Tips on Being Totally Adequate

In this confusing world in which we live, where it’s always “rush-rush-rush” and “Would you like whip on that Viente?” and “You’re standing on my foot,” we need to take a step back and think about what really matters. In the end, we’re all just people trying to get along and get by. Don’t you think that if we were all kind to each other and went out of our way to help on another that this would be a better world for all of us?

But being kind and helpful takes far too much work; who has that kind of the time and energy? Plus, we’d feel silly and might be ridiculed by others, and we should always let our actions be governed by peer pressure. As the saying goes, “To appear to be wise, let your peers be your guides.”

However, it wouldn’t take a lot of effort to be more adequate. In fact, you may find that being adequate is actually more time-efficient than other approaches. We needn’t really change the way we do things at all, except that when faced with a choice of behaviors we pick the one that causes the least disruption, so that everyone can get on with their business.

Here are some tips for leading a more adequate life:

When someone does something really nice for you, like giving you a present or saving your life, be sure to look vaguely in their direction and smile slightly. No thanks is necessary, because someone close enough to you to do this for you must know how you feel.

When you are driving along, approaching an intersection where you will turn and you see someone waiting for you because they think you’re going straight instead, don’t use the turn signal. Using it would let the person know that you intend to turn and they could go ahead, but that’s just forcing them into the awkward position of trusting you to not go straight anyway and plow into them. Also, a turn signal is just one more piece of blinking data in this already information-littered world; by not turning it on, you’re letting that other person’s brain relax slightly, enjoying the time that they spend waiting for you to possibly drive past. Besides, it’s so much effort to flick the turn signal stick; save that energy for more important things, like walking to get your next cup of coffee.

When you’re approaching a doorway and someone is there holding the door open for you, don’t acknowledge them. They were just doing this to be kind, and derived full enjoyment of it from the action. It would just be awkward if you thanked them.

Don’t make cruel jokes about others behind their backs; that would be mean. But do laugh when others do so. The victim is not even present and wouldn’t know, but the person making the jokes would be hurt if you didn’t play along. Besides, they might make fun of you next time unless they think you’re one of them.

These are just examples, and can’t begin to cover the full spectrum of ways in which you could lead a more adequate life. Think of them as parables. Or as allegories, without the annoying animals. Look for their inner meaning and see how you can apply it to your daily routine, and I think you’ll find yourself becoming totally adequate.

Bedtime Stories

Dylan Thomas mumbled, “I can’t remember whether I drank for six days and six nights when I was twelve or was sick for twelve days and twelve nights when I drank.” And then passed out into the guacamole. Again.

I was hanging out again with Dylan, working through the remnants of a six-pack of scotch. I was asking his opinion on reading bedtime stories to children, but was having trouble getting anything more out of him in his brief periods of consciousness than a few hiccups and a belch or two.

It’s my studied opinion that reading to kids is a horrible experience. It sounds great from the outside, of course: you get time with your child and you get to read them the classics and the books that you loved from your childhood. Plus, it’s a great excuse for climbing into bed early and avoiding tedious responsibilities around the house like unstopping the toilet in the downstairs bathroom or putting out the small electrical fire in the laundry room.

But then you encounter the reality of it: kids don’t want to hear what you want to read. You approach the situation with goals of reading Wind in the Willows, or The Hobbit, or passages from Freud, but your kids complain that they’re not enjoying your selection and hand you a Dora picture book. How compelling can it be when the girl’s best friends are a map, a backpack, and a fox that steals her stuff?

So I put it to Dylan as he lay moaning on the table, “Is it better to read anything than not read at all?”

Dylan muttered something unintelligible in Welsh with too many L’s and slumped to the floor. A brilliant man, Dylan, and a heckuva guy to have over when you wanted a game of Parcheesi and a hangover for the following week. But it was always difficult reading the his meaning. It’s the poet’s way: using words carefully to impart imagery and beauty while completely eluding comprehension.

I would rather stick to my principles and keep reading my choices of Hume, Descartes, and essays from Bloch to the kids, but then they pull out their ultimate defensive weapon: they fall asleep. So is it worth trying to educate them against their will, or should I just give up and have them enjoy their bedtime stories instead? Do I send them to bed wiser for the experience, yet crying in horror from Dante’s descriptions of Hell? Or do they go to bed happy and satisfied, knowing that once more Swiper has been defeated by the clutch timing of a knapsack?

Dylan was awake later, licking the grout on the tile floor, hoping for remnants of a fantastic vindaloo we’d had that evening, when he gave me his answer: “Do not go gentle into that Good Night Moon.”

Then he fell asleep with his face in the dog's bowl.

Little Jokes for Friday

I wonder, sometimes, about death and dying. For instance:

Do undertakers re-hearse?

Do grave diggers have coffin fits?

Do dead footmen get headstones?

If a story lacks plot, is it just not grave enough?

When I am King: Entitlement

When I am King...

We will all have important-sounding titles next to our names.

