“And I encourage you all to go shopping more.” — President George W. Bush in his year-end press conference this morning

“Buy more. Buy more now. Buy. And, be happy.” — OHM, the mechanized prophet of the totalitarian state in THX-1138

Here’s a first: PostSecret is a site I’ve blogged about before, but somehow I forgot all about it, only to rediscover it recently and fall in love with the concept all over again. New secrets are posted (and all old secrets removed) each Sunday. To contribute, all you need is a postcard, a secret, and a stamp.

Shopsin’s has closed. I never got the chance to visit. :(

On mahnamahna.net, an RFP is a Request For Prayer.

I got word this morning that a friend of some dear friends — someone I have hung out with several times, have always gotten along with, and have happy memories of — was in a terrible car accident this past Sunday as he traveled from the Bay Area to a new job and a new life in San Diego. He is hospitalized in an intensive care unit in Bakersfield with two broken legs, and unspecified internal and head injuries that my friends are hoping to learn more about soon. For now, if your spiritual tradition allows, please send thoughts, prayers, and hopeful vibes of lovingkindness out into the universe for the sake of Randy, who needs them right now.

… (among other things) hearing the ‘68 Beetle that you bought with your entire life’s savings when you were not quite sixteen (which you hold onto through the years even as everyone you know insists that you sell it) fire up for the first time in some eighteen months and ROAR in its humble, unique way.

(We all have a roar. It doesn’t matter if others don’t recognize it as such. It is a roar nevertheless. Own your roar.)

Talk about different approaches. Here on the West Coast, we recently had smellerific cookie advertisements removed from San Francisco bus shelters after complaints from folks in the “environmental illness community.” (How ‘bout we just call ‘em scentsitives?)

Meanwhile, in Manhattan, they’re spraying chemicals into the air to make city streets smell more like Christmas. Yeeesh.

This is just a snippet of today’s wonderful Jon Carroll column:

… I was thinking about the masks we all wear when we go to work. The masks correspond to the roles we are asked to play, and also to the ambitions we may have for eventual advancement. For some people, their mask is heavy because there is a chasm between what they do and who they are. They are not actually smiling and subservient, and they do not believe that the customer is always right, and they do not believe that the person above them is by definition more competent than they are, but they pretend. They play the role. If they want a check at the end of the week, they have to play the role.

If you’ve been playing the role for a long time, you are a “professional.” “She’s a real pro,” people will say, meaning: She acts the way I expect her to act, and she knows how to do her job. Being a “real pro” means squelching the urge to scream. Real pros have a lot of revenge fantasies… .