Thinking The Lions

19. Start treating health care like what it is: a universal, inherent right of all people.

18. Baseball should have a shorter season and shorter games.

16. Just start DVDs without all the preliminaries, please.

13. Ban driving any kind of automobile, motorcycle or other personal veh icle within 1-2 miles of downtown in any city with a population of more than 100,000.

12. Abolish gym class; instead, teach kids to play musical instruments.

11. Change copyright laws to allow anyone to use anyone else's creative work provided that the copier pay 60% of the profit to the originator and that the copier not cast the original work in a negative light.

10. Have more sidewalk cafes and outdoor seating.

9. When you have to give someone a gift, ask them what they want, and then get that thing for them.

8. Never interrupt or finish someone's jokes.

7. Periodically, give up something you like for at least a month.

6. Switch to "E-money."

5. Have each person assigned one phone number, and then add an extension for the various phones and faxes that person might be reached at.

4. Abolish Mondays and Tuesdays.

3. Don't listen to interviews with athletes or comedians.

2. Have "personal cashiers" at the grocery store.

1. Don't earn more than $200,000 per year .

Really, it's just giving me my money back, but it's like finding money, sort of. (3 Good Things From 8/28/09)

Even though I didn't get to leave work early like I'd planned... and in fact had to work late, I still had no trouble coming up with 3 Good Things from yesterday.

1. I got my mileage reimbursement for August a couple of days early. It's nice to get an unexpected check left on your desk just before the weekend.

2. When Sweetie and I walked the Babies! to McDonald's for an ice cream after dinner -- an ice cream that neither of us got, as it turned out, as after walking there neither of us wanted one -- we left early from the Playland because the other kids were really, really loud. We headed back home earlier than we'd planned, which turned out lucky because we got home mere minutes before a horrible thunderstorm broke out.

3. Mr F fell asleep all curled in a blanket, for the first time in his life, so far as I can recall. When I went into check on him last night, he'd pulled a bright green blanket from the floor into his crib and was snuggled into it.

Wouldn't "Portable Guinea Pigs" make a great band name?

Have you ever been sitting somewhere, like, say, a mandatory meeting for parents of high school students about financial aid and college and other important matters, and instead of listening, you're trying to watch videos on your iPod, but you don't have any good ones, and you sit there thinking Boy, today I was able to watch The Pen Story and that one with the hippo where they dance to The Lion Sleeps Tonight. I'd kind of like to watch that one...

And then you realize that the meeting's been over for a half hour?

Me, too. That's why I was so excited to hear about "Voydo." Voydo is a service that lets you Convert And Download YouTube Videos, without being a technological genius, either.

Check out the site. It's totally simple: Just cut&paste the video link URL and then hit a button. Then you click the box and it'll take it from there.

This is, not to put too fine a point on it, one of the greatest advances I've ever heard of. The key problem with Youtube (aside from those stupid piano cat videos) is that I could never take the videos with me to watch some other time. So if I wanted to see that guinea pig turning around, I had to go to work to do it. Or home. But you get the point. I wanted portable guinea pigs.

I just now, in about a minute and a half, did that and added some cool videos to my iPod, so I'm ready for the next big parental meeting at school. Bring it on, administrators!

Friday, August 28, 2009

1001 Ways To Tune Up The World, Number Twenty-Three

楽しみのための新しい言語をちょうど学びなさい

Aprenda línguas novas apenas para o divertimento

Μάθετε τις νέες γλώσσες ακριβώς για τη διασκέδαση

Выучьте новые языки как раз для потехи

Impari le nuove lingue appena per divertimento
23. Learn new languages just for fun.

I was going to have this one be Teach kids a new language each year of school, beginning with first grade, or even kindergarten but then I widened it out because I saw some books on sale at the store the other day that promised to let me learn languages while driving, and the only reason I didn't immediately buy at least one (if not more) was because Mr F and Mr Bunches were acting up and I had to wrestle them into submission.

Almost literally.

