Lifestyle & Culture
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Let’s Talk About Penises
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 28, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, March 28th, 2011Or maybe not. When you don’t have dick to write about, you can always reach for the low hanging fruit.
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I got an e-mail from a friend this morning asking me what I was going to write about today. I replied with “To be honest, I don’t have dick“. I don’t usually talk that way; this was an old friend who never seems to understand what I’m talking about unless I punctuate every sentence with an f-bomb or reference to bodily functions or the more personal aspects of human anatomy. A few minutes later he sent me a link to this interactive map of penis sizes around the world (there’s another one that correlates the data with IQ if you’re interested). This made me realize that although I’d written about Dick a lot over the last couple years, I hadn’t written about penis since July 2008, and in that instance, it was a rather historically important penis. At this point I’d like to point out that I’m still not writing about penises, I’m writing about not writing about penises. And I have to say that in spite of this extended abstinence from penis (I mean, as a topic) and even after combing Dickipedia, I still came up with dick. So have I finally become just another example of The Peter Principle
Getting Unstuck
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 21, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Monday, March 21st, 2011We don’t have the answer, but we do have the question. What are you afraid of?
Do you ever get stuck? I mean, stuck in a big way, not just solving a problem, but really STUCK? Well, what I’m about to say may not help. I’m kind of stuck right now myself, and in the process of figuring out how to get unstuck. But maybe you can learn something from my bumbling. My first piece of advice? Don’t search “how to get unstuck” on Google. There are thousands of web pages out there, eager for your traffic, most of which serve up a shallow article about how to get unstuck. But odds are, you will end up feeling more stuck as you find yourself overwhelmed with all those thought-provoking ideas about being stuck. I just spent about twenty minutes doing that, and then remembered that I have most of the knowledge and tools right inside me to figure this out. Which means you probably do too, because – although I like to think I am – I’m really not that unique. So let’s start with basics. Although one of the likely causes of “feeling stuck” is some form of depression, that is the extent to which we’re going to touch on it. If you think this is a possibility, by all means examine the possibility with a qualified professional, it’s a common problem, and nothing to be ashamed about. So as we dig in, a little warning: rather than laying claim to answers, we’re going to ask questions. The first is: are you stuck doing something, or not doing something? I have ingeniously created a situation that involves both. I say “ingeniously”, because being stuck in a dead-end job can be an unfortunate side-effect of “living responsibly”, but I’m self-employed! It’s all my own doing! I’m involved in several projects right now, and with a couple of them, I feel like I’m swimming through concrete, and others, I’ve been completely stalled. But this is an important question. Are you stuck in the sense of immobilized creatively? Are you stuck in a negative relationship? Stuck in a dead end job or stalled project? Are you just plain bored with your existence? The solutions to the first and last items mentioned can be fairly easy to fix. If you’re stuck creatively, the worst thing you can do in most cases is ponder the fact that you’re stuck creatively. That brings all your focus to the “left brain”, a guaranteed brick wall for creativity. My worst experience with this recently was sitting down with a group of business people that were trying to name a new venture. They decided to meet at one person’s house, and “brainstorm”. After two hours, this group of people – not really “creative types” in the first place – had nothing but a large collective headache to show for their efforts. And a few really dumb names. The surest way to kill creativity is say “Okay! Now let’s be creative!” and then not hand out some fingerpaints or something. You’re putting the rational brain to work on an irrational problem. Even if you have to use weird tools like Roger Von Oech’s Creative Whack Pack
10 Essential Items To Survive The Coming Apocalypse
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on March 15, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Tuesday, March 15th, 2011With the end of days clearly upon us, we thought it was time to finally assemble that survival kit. And since we’re afraid to leave the house, we thought we’d see if we could order it all on Amazon
  Amazon doesn’t sell REAL machine guns, but you can at least ANNOY THE HELL out of enemy invaders with this realistic BB gun replica . |
These are strange and troubling times. Global economic collapse, which was only prevented (or just delayed) by the nationalization of banks and industry. Border skirmishes in Korea. Continued war in Afghanistan and Iraq. Riots and revolution in the Mideast, massive civilian protests in Wisconsin. Earthquakes in Haiti, New Zealand, and Japan, where tsunamis and nuclear reactor meltdowns were added for extra apocalyptic horror. And in the most telling sign of all, America elects a black man as president. Who could ignore these obvious signs of the coming Armageddon? Well, not us; we started talking about preparations for the econopocalypse back in 2008 and have revisited the theme regularly since then. But with the official end of the world less than 650 days away, we thought maybe it’s time to take a more serious look at finally assembling those essential tools for surviving the apocalypse. We’re so frightened by recent events ourselves that we’re afraid to leave the office, so we decided to see if a person could secure all the supplies they need on Amazon. Aside from automatic weapons, water tanker, and razor wire, we think we did pretty well. See below.
