The Whether Report

Søren Kierkegaard is known for his work Either/Or. (After clicking on the link at Wikipedia, I discover that Either/Or is nothing like I had expected. [Obviously, I have not read it.] And, hey, the great Danish philosopher wrote Either/Or in Berlin, after a lecture he attended there proved to be "unbearable nonsense." Interestingly, grammatical purists might quibble over the use of the virgule, the so-called slash in the title, because of the type of relationship it tries to show. The original title, in Danish, Enten - Eller, we are told, used a hyphen.) But I digress.

"I get all the news I need on the weather report. I can gather all the news I need on the weather report." -- Paul Simon

Hmmmmmm.

"You don't need a weather man / To know which way the wind blows." -- Bob Dylan

So, which is it?

As for me, I find I benefit immeasurably from whethermen and other spiritual meteorologists in my life.

One such seer, known variously as Warren, Joe, or Mirthful Sage, is moving from these parts.

He will be sorely missed, but alas he will still be a personal whetherman.

And we will stay connected.

Deo volente.

Even Steven

From my days, eons ago, in the seminary, I remember December 26 is the Feast of Saint Stephen, recognized as Christianity's first martyr. (The feast is tomorrow in the Eastern church.) (Yikes, the things I learned about it from Wikipedia!)

From the gauzy memory of my later, at times less-innocent, youth, I also remember Saint Stephen being celebrated in a song by The Grateful Dead; good song; fascinating annotated lyrics.

Connections. We're all about connections, here at The Laughorist. That, and a laugh or two.

Devil or Angel?

"The devil is in the details."

You hear that phrase a lot, especially when people are discussing the fine points of a contract or some other type of negotiations. In his entertaining and thoroughly researched book The Quote Verifier: Who Said What, Where, and When, Ralph Keyes chronicles a long history of the saying. (I myself first heard it in the 1980s, in reference to arms talks between the Americans and the Soviets.)

Ralph Keyes notes that architect Mies van der Rohe was fond of observing, "God is in the details," and goes on to cite earlier variations of the saying, including French and German proverbs. One particular citation is from a mid-seventeenth century Amsterdam professor, Caspar Barleaus:


"Believe me that in the smallest particle God is enshrined."


I like that particular example because it resonates with a mysticism of the ordinary world. This richness is found in the writings of the French anthropologist and priest Teilhard de Chardin (read him years ago; very difficult but rewarding) and in Taoist and Buddhist writers. The universe in a grain of sand. The divine milieu. Traditional haiku celebrates such epiphanies in the natural world (as seen in one leaf, for example).

So, how did the God-oriented phrase transform into "The devil is in the details"? Ralph Keyes mentions quotes from Admiral Hyman Rickover, an old German proverb, and even H. Ross Perot as reasons for the popularity of the Luciferian version. But the question is left unanswered.

Whether devil or angel, count me as a details person. I can't help it.

For some people, details are an annoyance; these folks can't be bothered. They leave it up to us to do their dirty work, so to speak. But I shouldn't call it dirty work.

It's the heart of the matter, if not the heart and soul. (Speaking of which, if you are having heart or brain surgery performed, you will want one of us detailed people.)

I confess this obsession with details is either a blessing or a curse. In my youth, it came in handy on exams, with my brain acting as if it possessed pornographic (oops! photographic) memory. But translate that to a depiction of God, and you get The Infinitely Accurate Nitpicker Supreme Being. Not very healthy, or spiritual.

Incidentally, typos can matter big time. The whole concept of so-called domain swiping or domain tasting depends on seemingly tiny errors to engage in cybersquatting. Thus, Web site names with words like the intentionally misspelled "Hoogle" or "Winows" can potentially involve large sums of money, or significant lawsuits. (I haven't experienced such a winfall, or windfall, yet.)

So, is it the devil or an angel in the details?

I'm going for:


"The angel is in the details."


It may make my Monday more rewarding; perhaps it will suffuse the details of my day with redemptive qualities.

After all, it is Holy Week.

p.s. Wikipedia has a fine entry on Chardin, including this tasty morsel: Teilhard died on April 10, 1955 in New York City. . . . A few days before his death Teilhard said "If in my life I haven't been wrong, I beg God to allow me to die on Easter Sunday". April 10 was Easter Sunday.

'God's No Puritan'

In a comment to my previous post, Dafath wrote,

"God, you know, was no Puritan."

Presumably, Dafath would be willing to recast that sentence into the present tense or future tense. By Puritan I assume he's referring to the legalistic, "pure," and precise "godliness" of those in the 1560s and beyond who claimed a pure and unadulterated holiness. (I don't want to engage in theological debate, but I will say that despite its flaws, Wikipedia is enlightening, entertaining, and exhaustive [note serial comma] in its entry for this word.)

