Bloomberg

re: Mike Bloomberg, it’s weird that a guy I could fit into a travel suitcase is emblematic of the biggest threat to democracy the world has ever produced.

Small But Important Things

My—currently—9 year old used to always ask if he could download free games on my phone when he was using it, and I used to always say no out of caution. Recently I started saying yes when he would ask to download a free game, and his choices have been devastatingly innocent. He downloaded a game where you shape a piece of wood into a design, then he downloaded another where you use water to shape a stone into a design. And then, most recently, he downloaded a peaceful game where you feed different sea animals. It’s all super sweet and innocent stuff. He is moving towards his teen years rapidly and outwardly, and I embrace that, but I am still savoring these small, easily overlooked moments where he reveals the puppy-part he still contains.

Time Management

The good thing about losing faith in the idea of romantic love is that you have a lot more free time to worry about climate change. 

PSA for the Anxious

I have two statements for people who suffer from social anxiety. Both are true:

1. No one notices the awkward thing you think you did in whatever social situation. Most people are thinking about themselves at every moment, and are not there to assess the validity of your own neuroses.

2. Just because people aren’t thinking about you as much as you are thinking about you, it doesn’t mean you’re not important.

So chill the fuck out.

Happy Birthday!

“Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

Yesterday, when we went to sleep, we buried that day’s self. We buried it’s worries and pains and failures with it. This morning we are born into today’s self, and until we retire tonight, the day is full of possibilities, the potential for successes both small and big, new insights, new connection, and new passions and wonderful surprises.

Happy birthday to all of us! I wish all of us the best possible life today, and pray that when today’s self dies tonight, it dies the good kind of tired—the kind that spent the day doing meaningful work—and with a clear and satisfied mind and spirit.

You are the Bomb

Because my brain works in the way that it does, and because I am its slave, I’ve spent the last fifteen minutes lying in bed, creating one of those ‘there are two types of people’ metaphors, but I’m afraid it’s quickly spiraling out of control and I will never be permitted to sleep. 

I started with:

There are 2 types of people:those who design the bomb, and those who drop the bomb.

But then I realized, actually, there are 4 types of people: those who design the bomb, those who build the bomb, and...wait...there are also those who get the bomb dropped on them. So, 5 types of people.

My brain was momentarily satisfied, so it allowed me to begin drifting off to sleep. But as my mind started to relax, I realized in horror that there are many, many more types of people:

There are people who pay for the bomb. There are people who protest the bomb. There are people who see the bomb as necessary. There are people who use the bomb as a centerpiece of their wider global strategy as leverage. There are people who write about the bomb. There are people who use the bomb as a metaphor. There are people who dream about the bomb. There are people sexually aroused by the bomb. There are people who stopped worrying and learned to love the bomb. And there is me, a person who is losing sleep over all the different types of people that exist vis-à-vis the bomb, and worrying that this metaphor has become far too unwieldy for common use. Actually, I’m starting to doubt entirely how useful it has ever been to boil the entire human population down to two types in the first place.

Work for the C.I.A. (Born in The U.S.A parody)

Made in a laboratory 

By scientists to win the presidency 

Killing in mock interviews by age 3

I could roll up my sleeves before I could read

Work for the CIA

I work for the CIA

I work for the CIA

Work for the CIA

Got uncovered as a racist rat

When I was mayor but we covered it back

McKinsey mind prepares me for that

Donors won’t bail if the victims are black

Work for the CIA

I work for the CIA

I work for the CIA

I work for the CIA

Rigged the first caucus in the primary

Though nobody bought my victory speech

The establishment invested so much in me

But I will still lose against Bernie

I worked hard on my resume to look like a good candidate

Never read Ulysses

Claimed to speak languages I can’t speak

But nobody likes me cuz’ I’m Mayo Pete.

