Eric Karns

So I finally received my limited edition Obama poster which is of the oh-so convenient dimensions of 23″x40″, which nobody makes frames for. The poster was $70, I got number 895/5000 and some of these are going for $250-$400 on eBay. So I thought I’d get mine framed for posterity. Come to find out, it’s $850 to frame at frickin Michael’s!!!

Luckily a little web scouring and I was able to find www.framesbymail.com, which will make custom sizes in metal or wood for very decent prices.

I got a camcorder this weekend and made a little video… my weekend in a nutshell basically:

Check out me and my buddy’s food review/food related blog site. We’re planning on redesigning in the future and adding more interactive features, but for now we’re hoping it builds some steam. We’ve been pretty impressed with the enthusiasm of our contributing writers thus far…

Say hi to me. I might say hi back if this ends up actually working. I also might live to regret posting this.

*toot

“You are never too old to do what you enjoy.” This 101 year old Englishman just completed a half marathon and will be running in a full marathon soon. He smokes and drinks and stays out late and thinks he’s not doing anything unusual. Sure makes my mile-and-a-half walk to and from the metro not seem so bad now. Here’s the full story from ABC News.

I loves me a good mystery. Check out this ‘computer’ from the year 65 BC, that scientists say may have been a moon tracker of sorts. It was apparently discovered in 1900 near Greece in an ancient Roman shipwreck.

Well, I decided to move up in the world of blogging today. I will be migrating from Blogger to WordPress. WordPress is much more powerful and should give me more control. For now, until I figure out how to customize templates and make my own designs, I will be using a pre-designed template. You may notice a lot of links not working, and/or broken images etc., and the site might change quite a bit as I learn the tricks-of-the-trade.

The latest news in my never-ending pursuit of ancestral information, I found that our family may be related to the actress Yvonne DeCarlo (pictured above) who has a star on the hollywood walk of fame. I ran into an online board where fellow DiCarlo’s (sometimes spelled De) all originating from Frosolone who were apparently related to this actress. So although it’s unconfirmed it’s a good possibility.

Another little tidbit I discovered was that the name DiCarlo somehow originates from King Charles V of Spain, who reigned around the mid-16th century. Broken down, the name literally means “of Charles”… although I don’t think it necessarily means ‘of’ in blood relation terms… probably more along the lines of being the property of or under the govern of…

That’s all for today’s report.

In the opening sequence of PBS’ latest Frontline episode, an undertaker by the name of Thomas Lynch eloquently expressed what I felt is a very sad, recent cultural trend in America. He said:

I think we’re among the first couple generations for whom the presence of the dead at their funerals has become optional, and I see that as probably not good news for the culture at large.

Up until a couple generations ago, humans were the species that dealt with death, the idea of the thing, by dealing with their dead, the thing itself, so that the way we processed mortality was by processing mortals from one place to the other, one station to the next in this little pilgrimage between as they were to how they are to what we hope they’ll be. And this movement, emotionally, is mirrored by a physical movement. The bearing of it is so very, very important.

Sometime in the mid-60s, probably having a lot to do with Jessica Mitford’s book [The American Way of Death] and a lot to do with other social factors, there was sort of the triumphalist American sense that we didn’t have to deal with any discomforts. We saw people start organizing these commemorative events to which everyone was invited but the dead guy. The finger food was good, the talk was uplifting, the music was life-affirming; someone, usually the reverend clergy, could be counted on to declare closure, usually just before the Merlot ran out, and everyone was there but the one who had died.

And we come away from these memorial events, these celebrations of life, with the increasing sense that something is missing. And something is. What is missing is the corpse: the thing itself, not the idea of the thing.

It sort of makes you wonder if this trend isn’t partly to blame for the escalating violence and disregard for life in this country over the past 30 years or so. You can watch the entire Frontline episode online here.