A Cry for Laughter

The only thing I really want anyone to think as they read my column is that something in it is funny. It doesn’t need to be “chuckle drolly to oneself” funny or even “obvious smile on the face” funny. I just want people to find the things I say amusing.
I have to admit I’d love to know I made someone spit their morning coffee across the breakfast table because they laughed so hard at something I wrote, which is the grown up equivalent of having milk come out your nose at the third grade table in the cafeteria because Tommy Belcher timed the hand-in-the-armpit noise perfectly with the P.E. teacher walking by.
I think I have always gravitated towards funny. Growing up my family laughed a lot. We would watch television together and when Tim Conway really got going on the Carol Burnett Show we would all laugh. When there were off-color jokes - which when I was a kid simply revolved around a subtle double entendre as opposed to now when the jokes are often only slightly less “adult” than a Lenny Bruce after midnight set, - anyway, when there was a grown up joke that I didn’t get I knew something about it was funny because my father’s stomach would make little up and down motions as he suppressed his laughter in front of the kids.
In my life there was no Bar Mitzvah to mark my passing into adulthood, nor any aboriginal ritual scarification to claim I was no longer a child. Which is good because if ritualistic scarification was what showed I had reached the age of independence I would still be living at home having my mother wash my socks because I am so not doing that. For me the validation for passing beyond childhood simply revolved around making adults laugh. I’m not talking about the laugh you get when you’re four and you mangle a knock knock joke beyond all recognition and everyone laughs because of the Salvador Dali surrealism of “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Boo.” “Boo Who?” “Orange you glad I didn’t say banana!” I’m talking about a snappy turn of phrase which occurred in my own little brain at the opportune moment and everyone at the table genuinely laughed. That was my version of Rabbi Leibowitz saying “Now you are a man.”
This may explain a few things about my psyche. The first is probably the fact that I haven’t completely grown up. I wear Chuck Taylor high tops to work, I have Batman action figures on my desk, and I’d rather stick a pencil in my eye than fill out insurance forms. If I did stick a Ticonderoga #2 in my pupil I’d be filling out insurance forms all day for weeks, so I just grit my teeth and try to remember if my grandmother on my father’s side ever had high blood pressure or scurvy.
The other insight into my personality has to do with the fact I think I write what I write to make people like me (Pathetic? Maybe). Just like when I was little and getting my mom and dad to laugh validated me in my mind, making people laugh today helps me feel valuable. This is probably why the humor I prefer is not mean spirited. I would never be able to write material for Don Rickles.
I think the Mark Brothers are funny, but the Three Stooges aren’t. I think Bugs Bunny is funny, but Woody Woodpecker isn’t. I think making fun of powerful politicians is downright hysterical, but making fun of people who cannot fight back is reprehensible. To me humor should create, not tear down.
Laughter itself creates good things. It has been proven to have medicinally beneficial properties. The irrefutable source of Wikipedia (okay it is sorta refutable) says laughter has been shown to boost the body’s production of infection fighting antibodies. That is good. So if you laugh at my column you can send me five bucks and write it off as a medical expense. Two people happier, that’s positive.
On a final note, funny things are everywhere. Here is great example from a week ago. My oldest daughter and I were driving on a country road. There was a dead possum on the dirt shoulder. That is not intrinsically funny, but we made some comment about it might not be dead but just playing possum. That was slightly amusing. The real joke happened a couple days later. My daughter and I were driving down the same road and saw the same dead possum. My daughter said, “That possum has amazing work ethic.” Now that’s comedy.

Beware the Ides of March Madness

“To invest absolutely everything in something that means absolutely nothing,” was a phrase I heard on ESPN Radio a while back. That is an accurate way to describe sports. Sports fans understand that it really doesn’t matter who wins the Super Bowl, the World Series, or the NCAA tournament. At least intellectually they do. This does not stop them from painting their bodies and wearing shorts to a Packers game in January. I don’t care how much cheese you eat, brass monkeys are putting on long johns in Wisconsin during the playoffs, Well Diggers Local #327 has special posterior polar fleece allowances in their contracts for this time of year, and Witches have…well, you get the idea…
A general sports fan watches the games for the competition and the athleticism. The fanatics make a particular team their most important emotional investment. When their team is playing they ignore spouses, kids, chores, nuclear threats, and half-naked swimsuit models, unless it is during a commercial. It reaches religious proportions. The gospel according to Vince Lombardi is quoted. The commandments of Coach K are espoused. The Curse of the Red Sox was exorcised with more prayer than Max von Sydow threw at Linda Blair. The trials and tribulations of a Chicago Cubs fan make Job look like a slacker. Okay, I overstate a bit, but that is what sports fans are: over the top.
There is a single question I can ask to see if you are a true sports fan. Do you own a small radio with a single earphone that you can inconspicuously wear on your body? If the answer is yes I am willing to bet that at some time you used this ingenious device to listen to the game at a family event. Most of us can get away with this for a while. The problem arises when it is a close game. Screaming “Alright, baby!” and leaping into the aisle to do a happy dance when your guy buries a three-pointer at the buzzer is frowned upon by most folks at the wedding. Except the father of the bride, who cannot believe his daughter scheduled her wedding in March, dancing there beside you.
The NCAA Tournament has started up and it is a huge thing these days. Car companies design sales around them. The words “March Madness” are used more often than the words “That is not what we meant when we said stay in touch with your constituents, Governor Spitzer” were said in New York recently. There are scientific studies proving the overall productivity of offices drops dramatically the Monday after the brackets are announced because the office pools take precedence over selling stocks, designing software, and even staying in touch with your constituents (wink, wink, nudge, nudge).
I have to admit I truly love this event. Where else can a person hear names like Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Nikita Mescheriakov, Alexis Wangmene, and Longar Longar without having a United Nations security clearance? Where else will perfect strangers hug each other like reunited brothers returning from battle just because a guy with an overactive pituitary gland was able to shove a rubber spheroid through an iron ring (with authority). Where else can you hear professional broadcasters say things like: “He has been absolutely dominant at both ends.” or “The tip is controlled by the Trojans.”?
I am a Kansas Jayhawk fan and have been for quite a while. This means I have experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. I know exactly where I was sitting as I watched Danny Manning get his 18th rebound as the clock went to triple zeros against the Oklahoma Sooners and win the championship in 1988. Also, I couldn’t sleep when Jacque, Jerod, Paul, Scot, and Raef got beat by Arizona in 1997. My wife and I still gauge the level of disappointment for anything which happens in our lives against that night.

Me: Well, honey, I didn’t get that promotion at work.
My Wife: Gee, I’m sorry. I know how much you wanted that job.
Me: I feel really horrible. I don’t know what I’m gonna do now.
My Wife: We may have to sell the car with gas prices being what they are.
Me: I know. That raise would have made a huge difference in our lives.
My Wife: Does this feel worse than when KU lost in ’97?
Me: Oh, no…no, no, no…heck no!

Christopher Pyle considers Bucknell a dirty word, and will not wear, or allow his wife to wear, any clothing bearing a Jayhawk image during gameday because of his belief that it jinxes the team. He can be reached at occasionallykeen@yahoo.com, but not until Monday.

