Archive for the ‘Thoughts’ Category
And I’m Not Back!
Again, I haven’t posted a damn thing to this site.
Instead of whining or making excuses about that crap, here are some points of uninterest about my life recently…
- The kids were sick last week, and got me sick. Stomach Flu. I don’t enjoy vomiting, but hey, what can you do.
- I hit level 50 in SW:TOR. Waiting for the new patch to come out in April before I start a second character.
- I’ve picked up my camera again, after a long absence from photography. Pictures soon, maybe.
- I am sick of Girl Scout Cookies. I’ve spent 4 weekends selling cookies on street corners. It’s for a good cause; we’re taking the girls to DC in June, but… I’m sick of it all.
- I’m very far behind on my TV watching, movie viewing and book reading. But what’s new there, right?
- I’ve almost completed my multi-year project of building a database for my Star Wars Book/Comic/Magazine collection. Next step is to publish it online.
- Sadly, I’m too broke to go to ROFLcon III this year. Very upset about this.
What to do, what to do…
I have a “problem”.
I’ve been spending more and more time on Tumblr. And by time, I also mean I am posting more and more stuff on Tumblr. Tumblr is becoming my “real” site, more then this page is.
So, I’m debating weather or not I need to redirect TimothyPatrickMcMahon.com over to my Tumblr site for good. I would love to, but, I don’t want to lose all the junk I’ve already posted here. However, i get much more traffic over on Tumblr then I do here.
I have been double posting, putting the same stuff up on both sites, but I’m kinda getting sick of doing that.
What to do, what to do…
(Not that any of this really matters, it’s only important in my head and no where else.)
Anyway, just thinking out loud. I’ll make up my mind soon.
In the meantime, please go visit TimothyPatrickMcMahon.tumblr.com.
Indiana Braveheart
At the entrance of Edinburgh Castle, there is a statue of William Wallace. You know, the guy from “Braveheart”.
Here is a picture of the statue that I took the first time I visited the castle…
Well, in the movie “Braveheart”, the character, as played by Mel Gibson, looked like this…
But to me, the statue looks more like another knight from another Hollywood classic. To me, it looks like the last Templar Knight, who is found to be protecting the Holy Grail, in “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”. He look like this…
Am I alone in this? Does any one else see the resemblance? Please tell me I’m not crazy. Thanks!
Found Phone
Today I found a cell phone on the side of the road. I debated sending a picture of my junk to everyone in the phones address book. But… I didn’t. Instead I tracked down the owner and gave back the phone. —Damn, I hate doing the right thing!
(is it wrong that this thought even crossed my mind in the first place?)
Random Images
On December 13th, 2010, I wrote…
Last year, I spent way too much time browsing the internet just looking for the lulz. It was fun, but a complete waiste of time. I’ve broken myself of that habit thankfully. (though, I still haven’t accomplished anything yet with all this new time I’m not flittering away.)
Anyway, here is a bunch of stuff I found last spring, (which is eons ago in internet time). Just wanted to share it, so I can justify this stuff clogging up my hard drive. (this is post one of two – I’ll get to the rest of it later.)
Well, here is post two. Sorry it took me so long to get back to this. Enjoy!
I love that you can read this as he left them, or, he killed them. Makes me smirk darkly either way.
I'm with the 80%
Religions are silly!
We got a puppy last year - It's true!
Liked this one, simple as that.
Ya know, there are a great many things not in the bible...
I think the same can be said for politics.
One for the Potter fans.
Milhouse is not a meme.
Science can be funny too!
Statistically, my life is half over, and I've already come to this conclusion.
I wake up everyday feeling like this banana. Ugh.
So sad. So funny. So true.
His signature shot.
Punny!
It was funny when I was 9, it's funny now.
I wonder who was the first idiot to pull this face and think that it made her seem hot?
IMagine what we could do, if we all worked together?
We all do it in the end. :-)
10 things I will never post on Facebook
The other day I was stuck at the auto shop. To pass the time while I was waiting for my car, I tried to make over 100 new FB friends. I pestered as many “People You May Know” as I dared. (Some of these people I used to know, some I didn’t know at all.) I randomly selected people form the Facebook “People You May Know” list, and sent them this message attached to a friend request…
Hi there~ I’m stuck waiting for my car at the auto shop. So, to pass the time, I am trying to make at least 100 new Facebook Friends. So, I’m pestering you because we have at least 2 mutual friends online. You may not remember me, or you may not even know me, but none of that matters. Let’s just be friends. (Sorry to sound dorky, I’m just bored.) Feel free to ignore me if you want, I promise you wont hurt my feelings. Thanks! ~Tim
Well, after about 30 mins of clicking, I received this message from Facebook…
“Warning! You are engaging in behavior that may be considered annoying or abusive by other users.
