The Laws of Average

"An Average Coffee Mug Trapped in Abstraction."

A snowman named "Average Joe."

Average Joes Dodgeball team is so average that they have no individual faces.

"Born as an Average" (a Bossa Nova Ballad).

An average awakening for Joan Collins?

Just another day in the life of an average suburban housewife?

Not your average house cat.  Neither is this.

Not your average Italian Bow Tie Soup.

Not your average bake sale.

South Korea's Youn Sun Nah is not your average jazz chanteuse:


Not your average dictionary, if I do say so myself.

A family friend once boldly announced during a conversation that "Spinoza was an idiot."  As of this blog posting, no one indexed by Google has ever written that exact phrase.

People have said that Spinoza was:

"beside himself with grief and rage"
"dependent on his own work for a livelihood"
"little understood in his time"
"accused of abominable heresies and monstrous deeds"
"uncanny, both personally and philosophically"
"an easy man to revile but not necessarily an easy man to dislike"
"as close as philosophy could come to sainthood — a life of austerity, rationality, independence, principle, rarefied thought"
"loveable"
"offered 1000 florins to keep quiet about his views, but refused"
"unique to the point of solitariness"
"not at all put out by this"

While looking up Spinoza humor online, I discovered that there are no jokes indexed on Google that begin, "Spinoza walks into a bar."  The phrase "Did you hear the one about Spinoza" also returns zero results.

I guess Spinoza had the last laugh.

From Jonathan:

Q: How did the Italian Renaissance begin?

A: The Italian Renaissance began when Dante discovered the letter "U" in the wild. Within a few short decades, the outgoing and charismatic "U" had almost completely replaced the Roman "V" in secular vowel applications. Without Dante, modern developments like "U Pull It" junkyards and U-Haul truck rental franchises would have been impossible.

I enjoyed this description of my "Fortune's Navigator Compass" by Woof Blister:

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

You're (Literally) the Top
(inspired by Cole Porter, of course)

You're the top;
you're the peak of Dante;
You're the top—
blue-chip picante.
You're the jewel in the crown of a dinner gown by Klein.
You're Dorsey's trombone,
you're Kheops' capstone,
you're altar wine.
You're the top—
as in "hat," on Fred's head.
You're the quip
dear old Oscar Wilde said.
I'm an inarticulate voiceless glottal stop.
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

You're the top;
you're the head of Acme
(placed there
by imperial decree).
You're the high point of a fairy tale by Grimm.
You're lemon zest,
you're Arthur's crest,
you're the Battle Hymn.
You're the top—
you're the Everest summit.
You ascend
where others plummet.
Compared to me John Falstaff is a fop.
But if, baby, I'm the bottom you're the top!

The day I learned Eskimos don't have hundreds of words for "snow," the world seemed so much more ordinary.  Just don't tell me Pocahontas couldn't "paint with all the colors of the wind."

I laughed when I came across this line in a review of the film Anazapta (a supernatural tale set in the Middle Ages):


That would make a fun test question: "Rank the following according to menace."  What would the correct answer be?  (Hint: The worst one of them leaves a burning sensation.)
 

• an alien burst through his chest in Alien
• he was taken to the dreaded "Room 101" in 1984
• Sir Thomas More wouldn't give him a job in A Man for All Seasons
• when his elephantitis was exploited in The Elephant Man
  

• his lover turned into a roaring leopard in Cat People
• a guy in his bar was just trying to get back home in After Hours
• he learned about the interdependence of all systems in Mindwalk
• when his family adopted a wayward girl in Rambling Rose

The first diagram is my recreation of "The Pickle Theory of Value."  (This is a serious theory about the perceived value of start up businesses, and it is explained here.  Between you and me, I think all graphs should feature vegetables instead of boring lines.)

The second diagram is my spin-off of the pickle theory.  I call it, "Ceci n'est pas une cornichon."
 

Did you know that L. Frank Baum considered Little Boy Blue to be genuinely overworked?

The La Dolce Vita blog got empowered by my Follow Your Bliss Compass.  Here's an excerpt:

In Japan, most statues of Thousand-Armed Kannon, a Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, show only 42 arms.  Two are normal arms, and the remaining arms each represent the 25 Buddhist worlds.  40 times 25 equals 1000, plus two regular arms equals 1002.  Whether a statue has 42 arms or 1002, it still seems to misrepresent the goddess by minimizing or exaggerating her arms!

