Is Ice Cube Appropriate in Yoga Class?

Here at TWEDP, we strive to educate our readers. In that spirit, we present the following comment that regular reader and yoga teacher extrordinare Andrea M. left on our FB wall:

“Seriously considered it as an option for rock your asana but then retracted last minute for fear of offending the tribe, who might not appreciate its eloquence.”

The “it” in question?

Now, I don’t know what kind of world Andrea lives in, but a world in which one cannot play Ice Cube freely in every situation is one in which the Taliban has already won.

But in MY world, the Taliban has not won!

In this world, Barack Obama jumped out a helicopter from 1,000 feet with no parachute, killed 17 Taliban nutjob guards using the ancient art of shadowboxing, and ripped Osama Bin Laden’s heart from his chest with his bare hands.

Barack Obama did not defend our freedom just to see us give us the very freedom that drove his vengeance.

So, for my country, I give you

A Spirited Argument To Play Ice Cube’s “Today Was a Good Day” in Yoga Class

Lyrics are in italics. Passionate ranting in regular font.  From the start, I should make it clear that I will concentrate on only those lyrics relevant to the practice of yoga.  Lots of rappers say lots of stuff.

Just waking up in the morning gotta thank God

I should be able to stop after this one line. Ice Cube's entire purpose in writing this song was to express gratitude. Here, he expresses gratitude for the new born day with a terse eloquence that the Dali Lama himself can appreciate, if not match. Gratitude may not be one of the four brahmavihāras towards which Master Patanjali points us, but gratitude is an extremely important virtue in yoga. If I'm not mistaken, the current sign in the front of the world's greatest yoga studio ever is one word, and it isn't "Shelly" (yet).

That sign says gratitude.

No barking from the dog, no smog
And momma cooked a breakfast with no hog

So what is Ice Cube grateful for? First, he is grateful for a clean environment. We yogis like the environment. You may have seen us driving our hybrids to yoga and eating expensive but pesticide-free organic food. We also like non violence, not just to fellow people but to animals as well. The masters are pretty clear that one fully devoted to yoga will give up meat entirely. Surely the masters would approve of Osage Jackson's refusal to touch that swine.

I got my grub on, but didn't pig out

Moderation. Ice Cube understands that gluttony disrupts equanimity, so he eats only what he needs to sustain himself.

Called up the homies and I'm askin y'all
Which park, are y'all playin basketball?

Physical activity is one of the eight limbs of yoga. Cube understands that a sharp body leads to a sharp mind, which is necessary for the meditation needed to achieve the highest states.

Plus nobody I know got killed in South Central L.A.
Today was a good day

First and foremost, Cube is grateful for life. Every day that you and your peoples all wake up is a good day. It's like Tibetan Buddhism in a Raiders hat and black Wranglers.

The Lakers beat the Supersonics

So a natural body of water defeated a sound only produced by a gas-guzzling, man-made artifice? Again, yogis love nature.

In conclusion, Ice Cube is a Zen prophet for the new era. TWEDP strongly endorses the playing of "Today Was a Good Day," "Black Korea," and other Cube classics in any and all yoga classes.

The Smartest Animals, featuring Phillies talk

One of the things I have learned in the first months of TWEDP is that fewer people read stuff on the weekend.  I need to get better at accounting for that fact in my writing, because the two posts I wrote this weekend are, in my opinion, among the best I've done so far.  So I'm going to cop out a bit today and ask that if you're looking to read some of that raw, uncut Shelly, check Saturday's entry about how to change the world or Sunday's entry about what Tara Stiles means for yoga.

Oh, and the Phillies signed Juan Pierre.

I'm not mad.  It's a minor league deal.  If he makes the team, he pinch runs, pinch hits when all other options are gone, and starts maybe 30 games.

Most importantly, the Phillies needed to address the scrapiness deficit facing their team and Major League Baseball.  For the Phillies, you can't just let the veteran know-how of Raul Ibanez leave and expect your team to remember how to play the right way.  Adding Pierre to the outfield rotation ensures that we have a guy who will teach all these fancy-pants high priced stars how to run hard and put their pants on one leg at a time.  The Phillies have also done a great service to Major League Baseball and BBWWA, which is reeling after the loss of its sweet, sweet prince.

Whatever.  You don't care about that, and neither does Takao.  You're just waiting for me to link to the greatest Fire Joe Morgan post in history.

Wish granted.

Dolphins on the Delaware, y'all!!

Tara Stiles: An Outsider's Perspective

For the uninitiated, Tara Stiles is one of yoga's It Girls.  She hangs with Deepak Chopra.  Her story is written up in the New York Times.  Now she's balling out with Ryan Reynolds in car commercials.

And Tara Stiles does not care what you think about her.

Let me clarify.  Stiles has been the subject of a huge amount of controversy within the yoga community.  Now, some of that criticism comes from, if I may be blunt, the type of women whose sole mission in life seems to be to hate on any woman who dares to be too young, too pretty, and too thin.

The flipside is, some of that criticism is legitimate worrying about what happens when yoga meets capitalism.  I am not all that thrilled that Stiles models some of the packaging for her products on The South Beach Diet.  The dieting culture in this country is really, really awful.  That Stiles is tying her brand to it makes her part of a really big problem.  And regardless of how Stiles came about her particular body type, it isn't and shouldn't be a legitimate aspiration for most women.

(Tangent: it's also not the body type guys want, for whatever that's worth.)

However, that's not what I find most interesting about Stiles.  What's most interesting is that Stiles is the first yoga celebrity I can remember who is building her career and brand with a complete disregard for the yoga establishment.  Stiles is undoubtedly more famous and popular than other rising stars of yoga like Kathryn Budig or Elena Bower, yet it's Budig and Bower who are on the covers of Yoga Journal and headlining conferences.  I haven't heard of Stiles touring around the world offering workshops.  I haven't heard any hardcore yogas talking about the amazing class they took at Strala, her studio.

Instead, Stiles seems to be about yoga for the non yogi.  She eschews chanting in her workshops.  She helps normal, everyday people meet the goals they want to meet, like weight loss.  She offers a class called "Yoga for a Hangover."

My purpose in writing this post is not to judge Stiles.  If you want to construct her trial, just Google her name, and you'll hear plenty of people praise and crucify her.  Besides, Stiles has probably forgotten more yoga than I ever knew.  She lived on an ashram, for God's sake.

My point is, regardless of what one thinks of her strategy, Stiles represents an interesting development for yoga in the West.  The people who built the yoga culture in the United States focused on building a tribe of people who would be committed to following yogic ideals and support them with their dollars.  Put another way, even Rodney Yee, undisputed king of the yoga DVD,  wanted his DVDs to lead viewers to class, where they would learn more about the history of yoga and start down the path that countless others have trod over the past four thousand years.  That insularity made everyone very, very rich.  Yoga is now an eight billion dollar a year industry, and I would wager that most money comes from people like me who consider yoga to be a central part of their lives.

Stiles is not Rodney Yee.  Publicly, at least, she doesn't care about the yogic tradition, and she sure doesn't care about the tribe.  She shows that it is now possible to have yoga for the masses in the West.  Her yoga seems to ask for no deep commitment and promises the practitioner no great spiritual breakthroughs.  And her yoga seems to say, you can be a housewife who watches Oprah and still do my yoga.  You don't have to be part of the tribe.  You don't have to wear hemp.  You can take showers.

So Stiles, to me, is ultimately more about the growth of the yoga business than anything else.  The yoga business seems to be no longer dependent on a subculture of true believers.  As if we needed anymore proof, Stiles' runaway popularity shows that yoga has penetrated the culture on the deepest possible level.  Yoga is part of the Spectacle, and we can sell yoga the same way we sell hamburgers.

How to Change the World

Anyone working in the nonprofit or foundation worlds can tell you about the emphasis on proof.  The people with the money necessary to make good things happen want to see evidence that the program they're funding makes a difference, usually in terms of measurable outcomes like higher standardized test scores for kids or rates of employment for adults.  And that's all great.  I'm a quantitative researcher, and I want to see proof of effectiveness too, especially because contemporary statistics provides us with a dizzying array of tools that allow us to measure and isolate effects of various factors.

And yet...

I just read this wonderful Washington Post article about ReWired for Life, the program started by Sonja Sohn, aka Kima from The Wire.  When Sohn started this program, she didn't have a solid research base that informed her approach.  Hell, it's not even clear that she had an approach, beyond a vague notion that the remedial class from Season 4 seemed promising.

What she does have, though, is a commitment to making a difference and the knowledge that the people she wants to help need to be equal partners in the endeavour. Educators know that the single most important step to helping anyone is getting him or her to buy in.  Once they're invested, once they care, you can get somewhere.  Incredibly difficult challenges will still arise, but if the person cares, the two of you can work through it together.  The two of you can figure out where s/he went wrong and how to avoid similar problems in the future.

The foundation of any effective program of uplift has to be a desire to engage.  Engagement is incredibly difficult because real engagement is a two-way process.  If you want to help people, you have to allow them to have a voice in how they want to be helped, and you have to be open to those times when they're going to help you.  Your program is absolutely going to change from what you intended.

I wonder if our focus on measurable impact gets in the way of engagement.  I kind of doubt whether Sohn's program will show statistically significant outcomes, at least in its first few years.  She's working with a very small sample size, and the kids in ReWired are the highest of high risk.  Maybe her biggest "obstacle" to demonstrating her program works is that, right now, she has a purposefully flexible program that changes to meet the needs of her partners, the kids she's trying to help.

Can a flexible program measure its impact in a way that will satisfy people obsessed with the bottom line?  Will enough donors recognize that ReWired for Life and programs like it represent our best chance at truly effective philanthropy and give them the chance to offer the people who need uplift a voice?

I really hope so, because, sh!t, reading about ReWired for Life gave me a great deal of hope.  Big ups, Kima Greggs.

Compassion: The Word of the Day

Actually, compassion is tied for Word of the Day status with "soy."  The homie Sprows just came up with the greatest sequel title ever: "Latte 2: You Soy Crazy."

But I digress.

It's been a trying few days.  I'm near the completion of an article, and anyone who's written anything for submission knows that those moments before you hand it are sheer terror.  Added to the general upheaval of my life right now, this article is kicking my a$$.  I'm tired a lot.  It's kind of tough to talk to people for very long.  I want to fill a swimming pool with Glenlivet and reincarnate Hunter S. Thompson to baptize me and wash/anesthetize my sins away.

After trying a bunch of different strategies today to deal with all my stuff, I finally decided that I was going to try to worry about the troubles of others for a while.  I'm working on compassion without expectation of immediate reward.  Of course, I hope unselfishly concerning myself with the well being of others plants those good karmic seeds that will send angels my way to help me out, but it's karma's job to worry about the return on my investment, not mine.  I'm interested in trying to help people just for it's own sake.

So if you see a bald guy walking down the street looking dazed and friendly in Chapel Thrill, know that he's just repeating a one-word mantra and looking for people to help.  If you need someone to help you move this weekend, you're in luck.  Holla.

This Post Includes You

Blogger makes it very easy to obsess over how many people are reading your blog.  You get day-by-day and post-by-post counts of how many people are reading.

Those of who know me know that I think I'm quite clever.  When I looked at my first round of post counts, it looked like the most popular posts had "yoga" in the title.  So earlier this week, I made sure to squeeze yoga into the post title.  This proved unsuccessful at spurring the masses to click.

So then I gave it another look.  It turns out the most popular posts were those with titles that seem the most approachable.  Big, pompous words didn't work.

I should have known better, since I spend a good part of my time telling undergraduates to take big words and jargon out of their papers.  All those words do is put up barriers between you and your audience.  The key to good writing is to express complex ideas completely but in the simplest possible terms.

Also, I think pictures matter.  So here's a man pretending to be a hobo.  His clothes are way too new, and his features far too unforked, for him to be the real deal.

Early Bonus Scotchtime Manichean Madness

Note: I cheated a little and wrote this last night, while drinking scotch to numb the damage my idiot dentist wrought.  Warning given.

I believe Lovecraft.

Who I haven't even read yet.

But mean to.

(Once I found out that one-sentence paragraphs annoyed Takao, I dedicated my life to them.)

Anyway, I believe H.P. Lovecraft.  The universe is big and huge and scary and doesn't care about us even a little.  We are scared and alone and can't possibly comprehend the forces that are not aligned against us, but are completely indifferent towards us.

And yet.

And yet.


I believe Morrison.

As a species, we are destined to evolve and transcend.  We are all united, and united we will breach the walls of the possible, and it will be glorious beyond any words, and it is already happening.

You are a light.

Don't waste it.

The Yoga Before Class

In their translation of The Yoga Sutras, Geshe Michael Roach and Christie McNally use a movie metaphor to explain our relationship to reality.  They say that when a kid sees a man doing something wrong on a movie screen, he might tell the character to stop, or he might try to restrain the man.  Neither one will work.

Their point is, most of the problems we think we face are exactly like the example.  The choices we most naturally see usually address symptoms of the problem, not the underlying problem itself.  Until we can identify and fix the underlying problem, we are destined to make the wrong choice, and our suffering will continue.