Take Two Sips and Call Me in the Morning

Remember the old comic book plot in which the evil genius is scheming to drop some sort of nefarious chemical into the city’s water supply. His concoction will brainwash the population into following his every command, or the entire town contracts a horrible disease for which he alone holds the antidote, or it gives everyone a wicked case of the hiccups which makes them drink more water which gives them more hiccups. Holy involuntary spasms of the diaphragm, Batman!
An item in the news recently reported there are traces of dozens upon dozens of prescription drugs in the water supply for millions of people in the United States. It might be better if there was an evil genius. At least then there would be someone who knew how to counteract the tainted water. I do not want to be like those television reporters who relish striking fear into the hearts of the general public. You know the kind. “Is your pet plotting to kill you as you sleep? Tune in at ten to find out the alarming truth about your diabolical dog, your conniving kitty or even that heinous hamster.” In order not to be like that guy, I will say right up front that the scientific conclusions do not point to major concern over this discovery…yet. Okay, I’m a little bit like that reporter guy.
A spokesman for the Environmental Protection Agency was quoted as saying, “We recognize it is a growing concern and we’re taking it seriously.” The only reason I throw in this quote is not to show there is a crack team of scientists burning the midnight oil to make sure the water supply for the entire country is safe for babies and endangered species. Nope, I wanted to mention this because the man who said it is named Benjamin H. Grumbles. This is my new favorite name. It is just perfect for a curmudgeonly government spokesman. It is like having a pastry chef named John Dough, or a policeman named Michael Smith-Wesson, or a politician named Marvin Takerofbribes.
Back to the AP story about the drugs in the water supply, when a person takes a pill not all of the medication is absorbed into the body the rest is…um…well…deposited in the toilet and sent into the world to seek its fortune. The amounts are harder to find than a sea monkey in Lake Huron, but I still don’t like the idea of quenching my summertime thirst with a fine mix of Country Time lemonade and just a hint of an anti-convulsant.
Some of the findings made sense. The water supply for 18.5 million people in Southern California had anti-anxiety medicine in it. That would explain the number of people living there who are so laid-back they are prone. Remember these are the people who first used the word “dude” more frequently than any other noun, verb or adjective. There was a sex hormone detected in the drinking water of San Francisco. I don’t even need to write a joke for that. Each reader can make up his or her own gag, kind of like the home version of Wheel of Fortune. There were six different pharmaceuticals found in the Washington D.C. area. That explains a lot.
Actually, it occurs to me certain prescriptions in certain water supplies could possibly be a boon. I have worked in education for fifteen years. There are times of the year any classroom could use anti-hyper-activity medications for students and staff alike. Sodium Pentothal (a.k.a. truth serum) would be loads of fun before divorce proceedings in a courtroom or served to guests before they go on the Today Show (that would make the latest Matt Lauer interview of Alan Greeenspan a lot more entertaining). Or perhaps a mild sleeping powder insinuated into the systems of the casts of all those intensely bouncy Disney Channel television shows. Have you ever watched The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and not wanted to smack just one of them with a sock full of horse manure?
I have saved the most harrowing evidence of the dangers of pharmaceuticals running rampant in the water supply for last. It is not human pain and suffering we need to worry about now. Further down on the food chain shows the aftermath of man’s pollution. Male fish are becoming feminized. (It actually said this in the article I read.) Who wants to watch Roland Martin yank a six pound largemouth bass out of the lake and find it’s wearing lipstick and mother of pearl gill rings? It’s just not natural, Vern.

Becoming President is a Running Gag

I am not a political animal. If any of the readers out there remember my father, he was very aware and savvy about politics. My oldest brother, who shared the same name as my father, has been involved in covering politics as a newspaper guy for years and he eats the stuff up with a spoon. My interests lie more in the world of humor. Wait a minute; I guess we have more in common than I originally thought. Even without choosing sides you have to admit politics makes for strange bedfellows and fantastic fodder for ridicule.
John McCain clinched the Republican nomination. He had reached the number of required delegates through the primary process and his only remaining opponent dropped out of the race. The next day George W. Bush endorsed him for president. Way to get out in front of this issue Mr. President. Your choices were McCain, Obama, Clinton, or you could go off the board and bring Dan Quayle out of moth balls. This was a no-brainer (boy, that’s a straight line which is hard to resist). Oops, I forgot Ron Paul is still running for the Republican nomination, but everybody else has forgotten too. Who would vote for a 47 year old drag queen who gave us such hits as “Supermodel” and “Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous”? Huh? Ohhh, that was RuPaul not Ron Paul, never mind.
Other than filling hour after hour of television programming, giving coffee shops throughout the land conversation starters, and making monologues easier for late night comedians the primary process seems unnecessary. Really, I went back and looked at the results for the first primary in New Hampshire on January 8th of this year. The winning Republican was John McCain. Two months, eleven caucuses, and twenty-eight primaries later the Republican nominee is…John McCain.
On the Democratic side Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were two percentage points apart with Mrs. Clinton coming out on top. Now in March, there are four percentage points separating the two candidates (when you do math using the number of delegates each has earned to this point) with Mr. Obama holding the advantage. John Edwards could have saved a fortune in haircut money if we had just let the New Hampshire-ites decide things.
The truly scary part is not the time spent and sheer number of political food fights which have taken place. The scary part, scary like coming face-to-face with Norman Bates while taking a shower, scary like coming face-to-face with a great white shark while swimming off Amity Island, scary like coming face-to-face with Joan Rivers when rolling over to turn off the alarm clock in the morning, is the amount of money spent on these campaigns. Come on, Tom Tancredo is listed by CNN as having spent $3,458,130 in order to drop out of the race before the first caucus, before the first primary and to never get closer to a delegate than to carry his bag into the hotel in Minneapolis during the national convention in September. I didn’t spend one thin dime and I can do that.
Once again using CNN’s website as my source, I used my handy calculator to figure the two parties have spent $683,438,239 on the campaign through February first. Let’s take a moment to digest that. That would cover 7.3% of the estimated national debt. That amount of money could build 11,390 Habitat for Humanity homes in the United States or 854,297 homes in some developing countries. We could send 3,745 students to Harvard, for four years. That money could be used to take the entire population of Kansas, Nebraska, Missouri, Oklahoma, Colorado, Iowa and throw in both Dakotas, to McDonald’s for breakfast lunch and dinner, twice. (I actually did the math.)
Does anyone else out there remember when the conventions were not just weeklong infomercials for the candidates? I liked watching them when there was, at least on the surface, a modicum of suspense about who was going to be nominated. The best part was when the guy at the podium would call the roll of each individual state. Then the spokesperson for that state would launch into his three minutes of fame. “Mr. Chairman the great state of Wisconsin, the dairy land of the nation, the land of one point four million cows, the state capable of making enough cheese to cover an enchilada the size of Pangea, casts its votes for the next president of the United States of America, Eugene McCarthy.”

Planting seeds in a barren arctic mountain is a good idea?

I have a brand new reason to hope there is no catastrophic event of world-wide proportion. No global warming which results in Topeka’s real estate values tripling because they can now advertise beach front property. No tsunami creating a wave large enough for Gilligan to surf from his remote desert island all the way to Tokyo. (Wasn’t that a plot from the 1965 season?) No hijacking of the Electoral College resulting in the constitutionally valid installment of Chuck Norris as President of the United States. Nope, I need the world to keep plugging along just fine. Why?
Well, I read that a gigantic vault has been created inside a mountain near the city of Longyearbyen (I know it looks like I made that name up but I didn’t) on the remote Svalbard Islands between Norway and the North Pole. This vault was created and will be maintained as a safe repository for millions of different seeds. The very first shipment stored there contained over one million seeds. These seeds are all for plants used for food like eggplant, lettuce, barley, and potatoes. This all sounds well and good, doesn’t it? If there is a horrible occurrence like Donald Trump’s ego blots out the sun for an extended period of time dropping the world into an ice age even worse than the one starring Ray Romano and the food supply is truly depleted, this seed vault could be used. But think about it beyond the surface. This means the entire food supply for the planet would be vegetables.
One of the few perks to being a forty-five year old man is I no longer have to eat my vegetables. Oh, my wife keeps slipping them onto my plate in an effort to help me eat healthy. I eat a few of them while my children are watching so I can be a good role model (which despite one Globe Exchange contributor’s opinion is something I am cognizant of), but then I can hide the rest under the napkin and nobody is the wiser.
There have been bunches of movies made over the years showing the horrors of a post-apocalyptic civilization on Earth. The Planet of the Apes showed how horrible it would be if Charlton Hesston was the only human being capable of speech. There is an NRA joke there somewhere but I do not want to tick them off. (They have guns which have not yet been pried from their cold, dead fingers.) The Road Warrior showed Mel Gibson as the last good man in a world thirsty for gasoline. This was long before we saw him fight for the rights of 13th century Scotland or heard him go on an anti-Semitic drunken rant. Waterworld had Kevin Costner which in and of itself is darned frightening.
I have a new pitch for Hollywood using the Doomsday Seed Vault as the premise. The world has just come through a horrible event. The heroic Norwegians are making a valiant attempt to re-cultivate the Earth, but everyone is just sick to death of broccoli served with a side of artichoke hearts. Then suddenly into the land rides a stoic stranger. A man with no name, no past, and no spinach stuck in his teeth. He is a savior to the horribly healthy yet strangely unsatisfied population of the planet, for he brings with him a long forgotten secret. This secret will lead to a renaissance, a chance to re-gain some of the joy from the lost ante-apocalyptic days. He has the secret of high fructose corn syrup, the most powerful sweetener ever created by man. Who cares about the gigantic rise in obesity and possible liver damage? It tastes good and once again the world can have soda pop and Baby Ruths. It isn’t until the pivotal climax of the third act that we find out he also carries the answer to the centuries old question, “Just what is nougat?”
I hope there are other groups squirreling away different things, just in case. Might I suggest a vault containing Marx Brothers, Buster Keaton, and Bugs Bunny movies? If I have to deal with living in a post-apocalyptic world with Charlton Hesston, Mel Gibson and Kevin Costner I am really gonna be aching for a laugh. Or a vault containing all the books I never had the time to read. I would be smarter than Burgess Meredith and I would be sure I had a couple extra pairs of glasses. (There are big bonus points available if you get that reference.)

