Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

Blood is thicker than water. But give it a good scrub and the cops will never know.

Charity begins at home. Or so my kids told me when they begged 5 bucks off me.

Cleanliness is next to godliness. But it's even closer to annoyingliness.

The early bird catches the worm. So sleep in, unless you like worms for breakfast.

The Day of Rest: Remix

A picture is worth a thousand words, so my cartoon last week on this subject only covered about half of what I had to say. Here's the complete story:

This story won
1st prize on
humorpress.com:

The Day of Rest

God came in to the office one day. He hadn’t been there in a very long time. Being omnipresent meant being everywhere at once, except at the office. He found it too stifling.

The place was deserted. He walked around the building for an hour, the only sound his sandals scraping the linoleum. Finally, as he rounded the corner toward reception, the front door open and Peter entered, in shorts and a t-shirt with the slogan “Soul Survivor.”

Peter stopped abruptly. He hadn’t seen the Boss in millennia. One of the attractions of his job was very little management oversight.

“G-good morning, Your Almightyness,” he said. “What, er, what brings you here on a Sunday?”

“WHERE IS EVERYONE!, ” God thundered.

It wasn’t that He was mad. It’s just the way He talked. It was awkward watching movies with Him because He always knew what was going to happen and insisted on telling you. And then nobody else in the theater could hear the show; He was just so loud.

“Well, sir, they’re all off today.”

“OFF?”

“Yes, sir. Day off. At home. Practicing the harp. Meditating. That kind of thing. I just came in to grab something from my office on my way out. Sheila from accounting is having another lawn-bowling party this afternoon.”

“WHY?”

“I don’t follow you, sir. Why the bowling? Well, it’s really the only thing to do up here, other than the harp. I’ve been meaning to speak to you about that actually, sir. We’re having a bit of a morale-”

“NO, YOU NINNY. WHY ARE THEY TAKING THE DAY OFF WORK?”

“Well, because it’s Sunday, sir. We’re always off on Sunday. And Saturday, ever since that strike about the un-divine working conditions back in the 40’s.”

“WHAT DOES SUNDAY HAVE TO DO WITH IT?,” God bellowed.

“It’s the day of rest, sir. It’s in honor of you:
‘On the seventh day, God finished his work. And so he rested on the seventh day.’
I don’t think the repetition is quite necessary, although it’s still better than that section with all of the ‘begats’. Anyway, we take Sundays off because you did. It’s a day of rest.

“REST? REST?!!!! SUNDAY WASN’T A DAY OF REST FOR ME. YOU TAKE SIX DAYS TO CREATE EVERYTHING OUT OF NOTHING AND SEE HOW FAR YOU GET. DO YOU THINK YOU’D BE DONE WITH ALL OF IT IN JUST SIX DAYS?”

“But sir,” Peter asked, backing up slightly to put a little more space between himself and the Creator. “You’d done it all by then. The book says you’d created light. Which, by the way, is a pretty excellent feat, if I may say so. How did you even know what it was you wanted? A real visionary, sir. That’s what you are.”

“GET ON WITH IT!”

“Right. So on the second day, there was the firmament. To tell you the truth, I’m still not sure what that word means. It’s like ‘irony’; I think nobody understands the word, though everyone seems to use it. Which I find ironic.”

“PETER!”

“Then there was the waters, and the lands, and the stars and moon. Then you went ahead and made all of the animals and then Adam and Eve.”

“STILL REGRETTING THAT DECISION. NO END OF BOTHER, MAN IS. AND DON’T GET ME STARTED ABOUT WOMEN. I’LL NEVER FIGURE THEM OUT.”

“You said it, sir. Anyway, that’s it. Then you rested.”

“THAT’S IT? I CREATE THE PLACE AND THE PEOPLE AND THEN I’M DONE?”

“Well, … yes. At least that’s what it seems like. And that’s what the book says. I mean, it’s not like you then needed to create aliens. So that pretty much wrapped it up, right?”

“NOT HARDLY! HOW FAR DO YOU THINK CIVILIZATION WOULD HAVE GOTTEN IF I’D STOPPED THERE? WHAT ABOUT ARCHITECTURE? ELECTRICITY? MACHINERY? LITERATURE? OR A REALLY GOOD BEARNAISE SAUCE?”

