#20Gonna20

Solitude of Dusk, Richmond Ferry Dock

20 Images of 2020, plus One In Memoriam

The Ford Fl-Car ~ An American Automotive Allegory

Still the Busted Laptop, but with an Explanation

The Ford Fl-Car ~ An American Automotive Allegory

The Unremarkable Brain interrupts the previewed schedule of Blog posts to recount the tale of an unremarkable milestone in history of the American Automotive Industry-- the story of the Ford Fl-Car! (Pronounced “Fl-Kar”)

In February 1947, several years after Henry Ford left his corporation to dedicate his life to philanthropy, the geniuses in whose hands he had left the Ford Motor Company released their latest innovation at automotive shows in Detroit, New York and Los Angeles

Announcers proclaimed: “Ladies and Gentlemen, you will now glimpse the Future. Ford Motor Company gives you- The Ford Fl-Car!”

The Fl-Car was the World’s First Flying Car.  Breathless marketing copy averred that the Fl-Car would provide Americans the rarefied experience of setting off from home-- by taking off!

The program from the Spring 1947 International Automotive Exhibition in Detroit rapturously proclaimed, “Your neighbors will gape in awe and envy as you make your way along at the amazing altitude of 9 feet!”

Quite the innovation.

Seventy-two years on, there are no extant examples of the Ford Fl-Car on the road. Such cars, of course, wouldn’t be on the road; they’d be cruising along at vintage car shows at an amazing altitude of nine feet.

Nevertheless, the Fl-Car model was a dreadfully ignominious failure. Automotive Industry analysts attribute the model's failure to three design flaws:

1) The Fl-Car’s engine had an incurable bug-- it leaked oil continually.  Your neighbors, and most Americans, stopped gaping in awe and envy when they started getting motor oil in their mouths.

2) It did achieve and maintain an amazing altitude of nine feet but there are structures that are 10 feet, and taller. The Fl-Car frequently crashed into them.

3) The Fl-Car couldn't land.

By Summer 1947 the Ford Motor Company had pulled the Fl-Car from production. It never again was seen at Ford dealerships or cruising 9 feet above American roads. And by  Summer 1947, Henry Ford was deceased-- apparently succumbing to embarrassment.

OK--- Henry Ford did die in 1947 but probably not of embarrassment. Probably nothing could embarrass Henry Ford. And, of course, they was never a Fl-Car.

But there is Windows 10.

I've repeated the image above of the busted laptop and I feel I must explain how my laptop got busted. You see, this laptop had Windows 7 when I purchased it but by 2016, after a stop at Windows 8.oops, Microsoft was trying to shove Windows 10 into it.

Windows 10 is to Microsoft what the Fl-Car would have been to the Ford Motor Company-- the bridge too far, the product that was doomed to failure.

Windows 10 metaphorically continually leaked oil and ran into structures 10 feet above ground-- which is perhaps why it was dubbed Windows 10.

Tongue in cheek and palm to face, I blame the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for Windows 10. (Remember-- if Henry Ford hadn't devoted himself to philanthropy, no Fl-Car) 

When Gates left Microsoft to devote HIS life to philanthropy the Microsoft Corporation evidently experienced such a catastrophic brain drain that the brains left behind simply did not know how Windows anymore.

Hence Windows 10, hence my laptop had to die.

After many downloads of unnecessary upgrades, I was often left with a laptop that constantly consistently presented--  not the dread Blue Screen of Death-- but the equally bricked but needlessly antagonistic Blue Screen of Death with a Swirl. 

Imagine your laptop screen screaming, “I'm still alive but you can't access me!”

Because of Windows 10, I unfortunately broke my laptop in touch screen.

On one occasion, when Windows 10 needed to freshen itself up with another FORCED unnecessary download of an upgrade, I slapped the smirky swirl on my touch screen and it cracked.

On another occasion of a disabling FORCED unnecessary download of an upgrade, my fist collided with my computer. The thing ground to a halt. 

The word that popped into my head as I beat the living upgrade out of my computer? “Unproductive”.

How do I have a functioning laptop now? I learned how to use Ubuntu and currently am running Ubuntu 18.04…. or perhaps a hybrid with Lubuntu. 

There are challenges but, at least, I get to say what updates want and when I want them.
Whatever-- I don't bother it, it doesn't bother me.

Basically now I actually have an “okay car” that works. Not a fucking Fl-Car. I'm good.

Update from Forbes: 

"Windows (10) Updates (are) still a confusing mess to manage. That’s the definitive conclusion from a newly published study, which also contains a flowchart of Windows 10 update behavior that may just melt your brain."

"Windows 10 Updates Are Still A Confusing Mess, And This One Image Proves It."  2/27/2019
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/02/27/windows-10-updates-are-a-confusing-mess-and-this-one-image-proves-it/


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Self evaluation

There was recently great relief in the form of a lifting of a major stressor in my life. (No, I didn't hit anyone or anything. I'll expound later.) 

