From news reports I've seen this week:
Headline: Illinois-shaped flake joins cultural exhibit
This, of course, is about a corn flake sold on eBay for $1350.00. Now it's part of a traveling "cultural exhibit." Yeah, that's right, France, we've got the corn flake! Bet that stupid Louvre looks pret-ty shabby now, huh?
"That's the most perfectly Illinois-shaped corn flake I've ever seen," said Jon Wolf (curator of TriviaMania.com) as he accepted the flake, swaddled in a cotton-lined jewelry box.
Kind of makes you wonder if he's spent a lot of time looking for one ...
And we wonder why no one takes America seriously.
__________________________________________________________
Headline: Paris Hilton goes on safari
To start with, this sounds like the perfect title for a homemade YouTube spoof. The possibilities are just endless...
And then I was struck with a mental picture of Paris Hilton at a press conference wearing designer khaki safari gear and a Patricia Underwood pith helmet. Please understand - as far as I know, the following scenario never took place:
Cameras flash, reporters hang on Paris' every word as she recounts the moving experience, "Before I went on safari I just had no idea of the terrible living conditions of third world animals like lions and zebras and ... stuff. They have to like, drink dirty water and eat raw meat and leaves without salad dressing and ... stuff ... just to live. I'm dedicating my life and all the profits from my last movie to improving the lives of wild animals in Africa and ... stuff. And my sweet little dog, Tinkerbell, is going to be the new spokesperson for my foundation and ... stuff. Can you still call them a spokesperson if they only bark and ... stuff? I want to make sure all the animals of the world get to live in pretty zoos and learn great tricks and ... stuff ... so they can get treats and ... stuff. That would be HAWT!"
________________________________________________________________
Headline: Japanese aim to launch paper craft from space
Yeah, no kidding.
Japanese scientists and origami masters hope to launch a paper airplane from space and learn from its trip back to Earth.
Apparently the plan is to toss some (number currently undetermined) specially-made paper airplanes into the wake of the International Space Station and see how well they survive reentry into Earth's atmosphere. And while there is no way to track the planes on their return trip, there is a plan in place that, it is hoped, will at least allow scientists to find out where they landed.
Suzuki (the project leader) and Toda (head of the Japan Origami Airplane Association) plan to write a message of peace on the planes in several languages, along with a request for anyone spotting them to notify the team.
"Just imagine, children around the world would be anxiously waiting for the return of our origami shuttle, perhaps looking up into the sky from time to time," Suzuki said. "That would be great fun."
Obviously, Japanese children aren't raised with sufficient repetition of the warning, "You could put somebody's eye out with that!" In America we know better than to launch paper airplanes from a height of 250 miles in the hope that children will be watching for them.
After all, we're the nation with a corn flake shaped like Illinois.
So, aside from the risk to children's eyes everywhere, how many irreplaceable acres of forest and jungle will be destroyed when ignited by flaming paper airplanes from space?
Hey, Flaming Paper Airplanes from Outer Space! Sounds like a good spoof video. Or maybe it could be a theatrical release, starring Paris Hilton. She could use the money to buy corn flakes for underprivileged African lions ...
Friday, March 28, 2008
Thursday, March 27, 2008
An Application of Minivan Theory
Yesterday it happened again - my lane of traffic was moving much more slowly than the one next to me. A long line of cars waited for and eventually took fleeting opportunities to quickly and nimbly jump to the other side of the road. Finally I saw an opening and made my own move, accelerating to match speed with the faster-moving line of cars. It didn't take very long to reach the head of the slow line I had just abandoned. It was a minivan. Again.
Based upon observations taken over the course of many years of commuting, I have developed a discipline that I humbly call "Minivan Theory." Here are its basic tenets:
1) Minivans will be found at the forefront of slow-moving lines of traffic far more often than other vehicle-types, when taken as a ratio of the number of a particular type of vehicle to the total number of vehicles traveling a given route at any given time. In other words, more often than not, when I pass a slow-moving row of cars, they will be led by a minivan.
2) The length of the line of cars behind the minivan will be roughly equivalent to the length of empty roadway between the minivan and the next car ahead of it.
