Not another delay!

I don’t know if it is just me or the society we now live in, but the word patience is almost non-existent in today’s world.  Last week I was in one of those self checkout lanes at a local store and I swear the guy standing behind me was going to step into my back pocket while I scanned my items and dropped them into the bag that is literally three inches from the scanner.  I couldn’t tell if he had a bad case of sudden onset diarrhea, recently finished a beer drinking contest, or just wanted to smell the fabric softener in my shirt, but we would have ended up in the same clothes if he would have gotten any less patient. 

I had maybe three items to scan and the guy acted like I was analyzing a rare Picasso painting.  Constantly sighing, fidgeting, and looking around like a crack addict needing a fix.  The whole process could not have taken me more than 2 minutes tops but I felt as though I had just beat the train across the tracks as the guy barreled into the scanner like a starving monkey at a banana farm after I barely retrieved my bag. 

The truly sad part of this story is I have found myself feeling that same twinge of frustration over having to wait.  I was standing at our microwave the other day and notice that I JUST WANTED IT TO BE COOKED ALREADY SO I DIDN’T HAVE TO STAND THERE ANY LONGER.  I recall thinking to myself in that moment “even in this microwave society where everything is virtually instantaneous I can’t seem to wait on the microwave patiently”.  What is my problem?

I think it’s because we seem to crave constant stimulation.  Our brains are constantly going even when we sleep, or so I’ve been told as I sometimes talk in my sleep, and I’m not Einstein, but this has to be because my brain is still working while the rest of my body is out cold.  Our society has turned into a race of 3 year olds who need to constantly move, keep attention for roughly a 5 to 10 minute span, and rush to the bathroom just before our pants are soaking wet.  Some of us make it, and some of us don’t, but the point is that 2 minutes is only relative to which side of the bathroom door you’re standing on. 

Anyway, this article is just taking too long to complete so I’m going to end it now, go to the store, and pressure the person in the self checkout line to hurry up.  Hopefully they will be patient with me! 

Reward Card…Ugh

Now a day’s almost every establishment has a reward card they give out that keeps track of your purchases so the store can send you coupons, give you discounts, and generally causes moments of frustration in line as you search frantically for your card during checkout.  They usually give you a credit card sized card, and then one or two little cards that you can put on a key ring.

I used to carry the credit card sized cards in my wallet until it became impossible to fold my wallet so I moved to the key ring.  This is fine if you have one or two, but I currently have fifteen on my key ring.  I cannot fit my keys into my pocket any longer without looking like I’m carrying a mutilated softball in my pants. 

Each card is of a different size as well and because I stuff these into my pocket I’ve found the longer ones tend to become bent, which over time begins to wear away the lamination.  So now I have roughly six to eight cards that the lamination is curling on which essentially expands the cards physical space into the size of Delaware. 

As I look over the cards I realize that I use approximately three of these cards on a regular basis.  As I am a miser and always want a discount I carry these stupid things with me all the time on the outside chance that I’ll visit one of these places and get the discount / reward.  The only problem with this is that half the time I visit these places I forget I have the stupid things on my key ring and walk out without using them.  How I forget to use them is beyond me because after I walk out of the store I usually have to get a crow bar and a small crane to get the keys out of my pocket. 

I also do not feel rewarded for carrying these things.  Half the time, the times I remember to use them, they scan the card and it does nothing but collect my purchasing information.  I have basically carried these things around, provided my buying habits to faceless corporations so they can in turn sell that information to other faceless corporations, which will then send me coupons for their products.  Then when I’ve been tempted by their coupon offers and purchase one of their items they will offer me yet another reward card.  I’m detecting a pattern here and I think I’m the butt of this joke!

At any rate the reward card is essential in today’s age and should be carried at all costs.  So to get my keys back into my pocket I’m going to have the rewards cards sewn into a jacket with the bar code exposed because I just can’t pass up on a potential bargain / reward.

Now, where did I leave my keys?

Culture / Obsession with safety

I grew up during a time when the only people who wore helmets were soldiers, fireman, football players, construction workers that made buildings, and the batter in baseball. No one that I saw wore a helmet riding a bike, skateboard, go cart, dirt bike, or playing ice hockey (accept the goalie and that was a just a mask). Today it’s hard to drive a half mile without seeing grown adults sporting the latest swiss cheese holed helmet while riding a bike a whooping 10 miles an hour.

