Scott Stilson

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What is microblogging for?

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Is style a virtue? If so, how?

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Scott: Hey, no pointing. It makes me nervous.
Sullivan: I wasn’t pointing. I was air-rubbing your teeth.

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Ever take a grief nap? I sure have.

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Carla: There’s a book I wanna read.
Éa: Me, too. But I finished it.

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I am acquisitive. I am sorry, Lord.

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Take your time, Scott. Just the next right thing.

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It’s making more sense to me today, which is convenient as Thanksgiving approaches: We give thanks for spiritual gifts and the fruit of the Spirit, as well as miracles, yes, when we have identified them. Beyond that, are thanksgiving is general, as sure, we cannot thank God directly for putting food on our table, it being seed suppliers, farmers, distributors, and markets, along with our own trade with our employers of our labor for money, that have put the food on our table. But all of that is part of a system, a system we call Creation, in which such things are possible and indeed, such things bring pleasure. Since we are addressing the Creator of this Creation, it is right and good to give thanks! It is the kind of thanksgiving that results in the delight of the Giver because He is able to observe the joy and peace that His creation has engendered in other creatures.

Finally!

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I woke up ready to sleep ✏️ 🎤 🎵

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Don’t complain. There is no such thing as suffering. Only refusal to accept things the way they are. By the way, Buddhists have defeated the problem of evil. I just need to find a way to cogently combine it with Christianity.

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Reading Jeremiah 7 helps me make sense of Jesus’ saying that He speaks in parables expressly to obfuscate the truth for some of His hearers. If my children have been acting up for so long that I’m about to punish them, I will stop giving them instructions meant for their nourishment for the time leading up to their punishment lest they get the idea that they can just always push me to the edge but I’ll always relent immediately upon their tidying up their act. If I never delivered a punishment, we have impunity, and impunity is bad.

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I just read in Jeremiah that God accused Judah of chasing after hevel (“mere breath”) and thus becoming hevel—just like Ecclesiastes! Anything you chase after, you become.

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Anagrams of Stilson Sauder

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My marginalia—or at least, a bunch of quotes—from The Emotional Lives of Teenagers: Raising Connected, Capable, and Compassionate Adolescents (2023) by Lisa Damour

Pretty much everything written in this book about adolescents could be written about any of us (except the course of development stuff and the added intensity and volatility it brings).

I take it that it is normal for an adolescent to behave for a considerable length of time in an inconsistent and unpredictable manner; to fight his impulses and to accept them… to love his parents and to hate them … to revolt against them and be dependent on them … to be more idealistic, artistic, generous, and unselfish than he will ever be again, but also the opposite: self-centered, egoistic, calculating. Such fluctuations between extreme opposites would be deemed highly abnormal at any other time of life. At this time they signify no more than that an adult structure of personality takes a long time to emerge.

Anna Freud is quoted as saying the above in 1958 in the front matters. It is good to keep in mind.

Perhaps most important, this book will ditch the dangerous view that...

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We measure distance more frequently in units of time than in units of length. Why? What does that say about our culture?

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Give and receive. Don’t take.

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“Love is never any better than the lover.”

— Toni Morrison

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It’s just like humanity to take the spoils of victory and turn them into an idol (Judges 8:22-28).

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Even in his biggest triumph, Gideon is deflecting the glory (Judges 8:1-3).

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“As for you, you shall not seal a covenant with the inhabitants of this land—their altars you shall smash” (Judges 2:2, RA).

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Sullivan said yesterday that every conversation with me feels like an argument. That’s the sort of comment that prompts change in me, I hope!

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the third of three poems submitted to the bad poetry competition in celebration of Matthew’s 42nd birthday:

After a party one weekend in Wheaton

(optionally sung to the tune of “My Favorite Things”)

Come help me clean up the saag and the red dal
Green bits of mucus and loogies in highballs
Moist wet congealments of fatbergs and thongs
Bet it’ll take you forever with tongs!

When the turd falls
When the pus dries
Need a napkin bad
I simply wrap towelettes around all the mess
And then I have made a fad!

Round ground pork meatballs
And six chocolate hair wads
Leftover skin tags from yours and my dadbods
Brown chunks of something I don’t recognize
Rub it all out with the sweat of my thighs!

When the squits land
When the bowels void
Too much egg yolk through
I simply wipe hankies with ointment galore
And try not slip on poo!

But if we get soiled and covered in feces
Looking like accidents involving Reese’s
Something you pull from a festering clog
We can still use it as stuff for our vlog...

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the second of three poems submitted to the bad poetry competition in celebration of Matthew’s 42nd birthday:

Thoughts on Toejam

Pustule grease between my toes
Oh-so-moist, and in it goes
Sucked down my gullet, slurp yum-yum-yum
How it’ll smell when it wants out my bum!

Will I need tongs or strong vacuum birth?
How to squeeze out such congealy girth?
Will it right squish? Will it ka-slop?
Or will it be hard like the stuff in wood shop?

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the first of three poems submitted to the bad poetry competition in celebration of Matthew’s 42nd birthday:

Shet

I’d yet get debt to bet that
if you let sweat wet your tête at
Brett’s jet set vet fête,
I fret they’ll never let you and your pet back into the Met.
That’s a threat.

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Latitude, longitude, aye, aye, aye
If your don’t change your attitude, it’s bye, bye, bye