- This afternoon I had to make an unexpected trip to the Nashville Superspeedway in Gladeville, TN, and managed to get myself stuck in the worst traffic I've ever seen, and I've driven in LA and Chicago. There are great advantages to living three exits from work and working a weird schedule. I highly recommend that more Nashville commuters try it.
- Remember the scene in "Pulp Fiction" where Uma Thurman's character orders a $5 shake, John Travolta flipped out over the price and then says it's a damn good shake? Hardee's makes the best damn shakes on the planet now, and they aren't $5 (or, as it would be if that movie were made today, $7.50.)
- One of my best friends in the world, horror author Elizabeth Donald, is a visiting author at HyperiCon this weekend, and she's doing a reading from, amongst other things, her upcoming vampire novel tomorrow afternoon at 1. Elizabeth is a working journalist in Edwardsville, IL but moonlights as a published author, and her work makes for excellent readings. And I know that a lot of Nashville's blogosphere is not into cons, and I'm not even a big sci-fi person (except for my XPhiledom), but I'm really glad Nashville is getting one, because they can bring in some great tax revenue (ask the folks at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, which is enormous) and very nice folks. So if you'd like a little Memphis-spiced vampire fiction with a distinct snarky edge and strong female characters, come by and hear Elizabeth, and stay for the other stuff.
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6.15.2005
My take on the Phil Jackson/Lakers weirdness
As I posted as a comment elsewhere...
I have decided that Phil Jackson has hatched a secret plot to coach the Lakers, marry Jeannie Buss, take over ownership of the team and then trade Kobe to the Hawks. Then he'd be "rich, beootch!" and on the beach Zen mastering his own team while Kobe sweats and fumes in the Georgia humidity.
I have decided that Phil Jackson has hatched a secret plot to coach the Lakers, marry Jeannie Buss, take over ownership of the team and then trade Kobe to the Hawks. Then he'd be "rich, beootch!" and on the beach Zen mastering his own team while Kobe sweats and fumes in the Georgia humidity.
"You have to trust in something"
Steve Jobs did the commencement address at Stanford this year. Doubtless you know who he is, and if you've ever watched any of his MacWorld addresses, you already know he's a helluva speaker. But this one was particularly special, and a truly amazing retelling of many of the events that shaped where he is now.
Click here for the whole address
There's one particular passage that really struck me.
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
This whole line of thinking - trust, faith, karma, etc. - has been on my mind a lot recently. In particular, someone asked me something along the lines of, "Why do you agree with parents forcing their kids to follow a religious belief that they don't believe in?" That struck home a bit, because I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family, later became Catholic and am now Unitarian-Universalist. But honestly, I'm grateful for the upbringing I had. Because even though I never bought the whole ball of wax of my parents' religion, I learned a lot about personal faith. And to me, that faith is a very simple thing. I learned how to believe in something that I couldn't see or even explain, but just was, and that that belief and trust would somehow get me through anything that came my way. As I got older, I used that same sort of thing with other people. If you're someone whom I believe in, it's not something that you constantly have to prove or work for - I just do, and that very rarely changes. That's burned me more than a little, but it's fundamental to me, and not something I can really "fix". And while the simple faith is considered by some to not be properly thoughtful, more than naive and pretty foolish, it's also a great comfort.
And that's where another paragraph of Jobs' speech jumps out:
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
I can't say that my inner voice is very loud, or that my heart is very smart in its path. But maybe it all comes down to faith and trust after all.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Indeed.
Click here for the whole address
There's one particular passage that really struck me.
You can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
This whole line of thinking - trust, faith, karma, etc. - has been on my mind a lot recently. In particular, someone asked me something along the lines of, "Why do you agree with parents forcing their kids to follow a religious belief that they don't believe in?" That struck home a bit, because I was raised in a fundamentalist Christian family, later became Catholic and am now Unitarian-Universalist. But honestly, I'm grateful for the upbringing I had. Because even though I never bought the whole ball of wax of my parents' religion, I learned a lot about personal faith. And to me, that faith is a very simple thing. I learned how to believe in something that I couldn't see or even explain, but just was, and that that belief and trust would somehow get me through anything that came my way. As I got older, I used that same sort of thing with other people. If you're someone whom I believe in, it's not something that you constantly have to prove or work for - I just do, and that very rarely changes. That's burned me more than a little, but it's fundamental to me, and not something I can really "fix". And while the simple faith is considered by some to not be properly thoughtful, more than naive and pretty foolish, it's also a great comfort.
And that's where another paragraph of Jobs' speech jumps out:
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
I can't say that my inner voice is very loud, or that my heart is very smart in its path. But maybe it all comes down to faith and trust after all.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Indeed.
6.13.2005
Yet another blog post about The Verdict
Once upon a time, on another blog elsewhere, I made a post on the day that Michael Jackson was arrested. At the time, I said that obviously I don't know what happened, but it was really hard to look at a man who admits to sleeping with children and who'd already paid off other accusers and believe that he didn't do it. I still say that, to an extent. The trial brought out even more of the Wacko Jacko stuff, and I know waaaay too much about his choice in porn. But I did learn an important lesson - that no matter how screwed up a person seems to be, there's always someone more screwed up to make them look good in comparison. And that, to me, exemplifies the Michael Jackson trial.
