Wikipedia: I could read this stuff all day long

I love Wikipedia. I think it is one of the single greatest creations in human history. Reading Wikipedia has become a bit of a passion for me. Though there is always a reason I find myself plowing through a passage, I am never disappointed with what I find.

A couple days ago I read the entry for "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da", one of my favorite Beatles’ songs, looking for the origin behind the phrase Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.

It turns out that Paul stole it from an African conga player and was later sued for royalties.

I also learned that Paul wrote the song but John hated it, eventually forcing a more up-tempo beat after a heated exchange.

Also, the line, "Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face" was a mistake. Paul sung the line incorrectly during a recording session (Molly was supposed to be at home, doing her pretty face), but the rest of the band liked the mistake so much that it stuck.

Yesterday I read the entry for Dirty Dancing, learning among other things that Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze did not get along during much of the filming of the movie, something you might have never guessed based upon the final product.

Also, Dirty Dancing is in large part based on screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein's own childhood. She is the younger daughter of a Jewish doctor from New York, spent summers with her family in the Catskills, participated in "Dirty Dancing" competitions, and was herself called "Baby" as a girl.

Bergstein was apparently talking about herself when she wrote, “Nobody puts Baby in the corner.”

See what I mean? Every entry is a fascinating story waiting to be discovered.

For all it’s greatness, however, Wikipedia does have it's problems. The most glaring (other than a lack of an entry for me) is its frequent need for a professional editor.

This morning I was researching New Jersey Turnpike rest stops for the book I am writing. The Turnpike names each of its rest stops after famous people from New Jersey, and I needed the name of a northbound rest stop close to New York.

Naturally I found it on Wikipedia.

But the list (pasted below) needs an editor badly. The blinding repetition and unnecessary redundancy contained made me want to pull my hair out.

Clara Barton Service Area named after Clara Barton. Molly Pitcher Service Area named after Molly Pitcher. Thomas Edison Service Area named after… you guessed it. Thomas Edison.

And yes, I know that I could edit the list myself and thus contribute a small part to the greatness of Wikipedia, but I am in the midst of writing at least three books (not to mention this blog, a children’s book, a short story, and a dozen other smaller pieces), so my time and energy are best directed elsewhere.

And besides, I try to avoid writing for free at all costs.

Also, there are people in the world who actually enjoy writing, editing and otherwise maintaining Wikipedia.

I enjoy benefiting from their efforts.

You called me an idiot. You said I acted like a bully. You told me that I was cruel. I respond.

In regards to the much critiqued post about my handling of the slow driver, I offer a few comments: 1. Opening with the question “Was this mean?” wasn’t smart. I know what I did was mean. I knew it was mean while I was doing it. I should have asked if my actions were justifiably mean or mean-but-amusing.

That said, I doubt that any of the responses would have changed.

2. A clear majority of people responding on this blog and via Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, email and in real life do not approve of my actions in the slightest. I was referred to as an idiot, a plonker (a British term for idiot), a bully, a mean jerk and cruel.

3. The three people who approved of my actions found them to be more amusing than intelligent.

4. In retrospect, there were many reasons for the man in question to be driving so slowly, and I admittedly failed to realize even one of them at the time. While I think it more than likely that he was driving slowly because that was his preferred speed, there were many other possibilities that I should have accounted for prior to taking action.

5.  For the kind souls who wrote to me in an attempt to bolster my spirits in light of the harsh criticism I received, fear not. If I can dish it, I must also be able to take it, and I am. Readers need not respond kindly to my posts. I simply ask that they be honest and transparent. They were.

6. A few readers wondered if I engage in this kind of behavior in order to have something to blog about on a daily basis. I assure you that this is not the case.  In fact, I only wrote about this particular incident after mentioning it to a friend at dinner and suddenly wondering what other people might think. For every encounter of this kind that I write about on this blog, there are many more that never get written about.

Or as my wife said, “You were doing this kind of thing long before blogs even existed.”

Very true.

7. In the end, my intention is rarely to be mean. Instead, I seek to challenge social conventions.

When someone tests the door to a public restroom, finds it locked, and still knocks, I could remain conventional and say, “I’m in here!” or “I’ll be out in a second!”

Or I could shout “Bring out your dead!” or “A plague on both your houses!” as I’ve been known to do, because I think that finding a restroom door locked and then knocking on it anyway is stupid.

Sometimes I run the risk of being mean or stupid when challenging a social convention, and sometimes I initiate genuine change.

Yesterday I was mean.  And slightly vindictive.

If I had the chance, I would probably apologize to the man who was driving slowly.

But only after questioning him about his reasons for driving so slowly. Sometimes I just can’t let things go.

