The best (unintended) compliment about my magic ever

I used to walk Bardstown road in the Highlands when I lived in Louisville, KY, getting myself partially inebriated on local brews. On on particular occasion during my walk home, I met a cool group of people coming out of a gas station that I was going into. I’m pretty sure they struck up the conversation and invited me to their little porch party at an apartment, less than a block away. I hung out with this group of four for a couple hours, and we had some laughs, and I ended up doing some magic for them.

This turned into a regular thing, as they were always partying on the porch, and I was always walking home from a bar. They would invite me up, and we’d chat for a couple of hours. It was strange, but we never became “friends” – we never got personal.

Mostly we talked about conspiracy theories. It was never about magic. Maybe every other time, or every third time I’d go over, they would bring up magic, and ask me if I could do something for them. I did mostly mentalism and card tricks. I had this great book of Annemann’s (about mentalism with cards) that I was studying, so I practiced on the group. This went on for about five months. (Mid-April to mid-August.)

Then, I had a bout with an odd brain disease. Spontaneously Low Cerebral Spinal Fluid Pressure/Spontaneous CSF Leak. It’s a long name, I know. (My friend Rhonda said, “Only you, Matt. Only you gonna get somethin’ like this.) Anyway, what it really meant was that Continue reading “The best (unintended) compliment about my magic ever” →

Learning by DOING!

Frank Singer

Brent Braun

As I look back on all the ways that I have learned, all of the things that I now know, that I have learned it all by doing. When I wanted to paint, I just painted, When I wanted to learn how to play a song, I just listened to it, and attempted to eke it out on the piano or guitar. When I wanted to build something, I just started sawing and nailing.

My stuff is CRAP! Well, it started out crap. The stuff I liked to do, the stuff I stuck with, ended up getting more and more refined. And the more I learned how to do that stuff, I got better at other stuff, stuff I didn’t even know related. The more I learned about music, the better I got at painting. The more I learned about martial arts, the better I got at building, The more I learned about building, the better I got at music. Life is amazing.

—-THE PRECEDING PARAGRAPH WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE WORD “STUFF”—–

I had a friend who had a teacher that told him “There is one art, the Continue reading “Learning by DOING!” →

Time marches on.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WLANL_-_zullie_-_Vanitas,_Adriaan_Coorte_(1).jpg

Loosely written for the Daily Post Weekly Challenge.

I am a child of the 70s, a child of the 80s, and a child of the 90s. I couldn’t get into Pogs, but I was really into Garbage Pail Kids. So much so that I remember dreaming about having stacks and stacks of them, and I was disappointed when I woke up. I had a collection of G.I. Joe guys, the small ones. Not the dolls. I could build a G.I. Joe guy fort all the way along the eastern wall of my bedroom. And they were all on the same team. Clutch, Cobra Commander, Snake Eye. Working together against a common enemy. My fort was so well set up, so well defended, that there was never really a war. Ever.

I couldn’t solve a Rubik’s Cube but I could take the damn thing apart and put it back together in the right order. That’s one way to solve it. Some of my best friends (guys) had Cabbage Patch Kids. I got creative with an Etch-a-Sketch, and earlier, a Lite-Brite. I owned the Venom action figure before I even knew why Spider-man was wearing a black suit. I really wanted a Swatch, but I never got one. I never even asked.

One of the most exciting nights of my life Continue reading “Time marches on.” →

Contradicting cookies; Vanishing video

I got these fortunes tonight with my Chinese dinner. Yes, I ate two cookies. It’s okay, though, because based on the contradicting nature of the fortunes, I think the calories will cancel themselves out.

I also watched THIS MOVIE* – which was kind of awesome, and it kind of seriously sucked! I watched it on Amazon Instant Video, and I guessed it was from the 80’s. I just looked it up for this blog post, it’s from 2010. Which makes the filming, acting, and quality far worse than I thought. I expected better from Anakin Skywalker (Hayden Christensen). On second thought, no I didn’t.**

* If you didn’t click the “This Movie” link, but still want to know what movie it is, hold your cursor over the link, and the name should pop up. I could have just told you the name of the movie here, or there but that just seemed way too easy

** Okay, Okay. I’ll tell you the name of the movie. “Vanishing on 7th Street”

Hunting season – ghosts, that is… (an iffy ghost pic)

These are from my 2009 paranormal investigation (read: ghost hunt) at the Willard Library in Evansville, IN. The ghost is supposed to be haunted by the “Grey Lady” as they call her. So that’s who we were looking for. It was a fun night and I met a lot of cool people. Every single one of them was tenanted by tangible form*, however. I feel like I may have caught a picture of the ghost, but I hesitate, because I don’t really believe that. I’ll let you decide what to think about the following pictures. I have never shown these to anyone.

This is the original unedited shot. I just pointed and shot for the hell of it. I didn’t “see” anything until I looked at the pictures later.

Ultra brightened from original. Or some other filter.

negative of original

Me looking kinda dorky as I leave the Children’s Section of the library

*in Poe’s Masque of the Red Death, he uses the phrase “Untenanted by any tangible form” to refer to the entity.

Then, summoning the wild courage of despair, a throng of the revellers at once threw themselves into the black apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at finding the grave-cerements and corpse-like mask which they handled with so violent a rudeness, untenanted by any tangible form.

Read the whole thing online…

A haiku series on writing

I wrote these five poems for the WordPress’ Daily Post Weekly Writing Challenge. It is a haiku challenge, “you choose the topic”. I thought it was a pretty cool challenge for myself to see if I could actually do it. I had some fun 🙂

I chose “writing” for my topic, which made this exercise really interesting.

