The photo links to the blog where I found this. I still think this stuff needs more Buffy…
I’ve got to say, I enjoy reading (reading? “looking at” is more accurate) the Sartorialist and Mister Mort photo blogs.
I like Mister Mort better because lately the Sartorialist has been waaaaaay too introverted looking – discussing his book release, posting photos that were taken for magazines (an look like it), and generally not stretching much.
Today’s photo, however, is excellent because of it’s candid nature. Check it out (the photo links through to the full photo and blog entry):
I found an old chat log that was created a few years ago. It was called Budgeting IM – Key Budget Factors and had several hundred lines regarding serious business matters. It was hiding this wonderful diversion, nestled between discussion of depreciation, appropriate estimating procedures, and other gripping material.
The lesson: Budgeting discussion encourages you find every possible reason to avoid budgeting discussion.
Person One: I love/hate playing F, Marry, Kill…
Person Two: I never heard of it.
Person One: really? It’s fun to play, but someone always crosses a line, and then it becomes uncomfortable.
Person One: Like when my wife listed three of her friends.
Person One: or her sistersPerson Two: Oh, that’s brilliant!
Person Two: There are so many fun ways to play the game…the more I consider it.
Person Two: “jesus, buddha, mohammed”
Person Two: “sister teresa, ghandi, idi amin”Person One: I’m not playing with you.
Person Two: “your mom, your maternal grandmother, your paternal grandmother”
Person One: I like the inclusion of idi amin though…
Person One: I’m trying to decide which dead grandmother I’m going to F.
Person One: I’m definitely F’ing Buddha, but do I marry jesus or mohammed????Person Two: Jesus. he forgives.
Person One: for the win!
Person Two: how are we estimating “average cost” in the calculation in cell cc119? i don’t get it.
Once upon a time, I wrote about how I had a very bad idea.
The idea?
Teach a child that the telephone was called “a toilet” and the toilet was called “a telephone”.
In a way, it’s brilliant. In another way, it would get me put into jail and my child seized by authorities. When I tell this idea to friends, they assure me that they will hunt me down with pitchforks and torches if I ever procreate.
I thought it was an entertaining idea, if not practical. Then I read a comic that takes the idea to the next level…to whatever comes after “brilliant” in the scale of “bad ideas”. This comic wins.
(N.B.: It’s borderline safe for work. You know what is allowable, wherever you might be at this moment. Take your chances as you see fit.)
My friend Jack linked to an article titled Our National Altamont is Just a Shot Away. It’s an short article that mourns the fact that civility and courtesy are in short supply.
What happened to courtesy?
The article gives many examples of courtesy-gone-missing. The analogy between the Stone’s concert at Altamont and current public discourse and behavior is reasonable and the implication is grim: all that is left to complete the analogy is for somebody to be shot.
Of course, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and the rest of the conservative talk-radio crew top the list of the rude and discourteous. This is true to the point where they have spawned a cottage industry that documents the ways that they contradict themselves, misstate facts (i.e. lie) and make an ass of themselves in public.
They are experts in getting attention by being loud and rude. They keep attention by turning a complicated world into black-and-white…meaning you either love them or hate them…and either way, you either watch them to hear what they say or watch the websites that want to discredit what they say.
And that’s where courtesy went – it was simplified out of existence by the loud and stupid.
(That’s probably a truism, isn’t it?)
Cosmopolitanism
I wrote about cosmopolitanism a few years ago, but I think that post is just as good now as it was then. The quote from Appiah in his interview is especially important:
“Cosmopolitanism for me has two strands, one is that you have to take seriously the idea that we’re collectively responsible all of us for the fate of all of us. And the other is respect that the choices that people make can be different from one another.”
In the book, which I’ve read a few times since I wrote that post in 2006, Appiah talks about how we can better understand our own values and beliefs by encountering people who have different (and often incompatible) values and beliefs. To Appiah, “Value” (in the sense of “morals” or “values” or “virtues”) is created and strengthened through conversation.
I agree. The problem is that you can’t have a conversation when (a) you are yelling “YOU ARE WRONG!” at the other person and (b) you see the world in black-and-white, absolute terms. There’s no way to find middle ground, much less a better way to do things (that, perhaps, neither side can see alone).
So yeah…It’s too bad that we don’t seem to have much conversation happening on talk radio, cable television or even in the “impartial reporting” we get in the newspapers.