You have to be having sex in order to choose your phone over sex. I know this sounds obvious, but apparently it’s not.

A national survey conducted by TeleNav has shown that one in three Americans are willing to give up sex for a week over giving up their phone. The overwhelming majority – 70% – of these respondents were women.

Here’s the problem with these numbers:

Of the 33% of Americans reporting that they would give up sex for a week, more than half of them probably aren't having sex anyway, either by choice or by the lack of a willing partner.

And another significant percentage are probably so disappointed with the sex that they are having that giving it up for a week would be no chore.

Skews the numbers quite a bit.

What I’d like to see is the percentage of Americans who are having and enjoying sex who would be willing to give it up for a week in order to retain their phone.

Something tells me that the numbers would be decidedly smaller.

The study also reports that 22% of smartphone users said they were willing to forego seeing their significant other entirely for a week rather than give up their phone.

But at least 22% of my friends would kill for a week alone without their spouse or significant other. Even in the best of relationships, I have friends, both men and women, who find the thought of an empty house luxuriating, and at least 22% of them would be more than willing to send their significant other off for a week of whatever if it meant they could have the house to themselves.

I am not one of these people and fail to find the joy in being home alone for any significant period of time, but the feeling is certainly not uncommon.

When viewed in these terms, the 22% statistic seems significantly less astounding.

I realize that the people conducting these surveys desire news-worthy results, but none of this is news.

A bunch of people who weren’t having sex anyway or were having uninspired sex were willing to give up the unlikely possibility of good sex for a week rather than lose their phone?

And a bunch of people who would kill for some time alone acknowledged that they would accept the offer of time alone rather than lose their phone?

Big deal.

The most common and egregious of all leadership flaws

I’ve seen it more often than I care to remember, and I saw it again last week: A leader complaining about the amount of time required from him or her in order to manage a crisis.

It’s one of the most egregious of all leadership flaws, and yet it is astoundingly common.

Even worse is when the leader’s complaining is directed at the employees who are directly or indirectly responsible for the crisis, because at the moment of complaint, the leader has ceased managing the crisis. Instead, he has placed his own emotional needs ahead of the organization and has made the crisis entirely about himself.

Yes, it’s true. In the time of crisis, vast amounts of time and energy are often directed away from a leader’s day-to-day responsibilities, and his or her workload can increase significantly.

Years ago I found myself at the center of a crisis, and in a time when the leader of the organization should have been strategizing, problem solving, investigating and negotiating, he chose to spend 30 minutes detailing in a less-than-polite fashion how the crisis had impacted his week thus far.

He went so far as to tell me how the quality time with his grandchildren had been impacted.

I left his office with one thought in my mind:

What a spineless, gutless, clueless moron.

One of the primary responsibilities of a leader is to manage a crisis. If you’re unwilling to deal with unexpected problems without complaint about the time is requires, don’t become a leader. Complaining about the resources required to manage a crisis is akin to a firefighter yelling at a homeowner for playing with matches while the guy’s house burns down.

Yes, it’s a shame that the fire has started in the first place, and yes, perhaps the homeowner is even to blame, but it’s your job to put the fire out.

This is the burden of leadership.

There are many reasons not to complain about the time it takes to manage a crisis, but I like to think that they can be summed up in four simple sentences:

1. It’s your job.

2. Complaining doesn’t change anything.

3. No one wants to hear it.

4. Complaining makes you sound like a gutless, selfish fool.

The ones who fell out of the back of the pickup trucks are dead. Worse, they are forgotten.

Unfulfilled potential is difficult, if not impossible, to measure. Yet we ignore this fact almost constantly. I mentioned to someone that I need to buy a bike helmet for Clara now that she is riding her tricycle out on the street.

“A helmet?” the person said.  “When I was a kid, no one wore a helmet and we’re all fine. And for a tricycle? I swear we coddle these kids like they are made of porcelain these day.”

“Correction,” I said. "You didn’t wear a helmet and you’re fine. But what about all the dead kids who weren’t wearing helmets?"

It’s easy to forget about them. Maybe you didn’t know them.

Maybe you don’t remember them.

Maybe you didn’t hear about them because you were a kid and shielded from awfulness like the death of a child.

Maybe most of the news in your childhood was local, so unless it happened geographically near you, you didn't hear about it.

Maybe you can't remember them because they ARE DEAD.

At a recent author appearances, I told the story about riding in the back of a friend’s mother’s pickup truck when I was a kid. When I was done speaking, a man approached me and said that my story brought back a flood of memories of doing the same. “It’s a shame we don’t let kids ride in the backs of those trucks anymore,” he said.