“I guess, sir, that I thought all of those things were all natural byproducts of mankind. Once you’d created them, they’d eventually come up with good ideas on their own.”

God looked at Peter. Peter withered, thinking of pillars of salt.

“IDEAS, YES. GOOD ONES? MANKIND INVENTED THE ELECTRIC PEPPER GRINDER. AND THE SPORT OF DRIVING IN CIRCLES FOR 500 MILES. YOU THINK THEY CAME UP WITH THE REALLY GOOD IDEAS?”

“No, I guess not. But what about the day of rest? The scripture is very clear on this.”

“IN ADDITION TO EVERYTHING ELSE I CREATED THAT WEEK, I APPARENTLY CREATED TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS. IT’S JUST PLAIN WRONG. ON THE SEVENTH DAY, I DID NOT ‘REST’. ON THE SEVENTH DAY ‘I DID THE REST’. I WAS VERY CLEAR ABOUT IT AT THE TIME.”

“Got it, sir.”

“GOOD. NOW GO TELL EVERYONE TO PUT AWAY THE HARPS AND GET BACK IN THE OFFICE. TELL THEM IT’S GOOD FOR THE SOUL.”

“Well, sir, it’s just that everyone sort of enjoys that extra day off. Gives you a chance to re-charge those wings, if you know what I mean.”

God looked at him.

“PETER.”

“Yes, sir?”

“DO YOU LIKE IT HERE PETER?”

“Uh, sure, sir. Although, now that you mention it, there are a few-”

“DO YOU LIKE IT UP HERE, PETER? BECAUSE I COULD CHANGE THAT FOR YOU.”

“Ah, yes. I see that sir. Yes, sir. I love it. It’s heavenly.”

“I THOUGHT SO. NOW GET BACK TO WORK.”

“Yes, sir. And might I say how very wonderful it’s been seeing you in the office again, sir. It has been such a-”

God looked at Peter. Peter withered again.

“Goodbye sir. I’ll just go round everyone up.”

“YES.”

Peter jogged back out the front door, which slammed shut behind him, leaving God alone in the foyer. In the distance, a water cooler kicked on.

God said, “I HATE MANAGEMENT. WHY DID I EVER CREATE MANAGEMENT?,” and went in search of the coffee machine.

When I am King: Brochure Thing

When I am King...

Medical pamphlets will be more fun to read.

“It’s terminal.” These are the most horrible two words that your doctor might say to you, handily beating the runner-up, “rectal bleeding.”

My doctor didn’t actually say either of these winning phrases, but he did hand me a brochure last week that talked about how my shoulder problem was typically an issue with older, postmenopausal women. The brochure showed pictures of several such sufferers in beds. Obviously, either their shoulder pain or their advanced age made it impossible for them to get out of bed and change out of their nightgown. But I suppose that they’d retired thirty years ago and had nothing to do all morning but think about how their children never called and what kind of soup they’d like for lunch.

It’s not that I mind having injuries. I figure it’s part of being alive, especially in the high-risk, body-thrashing programming career that I’ve pursued for my entire adult life. And I don’t mind getting older because it’s better than the alternative.

But I do mind being mistaken for being even older and of the opposite sex. For one thing, I’d look awful in those nightgowns the old women were sporting.

The problem is the brochures. Handing you a pamphlet on your disease is the doctor’s way of telling you, “So many people have this problem that we mass-published thousands of these to hand out. So quit your whining, you baby.” It’s also a way for them to get out of actually speaking to you.

And these little booklets do help. Just looking at the pictures convinces me that I’m not doing that badly because I feel a whole lot better than the people in the pictures look. But they don’t make me feel very good about whatever I’ve contracted; the pictures of body parts and the clinical descriptions of maladies go a long way toward making me feel like I’m actually sick, instead of just suffering a temporary setback.

When I am King, medical brochures will be more upbeat. They will teach about the problems and possible cures, but with a whimsical and positive tone that helps patients feel better, even as their bodies are falling apart, piece by piece. Introductory phrases like, “Everybody has spleen disorder!”, “Osteoporosis: today’s hot disease for hipsters of all ages!”, “If you can read this, you must be okay!”, and “Everybody dies!” will help the inspire the readers to read on. Pictures of happy, young people playing Frisbee from their walker, acting as King Lear while wheeling an IV stand, or putting attractive makeup on gangrenous patches will help the patients feel young, healthy, and optimistic, even as the nurse is reaching over to unplug their life support.

