I'm On A Plane

Today’s thought is being brought to you by:  Ebola, Rakes, Extinction, and Readers Like You.

I’m writing this post from a plane, which is awesome to begin with, but it’s even more awesome because I have a window seat.  That means I get to look out and see our country from sea to shining sea, as I am going from the east coast to the west.  I also am rocking out to some particularly jammy jams, but I’ll get into that later.

Anyway, I just wanted to say America is indeed beautiful, at least from way up here.  At this height, I am completely removed from all of the troubles of the world.  I mean, I’m flying.  I feel like a total badass, but at the same time I feel very vulnerable.  I’m in a monstrous metal machine that I have very little idea how it works, and I’m looking down and seeing clouds.  I think this thing runs on stuff that explodes, but that doesn’t matter to me now.  I have absolutely no control of my fate for the next 5-6 hours, and that’s fine.  It’s what I signed up for.

I look out the window and heavens to murgatroyd, what a view!  In between the clouds, I can see the land, and it looks so pristine.  I can see small towns and big cities, and I can also see vast expanses of open land.  It really is quite something.

Naturally, an experience this majestic needs an equally majestic soundtrack, and oh baby, my jams are on point right now.  As of this sentence I can hear the crystal clear and melodic voice of Adele, who was preceded by Kurt Cobain and is being followed up by Tarja.  Safe to say that I have eclectic tastes.  That’s sort of the beauty of what’s going on up here.  Anything goes, and everything fits.  The view, the sounds, the lack of control, it’s a perfect recipe for adventure.

You better believe that I have a playlist of over six and a half hours to last me the whole ride, and it sure as heck is on shuffle.  So right now, I’m going to sit back, relax, and watch our country drift by beneath me.

-Harry

Around The Sun In 130 Days?

Today’s thought is being brought to you by:  North Korea’s Nuclear Program, Deer, Cars, and  Readers Like You.

If you read my earlier post about Gliese 581G, you probably have figured out that I enjoy staring into the night sky and wondering what’s out there.  Well, I ask and NASA delivers.  They just found a planet, Kepler 186F, that is possibly another Earth, or Earth-like celestial mass.  It’s located in the Kepler 186 solar system, and is located a distance from the system’s sun that puts it in what is called “The Goldilocks Zone.”  I love that.

Which brings me back to something else I mentioned in my earlier post, Drake’s Equation, my single favorite theoretical formula ever thought of by humans.  The possibility of life outside of our primitive field of view is an idea that has always fascinated me.  So whenever we find an Earth-twin, or in this case Earth-cousin, I get all giddy.  How cool would it be to not be the smartest things in the galaxy?

Even if there are no other civilizations out there capable of radioastronomy, if Kepler 186F is habitable, sign me up.  I sure as heck don’t want to die on this rock.  That’s been done.  If space is the final frontier, then call me Davy Crockett.

-Harry

Today, You Go Free

Today’s thought is being brought to you by:  Justice, Samurai, The War of 1812, and Readers Like You.

Today I’m going to talk about my relationship with Starcraft.  The short version is that it’s a one-way love/hate relationship.  The long version is slightly more complicated than that.

Let’s start with the one-way part.  Starcraft has no idea I exist.  I don’t play it.  My Blizzard account is for Diablo.  The only way Starcraft could find out that we are in a relationship is to check my youtube subscriptions.  I am 99.9% certain that Starcraft does not in any way reciprocate my feelings.  That’s ok with me, I think if Starcraft found out about me it would become awkward.

Moving right along.  The vast majority of people who play Starcraft play it for the multiplayer.  In multiplayer, it is a very competitive game.  People play for cash prizes of thousands of dollars.  It’s a professional sport in South Korea, although there were some legal shenanigans over broadcasting Blizzard’s intellectual property for Starcraft 2.  Those have since been sorted out, and now you can watch it there like an American might watch baseball here in the U.S.  This is where the first love part comes in.  I absolutely adore the fact that a video game can be taken that seriously.  I mentioned this earlier, but I’ll say it again.  I spend a lot of time on the computer.  The fact that people can actually make serious money by clicking their mouse repeatedly makes me smile.

