise, the space was filled by a grocery store (Shaw's). I still miss Ames even now, and if I had the chance to go back in time and visit any store again, this is definitely the one I'd pick.
Funny thing. I hadn't realized this until now, but this year is the tenth anniversary of Ames' demise. On August 14, it will have been 10 years since the announcement that every remaining Ames would close. Isn't that something else?
Here's a commercial Ames played to advertise their going-out-of-business sales. I only wish I'd had more money to take even better advantage of the liquidation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Yr8fhtM4lk
And here's what Wikipedia has to say about Ames:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ames_Department_Stores_Inc.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Frog Memories
Up here in Vermont, we don't see too many reptiles. Turtles live in some of the lakes, but I never discovered one myself - last year I saw one as roadkill, and when I was a child my grandfather brought over a turtle he'd caught to show me. And, as I mentioned in my post about Edgeworth, snakes are even more elusive. I've never seen a wild lizard at all. But amphibians are another matter entirely, and frogs have been part of my summers since early childhood.
My first experience with a wild frog was at a young age, around five or six. I was outside playing when I wandered over to one of my favorite spots, a water-filled ditch on a dirt road by my house. I had a lot of good times at this ditch, and I'll give it its own blog post later, but for now I'll focus on this one incident. I looked into the puddle and saw, peering back at me, the head of a frog. Just the head. With great excitement I ran into the house to tell my mom, eagerly shouting that I had found... a "turtle".
Yes, thanks partly to only seeing the head, partly being startled by something new, and partly being six years old, I thought the frog was a turtle. My mom told me so when she got a look at it, but my enthusiasm was only slightly diminished (turtles were my favorite animals at the time). This was the first of a number of summers that frogs would populate the ditch, although they weren't there every year.
Another, slightly later, memory of frogs comes from after my brother and I stopped using our kiddy pool but before it was thrown out. The pool was filled with outdoor toys and a few inches of rainwater. At the ditch one day I caught a frog, and around the same time I discovered a small brown toad hopping near our houses' back wall. I decided to try keeping the two amphibians in the kiddy pool. While the frog managed to hop out after a day or two, the toad stuck around for at least a week before finally escaping. I remember he wasn't a very good swimmer, but he certainly tried. I also remember taking him and holding him every day when I checked on him. I was always careful to wash my hands afterward, of course, thanks to reading about how some toads secrete poison.
One summer, I came into possession of a small frog and a larger frog. Aside from their size, they were identical. I kept the two of them in a tall bucket and checked in on them every day, occasionally tossing in bugs. They were always sitting in the same positions. One day I was in my room reading when I suddenly realized I hadn't fed the frogs in quite some time. Dashing to the garage, I saw the big frog in his usual pose, but the little frog was gone. I hurriedly released the larger frog into the ditch, solemnly acknowledging the smaller frog's obvious fate.
I still see frogs every so often, and thanks to childhood memories like these, frogs have a way of taking me back to the nineties, when so many of my fondest memories were made as a kid.
My first experience with a wild frog was at a young age, around five or six. I was outside playing when I wandered over to one of my favorite spots, a water-filled ditch on a dirt road by my house. I had a lot of good times at this ditch, and I'll give it its own blog post later, but for now I'll focus on this one incident. I looked into the puddle and saw, peering back at me, the head of a frog. Just the head. With great excitement I ran into the house to tell my mom, eagerly shouting that I had found... a "turtle".
Yes, thanks partly to only seeing the head, partly being startled by something new, and partly being six years old, I thought the frog was a turtle. My mom told me so when she got a look at it, but my enthusiasm was only slightly diminished (turtles were my favorite animals at the time). This was the first of a number of summers that frogs would populate the ditch, although they weren't there every year.
Another, slightly later, memory of frogs comes from after my brother and I stopped using our kiddy pool but before it was thrown out. The pool was filled with outdoor toys and a few inches of rainwater. At the ditch one day I caught a frog, and around the same time I discovered a small brown toad hopping near our houses' back wall. I decided to try keeping the two amphibians in the kiddy pool. While the frog managed to hop out after a day or two, the toad stuck around for at least a week before finally escaping. I remember he wasn't a very good swimmer, but he certainly tried. I also remember taking him and holding him every day when I checked on him. I was always careful to wash my hands afterward, of course, thanks to reading about how some toads secrete poison.
One summer, I came into possession of a small frog and a larger frog. Aside from their size, they were identical. I kept the two of them in a tall bucket and checked in on them every day, occasionally tossing in bugs. They were always sitting in the same positions. One day I was in my room reading when I suddenly realized I hadn't fed the frogs in quite some time. Dashing to the garage, I saw the big frog in his usual pose, but the little frog was gone. I hurriedly released the larger frog into the ditch, solemnly acknowledging the smaller frog's obvious fate.
