Weekend Update
It’s the end of the first week of the new year. So far, I am still alive and well so all must be good for me. I don’t really have all that much of a Weekend Update for you because I sort of rested this weekend.
I also started cleaning up my place. Actually, I started cleaning up the room I use as an office so I can work on my dissertation in relative calm. I think it will take me another weekend to finish off what I have started. I did make good progress in being able to toss out two bags full of accumulated trash and no longer necessary papers that went into recycling bins at my building.
Progress through recycling.
Sharon
My friend Sharon’s health seems to have not gotten much better. Her nasty cough has become pneumonia now and that has to be bad and ungood. I had thought about asking Sharon to go to the cinema this weekend with me. I decided to not ask her when she told me about her pneumonia. I have never had pneumonia and do not want to get it either.
I sent her a humorous get well card. I think humor is always appropriate when one is ill or otherwise unhappy.
Utah Alpha Chapter of Phi Delta Theta
When I was younger, much younger really, I attended the University of Utah as many of the regular readers already know. I joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity as a freshman and have never regretted that decision. In fact, it is one of the few major decisions in my life that I would repeat without a second thought.
Even though I live at the beach in Los Angeles, I still am an active supporter of the chapter and the national fraternity. I have a room named after me in the chapter house because I gave the chapter house some personal computers to create a computer study.
Before anyone thinks I was touched with good thoughts, I also needed a tax deduction and this worked out just fine for everyone.
My friend and long time fraternity brother Scott called me on Thursday after I posted the daily blog. He had wanted to catch up with me since we had not talked in a couple of months.
Scott also called to tell me the chapter had been closed by the fraternity because of a hazing issue. Our fraternity has a less than zero tolerance policy on hazing. I support what was done; I think it will be for the best in the end. It is better to completely stop and end the wrong message than to allow it to continue.
Certainly, I was disappointed since I was acquainted with some of the young men that were undergraduate members of the chapter. I had expected more from them and I felt let down by them.
I felt much better when Scott told me the University has already written a letter of support that invited the fraternity back on campus as soon as we are ready. I also felt better because this action allows us to clean the house and start over with a fresh group of young men.
Hopefully, these new young men in 2007 will be able to meet our standards for moral and ethical behavior.
On the plus side for me, I won’t have to worry about finding anyone to take to the Founders’ Day dinner dances in Salt Lake City until 2008. I could already see the cash flowing back into my wallet.
Maybe I should ask Sharon. Sharon has gone to these Founders’ Day events in the past and enjoyed herself.
Doug
I did have some good news this week. Doug called to let me know he got his grades. He felt he did well and I would agree with him. He ended up with two As, one B+, and one B. I did some quick mental calculations and I think he will be able to stay on the Dean’s List again this semester. We will know in a couple of weeks whether he stays on the List or not.
Doug thought he was going to get an A in the class that he received a B+. He thinks he just may have bombed the final examination and that dropped his grade; he had an A average going into the final examination.
I told Doug that it is not the end of the world and that finals are sometimes a disaster.
Weather
The weather was not very fair this past week for me. It was warm and sunny on Thursday and Friday and then the temperature dropped off for the weekend.
When I got home from the interview marathon and after I changed from my suit and tie, I went out on my balcony in shorts and a golf shirt. It was that warm; I think it was 80F/27C at the beach. It was perfect weather for smoking one of Emily’s cigars and reading.
Friday was warm and that brought out a flock of young female workers in short skirts in the courtyard on Friday. One of the more popular combinations was a short skirt with knee length, high heeled boots. Doug and his friend Mark should have stopped bye Dad’s office if only for the view.
There is one down side to short skirts so soon in the year; too much untanned flesh. But, this too will pass soon enough for Summer is never very far away in Southern California.
For the record, I was out in my shorts and Utah hooded sweatshirt on Saturday. I was just great to be in shorts again.
Bad Tats
There is another down side to the warm weather and that was the exposure to bad tattoos. One of the young women that I thought was just in training at a cosmetics company seems to be employed there now. I got to see way more of her tats than I could ever want to see in a 100 years. I think she has more tats than some of my sailors in the Navy. We all know that sailors love tattoos.
This young woman had tats of spider webs on her elbows and more geometric designs on her arms. She had more of what the Bug Guy calls tribal design on her neck that started up around her ear and then disappeared below her shirt collar. I would never ever want to see the whole picture.
On the plus side, I blew off going to the Los Angeles International Tattoo Exposition this weekend. I save some money on admission by staying home plus the cost of gasoline to get there and back. I also saved my eyes since I didn’t see any of the fully covered female bodies.
