A Short List of Comments For the Day

12/30/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

Non-spoiler alert for anyone unlucky enough to be keeping up with the U.S. “Downton Abbey” schedule instead of the UK one: everyone and everything ends well. The Christmas special which also serves as the series finale was simply as heart-felt as any hour or so of television could ever be.
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“Hand of God” on Amazon is a spectacular tv show. Ron Perlman’s performance was so great it prompted me to start “Sons of Anarchy,” which I’ve ignored all these years.
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“Don’t Look Black,” Misheard Racist Boston Song Title
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When someone knocks, I instead ask “Who isn’t it?” In this way, when they respond incorrectly, I don’t have to open the door.
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I’m writing a TV script titled “M o p s t e r.” It’s about a mafia family which owns a cleaning supply business.
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When someone knocks, I instead ask “Who isn’t it?” In this way, when they respond incorrectly, I don’t have to open the door.
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It’s not my fault that eggs are conveniently made in hand-sized throwing shapes. (Possible defense if I ever get arresting for egging someone.)

Regarding the oft-stated desire to be able to avoid seeing undesirable posts on Facebook: if people are being honest what they really are saying is they don’t wish to see posts that they disagree with no matter how heartfelt the content or how personal the message. It is a subtle and constant reminder that we might be quite wrong about something: or worse – that logic and critical thinking aren’t as important as we fool ourselves into believing.

Learning occurs only when you replace opinion or ignorance with another truth. Some of us share only things that are meaningful, personal or with our own twist to it. We are doing it right. Those with the dullest ax to grind tend to also be the ones with both the tendency to repost what another person has said or made and display a resistance to considering that other opinions might have a toehold on truth. Facebook is just a mirror or window, depending on how you see your role in using it to enrich your life. It can be both road and roadblock, just as your own real relationships work in life.

Holiday, Personal

A Children’s Book for Xmas

12/27/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

Recently, I finished one of the best surprises I’d made in a while. I made a very basic story book with many edited pictures for a friend’s son. While the premise of the story was religious in nature, really I just wanted to try to make something that might be remembered fondly.

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After getting all the ideas compiled, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Snapfish was offering something similar to what I wanted for a steal. I would have paid $100 per book, as I spent many, many hours editing the photos and trying to get the project to fit inside the confines of the finished book. I bought two copies, as I needed to ‘see’ it with my hands.

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It was a labor of love and it was something that I had a great deal of fun and moments of introspection doing it. I made dozens of pictures I discarded. Toward the end, I realized that I was letting myself get too far astray from the purpose of the story book – and from that realization, it was easy.

Here are pictures of the book once finished…

The book was a success with the child’s mom. I had so hoped it would be both a surprise and a treasure. So much of what I do is far from expectations. I sent the extra to her mother, the child’s grandmother, hoping it might be as well-received with her.

From there, I made a video version of the book and made it available to the mom digitally. It too was a success. I used a surprising song to provide the background music: Disturbed: The Sound of Silence.

Uncategorized

Sunday Musings

12/27/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

color in a room

Or we could hold the grouchy one down and put crayons up his or her nose until a smile appears?

The picture below is one I compiled from a lot of photo editing work over the year. I used it on my social media background. I love these kinds of pictures.

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jimmy

This picture is one I made of a friend who attends Notre Dame. I used a senior high school picture. The purpose was to compare and inquire as to how surreal the difference in worlds might be – separated by a mere year in time.

1.5.14-Main-Quad-Snow

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“Familiarity breeds contempt.” It is a slow painful emotional death to realize that time has wedged such a distance between two people that one or both turn to others for the sharp surprise of intimacy from others, only to repeat the process anew.

Holiday, Uncategorized

A Festivus Pole For the Rest of Us

12/20/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

I splurged and got Dawn one of the best possible holiday gifts possible: a Festivus pole from Wagner steel.

As all of you know, Festivus is right around the corner, normally celebrated on Dec 23rd. Dawn’s birthday is the following day on the 24th. Dawn spends a few minutes a day compiling her “Airing of Grievances.” I fear it might rival the reading of “War & Peace” and that I might be the central thesis of same. (She did ask me what the difference between ‘stun’ and ‘disable’ on her taser was.)

When I assembled this delicious celebration of all-things-yuletide, the cat became so overwhelmed that he fainted at the base of the pole. Dawn’s smile was so large that I feared her features would permanently freeze in that position.

Where our house was before a structure absent the spark of joyous living, we were now bathing in the unbeatable combination of both Xmas tree and Festivus pole.

The cat’s actual words prior to fainting: “O, Festivus!” and then he fell, where he lay for 17 minutes. The only way to revive him was by opening a can of Vittles in the kitchen and waving the open can in front of his tiny nostrils.

Experts caution against the proximity of Festivus poles near Xmas trees. That’s just too much holiday spirit.

You’ll note of course that the base is a simple “X,” denoting great sensibility and stability. The directions were in Navajo and Elvish. Wait, no, they were upside down. Never mind.

I drive around, looking at those poor souls without their own Festivus poles to light their lives. I spent hours searching for people who couldn’t afford their own Festivus poles. Festivus Pole Farms are a rare sight in these parts.

If you want your own high-quality Festivus pole: ORDER HERE

Satire Parody, Whimsical

Using Facebook’s “Create Page” For Amusement

12/19/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

Facebook is a feature-rich social media platform. Used properly, it can open up a world of content and opportunity.

Of course, I’d rather use it to amuse myself. Toward that end, I periodically create a page and use it to promote whatever craziness I can devise. It’s easy to set a new page up in a just a few minutes. I’ve found, however, that the more time spent making it look authentic adds to the fun when people begin to find it and comment on it.