I still think kids should learn languages more early and learn more languages. We'd be better off cutting out "social studies" and putting in language teachers (who could be part time, after all) and exposing kids to languages and cultures before their brains are all old and calcified like mine, but learning languages isn't great just for kids, it's great for everyone.

I've learned at one time or another four languages (in addition to English), and not all of them were learned by necessity. I took Spanish in high school, because I had to take a language and it was easier to learn to say El medroso Senor Gill y las ranas than it was to say der gefürchtete Herr Gill und die Frösche.

Then, I learned Japanese in college just for the heck of it. That was the second-best class I took in college. Well, third, I guess, behind "guitar" and "astronomy."

Then I learned Arabic because I went to Morocco and didn't speak it but had to get around. That's where I picked up a bit of French, too, as well as being taught the key to proper French pronunciation (the key being: never say the last letter of the word.)

But I want to learn more. I'd really like to learn Russian. And Chinese. Not because I need to, but because I want to.

Learning new languages exercises parts of the brain that never get used otherwise, and creates an appreciation for the culture of the country or group whose language you're learning. It also helps make you more of a citizen of the world. Even if I only remember a few words of Arabic, and don't know how to read it anymore, (ماذا يعني هذا القول ، على أية حال؟ ?) I think the Moroccans I ran into appreciated my efforts to speak their language. Would I still like samurais if I hadn't studied Japanese? Probably. But I like to think I appreciate them a little more than the rest of my countrymen.

Learning someone else's language also helps make foreigners a little less foreign, and offers an insight into the culture that produced the language. Empathy, almost. I'm not saying people always learning other languages will end all wars or result in a unified world government. But it would result in everyone being a little smarter, and understanding each other just a little better.

Prior entries:

22. Opposite yourself.

21. Just like dandelions.

19. Start treating health care like what it is: a universal, inherent right of all people.

18. Baseball should have a shorter season and shorter games.

16. Just start DVDs without all the preliminaries, please.

10. Have more sidewalk cafes and outdoor seating.

9. When you have to give someone a gift, ask them what they want, and then get that thing for them.

8. Never interrupt or finish someone's jokes.

4. Abolish Mondays and Tuesdays.

3. Don't listen to interviews with athletes or comedians.

2. Have "personal cashiers" at the grocery store.

1. Don't earn more than $200,000 per year .

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Question of the Day, 68

"Do you swear on me and the Babies! and everything, and Swear to God, and stick a needle in your eye?"
-- Sweetie.

Sweetie knows how to extract a promise. This week, we're going to refinance our mortgage and there was a small holdup that delayed it. Sweetie asked me the above to get me to promise that I would, definitely, call the bank the next day.

I pointed out to her that the last part was probably unnecessary, as if I swore to the rest and didn't call the bank, everyone and everything would be dead, and I'd be in Hell... and did I really, at that point, need to also poke myself in the eye?

I am the fastest man alive! (who is sitting in front of my computer!) (3 Good Things From 8/27/09)

I'm so glad it's back, even though it was gone a day. Here's yesterday's highlights.

1. I got to walk in the rain, just a little. Even though I had my suit and tie on, walking back from a meeting in a warm, late summer drizzle was a pleasant experience. I was able to feel the rain and enjoy it without getting soaked.

2. At the club, I cut my 2-mile treadmill time down to 18:10. Watch out, Usain Bolt.

3. Mr Bunches displayed an uncanny ability, at the store last night, to keep finding little wind-up toy/candy sets. As we picked up a couple of necessities (diapers, and what appeared to be 73 bottles of shampoo), Sweetie and I marveled at how Mr Bunches would roam the aisles with us and magically find toy after toy to carry with him, each of them these little wind-up toys that came packaged with a random-seeming leftover Christmas candy.

He only got two of them, though.

1001 Ways To Tune Up The World, Number Twenty-Two

22. Opposite yourself.

By that I mean, whatever it is you like or are interested in, find someone who espouses the exact opposite of what you believe, and spend a little time each day reading or listening to or watching them.

If you're into sports and like a certain team, find someone who likes another team or sport. If you're a Republican, listen to a Democrat, and vice versa. If you hate a certain kind of music, try listening to some of it, anyway, now and then. Pro-this? Meet Anti-That.

