Episode 77: Tip for Panera

Panera is one of my favorite places to eat, mostly because I don't ever feel sick after eating there. They used to play classical music too, which made me feel mature and sophisticated, as opposed to all those other places with TVs everywhere and pop music blaring. In any case, I even used to like talking to the people who worked at my favorite Panera, which is a big step for me. I don't even like talking to people I know. Everything was going so well for a while. I felt like Panera was really helping me develop my social interaction skills.

That all changed when someone at Panera decided it would be a good idea to add a question to every credit card transaction. "Would you like to add a tip?"

Wait, what?!

Don't we usually add tips after service has been rendered? How can you ask me to leave a tip before I know how good the service will be? What if I leave a tip and I get terrible service? What if I don't leave a tip and I get exceptional service?

Isn't this actually more like extortion?

Hmm, just a second...Siri, what does extortion mean?

...

Yep, it's just like that. It is just like a shakedown. Do you want good service or bad service? Do you want us to get your order right, or screw it all up? Oh, we'll take good care of you, for a price.

I panic and just hit NO if I ever actually have to order at the counter, because hitting YES leads to a math question, and I'm terrible at math. Thankfully my favorite Panera also has kiosks where I can order without ever having to talk to anyone, so I can avoid the whole awkward exchange. This has set my social interaction development way back. Why, Panera, why?

Here's a tip for you, Panera. Rather than asking us to tip before we get our food, why don't you just raise the prices and pay your employees a bit more? Why don't you tip your employees? Or just keep asking that awkward question so everyone feels uncomfortable at the end of every transaction.

Episode 76: Things I Don't Understand

There are lots of things I just don't understand. In fact, the longer I live, the more things I don't understand. As I was putting a CD on iTunes the other day I came across a hidden track. (Don't get distracted by the fact that I am still putting CDs on iTunes. It's still a thing.) What the heck was the point of hiding a track on a CD? Don't you want people to hear your music? Why would you make someone listen to 10 minutes of dead air before getting to a hidden song? It's a moot point now, what with CDs going extinct, but I still don't get it.

Social media is full of mystery to me. It's not that I don't understand how it all works, that's the simple part. You have something to say or to show so you post it for all the world to see. The part I don't understand is what people choose to post. Sometimes people post private (at least they seem private to me) heart-felt messages to family members or friends. That's a little like writing love letters on billboards instead of leaving them on your lover's pillow, which makes me feel a little uncomfortable, like I accidentally found a letter that should have been left on someone's pillow. Those letters are fine to share when some intrepid youngster finds them in an attic 100 years from now, when we're all dead. It's just awkward now, when we're all alive.

I don't understand warning labels, or really I suppose I don't understand how people could possibly need some of the warning labels I see. I bought a windshield sun shade, the folding silver kind that you put in your windshield to keep the sun from melting the inside of your car. It had a warning not to use it while driving. Really? Someone has tried that? I hope they at least cut eye holes in it.

Man wipes. I don't even know what to say. Wet wipes or antibacterial wipes are not specific enough, or are too feminine? On the one hand there is an increasing trend toward removing all reference to gender because people are increasingly offended by gender-specific language. On the other hand, we also now have man wipes. 

It's all so very confusing. People are confusing. 

Episode 73: Trash Collection and the End of Humanity

I am a big fan of trash collectors, not the people who go through other people’s trash and collect stuff, but the people who come to my house early in the morning and take away all the stuff I throw away.  The other people are quite often hoarders, which is bad for the business of real trash collectors.  That is probably why real trash collectors have started moving away from trash collecting and towards waste management.  They do not want to be confused with people who actually collect and keep trash.  In any case, as much as I like trash collectors, I do believe they very well could be pushing humanity towards its demise.  

You see, knowing someone is going to pick up everything we throw away is making most of us less responsible and less thoughtful, which is good for people in the manufacturing business, the advertising business, the retail business, and all sorts of other business, but not as good for the actual business of living on a planet with other living things also trying to live on said planet. 

Trash collectors are really enabling bad behavior. 

As long as they keep coming to pick up trash, we will become increasingly irresponsible with what we throw away.  It is only a matter of time before we just skip using stuff and start throwing it away on the way out of the stores in which we buy the stuff.  (Judging by the quality of a large portion of manufactured goods today, the manufacturers are already operating with that assumption.)  Fewer and fewer things are made to last, because there is no money in making things that do not have to be replaced every 12.7 seconds.

What would happen if trash collectors stopped collecting our trash?  What if we had to figure out what to do with all our trash?  I bet we wouldn’t buy as many things.  Most of the things we buy end up in the trash not long after we buy them, because we know the trash collectors will just come get them, the manufacturers will just make more, the advertisers will tell us about all the new things the manufacturers are making, and the retailers will happily sell them to us.  

It is a bit like the hydrological cycle, except with stuff we don’t need, and it is less like a cycle and more like a slow straight line to a future in which we live on the skin of a gigantic whirling ball of waste.  At that point, we would probably abandon Earth so we wouldn't have to deal with the waste problem.

