beautiful, funny, sad & true

Naturally, all of this Mac nostalgia made me think of the comic strip Bloom County, in which the character Oliver Wendell Jones got a computer for Christmas which had a hilarious mind of its own, and which was obviously inspired by the first Macintosh.  It was called the Banana Junior 6000.

You can click on all of these to make them large and legible, by the way.  Here are two strips, from when Oliver first got the computer. . .

. . .and here are two from some time later, when Oliver and the Banana started to feel the effects of Moore’s Law:

This was the 1980’s, after all, so there was plenty of heavy metal music in the culture at large.  Some people listened to it, some people ridiculed it, some of us even got guitars and learned how to play it.  I told you that story so I could tell you that Kiss was one of the biggest bands in the world back then (you could argue that they still are), and one of their claims to fame was definitely Gene Simmons’s tongue.  The creator of Bloom County designed a hilarious mock-advertisement for the Banana, using Gene as the negative model for what will become of your child if he or she doesn’t grow up with the necessary skills and tools to survive in this cruel and unforgiving world.  Like any good, intrepid Kiss fan, I instantly recognized it as a classic, cut it out of the newspaper, and tacked it to the wall in my bedroom.

Still rings true today, eh?

I love the name of the program ‘Bananamanager.’  That’s just pure genius.  Somehow, I suspect that’s where he got the idea for the whole Banana thing in the first place.

Incidentally, I need to give special thanks to this blog and this blog, from which I scrounged up these strips.  Without them, I would have been trying to take pictures of my old Bloom County books, which would have been a huge pain, and wouldn’t have looked nearly as good either.  My hat’s definitely off to both of them.

Today was, quite frankly, hellish.

The company at which I work was recently bought and taken over by a (formerly) rival company.  Originally, my company was split into three different ‘brands’.  Today we got word that the company that bought us is planning to close one of those three brands, and that Friday will be the day of reckoning.  This means that quite a few of my friends are going to be on the dole.

For a while, we thought that they intended to close the entire department that I’m in.  It wouldn’t surprise me if they do that, to be honest, but at least we made it through this round.  For me, the timing would be spectacularly bad, but then again, I don’t suppose there’s ever a really good time to lose a job.

So yeah.  Between thinking I was heading for unemployment, and then finding that no, a bunch of my friends are heading for unemployment, I just feel like I’ve been tied in knots.  It was an emotionally challenging day.

And by the way, I still have something in my eye; the same thing that was in there yesterday, in fact, and it hurts like effing hell.  Someone told me today that a “crazy but good” way to get things out of your eye is to pull your eyelid away from your eye by pulling on your eyelashes, then plug your nose, and then blow.  Yeah, I know.  It didn’t make any sense to me either, but I did give it the old college try, and I’m here to report that it was ineffective.  Apparently, rather than being ‘crazy and good’, it’s just crazy.

Sorry for the long lapse between entries.  I had a super busy and fun weekend, and then an incredibly busy and stressful week so far.  On Sunday night, IrishBand’s drummer came over and we recorded the drum tracks for another song, then I recorded the bass part and worked out a few guitar parts.

Tonight I have rehearsal, and my cohorts will be here pretty soon, but I did want to check in and give you an update.  And now I’m going to eat dinner and shut my eyes for a while until my friends arrive.

The other day, after writing the entry about flirtation and pedantry, I thought of a couple of examples of the type of sarcastic, pedantic, or downright nasty things I used to say to people.

ONE:
This occurred when I was nineteen, and I worked in the record department at a retail store.  Extremely glamorous (my tongue is very much in my cheek) and also low-paying.  One day, the manager and I were sitting around talking, like we used to do whenever business was slow, and a woman from another department ambled over to talk with us.  “Oh man, I hope today is better than yesterday; yesterday just drug.”

“Dragged,” I said, absently.

“What?” she asked.

“Dragged.  ‘Drug’ is something you take to achieve an altered state of consciousness.  ‘Dragged’ is what yesterday did.”

She gave me a look.  “What are you, some kind of encyclopedia?”

“Dictionary.”

She gave an exasperated sigh, then turned and walked away.  The manager put her hand over her mouth to stifle her laughter.

TWO:
This happened when I was about twenty-three, and I worked at a video store.  One of my fellow employees constantly talked about how she was on a diet, and about how she was doing this-and-that to lose weight, but she would constantly snack on candy throughout the day.  I don’t mean an occasional once-a-week kind of thing, either.  She’d buy a couple different bars in the morning and afternoon, and have an ice cream sandwich for lunch.  It was insane.

One day, she said, “I can’t figure out why I’m not losing any weight.  I mean, I eat like a bird.”

“What, you eat twice your own weight every day?”  Cause that’s what birds do.  “Or do you mean you put it down and peck at it like this?”  I made that pecking motion with my head toward her candy bar, which was sitting on the counter, half-eaten.

