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Nov. 14th, 2013 12:34 pmYou can tell if an item of clothing is a shirt by noticing if it is plaid (evidently)
Maybe I just have only clean plaid shirts? Maybe I need more shirts. Maybe I should do a better job of scrutinizing myself daily. It's not my fault though, I promise, all the mirrors in my house just show me from the belly-button down. It's a small, small world.
I can't lie to you, I need attention and validation. Likewise, I can't quite explain to you why, I just do. Some flaw in my character? Or some merit that I misdiagnose as a flaw because of a different flaw in my character? Who, I ask you, is to say.
Last night I was downtown at the City Club - my boss invited me to an APICs meeting which is like, his whole deal - he's an Ops guy so he likes Ops guy stuff - the lecture was supposed to be about Data Integration and Software - which is a big part of my day, so I was into it. The meal was very good, free drinks, free meals, I'm into it, I liked it. Right up until the class. Maaan... There is a reason I dropped out of business school after a single semester. I forget what dopes these guys are. Like, as in straight up dummies. The speaker is going on about the mysticism of math, and how it's hard, he ridicules the only people in business school who know anything about anything - the economists (and they're a pretty dopey bunch themselves) and then just goes off the edge decrying communism (!?) and regulation and insisting about how competition in the marketplace is great/good/perfect as if he'd never heard of or even considered game-theory. Like... Just the purest and evilest atavism you can imagine, presented as facts while ridiculing those who might disagree, who might like even a tiny taste of rigor in their academia, and then... I mean, this dude is a professor at a university, his lecture to us was just a re-hash of a lecture he gives to students and it was... Just so lacking in substance and I remembered all those years ago, when I thought - "Hey, study business get a job." Sometimes I think about how I didn't and how I don't have that good a job, but then I think about how I'm pretty smart, and how I like being smart better than I like having a better job. Man, just gross. I didn't make a scene or argue because my boss took me and it was nice of him to see me get fed. In a university setting I'd have probably tried to put up my own power-point as a counter-argument. If you don't make power-points about your main arguments vis-a-vis sociopolitical issues, I don't understand how you can live and function. I don't.
Fed, and thinking, I go home on the bus, it's cold and dark. The French Consulate gave up a warning to their travelers that claim you should avoid my neighborhood altogether and not go there at night (?!) This is in particular nutty since my neighborhood is very pleasant and good and they made no mention at all of the legitimately frightening neighborhood just down the hill. France.
If you are a traveler, probably don't hang out too much in East Cleveland after dark, unless you have someone super-cool with you, like me.
I went home, couldn't sleep or accomplish anything and woke up late, and got to the bus late and called to say I'd be late to work late, and was just, behind. Because clocks are wicked. At the bus-stop there's the Jehovah's Witness - which you find often enough in my neighborhood. I... I didn't immediately want to talk to the guy, but whatever, I will talk, shake hands, introduction, actual conversation - he was good - offered me the tract:
Fun, right? The Calvinist/Gnostic/JW answer is of course: THE DEVIL - which is sort of great because of how I'm writing this book, right now... Kind of.
Anyhow, I get into it with him, who do I think rules the world? I say money. And we talk about that, he asks about my observance of faith, I explain that I came up christian and am ethnically christian, I celebrate Christmas and go to churches for weddings and funerals. I express my opinion that there's not any more to it than that, except for the people who are fooled into giving away their money to churches because the churches only want money. And then my bus comes and I feel very badly about how I think about money, a lot.
Because of money, sure, it's money. But in the end it's really that token that demonstrates will and interest. What I'm interested in to offer money to, what I'm needful enough of to work for, will and interest and the persistent requests of others. Really they're asking for your will & interest, attention. I get very, very caught up in worrying about why I'm so uninterested in giving attention and interest away to anyone, and why I'm miserly about money and why I'm especially flinty about paying attention and giving interest to people. And then I think about how I have to snap out of it.
Snap out of it. This is what I say to my kid - a lot, snapoutofit. Because a little conversation with a dude with a watchtower might make you come alive and realize you're being insufferable, by accident even. Christ, I need to snapoutofit.
