David S. Atkinson's Blog, page 171

Muscle Memory Mixes With Mental Memory

I posted yesterday about how I moved offices at work for the first time in over two years and keep automatically going to the old floor. As an update, things have gotten more complicated now. Now I’m mixing muscle memory with mental memory.

I’m now going to offices that aren’t mine. I’m finding myself arriving at the general correct office location but on the wrong floor or the correct floor but old general office location. Yup, the muscle memory of either the old floor or old office position is being partially overridden by either the current mental memory of my current office location or the current mental memory of the current floor. It’s as if my brain is recognizing that something has changed and we can’t go completely on autopilot, but isn’t overriding the autopilot completely. Only partially.

Either way, I’m ending up at two different offices that aren’t mine. It’s kind embarrassing. Luckily, people aren’t noticing a whole lot. I hope my brain switches over to entirely current soon, or starts new muscle memory of the correct current location.

I’ll probably switch locations again then.

Two Years Is A Long Time

Two years is a long time. It might not seem like that long, but it’s long enough. It’s long enough to get trained in certain automatic behaviors at least.

I’ve had the same office at where I work for a bit over two years. Recently, I moved floors. You would not believe how many times I’ve gone to the wrong floor now. Seriously, multiple times per day.

I hadn’t realized how much of this had become an automatic behavior. I get in the elevator, I push my floor. Thinking comes a moment later when I realize I pushed the wrong one (sometimes, other times I realize this when the elevator doors open on the wrong floor). Then I have to push the right one.

It isn’t a big deal, or even really a deal at all. I just hadn’t realized how much I was doing without any thought at all. My body trained for the old way, it’s taking a bit to adjust to the new. Even a minor change can be disorienting after two years of constant repetition.

Randee Of The Redwoods Animated Gif!!!

I reminisced yesterday about the time Randee of the Redwoods “ran” for president. How could I do that without following up with an animated gif of Randee?

Well, pretty easily I suppose. It’s not like this adds much to my previous post. One might even think I’m milking a single topic into two days. However, the above is at least from Randee’s presidential “run” (at least I think so, it looks like it so that’s good enough). Doesn’t that count for something?

Remember When Randee Of The Redwoods Ran For President?

Remember when Randee Of The Redwoods ran for president? Well, he did. Maybe not for real, but they did a special about it.

I kind of wish I could watch that instead of all the election stuff I’ve been seeing recently. Any political opinions aside, I’d rather be watching Randee.

Old Commercial!

Instead of an actual post today, let’s just look at an old commercial. Remember “Where’s the beef?”

Man, I loved those commercials. It almost made me want to go to Wendy’s. I still didn’t for the most part, but almost.

Hot Dog Animated Gifs

I felt like doing another animated gif day. I’ve also got a friend who is always posting hot dog related memes. As such, here is hot dog animated gif day:

Hungry yet? This is kind of similar to the fried chicken post I did a while back.

More Me And Movies

I’ve been talking the past few days about how long it takes me anymore to get around to seeing movies. I just don’t watch many. However, a friend recently posted a captioned pic from a movie. Here’s the animated gif of that:

For some reason, that made me curious enough to see Ghost World. I don’t know why, but it did. Ended up really enjoying the movie too. I’m weird.

Me Watching Popular Movies Long After Everyone Else: “The Wolf of Wall Street”

As I mentioned yesterday, I don’t get out to movies much and when I do it’s long after everyone else. Perfect example: recently I finally got around to seeing The Wolf of Wall Street. How’s that for late to the party? That was 2013, right?

Anyway, I watched it.

At first I liked it much more than I thought I was going to. It was so over the top and ridiculous that it seemed like a parody of the high finance misdeed type movies. That seemed fresh and I was really into that. However, at some point that all seemed to calm down (even with the Quaalude/car scene), or I got used to what was going on so much that it seemed like it did, and there was just the consequences and attempting to evade them that followed. There was some titillating stuff, but other than that it seemed to be just another high finance misdeed type movie. I enjoyed it much less at that point, though I still enjoyed it.

