Those of you with whom I’ve had the pleasure of corresponding personally will know that I conclude, “Be well”—in person as often as in print. There are several reasons, but mainly, I believe it to be a superior cap to the alternatives, some of which I consider presently.

• “Sincerely” has been overused to the point that it almost sounds insincere: it’s like saying, “Can’t-think-what-else-to-say, bye.” It can be used artfully and to great effect, but only if one has covered a broad base of topics and the whole letter could be punctuated paragraph-wise with, “(I mean this quite seriously.)” Furthermore, the focus of “sincerely” is your own attitude, not the well-being of the person you’re addressing. If you are truly sincere, you will be able to convey that by each carefully selected word that crafts every sentence you’re writing—and if it’s a careless letter, why send it as a letter with a proper structure instead of a text message? Overusing “sincerely” is like overtraining your biceps: it’ll look better if you buffer it by something else and give it a rest. Try something else.
• “Be good” is insufficient because of its colloquial use, which is actually just confused with what would otherwise say “be well,” but when taken literally (that is, outside its mostly-Southeastern US context), this conclusion is telling the person to achieve moral excellence or to keep up his or her health. Sounds great, right? But what if the person needs dwell in the grace of Christ more than he or she needs to seek to achieve moral excellence, being already driven unhealthily by a misconception like “performance theology.” Maybe in order to truly be well, this person needs to relax a bit; or even in the long run needs to be sick, yes, even to experience momentary pain, or to be challenged in a new way, in order to grow and ultimately be a better individual and more actively beneficial influence on the persons whose company he or she keeps.
• “Take it easy”—this one always gets me. Hereagain, this well-intentioned phrase is an insufficient blessing. If I have a busy day ahead of me, or if I need to be much higher-strung than I am in order to complete some task or another, then the last thing I need to hear is “take it easy”—either because I’ll take it to heart and fall from underperformance into uniform indolence, or because I’ll mentally contrast what “taking it easy” would look like (e.g., a neat twelve-year Scotch blend, a nice cigar, good friends, good conversation deep into the night) with what must actually be accomplished that day (e.g., finishing work, writing a paper, doing laundry, working out, writing emails, paying bills deep into the night) and will thus be more discouraging than helpful! Furthermore, while some Type-A personalities really do need to hear this and take it seriously, taking it easy is usually the last thing we really need to do, and in the best of cases is still an incomplete motivational invocation.
• “Grace and peace” is the closest letter-closing I’ve ever heard to “be well,” and is characteristically charitable and thoughtful: who wouldn’t enjoy the blessing of grace and peace? And yet, if one is truly to be well, he or she will enjoy the grace and peace of Christ, and many more blessings besides, though the path to get there be riddled with the thorns of hard lessons that inevitably expose that grace and that peace.

I therefore propose “Be well” as the superlative benediction. Maybe it is ultimately in my best interests not to take it easy, but rather to go to the gym and sweat a bit under a squat bar, run in the cold winter sunlight and breathe in the fresh air, write a letter, sing a song, or make a tough call to an old friend or family member with whom I’ve had rough relations in the past. Maybe I need to push past my own limitations and do something that’s quite the opposite of easy, and so become an encouragement to others and become a better man. Maybe what I need to be truly well is to have the opportunity of becoming violently ill in order to re-evaluate my priorities and get my life in order. Maybe I’m in a dead-end relationship out of which I’d never myself see a way if not for the “Dear John” letter that might initially seem to perforate my joy and fill me with dread, but which will seem in the long run a great blessing, as an aerator punctures a lawn and tills the garden to make the plot more fruitful. Maybe, though I might never consciously wish it on myself, I need something other than a candy-coated reality full of apparent charm and warmth in order to become the kind of man that I was intended to become. By wishing my wellness, you invoke all of this—and since true wellness cannot be attained apart from the grace and the peace that surpasses all understanding, you thereby wish that to my person, and I will partake of it if I am well—whether the means be straight and flat or crooked and full of obstacles by which I learn, grow, and am ultimately made better.

And so to you, dear reader, I say, be well.

Technorati Tags: wellness, benediction, blessing

Technorati Tags: Qana, bombing, Lebanon, photographs, misrepresentation

Technical information about the “Secure Knot,” dubbed by Clifford Ashley the “Double Slip Knot.” Seriously though, if you’re lacing up your running shoes, finish off with this knot. It’s not only quicker than a conventional bowtie, you’ll also train your brain to break a habit and improve your alertness, and the shoes won’t slip from a loose knot, forcing you to stop your run mid-way through or risk flopping a sneaker out into the middle of a street, and you along wit it.

Eat This, Not That at a Summer Picnic. Links directly to the “Printable” version, a great little list of things to eat and not to eat. Who knew potato salad was such a foul offender? (BTW—notice the fine print, amusingly enough, which points to Women’s Health as the source of the article. They can do that because they’re owned by the same company, but I wonder how many catch it.)

