Try until.....

Head Coach of the East Carolina University Pirates, Ruffin McNeill, speaking at Robeson Community College's commencement ceremony in May of 2011 said he was turned down for head coaching jobs 26 times before he successfully was named as one.  This is a great illustration of the power of persistence.

bros and hos

So as to not distract from the royal wedding tomorrow, charlie sheen has vowed to stay sober all day. As a gesture of his gratitude, Prince William has announced that on the first night of his honeymoon he will wear underwear with the word "Winning!" emblazoned across the front.

Going back to my Roots....

My Kenyan birth certificate

Who do these people think they are anyway?

Congress today tabled all discussions of budgets and wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, so they could so they could focus on pressing matters concerning charlie sheen, lindsay lohan, and snooki.

Damn white people...

Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can’t have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only in order to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man’s worth couldn’t be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorney or politicians, therefore we couldn’t cheat. We were in a really bad way before the white man came, and I don’t know how we managed to get along without the basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society.

       -- Lakota Sage Lame Deer (from John Lame Deer, Seeker of Visions)((Actually I copied this from Daniel Suelo's blog. Suelo is a guy who has lived in a cave in Utah for about 10 years and avoids using money.)

bang bang

I am not a cynic. I am a banged-up realist. -- paraphrased from Wally Lamb's "The Hour I First Believed."

I've been working in the education field long enough now that I think it's time to start my own school.  As a startup, our goals will be modest -- we're going to train people for careers in putting the little stickers on fruit in grocery store produce departments.  Low tuition and you can get your degree in as little as 3 weeks, if you  enroll full time and really apply yourself.  No excuses.  The ball is in your court...., or the apple is in your basket.  

Stephen King's advice to writers --- READ!!!

Observation

I like the feel of warm peanut butter between my toes....

Ballad of peanut butter

Hospital Variety Show
Oct. 16, 2010

The Ballad of Peanut Butter

One day a child came home from football
Where he had fumbled, was jeered and booed.
His mother saw that his heart was breaking,
So she made him his favorite food.

Chorus:
She did not make him a bowl of garden salad greens,
She made no whole wheat rolls, or a pile of beans,
She made a sandwich of toasted white bread,
With peanut butter, creamy style.

The years went by and he was a loser;
He led a useless and wretched life.
But she never criticized him;
She smiled as she got out the knife.

Chorus

Then he decided, upon the basis
Of a book he read one fall,
That his problems had resulted
From excessive cholesterol.

He ate a great big bowl of garden salad greens,
He ate that whole wheat roll, and that pile of beans,
He gave up sandwiches of toasted white bread,
With peanut butter, creamy style.

That night his dog died,
He smashed his pick-up,
His sweetheart left him,
He lost his hair,
His house caught fire,
He went to prison,
His poor old mother
Came to him there.

Chorus


(Listen to Garrison Keillor's version here :  http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/programs/2005/05/07/scripts/pb.shtml
will need RealPlayer)

Frankly, my dear....

Frankly, I wonder who Frank was, and why he has an adverb all to himself.  Jacob in House Rules by Jodi Picoult

Get a Voki now!

copied from an email from Brian Johnson

“This is my way; where is yours?—Thus I answered those who asked me ‘the way.’ For the way—that does not exist.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“I believe that a life of integrity is the most fundamental source of personal worth. I do not agree with the popular success literature that says that self-esteem is primarily a matter of mind set, of attitude—that you can psych yourself into peace of mind. Peace of mind comes when your life is in harmony with true principles and values and in no other way.” – Stephen Covey

“Again and again I therefore admonish my students in Europe and America: Don’t aim at success—the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run—in the long-run, I say!—success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.” – Viktor Frankl

Update

 

 Two of the voices in my head have hired lawyers and a third is "considering his options." I tried to get them all to agree to mediation, but n-o-o-o, they had to have lawyers. And guess who they expect to foot the bill for all of this?

Silence is golden

The voices in my head were starting to get to me until a few days ago when they got into a big argument.  Now they're all mad and not talking to each other.  I was going read them a book on conflict management, but now I think maybe not.  

Dilemma

I assigned a "genre" to each item of my clothing. Then I stayed up all night trying to decide whether to organize my closet by the Dewey Decimal or Library of Congress system.

My goal in life is to master the highest level of insanity I can attain, without crossing the line into some sort of creative genius from which I, or someone close to me, could profit. 

Watch dogs

My uncle bought two dogs and named them "Timex" and "Rolex" because he wanted a couple of good watch dogs.

Leroy is a good ol' boy whose mama taught him well.  One Sunday he goes to church and after a while the preacher asks anyone with needs to be prayed over to come forward to the front at the altar..

Leroy gets in  line, and when it's his turn, the preacher asks: "Leroy, what do you want me  to pray about for you?"

Leroy replies: "Preacher, I need you to pray for  my hearing."

The preacher puts one finger in Leroy's ear, and he places the other hand on top of Leroy's head and prays and prays and prays. He prays  a blue streak for Leroy. After a few minutes, the preacher removes his
hands, stands back and asks, "Leroy, how is your hearing now?"

Leroy says, "I  don't know, Reverend, it ain't till next  Wednesday."

On excellence

"In his [John W. Gardner, secretary of health, education, and welfare under LBJ] well-known book, Excellence, he wrote: 'We must learn to honor excellence in every socially accepted human activity, however humble the activity, and to scorn shoddiness, however exalted the activity.  An excellent plumber is infinitely more admirable than an incompetent philosopher.  The society that scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because it is an exalted activity will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy.  Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.'"

from The Global Achievement Gap by Tony Wagner