This is a repost from 2004. I still feel this way...
Christmas starts before Halloween and gains a kind of destructive force and speed like some monstrous snowball hurtling down a mountain.There is no denying it. It is on TV. It is on the radio. It is outside your window. It is at your job. It is in your dreams. It is under your bed. It is at the tollbooth on the turnpike. It is in the men's room at the Dakota. It is ubiquitous. The music never stops. You're OK at first but even those with relatively good mental health are eventually reminded of or re-live every minor and major disappointment of some previous Christmas or every loss associated with a special person no longer with us. If one Christmas carol doesn't get you another one eventually does. There is no escape. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated. There is no escape from Christmas. You will never have enough money to deal with it. You will never be broke enough to be removed from it. You will never be able to hide from it. Christmas is all around you.You will not make new Christmas memories with the exception of particularly nasty December events, like a terrorist attack or a newly discovered attempted genocide somewhere in some country whose name you cannot pronounce. Peace on Earth- fat chance- good will towards men- no comment...and you haven't even considered the New Year yet...

Zero MPG

I confess that I have become a Dunkin' Donuts regular over the last year. I discovered that they do espresso drinks and are almost half the price of "gourmet" coffee shops. Like the expensive shops, the quality of your coffee really depends on the skill of the kid who makes your drink. I've had what seemed like the worst cappuccino of my life from a veteran Starbucks "barista" (give me a break...) and what was arguably espresso perfection from a Dunkin' Donuts guy who seemed more interested in chowing down on munchkins than making my drink. Well whatever, i'm not going to write about coffee today.There's something more pressing...
It used to just be at the bank, but now Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, MacDonalds and even my drugstore have a "drive through" line. They're called "drive through" but there seems to be very little driving and a lot of idling. I always go inside because frankly it seems like you get waited on faster. I just don't get how with gas prices floating at around three dollars a gallon, people feel all right about waiting in a line while they get 0 miles to the gallon. I am clueless about how this has come to be...but then again, half the country believes that to leave Iraq at this point would be to "surrender". What a world...

Early Adapter Blues

Well it's happened again..after spending over $400.00 ( of the company's money) on a Treo 700p smartphone a few months ago, Palm has just launched their newest smartphone, the Centro, yesterday. It will be available on Sprint for the next 3 months and appears to cost $100.00 and comes with a $100.00 rebate with a two year subscription. So the phone is, essentially, free. I think It does all that my Treo does; links my calendar and contacts with online sync services, does email, and runs all the Palm apps I have become unable to live my life without ( I know this sounds stupid but I have a program on my phone called ChordLab that will play any chord in any key and write out and play any inversion I can throw at it. It gives me diagrams of the inversions in my choice of treble or bass clef notation, a little keyboard, a guitar fretboard or if I really feel low-rent, tabulature... I also carry two complete dictionaries and 1 thesaurus...on my phone!! Allah be praised!!!) It seems the only difference between the Treo and the Centro is in price- early adapters blues again.
This has happened before. I have in the desk drawer to my left, 2 dead ipods. One is an original iPod bought about two weeks after they were released ( 4 -5 years ago??). The other is a dead iPod Video that I purchased about two days after it was released. I was subject to all the early iPod battery problems with the original and did a little better with the video model but as soon as I got my stuff, I watched the prices drop like a brick in the ocean. The iPod I currently use ( because all the previous models have seriously trashed hardware that Apple wants $150.00 to fix..) is a new model, the "Classic" (I guess it now takes but 4 years for something to become a classic...does that mean that my 1997 pathfinder is a classic-geez it must be a superclassic...). The "Classic" plays great, has a ton of storage ( 80 Gigs!!) and costs about 60% less than my first iPod .The price of the "Classic" is dangerously close to half of what the 30 gig video unit cost. I suppose the good news is that I have the money for such things.

At least, I didn't get burned by the iPhone price reduction, however truth be told, I almost did. I bought my Treo the week that iPhone was released. I went with the Treo because AT&T doesn't have service at my home. I "sacrificed" the iPhone for the Treo. But the hardware gods have shown me no mercy

I don't even want to talk about what my first computer cost...

Why does anyone care about OJ or Britney Spears?

The war in Iraq drags on.
Genocide in Africa goes unnoticed.
The American people are committing "suicide by carbohydrate" and 60% of the population is considered overweight - 35% are children.
The President of the United States is, by contemporary definition, insane.
It goes on and on.
With all of this going on, how could any person possibly care about the troubles of Vanessa Hudgens, Britney Spears or OJ Simpson??
The patients are running the asylum...

Unresolved Filial Issues??