I still see frogs every so often, and thanks to childhood memories like these, frogs have a way of taking me back to the nineties, when so many of my fondest memories were made as a kid.
Wednesday, January 25, 2012
Happy Endings and my Mind's Eye
There are plenty of ways to end a story. Horror stories frequently end poorly, with the looming threat either regrouping in another location or winning outright. Some stories, especially true stories, may end on a sad or downbeat note, such as the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? But the most common type of ending to a story is the happy ending - the ending where everything turns out all right. I've always liked happy endings, and I gravitate towards them when writing. What is it about them that makes me want them?
One important thing about the happy ending is that most or all of the characters get what they deserve. The heroes are rewarded, the villains are jailed, killed, or otherwise dealt with, and there's a bright future ahead. I have always had a strong sense of truth and equality, so it's important to me that justice is served.
And that's another thing - why is it so important that justice be served when the story is fictional? Easy - another one of my reasons for wanting a happy ending is that I tend to get attached to the story's characters. I have a vivid imagination, and when I read a book I see characters interacting in my mind's eye. My imagination will frequently make things interesting by making the characters into other characters I've seen in movies, cartoons, video games, and so on. It will latch on to certain names or details and craft characters around them from other areas of pop culture, no matter how ridiculous the result is. As an example, I once read a book with a character whose last name was Webber. For some reason my mind went on the following path: Webber > webbed feet > ducks > Daffy Duck. The character was then Daffy Duck, no matter how hard I may have wished he wasn't. That is the sort of imagination I deal with when I read.
So anyway, the point of this is that I'm left with a crazy lineup of characters from both my childhood and recent years interacting every time I read a book - some making more sense than others. But this process has not only allowed the characters to come to life in my mind's eye, it also makes them more endearing and interesting. I grow attached to the characters as they interact throughout the book, and if things end badly for them I tend to get a little upset. I may cry, if it was a hard-hitting enough event.
Now, I talk about all this because I have encountered two books in particular that stuck out at me for being interesting, entertaining, and great reads - until the closing chapters, whereupon they twisted into unhappy endings that completely ruined the entire story for me. I'm going to be spoiling both books' endings, so if anyone here happens to be reading these books, don't finish the paragraphs!
The first book was one I read in class for high school, and I no longer remember the name. It was about a large group of dignitaries from all over the world meeting at a single mansion. The mansion was then taken over by terrorists and all the dignitaries (plus a female singer who was there to perform for them) were taken as hostages. Over the course of the book the hostages and terrorists begin to see eye to eye with each other. They form friendships, and when a couple of the terrorists are found to be female, love even begins to blossom. And then... a SWAT team storms the mansion and kills every single one of the terrorists. And I had really been enjoying it, too, hoping that these teenage soldiers who had never known happiness could be turned around, brought back from the brink, and escape or survive the story. But no. Instead, the story ended with the unceremonious killing off of half the cast, taking away all of the most sympathetic characters and with it, my interest.
The second book was found several years ago at a yard sale. Titled Warriors, it's about a middle-aged former fighter pilot getting called back into service for one last war. Along the way he winds up falling in love with a woman around his age. Their romance grows, and the fighting sequences were exciting. But then, halfway though the story, the woman is murdered by the opposing army when a soldier breaks in and shoots her to death while she's taking a bath. The story took a hit here, but I kept reading... until the final battle ends with the dropping of a tactical nuke, killing the main character as well. The story ends with his goofy best friend (who was also recommissioned) being the most important character to have survived the events of the story. Again, the author thought I would still enjoy the book if all of the most interesting and likable characters were slaughtered. And he was wrong. A bad ending can ruin an entire story for me, and so it was with Warriors, which I bitterly shelved after finishing it, never to read it again, my opinion of it forever poisoned by the terrible ending.
Like many people, I read books and watch movies to "escape" into a fantasy world where I can look into the lives of heroes, villains, and everyday folks as they take on challenges and try to come out on top of each other's plans. That is why I like the happy ending - it is cathartic, it is pleasing, it is what I came for. I know the importance of heroes overcoming difficulties and dealing with setbacks, but if they don't triumph in the end it leaves me wondering what the point was.
One important thing about the happy ending is that most or all of the characters get what they deserve. The heroes are rewarded, the villains are jailed, killed, or otherwise dealt with, and there's a bright future ahead. I have always had a strong sense of truth and equality, so it's important to me that justice is served.
And that's another thing - why is it so important that justice be served when the story is fictional? Easy - another one of my reasons for wanting a happy ending is that I tend to get attached to the story's characters. I have a vivid imagination, and when I read a book I see characters interacting in my mind's eye. My imagination will frequently make things interesting by making the characters into other characters I've seen in movies, cartoons, video games, and so on. It will latch on to certain names or details and craft characters around them from other areas of pop culture, no matter how ridiculous the result is. As an example, I once read a book with a character whose last name was Webber. For some reason my mind went on the following path: Webber > webbed feet > ducks > Daffy Duck. The character was then Daffy Duck, no matter how hard I may have wished he wasn't. That is the sort of imagination I deal with when I read.
