Category Archives: Allure

Thanks to Pema Chodron

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I never took a serious interest in Buddhism. Maybe because it never did anything for me, I never did anything for it. Yesterday that changed.

Zoe and I were on a flight when I got furious at a flight attendant. Mean thoughts dominated my mind and shaped my attitude. I pulled out my iPod hoping to find something with the power to calm me. I found Pema Chödrön‘s lecture, Getting Unstuck, and started at around the 35 minute mark.

Within five minutes my emotional situation was explained and my rage subsided. She had begun to explain shenpa and I saw how I had become attached to my angry feelings for the flight attendant. At that moment it was easy to let go of the anger.

Today the lesson resonates like a gong. A few minutes ago I unsubscribed myself from a blog that stokes my rage and fails to provide great enough value to offset the time spent reading. I get attached to things for the nuttiest reasons.

Big Lebowski Easter Egg

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Character wardrobes are either memorable or forgettable. I can’t catch a glimpse of a red-haired woman in a green robe without being reminded of Maude, yet a man wearing a white suit over a red shirt probably wouldn’t make me think of Jackie Treehorn. What was the Dude wearing when he crashed into the dumpster? Probably he had on a grungy V-neck and a sweater, but that’s because the Dude abides. Maybe my noticing the robe is a personal fixation. I’m okay with that. This isn’t my thesis, it’s just conversation.

Most of the wardrobe design in The Big Lebowski is subtle, though I believe it was nearly all intentional. During a recent viewing, I noticed that two characters had swapped shirts. Have you noticed? If so, did you find it significant?

If you intend to look for it, don’t decode this rot13-encoded clue: “fvp frzcre”.

Yahoo! I damn thee.

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I don’t really damn Yahoo! (YHOO [disclosure: no position]) but I think I’ll go there less now.

Less is really none. I only ever used yahoo.com to test hotel internet connections. Sometimes if I used google.com and the hotel displayed a welcome page the DNS cache would get poisoned and google.com would become inaccessible. Thus I would check the connection with yahoo.com first because it didn’t matter if that domain became inaccessible.

Never mind the recent news about Microsoft (MSFT [no position]) and its spurned attempts to buy Yahoo! out. Never mind how strange it feels to use a word that ends with a punctuation mark, whether in the middle of a sentence or at the end of a non-exclaimed statement.

Yahoo! tricked me into reading part of an article that tells the sad, sad, sad story of a billionaire wife who was refused a divorce on lack of grounds. The assault on my masculinity can not be forgiven. In my defense, I just wanted to know the answer: “In some states, even if you want to divorce, the court won’t let you. Why?”

In some states, even if you want to divorce, the court won\'t let you. Why?

I clicked “Why?” and read half of the first page before I realized that the answer to my question was on another page and that I was reading Elle. I laughed out loud, took the screenshot and started blogging. Surely nobody will read about it on my blog. My masculinity is safe.

What domain should I use for testing hotel internet connections?

Cost of a free stapler

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Wise Bread told me how to get a free Swingline stapler. It’s not Milton’s red stapler but I did have my eye on staplers at the store, so I was interested.

The survey starts with an email address and at some point they’ll collect your mailing address. There was no link to a privacy policy so I went looking and found one after about two minutes. It said they will email me, send me literature, and share my info with other companies.

I pictured myself shredding sheafs of junk mail while grumbling at my shiny new stapler. How much would my free stapler cost me? If I can get ACCO to take me off their sharing and promo lists, not much. I took the survey.

School shooting conspiracy theory

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School shootings (Again) offer no explanations.

Gun control lovers fill their tanks on this stuff (State lawmakers push, pull on gun control following NIU shootings).

This time, investigators find a link (Gunman, Virginia Tech shooter used same Web dealer) suggesting that the shootings might have had a third party in common.

Besides well-meaning but misguided Americans, who would like to succeed in disarming the American populace? A foreign enemy, that’s who.

This is a perfect opportunity for the JTTFs to stop training layabouts to act like terrorists (Myths of Domestic Terror) and find the real foreign agents sowing violence in our midst.

Reality check: I have no more evidence than the articles linked above. Nevertheless, weaker leads have sparked investigations. If our enemies are plotting to weaken our domestic defenses by fueling (and, who knows, possibly staffing) the gun control lobby, they are very wise indeed. I stand behind an “individual rights” interpretation of the Second Amendment.