Month: January 2022

In your opinion, what is your best quality? #bloganuary

Today is the thirty-first of January, and this month I’ve taken my cue from WordPress writing prompts called bloganuary. I’m using up all available time, and I am behind, so I am getting here with a thought that bloganuary for me might run a little while into February.

I like to exercise my ability to reason, which is part of why I blog. In addition to interacting with other bloggers, there are other things I like about blogging, but writing prompts like bloguanary make me feel like I’m learning from others’ ideas and applying my own understanding to them. I appreciate it, which is likely a similar thing numerous different bloggers appreciate. I know a little about blogging professionally, but I’m not sure I would ever try that. A small hobbyist blog is easier to manage, and if money is not changing hands, there is a little less to worry about.

My love of reading helped challenge my instinct for the intellectual back then, and I enjoyed school because I was asked to apply my own skills to instructional activities, but I don’t think I ever developed the study skills to become an academic myself. As a result of my godfather asking if I would be interested in assisting him with his research, I was able to gain some insight that a ninth or tenth grader might not otherwise have.

I observe these plunges into my own mind to see what I can incite in myself and how I can address it on the page. Bloganuary has been fun this month. As for now, it’s been a strong month for my blog, but I’m hoping to return to my usual kind of “studied foray” in the future. Thanks to WordPress for organizing the prompts.

Photo by Jess Watters on StockSnap

Write about what motivates you. #bloganuary

Since I understand that social media is the reality for most of the first world, I am reasonably immersed in social media. My favourite YouTubers, whether they’re creating content specifically for YouTube or bands who are bringing out new material or old material from the old days when people like that did something fantastic, make me feel strong. The love for tech is naively formed, perhaps, but keeping in mind that the biggest firms, like Meta and Alphabet, would like your data, if not every single tech company, watching favourite creators become YouTube stars makes me feel strong most of the time.

I feel strong when a savvy TikTokker post turns out to be a great video, scored with some piece of music I’ve often enjoyed.

I feel solid when a companion or relative accomplishes something advantageous, since I like great choices, and not terrible. I can be a useful individual.

I feel strong when nations and their people stand together. Although I usually feel as though I am the spy in the back of the meeting of revolutionaries, heading for the gallows if I am caught redhanded for my true allegiance, I do enjoy when people with a common background come together. That can make for an extremely strong encounter.

A smart piece of writing, or other great content, makes me feel strong. It feels good to share trending web pages to Twitter and Facebook when I think they can provide food for thought. I feel strongly about posting on the Maple Lawn Facebook page for my father’s business.

Hi, it’s Patrick, Maple Lawn Cemetery’s Facebook page operator.

Wednesday‎, ‎January‎ ‎19‎, ‎2022 12:06 PM

I feel strong being with my girlfriend when she is happy with me. A relationship like our own strength is the main strength I have, considering that life is not a practice run. I would rather not hazard losing her warmth and care.

Taking part in a blogging challenge like WordPress’ bloganuary makes me feel strong 🙂

Remember a dream you had. #bloganuary

I have had a recurring dream in which I live in an apartment beneath a vampire’s castle. The dream appears similar to the remake of the film Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nach, directed by Werner Herzog in 1979, and to Norman Bates’ house in Psycho, directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960. It is always frightening returning to the house, and I never have an opportunity to move out of that home.

Werner Herzog

I referred to the dream moods website. “To see a house in your dream represents your own soul and self,” dream moods says. You have specific areas of your home that reflect different aspects of your personality.

When you dream of an old, rundown house, it represents your old beliefs, attitudes, and how you used to feel. Your current situation may be triggering old attitudes and feelings. The old house may also represent your need to update your thinking style. When you see messy or dilapidated houses in your dreams, something in your own life might be in chaos. There may be some emotional or psychological clutter affecting you. For you to recover control, you need to relinquish these sentiments.

Having a dream of a haunted house signifies unfinished business in your personal life, such as unresolved grief or unresolved emotions.

