Fake Fake Things? Coffee Cup a Concession to Ugly Post-Modern World

This article was originally published by Technorati on 11 February 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Are you kidding me? Has the world fallen in on itself? Something's gone haywire here.

The Daily Grommet has come up with a to go cup . . . that isn't. Called the I'm Not a Paper Cup and produced by Decor Craft, the ladies in a video posted to Shine on Yahoo! are fawning over this double-insulated porcelain replica of something you throw away as if it's just darling.

Mindy McCready Sex Tape and the PR Stunt

This article was first published by Technorati on 11 April 2010. To see all my Technorati articles, click Lifestyle in the Contents listing on the sidebar.

Here we go again. Another CD release, another sex tape faux-scandal publicity campaign. And Fox News has taken the bait with an exclusive story.

Troubled country starlet Mindy McCready is attempting to mount a comeback in conjunction with the release of her first CD in 8 years. The comeback comes on the heels of a well-timed sex tape that happens to have fallen into the hands of a porn production company.

McCready is the former mistress of retired pitcher Roger Clemens. So her sex tape is aptly titled Baseball Mistress--the porn industry has never been subtle with its titles, but this one lacks the humor value of most.

Moving Refrigerators with Marcus Aurelius and Eckhart Tolle

What is evil to thee does not subsist in the ruling principle of another; nor yet in any turning and mutation of thy corporeal covering. Where is it then? It is in that part of thee in which subsists the power of forming opinions about evils. Let this power then not form opinions, and all is well. And if that which is nearest to it, the poor body, is cut, burnt, filled with matter and rottenness, nevertheless let the part which forms opinions about these things be quiet, that is, let it judge that nothing is either bad or good which can happen equally to the bad man and the good. For that which happens equally to him who lives contrary to nature and to him who lives according to nature, is neither according to nature nor contrary to nature.

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book IV No. 39

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There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Shakespeare, Hamlet Act 2, scene 2, 239–251

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In Zen they say: "Don't seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions."

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth, p. 121

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Judge not, lest you be judged.

Jesus, The Holy Bible, Matthew 7: 1

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Whenever one is called upon to move refrigerators for a friend (that isn't us in the picture), it is likely in that mode of awakened doing our good friend Eckhart Tolle calls "Acceptance." The other two are "Enjoyment" and "Enthusiasm" (see Monetize Your Life for a complete discussion.)

"Whatever you cannot enjoy doing," he writes in A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61), "you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly."