Poe Pourri

My mind has been in a dozen places lately and hasn’t settled on anything significant enough for one good post, so here are some items that have been tumbling ’round my noggin:

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The more I learn about Sarah Palin the less I’m surprised that she is the GOP’s VP pick.  After yet another firing scandal involving Palin surfaced the other day it’s pretty apparent that she graduated from the Karl Rove school of politics.  Why tussle with your political opponents when you can just eliminate them?

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Speaking of Palin, here’s an amusing site that helps you translate GOP-speak for those of you keeping score at home.  They’ve coined the term “Palinguage.”  A couple of my favorite examples:

1)  “If you live in an Urban area and you get a girl pregnant you’re a ‘baby daddy.

‘If you’re the same in Alaska you’re a ‘teen father.’”

2)”If you grow up in Hawaii you’re “exotic.”

Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, you’re the quintessential ‘American story.’

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Spreading the love.  An old college friend of mine (a rare example of an adult who reads) and I were talking about books the other day and I mentioned Watchmen, which, to my surprise, she had never read.  The very next day I shipped my spare copy to her.  Yes, I had a spare copy.  It’s that good. 

If you’ve let the fact that it’s a graphic novel keep you away you should rethink that.  It truly transcends the genre, and is one of the best pieces of fiction I’ve ever read.

The pending movie release will get more folks curious about it, I’m sure.  After seeing the trailer I’m still clinging to the hope that the movie version won’t suck. 

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Where was I in the 90s when Smashing Pumpkins hit big?  Until recently I’d only heard a couple of their songs that were radio hits, and those are some of the weakest songs in their catalog (as is usually the case).  I was driven to their music by the song in the aforementioned Watchmen trailer, which is apparently a slow rework of their tune “The End is The Beginning is The End,” which appeared on the soundtrack to that atrocious film Batman and Robin.  They have a lot of good stuff.

Note:  I’m not even going to hyperlink that film title, lest I encourage someone who hasn’t seen it to actually investigate.  Stay away.

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Thank you for all the reaction to my earlier post, Murder and Motivation.  It has become one of my more discussed posts and was referred to on more than one other blog.   

I read yet another self help book recently, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle.  I was prepared to write an entire post about it (mainly so I’d have an excuse to use the headline “For whom the Tolle bells”) but I never sat down and formulated my thoughts adequately.

I think I could have skipped all but the last chapter and still picked up the message, for in that chapter Tolle boils down the key to “enlightenment” to three principles:  enjoyment, enthusiasm, and acceptance.  Tolle states that in everything you do at least one of those must be present. 

That goes along with the passage from Elizabeth George’s book that I quoted in my earlier post on the subject.  George’s character had learned to accept his life, which for him was as significant as learning to enjoy it or be enthused by it. 

Many of the discussion comments said we shouldn’t settle for acceptance but rather strive for enjoyment or enthusiasm.  Maybe acceptance leads to those.

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Overheard in my office not too long ago:

“Hey, today is free Slurpee day at 7-11!”

“Great.  What does that mean?”