Status: Single
Country: US
|
|
|
|
October 6, 2009 - Tuesday
 |
Category: Life
....................
I suppose if it were possible to lay out all the food I'm
going to eat for the rest of my life, the amount would cause me to react in
some dramatic way. Perhaps I'd
salivate. Perhaps I'd gag or get
nauseous. Too much. No way to deal with the quantity.
.. ..
I wonder if that's the way I, and many other people, react
to the world's woes. Too much. No way to deal with the quantity. Global warming. Poverty.
Hole in ozone layer. Melting ice
packs. Air pollution. Traffic deaths. Cancer.
HIV. Swine flu. Ebola virus.
War. Violent crime. Heck, non-violent crime too. The economy.
Bigotry. Tribalism. Plain old rudeness. The middle east. ....North Korea..... Overcrowding in prisons. Overcrowding on the freeways. Overcrowding all over the durned place.
.. ..
Maybe as a way to deal with this, just as we do,
inadvertently with all the food we're going to eat for the rest of our lives,
we only look at a small portion at a time.
Even the federal government does this.
Trying to change health care and health insurance matters, while trying
to deal with the economy, while dealing with wars in ..Iraq..
and ....Afghanistan....,
climate matters get pushed to the back burner.
Can't deal with everything at once.
.. ..
As individuals we could spend every cent we get, and every
waking moment trying to save people from hunger, homelessness, lack of health
care, etc. But few - if any - people are
going to do this. I'm not sure if
everyone working on such matters - and I mean everyone - would do the trick,
but I do know that not everyone is going to.
There are always problems. There
is always poverty, hunger, illness.
There seems to always be war.
People, most certainly including myself, tend to do what seems most
expedient, what serves oneself best. And
perhaps we brush a few crumbs off our table of time and money and energy
towards the problems, as a sop to our conscience. I generally give a dollar to anyone who asks
me for money, but I'm aware that my real motivation is avoiding the thought
later on that I should have helped this person.
A dollar seems to quiet that thought.
I could help an individual. I
think. I could take this person into my
home, or even put them into an apartment and see that he or she is fed and
clothed and taken care of. I'm not quite
sure I could afford that, but I might be able to. Perhaps I could devote myself to making it
happen. Work for some extra income in
order to take care of this person. And
that'd be one person whose life would, or at least might be, better. One person.
.. ..
There'd still be all the problems I mentioned above. Global warming, poverty, etc. This one person would be helped. That's not a bad thing. It's a good thing, probably. It is not an effective solution, however,
except for this one person. And it might
have a negative impact on my life. If I
give this person money that I would otherwise spend on something frivolous,
perhaps that would be practical, although if everyone joined in, there'd be a
lot more money given to charities, and probably a lot more businesses going
under because people were giving their money to charity rather than buying
video games, Hello Kitty handbags, or potato chips.
.. ..
And if I were to give away money that I would otherwise put
aside (save or invest) then I'd be more likely to join the ranks of those in
poverty later on in my life, when I may very well need this money I'm not
giving away and not spending on Led Zeppelin t-shirts.
.. ..
There are a lot of problems, and a lot of sadness all over
the place. Perhaps a small bit of it
happens because of human behavior of various kinds. Lots of it (tsunamis, floods, earthquakes,
volcanoes, hurricanes - assuming none of these are caused by climate change
created by us) seems to have no connection to human behavior. But what to do? What to do?
.. ..
I think between e-mail and the regular post I get 5 to 20
begging letters a month. From
organizations, mostly, though some of the e-mail (mostly in the form of various
scams) may be from individuals. I can't
help them all. If I sold everything I
owned, and gave away every cent I had, I wouldn't be able to give even one
penny to every poverty stricken person on earth. Probably not even within the citizenry of the
....U.S.....
.. ..
So what can I do? And
what should I do? First off, I believe
what I should do is what I want to do.
That may sound selfish and I agree.
It is selfish. I believe that the
only thing one truly owns is one's own life.
It is my life. It is entirely up
to me to choose what to do with my life.
My own values - and I certainly encourage everyone else to adopt them -
would limit me to actions that do not harm or cause suffering. Even there I've compromised. I drive a car. This is harmful for the environment. I buy things that come with plastic
packaging, and this is also harmful for the environment. I probably use more energy than is really my fair
share, considering how many people do not have access to sufficient energy for
their most basic needs.