With the way news organizations line up to present a given point, with the ability to skip some columnists and read others, with Google alerts and other web features letting us pick and choose what we want to read, hear, see, and experience, with iPods replacing radio, it becomes too easy to wrap ourselves in only those things that we agree with and which agree with us and which reinforce our world view.

That's too easy, and too wrong. Never being challenged means never testing the strength of your likes and your beliefs. If your viewpoints are right, then they can take a push from someone else who disagrees; being right means you don't fear listening to someone who's wrong. Only someone who's uncertain, or wrong, ignores or shouts down the opposition. And understanding the other side's point of view is important, even if you think they're wrong, because you have to know what you're up

If you do this, too, you might just find that you'll change, and grow. I've practiced this one for a long time now, and I've found my views changing from time to time, as I realize that a side I previously disagreed with had a good point. So I keep it up. I make it a point to listen to talk radio hosts I disagree with. I put music on my iPod that I might not otherwise like and leave it there. I try foods I previously hated. I read Maureen Dowd, even though she's never said anything I agree with. And I think about why they say what they say, and why I believe what I believe.

Prior entries:

21. Just like dandelions.

19. Start treating health care like what it is: a universal, inherent right of all people.

18. Baseball should have a shorter season and shorter games.

16. Just start DVDs without all the preliminaries, please.

10. Have more sidewalk cafes and outdoor seating.

9. When you have to give someone a gift, ask them what they want, and then get that thing for them.

8. Never interrupt or finish someone's jokes.

4. Abolish Mondays and Tuesdays.

3. Don't listen to interviews with athletes or comedians.

2. Have "personal cashiers" at the grocery store.

1. Don't earn more than $200,000 per year .

How'd a spider make this list? (3 Good Things From 8/25 and 8/26)

I was thinking of discontinuing 3 Good Things, not because I don't have enough good things but just to focus on other stuff for this blog, but then I thought, "Wait, I can do 3 Good Things, and still focus on other stuff for this blog. All I have to do is do less work around the house and office." Problem solved! So here's my 3 Good Things From The Last Two Days:

1. Last night, grocery shopping, Mr Bunches tried to steal another shopper's watermelon from under his cart. Mr Bunches always thinks the watermelons are like balls, and he wants to throw them.

2. The spider is back! I felt bad for him (her?) before, but now he's back and his web is better than ever and I'm learning to coexist with him.

3. I heard that the guy who won that $260 million jackpot spent the other morning mowing his neighbor's lawn because she needed the help. So if I couldn't win it, at least a nice guy did.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

1001 Ways To Tune Up The World, Number Twenty-One

21. Just like dandelions.

The other day, my mom said to me "A weed is just a plant growing where you don't want it to."

When, and why, did we start liking all-grass, perfectly manicured lawns? Think how much energy, and chemicals, we put into eradicating dandelions, and other "weeds," just because they're growing where we don't like them. Think about that, and then answer this:

Would you rather go for a walk along a golf fairway, or through a meadow?

The profuse exuberance of nature is ours for free, if we want it. Instead, we trample it down and cut it off and spray it with chemicals. We sweat and break our backs and use up all our free time, and for what? For a perfectly manicured lawn that requires us to start again the next day, for a lawn that looks like a movie set instead of a part of the landscape?

It doesn't matter how often we try to drive it away. Nature always comes back. So if we just like dandelions, let them grow where they want and accept them, our lives will be better.

You could use your extra time to call your senator or representative and urge them to vote for universal health care. I've spelled out a workable plan here. And you can find easy ways to get in touch with your senators or representatives just by clicking here.

Prior entries:

19. Start treating health care like what it is: a universal, inherent right of all people.

18. Baseball should have a shorter season and shorter games.

16. Just start DVDs without all the preliminaries, please.

13. Ban driving any kind of automobile, motorcycle or other personal veh

icle within 1-2 miles of downtown in any city with a population of more than 100,000.

