2025: a retrospective

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

Wow, what happened this year? I have no idea. It went by pretty damn fast if you ask me. That seems to happen more and more as I get older though. Go figure. Definitely wasn’t anything to write home about honestly. A lot of nonsense, a lot of BS, not a lot of memorable moments really. I took a bunch of international trips and those were sort of fun but again, not great. Don’t feel like I accomplished much, made many new friendships, or contributed in a very meaningful way to any cause I care deeply about.

However, just before Christmas, I did attend a meditation retreat where I felt genuinely good about myself and what I was doing. Honestly, that may have been the highlight of this year for me. Nothing went seriously wrong and no one flipped their sh-t at me and I didn’t feel the urge to strangle anyone. It was only a few days long but I gotta say, I really liked it. It was almost like being back at college for a few days.

And actually, another thing I did which I was quite proud of, now that I think of it, I wrote an annual message directed to my college graduating class for my alumni association of which I am now a participating member. Becoming involved with my alumni association feels like a bit of a crapshoot for me at the moment, like “What do I really aim to accomplish by reconnecting with them?” but I’m doing it so we’ll see. I liked the tone I struck in the message quite a bit and it just felt good to write something in a semi-professional context and have it be sent to hundreds of people. I felt official and competent. I love that. One of my favorite feelings in the whole universe: feeling competent. And writing this letter definitely made me feel that way.

So I guess, now that I’m thinking about it, there have been a few good things that happened this year. Also, I’m getting ready to build a house on a lot I now own in another part of the city I live in but that has been kinda crazy: getting permits, working with builders, negotiating the design with the architect (who is also my father), sh-tting my pants thinking about how much money it is costing, etc etc. So that MIGHT be cool at some point but right now it is too abstract and scary and full of hassles to be cool. Don’t get me wrong, it SEEMS like it WILL be cool at some point but so far it’s been a bit crazy.

I stand upon the brink of an entirely new year as I have done many times in the past. Thinking about it logically, nothing is likely to be all that different but I want it to be. I want this year to be the one when I really drive home my points, when I do the things I’ve been avoiding, when I don’t mentally cower in front of the contemplation of everything that could go wrong for me, when I don’t wallow in self-pity, when I have the courage to follow through on what I think is right no matter what other people are suggesting… When I stop searching for that elusive “problem” or “problems” that I KNOW I have but can never discover exactly what it is… When I stop thinking of myself as deficient, not good enough, unsuccessful, inept, fundamentally flawed. I want this year to be the year I say to myself, “I CAN DO IT” and really believe it!

Maybe I’m getting my hopes up a bit high. But I just want to shrug off all the nonsense that may or may not be happening around me and get my side of things straight. Thanks for reading my post. Happy holidays and happy new years to everyone! Let’s get it.

The Enzo

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx
Daily writing prompt
What is your all time favorite automobile?
View all responses

Wow, tough to say. Does this mean like brand only? or model and brand? And year? Who knows. Anyway, if I had to answer this question without knowing anything more about it, I’d probably say… the Enzo by Ferrari. Now obviously, I’ve never driven it. But most people who answer a question like this probably haven’t driven the cars they mention am I right? To me, the Enzo Ferrari is just the pinnacle of automotive beauty, performance and style. Nothing else comes close. Not terribly practical but hey, who cares.

Why?

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

Someone has just booted me out of their little world: an online friend who I never actually met in person. It seems this is becoming a pattern in my life: getting kicked out of people’s lives, organizations, establishments, so on and so forth. It’s a lot like being fired though when it happens with just another person, there’s no danger to personal finance. It has happened to me more than I’d like to admit: suddenly and more or less without explanation, being unceremoniously dropped from the universe of another. Honestly, looking back, it really does seem to happen to me a lot. Whenever it does, it leaves me reeling, staggering almost, attempting to understand what went wrong and what role (if any) I played in the separation. The 6 million dollar question: What did I do? What did I do to bring this about? Was it my fault? Could it have been prevented if I had just been smarter, more tactful, more respectful, more subservient, more aggressive, etc etc. Or was it going to happen no matter what I did or did not do? Was my connection to this person/place/organization bound to be severed by he/she/it/them eventually no matter how nice I was to them, how respectfully I behaved, how cleverly I stoked the fires of our connection?

