Angry comes easy. It’s calm confidence which requires effort.
Frustration is common and it’s frustration we find at the root of anger. An irate person doesn’t know how to voice their desires. They don’t have control of something so their frustration bubbles up as a red-flushed face, pinched brow, clenched fists, clenched teeth, clenched buttocks, and shouted words. The more meaningless the words, the more deep the frustration. A confident person has no need to curse. Vocabulary decay happens when a person has lack of control.
A few routine items can cause immediate frustration. Everyday things like a commute, a meal, or a relationship are often where the loss of control begins. People often don’t know how to talk about their concerns.
Rare is the driver who says, “Okay, so you needed this lane. I wish you would have occupied the immense space behind me instead of the limited inches in front.”
Usually it’s a bit more like, “Are you #*@^ing blind!” accompanied by a sustained horn.
Frustration. Lack of control.
Why do we get frustrated? How do we arrive there? Did we even really need to arrive there? Or were we already there? Are we all just numbskulls ready to burst at the slightest hindrance to our plans?
Because anger comes so easily, I wonder if we’re already there, ready to blow a gasket, pop a fuse, burn up a brain cell. To avoid the frustration, we need to be more adaptable. We need to make plans of action, including how to avoid anger and frustration, instead of only plans of maximum complacence.
So, next question: how do we be adaptable? Adaptable people learn to adjust quickly. They learn to pivot. Pivoting is not necessarily the skill of skipping the end goal due to obstacles. It is more like the skill of going around the obstacles to get at the end goal from a different angle.
Also, adaptability comes from practice. Adaptable people get better at it from shifting the angle of action every chance they get.
Instead of learning to honk the horn longer or to shout louder, the adaptable person learns some choice new words. Words like: “Gort. Klaatu Barada Nikto.” They learn new phrases, such as: “Bring in the logic probe!”
Instead of getting angry about people cutting them off in traffic, they learn to avoid the traffic altogether, like with a car fitted with maximum hydraulics so they can drive OVER the traffic jams. Or a car fitted with a drill so they can pass UNDER the traffic jams. Or they’ll just drive a motorcycle so they can go BETWEEN.
Instead of getting frustrated, the adaptable person gets creative.
It is a good sign that as I was perusing mountain bike trail names all over the western United States, I found more names I would place in the Best column than in the Worst column. As I’ve seen them though, the majority of the total were rather bland and inane.
You get a lot of “Connector” trails. Everywhere you look, there’s a trail named Connector, which is fine only when you realize those are mostly short jaunts from one crazy downhill to another.
It seems like it would be beneficial to everyone if there was a guide on how to name MTB trails. The first thing to remember is to avoid numbers. Mountain bike trails are not city streets. Unlike city streets, which are best laid out in a grid, such as is done in New York City or Salt Lake City. If you’re building a city, lay the streets out in a grid and number them so people have an easier time finding their way around…the city. Mountain bike trails on the other hand are almost never laid out in a grid, and they shouldn’t be. They are trails which often follow the contour of the mountain, aiming at the more enticing features of a mountainside, or just switching back and forth to make a climb easier. These trails are mostly wild (the good ones), not visited by machines, civil engineers, or city planners. These trails need dynamic, memorable names. Which would you remember more, a trail named Ripjaw, or a trail named Trail #657?
Yeah, it would be Ripjaw, right?
Ripjaw, by the way, is a character in the Ben 10 cartoon series. It’s not a trail name that I know about, but it should be.
The next thing to remember is less of a priority, more of a personal preference. It may have some merit, so take it into consideration. There are many names for trails which start or end with a real person’s name. The only time I feel this is trail-name worthy is when it’s a name like Sacajawea, Buzz Aldrin, or Haley Batten. When you get these trails named Mike’s Pass, Dave’s Turnaround, or Tyler’s Connector, it loses savor, and loses meaning. Nobody knows, or really deep down cares about Mike, Dave, or Tyler. Not that they aren’t super cool guys, but their names don’t make any trail memorable.
The last thing I think anyone naming a trail should remember is to name the sketchy trails with memorably sketchy names, and the ordinary trails with ordinary names. It’s honest marketing.