Lone Wolf and Cub DVDs
I was watching one of the DVDs the Princess and Doug got me for Christmas this weekend. The DVDs are a set called LONE WOLF AND CUB. It is a Japanese samurai epic in six DVDs. From time to time, some of the female actresses had what I would consider to be artistic tattoos.
In one film, the actress played an assassin who shocked her victims when she exposed a tattooed breast. The victim would be distracted and then she would kill him. Nice touch. I could not understand why the woman would submit to a tattoo that covered half of her breast and went down her chest to her waist. I know this because the tattooing was part of the film.
I know that the tattoo was only paint and nonpermanent and all that. What I don’t understand is why have a tattoo in the first place? Maybe it is a cultural thing or an act of rebellion by the youth.
In another film, I noticed a real continuity problem. It was one of two films that used firearms as primary weapons instead of the usual swords. Some actors used crude flintlock pistols while others used what looked Navy Colt single action revolvers. The Navy Colts were not produced until the 1840s when Japan was a closed nation and importation of Western goods was largely banned.
I also noticed that when Lone Wolf fired off the rifles in the baby cart, they acted like a machine gun and had an effective range of several hundred yards or meters. Machine guns did not come along until after the American Civil War or as the Princess refers to it, the War of Northern Aggression with the Gatling gun in the late 1860s. The bad guys in the film were armed with matchlock muskets that had an effective range of maybe 30 yards or meters on a good day. The matchlock was likely to be available in Japan when the film was set so that made some sense to me.
Cinema
The only film I saw this weekend was MUNICH.
This is a very powerful and violent film about revenge and how the revenge affects the agents of Israel. It is not a film for those who find the use of force sometimes the only effective solution. Negotiation is good for a time and in its proper place. But, negotiation only works when both parties have some thing to gain by talking about the troubles.
I think it is very well made and probably close to the truth. The truth is often in the mind of the speaker so it can be transactional in nature.
As I was walking out of the multiplex to my car in the car park, I was struck by how little has changed in the thirty years or so since the events that were depicted in the film took place. We still have Palestinians and Jews trying to kill each other and peace in the Middle East seems as illusive as ever.
And that gentle readers was my weekend.
Be well and stay happy.
I also started cleaning up my place. Actually, I started cleaning up the room I use as an office so I can work on my dissertation in relative calm. I think it will take me another weekend to finish off what I have started. I did make good progress in being able to toss out two bags full of accumulated trash and no longer necessary papers that went into recycling bins at my building.
Progress through recycling.
Sharon
My friend Sharon’s health seems to have not gotten much better. Her nasty cough has become pneumonia now and that has to be bad and ungood. I had thought about asking Sharon to go to the cinema this weekend with me. I decided to not ask her when she told me about her pneumonia. I have never had pneumonia and do not want to get it either.
I sent her a humorous get well card. I think humor is always appropriate when one is ill or otherwise unhappy.
Utah Alpha Chapter of Phi Delta Theta
When I was younger, much younger really, I attended the University of Utah as many of the regular readers already know. I joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity as a freshman and have never regretted that decision. In fact, it is one of the few major decisions in my life that I would repeat without a second thought.
Even though I live at the beach in Los Angeles, I still am an active supporter of the chapter and the national fraternity. I have a room named after me in the chapter house because I gave the chapter house some personal computers to create a computer study.
Before anyone thinks I was touched with good thoughts, I also needed a tax deduction and this worked out just fine for everyone.
My friend and long time fraternity brother Scott called me on Thursday after I posted the daily blog. He had wanted to catch up with me since we had not talked in a couple of months.
Scott also called to tell me the chapter had been closed by the fraternity because of a hazing issue. Our fraternity has a less than zero tolerance policy on hazing. I support what was done; I think it will be for the best in the end. It is better to completely stop and end the wrong message than to allow it to continue.
Certainly, I was disappointed since I was acquainted with some of the young men that were undergraduate members of the chapter. I had expected more from them and I felt let down by them.
I felt much better when Scott told me the University has already written a letter of support that invited the fraternity back on campus as soon as we are ready. I also felt better because this action allows us to clean the house and start over with a fresh group of young men.
Hopefully, these new young men in 2007 will be able to meet our standards for moral and ethical behavior.
On the plus side for me, I won’t have to worry about finding anyone to take to the Founders’ Day dinner dances in Salt Lake City until 2008. I could already see the cash flowing back into my wallet.