When money is involved, it’s usually worse but it’s always at least a little bit painful and very stultifying whether money is involved or not. It’s actually more scary than anything: to be dropped like an object of some kind and almost feel yourself hit the floor so to speak.

Conflict immediately arises in my mind: should I attempt to understand what went wrong and go over the details to ensure this doesn’t happen again? Or should I dismiss it, write it off as just another one of those things that seems to happen to me (all the time)? On the one hand, I don’t to dwell on negative events that are in the past. They happened, there’s nothing I can do about it. But on the other, “Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.” Is that what has been happening I wonder? Am I just not learning from my mistakes? Or is it just that every time these things happen to me, it’s just an unavoidable part of life, something I’m fated to continue experiencing until the day I die? And thus, if that’s true, then there’s utterly no point to paying any attention to them after they’re over because they will continue to happen whether I learn from them or not.

They are always disconcerting and stultifying as I mentioned earlier.

Part of me deeply believes that these things happen to me only because God has chosen for me a heavy burden involving the ostracism from and ridicule of many people outside of myself. This has always been my experience regardless of where or when I find myself. Hence, it would seem that it’s not really within my power to control or even affect.

Meditation has taught me that the events of one’s life are less important than how we “react” to those events and part of me also knows that this is at least partially true if not entirely true. But controlling one’s reactions is most certainly easier said than done. Science in fact teaches us that, “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Hence, if someone or something “acts” upon me or my life, a reaction is a foregone conclusion. Which is correct? Meditation or science? Who knows.

Part of me also believes that every difficult experience I endure is an honorable one in some way. And everytime someone or something rejects me, drops me from their universe, they are in fact showing how unworthy of my time and attention they have always been. They are demonstrating how shallow and weak they are by refusing to give me the benefit of the doubt, another chance, or the time it takes to understand where I’m coming from.

But of course, the fact that it seems to happen to me a lot makes me wonder: is it really my fault? Is it something I need to change about myself that people keep shutting me down? The answer to that probably depends on who you ask I suppose. But if it doesn’t and the answer is yes across the board, that is more depressing than I care to contemplate.

I always come away from these sorts of things wanting answers and getting none. Like I said before: what did I do that was so wrong? It’s hard to make changes when you don’t know what you need to change…

The strange exigencies of working in corporate America

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

Sexual harassment: it’s such an ugly phrase, purely a product of modern life (the phrase I mean, not the reality). And I think the label does nothing to solve the underlying problem, it only gives corporations ammunition for their list of “things we do not allow here within our corporate borders.” Just another bullet point for an enormous list of “fireable offenses”.

I just took a fairly in depth course for a new job I’m starting and I thought it was kind of sad: being made to watch this monotonous video about what is and what is not “sexual harrassment” and why it’s “not ok.” Like, yeah, I know it’s “not ok,” to pressure a subordinate into having sex with you in exchange for a promotion or something but if I didn’t already know that, would this course really change my mind? I just found myself asking at the end of it: “Why do they make people do these things, seriously? What is the thinking behind it? Is it genuinely for the benefit of female employees who might have been saved from predatory men were it not for this wonderful course? Or is it just for the company to cover their asses, to project an image to the public which demonstrates conformity with current attitudes towards ‘toxic masculinity’ or whatever?” I mean, what do I know? I’m not a woman and as such, I’ve never been groped on public transportation or been the victim of inappropriate advances by a lecherous boss. But still, I have to wonder if women who really HAVE been victims of this kind of thing approve of these ridiculous courses, if they think they are effective. And if they do, I sincerely beg their pardon. BTW, this is not the first course I’ve had to take like this and the others have been similarly dull and depressing.