What’s an ordinary name? Look to the common ones first. There are quite a few which sound like the same person traveled around to all the new trails and suggested the same name over and over again. Not likely, but kind of funny, if you think about it. We still have some names which pop up everywhere. Ridgeline, Cougar, and Juniper show up far too often. Portal and Pipeline appear on every mountain. Even Rock Garden, Rock and Roll, and Punk Rock, are used in so many places, they sound less like something you want to ride and more like somewhere you’d easily forget to take pictures. Common, therefore boring.
So, how do you avoid common? Take a look at these names. The ABSOLUTE BEST mountain bike trail names, from the western U.S. are these:
Horsethief Canyon—California (The birthplace of mountian biking as we know it, California, should have some great names, and they do.)
Special Orange—California
Sinuous—California
Graveyard Truck—California
Spahn Ranch—California (Here’s one that could have been named Spohn Ranch after one of the most amazing skateboard icons, Aaron Spohn. Whoever named this trail decided to name it after the Electronic Music outfit. It happens to be more fitting when it’s not about skateboarding.)
Deathhair—Colorado (Though there is perhaps an unhealthy obsession in the mountain bike community with death, trail names like Dead Guy, Dead Man, and Deathwish, don’t catch the attention quite like “Deathhair”. Really, what is that? A trail name that makes you want to visit.)
Hula Girl—Hawaii (So fitting.)
Jeep Eater—Hawaii (Whoa, look out!)
$300 Haircut—Idaho (Now this might seem to violate the first rule, but take a second look. It’s not trail 300. Tell me you wouldn’t remember this name—I won’t believe it.)
5 O’clock Shadow—Idaho
Low Hanging Fruit—Idaho
Tighty Whitey—Idaho
Carcass #3.26—Montana (I thought this one was just another numbered trail, but as I investigated, I couldn’t find a Carcass #1 or Carcass #2, or even a Carcass #4. That’s a bit intriguing.)
Slag Slayer—Montana
Old Chevy Truck—Montana
Puke Hill—Utah (Understandably named because it takes you 475 feet up in one mile. That’s about 145 meters up within 1.6 kilometers.)
Petrified Whales—Utah
Bloviate—Washington State (I want more like this.)
Sasquatch—Washington State
Fiddlehead—Alaska
Pagh—Alaska
Voldin—Alaska
Zasade—Alaska (Are these Russian names?)
And then there’s Arizona, which somehow grew a fascination with beans:
Franks ’n’ Beans—Arizona
Rice ’n’ Beans—Arizona
Bean Butte—Arizona
Bean Boulder—Arizona
Bean Bluff—Arizona
And that concludes the list of all the good-attention-grabbing trail names.
Now for the ones that grossed me out, or otherwise repelled me.
Not that everybody has the same goals for their offspring, but here are a few tips on how to motivate them, from an “expert” father.
For instance, you may want to encourage your child to find work so they can learn life skills, pay their way, and get out of the house sometimes. One way to give any child the right amount of motivation is to promise them if they stay around the house then you’ll be giving a lecture on the origins of babies.
This worked amazingly well for me. My son was planning on hanging around all day to do a whole lot of nothing. When I offered the lecture, he went out and got a job the same day.
Of course I congratulated him. “Good job on getting a job! You’re the most talented 10 year old I know.”
It can be difficult to get the young’uns to do homework. Most of us don’t want to do work when we get home. Home is supposed to be our sanctuary. A peaceful home is one where everyone can do what they want. Since a lot of homework happens online anymore, the tendency is to find a game instead. One possible solution is to hire an online assassin. Then you watch as your child’s character is destroyed.
“So, uh, now that the game is over, and you’re dead, I guess you may as well finish that math assignment.”
Want your child to get out of bed on time? There’s an invention out there which rolls up the covers at the end of the bed. It’s automatic, so it can be set on a timer. At the appropriate hour, the covers all roll up like a window shade. If that isn’t motivation enough, you can set the child’s alarm clock to play YOUR favorite music. They’ll rush to turn it off, no doubt about it. Last, but not least, you can set an alarm and hide it somewhere in the house. Kids love to go on treasure hunts.
Teach your daughter politics by taking her to the grocery store. Show her the produce section, and say, “I can get 17 different types of apples at the grocery store, but there are only two choices for President?! That’s un-American!”
Do you wish your son didn’t watch so much television? Tell him you’re going to get him excited about archery. First you buy the arrows, then the bow, then the targ…no, you don’t need a target. You already have one. Drag that old TV set outside and set it up, ready to shoot.