My wife and I were driving home from a recent outing and found ourselves in the slow-moving lane. I pulled into the neighboring lane and in a matter of seconds we passed - you guessed it - a minivan. I made a comment roughly stating the first tenet of Minivan Theory set forth above. In all fairness, I also observed that it is clearly incorrect to state that all minivans are awkward and underpowered, or that all minivan drivers have nowhere to be and all the time in the world to spend in not getting there.
In return my wife pointed out, "At least he's in the lead. Look at all the people following him."
There was a brief silence as we simultaneously recognized the profundity of this remark. Oh, you could just hear the wheels in both our heads spinning - at speeds that minivan tires only dream of. Leadership by impediment - a clear-cut application of Minivan Theory! Together we realized that far too often people enjoy a position of leadership simply because those following can't get around them.
Leaders, maybe it's time we check carefully to see if people are following us because we're going somewhere important, or because we're just in the way.
Based upon observations taken over the course of many years of commuting, I have developed a discipline that I humbly call "Minivan Theory." Here are its basic tenets:
1) Minivans will be found at the forefront of slow-moving lines of traffic far more often than other vehicle-types, when taken as a ratio of the number of a particular type of vehicle to the total number of vehicles traveling a given route at any given time. In other words, more often than not, when I pass a slow-moving row of cars, they will be led by a minivan.
2) The length of the line of cars behind the minivan will be roughly equivalent to the length of empty roadway between the minivan and the next car ahead of it.
My wife and I were driving home from a recent outing and found ourselves in the slow-moving lane. I pulled into the neighboring lane and in a matter of seconds we passed - you guessed it - a minivan. I made a comment roughly stating the first tenet of Minivan Theory set forth above. In all fairness, I also observed that it is clearly incorrect to state that all minivans are awkward and underpowered, or that all minivan drivers have nowhere to be and all the time in the world to spend in not getting there.
In return my wife pointed out, "At least he's in the lead. Look at all the people following him."
There was a brief silence as we simultaneously recognized the profundity of this remark. Oh, you could just hear the wheels in both our heads spinning - at speeds that minivan tires only dream of. Leadership by impediment - a clear-cut application of Minivan Theory! Together we realized that far too often people enjoy a position of leadership simply because those following can't get around them.
Leaders, maybe it's time we check carefully to see if people are following us because we're going somewhere important, or because we're just in the way.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
One More Rite!
Four or five years ago, my wife suggested that she wanted to buy me an orchid for our wedding anniversary. Like my mother, I had often mentioned that someday I would like to try growing an orchid. Just one - to see how it did.Unlike Mom, however, I actually selected one - a really pretty Phalaenopsis hybrid in shades of pink and white. And it has responded surprisingly well to the very moderate and casual level of care I give it. Every year its buds burst into bloom just in time to bless our anniversary with at least a few flowers. The full spike develops over the next couple of weeks, until it looks like the picture over there (taken this past weekend) -->
I will admit that, seduced by the success achieved with this specimen, I tried for a while to raise more than one orchid, but none of the others flourished - or even survived. Maybe Mom had the right idea, even if she never acted upon it - "... try ONE orchid ..."
Or maybe I'll try another Phalaenopsis sometime, if I just happen to see a particularly appealing specimen. But, whether or not I ever try my hand at another orchid, this one will always be very special to me - partly because of its beauty, but mostly because of who gave it to me.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Casualties of a Bloodless Revolution, Part II
The Industrial Revolution convinced us that most, if not all, services and hard goods can be reduced to constituent parts and reassembled into versions much improved over their handmade, homegrown, or personally-produced ancestors. Thus we are surrounded by countless and ever-changing forms of nutrient-packages replacing real food, entertainment-packages replacing real fun, and so on.
In some ways the Digital Revolution appears to have returned commerce to a more personal level - eBay is a good example. But there is still virtually no relationship between buyer, seller, producer and product. Online auctions do not recreate a time when we knew what the builder of our furniture looked like, where he lived, how he worked, where his wood grew, and so on. We no longer touch a living hand when we offer our money for his chair, and then "shake on it" when we strike a deal. Yes, those days are gone forever, except in very small niches. But that kind of awareness once made us a part of an important circle which united buyer, seller, maker, product, and the earth that produced the raw materials. In the same way, eating real foods can connect us with a grower and through that grower, to the very dirt and sunlight that birthed and nourished those foods.
