Boys Will Be Boys

PSA to anyone raising sons: Make sure your kids understand that ‘boys will be boys’ logic was literally used to defend Brett Kavanaugh’s attempted rape when he was in college, as well as Brock Turner’s rape while he was also in college. Maybe boys will be boys, but that is never an excuse not to be a decent human being.

Easy= Hard When It’s Time to Pay the Bill

The path of least resistance is always the most costly and regrettable in the long run.

Re: Adversity

It is so gratifying to be kind to folks who hate you. Your initial response to aggression is to be aggressive back, but to respond with kindness and understanding offers a much longer term reward. Not as instantly gratifying as a violent response would offer, but so much stronger, and so much deeper. Turn the other cheek.

In addendum, a quote from James Baldwin that I believe is complementary to this notion:

"You cannot lynch me and keep me in ghettos without becoming something monstrous yourselves. And furthermore, you give me a terrifying advantage: you never had to look at me; I had to look at you. I know more about you than you know about me. Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced." 

The Real Metric of Success

One thing I have learned in this life: degrees, accolades, and awards pale in comparison to what you believe in, how much you believe in it, and how you articulate that intensity of belief.

Scene from a Play #1

17 year old runaway runs into his football coach at the airport just as he is about to get onto a plane to a new city to start over:

Kid: Coach? How did you find me?

Coach: I read this (holds up kid’s journal). It fell out of your backpack during our last practice. I was going to give it back without reading it, but then I heard you had run away. I read it thinking maybe I’d find a clue.

Kid: it’s been so hard. Growing up it’s just been me and mom, and she’s got enough burdens...

Coach: you’re not a burden. Let me tell you, the stuff in this journal (holds it up again reverently), it’s inspiring. You capture everything so uniquely. You’re an artist. And that last entry where you decided to run away, when that thing happened at the party...you know you could have called me. I would have come for you.

Kid: nobody ever comes for me.

Coach: (puts hand on kid’s shoulder, his eyes well up) I would of come for you. I came for you tonight, didn’t I? (The kid embraces the coach)

Kid: you did! You came for me.

Coach: You know where else I came?

Kid: where else?

Coach: in your mother. 17 years ago tonight.

Kid: wait...dad?

Coach: that’s right, son. I am your father. And I have a feeling things are about to change around this place!

The End

Stats

When I was 8, I would always practice my signature for when I became a famous baseball player. I also used to write out the stats on the back of my imaginary baseball card. There would always be a slump somewhere in there, and I would get traded to some other team (usually the Baltimore Orioles). But I would come back, and it would be glorious, and I would return to the Reds.

Shoo-gar!

My 8 year old son is a super good reader, and normally he would pronounce the word ‘sugar’ in the conventional way, but last night I bought him a little bag of Swad—candy coated fennel—from Jungle Jim’s, and he liked it so much he decided to add it to a drink he had concocted this morning. I asked him what was in the drink, and he mentioned it contained ‘Shoo-gar coated fennel’. I laughed and told him that was the fanciest way I’ve ever heard someone pronounce ‘sugar’. The bag says ‘Sugar coated fennel’, and my guess is that Swad seemed exotic to him, so he must have guessed all of the ingredients were pronounced in an exotic way.

Left vs. Liberal

Liberalism is a luxury ideology bought and paid for by the left. Remember Jack Nicholson's character from 'A Few Good Men': "You want me on that wall!"

Speaking the Truth

I don't think we talk about the things we really believe. We tend to take those things as givens, and just leave them alone. The things we talk about are things we are trying to sell to others and ourselves. It's that kernel of insecurity that leads us to articulate our ideas. We hope that others will buy it so that we might fully buy it, and we hope that if we say it well enough we'll genuinely buy it too. Every prophet, intellectual, preacher, and professor is speaking out of need. They are trying to believe something in the hope that it will make them fully real. A fully actualized person would probably rarely speak at all.

True Greatness

"The errors of great men are more fruitful than the truths of little men." - Nietzsche

In our capitalism-ridden culture, we tend to mistake greatness with economic viability. In truth, many of the greatest among us are impoverished, and most of the leeches of society are living off of inheritance and privilege. Greatness is of the spirit. Little people are cultural sheep, content to live by the dictates of their societies and religions. They are conventional. They are boring. Great people transcend their cultural setting and historical moment in their spirit. Spirit is everything. Rockefeller, JP Morgan, Henry Ford... They weren't great men. They were savages with spears acting on their basest animal instincts. Their progeny are even less great. The great person is most often not one known by history, but probably someone you know personally. They probably frustrate and confuse the sheep amongst us. They will definitely make the sheep uncomfortable, and they should: Wolves always make sheep uncomfortable.

UDF

Langston: hey daddy...
Me: yes?
Langston: I know what UDF means.
Me: What does it mean?
Langston: Unattended Dairy Farmers.

Imagine all of the unattended dairy farmers out there, no adults in sight, milking whatever they want.

On True Love

I'm starting to think that the only philosophy true love and compassion can arise from is nihilism. Once we accept how meaningless everything is, then we are truly free to embrace beauty, feel empathy for our fellow sufferers (all here by no fault of their own) and seek joy as an end unto itself. For anything to mean anything, maybe we first have to let go of everything. 

Cats

I walked into my kitchen this morning at 3am, and this is what I encountered. What does it mean?

Looking to the Future

Assuming we oust Trump in 2020 and get two terms of a sane, progressive presidency, here is my pick for 2028. Ocasio-Cortez/Omar 2028!

Ilhan Omar

This is definitely a crossing the aisle moment. A chance for us to come together: republican friends, doesn’t your fellow republican make a lot of sense in this tweet? You should definitely donate money to Ilhan Omar’s re-election campaign.

Also, fellow leftists, isn’t she wonderful and right, and focused on making a better, more moral USA? We should clearly donate too.

Toaster Strudels

It is an absolute scandal in my house when there is one fewer icing packet in the box than there are toaster strudels. The fear creeps in: is one of my children a capitalist?

Innovative Business Model

I would like to propose a reverse strip club, where naked people rhythmically put on layer after layer of clothes. By the end of the song they should no longer be able to move.

Poetry

The religious mind cheapens poetry by insisting that it also be literally true; the mountains do not actually hear your cries. Your heart does not tell you who to love. The Sand Man doesn't seduce you to sleep, there are no Gods in heaven, and there is no heaven. Poetry is beautiful because it points to things we cannot describe. It allows us to characterize that which cannot be adequately characterized by plain language. Poetry points to something higher (or lower) without being that higher or lower thing. The lord is truly with us, but that is because the lord is something we have invented.

Different Kinds of Churches

When I was 18, some jocks from my high school took me to a strip club near my house called Deja Vu and paid for me to get a lap dance. It was the only strip club I've ever been to, and I befriended the girl who gave me a lap dance. Her name was Dominique, and we ended up talking about religion for about an hour after she finished her dance. That strip club is now a church. I'm tempted to visit someday just to see if the preacher left the pole in. If so, I wonder if he uses it during the services.

Freedom

Western countries who say they are attempting to liberate women from Islamic oppression by banning the hijab are actually doing the same thing as countries who require women to wear the hijab. In both situations, the woman is not given a choice. The true liberators are the women who refuse to wear a hijab when required, and those who continue to wear the hijab when they are not allowed. In summary, allowing people to express themselves as they see fit, based upon their own choices and value system, and cheering on those who do, is the only real way to promote freedom.