When I am King: End-dorsements

When I am King...

All products will use unknown actors in their advertising.















There’s something sad about the use of famous people to pitch products. I should buy a watch just because a sports star is paid to wear one during an ad? Or I should buy some insurance just because an actor I know is paid to talk about it? Or I should wear a certain kind of bra just because an actress I like is paid to say that she wears it (which, by the way, didn't fit me at all)?







Unfortunately, the system works: we recognize these people, pay more attention to the ads and, for some reason, feel better about buying the products just because these people got paid to endorse them. It’s a sad statement on society that we look to others to make our product decisions for us, even when these other people are not friends and were simply pocketing a check for the odious chore of selling out.

But there’s something even more pathetic about a company that hires unknown actors to do the job. Take, for example, the ad banner below that I ran across recently. You know when they say the name of the actor that (a) they’re not famous enough for you to recognize by sight, but (b) they hope that you’ll at least recognize their name. But sometimes, when the company doesn’t have enough money or sense, neither one is true and we end up with ads like this one. I don’t recognize the face and I’ve never heard her name before.

This situation drew me in further than any famous face would have; I wanted to know more. It turns out that she’s some kind of finance person, famous (I suppose) in circles where people give a crap. This didn’t make me any more interested in the product, but at least I noticed it just because the situation was so ridiculous.

When I am King, all products will use complete unknowns for their advertisements. Products will be chosen based on the curiosity of people to find out more about the people pitching the product: Who are they? Why were they chosen? What does that have to do with anything? Why am I wasting my time finding out?



It’s also possible that consumers will then make choices based on the merits of the products themselves instead of unhealthy interest in someone paid to fake their interest in it. Alright, maybe not.

When I am King: Time to Go

When I am King...

There will be no time like the present.

Tick, tick, tick...

We have an atomic clock. Or, rather, as Wikipedia corrects me, a radio clock, receiving radio signals from an atomic clock system somewhere else. This is a comforting distinction, as I’d rather not have an atomic device directly in my house. Much better to have it in the neighbors’ house, where we can derive benefits such as accurate time while foisting the potential for a core meltdown on them. They’re nice people, I’m sure, but they’re not us.

Centrally located in our kitchen, the clock is in the perfect place for a timepiece that always shows the correct time. Even amidst the uncertainties of as many as two (2) time changes per year, due to the incomprehensible and hopelessly outdated “Daylight Savings Time” tradition, our clock will always tell us what time it is right … now.

Or at least that was the theory when we bought it.

In practice, our atomic clock is just a clock. It either doesn’t talk to the atomic clock server, or it doesn’t bother to listen to the conversation. I think that it must be a teenage clock, knowing with deadly certainty in its acne-covered head that it is right, and that the atomic time server is an old fool.

So when the Daylight Savings Time change occurred a few weeks ago, we gave it a couple of days to get its act together. After that waiting period, we took the thing down and changed the time manually, as usual. Honestly, I don’t know how we manage it twice a year: reaching up, taking it down, spinning the little minute-hand wheel, and then hanging it back up on the wall. It’s all a bit too much and we have to take the next several months to recoup the energy to do it again in reverse. It’s a good thing that the time change doesn’t occur more often.

My wife called me yesterday to inform me that the clock had just adjusted itself. So now it’s an hour early, since we’d already, at great personal energy expense, set it back an hour. Again, I detect adolescent behavior at work, with a petulant, “You want me to change my time, Fine! There, I did it! Happy?!?!” [followed by the slamming of a virtual bedroom door and the boosting of heavy metal stereo volume to tsunami levels somewhere in the house of time]

I liked the idea of the atomic clock - no more worry about whether the time was incorrect; it would just work. But between its relationship difficulties with the time pulse, the draining of its batteries, and the fact that it doesn’t actually keep time that well to begin with, it’s worse than a normal clock without the fancy atomic-clock feature.

With a normal clock, I’d know to keep an eye on it and would never completely trust its information without checking some backup source. But with this kind of device, you feel like it must be right, making its mistakes a continuous surprise. It’s like having an untrained dog versus one that is mostly trained. With the untrained dog, you keep him confined to areas he can’t destroy and can mostly keep things from going off the rails. But with a dog that is mostly trained, you trust him enough to have the run of the house, and eventually come home to find your leather shoes in his mouth and a steaming pile on your bed.

