Reasons to be cheerful!

[Ecurb Noselrub]

home for a week. took my first shower in 16 days

the house is overrun with kittens. there are kittens upstairs, kittens downstairs, kittens underfoot. luckily theyre all tame so we can give them away after bit

im in bed and there are kittens on the bed , kittens on the windowsill, kittens on the tree stump i use for a nightstand, kittens in the hall

all running around after each other at a million miles anhour while i listen 5o the birds outside

I am trying to think who will be the best  actor to play you in the TV series based on your life.

I vote for Billy Bob Thornton.

[hermes2015]

home for a week. took my first shower in 16 days

the house is overrun with kittens. there are kittens upstairs, kittens downstairs, kittens underfoot. luckily theyre all tame so we can give them away after bit

im in bed and there are kittens on the bed , kittens on the windowsill, kittens on the tree stump i use for a nightstand, kittens in the hall

all running around after each other at a million miles anhour while i listen 5o the birds outside

I am trying to think who will be the best  actor to play you in the TV series based on your life.

I vote for Billy Bob Thornton.

I can't find fault with that bit of casting.

[billy rubin]

the winter before last this one's mother was this size and climbed to the top of a pile of dead out beehives down by the warehouse and cried. that night it snowed, and she wouldnt have made it.

now i picked this one up and it went to sleep in my hand so im stuck until it wakes up.

i googled billy bob thornton. ive never heard of him or anything he ever did, except ive heard of a television program called fargo.

so i dont know what to think.

[hermes2015]

 

[billy rubin]

many years ago there was a book written by a technical writer called

zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance

in it, the author explored a system of philosophy that was gradually revealed by a journey across western america, by motorcycle.

he was able to use the understanding of a mechanical device as a framework for understanding ways of thinking, and of apprehending reality.

i do the same. to me, working on a machine is to step into a world where rules exist that cannot be abrogated-- turn a right-hand nut clockwise, and it will tighten. turn it anticlockwise, and it will loosen. provide a properly assembled motor with compression, a correct fuel ratio, and a spark at the right time, and it will cannot help but run. if it doesn't, it is missing something in the previous list.

workibng on a machine rovides me with a means of clearing my head of ambigguity, inthe things i think about and try to understand. i spend 12 to 14 hours per day with my hands on a steering wheel, and theres nothing for my head to do but think. sometimes i'm successful, and sometimes not. but occupying my hands with a mechanical task somehow frees my mind up to work on a nother level, and i get more accomplished.

so todfay i changed the oil in one of the pickup trucks-- utes to your southerners--and while doing so have devised a way to trisect the angle with a compass and straight edge.

this has made me cheerful testing later today.

[Icarus]

I agree with Billy. One can become so absorbed in a project that other world realities do not exist.  I have built many engines and in many cases have been mentally insulated from all other things.  I used to be a smoker. In the cases where I had become so absorbed in a task, My cigarette would go out.  That is because I would not be aware that I had to puff on it.

I may have a mental problem because I can become thoroughly absorbed in something I am reading. In those cases I cannot consciously hear my wife who is asking a question or demanding that I  pay attention to her voice.

A case in point;  I am seriously claustrophobic.   Several years ago I was committed to have an MRI test for some sort of Muscle or bone malady.  The damned MRI had a tube barely large enough for a human body to slide into.  A fat guy would have scraped the sides on entry or  exit.  I needed a deadly serious distraction in order to endure the 40 minutes of claustrophobic terror inside that machine.

What did I do?  I began to visualize the tearing down of a Royal Enfield single cylinder bike engine.  I concentrated on every single bolt and nut, every gear, pushrod, camshaft, and oil pump part.  Lots of bolts and nuts held the aluminum cases together.  Having removed every single part of the engine, I began to carefully reassemble it. This was done with the utmost concentration about an engine and I survived the feared MRI tube. I had successfully put my irrational fear of enclosures aside

I make absolutely no claim to a superior mind over matter mentality or  unusual emotional proclivity. ,,,,,,,,,,There is some risk in lapsing into this separate state of mind.

