Thank Goodness it’s Friday…payday for some people.

If you’re a Christian businessman who pays your employees today, let me encourage you to PAY YOUR EMPLOYEES.

This will make Jesus hA-ppy.

Some of you may have big week-end plans which involve repeating the word shunda-hai over and over again like some kind of Buddhist mantra, which is fine, but make certain you hand out the paychecks.

I...t would strange for somebody who is blessed and highly flavored and experiencing the most bountiful and abundant blessings of the Creator of the Universe to do otherwise. Don't cha think?

Don’t make me start quoting scripture verses again.

Have a nice day everyone!

I do not believe in reincarnation, but if I DID believe in reincarnation, I STILL would not believe in reincarnation.

"When you're right you're right, and when you're wrong you're wrong. But when you are right you are never ever wrong."

--anonymous modern day Pharisee and lover of Eisegesis.

Plato, who said, “the unexamined life is not worth living”, apparently never read Solomon et al who wrote, “everything is meaningless” . . . after examining HIS life.

It isn’t known when Solomon wrote this before or after getting married. But you’d think after the 700^th marriage he’d have added an appendix to his ‘Meaningless Philosophy.’ And as far as history is known, no appendix or amendment has been discovered.

So.

Examine your life, but not TOO closely. And in the meantime…get a hobby.

Grammar Lesson

OK folks. Pay attention. A hypocrite is a person who engages in the same behaviors he condemns others for. Hippocrites was the father of modern medicine and died a long time ago. A hippo crypt is a really big hole for dead hippos. Hippos are not hypocrites, nor was Hippocrites a hypocrite. Hippocrites was a Greek. Some hippos are Greek, but most are Tanzanian. Some Tanzanians are hypocrites and very few are physicians...although some may be called Hippocrites. There are no hippo crypts in Greece...these are mostly found in Tanzania along with the non-Greek hippos. If there is a Tanzanian hippo called Hippocrites who teaches young hippos the finer points of molar care, this is sheer coincidence.

The Electric Monk

Does anybody know where I can buy an Electric Monk? It's a small machine that fits in your ear that believes weird things that people think are scriptural and biblical, yet are not necessarily so. The Electric Monk actual believes the weird pseudo-biblical things FOR you so you don't have to...and as a result you can get on with your normal life. Thanks!

Vert

Instead of reading the book of Lamentations last night, I picked up the old palette and a rusty spray can and forced my creative mind into new channels and created a work called 'Vert.'

Vert is a compressed composition of ethereal shadows of... abstract entities that encapsulate barren sterility. It creates an uncomfortable tension by decidedly dislocating all forms, thus creating a sense of metaphysical dissonance. It is a mute performance. Overall the work becomes a sort of dream organized along the lines of an unfathomable higher dimension of reality in the time and space continuum. Vert contains the principle of all things. It portrays energy as a paradox so what remains is a landscape of ruins, does not carry energy, and it is the scene after the primordial expansion of the cosmos. A compressed agitated landscape congruent with nature, the environmental movement, Ireland, Islam, spring, hope, envy, and (roughly) Libya.

I hope you enjoy it.

 

Crazy

People are crazy. I like people…I really do…but they’re still crazy. Some people live like Beelzebub is their spouse yet every other Facebook post is a bible verse. Crazy people will tell you they read the bible everyday yet haven’t read it in 15 years. What is really crazy is when you call them on it. Crazy people, see, couldn’t find the book of Zedekiah if they had to. Now that’s crazy.

Women are crazy. To be fair, men are also crazy but in a different sort of way. Men’s craziness is predictable and can be plotted on a graph. Women’s craziness is like abstract art, you see it in action but can’t explain it unless you have a Ph.D in English from Oxford…even then you still need a working knowledge of tensor calculus. Craziness in general has a long history that began on a fruit farm. I won’t go into the details but fruitiness and craziness ever since that sad day in the garden have had an uneasy alliance that continues to this day. The cure for craziness is marriage. The hope being the female craziness and the male craziness cancel one another out so something like normalcy sets in. And for those who never marry? Well…there’s always the convent, or the monastery, or the U.S. Congress where one can go and live happily forever after.  

A crazy experiment: If you want to be really spiritual try this experiment. Make a list of the top ten people you dislike. Some of you may say, “But I love EVERYBODY Jason.” True. But loving someone does not mean you want them coming to your yard sale. You may want them to live a long life and go to heaven and be with God and Jesus…and at the same time secretly hope they live in a corrugated apartment in Laos until they pass away. These ten should be people you personally know. Don’t put Kim Jong-un or Hillary Clinton on your list. Use the guy who ran over your cat or the girl you gave a $500 necklace to and now won’t return your phone calls ß-(note: this is a scenario…not an actual event. I have yet to give a girl a $500 necklace…someday…) Then, pray for each and every one on the list without cringing or using expletives. I don’t think God is happy when we curse during prayer. Anyways, after a time, perhaps a long time, you will start to feel something like compassion for these people. This is good practice.

