There was absolutely no reason why I should start a sketch of a unicorn’s skull. But I did. Here it is.
A Dying Breed
Limited Guacamole
Nimble Not
This morning I decided to eat my breakfast with my left hand instead of my right. I was under the impression this would stimulate the right side of my brain and help me be more creative in my thinking. But all it really did was slow me down.
You can’t go fast when the spoon goes in your nose instead of your mouth. Thankfully, I wasn’t using a fork! But really, anything up your nose is bad. Trust me.
After the last bite, I wanted to scrape the bowl clean. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the dexterity to do this. I tried and tried but things just kept falling off the spoon. Finally, in a bout of frustration, I switched back to my right hand. Immediately I was overcome with grief and depression like that time I learned what veal was.
I had failed both myself and the right half of my brain, which, on reflection are kind of the same thing. Does that lessen the sadness or compound it? It doesn’t matter. A failure is a failure. For the rest of the day all I could do was analyze old grocery receipts and worry I had overpaid.
Pop Quiz
Self-Conscious
A Plea For Transparency in Advertising
Panhandlers and bums are becoming more and more honest and trasparent. It’s become fashionable for them to display signs saying something like “Not gonna lie, I need beer”.
Why can’t businesses be more like today’s forward thinking beggars? I’d appreciate the honesty of a commercial stating “We really don’t care about your needs, we just want your money”?
From the Mouths of Babes
Said at home, it would have been funny. But when the little girl repeated her mother’s shopping list in the middle of Target, the mother was somewhat mortified.
I was in the right place at the right time to hear the exchange. The little girl was riding in the cart and holding the list. She said, “Mommy, all we have left on the list is candy and alcohol”. I thought that was humorous enough but then the mother quickly responded while looking around furtively, “rubbing alcohol, it’s just rubbing alcohol”.
It’s funny how context and abbreviation can lead to misconceptions. It’s also funny how embarrased we can get on just the assumption of what other people might be thinking. I bet that mother writes more detailed lists now or just doesn’t let her kid hold them anymore.
The Other Side of the Fence
Five Book Friday #2
Once again I’m bringing you the fivebooks I’ve read or have been reading over the last week.
- The first one takes the reader on an 1800 mile walking trek throughout Central America. Walking the Americas by Levison Wood is an enjoyable first person account of the still wild lands that make up Central America. From Mexico to Panama and finally ending up in Columbia, Wood and his friend find adventure and danger from both nature and their fellow man. This one wasn’t the most compelling page turner I’ve ever read but it had plenty to keep me interested.
- I like some of Woody Allen’s writing and maybe two of his movies. So when I saw Mere Anarchy on the shelf last week, I grabbed it to see if Allen was as funny as in Without Feathers. Once again there was a mix of laugh out loud funny material and pseudo high brow snarkiness. In all it was a quick fun read.
- Patrick O’Donnell brings a barrel full of first and second hand WWII spy stories in his book Operatives Spies and Saboteurs: The Unknown Story of WWII’s OSS. This book is basically a collection of anecdotes collected and combined in a generally chronological order. I enjoy learning about unknown or largely unsung characters from WWII. This book gave me just that. The OSS was a facinating group of facinating men and women who made a huge impact on the outcome of the war. If you’re interested in wartime espionage, this is the book for you.
- David Naimon‘s interviews with Ursula K. Le Guin were published in Conversations on Writing. This question and answer book covers writing fiction, poetry and non fiction from LeGuin’s perspective. It’s not at all a how to on writing but rather herr philisophical ideas of different types of writing. It was an interesting read but slow in many parts. I’ll admit, I skipped a few parts that didn’t interest me.
- I spend a lot of time thinking about how to exercise better and more efficiently as I grow older. That’s why I was ineterested when I found Play On: The New Science of Elite Performance by Jeff Bercovici on the new release shelf. Jeff travelled around to document breakthroughs in sports performance hacks and trends, talk to olympians about their training regimens and dig into health fads that promise too much. I’m only about a quarter of the way through this one but will definitely finish it. I was especially interested in the chapter on a better way to think about conditioning. Many professional athletes like NFL players are plagued by injuries as early as the preseason. It could be that they simply don’t train smart and that they push themselves too hard too fast. Sometimes you have to slow down and actually work less to reduce your chances of injury and let your body stay fresh.
The Boss
