"Lawyers are not a part of my social circle because I have a lazy eye..."- A letter from Kenneth Snipps

Brilliant.

A Letter from a Soldier to His Son.

"The price for ridding society of bad is always high."

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2011/11/price-for-ridding-society-of-bad-is.html

“Dear Dennis,

The man who might have written on this card once controlled Europe — three short years ago when you were born. Today he is dead, his memory despised, his country in ruins. He had a thirst for power, a low opinion of man as an individual, and a fear of intellectual honesty. He was a force for evil in the world. His passing, his defeat — a boon to mankind. But thousands died that it might be so. The price for ridding society of bad is always high.

Love, Daddy"

Apple Martini- Shaken AND Stirred, no Doubt.

A Post Few & Far (In the War) Between.

Some people have asked why I don't write more often.
A lot of people have complained that I don't write enough.

Sure, my amusing and absurd posts are fun, but I get the feeling that some people look to this blog to learn more about me as a person through posts such as Shut up About Hating Edmonton, or Why Did You Kill My Favourite Radio Station?

I recommend you stop doing that.

My reason for posting ridiculous and forgettable meme-esque things I have found on the internet is a very deliberate decision. I am no longer in the habit of taking my expressions to the blogosphere for people who may or may not care. I am no longer 22 with an aching desire for the world to understand me. I am no longer in such melodramatic pain and social anguish at the fear of rejection and failure that I must find an outlet for discovery and connection to ease the impending depression and possible (probable?) drinking binge.

I have other areas for that now.
And they are less in demand.

I now have a bit of a change in direction in my life and the way I wish to create the world I reflect. I AM ridiculous. I DO appreciate the absurd. I AM sassy and superficial and subjective about the idiocy of human relations sometimes. And this blog, as boring and offensive and cleverly contrived and self deprecating and disgusting and delightful as it can be sometimes, is the absolute most authentic way I can reflect myself to you all right now.

This blog IS me.

Sure, there may not be the verbose diatribes about human connection and social responsibility and romantic retaliation that I was a bit famous for back in the Arbitrary Comfort days, but I am just not that person anymore. I have chosen to express myself in the sound-bite exerpts & snapshots of enjoyment that I experience throughout my day and hope some of you will dig it as well and will find yourself smiling amongst the files of deadlines, task bars of red alerts, date books of obligations, and long commutes that just seem to get longer. This is the way I live now. For the tiny moments of awesome.

When shit gets heavy, I take it to my rock of a boyfriend Greg, or my loving-without-judgment family, or friends like the brilliantly misunderstood Tiv Lavrie, or my absolute favourite pub The Crown & Anchor, where Marko and the staff of filthy mouthed, big hearted, sex driven heathens make me feel safer and more free to be me than any therapists office or counceling centre ever could.

And this allows me to come back here and laugh with abandon and cry with compassion and love with altruism. Because now, more than ever before, it's just not always about me. A shock to some, I am sure, but a long overdue rite of passage.

So, please do not misunderstand my intention with this particular blog. The posts have intention; they are not just an obligatory means to an apathetic end. I just feel that sharing with you the email post that got sent to me yesterday and made me laugh until I almost peed (not even kidding) is a much more appropriate way to show you that my life, while not the most verbose at times, really does look like this:

I do hope you are as amused as I am. I do wish you guys all the best in whatever ways you are choosing to create yourselves. It is a fun and scary journey. and if you need some atrocity or absurdity, you all know where you can come.

Love you guys.
And thanks for everything.

Mother-In-Law Carolyn Bourne's Scathing Email to Heidi Withers.

After a "get-to-know-you" family visit apparently turned into an ordeal, Carolyn Bourne wrote an email to Heidi Withers, 29, telling her she had a thing or two to learn about proper manners before she married Bourne's 29-year-old stepson, Freddie.

The email criticized everything from Withers' table manners and sleeping habits to her parents' financial status after the young couple visited the Bourne family home in Devon, a rural county west of London.

