Not a Very Sarcastic Post in its Intent

With Advance Apologies to Grammie . . .

While this may be the first time you've seen this idea in print, I know that I am not the first person to have harbored this thought. It may have application in other facets of Life Itsownself. The thought first formed itself in my mind during some prior pre-election furor:

IF YOU REALLY, REALLY WANT TO BE ELECTED TO A POLITICAL OFFICE, THE FACT THAT YOU WANT THAT OFFICE IMMEDIATELY DISQUALIFIES YOU FROM HOLDING THAT OFFICE.

Simple, huh? Political parties would have to find qualified individual who DIDN'T want to run for the office. It could be done. Appeals could be made to patriotism, to the person's vanity, to his pride. The qualified person would have to be convinced to give up his chosen way of life for X-number of years, to serve one term and then he could return to the private sector, having done his duty.

There are good people out there, with no skeletons in their closets, very capable of running a city, a state, and yes, even this country. You probably know some such people. Heck, you may even BE such a person.

But The Vested Interests would never allow it. Political offices have become too good a living for the eager beavers who "serve" us now and they'd be loathe to the N'th degree to give up the lifestyle of the Rich & Famous that politics has become.

But don't hesitate to take this to heart, and don't hesitate, the next time you find your hand being pumped by some eager office-seeker to ask him, "Hey, do you really want this office?" And when he or she answers, "Yes," you look him or her straight in the eye and tell him or her that his/her answer automatically disqualifies him or her from holding that office. If enough of us start saying that, we'll end up being rounded up and put into concentration camps.

Some day the devisiveness of political contests will make enough of us ashamed and a group of bloggers will lead us out of the wilderness and into a promised land of (____Fill in your own blank____).

Mi Casa is not Su Casa

Or, When in Rome, Drive Faster.

I took this about a month ago. I understand enough Spanish to figure out that this was a rolling ad by an insurance agency to make a bit more money. I asked my agent about it and he told me that the company I'm with would not issue an insurance policy to someone without a license. I was curious and called the number and found out which insurance company would. It's a national company and maybe I should have pursued the matter and called some Vice President of Politically Correct Outside the Box Earnings to hear the spin that allowed them to write these policies, but I didn't.

In my state the people who don't have licenses, and who would still want insurance policies, fall into basically two categories: illegal aliens and undocumented immigrants, depending on your point of view. As such they join an even bigger crowd, People for the Ethical Treatment of Themselves. (And they get to describe just what that treatment is.) People for the Ethical Treatment of Themselves is very much in favor of getting things that the rest of us have to work for. Of course, I could always just drop out and become a member or People for the Ethical Treatment of Themselves.

But I'm not going to. And hey, I'm not bitter. I'm too busy doing two things: Enjoying my life and dreaming of commiting violence on other people.

What's your excuse for not joining People for the Ethical Treatment of Themselves?

Katie Couric... Failure or Woman Failure?

And there is a Difference...

Here's a headline, still bloody from having been ripped and torn, without anaesthetic from the Drudge Report:

" S.O.S. COURIC: CBS 'EVENING NEWS' PLUNGES TO 7TH PLACE IN TIMESLOT IN LOS ANGELES ON WEDNESDAY NIGHT; BEHIND 'FRIENDS' RERUN, 'KING OF QUEENS', 'MILLIONAIRE'... 1.1 RATING/2 SHARE LOWEST SINCE TAKING CHAIR..."

Because Ms. Couric and I do not share political and lifestyle choices I have never been a fan. I did not like watching or hearing her back in the days when she was a Today Show fixture. The causes she backed and her obvious political bent were not what I was a fan of. And yet she prospered. Or so it seemed.

And now, if the reports are true, CBS Evening News is not prospering. The Today Show, despite my distaste for Katie, prospered. I hadn't watched a network evening news in decades, so my vote was crucial; in essence, I wasn't even voting.

So why is Katie losing viewers? Does the fact that she is a woman make a difference? Is it Katie, the person, or Katie the woman? And why isn't Oprah helping her?

Halloween & Candy

Or, What's it Like to be Named Candace?

