In Chapter Four of the User’s-Guide we look at this important snippit of code and what it means to the FTU. For any Trifler’s who haven’t been keeping up with the user’s guide, the FTU is the Flesh Transport Unit.

If you will be participating in the workshop today, please make sure you have your number 2 pencils. We will be writing code.

Chapter Four

As always, the complete user’s-guide may be accessed from the radio button on the main page of the Trifling Blog.
The Management

Chapter Thuh-rrreeeee

All of the User’s-Guide can be accessed from the convenient radio button on the home page of the Trifling Blog.

The management.

You see, I am one of the tinker-bloggers. We are not serious commercial bloggers who go after the hard hitting stuff of the body politic or pursue the rich and famous like a junk yard dog in search of a femur. We represent a more genteel class of netizen. Our broadcast range is huge, but our readership is small. And that’s the way, uh huh – uh huh, I like it. uh huh – uh huh.

Our glasses pulled down on our nose, we lean into the workbench and get a whiff off the soldering iron. For a tinker-blogger, it’s not so much about “what” we create as it is about “that” we create. So here it is, the second chapter of the User’s Guide. Complete, unexpurgated and unabridged.

Chapter 2 – “mEmail”

There are phrases that make one’s blood run chilly. Not cold exactly, but a little chilly. One of those phrases that is sometimes encountered, is the phrase: “I wrote a book”.

When you hear this from someone you know, this is a PEZ from the Popeye dispenser that is going to taste sour.

It happened to me several years ago. I had a big-life experience, and I pooped out a book.

That is the short-hand, but that is kind of how I remember it. I was deeply embroiled in thinking about thinking and had a 12 step moment of clarity. A book pooped out. I recall distinctly the soft thud it made when it hit the floor. As amusing to read, as it was to excrete.

Something that I have discovered about writing, is that it is a long process. Blogging is cool-as-hell because you can do it in short bursts. But a book is a long term commitment to the commode.

So dear reader, for your amusement and bemusement…may you laugh, hiccough, fart, sneeze and cough all at the same time when you read it. But be careful not to poop. A book might come out.

Chapter One
http://www.donwarrick.com/users-guide/

Lord willin’ and the creek don’t rise, additional chapters will be thoughtfully forthcoming. D

I found it again today. Who’d-a-thunk that the place to dip your bill for a cool drink of human kindness would be the want ads. But it happens.

In a posting that must have been written under the shade of an old apple tree, the requester begs of the prospective job hunter that he/she: “Have a good education, obvious intelligence, and a friendly personality? ” What? You don’t want me to fill out an interactive PDF with all the information that is duplicated in my resume?

And then, dear friend who sits under the apple tree penning quill to parchment, you wrote more…

“Please note that this posting is only for kind, cheerful, secure, problem-free, nice person”. The most interesting notion here, is that you are asking for honesty and candor that I am not accustomed to of late. You want me to give you simple honest and answers, to simple and honest questions. How delightful. How refreshing.

And finally, you caution me to re-read your post and reply if I am “Comfortable”. I don’t know who you are, but I feel an alignment here. It’s as if you are beckoning me back to another age and another time, when it was still OK to ask nicely. Another time when it was OK to read and write and think as a result of both.

And finally you asked the tough question in your post. “Do you enjoy supporting things you believe in like FREEDOM and REASON and TOLERANCE?” This is almost too large a question to answer. Because it demands a level of honesty that matches the rest of your post. You have been honest in your plea, and so the reader has to stop and really ponder this first, and largest requirement. You even told me to be sure. To go back and re-read your post before I respond and apply to you for this position. This is weighty. You are asking me not just for the truth, but you are asking me if I am willing to walk the walk. This is not a question to be answered lightly, without considerable fermentation.

Everyone has a few pivotal reads on their timelines. One of mine was a book called: “Ishmael” by author Daniel Quinn. In this book, a regular guy responds to an add in the newspaper as follows: “Teacher seeks pupil. Must have an earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.” The rest of the book unfolds Daniel Quinn’s cosmology. A fascinating glimpse at social evolution, and a pivotal read for me. And reading this post today on Craig’s list evoked a memory of this ad from Ishmael.

And now, having given it considerable thought, ample meditation and quantum soul-searching; I can say yes. I am ready.

Not that I was a big Sunny and Cher fan, but I woke up this morning with this little snippit of a phrase in my head. And it’s one of those adhesive little buggers that just keeps playing…over….and….over….until you stand at the very door of madness itself. Well, as long as we’re here…

This song brings to mind a different time, when the colors were a little brighter, the songs were more than a little sentimental, and the general zeitgeist of the world seemed to incline you to smile. I remember, I was there. Yea, we still had tremendous turbulence in the world, but we could sense a current of change for the better. Somehow, we felt like gravity didn’t always apply to us.