10GB of gorgeous wallpapers. This is page 78 of I-don’t-even-know-how-many. I’ve been using 005 as my background for months now; YMMV. Enjoy all these gorgeous shots.

Don’t watch this or this if you’re easily offended or have a weak stomach.

Ellen Feiss, of Mac: Switch ad campaigns, is in a French film. No, it’s not just you. She’s cute, end of story.

Why Geeks/Nerds make the best boyfriends. What, didn’t you know?

Soaked your cellphone? Throw it into the oven for five hours on 125°.

Educate yourself about illegal drugs; make sure you retain this knowledge by not doing them. Actually, the Lycaeum.org is better for this sort of thing.

Daily Show commentary on MySpace courtesy of Demetri Martin. Look his stand-up comedy up on YouTube.

PhoneTrick.com? Plug in your info, real or not, and call your friends. Or enemies, you know. (Also a good way to find your phone if it’s gone missing somewhere in your car or apartment!)

The Restaurant Selector! Fairly excited about this site because it actually has listings for Columbia, SC. If it has listings for one of the least-esteemed states in the union, it just might have listings for your city. Check it out; ratings and descriptions along with addresses for all.

That’s all for now; enjoy!

The more I know of Stephen Colbert the more I like him. Articulate, hilarious, and precise. Do you remember his roasting of President Bush back in April? No? Well, I didn’t either, so you’re in good company: here’s the full transcript, and the YouTube mirror of the videos [First, Second, Third parts], as well as the opening segment of the next broadcast of the Colbert Report (01 May 2006) after the roasting.

The more I understand, the more questions I have; and the more I get to know Colbert, the more I believe him to be a genius.

Raise your hand if the Fourth of July (or whichever day of celebration in your country involves the grandest expenditure of Class C fireworks in a single night) is your favorite holiday!

::raises hand::

If you’ve been following the story on ThinkBlog, you can now read the Digg comments and the New York Times article.

read more | digg story

Back in September of last year, he announced on his blog that he would no longer be blogging while writing a book. I believed him, and dutifully removed the feed with chagrin from my RSS aggregator while doing a little “fall cleaning.” Turns out he couldn’t stay away, so I caught up on the archives. In there, I found the following tidbits quite interesting:

He wrote the black Buzz Rickson’s MA-1 flight jacket into existence. Seriously. Get the story straight from the horse’s mouth here. Here’s a short explanation from Technovelgy.com.

In March, he posted a review of V for Vendetta thus: “More thumbs up than a Chernobyl pianist. Superb. Splendid. Heartening. Go see.” This has changed my opinion of whether the film was worth it; a Xangan had talked poorly of the movie, but when the father of cyberpunk fiction says a movie is good….

Read Time Machine Cuba by Wm Gibson at InfiniteMatrix.

F:F:F —my autographed hardcover of Pattern Recognition (2003) would have been significantly more “filled in” had I seen this while reading: “These images are intended to give a sense of place to locations in William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition.”

It’s definitely an “adult” theme, but it’s comedy gold. And to think, I used to hate comedy….

You have to see this. Really. These jerks stole an electronic device and then had the audacity to refuse him the return. This is seriously just too much.

Hope you get it back. Moreover, I hope they get justice.

read more | digg story

read more | digg story

There’s a certain parallel there, to real life. The things that used to seem so overwhelming are no longer; they’ve been replaced by other things that are hard now. But they’re not that tough, either, are they? It will just take patience, growth, concentration, and perseverance to get through them, just as, in th same way, I had to grow up a bit for Zelda 2 to be a fun challenge as opposed to an insufferably boring impossibility.

Are you going together?
“r u gng 2gethr?”

Well, I have to go (”gotta go”)….
“g2g”

Recently, there was a story in the news about how this kind of talk is a “code” that’s derived in order to keep parents in the dark about the plans of their children. No, that’s sensationalist. Kids are smart enough to derive a real code if they want to keep their parents in the dark.

But you DO need to discipline your kids if they talk this way online, because it’s killing the English language. Also, the sky is falling. Discuss.

From his journal, hogghogg asks: “I keep finding myself in conversations with tertiary educators in the hard sciences (Physics, Astronomy, Chemistry, etc.) who note that even the geeks—those who voluntarily choose to major in hard sciences—enter university never having programmed a computer. When I was in grade six, the Commodore PET came out, and I jumped at the opportunity to learn how to program it. Now, evidently, most high school computer classes are about Word ™ and Excel ™. Is this a bad thing? Should we care?”

Do you think the desire to program computers has declined in the younger generations? If so, what reasons might you cite as the cause?

I think it has declined, but I’m not sure of the cause. It seems that there’s more of a focus now on sheer practicality: don’t worry about how to think logically, or how to design a program with a logical flow, just remember where the “Open File” dialog box can be found in MS Word! Tatsh made an insightful reply here. But what do you think? Is it necessary and/or good for kids to learn how to program? If you’re in high school right now, have you had any first-hand experience with programming languages? If so, was it on your own or through the school?

Meanwhile, final is finally DONE.