Ramblings

Always say Thank You

May 6, 2012 by Jeff Moriarty Leave a Comment

I work on an event called Ignite Phoenix, in which 18 presenters go on stage to share their passions in 5-minute talks. We fill an 850 seat theater, manage tickets, create tshirts and programs, bring in local bands and food trucks, live-stream it in HD, and have an incredible evening. It takes a core team of about ten volunteers, and an extended team of about another dozen people, months of planning, meetings, fund raising, and coordination to create what I (admittedly biased) think is one of the best grass-roots events in Phoenix.

As things were winding down at Ignite Phoenix last Friday someone came up to me after the show and said “You probably hear this all the time, but that was a great show. Thanks for all your hard work putting it on!”

I replied quite honestly that No, we don’t hear it all the time but we always appreciate it when we do. I had someone else come to me and say she had been coming to our events for nearly two years but only just now got around to saying Hello.

We get a fair amount of kudos and recognition, but a lot of it is online. And when you work on something big you will always get complainers, who even if they are few in number are usually loud and bitchy.

It never fails to make my day to have someone come up to me personally and say Thank You.

Sadly, I’m guilty of not doing this often enough myself. If I have bad service at a restaurant I’ll complain quickly, but how often do I stop and give extra thanks when it is great?

Saying Thank You is a little thing that can mean a lot. Never pass up an opportunity to tell someone you appreciate what they do, even if you think they’ve heard it before.

Zig & the Magic Door: How my dog discovered religion

March 5, 2012 by Jeff Moriarty 6 Comments

We have several dogs, and the smallest of these (by height) goes by the name of Zig. Zig is a Boston Terrier we adopted from a local rescue group, and is 25 pounds of solid attitude, focus, and obstinance.

We keep the dog food for our crazy pack in a large plastic bin in our laundry room, and when we fill it back up we close the door to prevent the pooches from crowding around and drooling. A few weeks back as I was pouring out a new bag of food, Zig sat expectantly on the other side of the door wanting to get in. My wife was out there, chuckling, so I thought I’d have some fun.

I took a few kibbles of food and flicked them under the door out at Zig.

She completely lost her mind.

This was the greatest thing ever in the history of things to happen to this dog. She went bananas chasing the pieces of food as they skittered across our tile. I’d try to get them past her but she was the most motivated goalie in history. We laughed, had fun, and then we forgot about it.

Zig didn’t.

The next morning we saw her sitting on the floor, staring at the bottom of the laundry room door. My wife and I were both right next to her, so we had no idea who she thought was in there that might be sending out food. It didn’t matter, she still waited. No food came out, but that didn’t stop her. Quite the opposite.

She began staring at the bottom of every door in our house, sometimes even if the door was open. She could easily just peek around the door and see nobody was there, but she doesn’t. There is a simple explanation for how food comes out from under that door, but she doesn’t make the connections. Instead, she is sure our doors are magic and randomly spit out food.

Then it occurred to me what was going on – our dog had created her own religion.

Magic Doors

Thousands of years ago when our ancestors looked out at the big, scary world they blamed Gods. From Anu to Osiris to Chaac to Thor to Yahweh to Allah, they came up with magic explanations for things they didn’t understand.

Zig and another Door — Zig and another Magic Door

They would pray and offer sacrifices, and when things went their way they would feel confirmed. When their prayers were unanswered then they assumed the Gods were mysterious or someone just wasn’t faithful enough. But they kept on praying. They kept on staring at their magic door.

The stars were the souls of the dead, crops would fail because the Gods were angry, the Sun went around the Earth, sickness was caused by demons… all things our ancestors believed until they looked behind the magic doors.

They thought the Gods lived in the clouds until we soared past the clouds and landed on the moon.

That’s what science gives us – not all the answers, but an understanding that we need to keep searching and learning. That just praying and hoping won’t change the world. That we can understand what makes things work by studying, by questing, by exploring. That we can always be moving forward.

We hope Zig figures out there is no magic to her door. She would still enjoy the food that comes out when we play the game, but wouldn’t waste her time staring at it the rest of the day hoping for a miracle. Our other dogs understand how the door-game works, so maybe someday she will, too.

Running isn’t just bad for you, it’s bad for all of us

January 12, 2012 by Jeff Moriarty 7 Comments

I started running last year to train for the Warrior Dash. It was fun and provided an excuse to get in some cardio, so I didn’t really think about the bigger implications.

