a good clip

Every week as I near Friday I get a little more uncomfortable. Not much, but a little. It isn't even noticeable until Monday night or Tuesday morning, but by Thursday I think about it almost any time I use my fingers for anything but typing. I am of course talking about my lengthening fingernails.

For some reason I cannot stand having long fingernails. I never have. When I was younger, I used to chew my fingernails, but I was reasonably good about doing it in a way that was difficult to notice, because I hate jagged fingernails as much as long fingernails.

I have always and still wonder how people who have long fingernails can stand them. Aren't they always catching on things? Don't they feel weird? Is it really worth having them long?

Now I trim my fingernails every Friday night. Some people go out and do more social things, but how can a night on the town compare to five minutes with fingernail trimmers. It simply can't.

fantasy world

Just about everything I have done for entertainment recently is a form of escapism. I have active escapism through fantasy football, fantasy Survivor, and a comic book character strategy game called HeroClix that we have been playing at work. For my passive escapism I have been filling time with TV and movies.

I have given this some thought. At first I thought it must be that I am subconsciously trying to escape the chaos of life. On further consideration, though, I have to think that it is because I have little other choice.

This is not meant to be a complaint at all, but the forms of entertainment I choose are largely due to what is possible. Even if I prefered to spend all of my weekends hiking, that is not something that I can easily work into my current schedule. Whether I would structure it into my schedule if it were easier is debatable, but the things that are the easiest to do are what I end up doing.

I do not understand how some parents of small children can remain socially active. That is definitely a challenge for me, and if the real world is a challenge I'll happily take a fantasy world alternative.

all thumbs

Of the things that frustrate me, among the most inane has to be my irritation of taking one copy of a handout and handing the rest of the copies on. In class last night my professor kept on passing out handout after handout. Every time the stack of handouts got to me I would awkwardly fumble around with the papers, finally work one out of the pile, and hand the now dishevelled stack of handouts to my neighbor.

I have the same problem when I am asked to help hand out papers in church to the congregation as an usher. I have the hardest time counting out the number of cards or papers that need to be handed to each row, so I go slower than a lot of other people.

I am not sure why I have trouble with this, but I think it is a combination of poor hand-eye coordination and stubby fingertips. I have a hard time being very accurate with keyboards as well, so the two artre probvabl;y rewlatewd.

filler pictures

This is a filler post because the only topics I had for today were either boring or underdeveloped. I have a few pictures that I have recently collected because I thought they were relatively humorous.

Here's what I've got.
I believe this is a marmot. I found it when looking through Wikimedia Commons. I'm not exactly sure why, but this picture strikes me as funny as any other animal picture I have seen in recent years.

This is a picture I took at the Combat Air Museum in Topeka last year. I know why they have to have the sign there, but it still sounds dumb.

This is from the parking lot in front of my office. It isn't too frequent that you see a trailer hitch on a Neon. I would suspect that even towing a small Sea-Doo could cause a Neon problems in the long run.

This is another picture from work. Handguns are prohibited, so employees must be limited to bringing in shotguns and rifles. I wish I was the one who originally made this observation.

you don't know that?

I am watching the game show 1 vs 100 right now. The game is structured so that one person is asked a series of questions as are a group of one hundred people in the audience. If the person outlasts everyone in this "mob" in the audience he or she gets one million dollars. If they miss a question, the people in the mob who have not yet missed a question split a pot of money.

When I watch a game show I frequently ask how people do not know some bit of information. For example, I thought that everyone knew that in Paul Revere's Ride two lamps meant that the British were coming by sea. Golden thought everyone knew that a white sale was for linens. We both got one of these two "easy" questions wrong.

It is always interesting to hear what people think is information that everyone should know. I have been surprised in the past when intelligent people I knew didn't know information I thought was common. I also know that many times people have reacted the same way to me.

