Worthless Ideas for Higher Education

The future of education at universities is evidently linked to distance education. If you are unaware of this new development, distance education is where a student does not actually come to a classroom and engage in discussions, listen to lectures, and fall asleep in the back row while texting on his cell phone. Instead, the student has “content” delivered to his home computer. In this way, a student can be offered a rich choice of educational options: falling asleep at home, playing X-Box in another room, or forgetting to turn on the computer altogether.

The administration loves distance education. Not only can it avoid those pesky students actually coming to campus, but can expend its entire instructional construction budget on vital new education projects such as a new scoreboard for the football stadium.

Even more important, as university budgets decrease, distance education opens new opportunities to collect tuition from students who may not live within a thousand miles of the university. Distance education is so much cheaper for a university, that naturally there must be  extra charges. It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that some universities require a virtual distant parking permit.

It is only a matter of time before we read of a half million dollar contract for someone to coach a Big Ten fantasy football team.
Distance education does work, it is popular, and inevitably this will create its own problems. What will happen when all universities begin competing for the same students? Since the students do not actually come to a campus, there is no particular reason why a university could not allow an ever increasing number of students to enroll. A virtual campus could enroll an infinite number of virtual students. How will a small cash-strapped state university compete with a large cash strapped Ivy League college?

There is only one way: $$Price$$. To paraphrase Earl Scheib; “I’ll educate that student for $39.95.”

Imagine the quality education of the future. A neo-Neanderthal from Moose Crack, Wyoming can get a budget degree in Inter-Dimensional Multi-Media Mass Communication Management Disorders from OxBridge University, Inc., without having to violate his house arrest by removing his electronic ankle bracelet. For an extra $125, he can make the dean’s list.

It’s going to start getting ugly out there as universities begin to really compete for students. Eventually, I imagine universities will begin offshoring faculty jobs. I have a mental picture where the entire curriculum is taught by a single former call center employee in Pakistan. He could earn a little extra money by hiring himself out to students to take the course from himself.

The constant struggling with students to separate them from their money is getting out of hand. We need a more dignified method to separate the student from his tuition. I have a suggestion.

At the beginning of the school year, each student must purchase a new backpack, (naturally in the school colors.) Packed inside each bag could be several thousand dollars in cash. Whenever the built-in GPS unit registered that the student was on school property, a bell sounds every ten minutes and a fresh $5 bill would pop out of the top of the bag. The nearest university employee could just reach over and remove the bill.

Of course, in certain large and popular classes, the sound generated would be enormous, but many of these courses are just noise to begin with.

Or here is a simpler idea. Just auction off the degree to the highest bidder.

English Weather Explains England's Food

It has been raining, something not all that common here in New Mexico. Two of my classes are at opposite ends of the campus, so I decided to wear a raincoat. Wearing a raincoat in southern New Mexico is really rare. When I put it on, something rustled in the pocket and I found $7.00 and a receipt from a bookstore. The receipt was dated 5 years ago.

Raincoat, rain, I guess this is what got me thinking of England lately. Since I wrote something very nice about England a few weeks ago, I’m hoping I can get away with a little criticism this week. Besides, most of my hate mail lately has been coming from South Carolina or India; I’m ready for a change.

If New Mexico has the best weather, England is way at the other end of the spectrum, somewhere near Minnesota in winter, except you can freeze in England in July. At best they have 2 months of late spring followed by 10 months of dank, wet, gloomy hell. I remember listening to the BBC while cruising on a canal boat through Oxford one day in July. The announcer said, “We have music for your English summer. All thirty minutes of it.”

It mystifies me how a people that at one time or another conquered half the planet, including some very nice warm places, never moved. Look at Australia! If you have to live on an island, why not pick the warm one with great beaches? No! Only the English would ship their convicts to the warm island while staying in a place as cold as boarding house soup.

Personally, my idea of paradise involves a hot beach. And it doesn’t matter how you spell that word. Here in New Mexico, we have great beaches. The beaches just don’t have any water.

Having at one point been masters of North America, the British were only able to hang onto Canada. I guess it had exactly what England loves, lots of cold, wet land. All this is important, for only after you understand that the English are a beautiful people who prefer misery to comfort can you begin to understand English cooking.

I’m not sure, but I think the national dish of England is pork tartar. This is a country that specializes in gray, greasy, and boiled food. I think I remember the boiled part the most, vegetables boiled to a uniform gray. Nowhere else in the world do people brag about mushy peas. And if you see a sign saying a restaurant has a choice of three vegetables, this means you can choose between carrots, peas, and succotash.

There is an old joke in Europe about Heaven and Hell. Heaven is a German auto mechanic, a French cook, and an English policeman. Hell is a German policeman, a French auto mechanic, and an English cook. There is more than a germ of truth in this joke.

To be fair, maybe it is just because the food is different.  Sometimes different is good.  Pork and beans and baked tomatos for breakfast is different, but good?  They actually sell something called "Breakfast In A Can."  Sausage, bean, and tomatoes all in one can.  This is different, but argualbly not good.

Coming from the Southwest, I prefer my food to be on the spicy side; if food doesn’t bite back, it’s not hot enough. Despite what my wife claims, this does not mean I prefer my food to actually be on fire as I eat it, but clearly, if your eyes are not tearing uncontrollably you probably prefer food that comes out of a small jar with “Gerbers” printed on the label. So you can imagine my difficulties in England. I remember a restaurant in London where I sent a waiter on a quest to find me the hottest spice in the kitchen. After a long wait, he brought me a jar of yellow mustard. I ate it with a spoon.

I don’t know why I expected anything different; every restaurant has two strange condiment bottles on the table; white sauce and brown sauce. As far as I could tell, they were two different colors of library paste.

The good news is that there are a number of good restaurants in England; you just have to know the secret to finding them; only eat at restaurants that feature food from countries that England conquered. The Thai and Indian restaurants are spectacular.  And I really loved the jars of pickled cockels, each came with a little wooden spoon.  And I tried a jellied eel; and it tastes pretty much like what you think it does, only colder, greasier, and eelier.

I think I’ve figured it out; I now understand almost everything about the English. Except cricket.

Travel Tips Worth Their Weight In... Pesos

These days, everyone is making fun of airport security. It is easy to take cheap shots at the mentally handicapped. I know, because just last week, I made fun of them. See for yourself, just scroll down about a page and a half.

Cheap shots are easy, but I would like to do something constructive. No, not make more suggestions on how to improve airport security, that’s useless. I know, as a professional educator, I can tell you that while you can attempt to teach algebra to a pig, all that does is piss off the pig. Well, actually, I’ve never tried it with a pig, but I did try to teach history to a basketball player. Pretty much the same thing.

No, I have several useful and helpful ideas on how to improve your travel. In short, I have travel tips.

Let’s start with air travel. I don’t know about you, but one of the reasons I hate flying commercial, besides the airlines not letting me be the pilot, is that the planes are invariably filled with people. And way too often, they want to sit next to me. I really don’t understand this; after all there is plenty of space left out on the wings.

The worst flights, as in SouthWorst Airlines, are the airlines that will not allow you to reserve a seat. Somehow, they believe it is far more dignified to allow you to crowd, push, and grab the best seats you can, not unlike livestock filling a cattle car. The problem with this is that after you find a nice seat, you sit there watching the plane fill and inevitably a 400 lb born again Neanderthal on his way to a bad breath convention decides take not only the seat next to you, but half of your seat as well.

