Politricks

I finally figured it out.

I finally discovered, after all this time, the fundamental difference between the two major-party campaigns ... and it only took two years!

Each candidate has come out and stated what he would do with taxes, health care policy, foreign policy, and so on. But both candidates have also come out with cheap shots and bold-faced lies about their opponents. Both have also lied about themselves.

In short, this "most historic election of all time" has been pretty much politics as usual.

But there is a huge difference between the candidates that only becomes evident when you realize what all of this campaigning has really been about. Each man is asking every one of us to go into a little curtained-off makeshift closet and pull his lever.

This is nothing new ... men young and old have been asking for this throughout history. And men have often come up with grandiose plans to get people to pull their levers, often talking a big game or being less-than-truthful in the process.

(Yes, I know I took this in an inappropriate direction, but bear with me.)

Let's be honest, when the campaigning is over and the realities of Washington set in, whichever one of these clowns gets elected today is going to wind up screwing you. If you take a moment to embrace the nature of this particular metaphor - immature as it may be - you realize something profound. By voting for either one, you are doing something for them that helps them far more than it will help you. And when it's all over, you won't feel respected the way you thought you might.

The big difference between these campaigns is Obama has been able to say just the right things (or the wrong things in just the right way ... wink, wink, nudge, nudge) to make the average voter feel excited about getting a chance to run behind a curtain and pull his lever. At the same time, McCain has taken a far less sexy approach that has reminded too many voters of why their mothers told them not to talk to strangers. At this point in the campaign, to the average voter he seems smarmier, more desperate. Almost creepy.

After all this time, all these ads, all these interviews, world tours, SNL appearances, debates ... after all that, it comes down to perception. And so today we go to the polls to decide which come-on line got us best.

Today it's "Yes, I can respect you in the morning" versus "hey, kids, I've got some tax breaks for you in the back of my van."

R-E-S-P-yadda yadda yadda

Nothing irks adults more than when children give them the respect they deserve.

Palin Representin' da' A-K-49. Woot-woot!

What do ya' know ... Saturday Night Live is funny again.

Many props to the Guff'ner for this one.

Strange Days

October 14, 2008, goes down as a unique one for me.

For the first time in my life, my circle of acquaintances had a birth and a death on the exact same day.

I got both pieces of news when I got to work this morning. Festive decorations on a cubicle, heartfelt sorrow in an email. The Alpha and the Omega all at once.

Both families are in my prayers, albeit very different prayers for each.

Critical Thinking

Sometimes I love critics, although much less so when it is I that is being critiqued. Rabid sharks are seldom as biting as some critics. Consider this line, from Slate Magazine's review of Michael Myers' new movie, The Love Guru:

This tale of a guru who brings joy to all who meet him is the most joy-draining 88 minutes I've ever spent outside a hospital waiting room.

Ouch.

Windfall prophets

Dave Ramsey, my new favorite financial guru, had an interesting comment on Big Oil yesterday. After spending $75 - the maximum amount the local gas station would authorize on a debit card at the pump - to fill the tank of his "politically incorrect" truck about three-quarters of the way, he went into the gas station's store to buy a drink. His little bottle of water cost him a buck.

It got me to thinking a little bit. If Big Oil should be punished for its windfall profits, I wonder what the calculation is on a bottle of water, 'cuz it's freakin' free. It's water. All they did was put it in a bottle. It's water ... and it's a dollar

For 8 ounces, it's a dollar, which, by the way, is $16 a gallon.

I think Big Water should be punished for windfall profits! Deer Park, you're going down! Costco brand water, you need to be taxed!

He then goes on to point out that a grande latte from Starbucks is $53 a gallon. Perhaps it's time to go after Big Coffee, too.

Be Seated

I hate when I get accused of being lazy just because I put something off for a few days or several months. You know - like posting.

(True, sometimes it is because I'm lazy, but that doesn't mean I have to like being accused of it.)

Yet sometimes the reason has nothing to do with laziness. For example, I have a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be organized. I also have developed a pretty good framework for how I want to organize it. I just need to put the organizational system into place, then all the organizing will be easy. My problem - and thus the delay - is finishing the system. You see, I'm a perfectionist; I'm just not very good at it. But here the problem is crazy, not lazy.

Then there are other reasons. The driver's seat of my car, for instance, broke. Apparently there is a weld in the frame of the seatback that snapped at some point. When this first happened, the seat leaned to right a little bit but still held up OK. After a while, something snapped again and suddenly I could no longer incrementally adjust the reclining angle of the seat. Also, if I leaned too hard, the seat would make a Pop! and suddenly it would recline a lot. When this happened, I would have to get out of the car, pull the lever that allows you to recline the seat, and give the seat back a big shove forward.

