I Think George Carlin Would Have Loved This.

This is a copy of an e-mail that someone sent to my wife. People don't send me stuff like this anymore because I have a habit of researching the veracity of anything suspect. I then e-mail them back with facts, and while some of them appreciate learning the truth behind hoaxes and rumors, I think it pisses most people off. Whatever. Stuff like this pisses me off. Here, in italics is the e-mail, and below it you'll find the facts surrounding the authorship of 'Paradox'.

"This is an awesome piece. If you have not read it, take the time to read it now. If you have read it, take time to read it again! GEORGE CARLIN (His wife recently died...and George followed her, dying July 2008)

Isn't it amazing that George Carlin - comedian of the 70's and 80's - could write something so very eloquent...and so very appropriate.

A Message by George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider Freeways , but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete...

Remember; spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, ' I love you ' to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

If you don't send this to at least 8 people.....Who cares?

George Carlin

It's got some great ideas in it, but as I'm a huge George Carlin fan I thought it was odd that he would say something like "We pray too little", considering that Carlin was a vehement atheist. He once said that the only being he prayed to was Joe Pesci, because he looked like a guy who could get things done. So I did a little digging and found this.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/paradox.asp
Long story short, George Carlin didn't have anything to do with writing this. It was written more than 50 years ago by Dr. Bob Moorehead, former pastor of Seattle's Overlake Christian Church. He was later accused of sexually abusing 17 male members of his congregation, forcing his resignation.
I think this is all hilariously ironic in a couple of ways. First, it leads one to believe that the list of ills provided are a product of the modern age, when in fact the author wrote them fully half a century before our modern age. Everyone over 50 with a computer loves forwarding this stuff to their kids with a bit a mix of nostalgia and self-righteousness. I think it's awesome that Dr. Bob was talking about their world.
It's also ironic that the hoaxsters chose Carlin as the alleged author, because he would have found this really funny too, particularly the part with the perverted priest.

Bohemian Dad.

I used to avoid working a lot more than I currently avoid working. I know that may be hard to believe, but it's true.
At one point in my life I had the goal of writing fiction for a living. I read a lot of Bohemian writers and took inspiration from them, most notably Henry Miller.
Miller was a tramp for the most part. Job to job, town to town, until he finally settled in a drafty old cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Like Miller I drifted from job to job, town to town, and I did my best at all times to live hand to mouth. I worked part time if at all, rented closets from likeminded peers in divey apartments. I bought all my clothing used or shared with friends.
The goal of course was always to spend the spare time writing.
I did a lot of writing. What I did not do however was any of the follow through. In 38 years I've sent off 2 pieces of work, to 2 prospective publishers for consideration. That's it. Anyway, I digress.
The point is this. When I became a father, I decided that I'd lost the right to be a Bohemian. My own parents were thrifty to say the least, and I've got to admit that they're choice to clothe me in generic outfits throughout childhood left me a bit scarred. Kids can be mean, especially when they have brand name and you don't.
So I've decided not to put my own kids through that Hell. Every fall we head out to the athletic stores and we get them top of the line running shoes. I spend the $10 or $20 extra to buy them the better labels of clothes.
But I'm conflicted. Personally, I'm averse to consumerism. I subscribe more to the principles of simplicity set forth by Thoreau. It's my own personal philosophy. I'm not going to spend more than a 2 grand on a car, because it doesn't make sense to me. I can't imagine spending more than 20 bucks on anything but task specific wardrobe items (running gear being the exception, injuries and discomfort are extremely demotivating.) I think that mainstream culture has lost touch with what's important because of rampant consumerism. Personalities seem too defined by what they have and what they don't.
That being said, personalities seem defined by what they have and what they don't, and I'm working on defining 3 little personalities every day. As much as I embrace counter-culture thoughts and philosophies, I kind of want them to be mainstream. Hippie families like this just don't cut it in the 21st Century. Do they?

Our mountains are lighter than air.

