New Toy

Did I ask you for your love?

Did I ask you for your dedication?

I don't want, I don't want your love.

I don't want, I don't want your affection!


Dateline, June 31, 2004

8 years ago,
to the month, I plunked down good money ($1600) for the old desktop. Call it Big Blue Dell. Despite its long service, I don't really harbor any emotional attachment. People love and make love to their computers, mod them, endlessly customizing inside and out, imbue them with personalities—only to chuck them out too soon when the newest shiny box becomes available. But to a writer, a computer ideally, should just be a typewriter. Sure, a typewriter with endless time-squandering fingertip access to a world of knowledge and social engagement, but a typewriter nonetheless. Means to an end.

But when you're on your own, business-wise, your box is not just a toy—it's your work, your productivity, your revenue generator. And when you're on your own, you have to be your own IT and IT training department. So no, I'm not a tech, I don't program or solder, but I've learned a bit about everything. Even when I knew far less, every upgrade I opened my wallet for has to run this gauntlet:

1.    Is it going to make what I do easier, faster or better?
2.    Do I need it now?
3.    How soon can I afford it?

Most of my techno-fancies are felled by the first blow. Few survive all three. These are good rules. Abiding over all is the genetic predisposition to buy smart, agnostic and not very often. Modern technology and its advertising make this very difficult. Device manufacturers want you to buy early and often and that is how their advertising is geared. To build brand loyalty. When the bloom is off the rose and you want to find out how to keep older tech serviceable, well that requires some serious research skills.

I want a New Toy (oh ay oh), to keep my head expanding.
I want a New Toy (oh ay oh), nothing too demanding.
Then when everything is in roses, everything is static
Yeh my New Toy (oh ay oh), you'll find us in the attic.

Reflections of a Walker--Three Up, Three Down

Three up, three down. My after-dinner routine, 5-6 nights a week. We're talking the Rocky Steps, so roundtrip, that's 426 steps in all, not counting the long landings. I used to bring my music along, but lately, I go unplugged, to better hear what's in my head.

Steps are a metaphor for life. Steps are work done, effort expended, reward gained, new highs, interminable plateaus, repetition, repetition, religion, progress, process, meditation and more. From antiquity, we've climbed steps to seek absolution, gain power and worship gods.

These particular steps lead to Philadelphia's Art Museum, "the Parthenon of the Parkway," a temple to art. A quick, keylike turn around the fountain reveals the glittering city in expanse, at its feet. My neighborhood, Fairmount, predates the Museum's construction by a good two centuries. William Penn had originally planned to put his manor house here on the neighborhood's most prominent point. I am so spoiled, having six, now seven museums in a ten minute walk. Two of them are literally at my feet, across the street from my house.

This particular night, I did not veer across Pennsylvania Avenue, rather I stayed on it, skirting Mark di Suvero's "Iroquois," another of my favorite nightly visual markers, seen here photographed by Inquirer alumni and friend Eric Mencher. My evening peregrinations had another destination, the newest and most controversial of our "art temples," the home of the new Barnes Collection. My nocturnal crawl had become an "arts reconnaissance."

Much has been said about this building--not all of it complimentary, some of this naysaying dished by yours truly.  I called it second-class, dowdy and unworthy of its prominent place on the Parkway, Philadelphia's museum mile, which, did I mention, I am privileged to live at the crown of?

I compared The Barnes unfavorably with the Phoenix Museum of Art (same architects--Tod Williams and Billie Tsien) and wondered if it was something of an architectural slight on my people and place.  When I wrote my piece, an architect friend admonished me to keep a close eye and an open mind. So I did. I have watched The Barnes grow from a hole in the ground. Though I'm not entirely won over, lately a new notion has taken hold of me which I'm finding increasingly hard to shake.

I am not an architect or an architectural critic. But being a visual artist, living smack in the midst of a city where dramatic structures rise up with some regularity makes it hard to be neutral or ambivalent to your surroundings. You take sides. You form attachments. You walk the beat and research with your eyes, ears and feet. So, what I've been grappling with is the idea that perhaps The Barnes is not an architectural mediocrity after all. Quite possibly, it is a work of subtle and compelling genius.

OUT OF THE POORHOUSE

(c) September 24, 1989

In much delayed honor of my father on his 85th birthday

by Rick Weiss

When I was a little boy, we were poor. Oh no, not poor by the standard of the Third World's Poor. Nor were we poor like the poor Chinese and Biafrans that my mother constantly reminded us of when we gagged down the candied carrots or liver with spinach and kidney beans that she served up. We weren't even poor by the standards of the immigrant poor, our brave grandparents who flooded the Eastern America shores at the turn of the century.

