I'm excited. Indiana Jones IV is coming out in May and they just released the trailer yesterday. It's lookin' good. The first one was amazing, the second one sucked, and the third one was back to amazing. Let's hope that's not a pattern and that it doesn't suffer from the every other sequel sucking syndrome.
For those of you that haven't seen the trailer...here it is.
First a little background. Those of you who have been around a while know that I am a pretend cowboy. That is, I dress up as a cowboy and shoot real guns in competition known as Cowboy Action Shooting. Those that don't know that can go read up on it here. Go on. We'll wait. Everybody else, smoke'em if you've got'em. Hmm, hmm, la la la. So, how's everybody been? Can you believe the weather? What about...wha...oh, you're back. Good. So now everybody knows about the cowboy thing, right?
A little more background. I personally have an open mind when it comes to history. Especially ancient history. I don't think we know everything that went down and I don't believe there's a particularly high degree of certainty about the things that we do know went down. I don't care how many degrees or how authoritative the expert *ologists are. There are simply too many unexplainable things all around the world and a couple of pot shards here and there just aren't going to explain it. Ever since I read "Chariots of the Gods" when I was a kid I've been fascinated by the possibilities and I enjoy reading speculative theories. Theories that in many ways do a better job of explaining the past that the BS fed to us by the established, respected, mainstream experts. So I was reading a book over the weekend by Graham Hancock and I was in a section where he was discussing ancient Egypt. He was going into great detail about their creation myth and talking about their gods, Osirus, Ra, Set, Isis, and so forth.
So here I am on Saturday, Cowboy Bruce walking through the kitchen with ancient Egyptian gods on my mind (okay, the weirdness of the previous sentence sums me up pretty well). I glance on the counter and spot my daughter's American Lit textbooks. (WARNING. The following sentence contains an extremely high degree of SARCASM and may not be suitable for younger audiences) Now this is HIGHLY unusual because my kids NEVER, EVER leave any of their things lying around. For some reason I decided to open the book and check it out. I cracked it somewhere in the middle and thumbed through a few pages. With the book lying on the counter opened to a random page this is the first thing my eyes fell on:
I Am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra
by Ishmael Reed
I won't post the text of the poem but here is a link to it on another site. Maybe not everybody's cup of tea, but I liked it. A lot. Mr. Reed is a contemporary African American novelist, poet and essayist that is known for his off-beat satirical commentary on American society. He is considered controversial by some.
I thought this alone was an interesting bit of coincidence, synchronicity, serendipity, whatever. Then I read the poem and a line in the seventh stanza stood out, "I am a cowboy in the boat of Ra. Lord of the lash, the Loup Garou Kid. Half breed son of Pisces and Aquarius." I'm a Pisces and my wife is an Aquarius. It's our daughter's book. Hmmm (okay, it's son in the poem not daughter but still...Hmmm).
As if that wasn't enough, it continued getting weirder. I decided to look up more information about Mr. Reed and discovered that he is credited as being the first (or at least one of the first) to refer to Bill Clinton as "America's First Black President" in an April 1998 column in the Baltimore Sun. Given that this very issue had come up recently in the Democratic Primary contest I thought it appropriate to take a "Whoa" moment and allow that little tingly shiver to pass.
My point in sharing this story? None really. Except maybe to remind you to keep your mind open to possibilities. Every once in a while some weird stuff crosses your path.
What do you suppose it all means?
Well I managed to fix my laptop over the weekend. What happened was this. I was surfing along last week minding my own business when all of a sudden I found myself staring at a black screen. I did the old reboot and several other standard things that one tries when their computer isn't doing what it's supposed to (including cursing) but all I got for my troubles was the brief flash of the Dell logo at start-up then an instant inky darkness that felt as if it was closing around me. A cold black endless void that drew from me the very essence of my soul and left me adrift and alone. Well, maybe that's exagerating a bit but the screen WAS still black.
I love the internet. I also hate it and I'll get into the reasons why another time but in this particular instance I love it. I researched my problem (with the laptop) on our old slow office desktop and discovered that what was happening was a fairly common occurance, especially in laptops, especially in the particular Dell model that I had. Who here knew that the LCD screen in your monitor had a light bulb behind it? Go on. Raise your hands. I confess that I did not. I do now however. It's actually a very thin flourescent tube that when lit provides a backlight which shines through and provides illumination for the screen so that you can see it. When it's not lit, you have a black screen. One of the ways to diagnose it is to shine a flashlight on the screen while the computer is on. If you see the image of your normal desktop well then, you know it's a problem with your backlight. Only it's a little more complicated than that. In addition to the bulb there's also this thing called an inverter. In a laptop it's a little narrow circuit board somewhere in the lid near the screen and it shoots a pretty sizable voltage up to the bulb to power it. So the problem could be either/or or even both.
