Embrace the Void, episode 193: “Bullshido, with Phrost”.
Decoding the Gurus Special Episode: Interview with Phrost on Bullshido
BJJ Mental Models – Bullshit Inoculation with Phrost
All links go to iTunes, but episodes are available on multiple platforms.
Came across this via StumbleUpon and wanted to archive it. Here is the original link. The author is Margaret Mason.
Glenorchy, Scotland - Home of the Fletcher Clan
Ancient Fletchers
One of the most magnificent of the many lovely Highland glens is undoubtedly Glenorchy, whence the Fletcher Clan is said to have originated. The Fletchers claim descent from Kenneth MacAlpin, the first king of the united Picts and Scots, and ancestor of our present Royal family. The Fletchers were the first to ‘raise smoke and boil water’ on the Braes of Glenorchy (Is e Clannan-Leisdeir a thog a cheud smuid thug goil air uisge an Urcha). The patronymic of the Clan was Mac-an-leistear, and prior to 1700 was written in documents as ‘MacInleister’. When surnames came to be used, in about 1745, the name was anglicised as Fletcher – the equivalent of the Gaelic ‘Leisdear’, man of the arrow. The first person to use the English ‘Fletcher’ seems to have been Archibald the VIIIth Chief. Their badge is the pine-tree, and their tartan is an arrangement of blue, black and green, with diagonal lines of red. Their crest is two arms drawing a bow, as depicted on the cover.
It is recorded that the Fletchers, prior to their migration to the upper part of Glenorchy, were in possession of Drimfearn in Glen Aray, just north of Inverary. This was in the eleventh century. But it was the lands of Achallader and nearby Barravurich which the Fletchers held as undisputed owners for many years. It would appear that they were in Glenorchy before the Clan MacGregor, although Buchanan of Auchmar designated them a sept of the MacGregors. Glenorchy was actually bestowed on the MacGregors in 1222 by Alexander II as a reward for their assistance in the conquest of Argyll. The MacGregors were in possession in Glenorchy for about 150 years. Their line of chiefs ended in the birth of a daughter, Mariota, who married John, son of Sir Colin Campbell of Lochawe, and the Glen was granted to her and her husband by Royal Charter in 1359.
If you’re an out-of-work construction guy picketing the the big corporate developer for unfairly hiring workers from another state instead of you and your crew; it’s probably not a good idea to be lazily standing around, leaning on your picket signs to such an extent that nobody can even read them.
Just sayin’…
Yeek Yeek, Whoop Whoop...
To be honest, I don’t really have a fleshed-out idea for this blog post; I just wanted to get this phrase down on “paper” since it sounded good in my head.
It wouldn’t be too hard to come up with a genuine sounding diatribe centered around how humanity seems to be adding more technological buffers between genuine human interaction, but it wouldn’t be sincere. I actually appreciate the fact that I can have asynchronous conversations with dozens of people around the world; that I can close my netbook and go do “real world stuff” and a message or two is waiting on me, and the conversation continues.
Not to mention the fact that the planet is getting progressively more crowded. As a futurist, I realize that unless we either manage to destroy ourselves or venture to the stars, as Carl Sagan put it, we’re going to be living shoulder-to-shoulder. The future envisioned in Snow Crash is an entirely plausible scenario, and when people are living in converted storage lockers (as apparently some in California have already tried), getting some social elbow room, even if virtual, will no doubt be essential to maintaining one’s mental health.
Just random ramblings on a Friday morning.
Did I miss a memo on this? Was there some conference held recently that I failed to attend where they held a session on how it was now cool to wear black socks and gym shorts?
I’ve seen this more and more over the past few months, especially at 24 Hour Fatness where I work out.
Why do I have a problem with this? Well damnit, on some level I aspired to be the crotchety old guy mowing his yard in black socks and shorts. How the hell am I supposed to differentiate myself from the young punks all concerned about chasing what’s fashionable if what’s fashionable beats down my door like a no-knock SWAT raid?
