Coopernundrums » Spring

Hasenpfeffer or Bust

JayCooper — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:46:59 +0000

It’s been a while since I posted anything regarding my beliefs. By and large I have really tried hard lately to be supportive and understanding of my fellow man’s need for intervention by a higher power. I don’t like it when that desire crashes headlong into my day, but I try not to get mad over it anymore. It’s a losing battle. That’s the way you start to think when you get older and (hopefully) wiser.

Normally I enjoy spring and fall the most as far as the seasons go. This year my two sons are as close to being grown as I could hope. I don’t dress them. I don’t bath them. They pretty much get themselves up and out the door for school. You get the idea. They always still take up a great deal of my daily thoughts. I wonder what we might have done right and what we might have done wrong. I also wonder what we can still do to help them with their burgeoning lives. I watch them and sometimes catch a glimmer of some thought in their eyes. Usually it’s when they are seeing something old again in a new light. Easter is one of those things I hope I got right.

I really feel that folks who celebrate Easter are, consciously or otherwise fostering the myth of christianity in some measure. I also never felt the necessity to cram my children full of chocolate, or perpetuate some lore about a magical rodent that farts shiny colored eggs filled with happiness. I do feel it is a good idea to not restrict holiday fun for kids who have to go to school and listen to how everyone else had lots of fun on this “special” day. Doing this, like many other things in religion, breeds resentment. I still feel, with this in mind, that I need not support or endorse such silliness. That’s the way we raised our boys.

I hope my kids will feel the same way I do because critical thinking and logical debate is good for the mind. Remember, the lack of verifiable proof that something exists is not in and of itself evidence of any kind that supports its existence.

So, this Easter please ignore the dizzyingly unbelievable messages from your religious teachers and take this, my Easter message to you as an atheist: Morality is not something a god gives us. It is something that is inside us all as human beings. Love one another and share what you have with those less fortunate. Feed the hungry, care for the sick and above all else this Easter do as you please not as your told because you only live once.

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Magnetic Personalities

JayCooper — Fri, 25 Mar 2011 02:49:27 +0000

Throughout the course of my life I have met some extremely colorful characters. I have a large circle of people who I am happy to call friends. I have a lot of clients that I work for that I don’t really consider friends. I want to tell you about a couple that fall into the former group.

These folks originally joined my group of acquaintances by becoming customers of mine. I was approached to update their existing business website, MagnetQueen. It was a long process as their website was a bit larger than I anticipated. Long jobs, as any developer or graphic designer will tell you, tend to stick with you. This one introduced me to Brian and Liza, Native New Yorker’s that migrated their business here to Tennessee. They make Save the Date Magnets for weddings, birthdays, graduations, you name it.

Brian is a Fordham University graduate and Liza is a graduate of the Parsons School of Design. Together they have owned and run their own successful business for many, many years. They would tell you that they wish they could be a lot more successful but, what other person wouldn’t tell you the same? They are a fun couple that likes the arts and are superb conversationalist and over the years I have grown very fond of them. Most importantly they make some of the coolest magnets you can imagine. My refrigerator is covered with picture magnets and fun magnets they have made for me over the years.

If you are in the market for some unique invites to give for your next event. I hope you will consider my friend’s work. I think you will be very pleased.

Here’s to you Brian and Liza.

http://www.magnetqueen.com

Summer is Awsome..if You are not a Computer

JayCooper — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 21:00:44 +0000

I was thinking today about the things we seem to do during the late spring and early summer months at my house and it ocured to me that people on the whole ignore their PCs during the summer months. They play outside, they go swimmimg, heck some folks even CLEAN.

It seems to me that at this time of year when the temp is the highest most folks seem to neglect the old computer. So as the helpful kind of guy I am I thought I would drop some of my own favorite summer computeing tips on you and hope it rubs off. Here goes…

Open your computer case and CLEAN OUT THE DUST!!!!!

- use a can of compressed air and spray off the CPU cooler (thats the hunk-o-metal on top of your processor)

- use the canned air to hose off the fans

- clean off the memory sticks

Turn off your PC in the hottest parts of the day (if you can)

- some folks leave their PCs on 24-7, thats fine, but of you dont actually use it during high noon, turn it off

Unplug those big fancy Dolby / THX speakers

- they give off a ton of heat suck energy big time.

Tie up and organize that Gordian Knot behind your desk.Computers are kind of like fine wine, they need air to breath and be the best they can be.

- loose cables and that squid like mas of tangled cables can lead to reduced airlfow and a shortened PC lifespan.

