by Marty Coleman | Mar 6, 2013 | Compliments & Complications - 2013, Robert Brault |
I know I am making you happy when I compliment your arrival at day #3 of Compliments Week!
The Visual Compliment
Imagine a compliment being something you could visually see, that as it came out of your mouth it became something real, floating over to the person it was directed at. What would your compliments turn into? Would it be a bright, garish sticker slapped on a woman’s breasts saying ‘NICE RACK’ or a man’s posterior saying, ‘NICE ASS? Would it be a generic puff of cotton that whispered, ‘I guess you look nice’ as it blew away and was forgotten? Maybe it would be a swirl of glitter that said, ‘oh shiny!’ as it landed on a diamond ring.
The Happiness Blanket
But maybe your compliment can come out as a happiness blanket. It would cover the whole person, no matter what specific compliment you are giving. And guess what? If you deliberately endeavor in advance to make your compliment, whatever it is, a warm blanket of love, given freely and with joy, then you will be happy. If you are happy in giving a compliment there is a much greater chance the recipient will also feel some level of happiness.
Give that compliment today.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who always compliments freckles, which are a like a blanket of happiness in and of themselves.
Quote by Robert Brault
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Literary Question of the Day
“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen” is the first line of what novel?
Come back tomorrow for the answer
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 5, 2013 | Compliments & Complications - 2013, George Chapman |
I am flattered you have shown up for day #2 of Compliments week!
Flattery Wolf
Flattery is fine. You just have to know what it is. It is a social nicety. It is grease that smooths the rough edges of social interactions. It is attached to an agenda. An agenda isn’t necessarily bad or evil or dangerous. But it can be. You have to be aware. Maybe it’s a benign agenda, the man just likes you. The man just wants a little attention and so he is just giving some attention. Maybe it’s cancerous and the man becomes a wolf and wants to get in your pants or in your wallet or in your life for some nefarious reason. You have to have a discernment about people, and men in particular. It should be up to the man to be good, not bad. He is responsible for that. But if he is not, if he is a wolf, and some men are, then you must be responsible for your side of it, the discernment, wisdom and knowledge to tell the difference between a wolf and a dog.
Complimentary Dog
Compliments are fine. But how do you know they are real, true, legitimate compliments and not underhanded flattery with an attached agenda to it? You know by what happens after the compliment. Does the man remain attentive to you in more ways than just complimenting you? Does he back up his supposed admiration for you by acting like someone who admires and respects you? Is he sensitive to what you want to talk about and do or is he pushy and insistent, always directing you back to what his agenda is? It isn’t that the man doesn’t have desires and hopes and even lusts. But he understands their place, that they are behind and less important than finding out and trying to meet your needs. A Complimentary Dog does that, a Flattery Wolf does not.
The Fight
So, who am I to make the case about Flattery Wolf vs Complimentary Dog? I can make the case because I have been both. And I bet if you ask most men they would say they have been both too. It is a fight between the two in many men. Which one wins? The one that gets fed wins. Do you, as the object of attention, reward the dog or the wolf? Do you enable the bad behavior or the good behavior?
I know it is rife with issues to call men dogs or wolves, obviously the analogy only goes so far. It does break down eventually. But it also has many useful elements to it in trying to understand how men think. And the better you understand how men think and act perhaps the better you will be in understanding how to deal with their flatteries and compliments.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who would be a dalmatian if he were a dog.
Quote by George Chapman, 1559-1634, English dramatist
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Historical Question from Yesterday Answered
Question: Oscar Wilde was put on trial, convicted and sent to prison for what crime?
Answer: Wilde was prosecuted for ‘Gross Indecency’. This was a charge leveled against suspected homosexuals who were not caught doing the expressly forbidden deed of anal intercourse, or buggery as it was known then (and which had a possible sentence of death), but were caught being too flagrant about their life in the otherwise underground web of homosexual society. Wilde spent 2 years in prison doing hard labor. When he came out he moved to France, never to return to England. He died destitute.
Oscar Wilde
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 4, 2013 | Compliments & Complications - 2013, Oscar Wilde |
It’s not complicated – today is day #1 of Compliments Week at the NDD.
Complimenting Cleavage – An Embarrassing Story
This past weekend I went to an art gallery opening. My wife Linda was out of town so I was solo. The gallery was filled with well dressed, glamourous people. I saw a friend and we were talking about my napkins, which she said she loved getting every day. She is well known and so she was constantly seeing and greeting new people as they came by. I waited patiently for a respite to continue the conversation when I noticed a woman next to me also waiting to speak to this woman. She had on a very intricate lace top with little colored things woven in. Under it was a plain black camisole. She also had on an elegant necklace that went to mid-chest. Her hair framed the necklace and the lace top very nicely.
I noticed all this in a split second, turned to her and said, with a hand gesture, “I love your top!” Just as I said it realized, along with all those other things I just mentioned, that she had a very pronounced cleavage. Large breasts, low top. My choice of words suddenly didn’t seem the best. She looked at me like I had just said the most awkward thing I could have possibly said, and I had. I did my best to recover, doing another circle of my hand and saying, “It all works great; the lace, necklace, hair, very nice”. I then introduced myself, and we both turned our attention back to our mutual friend. I saw her on and off the rest of the night at that opening and a number of other ones on the same street. I had the distinct impression she was hopeful I would not come up and talk to her again.
