mm480: Beat up

August 26, 2008
© Susy56 | Dreamstime.com

© Susy56 | Dreamstime.com

MUDGE’s Musings

Sometimes, you just have to admit defeat.

Or, perhaps, you just need to take a breather.

Tonight is a night that calls out for a break.

No sooner does one of our children get out of a suburban Chicago hospital, than another is admitted to a suburban Los Angeles one. Serious and painful, but, thankfully, not life threatening.

But, it’s beating us up, all of these health issues, especially when they don’t allow us to nurse our own mental and physical aches and pains.

So it’s shell-shocked times here at Casa MUDGE.

But, we’ll answer the bell for the next round.

That’s what adults do.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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mm477: A family affair, with granddog

August 23, 2008
© D | Dreamstime.com

© D | Dreamstime.com

MUDGE’s Musings

As I begin it’s near the nominal end of a summer Saturday; normally I might have had the opportunity to create some kind of post much earlier, but today was not normal, but that’s acceptable. Today was a beautiful day, and it had very little to do with the weather.

Disposed of the usual Saturday morning errand, grocery shopping, in reasonable fashion although closer to noon, having slept in somewhat later than is common.

Picked up MUDGElet No. 3 at his studio in his grandmother’s basement, took him to lunch at a sandwich shop on the way north to my favorite annual outdoor art fair. Mrs. MUDGE had determined that she was going to pass on the opportunity, due to the 90/90 (degrees Fahrenheit/percent humidity) weather, and the dire state of our discretionary art budget, and I was glad of the company.

We didn’t spend a long time there, but he especially enjoyed our stroll up and down one small section of what usually is a sprawling affair spread across several suburban downtown streets and parking areas.

Distressed economy note: fewer exhibitors, and many fewer members of the visual art loving public today (in previous years this particular event has been wall-to-wall people), but those in attendance appeared to be having a good time.

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mm475: An odd and disconcerting day

August 21, 2008

MUDGE’s Musings

… and not much to say about it.

Worked on location at the beginning of it, and reasonably productively from home at the end. The middle, was smiling and grim, institutional and emotional.

And we, and our man-child, remain on a tightrope.

Some days, the blogger’s prime directive, Thou Shalt Blog Daily!, is best observed very simply, and with brevity.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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mm424: I, for one, feel smarter every day…

June 29, 2008

MUDGE’s Musings

Spotted a couple of references (most recently and indirectly at Arts & Letters Daily) to a most thought-provoking article in the Atlantic Monthly by Nicholas Carr, regarding the perhaps crippling effect of Internet use on the intellect.

atlantic

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

What the Internet is doing to our brains

by Nicholas Carr |  July/August 2008 Atlantic Monthly

“Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave?” So the supercomputer HAL pleads with the implacable astronaut Dave Bowman in a famous and weirdly poignant scene toward the end of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bowman, having nearly been sent to a deep-space death by the malfunctioning machine, is calmly, coldly disconnecting the memory circuits that control its artificial brain. “Dave, my mind is going,” HAL says, forlornly. “I can feel it. I can feel it.”

I can feel it, too. Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

So I’ve noticed through the years that my ability, or even interest, to focus for extended lengths of time on a book had diminished. I have attributed this mostly to the natural effects of my alacritously advancing age. But maybe there’s more going on.

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mm157: I have no opinions today

September 30, 2007

MUDGE’S Musings

It’s that pesky personal life thing, folks.

Routine is shot to hell, as She Who Maintains is in L.A. where MUDGElet No. 1 has been hospitalized for over a week.

So today, tied up with hosting a committee meeting arranged when I was certain I would merely be co-piloting the hosting piece, I managed to evade the daily infusion of caffeine. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

As a former computer programmer (dates me; today my successors in the business are developers, don’t ya know), my world runs on caffeine. Miss it, everything is very wrong.

So, while the world keeps turning, and there are new wonders to wonder at, and new outrages to be outraged at, I’m content to veg’ out in front of the NFL games.

Back tomorrow, I’m sure.

Oh, and our daughter? Talked for over half an hour with her tonight — she’ll be going home in a couple of days, and is feeling much better, thanks. And She Who Maintains will be home the next evening.

Whew.

It’s it for now. Thanks,

–MUDGE

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