Lately, however, the seat turned terminal. The seat back had all the structural integrity of wet cardboard and it had to be replaced. This led to the conversation that I had been avoiding. I took Hubert (I drive a mid-90's Buick ... it's an old man's car, it needs an old man's name!) to the local dealership and asked for an estimate.

I know what you're thinking at this point. First, I don't know why, oh why, you are still reading this. Second, you are getting ready to point the lazy finger at me for not getting an estimate sooner.

But you see, I already had an estimate; I just needed one from the dealer. And as I had estimated, the dealer's estimate was indeed higher than my estimate of the dealer's estimate. See, I hadn't been putting this off out of laziness, I had been putting this off because I'm cheap.

Fortunately for me, the service manager on duty that day was also cheap. He suggested I check with salvage yards to see if I could track down a new, er, replacement seat that way.

(One good thing about driving an old man's car is there are always plenty of parts available from salvage yards. Many old men drive either too slow or too fast, which means there are a lot of cars out there that are OK except for the tremendous front-end or rear-end damage. As they used to say about chicken nuggets, parts is parts.)

Sure enough, I found a seat.

All it took was a couple hours of work, a trip to the local auto parts store to find the special ratchet attachment for the one freaking star-shaped bolt, and some colorful metaphors and voila! I had replacement seat in my car for a good $1,000 less than it would have been to have the dealer do it.

And to prove laziness was not the issue, the next day I uninstalled and reinstalled the seat again.

(That aforementioned one freaking star-shaped bolt is used to attach the seat belt to the frame of the car. The seat belt receptacle on the replacement seat was incompatible with the seat belt on the car. I didn't realize this until Saturday night when we drove to the store. As I was driving, my seat belt, which I had clicked into the receptacle, started retracting. It clicked, it just didn't latch.)

I'm actually going to have to uninstall and reinstall the seat one more time. The upholstery on the seats don't match, so there is a slight deviation between the fabric on the various seats.

(By slight deviation, I mean the back and passenger seats are maroon, the driver's seat is beige.)

That's a repair for a different day, however. Perhaps even a different month.

Imagine That

My son leads a secret double life. Typical third-grade boy by day, once school is out (and if there’s nothing good on TV) he sheds his cover and becomes Super Terrific Imaginary Action Hero Boy.

The life of a super terrific imaginary action hero boy can be an arduous one, fraught with danger, destruction, and, of course, lots of explosions. One day he might have to save the world from imaginary mutant dinosaurs, the next he may have to rally the good, ahem, metamorphing robots to repel an attack from the bad ones. The following day he may be an imaginary mutant dinosaur out to destroy the world. And of course there are the standard battles to wage that only involve humans ... who happen to be armed to the teeth with automatic weapons and laser guns.

Whatever the nature of the task facing a super terrific imaginary action hero boy, there are always two common elements: automatic weapon fire and mass destruction. The automatic weapon fire is essential because of the need for cool sound effects. That telltale tshtshtshtshtsht sound of an imaginary machine gun can be heard no matter what a boy is playing. "OK, Billy, you be the Pope and I'll be Buddha. Tshtshtshtshtsht!"

Incidentally, not every boy grows out of the sound-effects stage. Ms N gives me guff every time I pick up one of our cats. It's not a conscious act, but every time I hoist them off the ground I make a "Tshew" sound.

As for mass destruction, well, every third-grade boy worth his fruit snacks is a walking mass of destruction. Whether he's causing it or trying to prevent it, a super terrific imaginary action hero boy faces destruction of Biblical proportions every day.

It's a thankless imaginary job, but with great imaginary power comes great imaginary responsibility.

As I was getting ready to work on a household project, I heard my son downstairs. He was engaged in an epic battle that stretched from the living room to the dining room. There was even a sneak attack against the enemy’s flank in the hallway. Before long, the imaginary battle worked its way up the stairs and right to the edge of the room I was in.

"So how's the battle going?" I asked.

"Good," he replied, before unloading another imaginary clip into his surging imaginary foes.

"Are you winning?"

"No," he answered. He switched to a more laser-sounding weapon.

"Oh," I replied. Sensing a fatherly advice type moment, I figured I'd dispense some fatherly advice. "Well, keep fighting the good fight and I'm sure you'll prevail."

"Yeah," he answered, firing a few more rounds. "That's the way it usually works out."

Research and Dev-Hell-opment

"Annoying as Hell" seems like an understatement, what with the nasty reputation Satan has built up over the centuries.

Annoying? Hell is not supposed to be a nuisance; it's supposed to be agonizing! It's supposed to be, well, Hell.

But when you think about it, over time (and what is eternity if not lots and lots of time?) some annoyances become unbearably tortuous.

