Love Languages

When I was a small human
I would collect little pebbles
And leaves and interesting sticks
And bugs and flowers
And give them to my parents
It was how I said ‘I love you’

As I got older and made friends
I would make mix tapes
And burn CD’s
And create homemade covers
And give them to my friends
It was how I said I loved them

Now I have kids
I do the same things for them
Teach them recipes and buy them books
That helped me understand how to live

And they practice the same method
I’ve got shelves of grade school clay contraptions
And framed pictures they drew
And all kinds of recommendations they gave me
That say, ‘Dad, I love you too’.



“Preach the gospel at all times, use words when necessary”

I can never remember if that quote is from St. Augustine or Thomas Aquinas. Some dead guy who loved God and never had sex definitely said it though.

Patient Zero

I think ‘Patient Zero’ is a rude nomenclature. What if this person has self esteem issues? What if they feel like a habitual loser? We’re going to call them a Zero the first time in their life they’ve actually been first at something? Not me, man. I’m Trauma Informed. I say it’s time for Patient Hero.

It’s All About Who You Know

One of the best side effects of working in the homeless services for 10+ years is that I can’t walk down the street in downtown Cincinnati without someone calling out ‘Mr. Spencer!’ and initiating a conversation. The perk is that because of this, I’ve had the opportunity to introduce my kids to so many interesting and inspiring people as we have walked around. I am telling the truth when I say I am prouder by far to be shouted out on the street by a former client in front of my kids than I would be in front of whatever celebrity or ‘successful’ person.

Schopey

As I sit in the parking lot waiting for my client to walk out of the building their appointment was in, a 60-ish white man on a Harley Davidson drives by with a look of total contentment on his face, blaring some hair metal band (‘You know I’m a dreamer...’), I suddenly realize that Arthur Schopenhauer was the only human being who ever really understood what it means to be a human being.

You Sexy Thing!

“You know the thing.” - Joe Biden

Obama’s former VP just wrote the title of Hot Chocolate’s comeback jam!

Horror Movie Rules

I have a sick feeling we haven’t seen the last of Mayor Pete. I’m waiting to see him in his final form, as Bloomberg’s VP. I don’t believe he has the humility to just drop out because ‘the math doesn’t work’. I can hear him in the walls already, chewing on wires...

The Economy

Fuck the stock market. I hope it crashes completely.

Donald Trump and Republicans (and Corporate Democrats) point to it as indicator of how well our overall economy is going, but most Americans aren’t invested in it in any significant way, if at all. The real indicators of how the American population is doing is related to quality of work, overall debt, ability to afford necessary expenses, and deaths and medical issues of despair, i.e., suicide and addiction. These numbers paint a much grimmer picture of the overall well-being of our population. ‘The Economy’ doesn’t just boil down to the high stakes poker game the wealthier among us are playing in the stock market. It’s time for us to flip the poker table over once and for all, and stop pretending it means anything substantial.

“Despite the fact that almost half of all households owned stock shares either directly or indirectly through mutual funds, trusts, or various pension accounts, the richest 10% of households controlled 84% of the total value of these stocks in 2016.” *

*https://money.com/stock-ownership-10-percent-richest/

Cooking & Social Working

2 things:

1. This is a good recipe.

2. When he says at the beginning, ‘You’re not gonna get it right the first time’, and his tone was both casual and empathetic, as a person who is typically hyper self-critical, I totally relaxed, and was like, ‘Ok, this will take a couple tries’. As a social worker and food-lover, I can confidently say this guy is both a good cook, and possesses good pro-social skills.

Evidence

When you’re trying to creep on someone you just met on Facebook because you got mad serial killer vibes when you met them, and you realize they—under 40—don’t have a Facebook page. 

= Serial Killer.

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.