December | 2022 | Grumpa Joe's Place

Reading vs Watching

Posted on 04/12/2022 by Grumpa Joe

Between watching movies on Netflix and reading books, time is limited. My goal is to read one book every week during the year. That means I must find something I like, and then read it within a week. I am a slow reader and my comprehension is lousy. Often times, I must take a rest and not even touch a book for a week or two. The worst thing is when I start reading a book that is too philosophical, or too wordy, and it takes me too long to finish. Most likely because I really don’t want to finish, but my tendency is to read each book from cover to cover, even if I think it is horse crap. My theory is that even those books which I rate poorly have been published because someone else thought it was good. Publisher’s don’t like to invest in books that don’t make money.

My kind of movie: The story is plausible, but I’m sure some of the scenes are contrived for effect, and not believable.

DOG

Stars: Channing Tatum.
Directed by: Reid Carolin, Channing Tatum.
Release date: Feb. 18.

Dog is a comedy road trip movie coming to theatres starring Channing Tatum as Army Ranger Briggs who is given the seemingly impossible task of transporting Lulu, an unruly Belgian Shepherd, down the Pacific Coast to attend its owner’s funeral.

Watching movies is another matter. After supper every evening I look for an interesting movie to watch. There are days, when I spend thirty minutes scrolling through the movie menus trying to decipher whether I should waste my time watching, or not. One thing I like about Netflix is it’s ability to screen what I like to watch. The one thing I hate about Netflix is that it narrows the field of movies that interest me to a commonality that makes them all the same.

Netflix has targeted me with foreign films and they are the ones I watch most often because they tend to have better story lines. American films are too comic-book, crime related, shoot-em-up oriented, which turn me off. I love good stories, I even love bad stories. How often have you witnessed shootings and murder in your lifetime? Some of the films expect us to believe the impossible odds of the good guy escaping harm after being shot at by a dozen armor clothed goons spraying bullets with machine guns. Even more unbelievable is the good guy shooting his way out with one pistol and one clip of bullets. This is not realistic. That many bullets resembles war, but good guys get killed in wars. I’ll stick to the stories that involve real people and real life situations. Of course on the other side of the picture there is the Hallmark channel that shows only love stories with happy endings.

Last year I kept track of the movies I watched with my ratings. People were always asking me for the title of films that I thought were good. So, to accommodate them I noted each film on my phone. Unfortunately, I lost the file of over 500 film titles, and was really pissed for a few weeks. Now, I just watch the movies and don’t even try to remember the titles.

Filed under: Biography, Education, family | Tagged: Books, Movies, Reading | 3 Comments »

Brain Storms

Posted on 01/12/2022 by Grumpa Joe

Lately, my mind has let me down when it comes to original ideas. So many times I would awaken with some really fantastic schemes rolling around in my mind. This morning was one of the better ones as far as yielding ideas. They were so good in fact, that I noted them on my phone before they were lost into the ether world. The true test will come when a couple of weeks from now I review my idea list and I still understand what I wrote.

My brain polarity must be at the apogee of its orbit, because I feel very positive, energetic, and ambitious. This is the exact opposite of what I felt for the past seven days. Funny, how things can change so radically in such a short period. I celebrated with a solitary two-mile walk. It felt good.

The challenge will be to capitalize on this burst of energy with positive activity. The plan is to do so. I am studying details of a new challenge to myself. For many years, I have been amused by a device called a “whirligig.” Simply put, the whirligig is a wind driven weathervane. It is believed to be invented in China around 400 BC. Another earlier reference in Wikipedia is to a Sumerian wind driven weathervane dating to 1600-1800 BC. Whirligigs became an early American art form around the time of the American Revolution during the first Green New Deal movement dedicated to preserving air quality by using wind power. Most likely the devices were made by bored farmers, fishermen, during long dark winter hours.

Twenty years ago, I bought a couple of books on the subject fully intending to take it up as a hobby. My new goal is to take on the challenge to become a world expert on whirligig design and manufacture. It is one thing to picture an idea in your mind, it is another to actually implement it. I feel I have the skill needed to make these things, and I am creative enough to be able to invent some new ideas as well. I will begin with pure simplicity to learn the basics and work my way up to complicated designs with multiple movements. The very first effort is on the work bench in my newly remodeled work shop anxiously awaiting to come alive.

Watch this video to learn what a whirley-gig is.