Timothy Callahan

Is this the end?

I considered my writing to be a little bit more than a hobby, yet not exactly a career.  Sure, I wanted to be good at it and I worked hard at being good at it but I never thought I worked harder than say, a person who works on his car on the weekends. Or someone who works hard at a local dinner theater.  I write because it’s something I enjoy doing and if I succeed at it or make money off it, all the better.   

There are times when I work hard to get something published, it never happens, but I try.  I have gone the self-publishing route but really, I don’t have the time to promote my work as I should.  Maybe if I quit my job and worked at it full time I could get some publishing deals, but the truth is I’m not really brave enough to just go off and do something like that. 

I missed some chances when I was unemployed but to be honest I was more worried about getting a job than publishing anything.  Besides, all I had was one short novel that was good, but not great.  I did send it to places, heck I still send it places every once in a while, but so far no one has touched it. I can’t blame them, I’m not a popular name and agents and publishers want people who can make them money. I might be able to make them money but who’s going to take that chance?  If I were an agent or a publisher I don’t think I’d buy my novels.  The writings good, but not strong.  Why spend money publishing something that only a few people might buy?  Agents and publishers tell you they like to take chances on new writers but the odd are I won’t be one of them.   That’s not putting myself down, that’s an honest truth. 

It sounds like I’m giving up or I’m a pessimist.  Trust me, most people around me think I’m too optimistic about things.  I guess when you’re a realist about things that automatically makes it sound pessimistic.  I have hope that if I keep sending my stuff out someone will bite.  It will probably never happen but I have hope.   

I know my work and it’s good.  I like my work.  I read stuff that I’ve written years ago and I like it. I can see its flaws of course but I see flaws in most of the stuff I read.  Are my flaws any worst?   Maybe but until a professional reads my work I’ll never know.  Of course, the only way to get a pro to read my work is to get published.  Or pay a lot of money. I don’t have a lot of money so I’ll have to wait for a pro to buy my stuff.  Which probably won’t ever happen. 

When I spend an hour or so writing something I stop and wonder why I’m doing it.  Who am I writing for?  I want to write for people other than me and a handful of people who might listen to my podcasted writings at podiobooks.com.  The truth is, I’m not sure who I’m writing for anymore. In my 20’s and 30’s I wrote to try to get published.  I wrote to tell people I did something that was interesting.   I wrote because it was a release from a life that, while not horrible, had a bunch of holes that needed to be filled.  I wrote because my imagination was so large it needed an outlet.  I haven’t felt the need to fill any holes in my soul for a while. I wrote the Arwen saga because I had an idea that wouldn’t go away.  Now that that saga is done and I have nothing else to say I wonder why I still write. 

I’m working on another novel and my heart isn’t really in it. Could it be because the novel isn’t good enough to hold my interest or is it something more?  Have I finally gotten sick of spending the limited hours I have in the day writing something that no one will read?  Has my mind finally stopped supplying me with ideas?  Have I gotten to the point in my life where I don’t need to write anymore?  Or, do I simply need to sit back and relax and not worry about all those things?  

 

My quibids.com experience

First off, don't believe the hype about Qbuids.com, a penny auction site that seems to be pretty popular. Second, don't believe all the people who are dissing the site, calling it a rip off and to avoid it at all cost. The truth is the site falls somewhere in between, it's not all that great but if you do some research and follow some simple rules you'll see that it's not exactly a rip off either.

First off, what is a Penny auction site? Basically it's an auction site sort of like Ebay (in the same way a slot machine is sort of like a PS3.) where you pay 60 cents for every bid you make. You bid against other's for the product which is on a timer. If the timer reaches 0 and you're the last person to bid you win the auction. If someone else bids the timer resets, normally it resets to 10 seconds but I've seen it reset to 20 and even 30 a few times. Each bid adds a penny to the price of the product which normally starts at 0 dollars.

