“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.”
—- Inception
Vivian Maier
The worst kind of dream is when you dream that you wake up in your own bed. I mean, if you are dreaming you are in a submarine on Mars – if things go wonky, you can say to yourself, “Well, there are no submarines on Mars, and if there were, I wouldn’t be in one.” You know you are dreaming and can relax, knowing you will be awake sometime soon.
I rarely remember my dreams (There is that weird, just awoke, feeling where you feel the dream memories draining away like water down a drain) and when I do, they are very mundane and frustrating, like my real life.
Sometimes, though, I remember vividly.
The other night I dreamed that I was at Starbucks for a while, when it was time to go I discovered my car had been stolen. I walked around the parking lot, looking at the vacant space where my car used to be. Understandably, I was pretty upset and wondering how I was going to get home until I realized I was dreaming.
Right after that, I woke up in my bed… the sun was rising and I could see gray through the windows. I sat up, parted the curtains and looked out. My car was gone. Not a good way to start the day.
Then… I woke up again. I had been dreaming that I was in bed. This time, looking out at the street, I was relieved to see my car.
Unfortunately, there was an inch of ice all over it. There would be scraping before I made it to work.
Fifty years after he gave us The Godfather, the iconic director is chasing his grandest project yet—and putting up over $100 million of his own money to prove his best work is still ahead of him.
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot – but have had trouble putting into words… here it is described as the Virtuals and the Physicals – two groups about to go to war with each other.
Sakoo dumplings from the Khao Noodle Shop, Dallas, Texas. The waitress told us to remove the red rings if we didn’t want spicy. We, of course, left them on.
What a damn shame! A little neighborhood Laotian joint that was recognized as one of the best new restaurants in the country. At least I did get to go eat there… wrote about it here:
The screen fades to black and the words “The police rapidly figured out the whole plan and arrested all criminals, successfully preventing the bomb from exploding.”
“I want each of you to ask yourself right now: am I the Blue Falcon Sgt. Johnstone is talking about? Do I have it in me to fuck over my buddy so that I can have an easier time? Because I’ll tell you right here, right now: it will come out in the wash. It always comes out in the wash. You might get away with it for a day, or a week, but it is our job to find you; and we are very good at our jobs.”
The trail runs through some thick woods between the train line and the creek south of Forest Lane. There is a nice rest area built there. This homeless guy was sitting in the rest area, reading and writing in his notebook. We talked about the weather and I helped him find a lost sock.
There’s money in it, administering programs which succor the homeless … which, if the homeless were ever successfully homed … would mean an end to that mission and money stream. So the civic powers that be have a vested interest in keeping those programs going, and even expanding them to minister to ever-increasing numbers of homeless. Which makes the powers-that-be feel all noble, responsive, responsible and unselfish-like … but which one commenter on the linked thread pointed out … for all intents and purposes they are farming people for a money crop.
For Christmas, my son bought me (and both my sons) tickets to the Kansas-West Virginia game at Allen Fieldhouse. An amazing gift. The three of us drove up to Lawrence, stayed in an Air B&B and walked around a very cold and snowy town. The game was a blast.
It reminded me of a time, almost fifty years ago, when I walked into Allen Fieldhouse as a barely 17 year old freshman for my first KU basketball game. It was one of the most amazing times of my life.
I’m old, old enough to remember the stagflation of the Carter years. It felt just like this. It isn’t a good thing – especially when you consider the pain (20% interest rates) that are necessary to get out of it.
Little by little the night turns around Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn Lotus’s lean on each other in yearning Over the hills a swallow is resting Set the controls for the heart of the sun
—-Pink Floyd, Set the Controls For the Heart Of the Sun
Woodall Rogers Expressway, Dallas, Texas
I am not a car person. To me a car is a metal box – you get in it at some location, listen to the radio for awhile, and then get out at another location. That is pretty amazing, I’ll admit, but anything else isn’t a big deal for me. I don’t really care for going fast, or looking good, or even excessive comfort (although here in Texas functional air conditioning is a life necessity, not comfort). Reliability and good gas mileage are the most important aspects of an auto.
Because I’m not a car person I’ve never been a fan of the television show Top Gear. Though (the original version at least) has some cool ideas and a very talented and entertaining cast, I was never really into it. A friend of mine was extolling the virtues of the show and I said, “I know it looks cool, but I’ve never been able to get into it.” He said, “Oh, that’s because you are not a car person.”
So that’s that.
However, I was surfing around the ‘net, wasting some of the tiny bit of precious time I have left, and I stumbled across a YouTube video of a Top Gear review of a Ferrari Enzo owned by Nick Mason, the drummer of Pink Floyd… and it is genius on a number of levels (the obscene beauty of the car itself, the enthusiasm, the plugging of Mason’s book, the way Mason leaves the set [watch ’till the end]), so I thought I’d share it with you.