"Your behavior on your visit to Devon during April was staggering in its uncouthness and lack of grace," Bourne wrote, according to Britain's Press Association. Bourne even said it was a pity that Freddie had fallen in love with her.

Withers then passed on the email to some friends, who passed it on to others. The email quickly sparked a debate in the press, on Twitter and on Facebook about who was right: The hypercritical mother-in-law or the future bride who offended her in-laws by specifying what foods she wouldn't eat and taking seconds without asking permission.

Edward Bourne, Freddie's father, told The Associated Press on Thursday that no one involved would comment on the matter.

But the future bride's father did surface, telling the Daily Mail newspaper that Carolyn Bourne seemed to be an unbearable snob.

Nick Curtis, a columnist with the Evening Standard newspaper, said the contretemps has revived every stale joke on the planet about intrusive mothers-in-law.

"I sort of sided with both," he told the AP. "I'm not a parent, but I am a son-in-law, so I side with the junior partner. But I'm old enough now to believe in good manners, so I sided with the mother-in-law too."

Curtis said there was a useful lesson in this for every family.

"The moral is don't send out emails like this, and if you do receive one, don't forward it out. And be as nice to your in-laws as possible," he suggested.

"It is high time someone explained to you about good manners. Yours are obvious by their absence and I feel sorry for you.

Unfortunately for Freddie, he has fallen in love with you and Freddie being Freddie, I gather it is not easy to reason with him or yet encourage him to consider how he might be able to help you. It may just be possible to get through to you though. I do hope so.

If you want to be accepted by the wider Bourne family I suggest you take some guidance from experts with utmost haste. There are plenty of finishing schools around.

Please, for your own good, for Freddie's sake and for your future involvement with the Bourne family, do something as soon as possible.

Here are a few examples of your lack of manners:

• When you are a guest in another's house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat, unless you are positively allergic to something. You do not remark that you do not have enough food. You do not start before everyone else. You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.

• When a guest in another's house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early, you fall in line with house norms.

• You should never ever insult the family you are about to join at any time and most definitely not in public. I gather you passed this off as a joke but the reaction in the pub was one of shock, not laughter.

• You should have hand-written a card to me. You have never written to thank me when you have stayed.

• You regularly draw attention to yourself. Perhaps you should ask yourself why.

• No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity style behaviour.

I understand your parents are unable to contribute very much towards the cost of your wedding. (There is nothing wrong with that except that convention is such that one might presume they would have saved over the years for their daughters' marriages.)
If this is the case, it would be most ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding as befits both your incomes."

Social Networking.

Main Entry:	social networking
Part of Speech:	n
Definition:	the use of a website to connect with people who share personal or professional interests, place of origin, education at a particular school, etc.

It seems like people always like to jump on the bandwagon of hating someone.  Sometimes it’s gurus, sometimes it’s bloggers, and sometimes it’s “social networking pros.”  While I have been on Facebook and Twitter, I have heard some comments regarding social networking being a waste of time, a farce, and an unauthentic way of communicating to people you have never met.

I feel the need to speak up and and say that that is a huge misapprehension.

Networking in a non-traditional medium.

Networking is a traditional skill that is utilized by anyone who wishes to expand their visibility in a professional sense, and the same can be done for someone in their personal life.  The use of new networking avenues such as internet sites does not make the purpose any less legitimate, it but allows another tool in your arsenal to attain your objective.

We met on Twitter, now we entertain each other on Facebook.

If someone's objective is to gain new friends, have new experiences with people across borders & boundaries, explore new moments of entertainment in their lives, how is this unauthentic?  I hear people referring to Twitter as though it is anything but the new pen-pal paradigm.  And let's be honest, sometimes the people you actually "know" (and let's not even bother getting into the discussion of what it means to "know" someone) simply do not bring the same smile to your face as those who give you four or five or twenty 140 character pieces of brilliance in a day.

Who would turn away someone who asked for your friendship at the pub after a great conversation?