Even a broken clock would be more dependable - at least it would be correct twice a day. The atomic clock runs constantly slower than the real time, guaranteeing that it will only be correct when we bother to reset it, which happens twice a year.

I thought the clock on my phone would serve the same purpose - it’s talking to some time server out in the ether (probably costing me serious airtime minutes in the process - after all, time is money). So its time is always correct. Until you go out of service, like on a plane or in a sub under the Antarctic, or in a great coverage area when the mobile network is feeling despondent. Then you look at this dependable time piece and it says nothing, because you told it to get the time from some service that it’s not on speaking terms with at the moment. So now you have to set the time manually, but the only time you know is the one from your phone, which isn’t very helpful at the moment.

When I am King, there will be no more time. It’s so difficult, never quite knowing what the real time is, or whether your clocks are lying to you. Moreover, it’s stressful having appointments scheduled at exact times, trying to figure out what time it really is, being late because you had to get a coffee on the way and then had to go to the bathroom because of the coffee and then you met someone outside the restroom that you hadn’t talked to for a while and grabbed a coffee with them, and had to go to the restroom again where you met someone else and had a conversation with them. By the time you get to the meeting, it’s over and everyone is upset just because your clocks weren’t giving you the correct time. So no more: time will be a thing of the past.

That’s all for now - it's time to go.

Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

Don't cry over spilled milk. Cry over the bleeding wound caused by its container.

A rolling stone gathers no moss, so there's nothing to cushion the blow when it hits.

A stitch in time saves nine, so doing no stitches at all saves ten.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever, or until the beauty fades and they become bitter, tragic parodies of their former selves. Whichever comes first.

A Thanksgiving Poem

Today is the day when we gather together

And digest as much as we can.

We eat way too much and we drink even more

With our friends and our family clan.

We celebrate something of pilgrims and Indians

Sharing their meat and their bread,

Taking a break from gathering harvest and

Beating each other till dead.

But mostly we gorge ourselves over and over

On everything we see before us,

Like turkey, potatoes, and stuffing and gravy;

A greasy, masticating chorus.

So I wish you a Happy Thanksgiving today;

May you eat till your stomach is puffed.

Inhale all you can of the food that you see.

In short, I wish you’d get stuffed.

Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

All journeys begin with a single step, as do falls from great heights.

All things come to he who waits, except the time wasted waiting around for things.

Don't burn your bridges behind you. But if you have to choose, it's probably better than burning them in front of you.

Don't change your horse in midstream, unless it's drowned. Then it's probably a pretty good time to find a different ride.

For Goodness Sake

As is probably obvious by now, this blog is all about educating you, the innocent bystander that just happened to click on a link that took you here instead of to that site with cat videos that you were actually searching for.

In pursuit of that higher goal of learning, today's article is about the ancient Japanese art of making Sake, the rice wine traditionally consumed when you're in a Japanese restaurant feeling culturally open and guilty about the micro brew you really wanted instead.

I visited the Takara Sake plant in Berkeley yesterday, in an effort to understand more about this important element of alcoholism, and because it seemed like something to do on a Saturday afternoon. I highly recommend the visit as well as the tasting. But in case you can't make it there yourself, I thought I'd teach you a little about how Sake is made, gleaned from long minutes spent in the Museum of Wooden Things and from the video they showed (a very professional affair, interleaving scenes of serious artisans carrying bags of rice and windswept ponds).

First, it's important to realize that Sake is a true wine. You can tell this in the illustration on the right, from a diagram showing the steps of traditional sake making. In this step, we see the men stirring the rice with their feet. Despite access to the abundant wooden stirring implements that we'll see below and these things called "hands" (which the men in the picture clearly own), they chose to use their feet, realizing that this is what makes a real wine.

The next thing that struck me as I wandered through the large Room of Wooden Things was how many different types of buckets and sticks Sake making entails. There were placards and different names for all of them, but although my knowledge of Japanese is somewhat minimal (I can pronounce the word "Japanese", but after that it gets a bit sketchy), I'm fairly certain the translations of the placards would have said things like "large stick", "small bucket", "stick with handle", and "large, misshapen bucket".