Unfortunately, the fact that it is so competitive is also devastating to me.  Why?  Well, I suck at it.  Even though it’s a strategy game, it is also a twitch reflex game.  My twitch reflexes are horrible.  In addition, I have dyskinesia, which only exacerbates the problem.  Therefore, I cannot play multiplayer without getting absolutely demolished.  So to save myself the embarrassment and frustration, I don’t play it.  That’s the hate part of our relationship.

However, Starcraft also has a single-player component, and I love it.  I play a lot of video games, and there are very few that have a better central story.  As far as I’m concerned, the romance of Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan is the best one in any video game.  I know it’s kind of cheesy, but honestly, that industry is not the best when it comes to romantic relationships.  (Mario and Princess Peach aren’t exactly Romeo and Juliet.)  The supporting cast is also well-developed and have their own compelling stories.  The whole thing is just a good narrative.  It’s fun, dramatic, humorous at times, and tragic at others.  It has everything I’m looking for in a blockbuster action story.

So until next time, make sure you’ve always got a card to play!

-Harry

(And fix my damn jukebox!)

All Men Must Lie

Today’s thought is being brought to you by:  States That Are Commonwealths, War, Sporks, and Readers Like You.

“You think darkness is your ally?  You merely adopted the dark.  I was born in it, molded by it.  I didn’t see the light until I was already a man, by then it was nothing to me but blinding.”

This thought has nothing to do with The Dark Knight Rises, but I like that quote.  Instead, today’s thought is about why I am an unapologetic elitist, in one field in particular.  That field?  Nerdiness.  So I’m just going to come out and say it:  HBO producers are dicks for making Game of Thrones.  (Which is the wrong name for the series to begin with, by the way.)  They are dicks because they made something that made me decidedly uncool when I was younger into the thing that all the cool kids are doing.  I can’t go on facebook these days without hearing something about someone who died in the last episode.  I get it, important characters die.  Stop being surprised.  Ygritte dies next.  Now you know something.

The point I want to make today is not about George RR Martin’s love of killing fan favorites.  The point is that you can’t retroactively make yourself a fantasy nerd.  It doesn’t work that way.  You either grew up on fantasy or you didn’t.  Watching a tv show and doing a little background research just doesn’t cut it.

When I was a wee lad, I was picked on, rather relentlessly I might add, for my love of fantasy.  I have always enjoyed escaping into made up worlds and meeting strange characters.  I probably always will.  Magic in all of its forms has always captured my imagination.  I love it when I can read about a system of magic that makes sense, and is not a crutch for an author.  As much as I hate to admit it, Harry Potter has a fairly well defined magical formula.  A Song of Ice and Fire does not.  If you’re actually interested, the best magic system in a fantasy series is the Warrens in Steven Erikson’s Malazan Book of the Fallen.  Now that it has become cool to like fantasy, I’m annoyed.  All of the years I spent being bullied and insulted have now become wasted, because I can say “I told you so,” to my heart’s content, but no one cares, and more importantly, it doesn’t change my past.

Think about it like this:  I loved something that made me an outcast.  Now, when I speak out about how much I dislike the bandwagon fans, I am still made an outcast.  I can take some solace in knowing that I’m ahead of the curve, but ultimately that’s pretty small comfort.  I suppose I’ll just continue doing what I love and waiting for it to become cool.

-Harry

Football? More Like Football!

Today’s thought is being brought to you by:  Privacy, Evolution, Music, and Readers Like You.

There is a reason why the World Cup finals is the single most viewed sporting event on Earth.  In the 2010 games, an estimated 700 million people watched Spain clash with The Netherlands in the final.  That’s roughly a tenth of the population of our planet.  It’s also almost seven times the number of viewers of the most watched Super Bowl, which was in 2012, and had 111.3 million viewers.  So why is football (pitch) so much more popular than football (gridiron)?  The answer is simple.  It’s a better game.