This fantasy, which has come to me recurringly for a couple of days all at once, and at various times, is generally somewhat delightful and somewhat unnerving. I live in apprehension about the house, but then I can’t abstain from returning, as the place of the beast is the place where I reside.

My sister Kaite, years and years ago, encouraged me to look into the meaning of my dreams with the gift of a dream dictionary book. Although I’ve long since lost the book, I enjoyed probing into what some dreams I was having could mean.

When I am writing, my mother has also advised me to reflect on my dreams.

Feature a fictional character. #bloganuary

(Transcript of a video interview with Nova Scotia’s famed trailer park resident, Ricky, whose surname is being kept private for reasons of security)


TV Tropes
Trailer Park Boys

Interviewer: It’s a pleasure to meet you.

Ricky: Well, Mr. Smartypants, I’m mostly here because the judge said that if I set a positive example, it would look much better on me than going straight to what I do best, which is to grow dope and then to sell it. That’s how I make my living, that’s how I feed family, and who has a right to tell me otherwise?

Interviewer: I only said hi. Is there something you could say to introduce yourself?

Ricky: To the people watching?

Interviewer: I don’t really have a lot of viewers.

Ricky: Then why interfluke me in the first place? Why is it I’m helping you do that when I’m supposedly to be setting a good example?

Interview: What was the reason for your summons?

Ricky: You don’t listen too good, do you? Selling dope.

Interview: I think sales of that nature have to be regulated.

Ricky: Is that right, Mr. I told you so? I spend plenty of time in nature. Where do you think I calibrate myself?

Interview: Excuse me?

Ricky: Oh, so that’s your true colours. I turn the tables on you and you start playing dumb. Calibrate myself in nature, you asked me why I don’t do that.

Interviewer: I meant drug sales have to be regulated.

Ricky: Don’t tell me you’re a cop! I knew this was a bad idea. I must be out of my mind giving an interview to make the judge happy.

Interviewer: No, no, I’m not from the police, I just wanted an interview that I could put on social media. You’re known for making a documentary about trailer park life.

Ricky: I am, ain’t I? Look, sorry about your little news report thing here that you got me here for, but I just remembered. I don’t need to do this! I got my own documentary movie-making people.

Interviewer: I just thought on top of that.

Ricky: Nah, this is over. I got people waiting. You hear that? Real-life people that don’t want their lives put in some Internet book. I’m getting out of here. Find somebody else to intervain.

Fin.

Is there a quote you love and why? #bloganuary


AZ Quotes
Douglas Adams quote

He wrote The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels. The quote above includes the wisdom of Murphy’s Law, which states that if something can go wrong, it will go wrong. Douglas Adams’ books, additionally a BBC radio series, a TV series, and a film, all describe the obliteration of the Earth and two human survivors who eventually resolve to satisfy themselves with new lives, somewhere else in the universe.

Definition of foolproof

: so simple, plain, or reliable as to leave no opportunity for error, misuse, or failure a foolproof plan

The plan that initially begins the plot of The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a plan to demolish a house to make way for the building of a freeway bypass. The foreman of the laborers who have the occupation is a bonehead in that he can’t handle the proprietor of the house, our hero, from giving a valiant effort to stop the annihilation of his home. There is an idea that the seemingly foolproof plan to build the freeway bypass becomes a battle of wits between two men with different ideas. The irony in Adams’ novel pointed to the parallel idea that the entire planet should also be demolished for a plan to build an interspace bypass.

I think Adams felt that the majority are fools.

I feel reassured to read the Adams quote, as I often try to reflect on my strengths rather than feel like a loser. I have a wonderful girlfriend, a home to live in, and family. Though I am not sure I’ve ever achieved anything foolproof, the fact that nothing much is foolproof is a heartening indication that perhaps there is a foolproof plan for the Earth that only God comprehends.

Douglas Adams passed on 11 May 2001.

