1/18/2012 NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE NOTICE 1/18/2012
Under the provisions and authority of SOPA and PIPA this blog has been censored because the owner is rude, vulgar and just too damned independent for our taste. Adding this latest material to his FBI file, which was begun in the 1960s, we have also detained him for rendition under the powers granted by NDAA and DHS secret presidential signing order NNNN.
Good riddance, you snarky muthafuckah. Who's laughing now?
Sincerely,
The Man
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Ode to Chione
It's snowing. I was moved to bastardize some poetry.
SnowedOde to Chione
with apologies to John Keats and his Ode to Psyche
O Goddess! hear these tuneless tones rung
By rough enforcement and remembrance drear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own ‘cicle-frosted ear:
Surely I imagined, or did I see
The winged Chione with awakened eyes?
I wandered in my gard’n thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, cursing with surprise,
Saw two dour creatures, couched side by side
In deepest drift, beneath the whisp'ring flakes
On leaves and barren branches, where there ran
An alabaster mound, scarce espied:
'Mid hushed, cold-rooted flowers with fragrance died,
Blue, silver, and budded Tyrian no more,
They lay dormant with the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions blue;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed Hypnos,
While ready to pass kisses unnumbered
With tender eye-dawn of Aurorean Spring:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O frozen, fearsome dove?
His Chione true!
with apologies to John Keats and his Ode to Psyche
O Goddess! hear these tuneless tones rung
By rough enforcement and remembrance drear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own ‘cicle-frosted ear:
Surely I imagined, or did I see
The winged Chione with awakened eyes?
I wandered in my gard’n thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, cursing with surprise,
Saw two dour creatures, couched side by side
In deepest drift, beneath the whisp'ring flakes
On leaves and barren branches, where there ran
An alabaster mound, scarce espied:
'Mid hushed, cold-rooted flowers with fragrance died,
Blue, silver, and budded Tyrian no more,
They lay dormant with the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions blue;
Their lips touched not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed Hypnos,
While ready to pass kisses unnumbered
With tender eye-dawn of Aurorean Spring:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O frozen, fearsome dove?
His Chione true!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Love Post (blog carnival)
Love Post
(No, that’s not what I call my penis. His name is secret. Don’t ask cuz I won’t tell.)
Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word. Arnold Toynbee.
In Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta, Ernie K-Doe says, "Every time I call your name, I get such a thrill I can't explain." Maybe I should just stop there and you should go listen to Ernie, maybe even a couple of his tunes. Then again, I committed to writing a post for the carnival, so here goes.
My writing style tends toward the didactic. My first thoughts about how to compose a post about love for this blog carnival were in the vein of opening with a dictionary definition, followed by some Greek literary allusion(s) and definitions of the four types of love (agape, eros, philia, and storge) as delineated by our soi-disant philosophical ancestors, the Classical Greeks, then on to some more erudite, pontifical, literary excursions into an intellectually superficial explication of the abstract meaning of “love.”
Ain’t dat a load of crap? Sometimes I forget that I’ve embraced a shit-free diet even though I’m far from perfect at sticking to it. I’ll be the first to admit that we in the Christianized West have gone to great effort to separate intellect from emotion, to the detriment of both. Mens sana in corpore sano. That’s the ticket. Our contemporary popular stereotype of segregating people into nerds and. jocks, one OR the other, makes me very sad. Integration of our various selves into our single self is the key. The ability to fully love starts with self-love and, for me, that’s a difficult thing. I’ve been working on it for a while now; I’m getting there.
Then again, there’s that “love languages” concept, which I don’t find totally idiotic. There’s a kernel of sense in there. Interpreting another person’s style of expressing or feeling love can be a tricky business. Lots of aphorisms apply here; I like “assume positive intent.” That covers a multitude of sins. Or miscommunications. Sin is such a pejorative term.
At a simplistic level, I could boil my comments on this subject down to the classic observation that actions speak louder than words. I know a guy who always says, “I love being a dad.” [N.B. This is an exact quote.] Under my concept of assuming positive intent, I take that statement at face value. Saying that is an expression of love. However, over time, I have observed his actions which sometimes seem somewhat at odds with that phrase. I’m privy to the inner workings of my own family; I’m only guessing when I speak of other families’ dynamics, so what do I really know?
