I’m not Superstitious, I’m Quasistitious

I’m not what you would consider a superstitious person. Sure, I avoid walking under ladders, try not break any mirrors or open umbrellas inside of the house, but these are safety driven rather than superstition motivated. I’m not a friggatriskaideka or paraskevidekatriaphobe (and this is probably the only time I will ever use those words) nor do believe in rabbit’s feet or knocking on wood.

I think I’m somewhat superstitious in certain situations. I would say I’m Quasi-Superstitious or Quasistitious. Why not Semi-Superstitious, Demi-Superstitious or even Hemi-Superstitious?

I looked up Semi, Demi, Hemi, and Quasi is the prefix that works best. Although they all denote half, Semi is almost always used as a quantity qualifier. Its sibling Hemi is used mostly as a technical nomenclature in fields like chemistry, biology, and anatomy. Their kissing cousin Demi is more ceremonial and often implies “lesser.” A demigod, after all, is not quite the real thing.

Quasi is more appropriate because it means seemingly apparent but not really.  Like kinda pregnant.

Getting back to my Quasistitious-ness….The belief that bad luck comes in threes is a good example of how I sometimes partake of the superstition kool-aid.  A couple of things go wrong, and I start to look for the next bit of bad luck.

Recently, my wife sprained her ankle and we also had a tire blow out while driving to Michigan. My cell phone also mysteriously stopped connecting to our cellular network (looking at you T-Mobile) and we are hoping that those are The Three.

But if you think about it, you can always find three things that are both bad luck and in close proximity.  So maybe the Power of Three is really just good old-fashioned confirmation bias.  

Maybe the best explanation for my Quasistitious comes from a show that jumped the shark a long time ago:

“Superstition lies in the space between what we can control and what we can’t. Find a penny pick it up, and all day long you will have good luck. No one wants to pass up a chance for good luck, but does saying it 33 times really help? I mean is anyone really listening, and if no one is listening why do we bother doing those strange things at all? We rely on superstition because we are smart enough to know we don’t have all the answers, and that life works in mysterious ways. Don’t diss the ju ju from wherever it comes.”

Let me know your thoughts on Superstitions in the comments below and thanks for reading.

****************
Do me a favor? Click my “like” button and join our Facebook community.

You’ll find funny, informative links and interesting pictures.  Don’t worry, your Facebook feed won’t get overwhelmed.

Happy Reading!  Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

All I could remember was Goodbye Doesn’t Mean This has to be The End

At the end of the movie Oh Heavenly Dog, this song plays at the end, during the credit roll. I could never figure out what the name of the song was.  I only ever watched it on free OTA TV (because I’ve never paid for cable) and they cut the credits before getting to the song list.  Granted, the last time I watched that movie was before the Internet was a thing.  Over the years I have made halfhearted attempts to figure it out.

All I could really remember were two lines from the song:

Goodbye doesn’t mean this has to be the end
When we return to paradise

Unfortunately, I was looking for a song called “Goodbye doesn’t mean this has to be the end” which is part of the repeating stanza (we’re back to that I don’t know the parts of songs thing again).

When in fact the song is called Return to Paradise.  You’d think I would have found it that way since that was another of the few lines I remembered.  but the internet was young when I first attempted to search for this and I seem to only make the attempt once a decade.

I suspect the last time I tried to google this song, I came across the Elton John video linked here, but didn’t recognize the song.  In the movie the song is much fuller and maybe sped up a bit. So I probably played a few seconds of the song, didn’t recognize it and didn’t stick around to hear the stanza.  Believe it or not, Lyrics to every song out there is more recent than you think.  then got distracted by cat videos.  Luckily IMDB is a little more robust these days.

And let’s talk about those lyrics for a minute.  Man are they Power.  Full.  The song is not just about have to leave a tropical paradise for the cold weather back home.  It is talking about Shagri-la, Xanadu and El Dorado all rolled into one.

I’m heading homeward
Leaving sunshine and heading for rain
But we’ll return to paradise again

I feel like I have just solved another Mystery of Life.

Free Fun Friday is where I like to feature a video that has gone viral or is otherwise interesting. It started as a way to make a quick blog entry so that I wouldn’t go too long between post for my readers. Now it’s sort of evolved as a way to stretch my writing muscles and flex my creativity neural pathways.