What year would you choose to time travel to and why? #bloganuary

If I could time travel, I would go from 2022, back to the year 1994. Major league baseball players walked out. It was Tom Hanks’ second consecutive Best Actor Oscar win. Woodstock ’94 recalled the original concert. I wouldn’t want to create a paradox.

I would have to go to a department store or mall to buy clothing in style, like oversized sweatshirts, sweaters, and t-shirts. I would likewise move away from the town where I carry on with my life, as not to run into my seventeen-year-old self, of 1994.

It would have been cool to see Pavement play a show in 1994 when their record album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain was a commercially-significant album. They weren’t a characteristically commercial rock band. Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain briefly took Pavement to the top of the rock music industry, an industry much different today than it was then. I’ve heard quite a few recordings of Pavement playing live, and I would have liked to be in attendance when they were most famous. Some people really gravitate to Pavement. By the way, Pavement is doing a reunion tour this year, in 2022, and releasing a box set with both old and unreleased recordings on April 8. Stephen Malkmus, Pavement’s frontman, returned to the stage recently with a different band. Rolling Stone reported on it.

Stephen Malkmus Debuts Two New Songs at First Live Show Since 2019 https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/stephen-malkmus-new-songs-live-1287728/

However, the YouTube audio of the show on the Rolling Stone site is poor.

Pavement’s hit Cut Your Hair went into rotation on MTV at the time. Here it is (not a particularly formulaic music video presentation):

They also performed it for a taping of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Maybe I could trade my mall t-shirt for a band shirt. Bling.

How would you describe your favorite photo? #bloganuary

When I was young, when a girlfriend and I went to the regional butterfly conservatory, I took a photo of her smiling and seeming happy while seated in the semi-tropical environment. I took it with an old-fashioned camera. The negative is likely lost, and the photo has begun to curl. I was happy to think of it, though, when I read the prompt from WordPress.

Nowadays, I have a Sony camera that I take pictures with, from the time of Windows 8. Looking through the photos app on my desktop, I remember a photo dated the afternoon of one Wednesday in September 2014. It’s a photo of the field near the building that used to be a church, and which belongs to my dad, most of it being maintained by him and a few others. I had a FinePix Z1, and it was easy to get the photo. You can see the clouds peeking through the trees are a little bright, and the sunlit grass of the field is a little bright too. By then, I’d had a couple of years’ experience of being self-employed. The riding mower in the background is how I cut the grass every week.

Wednesday‎, ‎September‎ ‎3‎, ‎2014 1:59 PM

It meant a great deal to me, and I’m afraid some of my enthusiasm has waned. I surmise I’ve run into burnout. I do enjoy maintaining a tiny presence on Facebook for the cemetery. It’s the core of my dad’s business, and I do a lot of other social media that isn’t all geared to Maple Lawn Cemetery, which is our cemetery, or about Catholicism, or anything else like that. For example, I am participating in these January writing prompts because they are fun for me, and they are making January more fun than it would have been.

My better half nowadays is magnificent. It’s not the girl from the butterfly conservatory, but what can you do? I don’t think she characteristically wants her photo taken, but maybe I’ll ask her again.

I hope you like the photo.

https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited/
https://www.maplelawncemetery.org/24701.html
https://vymaps.com/CA/Louth-United-Church-And-Maple-Lawn-Cemetery-106942219457401/

Describe something mysterious. #bloganuary

This episode is frightening, unnerving even. It’s one of the worst aviation disasters in history, above Lake Michigan, in a lightning storm in the skies when a jetliner entered the fray, and minutes later, abruptly disappeared from radar. The radio contact just ended. Naturally, there was a significant alarm, and, everywhere the jet might have flown off course, lost in the storm, airline personnel searched for radio contact. Nobody knows what happened. It was just gone.

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501 was a propliner operating a daily transcontinental service between New York, and Seattle, when it disappeared from radar on the night of June 23, 1950.

