The Wide World of Tiny Nudges
Correspondent:: HellPope Huey
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 03:09:10 GMT
--------
A friend in for-godssakes Australia recently suggested to me that some
lives find their highest merit in simply being motivators for ideas or
small acts in the lives of others. With greater vigor and with an
increasingly smaller chance of it, we are brazenly told that we can all
be stars, heroes, President, when the truth is, those things are not
only attainable under iffy conditions at best, but might not be exactly
dazzling if you did find yourself on one of those hazy peaks. Bigger
truly isn't always better, especially when it comes to SUVs and various
personal bumps. His statement caused me to once again consider my
personal belief that the smallest, blip-on-the-screen things are the
vital pivots for larger ones and decide their most likely outcomes
before the paint is really dry.
There is a natural order to most things; if you step about 12" to the
left, you can usually get a bowling ball to go down the middle line and
thereby resist its more natural attraction to the gutter and your foot.
Stubbornly standing in the middle of the lane will greatly diminish your
chances of success, unless you throw overhand. Then you will probably
break to the left and regain a bit of advantage in your aim until they
eject you for being insane.
Having 4 young children of his own, my Aussie compadre pondered the
idea of the "validity" of the life of a theoretical small child who died
and what value it had. I suggested that "validity" was the wrong word,
as it implied a level of personal activity and effectiveness in the
world a child has yet to reach. It seemed to reach up and twist the tail
of his previous statement. Until the age of 4 or 5, when they finally
begin to grasp the concept of themselves as members of a larger
community than just Me and Mama, the only value they CAN have is in
their effect on their immediate clan, which places it squarely back in
the lap of Constant Reader. The economy of scale is just as immutable as
that bowling ball.
Try weighing it in the case of Dr. William Minor, who was one of the
more prominent contributors to the original Oxford English Dictionary.
The most interesting aspect of this is that he did the bulk of his work
from the inner sanctum of an insane asylum in England, where he was
placed after shooting dead in the street a man he did not even know,
during a momentary psychotic episode. As he had been a doctor during the
Civil War (during which he experienced traumatic events thought to have
helped to trigger his schizophrenia) and was an unusually learned and
cultured man, he was allowed great leeway that afforded him the freedom
to keep in his adjoining cells a large number of books. Those he arrived
with and others he bought with his Army pension as the years progressed
gave him a welcomed advantage in the detailed work that, ironically,
only his illness afforded him the time to pursue.
The minutes you spend on a grinding job or doing your taxes are not the
same as those spent in a hammock or making love. Sure, they tick by at
the same pace, but their shape and weight are poles apart. Its a neat
trick to make good use of them, to get past the clumsy things that
diminish them. Its one kind of task to make good use of them yourself,
another to keep outsiders from taking them away entirely. Of course,
once you have children, time changes shape in a manner that makes the
rest go rather pale. Then you are on a right-now basis that rivals dog-
or cat-time, in no small part because children have the dreaded Busy
Hands and aren't at all likely to stay in their boxes.
There is an art to time management that is so very fluid, it pushes
aside discussions of pragmatism in business and the like and brings into
play the sliding scale of where that time is applied. Your boss is
important; your child is important; yet there is no question that in a
pinch, the child will come first. One of the largest tasks one faces is
imparting to people that even when the demands of life pull you away,
they still loom large for you. This is especially hard to impart to a
child, whose world has yet to develop the capacity for a longer view.
When you can get them to see that like the motorized solar system models
that make the planets orbit the Sun at relative speeds, they are more
like the Sun to you than a mere satellite, you make a huge leap for
their sake as well as your own. Children can withstand virtually
anything but your abuse or your indifference, which is itself a form of
abuse. They are tender, true, yet also quite resilient when confronted
honestly. If you can find the right words and do the key things, those
orbits become solid rather than erratic. The potential noose becomes a
string of pearls to which you can add with each good word, each act of
rememberance or appreciation. The center can hold.
I wonder how many people, myself included, idly wish for a time machine
they could use to go back and unsay or undo things that went into the
dumper. I also wonder if, like in the very well-made but also
heart-grinding and violent film "The Butterfly Effect," some repairs
might lead to far worse situations than the things you wanted to make
right. Of course, I'd be remiss if I did not allow that some things can
be fixed after the fact, but an apology, for example, takes two
participants to work: one to recognize that it needs giving and one to
accept it. A handshake cannot be enacted by one person alone. Well, it
could be attempted by a New York performance artist covered in chocolate
syrup and ants, but that's another event you might want to go back and
erase.