“It’s a shame only if you enjoyed it and survived it,” I said. “But all the kids who fell out of the back of trucks and died or suffered massive head injuries probably wouldn’t consider it a shame at all.”

Kids tend to not hear about these tragedies unless they knew the kid who died, and even then, it’s so easy to forget about these tragedies by the time we become adults.

As a teacher, I can tell you that most of my third graders were shielded from the 9/11 attacks at the time, and even a few years after the attacks, many of my students were not aware of them.

Parents don't share the horrors of the world with little children.

As a result, we grow up assuming that whatever dangerous thing that we did and survived as a kid was survived by everyone else as well.

But rarely is this the case.

Unfulfilled potential also comes into play in the raising of children. For example, the way that my parents raised me was questionable at best. No books in the home. No help or even follow-up with homework. No encouragement to attend college (the word college was never even spoken to me). No participation in my athletic, musical or Scouting careers. No curfew.  No limits on where I could go or what I could do.

When I was 16, I vacationed in New Hampshire with six friends, squeezing into two tiny cabins and spending the week playing video games, hanging out at the beach and meeting girls, and my parents didn’t even know I was gone.

As a friend said recently, I parented myself for most of my childhood, and he was probably right.

Despite all this, some might assume that my parents did a great job, because I have turned out to be moderately successful. A wonderful family. Great friends. A successful teacher and novelist. A small business owner.

Others might say that although my parents were less than supportive, I managed to squeeze the most out of my innate abilities. They might assume that I rose above my parents’ inadequacies and still made the most out of my life.

I say neither.

While I am quite pleased with the way that I turned out, I am also willing to acknowledge that there may be a lot of unfulfilled potential in me.

I often wonder where I would be today had attended college after high school and gotten a quicker start on my professional life. What if I hadn’t languished for those five years after high school, working unending hours and living in the most ridiculous circumstances in order to survive?

What if I hadn’t needed to work a full time job while attending college? Might I have extracted more from my education? Would I have gotten to know more people? Built a larger network of friends and professional contacts?

What if my parents had been even slightly supportive of my athletic or musical career? Might my skills have developed to a higher level? Might something have become of those talents?

I suspect that despite my success, there is great amounts of unfulfilled potential littered throughout my life, and that most of it is no longer accessible or attainable.

This does not mean that I am not happy with who I am. Just curious about who I could have been.

Yet parents (including mine) justify their lapses in judgment or ease their parental guilt by ignoring unfulfilled potential and simply focusing on how their child has turned out in comparison to the mean.

“We didn’t really read to Johnny as a kid, but he’s turned into a solid A student, so it just goes to show you that every child is different.”

Sure, but maybe Johnny was supposed to be the next Einstein or the next Faulkner. Maybe if you had read to him at an early age, he would be curing cancer today.

I’m not suggesting that parents constantly beat themselves up over their failures. I just want them them to be realistic when dispensing advice or complaining about how dramatically the world has changed.

Don’t complain about bike helmets just because you've forgotten about all the dead kids from your own childhood and managed to avoid a head injury of your own.

Don’t suggest to a new mother that reading to a child is overrated and unnecessary because your little Johnny is an A student.

And please don’t tell me that Johnny turned out fine even though you smoked throughout your pregnancy.

Yes, Johnny may be fine, but in the grand scheme of things, fine sucks.

Lost potential sucks.

Just because Johnny has managed to survive and thrive despite your prenatal nicotine intake doesn’t mean that you made the best decisions as a parent.

Or even average decisions.

Worst still, we will never know what Johnny could have been.

Most improbable moment in Hollywood history comes from the classic film The Goonies

There have been many improbable moments in movie history, but I would argue that there is nothing more improbable than the final scene from The Goonies, in which Chunk invites Sloth to live with him.

Let’s put all custody issues aside, though they would be considerable.

Is the movie-goer really expected to believe that Chunk’s parents are going to assume responsibility for this inarticulate, mentally challenged, rage-prone man simply because their son loves him?

Presuming that this lower-middle class family has the space in their home for this seven-foot monster, the dental expenses alone would be astronomical.

Add to this the speech therapy, plastic surgery, job training and years of counseling that will be required in order to overcome the fact that he was physically and mentally abused by his siblings, rejected by his mother, forced to live in chains in the basement for most of his adult life, and is ultimately responsible for his family's incarceration.

sloth

Is this even within the means of Chunk’s parents?

Remember that this is a family who was about to lose their home to a wealthy land developer. Sure, they have the profit from the sale of some pirate jewels, but are we expected to believe that will be enough money after paying off the mortgages of half a dozen families to fund Sloth’s life of constant, continuous  care?

Or that Mikey, the owner of the jewels, would even be willing to provide such funding?