Yet we were poor by the standards of the neighborhood that we lived in, the sprawling insular sixties suburban society. In our neighborhood, men and women of manifest vision built razor clean, unsparing split levels and colonials with oversized picture windows on generous, partially wooded tracts, chopping down, plowing under, manicuring the last vestiges of rural countryside to surround the eastern cities; fleeing their parents’ cities and blazing open the new frontiers of suburban America.

My father was one of those men. Having his honorable discharge from the Marines, he painstakingly scrimped, scraped, working two, sometimes three jobs, to produce the nest egg that moved my mother, me – aged three and my baby brother, out of a downtown two bedroom Pittsburgh rowhome and into a three bedroom ranch in a new development called Northwood Acres. A $19,000 GI loan bought him the property – three-quarters of an acre, cleared – and the construction of a split-level three bedroom orange brick ranch. Dad had "gotten in" early and built when prices were low. Only four properties dotted the development's ninety-some acre expanse when we first arrived. Years later, when we moved again, there were well over a hundred houses in Northwood Acres.

Moments that no pictures or words do justice to:

Reflections of a Walking Man #6:

Walking past the Franklin Institute yesterday, I came up behind a young fashionably-dressed mother and her little daughter in their Sunday best. The mother, with long blonde hair, wore a smart red coat with the ease that pretty young women wear bright things. She was walking, bent in an attitude of conversation with the tiny girl who barely reached her mother's waist. The daughter had long, glossy brunette hair and was decked out in a child's version of the mother's attire.

I didn't hear what was being said. I could just read their body language. It was a sweet image. As I closed my distance and they approached the curb, suddenly the little girl clutched her mother's leg. "What if they send you to a unit and I can't come with you?"

They crossed the street and I walked on.

It ain't necessarily so ... Political commentary

All I know is what I have words for.

– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 1953

Time Magazine called the Protestor "Person of the Year." The first New Yorker of 2012, on my desk today shows Old Man 2011 eying Newt prancing about as the 1994 baby. Already, given the peripatetic nature of the Republican race, the New Yorker cover is obsolete before its cover date. I'm afraid the Time cover is too.

It ain't necessarily so

The t'ings dat yo' li'ble

To read in de Bible,

It ain't necessarily so.

Perhaps it's fitting to revisit this George Gershwin composition that has been recorded by so many of the greats. Like most things Gershwin, it was really quite before it's time. This song's time is now. Even the statement "these are cynical times" sounds breathlessly naïve. These are way beyond cynical times. These are times I have no better words for. What's more cynical than cynicism? Fatalism. Both assume the worst of inputs. The latter affixes inevitability to outcomes. As much as I abhor predetermination, there's only so long you can drive along saying, it's a wall, up ahead, coming closer, it's a wall, it's a wall, before you smack into something.

Let's play history rematch. I re-pair Ronnie Reagan, the Teflon optimist and Jimmy Carter, the one term president who preached austerity, mano e mano 2011 and wonder whether Carter would have been so convincingly trounced. We've got your New American Century right here, Ron. How do you like it?

While our president gets to play hail the conquering heroes to soldier boys and girls on airbases and transport ships coming home from Iraq, worldclass skeptic Trudy Rubin writes how profoundly and non-partisanly we've failed that country and the region.  It doesn't take a skeptic to see that wherever in the world we (mis)adventure, we unerringly make the wrong moves.  It makes some of what libertarian skeptic Ron Paul says make sense. Not the John Bircher stuff, but the "we should keep to ourselves stuff."

Once we invaded Iraq was there ever any positive exit to be had? Whatever happens there next, civil war, Armageddon, Iranian puppet statehood, Muslim sects running after each other with power tools, etc. ... America's first and biggest folly was to ever go there and we should never forget this. For a writer, that's like starting a sentence with a period. I see a lot of revisionist media about Iraq and it sickens me. Not so much because of the disinformation fed our own people, but the false hope stirred up in the Iraqis. We have abandoned the few secular, progressive Iraqis we've encouraged in our short stint there. Once branded American sympathizers, their fates are double-sealed. They should notice that the American dream did not flower in Iraq and flee their country while they can. This sort of abandonment happens with some regularity. Ask the Kurds under Saddam.

In Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, et.al, we hail "the will of the people," the triumph of the protest movement over multi-decade dictatorships but worry about what has replaced them. In America, we automatically assume that our way is the best and brightest beacon the world has to offer.  I'm less convinced than ever that the world wants what we offer. I'm not even so sure we ourselves still want it.

We watched our Congress bring the economy to the brink over the deficit limit, watched in horror as Standard and Poors downgraded U.S. Bonds from AAA to AA+ and decided, as individual investors and en masse that it really didn't matter. Congress doesn't matter. The Tea Party doesn't matter. The OWS doesn't seem to matter.  None of the Republican candidates matter. They all surface briefly like blips on the radar, then fade into the murk. Why? Because they appeal to our craving for novelty more than our desire for hard work and lasting solutions.

What matters? I say this to the Republican presidential wannabees as I say it to the Democratic president I voted for. Failed. All failed. What makes you worthy of another chance? Unbelievably enough, I'm going to give you one if only because I'm not yet a fatalist, but a failed fatalist, I'm reluctantly willing to listen. But I know that you're lying to me. Your lips are moving I know you're telling me what you think I want to hear.

Never has cynicism seemed like such a requisite and important virtue.

Wadoo, zim bam boddle-oo,

Hoodle ah da wa da,

Scatty wah !

Oh yeah !...

It ain't necessarily so. Happy New Year.

In defense of the (revised) liberal education

"This is a tough time to graduate from college. While unemployment is high across the board, recent grads face a brutal 9.3% unemployment rate -- the highest that statistic has been for them since the Great Recession began. Worse yet, studies have shown that fewer than half of recent college students are finding jobs that relate to their majors, and just more than half felt their jobs made use of what they learned as undergrads."

I came across this article by DailyFinance.com's Bruce Watson, thanks to an FBF and it made me think about how much things have changed since I was a starry-eyed student.

The old saw when we didn't have gray hair was that college was less valuable for what you learned and more valuable that you "learned how to learn." As a grad of communications, back further than I care to say, the attrition rate was appallingly high. Maybe 1 in 10 still working in the field. The one thing I got right back in my youth was that "you really have to want it" and I did. And I do. So here I am, still working in a field that is every bit as tough as it was when I got out of school, if not tougher.

Naked Scarlett Johansson Pictures

This isn't about one middle-aged man's hopeless infatuation with the sexy Scarlett starlet. It's something scarier that you and the pretty and pretty smart young actress probably don't think about enough. Ms. Johannson sent some nudies to her then husband. In her own words, "Nothing wrong with that."

Despite about a billion drooling fanboys craving a better look, any look, she hasn't willingly shared all of her voluptuous curves with the global filmgoing public. Good for her. It should (have been) her decision to do it or not. She obviously has strong personal or business reasons for keeping the full-frontal stuff private. When you get to Ms. J's place in the world, your body is a commodity. Still, you're a person and you deserve to have your wishes respected. Or so you'd think..

And that's where she and you, if you feel the same way, are in error.
Some geek, with shockingly little effort got her password and is off to the races. Now, he's going to spend a lot of time in jail doing a less senstive version of the shower scene from "Midnight Express." Maybe that is some consolation to Ms. J and her well-wishers. But to me, it's a sad case of closing the barn door after the horse has bolted, run down the road and been sold to the glue factory by your evil neighbor.

I am not a network expert. But I know (and you know) that everything you see, send and do on the Internet is available if somebody is smart enough, motivated enough and puerile enough to make hacking you their business, be they government, divorce lawyer or pathetic fanboy.

People use their damned smartphones as cameras. People think of email the same way they thought of private letters. What Scarlett and the rest of the world seem to forget with shocking regularity is that every sext, every candid, every incriminating thing you write and send resides somewhere on some server that even the strongest password is only a pathetic bandaid on.

So what should Scarlett or you do if you want to share something sexy, provocative or incriminating with your paramour or fellow conspirator? Use a non-internet connected camera. Save the sexy private stuff for face-to-face. Keep in mind that the more public you are, the less private you are. And Scarlett, love, you are a smart, sexy and very talented woman. I respect you. But if and when you do decide to bare all for the camera, I'll be right in line with all the other pathetic fanboys. I don't care if you are reading a phone book.

OMG, did I really just put that out on the Net?

A Speechwriter's Contribution

Dear President Obama:

I am a working media and speech writer and though struggling in this economy, I am not in the habit of working for free. 

