America's Coffee Addiction

So I realize that this entry would have been timely about 10 years ago to this day, but I have to write about when I was ordering breakfast with Casey and Jenna in downtown DC after our White House Tour (separate story for another day -- let's just say a guard was ready and willing to beat yours truly with a black baton for having "slanty eyes" and Casey got reprimanded for sitting in a chair).

Anyhow, we walk into a place called Cosi to grab some breakfast bagels. I ordered my sandwich and they asked me what I wanted to drink. The dialogue went (roughly) as follows:

"Would you like something to drink with that?"
"Yes. Milk, please."
"Coffee?"
"No. Milk, please."
"For your coffee?"
"No. Just a normal cup of milk."

Now I understand that miscommunications take place. I also know that I have the tendency to mumble sometimes. But honestly.

I think those of us from this generation saw earlier indicators of America's need for a coffee fix in our classmates in high school, and most of us noticed that at some point the number of Starbucks in our hometowns outnumbered the number of people. But who knew what it would grow into?

America is so in need of coffee in the morning...well, let's try this one on for size: How many times have you heard a coworker say: "I haven't had my coffee this morning..." as an excuse for poor performance, and then had the supervisor nod their sympathetic understanding and add: "Hey, could you brew some up? I need to get a start on the day, too." Addiction is an understatement. If you can't function without it, and going 24 hours without it is the cause of crippling headaches, that's called withdrawal, a symptom of addiction.

Or when you can't order something as simple as milk at a cafe because the employees' vernacular is limited to "coffee", that might be a symptom as well.

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Historical Lessons from Pamplona

This entry may live up to the ramblings part of my blog name.

History continues to teach us lessons, and a month or so ago when the Tanner boys started sending pictures of the most recent "Running of the Bulls" in Pamplona, Spain, my initial reaction helped me quickly conjure up an unqualified, over-generalized lesson of my own: History continues to teach us that the brave are insane and the cowards -- who avoid such activities -- are completely rational.

My initial reaction was, not surprisingly: "What in the world would possess a rational human being to do something like that? That's insane."

But then I had more of a chance to think about it. My second thought: "It's really about perspective...Most great people, at least in some limited way, are always viewed as a little off."

Use history as a precedent and think about it for a second. The Macedonian soldiers must have thought that Alexander the Great was crazy when he said something like: "Instead of being content with our spoils, let's cross the straits and kick some Persian A next, shall we?" Most British probably thought Winston Churchill was some deranged idealist when he refused to surrender, even though Britain was the only thing stopping the Nazis from conquering Europe. And yet they were great, because they had the courage to believe in themselves and instilled that courage in others.

Granted, these are extreme historical figures. But if you'll allow me to philosophize for a second, **stepping up on soap box** I would posit that all of us striving to improve ourselves, to succeed and to enjoy life, are a little crazy in our own way. Understand that when I use 'crazy', I use it loosely and synonymously with dedicated, bold, adventurous, daring, driven, risk-taking. Some universal examples that we can all relate to? I thought you'd never ask.

You have to be a little crazy to:
*...dream and to have goals in a world that perpetually bombards you with "can't" and "never";
*...pursue hobbies you truly enjoy, even though to an outsider they may not seem all that 'practical';
*...as an individual, completely trust another person and let yourself fall in love with them;
*...squeeze the joys out of life when the world with all its problems seem to be crumbling around you;
*...have children when it would make "so much more sense" to keep all that money those children are going to cost for yourself;
*...be great -- and I'm not talking about conquer-the-Persian-Empire great. I'm talking about the personal greatness in which you become the person you truly want to be, instead of taking the easy route and settling for mediocrity.

So the always-rational-people will never be great because they lack the courage to face risks and possible failure. They will never have stories to tell, nor a legacy to leave behind. Possessing common sense is one of those things that separates us from the animals; but I would say an equally great gift is the courage to, at times, go against common sense in order to either better yourself and/or the world around you. You need to be a little crazy to have courage, and you need to have courage to be great.

I tip my Henry Weinhard's to all of you who do things that strangers would sometimes term to be against "better judgment."

And if you've read this far, I tip my Henry's to you as well.

**End soapboxing**

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Not Even a Slap on the Wrist

Let's run through a theoretical scenario here. You are the chief of police in a mildly unstable government that has just undergone a coup d'etat and need to crack down on police corruption. What's your proposed solution? What kind of punishment do you instate to crack down on the cops?

