New Club for the Holidays

About the holidays:  For those who dread the Thanksgiving-to-New Years time period, here is an idea.

There is something very disturbing about the excessive commercialism, the hype, the Before-, During-, and After-Christmas sales, and all those GD people on TV who fill the screen with fake smiles and "good will."  It just elevates our basic, underlying chronic depression to very uncomfortable (murderous, not suicidal) levels.

So, come next week we will be doubling our ZOLOFT dose until mid-January  ... and avoiding most of the holiday TV programming ... including the musical shows that just HAVE to play The Little Drummer Boy for the 137th time ... it's a good thing that the composer is already dead or I would go "off" the bastard myself.

Maybe we should form a new club for people who hate the holidays.  We could call it "The Hum-Buggers" and when the club meets we could just sit there and grunt in disgust for an hour each week until the season is finished.  That works for me.  How about you?

The Jewish Tie Salesman & the Terrorist

A fleeing terrorist, desperate for water, was plodding through the Afghan desert  when he saw something far off in the distance.  Hoping to find water, he hurried toward the oasis, only to find a l little old Jewish man at a small stand, selling ties.

The terrorist asked, "Do you have water?"

The Jewish man replied, "I have no water.  Would you like to buy a tie?   They are only $25."

The irate terrorist shouted, "You Idiot!  I do not need an over-priced tie!  I need water! I should kill you, but I must find water first!"

"OK," said the little old Jewish man, "It does not matter that you do not want to buy a tie and that you hate me.  I will show you that I am bigger than that.  If you continue over that hill to the east for about two miles, you will find a lovely restaurant. It has all the ice cold water you need.  Shalom."

Cursing, the terrorist staggered away over the hill. Several hours later he staggered back, almost dead, and said: 

"Your brother won't let me in without a tie."

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Moral:

If you don't ask the right question, you will never get the right answer.

The question was not "where can I find water."  The haberdasher answered that question.

The question should have been "how can I get the water I need?"  The haberdasher did not answer how to get the water (by wearing a tie), which is what the terrorist really wanted to know, but didn't have sense to ask for.

Smoking and The License to Kill (yourself)

I am a physician.  At the time in my teenage development when I would have taken up cigarettes I was given two alternatives by my father.  Dad was a track and field coach at the University of Kansas.  He had some modest successes, like Al Oerter, my roommate in college who has won the Olympic Discus competition so many times I have lost count.   

Anyway, my Dad said:  "Son, you have two choices." 

(To myself I thought: "Gee!  Neat!  What will the choices be?  Cigars or cigarettes?  Cigarettes or a pipe ... that would be distinguished.")  

"To wit:" he said, "You may smoke anything you like.  Or you may continue to live at home with your mother and me."

So, I am a physician and I am a non-smoker.  I am also a realist.  After all the years and all the patients and all the lectures about how they should stop smoking I finally bowed to my wife's assessment of addicts: "They aren't going to give up their addiction no matter what you do.  Instead of wasting your time on folks who will never change, why don't you concentrate on a solution that would get smokers to pay for their own excessive medical care utilization?" 

Then, off-handedly she threw in a couple other ideas.  "And while you are at it, why don't you come up with a comprehensive approach that would keep the tobacco companies in business, create a new support industry to monitor smokers and cigarette purchases.  And don't forget to at least make sure that only adults can purchase cigarettes.  You probably can't control the adults who will give cigarettes to minors, but you can try to restrict buying to an adults-only population."

"Anything ELSE!" I moaned, "or is that ALL you think I should do?" 

"That ought to do it for now.  Let me know what you come up with." 

And she waltzed out into her eggplant and tomato garden, leaving me thinking I never should have mentioned the Attorney's General and their suits against the tobacco companies in the first place.  I reminded myself that, "If I would just listen to the ATC (All Things Considered) reports and analyses on situations like this and not try to participate in the discussion, I would be a lot better off."

But then, I DID get to thinking about a solution and, in a flash, it came to me: create a Smoking License,  a License to Smoke, just like a private pilot's license or a driver's license.  Look at the logical parallels. 

Take the private pilot's license as an example: if God had meant for men to fly, we would have been born with wings and an intrinsic ability to sense the magnetic fields of the earth so we could find our way home as automatically as migrating birds.  And private citizens are licensed so when they commit "pilot error" and "buy the farm" as the saying goes in aviation circles, the Transportation Safety Board will be able to look at the license and see who the fool was who thought he could take a short-cut through the thunder storm, instead of flying around it.  This is an example of the pilot certification becoming, so to speak, a License to Fly and similar to James Bond's double-0-7 license, a License to Kill.  Of course, in this aviation example it is a License to Kill Yourself.

