Showing posts with label don't ask. Show all posts
Showing posts with label don't ask. Show all posts
Saturday, January 10, 2009
I'm Back
"I have returned to blogdom." These words spoken by my hero General MacArthur have inspired many people since he wrote them in his blog from his laptop on board the PT Boat when he returned to the Philipines. Well...in a manner of speaking that is. This will not be a full length article as I do not have time right now. Suffice it to say...keep posted as I promise I will post within the next week or so. Promise...on my honor as a security guard. I swear it on the sword of my......uh.....actually I don't have a sword right now. Anyway, more to follow.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
An Overloaded Donkey
This is what I feel like at the end of the semester feels like--an overloaded donkey.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Waiting for Inspiration to Strike
Something I have been wondering some about over this particular break is the lucridity (my own spelling and possibly my own word) of the elite class in airports. Now if you are an elite member you get certain perks. One of those is that you get better service in the airport and on the airplane. So far so good. But how about this. I was sitting in the Seattle airport waiting to board my flight when the time came to get ready to board. If you have flown before you know that airlines board the old and young people first along with the elite/first class customers and those seated in exit rows. Nothing wrong with that. But here's the kicker. When the elite board, they board to the right of the podium. When the rest of us proletariat get to board the flight we have to walk on the left side of the podium. Now granted, you pay more you should get better service. But do you know what the better service is when you walk past the podium onto the plane? Do you know the difference between the left and right side of the podium? If you are the proletariat boarding to the left of the podium, you have the proletariat privilege of walking across a 4x6 foot square of dirty gray rug. Now if you are a member of the elite class walking to the right of the podium, you have the distinct privilege to walk across a 4x6 foot square of dirty red rug. And that dear reader is the only difference in the world between the elite and the proletariat when you board an airplane.
And someday, you too may be part of the elite walking across the dirty red rug, if inspiration ever strikes and you become rich.
And someday, you too may be part of the elite walking across the dirty red rug, if inspiration ever strikes and you become rich.
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Poems, Mariachi, and Ramblings
Well I am 8 hours and 14 minutes into my 20 hour all night/all day shift. I'm listening to what I believe is the Mormon Tabernacle Choir on a polka streaming websight. Don't ask. I'm about to change it. Which I just did. Now I'm listening to a gospel quartet. Friday was the last day of classes. Something happened in Greek class...I have immortalized it in the form of a poem. (first a pause to listen to the bass singer do a solo.) So that music was putting to sleep. I switched to...well it was "In the Mood" played on the accordion...interesting...now it is some mariachi...La Puerta Negra. But the poem...
The fly landed on my paper
I was ready for a caper
Greek class was getting long
I was waiting for the bell to gong
And when that fly had landed
I thought some fun to me was handed
My hand crept up to it
The fly my finger hit
It flew in an arc
My what a lark
It hit Ben in the arm
You can be sure I meant no harm
Ben didn't know what was going on
He covered his mouth with a yawn
The fly was no more
And Greek was soon 'ore.
So that was it...it provided me with some amusement...and all of you with a poem to deride and make fun of...is that redundant? We learned about something called reduplication in Greek...now if that isn't reredundant I don't know what is.....till next time I'll be around and busy....
The fly landed on my paper
I was ready for a caper
Greek class was getting long
I was waiting for the bell to gong
And when that fly had landed
I thought some fun to me was handed
My hand crept up to it
The fly my finger hit
It flew in an arc
My what a lark
It hit Ben in the arm
You can be sure I meant no harm
Ben didn't know what was going on
He covered his mouth with a yawn
The fly was no more
And Greek was soon 'ore.
So that was it...it provided me with some amusement...and all of you with a poem to deride and make fun of...is that redundant? We learned about something called reduplication in Greek...now if that isn't reredundant I don't know what is.....till next time I'll be around and busy....
Saturday, November 3, 2007
Life is Real...
Sometimes the seeming futility and endlessness of life reminds me of a poem I list among my favorites. It is
A Parody on a Psalm of Life
Life is real, life is earnest,
And the shell is not its pen –
“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”
Was not spoken of the hen.
Art is long and Time is fleeting,
Be our bills then sharpened well,
And not like muffled drums be beating
On the inside of the shell.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the great barnyard of life,
Be not like those lazy cattle!
Be a rooster in the strife!