And what happens to Sloth when Chunk goes off to college?

His parents are stuck living with and caring for an enormous, mentally deficient man thanks to a spur-of-the-moment offer made by their son while in the throes of post-traumatic stress?

I don’t think so.

As a writer, the decision was simple:

Sloth should have died while saving the Goonies from certain death back in the cave or he should have been seen in the final frame of the movie, wearing an eye-patch and a pirate hat, steering One-Eyed Willy’s pirate ship on its final voyage.

Sloth might be the hero of the film, but let’s face it:

No one wants to live with him.

Even his mother kept him chained in the basement.

And while we’re on the subject of The Goonies, how the hell did director Richard Donner (and writers Stephen Spielberg and Chris Columbus) get away with naming his pirate One-Eyed Willy in a kid’s movie?

And please don’t tell me that any phallic allusions associated with that name did not exist in 1985, because they did. I was thirteen at the time and I remember cracking up every time someone said One-Eyed Willy’s name, and I still giggle sometimes when hearing it today.

What could Donner have been thinking?

McDonald’s makes Happy Meals healthier, regardless of The Daily Beast’s uncertainty over the matter

The Daily Beast tweets: McDonald’s Adds Fruit to Happy Meals: In attempt to make food healthier. http://thebea.st/nV5a2p #cheatsheet

In attempt to make food healthier?

Since when is fruit (and vegetables, which have also been added to the Happy Meals) not a healthier choice?

Is there any chance that adding fruit and vegetables (and reducing the number of French fries, which McDonald’s is also doing) will not make their Happy Meals healthier?

Is it even possible for McDonald’s to fail in this healthier attempt?

Shouldn’t the headline read something like:

McDonald’s Adds Fruit to Happy Meals and makes food healthier.

Or…

McDonald’s Adds Fruit to Happy Meals and yes, Happy Meals are now healthier. No doubt about it. Oh, and they added vegetables, too. And reduced the number of fries. And also the overall calories as a result. Yup. A healthier choice. No attempt here. Just downright certainty.

Excellent first impression

Um… did you want me to come to your store?

If so, when?

Poor Jane Eyre. She’s been hungry for a whole 19 hours.

Yesterday I declared Jane Eyre to be a superhero and specifically described her super power: Super powerful nostril and brow identification

But all superhero fans know that with almost every super power comes a super weakness.

Like Superman. The fact that he comes from the planet Krypton gives him his remarkable powers here on Earth, yet Kryptonite (a chunk of rock from his now-defunct planet of Krypton) rids him of his powers and is potentially lethal to him.

Classic superhero motif.

I am Mr. Indestructible. I cannot be killed (having been brought back from death twice already) nor can I be bruised (never once in my entire life), yet I tend to be hurt all the time. Golfer’s elbow. Separated shoulders. Bad knees. Frequent concussions.

Strength and weakness tied together. Get it?

And so it turns out that Jane Eyre also has a weakness, though sadly it does not tie in well with her unique powers of observation.

Rather, Jane is ultra-super-mega hypoglycemic and prone to whining about her condition to no one in particular.

The girl can’t miss a meal without falling apart.

After fleeing Thornfield Manor by coach, she finds herself alone and destitute in the English countryside.

Less than 24 hours later, she is nearly dead from starvation.

Despite her ability to accurately appraise one’s countenance and disposition based solely upon nostril and brow, the girl cannot survive more than a day with food.

And thus her super weakness.

Note the following, self-described soliloquy:

“My strength is quite failing me,” I said in a soliloquy. “I feel I cannot go much farther. Shall I be an outcast again this night? While the rain descends so, must I lay my head on the cold, drenched ground? I fear I cannot do otherwise: for who will receive me? But it will be very dreadful, with this feeling of hunger, faintness, chill, and this sense of desolation—this total prostration of hope. In all likelihood, though, I should die before morning. And why cannot I reconcile myself to the prospect of death? Why do I struggle to retain a valueless life? Because I know, or believe, Mr. Rochester is living: and then, to die of want and cold is a fate to which nature cannot submit passively. Oh, Providence! sustain me a little longer! Aid!—direct me!”

My glazed eye wandered over the dim and misty landscape. I saw I had strayed far from the village: it was quite out of sight. The very cultivation surrounding it had disappeared. I had, by cross-ways and by-paths, once more drawn near the tract of moorland; and now, only a few fields, almost as wild and unproductive as the heath from which they were scarcely reclaimed, lay between me and the dusky hill.

“Well, I would rather die yonder than in a street or on a frequented road,” I reflected. “And far better that crows and ravens—if any ravens there be in these regions—should pick my flesh from my bones, than that they should be prisoned in a workhouse coffin and moulder in a pauper’s grave.”

