Author: Rev. Joe Dirt

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Word of the Day – Cyberchondria

Word of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many on my landing page.  Words have always fascinated me, and I am a fan of all types of word play, especially puns.  I have a hard time not looking up a word that I am unfamiliar with or not sure of the definition. I like those authors that stretch me by throwing in unexpected terms.   

  • Noun: Cyberchondria
    1. unfounded anxiety concerning the state of one’s health brought on by visiting health and medical websites
  • Synonyms:
    1. hypochondriac
    2. valetudinarian
    3. valetudinary
    4. hypochondriast
    5. hypochrondriast
    6. melancholico
    7. neurotic
    8. malade imaginaire
    9. obsessive person
    10. morbid person
  • Usage:
    1. “Working with our mortality in a meaningful way can be challenging. For one, we live in a death-averse culture in which comforting and life-affirming ways of thinking and talking about illness and death are rare. Further, the unprecedented nature of Covid-19, as well as an increase in self-diagnosis via the internet (“cyberchondria”), has been associated with an overall rise in health anxiety..”
  • Encountered:
    1.  While reading the Guardian piece: Illness and death are facts of life – Buddhism teaches us to be mindful but not fearful of it

To see more Words of the Day, visit this link: Words of the Day

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Rev. Joe’s Random Thought #2,921

yeah I know you did not ask!

You should so be blessed – well cursed at times actually – with a mind such as mine, making all these weird connections between my rumored neurons. Just be thankful that I do not share all of my random thoughts.

There are folks whose mission in life is to travel, experiencing as many different roller-coasters in the various amusement parks across the nation and for that matter, around the world, as they can.  I found several names for them, but coaster geeks was my favorite.

I bring this up as the other day I was texting back and forth with a friend.  In a wise-ass response to one of her texts I remarked, “Marriage: The Ultimate Roller-Coaster.”

These enthusiasts could save a lot of travel expense and time with a couple gold rings and a bag or two of rice.

Just saying.

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Chopping wood, folding t-shirts…

Recently I experienced my 26,298 rotation of this planet we call home.  This triggered the lever that counts the number of orbits around the star we refer to as The Sun, setting it at 48 (in hexadecimal) total revolutions, beginning the 49th.

All these largish numbers put me in a reflective mood, a pensive frame of mind, going over what has transpired in all those rotations and orbits.  All I could come up with is that it all has been rather pointless.

I then remembered a well known Zen koan:

“The novice says to the master, ‘What does one do before enlightenment?’
‘Chop wood. Carry water,’ replies the master.
The novice asks, ‘What, then, does one do after enlightenment?’
‘Chop wood. Carry water.”

Except in my case, having never chopped wood or carried water in the pioneer sense of the word, or even in the woodchuck sense…if a woodchuck could chuck wood, I say fold t-shirts, wash the dishes.

Enlightenment will, in all likelihood, have to wait until all the counters have been reset to zero, and I might get another shot at it… or not.

In the meantime, I am folding t-shirts and washing dishes.

Om mani padme hum

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National Siblings Day – April 10, 2024

For the sake of truth in advertising, I kept looking for an image of brothers going at each other, fighting tooth and nail.  All I could find were horribly saccharine, the one above being the less  mawkish of the bunch.

My take… the greeting card industry is at it, again.

However, it does have a touching back story.  Read about it here: National Siblings Day

And so it goes.

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Quote of the Day – L. P. Hartley

Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.

“The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.” ~~ L. P. Hartley: The Go-Between

To see more Quotes for Day, visit this link: Quotes for the Day

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Vanity Plate for the Day – WLKABT

Vanity Plate of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one in the wild that I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence.  When I was commuting from my home to downtown St. Louis and back, I was spending anywhere from an hour and half to two hours daily in rush hour traffic. I used the exercise of deciphering vanity plates to help pass the time… plus sometimes they are very clever and worth sharing.

WLKABT

This was on the back of  yet another Subaru Outback, this one an army green Outback in our neighborhood.  The Outback name is inspiring all sorts of Australian themed vanity plates. I read this as the Australian aborigine custom of taking a walk-about, on the off chance you have not figured it out.

To see more Vanity Plates of the Day use this link: Vanity Plates of the Day

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Hopefully my Spanish sounds better

The other day while speaking with one of my long term Spanish tutors via Skype I made the comment that my Spanish was too poor to have been studying the language for as long as I have.

A few days later he sent me his video.  The comment basically translates as “imagine you have been studying English for 5 years and you ended up speaking like this guy.”

Of course he sounds like every other good old boy I have ever known in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas or Missouri.  One of my self-deprecating jokes is that I speak Spanish with a Southern accent, and it is not from the south of Spain.

Years ago I wrote a blog posting My Chinese Nightmare that was a take on this theme.

And so it goes.

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St. Louis Metropolitan Area- A Mixed Bag

The St. Louis metropolitan area is such a mixed bag. I bring this up due to a recent study that listed two St. Louis suburbs among best places to live in the US.

It placed the St. Louis suburb we live in, Chesterfield, as 19th on their list, and another St. Louis suburb, Brentwood, which is closer to the actual city of St. Louis, as 18th on their list.

Chesterfield is undoubtedly a nice place to live. We have a school system with one of the better reputations in the state, the crime rate is reasonably low, all the conveniences are within easy driving distance. The city authorities are striving for growth, but they are doing so in a fashion that does not impact the quality of life here.  In fact they are doing many projects that Continue reading “St. Louis Metropolitan Area- A Mixed Bag”