I love being a dad. Saying that is an expression of love and I, too, say that sometimes. I know he loves his kids; but his weltanschauung or Platonic Ideal of “love” is perhaps not congruent with mine. And that’s part of what makes talking about love difficult. It’s awfully subjective and our intellectual concept of ourselves and how we assume we might behave in a certain circumstance, spoken blithely to a receptive audience at cocktail hour, is not necessarily the same as our actual expressions or actions when the metal meets the meat.
I would kill or die for my children. And I say that as a(n imperfect) pacifist. Saying that is an expression of love.
Then again, when I’m short on sleep and Chloe pops up at the foot of the bed at 2:00 AM wanting to discuss the whichness of what or how to unscrew the inscrutable, I am sometimes less than delighted to engage with her. Kill or die? Sure. Lose sleep to help her distill her thoughts about some concept she’s been digesting? Well, shit!, I dunno about that. Losing sleep to review some thought process I ran to completion in my own mind a half a century ago because it’s new to her… Well, that’s an expression of love, too.
Blather, blather, blather… I can drone on forever and ever. To paraphrase the line from the movie “The Princess Bride,” there’s not enough time for me to explain (to my own satisfaction), so let me sum up:
If another person is your TOE, that’s love. This is the poem I wrote for Ronnie for Mother’s Day 2009.
You Are
You are:
the sunlight warming my face, reaching me in a bit more than
minute minute minute minute
minute minute minute minute
after origination.minute minute minute minute
my beguiling moonlight, (reflected stellar luminescence)
illuminating me only a tick more than 1
ONE! A singularity althought not a singularity.
second after its reflection.(angle of incidence equals angle of reflection)
my glowing starlight,
distant, imperious, seeming cold but originating from furious fusion,
impacting my existence in a timeframe varying from as little as 4+ years
lightyears, that is, frantic wavicles
streaming madly through dark matter on their way here
to quite a large number from departure.streaming madly through dark matter on their way here
my big G, difficult to measure quantitatively,
but preeminent as one of the essential components of my universe.
The big G stands for [whatever I choose from its multiexistence in superposition]
my e, both
Einstein's e, derived from mc^2,
and the e representing that exquisite physical value –
the elementary charge of a subatomic particle.
elementary, my dear Watson.and the e representing that exquisite physical value –
the elementary charge of a subatomic particle.
more constant than Avogadro's number
and I know you can make better (guaca)mole.
Avogadro and avocado are NOT congruent!
Only one relates to (guaca)mole,
the other relates merely to a (simple) mole.
beyond mere quantum mechanics
What's beyond the edge of existence?
What's beyond the edge of that?
in that you are both a dimensionful and dimensionless constantWhat's beyond the edge of that?
simultaneously.
my Anthropic principle,
strong vs. weak becoming moot in this context.
No subjective valuation of strong or weak
only what is.
The Observer [watching!]
effecting and affecting my wave-particle duality,
as I am yours. [watching back!]
We achieve complementarity.
the Big Bang of
us=family{Maier}, transcending, somehow,
for OUR quantum
the uncertainty principle.principles not rules, right?
my universe.
our universe and we're still just in its Planck epoch,
barely moving into our grand unification epoch.
my TOE!
Saturday, December 31, 2011
Happy New Year 2011-2012
Happy New Year from the Cap'n and krewe (and, of course, Admiral Ronnie!) of the Zombie Princess!
We're having our usual New Year's Eve party for the cousins. Amusingly, our own daughters are old enough now that they're going to their own party and Ronnie and I will be ringing in the new year with just the younger cousins and without our own daughters. What's wrong with this picture? (grin)
My best wishes to you and yours for the coming year. As for me,
Shiny! Let's be bad guys! Or big damn heroes! Or both and let history be the final arbiter.
