G as in Good H as in Happy

We Are Thankful

And our feelings on the holiday are still expressed  here.

So Glad You Came

February 15, 2006

God prepared and delivered unto them the courageous soldiers of the 3d Armored Cavalry Regiment, who liberated this city, ridding it of Zarqawi’s followers after harsh fighting, killing many terrorists, and forcing the remaining butchers to flee the city like rats...

This, making the rounds, is a little thank-you note to those whom the Mayor of  Tall 'Afar, Iraq, calls 

not only courageous men and women, but avenging angels sent by The God Himself to fight the evil of terrorism.

Model discourse of its kind, in the context of oppression and survival.

Inexplicable Events

February 9, 2006

What can we possibly say about this? The Still Small Voice in a Big Picture.

Via Mark Shea

Gratitude, cont'd

Ingratitude and pride, under the umbrella of narcissism. Mere Comments has the goods. As well as autopsies of shame including a swipe at self-pity, a real stealth toxin as a commenter notes.

Let us be grateful too for what we don't have, our limitations, our bitter disappointments. As Byron Katie likes to say, "I've been spared.

Plenty to Say Grace Over

November 24, 2005

They had now no friends to welcome them, no inns to entertain or refresh them, no houses, or much less towns, to repair unto to seek for succour; and for the season it was winter...

What could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men...which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of... a wild and savage hew.

The mighty ocean which they had passed...was now [a gulf] to separate them from ... the world.

What he said.

Last year. Still true.

Never a Reason for Complaint

We couldn't have the Good Stuff without the Annoying Stuff!

The sole condition of our having anything, no matter what, is that we should have so much of it, that we are fortunate if we do not grow sick of the sight and sound of it altogether. Everything is smothered in the litter that is fated to accompany it. Without too much you cannot have enough, of anything. Lots of inferior books…of tenth-rate men and women, as a condition of the few precious specimens…the gold-dust comes to birth with the quartz-sand all around it.

--A PLURALISTIC UNIVERSE, ch. 8, William James

Courtesy Richard Lawrence Cohen

Veterans Day

November 11, 2005

Tech Central Station today: we have met our defenders, and they are us.

Tol'ja Tol'ja Tol'ja So

October 28, 2005

Raymond Arroyo's book on Mother Angelica of EWTN is taking off.

There are a lot of great anecdotes in the book.

"Uneventful is very good"...

October 22, 2005

...is a motto not limited to fowl.

You could do worse.

Happily, there are choices.

You might spend the weekend working on your hidden talents.

Products and Us

October 15, 2005

Customer research consultant Steve Portigal, a frequent commenter at Grant McCracken's always diverting This Blog Sits at the Intersection of Anthropology and Economics, studies how "customers work, play, shop, entertain, eat, and live their lives around products and services."

While pondering the narrative possibilities in such relationships, we happened on this. Holy Moses! Talk about the relationship of people and products! Not to mention the beneficence of a functioning, accessible market system. Which overflows into contests and premiums, as Nasubi had good reason to discover.

Courtesy The Ideas Bazaar from Grant's blogroll