Demotivational: Gullibility

I find news to be needless and odious. I try to avoid it and only run my hands in the oceans of filth every once in a great while. Mostly I watch Colbert Report and The Daily Show and I keep my finger poised on the Fast Forward button, I skip all the commercials and if a segment is becoming too obnoxious then I simply skip it. If the guest is annoying or unpleasant then I just hit stop and delete the program.

What in the news cycle would affect me? Local news is just about crimes, national news is about scandals, shock-pieces, or governmental waste. If there were news items to pay attention to I will find them and read up on them on my own by the people I follow on Twitter. They curate the news for me for free and I pick and choose what I look into. When I want to know more about something I check Wikipedia, which might as well be an authoritative source for information since it’s as biased and corrupt as all the other sources. I approach much things in a zero trust model. I’ll read a news item but I don’t believe it until it affects me personally, and since very little will affect me personally, I rarely if ever believe anything at all. I used to parrot what I read trying to impress people with what I picked up, but over years of dealing with know-it-alls and generally unpleasant-to-talk-to people I’ve given up. I know a lot but I don’t try to raise my voice and correct people who describe things any longer, it’s just not worth the conflict. I’ve gotten quite good at identifying bullshit and smiling as I watch the purveyor waddle away thinking that they have convinced me how great their steaming pile of bullshit is.

I find that watching too much news is simply bad for your mental and physical health. Too much of this noise is bad for your mind, it clouds your thinking and enables you to be a lazy oaf, unwilling to do any thinking on your own when some babbling putz goes on a rampage. Too many people allow too much in their lives to executively overwrite their common sense, if they even had it at all to begin with.

The difference between noise and signal is vitally important. Much of what you hear in “popular media” is noise and not signal. If you consume too much noise then you will be what you consume and will become noise yourself. Whenever I’m exposed to such noise I can feel it beating me down and generally making me miserable. I seek to avoid suffering, so that is to avoid noise, and finally to avoid news.

Paper money, extreme macro

I would march down to the US Postal Service and buy a Postal Money Order for $1000. Then march down to the bank and deposit the money and use it at I saw fit and at my leisure.

Pepper grinder bottle

I like to mix it up, I’ll alternate between “bless you” and “geshundheit” and if it keeps on happening I’ll mix in guttural mumbles just so I don’t overuse the phrase.

I like the idea behind “bless you”, there are so many cute little romantic ideas behind it. That people when they sneeze their heart stops beating for a moment and in that moment, they could be dead. Alternatively the saying could be a ward against some future illness that a sneeze could portend. I’ve seen it portrayed in movies where a parent is about to enter into a deal with some sort of magical creature and their agreement to allow the deal to go through is counted in sneezes by the victim. By saying “bless you” you wipe the slate clean, void the deal, and drive away the creature.

So the reason behind it is probably learned, probably habit, and for some probably tied to a bit of lore or trivia and they pay honor to it each time they say the phrase “bless you”. I suppose I’ve got a mix of all of that.

schooling threadfin pearl-perch

I find the distractions of life to be nigh overwhelming to me these days. There is just too much to do and the longer I ponder on the horizon of “To Do” items the further it gets away from me. Much like the surface of the Universe, it’s expanding and the speed of that expansion is increasing. There are some things I would dearly like to do, like plow through my “To Read” book collection, to plow through my “To Read” comics collection, to catch up on all the other things I have to look at or read up on and somewhere in all that find time and resources to try to restart my geocaching hobby. Unfortunately gasoline and other things that vie for my limited consciousness are all conspiring against me. There just isn’t enough time to do it all, so you have to be picky. I think that’s my overarching item on my Spring to-do list, is find better ways to handle all of this, to give up on some things and prune down other things.

Union Station Columns & Arches (Washington, DC)

My recurring dreams are all based on a central figure. I call this The House and in my dreams it is almost always either visible or a central player in my dreaming. Sometimes the house is a grand hotel, like the Waldorf Astoria, and it’s full of elevators without walls – just a platform and a knife switch for it to go up and down. Most often though The House takes the form of a sprawling 1970’s circa clapboard-sided bungalow house that is laid out in a single floor over thousands of square feet. In the house are people living in rooms, some are bedrooms, some are complicated conch-shell organized rooms with mystery hiding behind every door. Sometimes it’s bright and sunny, and sometimes it’s wet and rainy. Sometimes there are people I recognize and sometimes not. I don’t know why my dreaming mind takes me there and I remember the house so very well, and I’m sure it means something deep and meaningful but I’ve never been able to put a finger on it. I doubt dreams are supposed to be nailed down anyways. The minute you start trying to pin them, they slip out from beneath you and you find your memory slipping away from you. Many of the dream memories that I bring back to my conscious life function a lot like sand. The harder I grip, the faster the sand runs out of my fist and gets spread to the wind.

Every once in a long while I’ll have a very meaningful dream and the memory will hang around for the better part of a day. Very very rarely will those memories live beyond that, but there are some. I find that if I write about the dreams, that writing somehow solidifies them in my memory. I can’t really explain that one either other than it makes a fair amount of sense on a behavioral standpoint. What to make of the sprawling house? I’m sure any armchair dream analyst would have a field day with that one, especially if they knew some of the activities going on in the house and who was playing what parts.

Under the Milky Way

The best place to see the stars, at least close to where I am now is just outside of Cadillac Michigan. There is a little lake called Olga Lake, just inside the Manistee National Forest. This place is far enough away from cities and their light pollution to really get a great view of the night sky. I haven’t been to that place in years and considering the cost of fuel and general occupation with tasks at home, I doubt I’ll ever get to set foot there again.

Psyche and Cupid in the Musee de Louvre

I can’t really say that I have a FAVORITE, however to answer this question I would have to say that my ‘FAVORITE’ is the largest I’ve ever been in. That would be La Louvre in Paris, France. All of my really favorite sculptures and artifacts are within it’s halls. Everything from the Mona Lisa to my personally most-favorite sculpture of all time is Antonio Canova’s Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss. In that I have a favorite, both museum and pieces. Right behind La Lourvre are the Rodin pieces in the Monet museum, also in Paris.