I have the solution. Take a pipe with you, and make damn sure that the only thing ever burned in the pipe was tobacco. You don’t actually smoke the pipe on the plane, but as soon as you sit down, take your pipe out of your pocket and stick it in your mouth. Within seconds, a nervous stewardess will remind you that smoking is forbidden. As a matter of fact, she will remind you every 30 seconds until the plane takes off. But, I can absolutely guarantee you that no one will willingly sit anywhere near the insane man with a pipe. Unless, the plane is full, no one will sit within rows of you.

The only flaw in this plan is that you have to be one of the first to board the plane. I have a suggestion for this, too. Pre-board. All you have to do is go to a drug store and buy a nice padded brace for you leg. When you check in at the ticket counter, tell them you have a broken leg and need to pre-board. If you are really brave, ask for a skycap with a wheel chair. And while you are sitting on the plane, pipe in mouth, waiting for everyone else to board… you can take the brace off.

Naturally, you will have to tip the skycap, but my last travel suggestion will handle this. Foreign money. Especially from Argentina, Mexico, or any other country where high inflation is common. Buy the smallest possible bill in large quantities.

Part of the fun of traveling used to be trying to figure out how much the local money was worth. Brightly colored pieces of strange paper with pictures of unknown people. I especially liked the money the Dutch used to have; they were more like works of art than cash. And it was kind of fun to pay a cab driver by holding up a fan of strange bills and say, “Don’t hurt me.”

While the introduction of the Euro has eliminated some of the fun of European travel, there are still several countries who can provide you with colorful, although worthless, printed money. About six years ago, a single dollar would buy you over a million Turkish Lira.

Several years ago, I took the Doc and both boys to Mexico. At the first bank, I exchanged enough money to provide my wife some pocket change. “Here you are, Honey.” I said as I dumped a pile of bills in her lap, “You’re a millionaire.”

And it was true. I paid a little over $300 for a million pesos. At that rate, you can stuff a handful of 10 peso notes into a bellboy’s or a skycap’s hand. Worth roughly about a quarter.  The recipient will have absolutely no idea how much, or how little, you have tipped them.

You can act like a high roller and throw the cash around. Unless you are stupid enough to try this in Mexico.

A Practical Proposal for Airport Security

Two months ago I wrote about problems with air travel and my views about what we call, in what can only be a cruel jest, airport security. (http://markmilliorn.blogspot.com/2009/11/travels-with-my-family.html) As we all know, since that time the underwear bomber has upped the stakes. And like every American, I have an opinion about how to improve airport (in)security. And these suggestions, like everyone else’s, will not be listened to and the airport security will continue to be a train wreck into mediocrity.

Still, I would like to offer a humble proposal for airport security. My proposal is a compromise between what I really want, and a security program too limp-wristed to bring order to a kindergarten playground.

What I actually want is…nothing. Just stop reacting to the actions of terrorists. What did the Brits do during the Battle of Britain? They continued to live their lives as normal as they could. I remember several years ago visiting an exclusive tailor’s shop in London. The front of the shop still clearly showed shrapnel damage from German bombs. The shop had no intention of repairing it, and was proud of having conducted business as close to normal as possible throughout the war.

I would like the opportunity to be as brave, but unfortunately my government has decided that I must cower as they protect me from the fingernail clippers and shampoo bottles of my fellow passengers.

I understand the government wants to appear it is proactive, doing something, anything. In today’s nanny state, a government must do something about every problem, but I do not understand why the government is against profiling. I do it all the time. As I have written, my hobby is rabbit hunting. What would happen if the next time I went out in the desert to thin the hare herd if I didn’t profile?

“Yes, your honor. I shot two dogs, a pickup, and a steer, but at least I wasn’t profiling.”

My actual proposal is small, I want to empower the most effective security force in aviation today; the passengers. The only hijacked plane that failed to reach its intended target on 9/11 was brought down by the passengers. Both the shoe bomber and the underwear bomber were stopped by passengers. This despite the fact that all our security measures have done to date is disarm the passengers.

This is why I want to rearm the passengers. No, not with guns, I have no illusions that TSA will suddenly allow the stewardess to walk down the aisle saying, “Coffee, tea, thirty-eight?”

No, my proposal is a return to basics: Rocks. As the passengers board the plane, hand each of them a rock. One about the size of a baseball. Imagine the shoe bomber. Now imagine the shoe bomber being hit with 110 rocks. Crisis over. Ask yourself, if you are on a plane that someone is attempting to hijack, which would you prefer? A Sky Marshall somewhere on the plane who will probably try to reason with the hijacker while not injuring his self esteem? Or a plane load of people winding up to release a blizzard of 2 pound fast balls? There will be no need to subdue the would-be hijacker, he will be the lump under the pile of rocks.

No training is necessary, we all know how to use rocks, and as a society, we use them responsibly most of the time. I mean, you don’t have to build a fence around your rock garden to prevent a mass stoning. Even in Massachusetts you can carry a rock without a permit. Rocks are cheap, natural, renewable, and I guess they fit the definition of green.

America is at war with a fundamentalist Stone Age enemy with the brains of gravel. To fight them, America should return to the original missile defense system.  Clearly, rocks are the perfect weapon.  Let our motto be: Keep Calm and Carry On A Rock.

The Happy Valley

Many years ago, there was a beautiful and fertile valley. A hunter, intrigued by the abundant game, made his home in the valley and began to hunt rabbits. There was always meat on the table, life was easy and the hunter was happy.

Before long, a farmer moved to the valley and began to grow onions. He worked very hard and soon his efforts paid off with a bumper crop. Within a very short time he began to regularly trade onions with his neighbor for rabbit meat. Both men were very happy since rabbit stew tastes ever so much better with onions.

By the end of the first year, a shoemaker moved to the valley. Trading with the hunter for rabbit skins and meat, and with the farmer for onions he was soon making shoes for the families of both happy men.

The valley grew even happier with the arrival of a master brewer. Rabbit stew tastes great, but if you can wash it down with a cold beer it becomes a feast fit for a king. Shoes, meat, onions, and beer; the valley now had a thriving economy and a rosy future.

The next pilgrim was a preacher. The wives of the hunter, the farmer, the shoemaker, and the brewer insisted that their families must join the new church, if for no other reason than for the benefit of the children. The preacher explained that only through prayer and the devout religious observations would the harvest of onions and the availability of rabbits be assured. For his guidance, he accepted the gifts of shoes, meat, and onions. You can also be sure he accepted the beer, since he was the only preacher. Any preacher will drink beer as long as there isn’t another preacher to watch him do it.

By now, the little community was growing larger. Luckily a politician moved to the valley and explained the need for government and was quickly elected mayor. The new mayor quickly established an orderly society, with rules, laws, and taxes. Understanding the taxes was difficult, but the arrival of both a lawyer and an accountant helped solve the problem.

Before long, for the safety of the children, the community passed a law that every home had to have a fence built around it. This didn’t make the hunter very happy, as the fence was to be made from trees that primarily grew where the rabbits lived, but the hunter agreed to the project for the sake of the children. The work was very hard, but luckily the accountant counted the boards while the lawyer pointed out where the fences should be built. The hunter, the farmer, the shoemaker, and the brewer took time off from their jobs and with the spiritual guidance of the preacher, soon had the fences built.

The children were safe but uneducated, so the mayor wrote a letter and enticed a school teacher to move to the valley. It turned out the little community was ignorant, she explained that she was an educator and would instill a paradigm of advanced educational pedagogy based on excellence and self esteem. The ignorant people of the community were thrilled and hoped if this worked, maybe someday the educator could also teach the children. They understood this wouldn’t be anytime soon as the mayor was promising a football team just as soon as a coach could be found.

Schools are expensive, and there was a shortage of rabbit meat and onions, even though the mayor had passed a law against falling production. The mayor, the lawyer, and the accountant had worked out a five year economic plan that guaranteed success; the hunter was required by law to only shoot very large rabbits, the farmer was to double his yield per acre, and the brewer was required to put pints of beer in half pint bottles.

It was at this point that a man moved to the town. While he had a very large family, he didn’t have a profession. It seems that he did nothing at all. While it was the opinion of at least the farmer and the brewer that this man should starve to death, the preacher and the lawyer were good people and managed to explain that this man’s family had a right to eat, was entitled to eat, and the community owed it to them to feed them and provide shoes.

Since there was still a shortage, the mayor introduced a new sin tax on beer. Shortly after this new tax, the community discovered that the brewer had left town in the middle of the night with the preacher’s wife, neither was ever seen again. For some reason, right about the same time, the preacher convinced the mayor that alcohol was evil and new laws were passed making the drinking of beer against the law.

The farmer simply quit. He packed up his bags and moved out. He said several unkind things as he left, but there was no convincing him to stay. The mayor didn’t even try, saying he couldn’t be responsible for every undercapitalized business in town. Still the town must do something to preserve their way of life, so they passed a law forbidding the hunter from moving. Most of the pressure for this new law came from the shoemaker who was worried about the availability of rabbit skins.

The community’s fears proved to be well founded, for within a month they caught the hunter trying to sneak out of town. There was a trial, and eventually the lawyer convinced the community that a lesson had to be set for the education of everyone, especially the children. The hunter was hanged.

Years later when someone visited the valley, there were no people living there. The farmer’s fields were a dusty ruin and all the houses had blown down. Even the rabbits were gone, since without the hunter, they had quickly overpopulated, stripped the valley of plant life, and were already on the verge of starvation when an epidemic of Tularemia made them extinct.

The only thing left to show that people had ever lived in the valley was a faded sign where the mayor’s house had once been. As it swings in the wind, you can still dimly read the faded words; Welcome To New Mexico.

The Religious Upbringing of Children

The late Douglas Adams wrote a wonderful story in his incredibly misnamed five volume trilogy, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, about a distant race of people who wanted to know the meaning of life, after thousands of years of work, and building multiple computers, they learned that the answer was 42. Unfortunately, after Adams gave us the answer, he never got around to explaining the question.

When What’s-His-Name was about 12, he began to leave childhood and become self-aware, he began questioning the world around him. So it was only natural that one day he asked me the same question.

“Dad?” he asked. “Why are we here? What is life all about?”

“42.” I promptly answered. I can’t say I was expecting the question, but I was ready. Thank you, Mr. Adams.

“Dad! Be serious, I want to know what life is all about.” What’s-His-Name was practically yelling.

“Son, if you don’t believe me, go ask your mother.” This was another great answer. My son and I both knew I had never missed an opportunity to play a practical joke on him, and he knew better than to completely believe me. His mother, The Doc, is absolutely trustworthy, having had her sense of humor surgically removed during the third year of med school.

So my son promptly ran to the other end of the house and asked his mother the same question and just as promptly got an answer, “42.” The Doc loves Douglas Adams as much as I do. She used to operate in scrubs with “Don’t Panic” stenciled on the back. Okay, some vestigial remains of her sense of humor are still attached.

You could hear What’s-His-Name wailing from the other end of the house. I’m still not sure if he was upset at an answer he couldn’t understand or the realization that all of his genetic material came from the two of us.

This incident happened years before I had worked out the tenets of my own church, St. Mark’s Buddhist Bar and Tabernacle, but even then I knew that every child needs some form of religious or ethical foundation. Eventually, we settled for something simple; Life Sucks and Then You Die.

Simple religions for simple people and this one fulfilled all the needs of a religion. It explains why bad things happen; Life Sucks. And it handles the question of an afterlife; You Die. It encourages a practical, though somewhat stoic, lifestyle. Okay, it probably fails one major test of a religion, it doesn’t coerce tithing, but my boys didn’t yet have the resources that would attract an established church.

Faithful readers by now realize that my philosophy of raising children is to take every possible opportunity to fill their heads with bullshit and lunacy. I believe in stretching their brains before life locks them into a role. Having been raised in Our Lady of Perpetual Motion, a church that was constantly terrified that someone somewhere was having a good time, I was determined to have my sons avoid this infection until they had developed sufficient antibodies. Besides, I was worried that if I was caught back on church grounds, they might burn me at the stake.

I wasn’t sure the boys completely understood this philosophy until I attended a parent/teachers conference when The-Other-One was in the third grade. The teacher was a little upset with my son’s history report about the hardships faced by the Pilgrims. She couldn’t understand why the son of a history professor would end his report with… and you guessed it… “Life Sucks and Then You Die.”

I could have told her there were 42 reasons, but she wasn’t ready for a religious breakthrough.

Thoughts On Being a Grandfather, Honorary Second Class

When your children are small, it is amazing how little you know about being a parent. Every situation is new, the children are fragile, and the job is impossible. I distinctly remember trying to dress What’s-His-Name in a snow suit. I think he was three, all elbows and knees and it seemed impossible to get both his arms in that blasted suit at the same time. I suddenly realized that I was exerting on this tiny little arm approximately the same force necessary to remove a frozen lug nut from a truck tire. It was just blind luck that I didn’t end up with that arm ripped loose in my hands.

Right about the time I began to understand small children, I blinked, and suddenly the boys were teenagers. For a while, I thought this was an improvement, after all, I remembered being a teenager myself, I was a treasure trove of relevant information. Unfortunately, my sons had discovered that both their parents were morons; neither of them would listen to such unreliable people. The best they could hope for was that we wouldn’t embarrass them in public while they tried to borrow my pickup.

Then suddenly, they were adults. Now, they are not only willing to listen to us, but are plainly astounded at the sudden knowledge my wife and I possess. Obviously, we morons have been studying nights. Unfortunately, we still don’t seem to be of much use as either our lives have sufficiently diverged from theirs or our memory has degraded. Whatever the reason, it doesn’t seem we have much relevant advice.

Another possibility is that their father just wants to see the boys crash and burn. Bad mistakes make good stories. Somebody has to write this blog, otherwise there are no ads for you to click.

For whatever reason, it seems that as a parent, you are never really as much help to your children as you would like. Raising kids is a cruel joke that you play on yourself.

Then, suddenly, it is Act II and you have grandchildren. At first, this seems like a great joke on the parents bordering on sublime revenge. For Christmas, I’m thinking of giving the Munchkin a set of drums. I hear ferrets make horrible pets; I’ll buy her two.

Some of the fun of being a grandfather disappears when you realize there is work involved. Undoubtedly, the worst chore is the Christmas pageant. How many millions of hours have been wasted by men sitting in a school cafeteria, their ass wedged into a tiny chair designed for someone about 4 foot tall, while they listen to a flock of pre-pubescent tricycle motors sing Christmas songs in an octave only dogs can hear?

