Diamonds in the rough.

As I’m sure I’ve pointed out more often than is good for anybody, there are few activities that I enjoy as much as wallowing in the shiny baubles that magically appear on the interweb each morning. To some, time spent that way is akin to getting caught in a virtual La Brea Tar Pits of link bait and indefensibly ridiculous bits of electronic effluvia; but I’m more than shallow enough to enjoy all of it.

To wit: just this morning I followed a few links on the Times’ Op-Ed page that were part of a sidebar entitled “Resources: More on what books to throw out and why it’s a good idea to clean one’s home library.” One of the links included was this little gem by Lewis Grossberger, which just shows to go ‘ya why one should never, ever, take anything at face value. Grossberger’s “Resource” is, in short, one of those shiny baubles I so enjoy, and even better, it was hiding in plain sight amongst some of the rather solemn bits of literary opinion on which the Times has always depended.

So, enjoy the shiny and have a nice day while you’re at it.

Oh the irony. I even lost track of this post til just now.

Made it. It was close, but I just barely crawled across the finish line by dropping our 80 or so Christmas cards in the mailbox. And now that it’s official, I guess I can remove the razor wire from around the chimney and invite Santa to come work his magic. Good thing too; if the Fat Man’s only choice had been to pass by our house and leave nothing but lumps of coal, the boys would likely have staged a mutiny here at our little compound. Or a bloodless coup at the very least. Either way, I would have been kind of disappointed to not get my annual allotment of boxer shorts and socks. You know, exciting Dad stuff.

Anyway, I’m still mortified that we very nearly ran out of time for everything this year and… holy crap, I still haven’t gotten any eggnog… that coup may still be in play after all… gotta go. Merry Christmas.

The Special Olympics of Holiday Cheer

There are very few races in which I have the slightest bit of interest, yet I believe I’ve found another I couldn’t care less about: The First Christmas Card Mailed race. I should have known it was coming, really.

As I wandered down to the mailbox yesterday there was a suspiciously wintry chill in the air and the hushed silence that pervaded the driveway meant that the omnipresent leaf blowers were all done for the season. It was, in short, December 1st. As I nosed through the effluvia that the United States Postal Service is forever leaving in the mailbox, I spied what could only be a bit of red and green glitter at the bottom. Glitter from a Christmas card that was winking and smirking at me in the way that only a harbinger of this particular holiday season can.

“Yoo hoo,” whispered the glittery card, “guess what? It’s December and you haven’t even thought about Christmas cards have you? No you haven’t. I, however, came from a family that is organized, has their shit together and probably looks like they belong in a Ralph Lauren catalogue to boot. So there.”

I rolled my eyes which is really the only thing you can do when faced with cheeky, albeit hallucinatory harbingers of this most glittery of holiday seasons. Worse, by the time I got the offending card indoors and isolated it as one would a biohazard, I realized that it had left a trail of glitter behind me that looked as if I was being stalked by Phyllis Diller.

What to do then? Well, even though I realize I’ll never win the First Christmas Cards Mailed race, I really do have to get my holiday game face on. So then, it’s time to 1: beat a few smiles out of the boys, 2: snap a picture of the enforced smiles regardless of what I’m assuming will be their spectacular insincerity, 3: think of a pithy seasonal remark to add to the cards, and 4: actually mail the damn things.

So, I figure if I get all that done by, say, the 23rd or so I’ll be a winner just for finishing. Kind of like the Special Olympics of holiday cheer, if you will. Happy holidays!

The Tao of Wu? How about the Tao of Me?

Sure, we all know the Tao of Lao Tzu, the Tao of Steve, the Tao of Pooh and the Tao of goodness knows who else, but now the “abbot” of Wu-Tang Clan and awesome nickname owner Robert “The RZA” Diggs (The RZA? Yes, I believe a nickname pronounced “Rizz-a” is pretty awesome.) has offered us the Tao of Wu. Really. Well that’s just fine but I think it’s high time I stood up and shared the Tao of Me.