.. ..
Doing what I decide I want to do, seems to include wanting
to be of some assisstance. First I must
take care of me. After that, I think my
choices are to help those who are already meaningful to me - my friends, for
example. And after that, the struggle to
address climate change seems to me to be the most meaningful matter to deal
with. If the earth changes to a less
liveable state, it will inevitably effect absolutely everyone on earth. This makes it more urgent than a cure for
cancer, poverty, or even ending war - although there may be a connection
between war and accelerated climate
change.
.. ..
So here I am. Trying
to live my life, save for the future, and perhaps advance the fight against
global warming in a small, very small way.
Me and Al Gore and Ed Begley Jr.
Where's Mr. T., we can be the new A-Team.
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
September 27, 2009 - Sunday
 |
............
During a considerable amount of the 1990's I was
unhappy. Depressed, actually. I didn't like myself. I felt embarassed to be me. I don't know if I would be able to explain
this, or determine what caused me to feel this way, but I felt unloved and
unloveable and I definitely felt miserable.
Every moment of every day?
Nah. But far too frequently to
enjoy life. I got past it. Maybe because of therapy. That certainly could be what got me through
it. On the other hand, maybe not. Maybe it was like a storm I passed
through. It seemed to have started in
late '92 after the breakup of a multi-year long distance relationship that I
should have ended much much earlier, but that didn't end until she ended it,
and I'm thankful she did - though at the time I didn't feel this way. Was that the cause? The trigger?
I don't know.
.. ..
What I do know is that I found a way to focus on good things
in my life that became a nearly daily exercise and that I think is useful for
myself and for others. Useful in the
sense that it forces one away from the negative, even if only in an
intellectual sense.
.. ..
I made a list of 100 things in my life that made life feel
worthwhile and/or gave me pleasure. Now
pleasure is not happiness, but it's sure a lot better than focusing on
sadness. Making a list focused me on
what there was in my life that made each day worth living. Each day I'd try to make that list without
referring back to the list of the day before.
Not that they couldn't end up being the exact same 100 things. That was okay. Also, if I got really stuck before reaching
100, I let myself look at earlier lists.
I tried to make the list without looking at prior lists, but it wasn't
against the rules.
.. ..
My list included a few friends' names, and even a few
favorite authors or book titles. But a
lot of what was on the list were things from nature (sunrises, ripe peaches,
blueberries, lightning, butterflies) and things that many of us may take for
granted (having a decent place to live, running water, access to health care, a
good running car).
.. ..
It was definitely an effort to make that list 100 items
long, but that effort really made me focus on what in my life gave me pleasure,
joy, happiness, and I could always refer to the list if I were feeling
particularly blue.
.. ..
It is, I think, pretty normal to take certain things for
granted, especially if they've been part of our lives for a long time. There are plenty of people who suffer from
health problems from early on in their lives, but, thankfully, I'm not one of
them. Therefore, good health is easy to
take for granted. But it is one of the
things I am extremely thankful for, since we all know, from our own experiences
with illness, no matter how temporary, how dramatically bad health changes our
outlook. A big house, a fancy car, a
great career, maybe even a loving family, definitely take on less importance
when one's life is filled with pain or discomfort and anxiety about what comes
next.
.. ..
So, for myself, I try to remember to focus on those things
in my life that make my life feel worth living.
Sunrises and sunsets. Naps in the
afternoon. Playing guitar. Ladybugs.
The sound of a train in the distance (definitely not pleasurable if it's
right next door). The scent of pine
trees, the sound of water (waterfalls, rainfall, even showers). Mountains in the distance, sweet potato pie,
puppies. Having my own place to live
with indoor plumbing. Air
conditioning. Political freedom.
.. ..
Perhaps it's a bit like saying grace. Thanking the universe for the goods I've
received. And keeping the bads a bit at
bay.
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
September 12, 2009 - Saturday
 |
Current mood:definitely other
................................
When I was younger - not that much younger, actually - I
believed that just because a piece of furniture - say a couch - had always been
a couch, and never changed into something else, didn't mean that at any given
moment it wouldn't change into something else - say a fire breathing
dragon. And devour me. Or you.
