First, the puddles: when a kid walks by a puddle, he/she stomps it. There’s a simple, instinctive drive to do the thing that gives the most immediate pleasure.

I’m reminded of the classic 5th-season Simpsons episode “Bart’s Inner Child”, in which a self-styled self-help expert, played by Albert Brooks, urges Bart to just “do what [he] feels like,” i.e. pay no attention to consequences. The whole town of Springfield jumps on board the bandwagon. Mayhem, of course, ensues. The moral, taken in isolation, is that short-term grasping can ruin long-term happiness, especially when one considers the sum of both one’s own personal happiness as well as the happiness of those around us.

But is this *always* true? Is there a threshold at which, having suffered the pangs of regret following hundreds or thousands of lost opportunities for short-term, revel-in-the-moment happiness, we actually end up on the wrong side of the equation? Our sober, duly considered choices that are intended to bring long-term happiness end up being, in retrospect, not so happy at all?

Insert your domain of choice here: Career, relationships, religion, hobbies, friends, etc. etc. etc. The ageless recommendation to work hard to prepare for the eventual winter, probably best explained in modern terms by Max Weber, fails us if winter comes and we still find ourselves unsatisfied.

Is there somewhere a 50 year old man, sitting alone at his desk, contemplating his 10,000-item stamp collection, and thinking What. The. Fuck? Or is there a woman on her deathbed, who has followed dutifully the tenets of a particularly restrictive church, having a personal realization that there is no God? Can you imagine a woman who, having made the safe choice in her youth by marrying a good provider – even if he was a little boring –, wakes up, post-menopausal and wild with anxiety that she has lived her whole life on the wrong side of a choice made twenty years earlier?

I suppose that this is one of the – well, if not *fun*, at least *interesting* parts of being human – nothing is predictable, nothing is preordained, and every day we’re confronted with choices, large and small, whose net effects can be monumental.

If you have never had the pleasure of reading 20th-century American humorist James Thurber, you might want to visit your local library and pick up Fables for Our Time, which is Thurber’s modern take on historical fables. I liked this description of Thurber’s work I found in a critical essay by Ruth Maharg:

Thurber demonstrates the complexity of life by depicting the world as an uncertain, precarious place, where few reliable guidelines exist.

Indeed. What guidelines (unconscious or otherwise) are you operating under? Should you spend some time thinking about them? Hit me up in the comments.

If you’re a fan of unique and slightly disturbing imagery, you should check out Morbid Anatomy.  This blog, by Joanna Ebelstein, is a treasure trove of anatomic visuals from around the world, both human and animal.

There’s also a Morbid Anatomy Flickr group.

This is a great find.  Joanna obviously has a great love for the subject, and it shows.  This blog is a real labor of love.  Check it out!

I’ve never even heard of this movie – and now, probably never will again. Kyle Smith of the New York Post sums it up thusly:

The banality of evil has met its match in the banality of "Good," a Holocaust parable that barely registers a pulse.

What were the most annoying, most repetitive, most mind-numbingly banal phrases of 2008 that you hope die and stay dead before they can infect 2009?  Without further buildup, here are mine:

1. Ready on day one
2. Maverick
3. I can haz <anything>
4. You betcha
5. Commander-in-chief
6. Boots on the ground
7. Hockey mom
8. Look
9. Bailout
10. President Bush

What are yours?

Last night my wife and I went to see Amy Grant at the Overlake Christian Church in Redmond, WA. This was a polite show, a conservative show; the crowd was mostly young, female, and capital-C Christian; none of the liquored-up hooliganism you might have seen in your younger days at a Def Leppard or Guns ‘n Roses concert.

First, about the venue: HOLY SHIT. This was my first time in a so-called megachurch, and I can not believe how big the auditorium is. You could fit a small city in there, with room left over. I felt like I was in a hockey arena. Pretty impressive, but as someone who is used to the old-school architecture of St. Mark’s Cathedral, OCC felt a little sterile.

Amy performed from her selection of older hits – this was the “Lead Me On” tour – and did well, if not spectacularly. The funny thing about Amy Grant is that she’s not a terribly great vocalist, but despite that, she has a vocal presence that is compelling and attractive.

She was accompanied by eight musicians that she has toured with for many years; they were steady and predictable, with no (apparent) mistakes. The only gaffe of the whole evening came during a rendition of a new, unrecorded song that Amy is working on, when she had a hiccup on a guitar chord.