I think that's the first thing most people get right away, that each bid cost 60 cents, which means if you see a product that's a dollar and 100 bids have been made on it, at 60 cents apiece that's 60 dollars for Quidids' bottom line. Not a bad business strategy if you can get away with it. It also means if you and someone else gets into a bidding war on something and each of you spend 50 bids on a product and you lose, you're not only out the product but out 30 dollars and 50 bids. So, only bid on things you want and accept the fact you might not win and, if you don't win, don't get mad cause that's just how this site works. A read a lot of reviews and most people seemed upset at this point, that they spend 100+ bids on something and lost. So, keep in mind that if you lose you will lose your bids and your money but Quibids is pretty upfront with all that so I'm not sure how people feel they've been ripped off. To get ripped off I feel you need someone to take your money in a way that you didn't know about, or sell you a product that's not worth what you spend on it.

The real appeal to the site is the fact that you can get some really good things really cheap. I saw a PS3 sell for about 5 bucks (500 bids @ 60 cents a bid, do the math cause I don't feel like it.) Saw some Gift Cards sell for about 90% of what they're worth so you do get some really good deals if you win. In fact, I got two 10 dollar gift cards for Walmart, a 50 dollar gift card for Fandango and I won about 200 free bids, all for less than five dollars so that's good.

Before placing any bid, heck before signing up I looked carefully at the site and discovered a few thing that I found, well, interesting. As you can image the site really wants you to bid a lot and they make that very, very easy with an autobid feature that is very dangerous for you and I feel it's something that, if you sign up for the site, you need to be careful with. Of all the things I saw on the site this is the one thing that I can honestly say I didn't really like and the one thing that made me uncomfortable using. Basically, you can set an autobid to bid for you if you're away from the computer of if you don't feel like clicking the button. There is a cap, 20 bids, and you can start bidding when the price gets to a certain point, but if you think about it you can see how this system favors Quibids and not the bidder. Think about it, what if you get into a bidding war with two other people who are using Autobid up to the cap? The computer will just bid and bid and bid until the other computer runs out of bids or until you do. It just seems too random, too stacked against the bidder. I hated when I went against an autobidder cause I knew I was going to have to outbid a dumb computer. In fact, if I saw a bunch of autobids for an auction I just left without bidding.

When you sign up you do need to buy at least 100 bids at 60 bucks so that's what I started with. It didn't take long for me to win a about 200 more bids (there are always auctions for more bids, another way for Quibids to get some free money.) so it's easy to get them if you want, it's always easy to lose all your bids the first day if you're not lucky or careful.

I did find a few things odd that I want to talk about here. Well, only one thing actually. It seemed that I won a lot of little auctions when I first signed up then it got harder and harder to win even the little ones. Now, I could have just gotten lucky, which is probably the case, but it did seem odd. The some kind of odd that would happen to me when I went on dating sites, wouldn't get any hits for months, then just as my membership was up I'd start getting hits again. That kind of odd, as if the site were saying "See how easy it is to win? Now, get more bids and you'll win just as easy!" I'm suspicious but without any evidence and with nothing more than a few samples I can't say exactly what I'm talking about. Like I said, it could have been dumb luck that I won all those things the first week then couldn't even sniff a win in the two weeks that followed.

So, in conclusion, I enjoyed the three weeks I played around on Quibids but I'd never go back to it. In actually it's more of a gambling site and less of an auction site. It's easy to get absorbed in it, just like it's easy to get absorbed into pushing a button on a slot machine. I did get more out of it then I put in by about 10 bucks (that 50 dollar gift card put me over the top) but, like I said, either I got lucky or the system was rigged to pull me in. That's something you'll have to figure out yourself if you ever choose to check the site out.

Characters are people too.

I love the fact I have Netflix and Netflix is now showing a lot of the stuff I used to watch as I was growing up. Over the course of a week I was able to cherry pick some of my favorite Star Trek Next Generation episodes, a few Buffy and Angle shows, and some Arrested Development. I'm eagerly waiting for them to get Deep Space Nine so I can watch those as well. TV was a huge part of forming my imagination, more so than books or movies, although they also played a huge roll, just as big as Television.

What I found interesting as I was watching Next Gen was just how much that show did influence me. Story structure, characters, situations, all the things that show did well I can see in my work today. The Arwen, my very own Star Ship series, can easily trace its roots back to Episodes like Best of Both worlds, Cause and Effect, and The Inner light. It's no coincidence I guess that those are my favorite episodes and, on some level, I wanted to re-write them in some way with my own characters. It wasn't really a conscience choice, it just sort of happened.