And all this after less than a day without food!

If you’ve ever read Jasper Fforde’s THE EYRE AFFAIR (and you should), you’ll understand what I mean when I wish Thursday Next would pop into this section of the book (as she does in so many other sections of the novel) and say something like:

“Ravens picking flesh from your bones? Dying before morning? C’mon woman! You’ve been without food for less than a day! And this is Victorian, England! Not Miami Beach! It’s not like you weigh 86 pounds soaking wet!  Pull yourself together, you sad sack of humanity! You make me sick!”

I still like Jane. I like her a lot.

But based upon her condition, I don’t think I’d ever date her.

The mystery of net carbs, the most redundant name in human history and inexplicable online gaming, all in a bottle of 4C iced tea

In our recent pantry purge, I found this container of 4C iced tea mix. Note that the packaging indicates that contains 4 grams of net carbs per serving.

Net carbs?

Does a serving actually contain 5 net carbs, but the manufacturer assumes you will burn at least one carb stirring the stuff?

 

Naturally, I found myself wondering what 4C stands for while writing this post, so I did a little digging and found this explanation:

The name 4C, as in 4C iced tea and other products, comes from when the founder John Celauro opened up an Italian specialty store with 3 other immigrants who also had their last names begin with the letter C. The sign on the storefront read 4CCCC. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Celauro decided to change it to 4C.

I like how the company’s explanation deliberately excludes the obvious:

Mr. Celauro realized, after much mocking by his friends and neighbors, that the number 4, followed by four C’s, was quite possibly the most redundant name ever plastered on a store front in human history.

Perhaps in an attempt to make up for this omission, the 4C company has “developed a few games that will challenge your mind as well as your skills” and included them on their website.

I invite you to check them out here.

Doing so will most assuredly provide more hits to this page than the last three years combined, but most importantly, I would love for someone to present me with a scenario in which either of these two (not a few) games were actually found and played by anyone save the developers of these games and their guinea pig-like children.

Public marriage proposal: FAIL

I recently wrote about my 5 rules to the successful marriage proposal.

Having executed my own successful public proposal, I felt qualified.   

This proposal is ill advised on so many levels.

Black and invisible

Quick. Name me the last three missing or murdered children who you can think of excluding Caylee Anthony.

Done?

Okay. How many of those children are not white?

And while we’re at it, how many are not female and not blond?

In fact, name just one missing or murdered child who was not white.

Or one missing or murdered person who was not white.

Just one.

Can you?

If you’re like most people, you probably named Elizabeth Smart, Madeline McCann, Jon Benet Ramsey, and perhaps Susan Smith’s nameless murdered children.

Maybe you included Leiby Kletzky, the eight-year old who was recently kidnapped and murdered in Brooklyn. If you did, he is probably the only boy on your list.

If you included adults, you might have mentioned Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy or Polly Klaas.

You probably didn’t mention Everett Conant’s three boys, who were shot and killed by their father last week, because that story, while covered in the print media, has not become a national fixation.

But Conant was a man, living in Wyoming, and his children were boys and not blond. Nor did Conant attend any parties or wet tee-shirt contests after shooting his children.

The devil, my friends, is in the details.

In fact, you were probably hard pressed to name a single African American or Hispanic child or adult who had gone missing or was murdered.

And yet there is not a lack of cases from which to choose.

For example, in January of this year, while the media was covering the preparations for the Casey Anthony trial, D’Hari Black, 27, and her husband, Keith Black, 29, of College Park, Maryland were found guilty of felony murder in the death of 11 month-old Keith Black III. They were also convicted for felony cruelty to children for the abuse of their two year-old daughter, Kyara.

Where was this story covered?

As far as I can tell, a short piece appeared in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and another in the Atlanta Examiner.

That’s it.

I was only aware of the case because I lived in College Park years ago and was thinking about using the town as a location in my next book. I was doing some researching on the town and stumbled across the story.

Some might say that the Keith Black murder case was not sensational enough.

I believe that Keith Black was not white enough.

I found the intense national interest in the Casey Anthony trial bizarre and unfortunate. Thousands of children are murdered each year, so to focus so much attention and scrutiny on one case strikes me as a twisted and gruesome form of reality television.

Not that it hasn’t been done before. But it’s no less surprising each time it happens.

And yes, I realize that the unusual details of this case compelled people to pay attention, but when you choose to focus our time and energy on a medium that refuses to acknowledge that black and Hispanic children are kidnapped in this country just as often as white children, and when you choose to tune into a medium that places a premium on cute, blond female victims, you contribute to the problem.

And there are things that you can do to change it.

