Married men

One of the best aspects of having the wedding out of the way is not merely being free from all the planning and decision-making and preparing. That is all marvelous, of course, but those were an unavoidable situation in regard to executing the nuptial event. No, the benefit I have in mind pertains to being married, and how that puts an end to the incessant jokes one must endure from already-married men when one is on the verge of taking the proverbial plunge.

At work, at social outings, and even at family gatherings of my (at the time still pending) in-laws, the men would make quips about how it wasn't too late to get out. That would be followed by the ubiquitous anecdotes about how after the first year the sex would become sparse, and then the warnings about how all my money would be gone.

Yeah. Ha-ha.

It's not that I failed to grasp they were kidding around (well, mostly so), but there did come a point where I struggled with feigning amusement. I know that individually they were only making the joke once, but cumulatively they passed the point where the novelty had worn off long before they (individually) stopped making the joke. They (individually) seemed to overlook that likelihood (that I'd heard the joke already way too much). Presumably they'd gone through this hazing (of sorts) back when they were engaged, and now was their turn to partake in the other side.

As the groom to be I had to grin and bear it, because it was meant in a good spirited way; to get annoyed would make me that asshole who had no sense of humor.

And that, they would argue, I shouldn't be until after I got married.

~

Whenever I find myself talking with someone who is preparing for marriage, the only thing I intend to say is this: It has its ups and downs, but if you're with the right person it is completely worth it.

That may or may not make the person feel better, and may not even apply to his situation, but at least it won't be the same old attempt at humor that he has put up with presumably since he popped the question.

Of course, with my luck that sort of sentiment will be what he has heard too much of.

I'll understand the strained smile.

Yes you can

Feeling sorry for one's self is the DIY way of taking charge of pity.

Anything can be spun to seem empowering.

Peace of mind

Another post on the same subject as the last one...

I don't tend to put classical music on the iPod. It's not as though I lack tracks from that genre; I'm not an aficionado, but the collection includes hundreds (between the movements of symphonies, fanfares, tone poems, etc., that I accumulated largely during my music appreciation classes). And it's not that I no longer care for the pieces, as though I somehow grew out of a phase. Nothing like that.

It's due to cheap headphones.

I don't mean the headphones I use to listen to the music on my device; I mean the crappy ones that others nearby use to listen to the music on their devices at volumes those headphones cannot come close to handling.

Riding the train as my commute (as I've done for nearly a decade now), I know that there will be a lot of noises that could be encountered while in the car, and most of them I do not wish to hear. Sitting through half of cell phone conversations is bad enough, but those don't tend to last too long. What's particularly bad are those instances where someone gets on and the sound of their music bleeds from their headphones so much that even from ten feet away I can hear it.

The best recourse I have found is to drown it with the music in my own headphones. I don't have to blare my volume to overwhelm it, because my music is coming from a much closer distance (it's in my ears), but the music playing needs to have a full sound; it requires an inherent "loudness." While some classical music has "loud" portions (the 1812 Overture comes to mind as an obvious example), that's not what suffices. It needs something with drums—and I don't mean timpani, or the occasional snare hit. That loudness needs to fill most of the time the song is playing. Sadly, something with the dynamics of classical pieces doesn't tend to cut it, because the softer portions open the door for the sound from the nitwit with the crappy headphones to seep in. Although there are "soft" songs from all genres (jazz, country, rock), when that external sound seeps in over a classical piece it conflicts so much worse than songs from those other ones (not that it sounds good by any stretch of the imagination with those).

And as ridiculous and pathetic as it is to admit, that has pushed the classical pieces off what gets loaded on the device.

I have been tempted, at times, to carry a cache of decent headphones with me—the ones that I use were only $15 at Best Buy, and they handle a good range of sound without letting any slip out—to hand out in such instances, but I have refrained. The inconsiderate don't appreciate considerate gestures.

Especially when it's meant to be considerate to the rest of us more than to them.

~

Talk to them? Yeah, right. They have the volume turned up that loud because they don't want to be bothered by others who might point out their inconsideration to them. It's not an accident.

They have no consideration for their own hearing; the rest of us haven't a chance of being acknowledged.

~

I know my headphones are not leaking sound, by the way. When I take them out of my ears I cannot hear anything coming from them. Unless someone has superhuman hearing, they cannot hear anything when they're up against my ears. And in such a scenario, I suspect my music bothers the superhuman less than the nitwit with the crappy headphones.

I imagine.

500 Days of Some Loud Song

In the movie (500) Days of Summer (I prefer to spell the title with the parentheses that are on the ads, even if that's not necessary), the two characters, Tom and Summer, first bond over a shared moment in an elevator. (It's right at the beginning of this trailer, if you wish to have a look.) They are riding together as they leave the office for the day, with him listening to music through headphones. And I mean headphones in the literal sense; they weren't little iPod earbuds but the kind that go over the entire ear with a connecting bar running over the top of the head. They appear to be fairly high quality.

Summer hears the music of the Smiths ("There Is a Light That Never Goes Out") bleeding through from the headphones while they're on Tom's head, and she notes out loud her love for the group. When he detects her speaking he takes the headphones off and lets them hang around his neck so he can hear her. (See official photo below.) She sings along with the line in the song playing, then compliments him on his good taste in music, and they start talking.

It's the necessary moment to spur the rest of the story. In the context of the scene it's fine. However, reflecting back, I am slightly troubled by a particular detail.

If you are listening to music through headphones and the person standing three feet away can hear what is playing, it means one of two things: either they're crappy headphones or the volume is up way too high. However, in the scene, as I noted, they didn't look like crappy headphones. That would seem to leave only one alternative explanation for how Summer could hear the tune, but when Tom removes them from his ears the sound emanating from them is not at an ear-splitting level.

