The Deadliest Catch Shows Us What a Televised Death Looks Like

It feels a little like being punched in the chest watching this. Already knowing how things turned out seems to make this harder for me to take.

Today it is May 22nd, which means exactly 30 years ago a little video game called Pac-Man appeared for the first time. Thirty years! That could make one begin to feel REALLY old.

Today, Google turned their logo into this playable version of the game:

Pac-Google

I won’t bother linking it, because everyone can find google.com, and after today it won’t be anything but the regular search engine with whatever flavour-du-jour they have applied for that date.

Atari 2600 Pac-Man-ish Thing

I admit, I was never a big Pac-Man person. Actually, I shouldn’t say that – I mastered that Atari 2600 abomination – I figured out the pattern so that I would never get caught by Read the rest of this entry »

I miss Douglas Adams.

I intended to write a post on the anniversary of his death, May 11th. In the weird hazy netherworld of exhaustion I have been living in lately, I somehow missed the date. Yes, I know – most Adams fans celebrate Towel Day on the 25th, 2 weeks AFTER his death, but this was special because of the proximity of the 10 year anniversary  of his passing.

My copy looked exactly like this.

So yesterday I was beating myself up over missing the anniversary. I’m not prone to extreme celebrity worship, but I’ve always felt that Adams did something special for me: it’s like his books unlocked my sense of humour when I was about 10 or 11. Up until then, I’d been reading books that were more dramatic, mostly detective stories – starting with the Hardy Boys, then moving to Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Edgar Allan Poe, Agatha Christie and the like – works not exactly known for bringing out the chuckles. That all changed when Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy appeared.

The picture is what my Canadian-purchased book looked like, even though the source says it is the UK cover – I don’t know if there was a different cover for the U.S. market. I don’t even know where I got it. It was one of the first books I ever read that was meant to make you laugh, although I didn’t know that at the time I started reading it. I know it brought me a great deal of delight, and led to me naming pets things like Arthur Dent, and playing a lot of Infocom games (unlike most people who played Zork first, my first title was HHGTTG which led back to playing Zork). I always felt like it was a bit of a dirty secret, reading these funny books and all – and I didn’t meet anyone else who was also a fan – or even seemed aware of their existence – until I was around 15. Until then, in my little egocentric pre-teen world, Douglas Adams was this private thing that only I knew about. Ironically, I didn’t even know it was a radio show in the UK. I was just absorbed in the joy of reading these quirky, entertaining stories that were nothing like I’d ever read before. I wished I could write like Douglas Adams, but was thoroughly convinced (and still am) that I could never pull it off because I don’t have the wit.

So on the 10th anniversary of his death, I was going to write a small tribute to the man and what he meant to me. I was never a class clown, and I never sought attention through attempting to make others laugh (although my third grade teacher apparently remarked to my parents that I had a “tremendous sense of humour”, whatever that means). I felt I owed it to myself to do so, and to share that with the world.

All that stomping and gnashing of my teeth – figuratively, of course, I never mentioned it out loud – because again I’d missed something I inteded to do, due to exhaustion and brain fog.

Until this morning.

When I realized – Douglas Adams died in 2001, not 2000 – and I have nearly a year before the 10th anniversary.

Which explains the actual lack of whooshing sounds.

So please excuse me while I erect an SEP field around this post. Move along now, nothing to worry about here…

I’ve been doing more Molly the Owl watching. It brings me a lot of joy.

I read this book when I was about 9 years old. It ignited a life-long adoration for owls. I always wanted to live someplace where, like the central character of the book, I could have my own owl pets. My love of owls has nothing whatsoever to do with Harry Potter.

I’m always on the lookout for them. I want to take some photos, but the only times I have seen them outside captivity they were moving too fast in low-light conditions for me to get a picture.

If you’ve turned on the chat on The Owl Box page, you’ll understand why I’m bugged right now. Most of the discussion there is REALLY irritating. The worst of it is the “I bought a mug, so I’m a TRUE owl fan!” crowd. And… THROATPUNCH!

I’m glad that other people like owls, too - but the last thing I ever wanted to see was for it to become trendy and cool. The worst of it is that there is SO MUCH information out there online for people to read, but instead of searching it out and educating themselves, these people watching want to be spoon-fed facts.

The last year we lived in the old rental house, me and the kids cuddled up in bed and read Owls in the Family and The Dog Who Wouldn’t Be.

I think Molly has inspired me to do it again…

Owls in the Family: Farley Mowat

Peter Graves was a prolific actor, but for me this is one of the most memorable things he ever did: Airplane!

Comedy wasn’t his only genre, though – he appeared in both TV incarnations of Mission:Impossible and made far too many guest appearances on television shows to list, even fairly recently appearing on House.

His body was found in his home March 14th, 2010… he would have been 84 in 4 days.

Thanks for all the joy you brought, Mr. Graves.