One time in my youth I was working on someones rotary lawn mower engine.  I had it tuned to a fine state and I was busy adjusting the idle speed of the carburetor. A screw driver was needed to turn the screw at the carburetor. For some reason I dropped the screwdriver and it rolled under the running mower deck. In a fit of total concentration about the adjustment I unconsciously reached under the mower deck to retrieve the screwdriver.  The spinning blade smashed into my hand and I immediately returned to the real world, blood and all.

So here is sincere advice to Billy. Do not get so immersed that you forget that you are a vulnerable, human.

[Dark Lightning]

That's called "the zone", and anyone who can get to that state of focus has a gift that escapes the vast majority of the population, in my opinion. I'd be working a problem, or designing something, and the world around me would disappear. Once I reached some sort of resolution, I would emerge from that state, only to find that the radio was playing a different tune (or that it was playing at all). Sitting in an office in front of a tube or a quad pad is a fairy innocuous setting, though. I've known mathematicians and physicists who have missed meals (and showers) when working on particularly thorny problems. I was talking about this sort of thing the other day with a friend of mine who said that being a lot smarter than most of the population can be a burden (he was talking about his daughter at the time, and some of the problems she was experiencing in the working world). I can understand his point. Sometimes one can simply go with the flow and act the fool, but it's boring.

[billy rubin]

I may have a mental problem because I can become thoroughly absorbed in something I am reading. In those cases I cannot consciously hear my wife who is asking a question or demanding that I  pay attention to her voice.

That's called "the zone", and anyone who can get to that state of focus has a gift that escapes the vast majority of the population, in my opinion. I'd be working a problem, or designing something, and the world around me would disappear.

i understand ^^^these completely. i will be concentrating on something, especially something mechanical, and after a while i will notice that my wife is talking to me. in fact she will have been talking to me for some time. i'm cued into my name, auditorally, and so i tell her if she wants to get my attention, to begin her sentences by using my name. that will penetrate and i can come back into contact without losing too much of what she has said. but if she justs starts talking, i can be right next to her, and i won't notice until the second paragraph.

this pisses her off, even when i explain that its a function of concentration, not of willfully ignoring her. but she is a left-handed blonde viking artist born in the year of the dragon, and my puny protestations have little redeeming value.

it doesn't help that she has no concept of subject continuity, and will change the subject of hr conversation in mid sentence without the slightest acknowledgement that her indefinite pronouns now refer to previously unmentioned antecedents.

even when i am paying attention, she is hard to follow. but we ve managed fire and ice for going on thirty years now, so ill be dead before the cycle repeats

[billy rubin]

by the way, icarus, i understand your problem. i would love one of these.



are you aware that the indians are now marketing a 650 twin?

[hermes2015]

I bought that wonderful book by Robert M. Pirsig when it came out in 1974 and since then have reread it every few years.

[billy rubin]

have you read anything else by him? i had a dutchman poke me over and over to read some more of his stuff, but never did

zen and the art of was pretty thought provoking as it was. 

[hermes2015]

have you read anything else by him? i had a dutchman poke me over and over to read some more of his stuff, but never did

zen and the art of was pretty thought provoking as it was.

Yes, I was so excited when Lila came out and ran out to buy it. I just couldn't get into it and abandoned it after I don't know how many pages. I blame myself completely for not being open or clever enough to understand it.

[billy rubin]

thats how i feel about james joyce. ive readthe first half of ulysses over and over and have some the scenes imprinted in my head word for word

but then i get to the second half and find it impenetrable

smarter people than me tell me it just gets better but i cant see what they see

[hermes2015]

thats how i feel about james joyce. ive readthe first half of ulysses over and over and have some the scenes imprinted in my head word for word

but then i get to the second half and find it impenetrable

smarter people than me tell me it just gets better but i cant see what they see

I read Ulysses along with a good guide, but I can't remember the name. It explained the stages and symbolism of Leopold Bloom's day in Dublin as one progressed through the book, which was actually a good experience. I have never attempted Finnegan's Wake, though.

[hermes2015]

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man is much more accessible.