Now take the driver's license as a second example: unlike flying, God did intend for all of us to drive, even those who logically should be restricted to riding a bus for life and never getting behind the wheel of anything besides a NASCAR-simulator arcade game.  And since driving does not require the ability to discern magnetic fields or even have the good sense to THINK while operating a motor vehicle, the piece of paper issued by the State DMV also could be viewed as a License to Kill. 

Unfortunately, especially in the case of intoxicated drivers, it is usually a License to Kill Others, like old people, mothers driving a van full of neighborhood kids to their ballet lesson or a school bus full of high school band members going to Washington to perform for the President.

Which brings me to the Smoking License, an outstanding concept in licensing, if I do say so myself.  Here is the answer to all of the seemingly impossible criteria my psychologist wife imposed on my potential solution:

Anyone, that is, any adult wishing to smoke would simply apply for a Smoking License.  The marvelous aspect of this solution is that the infrastructure to issue, revoke and monitor the Smoking License is already in place at, where else (?):  the Department of Motor Vehicles.

They already have the computers, the cameras for you photo ID, the laminating machines and the billing and payment programs in place.  In addition, they have on-line communication with every Police Department across the country.

When you are old enough to drive, you get a license.  When you are old enough to smoke, you update your license to reflect the fact you smoke.  How do the Authorities know you are a smoker?  When they take your picture at the DMV, they stick a cigarette in your mouth.  Actually, they would stick a bright, white plastic tube with a disposable tip in your mouth, indicating your chosen preference for black, congested lungs, a hacking cough and the ability to irritate everybody near you who is allergic to cigarette smoke.

In addition to the DMV fee for the motor vehicle license, a smoker would also pay the Smoking License Fee.  This could be a lump sum payment, assuming the smoker had a couple thousand dollars handy at the time of application.  Otherwise, smokers could remit the Smoking License Fees in monthly installments throughout the year.  The actual fees paid would be calculated by the State Attorney General in conjunction with data provided by the State Health Director and would vary with the average amount per person spent on smoking-related diseases in that State during the preceding 12 months. 

Finally, we come to the only part of the solution requiring the application of a little technology: the new bar code or magnetic credit card-like strip on the back of the Smoking License.  The bar code or mag strip would be read by the new tobacco vending machines, or by clerks selling tobacco at retails stores.  The machines (and the retail clerks) would only dispense cigarettes to those with a valid license.  In addition, the mag-stripe license card would be tied to a network (like a credit card network that monitors all the purchases made using the License to Kill (yourself).  The more one used the card, the higher the dollar surcharge that would be attached to each sale.  This is based on the fact that the more one smokes, the more likely they will have to use scarce medical resources when they get lung, heart and other smoking-induced problems.

So, there you have the elements of a solution to the problem of regulating tobacco use.  It allows smokers to keep smoking, States to continuously collect revenue to cover the cost of smoking-related illness, vending machine operators to continue vending, but only to adults with Smoking Licenses and the tobacco companies to keep producing "nicotine-delivery products," so the growers don't have to sit, dejectedly in their North Carolina fields, smoking their whole crop themselves.

For further information on the Smoking License, Model Legislation and Lobbying Assistance Funds, please contact the Foundation for Smoking License Promotion, an intellectual think-tank.  The Foundation is funded by three groups which have only altruistic motives for helping smokers: the Pulmonary Disease Physicians of America (who care for acutely and chronically ill lung patients), the National Chest Disease Hospitals of the U.S. (who provide the intensive respiratory care units used by the Pulmonary Disease Physicians) and T-OPEC,  (The Tobacco and Other Products Economic Council) an independent, non-partisan, unbiased arm of the tobacco industry.  NOTE: No animals were harmed in the course of this research . . . in fact, no animals were even used, just humans. 

"... Can't help thinking about tomorrow ..."

    The Discrimination Engine principle would have those of us in "overload mode" consider the difference between what is labled "urgent" (usually by others, for us) and that which is labled "important" (which we should be able to do for ourselves).   The fact is that it is usually superiors who force us into overload by cramming our days with they designate as "urgent" when, in fact, most of those urgent things characteristically have no significant importance ... they are just things the superior doesn't want to do and can fob off on someone lower.

