Amy and I were co-hosts for Mark Udall’s summer solstice party today.  Mark has become a friend and is one of the few politicians I’ve really come to admire.

The quote of the afternoon was from Winston Churchill – “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.”

Mark reminded all of us that one of the great American traits is optimism.  Right on my friend.

Yesterday was my 13th wedding anniversary.  Amy and I went out to dinner at the Flagstaff House with Seth and Greeley who were celebrating their 3rd anniversary.  We had a wonderful time – I wouldn’t trade the last 13 years with Amy for anything (and I suspect Seth and Greeley feel the same way about each other.)

We spent a lot of time talking about how satisfied we are with our respective existences on this planet.  It’s a huge pleasure to be able to sit quietly at a nice dinner, looking out over one of the most beautiful views of any city that I’ve ever seen (Boulder from the top of Flagstaff is special), and enjoy the company of a few of the special people in my life. 

At some point in the conversation, we started discussing the ever present “introduction” question that comes up often, which is “What Do You Do?”

We decided the best answer – inspired by one of Amy’s friends – is “I’m Happy.”

One of my portfolio companies – Klocwork – has started a blog called g2zero: better code = better business in conjunction with New Rowley – a technology research and analysis company. If you are a software developer or a business person who cares about software quality, take a look.  A similar blog – On Be(come)ing Agile – run by Rally Software (another portfolio company) – on Agile software development – has been well received. 

If you are interested, take a look at them – feedback welcome and encouraged.

One of my favorite words is “fuck” – I’ve always viewed it as one of the most versatile words in the human language.  My mom used to cringe whenever I said it – now she just smirks at me.

Imagine my delight when I came across a scholary paper titled “Fuck” by Christopher Fairman of the Ohio State University – Michael Moritz College of Law.

Fairman’s paper is phenomenal.  In his words, his goal with the paper is as follows:

This Article explores the intersection of the word fuck and the law. In four major areas, fuck impacts the law: First Amendment, broadcast regulation, sexual harassment, and education. The legal implications from the use of fuck vary greatly with the context. However, to fully understand the legal power of fuck, the nonlegal sources of its power must be tapped. Drawing upon the research of etymologists, linguists, lexicographers, psychoanalysts, and other social scientists, the visceral reaction to fuck can be explained by cultural taboo.

This is not a humorous paper (although I found myself laughing out loud numerous times.)  As I worked through the paper, I got increasingly frustrated and discouraged by the inconsistency in the application of the law and the irrational behavior in key situations by people reacting to the word fuck.  Like every good scholar, Fairman states his conclusion in his introduction.

Fuck is a taboo word. According to psycholinguists, its taboo status is likely due to our deep, subconscious feelings about sex. The taboo is so strong that it compels many to engage in self-censorship. However, refraining from the use of fuck only reinforces the taboo. In the process, silence empowers small segments of the population to manipulate our rights under the guise of reflecting a greater community. Taboo is then institutionalized through law, yet at the same time is in tension with other identifiable legal rights. Understanding this relationship between law and taboo ultimately yields fuck jurisprudence. However, all the attempts to curtail the use of fuck through law are doomed to fail. Fundamentally, fuck persists because it is taboo, not in spite of it.

74 pages and 409 footnotes later, Fairman finishes with “Fuck must be set free.”  I agree. 

Oh – and the title of this post pays homage to Bono at the 2003 Golden Globe Awards.  His statement “This Is Really, Really Fucking Brilliant” which he made when he received the award for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture was delivered live on the East coast but was bleeped out on the west coast.  Maybe Bono will come up with a song titled “Set Fuck Free.”

Update: I just stumbled upon Mark Cuban’s post titled Cursing that he wrote earlier today.  It’s brilliantly aligned with this post.

I’ve written plenty on Work / Life balance and have spoken broadly about it with a number of people in the past year.  Howard Morgan – a long time VC and colleague (he was one of the first guys I ran into when I started working with Softbank in 1996) has an interesting post up about Work / Work balance.  Amy and I spent a lot of time talking about this on our “walk to the reservoir” this morning – managing one’s time within the context of work – especially if it’s distributed across a number of projects (or companies) is – in many cases – even harder than the elusive Work / Life balance thing.  Good thoughts Howard.

My dad has been blogging about his view of the crisis in our healthcare system for two months and is starting to hit his stride.  He’s been setting up the problem and building a base for his thoughts, while starting to recruit “a posse” (he’s a Texan – he can’t help himself) to help out.  My folks are staying with us this weekend – it’s really cool to see how enthusiastic my father has become about blogging.  Oh – my parents are also celebrating their 43 anniversary this week – congrats mom and dad – I can only hope Amy and I have as good a next 30 years ahead of us as your last 30 have been.

Amy and I love art – especially contemporary art.  We were long term patrons of an art gallery in Boulder on 1011 Pearl Street called Maclaren Markowitz Gallery.  The gallery – after having a successful run for 15 years – started to have tough times as the economy started to tank in 2001.  To try to be helpful, we became investors in the gallery and were able to help give it a few more years of life.  While it could have continued to limp along, at some point everyone was tired and the primary owners decided to close the business and move on with their lives.

We’ve continued to be tangentially involved in the local Boulder art scene, mostly through our relationships with several artists that we love, as well as the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and The Dairy Center for the Arts.  When a few folks – including one of the old managers at Maclaren Markowitz – started talking about opening a new gallery – we were enthusiastically supportive.

Blink Gallery started to come together and – at some point – we decided to join the small investor base and be directly supportive of the creation of this new gallery.  With a stroke of luck, they were able to get the “old Maclaren location” at 1011 Pearl Street and have done a great job of updating the gallery space to a contemporary, edgy feel on almost no budget.  The two founders of Blink – Susan Knickle and Pam Gonacha – have worked tirelessly to get Blink up and running.  If you are in Boulder on Pearl Street, stop by and take a look at the new gallery in town.  Their formal opening is on Friday, June 23rd from 6pm – 10pm – I’m sure they’d love to see you (and don’t forget to bring your checkbook.)

Fortune had a really good article on how MySQL is building a commercial open source company.  However, buried in the article is a typo that I expect was introduced by Fortune’s editors.

It’s not as if MySQL workers get some perverse kick out of catching colleagues goofing off, though. They know how common it is for e-mail or voice messages to be misconstrued, so they watch what they say. Fire off a dumb question to one of MySQL’s mailing lists, and you are likely get back the terse rebuke “RTFM” – read the freakin’ manual.

Dear Fortune Editors: RTFM means “Read The Fucking Manual.”  Even Wikipedia says it, so it must be true, although they seem to assert that “Read The Freakin’ Manual” in an acceptable substitute to avoid using the expletive “Fucking.”  But seriously guys, everyone knows that Freakin’ = Fucking in this case – why mess with one of all the all time great initialisms of the programming universe?

Since I promoted my mom yesterday, I’ll help my friend Jeff Clavier promote his wife Bernadette today.  She’s been involved in the Stanford Center for Social Innovation and has just launched a podcast called Social Innovation Conversations.  According to Jeff,

The purpose of “Social Innovation Conversations” is to be a collaborative online platform for experts, community leaders, and scholars to share their knowledge across sectors for multi-disciplinary learning. The Center will offer conferences, faculty lectures, speaker events and expert interviews. In addition, leading professional and other academic institutions will be invited to contribute content to the channel to raise public awareness about the grand challenges of the world.

If you want a place to start, Zach Warren’s “Laughter in a Time of War” is a good one.