Apparently purposeless activity

Useless is always used as a pejorative term. You know what I mean. Your distant cousin, who never fails to show up at holiday gatherings and no one quite knows how he always finds out about them, is frequently described as “about as useful as mammary glands on a wild porcine mammal of the male gender” or words to that effect. I would like to go on record saying that “useless” needs to be reevaluated.
To tell the truth I think we live in a world that leans too heavily on the utilitarian side of things. Utilitarians believe the value of anything is directly related to its usefulness. If this is the case then it makes total sense for the Pentagon to pay $6,325 for a wrench, but when the Japanese rich guy paid over $39,000,000 for Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers”, he got taken for the proverbial ride. Think about it. If the lives of hundreds of troops on a McDonnell Douglas C-9 depend on the bolts holding the wings in place do you want the mechanic to have a well-forged crescent wrench made from the finest American steel in his back pocket or a hundred and twenty year old oil painting created by a horribly depressed Dutchman?
Okay, that was a really crummy example. Especially since, I would like more people to look at things which do not have a means to an end utility as valuable. I’m not talking about truly useless things like Heinz 57 at a Vegan convention, Oscar ballots at a screening of anything starring Vin Diesel, or Mensa applications being passed around the infield gallery at the Daytona 500. I’m talking about things which will not, in and of themselves, accomplish tasks.
My brother, Eric, discussed this recently in a blog he writes. Now, my brother has read more books than the average B. Dalton has on their shelves and he understands things which when I try to wrap my mind around them it causes a brain hurtie worse than when I consume a DQ chocolate extreme blizzard in less than a minute, so I may have misunderstood some things, but I think we agree.
Here is a quote from what he wrote: “The value of anything is determined purely by its use towards an end. This devalues things that we would like to be ends in themselves, like people, animals and natural habitats.”
The same day I read his statement I came across an article in the New York Times Sunday Magazine which was trying to explain the useful brain science and evolutionarily beneficial aspects of playing. No, not playing the harpsichord, not playing Hamlet, not playing third base for the Yankees, just playing. Playing, as in Ken and Barbie get tossed into the clay pits of doom (a.k.a sandbox) and are saved at the last minute by G.I. Joe and his battalion little green army men. Playing, as in seeing if you can throw a ball all the way over the garage, have it bounce off the hood of the station wagon and then carom into the plastic wading pool splashing water all over your sunbathing big sister. That kind of playing.
Scientists spending time and money trying to prove that play is beneficial to the brain development of children is good if that is the only way the powers that be will care about allowing kids to play. I would prefer a world that looks at play as good, because it causes smiling, giggling, and the occasional hearty guffaw. There are many things that should be valued for what they give rather than what they accomplish and the government should be more open to it.
I work in education so No Child Left Behind has huge impact on my daily life. Naming it as they have it makes it hard for people to attack it, because if you do, it appears you want to leave some kids behind. My problem with it is it values tools over entire human beings. I have a fear the capitalist society we live in wishes schools to create new and improved employees. This means people are valued more for what they will do (money they will make and tasks they will accomplish, for example Donald Trump) as opposed to what they are (caring individuals who can enjoy a song or a book for the sake of its artistry, for example…for example…oh, boy, I can’t think of anyone who is famous for being a caring individual who can enjoy a book or a song for the sake of its artistry).

Philosophical Giant: Elwood P. Dowd

What is valuable these days? I’m not talking about monetary value. No one should listen to me about fiscal things. I drive an eighteen-year-old Ford Escort. This does not indicate someone with a lot of money, nor does it indicate someone with a whole lot of awareness of what driving an eighteen-year-old Ford Escort is telling everyone around him. Could it be…loser!?
Anyway, I often think what I value is becoming less and less valued by the majority of people walking around on this planet. I harken back (and we all know how difficult it is to harken nowadays) and I’m reminded of the great line from the play and movie about a six foot tall invisible white rabbit, Harvey. The main character is a splendidly happy man. Many people think his bucket of chicken is missing a leg and a thigh, the wick is lit but there isn’t any kerosene, the wheel is turning but the hamster is vacationing in Boca, but others think he may be the only sane one around. He has a line which states what I believe is a very enlightened philosophy: In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.
Before I go any further, let me say I do not wish to denigrate being smart. I am an educator, so smart is very important to me. Intellect is one of the things I fear is being less valued in the general culture. Thirty years ago one of the biggest film comedians was Woody Allen. In one of his movies he said the following: Nietzsche with his Theory of Eternal Recurrence. He said that the life we live, we’re gonna live over and over again the exact same way for eternity. Great. That means I’ll have to sit through the Ice Capades again. It’s not worth it. Today one of the biggest film comedians is Will Ferrell who says things like: let me quote the late great Colonel Sanders, he said, “I’m too drunk to taste this chicken.” The intellectual scales have to tip substantially in Mr. Allen’s favor.
I’m concerned the United States may have fallen more deeply into the Chasm of Dumbness than many places. In England there is a popular televison show called Q.I. It is set up something like a game show where four contestants are asked arcane questions about a myriad of subjects and they are given points based on accuracy and also on how many interesting bits of information they can add to the conversation. In the United States our popular game show has a raft of pretty girls in short skirts holding suitcases full of money. You be the judge.
Back to Elwood’s theory. Even though I do value smart and I hope to continue to increase the knowledge and skills requisite to be a well-rounded human being, I think being pleasant is quite valuable. I am not talking about a person who is so saccharin sweet Pollyanna-esque that you want to run into the path of an uncoming cement truck to avoid prolonging your exposure to him or her. You know the kind I mean. The person who actually believes life gives people lemons for the sake of making lemonade. Realists know life gives you packets of powder comprised of various chemicals and additives which when added to water resembles lemon color and flavor for the sake of making lemonade.
The “pleasant” I am referring to has more to do with caring about manners and decorum as opposed to selfishness and meanness. Here is why I think it trumps smart. If a person is bloody brilliant. As examples, he knows the entire contents of the encyclopedia Britannica, can whistle the collected works of Bach, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, and Marvin Hamlisch, can recite Shakespeare, Cervantes, Pushkin, and Stephen King, and can even rebuild the engine of a 1966 Corvair. If this same guy uses his voluminous knowledge of Hieronymus Bosch’s imagery of Hell to describe your mother, he is not someone you want to be around.
On the other hand let’s look at a person who has the I.Q. of a ball peen hammer. I mean this guy has difficulty pouring water out of a boot, even if the instructions are written on the heel, gets stuck between floors when an escalator suddenly stops working, believes knock-knock jokes are just too complex, and thinks the pinnacle of literary achievement involves characters named Veronica and Jughead. However, if he genuinely worries about you and brings you cheesecake when you are depressed, he is worthy of friendship.