One of my projects lately has been to try to identify the real issues behind conflicts I feel, to ask myself whether the options that I see in front of me address mere symptoms and whether the situation offers me any opportunity to plant new seeds that will lead to a better set of choices in the future.

At no time have I thought more about all of this than the five minutes before my yoga class.  The truth is that I care a whole lot about how I am regarded at what is, in my incredibly biased view, the best fLKLing yoga studio on the planet.  There's no real reason for me to worry.  My studio is an accepting and nurturing space.  Yet I worry, for no reason I could ever identify, what the teachers, staff, and other yogis think of me.

In the spirit of planting new and better seeds, let's see if we can peel back the onion and figure out a little bit of what the real cause of my concern is.  Because they're the ones getting paid, let's talk about the instructors.  I definitely, definitely care about what a few of the instructors at Franklin Street think of me.  Why might that be?

Because I like people, and I like to connect with those I see on a regular basis?  Yup, sans doute, as my French friend Colette would say.

Because these instructors are kind and wonderful people?  Yes they are, and those are definitely the type of people whose admiration and respect matters to me.  So far, so good.

Because they are advanced practitioners of something about which I care deeply and have dedicated a good part of my life?  Yeah, ok, but I'm starting to feel a little nervous.

Because...

AHA!!

Because they are the teachers, and I am used to getting As?

Because I want to be Super Yogi, the best yogi in the whole class and the object of admiration for all who behold me?

Because I want to win?

...and is some part of me trying to win yoga by writing this blog right now?

Hmm.  Hmm hmm hmm.

Keep in mind that I don't think either of these four potential reasons is innately better than the others.  I won't diss my competitive urges, because they've gotten me pretty far in life.  That said, when I walk into my studio, in addition to all the wonderful feelings and the completely awesome joy of seeing friends again, I do have a hint of insecurity, and that insecurity is something I want to move past.

Knowledge is power.  Lately I've been trying to take steps to fight the urge to win yoga.  In the first Warrior or Down Dog, I'm trying to let my body warm up, rather than going for it right away.  When my legs just aren't feeling it, I do a quick straighten, I shake it out a little bit, and I go back into the pose.  I'm trying not to hold poses any more just for the sake of, I MUST HOLD THIS POSE BECAUSE I AM A YOGI, DAMNIT.

And it all feels great.  It feels right.

I wonder if I could get to be as good a friend with that anonymous person in the back row as I am with Lori.

Cundiff's Folly: On a Blame-Free Society

Life is complex.  In 99.9 percent of cases, no one event or phenomenon is responsible for the totality of the outcome.

Congratulations, Bill Barnwell.  You have a layman's understanding of chaos theory.  You are level-headed unbiased high priest of sports statistical orthodoxy.  You understand that it would be, like, so last century to blame one person for the outcome of a football game, and all of the other high priests would laugh at you.

Also, you're full of sh!t.

There are many reasons the Ravens and Niners aren't going to the Super Bowl, but most of them involve men trying to narrow down countless options into the one right decision (hi, Cam Cameron) or perform incredibly difficult tasks.

On the latter point, shout out to Alex Smith, who might have been throwing to the worst collection of wide receivers I've ever seen this season and still rescued his career.

Each game had a singular exception to the "trained professionals struggling with extremely difficult tasks in the most tense possible environment."  They were asked to perform the most simple tasks associated with their jobs that required a level of skill that every college player in the country possesses, and they failed miserably.

Billy Cundiff and Kyle Williams lost the game for their teams yesterday.  It doesn't make us less objective or rational to say so.  They failed at basic fundamental tasks.  NFL kickers need to make 32 yard field goals one thousand out of one thousand times.  Williams was worse, because all he had to do was stay away from a rolling punt, and the Niners win that game in overtime.  Like, don't touch it.  I could have done that.

Hell, I did do that.  If Kyle Williams had been sitting next to me yesterday, he would have performed his job adequately, and I wouldn't have to listen to two weeks worth of stories asking if Eli F@#$@#$ Manning is a first-ballot Hall of Famer.

However, "Cundiff's Folly" has a better ring to it, so I'm going with that.  Anytime someone makes an issue more complicated than it needs to be, and snottily asserts that the world is complicated and if you were smarter you'd understand, look at them with supreme condescension and explain to them, in the voice that you'd use with a kindergardner who can't figure out how to tie his shoes, that they're committing Cundiff's Folly.

Also, I really hate Eli Manning.

Three Questionable Points: Obama and Race

1) There's a lot going on with the Right Wing's hatred of Obama besides race.  He has a funnyscary name.  He reps Hawaii and Harvard.  He is only the second president I can remember to not try to cultivate that aw shucks, good ol' boy bs.  He is The Other in so many ways that terrify a lot of people who never, ever thought they'd see a black President.

On top of that, he's pursued policies that go against the fundamental commitment of the Right Wing to limited government.  Liberal Check Yo Self Moment #1: Some people believe differently from us.  Obama has done some things they find deeply wrong and terrifying.

2) That said, cmon, son.

Have fun!  Google image search for "race card."  You'll kill yourself with joy!!

BONUS POINT) HAHAHAHA KICKERS ARE TERRIBLE.

3) Liberal Check Yo Self Moment #2: Barack Obama campaigned as a moderate.  He has governed as a moderate.  Yet we liberals loved him as an agent of meaningful change in 2008.  In 2012, we are just getting over our anger that Obama...governed exactly as he said he would.

I wonder why we could have POSSIBLY thought the first black president was more liberal than he is.

Seriously.  People are terrible and you should know!

Practice. All is coming.

What I take from the Yoga Sutras: if you do any one thing correctly for long enough, you will eventually know everything, reach nirvana, find heaven, and so forth.

But I didn't learn that from the Yoga Sutras.

I learned that from this stupid little summer camp that I attended in 1992 and, 20 years later, somehow run.

Whatever you love to do, keep doing it.  Do it when it stinks.  Do it when it hurts.  

Because you come out the other side and learn...everything worth knowing.

From one thing.

And if you're looking for that one thing, I suggest pandas.

Airplane Thoughts

Written on the plane to Akron yesterday.  I swear I did my job.

They had to put the locks on doors to the cockpit in the airplanes.  No cost was too great to prevent 9/11 from ever happening again.  I get that.  I agree.

And yet…

I remember the scenes from old movies where the stewardess came into the cockpit to ask a question or bring a soda.  There’d be some friendly banter.  If it was a comedy, the stewardess would be hot, the pilot awkward, and the pass me made at her comedicaly painful.

