Don Hall 7/6/19 Don Hall 7/6/19

I Like to Watch | Midsommar

Thus began my fascination with cinema made by the most fucked up white people about the most fucked up white people ever imagined.

David Himmel 7/5/19 David Himmel 7/5/19

Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of June 30, 2019

Sesame Street needs a Hasidic Jew character. Could be a Muppet, could be a human. Yes, there’s Oscar the Grouch and Julia the Autistic, but to truly represent an individual who complains and struggles with a break from routine, a Hasidic Jew is the best you’ll get.

Don Hall 7/5/19 Don Hall 7/5/19

The Guide to Excellent Customer Service

In The Shawshank Redemption, the character of Brookes Hatlin is released after decades behind bars. The world has changed. It's faster. Cars are faster, technology is faster, people seem to be in so much more of a hurry than when he was convicted. The speed of things and the lack of familiarity in simple day-to-day living pushes him further and further into a corner that he can only find one means of escape from - a rope.

Don Hall 7/4/19 Don Hall 7/4/19

The Reasons Behind the Celebration

“In our personal ambitions we are individualists. But in our seeking for economic and political progress as a nation, we all go up or else all go down as one people.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt

David Himmel 7/4/19 David Himmel 7/4/19

Loving Your Country is Like Loving Your Child

I love my daughter more than anything. I am devoted to her. I would die to defend her.

But that doesn’t mean I defend or justify every single thing she does. When she tries to claw her mother’s eyes out because she hasn’t peeled a banana fast enough, I let her know that that shit is not acceptable. My love for her motivates me to help her not be an asshole. I want her to succeed at being a worthwhile person. I want her to realize her full potential. Which I’ll again briefly mention is enormous, probably greater than your kids’, if you have them.

This brings me to love of country; patriotism.

Joe Janes 7/3/19 Joe Janes 7/3/19

The Minutes of Our Last Meeting – Ivanka Washington

If I weren’t already married to your mother, I would totally scoop you up and make you my wife.

Sheri Reda 7/3/19 Sheri Reda 7/3/19

A Rescue Call Despite the Odds

What’s the matter, why don’t you know who you are? Wake up, America,

it’s me shaking you by the shoulders like Jim shakes any given guest star

out on the Final Frontier:

David Himmel 7/2/19 David Himmel 7/2/19

My Old Man and the Sea, and Me

A blackened city looms ahead
With foreboding consequences obvious in the darkness.
Behind us, a bright sky and calm waters and the time I feel we used wisely.
“We would have been home if you hadn’t been so anal,” my old man says.
“It’s better to fix and fully prep your vessel in port,” I reply. “Helps us avoid trouble at sea.”

The wind arrives in furious fashion.
The knots speed up — they tighten and strengthen.
We’re under motor but that don’t matter none.
The tiny and mighty storm has found our little vessel.
We might as well throw the wheel overboard
For all the good it’s doing.

Don Hall 7/1/19 Don Hall 7/1/19

I Believe… [College Isn't Mandatory]

...that while I completely agree that college should be tuition-free in the United States, asking for previous student loans to be forgiven is a bit much. College is optional, not mandatory and anyone who signed up for a loan to go knew exactly what they were getting into.

Don Hall 7/1/19 Don Hall 7/1/19

Repost: 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.

Don Hall 6/30/19 Don Hall 6/30/19

Corporate Sexual Harassment Training is a Hamfisted, Poorly Thought Out Necessity

Yes, we watched another video of clueless idiots harassing each other with a dumbfounded obtuseness that defies how actual humans behave. In my time in the workforce, I think I’ve seen five of these videos and none of them are repeats which begs the question: how many fucking Sexual Harassment Training videos are in existence and can we have a mini-film festival featuring the best or worst ones?

David Himmel 6/29/19 David Himmel 6/29/19

Long Train Running: A Chicago Marathon Story | Chapter 4 — Why We Run

Jim Von Handorf ran marathons for the same reasons he climbed mountains: to escape and to conquer.

A career fireman in Nashua, New Hampshire, Jim was an outdoorsman to the fullest. He climbed mountains, bouldered, swam, bicycled and ran. His daughter, Amy explains that her dad could never really sit still. That he had a constant need to just go, go, go. He grew up in a small, Boston apartment with a lot of people. The bustling tightness of the city drove him to get out. It was always in his nature to escape. He was into Thoreau and Kerouac. He needed space. So he headed into the wild. His mountaineering expeditions he made with his buddies took him to peaks all over the country where he would test his mettle against the elements and his own limits.

He even showed esophageal cancer that he was not one to go down easy.

David Himmel 6/28/19 David Himmel 6/28/19

Notes from the Post-it Wall | Week of June 23, 2019

Phrases like “not to mention” and “ who needs no introduction” written or said leading into an introduction are completely false statements and make no sense in any context they’re used. They should be removed from our language patterns completely. It goes without saying that these phrases and others should not be used ever again.

David Himmel 6/28/19 David Himmel 6/28/19

The Sinking of Uncle Joe

And, Hey! Uncle Joe worked with Barack Obama!
He’s got black friends. He’s not a racist. Just ask him.

And he’s not a close-talker or a personal space-invader.
Just ask him.
He’ll put his hands on your shoulders and whisper:
“Hey, now… I’m your Uncle Joe. Remember Obama?”

Then, sadly, and unexpectedly, before you can answer or squirm away
He’ll say mostly to himself with disappointment, “Yeah… me, too.”

David Himmel 6/27/19 David Himmel 6/27/19

What We Learned from the First Democratic Presidential Debate

Initial media reports are naming Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) as the debate’s winner. More and more, Warren gains favorable ground in my eyes. I like her thoughtful, thorough plans. Yeah, they’re boring and require us to follow the bouncing ball as she walks us through them, but they’re tangible plans, even if she doesn’t repeat them in Spanish.

The biggest difference on the stage last night was not between any of the candidates but the color between Castro’s top and bottom teeth.

Joe Janes 6/26/19 Joe Janes 6/26/19

The Minutes of Our Last Meeting | Be Bester

Make Children Great Again!

Don Hall 6/26/19 Don Hall 6/26/19

Independence Day: The Dance of the Vicious

There are things for us to celebrate but perhaps we should put the party off for a few years while we get our shit together, clean up our own house, and strive to be the country we believed we could be rather than the nation we have become.

Sheri Reda 6/25/19 Sheri Reda 6/25/19

Him, Too

Almost everyone has a Me, Too story. This one isn’t mine.

Don Hall 6/24/19 Don Hall 6/24/19

I Believe… [You Are Not Your Credit Score]

...that if you judge your own success by your credit score, I’d like to point out there is a Kool-Aid stain on your shirt.

Don Hall 6/24/19 Don Hall 6/24/19

The Conflicting Case to Do Away with Facebook

It was a Black Mirror episode that triggered me.

Specifically, Smithereens, and more directly a monologue/rant by Andrew Scott about everyone looking down at their smartphones constantly. It hit me like a two-by-four in the gut: I am that guy. I’m on my phone far more than I should be and I’m almost paralyzed in my distractions.