My Mother's sister has chided me for not posting often enough. She says she reads my blog when she wakes up in the middle of the night. She has asked for more really long posts so that her eyes will get extra tired and close themselves. Wriphe.com: Boring People to Sleep Since 2002!®

So let's see, what things have I encountered recently that can be used as soporific fodder?

• I'm already suffering from Olympics withdrawal. I love the Olympics. I watch all I can, and I'm always sad to see them go on hiatus. While I hate the corporate and political greed that always accompanies them, that's just a sideshow for the main event: athletes from all over the world competing for little blocks of electroplated precious metals. I love the bonhomie between athletes and especially their ability to take a loss — essentially the destruction of their lifelong dreams — gracefully. (Speaking as a lifelong Miami Dolphins fan, I firmly believe learning to lose is the single most important thing in any sport.) Of course, I like seeing happy winners, too. The Olympics are our biannual reminder that people are what is really important in this life. Life could be a paradise if we'd just let it.

• “Bon-hommy,” went on Eeyore gloomily. “French word meaning bonhommy,” he explained. “I’m not complaining, but There It Is.” †

• The notifications on my telephone stopped working over the weekend, so no sounds when I get texts or phone calls. Not that I get a lot of phone calls. But if you call and I don't answer, now I can say that I didn't hear it without lying. (It's a software problem, not a hardware problem. For example, I can still watch YouTube videos. My notification sound effect is the sound of a Star Trek [TOS] communicator incoming call chirp, but my ringtone is a default system sound, and neither works. I have the phone turned off for recharge and will turn it back on tomorrow in the hopes that it just needs a good nap to get things sorted out. That sometimes works for me.)

• Update: It's working again. Which means that if I don't answer your call, I'm probably ignoring you on purpose again.

• Update Update: It's not working again. Which means it's time for me to buy a new phone. (This Google Pixel 7 lasted just a year and a half. I bought it because it was cheaper than a Samsung Galaxy, and, well, you get what you pay for.)

• If you're looking to go to sleep, do not click on this YouTube link. That's the song I put in my CD player and turned up REAL LOUD while I was dressing (because I had started singing it in the shower). There's a reason that I have never used Huey Lewis and the News in my "new years" posts: their lyrics are actually good. Ok, to be perfectly honest, the song I started singing in the shower was Lindsey Buckingham's Time Bomb Town, which is the second song on the Back to the Future soundtrack album. You know the one: "There must be about a million / single ways to go down." I'm sure you recognize it as the song playing on the clock radio when Marty wakes up in bed in 1985 (the first time). Once I realized what I was singing, my brain automatically clicked over to "Please don't drive 88 / Don't wanna be late again." Which, of course, I'm sure you recognize as the song playing on the clock radio when Marty wakes up in bed in 1985 (the second time). And that's why I buy soundtrack albums: so I can wash out the earworms I pick up in the shower.

Are you asleep yet, Kelley? If not, I can start talking about my dreams. Nothing is more boring than someone else's dreams. I had one recently where I worked up the nerve to ask Natalie Portman out on a date... and she said yes! (Although I got the impression it was a pity date.) We went out for coffee.

† Milne, A. A. "Chapter VI, In Which Eeyore Has a Birthday and Gets Two Presents," in Winnie-The-Pooh, pg. 72, E.P. Dutton & Company [New York], 1926

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At 4:29 PM Pacific today, Doc Brown and Marty McFly will arrive in modern day Hill Valley. So said Back to the Future Part II in 1989.

Back in the day, Back to the Future Part II was not nearly as popular as its predecessor or its successor. Mainstream audiences considered Part II too dark, too cerebral compared to the others. Frankly, I always thought most people didn't understand the movie's internal logic of branching timelines. It seemed strange to me that audiences would embrace one time-travel movie and reject its sequel. In hindsight, I don't think they love the travel as much as they loved the time.

As much as I enjoyed the original — I can still quote most of that movie from memory — I preferred Part II. It was easier for me to relate to the sequel's future of 2015 than the original movie's past of 1955. Nineteen Fifty-Five passed 20 years before I was born. It might as well have been 1885 or 1555. The original movie presented an artificial world, like a museum display come to life. People didn't really dress/act/live like that, did they? My parents definitely never made out in parked cars.

It wasn't until Part II came along and treated the 1980s with the same level of nostalgic reverence that its precursor had reserved for the '50s that I could understand what the franchise was really selling. I knew the '80s. To see the decade venerated by the people of the future, that seemed appropriate. No doubt that's what my parents' generation must have appreciated in the 1950s references of the original. I still couldn't relate, but I could understand.

Now to think that Marty McFly's "present" is 30 years in my past! I can look back and still see the 1980s as clear as though I was living in them. That means that kids today have just as hard a time relating to my past — with its coin-operated arcades and Zubaz striped pants — as I did to my parents'. It's almost too bad they won't be getting a Back to the Future Part IV to help them understand me. You kids get your flying cars off my lawn!

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