Lives of roosters all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And when roasted, leave behind us,
Hen tracks on the sands of time.
Hen tracks that perhaps another
Chicken drooping in the rain,
Some forlorn and henpecked brother,
When he sees, shall crow again.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The words of this poem often come to me when I am suffering from lack of sleep and major assignments are looming in the very near future. The incident that occasioned the remembrance of this poem today and thus memorializing it in my blog was that wonderful institution commonly referred to as Daylight Savings Time. I can assure you that as I look at the clock and the time of 117 AM registers in my somewhat somniatic (yes I just made up a word) state for the second time in an hour, Daylight Savings Time is a myth as it is certainly not light outside. Furthermore, since that said institution, i.e. Daylight Savings Time, has just moved the clocks back one hour, today my 8 hour overnight shift has just been lengthened to 9 hours....and I have 5 major assingments due next week.....why do I do this??? Well...can you think of something better to do with life than to further probe the recesses of my sleep deprived state?? I like adventure and setting the clocks back is almost like crossing the International Date Line without having to travel! Hey...if we set the clocks back an hour everyday for a year would time slow down? Life is real...Life is ernest.......and the sh......Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
A Parody on a Psalm of Life
Life is real, life is earnest,
And the shell is not its pen –
“Egg thou art, and egg remainest”
Was not spoken of the hen.
Art is long and Time is fleeting,
Be our bills then sharpened well,
And not like muffled drums be beating
On the inside of the shell.
In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the great barnyard of life,
Be not like those lazy cattle!
Be a rooster in the strife!
Lives of roosters all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And when roasted, leave behind us,
Hen tracks on the sands of time.
Hen tracks that perhaps another
Chicken drooping in the rain,
Some forlorn and henpecked brother,
When he sees, shall crow again.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
The words of this poem often come to me when I am suffering from lack of sleep and major assignments are looming in the very near future. The incident that occasioned the remembrance of this poem today and thus memorializing it in my blog was that wonderful institution commonly referred to as Daylight Savings Time. I can assure you that as I look at the clock and the time of 117 AM registers in my somewhat somniatic (yes I just made up a word) state for the second time in an hour, Daylight Savings Time is a myth as it is certainly not light outside. Furthermore, since that said institution, i.e. Daylight Savings Time, has just moved the clocks back one hour, today my 8 hour overnight shift has just been lengthened to 9 hours....and I have 5 major assingments due next week.....why do I do this??? Well...can you think of something better to do with life than to further probe the recesses of my sleep deprived state?? I like adventure and setting the clocks back is almost like crossing the International Date Line without having to travel! Hey...if we set the clocks back an hour everyday for a year would time slow down? Life is real...Life is ernest.......and the sh......Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Friday, October 19, 2007
History of Communication Cont. w/ Application
Last time we started looking at the history of communication. We first looked at how verbal communication came about and without dwelling on that, began to look at how written communication came to be. We will continue in that story.
Characters:
Oog: the guy that got it all started
Aag: Oog's wife
Uug: Oog's brother in law
Junior: Oog's son
Recap of the story so far:
Oog sent Jr. over to Uug's cave to tell Uug something. It got all mixed up and now the whole town thinks that the Red Coats are coming.
The men of the town stood there, shoulder to shoulder waiting for the Red Coats to make their appearance. (The Red Coats were a bunch of marauding barbarians who wore polar bear skin coats dyed with raspberry juice. They were a fearsome lot those Red Coats.) The only man not there to defend the town was Oog. Soon, Uug noticed that Oog was not there so he sent his teenage son Uugo to Oog's cave to alert him to the grave situation that the town of Cavesville was in. When Uugo filled Oog in on the details Oog was shocked! He grabbed his club and headed down to the town post-haste. When Oog got to Uug, Oog immediatly began questioning Uug about what was going on. Uug said, "I was working in my cave when Junior came running in and said that the Red Coats were coming." Oogs mouth dropped wide open. He said, "I sent Junior over to ask you if you wanted to come for supper and if you could bring some bread with you if you came!" They immedialty went to search for Junior. After questioning him at some length, they figured the situation out and sent all the townsmen back to their caves. While talking about the days events over dinner that night, they decided that something had to be done to prevent something like that from happening again. There must be a way to accuratly transfer messages from one place to another. Aag said, "What if you were to make a different mark with some raspberry juice for each sound we have. Then by putting the sound together you would form words and therefore my stringing words together you would have a message!" Oog slapped his hands on his thighs. "I am so glad I thought of that!" he said. "The intelligence of the male mind is astounding!" Uug, Junior, and Uugo concurred. Aag did not and the men didn't get any dessert that night. But from that conversation grew the alphabet and from there simple messages and finally books.
