I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is The Accidental Mind .

1SG Troy Steward: I have finally put the finishing touches on my Blackhawk flying video. Most of the footage is from my last helicopter flight in Afghanistan, flying from Gardez to Kabul. This video provides a snapshot into the variety of landscape in Afghanistan. You will see open and barren desert, mountain peaks, and lush green farmland — the most I had…

Sad humanists slink home to write
Their realistic books at night,
Or, they’re male and white, not gay,
To calculate retirement pay

From Not My Department by Christopher Wiseman.

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Story: Substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting by Robert McKee.

Formal Differences Within The Story Triangle: Closed vs. Open Endings; External vs. Internal Conflict; Single vs. Multiple Protagonists; Active vs. Passive Protagonist (an active protagonist, in the pursuit of desire, takes action in direct conflict with the people and the world around him; a passive protagonist is outwardly inactive while pursuing desire inwardly, in conflict with aspect of his or her own nature.; Linear vs. Nonlinear Time; Causality vs. Coincidence; Consistent vs. Inconsistent Realities and Change vs. Stasis.

Today, 25 May, is Towel Day. What is Towel Day, you might rightly ask? Well it’s a day for all of us to remember the literary genius of Douglas Adams who gave us the answer to Life, The Universe, Everything. (And no, I’m not going to tell you, if you don’t know you probably need to read the directions on a box of tooth picks.

But why a towel? Because, as the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy informs us:

A towel, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value:

Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth f the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

While I didn’t plan it this way, I think it’s cool that Towel Day also happens to be the day that I begin on of my three-day mini-retreats. I’ll be going off the grid for 72 hours. No computer. No electric lights. No stereo.

Just me, my journal, some books and my towel.

Thank you Douglas.

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Why Aren’t You Working?

Yesterday I mentioned that Tish Grier had sent me an email concerning The Plainly Obvious and I promised to post those thoughts if she gave her permission. Well, she did, and followed it with two additional emails. All of it is serious meat for the conversation, so without further ado, sink your teeth into what Tish said:

I’m dealing a bit with this right now–dealing with job and hobby blurring. So, I get what you’re saying about the subjective and objective blurring. I started to notice this a couple of years ago when the idea that sexual fantasies aren’t just fantasies–but are indications of what someone will actually puruse. The idea that a fantasy cannot be *just* a fantasy is slowly leaving our world.

I know that this way of thinking’s lead so many people to massive amounts of debit and no savings. Because it’s about making the dream come true. At whatever cost. Literally.

She followed it this morning with this:

I”m always amazed how the “g-d” of (some) psychotherapy works hand in hand with this strange “spiritualist” g-d that actually comes out of protestantism–and how it keeps us locked in a space between the real world and some other altered dream-place that can never exist. It keeps us working, working, working and spending, spending, spending in order to chase some capitalist dream of perfection on earth. And if we’re not happy doing all of this, just take a drug to ‘fix’ you up and get with it.

And this:

I had another intersting thought re the Secret…

My business coach often says how she hates affirmations–that getting anywhere takes a lot of awareness and hard work! She’s written some great stuff about getting stuck in hope–and that you’ve gotta do stuff to make stuff happen. Participating in life is the real secret.

And then there’s my two-cents worth.

Reality is the stuff that doesn’t go away just because you stop believing in it. –Philip K. Dick.

(And he ought to have known.)

I could never bring myself to forward all the email jokes, cartoons and other Internet comedy that land in my inbox. But then I started posting the ones my dad sends me. Judging from my comments and emails, my dad has become one of my greatest blogging assets. So for your morning blog chuckle I present: From My Dad.

As he dropped them roughly in the bag, spun
It closed, squatted, and with a sigh or cough
Pushed it deep into the water. Said none
Of the things I thoguht he might, just looked off,

Looked away from the bucket. No sound. No hurry.
Seemed like five minutes before he slopped it out
And shook them down into the hole. ‘Bury
Them. Empty the pail,’ he said, and left. It hurt

From The Gravediggers by Christopher Wiseman.

My name is Jeff Hess and I’m a biblioholic. I own hundreds of books. Not valuable books, mostly Science Fiction paperbacks and text books, tomes rescued by the bag from library book sales. A few years ago, in the interest of not burying myself, I began reading more books from the library and taking notes. My electronic chapbook was born.

This is a passage I copied from Story: Substance, structure, style and the principles of screenwriting by Robert McKee.

Anti-Structure/Antiplot – Stranger in Paradise and Wayne”s World: non-linear time, inconsistent realities.

