If you really love me...

You'll spam me?? Such is the gist of the following email, reproduced in whole below, that I received from a friend from church, who frankly should have known better. Hopefully she does not now consider me a fiend instead of a friend. This was just too "target rich" an environment to stay silent. For this post, I've corrected my pitiful spelling errors. I've also had to reformat the message, as the version as sent to me was a real mess, but then, so I find was my response. Such is life when using Outlook.

Disclaimer: any resemblance to humor is probably coincidental and purely unintentional.
This message blog entry should be received in the spirit of good will with which it is intended. Smarm ahoy off the port bow, Cap'n!

Where's the Tequila & Salt. Have A Nice Day!

Tequila and Salt This should probably be taped to your bathroom mirror where one could read it everyday. You may not realize it, but it's 100% true.

1. There are at least two people in this world that you would die for.

2. At least 15 people in this world love you in someway.

3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.

4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don't like you.

5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.

6. You mean the world to someone

7. You are special and unique.

8.Someone that you don't even know exists loves you.

9. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.

10. When you think the world has turned its back on you take another look.

11. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.

So..........If you are a loving friend, send this to everyone, including the one that sent it to you. If you get it back,then they really do love you

And always remember....when life hands you Lemons, ask for tequila and salt, and call me over!

Good friends are like stars.......You don't always see them, but you know they are always
there.

"Whenever God Closes One Door He Always Opens Another, Even Though Sometimes It's Hell in the Hallway"

I would rather have one rose and a kind word from a friend while I'm here than a whole truck load when I'm gone.

Forward to all your friends, including me. ![sic] And don't tell me you're too busy for this.
Don't you know the phrase "stop and smell the flowers"?

Persons of a sensitive nature or people who are easily offended by reality are asked to stop reading now read on and remember the wise saying of the Ancient Programmer:
“If you don’t like it, you can 101011101110110100100111001100011001011111000110101010 01010100101, bub!!!!!”

Now for the Snark:

1. There are at least two people in this world that you would die for.

Some corollaries:

1. There is at least 1 person who would kill for you. Man that just makes my day! What a great feeling! I hope to meet mine, because I’ve got some “mistakes” (see item 9 below) that just cry out for some fixin’...
2. Friends help you move, real friends help you move bodies. (See item 1 above.)

2. At least 15 people in this world love you in someway.

Some of them are not stalkers, pedophiles or even remotely creepy in any way… really!

3. The only reason anyone would ever hate you is because they want to be just like you.

Where “they want to be just like you” = “know you very well” or “know what you have been doing.”

4. A smile from you can bring happiness to anyone, even if they don't like you.

In much the same way that dollar, British sterling, or Euro denominated hard currency does… but this is much cheaper, (and much less heavy, especially if we are talking gold bullion instead) so it makes me smile… see! It’s a self-regenerating Circle of Giving™! But just think about how you can double this blessing! So next time you see me, smile as you fork over all of your cash! I’ll be sure to “pay it forward” someday. Honest, I swear!

5. Every night, SOMEONE thinks about you before they go to sleep.

Yes, and it causes me many sleepless nights while I map their insidious plots and plan appropriate countermeasures… If I go down, I’m taking as many as I can with
me!

6. You mean the world to someone.

Just so long as they understand that I am no way responsible for the current rotten state of the world… at least not that anyone can prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Convicted? No, never convicted. Or did you mean that “You are mean to someone in the world.”? This is a dirty lie! I don’t play favorites!

7. You are special and unique.

Yes, just like everyone else…

8. Someone that you don't even know exists loves you.

I’m confused… So you are saying that someone knows and loves me, but I’ve never met them? That would be “some one I don’t even know”… Or are you saying that someone who is non-existent loves me? Because that is a logical impossibility… either way, I think that may just be the tequila talking… And even if I could understand the your statement, and grant what you are saying, do they love the actualized, extant “me”, some idea that they have that I might be like, even though they have never met me, and probably doubt my existence all the same, or is it a higher, purer, Platonic Form of “me-ness” that so permeates the fabric of the multi-verse? To be honest, I’m betting on the tequila here.

9. When you make the biggest mistake ever, something good comes from it.

This depends largely on one of several consequences of the“biggest mistake evvah”:
1. Do you “really like” bald 300+ lbs. inmates named bubba?
2. Are you willing to associate closely with trial lawyers to sue the **** out of the deep pockets that said “mistake” is being pinned on?
3. You’ve got another bottle of tequila? If not, leave now! You’re harshing my buzz, man.
4. Are you talking about the wife and kids? Because I never get any sleep with all the damn noise and the tax breaks are utterly overrated.

