Random Notes from a Crank

I found an image on a social media site. 

It says, "A straw man walking a red herring up a slippery slope on his way to the comment section." 

It's true. Reading the comments on a newspaper's site will make you understand how stupid the average person is, which reminds me about what George Carlin said.  

In areas that are likely to be hit hard by tariffs, the Canadian government has an ad campaign that is trying to educate dumb Americans. The New York Times has an interesting article about this move: "Canada Drops the Gloves in the Tariff Spat, Makes Its Case on U.S. Billboards." 

I hope the Democratic Party does something similar. 

Regardless, the last paragraph of that article is hilarious: "'Normally, Canadian fans come down on buses,' she said. 'I hope they know we like to have them. They sure are nicer than Philadelphia fans.'" 

Oh lady, travel and tourism to the U.S. is definitely taking a hit.

I saw that Soundgarden has been nominated three times for the Rock-n-Roll Hall of Fame and has not gotten in. That's a travesty. 

Vote for Soundgarden.

When we visited the Hall of Fame years ago, I think that was the year after Pearl Jam got in. And I remember this video playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" in which Prince just totally shreds. It's a great solo. 

Prince was a genius and an underrated guitar player. 

And then there's this. He brings the funk even better than the original. 

When we lived in St. Louis, Mrs. Nasty went to one of his concerts. I should have gone too. 

I need to reacquire Sign O' The Times. That's a great album. 

Happy National Beer Day. 

Random Notes from a Crank

The past month or so I've been watching Game Show Network on a fairly regular basis. It's astounding to me how stupid the average person is. 

Watching these shows in which people give dumb answers reminds me of the statement by George Carlin: "Think of how stupid an average person is and realize half of them are stupider than that."  

Since I've been a kid, I've had the uncanny ability to stub my little toe on either of my feet about once a week if I'm lucky. The nails on my little toes are bashed to ugliness. 

I've discovered the HBO show/podcast Talking Sopranos that I'm enjoying a lot. I'm revisiting that great series. 

A while back I rewatched all of Boardwalk Empire. I had forgotten what a great TV series that one is. 

I bought a book recently that is likely to be banned by some idiotic parents in school districts because the non-fiction book talks about racism, sexism, and antisemitism, among other issues. It's titled Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed by Dashka Slater. 

I don't normally read books that are typically labeled "young adult," but this book looked interesting.

Musing of the Moment: "Incentivize" & "Utilize"

I highly dislike a certain word that has crept into many people's lexicons. That work is "incentivize." I like people simply saying, "provide incentives" instead of making a noun into a verb. 

I have another qualm, but it's in a different vein. I have a similar beef against the word "utilize" being used when a person could simply use "use" instead of "utilize." 

Why make things more complicated than they have to be?

These complaints reminds me of this classic riff on soft language by George Carlin. 

George Carlin on "Stuff"

I received an email today from a co-worker who told me she had some "stuff" to give me when we meet next week.  

Stuff is a much more interesting word after you've viewed the classic bit by George Carlin. 

So I thought I'd share. 

George Carlin on Baseball and Football

I don't why this floated into my consciousness today, but I was remembering back to a meeting months ago (January if I remember right). The three of us who were there early did some typical small talk, and the topic of sports came up, One person derided the value of football for American culture, and I mentioned the famous routine by George Carlin about the differences between baseball and football.

The other two people had neither seen nor heard of Carlin's routine. I was surprised by that, but then again, George Carlin is one my favorite comedians.

So today, if you're so inclined, enjoy Carlin's explication of the two sports and what they might say about America.

Missing George Carlin

@Me @You

We’re positioned to rethink, revive, recalibrate, revise, recapture, and 

rebrand our mission statements.

We’re looking for a catch-phrase, a cliché, a sports metaphor, a war metaphor that we can implement, diversify, and outsource—tactics,

strategies that work

while we rightsize and offload the peripherals of circumstance

to remain vibrant and accentuate

our competitive advantage, our emerging capacities.

But a maxim will work to

steamline our efficiencies while we expand our market.

Just make sure it’s 4G.

Btw, I'm 8G,

country strong,

and more supple than a Twitter feed.

Read it on my status, my feed, or my blog.

@Me @You

The marketing plan is to cross-pollinate.

and we will

at will,

willfully.

Or synchronize while we download, upload, feed, and friend

for synergy and diversity and opportunity

or hokum cultivated

to deploy and marshall resources in order

to meet objectives necessary to attain our goals.

Whatever you do, don’t think inside of it--the box that is.

And push that envelope.

Get that objective on a growth trajectory to meet the

needs of the 21^st century.

See, omelets, well they need eggs broken

just as long as we don’t reinvent wheels.

And the work, it needs to be smart to increase productivity.

See, I’m talking

@You @Me

I didn’t see the forest or the trees, and I didn’t hear a tree fall.

