Laziness

I believe that every individual has the capability to be a hard worker. Laziness is not physiological, it's just a mental affliction. If we all had our own personal therapists, laziness wouldn't exist (although I might be giving therapists too much credit). It's an issue of willpower and whether we have enough of it to overcome our cultural need to do nothing.

Laziness can't be inherent. If we are to believe Darwin, laziness would get you killed. Laziness is a byproduct of modern technology, a once luxury now turned into everyday commodity.

If anything good has come out of laziness, it's the idea of working smarter--not harder.

People have a limited amount of energy each day that they could direct towards thinking or doing. I wouldn't call it an efficient use of resources if you make a guy do a single repetitive task for an entire day. If one engineer thought about it hard enough and built a machine to do the task for him, bravo. He's too lazy to do it himself, but smart enough to build a machine to do it for him. That's efficiency.

That's all I'm really talking about. Doing more with less. Let's not get ourselves bloated with filler and nonsense just because we could afford to. Not all problems can be solved with hard work. Sometimes, the hardest thing to do, is to actually think about it.

Sandpaper

What is the point of sanding? To smooth out the rough edges or to discard layers? If it's the former, sanding is a piece of cake; if it's the latter, sanding is a tedious repetitive task with no end in sight.

Sandpaper is quite an interesting tool. It's not as rough as you'd expect when you put it against your skin (although I would advise against rubbing), but if you wipe it against wood, you can see minute particles being shaved off before your eyes. If you rub it vigorously, you can reach the inner layers of the wood. It's amazing how one piece of paper can turn the moon into a smooth baby's bottom.

Surely there's a sandpaper equivalent for every problem in life?

Captain America: The First Avenger

Captain America is a decent movie.

That's my one-sentence review. Sure I can elucidate as to why its decent, but most people just want a recommendation of "see" or "not see." My recommendation is "sorta see."

The movie is character driven, and we see how the weak Steve Rogers becomes the awesome Captain America. Most of the actors do their job appropriately. Chris Evans sells his character, awkward around women, but awesome around Nazis (by virtue of punching them in the face). Hayley Atwell is surprisingly competent as Peggy Carter and Tommy Lee Jones does a solid job. My only complaint is Hugo Weaving's unsteady German accent as the Red Skull.

As far as superhero movies go, Captain America errs on the side of grounded. Despite being a supersoldier, Captain America doesn't engage in the special-effects laden hijinks of his modern buddies such as Thor or Ironman. The movie does have an old-school feel where punches are more effective than laser beams (though there's no shortage of that either).

A mix of old school, high tech, and heart, Captain America is a send up of superheroes from the golden age. If you're a fan of superheroes in general, watch it.

Reaching

I have two types of friends. I have the reachers and the reached. People don't have infinite attention spans, so we're forced to focus on a few people. Even though there are persons with hundreds upon hundreds of "friends," realistically, they only deal with ten at most on an intimate level -- or even fewer.

That said, when it comes to setting things up, certain friends have certain contact preferences. The majority of my friends are reached, because they're lazy or self-entitled. How great would it be to just relax and let others ring me up all day long? By default, I have to be a reacher. The only way to get anything done these days is to reach out to others. Somebody has to get the ball rolling.

Backdating

I had the opportunity to post this yesterday but I consciously held back as to demonstrate the wonders of the internet. As it is, I actually did post this yesterday, but you would've never known. Unless you're an internet sleuth of the highest order, there is no way for you to actually know that this is backdated.

I could very well go back into last year and fill out all the empty dates if I wanted to, but there's really no point in doing that. While this is a chance to show off one of the neat features of the internet to be both past, present, and future, there's also another reason I held back. My workspace is infected with flies, and at night, these particular flies are vicious. These insect bites leads to furious inflammation and itchiness. This nonsense actually prevented me from running last week, simply because the discomfort would've been too much to bear. It also means that I'm restricted to operating during the day or morning. Night work is off-limits lest I suffer from another bout of scratching ankles.

F the flies.

Deadlines

I typically queue up my blog posts one day in advance. When I miss it, boy do I miss it. I've been batting 100% so far and haven't missed a single day. Will I start missing out on my daily routine? As evidenced by this post, no, I won't. However, it's hard to come up with material on the spot. Can you imagine trying to come up with something to write about every day? It's funny how at one point, there's not enough time to talk about everything you want, and then the next point, you got absolutely nothing.

The thing about a routine is that the more you do it, the more automatic it becomes. Practice doesn't make perfect, but it makes things a helluva lot easier. It also helps that I've let go of my obsession with substantive posts. I used to think that if you're going to post something, it had to be meaty with a lot of substance. I'm past that. Today's reading demands quick-to-the-point concision. It's better to throw a haymaker than a ton of jabs.

Journalistic Secret Sauce

I can never understand the public's fascination with celebrity progeny. Why would anyone want to see pictures of somebody else's kids? The stories that garner the most traffic are ones that deal with completely trivial issues like Hollywood. I do seem to remember something about a looming crisis about raising the government's debt ceiling, but the front page is telling me to be more concerned about how great this A-lister looks on the red carpet. We wonder why paparazzi's are so vicious when we eat their shit like flies on a hot summer day at the park.

We're just drawn to people. We want to know about others because people are a source of infinite engagement. But do we really need to feed on a steady diet of celebrity gossip? That's why Facebook is so popular. It takes celebrity gossip down to our level. We can entertain ourselves with never-ending news updates from our "friends."

How do you get people to care? What's the secret sauce?

Write about what they know.