This is no less than the 4th time in the past couple of weeks that I've opened up the delightful MS OneNote to blog while north of earth by 30,000-some feet. I never actually got around to pasting any of the former attempts into an actual post, as the continuing lack of posting whatsoever testifies to. These 4 recent attempts all sit shamefully just below the page of some that I wrote back when I was in Miami. A year ago. So if those never got posted, that gives you some idea…

Nothing I write anymore is anything close to the quality I was putting out when I was actually making time to read/write on a regular basis, anyway, so nobody's missing out on anything. I'm trying to make a resurgence on the reading but I've been trying to do that since college. Goodreads appears to be perhaps a decent method for keeping track of what I've been reading and perhaps letting my friends hold me somewhat sublimely accountable by their voracious amounts of read books that will consistently dwarf mine. What I don't like about it is the fact that at least 50% of my reading is online these days. I just finished Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde online recently - I guess I could throw it on Goodreads but I never cracked the actual book. Read a lot of Asimov this way too. Not that I'm reading a lot, by any means.

If you don't know about MS OneNote, allow me to enlighten you - its an awesome, little-known note-taking app rolled in with the full set of MS Office products - sans FrontPage, that is - if you happen to work for the kind of company that requires you to have such things. Or if you happened to drop the kind of cash I'd never think of giving to a company like MS, personally. Now you know. Half the battle. 10 points for the kids who can name that pop-culture reference.

This weekend will be the first "normal" one (by my standards of recent years) pretty much this whole year, save maybe one in January that I'm not recalling at the moment. If you've read my blog for any amount of time you're familiar with that format, I like turning into a creature of habit on the weekend, I find it quite comfortable:

Friday I work too much. Then late in the evening I get my take-out Chinese and retire with the latest from Netflix (still working through Season 1 of Arrested Development at the moment).

Saturday mornings I meet with the closest thing I've been able to find to an older man / mentor to talk through life stuff. On weekends when Kuz is in town and we're both free, we meet for lunch/accountability somewhere in Hell's Kitchen. I like the dining options around there, always have. The rest of Saturday is usually a mixed bag, the exception to the creature of habit bit…although it usually involves a mix of putting the finishing touches on the lesson for Sunday, watching some form of sport on the tube (bring on baseball season), and when the weather's good and I've been regular with my running - a nice long one.

Saturday nights continue the mix theme - poker, hitting the West Village haunts with Dave, dates, maybe catch a movie, whatever. Nothing too late what with Sunday mornings.

Church starts with youth leaders meeting to pray at 9:30 before the UES service. Then I head to the service with the high schoolers. After, we head to the church offices and have senior high group. That goes til 3ish depending on how good the conversation in group time pans out. There are 16 or so Sundays in the year that involve football for the next few hours. The rest involve getting home and catching up on life stuff that needs to be done before packing and crashing early because Monday morning's flight is gonna be an early one.

Kind of takes all the fun out of stalking me, doesn't it?

Anyway, that's what I'm looking forward to this weekend. I've been traveling for various reasons for a LOT of the weekends in the last 6 months, which is a LOT more difficult when you already travel for the week. I'm looking forward to NOT doing that for the next few weekends, spending a good deal more time in the city, and enjoying it while I'm still there.

After all, potential ADP projects are looming.

I still need to blog about that, don't I?

...later...

So what ended up happening? I worked too much on Friday, then headed into the church offices where I talked to Katherine about some interesting positions there, but at this point I'm not really sure that's the right move for me. Cregan and I worked on our lessons and then went to see 300 with Dave. Movies were still getting a decent turnout despite the blizzard. Flick was OK, about what I expected of it. Cool to see a movie set in a historical place I got to visit recently.

Saturday we had a youth leaders brunch in the city to discuss this year's mission's trip. Except, when I showed up to Cregan and Mindi's to catch a ride, I found them beginning the process of cleaning snow drifts out of the car after the sun roof vent had been left slightly open during the storm. So that took us about an hour. Brunch went nice, then the rest of the day was chilling and working on the lesson. Today was typical - church, youth group, home now. Picking up the roommate and his fiancee on their way back from Paris at the airport in about an hour, so I have to take off for that now...