We're having our usual New Year's Eve party for the cousins. Amusingly, our own daughters are old enough now that they're going to their own party and Ronnie and I will be ringing in the new year with just the younger cousins and without our own daughters. What's wrong with this picture? (grin)
My best wishes to you and yours for the coming year. As for me,
Shiny! Let's be bad guys! Or big damn heroes! Or both and let history be the final arbiter.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Defending unschooling
Our fabulous girls are 19 and 17 and we’ve been unschooling for quite a while now, not their entire lives, but quite a while. I’ve never really been one who wanted to discuss unschooling very much. I’m only on a couple of online groups and I rarely say much on those. I go to conferences and enjoy the experience immensely but I’ve never given a talk at one. I appreciate the fact that Ronnie interacts broadly and honestly with people about our lives and I’m willing to rest on her laurels. Thank you, my nonpareil wife!
There are also those long-time voices of unschooling, both online and IRL, who do such a thorough job of explaining, defining, and defending unschooling that they free me to just be an unschooler without having to spend my time discussing it. When someone wants to engage me in a prolonged discourse about educational philosophy, I just direct them to a couple of unschooling websites and go on about my merry way. I greatly appreciate the efforts of those who’ve BTDT for all those many years and made their efforts available to the proletariat (for free).
With our girls at peri-adulthood, I have my own internal, intuitive knowledge of their journey through learning in the wide, wide world. Part of that journey has been in parallel with and/or in congruence with other unschooling families of older teens and young adults and I see the same thing with those lovely people. These are exquisite human beings who make the world a better place just by virtue of their existence and who, I’m sure, will continue to do so throughout their lives. It has been a privilege to call them my friends.
So, when I see people asking those tired, old questions about homeschooling/unschooling, I just kinda shake my head and don’t understand why they just don’t get it. Of course, intellectually, I understand that I “get it” because I’ve lived it for all these years, day by day, week by week, year by year, adventure by adventure and they are speaking from their experience, which is completely different than mine, and from what they see or read about unschooling, which can be awfully misleading. Take, for example, what I saw recently on an unschooling site, which is the thing which prompted me to write this post.
The poster wrote this as his self-introduction:
i'm the father of 3 beautifol girls they are all home schooled [name] (7) and [name] (9) still sleep in cribs bottle feed and none of them are potty trained me and my wife never seen the need for it they are adorable runing around in their diapers [sic]
He then posted this:
hi my name is [deleted] and i'm a member please check out my page and coment on how i'm raising my children i'll let you know this our children are 7, 9, 14 years old and not potty trained me and my wife both decided never to potty train them they are more obediant thin other children there age if more parents kept their kids in diapers there would be less teen pregancy teen drug use exc [sic]
I read those posts and thought about a normal person reading it. Normal being someone who works hard at his job and pays to send his kids to a private school so they’ll get a good education, etc. Culturally indoctrinated, and I don’t necessarily mean that pejoratively. I further imagine Abby Normal reading that and thinking that it’s on an unschooling site and it is, therefore, something that all unschoolers believe in and do. Thinking about that, I feel less snarky about Abby asking the “same old” questions about unschooling. So, I’ll come out of my typical lurker mode to respond to Abby or anyone who wonders if that is how all unschoolers live.
Speaking only for my family and me, our girls did not and do not sleep in cribs; we coslept when they were younger and they got their own rooms when they wanted a private space. They were breast-fed, not bottle-fed. We did not actively pottytrain them but they were both out of diapers before their teen years… well before their teen years. Our girls are absolutely not obedient, or even “obediant,” and we’re very happy about that. As for sex and drugs (and I presume rock’n’roll), I like all three and I leave it to you to decide for yourself whether you do or not.
Make no mistake, leaving kids in diapers into their teens is not an official unschooling position. You can read about actual, practical, real-world unschooling here and here for starters. For a little sci-fi short story combined with my take on unschooling and other educational philosophies, go to my post from Christmas ’08 here.
I hope you had a wonderful 2011 and that 2012 will be even better!
Sunday, November 06, 2011
Do your best!
He tried to do his best
But he could not.
Neil Young – Tired Eyes
“Just do your best.”
