Untitled

[schn00dles]

Existential Expansion

Styriaxis (making your life more difficult to justify complaining about it)     I have been writing poems about made up words posted on the Internet from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig.  When my friend, Donn Trenton, heard this, he sent me the above word among others he has invented.  Serendipitously, the word ‘Styriaxis’ has provided the bit of grit needed for my oyster like…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Bourgeois Dignity by Deidre McCloskey

Contains some economic beliefs you might need to change.

If you think of economics as a study of how we create wealth, economic theory was pretty much anybody’s guess until we finally made some.  For thousands of years the daily consumption of an individual remained pretty set at around $3 a day. “Economic history has looked like an ice hockey stick lying on the ground.  It had a long, long horizontal handle at $3 a day extending through the…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Why Political Systems Endure to Squabble Interminably

Why Political Systems Endure to Squabble Interminably

(Spoiler:  It’s the Libertarians) Perhaps the reason various political systems endure and are argued is that they all have some current application.  For example, monarchy is the ruling system of the family:  King father, Queen mother, the aunts and uncles of Nobility, and finally the lowly Citizen-children.  All are granted their seniority with due rewards and obligations in the hierarchy.…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

My High School Address As a Returning Famous Alumni

My High School Address As a Returning Famous Alumni

       I’ve fantasized every since high school about returning as a famous and/or accomplished alumni and delivering an address to the assembled senior class.  I doubt that I am alone in this dream.  Also I am not alone, I believe, in not being asked to speak.  But, being in the arts, I am well used to this.   And perhaps we have trained to handle this better than many in the other professions. …

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

The Two Mathematicians

Global Warming Alarmists, with their over-riding  faith in the ‘accepted’ scientific consensus, remind me of the two mathematicians who proved that bumblebees can’t fly.  (The implications of which would be alarming, also.) When it was pointed out to them that bumblebees do fly, they said, “Oh!  So you consider yourself a mathematician?”  They then produced a stack of cardboard boxes filled with…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Newspeak and Masculine Vigor

Newspeak and Masculine Vigor are natural adversaries. And this is playing out in our Universities and National Politics.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/12/26/at-the-university-of-oregon-no-more-free-speech-for-professors-on-subjects-such-as-race-religion-sexual-orientation/?utm_term=.fdb7894617b7   The above opinion in the Washington Post by Eugene Volokh concerns free speech issues at the University of Oregon.  Apparently the University of Oregon administration has declared that…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

The Joys of a Poet

The Joys of a Poet: Arrival at this most minuscule of positions.

And His Arrival at this Most Minuscule of Positions I cross the Ohio everyday.                         Of the many experiences I remember of my theater years, the most compelling occurred on stage.  They were small moments, mini-scenes, in which the characters seemed so autonomous that the actors no longer needed to please the audience.  They were little sections of life that didn’t need to sell…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

My Son Doesn't Like to Read

My Son Doesn’t Like to Read

My Son Doesn’t Like to Read  My son doesn’t like to read.  Reading for enjoyment is a mystery to him.  Actually, sitting still for enjoyment is a mystery to him.  About the only thing he will sit still to watch are sports on TV and social media videos. He is not ADHD.  He can spend large amounts of time working at the computer on photographs and design problems, and he can concentrate and finish…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Pulling People From Their Cars

Pulling People From Their Cars

Pulling People From Their Cars My barber, who is working with me on our latest strategy to rule my aging hair, was worried following Trumps victory.   “They pulled a fellow from his car and beat him up just because he said he’d voted for Trump!  What kind of people do that?” I get my hair cut in this little shop about a block from home, which takes up the street side of a small frame building,…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Red or Blue?

Are we are living in a major media Matrix? And if so, which pill should we swallow?

This November 8th, Are You Going to Take the Red Pill or the Blue One?   It would seem Hillary supporters and Democrats, in general, view themselves as the more intelligent, educated and successful portion of the citizenry, burdened with many poor relations.  They would view themselves as the more urbane, cultured, sophisticated and nuanced in both their understanding of current events and the…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Embedded with the Deplorables

Embedded with the Deplorables

I wished my cousin in LA a happy birthday on Facebook the other day.  He thanked me and asked how life was in a “battleground state”.  I told him it was pretty quiet, pleasant actually.  For the most part it’s just people going to work and coming home.  It’s very hard to get people around here to riot! There are kids playing between the parked cars and riding their bicycles, and one who practices…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Getting It Into the Air

Getting It Into the Air

Once I had decided upon becoming a writer, I still had to make a living.  Just as the Zen Master must still chop wood and haul water, so I drove a Metro Bus part time.  One day, as I was passing through a Seattle suburb, I stopped outside a shopping center for this matronly lady to climb the stairs.  As she dug in her purse to locate her fare, she eyed me to say, “You look awfully tired.  You…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

The Unauthorized Use of Something I Read

The Unauthorized Use of Something I Read

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Business-School-Presenting/dp/0857285149/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1474034530&sr=1-1&keywords=the+complete+guide+to+business+school+presenting   A Facebook friend, Stanley K. Ridgley, PhD., has written The Complete Guide to Business School Presenting.  I was so taken by an excerpt of the book on the speaker’s use of the ‘Pause’, a teaser which Stanley…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

The Serenity Poetry Series

A little bit about the Serenity Poetry Series.

Poetry Readings Have a Long History One of the more memorable evenings I’ve spent in stage theater occurred at a small forty person theater in Seattle called the Odd Duck.  A playwright, whose name I can’t recall and wouldn’t tell you if I did, had written a piece for the playwright’s group show.  His stuff was very watchable, but violent, bloody and transgressive.  It was also highbrow and…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Getting Older, the Veneer Wears Thin for a Curmudgeon

Getting Older, the Veneer Wears Thin for a Curmudgeon

Just as our bodies fail us, so do our minds and our personalities.  Our charm gets frayed, or takes a few hours off, or leaves us altogether.  Or the glitz which made the more determined aspects of our personalities less pointed and uncomfortable has fallen away, like paint from a splintery bench.  We’re isolated.  The difficulties of minor tasks get exhausting.  Small mishaps make us irritable. …

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

American Home Life

A Modest Lack of Proposal   It’s harder to imagine Hillary Clinton not running for President than her candidacy.  She pretty much outlines the nature of a ruthless political animal in the current political age, where one’s accomplishments for office are that you have held a previous office – or a relationship to that office, and your ‘vision’ is whatever triangulates for a plurality of the…

View On WordPress

[schn00dles]

Book Report

I’ve finished five books of late, and I’m patting myself on the back.  So many periodicals arrive daily that I found I wasn’t finishing the books I’d purchased.  So I have made the effort and here is my report. “A Man Called Ove” by Fredrik Backman:  This is an English translation of a current Swedish bestseller.  It’s a marvel of sweet and sour.  Ove is the sour.  His works are the sweet.  Very…

View On WordPress