We postpone taking actions that facilitate our comfort in cases where immediately obliging the desire would result in others’ discomfort. This is polite behavior. For example, you won’t see a sober passenger take a piss on the subway. What’s happening implicitly in many of these cases, including the example above, is the establishment of a…
Contrary to the law of midday meals, some things hardly need to be worked for in order to be earned. They can be earned, in other words, for a lesser price than it seems they are worth. In even other words, so as to balance the books of the linguistic expression economy, a part of…
People can elicit praise simply by avoiding embarrassing consequences that their own carelessness made likely to occur. A good example is “Nice catch!” following the timely rescue of an object that, through lack of awareness, was sent falling to the floor. It’s a curious thing, applauding sans sarcasm someone who made a mistake. Whether the…
The phrase “at this time” has the unusual attribute of being ubiquitous in air travel and uncommon everywhere else. It sounds like the soft scolding of an authoritarian repression that hides its merriment at dictating when certain liberties can and cannot be exercised by cloaking itself in an innocent politeness and collectively addressing the passengers…
Some of the people who spend time in my field of view are such colorful characters that they demand formal documentation, much like Darwin upon discovery of a new species in the Gálapagos. I once saw a lost mariner drowning in the disorientation that is solid land. Thin, small, middle-aged and unshaven, he scampered aimlessly,…
In spite of all the negatives that tarnish much of the advertised allure, there is at least one societal benefit to the existence of smoking as an activity. That it is an intangible benefit and is consequently difficult to quantify should not be interpreted to mean that its impact is negligible. After all, many of…
Following is among the most offensive things I’ve written here. First, some background. Remember in one of the Harry Potter flicks, where Harry is battling Voldemort from a distance? Their respective magic powers are conveniently manifested as sorcerous energy light beams of different color. The beams meet somewhere in the middle, the forces of good…
What better way to follow up a post involving the acronym RIP than to write about murder? Consider the Venn diagram below. The blue circle is the likelihood that I’ll be murdered. The orange circle is the likelihood that I’ll become a serial killer. That I’ve made each circle the same size is purely for…
The characteristics of a person’s body, the fairness of the face they wear, the sound of their voice; while some variance is possible through diet, surgery, and smoking, these physical attributes are largely outside the realm of modification, and they at least partially inform the personality of the person to whom they belong. People run…
Apartment hunting took little more than two days. Before I left Fairbanks I thought I’d get a place in the Government Hill neighborhood since it would just be a walk from work, but three things converged to result in my never even visiting the complex: I never heard from them after faxing in my application,…
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