I just saw a bog of me and you,

unknown knowns, and known unknowns.

Possession

Today was one of those days that could get me going on a pretty good rant. Initially, I thought about critiquing our over-reliance on technology and people's (myself included) lack of mindfulness, which is one of the concepts I've been focusing on over the past few years through reading various books and articles.

[And in this spot you can now grin or roll our eyes about how someone would write a blog post railing against technology.]

However, what I think I'm really focused on -- at the basic level -- is what Thoreau states in Walden about how our possessions possess us.

One of the books I'm reading right now is an edited collection from New Society Publishers called Less is More: Embracing Simplicity for a Healthy Planet, a Caring Economy, and Lasting Happiness.

What many of the authors in the collection are promoting is living with lighter ecological footprints while embracing Thoreau's aphorism of "Simplify, simplify." Many of the authors are in or are influenced by the Slow Movement, and they're trying to persuade readers to live more simple, less hectic, and more meaningful lives by focusing more on our inner lives than outward possessions. In other words, they want folks to fully enjoy their lives instead of what Wordsworth refers to in "The World Is Too Much With Us" as "Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;/ Little we see in Nature that is ours;"

Some of the selections venture toward the whiny liberal variety of changing the world for the greater good of all and the planet. I like that message in general but not the whiny, unassertive tone of the some pieces. And I say all this as someone who would be considered a political "liberal" (on most issues) even though I see both American political parties as screwed up and usually spewing hokum backed by corporate interests. Or, put another way, I see some truth to how Lewis Black describes them--that the Democrats are a "party of no ideas" and Republicans are a "party of shitty ideas." And when they "work together," one guy says he has a bad idea, and the other collaborates to make the idea even "shittier."

But now I've gotten on a political tangent/rant. Back to what I'm supposed to be doing...

Okay, so one of my favorite essays in the book so far is co-authored by two Professors of Psychology, Tim Kasser (Knox College) and Kirk Warren Brown (Virginia Commonwealth). In their "A Scientific Approach to Voluntary Simplicity," they inform readers of their social-scientific study comparing two different sets of Americans (200 people per set), folks who lead lives of "voluntary simplicity"--people who "had voluntarily chosen to earn less than they could earn and had voluntarily chosen to spend less than they could spend" (37)--and mainstream Americans. Both groups took a survey that asked them about how happy they were and their environmental choices along with the Ecological Footprint Questionnaire. In addition, they "also measured two variables that past research found were associated with happiness and sustainability: mindfulness and values" (38).

But the results were a little surprising since the book is called Less Is More, a tome about simplicity after all. They found that happiness and sustainable lifestyle choices "were indeed compatible" (39). However, as the professors relate, "While there is some evidence that Voluntary Simplifiers were happier than mainstream Americans and were living more sustainable lives, ultimately our statistical analyses showed that identifying as a Voluntary Simplifier (versus a mainstream American) was not as important as being mindful and being oriented toward intrinsic values (relative to materialistic values)" (39).

So you're probably asking what the heck does being "mindful" mean, right? Earlier in the article, they talk about the "growing body of research on mindfulness shows that people vary considerably in the level attention they give to their thoughts, emotions and behaviors, and that to the extent they are more mindful, they report a higher sense of well-being" (38).

As Kasser and Brown conclude, the findings show that "living more happily and more lightly on the Earth is not as much about whether people think of themselves as Voluntary Simplifiers, but instead is more about their inner life -- that is, whether they are living in a conscious, mindful way and with a set of values organized around intrinsic fulfillment" (40).

So what this essay takes me to is another comedian, George Carlin, who satirized the American "getting and spending" long ago.

Be sure to take care of your "Stuff." And you're supposed to get more of it, especially that newer stuff.

And while you're at it, buy some Thneeds, "which everyone, EVERYONE, EVERYONE needs!"

Black/Dark Humor & Blackbirds

As Nick Neely writes about in "Blackbird Humor" on Audubon's blog, there was a strange incident in Beebe, Arkansas with the massive death of red-winged blackbirds. They just dropped out of the sky on New Year's Eve.

Since I'm a bird lover and the red-winged blackbird is one of my favorites, this is saddening, and I find the whole deal eery in a Biblical sense.

In his post, Neely explores the dark humor associated with how people have talked about what happened, which is one of the better explanations of dark humor that I've seen in a while. As humor goes, dark humor is my favorite since, as one of my students from long ago described it, "Dark humor, it's sort of funny. But then again it's really not once you get to thinking about it."

One of my favorite short examples of Dark Humor comes from George Carlin: "The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A death. What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, and you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating... you finish off as an orgasm."

If you're interested in browsing more aphorisms of Black/Dark Humor, click HERE, HERE, and HERE.

If you're so inclined, post one of your favorites from the links or from elsewhere.