i don't much care for modern country music

...it can be annoying and very limited, but they often have some good lyrics. Anyway, here's an example of a song I don't care for musically, but I like the words:



I like the idea of "live like you were dying" because, guess what: we are, all of us.

Most of the people I love are "living for eternity." That means that nothing in the here & now matters except inasmuch as it relates to cosmic/universal/eternal truths & standards. Prioritizing (or even meddling with) things that have no eternal impact is considered a misdirection of time & energy -- a gross waste of time at best, and ultimately tragically shallow & spiritually fatal.

But what if this is all there is? To paraphrase Christopher Hitchens (a bright-but-unhappy-and-often-unpleasant man), We're shot out of our mother's womb as if from a cannon, headed for a door studded with nails; the trick is to make something meaningful or ironic out of our lives in the brief moment we have.

My point is that we're all going to be dead soon. (Cheers!) Some people view this idea with dread, or are convinced they've found a get-out-of-death-free card -- and to each his own, I say -- but I've seen no evidence that we do anything after we die except decompose.

So in the meantime, turn that frown upside down -- you're gonna be dead sooner than you expected, but in the meantime, look! You're alive! Yay! Don't worry, be happy. And for heaven's sake stop worrying about what other people think, what you're wearing, what other people are wearing, and also 90% of the other absurdly irrelevant things you worry about. It's not worth it, and in 100 yrs not only will it not matter, nobody will even remember it.

Just sayin.

this is cute

My favorite part is this, from the comments:

If you start singing spontaneously at Disney world do people just join in like this? because I tried it at Time's square and a bunch of people just beat the crap out of me. I think a prostitute bit me. I'm so lonely.

nifty music

Things that suck

1) Fox News. I don't know if this bit (look for video called "Crumbling Model?") is part of their news section or their editorial section, but it's definitely presented in "news" format. Actually, I'm not sure the majority of Fox's viewers even know the difference between news and editorializing. But the point is, the smug, mocking tone is incredible considering the limited treatment they gave the subject matter.

2) I-tunes. As my son's friends would say, "It sucks @$$" for the following reasons:

• The interface is clumsy and non-intuitive.
• The ituneshelper process sucks up CPU like an airliner sucking jet fuel.
• The way it "manages" your music is laughable: it lacks the ability to detect two identical files, so if you have a song stored twice on your hard drive, you now have two copies in I-tunes.
• If you move or rename a file, I-tunes can't find it any more.
• OTOH if I-tunes is managing your music (which it will keep trying to do, even if you told it not to), for some reason it only (in my case) imported about 2/3 of my music, plus you have no control of what files are stored together, all you can do is establish playlists of titles.
• If you had several named folders of music with files names Track1, Track2, etc, now all your Track1's are together, followed by all your Track2's, etc.
• There's apparently no way to tell it which files of your large collection to put onto your small I-pod, except by sync-ing using selected playlists, but you can only use selected playlists if you automatically update when you plug in your I-pod -- you can't say "move these playlists to my I-pod just this once".
• I found no way to simply view the contents of my I-pod in an explorer-type window and manipulate (eg, delete) files manually.
• If you lose your hard drive and want to re-import your music from your I-pod, I-tunes won't do it for you; you have to do a special hack to just get the files back, but your song titles and playlists are gone.

And on and on. I could design a better program with one hand tied behind my back, my penis slammed in a door, and a fork stuck in my eye. I can't believe this product is the standard for personal music devices...

3) Televangelists asking for money. Just watched about 10 minutes of some slimeball exhorting his viewers to "plant a thousand dollar seed." Quick n dirty, if you plant a $1000 seed (ie, send in $1000), God will give you a harvest (ie, you will get a sh*tload of money) in the near future. It was one of the most disgusting examples of manipulation and mendacity I've ever seen. Quick example (out of dozens):

If you are moved to plant your $1000 seed right now, and you want to use your credit card (you know the sooner the seed enters the soil, the sooner the harvest comes), call this number. I know there's someone who needs their credit card debt wiped out -- if you use your faith, when you plant your seed with your credit card, God can wipe out your credit card debt...