With the ever-growing numbers of people that seem to be on the eternal damnation fast-track nowadays, there are good reasons to believe that Hades Inc would have a vested interest in finding punishments that are more cost effective and environmentally friendly.

Besides, many of the more insidious tortures are labor intensive and Beelzebub is facing labor issues. Unlike the Screen Actors Guild, the Subterranean Brotherhood of Minions and Trolls Local 666 is not under Satan's direct control. They reportedly have connections with the Teamsters, and we all know that can't be good news for management.

Alternative methods are employed according to the extent of ones pre-mortem misdeeds. Murderers and lawyers get the Pit of Eternal Fire, while people who were more "naughty" than "evil" get less extreme punishments, like the Fly of Eternal Ear Buzzing or the Unending Unreachable Itch.

The research division of Hades Inc tends to be secretive, but every once and a while rumors slip out. Here are some of the recent projects "allegedly" in development.

The Perpetual Hold
(“Your call is important to us. Due to high caller volume, your call will be answered in approximately ten … thousand years”)

The Smoke Alarm
(Doesn’t sound bad, you say? Remember, where there’s eternal fire, there’s bound to be eternal smoke)

The Realm of Loud Cell Phone Talkers

The Infinite Download

The Endless Staff Meeting

The Never-Ending “Head On” Commercial
(Apply directly to your forehead)

The Self-Losing Car Keys

The Uncooling Coffee

The Mobius Memo

And of course the dreaded Middle Seat in Coach.

Half Glassed

"Hope for the best, prepare for the worst"; that's my motto.

(Well, one of them, at least. "Buy low, sell high, collect early, and pay late" is another personal favorite. "I plan to live forever ... or die trying" is another, and it has the added benefit of being one to which I can claim ownership!)

But in practice, the words by which I live are more appropriately stated as: "Hope for the best, prepare for whatever requires the least preparation."

I've heard a tale told of a small farming town on the prairie that was suffering from horrible droughts. The townsfolk decided that with the help of the local pastor they would gather one day and pray their hardest for help from above; perhaps the Lord would answer their pleas with some much-needed rainfall.

On the prescribed day, the people gathered at the town square. Every single person showed up, but when the mass prayer was set to begin, the pastor looked disapprovingly at the crowd. "You people have no faith," he scolded, much to the astonishment of those there gathered. "Not one of you brought an umbrella."

It dawned on me that by observing the way in which someone prepares themselves, you might be able to discern that person's likely outlook on life. Preparation, after all, is a product of the expectation - or at least acknowledgment of the likelihood - of possible future events. Preparation is active risk management.

When the fire alarm goes off in many office buildings, the response of the employees is often less enthusiastic as it would be, say, in an elementary school. Teachers and school administrators have good reason to make sure that kids file out of the building in a somewhat orderly fashion, and kids usually would prefer being outside, anyways. Plus, those that evacuate to the front of the school get to see the fire truck.

Office workers, on the other hand, are less enthused about the fire truck, and often less excited about going outside. As adults, office workers are expected to handle their own evacuation. There's no lining up in single-file lines. Besides, years of experience have taught most office workers that there are far more sounding of the fire alarms than there are actual fires.

Where there's smoke, there's probably a frozen waffle jammed into a break-room toaster.

As a result, office workers are frequently non-plussed about the whole alarm-thing, and often take a moment or five to prepare themselves and their work area before actually attempting to leave the building.

A fire alarm, therefore, presents the possibility for a sociological experiment. Theoretically, the extent to which an office worker prepares him- or herself for a building evacuation could correlate to that worker's general perspective on life. An optimist and a pessimist would presumably have a different outlook on the alarm, and thus would respond differently.

One may feel that the alarm is just another in a string of false alarms. If so, this person would gather very little - perhaps their purse, keys, or cell phone. It seems reasonable to assume that the person who evacuates the office empty handed is expecting to return to the office in short time and to find his work waiting for him just like he left it.

Some people, however, leave the office during the alarm looking as if they were leaving for the day. This type of person is anticipating that his work may not be as he left it; that this alarm may be real and that their office may be at risk of being engulfed in the blaze. (Bull manure is flammable, after all)

This person, laden with shoulder bags, laptops, coats, boots, and possibly even family photos and coffee mugs, is ready to not only evacuate the building, but to leave the area altogether if that is required.

Next time your building's alarm goes off, think about how you respond, and how your coworkers respond. Who's expecting to come back and who's thinking the building might burn to the ground? Makes for interesting musing.

My own experience is that people do respond differently. The problem, though, is now one of definition. Take the guy who evacuates with all of his personal effects and car keys in hand and compare him to the guy who is just waiting to head back up and return to his work ...

Which one's the optimist?