That the universe, being billions of years old, dealt with time
differently than you or I. Something has
remained what it has always been for - what?
Minutes? Hours? Days? Weeks?
Months? Years? Centuries?
Millenium? So what? A mere snap of the finger for the
universe. So if a mere couch has been a
(mere) couch for decades even, what of it?
So it's a couch for 40 years, and then it's a fire breathing
dragon. Just because neither you nor I
have ever seen anything like it, doesn't mean it can't happen.
.. ..
This, however, was not a comfortable way to view life. It had to do with feelings of uncertainty,
anxiety, fears. Somehow, during the
years I was in therapy, my point of view changed.
.. ..
Yet, the thought remains.
Just because something has never happened, or simply not happened in
one's own experience, or in what one's read of or heard of, doesn't mean it
won't. In the early 80's I lived in ....Portland.. ..Oregon..... I don't know if volcanologists felt
differently, but your average man (or woman) on the street certainly wasn't
expecting ....Mt... ..St. Helens.... to return to being an active
volcano and blow it's top off. It hadn't
happened in, I think, anyone's lifetime that was living at the time, so no one
thought it would. But it did.
.. ..
It's 9/11, and eight years ago on this date something
happened that no one expected to happen.
Or if not no one, few. Then it
did.
.. ..
....Mt...
..St. Helens..... 9/11.
The Red Sox winning the pennant.
Bernie Madoff. No one expects,
and then....
.. ..
I believe it is difficult for us to maintain a sound perspective
on things. We're humans, we deal mostly
with other humans. We deal with our
human businesses. If, like me, you live
in a big city, you see few stars. A sky
chock full of stars might give a person a slightly different perspective. Remind them that they're but very very small
creatures in a very very large universe.
But living, as I do, in the ....L.A..... The world seems like something constructed by
mankind.
area, I see few stars, and many many more buildings and streets than trees and animals.
.. ..
But it's not. The
world, our world, this earth, is, compared to us, immense. And much much much much more complicated than
our day to day lives. And the world, our
world, this earth, is minute. A speck of
sand compared to the Milky Way, and the Milky Way a speck of sand compared to
the universe in total.
.. ..
I'm an actor, which is sometimes considered an artist. And I like art in many different forms. Otis Redding, Mozart, Picasso, Henry Moore,
Albert Bierstadt, Derek Jacobi, John Gielgud, Dennis Potter, Manet, Nureyev,
Blind Blake, W.M.S. Turner, Copland, and others. But I cannot see that any art, made by man,
compares to the beauty of the natural world.
Sorry Pablo. Sorry Rudolf. Sorry Dennis.
A bear, a tree, the ocean, the clouds, clover, a ladybug, the sound of
the wind through the trees, a lightning storm, the subjects of those awesome
photos taken by the Hubble Telescope.
That's beauty. That's
incomparable beauty.
.. ..
Was there actually a time before all this was all this? Will there be a time when all this is no
more. Or something different? And if all this becomes something different,
will it come as a big surprise? Something that no one expected? And if so, then what?
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
September 10, 2009 - Thursday
 |
....................
Didn't I just write about this?
.. ..
My friend Heather, who is also my realtor - I'm shopping for
a condo - was to meet me in Encino this afternoon. She driving up from town on traffic clogged
405, me from ....Glendale....,
and traffic on the 101 was so bad I got off to finish the trip on surface
streets. Only Heather got there ahead of
me, opened the lock box (a place where the keys to a property are kept so that
realtors can show the place) and found no keys.
That's the 2nd time this week this has happened.
.. ..
There seem to be 3 possibilities for the reason. 1) The property has been purchased or at any
rate is in process, and the keys have been removed by the seller's agent. 2) The realtor who looked at the property
last forgot to replace the keys and drove off with them - this would be sloppy,
unprofessional, and rude, but still no worse than a mistake. 3) The realtor who looked at the property
last purposely took the keys so that he or she would have a better chance at a
sale. This would be somewhat
understandable in today's economic climate, but inexcuseable in matters of
manners or morals.
.. ..
Heather and I each lost over an hour of our days, and put
mileage on our cars and burned gas (consider both pollution and the cost of
gas) unneccessarily.
.. ..
