A friend send me a link for a site that takes random Family Circus comics and adds random Nietzsche quotes. I think this is one is very funny. It is a great idea. I think there are lots of comics that could use this kind of treatment. I know the Family Circus is easy because the text is not part of the cartoon. I wonder what The Far Side would look like
The Searcher: that's what happens when you try to sum up complex issues in a single sentence. You end up getting it mostly wrong
I find this to be so true. Over and over again I see the in the media. When people use an analogy to explain a complex situation they leave most of the truth on the table. This frustrates me when I see people try to make things simple that are not simple. I think it is lazy thinking. This usually leads to bad decision making. One of the problems is that whoever makes the mistake of summing up a complex issue in a single sentence and gets it wrong, they usually do not face any consequence.
I was talking to Tim Taylor at a blogger meetup that I went to. He kept on saying that baby's have a perfect love. If you liked up five newborn babies of different races they would only love each other. There would be no conflict, we teach them how to have conflict.
I told him that I hate that argument. Those five babies are not even close to being mentally developed. They cannot take care of themselves. If those five babies were left on their own, we would have five dead babies.
I told him that I thing God gives us conflict and suffering. We are given these things so we can find out what kind of people we are. Without these things we would not value life, ours or others.
Tim was wearing a shirt that says, "Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." Jalal ad-Din Rumi. My conversation with Tim was the best conversation I had all night. He was the only blogger I meet that did not care about their space in the bloggersphere or how blogging was going to change the media world.
JF Cates at Testzone Blog Report made me think of this quote. JF lives in Charm City (Baltimore, MD). We are both big fans of the TV show Homicide: Life On The Street. In one of her recent posts she answers the question "What's the real reason you get up every morning?" with, "because I love my first cup of coffee in the morning." Instantly I thought of this quote from Homicide.
Det. Frank Pembleton: You know, every day I get out of bed and drag myself to the next cup of coffee. I take a sip and the caffeine kicks in. I can focus my eyes again. My brain starts to order the day. I'm up, I'm alive. I'm ready to rock. But the time is coming when I wake up and decide that I'm not getting out of bed. Not for coffee, or food or sex. If it comes to me, fine. If it won't, fine. No more expectations. The longer I live, the less I know. I should know more. I should know the coffee's killing me. You're suspicious of your suspicions? I'm jealous, Kay; I'm so jealous. You still have the heart to have doubts. Me? I'm going to lock up a 14 year old kid for what could be the rest of his natural life. I got to do this. This is my job. This is the deal. This is the law. This is my day. I have no doubts or suspicions about it. Heart has nothing to do with it anymore. It's all in the caffeine.
I listen to this on MP3 and I am amazed. As a writer, I wish I could capture an idea as well as this.
I was cleaning out an old e-mail inbox. I came across a message that was sent to me a few months ago. It was a message that I had thought about a lot. The woman knew I had a crush on her. She pushed me off indirectly a couple of times and directly once. I was fine with that. I still extended my friendship to her. This was a message she sent to me before she want to vacation.
Btw one more thing. I am sorry that I haven't been as nice to you as I should be. I get really nervous when guys are interested in me and I just want to be friends. I tend to avoid them, because I don't want to lead them on. Clearly their has to be a better course of action, and when get back I am game to try and spend some time figuring that out. ;)
There is something I love about this message. Most of the time people would not admit something like this. This is part of the unspoken language of women and men. It is expected that some one has pushed back on you. This means they want you to back off. Many times you can back off, but still stay friends with the person. This is what I was trying. I have never had a woman say this to me before. I wonder if there was any way this could have turned out better.