Today, I wonder if the stewardesses and pilots ever talk.  When can they?  Do they miss each other?  Is either job worse now than it was 20 years ago because you don’t get along as well or often with your coworkers?

We have gotten so good at putting barriers between each other that we now don’t even notice the costs to doing so.

Spacing Out For Fun and Profit

Maybe the most basic magical technique I use on a semi-regular basis is called scrying.  It's easy, it's helpful, you can do it even if you think magic is bs, and it can be a ton of fun.

Sit in front of something nondescript.  I've read you should use a bowl of water or a mirror, but I've done it staring at a wall or into the darkness in bed.  Then, relax your eyes and let your brain go wherever it wants, and trust that everything you are seeing is real.

In my two favorite scrying episodes, I've seen myself as a Gandalf-type figure in white robes and a kick-ass white beard living in a tower of ice, staring down at the pristine, icy landscape with regal disdain.  I've met my spirit animal, the wolf, and I'm not sure he's a particularly friendly fellow.  He tends to chase other creatures away and jealously hoard his kills.  I've also stared into complete and utter nothingness, the darkness behind the dark, and found that it's not that bad.  If that's the afterlife, at least it will be relaxing.

It's what the the shamanic among us might call "having visions."  "Talking to spirits."

Are you freaked out?  Feel the need for a confession and Hail Mary?

Relax.  If nothing else, my "visions" give me an excuse to post up the picture of Three Wolf Moon.

And as you might guess from the quotation marks, I don't think there's anything paranormal or spooky about these "visions."  I am sure that a reader can identify a psychological technique that calls for a subject to let his mind do whatever it wants and analyze the results--free association, maybe?  That's all that's happening here.  

I learned a great deal about myself from these episodes.  I'm a loner.  I like solitude.  I can isolate myself and push people away.  If you had asked me a year ago, I guess I would have said I knew this stuff about myself, but I certainly wouldn't have felt it in my gut and accepted it as true the way I do now.

And I'm a guy who wants healthy relationships, so it's pretty useful to know that I have this streak in me.  It allows me to control how it manifests itself better, I hope.  Maybe I'm a little less quick to blow people off.

The larger point: when I talk about magic, I could really care less about whether the tricks and spells work, although I have no doubt that they do, for skilled magicians under the right circumstances.  The reason I enjoy thinking about, reading about, and, yes, practicing magic is because it frees me to experience things I hadn't even considered before.

I consider myself to be a pretty practical and skeptical guy, and here I am writing about wolves and relationships.  This stuff is FUN, and I've learned a tremendous amount about myself and my world.  My dabblings have broadened my perspective on the world and myself.  Letting the weird into my life has made me more open minded and less afraid.  THAT'S the real value here.

Black Magic

In respect of the SOPA/PIPA blackout, no post today.  I'll write it, but I won't post it until the 19th, when I'll post two entries.

Magic Week: How to Summon Manatees

I love manatees.  On a list of my absolute favorite things, in which I include things like "my parents" and "my friends," manatees are easily in the top 20.

This is the story of how I summoned manatees.

My family has a house on a bay in Southwest Florida, and you can see manatee from our dock maybe once a week.  Last March I was visiting and saw one on my second day down there.  When I told my mom, she told me she hadn't seen one at all that season.  I felt bad for her.  Because manatees are awesome.

Here's where the magic happens.

I spent a good part of my week visiting in a state of deep meditation and contemplation of the aspects of my environment of which we are generally unaware.  In that state, I remember wishing my mom could see a manatee, because it wasn't fair that anyone should not get to appreciate something so gentle and wonderful.

Within maybe two hours a manatee cruised on by.  So did another one two days later.

I will now take questions from the audience


You know people can find anything you put up on the Internet, right?
Yes.  Potential employers and soul mates, I am not insane, nor will I ever attempt to hex you.  Even I knew how, I wouldn't, and it wouldn't work.  Anyway, please finish this entry.  It should dispel any questions about my sanity.

So...you can summon manatees?  Like right now you could summon a manatee?
Right now?  No.  Even if I were in Florida, it's the cold season, when manatees are less active.  I don't know if I could replicate the combination of deep gnosis and sincere unselfishness that was key to my success.  Most importantly, it doesn't work like that, at least in my experience.  Nature is really big and really complex.  Each of us is pretty small.  We don't get to snap our fingers and make nature do tricks at our command.

Could I get myself into the right state of mind in the right time of year and summon them again?  I certainly intend to try when I go down there later this year.  I may succeed, I may not.

If you can't do it again, did it really happen?
Given a million chances, you could never recreate the first events that led to falling in love for the first time.  It took a combination of effort, circumstance, and luck that you could never again replicate.  Magic isn't quite like that.  If I were a more dedicated or capable magician, I probably could get manatees to show up again. The point is that replication is not everything.  Stuff happens all the time that we can't recreate, but that doesn't make it less real.  It still happened.

Ok, so what exactly do you think you did, summoner?
Two things, the first of which is pretty prosaic.  I put myself in a state where I was far more likely to notice any manatee activity.  The type of meditation I was in made the entire world incredibly interesting.  I spent at least an hour just looking at the different flowers and plants in our yard.  I savored the smells of the water.  It's not surprising I was better able to hear when a manatee breached or recognize the ripples in the water they make.

The other thing?  I was in a great mental place.  The universe recognize that and sent out some signals, and the sea cows obliged.  It's magic, fool.  I don't know how it works.  I'll get into some of the justifications better magicians than I give for how it might work in tomorrow's post, but even they are only guessing.  There are forces at work in the universe that we cannot directly perceive or explain,.  But we may, if we're lucky, good, and persistent, be able to tap into them.

Or it was just coincidence.
It certainly doesn't feel that way.  In my heart of hearts, I am completely sure I did something magical that day.  Nothing will ever convince me otherwise.  But you could be right, skeptic.  Maybe it was coincidence.  I can't prove that it wasn't.  Ultimately, it comes down to what you want to believe.

And you really believe this?
Nothing is true.  Everything is permitted.

The Perils of Fame

Originally, yesterday's entry was going to be about the cancellation of the new OMAC series, and how I blamed Dan Didio.  I had a really clever schtick worked out where I was going to attribute low sales figures to Didio's general loathsomeness and that, were he smart or good at his job, he would have penned OMAC using a pseudonym.

A pseudonym like "Schman Schmidio."

Maybe the schtick wasn't that clever.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the snarkatorium.

As I sat down to write yesterday, I thought about the praise and encouraging comments I've gotten from people about TWEDP thus far.  16 days ago, that people would, you know, actually read and enjoy this stuff was the furthest thing from my mind.  Remember, I'm an academic.  I'm used to slaving on something for years and no one reading the end product.