I recently read an interesting article wherein the author suggested
that the old saw about there being two kinds of people had a more
down-to-earth center. Rather than addressing whether or not you put the
catsup on your fries or next to them, it came down to personal style.
The first kind operate on a basis of what seems right or wrong, from a
certain moral center that has consideration of a thing's effect on
others and the possible repercussions. The second are focused on
personal gain as much as not and a whats-in-it-for-me view that sees
others as stepping stones to some goal.
Clearly, you can't get much done if you constantly wring your hands
over every remotely possible upset to anyone in sight; taken to excess,
that is, of course, bleeding-heart B.S. that hinders the doing of
productive work. On the other hand, a fair number of hard-chargers,
being as they are, often get much more muted or quietly frustrating
results because their ability to press ahead or shmooze is so lacking in
the grease that turns the wheels of the vital smaller details, the
reward is notably lessened. Being self-centered, they only snort at the
more limited returns without grasping the genesis of why things did not
turn out in a more golden fashion. It sometimes seems pointless to slow
down long enough to even try it, but you can also be rewarded by the
stunned look on the face of the person to whom you gave a little slack
at a key moment. As with the New York policeman who said he had a much
easier time with some street people by merely calling them "Sir," that
little show of regard can have a great impact, simply because it is so
regrettably rare. Well I'll be dipped in manna; the gentle touch
actually worked, THAT time, at least.
The Internet is often a grave enemy in this process. Even when you
click swimmingly with someone online, there is the haunting fact that
the lack of vocal inflection, facial cues and a certain sort of
conversational start-&-stop only in-person time can confer is denied
you. So much is freeze-dried in bytes. There is not only a vital tone in
audio, but one in simple electrical fields or "aura" that can turn
thunderheads into spring zephyrs. If you are not given that chance in
person, you can not only miss the boat but fall off the dock, into the
waiting jaws of Chompy. Ooo, yuck!
The Apollo spacecraft made use of a class of fuels known as
hypergolics, which are binary in nature. Bring them into the same place
and POW, instant combustion. If some wag had filled one of the chambers
with Boone's Farm Avacado Wine, pffft, nuttin'. I've seen more than a
few get all puffy and ask why you didn't like your wine. Damn their
hides. They should be dropped into the middle of a Mexican prison clad
only in a thong and a messy lipstick job.
What, you say 'tis a barge bursting with liberal bilge? Nay, I say thee
not and a severe nether- regional intrusion for your impudence. As the
world becomes tighter, more crowded in key places, more perilous, it
seems as if quieter things are taking a real beating. Art, music that
doesn't start with ill-fitting plastic visuals, a little compassion, a
week to consider an awkward event before (or rather than) exploding on
an imagined offender, a little capitulation for the sake of the other
person, all are being assaulted, sneered at, devalued in ways that
diminish and even destroy the crucial underpinnings. Only after the fact
do many of the hard-chargers come to a halt before the wreckage and even
then, the response is often merely external: "Hey, who screwed this
pooch???" Don't look now, bucko, but I think it just might be you.
To the victor may go the spoils, but "spoiled" can be exactly the
result, diminishing the gains and tarnishing the future. Some victories
aren't worth winning and have a short shelf-life. The strongest person
can be the one who held back or moved ahead for the sake of another,
rather than living in such a world of only one that they glossed over
their opportunities to make lasting impacts which went to the bone and
the heart, as opposed to merely glancing off the surface. The Magic
8-Ball has a section that reads "Please try again." That one can sure be
a bear to wrestle, but then, its both your biggest challenge... and your
best hope.
That said, why in the three-headed Hell am I willing to take the risk
of appearing to be a self-appointed, flatus-filled blimp in assuming
such a stance? Why, because I am a towering figure of a man with the
guts to look in my own mirror and say "Don't look now, bucko, but I
think it just might be YOU this time." Sigh... I lose more mirrors that
way. For better or far worse, I'm HellPope Huey and I approve this big,
fat message.
--
HellPope Huey ~ www.subgenius.com
Why the f*** am I HERE?
Oh yeah, for the buffet
"Evil beware: we have waffles."
- 'Teen Titans"
"Do not remove a fly
from your friend's forehead
with a hatchet."