I think it’s a good time, given the upcoming World Cup, to spend some time thinking about the beautiful game, and why I, like the rest of the civilized world, love it so much.  It is also worth noting that I am a huge Liverpool FC supporter (like LeBron James) and that it has been an emotional week for me, being the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough disaster that claimed the lives of 96 fans.  In fact, during today’s opening ceremonies at Anfield, I cried, and I’m not ashamed of that.

Football (American) is a sport of violence, anger, and intimidation.  I’ll freely admit that it is full of athleticism and passion, both important qualities of any organized sport.  It is also needlessly complicated, and even the players (and sometimes coaches) don’t have a full grasp of the rules.  Try condensing it into ten words or less.  I think you’ll find that a rather challenging task.

Football (World) on the other hand, can be summed up quite succinctly in less than ten words.  Try this:  Put the ball in the net.  No hands allowed.

Of course, as the game has evolved, there are a few more rules added in (offsides, goalkeepers hands, etc.) but the rulebook is significantly thinner than football (American) and much easier to explain.  Find me a professional football (World) player who doesn’t know all of the rules, and you’ll have found me a liar.  The same cannot be said for football (American) players.

I have also found (anecdotally) that football (World) players and coaches give better press conferences by leaps and bounds.  Let me give you an example from this morning’s match of Liverpool vs. Manchester City, a very important tilt in the Premier League title race:

Liverpool won the match 3-2, led by their captain, Steven Gerrard.  As soon as the game ended, he immediately called his team together for a huddle.  In said huddle, which the cameramen were desperately trying to get inside of, Mr. Gerrard was as animated and passionate as any man I have ever seen on a field of play.  You could see the intensity written all over his face.  Later, when he faced the media, he was asked what he said to his team.  He answered, “That’s none of your business.”

Professional athletes on both sides of the pond are contractually obligated to speak to reporters, but it is rare to find an American who is willing to be so blatant in his commitment to his teammates in front of the camera.  It reminds me of when Seal Team 6 visited the White House, and were asked point blank by the President of the United States which one of them had killed Bin Laden.  They refused to single out a man, instead responding that they had killed him as a team.  The British interviewer (like the President) pressed no further in his questioning of the Liverpool captain, another sign of the mutual respect between the media and the athletes.

I could go on ad infinitum with reasons that I prefer football (World), but I’ll leave you with this thought:

America has four major professional sports.  The rest of the world has, by and large, just one.  Are we really that split as to which one is the best?  Seems like everybody else has it figured out.  Let’s step up our collective game, and start playing the right one.

-Harry

A Place To Sleep

Today’s thought is being brought to you by Friction, Croissants, Demi-culverins, and Readers Like You.

Have you ever wanted to place an order at a really fancy restaurant?  Perhaps you are interested in getting your suit measured?  What about learning the Cyrillic alphabet?  Do you like checking out books from the library?  Might you be a fan of getting your makeup done?  Is having a throwback to your elementary school days something you’d consider?  Do you think that Bob Ross (rest his soul) was a boss of bosses?

Or is there a chance that you enjoy sleeping?

If you answered yes to any or all of those questions, then you should watch ASMR.

Let me make something absolutely clear.  ASMR is not porn.  One does not get off on it.  The fact of the matter is, a fair number of popular ASMR artists are beautiful young women.  If you are watching for the eye candy however, you are wasting your time.  Porn is porn.  ASMR is ASMR.  To be honest, most times my eyes are closed after about sixty seconds of watching anyway.  If you are trying to excite yourself, you are looking in the wrong place.  ASMR is for relaxation.  As one ASMR artist so eloquently put it, ASMR is about as erotic as peeling an orange.

Understand that not everybody gets the tingles.  That’s ok, I only get them some of the time.  Regardless, ASMR does relax me every single time.  It also helps me get to sleep when I’m struggling with that.  Just put on headphones, queue up a nice playlist, and bingo!  I’m out like a light.

