An ad from a Bed, Bath and Beyond circular.

I’m tired of the “Live, Love, Laugh” trend.  I saw this item in a circular yesterday, and it struck me as home decoration that will not age very well. In 20 years, that kind of stuff is going to look ridiculous.

It’s heavy speculation to hang words in the house.  For instance, the font could fall out of favor.  Think of how poorly popular fonts of the 1970s have aged.

Anyway, whenever I hear or read “Live, Laugh, Love” (or its verbose cousin “Live Well.  Laugh Often.  Love Much.”), I don’t think of it as a credo for how to live.  It always sounds like the tagline to a yogurt commercial.  I see families slow-motion-slurping yogurt in some fantasy land of golden sunshine and tire swings.

This one slipped through the spam filter at work:

Hello! How are you? You would like to communicate with me? To me of 28 years and my name Victoriya. I from Russia, city Kazan ‘. I pass love in my life, and I wish to find it! I am a unique girl, good, attractive, intellectual, active and quiet, but lonely… I believe, that I deserve happiness as any person. How you think, – that the most important in this life? I believe, that you will agree with me, that the LOVE is that we search for all… I shall aspire to do my person happy, I thirst convenient evenings together where we embrace on a sofa and to speak words about love whisper… I have many interests in a life as reading, cookery, dialogue with friends, visiting new places and I investigate all new. I search for the responsible person, the one who can show me wisdom, love and attention which he has.

If you wish to study me better, I shall wait for your letter on mine e-mail:  victoriyahalturina@rambler.ru

If you will write to me I with pleasure shall answer all your questions as something inside speaks me, that something big and beautiful can grow between us…
Have a good time!
Victoriya

Have you examined lately what your friends have done to your life?

The premise: Facebook now rivals e-mail as the easiest way to communicate electronically with many people.  Among my friends — and I’m talking about people with whom I want to make plans regularly — a Facebook message will get a faster response than an e-mail.  This requires people to spend relatively large amounts of time on the site.

Clearly, spending that much time on Facebook lures a people to drink from their own stream of consciousness.  We’re treated to their momentary obsessions and fleeting thoughts searching for the quickest exit (in this case, through the fingers).   In the end, you get a whole bunch of nothing and scores of people who “like” it.  There are a lot of people seeking approval out there and as many others willing to give it.

I took action last month.  I instituted a policy to ban (later amended simply to “hide”) people who post random song lyrics as status updates.  I’ve already hidden three people.  I would hide everybody and use Facebook only as an elaborate e-mail, chat and event-management service, but it’s sometimes fun to look through the list of friends and see who has the least to say.   It gives me something fresh to talk about behind their backs.

The status update has become, perhaps, the lowest form of communication (lower than the T-shirt).  It’s worthless.  Your friends are wasting your time.  Don’t just sit there and take it.

I have revisited the show “Strangers with Candy” in the past few weeks.  I was a fan when it first aired about 10 years ago, and the episodes are fun to pull out and watch every few years.

It’s a show that’s full of boundary-jumping, wide-open, blatant crassness — and the returns are diminishing as I get older.  It’s still funny, but I mostly enjoy watching it now with people who haven’t seen it before and delighting in their shocked laughter.

When I was 20, a gasp was as good as a laugh.  At 30, I prefer the laugh.

What a night. I had some marvelously vivid dreams.

First, I dreamed Rush Limbaugh showed me his two children. They were mostly air-filled and floating in a swimming pool.

I then dreamed that my mom and I had to fly to Boise, Idaho, to manage a circus for the weekend. We were flying on Southwest, and I was trying to write my name and address on one of those paper luggage tags at the ticket counter. But they all were TWA luggage tags and people had already written on them.

Later in that dream, I was in a St. Paul, Minnesota, motel. I saw a couple of dark-suited, sunglassed men stealing the contents of my room — including the motel’s furniture. My gut told me they were agents of some kind. As they were driving away, I jumped through an open window and into their vehicle. I put my hands over the driver’s face. He proceeded to show off his considerable memory by reciting which intersections were were crossing as my hands blinded him. I grabbed the wheel and crashed us into a house.

