Drinking is Awesome

I offer this as proof that drinking is amazing.

Moral and Physicial Thermometer

The Moral and Physical Thermometer concept was first published in the early 1800s - specific dates are conflicting but it was closer to 1812 - as part of the first catalog for the characteristics of alcoholism. It had a few other incarnations, namely tis one (which is far better illustrated than [the original]), that purported to indicate the various goodness of Enlightenment Era drink. The idea being that one would be better served keeping their consumption of alcoholic beverages towards the top of the thermometer.

Why water hits a temperature of 70, I can’t really fathom why the numbers are what they are.

The original version appeared in a treatise entitled An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind (Ardent Spirits would be a great band name), written Benjamin Rush (another Benjamin!). Rush is a pretty fascinating person. He, like my man Franklin, was a signatory of the Declaration of Independence, published both the first book of Chemistry and Psychiatry, and he is considered to be the founder of American Psychiatry.

Ardent Spirits, though, is attributed to the start of the entire temperance movement in America. The whole pamphlet is pretty fascinating. Rush, at length, identifies traits and phenomena of extreme alcohol inebriation in order to allow for better diagnosis and treatment. But Rush never intended the diagnosis of addiction to become a banner booklet in the quest to prohibition.

In fact, Rush pretty clearly states that his is not against alcohol in its entirety in the first paragraph on the first page of the document.

”Fermented liquors contain so little spirit, and that so intimately combined with other matters, that they can seldom be drunken in sufficient quantities to produce intoxication…. They are, moreover,… generally innocent, and often have a friendly influence upon health and life.”

• Benjamin Rush, An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind, page 1

Rather, like the image above, indicates that there are “good” drinks to be had. Like water. Or cider. Or wine and beer. At the time, alcoholic beverages were genreally safer to drink than water and was the primary liquid consumed on the Mayflower. Rush goes so far to suggest that you can help and addict through the detoxification process by switching them to beer, wine, or cider.

”By the temporary use of these substitutes for spirits, I have never known the transition to sober habits, to be attended with any bad effects, but often with permanent health of body, and peace of mind.”

• Benjamin Rush, An Inquiry Into the Effects of Ardent Spirits Upon the Human Body and Mind, page 20

Of his suggested remedies, this is the most human. The others? They include, but are no limited to,

• Christ
• Guilt
• Plunging the body into tanks of water
• Severe whipping (none of that half-assed whipping)
• Bleeding
• Terror

I… sort of wonder what terror would include but I actually expect it’s an antecedent to aversion therapy, which is another useful thing used for nefarious means. And I’m pretty sure many of the other treatments will lead to bleeding. And, as an interesting aside and final note, Benjamin’s Franklin death is attributed to Rush’s vocal proponence of blood-letting.

Representation and Reusability

Representation and Reusability

I’ve had two conversations recently about brand identity and memorability apropos of this post. Of late, I’ve been concerned with self representation on the web and meat space and how these things can or should overlap.

To recap that post, I changed my internet handle a few years ago and exchanged memorability for maturity as I started to explore and define myself. I’ve been toying with the idea of going back to a more memorable name as I establish BunnyRope in the world. “ABMann” has no obvious link to BunnyRope nor is it as easy to remember as my business name.

Conversation 1 with Alyska (in reverse chronological order) was around changing my handle back to AngryBunnyMan. Alyska proposed that memorability can be achieved in a variety of ways, name recognition not withstanding. I could, in fact, increase overall memorability by simply identifying myself as ABMann of BunnyRope which sort of links me to the memorability of my business name.

This seems like a better approach to for 2 related reasons:

1. Your business should be of primary importance as that is your contribution to the world.
2. You are your business. If I should choose to be remembered as myself or my contributions, the virtuous answer, potentially the more humble answer, is to choose my contribution.

Legacy versus Fame.

Conversation 2 with Graydancer was around brand representation across multiple creative endeavors. Gray is an industrious and prolific creative - he has written books, teaches on sex and sexuality, blogs on personal development, and other numerous things about town. He recent transitioned into full time self employ ,you can become his patron (I finally did as I had been meaning to for a while), and has been attempting brand his various endeavors in a memorable and, especially, meaningful way.

