A few days ago I saw a dude in the “local” supermarket with crocs on. Orange crocs no less. And the thing about dudes wearing crocs is that dude crocs are huge even in normal sizes. Not huge like, “Whoa, this burger is huge!” No, huge like, “Everybody run it’s coming right for us!.”

So this chance encounter prompted the following tweet on The Twitter.

A few minutes later I received an email from The Twitter informing me that I had a new iFriend following me on The Twitter and this new iFriend was crocsinc. You know where this is going.

Clearly some marketing-bot intern over at crocsinc has been assigned the barbarous task of monitoring The Twitter for mention of crocs. The only logical course of action is to mess with crocsinc.

Which elicited the following inflammatory response from crocsinc:

Clearly, marketing-bot does not realize crocsinc is on a slippery slope to become a lightning rod for so much pent up misanthropy.

Stay tuned.

Because Flo took a M-B test via Alice, she made me post my well-established M-B/Keirsey results:

INTJ – The Rational Mastermind

Some excerpts from INTJ profiles:

To outsiders, INTJs may appear to project an aura of “definiteness”, of self-confidence. Sometimes mistaken for simple arrogance by the less decisive, this confidence is very specific rather than general in nature; its grows out of the specialized knowledge systems that INTJs start building at an early age.

INTJs are known as the “Systems Builders,” perhaps in part because they possess the unusual trait combination of imagination and reliability. Anyone considered to be “slacking,” including superiors, will lose their respect — and will generally be made aware of this. On the other hand, they do tend to be scrupulous and even-handed about recognizing the individual contributions that have gone into a project, and have a gift for seizing opportunities which others might not even notice.

Contingency planning and entailment organizing reaches its highest level of development in the Rational Mastermind. It is not an informative activity for them, but a directive one in which the planner tells others what to do and the order in which to do it. As the organizing capabilities the Mastermind increases so does his or her inclination to take charge of whatever is going on.

While they are capable of caring deeply for others (usually a select few), and are willing to spend a great deal of time and effort on a relationship, the knowledge and self-confidence that make them so successful in other areas can suddenly abandon or mislead them in interpersonal situations.

And some “rules” for dealing with INTJs:

• Be willing to back up your statements with facts or sound reasoning.
• Don’t expect an INTJ to respect you or your opinion without reason: respect must be earned.
• Expect debate. INTJs like to tear ideas apart to discern their worthiness. They will argue a point they don’t support just for the sake of argument.
• Do not confuse the strength of your conviction with that of your argument. INTJs do not need to believe in a position to argue it well.
• Do not be surprised when you encounter sarcasm.
• The ultimate insult to an idea is to ignore it. This means it isn’t even interesting enough to deconstruct.
• INTJs believe in workable solutions. They are extremely open-minded to possibilities, but they will quickly discard any idea that is unfeasible.
• INTJs do not care about how you view them. They already know that they are arrogant bastards with a morbid sense of humor. Restating the obvious is a waste of time.

And, last but not least, a few alleged and actual INTJs:

• Augustus Caesar
• Mr. Burns
• Ayn Rand
• Niels Bohr
• George Lucas
• Colin Powell
• C.S. Lewis
• Professor Moriarty
• Gandalf the Grey

Part 2: Defining Terms

In Breton’s first manifesto he wrote that surrealism was pure “psychic automatism” used to express in verbal, written or “any other form” the “actual functioning of thought.” Which is to say the surrealists believed that linguistic, social and cultural constructs sullied and interfered with the foundational function of human thought, and sought to break through these barriers to tap into the true deep structural functionality of the mind.

In part one of Children as Philosophers: Solved?, I stated that children are Developmental or Natural Surrealists. Henceforth I will use the term Natural Surrealists.

The predominant usage of Natural in this context is to underline the inborn state of the child’s brain and thought patterns. If you are interested in the natural structure of thought, the only place to find it is in a mind that has not had formality imposed upon it by any one of the many eventualities in life that cause significant change, physiological or otherwise, in the brain: acquisition of spoken or written language, puberty, the progressive effects of age, social structure, and so on.

