Is today the first day of the rest of your life?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Doug Savage’s Savage Chickens cartoon for February 5, 2026 titled First has the following dialogue:

 

First Chicken: Today is the first day of the rest of your life!

 

Second Chicken: This second is the first second of the rest of this minute!

 

Second Chicken [continuing]: That’s how ridiculous you sound.

 

Where did that tired proverb come from? The Wikipedia article on Synanon has a section Beginnings saying their founder Charles E. ‘Chuck’ Dederich Sr. coined the phrase. But the 2012 Dictionary of Modern American Proverbs instead says on page 260 (see Google Books) that it first shows up in the January 29, 1968 Helena Montana Independent Record (but likely is older than that):

 

“The colorful fluorescent posters lining the walls of the crowded Student Union theatre bore such messages as….’Today is the first day of the rest of your life’.”

 

Another Wikipedia article attributes that proverb to The Digger Papers.

 

That proverb also is on a sign in a ‘Welcome to Hell’ Far Side cartoon by Gary Larson. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An illustration for “This second is the first second of the rest of this minute!” is shown above based on an OpenClipArt image.

 

 

Brian Jenner raps about what he does as a speechwriter

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I was looking at a post by David Murray at his Writing Boots blog on February 4, 2026 titled Apparently, it takes diff’rent strokes to move the world of professional speechwriting. He had embedded a two-minute YouTube rap video by Brian Jenner from February 21, 2018 titled The Speechwriter Rap – Brian Jenner – Speechwriter. Text for the first minute is:

 

“I expect you’re here because 

    you’ve got a speech to make

You need to impress, there’s a lot at stake

You’re wondering – what can a speechwriter do?

That’s my job title; I’ll explain to you

On the phone, because that’s the inexpensive way

You tell me in your own words, what you’d like to say

I’ll then quiz you gently about your ideas

The journalist in me will calm all your fears

When’s the event? What’s the setting?

How many guests? Won’t that joke be upsetting?

With a clear understanding, I’ll be ready to go

Whoah! Did we agree on a fee? Oh dear no

Before that’s sorted, nothing begins

In business, we like it, when everyone wins

As a writer, for years I’ve scribbled and spoken

Check out my books, with your next book token

My skill is: I’ve written dozens of speeches

My, my. There’s a lot that experience teaches”

 

On October 19, 2025 I blogged about when Brian Jenner discusses the state of speechwriting.

 

An image of a man typing on a laptop was cropped from one at Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Our tools for measuring, recording, remembering, and reasoning about time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excruciatingly detailed 22-page pdf article by Kensy Cooperrider at Topics in Cognitive Science on April 29, 2025 (Volume 18, Number 1, pages 147 to 168) titled Time Tools. He concludes:

 

“We humans come into the world with basically the same biological equipment for managing time as many other animals, and probably all other primates. But we nonetheless end up with an understanding of time that is unlike any other in the natural world. This is because we alone have developed cognitive technologies to help us grapple with temporal structures - and helpful they are. They allow us to tally, coordinate, predict, measure, record, remember, and reason; they allow us to deal with time in new, powerful ways. Though some of the consequences of time tools are quite recent, others are far older: some scholars have proposed that early time tools like seasonal calendars may have already begun to improve our foraging success in the Upper Paleolithic.

 

Our cognitive technologies for thinking about time have now become so deeply internalized, so woven into our understanding of the world, that we can barely imagine a world without them. Clocks, calendars, and timelines; seconds, minutes, hours; shared ways of talking about time as something to be saved and ‘budgeted’; ideas of time zones and deadlines and setting clocks back - these ideas are now utterly banal. Today, to not know the day of the week - an arbitrary convention par excellence—is to experience deep disorientation. Physicians check on patients’ faculties by asking them what year it is, and a common formal screening for cognitive impairment involves reading an analog clock. One of the most remarkable aspects of our time tools - and of human cognitive technologies in general - is that we grow so dependent on them that they become almost invisible.

 

Here, I have tried to shake up this feeling of invisibility - to remove, as it were, the glasses we had forgotten we were wearing. By focusing on earlier, less familiar time tools - in particular, those that came before the rise of ubiquitous ‘clock time’ - I have tried to bring into focus: first, the diversity of concepts, practices, and artifacts humans have developed for dealing with time; and, second, the universality of the practical problems that humans have used time tools to solve. The importance of our time tools is hard to overstate. Much is made –understandably - of our species’ ecological dominance, of the fact that we were able to spread over a vast swath of space, occupying niches that are completely inhospitable to other primates. Less is made of our species ‘temporal dominance,’ of the fact that we alone have learned to navigate and master - and, arguably, construct - a fourth dimension of the world. Without time tools this would have been, quite literally, unthinkable.”