Prior to the birth of my daughter, my wife and I would watch The Today Show each morning while getting ready for work, and about every three months or so, they would report on the disappearance or murder of a white girl.

In the years I watched the show, I cannot remember seeing a single one of these stories in which the victim was not white and female.

Each time one of these stories came on, I would leave the room or turn off the television, refusing to provide my attention to a news organization that is hell-bent on sensationalizing the best looking white victims of kidnapping and murder in this country and ignoring all victims of color.

Did my actions change anything? Have I helped to solve this problem?

No and yes.

No, it did not change the way in which the media continues to report these stories, but perhaps if others follow suit, things will eventually change.  Maybe the tragic story of Keith Black III will be reported by a news organization like The Today Show, or better yet, perhaps we’ll stop treating these stories as reality programming altogether.

But even if I am the only one boycotting these stories in all of America, that doesn't make my actions foolish or a waste of time. Doing the right thing in the face of blinding indifference is still a fine thing.

But yes, my decision to ignore these stories does make a difference as well.  It makes a difference in my life.

I have not followed the Casey Anthony trial.  I have not read the stories or watched the trial or even engaged in conversation about the case, and to be honest, if it wasn’t for updates popping up in my Twitter stream, I would probably know absolutely nothing about it.

I chose to invest my time and energy elsewhere.

Last week I read a book in the doctor’s office while sitting next to a woman who was reading about the case in People magazine.

I listened to music, podcasts and audiobooks for untold hours while exercising beside people who spent their workout watching the trial on television.

I discussed parenting with a friend while others around us were discussing the trial and the actions of Casey Anthony.

In the end, I feel like I made better use of my time. While so many fixated on the excessive coverage of these tragic circumstance, I engaged in activities that were meaningful, productive and a lot less sleazy.

And six months from now, when the tragedy of Caylee Anthony has been replaced by a different, white, probably blond girl and the details of the Casey Anthony trial fade into obscurity, I will ask myself:

Did I miss out on anything by ignoring the trial of that mother who probably killed her daughter?

Am I lacking any vital information?

Do I regret not tuning into the story like so many others?

The answer will be no, because the answer has always been no.

It was no with that blond girl, and it was no with that other blond girl, and it was no with that missing mother of two, and it was no with that other blond girl.

I don’t know much about any of them, which is about how much I know about Keith Black and all the other missing and murdered children who are not white and not blond and not female.

Douchebags Make it Douchy For Non-Douchebags to Wear Watches

The New York Times published a piece this weekend on watches entitled Watches Are Rediscovered by the Cellphone Generation

Excerpts from the piece reads:

But after going watch-free for much of the last decade, the three men — all in their 30s and considered style influencers — are turning back time. Mr. Thoreson, 38, is shopping for a vintage gold IWC with a white dial or a Rolex GMT-Master. Mr. Chai, 38, has been wearing a vintage Rolex, loosely dangling around his wrist, “not as a timepiece, but as a piece of jewelry,” he said.

And Mr. Williams, 32, splurged on three watches: an IWC Portuguese, a Rolex GMT-Master II and an Omega Speedmaster, also known as the “moon watch,” since that is what Apollo astronauts wore.

“The men’s-wear set has recently rediscovered the joy of proper mechanical timepieces,” Mr. Williams said. “Right now there is no clearer indication of cool than wearing a watch. If it was your grandfather’s bubbleback Rolex, even better.”

"It’s an understated statement about your station in life, your taste level,” Mr. Thoreson said.

“In certain circles,” Mr. Thoreson said, “if you don’t have a substantial timepiece with some pedigree, you feel like you’re missing out on something.”

In light of these comments and the rest of the story in general. I would like to propose some alternative titles that are perhaps a little more fitting.

• Douchbaggery Reaches the Wrist

• Bowling for Soup Was Right: High School Never Ends

• Newly Un-datable Men Find Materialistic Joy in Watches

• Social Suicide in The New York Times Style Section

• Men With Small Penises Get Nostalgic In Search For Compensatory Strategies

• Old-School Accessories for Men Who Can’t Strap their Mercedes to their Wrists

• Little Boys with Fancy Toys

• Douchebags Make it Douchy For Non-Douchebags to Wear Watches

Rethinking my assault on the institution of coffee

A follow-up to my attack on the institution of coffee from yesterday: A reader on Goodreads responded to my post with the following:

“Coffee is also a ritual, a comfort. I know I can get through a tough commute, a tough meeting, a tough report or a tough day in general if I have that coffee.

I wonder if the bigger problem is the over-sharing that goes on in social media?”

She might be onto something. As I was forced to point out several times yesterday, my post was not an attack on coffee or the act of drinking coffee, but on the way in which people insist on talking about it, tweeting about it and raising it's status in society to unreasonable levels.