Another show that really influenced me, more as a young kid than a teenager, was Star Blazers or, if you were in Japan, Space battleship Yamato. I loved that show so much. I used to race home after school to watch it. I would then try to draw the episode and when I figured out I have no artistic ability I used to write stories about the show, using my own characters in place of the ones on TV. Of course, the stories I wrote were just mirroring the stories on the TV by that really was my first attempts to write a story, all because of that show.

One of the odd things that struck me at that early age were characters. I felt like I was giving people life! If I thought of a character and I wrote about that character I was sort of creating a new life form in my mind and that life form could only act if I let them act, could only do what I wanted them to do. As an 11 year old that was a pretty powerful concept and one that I held on to even as I was learning how to write and how to build story and structure. I would create a character and in my eye the person was alive, not just a figment of my imagination but a real, live being. Which is way I always feel bad when I kill someone in a story.

I also hate it when I just remove a character completely. To me I not only killed someone but he or she no longer existed! That's kind of dark.

In my one novel, Ida, I had to do that. I killed a character half way through the book for impact not realizing I would need him later in the story. I had created another character to take his place but as I wrote it I thought, "why did I just create this new guy when I had a perfectly good guy that I killed?" So, I went back and unkilled the guy and totally wrote out the new guy. I felt bad for the new guy so if I ever do a sequel maybe I'll give him a part. I also think the guy I killed was pretty happy to be alive again, especially since his death was kind of painful to begin with.

I also did that with another character in my Arwen books. I was going to kill him in book two but decided not to but then I killed him in book three for no good reason really. Come to think of it he should have died in the second story cause his death then would have meant more than his death in the third. Oh well, if I could do it over again I would but I can't so he lived to see another story. . .where he died.

When writers talk about how the characters tell them what to do most people who don't write have a hard time understanding that. I understand it. More than once my characters have told me what they want and what they want to do in a situation. I find it hard to get anything past my characters, if they need to act dumb for some sort of plot point to happen I have a hard time making them dumb and I feel I need to trick them into going for the plot point before going forward. Smart characters who act dumb really annoy me so I think it's more that I don't want someone to read my work and go, 'wow, that character is normally on the ball, how does she not know what's going to happen?'

That drives me nuts when I see it on a TV show or a movie. I'll give you an example of a show that I liked a lot but had a hard time watching because the characters acted way dumber than they were supposed to be.

One of the news shows I enjoyed, before it was canceled, was No Ordinary Family. In this show you had a bunch of really smart people. It was a show about people with super powers and how they adjusted to those powers. In fact, one kid had the powers of super-duper smartness.

In one of the episodes they meet a shape shifter who could make herself look like anyone in the family. Now, I can see that fooling people the first time and it made that episode kind of fun. Eventually they find out she's a shape shifter and beat her, she escapes and they hope they've seen the last of her, only they don't know if she'll be back or not.

A few episodes later she does return and does the same thing, taking the shape of family members to get information out of them. Now, as I'm watching that show I can't help but think, "boy, these guys are dumb. They know someone is out there after them who can look like any member of the family wouldn't it be smart to, oh I don't know, come up with code words to ask someone a question only they know when they first meet?"

That's just one example from one show, there are lots of other shows with lots of other examples I can think of. I personally think it takes a lot of imagination to come up with a way to fool your characters without them being dumb.

Like I learned in improv, play up to your characters intelligence, don't make him a dumb guy cause the audience can see right through that.

It’s the end of the World and I feel fine

So, yesterday the world didn't end. Why am I not surprised. I think most people believed we would wake up the next day without any issues other than maybe a hangover or some other drinking related mishap. It was Saturday night after all. Judging by all the posts on Facebook no one I knew took it seriously. I think that maybe some people used it as a way to reflect on their religion, maybe reexamine their relationship with God. All it really did for me is reawaken a question I've had for a very long time, one that's been bothering me for about as long as I can remember. What are people fascinated with being on Earth when it finally ends? If you believe in heaven, if you believe there will be a rapture, why do you want to be here when it happens?