Furthermore, what the Industrial Revolution has done to tangibles, the Digital Revolution has largely and increasingly inflicted upon intangibles such as education, friendship, courtship, conversation, community, etc. Digital technology offers the promise of reducing these, and all other relationships, to raw data which may be manipulated, reproduced, stored, transmitted and translated at will. Both as a process and as a philosophy, digitization reduces its subject to a series of zeros and ones. One need look no further than down the pages of this very blog to discover the high degree of success with which images and sounds can be so reduced, reproduced, transmitted and translated. But relationships are more than images and sounds.
Education is about more than delivering data from teacher to student. For instance, the most important stuff I learned about music from guys like Grant Wolf and Fred Forney and Randall Shinn and Robert Oldani had little to do with the hard facts of theory and history. Rather, I was more changed by a single glimpse of what they felt and thought about music than I was by daily inundation with facts they knew about music.
Similarly, friendship is not measured simply by how many pieces of information we collect about one another. Courtship cannot be reduced to the answers on a compatibility survey. Conversation is not always as much about the factual content of our sentences as it is about the setting where we speak, the tone of our voices, the set of our faces, and so on. Community involves far more than submitting our name and optional, brief biographical data to an online site and agreeing to abide by its rules. The premise is flawed that considers relationships matters of data that can be reduced to binary code.
It may be too late to rethink the Industrial Revolution in terms other than philosophical, but we are not yet irreversibly sunken into the digital realm; we can still face this revolution differently than we handled its predecessor. We can employ digital technology as an instrument for storage and transmission of impersonal data, and not adopt it as a philosophy of life. The success of the Industrial Revolution gave us the tools, processes, science and free capital necessary to launch the Digital Revolution. Perhaps we can also learn from its failures how to deal with the shortcomings of digitization before we have shed too much bloodlessness on its altar.
In some ways the Digital Revolution appears to have returned commerce to a more personal level - eBay is a good example. But there is still virtually no relationship between buyer, seller, producer and product. Online auctions do not recreate a time when we knew what the builder of our furniture looked like, where he lived, how he worked, where his wood grew, and so on. We no longer touch a living hand when we offer our money for his chair, and then "shake on it" when we strike a deal. Yes, those days are gone forever, except in very small niches. But that kind of awareness once made us a part of an important circle which united buyer, seller, maker, product, and the earth that produced the raw materials. In the same way, eating real foods can connect us with a grower and through that grower, to the very dirt and sunlight that birthed and nourished those foods.
Furthermore, what the Industrial Revolution has done to tangibles, the Digital Revolution has largely and increasingly inflicted upon intangibles such as education, friendship, courtship, conversation, community, etc. Digital technology offers the promise of reducing these, and all other relationships, to raw data which may be manipulated, reproduced, stored, transmitted and translated at will. Both as a process and as a philosophy, digitization reduces its subject to a series of zeros and ones. One need look no further than down the pages of this very blog to discover the high degree of success with which images and sounds can be so reduced, reproduced, transmitted and translated. But relationships are more than images and sounds.
Education is about more than delivering data from teacher to student. For instance, the most important stuff I learned about music from guys like Grant Wolf and Fred Forney and Randall Shinn and Robert Oldani had little to do with the hard facts of theory and history. Rather, I was more changed by a single glimpse of what they felt and thought about music than I was by daily inundation with facts they knew about music.
Similarly, friendship is not measured simply by how many pieces of information we collect about one another. Courtship cannot be reduced to the answers on a compatibility survey. Conversation is not always as much about the factual content of our sentences as it is about the setting where we speak, the tone of our voices, the set of our faces, and so on. Community involves far more than submitting our name and optional, brief biographical data to an online site and agreeing to abide by its rules. The premise is flawed that considers relationships matters of data that can be reduced to binary code.