Life is a journey to a distant destination. We should do what we can to enjoy the journey itself, because from the way the old women looked in that brochure, the destination sucks.

Sunday Comics: The Day of Rest

Things I Believe: Thoughts for Friday

Discretion is the better part of valor. But it's the most critical part of cowardice.

Don't punch a gift horse in the mouth.

It takes one to know one. But it doesn't take anything to know nothing at all.

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry and the world laughs at you.

Double Time

People have mentioned that I bear some resemblance to CNN's Anderson Cooper. I personally don't see it. Other than the fact that we both hang out in sport coats, live life on the edge, and are world-famous television personalities, I can't see the similarities. I had CNN send me a headshot of Mr. Cooper so that I could compare it to one that I had lying around (note: Mr. Cooper is on the left):


Besides the fact that he highlights his hair with gray to get that distinguished look I've been perfecting over the last several years (although he seems to have overdone it a bit), he clearly doesn't have the same intrepid reporter feel that I inherently exude. But he tries.

Nevertheless, it seemed worth pursuing the following possibility, since the public might see the pair of us differently:

I am hereby applying for the role of Anderson Cooper's Stunt Double. Celebrities have used stunt doubles ever since the demise of Isadora Duncan (which also resulted in a general trend away from long scarves and convertibles, whose popularity had previously run neck-and-neck). It is now quite common for famous people to use doubles for everything from movie stunts to charity appearances to tedious relationship conversations. The use of doubles has freed up these important people for more critical things in their lives, like sleeping in.

With Mr. Cooper's propensity to put himself in dangerous situations, from the protests of the Middle East to the stampeding cows of Wisconsin, it is clear that he would prefer not to give up the riskier side of his job. But he would surely like to be able to be in more places at one time, enabling him to be both in the newsroom and in the field. So I am applying to be his inverse stunt double. He can continue to do the stunt work required of his job, and I'll take on the awesome responsibility of all of the other stuff that he could do. Sitting in the newsroom, being interviewed for the Jon Stewart show, eating expensive meals at fancy restaurants: these are all of the things that he would surely like do more of, if only he wasn't so busy risking his life to report the news. With my help, he can do it all.

Why stop at Anderson Cooper 360, when he could have Anderson Cooper 720 instead? There's a revolution one could believe in.

I'm currently waiting to hear back from Mr. Cooper's people. This process would probably happen a lot faster if his people included an inverse stunt double to handle this kind of administrative detail for him. Meanwhile, I'm practicing the moves requisite for the position: smiling, shaking hands, eating expensive food, and adding more gray to my hair.

Things I Believe

A person is known by the company he keeps. Especially the CEO.

A picture paints a thousand words. But they're really tiny and hard to read.

A rising tide lifts all boats. Then it smashes them on the rocks.

Crime doesn't pay. But the perks are awesome.

When I am King: Phoney Business

When I am King...

Phones will be phones. Internets will be Internets.

A few months ago, after incessant marketing spam from AT&T, I ‘upgraded’ to UVerse. I had been a happy DSL customer for years. Without cable TV, or the desire to get it, didn’t see the reason to change my ISP service. I had a phone. I had the Internet. I was set.

Cold calls couldn’t dissuade me. Especially the one where the guy asked about my current TV plan:
“I don’t have TV.”
“Right, but how do you get TV now?”
“I don’t get TV.”
"But how do you get TV channels?"
"I don't."
[pause]
“Er, thank you sir. Good night.”

And they never called back. Obviously, a customer without TV coverage is not worth having. Maybe they detected my inherent inability to pick up on social trends, or my failure to see all of their UVerse ads on TV. Or maybe they figured a lack of cable implied a lack of income and I’d soon be living on the outside of my foreclosed house, anyway.

But I am, above all, a cheapwad. So when I finally saw an ad that convinced me I’d pay less for my phone+Internet through UVerse, I went for it. I had to wade through all of the online pages that tried to get me to buy TV coverage first, of course. It was like going to a department store for a pair of sneakers and having to wind through the aisles of jewelry and makeup and bedding along the way. “You don’t want th TV+Internet+phone package? Well, how the Internet+phone+TV package instead?”

