The Jesus Iron(y)

Saw this photo online today:

The accompanying text:

In this photo taken Monday, Nov. 23, 2009 residue is seen on the bottom of an electric iron at the home of Mary Jo Coady, in Methuen, Mass. Coady says an image of Jesus Christ that she sees in the pattern on the bottom of the iron, which she first noticed on Sunday, has reassured her that 'life is going to be good.'

All I can say is "People believe this crap.  Holy shit."

I'd be willing to bet that I can vomit and make a picture of just about anything I want, including Jesus.  Think people would like it if I advertised that I had vomited Jesus?

Philosophy 101: Respect v. Admiration

No, it's not a court battle ...

Dunno why, but a while back this dichotomy (if it is indeed a dichotomy) came to mind.  I was thinking about various people, and it occurred to me that some I respect, some I admire and some I both (great grammar there ...).  And it occurred to me that there definitely IS a difference between the two feelings.  But what is the difference?  Here comes some stream-of-consciousnesses ... I think I'll begin with their "official" definitions (those I like the best, anyway):

Respect = esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment.

Admiration = a feeling of wonder, pleasure, or approval

At first glance I thought I had it licked.  But with another look, esteem for vs. a feeling of wonder are not all that far apart from one another.  My impression has been that I would rather have respect for someone than an admiration for them.  To me, respect implies that there is something about that person that you really ... uh ... admire.  Hmmm ... I guess I'll have to be careful or else I'll find myself in one of those circular arguments.  A person I respect is someone that has some quality or qualities that I, sometimes, wished that I possessed myself.  Someone who acts just the right way at just the right time, handles situations correctly, says all of the right things.  Someone who has a great deal of knowledge, experience or insight (or a good combination of those) in various issues that are of interest to me.

Counter to this (or perhaps directly in line with it ... we'll see) is admiration.  Someone whom I look up to, perhaps would like to strive to be like in some ways.  AAHHH!  I think I just figured out the difference!

I can admire someone for something that is not a personal quality.   I can admire someone for their position, their financial situation or perhaps something they own (i.e. a nice house or a sweet Harley).  These are tangibles, material items (mostly).  For these types of things, I can admire someone, but not necessarily respect them.  So that is it.  Very interesting, considering the fact that I have always looked at myself as an incredibly materialistic sumbitch (something with which my wife disagrees about me, or so she says).  And yet, here I am saying that I covet, at least at times, intangibles over tangibles.

Huh ... whodathunkit?

My son's theme song

I wrote this (edited and updated here) on August 27, 2008.  All about 80s music and my kids.  Huh ...

Last night [evidently this means on August 26, 2008] I went to Wolf Trap to see the Regeneration Tour 2008 (note that this website is for this year's tour).  Playing were some very 1980s bands, in this order:

1. Naked Eyes [known for ‘Promises, Promises’ and ‘Always Something There To Remind Me’),
2. A Flock of Seagulls [‘I Ran (So Far Away)’, among others]
3. ABC [‘When Smokey Sings’ (a great tribute to Smokey Robinson) and ‘Shoot That Poison Arrow’]
4. Belinda Carlisle [known for bunches of hits on her own, and that was AFTER several years’ worth of hits with the Go Gos]
   
5. Human League [‘Don’t You Want Me Baby’ and ‘Fascination’]

It was a really great retro-80s concert.  Five bands, and the total concert time was close to 4 hours.  To me, the ultimate 1980s song is and always has been ‘I Ran’ by AFOS.  That was during my freshman year in college, and just brings back memories of strolling around campus, tooling through the student union and lots of fraternity parties.  I have always loved that song.

Interestingly, as much as I enjoyed being there at the concert, several times I noted that I had ‘zoned out’ and was thinking back to last [the previous] Summer when I went to see Hootie and the Blowfish (now, unfortunately, basically defunct since Darius Rucker left to pursue a solo career).  They have a particular song, one of their hits, which contains a line that I love.  After seeing that concert last year, that CD was my go-to CD for weeks and weeks.  As I played that CD and paid more and more attention to the lyrics, one line, that one very short line in a single song, struck me as absolutely incredible.  The sixth song is ‘I’m Goin’ Home’, and the line is:

“He’s no little boy,
He’s my pride and joy”

That is my son.  That is Li'l D.