Maybe I’m not watching enough television.

Well, this is the first activity of any kind on brianshrader.com in about a month. I’ve been in the house-buying-and-moving process. Harrowing, but fine, I guess.

I’ll probably remember 2009 for the recession more than buying my first house. This has been my first adult recession, and what a way to start! I spent the first six months frightened at the prospects of a collapsing economy and the second six months betting on its future health by buying a house.

What’s the worst that could happen?

I could starve to death, broken and penniless in the woods, I guess.

Being a homeowner isn’t really an accurate description of the situation. Better: I have an agreement with the bank to let me live here and do things while I pay for the house a couple of times over. I’m a stickler for the truth.

[Writer's note: On the radio right now, Don McClean's blabby, sickening "American Pie" is stinking up the airwaves. It's downstairs, and I don't have the energy to turn it off. So, if the influence of it's gassy lyrics and ham-fisted imagery drag this blog post to a watery grave, I apologize. Blame Don and your fellow man.]

There are two great features of the new place. It’s far enough away from civilization that I feel like I’m in the sticks. It’s 10 minutes from a grocery store, 10 minutes from a gas station, 10 minutes from a stop light. Marvelous! Spotty cell phone service, but quiet. It’s in a one-street subdivision, and every house is back in the woods. We all have the same idea. I enjoy hearing the distant pops of shotgun and rifle fire in the afternoons. I’ll take this over cookie-cutter suburbia any day. Every neighborhood I looked at reminded me of a beehive. I don’t want to live in a beehive.

I’m waiting to see some wildlife out here. You never know when you’ll have to pick off a squirrel for breakfast. Hey — I’ve already been through one recession, friend. You just never know what’s going to happen. So far, no wildlife, except for a neighbor’s bizarrely skittish dog. He’ll slowly walk up, sniff your hand or pants, then suddenly tear away as if you popped a bag in his face. I’m glad this dog is not a person, or I’d have serious qualms about living here. Something has come loose in his brain.

The other great feature is that the place came with three burn barrels! There’s no more natural place to spend time in a recession than huddled around a barrel of burning trash. It’s fitting and I love it.

Buying a house consumes a lot of your life, so I understand why new parents fall out of rhythm with the rest of us. Once upon a time, I was carefree and floating. Now, I’m measuring for weatherstripping and keeping a close watch on the electric meter.

Carry on to 2010.

Once upon a time, I was a Junior Cub Broadcaster, working at the now-dark radio station in Fuquay-Varina. I was 15 and blessed to have a fun job running the board there. We ran syndicated shows in the afternoon, and that left me plenty of time to play.

I remember listening to a CD of the best radio spots of that year (1994), and I’ve never forgotten one of them. It was for some bank, which wanted to project a friendly, local feel. The spot had a parody jingle for “Behemoth Bank and Trust.” It sounded just like a bank jingle. Here are the lyrics:

When you walk into Behemoth Bank
Don’t expect a smile
Or a friendly “how do you do?”
‘Cause that’s just not our style

We’ve got a ton of money,
So why should we give a hoot?
We’re Behemoth Bank and Trust
And we don’t care about you.

It started Monday morning as an innocuous sore throat, but quickly descended into fever and chills by evening. I’ve been laid up since Monday night with some kind of hell cold. It faked me yesterday with a slight recovery before slamming me last night with another round of chills. I’m feeling better this morning, but there’s no doubt that I’m going through a double-dip health recession.

Last night, my nasal congestion settled into my throat, and I had the sorest throat on record. I was tired, but whenever I drifted off to sleep, some muscle in my throat involuntarily clenched and I’d suddenly wake up with a sharp, stabbing pain in my throat. Miserable. I finally fell asleep around midnight, but awoke at 5 a.m. I popped a Benadryl and just woke up from that fake chemical-sleep, so I feel like I’m living in Jell-O.

Realizing that something as insignificant as a head cold had me moaning in pain in a hot, sweaty bed all night makes me prayerful that I will not end up writhing in a death bed.

