peering at life through the lens of death is a truly effective way of discovering what is truly important in one’s life. i find this akin to beginning "with the end in mind", although i’m not sure stephen covey had that in mind when he wrote the seven habits of highly effective people.

one exercise that i find helpful is to periodically ask myself if i would spend my time any differently if i knew i only had 30 days to live. my answer is always yes, and i have been struggling to move closer to being able to answer that question in the negative.

the primary difficulty in that struggle is realizing that priorities are inherently different given a short period of time and a lengthy period of time.

is there a way to resolve the two and find a happy medium or should i just start eating red meat with every meal and smoking a carton of cigarettes every day?

i’d love to hear feedback, even if you think i’m a crazy fool. especially if you think i’m a crazy fool.

neil strauss, the author of the game, just sent out a list of what he calls "subresolutions" to his mailing list. i thought they’d be worth posting, so here goes:

1. Call your cell phone provider. Ask if you can get a  better calling plan based on your usage. This way you can afford to do the next item on this list.
2. Subscribe to a newspaper or magazine. Choose a topic that you don’t know about - be it fashion, culture, politics, science, or technology - and sign up for the best periodical covering that topic. Rather than choosing an the most popular magazine, select one that offers the most in-depth and interesting coverage, like Wired for technology or Foreign Affairs for politics or Mental Floss for general culture or New Scientist (which last month had a handy article on how to win at rock paper scissors) for science.
3. Get a passport if you don’t have one. If yours has expired, get it renewed now. You don’t want to get stuck at home while your friends are enjoying some great concert at the Acropolis in Greece. If you’re a U.S. citizen, just go to most post offices with two acceptable photos of yourself, proof of U.S. citizenship, and a valid form of photo identification. You can find more information at http://travel.state.gov/passport.
4. Register your full name as a web domain if you haven’t yet. You never know when you’re going to want your personal website.
5. Get business cards. Don’t have a business? It doesn’t matter. Sites like www.vistaprint.com will send you 250 free ones (though there’s a shipping fee of $5.45 or so). Never hurts to look professional.
6. Sign up for US Airway’s e-Saver, Southwest’s Ding!, American Airlines’ Net SAAver, or any other wackily-named airline program that offers last-minute, low-cost travel options so you can take a quick weekend getaway whenever you feel like it. Flights can be as low as $15.
7. Check your credit report for identity theft, or any other misinformation or errors that could harm your financial status and options. U.S. consumers are entitled to one free check a year at www.annualcreditreport.com.
8. Back that shite up. Most people don’t take the time to do this, and regret it later. So copy your entire hard drive onto an external drive immediately; if possible, download a program like Achronis True Image that will simplify the restoring process and regularly make backups. Also backup personal data on your cellphone, PDA, and any other device. While you’re at it, make photocopies of your credit cards, passport, drivers license, social security card, birth certificate, and other important papers. If you keep a journal or anything similarly irreplaceable, photocopy that. Keep these in a safe deposit box, parent’s house, locked file cabinet, or any other secure location. They’ll be invaluable in the event of theft, loss, fire, dinosaur attack, or any other unplanned disaster.
9. Look through your refrigerator and cabinets. Read the labels on the food. Give anything high in saturated fats, trans fats, cholesterol, and sodium to someone you don’t like (just kidding). Then make a list of healthy alternatives, go to the grocery store, and restock. Here’s what the government says you should do in a grocery store from now on: http://www.nutrition.gov/index.php?mode=whole_story&story_id=161
10. Make an appointment to get a physical exam from a trusted doctor. Head off any potential medical problems that may hinder an active, fun year. Also recommended: make an appointment with a dentist to get your teeth cleaned if you haven’t done so in the last six months. You may also want to call for an eye exam if you haven’t had one in the last four years. (Make sure you get a second opinion if any of the above tries to talk you into any costly procedure.)
11. If you want to improve your appearance, you’ve probably already resolved to work out or join a gym. So here’s a sub-resolution: Buy a suit. (Or a dress if you’re a woman.) But don’t just get any suit. Get one that’s slightly closer to the size you want to be this year, whether it be a little bigger or a little smaller than your current measurements. Try it on every morning as a reminder to yourself to stick with your fitness program; until, one day, it fits perfectly, and you wear it out and feel like a million dollars.
12. And as long as you feel like a million dollars, you might as well figure out how to make a million dollars. You can find out how much money you’ll need to tuck away here: http://partners.leadfusion.com/tools/kiplinger/savings01/tool.fcs.

would you add anything to the list?

it was christmas eve and i was going through my takeout menus trying to find a place that would deliver a meatball sub to me for lunch. i made it to the last menu in the stack and finally found a place that answered the phone:

"happy holidays. is this for pickup or delivery?", the seemingly friendly voice on the other end inquired.

i requested delivery and was then asked for my name.

in most situations when asked for my name i usually go with brad pitt, mr. awesome, or the gold medal finalist in the shoe tying olympics three years running. this time i decided to roll with my full first name and started spelling it for the friendly voice.

"J-O-N-A–"

"i know how to spell jonathan. i’m not stupid," the friendly voice pointed out.

i figured the phone clerk had a right to be a wee bit cranky being that she was working christmas eve and all, so i let it slide.