12. Abolish gym class; instead, teach kids to play musical instruments.

11. Change copyright laws to allow anyone to use anyone else's creative work provided that the copier pay 60% of the profit to the originator and that the copier not cast the original work in a negative light.

10. Have more sidewalk cafes and outdoor seating.

9. When you have to give someone a gift, ask them what they want, and then get that thing for them.

8. Never interrupt or finish someone's jokes.

4. Abolish Mondays and Tuesdays.

3. Don't listen to interviews with athletes or comedians.

2. Have "personal cashiers" at the grocery store.

1. Don't earn more than $200,000 per year .

Taking Stock: My Wallet

I decided I'd clean out my wallet the other day, and then I decided I'd share with you what was in my wallet, pre-clean...

1. The wallet itself, a leather one that replaced my old wallet. The old one that I'd bought myself folded into three parts, making it too bulky to carry in my back pocket, so I asked Sweetie to get me a new one as a present, and she did.

2. Various lottery tickets. Every time I get gas, I get a couple of lottery tickets. You'll say I'm a sucker, but it adds maybe $3 to the cost of a fill-up and in return, I might win a jillion dollars. And if I do, and you did call me a sucker, I will take out a billboard in your town and put a picture of me on it with the caption "Who's a sucker now!" (Note to karma/fate: I will also do good things with the money, so send it my way.)

I checked all these numbers on Saturday; I check them myself because I don't trust convenience store clerks to do it at the shop. What if I win a jillion and they don't tell me and they say the ticket's garbage so I leave with my candy bar and that night on the news I hear "Convenience store clerk wins a jillion dollars, says 'who's the sucker now?' I just don't take that chance.

3. Money That I Had To Give Back To Sweetie: The Boy wanted to go see Inglourious Basterds on Saturday, but none of his friends were around, so he asked me if I wanted to go, and I agreed to, so Sweetie gave me $30 so we could go to the movie.

Then, The Boy got a call from some girls who said they'd go, so The Boy ditched me and decided to go with them and I had to give the money back to Sweetie. But karma got The Boy (as it always does) when the girls later changed their plans, leaving The Boy with nobody to go see the movie with.

4. A receipt for parking in Milwaukee. This is the actual receipt from the day I thought actual things about Regina Spektor's new album. I've been carrying it in my wallet for nearly a month, meaning to turn it in to our office manager for reimbursement of my twelve bucks. I finally gave it to her this past Monday.

5. A receipt for the Babies! air conditioner: We bought the Babies! an air conditioner this year, since our house doesn't have central air and their old air conditioner was on its last legs. I smartly saved the receipt in my wallet for nearly three months before realizing that I was no longer likely to return the machine.

The Babies! also lost their air conditioner privileges this week when Mr F noticed that there was a cord from the AC to the wall, and decided that he'd try to swing on that cord. When I was unable to deter him from that, I had to remove the air conditioner from their room for fear that he'd pull it right out of the wall.

6. A picture of Mr Bunches when he had no hair and more baby fat. I keep a variety of pictures in my wallet; the left-hand side is the kids and the right hand side is from the extended family. I've also got, tucked in with those pictures, a cut-out from the day I quit smoking five years ago.

7. Middle's Senior Picture: This is another of the collection of photos that includes Oldest's senior picture, The Boy's freshman football photo, Middle's Golf Tea

m photo, and one of Sweetie signing a wedding registry at her brother's wedding in West Virginia. All of them are rare photos of my family in which you can see their faces; all the kids have Sweetie's habit of instinctively ducking away from a camera.

8. My Best Buy Credit Card: To avoid spending, Sweetie and I are supposed to keep credit cards in a box in my drawer (we call it The Glass Case Of Emotion.) This card is still in my wallet from the night we had to go get my nephew a present.

9. Ticket Stub From "The Hangover." I save nearly every ticket stub from every movie Sweetie and I go see. I have a whole collection of things like that. Also, although it's hard to see, I have in my wallet a list Sweetie gave me a long time ago of all the things she likes about me, and an excerpt she cut out of a book of a scene she thought was romantic and sexy.