When we decide the solution to a problem is to make it someone else's problem, that's when we embrace the end of humanity.  

Episode 72: Targeted Marketing

Advertisers are some of my favorite people, or at least they might be, if they weren't some of my least favorite people.  Actually, I am not sure about them as people, in fact, I am not even sure they are people.  In an age of bots and algorithms and such, advertisers are quickly becoming as faceless as they have always been soulless.

I bring all this up because the latest bothersome intrusion into my otherwise peaceful existence has been coming from the nether regions of the windowless basement dwellings of commercial marketing strategists straight to my computer as I wander aimlessly through the increasingly irrelevant expanse of social media.

Targeted marketing has taken on a whole new dimension now that the basement dwellers can actually use all the data they collect.  They have been collecting all sorts of data about us and our preferences for eons, but now they can actually use that data to make relevant ads pop up on our computer screens as we waste our time checking up on everyone else’s lives, while our own lives flitter on by.

I am all for these ads, because it reminds me that someone is always watching and waiting to sneak up and shove a relevant ad in my face.  It makes me think twice before I browse unsavory or embarrassing content, which is probably a good thing.  No one wants relevant ads popping up when what is relevant is also rather embarrassing and revealing.  Wait, I’m not actually all for these ads.  Part of me is pretty creeped out. 

Another part of me does rather like it when those ads tell me the things for which I have been searching are on sale somewhere.  After all, isn’t the complete infiltration of my virtual mind a small price to pay when it comes to saving some cash?  It’s not like the people responsible for the people responsible for the ads are trying to control me, right? I’m much too smart for…What the?  Snuggies on clearance!  That’s just what I’ve been looking for!  Sorry, but I can’t miss out on that.

Episode 75: Doctor Kim

Doctor Kim recently raised concerns when she tweeted a personal message containing an endorsement for a morning-sickness drug and someone revealed that the drug company actually paid her for her endorsement.  Although it seemed to be a conflict of interest, she is a widely trusted…wait, she is not a doctor?!  Hold on, she's just a celebrity getting paid to pretend her opinion about some certain product is actually high on the list of reasons people with working brains would purchase that product?  So, why is that causing any sort of stir?  

That is most certainly not a conflict of interests.  Her primary interest is getting money, and the drug company's primary interest is selling drugs to make money, so this seems to be a happy marriage of complimentary interests.  Neither drug companies nor celebrities have ever been known to concern themselves with something so silly as actual people when money is on the table, or under the table, or has the remotest possibility of someday being anywhere near the table.

If you're looking to celebrity tweets for guidance on anything, you probably need to step away from social media for a few minutes and go out into the world to experience it for yourself.  People who get paid to be whatever the people who pay them want them to be are probably not the most trustworthy sources of information, and the people paying those people, obviously, are even less trustworthy.

Here's the thing, I'm not concerned that not-doctor Kim tweeted for pay about some drug she may or may not actually use, because that's just how things work when you are famous.  What concerns me is the fact that people are concerned.  You see, I assume most people would read that tweet for what it is, a commercial, and not as sage medical advise from a medical professional with actual knowledge and expertise.  From the tenor of some responses I've seen, it would seem there are people out there who would read it as the latter.  

If you are one of those people, there is still hope.  You can change.  It's really quite simple.  All you need to do is set aside your social media drug of choice, go outside, breathe actual air, look at actual things, talk to actual people, and be an actual person who does actual things.  In no time at all, you will discover you have an actual brain of your own, one you can use without any input at all from celebrity advertising puppets dangling from the golden strings of corporate profiteers.

Episode 74: What Color is Your Soap?

Back in the day, whichever day that actually was, advertising made some sort of sense.  People had useful products to sell, and they wanted to tell people all about the useful features of their useful products.  Today, I had to buy soap for my dishwasher.  In the soap-for-dishwashers isle I found a dizzying array of options.  Oddly enough, most of the different options were actually from the same brand.  There was soap that was 6 x’s the power, and soap that was 8 x’s the power, and even soap that was 10 x’s the power! Okay, is this some sort of internal one-upmanship at the dishwasher soap factory?  Why wouldn’t they just sell the best soap they had? Maybe they are improving their soap so fast they cannot sell the weak stuff before the stronger stuff comes out. At least they are still trying to appeal to my desire to clean things, which makes sense if you are selling soap.  This is a concept apparently lost on the carwash people.

A few days ago I actually paid attention to the various benefits of the different car wash levels.  At first, things made sense.  The levels started with Good, then moved on up to Better, and then on again to Best, and finally on to Supreme, which did make me wonder how we differentiate among superlatives, but I could understand the car people clearly thought Supreme was better than Best.  The obvious question then is what makes a carwash Supreme.  Tricolored foam.  Yep, that is what bumps your carwash up another rung on the ladder of superlatives.  It’s not foam that is 10x’s the power of lesser foam. It’s not even 6x’s the power.  It’s just multicolored.  Okay, I realize the mushy-brained kooks of advertising think we are all very gullible and not very bright, but it’s like they aren’t even trying anymore. “Here, buy this soap because it is colorful, and won’t all those colors look fun when you are washing stuff?” 

