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Dear American: Awaiting Your Correspondance – Important Business Matter

Tild — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:41:00 +0000

Making its way across the intertubes today…

It would be a lot funnier if it weren’t so close to the truth.

Awaiting Your Correspondance – Important Business Matter

Dear American:
I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transaction is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully

Minister of Treasury Paulson

Also found here and here (with misspellings and bad grammar needlessly added for extra “authenticity”)

A Face in the Crowd

Tild — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:57:01 +0000

Golly, that face looks awfully familiar. Where have I seen it before?

Oh, yeah. Now I remember.

Tom Tomorrow today

Tild — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:38:27 +0000

Who indeed? But don’t think about that right now. No, there isn’t time to think! You gotta act! Hurry! Time’s a wastin’ and time is money! Ain’t that right, suckers citizen taxpayers??

Truth in Advertising: the latest McCain-Palin ’08 campaign sign

Tild — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 04:26:00 +0000

Wish I could take credit for “McBush”, but I can’t. Does anybody know who made it? (Obviously one of the photoshop gods, or somebody from Worth1000 – same thing, really)

On the other hand everything else here is my work, including “Paney” (albeit inspired by this version. H/t to the divine Phoenix Woman!)

Physicians Against Nutrition

Tild — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:19:39 +0000

Dr. Brian Davis comes out against food stamps, school lunches and other outrageous “entitlements” in the Farm Bill.

Ollie Ox at Bluestem Prairie has all the meaty details, from soup to nuts.

Dr. Davis, one of the founding members of a new PAC named Physicians Against Nutrition , was asked for a quote to accompany this article. He wisely intoned:

“The mission statement for Physicians Against Nutrition reinterprets the age-old creed of the healer to speak to the needs of the 21st century ward heeler, to whit: First do no harm …to my pocketbook, dammit!”

Ahh. Food for thought indeed.

PAN (Physicians Against Nutrition)-PAC logo courtesy of KOAT (Kindly Old Auntie Tild)

Spong on Family Planning and God’s Will

Tild — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:08:52 +0000

As I’ve often said before, on my About page and elsewhere, I was baptized and raised a member of the Lutheran church (Mount Olivet, in fact.The big kahuna of ELCA congregations in North America) but many years ago I fell away from Lutheranism, and from Christianity, and from all forms of organized religion.

I don’t think of myself as an atheist, altho maybe I should. If the defining characteristic of atheism is not believing in the existence of any entity whose existence cannot be and can never be measured or detected by any physical means and relies entirely on a human’s leap of faith, then yes, I am an atheist. What keeps me from identifying as an atheist, tho, is the atheist conviction that once we die, that’s it. The end — nothingness — kaput — that’s all folks. (Altho I don’t see how thinking an afterlife of some kind is possible makes one any less an atheist. ) I do think it’s possible that our consciousness continues in some form after death, and we just don’t yet have the means of detecting it. Maybe when we finally acquire that knowledge, and can perceive that consciousness, we’ll also be able to go there at will, rendering the discussion moot.

Still, for all my self initiated separation from Christianity, time after time I keep returning to the writings of retired Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong. Why? Well, I guess it’s because for me he epitomizes the concept of a person of faith who is also rational. I don’t have to share Spong’s belief in Jesus and in the Christian concept of god in order to share a belief in a compassionate, egalitarian, inclusive moral code for humanity. I believe that if we follow that path, it can lift us — humanity — all of humanity — to a higher plane, ‘higher’ meaning more knowledgeable, more aware, less fearful, and so also ultimately (and perhaps paradoxically) more powerful. Take it or leave it, it’s whut ah bleev.

Got another Q&A with Bishop Spong in my email today, and it’s a dandy. This is how a rational, progressive, new paradigm Christianity sounds, folks:

NCSU1970, via the Internet, writes:

How do you respond to Christians who say they live their lives according to God’s plan for them, and that all the things that happen in their lives are because God wanted them to happen? My daughter-in-law is pregnant with her fifth child, which is sad considering her financial situation, as well as all the problems the world faces today in caring for its growing population. She says they are having babies because it is God’s plan for them. My husband and I wonder if they will finally take responsibility for their lives and the lives of their children and decide on a form of birth control before number six is created. They say they totally trust God and rely on God to decide everything! Isn’t this just a cop-out, an immature response by someone who can not or will not take responsibility for themselves? They say they are being faithful Christians and everyone should live the way they do. For them there is only one path.

Dear NCSU1970,

Of course it is a cop-out. It is also an expression of religious dependency that marks the person as significantly childlike and immature. Her argument, if you have presented it fully and fairly, is also quite irrational. Since God gives us hair that grows, are we correct to argue that cutting it violates God’s plan? If we take medicine when we get sick, does that violate God’s plan for us to be ill?

Sexual intercourse, not God, produces babies. Does one imagine that God wills a dozen children for some, while demanding sexual abstinence for others? Would not effective family planning that requires responsible decision making be a better alternative for everyone?