Finally, I managed to get the service I want: UVerse for cheapwads. Phone + Internet. Period.

And it was cheaper, at least for now. And it basically works.

But today, I called home in the middle of the day. And I got the response, “The subscriber you are trying to reach is not currently in service.” Called again, same response. Which nearly rules out my wife having an affair, unless the guy is really good at sounding exactly the same every time he answers the phone.

Subscriber? You mean my house? I didn’t realize the house had subscribed to anything. I just thought it was a house. With a phone.

Then the reality of UVerse hit me: I now have a VOIP phone. That is, a phone on the network, instead of on a phone line.

This makes sense in general: phone traffic over the Internet. It enables all kinds of services that appeal to cheapwads like me. But somehow I find this particular use of it a tad ridiculous:
UVerse comes to my house through the phone line. It's basically DSL with branding. So I traded out my phone service so that they could put my phone on the Internet service that they provide through my phone line. And now my phone doesn’t work. The phone line still works fine. And if I still had regular phone service, the phone would be ringing. But since it’s connected through their hardware and software along the way, it’s masquerading as an out-of-area cell phone instead.

It really makes me want to try out their TV service for an extra $50/month.

When I am King, phone lines will be used to make phone calls. Phone lines can also be used for other purposes, like carrying network traffic and restraining children at the dinner table until their broccoli is finished. But if there’s a phone, by gum it’ll be plugged into the dang phone line.

And TV? I don’t care how you get that. I’ll still be too cheap to pay for it. I get my TV through the Internet.

A Belated Valentines Wish

Happy Valentines Day.
To show you how much I care, I bought you a card for $4 written by a stranger, plus some candies that taste like chalk.
And some dead flowers.

Won't you be mine?

When I am King: Gameskill

When I am King...

Video games will train our children.

As a new owner of a fancy phone, I’ve been doing a lot of research into phone applications (I’ve been playing a lot of games). One of the games I’ve been losing my life to is Angry Birds, a game in which you launch birds at pigs.

Launch birds at pigs.

It struck me, when I first started playing the game, that game designers have simply given up on the whole “plot” thing. I could imagine the meeting when the company tried to define the vision of the game: “There are these pigs, right, and they take these, um, eggs. And, let’s see, the eggs must have come from some birds, right, and they birds would be pretty angry, and … Ah, screw it. Let's write some code.”

But as I’ve sunk more of my nonexistent spare time into the game, I realized that there is actually a deeper level on which the game operates. It’s not about plots, and stories, and characters, and all of the traditional elements of an engaging fantasy world. Instead, it’s about life skills.

Think about it: you learn to precisely target the birds at the enemy to destroy them and their defenses. You sow terror in the pig community in the hopes of getting the eggs back. You wreak havoc and revenge upon every pig you see, advancing levels only when you have killed every pig in sight. And you do all of this with minions that are happy to die for the cause.

Angry Birds is training the next generation of suicide bombers.

This might be too subtle to catch at first. Then you get to the level where you launch the bomb bird at the bus full of pig children.

And while this could be construed as disturbing on some level, the fact is that our children need to develop life and career skills. Gone are the days when responsible parents would send their children out to harvest the crops, milk the livestock, and slaughter the family pets. And children learning a manufacturing trade in sweatshops is a dying tradition. Even the coal industry, a natural for minors, is sealed to the little tykes. So where are kids supposed to pick up the crucial experience that can carry them into their brief adulthood and us into our retirement?

Meanwhile, most kids spend every possible waking hour playing video games. What better way to train tomorrow’s adults than by teaching them through this engaging and interactive medium?

When I am King, all video games will teach important life skills. We’re part of the way there today, with such educational opportunities as performing hits for the mob, massacring aliens with heavy firepower, and jumping over crates to collect coins. But we could go so much further with a little more focus on the critical elements that our society revolves around:

• Investment bankers could be raised on games that teach how to bankrupt the economy while spending government bailout grants in performance bonuses.
• Budding politicians could be taught important talents such as looking determined, promising undeliverable goals, and outright lying.
  
• All kids could learn the fine art of begging, as a backup when the other alternatives don’t pan[handle] out.

The time that kids spend playing will make them more qualified for these and other critical roles in our society. When our children can learn a trade in their leisure time, it's time to cut funding for education, because that's what governments do.