45 minutes later my buzzer rings and it’s the meatball sandwich delivery guy. and when i say guy, i mean sasketchewan. seriously, the guy was huge. i wouldn’t be surprised if parts of his customers’ orders frequently went missing.

"that’ll be $11.04," he said matter-of-factly.

i reached for my wallet and made the mistake of being friendly.

"how’s your day going?" i asked. "are you guys getting mobbed, it being christmas eve and all?"

he gave a furtive glance around and replied, "not too bad, but i just got a new shipment in."

i didn’t quite understand why a pizza place that made their own pizza would get shipments of pizzas, so i shot him a puzzled look.

he clarified: "i don’t know how best to approach this, but i just got a new shipment of porn dvd’s. they’re all out in my trunk. you wouldn’t happen to be interested would you?"

i didn’t have the heart to tell the guy i was in the middle of filming one at the moment and that the script called for me eating a meatball sandwich and involved no sex whatsoever. instead, i politely declined and took the sandwich from him.

he didn’t seem to know how to exit gracefully and tried once more for a sale.

"i’m just trying to make a buck or two on the side, you know? sorry, i didn’t know how to approach the subject. sorry."

"it’s ok, man," i said and i slowly backed inside.

as i reached the top of the stairs, i almost half expected to open the bag and find my meatball sandwich replaced by a dvd with the same name. it’s a really good thing i didn’t order a meat lover’s stuffed pizza and a tossed salad.

a really, really good thing.

my sister-in-law mentioned the word metrosexual during the course of post-gift-un-wrapping idle chit chat.

my uncle immediately queried: “metrosexual? is that when you have sex while traveling?”

my uncle learned a new word today and the rest of the family got a chance to practice their horrified but not surprised faces.

dear keeper of the winter solstice and purveyor of all things weather-related,

p.s. you used the global warming excuse last time, so let’s try to be a bit more creative.

tonight i was waiting for my train home, since that’s what i do for fun and because flying cars haven’t been invented yet. this girl was sitting next to me with her nose stuck in a book. she looked like she might be kinda cute and people who read books are smart, according to reading rainbow. i started the conversation with my super patented pick-up line, which i probably won’t ever use again.

“so how’s the book?”

she slowly processed what i said. since it was a really tough question, i gave her a few moments to think and when she hadn’t come up with an answer yet i delivered the next bombshell.

“what book is it?”

it had some large text in angry letters on the front and the background was yellow, so i just assumed it was a hot dog recipe book. it clearly was not a romance novel or a nancy drew mystery. as she considered the best way to summarize her book for me, i smiled and decided to help her out.

“is it a girl book?”

she put on angry eyes, scowled and retorted as she turned away.

“i don’t read girl books.”

i filed that away under questions that don’t work and her under girls i don’t like.

it might be a little unfair to write blog entries at the expense of people who act like they have nothing better to do than harass other people, but hey, no one made me the czar of blog ethics. here’s yet another ridiculous encounter i had tonight at a bar near my building.

a certain unkempt male walked by who looked like he came in to take a break from panhandling, which is quite possibly the case. a few of us were joking around in our clique-y circle, since that’s how we roll, he walked past, pointed at the lone attractive female in our midst, and said “were they just talking about playstation baseball?”

i gave him a double take, a well-crafted confused look, and a gift certificate to home depot. he repeated the question. i slowly answered him: “i’m pretty sure there’s no damn motherfucking way in hell they said anything about baseball.”

he calmly replied in a drunken drawl with “what about playstation, were they just talking about playstation?”

what does one say to that when both topics were as far removed from the conversational radar as easter island is from the warp whistle in the castle in stage 1-4 after you defeat bowser’s third cousin once removed?

at this point the hobo-in-training looked me dead in the eye and said, “well, they should totally get into playstation baseball,” and exited stage south (for all the non-drama nerds, that means the exit door was due south of my ass).

after that, we continued talking about the price of canadian bacon in south brazil and other politically relevant topics, all of which had nothing to do with a playstation. or, as my one friend put it, a “no friend-station”. that guy is one clever guy.

it cracks me up when two people with very different accents think that raising their voices at each other is the greatest communications tool since myspace. i just finished booking a hotel room in central pennsylvania, but i would have seen more success directing a bollywood movie. the phone operator did not hear a key piece of information i gave him at the beginning, so we had to do the whole joyous dance all over again. after that, i renovated my apartment with my face.

a gentleman walked onto the train this evening wearing a pair of those all-in-one radio headphones that went out of style shortly after rickets. the kind that came with a free chiropractic adjustment and a set of therapeutic counterbalance weights. if beethoven rode trains, collected vintage electronics, and wasn’t deaf or dead, he would totally be this guy. or this guy would be him. beethoven or not, he looked ridiculous.

i’m guessing the strap around the back of his head is an after market dental headgear add-on and health insurance would only pay for the leonard nimoy special edition. it also possibly doubles as a hairloss prevention device and a camouflaged beer hat.

i think i might be on to something.

i got into a conversation tonight with a girl. she was cute.

she taught me a tip for using google.

if you want to find the synonyms along with a particular word, use the tilde sign (~).

i was outnerded by a girl and did not get her number.

it’s probably for the best.