I just don’t get why there is comment spam on my blog. Thanks to Akismet it all gets sorted into the spam category automatically. I don’t even see the junk, so what’s the point of even sending it? If the spam is never seen, isn’t it just a monumental waste of time?
So, for this that like sending me comment spam, send away I guess. It’s a waste of time and electricity. It’s monumentally stupid. I’m not even seeing it. Just notice a number and click “Empty Spam” and that’s it!
We just got a bit in the mail while we were away from GE Moneybank, the people who manage our Meijer credit card. They have revised the “points reward program” and taken away the 20% off everything coupon we could get and replace it with a 5% grocery and 15% clothing and other coupon. This marks the end of us being able to take advantage of the 20% coupons and while it was good while it lasted, it was probably a huge loss for Meijer. It doesn’t do anything for our loyalty, as it’s a slap in the face when we could have really used those savings most of all. Alas, we’ll have to continue to trim and buy less. Money is so tight, and with all the breaks evaporating before our eyes, we have to make every cent count. Thank goodness for Peanut Butter. It holds the world together.
I subscribed to the Notify service from the Weather Channel. It was cheap and easy and kept me alerted to weather issues. They just sent me my “FINAL NOTICE” at 12:23am last night because my work credit card was replaced and they couldn’t auto-bill me. Then at 12:24am they sent me another email telling me that my account was cancelled.
I’ve been lazy about deciding whether to keep or kill this service. It’s more annoying than useful and now that there are apps galore that alert you over the phone, something like this is just a waste of money.
I think I’ll let the entire thing just lapse. They have cancelled my account, let it rot where it dropped. Feh.
I discovered this bit of wisdom in the dimly lit corners of my pocket list. Enjoy.
“Anger is like a storm rising up from the bottom of your consciousness. When you feel it coming, turn your focus to your breath. Breathe in deeply to bring your mind home to your body. Then look at, or think of, the person triggering this emotion: With mindfulness, you can see that she is unhappy, that she is suffering. You can see her wrong perceptions. You can see that she is not beautiful when she says things that are unkind. You can also see that you don’t want to be like her. You’ll feel motivated by a desire to say or do something nice — to help the other person suffer less. This means compassionate energy has been born in your heart. And when compassion appears, anger is deleted.”
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Buddhist monk and author of Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames
My ideal kitchen is something that has occupied my mind on and off for years. I’ve worked in galleys and small kitchens and large kitchens and I’ve found myself able to cook well despite the small spaces. After a while I figured that if you do not have the space, you have to become more clever. Repurposing and multi-purposing tools you already have become paramount and blogs like LifeHacker are a great place to discover new clever ways to use what you have and make it really perform tasks that you’d never think before. Working in a very small kitchen, for example, if you need more counter space for chopping or mincing then pull out a drawer and put a cutting board across the drawer. It’s the perfect height, and adds just the right amount of space when you need it and pushes away when you don’t need it. It’s that sort of cleverness that really attracts me.
So size isn’t so much of an issue. What it really comes down to are really high-quality durable tools that make sense to use. Great refrigerators with numerous zones, whole-doors, and the freezer on top. A really excellent oven, using natural gas for fuel, a smaller oven on top of a larger one below, with interiors that are nice and clean. I’m particular about the design of the oven space itself. Ovens need good temperature controls, but that’s only part of it. Ovens, no matter what system controls the temperature inside the oven can benefit from bricks. Cheap and easy, bricks are awesome in ovens. They absorb heat and radiate heat slowly – the oven takes longer to get to temperature but the variability of the temperature cycling is smoothed out as the bricks compensate for the variability and make your baking much more reliable. The cooktop needs to be large, or as large as it can be. Lots of burners and with the right tools even the most basic of ovens with cooktops can become a great and versatile tool. For the cookware the kitchen needs to have at least a various compliment of Lodge Logic cookware. I prefer in nearly every situation to cook with cast iron. There are exceptions, proper steel pans for crepes for example, and stainless steel 18/10 sauciers. Kitchen gadgets and tools are pretty much dominated by OXO brand as far as I’m concerned. Much of what they make is superior to other options because they are designed well and cleverly, like measuring cups you can use looking down into them instead of across of them. There is another brand called “The Pampered Chef” that makes wooden spoons and they are exceptional. All of these things are good selections in the perfect kitchen, but the most essential tool in any kitchen, the ones you want to really concentrate on because you’ll use these tools the most are your knives. Every kitchen should have a host of fine knives and they have to be sharp, non-serrated, and of multiple sizes. paring, small chef, large chef, butchers blade and optionally a Santoku blade. I’m a huge fan of Victorinox brand for knives. They are inexpensive, durable, sharp and of exceptional quality. Your knives do not have to be expensive label-whore blades, but they have to be razor sharp and regularly sharpened. Nothing contributes to kitchen injuries more than struggling with a dull knife.