“I give 100% (or, illogically but enthusiastically, 110% or 1000%) every day.”
“I tried my best.”
“Leave it all on the field.”
“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” -Henry “Red” Sanders
For some reason, I've been thinking about percentages lately. This ideal has been chewing my ass forever. I took it to heart as a child and have only recovered from it (a little) at an intellectual level; I still feel it at my core. Confession: I do not give 100% every day, in the way that those exhortations imply. Maybe I should state that “in the way that I hear these aphorisms”; but I think I’m hearing exactly what they mean. If you have any tendency toward self-doubt, or maybe even merely introspection, isn’t there always the opportunity to question your total commitment? Did I really give a full 100% to that effort? Isn’t there something I could have done… Better? Faster? Cleaner? Prettier? More? Whatever?
“Do you best.“ is not an exhortation, it’s an order, with an implied consequence for failure to do so.
As always, I only speak knowledgeably from myself and of myself, but I’ve known a lotta other guys over the years and I’m gonna bravely generalize from that experience and a Bergsonian intuition, ok? American boys/men are indoctrinated from their earliest age that life is a competition and ya gotta win, presumably by doing your best and giving 100%. The inescapable lemma of that is that you’re competing against others and the way to win is to beat them. They must lose. The very definition of a zero-sum game.
Happily, I got over that particular belief early on. I was never very comfortable with the zero-sum model for human interactions and I was smugly pleased with myself for not being suckered into an endless nightmare life of feeling eternally competed against in all aspects of my existence with the consequence of being the LOSER if I wasn’t the winner. That shit wears ya down. However, the competition model I did hold onto is competition with myself. Well, the “myself” which is actually the demon I allowed to possess me, lo!, those many years ago, the demon whose name is Legion and whose cognomen is (Asinine) Culturally Imposed Beliefs.
A while back I did a post where I referenced my delight with myself for being less interested in defeating my opponent than in bettering my own skills, in the example/metaphor of a tennis game. How superior and enlightened of me. Well, maybe. At a simplistic level, anyway. But let’s dissect that a bit.
In that post I said:
------------------
I'm rushing the net. My opponent just made a poor return which is floating toward me and which I can do anything I want with. I can choose to make the high-percentage put-away shot, which I can make 99 times out of 100 and which will certainly win me the point, game, set, or even match. It's the sure winner. Or I can try for the high-skill shot, the difficult one which I make maybe 30 times out of 100, the shot which challenges me but which doesn't really benefit my score in the game. Quite the opposite, by trying that shot, I have a 70% chance of giving away a sure point.
If the important thing to me is winning this particular game or, more generally, playing the game with an overall philosophy that winning is the most important part of the game to me, then I'll probably choose the 99% sure shot. However, if my philosophy is more inclined toward challenging myself rather than being concerned with a particular outcome of a particular game, then I'm thinking about trying the low-percentage shot.
------------------
Perhaps this is merely the ultimate egotistical version of “Do your best.” Is it possible that what I’m really saying here is that my opponent is so far beneath my level that he’s not really a factor in my game? He’s no more important or meaningful than a practice wall or ball machine. The true competition is against me, the incredible, transcendental, striving-for-perfection demigod incarnate, Frank the Nonpareil, Emperor of Eternity, Imperator of Infinity. Ave, Franko, morituri te salutamus!
In that context, I’m even more of an indoctrinated prole than the guy who follows “Do your best.” to the point of besting his opponents and stopping there. When he’s accomplished that, he can take a well-deserved rest and kick back with a beer and an entertaining football game on the tv, feeling like a winner. The competition against the self is literally eternal and infinite. It’s worse than a zero-sum game. It is the Kobayashi Maru of the soul.
I dislike that idea very much.
Come to think of it, speaking in populist postulates, why throw the baby out with the bathwater? When I wasn’t writing about tennis, I once wrote about perception. In that post, I wisely stated there that perception is everything. Everything. Is competing against myself necessarily a “bad” thing or is it just the psychological baggage I impose on it which makes it something it actually isn’t at its root? For the sake of my own sanity, and peace in my troubled soul, I choose to believe that striving to increase my personal body of knowledge/skills is not congruent with merciless competition against my (inadequate) present self to create a perfected future me.
