And so it begins.

Today we swing into full gardener, lawn care, landscape mode. We are planting tomatoes, spreading soil and grass seed, planting flowers, spreading fertilizer, weed killer, and hope. Hope mixed with some prayer and topped with wishes. Watered into the fresh, earth, carefully chosen, and purchased, carried home in the back of a pickup, hauled around by hand to the back of the house, cut open and spread with care to cover the bare spots. Seed sprinkled generously over the dark, rich soil. 

But, the real good news is the emergence of my true calling, “travel videographer.” I know a trip to the local warehouse style hardware store with its endless aisles, vanishing help, and dizzying variety of styles, prices and milling, moving rivers of customers wouldn’t seem to offer much fodder for a video, maybe though, if you look at it right. 

Streams of people, all with huge carts loaded with lumber, tools, plants, bags, bundles and bales, piled so high they can hardly see around them. So heavy they can hardly steer. Big, unwieldy tanks left right in the middle of the path and rush over to look at the pallet piled high with something on sale. A huge basket, heavy, imposing and impossible to get around, a rock in the middle of a stream, laws of fluid motion fueled by anger, haste, and self importance. 

You can almost hear the indignity. “That is where I was going to leave my cart, you inconsiderate slob.” And, if the pallet of sale items is significant enough there will be a row of heavy carts, running down the aisle, around the corner, and back to the door leading to the garden center. From that point it becomes a phenomenon that feeds itself.  More people see the fascination and want a small piece, without even knowing what lies at the end of the rainbow. 

It doesn’t take long for the wait to increase the pressure. By the time people get to the display they are in a feeding frenzy, convinced that anything worth that kind of line, slow, interminable had to be valuable enough to buy several, no matter what it was. Supply and demand at its most primitive. 

Fortunes are made in those moments. A mad dash, in slow motion, a wide band of shopping carts narrowing into a laser focus at one spot and exploding out from a single point, for something, anything. It is a play that repeats across stores, across cities and states, driving up the value of companies whose products have stirred the interest of a random shopper whose tastes runs toward bargains in bulk. 

I like to wander, look, touch, pick up things, examine them, wonder if the product and I could have a meaningful relationship. My wife hates it when I touch things, but she knows it is who I am, I have to touch fence posts, stop signs, it is how I practice communion with the world, it keeps me grounded. And I like to look at things in stores, find out if it would be my thing, a thing I could use. Normally it isn’t, sometimes, though. My wife goes with a plan, she has studied the advertisement, she knows what she wants, and has a path laid out in her mind. But she is willing to wander a bit, to keep me in sync with things, she is good to me that way.

Vacation Hero, the Video Game, (not really)

This summer we were not sure what to do on vacation. Normally we have our plans made, and our anticipating the sweet joy of irresponsibility by now. This year we were uninspired. So, we decided to spend a week in a small cabin at a state park. My wife suggested we go a little farther, maybe another state.

We drove through West Virginia on a trip to North Carolina a couple of years ago, and I fell in love with the state. Steep mountains, deep valleys, mist covered and beautiful. Green, explosions of green, bursting from the mountains that climb straight to heaven. So, I chose West Virginia.

"Find a nice place and make some reservations." My wife said.

"What?!?! I don't make reservations." I said, in shock.

My wife normally picks the place we stay. Carefully comparing cabins, looking at pictures, reading reviews, measuring locations against some sort of internal grading system. She spends hours researching, weighing, analyzing choosing. And she always comes up with a great place. She is thorough, careful and considerate.


I pick a place and start panicking. Then I look at other places and start hyperventilating. Then I go back to the first place and realize it might be ok, and then I fall completely to pieces, and start looking for something, anything that might make sense in a world gone mad, filled with cabins surrounded by God knows what, filled with terrors unimaginable. George Bernard Shaw said "you cannot be a hero without being a coward." I'm covered.

Traveling Mascot i

Then I go back to the first place, make a reservation and start putting my affairs in order because I know the end is near. Sweat beads on my brow, my hands shake, I start to develop a nervous tic, and at night I hear burglars.

"But, I am much better at picking the traveling mascots, and you are much better at picking the place we stay." I explain, in my most logical, reasonable, careful voice. We should both be on the on the same plane here.

"You have already picked the traveling mascot." She says, exasperated, her eyes looking to Heaven for strength.

"Just the first one, the easy one, the still photo one. I still have to pick the animated mascot."

"And the cabin," She said.