Nick Mason’s Ferrari Enzo
The only sad thing is the article that lead me to watch a Youtube video on the Ferrari Enzo (remember, I’m not a car person). If you feel that you are having too much fun, are having too good of a day, need something to bring your life down a notch:
Some New Year’s resolutions are more attainable than others. Even at a time when so much is beyond our control, we remain in control of our own speech patterns. And so, as leaders and employees continue to rethink what the modern workplace should look like, including how we gather, perhaps it’s an opportune moment to banish certain phrases from the “meeting-speak” lexicon. To learn what refrains others would be happy to never hear again in a meeting, the author did a bit of crowdsourcing. She presents some of the responses that resonated the most.
In goes the cheese, Unfortunately I bought the wrong kind of Mexican cheese and it didn’t melt. No problem, I pulled out some shredded mozzarella and it was all good.
More than 1 million fewer students are enrolled in college now than before the pandemic began. According to new data released Thursday, U.S. colleges and universities saw a drop of nearly 500,000 undergraduate students in the fall of 2021, continuing a historic decline that began the previous fall.
If you’re like most people, you have a New Year’s resolution in place and you may have even stuck to it so far this year. Good for you! Realistically though, you’re going to fail. How long have you said you really should get in shape, or lamented the need for more quality time with family and friends? The fact is, despite the most earnest commitment, resolutions just don’t work.
After the sudden and intense drama of getting hit, they suffered from devastating symptoms that wouldn’t go away. It seemed like no one could help—until they found each other.
“People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It’s not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past.” ― Milan Kundera
The Blue Angels over my work parking lot.
Something that has surprised me about getting old (not getting older... getting old) has been the transformation of the future into the past. Where life used to be dominated by hopes and dreams it is now (and this happened with awful speed) possessed by memories.
Especially certain powerful, yet unpredictable memories. Something I have not thought about in decades will bubble up from the vast ancient soupy mess of my mind and… there it will be.
Often this memory will be so unexpected and ancient I’m not sure if it is even real or not. And with a memory, what is real? If a memory is of an event, person or an item that never happened or never existed – is it still a real memory? All memories are at least somewhat inaccurate – if not a complete fiction. What difference does it make?
And, to complicate things now, there is the internet. If a memory is of something that can’t be located online – how can it be real?
Por Ejemplo
Out of nowhere a couple of days ago a vivid memory came to me of a model rocket – a boost glider to be exact – that I think I made when I was in high school. Model Rocketry was a hobby of mine – as it was to many boys of my age. It was actually pretty cool – I’d order kits through the mail, build them, paint them, put a cartridge motor in them, launch them in the air – and finally watch as something went wrong. They would burn, or streamline straight in (called a Lawn Dart), or fly around in an uncontrollable tangle, or (if their parachute worked perfectly) drift away forever lost on high lofty Kansas winds.
Just kidding – often times… some times they would work – swoosh upward in a jet of smoke and the smell of black powder then have the ejection charge pop off the nosecone and deploy the plastic chute at the perfect apogee – a clot of kids would run after the slowing falling bits of paper tubing and balsa.
Now this memory was of a glider – a balsa airplane with a rocket attached to the nose. It was a difficult craft to build and fly – it was one of the last ones I built. My skills had improved over the precious few years of my youth.
The glider was unusual. It was tail-less with the wing an odd (and hard to make) swept inverted gull-wing – sort of an “M” shape. Gluing the wing panels in the proper angles and alignment with the correct balance and airfoil shape wasn’t easy. I was very proud of it.
But had I actually built it? I wasn’t sure. It was fifty years ago.
So it’s off to Google. I did a lot of searches on “tail less boost glider” and “model rocket glide recovery” and such without success. There were a lot of boost gliders out there but they all looked like regular airplanes – nothing with the strange shape I remembered.
I tried a different tack. I knew it was probably an Estes kit – I was an Estes rocket builder (as opposed to the Centuri models – which seemed flashy and unserious to me) and I figured that company might have it in its history. I found and downloaded PDF copies of their catalogs from 1970 through 1974. Then I went through the offerings (which brought the nostalgia tumbling back – either I or one of my friends had built and flown many of these kits).
I found it. It was an Estes Nighthawk.
Estes Nighthawk. Once I had the name, I found several photos. It looks just like I remembered it.
The kits were discontinued in the mid 70’s. They cost two dollars at the time. There is an old kit for sale online for $140.
As an American, I’m convinced that the United States is the greatest nation on Earth. Obviously, I’m biased as hell and, frankly, I’m not interested in apologizing for it.
We’re not perfect, but I see remarkably little from other countries that look attractive enough to me to make me want to relocate. Especially when you understand what some of the ramifications are of certain policies.
If you’re someone who struggles with Sunday night anxiety, chances are you get a little restless as the weekend comes to a close. Indeed, with the weekends feeling that little bit shorter now the nights are drawing in, it can almost feel like the time is slipping away from you.
My Not-A-Purse. What is strange is that I found this image floating around on the internet – I don’t know where it originally came from. But if you look, there is an Alphasmart Neo sticking up in the bag. I can’t believe other people out there have Neos in their bags, exactly like mine.
Bill Chance 