Facebook’s systems determined that you were going too fast when adding friends. You must significantly slow down. Further misuse of site features may result in a temporary block or your account being permanently disabled. For further information, please visit our FAQ page.”
Well, I didn’t connect with 100 new friends (only about 30 or so). Oh well.
Anyway, after connecting with these people, it got me to thinking about what I say, and to who, online. I don’t mind posting anything and everything that crosses my mind, no matter how stupid, to Tumblr and Twitter and here. But on Facebook, I tend to self-edit a bit more. I guess it’s because I don’t want the people who know me to really know the real me. This realization lead me to ask, what would I never post on Facebook?
After a short interlude of contemplative self reflection and introspection (does that phrase even make sense?), I came up with ten things I would never post on Facebook…
- Hey Mom, I saw this video online and it reminded me of you! Take a look! http://tinyurl.com/29k7squ
- I’m sorry, but I can’t hold it in any longer… (BLANK), I love you! I always have, and I always will! Let’s run away together! (with BLANK being the name of any women other then my Kate.)
- Can anyone here help me score some heroine before the weekend?
- Ya know, when you use the metric system, my penis almost appears to be of average size!
- Let me tell you what really bugs me about the (BLANK)’s. (with BLANK being the racial, ethnic or religious slur of your choice.)
- It wasn’t gay because he only put the tip in.
- To be honest, I don’t really like 94% of you, my so called “friends”.
- I’m sorry, but if you ask me, I’d say that the quality of videos on RedTube has taken a significant nose dive over the last few months.
- If you’re reading this, then I’m already dead.
- I need to get laid.
(update: I just reread this post. 60% of this list is sexually oriented. Sorry, I didn’t know that this is where my imagination would take me! I’ll try and keep it cleaner next time.)
Don Draper Meets Kermit The Frog
Today, I stumbled upon this old film by Jim Henson, made for IBM in 1967. Made me wonder if we will start to see stuff like this on MAD MEN in the next year or so.
We are just monkeys
This video does a nice job of summing up my own personal philosophy.
Saxtons River Elementary Schools
I recently found my 4th grade “yearbook”. It’s just a bunch of photos that were photocopied, printed and then bound together. I am feeling old because the pictures all square with rounded edges (plus the fact that this was 29 years ago). Do they even make film like that anymore?
When I think about 4th grade I think about Atari, sledding at Jason Abare’s house and sliding through dog poop, the video game cabinets also at his house and the rope swing he had that scared the crap out of me, learning how to play football (and liking it), being pushed into little league (and hating it), Bob Osgood’s awesome tree fort, maple syrup, really liking school and really liking the school building (is it weird for a nine year old to appreciate architecture?), seeing my first movie on a VCR (Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory) at Marianna Luring’s house (it was a class trip after we read the book), Marianna Lurings fingers (the were long and skinny and the image of the has stayed in my head for years), the three legged dog who lived two blocks away, the recorder, having to go to speech therapy because I lisped and my TH’s sounded like S’s, taking piano lessons, learning to play Dungeons and Dragons, the silver short band radio I had which at night received signals from very far away, the dog we thought was a stray and took in and named Sheba only to find out it belong to the neighbors and her name was Jesse, playing tag on our bikes with tennis balls in the summer, being really into Casey Kasems top 40, sliding at Vermont Academy, thinking Vermont Academy was a college, waiting for The Return Of The Jedi to come out the next year, first noticing girls in that “special way”, playing with firecrackers, being able to go out and explore the town in ways I would never let my 4th grade daughter do now, getting into my first (of only two) fist fights as a kid (not counting the ones I had with my brother), swimming at the rec, the YMCA day camp, Shel Silverstein & Japanese styled ink paintings, monarch butterflies and milk weed, making crystals, the bad school sandwiches that were on stryrofoam plates and wrapped in plastic, that cool big blue house (again, what’s with the architecture?), learning to blow my nose without a tissue, getting my first alarm clock (which is still on my bedside table and still works!), the silver triangular climbing thing on the playground, the big concrete sewer pipes on the playground, the grocery store in town with the scary old couple and the dusty shelves who had the best candy, and the other grocery store in town who would sell me cigarettes (for my mom).
I’ve scanned the yearbook. You can see the pages on Flickr
In my humble opinion…
Every Facebook fad puts FB one small step closer to being the next MySpace.
THE DAYS OF MIRACLES AND WONDER
A humorous short story about time travel, technology, politics, cynisism and perspective. – I enjoyed.
Written By Greg Knauss, From his blog “An Entirely Other Day” – Entitled THE DAYS OF MIRACLES AND WONDER
“AAAAAaaaaaagh!”
“Please calm down. Breathe deeply. Anxiety is a normal part of the temporal displacement field. It will pass quickly. OK. OK? OK. Now: Hello. I am you, from the year 2010, two decades in the future.”
“Aaaaaaaagh!”
