Scott Stilson

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🎧 đŸŽ” I’m glad I kept my CD copy of Superchic[k]’s Karaoke Superstars. Cute, catchy, honest, lightly theistic punk-pop whose lead vocalist was clearly in her early twenties when she wrote it but was nevertheless equipped with the kind of wisdom that twenty-somethings need.

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In conversation with a friend last night, we developed a fourfold list of precepts that, if held together (in partial tension, for sure), will lead to a happy life:

  1. Give thanks in all circumstances.
  2. Do what you’re doing. Don’t worry about the rest.
  3. Follow the impulses of your eyes and the desires of your heart, yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things.
  4. It’s a fact that you will not accomplish and experience all the things you want to before you die.
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The ideal birthday communication is neither the tired greeting card not the awkward phone call. The first is unremarkable; the second requires too much of the recipient. Instead, it’s a heartfelt voice message sent via text. 🎉

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Circumvent Google’s default search results page—including its new, unwelcome AI results—and return to a simple list of blue links. đŸ’»

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Saying “thank you for your patience” before the speaker knows his listener will give it is presumptuous. Better to say “I’m sorry.”

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I stand with carbohydrates. 🍞

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🎧 đŸŽ” I happened across a CD copy of local bluegrass stalwarts Tussey Mountain Moonshiners’ 2016 album SHINE last year at the AAUW used book sale. It cost me a dollar. It’s (more than) good enough to make me feel as if I have stolen from them.

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Hypothetical future album title: Self-Preservation for the Sake of Others

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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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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 tĂȘte at
Brett’s jet set vet fĂȘte,
I fret they’ll never let you and your pet back into the Met.
That’s a threat.