Real Joe

I’m continually bugged by the assumption that God only “calls” those who’s mission in life is the ministry, as in this article on seminarians.

Like many who enter the priesthood, Keating said, he didn’t choose to become a priest. “My experience was: I’ve been grabbed to be a priest. Priesthood chose me. “It’s not like you say, ‘Let’s see — doctor maybe, teacher, priest? Hey, I like priest.’ You’re living your life and you get tackled,” he said. “It really is God calling me to serve Him in this specific way.”

Well, sure, but that’s not really any different than any other line of work that can be characterized as one’s “purpose in life.” My wife and I went shopping for flowers and shrubs over the weekend and visited a nursery started a few short years ago by a guy who’d painted houses for a living for 30 years. When I asked him how life as a nursery owner compared, he smiled broadly and deeply. “I’m in hog heaven.” He’d never say “God called me” but his calling is no different than a seminarian’s.

I’ve started reading a book called Lummox by Mike Magnuson. The StarTribune’s book review a few weeks ago caught my eye with this line: The happily loutish book proves that regular guys can have colorful interior lives and that domestic beer can fuel fine artistic achievements.

Magnuson’s Lummox web site is classy, and includes his weblog, Lummoxopedia. He’s doing the book-tour rounds in his pickup truck. Hope he swings by us here in Viking territory. I have an idea I’d like to pitch to him.

While perusing the Men’s Health site after reading the online dating article (below), I stumbled upon this quick marriage quiz, based on John Gottman’s seven principles of making marriage work. (I’m linking to the Gottman site in case the MH link changes.)

At first glance, I like it and plan to take a closer look at it… and maybe see if my wife wants to compare notes. (gulp) Any other takers out there? Let me know.

The June issue of Men’s Health has an article titled Looking to Click: Online dating isn’t just for freaks and geeks anymore. Our guy met dozens of attractive, fun women–and you can, too. If you’re in the hunt, it seems like a good how-to guide. I say “it seems” because I’m not in the hunt and I can’t exactly experiment with the author’s advice — it would be unethical, plus my wife reads this blog.

But I know several people (men and women) who’ve recently landed in longterm relationships via online dating, so it makes sense to learn how to do it right. As the author says, “Given that most men shoot themselves in the foot when approaching women online, your odds can be quite good.”

(FYI, the link to the article above is not likely to be accurate for long — they rotate articles on their sex index page and don’t have a perma-link to the article, which starts on p. 122 of the magazine.)

If you’ve spent any time at all watching or listening to war briefings by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, you’ll appreciate his Sex Tips in the June issue of Esquire.

Dear Secretary Rumsfeld: My wife and I are happily married, but the spark seems to have gone out of our sex life. How can we spice it up? —Harry Blumenthal, Bakersfield, California. Secretary Rumsfeld: There’s no great mystery here, Harry. It can’t be that hard to understand. You get in there, you do your job, you develop an exit strategy, and you get the heck out of there. That’s the way sex works. Why does everything have to be so difficult?

Pathetically funny is Hugh Hefner’s What I’ve Learned. Some inanities:

I have slept with thousands of women, and they all still like me. | I wake up every day and go to bed every night knowing I’m the luckiest guy on the fucking planet. | The best part of any relationship is the beginning.

You’ve learned nothing about fatherhood, Hef? Civic involvement? Spirituality?

I still have my son’s fancy camera from my weekend of taking photos at the World Round site in Duluth. Last night as the sun was going down, bathing the city in a golden glow, I decided to take some photos of my favorite pub, the Contented Cow, and my favorite coffeehouse, the Goodbye Blue Monday. I then headed over to the Arb to snap a few pics of the budding leaves and grasses. A hot air balloon drifted into view, about ready to land, and I managed to catch some deer scampering nearby.

I barely know what I’m doing with a camera — I considered it a major accomplishment for me to avoid my own shadow — but the freedom of digital photography is a hoot and I went on a binge. I’m following Doc’s thread on buying a digital camera, but I’ve got a tax bill to pay first.

Hats, shirts, mugs and Uncategorized other fine items are now available in CafePress.com’s Real Joe store. Prices are a buck or two over cost. There’s a separate store (hidden, natch) for paying subscribers, with all items at cost.

I’ve created a Merchandise page with a link in the nav bar.

I spent much of the weekend in Duluth, taking photos of the preparations for the US round of the World Championship series in Observed Trials, and then getting them up on the web site asap. It was good to have a weekend totally focused on something else: ripping around on the loop trail on my trusty old ‘88 Beta, tackling a few rock obstacles, and hanging out with the work crew — just what I needed to rejuvenate a bit. And it’s quite a trip to be getting emails from lads across the pond, offering their kudos on the website and photos.

Doc Searls noted my jaunt and the Hummel quote. This weekend was an example of a non-urgent, yet important task on my to-do list.

I’m heading to Duluth today. Our observed trials motorcycle club, the UMTA, is one of the clubs putting on the USA Round of the World Championships in two more weeks. I’ve done the website and I want to take some photos of the sections to help promote the event.

I also need some time away from writing, working, and the computer… it might be part of the slump I’m in that I noted yesterday.

An insightful glimpse into the world of Mike Tyson, by fellow Northfielder Gordon Morino, in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine. There’s another side to Tyson that’s not seen by the press. It took an ex-boxer philosophy professor to both see the pattern that was preventing it, and to coax it out. Who woulda thunk: a bear hug and a love of homing pigeons.

It became clear to me that Tyson is an intelligent and complex individual who, on the one hand, is terribly wounded by his public image as a golem and yet, on the other, cannot restrain himself from acting the part. He seems almost compelled to make the offensive remarks — e.g., ”I want to eat your kids” to Lennox Lewis — that provoke the very reaction that troubles him. The press is all too willing to play an antagonist’s role in this ugly drama. At one point in our conversation, I mustered the nerve to suggest to Tyson that many of his remarks were disingenuously self-degrading. Tyson sheepishly agreed but then told me what he tells himself all the time, namely, that he needs to act like a bone-crazy thug in order to sell tickets.