My initial ideas were the classics: waterboarding (I didn't want to include the link, so you can look it up on your own if you want), the sharpened bamboo inserted underneath the fingernails (courtesy of Sayyid from 'LOST'), a pillory; for the under-14 crowd, you could even institute the notorious dunk tank from school-carnival days. Any combination of those would serve as a sufficient deterrent, in my opinion.

The Thai Police decided a few weeks back to go a different route. For policemen who violate rules, the punishment is the wearing of a pink "Hello Kitty" armband.

No, you are not illiterate, and yes, you read that correctly.

I make no claims to being an Organizational Behavior expert, but I'm guessing that this is not the best way to stop corrupt cops from running extortion scams, laundering money, and basically using their position to improve their standard of living. Anybody who feels differently, feel free to weigh in. (I realize I've neglected to mention that this is for first-time, minor offenses...but I'm operating off the principle of the idea here) In the words of Seinfeld with regards to the Winter Olympics' biathlon: "This makes about as much sense to me as swimming and, I don't know...strangling a guy."

However, on the off-chance that this does work, and to better position myself as a law enforcement consultant if other police agencies decide to adopt this humiliation-by-clothing/accessory idea, I brainstormed a few ideas:

*They could make German police wear this Tom Cruise t-shirt.

*For our Texas brethren down south, maybe make them wrap a large towel around themselves.

*After searching long and hard, I decided that there is nothing that you could dress a Japanese person up in that would humiliate them. Have you seen their game shows?

*But really, when it boils down to it, I think this would translate well into any language:I wasn't feeling all that creative today, so these are pretty lame. Feel free to make suggestions.

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VNTY-PLTS

I seem to be spending more time in the car now that I’m out of Provo. When I get sick of NPR, music, or feeling like trying to sort out my thoughts is going to induce some sort of premature insanity, I start focusing on what’s going on outside. It’s a two-edged sword. Sometimes I’m rewarded with beautiful scenery like waterfalls. Sometimes I’m punished with seeing a shirtless man in his Jeep with more back hair than that guy that Ben Stiller plays basketball against in “Along Came Polly” (a sub-par movie at best).

Anyway, my point is that I notice things I wouldn’t have before – like the ridiculous amount of vanity plates in the DC-area (sources tell me Cali drivers hold their own in this department). They helped occupy my time at first when traffic was bad, with me trying to figure out what the owner was going for; kind of like those psychological tests proving that your mind is capable of reading a passage smoothly as long as the first and last letters of words are the same, even if the letters in between are scrambled. (See how much my Psych minor has helped me out at www.in-absolutely-no-significant-aspect-of-my-life.org). Here are a few I’ve seen, with what I assume was the meaning the owner was going for. Some are pretty easy to decipher, although ultimately useless:

<-- Pretty obvious: "Kicking Tail”

“Redneck Love”. Not necessarily something I want to think about, but pretty obvious. -->

Others aren’t so obvious:

<-- “Log Jammin’ ” ?? (I can only surmise that this is a Bob Marley song about clear-cutting forests)

??? I really have no clue here.------->

The novelty wore off after seeing the first five or so. Now they just bug me. I don’t really see the purpose. If you want to convey a message that bad (the fee and hassle of waiting time to get customized plates) in order to say something meaningful, you would think you would want more than seven characters to do it.

But perhaps I misjudge my fellow DC’ers / Northern Virginians, and I need to be objective and try and see things from their perspective. Maybe they’re not going for anything profound, but something short and concise, so that they can remember their plate # for some reason (I can tell you right now, I can’t remember mine). That makes sense.

Then again, if you do something stupid and / or illegal, the plates make it that much easier for the people who saw you to remember your plates when they call the cops on you.

If you’ve seen any good plates lately, feel free to post them in a comment. I’d be interested to see what’s out there.

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Attn: All DDR & Guitar Hero Fans

So I am going to say immediately that this is from "The Onion", my favorite newspaper to grab when I'm at a Metro Station here in the DC area, and is by no means an original work of mine. This is way too hilarious for me to think up. Given the recent hype around these games, this is a fitting article (click the image to go to the article). Enjoy.

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Grade School Lunch - Status Symbols Start Early

Growing up and going to grade school, how many of us brought our lunches from home? And how many of us were jealous of those kids that always had Kudos Bars as the sort of 'dessert' portion of their lunch? You know, those bars that were disguised as semi-healthy granola bars, but were really the M&M / Mars Corp. pre-cursor "gateway" candy bar to future chocolate addiction? Hopefully some of you are nodding your head in agreement right now, or else this entry will be completely worthless.

