communication

What Your Dinged Up Car Can Teach You About the Universe

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ding!

Just behind the little gas tank door on my Honda, there is a silver scratch in the paint, about the size of a dime. It looks almost like an upside-down Nike swoosh. The panel is a little bit dented.

I know exactly when it happened.

It was a Friday in June 2006, I was new at my job, and I had just screwed up bigtime. I had transposed a few digits in my field notes and something ended up being constructed improperly, to the tune of about $5,000.

My boss had received a phone call, informing him of my costly blunder, while the two of us rode along in his truck back to the office. Things had been blowing up all day, and that was the last thing either of us wanted to hear. Painful silence.

Then my cell (for which he pays the bill) rang. Sheepishly, I answered, knowing it was a personal call. My friend wanted to go camping right after work. Feeling a desperate urge right then to get the hell out of town, I said yes and then quickly got rid of him. The awkward, silent ride continued.

When I got home, I hurriedly unloaded the work-related equipment from my trunk to throw in my camping stuff. I really wanted to be gone.

I had a bundle of wooden stakes under one arm and an aluminum range pole under the other, when I heard Right Said Fred playing behind me. Suddenly curious, I spun around to look for what kind of bizarre character would be blasting I’m Too Sexy from his car in 2006, and whacked my own car with the metal tip of the pole. Read More

by David on August 14, 2009
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Why You Should Keep Your Really Old Schoolwork

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face

Over thirteen years of grade school, the average student probably hands in a small forest’s-worth of worksheets, journals, drawings and assignments. So much of it is profoundly unmemorable: lab notes, arithmetic tests, book reports, and all other sorts of by-the-numbers tedium.

The creative work, however, is much more revealing. When a kid is asked to draw a picture or tell a story, the mind flies wide open, perhaps more so than it ever could later on in life, once the child has learned what the world considers immature, upsetting or otherwise unacceptable.

Minds Revealed

In “88 Important Truths“, number 8 was “Children are remarkably honest creatures until we teach them not to be.” As kids, we could spill our thoughts right onto the paper with only a trace of the self-censorship that is so pervasive for an adult.

Sitting down to write, as I do today, I’m all too aware of how my thoughts might be perceived and interpreted. I know (or at least I think I know) what the audience is likely to read into it, and so I edit, adjust, and omit accordingly. By the time the finished product is delivered, its character has been shaped by deliberation and second-guessing, with many of my original thoughts removed for the purposes of clarity, cleanliness, and convention. Read More

by David on August 10, 2009
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Secret Lessons From Sesame Street

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Big Bird with Pat Nixon

It was not until I was an adult that I realized that behind Sesame Street is a grand conspiracy.

It’s been on the air for forty years now, and we’re all familiar with the format: short, simple skits involving muppets, neighborhood human cast members and the occasional celebrity.  Each skit has an obvious educational point to get across.

Back when I was a kid it seemed to be the same lessons we learned in school: letters and numbers, shapes, colors, playing fair with others, sharing.  Familiar, scholastic topics, taught by ridiculous monsters and ultra-kind grownups.  I thought these nuts-and-bolts lessons were really as far as they went on the educational side.  The rest was just entertainment.

Unbeknownst to me, the Sesame Street writing team was secretly preparing us kids for things a lot tougher than kindergarten-level math.  Read More

by David on July 20, 2009
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There’s Nothing Small About the World

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smallworld

“Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish opinions.”

~Zen saying

I don’t watch the news anymore, and I don’t get the paper.  It took too much time to read, and often it would put me in a bad mood.  There was too much to disapprove of, too many unsettled and unsettling stories.  So I cut it out.

Television news was no better, mostly celebrity misbehavior and crises of some kind: fires, diseases, bombings and market trouble.  I used to turn on CNN first thing in the morning, and listen while I made breakfast.  One day I quit.

Initially, I feared I would feel out of the loop, that suddenly I would not know what was going on in the world.  My peers would be exchanging crucial details about the state of the universe, and I’d have to ask sheepishly, “What’s swine flu?” or “Who’s the US president right now?”  How embarrassing. Read More

by David on June 1, 2009
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Good Morning

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coffee and newspaper

I feel very blessed.  I seem to be drawing a small but growing group of some of the most thoughtful, intelligent readers around.

I appreciate you all very much, you’ve done more for me than you know.

I had a lengthy article all ready to go for today, but I’ll post it another day.  I won’t fill your head with my opinions this morning, there will be plenty of those later.