The entire herd stands on the stage like deer caught in headlights as they sing the same words to every song:

La –la Santa la-de-la-de-la

O Bethlehem’s Reindeer

La Holy Night O’ Holy Nose

You Better Be Christmas Bells

All around you, soccer moms are videotaping every second. Who exactly will ever watch this? This is a new age, we have internet and YouTube. When you are probably just a Google search away from watching a video of the most wildly improbable event you can possibly imagine; say a chimpanzee attempting to mate with a football, why would you suddenly decide that tonight would be a perfect night to watch a badly filmed video of tiny children singing, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa’s Reindeer?”

Bored out of my mind, all I could do was sit there and ask myself questions. Why do schools have the acoustics of a snare drum? How do they expect a grown man to smile all the way through a Christmas pageant with nothing more fortifying than a plate full of vanilla wafers and a Dixie cup full of mystery punch? And most importnantly, exactly how much trouble can you get into if you spike the punchbowl in a pre-school?

Christmas in New Mexico

It is Christmas in southern New Mexico. You can tell by the weather, it is unseasonably cold; it only got up to 60 degrees today. Blue skies and warm sunshine, New Mexico has the perfect winter weather. If you don’t go outside in the middle of the night, our winter’s amount to only a few cold days scattered across a couple of months. We had one of those days last week; it snowed half an inch in one day, the schools closed, people panicked as if they had never heard of snow, and then we were back to normal.

For us, snow is mainly a spectator sport; we can see it on the mountains as we play golf. Snow belongs on Christmas cards and Yankees’ heads.

But you can tell it is Christmas because all the college students have left town. It is so quiet! God knows I love my students, but it is nice to drive to work without 5 cars driving so close behind me they seem to be auditioning to become my own personal proctologist. I know a librarian who once wished the students would never return; “It would be so much easier to keep the library neat if we didn’t have all those students.”

The southwest has its own form of Christmas decorations; luminarias. A tradition that dates back to when this part of the country was part of Mexico, luminarias are small paper sacks partially filled with sand that anchors the sack and provides a base for a burning candle. My family uses a modern version, a plastic waterproof sack containing a small electric light. The traditional name for these is fakolitos.

My wife, the Doc, is unhappy that Christmas seems to become more commercialized every year. Once again, I disagree. I don’t think the holidays are commercial enough.

Let’s cut the crap, by commercialization, we are talking about money. Can you have too much money in something? There have been periods in my life when I didn’t have any money; if it had cost a dollar to go around the world, I couldn’t have reached the next county. And there have been times in my life when I was relatively flush. Trust me, flush is better.

Exactly what is supposed to be wrong with money? Somehow money has become synonymous with evil. While I have no idea where this silly idea came from, I can tell you exactly what is wrong with it. Money is nothing more or less than the present incarnation of an ancient idea. Thousands of years ago man worked and fought for meat. If you had enough, you did not starve. Today, civilization notwithstanding, modernization has simply substituted money for meat. And if you have enough, you still won’t starve. Money is meat.

So bring it on, commercialize the holidays all you want. Let’s start the Christmas season even earlier, put the tree up Halloween night. Turn Thanksgiving into a Christmas brunch, and New Years can be the morning after party. While you are at it, you can merge a few other holidays into Christmas.

Hanukkah lasts 8 days, Kwanzaa 7, but Christmas is limited to one? Let’s combine them all and shoot for 100% participation. Happy Kwanistmaskuh!

Not only would this maximize shopping time, but it would eliminate all the false pretenses that have cropped up lately by the university and most stores about Christmas. Season’s Greetings, Happy Holidays, Winter Break, my ass. Who the hell do we think we’re fooling? By combining the various holidays, all of them lose their religious significance, and we can concentrate of the business of Christmas. The expanded economic season will mean full employment, rising industrial profits, and increased tax revenue for the government.

As a first step, I believe the government should enact a Christmas stimulus package. Uncle Sam Claus can leave cash in my stocking.

Who Wants To Be A Grandfather?

Suddenly, and without much warning, I seem to be a grandfather. My son, The-Other-One, not What’s-His-Name, has managed to find a shortcut. Instead of adhering to the Brady Baby Bill with the mandatory nine month waiting period, he found a loophole and started dating a young woman with a three year old daughter. The child is tiny, like her mother, The Leprechaun.

I have to admit the child is adorable. Cute, smart, loving, and already house broken. Unfortunately, I’m not sure that I am ready to be a grandfather. There was a time when I wanted a lot of children, but 30 years later, I can no longer remember why. Unlike Angelina Jolie or Madonna, I have absolutely no desire to collect the entire set.

The Munchkin has provided me with several educational moments. Just last week, she informed me that as she was too young to be an adult, she was a “little-dult.”

And I have learned an awful lot about children’s clothes. Thank God I had boys. Boys will wear a paper sack if you cut holes in it for their legs, but little dresses for a three year old cost more than the clothes I wear to work. I remember an August a few years back when both boys and I needed back-to-school clothes. From the house to the mall and back home in under an hour, we had shirts, Levis, socks, and underwear for all of us and still had money for a pizza. We only had to go to one store; Sears. My motto: Buy your clothes where you buy your drill bits.

Evidently, clothing shopping for girls of any age requires the logistical support of a D-Day landing, a trip to every store in the county, and cost as much as my first car. I had no idea that a three year old girl needed jewelry. Mark my words; the first company that introduces a line of cosmetics for toddlers will reap a fortune.

I confess most of the problems are caused by me; it seems that you can’t raise little girls the same way you do boys. With little girls, you’re not supposed to cuss, threaten an ass-whipping, or teach them to shoot craps. The consensus around the house seems to be that if I had raised a daughter she would have turned out to be a sadomasochistic psychotic whore. Maybe so, but I bet she could make a decent martini.  (Both boys learned quite early to make a great martinin, but they never understood why I had them go outside to the far corner of the yard and whisper, "Vermouth."  I like a VERY dry martini.)

With the boys, I tried constantly to fill their heads with nonsense and bullshit. No question was ever answered truthfully, and story time was always a challenge to everyone’s imagination. When cooking, I used food coloring to dye every meal into outrageous colors. For a while, the favorite meal of both boys was a dish of my own invention; Monkey Blood Chicken. Rare was the breakfast without Green Eggs and Ham. Ours was the only house where Dr. Seuss was a cookbook.

Now, suddenly, this is frowned on. The Leprechaun doesn’t like it when I tell the story about Curious George and the Electric Fence. I’m not supposed to say that raspberries are actually blood clots. And personally, I thought it was hilarious when I had the Munchkin searching the house for our new pet, the Mexican Barking Spider.

I will admit the little-dult is adorable. She climbed into my lap and asked me if I would be her Grandpa Mark. I was so touched; I told her the story, Mr. Fork Marries Miss Electric Outlet.

Rules for a Happy Marriage

It seems impossible, but I have been happily married for over 35 years. This incredible record is probably a result of the marriage of the two most stubborn people in the world. Still, I do have a few words of advice for people considering committing marriage.

First, rules for the men. Years ago, my father gave me three great rules for marriage, and for the most part, I have followed them.

The first rule. Give your wife her own desk, and stay out of it. No matter what file you are missing, no matter how much you need a stamp, stay out of that desk drawer. This is not to give your wife a certain amount of privacy; it is actually to save you from losing your temper. Trust me, there are things in that desk that you really do not want to know about.

The second rule. This rule is very much like the first, but much harder to follow. Never, never, never look into your wife’s purse. Boy, this is hard. No matter how much you need her keys, or anything else, never put your hand in that purse. Take it to her and let her root around in that bag. Not only will you be respecting your wife’s privacy, but it is much safer. The inside of a woman’s purse is about as sanitary as a public toilet in Juarez. Can you imagine the infection that could come from a paper cut contaminated with a 20 year accumulation of rancid makeup mixed with petrified breath mints?