Obviously, in the context of the scene, it's necessary that the music not drown out their conversation; him being near deaf doesn't advance the plot. Also, if the volume is so high he cannot hear anything else he doesn't detect her saying anything, and he doesn't remove them to initiate the actual bonding. Thus, the volume couldn't have been excessive.

So we're back to crappy headphones. Certainly it's tricky to say whether they're really of any quality just by looking at them, and they do not completely envelop the ear, so some bleeding of sound could be feasible, but his character seems the type who would have gotten a decent set. Just my impression, but that's what colors my viewing.

In any case, whether it's poor sound mixing or inconsistent character development, one thing is not up for debate: Whether the volume's too loud or the headphones too crappy, it's inconsiderate to play music and make others around have to hear it, too. Even if they love the song playing.

Give a hoot. Get some good headphones.

You're not going to meet Summer anyway. She's just a character in a movie.

~

What's the point? As always, you should take from this a renewed appreciation that your brain doesn't operate as mine (unfortunately) does.

Pigs in a brain-klet

Last Saturday we headed down the 405 to visit the Orange County Fair. We last went in 2007, just after I got my new camera. That day I was still figuring out what to make of adjusting the aperture and exposure, taking many shots. This time, with two years of shooting (and a slightly greater understanding of how to work the camera—slightly), and having never really finished processing those original shots (this post on the photo site was as much as I got to sharing), I wasn't so inspired; pretty much the fair looked the same, so I found myself thinking I could just as well spend time working on the pics taken last time as I could work on new ones I might take this time.

"Al's Brain" was a worthwhile attraction, featuring a 3-D movie starring Weird Al Yankovic. It was a comedic take on a scientific exploration of the brain which aspired to tell the audience "everything there is to know about the brain"—that could be fit into about nine minutes. Being free with fair admission, it certainly proved an entertaining use of those nine minutes, although even with a catchy polka-rock song by Weird Al and his band I find that I don't remember learning anything.

The 32-ounce beer I'd had just before the presentation may have affected that.

And of course there was no photography allowed inside the exhibit, so I didn't have to worry about that. (There was an impressive sand sculpture outside promoting the show, and of that I snapped a few shots. See one to the left.)

~

After leaving the movie something caught my attention that filled me with an undue amount of excitement.

It was the sign on the side of the information booth. That did make me point my camera and take a shot (which can be seen at the right).

In a list of recommendations, such as wearing comfortable shoes (which clearly was ignored by the women we saw wearing high heels) and applying sun screen, was this: "Drink a lot of water."

Prudent advice, certainly, but my excitement did not stem from being a fan of hydration.

One of the photos from the 2007 outing that I did process and post was used in this post. That shot was of the list of recommendations on the side of the information booth, focused on that same suggestion regarding drinking water. However, two years ago that line read: "Drink alot of water."

Seeing this year's sign I immediately knew: At some point in the intervening period someone involved with the preparation of signage at the fair realized that "alot" is not correct (or someone prudently ran a spell check) and split it into two words.

I'm not saying that I think my post had any influence on the situation. I am merely something of a fan of people paying attention (and, by extrapolation, of people actually using that brain that Weird Al sang about), whether I had anything to do with it or not.

So, hooray.

~

A short while later we went into one of the large tented areas which was devoted to pigs (with the theme "Think Pig"). Pigs in movies, pigs in sand sculptures, "hogs" as a nickname for large motorcycles, and of course, pigs as livestock. Along one wall ran a mural-length timeline of the history of pigs. All right, more educational opportunities.

I took some photos, but not of what one would expect.

Not even a quarter of the way down was a note about how the man who would become our country's first president imported hogs 16 years before colonies declared independence.
Well, at least the picture above above it looked like the father of our country. The text, however, identified the hog importer as "Goerge Washington," so who knows?

While that seemed egregious, another 20 feet down the wall there was another "Goerge" mentioned (part of a radio duo with Gracie Allen), which sounds like George Burns, but in this alternate pig reality his last name is the same as Gracie's, so his first name could be spelled the same way as that hog importer. (We're overlooking the use of quotation marks here.)

There was consistency the writer of the text had going. I had to concede that.

Perhaps too much pork causes some mild dyslexia. However, look closely at the text preceding the name of Gracie's husband and you'll spot that Spam was a "sponser."

That wasn't the end of the photo-taking.


A note about 1922 indicated "insullin" was extracted from a pig, but perhaps that's what insulin is called in this pig-iverse with Goerge Washington. But a note about a 1976 Swine Flu scare stated that only "six doccumented [sic] cases" appeared.

There was no way I could spin that to be other than just sloppy proofreading.

Later it occurred to me: Perhaps the motivation simply was to see if they could get some poor sap who can't help but notice such details—who has the unfortunate tendency of using that thing inside his skull about which Weird Al sang (in 3-D, no less)—to talk about it on his site. Let's face it: There's little chance that a history of pigs without typographical errors would prove post-worthy.

And if so, I fell right for it.

There's no such thing as bad publicity, or something.

Oh, I should mention that I did snap a quick one of an actual pig, sleeping in a pen, but that was more of an afterthought, so I wouldn't feel guilty about taking nothing but pictures of typos.


When the writer part of the brain kicks in, the photographer part slouches off. Perhaps if we'd gone back to watch "Al's Brain" again I might figure out why my brain does that.

~

And from the I-am-not-making-this-up department: Within sight of the pig exhibit was this sign:
Well, at least it proved inspiring to the photographer in me (and all the words in "chocolate covered bacon" were spelled correctly).