Links and things that I’ve run across recently.
First Snow
Or to quote Lorelai Gilmore: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have flakes. Flakes have been sighted. Flakage, if you will, has begun.”
Yesterday afternoon and into the night, the season’s first snow in the Boston area (and if I recall correctly, in New England generally).
I settled in, and popped in Gilmore Girls season 1, disc 2, episode 8, “Love, War, and Snow.” Sigh.
A Motto Worth Remembering
For creative people, these two words are a life-saver. (By Bob Baker.)
There’s a two-word phrase I’ve been using a lot in recent years. The words have a pretty profound meaning behind them — and they have everything to do with achieving creative success and fulfillment.
But I’ve discovered a surprising thing about them: These words are often misunderstood by many people.
Here they are: “serve others.”
The Storm that Tried to Steal Shabbat
I just had to pass along this story of a community of New York Jews who survived the Sabbath in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.
Halloween Is Over, but Thanksgiving Comes First!
Some photos from the day after Halloween.
If you haven’t “like”d the Thanksgiving Comes First page on Facebook yet, here it is.
But there’s a silver lining to all the holiday music being trotted out so early: there are no Christmas “four-chord” songs.
Reviewing a Scene I Wrote Last Week…
What?! Oh… That says “immutable funk.”
Want a Good Political Laugh?
The night after election day, I woke up from a nightmare. In the dream, a child from evil told me he wanted to play a game in which he was going to bite my finger off. And then he actually tried to bite my finger off. And his jaws were vicious like a shark’s. His mother matter-of-factly explained to me that he tells you the truth about what he’s going to do.
Then he tried to bite off another part of my anatomy that I don’t care to talk about. And that’s what caused me to jolt awake, and I couldn’t get to sleep again.
But that’s not the political laugh that inspired this segment.
I’ve finally figured out the real difference between libertarians and conservatives: conservatives are experts at composing hurtful rhetoric, and they engage in it proudly.
Today, on Facebook, writing to a group of people, as part of a much longer comment, I said, “You can mope around and complain how the country is going down the toilet; or you can resolve to do something about it.” One particular conservative apparently took that comment personally, promptly melted down, and reasserted that the country is indeed being sucked down the toilet, which apparently is my fault.
“Oy vey,” I replied. “Just once I would love to have an intelligent conversation with a conservative that didn’t degenerate into name-calling.” And that’s the truth. Then I added: “Hey, at least she didn’t call me a liberal. That’s an improvement.” Which is also the truth, because it shows a certain amount of intelligence and nuance.
And so she replied by telling me that she is intelligent; then she called me a liberal.
This is the kind of thing you just have to laugh at.
(By the way, I tend to have just as many problems with liberals. Just different problems.)
Hey! White Is a Color!
A young friend on Facebook recently referred to her “colored” friends and “non-colored” friends.
I think it’s time to reiterate the wise words of my darker-gray colleague, Michelle Hickman: “Shouldn’t we just accept the fact that there is only one true race? The Human Race.”
Today’s Quote
Indeed, movement is fundamental to the very existence of brains, which developed primarily to control movement, to predict the outcome of movement and remember the result of past movements. Plants, by contrast, never evolved brains since they did not need to do this.
(Joe Griffen and Ivan Tyrrell, Human Givens: A new approach to emotional health and clear thinking)