You can't spell nudist colony without a healthy colon.
We explore today the very nature of exploring. I was reminded the other day that new is great. In virtually every aspect of life, newness is appealing, exciting, and stimulating. I think everyone knows this. In every industry I can think of newness is the key to success. Certainly in the computer industry, newer, bigger, better, faster is better. But even in software, using a new application is great. Using a old application that has been revised and upgraded to have new features is great.
New wife? I think it is possible that affairs start as a result of our pursuit of newness. Have you ever met somebody you think is great, funny, entertaining, and witty - then you meet her husband. He treats her like crap because to him, she is old, used-up, and pruny. Her jokes are re-hashed, hackneyed junk she tries out on anybody who hasn't heard them yet. Her stories? Just as worn. But the new girl? Fresh and alive and charming and delightful with fun stories and a charismatic way of telling them.
Car companies know this all too well. Used cars are new to somebody. And new cars have that smell that feeds the need for newness. My car isn't new. But there is something missing - ah, yes, the Duramax with the Allison transmission. I will pull this trigger soon because I want a new truck. New sometimes pulls a trailer better too.
I have seen people fix up things and make them new again. I tried this with Debi. One hip down, one to go. I did this with my house. One hip down and one to go. Ba dum, ch! I’ll be here all night. Try the veal. It is like living in a new house that is really familiar. I can't describe it but I somehow really LOVE it because it is new. Remodels are a good way to make something old, new again. I have seen people jack their cars up, put new tires on, and put on a fuzzy steering wheel cover to bend the newness curve up again.
Then there's old that is so old it becomes new again. Classic cars are always a sight on the road. We look at them and remember the good old days when things were made better. Back then when you got in an accident in your steel-on-steel Chevy you just hosed off the dashboard and kept on driving it. It is only after you pass the classic Rambler that you realize that it is 115 degrees outside and he had his windows down because he had no air conditioning. Oh, and push button transmission and crappy shocks. And the whole thing could catch fire at any moment. Thank goodness I don’t like old cars.
Sometimes, just to keep things new, I avoid asking my wife for sex - just to change things up a bit. Keeps the relationship alive...
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Monday, June 18, 2007
Good Dreams and Brad Dreams
OK, I admit it. Lately the blog has kinda been a train wreck. OK, more like a train with its wheels locked so sparks shooting from the track as it smashes into a busload of retarded children headed for summer camp with their special guest star Lionel Richie singing ‘Hello’ and leading them in the chorus. (thx Adam) Sorry. There have been few posts and the ones that made it really blow. I think it is a mood thing and a time thing. Enough excuses.
Today’s topic: dreams. I am worried. Most of the time my dreams are benign and confusing with highlights of sexual content. I can cope with them. But sometimes I dream things that cannot possibly have originated in my brain. I mean, I know my brain. I live in it. It often generates the most random and unexpected things. I call that creativity. I like that aspect of my brain. But when I am faced with the realization that the dreams I have expose thoughts that are actually lurking in my mind…I entertain the thought of just accepting the psychosis and beginning the shock treatment.
And why is it that I am not free in my dreams. In the midst of the most disjointed, dysfunctional, delusional extravaganza, I am strangely aware of my boundaries. That doesn’t mean that I don’t go to the mall naked. It means that when I go to the mall naked I am always shamefully hiding behind a garbage can (and fashioning a suit of armor out of it) instead jogging round from store to store asking them if they want to participate in the ‘Name the Pee-Pee’ contest. Instead, I am wondering why it took me until I was in the mall upstairs outside the Mrs. Fields to REALIZE THAT I WAS NAKED! It must be the dough. Or the smell. And let’s just say that she wasn’t the only one handing out free samples…
I would never cheat on my wife. That said, I can’t even cheat in my dreams. I often find myself in compromising situations only to be thwarted by my morals and ethics. I don’t advocate explaining these dreams in great detail to the Mrs. because even if your explanation includes the disclaimer that your love for her and devotion to her transcended the subconscious so as to restrict your catatonic bone dancing you will still be sentenced to sofa-sleep. (Davenport dalliance dreams are delicious)
Why is nudity such a part of dreams? I see naked people. Usually I don’t know them. Often I am naked. Nearly always, my wife is naked. I will probably study this phenomenon a little more closely to see what the expert wacknoids who think they know but are really guessing have to say about it. My own pre-researched conclusion that I jump to is that the forbidden nature of nudity is socialized into us to the extent that it is only in dreams that we can dip our toe into these illicit waters.
