Barnson.org

My first realization that my eyes were not completely perfect came at the age of seventeen. There was a lunar eclipse, and I had set my telescope up on its tripod in the back yard of our home in Montgomery County, MD.

My friend, Steve Pratt, was hanging out at our house that night. I focussed my low-power telescope perfectly on the moon, and marvelled at the detail even this modest device could muster.

I had been an astronomy buff since I was a small child, and could easily locate the common constellations in the night sky. I had a mental calendar of all the regular meteor showers, and for several years had pretty faithfully gone out to watch for at least one night of each shower. In those days, even that close to Washington, D.C. we had a clear view of the night sky, with few streetlights to glare out the heavens.

I gestured to Steve to come over. “Just look at that,” I said, “pretty cool, huh? You can watch the eclipse obscure the moon.”

Steve leaned over and peered through the diminutive telescope. “It’s fuzzy,” he replied.

I bent down to check. “No, it’s perfectly clear,” I responded. “But adjust it, maybe your eyes are different than mine.”

Steve adjusted the focus of the telescope and made the appropriate noises of awe and wonder. I could tell that he didn’t think it was nearly as cool as I did, but I didn’t care.

However, the knowledge that he’d had to adjust the focus troubled me. A few months later I went and saw the eye doctor.

“This is what I call a ‘nuisance prescription’,” he creaked in an ancient, wheezy voice. “Your eyes are fine. There’s a slight astigmatism, and I’ll give you some glasses to help you read signs when you’re driving at night or using your telescope, but I wouldn’t advise wearing them all the time. You’ll just get dependent on them, when really, your eyes are almost perfectly normal.”

Thus I received my first pair of glasses. They had bright red frames, flecked with black, and were “schoolboy style” — covering a large chunk of my face when I wore them. I thought they looked cool, but had a strong suspicion that nobody else did.

Well, after a decade and a half, and many lost glasses later, I finally decided to try out contact lenses. Over the years, my minor prescription has gotten slowly, but steadily, worse. There’s a sliding scale of vision, from -5.00 through +5.00 (actually, it goes beyond that, but past the fives you’re pretty much legally blind without lenses). If you’re in the negatives, you’re nearsighted; your eyes focus light a little too well, and the focal point is in front of your retina. If you’re in the positives, you’re farsighted, and your eyes focus light on a point behind your retina.

Anyway, my right eye is -1.00, while my left is -0.75 now. Something contacts don’t seem to be able to do, while glasses can, is correct for severe astigmatism, or unevenness of the pupil or retina. For that, you need glasses, with a certain offset to handle the irregularity. I have a slight astigmatism, but contacts improve my vision enough that the minor fuzziness around the edges of some letters on a chalkboard doesn’t hurt much.

It’s been an interesting adventure, though. The day I received my initial prescription — this past Thursday — it took me over a half hour to get the darn things in and out the first time. Getting them out isn’t too big a deal. You just slide the lens slightly off the pupil, and then it’s easy to pinch it off your eye. But putting it on! What a chore that was. I kept getting bubbles, and it wouldn’t stick. Ick.

I wore them through the afternoon on Thursday, but discovered by the evening, my eyes were actually really tired. I think it’s because they’ve become so accustomed to focussing at a certain point, that having my eyes constantly corrected is an adjustment. Also, I could feel the lenses in my eyes the first day. I could tell they were there, and every time I blinked, I’d feel them shift around. Today, I’m not noticing them, but I also bought some “artificial tears” to put in to help make sure my eyes stay wet. We live in an extremely dry climate, which has been hell on my eyes for years (lots of redness). Maybe having contact lenses will force me to actually take care of my eyes for the first time 🙂

Anyway, that’s it for my adventure (so far) in contact lenses. It’s something new, and I’m already eyeing the tinted lenses with a little greed. I mean, I could be brown-eyed tomorrow, and violet-eyed the next day! How cool would that be?

Well, probably not cool to anybody else, but cool to me.

Hi its me again

Well we can feel the top of Angelina’s first tooth coming thru the gums, nothing to see but you can feel it.

She has been more cudly then usual lately, falling asleep on mom or dad, which for her is completely out of character, she is not a cuddly baby by any stretch of the imagination. She is back to her happy self tho for the most part, not quite as whiny as she was before the tooth broke.

School is going well, turned another 3.9 in my last class, christy must have put in a good word for me upstairs again, she is such a good sis. ttyl

If you’re interested in some interesting news about Ken Jennings’ winning Jeopardy run 36 episodes in advance, then keep reading. Ken Jennings is the 30-year-old software engineer from Utah who has won over a million dollars playing Jeopardy for over forty episodes, resulting in the highest ratings ever for the show.

