1. Life isn't fair. Sometimes you get lucky; sometimes you get screwed. That's the way it goes. Get used to it.
2. All families are "dysfunctional," if dysfunctional means less than perfect. So is everything--and everyone--else. All humans are a little nuts, and so are you.
3. If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault--even if your family was dysfunctional. Perhaps your family caused you real pain, damaged your psyche or crushed your dreams. Guess what? Now's your chance. Living well is the best revenge. Whining about your mistakes may be satisfying, but not repeating them is better.
4. The world doesn't care about your self-esteem. In fact, the world insists that you accomplish something before you feel good about yourself--and that's not unfeeling or unreasonable. When you knock out Liston, Frazier and Foreman, you can call yourself The Greatest and people will agree. But not before.
5. Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Let's face it, at your age, you don't really have much dignity. Like self-esteem, dignity must be earned. What you call dignity, adults call attitude; and flipping burgers, like any job--or any position of trust--is an opportunity.
6. You may never be rich. Why lie? It's always possible, but the odds are against it. If you keep at it, however, you are almost certain to be successful and comfortable. Half the battle in life consists of showing up every day, on time and ready to go. But you will probably not make 100K--or even 30K--right out of high school. So get real.
7. Going to college is not a magic bean that will grow up to support a castle in the clouds. If you have no vocational calling and the only reason you have for going to college is to prolong your dependent adolescence while you wait for a Big Idea, don't bother. Wherever you go, there you are. Big Ideas usually come when you're busy doing something else, so you're better off drawing a paycheck.
8. If you think your teacher is tough on you, wait 'til you meet your boss. Chances are he won't belong to a union (unless you do), which means that he can be fired. Which he will be, if you don't do your job to his satisfaction. His job depends on your performance--and that makes you expendable.
9. Life is not divided into trimesters and you won't get the whole summer off. Forget about Easter break in Daytona. Plus, very few employers will be interested in helping you find yourself. Do that on your own time.
10. When you land a job, remember that the job is not "yours." The job belongs to the employer who loaned it to you on credit, based on your promise to perform. The good news is that the employer does not own you. What belongs to you is your freedom; what you are selling is your service.
11. TV is not real life. Even reality TV is not real life. In real life, people can't spend all day running around half-naked on tropical islands or hanging out in the coffee shop cracking jokes. Plus, a little sexual innuendo in conversation goes a long. long way, most people find visible tattoos distasteful and a boob job is not required to scan groceries.
12. Before you were born, your parents were probably cool--or at least not as boring as they are now. They evolved into boring creatures through natural selection: by paying your bills, cleaning up your messes and listening to you tell them how cool you are. So before you heal the planet, clean up your room.
13. Nor will you always be cool. No matter how cool you think you are, your own kids will find you insufferable. You cannot prepare for this too early.
14. Be nice to nerds. It's the right thing to do and--since nerds, dweebs and geeks are often serious people--the chances are better than even that one day you will work for one.
15. Your school may have eliminated winners and losers. Life has not. Life quickly separates the wheat from the chaff. Don't be chaff. And don't expect a gold star for attendance or a trophy for being the best tweeter ever. If life is good to you--and you are good to life--you will have a network of family and close friends. But the hard truth is: you are on your own. And what could be more glorious?
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
We Ain't Them
Frankly, I don't think much of Islam. I've yawned and struggled through the Koran, Sunna and two recommended versions of the Haditha--and I still don't think much of it. Compared to the Bible, both Old and New Testaments, the Koran doesn't. Not as revelation, not as history, not as moral instruction and definitely not as literature. The Koran is stilted, clumsy, repetitive and, above all, derivative--and don't tell me I don't get it because I don't read Arabic. The illiterate Mohammed didn't either, much less write it, and Arabic is an unsophisticated language. It ain't Hebrew, Greek, Latin or English, the languages of the Bible. To me, the Koran is a user's manual for the abused and Islam is more totalitarian sociopolitical control system than religion, but no one--yet--is forcing me to buy into it, and as an American, what and who other people worship is not my business.