Maybe I just have only clean plaid shirts? Maybe I need more shirts. Maybe I should do a better job of scrutinizing myself daily. It's not my fault though, I promise, all the mirrors in my house just show me from the belly-button down. It's a small, small world.
I can't lie to you, I need attention and validation. Likewise, I can't quite explain to you why, I just do. Some flaw in my character? Or some merit that I misdiagnose as a flaw because of a different flaw in my character? Who, I ask you, is to say.
Last night I was downtown at the City Club - my boss invited me to an APICs meeting which is like, his whole deal - he's an Ops guy so he likes Ops guy stuff - the lecture was supposed to be about Data Integration and Software - which is a big part of my day, so I was into it. The meal was very good, free drinks, free meals, I'm into it, I liked it. Right up until the class. Maaan... There is a reason I dropped out of business school after a single semester. I forget what dopes these guys are. Like, as in straight up dummies. The speaker is going on about the mysticism of math, and how it's hard, he ridicules the only people in business school who know anything about anything - the economists (and they're a pretty dopey bunch themselves) and then just goes off the edge decrying communism (!?) and regulation and insisting about how competition in the marketplace is great/good/perfect as if he'd never heard of or even considered game-theory. Like... Just the purest and evilest atavism you can imagine, presented as facts while ridiculing those who might disagree, who might like even a tiny taste of rigor in their academia, and then... I mean, this dude is a professor at a university, his lecture to us was just a re-hash of a lecture he gives to students and it was... Just so lacking in substance and I remembered all those years ago, when I thought - "Hey, study business get a job." Sometimes I think about how I didn't and how I don't have that good a job, but then I think about how I'm pretty smart, and how I like being smart better than I like having a better job. Man, just gross. I didn't make a scene or argue because my boss took me and it was nice of him to see me get fed. In a university setting I'd have probably tried to put up my own power-point as a counter-argument. If you don't make power-points about your main arguments vis-a-vis sociopolitical issues, I don't understand how you can live and function. I don't.
Fed, and thinking, I go home on the bus, it's cold and dark. The French Consulate gave up a warning to their travelers that claim you should avoid my neighborhood altogether and not go there at night (?!) This is in particular nutty since my neighborhood is very pleasant and good and they made no mention at all of the legitimately frightening neighborhood just down the hill. France.
If you are a traveler, probably don't hang out too much in East Cleveland after dark, unless you have someone super-cool with you, like me.
I went home, couldn't sleep or accomplish anything and woke up late, and got to the bus late and called to say I'd be late to work late, and was just, behind. Because clocks are wicked. At the bus-stop there's the Jehovah's Witness - which you find often enough in my neighborhood. I... I didn't immediately want to talk to the guy, but whatever, I will talk, shake hands, introduction, actual conversation - he was good - offered me the tract:
Fun, right? The Calvinist/Gnostic/JW answer is of course: THE DEVIL - which is sort of great because of how I'm writing this book, right now... Kind of.
Anyhow, I get into it with him, who do I think rules the world? I say money. And we talk about that, he asks about my observance of faith, I explain that I came up christian and am ethnically christian, I celebrate Christmas and go to churches for weddings and funerals. I express my opinion that there's not any more to it than that, except for the people who are fooled into giving away their money to churches because the churches only want money. And then my bus comes and I feel very badly about how I think about money, a lot.
Because of money, sure, it's money. But in the end it's really that token that demonstrates will and interest. What I'm interested in to offer money to, what I'm needful enough of to work for, will and interest and the persistent requests of others. Really they're asking for your will & interest, attention. I get very, very caught up in worrying about why I'm so uninterested in giving attention and interest away to anyone, and why I'm miserly about money and why I'm especially flinty about paying attention and giving interest to people. And then I think about how I have to snap out of it.
Snap out of it. This is what I say to my kid - a lot, snapoutofit. Because a little conversation with a dude with a watchtower might make you come alive and realize you're being insufferable, by accident even. Christ, I need to snapoutofit.