Word on the wire is that Ken Jennings has finally lost at Jeopardy in his 75th game taped this past Tuesday. He walks away with $2,500,000 in his pocket. I had no idea that they tape 30-40 shows in advance!

Well, it wasn’t 2003 at least.

Suffice to say, while there were no “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle”, there was also no “Pirates of the Carribbean” (or for Me, Freddy Vs. Jason and X2).

High points: The fantastic Spider man 2, which is everything I wanted it to be, but lacks some of the wonder of the first.

Shrek 2, which was funnier than the first, but lacked some of its magic.

Dodgeball was funny, but not “Bruce Almighty” funny. Collateral was interesting, Super size me was great, but it was no Bubba Ho Tep. The Day After Tomorrow was fine, but nothing special.. Harry potter was better than the first two as a film, but lacked some of the wonder..

Low Points and Letdowns: Alien Vs. Predator.. and I’m ticked about it. Catwoman (didn’t see it, but that’s no surprise) Bourne Supremacy – A fine film ruined by “Blair Witch camera Shakiness” Hellboy (But I seem to be alone here). And a bunch more that really, I didn’t get excited about.

The problem is, excluding Shrek and Spidey (And I want to include Kill Bill – GREAT), most of the films this summer were not as cool as the films of last summer.. and I was just kind of Blah..

Now, admittedly, we saw fewer movies this summer because we were ripping our way through the Buffy and Angel seasons like there was no tomorrow (still doing so, actually)… but, was anyone REALLY excited about “I robot?”

Thankfully, there are movies to look forward to next summer. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Batman Begins, the Fantastic Four, Bewitched, Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Harry Potter 4, and (man I’m a sucker for these films:) Jurassic Park 4.

Thoughts?

“Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country,” said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. “All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man’s prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day…is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation.”

Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.

Just in time for Labor Day, the Bush administration presented its plans for eliminating overtime pay for war veterans. That’s right: if you learned your trade in the military, Bush’s “pro-labor” plan now makes you an exempt, salaried employee, ineligible for overtime.

Bush’s plan also proposes that employers convert exempt employees to hourly employees at a lower rate of pay which, without overtime, reflects their actual work hours.

What if you provide “skilled advice” as part of your trade? You’re also ineligible for overtime pay. Exempt Professionals once included doctors, lawyers, and those with specialized degrees. Now, it covers any person with specialized knowledge.

And you only need to read through 15,576 pages of Federal Register to find this delightful information. Even more interesting? That the “comp time” Bush gleefully extolled the virtues of during his nomination acceptance speech doesn’t exist in this proposed mammoth law, while the pay cuts do.

Happy Labor Day, newly-minted exempt salaried employees formerly known as “laborers”. Welcome to the sixty-hour work-week for forty hours’ pay.

As most of you know, about two years ago I abandoned the religion of my parents. It wasn’t working for me, and since then I’ve been a much happier, healther, more honest person.

One of the unfortunate things I found in taking the Socratic “I know nothing” approach, though, is that of building a “personal ethic”. Many people assume that without a god to lay down an ethic for you, like the Ten Commandments, you’d be left to your own devices and become this wicked, evil person. I’m living proof that that’s not true 🙂 Nevertheless, I’ve often thought that this road would be much easier for other people to grasp if there was a succinct summary of ethics which I could point to and say, “That’s what I strive for”.

Luckily, my acquaintance John B. Hodges penned just such a summary, as “The Ten Points of Ethical Wisdom, an Atheist Moral Compass”:

1. Do not mistake obedience for morality. Ethics is a tool for living with other people. It is not based on authority, but on reason and compassion.
2. Do not seek to deceive yourself or others with pleasing lies. Things are as they are, and the consequences of actions will be what they will be. The wise will be truth-seeking and truth-telling.
3. If you value anything in this life, on this Earth, you should value other people, for they are the only help you will have in times of trouble. Seek friends and allies, do not make enemies unnecessarily.
4. Reason and compassion together imply other commitments: to democracy, freedom of thought and speech, equal rights for all, community support for the disadvantaged and handicapped, humane treatment of animals, and preserving the Earth for future generations.
5. Why does a person deserve the protection of the law? For one thing, we are persons also, and force uncontrolled by law would threaten us as well. We are all at risk, of illness, accident, poverty, and aging; by protecting the weak, we protect ourselves.
6. We find ourselves alive and conscious. What shall we do with our lives? Beware “fishers of men”. If we demand that someone else supply us with a purpose, someone else may DO just that. Purpose is ours to choose.
7. There is a natural “default” purpose, which we may choose if we like. We all have parents, as did they, back to the beginning of life. Every one of our ancestors had children. Health is the ability to survive; the goal favored by natural selection is “promote the health of your family.” We are all the offspring of uncounted generations of family-health-maximizers, so we may find adopting this goal consciously to be congenial. Beyond our near relatives, we may choose to draw our circle of friends and relations as widely as we wish. We are all members of Darwin’s family, all kin from the beginning of life.
8. The Good is that which leads to health, The Right is that which leads to peace. If you want to maintain peaceful and cooperative relations with your neighbors, don’t kill, steal, lie, or break agreements. If you want peace, work for justice. As Shakespeare wrote, “It needs no ghost, Milord, come from the grave, to tell us this.”
9. Fairy-tales about the supernatural are not necessary to give meaning or purpose to life. Meaning is the story we choose to join. Instead of seeking a ticket to Heaven by being an obedient slave on Earth, we can gain meaning by taking a positive role in history, seeking to make this Earth a better place.
10. Enjoy the life you have, appreciate the world you live in, make the best of the opportunities that reality offers you. Do not seek to live forever, for nothing does. The Universe is vast and wondrous, and more than enough. We have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