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Wikileaks, The People
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 12, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Saturday, March 12th, 2011In an era of civil unrest driven by injustice and anonymous activism, you may already be a part of the revolution and just not realize it.
 This image makes more sense when you see the whole thing. |
I find it interesting that the media forces behind the political movement in America that fancies itself to be somehow modeled after the protests of the Boston Tea Party are amongst the loudest voices proclaiming that the teachers, fireman, police officers and others who are protesting to protect the livelihood of the working class in Wisconsin are “rabid mobs of criminals and thugs”. I also find it interesting that in spite of plans for a “day of rage”, the Saudi Arabian monarchy managed to prove once again that the best way to oppress people is to tell them that God wants it that way. And in efforts to squelch information elsewhere, it’s likely that the appeal by the lawyers of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange will fail, and he will be extradited to Sweden, and later be snagged by the US government, in keeping with the Swedish government’s previous complicity in US-organized rendition and torture. One minor problem the US government may face is where to torture people like Assange now; the Egyptian protesters seem to have breached their favorite destination for torture. Not to worry though, they can just stick him naked in a cell with Bradley Manning if they have to, right? But these are interesting times, and I don’t think that these conventional methods are going to stop the slowly growing sense of injustice that’s spreading around the world. It’s becoming difficult to even keep track of where exactly the unrest is; this CNN summary covers much of the Mideast, but almost no media sources are talking about what’s happening in Portugal for instance. And aside from the public protests, there’s another interesting movement afoot. One that will be very difficult to target as an “enemy”, because it has no body, no face, no singular agenda, and no headquarters. I’m not only talking about hacktivists like Wikileaks and Anonymous. I’m talking about people like me, and maybe you. People who have enough common sense to realize that in almost every country in the world, the concern for collective well-being is no longer about which political party is in office, but which corporations own them. Hacktivists will obviously play a role for a while, but in an environment of protests, whistleblowing, and crackdowns against them, it will be hard to keep the facts straight. One recent example of this was when, in an hilarious variation on the ancient adage “if you meet the buddha on the road, kill him“, the American media was hoodwinked in a huge way about the nature of the amorphous internet group Anonymous. MSNBC recently interviewed a fellow who claims to be a “senior strategist and propagandist” for Anonymous, and even tech blogs like this one took the bait and ran with it. People seem to just eat this stuff up; one of the few sources you’ll find that questions the likely fallacy of this fellow’s claims is TheOtherMcCain.com. It doesn’t take a genius to piece together that a group of extremely intelligent anarchistic programmers probably doesn’t send their chain-smoking general to lay out their agenda on MSNBC. Another example is a recent Gawker piece that asks What Does Anonymous Have on Bank of America?, and then goes on to basically say “nothing”. But that you should watch for that nothing this coming Monday. Careful Gawker, remember what happened last time you got Anonymous pissed off. But I personally expect to see more unrest, and to see it fueled by the kind of leaks that can only happen via the internet. Regardless of whether you approve of the specific actions of groups like Anonymous or Wikileaks, or individuals like Bradley Manning, they’re going to affect you. It may be impossible to intentionally engineer a bankrun, but the seed gets planted in the mind, and when the dirt comes out on a politician like Scott Walker in Wisconsin, we’ll see more events like the bankrun by Wisconsin fireman against M&I. Anonymous may be more on the mark than we think with the slogan “none of us is as cruel as all of us”. Read the rest of this entry »
Fake It ’til You Make It – Not Until You Break It
[ 2 Comments ]Posted on March 4, 2011 by admin in Lifestyle & Culture
Friday, March 4th, 2011Kidding yourself to get through tough times with your venture is a powerful tool. Just don’t make it your business model.
 Some of this content is excerpted from a book I’m working on. |
You’ve probably heard of the “fake it ’til you make it” approach. It has been espoused by everyone from Amway and Alcoholics Anonymous, to Zig Ziglar