Retraction

I was in bed tossing and turning, and unable to capture the elusive respite we call sleep. Actually, it wasn't that dramatic. I had just turned the light off and fell backward into bed and the wheels of blog writing began to spin furiously. I'll tell you, I've lost way too many writing ideas by not responding to that furious spinning in the moment and just listing off to sleep. Not this time, Boy-o! I sat up, reached for the light switch, flicked said light switch to the 'on' position, and fired up my computer.

When I say "fired up" I mean "powered on." "Fired up" is what your short-fuse boss gets after you chain all of his paper clips together. So I powered on my computer. I didn't power on top of my computer. I don't know what it would be to "power." I pushed the button and the computer started operating. All because I had an idea. I will now tell you what that idea was, and continues to be now in the state of "is."

Recently, well, not too recently actually, recently as far as my posts are concerned; I haven't been posting very frequently as of late. I'm speaking of recently as over a month ago. That recently!? Yes. Anyway, in a blog post dated May 25th of this year, and titled Blogger Has Been Bleeger of Late, I made a statement that I now wish to retract. I've heard of retractions before in the press, it's time for me to retract. You see, I made a comment that has since been plaguing my memory. It pops in my consciousness every so often and slaps me and says "you were wrong." It has finally caught up to me with enough force to require rectification.

In the post mentioned above, says I, "Not that I haven't had the time or anything like that, there is always time (yes, Jim Croce, there is always time...put that in a bottle and drink it!)." I am realizing the exact opposite, Jim Croce was more right than he knew. More right than he could ever have known (okay, I'm leaving the bounds of rationality again, which is what got me into this retraction mess in the first place; I ought to leave Croce out of this...but I can't), more right than I could ever have known. But I know it now. Time is limited.

I didn't leave it at such an absolute statement as it seems in the snippet quoted here. In the context of the post and with the rest of what I said you see that I didn't really dismiss the claim that there is never enough time, only mostly did I do that. And as I stated, since writing that post I have had many moments of remembering saying that while thinking about how much I wanted to do or felt I needed to do but just couldn't figure out how to mash it all in. I think there is more time than we sometimes allow for, but most of the time there isn't enough time, and we have to decide what will get that time.

If you have two tomato plants and you only water one of them, chances are the un-watered plant will not produce as much or as healthy fruit as the first. Perhaps it will simply die. Time is like water, or rather, how we spend our time is like water. We can use it to feed things and make them thrive, likewise we can deprive other things of time and starve them to death (which in some cases isn't a bad thing, and to point out the obvious, some things we feed with time are probably better for us to leave them without that sustenance). So what gets our time and attention? That's up for each of us to decide. There lies freedom, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Therein lies joy. Bob Ross knew it.

The only reason I said that was because when I typed "joy" it reminded me of his painting show on PBS. But since I can spin things pretty well, I will now tell you that he knew it and that's why his paintings were done so quickly. He could have spent hours over an easel, painting away, but he wanted to spend more time with his other interests in life so he painted beautiful pictures quickly. He made good things fit into the time he had, so he could have joy in painting and still have time to be Bob Ross.

No matter how you go about managing your time, you will need to sacrifice some things in order to have or do other things. They can all be good things, but somethings got to give. Take right now for example, I am giving up sleep to quench the fire set by this blog post idea.I am sacrificing. And for me that makes this post all the more entertaining and valuable, because I am giving up sleep for it. Maybe it's just a case of buyer's remorse.

I'm wondering something, do you have trouble following my writing because I don't have a defined "past tense"/"present tense" presentation? Never mind, it isn't important...wasn't important.

I think I have sufficiently expressed my thoughts regarding the retraction. I'll give a diagram of how this works. I get an idea to write about and my head starts filling with sentences and phrases that I want to use. This fills up in my mind like so many potatoes in a sack. Some potatoes are good, others are not as good. Some are large, some are small. Some are rocks. Most of them are covered in dirt and are not ready to eat. Actually none of them are ready to eat. I think eating uncooked potatoes gives you botulism. No, that's honey, in babies. When I have children I am going to sit them down and say "you can't eat honey, [baby]." I don't have names picked out yet. My soon-to-be wife and I briefly discussed baby names a while back, but I don't think we settled on any, so for now [baby] will suffice.

See what I mean? Some of the potatoes in the sack are actually rocks, not potatoes at all. Anyway, after the potatoes are in the sack they get carried to the place of processing. Whatever that is for potatoes, I don't know. I guess they probably get processed before going into a sack. I don't know. My ideas, though, like potatoes, eventually get dumped out of the sack (in the case of ideas the sack being my mind) and into a french fry cutter or potato chip slicer. That is the equivalent of me typing a post. The end result is that the potato sack is eventually emptied, as is my mind. In tonight's case, this happened several paragraphs back. I typed about the retraction until I had no more thoughts left about it. I don't know that it all came out in good sense or not, that's not for me to worry about. I just put the potatoes down and let you decide.

The point is that I have run out of anything worthwhile to type under this title. To which you respond, "duh." Good night.