Following Dell's assembly/disassembly instructions for my model I commenced surgery. The inverter is the easier part to get to and replace and all the advice I read said to try that first. Once I had extracted said inverter I headed to the one place where (almost) anything in the world can be bought. EBAY! I said I love the internet. I also love Ebay. After spending some time trying to match part numbers and pictures I purchased what appeared to be the correct part. I had it in my hands in about three days for a total cost of right around $30. I repeated the surgical procedure in reverse and before completely closing the patient, uttered a prayer to the Goddess, God and the Universe, then pressed the power button. Houston We Have Liftoff! Happy dance and an utterance to aforementioned Goddess, God, and Universe.
If that had not solved the problem, the next step would've been to track down a replacement bulb (hello Ebay!) and install it. That procedure would not have been as straight forward and would've involved soldering and a few other things that I was happy to not have to perform.
The whole process, once researched, was actually very easy. Once I knew what I had to do, it honestly took me longer to track down the correct part on Ebay than it did to remove the old one and replace it with the new one. If I would've sent it in somplace for repair it would've cost close to $300 and I would've seriously had to consider whether it would've been smarter to put that money towards a new one. Instead I paid $30 and invested a little bit of my time. I like to try to fix or build things myself if I can. I'm not the type who can't admit that I'm in over my head but on those occasions when I can truly do-it-myself, it's very gratifying when it actually works out.
Long story short. I'm back on line at home. Of course that doesn't solve the problem of what to blog about.
I went to a very small college. 1400 students total. One of the benefits of going to a small college was that you got to know the faculty pretty well (that actually was both a blessing and a curse, depending on the particular faculty member). There were no TA's teaching, in fact I don't remember there being TA's at all. I was a biology major and the head of the biology department was Dr. Meredith. Doc Meredith was pretty easy going and soft-spoken and he had the affinity for dumb jokes that all science teachers seem to have. There was a folksy, aw shucks intelligence about him that reminded you of Andy Griffith or Will Rogers.
One day I was in the department office for one reason or another and Doc Meredith was there with a package that had been delivered to him. He was looking around the desk for something to use to open the box. Now when I was growing up every male in the house carried a pocket knife and I was no different. It was a natural thing to me. I got in the habit when I was around eight years old and I've carried one ever since. Naturally I reached into my pocket and produced my knife and handed it to the good doctor.
He looked at the small knife in my hand, smiled that small smile that told you something was coming, then he looked at me and said, "Why, Bruce. You are an educated man."
Well, I was in college in the hopes of becoming educated but I didn't really know what he was talking about so I responded in the manner that any college freshman-aged educated man would. I said, "Huh?"
He proceeded to explain, just as I knew he would, that back in the days when writing was done with a quill dipped in ink, the quill had to be frequently cut and sharpened in order for it to hold the ink and write properly. This cutting was accomplished with a small knife kept and carried specifically for that purpose. The knife became commonly known as a "pen knife". Back then the vast majority of people did not know how to read nor write. The only people that had "pen knives" were those who had and used quills. The only people who used quills were those who could read and write and the only people who knew how to read and write were those who were educated. I carried with me a pen knife, one of the early earmarks of one who was educated, therefore I was an educated man.
It's interesting to me that I had entire semester-long classes in college that I have absolutely no recollection of but the parts of my education like the pen knife story will stay with me for the rest of my life. Strange.
The reason I relate this story to you now is because I was reminded of it last weekend. My wife and I went to Washington, DC for a couple of days for her birthday. We spent the day Saturday walking around near the Capitol and hitting a few of the museums on the Mall. We were about to enter the Library of Congress when I remembered that in this post 9/11 world it is impossible to enter government buildings without first going through security. I have reluctantly gotten used to leaving my pocket knife at home or in the car when I travel by air but I had completely forgotten about the security checkpoints in our public buildings. I really wanted to see the exhibit but I didn't want to have to give up my knife for good. We had traveled by Metro and were too far from the hotel to go back. Hmm. What to do? My wife suggested hiding it outside. It was a Saturday. It was cold. There were very few people around. Sounds like a plan to me. That's what I did. I hid it as high up as I could reach on an out-of-the-way ledge around the corner from the entrance, then retrieved it when we came back out. My wife is a genius. Fortunately, there wasn't much security to speak of in the other buildings we visited that day so I didn't have to resort to knife hiding again.
My point to all this is that from time to time (often when I'm standing in my socks in an airport) I am slapped with a reminder of how far we have regressed. A reminder of what we have lost. When I was a kid we trusted eight year olds with pocket knives. Then the terrorists struck on 9/11 and put us into shock. But that which we lost was not taken away by the terrorists. They acted. We reacted. That's what this country has gotten really good at. Reacting. Usually with a jerk of the knee and little to no thought. To be responsible means at its root that we have the ability to choose our response. We could have chosen to respond using reason, and education, and intelligence. We could have responded in so many ways. But we responded, and continue to respond blindly with fear of a boogieman that our government constantly reminds us of. Our response was to take off our shoes and stand in our socks at the airport. Our response was to accept that our bottles can't hold more than three ounces and that the stock of the companies that produce one quart plastic bags went up. Our response is to reach in our pocket and hand over the sign and symbol of an educated person. In many ways, for me at least, it's the little seemingly insignificant things that speak the loudest. On Saturday I heard that one loud and clear.