The problem of sending messages to people when you didn't have a runner soon reared its ugly head. Different tribes of cavemen had different solutions. Some polished up metal plates and used sunlight to flash sunlight back and forth. Some whistled or used long wooden horns to call to each other across valleys. Some of the more destructive tribes, of which this writer is a member, preferred the smoke signal approach but they often had altercations with the EPA. "Honestly Sir, the reason I had to send a message to my pen pal in India. That is why I had to burn Yellowstone National Park. That is the only way my pen pal could get the message!"
From those rather primordial beginnings grew the postal system, telegraph, telephone, radio, cell phone, email, instant messaging, etc. And with each of those technological advances, we became more and more addicted to communication. And we have to have more and more options. We can't just have a cell phone now. It has to have text messaging, call waiting, voicemail, and email access. We can't just have email, we have to have several email accounts, Yahoo, Google, and half a dozen other forms of instant messaging. We have our Scholar360 account, blogspot, FaceBook, and MySpace. And if we don't have instant access to at least a score of ways to communicate at any time night or day anywhere in the world, we can't function. What has society come to? We spend so much time communicating with others that we often don't take time to sit and think and still less time to communicate with God. Jesus often got away from it all and spent time in the wilderness and mountains and on the lake. Sometimes it was with his closest friends. Often it was just him and his Father. Alone. For an evening. Or a whole night. Or early in the morning. When was the last time you got alone for a long period of time and just sat and watched the tadpoles swim? You can get a lot of thinking and praying done while doing that. When was the last time you were quiet and let the Spirit search you? I'm probably stepping on some toes now but don't worry....I'm yelling louder at myself than I am at you!
Characters:
Oog: the guy that got it all started
Aag: Oog's wife
Uug: Oog's brother in law
Junior: Oog's son
Recap of the story so far:
Oog sent Jr. over to Uug's cave to tell Uug something. It got all mixed up and now the whole town thinks that the Red Coats are coming.
The men of the town stood there, shoulder to shoulder waiting for the Red Coats to make their appearance. (The Red Coats were a bunch of marauding barbarians who wore polar bear skin coats dyed with raspberry juice. They were a fearsome lot those Red Coats.) The only man not there to defend the town was Oog. Soon, Uug noticed that Oog was not there so he sent his teenage son Uugo to Oog's cave to alert him to the grave situation that the town of Cavesville was in. When Uugo filled Oog in on the details Oog was shocked! He grabbed his club and headed down to the town post-haste. When Oog got to Uug, Oog immediatly began questioning Uug about what was going on. Uug said, "I was working in my cave when Junior came running in and said that the Red Coats were coming." Oogs mouth dropped wide open. He said, "I sent Junior over to ask you if you wanted to come for supper and if you could bring some bread with you if you came!" They immedialty went to search for Junior. After questioning him at some length, they figured the situation out and sent all the townsmen back to their caves. While talking about the days events over dinner that night, they decided that something had to be done to prevent something like that from happening again. There must be a way to accuratly transfer messages from one place to another. Aag said, "What if you were to make a different mark with some raspberry juice for each sound we have. Then by putting the sound together you would form words and therefore my stringing words together you would have a message!" Oog slapped his hands on his thighs. "I am so glad I thought of that!" he said. "The intelligence of the male mind is astounding!" Uug, Junior, and Uugo concurred. Aag did not and the men didn't get any dessert that night. But from that conversation grew the alphabet and from there simple messages and finally books.
The problem of sending messages to people when you didn't have a runner soon reared its ugly head. Different tribes of cavemen had different solutions. Some polished up metal plates and used sunlight to flash sunlight back and forth. Some whistled or used long wooden horns to call to each other across valleys. Some of the more destructive tribes, of which this writer is a member, preferred the smoke signal approach but they often had altercations with the EPA. "Honestly Sir, the reason I had to send a message to my pen pal in India. That is why I had to burn Yellowstone National Park. That is the only way my pen pal could get the message!"