Of Beards

When you see a man with a beard, what do you conclude? Do you conclude anything? How much of a role does the beard play in your judgment of the man? Yes, I say judgment, as we all make stereotypical judgments about pretty much everything we see, all of the time. It's true, if we didn't then we'd spend hours every day just looking at anything new. We stereotype to make quick judgments and move on with our lives. Don't worry, stereotyping isn't evil, neither is making judgments. You can use stereotyping to prejudice or discriminate, in which case it isn't favorable, but still not intrinsically evil, just ignorant and/or obnoxious. That's all.

So how do you stereotype beard wearers? I'll tell you how I answer that question, I'd say "it depends." A beard doesn't have any intrinsic value. It is just hair, but, if you look at the way it is styled and kept, then you can begin to apply value to it, or rather, lock the wearer into a stereotype. If you are still having trouble with my use of the idea "stereotype," try this on: using stereotypes to make character judgments of a person without giving them any opportunity to prove themselves is lame. That is my subjective opinion. But you will automatically stereotype and that's fine, but don't forget to give someone a chance to prove who they are.

Back to the beards. I don't think all beards are the same. I also don't think that every wild, unkempt beard belongs to a domestic terrorist. Nor do I think that every set of mutton chops belongs to a Confederate soldier circa 1862 (though most do). The point is that beards are like any other piece of fashion or style and they follow trends. They do not make or break a man...

The rest of this post can be found in the Ajax's Whimsical Revolution ebook for Amazon's Kindle. The book is a compilation of my favorite posts, 78 to be exact, of which this is one. If you don't have a Kindle e-reader you can download the free Amazon Kindle app for PC or Mac.

I Just Wanna...DANCE!

I don't want to dance, but I do think this song is catchy:



I was going to just link to this video on Facebook and make a snarky comment about it, but I'm in a blogging mood.

I have this video in my iTunes library. I didn't buy it, so it must be one of the dozens of free files they offer each week which I indiscriminately download and never listen to (on purpose). I happened to listen to it tonight, and I like it. It does make me wonder, however, whether or not this band is what would happen if Ralph Macchio and the Disney Channel got together and had a child? Do you see it?

Well, it is a decent tune, if not cliche and predictable. I like it, but the band makes me laugh. Perhaps if I was 15 years younger, with rich parents, and living in an affluent suburb or on the outskirts of a southern states metropolis, I wouldn't find the band so laughable. But who am I to judge? Well, I'm Ajax! And this is my blog.

I think the trend of bands over the last 20 years has been interesting. Bands like Green Day and Nirvana paved the way for bands like Panic! At the Disco and The Downtown Fiction. If it wasn't so late at night and my thinking wasn't so halted, I think I'd like to get really philosophical about this topic, but at the moment I just can't do it. I used to say, in defense of people calling Green Day a bunch of "sell outs," that there is nothing more punk than for a group of guys to play sloppy music and get rich off of it. Sloppy as in easy to play and lyrics that won't turn heads or stand through time as profound. But now looking at the results of their breaking down the mainstream walls and letting every Tom, Dick, and Panic! into the record stores, I'm wondering if they did such a good thing after all.

It doesn't matter, it's all just bunk anyway. And I am going to bed.

Working Seven to Seven, What a Way to Make a Livin'

I can never decide if I want this blog to be about me or about the things I think are interesting and humorous. What's the difference, you ask? If it is about me then I might as well waste some space mentioning that it has been forever since I've typed anything here. But that just seems weak and panderous (which I mean to say "playing to the lowest common denominator." I have to explain it because "pander" has some specific connotations by some definitions and that's not what I'm trying to say here at all). So rather than go on about how I haven't taken the time to "blog it up" lately, I will just jump right into a post, rather than finish the thought I started above with the question I posed.

Dolly Parton thought 9am to 5pm was a rough go at making a living. It makes for a nice song though. Honestly, I'm as surprised as you. I wouldn't have thought it would be one that I would listen to on purpose, but as I have it playing at Grooveshark currently, I'm realizing that I might. In the spirit of this song, I will now give you the run down of a typical night for me at my recently new job. Rather than one day, I will give you the highlights of the last three night's 12 hour shifts. It will be an amalgamation, primarily because I wanted to use that word, but also because at this point I can't remember what happened on what night, or at what time. My current tally is 3 hours of sleep during the last 34 hours. Hence my inability to differentiate between nightly activities.

1845 hours (that's 6:45pm): Receive the daily report from the prior shift
1900 hours: Ride along to the mall with another staff member and several residents
2100 hours: Play Risk with residents for 2 hours
2300 hours: Sit in a chair for 4 hours and read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (almost finished the book in one sitting)
0300 hours: Fill in pot-holes in the dirt driveway and parking lot with two other staff members
0500 hours: Watch America's Funniest Videos on TV
0600 hours: Empty the trash
0630 hours: Sit by the door while the next shift arrives and receives report
0650 hours: Moan about how long the last 20 minutes have gone
0700 hours: Go home, zombified and ready for sleep

What is my job title? Recovery support staff. It is an interesting job, mostly because you never know what will happen in the middle of the night as we try to keep ourselves awake. Actually, I do know what will happen, we will use someone's iPhone to watch these videos:
Mountain Top!

Crime Deterrent

Hope (my personal favorite!)

The tiredness caught up to me. Good night.