What I've Learned...

This is not the usual stuff, but a real hilarious one.
I love the honesty and frankness of it all. Modified it to fit our Malaysian situation.

What I've Learned...
from http://open.salon.com/blog/cranky_cuss


I DON’T understand people who don’t like to read. The opportunity to learn new information is what gets me out of bed every morning. That and a full bladder.

MY favorite time is Sunday morning. While my family sleeps in, I brew a pot of coffee, turn on my Astro Byond, and curl up with the Sunday paper. It’s bliss.
BUT don’t mistake me for a morning person. When my bladder gets me up on Saturday morning, and I realize I can climb back under the covers, it’s like Christmas in July.
THE producer of the TV series Arrested Development joked about giving one of his characters “an antiquated disease like gout.”
My brother gets periodic attacks of gout, so there ain’t nothing antiquated about it, bub. I've seen him hurt like a son-of-a-bitch.
WHEN you’re young, you take your body for granted. When you’re older, your body takes revenge.

WHOEVER coined the phrase “the golden years” must have been a doctor. Or his accountant.
THE greatest Beatles album: Revolver. But ask me again next week and I might give a different answer.
PAUL McCARTNEY’S messy divorce from Heather Mills was the biggest surprise since the trooper smelled marijuana on Willie Nelson’s tour bus.
IF an alien tried to figure out life on Earth by watching our prime-time TV shows, he’d think we’re a nation of serial killers and child molesters.
HE’D also think teenagers are all sullen, Playstation-addicted druggies who lost their virginity at 13 because they’re angry at their workaholic parents for never being home. In real life, I’ve never met this family.
HAVING had two boys of my own, I’ve met a lot of other children, and most of them are thoughtful and caring. Our future is in good hands.

THERE ARE tons of books of parenting advice from the “experts.”

My advice: 1) buy all of the books; 2) stack them up in the middle of your lawn; 3) light a match.
IF I were writing a parenting book, it would be one page long: Don’t be an asshole.

Meaning: don’t abuse drugs or alcohol, don’t abuse your kids or spouse, don’t have dish-throwing arguments, don’t cheat on your spouse.
I’d throw in a couple of common sense items like, pay attention to your kids once in a while and attend parent-teacher conferences.
If you can do that, you’re 98% of the way toward being a successful parent.
Of course, it also helps to be financially secure.
I’M STILL BLOWN AWAY by Wesley Autrey, the guy who jumped on the subway tracks to shield a stranger while the subway cars went over them. To instinctively respond like that is just mind-boggling. But what amazes me is that, when EMS and the police arrived, he just got up and walked away, like he had just stopped to pick up a newspaper. He’s received a couple of awards, but they should give one to his parents, too, because somehow they instilled extraordinary values in their son.
MY favorite beer is Sam Adams, but I boycotted them for a year because they sponsored a radio stunt that involved a couple having sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I didn’t even tell my wife about my boycott. Doing something out of moral conviction shouldn’t require positive feedback.

IF YOU NEED to let people know you’ve done a good deed, then you’ve done it for the wrong reasons. Unless you’re Bill Gates or Bono shaming us into giving more.
I SAW a documentary on the killing of Emmett Till, and it was nauseating to think we tolerated that level of hatred and brutality only 50 years ago.
Remember that whenever someone talks about “the good old days.”

I KNOW America still has racial issues, but it also tries to absorb more different cultures than any country ever. Walk through a mall near me and you’ll see whites, blacks, Latinos and Asians of all nationalities and all ages, and I think it’s great. I enjoy the incongruities – Arabs wearing hockey jerseys, Chinese girls serving Cajun food, Koreans calling me “dude.” I recently saw a black teenager wearing a Mister Rogers T-shirt.
THE FRENCH were contemptuous of American racism, but look at the trouble they’re having now with their own Muslim immigrants. It’s easy to pretend to be tolerant when your community is homogenous.
IN SPORTS, I always root for the underdog because I believe in an egalitarian world.
I want as many people as possible to have some success.
Rooting for Manchester United or Liverpool feels like rooting for the old boys’ network, rooting for sealed borders, rooting for the status quo.
The WORLD should be about open doors and fresh blood.
WE ROOT PASSIONATELY for our team and boo the opponent, but sometimes we forget that the players are just young guys trying to make a living. One of my favorite sports moments occurred in the last two minutes of the 1995 Stanley Cup finals. TV cameras showed Mike Peluso, the toughest guy on the New Jersey Devils – a team I root against – sitting on the bench, looking up at the scoreboard. As he realized he was about to achieve his lifelong dream of winning a Stanley Cup, he began to cry. So did I.
ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW about gluttony in America is that, in many fast-food joints, there is no small-size drink – only medium, large, and extra-large. And they now have to make bigger straws for the drinks.
MOST USELESS INVENTION? The escalator. It’s the law of unintended consequences. It was supposed to speed up foot traffic, but it actually slows it down and causes more congestion, because everyone rides it like it’s an elevator. And thus people are lazier and get less exercise.
I HAVE A LIBERTARIAN BIAS against seat belt and motorcycle helmet laws, but if you’re not wearing a seat belt or motorcycle helmet, what the hell is wrong with you?
I HAVE NEVER spent more than $40 on a watch. Never will. How much more accurate can a $1000 watch be – a half-second? And if your cell phone gives the time, who the hell needs a watch?
I’VE KNOWN SOME PEOPLE who have committed suicide.
You know how they say that God never puts more on your shoulders than you can bear? That’s bullshit.

LIKE MANY PEOPLE, suicide crossed my mind occasionally in moments of despair. And like with many people, the thought quickly disappeared. But if you’ve never had to, at least once, fight the urge to crawl back under the covers in a fetal position, with all the lights off, the doors locked and the phones off the hook, then you’re blessed. Or dense.
GREAT QUOTE on religion from Michael Shermer: “So it turns out there are 10,000 gods and yet only one right one. That means we're all atheists on 9,999 gods. The only difference between me and the believers is I'm an atheist on one more god.”
WHAT WOULD JESUS DO?
I know what he would NOT do: Drive a humongous car. Sport expensive bling-bling. Trade the mother of his children in for a trophy wife. Give even one second’s thought to the estate tax. Campaign for lethal injection. Start a war in the Middle East.
AN EXAMPLE OF LUCK: Kurt Vonnegut and baseball Hall-of-Famer Warren Spahn both fought in World War II’s Battle of the Bulge. 19,000 Americans died in that battle. What if Vonnegut and Spahn had not survived? We would never have had Slaughterhouse-5, and someone else would be the winningest left-handed pitcher of all time. And among those 19,000, did we lose any potential Vonneguts or Spahns?
MY PERFECT DAY OFF? A few hours spent writing, a couple of hours spent reading a good book, a couple of new CDs on my headphones, surfing the Net for news, a couple of household chores completed, a nice meal with my family at a modest Italian restaurant, a classic movie on my DVD player, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a little light reading, and 8 hours of sleep. Unfortunately, there’s only 24 hours in a day, and there’s a ballgame on ESPN and a bag of Doritos calling my name.

TRUST me, if you have an opportunity and let it pass out of fear of failure, you’ll feel much worse than if you seize the opportunity and fail.
THE MORE I learn, the more I realize I don’t know.



CHALLENGE your beliefs regularly. Even Einstein was wrong sometimes. And you’re not Einstein.