Tales of Ordinary Madness

Oh ya, all that goodness under a single roof. This little gem of Americana can be located in downtown Southern Pines, North Carolina. When I found out this place was located just a few short miles from Jess’ Mom’s house, how could I resist. I dragged Jess out there (someone had to take the pics) this afternoon

Here’s a pic of me standing next to the bear that announces the presence of this great museum:

Oh and the best part of this museum is their collection of ALL of the credible evidence for evolution:

In case it’s not obvious, the only thing in the case is a plastic snake wrapped around an apple.

If the sign isn’t clear, here is a better shot:

Ridiculous is the nicest word I can think to describe this place. If you’re in the neighborhood make sure you stop by.

I totally want to hang out with Satan.

I could watch it over and over and over again

So, I’m not sure that I totally understand the usefulness of “micro-blogging”, but given the immense amount of interest around it, I’ve decided to give it a try. I know twitter is the most popular site right now, but I refuse to use it for several reasons. Mainly because the service seems to be down more than it is up, but also because once your content is put into twitter, it’s theirs. They have been given a ton of venture capital money and the only way they can make money is with YOUR content.

Identi.ca is different. Identi.ca is based upon an Open Source application called laconica licensed under the GNU AGPL. You control and own all your content. Don’t like Identi.ca? Fine, grab your data and set-up your own Laconica server.

We’ll see how my micro-blogging experience goes. Right now Identi.ca is still rough around the edges and they are still in the process of adding some features that Twitter has had for a while.

If you’d like to see my Identi.ca feed, you can see it here: http://identi.ca/cteodorski/all

Bloggers stink.

People need to relearn when it is appropriate to use the exclamation point. Below is the explanation of when to use an exclamation mark:

A sentence ending in an exclamation mark is either an actual exclamation (”Wow!”, “Boo!”), a command (”Stop!”), or is intended to be astonishing in some way (”They were the footprints of a gigantic hound!”).

“I had a great sandwich!” or “What a nice house!” or even “That was very funny!” doesn’t qualify. I don’t understand why the exclamation mark has become the most abused punctuation symbol (for my purposes, I prefer to abuse the comma).

Please, next time your blogging, read your sentence that ends with an exclamation point aloud like you are yelling “Stop!” to a friend who is about to cartwheel off a cliff and see if it still makes sense. My guess is that 99.999% of the time it will sound down right ridiculous.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

This video moved me in a way I can’t explain. It’s so easy to be us versus them, but so easy to forget it when you see people together sharing the same silly experience.

http://www.wgrz.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=44744

At Steve’s Wonderful World of Pets in Williamsville, owner Steve Lane is selling tattooed fish for the first time. Some have polka dots, some have stripes and others even have pink hearts.

The fish are imported from Singapore. Lane believes they have to be restrained and then tattooed with a tattoo gun.

This whole practice makes me ill. I thought I had a lot to say about it — but I really don’t. I would just encourage everyone to boycott any store that you see is selling these tortured fish. We can only stop this practice by voicing our disgust with our dollars.

I used to practice with my Sanghavery regularly. I would regularly attend Tuesday night sittings and wouldn’t miss an opportunity to attend the twice yearly retreats.

And then something happened….

Part of what happened was the Sangha moved to a new home. The home they found puts them in a part of town that is far from convenient for me, it’s very difficult for me to get from work to sitting in a reasonable time, especially if I have any thoughts of eating dinner beforehand.

Part of what happened was that I allowed myself to get too busy. I’ve started back to school, working on my Masters, I’ve become a father, and we bought a house — all within the last year. Balancing this all with a job that often requires more than 40 hours a week is difficult.

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about the practice and how much I feel I benefited from it. I’ve also been reading “The Art of Power by Thich Nhat Hahn” which has me longing again for the practice and for my Sangha.

Unfortunately, my schedule in the near future doesn’t look like it will allow.

What is a busy Buddhist to do?

The below link is to a video I created. I found it quite amusing, hopefully you will to.

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