Arrogance: the defining personality trait of all those who are more successful than you.
Envy: the defining personality trait of all those who are less successful than you.
It’s All Downstream From Tip-Shaming
Kroger: Would you like to scan and bag your own groceries?
Customer: Bag my own groceries? Are you going to pay me to do your work?
Kroger: No. As a matter of fact, we’re going to start charging you for the bags that you’re filling yourself.
Customer: Is the bag fee going toward higher quality bags?
Kroger: No. The new bags break ten times quicker than the old ones.
Customer: Win win win. Sounds good to me.
Always Right or Always Good?
It’s far easier to deal with people who always think they’re right than with people who always think their intentions are pure.
People who always think they’re right have a high incentive to actually be right, because they know everyone can tell when they’ve been proven wrong. On the other hand, you cannot prove to someone that their intentions were impure.
I Paid Extra For An Autographed Copy
Just arrived in the mail today.
What LEGO Taught Me About Life
“I had a lot of LEGO as a child, as did my friends, and we all knew there were two kinds of blocks: “regulars” and “specials.”
Regulars were the kind of blocks you used to build a wall, a floor, a hull, a wing, a fuselage, or a roof. Most were solid, symmetrical, and they tended to look like cinderblocks, bricks, beams, studs, cast metal, or sheetrock. In any unsorted box of LEGO, most are regulars. That is because you need a lot of them to build a plane, a castle, or a ship.
Specials were few in number, though, and tended to be small. They weren’t practical, but they were highly desirable. I remember hundreds of different kinds of specials: small transparent cones and rods (which tended to represent light or laser beams), dials, levers, switches, flags, feathers, rockets, treasure chests, shields, swords, and so forth. While you couldn’t build a fort with specials, you couldn’t build a cool fort without them.”
-from my latest for CiRCE
Proverbial, Episode 124: Not My First Rodeo
The latest episode of Proverbial is devoted to the saying, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” which I think one of the most misunderstood aphorisms that pretty much everybody’s heard. Download the latest show here.
Mobile Order For The Nouveau Riche
We need to get that “The rent is too damn high” fellow back and send him after Starbucks.
New Episode of Proverbial Is Available Now
After a two month hiatus, Proverbial is back. Episode 123: Letting The Water Hold Me Down is available now.
About The Barbie Movie
“The film’s greatest contradictions concern motherhood. Barbie wants motherhood to be noble, but not more noble than a swinging single life, which is to say that it doesn’t matter what women choose as long as they choose it for shallow reasons.”
Book Signing In Concord, NC
I will be at Goldberry Books in Concord, NC on the evening of August 10 to do a little reading, a little Q&A, and to sign copies of Love What Lasts (or any other objects upon which you prefer my signature). If you’re in the area, or care to drive, fly, or sail to the area, I would love to see you there.
You can register for the event here.
There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity. 