Maybe I should ask Sharon. Sharon has gone to these Founders’ Day events in the past and enjoyed herself.
Doug
I did have some good news this week. Doug called to let me know he got his grades. He felt he did well and I would agree with him. He ended up with two As, one B+, and one B. I did some quick mental calculations and I think he will be able to stay on the Dean’s List again this semester. We will know in a couple of weeks whether he stays on the List or not.
Doug thought he was going to get an A in the class that he received a B+. He thinks he just may have bombed the final examination and that dropped his grade; he had an A average going into the final examination.
I told Doug that it is not the end of the world and that finals are sometimes a disaster.
Weather
The weather was not very fair this past week for me. It was warm and sunny on Thursday and Friday and then the temperature dropped off for the weekend.
When I got home from the interview marathon and after I changed from my suit and tie, I went out on my balcony in shorts and a golf shirt. It was that warm; I think it was 80F/27C at the beach. It was perfect weather for smoking one of Emily’s cigars and reading.
Friday was warm and that brought out a flock of young female workers in short skirts in the courtyard on Friday. One of the more popular combinations was a short skirt with knee length, high heeled boots. Doug and his friend Mark should have stopped bye Dad’s office if only for the view.
There is one down side to short skirts so soon in the year; too much untanned flesh. But, this too will pass soon enough for Summer is never very far away in Southern California.
For the record, I was out in my shorts and Utah hooded sweatshirt on Saturday. I was just great to be in shorts again.
Bad Tats
There is another down side to the warm weather and that was the exposure to bad tattoos. One of the young women that I thought was just in training at a cosmetics company seems to be employed there now. I got to see way more of her tats than I could ever want to see in a 100 years. I think she has more tats than some of my sailors in the Navy. We all know that sailors love tattoos.
This young woman had tats of spider webs on her elbows and more geometric designs on her arms. She had more of what the Bug Guy calls tribal design on her neck that started up around her ear and then disappeared below her shirt collar. I would never ever want to see the whole picture.
On the plus side, I blew off going to the Los Angeles International Tattoo Exposition this weekend. I save some money on admission by staying home plus the cost of gasoline to get there and back. I also saved my eyes since I didn’t see any of the fully covered female bodies.
Lone Wolf and Cub DVDs
I was watching one of the DVDs the Princess and Doug got me for Christmas this weekend. The DVDs are a set called LONE WOLF AND CUB. It is a Japanese samurai epic in six DVDs. From time to time, some of the female actresses had what I would consider to be artistic tattoos.
In one film, the actress played an assassin who shocked her victims when she exposed a tattooed breast. The victim would be distracted and then she would kill him. Nice touch. I could not understand why the woman would submit to a tattoo that covered half of her breast and went down her chest to her waist. I know this because the tattooing was part of the film.
I know that the tattoo was only paint and nonpermanent and all that. What I don’t understand is why have a tattoo in the first place? Maybe it is a cultural thing or an act of rebellion by the youth.
In another film, I noticed a real continuity problem. It was one of two films that used firearms as primary weapons instead of the usual swords. Some actors used crude flintlock pistols while others used what looked Navy Colt single action revolvers. The Navy Colts were not produced until the 1840s when Japan was a closed nation and importation of Western goods was largely banned.
I also noticed that when Lone Wolf fired off the rifles in the baby cart, they acted like a machine gun and had an effective range of several hundred yards or meters. Machine guns did not come along until after the American Civil War or as the Princess refers to it, the War of Northern Aggression with the Gatling gun in the late 1860s. The bad guys in the film were armed with matchlock muskets that had an effective range of maybe 30 yards or meters on a good day. The matchlock was likely to be available in Japan when the film was set so that made some sense to me.
Cinema
The only film I saw this weekend was MUNICH.
This is a very powerful and violent film about revenge and how the revenge affects the agents of Israel. It is not a film for those who find the use of force sometimes the only effective solution. Negotiation is good for a time and in its proper place. But, negotiation only works when both parties have some thing to gain by talking about the troubles.
I think it is very well made and probably close to the truth. The truth is often in the mind of the speaker so it can be transactional in nature.
As I was walking out of the multiplex to my car in the car park, I was struck by how little has changed in the thirty years or so since the events that were depicted in the film took place. We still have Palestinians and Jews trying to kill each other and peace in the Middle East seems as illusive as ever.
And that gentle readers was my weekend.
Be well and stay happy.
posted by Chuck Reinhardt at 9:07 PM
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