Sure, companies have been using the old lets-differentiate-ourselves-from-our-competitors-with-some-sort-of trivial-detail-that-is-totally-unrelated-to-our-product-or-its-use trick since mushy-brained kooks took over the marketing racket, but they were way more crafty and less obvious about it.  I mean, they would take the same old thing, the thing maybe a few other people were also making, wrap it in sexy new packaging and say how much better it was than some other version of the exact same thing in less sexy packaging.  It used to be about the actual product, or at least pretend to be about the product.  

Has it really come to this?  They don’t even bother to make up something about multicolored foam being more effective.  Have our minds really been turned so mushy we will choose a car wash based on the color of the foam it uses? I, for one, will not!  I bought the Supreme because it was better than the Best, whatever that means, and that is why the mushy-brained kooks get paid the big dollars.

Episode 71: Pets

I used to have pets, cats, dogs, an occasional rabbit. Now, I have fish given to our family by a friend who thought our kids would like to have fish. The first three died, as did some sort of strange frog thing that looked like it was dead even when it was alive, so we are not sure how long it was dead before we noticed. There are two that have survived my passive attempts to kill them, so far.

You never forget a dog, because it runs to meet you when you come home, chews up everything of value in your house, poops on anything it can’t chew up, barks at nothing in the middle of the night, and generally makes a nuisance of itself to make sure you know it hasn’t died or run off. Cats are slightly less noticeable, but they show themselves just enough to remind you to feed them.

Fish cannot do anything to get your attention. The best they can do is swim wildly around their little bowl hoping some stray light will reflect off their scales and catch your eye so you remember to change the water so they can breathe. Sure, they don’t try to procreate with your legs, but you cannot sit down on the couch and scratch their heads or wrestle around with them…at least not for long…and it usually ends badly for the fish.

All you can really do with fish is stare at them, which seems to make them nervous, probably because they think you are contemplating how best to prepare them for dinner. They don’t realize the only people who actually eat tiny fish are drunk frat boys and sober junior high boys, and none of those boys do much in the way of preparation.

In any case, do we really want to teach our children to stare? How is that responsible parenting? You can always tell the people who grew up with fish, because they just stare at everyone without saying anything. That’s how having fish for pets teaches you to interact with other living things. Ok, that last statement may lack any semblance of accuracy, but that doesn’t make it any less true, and it is also a good reason for me to refuse to replace the last survivors when they cease surviving.

Episode 45: Lost and Found

For those of you who have lost something you wish not to have lost and have given up hope of ever finding it because you lost it decades ago, take heart.  Bill Fulton of Baker City, OR, lost his wallet in 1946 at a basketball game.  It was returned to him when discovered during renovations to the school 63 years later.  Only his student ID was not there.  Ruth Bendik’s wallet was stolen by a pickpocket in 1982 in Central Park.  It was found by a worker doing tree maintenance in 2009.  The only thing missing was $20.  All her credit cards and identification were still there.  It does seem a bit strange that the wallet was found in a tree, but it might make more sense if we knew more about Mrs. Bendik’s history with crows.

You see, crows recognize human faces.  If you get on their bad list, they all yell at you wherever you go.  In fact, if you get on one crow’s bad list, word will likely travel fast and you will find yourself on lots of bad lists in the crow community.  Scientists who tagged crows found this out the hard way when they started noticing cacophonic crows wherever they went.  

What does all this have to do with wallets from 1982? 

Well, let’s just say, for the sake of having something more to say, Mrs. Bendik baked some apple pies one day and set them out on her balcony to cool.  Let’s further say some crows noticed the pies, thought they looked rather tasty, (surely crows eat pies, especially apple pies, unless they are communist crows) and decided to drop in and have a few bites. 

Of course Mrs. Bendik would be furious if she saw crows desecrating her world famous apple pies. No one would care if the pies were no good to begin with, so we will say these were world famous.  She would grab whatever was at hand, a broom, a lamp stand, a wrench, a rope, a lead pipe, The Marriage at Cana by Paolo Veronese, or a toothpick, and go to swatting at said hungry crows.  The crows would be rather put out by this aggressive behavior, and they would add Mrs. Bendik to their bad list.  They would also tell all their other crow friends, which all look the same to us.  Even scientists have a hard time telling one crow from another.  Now, isn’t it quite likely that one of these friends, in an effort to avenge the ill-treatment visited upon his friends, would swoop down and abscond with Mrs. Bendik’s wallet?  And isn’t it just as likely he would drop said wallet in a tree?  And isn’t is just as likely this would all happen in the conservatory, or maybe the library?  And isn’t it also likely Mrs. Bendik’s real name is Miss Scarlet?

Anyway, the lesson here is if you are going to bake a pie and set it on a balcony, don’t go out with your wallet visible to passing crows, but if you do and your wallet goes missing, check the trees in Central Park in 27 years.