The prose is so feckin’ breathless I have to believe that the writer is a frustrated Harlequin author. I admit that it’s difficult to envision ripping Cleveland’s bodice (particularly in light of our Governor’s gutless pass on the silly stripper bill) but this news release from Greater Ohio all but heaves with anticipation (cue Tim Curry).

Restoring Prosperity: The State Role in Revitalizing America’s Older Industrial Cities, which specifically identifies nine challenged Ohio older industrial cities-Canton, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton, Lima, Mansfield, Springfield, Warren, and Youngstown-provides a framework for recovery and emphasizes that these cities are ripe for revitalization, due to new promising trends and attitudes that revalue these cities’ qualities. Also, the Report states these cities possess the right assets to overcome their challenges. Ohio’s mix of educational and medical institutions, historic neighborhoods, and natural amenities provide a strong basis for recovery, as long as the right state policies are in place. Greater Ohio will work in partnership with local leaders and state policymakers to forge an agenda for change that helps cities capitalize on their assets and catapault these cities into a new economic era.

Translation: give us more tax dollars you wanking slackers.

And somebody please get these people an editor.

I’m constantly tossing interesting websites into what I call my blogpile. Some of them find their way here in the form of regular posts, but more often than not they languish and get buried deeper in the pile. The end result is that I have to go back and do a bit of shoveling. Today’s item is Woodstock, Day 3.

Eddie: For the longest time here in Iraq I went without any kind of music. Well, one day I gave in and bought an IPOD Nano. I got a bunch of songs from all the guys in my platoon and put together several playlists. I figured I would share my “Pre-Mission” playlist. It’s what I listen to before I’m about to head out on patrol or on a mission, and it really gets me…

People who don’t know Ray Bradbury think he’s a science fiction writer. At best they’ve read Fahrenheit 451 and maybe The Martian Chronicles. Bradbury writes tales of the imagination and that’s different from SF or fantasy. He writes what’s in our heads. And reading one of his stories is to live, for a little blessed while, in the possible.

Like this passage from his latest Farewell Summer where young boys are fighting growing old.

“You know something,” said Charlie, turning back toward his friends, as if he’d suddenly remembered something important. “I’ve been thinkin’. I got an uncle, twenty-five years old. Came by earlier today in a big Buick, with his wife. A really nice, pretty lady. I was thinkin’ all morning: Maybe I’ll let them make me twenty-five. Twenty-five strikes me as a nice medium age. If they’ll let me ride in a Buick with a pretty lady like that, I’ll go along with them. But that’s it, mind! No kids. It stops at squalling kids. Just a nice car and a pretty lady with me, ridin’ along out toward the lake. Boy! I’ll take about thirty years of that. I’m puttin’ in my order for thirty years of being twenty-five. Fill ‘er up and I’m on my way.”

“So when do we start the war again? said Tom.

I turned 25 the year I was discharged from the Navy and started at Ohio University. Charlie picked about right.

[Afterword. It has been a pleasure for me, to revisit my beloved Green Town — to gaze up at the haunted house, to hear the deep gongs of the courthouse clock, to run through the ravine, to be kissed by a girl for the first time, and to listen to and learn from the wisdom of those who have gone before.]

I’ve been seeing more and more about the latest incarnation of Napoleon Hill’s Think And Grow Rich philosophy as found in The Secret. (Of course it’s no secret, but try selling a book titled: The Plainly Obvious). I think there’s a great deal of common sense in the idea, but that 99.9 percent of people who try it never get past Think.

By that I mean they fall into the if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride category.

In recent days two items have caught my attention.

The first was this examination of Henry Ford’s take: If you think you can do a thing or think you can”t do a thing, you”re right.

This famous quote from quintessential American success story Henry Ford encapsulates the very core of why positive thinking works, and why it is one of the most often touted tool of personal development literature. It also highlights, by contrast, what is wrong with the (in)famous book and DVD “The Secret”, cited recently by another blogger as one of the most successful infomercials ever.

The second came in an email from my friend and blogger Tish Grier at Love And Hope And Sex And Dreams. I’m hoping that Tish will allow me to quote from her thoughts.

If there is one thing I wish everyone could see everyday it would be Fox Mulder’s UFO poster. If we could each wake up and have the first thing we see each morning to be the words: The Truth Is Out There, I think we’d be better off.

There are no magic beans. There are no secrets. No one is hiding the truth.

It’s like losing weight. Want to lose weight? Eat less and exercise more.

Everything else is commentary.