In our conversation, we were trying to figure out how to you separate the things you do as distinct entities but keep the spiritual link between the two. I argued that a person is at the heart of everything even if their businesses are different - you are your business(es) irrespective of output.
Condensed:

1. Your business is a representation of yourself. Gray argued that each aspect can or should be distinct enough from each other so as to carry their own weight - your business(es) and representation should speak for itself and not be a stand in for you. Condensed:
2. Your business is its own representation in the world.

I don’t think either is wrong and each are grounded in producing something as a legacy. I disagree that you can ultimately divorce yourself from anything you do and, potentially, it behooves you not to divorce yourself from it. I think it impossible, in fact, when you have already created something else in the world. Everyone knows that thing of yours already and it will be the comparison for other things that you do, good or bad.

Still, this helped coalesce my own approach to Identity and its something I’ve been doing unconsciously.

Here are my two current brands:

  <img src="_BR+Chop.pngBR+Chop" alt="">




  <img src="_Chop.pngChop" alt="">

The BunnyRope icon came first. But it wasn’t named first.

When I first started it, I chose the name because it harkened back to my original name, AngryBunnyMan. In my mind, I already had this internet identity, why do something completely divorced from it? I figured, and this is important, that people already knew me so let’s use that to carve out this new aspect.

I didn’t realize it but that seeded the most recent introspection on identity. BunnyRope’s memorability had overtaken me and I didn’t want to be lost to it.

Thus, I set out to create the second brand, something to better represent me as me and not as ‘me’ of BunnyRope. This was actually the last of half a dozen ideas, some of which can still be found online but I think tis one will stick for one important reason:

I’ve created a branding language. I have threaded myself into that identity in a way flexible enough that it can apply to all the things I may want to do.

I am what I put into the world.

Plan for Attaining Moral Perfection

Virtue Franklin Virtue Journal

Here will I hold. If there’s a power above us (And that there is, all nature cries aloud Thro’ all her works), He must delight in virtue; And that which he delights in must be happy.

• Cato, by Joseph Addison

Benjamin Franklin was 20 years old when he wrote the above words at the top of his newly defined system of self improvement. He was returning from an 18 month letterpress apprenticeship in London which was an 80 day voyage and, I suspect, leaves one much time to reflect. Otherwise you’d go stir crazy.

I have been endeavoring to do similar as I entered my 30s. I intended, and still do intend, for this decade to by one of introspection. I desire a closer relationship with my inner self and deeply desire a better understanding of my own motivations and movements in the world.

Unsurprisingly, I became enamored with Franklin’s 13 virtues while reading his autobiography; and, as I have been struggling (seemingly in perpetuity) with my own tenacity at self-understanding, believe having something more systematic will be useful.

Thus: I’m going living by Franklin’s virtues.

…I conceived the bold and arduous project of arriving at moral perfection. I wish’d to live without committing any fault at any time; I would conquer all that either natural inclination, custom, or company might lead me into.

• Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

I am, however, not striving for moral perfection. I don’t know if I even fathom what that would look like given my beliefs and place in the world. But it is no matter. The process of watching myself, having a focus, should help reveal it.

How is this going to work?

Alyska gifted me the Art of Manliness incarnation of Franklin’s journal. It’s what is pictured above and I’m going to use it.

Franklin’s virtues are laid out in 13 week intervals with the focus of each week on one virtue. Each week has a 7x13 grid - 7 days to a week, 13 virtues to track. Though the intention is to live by the definitions of each, you take especial care to acquire the habits of one particular virtue. At the end of each day, you tally your adherence to each virtue by placing a dot in the square for each virtue you did not succeed at, kind of the opposite of the Seinfeld Calendar4. Over the course of the weeks, you should see a decrease in the dots for each virtue.

And only then shall your power be over 9000.

My intention is to start each week defining what the 13 virtues mean to me. I’m not so silly to think Franklin’s definitions will transplant perfect to a modern life nor to my place in it so want to find my own meaning for each. At the end of each week, I’ll reflect on what I learn. As I’m a new age kind of guy6 I’m be posting about it here along with additional explorations into virtue, morality, and ethics. Hopefully I’ll learn something about myself. At worst, this will be a lovely way to extend my morning protocol journaling.

Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning.

And Also: New Webspace.

I migrated to a new blog space. It is a little simple and has somewhat less automatic integration with other stuff but I looks cleaner and is making me more thoughtful in organization.  With Tumblr/Wordpress, it was too easy to let entropy win.

You can see the new version here: ABMann.net which is where you are right now.

And just for funzies I made a landing page for AngryBunnyMan.com

I’m still updating categories, as, and photo links for old posts but the mechanism is running.

Be Pavlov; Not The Dog

At the beginning of December I made a choice: stop filling empty time with diversion.

I, like many in my cohort, love my iPhone and my iPad and all the wondrous things of the connected world. I, like many in my cohort, enjoy updating and checking all my social media. Currently, I interact with Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr, and Ello (a little). (RunKeeper abd MyFitnessPal too insofar as I have two people I follow who use it as actively as I do.)

I, like many in my cohort, spend inordinate amounts of time bouncing between social media streams. I follow enough people that by the time I’m done with a round of checking, there’s new stuff to be seen.

The random reinforcement, the dopamine hit, is strong. It’s classical operant (thank you @_toddmc) conditioning, you see, and a pleasant way to spend your free time. I just felt like it was getting out of my hand.

So. Instead of checking twitter in those moments of down time, I either read a book (a real paper book) or engage in active mindfulness (sort of like short term meditation).

The results have been rather neat for the first one. In the last 20 days, I have read the following books:

• The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Public Speaking, Dale Carnegie (224 pages)
• Confessions of a public speaker, Scott Berkun (240)
• Keeping it Straight, Patrick Rhone (175 pages)
• This Could Help, Patrick Rhone (145 pages)
• Presentation Zen, Gar Reynolds (312 pages)
• Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs, Carmine Gallo (256 pages)
• The Elements of Style, Strunk & White. (88 pages)
• On Writing, Stephen King (320 pages)December 2014
• Beyond Trying, Mike Vardy (e-book, no listing)

They aren’t hefty or anything and I’m obviously reading outside of the interstitial times. But: I’m finding the change significantly more gratifying.

And when I read more, I feel like I’m doing something good for myself. When I’m feeling good about myself, I do good things for myself like exercise, write, plan projects, and the like.

The reduction of the dopaminergic reward cycle of social media has allowed my drive for self-actualization to reassert itself rather than hunt for the next stimulus.

In other words: Be Pavlov; Not the dog.

do good things

Dad liked my usb typewriter.

Thanksgiving come and gone. It was quiet this year. We went from three families to just the one, me and my Dad. The introverts. It was sedate with a steady cooking cadence that felt like mastery over Side Dish Logistics. Nothing burned. Everything offering a warm comfort simultaneously.

Dad was chill, bouncing between football updates and asking me about house and home. He has always been delicate trying to discover me. I don’t get that given my lasting memory of his candor, usually born from a need for simplicity. But he did ask in a gentle way about things never before discussed.

“Don’t worry, I’m a weirdo too” was how he reassured me when asking about Shibari, about processing hemp, about my market for Bunny Rope. He appreciates my approach to my business as well as my plan, both entrenched in the simplicity he taught me. It resonated with him, with us both, when talking about dye chemistry and my inability to comprehend selling rope that could dye your hands just from picking it up. Do good things, carefully, not too quickly.

“As a parent, you always wonder what else you could or should have noticed.” My tattoo, which he learned more about because others were less timid to discuss it with me, represented harder times in my life. Times when, like thanksgiving, it was just us bouncing between football and commentary but I had something more sharp than typical teenage angst trying to cut through my identity. He knew. He didn’t know. Who could have known what was really in my mind? I told him it wasn’t his fault, it was me and the dreadful people I surrounded myself with. But it was his advice that led me to the right college, the right light at the end of the tunnel, I told him.

“But it is unexpectedly gratifying to see what your kids become.”

Left unsaid but as plain as the tears in both our eyes, the guilt over not acting more overtly.

Guilt is self inflicted. I know these things: Do good things, carefully, not too quickly. You let me be me how I needed to be me when I needed to be me.

Don’t worry, I’m a weirdo too.