If I saw that guy, I'd be tempted to punch him in the face.

Sweet Savage Love

OK, this post will be nothing like as interesting as it sounds. Unless terrorists break in while I'm writing it, and I'm able to turn it into on-the-spot war journalism or something.

Anyway, Sweet Savage Love was a racy romance by Rosemary Rogers that all the girls in my Jr High read, and which my english teacher refused to let one of them give her oral book report on because it was too trashy. Which he was probably right about.
However, he was wrong about the use of exclamation points, which he contended were merely to add emphasis to whatever kind of sentence they were tagged onto, and which I contended also carried a connotation of "surprisingness", a position I still hold to, but he's been dead for 20 years so he (or I) can probably shut up about it.

My point started out to be (peripherally) about the Noble Savage concept, not book reports, but I got distracted thinking about Karynne Whatever-her-name-was and how Mr. Berg made her sit down after she started her book report, but it didn't hurt her popularity, since that was mostly based on how she looked in tight 70's-style jeans, one pair of which she had that zipped all the way around to the back, sort of like chaps I guess.

So anyway, a friend sent me this quote today:

A mind without instruction can no more bear fruit than can a field, however fertile, without cultivation. - Cicero

And all I really wanted to do was agree with the Cis-meister on this one, and further to say that if you believe that

• "traditional medicine" is bad for you, and what we need is more herbs & accupuncture & aromatherapy
• being self-taught by experience is alway better than book-learning (ie, "you don't learn nothin' in that there university that you cain't learn in the regular ole school of life")
• America is always on the side of good & right
• 9/11 was in inside job
• the Apache were a peace-loving people
• God looks out for America because we're especially big fans of His
• Sarah Palin would've made a good vice-president
• Pro-life people all hate women
• Gay people are just straight people looking for kicks
• we should withhold HPV vaccine to make girls more likely to be celibate
• art is not to be judged; all art is of equal value
• anything else that i disagree with

then you are an imbecile. You should not vote or procreate. You should buy many things made of shiny plastic from Walmart, then stay home watching TV and reading books like Sweet Savage Love.

Just saying.

These are the conversations of our lives…

Bryan: Can you tell me, does everyone in the Engineering union automatically receive the Uniform Allowance benefit?

Client: The engineers, yes. That’s who gets the Uniform Allowance.

Bryan: Okay, right, good. So is it *everyone*? Do *all* the engineers get the allowance?

Client: Yes, they are all engineers. The Maintenance union used to get it too, but they bundled it into bonuses a couple of years ago. So it’s just the engineers.

Bryan: Uh-huh. That’s interesting. I was just wondering if the engineers *all* get it, or do some engineers *not* get it.

Client: Well, they all sign up for it. It’s a popular benefit.

Bryan: Yeah, I imagine so. What I should have said is “Is it ever possible for an engineer to *not* get it?”

Client: Well, all of our engineers get it, I don’t know why they wouldn’t. It’s like free money, whether you actually wear a uniform or not.

Bryan: Mmm, yeah. I would too. And is there any scenario where an engineer could ever *not* get it?

Client: Why wouldn’t they get it?

Bryan: I don’t know. But the software needs to know if they ever might not have it, and what to do if so.

Client: But they all DO have it.

Bryan: Yeah, but if it’s ever possible, I have to write the software to control for that.

Client: That seems weird, I can’t imagine why an engineer wouldn’t opt for the benefit.

Bryan: Right, me either. But it really doesn’t matter *why* as much as *if* it might happen. Do you know if it’s possible to process an engineer without the allowance?

Client: We never process them without it, because they all have it.

Bryan: Right, I understand. But do you know if the rules permit an engineer to be processed without the allowance?

Client: I have no idea…

Bryan: Okay, well, I’ll be back in a minute, after I plunge this pencil into my eye socket.

my life lately

Not much of interest to report.

Letting my hair grow. Bought a motorcycle.