So what are my qualifications for flaunting my own, unique Tao? Well, mostly that I’m anything but unique, really. That is to say that basically I’m a young-ish guy who’s a husband, father of two and all around regular guy. And unlike Mr. Diggs who is, apparently, chock full of Tao, I’ve never had to overcome any great obstacles such as race, gender or disability. Everything in my life has, quite frankly, come pretty easily.

To put a finer point on it, I’ve never had to work very hard. Well... I did spend twenty years in the trenches of the food service industry, but I hardly think the difficulty of my career trajectory matches, say, coal miners, single moms, factory workers in South America, child laborers in Asia or even Victorian waifs selling pencils on snowy street corners. So in the scheme of things, working a job where I catered to cranky old people who liked to pretend they were still in the Catskills was, in short, a cake walk. Sometime literally, but that’s a different story.

Anyway, to summarize what otherwise might be an unnecessarily long winded treatise, the Tao of Me pretty much boils down to these two things:

1: Be nice to people. It’s not that hard and even if you don’t believe in Karma, you will, over the long term, feel better. (Except of course if you’re a douche bag, in which case never mind.)

2: Share. Or, put much less simply: even if you’re tempted to feel like an entitled libertarian because you don’t think your tax dollars should go to undeserving people or be used to light streets you don’t drive on… just stop. Stop feeling all persecuted because some government services are inefficient and there are some people who take advantage of them. And just because you don’t personally use a particular service doesn’t mean that it’s unnecessary or has nothing to do with you, because it does.

And how is that, exactly? Because even if you’re the sort of dismissive jerk that’s frightened by anything you think is liberal or touchy-feely… bear in mind that we’re all connected. How? What do you think happens if no one with dark skin can get a loan for a car, house or business? What happens if kids in struggling families can’t get access to meaningful higher education? What happens if everyone who’s born into a crummy neighborhood is allowed to fail? Chaos, that’s what. It’s the recipe for the creation and preservation of a permanent underclass. Remember the Watts riots? Sure you do. And if you don’t, look it up. ‘Nuff said.

Anyhow, I once again seem to have gotten far enough afield that there’s no obvious way to turn this little intellectual safari around. And that’s fine, really, because I actually like it here and it’s time for lunch anyway. Tao out.

Cognitive Dissonance.

There are few guilty pleasures I enjoy as much as reposting some of the shiny baubles I happen across on the interwebs each day, and that pleasure isn’t dampened in the slightest by the fact that it’s very likely that everyone has seen them already. And, as I also harbor a love of all things ironic with an ardor that may border on the unseemly, the following bit is sort of an exacta, if you will. =(Although to be fair to Irony, this piece is really more of an exercise in full-blown cognitive dissonance… so there you go.)

Anyway, enjoy:

"I am a conservative.

This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy.

I then took a shower in the clean water provided by a municipal water utility.

After that, I turned on the TV to one of the FCC-regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined the weather was going to be like, using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture-inspected food and taking the drugs which have been determined as safe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration-approved automobile and set out to work on the roads build by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level
determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank.

On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school.

After spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the Department of Labor and the Occupational Safety and Health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and Fire Marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all its
valuables thanks to the local police department.

And then I log on to the internet -- which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration -- and post on Freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right."

More Yummy Links? Really?

As I may have noted not too long ago, there are few things as satisfying as a little bit of shameless self promotion. Well, I suppose there are always things like flying to Vegas for the weekend and… well, that’s actually pretty different, isn’t it? Never mind. Anyway, I guess some more shamelessly yummy links will have to suffice:


The 10 Best Ways to Lose Weight and Keep it Off

Healthy, Delicious Recipes for Your Labor Day Celebration
Three Recipes that Add Up to One Great Meal

Indoor Rock Climbing in New York City
Three Places to Get Off that Boring Treadmill and Start Climbing

Mmmm, delish.