Has this become a way of doing business? My last two blogs have been about dealing
with unhelpful corporations, and now this blog deals with the dirtier aspects
of the real estate business. One would
have to be a polyanna to think that everyone will behave politely and fairly,
but it still rankles when one is effected by the other kinds of behavior.
.. ..
If the person who drove away with the keys falls into the
3rd reason I described above, I certainly hope they get their comeuppance in
some way. Perhaps a root canal. Or to return to their car and find they have
a flat tire after the next time they show a property. Ha!
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
September 10, 2009 - Thursday
 |
Current mood:sardonic
....................
I have been using the same cell phone for at least a few
years now. Probably longer than
that. It's a phone. No camera, and I don't know how to go on-line
with it, or text. It's a clamshell
design and recently I had begun to wonder whether the sound quality had gone
downhill, and if I should get a new one for that reason.
.. ..
I had saved a small lanyard from my previous cell phone, and
installed it on this one. A lanyard is
simply a small sort of leash. I found it
convenient.
.. ..
However, I didn't find it so convenient when, getting into
my car last Saturday, the lanyard got caught in my car door handle and was
thereby jerked out of my hand and went scuttling onto the asphalt of the
parking lot I was in. The battery popped
off the back. I put the battery back on,
powered the gadget back up and that's that.
.. ..
Only that wasn't that.
Three days later I realized that my phone didn't work. It turned on.
Actually it did everything it's supposed to, except the audio seemed to
have gone bye-bye. I could place calls,
but not hear the person, or, more frequently I suppose, the answering machine
at the other end. The phone would ring,
audibly, but I couldn't hear the person who'd called. The rest of the functioning attributes of the
phone were rather superfluous without this one, all important function.
.. ..
So I went to Sprint, my wireless carrier - which is my pet
name for them - and priced a new phone.
There was a similar, but slightly sleeker, slightly slimmer, slightly
less easy to use the slightly smaller buttons phone, that didn't have a camera -
something I crave in a phone, the not having a camera - for only $19.99 if I
signed up for two more years of service.
.. ..
I'd finished my last two year contract years ago, and really
didn't want to sign up for another.
There were also 2 phones I could get for some higher price, the entirety
of which would be refunded as a rebate - a strategy I simply don't
understand. This will cost you 80
million dollars, but we'll give you back 80 million dollars after you buy
it. How in the world does that make any
sense? - but these 2 phones each had cameras.
See above.
.. ..
So. $19.99, comes
with a charger for the home, but not for the car. Requires a 2 year use contract. Fine.
Ring me up. So the nice gal
starts the paperwork. First I have to
read the contract, which is available for me to read on a 4 inch by 3 inch
screen in tiny font. Then sign, or at
least click on "OK". Oh, and
there's an $18 activation charge. Why
would anyone buy a phone and not want it activated? Therefore, why isn't the activation charge
included in the price? Easy answer. They can't say it costs $19.99 then. This is nearly identical to the strategy
pursued by Dell which I blogged about 2 days ago. It is, I think, part of American business practice. If you've ever bought a new car, you've
experienced it. Did you want the
protective coating? Tinted windows? Extended warrantee? Upgrade the stereo? Tires?
An engine? Did you want the car
activated....
.. ..
I could, of course, have said no. I'll go get a phone from T-Mobile, or
AT&T or whoever else is out there with a cell phone business. The problem is that I'm not dealing with a
Sprint employee who cares one whit whether I go or stay. The bottom line is not this person's
concern. Customer satisfaction is not
this person's concern. Very little about
their job is of concern to them. They
have to be there and do this work in order to get their paycheck. Everything else is just noise.
.. ..
And, like with Dell, I would hesitate, and then decide that
my time was more valuable to me than this additional charge, and this one, and
this one. Does that mean I throw my
money around, or even away? I don't
think so. I think it means that this
sort of wearing down is effective, and at some point I want my life to be about
something besides getting the best deal.
I'd rather put up with being mildly - and not so mildly - ripped off,
and have time to read a book or watch a movie.
.. ..
But I hate being a faceless consumer, of no importance at
all to the businesses I do business with, except as a pocket they can put their
corporate hands into and withdraw money.
The consumer society may have made life more liveable for many many more
people - I'm not sure it has, but it may have - but it hasn't made any of those
people enjoy the experience of being treated as domesticated animals.
.. ..
