September 30th, 2006 at 3:59 pm ()
Where I work, there are several doors with “Please open carefully” signs on them. I asked if we could place “Please open fast and recklessly” signs for the opposite sides of the doors, just to rebalance things. I was told that signs were too expensive to use on frivolous stuff. So then I asked “Well, what if I paid for them” and they told me “If you’re buying, you can probably put up whatever signs you WANT!”
The fools…
September 29th, 2006 at 3:51 pm ()
Sometimes, when you’re strong, you help the weak. This isn’t because it benefits you now or even later. This isn’t because they necessarily will perish without it. You just give ‘em a hand. Sometimes, “the weak” aren’t all that weak, really, but just on a down cycle, or a lull in mood or power or whatever. This happens to everyone once in a while, including “the strong”. Sometimes “the weak” really ARE weak. That’s okay. This is also why you just help ‘em out sometimes. No reward, no treat, no nothing. You just do that. Because you can. Because you think of it.
Maybe it costs a bit. Maybe it costs a few bucks, or a half hour out of your day, or the convenience of sitting down on the commuter train after a long day of work. Maybe. I don’t think it kills us to tap a few of those hidden resources for others.
September 26th, 2006 at 3:52 pm ()
You are not bold, italics, or even underscore. You are not a method of emphasis. Stop trying to be this. Resist the urge to leap onto signs and cakes and cars and banners. This is not a simple semantics request, a mere peccadillo. There is a critical thing you are missing: in these roles, you are not a method of emphasis at all. In these roles, you are a negation. You mean the opposite. It’s not a “problem” — it’s a problem.
September 23rd, 2006 at 3:48 pm ()
I’ve learned by a lot by keeping my trap shut. It’s amazing — I can enter a new environment and as long as my mouth is shut other people’s mouths seem to open wider to fill the silence.
(thank you, Alisa!)
September 22nd, 2006 at 3:47 pm ()
One of the trickiest things to integrate, to really understand and act accordingly with, is the novel idea that other people’s opinions of me are none of my business. Sure, it’s nice when they’re good and it’s not-so-nice when they’re bad, but really, it’s their opinion, and they are welcome to it.
It’s none of my business.
September 20th, 2006 at 3:43 pm ()
Once someone has decided that they are in the bad place and that other people are somehow privileged, it’s pretty difficult to break them out. Either they fight to stay in this place (after all, being here rewards them), in which case you expend energy for naught, or attempts to show them that they have built this prison backfire because they refuse to engage in the self-conflict necessary to overcome the place they’ve imprisoned themselves.
September 18th, 2006 at 3:42 pm ()
Things don’t have to be bad for us to want to change them. Sometimes we just want change. Sometimes we need change. For example, underpants.
September 17th, 2006 at 3:41 pm ()
I can hold my breath for a while and be underwater for almost a minute.
This offers me the temporary illusion that I can live without breathing. That I can live underwater.
But I can’t.
Like being on vacation. I can save and save money and then, for a week or two, I don’t have to work and I can relax and hang out. But eventually, I realize that this isn’t quite sustainable.
Of course, I can always change my life enough to make some of these things possible, but that would take a lot of work.
September 17th, 2006 at 3:40 pm ()
Sometimes, these are the nicest times we can have. Genuinely nice.
September 15th, 2006 at 3:39 pm ()
A belt buckle that reads “If you can read this, you’re doing juuuuuust fine.”
I know, it’s not that clever, but I haven’t seen one yet.
September 14th, 2006 at 3:35 pm ()
Attention restaurants and other organizations and peoples who engage in the practice of making nachos. It is vitally important, if you are making nachos for more than one person, that you learn the following word and that you embed it in your nacho-making brain:
Layers!
Making nachos is not some slap-it-together enterprise. Nachos are a wondrous — if not holy — food, and they must be put together with care and attention to detail because otherwise, you lose the magic.
If you’re only making them for you, then don’t worry about it. The basic nacho recipe works — make a layer of chips, put stuff on ‘em, bake and broil ‘em, eat and enjoy. Besides, if you’re making them for yourself, then you make them however you want to make them — it makes no difference to me.
If you are making them for other people, if you are making them for paying customers, or even paying customers who really understand the mythic quality of nachos, then you have GOT to master the simple art of layers.
It’s simple enough: You put a single layer of chips, then your various toppings, but drizzled in specs all over the layer. NO PILES! Just drizzled. Be sure to get to the edges. Then another layer of chips and another layer of toppings, and so on. Under no circumstances should you ever simply make a pile of chips, and then artlessly pile junk on it as if you’re trying to simulate the Leaning Tower Of Eatsa. It might look attractive, but you’ll precipitate a mess, as well as a Topping War, and you’ll be left looking forlornly at a plate filled with bare chips. Bare chips. Unthinkable!
Layers. It’s not complicated, it prevents Topping Wars, and every chip has something tasty and delicious on it.
Nachos are serious business.
September 14th, 2006 at 3:34 pm ()
The harder we try to make someone into that-which-completes-us, the harder it is when they eventually (and rightfully) refuse the role and leave us gasping for breath and balance.
Of course, it can be much worse when they stay.
September 13th, 2006 at 3:25 pm ()
Special challenge today!
Mess with the world on a local level, and report back here on how you did it (in case the rest of us can’t think of a good idea).
Thank someone today. Be sure to mention specifically why you are thanking them, and make sure that you are sincere. In other words, just don’t make something up. Now, the trick, however, is to thank someone unexpectedly.
