“We’re here on Earth to fart around” – 10 things worth sharing
Farting around with the boys.
Newsletter #009
This blog was adapted from my monthly newsletter, which you can subscribe to here.
This is the second version of this newsletter.
Last week, during yet another delay on the rebuild of our bookstore, I thought writing would make me feel less anxious but it turned out to just make for a very anxious newsletter. Lord knows we have plenty of those these days – so here goes number two:
“…I have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And see some great looking babies. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And I’ll ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is…we’re here on Earth to fart around.” - Kurt Vonnegut
-This article about a bunch of high schoolers spending the summer printing their own newspaper gives me hope for the future. “‘We still haven’t done hot dogs,’ Teddy said. Billy agreed: Hot dogs should be an editorial priority.”
-Baseball season is over, and we may have witnessed the greatest game ever played by a single player. Shohei Ohtani, who pitches and hits, struck out 10 batters and hit 3 home runs in the same game. 10 strikeouts in the playoffs is already hall-of-fame quality – but he also outscored the other team single-handedly. Absolutely wild… even his teammates could not believe it was happening.
-I stayed up late watching Daniel Day Lewis’ Lincoln (2012) the other night and was struck by his superhuman focus on a single thing: getting the 13th amendment. He yelled at his cabinet, who were all more worried about the political consequences: “See what is before you! See the here and now! That is the hardest thing. The only thing that accounts. NOW. NOW. NOW.” (I decided to watch it after seeing Ryan Holiday and Doris Kearns Goodwin gush about Lincoln’s leadership.)
-Political hot take: I’ve seen several Democrats criticize Trump during the shutdown for “being on the golf course” instead of negotiating. I am also old enough to remember Republicans ridiculing Obama for being on the golf course. IT 👏 IS 👏 GOOD 👏 TO 👏 HAVE 👏 HOBBIES 👏 ESPECIALLY 👏 WHEN 👏 YOU 👏 HAVE 👏 A 👏 STRESSFUL 👏 JOB 👏 Find a different argument. There are plenty to choose from.
-Maybe we don’t need to optimize every part of our lives: “Convenience can cost us. Our humanity, our health, our well-being, our connection to others and to what we truly care about…. ‘Work worth doing’ is another way to say inconvenient.” - Seth Godin
-“The frictionless life we so desperately seek today, is just one stripped of slow, simple joys: cooking as a daily ritual, carefully choosing every word in a meaningful message, walking the long way home for once, and realising how beautiful your neighbourhood is… knowing someone for years and years and years and then one day, realising you love them.”
-“Being annoyed is the price you pay for community… it means having guests when you'd rather be alone. It means letting someone live with you even when they get on your nerves. It means showing up for events that you'd rather not go to. It means turning the other cheek.” - divya venn
-Last week, we found the craziest, coolest bookstore I’ve ever seen. Steel’s Used Books is in a strip mall in North Kansas City. The owner has been collecting books for more than 25 years, and the store is filled floor to ceiling (and then some more on the floor) with everything you can think of. If you like a dirty treasure hunt and an eccentric cast of characters, you need to check it out.
-“If it’s not good for the hive. It’s not good for the bee.”
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
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Hope this inspires you to fart around and take the long way home.
See you next month 👋
Justin