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So, we have this DVR which is the irresistible force that pulls me in the opposite direction of my personal GTD efforts each evening.

We also have set it to record, among many other shows, Two and a Half Men. I can’t say exactly why, except that Charlie Sheen is pretty funny in this series if you can ignore the fact that he’s basically playing himself. A womanizing Charlie Sheen on a madcap sitcom is kind of amusing, a womanizing Charlie Sheen in real life is kind of sad. But it’s a sitcom, not real life. And I like John Cryer.

Anyway, I noticed one night that a slide with a bunch of enigmatic writing on it showed for a split second as the Two and a Half Men credits were rolling. And, well, me — moth, enigmatic writing — flame. I had to check it out. Now we’ve taken to freezing this frame after every show so we can read director Chuck Lorre’s Vanity Slide. Apparently Chuck’s been waiting for us to catch on since he’s got all of the vanity slides he’s ever shown, including the ones shown at the end of his other show Dharma and Greg, stored on his very own vanity slide website.

Chuck is a witty guy and the cards read like a blog. Chuck Lorre may very well be the first TV Blogger. Granted he has a rare platform from which he can TV Blog, but still. Isn’t this some kind of cultural first?

You know the guy with a new hammer thinks everything looks like a nail. And my latest new hammer is Michel de Certeau’s “Practice of Everyday Life”. And I say Chuck Lorre is a nail.

de Certeau talks early on in his book about how culture is defined not so much by the products — books, movies, magazines, plays, TV Shows — that are provided for our consumption, but the ways in which we as “consumers” appropriate, adapt, and subvert them to fit our own needs. We use “tactics” to exploit cracks and crevices in the structures of production, taking advantages of oppotunities to exert our individual power and express ourselves. Many Lifehacks ( a concept now in vogue) are in this spirit…

(You think my words sound pretentious? You should try to read de Certeau’s over the top academic prose.)

… anyway, Chuck Lorre has done exactly that. He’s found a little crack in the TV production machine and he has appropriated it in order to express himself. More power to him, I say.

This is not exactly hot off the presses, but apparently scientists hypothesize that the Female Orgasm is a “happy accident” and serves no evolutionary purpose, kind of like nipples on men. Let’s see, women get the big O and men get nipples. When it comes to evolutionary accidents, the men got shortchanged big time.

Not that I don’t subscribe to the theory of evolution, mind you. I do. But I don’t believe it explains everything. It’s amusing to see how scientific materialists attribute everything that falls outside the explanatory bounds of current scientific theories to accidents — chance, randomness, fate, whatever you call it.

Seems to me such attributions require as much faith as my personal Christian beliefs about God. Randomness is a very useful concept, but cannot be proven to exist. God is a very useful concept, but cannot be proven to exist. So I guess which you choose to use to explain things beyond the grasp of current science depends on your faith.

And don’t even get me started on Occam’s Razor. Besides being a distortion of its original intent, using Occam’s Razor as a test against faith just tranforms one subjective question into another subjective question. Who’s to say that your concept of chance or randomness is simpler than my concept of God? You do? Your faith is stong, my friend.

Back to orgasms. I like the idea that women have them for reasons other than reproductive advantage. I like the idea that something so enjoyable exists as a gift from God, for the pleasure of it. Maybe it’s all part of the Plan and not just a happy accident.

“Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet they don’t just exchange facts; They transform them, reshape them, draw different conclusions from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn’t just reshuffle the cards, it creates new cards.”

– Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity

My wife and I have started another attempt at fostering regular creative conversations in our community . One Thousand Blank White Cards and Bad Art Night were mainly niche ideas and did not have a sustainable draw (or at least I did not have the promotional chutzpah to sell them properly.) This time we’re going at it a little more mainstream, but it’s still rewarding and fun.

My wife and I got the idea from our failed book club (did I tell you we were starters?). We could never decide on a book to read and nobody actually read before the discussion sessions anyway. So we decided to ditch the book, keep the discussion and dictate the topic to everybody else. Then the invitees could self-select and do whatever reading they cared to do to prepare for the conversation. Walla! Second Thought!

This is the third month so far. The first two were a rousing success. Here’s the blurb we send out at the end of each monthly invitation:

“How Second Thought Works

Second Thought is a conversational salon held on the second Saturday of each month. Each month’s conversation has a different topic. We cycle each quarter through three themes — issues, spirit, and fun.

Think about the theme and come prepared to express your thoughts. We don’t care how you prepare — review a book, scan the news, pen a poem, paint a picture, say a prayer, tell a story — just as long as you prepare something to share. Each person will have a chance to share uninterrupted for up to five minutes before the conversation opens up.

There are very few rules for this conversation. Courtesy is paramount. Participation is a must. Come prepared to change only one mind — your own.”

This month’s topic is the “Fun” topic — Summer Fun in Houston. More on that topic later.