So my sister is like totally a nurse now. Woot.

Well, about a year ago I was battling illness, busy with youth group events like the 30 Hour Famine, in love with NY and making promises to write more about it, and, on the other hand, warning about working too much to blog regularly.

Not much has changed.

Sick for the second time in 3 weeks, so that's very not cool. I wasn't sick for the Famine (2 weekends ago) for a change, but I didn't do the sleepover as work has been, well...work. The hours these days are similar to what they were a year ago - far too many, but now it just seems to come with the new title, hence - less complaining on the blog and more straight up work. Traveling to Chicago doesn't help.

From a Volkswagen ad in a ski mag I was reading in the doc's office at lunch today:

You have "a thing." And no. It's not your "issues." Or your "stuff." It's the one thing you love doing. And maybe even being. Maybe you feel it when you're plugging in a guitar. Maybe you feel it when you're sitting in the middle of the ocean, alone. Waiting. Maybe you feel it when you're taking a load of Little Leaguers to Districts, two states away. Whatever it is, its your thing. And it's always been your thing. Okay, sure. People may share the same thing. But deep, deep, deep down, you know your thing is a little different. (Okay...a lot different.)

Oh, and I got accepted into Accenture's Developing Partnerships practice, which is flippin sweet. Next post will elaborate on that.

(maybe)

(oh, and the picture...long story short, one of my good college buddies named Dave [what else?] did an internship for the German company Sick one summer, and our whole senior year we couldn't get over joking about how sick everything was, like how sick the forklifts in their warehouses were, and how sick it was to be in Germany, and how sick...you get the point. Anyway, good times. Dave's married to a cool girl now and I think they have a kid. Last time I saw them was my 5 year reunion, right at good old Benji's, where I left him.)

Thirsty hearts are those whose longings have been wakened by the touch of God within them. - A.W. Tozer

I recently finished reading The Sacred Romance (although the sidebar won't reflect that, or anything else I've read / watched / listened to in the last couple years). I have to say that this is the first book I've read in quite a while that either a) caused me to begin making some life changes from the rut I was in prior to reading it, or b) been quality enough that I plan to re-read it shortly.

One of the things I liked best about the book was the humility that was evident in the writers' style. This is a humility I see in what I consider to be the best of writers and orators: they are not afraid to rely heavily on the previous wisdom of others. They offer a unique and relevant point of view, however it is clear that their thoughts are heavily seasoned with what they have learned from those who went before them - and are quick to quote and cite these sources. C.S. Lewis is an excellent example of this, relying heavily on the ancient church fathers. I also like my pastor's style for this reason - of course it helps when the person employing this tactic is as well read as men like these.

Some examples, with related thoughts from the authors:

Power can do everything but the most important thing: it cannot control love.... In a concentration camp, the guards possess almost unlimited power. By applying force, they can make you renounce your God, curse your family, work without pay, eat human excrement, kill and then bury your closest friend or even your mother. All this is within their power. Only one thing is not: they cannot force you to love them. This fact may help explain why God sometimes seems shy to use his power. He created us to love him, but his most impressive displays of miracle - the kind we may secretly long for - do nothing to foster that love. As Douglas John Hall has put it, "God's problem is not that God is not able to do certain things. God's problem is that God loves. Love complicates the life of God as it complicates every life. - Phillip Yancey

Satan gets us to side with him by sowing the seed of doubt in our first parents' minds: "God's heart really isn't good. He's holding out on you. You've got to take things into your own hands." And Paradise was lost.