10. The OTHER Best Buy Card: We used to have a "Circuit City" credit card along with our "Best Buy" account, because you can never buy too many electronics on credit. Then "Circuit City" went belly-up, and Best Buy bought them out, and we got sent a new card, and I can never keep straight which one is the "real" card and which is fake. Rather than throw out a credit card that might be valid, I just keep them both. That's efficiency.

11. The pictures of the extended family: The only one you can see clearly is my niece, Lauren, who I believe is identical to my niece Alexis. My brother Bill apparently says they're not identical, but Bill is clearly nuts. If you saw them, you'd know they're identical.

Lauren is the younger twin who always got a raw deal when the girls were little. Once, she and her sisters were playing house. My niece Ciara was the mom, Alexis was the daughter, and Lauren was... the dog. Later on, they played superheroes. Ciara was Supergirl. Alexis was Wonder Woman. And Lauren was... superdog.

12. A Blank Business Card. I don't often remember to carry my business cards around, but I've made an effort to put 1 or 2 in my wallet just in case. This was the last one left in my wallet that day, and it turns out it was blank on both sides:

I originally took a picture of both sides of the card, to prove that it was blank on both sides, but then I realized that didn't prove anything, since I could simply have taken two pictures of the same side of the card. So you'll have to rely on my word that the business card in my wallet was actually blank on both sides.

As a final note, the newspaper in the upper right of the picture was not ever in my wallet. It was just on the table as I spread out my wallet contents.

Question of the Day, 67

Can you tell us apart?
-- Sweetie, upon returning home from her hair appointment.

She asked that question while holding up a picture of Cindy Crawford that she'd used as a model for her hair style last night.

It wasn't, though, even kind of close. I could tell them apart easily, because while their hair styles were similar, Sweetie is 1 billion times hotter than Cindy Crawford.

Note: Sweetie is not pictured because she won't let me take pictures of her and throws her arms up whenever I try to, so I mostly have pictures of Sweetie's elbows. But even her elbows are very pretty.

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

1001 Ways To Tune Up The World, Number Twenty.

20. Why not have Radio-DVRs?

It's hard, in tuning up the world, to follow up some ideas with others, and I'm not doing these in any specific order. So really super important ideas like number one, or number nineteen, have to get mixed in with things that aren't quite as life-saving, but which would, nonetheless, help improve the world, and that's my goal here.

And DVR-Radios would help improve the world.

I suppose they'd be DARs, or some such, Digitial Audio Recorders, but whatever you call them, we should have them.

The technology has to exist to create a Radio-DVR and then install it in stereos, iPods, and car dashboards. DVRs are smaller and more accessible nowadays, and modifying it so that it would work only on audio would, it seems to me, be cheaper and easier to do.

It makes sense to do that, too. Radio stations and other broadcasters are creating more and more "podcasts," but those aren't sufficient and they're kind of clumsy. Yeah, yeah, I can download a podcast and listen to "Dan Patrick" on my iPod but I have to download the podcast on my computer, and then load it into my iPod, then hook my iPod up in my car, and that's a lot of extra work. Plus, what if I'm listening to "Dan Patrick" on my drive to Milwaukee and then I get there, but the show's only half over? I don't get to listen to the other half until I get back to my home or office and then I either have to listen to it on my computer, or I have to download it and go through that whole rigamarole? Why couldn't I just hit record and then listen to the rest of the show when I get back from court?

I should be able to do that, and to just set my car radio to DVR "Dan Patrick," and "The Bob & Tom Show" and "Sly In The Morning" and then pick and choose from those to listen to them when I want to listen to them? Doing that would revolutionize radio, making it easier and more possible to listen to radio shows. "Easier" and "more possible" generally equal "more people" and "more money."

After all, we have DVDs and DVRs, and they co-exist, making it convenient to watch "Better Off Ted" when and where I want.

So let's get with it, radio people! And electronics people, I suppose, too. You get with it, too. I've done my part.

Oh, and also, call your senator or representative and tell them to start being human beings instead of pawns of the insurance companies, and to vote for universal health care just as I proposed it. You can find easy ways to get in touch with them just by clicking here.