Many of my friends have written lovely posts about being kind to yourself, as kind as you would be to a cherished friend. That’s something which I, again, accept intellectually, but have never really internalized. I can easily and happily do that for others but it’s difficult to do that for myself.
Maybe it’s as simple as that. If I choose to try/do something to stretch myself simply for its own sake, that’s not only ok, it’s delightful. If I feel compelled to compete against myself mercilessly and endlessly, that’s not the same thing and it’s not a pleasant way to live. I can choose to live happily with myself rather than always living in competition with my current self.
Today, I will NOT do my best or give 100%. Or maybe I will. If I feel like it. But I refuse to feel pressured to do so, especially at unrealistic levels.
But he could not.
Neil Young – Tired Eyes
“Just do your best.”
“I give 100% (or, illogically but enthusiastically, 110% or 1000%) every day.”
“I tried my best.”
“Leave it all on the field.”
“Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.” -Henry “Red” Sanders
For some reason, I've been thinking about percentages lately. This ideal has been chewing my ass forever. I took it to heart as a child and have only recovered from it (a little) at an intellectual level; I still feel it at my core. Confession: I do not give 100% every day, in the way that those exhortations imply. Maybe I should state that “in the way that I hear these aphorisms”; but I think I’m hearing exactly what they mean. If you have any tendency toward self-doubt, or maybe even merely introspection, isn’t there always the opportunity to question your total commitment? Did I really give a full 100% to that effort? Isn’t there something I could have done… Better? Faster? Cleaner? Prettier? More? Whatever?
“Do you best.“ is not an exhortation, it’s an order, with an implied consequence for failure to do so.
As always, I only speak knowledgeably from myself and of myself, but I’ve known a lotta other guys over the years and I’m gonna bravely generalize from that experience and a Bergsonian intuition, ok? American boys/men are indoctrinated from their earliest age that life is a competition and ya gotta win, presumably by doing your best and giving 100%. The inescapable lemma of that is that you’re competing against others and the way to win is to beat them. They must lose. The very definition of a zero-sum game.
Happily, I got over that particular belief early on. I was never very comfortable with the zero-sum model for human interactions and I was smugly pleased with myself for not being suckered into an endless nightmare life of feeling eternally competed against in all aspects of my existence with the consequence of being the LOSER if I wasn’t the winner. That shit wears ya down. However, the competition model I did hold onto is competition with myself. Well, the “myself” which is actually the demon I allowed to possess me, lo!, those many years ago, the demon whose name is Legion and whose cognomen is (Asinine) Culturally Imposed Beliefs.
A while back I did a post where I referenced my delight with myself for being less interested in defeating my opponent than in bettering my own skills, in the example/metaphor of a tennis game. How superior and enlightened of me. Well, maybe. At a simplistic level, anyway. But let’s dissect that a bit.
In that post I said:
------------------
I'm rushing the net. My opponent just made a poor return which is floating toward me and which I can do anything I want with. I can choose to make the high-percentage put-away shot, which I can make 99 times out of 100 and which will certainly win me the point, game, set, or even match. It's the sure winner. Or I can try for the high-skill shot, the difficult one which I make maybe 30 times out of 100, the shot which challenges me but which doesn't really benefit my score in the game. Quite the opposite, by trying that shot, I have a 70% chance of giving away a sure point.
If the important thing to me is winning this particular game or, more generally, playing the game with an overall philosophy that winning is the most important part of the game to me, then I'll probably choose the 99% sure shot. However, if my philosophy is more inclined toward challenging myself rather than being concerned with a particular outcome of a particular game, then I'm thinking about trying the low-percentage shot.
------------------
Perhaps this is merely the ultimate egotistical version of “Do your best.” Is it possible that what I’m really saying here is that my opponent is so far beneath my level that he’s not really a factor in my game? He’s no more important or meaningful than a practice wall or ball machine. The true competition is against me, the incredible, transcendental, striving-for-perfection demigod incarnate, Frank the Nonpareil, Emperor of Eternity, Imperator of Infinity. Ave, Franko, morituri te salutamus!
