RKNet Blog... Thing

In the very broad strokes that I have always heard, the Christian calendar period referred to as Lent is about giving up things that are bad for you, to spiritually improve yourself by ditching nasty habits, etc. A laudable goal, but for those of us who aren’t Christian, it seems redundant in the light of New Year’s Resolutions, because there simply isn’t the church-based motivations to make it worthwhile.

Thankfully, someone has come up with an alternative: Discardia.
Discardia sounds delightfully like Discordia, and feels as though it has roots there, though it is unclear from the text on the matter whether it is indeed truly Discordian in nature. Either way, it is non-denominational and is strictly for personal growth, rather than personal growth for the sake of a religious precedent.

The premise behind Discardia is very simple.

Discardia is celebrated by getting rid of stuff and ideas you no longer need. It’s about letting go, abdicating from obligation and guilt, being true to the self you are now. Discardia is the time to get rid of things that no longer add value to your life, shed bad habits, let go of emotional baggage and generally lighten your load.

As a person who has a hard time letting go of tchotchkes and knick-knacks and guilt and obligation, this is precisely the kind of regular ritual I could really get behind. It happens multiple times a year, unlike traditional religious cleansing periods, which typically only occur during one day or period of time each year. The founders of this concept were kind enough to provide a calendar by which to prepare yourself.

This provides an opportunity for more than just a “spring cleaning” or a singular religious internal cleansing. It is a chance to inject some much needed clarity into a cluttered, hectic life at multiple times during the year. It’s really like an ultimate lifehack holiday.

Today is the first day of Discardia for this portion of the year. As the moon wanes to the position of new, and as spring draws ever closer, you can shake the stagnant air from your home, the pine needles from your rugs, the catalogues from your bathrooms, and take a nice deep breath.

Now go read some James Joyce and get drunk!

Then after you’re drunk, read some of the dirty letters he wrote to his lady. Ooh la la!

This message inspired by: Shelfari and the urge to get drunk.

Simple links that summarize my feelings for this particular pseudo holiday that inspires more jealousy, depression, and ill-will than possibly even Christmas!

• Wordlab - $122.98 Says I Love You In which the spending habits of the besotted and pussywhipped are discussed.
• Ectomo - Lupercalia: Happy Fucking Valentine’s Day In which the dubious history of the holiday’s Christian/pagan associations is discussed.
• The Sherman Foundation - New Word Order: Honey Trapper In which the definition of a newer phrase says a lot about modern relationships.

Enjoy tomorrow’s discount candy!

Poking about as I am wont to do, I discovered this Flickr account chock full of vintage Valentine’s Day cards. User Valart2008 has procured (at the time of this writing) 58 vintage card designs from the good old days. You know, when children were all extraordinarily hydrocepalic and wore thicker eyeliner and more rouge than a room full of goths.

I believe I’ve also found the culprit behind the shortening of the word “you” into the letter “u”. It all started back in the 50’s, with a little girl and a lamb.

Enjoy!

I went in to reproduce the first wallpaper in a more common format and went and made a different one entirely. Luckily for you this one is in 1024×768, which is much more common than the previous one which I have yet to doctor into something more practical.

For this I found myself inspired by the age-old saying: “Love means never having to say you’re sorry” - which is a load of crap, but somehow charmingly sentimental. Ah well. Enjoy the fruits of my blood, sweat, and tears you freeloaders… er, I mean, enjoy the wallpaper. Don’t forget to re-visit this and the previous post for more sizes of each. Card friendly PDF versions for easier printing will be generated on-demand.

Let it never be said that I throw complete disfavor upon arbitrary, stupid holidays based around the martyrdom of one of three possible guys in order to overwrite pagan tradition. Far from it, any excuse to get more color in my dreary winter, and of course free candy, is a good excuse.

That said I have prepared a lovely little something to give to the one you’d like to get all cuddly-wuddly with for this (contrived, commercialised) Valentine’s Day. It works well as a wallpaper for 1600×1200 displays. I may edit this later to include other, more common screen sizes, so be on the lookout.

Please enjoy! The majority of this was constructed using photoshop brushes located over at brusheezy. They’re absolutely wonderful and I highly recommend checking them out at your next earliest convenience.

So I was having a pretty good day today. Surprisingly good in fact, all things considered. When WHEB had to go and ruin it for me. Again.

This time, it wasn’t the overabundance of sloppy-joe instigating Herpes-Crisps (Godsmack), nor was it a double shot of Nickleback. No, this was something even more asinine. Today, the dj’s announced that, according to world-renowned psychologist Cliff Arnall, Monday, January 21, 2008 is “the most gloomiest day” of the year. Depressing nature of the retarded phrasing aside; none of these conclusions are all too revelatory, and… thanks for reminding me, Asshat.