But that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion, which is: Mohammed ain't Moses. For a holy man, he was awfully preoccupied with the things of this world--not all them legal or seemly. As a prophet, which he claimed to be, he sounds like Daffy Duck alongside Isaiah or Jeremiah. And he sure as sunrise ain't Jesus Christ. What Mohammed was--among many unsavory things we won't go into now-- was a plagiarist. Without the Bible to crib from, and ancient pagan beliefs from the surrounding desert tribes to coopt (including recruiting a certain demon djinn named Al'lah) he might have remained silent--and we'd all be happier today. Especially Muslims.
Which (work with me) brings us to Islamic terrorism. I'm not one of those self-hating lefty appeasers who believes that killing terrorists creates more terrorists. Frankly, I don't care if it does. The more that pop up, the easier it becomes to play Whack-a-Mole. A wall of stacked dead terrorists, like the wall of dead Persians the Spartans built in 300, is not an unpleasing image. For every one of ours who falls, I'd prefer to see one hundred of theirs go down--as policy. Sue me.
All that said, we ain't them--and we must never forget that. When the Tolley-bonn took over in Afghanistan, they destroyed the mammoth Bamiyan buddhas, built ca. 300-500 AD, because they supposedly threatened Islam. (Islam has an inferiority complex--and deserves it.)
But that doesn't mean I don't have an opinion, which is: Mohammed ain't Moses. For a holy man, he was awfully preoccupied with the things of this world--not all them legal or seemly. As a prophet, which he claimed to be, he sounds like Daffy Duck alongside Isaiah or Jeremiah. And he sure as sunrise ain't Jesus Christ. What Mohammed was--among many unsavory things we won't go into now-- was a plagiarist. Without the Bible to crib from, and ancient pagan beliefs from the surrounding desert tribes to coopt (including recruiting a certain demon djinn named Al'lah) he might have remained silent--and we'd all be happier today. Especially Muslims.
Which (work with me) brings us to Islamic terrorism. I'm not one of those self-hating lefty appeasers who believes that killing terrorists creates more terrorists. Frankly, I don't care if it does. The more that pop up, the easier it becomes to play Whack-a-Mole. A wall of stacked dead terrorists, like the wall of dead Persians the Spartans built in 300, is not an unpleasing image. For every one of ours who falls, I'd prefer to see one hundred of theirs go down--as policy. Sue me.
All that said, we ain't them--and we must never forget that. When the Tolley-bonn took over in Afghanistan, they destroyed the mammoth Bamiyan buddhas, built ca. 300-500 AD, because they supposedly threatened Islam. (Islam has an inferiority complex--and deserves it.)
This followed a pattern of jealousy, triumphalism and historical revisionism begun with the building of the golden-domed Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem over the ruins of Solomon's temple and continuing today with the threatened construction of the Ground Zero mosque. When the Jews retook the Old City of Jerusalem in 1967, they did not blow up the Golden Dome and start construction of a new temple, which would have been tit for tat. The reason they didn't? Israel ain't them, and neither are we.
Which (keep working with me) brings me to the scheduled ceremonial burning of the Koran on 9/11. This bonfire is the "brain" child of the Rev. Terry Jones, founder and pastor of the Dove World Outreach ministries of Gainesville, Florida. Dove's grandiose name belies the fact that it has 50 members and I don't know or care where Jones got his divinity degree or even if he has one. This is America. Anyone can start a church and get a tax exemption. Is this a great country ot what? Yes, this is a great country. Remember that, because we ain't them. We ain't terrorists and we ain't Westboro Baptist and we ain't Dove Outreach. We're Americans. We don't purposely kill women, children or innocents, we don't use human shields and we don't burn books. Even when our symbols are violated, whether they soar into the sky like the twin towers or lie in their former shadow like a graveyard, we don't engage in cheap symbolism, because we ain't them. Most of us are Christians, whom God taught that every human soul has equal worth, and we struggle to remember that, because we ain't them.
Oh, we'll fight back. Don't dream that we won't. And we'll win, too, but burning the Koran is not fighting. It's a cheap publicity stunt, tailor-made to play into the hands of Democrat spinners desperate to find some leverage in the eleventh hour of a campaign that is likely to end in a blood-bath. It'll give them a chance to call us haters, but we're not, because we ain't them. Let's not find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. We're Americans, the people from the City on a Hill, and the whole world is watching. And cheering. We're the real American majority, silent no more and standing tall in overwhelming numbers for the first time in my lifetime. We don't have to play stupid and we don't have to play dirty. We're not afraid of terrorists. We're not afraid of Islam. We're not afraid of any enemy, foreign or domestic. And we're certainly not afraid of a poorly-written book. We can win this thing sweet and clean, battle by battle, standing in the fire of truth. So let's just do it, our way, the free American way, because--never forget--we ain't them. I don't care wo they are.
