I live across the street from a supermarket. This is both a blessing and a curse. It does not take much effort to buy groceries. I also do very little planning before I go over there. Many times I put off grocery shopping as long a I can. That is the way I run most of the things in my life.
Today I keep on telling myself that I needed to go to grocery shopping. There were a couple of thing that I could not put off any longer. Like most weekend days, I just kept on putting it off. I sit around my apartment and find every reason not to leave.
I did not make it over to the Supermarket until about 10:30 PM. The supermarket was mostly empty. There were no more then 10 or 15 shoppers in the store. It was like I had the store all to myself. I wondered around the store. I had little idea of what I was going to buy.
I felt like I was drifting as I walked thought the store. I looked at a six pack of Jello and pudding. I knew that if I bought that I would eat all of them over the weekend or throw them out because I let them get old in my fridge. The idea says so much about the way I live my life. I have been shopping for one since I left Philadelphia. I have not taken any real steps to change that theme in my life.
It was Saturday night and I was in an empty supermarket. I felt like I was on the moon and the gravity was one sixth that is usually is. I could see the world around me and I was so far away from it. I had not had a face to face conversation all day. No one in the supermarket was saying anything to each other. Maybe we were all isolated from each other.
The way I shop says so much about the way I live my life. There is nothing that makes me feel disconnected from the world like shopping with the feeling that I am all alone in the world. There are so many things I will not buy because of either I have no one to share them with or I am too lazy to spend that much time preparing food.
I bought some frozen meals. I thought about how Jeremy thinks frozen food is soulless and eating should be a soulful event. I disagree with him, but I think I would lose a debate with him right now.
I shuffled out of the supermarket. There is nothing that is connecting me to the rest of the world. Nothing but the force of my own will. I have no commitments to anyone. I have no anchors to the world around me. There is nothing that people rely on from me. I know that have taken steps to construct my life in this way. It was not my goal, but it was the result of living my life this way. I am turning 30 in a couple of weeks. Will that change the way I am living my life?
This is one of the best idea I seen in a long time. To tell the story of your life one song of a time, really gives people a chance to know you. Todays pick is one of my favorite songs off all time. It has a lot of great meetings.
UPDATE: There used to be a URL on this page for Bullwinkle's song of the day page, but that page has gone away.
Christina Hoff Sommers, Author of books like Who Stole Feminism and The War Against Boys, Says in a recent Christian Science Monitor Commentary that "As the 2000 election made plain, the United States is pretty evenly divided between conservatives and liberals. Yet conservative scholars have effectively been marginalized, silenced, and rendered invisible on most campuses."
I think there is an important idea in what she is writing. My experience is that discourse has been moved so far to the left at most universities that most arguments have two different positions, liberal and radical. Many times the people who are liberal are called fascists by the radicals. This distorts these arguments and the impact on the real world. Students at these schools get a view of the world that does not hold up in the real world. Worst is that anyone right of liberal is pushed out of the discussion. If the students here are the future leaders of America this causes lots of problems.
The worst thing is when people try to quash conservative speech in a university setting. There are lots of stories of entire runs of student newspapers being stolen because there is a commentary or story that upsets some campus interest group. Worse is a group pressuring an editor to resign over publishing something that is honest political debate. The campus interest groups are bullying people into not debating issues. That is the wrong thing to do.
A lot of people will say it does not matter that universities are liberal. That would be true if conservative thought was not all but stripped from the landscape. Universities should be safe havens for political and social thought from all sides of the spectrum. The current system is one of the current causes of the poor level of political dialog we currently get. Politicians on the right and left are moving so far away from each other. Maybe it would be better if these universities did not have cultures that were so anti-conservative.
A Career...Career...Career...Career...Career...Career...
I have always thought I have a pretty good resume. I have never been nervous sending it out to people. I think a lot of people think they have very good resumes. I try to give my friends advice, but they are set in their ways. I cannot say that I really know I am doing it correctly either. Maybe we should all just look at outside advice and make another draft of our resumes
Here Are The Facts You Requested are listed on the The Canonical List of Weird Band Names. (Link not gone) I wonder where the line for actual bands are. Dod I Frysbox would count?
There is a joke in the movie Singles where Matt Dillon tells a reporter that his band is big in Portugal. The gag is that everyone knows he is lying. At another point in the movie he has convinced himself it is true.
My friend Eric is in a band named Here Are The Facts You Requested. They worked a record deal with Testing Ground, a record company in Spain. Eric never met the guy before, but they guy hear a song off the web site and he wanted to make a deal. I think that is really cool. One day Eric might be big in Portugal
If you are wondering, 15 Euros is about 13 US. That is cheaper then I can it is on Amazon.
While I was in Portland, one of the books I bought was a copy of The Qur'an. (Side note, I feel like I have to put 'a copy of' before the Qur'an. I feel that if I wrote 'I bought the Qur'an' would would be making a statement that was too large and over arching. just a thought, not back to what I was writing) I have not really looked at this copy of the Qur'an since I got back from Portland. It have been sitting right next to my desk the whole time. I look at it from time to time, but I have not really cracked it open.