That awkward moment when you’re at a party and you look across the table to see another person who is sharing an unspoken but private moment with you. When each knows the other understands and is in agreement with what is being expressed in a meaningfully silent manner. And so, to break the ice, you casually drop the word ‘Mamihlapinatapai’ and nod knowingly because you’re under the impression the other person studied philology for eight years and intuitively ‘gets it.’ But the dream is shattered when they merely say, “God Bless You!”  

Not all worldviews have equal merit since not all correlate with reality. Many times a person can project an air of authority and wisdom despite having a flawed worldview. Their logic and reasoning may be sound and in perfect accord with their worldview, but if it is not congruent with reality then that person has no true authority and must rely on word play and bully tactics. One should not be fooled by their bloviating and big words even if they call themselves 'doctor.'

All people view Life through their own lens and expect others to adhere to their reasoning. Their logic may be good, but the logical endpoint of all their arguments will always be, can only be, mistaken since their premises about the fundamental nature of reality are incorrect.

Having good intentions does not equate good ideas.

Some people build an entire empire around unicorns and the doctrine of Unicornology. But after twenty-five years of alleged unicorn sightings with no empirical evidence to back up their assertions, besides a couple mysterious hoof prints by the local horse farm, one would be a fool to be a disciple of Unicornology.

It is best to humor such people even though they are wrong. Not everyone has a perfect knowledge of Life, the Universe, and Everything and we should be tolerant of one another’s worldviews. But when decisions that seriously harm people, and lead people astray, are continually made by people who think they are the ultimate experts in reality, it is then time to mark such individuals and paradigms as absurd and have nothing to do with them.

Science

In celebration of Independence Day, I am constucting a life-size (working) model of a cruise missile.
 

 

 

Anyone want to go with me this summer to New Mexico to test it out? Preferably somebody with a long-bed pick-up truck? And likes the smell of gunpowder?

I keep having this recurring nightmare that I'm a 91-year-old man walking through Wal-Mart and I look exactly like the Dalai Lama.

Any dream theorists out there?

I should also note I offer quaint tidbits of knowledge concerning trans-fats to young couples and smack people with my staff when they say they're, "looking for a good pair of Sketchers for cardio."

Advice

If you've a friend who believes in unicorns, and he takes you to his horse farm to see all the hornless unicorns, it is best to humor him while visiting. That doesn't mean you should take up the Unicornology and travel to all the latest unicorn trade shows and study the medicinal properties of their magical horns.

Running Advice: It is shy near impossible to run a good solid 8 miles a mere six hours after eating 5 rainbow trout and a half-quart of Earl Grey tea without experiencing the type of gastrointestinal difficulties that make your stomach feel like it is trying to turn itself inside out like some kind of discombobulated Mobius strip...

Pope Fiction

Just received a lot of fiction books in the mail at approximately the SAME EXACT time the new pope was elected.

Pulp Fiction...Pope Fiction....Coincidence?..

Hmmmmm...

I'm sure there's a conspiracy theorist out there somewhere who can explain the mysteriousness of it all.

Training for the Olympics

More Training  Advice: (Because it’s Friday and I’ve nothing better to do except look at a hundred microscope slides of dead arthropods at work…and my eyeballs hurt)

This is guaranteed to make one a much faster runner.

1-Sell all your worldly possessions and move to the Himalayas in Northern Nepal.

2-Buy a tea house and learn Nepali…I’ve a phrase book if you want.

3-Spend the first six months running from the tea house to the nearest village twice a day.

*note: this should be at an altitude no less than 15,000 feet

4-By this time your hemocrit level should reach illegal levels according to the International Olympic Committee which is where you want to be.

5- Rest for one week and read ‘War and Peace’ in the original Russian.

6-(Time for speedwork) MWF for the next 3 months, run 3*1 mile repeats uphill. Wear Sketchers, Wal-Mart jorts, and tube socks…and a weight vest if you can find one whilst training. This will curb any doubts left in the mind of others that you are in fact crazy…quite crazy…and the natives won’t bother you. TThS and S you should run easily 8-10 miles on a dirt trekking path.

7-Take 3 days off and make yak jerky…you’ll need the protein. It’s prolly a good time to make sure your oxygen-generating machine is working as well.