Recently, I heard someone claim ketchup is really only tomato jam.
If you think that sounds reasonable, then maybe you’d like to chow down on a peanut butter and tomato jam sandwich.
Personally, I’d rather have strawberry, grape, tangerine, any jam other than “tomato jam”.
You see, this whole insane debate started with some unnamed botanist claiming that the “fruit of the vine tomato” is a fruit. That’s an awkward semantic.
Semantically, any product of anything else is a fruit. The fruits of a window wash are clean windows. The fruits of putting a monkey in a room with a word processor are a million ‘blogs. And, yes indeed, the fruits of planting a broccoli seed are broccolis. Or is it broccolae?
By whichever slant you take that definition, the most dedicated vegetable could be considered a fruit.
It might be good to remind ourselves that the definition of a vegetable is: a plant grown for the purpose of cultivating some edible part of the plant.
That’s another extremely loose definition. By at least one of the definitions of fruits and/or vegetables, all fruits are vegetables, and all vegetables are fruit.
Loose definitions are confusing.
Here’s another way to look at fruits and vegetables that is much less confusing: define it how you use it. Utilitarian semantics are probably the way most of us define fruits and vegetables anyway. We say, “Yes I would like an onion on my hamburger. Put it right next to the tomato.” Like things go together. It’s a utilitarian view.
Or perhaps you’re mixing up a batch of home-grown and home-made salsa. The basic recipe is going to include tomato, onion, and jalapeño, in measured amounts. These three items go together in a beautiful blend of utilitarianism. We use vegetables with vegetables.
Most people aren’t going to say, “By golly, wouldn’t it be great to have some salsa flavored Jello?” Likewise, not many people are kooky enough to say, “Let’s make jam out of this cabbage.” Why? Because we want the vegetables to not be sweetened unnecessarily, or the fruits to be all salty or spicy. It’s all in how we use them and how we want them served.
There are places a tomato should not go. A chopped-up tomato should never, ever be at the bottom of yogurt, waiting to be stirred in. Tomato slices should not be found on top of a birthday cake. Tomato on a potato? Sure. But tomato on top of a pancake with whipped cream? No way.
Not that the Campbell Soup Company is the last and final authority, but they’ve been doing things right for long enough to have amassed the experience points. Take their V8 blend for one example. Yes, there are tomatoes in the V8, along with 7 other vegetables, hence the V in the name. Or for one more fine example, in Campbell Tomato Soup, there are no fruit ingredients, no pear puree or apple juice, only tomato and tomato products.
So let’s all continue to agree and call for fruits when we want to eat a fruit, and call them vegetables when we want to eat vegetables.
Headphones were invented in 1910 by a man named Nathaniel Baldwin. The reason he invented them was because he couldn’t hear the talks in a General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
Like any inventor, he made a number of varieties before he started to develop a durable, working product. His earliest prototypes, which he sent off to a wide selection of potential buyers, were quite obviously home-made. Some of the people who didn’t buy his product were those who couldn’t look past the low quality of the originals.
His first most steady buyer didn’t need to see quality, they were more interested in what they could do with Nathaniel Baldwin’s invention. He sold his invention to the U.S. Navy with exceptional reviews. However, they wanted more than he could produce right away. He had to build a factory to make more headphones. That factory is still standing—a building known as the Baldwin Radio Factory—which is still utilized and maintained well in Millcreek, Utah.
Baldwin hired people and started producing massive amounts of headphones for the military and anyone else who would buy them. These durable headphones sold for 12$ back then, about 175$ in today’s money. Because of the high price and the high demand, it wasn’t long before Nathaniel Baldwin was a millionaire. Sadly, he was not as talented at managing money as he was at inventing. He eventually lost his fortune.
Users of his product gave high praise, and they gave his headphones a nickname. Because the headphones were called Baldwins, people called them “Baldies”.
The technology has been around for over 100 years, and the amazing invention of headphones has gone through uncountable mutations. Any good evolution needs mutations. The humble headphone set has definitely changed every which way imaginable.
I’m personally in debt to Nathaniel Baldwin for the invention of headphones. Without them, I would have gone insane through math classes, English classes, long flights, and many other times when music was needed. Of course, headphones are good for more than music. There are people these days who don’t know how to answer a call without a headphone in at least one of their ears.
If you’re one of those people, thank Nathaniel Baldwin.
Xenosthesia.com 