So anyway, the point of this is that I'm left with a crazy lineup of characters from both my childhood and recent years interacting every time I read a book - some making more sense than others. But this process has not only allowed the characters to come to life in my mind's eye, it also makes them more endearing and interesting. I grow attached to the characters as they interact throughout the book, and if things end badly for them I tend to get a little upset. I may cry, if it was a hard-hitting enough event.
Now, I talk about all this because I have encountered two books in particular that stuck out at me for being interesting, entertaining, and great reads - until the closing chapters, whereupon they twisted into unhappy endings that completely ruined the entire story for me. I'm going to be spoiling both books' endings, so if anyone here happens to be reading these books, don't finish the paragraphs!
The first book was one I read in class for high school, and I no longer remember the name. It was about a large group of dignitaries from all over the world meeting at a single mansion. The mansion was then taken over by terrorists and all the dignitaries (plus a female singer who was there to perform for them) were taken as hostages. Over the course of the book the hostages and terrorists begin to see eye to eye with each other. They form friendships, and when a couple of the terrorists are found to be female, love even begins to blossom. And then... a SWAT team storms the mansion and kills every single one of the terrorists. And I had really been enjoying it, too, hoping that these teenage soldiers who had never known happiness could be turned around, brought back from the brink, and escape or survive the story. But no. Instead, the story ended with the unceremonious killing off of half the cast, taking away all of the most sympathetic characters and with it, my interest.
The second book was found several years ago at a yard sale. Titled Warriors, it's about a middle-aged former fighter pilot getting called back into service for one last war. Along the way he winds up falling in love with a woman around his age. Their romance grows, and the fighting sequences were exciting. But then, halfway though the story, the woman is murdered by the opposing army when a soldier breaks in and shoots her to death while she's taking a bath. The story took a hit here, but I kept reading... until the final battle ends with the dropping of a tactical nuke, killing the main character as well. The story ends with his goofy best friend (who was also recommissioned) being the most important character to have survived the events of the story. Again, the author thought I would still enjoy the book if all of the most interesting and likable characters were slaughtered. And he was wrong. A bad ending can ruin an entire story for me, and so it was with Warriors, which I bitterly shelved after finishing it, never to read it again, my opinion of it forever poisoned by the terrible ending.
Like many people, I read books and watch movies to "escape" into a fantasy world where I can look into the lives of heroes, villains, and everyday folks as they take on challenges and try to come out on top of each other's plans. That is why I like the happy ending - it is cathartic, it is pleasing, it is what I came for. I know the importance of heroes overcoming difficulties and dealing with setbacks, but if they don't triumph in the end it leaves me wondering what the point was.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Technology Marches On
When I was in elementary school, I remember there were a few years where the school "advertised", for lack of a better word, a special event kids were encouraged to take part in. This event consisted of going an entire week without watching television. Looking it up, I've found that it's still being practiced - it's a week in April called "TV Turnoff Week".
The idea behind TV Turnoff Week is simple: If kids don't have television, they'll be more active, or play together, or read, or something else conceived as better than television. But the problem with technology is that it's always changing, and television does not have anywhere near the pull now it did in the nineties - and so, turning it off for a week makes far less of an impact.
As a child, my thoughts of TV Turnoff Week were simple: I felt it was extreme, and believed it unnecessary. I never participated. I was a pretty well-rounded kid (albeit solitary aside from my brother) - sure, I watched Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and occasionally the Disney Channel, but I had other pursuits. I played outside. I doodled. I was an avid reader. Toys and video games and coloring books all occupied niches of my time. I didn't feel that television dominated my life enough to be a horrible problem I had to evict - and at the same time, I dearly enjoyed my regular shows and didn't want to miss out on them.
Flash-forward to today. As it turns out, I've been participating in TV Turnoff Week for at least two years now. Back in 2009, after going back and forth between several cable plans, my family made the decision to drop all television. Although we still have four televisions in the house, not a single one is used for actually watching television shows. Two of them have VCRs hooked up to them. All four have a video game system connected. None receive any cable or over-the-air channels. This is what we use television sets for now, and I couldn't be happier with it. In the past, we had the television on for most of the day as background noise, and as I grew older and found fewer and fewer shows I cared about watching, I didn't enjoy it. But now? No commercials, no blaring news or reality shows, and no having to listen to dramatic weigh-in scenes on The Biggest Loser or studio applause on Wheel of Fortune when I'm trying to sleep.