Humility nation, not humiliation

It was not my intent to disappoint individuals throughout the country, but I believe I have done so. My brother showed me a way to attach an on-line doohickey to my blog. (I find it amusing that spell check recognizes doohickey but not blog.) This doohickey shows me a little information about the folks visiting the site. It tells me what town they are from and if they used Google to get to me it even tells me what the visitor typed into the search box. This is where the disappointment comes into play.
Awhile back I wrote a column in which I pointed out how terribly out of touch, as well as past the point of ogling swimsuit models, I am. In the column I mentioned Cheryl Tiegs in that white mesh swimsuit she wore in Sports Illustrated some thirty years ago. Well, because of that mention, if a middle-aged man is trying to recapture some of the libidinous fire of his youth, while the wife is busy watching Ugly Betty, and sneaks onto the internet, typing Cheryl+Tiegs+white+mesh+swimsuit into the computer gets him a list of websites, including mine. This has to be a monumental let down like ordering a banana split and getting asparagus on a bed of fresh spinach because they are out of ice cream.
To those individuals (in particular the guys from Renton, WA, Fennville, MI, and Newbury Park, CA) I need to point something out. When you go to Google there are words in the upper left to help you. If you point and click on the word “images” you might find your search for Ms. Tiegs more (ahem) fruitful.
Why am I worried about disappointing people I will never meet, especially people who are spending their free time searching for racy photographs from 1978? I don’t know. I suppose it could revolve around the fact that I have the self-esteem of plankton.
A buddy of mine is constantly on me about my predilection for self-effacing statements. Maybe it’s because I’m such a total loser. Oops, there I go again. Actually, I know I’m not a loser, but I do have buckets of humidity…sorry, that should be humility. If I had buckets of humidity I’d be living in Quillayute, Washington, the most humid city in the United States according to the Weather Research Center in Houston, Texas. Knowing the town with the highest average humidity has to point out just how useless much of the information in my cranium truly is. (I think that may be another self-denigrating statement.) I do not know which city in the nation has the most humility, but I am willing to venture it is not Washington, D.C.
Truth be told, being so empty of myself (That is the opposite of full of myself, isn’t it?) has held me in good stead for most of my life. People are more likely to help if they feel it will be appreciated, but more importantly, people will be more likely to help if they feel you need their help. People who know everything, or at least advertise they know everything, do not invite altruistic feelings in others.
This works best with women. No, I’m not talking about some silly “How to Date Swim Suit Models Even if you Make That Kramer Guy from Seinfeld look like Brad Pitt” hint from Hugh Hefner or Austin Powers. Many women are hardwired with a maternal instinct, not just for children, but for inept men as well. You should not be a blithering idiot, that doesn’t elicit nurturing actions that elicits a rap in the mouth.
My theory stating the concept that a highly modest person can be effective is echoed by someone with much higher status than I possess. Jim Collins is the author of “Good to Great”. His book was originally published almost seven years ago and it has proven its staying power because it currently ranks thirty-first on the Amazon.com bestseller list. He says a level five leader (five is as high as he goes) is not a larger than life person. A level five leader is “self-effacing, quiet, reserved, even shy.” Aha! I rest my case. He points out a great leader says “we” not “I”. The old cliché holds true. There is no “i” in team. Has anyone else noticed there is no “i” but there is an “m” and an “e” which spells me?
So I will stick to my modest ways. I will downplay my strengths and admit my shortcomings and if Mr. Collins is right I will one day rule the world!

Sunday Dinner Gone Wrong

The warm weather this past weekend made a lot of people happy. The winter doldrums can set in this time of year. Christmas is over. Spring can seem so very far away. We have had several really cold days and the ice and snow took forever to melt. So when the temperature was downright balmy many folks probably went for bike rides, long walks, fathers and sons tossed the ol’ pigskin in the backyard making for dozens of Norman Rockwell-esque scenes around our hometown.
The Pyle family did not act out one of those scenes. We opened every window in the house and went to a burger joint. Why would we do that you ask. Well, basically, because I’m an idiot.
Let’s go back to Sunday morning. My wife and the kids are going to go to church. I am going to go to work and do things I never seem to be able to accomplish during the week. Claudia (my wife, for people new to this column) says to me, “I’m going to turn the pork roast up to medium. Can you turn it down to low before you go to work?” I pause to consider. This requires absolutely no culinary talent and very little thought, so I respond I will be able to do that.
Several minutes go by and I have completely forgotten about my assignment. Luckily there is a waft of delicious smell that gets my attention as I am packing my bag with the work I need to do. The smell of lunch cooking is a much better communication device than texting or e-mailing when it comes to getting a message to a forty-five year old man. The stomach rumble reminded me I was to turn the roast down.
I went into the kitchen walked directly over to the roaster which was sitting on the counter not far from the sink. The dial was set so it was pointing a little past the middle. To me that seemed to indicate medium. I then turned the dial so it pointed to the left and little down. To me that indicated low. I then congratulated myself on a job well done, grabbed my car keys and left for work.
Well, fair reader you may think everything sounds hunky dory so far. Why are you an idiot? My olfactory sense may have helped me remember the task, but my other senses failed me. I did not use my sense of touch to become aware the roaster was room temperature. I did not use my sense of sight to see the roaster was not plugged in to the electrical socket. I did not use my sense of hearing to pick up the slight bubbling sound coming from the pot on the stove which truly contained the Sunday dinner Pyle family pork roast, which was still furiously cooking away on a burner set to medium heat as I blithely drove many blocks away to be a good employee.
Flash forward with me now about two hours. I have turned the corner and I am driving down the block towards my home. I see the silver minivan (also known as the signature for married with children, a mortgage, credit card debt, and no chance whatsoever of jetting to Monaco for a diverting weekend at the roulette table) parked in the driveway. The family is home so we can have a pleasant lunch together. Then I see daughter number 2 opening the windows to the living room. My thought is the warm weather is being taken advantage of and we are going to enjoy the fresh air in the house. Then I see my wife is opening the window next to the kitchen sink. My thought is we don’t usually open that window, hmmm? Then I park my car, step out onto the driveway and the smell hits me.
I jog up the front steps and even before I get to the door I am calling to anyone in the house, “I turned it down.” Then I look into the kitchen and see the smoking, blackened pot on the stove and the reality of it all sinks in.
Earlier I referenced all the different Norman Rockwell images depicting the touching moments of family togetherness and said we resembled none of them. That is because I do not remember a single Rockwell work titled “Mercilessly Making Fun of Father.”
Several days have passed now. The charcoal briquettes, formerly known as potatoes, have been thrown in the dumpster. The pork roast, which had spot welded to the pot, has been disposed of. The smell has almost left the house. But Dad is still the rump roast of the jokes.

Principles, ethics, and morals, oh,my

I was reading the New York Times on-line the other day. (Sorry, Mr. Montgomery, I am guilty of media adultery. I have been seeing another newspaper on the side.) There was a long article about morality. The guy who wrote the article was a professor at Harvard University, Steven Pinker. His approach was to talk about brain research, which was beyond my feeble comprehension capacities. There were a few items which stuck out to me though.
The first was the idea that there is a sort of morality switch. Some things just tickle the switch. The ticklers are things which are merely unfashionable, disagreeable or imprudent as opposed to those which are truly considered immoral. His examples were a little dense so I am going to have a go at it in my own voice.
It is unfashionable in many circles to get a tattoo. It is less a sign of drunken sailorism than it used to be, but many people still find it déclassé. It is disagreeable to get a picture of Rosanne Barr tattooed on your chest. It is imprudent to get Bill O’Reilly’s face tattooed on your forearm if you are going to the Democratic Convention. But, when all is said and done, it is only immoral to get a tattoo if you use the blood of clubbed baby seals instead of ink. (Oh, boy, even I think that was a horrible thing to say and I’m the guy who wrote it, sorry.)
What is moral can shift over time depending on the general knowledge base of the culture. It was once considered reprehensible to lie, cheat and steal to further personal goals, to blatantly, even proudly, put one’s bad habits and personal shortcomings on display for all to see, to demonstrate human failings in such an overt manner as to lose all deniability or opportunity for forgiveness. Now we call these same behaviors the latest hit reality show on CBS.
Mr. Pinker lists five components of the moral sense found in almost every culture. Those five are: harm, fairness, community, authority, and purity. The concept of “harm” revolves around the idea that it is wrong to harm others. There are of course exceptions. It is okay to harm individuals who have committed an egregious act. Acts like stealing food from orphans, snatching the purses of elderly women, or helping to write, produce, distribute or market the latest Rambo film.
Fairness states that one should return favors, reward good deeds and punish people who cheat. Well, as a father of three, I have frequently heard the plaintive wail of a child saying, “That’s not fair.” (Somehow children can make the word “fair” into a veritable Wagnerian aria of displeasure when they’re really annoyed.) After reading Mr. Pinker’s article I am better prepared to battle that whiny cry of moral outrage. I can tell the nine-year-old boy staring at me with clenched jaw because the big sister gets to go to the movie and he doesn’t that sociobiologists have postulated that there may even be a gene which has evolved over time to enhance the reciprocity factors and cultivate altruism. Throwing that amount of logical sounding babble at him will cause him to become bored and go downstairs to the more controllable world of Lego Star Wars on the GameCube and I can take a nap.
Community can also be illustrated well using children. The fifteen-year-old and the thirteen-year-old sisters can call each other names, pull each other’s hair, and leave each other black and blue and miserable, but if someone outside the family even looks cross-eyed at “my sister” they turn into secret service ninja bodyguards bent on protecting the life, limb and reputation of the same person that just moments before they contemplated giving a wedgie of epic proportion.
The idea of authority means people believe it is correct and moral to defer to legitimate authorities and respect people with high status. Unfortunately in my life the list of legitimate authority figures seldom includes tired old dad. Also, in today’s society high status is bestowed on Tom Brady not assistant principals hidden amongst 550 fifth and sixth graders.
I do not have the credentials of Mr. Pinker, but I must disagree with him. He says purity is valued in all cultures. Have you read the ingredients on anything? Heck, even Ivory soap has sodium tallowate, sodium palm kernelate, water, sodium chloride, sodium silicate, magnesium sulfate and fragrance. 99 and 44/100% pure my Aunt Flabby!

