Sunday, June 27, 2010

My Little Town Tuesday: When a Man's Home Really Is His Castle


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This castle is located in the heart of My Little Town.

What makes it so interesting?

This is the next-door-neighbor to the left.

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And this is the next-door-neighbor to the right.

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The owners, who live in the middlest of middle America, dreamed of owning a castle. And so they began converting their unassuming ranch home into a citadel. Over time, they covered the exterior of their house with stone, added on a turret here and there and replaced their front door with something that looks a lot like a portcullis.

All they're missing is the moat.

It makes me think of that poem by E.A. Robinson:


Miniver Cheevy

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.

Minever mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Minever loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediƦval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.


But they went after their dream and made it happen.

How cool is that?

(PS - I know it's not Tuesday. I hit the Publish button by mistake and decided to just leave it. Have a great week!)

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Old Joke #44

One day an Irishman, who had been stranded on a deserted island for over 10 years, saw a speck on the horizon. He thought to himself, "It's certainly not a ship" As the speck got closer and closer, he began to rule out even the possibilities of a small boat or a raft. Suddenly there strode from the surf a figure clad in a black wet suit. Putting aside the scuba tanks and mask and zipping down the top of the wet suit stood a drop-dead gorgeous blonde! She walked up to the stunned Irishman and said to him, "Tell me, how long has it been since you've had a good cigar?" "Ten years," replied the amazed Irishman. With that, she reached over and unzipped a waterproof pocket on the left sleeve of her wet suit and pulled out a fresh package of cigars and a lighter. He took a cigar, slowly lit it, and took a long drag. "Faith and begorrah," said the castaway, Ahh "that is so good! I'd almost forgotten how great a smoke can be!" "And how long has it been since you've had a drop of good Bushmill's Irish Whiskey?" asked the blonde. Trembling, the castaway replied, "Ten years." Hearing that, the blonde reached over to her right sleeve, unzipped a pocket there and removed a flask and handed it to him. He opened the flask and took a long drink. "Tis nectar of the gods!" shouted the Irishman." 'Tis truly fantastic!!!" At this point the gorgeous blonde started to slowly unzip the long front of her wet suit, right down the middle. She looked at the trembling man and asked, "And how long has it been since you played around?" With tears in his eyes, the Irishman fell to his knees and sobbed, "By all the saints! Don't tell me that you've got golf clubs in there too!"

Monday, June 21, 2010

10,000 Hours


If you've read Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers, then you already know that 10,000 hours is the amount of time it takes to become an expert at something.

To prove his point, he cites The Beatles, who for a period of time played 7 nights a week, 8 hours a night, in Hamburg, Germany, and who, consequently, were master musicians by their mid-twenties.

He also talks about Bill Gates, who started programming computers when he was in the 8th grade. In high school, he would sneak out of his house at night to spend the wee hours writing code during available timeshare hours at the University of Washington. All of this focus meant that by the time he reached his early twenties, he had mastered computer programming.

In a regular day-job, it takes 5 years to amass 10,000 hours. As a former manager, I can tell you that, in looking at a resume, that's a pretty solid cutoff for feeling like you're hiring an experienced person who's not going to need a lot of hand-holding to get his job done. Of course, you interview to make sure all the soft skills are there, and that the person is not a psycho, or a giant liar who made up everything on his resume (it happens) but on a totally technical basis, 5 years is a solid experience curve.

What does that mean, though, for activities outside the workplace?

I've been married, off and on, for 37 years and during that time I've cooked dinner an average of 5 times a week. Assuming I spend one hour per meal, that amounts to 1850 hours. So it's just as I suspected: I am unlikely to live long enough to become a good cook.

(So why, I would argue, should I expend any more effort on a goal I'll never reach?)

On the other hand, since 2001, when I started writing seriously, I've put in between 10 and 20 hours a week writing. Taking 15 hours/week as a conservative estimate, that means I've accumulated approximately 7000 hours.

3000 to go.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

My Little Town Tuesday: Why, Lord, why?

This may come as a surprise, but I live just up the road from the 65-foot statue of Jesus that made national news when it was struck by lightning on Monday night.

Before the fire, it looked like this:



After the fire, like this:



It's impossible to know what was in the mind of God when this happened, and hard not to wonder why He struck this statue of His Son instead of the Hustler store that lay just across the highway.

Was it because there is something deeply wrong inside the Solid Rock Church, as one congregation member stated when interviewed on local television?

Was it because God already warned us not to build graven images?

Or maybe God, like me, just found the statue to be offensively ugly, like one of those statues you find at county fairs that are carved out of butter, as Heywood Brown said.




Perhaps the statue was gay. That's always a valid cause for geographically specific natural disasters.

Or maybe, just maybe, it was because the metal framework has lightning rods for arms.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

My Little Town Tuesday: That Awkward Stage



Nice to know it isn't limited to human teenagers.

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