Just Do It America

People are funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar.

I know a guy who is into recycling. Really into it. Nothing – nothing – gets thrown away in his house, office, or presence without scrutiny, argument, and, if necessary, research. Is that recyclable, compostable, or landfill? What plastics can you recycle? In which cities? If your city doesn’t take them here’s a list of recycling centers. This one is on your way to work, but this other one stays open an hour later and also takes glass. You can’t take hazardous waste there but it’s collected by the city once a year. Or if you live in this other city you can call the sanitation department 48 hours before your normal garbage pickup day and they’ll take it. But they won’t take tires. Or you can go to a designated collection center, but you have to bring your water bill to verify your address. Electrical garbage can be taken to Home Depot to be recycled. Used motor oil can go to Jiffy Lube.

Do you have any idea how much effort it takes this guy to get through one day?

People are the same about organic gardening, or finding restaurants that use vegetarian refried beans. They go out of their way all the time for some quirky personal philosophy. They only eat raw food. They only use cloth diapers. They only listen to pre-1983 Eric Clapton songs. They do their research. They go out of their way. And they spend a little money. It’s a passion. It’s a passion for doing what you believe is the right thing to do – an important thing to do.

There’s been so much talk lately about our economy. What’s the right thing to do? What are the important things to do? Our elected officials believe the answer is to blame the other guy. It’s not. The answer is to get more Americans working. Our elected officials – even with the American Jobs Act – aren’t going to do it. I’m sorry, but they just aren’t. We have to do it ourselves. Check out the story at the other end of this internet link:

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/MadeInAmerica/made-america-resource-guide-find-american-companies/story?id=13057404

You want to put Americans to work? Buy American stuff. You don’t have to be a maniac like my recycling friend, and I’m not saying “buy only American made stuff”, but buy more American made sutff. Buy an American made cutting board for your kitchen. Or an organic pillow for your bed. Or wool throw blanket for your family room. Buy the stuff you would normally buy, but just buy it from America. Light bulbs. File folders. You may have to go out of your way. You may have to do a little research. And you may have to spend a little money. It might be worth it. Regardless of how you feel about Warren Buffet and his secretary’s taxes, or Obamacare, or we’re-regulated-to-death, just do it. Do it regardless of who’s to blame on Capitol Hill. Take it up as a bit of a passion.

Seriously, doesn’t it seem like a reasonable thing to do?

Ah sweet controversy. How we love thee.

We love to kill people here in Texas. But make no mistake, this is no Hansel and Gretel affair here. Turns out that unlike the wicked witch, we don’t like feeding the people before we kill them.

A recent outlandish last meal request from a Texas death row inmate has caused quite a stir. A Texas state senator demanded that the Department of Criminal Justice stop the practice of allowing inmates whatever they want as a last meal. The Department agreed. So no more crazy last meal requests. Are we inhumane? Are we wasting money? And so the arguments drone on.

To my way of thinking the best way to get rid of the last meal dilemma is to get rid of the death penalty. Two birds, one stone. But that's another argument for another time.

The argument run out there by the aforementioned Texas state senator this week was "hey, these criminals didn't give their victims the courtesy of a last meal request, why should they get one?" True enough, but there's a couple of issues here. (1) are you sure the victim didn’t eat what he wanted prior to being killed? (2) Are you sure the criminal is the one who killed the victim? Absolutely sure? Because you're about to absolutely kill him. (3) the senator’s argument is somewhere on a slippery slope that ends with the criminal being killed in the same manner in which he killed the victim. In this case dragging behind a pick-up truck. That's a little too eye-for-an-eye for the Christians here in Texas who want to humanely kill the person BUT want to deny them a last meal request to show them, one last time, who’s boss.

I guess in the end, I just don't care. I don't think it's a big deal if they do get a final meal request, and I don't think it’s a big deal if they don’t. I'm thinking a last meal - OK - a total binge - No. But why the hell should we feed them anyway? Save a few more dollars by cutting him off a week or so before killing him. Why not? We're going to kill him anyway and if he’s starving to death maybe he’ll appreciate it. Lately the prisoners themselves seem to be making a joke of it by ordering crazy last meals. So I can see why people are offended, but what are you going to do if you're offended? Kill the guy? Well… yes. Yes you are.

Perhaps the guards should just take the guy down to Golden Corral for an afternoon and let him loose on the buffet. But if you really want to do the guy a favor, run a hooker in there about 20 minutes before you kill him. At least that way he won't vomit four bacon cheeseburgers, a meat lover’s pizza, a pint of ice cream, two root beers, and a pound of barbeque ribs on the floor when you fry him.

Things that Go Bump in the Night...

I have a raccoon in my attic. And it’s making. Me. Crazy.

According to the good people at 911Wildlife I have a raccoon who, based on dropping-age-analysis, appears to have chased off a previously residing possum who may have eaten or chased off previously residing rats. I have a veritable food chain of attic dwelling pests running around just above my head. At night. While I’m sleeping. Er, trying to sleep.