It may be too late to rethink the Industrial Revolution in terms other than philosophical, but we are not yet irreversibly sunken into the digital realm; we can still face this revolution differently than we handled its predecessor. We can employ digital technology as an instrument for storage and transmission of impersonal data, and not adopt it as a philosophy of life. The success of the Industrial Revolution gave us the tools, processes, science and free capital necessary to launch the Digital Revolution. Perhaps we can also learn from its failures how to deal with the shortcomings of digitization before we have shed too much bloodlessness on its altar.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
More Rites of Spring
The koi have returned! OK, it's not exactly like the swallows to Capistrano or even the buzzards to Boyce Thompson ( check out http://www.btarboretum.org ); my koi didn't winter in Mexico or Central America. But still they managed to mostly disappear for a few months into the 4-foot deep end of their 3000-gallon home. And now they've resurfaced, looking healthy and happy - and obviously feeling hungry!
Click on the images above for larger versions, if you're so inclined...
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Rites of Spring
They start in late January, hinting that Spring is close at hand. Aloes always remind me of a fireworks display lasting months instead of minutes, rockets exploding over a span of days rather than seconds. I don't hear any sound from them, but they sure seem to wake up the sleeping plants around the garden - first the lantana, then the miniature roses, the citrus...
Enjoy the video - about two-and-a-half minutes I threw together with some digital photos from my garden, a CD from my collection (Holst - Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity) and Photo Story 3 for Windows (included with XP).
Enjoy the video - about two-and-a-half minutes I threw together with some digital photos from my garden, a CD from my collection (Holst - Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity) and Photo Story 3 for Windows (included with XP).
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Casualties of a Bloodless Revolution
For all its benefits, the Industrial Revolution has turned out to be far more revolutionary (and perhaps more revolting!) than we might realize. Not only did it change forever our way of producing and distributing goods, it also changed dramatically the way in which we view those goods, the distribution chains that provide them, and the services attendant to those industries. A circular, interdependent relationship between builder, seller, and user was replaced with a delivery system designed to place goods and services into the hands of the consumer, or from another vantage point, a delivery system designed to place consumers' money into the hands of businessmen.
These reformulated attitudes have "trickled down" into virtually every area of our lives, coloring how we work, play, eat, sleep and even worship. Michael Pollan's books, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, depict ways in which the industrialization of American food production has encouraged and in turn been supported by the perception that food is nothing more than a nutrient-delivery system, and one which can be improved upon by science and technology.
In much the same way, Americans have come to view work as a sort of income-delivery system. From the other side of the desk, workers are viewed as productivity-delivery systems. Sleep is a rest-delivery system. Because many of us have no real relationship with our work or with the people who benefit from it, we find the need to "get away" once in a while. So we spend vacations and holidays at resorts, spas, amusement parks, etc., which are actually carefully-engineered delivery systems for rest, relaxation, recreation and fun. Longer-term we look forward to retirement, when we won't have to wear ourselves out any more in the "rat race." We then seek systems which will deliver to us the things we feel we missed out on by working all of our young lives.
So, then, we tend to see ourselves as points in a huge mess of delivery systems, for which we need yet another delivery system to provide us with the means to sort everything out. Depending upon the particular system, we might be the recipient, the provider, or some stepping-stone in between. Contrast this with the quaint notion of living as part of a great circle in which our roles are never defined but easily understood. We have gained much from the Industrial Revolution, but we have lost much as well.
Unfortunately, some things just don't respond well to the revolutionary parameters of industrialization. Food is one of them. The American diet, far from the nutritional masterpiece promised by science and technology, is shamefully responsible for obesity, heart disease, diabetes, tooth decay and a host of other ailments where it has replaced traditional dietary customs. Stores are full of manufacturers' attempts to conjure healthier foods from constituent elements. Everywhere we are surrounded by books, television programs and seminars trying to teach us what to eat. But this abundance of information and technology has utterly failed to avert the diseased destiny of American-style eaters. This tells me that food is more than the sum of its nutrients, and that the way in which it is prepared and consumed is nearly, if not entirely, as important as the ingredients used to concoct it.
American consumers are also immersed in a sea of information and products designed to make us better workers, better bosses, better investors, better travelers, better parents, better spouses, better friends, better worshipers. American businesspeople are likewise inundated with the counsel and tools they "need" to become better providers of such things as employment, financial products, travel destinations, recreational opportunities and worship experiences. In all of these areas, as with food, this glut of advice is symptomatic of the failure of industrialization to make good on a promise of betterment. In other words, there are many areas of our lives which do not adapt well to a purely industrial outlook.