Friday, September 3, 2010
Dead Words Walking--Part One
Dead words walking are words and expressions that are part of today's vernacular, but deserve to be on Death Row, awaiting execution. Part One consists of words heard many times a day on broadcast media. These words and phrases have been convicted; many suspects still roam the streets. If you hear one, cover your ears and call the authorities.
Walking It Back -- As in, "He ran his big mouth yesterday, and today is busy walking it back."
But once the horse slips from the stable and canters into the world, it's too late. It doesn't matter if the statement is an outright lie (which is usually the case), or an unfortunate choice of words, or just accidental blurting (which is likely to be the truth). You can lasso Dobbin and walk him back to his stall, but his tell-tale hoofprints remain in the world. Excuses and explanations may be possible--occasionally even good ones--but there is no walking back the talk. Let's stop pretending there is and turn this expression into dog food.
At the End of the Day -- This means "ultimately" or "finally" or, if you're feeling dramatic, "in the end." Not exciting words, so the first time you heard "at the end of the day," you may have found it refreshing or colorful. Then the media magpies snatched it up and flew in raucous circles. Now it's not unusual to hear it from the same talking head several times in a five-minute segment. At the end of the day, an example must be made of the next public figure to use this expression.
Thinking Outside the Box -- Some say this expression came to us from Madison Avenue admen; others insist that it comes from the cutting edge world of scientific and technological innovation. Wherever it came from, it needs to be put back in the box. Nowadays, it's used whenever a teenager is deciding whether or not to invest in a tattoo. What we really need to do is apply old, tried-and-true solutions to current problems. Current, not new problems, because human problems are never new--only their context. Here's an idea: how about thinking inside the box for awhile? We might learn something.
Sausage-Making -- "Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made." --Otto Von Bismarck. He added "Out of respect for sausages." In the Obama era, permutations of this aphorism are favored by left-wing newscritters pretending to be moderates. They use this to suggest that the strong-arming and bribery employed to ram through, say, ObamaCare, are business as usual. This is, well...baloney. Bismarck (often credited as the first big government progressive, as well as the father of the welfare state) meant that politics and legislating involved unsavory horse-trading and tit-for-tat favor swapping, but the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Axis of Ego has plumbed new depths of legislative depravity. At least for America. This expression must be ground up, encased and fed to pet Democrats.
Game Changer -- This new cliche hails (as so many do) from the sports world, where it means any big play which alters the flow and eventual outcome of a game. It's harmless and has only become offensive because everyone--everyone--in media (all of whom suffer from cutesiness and echolalia) uses it incessantly, for every petty morsel of breaking news. Let's bench it before it makes a game-changing mistake.
Orientated -- If you become oriented, you are not turning Japanese, no matter how much you think so. To become oriented is to be familiarized with new surroundings or a new situation, or to be placed in proper relationship to that which is. To be disoriented is probably to be drunk. The process of becoming oriented is called orientation. But there is no such word as "orientated." I don't care how many times you've heard it. And any hairdo who uses it should be immediately frog-marched off the set.
Tipping Point -- This has taken the place of turning point, but conveys a spicier sense of urgency and inevitability. The tipping point of a situation occurs at the same instant as the game changer. Although overused, it's colorful, and I wouldn't really mind it except for the fact that, just as we don't know what play, if any, was the game changer until the game is over, we don't really know where the tipping point was until the tipped object actually crashes to the ground. The other tipping point comes at the end of a restaurant meal, but doesn't concern us here.
Dysfunctional -- Any word entering this dimension from the realm of psychobabble is suspect--this one more than most. My chief objection to it is that it is meaningless. These days, anything that doesn't work perfectly from the perspective of everyone involved is dysfunctional. Ergo, everything's dysfunctional. Every organization, every system, every relationship--especially the family. I have a question for you: Did you survive into adulthood? If yes, then your family was functional. Not perfect, but then neither are you.