Maybe it all comes from the fact that we're the only animal on Earth who knows it's mortal. I could be wrong, bears could easily have a rapture myth just like we do, but I doubt it. We're the only animals that know we'll die someday. Other animals do what they can to survive but do you think many of them stay up and night going, 'I'm going to die. I'm going to die.' That could be why my dogs bark and kick in their sleep, but once again, I doubt it.

We are smart, we are clever, we've figured out things about ourselves and about the world we live in. We are also really dumb, prone to trying to see patterns where there are none, and irrational to the extreme. We are all those things and I believe that is why so many people want to see the world come to an end and why they want to be here when it happens.

I'm pretty sure end of world myths go back before the stories in the bible. I would bet one of the first stories ever told was about the end of the world. The story of the flood and Noah was around thousands of years before it was put into the bible and I'm sure it was just one of many such stories being told at that time. We're still telling them now and if we headed 500 years into the future we'll probably hear them then as well.

That's just the way our minds work, we like to tell stories, we like to listen to stories, we also like to think that our lives have meaning and maybe, for some, the only meaning is to be here when it ends. That's why I sort of feel bad for those who build themselves up for the end only to be disappointed the next day.

It's pretty obvious to me that most of those that predict the end of the world are charlatans trying to get money out of weak willed people. But, it's those people that I wonder about. Can a rational mind believe that the world will end? Does it take someone who is easily manipulated to believe it? Can you be a smart, educated person and still listen to an 85 year of man, someone who had predicted things that never happened, and believe him this time?

I think this is always going to puzzle me until I can find a cause, or a person, that I can get behind so fully that I believe everything that's said and do everything that's asked of me. I'm a very cynical person when it comes to causes and people so I may never know for sure.

One more thing, the only time the world will actually end is when the sun goes nova. . .or a stray black hole passes our solar system. . .or if another planet collides with us. . .or if we're hit with a gamma burst. . .or, you know what, never mind, I've got more than enough to think about tonight as I sleep.

There’s a spider in my car!!

So, there I was, driving home, minding my own business when suddenly, out of nowhere, I see a spider, a huge one, walking down the window of my car. My first reaction was, 'oh, he's on the outside, he'll fall off.' then I looked at it closely and I realized, oh no, it's inside the car!!

Fun fact, I'm scared to death of all bugs. Okay, maybe not scared to death but I don't like them too much. The best way to hear me scream like a little girl is to be a bug, a large one, somewhere in my immediate vicinity.

I'm driving, there is no way for me to pull over to stop, and this spider is slowly walking down my windshield toward me. I'm carefully looking around the car trying to figure out if I can get the spider out of my car while still driving. Yeah, that wasn't going to work so I simply started talking to the spider. "Hello Spider, hope I'm taking you a place you want to go. Say, spider, can you please stay there. . .oh, you're moving again, that's okay I get it, I'd move too if I could . Okay, now you're near my rearview mirror and hey, where did you go? Okay, I can't see you now and you'd think that would be okay but really it's not cause when I could see you I'd know where you are, but now that I can't I'm afraid you might surprise me somehow. Where did you go anyway?"

For the rest of the ride I'm looking at the Windshield wondering where the spider went. I finally pull onto my street and park and only then do I see that the Spider decided to rest on my rearview mirror. I have a choice, leave it there and hope that it doesn't build a web in my car or try to get it out. I didn't really want to kill it, mostly cause it was kind of big and that would have been messy, or find a way to shoo it out.

I look around and find an old parking stub, an old Yahoo map I printed out, and a bunch of other junk. I really need to clean my car. I use the parking stub to sort of herd the spider onto the Yahoo map and, of course, it was then that the spider decided to jump, which caused me to jump and scream and leap out of the car! When I look back into the car, after making sure my heart was not, in fact, on the driver's seat, I see the spider was still on the Yahoo map (maybe he needed to know where he was going?)

I grab the paper and throw it out of my car and onto the ground. The spider fell out of the paper and then just sort of stayed there. Now, I really have a delema, step on it or let it go. I choose to let it go and watched as if scurried away.

It occurred to me, as I was writing this, that Spider in my car would make a great B-52's song! Can't you just hear Fred Schider singing:

There's a spider in my car, oh no!