Episode 70: Education Revolution

Picture yourself in a second grade classroom. There are 20 or so students trying to make the most of their public education experience and one student causing a massive disruption by yelling at the teacher, refusing to do his work, throwing things, and whatever other disruptive behavior an elementary brain can conceive.

Many of you reading this probably cannot picture that because it would not have happened when you were in second grade. When you were in second grade, the teacher, or perhaps even the principle, would have grabbed that one disruptive student by the scruff of the neck, or the short hairs, or the arm and marched him down to the office where he would have had to wait for his parents to come take him home, where he would likely face additional discipline for the purpose of ensuring he would learn to behave like a human child given the privilege of an opportunity at an education.

Today's classrooms may as well be on the moon for how differently they function under the infallibly defective guidance of what could only be the product of federal government oversight of very local affairs coupled with the fear of completely illogical, irrational, and unfounded lawsuits.

I have heard multiple accounts of similar incidents in today's classrooms, where the 20 or so studious students vacate the classroom so the one student can be alone with his misbehavior until it has run its course. Good heavens, we wouldn't want the child to think he had actually done something wrong. What kind of damage might that do to his fragile self esteem? And we cannot possibly lay hands on such a child to get him to comply. We don't want him to feel as powerless as the teachers do we?

Let's apply this lesson to life as adults. This would be akin to a peaceful and law-abiding family awakening to a burglar in the house and rather than calling the police to come and drag the crim off to jail, they politely offer to leave the house until the burglar has finished whatever he would like to do in their house.

Yes, it is exactly that ridiculous.

Thank you, Big Brother, for working to standardize our education system and ensure all those ridiculous people who believe there are such things as teachers don't get the crazy idea they might actually be able to come up with creative and effective ways to educate our youth if we just let them get to it, and for turning public schools into juvenile detention centers actually run by the juvenile delinquents. We will have the next great society in no time.

I am sure there is no better way to do this whole education thing, but just for giggles, how about we go back to the old drawing board and toss out some ideas. There are no bad ideas...excepting, of course, any idea that should happen to claw its way out of the black hole in the fabric of logic that is the Federal Government.

Episode 69: Good Friend Robert Redford

So the other day, I received a note from my good friend Robert Redford. I was pretty excited because I hadn't heard from him in forever, but that's probably only because he has never heard of me.

Okay, so technically it wasn't so much a personal friendly note as it was a formal notification from Bobby on behalf of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which I learned I seem to support fervently enough to receive recognition in the form of a Certificate of Appreciation. It is nice to know my support is appreciated, but I was slightly confused because I had never heard of such an organization before receiving the note from Bobby.

Apparently the NRDC is "the Earth's best defense" against "those who would destroy it." At least that's what my Certificate of Appreciation says. Who wants to destroy Earth? I assumed, as most people would, that it was grotesque angry intergalactic aliens looking for worlds to harvest so they can power their machinations of destruction and continue their quest to control the universe. Surprisingly, that is not who the NRDC fears most.

In the special report enclosed along with my certificate, which I have proudly framed and mounted in a prominent place in my office so everyone will know I do not hate Earth, the Virginia-based NRDC uncovered "the worst corporate assault on America's natural heritage you've ever heard of." Coincidently, it also happens to be "the worst possible nightmare for Alaskan wilderness," and "an almost unimaginably bad idea." I've almost had a few of those, I think, but it's hard to tell because I don't have a great imagination to begin with...with which to begin...at all.

There were a lot more words, some underlined, some bold, some red, and some quite large in the few pages of the special report, but it was about Alaska, and that is very far away, so I lost interest. I mean, I don't hate the Alaskan part of Earth, and the free wildlife tote bag to "show the world you're helping to stop the Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay," was very nice, but Alaska is very far away, and cold.

There was some sort of paper I was supposed to sign and send somewhere, presumably to someone who has some sort of power to halt all the nightmares. I think maybe the President of the United States might have been mentioned, but I don't know the President any more than Bobby knows me, and the tote bag wasn't so nice as to motivate me to purchase it for a $15 donation, so in the end I kept supporting the NRDC the same way I always have, by not wanting to destroy Earth.

I trust they can still feel my support, so I am keeping the certificate. It makes me feel like I am part of the solution to the problem of horrific apocalyptic nightmares in Alaska, plus friends support each other, right Bobby?

Episode 68: Shut Down the Shutdown

So the government has shut down. Well, more accurately, those who govern have shut down all productive work directly funded by the federal government. Ah, if only a government shutdown actually meant those who govern would have to do without pay until they fixed what they have broken. It occurred to me today to wonder what exactly politicians do to earn their $174,000 or more salaries. As near as I can figure it, they wander from meeting to meeting arguing with each other and bashing each other to the press, but only when they are not trying to cover up some scandalous habit or behavior.

Whatever they do must be important, because they wear suits and have to go to important parties and such. Only important people do those sorts of things, because only important people can afford to do those things, because only important people have money. At least that's what I get from my very impartial and comprehensive research and observations.