I didn't think much of the paint job at first, but the whales kinda grew on me. Besides, it shows that I'm a green guy, so dating me is like doing your part to save the earth. Or at least, that's what I tell the girls. ;-)

Am finding myself really really busy, hence minimal blogging lately. Miss doing it, tho. Lots of thoughts and opinions, sometimes they get crowded and need to be inflicted on other people so I can forget about them.

Here is a bunch of negative -- or at least challenging -- stuff:

This week David is pissed at me because I was making him do work he didn't want to do and he was being a gigantic douche -- rude, uncooperative, destructive, etc -- and i told him i was this close to knocking him on his ass, which was not good parenting but i felt something needed to be clarified about how completely unacceptable his behavior was, but the result was that he said "why don't you then?" and then swore at me and ran away to his mom's.

So we missed going to the dirtbiking class we'd been planning for 2 months. He didn't want to go (or forgot, not sure which) so I went alone, and had to eat the $175 i had paid for his admission. He's still being surly, doesn't want to talk to me, so we'll see how that works out.

Samantha took herself off her meds (who needs that sh*t when you feel this great?) and as soon as her chemistry levels dropped immediately cratered into depression. So she's back on her meds and hopefully will be able to engage with life again soon and not cry all the time. It's hard to let your kids learn their lessons on their own, but not much choice since I clearly don't know anything. Apparently I've spent the last 44 yrs in a coma, completely failing to accumulate any wisdom whatsoever that could possibly be of use to a teenager. ;-)

Missed my parent's anniversary; thought about them but didn't have their Ukraine number in my phone and wasnt near my computer all day. Oh well, I imagine they'll still love me.

A good friend lost her job & house, then got kicked out of her new lodgings by a neurotic landlady who's not too well-anchored to reality. Then her dog who'd been with her for 13 yrs had to get put down because she couldn't find a home for her. She is understandably depressed.

Another friend is going thru a tough divorce, adjusted her own meds (I sense a pattern) and then had a couple of big personal/financial disasters in a row; she took a bunch of pills, but luckily had presence of mind to call someone and is now doing better.

My motorcycle got knocked over while parked at Masterpark at the airport. Probably take a couple hundred $ to fix everything. Masterpark guy said their policy is that they don't cover such things, but because I was really nice about it he wanted to do something, so offered to comp my parking on future trips until we reach the value of the repairs. Glad I went with honey over vinegar on that one. :-) Will probably lose the orca when they replace the gas tank (fuel is leaking) but i still have the ones on the side covers.

Work is iffy lately (lots of postponements/cancellations) but still managing to pay my rent & alimony. The IRS is a different matter, but I'm hoping to rectify that situation over the next couple of years.

On a happier note...

I don't have cancer that I know of. Or if I do, it feels pretty good so I'm okay with it. Also I apparently didn't get the chemical imbalance/mood disorder genes that other people have, so that's pretty cool.

Sam is passing her classes (AFAICT) at the community college. Her art is really good. Hoping she parlays that into career that supports her so she doesn't have to be a stripper.

David is 5' 11", 160 lbs. He's not bouncing off the walls so much, thx to Adderall.

Went camping over the Memorial Day weekend. Found somebody's stash of weed on the beach; I don't smoke that stuff but I have a friend who has a prescription for it, so I figured I'd give it to him.

Was in LA area recently, got to see some family which was very enjoyable. Got my butt kicked at Wii bowling, but am mostly able to salvage my self-esteem by revving my motorcycle really loud.

Ok, that's all the mind-numbingly boring stuff I can think of to post right now. Hope all are well. Happy summer, everybody.

PS. the new Terminator Movie is good. Just saying.

it has been suggested...

by a friend of mine that we need more words to express the varied concepts and feelings we call "love". here are some of her ideas. what do you think?

love for one's own child
love for family members
love for a close friend (philos)
love for pets (no, not like that. don't be nasty.)
love (empathy) for other people, like foster children, homeless people (philos/agape)
affection mixed with lust (eros)
love of nature, art, aesthetically pleasing things
love of our favorite hobbies/activities, and the feelings they invoke
love of the moment (starry skies, making love, sounds of music)
love that makes us want to commit to a relationship