It was an assault on the institution of coffee, which I thought I made pretty clear in the title of the post.

Enjoy your coffee as much as I enjoy my Caffeine-free Diet Coke, but do I have to hear about it every damn day?

So I think the Goodreads’ reader is right, or almost right.  It’s not the over-sharing that bothers me, but the unnecessary-sharing.

The boring-sharing.

For example, I watched a woman ask for 12 creams and 12 sugars in her small coffee this morning at Dunkin Donuts (I was getting coffee for my wife).

As I stood in line, I tweeted about it, because I thought it was a highly unusual and slightly insane request. I also noted the courage it must have taken to make a request like this.

And my tweet got a response. People couldn't believe it. It made a guy who drinks his coffee black scoff in disgust. It made another one laugh.

The aforementioned reader on Goodreads even responded:

12 creams and 12 sugars means it was no longer coffee, more like a vaguely coffee-tinted beverage.

Then I laughed.

This seemed like the right kind of coffee-sharing situation to me. It was unique. Odd. Possibly amusing. Maybe even conversation-inducing.

"Need. Coffee. Now." or "This is going to be a three-cup day!" or "I need my Starbucks right this minute!" are none of these things.

They are nowhere close to these things.

These kinds of comments only serve to glorify the need for coffee, and as I’ve said before, I get it.

You all need your coffee.

Fine.  Drink up.

And please shut up unless you have something new to say.

My personal assault on the institution of coffee

I am constantly annoyed by the Facebook updates, Twitter posts and verbal declarations regarding the need for coffee, the desire for coffee and the importance of coffee in everyday life. It’s a beverage, people.

Only it’s not.

Somehow it’s also become a societal totem of a harried lifestyle. The prized moniker of both the inundated worker bee and the ambitious titan of industry. A demarcation of imposed diligence and prized productivity.

And at the same time, it’s also become an acceptable means of spending leisure time.

“Let’s get a cup of coffee” has become equivalent to “Let’s take a hike” or “Let’s go see a movie” or “Let’s go throw a Frisbee in the park.”

I find all of this utterly insane.

Nevertheless, I decided to take a step back from my hardened stance on the mysterious brew and be a little more reflective when is comes to my position. I wanted to determine why these constant coffee declarations bother me so much.

Why “This is definitely a two cup day!” and “Need. Coffee. Now.” makes me want to punch said coffee drinkers in the face.

I’ve come up with three possibilities:

• I don’t drink coffee, nor have I ever even tasted coffee, so I can’t possibly understand its impact on a coffee drinker’s everyday life.
• The need for coffee is so often expressed that it has become exceedingly repetitive, virtually meaningless and utterly cliché.
• The apparent physical need for coffee (or any other substance) is a human weakness that I detest and avoid at all costs.

All three possibilities may play a role, but I’m leaning toward #2.

I am, however, willing to listen to opposing viewpoints.

Redundant, and therefore stupid, ad copy.

I don’t think that McDonald’s understands the meaning of the word savor.

Couldn’t “Relax and enjoy” characterize the word savor rather effectively?

So this ad copy essentially reads:

For every drop of life that you relax and enjoy, relax and enjoy.

Once is fine. But this is a pattern of stupidity.

I’m almost finished reading Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN. Amongst the many controversies cited in the book is Jemele Hill’s regrettable reference to Hitler in a 2008 editorial about the NBA playoffs. In describing why she could not support the Celtics in the NBA playoffs, she wrote:

Rooting for the Celtics is like saying Hitler was a victim. It's like hoping Gorbachev would get to the blinking red button before Reagan. Deserving or not, I still hate the Celtics.

For her comments, Hill was suspended for a week without pay.

At first I felt bad for Hill, understanding how her comment, while lacking nuance, was not meant to offend. As a fan of the Detroit Pistons, she was merely pointing out that once you hate a sports team like the Celtics because of the affinity you have for your team, it is impossible to ever alter your position.

As I told a friend, it’s probably a good idea to avoid referencing Hitler in all metaphors, particularly if you are in the media.

At least to avoid Godwin’s Law.

Then I went to her Wikipedia page to see what Hill has done since the controversy.

Under the heading of Controversy was this:

In 2009, Hill was at the center of a controversy after telling Green Bay Packers fans to give Brett Favre the "Duracell treatment," implying that fans at Lambeau Field should throw batteries at the former Packer quarterback.

Later in 2009, Hill once again was reprimanded for her comments after comparing University of Kentucky Wildcats men's basketball coach John Calipari to Charles Manson. She later apologized to the university.

Suddenly, I stopped feeling bad for her.

