In addition to being publisher, editor, circulation manager, graphic designer, and advertising director for the paper you are now reading, I am also cook the meals and do the dishes here at Syncopation Central. When I'm laying out The Syncopated Times the food tends to be more expedient. This week, after enjoying a take-out order of Singapore Mai Fun (a dinner which always prompts the same joke: “I get no kick from Lo Mein—I'm havin' Mai Fun”), I cracked open my fortune cookie to discover this message:
I have never been one to let dessert items dictate a course of action (unless it's to avoid them, for the most part), but this “fortune” was particularly misguided. It is, in fact, the worst possible advice I could imagine imparting to anyone. Assuming I have any personal beliefs (and I'm not saying I do), sharing them leads only to bitter disagreement between intractable sides. People start calling each other names and no longer see each other as fully human. At best, one faction condescendingly attempts to “enlighten” the other. And it has been my experience that insertion of said beliefs (in the form of an agenda) into any otherwise innocent and constructive endeavor ruins the whole enterprise.
The Syncopated Times has a point of view, and that should be intrinsic in everything you read here. Plainly stated, it is that good music, intelligent discourse, and le