Northwest Orient Airlines Flight 2501

There was a virtual quest for the missing airplane, at first apparently down in the tempest over Lake Michigan. What was weird was that the debris proved just absent. It just wasn’t in the lake. The things that turned up were frightful – odd pieces of the airplane, and peculiar clothing and things, logical from the missing plane. What’s super mysterious is that there just was no significant wreckage, just the rain of horrible debris from the aircraft. The plane completely vanished. I would think, if lightning struck the plane, the whole thing would have gone down, and people searched and searched for it. If it somehow detonated in flight, why would little bits of the plane and its passengers have landed? If the plane somehow got vaporized, everything should have been destroyed. It is a terrible secret, and for a long time, trackers have looked and looked for more proof of what occurred and never tracked down it. There is not a really obvious reason.

A rock marker, given by Filbrandt Family Funeral Home, was set in Riverview Cemetery with 58 names of flight 2501 survivors and the expression “Gone yet Never Forgotten” in 2008.

Discovery Channel’s Expedition Unknown (season 8, episode 2) featured the crash, which aired on February 12, 2020.

Which book are you going to read next? #bloganuary

My mother once picked up a book called From a Certain Point of View, as a Christmas gift for me. It’s a collection of short stories set in the Star Wars universe. The book’s short stories tell the plot of Star Wars from the point of view of minor characters. For example, in the first story in the book, the captain of the escape brigade gets the point of view, which is neither the droids C-3P0’s or R2-D2’s, nor Princess Leia’s. It is the same plot as the first scene of the film.

The book is celebrating Star Wars‘ fortieth anniversary, so I am taking the understanding that the book is a 2017 volume. 2017 was the year of Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi.

Photo by Matt Bango on StockSnap

The Last Jedi took a different point of view that was a departure from styles of the previous Star Wars films. It recreated Luke Skywalker as a figure afflicted with existential angst. The book only contains scenes from the 1977 Star Wars film with a yowl from Rogue One to begin the book.

I don’t know why I haven’t read it sooner. I think the interest in Star Wars for me returned with the Disney+ series The Book of Boba Fett. Thinking about the desert planet of Tatooine through the eyes of Boba Fett got me feeling good again about Star Wars. Boba Fett’s the character whom Lord Vader used to freeze and transport Han Solo back to Tatooine, to the palace of Jabba the Hutt in the second and third movies of the original trilogy.

Star Wars is an unusual fantasy. With the film, picturing each second from these brief tales ought to be a breeze.

What is your dream superpower? #bloganuary

In the month of January, WordPress is showing us writing prompts, and I have been keen to participate. The fourth of January WordPress prompt was something we wish we knew how to do. I thought of turning back time, inspired by the conclusion of the 1978 movie Superman, starring Christopher Reeve as Superman and Marlon Brandon as Superman’s father, on their home planet, Krypton.

https://findingenvirons1.blog/2022/01/04/what-is-something-you-wish-you-knew-how-to-do-bloganuary/
What is something you wish you knew how to do?

I think that my dream superpower is to be able to turn back time. Margot Kidder plays Lois Lane. In the film, Superman flies around the entire world, going back in time a few minutes to save her from catastrophe. When Superman learned he was from Krypton, his father told him to live a disguise, helping humans only and not interfering. I don’t think, it is clear, that Superman can live without Lois, so he makes the difficult decision to turn back time and get her clear of danger and save her life. There have been difficult times in my life that I might have put this power into effect to change, but you can only live life one way in reality, and this is the way I’ve had to live mine.

Filmmaker Richard Donner directed Superman, whose claim to fame was previously The Omen, in 1976. He was lucky to have the privilege to direct Superman, whom I don’t think had received a screen treatment for a very long time. The character came to life marvellously under the direction of Donner and, of course, with the portrayal by Reeve. It is a funny and strange film that turned out quite well.

If I could turn back time, I might, but I know it would have consequences on the events in my life, and so it would have to be done with care.