A spider in my car, good golly!

How did it get there?

Where will it go?

A spider in my car, good god!

Meeting someone famous

I find my reactions to things very interesting. It's like my body and my mind are working on totally different plains of existence. Before a show I'd tell myself to relax, be calm, and, in my head, I am yet right before going on stage I start to sweat and shake and just get very tense and nervous. No matter how many time I take a deep breath, no matter how many time I tell myself to relax my body just will not respond to what my brain is telling it to do.

I get that way when I meet someone for the first time as well. I don't want to come across as dork or someone nervous but I know that's just how my body works. I've always been that way, which is why I always had a hard time meeting girls, or even talking to them. I've gotten better, I can now talk to a pretty girl without being too nervous, mostly because I've accepted the fact that I'm a dork and will always be a dork so that take the pressure off me being cool.

I wish I could control it, I've tried many time to control it, but I just can't. No matter how I feel I should feel my body is just going to react the way it wants to react, I have very limited control over it.

All this came into play Thursday night when I went to my first 301 improv class. I met an actor who's work I really enjoy, someone I've been watching for a while now, and someone who I really can't believe is also taking a 301 improv class on a Thursday night in Philadelphia. But, in order to respect his privacy I will not say who it is, just give vague hints and if you figure it out then good for you! You watch the same first year sitcom that I do!

First of all Thursday night didn't really start out well for me. Like most things it was because of food. I had forgotten to get myself some dinner when I went to lunch (I was going to buy a sandwich to save for later.) and I was really hungry when I parked my car near the theater. I went to a store which I thought had pre-made sandwiches but they didn't so I left. Went to another store with the same story. It's getting time for my class to start so I thought I'd just go without food but then I passed a café and got myself some coffee and a cinnamon bun so yeah, that was my dinner! And, I didn't eat it till the first break around 9.

So, I get to the theater with a coffee in one hand and a bun in the other. I see the teacher, Greg, standing there and I go over to say hi. I know Greg but it's been a while since I've seen him. He's talking to someone so I wait, then I look at the person he's talking to and pause. I say to myself, "damn, that guy looks like the actor who plays that character on that show I like." Then I shake my head and go, "naaaaahhh, what would he be doing here?"

Greg sees me and says hi, I say hi back and a few friends I knew from my other class show up and after a while we head up to the room. All the while I'm trying to get a better look at this guy cause really, he looks so much like that actor he could be his twin brother, maybe it is cause I still can't wrap my mind around what can be true.

We get to class and one of my improv friends sit next to me, next to him is the guy. My friend starts a conversation and asks his name, he tells him "Oh, I'm. . .(insert name here.)" he then asks, "what do you do?"

"I'm an actor."

My brain is still not believing what I'm hearing, he has the first name of the guy I think he is and he's an actor. I pull out my iPhone and jump on to IMDB to check to be sure that is the guy's first name and sure enough, it is. I still can't believe it, but my heart starts to beat faster and my face starts to flush and I think, "what the hell? Why is this happening?"

Then the class starts and we do some scenes. All the while I'm thinking, "this is not who I think it is, it can't be, I mean, why is he here?"

Now, don't get me wrong, the actor isn't a house hold name, he isn't someone who would might not even recognize on the street, but I do watch his show every week and I do enjoy it every week so to me he's bigger than I think most people think he is.

Finally we get a break and the class breaks up into small groups as we head to the bathroom and vending machines. I had to do it, I walked over to him and asked, "are you (insert name) from (insert one of my favorite shows?) " he looks at me and says, "Yes, I am."

Actually, I took that pretty well. I said, "Me and my girlfriend love you show, it's one of the best out there now and we watch it every week. She is totally going to freak when I tell her you're in my class."

He then starts having a conversation with me about improv and how he just wants to act silly for a night. So, the more I'm talking to him the more nervous I get, it was sort of a delayed reaction as my body finally caught up with my brain. I start talking and I can hear the tremble in my voice, I start to flush and I start to shake. I kept saying to myself, "Come on Callahan, keep it together." So, you see, once again my body and my brain just didn't synch up cause in my head I'm fine, yet my body is reacting in a way that I wished it wouldn't!