From those rather primordial beginnings grew the postal system, telegraph, telephone, radio, cell phone, email, instant messaging, etc. And with each of those technological advances, we became more and more addicted to communication. And we have to have more and more options. We can't just have a cell phone now. It has to have text messaging, call waiting, voicemail, and email access. We can't just have email, we have to have several email accounts, Yahoo, Google, and half a dozen other forms of instant messaging. We have our Scholar360 account, blogspot, FaceBook, and MySpace. And if we don't have instant access to at least a score of ways to communicate at any time night or day anywhere in the world, we can't function. What has society come to? We spend so much time communicating with others that we often don't take time to sit and think and still less time to communicate with God. Jesus often got away from it all and spent time in the wilderness and mountains and on the lake. Sometimes it was with his closest friends. Often it was just him and his Father. Alone. For an evening. Or a whole night. Or early in the morning. When was the last time you got alone for a long period of time and just sat and watched the tadpoles swim? You can get a lot of thinking and praying done while doing that. When was the last time you were quiet and let the Spirit search you? I'm probably stepping on some toes now but don't worry....I'm yelling louder at myself than I am at you!
Saturday, October 13, 2007
History of Communication
Verbal communication. It started out one of two ways.
Theory one: Oog the caveman was putting up a partition in his cave. His family was growing and he was partitioning off the playroom to make two rooms. While moving a large rock, he dropped it on his foot and the cries of agony and rage went down in history as the first verbal communication that we, as homo sapiens, had.
Theory two: same time, same place. Only this time Oog's wife Aag was watching. When she saw him drop the rock on his foot, she whispered "Oops." From that rather inauspicious beginning, grew the languages we speak today.
One day Oog wanted to tell his brother-in-law Uug something. But, Uug was in his cave and Oog couldn't leave what he was doing to talk to Uug. So Oog sent his son Junior. Now Junior was a good lad but like most boys his age, a little forgetful. To complicate matters even further, Uug was hard of hearing. When Junior left, he knew that he was supposed to ask Uncle Uug if he was going come over for supper and if he was, to bring some bread and pot roast. "And," Oog added, "come home right away."
So Junior left the cave and went next door to Uncle Uug's house. When he got there, he realized that he had forgotten exactly what he was supposed to ask. He thought it had something to do with bread though. So he asked Uncle Uug, "Do you have any bread or toast and are you coming?" and having said that, turned around and left. After all, his dad told him to come right home. Uug was horrified. The Red Coats! And they were coming!! He ran out into center court and sounded the alarm. "The Red Coats are coming!" he shouted. Everybody came running with their clubs. They lined up shoulder to shoulder, ready to defend their wives and children. they waited....and waited....and waited......and waited...........................................................................
to be continued
Theory one: Oog the caveman was putting up a partition in his cave. His family was growing and he was partitioning off the playroom to make two rooms. While moving a large rock, he dropped it on his foot and the cries of agony and rage went down in history as the first verbal communication that we, as homo sapiens, had.
Theory two: same time, same place. Only this time Oog's wife Aag was watching. When she saw him drop the rock on his foot, she whispered "Oops." From that rather inauspicious beginning, grew the languages we speak today.
One day Oog wanted to tell his brother-in-law Uug something. But, Uug was in his cave and Oog couldn't leave what he was doing to talk to Uug. So Oog sent his son Junior. Now Junior was a good lad but like most boys his age, a little forgetful. To complicate matters even further, Uug was hard of hearing. When Junior left, he knew that he was supposed to ask Uncle Uug if he was going come over for supper and if he was, to bring some bread and pot roast. "And," Oog added, "come home right away."
So Junior left the cave and went next door to Uncle Uug's house. When he got there, he realized that he had forgotten exactly what he was supposed to ask. He thought it had something to do with bread though. So he asked Uncle Uug, "Do you have any bread or toast and are you coming?" and having said that, turned around and left. After all, his dad told him to come right home. Uug was horrified. The Red Coats! And they were coming!! He ran out into center court and sounded the alarm. "The Red Coats are coming!" he shouted. Everybody came running with their clubs. They lined up shoulder to shoulder, ready to defend their wives and children. they waited....and waited....and waited......and waited...........................................................................
to be continued
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