(Seems like a great time to plug my book!  200 scintillating pages on education finance and local school boards politics!  Relive the Great Rutland Donut Controversy of 2003 again and again!)

But some of you are apparently reading.  And you've said nice things.  And...like, humbled, shocked, embarrassed, and really happy.  Thank you.  A million times thank you.

All of this goes through my head yesterday, and I ask myself, do my adoring masses really want to read about how the editor of DC Comics sucks for not being able to sell a book that he wrote?

I actually asked myself if my readers would care about a topic.  Seriously.  My readers.

This is the part where you laugh at me.

Keep in mind that all of this neurotic self-consciousness is being generated by an average of 50 page visits a day.  I cannot even imagine what artists who have followings that support a career go through.  The next time that you're mad that your favorite band made a terrible record, remember that you're probably partially responsible for its terribleness.  Whether they want to or not, that band is thinking about your expectations of what you want to hear from them.  The weight of those expectations has to be staggering.

The best bands often react to fame with the most ambitious, uncompromising effort of their career.  I haven't finished my coffee, so ambition is not happening, but I can do uncompromising.

HE IS OMAC!!!

Be Here Now, or Walter Mitty and Me

Say I could wave a magic wand and give you six months of paid vacation.  Salary, benefits, whatever.  Everything stays the same, except your boss tells you he wants you to disappear and come back in July.

What would you do?

The temptation is probably to get all Walter Mitty with it, to think about all the trips you'd go on, the hobbies you'd pursue, the classes you would take so you could get a new and better career.  And that's fine.  Walter Mitty dreams have their place, but it's a very specific place, and here it is:

Walter Mitty dreams are things you should be doing.  Right now.

I don't care about your job.  I do care about your family, which is why you need to get on making your dreams work, right now.  What are you teaching your kids when you settle for less than you can be or, even worse, that you'd be happier somewhere other than where you are right now with them?

My experience with Walter Mitty dreams tells me they're all false hope, anyway.  36 year old Bryan does not believe how many of 18 year old Bryan's dreams came true, and not one of them eased the restlessness in my soul.  All the goals I set that I thought would complete my identity and personality didn't.

Only when I stopped living in/for my dreams and started living for right now did I start to get anywhere.

And that's where I run out of words to describe it, at least for today.

Pain and Gratitude

One of the things I have discovered in the first couple weeks of this project is that it has allowed me to start to talk about things I have previously been uncomfortable talking about.

So.

Let's talk about pain.

If you're a reader this close to TWEDP's inception, you probably know me fairly well, so you know 2011 was an incredibly rough year.  My 2011 ended 8 days ago, as did the Really Bad and Unfair Thing (which we'll call REBUT, because it's funny).  Of course, REBUT may be over, but I have a lot of hurt, anger, frustration, helplessness, disbelief, and fear left.

In short, I have a sadness.

Because I tend to compare things maybe a little too much, I've started to think about the last time I had this big a sadness about me nine years ago.  For all the similarities, the two major differences between 2003 and now are most important.

One, the stuff that happened in 2003 was much, much worse.  At the end of the day, if the people you love are still around, you're doing ok.

Two, I am so much better equipped to deal with pain now.  Age and experience, and the growth and perspective and wisdom that come with it, are just about the most valuable things we can have.  If you're significantly younger than I am, know that it really, truly does get better, not just because tough times don't last but because you start to know that they won't last and you better understand how to bide your time and deal until they end.

Yoga also gets a shout out here.  Through yoga, I have learned to accept what I can't change.  When I was 25, the idea of being really, really sad mad me think I was somehow broken and inferior.  So, in addition to being sad, I was frantic all the time about why I was so sad.  As you can imagine, this combination of sad and frantic did not produce optimal results.

Now, though--ok, I've got a sadness, just like I did before.  That sadness is going to be around for awhile.  I will do everything I can to make sure it leaves as quickly as possible, but I'm not going to try to chase it off with a torch and pitchfork.  It'll be here until it goes, and that's ok.  In the meantime, I might as well make friends with the sadness.  We spend a lot of time reading bad Star Wars books and staring out the window at nothing in particular.  That's what the sadness wants to do, and really, it's not that bad.  I like Star Wars.

Once I accepted the sadness, I could put it into some sort of perspective, which makes it pretty easy to remember that's not all I've got.  I've got the best, best, best mom and dad on Earth.  I've finally got a crew of filthy Durhamites who make the South feel like home.  I've got a disturbingly loyal friend that calls me every day for no particular reason and with whom I share at least 50 percent of a brain.  I've got a yoga community with classes that keep me challenged and instructors who seem to sense when I could really use a compliment.  I've got an organization that trusts little ol' me to follow in the footsteps of a legend and teach 100 high school kids how to be better leaders and people.

LOVINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN IS WHAT I GOT.

(Couldn't resist)

Yup, I got a sadness, but I got a lot of other things that make the sadness seem far less daunting and ensure the sadness isn't going to stick around.  In the meantime, sad sucks, but it's not the worst thing on Earth.

Being Chelsea Handler is.

And if it's Saturday, PANDAS

Sci-Fi Jesus

I came up with one of my greatest ideas ever as I was falling asleep last night, and I am giving it to the evangelical Christian community free of charge:

Sci-Fi Jesus.

The concept: The Bible establishes Jesus has some pretty sweet powers.  He can turn water into wine.  Feeding the multitudes and alladat.

But, see, those are the powers we mere mortals can perceive.

You know that Jesus was on some behind-the-scenes isht.  

We already know that Jesus forbade physical violence but waged metaphysical war on the ideas of violence, oppression, sin, and the like.  So what if someone made a movie that showed that metaphysical warfare in terms we could understand?  You're telling me you wouldn't watch Jesus in a superhero movie where he brings the ruckus to the literal manifestation of evil using powers across all 11 dimensions?  That Jesus punching out Evil and saving the day with a punch that he conceals by delivering it through a pocket dimension wouldn't make everyone you know go see that movie 15 times?

And for the sequel, imagine that the Hadron is actually an evil secular humanist plot to rip apart the universe.  But, of course, they can't get that sh!t past Jesus.  From his physical existence 2000 years ago Jesus perceives the threat, reaches across time and space, and undoes the work of the Hadron Collider at every instant.  Hadron Collider always rips apart the universe, but Jesus simultaneously rebuilds it.  And he lets the evil scientists KNOW that they are constantly succeeding but failing, because that's all part of some OTHER metawar that we'll tell you about in the third film.

You'd go see that movie.