So, I picked the cabin, made the reservations, found the nearest Kroger, only 14 minutes away, chose the animated travel mascot, and rushed this video into production. No thanks to my wife. I have to do everything. 

Life Explained Space Station.

Recently we, here at Life Explained, purchased a gently used Space Shuttle. This is the latest step in our plans to spread Life Explained all over the universe.

Fortunately, with all of the zeal of my co-workers I am free to goof around a little bit. They have taken over procurement (fanatically), planning (if you want to call it that), and execution (though we are still deciding who to execute, nominations are being accepted).

Most people would let a turn of events like this affect their self esteem, somehow lessen their self

worth. Doctor Dawg and I prefer to think that if you surround yourself with able people who are willing to work long into the night, toiling endlessly over the minute details, dotting the Is and crossing the Ts, beating the horse and saddling up the drum it leaves us with a little flexibility. Like taking the VW beetle* and cruising up to Put In Bay for a day of leisure, and a few cold ones. And campaigning, of course.

Of course, we want to do out part so we made this video, with the new Life Explained water mark. Please, enjoy, and meet us on the island, we will buy the first round.

*Whoever bought the VW deserves a raise.

Life Explained, the Movie rises from its shallow grave.

We, here at Life Explained, would like to apologize for this latest egregious affront to humanity. We are sorry. But, the need to make a movie is all consuming, kind of like eating peanuts, once you start you can't stop.

Grab some popcorn, a pop and some earplugs, it is about to get real. 

A new chapter in the story of Life Explained.

Yesterday I wrote a blog post on the Tech Whacko site about video processing apps. I have several, and if you have read this blog before you know I love all apps. If this is your first trip here, well, I love all apps. But, video apps is an obsession all it's own. Probably an unhealthy, unholy, demon sort of obsession.

I will read about one, and think that looks pretty cool, and rush off to download the free version. Of course, as any fool could tell you, the free version is lame, and never worth the trouble.

But, here is why any fool is wrong! If I didn't download the free version how could I possibly have ever know how desperately I needed the full version. Once the free, stripped of all the really cool stuff had been tried, and found lacking then it was off to the App Store.

Seven dollars, it is a small price to pay for such a wonderful little bit of software wizardry. Of course, I needed the other one as a comparative model. There is no way I could know if my $7.00 had been well spent without buying the $6.00 competing app. Wow, that one is great too.

And, how about this one, it is only $3.00. What a steal.

Right now you are probably thinking, "big deal, Tim. Should we care about your foolish dreams? Are you going to continue going on and on about this? Don't you have anything better to do?"

To these questions I answer, Yes, Maybe, and Probably, and I will get to it in a minute.

Here is the thing, I have invested about sixteen smackers in these things, and now I am trying to convince my wife I need a new iPad to use  them effectively. The iPhone works but a bigger screen would be great. Which means you are going to be seeing a lot more videos on this blog. I apologize in advance.

But, she is not going to just take my word for the necessity of a new device. And, desperate times call for desperate measures. So, in the comments I need everybody to say something like "wow, that  is cool, just think of what you could do with a bigger screen."

Here is a trailer from my first blockbuster, smash hit, A Robot Looks at Humanity.

Thanks for your cooperation.

Some days things work out, some days they don't.

We were looking for a customer for our newest missile systems, an ingenious new weapons delivery platform. It uses an interdimensional drive module that makes it invisible until seconds before impact (please see the attached video for a demonstration*). By then it is too late for counter measures, unless you count uncontrollable sobbing and desperate begging as effective anti-missile defenses.

Turns out the namby pamby, technophobes in charge of weapons development want missiles they can track. It seems they are uncomfortable with explosive ordnance that just vanishes, poof, and magically appears on target. As far as we can tell it had something to do with Amelia Earhart, the Battleship Eldridge and the Philadelphia Experiment, whatever that was.

Even worse, all of the nations with any real cash for buying weapons felt the same. They had all lost some expensive, irreplaceable something at one time or another.

Then we heard, through back channels, about a giant, omnipotent organization, cloaked in secrecy, working behind the scenes to manipulate the the human race. A faceless, nameless entity, possibly evil, certainly controlling that had its dirty little fingers in everybody's pie.

What the heck, we reasoned. They are probably not interested in the mysterious vanishing missile but maybe we could get them to buy the company, and we could retire, with a little dignity, a little coin, and time to enjoy life.

Our lawyer contacted them. Here is their response.




