Driver's Education

My daughter has started driving. This means I am now old. This means she has learned not all hand signals by drivers were replaced when cars got turn signal lights. This means my insurance rates have gone from “it hurts to write the check” to “does someone have a tourniquet…I’m hemorrhaging money over here.” This means when she has to go to drill team practice at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning I can stay in bed. Ah, there’s the proverbial silver lining.
I have never been the best teacher for my own children. We get frustrated with each other quickly. Even third grade math homework required UN peacekeepers being called to our kitchen table. (“I know this is not the way your teacher explained it to you, but it works so shut up.) Now that she has the rectangle of plastic giving her legal rights to drive we have found some things we did not spend enough time teaching her.
We are comfortable with her forward motion, but backing up has proven to be somewhat problematic. We have a garage behind our house on the alley which is the home for her little red two door. The first time she was driving to school by herself, I was watching from the upstairs window as she was leaving. You’ve heard of a three point turn, well, I needed a slide rule and Stephen Hawking to calculate the points in the geometric figure created by her attempts to get from the cement next to the garage into the alley. That night I used a shoe as a visual aid in describing a more efficient way. It turned out my wife had also been watching that morning and in the afternoon had done a sort of interpretive dance to demonstrate the “pulling into the alley” process.
A couple of days later I got a phone call from my daughter. She could not get the keys out of the ignition. Since the car was not running we decided she would go on into school and I would drive up and figure out what the problem was. A few minutes later I got another phone call. The situation had been solved. One of her friends visited the car with her and figured out the car was not in park so the steering column would not relinquish the key. I am just glad the high school parking lot is flat. A car, not in park, left unattended on an incline would have a very different result.
My daughter and her friend come out of the school and the friend says, “Okay, Emilyjane, where’s your car?”
Emilyjane scans the lot, “I thought I parked it right over there.”
The friend asks, “What does it look like?”
Emilyjane replies, “It’s a red two door Escort.”
The friend says, “You mean like that red two door Escort at the bottom of the hill resting halfway in the ditch and halfway through the principal’s car.”
Emilyjane says, “Oh, silly me. I didn’t even drive to school today. What was I thinking?” As she slowly backs into the building looking around for possible witnesses.
Before anyone starts thinking Emilyjane is a bad driver I need to make it clear I believe she is good at driving. She is just inexperienced and I did not teach her as well as I should have. She doesn’t have the benefit of a top of the line driver’s education course like I had.
She didn’t log hour after hour in a car with two other nervous teenagers and a grumpy man whose greatest pleasure was slapping the roof of the car loudly as the student made his first attempt at parallel parking. She did not watch 16 mm films of horrible accidents which struck abject fear into the hearts of many in the class and caused certain boys to argue whether a ’77 El Camino could even get up enough speed to actually tear a telephone pole off at ground level. (The real kicker was all those films had theme music more appropriate for kittens and puppies frolicking about in a sunny meadow than for the oil stains, cracked windshields and gnarled metal of disemboweled Chryslers.) She didn’t “drive” in a simulator helping nascent drivers identify, predict, decide and execute what would happen in a variety of real-life situations (See Mr. Ropp, I was too paying attention). However, I have passed on to her the most important message made blatantly obvious throughout my driver’s ed course: All drivers are deceitful and wish to kill you.

Ask a frequent question, get a frequent answer

I came later than many to the world of computers. I can remember coming across the term “FAQ” and trying to pronounce it like it was a word. It was probably months later that I saw the words “frequently asked questions” written out. There was a clearing of the clouds, an astral choir sang, and I slapped myself on the forehead as I suddenly realized just because I enjoy Broadway show tunes doesn’t mean I have to be ashamed. I can admit it and still be a man.
Now, years later, I have learned that “FAQ” is often used as a signpost to guide users to answers that many people have asked before in order to shorten the time spent looking for information. Just think, if the wise Tibetan monks had a few FAQ Foothills fewer people would risk their lives climbing the mountains looking for enlightenment. Not everyone wants to know the meaning of life and the true road to happiness. Maybe an FAQ Foothill could just explain the meaning of a tough word like “solipsism” or the true road to the nearest Baskin Robbins (which has thirty-one varieties of happiness). Not everything needs to be so darned momentous.
As a way to avoid doing the things I really should have been doing I decided to cruise through a few websites and see what was being asked frequently. As you might have guessed the government has a lot of questions asked of it.
One of the popular questions on the Internal Revenue Service website is “What should I do if I made a mistake on my federal return that I have already filed?” The first sentence of the response is “It depends on the type of mistake you made.” If it is a mistake in your addition or subtraction the government will simply re-figure it for you and amend the return themselves. If it is a failure to report the thousands of dollars you made under the table by selling your complete collection of Leonard Nimoy albums on EBay then the government will impound everything you own and make you pay an extra penalty for trafficking in incredibly bad music.
My next stop was the Environmental Protection Agency website. A question I found was: “How will I know if my water isn’t safe to drink?” If the water is brown do not assume it is chocolate. Small chunks of rodent floating in the glass might be an indication. If a spark can set it ablaze drinking it is not recommended. Okay, I made that stuff up. The real answer is, “Your water supplier must notify you by newspaper, mail, radio, TV, or hand delivery if your water doesn’t meet EPA or state standards.” Of course by the time all these avenues for getting the word out have been prepared, and then used, your tropical fish have legs, the toilet glows in the dark and the carbonation in your ginger ale has mixed with the water causing a chemical reaction in your alimentary canal resulting in burps which can be recorded on seismographs in Japan.
I didn’t even know there was a website for the United States Court system until this exercise. The second question on its FAQ list was: “What are the qualifications for becoming a federal judge?” The first scary part of this question is that people are surfing the web contemplating becoming federal court judges. (It was either a career on the bench or draw that parrot and become a graphic artist in my spare time.) The second scary part is the real answer: “The Constitution sets forth no specific requirements.” If we are not careful we could end up with a Tenth Circuit Court composed of Paula Abdul, Bruno (from Dancing with the Stars) and that guy whose graphic artist career went belly up when he found out he had to draw things other than parrots.
Federal Bureau of Investigation: “How accurately is the FBI portrayed in books, television shows and motion pictures?” Very few of us have hair as good as Efrem Zimbalist Jr’s.
Center for Disease Control and Prevention: “What is the difference between being overweight and being obese?” Froot Loops versus doughnuts for breakfast.
Federal Emergency Management Agency…actually I never got to read their FAQ’s because the internet connection slowed to the speed of a sloth sipping Benadryl. I am not making this up. The irony is a little too stark.
Now for my personal favorite. This was on the website for Northwest Airlines. “Do you have a policy for transporting antlers?”

Now and then you need to look at then, now

Well, believe it or not, it is now the year 2008. When I was a kid the far fetched future talked about in science fiction books and movies was 1984, 1999, 2001 and 2010. Only one of those has not already happened.
Many of the futuristic do-dads from those fictitious settings are not even as cool as the things we really have. Would anyone actually want the bulky monotone robot from Lost in Space? (“Danger, Will Robinson” what good is that? A three pound dog can alert you to danger and the maintenance is easier.) For people with the proper know how technology can do so many things. I am not one of those people. I use my cell phone to call people and even less often to receive calls from people. Some folks can use their cell phones to send text messages, listen to music, watch video, google (to those who are less technologically savvy than I, that means “look up”) the 1975 MVP of the NBA, and get GPS directions to Nirvana.
When “older” folks like myself start complaining about how the world is going to Hades in a picnic basket the implication is it used to be better. Let’s take a look. The year is now 1908. Here are some things which happened back then.
January 21, 1908, New York City passes a law making it illegal for women to smoke in public (it was vetoed by the mayor). Nowadays that would never happen. No municipality would contemplate banning the civil liberties of any group willing to purposefully inhale smoke laced with a variety of unhealthy or even deadly toxins while generously sharing the smoke with bystanders who simply are compelled to breathe because stopping has more immediate health concerns attached. What’s that? Over twenty states have banned smoking in public places and hundreds of cities have as well? Never mind.
February 18, 1908, Japanese immigration to the United States is forbidden. Hmm, problems with immigration? That doesn’t sound familiar at all. I mean Lou Dobbs won’t even buy a CD with Hot Blooded or Double Vision on it. (That is truly an obscure reference. Give yourself 150 bonus points if you know what I’m talking about.)
September 17, 1908, Thomas Selfridge becomes the first person to die in an airplane crash. Now, you probably think poor Mr. Selfridge died due to an inept pilot who did not know how a plane really worked since it had only been invented five years earlier. Wrongo! Mr. Selfridge probably felt pretty doggoned safe. His pilot was Orville Wright, the guy who had invented it.
October 14, 1908, the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. It was the second year in a row they won it. I am sure they saw the beginnings of dynasty. One hundred years later bleacher bums are still drinking large amounts of cereal malt beverages and looking for goats, Bartmans, Kerry Woods’ sixteenth arm surgery, and any other manifestation of their futility.
November 6, 1908, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are said to have been killed by soldiers in Bolivia. There has been a bit of a mystery surrounding this story. But anyone with half a brain knows they didn’t die there. They were seen in 1930’s Chicago when they took a bunch of money off mob boss Doyle Lonnegan. (This reference is only worth 35 bonus points.)
Several famous people would be celebrating their one hundredth birthday this year, if they weren’t…dead. Louis L’Amour could be working on his one hundred forty-fourth novel. That is if he kept up with his average of 2.48 books released each year from 1950 to 1987. If Edward R. Murrow was still alive he would be armed with a high powered rifle looking for Rupert Murdoch. Mel Blanc would still be one of the funniest men around that very few people had ever seen but everyone had heard. The most famous person born 1908 was born on my same birth date, September 19, Paul Benichou. What, you don’t know Paul Benichou? He was a French intellectual. Okay, so he isn’t famous today, but is anyone famous today for being an intellectual?
Actually, I do not share a birth date with many famous people. That is until you get to September 19, 1928. That is the date that a baby boy was born in Walla Walla Washington named William West Anderson. This kid would go on to make an impression upon television surpassed by very few. This kid would change his name to Adam West. Holy eighty years old, Caped Crusader!