Now, a dream. Last night I had a strangely disjointed dream about my friend Brad. Brad owns a successful advertising company but in my dream he was a plastic surgeon living and practicing out of his house in Hawaii. My dream picks up the story when I go in to visit him for an indescribable procedure. I can describe WHAT he did but not WHY he did it. I was lying on a table and he came up to my left arm and sank his scalpel deep into the shoulder and cut a line from it to the inside of my elbow right alongside my bicep. I remember feeling nothing. Not painful, no cutting. I do remember thinking that as he cut I was growing more delirious as if he had some sort of elixir on his knife that caused an anesthetic response (both local and general). As he cut, he complained about how hard it was to cut through a piece of fat near the shoulder/bicep division. He had to cut that a few times to get a deep as he somehow needed to cut. He left the room and my wife came in, naked, and slipped under the covers of the bed diagonal from me. He came back in and went to her bed, pulled down the covers, and used his scalpel on her hip, I believe, perhaps to revise her scar. But he must have forgotten the anesthetic because his first cut made her SCREAM so loudly that it woke me up.
This dream was not particularly troubling but I always have to ask myself...Why in Hawaii? Why Brad? Why wasn't the bed next to mine? I know why not my bed. She wouldn't want to disturb the large gash in my arm...
Today’s topic: dreams. I am worried. Most of the time my dreams are benign and confusing with highlights of sexual content. I can cope with them. But sometimes I dream things that cannot possibly have originated in my brain. I mean, I know my brain. I live in it. It often generates the most random and unexpected things. I call that creativity. I like that aspect of my brain. But when I am faced with the realization that the dreams I have expose thoughts that are actually lurking in my mind…I entertain the thought of just accepting the psychosis and beginning the shock treatment.
And why is it that I am not free in my dreams. In the midst of the most disjointed, dysfunctional, delusional extravaganza, I am strangely aware of my boundaries. That doesn’t mean that I don’t go to the mall naked. It means that when I go to the mall naked I am always shamefully hiding behind a garbage can (and fashioning a suit of armor out of it) instead jogging round from store to store asking them if they want to participate in the ‘Name the Pee-Pee’ contest. Instead, I am wondering why it took me until I was in the mall upstairs outside the Mrs. Fields to REALIZE THAT I WAS NAKED! It must be the dough. Or the smell. And let’s just say that she wasn’t the only one handing out free samples…
I would never cheat on my wife. That said, I can’t even cheat in my dreams. I often find myself in compromising situations only to be thwarted by my morals and ethics. I don’t advocate explaining these dreams in great detail to the Mrs. because even if your explanation includes the disclaimer that your love for her and devotion to her transcended the subconscious so as to restrict your catatonic bone dancing you will still be sentenced to sofa-sleep. (Davenport dalliance dreams are delicious)
Why is nudity such a part of dreams? I see naked people. Usually I don’t know them. Often I am naked. Nearly always, my wife is naked. I will probably study this phenomenon a little more closely to see what the expert wacknoids who think they know but are really guessing have to say about it. My own pre-researched conclusion that I jump to is that the forbidden nature of nudity is socialized into us to the extent that it is only in dreams that we can dip our toe into these illicit waters.
Now, a dream. Last night I had a strangely disjointed dream about my friend Brad. Brad owns a successful advertising company but in my dream he was a plastic surgeon living and practicing out of his house in Hawaii. My dream picks up the story when I go in to visit him for an indescribable procedure. I can describe WHAT he did but not WHY he did it. I was lying on a table and he came up to my left arm and sank his scalpel deep into the shoulder and cut a line from it to the inside of my elbow right alongside my bicep. I remember feeling nothing. Not painful, no cutting. I do remember thinking that as he cut I was growing more delirious as if he had some sort of elixir on his knife that caused an anesthetic response (both local and general). As he cut, he complained about how hard it was to cut through a piece of fat near the shoulder/bicep division. He had to cut that a few times to get a deep as he somehow needed to cut. He left the room and my wife came in, naked, and slipped under the covers of the bed diagonal from me. He came back in and went to her bed, pulled down the covers, and used his scalpel on her hip, I believe, perhaps to revise her scar. But he must have forgotten the anesthetic because his first cut made her SCREAM so loudly that it woke me up.