Although I realize this will not resonate with all readers of barnson.org, it really resonated with me. It’s a bit too long to hang it as a cross-stitch on the wall, though…

Well, today is Friday. I have been swamped at work. But just wanted you to know that I spent 4 GREAT days with the Barnson clan in Utah. I got to know my nieces and nephews again and became reaquianted with my brother and sister-in-laws. And in that process, I think we all became closer. It is honestly the best experience that I could have gone through. It is wonderful to have a family that cares so much for you even though you have divorced their brother. Everyone was warm and welcoming. Genna and I were extremely tired when we got home and I think she is still on Utah time. As for me, I had to get over the jet lag quick if I was going to make it into work on time.

I just wanted to thank everyone for a awesome time!!! I told Genna last night, we might try and make it next year, money permitting.

Love you all!!!

Hey there,

Just thought I would post my .02 cents worth. I am still out there, just taking care of my baby and slaving away in school.

Not much new really going on, perhaps Angelina well have a tooth soon. Other then that just life in the slow lane.

Just wanted to let y’all know I started the new job, and time is short at the moment. Looks like it’s going to be a fun challenge! Maybe after this week I’ll be less of a blogslacker…

Its been a bit since I did an old Matt story, so here it is, one of my fave old Matt stories.

1991, My freshman year of High School, Matt’s Senior year. After a fine middle school acting career, but an unauspicious beginning of High school nabbing an understudy role, I finally found myself back on the stage in a larger capacity. I was cast to play Elisha J. Whitney in Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes”.

Now, my current reputation for over the top theatre comedy was not present nor deserved at that time, as I was afraid to do much more than yell onstage. There was someone in the cast who I found to be further along in the talent game than I was. Mr. barnson.

Playing the irrepressible Evelyn Oakley, Matt brought a gusto and bizarre energy to the role that Porter himself probably never envisioned (or probably wanted). Playing right to the crowd, Matt was able to take an energy i had yet to find as an actor, and blast it out with flailing arms and legs, a bizarre accent, like Sam Kinison mixed with Eddie Izzard, with just a touch of Jim Carrey.

As I was struggling to play drunk, Matt pulled me aside and said.. “Dude, look.. just stop being afraid to look dumb and just explode.. WOO!!”.

I told myself I would do it, and I was sure I had.. but the video of that old Play doesn’t lie. I never did quite get it right.

As my acting years went on, I held on to that advice, though. The next year, as I began an almost “Single White Female” imitation of Matt (never was good at forming my own identity), I used some of this approach in “Into The Woods”, and finally mastered it in “Hello Dolly”.. and to this day, I find myself utilising these over the top skills that I was lucky enough to be taught.

As a side note.. the above is not one of my fave stories.. this one is.. Matt would get really wrapped up in his over the top Bristish role. He would be known to hold the accent offstage for a while.. which could be funny.

It is important to note that we had body mics on for the musicals.

On one particular night.. after aparticularly good scene with a pair of glow in the dark boxers shining in the blackened theatre.. Matt began trotting offstage in character as he would often do. As the steps began to swivel around, one could hear an audible thud.. the dull banging of the stairs right into Matt’s flailing limbs.

On this particular night, the sound tech just happened to have not turned off that particular microphone..; and like the stars alligning, these particulars allowed the audience to hear their favorite bombastic purehearted, well behaved Mormon boy.. scream out..

“OH F**K!” in a loud british accent, ringing over the loudspeakers.

Now, matt was not a curser.. (nor was he british).. but that day, to hundreds of shocked Cougar parents, he was both.