What does that mean for the rest of us? Well, what it seems to mean is we are in the middle of a tug-o-war between political parties, and they would mostly rather pull our arms off and watch us bleed out than stop tugging. You see, the thing in the middle of a tug-o-war is merely a tool, a means to victory over the opponent on the other side. What happens to it is not really as important as making sure your opponent doesn't win.

What we have on our little playground are a few hundred bullies on one side, a few hundred bullies on the other, and just over 300 million wide-eyed victims in the middle. Welcome to the government shutdown my fellow Americans. May you keep at least some of your limbs until the tugging stops.

Episode 68: Anonymous Sources of Good Character

I have noticed a trend in news stories in which something sensational happened and in which the government or big corporations are involved. My scientific research reveals that several to many times, sources referenced by reporters "spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak."

I'm actually really not sure where to go with this now because my brain gets stuck in an endless loop of illogical irrationality every time I see that statement.

As near as I can figure, what it means is as long as no one knows who did it, it is ok to do something you are not supposed to do. "I did it, but I'm not telling you who I am, because I wasn't supposed to do it." My kids are very familiar with this logic, as are most kids, which is why kids have parents, to debunk such irrational and irresponsible unreasoning. It would seem that reporter school is taught by children.

Try to apply this reporter logic to other areas of life. Go ahead, it will be fun. For example, what if the greedy bankers partly responsible for all the crazy economic woes used reporter logic? Some bankers took the hard-earned money you were planning on using for stupid things like your retirement and your children's education and spent it on important things like yachts, exotic sports cars, European vacation homes, and cocaine, but it was on the condition of anonymity because they weren't actually authorized to do so. Well, that changes everything, doesn't it. Now I guess we shouldn't hold them accountable, because they tried to be anonymous about it, they really did. Don't we all?

Isn't that kind of the rational we all use when we are trying to get away with doing something we are not supposed to do because it negatively affects someone else, even though it is for the great reason of positively affecting us in some usually insignificant and temporary way? Except we used to say, "it's okay unless you get caught." The anonymity thing does sound better if we are trying to maintain good character while doing things we are not supposed to be doing, so I can see why we have started using it, because character is important.

I'm going to try this character-saving reporter logic on the cops next time I get pulled over. "Officer, can't you just write down in your little book that you couldn't give me a ticket because I was speeding on the condition of anonymity because I was not authorized to speed?" If that doesn't work, I will just argue that I was authorized to speed but I cannot reveal the source of my authorization. I'll let you know how it goes, with my one phone call.

Episode 67: Magic Boxes and Crazies

I did a crazy thing today, so crazy I almost don't want to admit it, not so much because it was insanely crazy itself, but rather because it is ridiculous that I thought it was crazy. It could be that I was just drunk on a heady cocktail of Rob Bell, Donald Miller, and Anne Lamott. My desk is littered with the evidence of a recent reading binge on those three, and they make you think about thinking about wanting to do and say and think and ask crazy things, like people who do not live in suburbs do.

In any case, this morning I went out, in the car, to at least two different places, without the one thing with which everyone on planet Earth must have. Yup, I actually went outside my house, not just in the yard out of my house, but at least 3 to 5 miles out of my house, without taking my mobile phone. I have to admit, I nearly had a panic attack when I thought of all the horrible things that could happen. What if someone tried to call me, or updated a Facebook status, or worse yet, what if I got a flat tire!? How did people deal with such things before? It was nerve-wracking, but I made it back without incident and only missed one call and no useful Facebook updates. What a crazy thing it is that these little magic boxes have gone from novelty to ubiquity to I-cannot-breathe-without-it-y in such a short time.

According to actual statistics, not just numbers I made up, there are around 6 billion active mobile phone subscriptions in a world of about 7 billion people. Not surprisingly, there are more mobile phones than people in the U.S. I started trying to think of people I know who don't have a mobile phone. The best I could come up with are a couple friends who keep their mobile phones in drawers instead of attached to their persons at all times and don't have unlimited texting.

My kids don't have phones yet, well, not exactly. The truth is they have my wife's old iPhone, but it is not actually active as a phone, so it doesn't count.

My parents used to give us their old phones too. We pretended to call people on them, or sometimes hit each other with them, or tied people up with the curly handset cords. So far, that is not what our kids do with the old iPhone, mostly because it has no cord, would break if they hit each other with it, and has so many games and Apps it is hardly recognizable as a phone at all.

The little magic boxes we call phones probably spend most of their time wondering what they have in common with some wrinkled dusty old antique device that only had one function, even though it was ten times their size. Life used to be so much simpler. People walked to places, talked to each other in person, spent time outside, and generally has less stressful lives. On the other hand, they couldn't play Angry Birds and look up interesting facts on the internet while stuck in a boring phone conversation, so life wasn't all rose petals and gummy worms for them either.