Of course, the previous display was just an initial sampling of the vast array of sticks and buckets they used. To the right was another set of sticks leaning casually up against another wall, as if after a long day of stirring.






There were also smaller sticks used, as seen to the left.






There were also sticks seen mingling with buckets,  foreshadowing the more complex tools seen below.







At this point, the tools got far more interesting as they started combining functions. For example, in this piece we see the powerful discovery of putting a stick into a bucket.







And in this exhibit, we see a fundamental leap in thinking as sticks and buckets got combined into wholly new stick-bucket tools.




The advances seen in the stick-bucket prototypes above were refined into these more advanced, and quite substantially longer production versions.



Perhaps the most important advancement in sake tooling came when another stick/bucket combination resulted in this triple combination of a long stick and two buckets.

The final, and quite startling, piece on display was this altogether new tool, neither a stick, nor a bucket, nor a stick-bucket combination. You can see it next to the flat sticks to the left. It is, obviously, a hedgehog.



 That's all for today's lesson about sake making. I hope you learned as much as I did.

Tricker Treat

Things I Believe: Little Thoughts for Friday

Those who live in glass houses shouldn't.

Time waits for no man. It waits, instead, for a woman named Irene, who's very, very late.

Absinthe makes the hearth grow flounder.

Beauty is only skin deep, which explains why someone's so ugly when you cut their skin away.

Sunday Comics: Sound Logic

I've always wondered at the difference between people like me ("music snobs", according to my wife), and people who care deeply not about the music itself, but rather the quality with which the music is reproduced (heretofore referred to as "audio snobs"). 

I've done some research and have created the following Venn Diagram to help others understand the important distinctions in these demographics.

When I am King: Buy the Way

When I am King...

We will buy only what we can actually use.

What is our fascination with Costco? Do we really need that much of anything?

I was there the other day, pacing the aisles, and came across some scissors. “Great!,” I thought, because we had only one pair at home and they were broken. Clearly we needed new scissors. Perfect timing.

I ignored the fact that I was buying a pack of scissors - not a pair. And not just two of the things - this pack had three pairs. But I was fine with that, happy in fact, because this meant we’d have back up pairs. So when one breaks, you can just reach in the drawer and pull out another one. No need to rush to the drug store in the middle of the night to replace the scissors - just root around in the junk drawer and pull out the next pair. And I had proof at home that the things do break, so this was obviously a good thing.

This rationalization completely ignored the fact that we’ve had that broken pair at home for the last two years. At no point did the situation escalate into a scissors emergency. The only time it ever occurred to me to replace them was in that aisle in Costco. There is no “emergency” with scissors - just situations that might require a bit more time and care in cutting. Or the use of, say, a knife. Or teeth.

But somehow, we’re brainwashed in that massive store into thinking that we need these huge things. And lots of them. Potato chips? Love ‘em - gimme that 10 pound bag. That taquito tasted pretty good - I’ll have a bushel. And my, isn’t that a great deal on a steamer trunk full of car batteries?

One of the reasons for the overabundance of things in each package is the currency that Costco uses. It’s based on the U.S. system, but works a bit differently. In the U.S., we’re debating whether the penny should still be in circulation; it costs more to produce than it’s actually worth, and rounding off to the nearest nickle seems like a fine workaround (tragically unfair to President Lincoln, but then he probably won’t know). But in the sovereign state of Costco, they have done away with the penny entirely. And the nickel, and the dime, and all coinage for that matter. They’ve also eliminated the one and the five dollar bills. They have made the ten dollar bill the minimum denomination; everything in that store costs at least $10.

They obviously want to sell items that actually cost less than $10 in the real world, so they make it work by just throwing as many of them in as it takes to get to that minimum price and then shrink-wrapping the whole ugly bundle together. That’s why I have enough disposable razors and Q-tips to last me until the zombie apocalypse. I’ll have the cleanest brains those zombies will ever slurp.

Meanwhile, we all need larger and larger cars and houses just to transport and store these items. SUV owners might claim that they buy their cars for their wild, off-roading lifestyles, but we know better. I’ve seen Expeditions slow to a crawl just to cross a speed bump in the grocery store parking lot, truly an exciting expedition for that family.

