The Weekly Prop Giving

Mad Props Yo, Whatnot Comments (8)

It would not be an exaggeration for me to say that over the course of a single week, I read a metric ton of whatnot, web-based and otherwise. From a blog standpoint, I’ve managed over the years to narrow the sites that I frequent down to those that are so well-written and profoundly moving that every post is an absolute winner. Seriously. Every morning, after working through my Huge-Ass List ‘O Blogs (HALOB), I’m so emotionally drained that I have to crawl to a dark room and cry for about 10 minutes before I can do anything else.

Fear the HALOB.

There are other sources of inspiration, as well. I get the New Yorker (yes, I’m one of them) and The Atlantic and there are these bound volumes of papered writing called “books” that sometimes own my attention and ultimately chisel their “words” into my “brain”. On Fridays, as a public service, I’d like to share some of the stuff that’s left a mark (or bruise) over the previous week. I am all about the giving of props when and where props are due. I enjoy being a prop-giver and would like to think that prop-giving is a virtue somewhere. So, mad props, yo. The following are not whack in the least:

I was not aware that Dick Cavett had a blog. Nor was I privy to his past with depression. An interesting read.

The Yeti was on a roll this week with this and OMGPOW!.

Black Hockey Jesus and Son of Black Hockey Jesus (aka Neil Peart) fight the power through their gift of song (Warning: Prepare to rock and/or be rocked).

Palinode’s interesting and insightful take on WALL-E.

The magic that is the Progressive Boink forum. Craigslist Missed Connections:
I WAS AT THE ZOO AND SPOTTED YOU JACKIN IT. WHEN YOU SAW ME, YOU SLIPPED ME A SLY GRIN AND KEPT JACKIN. WANNA TRY AGAIN IN A MORE PRIVATE SETTING?

ME: 60 Y/O DWM IN RASCAL SCOOTER
YOU: A ORANGATANG

Also, if you’re into time-wasting and chuckles, go look at their lists.

And finally, some G.K Chesterton on the power of imagination:

Most of the inconveniences that make men swear or women cry are really sentimental or imaginative inconveniences-things altogether of the mind. For instance, we often hear grown-up people complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little boys’ habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the 2:15….A friend of mine was particularly afflicted in this way. Every day his drawer was jammed, and every day in consequence it was something else that rhymes to it. But I pointed out to him that this sense of right and wrong was really subjective and relative; it rested entirely upon the assumption that the drawer could, should, and would come out easily. “But if,” I said, “you picture to yourself that you are pulling against some powerful and oppressive enemy, the struggle will become merely exciting and not exasperating. Imagine that you are tugging up a lifeboat out of the sea. Imagine that you are roping up a fellow creature out of an Alpine crevasse. Imagine even that you are a boy again and engaged in a tug-of-war between French and English.”…I have no doubt that every day of his life he hangs onto the handle of that drawer with a flushed face and eyes bright with battle, uttering encouraging shouts too himself, and seeming to hear all around him the roar of an applauding ring….An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Sir @ July 11, 2008