And one final, contrary, positive note. Phillip Moon, the guy who helped me put my
website together (www.markchaet.com) for a very reasonable price, has since
then helped me update my website, when I couldn't remember how to do it
myself. Just this week I had to contact
him again for the same purpose. I
couldn't remember how to make the changes.
And, as usual, he helps me, is very nice and friendly and efficient
about it, and doesn't charge me any more money.
Phillip reads my blog sometimes, so I hate to say I'd be willing to pay
him for helping me, but I would.
Phillip, of course, is not getting rich by doing this. And the people who run Sprint, and Dell, and
lots and lots and lots of other ....U.S.....
businesses are primarily concerned with getting rich. They're corporate ....America...., and they want to run the
world. Phillip is a nice guy with some
worthwhile saleable skills who wants to make a decent living. Oh ....America...., we need more Phillip Moons
and less Dells or Sprints. At least we
need more of the one and less of the other in terms of the way things are run.
.. ..
Did you enjoy this blog?
That'll be $9.95, please. Did you want it activated?
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
September 7, 2009 - Monday
 |
Current mood:  aggravated
Category: Life
I have a Dell Dimension E310 computer. It has been running slow for quite awhile now.
I called Dell and learned that, in their opinion, it is a hardware, rather than a software problem, and my warrantee does not cover assistance on hardware matters. Or maybe it’s the other way around. At any rate, I was offered assistance at a particular additional price - I don’t remember right now what that was - or a package deal, good for assistance on 3 separate matters for $179. At the time, it seemed that the $179 package deal made the most sense, and I went with that.
The technician then took remote control of my computer, and worked on it for several hours. At the end of this time he seemed a bit vague about what he had accomplished. I didn’t learn whether I’d had some difficult to eradicate virus or anything of the sort, though I was assured that he had cleaned up some matters. His recommendation was that my 504 megabytes of memory was insufficient to my needs, and he recommended I get 1 gigabyte of memory and install it. The cost for the additional memory was $19.99, and I bought it. In addition, I paid $1.95 for tax.
The memory stick came fairly quickly, but I didn’t have time to deal with it right away. Finally, over a month later, I carved out the time. I went on-line and looked at several tutorials on how one puts the memory into one’s computer. I printed out some text and illustrations. Then I went to the Dell site, and looked at an owner’s manual for my computer.
At the bottom of page 65, and continuing onto page 66, I found the following text: “Your computer supports DDR2 memory.... DDR2 memory modules should be installed in pairs of matched memory size, speed and technology. If the DDR2 memory modules are not installed in matched pairs, the computer will continue to operate, but with a slight reduction in performance.”
So, if I’d done what the Dell tehnician - whose advice I’d paid extra for - had told me to do, with the memory stick he’d sold me, my computer would have run, but possibly even slower than it had before.
So I called Dell again, and got through to a technician, and told her my concern. She put me on hold, and after a couple of minutes came back and agreed that I had been given bad information. She offered to sell me two memory sticks, a matched pair, that would give me the 1GB of memory that had been recommended. I pointed out that I’d already purchased what had been recommended last time, and suggested that they should GIVE me the 2 half gig sticks in return for the 1 gig stick. I don’t remember what she replied - although each time I made a suggestion, she had to put me on hold for 2 or 3 minutes - presumably to speak to someone with authority. Finally we got to this agreement, or so I thought: I would buy 2 half gig sticks, at $13.99 each, and Dell would send me packaging material for the 1 gig stick, postage paid, and refund me the $19.99 I’d paid previously. For some reason, rather than zero shipping and handling, which I’d gotten the previous time, this time they wanted to charge me $6.99. With taxes, the new paired memory sticks would cost me $38.38. Just short of twice as much as one 1 gig stick had cost. At that point, I thought perhaps I should get one more 1 gig stick instead. But every time I made a suggestion, I had to wait until she’d put me on hold, gone away for 2 or 3 minutes and then come back with a reply, and it wore me down. Finally I said “never mind, it’s not worth my time” and agreed to buy the 2 half gig sticks for $38.38, and return the 1 gig stick for $19.99 credit. She put me on hold to get the confirmation number. Twenty minutes later, still on hold, I hung up.