No, we all need these monster vehicles just to fit our purchases from Costco. We also need bigger houses to keep the stuff. This explains why in California, where we don’t have basements, nobody parks their car in their garage. Instead, it’s where we keep the stacks of napkins, and boxes of diced tomato cans, and pasta packs that cannot fit in the house.

It shouldn’t be called Costco, it should be called Bomb Shelter Depot. Why else would we need so much damned toilet paper? Only when the Big One hits are we going to justify all our stockpiling efforts. Of course, that’s when we’ll realize that we were really good at storing shipping containers full of ramen noodles, but didn’t happen to set aside any drinking water.

When I am King, we’ll all buy just what we need. More like the Native Americans. When they hunted, they killed just what they needed and they consumed it all. They didn’t buy a herd of buffalo and stick them in the bench freezer. Heck, they didn’t have basements either, or even garages; where would they have put the things?

We need to return to that model: figure out what we need, and buy that. Simplify, scale it down: purchase, consume, repeat. Except for those potato chips, because they look really good. And I know I might to need a second stapler one day, so I’ll just get that two-pack now.

When I am King: Age-Old Solutions

When I am King...

There will be no more mid-life crises.

The mid-life crisis is one of the most significant moments of our lives. It is the turning point where we go from thinking that anything could happen to knowing that nothing did.

It’s the out-of-fuel part of the journey, that time on the highway where the gas tank Empty light goes on, and you see nothing but prairie and tumbleweeds for miles around. All you can do is to ease off the accelerator, turn off the air conditioning, and turn up the hope as you coast toward your fate.

It’s also a time to take up new hobbies, like heavy drinking and visiting the doctor. It is the time of life for which television shows like Jerry Springer were invented, to help you realize that no matter how bad things are for you, they could be a lot worse.

But all of this is such a waste of energy and drain on our society. There are so many other things that we could not quite achieve in our lives, if only we could continue to make the pointless effort.

When I am King, the mid-life crisis will be a thing of the past. Or, rather, it will be a thing of the future. Medical advances will greatly extend the human lifespan, using everything from robotics to formaldehyde. Mid-life will, necessarily, be extended by years as well, allowing us decades more of productivity before we recognize our inherent uselessness and insignificance.

The best part is that medical advances will extend how long we live, but not the aging process, so we will still be getting senile in our 80s and 90s. This means that if we can manage to hold off our mid-life crisis until the same time, then we’ll have the added advantage of combining these maladies. So while a mid-life crisis may be just as torturous and meaningless as it always was, our senility will ensure that nobody will notice, remember, or care.

When I am King: Filling You In

When I am King...

We won't need dentists.

I went to the dentist recently and was told I’d need fillings. That’s pretty normal - my teeth attract cavities like nerds attract bullies. It’s just the natural order of things.

The annoying part was that I needed fillings … to replace my fillings. The dentist said, “You have some older silver fillings. We have to replace those because you can get cavities under them.”

Hold on - they want to fill teeth that have already been filled? Why is that fair? I’m pretty sure the dentist manual says that they’re supposed to fill cavities. Moreover, once those cavities are filled they’re supposed to go rooting around to find more cavities to fill. They are definitely not allowed to go looking back at filled teeth to see about re-filling them. They’ve been there, done that - my filled teeth have done their part and sacrificed themselves for the greater good of my mouth. Now get the hell away from them and go find something real to charge me for.

The problem could be that there’s not much enamel left in my mouth for them to poke and prod. My set of teeth simply don’t provide a fertile soil upon which the dentist can plant future profits. So she’s looking for other ways to ply her trade. If your only tool is a little metal pointy thing, everything looks like a cavity. Even a filling.

When I am King, everyone will have artificial teeth. I’m pretty sure it’s the only way to keep the dentists and their sadistic ways away from our mouths. People think that Jaws, the James Bond villain, had those metal teeth for some nefarious purpose. Not true; he just hated dentists. And if they tried to fill his teeth anyway, he’d bite them.

Things I Believe: Little Thoughts for Friday

 Life: If it's so great, why are people dying to leave it?

Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. So answer your damn phone and put it on vibrate already.

Beware of Greeks bearing gifts. And massive debt.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Words like, "Is that oatmeal on her chin?" and "Does your camera know how to focus?" and "Was this picture really worth the cost of the frame?"