Bush claims to be listening to God. BinLaden claims to be listening to God. I don't think either is listening to anyone.
BTW, did you catch that BinLaden, in his latest videotape, exhorted his followers to smash capitalism? Pretty serious talk for someone who came from one of the wealthiest Saudi families of all time. And did BinLaden's dad inherit his billions?? Nope, he made it all in the construction business- the good old fashioned capitlist way...
So is Osama working out filial issues by spewing hate and training suicide bombers?? Is Bush trying to prove to his father that he can do what Bush Sr. couldn't do ( bring Saddam down)??
These thoughts beg the question; If either of these misguided fools had received treatment for their megalomania at some opportune point in time, would there be 3000 less dead US soldiers, countless less dead Iraqis, and would the towers still be standing??

Subconscious Astronaut??

OK, you be the judge. I never really thought much about how the unconscious or subconscious portion of your brain interacts with your conscious behavior. I guess I assumed there was a link somewhere but again, I never really thought much about it. Well, consider this;
This past summer I had the opportunity to tour the Kennedy Space Center and watch the liftoff of the Shuttle Endeavor. It was a very emotional day for me - firstly, I have always wanted to see the live launch of the Shuttle and it was so nice to be able to actually do one of those things on the list of stuff you want to do before your time is up. Secondly, the tour and exhibits at the Space Center museums brought me back to my childhood when I just about worshipped the astronauts. I knew all their names, their missions - the whole works. I always said that I wanted to be a test pilot so I could become an astronaut. Also, in the exhibit photos of all the initial launches and control rooms, there were pictures of all the engineers. All these engineers looked so much like my father when I was a kid that it just blew me away- the black glasses, the mechanical pencil in the pocket, the slide rule, the bow tie... So really, it was a great day for me.
When I returned to the office, my boss had shaved his beard after years (18 that I know of) of wearing it. While talking with him I told him that I had been considering getting a really short haircut for a while and he said " well, nothing the matter with a little change". I agreed and since I was going away for a week's vacation in Maine the next day, I went out to my stylist and had my hair cut within an inch of it's life. The cut was what we used to call a "crew cut" - the style that is currently favored by police officers, military guys etc. It took a little bit of time to get used to but it was great to go in the ocean or the shower and towel dry my hair and be done with it. I also was reminded, in the mirror, of the kid who wore that haircut for the first fourteen years of his life. I felt like I had come a long way. After wearing my hair long (ish) for years I was oddly comfortable with it.
Fast forward a few weeks and I'm back in the office again and I'm reviewing some materials I got at my Florida conference (where I saw the shuttle). Out of a notebook, an 8 x 10 glossy photo fell to the floor. I had picked it up at the Space Center- a black and white photo of Alan Shepard, the first American in space. He was talking to some people after his historical first sub-orbital flight. I had to laugh- there was Alan Shepard with my new haircut. The same haircut worn by all the Mercury astronauts...
So I wonder- If I said to myself "I want to get an Astronaut Haircut" I would have censored the thought immediately and made sure I mentioned it to no one. After all, I'm a responsible adult - Dr. Welts - not some kid dreaming of becoming an astronaut and mimicking everything about them. But maybe that kid is still there - maybe I just forget about him...maybe he never gave up the astronaut wish...
So what do you think - did my unconscious mind take responsibility for communicating from that deep part of me and then disguise the real desire so I could give myself an astronaut haircut?? Or is this a bunch of silly coincidences and the expression of someone who has too much time on his hands ?? I'd love your opinion..

The Presidents Numbers

I hear the presidents popularity has sunk below that of Nixon right before his resignation. If so why doesn't it feel the same way? When Nixon went down I was working at a summer camp that was really a treatment center for behaviorally disordered kids. We were so busy it was like, "Nixon's gonna resign tonight", "Really??", "Yeah really, Watergate remember??", "Oh yeah, wanna go in town for a beer tonight??
I guess those must have been the good old days when a politician was actually punished when caught engaging in underhanded and illegal acts. Nixon was considered sleazy for taping his guests conversations and phone calls. Bush has been taping and spying on EVERYONE he feels like and the consequence is low poll numbers. No impeachment, no censure, no resignation, no nothing...
I suppose something could happen in the next two years that would expose him for the puppet he is but if throwing the constitution out the window and being responsible for the deaths of over 2000 US soldiers and countless Iraqi citizens while blowing several trillion dollars in a war that we have no business fighting doesn't do the trick then what the hell will??

New Posting Widget

OK time to get back into the swing of things- a year and a half since my last post...geez. Just installed a new dashboard widget that might make it easier to post hmmmmmm...