I do know that 60 years ago, no one had to bear witness to these kinds of educational videos before beginning jobs. The term itself was coined in the early 70’s according to Wikipedia. I just found it a hard thing to sit through as somebody who has been on the receiving end of women’s rights gone wrong more than once.

As you may have guessed dear reader, I’m a man. And I’ve had to deal with more than one deranged entitled woman having nothing better to do than tell lies about me. I’m no saint but I’m not a rapist either even though the political correctness of our modern world makes me feel like one sometimes. I just wish we lived in a world where the term “sexual harassment” wasn’t necessary.

Rims

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx
Daily writing prompt
What are you most excited about for the future?
View all responses

Feeling financially secure enough to buy rims for my car. I have ALWAYS wanted to have a car with aftermarket rims on it. I do have a chunk of money saved up right now which I COULD dip into to buy them right now but I also don’t have a job. And I think it’s stupid to spend money on something as utterly inessential as aftermarket rims for my car when I have no income. And, furthermore, buying rims for your car when you have no job puts you very squarely in drug dealer territory if you ask me. But yeah, that’s what I’m looking forward to right now.

New Job

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So I’ve started a new job. It’s at a manufacturing company about a 30 minute drive from where I live right now. I think that’s a pretty reasonable commuting distance. I’ve been there for about a week and a half so far. I’ve had two other different jobs in the past 9 months or so and they haven’t worked out for various reasons. This one seems like it could work. So allow me to be stupidly adult and modern for a moment and say “I think my work could work for me.” I’ve always subtly detested that phrase: “It (doesn’t) work(s) for you.” I don’t know why.

Many exciting things seem to be happening in my life at the moment: new job, making my car sportier and flashier via various modifications, taking a trip to the Southwestern United States with my dad in the next week or so but… I feel quite sad for some reason. Like a lot of the things I wanted when I was younger haven’t come to pass and like despite being marginally successful by some measures, I am woefully inadequate by others. It just seems like the harder I try the more things seem to go astray somehow. Gaging what is and is not acceptable action seems more difficult than ever for me.

Life is hard, it always has been, it always will be. But I always feel like there ought to be more tools at my disposal for turning life’s many difficulties to my advantage in one way or another. And, yes I admit, I always feel like things are just plain worse for me than for others. Experience and conventional wisdom tell me that that is simply not true, that everyone’s burden is unique, that it’s all relative and I occupy a certain space on the spectrum of things with some people having an easier time of it than me and others having a more difficult time than I am. But goddamnit, it just FEELS so true, the thought that life is just plain harder for me than anyone else.

I don’t know much about history, anyone’s or anything’s besides my own and I don’t pretend to. I think of myself a bit like Sherlock Holmes in that he once commented to Watson, after Watson told him that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around (I think that was the factoid), that he found that piece of trivia moderately interesting but that he would now put all his energies into forgetting it completely and entirely. This flabbergasted Watson to say the least but Holmes explained that he had all the knowledge in his mind more or less neatly arranged and a factoid like the one he just heard would only serve to clutter things up and get in the way of other things he was more concerned with remembering. I have no real interest in history and I imagine that little pieces of historical fact would only serve to clutter up my mind and get in the way of other things I’d rather keep there.

What am I trying to say…. I don’t know. I’m 41 years old and I feel quite beaten down by life to tell you the truth. Like the harder I try to just go out there in the world and live, the more the universe tries to make things difficult for me. I wonder if I will ever look out upon the world from some as-yet-unknown vantage point surveying my surroundings and say to myself, “Life is good, I’m happy where I am, I’ve done things I’m proud of, and I am at peace with the way things are.” And mean it. I just don’t know.

I hope this job proves to be interesting, lucrative, and doable. Bye for now.