10. When you think the world has turned its back on you take another look.

Now’s your big chance to take advantage of the world, while its back is turned! Be Prepared! Just make sure it’s not looking over its shoulder while you execute “Operation Total Domination.” And be sure you’ve brought enough spare batteries for your evil robot army.

11. Always remember the compliments you received. Forget about the rude remarks.

Unless the compliments flow after the bottle of tequila is empty, because you just can’t believe a thing that a drunkard says. On the other hand, you and the other drunk probably won’t remember a thing anyway… it’s probably for the best.

So..........If you are a loving friend, send this to everyone, including the one that sent it to you. If you get it back, then they really do love you

So what you are implying is this:
a. “Loving friend” equals “spammer”
b. I shouldn’t send this with “return receipt” turned on, because a small, efficient “mail acknowledge packet” does not equal “love” but resending a large HTML formatted email, with or without in-line snark, does? Weird. Well, all my friends are weird… and all, except you, are not spammers, so I guess you are the only one who loves me… JOY!!! Can you help me move this heavy stained carpet roll? Thanks, U R teh best!

And always remember....when life hands you Lemons, ask for tequila and salt, and call me over!

No problem, but could you pickup some salt and tequila on your way over? Oh and some limes, since that’s the sour citrus fruit that is traditionally used when doing tequila shots. But, hey, we can still use the lemons, so be sure to pick up a case of hefe-weisse as well. I prefer Paulaner in the 20 oz. bottles. Oh, and some lemons… I don’t have any. Kthksbye!

Good friends are like stars.......You don't always see them, but you know they are always there.

Let’s unpack the analogy, shall we?

• Friends are giant balls of super heated gas plasma, who periodically emit high energy radiation that can destroy life as we know it, surrounded by a near vacuum
• Looking directly at friends for short periods can damage your vision, while staring at them for any length of time results in total blindness.
• Friends can and will go “super-nova” on you. Friends can be a part of a binary system, where your Primary friend and the Secondary Object (SO) are in a tangled, complicated orbit around each other, where invariably the SO is either

1. A “Black Hole”, which grows wide with an ever expanding accretion disc, eventually consuming the Primary completely, continually spewing twin plumes of violent, hot gas in inverse directions from “the plane of the ecliptic” a.k.a., the neighborhood.
2. A “Pulsar”, whose periodic outbursts of high-energy plasma is so consistent, you can set your watch by them.
3. A “Neutron Star”, who is very tiny and very very dense.
4. A “Red Giant” really self-explanatory, but a word of caution: this type will always go super-nova on you in the end. Your friend may also be any of the above doing the same to the SO…

"Whenever God Closes One Door He Always Opens Another, Even Though Sometimes It's Hell in the Hallway"

So what you are saying is that such literary luminaries (see above) such as Dante, Shakespeare, Terry Pratchett, and AC/DC where all wet then they referred to a “Highway to hell?” It’s really a “Hallway to hell?” Talk about the banality of evil… much like capitalizing every word in an unreferenced “quotation,” or not using a period at the end a sentence, but I digress.

I would rather have one rose and a kind word from a friend while I'm here than a whole truck load when I'm gone.

"You can get much further with a kind word and a 2x4 than you can with just a kind word alone.” – J. Michael Straczynski

Forward to all your friends, including me!

Sorry you’ve been voted out of the ever important “friends of me” club… unless you show up with the tequila, salt, lime and bier… and/or give me a big smile and an even bigger wad of cash, cuz then, OMG U R t0TaLly MY BFF 4EVVAH!!! Yeah.

And don't tell me you're too busy for this.

It is self-evident that I’m not too busy, since I clearly spent hours
crafting some finely honed snark in response to this silly, sloppy,
smarmy, slice of spam… so no… I’m never too busy… not for you, you old
pal-o-mino!

Don't you know the phrase "stop and smell the flowers"

Never heard of it, (this is called plausible deniability… or is it deniable plausibility… I never can keep that straight.) and you know how much I like flowers. So bring some roses, orchids and gardenias, about 3 dozen of each, along with that case of tequila (“Tres Generations”, por favor, not that wretched “gringo juice” you usually swill down like spring water on a hot day.) and the 4 cases of weiss bier you promised you’d bring. AND if you start singing that annoying Glen Campbell song again, I SWEAR BY CTHULHU that I will target my ICBM’s at your command bunker and THIS TIME…
Or have you never heard of the phrase “Nuke ‘em ‘til they glow, then shoot ‘em in the dark”?

And, Thanks for caring™®©!” I really mean that!

Behavioral evidence for a common Australopithecene ancestry between Pan troglodytes and Homo sapiens sapiens

Take that, you champions of Intelligent Design! Ha!