There is a hidden benefit in the second rule. In exchange for never violating the sanctity of the purse, men receive the right of cargo. This means that when asked, wives are supposed to carry something in the purse without complaint. My wife, The Doc, has to be reminded on a regular basis about the right of cargo.

The third rule. Inarguably the most important rule. If for any reason you find that during an argument your wife is demonstrably wrong and you are right; say about the capitol of Turkey or something else you can prove by consulting a dictionary… apologize immediately. It will save time and is cheaper than flowers.

Now, the rules for women. Actually, I don’t have any rules for you. Hell, I’m not even sure that women are the same race as men. The way women like jewelry and other shiny objects they could be evolved from crows.

Still, I do have some timely holiday advice for you. Women give horrible gifts. After 35 years of marriage, counting Christmas, birthdays, Valentine’s Day, anniversaries, and Father’s Day, I have been the recipient of over 175 such gifts. Frankly, most of them sucked. The Doc, my wife, certainly was trying to give me a good gift, but she has no idea what to give me. Talking to my married friends, it turns out that this is a common problem. So here are the guidelines:

1. Don’t give us clothes unless you think you are married to a metrosexual. If your husband, like me, is not really sure what that word means, he doesn’t want clothes. Most mornings, I just wear what’s next in the closet. My wife once gave me a pink shirt with no pockets, and while it was a poor shirt, it made great rags for cleaning my guns.

2. Almost any man will be grateful for a new electric drill. I have nine, five of them cordless, nevertheless, I would be delighted to get a tenth.

3. Sporting goods are a great idea. Guns, fishing poles, golf clubs, or anything else in this vein. One caution, unless you actually go shooting, fishing, or golfing with your husband, don’t pick out the gift yourself. Ask his best friend to help you. (And Honey, if you are reading this, Chuck knows exactly which Ruger Single Action in .45LC with a 5 ½ inch barrel I want.)

4. Ladies, if you can’t bring yourself to buy any of the above, here is a sure fire winner. You will have to trust me on this, because you won’t understand it, this is a Y linked chromosome gift. Go to the hardware store and buy him 50 feet of good rope. I asked most of my male friends, and almost all of them said they would trade their last birthday gift for 50 feet of good rope.

Death by Stephen King

About 20 years ago, I had to make a series of trips across the state of New Mexico for business. I forget how many times I drove up and down I-25 from one end to the other. This is beautiful country, but after you have seen it a few times, you are mostly aware of the long periods of time with nothing out there.

It was at the end of the summer, and I was getting a late start as I headed north in my pickup. By the time I passed the chili fields of Hatch, it was very dark. The night sky in New Mexico is always fantastic, either the lack of lights make the constellations seem to leap out at you or as it was that night, the summer storms produce unbelievably beautiful lightning.

If you have never seen desert lightning, the blackness suddenly pierced by blinding flashes that reveal the mountains and valleys… well, you probably live someplace where you should stay. We don’t need any more damn Yankees living here. Don’t move here, you wouldn’t like it anyway. You wouldn’t believe how many square miles we have without a Starbucks. Hell, the entire state only has a single Costco, and its 200 miles away.

Somewhere north of the town of Truth or Consequences, I began to notice that my headlights were getting dim, evidently my alternator had died and the truck was running off the battery. Miles from a town, all I could really do was select the spot where I would spend the night. I couldn’t even pull the pickup very far off the road, but I stopped on the top of hill where when the lightning cooperated, I could see Elephant Butte Lake off in the distance with the mountains behind.

Too far to walk to the next town, well out of cell phone range in those days, all I could do was sit and wait for the highway patrol to find me. I raised the hood, tied a white rag to the hood, moved over to the passenger seat and tried to get comfortable. I like to drive off road, and in case of trouble, I carry a lot of gear in my truck, I had more than everything I needed, I even had a book to read.

I have and will read anything, behind the seat I had stowed a Stephen King novel. Horror books aren’t my usual style, but since I had never read one of King’s books, I was looking forward to trying one. I positioned a candle on the opened glove compartment door, lit it and began to read the book. Wow, that was a great book.

Each truck that went down that highway rattled the truck. Every few minutes I would get so absorbed into the book that I would forget where I was, but a sudden flash of lightning through the high desert air would bring me back to my senses. Stephen, you are a master, I was scared silly. If someone had walked up to my truck and knocked on the window, I probably wouldn’t have lived long enough to write this. Death by Stephen King.

At one point, either the thunder or the passing of one of those eighteen wheelers shook my tiny pickup so violently that the candle fell over. The fall didn’t put the candle out and I didn’t even notice this until the dash caught fire and the fumes from the burning plastic got my attention.

I never got any sleep that night; I spent the entire night reading that book, finishing a few hours after the sun came up. The highway patrol had been busy with a wreck on another highway, all together; I spent about 14 hours before they found me and arranged for a tow truck to take me back to Truth or Consequences. The highway patrolman felt bad about the delay in finding me, he didn’t seem to understand why I was happy about the night I spent on the side of the road or why I wouldn’t have wanted to have been found any sooner.

Horror books will never be my favorite, but I have read several Stephen King books since then. And though he’s a great author, I don’t think he can write a book that will compare with the first one I read.

Cargo Cult Comes to New Mexico

During World War II, various Melanesian and New Guinea islands were suddenly confronted with the advanced technology of both the Japanese and American armies as they invaded and set up airbases. The islanders marveled at the technology the soldiers brought with them. To a stone age culture, even a trash dump must have seemed like a wonderland. Think 1989 and East Germans running through into West Berlin. Think kid in a toy store. Think my wife in a jewelry store.

To the islanders, this was a perpetual Christmas. They thought the planes were messengers from the gods bearing wonderful gifts. Too soon for the islanders, the war ended. The planes flew away and the strange men left. The islanders waited and neither the men or the gifts from the sky ever returned. Obviously, the gods were angry. There was only one thing to do; copy the behavior of the soldiers so as to attract the planes again.

So the natives dutifully built bamboo replicas of planes, painted USA on their chest, made fake headsets out of coconuts, and even constructed a bamboo control tower. They lit signal fires and waved signal flags on the runways. All to attract the planes. Sounds sort of like an episode of Gilligan’s Island where the Captain and the Professor build an airport.

Anthropologists call this a Cargo Cult; where magical thinking and ritualized practices are supposed to produce quick wealth. In New Mexico, we call this the Spaceport.

Several years ago, our state managed to convince the voters to raise taxes in order to build a spaceport in Southern New Mexico. This is a poor state, there are few jobs, and most young people who get a degree in our state promptly leave the state for a job somewhere else. In an effort to jump start the economy, we started our own cargo cult. If we built a spaceport, the rockets would come. A multimillion dollar industry would land from the sky.

If you build It, they will come. I think I’ve heard this before. Unfortunately, so have the states of Virginia, Wisconsin, Alaska, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona. All of these states, and a few other countries, are building spaceports. And several of these have actually launched numerous successful rockets. So far, New Mexico has a nice concrete pad and nothing much to show for the proposed $225 million dollar project.

Well, that’s not quite true, we can show that we raised taxes, and starting next month you can go on a tour of the site. Save your money and just imagine a large rectangular concrete pad in the middle of a desert. And we have launched a few rockets, a few even worked. We launched James Doohan’s (Scotty from StarTrek) ashes. The rocket fell into the mountains and for a while was lost. Scotty would have done better to beam off.

