I can’t believe that in all the times I’ve watched this movie I’ve never noticed this.
Mind is blown25 5 2010
Life is a fitted sheet25 5 2010
Have you ever tried to fold a fitted sheet neatly? It’s difficult, to say the least. A top sheet is simple to fold; it has nice, concise corners you can match up. Just grab one corner like this then match it to the one opposite itself. Then you do the same on the other side. Repeat this process several times and you end up with a quaint little square or rectangle that will fit perfectly inside your linen closet.
A fitted sheet, however, is a different story. Fitted sheets have those messy edges due to the elastic within. You may start the folding process with the best of intentions. You try to make each corner a neat shape, but quickly realize this is futile. You continue folding, but before it’s over with you’ve resigned yourself to the fact that it’s going to be messy no matter how hard you try. You end up just wadding the sheet into something resembling a polygon and shoving it in the closet.
Life is a fitted sheet. We try to reign it in, to control it. We want clean edges and corners that make sense, that have tangible beginnings and ends. Unfortunately we can’t do this to life. Life is an odd shape.
Life doesn’t have to be neat, or orderly. Nor does it have to make sense as we hold it in our hands, turning and inspecting it. It doesn’t have to be these things because when it’s used as intended we can step back and see just how perfectly it has been fashioned.
I find your lack of tests disturbing8 5 2010
This morning I took the second battery of GACE tests in my pursuit to become a certified teacher in Georgia. The group of tests were called the “Basic Skills Assessment” and they were, indeed, basic at the fundamental level. Aside from my own failure in regards to manipulating fractions, I’m positive I passed all three tests (Reading, Writing, Mathematics) with flying colors.
Believe me that when I say these tests were ridiculously easy, the situation is not to be exaggerated. The math test took me 45 minutes to answer 46 questions. That includes time it took to do long division by hand. The Reading section took me a little longer at an hour and ten minutes. The section that took me the longest was the writing section because it involved a hand-written essay at the end which I had to outline on the spot.
I don’t bring these things up because I’m bragging (though, of course I am). Rather, Continue reading »
Harassment, alarm and spaghetti3 5 2010
A Christian preacher has been arrested for saying homosexuality is a sin. At first blush I was outraged that someone would be arrested for exercising their freedom of speech. But then, after a few minutes of reflection I’ve changed my mind.
Dale McAlpine was charged with causing “harassment, alarm or distress” after a homosexual police community support officer (PCSO) overheard him reciting a number of “sins” referred to in the Bible, including blasphemy, drunkenness and same sex relationships.
Mr. McAlpine was basically standing on a ladder on the sidewalk, making public declarations that fornication, adultery, homosexuality and drunkenness were sins before God. Saying stuff like that from a street corner is just asking to piss someone off. I mean, if I were to be walking by him and heard him say those things, it would rub me the wrong way and I’d probably agree with much of his theology. They might have done that kind of stuff a few millennia ago but things work a bit differently in the 21st century.
While I do believe in freedom of speech, I also believe that a person should be able to choose what he or she reads and hears, they should not be verbally accosted unless they choose to subject themselves to such language. If Mr. McAlpine had been arrested after he had, say, written a book or taught a church group wherein he stated that homosexuality is a sin, such an arrest would be reprehensible. But by preaching on a street corner you’re making a public nuisance of yourself. I’m glad he was arrested.
I’m glad he was arrested in the same way I’d be glad if an Atheist were arrested for standing on a ladder preaching that all Christians are brain-dead sheeple worshiping a flying spaghetti monster. Do they have a right to believe, write about and talk about those things? Sure. But that doesn’t mean I have to listen to it.
An indelible mark25 4 2010
I have a tattoo. It covers much of the underside of my left forearm (the side next to my body). As a reader I understand your natural desire is to see a photo of it, but I’m not going to show you one.
First, a picture doesn’t do it justice. Second, and this is most important, I don’t care what you think of it visually. By posting a picture of it I’d be inviting your comments relating to the art. I don’t care if you think it sucks. I don’t care if you think it roxorz. So you’re not going to see it unless you meet me in person, in which case you can’t miss it. Then you’ll have to tell me to my face that you think it sucks, you won’t have the anonymity the internet provides. Besides, the art while gorgeous, isn’t the point of me getting a tattoo; the point is what the tattoo is and what it represents.
It’s a mushroom. I’ve been contemplating this design for about ten years now. It’s a stylization of a mushroom tattoo my father has on his left forearm. If you know my dad, you know this tattoo.
Mushrooms are actually fascinating organisms. Some interesting facts relating to them:
- In many ways they actually bear more resemblance to animals than plants. For starters they are non-photosynthetic. They take in oxygen and release carbon dioxide. They rely on plants not only for their food source but literally for the air they breathe.
- Mushrooms contain MASSIVE amounts of vitamin D, which for a long time was thought to only be found in significant quantities in meat and fish. Good news for vegetarians.
- The part of the mushroom we eat is actually its reproductive structure, which sounds a little freaky when you consider that fungi are closer to being animal than plant.
- Fungi digest food outside of their bodies. They release enzymes into the surrounding environment (we release enzymes into our gut) which break down organic matter from plants into a form they can absorb (also done in our gut). The earth is the mushroom’s gut.
- One of the largest living organisms on earth is a mushroom. It’s about 38 acres in size, weighs about 100 tons, and lives in Michigan. It grew from a single spore, and is thought to have been growing since the end of the last ice age, about 10,000 years ago.
But enough of the useless facts, back to the tattoo. Why a mushroom, you ask? Two reasons: Continue reading »
Design with Linux in mind21 4 2010
Linux may not hold the majority of the desktop market like Windows and it may not garner the attention that Mac does, but its use is increasingly expanding. In fact, it looks like Linux usage is hovering within 2% of Apple. With that in mind I contend that it behoves us as web designers to consider the OS of our users as much, if not more so, than their browsers. Fortunately, there are only a couple areas that regularly cause issues between Operating Systems: fonts and forms. Continue reading »