So, the break ends and we head up to learn more about the Harold and all the while I'm trying to settle myself down. I do, eventually, but it took a while. Damn, I hate my body sometimes!

The entire drive home I kept thinking to myself, "I can't wait to tell Debbie about this! She's going to freak!"

I get home and walk into the house, I say to her, "oh my god, you will not believe who's in my class!"

She looks at me dubiously, probably thinking it's an ex-girlfriend or something, and says, "who?"

I said, "(insert actors name)"

She said, "who?"

I said, "The guy who plays (insert character on that show we like.)"

And yeah, she freaked! She said, "oh my god! What's he doing in your stupid improv class!?"

I said, "I don't know! But he is! It's it so cool!"

So, the rest of the night we totally geeked out about it, which was fun.

Maybe my body was acting the way it was cause it too wanted to geek out like I did at home and I had to tell it not too, maybe my body is just rebelling cause really, deep inside, I totally want to be that spastic kid I was when I was 8 and I could get away with it. Can't do that as a 40 year old, unless it's in front of your girlfriend cause really, if you can't be spastic then when can you be?

Wet dog

There is an improv game called Wet Dog. It's pretty fun and it helps get rehearsals started in a good, positive way. Basically you shake your left hand and count down from 6 to 1, then you do your right hand, then your left foot, then your right foot, then you do it again only you count down from 5 to 1. Eventually you count down to 1 and bounce around like a spaz. (Most improv games involve you bouncing around like a spaz, which is why I like them.)

That really has nothing to do with this entry, I just couldn't help thinking about that game while Jeffery was shaking all the rain off his coat as he ran into my bedroom this morning after him and my girlfriend got caught in a downpour on his walk. Needless to say a very wet dog jumping on you shaking for it's worth is more than enough to wake you up and get you motivated to get out of bed, especially when said girlfriend, who is also soaked, throws you a towel and orders you to dry him off. Which is really hard to do cause he would not sit still! He was in full Jeffery play mode and once he goes there it's really hard to get him out of it.

******

I'm really kind of surprised no one has ever tried to impersonate me. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not a famous person but I do sometimes have a strange cadence in my voice. I. . .tend to . . . stop talking. . .for a beat. . .before talking really fast or at normal speed. I do this because, when I was a teen, I used to say the word "right" or "like, um" before continuing to talk so a story would sound something like this:

"So, Debbie was walking Jeffery this morning, right, and um, it started to, like rain, right? So, she got, um, caught the rain, right, and like, um, her and Jeffery got wet, right? So Jeffery comes running into the room, right and, um, shakes all this water off onto me, right? Then, he, um, runs out and Debbie throws me a towel, right, to like, um, dry him off, right?"

I tried to get it under control and I found the best way was to notice when I would say right, or like, or um, and just pause because I read that we say things like, Um and like and right to allow our minds to catch up with our mouths. So, I pause to let my brain catch up then I start again.

It's still a work in progress, if I'm not thinking about it or I'm nervose I still throw a few um's and right's in there, sometimes silence just makes you look dumb, right?

****

Things that make sense to me: Renewable energy

I sometimes picture God up there in heaven, looking down on us, complaining to any angel that happens to fly by saying, "I give them wind, the sun, tidal waves, and geothermal and they still insist on using the stuff that I specially placed deep underground for their energy. Geez, what else do I need to do?"

That's how I see it, God placed all the oil and coal underground because he didn't want us to use it, just like we place poison on a high counter top so our kids can't get to it.

I sometimes wonder what the world would be like if the companies that run the world had, when they first started, put their money and power toward the renewable energy resources we have on the planet. Imagine if, 100 years ago, Henry Ford thought, "I wonder if I could get this car to run on water instead of gas?" What if Thomas Edison thought, "Hey, I bet we can set up some wind mills to power this new light bulb thing I invented."

During the turn of the last century coal, gas, and oil were the best way to create the power that was needed and we never thought we'd need another way. It seemed limitless and abundant but now we know better so, shouldn't we be working harder to figure out how to use the sun to power our cars? How to use the tides or geothermal energy to power cities? The oil and coal we dig up won't last so wouldn't it be smart to look elsewhere?