I do hereby resolve ...oh, nevermind

Christmas is over. The wrapping paper is in the dumpster. The decorations around the house have a slight melancholy about them. The teenage daughters have the iPod ear buds firmly planted in their ears. The nine year old son has his hand grafted to the video game controller and responds to questions with grunts signifying anger, triumph, or hunger. Mom is counting the hours until school starts again. Dad is counting how many hours he worked to pay for all these electronics which cause his children to ignore him. Ahhh, money well spent.
After Christmas people are looking at the New Year. A new year shouldn’t simply mean a headache, a certain spinning sensation when trying to get out of bed followed by college football. It should mean a fresh start, a chance to improve one’s life. To this end many make resolutions.
When you look up resolution in the dictionary it says: “a firm decision to do or not to do something.” The problem with the definition is the term “firm”. Most resolutions are about as firm as the handshakes you get from the “La Cage Aux Folles” chorus line. I surfed the internet for the most common resolutions. Four resolutions which showed up with frequency were: reduce stress, spend more time with the family, get out of debt, and get organized.
Reducing stress is a very positive goal. Stress causes all sorts of unhealthy side effects. I resolved to try to minimize the stress in my life. But then I started worrying I might not be able to keep my resolution. That caused stress. Then I realized to truly eliminate stress I would have to eliminate a lot of people. The guy at the grocery store self check out who pays his $37.48 bill using pennies, the kid down the block who plays his devil worshipping rap music loud enough to rattle the windows in my mother’s house 120 miles away, and the guy on the phone commercials who doesn’t even have to say “Can you hear me now,” to earn more money than I do, pant, gasp, myocardial infarction! Killing all those individuals might be cathartic, but a federal penitentiary creates a whole new set of stressors.
On to the next one. In this hustle and bustle world we find ourselves spending less and less time with our family. Everything we are, and have the potential to be, is built from our families. Our family is the foundation of our lives. The strong foundation makes for a strong house. But, have you ever looked carefully at the foundation of a house? It is full of spider webs, things the dog dragged out of the neighbor’s trash cans, and dead possum parts. The foundation is important, but do you really want to spend time with it? Look at your family. There is Cousin Frank who thinks he is a true lady’s man with his short-sleeved lime green leisure suit. Also, your sister-in-law who makes guests on the Jerry Springer Show seem sedate and well-balanced. Let’s face it, your own kids could use intensive manners training or a lobotomy, whichever is cheaper. Resolution two lasted about an hour and half into the New Year’s Day party when you suddenly remembered a pressing task at the office.
Getting out of debt is not an easy thing. Getting into debt is both easy and a heck of a lot more fun. I know creating a budget and sticking to it is the way to live. Cutting up the credit cards and putting a portion of your paycheck into a government secured education fund would be the smart thing to do. The fun thing to do is to charge a new hi-definition television, a kickin’ stereo system and a recliner with a built-in beer cooler and massage settings from “Wife’s Back Rub” to “Full Geisha” then retire to your basement to watch sports and Schwarzenegger movies until your eyeballs fall out.
The last resolution on the list is getting organized. I did a bunch of research and found several great ideas. These pointers by highly effective people make it so every thing you do will be efficient…well, I had it here a second ago. It was in a color-coded file folder, color coding helps immensely I read. The folder was purple. Purple stood for top priority. Or was it purple because it’s my daughter’s favorite color? Oh, no I feel stress, where’s my Visa? I’m going to go to the store and get enough Dr. Pepper to founder Secretariat (losing weight was also a resolution).

Celebrity Death Match: A. Maslow v. S. Claus

There has often been a great disparity between what a person needs and what a person wants. Since I went to school to work in a school I spent time with Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.” This world renowned smart guy put forth the idea that human beings have certain needs and he showed them in a progression from basic to more complex. He also said one can not focus on fulfilling the next need until the more basic need is at least partially met. The main purpose of this in how-to-be-a-teacher-school was if a student is hungry and cold he is not very likely to care about the chief exports of Ecuador. In case you are fully fed and your temperature is properly regulated: oil, bananas, flowers and shrimp.
Since this is not my educational philosophy final I will not go into a bunch of detail but I will say Mr. Maslow does not mention getting an iPhone anywhere in his treatise. He does discuss when explaining the top of the pyramid section of self-actualization that opportunities for creativity, spontaneity and problem solving are important. Hmmm, creativity, spontaneity, and problem solving…I don’t know about you but that just screams “The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass.” Do you think I could get a prescription from my healthcare provider for a Wii and therefore get insurance to pay for it because it is a health NEED.
Okay, if we are going to put Mr. Maslow out there as the champion of “need” who better to step up to represent “want” than the most famous bearded fat man in history, Raymond Burr. Mr. Burr represents the wants because of his long career on television including the great made-for-TV Perry Mason movies of the early 1990’s. Okay, that is truly lame. Santa Claus is the bearded fat man who should be the personification of “want”. Mr. Claus has been answering want lists for hundreds of years. If he only brought what was needed he would have a sleigh full of socks, underwear, warm coats, bran flakes, and Bowflexes. Would that stink, or what? If the poem read “children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of lima beans danced in their heads” it just wouldn’t ring true.
How about we look at some Christmas lists from around the world and then focus on the needs?
George W. Bush: Wants a legacy which would place him in a modern day Mount Rushmore of presidential greats. Needs someone to explain to him that WMD does not stand for “Wasteland, Mostly Desert” which Iraq actually does have plenty of.
Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears’ mother: Wants to publish a book on how to parent. Needs to read a book on how to parent. (I think if Dr. Benjamin Spock saw what she was doing in the name of parenthood he would have no choice but to knock her up side the head.)
Duncan Hunter: Wants to be president of the United States of America. Needs to have more than seventy-five people in his home state of California know who the heck he is.
Wal-Mart: Wants to have a net income larger than the number of grains of sand on the world’s beaches plus the number of stars in the heavens plus the number of fish in the sea plus the number of times Elizabeth Taylor got married. Needs to realize getting a rich man into heaven is like getting a camel through the checkout line in under fifteen minutes on a Saturday afternoon when there are forty-seven cash registers but only six of them open.
Bill Belichick: Wants to win every football game he coaches. Needs to take a charm course. He is about as appealing as a having Dr. Benjamin Spock hit you upside the head.
The People in Favor of Why Not Dodge?: Want to have a visit from the Special Events Fairy who magically sets a fully functioning, well placed, tastefully designed reasonably priced building somewhere in Dodge City. Need to realize this building will not fix all the cities woes and create a boon of tourist dollars akin to Branson, Missouri when that Japanese violinist opened his theater
The People Against Why Not Dodge?: Want to have a freak accident involving a heretofore unknown tectonic fault rupture beneath the newly placed Special Events Center causing a stream of molten lava to bubble forth and melt the building to a sparking slag heap. Need to realize the building will not be built on 666 Mephistopheles Avenue taking the city straight to the place which gets even fewer snow days than we do.