So without these influences children exhibit many of the desired characteristics, and significant practices, of surrealists simply by acting naturally, that is, by acting without conscious or self-conscious thought. Because the assimilation of “adult” or societal values and customs is an ongoing process, and each child has not only a unique brain, but also a unique upbringing, different children exhibit these characteristics to various degree throughout their development.

Making use of the word Natural in this context also allows me to highlight a related meaning of the word: children are predisposed to be good at surrealism in the same way one might say Tiger Woods is a natural at golf (though the analogy breaks down, the usage is common).

In the next segments, I’ll begin a discussion about the various ways that children act and think like surrealists

Read more about it at the Girl Effect Website.

Results to Pew Study of Religious Beliefs. [link via Flowing Data]

Lessons Learned:

• I don’t fit in very well.
• JW’s are crazy
• WTF is the religion of “Historically Black?”
• WTF are “Mainline Churches” and how are they different?
• Pew questions are not worded neutrally.
• If they were, who would read them anyway?

I like getting helpful tips that enable me to simplify my life. Ideally these tips are brief, pithy, and cheap. Fortunately, the internet has stepped in to meet this need. So I subscribe to a few blogs that (allegedly) feature information like this. Lately, however, I have been growing cynical (imagine that) of these blogs.

For example, today the unsuitably titled Zen Habits posted The List to Beat All Lists: Top 20 Productivity Lists to Rock Your Tasks (don’t click the link). Yeah. This helpful zen list contains links to 20 lists of “productivity” related topics like 10 Resources to Help Overcome Procrastination. How about avoid stupidly long lists?

The consolidated list makes for 406 “tips” plus a link to another post with 15 more. I can just imagine how much more productive I would have to be after spending an entire day reading the 421 helpful tips.

Guess who got removed from Google Reader today?

I recently acquired the unabridged audio cd of Steve Martin’s autobiography thanks to a Father’s Day-related gift card (thanks Mom!). If you have talked art, culture, drama, or writing with me at all, you know that I consider Steve Martin one of the best contemporary playwrights, screenwriters, and novelists.

Ever since watching VHS rentals of his comedy act from the 1970s, I have always had a hard time explaining what I believe to be his genius, but listening to the autobiography helped my quantify it a little more. In the book he discusses the development and philosophy of his act, and how it influenced his body of work. The philosophy is mixed with anecdote, jokes that killed, jokes that bombed, and life story.

It isn’t a story for all time, but it is a great story of how hard work, talent, and serendipity forged the life and career of an amazing writer and performer. I suppose if you don’t like Steve Martin, you won’t like the book. But I found it interesting, insightful and funny. The audio cd is, thankfully, read by Martin so the nuance and meaning isn’t left to interpretation of a narrator. I have found myself laughing out loud less frequently these last few years, but Born Standing Up: A Comic’s Life provided ample opportunity.

Part 1: Introduction

The intervening time between this and my previous post on Children as Philosophers has presented me with my most complete thinking on the subject to date.

Children are Developmental (Or Natural) Surrealists

This, of course, is a term of my own invention which I will define here later. Rather than writing a treatise on the natural philosophy of children, I will discuss my thinking on this topic in segments discussing the beliefs and behaviour of children within the context of the beliefs (primarily the Surrealist Manifestos) and artifacts of the surrealist movement.

tiny planets, two hydrogen/one oxygen at a time
counted easily as stars
forge in this one
a chasm that leads eventually to one grander

tiny planets, two sorrow/one suffering at a time
counted slowly as stars
forge in every one
a chasm that leads to one greater

between stone or hearts or both
between the me i know i am and wish i was
between the you that you are and the you that i remember
between the love of what was and the pain of what will be

or maybe they are all the same chasm
are all one
themselves and their like
across three days of darkness to the moon
and the further silence to the great planets
and phobos and deimos
cutting a chasm of all hearts
across the freezing hot black between
my world and yours

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them.
- Arnold Lobel