But, we have a tenant. Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic has signed a million dollar a year lease for 5 years. It is heartwarming to think that by the year 2234 we will break even, if he continues the lease. I think Branson has found another virgin.

Well, if it is any consolation, he found another one in Sweden. He signed a contract with them, too.

New Mexico needs jobs, but we don’t want to do the things that will help jobs come here; lower business taxes, repeal closed shop legislation, reduce property taxes, etc. I guess there is nothing wrong with a cargo cult, but I wish we could have just built it out of bamboo. I don’t mind if the governor wants to run around the desert waving signal flags, but why does it cost $225 million?

Travels With My Family

Oh, the joys of travel. I can remember a time where people put on their Sunday finest if they were traveling by airliner. Not a plane, an airliner, a word that conjures up an image of the dignity of traveling on a cruise ship of a hundred years ago. The important word here was dignity. ‘Was’ as in past tense. Today, traveling by plane is more like being sentenced to the county jail for the weekend.  Complete with the strip search.

Is it even possible to enjoy traveling by air anymore? The cost, the delays, the brain dead security, and the overcrowding are bad enough, but the true terrors of traveling are your own family.

My own very real brush with hell was a Christmas flight to visit my wife’s family. Not only would we take the boys, What’s-His-Name and The-Other-One, but we were taking Aunt Dingbat. Once a bright, incredibly talented woman whom I was proud to have as a friend, she had been turned into Aunt Dingbat by dementia. While this sounds unnecessarily cruel, it is important to realize that the previous tenant has moved out of the familiar body and the present squatter has no resemblance to the previous treasured member of the family.

Okay, I am a little cruel, but personally, if I don’t do it this way, all the great memories I have of a wonderful person will be replaced by memories of a clown.

So, there we were, traveling with small children and Aunt Dingbat. The children are bad enough; since even a trip to the grocery store and back requires that you tote enough luggage, baby bottles, and diaper bags that you resemble an African safari attempting to locate King Solomon’s Mine. If I had it all to do over again, I would buy stock in the parent company of Pampers before we had the children.

We checked Aunt Dingbat out of Our Lady of Perpetual Motion’s Home for the Habitually Stupid and made our way to the airport with just enough time left to catch the last seats on a late flight to Dallas Love Field. I’m not going to tell you about dragging this group through airport security, since we all know it is too ineffective to catch a drunken moose. I was once held up by security for over an hour for the sin of carrying a fountain pen. The security guard had never even heard of one before.  Would someone please try to strangle a pilot with a bra?  If we have to undress at airport security, I want to see something come off more interesting than feet.

The flight was delayed by bad weather, the flight was bumpy, and every child onboard, including mine, was screaming. We arrived late, so late that the rental car company was obviously doing me a courtesy by waiting for me to show up and claim the car I had reserved. Since the flight was on the ground, I reasoned the worst was over, my luck was changing.

I had rented the largest land yacht available, a real pimpmobile. I told myself that I wanted a car big enough to handle two child seats, five people, and a mountain of luggage, but in reality I was trying to rent a little dignity. Maybe a luxury car would make up for the fact that I had just flown on a cattle car to the colicky baby convention.

As I drove back to the airport from the car rental office to pick up my family, I could see the lights in the terminal building turning off. It was midnight; Merry Christmas.

I parked in front of the deserted airport where my family was waiting, hit the button on the dash to open the trunk, set the heater on high to warm the car, and got out to begin loading the trunk. I ran around to the passenger side of the car and opened the front door for Aunt Dingbat, then started to tackle a mountain of luggage.

Aunt Dingbat was impressed with the car. She leaned over, resting one hand on door’s armrest and admired the leather interior. “Wow,” she said. “This is nice.”

Then she stood up, hitting the door lock button, stepped back, and firmly shut the door, locking us out of the car. The key was in the ignition, the engine was running, the airport was deserted, and we were screwed.

Want a silver lining? The trunk was open. I got to pick the window I broke with the tire tool.

The Winter Campaign

Even here in southern New Mexico, winter eventually came. It snowed on the mountains and got down to freezing here in the valley. Personally, I’m against it. I would prefer an endless summer. I don’t even want ice in my scotch, and as for snow, it belongs on Yankees and Christmas cards.

Hot is good. That’s why I live in New Mexico, hot means cold beer while reading a book next to the pool. Summer is warm nights on the deck, meals on the patio, and green grass and flowers. Then winter comes. I wish Congress would quit trying to build a fence to close the border with Mexico. Instead, let’s spend the money on weather stripping the Canadian border. Cold means… freezing your ass off. Winter is raking up leaves, cleaning the fire place and dead gardens. Cold means stockpiling weapons-grade hot chocolate and an icy wind as cold as a mother-in-laws heart.

And I know exactly who to blame; my wife.

Women are in charge of the weather. I can prove it; after 35 years of marriage, I know exactly what I am in charge of. I could hardly forget, as it’s a short list. First, and this is most important, I am in charge of bugs. All bugs, everywhere, are my responsibility. Secondly, I am in charge of busted plumbing. And last, I am in charge of loud noises after dark. That’s it, three responsibilities, and I do them pretty well, although I admit my wife thinks I could do more in the bug prevention department.

Naturally, if that is all I am responsible for, my wife must bear responsibility for everything else. And that includes weather.

Lately, my wife has decided to up the ante and make this winter business so much more difficult. For a variety of reasons, my wife has decided that her favorite toy is the thermostat. The joystick on the boy’s Playstation doesn’t get as much action as that thermostat. I go to bed in a warm bedroom and wake up in the middle of the night to find the heater turned off, the windows open, and two cats trying to build a nest between my knees. Why do the cats love me? You can sum it up in two words; body heat.

I checked on the boys, What’s-His-Name was under three blankets and showing early signs of hypothermia. The-Other-One, obviously his mother’s son was sleeping soundly in his underwear. He didn’t have a blanket, What’s-His-Name had stolen it.

Sometime during the night my wife had decided it was too hot and turned off the heater. Evidently, she quickly changed her mind, because by the time I had woken up half frozen, she had decided to wear a sweater and wrap herself up in the comforter that had originally covered both of us.

In the temperature wars, I decided to start an arms race; I bought a new thermostat. It took me a while to find the right model; I bought the computerized Swiss army knife of thermostats. I have seen airplanes with fewer controls and buttons. Insanely difficult to use, you can program it to adjust the heater to a preset temperature four times a day. After memorizing and then hiding the instruction manual, I set the thermostat to reset every two hours all night long. If my wife turns the heater off, by the time the house cools off, the thermostat will reset itself and turn the heater back on.

My victory was only temporary. Somehow, my wife through trial and error is starting to understand how that thermostat works. I need a new strategy. An electric blanket with a combination lock? Bigger cats?

My current plan is to look for an additional pair of computerized thermostats. I figure if I replace the current model with a new one, then keep rotating them every couple of weeks, winter will be over before she figures out how to run them.

Trick or Treat by the Book

In 1976, I worked for a large book publisher based out of New York. What a wonderful job. I read books, drove a company car, and talked to the owners of book stores about our forthcoming titles. Not only did I get paid for this, I had an expense account.