In that context, I’m even more of an indoctrinated prole than the guy who follows “Do your best.” to the point of besting his opponents and stopping there. When he’s accomplished that, he can take a well-deserved rest and kick back with a beer and an entertaining football game on the tv, feeling like a winner. The competition against the self is literally eternal and infinite. It’s worse than a zero-sum game. It is the Kobayashi Maru of the soul.
I dislike that idea very much.
Come to think of it, speaking in populist postulates, why throw the baby out with the bathwater? When I wasn’t writing about tennis, I once wrote about perception. In that post, I wisely stated there that perception is everything. Everything. Is competing against myself necessarily a “bad” thing or is it just the psychological baggage I impose on it which makes it something it actually isn’t at its root? For the sake of my own sanity, and peace in my troubled soul, I choose to believe that striving to increase my personal body of knowledge/skills is not congruent with merciless competition against my (inadequate) present self to create a perfected future me.
Many of my friends have written lovely posts about being kind to yourself, as kind as you would be to a cherished friend. That’s something which I, again, accept intellectually, but have never really internalized. I can easily and happily do that for others but it’s difficult to do that for myself.
Maybe it’s as simple as that. If I choose to try/do something to stretch myself simply for its own sake, that’s not only ok, it’s delightful. If I feel compelled to compete against myself mercilessly and endlessly, that’s not the same thing and it’s not a pleasant way to live. I can choose to live happily with myself rather than always living in competition with my current self.
Today, I will NOT do my best or give 100%. Or maybe I will. If I feel like it. But I refuse to feel pressured to do so, especially at unrealistic levels.
Friday, November 04, 2011
The faces of Chloe
Little Chloe snuggled with Ronnie.
Chloe's official camera smile when she was younger.
Chloe playing some bass (not her bass, Cornelius, but the one that lives there) with the Basement Boys.
When she was little, we sometimes called her "ti rouge." She's very red here.
Chloe and her pal Qacei ready to take the time machine back to the 80s.
Ready for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Chloe's official camera smile when she was younger.
Chloe playing some bass (not her bass, Cornelius, but the one that lives there) with the Basement Boys.
When she was little, we sometimes called her "ti rouge." She's very red here.
Chloe and her pal Qacei ready to take the time machine back to the 80s.
Ready for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
She no longer needs braces
That's not just a metaphor but it is also a metaphor.
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Marjorie. She was usually called Marjie but sometimes she was know as Iggie.
She grew.
And grew.
She tried school. It wasn't a great fit.
She leapt into life with unbridled enthusiasm.
She had many adventures.
One day, she decided she wanted to be MJ, rather than Marjorie, and have some holes in her nose.
She had more adventures, including a nice visit to Europe.
And one day, she decided she needed some braces.
Then one day, she no longer needed them.
But in the Duchy of Metaphor, if you ever want some (more) bracing, of any kind, smallish or largeish, the Duke of Metaphor (aka yer dad, sometimes known as me) is always reachable and ready to assist. And the Duke is a stone-cold, awesome genius, yo! He can figure shit out like a motherfucker! Remember dat!
I love you, my little MJ!
Once upon a time there was a little girl named Marjorie. She was usually called Marjie but sometimes she was know as Iggie.
She grew.
And grew.
She tried school. It wasn't a great fit.
She leapt into life with unbridled enthusiasm.
She had many adventures.
One day, she decided she wanted to be MJ, rather than Marjorie, and have some holes in her nose.
She had more adventures, including a nice visit to Europe.
And one day, she decided she needed some braces.
Then one day, she no longer needed them.
But in the Duchy of Metaphor, if you ever want some (more) bracing, of any kind, smallish or largeish, the Duke of Metaphor (aka yer dad, sometimes known as me) is always reachable and ready to assist. And the Duke is a stone-cold, awesome genius, yo! He can figure shit out like a motherfucker! Remember dat!
I love you, my little MJ!
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