A day like today was made for wondering.   Warm (for January) and very sunny.  A day made for quiet reflection. To sit and see the sun shining through the trees with a fire in the fireplace was most enjoyable.  With the warm temperature of the day, the fire has now been allowed to fade.  The sun is doing an wonderful job providing extra heat to the house.  It is comfortable.

So in these times of quiet reflection, I often wonder about the past and future.  More of the future now, than the past, but the past does have a place in my heart.

So today I’m wondering what my future holds.  What the futures of my daughters’ holds.  It is enough to wonder.  I don’t need any answers yet, the wondering and pondering of this is enough.

My hope is that my daughters are happy in life.   I had a very happy life for twenty years.  I would hope for at least the same for my daughters.

I don’t need to wonder about the past anymore.  The past is just that, the past.  It is over, the wondering is over.  The past is a place to store memories of the hopes of days gone by.  A place to keep memories, both good and bad.

Do you wonder about your future?  The future of those you love?  Today, tomorrow, next month?  Do you make plans, or just live day by day?  What happens when the plans fail?  Do you wonder?

My plans in life are simple.  I want to be content.  I was happy and sad.  Happy is very good.  Sad is not so good.  Content is restful.  Today I am content.

Yes, I’m watching the Back to the Future trilogy. Fun little group of movies. But what I want to talk about is time travel and the little word ‘if’.

If you could go back and change something, would you? These thoughts have been in and out of my mind for the past 5 or so years. There are times when I would want to go back and try to change things. But I’ve always had the feeling that things would change for the worse. Kind of like the Back to the Future II. Change one thing and oops there goes everything else. Would it work like that. Most likely.

So knowing I couldn’t change anything that would make any changes. What about little things? Sure wish I could at times. Little things like being a better husband, a better son, a better father. What would it take, and what would that change?

Things going through my mind at this time. Changes to make or be made. I guess that is really the question. Every time I think about changing the past, I start thinking about changing the future. things I can change to be better than I was in the past. Worth while investment in time that. Instead of wondering about the what ifs, maybe I should wonder about the what wills. What will I do tomorrow, next week?

Food for thought.

I was doing a search in the library’s database, and I came across the title Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow.  Further investigation showed it to be a science fiction book about Walt Disney World in the future.  Not usually my type of novel (and I strongly prefer to read non-fiction anyway), but since we’re Disney affectionados, I couldn’t resist the read.  It took me over a month to read it, and that’s not even soley because I’m so busy.  The book is difficult to read – author Doctorow does a nice job at placing the reader in the characters’ futuristic universe, but it’s almost too much – he neglects to provide an explanation of certain things.  For instance, the characters all have “Whuffie” and “HUDs”, and these concepts are constantly revisited throughout the story, but it’s never explained exactly what these things are!  My interpretation is that Whuffie refers to a meter in one’s body that measures a person’s positive characteristics, experiences, and emotions – and others can see your Whuffie level.  A person with low Whuffie is shunned in society, and sometimes even denied entrance to Disney World.  HUDs seem to be a person’s computer – it almost seems to be a part of their brain.  They can look up stuff and send things to each other instantly with their HUDs like directions to places.  It seems to be kind of like today’s internet, yet it’s built right into people’s brains.  So, yeah, you can see why it was slow reading as the reader had to get around all of these unfamiliar concepts.  But onto the story itself…

In the future when Down and Out…  is set – and I don’t know what year that is, he never specifically says – Disney World is now a retro-park; something that is preserved only because it’s an example of the great works of our current time.  The main character, Julius and his girlfriend Lil (who was raised in the Magic Kingdom) are on a mission to save the Magic Kingdom and keep the attractions as they are: old-fashioned rides through vintage dioramas.  There is a group of people trying to “rehab” all the rides and give them a futuristic makeover, and they do get ahold of the Hall of Presidents – they make it so that the guests can actually see what it feels like to be Abraham Lincoln and the rest of the former Presidents.  It is the goal of Julius, Lil, and their friend Dan to keep the rest of Liberty Square (a section of the Magic Kingdom), especially the Haunted Mansion, away from the “ad-hocs” as the rehabbing group is called.  Throw in Julius’ murder (don’t worry, he’s been “backed up” and can reclaim his life in a clone) and the fact that he now has to find out who killed him and keep it from happening again, and that’s how the plot thickens.