Episode 66: Big Game Hunting

So, I met a South African who is into hunting big game. Where I grew up, hunters hunted things like deer, rabbits, squirrels, and the occasional mailbox. None of those things qualifies as big game. From what I gather, big game is anything that is just as likely to kill you as you are to kill it. In fact, if you don't have a rather large gun, and you find yourself out in the African bush facing any one of the many big game animals, your chances of survival are only slightly better than the next slowest person in your party.

Hunting, as I remember it growing up, involved trying to sneak up on or chase animals that ran away as soon as they saw, smelled, or heard you. Hunting in the big game world involves hunting animals that very well may be hunting you at the same time. This sounds rather insane, so I figured I should read up on big game hunting.

Well, I am through the Lion, Elephant, Leopard, and Cape Buffalo chapters of Death in the Long Grass, by Peter Capstick and have learned it is even more insane than you would think if you weren't sure exactly what to think about big game hunting, because you don't know exactly what it is. 

Capstick was a big game hunter back in the 1960s and 1970s, and he has all kinds of gruesome stories, because it seems lots of big game hunting involves being so close to the animals that if you miss your first shot, you will very likely end up in a mouth, on a tusk, under a gigantic foot, or hurtling through the air before ending up in a mouth, on a tusk, or under a gigantic foot. A 1-pound kitten can scratch me to bits, so I have no desire to be a scratching post for a 450-pound angry lion, or even a playful lion for that matter, or even a 160-pound leopard. Actually, I really don't like sharp-clawed kitten attacks either. I probably do not have a future in big game hunting.

It's not just danger from being attacked by the wild animals you have to consider. You might also get shot by another hunter, like the guy who accidentally shot his son-in-law's hand to bits. Granted, the hand was in a lion's mouth at the moment and the guy was just shooting at sounds because he couldn't see on account of the skin of his head being flapped over his eyes and his hands being broken after being attacked himself by the lion only moments before. I'm sure that affects your aim, even if you are an experienced hunter.

I tell you all this because I am very often amazed at how different life is depending on where you live. As I write this, my arms are itching and smarting a bit from being scratched by aggressive twigs in my back yard as I wrestled them into the trash can. They put up as much fight as they could, but I persevered. There's a guy out there who survived having his hand shot while it was being chomped on by a lion! He probably hangs out in a bar with a bunch of other guys who have scars on various appendages that have been in the mouths of various big game animals and talks about the guys who didn't get their appendages back out again. The other night I hung out in a basement with a few guys and talked about how I hurt my back, and I am not even sure how.

Alright, back to the Hippos chapter for more on the photographer who survived having his leg chomped by a curious and rather aggressive hippo. Well, maybe a break first to walk around because I think my butt is numb from sitting, and I won't even have to worry about any big game hunting me, although sometimes I don't see my kids coming, and that can hurt. Very different lives indeed.

Episode 65: The Worst that Could Happen...

I realized today that people are not overly creative when they ask the question, "Well, what's the worst that could happen?" They always seem to have their own answer to their own question, but it very often reveals a very optimistic and naive lack of cerebral effort. Usually, the worst thing that could happen is assumed to be directly related to the topic of conversation at the time.

For instance, two people are standing on a rock only 10 feet above a body of water that is plenty deep enough for diving. "Well, what's the worst that could happen? You might accidentally do a belly flop and that would probably sting a bit, so go ahead and jump."

Good heavens! What sort of modern education system churns out such blathering idiots? That is not even close to the worst thing that could happen in that particular situation, let alone the worst thing in general at that given moment in time for those two people.

The water could be infested with goldfish that have evolved into giant man-eating terrors after being heartlessly flushed down toilets somewhere in New Jersey. The rock itself could suddenly open its mouth (having just sprouted one due to instantaneous evolutionary processes set in motion, quite accidentally, by toddler aliens playing with their toys many light years away) and swallow them whole, or chew them up first, depending on the size of its mouth and whether it had teeth. Gravity could suddenly reverse itself just as they jumped and they could end up hopelessly floating around the dark and fathomless void of infinite space. Those are just a few things that could be worse than "the worst that could happen" to those poor dimwitted divers.

I think you see my point, which is great, because I've gone off and left and can no longer see it myself, so I'm glad to know someone is looking after it. Our education system has failed us and is failing us, and we lack the creative prowess even to speculate on the worst thing that could happen if our education system failed us.

Also, you should not have such discussions with 8-year-olds who already have numerous irrational fears.

One more thing, if you write when you are hungry, you will invariably include bits about things eating other things, so if you would rather avoid such references, it is probably best to write on a full stomach.

Episode 49: Did You Know: Indiana

I live in Indiana, so I thought it might be interesting to find out just what makes this state important or interesting.

Did you know there is a town in Indiana called Santa Claus? I am not even kidding. You can find it right near Christmas Lake, which you cannot go to because the people who live there got tired of visitors and turned their little haven into a gated community. In any case, the story is they wanted to be Santa Fe, but there was already a Santa Fe in Indiana, which caused a problem when they wanted a post office. To get a post office, they had to change their name, and what better name for a town could there possibly be than Santa Clause? (Did you know quarterback Jay Cutler was born in Santa Claus?) Although I have very little proof, which is to say absolutely none, I am pretty sure those responsible for naming that town are somehow connected to those who most recently named our beloved Fort Wayne baseball team.