Do me a favor? Click my “like” button and join our Facebook community.

Can Larry David Walk it back?

Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David sparked some controversy when he joked about trying to get a date at a concentration camp while hosting SNL last Saturday.  The joke starts about 5:40 into the video clip but there is a reference to the recent fusillade of sexual assault allegations in the new at 3:40.

Whenever  controversy du jour like this occurs, I tend to see what my favorite pundits have to say about it.  It seems there are two camps.  The “It’s always too soon” to joke about The Holocaust Camp and the Remember to Add ‘to you’ When you say Something is Offensive Camp.

The Always Too Soon Camp feels that  the victims and the goings on in the camps should be treated with reverence. Making them part of stand up routines is not treating them with dignity.

#ReallyMakesMeCringe when we have people denying the holocaust & Larry David opens the door for them to think it’s fine to joke about it. pic.twitter.com/w8SFjpieTa

— Red T Raccoon (@RedTRaccoon) November 5, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Larry David’s SNL monologue is another example that “anti-semitism” like “racism” is simply pattern recognition.pic.twitter.com/3cFHDOB6ie

— Will Westcott (@westland_will) November 5, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

The Not Offended Camp think that finding humor is empowering and a way to take back power. That he wasn’t being disrespectful to the people who suffered in the Holocaust. He was finding humor in the situation, not in the suffering, the pain, or the trauma. If he was making fun of anyone, it was himself.

If Larry David isn’t allowed to make holocaust jokes then what is the point of comedy or being Jewish

— Kath Barbadoro (@kathbarbadoro) November 5, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

Oh no. Larry David told an offensive joke. Countless are emotionally scarred. My thoughts and prayers are with all the victims.

— David Rotella (@ninjadave26) November 5, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I’m seeing Larry David getting a hard time for a holocaust joke. He’s Jewish. Am I going mental here?

— Limmy (@DaftLimmy) November 5, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

My warmest condolences to all you non-Jews who were injured by Larry David’s joke at his own expense.

— Bess Kalb (@bessbell) November 5, 2017

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

I don’t think his joke was funny, but I don’t share the outrage everyone else is feeling.  I’m not Jewish (as far as I know) but my grandparents did spend time in a work camp in Germany, long enough for my mother and an aunt to be born there.

Honestly, I don’t know enough on this and addressing this topic right now feels like it would be sticking my head into a hive of angry hornets and why would I want to do that? Instead, my only question is, can he walk this back?

Back in the day, when a comedian told an off-putting joke, people responded by not laughing and the joke was quickly and unceremoniously removed from the routine.  In the Social Media Era of the Internet Age, the offending joke gains a life of its own and goes viral.

Can Larry David walk this back? If so, what is the path to do so?

Do you me a solid and swing by my Facebook page and LIKE it! You’ll find funny, informative links and interesting pictures. Don’t worry, your  feed won’t get overwhelmed.

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

Music is the Ultimate Time Machine: Book of Love’s Witchcraft

It’s really cool listening to an old song and noticing something that you’ve never noticed before. Hat tip to Nina from You Know Neen for the headline idea.

Recently, I added 90s Techno Tunes to my Spotify Playlists and have been listening to some old school synthpop while running. I discovered a reference to Dark Shadows in a Book of Love song called Witchcraft.

In the second what do you call it, stanza? Refrain? I was not a music major. Anyway in the second set of repeating lyrics there’s a couple of lines:

Angelique takes Barnabas
From Josette

Before the Johnny Depp version, there was a soap opera called Dark Shadows in the 70s. As a kid, I just thought it was a pretty cool show about a vampire, but apparently there was a story arc too.

This is the part of the post where I put in a lot of transitional stuff that ties everything together nicely and earns me a Nobel Prize in Blogging.  Okay here goes nothing.

Listening to old songs from my early 20s brings back memories of a simpler time that didn’t seem so simple at the time.  We use to dance to Book of Love, Erasure, Yaz and other pop music alternative bands at places like The Octagon and Artful Dodger.  Usually I was the extra wheel since I was always Terminally Single and the bouncer nicknamed me Macaulay Culkin because I always went home alone. But this is Free Fun Friday so only light thoughts today.

