Welcome to Carl V.'s Blog

Today is January First.  2015 has just started and it surely doesn't sound as futuristic as it did when I was little.

2020 and 2025 once sounded like they were so far into the future that they were lifetimes away.

 
Buck Rogers In The 25th Century was produced by Universal Studios and aired on NBC from 1979–1981.  This was how I pictured anything past the 20th century; so far away that it bordered into fantasy.  Yet here I am, with access to information about things that happened two thousand, or six thousand years ago, right at my fingertips and it isn't the 25th but we are definitely in the 21st century.   

Cleopatra, the last Pharaoh, who died in the year 30, is closer in time to me than she is to the time of the building of The Great Pyramid, if you posit that it was completed around 2560 BC. 
And I think people are still the same, regardless of the year.  We just have different toys.

So much knowledge is available with one click.  It is overwhelming.



Today I start a blog.  I've been thinking of starting one for a long time, and it's not my first.  But I am a better starter than a finisher.  So we will see.  Will I write a little every day, or every once in awhile?  I am not sure.  But I am learning to give myself options rather than ultimatums.  When I add something to my list of things I have to do, I don't want to do it.  So I'm not adding this to my list.  Yet, it's here should I want to write in it.

Isn't ultimatum a silly word?  I understand the need for such a word, but it sounds like old tomato to me so I don't take it nearly as seriously as the definition demands that I do.

Here's an image, just like what I think when I hear the word "ultimatum," from stopclinic.com


Today I read a FB post talking about how Steven Pinker thinks italics are underused in English.  I pretty much hate them, but I just tried it, with little ill effect.

Last night, I listened as my tax dollars went up in smoke with all the firecrackers being ignited.  I figure in this neighborhood people are spending their welfare checks on these noise makers.  I don't understand why anyone would choose to make sounds that loud, but,maybe since they play their music so loudly, they can't hear as well unless they were trying to scare someone.  When I watch fireworks, I think of the sounds as unwanted byproducts of a pretty show.  But these people, yeah, I said it, these people, buy things just to have loud sounds.  They spend money on this.  I don't get it at all.  But as a citizen of The United States of America, I know we all benefit from living here, which translates into benefiting from taxes.  It's unfair to think of some neighborhoods as subsidized housing when you consider things like homestead exemptions.  We're all subsidized in some way.  I can't know how much value to place on the seen and unseen things my tax dollars support.  I just figure they waste a lot of money; the government and the people.  FedEx and UPS make profits but the US Post Office doesn't.  The neighbors light their money on fire.  Anyway, the firecrackers didn't keep me up any later than I wanted to stay up.

Today I wondered at the seemingly arbitrary business closings.  Presumably banks and post offices, and my lieberry, of course, are closed for New Year's Day.  But so were independently owned restaurants and the one barber shop I happened to see, next to my gym.  The gym was open, and fast food restaurants were open, but if I had a business I think I would have had it open today, because so many people weren't at work, which means they could be out spending money.  

Welcome to 2015.  We're going to get along just fine.