Here we are 45 years later and we feel heavy. Whatever it was in the music seems only a distant reverie. The tune has been replaced by an eerie gloom. Sunny ain’t so sunny any more. Cher is in her 60′s and we feel like we are sitting in a puddle of our own mud. The mod colors have gone ashen.

But if you listen very carefully you can still hear the faint strophe in the distance, and it’s getting nearer. The beat goes on. And it is beginning to stir in us some serious change. We are tired of the mud, and it’s time to find the garden hose.

The world is trying to right itself. It starts with the way we receive information now. We control the dial, and the on-off switch like never before. The internet gives us choice. For many, we are becoming aware of the choices we make, and that we don’t have to sit in the mud. We are beginning to wake up, wipe the sleep from our eyes, and change our focus, our orientation. We are returning to the light.

For my part, I have found myself gravitating to the good news. I recently became involved with an internet based news program called: SmileTV. Smile TV is the brain child of Sandy Pediflous who posted a conspicuous add on the bulletin board of the local Public Access TV channel. “Tired of the bad news?” the sign read, “Come be a part of SmileTV a fledgling internet news program that only reports the good news”. Well, I responded.

I found myself surrounded by bunches of people who were as tired of the mud as I was. Sandy formed a production crew from the mud (I’m getting some Golem imagery here) composed of working professionals from the industry, all dedicated to capturing the good news. The first segment we shot (still in post-production) was for the MEND organization in the San Fernando Valley. MEND is one of the largest charitable organizations in LA county, and the largest food bank to help feed the hungry. Yes, there are hungry. But the good news is…we can do something about it! For more information about MEND, go to: http://mendpoverty.org/

Sandy’s second shoot was for an organization called: “Ride-On” – another non-profit org. that provides equestrian therapy for people with disabilities. We just spent 2 days watching these people pour their hearts out to kids of all ages. Making life a little better, changing the orbital path of the world, just slightly. http://www.rideon.org/

To tune in to a little bit of the good news, try checking out SmileTV http://smiletvgroup.com/

So, as I sit here, listening to the monotinous patter of raindrops on my desktop (That one’s for you Nos, and Doug and K3) I leave you with the following quote:

“Summing it all up friends, I’d say you do your best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling and gracious”, the best not the worst”.

You may not recognize the language it’s from a rather obscure translation that I happen to dig. The author is the apostle paul. Philippians 4.

Peace in. Don.

I have a theory that if you find something unexpected in your environment, it will draw your attention. There is a lot of neuroscience that supports the idea and even a great deal of research about your peripheral field of vision and how the brain processes the panorama. In fact, its a little like compressing an audio file into an MP3. Your brain constantly processes the visual information, and even fills in the gaps. So, when we are scanning the area around us, when something seems out of place – the mind is forced to notice the new information inserted into the compressed picture. Or, at least that is my working theory.

I have been playing with this theory for a number of years. Most recently on a large scale when I was at the Milburn Stone Theatre in MD. My crab eating readers will remember “The Unexpected Environment” project. I started constructing elements of the plays we were producing in the lobby of the theatre. There was the bedroom from “Death of a Salesman”, the glass greenhouse from “Barefoot in the park. On a very large scale, I tested the phenomenon by inserting very large unexpected objects into a space where they did not belong. The result? Like moths to a bulb on the back porch.

In this iteration, I proved (albeit anecdotally) that encountering something unexpected in your environment, can take your breath away.

In the next stage of the experiment I plan to test the hypothesis from the other end of the telescope.

You, my kind readers (both of you) who read my post yesterday about Regal Publishing know that I am trying surreptitiously to raise awareness about myself. To market myself, without seeming too audacious. To that end, I am continuing to phase 2 of my testing. The drop card.

The drop card was a device that I came up with while at the Dayton Playhouse. I printed hundreds of business size cards I called Mini-Billboards and stuffed the pockets of patrons with the confetti – beseeching them to “Drop” these little nuggets wherever they went, like breadcrumbs. Phase two is a variation on that theme.

Using a single QR code, printed on a white business card I plan to test my theory. The idea is simple. Place something unexpected in the environment, provide a linkage to an action (the QR code) and there will be a natural tendency to follow the path. Well, we’ll see. This is the point at which I wonder if prayer will skew the empirical results.

I hope so.

Don-out for now…

I was really about to make a point and it is this: It’s not OK to use “ok” in your correspondence as a stand-alone sentence. It is in fact, insulting to whomever you are attempting to communicate with. And yes, this is where I wish we had a Dear Abby to scold the offenders and codify this into the rule book of etiquette.