Sometimes going down a rabbit hole is a good thing.

Do me a solid and swing by my Facebook page and LIKE it! You’ll find funny, informative links and interesting pictures. Don’t worry, your feed won’t get overwhelmed.

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

Stop being so hard on yourself

One of the best pieces of advice I ever heard came from a throwaway comment by a friend I’ve known for nearly two decades but only recently got to know on a more than a superficial level. I don’t even remember what prompted the remark but it was solid. She said:

“Stop being so hard on yourself”

If being hard on oneself were an Olympic event, I would be a repeat gold medal winner. The Michael Phelps of that event. It seems I’m always playing back old memories on my Pensieve in HDTV-esque quality where I relive every mistake, mishap, and faux pas of my 20s and 30s and even last Tuesday.

Because sometimes, despite your best efforts, things just don’t happen — you could have been in the right place at the right time but weren’t, or you were and you didn’t capitalize on the moment. Things happen for a reason. Sometimes the reason is dumb fucking luck.

Just like the ghosts in The Sixth Sense, people don’t realize how hard they are being on themselves. That’s right, I’m using a 17-year-old movie as a way to bind an analogy.

“I’m not saying you can’t think about your tax bill or your leaky faucet. I’m saying you can’t let these things, which you consider negative, dominate your thoughts. Of course you have to think about them. You need to give them the time and attention they deserve so you can address them and fix them, but once you’ve made as much progress as you can toward solving the issue at hand at a particular point in time, then, when no further forward progress can be made, you should redirect your thoughts to something else. Keeping your focus on your worries, all the negative situations over which you have no control, or which you cannot control at the moment, will only attract more negativity to them and therefore to you. It’s the law of attraction. The law of creation.” Down at the Golden Coin by Kim Strickland

Instead of being so hard on yourself, you have to learn to be where you are, and be okay with that.

So the next time you are at a dinner party and someone says starts beating up on themselves, say to them: “Hey stop being so hard on yourself!”

And be sure to give them the link to this post. That’s how dinner parties work, right? I don’t get invited to many.

**************
Happy Reading! Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

Flashes of Confidence

No one has ever accused me of posing an overabundance of Confidence. There have been glints, glimmers, and flashes, but at best I usually oscillate between cautiously optimistic and Fake It Til You Make It, with a heaping helping of Second Guessing thrown in for good measure.

Now the question  I have is, is it Fake it until you make it, or Fake it Til you make it or Fake it Till you make it?

By the way, there is absolutely no point to that last sentence and if I were a better writer, I’d just edit it out, but now that I’ve written it and then written about it, I just can’t seem to let go. Or writing about the sentence. OMG, what if I can’t finish this post because I’m stuck on this shit now?

Let’s get back to Serious for a minute.  Confidence is something you gain when you have successful outcomes and experiences.   And most of my life that was not the case.

Growing up in Humboldt Park, I got my butt kicked a lot for being a white kid in a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood.  It doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence when you know any stupid disagreement that kids have is gonna end up with someone starting a fight with you.

I remember being confident (or was it just cocky) in college.  Something changed somewhere during my time at NMSU.  When I first arrived I had confidence but by the end of my time there I lost my confidence.

And of course, any Modicum of Sureness after college was beaten out of me at my first job in Corporate America.

Even when good opportunities with lots of potential presented themselves, I would somehow either fuck them up myself or they would not match my perhaps disproportionate expectations.

I still don’t really have confidence so much as Bravado, or as it’s known by its scientific name: chutzpah.  At this age, my confidence is more just not having many fucks to give about things. I don’t back down and crumble when a friend doesn’t like something I say on Facebook.  I stand up for myself and defend myself better, though I willingly adapt my thinking upon receiving new factual information, like when I’m really being a jackass.

In a nutshell, I’ve become Bugs Bunny and that rabbit oozes confidence.

I am confident you will swing by my Facebook page and LIKE it! You’ll find funny, informative links and interesting pictures. Don’t worry, your FB feed won’t get overwhelmed.