The photo at the left continually cracks me up. I like dogs and I have a sister-in-law who has one of these scruffy little whatever they are dogs. That look ...!

Once a year, for about a 20 day period, I eat candy. Which is why I wonder why people would name a daughter Candace or Candy? Why?

Then twice within five weeks I'll eat jellied cranberry sauce. YUM! That's it for the year, just twice... Ritual and tradition.

Anyway, step back a bit and see if you can figure out how it came to be that we celebrate a specific day of the year by violating well established nutritional & dental health laws.

Cultures & Showing Off

as captured in Drive by Photography

I took these yesterday. One in an area heavily Hispanic and the other in an area
that is heavily Asian. I tried to eat at a restaurant in the Hispanic area, but could not get served, and then was fawned over
at a restaurant in the Asian area. (That was very weird. It was a Korean restaurant where I ate Japanese food, while listening to Mexican music coming from the kitchen...)

I noticed these two celebrations. The Hispanics in the top photo are at a public park to take wedding day photos. The men are wearing Pachuco suits and hats (see Google images if you're curiosity is piqued). This is expense exuberance. There will be precious few occasions for them to wear these suits again. And they are in a public park to take these photos because the hall they could afford to rent isn't pretty. These are (a very educated guess) humble working people who are going all out (or as far out as they can go) to make this a very special day.

The second photo shows Koreans doing the same. Those are Ferraris lined up at the right, in orange and yellow. There's more money tied up in one of those cars than all the Hispanics in the top photo will see in the next ten years. Such exuberance.

Any guess as to who's happier? Content? Appreciative?

Nah, I don't know either.

If this little jaunt into communication theory helps just ONE person...

I hope that person gives me a lot of money.

Sophomore year in collich(sic) I took Communications 201. I am very sure that most people who took it treated it like non-psysh majors treated Psychology 101. Some of the classes were interesting, but there was no need to really know it, because it's just theories n' stuff...

Communication is getting ideas, thoughts, dreams, knowledge, fears, hopes, emotions, warning, threats, etc. from one human to another. Because it's mostly very easy and so based on context, we don't really feel the need to learn what communication really consists of. I open my mouth, words come out and five minutes later I get my Ciabatta Breakfast sandwich. Ergo, communicating is simple! Yes, but only when it's about things that don't matter.

About the context thing... If I point a gun at you and snarl, "Give me all your money," you pretty much have gotten exactly the point I wanted you to get. If I point a bag of ripe tomatoes at you and snarl, "Give me all your money," you're in communication limbo. You don't know what I'm trying to tell you. Context and setting... If you're in Macy's and a voice from 200 yards away yells "4!" you are not going to react the same way you would if you were in the middle of a golf course and heard "4!" See? Context and setting.

When the boundaries of your contextual engagement are blurry, or too faint to see, this is when you have to learn 'communication, the science thereof.' And if you have the time and the patience, it's not hard. Motivation helps, too.

Today's lesson is about a basic units of communication: Words. Admit it, you use them!

It is probable that 'words' are not what you think they are. Most people think of words as containers, and conceive of communication as the exchange of containers between parties. We often consider the other party to be at fault when he or she doesn't 'understand' what we're trying to say. We think to ourselves, "Geez, I handed over the containers, why doesn't he get it!!" But there was no 'exchange.'

Take this example:

Mom: "Lori, I think you and Jeff should cool it."

Lori: "mmmmm" (But inside, she's saying, "I hate you! I love Jeff! I'm not leaving him!" and then she tells Jeff what Mom said and they elope, she gets pregnant and dies during a back-room abortion that Jess convinced her to get.)

All because there was no communication. Mom handed a container labeled "cool it" to Lori. But Lori didn't take that container and look into, as Mom was assuming. Nope, what Lori did was look at the label and then go to her storage shelves and pull down her "cool it" container. Its content was significantly different from the container Mom had offered. In Mom's container "cool it" meant turn the fire down a little, take it easy. You can see what's coming. In Lori's container, "cool it" meant stop entirely.

So when you're in a situation where complete communication is a important, think about the fact that your definition of a word may not be the same as the other party's definition of that word. The solution is paraphrasing. Ask the person to repeat back to you, using different words, just what it is he or she thinks you just said. This can save a relationship, a project, a job, a life.... oh, the possibilities are endless!