Funniest thing: Amy Grant can not dance. You might imagine that a popular performer with 25+ years of stage experience might have discovered some shake and bake somewhere out on tour; but no, she dances like a white person – i.e., poorly. She’s not as bad as Elaine from Seinfeld, but she’s definitely no Grace Kelly either. It doesn’t matter, though – my wife and I both enjoyed the show, and that’s what counts.

Two days ago, a couple of skinheads were arrested and charged with plotting to assassinate Barack Obama an many other African-Americans.  After breathing a sigh of relief that these idiots got caught, one thing stood out: the neo-nazis have their own numerology!

In all, the two men whom officials describe as neo-Nazi skinheads planned to kill 88 people — 14 by beheading, according to documents unsealed in U.S. District Court in Jackson, Tenn. The numbers 88 and 14 are symbolic in the white supremacist community. [...] The numbers 14 and 88 are symbols in skinhead culture, referring to a 14-word phrase attributed to an imprisoned white supremacist: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” and to the eighth letter of the alphabet, H. Two “8″s or “H”s stand for “Heil Hitler.”

Aside from being momentarily surprised that these guys could even count to eight, this sort of coded message doesn’t surprise me. Numbers have been used for centuries as short-circuit references to emotionally-charged subjects: 666, 911, hell, even 69.

Regarding the number 88, I was even more surprised to pick up Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion last night and read on page 76:

I half rose from my seat to demand of the grinning giant looming above me in a sweat shirt, number 88, “Whither wilt thou lead me?” fixing him with the most withering Shakespearean gaze my goof-balled eves could muster.

This is Leland Stanford Stamper, dreaming of a reunion with his older half-brother Hank, who has his own views about racial purity. On page 89, Hank brings up the “Family Anthem”, of which part is:

I figured … that we’re a family first, and that’s the most important. We got to keep ourselfs free of racial pollution. We ain’t some bunch o n——s or J–s or ordinary people; we’re Stampers.

Also interesting: On the bus trip home to confront the psychological mess he’s made of his relationship with Hank, Leland passes a road sign that says “88 Miles to Eugene’s Second Market”.

Could this 88-means-Hitler nonsense have been around in the early 1960’s when Kesey wrote his book? Could he have been aware of it and used it as a hidden shorthand for Hank Stamper’s racial attitudes, or of rural Oregonians in general? I suppose anything is possible.

This is another remake of Karl Fisch’s famous Shift Happens presentation. It’s an animated version with some great background music that I can *almost* identify…if you’re into thought-provoking, inspirational presentations, then give this a try.

http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=x7aVOMrlfkkijQwcLllwk6WjB5JE0zrF

This is another remake of Karl Fisch’s famous Shift Happens presentation. It’s an animated version with some great background music that I can *almost* identify…if you’re into thought-provoking, inspirational presentations, then give this a try.

http://release.theplatform.com/content.select?pid=x7aVOMrlfkkijQwcLllwk6WjB5JE0zrF

I just saw, for the first time ever, a reference to “96 hours” when referring to elapsed time. That’s four days to you and me.

I *think* that this is an indication, albeit a small one, that what pundits have been calling the 24 hour news cycle is more real than ever before.

Data point #2: I was watching Olbermann tonight and he made a passing reference to the McCain Blackberry brouhaha as if it were ancient history, even though the briefing that kicked off the incident took place only yesterday morning (about 38 hours ago).

Data point #3: We’re barely over the collapse of one financial institution when we are eagerly anticipating news of the next. Lehman Brothers? Old news. Bear Sterns? Pleistiocene.

I might have more to blog on this later, but this addiction to recency is an interesting phenomenon.

p.s. I probably also noticed this because I’ve been reading a lot of Charles Stross and Vernor Vinge, and they both use their own alternate time systems in their novels – a decimal-based system – kiloseconds, megaseconds, gigaseconds, etc.

Browsing around while working this morning, I was stoked to find a album of tracks featuring Luciana (who I love) – along with a link to buy directly from iTunes.  “Yow!” says I, “I’ll buy this album right away!”

But I can’t.

The album is only available on the UK version of iTunes, and my account isn’t authorized to buy music from that store.  And there’s no (apparent) way to authorize my account for the UK.

We’re in a global economy now, stupids!  Bits have no borders.  EPIC FAIL.  Now I’m just waiting for my iTunes 8 download to complete so I can top off my frustration level with a Blue Screen of Death.