She got mad and walked away, and the other two employees cracked up laughing.  These days, I would never make that joke.  Maybe it’s because of all the women I know who have eating disorders.  Maybe it’s because I’m wiser about psychological matters now, and about the myriad ways that shame weasels itself into our lives, and into the decisions we make every minute of every day.  Or maybe I just think that it’s mean to make fun of people about their sensitive subjects.

All that being said, I have to confess that I do still think the ‘twice your own weight every day’ thing was funny.  But when I look at videos or pictures of myself at the time, though, I see what a jackass I used to be, and I have to cringe.

I must have been twenty-eight or thirty before I really started to change, and to grow emotionally, and to become the person I am now, but that’ll have to be a story for another day.

After over a year of the black template, it was time for a change around here.

I finally stumbled across a new template that I liked, after much searching.  I don’t like everything about it (specifically some of the fonts; I’m trying to figure out how to change them) and I had to change the header to keep it from changing away from the color bar to other images.  The original also has a biplane, a night sky, and a Japanese rising sun, all of which have exactly nothing to do with this blog, so they’re gone now.

Nice to see a brighter, happier version of BFST, I have to admit.  I loved the old design, but in these dark times I wanted something a bit more cheerful.  Just one more example of my ‘Out With Crappy Old 2008, Cause Here Comes 2009!’ ethos.

I also took the opportunity to check in on Twitter and see if they’ve made any changes too.  Turns out they have, as you may have noticed.  I went for the Flash version this time.  Let me know if you have difficulty seeing it.  Actually, y’know what?  I take that back.  Just go download a newer version of Flash, would you?  Sheesh.

I volunteered to go in to work for a couple of hours of overtime this afternoon, which I almost never do.  Some people live to work, and others work to live.  I’m definitely in the latter category, but this time I thought a couple hours here and there would be a good idea to improve my reputation around the office a little.

Came across a new blog today, thanks to Twitter, that I really enjoy.  It’s called the list of now, and I’m adding it to my blogroll, but I also wanted to share it with you publicly and give her a little ‘shout out’ or whatever the kids these days are calling them.

OneYearAgo

Incidentally, I just realized that BFST has been around long enough that I can start doing TwoYearsAgo now.  Cool.

As I promised, here are my favorite pictures from this past year, in no particular order.

The landscape between Utah and Idaho is vast, and seems quintessentially American somehow.

This picture was taken outside the studio when we were mixing Andrea’s CD.  There had been a freak snowstorm overnight, and we all woke up to this beautiful scene. Amazingly, the snow was all gone by the afternoon.  We finished mixing the songs, and then I drove back to Portland and went on a great first date.  That was a good day.

Andrea had just read and been inspired by the book Blue Like Jazz, and she wanted to take a little hike around the campus of the college here in town in which the book is set. Though it has changed in the decades since the book was written, this was and still is a beautiful place to hike and explore.

This is one of my favorite locations to take pictures.  It’s an abandoned cannery town along the Columbia river. Sorry about the small size.

When Breanna and Justin and I were on tour in Reno, Justin was getting his CD mixed in Portland, and the guy would send Justin mixes via e-mail, for him either to approve or to request some small changes. After our show, he and Bre were listening to the final mixes, so I left and walked around for an hour, and took about a million pictures of the city at night.  Came back and listened for a while, and when they went to bed, our host and I stayed up talking for another hour and a half afterwards. That was my favorite day (and night) of the tour.

ViolinistKarlee, me, Breanna and Justin on our tour, after our show in Redding.  This picture just puts a smile on my face every time I see it.  Karlee is such a lil thug.

This is my car, all loaded up with instruments to go to the studio and record my parts for Andrea’s CD.  I’m always amazed at just how much stuff this car can carry, despite its diminutive size.

ChefDave, in an instantly classic pose.  I love the way the light is gleaming off the knife.  Incidentally, you owe to it yourself to eat at the Sego Lily Cafe in Bountiful, Utah, by the way, next time you’re there.  Dave’s food is phenomenal.

There are lots of abandoned military bunkers outside Port Townsend, Washington, and I could easily spend a weekend just taking pictures of them. I love the way the light interacts and contrasts from room to room.

Ah, beautiful Astoria, Oregon, seen from the highest point in town.  That’s another place that provides an almost endless supply of photographic opportunities.

This picture I didn’t take, but it’s such a classic that it warranted inclusion on the best pictures of the year.  It’s the Cinemagic theater here in Portland, when they were in transition from the movie Hancock to the Dark Knight, and this was the sign change, in progress.

I love looking back over the year in this way. Even though this was a particularly difficult, painful, and challenging year, there were certainly plenty of good times too.

Here’s to a better 2009, though.