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

The dB’s hit Love Is For Lovers sums up my love life

Now that Valentine’s Day is over and everyone who either loves it or hates it has gone back to their neutral corner, I thought I’d share a little from the romantic side of things.  In 1984 the dB’s released this thing called an Album titled Like This.  The hit single from it was Love Is For Lovers and though I didn’t hear the song until the 90s, this song summed up my love life.

Do you remember when blue was the feeling
Gray was the weather, one was the number?
Do you remember when love was for others?

Back then we didn’t have an easy way to look up the lyrics of a song.  You had to buy the album and hope they lyrics were in the jacket.  I thought the line was Grey was the Word, which also works.

But the point is the opening stanza really summed up Life in my 20s.  I often felt blue about not having someone special in my life.  One was my number and it always felt like all my friends had girlfriends and I was some loser who couldn’t find someone.  Honestly some of those friends were craptastic and if they could find someone, what the fuck had to be wrong with me.

From where I was standing, it seemed like everyone had this dating thing down and had no trouble transiting from first date to coupledom.  Meanwhile I just  faceplanted  hard back in my days.

And then that thing happened.  I won’t go into the dirty details since Free Fun Friday is meant to be uplifting.  Remember Chicago how you felt when Reggie Bush taunted Brian Urlacher in the end zone of the NFL Championship game?  It was like that.   I drew a line in the sand and said enough.  And the next day, everything was pretty much the same.  But it was also the beginning of the path that would eventually lead me to meeting my wife Nightingale.

Now every day is like summer vacation
Christmas and birthday rolled into one day
Now every night is a special occasion
Where does it all end? Maybe next someday

Is the one quintessential song that sums up some component of your life?  Tell me about it here in the comments, then swing by my Facebook page and LIKE it! You’ll find funny, informative links and interesting pictures.  Don’t worry, your FB feed won’t get overwhelmed.

If you really like this post, please scroll back up to the top and click the “subscribe by email” button. You can sign up to receive an email whenever I publish something new.

No spam, no junk. Just me. Promise.

Need to reach me? Send me an email at therunninggod@gmail.com! Happy Reading!  Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

3 ways to fix the problems with air travel today

Air travel is very stressful and time consuming these days.  I’m not talking about being on a plane and worrying about it falling from the sky.  i’m talking about all the hassle and hoops one has to jump through just to get on the airplane in the first place.  You have to arrive hours before your flight and wait in long security lines.  Often your flight is shorter than the time you spent getting to the airport and through security.  Then you are waiting for your flight in a cramped area at the mercy of price gouging bars and restaurants.  Here are 3 ways we could improve the experience.

Charge People for Carry-on Baggage
One of the biggest annoyance is not being able to exit the plane because everyone in front of you is trying to get their bags down from the overhead bins.  Instead of charging to check bags, do just the opposite.  Charge people to carry a bag onto a plane but incenticize them to check their bags for free.  Also, push to standard the carry-on bag size.

Board the plane from back-to-front (FILO)
There really is no reason anyone seated in the front of the airplane needs to also board the plane before anyone else.  The plane takes off when the designated time arrives regardless of how many passengers are already on board (I need to fact check this but since most flights these days are delayed I’m not gonna make that a top priority).  If you’re in First Class, your seat will be there for you whether Walter the Unwashed boards before or after you.   And guess what?  being in First Class means you do get to deplane first, so you still have some eliteness going for you.

Get rid of the TSA
You never know how long it will take to get through security at the airport these days.  Most of the time, you get there 2-3 hours before your flight and you get through the humbling, humiliating and annoying task of taking your shoes, belt and other metal items off in 20 minutes.  Other times you might actually miss your flight because so many people didn’t get the memo.  There is an attempt to mitigate this with software, but there is an easier solution.  Eliminate the TSA.

Seriously, let’s just accept that they are a big fat waste of money and that they contribute more to the problem than to any solution.  I mean really if we are going to allow people to walk into a Walmart with an assault rifle, we can let people bring more than 3 oz of liquid on a plane.

*************

Do you detest waiting to board a plane?  Tell me about it here in the comments, then swing by my Facebook page and LIKE it! You’ll find funny, informative links and interesting pictures.  Don’t worry, your FB feed won’t get overwhelmed.