So what happened? We had VCRs and video games in the nineties, and I loved TV then. Why do I no longer care about it? The answer's right in front of you. The Internet absolutely destroys television in terms of user enjoyment, real-world application, practicality, and entertainment value. It's "on-demand" - I don't have to wait till 8 PM to access my favorite websites. They (generally) aren't interrupted by loud, unwanted ads. And if you must have something to watch, there's plenty for free thanks to places like YouTube and Crackle. As a result, the Internet has completely replaced television as one of my entertainment sources, and does things TV could never do. This is why I was so enthusiastic when joining this week's protests against Internet censorship - we can't afford to lose something this valuable.
And don't expect an "Internet Turnoff Week", either - thanks to online schooling, e-textbooks, scholarly articles, social networking and Wikipedia, the Internet and computers in general have proven to be useful in academia as well. Technology marches on, and I'm always interested to see how it develops and changes the world next.
The idea behind TV Turnoff Week is simple: If kids don't have television, they'll be more active, or play together, or read, or something else conceived as better than television. But the problem with technology is that it's always changing, and television does not have anywhere near the pull now it did in the nineties - and so, turning it off for a week makes far less of an impact.
As a child, my thoughts of TV Turnoff Week were simple: I felt it was extreme, and believed it unnecessary. I never participated. I was a pretty well-rounded kid (albeit solitary aside from my brother) - sure, I watched Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and occasionally the Disney Channel, but I had other pursuits. I played outside. I doodled. I was an avid reader. Toys and video games and coloring books all occupied niches of my time. I didn't feel that television dominated my life enough to be a horrible problem I had to evict - and at the same time, I dearly enjoyed my regular shows and didn't want to miss out on them.
Flash-forward to today. As it turns out, I've been participating in TV Turnoff Week for at least two years now. Back in 2009, after going back and forth between several cable plans, my family made the decision to drop all television. Although we still have four televisions in the house, not a single one is used for actually watching television shows. Two of them have VCRs hooked up to them. All four have a video game system connected. None receive any cable or over-the-air channels. This is what we use television sets for now, and I couldn't be happier with it. In the past, we had the television on for most of the day as background noise, and as I grew older and found fewer and fewer shows I cared about watching, I didn't enjoy it. But now? No commercials, no blaring news or reality shows, and no having to listen to dramatic weigh-in scenes on The Biggest Loser or studio applause on Wheel of Fortune when I'm trying to sleep.
So what happened? We had VCRs and video games in the nineties, and I loved TV then. Why do I no longer care about it? The answer's right in front of you. The Internet absolutely destroys television in terms of user enjoyment, real-world application, practicality, and entertainment value. It's "on-demand" - I don't have to wait till 8 PM to access my favorite websites. They (generally) aren't interrupted by loud, unwanted ads. And if you must have something to watch, there's plenty for free thanks to places like YouTube and Crackle. As a result, the Internet has completely replaced television as one of my entertainment sources, and does things TV could never do. This is why I was so enthusiastic when joining this week's protests against Internet censorship - we can't afford to lose something this valuable.
And don't expect an "Internet Turnoff Week", either - thanks to online schooling, e-textbooks, scholarly articles, social networking and Wikipedia, the Internet and computers in general have proven to be useful in academia as well. Technology marches on, and I'm always interested to see how it develops and changes the world next.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Meet Edgeworth the Garter Snake
In November of 2009 I was walking our family dog, Ginger (an adorable chihuahua I'll share pictures of another time) when I noticed something moving through the nearby grass. To my surprise, it was a garter snake. I knew garter snakes lived in Vermont, but I had not seen one since my elementary school days when a fellow student found one on the school's open field where sports where played. My shock quickly gave way to very pleasant surprise - the snake had been one of my favorite animals for a long time, and for a period of time in elementary school it was my absolute favorite animal (that title, by the way, belongs to a different creature now. I'll write more later).
Needless to say, I couldn't waste this opportunity. I scooped up the snake in a plastic sandwich bag that would have housed Ginger's business if she had done any yet, and after making sure she didn't have to use the bathroom, I brought her - and the snake - inside.
Step One on the road to snake ownership was complete - I had a snake. And fortunately, I had a place to put him - albeit a temporary one. As I mentioned in my story of the monarch butterfly, I like to keep insects and spiders in a plastic container. Step Two of snake ownership - naming the snake - was easy. After a bit of thought, I decided to name him "Edgeworth". I selected this name (which I got from a video game character) because I thought taking a stuffy, pretentious, and high-class name like that and applying it to a tiny, harmless snake would be funny. Step Three was going to be difficult, though - convincing my mom.
She wasn't exactly in favor.
For the next couple days, the snake (and the entire bug container) was quarantined on the porch. Every so often I'd take him out and hold him. Aside from his fearful reaction of vacating his bowels on my hands, Edgeworth accepted the holding. However, it was November, and although we were in a fairly warm period, I knew Edgeworth wouldn't be able to keep this up. A conversation with my mom made things clear.
