When I am King: Reconnections

When I am King...

Renewing old acquaintances will be much more efficient.

Through the wonders of social networking sites like FaceBook and LinkedIn, we now reconnect with old friends in a way that was never before possible. Previously, if you wanted to find someone you used to know, you would have to do real work, like making a phone call or, even worse, writing a letter. Now, a plethora of opportunities to reconnect come unbidden through the portals of our lives.

Each time we reconnect with someone, we send them a note to catch up. And every time we do this, we give roughly the same information: we ask them what they’re up to, tell them how we’re doing, enumerate the number of children and pets we have, and tactfully skirt the issue of jail time.

Consider the countless seconds, nay, minutes we waste writing the same information to all of these people. With that extra time in our lives, we could be sending or responding to friend requests of other people we no longer know, or staring mindlessly at the visual noise on these social sites about everyone else we’ve already connected with.

When I am King, reconnections will be much more efficient, saving time and social energy. People will be more productive, more connections will be made, and everyone will have the dirt on everyone else, making it a more interconnected and paranoid society overall.

We will achieve this goal through the use of simple templates which fill in most of the pertinent details, leaving you to just select some choices and personalize the note before sending it off. This approach has worked well elsewhere and it should succeed for the social networking arena as well. Here is a sample:

[Their name]!

Great to hear from you! What have you been up to the past, oh, [Number] ["decades", "years", "minutes"]? We haven't seen each other since [personal reference, for example: "you said you never wanted to see me again", "you hit me", "I filed that injunction", "Tuesday"]!

I’m in [Location] now, [working at CompanyX, crashing with Mom & Dad again, living out of a shopping cart]. It keeps me busy, that’s for sure! In the meantime, I’ve had [Number] [kids, fish, nervous breakdowns], which is a lot, believe me! How about you?

Hey, I always wondered, did you ever [personal reference, for example: "get out of jail", "get that leg sewn back on", "solve that acne problem"]? And do you still [personal reference, for example: "play the tuba", "hum Barry Manilow tunes through your nose", "hate me"]?

Hey, it was great catching up with you. Keep in touch!

[Your name]

Little Joke for Friday

I wonder:

If your stalker harasses you, is it an idol threat?

When I am King: Mutterhood

When I am King...

Dogs will train parents.

People pondering parenthood will often get a dog first as part of easing into eventually having kids. Through raising a dog they can learn how to care for another living being, get used to the responsibility of feeding someone regularly, and adjust to not forgetting about them when they go on vacation.

There is merit in this approach, but dog ownership doesn’t go far enough. We need to add some critical elements to owning a dog to make it begin to cover the territory.

When I am King, everyone would be required to own dogs, with these additional requirements:

Own several dogs: Even if you plan to have only one child, things happen and pretty soon there are several running around in the house. Or even if you do only have one, they tend to attract other kids like flies on meat. You’ll need to make sure your system can handle the chaos of more than one running around in the house constantly.

Train your dog: Most owners put their dogs through obedience school, but once/week for 2 months doesn’t begin to cover the education responsibility of a parent. You should enroll your dog in enough classes so that they are in school several hours each day. Do this for at least twelve years or their entire lives, whichever comes first.

Use diapers: With countless hours in obedience class, your dog will be house-trained and won’t need the diapers. But you will. Dealing with messy diapers is one of the joys of parenthood and should be a part of any parent training regimen. Some children wear diapers for several years, but feel free to limit your dog-diaper training period to just 2 years; pretend your dog-child is advanced.

Take pictures: Wear our your camera and video camera taking pictures and movies of your dog. And most importantly, send updated pictures to relatives constantly. Kids change in interesting ways as they grow up, and you must pretend your dog does too and that your friends and relatives care.

Tend to the sick: Several nights a year, spend a sleepless night caring for your sick dog: take his temperature (you’ll want to use the rectal thermometer to avoid his teeth), give him medicine, and comfort him. Of course, he won’t actually be sick, because dogs generally aren’t. But remember, this is your surrogate child. Pretend.