More on this in future posts...
These reformulated attitudes have "trickled down" into virtually every area of our lives, coloring how we work, play, eat, sleep and even worship. Michael Pollan's books, The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense of Food, depict ways in which the industrialization of American food production has encouraged and in turn been supported by the perception that food is nothing more than a nutrient-delivery system, and one which can be improved upon by science and technology.
In much the same way, Americans have come to view work as a sort of income-delivery system. From the other side of the desk, workers are viewed as productivity-delivery systems. Sleep is a rest-delivery system. Because many of us have no real relationship with our work or with the people who benefit from it, we find the need to "get away" once in a while. So we spend vacations and holidays at resorts, spas, amusement parks, etc., which are actually carefully-engineered delivery systems for rest, relaxation, recreation and fun. Longer-term we look forward to retirement, when we won't have to wear ourselves out any more in the "rat race." We then seek systems which will deliver to us the things we feel we missed out on by working all of our young lives.
So, then, we tend to see ourselves as points in a huge mess of delivery systems, for which we need yet another delivery system to provide us with the means to sort everything out. Depending upon the particular system, we might be the recipient, the provider, or some stepping-stone in between. Contrast this with the quaint notion of living as part of a great circle in which our roles are never defined but easily understood. We have gained much from the Industrial Revolution, but we have lost much as well.
Unfortunately, some things just don't respond well to the revolutionary parameters of industrialization. Food is one of them. The American diet, far from the nutritional masterpiece promised by science and technology, is shamefully responsible for obesity, heart disease, diabetes, tooth decay and a host of other ailments where it has replaced traditional dietary customs. Stores are full of manufacturers' attempts to conjure healthier foods from constituent elements. Everywhere we are surrounded by books, television programs and seminars trying to teach us what to eat. But this abundance of information and technology has utterly failed to avert the diseased destiny of American-style eaters. This tells me that food is more than the sum of its nutrients, and that the way in which it is prepared and consumed is nearly, if not entirely, as important as the ingredients used to concoct it.
American consumers are also immersed in a sea of information and products designed to make us better workers, better bosses, better investors, better travelers, better parents, better spouses, better friends, better worshipers. American businesspeople are likewise inundated with the counsel and tools they "need" to become better providers of such things as employment, financial products, travel destinations, recreational opportunities and worship experiences. In all of these areas, as with food, this glut of advice is symptomatic of the failure of industrialization to make good on a promise of betterment. In other words, there are many areas of our lives which do not adapt well to a purely industrial outlook.
More on this in future posts...
Friday, March 14, 2008
A Few Pointless Things
I think that every now and again I may just post a list of things that seem to me to be rather pointless. Today's list is subtly and cunningly themed [HINT: it has nothing to do with tiny birds!] :
Shiny, clean Hummers
Hummer limousines
Hummers on city streets
Hummers with low-profile tires and spinners
Hummers without vanity plates
Hummers as commuter vehicles
Hummers with vanity plates
Hummers ...
Well, Hummers!
To any reader who owns a Hummer - instead of apologizing, I simply point out the "Comments" link below...
Thursday, March 13, 2008
tHE aBSURD lIFE, pART dEUX
Multitasking. Sounds like a good idea, doesn't it? Good computer operating systems do it really well. Moms perfected it long before there was a word for it. And most, if not all of us strive to get better at it. To a degree, multitasking is a necessary and profitable tool for living life; past that point it becomes absurd.
At the precise moment that the absurdity of multitasking struck me, I was working out in the gym before showering and heading upstairs to my day job. I caught myself simultaneously walking on the treadmill, marking up the manuscript of a book I'm editing, whitening my teeth with those wonderful, chemical-impregnated plastic strips, and catching bits and pieces of current events from CNN on TV. Only the apparatus affixed to my teeth prevented me from accomplishing the other necessary goal for my workout-time - downing my first pint of water for the day. I had to actually work that in around the time allotted for developing a blinding smile.