Like any effort, you get as good as you give.

The more creative the content, the more perplexed your accidental visitors seem to get, especially if you add real business information to the pages. For addresses, I usually find a real street address which no longer has a structure on it. Just put on your creativity hat and you can devise clever means to provide a phone number, web presence and photos.

If humor is your goal, it is staggering how much snark and jab you can pack into satire and parody without drawing the ire a personal Facebook page might.

For this particular one, I created a fake hair salon, “Hair To Displease You,” and insisted we all had cosmology licenses, which can give you the wrong impression if you’re not paying attention. My posts were mostly social commentary disguised as specialty haircuts or goofiness associated with the issues of customer service a business might encounter.

You can google for interesting sites, too. There are a lot of them, covering just about any topic you can imagine.

Satire Parody, Uncategorized

Guatemalan Heat: A New Fragrance

12/17/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

bear trap ad.png

Guatemalan Heat:
A New Fragrance By Jay Hill & BearTrap Colognes.

Made from the essence of distilled tears of angry lovers. Stored 13 years in casks lined with the hottest peppers on Earth, tinged with the misty rains of 100 streams, blessed by monks.

When you n-e-e-d the right kind of attention: Guatemalan Heat.

When you w-a-n-t the right kind of attention: Guatemalan Heat.

Legal Disclaimer: Use at own risk. User subject to intense scrutiny and passion. May cause heart palpitations in those nearby. Plan to leave the party early.

bear trap.png

Uncategorized

Pictures and Ideas

12/16/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

20151211_122448

complain and friends

20151204_192929

door

throw food away

4 years

ghosts are real

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mike as batman vs superman

scissors

problems

walmart

sounds of silence

work and put it behind you

sell personality

adventure unfamiliar

notre dame fight song

ridicule

heardrum

Personal, Uncategorized

I Ponder

12/14/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

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I do a lot of searching, either for family trees, yearbooks, missing people, or just plain curiosity. I’ve found a staggering amount of familiar faces in annuals from all over the United States. Usually, I finish my list of interesting tidbits with more questions than I start with.
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This is a picture of Bill Flanagan as he appeared in the 1964 Springdale High School yearbook. I have three points: #1, he looks exceedingly like Anthony Michael Hall from his younger days in “The Breakfast Club.” (Which is why I paired him with his doppelganger in my picture.) ‪#‎B‬, he is wearing sunglasses in his picture. I’ve looked at hundreds of yearbooks from the 60s – seeing a pair sunglasses is rare. #6, it is possible he is blind, in which case I am more intrigued than ever. (He’s not wearing glasses in the 1963 annual.)
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The picture is from 51 years ago, so I’m sure someone in my expanded overlapping circles would know someone who knows him. I’ve found a weird assortment of missing people in the last few years. One constant in my efforts is that someone always knows something that leads to the person in question.
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But his picture is an example of one of those things I’m not sure I want to investigate. I’ve had his yearbook picture for a couple of years. Each time I encounter it, I tend to ask myself why I have a picture of Anthony Michael Hall and then I remember the unexplained picture from the 1964 yearbook.
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All the stories in my head I’ve created to explain Bill Flanagan’s sunglasses probably eclipse the reality he went on to live. I hope not. I hope his life was absolutely fascinating.
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His picture from the annual is frozen in time, existing in dusty closets and in the bowels of the internet, maybe forever. I see his picture and wonder about the roads he walked, the people he met, and why he had on sunglasses for this yearbook picture.
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I prefer to continue to wonder rather than to know, even as I am tempted to find his life story. In my imagination, Bill Flanagan lived a life too full to capture in a synopsis. I hope we all do and that you too find your pair of sunglasses in each moment.

PS: I used a weird numbering system to confuse some and annoy the perfectionists.

Death, Personal, Uncategorized

Overmorrow

12/13/2015 X Teri Leave a comment

I had to dive into a digital haystack to find a word that had slipped from my grasp, one that someone once convinced me was sorely lacking in English.
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The word is ‘Ikstuarpok.’ It’s an Inuit word; when loosely translated means, “the act of waiting so anxiously for someone to arrive that you go to the window every few moments to see if they’ve arrived yet.” Those lucky enough to have cherished pets probably witness this frequently, as pets aren’t equipped to differentiate between permanent departure and a quick trip elsewhere and back home to safety.
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It also aptly describes the human emotion we feel after a tremendous loss. Despite a certainty that the person we anticipate will never again cross the threshold, we can’t stop ourselves from physically and mentally peering out, hoping against all rational hope that somehow, we are wrong. I’m certain it is very common, as it is usually expressed as the longing to hear someone’s voice for even one more minute or to spend one singular day with someone we grieve.
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We see resemblances in faces at the grocery store, hear a laugh that echoes through time, or catch a snippet of a melody that pushes us into the undeniable memory of the someone who forever eludes us. Harshest still, our treasonous minds lull us into a dream wherein we believe and feel the person who is no longer with us. Waking, we feel the agony of loss as if it were occurring again, the wound once again ripped open. No matter the pain, though, we relish the slight agony of loss, so powerful are our minds at recapturing memories.
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There’s also an English word that has sorrowfully departed our language: ‘overmorrow.’ It’s a word that means “the day after tomorrow.” It has an additional meaning. It evokes the hope and faith of a future in which we no longer feel the urge to look around, to jump up the window, or to see a face that is not there. We know that tomorrow will also hold surprise and wonder and perhaps we will be content to remember with love and fondness anyone no longer with us.
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Overmorrow.
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I wish it were overmorrow for some of my friends and that their windows were already full of sunshine, whether they peer from within or not.
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P.S. Parenthetically Speaking

Monthly Archives: December 2015