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About This Author
I am SoCalScribe. This is my InkSpot.
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Blogocentric Formulations
Logocentric (adj). Regarding words and language as a fundamental expression of an external reality (especially applied as a negative term to traditional Western thought by postmodernist critics).
Sometimes I just write whatever I feel like. Other times I respond to prompts, many taken from the following places:
 "The Soundtrackers Group" 
"Blogging Circle of Friends "
"Blog City ~ Every Blogger's Paradise"
"JAFBG"
"Take up Your Cross"
Thanks for stopping by! 
October 31, 2016 at 7:43pm October 31, 2016 at 7:43pm
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POSITIVE THING #7
I'm way behind in my entries, but since today is Halloween, I thought I'd blog about my favorite Halloween costume that I discovered this year. I wasn't able to get one for myself, but I think these Glowy Zoey stick figure costumes are one of the coolest ideas I've seen in a long time:
Seriously, whoever invented this needs some kind of inventor's prize. Or at the very least, I hope they made a boatload of money off this concept, because it's unbelievably simple and elegant. I'm not usually one for really complex, intricate costumes that take hours to put on, and this is the exact opposite of that. With some dark clothing and strategically placed LED light strips, you can become a living, breathing, walking, talking stick figure that stands out during all the trick or treating at night.
I really need to do a better job of planning for Halloween; it always manages to sneak up on me and I've run out of time for a costume before I know it. I guess I'll have a good last-minute backup for next year!
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October 25, 2016 at 6:37pm October 25, 2016 at 6:37pm
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POSITIVE THING #6
Podcasts. Generally speaking, I think the phenomenon of podcasts is fantastic for someone like me, who has a lot of varied interests, but maybe not the attention span time to read an entire book or watch an entire documentary about each individual topic. And the great thing is that there are podcasts for just about any topic at this point, which means it shouldn't be too hard for anyone to find something that interests them.
Some of my favorite podcasts this year are:
Freakonomics. Stephen Dubner (co-author of the bestselling Freakonomics books) hosts a weekly look at applying economics theories and investigation to everyday topics like why we still use cash, why Uber is an economist's dream, what causes gender barriers, why there are so many mattress stores around when people purchase them so infrequently, etc. For someone like me who adores random knowledge and useless bits of trivia, it's fascinating to look at a lot of these topics.
My Dad Wrote A Porno. Easily the funniest new podcast I've discovered this year. A guy realized that his dad has been writing incredibly bad erotica under a pen name... so naturally, he and two of his best friends figured it would be a good idea to read a chapter a week to an audience and discuss it book-club style. 
NPR Planet Money. Like, Freakonomics, Planet Money looks at the financial and economic underpinnings of an assortment of topics. They really find some cool stories to present... recent topics have included how Venezuela's economy imploded despite having everything seemingly going for it, why self checkout machines at the store always have problems, and how Subaru became very successful by marketing specifically to lesbians.
Slate Political Gabfest. A former editor-in-chief of Slate, an legal expert on the Supreme Court, and a longtime White House correspondent turned TV news host cover three topics in politics from the previous week. While it's obviously election-heavy coverage this year, most weeks involve them talking in depth and very insightfully about things like Supreme Court decisions, Congressional actions, or foreign affairs. By the time I've finished listening each week, I feel like I've got a better grasp on the state of affairs in the world, even if I haven't been paying attention to the daily news.
TED Radio Hour. This podcast explores a general topic (the big data revolution, failure, the case for optimism, how things spread, the seven deadly sins, etc.) and pulls together three or more TED talks about the subject. I've always found TED talks fascinating, and I love the fact that I don't have to listen to separate entire talks on their own, but rather can have someone pull the highlights centered around a common topic together and presenting everything in a digest format.
There are a lot more that I listen to regularly, but those are some of my favorites from so far this year. If you don't already listen to podcasts, I highly recommend checking a few out. Ranging from about 10 minutes to a couple hours per episode (and again, on a variety of topics), I have no doubt there's something for everyone.
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October 22, 2016 at 6:45pm October 22, 2016 at 6:45pm
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POSITIVE THING #5
My wife and I are currently rewatching the entire seven-season run of Gilmore Girls in anticipation of the upcoming revival on Netflix. While that alone would be a positive thing (such a great show!), I wanted to instead focus on a really cool marketing stunt that was done earlier this month to get people excited about the show again.
