Mamihlapinatapai

Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes erroneously spelled mamihlapinatapei) is a word from Tierra del Fuego listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word”. It describes a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that neither one wants to start.

Nuff said.

[Update: Now with YouTube-y bandwidthy goodness!]

OK, so this was originally posted in my private journal, but I sent it around to a few friends and they seemed to enjoy it, so here we are.

Please note that I am certainly not attempting to take credit for these concepts, as they’ve been stolen from various bits of psychology, spirituality and the like. They are simply a list of 10 rules that I’ve tried to follow and have found to be very helpful in decreasing my stress levels and enjoying my life more.

I’d love to hear any feedback from the (literally) DOZENS of people reading.

So without further ado, here’s the list.

1. You get back from the world what you put out into the world.
2. Get everything out of your head (write it down, say it out loud, sing it)
3. When presented with new opportunities, say yes more than you say no
4. Avoid attention whores and emotional vampires, they are people with nothing to offer.
5. Pay regular conscious attention to how you are treating yourself. If it’s not at least as good as your closest friend, do something about it.
6. Ask for what you want, when the worst response is a “no”
7. Spoil yourself when you can, but remember that material goods are background noise in a fulfilling life.
8. When you feel down, sit down and make a list of the good things that have happened to you in the last week. “There haven’t been any” is not an acceptable answer.
9. Don’t stress what you can’t control. Ever.
10. You can’t change other people; all you can do is be the kind of person that other people want to change in order to be.

[Update 1/27: Some other good/duplicate ideas at Hack Yourself]

Listening to: Laika – Sugar Daddy

If some of the “new” features of Windows Vista look a little familiar to you OSX users…

“Live previews of applications!” “Sidebar widgets!”

Search for applications anywhere on your machine!

As some of you may have read, Microsoft is playing nice with the web (for once) and adopting Mozilla’s “Syndicate” image as their RSS button. This is a good step toward further interoperability and generally making things less confusing for those who arent so RSS-savvy, as well as finally getting rid of those ugly-as-sin orange RSS buttons ().

Instead, what we use now is this:

Courtesy of mattbrett.com

However, realizing that it’s still that ugly orange, Matt has been kind enough to create a ton of downloadable versions of the icon in EPS, GIF, AI, PSD formats, for your own custom color coding.

They’re all available at FeedIcons.com

I’ve already switched over, as you can see from the menu bar.

Listening to: Laika – T. Street

Here’s an idea that needs to happen:

I want a web service that will import my netflix queue and tell me which movies are on cable within the next week, so if there are films that i dont care about the 5.1 or bonus features i can record them on my tivo and clear out my queue.

Someone, make it happen!

Happy Jewmas!

But I saw this headline on IMDB and couldn’t stop laughing.

Actor John Spencer, who won an Emmy award for playing chief of staff Leo McGarry on The West Wing, died Friday of a heart attack; he was 58. Spencer’s publicist, Ron Hoffman, said that Spencer died at a Los Angeles hospital, and no further details were available at press time. Services and funeral arrangements are currently pending. –Prepared by IMDb staff

Seriously, he was one of our finest actors, who seemed to have had a blast playing COS Leo McGarry on The West Wing (which I’d call one of the finest dramas in television history.) these past 7 years.

He will be missed.

If you haven’t already, I strongly recommend you check out Season One and Season Two of The West Wing. They’re only $20 each on Amazon.

If you’re into music at all, run don’t walk to

The only music recommendation engine I’ve used that gives me music I

A) Like and
2) Haven’t heard of

New find: The Kin.

As of today, this blog is officially…