facebook suicide 15:49

I'm such a coward.

This afternoon I lept off the bridge that crosses the sea of social networks and came to rest at the bottom of dark, cold abyss. I deactivated my facebook account. I'm a little grumpy today, so I might reconsider at any moment but really, I'd rather just do without it.

Of course, I can't. Not really. I opened another account a minute later to manage the pages I keep for clients, but that's different. That's work. Facebook stopped being fun. It causes me anxiety. I feel like I had no control over my own privacy.

Sure I love sharing pictures and media and posting things and commenting... but, JC, there are so many ways to do all that without embarking on a journey across those unpredictable waters. It's not even really a very useful program for an average user. Managing events isn't as good as it once was and, like my cell phone's address book, it allows me to forget lots of important things because everything I need to know is stored in there along with the tripe I really don't care about.

So, I ended it.  We'll see how long I last: I'm itchy already.

Maybe I'll see you out here somewhere.

meet the antlers 09:24

our wild lives 16:01

Yesterday afternoon I heard a thud. That terrible, heart-wrenching bird-on-glass sound that is the final utterance of too many urban songbirds. I had just emerged from the shower and turned to the window--the blinds of which I just lifted a moment before--in time to see a smudge with a downy feather stuck to it.

I cursed, hurried downstairs and into the backyard where I found, just the other side of the air conditioner (I didn't even know we had one) a motionless Northern Flicker. I was expecting a chickadee or maybe a mourning dove, but this is a relatively scarce bird, especially in suburbia.

The guilt washed over me as I recalled all the birds I've attempted to rescue (grackles, starlings, sparrows) and failed miserably. As I got closer, I noticed the bird was blinking and gasping. Spurred on by relief and optimism, I gently picked it up and brought it in the house. The flicker was warm to the touch, soft, and fragile-feeling. Jay, Mike's girlfriend had me curse and rush out, gasped when she say the bird (she thought I'd hurt myself...) and I called for Mike to bring me a shoebox.

Note to amateur naturalists: birds go into shock fairly easily. The signs are

• lack of response to stimulus
• beak open  and panting
• irregular, slow blinking
• loss of equilibrium

Treatment should consist of the following

• place the injured bird in a shoebox (with airholes) lined with newsprint or paper towel
• put the box in a warm, dry, quiet place
• be patient
• do NOT feed or water the injured bird

A few hours later, Mike checked on the bird. I was out and he called me on the phone saying it had soiled its box. Perfectly normal, I told him, If you want to, you can put a new layer of paper towel down.

Mike took the box out into the backyard, lifted the lid, and flicker flew away.

So satisfying.

get this song out of my head 17:33

I kind of love 80s ballads. Sometimes, though, a song will stuck in my head and just loop through the chorus again and again and again and again and you get the point.

I bet this happens to you too. So, this is my gift.  To you.

Hope you love it.

Cassandra Rex 11:54

Cassie reminded me just now that it's been a week since I've blogged.

Just in case you don't know her, let me introduce Cassie. She and I work and play together at Pink Elephant Group, the company in Kitchener at the City Hall that does branding, design, and communications strategizing.

She's a card. A real clown. I've called her a comedic genius (I know a few of those: several are women).

She running for Miss Oktoberfest this year. Your support is appreciated; but really, she's a shoe in.

We're making a Video Journal of her experience running for one of the strangest "pageants" in the world. It's like a beauty pageant whose focus is beer-drinking. There's no bikini round (not that there should be) and the prizes are pretty great.

If you see Cassie, wish her good luck and remind her not to forget the little people once she's crowned the Queen of the Beer Tent.

diet of excess 12:43

I've lost some weight. Maybe you noticed.

My secret to slimming down in the summer months:

white beer and cigarettes.

A little yoga now and then doesn't hurt, either. And I'll have to ramp that up, because I've quit smoking (for real) and I think I'll cut out the drinking too because it ain't cheap and I've only got the one liver.

Waterloo has many fine saloons, so it'll be tough; especially since around half of my social activities take place at restaurants or bars where drinking is the primary motivation for going. Maybe I'll switch back to red wine. And practice some moderation... remember moderation?

denial ≠ happiness (H-theory) 09:29

Math is really something. And coming from a mostly right-brained wordperson that's a real statement. There was a time in my life when I didn't believe in math. I literally thought is was a poorly motivated way of understanding life, the universe, and everything because no equation is as expressive (or impressive) as any of the disciplines in the humanities. That's why they're called "the humanities," I would have said.

But math, I know now, is a language. You can do a great many things with it, but at the moment its uses are... not limited exactly... but highly specialized. Which is a shame, because it means that many people who spend their days using the language of mathematics have no way to express their interiority - that human phenomenon which is more than sum of its parts. Like a hidden dimension, or 'brane that unfolds through the confluence of human consciousness and the physical mind.

But I digress...

The title of this blog entry "denial ≠ happiness" is an equation, of sorts, that has been on my mind lately. Math is really, really good at pointing out relationships, and especially adept at defining terms in opposition. That denial does not equal happiness doesn't mean that you can't be in denial and still be happy: of course you can. But happiness is not equal to denial and is not the product of denial and is not the cosign or vector or root of denial.

So what is happiness? Can math tell us? Because writers have been batting this one about for millennia with no consensus. We can identify things that make us happy, and generally it's agreed that happiness comes from the fulfillment of what the heart wants. The altruism "the heart wants what the heart wants" strikes me as a fairly algebraic proposition: it's vague and doesn't really tell us anything new, but it reduces a complex question to a pithy, albeit highly variable statement.

Can we do better?

Engineers and mathematicians: this is a call. Write me some math. Give me an equation based on the following variables that expresses your take on happiness:

H = the Heart

h = happiness

W = Want

w = what

D = Denial

Feel free to add or change any variables you feel are appropriate to the parameters of the equation, but please identify them. Leave your equations in the comments of this blog post. I'll repost the highlights and credit your brilliance.