The big problem was that this was about a third of the way through the movie.

Seriously, I let my wife talk me into finally watching this late at night and we didn’t bother to check the run time. We didn’t remember hearing about it being long either. Round about the time I thought it was wrapping up, there was still another hour still to go.

That couldn’t have been good for how we responded to the movie.

Still, it was much more interesting than I thought it was going to be. If I’d known, I’d have watched it sooner. Still, I wish they’d been able to keep up some of the techniques of the early part of the movie into the later. That would have been more fun for me.

Me Watching Popular Movies Long After Everyone Else- “Mad Max: Thunder Road”

I don’t watch much tv and I don’t get out to many movies. My wife drags me to one or two a year, sometimes. Some years I don’t go the theater at all. I get kind of behind. However, I sometimes get caught up long after everyone else when something comes on indemand (particularly when it’s free) and I get in stuff long, long after everyone else. Recently? Mad Max: Thunder Road.

Most people either seemed to love it or hate it. Personally, I came down somewhere in between. I still prefer Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but I still enjoyed it. The special effects were good and the story wasn’t bad.

Of course, watching at home, I often had trouble hearing the dialogue and then got blasted out by the action sequence sounds. It happens.

Actually, the plot reminded me of Thunderdome a bit. I mean, Max helping people try to get to a utopia that he assures them isn’t out there while being pursued by the miscreants who run some nightmare city. Then he’s right and they have to figure out how to cope. It had its differences, but also similarities.

Still, though I don’t think I’ll be quoting any lines from the movie any time soon and likely won’t remember it much for very long (unlike Thunderdome which caused me to say “Who runs Bartertown?” to some friends of mine as we recently walked by a Masterblaster Plumbing & Drain billboard), I enjoyed it. It was definitely worth a watch.

“Not Quite So Stories” And The Camel Hump

My soon to be released short story collection Not Quite so Stories (coming March 1) is in many ways an answer to the one of the concepts often suggested behind myths, in particular Rudyard Kipling’s Just So Stories. As Kipling’s stories influenced mine, even in having a concept to be answered, I thought I’d talk through some contemplation on a few of his stories as we got closer to publication day. Today let’s look at “How the Camel Got His Hump.”

This may have been one of the earliest of these stories that I ran across. I remember watching a cartoon depicting a few of these stories when I was pretty young. I think in school, but I’m not certain. It had that awful “made for school” quality to the cartoon that comes from the extremely low budgets that sort of thing usually has. I enjoyed it, but I definitely had a few thoughts. I think similarly now, but perhaps they have become more magnified.

After all, the basic story is that the world is young and animals have just begun to work for man, but there is a camel who doesn’t want to. He lives alone in the desert, eating “sticks and thorns and tamarisks and milkweed and prickles” to avoid working and says “Humph!” when anyone tries to persuade him otherwise. Man makes the other animals work harder as a result, do they send a Djinn to deal with the situation. He gives the camel a hump for his behavior (which at least allows the camel to work three days without eating because the camel can live on its hump). However, this doesn’t actually accomplish much because the camel still shirks work whenever possible.

Vengeful much? The camel is punished simply because he refuses to conform? Admittedly, the other animals are made to work harder as a result of the camel’s refusal…but man makes them. Why do they even have to work for man? The camel certainly doesn’t want to. What was the camel offered in return? He lived in the desert and ate “sticks and thorns and tamarisks and milkweed and prickles.” What was man giving the camel that justified expecting the camel to work? The camel gets no shelter from man and no food. Unless you buy into some Biblical espousal of man’s dominion over the beasts of the world, there isn’t really a reason why the camel should work for man. The common good is the common good and all, but the story states that the animals were working for man…not a common good from which they benefit. This is slavery and rebellion against slavery, for which we gleefully accept the camel’s punishment when he refuses to go along.

Seriously, why the heck should the camel have worked for man? Just because the other animals got conned into it? The camel may not be pleasant and sociable, but this is unjustified aggression.

Obviously, I kind of side with the camel.