Substitution Game

[Going to church] doesn't make you a [Christian] any more than 
going to [a garage] makes you a [mechanic].

Add your suggestions in the Comment area.

The Work You Speed to Hate

An irony of the depressed economy: Roughly 9% of people in the US don’t have a job … and they comprise a group whose complaints about being out of work rank at the top of most survey concerns about our country.

However, one of the common complaints from people who have work is how they hate their jobs. 

So I don't understand why the ones with jobs speed on the freeway, pass on curves, cut in and out of traffic and, in general, make a NASCAR-like race out of driving to work every morning.

Reminds me of the poem (I would post an attribution, but can’t find one):

            As a rule

Man’s a fool:

When it’s hot

He wants it cool.

When it’s cool

He wants it hot.

What it is

He wants it not.

Failure of Newspapers, Reason for

Research and analysis of gross and net revenues of the nation's print newspapers and their suppliers has revealed some interesting information.  Two relationships have been discovered, one direct and one inverse. 

The direct relationship is described by the fall in purchases of printer's ink and newsprint, and the gross revenues generated by newspaper sales.  This relationship has been characterized as one which should be "intuitively obvious to the casual observer."  A not-so-obvious, but just as concrete a direct relationship has been noted between the decrease in newspaper sales and the decrease in the sales of ink-stain removal products.

The inverse relationship, which should be just as obvious is between the decline in print-edition sales and the rise of revenues due to the sales of eReaders (various products), tablet computers (e.g., iPad(r) and iPhone(r)), the Amazon Kindle Fire(r), the Barnes and Noble NOOK(r) and the like.

Our analysis, proprietary and (probably) of non-generalizable nature, is that the general public has become fed up with cleaning printer's ink deposited on fingers, hands and everything those appendages touch (e.g., white toasters and other appliances, white kitchen faucets, counter-tops upon which the papers lie (lay?) while being read, smudges on white shirts and blouses and a myriad of other otherwise sparkling, clean items about the well-kept home). 

While the smudges are some of the most obvious draw-backs to daily newspaper subscriptions, there is the peripheral disadvantage of having finger-prints all over the house.  Even the least adept, CSI trainee is able to lift those prints from glasses, plates, every-day silver and mirrors, to name but a few areas from which an identity can be determined.  Day-to-day readers may not be under suspicion of anything (except participating in the demise of the print media), but in the unique situation where a specific individual is being sought, a random finger print may be critical to closing the case, and therefore, be a reason for even the most ignorant criminal to cancel his (her) daily subscription.

It, therefore, seems obvious that the tidy middle class homemakers have decided that "newspapers must go," that ink-removing tasks (and the costs thereof) are a burden to be dispensed with, and that the neat, clean and continuously-updated digitized information  delivered to us inside our warm, dry, heated and air conditioned homes it the option of choice. 

In addition, having that digital information delivered to us 24/7 on our eReader equipment (various manufacturers) is far preferable to having to brave the wind, rain, snow, sleet, ankle-deep water and other environmental hazards when getting the paper thrown on to the driveway by the brazen little snot, with the entitlement attitude, on his bicycle who will TP our trees at Halloween or misplace our paper completely if he is not given a handsome monetary (cash) reward at Christmas. 

The newspaper as a modern-day utility is going the way of all dinosaurs.  We can only take heart in the fact that those dinosaurs, their bones and altered flesh are now, after eons of metamorphosing into Light Sweet Crude, are lighting the way to our petroleum-fueled future.  The horse-and-buggy days were replaced by internal combustion engines.  The print media is being, understandably, replaced by digital data delivery.  And it has all happened, in the case of newspapers, because of the printer's ink smudges on our new, white, Cuisinart(r) toaster.

Please pass the butter.

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."

-------------------------------------------------------------

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 !!")