"So what happens if we leave it out here?", Mom asked.
"He'll die." I replied matter-of-factly.
My mom may hate snakes, but it's pretty hard for her to outright let an animal die. She relented and allowed Edgeworth back inside, and the container went back in its correct place in my room.
Next, I had to figure out how to feed Edgeworth (garter snakes have varied diets depending on species and even individuals). After some trial-and-error including buying him mealworms and crickets at the pet shop, I hit upon earthworms as Edgeworth's favorite food - he refused everything else I tried. After that, I needed to find him a better home - although he was only eight inches long, that was still a bit big for the bug container, and he also seemed very antsy about being exposed - I needed some decorations for him. For Christmas that year I got a much larger container from the same company that manufactured my bug container called the Reptile Ranch. I decked out the Ranch with a cave, a branch from a tree outside, a water bowl, and the crickets and mealworms came along to give him some company. I'd read that garter snakes enjoy seeing things moving around, and since I couldn't place him somewhere that got a lot of human/pet activity I had to substitute insects.
Now fully tricked out (last year I added fake moss, a fake cactus, and a vinyl rose), Edgeworth is suddenly living a life of comfort - a big change from that November day. He's now over a foot in length, and he's fed store-bought nightcrawlers and requires little else except an occasional litter change and fresh water. He may not be as loving as a dog or cat, or as fulfilling, but he fills a unique niche nonetheless, and I sometimes talk to him (although I don't confide in him). I'm glad I met him, and I'm happy that my mother could, in some small way, overcome her snake phobia. She still likes to insult him jokingly, and refuses to touch him, and insists there will never be another snake in the family, but it's progress all the same.
All of this talking and you still haven't actually MET Edgeworth! There he is below (this photo is roughly a year old, but he hasn't changed much except gotten a bit bigger). Click the photo to enlarge it.
Here's Wikipedia's entry on garter snakes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake
Needless to say, I couldn't waste this opportunity. I scooped up the snake in a plastic sandwich bag that would have housed Ginger's business if she had done any yet, and after making sure she didn't have to use the bathroom, I brought her - and the snake - inside.
Step One on the road to snake ownership was complete - I had a snake. And fortunately, I had a place to put him - albeit a temporary one. As I mentioned in my story of the monarch butterfly, I like to keep insects and spiders in a plastic container. Step Two of snake ownership - naming the snake - was easy. After a bit of thought, I decided to name him "Edgeworth". I selected this name (which I got from a video game character) because I thought taking a stuffy, pretentious, and high-class name like that and applying it to a tiny, harmless snake would be funny. Step Three was going to be difficult, though - convincing my mom.
She wasn't exactly in favor.
For the next couple days, the snake (and the entire bug container) was quarantined on the porch. Every so often I'd take him out and hold him. Aside from his fearful reaction of vacating his bowels on my hands, Edgeworth accepted the holding. However, it was November, and although we were in a fairly warm period, I knew Edgeworth wouldn't be able to keep this up. A conversation with my mom made things clear.
"So what happens if we leave it out here?", Mom asked.
"He'll die." I replied matter-of-factly.
My mom may hate snakes, but it's pretty hard for her to outright let an animal die. She relented and allowed Edgeworth back inside, and the container went back in its correct place in my room.
Next, I had to figure out how to feed Edgeworth (garter snakes have varied diets depending on species and even individuals). After some trial-and-error including buying him mealworms and crickets at the pet shop, I hit upon earthworms as Edgeworth's favorite food - he refused everything else I tried. After that, I needed to find him a better home - although he was only eight inches long, that was still a bit big for the bug container, and he also seemed very antsy about being exposed - I needed some decorations for him. For Christmas that year I got a much larger container from the same company that manufactured my bug container called the Reptile Ranch. I decked out the Ranch with a cave, a branch from a tree outside, a water bowl, and the crickets and mealworms came along to give him some company. I'd read that garter snakes enjoy seeing things moving around, and since I couldn't place him somewhere that got a lot of human/pet activity I had to substitute insects.
Now fully tricked out (last year I added fake moss, a fake cactus, and a vinyl rose), Edgeworth is suddenly living a life of comfort - a big change from that November day. He's now over a foot in length, and he's fed store-bought nightcrawlers and requires little else except an occasional litter change and fresh water. He may not be as loving as a dog or cat, or as fulfilling, but he fills a unique niche nonetheless, and I sometimes talk to him (although I don't confide in him). I'm glad I met him, and I'm happy that my mother could, in some small way, overcome her snake phobia. She still likes to insult him jokingly, and refuses to touch him, and insists there will never be another snake in the family, but it's progress all the same.