Was I shocked by the verdict? Yes and no. I dodn't see him being convicted on the highest molestation charges, just simply because the alleged victim and his family just didn't present convincing evidence. When you have a mother who's already proven to use her children to scam a company out of money, how can you believe that they're not doing it again? The kids' inconsistant stories, the mom's wacked-out testimony...it's hard to convict someone else when your victim and witnesses seem to be the ones on trial at times. And Debbie Rowe pretty much blew the conspiracy charges outta the water, even if I personally thought she was full of crap when she did it. The one thing I was surprised on was the lesser alcohol charges. When you have person after person taking the stand, talking about the Coke cans with wine, it's hard not to believe the "Jesus juice" testimony.
The thing that gets me about the verdict (and I guess here some would say that I'm offering some fake sort of compassion, but believe it or not, I do mean it) is that everyone's crowing about a victory here. There were no victors in this trial. If it's the worst-case scenario, a pedophile got off scot-free and was pretty much given free rein to share beds with boys and serve Jesus Juice till kingdom come, while a young boy basically lives the rest of the life with what happened to him, knowing that the justice system failed him. But that pedophile would also have to live with the knowledge of what he's done, and with the knowledge that over half of polled U.S. residents think that he's guilty. As obsessed as Michael is with his image, the knowledge that most Americans think he's guilty as sin and that he deserves that will eat him alive. And I would also say that his supply of possible future victims has dried up. Being alone with a guilty conscience is not a great place to be.
But even in the best-case scenario for Michael, this is not something he's going to recover from quickly. He's spent almost two years with the world press picking apart his life, and it was definitely a TMI situation. Now he probably faces some sort of civil action, and he's already broke. I'd say that most likely he'll be reduced to a Las Vegas casino act for a long time. But most of all, he's lost something that was very important in him - trust. He said in an interview that he didn't trust adults, but children had never let him down. And losing that kind of faith and belief in people is worse than losing all the money in the world. As for the kid, he's still a victim - of a maniulative mother, a vindictive prosecutor, and media who will forever chronicle every misstep in his life. It's hard to believe that this boy randomly decided to pipe up one day and call a person who had been so nice to him a molester. There's a lot going on behind this, and none of it is a good life lesson for a young child who's already fought for his life in the past.
In any case, the verdict is in, and after awhile another celebrity screwup will become the media's darling and the late-night punchline. But I do hope that people learn more from this trial than what weird markings are on a singer's private parts. I hope that it doesn't discourage some young kids watching this trial from afar from reporting the terrible things that have happened to them. And I hope that us adults begin to look at the prosecution of sexual exploitation charges as less of a means to be vindictive and "nail" someone in a salacious way, but as more of a way to possibly save countless others from the same fate.
http://www.protect.org/
Was I shocked by the verdict? Yes and no. I dodn't see him being convicted on the highest molestation charges, just simply because the alleged victim and his family just didn't present convincing evidence. When you have a mother who's already proven to use her children to scam a company out of money, how can you believe that they're not doing it again? The kids' inconsistant stories, the mom's wacked-out testimony...it's hard to convict someone else when your victim and witnesses seem to be the ones on trial at times. And Debbie Rowe pretty much blew the conspiracy charges outta the water, even if I personally thought she was full of crap when she did it. The one thing I was surprised on was the lesser alcohol charges. When you have person after person taking the stand, talking about the Coke cans with wine, it's hard not to believe the "Jesus juice" testimony.
The thing that gets me about the verdict (and I guess here some would say that I'm offering some fake sort of compassion, but believe it or not, I do mean it) is that everyone's crowing about a victory here. There were no victors in this trial. If it's the worst-case scenario, a pedophile got off scot-free and was pretty much given free rein to share beds with boys and serve Jesus Juice till kingdom come, while a young boy basically lives the rest of the life with what happened to him, knowing that the justice system failed him. But that pedophile would also have to live with the knowledge of what he's done, and with the knowledge that over half of polled U.S. residents think that he's guilty. As obsessed as Michael is with his image, the knowledge that most Americans think he's guilty as sin and that he deserves that will eat him alive. And I would also say that his supply of possible future victims has dried up. Being alone with a guilty conscience is not a great place to be.
But even in the best-case scenario for Michael, this is not something he's going to recover from quickly. He's spent almost two years with the world press picking apart his life, and it was definitely a TMI situation. Now he probably faces some sort of civil action, and he's already broke. I'd say that most likely he'll be reduced to a Las Vegas casino act for a long time. But most of all, he's lost something that was very important in him - trust. He said in an interview that he didn't trust adults, but children had never let him down. And losing that kind of faith and belief in people is worse than losing all the money in the world. As for the kid, he's still a victim - of a maniulative mother, a vindictive prosecutor, and media who will forever chronicle every misstep in his life. It's hard to believe that this boy randomly decided to pipe up one day and call a person who had been so nice to him a molester. There's a lot going on behind this, and none of it is a good life lesson for a young child who's already fought for his life in the past.
In any case, the verdict is in, and after awhile another celebrity screwup will become the media's darling and the late-night punchline. But I do hope that people learn more from this trial than what weird markings are on a singer's private parts. I hope that it doesn't discourage some young kids watching this trial from afar from reporting the terrible things that have happened to them. And I hope that us adults begin to look at the prosecution of sexual exploitation charges as less of a means to be vindictive and "nail" someone in a salacious way, but as more of a way to possibly save countless others from the same fate.
http://www.protect.org/
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