Joke Like a Pirate Day

In honor of Talk Like a Pirate Day:

What's the letter between T and V?
Arrrrrr! (pirates don't know their alphabet)

What does a cat say?
Arrrrr! (pirates don't have pets)

What does a parrot say?
Arrrrr! (He thought you said 'pirate')

Describe the inherent conflict between the Ego and the Id in modern society
Arrrrr! (pirates like one-word answers)

Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

Two heads are better than one, unless we're talking about acne.

The longest journey starts with a single step toward the car.

Too many cooks spoil the broth, unless you're making human broth.

Diamonds are forever, like styrofoam and nuclear waste.

When I am King: Statistical Significance

When I am King...

Statistics will be .3% more productive.

I read the following on a news site recently: “The productivity of U.S. workers slipped 0.3% during the second quarter, after falling 0.6% the prior quarter.” And I thought, what am I supposed to do with this information? Should I type faster? Think more cleverer? Stop visiting the bathroom so much and use the jar in my office instead?

Where do these statistics come from? (Don’t answer that, economists. I guarantee I won’t be interested in the real answer.) More importantly, what should we do with such abstract information? It’s like someone knocking on my door in the middle of the night to tell me the iron content of my drinking water - am I supposed to care?

I think the real reason that they tell us these things is so that we can worry more.

We have so many truly scary things to worry about in this world: terrorism, natural disasters, employment, our health, more reality TV shows - the list goes on and on. Each of these things is real and could affect us at any time. If we really thought hard about them, we’d die of stress long before any of them could actually do us in.

That’s where these other worries come in: they make us think about completely intangible ideas, complete with meaningless numbers and data. We’re so busy worrying about all of these things that we can’t possibly understand, much less do anything about, that we spend less time worrying about the ones that will actually kill us. In so doing, we live happier lives. It’s not that we’re less stressed or have less worries; in fact these things give us far more to worry about. But it’s a less focused and reasonable worry, and therefore a safer one.

When I am King, I’ll have my ministry issue statistics on many more things for people to think about. Why limit ourselves to economic growth and productivity data? What about body fat density averages? Number of donuts consumed per capita, per day? Number of tweets per hour, as a national average and per region? Tubes of toothpaste capped, with charts? Beers consumed per day: weekend vs. weekday?

We’ll be so busy trying to understand the data that we won’t even have time to worry and will lead .7% more productive lives.

Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

As ye rip, so shall ye sew.

Putting lipstick on a pig isn't so bad. It's kissing the pig that's the problem.

Don't put the cart before the horse, unless it has a motor with more than one horsepower.

Don't upset the apple-cart - it can be a real bastard when it's mad.

When I am King: O Canada

When I am King...

Everything we own will proudly display our flag.

Way back before the dawn of time, when I was a student traveling around Europe, I noticed the Canadian travelers. It wasn’t that I noticed those people more than others, but I noticed that they were Canadian. It’s not that they looked any different than other travelers, or dressed differently, or acted any less “I’m a student tourist” than anyone else on the circuit. And it wasn’t because of their cute accents, eh? It was for the simple fact that they all had, to a person, Canadian flags pasted very visibly and obviously on their backpacks.


I was reminded of this a few weeks ago while traveling in Washington, D.C. There, the embassies litter the city like gum on a sidewalk. You can’t walk ten paces without passing the embassy of some country (probably one you’ve never heard of - there are a lot of those).

Most embassies are subtle; they are generally nice buildings with a small plaque near the front door telling you what it is. If you’re lucky, there might be a flag, but generally nothing so obtrusive.

The Canadian embassy, meanwhile, was awash with flags, flying in the breeze like so many towels after a big day at the beach.






These grand showings of national pride confused me because I didn’t associate major nationalistic behavior with our neighbor to the north. After all, this is the country whose national anthem has a title that reads more like someone just remembering what it was they were going to sing about, “O.... Canada”. Or maybe they’re wondering how to pronounce it, or if it’s really worth all the bother, “Ohhhhh, Canada?”

The great Canadian hero Dudley Do-Right didn’t do much to sway my opinion of their nationalistic fervor.




