Matt Brundage

Just when I thought it was safe to eat healthy again, Annie goes to the store and brings back two large containers of ice cream, at least two packages of Pepperidge Farm cookies, a dozen doughnuts, tea cookies, chocolate chip cookies, brownies (with sprinkles), spicy hot potato chips, Boboli pizza dough, two four-packs of Starbucks Frappuccinos, and Lord knows what else. Add to that my new affinity toward Dagoba dark chocolate and Jiff peanut butter — and Annie’s propensity toward putting those bite-size chocolate morsels and Reese’s peanut butter cups in little bowls in the living room — it’s a wonder that my body hasn’t completely gone to seed.

On the bright side, at long last my weight now starts with a “1″ instead of a “2″ (well, at least for this week), so I must be doing something right. Let’s see how long it lasts. Here’s another meaningless graphic for those of you who enjoy such things…

• …in a browser. Ideal specimens, in descending order, are Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Safari 3.1, Firefox 2, IE7. Browser chrome should be optimized to increase viewable page area. Application(s) should — naturally — be maximized.
• …with an operating system released this decade on a PC manufactured after 2003. An Internet connection speed of at least 200kbps. Memory of at least 512mb. A system not infected with viruses or spyware.
• …with a minimum screen resolution of 1024×768, although 800×600 is still unofficially supported.
• …on a computer monitor with a contrast ratio of at least 600×1, at least 80 candelas per square meter (nits), and an ambient correlated color temperature of approximately 5000K. Ideal monitor connections are, in descending order, HDMI, Display Port, DVI, and VGA. Additionally, other factors will affect viewing, including proper visual perception and adequate room lighting (indirect natural sunlight and/or shielded halogens are recommended).

Additionally, readers should possess a strong command of the English language and should have the ability to detect such subtleties as irony, parody, and attempts at wry humor. Reading this post while under extreme mental anguish or substantial physical pain is not recommended.

The Pretenders’ “My City Was Gone“, known as the bumper music with the killer bass line on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, has typically been viewed as a protest song: focused on then-president Ronald Reagan’s economic policies. Between the lines, Pretenders’ singer Chrissie Hynde argues that Reagan’s policies (the “government”) contributed to the mall culture in middle America — whereby bedroom communities and open spaces are replaced with big box stores, fast food joints, off-ramps, and strip malls. While there is some validity in protesting against the homogenization of American culture, Hynde’s anger may have been misdirected. Let’s examine if Reagan could have contributed to the injustices that Hynde rails against:

The Budget process of the United States government states that the president shall submit a budget proposal to congress, who will then approve and/or modify the proposal. Reagan’s first budget request was for fiscal year 1982, which started on October 1, 1981.

Since “My City Was Gone” first appeared on wax in October 1982, Hynde only had a small window by which to pen the supposedly anti-Reagan lyrics. Reagan didn’t even take office until January 1981, and his budget wasn’t effective until October of that year. I seriously question the influence that Reagan (and the gridlocked 97th congress) had on new construction contracts in Akron, Ohio between October 1981 and the day that Hynde wrote “My City Was Gone”. For the sake of argument, let’s say spring 1982, although it could have been much earlier. Various sources indicate that the song was written before the death of The Pretenders’ guitarist James Honeyman-Scott which occurred in June of 1982.

In reality, Hynde is lamenting that her Ohio isn’t the Ohio she knew when she was younger. In a perfect world, there should have been a moratorium on all real estate development in Akron, Ohio in 1973 — the year Hynde left for London. It’s becoming apparent that Hynde is railing not only against development and change, but against capitalism and the market economy itself.

A certain confluence of situations has devolved this blog into a near-ghost town. Admittedly, posts of late have been less than superb. About the only bright spots are write-ups (that I didn’t write) and photos (some of which I didn’t take) of our rabbit, Sniff. There’s been some unintentionally funny images and musings that only a mother could write.

Apart from that, posts have been sort of boring. I just don’t have the flair that I once did. I’ve gotten the mindset of not blogging about specific topics because they’ve been done in bigger and better fashion by others. To compound matters, I don’t find my life particularly interesting. Deeply fulfilling, yes — but hardly interesting.

Some authors of topical blogs feel restricted in that they don’t have any leeway in what they can blog about. They blog about one topic, and write well. I have the opposite problem — my site has no true focus, so my posts swing wildly from religious and political musings and random humor to geeky stuff to what I happened to do last weekend. Because I have the freedom to post in any conceivable topic, I post infrequently, and with poor results. I’ve had better luck with Facebook’s status updates, a feature I adore because it enables me to post witty one-liners without all the rigmarole of creating a full-fledged blog post.

My resolution for the summer is to assign myself topics to blog about. I may even ask people to demand that I write a blog post about a specific topic — however obscure or esoteric. Whatever it takes to get out of these doldrums.