Truth

Stolen unapologetically off the Facebook and so out of character from what you've come to expect from me in this blog, I know, but whatever…

The Mayonnaise Jar and Two Cups of Coffee

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, he wordlessly picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls. He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else. He asked once more if the jar was full. The students responded with an unanimous "yes."

The professor then produced two cups of coffee from under the table and poured the entire contents into the jar effectively filling the empty space between the sand. The students laughed.

"Now," said the professor as the laughter subsided, "I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things–your family, your children, your health, your friends and your favorite passions–and if everything else was lost and only they remained, your life would still be full.

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car.

The sand is everything else–the small stuff. "If you put the sand into the jar first," he continued, "there is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff you will never have room for the things that are important to you.

"Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children. Take time to get medical checkups. Take your spouse out to dinner. Play another 18. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the disposal. Take care of the golf balls first–the things that really matter. Set your priorities. The rest is just sand."

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the coffee represented. The professor smiled. "I'm glad you asked.

It just goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem, there's always room for a couple of cups of coffee with a friend."

April 24, 2012

Word.

March 26, 2012

Applies Equally to Fridays

March 25, 2012

Word.

March 22, 2012

Porn

March 10, 2012February 2, 2020

SO True!

This was one of my first observations about San Francisco upon moving there in the 80s. Apparently nothing has changed. Doesn't anybody work in this town?!?

March 8, 2012

On Becoming One With the Darkness

"After decades of following the twisty course of Conservative arguments and debating friends and colleagues, I know one thing to be true: futilely trying to get Republicans to talk honestly in the 1990s about, say, Bill Clinton amounted to little more than a dress-rehearsal for futilely trying to get Republicans to talk honestly about Bush, Cheney, DeLay, Iraq, 9/11, deficit-exploding tax cuts, climate change, radical banking deregulation, radical environmental deregulation, the assassination of abortion providers, contraception, labor unions, mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds, and couple of dozen other topics I would reel off.

"In other words, it doesn't work: to protect their egos (and, often, their incomes) instead of doing what we teach every child to do—apologize when you are wrong—the Right has collectively jumped past a spiritual event horizon and into a soul-darkness from which there is no return: a darkness in which imps and devils are always patiently waiting to take your hat and coat and make you extremely comfortable on the gentle, downward-sloping road to Hell.

"This darkness comes with a promise and a catch: the promise is, that the Right will never, ever be called to account for the endless lies they have told and endless betrayals they have committed; the catch is that they can never leave, and no matter how repellent their neighbors become and no matter how humiliating and horrifying the lies become, they are obliged to shut up and go along with the program. With this promise comes the terrible, goosestepping power of a mob under harness, but with it also comes a grotesque fragility because to keep the darkness alive the Right has become s confederacy of Mrs. Havishams, rotting away in the gloom.

And to make matters much, much worse, their decaying mansion sits on top of such a massive, leaky stockpile of lie upon lie, betrayal upon betrayal, hypocrisy upon hypocrisy and treason upon treason that the danger of one, stray non-Fox Approved fact accidentally glancing off another non-Fox and sparking off a conflagration is omnipresent.

The entire Conservative enterprise is built on delusion and old dynamite, which is why every clock much forever remain stopped at one minute after Reagan's inauguration, every fact must be smothered under the stasis field of Rush Limbaugh roaring, rage-drunk bluster. It is the sarcophagus of a dead ideology where the walls are now so densely postered and palimpsested with the detritus of Conservatism's lurid, lying history that its denizens cannot find the exit anymore, and its floors are so sticky and pitted with the grue of its savage, tribal, beat-in rituals that no one bothers to even look for the door.

Which is why no deviation can be permitted, no error can be admitted and no apologies can be allowed.

Read the rest here.

March 3, 2012

You Remember That Tsunami…

…I wrote about? The one in the vision of Santorum and his fellow haters standing on a beach shaking their tiny little fists at its approach like angry old men?

This is that Tsunami. And nothing's gonna stop it.