Occasionally, I was asked to read advance copies of books and try to predict how they would sell in Texas. In two years, I doubt if any of the reports I turned in were as accurate as a New Mexico weather forecast. Frankly, I was horrible. If I liked a book, the author probably couldn’t give a copy to his own mother. And without exception, the books I hated not only sold well, but ended up as major motion pictures starring Harrison Ford.

I have no idea why I wasn’t fired, as I had the kind of accuracy you normally associate with a government agency. Unless the editors routinely did the opposite of whatever I said…well, perhaps that’s possible.

Meanwhile, totally oblivious to the fact that I was a black hole of marketing advice, my biggest problem was my expense account. It was too big. Seriously, the home office in New York routinely sent me notices wondering why I wasn’t spending more money. No one seemed to understand the difference between a 5th Avenue hotel and a motel room in the valley of Texas.

Padre Island at spring break is crowded, noisy, and expensive. During January it is abandoned. I once rented the Honeymoon Suite just outside of Corpus Christi for $14 a night. And the room came with a private pool.

I was expected to entertain, and I certainly tried my best. Unfortunately, you could take half of Beeville, Texas to the diner for a chicken fried steak and still not put a dent in a hundred dollar bill. Even if you took someone to the steak house, the most expensive drink on the menu was a bottle of Dr. Pepper; most of Texas was still dry. An exotic beverage was a can of Coors beer smuggled in from another state.

One day, a book store called me with an unusual problem. There was a brand new thriller out in paperback by an author who is still widely read to this day, and yes, I hated the book, and yes, it became a movie that you have probably seen.  In any case, the bookstore had ordered 40 copies but they had received 40 cases or 920 too many books.

At that time, a paperback cost about a nickel to make, hardly worth the cost or trouble to ship back. My boss asked if I knew anyone with a truck. (Yeah, that was a tough one, who in Texas would own a pickup?) My boss instructed me to take the books to the dump and dispose of them.

Impossible. I like books; I would rather have taken infants to the dump. I took them home and put them in my garage. 920 copies of the same book, any one of which was an insult to trees everywhere. This caused a little trouble in my home, my wife kept giving me what I call the Gregor Mendel look. This is the wide-eyed stare you get when your spouse suddenly realizes you will donate half the genes to your future children.

Ahh, but I had a clever plan. I explained to her that Halloween was coming and these books could be given out to the children who came to our door. At the time, we lived in a suburban area of San Antonio. At Halloween, hundreds of kids came to our door. This was a kinder and gentler time before we realized that children should be kept at home and locked in a closet for their own well-being.

Come Halloween night, the plan worked pretty well. Every kid who came to the door got candy, and a brand new paperback book. I gave away hundreds of books, and felt pretty good about it. Maybe it wasn’t the greatest book in the world, but it was a book. I was advancing reading and the love of the printed word. I was a hero.

These good feelings lasted all night long, right up to the point where I got into my car to drive to work. As far as the eye could see, up and down the street, books were in bushes, on rooftops, in gutters…

It took me hours to round them all up.

Raising Small Children Redux

There is an old and somewhat dark story about a very wealthy couple obsessed with the safety of their soon to be born first child.  The daily newspapers were filled with reports of accidents and horrible reports of the dangers that awaited their new child.

Realizing that the chance of their child surviving and reaching adulthood was simply a gamble, the couple decided to spare no expense to insure the absolute safety of their newborn.  They purchased a remote property where a massive bunker was dug into the side of a hill.  The bunker was a combination of hospital and home where an infant could be born and raised in absolute safety.  When the child was born, he breathed purified air, ate a perfectly balanced diet, and was daily attended by nurses, teachers, dieticians, and doctors in a home as free from all dangers as could possibly be arranged.  He lived in rubber rooms, never saw a sharp object, or experienced the slightest risk.

The child lived, grew, and thrived in this perfect world until finally his twenty-first birthday arrived, the day when he was to finally step out into the real world.  The young man stood in front of the giant double steel doors as they slowly creaked open, revealing a new world where the young man was to enter for the first time.

And when the doors finally opened, the young man promptly died as his heart gave out from the excitement.

Raising children is always like this.   No matter what you try, you cannot keep the little monsters safe.  When our first son, What’s-His-Name, was born, we certainly tried.  I think I boiled everything in the house except the cat.  By the time the second one was born, The-Other-One, I’d let the boys play with power tools.  I had learned you can’t keep children safe.

It was a lesson that I had to learn, and relearn every few months.  Perhaps the best lesson was the tree-climbing incident. 

Our back yard was built on the edge of a small cliff, and while the rock wall surrounding the yard is several feet high, if you were to manage to go over the wall, it’s about a 20-foot drop.  One day, when the boys were about 6 and 8, they had been playing quietly in the back yard for about 15 minutes.  This is always a bad sign: boys are not naturally quiet.  So I looked out, and there they were, about a dozen feet up a tree and out on a limb that stretched out over the wall.  Say, roughly about 30 feet down to the neighbor’s concrete driveway.

I admit it, I chickened out.  I convinced them to come inside and play in their room.  Not an hour earlier, I had told them to go outside and play; now I wanted them to come in.  This is not terribly consistent, but as I explained in my earlier post on raising children, the true secret of raising children is to be larger and meaner than them.  Both boys went to their room and played.

They played for about 15 minutes before I heard a loud thud followed by, “Ow!”

If you carefully link several belts together and throw it over the top shelf of the closet and hook it on a nail in the back wall of the closet…   Yeah, you can climb onto the top shelf.  At least until The-Other-One pushed What’s-His-Name off.  He fell five feet onto a thick carpet and broke both bones in his wrist. 

Should have left the little bastards up in the tree.

There were many, many refresher courses on this subject.  What’s-His-Name totaled my truck 25 feet past the railroad tracks while giving a young lady a ride home from school.  This makes perfect sense when you learn she had a large chest and no bra.  I couldn’t even get mad at him, as 30 years ago I used to speed up for railroad tracks when his mother rode in my car.

One day, coming home from work, I saw The-Other-One on the roof of the house.  With my lawn mower.  I just drove right by and kept on going.  Didn’t come back for over an hour.  To this day, I don’t know what he was doing and I don’t want to know.

My wife and kids and I went camping at Carlsbad.  We had two tents, Karen and I in one, while the boys shared the other.  In the middle of the night, I woke up when I heard The-Other-One say, “Nice Kitty.”  I looked out; he was petting a skunk.  I went back to sleep.

I once got a phone call from the local police at 3:00 in the morning.  It was raining heavily and while the policeman personally thought it was really cool, would I please stop my sons before any more people complained?  Seems the boys were waterskiing behind my pickup as it drove up and down a flooded street.

I’ll boil it down for you; Milliorn’s Rule of Child Raising:  Children have a right to be eaten by bears. 

As surely as missionaries should be eaten by natives.

Missionaries, the Other White Meat

Missionaries devote their lives to selfless sacrifice and working for a higher power. Naturally, I hate them.

And why shouldn’t I? Instead of them bothering poor helpless people in some jungle where if they don’t behave themselves the natives could at least eat them, I usually see missionaries when they stand at my front door. I really wouldn’t mind the intrusion if I, too, were given the option of slow roasting the more obnoxious.

Sadly, the local gentle customs will not even allow me to chase them from my yard with a garden hose. If you think about it, this isn’t fair to the missionary, either. Missionaries have a God given right to be eaten by natives, and I firmly believe that we should oblige them. Without the risk of suddenly becoming part of a balanced diet, a missionary turns into nothing more than a Mary Kay lady with an empty sample case.