Going Forward -- This one--meaning "from now on"--was probably conceived by the same people who brought us "at the end of the day." With a key difference. While "end of the day" is abused by the full political spectrum, "going forward" is abused exclusively by progressive leftists, who favor imagery that promotes relentless forward progress down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City of Mankind. The left is moving on.org, never looking back, nor, since they're wearing blinders, side to side. They only have eyes for the finish line. And then what?
Walking It Back -- As in, "He ran his big mouth yesterday, and today is busy walking it back."
But once the horse slips from the stable and canters into the world, it's too late. It doesn't matter if the statement is an outright lie (which is usually the case), or an unfortunate choice of words, or just accidental blurting (which is likely to be the truth). You can lasso Dobbin and walk him back to his stall, but his tell-tale hoofprints remain in the world. Excuses and explanations may be possible--occasionally even good ones--but there is no walking back the talk. Let's stop pretending there is and turn this expression into dog food.
At the End of the Day -- This means "ultimately" or "finally" or, if you're feeling dramatic, "in the end." Not exciting words, so the first time you heard "at the end of the day," you may have found it refreshing or colorful. Then the media magpies snatched it up and flew in raucous circles. Now it's not unusual to hear it from the same talking head several times in a five-minute segment. At the end of the day, an example must be made of the next public figure to use this expression.
Thinking Outside the Box -- Some say this expression came to us from Madison Avenue admen; others insist that it comes from the cutting edge world of scientific and technological innovation. Wherever it came from, it needs to be put back in the box. Nowadays, it's used whenever a teenager is deciding whether or not to invest in a tattoo. What we really need to do is apply old, tried-and-true solutions to current problems. Current, not new problems, because human problems are never new--only their context. Here's an idea: how about thinking inside the box for awhile? We might learn something.
Sausage-Making -- "Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made." --Otto Von Bismarck. He added "Out of respect for sausages." In the Obama era, permutations of this aphorism are favored by left-wing newscritters pretending to be moderates. They use this to suggest that the strong-arming and bribery employed to ram through, say, ObamaCare, are business as usual. This is, well...baloney. Bismarck (often credited as the first big government progressive, as well as the father of the welfare state) meant that politics and legislating involved unsavory horse-trading and tit-for-tat favor swapping, but the Obama-Pelosi-Reid Axis of Ego has plumbed new depths of legislative depravity. At least for America. This expression must be ground up, encased and fed to pet Democrats.
Game Changer -- This new cliche hails (as so many do) from the sports world, where it means any big play which alters the flow and eventual outcome of a game. It's harmless and has only become offensive because everyone--everyone--in media (all of whom suffer from cutesiness and echolalia) uses it incessantly, for every petty morsel of breaking news. Let's bench it before it makes a game-changing mistake.
Orientated -- If you become oriented, you are not turning Japanese, no matter how much you think so. To become oriented is to be familiarized with new surroundings or a new situation, or to be placed in proper relationship to that which is. To be disoriented is probably to be drunk. The process of becoming oriented is called orientation. But there is no such word as "orientated." I don't care how many times you've heard it. And any hairdo who uses it should be immediately frog-marched off the set.
Tipping Point -- This has taken the place of turning point, but conveys a spicier sense of urgency and inevitability. The tipping point of a situation occurs at the same instant as the game changer. Although overused, it's colorful, and I wouldn't really mind it except for the fact that, just as we don't know what play, if any, was the game changer until the game is over, we don't really know where the tipping point was until the tipped object actually crashes to the ground. The other tipping point comes at the end of a restaurant meal, but doesn't concern us here.
Dysfunctional -- Any word entering this dimension from the realm of psychobabble is suspect--this one more than most. My chief objection to it is that it is meaningless. These days, anything that doesn't work perfectly from the perspective of everyone involved is dysfunctional. Ergo, everything's dysfunctional. Every organization, every system, every relationship--especially the family. I have a question for you: Did you survive into adulthood? If yes, then your family was functional. Not perfect, but then neither are you.
Going Forward -- This one--meaning "from now on"--was probably conceived by the same people who brought us "at the end of the day." With a key difference. While "end of the day" is abused by the full political spectrum, "going forward" is abused exclusively by progressive leftists, who favor imagery that promotes relentless forward progress down the yellow brick road to the Emerald City of Mankind. The left is moving on.org, never looking back, nor, since they're wearing blinders, side to side. They only have eyes for the finish line. And then what?
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