Saskatchewan is flat. If you wanted a simile for extreme flatness, Saskatchewan would be very near the top of the list.
It's also pretty devoid of any significant scenery other than sky. Consequently that's where I find myself looking most of the time, up up up.
I remember when I returned after spending 10 years in the mountains of Alberta and the West Coast of B.C. that I had the sensation of being at a tremendous altitude for my first few weeks back.
The absence of mountains on the horizon somehow convinced my senses that I must be high above the mountains. It was like vertigo those first few weeks.
I was riding in a friend's car at that time, and I spotted a line of storm clouds moving in far away to the west. I'd been looking at them for a few minutes before I realized that it wasn't a mountain range, but clouds, and I laughed to myself.
Yesterday I was out riding my bike on the edge of town and I saw a distant range of clouds rising over the horizon, and I was reminded again of the mountains, and for a moment I missed them. Only for a moment though. Soon I was full of appreciation for our mountains, lighter than air, advancing and retreating across the sky. You can watch a storm cloud boil and grow, and it looks like a great volcanic lava flow growing and rising. Our mountains light up with fireworks all summer long, and they turn and drop and can be 1000 different colors at once when the sun is setting. By far the very best thing about our moving mountain ranges of cloud, is that they are never the same as they were the day before.
Scenery is entirely dependent on focus.

Confirmation Bias.

When I played poker, I made a living of off the confirmation biases of others. Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs. For example, if you believe that during a full moon there is an increase in admissions to the emergency room where you work, you will take notice of admissions during a full moon, but be inattentive to the moon when admissions occur during other nights of the month. A tendency to do this over time unjustifiably strengthens your belief in the relationship between the full moon and accidents and other lunar effects. In poker it's the tendency to view one's wins as relevant and meaningful, but downplay or disregard one's losses. It's one of the reasons I used software to continually analyze my game. There's no kidding yourself when you have the mean win/loss rate of 250,000 hands looking you in the eye.
I think that poker may have destroyed my mind. In poker you are constantly playing a game of "What do I think he has, what does he think I have, what does he think I think he has, and what does he think I think he thinks I have. It gets pretty convoluted, but it pays off...in poker.
In real life, I'm having trouble shaking this thinking. I question every action of every one around me for what it really means, and I have a reverse confirmation bias. I tend to use selective thinking that confirms ulterior motives everywhere. I can quite easily convince myself that this is rational, and that on the contrary, the lack of an ulterior motive is irrational.
I analyze situations, find the worst case scenario for another person's thoughts or behaviour, then build up a system of associations and beliefs that make any best case scenario seem naive and optimistic.
Anyway, I'm rambling, not making much sense to myself, better go to bed as I have to be up in 5 hours to count for 3 hours.

Dine and Dash.