Instead, I’ll just take this chance to wish you a good day.  And I mean you, as a person.  Have a great Friday, really.

Whatever you have on your plate on this particular day, I hope it’s not too troublesome for you.  But if it is, know that it matters to me too, because I like you.

If there’s anything I can do for you from my computer chair that won’t get me fired, send me an email.

Thank you all for coming, I’m honored.

Photo by jRa7

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by David on May 29, 2009
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3 Extraordinary Bloggers Doing 3 Extraordinary Things Right Now

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black sheep

The blogosphere has grown to astronomical size already, but somehow, there still appears to be pervasive sameness to it. (Anybody know where I can learn to make money online?)  There are millions of blogs in thousands of niches, and in each, certain authorities rise to the surface.  Most of these “A-listers” are just especially good at something a lot of people are doing: marketing, getting fit, discussing tech stuff.  Nothing wrong with that.   But some people are clearly drumming their own tune, and it’s refreshing to see people who are doing something that is so distinguished, they have no competition.

Here are three fascinating characters working on three extraordinary projects.  Enjoy.  Read More

by David on May 20, 2009
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Asking Google is Asking Humanity

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Humanity on four laptops

I remember my first real-time online interaction.  It was 1993, and I was navigating through a local BBS on my trusty 2400 baud modem.  Some of you may have used BBSes back in the day, but most of you probably don’t know what that is.  BBS stands for Bulletin Board System, which is just a software program on someone else’s computer, where different users could log via phone line on and read news, play simple games, download programs or leave messages.

Most BBSes only had one incoming line, so you couldn’t be online at the same time as anyone else.  If you attempted to reach the BBS when someone else was on, you got a busy signal.  Even though BBSes had many members, it really was a solo activity, you just explored what other people had left there, hence the monikier Bulletin Board.  Still, they fascinated me.

One day, while I was reading some crude, text-based message board, the screen went black.  At the top, letter by letter, words began to appear, as if I was typing them.  But wasn’t me, it was someone else! My heart started pounding.  Life! There was a living, breathing person using my computer, in my basement, from somewhere out there.  It was astonishing and terrifying, like I was encountering an alien. Read More

by David on May 1, 2009
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Get Up, Stand Up

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Zen

I’ve interrupted my regular posting schedule to bring you this important message.

On Sunday, well-known and well-liked blogger Leo Babauta of ZenHabits received an email from the lawyers of author Susan Jeffers, claiming that he had infringed on her trademark in one of his posts by using the phrase “feel the fear and do it anyway” — the title of Jeffers’ book.

That Leo had never heard of the book is, from a legal standpoint, supposedly not relevant. The fact that he was only repeating an intuitive phrase he’d heard from a friend on Twitter (to whom he did give credit in the post) does not excuse him from his offense. It is his responsibility to be aware that the words he used to convey his point had been rendered off-limits by somebody else’s choosing them for a book title, years earlier. Considering how many books and products are out there, I wonder how many of my posts contain book titles or slogans, and whether I’ve already got threatening letters on the way.  Read More

by David on April 28, 2009
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How to Always Have Something Better to Talk About Than the Weather

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Coffee and rain

Six years ago, when I lived in a snowy mountain village and paid my bills by cleaning high-end sinks and toilets, someone said something that prompted me to confront an uncomfortable truth about myself.

A well-meaning coworker mentioned that she had been talking to another housekeeper about me.  Oh?

“She said, ‘David is a such great guy to work with, it’s just that he’s just so quiet.‘”

I don’t remember how I responded, but I assume I tried to disagree somehow, and went back to my work hoping nobody would ever say that to me again. Read More

by David on April 26, 2009
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Thank You

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A gift

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, raspy-voiced, chainsmoking high school student for showing me where the sheet metal shop was on my first day of junior high shops. I was lost and frightened.

Thank you Mr Isaacs, for pulling me out of class and chewing me out for quitting basketball.  It was so thoughtful of you.

Thank you Ms Shawcross, for phoning me years later and telling me you shared my old short story with your new class.  I’m glad they liked it.

Thank you Nadia, Lisis, Roger, Michael, Sherri, Gwynn, Ian, Jay and Alison for welcoming me with open arms into the blogging world.

Thank you, kind readers, for finding my words worthwhile. I appreciate it more than you know. Read More

by David on April 16, 2009
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