     If you can keep the list of objectively important things clearly in mind, then you have an option for the Fobber (if you are the Fobbee):  "I would love to do your Fobbogenic Task, but I will have to stop what I am doing for the Big Fobboblastic Boss (to whom you answer) to do what you are asking.  If you think that would be OK, then just let me know and I'll get right on it."  

  (The rest of the unspoken dialogue you should have only with yourself and not the Fobber:  "Otherwise, go pound sand, quit trying to fob this kind of crap off on me, and go do it yourself !!")

Combat for Dummies: Advice from military instruction manuals

"When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend." -- U.S. Marine Corps

"Aim towards the enemy." -- Instruction on U.S. Rocket Launcher

"If the enemy is in range, so are you." -- Infantry Journal

"A slipping gear could let your M-203 grenade launcher fire when you least expect it.   That could make you quite unpopular in what's left of your unit."
-- Army's preventive maintenance advisory

"It is generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed."
-- U.S. Air Force manual

"Tracers work both ways." -- U.S. Army Ordnance

"Five-second fuses only last three seconds." -- Infantry Journal

"If your attack is going too well, you're walking into an ambush." --Infantry Journal

"If you see a bomb technician running, try to keep up with him." -- USAF Ammo Troop

Thinking Out Of The (T.O.O.T.) Box

... or, as my grandfather used to say: "If you don't toot your own horn, nobody will."

The Short Version:
So many people are reaching back 15, 20 or more years into the past with sexual abuse accusations ... and making hundreds of thousands of dollars suing ... that it seems like a great strategy to cover my income needs for the next 10 to 15 years.  Here is my plan:

The Long Version:
It all began when I turned 75 in April.  That was seven months ago.  I became semi-retired and, with that change in status, my income began to drop.  In each succeeding month my income has continued to go down little-by-little.  I am now close to being in the same boat as 9.1% (or 10.5%, or 16.7%, depending upon which ethnic or nationality-affiliated group you are talking about) of the people in the US who are unemployed. 

Since I am not one to accept entitlement benefits from state or federal agencies I have had to evolve a strategy for supporting myself by "Thinking Out Of The box," or TOOT(B).  I have been forced to create TOOT(B) because TOOT(A), i.e., Thinking Out Of The box-Plan A (salary generated by working for one or another large corporations) has cocked me a snook and left me searching for creative answers to survive.

Hence, the new TOOT(C) Plan (Thinking Out of The Box-Cash Option):  I will describe here, with some detail about how it will be implemented.  First, a little background about my High School teachers and coaches.  We had a Physical Education teacher (who was also a football coach) who was a former Marine, a sadist and a believer in corporal punishment.  When any of the kids in Gym Class would misbehave he would take us back into his office, close the door and proceed to "set us straight" on what we had done wrong and how we could "make it up to him."  (You know what THAT means, don't you?)   What he did vis-a-vis physical punishment will not be described in detail.  However, actual punishment did include verbal insults, and comments on how poorly we performed calisthenics, episodes of what he called "necessary physical contact" (again, you know what that means) and diatribes on how miserable our state of physical conditioning was and other specific and general critiques of our useless existence, usually screamed at us.  He also gave us each a failing grade for any day we showed up with dirty gym clothes.  He went so far as to check our BVDs personally (and probably sneak a peek down our drawers) almost daily.  If the BVDs didn't come out sparkling, the next thing we could expect was a Giant Wedgie, which would definitely result in our having to take our stuff home and throw it in the washer.  Suffice it to say, he punished every kid in the class at one time or another.

In addition to the physical punishment meted out by the coach, we were also psychologically tortured by, among others, our Latin teacher.  We were forced to actually learn that dead language ("It will help you immeasurably in English class later"), read aloud "Caesar's Gallic Wars" in Latin in front of the whole class and recite many long passages from memory to get any kind of passing grade.  It was pure torture. 

With this knowledge commonly known to our entire High School class, I am putting together a class action law suit which is going to be based on this Psycho-Sexual Physical and Psychological Abuse perpetrated on us during our 10th, 11th and 12th grades.  My intention is to sue the coach and teachers (whether still alive or currently dead), the school system, the past and current school board members and the city council members to whom the educators report.  The amount of the suit will be determined by how much money I want for "pain and suffering" all these years and be driven, in principle, by Pareto's Law, which says 80% of everything that gets done is accomplished by 20% of the people.  Therefore, I am going to contact the most active 20% of our class in the belief that we can get 80% of the suit done in record time.  In addition, my plan is to split the (est.) $100 million this way: 80% of the $100M will go to the 20% of us who brought the suit.  The other 20% of the money can be split among the 80% who didn't lift a finger to help us. 