When I first heard that line last year driving to (or from) work, I got a lump in my throat when I realized what I was thinking.  I got home and immediately told Laura.  She understood.  To this day, every time I hear that line, I still get a small lump in my throat as I think of Li'l D.  The CD is playing now while I type [back in August 2008], and my “pride and joy” is busy whining that his little sister keeps bothering him and taking his toys, asking me if "THIS song is still part of it" (whatever “it” is --- little kid talk ...), interrupting me to tell me that the triceratops that he happens to be holding right now has a swishing tail, and on and on.  But he is MY pride and joy.

I kept zoning away from the concert that night, thinking back a year to the Hootie concert, and then to my pride and joy.  It was just, well, cool.  Made me smile as I enjoyed the retro music.

It is now getting late [in August 2008], and Laura is out getting her hair cut, or whatever fashion thingy that women do once a month to the tops of their heads.  Li'l A, my lovely daughter of 2 years, keeps saying “I want my Mommy.”  Nothing new there.  I am holding her off so far by saying that she will be home soon, followed by a distraction.  The distraction this time was “Go up and get your bottle.  You still have some milk left in it.”  “OK” says she.  Then I smile and say “Can I please have a kiss?”  Her reply?  The typical Li'l A reply: a HUGE pucker.  So I get a big kiss from my adorable 2 year old, she goes up and gets a drink of her milk and comes back downstairs to the basement.  Li'l D, my pride and joy, is quietly (for a few seconds at least) playing with ... whatever ... and all is right with the world for just another few minutes.

I unfortunately don’t yet have a ‘theme’ song or a line for Li'l A.  I may at some point.  I have a very strong feeling that she, too, will become my other pride and joy.  As soon as I understand more of what she is saying ...

Lesson of the Day - How to ID a cheetah

Took the kids to the National Zoo this morning for fun, but also got an inadvertent education.  We learnt a few things.  Most interesting: We saw 3 cheetahs, who were, we were told, brothers.  The FONZ volunteer who happened to be wandering around, educating people about cheetahs, told us that although cheetahs have spots around most of their bodies, their tails have rings around them.  And he told us that every cheetah's tail rings are unique, enabling us to identify each cheetah from every other cheetah.

I mentioned this to a coworker this afternoon.  He looked at me, smiled and said, "Great, they are barcoded!"

Wordicles

I thought I was being really, really smart and intelligent and, mostly, creative.  I just created the term wordicle.  I even put it in the labels section for my last post on "-philes".  But then I Googled the term wordicle and out popped, first thing, https://wordicle.com/ (interesting that it is a secure site ...).  That sucks!  Someone else stole my creativity before I even had a chance to create it!!  That sucks!  Bastards!!!

I actually stole the idea (or so I thought) from a buddy at work who earlier this year, before a bunch of us ended up moving to other offices all over the friggin' place, revelled in the times when several of us would get together and just brainstorm over whatever the topic du jour was.  He coined (or so I thought) the term "smarticles", for those teenie tiny microscopic invisible particles that would fling themselves imperceptibly around our work area, making us all think real good.  He was very disappointed, as was I, as we all took other jobs and moved offices (another story, for another day), and basically did the smarticles in.  In Googling the word "smarticle", I found that he did NOT, indeed, coin it.

While posting my last, I realized that there really does seem to be an abundance of smarticles in and around my brain still, and the term "wordicle" appeared to me, which would describe anything explaining anything related to anything to do with words.  My last, therefore, was a wordicle.

And I have labelled it as such, so's I can now easily link all future wordicle blog posts to each other.

Inconsistent connotations

From Dictionary.com:

con·no·ta·tion: An idea or meaning suggested by or associated with a word or thing

Evidently a word ending in "-phile" connotes a person who loves the thing described at the beginning of that word:

• A bibliophile is a person who loves books
• An Anglophile is a person who loves everything English
• A cinephile loves movies

These are all good things, right?  So why does the word "pedophile" have such a bad connotation, the opposite of the above?  I'd think that all parents are pedophiles.  But no ... for whatever reason, in this case, "pedophile" doesn't mean someone who just loves children; it means a person having pedophilia, the sexual desire for children.  That is not so good.

So why does asparagus make your pee smell?

