There’s a popular saying in sports that the best referee or official is one you never notice or talk about. That is to say, if you find a reason to talk about one of them it’s most likely because they made a bad call or otherwise inserted themselves into the flow of the game. An invisible referee is a good referee.

I wish more people took that attitude about driving. Your aim should be to make it from point A to point B without anyone noticing you. If you’re going too fast because your time is more important than everyone else’s, you’re noticed. If you’re going abnormally slow, you’re noticed. If you’re texting and driving like an asshole? Noticed. If you have no idea where you are going before you get in the car and change lanes unexpectedly cutting people off? Noticed.  Do us all a favor and try to be invisible when you are in the car. I will do the same. If you notice me it’s because I noticed you first.

I love the creativity and word play you often find in bars; on signs, on t-shirts, etc. Some of my favorite:

Thankfully we don’t have to read by candle light anymore.

The Dangers of Reading in Bed (The Atlantic)

“People feared that solitary reading … fostered a private, fantasy life that would threaten the collective.”

I came across this passage in some weekly reading. This is the type of elitist intellectual bullshit writing that makes me crazy. I have no problem with the content. It’s the writing and delivery that irks me. Writing like this is not meant to convey an idea, it’s meant to stroke the intellectual ego of the writer. 

“These stories rely on quasi-indigenous and feminist images of community to offer alternatives to Western hyper-extraction; both resolve their disaster narratives with the triumph of intuitive and holistic modes of existence over imperialism and militarism. They not only depict the post-post-apocalyptic future in joyous terms, but do so by appealing to a more benevolent and ecologically attuned humanity.” {Jeff throws up in his mouth a little}

End-Times for Humanity (Aeon)

“Live in the present.” “The present is all we have.” “Be mindful of the present.” “Stop worrying about the future and the past.” The fluffy, new age world has been coercing you into believing that your life would be better if only you could learn to live in the moment, the now, the present and forget the past or stop worrying about the future.

Guess what? There is no present. There, I said it. No matter what you are doing - reading, writing, walking, thinking - the moment it happens it is the past. When you are contemplating it, it is the future. There are no discreet points in time. Time is a continuum. There cannot be a present because everything is always happening and that, by definition, means it is in the past. When you step forward, each partial movement in that direction becomes the past. There is never a present because the thing that hasn’t happened yet is in the future.

The best you can hope for is to be mindful of the fact that there are only two states - what has happened, and what might happen. There is no what “IS” happening, ever.

Does anyone else get confused when you see a sign in the bathroom that says: “Don’t Flush Anything Except Toilet Paper”

(Hat Tip: Pop)

May the splinters never point the wrong way as you slide down the banister of life,

Jeff