Sometimes it is a little difficult to acknowledge that I don't know something that everyone else does because it might betray that I am not the vault of useless knowledge that I like to be. When it comes to the stuff that a person wants to take pride in knowing I think just about everyone is that way. One person may not feel stupid not knowing who the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation was, but that same person might be embarrassed not to know something about cars, or fashion, or something else. I just have to avoid expecting to know it all.

my chill pill

I don't do New Year's resolutions for two big reasons. First, too many other people do them, so I would feel like I am just doing the resolution because everyone else is. Second, I don't want to be like the majority of people who make New Year's resolutions and break mine before February. I do have a resolution that I am making to myself starting this week, though, and I am not going to wait until January to make it. I am going to be less neurotic.

A while back in one of my first classes I took the Big Five test to measure different personality traits, and I posted my scores. The test scores actually seemed to indicate that an MBA may be a bad idea because some elements of my personality do not traditionally fit into most business leadership roles.

I took the test again this week because I have yet another class that is dealing with testing personality in the workplace. My introvertedness was actually significantly lower this second time taking the test. This is largely due to the fact that NJ keeps Golden and I home a lot, though. When I see a question about going to a crowded party, it doesn't sound near as bad as it used to.

One part of my personality that has remained consistent, though, is my high neuroticism. This indicates that it is easy for me to get frustrated at everyday things, which is obviously not a good thing. It does make me more responsible for reasons that are beyond this post, but it still causes more problems than it is worth.

I do not have an official plan right now, and I know this will take some time. I do have an idea of what causes my neuroticism, though. I am a perfectionist and I tend to view things as beyond my control. If I change this part of my psyche a bit, I will lower my edginess.

Also, I do not expect to do more than eventually bring myself into a more normal range. I don't think I would want to go further than that anyway, because I don't think a little neuroticism is necessarily a bad thing. I just go overboard on occasion. Since I know the causes, I plan to start addressing those over the next couple of years. Perhaps in that time I can become a little more normal.

one more faux pas

I have already shared this story with some of the guys in the office, so those who have already heard it will have to just be patient.

In my Monday class I sit on the edge of a group of wisenheimers. Throughout class there are humorous comments that emanate from behind me and to my right in relation to whatever topic is being discussed. I will not say that I have not taken part at all in the wisecracking, but I actually stay out of it as a general rule.

Last class a discussion about RFID tags and privacy issues. RFID tags are actually the chips that a lot of people think will be the mark of the beast. I don't think they are the mark of the beast, but that is way off my current topic. It is anticipated that the chips will be embedded into people who have special medical situations like penicillin allergies to alert medical personnel. This sparked a debate as to whether people would tolerate having a chip embedded in them that contained personal medical information.

While several people were enjoying the debate, I was a little irritated because it was not on the real topic for the class and we were already running later than usual. In the midst of my irritation I thought of a joke. I commented to the person to my right, "We should have the chips made in China so that they are so coated in enough lead that they can't send any signal." This got a favorable reaction because I was talking to someone who likes to joke. As we were chuckling I turned to my left and remembered that the guy who sits to my left is Asian. I believe he is actually Chinese, but I am not absolutely certain. He didn't react to the comment, but I said it loud enough for him to hear. Oops.

I was a little embarrassed, but I don't know that this was really a true faux pas. My comment was really just a reference to recent world news, but it still was probably in poor taste. Did I cross the line into offensive or was that just a minor foot-in-the-mouth situation? At the least, I am learning how poor a reflection I am to the Chinese.

name that band

Each picture below represents a band name. Not all of the bands are still together, but more than one still is. All of the bands are very well known, so don't be thinking of obscure musicians.

As an example of what I am getting at, if I displayed a few images of Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill, you could answer that this represented The Rolling Stones. That would also probably be one of the easier pictures to guess.

I did not plan it this way, but I think the pictures start easier and get progressively harder. Others may differ on that opinion.

I will provide the answers tomorrow in the comments. Feel free to try to guess the answers before then, though.

1. This is easier when approached from my perspective.


2. I never claimed to be an artist. Even so, it should be obvious that these are sheep. What does that have to do with anything, though?


3. Aren't they cute? I mean the birds, not the politicians.


4. Are there any card games where you only hold three cards? I only displayed these three cards because this clue is difficult enough without me throwing extra cards into the mix.