300,000,000 People living in America

Or, How Many Roads Must a Man Walk Down...

According to some group that has a Mission (or maybe just an Axe to grind), on 10-17-06, at 7:43 a.m., EDT, the 300,000,000th living American will enter this world. The group offering this "fact" also tells us that this 300,000,000th living American will be born in Los Angeles, of Hispanic parents. Making it a 50-50 shot that he or she will be born of illegal alien parents.

Which makes not a whit of difference: We'll be 300,000,000 strong.

China & India probably have 7 times this amount. The EU has about double. I'm not taking the time to find out about Africa, South America and those parts of the east that aren't China and India.

In other words, we're vastly outnumbered. But you sure wouldn't know it, would you?

Are we to be admired or pitied? How will this all play out on our plasma TVs?

Remedial Technology Update

Or, If I know this, you should, too

Google is reinventing computing. Coming from the world of AOL, Gmail was like a gift from the gods. Almost 3 gigs of storage... If you open a couple of accounts, and have the patience, you can back up all your data files, all your photo files and all your music files. That's assumng you're not my sons, with their total of 95 gigs of downloaded songs. They do love BT. I don't even know what BT stands for, but they do love it. Gmail is free... Free!

My first computer was an Osborne 1. Then I got an Osborne Executive. Then a KayPro. There was software that allowed me to interchange a floppy disk I created on one of the Osbornes with the KayPro, and vice-versa. Then came the PC. I never did buy an actual IBM PC, just the clones. Then came the costliest computer purchase I ever made, $2,800 for a PC AT. It was 10 megahertz of blazing speed. We were cutting edge! I was drunk on the power!

But I expect that I'm getting the same look from you right now that I get from our two youngest boys. They could care less. BFD... Or as Yoda would say, Impressed they are not.

Anyway, back to Google. Sitting just under the top tool bar, at the left, on the Gmail main page it says Docs & Spreadsheets. It's a hyperlink. Click on that and after you confirm your name, you see this:

Welcome to Google Docs & Spreadsheets!

With Google Docs & Spreadsheets, you can:

• Use our online editor to format documents, spell-check and more.
• Upload Word documents, OpenOffice, RTF, HTML or text.
• Download documents to your desktop as Word, PDF and more.
• View your documents' revision history and roll back to any version.

Plus, since its online, you can:

• Invite others to share your documents by e-mail address.
• Edit documents online with whomever you choose.
• Publish documents online to the world, or to just who you choose.
• Post your documents to your blog.

This blog is also now part of my Gmail account package. I no longer log in via blogger.com, but through Gmail.

Anyway, if you have EVER wanted to write and keep your writing handy (and current) Google has now offered you something not to be missed. What you write is stored online, not on your computer. You can access your documents from any internet-connected computer. I suppose that in theory you could access it via a web-browser enabled phone, but don't quote me on that.

The shared editing thing is astounding. My wife and I share a spreadsheet where we keep a monthly track of income and spending. We can even access it at the same time, me from the office, or on the road at a Kinko's, and her at home. And we can be on our cell phones (family plan, of course) and discuss the budget. (Okay, discuss might not be the right word. More, me weeping uncontrollably as she enters expenditures...)

When you're inputting data to any file, it makes saves like every ten seconds. You can't lose data! Your Sony laptop could burst into flames, and then explode, as you sit there at the airport and you wn't have lost any data! Your crotchital hair maybe, but not your data.

So that's my technological update. If you don't have Gmail, you're really missing something pretty slick, because it's a gateway (but not a Gateway) into a world that I've watched develop and am very happy to be part of. If only I'd bought the stock. But of coure had I bought Google, it would have immediately gone into the tank. So in a sense, Google owes me, big time. Or they used to. Now they've paid me back.

Moving Along Quickly Now...

Or, What a Pisser was Pavlov's Dog.

Dr. Ivan "Winkie" Pavlov was trained as a chemist. His famous experiment was more about the chemistry of digestion than it was about conditioned reflexes.