Meanwhile, I’ve met Canadians over the years and of the words that come to mind, “nationalistic” is not one of them. “Humble”, maybe. Or “pale”. But not “nationalistic”. I mean, this is the country that still has the Queen of England's face on their money. It’s like their still living in their parents’ basement (even though they’re really in our attic).

So what gives with the flags on all of the backpacks?

Well, I spoke to one of them. I hired a local interpreter to translate between our dialects of English (translation apparently consists of added an “eh?” to the end of each of my sentences. So Canadian English is actually a variant of Pig Latin, eh?). It turns out that the backpack flag is not so much a statement about Canada as it is against the U.S. That is, the Canadians that I asked said that they mainly didn’t want to get mistaken for Americans, so they put the Canadian flags on their backpacks to make sure that didn’t happen.( As if: they look totally different from Americans, eh?)

So they weren’t proud to be Canadian, just proud to not be Americans. I suppose this is an extreme form of humility, where you define yourself not by your own characteristics, but by those of people near you.

In any case, it got me thinking: I think it’s a great thing to make a clear national statement with your clothing, your buildings, and your camping accessories. Let these accessories say a little about who you are. Or, in the case of Canadians, who you aren’t.

When I am King, we will take the approach of our friends to the north (i.e., Canada. Unless you live in Alaska, then they’re your neighbors to the East. Or if you’re Hawaiian, they’re not really your neighbors at all, just some people from a colder place. Much colder. Like a whole country made out of shave ice.). We will fly our flag proudly. But it’s not enough to fly it on our embassies; we will put it on everything we own. Babies will be tattooed with the flag, teenagers will fly flags from their piercings, clothing will be patterned only in the flag’s colors and styles.

I even have the flag already designed. Sure, it’s early days, but you can never be too careful with something as important as your nation’s flag. Here it is:

The Greatest Disappointment

I watched the original Star Wars movie this weekend with the kids, and relived the greatest disappointment of my childhood: the death of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Actually, the death scene itself was lovely. You got to see him evaporate as Darth’s light saber hit him, like the witch in the Wizard of Oz. Darth was left alone, kicking the robes and wondering what just happened. “[shhhhhck] Hey! [shhhhhck] Come back here, old man! [shhhhhck] That is not fair, I totally cut you in half. [shhhhhck]”

No, the disappointing part was the aftermath of this battle. Before he died, Obi-Wan told Darth, “If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” Then he waited until he saw Luke was watching (which is more than a little creepy), raised his weapon and let himself be popped like a piñata.

This was an awesome lead-up into something wonderful. Would he become a god and smite Darth? Would he become Luke’s protector? Would he add power to the light side of the force, like some human turbo-booster? Or was he just screwing with Darth and wasn’t going to die at all? I couldn’t wait - it was going to be fantastic.

And then.... nothing. Zilch. Except for a couple of “Use the force, Luke” and “Hey, Luke, listen to me, you young whippersnapper!” Obi-Wan became a total non-force in the story. He returned for a couple of lame cameos in episodes V and VI, but didn’t do much besides play a supporting role as a low-res hologram, mumbling on about the force and how kids these days should listen to their elders more.

This awesome warrior let himself be killed just to end up as a minor cameo character spouting soundbites; that was the greatest disappointment of my childhood.

The greatest disappointment of my adulthood was years away and would come in several installments: Star Wars episodes I, II, and III.

Thank You, United Airlines

Thank you, United Airlines, for the stunning customer service available exclusively on your awesome website. I haven’t been provided such prolific up-selling since the last time I went to McDonald’s. But fast food joints only offer me more fries and soda, whereas your site allowed me to choose from a myriad of ways to spend hundreds of dollars.

Thank you for starting out the experience with an ad in the middle of your home page for luxurious travel packages completely unrelated to the reason that I came to your site.

Thank you for putting up an ad instead of a progress bar while you searched for flights, so that I could read about how I can now pay you $349/year so that I can check my bags for free. Imagine, only $350 to get back to the good old times a decade ago when bags were always free. Wouldn’t you pay $350 to spin back the clock hands and do it over? Wouldn’t you?

