The Fool Proof

If you are a gin enthusiast, you could do worse than laying out for Poor Tom's gin.  For Fathers Day I have been graced with a bottle of the 'Fool Proof' 52% Poor Tom's.  I have just had a dry G&T (equal parts making it 'dry') and holy kablooey in. A craniium.  Delicious, and nourishing.

Love your work

You might not have picked this up, but my foolery extends to the workplace.  I have been through an escalating series of difficult conversations about my non-compliance, non-performance and general devil-may-care attitude to achievement.

This results from an accumulation of disappointment.  I thought I was going to be amazing the world with discoveries and inventions, but so far the only thing I've invented has been generally regarded as silly or incomplete.  Those who judge these things use criteria pretty far from those I would apply, and if I judge their performance I find leadership almost totally lacking except in the domain of domination, performance measurement - very rarely are we stopped from addressing clients' non-problems.  Someone once asked "could the leaders give us an overview of their understanding of the field we're in, just once a year?" and the answer was a round rejection of the very idea.  So my demotivation is not coming from nowhere.

Still, I was being pretty ridiculous.  So I went into a long weekend seething with resentment that I was being held accountable for my timesheets, a very weak tool measuring in painful accuracy, my attendance. My performance is also measured, but less frequently and with better-designed paperwork.

Then, I watched a lecture on Oedipus from Peter Sruck's Coursera.com course on Myths from Greece and Rome.  Oedipus' story is amazing. Peter brought out the question of Oedipus' responsibility.  Here was Oedipus meeting a man of his fathers age on the road and, over the issue of who should step aside, killing Lais (his true father) and his whole retinue. I had been thinking about the Oedipus complex of irresponsibility and wondering why I was so much closer to Oedipus than Oddyseus.  This moment crystallised it.  Even if I am in the right about the uninspiring leaders, the naff prescription of measures and mechanisms that are not applicable to my type of work (I am not manning a desk for a shift, I am solving problems), I still believe I should get out of the way of the silly old king when he asks.  And that gave me the key.

I have to love work charitably, not Libidinally.I am not going, ever, to get a glandular charge from doing what these guys ask.  It will always be disappointing. But I shouldn't make these guys die in a ditch defending their stupid practices and total lack of vision. There are times to represent that, but stepping aside, just going along a bit more, out of charity for their feeble age might be the answer I can live with.

Church and the Fundamental Attribution Error

Psychology* describes the Fundamental Attribution Error as the error of attributing outcomes to circumstances and the individual in a biased way - with the bias tending to reflect individual self-esteem.  So my failures result from hard times, yours are because you are weak and ineffectual.

We are each others circumstances.

The gospel way, among other things, requires a reversal of the attributive, judging gaze.  Take the log from your own eye; give to (and forgive) others as you do yourself.  This is not a reflex - it is consciously acknowledging the FAE as an enabler of sin, and consciously redirecting that gaze.

In church, we need practices that reflect this reversed gaze and make us the circumstances of other people's best selves.  This means, for example, not frustrating or confusing each other, but listening and accepting as instructive the expectations of others.  It might mean finding some way to engage their bad behaviour that helps them stop it freely, without bad feeling.

*Well, some of it, at the moment.

Wishlisting

A short list of stuff I need or want:

Sound stuff:  too expensive but I don't want to forget it.

Clavia Nord G2 Engine (prefer fully expanded)  ($1500?)

ADAT 8-channel Preamp like Focusrite Octopre  ($600)

Cakewalk Studio ($200)

Screenwriting:

Voucher for review and hosting at blcklst.com ($100 / screenplay)

Voucher for 10+ hours a week.

Weight training:

5kg vanilla whey concentrate from Proteinauthority.com.au  ($130)

weight training belt  ($40-50)

Books I don't have by Gene Wolfe, Alfred Bester, Charles L Harness.

Scifi movies or Film Noir movies I don't have

Season 5 of The Wire in particular.

Renovation tools: A good sander with an effective dust collector, other tools for weatherboard maintenance - e.g. board removing saws, pry bars, etc

Heart rate monitor + other functions thing:

• Microsoft Band 2 (Basically unavailable)
  
• Atlas Wearables Atlas (US $250)
  
• Fitbit Charge HR ($180) or Surge ($245)
  

Many other things received with thanks.