The sad thing is, I really don't need a mental distraction from the routine of working-out; I actually enjoy the sensations of walking (alternating level and incline) and lifting weights. That is, I enjoy those experiences unless I ignore them in favor of editing a book, timing my teeth, and catching some tidbits of news. I want white teeth. I want to work as a writer and editor. I want to have some idea of what's going on in the world. And I want to feel my muscles doing something other than cramping in an infernal office-chair.
Unfortunately, while I can simultaneously do the activities of whitening, editing, listening, and exercising, I cannot experience them all at the same time. I have to allocate my consciousness in a rotation that visits each activity for just enough time to adequately maintain it.
At this point someone will no doubt raise the obvious objection - who in their right mind wants to "experience" teeth-whitening strips? I agree, but my point is not so much in the details as in the overall philosophy. Overdone, multitasking reduces our lives to a set of time-units into which we must stuff as many things as possible. This leads us to accomplish everything except the enjoyment of our accomplishments.
Jesus' promise of life is that we should have it in abundance, not that we should stuff it with abundance. Solomon looked at the way life was lived around him and called it, "vanity." I call it, "absurdity."
At the precise moment that the absurdity of multitasking struck me, I was working out in the gym before showering and heading upstairs to my day job. I caught myself simultaneously walking on the treadmill, marking up the manuscript of a book I'm editing, whitening my teeth with those wonderful, chemical-impregnated plastic strips, and catching bits and pieces of current events from CNN on TV. Only the apparatus affixed to my teeth prevented me from accomplishing the other necessary goal for my workout-time - downing my first pint of water for the day. I had to actually work that in around the time allotted for developing a blinding smile.
The sad thing is, I really don't need a mental distraction from the routine of working-out; I actually enjoy the sensations of walking (alternating level and incline) and lifting weights. That is, I enjoy those experiences unless I ignore them in favor of editing a book, timing my teeth, and catching some tidbits of news. I want white teeth. I want to work as a writer and editor. I want to have some idea of what's going on in the world. And I want to feel my muscles doing something other than cramping in an infernal office-chair.
Unfortunately, while I can simultaneously do the activities of whitening, editing, listening, and exercising, I cannot experience them all at the same time. I have to allocate my consciousness in a rotation that visits each activity for just enough time to adequately maintain it.
At this point someone will no doubt raise the obvious objection - who in their right mind wants to "experience" teeth-whitening strips? I agree, but my point is not so much in the details as in the overall philosophy. Overdone, multitasking reduces our lives to a set of time-units into which we must stuff as many things as possible. This leads us to accomplish everything except the enjoyment of our accomplishments.
Jesus' promise of life is that we should have it in abundance, not that we should stuff it with abundance. Solomon looked at the way life was lived around him and called it, "vanity." I call it, "absurdity."
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Pizzarapi
AZCentral.com posted this news story, of which I have included only the headline and first line:
Ashley Olsen blasts paparazzi
BANG Showbiz
Mar. 11, 2008 10:51 AM
Ashley Olsen has blasted the paparazzi, calling them "weird and scary."
Presuming that BANG probably misreported the story for one reason or another, I took the liberty of a rewrite:
Ashley Olsen blasts pizzarapi
Ashley Olsen has blasted the new restaurant, Pizzarapi, and the fast-food entrees it developed, calling them "weird and scary."
Ashley Olsen blasts paparazzi
BANG Showbiz
Mar. 11, 2008 10:51 AM
Ashley Olsen has blasted the paparazzi, calling them "weird and scary."
Presuming that BANG probably misreported the story for one reason or another, I took the liberty of a rewrite:
Ashley Olsen blasts pizzarapi
Ashley Olsen has blasted the new restaurant, Pizzarapi, and the fast-food entrees it developed, calling them "weird and scary."
Pizzarapi is a joint venture between KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Jack in the Box. Their signature meal consists of bite-sized, boneless pieces of fried chicken rolled with pseudo-Mexican flavorings inside a flour tortilla. This meat-filled tortilla is then deep-fried, smothered with cheese, sausage, peperoni and pizza sauce, and baked. Finally it is served on a bun with three slices of bacon, ranch dressing and a shred of lettuce.
I have to agree with Ms. Olsen - "weird and scary."
