Traditions passed on
Through generations on end
Are sure to endure
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
Showing posts with label on. Show all posts
Showing posts with label on. Show all posts
28 September 2018
13 August 2018
haiku 12-13 Aug 2018
A bear ate my bag
And the neighbors have moved on
Tests of patience, pride
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
And the neighbors have moved on
Tests of patience, pride
[ americanifesto / 場黑麥 / jpr / urbanartopia / whorphan ]
18 June 2018
20 March 2013
bare and spill
Having spent the past year experimenting on his friends and family (without their consent, of course) and probing just how far he could push an ego until it fought back, this liesmith finds that many Americans have grown accustomed to a person baring his soul and spilling his guts at the drop of a hat, and that baring and spilling is now so commonplace that it causes a stir if does not occur as expected. Instead of being a rare, cathartic event during which one party helps the other deal with or process a traumatic or important event, baring and spilling has become as routine as saying Thank You to a door held open out of politeness – if it does not occur, the person who refuses to bare and spill is looked upon with contempt, and treated with disdain. (This bad habit has an evil twin: that of saying “I Love You" 70 times a day to persons one doesn't really love quite enough to merit saying it to them constantly.) Taking his experiment one step further, the author has stopped baring and spilling to persons to whom he had previously talked unfettered about everything, which has lead to a variety of changes in a number of relationships.
In part, he blames daytime television shows for this overall shift in American habits; their tendency to thrust behavior previously reserved for the therapist's office before the eyes of emotionally-repressed Ynki housewives seems to have helped convince these women to search for the same kind of emotional release in their relationships with girlfriend and husband. (Rarely if ever do the daytime hosts warn of or outline the risks associated with undertaking psychological counseling on one's own.) Guests to these talk shows would routinely break down, releasing their pent-up angers and fears and joys and proclaiming how wonderfully purified they felt after having bared their souls. Housewives whose lives are often ruled by routine soon became addicted to the idea of release and emotional excitement without fully understanding the dangers associated with unassisted, amateur psychology. Some stones are best left unturned, and some secrets were never intended to leave the mental closets in which they reside, but the addiction to backyard pseudo-psychology grew, and spread; it has become so intricately enmeshed in our current society as to be one of its more common features. Today, we seldom accept statements at face value or respect the right of our counterpart to his modicum of privacy, preferring rather to keep prying and peeling back the layers until – for good or ill – we have peered into the tenderest folds of our victim's most dark and dismal core. (The author is guilty of this behavior, just like most other Americans.)
People who pry so incessantly rarely care about helping others lessen emotional turmoil or improve mental well-being; they care more about the power they feel watching a being just as fragile as they are flounder about before he descends into a spiritual malaise of his own making. How, though, might one avoid the trap of the pseudo-psychologist and maintain a pure and honest heart? By staying quiet, politely refusing to play along, and keeping one's business to oneself. We who understand the raw and awesome power of full disclosure, therefore, sparingly spill and barely bare; some beasts are simply best left chained.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
In part, he blames daytime television shows for this overall shift in American habits; their tendency to thrust behavior previously reserved for the therapist's office before the eyes of emotionally-repressed Ynki housewives seems to have helped convince these women to search for the same kind of emotional release in their relationships with girlfriend and husband. (Rarely if ever do the daytime hosts warn of or outline the risks associated with undertaking psychological counseling on one's own.) Guests to these talk shows would routinely break down, releasing their pent-up angers and fears and joys and proclaiming how wonderfully purified they felt after having bared their souls. Housewives whose lives are often ruled by routine soon became addicted to the idea of release and emotional excitement without fully understanding the dangers associated with unassisted, amateur psychology. Some stones are best left unturned, and some secrets were never intended to leave the mental closets in which they reside, but the addiction to backyard pseudo-psychology grew, and spread; it has become so intricately enmeshed in our current society as to be one of its more common features. Today, we seldom accept statements at face value or respect the right of our counterpart to his modicum of privacy, preferring rather to keep prying and peeling back the layers until – for good or ill – we have peered into the tenderest folds of our victim's most dark and dismal core. (The author is guilty of this behavior, just like most other Americans.)