Receipts

When You Know You’re Doing It Right

It doesn’t matter what went right or wrong in my day; when I get home, and my 9 year old is already looking out the window waiting for me, and throws open the front door and runs out to hug me saying ‘Daddyyyy!’, I am immediately at peace.

Cat Tails

When I was a little boy, I loved snapping off those weird plants called ‘cat tails’ at the stem, and carrying them around until I couldn’t resist the urge to rub them until they erupted in a cloud of glorious white fluff. I passed that excitement onto my kids. The last time we acquired some of these things, My 9 year old decided not to explode his, and left it in a drawer for several months. He just showed it to me, and I suddenly realize why the things got called ‘cat tails’ in the first place. This is science.

Abominations

I walked into my office today to find this tiny rubber fetus laying on a desk. It is utterly horrifying, and should not exist. To quote Ian Malcolm from Jurassic Park: “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should.”

Problem Solving

I’ve noticed this phenomenon: I frequently experience this thing with problems in life/work where I get to the point of metaphorically banging my head against the wall trying to find a solution, but a solution doesn’t come, so I reach out to someone for help/advice, and almost instantly the solution comes to me, often before I receive the help or advice I asked for. I’m wondering if the mere act of surrendering/humbling myself before the problem allows my mind to loosen up and reconsider the issue from a different angle or something. 

I need to look more into this.

Job Prospects

My 9 year old: ‘Hey Daddy, what if you got paid 1 million dollars a day to pour milk on people’s heads?’

Me: ‘hmm. What kind of milk?’

Humans Driving

A funny thing just happened: I got into the highway, and the guy driving in front of me was going very slowly. It wasn’t super convenient to switch lanes and get in front of him, so I just followed him for a minute assuming he’d pick up the pace. After a few minutes he had not picked up the pace, and the right lane cleared up,  so I moved over. As I passed him, I just happened to look over, and he was already flipping me off. I wasn’t angry, or driving aggressively, or planning to flip him off. I interpret the fact that he already had one in the chamber to mean he knew he was driving like an asshole, and was expecting to get the normal treatment from a fellow driver when you are driving like an asshole. Hopefully my surprised facial expression caused him to reflect upon the way he navigates his life.

Resolutions

I hope we are all better in 2020 than the shit people we all were in 2019. Happy New Year!

True Sacrifice

Dying is so easy and so final. If Jesus really wanted to redeem mankind with his suffering, he would have gotten a job at a bank, a college debt, a mortgage, and a couple of kids. He could have died for our sins nightly, a glass of bourbon in his hand and the late show on the television.

Customer Service

Getting my oil changed at one of those quick oil change places, and the older white guy in the car next to me starts yelling at a younger white mechanic. The older man asks to talk to the manager. A black guy about my age comes out—clearly either the general or shift manager—and starts talking to the angry customer. The customer says, ‘I asked to talk to the manager!’ The manager says, ‘I am the manager sir. Let me know how to help you.’ Then the customer says, ‘ I need to talk to the white man who pays you!’ and I saw all of the (white) mechanics’ eyes widen. I was hoping for a strong comeback from the manager, but he responded in a better way by being unfazed and professional, and moving things along. When the customer checked out, he almost seemed chastened as he paid for his service.

Hats

My grandfather loved hats. I grew up thinking men should wear hats. At my first job in the human services, I met an older man who always wore fly ass hats. One day I asked him, ‘how many hats should a man have?’. He laughed and said, ‘I’m a recovering addict. I used to buy crack, now I buy hats’. He didn’t give me a specific number of hats a man should have, but he taught me other things about being a man, and, PS, I’ve got a bunch of hats now.

Nitpicking

Maybe it’s a small point, but how can someone be both radical and ‘do-nothing’? Doesn’t ‘radical’ ultimately imply action? How can you be radical if you’re not doing anything? Also, LOL to the whole ‘radical left’ thing. If any kind of radical left was in power in the U.S., we wouldn’t be talking impeachment. We would be talking guillotines.