Forty minutes later she called back, with the confirmation number. Because, she said, she was calling me, rather than me calling her, she would be unable to transfer me to the department that would handle my return, so she gave me that phone number. Now slightly armed with case number and order number, I called that number. That department was closed through the Labor Day weekend.
So I’ve paid $179 for Dell’s expert assistance, which resulted in my being sold the wrong part which I paid $21.94 for. I discovered the error on my own, called them again, which resulted in my being sold $38.38 in additional parts, and now I still have to call them again, to try to get a refund for the original wrong part I was sold, and argue with them about shipping and handling.
Dell is either very inefficient, or very efficient, since they now have around $240 of my money for parts I do not yet have, which I’ll have to install myself, to make my Dell computer run well, and which they should have strongly recommended when I first bought the computer. In fact, it probably should have been sold with 1 GB of memory since without it, the computer doesn’t run very well.
All in all, I would prefer not to deal with Dell in the future. Their service is either terrible or rapacious, and I wish them much bad fortune.
I plan to forward this blog to the president of Dell, and to the “On Your Side” columnist at PC World magazine. Wouldn’t it be a pretty world in which I’d be given satisfaction for my time, efforts and costs?
And a side note. I used to be able to insert a graphic into these blogs by giving the URL of the graphic. Now it seems I can only add a graphic if I've already uploaded it into my photos section of myspace. And I can't add what video I'm watching, or music I'm listening to, or book I'm reading, using the device at the bottom of this form. Am I missing something here?
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
September 6, 2009 - Sunday
 |
Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
Many of you reading this - as though there are many people reading it, which, sadly, I doubt - know I’m a professional actor. That it is my livelihood. That I have pursued this course for quite a long time. I only mention it because this is a blog open to anyone, and someone may read it who doesn’t know I’m an actor, or doesn’t even know me.
On July 26, this year, I received an e-mail with the following message, from which I have deleted the name of the person sending it:
“Hello my name is ______________.Iam a fan Mark Chaet .I enjoyed his work on the tv show called "Chicago Hope".The reason Iam writing is to ask for an autographed picture.I would like one got my collection.
P.S.Is there any charge for an autographe photo. Thanks”
The only thing I changed in her e-mail was I inserted an underline instead of giving her name. It is not my intention to embarrass her, or even to criticize her.
Here is my reply, minus two long sentences about my recent work, which I’ve probably already mentioned in previous blogs: and her e-mail account name replaced by an underline:
“Hi. Thanks for your letter. Wow, Chicago Hope was a long time ago. Perhaps you saw it in reruns. I notice your e-mail account name "________". I did two episodes of The Nanny, perhaps you've seen those.
I'd be glad to send you a signed photo. You'll need to give me an address to send it to. No charge.”
She sent me her address, and I sent her an autographed headshot, using my agent’s office address as a return address - just to be careful.
So that was late July. Yesterday (9/4/09), I received an e-mail from the same person:
“Hello my name is ______________.Iam a fan of Mark Chaet.I enjoyed his work on the tv show called "The Division".The reason Iam writing in to ask for an autographed picture.I would like one for my collection.
P.S.Is there any charge for an autographed photo Thanks”
Hmmmm. Is it possible this is someone who is writing to any actor with credits whose e-mail address she can find? Might she be selling this photos on ebay? I can’t find any reference to me on Ebay. An autographed photo I sent out 20 years ago when I had a recurring role on General Hospital showed up for sale on Ebay a few years ago. Price: $0.18. I felt such pride. At any rate, if Miss _______________ is doing that, in these difficult economic times, I don’t really feel any animosity towards her for it. It’s a little bit of a ripoff, if that is what is going on. My feelings, a little, and the postage and bother.
Mostly, I just find it interesting. And if any of my fellow actors - or fellows who aren’t acting, have heard from her, I’d love to hear about it.
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
September 2, 2009 - Wednesday
 |
Current mood:optimistic
Category: Friends
This morning I wrote a blog so dull that I'm not posting it. Thereby proving I am a great human being.
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
September 1, 2009 - Tuesday
 |
Current mood:distinctly other
Using maps on-line, I think I've figured out that the southern edge of
the station fire, now over 100,000 acres, is around 4 miles north of
me. I don't know if that's any closer than yesterday. I don't feel
any more threatened than yesterday, and I didn't feel threatened then -
but that may be ignorance on my part.