And so last Friday I officially launched Plan Ringtail to rid my home of this pesky invader. The plan works like this: get the critter out via a one-way door, if it has a litter of babies up there it will find another way back in, if it doesn’t then it’s gone for good. Then cover up the entry holes with dirt and sod. A brief view into my mind at this point: a raccoon tearing the siding off the house in the middle of the night to save its babies; waking from a troubled sleep believing that the lump of covers at the foot of the bed is a raccoon; opening the attic door to find a mother raccoon with a switchblade waiting to kill me. Tip of the iceberg my friends, tip of the iceberg.

Four and a half days in to Plan Ringtail and the evidence is maddeningly inconclusive. Maybe the raccoon left and dug its way back in the first night. So I covered up that hole. Nothing has happened since. Every little noise made anywhere within a 10 mile radius could be the raccoon in the attic. Was that the TV or the raccoon? Mute. Silence. Un-mute. Repeat. The good people at 911Wildlife are now sending me a video with audio of what baby raccoons sound like so that if I hear that sound, I’ll know they’re still up there.

As good as Plan Ringtail may be it is a flawed. And that flaw is based entirely on my cowardice. See, I want nothing at all, whatsoever, at any point in my life or afterlife to come face to face with any of the aforementioned attic dwelling pests. Dead or alive. And so Plan Ringtail is based on the logic of raccoon behavior. Now listen, if raccoon behavior was that damn logical do you really think they’d be living in attics and digging through trash cans for food? No! They’d be chasing my chicken-ass out of the house and working their way through the refrigerator. They’ve got switchblades for crying out loud! What we need here are facts. Cold, hard, observable facts.

Let me introduce you to the Planetcam Internet Motion-activated System. A live, secure window into my home from anywhere. We’re talking about a wireless PC transceiver, control center software, an Eagle Eye motion sensor, USB video capture cable (high res of course), a small video receiver (no audio), and an instant-on camera. $129.99. Hundreds of uses, tiny and discrete, easy to setup, and weather resistant.

I like the idea of ‘control center software’. Like I’m NASA or something keeping an eye on the Mars Rover. I am so close to hitting the “click to add to shopping cart” button that my hands are shaking. My wife would kill me.

But let’s get real. Imagine I do this and actually have the guts to go up in the attic and install this thing. Can you imagine the anxiety? Increasing exponentially with every minute that I’m up there? With every drip of sweat off my brow and slip of the screw driver? With every tree limb brushing against the roof? It would be such a complete study of a person going insane that it’s a pity the camera won’t be hooked up to capture it.

You know how this will turn out right? You’ve seen the video of the Loch Ness Monster? And Bigfoot? And the ensuing lifetime obsessions? That’s the road we’re headed down. Out damn raccoon! Out I say!

Unschooling? What the what?!?

I read an article yesterday about Unschooling. Rather than following a set curriculum, the Unschooling child is in control of his learning and is free to decide what he wants to study and when he wants to study it. And of course this produces fabulous results. One child became a successful entrepreneur, one became a mathematician. I’m sure one will become Albert Einstein. Apparently the Lord of the Flies had it all wrong.

I’m a skeptic, of course, and view this as another rationalization by parents who don’t want to do any of the hard work of parenting. Or it’s a rationalization by the Tea Party to eliminate funding for education. Either way, I had the opportunity to study and learn what I wanted when I was a child too. It was called a hobby. Not school. I learned a lot about Star Wars and electric football. It was awesome, but neither included reading, writing, or ‘rithmetic.

Regardless, I owe it to you to do some objective analysis on this educational approach. But there are precious few examples of Unschooling children in the world. Our data set is far too small for meaningful analysis. Lucky for me, there are tens of millions of people to observe who study whatever they want whenever they want. We call them adults.

So using adults as a proxy for children – not as big a stretch as you might think when you consider we use mice as a proxy for children all the time – I did a little observing to see what these adults were learning. I was able to draw a few conclusions about what the hot subjects might be if there were an Unschooling course catalog… which there never would be…

1. Internet pornography
2. Call of Duty
3. The Kardashians (and several geographic varieties of housewives)
4. Fantasy Football
5. iPads

I hear that there is a Kardashian-mother-Bruce-Jenner sex tape out there. I’m sure a lot of Unschoolers will want to learn about that.

There were a few interesting observations as well. A lot of us enjoy learning about what to do if we’re stranded on a tropical island with a bunch of strangers and have to vote one of them off that island every week. Many of us, particularly men, like learning about numbers. A touchdown is 6. Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941. A Porsche 911 can go 0 to 60 in 4.7 seconds. Numbers, not math. And almost everyone, especially famous Unschoolers, likes learning about writing, but only 140 characters at a time and not with a pencil.

And despite repeated opportunities, no one seems to want to learn about how credit cards really work, the relationship between fat foods and fat bodies, functional governments, exit strategies, or how to behave like a decent human being while driving a car.

So until I see some 8 year old Unschooler reading about Alternate Minimum Taxes I’m not convinced.