* Attached Video

Troubles in the Deep South.

In the newspaper today there was a list of presidential candidates and the amount of money each had raised. It was an obscene, embarrassing amount of money. More money than most of us even knew existed. It was very troubling, and we should talk about how much it cost to purchase an elected official.  But there is something more troubling. Apparently, there are giant centipedes in Texas.

Yes, everything is bigger in Texas, and it is a source of pride. However, this is probably getting a little carried away. According to reports the terribly big, probably lightning quick, monster is not a real threat to humans. The bite will be more of a sting that causes swelling than a deadly, debilitating, rapidly accelerating venom induced death spiral. 

There is no confirmation but, our crack team of Life Explained investigators report that this huge, terrifying beast uses an alternate method to stalk humans. It scares people to death. Fortunately, we did not lose any reporters to this menace. Mostly because they reported from their homes, in the basement, behind closed doors, under the pool table, covered by a tarp.

Thank you, fearless investigative reporters. You have the gratitude of an adoring nation.

We would like to take this opportunity to add that Dr. Dawg has accepted no campaign contributions (not yet, anyway, wouldn't you like to be the first?). And, if elected he promises to make all the giant centipedes wear bells, trying sneaking up on someone and scaring the bejesus out of them sounding like a department store Santa Claus.

Here is the latest campaign video. If you have a special interest group you would like us to pander to just drop us a line. There are plenty of people who feel they are being ignored by the major party candidates, those are all people, our folks.

Oh no, not another new blog.

I have another new blog (Thank you Jeremy Crow), Life Explained explains aging.  I am kind of good at this, I am even aging right now.  If you want to know how, go check it out.  And check out this video from one of my favorite new apps, Cam Animate.  It proves you are only as old as you feel, and I feel confused.

My Bracket, it was fun while it lasted.

As promised yesterday, here is my bracket for the NCAA tournament (2015 version).

Obviously, I am almost eliminated already.  That is really the plan, you know (not really)?  While everybody else is watching, tense, nervous, constantly checking their bracket, and their place in the bracket challenge(s). Chewing their fingernails, snapping at their families, cursing co-workers, spewing anger, disappointment, hate, and intolerance, just waiting for the hammer to drop I will be enjoying an icy cold, delicious beverage, and a tasty, warm, and with luck, healthy snack, and basketball.  This leaves me free to curse the refs, the fates, the unfortunate string of poor free throw shooting, the coriolis effect that is certainly reducing the three point shooting percentage of my team, anything that makes a convenient excuse for my team losing, almost without care.  

I know picking Kansas to win is crazy (forgive me Bill Self) they may be home before next weekend, but you have to pick somebody, and it should be somebody in the top 4 seeds.  I would have picked Louisville, except they showed Chris Jones the door, and losing your starting point guard right before the tournament is a bad omen.  And, in all fairness, I probably did pick them to win in one of the other brackets, I don't remember, and will let you know for sure, maybe.  And, as discussed yesterday, picking someone I don't want to win is impossible.  It leaves me rooting for a team I want to lose, or rooting against my bracket, and that is too much to ask. 

Here is my bracket with friendly, little cartoon people and musical accompaniment from the Spencer Davis Group.  You have to love those guys.

So, that is mine, enjoy, share yours if you want, the email address it tweettweetjohn@yahoo.com, and it will be posted here, for posterity.   And, if that makes you uncomfortable, that's cool, enjoy the tournament, I hope you win, I am pulling for you all the way.

Hey, can you help a dog in need?

This is my friend, the dog, at work.  As is obvious from this picture he is a good looking dog, and pretty darned smart, too.  He is also very friendly, and is really just a lot of fun to be around, a good friend, indeed.  But, he lacks basic verbal skills that are crucial to successful understanding, he can't talk.  And sometimes he looks at me, with those expressive, intelligent eyes, and I can't help but wonder what he is thinking.  

Now, through the miracle of the, patent pending, Life Explained Dog Thought Visualization DeviceÔ we can see what is on his mind.  As you can see, he is thinking of a nice, foamy delicious latte, with a wolf pattern.  What a delicious, delightful, way to start your day. 

Of course, we are all thinking a little more about coffee these days, knowing that +Mike Raven from the The Blog of Thog! is amassing an army of tea drinkers, a mob of tea drinkers, (I am not sure whether a large, potentially violent group of tea drinkers would be an army, a mob, a swarm, a pack or a gang, any advice here would be greatly appreciated, thank you), and they are bent on world domination.  And somebody needs to take a stand.  