And here's something that most stories about Winkie and his dogs leave out: If after 'conditioning' the dogs, you stopped presenting food when you rang the bell, the dogs would quickly stop salivating at the sound of the bell. In other words, the conditioned reflex was temporary.

You're befuddled. Not about the fact that of course the dogs, after a series of bells without food, would stop salivating... Nope, what you're befuddled about is the point of me telling your this.

Because you're just as conditioned as those dogs! Yep, when it comes to reading blogs, you are. Probably with any reading. You have been conditioned. And you did it yourself, with a little help from the culture that nutured you. Your conditioned reflex is that when you choose something to read, it is ALWAYS with the expectation that there is a 'point' to what you are reading. You generally make an assumption when you chose something to read that it will "do" something for you, it will 'appeal' to some need you have.

Have you decided what my point is?

Me, either.

This Really Happened!

Or, why don't I have the slightest bit of shame?

This just happened. At the exact instant I discovered what had happened, it wasn't funny. But since nothing really unfortunate happened, it very quickly became pretty darn hilarious, when viewed through the filters of my joy-tilted brain-brew.

I pissed myself. Quite by accident, but still, piss is piss. As piss, it's just a yellow stream, somewhat benign. But when you label it "urine," it quickly passes from a fairly innocuous liquid to a smelly, very ill-favored liquid. So while I pissed myself, the problem came when it turned into urine on my clothing. Yes, clothing.

Obviously you've recognized that the potty seen above is somehow involved in this pisser of a story. Here's how...

I was carrying equipment when I got to this very high-class mens room in a high rise building in a downtown location. So I didn't want to squeeze into the 'normal' restroom stall. Instead I took the 'handicap' stall. I didn't cut the line; there were no handicapped men waiting to use it so I felt not the slightest bit of guilt.

And then as I was sitting to business, I got a phone call. A friend was calling about golf. So my initial efforts as I sat there were placed on autonomic control while the higher centers of my cerebral cortex dealt with weekend golf plans. I sincerely believe that under 'normal' conditions nothing would have happened.

But see that two or three inch gap between the toilet seat and the porcelain bowl? This became the crux of my problem.

With my shorts (Yes, shorts. Eat your hearts out, suit wearers.) were down around my ankles, the pressures-that-be saw to it that the stream of urine that my body relieved itself of, undirected as it was by my otherwise occupied voluntary nervous system, passed through that gap and gravity took it from there.

I wasn't aware of any of this until I was ready to reassemble the façade of fabric that hides the real me from public view.

My shorts were sopping wet. My tennis shoes were liberally coated. A sense that an enormous wrong had been done overwhelmed me. But in very short order I was laughing at myself.

I was early for my appointment, I had a suitable change of clothing in my vehicle (I am now wearing golf slacks and sock-less soft-spike golf shoes on which, thankfully, the soft spikes have been worn down so no one here in this Kinkos can really tell they're golf shoes). I was only a few minutes late for my appointment. After the appointment, thinking about what a silly story this is, I returned to the scene of the grime and took this photo.

So... if my story can save one person from suffering this fate, then my paving this unfortunate road in the wilderness will not have been vain.

And now I'm thinking I might be in line for a Nobel Piss Prize. (Yeah, I'm groaning, too...)

Google Earth

Be glad you're not here for me to take you on a tour of my life.

I downloaded Google Earth a while back. I use it at work. I have this snazzy 'snapshot' program so I can turn Google Earth satellite photos into pretty nice .jpgs.

I've been 'collecting' snapshoots of places I've lived. I'm making a sort of 'wall of shame' out of these prints... All the places I've lived where I let the grass go wild, the shrubbery go wild, the neighbors go wild, my kids go wild... I suppose you could say that in my case 'life' is what happens when you're busy watching television.

Today I noticed that there are new photos being used. When I first got Google Earth, my work place hadn't been refurbished. Now the new satellite photo shows my car and the office manager's car parked in their spots. I view this as a form of immortality.

What have you found interesting on Google Earth?

UnImpreachability

Or, What I said to the Religious Messengers

Two ernest members of a religious group, whose name I'll keep off the record, but whose initials are JW, came to the door today.

