One of the things you should never do is Google your childhood.

One thing people my age (who grew up in the USA) like to do is lament the loss of the great Saturday morning shows in the 1970s. We are convinced that modern Saturday morning fare is crap and we were the few, the happy few.

This is mostly because we remember how the shows made us feel not how they actually were. We also tend to remember the theme songs. We also don’t realize how demented we’ve become because of them.

The king of all shows was The Krofft Supershow. We mostly remember it for hosting a bunch of other shows. What we didn’t remember was Kaptain Kool and the Kongs. When you watch this, you will understand why we blocked it out.

Having watched this once, I then forced myself back into very dark places, I first dared explore one of the shows that first gave me an inkling of, well, puberty, Electra Woman and DynaGirl.

The song is still catchy and the main actress still, um, electra inspiring. (I should also add that Judy Strangis aged well and/or had a good plastic surgeon.) If you want to explore true madness, however, search for an actual episode. (Electra demented.)

The other shows, and probably the ones with the best theme songs were Doctor Shrinker (warning the acting is terrible and lead woman is named BJ).

and Wonderbug

Unfortunately, this greatness was ruined in Season 2 when Bigfoot and Wildboy and Magic Mongo were added to the line up. And then it was completely ruined in Season 3 with the addition of the Bay City Rollers.

Now, those still wallowing in denial will point out that all the networks had their own line up. One channel gave us superheroes with Shazam! and The Secrets of Isis (come on, how many of you, for a brief second, think “Oh Mighty Isis” when you hear news out of Syria and Iraq? My hand’s raised) but these were just badly acted, not demented. They also didn’t have catchy theme songs.

In the end, I suppose, what current Saturday mornings miss is the variety of twistedness and dementedness. Well, maybe that’s because we’ve become so demented we don’t remember. Whatever the truth, the theme songs aren’t as catchy as they used to be.

For the record: We are happy to report we survived the typhoon and that school was cancelled.

This month my goal is to hurt my daily opportunity to work on this blog.

I’ve written before about how I took part in a Monthly Challenge where participants were encouraged to adopt a new habit or drop an old one for one month and see what happens and how they feel. At the end of the month they decide if they are going to keep the habit.

In my case, I decided to try a consistent 11-5 sleeping schedule, even on weekends, which was a lot better than my four hour(ish) random sleeping schedule. To help accomplish this I also decided to stop drinking coffee after lunch.

After the month, I’ve found that with the more consistent sleep pattern I’ve had more energy and been more productive in the afternoon–especially at work when I have a free hour–and after work. (The exceptions are if I have a high-carb lunch, then I get sleepy for a while.) It also gives me time in the morning to exercise, do some writing and plan my day and I’ve found myself less grumpy at work (although the company I work for is trying to make up for that. Long story involving a typhoon and bovine scatalogical materials.)

Now that the 30 days are over, I’ve decided I’m going to keep the habit.

The problem is, now when I get home I’m still in my “damn I’m sleepy” after work schedule where I sit down in front of the computer and read news and generally waste time for a couple hours.

Lately, though, I’ve found myself much more restless during this time. Therefore, my goal this month is to eliminate the after work internet and focus on writing projects and more reading.

The problem with that is, after I’ve written a couple hours, I don’t have much energy left for these daily entries. (That happened this weekend when I spent the better part of each day writing.) Also, if I never turn on the internet, it’s kind of hard to write a post for it.

That means I’ll have to experiment with when to write these–which mean’s I’ll probably continue to start them at 10 p.m. or so Tokyo time and hope I don’t have as many typos as I usually have.

By the way, I encourage everyone to try to the Monthly Challenge. Try giving something up for a month. At the end of the month, you can change back or keep going.

Woops: Technical difficulties. Lost first version of this. Second may be short.

Although I like baseball highlights and the baseball playoffs I don’t like baseball that much. (And, no, I’m not a commie.)

Part of the problem is I didn’t play anything resembling organized baseball until Hayden, Colorado got a Little League team when i was 11 or so. I tried playing (to this day I don’t remember why I did that, but the fact I actually played in games meant there must not have been many players) but I never took to the game.

I never learned to judge a pitch as it left the pitcher’s hand and I never learned to judge where a fly ball was going to land. To this day, I remain impressed by people who run to where the ball will be. My strategy involved standing in one place and hoping the ball hit me.

Also, when I was growing up Colorado didn’t have a baseball team. By the time it did, I was living back in Kansas which still has no team. I therefore never had the chance to study the game they way I did the Denver Broncos and American Football.

To me baseball is still just two men with a ball taunting  a guy with a stick while a bunch of their friends watch and wait for something to do. Despite that, I respect the skill baseball players have and I even enjoy baseball documentaries. Heck, I even watched the documentary Knuckleball! when I was on a plane last year.

I also tend to watch baseball when something record breaking is about to happen. Back in 1995 I joined a group of friends to watch Cal Ripken, Jr. break Lou Gehrig’s consecutive game streak. What I remember most about that was how moved my friend, a Baltimore Orioles fan was, and how ESPN announcer Chris Berman stopped talking so everyone could enjoy the moment. To this day I’m grateful Bob Costas wasn’t the announcer. He’d still be talking.

Now, for the first time since my first semester at university, the Kansas City Royals actually have something to do in October other than find an open golf course. Unfortunately, the games are on when I’m at work and I can only watch them via game trackers on sports websites.

I think I like this way of watching baseball better than actually watching baseball.