Enroll them in activities: Playing in the yard and sleeping in the house is not enough for your dog; if that’s all our children did, we would be a lazy and complacent society. No, you must enroll your dog in several activities: sports, music, art, dance, and anything else that’s available. Preferably you should have them in at least two activities at a time, so that you are in constant conflict over performance times (“How do I get him to the recital at 3 when his soccer game doesn’t end until 3:30?”). It is also key to tell people that you don’t want to overschedule your dog, that it’s so important that he be given the opportunity to simply play … and then go ahead and overschedule him because that’s what everyone else is doing. Ideally, many of the activities will involve travel on the weekends, so that your family can enjoy the experience of spending weekends driving the dog around to games that they won’t win and won’t remember.

Kick them out: When a dog is 21, or 3 in dog years, lock them out of the house with kind words like, “Get a job!” It is natural for a parent to expect their children to care for themselves at this age.

Let them back in: Of course, it is also natural to be completely wrong, so you should let your dog back in after a few minutes and resign yourself to taking care of the mutt forever.

When I am King: Earth Daze

When I am King...

People will have many more days of planetary celebration.

I hope you enjoyed Earth Day this past week. I know I did - I spent all day living on the planet, not leaving it for even one second.

But Earth Day has always seemed somehow, I don't know, dirty to me. I mean, why celebrate soil? When you have kids in the house, you live your life in a pile of dirt, so taking a day to celebrate it seems a bit much to me. It's like having Lint Day, or Dust Day, or What-the-Hell-Is-That-on-the-Ceiling-and-How-Did-It-Get-There Day.

When I am King, I will institute several other days of celebration for our planet's people:

Girth Day: While Earth Day is about less waste, Girth Day is about more waist.
The holiday is typically celebrated by binge eating.

Dearth Day: Earth Day is about using less, Dearth Day is about having less.
The day is celebrated by scavenger hunts for everything you don't have enough of, like cash, paired socks, and time.

Birth Day: This is not the traditional celebration of when each of us was born. Instead, this is a celebration of birth itself.
Each of us will undergo extreme exertion, a nearly lethal amount of pain, and then finish by covering ourselves in viscous fluids. The final part of the ceremony is marked by our receiving an epidural drug strong enough to knock us out for a week.

Mirth Day: This should be a funny one.

Perth Day: Everyone in the entire world will crowd into Perth, Australia for this single day.

Worth Day: Each person will calculate their net worth to the penny on Worth Day. This was not possible in prior years, but thankfully the implosion of world financial systems has made everyone's net worth just about zero, so it should be an easy and fun exercise.
The occasion is usually celebrated with heavy, somber drinking.

Hellephone: An Ode

For those who wish to follow along at home:

Is music-on-hold a measured response?
Does it harmonize more than it’s helping?
Do answering systems with options galore
Leave us screaming and drooling and yelping?

I usually feel like I’ll never escape,
Spending life in an infinite loop.
Surely Hell does not have tortures worse than this pile
Of infuriating, telephony poop.

“Press one for a menu with more number options,
Press two if you’re feeling bold.
Press three if you want to repeat these choices,
Press four for music-on-hold.

Press five if you want to record a message
Press six if, instead, you do not.
Press seven if you want the menu in Swedish,
Press eight if in Cypriot.

Press nine in emergency; this will connect you
To menus read out much more quickly.
Press zero to hang up; you can call back later,
When you’re feeling a little less prickly.

If none of these options appear to be yours
Perhaps you just dialed for fun.
We’ll hang up now, and thank you for calling
The hotline at 9-1-1.”

Little Jokes for Easter

I wonder: Have the baby chicks in Easter eggs dyed and gone to heaven?


Q: What do you call bread that rises on the Sunday after Good Friday?
A: Yeaster

Sunday Comics: Easter Basket Case

The Easter Bunny no longer visits the homes in Feegle County.

Little Joke for Passover

A friend asked why I hadn’t posted any Passover jokes. Thousands of years the Jewish people have suffered and we should make jokes?

So here’s one:

Q: Who travels the world this weekend, hiding pieces of matza for the children to find?
A: The Easter rabbi

Little Joke for Tuesday

Is music-on-hold a measured response?

Little Joke for Friday

I recently looked at my bank statement. After I recovered, I tried to figure out what the slogan about my "Financial Well Being" meant. I think I've narrowed it down to either:

My finances are deeply underground and under water

or

My investments have been like throwing coins into a deep hole in the ground and making a wish.