Many parts of the Christian Church like dependent, childlike members. That is why many church leaders exhort us to be “born again.” When we are born again, we become children anew. Perhaps what we need to do is not to be born again but to grow up!

Your daughter-in-law and her husband have used religion, a very juvenile version of religion I might add, to delude themselves into pretending that that passive dependency is actually a virtue. I think those who claim that their path is the only pathway to God are both arrogant and idolatrous. They have attributed to their frail, human definition of God some ultimate significance. They have made an idol out of their own creation. They have also assumed that their limited human mind can define the indefinable.

Religious words cover a great deal of neurotic and even psychotic behavior. One should not be intimidated by that, even when it occurs in the life of a loved family member.
John Shelby Spong
PS: Does your e-mail address mean you are a 1970 graduate of N.C. State University in Raleigh?

Hah. I like the little post script. That’s another thing I like about Spong: the way he never stops reaching out, never seems to stop being interested in other people and their lives. I’ve also noticed that his ongoing interest never seems to depend on whether someone’s given money to his “ministry” or not, which oughta tell you a very big something.

Grovel, puny humans!

Tild — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 04:54:50 +0000

O the influence! Behold the sheer raw power of Tild.

Luckily for you, I only use my powers for Good, so check back here often. Any minute now I’m gonna say something influential. Really. I’m pretty sure.

Methinks Auntie Tild needs some Anti-Hacks

Tild — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 02:09:11 +0000

Hi-ho, readereenos. By way of introducing an interesting post I read today over at ZenHabits, I think it’s about time I gave you all a brief overview of the current life situation of your kindly old Auntie Tild. (You know, that mildly odd person who’s been putting up stuff on this blog for the past 4 and a half years.) You know her, you love her, you can’t live without her — oh yeah, that’s your kindly old Auntie Tild alright.

So. What’s going on in my life? Well, let’s see…

I will turn 56 exactly a month from today.

My youngest child graduated from high school last month.

In 2 weeks, he and his brother the junior at the U of M Mpls are both moving out of the house. (That would be fabled Tildebunkport, the house we’ve lived in for the past 15 years.) Those 2 guys are all the kids I’ve got, which means that in a month Tildebunkport will be an empty nest.

After decades of extraordinarily good health, a few chickens are finally coming home to roost for this perennially fat and stressed-out woman now in advanced middle age, in the form of back problems akin to sciatica that manifest themselves as severe chronic pain in my right leg. Sleep is challenging. I tried vicodin for a while, and felt a lovely and deep spiritual kinship with the lovely and deep fictional Dr. House, but no pain relief, so I’ve gone back to my usual painkillers, massive quantities of ibuprofen and very dry Fino sherry — not together, of course. *

The novel I’ve been writing (very fitfully) for the past 10 years continues to molder in my hard drive and on 2 online backup sites. Haven’t added a word to it in over 3 years.

In short, I’m at a point in my life where I could really use a new direction; a shift into a different gear; a tilt towards a new perspective; a great big sudden change. How to do this? How to go there?

Those kind of questions have been taking me to zenhabits.net more and more often lately. I really liked this post today about productivity and ways of thinking and mainly about making changes in one’s life via the use of what the author calls “anti-hacks”. Yeah. Maybe that’s what I need right now: some o’ those anti-hack thingies…

8 Great Anti-Hacks to Fundamentally Change Your Life

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Clay Collins of Project Liberation and The Growing Life.

Albert Einstein stated that “problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.” Einstein, of course, was right. Sometimes our problems require more than life hacks, tips, tweaks, etc. Sometimes our lives don’t need optimization, they need to be fundamentally reconfigured.

So What are Anti-Hacks?

“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil for every one striking at the root.” – Henry David Thoreau

Anti-hacks attempt to solve problems by approaching them at a higher level of thinking (the prefix “anti,” by the way, can mean “instead of” as in “anti-drug,” or “anti-folk”). For example, while David Allen says that “mind like water” (piece of mind) comes from creating exhaustive to-do lists and getting everything out of your head, an anti-hack might involve meditation, because all the list-making in the world will not bring you to a meditative, mind-like-water state.

A hack might help you optimize your car’s engine so you get better gas mileage, whereas an anti-hack might involve moving near your place of employment so you can walk or bike to work.

(By the way, creating a new word for an old idea can be a pretty pretentious thing. But I’m asking you to cut me some slack here. I’m not trying to push my own vocabulary, build a movement, or be clever; I just couldn’t think of a better term. Use whatever terms you want – I have no agenda. Still, I think the term “anti-hack” highlights a significant distinction between optimization — hacks, tweaks, tips, etc. — and reconfiguration).

Here are some of my more offensive thoughts, packaged as …

8 Random Anti-Hacks For Living

Please keep in mind some of these “anti-hacks” may not be practicable for you. These aren’t “one size fits all” solutions.

1. Embrace Your Inner Dilettante, be Flaky, and Denounce the Cult of Permanence. After college graduation, we’re allowed a couple years of experimental wiggle room. And when those years are over we’re supposed to semi-permanently stay put. We’re supposed to stop vagabonding through life. We’re supposed to sit down and shut up.

