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Making a mountain…out of television
By matt | May 7, 2008
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My friend, Brad, likes to tease me about the fact I don’t have a television. Well, I should amend that…he teases me every time I bring it up by linking to The Onion article: Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn’t Own A Television.
At first, not having a television was a little bit of a thing for me. It was hard adjusting to it, really, because I had used it as a form of entertainment and now I had free time to spend that would otherwise have been consumed with channel surfing.
I don’t find television to be “evil” or anything silly like that. So let’s get that out of the way. I just prefer other forms of entertainment…and to be honest, I have a television I just don’t have it connected up to cable or to an antenna. Thus, I still watch DVD’s but I don’t watch anything that is broadcast.
Thus, when I saw one of the blogs on the Wall Street Journal published an entry about turning off cable TV at their house, I guess I expected more when the title of the entry was “Why We Now Have No TV: And (Kind Of) Like It”.
They say why they don’t have a TV. They don’t say why they like it!
In the comments on my post a few days ago, Walt and Sarah talked about how television can fit into a household and why it can be a good thing. I don’t disagree with these perspectives.
What I didn’t see in the WSJ was why they thought a television-free house was good. Simply subtracting does not necessarily improve a situation. My question: what did they add to their lives once they stopped watching television?
Topics: technology | 4 Comments »
It’s finally spring!
By matt | April 30, 2008
I think spring is finally here in Cleveland.
To me, this winter seemed to drag on endlessly. There were long periods where temperatures were in the 20’s, which is lower than I like…even when I’m wearing super high-tech clothing that was made for arctic explorers.
Naturally, when it warmed up, I was happy that things had changed. Yet, it got so warm so quickly — 70 degree days for a week — that it seemed like we skipped directly from winter to summer. It wasn’t a natural, northern Ohio transition. It seemed, for a few weeks, as if we had all boarded a plane in wintry, snowy Cleveland and got off the next day in summery, sunny Cleveland.
Of course, then it changes again and suddenly we’ve got near-freezing days.
This makes me grumpy.
As I was driving home, recently, on one of those days where nothing is wrong but nothing is particularly cheerful, I turned a corner. The sun was shining directly upon me, through the windshield. It struck me, bright enough to warm me. My head and chest were warm. My legs and feet, in the shadow of the compartment, were cold.
I cracked the window open for my head and chest. I turned on the heater for my legs and feet…and then, best of all, I smelled cut grass on a day when it had been rainy, sunny, cold and then warm (in the sun).
Spring! Finally!
I love the change of seasons.
Topics: cleveland | No Comments »
Funny? Or sculpture?
By matt | April 29, 2008
Bent Objects is something strangely combining humor and sculpture.
Topics: art/aesthetics, humor | Comments Off
Funny?
By matt | April 28, 2008
Topics: humor | No Comments »
The Only Experiment
By matt | April 23, 2008
I remember, some time in the early 1990’s, a song that had the lyrics:
“Wake up. Go to work. Eat. Go to sleep.”
I spend my life trying to break that four-step cycle. It’s impossible to do. I don’t resent the cycle. We live in a world where food and shelter are necessary and are only obtained through work or effort.
Still, I try to leave the cycle when possible because I think that it is too easy to fall into a rut and forget that there is opportunity for more. We don’t need to spend our energy on just these four things.
Electronic Archeology
I bring this up because I was doing some electronic house-cleaning. I re-read old email, collecting in my inboxes since I got this computer in November of 2006. I also went back and read a bunch of my old entries on this website.
After reading this, I noticed that I keep using two words to describe my what I’m doing in my life:
- Experiment
- Exploration
The Only Experiment
Friends of mine make fun of me for not having a television. When they seriously ask me why I don’t have one, I answer by saying “why would I need one when there are so many other things to do?”
But it’s more than that. It’s more than the fact that there are many alternative entertainment options. There are too many things to do that let me explore life, experiment with my perceptions of myself, and to try to be engaged with the world rather than an observer.
