Another One on the Way

She told me there's another one
unexpected but it still comes
and the rise might end but the cry won't
I'm sorry for you, I'm happy for you.

Hitch a ride to somewhere far away
come back again another day
Put your nose in the tough-life trough
smoke a long one, release a cough
I'll be here twisting poses
in this desert I'll be Moses
part the sea for myself and see myself
happy for once for now and yourself?

We're all alone to start with, only life
and we're all alone to end, only breath
so fill the middle with the way or someone elses;
choose for yourself and relish choices.

Holiday Discrimination

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hol·i·day n.

A day free from work that one may spend at leisure, especially a day on which custom or the law dictates a halting of general business activity to commemorate or celebrate a particular event.

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Read the definition above and riddle me this: why do we choose to only celebrate certain holidays? I, for one, celebrated Passover AND Easter this year. I celebrated Channukah and Christmas last year and for the past 23 years. I even celebrated Good Friday. Hell, it's called Good Friday! Have you ever had a lousy Friday? Rarely. But when you do, don't you yearn for the day when you have a really GOOD Friday? To make it Good you know what I did? I didn't go to work because my office was closed. It didn't require smearing ash on my head, putting my physical body in a church or eating special food. It simply required having a smile on my face.

Hell, every day should be Good Day.

But I digress. Why should religion dictate which holiday we can and can not celebrate? Why not use them all to our advantage? It's my belief that God/Master of the Universe/Great Spirit in the Sky is all about relaxation. The spirit invented that extra day just for chillin' out didn't it?

I'll keep this post brief because the point is really quite simple and clear: the next time you get a chance to celebrate life do it. If it happens to be on your calendar marked in ALL CAPS and named after an historical event, famous figure or seasonal occurrence then, please, for the good of the universe, take some time out and send your appreciation into the great energy source of being. We'll all be better off for it and you don't even need to put in for a formal leave of absence from your life to participate.

A Chicken on Every Desktop

It was sometime in the afternoon of April 18th that I installed a new widget on my desktop. For those who aren't quite as 'geeked' out as me, a widget is a small utility that runs on the desktop level of a computer system that performs a function. Examples are a notepad, a world-clock, an controller for iTunes or a battery drain check for a laptop.

I chose to install a chicken.

Amazingly, in my testing over the past 24-hr period I find that I've experienced the following widget usage patterns (keep in mind that I'm on the computer about 85% of my workday):

• Wi-Fi signal check: 0 times
  
• CPU usage checker: 2 times
  
• Battery checkers: 0 times
  
• Weather for 92653: 1 time
  
• Clock to check time in London: 3 times
  
• Clucking Chicken: 6 times
  

Why does one resort to putting a chicken on ones desktop and using it as a form of sick entertainment? If you have to ask, you've never seen a tiger pacing in a small metal cage in a zoo. If you have to ask, you have an outdoor job that lets you see the sun. If you have to ask...

Ironically, when I downloaded the chicken I already had a picture from the Nature Conservancy website of the Oklahoma Tallgrass Prarie Reserve. The chicken looks like the photo at the top of this article. Actually, that's him.

If you understand where I'm coming from, or better yet if you don't, then a glance at the results I've gotten from the chicken's suggestions to my more complex issues at work is in order:

Q: What should I put on iTunes?
Chicken: Tweet tweet tweet

Q: Should I keep working on this business continuity document for my employer or would it be more prudent to check my Yahoo mail?
Chicken: Tweet tweet tweet

Q: Why does Bill Withers make me feel inadequate?
Chicken: Bak bak bak!

Q: Chicken, should I just take some time out to write a blog entry?
Chicken: Tweet tweet tweet

Q: Why am I talking to a virtual chicken on a 78 degree sunny day?
Chicken: Tweet tweet tweet

Q: Only chicks say tweet tweet. Shouldn't you be clucking?
Chicken: Tweet tweet tweet

Q: I believe the meaning of life is love. What do you think?
Chicken: Bak bak bak!

Q: How do I get our eCommerce package to cache it's image content without conflicting with our CMS system's DLL plug-in for IIS 6.0 now that I've created a new Application Pool for each system and the caching still fails?
Chicken: Bak bak bak!

As you can see, the chicken is providing a great deal more to my productivity at work than any other widget could do. For that matter, I believe the chicken might be providing more to my overall life-sustaining happiness then most of my fellow employees (and that's a bold statement because I really enjoy a majority of my co-workers).

So next time you're thinking about doing something silly like asking an Magic 8-Ball what to do with your life or filling the gap in your work-day with something silly like actual real-time communication, think chicken.