Thank you for posting a price that didn’t happen to mention the extra fees of another 10% on top of the price you quote. If there’s one thing I don’t want to be bothered with when I’m shopping, it’s those pesky details about how much things actually cost. I don’t know how many times I’ve used a Sharpie on the Denny’s menu so that I can choose my breakfast Slam with flagrant disregard to the price.

Thank you for putting up an ad for your mileage program after I chose my flights, because I know it was time-consuming for your servers to take me from the page with the flight choices to the page with just the ones I chose. Why, it probably takes a supercomputer to calculate all of those extra fees that you didn’t bother me with on the previous page.

Thank you for the sidebar ad for your credit card, which I was eager to read to take a break from all of those details about how much my $408 flight actually cost. And how convenient that you gave me the opportunity to get a credit card; I was wondering how I’d pay for these tickets.

Thank you for the offer to join your Red Carpet Club during the lengthy transition from the page that asked for my name to the page that offered me seats. If there’s one thing I want to spend money on, it’s an entry fee to a room in which I can spend my time luxuriously while waiting in airports when you've canceled my flight or made me so late that I miss my next leg.

Thank you for the opportunity to upgrade from your standard sarcophagus seats to your more roomy caged-veal seats. And for only $39 a leg, that’s less than $80 each way. Why, that’s quite a deal when you think about what a square foot of rental space costs in a good neighborhood these days. Of course, that money only buys me the space for the four hours of flying time, but I'm sure it's worth it.

Thank you for the multiple other opportunities to rent more legroom; I enjoyed getting to read the same offer on every single seat selection page. As I like to tell my kids over and over, “Anything worth saying is worth saying again.” Or even four times, as in this case.

And finally, thank you for putting up a beautiful, dedicated page of offers before I could actually purchase tickets in a last attempt to sweet-talk me into the same upgrade options that you presented me with several times already. And there's nothing more enjoyable to me than having my decisions questioned by people that don’t know me. And the best part? You conveniently selected all of the “I really want to give United more money” options, so that I could easily find myself buying those wonderful upgrades for a couple hundred bucks. It was sweet of you to offer, but fantastic for you to assume.


All in all, it was wonderful to see how such a successful company (the largest airline company in the world, according to a rousing speech by the CEO that we all enjoyed listening to on the airplane televisions before every flight) can, through the wonders of the web and a brilliant advertising strategy, prostitute itself every bit as well as those kiosks that sell mobile phone cases in the local mall.

Thank you, United, for helping me to consider using any other airline next time around. Or maybe I’ll drive.

Owed to the Credit Card

The Card is My Shepherd
A Song of Credit

The Card is my shepherd; I shall not want.

It maketh me to eat in expensive restaurants; it beggeth me to purchase the still waters of Evian.

It restoreth my debt: it leadeth me in the paths of spending for the sheer hell of it.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of debt, I will fear no bankruptcy: for thou art with me; thy rounded plastic rectangle and thy magnetic strip they comfort me.

Thou preparest a shopping list before me in the presence of mine desires: thou anointest my wallet with grease; my credit limit runneth over.

Surely consumer goods and joy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the loving embrace of the Card for ever.

Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

You are what you eat. Today, I am a donut.

You are never too old to learn, but you can get old enough to not give a damn.

You can't win them all. That's why cheating was invented.

Women and children first. Then if it's safe, the men will be along eventually.

Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but only if you throw it really hard.

What goes up must come down, except your age. And the U.S. national debt.

Any port in a storm. Or sherry.

Might makes right. Then realizes its mistake and makes U-turn.

When I am King: Founding Fathers

When I am King...

I’ll be a less grumpy ruler.

I spent last week in Washington, D.C., taking a look at how the U.S. government is run. Or how it crawls, as it were. And how it all began.

For one thing, the founding fathers were grumpy.

It’s tough to know the true faces of our fathers. At least, it’s tough if you’re talking about our founding fathers, who passed away some 200 years ago. But we can learn a bit about them through their legacy and through the images they left behind. In particular, we can look at the paintings, sculptures, and monuments that were, er, erected

in their honor.

When I saw the first painting of one of these great men, I thought it was that the model was just having a bad day.



Or maybe that the painter was feeling ornery.



But the more paintings I saw, the more grumpy old men I discovered.