One well-intentioned miscue?  Fine.

But encouraging fans to throw batteries at an NFL quarterback?

And comparing a college basketball coach to Charles Manson?

With the thousands of resumes that ESPN receives every year, I cannot imagine why she is still with the company.

Look! Another politician can’t simply admit to making a historical mistake.

As I’ve said before, I’m not happy when lawmakers make simple historical blunders, but I can live with them. Nobody’s perfect.

It’s the refusal to admit that you have made a mistake that I cannot stand, and it only serves to make the initial mistake even worse.

Today’s case in point:

In an attempt to explain away her claim that the founding fathers worked tirelessly to end slavery (even though many of them owned slaves), Michele Bachmann attempts to lump our sixth President, abolitionist John Quincy Adams, into the group of founding fathers, even though he was nine years old at the time that the Declaration of Independence was written and a twenty year old college student at the time of the writing and adoption of the US Constitution.

Congratulations, Michele. You just made yourself look even more idiotic.

Just say, “Yup, I screwed up,” and move on. Admit your mistake and it will be forgotten in a day or two.

Otherwise your Good Morning America interview will go viral, thousands of bloggers write about your blunder-to-explain-a-blunder, and the story continues.

Honestly, who are advising these morons?

The stupidest simile in the whole wide world

Without question, the stupidest simile in the history of similes is drunk as a skunk.

It is a simile not based upon meaning but simply upon rhyme.

Skunks have absolutely nothing to do with alcohol consumption or inebriation.

Skunk and drunk rhyme.  That is the extent of the simile.

That makes it incredibly stupid.

As stupid as:

Big as a twig

As sad as glad

As nice as an improvised explosive device

Except these aren’t universally utilized similes.

Drunk as a skunk is.

Please help me put an end to it.

The celebratory graduation bedsheet has gone too far

Sometimes I get unnecessarily annoyed, so this could admittedly be one of those occasions. But I don’t think so.

Ever since the beginning of June, the Connecticut landscape has exploded with painted bed sheets congratulating recent high school graduates on their achievements. Hanging on fences, across bridges, and and between trees and poles, these sheets are everywhere, and I can’t help but feel that:

1. The world was a much better looking place without them
2. Graduation celebrations were hardly wanting before the advent of the celebratory sheet
3. We may be overvaluing the high school diploma

    

Far be it for me to underscore the value of education, but in my mind, a high school diploma is the expectation for every young person.

It is a student’s job.

In return for housing and food and clothing, a kid is supposed to get an education in order to become self-sufficient and self-sustaining, and while graduation is a time for celebration, I’m not entirely sure that it is sheet-worthy.

After all, I have to assume that some of these sheets are congratulating lazy, talent-wasting kids whose GPAs are well below the Mendoza line.

Could we at least establish a sheet worthy criteria, because based upon what I have seen over the past two weeks, every kid in town has a celebratory sheet.

I also worry about the inevitably expanding nature of such public celebrations. While ranting about these sheets recently, a friend called me a curmudgeon and suggested that I “get over it.”

“There’s nothing wrong with celebrating a lifetime of academic achievement,” he said.

“Sure,” I agreed. “Celebrate." But do we have to hang bed sheets all over town? What happened to a handshake and a party? Even a gift is fine.  But a sheet? It strikes me as a game of one-upmanship by a bunch of parents with too much time on their hands.

You watch. This is just the beginning.

An hour later after this conversation, I drove past a sheet celebrating a student’s graduation from sixth grade.

Sixth grade.

As my wife said, every grade until high school is practically an automatic pass.

Graduating from sixth grade is akin to potty training.

Everyone does it.

But what began as the draping of sheets across bridge abutments has now expanded to the draping of sheets all over town, including some of the most prime real estate available.

And now we have sheets for kids who have survived middle school.

What’s next?

Elementary school? Pre-school? GEDs?

Will we have bed sheets congratulating children on their green belt in karate? Their most recent Boy Scout merit badge? Are parents going to start hanging sheets when their kid wins a soccer tournament?

A school raffle?

How about when their kid finally finished War and Peace?

Congratulations, Jimmy! Tolstoy would be proud! We are, too!

Don’t laugh. It could happen if we don’t do something to stop this insanity.

I was at dinner with a like-minded friend last night, explaining the situation in detail, and he liked my proposed solution to the recent celebratory sheet proliferation:

Vandalism

Spray-paint all the celebratory sheets in the area with messages like:

So what?

Big deal.

This was meant for sleeping, moron.

Unfortunately, our wives overheard our conversation, and Elysha asked me not to do it. One of the very few times in our relationship that she asked me to refrain from something.

So I might not.

But I’m still considering it.