All of this talking and you still haven't actually MET Edgeworth! There he is below (this photo is roughly a year old, but he hasn't changed much except gotten a bit bigger). Click the photo to enlarge it.
Here's Wikipedia's entry on garter snakes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garter_snake
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
The Story of a Butterfly - Part Two
About a week after the shadowbox was added to our home's decor, my mom came home from work with a special guest. She had found another monarch butterfly in the parking lot at her place of employment. Thinking of me, she picked it up and stuck it in a little container, and then took it home. I accepted the gift warmly and inspected my latest acquisition. This butterfly was female. She was somehow in even worse condition than the male I had found two weeks before. One of her wings had a patch on it that was bubbly and wavy, like paper that has gotten wet and then dried out. Additionally, my mom had gotten the container from a coworker who smoked, so the butterfly had also been choking down nicotine for the last twenty minutes. I moved her into the same container I had used for the previous butterfly, and like the last "tenant", she spent most of her time clinging to grass and trying to gain strength.
As with the first one, I would take the female monarch out every day to hold in my hand, occasionally feeding it from dandelions. And unlike Mony, Mony The Second was starting to improve. She ignored her damaged wing and began making little fluttery jumps. With my door and window closed, I would take her out of the container each day and watch her attempt to fly. The first day she took off resulted in a clumsy, brief flight not unlike the Wright brothers' maiden voyage. Descending from my hand, she flapped and struggled her way about 3 feet in a downward arc before collapsing on my floor. I scooped her up and returned her to her container.
The next day she fared a bit better, traveling a little farther before landing on my bed. A few days later she took off from my hand, flew a complete circle around me, and came to rest in a perfect landing on my curtains. I applauded her progress. Returning her to her house with a fresh dandelion, I told her that tomorrow could be the big day.
It was a sunny early October morning. I had kept Mony the Second for about a week, and if she was strong enough, today would be her last day with me. My mom and I went outside, I with Mony the Second and she with a camera. My mom took several shots of me holding Mony the Second as she felt the crisp, clean outdoor air for the first time in a week. Mony the Second tested her wings. Open... close. Open... close. She fluttered a little but remained clinging to me. I held my hand up, allowing for a good takeoff point. All of a sudden her wings began to flap, and she leapt from my hand into the sky.
She started strong but began to sink, losing altitude quickly. For one terrible moment I thought she would crash, but Mony the Second regained her composure and began to climb again. She flew in a circle, then moved briefly over our house before changing course and moving off in a different direction. I watched the shrinking orange blur make its way along before she moved behind some trees. For a moment I saw her above the trees, and then she was gone.
"She's gone. She made it." I said. My mom stood next to me, having watched with a sense of wonder just a strong as my own.
And then we hugged each other, and I cried a little. I had done it. I had nursed a sick animal back to health. I wondered if Mony the Second realized that.
Animals may not feel human emotions, especially insects. But I can at least pretend that they do.
As with the first one, I would take the female monarch out every day to hold in my hand, occasionally feeding it from dandelions. And unlike Mony, Mony The Second was starting to improve. She ignored her damaged wing and began making little fluttery jumps. With my door and window closed, I would take her out of the container each day and watch her attempt to fly. The first day she took off resulted in a clumsy, brief flight not unlike the Wright brothers' maiden voyage. Descending from my hand, she flapped and struggled her way about 3 feet in a downward arc before collapsing on my floor. I scooped her up and returned her to her container.
The next day she fared a bit better, traveling a little farther before landing on my bed. A few days later she took off from my hand, flew a complete circle around me, and came to rest in a perfect landing on my curtains. I applauded her progress. Returning her to her house with a fresh dandelion, I told her that tomorrow could be the big day.
It was a sunny early October morning. I had kept Mony the Second for about a week, and if she was strong enough, today would be her last day with me. My mom and I went outside, I with Mony the Second and she with a camera. My mom took several shots of me holding Mony the Second as she felt the crisp, clean outdoor air for the first time in a week. Mony the Second tested her wings. Open... close. Open... close. She fluttered a little but remained clinging to me. I held my hand up, allowing for a good takeoff point. All of a sudden her wings began to flap, and she leapt from my hand into the sky.
She started strong but began to sink, losing altitude quickly. For one terrible moment I thought she would crash, but Mony the Second regained her composure and began to climb again. She flew in a circle, then moved briefly over our house before changing course and moving off in a different direction. I watched the shrinking orange blur make its way along before she moved behind some trees. For a moment I saw her above the trees, and then she was gone.
"She's gone. She made it." I said. My mom stood next to me, having watched with a sense of wonder just a strong as my own.
And then we hugged each other, and I cried a little. I had done it. I had nursed a sick animal back to health. I wondered if Mony the Second realized that.
Animals may not feel human emotions, especially insects. But I can at least pretend that they do.