Forget the DNA evidence pointing to common ancestry, here we have a report of identical threat behavior when exposed to environmental stress. Prior to the drastic method chosen above, I'd recommend a stern teeth baring, followed by a bit of the "old waving the arms and jumping about while screeching." It rather reminds me of the catalog of stupid puns for Titles and Authors that provided endless amusement during those halcyon days¹ of childhood. Sheesh.








^1. q.v. shitty

Religious persecution in North Carolina

Oh noes! Teh religious persecutions!!

As usual, I'm several days late to the party, but this post is one of the many reasons why I enjoy reading Wil Weaton's blog.

My beloved malaprop

My wife (a.k.a., She Who Must Be Obeyed) is a veritable Yogi Berra when it comes to malapropisms and otherwise generally abusing the English language; thankfully, the resemblance ends there.
Her most memorable malapropism being:

"Hindsight is 50/50."

Yesterday she called me at work and laid a new one on me:

"I love hearing your smile."

She's delightfully weird.


I'll update this post as I remember others or as new ones are mangled.

Logical thinking in difficult circumstances and difficulties arising from logical thinking alone

This post over on Art-of-Persistence got me thinking:

...But notice that when confronted with concrete situations, it is not our intellects that are immediately engaged, but our emotions. So is trying to deal with these sorts of situations by appealing to logic alone really logical? No.

I agree, and would argue that by exclusively viewing situations from a logical standpoint can lead to madness and worse, however it certainly has its uses. Assessing difficult situations exclusively from a "logical viewpoint", or clinical thinking, can be employed to set a boundary between the heart and the immediate dysphoria and sorrow that, for all its beauty, envelops this world. A Suffering, that should we face it square on, staggers the mind, heart and soul.

"Overwhelming" hardly covers it.

Clinical thinking is a powerful tool and is useful in many circumstances, the necessary mind-set of pediatric physicians working with terminally ill children, being an obvious example. To maintain a high level of functionality during emergent situations, we need to keep our feelings in check. It is equally necessary to then pick up and deal with the emotions we've previously put on hold, or suffer the ill effects of ignoring them. Our feelings will out. Who can remain unmoved when watching the interviews from Band of Brothers, as aging veterans relive the suffering of terrible events in a youth spent at war?

The "problem" is that we are not really logical or rational creatures. We are emotional beings, driven to a large extent by our endocrine system (and heredity, diet, environment, et cetera ad infinitum.) Failing to honor this reality causes great damage to the psyche. While we cannot and should not trust our feelings, neither can we ignore them. Our biology makes this difficult if not impossible to get away with, no matter the desire of the classicist to practice stoicism or the geek to emulate Spock.

To achieve stability, we need balance. (A Blinding Flash of the Obvious, to be sure.) Reliance on emotion, without switching on the logic circuits, causes us to make profoundly bad decisions. Taken to an extreme, letting the emotions rule can completely paralyze our lives producing endless chaos, crisis upon crisis, or worse yet, an appearance on "reality" TV.

The reverse, however, is perhaps more troubling. Reliance on clinical thinking alone without engaging the heart, diminishes of our capacity for empathy. Without empathy, it is all too easy to view others as "less than" ourselves, not as fellow humans, but as objects. We run the risk of slow cardiac lithification, producing in ourselves a monster by degrees. The extreme end result is a seared conscience, utterly devoid of empathy, and with it the capability to commit the most inhuman atrocities. Certainly, there are other routes to this unfortunate end, but thinking about Rich's post led me down this particular rabbit trail.

It seems to me that an exclusive reliance on clinical thinking, when coupled with an ideology* (which, it seems, is clinical thinking writ large, and invariably defines a group of "Others" as "less than" the group holding said ideology,) explains the darkest chapters of 20th Century history. Is our age of genocide an end result of an abuse of the power of clinical thinking? Did this useful tool, a product of the age of reason, when combined with the technological advances of the resulting industrial revolution, as well as the rise of ideology, become a wicked instrument of unleashing intentional, unprecedented slaughter? It's certainly part of the equation, but there's a lot more to this.

Explaining and truly understanding the darkest motivations of human behavior is hardly a simple task, let alone a pleasant one. It is beyond the scope of a single life time, let alone a single post on an deservedly obscure blog. But the Church Fathers had a succinct definition for it: sin.

*This little construct of mine only holds as long as we are talking about secular ideology. Religious ideology doesn't really live inside this house that I've finely crafted from the choicest straw. That would be the subject of another post.

It's alive...

After an epic period of procrastination, I'm posting.

oh joy.