To minimize the impact that someone can have on you due to such arbitrary things such as location, channels of communication, and longevity seems rash.  I have known of people who have fallen in love at first sight; I know people who have confessed more of themselves to people they have never met than their own family; I have been cheered up by people I would never be able to befriend due to them being thousands of miles away.

And that is what makes someone "good" at social networking.  Their ability to connect with people all over the world.  To take an interest in their lives and what value they bring to your world, and hopefully they will feel the same way about you.  To connect sources of need with sources of hope.  And to have some fun with each other.

If someone can brighten your day in one place, why not invite them in another?

I have gained Facebook friends through Twitter.
I have introduced Facebook friends to Twitter.
I have introduced people in my tangible life to others I know.
I have assisted Slave Lake victims in connecting to people willing to help.
My blog has brought attention to local issues and has connected me to people I would have never known of otherwise.
I have received letter and postcards from friends I have met through Facebook and Twitter.
I have received gifts in the mail from people I haven't met yet.
I have helped some people I have never met but have had the same issues connect with each other, and they have done the same for me.

Postcards in the mail are the norm for me now.

How can you dismiss social networking?

You may not be very good at it, because God knows it takes some work, but how can you deny the people who are, or the importance of it?

Participating in events in my city? Yes, please.

It would be remiss of me to allow people to dismiss it or, even more insultingly deride it and the people who participate in it, without saying something.  The biggest threat to the power of networking sites is people turning against it for spite. 
We are the most social, strongest, communicative community in the history of the world, and people have turned on each other out of envy, spite, or inability to see it's value.

And there is value.  You just have to put in the work to see it.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE GENTLEMAN BLOW-DRYING HIS BALLS IN THE GYM LOCKER ROOM.

May 27, 2011

- - - -

Dear gentleman blow-drying his balls in the gym locker room,

You're actually doing it. I mean, we've all dreamt of blow-drying our balls out in the open, but you're actually doing it in front of me and at least sixteen other people that just finished exercising at this pricey sports club. Some of us will do it in private in our homes, or in a hotel room using a hairdryer a stranger might have just used to style their hair for that big business meeting in Denver. But not you. You are not confined to such social norms, norms that usually keep flapping, flag-like balls out of my eyes.
Does the courage to do this in public come with age? Perhaps it's something a young man like me can't understand. But you, you are on in years; gray and spotted like a ham in a paintball fight. Your scrotum reminds me of boardwalk taffy. Maybe you've been building up to this day your whole life and I'm witnessing the birth of a phoenix. You are no longer a man that blow-dries his balls in secret. You have transcended that station and now fall into an elite group of Spartans that blow-dry their balls wherever they God damn please. If caterpillars emerged from their cocoons as butterflies with heavy, sagging testicles I'd imagine they'd feel the same as you might right now.
Maybe you're making up for the fact that you no longer have any hair on your head that requires blow-drying. Is grabbing a hairdryer a rote, preening response from your earlier years when you and your majestic mane would say things like, "bees knees" to fresh-faced nurses at the pool hall while discussing the Teapot Dome scandal? Did they have hairdryers back then? I think my ability to correctly recall history is being affected by the sight of your twin sperm fountains.
I especially appreciate the way you've got one leg up on the counter. Not only does this allow the hot jet stream of air a more direct passage to your gene-carrying duffle bag, it also gives me an intrusive view to the white fields of pubis covering your taint and beyond. It almost makes me think of Santa Claus, but I was not sexually abused by Kris Kringle as a child. Speaking of Christmas, were the Adidas soccer sandals you use as shower shoes a gift from a grandchild?
Your actions disturb and inspire, and I can't look away. I'm either swelling with physical repulsion or the joy a parent feels watching their child take their first steps. Only in this case the child is an 84-year-old man with a hairdryer aimed at his balls. Whatever the case, you're an exemplar of bravery. So, please, shine on you withering diamond.

Thanks!
Ross Beeley