For anyone who hasn't seen the show, it's about a single mother (Lorelai) and her teenage daughter (Rory) living in a small Connecticut town called Stars Hollow. It's the kind of small town where everyone congregates around the town square and local people frequent local businesses. The show's creator, Amy Sherman-Palladino, based the show's town on Washington, Connecticut, which she was inspired by during a weekend stay. One of the most popular town locations in the show is Luke's Diner, a small coffee shop and restaurant near the town center. Luke Danes, the proprietor, is a will-they-won't-they love interest for Lorelai throughout the series.
On Wednesday, October 5th, over 200 businesses nationwide (mostly independent coffee shops) converted their decor and menus to look like Luke's Diner. For one day only, fans of the show could go to a coffee shop and feel like they were stepping into Luke's Diner in Stars Hollow! And, for those who went to venues in and around Los Angeles, some of the cast even spontaneously dropped in! 
A friend of mine actually had Scott Patterson (the actor who plays Luke) show up while she was waiting in line. 
In a world where marketing and advertising is so often has negative connotations, it's nice to see someone come up with a unique, fun idea that can get people excited about the product in question without explicitly hawking it.
Further reading: Luke's Diner Is Coming to a Town Near You
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October 22, 2016 at 3:27pm October 22, 2016 at 3:27pm
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POSITIVE THING #4
The most popular Halloween costumes this year are not princesses! *fistpump*
For the past eleven years, princess costumes have been the number-one-selling Halloween costume category in the United States. And while the princess phenomena has been amazingly popular and profitable for a lot of companies, it hasn't been without its faults. Some believe that encouraging girls to pretend to be princesses encourages them to be vulnerable and expect to be taken care of, rather than being independent, capable, and tough.
I'm not sure I 100% buy that (some girls legitimately dream of or want to pretend to be princesses), I think there are absolutely issues surrounding the availability of good alternatives for the girls that don't. Rey was reportedly left out of many early Star Wars: The Force Awakens play sets, and the Avengers: Age of Ultron motorcycle toys replaced Black Widow's character - who rides the bike in the movie - with Captain America are concerning, especially since these changes were allegedly made on purpose by someone involved in the marketing campaigns because they decided that boys wouldn't be interested in toys that featured girls.
But what about the girls who would otherwise want to play with those toys?
There was another reported issue where girls where looking for girl character toys and merchandise in traditionally boy-dominated categories (Black Widow and Gamora for Marvel, Rey for Star Wars, Harley Quinn and Batgirl and Wonder Woman for DC, etc.) and simply not being able to find anything in those categories because the companies decided that girls wouldn't be interested in those products so they were just never manufactured. 
It's nice to see the princess category get knocked down a peg by the superhero genre; I think it makes a pretty strong statement that there is a market for girl-oriented costumes and toys and merchandise that aren't simply princess-themed, and hopefully it will encourage companies to start manufacturing more for the next generation. I understand that a company has to make the products they think they can sell, but I'm now optimistic that it's becoming clear that there's a demand for strong female role of different types.
Further reading:
Halloween Costume Showdown
Excluding Female Characters from Merchandise Doesn't Just Impact Girls
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October 22, 2016 at 3:41am October 22, 2016 at 3:41am
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POSITIVE THING #3
Crowdfunding has become a popular means of raising revenue for a variety of causes in recent years, and there are no shortage of sites to help you do it. The most famous is probably Kickstarter for creative projects, but there's also Indiegogo for just about any kind of project, GoFundMe for non-incentive based fundraising, Seed & Spark specifically for film and television, DonorsChoose for education, AngelList for start-ups, Patreon for ongoing sponsorships... and those are just the tip of the iceberg.
Although I've used and donated to quite a few of these over the years, my favorite crowdfunding site above all others is:
If you're not familiar with it, Kiva.org is an entrepreneurship platform for developing countries. Business-and-betterment-minded individuals in those developing countries apply for loans as small as $25 to get them on their feet financially, and those loans are repaid to the investors at which point those investors can roll it over into another loan or cash out.
I really love the fact that these projects are all designed to financially help someone get on their feet in their community. It's not about big profit motives or significant ROI or helping an artist achieve his or her creative vision; it's about helping a struggling store owner in India restock his shop so he can continue to sell goods to the community. It's about giving a farmer in Madagascar the money she needs to purchase chickens and goats so she can support herself selling eggs and dairy. It's about helping a family in Guatemala buy the raw materials needed in order to produce large quantities of hand-sewn goods to sell and support themselves and their relatives. It's about providing tuition for a single mom in Afghanistan so she can take night classes, graduate, and get a job that will better support her children.