Having eaten some asparagus on several occasions recently, I finally just had to find out.  Googling "why does asparagus make your pee smell" finds us bunches of answers.  Three relatively random ones here:

• http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/577/why-does-asparagus-make-your-pee-smell-funny
• http://dsc.discovery.com/guides/skinny-on/asparagus.html
• http://answers.ask.com/Home/Gardening/why_does_asparagus_make_your_urine_smell

So, the causes include none or one or several of:

• methanethiol
• several S-methyl thioesters, specifically S-methyl thioacrylate and S-methyl 3-(methylthio)thiopropionate
• metabolites
• six sulfur-containing compounds
• methyl mercaptan

Let's forget for a moment the fact that I cannot pronounce several of these.  It appears that science has not yet caught up to this very important biological phenomenon.  There are numerous other supposed causes as well, I am sure.  It also appears that people individually must have the proper smeller set up; that is, not everyone can smell this.  Some people consider this to be lucky on behalf of those who cannot.  Personally I really don't give a crap either way; I am just curious ...

"... the big pot in the sky"

The other night over dinner my 3 year old daughter, Li'l A, looked at me and asked "Daddy, after dinner can we go outside and see the big pot in the sky?"

Several weeks earlier, we had all gone outside after dark and stared up through our binoculars at the moon, the stars, various aircraft, etc.  We discussed the constellations, those we could see at the time (not many), and other important world-changing issues.  We talked about the Big Dipper, which we in Earth's northern hemisphere can see pretty much year-round, except for certain times of the night, and this was one of those times.  So, several weeks later, my brilliant and cute daughter asks to see it again, in her own very bright 3 year old way.

Great in Slate

I read this article a few weeks ago and found it to be hilarious:
This Case Is a Dog - The Supreme Court mauls the law banning animal-cruelty videos

Obviously my main take-away was different than some of those who commented on the article, as I was fully into the humor presented by the author (one Dalia Lithwick), whereas many others were more concerned with the specific legalities and such being discussed.  I am an animal lover, particularly dogs, and some of the ridiculous idiocy displayed by the people in question in the article is just plain disgusting.  But the way the author portrays the Supreme Court scene as a pack of animals (the Justices themselves) variously stalking their prey (the lead attorney for the defense) is brilliant.

Philosophy 101: Death

So this one too I wrote previously.  Evidently on July 15, 2009, so not too long ago.  I like this one.  Brings up some good questions.


    A question came to me today.  I have no idea why.  I think I was riding the Harley home from work, contemplating everything.  Was possibly thinking of sick friends, or perhaps I had heard something on the news about someone being sick or dying.  I just don’t know.  But then the question appeared:

Why do we get so upset about something that is inevitable?

    Death.  It is inevitable.  It WILL happen.  We cannot stop it.  Sometimes (only sometimes) can we delay it.  But this thought occurred to me that we get very attached to other people (in this case people; I won’t even go into pets and such) and we usually get pretty upset when they die.  And yet … we KNOW they will die.  Or we will.  Between you and your friend/partner/spouse/whoever, one of the two of you will go first.  We all know this will happen.  And yet, even with this foreknowledge, knowing that our love or attachment must be only temporary, we still get upset when the inevitable happens.

    This must be my logical side.  Of course, logic dictates that we don’t get attached to anyone (or anything) in that way in the first place.  But that is just logic.  We’re human.  We HAVE to get attached.  We HAVE to fall in love.  This is what Captain Kirk spent 3 seasons (wow … it was only 3 seasons????  I admit I had to just look that up …) trying to teach Mr. Spock about.  We HAVE to have that longing feeling (as opposed to “That Loving Feeling” as performed by The Righteous Brothers some time ago) for another person, animal or, perhaps sometimes, even something inanimate.

    Now, that latter proposition could perhaps make some sense.  Having some strange human attachment for something inanimate (a rock?  A tchochke? (wow, did I spell that right?) a car or really cool motorcycle?) might make just a little sense if we know that the object will outlast us.  A car?  Usually not.  A rock or a tchochke?  Why not?  Unless it gets lost or broken, it can very well outlast us and our kids and our kids’ kids.  So, in some strange way, that kinda sorta does make some sense.

    But falling for someone who we KNOW has a limited time with us really is, when you get down to it, just plain silly.  It makes no sense.

So why do we get so upset about something we know is inevitable?

    I don’t know.  I’ve actually been mulling that over in my head all day since the thought occurred to me.  And I unfortunately have nothing to show for it.