Nonetheless, please consider the following an act of civic contribution to your re-election campaign. I can't offer money I don't have, but I do have ideas and words aplenty. Some of them, I think, belong to you. They are yours for the taking. An attribution would be nice, but I'm not even insisting on that. If you use it, I'll know.

The title of this speech is: 

"Things I should have said and done"

Three years ago, I was elected to the most important chief executive position in the world. I, like others, thought of it as the most powerful position in the world, but experience has taught me otherwise. With a thousand thousand media spotlights turned on me and powerful forces bent against me, I have seen the failure of my best intentions and at times have felt powerless to stop this failure.

I don't feel that way now.

ARE WE NOT MEN -- Mainly on Masculinity, Learning and "Anti-Social" Media

Last month I spent a marvelous weekend in the company of two of my best friends and their sons. It was a multigenerational, manly weekend, full of beef, beer, boasting, boating and blasting the open road in my friend's Porsche 914.

Manly stuff, including long reminiscent and forward-looking conversations wherein we expressed fears, concerns, hopes for our boys. On the whole, they are like the children of Lake Woebegone, above average lads, and nearly all labor with some degree of academic challenge.


Two speakers at Ted Talks intelligently and eloquently spoke to "boy issues" in academia.



Psychologist Philip Zimbardo asks, "Why are boys struggling?" He shares some stats (lower graduation rates, greater worries about intimacy and relationships) and suggests a few reasons. He stops short of solutions. He tells the audience that it's their job. And no doubt it is – their job and ours.


So what the heck do we do?

Reflections of a Walker #3

Volt for me and I'll set you free!

(warning: high geekspeak index)


Goodbye, good old friend.
Hello, good new (more gently used) friend.

 Back, last winter, I was stepping into a cab in my trenchcoat, closed the door and heard a sickening crunch. Result, house left. I was heartbroken, for this old friend had accompanied me on all walks, rain and shine for six years. Perhaps it was the striding gods punishing me for abandoning my pedestrian ways.

I know there are tons of fancypants MP3 players out there, most with Apple logos, big flash drives, video, all manners of "Swiss Army" hoohah, but this old school iRiver H320 player still holds more than a candle to them all. Maybe I'm an old school throwback, but the idea of watching a movie on a 3" screen is absurd. Hell, my 27" screen is too small for optimal viewing. Let music players be music players.

This South Korean manufactured playa sports a comfortable 20G drive, room enough for 2800 songs, most ripped at minimum 256k bitrate, decent radio, great recorder ... plug it in USB to your computer and it functions as another agnostic USB drive, no fuss over DRM or bizarre Apple music file structure. (Music, music, which directory is my $$$'ing music in?)

So unlike wetware friends who are irreplaceable, this new old friend (house right) was $60 on Ebay. If you like this oldschool player, just understand that it has a fiercely devoted fanbase (http://www.misticriver.com/) and can be hard to find. I was damned lucky. The one I'd bid on previously topped out at over $200. Once new friend arrived, I dragged and dropped my 18G portable music directory to the new friend, stripped off the old friend's silicon skin and plugged my musician quality Shure SCL4 sound isolating earbuds in and good to go.

Some folks take me to task, asking "is it safe to walk with earbuds in?" I'd ask them, especially if they're city dwellers, if you really need to hear city noise at normal db levels? The headphones' sound is so clean 109db (S/N) on the SCL4 (EC4 replacement), that you don't need to and shouldn't overdrive them for risk of damaging your hearing. Clean, normal volume sound, exterior sound reduced 60-80% and one's own head is a concert hall. One only need pretend you're hearing impaired and pay extra attention when crossing streets.

This iRiver player/recorder sports a 1.8" 20G Toshiba minidrive found in netbooks and mini-laptops, but Toshiba discontinued the more capacious upgrade drives with the old CF interface in favor of the newer ZIF interface. There are converters out there, but there's some question in my mind if it can all be crammed into the tiny space in my H320. So for now, I guess I'm stuck with only 2800 tunes at a time. A quality problem.

What's this have to do with walking? All I can say is it's my life and it's sometimes life needs a soundtrack of one's own choosing. Urban ambience can be interesting but I prefer to roll my playlist when I hit the streets. The aural joy and peace of mind/soul it brings me was well worth the investment.

For earlier Reflections of a Walker posts, just scroll down or visit my FB posts at:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32729666&l=a7efec5c26&id=1338279946
and
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=32676077&l=b4c64e24e4&id=1338279946

Happy trails.

Signed the Walking Man.