Here’s what Arnall, an expert in the study of depression concluded, based on some mathematical formula that we’re not privy to.

This time of year produces six [how about 200] factors which lead to feelings of gloom and doom, and all of them converge today [as the cosmos align and Pluto weeps?] to “leave us at our most miserable.” The factors are as follows.

• Christmas Debt (Ok, Sure)
• A Feeling of Monotony after Christmas Cheer has Faded (Christmas Cheer?)
• Broken New Years Resolutions (I hope you knew better than to make any)
• Low Levels of Motivation (Um… This is a Temporary Thing?)
• A Desperate Feeling That You Need to Act to Improve Your Life (Always)

He goes on to offer a couple of insights as to how to combat “Blue Monday.”
1. Stop Whining. It is boring and you are boring. (I feel better already!)
2. Focus on the good things you do have in your life. If one of your limbs does not work, focus on the three that do. (Haha, Cripple.)

Enjoy the rest of your shitty day. But, chin up. Tomorrow the debt/motivation/goal-oriented fairy is due to swoop in and save the day.

I’ve been meaning to get to slapping my holiday list up here - not so much in the hopes of getting the gifts that are on my list - so I can do some slobberingly glorifying reviews of some of my favorite things.

The first thing worth noting is this great article on the MAKE blog about DIY gifts. You’d figure that anything do-it-yourself would run on the cheap side, and for some of the items I suppose it is technically cheaper, but some of these projects are for those with cash to spare.

Nevertheless, nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from the… workbench. Okay that’s lame. How about: Give the gifts that keep on geeking? Uhmm… Right, well, the overall gist here is that you can make all kinds of technologically inclined do-hickies for all the open source loving, raw part digging, LED enthusiasts in your life. It will cost you between $10 (for the LED menorah) and upwards of $3,000 (for a hardcore 3d printer).

Just think, for younger people on your list, you could get one of the kits and build it together. For the musically inclined nerd on your list, you could build the Daisy Open-source MP3 Player and build a sweet ass steampunk case for it out of an Altoids tin or a Weighted Companion Cube or something.

Any way you look, fun times to be had by all.

So today has been re-affirmed as “Loyalty Day” by our current Commander in Chief. Well… okay, fine, whatever. It’s not as though we don’t already have a number of patriotic-themed holidays that we thoroughly ignore despite these types of reminders. What’s one more?

The whole thing smacks of Orwellian doublespeak, to be sure, but any propganda is bound to display the characteristics of its nature, afterall.

That aside, I think it is a good idea to keep in mind the history on which this country was founded and maintained; that habit, in addition to tracking the most recent ways the nation is being run, should provide us with more ways to keep the BS down to a bare minimum. Granted, “A bare minimum” will undoubtedly still be a very large amount, but that is the issue with democracy in the first place: it requires many people to get together in the attempt to reach an agreement on which policies will work out the best for the most people at once. But I digress.
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I’ve heard of at least a few people who are finding themselves more and more depressed lately. There are times where I’m tempted to lump myself in with that group as well, although for the most part I’m doing my damnedest to keep a relatively positive disposition despite mounting fears about my irresponsibility catching up to me.

As it turns out, I and my compatriots are far from the only ones who feel this way. Via The Sherman Foundation, I found an article at Ananova entitled Blue Monday. It addresses the phenomena of winter blues, particularly that post-Christmas slump a lot of people seem to fall into.

Just a short blurb of an article, but it cites a few villans of positivity that tend to crop up right around now:

• bad weather - That one is a big 10-4. Winter finally showed up around here, and I have to say the cold snap and the nearly snapping my neck walking to work on ice doesn’t do much for MY mood.
• mounting debt - You bet your arse this one’s creeping up with increasing urgency for yours truly here. My holidays were at least somewhat expensive, and without a “nest egg” to speak of, making rent is stressful as hell.
• failed resolutions - I didn’t have any specific “New Year’s Resolutions” but I was definitely poised for reform of my habits until all the ice hit. It seems sort of obscene to drive to the gym, drive home, then walk to work… when the gym is in the same building as my office. If they hadn’t taken away my parking space, it wouldn’t be an issue. I was feeling a little more positive about the whole thing before the prospect of walking to work became a dangerous one.

So yeah, I can see what they’re getting at with that.

The solution proposed in the article is “volunteer”. Well, that’s nice and all, but that won’t shore up the hole in my bank account, now will it? I’m all for doing for others, but dammit, you have to do for yourself first. If you can’t help yourself, what business do you have helping others?

Still, I have to look at all this from a positive persective. Being broke is encouraging me to start cooking again. It’s going to get me to follow through on setting some things straight. It’s going to motivate the hell out of me. Hopefully I can take all this negative propulsion and adjust it, setting a trajectory that will slingshot me back to home using the moon’s gravitational pull. Or something.