Transformers' Bad Accidents

Mr 4 demands a nightly bad accident story (how I fell from my bike was a favourite); but since he discovered the transformers, this has morphed slightly into a 'Transformers' Bad Accident story.  This has been a good little exercise - and some of the stories have turned out satisfactorily too.  I have invented the inept Decepticon Blunderbus, a bus who gets things comically wrong and actually forgot how to transform in one story.  He is now in semi-retirement working permanently as  a bus, something the autobots set up as a sort of doofus protection program.

So, two examples I wanted to write up.  First:

"Starscream and Megatron were working on a new biomechanism, a new component, that would bring special powers and an additional transformation.  Starscream secretly plotted against Megatron even then, and had rigged the component to make the third transformation a permanent transformation into a mattress!  Megatron insisted that Starscream be the test candidate.  Starscream demurred, claiming it was against his loyalty to gain powers over those of Megatron.  Megatron really insisted, and Starscream was overcome with fear of his own surgery, and fainted.  When he woke, the surgery was complete.  He decided then that his best option would be to pretend he was trying to use the component but that it didn't work.  Megatron was furious, and activated his secret modification to the component: a manual over-ride!  Starscream screamed as he was transformed into a mattress.  Megatron laughed.  Then stretched out on the mattress."

Second, 

"Optimus Prime had told RC and Bumblebee to clean up their rooms. To make it fun, they swapped. The combination of RC's deft judgment and Bumblebee's 'open-book' nature made her task organising his room a snap.  She just picked up stuff and looked at it and decided where it would be most useful.  Bumblebee, though, was having trouble.  The more he tidied, the more he realised he didn't know RC very well. Lots of her things were hard for him to organise, because he didn't know why she kept them, what she loved about them. Somehow, though he had worked with her so long, she still seemed mysterious.  In the end, he just made a small collection of rubbish (an old data-stick, some broken components) and stuck to putting things back on the nearest shelf. They stopped after an hour and swapped back.  Bumblebee looked around his room with appreciation. RC came in and asked 'Where are my recordings?  My photos, all my old photos.'  Bumblebee shrugged ("Bumblebee can't Talk!") and came to help look.  Eventually, RC found the old data-stick.  "This is all my memories of Cybertron, the others of my type, like, my family."  They looked through the collection together that afternoon. Bumblebee felt very pleased to know his good friend so much better."

An excellent line reading

In Clueless, there is a moment which I love as Cher (Alicia Silverstone) tells her father she negotiated from Cs to As, and asks 'Aren't you proud of me?'

Her father responds 'I couldn't be prouder than if these were based on actual grades.'  The actor (Dan Hedaya) speaks this with inflections suggesting to Cher (and to the audience) that he means 'I couldn't be prouder if these were based on actual grades.'  But he's a litigator - he doesn't put a redundant 'than' in the sentence - its doing something.  I think he's saying 'It would be inappropriate to be prouder of this achievement than As.  I'm proud of you, but less than As would have made me.'  But, its a phatic judgment, because he knew Cher would not be getting As and he doesn't want her to think he's at all disappointed.

I've made a huge mistake

I have been sweating the espresso machine options for a while and an apparently 6-month old Boema (Australian made commercial machines) was on sale in Victoria for $1000.  And it was the day before work started and it seemed to me that I needed to take action.  My wife too, was wearying of my esprotic (?) advances, because she said 'fine, see if I care.' And so I said 'Maybe I will!' And since the auction was ending in about twenty minutes I pressed to bid, and then watched in horror as I won.  It is pictured here installed in our already crowded laundry, because it needs to be plumbed in.  So you've spent $1000 on a young machine - but it doesn't work.  So you take it to a service guy (coffeemachinist.com.au - excellent guy) and pay for a new solenoid and two hours of work.  $300.  Then you take it home to fit the new filter ($80).  To get it connected has taken a lot of hassle and expense and a pressure reducing valve ($75), with a lot of different fittings leaking until I spent my way free of trouble, culminating in today's purchase of a 3/4in f-f flexible hose for $53.  I would say I have spent $1600 altogether. Much, much more than I thought it would cost.  But cafe coffee at home starts tomorrow morning, and I can't wait.