To my faithful Christians out there: don't be mad.  One, I agree that we have to do this right.  That means any filmmaker needs to demonstrate strong Biblical knowledge, and Michael Bay is not allowed within a thousand miles of the set.  Two, I'm pretty sure Jesus is down with this plan.  We know that Jesus is beyond our understanding.  We know that, in order for us to better understand some part of His infinite wisdom, He often spoke in parables.

Well, these would be parables.

Parables about KICKING A$$.

And all of a sudden, Jesus would be the coolest kid on the block again.  Batman would have nothing on Sci-Fi Jesus.  Church attendance would swell, allowing you to talk to the people about...whatever it is one talks about in church.

Thank you Sci-Fi Jesus!!

When Responsibilities Collide

I pride myself in adult behavior.

Those of you who know me are laughing, so let me be more precise: Being an adult comes so unnaturally to me that when I DO show responsible behavior, I am very proud of myself.  When I am on time for a meeting, or pay attention when a speaker is kinda boring, or avoid speeding in excess of 20 mph over the limit, I feel as if I have won a great victory over myself.

On the flip side, no part of this whole "adult" thing is more difficult to me than when what the responsible thing to do is unclear.

The Pennsylvania of Association of Student Councils has a state board meeting this weekend.  I just missed my flight to go there because I have, or am just getting over, a nasty stomach virus.

On one hand, I feel very responsible.  I am, without a doubt, sick.  Tuesday night was an epic of stomach-churning awfulness that saw me fall asleep in pain at 5 in the morning.  The last thing the board needs is me spreading the North Carolina Zombie Stomach Apocalypse Virus to all of them.

On the other hand, I feel like a complete slacker.  I'm better today.  I'm not in agony like yesterday, and I have a feeling that by tomorrow I'll be right as rain.  So what if I can't really stand up for more than 10 minutes at a time without needing to lie down for an hour afterwards?  I'M A MAN.  MEN DON'T LET SICK STOP BUSINESS.

I didn't go, which I am sure was the correct decision.  Now what I need to do is work on not feeling guilty all weekend.  As usual, I need to read up on my Yoga Sutras.  I find the practice of non-attachment to be most difficult when it involves the good things in your life.  The guilt of not living up to my highest expectations of what I should be as a teacher/person/researcher/friend/state board member weighs on me, even though I know no living person can always meet his/her loftiest goals for themselves.  Sometimes life gets in the way.

To my fellow board members: it kills me that I won't be with you this weekend, but I'll see you in March.

No Kinds of Love Are Better Than Others

We appreciate reader feedback, and we want you to feel better about your life.

(That sounds dickish.  I'm actually being sincere.  Stupid postmodern irony complex making it hard to communicate sincerely.)

So when Allison said she was sad about the situation in our first blog post, we felt the need to clarify.

We were sad that we didn't have the opportunity to follow up with this particular young lady, but we were probably more happy that we got to meet her than anything else.

First off, when someone is attracted to you, that sh!t is awesome, right?  My ego needs feeding, and so does yours.

Second, the longer I (abandons first-person plural gimmick) remain single, the more often I meet a really amazing, beautiful, drive-you-nuts alluring woman who likes me, but neither of us is in a position to pursue a relationship.

Maybe she's got one of those unfortunate "significant other" things I hear so much about.

Maybe she's still trying to get over that last unfortunate "significant other" thing I hear so much about.

Maybe I meet her in a 2.5 hour line for a cab a 2am 500 miles from NC with our grumpy friends being grumpy.

The point is, it's all good.  See, the longer I stay single, the more I have gotten an appreciation from what I really need from people.  I need connection.  I need to feel as if I am meeting people that challenge, inspire, and touch me in one way or another.  It turns out that if one is willing to roll with the limitations life puts on him, he can have fantastic, life-nurturing intimacy with more people that he could have ever dreamed.

(To any of those unfortunate "significant other" things lurking in this blog: I am talking about non-physical intimacy.  Sarah hit me with a great line the other night and said that "jealousy is a bourgeois emotion."  So all you dudes?  Quit being bougie, dawg.  Dag.)

My only worry is that this approach leads to half loving these women.

And Johnny Taylor never lied.

2012

I'm really into New Years' resolutions this year and I've made a bunch of them.  There's kind of a meta resolution to be a better person and to live up to my ideals more often.  I want to put others ahead of myself.  I want to write every day.

And all I ask in return is that this nonsense cease.

Not all nonsense.  We all have some nonsense at every point in our life.

But I would very much like this particular nonsense, and he/she/they who cause it, to go the hell away.

EDIT: Another resolution is to protect myself through circumspection, ie, talking bout it without talking bout it.  The only downside to that strategy is that people might worry posts like this one are about them.

Trust me: if you're reading this, you are not the cause of my current nonsense.

Nor are you the father.

Why I Do Yoga

When I was finishing my dissertation eight years ago, I sat in a lousy office chair for way too many hours a day. Unsurprisingly, my back hurt all the time.  When I told my mom, she suggested I try some yoga.  I had done classes with her a few years earlier and dug them, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.  I added in about ten minutes a day of basic asanas (poses) into my existing workout routine.

Within three days, my back pain was gone.

Today, sometimes I get questions about why I do so much yoga, and I have made it a point not to make my answer more complicated than it needs to be.  My first answer to that question is always, "Without it, my back would hurt."  All the other amazing, profound, monumental changes the practice has made in my life flow from that first truth.

Which is why the latest New York Times' trolling of yogis is kind of funny.

Can you get hurt doing yoga?  Yes and no.

On one hand, DUH.  If you're in a contemporary American yoga class, you're probably very interested in the fitness aspects of the practice, so you're pushing your body to do things with which it is not entirely comfortable.  Combine that with the general Type A-ness of our culture.  Gee, do you think there's a chance you might try a handstand before you have the necessary form and strength and ufck up your shoulder?  I did.

On the other hand, if you hurt yourself doing yoga, 

A wise woman and fantastic teacher always tells her students to do less, as any yoga instructor worth her salt will do.  Part of the practice of yoga is learning the limits of your body and where the line is that separates an honest and wonderful effort to improve your physical being from a destructive desire to hit a pose regardless of the consequences, damn the torpedoes GRRRR.  Once you're into that mentality, you're not doing yoga.

I look around at other yogis in class more than I probably should.  These days, I find myself most interested in watching those yogis who I know have been practicing for years but have (l)earned the humility and good judgement to know when to come out of a pose and/or curl up in a little ball.  Child's Pose might be the most important pose for our way-too-busy, way-too-aggressive society to practice.  Going with the flow and accepting your limitations is at the heart of yoga.

And the good news is, the more you learn to do that, the more poses you actually can hit, so you'll look hot too.