Striking a Blow for Workers Everywhere

The writers have been on strike for over a month now. Wait a minute, I’m a writer and I am writing this very moment. There I go again. I just wrote that sentence, too. I can’t seem to stop myself. Does this make me some sort of strike breaker, scab?
Oh, now I remember. It’s not Hutchinson News Community Columnists who are on strike, but rather television and movie writers who are walking the picket lines. Many scripted TV shows have already gone on hiatus. (The big question is: How will wrestling continue to air shows?) Will television networks throughout the land go dark? Unfortunately they will not. We will have a plethora of unscripted shows. Shows like “Survivor”, “The Amazing Race”, “The Bachelor”, “Wife Swap”, and “We Turned Over Another Rock to Find the Worst Aspects of Humanity and Now We Will Point a Camera at it to Prove Some People Will Watch Anything” will multiple like rabbits on Viagra.
This strike will not cause much consternation for me. I don’t really watch much television any more. This is not a way of setting myself up as some aloof person for whom television is not aesthetically challenging enough for my superior brain. I used to claim the sentence “I only watch public television” was the mating cry of the pseudo-intellectual. I like TV. I watched quite a bit during many different stages of my life. But, at the moment, I have a wife, three children, a mortgage, a job, and a strange desire to sleep so sitting in front of screen is not a frequent option. I do watch the Chiefs (the previous statement is akin to admitting one purposefully runs one’s fingernails over a chalkboard), and KU basketball whenever possible and I got hooked on “Heroes”, but I watched that on my computer. Television is not very important to me any more.
In preparing for this column I did my usual exhaustive four and half minutes of extensive research. It seems there have not been a whole lot of strikes in the entertainment industry. There was an actors strike in 1952. It seems Ronald Reagan was the president of the Screen Actors Guild. He was lucky there wasn’t an air traffic controller in the White House at the time or all actors might have had to look for a new profession. There was another actors strike in 1960. Then things settled down for twenty years. A three month actors strike in 1980 was followed by a three month writers strike in 1981. There was a short-lived (two weeks) writers strike in 1985. The one and only directors strike was in 1987 and it lasted three hours and five minutes, roughly the time it takes to watch Warren Beatty’s movie “Reds”. I’m sure that was a ploy by the producers. “If you don’t come back to work we will only have movies like this to watch over and over again.” The most recent writers strike lasted five months in 1988.
I remember no effects from any of those strikes. This leads me to wonder what repercussions other strikes would have on the world. A trash collectors strike would be noticed much more quickly than a strike by the people who put those colorful cellophane decorations on deli toothpicks. Oh, sure the ham on rye with sauerkraut and pickles would not be nearly as festive, but sandwich eaters throughout the land could make the sacrifice.
Living in a world without teachers would mean wholesale home schooling. Since the vast majority of people cannot stop working every day due to financial reasons many home schoolers would be left to self-teach. This would create a generation of people very adept at computer chatting, cell phone text messaging, leaving the lights on throughout the house, and sleeping until noon. I have yet to see a want ad listing that skill set as prerequisite to employment, and if I had seen one I would have driven my daughter there post haste.
I am sure everyone can suggest the job least likely to be missed if the people doing it went on a permanent strike. Jobs like: dust ruffle manufacturers, anyone helping Kevin Trudeau be on television twenty-four hours a day and campaign managers for Mike Gravel, the former senator from Alaska currently running for the Democratic presidential nomination. No really, he is. I read it on CNN. At the moment he garners only one percentage point more in the polls than either I or Ernie the Keebler Elf does.

Whoso removeth this clog is the rightful king

There is a great desire in many people to be heroes. The popularity of everything from comic books to John Wayne movies to video games testifies to this fact. Seeking heroic satisfaction by pretending to do undertakings of epic proportion also shows that people don’t think they can reach the level of Champion of the Human Race in real life. I beg to differ. Just two weeks ago I lived the hero quest story and still got to watch most of the Kansas – Missouri game on television.
The story of the hero quest is ancient and there are very specific steps which describe the process. Step One: The Call to Adventure. In the great stories this is often represented by a terrifying herald of doom. In my case it was simply my wife. No, that is not some cheap wife joke. She was simply the person to call my attention to the quest at hand. She told me the sink was clogged. Scoff if you want to, but with a true dearth of minotaurs and women sporting garter snake hairdos in the world, a clogged sink is about as good as I get.
Step Two: Refusal of the Call. Often the hero is so set in his ways he does not heed the call or refuses to step up to the challenge. I was no different. I ignored the problem. This is the typical man’s first action whenever there is a problem. The baby is crying. The man: she’ll go back to sleep. The wife is mad. The man: she’ll get over it. A man’s body is covered with weeping sores and his left arm has fallen off. The man: Who needs a doctor? I’ll be okay.
When I finally answered the call I went to simple answers. I plungered, which just moved water around, much of which ended up on the floor. Next I used highly caustic will-eat-the-through-anything-even-molecular-bonds fluid. You think I’m joking. Well, it proceeded to eat through the basket in the drain of the sink. This got the water to drain out of the basin, but it went into the cabinet underneath and then flowed out onto the floor of the kitchen.
The real adventure begins when the hero crosses over the first threshold. For me this was when I let a stream of less than happy words flow out of my mouth like the water flowing onto the floor. This was the point of no return. The hero is forced to face the problem and wade into battle. I was forced to face the problem and wade into the kitchen. Sorry, too many fluid puns.
Every great hero has his mentor who gives him special knowledge or tools to meet the challenge. Perseus was given a special shield by Athena. King Arthur had Merlin. Glooscap was given a magical bag by Grandmother Woodchuck. (I did not make that up…look it up.) I was no different. Like Luke Skywalker I had a teacher. Mine was Obi-War-Ren.
Okay, his name is actually just Warren. He is a friend who knows all those things which make someone actually useful. As opposed to someone who can tell you about the great Wabanaki hero Glooscap and how Grandmother Woodchuck plucked the hairs from her belly to make a magical bag. I know it is hard to believe that understanding plumbing would be more useful than that, but just look at the bill for a plumber and then think about how much you paid to read this.
Warren was my guide through the Road of Trials encountered by heroes. He knew how to navigate the vast Terra Incognito of the hardware store. He showed me such arcane weapons as plumber’s putty, traps, and drain baskets. He explained the mysteries of water pressure. He let me do actual labor instead of just having me hold tools and barking at me to point the flashlight in the right spot.
Next in the hero quest is the apotheosis. This is when the hero’s ego is disintegrated in a breakthrough of consciousness. He then takes his “ultimate boon” back to his home. After all this the hero is now a master of two worlds, both the divine and the human.
With Warren’s help on my hero quest I am now the master of two worlds. I can write a column containing such words as apotheosis, woodchuck and weeping sores as well as get the potato skins out of the u-bend using a drain auger and a screw driver. I am no longer impressed by Hercules.

Just Because CNN Says it, Should We Care

At the risk of biting the hand that feeds me (truthfully the News doesn’t pay that well) I have to take exception to what the media decides I should know. Actually, the News does not cause me the consternation that larger, nationwide entities do. Let’s take a look at CNN.
CNN is a pioneer in its field. It is a gigantic world-wide enterprise with reporters in every corner of the globe (which makes no sense because a globe is round and has no corners). It even has Darth Vader doing the voice-over for its commercial. This (scuba tank regulator intake of breath and exhale) is CNN and I am your father. It is supposed to be a highly reputable news organization. As I write this it is nine o’clock Monday evening and if I go to their website three of the main headlines are: “Bride was an insurgent in disguise”, “Iraqis help ‘crush’ al Qaeda in Iraq”, and “‘I just lost it’ Ivy League prof admits killing his wife”. So, explain this to me. Do I need to know any of this stuff?
Headline number 1: Bride was an insurgent in disguise. This was a story about a wedding convoy getting stopped by soldiers north of Baghdad. Upon closer inspection they found the groom was wanted on terror related charges, the wedding gown was tea length which is so not done anymore, and the bride had a five o’clock shadow and was a chased man not a chaste woman.
Whether you are in favor of the way the government is handling things in Iraq or not you have to admit war is a nasty proposition. This news report sounds like the plot for the next comedy hit of the summer. A wanted terrorist decides to go on the lam disguised as a newlywed bride. Just watch the wackiness that ensues as Adam Sandler and Kevin James star in “I Now Pronounce you Haider and Abbas”. I don’t want to bring the room down, but reporting the ‘lighter side’ of terrorists and war seems at the very least in bad taste.
Headline number 2: Iraqis help ‘crush’ al Qaeda in Iraq. The story itself about how citizens of Iraq are contributing to the increased security of a section of Iraq is worthwhile and shows a modicum of progress can be found from time to time. The overstatement journalism is found in the headline. They say this line of defense is “crushing” al Qaeda in Iraq. If success in one sector of Baghdad is crushing al Qaeda than when the Miami Dolphins play the New England Patriots on December 23rd and they block the living daylights out of the Patriots kicker than they can say they crushed New England.
Headline number 3: ‘I just lost it’ Ivy League prof admits killing wife. I do not wish to denigrate the awfulness of the act or say that it should not be made public, but why does a national news service feel it needs to be a major story? Unfortunately, awful things happen everyday in most every sector of society. Would it be okay if all news organizations made a pact to stop trading in sordid acts of people murdering one another and simply placed an article in every paper saying: People do awful things to each other with a frequency that is quite frankly depressing and we need to remind you of it so you all take a moment to appreciate what you have and to remember to be careful out there. However, we are not going to tell you about this one guy who killed this other guy because that implies his death is more important than the other people who met a similar fate but were not famous enough or remarkable enough to get mentioned in the paper.
I do not want a Pollyanna approach to the news which only reports “good” stuff. What I would like is information about what our governments are doing which directly affect our lives. Information about the world’s economy and environment which impact me and my children is useful. Information about the candidates running for office which goes beyond sound bites and spin make for an informed electorate. All of these things would make me feel like an intelligent citizen of the planet while still not breaking with the mission statement of most news organizations promising to depress its readership like reciting Sylvia Plath at a birthday party.