The Complimenter
I am a complimenter. It can be interpreted as a come on, an insincere flattery, an over the top rambling, or any number of other things. But I don’t care because I know this truth; If I don’t say it, pretty soon I won’t think it. And if I don’t think it, I won’t notice it and if I don’t notice it the world will be incredibly dull, boring, grey, relentlessly serious, depressing, futile and ugly for me. I don’t want that and so I notice what I love in the world. I think about what I love in the world and I say what I love in the world. Sometimes it backfires and I am embarrassed but I would rather suffer that then live in a world where I can’t speak of the beauty I see.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who does indeed love beautiful eyebrows.
Quote by Oscar Wilde, who loved beauty
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Historical question of the day
Oscar Wilde was put on trial, convicted and sent to prison for what crime?
Come back tomorrow to find the answer
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by Marty Coleman | Mar 1, 2013 | Anonymous, Meh Meh Mediocrity - 2013 |
Steady now, it’s finally day FOUR of Mediocrity Week!
The Invitation
Note the quote says it’s an invitation. That means you do not have to accept it. Having a regular paycheck at a steady job has within it the temptation to become mediocre. It does not mean it is a requirement. It is something to watch out for though because mediocrity in the work world is like a long term habit that leads to a disease that you don’t know you are acquiring until it is too late.
My Wife’s Resistance
My wife, Linda, is a business woman. She has worked in the same industry with the same company (bought and sold many times over) for over 20 years. She has had every opportunity to become settled and mediocre in her job but she hasn’t. She has always been committed to doing her job really well. There have been years and years of her building up effective business structures and procedures only to see them be dismantled by those who came after her. On a regular basis she is asked to go back in years later and clean up the detritus of failures and rebuild what she built before. And she does it. She has done this with the higher ups almost never realizing the incredible ability she has to do those things again and again. And the reason she can do them? Because she is dedicated to be not just competent but excellent at her job, whatever it is.
Tombstone
So, I have seen it done. The key is the desire to be excellent has to be internal. It cannot be decided by if you are high on your job at any one moment or not. It can’t be decided by the recognition, the salary, the perks. It has to be driven from your character. YOU have to want to be excellent apart from anyone or anything else. Just YOU.
If you are wondering if you want to be excellent, imagine having a tombstone that says, “Here Lies a Mediocre Human”.
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Drawing and commentary by Marty Coleman, who is married to an excellent woman.
Quote is Anonymous
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Mediocrity Week has so far had visits from 36 countries including:
- Latvia
- Zimbabwe
- Uganda
- Suriname
- Algeria
- Malaysia
I am not sure why I think it’s cool that the NDD is so international in its reach but I do.
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by Marty Coleman | Feb 28, 2013 | Albert Camus, Meh Meh Mediocrity - 2013 |
I slept on it and next thing I know it’s day 3 of Mediocrity Week!
Signs of Life
My post yesterday showed a woman watching TV in the dark, pretty much unmotivated and inactive in life. She was leading a mediocre life and I illustrated it by showing her being idle while the world passed her by. But the truth is being idle is not necessarily a sign of mediocrity. It’s mostly a sign of nothing. It’s just something we all do. We all have times we are idle, not pursuing some grand goal. We just sit and read a light novel, or watch a funny TV show, or listen to frothy infectious pop music. If you have a drive to achieve something, a drive to be excellent at something, then that idle time is good. It is needed to rejuvenate your ideas, your creativity, your energy.
Signs of Death
But if you are living a mediocre life, a life unmotivated and without a flame of excellence then that same idleness is a killer. It is not rejuvenating you, it is burying you. It is helping you to die while you are still alive. So ask yourself – Are you taking a breather at the end of a long day? Then you are in good company, most of us like to do that. Or are you taking a breather from life? Then you might want to slap yourself awake and see if you might not want to pursue something greater than the killing mediocrity of never ending idleness.
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Drawing by Marty Coleman, who has never used curlers for their intended purpose.
Quote By Albert Camus, 1913-1960, French writer and philosopher. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, 1957
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When I mentioned on twitter this morning that I was drawing a woman with curlers in her hair my friend and fellow running coach Theresa thought I might need some inspiration so she sent me a photo of herself in curlers. She says she sometimes will even stop at a convenience store to get something while in her curlers AND has been hit on a number of times. She says it has to do with her confidence, that she is who she is and likes it, curlers or not! I have to agree, that’s what confidence is all about!
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Trivia Question from yesterday answered
Question: A man known to many as ‘The most hated man in America’ was suppose to be on the Titanic but missed the boat. Who was he and why did he miss it?
Answer: Henry Clay Frick. He was the chairman of Andrew Carnegie’s steel company and was the man in charge of the violent response to a worker’s strike in 1892 at the Homestead Steel Plant. As a result of that he became widely hated in the US. He and his wife, Adelaide, were ticketed to be aboard the Titanic but she sprained her ankle in Italy shortly before the voyage and they were not able to make the crossing.
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