Wisdom of the Sages
Episode II
February – Winter 2011
Hello People of the World;
We’ve made it to month number two! How many of your New Years resolutions are already broken? Here we are a month in and everything seems to have shaken out and it is back to business as usual. See? New Years Days are nothing to fear.
Let’s get started, shall we?
1:[ First Item of the Month: I think that it’s time to shake things up a bit. For some time I feel that WoS has gone a bit stale. It was a feeling that I couldn’t shake. Then, I saw this today.
I started Wisdom of the Sages almost 10 years ago during the summer semester in the Academic Computing lab in the 623 S. Wabash Building of Columbia College. It was an email note, a rather long email note to the entirety of my address list at the time on a series of news items and book quotes and silly sayings and thoughts that interested me or caught my eye.
By no means did I think I was doing a public service because I only sent it to friends. The main reason I did so was because I was in that rut Lev speaks of in his video about my writing. I knew that the career arc I started then was writing-intensive, so to get into the habit of writing on a whim I decided to create a Friendship Newsletter filled with unimportant junk that interested only me. All newsletters are filled with self-important stuff. I wanted mine filled with self-important, un-important stuff. (See what I did there?)
So, I was off and running, sporadically sending out large emails to jam up my friends’ inboxes. I sent it out in part because I knew that this would be the only way I would keep in contact with my Wyoming friends, some of whom moved on beyond Wyoming. These were in the days before Facebook. I know, right? It is kind of hard to image. But the human population seems to have survived 30,000 years without it up to then.
Now, here we are, WoS having evolved from an email, to a rather clumsy webpage, into its current form as a weblog. I simply continue to write this because its fun to do. Everyone else out there has “IMPORTANT” blogs, mine is the respite before you get back on the grueling trail. I know I have some dedicated readers as they talk with me about it or reply in the comments.
Of late I have been trying to incite discussion. But people tend to be afraid to debate me. Or they are afraid to espouse an opinion for fear of committing to a stance or ideology. (I think so at least.) They usually save it for Facebook comment spaces. Oh well. For the most part, I keep writing WoS simply because I enjoy it.
Oh, I’ve ended it on more than one occasion. But it’s too fun to do and keeps me honest as a writer and I’ve found that I have an opinion on almost anything that I’d rather share however detached from human interaction. So, to keep out of the rut, I have given myself a deadline and a limited number of things to write about. But these have not yet hindered the writing of the ‘blog. In fact, I am sitting here writing this in one sitting.
I write this silly “‘blog” in addition to my work stuff, all the many, many, many writing projects, as well as, being in the middle of several projects including a large photography project and a large sketch project. Not to mention the ton of short videos I am working up and the TWO feature films I am desperately trying to get off the ground.
When it comes to my photos, or my movies or my sketches, I try not to care about what people will think about or how they will classify them. So, why should I do that for my writing? I guess that is the point of this little shpeal. I am going to write about what interested me in the first place. Being lazy and nonsensical.
2:[ Seriously, a fully-functional woman backs into a handicapped space and comes into the Starbucks. She had no handicap sticker or license plate or those thingees you hang from the rearview mirror. But, I guess since she put on her emergency flashers that makes it okay.
Her “BIG EMERGENCY”? A tall, soy latte. That’s it.
And it just happened again! This time another lady rolls huge car into the handicapped spot crookedly, leaves her kids in the running car just to pick up a cup of coffee. Sheesh! To make it worse she stops and talks to a couple of other ladies she knows who where there for half an hour while her kids sat in the car in the handicap space….
3:[ I think I will invent psychic, sentient traffic lights.
Psychic so they can feel how I’m needed right away!
Sentient so they can see me rolling forward, foot by foot, towards the intersection and they can see how impatient I am and how I’m needed right away and they can instantly change to green just for me!
4:[ I know why so many Native guys are mad about the popularity of the Twilight Saga’s “The Wolf Pack”. The ubiquitous group of Indian boys running around the rez turning into wolves in the Twilight Saga of movies.
It has nothing to do with representation of the “True Native American” man, misrepresentation of Native Americans in general, or the creation of new stereotypes. It has nothing to do with that at all.
It has everything to do with these four Native men are now the focal point of sexual adoration from white women. Yep, I said it.
5:[ Overheard in the Coffee Shop: A continuing series: People complaining about the plowing of snow after the “BIG BLIZZARD”.
“You know what they should do is start with the side streets first before doing the main roadways. That way… etc.” What you are really saying is that they should clear your street first. Look, they have clear the main roadways first to even get to the side streets.