The generation gap

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

When I was growing up, computers, technology, and the internet were mysterious, alien, burgeoning things. I, and everyone I knew, regarded them with skepticism and incredulity. What were they all about? There was an air of magic, of allure, of the unknown about them that I think young people these days are completely unaware of. I think they are regarded more as facts of life rather than curious contraptions that may or may not ever become important. Interestingly, I was an (I hate this word) “early adopter” of technology in some ways. For instance, I had a laptop in school when almost NO ONE had a laptop. I think perhaps one other person in my whole school regularly brought a computer to class with which to take notes.

I just substitute taught a class at a middle school and it was hard to ignore the fact that every single cotton picking one of the kids I was teaching had a school distributed laptop computer. So, yeah, not much mystery or uniqueness about something everyone has… And obviously, they all had internet access. I think at one point, I bought a modem which could be used wirelessly with my laptop but that was a very new-fangled thing when I got it. Perhaps even more amazing is how quickly that new-fangled thing became completely outdated and abandoned when laptops started coming equipped standard with wireless modems and later, WiFi.

What I’m trying to get at is the idea of technology feeling a bit alien, a bit unusual, a bit nerdy, and definitely uncommon. It seems that now, it really is none of those things. I mean, obviously, there are still places in the world where technology is not quite so ubiquitous but man, times have sure changed if you ask me. Other kids in my class would often make fun of me, if I remember correctly, for even using a laptop in school. At that time, a lot of kids still hand-wrote essays and assignments and so forth. As time went on, more and more people started to type their papers but that definitely wasn’t the norm during my middle and some of my high school years.

I guess what I’m saying is that seeing these middle school students using laptops (all of them) was pretty weird to me. Not pretty weird actually. Really weird. It made me wonder what the point of all our technological progress really is. Some of them were quite unruly which made teaching them very trying and I have to wonder if all those damn computers had anything to do with how poorly behaved some of them were. Of course, kids have been ill-behaved since the dawn of time but still, it’s worth considering I think.

I also don’t think they will ever appreciate what it was like to connect to the internet for the first time using an old-school dial-up modem. Nowadays, the internet is just… there. It’s totally taken for granted. Not like when I was young when there was kind of a long drawn out process by which you gained access to it with a lot of funny noises and little colored lights on this tiny box that you had to plug into a regular old telephone.

Some of the kids I’ve been teaching have been real pains and others have been very sweet. They run the gamut as everything in this world does I suppose. So far, I’ve taught for the first time at two different middle schools and 1 elementary school. I was a general substitute at 1 middle school and a “library/media studies” sub at the elementary and the other middle school. I hope my experience as a substitute improves fast to tell you the truth. I’m having a bit of a rough time.

Dreams

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

I was thinking today as I ate my breakfast, or maybe it was lunch, at any rate it was my first meal of the day, that people always talk about dreams as something desirable beyond all else. It goes without saying that if you have “realized a dream” in some way, you’ve accomplished or achieved something truly remarkable, at least according to your own standards. It’s like “What’s better than a dream?”… I’m just saying in the world of today, of America, of the 21st Century, I don’t know what, it’s just… universally accepted that if you have “made a dream come true,” there really is nothing left to seek after, am I right? A dream is the embodiment of the highest accomplishment a human being can hope for is it not? Maybe… Maybe not. At least, in the America I grew up in, it was pretty f—ing important.

But… at breakfast, or lunch, or whatever it was today, I realized something. I realized that, at their core, dreams… don’t make any sense. That’s a fundamentally defining characteristic of all dreams is it not? And so what can one conclude from that? Well, I would say that, basically, most people’s highest aspirations consist of seeking to realize or achieve something (a dream) that doesn’t make any sense.

People talk about “following your dreams” do they not? And if we can all agree that, almost across the board, dreams are inherently nonsensical things, then everyone advocating the idea of “following your dreams” is, by extension, advocating “following something that doesn’t make any sense.”