---

We come into the world with a longing to be known and a deep-seated fear that we aren't what we should be. We are set up for a crisis of identity. And then, says Frederick Buechner, the world goes to work:

Starting with the rather too pretty young woman and the charming but rather unstable young man, who together know no more about being parents than they do the far side of the moon, the world sets in to making us what the world would like us to be, and because we have to survive after all, we try to make ourselves into something that we hope the world will like better than it apparently did the selves we originally were. That is the story of all our lives, needless to say, and in the process of living out that story, the original, shimmering self gets buried so deep that most of us hardly end up living out of it at all. Instead, we live out all the other selves which we are constantly putting on and taking off like coats and hats against the world's weather. (Telling Secrets)

---

We have all read in scientific books, and indeed, in all romances, the story of the man who has forgotten his name. This man walks about the streets and can see and appreciate everything; only he cannot remember who he is. Well, every man is that man in the story. Every man has forgotten who he is.... We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. (Orthodoxy) - G.K. Chesterton

Every woman is in some way searching for or running from her beauty and every man is looking for or avoiding his strength.

---

It is impossible to live the spiritual life in the ontological lightness of doing because our hearts and minds have become enemies rather than allies. Neither are we free to love or serve.

All in all, the book had a powerful message which resonated thoroughly with me at the time that I read it. That, however, is a caveat in and of itself - I don't believe it is a book that's been aimed at people who aren't in that point in their life that they are ready to hear its message. And I think that I just barely got to that point before I finally cracked this book, in God's good timing. For the first time in a long time, I'm not quite so skeptical on hope.

Well, its nothing deep, but its a post that has nothing to do with me (and everything to do with stuff I think is cool). Its been a long time coming, but here they are: links 'a plenty.

The Talent Myth. 2 guesses why I like this one.

You can either worry about it, or get used to the new world, like the kids are doing. This is the kind of stuff I want to book about at some point.

Smart urban design.

Go TSA, go.

This was interesting, as was this. Not sure if anything will come of either.

Google link of the week: Why Ajax Failed (Then Succeeded)

Whisk and Ladle sounds about as cool a dinner as one could have in the city, or anywhere else for that matter.

Finally, some excellent Asimov reading.

Oh, and some music to read by, straight from the Paris metro.

Wrote this a couple years back. Followed up with this.

So...yeah. Almost 7 years now. And that's neither here nor there.

Still sick, stuck in Chicago til tomorrow night, tired and behind schedule on the project. Also, neither here nor there.

Been a lot of that, lately.

Happy Wednesday, or whatever you decide to call it.

Oh and kudos to you if you caught the subtlety in Google's mispelling of their logo today. I take the fact that I noticed it and figured it out as proof positive that I do know what its like to love someone on a daily basis enough to notice when they change something small. My someone just happens to be Google.

Well it hasn't quite been a week yet, so I'm making good on my last post's promise.

Roughly... end of November, that's when I last wrote a decent piece. A short bit in support of returning to conscription.

It was a good post because it didn't have anything to do with me.

What was different between me now and me 3 and half months ago? I had just spent some time in Greece, for one thing. That helps. I hadn't been exposed to the full brunt of this project yet, for another. I hadn't been travelling so regularly - that definitely has something to do with it. Not much else comes to mind.

So there it is.

I'm debating getting on the plane tomorrow, but not for profound reasons - I'm feeling rather flu-ish. Hit me last night after a big day of nothing. Met Dave for lunch and worked on the lesson I never ended up giving since I started feeling rough around dinner time and knew I'd wake up worse.

The week was about normal, although a pleasant exception was meeting up with Dawn on Wednesday to sample some of Chicago's finest French cuisine. Le Bouchon had a nice, crowded feel that a lot of NYC places do, however the crowd was definitely dying down by 9:30, when we left. I had the hanger steak, it was decent, as far as hanger steak goes.

Its freakin cold in Chicago. Everyone complains but I kind of like it.

And this week my goal is to write a decent post that has nothing to do with me. Baby steps.

...meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain; meaninglessness
comes from being weary of pleasure. And that is why we find ourselves emptied of
meaning with our pantries still full. - Ravi Zacharias

Sitting in the pre-Super Bowl silence of the pad on a Sunday night - well, the silence that is b-sides of old U2 and Badly Drawn Boy and Van Morrison and whatever else the vast repository that is the home computer may decide to produce. Roommate is having a dozen or so people over for the game - Sunday night is about the last time I feel like being social these weeks, but hey - its the Super Bowl. Should be super - not being able to hear the game or ads over the din of the party, not to mention being generally alone while surrounded by people. Which is a state I'm fairly accustomed to, but do not enjoy so much in the sanctuary of the place that I live in.