While I love funding creative projects and good for-profit business ideas and classroom projects as much as anyone else, there's something immensely satisfying about helping entrepreneurially-minded people around the world make their developing country a little more developed. And it's pretty amazing that you can invest as little as $25 and just keep rolling it over from one campaign to the next as you get repaid.
Not a bad way to help make the world a better place!
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October 18, 2016 at 8:49pm October 18, 2016 at 8:49pm
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POSITIVE THING #2
Even though I don't normally watch the show, I am a huge fan of Lip Sync Battle... or at least the ones that Jimmy Fallon does on The Tonight Show. The Spike TV spinoff show is just okay... I generally feel like the added production value and setup takes something away from what used to be smart, low-key form of entertainment. But every once in a while the Spike TV spinoff manages to use their broader, large-scale format to great effect. I blogged earlier this year during the Soundtrackers activity about Channing Tatum covering Beyonce and his wife turning the tables by making him the recipient of the Magic Mike "Pony" striptease ("Pony" ).
Today, I'm sharing Anthony Mackie performing "2 Legit 2 Quit" versus Joseph Gordon Levitt's "Rhythm Nation." Now, ordinarily, it'd be pretty hard to top Anthony Mackie performing an MC Hammer song (complete with the outfits and dance moves), but Joseph Gordon Levitt manages to surprise everyone with a pitch-perfect rendition of a Janet Jackson classic, complete with choreographed backup dancers. And the looks on the faces of hosts LL Cool J, Chrissy Teigen, and special guest Seth Rogen are absolutely priceless as they watch two remarkable entertainers bring us back to the glory of the 90s.
This clip makes me smile every single time I watch it:
For the record, Joseph Gordon Levitt also did a great Nicki Minaj and Elton John back when this contest got its start on The Tonight Show
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October 18, 2016 at 8:13pm October 18, 2016 at 8:13pm
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POSITIVE THING #1
It might seem a little worrisome to start a positive blogging activity with a story about politics, but I think this is one worth mentioning because it's so rare that anything is a bipartisan effort at this point. Over the weekend, a Republican office was attacked by vandals who threw a Molotov cocktail through the window and spray-painted a swastika and "Nazi Republicans leave town" on a nearby building.
What's so surprising about this story is that a group of local Democrats started a GoFundMe campaign the very next day in an effort to raise money to repair their political opponents' offices as quickly as possible. Their message, one designed to promote a moment of "graciousness, not fractiousness" was as follows:
“As Democrats, we are starting this campaign to enable the Orange County, North Carolina Republican office to re-open as soon as possible.
Until an investigation is undertaken, we cannot know who did this or why. No matter the result, this is not how Americans resolve their differences. We talk, we argue, sometimes we march, and most of all we vote. We do not resort to violence by individuals or by mobs.
So, let’s all pitch in, no matter what your party affiliation, in and get that office open again quickly.”
The campaign met and exceeded its $10,000 goal (eventually raising just over $13,000) in less than a day. 
It's nice to see, in this extremely polarized and volatile political climate, that some people still understand the idea that physical violence and terrorism is never the answer to a difference of opinions... and that regardless of whether we're Republican or Democrat, Independent or otherwise, we can still come together and help each other when tragedy strikes.
For further reading, check out this Huffington Post article .
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October 10, 2016 at 9:25pm October 10, 2016 at 9:25pm
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Take Two ▼
Author's Note: The original version of this blog post was lost to a browser crash. It was written in response to iKïyå§ama  's "Note:
Honoring [Link To User oldwarrior]
I will gi...". While I doubt the merit badge is still available, I felt compelled to reconstitute this post to the best of my recollection because Oldwarrior  's memory is worth the extra effort.
According to the daily email reminders I keep getting and subsequently deleting with vague promises of "getting around to it later," it has been 196 days since my last blog entry. Apparently the last thing I wrote was my final entry for last February's "The Soundtrack of Your Life" ... which also means that I've, rather embarrassingly, had a blog post titled "Dick In A Box" at the top of my blog feed for the better part of the 2016 calendar year. 
Mostly, I just haven't been that inspired to write. I don't like to post blog entries unless I'm either participating in an activity or have something meaningful to say, and there's been precious little of either lately. But when iKïyå§ama first posted "Note:
Honoring [Link To User oldwarrior]
I will gi...", I knew I found a reason to write about something again.