Today I witnessed natural evidence of the "God is no Puritan" view.

Snowmelt.

With temperatures reaching into the sixties (Fahrenheit), Old Man Winter shed a ragged coat of snow, leaving torn and tattered shreds of dirt-speckled icemelt. Sidewalks arose like volcanic islands out between snowbanks. Yesterday we had maybe 18 inches of snow in most places; it's down to 8 to 10 inches in most spots today. It's an untidy mess, it is. Snow pockmarked with decaying dogshit, candy wrappers, lost newspapers never delivered, branches, last fall's dead leaves. Gone is the pristine blanket that quiets the night and day equally (of merely days ago!). Where does this dirt like pepper mixed into a bowl of salt come from? It looks as if it's been raining detritus, dust, and black dandruff against the formerly alabaster melting surface. Mud percolates under it all awaiting our shoes (and dog's paws) to track into the house.

But wait.

The forecast is for rain in the next few days.

The tainted snow needs a good washing . . .

. . . in advance of the snow predicted for this weekend.

As Soren Kierkegaard might say,

Either/Or.

Either snow or rain, either winter or spring, but both and all?!

Kaizen, the Kokonuts Way

I like the term kaizen, with its evocation of ongoing improvement. (The folks at Kaizen Chronicles got me thinking about this. Kudos to them for quoting a Leonard Cohen song. By the way, guys, is Bo Steed a nom de plume, so to speak, of a porn star?!)

I forgot I had encountered the term in the workplace years ago, during an aggressive rampage of so-called Total Quality Management (TQM), continuous improvement, blah-blah-blah, et cetera ad nauseam. Of course, it was mostly a ruse, a vehicle for "lean manufacturing" (incidentally, we didn't manufacture anything), an opportunity to supposedly do your job better, so your position (as well as many other positions) could be eliminated, so the company could be sold, raking in oodles of money for the owners, the purveyors of "quality." (All of that did eventually happen.)

But Wikipedia informs me that true kaizen must be practiced with something called respect for people (why does Wikipedia put it in quotes, with initial caps?), or else it is something called kaiaku, which -- no surprise -- means "change for the worse."

I was wondering, though, is kaizen a polar opposite of the acceptance and resignation of zen?

Oh well.

How Now Tao Wow.

What about today?

Today my kaizen consisted of a total and complete, up and down, across and behind, under and over, cleaning of the Kokonuts domestic bathroom. Every spot. I started it because it bothered me to distraction. Not because I was asked to or was nagged or was guilty about it. (Sheesh, maybe it was because of my public letter about flirting in my previous post! (I inserted all that to see if Dr. Andrew and his legions weigh in.) (Enough already with the parentheses!) With my wife joining in, it soon became a collaborative, and rather fun, task. (Refreshingly and rarely collegial.) I told my daughter when we were done that we could eat off any surface in there if we so chose. This binge cleaning (initiated by a binge person) of course evoked evangelical and crusading thoughts such as, "hey, let's do this every Saturday!" (soon amended to "every other Saturday," since my spouse works every other weekend), almost immediately amended to "how about we just confine ourselves to this one day."

We would've enlisted the energetic resources of our young daughter, but she had an overnight guest over, so we went easy, making both of them haul out the detritus of old shampoo bottles, dusty ornamental things, and other junk.

This episode led to a spousal leisurely lunch at a North Side Italian bistro (another rare event) (daughter went with friend) (I even tried some latte; not for me), some residual soreness, a skipped afternoon nap (we were too late into the afternoon, past its nap-taking tipping point), and a fairly positive outlook on life while gazing out the window into the chilling but lambent northern sunlight.

Kaizen, the Kokonuts Way.

A Paean to the Pain of Multitasking

Multitasking.

I loathe the very word with its self-important, mutlisyllabic tut-tutting of schoolmistress- or drill-sergeant-inspired legalism; with its hidden "tit" and its phony "asking" and its stern "ulti"matum and its usurping pretender "king." And I despise the word's very origins, which describe the functions of a computer's central processing unit, as if we and our brains were no more than CPUs dressed up in so much flesh and neural wiring. And most of all I detest the reality of multitasking.

Quite simply, I ain't built for it. Call it ADHD, genetics, impatience, zen, Luddite Syndrome, or Old School, but it drives me to distraction. (Well, by definition, multitasking thrives on distraction, doesn't it? That's the secret fun of its legion of admirers.)

E-mails, phone calls, oral requests, written demands on real paper, taps on the shoulder, cellphone messages, electrodes attached to the cerebral cortex. Sort it all out. Prioritize (another loathsome word; why not rank?) it all. Do it all now. Do it all at once. Do it all perfectly.