Coming tomorrow: why, if I were a NYT editor, I would troll yogis too.

Hog: a Metal Awakening

There's a long version and a short version of this post.

The long version: Done correctly, metal makes all other forms of music look trite and besides the point.  I can't think of another form of music that so effectively summons forces that are clearly beyond human control.  If that's a cliche, it's a cliche because it's 100 percent true.

Case in point: the homeboy Alec Ferrell is in a couple bands.  Last night, I went to see Hog, his metal outfit.  I try to avoid seeing my friends' bands for as long as possible, because nothing in the world is worse than a good friend and a good dude who is really proud of his really mediocre band.

Alec does not have that problem.

My god.

From the minute Hog got on stage, it was pretty clear that I listen to a lot of meaningless music, and that I need to cut that isht out, because I could spend that time listening to Hog.  As near as I can tell, their songwriting process is as follows:

1. Lead guitarist comes up with series of the coldest riffs you will ever here.
2. Lead guitarist tells the rest of Hog to memorize the riffs and play them as hard as you can.
3. The rest of Hog smiles, because, damnit, what's the point of playing if you can't rock as hard as possible?
4. They spend the next FOUR MONTHS perfecting each song into another version of the Ultimate Nature Machine.

Again, great metal is about tapping into some deeply primal stuff that we puny humans usually can't handle.  You may think that your sensitive singer songwriter, your jam band, your emcee, your dance music producer superstar, your 19th Century German composer, or whatever is tapping into something primal, but the best versions of all these archetypes are ultimately bound by human limitations.

Son, Hog is not human.  Hog is about that full-on Viking god isht.  Thunder.  Lightning.  Monsoons.  Asteroids smacking into the Earth, because the gods went all Ragnarok and sometimes a god's gotta break a planet or two to make an omelet.  Your wars?  Friend, your petty human wars are nothing to the gods, so they are nothing to Hog.  Come at Hog with a tank, and they will call down a f#$%ing glacier on your a$$.

The type of commitment needed to do what Hog does is staggering.  Again, FOUR MONTHS of practice before they play a song out, for a bunch of guys with day jobs.  To listen to Alec talk about effects and head units and arpeggios is to realize that you need to get more serious and passionate about your own creative endeavors, because there are dudes out here who do not trifle, not even for a second.

For the listener, all those sacrifices seem worth it.  Hog is powerful and Hog is sexy and your favorite band would never, ever agree to go on stage after Hog.

The short version: if you ever get the chance, go see Hog.  Don't worry if you don't like metal now, because you will like metal after you see them.

Freedom is Free, featuring ZOMG PANDAS

Yes, it really is.

In no way do I mean to disrespect the people who stand on the front line of the conflict between order and chaos.  The sacrifices of individual members of the military and the police, firefighters, teachers, and all other underpaid, underappreciated public servants improve the quality of the choices the rest of us can make beyond calculation.

But even in the most dire, awful, subhuman conditions, one always has a choice, even if that choice is only to die on your feet or live in chains.  From what I understand of the Existentialists, that seems to be their central message.

I used to think that was a threat and a way to cast moral judgement.

Now, I see it as a promise and an opportunity.

No matter what the situation, we are always able to evaluate it and decide how we want to handle it.  All we have to lose is the esteem of others, our comfort, our life, whatever.  But if we follow our heart/conscience and we do what's right, how much can those things that we lost be worth?  And don't we all believe that strength of character and conviction and living the right way will pay off in the long run?

*CONTENT DELETED*  <--me trying to learn to be more circumspect.  In compensation for the deleted comment, here's a picture of a panda.

Yoga, Einstein, and Grant Morrison Walk Into a Bar

My favorite reading on my syllabus for my course on Research Methods comes George Lackoff's The Political Mind.  Lackoff summarizes the knowledge science has gained about how the brain works.  The main takeaway point is that we think in terms of concepts and narratives.  Its application to politics is, none of us believe what we believe politically because we objectively weighed the facts and came to the most logical decision.  Our brain doesn't work nearly so neatly.  We believe what we believe because our brains seek to fit new information into a relatively narrow set of cognitive frames.

As fascinating as the narrow application of that theory is, its broader meaning is even more mind blowing.  None of us see the world as it is.  We perceive only the segment of the world that our brain allows, and our brains are such a murky, weird, not-rational-but-biological place that we shouldn't even be all that sure that what we can perceive represents something true or immutable.

If nature isn't your thing, let's talk about nurture.  By the time most of us were 10, we had probably learned that no two snowflakes are exactly alike.  If that's the case, why do we call all the white stuff that falls from the sky snow?  Probably because we lack either the perception or the words to delineate the infinite different varieties of snowflakes that exist.  Some linguist can give the citation, but I am sure that our perception is greatly limited to those things/categories/concepts for which we have adequate language to express them.

Thanks to yoga and comic books, I have spent a lot of time thinking about magic, meditation, religion, theoretical physics, and the psychedelic movement.  At this point in time, I think they're all reaching for the same thing.  They are reaching for that moment where we can transcend our normal perceptual and linguistic limitations and more accurately perceive the nature of reality.

If you don't understand anything I just wrote, don't feel bad, because I don't either.  This is the biggest idea with which I have ever struggled, and I lack accurate words to describe it (because, hey, the idea is that words can't express).  But this idea is also one of the most important things I have ever found.  If any one thing has inspired me to start this blog, it is the opportunity to talk about this idea--to try to get a better handle on what it is, and to try to open the way to others to see it, as others opened and continue to open the door for me.

And because the Idea is infinite, and my supply of words only slightly less so, you can expect numerous fumbling attempts to explore it over the next 359 days.

PS: Please note that I said that I had THOUGHT about the psychedelic movement.  For the record, I have never tried a single hallucinogenic drug, and you can polygraph me any time you'd like about that claim.

MO ROMNEY! MO ROMNEY! MO ROMNEY!

I remember when I thought this blog wouldn't talk about politics much.  But due to overwhelming popular demand,

Yesterday, we established Romney is going to win New Hampshire in a landslide and that he actually won a state where the Republican electorate should have been relatively less favorable to him.  He's got an early lead in delegate math, and he's got a superior campaign infrastructure set up that makes him better positioned than any other candidate to maximize his delegates from every possible situation.

Takao Yamada points out that more than 75 percent of the Iowa caucus goers voted for someone else.  I tend to be highly skeptical of the idea that the "anyone but Romney" vote means anything.  Ultimately, one real candidate would have to gather all the disparate voices that make up the more conservative side of the party and overcome the financial and institutional advantages Romney possesses.