Especially not up for it after a weekend where I was out Saturday and most of today for our winter youth leaders' planning retreat. It was good, but not exactly restful. I'm going to need next weekend, when it finally gets here.

Especially not up for it after this past week at work - its getting tough and while I'm certainly capable of delivering an excellent production, I've lost motivation. Doesn't mean I won't produce - my deeply instilled work ethic is more than enough to force that out of me, but there's just no zest in the formula at this point. I'm tired of business traveller hotels with their sandpaper towels, smoked-in rental cars that I'm too tired to exchange, dealing with masses of people who don't understand basic air travel etiquette, and having to find food at night when I'm in the office past when everything's closed.

I'm even more tired of my own whining. This week I've resolved to go back and find the last time that I wrote a positive post about something, anything, and then write about the difference between where I was then, and where I am now. I don't expect to remedy all matters, but at least force some reflection. Its not that things are all that bad right now anyhow - I still have a steady job at a great company, and love the church and youth group and friends I've been blessed with in the city that I love living in. Regardless of any need I may feel for change, I need to drop this habit of complaint I've weakened into. I didn't used to do that.

Pause for laundry and finishing the packing.

Billy Joel's singing the Anthem. Troops at attention in Bhagdad. Two African American coaches in the big game. Thunderbirds by night, 9g's in the tropical rain. Live, around the world, in 176 countries.

Snow.

Big fluffy white wet ones. Not cold enough yet for the more dry goodness, but I'm not near a mountain, so it doesn't really matter. For some reason, however, every time it snows my first reaction is always to check the texture and assess its ski-ability. Champagne pow makes me happier than wet cotton, but if its white and falling from the sky, its proof that God loves me and wants me to be happy, and that's the point of snow, at the end of the day. I went for an out-of-the-way walk to the grocery store for nothing at all that I needed just because it was falling.

Friday was slammed with work from home, then I was supposed to see End of Men with Mars but it turned into us meeting up with Jay at the pig - I haven't been there since the last time I was hanging out with the both of them. A few drinks turned into dinner and drinks turned into Dave's appreciation party for Jay for getting me promoted, so the night cost me a few hundred more than I normally plan for on a night out with Jay, but I owed it to him. I think.

Saturday was hanging with Jon, AM, Angie, and her friend Julia who came down with her for the day. Kind of a rotating mix of who hung with who when, but it was a good day. Any day you end up at Ulysses is a good day, even if you end up there with a splitting headache. Don't get those hardly ever.

Today was church, where my pen ran out of ink at the start of the sermon, which I H.A.T.E.. Writing is how I listen. Then it was like TWELVE (count 'em) kids at Senior High which was just plain scraping the awesome off your awesome boots.

But it was also kind of sad.

Ever since I've decided its time to go, it seems like most of my experiences here are both poignantly sad and yet filled with portent of a very necessary change. Everything just feels like its telling me that its my time to move on. I feel like I'll be back, somehow, someday. And I feel like I don't want it to be over just yet. But I also feel like the city is almost ready to wish me farewell - for now. I think I needed it to be saying that to me.

I guess I haven't blogged it yet, but I didn't really talk to many people about it til this past weekend - I've updated the resume and have been applying to a number of different international relief organizations. I particularly want to get involved with relief efforts for the refugees of the genocide in Darfur, which would likely involve a move to Chad. I've found a few positions that sound like good matches for my skill set, and I'm really praying that God will open up the right door at the right time.

And for the first time in my life, I really feel a strong desire to go to a new place and do a new thing. Mind you, I'm not claiming its the guidance from God I've been seeking for so long - for all I know this could be a terrible decision - but I am saying that I really, really want to do this. I want to help people.

I'm sick of helping American corporations make money. I'm even a little tired of America itself, I think. I want to go somewhere else for a while. I want to get rid of a bunch of my stuff, throw the rest in a storage unit, and just leave. I want to help people.