At work we are besieged, inundated, swamped by multiple tasks competing for our attention and action. It's almost enough to send me packing, out the door, strolling off with a secret smile. Job ads clamor for candidates who excel at multitasking, as if proficiency in this were a badge of valor, an iconic medal of honor for those bloodied but unbowed in the mercantile wars.

I suppose so-called multitasking (also termed "engaging in polychronistic activities") has its place (you sex fiends out there will suggest soixante-neuf). I suppose real battlegrounds, ICUs, and homes may be suitable venues for multitasking ("honey, can you hold on that orgasm while I text back my boss on those merger numbers?").

But multitasking (hyphenated or not) is not for me.

Besides, does the pitcher pitch and bat simultaneously? Does the quarterback throw and receive at the same time? Does the pilot take off and land concurrently? Can a president (ahem, this president) successfully think and talk simultaneously? Should a soloist perform ensemble?

I say, do one thing and do it right, rather than five things simultaneously and shittily.

But that's little ol' me. Alas, I recognize I am sadly out of step with the modern world. (Or still haven't recovered from vacation.)

That's why I like the Latin phrase I suggest as an antidote for this current rage:

Age quod agis --

which means, "Do what you are doing" (and presumably, not something else at the same time).

Now, back to work, folks!

Laugh. Or....
Else.

Impacted Wisdom

Count me among those who dislike using impact as a verb. I didn't say it couldn't be justified or defended on linguistic and historical grounds, as pointed out by The American Heritage Dictionary and others.

But I don't have to like such usage -- or use it.

And if I do use impact as a verb, I want it reserved for one of its most literal meanings, which I experienced yesterday as a passenger in a car.

"The car I was riding in was impacted by a pickup truck advancing upon us from the rear, which forced our car to collide with the car in front of us."

Yes, collided is a better verb. (But the collision, or, um, adverse impacted event, also known as an accident, hurts just as much or causes as much damage.)

Along with others, I don't like impact as a verb because it smacks of smug jargon. A more specific verb (affected, influenced, harmed, deteriorated, corrupted, failed...) would convey the real intended meaning. But maybe the users of impact as a verb are trying to obfuscate. (I think the current vogue use is owing to the jargon employed in environmental impact statements.)

Anyway.

No one got hurt in the accident. I thought I'd be sore today, but wasn't.

There but for the grace of God go I.

(Hmmm, as noted in the link above, Wikipedia gives an informative history of that phrase, crediting John Bradford.)

It wasn't a semitractor-trailer bearing down on us.

I am reminded of Emily Dickinson's sobering words:

Because I could not stop for Death He kindly stopped for me. . . .

Listing Listfully and Listlessly

My life is cluttered, and lists are part of the clutter. Lists reside on tiny pieces of paper that I carry in my pockets, with the left side used more than the right. Lists abound on my desk on sticky Post-its of neon colors. I have even taken lately to drawing up a list at the start of the workday. It's an exhaustive list inventorying all the anticipated tasks of the day: responses to calls, e-mails, queries, comments, asides, requests, deadlines, and stated or implicit demands of disparate pieces of paper on my glass desk, a desk as transparent as my orderly attempts to rein in my rampant disorder. (I am ending this paragraph right here in homage to Lenny Cohen.)

Then I numerically rank each task, perhaps stopping at ten. Then I cross off each completed task.

This list-ordered tasking seems to settle me down and focus my efforts. It works until intrusions of yet other tasks.

Or does it work at all? And will it last?

List last.

Last list.

Lost lust.

Lust lost list last.

List lost lust last.

I just love the lilt of those four words.

Et cetera. Inter alia. Age quod agis.

Where was I?

If am without lists, does that make me listless?

Or do the lists themselves make me listless, tricking me into thinking listing equals doing?

In consulting my Oxford English Dictionary, or OED, I am thrilled to find the deep and criss-crossed layers of listing and its variants and associated forms. (Yes, such a finding thrills me, and I make no apologies for it.) The word list offers a rich playground for any list maker.

(But I will be brief. I need to pack for Berlin -- and alas I have for now successfully avoided lapsing into all kinds of blatant Wall metaphors, analogies, and paradigms.)

My OED tells me that list in some associated form or other (to say nothing of Franz Liszt!) refers to:

hearing,
the ear,
a border,
a hem (as in [ahem!] a silken piece of ooh-la-la! cloth you know where),
an earlobe,
part of a head of hair, such as a beard,
a scar,
a ring around the foot of a column,
a place of combat,
a staked enclosure (plural = the starting point of a race),
joy,
delight,
appetite,
craving,
lust (you knew it would come to that),
the careening of a ship (such as the ship of state embarking on certain courses of action),
a roll or catalog of words (such as This parade of nouns),
to please,
to care for,
to listen (I've barely begun to touch the verb forms)

insert ellipsis points here

This is just for starters. (Does that make it UNjust for finishers? hahahar!)