Overall, it was a very interesting read, but probably not something I’d re-read.  It was worth stepping out of my usual non-fiction genre for the experience to read a science-fiction tale, but it wasn’t anything stupendous.  The story was interesting, and the author did a great job of detailing life in the future, even if it was at times confusing to the reader.  I kept feeling like I was coming in on a sequel having missed the first part.  I thought there’d be more details about the Magic Kingdom, and in that respect, I was disappointed.  But if you like sci-fi books and you’ve been to Disney World, I recommend this book only if you read a lot and have lots of spare time.  On a grading scale, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom gets a C- from me.  Up next for me is My Lobotomy by Howard Dully- a non-fiction book about a guy who was involuntarily given an “ice-pick” lobotomy as a 12-year old.

Yes, death is an interest of mine. Years ago, when I got married, there were many deaths among family and friends. There were so many deaths, my wife and I joked about our marriage ending the same way. Unfortunately, we were correct. Many deaths in a few short years, with hers as the final death in the line. So yes, I have a morbid interest in death.

My interest this evening is Cryonics or the freezing of human or animal bodies with the “possibility” of bringing them back to life.

Why? Currently there is no known reversal method, so why do it now. It costs a lot of money to keep a body/head in a ‘suspended’ state, and there is no and may never be a reversal method. Sound like someone is playing with the emotions of people near death, or their families.

Even if there ever is a reversal process in the next 50 to 100 years, why would anyone want to revive the “dead” people? There are complaints of over population now, do we really want to have an alternative way to put more bodies on the planet. We do well enough now with the usual approach (having babies — explanation for those who weren’t sure what method is used). I can’t see that happening, unless they want something.

How will you fit in? The future will be different than life now, how will you cope? 25 years ago, personal computers were in their infancy. Now just about everyone has one. What changes will occur in the next 25 years? Next 50? Next 100? 200? If you are having trouble with text messaging on a cell phone, or wonder about all these people with things hanging out of their ears, will you be able to cope with things going on around you in the future?

And the real thing I wonder about is what is the ego of a person who wants to be frozen and thawed later. I’m not saying anything about family decisions (later…), but about a persons desire to put off death to be cured at a later date. Is anyone really that important?

And about a family that decides to keep one of their relatives, do they love/need the person so much to try to keep them around, or is it a comfort that just maybe? I could never see doing this for myself or for someone I care about. I think there would be too much anguish on both sides if and/or when the body can be thawed.

And I haven’t even touched on any religious aspects of this. I think that may be the start of a different post. Many things I would have to wrap my mind around for that…

We managed to fit in some movie watching this week while the kids are with Grandma, and I was attempting to put them all together in a clever blog post title, but it wasn’t to be.  Probably my lack of sleep with the new baby and my recovery process has inhibited my creativity.  I hope to be back in full swing soon, but it will probably take a few months, especially because once I’m feeling better, I have lots of stuff around the house I need to catch up on and as much as I would like blog posting to come first, it doesn’t.  As people keep reminding me oh so helpfully, a c-section is major surgery 🙂  Don’t I know it. 

So the 3 movies we saw this week are Hellboy 2, American Psycho, and Fortress.