3 days ago, I was surprised that I didn't smell smoke when I stepped
outside. 2 days ago I did. Yesterday I didn't notice it - either
because it wasn't there, or because I'm oblivious, I guess.
Today's local weather conditions are:
Partly cloudy. Isolated morning showers. Smoky at times. Highs 96 to 105.
Yep, 105 miserable degrees. My friend Bob Tyson wrote to me yesterday and asked about
prevailing winds, a sensible question. This morning, the winds,
locally, are around 1 mph, and tending east, so that doesn't seem like
any sort of worry for me. And the possibility of rain (see above) is
terrific.
Very very sadly, at least 2 firefighters have died, as well, I think,
as a few other people, and over 50 homes have been destroyed. Really,
really sad.
Yesterday I got an automated phone call asking me, as a Glendale
resident, to cut back on my electricity consumption. To turn my air
conditioner to, I think they suggested, 78 degrees. Except my air
conditioner, a wall unit, doesn't have settings that fine. There's
high cool and low cool, and then a range within those, of low to high,
1 to 10. Furthermore, the A/C unit is really only capable of handling
my living room, and not my bedroom, but when the weather is like this I
sometimes try to make it handle more, because my computer is in my
bedroom, and I sit here typing and reading a good deal of the day, and
it's miserable without A/C. But I walked around the apartment making
sure other things were turned off (electric toothbrush, cell phone
charger, coffee maker) and unplugged - so maybe I'm doing my part. And right now, 9:15 a.m., my A/C is not on. I feel so righteous.
Oh, and my tv died Sunday, so there's an electicity saver.
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|
August 28, 2009 - Friday
 |
There's been a wildfire burning north of La Canada, which is the community just north of where I live, for several days, and this morning I can smell the smoke. I woke up around 6 a.m., and the sunrise colors were really pretty, but I imagine that may be, at least in part, because of the fire, and the smoke in the air. Evidently quite a few people have been evacuated. Sad. Scary too. And the weather has been very hot. Yesterday, at an ice cream place at Coldwater and Magnolia, the woman behind the counter said the Walgreen's sign kitty corner from the shop had showed the temperature as being 111. One hundred and eleven degrees! Jiminy! Bad for everyone (except air conditioner shops), but, oh my, I feel badly for the firefighters. Yikes.
I am starting a new acting class in a few weeks, and am supposed to perform a monologue at my first class. Trying to find that monologue - or trying to find time to try to find it, has been aggravating me for several weeks now. Between one thing and another, I seem to have not had time to devote to this matter. Last night I found a terrific monologue in an old Paddy Chayefsky teleplay called "The Big Deal" and spent some time working on it. Even though I now have the work of preparing it to do, it is a real relief to have found it. One more chore, partially completed.
Darned if I know where the time goes.
However, some things get done. I've done a little writing these past few weeks. Mostly new ideas, jotted down, worked on a bit. Hopefully I will come back to one or more of these ideas. Hopefully I will complete something in the near term. I'd also like to shoot a short film from a script I have, and get up on stage and perform some of the monologues I've been writing. Oh and 85 other things I'd like to get around to doing, including taking a vacation. Darn it, why do some people get 25 hours in a day and I only get 24?
Looked at a couple more condos yesterday, and I will bid on one of them. It's not as big as some I've looked at, but it was nice, and the building was nice, and it's in an area I like. It's also very near the maximum I feel I can afford. Well, we'll bid a bit lower and see what happens.
And since this blog, like the last two, is just me chattering about me, I'll stop here and hope that anyone who began reading it, has gotten this far. Consider it a very long tweet.
Powered by  | | English | | Albanian | | Arabic | | Bulgarian | | Catalan | | Chinese | | Croatian | | Czech | | Danish | | Dutch | | Estonian | | Filipino | | Finnish | | French | | Galician | | German | | Greek | | Hebrew | | Hindi | | Hungarian | | Indonesian | | Italian | | Japanese | | Korean | | Latvian | | Lithuanian | | Maltese | | Norwegian | | Polish | | Portuguese | | Romanian | | Russian | | Serbian | | Slovak | | Slovenian | | Spanish | | Swedish | | Thai | | Turkish | | Ukrainian | | Vietnamese |
|
|
|
|