“My other superpower is that I don’t mind embarrassing myself in public. If I had to pick one quality that best predicts success (other than wanting to be successful) it would be the willingness to risk embarrassment.”
— Scott Adams
Could it be that our purpose is to tell a story, and that the better lived a life is, the better the story that survives after you’re gone?
An intriguing question posed by Dave Winer (a couple of years ago). If I read the post correctly, he’s wondering if there is really more to us than the stories we tell. For those of us that attempt to share our hopes and fears, successes and failures (in journals like this one)…is there really more to us than our blogs? Reminds me of a great T-Shirt David (Brazeal) found on someone’s blog: Enough about me. Let’s talk about my blog.
Sheryl Crow will be 44 next month but it will be a smoking hot 44, based on the cover of Shape. Ms. Crow says she runs or bikes (outdoors) for at least an hour “every single day.” Doesn’t listen to music while running, but meditates and “gets her thoughts in order.” If not running, she’s biking with Lance. She cuts out early since LA typically does six or seven hours a day. When the two cook at home, they make a Mexican burrito for breakfast with cheese, salsa and Jimmy Dean sausage. She eats lots of vegetables and recently gave up caffeine. [Photo]
“We’re going away. Pack your shit, folks. We’re going away. And we won’t leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet’ll be here and we’ll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance.”
— George Carlin rant on why the planet is fine
A year ago I asked: If you experienced the worst day of your life…something truly horrible…and there was a drug that made you forget the previous 24 hours, would you take it?
I was reminded of this today when I had to send my Thinkpad back in time to a “restore point” where life was good. To a time (last night) before it got so screwed up it wouldn’t even boot up. Man, what a great feature and pretty damned close to a time machine.
Some of us would wear that Button out, hoping for a better day today. Might work if we only got to use it, say, three times in a lifetime. Yeah, today sucked… but do I really want to use up one of my “go back to yesterday” options?
It only works because –with my laptop– I can change the future. I know what I did to screw the pooch so I won’t do that again. Could we be trusted with that knowledge in life?
A Hollywood director with a reputation for making violent, bizarre films is headlining what’s billed as a world peace conference in southeast Iowa this weekend. Known for movies like “Mulholland Drive,” “Blue Velvet” and the T-V series “Twin Peaks,” David Lynch is also on the board of directors at Maharishi University in Fairfield. He says perpetual world peace will result by assembling eight-thousand people to continuously practice transcendental meditation. Lynch says “It brings peace, real peace, and peace is not just the absence of war. This real peace, being enlivened, drives negativity away like light drives darkness away.”
“If you have something to say, then say it. If not, enjoy the silence while it lasts. The noise will return soon enough.”
— Hugh Macleod
“The greatest country in history. We can do so much. We will do so much. This country was, after all, founded to move into the future, not to hold onto the habits and ideas of the past. For most countries, if you ask them what they are, what’s unique and defining about them, they’ll point to their past. Not us. Americans have always pointed to the future. If you want to understand us, look at what we’re going to do. Americans face forward.”
A speech that David Weinberger wrote but never gave.
“…about how we all spend so much time having a life that seems to be the kind of life other people have — get up, get breakfast, get dressed, go to work, get there at 9:00, leave there at 5:00 or 6:00 or whatever, come home, eat dinner, watch TV — and I suddenly found this really sad. That we come to this earth and that’s all we can come up with for a life. I don’t want to be the fire-eating woman in the circus or something, but I think I want more of a life than a person who lives in a box, leaves their box in the morning, gets in their box-with-wheels, drives to another office box, sits in that box for 8 hours, their butt spreading a little wider every day from just sitting there, goes home to their box, sits in front of the box, eats a frozen dinner out of a box, goes to sleep on their mattress and box spring.”
Jonathon Delacour on the movie After Life.
“The premise of After Life is simple. Every Monday, people who have died walk through an open doorway suffused with pale light into what looks like a derelict boarding school. Each is issued with an ID number and assigned to a counselor who will assist them in preparing for the journey to the other side. Much of the film is taken up with these counseling sessions, which commence with an explanation of the rules:”
You’re going to stay here for a week. Everyone gets a private room. Please feel at home. But while you’re here there’s one thing you must do.
Out of the __ years of your life, we’d like to ask you to choose one memory, the one you remember and cherish most. There is a time limit. You have three days to decide.
After you choose your memory, our staff will recreate it on film as exactly as possible.
On Saturday we’ll show the films to everyone. The moment the memory comes back to you most vividly, you’ll go on to the other side, taking only that memory.
Via Halley’s Comment