Tibetan art seems to have a better grip on one thousand arms.  This painting of Thousand-Armed Chenrezig (a.k.a. Avalokitesvara, the Buddha of Compassion) looks convincing.

This Chinese statue of the Goddess of Mercy also appears to get the number right.

But who's counting?

My friend Jonathan wrote to me about "making pesto like an Italian grandmother."  I got to thinking that fresh basil and extra virgin olive oil aren't enough, in and of themselves, to make pesto on par with an Italian grandmother's.  It occurred to me that in order to make pesto like a real Italian grandmother, one would have to somehow be an Italian grandmother.  Improbable, perhaps ... but not impossible, thanks to the Honorary Italian Grandmother (and Saint) Certificate.

Italian grandmothers are famous for being dauntless, affectionate, and inspirational.  The spirit of Nonna, the archetypal Italian Grandmother, is the zest for life.  Nonna is present whenever a family and guests are well fed and whenever something is created by hand, with care and love.

I created the Honorary Italian Grandmother (and Saint) Certificate for those rare individuals with a flair for maintaining tradition, improvising without blinking, and turning anything into a nurturing experience.  The Certificate is personalized in fine calligraphy, easy for you to generate, and completely free!  Click here to check it out.

Today's "symbolic outlook" from MysteryArts.com is rather exciting.  Notice the elegant progression of spirals, from a tiny spiraling line within the crystal-ball (left), to the full spiral in the circle (middle), to the uncoiling spirals forming the magic lamp (right).  The small spiral is but one of many things floating inside the crystal ball.  Whether symbolizing a spiritual journey, evolution, growth, or the balance of light and dark (as in ancient Chinese art), the outlook seems to suggest that focusing on the spiral brings it to the foreground and enlarges it.  Then, in the third panel, the spiral doubles itself to cradle the flame of a genii's lamp.  Therefore, looking inward (the crystal ball) provides insights into nurturing the spark of life (the spirit contained within the physical shell of the lamp).  Even better are the captions for each symbol.  Reading left to right, enchantment (finding delight, being charming), if put into motion (acted upon), will fuel the imagination (make-believe, as in the Aladdin story). 

Q: How do they make rye bread?

A: It's grown from caraway seeds.

From Prof. Oddfellow's sketchbook:

I've been compiling a list of things I excitedly told my kid brother 20 years ago, which he (annoyingly) scoffed at.  These were ideas (from any number of sources) that captured my imagination but which irritated my brother's skeptical brain and stimulated his argumentative nature:

1. Had dinosaurs not died out, they would have evolved into human beings.  [I had seen a computer model proving this one, with an illustration of what a dino-human would have looked like (scaly skin, lizard-like features, human frame).  In fairness to me, this was long, long before the general public had any reason to doubt computer models.  So-called evidence aside, I'd say my brother's suspicions about this one were overly exaggerated.  Here's a short article about the theoretical "dinosauroid."]

2. The Navy cannot train dolphins to plant underwater bombs, because dolphins are pacifists.  [I still like the idea of dolphins being pacifists.  I heard this one from my professor of transformational/generative grammar.  He didn't have the Navy's unclassified reports on hand.  Here's a brief mention of "the dolphin who refused to fight" in the Persian Gulf.]

3. Eskimos have hundreds of words for "snow," proving that different cultures experience different realities.  [This is indeed an urban legend.  My brother was right, though not necessarily for the right reasons.  Here's a Wikipedia article about the origins and significance of the myth.]

4. The only reason dolphins don't paint, sculpt, play instruments, and build buildings is that they don't have hands.  [In other words, dolphins don't have a culture due to a physical handicap, not because they're otherwise unevolved.  I still like this idea.  Here's an article entitled "Dolphins and Man — Equals?"]

Well, that's all I can think of right off the bat, though I recall my brother scoffing at me hundreds (if not thousands) of times.  Luckily, kid brothers don't carry much clout ... though here I am 20 years later still thinking about what mine scoffed at!