Have you ever considered exactly what these people are doing when they show up at your home? You are minding your own business, in your own home when uninvited guests intrude on your privacy by ringing your doorbell. You open the door to discover a pair of slack-jawed yokels who appear to be about as mentally acute as empty buckets.

Next, the pair of them begin to explain to you that your moral philosophy, your sense of ethics, in short the personal code that makes you who you are, is wrong. More importantly, you must adopt their views as your own. At this point, in any truly civilized society, a garden hose would be required by law.

A missionary doesn’t know anything about you; for all he knows, you may belong to the same faith, might even go to the same church. All he really knows for certain is that you are wrong while he is right.

What makes missionaries so certain they are correct while you are completely ignorant? It is not because they have achieved any great success in any realm of their own personal life. No, most missionaries are convinced they alone are morally and spiritually gifted because either they were chosen by God himself to be born into the one true faith, or they have discovered it within the last six months.

My university has various missionaries that arrive annually as the weather pushes them south for the winter. Where Capistrano has swallows, and Hinckley has their buzzards, we have Reverend Jed, the prodigal moron. Reverend Jed is passionate about preaching his personal version of holy hatred, a message that he delivers at campuses around the country.

Several years ago, as I leaving the classroom, I found Reverend Jed surrounded by my students. This particular day his sermon was on the various evils of women. He pointed a long, bony finger at me and screamed, “Women in pants are an abomination!”

“Absolutely,” I agreed. “Women should be removed from their pants whenever possible.”

Of course, this doesn’t faze a missionary. Anyone who has regular communication from his very own personal imaginary friend cannot be bothered with reality. When you are on a holy mission, people expect you to have the manners of a steamroller and the empathy of a plague.

This is what is so scary about a missionary. Did you ever notice that if you admit to hearing voices, they label you a schizophrenic? But if those voices are God speaking only to you, you’re just being pious.

Why is it that when God gives these people personal instructions, they always seem to be such self serving, if not loony, orders? I have a suggestion; if you think you hear God talking directly to you, perhaps you should ask for a written confirmation, or at the very least, wait for the burning bush. If there really is a spiritual and heavenly message system, I suspect some people are only reading their spam mail.

Years ago, I worked out a foolproof tactic to deal with the missionaries who come to my door. Invite them into your house, sit them in the living room, and offer them a cold beer; as long as there are two or more of them, they’ll refuse. Don’t accidentally make this offer to a single missionary, you’ll quickly run out of beer.

Then drag up a chair and sit next to one of them. Invade their personal space, get as close as possible while you stare into their eyes. And most importantly, before they can start their spiel, you say; “Have you ever considered the inner peace and infinite joy that could be yours if you would just accept Satan into your life?”

It is very unlikely you will see them again.

Coffee in the Morning

I need coffee in the morning; it is not exactly an option. I’ve been known to chew coffee beans to wake up enough to remember how to use the coffee pot. My one true talent is sleeping, but this talent does not include waking up.

I rarely make my own coffee, thankfully, the munchkins at work make it for me. Since neither drinks coffee, they don’t mind making it strong enough to induce heart tremors. Wonderful! Coffee should not only have a flavor, it should be felt in the chest.

Sadly, I think the true enjoyment of drinking coffee is vanishing. I seem to be the one of the few who still truly enjoy a cup of Joe. Oh, half my class shows up every morning carrying something from Starbucks, but a half-decaf-double-mocha-skinny-fat-crappachino hardly qualifies as coffee. It’s more like a hot milk shake.

If you truly like the taste of coffee, why put all that crap into it? You put enough milk, sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate sprinkles into 30 weight motor oil and it won’t taste bad either.

Coffee is usually one of the things professors list when someone mentions “poor students.” Somehow, a student carrying a cell phone that cost more than my first car, an Ipod, and a $5 designer coffee does not exactly fall into the category of poor.

Have you ever wondered why coffee is called a cup of Joe? There is a great story that Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels outlawed alcohol on US naval ships in 1914, ending the long tradition of grog and rum. Since the strongest drink left on ships was coffee, they called it a cup of Joe in his honor.
This is a great story, not true, but still a great story. That’s okay. I’ve always believed that there is so little truth in the world that we shouldn’t waste it, we should use it sparingly.

So, unofficially, I can tell you there are five grades of coffee; Coffee, Java, Joe, Jamoke, and Carbon Remover. On any given day, I’m happy to have anything in the top three categories. The bottom two can only be made by true coffee illiterates; tea drinkers, the US Army, and Mormons.

I didn’t believe another category was possible, at least I had always believed this until today. Now, I can now add to the top of the list; Peaberry. I don’t mean the chain of coffee shops; I’m talking about a type of coffee.

Peaberry, or caracoli, is when the coffee cherry produces a single seed instead of the usual double. With more space to develop, the bean is pea shaped. Since the bean is rounded and lacks edges, the bean roasts more evenly. In all, the taste is far more intense and robust.

Robust is putting it mildly. Think coffee on steroids. Coffee good enough to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. Strong enough to grow hair on a billiard ball.

Unfortunately, it is expensive enough that you may have to finance your first cup.

When Pigs Fly

Is it just my university or is everyone going crazy over the H1N1 flu? All this while the Center for Disease Control tells us that this particular flu may not be as bad as the regular flu. So why are we close to a panic?

Isn’t it possible that people with mundane lives are desperately seeking some drama. It’s either that, are the world as we know it is half way down the storm drains of hell. I think some people would prefer a little catastrophic disaster than continue their boring lives.

So, the university has published disaster plans, flu advisories, H1N1 warning letters, and my personal favorite; an email that tells us to develop a three-deep roster in case key personnel become ill.

This is several impossible things. First, that a university strapped for cash would have three people capable of doing the same job. Second, if there were two people in the department that could do my job, I’d admit it. And probably most important, if this flu season turns out to be so bad that the first two people on the roster were sick, the third listed person would be willing to come to work.

If that many of the faculty are out sick, the remaining healthy ones will be hiding under their beds with a pair of panty hose over their heads in lieu of surgical masks.

Still I want to do my part.  I have two work study students; the Munchkins. One works in the lab in the morning, the other in the afternoon. Today, at lunch, while the two Munchkins overlapped, I called them into my office and explained our departmental health safety plan.

“If you think you might have any of the symptoms of the flu,” I said, “you still need to come to work. Just place a plastic bag over your head and secure it firmly around your neck with duct tape. Be sure the bag is clear, the university has told me several times they believe in transparency.”

Then, in case either of them actually got the flu, I gave them both a short list of the faculty office doorknobs I wanted them to spit on. No one can say that I am not prepared.

These plans won’t work and I know it. You probably cannot count on the average Munchkin to do her patriotic duty to prevent the flu from spreading. I’ll bet you anything they won’t wear a bag. I wonder how long they can hold their breath.

If there is a flu epidemic, the faculty are doomed. Each and every student, at least in my opinion, carries more germs than an open trench sewer in Belize. And they all sit there; mouths open, staring at their instructors. Each of those mouths is a virus cannon just waiting for a cough to fire their deadly salvo at the innocent instructor standing helplessly at the front of the room. We need body armor.

While I won’t get body armor, the university has plans to place large bottles of hand sanitizer at strategic locations. I am sure that someone, besides me, has already thought of sabotaging those bottles by adding a little super glue. That would almost make the entire epidemic worth while.

And you can count on me to believe this nonsense just as soon as pigs fly. Or in this case, swine flew.