- Chinese Proverb
Correspondent:: CyberDroog
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 05:57:17 GMT
--------
On Sun, 20 Feb 2005 03:09:10 GMT, HellPope Huey
wrote:
> A friend in for-godssakes Australia recently suggested to me that some
>lives find their highest merit in simply being motivators for ideas or
>small acts in the lives of others. With greater vigor and with an
>increasingly smaller chance of it, we are brazenly told that we can all
>be stars, heroes, President, when the truth is, those things are not
>only attainable under iffy conditions at best, but might not be exactly
>dazzling if you did find yourself on one of those hazy peaks. Bigger
>truly isn't always better, especially when it comes to SUVs and various
>personal bumps. His statement caused me to once again consider my
>personal belief that the smallest, blip-on-the-screen things are the
>vital pivots for larger ones and decide their most likely outcomes
>before the paint is really dry.
It is a very human need for people to value even the smallest contribution
to anything. It seems like most people would cash it in if they couldn't
feel they were worth something.
Somehow it reminds me of a line in Liar Liar. Jim Carey's son said
something about beauty being on the inside and Carey said "That's just
something you say to ugly people."
> There is a natural order to most things; if you step about 12" to the
>left, you can usually get a bowling ball to go down the middle line and
>thereby resist its more natural attraction to the gutter and your foot.
>Stubbornly standing in the middle of the lane will greatly diminish your
>chances of success, unless you throw overhand. Then you will probably
>break to the left and regain a bit of advantage in your aim until they
>eject you for being insane.
Most bowlers I've seen tend to walk pretty near the middle, and throw the
ball far outside. It is the spin that brings the ball back to center.
Maybe that's the real lesson. When you can put enough spin on anything,
you can come out ahead.
--
REFORM, v. A thing that mostly satisfies reformers opposed to
reformation.
- Ambrose Bierce
Correspondent:: "«BONEHEAD>>"
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 07:49:57 GMT
--------
"HellPope Huey" wrote in message
news:Grinningbastard-3697F5.21103319022005@news1.west.earthlink.net...
>
> A friend in for-godssakes Australia recently suggested to me that some
> lives find their highest merit in simply being motivators for ideas or
> small acts in the lives of others. With greater vigor and with an
> increasingly smaller chance of it, we are brazenly told that we can all
> be stars, heroes, President, when the truth is, those things are not
> only attainable under iffy conditions at best, but might not be exactly
> dazzling if you did find yourself on one of those hazy peaks. Bigger
> truly isn't always better, especially when it comes to SUVs and various
> personal bumps. His statement caused me to once again consider my
> personal belief that the smallest, blip-on-the-screen things are the
> vital pivots for larger ones and decide their most likely outcomes
> before the paint is really dry.
>
> There is a natural order to most things; if you step about 12" to the
> left, you can usually get a bowling ball to go down the middle line and
> thereby resist its more natural attraction to the gutter and your foot.
> Stubbornly standing in the middle of the lane will greatly diminish your
> chances of success, unless you throw overhand. Then you will probably
> break to the left and regain a bit of advantage in your aim until they
> eject you for being insane.
>
> Having 4 young children of his own, my Aussie compadre pondered the
> idea of the "validity" of the life of a theoretical small child who died
> and what value it had. I suggested that "validity" was the wrong word,
> as it implied a level of personal activity and effectiveness in the
> world a child has yet to reach. It seemed to reach up and twist the tail
> of his previous statement. Until the age of 4 or 5, when they finally
> begin to grasp the concept of themselves as members of a larger
> community than just Me and Mama, the only value they CAN have is in
> their effect on their immediate clan, which places it squarely back in
> the lap of Constant Reader. The economy of scale is just as immutable as
> that bowling ball.
>
> Try weighing it in the case of Dr. William Minor, who was one of the
> more prominent contributors to the original Oxford English Dictionary.
> The most interesting aspect of this is that he did the bulk of his work
> from the inner sanctum of an insane asylum in England, where he was
> placed after shooting dead in the street a man he did not even know,
> during a momentary psychotic episode. As he had been a doctor during the
> Civil War (during which he experienced traumatic events thought to have
> helped to trigger his schizophrenia) and was an unusually learned and
> cultured man, he was allowed great leeway that afforded him the freedom
> to keep in his adjoining cells a large number of books. Those he arrived
> with and others he bought with his Army pension as the years progressed
> gave him a welcomed advantage in the detailed work that, ironically,
> only his illness afforded him the time to pursue.
