Prologue:
I'm a cyclist.
Act I: Summer
Angry guy in car: Get off the f***ing road!
Act II: Winter
Angry guy on sidewalk: Get on the f***ing street!
The end.
Moral:
You have heard it said: "You can't make everyone happy".
Unfortunately it seems cyclists don't make anybody happy :*(
Author's Note:
There are jerks in the world. Cycling is better for the health, the wallet, our traffic, our noise pollution, our environment and our time. It's a tragedy...
Whenever I get a package of plain M&Ms, I make it my duty to continue the strength and robustness of the candy as a species. To this end, I hold M&M duels.
Taking two candies between my thumb and forefinger, I apply pressure, squeezing them together until one of them breaks and splinters. That is the "loser," and I eat the inferior one immediately. The winner gets to go another round.
I have found that, in general, the brown and red M&Ms are tougher, and the newer blue ones are genetically inferior. I have hypothesized that the blue M&Ms as a race cannot survive long in the intense theater of competition that is the modern candy and snack-food world.
Occasionally I will get a mutation, a candy that is misshapen, or pointier, or flatter than the rest. Almost invariably this proves to be a weakness, but on very rare occasions it gives the candy extra strength. In this way, the species continues to adapt to its environment.
When I reach the end of the pack, I am left with one M&M, the strongest of the herd. Since it would make no sense to eat this one as well, I pack it neatly in an envelope and send it to M&M Mars, A Division of Mars, Inc., Hackettstown, NJ 17840-1503 U.S.A., along with a 3x5 card reading, "Please use this M&M for breeding purposes."
This week they wrote back to thank me, and sent me a coupon for a free 1/2 pound bag of plain M&Ms. I consider this "grant money." I have set aside the weekend for a grand tournament. From a field of hundreds, we will discover the True Champion.
There can be only one.
-Taken from an email forward. Author unknown.
Everyone dies. If we call approaching death "dying", then it would follow that we are all dying. Now for the Christian readers they would argue for rapture-related exceptions but for the sake of discussion today let's not go there.
Dying is rather significant (at least somewhat significant) - so what are we doing about it? Do we think about it? Are we aware - and have we come to grips with this reality? I fear our answers to such questions. I know for me (and I suspect most of us) death seems so distantly irrelevant. Which is sort of silly, we think so much about other upcoming events in our lives: getting a driver's license, becoming an adult, getting married, etc. What should death mean to us?
There's a inherent sadness that I experience as I ponder death. Certainly those religiously minded yearn for the "next life", but we all want to experience things on earth. I would like to grow personally, perhaps experience marriage, travel the world, learn a Bach cello suite, pee off a ridiculously tall tree, and the such. To think of losing those opportunities forever makes me sad. So we cling to life, and we cling hard.
Let us not forget what is worse than death, and that is watching others die. I have yet to experience the sorrow of having a close one pass away. But in terms of myself, even at my young age I have become aware of how mental capacity, physical health and ability quickly decline. There's such insecurity and fear in that - to imagine one's self losing power, ability and throughput. As I've watched my parents grow old I've seen this firsthand, and know should I live to be old I surely face the same.
But it doesn't end there. I do not regret thinking about death, because it helps me treasure life even more! That the sunlight upon my face feels that much more vibrant! The joy of laughing with a friend or enjoying the peacefulness of a quiet walk. The become so much more real, so much more valuable. So I am glad to have thought about physical death. I am glad for what you've taught me. Yet regret arises for I know I could have done more. I should have done more. This is why I will remember you, and what your short and simple life has taught me. Thank you Mr. Grasshead.
The author does not wish to portray any insensitivity to the death of loved ones. Rather just the contemplation upon the simple life and death of a plant. Well in this case a rather large number of plants. The author doesn't actually know how to refer to a single grass. He just says "there's some grass". I mean, some people use "blade", but that's in reference to the leaf structure, not the plant itself. "A grass" perhaps is most accurate, but I digress.
The author currently resides in Winnipeg, Canada and spends some of his free time practicing grass-revival techniques, mostly involving water.
It was on. I had brought my A game. It all started with a furious smattering of keys (in a somewhat consequential order), followed by a pause, and further smattering. Again I paused with hand on chin, and then smattered some more. It had good links in it and well thought out paragraphs. I proofread it several times, as to improve on my writing style and word choice. Being the multitasker I was, I was surfing off in another window. Happened to click a link to a PDF file, and then BAM my browser crashes. Thank you very much Adobe Acrobat Plugin. It seemed fated that this is how I would discover that blogger.com doesn't have an autosave feature. Lost the blog post I had laboured for.
The post on Music, Literature and Film will have to wait. Life doesn't have an Autosave... after a blunder we can't just revert to a previously saved reality.
Until then, 3 guesses on what "Fire Exit" is in Welsh, and the first two guesses don't count.
Photo takens by friends from the Schloss"One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say." -Will Durant
Procrastination is a funny thing. Its a way of life for students. Acknowledged by all, hated by most, and joked about and almost flaunted by many. I read a couple interesting articles on procrastination, started from this Slashdot post, interestingly the first article suggests that procrastination can be good. Check em out:
Good and Bad Procrastination
Structured Procrastination
Great opening question from the first article: "The most impressive people I know are all terrible procrastinators. So could it be that procrastination isn't always bad?" The second article just makes me laugh. Sadly it seems so true though... lol
Some interesting ideas here to be sure. If we're putting off less important things to do more important things that's good right? I'm pretty sure Albert Einstein put off cleaning his room from time to time while finishing up the theory of relativity... a few thoughts on these issues though:
-Priorities: This is assumed that you can properly assess what things are important. This has large implications both ways. What I've been learning about life is that the seemingly small things are not so small at all. As Oswald Chambers remarked "It is ingrained in us that we have to do exceptional things for God—but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things of life." We may easily thing petty things crucial, and mislabel the great things of life as fluff.
-Balance: "Saying 'yes' to one thing means saying 'no' to another". So say if I devoted myself to yo-yoing, yeah that area of my life would blossom, but it comes at a cost. These "impressive people" may be impressive in certain areas, but by consequence of being highly devoted to one thing - they are less devoted to other things. We simply cannot do everything.
-Perception/Expectations: Often I heard conversation along the lines of: Tom: "yeah I'm a bad procrastinator". Dick: "no you have no idea, I'm the worst procastinator". Besides that weirdness of bragging about procrastination... Perhaps its our overproductive, overbusy society - but we all have this view that we are never doing enough. Now then it could just be that our standard of productivity is just warped. This can easily lead to guilt and despair - neither of which are terribly motivating. I think we need to learn to give ourselves a break and learning to set reasonable expectations.
Part of me is a bit adverse to the Structured Procrastination idea... trying to produce good from our natural tendency to avoid the large tasks on our mind.. lol
Thoughts? Secret confessions of closet procrastinators? :P
Remember in the Matrix where you look like your residual image or whatever? Have some fun, click on my pic and make your own:
haha came across this funny picture, it made me laugh a lot. Not even sure why, but perhaps it will do the same for you:
LOL. Not like "ha ha" funny, more like a snickering that starts small and grows.