Speaking of baseball, shortly after the aforementioned name disaster (the town, not the team), the first professional baseball game was played in Fort Wayne. It was 1871, which also happens to be the year something was invented, someone was born, and something else fantastic happened or didn't happen. It was a good year.

Another good year was the one in which someone discovered lots and lots of limestone in southern Indiana. A whole collection of good years followed for the people who figured out how to sell that limestone to the folks building the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, the Pentagon, the U.S. Treasury and a bunch of other buildings in other places.

A collection of bad years for Indiana trees began shortly after settlers came and started chopping them down. Before the settlers, Indians lived in Indiana, and they seem to have liked trees a bit more than the settlers, so they left them (trees) mostly alone. (They had really good reason to like trees more than settlers once the settlers started attacking trees and bringing all sorts of new illnesses, like "boy bands" and "pop divas".)

Back in the day, before boy bands and pop divas, Indiana was around 80% forested. After all the settling and buildings and fences and fields and SUVs and talentless hacks with pretty faces and small brains exploited by greedy shysters with lots of money and no scruples, we are now closer to 17% forested.

That makes me feel bad about using my fireplace. I mean really, shouldn't I be watching all those poor exploited artists instead of wrapping my fingers around a steaming cup of hot cocoa while staring blankly into the flames as the firelight flickers warmly around the otherwise dark room and the cares of my day melt slowly away? Of course not, then all the trees would have died in vain! You have to ask yourself, if you were a tree, would you rather be chopped down and burned or subjected to the latest American Music Awards show?

Thankfully, Indiana does not have be ashamed of the artists we have produced. We can boast about the likes of James Dean, Steve McQueen, David Letterman, John Mellencamp, Cole Porter, Axel Rose (okay, we might have some explaining to do on that one), the Jacksons, and some other famous people.

The point of all this is there are lots of useless facts and tidbits floating around out there, and you may never know any of them. On the other hand, there probably aren't really any bad consequences for that, so you don't have to get all panicky about it just yet.

Episode 48: What Just Happened?

Have you ever suddenly wondered how you got to where you were? For example, you find yourself alone in a row boat in the middle of Lake Michigan in the middle of a snow storm and you cannot remember how exactly you ended up there when you started at a New Year's Eve party in Toronto. (If this has ever happened to you, you need to start asking yourself some questions about your friends.)

Okay, maybe you cannot identify with that, but how about something a little less extreme. Perhaps you find yourself wedged into a seat next to a very drunk half-naked middle-aged man sporting what is supposed to be some sort of team emblem in body paint on his chest and screaming incoherent insults at the opposing team. You wonder how you got yourself into that when all you did was accept free tickets to a game from a friend.

In any case, we had a friend over for lunch a while back. Later in the afternoon we found ourselves in the guest room looking at our newly remodeled bathroom and chatting idly about something quite forgettable.

Very innocently, she suggests the room might be more "open" if we move the bed a bit. My wife is skeptical, but figures there's no harm it moving it just to see. Of course, to move the bed, we have to move a few other pieces of furniture, but what else do we have to do on a Sunday afternoon?
Had we only glanced up we may have seen the grill of the truck hauling a trailer full of doom bearing down on us, but we did no such thing.

The next thing I know, I am in the garage staining a Crosley-like wooden record player/radio/cd player a darker color (to match the other dark wood furniture) after building two new shelves for the closet and moving all the furniture from the guest room into my office (which only recently recovered from its part in the bathroom remodeling project) while my wife and our "friend" are out shopping for paint, material for curtains of some sort, and a new reading chair.

Maybe it was the fumes from the stain, but I couldn't remember how on earth things went from, "You know, if you moved the bed over there, it would open up the room." to "Hey, why don't we tear down the house and rebuild it before your parents arrive in three days for Thanksgiving?"

As I try to navigate my staining sponge around all the knobs and dials, and use q-tips to try to clean when I am not so successful at avoiding said knobs and dials with my staining sponge, I wonder if this whole thing could have been avoided somehow.

Episode 63: Brush Like a Superhero

In an ad on the back of a sports magazine for kids, some toothpaste company had Spiderman slinging his webs under the caption, "Brush like a superhero." I guess that means all superheroes are good at brushing their teeth. On the other hand, it could also mean all superheroes use that particular brand of toothpaste. I suppose it could also mean any number of other things related to super-heroism and dental care.

It got me thinking about superheroes and their teeth. Spiderman, for instance, has a mask that covers his mouth, so I am not at all sure he is even able to brush his teeth (bla, bla, bla, Peter Parker, bla, bla bla.). Of all the superheroes available, why choose him for a toothpaste ad? It would seem the ad was actually advocating not brushing teeth, assuming we are supposed to brush our teeth the way we would if we were superheroes who could not get at our teeth to brush them.

