Author: stripsclubsaresaddiscos

We The Hunched Over Wordies

Have you noticed that no one wants the two spaces after the period anymore? Apparently, Microsoft decided to make it one – most likely for Its own convenience. There’s a whiff of that compromise in all things language and literature. It’s no coincidence that a tech mega-company decides what’s best for writers and readers. Sometime between the Scientific Revolution and when the term ‘Language Arts’ became obsolete, people began to discredit and disrespect the written word and all of us hunched over and vocabulary-laden wordies. Where were you when they came for our non-colloquial definitions, our leather-bound editions, our tiny notepads, and our odiferous library corners and, at last, our word-processing etiquette? “Tech Evolution” cannot take the history of the letter away by simply adding an E (E—Mail – excuse the pun, but I pun when I get upset)! So forgive my tedious and troublesome double space, but we’re a package deal.

Athletes aren’t Heroes

Athletes should not be paid more than teachers!  It is one of the great injustices of Life.  And I don’t just feel that way because my mother and father taught for many years or that Ms. Ramirez from 2nd grade was super-hot (I won the perfect attendance certificate that year).  No, I think teachers and all professions, for that matter, should compensate solely on their positive societal impact.  The greater the positive societal influences, the higher the compensation.  On another note, I believe the gap between the occupations’ societal impact and its proportional compensation is what really makes a Hero.  The teacher’s hard work and value to society combined with the limited monetary compensation makes him/her a Hero in my book.

Entertainment, although necessary in our increasingly discouraging times, is not hero-work.  With all the impact this virus is having on our society and communities, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the real heroes in our world wear a mantle of thanklessness.  Health Care workers are not just doctors.  The nurses, nurse aides, in-take personnel, hospital security, hospital janitors and the like are the day-to-day, impactful members of the health care industry.  Moreover, very similar to teachers, those kind of workers often get a middling check paired with high responsibility.

Athletes are as much heroes as let’s say… tight-rope walkers: both are skilled, but they’re essentially useless to the overall functionality of society. Now before you label me as some anti-sport, semi-masculine bookworm (see previous post Boring Beetle), you should know that I have spent a good deal of my discretionary time on sports (see previous post  Truly America’s Pastime). In addition, I know first-hand, with my failure to fabricate a sports career, that an athlete has unique physical skills. However, the professional athlete’s application of those physical skills are non-contributive. How much impact can Aquaman have on the swim team or The Flash playing wide receiver for the 49ers?!

Estimate the Opponent

I’ve always said, “Underestimation can turn a farmer into a general”. To me, that maxim speaks to the severe danger of underestimating an “opponent” (I’m very competitive and slightly paranoid so I treat most people like opponents). And as I’ve applied the Never-Underestimate Philosophy to my life, with fruitful results, the philosophy is not FOOL-PROOF (pun intended). There will always be someone who’s talent or ability is worthy of UNDERestimation. Consequently, overestimation can create a detrimental blind-spot that could potentially lead to the downfall of any budding, young strategist. It’s a delicate understanding, but an important one. Chess seems to illustrate the point most clearly: during a game with a new opponent the advanced player can create an intricate strategy with built-in defenses against the most likely moves ahead, which only works if the other player knows the likely moves. If one player is better than the other, he or she can open-up a direct path to victory because he or she is guarding against more complicated routes. So when in business, sports or life, in general, the analysis of the opponent should take place at all levels of the game. Don’t over or under, just estimate the threat!

Boring Beetle

You’ve been lied to…the Bookworm, a symbol of the book smart, bibliophile class, does not exist!  There is no such worm or insect.  What we know as the Bookworm can actually be any number of wood boring insects in the larva stage, usually a beetle. 

So next time you’re called a Bookworm, because you’re occasionally seen reading a book recognize that they’re calling you a Wood Boring Beetle with no discernable trait for intelligence due to book-learning

Classically Trained Bongoist

​What is wrong with the basics!  There is an important truth in the unaltered, unadjusted form.  I’m not saying improvement is wrong or that growth in concept or innovation is a bad thing, but what about that original concept.  When people refer to the basics or the fundamentals of something it is always perceivedas a starting point, but often times, we begin something only to realize we preferred how it all began to where it is now.  Human nature secretly yearns for the simplistic, but will never admit it for fear of being deemed simple.      

The Arts are the best medium to make my thoughts clearer, in particular the area of music. For instance, the bongo is an instrument rooted in simplicity: someone hits it and it makes noise. It’s a hollow, barrel-shaped structure with a fiber stretched across the top. Just hit the skin or fiber and the sound echoes, do it a bunch and it builds a rhythm. Simple and effective. However, I’m sure at some point in the bongo’s history someone thought to look into complicating the bongo. I’m sure someone spent countless hours devising a proper hand position to strike the bongo and terminology to explain said position or the scale the bongo should register in or something along those lines. Ultimately, the elegance of this seemingly rudimentary instrument was lost. Now I don’t pretend that an expansion of understanding about a subject ruins it; I only mean to state that a simplification of a subject doesn’t always mean a regression.

There was a time – as science and technology slept like the proverbial dragon atop of a wealth knowledge and understanding – that Arts like literature and music were left to develop and grow without the skepticism they now face about their overall knowledge value. That time was spent over-analyzing the many art forms instead of solidifying the simple connections that aesthetics and expression have with the Human Spirit. Consequently, as technology continues to march us closer and closer to some sort of Terminator-esque Doomscapelittered with the corpses of our murdered Privacy and starved Discovery there is no foil in sight. There is no cry for the simple beautiful picture or poem or the pure sound that comes from the heroic Bongo.