“I said, calm down. The panic will pass.”
“Calm down? Calm down? You’re fat! And bald! I’m going to be fat and bald!”
“Hold up there, Sparky. You’re already fat. And will it help with the bald thing if I assure you that you’re, um, romantically involved on a regular basis?”
“But…”
“Regular basis.”
“Yeah, OK, fair trade.”
“I’ve come to the past to tell you two things.”
“Other than the bald thing?”
“Yes. Other than the bald thing.”
“Is it about nuclear war? Because radiation would explain why all your hair has fallen out.”
“In 2010, Apple will introduce a new computer, called the ‘iPad.’”
“Hee!”
“You’re thinking of a sanitary napkin joke, aren’t you?”
“Hee!”
“Would you like me to describe this computer to you?”
“Is Apple even still around? Microsoft just launched Windows 3.0 and—”
“It’s about the size of a piece of paper, half an inch thick and weighs a pound an a half. It has 64GB of storage, can play tens of thousands of songs and can display everything from photos to high-quality video. It has a touch-sensitive screen, is completely wireless and can connect to the Internet from just about anywhere.”
“Aaaaaagh!”
“Pretty cool, huh?”
“Holy crap! Oh, my God! Do you guys have, like, flying cars, too? Did aliens come and give you this technology? That means I can get USENET anywhere.”
“Um. Yeah. The Internet expands a bit from USENET, by the way.”
“Gopher?”
“Yeah. Gopher.”
“Oh, man. Can I see it? Do you have one?”
“Well, no, I don’t have one, because it won’t come out for another two months. But, here, I’ve got a smaller one that can make phone calls, too.”
“Aaaaaaagh! Oh, my God. This is so cool! All this, and I’m getting laid, too? People in the future must be so happy!”
“Actually, no. People are sort of disappointed.”
“What? How is that even possible?”
“That brings me to the second thing I want to tell you. In 2008, America elects a black man President.”
“What? Really? Like Morgan Freeman in ‘Deep Impact’?”
“No, you anachronistic goober. That movie doesn’t even come out until 1998.”
“So, he’s like Disraeli or Thatcher, right? Only Nixon can go to China? He’s really conservative? Please tell me you don’t elect Alan Keyes President.”
“No, no. His name is Barack Hussein Obama.”
“OK, now you’re just screwing with me.”
“No. Totally serious. He’s liberal, intelligent, deliberative, pretty much everything the country needs after Bush.”
“Bush? But Bush is President now. Please don’t tell me that he’s still around in 2008!”
“Oh, no. You’ve got the good Bush. The other one is who Obama is cleaning up after.”
“Wow! That’s awesome. That’s wonderful to hear. People must be really— Oh. You’re going to do that thing again, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am. A lot of his supporters are disappointed.”
“With what? A liberal black guy got elected President!”
“And in his first year, he prevented a second Great Depression, has stopped torture as official policy, is winding down an unnecessary war, has dramatically opened up the transparency of government and has gone a good way towards restoring America’s place in the world.”
“And people are disappointed?”
“They want more.”
“Like the people disappointed with the computer?”
“Yes.”
“So people in 2010 are dicks?”
“They’re cynics.”
“Oh, please. I’m a cynic, and all this stuff sounds incredibly great.”
“That’s why I wanted to talk to you, 1990 me. Your cynicism is important, even vital. God knows, there are times when it will seem like bunnies-and-rainbows optimism given what actually happens. Things get really, really bad for a while, and no amount of cynicism seems like enough.
“But I also wanted to make sure that there are some things that are, in fact, awesome. The world’s been through a hell of a lot, and I’m not sure I trust my own eyes anymore. I don’t agree with every one of Obama’s policies and I doubt that I’ll buy an iPad, but does that make their existence any less amazing? What would the bright-eyed, long-haired, involuntarily celibate version of myself from two decades ago think?”
“I think it’s amazing. All of it. And I’m even ignoring the fact that you can apparently time-travel.”
“Good. That’s good to know. I look at some of the stuff that’s going on, what we can do and what we’ve done, and I want to be astonished. But some small, mean, broken part of me thinks it will all go to hell, that it’s a trap.”
“Wow. You really are cynical, aren’t you? It all looks great to me. Magic. The future! Man.”
“OK. Thanks. Oh, and two more things.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t ever used the words ‘Meh’ or ‘Fail.’”
“OK.”
“And in a couple of years, when you’re deciding if you want to go on a blind date with someone’s lawyer friend, do it.”
“Seriously?”
“Talk about awesome.”
#hastags
I don’t think that I am using enough #hashtags in my life. Gotta work on that.
In need of a good read
Mark Leyner, will you please write another novel? Thank you.
What I Had For Lunch
Caesar – The laziest of the salads, and yet so pretentious as well. In my mind, it is the Ignatius J. Reilly of leafy green meals.