Perhaps the ad was actually put out by some other toothpaste company trying to discredit the one supposedly putting out the ad. I mean, who would trust a toothpaste company that apparently advocated not brushing your teeth? Clearly this was sabotage. There is no way those highly astute mushy-brained kooks would have missed such an obvious detail, right? I mean, that would be like putting Lex Luther on an ad for hair dryers. "Blow dry your hair like bald evil villains."

On the other hand, maybe this just reveals the amount of contempt those mushy-brained kooks have for their audiences. Or, perhaps this is a test to see whether we pay attention to their work. Maybe they feel overlooked, forgotten, lonely, misunderstood, and under-appreciated, and this is their way of crying out for attention. I hear you, mushy-brained kooks, and I share the pain you feel from your windowless basement offices. We do notice your work and we want to respond to it in the way you intended when you poured out all your sweat and tears to create it, we just don't understand what you are trying to say.

Maybe abstract art and advertising don't mix very well. I'd love to brush like a superhero, if that was a good thing, and the model superhero was actually capable of brushing his teeth, and I knew what exactly about his method of tooth brushing I should emulate.

To prove my commitment to affirming mushy-brained kooks everywhere, I have stopped brushing my teeth and started wearing a spiderman hood every day. Well, actually, it is more like a red hoody sweatshirt I accidentally put on backwards with the hood up this morning. It's my way of raising awareness for your plight, mushy-brained kooks. People don't seem to get it yet, and I cannot really talk with the hood blocking my mouth, but I will not stop until people do get it, somehow, because it's what you do every day for us.

You are not alone, mushy-brained kooks (at least metaphorically or metaphysically anyway). Let's all join together to support advertisers by posting random, unrelated, irrelevant phrases and images wherever we can until our message cannot be ignored. No one will understand it, but everyone will notice it, and isn't that what it is all about?

Episode 63: Sunburns and Cultural Confusion

So, on a beautiful September day in the great state of Indiana I was minding my own business watching what was supposed to be soccer (as it turns out, 7-year-olds aren't very good at making it look much like soccer, despite the jerseys, cleats, shin guards, goals, and soccer balls) when I was brutally attacked by the sun.  

I made it through two years of pool days, beach days, and other-activities-in-the-sun days in the hottest days of summer only to be sucker punched on one side of my face by the almost-fall September sun in the middle of the midwest.  While I have no statistics to back me up (something that has never stopped me before) I am quite certain no one else at those soccer fields got sunburned that day.  I take it as a vicious attack on my culture by a remorseless celestial bully.  

That's right only someone whose blood is entirely Nordic could have felt the effects so severely, at least I think Nordic means Norwegian, or at least something geographically close to Norwegian anyway.  I'm not actually sure about that that because really the only thing Norwegian about me is my blood and genes and all that.  I have never even been to Norway.  Once, when I was motivated to learn more about my cultural heritage I tried to learn some Norwegian.  It didn't go very well on account of the fact that there are no vowels and every word looks like a random collection of letters designed purposefully to be impossible to pronounce.  In point of fact, I am probably more Mexican when it comes to actual demonstrations of culture.  I speak Spanish, have been to Mexico, and love the food.  I don't speak any Norwegian, have never been there, and dislike the only foods I have encountered from Norway.  This is very confusing for me.  

My blond hair, blue eyes, and basement-dwelling skin tone don't fit very well with Mexican culture, but I don't know anything about the culture of my blood.  I guess this is what it means to live in a melting pot.  At least I can always claim my American culture, whatever that means...unless I am in South America. Even American culture is confusing.  Well, for easier discussions about my culture I am going to call myself Normeximerican from here on out.  We are a small, misunderstood culture, but we will never lose our roots...at least not after we find them anyway, provided they are not hanging out anywhere near that back-stabbing, two-bit, sucker-punching sun.

Episode 4: Super Windy Turbo Jet Turbine Hand Dryers

Who knew it was so difficult to build a functional paper towel dispenser for restrooms? I use two hands and pull, just like the very helpful instructions indicate, but I know who writes those sorts of things, so it is not a big surprise when it doesn't work.

Instead, I end up with a wet, thumb-sized scrap of paper towel clutched tightly between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, and an otherwise undisturbed paper towel mocking me from the dispenser as I shake my hands violently to dry them enough to grip the remaining towel well enough to dislodge it. By the time I get my hands as dry as possible using towels with the absorptive qualities of the thirty-year-old shingles on my roof, my food has gotten cold, so my wife has boxed it up, paid the waiter, loaded the babies into the car, pulled up to the door, washed her hair, walked the dog (presumably someone else's since we do not actually have one), read an epic novel, and fallen asleep.

That is why I heartily endorse the super windy turbo jet turbine hand dryers. Not only do they provide loads of amusement for kids waiting for their parents, but they also keep restrooms free of paper towel trash. I am trying to convince my wife to get one for the house.