Happy Reading!  Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

2-Year-Old Toddler Saves Twin From Fallen Dresser, afterwards ArmChair Parents chime in

Update 01/05/2017:  There are some who believe this video was faked.  I’m not sure why anyone would do such a thing, the benefit would have to outweigh the Parent Shaming they endured, or they completely miscalculated the rewards and/or response. 

 

Has everyone seen the video of the 2 year old who lifted a dresser off his twin brother?  I was first alerted to it by former ChicagoNow blogger Jenny Milkowski who posted the video on her FB Page.

Even before I watched the video, I knew what to expect:

Judgemental Comments from Know-It-All members of the That-Could-Never-Happen-to-Me clan.

• “Where were the parents?”
• “How could they not hear anything?”
• “I would never leave my kids unsupervised”

It doesn’t help that many of the news outlets covering the story don’t relay all the available facts.  Not that anyone would read them before spouting off an opinion.  Most people just watch the video and fire off their two cents without reading any of the pesky facts.

The story is that the kids (Bowdy and Brock Shoff) woke up and were playing in their room while their parents were sleeping.  This is very common with twins or kids who share a room at this age.  They have each other and can do more without the watchful eyes of parents.

Apparently when the parents woke up and checked on their kids, they found them playing in the room but the dresser was tipped over.  They reviewed their nanny cam and discovered what had happened.

The Shoffs were “initially hesitant to share the video but decided the issue of bolting furniture was too important to ignore.”  They also imply a higher power was involved with helping Browdy move the dresser off his brother Brock.

I’m not saying the Shoffs are candidates for Parents of the Year.  They know they fucked up and that is one reason they shared the video:  To hopefully convince other parents who don’t think that dresser or TV Stand is any danger, to think again.

It’s practically impossible to watch your kids 24/7 and attempting to do can be more harmful then not doing so.  If you have small children (or even just one) you are likely always in a sleep deficit.

Here’s something that is much more helpful than McJudgey comments that do not add anything to the discussion…a Childproofing Checklist from the International Association for Child Safety

****************
Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Here’s the part where I beg for stuff because we get paid in likes, shares, re-tweets and feedback. Please also do any and all of the following:

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.

With one month to go, 2016 worse Year of the Decade

What to make of 2016.  It started with Bowie who grabbed Glenn Frey in order to catch a ride to a party at Vanity’s palace in the sky.  But it wasn’t so much the celebrity deaths that got us.  No it was the election fatigue.  The U.S. Presidential campaign seems to start earlier and earlier each cycle and frankly it is exhausting.  I honestly believe we need to switch to a Hunger Games format and just be done with it.

And a good majority of Americans have found themselves upset at the results of an Electoral College that merely did it’s job as outlined in The Constitution.  And then the slow decent into Dante’s Many Circles of Hell has begun.

I am stuck in a post-election haze of despair–sometimes depressed, sometimes embarassed, often nauseated and, and frequently terrified.  And I’m a straight cis white old male who isn’t too bad off!

Trump is such a base, horrible human being, and he has, in my view, such shallow ideas about pretty much everything that I am truly sickened by the idea that people I went to school with have chosen him.

They didn’t vote for racism! They voted to make America great again!

“If Trump’s administration indulges in the racism, sexism and religious and other bigotries that Trump and his people have already promised to engage in, we can assume it’s because his voters are just fine with that racism, sexism and religious and other bigotries — even if they claim to have voted for him for other reasons entirely. After all, Trump didn’t hide these things about himself, or try to sneak these plans in by a side door. They were in full view this entire time. If you vote for a bigot who has bigoted plans, you need to be aware of what that says about you, and your complicity in those plans.”  — John Salzi.

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

 

Free Fun Friday is where I like to feature a video that has gone viral or is otherwise interesting. It started as a way to make a quick blog entry so that I wouldn’t go too long between post for my readers. Now it’s sort of evolved as a way to stretch my writing muscles and flex my creativity neural pathways.

****************
Thank you for reading and I hope you will comment below. Here’s the part where I beg for stuff because we get paid in likes, shares, re-tweets and feedback. Please also do any and all of the following:

Follow Mysteries of Life on Twitter (@MysteriesOLife), Facebook or subscribe via email.