 

An image of Big Ben came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

An excellent comprehensive monthly calendar for planning to improve your public speaking this year

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On January first I blogged about In 2026 only you can prevent bad presentations, and mentioned an article by Maurice Decastro at Mindful Presenter on December 28, 2025 titled 10 Ways to Develop Strong Public Speaking Skills in 2026. He has another article on January 1, 2026 titled Transform your public speaking skills: a comprehensive yearly growth calendar. It has the following categories organized by months, each of which is briefly discussed:

  

January – Prioritise what matters most

Identify your ‘why”

Focus on your strengths first

Find a trusted friend or colleague

 

February – Clarity is king

Start small and clarify one core message

Know your audience and shape the message around them

Pressure-test your clarity

 

March – Create a strong, impactful opening and closing

Begin with a compelling quote or question

Share a fascinating anecdote, statistic, or fact

Create an image

Close with impact

 

April – Managing your nerves

Ground your body to calm your mind

Shift focus away from yourself

Build confidence through preparation, not perflection

 

May – Could you listen to yourself?

Record yourself practicing

Slow down and pause

Experiment with volume and emphasis

 

June – Practice mindful movement

Connect with the ground and your hands

Connect through eye contact

Connect with yourself before speaking

 

July – Manage your bad habits

Fire, aim, read

One size fits all

The curse of knowledge

Avoiding mud at the wall

Avoiding PPI (Preparation, practice, internalization)

The tornado effect

Looking good

Avoiding the bush

The ostrich syndrome

Speed of light

Energy is key

The corporate spokesperson

The comforter

Motion sickness

Let’s count

You don’t sound so sure

 

August – Share stories

Create a personal story bank

Structure your story and make it emotionally engaging

Enhance your story delivery skills

 

September – Focus on engagement and interaction

Ask questions

Encourage reflection and gauge the atmosphere

Boost audience participation

 

October – Get out more

Attend live events

Look for opportunities to learn

Ask for help when needed

 

November – Mastering questions

Listen fully and clarify

Pause, smile, and breathe

Stay focused and strategic

 

December – Spend time reflecting

Reflect on your learning and add new techniques

Demonstrate your skills in practical situations

Create a personal development plan

 

His monthly titles had dashes for January, February, March, April, May, September, October, and November; But he used colons for June, July, August, and December. I edited to make them consistent.

 

There are three categories in each month for January, February, April, May, June, August, September, October, November, and December. But there are four categories for March, and sixteen categories for July. That is a total of 44 categories! Those 16 from July might better have left four there, and spread the remaining dozen as two each over six months.

 

The calendar was adapted from this one at OpenClipArt.  

 

 

An excellent blog post on how to rehearse a speech

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is an excellent post by Nick Morgan at his Public Words blog on February 6, 2024 titled How to Rehearse a Speech which has the following half-dozen useful suggestions:

 

As soon as you can, ‘freeze’ the script.

 

Record the speech and play it on walks, runs, drives, and anything else repetitive you do before the event.

 

Break the speech into chunks and rehearse them out of order.

 

Spend time connecting your motion on stage with the moments of your speech.

 

Memorize the flow of the speech, not the specific words.

 

Practice the speech with different emotional tones.

 

The image of Brittney Marie came from Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

Four portmanteau words with less and more; never and ever

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wikipedia says that:

 

“In linguistics, a portmanteau (also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or simply blend) is a word formed by combining the meanings and parts of the sounds of two or more words.”

 

The 2x2 table shown above lists those for combinations of less and more; and never and ever. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that nevertheless is an adverb meaning “in spite of that; however”, nevermore is an adverb meaning “never again,” and evermore is an adverb meaning “forever, always.” Everless isn’t in the dictionary; but instead is the title for a 2018 book by Sara Holland: Everless: A New York Times Bestselling YA Fantasy Romance of Time and Dangerous Secrets.

 

On January 19, 2024 I blogged about The Joy of 2x2 tables, or charts, or matrixes.

 

 

An xkcd cartoon about hazardous male-to-male extension cords

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The xkcd comic for January 23, 2026 is titled Double-Pronged Extension Cord. My colorized version is shown above. It was discussed at Explain xkcd. A Wikipedia article titled Gender of connectors and fasteners has a section on Safety that explains how this is a tragedy waiting to happen:

 

“A double-ended male connector for utility-supplied (mains) electrical power is extremely dangerous, and sometimes is called a ‘suicide cable’ or ‘widowmaker cord’. Some hardware shops explicitly refuse to make or sell them when asked by customers who have mistakenly hung a string of Christmas lights backwards and wish to connect the socket end to a wall socket, or who intend to connect a generator or inverter to their home's electrical circuit in the event of a utility power outage. The exposed prongs on the live end of the cable pose serious electrical shock and fire hazards, and when improperly used in a generator setup may cause the equipment to burn out when utility power is restored. It can also backfeed power into the grid, potentially damaging utility equipment or even electrocuting linemen attempting to restore power.^”

 

There is an article at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) web site on September 15, 2022 titled CPSC warns consumers to immediately stop using male-to-male extension cords sold on Amazon.com due to electrocution, fire, and carbon monoxide poisoning hazards. A follow-up article at Consumer Reports by Tobie Stanger on September 16, 2022 is titled Don’t Use Male-to-Male Extension Cords Sold on Amazon – or Elsewhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For photography male-to-male extension cords sometimes were used to synchronize a pair of electronic flashes for cameras, like the suicide cable shown above. Of course, this was potentially dangerous because someone else might instead plug one end into an AC wall socket and destroy your flash. See an article at STROBIST in April 2006 titled Lighting 101: Build a Pro Synch Cord, Pt. 1.

 

The image of a suicide cable came from Wikimedia Commons.