I’ve heard that lucid dreams can sometimes be less bizarre and nonsensical than regular dreams but that’s neither here nor there really since most people don’t know anything about lucid dreams.

I guess something deep down in me really takes issue with the idea of devoting so much time and energy to something that fundamentally has no order and no reason. It’s almost as if we revere dreams as something with a logic and sensibility all their own that we could never hope to understand, making the pursuit of them inherently worthwhile. Maybe its a zero-sum thing: like, well if you’re not going after your dreams, you’re going to wind up in your nightmares so it doesn’t really matter if they make sense or not because they’re better than nightmares.

On the other hand, isn’t regular life also more or less nonsensical? Maybe we just ascribe meaning and order to things that essentially don’t have any and thereby convince ourselves that dreams are mostly nonsense while life more or less makes sense. I can say from personal experience that I’ve always considered life to be kind of nuts, like not much different from a strange dream.

That’s more or less all I’ve got to say about it. I just wanted to share this revelation… that many people spend most of their lives pursuing things that… are totally bizarre and absurd.

Car repair

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx
Daily writing prompt
What is the last thing you learned?
View all responses

I learned (by watching YouTube videos) that my car has what is known as a “Convergence Telematic Module” (CTM) stashed away behind the glovebox which can be accessed by removing several panels on the dash as well as the glovebox itself. This module controls the bluetooth functions of the car as well some important display information in the instrument panel (like the mileage) and, if it is malfunctioning, the mileage will blink on and off (the display is digital not analog). My car started doing this (flashing the mileage) so I searched on the web for the problem and discovered the things I just mentioned. Determined to fix it, I did a web search for the symptom I was experiencing (the flashing odometer) and got a bunch of hits. Ultimately, I boiled it down to the fact that my CTM was the cause of the issue (I hoped) and bought a new module on eBay for around $100 (brand new they can be $600 or more to say nothing of the labor if not doing it yourself). I researched where it was located in my vehicle (so I could replace it) and initially came to believe it was behind a panel next to the back seat on the driver side. But I’m glad I didn’t start digging around back there as I later learned that this module is only in that location when it comes to BRITISH versions of the the vehicle I own. In the AMERICAN version, the module is located, as I said, behind the glovebox, which actually made the process of getting to it quite a bit simpler. Anyway, I further searched for a way to access the module’s location in the AMERICAN versions of the car and found a very helpful video by a youtuber named Ele Truk (thank you!) who showed how to remove the glovebox. So, long story short, I had a problem, figured out what was causing it, got a piece that needed replacing, found out how to replace it, and did the work. I probably saved around $700 or more by not taking it to a professional mechanic too. Knowledge is power indeed. Or if not power, certainly worth a good deal of money.

Running Time: a 90’s movie that feels like a play

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I’m a big fan of Bruce Campbell, I can’t deny it. He has a great screen presence. He’s no Laurence Olivier but he’s just so much fun to watch. My rationale for liking him so much comes from, unsurprisingly, his most memorable role, that of Ash from “Evil Dead.” So many horror movies take themselves too seriously, they try to blow you away with gore, with suspense, with sheer jump-out-of-your-seat moments, or just how scary they can be. Bruce Campbell in “Evil Dead” always made me feel like it was scary and it was a horror movie but that at no point was there any real danger. Like somehow, consciously or unconsciously, he had the interests of his audience at heart. And even though he was only a playing character trying to save humanity from the forces of darkness, somehow, he was actually doing that too by subtly giving the proverbial wink and nod to everyone watching the film, reminding us not to get lost in the Hollywood shuffle. Intentions aside, Bruce Campbell is funny and he’s a leading man if there ever was one. Almost a caricature of a leading man, but a leading man nevertheless.