5. No, I did not mean to make this guy too small for his robe. Again, I am not an artist.

Hopefully I don't need to warn anyone that there is a possibility that someone will throw some guesses out in the comments. So, if you don't want anyone to tell you the answers yet you may not want to read the comments until later.

survivordust

I'm typing this in front of the TV. When I talked to my mom earlier tonight she asked if I ever watched Survivorman. She isn't sure why she watches it, but we both agreed it is worth watching when nothing else is on. Interestingly enough, there is not much else on, so that is what I am watching.

For those who have never seen the show, a guy is dropped in the wild somewhere for a week alone with cameras and he tries to find ways to best survive until he is "rescued." Some of the places he has been dropped have not appeared too bad, but most of them do not look fun at all.

When I watch a show like this I am reminded how much of an indoor person I really am. I probably would not survive a lot of these scenarios that I see on TV. Things like eating raw meat, going on very little water, being alone for days on end, and being exposed to the heat and cold of the outdoors do not exactly appeal to me.

It would be cool to know I could survive if I somehow got lost in the Overland Park wilderness between my house and the office and had to live off the land for a few days. I guess I'm just going to have to take my chances travelling through Blue Valley.

history and the people

When challenged about their policies or actions there are two main standards that politicians and high-level government are held to. They are how their constituency views the decisions and how history will view the decisions. I do not like either of these standards.

First, when a politician wants to challenge another politician on an issue, rather than use terms like "right" and "wrong," he or she is more likely to say something like, "the American people agree with me and not you." I am always irritated by that phrase, because plenty of horrible people throughout history still had the general populace's support.

When a government official does something controversial or takes a polarizing position, the media rarely ask what is right and wrong. The media rather asks how history will view the individual or his or her actions. This bothers me because history is not unbiased. Look at a figure like Christopher Columbus as an example. Today he is probably more hated than loved. One hundred fifty years ago someone might be able to honestly say that history treated Columbus well. Changing perspectives on the events he set in motion changed people's perspective of him.

I understand the reasons to use these standards. When a government is structured like a democracy, the people's opinions about issues will partially determine who gets to hold government positions. Also, in theory, history should glorify the people who make the right decisions because retrospect is supposed to be 20/20. This is not how it works in practice, but it sounds good.

I am not saying to not vote for someone who uses those phrases, either. While the statements are not ideal, they are certainly pertinent. Also, well-meaning people can get coached into saying things that I do not like. I just do not like the idea of appealing to an audience's sense of popularity over its sense of morals.

If someone overdoes it, though, I probably will not vote for him or her. Shouldn't one of the signs of true leadership be that the individual is willing to sacrifice glory to do what is right? So, as politics starts to heat up over the next year, I will probably mention politics from time to time without without advocating one specific politician. I am, however, advocating that you write off any comments you hear about what the American people think or how history will view someone's actions. Those are not the most important questions to be addressed.

500

Today is my five hundredth post. Since a five hundred record in sports indicates a season where a team has the same number of wins and losses, this post is about being average.

I do not think that I am good at being average. There is not really a better way of saying it. I have some good strengths and some bad weaknesses, but I rarely feel average. Maybe everyone is like that, and I am more average than I think.

A book written a few years ago called The Average American listed a few things that describe the majority of Americans. I blatantly lifted the list from a longer list at NPR, but NPR ripped its list from the book.

According to the book (I am taking NPR's word for it), the following bullet points describe most Americans. The parenthetical remarks describe whether that specific bullet point describes me.

• Prefers smooth peanut butter over chunky (no)
• Can name all Three Stooges (yes)
• Lives within a 20-minute drive of a Wal-Mart (yes)
• Eats at McDonald's at least once a year (yes)
• Never sings in the shower (not usually, but not never either)
• Lives in a house, not an apartment or condominium (yes)
• Has fired a gun (yes)
• Is between the ages of 18 and 53 (yes)
• Believes gambling is an acceptable entertainment option (yes, but with serious restrictions in place)
• Grew up within 50 miles of current home (no)

According to these amazingly arbitrary questions I am 70% typical American. How about you?

look into the future

I check financial news pretty regularly, so lately it has been easy to get the impression that the mortgage world is coming to an end. Generally speaking, this does not impact Golden and me too much because we will not be buying or selling a house for a while, but we do need to retain some equity to eventually stop paying PMI on our mortgage. At this rate, I figure we'll be paying PMI until NJ is leaving for college.