I ran in ignorance.

Today, on a particularly painful run that clearly 85% of my body did not want to be doing, I realized my folly. I listened to my body and it told me that running wasn’t just a bad idea for me, it is a bad idea for all of us.

History of Running

Let’s peer back in time at our ancient ancestors when all of them ran. You had to run to catch your food, run to move to new hunting grounds, run to escape the jerks in the next settlement over when they came to kill you and steal all your woolly mammoth tusks.

Here is the To Do list for pretty much all of our forebears:

1. Invent wheel
2. Learn to ride horses
3. Hook horses to wheels
4. Own faster horse/wheel thing than neighbors

Notice the thread? Job One for our ancestors was to STOP running and find as many ways possible to not have to do it again. What happened once this list got out of committee and got some traction?

Civilization!

Running is bad for the human race

A growing number of people think running is fun. Marathons, half-marathons, triathalons, ultra-marathons, megathons, infinithons, and on and on. Every person who laces up a pair of shoes (or slides into some Vibrams) is turning back the clock to a time before we had perfectly good and safest convertible car seat 2015 and airplanes to get us around. They’re not even running for a good reason. If hungry lions were released behind the runners at a race, at least there would be a sense of neolithic nostalgia about it.

Moving away from the products of our evolution as a species sends a message that we should abandon our modern progress and revert to a dirtier, sweatier, far more dangerous time. We evolved places like McDonald’s and Taco Bell so I don’t have to suit up and go hunt a buffalo every day. We created things like jeans and t-shirts so I can let my deer skinning and tanning skills get really rusty. I love indoor plumbing, the internet, laser beams, and my iPhone.

We can’t let runners take those away from us.

Their time is running out

Next time you see someone running, give them a flier for a nearby classic car insurance quote dealership. If they’re listening to their iPod while they run, squirt it with water. Leap out from behind bushes and bite their legs to see how they really like the thrill of the chase.

Write to running event organizers and tell them to grow up and enter the Twenty-First century… or even the Nineteenth if that’s too much for them. Contact your Congressional Representatives and let them know how unAmerican running really is. Demand they take action.

Our ancestors would smack modern day runners right upside the head. If we work together, we can preserve everything they fought so hard to create: a comfy ride.

The Best and Worst Condiments

December 22, 2011 by Jeff Moriarty 2 Comments

I love food, in all its flavors, textures, types, and styles. I adore trying new things.

That is why I cry a little when I see someone immediately salt the snot out of a dish before trying a single bite, and there is no greater source of my tears than the class of food products known as “condiments”.

Correctly done, a condiment should add flavor to food. What sadly happens far too often is that people glop and plop this stuff on otherwise tasty food to completely cover over the original taste. Their food becomes just a Condiment Delivery Device, and I wonder why they don’t just squirt the stuff right into their mouths and cut out the middle man.

If you want to get the most out of your food, then heed my list of the Top and Bottom condiments…

Best Condiments In The World

1. Sriracha Sauce – Known to all by the distinctive rooster on the bottle, know by some as the “hot cock”, it is clearly the most glorious of all condiments. It might even transcend “condiment” to be an actual “prodiment”. As the Oatmeal pointed out this stuff is glorious. It is tangy, magical, and acceptable in all amounts from a “Small dollop” up to “See you in the afterlife”.

2. Spicy mustard – While much milder than Sriracha, it brings both flavor and zing to everything from ballpark franks to wine and cheese plates. It goes anywhere with style and swagger. Plain yellow mustard is not horrible, but that’s Little Child Mustard. Here we’re talking about Studly Mustard, also known as Studstard. Also acceptable are garlic mustard, stone ground mustard, and nuclear death mustard.

3. Salsa – This refers to real salsa, not Cold Tomato And Random Vegetable Chopped Goo. It’s a condiment so tasty you can eat it on a plain corn chip with style. Professionals include it to finish off everything from tacos to pasta. It’s the Transformer of condiments.

Worst Condiments In The Universe*

1. Mayonaisse – Screw everything about this zit-pus like substance. You know what a great ham sandwich tastes like when you add mayo? Mayo. Know what a dead rat tastes like when you add mayo? Mayo. Other than helping out in egg salad (where it is saved by the mustard), and helping people eat their dead rats, this stuff is the Taste Killer and should be banned from all discerning mouths.

2. Ketchup – This condiment is acceptable with one thing: French fries. Maybe a hot dog or hamburger, but only if you’re out of mustard. If you put this on your eggs, your steak, your doughnuts, or anything else you need to seek help.