It is time for everybody to take a stand.  So rush over here and voteVote early, vote often, and come up with a compelling reason why your drink of choice should be chosen by everyone, everywhere, all the time.  Use the hashtag #HOTDRINKDAY, even if you want something cold, and refreshing, we are not fussy.

Remember, it is your duty.

A little help, please.

Last night the moon was huge, it looked as if it were dropping in for a visit, maybe a danish, coffee, and the morning news.  It was even a little intimidating to look at, it was so big.  How small and insignificant these things make humanity seem, the world that surrounds us, and the universe that surrounds that, it is mystifying, grandiose and infinite.  And we are a small, pointless little infestation, filled with self importance and ego, sure of our infallibility, and our place in the universe.  Which is why we invented television

Ah, the joys of television, the guilty pleasure of watching Dr. Phil bring the hammer down on some poor schmuck, all while thinking, "what a moron.  I am way smarter than that dunce."  Maybe so.  Dr, Phil too real for you?  Try "reality television," it is completely divorced from reality.  Watching reality television is a little like watching professional wrestling, shifting alliances, well documented subterfuge, and sabotage, and the slight chance for an occasional injury.  Injuries, and Machiavellian intrigue in front of film crew, a microcosm of the human experience.  If this is not sounding like your cup of TV, don't give up yet.

There is televised sports, a sure fire escape, and if the game is not enough you can tune into a sports programming television network, and listen to them talk about sports all day long, into the night, and into the next day.  Lose yourself in high lights, and endless, explosive description of games that are already over.  It is a love/hate relationship without hope for escape. Everybody who watches sports with any frequency can tell you exactly why a team lost.  And it never involves the simple explanation, "wow, that team was a lot bigger, stronger, and faster than my team."  Deep inside every sports fan is a hall of fame coach, just one small break from a million dollar contract, a series of championships, and the love of all those adoring fans.

You might be asking yourself, "where is all this mindless, pointless drivel going?"  If so, you are probably new to this blog, but there is a point.  I have a showdown, with pride, and national identity on the line, well maybe not national identity, or pride, but a showdown, with +Mike Raven, from The Blog of Thog, about football, American Style, versus Football, the rest of the world style, which is, sort of, a continuation of our video production death match, and I find myself lacking any decent football video, that is not copyrighted or protected, and is free to use, I would hate to pirate anything, and end up breaking rocks in the "big house."  If you have any please email me at "tweettweetjohn@yahoo.com, or just let me know where to find it by putting in a link in the comment section.

The Second "New" Beginning of the Week.

As reported earlier I recently added a Microsoft Surface Pro 3 to the assortment of tools used in daily life, and the manufacture and distribution of this and several other blogs, social media accounts, and idea creation and storage enterprises.  It takes a lot of hardware, an iPhone, and iPad, a desktop computer, and a new tablet, laptop combination called the Surface Pro 3.  But, all of this circuitry, plastic, aluminum, glass, and all of the alchemy involved in turning electronic impulses into profound, unique ideas requires an enormous amount of software to support the magic.

However, these software packages do not recognize me as the owner of all these wonderful ideas stored in various "clouds" scattered around the skies and across the horizon along the information superhighway.  So, after loading all of the idea creation, sentence generating, picture distorting, and page storage programs on my new tablet / laptop wonder machine it was time to start logging in to all of the various services.  

AARRGGHHHHH!!!  Who can possibly remember which email account was used for these packages, let alone the passwords associated with each one.  Once you are logged in on your iPhone, or iPad, or computer, it is done,, you just stay logged in unless something odd happened.  Now, I had to trudge the endless, inescapable quagmire of safety, and security.  

I am all for intellectual property ownership, if you have any intellect, and anybody who has been reading my blog knows that I have no real concerns.  Even worse, though, than figuring which email was used, and resetting the password, many times, these sites would make me enter some barely discernible sequence of numbers and letters in a little box before letting me view and edit my ideas (if that is the right word).  I think it is all set now, though.

I'm afraid that spells big trouble for my foe +Mike Raven from The Blog of Thog, a Man, a Camera, a Legend.  I have storyboarded my next video in our furious battle for video production supremacy.

I have a problem.

