Every once in a while I write something that I'm proud of. Here is one of those documents. It's boring yes....but for me it was interesting. It involved A LOT of interviewing and I love that.

Click here to download:

mc-cs-elegant-manufacturing.pdf (377 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

mc-cs-elegant-manufacturing.pdf (377 KB)

"...new experiences trigger the same chemical reaction in the body as love....."

http://yahoo.match.com/y/article.aspx?articleid=6714&TrackingID=526103&am...

Apology
More often than naught
Is for the birds…

"It's on the anvil," is an English idiomatic expression and basically means "still in the works," "a work in progress," "still to be decided," etc.

It's sort of like the development of my butt muscles, which are still---I'm afraid---on the anvil.

Heh.

Do you ever have those moments when you "learn" a word after you've used it thousands of times already?

Surprisingly, this happens to me quite often and though I realize (somewhere in the back of my mind) that my ego is telling me I'm stupid for not catching on to the word-in-question's origin by the age of 3.25 years old the pleasure of TRUE discovery tells my ego that it's an ass.

The other day for example I was at work and I said the word "kidding," and I realized (perhaps for the first....or possibly second time in my life) that the word kidding originates from the word "kid." You know....like kids acting like kids......that's KIDDING!

The delight inspired by the images that the realization conjured in my head was just so wonderful. These images, for example, included some imaginary kids running around and doing cartwheels, which of course made me want to run around the office and do cartwheels but instead I went and dutifully made the call I should have made before I was distracted by the word "kidding."

Lately I'm distracted a lot. Mostly by sex thoughts and word derivation obsessions.....a likely combination.

I love the Pulitzer Prize.

Though some people may say that the PP is controlled by rich selfish New Yorkers who are---naturally and logically---Jewish, I would say to these people that 1) I think you are nuts and 2) even if you are correct in your bigoted assumptions those rich New Yorker Jews sure can judge WRITING!!!!!

Anyway, my latest PP read (in the fiction category) is titled "A Visit from the Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan.*

There are so many elements I love about this book. I love how the author plays with narrative insertions for instance.....but what I love the most is the author's choice of title and the ongoing metaphor that inspired it. The metaphor, which compares "time" with a "goon," is present from the beginning of the novel, but is vague and mysterious until the middle of the book when one of Egan's characters says something like this: "Isn't time a goon?" And then it emerges.....this COMPLETE metaphor that has been there since Chapter 1.

So beautiful.....

Another element of the novel that I truly appreciate and even crave is the feeling that it creates and the speed at which Egan releases those feelings. It seemed to my literary heart that Egan literally "seeped" her feelings (wonder, melancholia, disappointment, disquietude, etc.) word by sentence and sentence by word until all at once (like time itself) the feelings had come slowly and then, too quickly, were gone.

It's almost as if, in her novel, Egan has felt and heard TIME and has left its imprint in words.

In effect she has befuddled the goon.

Love it. Love literature. Love the PP. Love this damn time-restricted life.

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* This novel is sexually explicit in some chapters and also contains language.

The other day I ate four grapefruit while sitting in a hot bath. I don't know what it is about hot baths and eating but the combination is a pleasurable one.

Even the most pleasurable experiences can be improved however.

For example, if you listen to French language CDs while eating grapefruit in a hot bath then the experience can be described as having been mathematically squared.

Looking for the cubed experience?

Put a sage and black licorice bubble bath liquid in your hot bath water and then just try and SAY that your life hasn't become the essence of perfection.

Just try it.

"If you have to profess that you are not jugmental [then] you probably are."

                                                                                                                              ---B.C.A.

It's no secret that I'm single or that I've never been pregnant or that I don't have a child that "I'm raising up in the way that s/he should go...."

It's no secret that I live in the land of child bearing and child-rearing advice, and believe it or not, though I get sick of hearing this advice (or the "proper" way to get to the point in which you can bear a child within the bonds of holy matrimony) I think there is definitely an art to child rearing.

Of course I again want to reiterate that I don't currently have children so that ANY of my dear readers can feel free to shake their little heads and ask themselves: "What could a single 30-plus-year-old BLOGGER know about child rearing!!!???"

Well my dear readers, let me just say this: Life isn't always about KNOWING; sometimes life is about POSITING the plausible or the optimal.*

Anyway, here goes: I think that the best parents are those parents who actively learn from their children and do very little to mold them. Basically, I could go on and on about what these parents DO but I could more easily and more succintly describe how these parents THINK. They think like this:

"I can learn more from my children than they will ever learn from me."

I think it's that simple.

If a parent finds that the importance of life (and the joy that we seek from it) stems from any of the characteristics listed below then I think that the parenting philosophy of "the child knows best" is the way to go:

a) lack of inhibition
b) natural honesty
c) fairly constant questioning
d) CONSTANT observation of environment and/or others
e) very little action besides healthy physical motion and play
f) very little strategic manipulation of others (as far as I can tell from younger children)
g) NO small talk
h) complete confidence and trust in self and his/her protectors

So what is the proper role of a parent? What should s/he DO? Well, I don't know to be honest....it's hard to even posit a general solution. But I can't help but think that just CENTERING THOUGHTS within a certain philosophical construct (i.e, I think I can learn more from my child than s/he will learn from me) will separate the "child knows best" parents from the "Mom and Dad know best" parents.

Again though, what do I know? What could a single girl possibly know about child rearing?
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* My current definition of "knowing" or "knowledge" is VERY stringent.