I know we're trying and I think we've got a good start with hybrid and electric cars but really, that's just a small start. We're decades behind where we should be at this point in history. I've heard that the oil, coal and natural gas left could last us for another 100 years. I've also heard that we've reach the peak and we'll start to run out by 2020. I'm kind of hoping that it's 100 years because I'd like to believe by 2111 almost everything will be run on renewable energy.

I sometimes wish we had continued the research started in the 1970's during the energy crises. That really should have jump started the move from oil to other forms of energy but, thanks to some very smart oil people, it didn't. The companies that owned the oil fields saw what was happening here and decided to increase production of oil, lowering the price, making the government wonder why they should pump billions of dollars into renewable energy when we had plenty of cheap energy coming into the country. Look how well that turned out. It seems we're paying the piper now and it'll only get worst.

I remember when gas cost a dollar a gallon, that's when I first started to drive about 10 years ago. Now, 5 bucks a gallon doesn't seem that crazy at the rate gas keeps going up. We almost reached that a few years ago and we've come close a few times since then. I guess nothing jump starts a need for new energy sources like money.

Energy creation has always been hard on the planet and on us. When all we could burn was wood it caused entire cities to burn to the ground. Once we found other means it made some people insanely rich, and made some countries insane. I do often wonder if the Middle East didn't have so much oil would it nearly as important? I don't recall my history perfectly but I know that area has always been important for trade routes and spices and stuff but without oil would we really even care? I see that area as being just another Africa. You see, there are a lot of bad dictators in Africa but we really don't seem to care since those countries can't provide us with anything we really need If Libya didn't have oil riches would we really be bombing them? Well, maybe but I doubt it. Energy, the ability to have electricity so we can watch our TV's and gas so we can drive to the bar, that's what it's all about.

We need energy, we need it to run our lives. Energy creation provides billions of dollars to our economy in jobs, labor and taxes. How many people does it take to bring one gallon of gas to our country? What would happen if that just went away. I'm all for renewable energy but there does seem to be a dark side to it too. What would happen to our social and economic structure if, all of a sudden, everyone had a solar panel and windmill on their roofs providing energy for their homes and electric cars?

I see a future where power plants are located on the coasts; I figured that's the best way to get three out of the four major renewable energy sources easily. Wind, sun and tidal power. If you happen to be here a hot spot all the better, you can have all four! The power companies will still charge you for the service, only it would be simply to help upkeep the equipment. Would that make it cheaper? Probably but would they charge you less? Probably not. No company wants to drop prices if it they can avoid it, that includes the power plants.

I also see a future where gas stations are a thing of the past and instead you'll have charging posts along all the highways. Imagine that every few miles you see a charging station, which I see a simple pole with a solar panel and maybe a small windmill, high in the sky absorbing light and wind. You pay whatever they'll charge (would it be by the kilowatt or a flat rate? Not sure yet) it charges your car in less than a minute and you're off again. Hopefully the batteries in the future can charge the quickly.

I also see that the battery will be small enough to take out of your car and plugged into your home outlet to charge overnight. I've read stories on how people are experimenting with all kinds of ways to produce electricity, from photosensitive paint to cloths that, when you move, generate a current. Than would be really cool for your iPod, just plug it into your shirt and start walking!

But to get there we need to start now. My vision is at least 100 years away, I'll probably be dead but I would die happy if I knew we were heading there. It's going to take a huge reconstruction of our power system to get to that point and we need to start now, not tomorrow, but now.

I’m 40, now what?

So, I turned 40 a while go, in February to be exact and I've been wanting to write about the experience for a while now. But, the reason I haven't is pretty simple, I really have nothing to talk about.

Sure, if you asked me when I was 30 or 35 what it would be like to be 40 I would have said something like "well, that's so far away I don't want to think about it." And now it's here, and now it's gone, and I don't think or feel any different than I did when I was 30 or 35. Heck, sometimes I don't think I feel any different than when I was 20 or younger. Sure, I have more experience and yeah, I've done things that I would never have dreamt of those many years ago but at the core, on the inside I still feel and think pretty much the same.

At least I think I do, it's hard to say really.