Granted, I’ve never actually gone out of the house wearing black socks and shorts; I’m still too young to have been so un-fashionable. But christ on a stick, I sure was looking forward to embarrassing my kid with contrived apathy for culturally acceptable foot decor.
I guess I’ll just have to settle for picking her up from school in a luchador mask, or prepping a video montage of her temper tantrums to show her future dates.
Yes, I do have the footage, I just need to select a song for the soundtrack.
I paid a shitty latte’s worth of rent on a booth with an outlet nearby at a local chain coffee shop. The wifi here sucks more than a roomba programmed by Cyberdine, with the latte itself running a close second. Still, I figure, it’s a fair trade for the illusion of ambiance and a clear head to crank out some words. Too bad that wasn’t to be.
Shortly after setting up shop and getting my fingers primed to tap out English, a couple of evangelical christians in their late teens/early 20’s decide to take up residence a couple of tables away and have an obnoxiously, deliberately loud conversation about Jesus, the supernatural, prayer, and related subjects.
Whatever, I think. I’m easy like Sunday morning and I support free speech even more than I do the other 9 amendments in the Bill of Rights (especially the one about not having to let soldiers crash at my house, which I know would fucking suck having been one myself; nasty bastards).
So music is my anti-christ, and I queue up a playlist of Dethklok songs, to drown the twits out so I can think. Yes, death metal (or even a tongue-in-cheek tribute to it) is less distracting than the babble of people infected with the jesus meme.
Unfortunately, the black noise isn’t enough to overpower the bulk of those turkeys’ gobbling. Fortunately, a glare or two over my shoulder in their direction and they relocated a few tables away. All’s good in the hood, as they say (and by “they” I don’t mean anyone in particular you goddamn racist).
The ironic thing about this is that even Christ didn’t want his followers making a big public show of their religion. Matthew 6:6 reads: But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly. (King James Version)
Whatever. While enduring all of this and trying to make some headway on the book, I had to deal with the additional aggravation of the shop’s wifi signal going in and out on me. To me, this was worse than the knucklehead christicans, as I at least had the option of sacrificing my hearing to drown those bastards out. But every time the connection would drop, not only could I not save what written (since I’m using Google Docs) and research the odd factoid, but the damn music I was streaming would cut out. So I’d go from thundering guitars and cookie-monster vocals* (about coffee, oddly enough), to “…well what Jesus really wanted was for true Justice!“. It was like I was a battlefield detainee and Andy Kauffman’s zombie had been hired by a Gitmo interrogation squad to DJ directly into my head so I’d admit I once picked up a hitch-hiking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on the way to the gym.
When the coffee ran out I decided to pack it in and head home. (I’ve actually been finishing this up from my living room, since the “ironic thing” paragraph.) Now as an avowed “Dick”, I was obligated to say something, to someone. My first inclination was obviously towards the Hitler Youth Twins, to make some kind of snarky request that would call their attention to the obnoxious volume of their conversation. But when I thought about it, that was unnecessary. I’d already glared at them, they’d moved a few tables over, and it most likely wasn’t their fault they were unable to overcome being groomed from birth as douchebags. I guess I could have insulted their parents, but I don’t think that even Harlan Ellison could have come up with an appropriately brief rebuke in that situation that would have, at the very least, still maintained some sort of dignity on his part.
Besides, I wouldn’t have gotten through to them anyway and more than likely would have just made the employees there uncomfortable. Seeing as I’m often at that coffee shop to burn a cigar and watch the sunset, and that I enjoy my coffee without extra helpings of counter grime and roach parts, the logical and productive choice was to bring up the shitty wifi connection instead. Which I did, only to find out that they’ve got fucking bandwidth filters that choke streaming content because of assholes coming in to play online games.
As I sit here wrapping this up, I genuinely don’t regret not** saying something to the Vienna Sausage Choir. But I do regret paying for that shitty latte.
*Credit: Brian Posehn
**Double negative, I know. Deal with it.