I have become addicted to the "#App of the Week" @theappstore, on Twitter.  Particularly when apps to assist in the making of movies are involved.  If it ends with "matic" (Cinamatic, Kinomatic) it ends up on my phone.  Though, it doesn't really need to end with that suffix, it just seems to be a recent convention, and it adds an appeal, almost like putting "Spielberg," "Welles," or "Coppola" in the title.  It is a little frightening to think how quickly I will download the app with "Oscar Winner" in the title.

Honestly, though, to date the one I have used the most is called "Splice" and it is great.  It is very flexible, and easy to use.  "Splice" offers several ways to add a little flair to your "artwork" and is just a fun app to play with.  The biggest problem with "Splice" is the end, it lacks in ways to share your creation.  But, it was one of the first apps I got, so it is ancient in technology years. Still, it has been a good friend, and a man my age should not abandon things because they are a little older.

Anyway, it is with great anticipation that we enter the next stage of our "creative process."  Movie making here we come.

Here is the downside, for you, loyal members of the Life Explained Universe, there are going to be a lot more video posts on this blog.  It will start out a little rough, and then probably go downhill, rapidly gaining speed, careering off boulders, trees, railings, and pedestrians, crashing in an inglorious, anonymous pile of barely recognizable garbage at the bottom of a cliff.  But, those who have read this blog for a while know that won't stop me.  Onward through the smoke filled rubbish, that is my motto.

If you get irritated at this latest turn of events you can blame +Mike Raven who writes the hilarious and entertaining Blog Of Thog.  He has a YouTube channel, and is a very talented videographer, (plus, he has a remarkable idea for a "travelling book" that might might help all of us understand we are not so different, maybe he should pitch the idea at the UN, if they could stop bickering long enough to listen) and I have decided to compete with him in a Death Match of Video Production.  Please feel free to visit his blog, and leave a few snarky comments, I have heard, and I don't know if this is true, that he drives on the wrong side of the road.  I would post a link to his YouTube channel, but I can't find it at the moment, stupid technology, anyway.

So, to start my new career, here is the Introductory Video, Dr. Dawg For President.

Building, and the Chance for Exploitation.

They are "tearing down" the parking lot next to us and constructing a building.  It is a fascinating process to watch.  They assembled a temporary fence around the parking lot, then bought in a huge excavator, and tore up the asphalt.  One worker was operating the machine, clawing up the pavement, and the other watching.  That is one getting over job, standing there watching somebody maneuver a tractor, but it would get very dull very quickly, plus, in direct opposition to well established stereotype, he did not even have a shovel handle to lean on.  Maybe it is part of a fitness initiative, "leave the shovel in the truck, tone up, trim down, live longer."

In an effort to reduce the risks associated with construction jobs workers are now required to wear bright neon shirts, or vests, and hard hats.  So these men, surrounded by chain link fence, tearing up a parking lot, with nothing above them but sky are safe.  From what?  There is a shirt that said "if I were a bird I know who I would poop on."  That makes me laugh every time I think about it.  Honestly, I would need to give it some thought, before I picked the target, if I were a bird, but it would not be one the poor man standing there watching his "co-worker" rip apart the parking lot with a tractor, he has enough problems.  Besides, his head is protected, he has a hard hat.

Once in a while men show up in shiny blue jeans, and button down shirts, normally they have the cuffs rolled up, and they look pretty official, it is obvious they are not there to tear anything up.  They point randomly around the destruction that used to be a parking lot, sweeping motions that might embrace the whole block, I worry for our parking lot.  Suddenly, they realize there is a tree across the street, and they scurry over to stand under the leafy branches, and it is not clear if it is for shade or protection, since they are not wearing hard hats, it would muss their stylishly combed hair.

Anyway, I have decided to take advantage of the opportunity provided by fate, and Verizon wireless.  I am going to take a picture at random times during the day, sometimes once, sometimes more, and at some point I am going to assemble these photos in an animation app I have on my iPad, and put the whole thing to music, and then post it on here.  Aren't you lucky?

If you have a preference for the song, or type of music, let me know, and if I can come up with nothing better I will use your suggestion.  And as an added bonus, I will give you credit for the choice in the opening and closing scenes of the video.  Aren't you lucky.

A brief re-creation of our trip to the spring game in Lincoln

Here is a short film, depicting our recent trip to the Spring Game in Lincoln. It is only minutes and four seconds long, though, you will probably feel it was much longer, if you watch the whole thing. It would be a good idea to turn down the volume, I like music loud.

Please enjoy, or at least tolerate, and smile politely.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Somewhere in the midwest.