What I do not understand is how this appears to have taken entire industries off guard. For years now I have been reading about the impending housing market implosion. Millions of people were getting mortgages that they could not afford, and this fact was no secret, so someone was going to have to pay the piper some day. It did not take a doctorate in economics to figure that out.

In fact, I don't know if BB remembers this, but when he was looking for work two years ago I encouraged him to avoid working with mortgages. I also personally turned down a job offer over four years ago with a mortgage title company in part because I knew the job would be in danger within a few years once the housing market headed south.

If predicting what is currently happening was so simple I would have hoped that businesses that relied on home lending would have accounted for this risk years ago. Most apparently did not, and the entire economy is now paying the price for this short-sightedness.

This all makes me wonder what other completely predictable surprises are around the corner. I know that an obvious issue that a lot of people are predicting is global warming. Since that is a popular one and can be controversial, I won't address it specifically. I will instead offer a myriad of serious and not-so-serious predictions of my own. In case you didn't figure this out, the serious predictions are the even-numbered ones.

1. There will be a scandal on Sesame Street when it is learned that Bert, Ernie, and the show's producers are receiving kickbacks from the letter J for making sure it gets more exposure on the show than any of the other letters.
2. Unless the new fuel regulations requiring a certain percentage of ethanol use that were recently passed are somehow modified, the price of food and gas will go up significantly in the next five years. The oil industry will take the fall for the price hikes.
3. Michael Jackson will be offered the leading role in the TV spinoff The Bionic Man since he already is one.
4. No matter who is nominated for president from either main political party, the biggest appeal of both candidates will be that they aren't the other major candidate.
5. To ward off complaints of corruption in the contract bidding process, new contracts to rebuild the infrastructure in Iraq will be bid through eBay. The first eBay contract to install a water purification plant outside Mosul will be won by college sophomore in New Jersey who thinks he is bidding on a Brita water pitcher.
6. The founders of Google will learn to deeply regret using, "Don't be evil," as the company motto when Google accidentally discloses some of the personal information it keeps on users.
7. Nursing homes will save millions by replacing most of the care staff with the OnStar system.
8. The value of commercial real estate will plummet in about ten to twenty years when the affordable technology for telecommuting reaches the point that an employee can sit in a virtual office at home that makes the employee feel like he or she is actually in the office.
9. Angelina Jolie and Madonna will eventually adopt one in five children born into a third-world country.
10. Everything from pharmaceuticals to minor accounting services will be purchased and utilized via vending machines and kiosks, getting rid of more U.S. jobs than China and India combined could dream of taking.
11. OJ Simpson will find the real killer.
12. I will discover how wrong I really am.

trailers

In the movie The Holiday, one of the main characters' jobs is to design trailers for movies. She starts to see the world as if it is a movie trailer, and this leads to some playful digs at the basic structure of a movie trailer today. While the typical movie trailer does follow a formula, it really can be an effective means of getting people to watch a movie.

Since I have been watching quite a few movies recently, I frequently check the extras on the DVD for a trailer of the movie. This is because I am very interested in how specific movies were marketed, and how effective I think the marketing is. The trailer has to be one of the more important pieces to marketing a movie, so it would stand to reason that the success and failure of a movie should be partially due to the quality of the trailer.

I think that a trailer gets my attention the best when it follows one of the most basic literary rules: "Show, don't tell." I know that I am not applying the rule as it is supposed to be used, but it still works for me. When I watch a trailer, I do not want to hear someone give a laundry list of what is in the movie, I want to get a more of a taste of what is going to be in the movie.

