Author: robertjames1971

I'm wicked tall.

We Did This Already

Daily writing prompt
Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.
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Come on, guys. You’ve given us this question already. I answered with the “I gotta take a walk” story from when I was a young, impressional guitar playing high school student. I think I might have mentioned my third grade teacher too.

Man, I don’t want to write the same thing again. I know it’s difficult to come up with original questions, but can’t you do better than this? Ugh. These daily prompts are supposed to help me get my brain ramped up to speed in the morning and instead today it’s just making the grumpy old man feel grumpier. Ugh, again.

Okay. We were either still in high school or it was shortly after high school and I was in the Music School at the University of Lowell, shortly before it became UMass Lowell. Mike the Bass Player, who was my band’s bass player in high school and is still my band’s bass player today, had a house party and we played. One of his friends, that I didn’t really know, had had too much to drink and came up to me and, in a very slurry voice, said, “you’re the best guitar player in the world.” That might not be the exact quote. It was 100 years ago and he was a little hard to understand. There may have been an F-Bomb or two that I left off the quote. Also, it was objectively, demonstrably, untrue. I suck. I am not the worst guitar player ever (back then or today) but I am so far removed from good. If he had said, “you’re the most adequate guitar player in the world” I wouldn’t have laughed at him the way I did. I would have thanked him. As it were, it was just a silly ego boost that stuck with me for a while. I had forgotten about it over the decades until just now. It’s a stupid story that is meaningless, but I’m grumpy so that’s what you’re getting.

QED, or some shit.

New Who

Two new episodes of Doctor Who were released last night. We just watched them both.

Spoiler free mini-review:

The first of the two, Space Babies, is good. Adorable and a little dark at times. Good stuff.

The second episode, The Devil’s Chord… not so much. I found myself looking at my watch a lot and thinking, “is it over yet?”

Stop Light Theater

Non-Hipstamatic filtered Stop Light Theater:

Hipstamatic-filtered Stop Light Theater at the same stop light:

254/365

This post brought to you by nothing. Just a red head who is watching The Godfather Part II with the love of his life on a lazy Saturday afternoon.

You’re welcome.

Northern Lights

Apparently you could see the Northern Lights from near my house last night. Did I look outside? Nope. I was simultaneously watching what is arguably the greatest movie ever made, The Godfather, and watching my hockey team get smoked for the second playoff game in a row.

Insert the sound of a frustrated sigh here.

The plan for my immediate future is to go to a department store to buy some clothing for our upcoming Florida trip. I don’t like wearing shorts. I’m a jeans guy. Khakis work in a pinch, but I feel most comfortable, the most like me, in jeans. I don’t own a pair of shorts. The last time I bought shorts for myself was also in preparation for a trip to Florida, but at that time I weighed about 240 pounds more than I weigh today. I need to go buy me some Florida-weather-appropriate garments. Blah.

I might go shopping for a bird feeder that doesn’t suck too, but that would require making two stops and I don’t think I have that in me today. We’ll see.

I missed the Northern Lights. What a puke head. Ugh. Dumbass.

Freedom

Daily writing prompt
What does freedom mean to you?
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“There is more than one kind of freedom,” said Aunt Lydia. “Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

A little clarification on the quote. In the context of the story, what Aunt Lydia called “the days of anarchy” was our current society, at least at the time of writing which I believe was the 1980’s. The “now” of which she speaks is arguably the most brutally oppressive religious dictatorship western fiction has ever dreamed up.

You know what would be nice? It would be nice if women had control over their own healthcare. My wife and my daughter, my sister, my niece, my friends, my neighbors, all women. It would be nice if freedom meant they made their own decisions about their own bodies.

You know what would be nice? It would be nice if freedom was not dependent on something as idiotically arbitrary as the color of your skin. If people with one color skin had the right to a fair trial when they are accused of breaking the law, while people with another color skin are shot in the street like animals by those who claim to be upholding the law for even the most minor legal infractions. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

You know what would be nice? It would be nice if our rights were not dictated by where our ancestors lived or how they choose to practice religion (or not). It would be nice if people in our society had the same rights whether they were descended from people in western Europe, or people in the middle east, or people in the far east, or people in Africa. That would sure be nice, I think.

Okay. I am stopping now. Today’s daily writing prompt has seriously pissed me off and I am going to start writing the word fuck a lot if I don’t stop writing now.

Friggin’ Bruins

The Bruins lost 5-2. Friggin’ Bruins.

Robin turns her back on them. I won’t, but she did.

ADDENDUM: I must have missed an empty net goal in the last seconds of the game. The Bruins lost 6-2, not 5-2. Bite me.

Down By One in the Second

We’re about five minutes into the second period and The Bruins trail the Panthers 1-0. We’re going on the power play though, so let’s be optimistic.

Jen and I watched The Offer on Paramount+ this week. It’s actually the second time we watched it. If you’re not familiar with it, it’s the story of the making of The Godfather. Now that we’re finished with the show we’re watching the movie. Clemenza just left the gun but took the cannoli’s.

The Godfather is on the living room TV. The Bruins are on my iPhone via the streaming app formerly known as HBO Max. I’m trying to multitask over here, but it’s tough when the movie is so legendary and the iPhone screen is so teeny tiny. Even if it is an iPhone 14 Pro Max.

The Bruins did not score on the power play. Crud.

I Wanna Go Back

Animal Kingdom
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The Gigolo Aunts have a song called, “Everything is Wrong.” The first line of the lyrics is, “I wanna go back.” Every time I think of our impending Florida trip I sing that line from that song in my head.

I wanna go back. There. I just did it again as I was typing. Thanks, Gigolo Aunts!

Early Game Three Stress

The Bruins vs Panthers series comes home to Boston for game three tonight. The Bruins took game one down in Florida, then got smoked in game two. The hope is that Pastrnak’s late third period fight in game two might be enough to wake everyone up after the bad game. Maybe that, plus a little home cooking… We need a win tonight, Bruins.

I haven’t been able to actually watch any of these games yet as we no longer have a functioning cable TV account. The games have been on ESPN and I can’t stream that network at the moment. Tonight’s game is supposed to be on Max, but we’ll probably be blacked out. Maybe I can setup a VPN somewhere?

We’re still about four and a half hours away from puck drop, but my nerves are already gearing up. The playoffs stress me out, man. I tells ya.

In other viewing news, the new season of Doctor Who hits Disney+ tonight at 7:00pm Eastern. I believe we’ll get two episodes today. Dark Matter on AppleTV+ has released two episodes and I am hooked. The premise is very similar to the recently released Constellation, except (to this point at least) Dark Matter is about 123612346147134 times better… and I liked Constellation. Here’s hoping it stays good.

Another down side for tonight’s Bruins game (pardon me for steering things back onto the target topic) is that I am totally freakin’ exhausted right now. I don’t know if I am going to be able to stay awake until the end of the game. I got six hours of sleep last night, which is usually enough to get me through the next day, but I feel like I needed 16 hours last night. Whether I am watching the game or just following the play-by-play updates on NHL.com, I will very likely be out like a light before the game ends. 9:00pm bedtimes are common for both middle school kids and middle aged red heads.

Go Bruins.