No form of pride goeth before a more cataclysmic and disastrous fall than believing one’s own bullshit like it’s gospel.

Finally, a cause I can get behind.

This is an amazing headline if you have no idea that it’s about basketball.

I’ve always thought that Conjugal Visit would be a good name for a country band.

I thought I’d moved beyond my borderline-fanatical conviction that exclamation marks should only be used following the words “Help” and “Fire”, but 30 seconds on LinkedIn puts me back in punctuation holy war mode.

Well, we haven’t declared war on Mars yet. So there’s that.

The implications of the expression “common sense” should always be assessed according to the tax bracket occupied by the person deploying it.

Willfully ignorant, pointlessly mean and aggressively stupid is no way to go through life.

So it turns out that good hockey sticks are like $300 now, which makes me super-happy that I got to be a mediocre high school hockey player back when they were about 90% less than that.

One gets the sense that we’re entering the It Was Like That When I Got Here phase of organizational disintegration, which is always a fascinating phenomenon in a culture positively allergic to accountability.

Believing in miracles is a good thing. Counting on them, much less so.

The person who reflexively puts themself at the center of every situation or event, regardless of actual connection, is not someone who can be counted on to champion anyone’s interests but their own.

We’ve reached stage of the holiday season when every mall Santa has the thousand-yard stare of a soldier in the trenches at the Battle of the Somme.

If someone saves my life, I will not care about the god they worship, or if they worship a god at all. I will not care what they look like or where they come from. I will be grateful for my life, and for their courage and compassion.

There’s a whole lot of stuff I know little or nothing about. As always, I have a lot to learn. And that alone seems like a good enough reason to try and stick around for a while.

Missed ya, friend.

Wasn’t I just awake for like 16 hours? Doing it again seems ridiculous.

The person who believes no one can teach them anything is bound and determined to prove themselves right, no matter what the cost.

Most of the classes I took in college have little to no direct connection to what I do for a living. But from history to philosophy to economics, I learned something through all of them that changed the way I saw and thought about the world around me. And in so doing, made me a better writer.

Advertising doesn’t suffer because clients demand results-driven work. It suffers when clients don’t understand how advertising succeeds in driving results, or the time and resources required to drive them in a competitive market.

I think the best part of remote work is the extended periods of time I’m left alone with my own thoughts, feelings and unquiet mind because what could possibly go wrong with that.

In a see and be seen business, I’m more be and be invisible.

I swear, Americans treat paying attention behind the wheel of a car like somebody told them it was Socialism.

I like thinking. It’s the first step in making stuff, which is my favorite thing to do. It’s both fun and useful. It’s allowed me to make a solid living in a series of profoundly unlikely ways. And I’m occasionally amazed by the cool stuff that’s lurking in far-flung recesses of my imagination.

Talking with my parents is a frustrating but useful reminder that political machinations at the national level remain more intellectual exercise than real-life concern for even well-intentioned people. Especially if they still see the national media as a reliable and impartial journalistic resource.

In spite of everything, the flawed beauty of humanity remains undefeated.

I’m a city kid. Always have been, always will be. Cities have taught me how big and small the world is and how much of it is different than me. Cities are a constant raucous conversation of ideas and dreams from a thousand different directions.

Unfortunately, this week in advertising mergers, consolidations and of course massive layoffs welcomes a new class of folks to the club I reluctantly belong to: The Every Agency I’ve Ever Worked For No Longer Exists Society

*takes a long, thoughtful pull from my calabash pipe, settles back into my richly upholstered chair, exhales a voluminous cloud of fragrant tobacco smoke* Well, I suppose every generation must have its “23 Skidoo”, yes?

Haters may come at me for this, but I still say “Puff, The Magic Dragon” is the saddest song ever.

Thank goodness all of the sales are being extended. Just when it seemed like no one would dare to offer a discounted price on anything ever again for any reason. Huzzah. Truly unprecedented times we’re living in, friends.

I think my parents truly believe that people only do things for reasons that make objectively logical sense. And I have to give them credit for their barnacle-like tenacity in clinging to that belief for more than 80 years, which is a long time to overlook the abundant evidence to the contrary.

People always say that comparison is the thief of joy. Which makes me wonder if Thief of Joy is an office that’s appointed or elected. And in either case, by whom?

It took me most of my life to believe this when I say it, but damn am I glad that I’m the misfit oddball I am and not like anyone else. Trying to be got me lost again and again and probably would have done me in if I’d kept it up.

Really enjoying the “Did I injure myself and not notice or does this random thing just hurt all the time now?” era I’ve apparently entered. Chock-full of surprises.

COVID booster in the left arm, flu shot in the right. Ask me anything while I can still type. 😆

I can’t imagine being born with the gift of curiosity, the power of wonder, and then reaching some arbitrary age or point in life and saying “Well, if I don’t know it or never heard about by now, it must not be true or possible or matter much at all.”

Whether you’re headed to a warm, welcoming and joyful gathering to celebrate love and friendship, into the belly of a family beast to battle for basic respect and decency, or somewhere in between, courage. None of it is easy, even when we’ve gotten good at making it look like it is.

In terms of athletic prowess, what I lack in skill and ability I make up for with a wanton disregard for my physical wellbeing and an unnervingly comfortable relationship with pain.

Question for my Minneapolis bike folks who’ve ridden the new bike lanes on Hennepin north of Lake: Anybody else had close calls with cars entering Hennepin from one of the side-street crossings? There are 2-3 intersections where carnage seems almost inevitable—especially when it’s dark.

I am thankful for the throuple of Cardinals who’ve been hanging out around our bird feeder for the past couple weeks. Both for the simple pleasure of watching beautiful birds and the imaginative entertainment of concocting stories of reality TV-flavored avian romantic drama between them.

Today’s Tool post for no reason other than I just love this song. youtu.be/XqeTtAqNTgY?...

Let’s give millions of people who are absolutely convinced that they’re the smartest person they know unfettered access to each other’s at best semi-informed opinions about anything and everything, 24 hours a day until the sun burns out. What could possibly go wrong?

Every so often I’m reminded that in another life, years of rigidly formal education and narrow-minded parenting successfully smother, crush or stamp out every last spark of curiosity and creativity from my being. And I’m grateful for whatever part of my lizard brain protected that flame for so long.

When you have the chance and it’s warranted, don’t sleep on telling your friends you’re proud of them. Especially if you haven’t because you thought it would be weird.

I’m not going to glorify or idealize sore muscles. But I’m working my way back towards the fitness level that lets me get the most out of doing the stuff I love. The soreness that comes with that pursuit feels like progress. And I’m grateful to be able to put that kind of work into it.

My relationship with making music is in that weird emotional DMZ between being drawn to the idealized concept of playing in a band and my more fraught, conflicted and complicated feelings about how that dynamic actually works.

As I’ve gotten to know people in my bio/birth families and heard stories about the people who became my parents, I struggle with what parts of those stories are mine to tell, to share with others. The stories belong to me, but they also to other people who had nothing to do with me being born.

Sometimes the truth is so simply and brutally stupid that it tempts us to contrive the most ridiculously complicated explanations to make it make a lick of sense.

If the news you have is not big, should you even be posting on LinkedIn?