Murphy’s Bye-Laws

Everyone knows that polka-dots are the new black and that podcasts are the new blog. So, in that spirit, this edition of Syndication Saturday will focus on podcasts. Some podcasts are just recorded radio shows that are posted after the shows air and some are recorded with the sole purpose of being a podcast. There are podcasts for every interest under the sun from comedy to science, from news to fiction, from sports to video games; you name it and there is a podcast for it.

I started listening to podcasts on websites when the music on my work computer got old, my Pandora hours were timing out, and I still needed the mental distraction so I could concentrate on doing work. That last statement may sound crazy, but don’t we all have that part of the brain that needs distracted to let other parts get shit done (no, I’m not talking about those voices). I started out in the Kevin Smith universe before I found several other podcasts via iTunes and realized I had a saturation point for the Smith universe that I had hit. I then moved onto, and still listen to everything they put out, WTF with Marc Maron and The Nerdist (Chris Hardwick). These are two of the consistently best podcasts available. I nice rundown of podcasts from week to week, and the only place I know of that does reviews of podcasts, is The Onion’s AV Club that puts out Podmass every week. There are an endless selection of podcasts to choose from and that is why I will suggest a couple of lesser know shows today. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve written on these pages early and often about the drudgery of cubicle-dwelling wage-slavery, grinding commutes, and the miraculous feats of self-motivation suited to a circus sideshow. For nearly ten years I drove about an hour each way to work. Some days were easier than others, but, generally, I figured I was pretty happy with my situation. However bad or stressful the day was I could always look forward to returning home to my wife…and my life. Sometimes it takes some distance from a situation to fully understand it, though. Now, a few weeks into a new job, I feel like a huge weight has been lifted as I’m happier more often and maintain a higher base level of happiness. This new feeling makes me question just how happy I was before.

In the first link above, I quoted a Claire Wolfe piece comparing “Dark Satanic Mills” to “Dark Satanic Cubicles” wherein she writes, “Neither allows us access to our families, friends, or communities when we need them or they need us. Both isolate work from every other part of our life.” This is the thing that eventually occupies my mind when I marvel at how happy I am to not drive so far, work so long, or stress about ludicrous deadlines for nearly pointless tasks. I know when I’m going to arrive home everyday, and I’m still trying to figure out what to do with the time I have left in the evening. Besides being home more, I also feel like I work in the same place I live; where before I left the state and general area to go someplace with little-to-nothing in common with where I live.

Of course, this transformation is only half complete. I could still produce something for myself and work from home, which I may try someday. For now, though, everything is turning up PintofStout and I can now see what happiness this change has wrought and I can hope to continue and expand it.

I’ve not the time or energy to rant about Christmas or the election right now. I have covered it before, though, which will follow below for your reading pleasure.

With the holidays comes happy reunions with old friends, here is a post about our life trajectories: The Rocky Bottom.

Also there is some sort of astronomical mumbo-jumbo about a solstice </sarcasm>: Rage Against the Dying of the Light.

Christmas as we know it doesn’t quite match what any one side of this culture war over Christmas says it should be: Yule Celebrate Christmas and Yule Like It.

The topic of religious belief, which nonsensically bleeds into scientific belief, was covered last election when Mitt gave some speech about how he doesn’t have two heads or feed on human flesh because he is a mormon: No Votes For Non-Believers.

(A fine article from Michael Shermer regarding this is here: http://www.skepticblog.org/2011/12/20/e-pluribus-unum/ ).

I won’t link any more election stuff. That is easy enough to find here. Even though it is two days ago and, therefore, may as well be a year ago, I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas or otherwise enjoyable month of December.

Peace.

As I was eating a monster sandwich today, made on a whole loaf of fantastic Mancini bread, I had this thought: to fully enjoy and indulge in this sandwich orgy one must leave humility at the door and be willing to sink their teeth into this chewy loaf piled with layered meats and cheeses without fear of the mayonnaise oozing out onto their face. To timidly nibble around the edges in order to avoid getting all up in the mess is to bypass the chance to taste the soul of the sandwich and opting instead to partake of it in parts separated from the organic whole. Most every sandwich worth eating has some aspect of eating it that comes across as untidy or downright messy. Sure, sensibly stacked sandwiches with a little sauce or condiment will sustain one indefinitely, even be enjoyable if the ingredients are of good quality; but the eater of such sandwiches will never know the sublime pleasure known to the sandwich conqueror smiling widely, with mayonnaise smeared across their cheek or sauce running down their arm to drip off their elbow, because they found a way to get the sandwich impossibly stacked with unlikely ingredients into their mouth and tore off a chunk like a lion tearing into the flesh of a beautiful gazelle.

Of course, not all sandwiches are heaping and not all heaping sandwiches are going to deliver a rewarding experience. A sandwich piled high with sub-par ingredients is a clever way of drawing reckless eaters. No matter how well vetted the sandwich may be by the chef, there is still a risk in delving face-first into such a towering heap prepared by someone else. While preparing one’s own sandwich, there is a fine line when piling on ingredients between risky and selfish gluttony.

There is something chaotic and adventurous about a hard-to-eat sandwich. In that chaos and adventure also lies great reward for those willing to brave the mess and get some mayonnaise on their face. The fearful are left with safe PB&Js forever.

Thus ends the extended metaphor. I’ve written about sandwiches and *nudge*nudge* sandwiches before:

Gourmet PB&J

Zen and the Art of the Sandwich

Super Sandwich Goodness

My eyes were drawn from the heart-lifting sunrise just beginning to penetrate the darkness, the smallest sliver of crescent moon I have memory of seeing, and the stoic silhouettes of trees against the fiery horizon to gaze into the brightly lit windows of the  modest old house sitting off the road, illuminated like pure joy in the eyes of a child. Through the windows of the awakened house, the top of a little blond head toddled toward the window. My heart sank, right through the floor of the car, and settled on the road to stay at this house and that little blond head as I drove away.