And speaking of wants, I don't know if I'll ever fall in love, but I'd at least like, just once, to have a nice long walk in the snow with a girl that appreciates God's goodness in frozen form as much as I psychotically do.

And that's my best shot at a female form, at least from waist up. I don't know what I like about it in particular so much as the fact that I just feel that I got it as right as a pencil ever could have. The subject will remain unidentified, but I reiterate: this one caught the moment perfectly - perhaps better than anything else I've ever drawn. (Same deal, full size .jpg if you click on it - I think it looks even better close up)

For some stupid reason, when life gets tough, I get creative. I have no idea why, but its only in the downers that I seem to play my guitar plenty, begin putting together new book sketch-outs, pull out some of the old sculpting stuff, and, when its really all hit the fan, start drawing again.

Did all of my best drawing back after college. It was the closest I ever came to doing some good human form sketches, and one or two shots at actual faces, which to my dying day will be the hardest thing in existence to draw accurately.

I've drawn a few of pieces since that time but nothing (save one, perhaps) of any significance. Until this Fall. We were somewhere on our trip to Greece and someone mentioned something in passing about how great it would be if Robbie could do some paintings of some of the wonderful sights we were seeing. Now let it be known that I will not go near paint, because I have only lowly lead-sketching skills, and even those are rough and untrained. But, the thought occurred to me at the time that I might put a couple small pieces together for both the 'rents and the 2 sisters for Christmas. I wasn't seeing anything that they seemed to like that either a) they weren't already buying for themselves or b) I didn't see as a good fit for a gift from me, and so I thought combining a little of my time and (arguably) talent with the Greek countryside / infrastructre might make for nice Christmas gifts.

Things weren't really going rough come the trip to Greece, but I did have a formidable new project on the horizon which has since lived up to its formidity, along with everything else that transpired in the last few months. So, although I wasn't planning to be in a state to draw well, there I found myself. In retrospect, perhaps that was part of what led me to where I am now. That's rather beside the point now, though.

A couple of weeks ago I finally threw a bunch of my work, old and new, into a portfolio and took it by Cregan's office to scan it all for posterity. And you are now the benefactor of this effort, in both this and subsequent posts, to follow.

This one is the Acropolis at Rhodes, off of a picture I took facing towards it from the west, along the side of the road up from town that Joey and I were motorbiking up. The sun was behind the clouds as it set in the afternoon, and it didn't really come out how I would have liked because in the end, the clouds are shaded and the sky isn't, and it really should be the reverse. Even though the sunlight was coming in from behind the clouds in the picture, the sky behind it was such a deep blue that the clouds really became brilliantly white, and everything in the foreground (trees, Acropolis, ground, etc.) all had a contrast of almost completely dark, from the angle we were facing it. That said, I think it still came out alright, with the color scheme flip for everything that isn't on the ground. This is Mom and Dad's present, mounted in a nice frame (not pictured).

(Clicking on it takes you to the full size version, which unless you have a computer / monitor setup that I sincerely lust for, your browser is not going to fit. Hint: right click, save as...)

Well its not that I haven't been writing... so much as I haven't been writing here.

Work. Life. Youth Group trips to Young Life camp. Work. Travel. Life.

None of it is a sufficient excuse to free me from the bond of writing I at one point sought to place upon myself. Now, its just work and travel and life...friggin life. Life keeps getting in the way of my attempts to make something of it. And lately life is work and details and vodka and swimming and youth group and reading and whatever.

Its all keeping me from the GRE's and going back to school and throwing caution to the wind and actually submitting another article or two to a big magazine or the Times or whatever. It makes me mad and yet I'm indifferent enough that the anger is only temporary to the moment. Tomorrow I'm going to wake up and only my 6 am call is going to matter, and then my 7:30. The fact that I have calls at these hours speaks to my commitment to change things, or rather, my lack thereof.

So there you have it, some blogging. I stayed up for this.

I never should have gone to college. I should have stuck with skiing, maybe made something of myself with it, maybe had a few knee surgeries...

but at least, with the failure, I would have known that I gave it a shot.