8-The last three months, run 20*400m repeats with 45sec rest in a tea plantation. Ideally you’ll want a big bull yak in there to keep you wary and alert. This will train your fast twitch muscle fibers in a way simply running around your typical American high school track won’t. Do this 3 days a week while resting the other three. One day a week should be a long run…I’m thinking a round-trip jog to Everest and back should do the trick…and take a bag of candy.

9-By now you should have the lung capacity of a Diplodocus, blood so thick with red blood cells you need a pacemaker, and muscles that rival Madonna’s biceps. So…then it will the optimum time you run a 5000m PR.

Good Luck>

Scientia Potentia est?

 
Ok.  I got it now.  

Knowledge is Power. 

Power according to physicists is Work divided by Time. So, Knowledge is also Work divided by Time. Or (to rearrange the equation)

Knowledge (Time) = Work

Knowledge is also equivalent to Google

So as Time increases on Google, Work increases

But statistics show as Time increases on Google, Work decreases.

But stats lie.

So, as Time increases on Google, Work really does increase.

Interestingly, the Journal of Women’s Studies reports that as Work increases, Money ($) decreases.

Therefore, the more the Work, the less the Money ($).

And the less the Money ($), the less the Power.

Furthermore, since Power corrupts and Absolute Power corrupts absolutely, (whether for good or evil depending on your viewpoint), it goes to show the less Power, the less one is corrupted absolutely.

Hence one becomes poor (less $) with a corresponding lack of Knowledge.

To further complicate matters: Ignorance is Strength (as we all know from Orwell’s ‘1984’)…the less Knowledge you have the stronger you are.  And the stronger you are, the more Work you can do…as long as you don’t expect to get paid for it.

Hmmm…maybe I SHOULD go into politics…

Art is Important

Art and Beauty provokes the inner part of man, the soul and spirit, in a way laws, philosophical systems, and programs cannot. The experience of viewing, participating in, Art allows one to catch a glimpse of heaven from our fallen state. It touches on one of those thin places in reality. Man sees through this translucent veil where the physical plane meets the spiritual plane and cannot help but long for his eternal home. All men know intuitively they are broken (whether they admit it or not) and see a glimmer of what they could be as the spiritual realm acts as kind of a mirror reflecting the ideal. Beauty sparks the imagination and practice of men to make their own thin places that aren't a dream, but a transforming reality.

Brothers' Odd

(On Craigslist today)....Pterodactyl Handler: Looking for someone to train my pet pterodactyl. I've got a custom titanium saddle and 14" cattle prods. Experienced trainers only. Text or call xxx-xxx-xxxx.

(There are some weird people in Morgantown)

Go

There is no reason to sit around daydreaming thinking circular thoughts that carry no meaning. Life is meant to be an on-going forward progress. So go and reconquer your kingdom, which has become seeped in mediocrity. Stop repeating the same routines. You won't learn anything new that way.

Je n'aime pas le neige

Currently in West Virginia

 

Tonights forecast: snow

 Tomorrow: snow

Day after tomorrow: snow

Day after that: even more snow

Sunday: again...snow

Next day after Sunday: more snow

24 hours later in same place: that's right...you guessed it...more snow

24 hours later (still in same place): neige (French for snow)

 

Thursday after this Thursday: small probability of sun. If not, then Groundhog Hunting Season

The dominant thought revolving in my mind last night during the State of the Union speech

"The major problem, one of the major problems, for there are several, with governing people is that of who you get to do it. Or, rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well known and much lamented fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made president should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."

 --Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Hot-air Balloon

Seven sheets of paper + 2 hours of my lifetime + a tiny bit of Elmer's glue = one hot-air ballon. This particular model was designed by Yuri and Katrin Shumakov.

Caballo Blanco

Using 9" tracing paper.

 

 

Turtle Making

                  Here's my latest creation. A snapping turtle made from green wrapping paper.

Katz

I'm glad I didn't make a New Year's resolution to blog every day in 2013...

Cats.

The paper ones.

Origamically speaking.

What I have been up to the past few days.

Final run of the year complete...10 miles in muddy snow and ice. I am truly grateful for the smallish herd of Dashund puppies that chased me at the halfway point when motivation was forthcoming and all seemed bleak. May there always be Kibbles and Bits in your furry little bellys.

Running Advice: "No doubt a brain and some shoes are essential for marathon success, although if it comes down to a choice, pick the shoes. More people finish marathons with no brains than with no shoes."

-- Don Kardong

This year I plan to watch not so many Michael Jackson videos on YouTube and read the complete Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English vernacular.