>
> The minutes you spend on a grinding job or doing your taxes are not the
> same as those spent in a hammock or making love. Sure, they tick by at
> the same pace, but their shape and weight are poles apart. Its a neat
> trick to make good use of them, to get past the clumsy things that
> diminish them. Its one kind of task to make good use of them yourself,
> another to keep outsiders from taking them away entirely. Of course,
> once you have children, time changes shape in a manner that makes the
> rest go rather pale. Then you are on a right-now basis that rivals dog-
> or cat-time, in no small part because children have the dreaded Busy
> Hands and aren't at all likely to stay in their boxes.
>
> There is an art to time management that is so very fluid, it pushes
> aside discussions of pragmatism in business and the like and brings into
> play the sliding scale of where that time is applied. Your boss is
> important; your child is important; yet there is no question that in a
> pinch, the child will come first. One of the largest tasks one faces is
> imparting to people that even when the demands of life pull you away,
> they still loom large for you. This is especially hard to impart to a
> child, whose world has yet to develop the capacity for a longer view.
> When you can get them to see that like the motorized solar system models
> that make the planets orbit the Sun at relative speeds, they are more
> like the Sun to you than a mere satellite, you make a huge leap for
> their sake as well as your own. Children can withstand virtually
> anything but your abuse or your indifference, which is itself a form of
> abuse. They are tender, true, yet also quite resilient when confronted
> honestly. If you can find the right words and do the key things, those
> orbits become solid rather than erratic. The potential noose becomes a
> string of pearls to which you can add with each good word, each act of
> rememberance or appreciation. The center can hold.
>
> I wonder how many people, myself included, idly wish for a time machine
> they could use to go back and unsay or undo things that went into the
> dumper. I also wonder if, like in the very well-made but also
> heart-grinding and violent film "The Butterfly Effect," some repairs
> might lead to far worse situations than the things you wanted to make
> right. Of course, I'd be remiss if I did not allow that some things can
> be fixed after the fact, but an apology, for example, takes two
> participants to work: one to recognize that it needs giving and one to
> accept it. A handshake cannot be enacted by one person alone. Well, it
> could be attempted by a New York performance artist covered in chocolate
> syrup and ants, but that's another event you might want to go back and
> erase.
>
> I recently read an interesting article wherein the author suggested
> that the old saw about there being two kinds of people had a more
> down-to-earth center. Rather than addressing whether or not you put the
> catsup on your fries or next to them, it came down to personal style.
> The first kind operate on a basis of what seems right or wrong, from a
> certain moral center that has consideration of a thing's effect on
> others and the possible repercussions. The second are focused on
> personal gain as much as not and a whats-in-it-for-me view that sees
> others as stepping stones to some goal.
>
> Clearly, you can't get much done if you constantly wring your hands
> over every remotely possible upset to anyone in sight; taken to excess,
> that is, of course, bleeding-heart B.S. that hinders the doing of
> productive work. On the other hand, a fair number of hard-chargers,
> being as they are, often get much more muted or quietly frustrating
> results because their ability to press ahead or shmooze is so lacking in
> the grease that turns the wheels of the vital smaller details, the
> reward is notably lessened. Being self-centered, they only snort at the
> more limited returns without grasping the genesis of why things did not
> turn out in a more golden fashion. It sometimes seems pointless to slow
> down long enough to even try it, but you can also be rewarded by the
> stunned look on the face of the person to whom you gave a little slack
> at a key moment. As with the New York policeman who said he had a much
> easier time with some street people by merely calling them "Sir," that
> little show of regard can have a great impact, simply because it is so
> regrettably rare. Well I'll be dipped in manna; the gentle touch
> actually worked, THAT time, at least.
>
> The Internet is often a grave enemy in this process. Even when you
> click swimmingly with someone online, there is the haunting fact that
> the lack of vocal inflection, facial cues and a certain sort of
> conversational start-&-stop only in-person time can confer is denied
> you. So much is freeze-dried in bytes. There is not only a vital tone in
> audio, but one in simple electrical fields or "aura" that can turn
> thunderheads into spring zephyrs. If you are not given that chance in
> person, you can not only miss the boat but fall off the dock, into the
> waiting jaws of Chompy. Ooo, yuck!
>
> The Apollo spacecraft made use of a class of fuels known as
> hypergolics, which are binary in nature. Bring them into the same place
> and POW, instant combustion. If some wag had filled one of the chambers
> with Boone's Farm Avacado Wine, pffft, nuttin'. I've seen more than a
> few get all puffy and ask why you didn't like your wine. Damn their
> hides. They should be dropped into the middle of a Mexican prison clad
> only in a thong and a messy lipstick job.
