Ten Rings: Jewels of Achievement

    I am royalty. My two glorious children are diamonds on my fingers. My wife is a fabulous opal. That's three fingers for a happy family, seven for the rest, for life achievements. My library is an ascending gold ring, a new layer for each year of more enriching novels, interesting nonfiction and textbooks for edification. I am FunTrivia royalty, a sovereign silver "T" for having ventured through all the trivia categories, building a factual temple that is strong like a fortress, discovering countless new facts between the cracks of my books. All the miles my feet have pounded the ground are an earthy emerald, on pace to outdistance the length of the equator. That's six fingers covered, four for the rest. My career is a bluesy sapphire, difficult to endure at times but worth every penny, affording great strides through numerical efficiency. A ruby glows from my college degree, my whole academic career, even the parts left unfinished, filled with high marks and praise. Amethyst shards reach skyward where my travels and photos erect an album that is beyond beautiful. Finally, the 10th finger holds a modest pearl for my written collection, that if not is the highest quality at least is prolific. 

    These are my jewels of creation and achievement. The highest order given by God for what He gave me. I hope that I am making Him proud for realizing His potential in all that I do. To balance the elements without from within, by softening time with the gift of technology. People couldn't do what I do a hundred years ago. What a time to be alive. Give me another 30, 40, 50 years- I will put ten more on my toes.

1816: The Year Without a Summer

The presentation below was completed for a weather seminar class in my master's program.

My professor noted a correction needed from slide 3: sunspots can influence climate albeit to a minor degree.

Fire Weather (Homo Flagrans)

    We call ourselves "wise humans", homo sapiens. This is the mother of all misnomers. A better name for us is homo flagrans, burning humans. That's what the geologic record is going to reveal about our legacy in the eons to come, as a runaway, reckless species that upturned Earth materials and burned the atmosphere to hell, causing the sixth mass extinction- the only such mass extinction caused by a single species- by regurgitating as many greenhouse gases as the freakish Siberian super volcanoes during the Permian extinction 250 million years ago.
    I came across this term in John Valliant's frightening book "Fire Weather", which he apparently coined. It made me laugh out loud: probably the only time in a book of such despair. Fire weather is a new phenomenon in meteorology that began at the turn of the century, when humans cranked up the thermostat and showed little collective interest in turning it down. The forest will burn until the sky is opaque, as if we, the incinerators of all materials, were the worst volcanic eruption ever seen. Because that is all we do geologically- burn shit. We are the Earth's first species that flourishes on fire. Homo flagrans, ha, that's what we are.

Quadratura

 Heaven is a ceiling that grows
 Through landscapes in the mind's eye
 To contemplate all our divine intentions
 Plastered in permanence, unfiltered
 From the shifting vices of Earth.
 Where the megaron strips navigation
 We look to the stars for an answer,
 Absolution in a rococo nebula
 Framed by imagination, trickling tintinnabulation,
 Echoes of bells off the bronze planetarium.
 Skyward we teleport home
 In a basket of deliverance, unfettered
 Cobwebs of illumination conducting
 Orchestral fantasies in the light,
 A radiance to cleanse our atmosphere.
 Soul meets body at the cherished boundary
 Where angels become humans that grow wings,
 Leaking children from the loophole of time,
 Oil streaked burden of gravity unrivaled
 To brighten the path in hymns of creation.

Best of Seinfeld

    I'm nearing the end of my third viewing of all the Seinfeld episodes. The first was in the 90s when it originally aired, plus all the reruns on cable TV through the 2000s. The second was with my wife when she first moved here. It's still as funny as I remember it, even if it is more dated. All the social observations are prisoners of the 90s, though many of them would resonate today. And that is why I've enjoyed this cycle as much as the others, if not more.

    Contrary to popular opinion, I like the later seasons more than the early and middle ones. The show seemed to get better as time went on, going hand in hand with the acting improvements, especially Jerry's. He really nailed that dumbfounded look when one of his friends had a bonehead idea. He looks at them as if he can already see the insanity of the plot unfolding before him, and we are in for another wild ride.

    The comedic writing of Seinfeld is second to none. Plots are interwoven masterfully to make you forget the seemingly inconsequential event at the beginning of the episode that serves as the "butterfly effect" to corrupt an often routine situation into an awkward, hilarious one at the end. I often struggle to remember that key moment at the beginning of an episode as I'm nearing the end: the one that makes me realize, if this one little thing hadn't happened this whole mess could have been avoided. A great idea for a book would be to dissect each episode, analyzing each moment for the chaos generator. It helps that each of the four are neurotic, insecure people, which always seems to attract a crazy moment in real life.

    I used to think of Kramer as this zany, eccentric individual who was secretly a genius. Upon this viewing I see him more as an endearing idiot but still hilarious. Elaine is much more vain than I remember her. George is more relatable as I get older, so I actually like him better than I did before, though he does get away with some horrible things. Jerry is Jerry and he will always be Jerry, the ambivalent viewer making snide remarks at all the stupidity while engaging in it himself unwittingly.

 My favorite episodes:

 The Marine Biologist
 The Pothole
 The Serenity Now
 The Label Maker
 The Gum
 The Package
 The Little Kicks
 The Contest
 The Boyfriend
 The Airport
 The Voice

This ranking is based on laughs, enjoyment, memorable quotes, and scenes that I have rewatched over and over. For example, in "The Label Maker" it is the risk game. In "The Package", it is the write-off scene, something which would amuse any accountant.