Leaving that topic for a second, I want to let you know that I spend a ton of time on the computer.  Online games are something I really enjoy, and sometimes I’m good at them.  But, the internet is a scary place.  People are quick to rush to judgment, use foul language, and be generally hurtful.  That is frankly depressing.  The internet is a wonderful tool for communication, and it rubs me the wrong way when people abuse the anonymity of the web to be jerks.

That’s why ASMR is the cat’s pajamas.  It’s a community of people going out of their way to be supportive and helpful to other folks that they have never met.  Basically, it is everything that the internet should be.  Nothing mean, nothing hurtful, nothing insulting, just people helping people.  Now that’s quite a thought.

-Harry

The Importance Of Being Communicative

Today’s thought is being brought to you by:  Plankton, Honor, Rubber, and Readers Like You.

As I was pondering the nature of human interactions while jamming out to some jams and eating chicken, (because YOLO,) a thought of profoundly trivial importance crossed my mind.  It runs something along the lines of this:

Language sucks.  Sure, if we didn’t have it, we’d be screwed in a societal sense, but on a personal level, I think everyone would be a little better off if we never had to obey the rules of a fixed language.  If you had no words to bind your emotions, all of your expression would be pure, as it would come straight from the source, with no annoying middleman.  Obviously, I am not suggesting that everyone all of a sudden stop using words, although I don’t always use them, I just think communication would be so much simpler and more honest without them.

Like I said, I don’t always use words to express myself.  Sometimes simple noises, or even silence, can be far more truthful.  People have told me that it is aggravating that I don’t answer their questions in ways that they can understand.  I find those people equally aggravating because they aren’t making an effort to leave their comfort zone, and tapping into pure emotional communication.

Just a thought.  If you have time, think about it yourself.  Or don’t, your choice.

-Harry

Bonus Thought Challenge!

Name four things that are holier than thou.  Deities don’t count.  Go!

A Thought For A Thursday

Today’s thought is being brought to you by:  God, Tuna, Kittens, and Readers Like You.

As I was pondering the meaning of existence, (because, you know, it’s Thursday,) I stumbled across a thought that I found particularly amusing.  It goes something like this:

Gliese 581G’s reality as a planet is not confirmed.  However, it is the closest extraterrestrial body we know of that could support life similar to the kind that we have here on Earth.  So, if Drake’s Equation has a positive whole number answer, and they happen to be living on Gliese 581G, do they think that our existence is not confirmed?

That would be silly, because everyone knows that we exist.  Right?  Just a thought.

-Harry

Welcome

Welcome to Yellow Brick Roads For The Color Blind.  If you are reading this, prepare to be over-, under-, or regularly-whelmed.  Let me start with the following disclaimer: I have no idea what is going to happen next.  With that out of the way, let’s begin.

My name is Harry.  As I am typing this, I am the smartest guy in the room.  I am the only guy in the room.  Ipso facto, I am also the dumbest, and of the two options, (smartest or dumbest) I prefer being lazy.  My mind works in ways that I don’t always understand.  In that regard, you and I are both very much alike and simultaneously polar opposites.  If I’ve lost you already, either go back to the beginning or stop reading, the choice is yours.  If you’re keeping up, wonderful.  I was rather hoping you would.

As you may have noticed, I am full of lovely little contradictions.  I like that.  It makes me feel like a quantum computer of some sort, although infinitely less complex.  Which brings me to the next fun tidbit about myself: I have no super powers.  That thought is very reassuring to me.  Sometimes, in the course of a conversation, the question will arise, “If you could have one super power, what would it be?”  I invariably answer, “teleportation,” and invariably, I am lying.  The reason I lie is so I don’t look like a dick.  The truthful answer is as follows: “I don’t need a super power, and if I did, I sure as shit wouldn’t tell you, as that would render any super power I was unlucky enough to have utterly useless.”

The final thing you need to know about me in this little post is that I believe in pants.  I consider shorts to be a variant of pants, so I believe in them as well.  That’s pretty much the extent of my religious views.  (No idolatry.  That would be a waste of pants.)

So keep your pants on.

-Harry