>
> What, you say 'tis a barge bursting with liberal bilge? Nay, I say thee
> not and a severe nether- regional intrusion for your impudence. As the
> world becomes tighter, more crowded in key places, more perilous, it
> seems as if quieter things are taking a real beating. Art, music that
> doesn't start with ill-fitting plastic visuals, a little compassion, a
> week to consider an awkward event before (or rather than) exploding on
> an imagined offender, a little capitulation for the sake of the other
> person, all are being assaulted, sneered at, devalued in ways that
> diminish and even destroy the crucial underpinnings. Only after the fact
> do many of the hard-chargers come to a halt before the wreckage and even
> then, the response is often merely external: "Hey, who screwed this
> pooch???" Don't look now, bucko, but I think it just might be you.
>
> To the victor may go the spoils, but "spoiled" can be exactly the
> result, diminishing the gains and tarnishing the future. Some victories
> aren't worth winning and have a short shelf-life. The strongest person
> can be the one who held back or moved ahead for the sake of another,
> rather than living in such a world of only one that they glossed over
> their opportunities to make lasting impacts which went to the bone and
> the heart, as opposed to merely glancing off the surface. The Magic
> 8-Ball has a section that reads "Please try again." That one can sure be
> a bear to wrestle, but then, its both your biggest challenge... and your
> best hope.
>
> That said, why in the three-headed Hell am I willing to take the risk
> of appearing to be a self-appointed, flatus-filled blimp in assuming
> such a stance? Why, because I am a towering figure of a man with the
> guts to look in my own mirror and say "Don't look now, bucko, but I
> think it just might be YOU this time." Sigh... I lose more mirrors that
> way. For better or far worse, I'm HellPope Huey and I approve this big,
> fat message.
>
Damn you ..it's 3 am and you got me all to thinkin...
especially the kid part, seeing as my little time disturbance
is about to turn a year old, I must say that the time I spend with
her is a helluva lot more profound than the time I spend
with the majority of humans...
It's been awhile since you spewed forth such a diatribe... thanks...
--
"I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious." Albert Einstein
Correspondent:: HellPope Huey
Date: Sun, 20 Feb 2005 19:12:02 GMT
--------
In article ,
"«BONEHEAD>>" wrote:
> Damn you ..it's 3 am and you got me all to thinkin...
I am sorry. I know that's not very popular around here unless someone
is getting their tit put in a wringer, heh.
> especially the kid part, seeing as my little time disturbance
> is about to turn a year old, I must say that the time I spend with
> her is a helluva lot more profound than the time I spend
> with the majority of humans...
I have a Dad-Gland, but am too twitchy to make a good father, I think.
Its a helluva job and I have some regard for anyone who can turn out a
kid who is not a serial killer. Its all a crapshoot and your best hope
is to simply deliver good course-corrections as you go so they have an
honest chance to Make Good.
I DO like children (no, not fried, up yers) because they are still
relatively untainted and more honest by default.
I had a friend's son of about 6 ask me if there were real monsters
after we'd watched a scary-ish flick. I explained the art of latex
molding and photography to him in simple terms and suggested that the
nearest things to real monsters were sharks and ugly bosses.
I said "Because those things are true, you should enjoy those movies
because they are exciting and fun, but understand the real foundation
under them. You don't have to be afraid deep down, so its fun to be a
little scared for a while. Does that make sense?" He thought so.
All he wanted was a little clarity and reassurance, like most of us. I
may have blunted his monster-fun a bit, but I may also have done him a
solid and broadened his subsequent enjoyments. Hope so; he's a smart kid
with great parents, so it was a quality moment.
> It's been awhile since you spewed forth such a diatribe... thanks...
I'd post more of 'em, but as I get older, it becomes harder to grow
back the flamed-off TAIL-MEAT that often results, BWAHAHAHA. After all,
I am not a lizard; I just play one on Usenet, praise "Bob."
--
HellPope Huey ~ www.subgenius.com
Lassie was a lesbian
I know I'm ugly.
The dog closes his eyes
when he humps my leg.
- Rodney Dangerfield
Magnetism is one of
the Six Fundamental Forces of the Universe,
with the other five being
Gravity, Duct Tape, Whining, Remote Control
and The Force That Pulls Dogs
Toward The Groins Of Strangers.
~Dave Barry