My kids’ school has a new principal who sends out emails to the parents every week, always making sure to sign it with his name, “Dr. Feeg Cremble.” And that’s really nice, because I don’t know about you, but I find it totally reassuring that the principle has a graduate degree. I don’t know what I’d do if he was just an ordinary guy with enough educational background to become principle. So of course I would want to know his educational qualifications with every email he sends. I may have forgotten since his last email, so it’s great that he reminds us all every time.

This use of “doctor” is typical and expected with medical doctors, of course. We want them to tell us that they are doctors so that when someone in the room gets sick, we know whom to sue for malpractice.

But that’s not the people I’m talking about – I’d like to focus on the ones with academic degrees. I mean, I’m sure that becoming a surgeon is difficult and time-consuming, but think about the poor guy that spent 5 years in grad school crashing frat parties until the university finally gave him a degree just to get rid of him? He needs just as much attention as that other profession, so it’s right that he lay claim to it as often as possible.

There are many non-medical people that I’ve met that have “Dr.” on their business cards or signatures, or that introduce themselves as Dr. SoAndSo. But I don’t feel we have enough of this in our society. I know that there must be more PhDs in education, science, and art that we need to know about. And, in fact, we should know more about everyone through their titles. Why would I just want to know someone’s name and possibly their married status when they introduce themselves, when I could know much more about their academic qualifications?

When I am King, everyone will have titles that reflect who they are, what they’ve done, and how important they feel they are in their own world.

For example, everyone should obviously list the degrees that they have achieved, such as “BFA Music,” “MS Botany, “ and “BA Women’s Studies (minor Greek, concentration Literature).”

But even that’s not enough. How do we know how good they are in their subject? Or whether we can trust them to be the person we seek out when someone’s suffering from a sudden attack of Liberal Arts Deficit Syndrome? These titles should have enough information that everyone will know everything pertinent about you, including academics as well as occupations. Think of them as short resumes attached to your name. For example:

“Gloria Grendle, PhD Nuclear Physics, Top Secret Weapons Designer”
“Becky Bristol, 11th Grade (GPA 1.7), Skanky Barfly”
“Bob Baker, Game-winning hit 8th grade little league city championship, Town Drunk”
“Jon Brown, B.A. History (GPA 2.8), M.A. Danish History (GPA 3.2), Barista”

These new titles will be so much more informative than mere names and will save us so much time wasted in actually having to talk to people. Entire conversations can be covered just in the introductions, avoiding countless hours of wasted time actually talking to people just to determine that you have nothing in common with them. Why bother getting to know people when you can use their academic qualifications to determine whether it’s worth it?

Titles: Let’s take them to the next degree.

When I am Kindle

When I am King...

I'll offer my book for the Amazon Kindle.

Due to the overwhelming request of ones of readers, I've made the just-selling book When I am King... available for the Amazon Kindle. Now you can enjoy the experience of reading material in digital form that was originally available in digital form then published in hardcopy. Perhaps next year we will offer another hardcopy version based on the Kindle edition.

The Kindle version is unique in its own way, offering fancy "linked" entries on the Contents page, in addition to a lower price ($3.95) than the tree-based version of the book (now only $6.95). Collectors will certainly want to acquire both versions, probably multiple times.

Little Jokes for Tuesday

When your feet are asleep, are they comatoes?

If you want them awake, should you sock them?

When they wake up, are they completely heeled?

Little Joke for Friday

If a group of men can be called “brethren”, does that make a group of women a “sistern”? Or would that just be a pisser?

When I am King: O, Besity!

When I am King...

Children will no longer be fed.

Ours is truly a growth society - we’re growing fat. Clothing sizes are getting larger, our cars have become monstrously huge just to fit us, and entire industries have sprung up in the medical community to help us get back to a reasonable size so that we can do it all again.

The only things that haven’t compensated for our girth growth are airplane seats, which are still built for the body of an average 8 year old anorexic. Of course, this dynamic is intentional, helping to make air travel the wonderful experience that it is.

Last year, Disney World had to fix up their “It’s a Small World” ride. For one thing, they had to make the boats more buoyant to keep our massive bodies afloat. Also, they plan to rename the ride, with the top contenders being:

• It’s a Big, Fat World
• It’s Not a Very Small World Anymore
• It’s a Small World with Huge-Ass People

and

• Caution: Boats May Sink

There are many theories on our growth curve. Is it the sugary drinks we suck down like we’re racing to put out an intestinal forest fire? Is it the fast food that we supersize just in case we don’t get another meal this decade? Is it the food itself, so filled with preservatives that we’re being mummified in life? Is that we buy so much food at these warehouse stores that we have to eat larger portions just as a means of storing it in our houses? Or are we parents stuffing our children at an early age, responding to some obsolete and disturbing instinct of fattening up our domestic animals for consumption?

My ministry has been studying the problem and has come to the following conclusion: we need look no further than our children. That's a good thing, because they're getting so huge we can't see past the little porkers.