I'll admit that my initial intention was just to quickly read an item and post something so I could collect the Merit Badge being offered (I am, after all, an unabashed Merit Badge collector). But as I started to scan Oldwarrior 's port, it occurred to me that this the memory of someone's life here, and it deserves more than just a quick skim of one item. So instead I read through a considerable number of items in his port in an effort to get to know him better.
Over the years, Oldwarrior (Gene) and I crossed paths every so often... we'd each reviewed five of the other's written works... but I didn't know much about him. So you can imagine my surprise when even the quick blurb on the Bio tab of his portfolio revealed some pretty amazing things. He was retired military (Rangers AND an MP? Those are not easy specialties!), a former newspaper editor and investigative reporter, and an artist in more than one discipline. What most struck me was his military decorations: a Silver Star, four Bronze Stars, and three Purple Hearts? There are action heroes in novels that don't have that much hardware recognizing their heroism and valor. I mean, seriously, just look at this photo of Gene from his Bio:
That's a lot of distinguished service!
My perusal of Gene's portfolio then brought me to "MY POLITICAL RAMBLINGS" where I looked at his stance on the importance of the flag as a symbol ("Burn my Flag and I'll burn your behind!" ), our country's sometimes questionable foreign policy decisions ("MY COUNTRY-RIGHT OR WRONG!" ), the issue of "GUN-CONTROL" , and a whole host of other issues in "DIRTY POLITICS" . What I've learned from these writings is that Gene and I agreed on some things and had differences of opinions on others. I share his enthusiastic defense of our flag as a symbol of our country and those who fight for it, but disagree with his assertion that gun control is a cowardly agenda to disarm the public and make them easy targets or victims. I often find myself wondering, as he does, what the American public would really think of foreign policy decisions the government makes for which we only hear one (positive, optimistic) side of the issue. But I disagree with his assertions that criminals are not entitled to the same rights as law-abiding citizens, or that a country should solely focus on its own citizens before extending aid to foreign nations.
I have a feeling Gene and I would have had some really interesting conversations about these topics. His background was vastly different than my own, and we would have doubtlessly argued opposing positions on issues that we both feel passionate about. But the strength of his convictions, his eloquent argumentation, and his respectful presentation of his opinions leads me to believe that it would be a valuable discourse in an era when the art of intelligent discourse is being lost to entrenched positions and intolerant mindsets.
Next, I looked at "MY RELIGIOUS & SPIRITUAL ITEMS" and was deeply moved by the honesty in recounting his struggles with PTSD and the faith he found that helped him navigate those troubled waters ("THE RUDDER" ). I followed his blending of spirituality and science and philosophy in "PROOF OF LIFE AFTER DEATH....?" and then the metaphor for his religious journey in "JC IS MY CO-PILOT" . Again, I was struck by the wisdom and intelligence and conviction of the words he wrote.
If there's one through-line to all the pieces I've read in his port for this exercise, it's been that Gene seemed to be a man of dignity and respect for others, strong convictions, and a wide variety of interests... and that's something the two of us share (or at least I like to think so). More than anything, this has made me realize just how much I wish I had taken the time to get to know Gene over these past several years when I had the chance. It's a missed opportunity that will likely be on my mind for a while.
My takeaway from all of this is twofold:
One, Gene was a remarkable, accomplished man who will be truly missed.
Two, I don't want to come across another one of these challenges and realize that I never really took the time to get to know the person while they were alive. Someone shouldn't have to die before we take the time to really get to know more about them.
Over the past couple of years, I've really struggled with my place here on WdC. I started showing up here to develop my writing ability and over the past thirteen years on the site gradually assumed more and more responsibilities running contests and groups and fundraisers and other activities. Somewhere along the line I think I burned myself out and I've been steadily maintaining a minimal presence ever since, looking for a way to get back into the larger community. Thanks to iKïyå§ama and Oldwarrior , maybe I've found a way. And maybe, rather than coming up with a new group or activity or way to raise a bunch of GPs for friends' causes, it's as simple as starting to get to know and connect with new people in the community, like I used to when I first started.
See you on the other side, Gene. 
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![Merit Badge in Honoring All Who Served
[Click For More Info]
In honor of [Link To User oldwarrior] - an inspiration to many in the Writing.com community.
"Use things and love people instead of using people and loving things."
Rest in peace, good sir. *^*Salute*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Honoring_All_Who_Served-433283_1.gif)