Failure is a great teacher...

...if one lets her do her job.

I have trekked behind in Her footsteps for years.

The Goddess Quit is the angry nemesis of Failure. Quit aborts the unborn Will from Failure, and leaves her daughters Depression and Dismay to fester in the womb.

Quit is a low pressure system that teases the energy from Failure. I will side with Failure in every stormy battle against Quit.

I will ever choose Failure in Her n'er ending battle with Quit's vamp sibling Inertia.

I will battle Nothing with Failure.

"I will stand on the Ocean until I start sinking."

Failure breathe my final essence, I will not exchange a kiss with the seductress whore Quit.

I respect fair Failure and will battle beside Her. I do not pursue Her. She is but one of triplets.

I much prefer her most beautiful sister Success, of the three.

I have
         slept
                  most often
                           with the
                  homely
and
         good
                  sister
                           Adequacy.

Proving others are smarter than I...

is a passion of mine. I have often said, "If I am not the dumbest guy in the room, somebody has got to go."

I once frightened a new employee with that statement. He realized within a week or two that he, too, was smarter than I.

Why would I consider hiring someone with less talent and intelligence than I have.

I may be dumb, but I am not stupid.

Today Ray proved again that he is smarter than I by actually doing what I could only describe in a cartoon diagram. He did not need to prove he is smarter. It is unanimously accepted. I contributed in my small way with a challenge to cross the hill. He found a gold mine on the other side.

I benefit from being near such people. Sometimes a small nugget falls from their heavily loaded wagon.

I donate it to charity when I find one.

I have lashed my pony's halter to the rail on his buck-board. I wish him all of our common great success.

He deserves all of the credit.

It is
        the least
                I
        can give,
                when
        it
                is
        not
                the most
        I can give.

I was trained...

as a sociologist. I was a graduate student for roughly two hundred years. I had many successes, but was an ultimate failure. I am a quitter. I am ABD.

I don't know if I know how sociologists think anymore. I have no intimate contact with any. I seem to remember that even the most broadly intelligent ones were also great babies whose days were filled by (attempts at) compelling intellectual discovery coupled with a grotesque personal pettiness. A few were bitter. Most were people with whom I enjoyed spending time.

The distinction with all non-academic careers I have encountered is the existence of intelligent discourse. Pettiness and personality foible is everywhere a constant. But America, Inc. generally impugns thinking for its own sake. It uses the word "philosopher" as a shrouded insult. Dumb-Luck, on the other hand, gets plenty of good press.

Intelligent discourse is not simply absent as a goal. It is simply absent.

Academic life was thrilling because of the constant intellectual pressure on all boundaries, in all directions, all dimensions. Great heated arguments in the coffee shop or the classroom expanded existing cerebral spaces, or created entire new galaxies from the matter previously hidden within cerebral and empirical black holes.

The gravity in these black holes sucks the curiosity and energy from potential intellectual discourse in real world America, Inc. before it is ever born.

Philosophy and empirical reality are spun together in academic discussion to show the absolute value of both and the absolute value of neither. Theory and fact are bashed on wet rocks to wash away the dirt and expose the underlying fabric.

Academics learned from hippies about their various treatments of blue jeans. Denim, theories and facts have life cycles. Depending on how you treat them, they break-in, shrink, fade, and wear-out. Patching them is an often option, as is creating patches from them. Denim will only stay blue and crisp hanging unused in the closet. Fact and theory are not so fortunate even there. Torn, ripped and faded jeans have a lot of life in them: So too with both fact and theory.

America, Inc. is wont to discard jeans if pressing them does not restore them to some proper sense of fashion. It takes a cowbird approach to the dissemination of ideas. Delineation and fine distinction are not valued when homogenization and domination produce a better result. Individualization gets high marks in America, Inc. but I don't advise that most individuals try it.

It would be flattering to suggest I was an adequate student in most regards. It was a very fulfilling life style, despite the poverty. My current standard of living would not have been attainable with my passion so overwhelmed by my limited competence in that environment. I understood the concept of self-actualization. More idiot than ideal, I failed to understand the gulf to cross to reach even its beachhead.

Craig Taylor of Western Kentucky University once distinguished between sociology as a profession and sociology as a career. Professional sociologists are paid to teach and research common and esoteric topics; career sociologists, once trained, take their pedagogy and zeitgeist into the world and apply it in their non-academic careers.

I am become forced to take the lower trail. I vault breathlessly down this career path trying to run astride the Goddess of Adequacy, hoping to keep the giants visible in my peripheral vision. Failure is common. I fall behind her. I lose sight of the masters. Although I have here circumvented the journal editors, I have no power and no influence. America, Inc. owns too much of the day.



Kristofferson wrote that, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." Perhaps this phrase has become cliche in America, Inc. Perhaps it is a matter of perspective, another small tear in these old jeans.

I bid the sociologists their own good day. Thanks for all of the memories.

I will
               watch
                   for you
       in my
      momentary glimpses
  of
                 the shoulders
    of giants.

DB was the nickname...

I gave to a manager I never liked. It was back when I was a snob about such things as people who I didn't think were as smart as I (thought I) was.

He didn't meet the minimum education requirements for the position of IS Manager in a hospital in Nashville. A Bachelors degree is not a high bar, particularly in such an environment, but he had failed to cross that threshold.

The Director of IS, Dave, hired him anyway.

I can't help but believe he regretted it later.

But that didn't give me any pleasure.

Once in a meeting, DB was so quick to agree with Dave that Dave said, "wait, we appear to be one opinion short here."

I liked Dave a lot more after that day, and had more respect for him.

And DB got his name: Dave's Bitch.

Everyone on the team adopted the nickname. So we developed a cover story in case it slipped out in front of him - which it periodically did. We said he looked like the actor who played DB Cooper in the movie (Treat Williams). He didn't.

DB left and went back to the renal facility whence he came.

I took my arrogant ass back to Georgia.

Dave kept the faith until he left.

And none of it matters
              to anyone
         any
more.