As we've seen time and again with Newt Gingrich, once people actually get a look at a real, live person and consider them, and not some "anyone but Romney" abstract ideal, as the opponent, they start to think Romney might not be so bad.  I called the Crazy Guys crazy yesterday not because I think they're crazy but because as the electorate learns about them, the electorate looks at them as too kooky to do the job.  Santorum is about to go through the media treatment for the first time, and people won't like what they see.  Paul is too unconventional.  Perry couldn't win a student council election outside of Texas.

The only candidate with any kind of leaderly gravitas left is, somehow, Gingrich.  Don't ask me why or how, but he's the only other guy in the race that I think most Republicans can imagine as President.  People are comfortable with the idea of Gingrich as a leader.  No one expects him to do well in NH, and if he gets a  win in South Carolina he can claim momentum.  If Romney really isn't going to get the nomination, I still think Gingrich is the only real threat to take it from him.

But let's be real.  Newt Gingrich is not beating Mitt Romney.  Romney is going to win convincingly in the Northeast, the Pacific coast, and the Upper Midwest, where the social conservative crowd is relatively less important.  And even in the South and other socially conservative, do we really expect that social conservatives are going to rally behind Mr. Lova Lova?  Do we really think Gingrich can go a week, let alone four months, without saying something abysmally stupid?

Things can still happen in the primary season that can affect the general election, I guess.  But all the drama of who will be the Republican nominee is over.

Romney Won the Nomination Last Night

The media's job is to attract eyeballs, so I imagine they are in full spin mode this morning.  "Romney and Santorum were a virtual tie."  "More than 75 percent of Caucus goers voted for 'Not Romney.'"  "We move on the New Hampshire with nothing decided."

They're all lying to you.  Romney got as big a win last night as he could have expected, and the contest to nominate Barack Obama's opponent is all over but the shouting.

I am not Nate Silver, so I can't give you the exact mathematical probability.  But I can translate the order of finish into terms anyone can understand:

1) (tie) Mitt Romney and a Crazy Person
3) A Crazy Person
4) Newt Gingrich

Now, if you support one of the Crazy People, don't get mad at me.  Get mad at the rest of the world, because I am only speaking in terms of electability, and

Brother

Bruh

Dawg

Champ

Everyone thinks your boy is crazy.  Your boy has no change of getting the Republican nomination.  None.

Besides, if you want to listen to people pretend to take your guy seriously, the media will try desperately over the next few days to convince you that one of the Crazy People is a real challenger to Romney, because they want to keep you watching the Campaign Show as long as possible.

But back to Romney.  If Romney was going to lose the nomination, Iowa was a place he should have lost fairly decisively.  Iowa's Republican voters skew conservative, which is the part of the Republican electorate with which Romney was supposed to have trouble.  Romney gets to move on to New Hampshire next, which contains a much higher percentage of his natural constituency.  Combined with the momentum of a better-than-expected showing, Romney is about to mollywhop everyone else in New Hampshire.

I have to cut this short to catch a plane.  I will finish this thought tomorrow with the only possible dark cloud on Romney's horizon and why it's highly unlikely to stop him.

Anyway, I just skimmed what Silver wrote about last night, and it seems like he's saying the same thing I am except more artfully and precisely

Keytar

2011 goes down as the Year I Got Back Into Music.  Thanks to the combination of turntable.fm and the Washed Out album, I have heard more new music in the last six months than at any time...since college?  Ever?  My only worry is that I consume so many songs that none of them register.  Back in the day, I'd live on nothing but bread, water, and a new Pavement album for months.  Now, I get to listen to so many very good things on demand, but am I not giving enough time to the few great songs I hear?

But that, friends, is a  prototypical first world problem.

Besides, I'm not so far gone that I don't recognize a great song when I hear it.  Exhibit A: Teeth's "See Spaces."

Not only is this one of the catchiest songs you can imagine, but it is a great example of how thoroughly Kids These Days have conquered synthesizers.  I came of age in the era where singer/songwriter types were first trying to come to grips with the new musical DNA that hip hop, dance music, and really cool gadgets bequeathed to us.  A lot of mediocre production got very popular with a lot of people who would never tolerate such tripe out of guitar rock.

And, yes, I'm talking about that f###ing Postal Service record.  Shame on you, white people.

Sometime between now and when I last cared, a generation of Kids who were raised on electronic music grew up, so it's part of their DNA.  These Kids get technology and how to use it, get that, in the brave new world, we are all engineers and we can all make amazing, neat sounds with nothing more than a little effort and good knowledge of, I don't know, ProTools or something.  They understand what good production is supposed to sound like in the way that I once understood exactly how a guitar should sound in different situations.

And they're making really awesome music.  Good, creative acts like Atlas Sound use the tech only/always when the track calls for it.  The production fits and enhances the song.  Timbaland at his peak couldn't get a keyboard sound more appropriate for "See Spaces" than Teeth and their producer.

Making the Apocalypse Work for You

Even in the Last Year, the question remains unchanged. How can you benefit from the End of the World? The prudent investor will ignore the temptation to treat December 22nd as an anomaly. Rational economic behavior has always carried the day, even in the worst times. The Apocalypse is no different.

Personally, we plan to stop paying for things, and we urge you to do the same. However, if you just stop paying your credit card bill this month, you both maximize the likelihood that you're going to spend December 22nd in jail and minimize the fun you'll have in the meantime.

Start small. Leave nine percent of your next credit card bill unpaid and gradually escalate the unpaid amount through the next 11 months. One of the key tenants of any sound plan for the Apocalypse must be to throw credit agencies, law enforcement, and other small-minded forces off the scent for as long as possible. For that reason, you should not quit your job until July 15th or stop payment of your rent or mortgage until September 1st. Failure to observe these dates may result in incarceration or the lack of sufficient funding for doing whatever the f### you want for as long as possible, which may be even worse than the pokie.

On the other hand, the prudent investor must avoid attacks of guilt that may increase the likelihood of plan failure. Your sound long-term plan should be built on the assumption that other investors will follow a similar strategy. Should all investors pursue a strategy that maximizes their utility, they will increase the chances of some sort of apocalypse before the beginning of the 2013 fiscal year, be it financial, locust related, or other. For these reasons, the job quitting and deadbeat becoming are absolutely key parts of this plan. As always, those investors most committed to their plan will reap the largest rewards.

Her and Me

Such pretty eyes, such kindness, such gentleness, such wonderful skin. There was a point where you had your back to me and I almost put my arms around you, just so I could pull you close and kiss that shoulder.

Then there was the point where you kept touching me. Just on the arm. Totally PG. But enough to let me know.

Which is why meeting you 500 miles from home in the middle of a two-and-a-half hour cab line was so unfortunate.