If you’re not familiar with Derek Lowe’s “In the Pipeline” blog, you should be. Whether you’re a chemist or not, his writing is witty and wonderful and breathes zing and pizazz into, uh, your breath-mask. [things I won’t work with]
Since it’s OK to say hate-filled things, here:
In an earlier posting I describe a fun word-game in which the word “pants” is substituted into quotes or lyrics of sentences. We used to play it at a company I started back in 1997, and I always thought we were the inventors of it (alcohol was involved!) We had another game that we played, which was the elaborate retelling of Official Jokes. There were 3 (the lion hunter joke, the parrot in the fridge joke, and the kennedy assassination joke) and since we all knew them, for some reason it was screamingly funny to hear someone trying to tell an old joke in a new way.
One of the hard parts about putting my opinion out here in a blog is that I have to turn over all my ideas and attitudes and look at them more carefully. I’ve done that, regarding computer security stuff, for around 25 years, and I like to think I’ve dislodged most of the B.S. But, when you start publishing your opinions about art, music, food, F-35s, military glory, and good scent oils to put in soap – it gets harder. Because I’ve suddenly moved into this weird grey zone where I know I’m writing about my opinion but I don’t want to take the attitude: “well this here is my opinion and if you don’t like it, F you.” Because that’s not how to have an opinion. To have an opinion you have to actually think about why you have that opinion, and then you can decide whether it’s defensible or not.
The diversity and wonderfulness of performing arts and music makes me so happy! I almost turned my “Sunday Night” posting in a huge list of diverse artists, but I thought it would be better to stick with just 2, and keep it focused on the story telling honky tonk side of things.
Johnny Vector suggested Bruce Cockburn’s “If I had a rocket launcher” and I am now quite the fan. First off, the sentiments really resonate with me: there are a lot of people in the world I wouldn’t hesitate to inhume if I they had the misfortune to step in front of my big-ass truck. I cried more over the deer I hit than I’d cry over Dick Cheney, for example, and I was mostly upset about that I had to write off my Toyota Tundra. I’d cheerfully trade a truck for some of these guys…
If I had a rocket launcher!!!!
Promoted from a comment by cartomancer[1]
I discovered this gem a few years ago, by accident, while I was researching the Furtwängler performance of April 20, 1942 [more] Originally, there was a shorter version of Kelly’s presentation on youtube, but he re-recorded it and has made it available on Harvard’s edX [Kelly] free online educational program.
Novelist Walter Mosley is a widely-published author of crime fiction, children’s books, and stories. He did a talk at “Politics and Prose”[Mosley] about his book “Folding the Red Into the Black: Developing a Viable Untopia for the 25th Century”[amazon]
I don’t like the term “common sense” because it’s an oxymoron – what is common is usually not sensible, and what is sensible is seldom common. Mosley dishes out something that is probably uncommon sense.
Back in the 90s I used to suffer from insomnia. I’d get an idea, then be unable to sleep until I had fully hashed it out. Then, I decided to try operant conditioning on myself, to train myself to go to sleep under predetermined circumstances.