Chaos Theory

Guess what I'm doing today

• Thanks for patiently observing us go through the motions of matrimony
• Please don't sit me at a loser table
• Thanks for believing I can conceivably fill the "plus one" and not mocking me when I can't
• You'll never guess what I got you from your registry of pre-selected gifts
• I'm glad we forced our loved ones to buy us tons of stupid crap
• I'm waiting to get married until my age group's first batch of divorces
• Getting married last lowers your chances of getting divorced first
• I hope the photo session doesn't last longer than the marriage (Note: I have been told to show up 2 1/2 hours before the wedding because photography is going to take THAT LONG. I'm not even IN the wedding, for fuck's sake.)
• Congratulations on probably not dying alone
• Welcome to the family
• I'm happy for you and ashamed of being single
  

How to save the place where you work

"Last year, not surprisingly, Fort Mifflin ran into financial difficulties. Its staff got laid off and its bills went unpaid. Finally the only remaining employee put on his thinking cap and asked himself, "How can I save this museum?"

Answer: Reach out to the psychic community."

All Chewie, all the time

Oh lordy.

Wha...?

Tim Gunn makes the comics. Really.

Hubby got a gun

BAD groom's cake (scroll down to #2).

My ADD made me stop and start reading this 47 times.

On your short attention span.

 "When I call Merlin Mann, one of lifehacking’s early adopters and breakout stars, he is running late, rushing back to his office, and yet he seems somehow to have attention to spare. He is by far the fastest-talking human I’ve ever interviewed, and it crosses my mind that this too might be a question of productivity—that maybe he’s adopted a time-saving verbal lifehack from auctioneers. He talks in the snappy aphorisms of a professional speaker (“Priorities are like arms: If you have more than two of them, they’re probably make-believe”) and is always breaking ideas down into their atomic parts and reassessing the way they fit together: “What does it come down to?” “Here’s the thing.” “So why am I telling you this, and what does it have to do with lifehacks?”

Mann says he got into lifehacking at a moment of crisis, when he was “feeling really overwhelmed by the number of inputs in my life and managing it very badly.” He founded one of the original lifehacking websites, 43folders.com (the name is a reference to David Allen’s Getting Things Done, the legendarily complex productivity program in which Allen describes, among other things, how to build a kind of “three-dimensional calendar” out of 43 folders) and went on to invent such illustrious hacks as “in-box zero” (an e-mail-management technique) and the “hipster PDA” (a stack of three-by-five cards filled with jotted phone numbers and to-do lists, clipped together and tucked into your back pocket). Mann now makes a living speaking to companies as a kind of productivity guru. He Twitters, podcasts, and runs more than half a dozen websites.

Despite his robust web presence, Mann is skeptical about technology’s impact on our lives. “Is it clear to you that the last fifteen years represent an enormous improvement in how everything operates?” he asks. “Picasso was somehow able to finish the Desmoiselles of Avignon even though he didn’t have an application that let him tag his to-dos. If John Lennon had a BlackBerry, do you think he would have done everything he did with the Beatles in less than ten years?”

One of the weaknesses of lifehacking as a weapon in the war against distraction, Mann admits, is that it tends to become extremely distracting. You can spend solid days reading reviews of filing techniques and organizational software. “On the web, there’s a certain kind of encouragement to never ask yourself how much information you really need,” he says. “But when I get to the point where I’m seeking advice twelve hours a day on how to take a nap, or what kind of notebook to buy, I’m so far off the idea of lifehacks that it’s indistinguishable from where we started. There are a lot of people out there that find this a very sticky idea, and there’s very little advice right now to tell them that the only thing to do is action, and everything else is horseshit. My wife reminds me sometimes: ‘You have all the information you need to do something right now.’ ”

For Mann, many of our attention problems are symptoms of larger existential issues: motivation, happiness, neurochemistry. “I’m not a physician or a psychiatrist, but I’ll tell you, I think a lot of it is some form of untreated ADHD or depression,” he says. “Your mind is not getting the dopamine or the hugs that it needs to keep you focused on what you’re doing. And any time your work gets a little bit too hard or a little bit too boring, you allow it to catch on to something that’s more interesting to you.” (Mann himself started getting treated for ADD a year ago; he says it’s helped his focus quite a lot.)"

One Sentences

• While walking down a street in New Orleans with his wife and two young daughters, my father was approached by a prostitute.
• Becoming a stay-at-home mother has made me believe there is absolutely nothing wrong with drinking before noon.
• When my grandma talked her way out of being arrested by the Disney police, I knew it was the best vacation ever.

Another good review of a bad book

"Right away, I have
Many, many issues with
Heroine Clary

She’s a hardcore Sue.
Clary Sue can see ‘Hunters
She is SPECIAL, guys!

- Show quoted text -
Miss Perfect? Miss Chosen One?
Misses the big clues"

New companion cast

I'd like to think this is a young River Song, but they don't say.

And you thought Sarah Palin and the moose crap was bad

"This fine lady, Governor general Michaelle Jean, who is Queen Elizabeth's representative in the Canadian government, butchered and ate RAW SEAL HEART."