Even when they go above and beyond people still have the gall to complain. I sat there watching city bulldozers scoop up the huge mountains of snow on street corners and drop it into a dump trunk. Still, the barista and a customer were still complaining at how they took their time getting to it and how it blocked traffic. Sheesh.
6:[ So, on a recent visit to my baby girl, I wore an older pair of jeans that I had not worn in some time. The reason being I was waiting to patch the hole in the legs. But hey, they were clean so I wore them on this visit.
My Char and I are sitting there in front of the TV blasting Lego storm troopers and collecting chips on our way to “True Jedi” status when, as the game tallies our score, she points to the hole in my pants knee and asks, “Are these new pants?”
Which reminded me once again that we are a society that buys $250 “distressed” jeans. Meaning, they are pre-worn with faded material and holes. Man, the rez we got those for $10 at Kmart, but had to wear them a whole school year before they looked like that. I still sew and patch my jeans. But it was a funny-cute observation by My Char.
7:[ And now Wisdom of the Sages presents:
“An Ever-growing List of Things That MUST Stop!”
+ Stupid people are still walking into traffic. Come on, your sh*t’s not THAT important!
+ The idea that a “blizzard” lets people park in spots that are NOT parking spaces. Just because you cannot see the ground for all the snow and ice doesn’t mean you can park on the sidewalk, or double park or block a frickin’ crosswalk with your stupidly parked car.
+ People’s annoying habit of really starting a anecdote in detail then, just so they can get to the point of which they can complain about, veer off into “blah, blah, blah.” And I mean they actually say “blah, blah, blah” to get past any kind of “boring” details. I imagine they leave out the unflattering details or the details that garner sympathy for the object of their complaints.
+ Speaking of walking in post-“blizzard” conditions: Now that the temperature is up, can we please start walking on the sidewalks again? Come on, it’s only mud. Walking against traffic in the street is going to lead to something stupid…
+ Reality Television. There, I said it. Whew. That felt good…
8:[ I officially hate Pop Music now. I just heard one of those same-sounding teenybopper singers wail, “Why so serious?” in their stupidy-stinky song. Really? Quoting the Joker from “The Dark Knight” to earn some form of credibility? Get real.
Well, maybe she wasn’t directly referencing the Joker in “The Dark Knight” but I get tired of the geeky stuff making the mainstream, I guess. Still, the song sounds like every other song that is out there…. And that doesn’t do well for Pop Music.
9:[ From the “This Just In” Department: Looks like the Egyptian People’s demonstrations have led to the resignation of their president. Many of the news channels I see state that this could destabilize the entire Middle East. Wait, isn’t the country mostly on the African continent? I understand a peninsula bridges to Israel and Palestine. Weird. I even saw one News Channel (That shall remain unnamed) place it on the map between Iraq and Iran. Wow. Are we that stupid?
I don’t know, nor will I hazard any guesses for what this means to Egypt or for the region. But, we’re not winning any gold stars for geography here…. (Nor for spelling either...)
10:[ Last Item of the Month: So, the BIG SNOWSTORM OF THE CENTURY just hit Chicago town. Guess what? All it left was a bunch of snow on the ground! Sheesh, get over it people. It snows in the winter and living through it is what we are SUPPOSED to do. It snowed for less that 24 hours and it’s the STOM OF THE CENTURY. I used to live in the highlands of the rez, right below the Rocky Mountains and I remember it snowing for a week at times. The big, heavy stuff, too. I remember when the power was out for a couple of weeks and we had to sleep around our fireplace.
This past month wasn’t so bad. I though that is what a “Chicago Winter” is supposed to be like, to hear people talk about it. It’s winter. Why do we act so surprised when it snows during the winter?
That will do it for this month.
There is nothing like an over-hyped football game to make you forget a crazy man with a gun killed a judge and a child and wounded a congresswoman in Arizona. But by all means, cash in your bets. Which begs the question: If the Packers had lost to the Steelers, would that have meant that the Bears would have won the Super Bowl?
Anyways. Just thought I’d also announce a tiny project that I’ve been threatening for a while now. Wisdom of the Sages Video is now up on my YT Channel, which you can see here. Let me know what you think. Let me know what topics I should cover. This will be different from the newsletter, wherein you will have some say in the topics. I’m not asking for thumbs-ups or for subscriptions. Please, don’t do that. You can rate and comment if you please. But I do ask you let me know what you think of this new format for WotS”.
Until Next Time, “I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control everything really are.”
© 2011 Ernest M. Whiteman III
