For the past few weeks I have been 'wired' in a few main ways. I check youtube.com daily (I have lists of people I watch, and topics); veoh.com, similar to youtube, not as gigantic; this blog, motivating me to take a few pictures every day; and classmates.com. None of these are new, some are old (classmates.com was used for story research a few years ago).
And I find its better to search youtube.com and what ever in google compared to searching the youtube.com search box.
And I have been fiddling with
Classmates.com, find your old friends, No not really. Its just as I near 50 there is some interest in the past. While cleaning over the weekend I found an elementary school yearbook. I was in the 3rd grade. IT DID NOT LIST ANY NAMES! Along with it were a few random reports cards, one from elementary school, a few from high school. Such mediocrity in marks, I could be president! At any rate it more than a walk down memory lane. I was surprised by how many names were in classmates.com (a snobbish feeling: those people can use email? The web?). classmates.com wants money to see more than a name, and I am not sure about that. A few bucks a month (it would take a few hours to swipe the info into word files for my graduating class). I do have high school yearbooks with names in them. But to see that people actually went to classmates.com and signed up was amazing. – and it may list current location and personal stuff.
The great video wasteland:
Youtube.com and veoh.com are video sharing services. If you want to hear a song go to youtube and you most likely will find a clip from MTV, of you’re a member of the class of 75 a grainy snip stolen from Dick Clark's BANDSTAND. VEOH.COM will let you download stuff (small selection of movies, tv episodes, movie trailers). You can move it to a thumbdrive for at the office viewing! Comic remakes of Dark Shadows on youtube . . . snips from the Simpsons (some complete episodes). A lot of stuff has vanished (the DAILY SHOW with JON STEWART had a ton of election stuff that has been removed . . . probably by court order. Youtube.com is not downloadable, so veoh lets you keep KEEP stuff incase the poster decides to remove it.
There is one youtube poster from Spain who tries to post something for every minute of every hour of the day. A zillion posts. Its incredible. At times desperate.
In youtube.com I watch a ranting atheist, vulgar, crude, ego driven. But a lot of laughs. He did a bit on Mark Foley . . . and his stuff on Osama - he is trying to earn a fatwa on himself is . . . then there are some college dorm students who post things, bits of parties, drives to MacDonalds, all the time chattering. When I hear of something new I may google it (like the BRIGHTS - http://www.the-brights.net/ ).
The ink blots say: youtube, my god you are 50 not 25 (I THINK someone said that to Norma Desmond in SUNSET BOULEVARD yesterday). The classmates.com says, retrospective? Paul says my chance for a midlife crisis past 10 years ago and I can forget that.
On New Year’s Eve a local bar closed. Opened in 1961 (I was four and in ohio). Its on the way to work, if I walk down Ontario, as I have hundreds of times in the past 12 years. Business cyle live and death. OH THIS IS TOO morbid, I have been overtaken by chthonic forces and am seeing a darkening (soon a quickening?).
BUT ITS FUN to look at the bar, all closed up, to become a 'luxury' condo. I hate that word LUXURY, so pretentious in advance. How many drunks walked out the front door of O'Neils into traffic? I have had take out from it a few times, burgers and super greasy fries. Under the fries they put this miniature pack of M&Ms. Health Food all the way. Owner Joe O'Neil must have gotten a bundle of bundles, 4 floors will be replaced by 50 with 160 condos.
And they are building a new apartment building near the office, I have a bird’s eye view. CRANE OPERATORS OF THE WORLD UNITE, YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOOSE BUT YOUR VIEWS!