Something that I find interesting is how bad older trailers are by this standard. I am not completely sure if it really is a taste thing, but I like newer trailers a lot more than old ones as a general rule. I have included a few in this post to make my point, but do not feel obligated to watch them, as that would take some time.

Going back over sixty-five years to Citizen Cane (1941), which is generally considered to be one of the best movies ever made, the trailer nearly puts me to sleep. It is all conversation and shows me little of the story.



Created about twenty years after Citizen Cane, the trailer for Psycho (1960) was no more exciting. It is amazing to me that anyone bothered to see that movie except for the fact that a lot of people liked other Hitchcock movies. The movie itself is one of my all-time favorites, but I am quickly bored by the trailer.



When I saw the trailer for Star Wars (1977) from thirty years back I noticed more of the typical action elements from modern movies, but the voiceover just simply sounds uninteresting to me. From what I can tell, this is relatively typical of the trailers made in the late seventies and early eighties.



At some point in the early to middle nineties the current trailer formula became common. A good example of this is for Twister (1996). The movie was okay, but not as good as any of the previously mentioned movies. The trailer, however, is much more interesting than the other trailers because not a lot of time is devoted to just talking.



Of course, it could be that I just like to hear Don LaFontaine's voice.

guerrilla diamond

Warning, minor spoilers!

This past weekend I watched Blood Diamond. The movie is very well made, but I had trouble with one element of the story. The main character's son is captured by some rebel military forces to fight for them and so this main character spends a large part of the movie trying to get his son back.

Ever since NJ was born, I have had a hard time with stories where a father is put into a position where he can't take care of his family, especially his children. I cannot imagine NJ being taken away and I cannot fathom the frustration I would experience trying to get him back. Before we had NJ I would have been affected by the scenario. I was much more affected this last weekend, though, because I could project us into the roles I saw on the screen.

It is because of this that I have avoided other films like Cinderella Man and The Pursuit of Happyness. It is not that I don't think they will be compelling stories. I just don't want to visualize myself in a role where I cannot take care of my family.

Throughout the film I was reminded how much NJ means to me. I know any future siblings he may have would be just as important as well. Because of this, it was unpleasant to mentally put myself into the shoes of the man searching for his son. The thought of the things happening to NJ that happened in the movie is heart-wrenching.

Thankfully, there are not very many forced conscription guerrilla warfare groups in eastern Kansas. That is, unless the boy scouts have changed their enrollment process lately.

the law

In my human resources class we have been discussing discrimination. One of the primary points to understand is what groups are officially protected and which are not. Employers have to watch what they do and say in regard to the protected groups, but members of unprotected groups are, as the name implies, unprotected.

Something that I did not realize is that workplace sexual harassment is considered sex discrimination because the victim or victims are usually targeted by gender. There was apparently at least one case where a company successfully defended itself when a bi-sexual manager harassed employees. The company's defense was that the manager harassed the men and women equally, so there was no discrimination.

It is discussions like this that make me despise law. While I understand and appreciate the purpose for laws, I can get cynical about many peoples' approach to the law. Find what you can and cannot do, then take advantage of the law's shortcomings and stick it to your fellow man.

While this does not do the topic justice, it is for this reason that I so appreciate that true Christianity has little to do with law. I know some people like to integrate law into a relationship with Christ, but the foundation of the relationship should not be law. The New Testament writers made sure of that. What "rules" exist are defined by love. There are no loopholes because you either love or you don't.

Maybe this oversimplifies a relationship with God. I don't think that is a bad thing, though, because I think most people want to overcomplicate it.

the scream

Today we went to Silver Dollar City with Golden's family. We didn't spend too much time on the rides, but we did take the opportunity to ride something called The Giant Swing.

There is something about a truly enjoyable ride that makes me want to shout. People who know me as the quiet person that I normally am are usually surprised when they go on a roller coaster with me.

When I first went on a ride with Golden I think she thought I was screaming because I was scared. I wasn't. It just adds to the experience. Because people sometimes misinterpret my behavior, I have tried holding it in, but it just isn't as fun.

So, since I enjoy it more, I'll continue to scream. I will just have to live with most everyone else thinking that I sound like a frightened little girl.