I like this first line
The second is not better
Just ‘cus it’s longer
—–
Sometimes what you say
Is not quite as important
As what you don’t say
—–
If you have the time
Be as real as you can be
Always have the time
—-
The masters of art
Always say the same darn thing
Be yourself and DO!
—–
Being musical
Does not always help me think
Being honest does

—–And A Special Bonus Haiku——
Read between the lines
Make this haiku yours

Unhelpful and Inconclusive Discourse on Social Media

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The dPhone – struggle to return to a dumb phone (part II)

My decision to go back to a dumbphone was easy. My experience switching to a dumbphone, however, sucked salty rocks. (That’s a bad thing. I can see how this metaphor may seem like a good thing, since if you need salt, salty rocks may come in handy.) Part of the reason we were moving backwards in technology was to save money. At first, we didn’t care what service we went with but we decided to go prepaid because my parents had several phones in pretty good condition and we could take our pick. So I took all of them. Two Tracfone phones and two Net10 phones.

Before I go any further, I should add that I had just finished reading the book “The Story of Stuff” by Annie Leonard and I was very eco-conscious about buying something new when we could reuse.

BOOST MOBILE: We looked over the plans and prepaid packages for both of these, and a couple of others. We liked Boost with their shrinking payment plan – but after a phone call to customer service, they said they couldn’t Continue reading “The dPhone – struggle to return to a dumb phone (part II)” →

My journey back to a dumb phone (the dPhone Part I)

“The iPhone is amazing. You can do almost anything with it. But with all of the apps and capabilities of this piece of equipment, I just wish that it could like, make phone calls.” – a random friend of mine

He was right. I remember how excited I was to get an iPhone, after having a Samsung with a slide out keyboard it seemed like I was on the brink of modern technology. The phone replaced: My Camera/GPS/Nook eReader/Ipod/notebook/to do list/video camera/tv remote/Korg sound module/newspaper/calendar/olympus voice recorder/…and more. Like everyone else, for the last two years of my Verizon contract I had my head buried in my device. And during this time I was somehow blinded to the fact that it really, really, REALLY sucked at making phone calls. I hated to do it. In the winter, I couldn’t answer with gloves on. In the summer, I couldn’t talk without getting sweat all over the touch screen. I’m not a Bluetooth wearin’ kinda guy, so I’m not going to go that route. And the headphones with a mic, they just get in the way.

All of that aside, the sound quality during a phone call nearly always sucked. I have said “what” more in the last two years than in the other 38 years combined. (I made that math too easy for you!) And I really was blind to all of this, perhaps willfully so. Because I didn’t want to give up this device.

Thankfully, I am a slave of novelty, not technology. I think we all are. It’s just that technology is the most interesting form of novelty. When my wife suggested that we take advantage of our contract’s demise and switch back to far less expensive dumb phones, I almost felt relieved. We agreed that it wasn’t only the money, although it would save us $1200 a year. We both wanted “out” of the smart phone situation. And I was excited about getting something new, even if it wasn’t “as good as” the phone I was leaving behind.

I started looking at phones, so I could get us something that was not necessarily comparable, but definitely something that was usable. We are addicted to texting each other and asynchronous communication has it fine points. So really, the only feature we needed was a full keyboard.

I chose a Samsung phone for her, and (crazily) at ZTE smartphone for me. I picked mine up first, and THANK GOD, Boost has no service at my house. So I send it back from whence it came, and we both got LG slide open phones. This isn’t a review of those phones, so I’m not going to mention the model. When you move from a smart phone to a dumb phone, there’s plenty to complain about. But in my mind I turned all of those into positive. No Apps? Not really, just the stupid common ones. Some games, but we were never really phone gamers. We prefer to be sitting at a table with a deck of cards, even though Janelle knows I cheat.

The thirty dollar “dPhones” we purchased are really only good at the one thing that the iPhone sucked at – being phones. Call quality is amazing – really. I can’t believe I could talk to anyone on the iPhone, after listening to my new $30 LG. The speakerphone is fun, and it afforded me something that my pickup truck could never do – hands free talking. My truck doesn’t have bluetooth, but I don’t need it anymore, the speaker is loud enough (and the microphone is sensitive enough) that all I have to do is make the call (voice activated calling if I want) and shove the phone in my sun visor. That’s it! I like it as a phone, and as a text messaging machine. And that’s all I really need.

The iPhone? Well, it is my iPod touch now. I have music, news, and that’s about it. I’ll keep it with my when I need a slim, capable camera as well. I went back to my neglected Nook for books again, and the experience of reading this way is very pleasurable. I also started really getting into my MacBook Air again. It is so much easier to blog, to search the net, to fill out my daily journal. Almost everything I have trained myself to do on the iPhone (simply so I could justify its existence) is so much easier on my laptop. I almost viewed my computer as a necessary tool for some things, and the iPhone as the luxury item. Now I know the truth, I love the laptop, I love the nook. I used to think that I would make life simpler by consolidating everything into one device. I was wrong. I spent far too much time with my eyes and brain locked on this little device, and when I ran out of things to do, I would try to organize apps into folders in a better and more efficient layout. I was fooling myself, and spending far to much time playing with a neat little device.

It is very freeing. When I walk out the door, I grab my dPhone. I look at it when I get a text, and I look at it when it rings. And that’s about all there is to look at.