Prior entries:

19. Start treating health care like what it is: a universal, inherent right of all people.

18. Baseball should have a shorter season and shorter games.

16. Just start DVDs without all the preliminaries, please.

13. Ban driving any kind of automobile, motorcycle or other personal vehicle within 1-2 miles of downtown in any city with a population of more than 100,000.

12. Abolish gym class; instead, teach kids to play musical instruments.

11. Change copyright laws to allow anyone to use anyone else's creative work provided that the copier pay 60% of the profit to the originator and that the copier not cast the original work in a negative light.

10. Have more sidewalk cafes and outdoor seating.

9. When you have to give someone a gift, ask them what they want, and then get that thing for them.

8. Never interrupt or finish someone's jokes.

4. Abolish Mondays and Tuesdays.

3. Don't listen to interviews with athletes or comedians.

2. Have "personal cashiers" at the grocery store.

1. Don't earn more than $200,000 per year .

I found the squirrel funny because it never hit me. Stupid squirrels and their bad aim! (3 Good Things from 8/24/09)

Who can find 3 Good Things about a Monday? I can...

1. Pizzaburgers for dinner! Is there a better combination of foods than that? Is there a better combination, period, than pizza+burgers? Until JediCheesePuffs come along, no.

2. During the walk Sweetie and I and the Babies! took, we were briefly treated to a shower of hickory nut shells thrown down at us from an unseen squirrel, above.

3. This song, which I got on Saturday and first listened to yesterday:

It's "I Like You So Much Better When You're Naked," By Ida Maria, and it's so good I listened to it 3 times in a row.

Monday, August 24, 2009

1001 Ways To Tune Up The World, Number Nineteen

19. Start treating health care like what it is: a universal, inherent right of all people.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness mean nothing if a person can't afford to take her baby to the doctor because she can't pay a co-pay. They mean nothing if a person cannot get her insurance company to pay for the blood thinning drug a doctor recommends, and instead has to rely on prayer and an aspirin a day. They mean nothing if pre-existing conditions can't get treated and if people have to work at the same job, with no hope of leaving, because they can't lose their insurance and switching jobs means just that.

America -- and the rest of the world, but America, for now -- is better than that. I can't even believe we're having the discussion about whether or not it's right, and feasible, to simply provide free or affordable health care for every person in America, right now, right this second. The top 5 movies alone in 2008 grossed nearly 2 billion dollars. The top 10 grossed $2.5 billion.

If we, as Americans, took one-half the money we spent seeing crap like "Quantum of Solace" and paid for health care, we could easily, easily easily afford it.

All that has to be done, and it is this simple, is first, require that any insurer who provides insurance cover all pre-existing conditions. Then, have the Federal Department of Health And Human Services offer an insurance policy -- call it "Federal Care." Make it available to anyone who wants to buy it, and charge as premiums a percentage of the insured's income.

Bingo. Universal health coverage. It would be free for people at or near the poverty line, and affordable for everyone else. Those who don't want the government to administer their health care don't have to buy the policy. Insurance companies would be able to compete because not everyone would want, or need that coverage. Private companies already compete quite well with the government: private lenders coexist with FHA and VA-guaranteed loans, with student loans, and with government package delivery.

It's that simple. he United States can, and should, immediately provide access to health care for everyone, and if you think otherwise, if you think anything but that, then you are greedy and stupid and mean. We can and should do that. But we don't. And it's a shame. It's a shame that the gullible, greedy, stupid and mean are in charge of the country instead of me. It's a shame that people let themselves be tricked, and trick others, into thinking that the system we have is any good, and its a shame the people are getting sick and dying, that babies and little kids and grandmas and mothers have to struggle with curable health conditions, all because Americans would rather let their politicians get rich off of insurance companies, and because Americans would rather spend their money on Cheetos than on providing a kidney to a small boy.

Sometimes, I'm very ashamed of my country.

Prior entries:

18. Baseball should have a shorter season and shorter games.

16. Just start DVDs without all the preliminaries, please.