The tale of the Fl-Car was a bit of schtick I've often bored people with verbally, but I was able to get it in writing here within roughly three hours. Typos? Sure.
But now I can expand the audience I bore with this schtick

From now on one "So I Went" (Maine), one "So I Heard" (Karaoke Songs - "Too Much Heaven") and many lovely photos (which you can order as Prints or Notecards, here!)

red tree flowers

red three flowers

The International Federation of Who Cares

Busted Laptop with Unmade Bed in Background

The International Federation of Who Cares

What is it that keeps people from completing the tasks they need to complete? What causes procrastination?

Many years after I gained intimate acquaintance with procrastination, I had the long-delayed epiphany that the basic origin of procrastination is hidden in the statement "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good". As a Italophone, I was surprised to learn that this aphorism usually attributed to Voltaire is based on the Italian: "Le meglio è l'inimico del bene".

Now, I don’t claim the procrastination in my writing work is a symptom of perfectionism. Incompletion in my work probably stems more an approach to it left over from how I wrote when I was first strongly conditioned to write. 

When most people were more focused on writing papers (which I also did) I became more concerned with writing scripts for theatrical plays because the scripts were expected of me (long story which I may or may not get to.) The scripts I wrote fit a certain format. Unlike playscripts one may read in literature class-- and as I first wrote scripts-- my endeavor  centered on writing LESS: with less scenic and lighting detail and fewer blocking details and line readings.  

I came to understand of the process of writing as one which leaves room for collaborative input from other professionals-- designers, directors and actors.  Hence, I became more inclined to leave my writing work incomplete, awaiting feedback from other.

In the folowing years event till  today, on several assignments I’ve maintained that approach towards writing and discovered that my assumption was way wrong-headed. In most instances, it was instead expected that the written material I turned in would be 100% done; not a penultimate draft on which editorial comment and collaboration would be offered. certainly. 

This attitude to prose writing is like another form of writing I did when I was younger-- songwriting. I wrote songs by myself, writing both the music and lyrics, doing my own “nitpicking” until the product suited my standard as “perfect”  This practice has oddly made me super-critical of songwriting--  especially songs written by songwriting teams.

For example-- and drawing in the topic of “nitpicking”--  the weirdest lyric that has ever leapt out of a song was written is at the beginning of the song written by the Bee Gees for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton.  I admire the (B)rothers (G)ibb’s writing skill and I will reinforce this admiration in referring to their work on another song which I will feature in this month’s Karaoke Song spotlight, "Too Much Heaven".

But their lyric which has always struck as flawed is that of “Islands in the Stream”. "IITS" is a fun song about mutual devotion which begins with an astoundingly off-tone analogy:

Baby, when I met you there was peace unknown
I set out to get you with a fine tooth comb

Huh? 

Anyone who has ever used a “fine tooth comb” knows that if you set out to get anything with one of these devices, you're basically seeking a louse (or its eggs). This weird phrase hasn’t prevented the song from becoming a beloved classic and the Bee Gees regarded as expert songwriters, but here we have both the literal and figurative failure of nitpicking.

Perhaps they are the charter members of the International Federation of Who Cares?  Do you wonder what IFWC is, and how to join?

My work with a team of two other co-worker in the travel industry.  We would (I believe) literally tear our hair out trying to make three destination brochures, consisting of a total over one hundred pages featuring hundred of hotels with thousands of price point absolutely error free. This longtime experience later on in my life reinforced the belief process I has as a scriptwriter-- seeing writing was a seemingly eternal collaborative free-for-all. 

The descriptive copy I wrote portraying hotels, tours and destinations would always be nitpicked over-- until the core team with which I worked discovered the International Federation of Who Cares.

For three years preparing these brochure promoting product in Hawaii, Mexico and Tahiti we always failed at being 100% perfect-- and received grief for our failed effort. Probably the grief we received was mostly self-originating, until we created the IFWC.

We didn't descend into the dismay of the impossible pit of nitpicking. Whenever my boss would lament that our work was “a complete mess", my reply was "It's not a complete mess. It’s an incomplete success”. This touchy-feeling slogan was roundly mocked.

Ultimately our route to colalborative madness wound up at the cul-de-sac of IFWC. This acronym began as an abbreviation of a phrase we’d utter in frustrate disgust as our deadline approached and yet minor errors would arise.

We’d say/ask of the end result of our efforts: It’s Fine! Who Cares?

The phrase became “IFWC”. From there this union of good enough was universalized into the International Federation of Who Cares. This global brotherhood/sisterhood exists to this day when anyone has had enough in the search for perfection.