People who pry so incessantly rarely care about helping others lessen emotional turmoil or improve mental well-being; they care more about the power they feel watching a being just as fragile as they are flounder about before he descends into a spiritual malaise of his own making. How, though, might one avoid the trap of the pseudo-psychologist and maintain a pure and honest heart? By staying quiet, politely refusing to play along, and keeping one's business to oneself. We who understand the raw and awesome power of full disclosure, therefore, sparingly spill and barely bare; some beasts are simply best left chained.
mentiri factorem fecit – 場黑麥
09 January 2013
on using techmology
In an age that has witnessed the rapid spread of sophisticated hand-held computers, I find it hard to fathom how certain people still don't know how to use digital devices. “There's no instruction booklet,” they often say, or, “I don't know how to get back to the place where I can check my email.” If you are one such person, here are a few tips.
Tip #1: No matter how many buttons you push, you won't break the device. Every button has a name or icon on it to indicate what it does, so push each button in turn, wait to see what it does, and then memorize the steps needed to get to a certain area or to activate a favorite application. The hesitation to push a device to its limit is likely a holdover from analog times, when flimsy devices would break as soon as the user pulled what he should have pushed and twisted what he should have left alone. Computers may crash, but they tend to start back up again, good as new, so forget bygone concerns and have at it.
Tip #2: There are no instruction booklets because these devices are designed so that even brain-dead, snot-nosed teenagers can use them. Teenagers aren't smarter or better at using technology than the average adult – they are simply less afraid of making mistakes and just mash buttons until they get their device to do what they want it to do, whereupon they follow the same steps over and over again. (Besides, the instruction booklets of yore confused and frustrated more often than they helped, and only maybe one in ten users actually read them, so if you use that lame and tired excuse, please stop.)
Tip #3: If you find yourself in an area of your device that you don't recognize, find a button that looks like an arrow or that has the picture of an arrow on it and keep hitting that button until you can go no further and you find yourself back at square one. Then, start hitting buttons until you get where you want to go, and stay there. Only a handful of kids today do outrageous things with their hand-held computers; the rest use but a few applications – email, instant messaging, a social networking site, a music player, and maybe a video service – without ever delving into the inner workings of their devices or pushing their little toys to the limit.
Tip #4: When in doubt, ask a brain-dead, snot-nosed teenager for help. Seriously, nothing strokes their egos more than being asked to show Granny how to get back to her email inbox so she can see all those pictures of cherubic children her daughter-in-law keeps claiming to have sent. Get your device back promptly, though, unless you want to lose it forever to the fleet fingers of a trolling teen.
In the end, your stoic refusal to back down from a challenge will win the day and afford you all the advantages of the hand-held digital device. So step once more into the breech and mash those buttons until your tablet says, “Meep.” And, of course, mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
Tip #1: No matter how many buttons you push, you won't break the device. Every button has a name or icon on it to indicate what it does, so push each button in turn, wait to see what it does, and then memorize the steps needed to get to a certain area or to activate a favorite application. The hesitation to push a device to its limit is likely a holdover from analog times, when flimsy devices would break as soon as the user pulled what he should have pushed and twisted what he should have left alone. Computers may crash, but they tend to start back up again, good as new, so forget bygone concerns and have at it.
Tip #2: There are no instruction booklets because these devices are designed so that even brain-dead, snot-nosed teenagers can use them. Teenagers aren't smarter or better at using technology than the average adult – they are simply less afraid of making mistakes and just mash buttons until they get their device to do what they want it to do, whereupon they follow the same steps over and over again. (Besides, the instruction booklets of yore confused and frustrated more often than they helped, and only maybe one in ten users actually read them, so if you use that lame and tired excuse, please stop.)
Tip #3: If you find yourself in an area of your device that you don't recognize, find a button that looks like an arrow or that has the picture of an arrow on it and keep hitting that button until you can go no further and you find yourself back at square one. Then, start hitting buttons until you get where you want to go, and stay there. Only a handful of kids today do outrageous things with their hand-held computers; the rest use but a few applications – email, instant messaging, a social networking site, a music player, and maybe a video service – without ever delving into the inner workings of their devices or pushing their little toys to the limit.
Tip #4: When in doubt, ask a brain-dead, snot-nosed teenager for help. Seriously, nothing strokes their egos more than being asked to show Granny how to get back to her email inbox so she can see all those pictures of cherubic children her daughter-in-law keeps claiming to have sent. Get your device back promptly, though, unless you want to lose it forever to the fleet fingers of a trolling teen.
In the end, your stoic refusal to back down from a challenge will win the day and afford you all the advantages of the hand-held digital device. So step once more into the breech and mash those buttons until your tablet says, “Meep.” And, of course, mahalo.
mentiri factorem fecit © 場黑麥
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