So, for example, someone holds the door for you and you thank them. Expected. Doesn’t count. You finish a real hard bastard of a project at work and you thank your boss for offering you such a helluva challenge. Unexpected. Counts.
And it should be something “good”. For example, thanking the barista for wearing a low cut blouse so you can see her cleavage is (arguably) unexpected, but (arguably) not a nice thing to do if you don’t know her very well.
Mess with the world at least once today. Show gratitude where none was expected!
September 13th, 2006 at 1:00 am ()
“No” is an interesting word.
There are many perfect ways to say it. There are many cruel and unnecessary ways to say it.
Cultivate saying “no”.
“No”, “no”, “no”. Learn beautiful ways to say “no”. Learn sexy ways to say “no”. Learn ways to say “no” to children or childlike people. Learn aggressive ways to say “no”. Learn passive ways to say “no”. Learn professional ways to say “no”. Learn how to laugh with good cheer while saying “no”. Learn how to say “no” in such a way that “yes” might be possible later. Learn how to say “no” and mean it forevermore. Learn how to say “no” to a friend, to an enemy, and to a member of your family. Learn how to say “no” while touching someone you love. Learn how to say “no” to a person at a service station pumping gas into your car and trying to sell you wiper blades and a new fanbelt. Learn five silent ways to say “no”. Then learn two more you didn’t think of before. Learn to say “no” at a busy, stressful intersection. Learn to say “no” in a field of grass with nothing between you and the sky. Learn how to say “no” in the morning while sipping a tasty cup of coffee. Learn how to say “no” in the evening, as you’re going to sleep. Learn how to say “no” in an Austrian accent. Learn how to say “no” in English, French, Spanish, and German. Learn how to say “no” in Vietnamese.
Now, replace all the “no”s with “yes”s (and vice versa) and learn those ways, too. Do these things and you will have opened a new book on communicating with human beings.
September 12th, 2006 at 12:59 am ()
When I hear about all the different government conspiracies that are supposed to exist, from secret deals to space aliens, most of the time, I find myself asking “Wouldn’t it be a lot simpler if we just attributed that to some combination of greed and stupidity? I mean, it still fulfills the necessary requirements, and it doesn’t take a wall-sized diagram and to understand.”
For some reason, conspiracies seem easier to accept by people. I don’t understand this. Greed makes sense. Stupidity makes sense. How can it be so difficult to discount these Important Human Qualities when trying to figure out how something got so messed up?
September 12th, 2006 at 12:58 am ()
I must admit I’m not all that impressed with IQ. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m impressed by intelligence, especially when not decoupled from humanity, but the actual value “IQ” and the idea that we can be sorted down to a single number that is held in such high esteem is what bugs me.
And maybe it’s perfectly fine, or “well, better than we used to have”, but somehow, in the implementation, it goes stinky. Somehow it’s good in theory, but once it gets out among the people, and gets filtered through all the brains out there, the idea of “IQ” becomes something a little less “clean” than theory allows.
I think maybe it’s the most recent example of physiognomy, that tendency to be able to judge people by their physical characteristics, such as the distance between their eyes, the bumps on their heads, etc. The “IQ” thing just obscures that foolishness behind lingo and tests, but I think it’s the same thing. And I suspect that within another hundred years, we’ll look back on “IQ” as quaintly as we look back on Phrenology — and place it in its rightful place as one of the missteps in understanding humanity that “seemed like a good idea at the time”.
September 11th, 2006 at 12:57 am ()
Human beings respond very well to a reward system. One could suggest (and probably not get too much argument) that the vast majority of the things we do, we do because we receive some sort of reward from it. This can lead to some very unpleasant realizations (unpleasant mostly because it’s unexpected and we rarely look good afterwards).
On the plus side, it means we are easier to change than we thought we would be. Once we understand the reward for a bad behavior, we work out a reward for the preferred behavior and we should be good to go.
September 9th, 2006 at 12:56 am ()
If there were space aliens among us as spies, I don’t think they would make the kind of stupid mistakes we see in the movies. I think we wouldn’t notice. Like the way ducks respond to decoys and duck calls, we would almost certainly see such creatures as perfectly normal people. Anyone sufficiently advanced to travel easily around the Universe has got to have their shit together well enough to not make those really telling mistakes. Or if they do make mistakes, then we sure won’t notice ‘em. Just like ducks.
If you want to find space aliens, if you want to really figure out where those spies might be, then look in places where you literally would not expect them. Look for people who are practically invisible, but where they can observe a lot of folks. Try to put yourself in the position of an extremely intelligent alien. Where would you go? How would you be disguised? Think about it for a month, about all the telling mistakes you might make. Figure out how not to make those mistakes.
I can’t point you to an alien spy, but rest assured that chances are, you couldn’t tell an alien spy from your own mother. They would be idiots to not be at least good enough to fleece the sheep!
September 8th, 2006 at 12:56 am ()
Indecision in the restroom
You never know
When time to go
If it’s a fax or call.
For one requires paper
And the other
Not at all.
(9-2-2006)
September 8th, 2006 at 12:52 am ()
Q: What do you call a hula hoop with a nail driven through it?
A: A navel destroyer!
Q: What do you call a cute punk?
A: A punkin!
Q: How do you keep your eye from hurting when you drink coffee?
A: Take the spoon out of the cup!