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Seeker-Sensitive Paganism
or
Why Pastors Should Read Their Own Church Signs
or
Why Pastors Should Read Their Own Church Signs
SUN WORSHIP 10:45
Not exactly the message I expected to see prominently displayed upon the marquee of a Baptist church. But, there it was. And there it remained, day after day, beckoning my eye as I drove to work.
Some sort of offering for comfort-loving pagans who prefer not to rise at dawn in order to worship the sun? A bait-and-switch tactic to attract some as-yet-unreached masses of Wiccans, Druids, Shamanists, and the like? Or just an unfortunate but rather funny example of misspelled abbreviation?
I hereby propose the "Order of Our Lady of Perpetual Stultification," to be conferred upon churches whose advertising signs regularly surpass the norm in the categories of inane content and/or poor grammar.
Pastors, take note - the people who read your marquees are already handing out this award, though probably not by the erudite title I have suggested.
Oh, and I'd like to say just one thing to whoever it was who thought up the slogan, "Be an organ donor - give your heart to Jesus." I humbly nominate you for Special Achievement in the category of really, really, really bad ideas for church-sign content.
Monday, March 10, 2008
tHE aBSURD lIFE, pART oNE
I was traveling at a speed which once would have been called "breakneck," and one which, wrongly directed, promised to break a lot of other body parts, too. Willingly and voluntarily I had strapped my flesh-and-blood frailty into a steel-and-plastic projectile, and then fired myself into the distance, expecting to land some twenty miles from my starting point. It was somewhere in the middle of that trajectory that I began to consider the absurdity of it all.
Of course I'm talking about commuting to and from work every day, or even just driving a car in general. Millions do it. I've done it for years. But suddenly I found myself asking, "How in the world is this a good idea?" I was struck by the blatantly arrogant nonchalance with which I regularly blast through time and space belted and latched inside a metallic road-rocket.
It occurred to me that, when perfectly developed and conditioned, a purely self-powered human can expect to achieve something along the lines of a four-minute mile. There are cars on the road today that can rack up four-mile minutes. Mine, by the way, is not one of them. Nevertheless, the forty-five miles-per-hour I generally attain for much of my commute is roughly triple the top-notch miler's speed. Presuming, of course, that he could somehow maintain that pace for an hour!
It isn't that I am suddenly afraid of my car or the traffic that surrounds me. It's not even that I've been stricken with that "sense of my own mortality," some people talk about. It's far more basic than that. I've developed a guilty feeling that maybe we're stretching the fine points of some universal, unwritten laws, or even breaking them outright. Or maybe they are laws that are written out plainly, but we simply choose not to read them. Laws of nature? Laws of God? Laws of common sense? Of physics or biology or mathematics? Genetics? I don't really know. It just sometimes seems to me that the benefit we gain from constant high-speed travel is more than offset by the loss of something less tangible. Like we should treat those machines, and the velocities at which they convey us, with a little more respect or maybe even a little superstition. Or just a healthy dose of skepticism.
Maybe I'm just realizing that the time I save by the pace I keep comes at a cost. Perhaps the absurdity of the automobile is recognizing that the rhythm of human life can only be accurately maintained at a certain tempo. Accelerate the music too much and we begin to drop beats that are forever lost. And instead of experiencing a richly textured cadence that rises and falls in natural swells and ebbs, all we hear is the machine gun staccato of a single, mechanical, unvarying, and ultimately pointless snare.
I'm not suggesting we abandon automotive technology in favor of some form of Luddism. I'm just thinking that maybe we should pay closer attention to the cost of the time we save. Kind of like setting up a sort of "life-beat budget." That might just enable us (or even force us!) to pay less for saved time and to enjoy it more.
Of course I'm talking about commuting to and from work every day, or even just driving a car in general. Millions do it. I've done it for years. But suddenly I found myself asking, "How in the world is this a good idea?" I was struck by the blatantly arrogant nonchalance with which I regularly blast through time and space belted and latched inside a metallic road-rocket.
