I’ve got my son and one of his friends with me at Trader Joe’s. They start off by grabbing some roast beef and panini at the free sample stand. Later, when I’m in the checkout line, they wander off, I assume to go outside, but it turns out they went back for seconds on the free samples. “You guys are an embarrassment!” I say. “The free samples are supposed to be one to a customer, not all you can eat!” “I don’t think she saw us the first time,” my son says. “So it’s okay.” “Jesus, I can’t take you guys anywhere.” Read more →
December 2008
NFL Week 17 Recap: You Can’t Win With Knuckleheads
My son is 15, he’s played competitive roller hockey for a number of years — including winning a 12-and-under national championship — and the main thing I’ve learned in that time is that a player’s individual skills are not nearly as important as his ability to play as part of a team. We know lots of kids with terrific skills but if they just want to do their own thing out there, you put them on a team and they actually make the team worse. Or to put it in a nutshell: You can’t win with knuckleheads. I was reminded of that last weekend as I watched Dallas, with talented knuckleheads like Terrell Owens and Pacman Jones, get knocked out of the playoffs with a 44-6 loss to the Eagles, who cut Owens in 2005, and the Jets, who cut Chad Pennington to make room for drama queen Brett Favre,… Read more →
A Consulting Axiom
I’ve been downgraded from an ear infection to a “full-blown” ear infection. Last week, the doctor at walk-in urgent care gave me an Amoxicillin prescription and told me to come back if the symptoms didn’t improve in four or five days. They didn’t, but I went to a different walk-in clinic this afternoon to work a second opinion into the process. The doctor gave me a prescription for Levaquin to replace the Amoxicillin. I know, nobody cares about this. I only mention it because it reminded me of something important. I was a consultant for many years and I’m going to share with you now one of the axioms of consulting: Whatever the client is doing, advise them to do something else. If whatever they’ve been doing was working, they wouldn’t need a consultant, right? Is Levaquin “better” than Amoxicillin for ear infections? No, but you see what I’m getting… Read more →
The Renaissance Man
I’m looking at these last few posts where I’ve strung together W.H. Auden, John Dewey, Meat Loaf and Franz Kafka, not with any sense of purpose, just things I’ve read or listened to on my winter break. What a renaissance man I am! Why, if you were here, we could talk about poetry, education, philosophy, sex, drugs, rock ‘n roll, existentialism . . . and we’d have a good time too, considering we’re all going to die . . . Read more →
Lullaby
Certainty, fidelity On the stroke of midnight pass Like vibrations of a bell And fashionable madmen raise Their pedantic boring cry: Every farthing of the cost, All the dreaded cards foretell, Shall be paid, but from this night Not a whisper, not a thought, Not a kiss nor look be lost. — W.H. Auden, “Lullaby” Read more →
Experience and Education
How many students, for example, were rendered callous to ideas, and how many lost the impetus to learn because of the way in which learning was experienced by them? How many acquired special skills by means of automatic drill so that their power of judgment and capacity to act intelligently in new situations was limited? How many came to associate the learning process with ennui and boredom? How many found what they did learn so foreign to the situations of life outside the school as to give them no power of control over the latter? How many came to associate books with dull drudgery, so that they were “conditioned” to all but flashy reading matter? — John Dewey, Experience and Education Read more →
Bat Out of Hell
And I ran up the stairs to my parents’ bedroom Mommy and Daddy was sleeping in the moonlight Slowly I opened the door, creeping in the shadows Right up to the foot of their bed I raised the guitar high above my head And just as I was about to bring the guitar Crashing down upon the center of the bed, My father woke up, screaming “Stop! Wait a minute! Stop it boy! What do ya think you’re doin’? That’s no way to treat an expensive musical instrument!” “God Dammit Daddy! You know I love you, But you got a hell of a lot to learn about Rock ‘n Roll” — Meat Loaf, “Wasted Youth” Read more →
Couriers
They were offered the choice between becoming kings or the couriers of kings. The way children would, they all wanted to be couriers. Therefore there are only couriers who hurry about the world, shouting to each other — since there are no kings — messages that have become meaningless. They would like to put an end to this miserable life of theirs but they dare not because of their oaths of service. — Franz Kafka Read more →
Another Way Computers Are Making Life Better for Everyone
His mom took the boy’s laptop computer away because she didn’t like his attitude about something or other, and now he’s trying to involve me in a secret plan to get it back. I ask him, “Why don’t you forget about the computer and do something else tonight? Read a book or something?” He says, “I need the computer so my friends and I can talk to each other.” “Use text messages. Or a phone. There’s an idea.” “We need video.” “Video? What do you need video for?” “Don’t worry about it.” “Exactly. So you don’t really need the computer.” “‘Don’t worry about it’ doesn’t mean I don’t need it. It means don’t worry about it.” “What are you going to do? Have a biggest dick contest?” “Is that what you used to do?” “We didn’t have webcams when I was your age. We had to take ’em out and… Read more →