Clean your KEYBOARD!!! (yes that sticky, dirty, crumb infested drink receptical that you push the letters on)

- unplug the keyboard from your computer

- Turn it key-side down and SHAKE

- Use a mild detergent on a damp cloth and wipe down all the finger grime and ick

- let it dry thoroughly

Now go, don’t forget your PC this summer. Give it the love it needs and deserves.

Anti-Valentine’s Graffiti

JayCooper — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 16:49:21 +0000

In honor of the upcoming rediculous holiday I present you with some interesting custom graffiti in keeping with my own feelings. ENJOY!

Valen-SHMUCKS-Day

JayCooper — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:10:04 +0000

It should be exposed that Valentine’s Day was originally concocted by the Christian Church to ruin the festival of Lupercalia (named after the Roman God Lupercus) which was held on the 15th of February and continued throughout the month. Lupercalia was a fertility festival dedicated to Faunus, the Roman God of Agriculture, (the date in February was originally chosen to welcome spring) and to the Roman founders Romulus and Remus commemorating young men’s rite of passage. To begin the festival, members of the Luperci, an order of Roman priests, would gather at a sacred cave where the infants Romulus and Remus, were originally discovered happily staying alive by suckling a “lupa” (a she-wolf – think Ann Coulter).The priests would then sacrifice a goat, for fertility, and a dog, for purification because apparently with all those priests around, there were no pure goats. The young men would then slice the goat’s leather hide into strips, dip them in the sacrificial blood and take to the streets, slapping both women and, as the story goes, fields of crops with the goat-hide strips. Okay, a lot more women, than fields, were being spanked with these goat-strips, but this wasn’t a bad thing.

Roman women welcomed being touched with the hides because it was believed the strips would make them more fertile in the coming year…or at least more popular at Roman parties.

Later in the day, a lottery was held where all the young women in the city would place their names in a big urn and the city’s bachelors would then each choose a name out of the urn and the girl would be the sexual partner of the young man for a year.

Now THIS was a lottery! You can imagine how crowded the liquor and 7-Eleven stores were. Everyone’s a winner!Okay, except for the goat and the dog, but there weren’t any special interest groups back then. Except for the ultimate self interest group, the Church.

In 498 A.D. Pope Gelasius of the Christian Church declared the celebration a pagan holiday, because it was fun, and decided to christianize the hell out of it. He did this by creating a “misinformation” celebration on the day before the festival of Lupercalia, February 14th, in the hopes of confusing the entire matter.

Instead of the names of young women, the urn would contain the names of Christian Saints and the young men and women were to emulate the ways of the saint they picked from the urn for a year.

Way to kill a holiday.

So much for the Lupercalia festival. The Christian church now needed a new holiday “mascot” to coordinate with the date they needed and found one in Saint Valentinus. But Saint Valentinus was a virgin and knew nothing of romance. This fact would hinder the effort to confuse the celebrations. Not to mention if anybody should have been celebrating Lupercalia, it was this guy.

The Christian church knew this wouldn’t fly and created an elaborate story about Valentinus and love.

Oh those Christians and their elaborate stories.

So now you’ve got Valentinus, an anti-lover chosen to be the propaganda machine’s namesake of a lover’s holiday that wasn’t created to be a lover’s holiday but rather was invented to demolish a sexual holiday.

And it worked. Because you’re all crazy.

Happy Lupercalia.

Misguided Laudable Knowledge day

JayCooper — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 14:48:16 +0000

he is just a man

First, let me say that this is not one of those hate posts. Secondly, I want to assure anyone reading this that I am indeed and intelligent person and that I do not intentionally set about to incite or induce hatred.Martin Luther King Day to me is a TRUE conundrum, this year, in the year of Obama especially. I do see the significance of what the man did in terms of pressing the issues of racial equality and human rights. I do believe that he was a major catalyst in solvency of a national, and some would say international, movement. These things I understand. What I do NOT understand is how we as a nation and as people with high levels of real common sense seem to somehow place this man on such a pedestal. In my lifetime I have seen this national holiday grow from being a day of respect and honor into a national spectacle that seems to rival nothing short of Christmas in its commercialization and hype.

It shocks and surprises me that we, who consider ourselves intelligent, have let this evolve into something that it should not be. What would happen if we all put as much pomp, sensationalism, and over commercialization into Thomas Edison day? That man was largely responsible for the age we live in with regards to advancing humanity from a literal dark age. What if we took the day off work and decided we needed a parade for this? I could go on and on citing major figures in United States history that have all had just as much impact on all of us as MLK but that would not help with my point.

I am sure this post if viewed by enough people could be construed as hateful but I assure you it is not. I mean no ill will towards anyone. I just feel like we have really gone overboard with this thing. While we are idolizing, or deifying him, lets just say he walked on water and came back from the dead too.