Wayne’s Whirled

So when I in Vegas several weeks ago, I found that they have renovated the pool area at the Golden Nugget downtown.  What they included was a shark tank with a slide that goes THROUGH it; check out the girl going through right past the sharks!

Either that or she has a thorn in her paw.

Being an avid reader, I was surprised myself that I have found it more difficult to get going when I pick up a book (either new or one I am currently reading).  In the absence of some accountability, I will read for 18 seconds, stop and pet the dog for two minutes, go over to the piano and play for 92 seconds, stop and go check my email, come back and read for three minutes, etc in this endless loop of doing a million things but doing none of them for long or very well.

The solution for me (which has worked incredibly well for being so simple) is that I will use the timer on my phone, set it for ten minutes and make myself do whatever I am doing until that timer goes off.  Oddly enough if I choose to read (or anything else, really), once the timer goes off, I am engrossed enough in the activity that I want to continue.  It’s like I need to get over some attention span hump and then all is well.

I have wondered about this for a while, and recently saw this article in The Atlantic that questions whether the small snippets of information constantly streaming through the internet have affected our attention span.

It’s amazing how much better I feel to have somewhat of a diagnosis and know that I am not alone

My name is Wayne, and I am an information-aholic.

This was taken in the drive through line at McDonald’s a week ago.  I know I had to be there to snap the picture but I was just getting a side salad and a glass of warm water.

My friends Max and Princess think that I need new tennis shoes:

Here’s a hint: theirs are BLINDING!

So I was waiting for some food to go last night at a rather busy place, sitting in a chair reading when this kid who was around 11 asked if the chair next to me was used.  I said no and he sat down and started playing a racing game on his Sony PSP.  I was impressed with the graphics so I said “Cool.”

He looked over at me and my book and said:

“Books are cool too.  They just aren’t as interactive“.

He then proceeded to chide his mom for reading Danielle Steele chick lit garbage, his quote being

“I don’t know how you can read that drivel.”

The kid was ELEVEN.

Okay, so I am stealing from Naughty By Nature’s song “OPP” from back in MY college days, but in this case it is “OPC”, as in Other People’s Children.  And regardless of the lyric, I am often NOT down with it.

Don’t get me wrong; I think kids can be great. You know, when they are well-behaved, charming, wide-eyed, curious and when they are on a “time out”. What gets me is how the public behavior of OPCs is getting worse over time; I know if I had thrown a fit in a grocery store when I was a kid, that shopping trip was not going to last very long. It seems like most parents “back then” placed a priority on NOT BOTHERING THE CRAP OUT OF EVERYONE ELSE AROUND THEM and so they would leave the store and shop another time.  The same for movies or restaurants; so what the hell happened?  I say we go back to old school:

Thoughts?

So last night I saw a show called Britain’s Worse Teeth; given all the jokes made about bad British teeth you can only imagine what these might have looked like.  No fear!  Thanks to TiVo and a digital camera I give you the following:

That’s pretty bad, even by British standards.  Alas, they were not able to be saved and he ended up with dentures

I think this is the sister of Kenny from South Park…