Be kind...

Some times it's hard.

When you're trying to reason with someone, and he ignores your obvious insight.
When she and her friends look at all the facts and still come to the wrong conclusion and you fantasize about grabbing them around their necks and shouting
"How on earth can you be such a nincompoop!" and
"The reason you don't see it that way is because you're an ignorant idiot with no capacity for rational thought in that tiny brain of yours!"

Don't do that. =)
One of the most persistently present verses lodged in my head from years of Sunday School says:
"Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you."(Eph.4:32)
Whoa. Seems like I need a reminder every now and then.
You know, God didn't say "Be ye smarter then everybody else!".
Simplify.
Be ye kind.
You never know, maybe that person in your life has something to teach you...even if it's patience.

A Jolly Stroll Downtown

Or, How I Walked Around OTR For Hours With Conspicuous Valuables In My Backpack.

It all started with a trip to the CE. The internet in my apt was acting hinky, so I legged down to the land of the free wireless and beautiful coffee.

About closing time (6:00 post mortem) I decided to leave, because although I think I could’ve taken the barista, I’ve learned they tend to frown on that sort of thing, and call names.

Next, since I was roughly in the area, I trotted over to fountain square and snapped a few for later.

It was a beautiful night.

Next, some guy tried to (clumsily) filch my wallet out of my back pocket, but I, experienced world traveler that I am (Dublin, anyone?) had removed it to my hip to prevent just such an event from occurring. I affectionately advised him to “go play in traffic”, and continued on my way.

After stopping in on a few stores and art galleries, I decided it was time to wend my way homeward, and so started back up the Young St. steps. I had gotten as far as Milton St when looking ahead I espied what appeared to be some sort of negotiation on the next level of steps. Due to the lack of light and witnesses, and the presence of my laptop laden backpack, I decided to cut across Milton to Sycamore, and go home that way. On my way I met a lady who was trying to attract the attention of a stray cat, and who informed me in wistful tones that she “Never made it to Milton. They always stop me…”

Who?

The cats?

The infamous ghosts of Milton St.?

I never asked…

A Glowing Study on Lampyridae

(See, "glowing", get it?)

Fireflies are nifty.
I've never met anyone that doesn't like fireflies.
They are one of the select few that never have to pay their light bill, you know? Bioluminescence.
From Wikipedia:
The enzyme luciferase* acts on luciferin, in the presence of magnesium ions, ATP (adenosene triphosphate), and oxygen to produce light.
*Yes, as in Lucifer (light bringer)

"You would not believe your eyes, if ten million fireflies lit up the world..."
This song, entitled "Firefly" by the group Owl City, piqued my interest. How many fireflies would it take to REALLY light up the world? So, with the vast power of the internet gods at my disposal, I determined to find out. Turns out that 1 firefly weighs in at around 1/40 lumens. In other words, you'd need about 40 fireflies to equal the brightness of one candle. Woopee. In contrast the BIG YELLOW ONE which is the SUN, when measured in lumens,(which is a really dumb way of measurement by the way) trickles in at 6,840,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 lumens.

Soooo, if you were to light the world with fireflies, it would take(deep breath): 273,600,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 fireflies!

Better get those old Ball jars out and get busy, because if you catch an average of 1,000 a night it would take you forever-to-the-"nth" power, dude...

Later

On Music

One of the biggest problems I have with modern music is that I see it bludgeoning the cultural taste buds of this generation, overloading and rendering them incapable of distinguishing the much more refined flavors of emotion from, say, most music written before the 1900's.
One of the statements I've heard quite a lot from many of my peers is that they think classical music "all sounds the same"!
Their overstimulated senses are now rendered incapable of appreciating the music for what it is: Man's potential for genius realized through the art of sound.
It would be like having a exquisite meal prepared for you by a 5 star chef, and then turning it away because they don't have any ketchup with which to douse your pâté de foie gras...
Please, friends, do yourself a favor and don't criticize what you don't understand.

Whew.

Pause

A haiku for you:

The next street over
the sun is always shining
as I walk up it.

Resume.

Ike's Blog 2.5: The Blog Strikes Back

(Not the movie, still the book)

Sooo, I have decided to go back into the archives and pull out some unpublished drafts that never saw the light of your screen. Until now. I give you, in their somewhat incomplete yet unedited form; The Drafts.

Draft the Ist: If Wishes Were Horses...

>If wishes were horses, beggars would ride."

How many times have you heard that phrase, or have come across it in writing?
There are some inherent problems in this statement, however, and it is on these that I will be focusing on for the rest of this post.
From the information given it is impossible to know the time of the relation
(wishes=horses)
which might give us a clue as to the validity of the argument. In other words, at what point in time did this transmutation of non-corporeal thought into corporeal Equine occur, as it were.
Is this simply another question like "Hey, I wonder what this world would be like if we were all upside down?" and of course the answer is that philosophically there would be no difference if we were created that way. If that was all we had ever known, to us we would be right side up!
So if since the beginning of time
(wishes=horses),
pedestrian beggars would still be because wishes would not be wishes at all, they would be horses, or vice versa!
But then what if, say, this change happened over night, and all of a sudden wishes become horses. At first your average beggar might be pleased, although reasonably very startled. He could sell the horse and make some money. But soon, assuming the wish rate among beggars is rather high, the market would be flooded with horses, and the value would drop precipitously until they would be worthless. Not to mention the sophistication required for the waste removal system after the inundation of the streets... <

The Effects Of Caffeine On An Artist

Some people get jitters and shakes.

For me, it’s like everything slows down so I can process it.

After coffee, even walking down a street becomes a intoxicating rush of information.

With the caffeine loosing my brain, it’s as if a switch has been thrown-“click” as suddenly it begins to come alive with the river of patterns…

The words “ smooth flavor” flashes across my thoughts. I stop; mentally I backtrack, and realize the source was a piece of paper blowing in the wind past me, glimpsed by my eye for a fraction of a second as I hurried along.

An ant on the pavement who’s short one antennae…a girl with three earrings on her left ear, two on the right(I wonder if she feels off-balance?)…three blooms, two buds on that bush across the street(hmm, rather late in the season)…sounds, shapes, colors, all being processed and organized simultaneously at light speed. I get the feeling that if I really wanted to, I could think a great thought…

Or something.

=)