EppsNet Movie Reviews: Gran Torino
It’s sad to see Clint Eastwood get old but somebody’s got to do it. It seemed to me as far back as Unforgiven and In the Line of Fire that while other actors were trying to stay artificially young forever, no one else was putting on screen an honest portrayal of what it’s like to be an old man, what it’s like to feel yourself diminished. And that was 15 years ago, when Eastwood was in his early 60s. He’s now 78 and looks it. I was trying to think of another leading actor who’s doing roles where the central fact about the character is that he’s gotten old and tired and scared . . . Robert De Niro? No, he’s still doing the same cops and mobsters roles he’s been doing for decades. Al Pacino? Dustin Hoffman? No. Same roles, plus they’re both around 70 years old with absurd… Read more →
Good in a Crisis
A family member was explaining to me that she is “good in a crisis.” I have to say that’s true, that this person is in fact at her best in a crisis, which explains why, in times of tranquility, she’s always looking for some way to escalate things into a crisis. Read more →
Footsteps
He looks up the trail trying to see what’s ahead even when he knows what’s ahead because he just looked a second before. He goes too fast or too slow for the conditions and when he talks his talk is forever about somewhere else, something else. He’s here but he’s not here. He rejects the here, is unhappy with it, wants to be farther up the trail but when he gets there will be just as unhappy because then it will be “here.” What he’s looking for, what he wants, is all around him, but he doesn’t want that because it is all around him. Every step’s an effort, both physically and spiritually, because he imagines his goal to be external and distant. — Robert Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Read more →
My Dog Reviews Marley and Me
I love movies about dogs! Wait — is Owen Wilson in that? I HATE Owen Wilson! Whenever I meet a new bitch at the dog park, the first thing I ask her is “Do you think Owen Wilson is funny?” And if she says yes, I am OUTTA there. Rating: Two paws down. — Lightning Read more →
Christmas Cookies
My wife and son brought home some Pillsbury cookie dough sheets (see photo) but we’ve got a problem. Even though the packaging shows cookies with festive holiday shapes (“I want the ones shaped like Christmas trees,” my son says), the sheets are not pre-cut, and we don’t have cookie cutters. I say, “It looks like what you’re going to get are cookies shaped like rectangles.” Read more →
I Went Deaf on Christmas Eve
I. At home I tell my son I’m going to the urgent care walk-in clinic. “What for?” he asks. “I want to find out why I’ve gone deaf in my left ear.” “You’ve got an ear infection,” he says. “I had one when I came back from Thailand. I was also coughing 24/7 so I had to take this insane cough syrup and ear infection pills.” “I’m not coughing 24/7. I’ve got a lot of congestion though.” “You’ll just get the ear infection pills then.” “When you took them, could you feel your ear canal cracking open? Man, that’s the best! It’s almost worth it to have a clogged passage just to feel it cracking open again.” “Yeah, but it takes a couple of days.” II. At the doctor’s office The nurse takes my blood pressure. “100 over 60,” she says. “Is that good?” I ask. (I already know it’s… Read more →
A Time to Worry
It was a weird day for dog walking. Just after Lightning had a run-in with a rottweiler, who fortunately turned out to be docile, we came upon a young man and what looked like his mom walking a pit bull. The woman said “Hold ‘im, Cody” to the kid in a chain-smoker voice and I veered Lightning in another direction. I wasn’t taking any chances because they looked exactly like the kind of people who’d own a violent pit bull. You’ve got Ma, the chain-smoking meth addict, and her boy Cody, the kid with the white trash name. Whenever I hear someone say “Hold ‘im, Cody” to a guy with a pit bull, I am outta there . . . Read more →
There are Different Kinds of Small Dogs
FYI — I’m a small dog, but I’m not a “pretend to be brave at the end of a leash” small dog, I’m a “this leash really is holding me back” small dog, as a neighborhood Rottweiler learned when he bounded across the street at me a few minutes ago. I don’t like big dogs running up on me — it’s disrespectful — but the woman walking him was too small to hold him back. So I put my front paws on his shoulder and growled in his ear, and when he couldn’t look me in the eye, I knew everything was going to be okay. My owner said later he thought at least one of us was going to be killed . . . — Lightning Read more →
Mankind Is No Island
Below is a short film shot entirely on a cell phone. It uses an unusual technique — a very simple technique — to present a narrative without the use of an actual voiceover narration . . . Read more →
Career Advice
Via Presentation Zen: Read more →
Winter Haikus
Outside the window, snow, A woman in a hot bath Overflowing. — Nobuku Katsura See the river flow In a long unbroken line On the field of snow. — Boncho Confined within doors A priest is warming himself Burning a Buddha statue. — Natsume Soseki Through snow, Lights of homes That slammed their gates on me. — Buson Read more →