I was talking to one of my line cooks outside and we watched the sunset and wound down from the rush and talked about how we could improve our performance next time. We talked for a while and the sun did set and dusk turned to dark and we heard sirens out in front of the building on Circle Drive. Red light bounced off the walls of the building and we poked our heads around the corner to see a fire truck blocking traffic, and a group of firemen huddled around a mass on the ground. I think I saw the thing's feet moving and the firemen were quiet and focused. Moments later there was a police car, and a cop and another fireman were laying out pylons and directing slow moving traffic around the scene and we moved up closer to see more.
"If you get close and you see something horrible, you'll never forget it." I cautioned my young cook, remembering a trip on the bus when I was a kid. An old lady had been killed crossing Broadway and they had a detour set up. As my bus turned I looked out the window and could see a long dark puddle stretching away from a people sized blotch in the center of the road and flowing down in rivulets to the gutter. It was midafternoon in the summer, and the blood glinted black and shiny and smooth in the high sun. It's a sight you don't forget.
My cook looked at me a little spooked and thought about whether he could handle human horror in his head, then moved up anyway.
There was a car stopped in front of the huddled mass, and its hood was smashed and its headlight was smashed and its windshield was smashed and there was this tall lanky teenage kid all pale and shaking standing beside the car hugging himself and biting his lips watching with complete and utter intensity as the firemen worked on the thing on the ground.
It was only another minute or two and there was an ambulance there and the EMS guys got out and started to help, one of them breaking out a stretcher. A TV cameraman showed up and started filming, visibly bothered when a car passed in front of his shot.
Some guy in his 40s came walking by, dressed in business casual, tired, toting a laptop and smoking a cigarette and he stopped to watch with us.
"Pedestrian?" he said.
"Yep" I said, although I didn't really know.
The guy looked at the damage to the car. "Must have been a big pedestrian." he surmised.
"Or a fast car." I noted.
"Maybe both. Dead?" he asked me.
"I don't know, I think I saw his feet moving."
He tilted his head, shrugged, then shook it no. "They're moving pretty slow for a not-dead guy."
And they were. And nothing moved, not feet, not hands, not head, not even my line cook and I. They put the thing on to the stretcher and put the stretcher in the ambulance and the ambulance tore away and we stood there for a couple of minutes watching the clean up.
The firemen passed around a spray bottle and sprayed off their boots and the knees of their overalls and the fronts of their jackets. One of them spread sand across a long glistening patch of dark wetness on the roadway.
I went inside and the party was still going strong, but the bar manager was keyed up anxious and there was a cop asking questions and taking notes and one of the waitresses was in the office crying. The grotesque and curious thing on the road had been a guy in our bar minutes before, a friend of the server and he had dashed across the street to buy cigarettes when the tall lanky kid slammed into him, taking away all his peopleness and life and momentum.
I was shaken. I don't like mortality, and that was a pretty uncomfortable reminder how fast that can happen.

Depends on how you look at it.

I read an article recently that talked about how mental disorders involving skewed perceptions might actually be the more accurate outlook.
What interested me in particular was the concept of depressive realism. Essentially, this is the idea that depressed people have a more accurate picture of reality than the population at large.

Studies by psychologists Alloy and Abramson (1979) and Dobson and Franche (1989) showed that depressed people appear to have a more realistic perception of their importance, reputation, locus of control, and abilities than those who are not depressed.

People without depression are more likely to have inflated self-images and look at the world through "rose-colored glasses".

Just thought I would share that, before I head off to bed. Long day today, early day tomorrow.

This Old World Keeps Spinning 'Round.

I like moments. At one point I lived my life in search of moments. The kinds of moments I like are the moments where I have a mainline right from my center of my being to the infinite divine. Christians would call it a state of grace. Buddhists would call it enlightenment. I call them moments.
I've just come home from one of these beautiful moments, and I managed to make it last for quite a while, which is awesome.
Here's what happened.
I was out on my longboard, trying to get the hang of a few of the more advanced techniques. After I got sick of practicing, I decided to enjoy a nice slow carve along the freshly paved road I was on. The street had a nice gentle grade to it, that allowed me to basically maintain speed for close to half a kilometer or so...no acceleration or deceleration, just a perfect cruise.
Above me the sky was absolutely clear and stars were out in all their glory. Stars get me every time. If I'm out walking at night, I have my head craned way back and my jaw dropped wide open and I stumble around staring up.
I basically assumed that same position tonight, rolling effortlessly down this gentle slope.
Boarding is a beautiful feeling. It's a mixture of near weightlessness and barely controlled momentum. An almost gyroscopic feeling of balance and motion and gravity if that makes any sense. So there I was, rolling along with this weightless sense of motion, staring up at the stars, which of course are far enough away to appear motionless. Watching their stillness, focused on stationary points in the sky I had this moment where it seemed that I was motionless as well. It wasn't my board and I cruising down the road, but more a matter of the road and the street and the city and the world rolling under us. Instant state of cosmic grace!
Driving home later I had the top down in the convertible, still enjoying the stars, still enjoying the sense that it was the world moving and I was a fixed point in space. Then I discovered a new favorite thing, and you can try this too!
My little convertible is old school, a 5 speed manual with power nothing. I came to the top of a small hill and at about 60k I popped the car into neutral, turned off the lights and the ignition and rolled quietly down for a block or so. Let me tell you people...that is fun.
Good night.