It occurred to me that, when perfectly developed and conditioned, a purely self-powered human can expect to achieve something along the lines of a four-minute mile. There are cars on the road today that can rack up four-mile minutes. Mine, by the way, is not one of them. Nevertheless, the forty-five miles-per-hour I generally attain for much of my commute is roughly triple the top-notch miler's speed. Presuming, of course, that he could somehow maintain that pace for an hour!
It isn't that I am suddenly afraid of my car or the traffic that surrounds me. It's not even that I've been stricken with that "sense of my own mortality," some people talk about. It's far more basic than that. I've developed a guilty feeling that maybe we're stretching the fine points of some universal, unwritten laws, or even breaking them outright. Or maybe they are laws that are written out plainly, but we simply choose not to read them. Laws of nature? Laws of God? Laws of common sense? Of physics or biology or mathematics? Genetics? I don't really know. It just sometimes seems to me that the benefit we gain from constant high-speed travel is more than offset by the loss of something less tangible. Like we should treat those machines, and the velocities at which they convey us, with a little more respect or maybe even a little superstition. Or just a healthy dose of skepticism.
Maybe I'm just realizing that the time I save by the pace I keep comes at a cost. Perhaps the absurdity of the automobile is recognizing that the rhythm of human life can only be accurately maintained at a certain tempo. Accelerate the music too much and we begin to drop beats that are forever lost. And instead of experiencing a richly textured cadence that rises and falls in natural swells and ebbs, all we hear is the machine gun staccato of a single, mechanical, unvarying, and ultimately pointless snare.
I'm not suggesting we abandon automotive technology in favor of some form of Luddism. I'm just thinking that maybe we should pay closer attention to the cost of the time we save. Kind of like setting up a sort of "life-beat budget." That might just enable us (or even force us!) to pay less for saved time and to enjoy it more.
Friday, March 7, 2008
The French Presidency
It's been nearly a year since the Associated Press reported, "Conservative Nicolas Sarkozy won the French Presidency by a comfortable margin Sunday and immediately signalled (sic) his victory would mean friendly relations with the United States."
This is problematic for me, not because I have anything against the French, nor because I am opposed to friendly relations between our respective governments, but because of the record cold weather in Phoenix during the winter of 2006-2007.
It was an environmental catastrophe of epic proportions. Dead leaves from trees that are normally evergreen created a mess in my swimming pool, and several small palm trees died in my yard. I am quite certain that the Constitution guarantees me a leaf-free pool and flourishing palm trees, so in modern American tradition I venomously sought a scapegoat to bear the brunt of my inconvenient truth.
Of course I began with a "List of Usual Suspects." Unfortunately, global warming seemed a poor candidate to take responsibility for unusually cold weather, and so I turned to such monumental problems as the war in Iraq, legalized abortion, the federal deficit, FEMA, and even that most insidious but never-discussed issue, continental drift.
I am sure that some of my evangelical hardhead-for-Christ friends would be satisfied with some scenario that blames homosexuals. Likewise, certain of my if-there's-a-God-He's-a-liberal-Democrat friends might find a way to indict George W. Bush. I, on the other hand, found no solace in any of those hot-button issues.
So I blamed the French.
NOW what am I going to do?
This is problematic for me, not because I have anything against the French, nor because I am opposed to friendly relations between our respective governments, but because of the record cold weather in Phoenix during the winter of 2006-2007.
It was an environmental catastrophe of epic proportions. Dead leaves from trees that are normally evergreen created a mess in my swimming pool, and several small palm trees died in my yard. I am quite certain that the Constitution guarantees me a leaf-free pool and flourishing palm trees, so in modern American tradition I venomously sought a scapegoat to bear the brunt of my inconvenient truth.
Of course I began with a "List of Usual Suspects." Unfortunately, global warming seemed a poor candidate to take responsibility for unusually cold weather, and so I turned to such monumental problems as the war in Iraq, legalized abortion, the federal deficit, FEMA, and even that most insidious but never-discussed issue, continental drift.
I am sure that some of my evangelical hardhead-for-Christ friends would be satisfied with some scenario that blames homosexuals. Likewise, certain of my if-there's-a-God-He's-a-liberal-Democrat friends might find a way to indict George W. Bush. I, on the other hand, found no solace in any of those hot-button issues.
So I blamed the French.
NOW what am I going to do?
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