I did not like Hellboy 2.  I actually would have left the theater, but I never got around to asking my husband if he wanted to and that was a good thing because he liked the movie.  It gave me a good laugh when we were walking out of the theater and he told me he liked it because we always have the same taste in movies and I really didn’t like this one.  That also means I don’t have much to say about it except that the Abe fish-like character reminds me of C3PO from Star Wars, and I can’t believe the actor who plays Hellboy, Ron Perlman, was also Vincent the Beast in the old Beauty and the Beast tv show from the 80’s with Linda Hamilton.  I thought he was going to be some Andre the Giant huge guy wrestler type, but it turns out, he is just a regular actor.  I suppose my impatience with this movie had to do with the fact that my infection flared up and I was raging with fever yet again in the movie theater.  So even though I felt crappy and wanted to leave, I could not pass up a night out with hubby while the kids were away.  Even if it was to see Hellboy 2…  I’m just glad one of us enjoyed the movie.

Next up is a movie from the early 90’s called Fortress.  It’s set in the future – and it’s always fun to see what people thought the future would be like when the movie was made over a decade ago – and revolves around a corporate owned underground prison (think Walmart does Alcatraz).  The main characters are sent there when they break the “one child per couple” rule.  They had lost their first child, and now they’ve been caught trying to have another, so they are both sent to prison, even though she is pregnant.  This is a fun action-packed movie.  When I looked it up on imdb.com after we watched it, I learned that it is actually a kind of cult classic movie and there are actually multiple endings.  Our version was the less happy of the endings, but I still liked the movie.  It’s kind of violent for early 90’s, and if you look it up on imdb.com, don’t let the keywords fool you.  Let’s put it this way, if I had seen the keywords first, I wouldn’t have watched this movie, but in retrospect, I don’t think there was really much adult stuff in it – just violence and gore, but they didn’t overdo it like they do in some movies nowadays, like the Saw movies for instance.  American Psycho on the other hand…

I will start by saying that Christian Bale was excellent in this movie.  I wasn’t so impressed by him when he was Batman in The Dark Knight, but he definitely shows versatility and depth in this movie.  He plays a Wall Street executive who is just about as big a jerk as one can be.  Also, he has blood lust and likes to kill people in his spare time.  The movie is very strange for reasons I can’t quite put my finger on.  For one, I was confused about what the movie was trying to be.  I guess it’s just a story about this man, an American Psycho.  But at times throughout the movie, the music was strange, and it just didn’t play like a normal movie.  And then there were the constant 80’s references.  I guess it was supposed to take place in the 1980’s, given the characters’ huge cordless phones and constant talk of musical artists such as Phil Collins, Huey Lewis, and Whitney Houston.  Why they would change the time period of the movie, I don’t know, but they did a good job because if Reese Witherspoon (who is about my age and would have been a kid in the ’80’s) wasn’t in it, I would have been convinced the movie was actually filmed in the ’80’s.  And I have to say the end confused me a lot.  I won’t say more because I don’t want to spoil anything, but if anyone who reads this has seen this movie, maybe you can answer a question I have.  I don’t think I’d recommend this movie since there are many disturbing scenes and it didn’t seem worth it to me to sit thru them for what you get from the rest of the movie.  I don’t think I’m going to put it on my list of baddies however, but then again, Hellboy 2 isn’t going on there either.  Just 2 movies I didn’t really like and wouldn’t see again, but I don’t feel like I wasted my time watching either of them, and that’s always a good thing.   

Does anyone view the videos I post?  There have been no comments at all on either the Godtube one I posted two weeks ago, nor on the Archie videos.  Are they just uninteresting?  No time maybe?  I’m thinking of posting more videos, but if no one watches them then there’s probably no point.

As for this site, I suspect if I continue it will have to undergo a name change.  Now that I am no longer on a track to teach, at least for now, I am not likely to go back to subbing.  I usually enjoy it, but it really doesn’t pay the bills.  If I was capable of running an online business in addition to it I would probably continue, but I have to find a real job, doing what is still to be determined.  I still believe God was trying to tell me something those years ago when I was reading an article about teachers. I can only trust that if it wasn’t to be a teacher, then that something is still out there waiting for me to determine what it is.