In 1997’s “Running Time,” one can see Campbell in good form. He delivers his characteristic tough guy demeanor and his no-nonsense approach to on-screen, in-character business. But Bruce Campbell isn’t the only thing about “Running Time” that makes it great.

Like Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope,” the movie is intended to have the appearance of being cut-free, in other words, devoid of cuts from shot to shot. Most movies have hundreds of cuts. And although one can not (or perhaps could not because technologies have changed a lot over the last 30 years) truly make a cut-free movie (because rolls of film only translate to around 10 minutes of film time, at which point, you need to stop and reload the camera), this one was about as cut-free as they come, having around 30 in total which are hidden throughout the film. This style works very well with the subject matter of the film (a heist) where time is a crucial component of success. That was not an accident as you might expect. Becker, the director, intentionally created a script about a heist in order to use this technique of a cut-free movie. And, in case you are wondering, the idea for the style preceded the script and not the other way around.

Having read through some history of the film from the director’s point of view, I can tell you that there are many more interesting things about this movie than just its shooting style, its resemblance to a play, Bruce Campbell, or the eerie prescience of the actors wearing surgical masks during the heist itself (hint: think recent worldwide health crisis). For instance, the movie is shot on 16mm ASA 64 Kodak black and white film. 64 ASA film is incredibly slow meaning getting the exposure right is very difficult. However, the image you end up with if you have exposed it well is very, very sharp and very very low grained. For comparison, Clerks was shot on something called Kodak Eastman Double-X which (if I have understood it correctly) has an ASA of around 200 indoors and 250 outdoors (though I don’t know why a film should be rated differently between indoors and outdoors). That’s like 4 times as fast as the film stock used to make “Running Time” and, if you hearken back to an image of Clerks, you will perceive how grainy it was and how sharp this is.

The movie definitely seems like a play, especially in the interactions between Campbell and Barone. The long take(s) just make it seem less like we (the audience) are seeing the characters on a screen and more like they are performing right in front of us. Barone’s acting is not stellar and neither is Campbell’s but that’s not why you go to see a Bruce Campbell movie as anyone who has seen one can probably tell you. You go to see a Bruce Campbell movie because he kicks ass, it’s kind of that simple. That said, the dynamic between Barone and Campbell is compelling, he with his Ex-con mannerisms and she with her down-on-her-luck-resorting-to-prostitution-to-pay-the-bills persona. It’s not high art by any means but their relationship is moving in a way. The idea that two wayward people can somehow come together to rescue each other from their own foibles is something I’ve always wanted to believe in and it’s a pleasure to see it on-screen in the form of this movie.

It’s not a perfect film mind you, it does have some problems. A lot of the camera work I think could have been better, there were many times when the focus was a bit off. But the nature of the movie pretty much assured that getting a perfect shot was never going to happen. Maybe you could get the focus just right if you had a hundred takes to do it but that couldn’t be done here. I also thought, when you come right down to it, there just wasn’t quite enough plot to really make a movie here. The heist itself isn’t quite enough and neither is the long lost romance between Barone and Campbell. The heist is great movie fodder but the more cleverly it is executed on-screen, the greater the pleasure of watching it take place and the less you need other plot points to make the movie sing. I recognize that the idea of the movie was that things were going wrong and the emphasis was on the psychological impact this had on the characters but heist movies do need energy and I thought this was a bit low on that. Take for comparison, the heist scene at the beginning of “Snatch,” by Guy Ritchie. There is a very slow build up of the characters entering the building and traveling to the appropriate floor via elevator and then just a few seconds of high intensity action as the heist is carried out. This sort of “smash and grab” film-making really shoots through your veins and a heist, in my opinion, must be shot in such a way that the audience experiences this rush.

Running Time, in short, is a lot of fun. It’s an innovative concept for a movie and for the most part, everything about it works really well. One of the biggest drawbacks to the medium of film is that it removes the audience from the action much more than a play does and this film, in some strange way, attempts to reconcile this. And, for the most part, it succeeds.