Fever dreams are bad enough, but when you combine it with a sore throat, look out. Every time you swallow, your body feels the discomfort, and I’m sure it incorporates that into the dream. Monday night, I had a lengthy, frustrating fever-and-sore-throat dream about selecting a dining room table. I don’t remember the details, but the dream world made it impossible to select an appropriate dining room table. It had to do with angles. This is the third fever-and-sore-throat dream I’ve had that involved insoluble math problems. This is telling.

Of course, sick days are full of attempts to entertain yourself and whiling away the hours of quiet despair. Netflix provided the foundation of my entertainment. I added some things to the Instant Viewing queue and watched them in bed with the Roku player, which is the finest electronic device on the market today. Monday night, I enjoyed a couple of “Dragnet 1967″ episodes, some Jack Benny episodes and the movie “Network.” It was the first time I’d seen “Network,” and I really enjoyed it. What a pleasure to watch Robert Duvall being angry.

Yesterday morning, I watched all of the “American Experience” series on FDR and the first episode about Truman. The story of Franklin and Eleanor’s marriage is a real tragedy, and it brings into focus Hillary Clinton’s interest in Eleanor Roosevelt (remember when she said she felt Eleanor’s presence in the White House?). I also didn’t realize how quickly Truman’s star rose in the years before he became vice-president.

So, now that my throat is feeling better, I’m going go and swallow some things. I will relish these moments.

I’ve heard so many people cheering on fall this week. We had a little bit of a cool spell, bright blue skies and low humidity, and people were jonesing for more.

Just stop! Listen to yourselves! Autumn is the ultimate bait-and-switch. We’re frogs slowly being boiled to death. This is the start of the long, slow, miserable slide into winter.

This deterioration of joy really started June 21, the first day of summer [as I noted here a few days later]. That’s another trick to get your mind off the inevitable. You’re duped into celebrating the start of “summer,” but the death sentence has been written. The days progressively get shorter from that point on.

In Raleigh, NC, we have 14 hours and 35 minutes of day on June 21. From that point forward, we lose a little each day — all the way to December 21, when we have a mere 9 hours and 45 minutes of daylight. The sun sets at 5:05 p.m. on December 21! It could always be worse. The sun falls from the sky at 3:47 p.m. in Presque Isle, ME. [For the record, the high was 12°F on December 21, 2008, in Presque Isle. They had a 24 mph wind gust at one point. The low temperature: -29°F.]

So, while you’re whooping it up at the beach, by the pool or on the patio, enjoying those wonderful summer evenings, the Earth is stealing your day!

Sure, the fall is delightful. Those first few crisp autumn days are refreshing. But this is like saying, “My goodness, the view was spectacular as my airliner went down.”

Enough is enough! Winter is coming! It’s three to four months of mandatory death and desolation, as far as the eye can see! A careless, cold wind lays waste to the landscape. From the dead ground, twisted, gnarled, bare tree limbs claw at a dead sky. The teeming air, once filled with the calls of cicadas and crickets is silent.

You would go out and try to look for some kind of life on that deadscape, but you can’t stand being out in that miserable weather. A sunny winter day in Raleigh probably is due to a good cold front that just blew through. It’s 38 degrees with a enervating 25 mile per hour wind. If it’s not sunny, then it’s raining for four crummy days. The temperature, again, probably is sitting at 38 degrees.

If it does drop below freezing, it’s likely going to be an ice storm, and you’ll be unable to leave your house that lost its electricity three days ago.

You fall-lovers — you people are sickos! Check back in February to see who’s right.

The trees have hit that point in late summer where they just look tired.

Summer is now entering it’s senior years. It’s still active. It still has life. But it certainly doesn’t get around like it used to. Summer can still crank it up into the 90s, but the days of withering heat are in the past.

It’s like an empire that’s in decline. Yesterday, it was 68 degrees and raining. No doubt, this flagrant imposition of fall really knocked summer for a loop. It’s probably panicking — scrambling for a response. People who love summer know it won’t be long now.

I was heading out for my walk around the block Friday when I saw Sky 5 floating over the trees, coming in for a landing. I headed back to the newsroom, grabbed my camera and walked out in time to get some HD video of Sky 5 taking off.

It never, never gets old.