Being Thankful: Good and Good for You

The day after Thanksgiving is the kick off for the big holiday shopping season. At least it used to be. The greed mongers also known as giant retail chains have been pushing us to start our great dance into irretrievable debt even earlier than usual. The weekend before Thanksgiving KOLS Magic 95 started playing Christmas music. Not just here and there interspersed amongst the usual play list, but all the time. This is just wrong! Not only was Christmas more than a month away, but global warming was in full bloom pushing the temperatures well above anything Frosty, Rudolph, and all the Whos down in Whoville would think indicated St. Nick was even contemplating pulling the sleigh out of storage. If I am driving to the store wearing shorts and sandals I want Surfin’ USA not Winter Wonderland.
You can call me a Scrooge if you want, but I will not believe the purpose of pushing the Christmas season up earlier and earlier on the calendar is motivated by people looking for peace on earth and good will towards men. It is motivated by people who want a piece of the action and are unconcerned if the general public spends their nest egg and needs the help of Goodwill Industries to eat next holiday season. Actually, when you stop to look at it the people who are trying to skip Thanksgiving and go right into Moneygiving resemble the Scrooge at the beginning of the Dickens classic rather than the altruistic one at the end.
In my own mini-form of protest I would like to elongate Thanksgiving rather than go right into Christmas. Let’s make Thanksgiving a full weekend, not just a day. We eat leftovers past Thursday. Many of us have Friday off from work already. Football games are on television Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If we think about it the great majority of us have enough going right in our lives to be thinking thankful thoughts beyond one day, a day we spend a great chunk of the afternoon sleeping through because we have unbuttoned the sans-a-belts, stretched out on the couch, and settled in to watch a game featuring the Detroit Lions which easily allows the tryptophan to kick in sending us to Sleepytown.
Giving thanks is not only a good reason for a day off, but it has been shown to improve one’s health. Martin Seligman holds a Ph.D. and has written books meant to help people raise the level of happiness in their lives. One prescription he offers for a jump on the happy meter is to take time to be grateful. He sites a psychological study which had people spend just a few minutes each night writing short notes on what they were grateful to have. It did not have to be anything all that momentous, just stuff you are glad pops up during the day. The people who did this actually showed growth in their general feelings of contentedness.
Mr. Seligman goes on to explain that the act of being grateful amplifies the good memories from the past. This increases the number of times good things simply pass through your mind, and if you are thinking happy thoughts you will be happier (add Tinkerbell dandruff and you can fly). If you stop to think about it, this seems pretty obvious and the next thought has to be, “Is this all it takes to get a Ph.D?”
Here is my own way of teaching people the process Mr. Seligman suggested. I cannot say what you personally should be grateful for, but if I apply it to people we all know it becomes more concrete.
Alex Rodriguez: I am thankful the priorities of the planet are so far out of whack that I get over 27 million dollars a year to lead my team somewhere near the World Series.
Keith Richards: Even though I died ten years ago and that is why I look the way I do, I am grateful no one has actually checked my pulse and blown it for me.
Bill Gates: I am grateful survival of the fittest has changed from being fast enough to outrun a tiger and strong enough to skin a mammoth to smart enough to create software which confounds and frustrates, but people will spend good money to have.
Mark Mangino: I am thankful my team follows me each and every Saturday. I realize part of the reason is I have reached a mass which creates its own gravitational pull and much of the team functions as moons and satellites.

Christopher Pyle is thankful for many of the little things in life: cookies, giggling children, music, and the fact he is not required to do algebra.

The Glass is Half Full of Sour Milk

I am having a minor crisis of my conviction. For years I have tried very hard to believe in the intrinsic goodness of people. This assumption is getting harder and harder to find corroborating evidence of support. It is not that I have crossed over to the dark side and think everyone is a deceitful, selfish, mean-spirited purveyor of degradation and boom-de-boom devil worshipping music making me want to stockpile bottled water, batteries, and Pop-Tarts in my basement, duct-tape plastic over my windows and buy a Rottweiler with a disposition making Dick Cheney look like Mr. Rogers. Nope, I just think too many people are horribly unhappy.
A theory was proposed by my wife stating babies are born knowing how to express unhappiness. (Crying happens before they do anything else.) On the other hand it takes weeks and focused effort by the parents to get the little beggars to smile. (Of course, when they do it would even melt the heart of the above mentioned Rottweiler.) Many babies don’t smile until they are two months old. That means eight weeks of going from overtly cranky to merely placid before genuine signs of happiness appear.
I have read a variety of books by philosophers, psychologists, gurus, and comedians (carefully omitting Dr. Phil) in search of what happiness is and how to make it more prevalent. In “Authentic Happiness” Martin Seligman discusses the evolution of different emotions. He makes it clear that both negative emotions and positive ones have very real benefits. The negative ones (fear, sadness and anger) are the first line of defense against external threats. Of course our ancestors with well honed fight or flight instincts were better equipped to survive and create descendents.
Picture this Caveman A, let’s call him Carl, is a depressed wheel-maker. He is constantly scared and hasn’t smiled since the early Pleistocene. Caveman B, known as Mel, is a happy cave painter best known for the very life-like mammoths he creates. He is cheery and laughs frequently. One day the two of them are sitting by the bank of the river. Mel is cultivating his positive feelings observing small mammals cavorting in the short grass. Carl is cultivating his negative feelings by frequently jerking his head from side to side looking for signs the ice age is coming back. When Mel turns to point out a particularly cute Crusafontia (prehistoric squirrel) to Carl he does not see Carl. He sees an Arctodus, a.k.a short-faced bear (the face may have been short but the bear was six foot). Thus the pessimist, running away Carl, was alive and the optimist, sitting and smiling Mel, was a prehistoric version of Purina Bear Chow.
Mr. Seligman and his Ph.D. go on to say that our positive emotions also have an important purpose in evolution. They broaden intellectual, physical and social resources. Happy people appeal more to other people. Happy people are more open to new thoughts and ideas. Happy people are more tolerant. Happy people are more altruistic. Happy people have fewer health problems like issues with the heart. There is another Dick Cheney joke in here somewhere, but I have already used up my one per column allotment.
The general mood of a person can make a big difference in the levels of success he finds in certain tasks. Seligman says critical thinking is best done in a less happy mood. So doing your income tax while depressed is actually more likely to mean you’ll do it right. That’s convenient. But deciding who to marry should be done whilst one is in a good mood. That’s easy to understand. Happy Guy, being an optimist, gleefully thinks the gorgeous blonde in accounting is just right for him. Depressed Man, being a pessimist, looks at the cute red-head in human resources and thinks she would never be interested in him so he might as well quit his job, move to a cabin in Alaska and write his manifesto on how mankind is doomed due to the mass consumption of carbonated beverages and the fact that Jimmy Kimmel has his own television show.
It seems to me both pessimism and optimism come in handy. Therefore, I have designed a new philosophy. I call it Pezoptimism. The theory here is happiness needs to be doled out on a regular basis in small easy to digest portions preferably by swinging back the plastic head of a cartoon character and having the piece of happiness drop into our hands.