Anyone who is in the midst of a dispiriting search for perfection-- who has proofread and corrected to distraction and who despairs that a job well done is a job never done may join merely but taking a deep breath and intoning:

"It’s Fine! Who Cares?"

________________ Self-evaluation

Yeesh. Where to begin?  An essay on the topic of procrastination completed nine days late?  The reason: being trapped in an existential hell where the revelation of a determination is put off while the determination undergoes a "quality review" which can take several months.

I did some revision in the following days which brought the piece more into focus.

But concentration seems impossible. (No real world details will be shared in this blog until THAT process is complete.) At the very least I was able to ignore the arrival on an email related to that process until I got this posted.

the unremarkable brain returns in february

The unremarkable brain has been on hiatus last month and this month as a result of the holidays and the Federal Government shutdown-- yes, my brain actually IS a National Park, but I digress--

Great news!

The unremarkable brain will be returning in February with:

So I Thought: "The International Federation of Who Cares?" (2/9) and "Does Humor Have a Color? Yes. Green." (2/23)

So I Saw: Seven more R O Y G B I V images

So I Went: "Maine" (2/13)

So I Heard: "Karaoke Songs: Too Much Heaven" (2/17)

Dates approximate.

ALSO -- If you would like to order prints or notecards featuring my images, please see SALE to place orders!

violet cardoon at high noon

violet cardoon at high noon
the gardens at lake merritt, oakland, ca

indigo motel mood

indigo motel mood
memphis, tn

blue sign

blue sign
division street, san francisco, ca

How Great is Depression and How Long is Anxiety

So I thought it would be a worthy endeavour-- at this point-- to present a simple explanation of how I perceive depression and anxiety.

Then the wheels came off my will to post anything and once again I fell short of my goal of posting between the 9th and the 23rd of each month.

We’ll get it right in time.

This is not the complete reflection on the dual affliction of depression and anxiety but it will have to suffice for the moment. 

Also, I’ve not studied psychology or psychiatry, so I do not know whether my characterization duplicates some other thinker's writings-- but I’m sure my impression is solely my impression.  

My characterization may seem simplistic and possibly cliched but... bear with me.

Anxiety: an Affliction of the Perception of Time
A family member shared with me an account of the first occasion on which she noted that her mother might be suffering from some sort of mental illness-- which did in fact turn out to be Alzheimer's Disease. 

On a completely mundane day out shopping with her mom, she walked away for three minutes and when she returned your mother was in a state of panic.

Alzheimer's Disease of course is not Anxiety but her account nevertheless led me to wonder whether the nature of anxiety might have something to do with the inability to fix a beginning point and then end point in one’s reasonable perception of time.

Someone who's anxious may in fact regard thirty minutes as a year-- not realistically, of course,and not rationally.  But being left waiting for an anxious person approaches being unendurable.  One can learn now to suppress this sort of anxiety but if one who has anxiety is told a task was just take three minute, if they have no way of a fixing to starting point to that amount of time, they enter an uncertain realm wherein time is a joke.

Depression: an Affliction of the Perception of Space
What pairs well with time? 

Yes, that’s right: space!  

And since I was anxious to have a similar definitive description of depression, I examined whether I perceived depression as  a disorder in my perception of space. 

I do know that a depressed person-- take me for example-- by my disordered nature instinctively overestimates the load they have to bear and the distance they have to travel.

So frequently-- not always though-- a mere trip from my bedroom to the kitchen to get a drink of water can seem as daunting as carrying a ton of weight over the distance of  a mile. 

This miscalculation is naturally followed by the unanswered question “….and for what purpose?”

I will continue to extrapolate on this basic premise as possible but the gist of my message today is this: To me depression and anxiety are best defined as a internal inability to adequately objectively and reasonably judge the distance to travel the burden to bear or the time to budget to accomplish anything... and the anguish which results from this failure.

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MORE TO FOLLOW
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Self assessment
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I began this on a Monday and by Friday still hadn't been able to continue work on it. Now it is Sunday and I'm finally posting.  As the week progressed I began to obsess on the fact that, although what I intend to write is as precise a definition of my experience of depression and anxiety that I can recount, my definition may differ from other's experiences or a textbook definition.

I'm also thoroughly disgusted by the utter twisting of my intended words that my voice to text executes. To dictate text pertaining to personal experiences and then to read its nonsensical shambles of transcription-- for me-- is to feel profound failure.

On top of this challenge, note here another nasty pitfall of mental illness.  

Sufferers are compelled to keep quiet because they fear that the symptoms they are confronting don't conform to a textbook definition and aren't easily understood by others.

As for this post, I'm going to have to resort to the strategy I used previously-- post what I have done and promise “MORE TO FOLLOW”.

Hey, it's something-- and something is better than nothing.

green feeling

green feeling
oakland, ca