I interrupted their opening spiel with a question, "What do you clowns know about Laztheism?" Both my countenance and my tone dripped 3/4's scorn, 2/5's loathing and 3/16's opprobium.

The female member (I'm glad it wasn't the male member, because that makes for awkward phrasing...) bit. "What's Lazyeism?"

"It's not Lazyeism, Sister. It's Laztheism. As in Lazy Theism. And it's a short hand, indicating that Laztheists don't expend any energy considering Theism; we don't think about god or gods, either to worship or deny the existence thereof. Religion isn't a solution, it's just a problem." I had more to say but the male member (there, I said it...) counter-interrupted me.

"Slow down, Sailor!" he said. "Who are you to question the need for religion? If we didn't need it, it wouldn't exist...!"

"Oh yeah?" I counter-counter-interrupted. "Lots of things exist that have no proven need, value or benefit and not only do they exist, but they blossom!"

"Ha!" he said. "Name one! Go ahead, I dare you!"

Smiling a slight curvy lipped semi-sneer I accepted his challenge. I hesitated, to heighten the tension, and then whispered, "Blogging..."

Their jaws dropped. They mader furtive glances at each other and then the male member (how am I getting away with this rampant pornography?) lead the retreat.

Laztheism 1, Organized Religion 0, but it's still early in the game.

Brain Brews

Or, You are how you Think.

It may just be a convenience to suppose that how your brain operates is a function of the DNA instructions that built it. Which is another way of saying that people at both extremes of any behavior continuum didn't really chose to be there. Like us gay people, who simply can't help being gay. (As in happy...) People tell me that I have a delightful personality, to which I modestly respond that it's just my brain brew.

This is all well and good for those of us comfortably in the middle of the continuum. Think of it as a bell curve; the majority of us are in the middle. Thus we are "normal."

Problems arise at both ends of the continuum. Saints and sinners make many of us "normal" people uncomfortable. I think most of our politicians come from the extremes. Okay, from one extreme...

I've met kids whom you could tell were headed for the sinner extreme and while carefully avoiding getting involved, I've wondered if something could be done for them, like messing with their brain brew. But who would be in charge of such decisions? It couldn't be a "normal" person, could it?

Eating your heart out through your digestive system...

I wish the photograph could carry the scent and the flavor...

My wife is a great cook. At least in the sense of making the kitchen a magical place. Can you say, "Yum"?

The dish above is a dessert called Fruit Pizza. (It deserves the capitals.) The crust is sugar cookie dough and then where the tomato sauce would go there's this heavenly cream that must have illegal drugs in it. I like to shave off some of the creamy frosting, put it in a plastic bag and then huff it. When I do this I don't have to take my insulin shots.

Then she adds the fresh fruit. There was fresh fruit left over and when everyone else had had their fill, I snatched the cookie sheet, set the dog to guarding the bedroom door and sat there and scarfed up the leftovers. (As if there would ever BE any leftovers!)

After I took the photo, I began eating the pieces. I sliced up the banana and spooned on extra pieces of fruit on each bite that I took. What would Karl Marx have thought of Fruit Pizza?

CAR BLOGGING! BLOGGETTES!

An Idea whose Time has Come !!

Certainly the American Culture, and those foreign cultures who mimic us, have become very comfortable with individual "sharing" of personal information and emotion.

By "sharing," I mean that we don't mind expressing ourselves for the benefit of those who observe us. We do so vocally, along with the clothes we wear, and with our cars and the way we modify or decorate our cars. And with our blogs...

You're not going to believe this, but back before you were born, the only bumper stickers that exited were extolling National Parks. Now bumper stickers have become an important mode of communication, or at least of expression.

So the next step will be (ought to be) an area on the rear of the car that will display a message that can be changed, as desired, from a keyboard by the driver's seat. Safety concerns dictate that the keyboard system be disabled while the car is in gear. But anytime you get the transmission in park, you can change your message.

So if you're really cool, and want your coolness appreciated, every day before you leave for work you'd have to come up with a 'bloggette' for your car's display. The mind boggles at the thought of the American motoring public communicating with other motorists via snippets of conversation on the rear of their cars . . .