Umm .... Weird

So my mom emailed me today to tell me that she couldn't see my blog. Upon checking it out, I found that I couldn't see it, either. It was just a big, blank screen. I tried to republish it, but that didn't work. So I'm creating this post just to see if it brings The Chronicles back to life.

Kooky, Creepy, Cool

It's an input device, like a mouse or pen or something. No, it's a camera. No, it's a screen/display. No, it's a brush ... I don't even know what tech is involved, but it's damned cool: the I/O brush.

Rock On, Lord Vader

A Dark Lord of the Sith, rocking it out. The band may not be from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, but the song did once top the UK charts solely on the strength of digital sales. I tried to hate it, but it's too catchy. It's no "Gold Pants" or anything, but I like it.

Point of Clarification

So often in life, I find golf microcosmically describing other aspects of life. For instance, sometimes when I play I get so focused on what I need to do -- pick the target, grip the club, square the clubface to the target, set up to the ball, don't grip too hard but keep the hands firmly on the club, take the club away smoothly but not too far -- that I end up hitting some weakly fading shot that the wind laughingly knocks short into a bunker or other undesirable place. And, really, when you get down to it, you have to think that hitting the ball solidly is probably the most important part of the golfing.

Reading Don's comment in response to my last post made me realize that I had done the same thing when I wrote that little anecdote. I was so focused on painting the backdrop of the morning scene that I didn't really make the point clearly. Before I get to that, though, let me address Don's point. If my blathering suggested more than "bystander interest in such a familial scene on [my] part," it did so completely by mistake and, more to the point, erroneously. While I admire their commitment and responsibility, I harbor no envy for those whose mornings require action and interaction. At this point in my life, I recognize that, if nothing else, my Morning Brain is ill-equipped to handle such situations.

Now, let me disambiguate [aside: I didn't make up that ridiculous word. Someone I know pointed it out to me from a technical book, and it's so awful that I had to use it.] the point from my last post. What I was trying to point out is that I thought it took years to learn certain behaviors, but some of them might be instinctual. For instance, I thought it took girls years of experience and responding to thousands upon thousands of stimuli to know that they should run or at least cry when they looked at me. I was wrong. It's pre-programmed.

Nature vs. Nurture

I recently made the trip to the greater Philadelphia region to visit the Pretty Boy and his family. OK, that's not true. I made the trip so that I could play some very bad golf with the Pretty Boy and another friend who lives in Connecticut. The visit was a fringe benefit. While I was there, I experienced what I can only call a stark example of instinct vs. learned behavior.

After arriving late on Friday night, I awoke Saturday to the normal activity of a house with two young children (a boy, age 2, and a girl, less than a year old). There were alternate periods of wailing and laughter, toys crashing to the floor and making their distinctive whirrs, chirps, and beeps, all of which eventually gave way to a Sesame Street-inspired quiet. Not being a morning person, I engaged the family only in passing, grunting a "Morning" to whomever required acknowledgement and avoiding those who didn't. I retreated into a Diet Coke and my book as I sat down in the living room where the PBIT (that's Pretty Boy In Training) was watching Sesame Street in such an enthralled state that one might think it was explaining the secrets of the universe. It might have been, too, but I had to concentrate on my soda and my book just then.

We existed in amiable silence for a while, enjoying our respectively chosen methods of coping with the morning, and all was good. Then, Mom/the Pretty Woman (it's a pretty family) came in with the Pretty Girl. Apparently, the Pretty Woman needed to do some things that would be more easily accomplished without the Pretty Girl in the crook of her arm, and deposited the child on the couch opposite her brother, explaining to me that she was just going to leave the Pretty Girl there for a few minutes and other words that never quite penetrated my Morning Brain. The PBIT took a second away from the show to give everyone in the room a perturbed look, conveying just how much he approved of all this interruption as the Pretty Woman started to leave the room. At that moment, for some unknown reason, I glanced at her retreat, then stole a glance at the newly-deposited Pretty Girl. On something close to the same page, she looked at her mother leaving, then looked straight at me, opened her eyes wide, her mouth even wider, and began to cry.

Some things in life are just instinct. I guess it really does come down to fight or flight. Or cry.