My writing here has been less frequent, recently, than at other times in the past. The timeline of entries on this site is also filled with gaps. The frequency and spacing of the gaps correlates with times when I’m running off and trying something new. I can see this from the entries, recalling why I decided to stop writing. I can read about it when I compare email I wrote about my life and exchanged with friends during the times I wrote less-often on this site.
I know that I’ll never completely abandon writing for this site. I also know that life, engaged with the people and the world around me, is the only thing really worth pursuing. Still, I can’t apologize when I don’t write here because when there are pauses here, it means something important is happening elsewhere in my life.
The experiment is running.
Topics: Impossible Year | 5 Comments »
College Humor
By matt | April 20, 2008
I’ll admit that the “Hardly Working” videos on College Humor are one of my guilty pleasures…
The site is essentially a new National Lampoon when that magazine was still doing the really funny stuff like Animal House. The stuff linked below aren’t part of the “Hardly Working” series, but they are two of my favorites on the site. They capture so much of the online-discussion-chat-whatever experience.
There’s some swearing, so they are potentially unsafe for workplace consumption. If you could watch Animal House uncut at your workplace, it should be fine. And if so, email me immediately so that I can apply to work with you! (joking!)
…and…
Topics: about, humor | No Comments »
Pro-life or pro-choice, this is still wrong…
By matt | April 17, 2008
A senior art student at Yale artificially inseminated herself and then miscarried, multiple times in order to create “art” from the resulting…results.
No matter your perspective, this is scandalous.
From a pro-life standpoint, this is simply evil.
From a pro-choice standpoint, this is minimally self-abusive and reasonably a pervision of the right that pro-choice supporters pursue.
Part of me expects her to reveal this as a big hoax…that the very “announcement” was “performance art” and the resulting response (such as this blog entry) was proof that her art was successful.
Topics: bad ideas | 4 Comments »
Cosmetics
By matt | April 6, 2008
I’ve been spending more time than usual with things that are not writing for this blog. In the last few days, I’ve done some minor cosmetic upgrades to the site.
On the left, you’ll find my newest favorite toy: the “shared items” from my RSS reader that lists the things I’ve found on the web that I thought were interesting. (It’s the “shared items” script from Google Reader, but it’s pretty cool.)
I also got rid of that right-hand column on the site. That went pretty smoothly, but I messed something up so some images seem to do wacky things to the text that follows if I don’t cheat and wrap them in some useless HTML. I’ll fix that up later as it’s not a serious problem at the moment.
And…yeah. I live right on the edge. Huh?
Topics: about | Comments Off
Sick [of|in] Winter
By matt | March 26, 2008
There’s one thing I don’t understand: why do we get sick in winter?
This has been a long winter for me. I’ve been sick several times - more often than usual - and I’m tired of being sick. I’m also tired of the consistently below-freezing temperatures, the dirty snow, the sound of ice sliding off my roof, and my shoes getting ruined by rock salt.
But the crummy weather can’t explain the reason that I and most of the people I know get sick more often in winter than in summer.
I’ve heard two primary explanations for why we get sick more often in winter. First, it’s because the cold temperatures lower our resistances. Second, it’s because we’re indoors more often and are thus in contact with The Infected more often.
The problem with the first proposal? Most of us don’t work outside any more. The majority sits at desks or work in large heated buildings for five days a week. When we go home, it’s in heated cars. At home, few people in this country worry about the temperature ever falling below 65 and many keep the temperature at 70 all year.
Also, I have to imagine that the things that make us sick do much better in warmer months than cold months. We don’t have malaria in Ohio because of this reason, after all. So why would we think that the cold months are somehow “better” for the germs?
The problem with the second proposal? Most of us don’t see a substantial difference in our habits, locations, or work schedules. We work in the same offices. We live in the same homes. We shop in the same stores. So we’re in contact with just as many people, potentially infected people, in the summer as in winter.
So I don’t get it. Why do we get sick more often in winter than in summer?
Topics: health | 4 Comments »
A musical interlude…
By matt | March 17, 2008
While I get some things written, here’s a video of a group that mixes together a little bit of…well, a ton of bands.
Topics: music | 2 Comments »
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