The list goes on.

Or could,

But I am getting listless.

Laugh. Or....

Else.

Let's Stop Serial-Comma Killing Now!

We know society exhibits moral outrage over serial killings, as well it should.




But why the widespread apathy over the death throes of the serial comma?




Fight the good fight. Become a Serial Comma Commando today!


The serial comma, also known as the Oxford comma or the Harvard comma, is the comma found in this construction:

Hurray for the red, white, and blue.

Believers of the use of this construction (like me) insist on that comma after the word white.

My particular reasons are straightforward: consistency and lack of ambiguity.

At least I thought so until I checked out the entry for topic at Wikipedia. I must say, the entry is exhaustive and entertaining.

It gives cogent arguments both for and against.

I used to be a newspaper copy editor. Nearly all newspapers (at least in American and Canada) do not use the serial comma. The New York Times and The Washington Post, excellent newspapers, do not employ that comma after the word white in the example above. Nearly all book publishers used to use it. The New Yorker magazine still uses it.

I reject the argument (made by some, including Lynne Truss of the popular book Eats, Shoots & Leaves) that this style decision is variable depending on context and circumstances. (Oh, of course, you can find an exception to any rule. So, yes, all such decisions are potentially variable. I'm not talking about that. Oliver Wendell Holmes said something like you have to know the rules before you know how to break them. I'm talking about the rule here, not the exception[s].)

I say adhere to the rule, or not, but do so consistently.

It is troubling in recent years to find myself reading a novel and to encounter style usage all over the place on this.

Sloppy.

Most of you say this is all silly and does not matter.

I'll close with the wonderful example from The Chicago Manual of Style (which, naturally, supports the view of the serial comma embraced by The Laughorist):

According to the erudite and entertaining folks at the University of Chicago Press (check out their FAQ section), not using the serial comma can put you in this pickle with this hypothetical book dedication:

"With gratitude to my parents, Mother Teresa and the pope."

Laugh. Or....

Else.

Freegonomics: Food for Thought -- and Word Blenders

As you know, I like wordplay. The title of my blog declares it. (Of course, laughorist is a blend of laugh + aphorist.) So, when I read an online piece today about some folks in the San Francisco area who succeeded in complying with their vow not to shop for a year (with some exceptions), I was all set to declare myself as the inventor of the blended neologism "freegonomics."

Read on.

The news story made reference to so-called freegans, people who advocate minimal consumption -- with some going so far as to eat out of Dumpsters. (Please note: the former newspaper copy editor in me warns you that Dumpster is a brand name and should be capitalized when you read it in print or online.) The word freegan itself, of course, is a linguistic blend of free + vegan. (Turns out that some freegans are meagans, because they allow themselves to eat meat.)

Well, I cannot claim to have coined the term freegonomics (the link here to the word is actually a thought-provoking essay by columnist Lucy Siegle in The Observer back in February 2006). A simple search of "freegonomics" indicates that several others already beat me to it, by months if not years.

Even if I did not coin the term, I feel the concept raises issues worth considering. When I was in college, during the Vietnam War, I remember a philosophy professor, John McNeill, challenging our class at LeMoyne College with respect to those who protested the war. He said something like this:

"A Franciscan movement could end this war in 90 days. But you can't do it. If everyone from, say, the ages of 15 to 30 disciplined themselves to the point of buying only necessary goods, you would be able to get anything you want from the government in no time. The economic effect would be huge, and you would be able to stop the war. But you don't have that ability to sacrifice."

Something like that. And I suspected then, and now, he was right.

There's little doubt that consumption (is "overconsumption" a redundancy about redundancies?) in capitalist (well, in all societies) involves abuse, destruction, waste, and greed.

But couldn't the same be said ever since Adam and Eve (easy on those apples, kids)?

I don't disagree that we (we in the U.S. and the so-called developed nations, as well as we who pollute the air and foul the rivers of a booming China) are ravaging the planet. But on a macroeconomic level, if "we" all were to cut back even to a sensible minimum of consumption (a sensible minimum, however you define it), does that impoverish thousands, if not millions, of suddenly jobless people?

I am neither a microeconomist nor a macroeconomist. I tend to be quite frugal (some would say cheapskate). I am not an extravagant buyer. When clothes are given to me as gifts, I feel sheepish (well, that's true for anything made of wool - HAHAHAHA).

I don't know what to conclude about any of this.

Just some food for thought.

And, speaking of word blenders, as opposed to food blenders, even Wikipedia (the source of many definitions above) is a blend of wiki (Hawaiian for fast) + encyclopedia.

You can look it up.

Laugh. Or....

Else.