I used to have a nasty temper. In fact, my nickname at my college fraternity was “Little Angry Man.” (It was also “Tabasco” and “Rollerboy,” but those are other stories.)
Over the past 20 years, though, I’ve worked hard to keep my temper in check. I’ve learned not to let things get to me, and I’m proud to say that I haven’t gotten angry at anyone for at least 15 years now.
That is, until just a few weeks ago …
When you vilify your opponent by presenting the most extreme, most irrational position from the other side, it’s easy to feel smug and believe that your position is the obvious one.
The problem is, doing so only diverts our collective attention from the issues that actually matter. Think about it this way: If you truly hate our current president, and you oppose every policy he has and every inch of his very being, how does this little anecdote help you advance your cause?
A first-person video of a small prop plane crash landing in Taiwan. All I can say about this video is … holy shit.
A few months ago, I decided to run a little experiment, to see how serious people are about getting their blurbs published. So, I created a page with submission tips, and I left a little Easter Egg in there, as a way to reinforce people who RTFM.
Since I put up that page, I’ve received probably a hundred blurb submissions. Do you know how many demonstrated that they found the Easter Egg?
It’s an awful pun. But I wanted to share this mashup my buddy Scott made of Muse’s “Madness” and George Michael’s “Faith:
Yep, it was kind of embarrassing, but looking back at it now, it was also pretty damned funny. If nothing else, I’d say it’s a good sign for our marriage that we both rolled with it and could laugh about the whole thing even as it was going down.
Two songs with totally different styles (well, aside from the feathered mullets), yet eerily similar chords.
Woo hoo! I got my new .blog domain, so you can now find this site at dennis.blog. Thanks, Automattic!
Note that dennishhong.com and dennishong.blog will both redirect to this site, too. And if you’d like a .blog for yourself, click here.
There are assholes on both sides. So we can either fixate on this tiny percentage of assholes and paint everyone on the other side as such. Or we can accept that most people on both sides of the political spectrum are decent human beings, and actually try to reach across the aisle and engage with them.
We had such a grand ole’ time that she puked in the Uber on the way home, and then pretty much passed out on the curb outside our house.
Okay, not a big deal … yet.
Well, okay. It’s a slightly big deal. Like specifically, 150 dollar-sized deals. But whatever. I also once puked in an Uber that Melissa had called and ended up getting fined for, so now we were even.
No, the big deal arrived after I finally got her back into the house, into the bathroom, and draped over the toilet …
Aaaargh, I … can’t … very well propose on September 11. That’s so inappropriate. Is … isn’t it?
We wanted to look good for our wedding. But rather than set some vague goal about “getting in shape” (which we had already been trying to do for the past year), we decided we needed a specific endpoint. We needed something that would provide some ass-kicking focus and motivation.
Our solution? Train for a bodybuilding competition.