So my perfect kitchen can be a movable feast. I would want to bring my own knives with me if I were to go wandering – everything else is pretty much either a standard or can be worked around. Perhaps someday I’ll have a house where I can design the kitchen and that’ll be where the heart of my home will be.
Pick a contentious issue about which you care deeply — it could be the same-sex marriage debate, or just a disagreement you’re having with a friend. Write a post defending the opposite position, and then reflect on what it was like to do that.
People shouldn’t be expected to learn anything new once they are done with primary education. If they are too old, there is just no way that they can acquire new skills, nor should they. Skills aren’t as important as simply living a quiet life. Be quiet, be meek, hope that the troubles of life just pass you by. If you aren’t special, if you aren’t unique then you will fade into the background and you’ll be safe.
I just can’t continue. The bullshit is just too thick. It flows too furiously. The more I write the more irritated I become and it’s just pure sarcasm. I don’t understand how anyone could live this way. I don’t even.
What are you more comfortable with — routine and planning, or laissez-faire spontaneity?
I like to blend the two together. Having a plan is always a good idea however leaving yourself open to spontaneous events is worth so much more. The best of both worlds after all is a more balanced approach. I am very fond of creating a third option to a duality question and synthesizing my own options in situations. When I went to Paris I discovered that while walking around the city, if you are actively looking for something in particular you will not find it. You will only find it if you resolve that you don’t care to find it and you are tired of searching for it, then you’ll end up standing right in front of what you were originally looking for. So, a plan? Yes it can help, but without serendipity you won’t actually find what you are looking for, not really.
You have the choice to erase one incident from your past, as though it never happened. What would you erase and why?
I’ve written about this before in other posts that were concerned about the past. I wouldn’t change anything about my past and that includes this topic as well. If I started to edit my past then I would no longer be who I am and that would mean that on some level, my life is a sham. Since I can’t live like that, even having the potential to change anything about my past would invalidate my life and shame me deeply in regards to how I live my life today. So no, I own all of those incidents – the good and the bad and I hold them close and treasure them. They all make me who I am right now, how could I be any other way?
The Tooth Fairy (or Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus . . .): a fun and harmless fiction, or a pointless justification for lying to children?
Life is dark enough without these characters to help buffer how dull life could be without them. In comparison it’s better to have these comfortable lies in place than the alternative of dull banality. Children’s minds are wide open and introducing a little bit of wonder into their lives is, as far as my feelings dictate to me, a good thing. The point of these characters is to give kids hope, someone to think about while they are growing up learning how to behave as a good person when they get older. Being good for Christmas, being good for the Tooth Fairy, being good for the Easter Bunny to hide eggs – these things all concentrate on one thing, to be good. If there is no reason for it, then it’s not as easy to explain to kids the why behind being good. The ends justify the means, at least in this case I think.
If you could have any author –living or dead – write your biography, who would you choose?
My biography would be a funny thing, I would need someone with a good grasp on the absurd and with a nice turn of phrase that I could appreciate. Who would I choose? There are some classic authors that come to mind but mostly because they seem appropriate that they come to mind, not because they would do it very well. Out of all the names you could choose, of all the people the one that’s the best fit would likely have been Voltaire. Anyone who wrote Candide would likely be able to grasp my life and give it the tone it deserves for my biography.