Then I looked at the sculptures. Now, you could say that marble or bronze is a hard medium, producing hard looks. But this guy would beg to differ:



You could also say that the sculptor had a bad day



or that the model got tired of posing



But after all of this art and all of these different men, I’ve come up with a different, more reasonable theory: the founders of democracy were just plain grumpy.

I can’t say I blame them. Look at it from their point of view. They put up with the tyranny of a remote and somewhat insane king for a long time. Then they finally got up the nerve to fight a doomed war with no army, no central government, and not even a decent pair of boots. They manage to defeat the other side only to then suffer years of bureaucratic hell debating what kind of government to form. They manage to do this in just eight years (compare that to anything accomplished in any two terms of presidency since that time), establishing a democracy that survives to this day. It took the French years and more than a few severed heads to get this far, after which they chucked it all away and begged for an emperor to take over.

After all of that work, they then started the real hell and torture of their lives, learning that democracy is just a fancy Greek word for “everybody gets a chance to whine”.

By the time they sat down to pose for the artist, they simply had no joy left.

I believe that another, more probable, reason for their demeanor was that they were simply constipated. Perhaps the diet in those days just didn’t offer the variety of fiber-rich foods that we see today on our way to the donuts. This theory is borne out by the linguistic fact that constipation comes from the words Constitution (the governing articles these men created) and pater (father). So constipation is literally the state of being a founding father.

When I am King, I’ll have all of my portraits done before my term begins. Oh, and I’ll also manage to enjoy my rule. This won’t be no stinking democracy where I have to actually listen to the people and compromise. Plus, I’ll eat more fiber.

When I am King: Racing Gear

When I am King...

We will all wear racing gear.

I love the fact that everyone on a casual bike ride wears a racing outfit, even though they’re not actually racing, unless it’s to the nearest Starbucks. “Last one there buys venti lattes!”

I think I actually see these spandex gangs more often at the cafe than in transit. But maybe that's just because they move so fast on the roads that I miss them.

Meanwhile, these racers are decked out in shirts so bright they don’t need headlights and shorts so tight they sing soprano around the turns. Their wraparound sunglasses can catch all of the bugs that will splatter at the blistering speeds of up to 10 mph that they’ll achieve on the way to the cafe, and they wear racing helmets that look like a silver slug, stretched slightly in the breeze. Their shoes clip into the pedals to ensure that if they are ever in an accident, they will avoid an painful injury by being clicked inseparably onto the bike thus dying immediately.

The best part about bike footwear is that it's basically tap shoes with clips. So when they do go down, they’ll go down dancing.

This entire kaleidoscopic ensemble is topped off by enough logos to populate a shopping mall. Real logo’d apparel is bad enough. You know the ones: the shirts, shorts, caps, and jockstraps that real athletes (that is, athletes we pay to see) wear to indicate that although they’ve never used the products, the companies that put them there pay them millions of dollars for the rights to make the athletes prostitute themselves.

The logos worn by the weekend workouters are somehow worse; they pay way more than a shirt is worth for the privilege of wearing the logo of one of these companies, so that the companies can turn around and pay it to the prostituting athlete, who then inspires fans and sycophants to go out and pay even more for such a shirt. Don’t they realize that the athlete isn’t wearing that shirt by choice, but because of her debilitating gambling habit? Or his massive alimony payments? If the athlete had a choice, they’d wear something a little more understated. Like solid gold.

Meanwhile, other sports aren’t suffering the same fate. I continue to see people out jogging with nothing more than a pair of shorts and functional shoes. Or out playing basketball in shorts and a t-shirt. Or shooting darts in the bar with nothing more than a dribbled-on polo shirt and a huge buzz. Clearly, these other sports have some work to do.

When I am King, all sports will require appropriately overachieving apparel. Runners will be required to wear shoes with wings and fake motion-blur. Basketball players will wear tank tops and shorts that hang down to the tops of their high-top shoes. Pickup games of touch football will require full tackling uniforms with mesh jerseys and a cooler of Gatorade to dump on the winning coach. And hockey players will be required to sport blood on their uniforms (but that requirement is easily fulfilled within the first couple of fightsplays).

And all uniforms must be covered in logos. All sporting participants must look like Indy 500 cars, apart from the speed, the endurance, and the sponsorship. And we’ll all wear tap shoes, because everyone loves a nice tap routine.