I bought this copy of the Qur'an used. It strikes me funny that I could buy a copy of the Qur'an used. It does not seem like the kind of book that people get rid of. I have to say I have no idea what kind of people buy the Qur'an. But I would think that most of the people that buy it are serous about it. I cannot see a Muslim sell a copy back to a used book store.
I can see what types of people would sell the Qur'an back to a book store. The copy I purchased makes me think it is a version that might be used in a college class. It could have been some one who got it from a friend who was trying to convert them. It could have just been a person trying to better understand the worlds fastest growing religion. I could see people selling the book back for any for these reasons.
I am not sure if I fit into any of these This copy of the Qur'an is in almost perfect condition. There is only one mark or note I can find anywhere on the book. The index page for the Five Pillars is dog-eared. I wonder if the person who had it even read it at all. I have not made the time to start reading it. It is just like almost all of the books I have purchased in the last two and a half years. I wonder if the person sold it back because they never had a chance to read it.
Like many high tech companies we have our own espresso machines. I think this is all a little funny. It is one thing to need a cup of coffee everyday. I think it is totally silly to need a latte mocha every morning. I think it underlies a bigger problem in America. Just in case you want to know. Here are the rules that were e-mailed out today. I guess some people do not follow the rules. I hope you enjoy these rules.
Sorry for the mail, but after the umpteenth time of needing to clean one of the espresso machines before using it, I thought it
was time for a refresher on the use of the espresso machines.
There are a set of rules posted on the cabinets above each machine. I'm not going to cover all of them here, so please read
them. A couple of the items that I want to stress are:
When you are finished, clean the machine
If you've steamed milk, wet a paper towel with hot water and wipe the nozzle off. Please don't use the same sponge that is used to wipe down the sink and counter, as it can be a bit "nasty".
After you remove the grounds container, press the button with the star on it to rinse the old grounds off the water outlet. When the water runs clean, press the button again to stop the flow.
Wipe down the machine
When you close the valves for either the hot water or steam nozzle, you don't need to close them tightly. Both of them use a clutch mechanism to open and close the valve. If you turn it tightly, you can actually damage the valve and we'll need to get it repaired. All you need to do is turn it until the water or steam stops flowing. There should still be "play" in the knob.
Thank you in advance for following the rules of espresso machine etiquette
A few years ago there used to be lots of newspapers on the web that would let people build customized comic pages. The Houston Chronicle is the last one I know of that still lets people do this. The sites run by the syndicates like Comics.com, Comicpage, King Features, and U comics. I like the Houston Chronicle site because I can get a lot of comics really quickly. I love comics. I feel you have an idea of what kind of person I am by knowing the comics I like. Here is my customized comic page.
I think from this Post you can find 90% of the newspaper cartoons that are available.
I just found problem with Netscape. All of my pictures were coming up broken. Does anyone use Netscape anymore? I used to love Netscape. They dropped the ball around 4.6. Now I use IE just like everyone else. It is so sad.
I get about sixty hits a week. From that number I am trying to figure out how many people read my site on a regular basics and how many are just passing through. I know that I have four or five regular readers. I am not sure how many other people check out my site. I want to know if people are actually reading what I am writing or if they just see it and leave.
How about everyone who is reading actually fill out the comment box at the bottom of this entry? It would help me understand who is reading. It might just be a little ego thing for me.
How Nice Am I? (or Another Conflicting message about what it means to be a Man)
There is a Therapist in Seattle that says that nice guys are just wimps that are not good for society. It is the same old story about how men are not taught to be tough anymore. Of course this guy is welling to tell us all about it in his new book, No More Mr. Nice Guy! Dr. Glover wants me to get in touch with my 'Inner Asshole.'
Here is the point where I make my sad admission. He talks about how nice guys do not get anywhere with women. If they do get somewhere, they do not build good relationships. I have always been a 'nice guy' and I never get anywhere with women. He might have a point here.
For the most part, few people I know have a problem being and asshole. I think that we need to teach people what it means to be a man. I think it is more then just power and machismo. It is about responsibility and pride. It is about having a place in this world that you help make and maintain. I feel that people on both sides of the masculinity debate are wrong.
I went to see Spider-Man yesterday. I cannot remember the last time I stood in line for an hour to get into a movie. The line was long. There must have been three hundred people in this line in front of me and another hundred behind me.
There is one feature of this picture that I really love. I love the palm trees. From time to time I see a grove of pine trees and it reminds me that I live in California. I never planned to live here. It was not one of my goals. I am not sure that I even like it that much. With all that, is still surprises me.
Those moments of surprise are happening less often now. It only happens once every couple of months. When those moments of surprise no longer happen, I will be a true Californian. I wonder if I will be there that long.
I have said for a long time that I do not smoke because I am a cheapskate. I can not figure out how much money I am saving by not smoking. It is true I am wasting that money on DVDs and computer gadgets.