The condition of man… is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.
- Thomas Hobbes

Whenever I start feeling too good about society around me, I only have to hop in the car and get out on the highway. There is something about being on the highway in (or on) a motorized vehicle that can turn polite, considerate people into raging antisocial

Mad Max Knows Road Rage

assholes who are completely oblivious to any other living soul around them. It takes a nominally polite society and turns it, almost literally, into Mad Max- an everybody-for-themselves world where only the bold survive and prosper. Does this observation say something about the larger society by looking at the basest element, like the Dostoyevsky quote, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.”? Or does it say something deeper about human nature that would eventually culminate into societal patterns? Does it mean anything? Read the rest of this entry »

I’m an observer, an introverted, intuitive, thinking, and PERCEIVING person according to every Myers-Briggs test I’ve ever taken. Something I’ve noticed through observation of a little scene recently brought something to light. I was watching the sometimes awkward transformation of a man occupying a place of strength and hardness required for survival in our society into the closest men such as this ever make it to being a nurturer. I’ve observed with curiosity similar situations over the last couple years, but something that was changed in me with the birth of my son allowed me to observe more keenly.

The observed change wasn’t perceived in the subject I watched, but in me as I watched. Sitting in a parking lot waiting for my mother to drop off my son, now 14 months old, I saw another child exchange taking place. There was a large pickup truck. It was larger than a normal full-size pickup because it was lifted slightly and was presumably four-wheel drive. It was a late model and looked like it had seen some work in its day. Approaching this truck on the driver’s side, which was facing away from me, was a very large man in the bright orange shirt of a laborer. I knew how large he was by how much of him I could see over the hood of his equally large pickup. Beside him, there was a small child, whose feet I could see under the truck. There seemed to be an excitement in the feet and something like a humbleness in the man that happens when a small child is pouring love and admiration all over them. I don’t even know if something like that humbleness is perceivable; I suspect this is just how I feel when in a similar situation. Is there a change in a man’s demeanor or the hint of a smile or even a look in the eye that accompanies the reception of such pure admiration?

I wonder if the feeling and any outward tells of such feelings fade as the child matures. As the child matures, the admiration is going to be tempered by the reality of the person admired, is it not? As the relative physical largeness of the man in question reduces as the child grows, so too does the largeness of his person and with it the degree of admiration. Realize here, that I’m speaking of such a high level of perfection as to be borderline hyperbole. Falling from such unrealistic heights is hardly negative, but inevitable like the fall of Santa Claus. Whether the perception of the child changes is not the issue here, though, read Reflections of a Coffee Mug II for that; I wonder if the new squishiness and empathy born in a new father fades with the dependency on them.

“I’m not on crack. I’m straight up mentally ill.”

– Tracy Jordan of television show 30 Rock

A few days ago on my Tumblr, I posted a link to Jim Bovard’s blog where he informed his readers of a new book being put out by Thomas Szasz. For those not familiar with Thomas Szasz, he is a celebrated psychiatrist (outside the establishment, anyway) who made uncomfortable waves in the pool of the status quo in 1961 with The Myth of Mental Illness. There is much, much more about him and his ideas, along with lots of material, at the newly-bookmarked-in-my-browser site http://www.szasz.com (bio, summary of why he is awesome). Sorry for all the links, but there is a lot to sift through; I gave you some basic fundamentals.

When I saw Bovard’s post with select aphorisms listed at the bottom, I was tempted to tweet them all – a good aphorism begs by its very existence for tweeting. Read the rest of this entry »

It has been a while since I first wrote one of these…the only one of these. Have you been checking in on Joel at The Ultimate Answer to Kings or Jennifer at Ravings of a Feral Genius? Good. Today I wanted to share a site on Tumblr that has provided some pretty poignant and very accessible poetry. There isn’t any pretension in his poetry.

The blog Poor Phraser has enthralled me with the biting humor about societal norms and stereotypes and touched me with heartfelt poems overflowing with feeling. I read this blog in my Tumblr dashboard (or more likely the app on my phone), but the site is very clean and puts focus solely on the poem.

Here is a fine example he posted recently, He’s a Proper Poet (he’s English, btw):

He’s a proper poet

he writes proper poetry

And he wrote a proper poem

that he wants to read to thee

.

He’s a proper poet

he’s been published in The Times

And he’s such a proper poet

none of his work rhymes

.

He’s a proper poet

A proper literary guy

for he’s got a book in Blackwells

and he’s been to Hay-On-Wye

.

He’s a proper poet

His new piece on Dionysis

Has been read by other poets

and won literary prizes

.

He’s a proper poet

he writes proper poetry

But all his proper poems

don’t make any sense to me

This past week, we had the unfortunate occasion of waking my Uncle Dick. This was an event everyone knew was coming eventually, having been diagnosed with acute leukemia about a year ago and given a prognosis of as little as three months to live. He rebounded and took the reigns of his care, and by extension, his death. Refusing aggressive chemotherapy or radiation meant he wasn’t going to go down in a sloppy heap of sickness. The prognosis changed very little – if at all – with that path of treatment, anyway. Instead, he chose a treatment that would get him home quicker. This treatment proved effective in sustaining him to a point where he was driving to visit family locally, working in the yard a little, and surviving in functional health for almost a year. Read the rest of this entry »