I start to feel like I can’t maintain the facade any longer, that I may just start to show through. And I wish I knew what was wrong. Maybe something about how stupid my whole life is. I don’t know. Why does the rest of the world put up with the hypocrisy, the need to put a happy face on sorrow, the need to keep on keeping on?... I don’t know the answer, I know only that I can’t. I don't want any more vicissitudes, I don't want any more of this try, try again stuff. I just want out. I’ve had it. I am so tired. I am twenty and I am already exhausted. - Elizabeth Wurtzel

Yeah so blog fell by the wayside yet again. I'd say I have hopes of resurrecting the writing in '07 but that would pretty much jinx the whole thing. If I blog even close to what I got out this past year, I'll be doing good.

And so we start a new year, with the same tenor as the majority of last year - whining about my lack of time and inability to find the inspiration for decent writing, so much as pithy, pitiful journaling.

Well, on that note…

Worked the week before the long Christmas weekend in Chicago, and flew back to Cali the Thursday evening of that week. Sis and the grandparents met me at the airport, and I had my Weinerschnitzel rendezvous on the way home, and it was glorious. Friday I worked from Panera, and after my calls I remember deciding to pack it in and start the holiday a little early, thinking "hey I'll find time to get this done during next week at some point." Which never happened, which will make tomorrow a bear - seeing as I do not have the energy or motivation for it this evening.

Back to the weekend. I think we had people over for dinner on Friday night. Joey's piano teacher and his family. This guy is a virtuoso of sorts and Joey's been growing by leaps and bounds - I wish I could have gotten that kind of training instead of my classical one, I could be that classy wine-bar / event pianist I so often wish I was instead of flying to Chicago every week to get more technical.

Saturday we definitely did something. I don't remember what, but probably multiple things. I think maybe I took my shirts to the dry-cleaner and went to Ikea to get frames for my as-yet-unfinished Christmas presents. I think all of this may have been on Friday afternoon, but I'm pretty sure it was Saturday. Who knows.

Sunday was church with the fam, morning and evening. Margy and Jonny got in from their cross-country drive early in the AM and woke up in the afternoon to go to the evening service with us.

Monday was Christmas. I wore an army helmet all day long. This pretty much took care of my annual ruining-of-the-serious-Christmas-pictures tradition. And it felt in-character for the amount of Wolfenstein I was playing with Peter and Joey throughout the day.

Tuesday. Tuesday was Tuesday. That's about all I think I will ever write about that day, for the rest of my life.

Wednesday Jonny and Joey and I headed up into the snowy Sierras and they boarded while I picked up telemark and fell in love with skiing all over again for the very first time, which was pretty much exactly what I needed. Not that I don't love alpine and twin tips and dropping huge sketchy lines and massive cat-tracks and the like, but I distinctly remember sitting on the lift and having a kind of morose "is this as good as it gets?" moment. Granted, it was kind of colored by my getting older and dealing with life situations and a lot of stuff I've had to deal with lately, but the feeling was distinctly related to skiing at that moment, which was a complete first in my life.

And then my heels were set free, and life on snow was new again. I'm really looking forward to getting back on tele's and getting better at it. It’s the hardest discipline on the mountain and I'm excited about the challenge.

We did dinner with the fam at the Mac Grill that night, which although I was really tired and mentally exhausted, was still a good time.

Thursday I was just plain dead, body burning from the new skiing regimen. We all headed up to the grandparents' to meet up with mom's sister and her kids there, my two wonderful cousins that I haven't seen in way too long, who I hope get out to visit me in NYC sometime soon. We older sibs/cousins all took off for a couple beers and smokes (sans cancer for me, thanks) at a bar on the strip in Nevada City after dinner, and stayed there until mom called to tell us we were being rude. Back for more presents and games and then back home, where it was packing for my departure for Dallas on Friday morning.

Which is a whooole nother story…

Methinks I see an heav'nly host
Of angels on the wing
Methinks I hear their cheerful notes
So merrily they sing:

Let all your fears be banish'd hence,
Glad tidings I proclaim,
For there's a Saviour born today,
And Jesus is his name.