We have as a consultant to our group, an image specialist from D.C., who will counsel us on how to use innuendo, vague threats, completely unsubstantiated accusations, and stories that you couldn't even pull out of a cocked hat if you were the world's best magician.  We also have a journalist who has worked extensively with sensationalist rags like "The Enquirer" and is an expert in using inflammatory, accusatory, off-the-wall language, epithets and slurs.  We will use his talents to make the language of all the details in the law suit as wild and out of control as is humanly possible. 

The fact that none of the abuse accusations that will be made in this suit are totally fictitious is irrelevant.  The suit is not based on truth, it is based on the desire to make money and, if similar suits that have been filed recently are any indication of success, I think that I will have found the solution to my lack-of-income problem. 

About the future: once I am back on my feet financially, I am considering making sexual assault and / or abuse charges against Kim Cheo-seon ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eunuch) for behavior "unbecoming to an officer and a gentleman" (OK, gentleperson) and Marilyn Monroe (in abstentia, er, absentia) for two-timing me with JFK.  That will fix HER image once and for all.

Don't want to know the answer? Then don't ask the question

Real Life ... (embellished a little, but not much): Phone call from One Good Old Boy, out of the blue, right in the middle of doing something important he says: "Hi! How ya doin' ?"

Well, here's how I was the day I got that call ... a little snarky:
"What a week!  Anxiety Level (AxL) UP: Had a note from SONY that our BRAVIA could burst into flame, so had a Tech visit us and take the whole flat panel apart, test the innards and tell us ours was not one that would do that ... (AxL) DOWN;

... maket went up  AxL DOWN ... But for how long? AxL UP ... then drove to remote work site for two days of 8 hr-per-day training on a new EHRS (electronic health records system) ... AxL UP;

... market went down ... AxL UP ... then they killed "Al Gathafi,  AxL DOWN, variously rendered as "Al Qaddafi," "Algathafi," and "Al-Gathafi." ("variously rendered" in this case referred to the spelling, not what the rebels did to him). To make it worse there is the ironically-named "Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights." and we wondered more about the spelling;

... then the market went up (sort of) AxL UP ("Will it keep going up, or will it drop?") ... Note: And for the Libyan leader, that's just his surname. Variations on his given name include Muammar, Moammar, Mu'ammar, and Moamar, and many others.  Once you've settled on how to spell his first and last names, you then have to decide whether you want to add the Arabic prefix "al-" before his last name. Which can also be spelled "el-." And then you have o decide whether the prefix should be capitalized

... then the market ... well, you know ... and AxL went UP and DOWN and UP again ...

...This is the point where most media editors would give up on Kud-Off-ie and run a story on Justin Bieber (sp? Beiber, Beeber, Beaber) instead, but this was big enough to get reported with all the name variations, probably just to make sure he was really the properly "named one" who was dispatched ... that dispatchment leading to AxL DOWN;

... then I got home from worksite, which took 4 1/2 hours instead of the usual 2 1/2 (due to work in the Bay Bridge causing one-lane traffic hold-ups) AxL UP;

... got to bed at 11:30 PM, awakened at 1:30 AM when wife got sick (minor illness, but we were both awake), then finally got back to sleep at 5:30 AM or so, awakened at 8:45 AM and called the cardiology office to tell them we were not going to be there in 45 minutes to keep her appointment ... AxL still UP, but dropping as wife's self-limited illness improved ...

... then found out that overall we were up $4,500+ in the market for the week! AxL way DOWN;

So, all-in-all, it was quite a week.  I am going to the wet bar in the kitchen now and believe I will just drink until Sunday night and hope for a better week coming up ... because we KNOW that AxL will have to be UP!  (and then DOWN and then ... well, you get the picture) ... "
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Somewhere during my response to such and innocent question, "How ya doin'?"  some might apologize for calling ... others might express their anger at my going off on them.  To that I say:
"If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question."

So, "How ya doin'?"
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PS: The truth: What I really said was ... what we all say:  "Hey! I'm doin' fine!  I'm glad you called." 
The bulk of the above tirade was, of course, purely internal, purely mental, what some refer to as What is Going On Under the Floor.  Think about it the next time you call a friend.  Listen carefully.  Try to feel what might be going on under their floor.