Notes from the Post-it Wall — Road Trip Edition
• The President George Bush Turnpike being a toll road is hilarious irony, and sort of a fuck you to the people of Texas.
Creation Does Not Guarantee Equality
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Jesus Christ, that's a high bar. I mean, first, the whole "endowed by their Creator" hits the religion thing pretty hard on the nose. For this post, let's just assume that in spite of their vast knowledge of the Magna Carta and the enormously well read nature of our Founding Fathers, they were still sort of a bizarre group of highly superstitious religious types, admit the flaw and move on, OK?
It's that almost comical statement that "all men are created equal." Ignore the fact that they only meant men and only white men and only rich white men. Let's take the phrase as we interpret it today. That WE ARE ALL CREATED EQUAL.
I hate to break it to you but that's complete horseshit.
Adults Put in the Work
Let's be amazingly reductionist for a moment.
There are 100 people.
25 of them voted for Trump and the existing Republican Party.
27 voted for Hillary (but only 18 of them wanted her as the candidate...)
2 voted for candidates outside of the two-party system.
10 couldn't vote (mostly through voter obstruction.)
36 simply didn't vote at all.
What are the potential strategies to moving in a direction perhaps less poised for complete and utter disaster under a continued regime of GOP controlled governance?
The Illinois-Missouri Derby
I could have made the drive inside of two days had I been alone. But I had the wife and the dog, and when you’re driving the 1,164 miles between Chicago and Austin, Texas with souls on board other than your own, it’s best to make pit stops along the way.
Springfield. Kate was unimpressed with Lincoln’s home. “It looks too nice for being that old,” she said.
“You would have been even more unimpressed if they’d just let nature take its course for these past 152 years,” I told her.
Making Space and Rejecting Ego
You are not your popularity or your lack of it.
You are not the number of “likes” on your Facebook feed.
You are not your credit score.
You are not the number of dates you went on.
You are not your ability to influence others to do the things you want them to do.
You are not your weight or your body image.
I Believe...
I believe...
Playing Dead in the Face of Responsibility
Human beings are among the most vulnerable creatures on the planet. No armor, no big claws, can't fucking run fast, not particularly strong. Even the strongest man on the planet (you know, the redneck fucker who can pull a tractor with his teeth or hang an anvil from his balls) is just a thin-skinned hot dog meal to a mountain lion.
So we compensate with misdirection.
Kindly Persuasion Works Better Than Outrage
When Abraham Lincoln was 33 years old, he gave a speech inside a Presbyterian church to a temperance society. His message: The assembled ought to be nicer to drinkers and sellers of alcohol, rather than shunning them, or denouncing them as moral pestilences. Indeed, they ought to use “kindly persuasion,” even if a man’s drunkenness had caused misery to his wife, or left his children hungry and naked with want.
The Enemy is Us
If you hire soldiers to become policemen, civilians become the enemy.
Obama Making that Paper the American Way
I don't wish heartbreak on anyone, but I can’t help to laugh at the outrage and sadness that former president Barack Obama is going to collect $400,000 to speak to a Wall Street investment bank. We don’t know what he’s going to do with the money. Build his library? Invest in Chicago Public Schools? Buy Michelle a shitload of sleeveless dresses? Donate it to the Carter Center?
Notes from the Post-It Wall — Week of April 30, 2017
... I picked apart a Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup. The chocolate on its own, kinda sucks. The peanut butter on its own kinda sucks. Eating the chocolate and peanut butter separately is like Paul McCartney and John Lennon. They’re completely awful unless they’re together. ...
Separate is Almost Never Equal
I understand the argument that, as a society, there are so many grievances we have against one another that we should simply go to our separate corners and go with the "Separate but Equal" stance.
Start Somewhere
Murder in the Age of Expanding Connotation
Refusing to Take the Bait
When the new currency is won by throwing shit at each other, provoking an online fight is the way to go. I'm finding that I don't want to play that game anymore. That emotional intelligence is generally an oxymoron in that emotions tend to cancel out any intelligence in communicating.
Clearing Out the Detritus and Memory Hogging Applications
On my iMac I have a program called "Memory Clean." It's a cool, little third party application that lets me know on my dock how much memory is being used at any given time, which applications are using significantly high amounts of it and has a quick function that "cleans" out the used but unnecessarily overloaded memory so the damn machines can move more quickly, more smoothly, and more efficiently. I like it because A) it works the way it's supposed to and B) it gives me a sense of control I otherwise wouldn't have.
As tired as the "Computer Brain = Human Brain" metaphors are, this is one more of that stripe.
I Believe...
"Why?" Can Be a Cage of Epic Proportions
"When hungry, eat your rice; when tired close your eyes. Fools may laugh at me, but wise men will know what I mean." — Zen proverb
I'm not a zen guy. No—stop it with your assertions that somehow, with all of my bluster and over working that I am actually zen. I read Jeff Bridges book and I. AM. NOT. ZEN. I'd love to be a zen type but I have this die-hard battery up my ass that prevents the natural chill associated with being zen.
However...
It's the Common Ground Rather Than the Differences That Unify Us
"It tastes like chicken."
Why do we do that? Why do we compare a meat we aren't used to, that perhaps sounds alien like snake or crocodile or stingray, to the most common of American meat products?
I'd wager we do that because trying new and different things contains a risk. For most of us, risk is a bit uncomfortable because it has a real chance of tasting like shit. Which upon signaling our distaste, we are immediately judged for our terribly pedestrian tastes and told we are terrible people for sticking to the Olive Garden as fine dining.
Notes from the Post-It Wall — Week of April 23, 2017
I screwed up reinstalling a towel rack. My future as a successful family man is not a promising one.
How do you want to be defined? By one action? By some opinion that could evolve? By a mistake, regrettable only with hindsight? Or by the sum of your parts? Okay, do that for other people. Start the trend.