Lay down your crooks and quit your flocks,
To Bethlehem repair;
And let your wand'ring steps be squar'd
By yonder shining star.

Seek not in courts or palaces,
Nor royal curtains draw;
But search the stable, see your God
Extended on the straw.

Then learn from hence, ye rural Swains,
The Meekness of your God,
Who left the boundless Realms of Joy
To Ransom you with blood.

The Master of the Inn refus'd
A more commodious Place;
Ungenerous Soul of Savage Mould,
And destitute of Grace.

Exult ye oxen, low for joy,
Ye tenants of the stall,
Pay your obeisance, on your knees
Unanimously fall.

The royal guest you entertain
Is not of common birth,
But second to the great I Am;
The God of heav'n and earth.

Then suddenly a heav'nly host
Around the shepherds throng,
Exulting in the threefold God
And thus address their song.
To God the Father, Christ the Son,
And Holy Ghost ador'd;
The First and Last, the Last and First,
Eternal praise afford.

"At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and Destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."

"Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

"Plenty of prisons," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

"And the Union workhouses?" demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"

"They are. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish I could say they were not."

"The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" said Scrooge.

"Both very busy, sir."

"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course," said Scrooge. "I'm very glad to hear it."

"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish Christian cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the Poor some meat and drink and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"

Tab emptying time.

Lessons from the Center for Collective Intelligence.

Cool Street Art.

Google Patents.

A quick look at how behind the tech-times our government is.

Interesting WW2 strategy reading.

Mozart is now free on the internet. All of it, apparently.

Co-youth leader Peggy started this company, please buy her soaps.

CB2 is Crate and Barrel's answer to Ikea. I have to say the marketing strategy is straightforward and interesting.

Swivel would be a lot cooler if I wasn't colorblind.

Dreamhost has cool flash tools.

This could be useful but I'm kinda wary about it.

Strange Soviet buildings.

Have my sights set on my next NYC burger experience.

This is another of the many wonderful reasons that God saw fit to give us internet.

Specialized's Christmas card, performed entirely on bike parts. Formerly here.

Punished accordingly, I'm sure.

Time's 2006 photos of the year.

JibJab's year in review (slight off-color humor warning).

(Tuesday links because I don't have time to write and this post has been sitting around for a week or so. Probably more links soon.)

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child really loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."

"I suppose you are Real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

"The Boy's Uncle made me Real," he said. "That was a great many years ago; but once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."

Letter to the Editor

Adbusters Journal

adbusters.org

Kalle Lasn's intriguing article on "rewilding the cultural environment" in volume 69 was filled with good information and insight, however it certainly leaves the reader at a critical impasse.

Lasn's got his heart in the fight, but the problem is he's in the wrong fight. A "battle for the mind" will not work. That's the same path that unsuccessful leaders throughout history have sought to promote their causes. Causes are most successfully promoted through either brute force (eg. Roman empire) or changed hearts on a massive scale (eg. the rise of Christianity, somewhat ironically at the time of Roman rule). Changing your mind might motivate you in some way, but changing your heart shifts the values of your life.

Being "not quite of this earth" (ref. First World Facismo, same volume) is exactly what should most motivate us to hold it in the highest of care. Say you're driving your new car and get in a minor accident. Sucks, but insurance will cover it, no biggie. Now say the same thing happens when your driving your friend's new car. Different feeling. The idea is that when you are entrusted with something, it gains a certain weightier value. Same goes for our planet - it doesn't belong to us.

Over-valuation of the planet earth for its own intrinsic qualities, rather than seeing it as a gift, given to us to be cared for and returned, leaves one at a dead end. True motivation for caring for something at a level that will bring meaningful change comes from love for someone outside of your own existence. Anything less - even love for the planet itself - is just selfish ambition to have a better place to exist in, while the self is here, or at best the hope of a self's progeny being guaranteed a better existence (which is really just self-perpetuation, not love).