Monday, January 16, 2012
The Story of a Butterfly - Part One
It was not a dark and stormy night. Rather, it was an overcast afternoon, September 2007. I was heading home after an afternoon at the library when I felt a wet plop on my head. Suspecting the worst, I paused my MP3 player and held out a hand. Sure enough, my palm was soon splattered by a drop of rain. Just my luck, I grumbled to myself. I picked up my walking speed a bit and resumed my music.
I had only traveled a few dozen more feet when something brightly colored caught my eye. Off to my right, in a patch of tall grass at the side of the road, something orange and black in color was nestled in the reeds. I moved in for a closer look and found it was a monarch butterfly. I'd seen these delicate creatures in the area before – large, handsome animals that flew gracefully and elegantly. I could tell that something was up with this one, though, as it did not flee or even move in my presence. Taking advantage of the situation, I gently scooped up the insect and began carrying it home. It moved a little – it was definitely alive – but remained quite still in my hands. The rain began to fall harder, and I sped up again, practically running now, with my newfound catch in my cupped hands, my fingers over it, shielding it from the rain. I stopped for a moment and messed with my MP3 player again. Once I had some suitably epic-sounding music pumping through my headphones, I resumed running. I’ve always had a flair for the dramatic.
Once home, I placed the butterfly in a small plastic container and added a little grass for it to perch on. There was no way I would allow this butterfly to be added to the often chaotic "main jar" all my other insect pets lived in. No, this sickly butterfly would be quarantined, and released once it felt better. It rained all the rest of that day, but the next day was clear. I ventured outdoors once more, located a dandelion, and took it inside to the butterfly. I opened its container and took it in my hand, then I presented it with the dandelion in my other hand. Slowly, the monarch’s feeding tube uncurled and delicately poked into the head of the plant. Feeding a butterfly was one of my more invigorating experiences that year. When it was done, I gently placed the monarch back in its home, with the dandelion in case it wished for more nectar later.
The next day, I did a little research on monarch butterflies after wondering if the genders could be told apart. I wanted to know what sex my own captive was. A look at my old animal encyclopedias returned an answer: Male butterflies have a black spot on each wing, towards the middle, which contains a chemical used in mating season. Later, I took a look at my own monarch, and sure enough, when it opened its wings I saw the spots. My butterfly was male.
Naming has never been a strong suit of mine, and I called my butterfly simply "Mony" (pronounced moan-ey). For several days I looked Mony over, and every day he acted the same. His condition didn’t appear to be improving or worsening one way or the other.
One morning, before going on another daily excursion to the library, I took out Mony and just looked at him. He looked back, clinging to my finger and slowly opening and closing his wings, making no attempt to fly or flee. Suddenly he raised a foreleg and... waved. I found this little movement quite funny. There was no way an insect could understand human conditions like “waving” and the like - it must have just lost its balance a little. So I laughed it off, and returned Mony to his container.
But that evening, I returned from the library to find him lying on his side in his little plastic house. He was dead. Had Mony been trying to say goodbye? Obviously not, but I didn’t mind imagining that it was so.
The next week, I purchased a shadowbox at the local dollar store, and my mother helped me mount my deceased butterfly to it with pins. Once we were finished, the shadowbox went up on the wall and is still there today – a memory of my former pet, a pet I couldn’t save.
But this story is far from over.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
About Social Networking
I understand why social networking is so popular. It can be a great way to connect with friends, relatives, and co-workers, meet new people, and catch up with old acquaintances. It's brought families together, reunited long-lost pals, solved crimes, and allowed for organized protest. Facebook and Twitter aren't two of the most popular sites in the world for nothing. But social networking isn't for everyone, and I'm proof of that.
I am a very private person. When I was a child, I learned a classic lesson: Don't talk to strangers. In elementary school, I got acquainted with computers and the Internet at around the same time they started becoming relevant to the public - the late nineties. There, a variation of stranger danger was made clear: Don't share personal information online. If you give away details about yourself, people can find you. You could get stalked or mugged or have your identity stolen. And that lesson stuck - to this day I am very cautious when it comes to giving personal information of myself away. Only online stores get my address (and I always prefer to give my PO Box). I keep my "real" life and "Internet" life firmly separate. Until I made this account, I never used my real name for a website (with one exception - I had the username "Bryan" on Rate My Kitten, a cat photos website I joined when I was around 11 years old). And I absolutely refuse to post a photo of myself on the Internet, and I will probably never allow it. It's a sticking point for me. I don't like putting myself out there.
Because of my cautiousness and love of privacy, I have managed to avoid a lot of the issues other people may have with social media. I'm not going to be persecuted for voicing a volatile opinion on Twitter. I'm not going to have my personal information stolen by a Facebook hacker. And I won't have my photo get ripped from a personal page and used somewhere else - most likely in an unflattering situation - without my permission.