(Funny anecdote. The day after an 8th grade basketball game we were sitting at practice, and our coach said "Kudos to Chris for grabbing 14 rebounds yesterday." Chris couldn't make practice for some reason, so the next day my buddy Alex and I saw him and Alex said "Dude, Chris. Coach Sotka said he was going to give you a kudos bar for grabbing 14 boards in the game yesterday!")

My parenthetical stories aside, did you ever notice how Kudos bars just kept getting smaller and smaller each year? They started out the size of a candy bar, but they kept getting shorter until they became equivalent to a Fun Size candy bar. How pathetic is that of Mars? I guess I shouldn't blame the company...that extra 2 or 3 inches of artificial, synthetic chocolate that they pump out by the ton must be costly.

While I'm talking about grade school lunches... I remember being jealous of the kids that had, in addition to the Kudos Bar, the Lunchables and Squeeze-its. The cool kids always seemed to have them. I guess what you brought for lunch served as the status symbols in grade school. But I guess in retrospect I'm okay with my parents having avoided paying extra money for a shrinking pseudo-candy bar, 6 oz of flavored sugar water, and processed meat and cheese with enough cholesterol to clog my little 10-year old arteries just so that I could fit in.

Hmmm. Empty calories and no sense of real fulfillment. I guess the status symbols of childhood really aren't so different from those of adulthood.

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Baseball: Our National Pasttime?

Baseball confuses me.

Now, before you misunderstand that and start patronizing me with "In baseball, there are nine players; the pitcher throws the ball and the catcher catches it..." I should clarify that I understand the scoring, the positions, the strategy, etc--but to me the sport is still a bit of an enigma (not to the extent that baseball's illegitimate-second-cousin-by-marriage relative [cricket] is, but you get my point).

I love going to baseball games. I like the vendors yelling. I like being able to sit back and relax while watching a sport. I especially like the guarantee that I will get to hear Ozzy Osbourne scream: "ALL ABOOOOOARDDD! HAHAHAHA..." multiple times in a game, because I am fairly sure that it is a League mandate that each team must have a player whose 10-second approach-the-plate-music is Black Sabbath's "Crazy Train."

And yet, if I'm surfing the channels on TV and I have a choice between watching the "Battlefield Earth" television broadcast premiere on TNT* and a baseball game, I hesitate. Granted, the hesitation lasts a split-second and I choose baseball, but this still concerns me as a self-proclaimed sports' fan.

Maybe it's because I sometimes have difficulty accepting professional baseball players as athletes. Guys that spend most of their time sitting, standing, or chewing, and who get winded after jogging 180-feet, don't present much of a defense for themselves to be classified as athletes.

But the other half of me thinks about the physics that is involved in pitching, or hitting a baseball with a relative toothpick for a bat, and it blows my mind. Einstein never even got around to explaining it. There is no denying that the hand-eye coordination needed for baseball requires ridiculous skill. I'm guessing the hand-eye coordination needed to adjust yourself 50 minutes every night doesn't, however.

I guess I'm trying to say that I find it difficult to understand the appeal sometimes. Maybe guys like watching baseball on TV because they can sit on their couch with one hand down their pants and tell their wives: "Look, babe. That guy has no problem adjusting himself in front a stadium of people and millions of viewers. Why can't I do it at home in front a few of your Tupperware-party friends?"

So I began this blog trying to talk it out in hopes of resolving my feelings about baseball... And I end just as confused and ambivalent, if not more, than when I started...

*I understand that TNT would never do this and the idea that they would even consider broadcasting "Battlefield Earth" is a blatant insult to the competency of their staff, but it was the first network that came to mind.

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A Move and Verizon

So I said I wouldn't post updates on my life here, but I just got done moving and we're waiting for Verizon to install our internet at the new place, so I have been sans Internet since Sunday. I never realized how crippling no internet can be. I don't know how much money is in my bank account, I can't pay my bills; I can't even find out how to get anywhere without access to Google Maps.

Anyhow, Nartker wrote me an email and harped on me for not posting recently. I am on it when I get access back on Monday. I know none of you ('cept Nartker, who I'm going to send a customized mug for being an anxious fan) care all that much, but hang tight. I've got some ideas for posts in my head that I'll get out when I'm back up and running.

Best,
-JD

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