I really, really love your magazine and where its going, although I'm probably about the furthest thing from your typical reader. I work for a massive global business consulting firm, and I happen to be an executive in my company's consumer products group. With a focus on Retail. I support the global war on terror if it means my children will have a safer world to live in, even if we got it off to a shitty, corporately driven start. I loathe the culture of shop, shop, shop, me, me, me, that we live in, and I'm an enthusiastic environmentalist. I'm a deeply reformed Presbyterian.

But you seem to promote a balanced and open attitude towards these many of these vital issues, and that's key. I hope that much of what you're pushing for you someday see. And, true to my consulting nature - I'm just trying to help you do it better, faster, more efficiently. See it as the gift it really is - then change will come.

Right so I used to have this blog I used to write on. Once upon a time.

So what's up?

Last week was Chicago M-W and then off to Orlando for my operating group's management conference. Which was basically state of the operating group during the day and o.p.e.n. b.a.r. during the night. I'm old and sleep deprived and so I was in bed by 2 or 3am after plenty of drinks both W and Tr nights, and both following mornings I awoke to voicemails/text msgs from my higher ups threatening to fire me if I didn't show face at the bar RIGHT NOW (which happened to be 3 or 4 in the morning). I'm getting to the point that I can't party at the industry level anymore.

Maybe it was just their one time to let loose. I can hope.

Saturday was errands and working on today's lesson, and then that evening was the wonderful, the epic, the ever-blissful Cooke Christmas Party. Met lots of great new people and saw lots of old friends I don't keep up with like I should. I stayed later than I should have and of course missed out on my one chance at 8 hours of straight sleep for the past/next week or two.

And then it was today and church and youth group and home and laundry and football and pack and football and...blog and go to bed. I have to be on my way to the airport in roughly six hours, joy. Oh and caught up on some of the drawing for Christmas presents. Haven't really drawn seriously in quite a bit, and it feels good to be doing so again.

So...from here...

Its Chicago, fly back to NYC, drive to Boston, back to NYC, back to Chicago, home for Christmas (a very white one), DFW for New Years where K-train is getting all married up on the Eve, back to Chicago, then back to my own bed sometime in early Jan. So I'll have tonight and perhaps two other nights between now and then in said bed, which is where I'm going now.

Bleak hope to blog something of some substance before Christmas. Doubtful.

Oh and happy December. 10 days late, for cry-yi-yi.

So I've been watching parts of Brokeback Mountain lately as its on HBO every night I'm in the hotel. Not the gross part(s?) but enough to get a picture. They are two great actors after all and its clear to see that these parts will probably be career high points for both of them.

Anyway, I still of course consider homosexuality to be a perversion of God's natural order, but one thing I realized watching some of this is that I regularly watch movies where people break plenty of the ten commandments. And this movie was more about breaking a law that isn't even expressly mentioned there. Kind of puts things in perspective, even if its a gay one.

Meanwhile one of the DVD's I've had tossed in my work bag to get watched again sometime soon is Seven.

I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other so much as ruminating on how we tend to focus on certain things - perhaps ones that we don't struggle with so much - and look down on them from our vantage point of 'lesser evils.'

...

Staying at the nice Westin in town for a couple of days, they have a lap pool which is just freaking great, as I can't run. I don't think I blogged it yet, but I was up to 8 miles a day by the time I left for Greece, and shortly thereafter, whereupon I decided to either get a hairline fracture in my upper femur or tear some kind of deep muscle tear in my upper thigh (the ilioipsofacto or something like that - only smart people know all those Latin names for leg muscles). So, yeah.

Here until Wednesday and then its off to Orlando for a management conference with the execs in my operating group, so that should be good networking times.

...

And, disaster struck last week. I lost not only my favorite belt - black, worn almost everywhere I've ever been, durable, enduring...just the perfect belt. I'm still hoping the hotel from last week might have found it. Bleak hope.

Hat, on the other hand, is a simply unmitigated nightmare. Hat has been with me just as long if not longer, and its even more perfect for my noggin than belt was for my waist. I've actually worried from time to time about losing it, and on my trip back home this weekend, I lost it at some point. I'll check the lost and founds for the rental car place, but I'm pretty sure hat has left me for good.