Early Retirement for Injured Federal Employees
Say a person is playing golf, hits the ball badly and yells out loudly, “Fore!” In his mind, however, the individual has the word spelled wrongly — say, as “Four” or “For”, or any number of alternative ways. When first heard, he had thought that it was spelled in the commonplace, conventional way. Does it matter? Doesn’t the fact that homophones exist become an issue of “right” or “wrong” only if the implicit clashes with the explicit? […]
How does one prepare for the unknown? If the very basis of preparation is to prepare for something, how can you then engage in that activity if X is an anomaly, a conundrum, a mystery yet to be uncovered and revealed such that the prior stage of preparing for it can be accomplished? Is there a necessity for the pre-preparation stage? […]
It depends upon how you read the concept, which word or syllable you place the accent or emphasis upon, doesn’t it? In one sense of the concept, it has to do with games found at the county or state Fairs — you know, where cotton candy is sold and prizes are awarded for the largest potato grown or the fattest pig shown. In another sense, it is in contrast to its opposite — of games where you have a good chance because rules are imposed and upheld, […]
Everything has a price, whether in terms of monetized payments or through labor, effort, worry and loss of peaceful interludes. What expansive periods of our lives do we engage and assign to “wasted” time that must be discarded, forgotten and left beside? What is the price we pay to maintain the status quo, even though we know that such clinging to a lack of change is merely extending the wastefulness of our own making? […]
There is something particularly annoying about a piece of music, an orchestral ensemble or a simple song that is out of synchronized perfection, or put quite simply, out of tune. The annoyance can be traced, of course, to the origin of the discordant piece; the “band” itself, the group of musicians or the orchestra or symphony that is responsible for the unpleasant sound waves that drift […]
To die is forgivable; to be forgotten, not so much. Perhaps that is why the 15-minute rule of one’s fame is so important to most people; that, to be “appreciated” in a life-long struggle just to remain relevant makes fools of us all, and the basis upon which con-men and scams continue to effectively play their course. It is, of course, the “then” that matters – that prelude to the state of being forgotten, that defines what a person’s life was, remains, and will continue to be in the future amongst and amidst the remainder of a family, friends and acquaintances left behind. […]
We all think we are the “best” at it; and, indeed, that is one of the espoused quantifications boasted by one of the major party’s candidates: a greater deal-maker, the penultimate trader. Such a person claims to be able to spot the jewel in the hidden crown; the uncut diamond in the quicksand of life; and the unrevealed luminosity […]
If everything is bosh, then why care at all? The swing of the historical pendulum will always revert to self-correct the excesses of a previous generation, and thus was deconstruction merely a natural methodology in the linear castigation of dialectical argumentation in philosophy; but with the likes of Foucault and Derrida, where the entirety of analytical discourse is either a power play or merely a language game neither wedded to truth nor reflecting the objectivity of reality, then why care at all? If pure relativism rules, why do humans prefer one set of circumstances to another? […]
We can often dismiss antiquity with ease by relegating personalities to caricatures and stereotypes. Thus, of the Crusaders, that they were merely simple folk unsophisticated in the evolutionary Darwinism of modernity; of Roman legions, fearful of punishment and brought up to bear the cruelty of his environment; or even of more recent vintage, the gunslinger out West — of Billy the Kid or Wild Bill Hickok, where legend surpasses the individual and becomes fact. But a slight alteration of a vantage point can skew the perspective; and thus, when we focus upon the cauldron […]
We dream of those moments; the final word in a debate which devastates the opponent; the retort which wows the audience; the closing statement that persuades beyond a reasonable doubt; the performance of a lifetime which defines the value of life itself. […]