Category Archives: Thoughts @ Large

• If I owned a piece of land that jutted out into the water but had no place where a boat could land, I would call it Moot Point.

• His casual pleasure is my extravagance.  My sense of necessity is lost on you.

• We can live in a culture of violence, or we can choose something else.

• Readers of The 100 Billionth Person may have already suspected this: I do not exist between blog posts.  That’s right.  Minutes after each post, I suddenly evaporate into a quantum nothingness and only re-materialize days later when the universe reaches a point of critical boredom.

• Do you know what’s really awful about questions that are left hanging?

• I have not been and never will be a season-ticket-for-the-orchestra kind of guy.

• By the time I finally decide to start sending text messages, everyone else will have phones with implants that transmit audio and video messages directly to the brain.  Texting will be as outdated as The Tea Party is now.  The only life form that will understand and respond to r u ok will be an oak.

• There are two kinds of people in this world: those who kill spiders they find in their homes and those who let them go unless the spiders are really big or ugly, then they turn into the first kind of people.

• Shooting firearms for sport is an activity that satisfies man’s prehistoric hunger to launch projectiles.  I would not be surprised if men at the shooting range were found to salivate upon seeing that first bullet hit the target (that would be an interesting study).  There are far less violent ways for men to set an object in motion and follow its trajectory toward a target.  Here I would suggest golf.  In golf, unlike shooting, the projectile doesn’t create a hole — it quietly falls into a hole that is already there.  Eventually.

• There is a reason that name-brand canned tuna is better than your grocery store brand: the store-brand stuff has chopped tuna eyes in it.  Look at the label if you don’t believe me.

• I have an idea for an iPad app for pianists.  It would not only display the sheet music for the composition but would “listen along” as you play and automatically “flip the page” when you reach the last measure on the page.  Ideally, the app would also let you place a second iPad to the right of the first so you can always see the look-ahead page.

• No rhyme or reason?  There may be no reason but one can always find a rhyme.

• A few days after the Malaysian airliner disappeared, NBC News chose to air a segment featuring a man who was scheduled to board the flight but did not, and so he “survived” this event.  The man attributed his existence on this planet to “the grace of God.”  Why is it that the logic of religion always seems to lead so quickly to the specialness of “me?”

• I am finally over mourning my 50s and I now take heart that I am in my early 60s.  (After all, what choice do I have?)

• Besides my wife saying “good morning” to me, the sound I love to hear to start my day is the friendly, familiar, slowly rising-in-pitch gurgle as hot coffee fills my mug.  The kitchen is quiet, save for this sound.  The echo of that sound makes my first sip taste delicious.

• Introverts vs extroverts: extroverts don’t care whether others approve of their behavior, so they go ahead and do whatever suits them, which ironically attracts certain people.  Introverts on the other hand are guarded about their behavior, protecting themselves from disapproval and isolating themselves from affirmation, effectively turning people away.  I wish I were more outgoing, because it is rewarding to seek out and exchange ideas with others — but then again I value the time I need to focus on my own creative goals.  In the end, I’m not sure there is that much difference between introverts and extroverts except for the ability to recognize and confidently project one’s own essence.

• People ask, what is my blog about.  I never have a ready answer.  Maybe that’s a good thing.  The minute I feel predictable is when I feel the urge to do something different and throw myself and my readers out of our respective comfort zones.  So I must make the following announcement: this blog is about making connections and it always has been.

• A recent “contestant” on Judge Judy made the following post-trial statements about her adversary in court:

“As far as telling her ‘I hate gays,’ that’s not true.  I have some friends that are homosexual.  I do not approve of their lifestyle but I will love them.”

No, this woman does not hate gays, she just finds them distasteful.  Anyone who uses a five-syllable clinical term (ho-mo-sex-u-al) to describe a fellow human being, when the one-syllable word gay would do nicely enough, reveals through her words the emotional distance she intends to maintain.  I wonder if her “homosexual friends” know that she calls them her friends.  And I wonder what they feel more, her love for them or her disapproval.

• I just watched Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma (a Republican, naturally) make the argument that ObamaCare is a colossal failure because, unlike business, government just does not know how to get things done.  As he put it, “The government is not Amazon.”  This is both a tired and flawed line of reasoning.  Private enterprise is not comprised of businesses with a 100% success rate.  Over 40,000 businesses filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. in 2012.  The failure rate of business startups is 50 to 70% within the first 18 months, according to this source.  The point is, if one wants a program to work, if it has to work, then one cannot afford to turn it over to private enterprise, because private enterprise by its very nature embraces risks and failed endeavors.  Dogmatic folks like Rep. Cole tend to forget that for every one Amazon, there are three WorldComs.

• Little-known grammar fact: the past tense of havoc is haddock.

• The up-to-now-automatic Republican Senate filibuster of Presidential judicial nominees ends, finally.  Objectors (in the minority party) cite the corrosive effect of this action on Senate deliberation.  I counter that it serves to show that elections matter.  We don’t elect Senators with 60-percent super-majorities.  If they win their seats by one vote, they win, and they sit in their seats for six years, which is time enough to deliberate.

• Another little-known grammar fact: the past tense of bible is bought bull.

• We have decided to take President Obama’s offer and we will be keeping our current health insurance plan for one more year.  When I figure in the cost of the premiums and our maximum out-of-pocket amounts, I expect that we will save about $6,500 next year, compared to the ObamaCare plan we would have had.  We could save as much as $7,700, with a possible downside of no more than $1,200 if we both max out on medical expenses.  Do I feel guilty about dropping out of the local risk pool?  Not really.  We should expect people to make rational financial decisions for themselves given the options available.

• In other news, a local brewery has run into a head of foam for having named one of its beers after the popular Hindu god Shiva.  Rajan Zed of the Universal Society of Hinduism in Nevada (no connection to the brewery Sierra Nevada) is protesting the use of Shiva’s image on bottles of Asheville Brewing’s Shiva India Pale Ale.  “Shiva is highly revered in Hinduism,” he said. “Once you use the can or the bottle, then you throw it in the garbage – that is highly unacceptable,” Zed said.  (This leads me to wonder: if you recycle a bottle of Shiva India Pale Ale, does it come back as a vase in its next life?)

Mike Rangel, head of Asheville Brewing, told the Fox Carolina reporter that “he met with … representatives from a [local] Hindu temple about the name of the beer” and “they came to a respectful agreement” about the use of the image.  “We definitely felt like we’ve done our diligence with our local community — we’ve had two complaints in 16 years,” Rangel said.

I have an idea for another beer that Mike Rangel might consider brewing.  It is made from whole grain, I mean holy grain, from the Middle East.  I call it Jesus: Israel Pale Ale (click on the label at right.)  Who in this community could possibly be offended?  This is Beer City.  After drinking a few cold ones, we just loosen our Bible Belt.

• This blog does not run on vapors.  I write it with the idea that some people will read it.  As a reader of this blog, your now-and-again comment will demonstrate your interest and will help keep my Tinker-Bellian flame burning bright.