Any parents out there know that when your kid is involved in activity, any activity, from a sport to a scouting group to a book club, there has to be snacks. Some parent is involved in coming up with the snack schedule, and then all of the parents end up bringing snacks on their turn. Donuts, juice boxes, cookies, candy, some token fruit which usually goes uneaten, chips, pizza… there’s always food at these things. And if you ever suggest actually not bringing food, the other parents stare at you in horror. “They’ll need a snack! They’ve been in school for two whole hours after lunch!” Never mind that the activity ends right before dinner time and you’ve just stuffed them with enough junk to fill a piñata; they must be fed.

So the kids go on with their activities, eating more all the time, getting them into a habit of gorging themselves that will have them crushing their bathroom scales in adulthood.

When I am King, there will be no more snacktivities. In fact, there will be no more food for children at all. We will keep them on a strict IV-drip diet to ensure that they get just enough nutrients to survive (ours is not a cruel regime). We must reverse the fattening trend and get our young ‘uns back down to where they should be. We will give them a good place to start from, so that they can have plenty of time to grow into the obese adults that we know they’re capable of becoming.

And now, I’ll leave you with a song. This is one of the jingles being considered for Disney’s revamped ride:

It’s a world of food, and a world of drink,
It’s a world of eating, till we can’t think.
There’s so much that we eat
That it’s time we agreed
It’s a fat world after all.

Chorus:
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat, fat world.

There are happy meals that we supersize,
And those chicken parts taste so good with large fries.
Now it’s harder to hide
‘Cause our butts are so wide
It’s a fat world after all.

Chorus:
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat world after all.
It’s a fat, fat world.

Little Jokes for Thursday

I wonder:

Do horses have stable relationships?

Are roosters hen-pecked?

Do pigs have pen pals?

Corporate Survival Guide: Doorway to Success

“Power,” as a great general may have said once, “is gained not through great works, but by great rumors.” It doesn’t matter what you actually do, but rather what others think you might have done. This is as true on the corporate battlefield as it is in real life, particularly in the mad, scheming power-grab that is your everyday office life.

One of the easiest ways to generate buzz is through visible interaction with your management chain. I call it: “The Doorway to Success.”

Try this: walk over to your boss’s office and say loudly, just outside the office, “I’ve got to talk to you, now!” Then quickly enter the office and shut the door audibly. Then ask your boss something innocuous, like “How was your weekend?” or “Nice shoes! Where’d you get them?” In a pinch, you can also try, “Whoops, forgot what I was was going to say! Don’t you hate it when that happens?”

Once the conversation is over, open the door and move quickly back to your desk with an intense look of constipation on your face. Pretend that there’s an alien trying to bust out of your chest, and you’re keeping it trapped inside through sheer willpower.

After you do this a couple of times, you’ll notice heads of coworkers popping above the nearby cube walls like prairie dogs at dinnertime; everyone wants to know what’s going on. Of course, there is nothing happening - it was all pretense. But that’s my point: it’s the same thing.

There are two impressions that you’ve created in your coworkers through this action:

• Something big is going down: People don’t usually get worked up in the office except when the coffee maker is broken or a toilet overflows. Seeing someone agitated and talking to management about the issue must mean that something is happening that’s pretty important.
• You know something about it: This is the most important element. It’s less important what you know than the fact that you know it and they don’t. It is critical to follow-through on this with your coworkers. Some will wander by and hint subtly that they’d like to know what’s going on, but you need to avoid dropping any hints, while still looking that you could. Some will just come out and ask you what you know. Feel free to tell these people that you can’t say anything, and that you’re surprised they don’t know. It’s always good to take people down a peg when you can, because your importance in the hierarchy is always relative to those around you.

Of course, this tactic works best when your boss has an office. Stomping loudly into the cube and asking how their tennis game is coming along doesn’t work nearly as well.

If your manager has a cube, here are a couple of alternatives to think about:

• Find a door: Tell the boss in their cube that you need to talk, but not here. Then bring them through your department, taking a circuitous route past as many coworkers as possible, continuing to repeat things like, “It’s really important” and “We need a private place to talk about this” and maybe some tidbits like, “I don’t know how The Board is going to deal with this.” Finally, drag the boss into an unoccupied office or meeting room and proceed as above. (Bathroom stalls generally don’t work as well, as they tend to give the conversation an entirely different flavor and your boss may try to call security).
• Find someone else: Frankly, if your boss has a cube, you should probably find someone more important. Offices are a mark of distinction on the corporate battlefield, like promotions or executives knowing your name (or at least guessing at it). The subtle message from the executives to the cube-bearing manager is, “You’re not important enough to have private conversations.” So why are you wasting your time talking to them? Find someone that is that important; you should pretend to be in the know with people that actually are.

Finally, be sure not to overplay this strategy. People will only buy it if they think you are getting secret information at reasonable intervals. Also, your manager may start wondering why you keep making such a big deal of asking them what they had for lunch, or how they take their coffee, or how to request lumbar support for your office chair. I’d suggest limiting the “Doorway to Success” technique to no more than ten times per day.