3. Ranch dressing – Capable of turning the healthiest of salads into an artery clogging bowl of sludge, it often hangs out in the refrigerator near its eviler cousin, the mayo. Together, the two are often known to bully around more defenseless food when the refrigerator door is closed and the lights go out. Every time you dunk a carrot stick or broccoli sprout from a veggie platter into this goop, you’re punching Mother Nature in the face. If you dunk your pizza in this stuff, you need to switch pizza places then punch yourself in the face.

* I don’t think even if we encounter alien civilizations they will be able to top these nasty things.

If you’re a condiment junkie, please, get help. There is a world of flavors out there just begging to run rampant over your tongue bumps – set them free!

A Grinch’s Tips to a Nearly Tolerable Christmas

December 17, 2011 by Jeff Moriarty 1 Comment

Godzilla Christmas Tree — Godzilla: King of the Tannenbaums

I don’t like Christmas.

I grew up in a Roman Catholic household so had it in full force as a kid, but as I grew up it started to feel made up and silly. Now I become increasingly anti-social as the 25th approaches, and have resigned myself to simply enduring this time of year and not trying to understand it any longer.

As an admitted Grinch who knows there is no way Christmas will ever disappear, here are my Three Tips To A Nearly Tolerable Christmas…

Stop worrying about that Jesus guy so much

I am no longer a Christian, and not even religious at all, so do you know how pissed off I get when someone wishes me a Merry Christmas?

Not even a little bit.

Someone is wishing me good tidings in a way that’s meaningful to them. How can I get mad about that?

What drives me bonkers is the endless bitching about the “right way” to say things. Some Christians scream “Keep the Christ in Christmas!”, while non-Christians get bent because someone wished them anything other than a generic Happy Holidays. I’ll take everything from Happy Chanukah to Frolicking Festivus with a smile.

Tip 1: However you celebrate this time of year, be gracious in accepting how others do it.

Stop buying crap

No other activity of the year brings out hateful, mean, rude behavior in people like Christmas shopping. From pepper spraying shoppers over Black Friday deals to fistfights over stolen parking places, it’s revolting. I avoid malls entirely between Thanksgiving and New Year because I can’t stand the madness.

Now “Christmas is too commercialized” is a popular drum to beat, and maybe you’re even nodding at this point, but here’s the thing… if you buy any Christmas gifts you’re part of the problem. Every year people lament how commercialized Christmas is, but they still buy crap they don’t need to fill manufactured expectations and Black Friday projections.

Things aren’t what make us happy.

My wife and I stopped giving each other presents years ago. Instead we pool the money we would have spent together, buy as much food as we can at Costco, and take it to a local Food Bank. Black Friday gets no help from us.

Tip 2: Find something you care about this Holiday season and invest part of yourself. Invest in time with people you care about, or people who need help.

Make your own celebrations

My first year in Arizona I lived in Manzanita Hall at ASU, on a floor entirely populated by 18 to 19 year old boy-idiots away from home for the first time. Our community room TV was programmed by majority rules, which meant it was generally football games and juvenile garbage that I was rarely interested in.

As a result, my hopes were slim when I rolled in an hour early to try and commandeer the TV to watch the Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Charlie Brown Christmas specials. This was kid stuff, and I figured I’d be laughed off the floor if anything more interesting was on. I was wrong.

When other people trickled in over the next hour, every single one was relieved when I told them what I was planning to watch. Every one. By the time Rudolph started not a square inch of floor or wall space was unoccupied. A SWAT team could not have changed that channel without casualties.

Several dozen instant friends all cheered the Bumble, laughed at Charlie Brown, and a few even tried the Snoopy Dance.

As a result, my best Holiday memory that year didn’t come from all the traditional dinners or present wrapping. It came from a group of strangers all sharing their favorite TV shows.

Tip 3: Ignore convention. Find the things you really love about the Holidays and genuinely share them with someone. Maybe family, maybe friends, maybe strangers, maybe someone down on their luck.

My heart of unwashed socks

That felt good. My heart didn’t grow three sizes or anything, but a nice venting is good for the digestion.

Now I’m going to dust off my copy of Bad Santa (NSFW), chase some kids off my lawn, and get back to being an anti-social crank.

I hope however you do spend this last 5% of the year, you find untarnished happiness, humor, and fun somewhere in the mix.