I don't have a Facebook or a Twitter or a MySpace account, and I only joined Google+ because I accidentally created this account on Google instead of Blogger (Google owns Blogger, for those who don't know). My Google+ page is blank - and blank it shall remain. I have a YouTube account, but I don't mention my name and I certainly don't put up videos of myself. I'm far from the only person who isn't interested in the Internet 2.0 invasion of privacy. It's just not for me.
Here are 13 cases where Facebook made people lose their jobs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/fired-over-facebook-posts_n_659170.html#s115707&title=Swiss_Woman_Caught
I am a very private person. When I was a child, I learned a classic lesson: Don't talk to strangers. In elementary school, I got acquainted with computers and the Internet at around the same time they started becoming relevant to the public - the late nineties. There, a variation of stranger danger was made clear: Don't share personal information online. If you give away details about yourself, people can find you. You could get stalked or mugged or have your identity stolen. And that lesson stuck - to this day I am very cautious when it comes to giving personal information of myself away. Only online stores get my address (and I always prefer to give my PO Box). I keep my "real" life and "Internet" life firmly separate. Until I made this account, I never used my real name for a website (with one exception - I had the username "Bryan" on Rate My Kitten, a cat photos website I joined when I was around 11 years old). And I absolutely refuse to post a photo of myself on the Internet, and I will probably never allow it. It's a sticking point for me. I don't like putting myself out there.
Because of my cautiousness and love of privacy, I have managed to avoid a lot of the issues other people may have with social media. I'm not going to be persecuted for voicing a volatile opinion on Twitter. I'm not going to have my personal information stolen by a Facebook hacker. And I won't have my photo get ripped from a personal page and used somewhere else - most likely in an unflattering situation - without my permission.
I don't have a Facebook or a Twitter or a MySpace account, and I only joined Google+ because I accidentally created this account on Google instead of Blogger (Google owns Blogger, for those who don't know). My Google+ page is blank - and blank it shall remain. I have a YouTube account, but I don't mention my name and I certainly don't put up videos of myself. I'm far from the only person who isn't interested in the Internet 2.0 invasion of privacy. It's just not for me.
Here are 13 cases where Facebook made people lose their jobs.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/26/fired-over-facebook-posts_n_659170.html#s115707&title=Swiss_Woman_Caught
Monday, January 9, 2012
What is Asperger's Syndrome?
My name is Bryan, and I have Asperger's Syndrome.
Asperger's Syndrome is a form of high-functioning autism. People with Asperger's are generally withdrawn, uncomfortable in social situations, and are not very good at reading body language or understanding nonverbal cues. Their hobbies may border on obsession (the usual term for them is "special interests"), their minds encyclopedias of factoids about their hobbies, and they may become outgoing and cheerful if given a chance to talk (at length) about what moves them.
People with Asperger's frequently misunderstand metaphors and sayings. They think logically and take things literally. They may seem emotionless or cold to outsiders, but they are very close and loyal to friends and family. Last but not least, a lot of people with Asperger's are known for intelligence, displaying skill in fields like writing, engineering, technology, or science.
Everyone with Asperger's is different. Some of the many possible signs, conditions, symptoms, and quirks of Asperger's contradict with each other, and most people with Asperger's have only a small sampling of them.
What about me? I like to write. I love animals. I sometimes follow (and laugh at) politics. I watch Pixar films and giant monster movies. I listen to music and go for walks. I read Stephen King novels and nonfictional books on dinosaurs. I collect toys. I play video games. Sometimes I like to draw. I cry at sad stories.
In short, I'm human. Just one with a slightly different take on life.
Asperger's Syndrome is a form of high-functioning autism. People with Asperger's are generally withdrawn, uncomfortable in social situations, and are not very good at reading body language or understanding nonverbal cues. Their hobbies may border on obsession (the usual term for them is "special interests"), their minds encyclopedias of factoids about their hobbies, and they may become outgoing and cheerful if given a chance to talk (at length) about what moves them.
People with Asperger's frequently misunderstand metaphors and sayings. They think logically and take things literally. They may seem emotionless or cold to outsiders, but they are very close and loyal to friends and family. Last but not least, a lot of people with Asperger's are known for intelligence, displaying skill in fields like writing, engineering, technology, or science.
Everyone with Asperger's is different. Some of the many possible signs, conditions, symptoms, and quirks of Asperger's contradict with each other, and most people with Asperger's have only a small sampling of them.
What about me? I like to write. I love animals. I sometimes follow (and laugh at) politics. I watch Pixar films and giant monster movies. I listen to music and go for walks. I read Stephen King novels and nonfictional books on dinosaurs. I collect toys. I play video games. Sometimes I like to draw. I cry at sad stories.
In short, I'm human. Just one with a slightly different take on life.
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