Pieces of Eight

I got eight carburetors and boys I'm usin' 'em all.
Bob Dylan

Yoga for Cynics is feelin’ the love as, just in the past few days, it’s been awarded honors by blogger friends Svasti, Juliet, and Tony the Acoustic Guitar Playing Red Panda, as well as being called upon by Samantha Grace (not her real name) to provide the following list (which also answers some frequently asked questions):

Eight Things You Might Not Know About Me:

1. After getting my PhD, I could hardly wait to be on a plane or somewhere and have somebody say “is there a doctor on board?” so I could reply “yes! I’m a doctor!” A month or so later, I was on a plane, and that very question came over the loudspeaker. I decided nobody’d think it was funny, though. So, I came up with the “can explain Faulkner while you die” thing, which people do think is funny (or at least that’s what they say).
2. I was once called “yoga faggot” in an online forum.
3. Ironically, enough, others have suspected me of going to yoga class to ogle women.
4. Much as I’m into the idea of being bisexual, I’ve sadly never actually met a man I was attracted to.
5. I know lots of places where I can see women without having to twist myself into gurudasana to do it.
6. Besides, as I am sometimes the only male in yoga class, I fill the quite necessary role of providing the low end on OM.
7. The quotes on this blog are mostly from memory, though I usually look up the exact wording. J. Krishnamurti wrote “if you quote some high authority, then you equally stop thinking,” and I agree with that...I mean I don’t agree with it...I mean....
8. No matter how perplexing you might find this blog, you’re still not nearly as confused as I am.

we must stand up and say “eight is enough.”
Barack Obama

My Astrological Sign: Charlie the Three Toed Sloth

Being a good writer is 3% talent, 97% not being distracted by the internet
unknown (but found, of course, somewhere on the internet)

Would it be hypocritical, or at least disadvantageous, to discuss what an incredible time-waster the internet is in a blog? I met somebody once who started an anti-technology, nominally Luddite organization. She gave me the URL for their website in case I wanted to get involved.

I lean and loaf at my ease observing a spear of summer grass
Walt Whitman

They say savasana is the most important yoga pose, or at least some of they do. That’s “corpse pose” for the uninitiated...so easy a dead person could do it. I actually find it nearly impossible without a yoga teacher present. I can fuck off endlessly but, somehow, am not so good at actually doing nothing.

God knows, it’s sacrilege to waste the talent for idleness which I possess
William Faulkner

There’s a stupid bumper sticker that says “I was going to procrastinate but decided to put it off till later,” or something like that—I’m too lazy to google it. There’s actually something to it: procrastination is much better if done on purpose—go off and do something you actually feel like doing with the knowledge that you’re not gonna do what you’re supposed to be doing anyway, as opposed to pacing around or endlessly web surfing all afternoon under the false pretense that you’re actually gonna be productive.

No one seems to know
How useful it is to be useless.
Chuang Tzu