For many of us, in our work-a-day worlds, we have a couple of choices for communicating with our co-workers. We can send them an email, we can drop by their cubical, we can call them on their iphone or Blackberry, or (drumroll please) we can send them an instant message. IM’ing has become such a favored method for communicating in the modern work-a-day world that their are commercial instant messaging applications a’plenty. They sit charmingly on your desktop at work and play a lovely musical chime when someone wants to chat you up. Bllllliiiiiiiinnnnng! There, wasn’t that charming?

Yea. Charming.

Now I realize that the form of communication in the information age is changing. I recognize that we are awash in a world of tweets, but there is a difference. Tweeting is serial communication. It is a composite, in real time of life as it happens in 32 bit segments. I’m OK with that, because no one ever simply tweets “OK”, and leaves it there to stare at you. Not so in the workplace.

Let me give you an example: The other day/week/month I was IM’ing with a colleague and providing a progress update on a project. Back and forth the dialogue went, an even exchange for the most part and an effective and efficient way to conversate (yes, I just used the word conversate he he he) and then it happened. I concluded my half of the conversation with “well, that about sums it up” and then, what glared back at me from the cold little white box in the corporate instant messenger was just two letters. An “O” and a “K”. Could anything be more ineffectual?

Ladies and Gentlemen, “OK” is NOT the worlds shortest stand alone sentence. It is, in truth when used that way terribly insulting to the reader who has just crafted a sentence for you using a subject and a predicate. Perhaps you can manage an: “Alright” or a “Thanks”, but keep your stand alone OK to yourself.

I’m sure there are other bloggers who have written about this poison pill of a pseudo-word both in and out of this context and I suspect my lone voice will die off as you walk down the corridor to your next meeting, but I hope that the message will persist with a few of my faithful readers. Remember to put care into words OK?

I was met several years ago with the same paradox that many churchgoers are. On the one hand, you have the figure of Jesus, not a bad character to emulate. On the other hand you have Paul and the church. I was unable after a while to find common ground. Maybe that was the point. Maybe if it all worked so well, the world would have been a trouble free zone for the past couple thousand years. Maybe, just maybe, Paul was the stone in my shoe. I have been walking around with him, just slightly uncomfortable for 30 years. So, I favor the right foot, what the heck.

A few weeks ago I was thirsty for a drink of God, so I padded over to the place where I thought he might be kept (the internet now-a-days) and sure enough, there he was. http://www.biblegateway.com/ I even signed up for a daily free delivery of God soup and with both anxiousness and anxiety woke the next morning to slake my thirst. And there he was, the same old Paul. Day after day after day….I don’t even have words to express how much I disliked that voice. Until I read this:

Philippians 4
8 -9 Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized. Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.

In the troubling times we live in, we can’t run and hide. We cant find shelter enough or immunity. Pain is all around us, it is in us and on us. Our suffering is the same as Paul’s. We dont have to like it, but we do have to live with the pebble in our shoe.

What is the poultice? Grab on to love. Hold it tight and don’t you dare let go. We’re standing on a tiny blue ball that is spinning out of control and each and every day we have to persevere. We semi-wake from our semi-sleep and we put our semi-uniforms and go to semi-work where we will be rewarded with just enough to keep us locked into the chain of despair. So hold on dear ones. There is only one way out, and that is the way in.

Give yourself up to God. Redemption is just a smile away. Just a touch. Just a hug. It is just reaching out and taking the trunk next to you and with one great tearful eye, knowing that no matter how terribly turbulent this life may seem at times, that love – is there for each of us.

This year, I received a boatload of birthday wishes on Facebook. I smiled like the Cheshire cat all day. One million friends (OK, maybe I exaggerate) held out their trunks to me with a simple smile, a gesture, a touch. I didn’t touch the ground the rest of the day.

So that’s our job. We’re supposed to fill our minds with things that are true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious, beautiful. We’re supposed to praise not curse. That’s all there is. Everything else was just a bad first draft. When the church found Paul’s little plastic waste can – the one right next to his typewriter, they picked up all the crumpled leavings – ironed the pages and published the book. They should have simply gone to the source – The one sheet still proudly clinging to the roller. And so, I present it here for you today.

Have a prosperous, productive and profitable day.

Oh yea, and stay out of the trash.

There I was, in my usual custom seated at my desk, enjoying my morning dash through my google dashboard when I happened upon Happy. I found him inside a widget that I oft enjoy called “Shorpy” a picture repository that aggregates exquisite frozen moments in time. I particularly love the dead people. All of them are of course, because Shorpy pictures all come from the turn of the century. So it’s like looking at your grandma or grandpa when they were unwrinkled. Pretty cool.

And in this wandering in Shorpyland, sometime you will fall upon a singular countenance that will sustain your day. Such is my good fortune on this day. And so dear reader my story comes to a close with only the briefest of postlogues. Here is the face of Happy. All it takes to get Happy, is to be Happy.