This dream was not particularly troubling but I always have to ask myself...Why in Hawaii? Why Brad? Why wasn't the bed next to mine? I know why not my bed. She wouldn't want to disturb the large gash in my arm...
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Serenity
Am I told what to think?
What a funny notion but on the other hand, it happens. I was talking to a person I used to work with who stayed in the hell hole that was NDCHealth after I left. In a passing conversation sometime after I left I asked him if he liked working there. He said, "It's a great place to work. At least that is what I am told..."
How telling. Can't you hear the corporate rah, rah in that? Instead of actually making it a great place to work, they just tell people how much better it is. The problem is that employees who have been there and seen both worlds think the new working environment sucks. And they are right - except they are continuously told how much better things are now.
I wonder how often this happens in life. How often do we bother to gather empirical data versus being fed information via the media spoonful. How often have I used facts and data from unverified, plastic-haired commentator source versus my own research. I'm afraid I do this often. I don't have time, for example, to disect the federal register report on HIPAA legislation so I rely on shortcuts to bring me to a level of understanding that allows me to emphatically rant about regulations and requirements with minimal knowledge. Now that's convenience. This is not to say that I don't have my crap-detector finely tuned on every piece of information I receive, its just that if it sounds good and matches my core beliefs, it's readily added to the arsenal.
I was talking to a friend the other day and at the risk of sounding cryptic, we were talking about a subject that is controversial. I realized that I didn't have a stand on this issue. Now, in my many years of life that doesn't mean that I haven't ever thought about it but if I had to state my stance on the subject, I would have to defer until I had thought enough about it to make a statement. Either that or catch a documentary on Discovery that swayed my thinking and filled my arguement quiver with undocumented, unverifyable, unsubstantiated weapons.
I concluded at the end of our discussion that I wasn't affected by the topic and therefore didn't have a strong opinion - meaning that I would be able to argue either side effectively. This was a mistake. His take was that I should see the world as he sees it. There should be no middle ground and there certainly should be no such thing as a flexible opinion.
As I gather more information and change my mind as a result, I'm smarter, right? As I more deeply contemplate a topic and gather my own information, I should be better informed to make a decision, re-align my thinking, and fight to the death to make sure everyone sees it my way -- at least until I change my mind again...
What a funny notion but on the other hand, it happens. I was talking to a person I used to work with who stayed in the hell hole that was NDCHealth after I left. In a passing conversation sometime after I left I asked him if he liked working there. He said, "It's a great place to work. At least that is what I am told..."
How telling. Can't you hear the corporate rah, rah in that? Instead of actually making it a great place to work, they just tell people how much better it is. The problem is that employees who have been there and seen both worlds think the new working environment sucks. And they are right - except they are continuously told how much better things are now.
I wonder how often this happens in life. How often do we bother to gather empirical data versus being fed information via the media spoonful. How often have I used facts and data from unverified, plastic-haired commentator source versus my own research. I'm afraid I do this often. I don't have time, for example, to disect the federal register report on HIPAA legislation so I rely on shortcuts to bring me to a level of understanding that allows me to emphatically rant about regulations and requirements with minimal knowledge. Now that's convenience. This is not to say that I don't have my crap-detector finely tuned on every piece of information I receive, its just that if it sounds good and matches my core beliefs, it's readily added to the arsenal.
I was talking to a friend the other day and at the risk of sounding cryptic, we were talking about a subject that is controversial. I realized that I didn't have a stand on this issue. Now, in my many years of life that doesn't mean that I haven't ever thought about it but if I had to state my stance on the subject, I would have to defer until I had thought enough about it to make a statement. Either that or catch a documentary on Discovery that swayed my thinking and filled my arguement quiver with undocumented, unverifyable, unsubstantiated weapons.
I concluded at the end of our discussion that I wasn't affected by the topic and therefore didn't have a strong opinion - meaning that I would be able to argue either side effectively. This was a mistake. His take was that I should see the world as he sees it. There should be no middle ground and there certainly should be no such thing as a flexible opinion.
As I gather more information and change my mind as a result, I'm smarter, right? As I more deeply contemplate a topic and gather my own information, I should be better informed to make a decision, re-align my thinking, and fight to the death to make sure everyone sees it my way -- at least until I change my mind again...
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