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.

Joel Osteen

I guarantee you, every motherfucker trying to give inspirational speeches based on their own experiences and create memorable motivational quotes on Facebook has absolutely burned their own life completely to the ground, and their mom knows the truth.

I Go By Many Names...

Who is this man with a matching universe themed hat and hoodie, walking aggressively down my street, chugging passionately from a white Monster energy can and carrying a black grocery bag full of mysteries? I need to know his story. I don’t need to hear the soundtrack, because I’m sure it’s all Drowning Pool, Staind, and Korn, but his story...I actually probably don’t need to know it. I’m pretty sure I could write a better one.

Read Into This

‘So ridiculous. Greta must work on her Anger Management problem, then go to a good old fashioned movie with a friend! Chill Greta, Chill!’

Donald Trump has completely validated all of Sigmund Freud’s ideas. He may not specifically want to be Greta Thunberg, but he very much wants to be the youngest, prettiest, most noticed girl in the room. I feel bad for him, and I feel bad for the entire world, because we have to suffer the ramifications of this sad, hurt man’s neuroses.

I Am But A Man

When your kids are upset, and you improvise some philosophy and motivational talk (right out of your ass), and the evening is saved, and...maybe we all really learned something here?

Honor Among Thieves?

Apparently I left my wallet at a gas station I went to this morning. Someone turned it in to the proprietor and they found my business card and called my work phone to let me know they had it. I had 80 dollars in there, and when I picked the wallet up there was only 5 dollars left. I’m conflicted about how to feel about this. Obviously someone stole from me, but on some level, they decided not to totally clean me out, which counts as a certain kind of compassion.

Be An Extremist

I don’t understand people who don’t hold public office declaring themselves ‘moderates’. You’re not an elected official. You are free to advocate for your actual worldview in a completely undiluted way! You don’t have to compromise with opposing parties or write legislation you think will be able to muster enough votes to pass. Say what you really want. Organize to put pressure on elected officials to make it happen. Vote for officials you believe are most likely to represent your views. The compromise and moderation and vote counting happens within the government structure. If you start off with a watered down demand because you think it’s more pragmatic, by the time the elected get around to actualizing, it will already have lost all of its flavor. Be an extremist for what you believe. Centrism is weak. It’s affected by weak, vain bores who lack imagination and value the appearance of being sophisticated members of the intelligentsia above all else. Take your NPR tote bag and get out of here.

#Mood

Heads up to anyone who has to interact with me today, I appear to be in a really irritable mood. I’m trying to manage it, but to illustrate the depth of my condition, I just got profoundly annoyed by my windshield wipers, and aggressively hit the lever to turn them off in a way that if verbalized would translate into a really bitchy, ‘Could you fucking not?’

What Came First?

I can’t decide if hurt, sad men, incapable of insight, growth, and healing, created the (all fictional) characters of James Bond, John Wayne, and Frank Sinatra, or if those fictional characters created these real men. Definitely a chicken/egg situation.