I have the same interests, Science Fiction, writing, reading, movies, TV, girls, than I did when I was younger. I've added a few more along the way but not many. Improv probably being the biggest addition to my life, but even that's not really new since I've always loved to laugh and I've always loved to make people laugh so, I guess improve isn't new as much as it is a different manifestation of something I already liked to do.

I wasn't really expecting anything Earth shattering to happen when the clock struck midnight on February 23^rd but I guess I expected to feel something different, some sort of realization of "wow, I'm 40 now!" and I guess there was some of that in the days leading up to it but, after the day passed it was just another birthday, just another day.

Actually, I discovered a long time ago that birthday's, for me anyway, never live up to what other people tell you they'll be like. When I turned 16 it was supposed to be a big deal and yeah, I had a nice party and all but really I didn't feel any different. Same when I turned 21, 30, and now 40.

Personally, I think you should really celebrate birthday's before you turn 10 and after you turn 80 cause really, they're fun until you have start inviting girls you like to a parties, then again when you're not so sure you'll have another one. I mean, I can get behind an surprise 80^th birthday party for me! Actually, never mind the surprise part, that seems like a bad idea.

A lot of events in our lives are like that I guess. I mean, don't get me wrong, I've done a lot of really cool things, fulfilled a lot of goals and experienced a few things I never thought would happen and those were all great moments in my life that I'll never forget but, I can probably name those moments on my hand. A lot of supposed life defining moments have either added another expeince to my cost of living, or just weren't all they were cracked up to be.

I know, I almost sound like I'm being a curmudgeon but I'm not, I've enjoyed everything I've had to experience in life and those things that I haven't enjoyed I've at least tried to learn from.

I guess that's the one thing about being older that I enjoy, learning from the things I've done and trying my best to become a better person. It sometimes seems like that's all I've been doing my entire life and maybe one day I'll be the best person I can, hopefully before my 80^th surprise party.

Found things in the digital age

While going through an old box I found about two hundred old photographs dating back about 10 years or so. Now, most of them were of nothing really special, I took a trip to Disney World in 2000 and I'd say about 80% of the photos were from that trip, and mostly consisted of shots that I could take the next time I go back. So, those were gone. About 2% were of old girlfriends who I no longer speak to (or really want to speak to) and, since I have wonderful girlfriend now we decided to remove those as well.

It was the other 12% that were special. Photos of my Mom and Dad, photos of me and my sister, old photos of my two cats (the first pets I picked out on my own!) when they were kittens. One of those cats was given away to someone I don't know, the other my sister still has, he's almost 13 years old and still going strong but, seeing him as a kitten, in one of my old apartments was kind of neat. Also, seeing the old apartment was really neat too. Photos of dogs long since passed, photos of trips to the mountains with people I'm still friends with, and with people whose names I don't remember. Photos of me with hair, although you can see the slow progression from nice hair to baldness. It was a fun and unexpected surprise, and it got me to thinking if this will ever happen to me again.

As of, I guess 2003, every photo I've taken has been with a digital camera and each photo has followed me from computer to computer thanks to portable hard drives, backup software, and burned CD's. Before today the last time I found a large group of photos was when I found a CD from a backup I had made 4 years prior.

I am very careful to make sure I never lose any old photos so it doesn't look like I'm ever going to be without all the photos I've taken since I had a digital camera and, that's good. I one time accidently formatted a portable drive with some un-backed up photos and I lost them all, I wished I still had today.

In 50 years will we hear stories about how someone looking at an old computer and found parts of an unmade Kevin Smith movie? Will someone looking through a pile of old CD's only to find old photographs from the set of Avatar? Or, will the things that might have been rare be common place in the age of the digital media where it's hard to lose anything? Will photos or old movies ever actually be lost only to be found again?

My biggest worry about the new digital age is formatting. Right now if I were to save this blog using Word 2010 then the world ends in some way will the aliens who find it be able to read it? I don't think Glaxor from planet Xeon will have a Word 2010 converted for whatever operating system his ship uses.

It seems that throughout time the better the technology is the less likely it'll be preserved for the future. We've gone from stone tablets, to parchment, to paper, to computers. You tell me what will still be around in 1,000 years.