In this day and age, staying put in one’s situation (i.e. one’s career, job, company, city, town, etc.) is how you become an expert, advance in your field, and win the respect of your peers and family. We’re fed the myth that staying put affords us dream jobs. And we want this permanence as well: we want tenure, we want seniority, we want bedrocks and sure things.

But radical and rapid-fire growth often happens when you have freedom to try new things. Rapid-fire growth doesn’t require traveling across the country, starting a new business, or flooding your senses on a daily basis, but it often requires a high level of latitude. Radical growth often requires the ability to rapidly change directions, change contexts, and change situations. Rapidfire growth often requires a dilettante-esque mobility. And if you exercise this mobility enough, other may very well perceive you as someone who hasn’t “found himself.”

The problem is that post-higher-education life just isn’t configured to encourage growth; it’s configured to reward stagnation. We’re rewarded for stagnating, for unnecessarily sticking with things.

2. Stop Hiding Behind the Comfort of Stepping Stones. So many of us live “stepping stone lives.” We spend the majority of our waking hours working for goals that are merely stepping stones to other goals. For example:

We do well in high school so we can get into a good college.
We do well in college so we can get hired by a good company (or get into a good graduate school).
We do well at our jobs so we can get even better jobs and make more money.
We join committees to pad our resumes or impress our bosses.
(Question: what would your life be like if you cut out all the stepping stones?)

We are uncomfortable going after what we want in ways that aren’t culturally or institutionally approved. But we would all do well to live courageously by directly going after what we want.

(I realize that not everyone has the luxury of avoiding stepping stones. If your dream requires a medical degree, for example, you’ll need to suck it up and stay on those stones).

3. Pursue Self-Development over Productivity. Productivity often poses as self-development, but self-development and productivity can be two very different things. What is best for us as individuals can be bad for our on-the-job productivity.

4. Get to “Mind Like Water” the Original Way (i.e. Mindfulness). There is a myth among many productivity evangelists that productivity – or a productivity system – can lead to the meditative state likened to “mind like water.

“In karate there is an image that’s used to define the position of perfect readiness: “mind like water.” Imagine throwing a pebble into a still pond. How does the water respond? The answer is, totally appropriately to the force and mass of the input; then it returns to calm. It doesn’t overreact or underreact.

“[I]f you get seriously far out of that state–and start to feel out of control, stressed out, unfocused, bored, and stuck–do you have the ability to get yourself back into it? That’s where the methodology of [my productivity system] will have the greatest impact on your life, by showing you how to get back to “mind like water,” with all your resources and faculties functioning at a maximum level. ” – David Allen

The mind like water myth is the myth is that any productivity system can be the starting point for having “all your resources and faculties functioning at maximum level.” The myth is that a water-tight task-handling methodology, an elaborate folder system, a clockwork method for handling your inbox, a label-maker, and a set of routines come first.

The “mind like water myth” is that that productivity — or a productivity system — is the path, and that mind like water is the destination. Bruce lee once said that “all fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability” and that “the possession of anything begins in the mind.” I believe Bruce is right: possession of a “mind like water” begins in the mind. It’s not productivity first, mind like water second. It’s the other way around.
[More]

* Um, about the Fino… If you ever have reason to be gift-y with your kindly old Auntie Tild, or are just in the mood to savor some exquisite, bone dry, lovely with tapas, none of that sweet cream sherry crap, wonderful wine, just remember one little word: Fino. F-I-N-O. Spanish Fino only, por favor. I recommend Lustau East India Solera; the reliable old classic Tio Pepe; and my absolute fave rave: Pedro Domecq La Ina.

Si, among many other things, your kindly old Auntie Tild is also a sinverguenza wine snob.

Now Do This: the Joy of Single-tasking

Tild — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 17:25:15 +0000

I hate to-do lists. I make them, and I even finish them sometimes, but usually it’s only a few minutes before my focus wanders off into the unknown and doesn’t return for hours, or days, and the whole thing ends up being yet another pointless exercise in FAIL. What to do?

Leo the Zenhabits guy found something that works when the standard to-do list is too daunting; when the thought of having to get more than one thing done becomes a challenge of soul-crushing proportions. How does it work? Make your list one item long. Focus on getting that one thing done, and when you’re done with it, either choose another thing to do, or not. Give it a try here:

Now Do This

Ooh, I really like clicking that little “done” button.

Rated R

Tild — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:50:05 +0000

..for Ridiculous.

Yes, thanks to Evil Bobby, I now know that my blog is rated:

Looking for payday loans?

Wow. And how did I bring this R rating upon myself, pray tell? Well, the makers of this gadget say:

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

death (3x)

bitch (2x)

screwing (1x)

Yep, I’m a notoriously naughty old bawd, ain’t I? Don’t answer that. C’mon, let the nice old lady enjoy her racy reputation for just a moment.