I see people my age with these things on their heads and think “really”. Does anyone believe that the impact from the Mac truck barreling down the road with a driver who needs to text his buddy to see if he wants to hang out later will be any less fatal with that styrofoam walnut on their head? The helmet, at best, is a false sense of safety. As a child when I would have a wreck on my bike, which was usually a result of something stupid I was doing like riding without my hands on the handle bars and trying to sit Indian style on the seat, the last thing I would brace my fall with was my head. I know that seems silly, but I always found that impact with my face and skull on the pavement to be less appealing than my hands hitting first. In fact my head was the part of my body that I purposely avoided coming in contact with the ground.

Now, I’m not an advocate for people not being safe. I’m an advocate for people being smart, and coordinated. One thing I learned as a child was if I couldn’t do something without banging my head on the ground I quickly avoided that activity. As did all the other kids I grew up with. I learned how to ride my bike, but more importantly, and painfully through trial and error, I learned how to fall off my bike as well. Falling off a bike hurts. You may skin a knee, elbow, and scuff up the palms of your hands breaking the fall and if going fast enough may break a bone, but most likely not hit your head if you know how to fall.

I know what you are going to say “what about the fall you haven’t planned for, or the occasional front end impact with the neighbors dog as you ride your bike through their living room” to which I would respond “they shouldn’t have left their front door open while I was on my bike ride”. If I can be serious for a second we cannot protect ourselves from every possible accident….UNTIL NOW! I created a suit made of kevlar and bubble wrap that is lined with chain-mail. It’s virtually impenetrable and covers the entire body accept the face. The bubble wrap cushions the fall / impact, the kevlar protects you from the abrasions, and the chain-mail just looks cool. Knights wore chain-mail and is there any cooler look than a suit of armor?

The only slight snag I’ve had with the suit is that it weighs roughly the same as a Ford Focus. I’ve found that if I crawl into the suit and lay in my front yard it works perfect as I have yet to be injured from a fall. I’ve also found that laying in my front yard outside of the suit has the same affect, but I do not feel as confined or get as sweaty as the suit does not have a lot of ventilation. Hey, it’s still in the design stage!

Anyway, I think if people truly want to be safe while riding their bikes, and make the next fashion statement, then they need to get one of these suits when it comes off the production line. Sure they will have to find bicycles that will hold the weight of a Ford Focus, and probably look like an idiot riding down the road, but it’s all about being safe, right?

Personally my bicycle is a car, and so far I haven’t had to put a helmet on while driving it, but if I can get this suit in the front seat you bet I’ll be sporting my chain-mail protection unit!

What a gas!

That phrase used to reference a good time, and I think was popular around the 1920’s and 30’s when everyone was high on nitrous oxide and dentistry would gladly take a dozen eggs or a Cornish hen as payment for tooth extraction.  Today a simple tooth cleaning will require a cosigner and 20% of your net worth put down just for them to consider poking you with a metal pick to make your gums bleed.

With all that said the gas I’m referring to is methane, which we humans produce on a daily basis.    This is the same gas that causes my family and pets to usually leave the room I’m in with disgusted looks on their face and expressions that can only mean they are thinking “I hope I don’t get brain damage from that smell I was just accosted by”.  I never claimed my poop doesn’t stink so this will generally cause a chuckle from me and sometimes an outright laugh.

However this is still not the point of this blog.  I’ve done some extensive research on this topic of methane and the effects on humans, and when I say extensive I mean I asked my family and friends over the years.  I would have asked everyone in the world, but that could take at least 3 lifetimes, and I don’t know about you, but I don’t have that kind of time on my hands.

The one conclusion I found in my studies is that to a person not one of the people I asked ever liked taking a poop at school when they were in elementary and high school.  This is fascinating to me simply because every job I’ve ever had I would encounter odors so pungent coming from the employee bathroom that if one were exposed to them long enough it would shut down their central nervous system.  People obviously got over their phobia of dropping logs in school as adults, and as far as I can tell, have greatly increased their fiber intake to make sure their cycles coincide with a workplace toilet.    It also seems to coincide with my entrance into those bathrooms.   Ugh!!!

Now, I’ve come up with a theory, which I like to call “getting paid to poop” that basically says if people can get paid at work while they poop most people will poop while at work.    I know this not exactly on the same level as the theory of relativity, theory of evolution, or Colonel Sander secret recipe, but when you connect the dots it seems to “flow”.  Realistically people are getting paid to poop, use the company’s toilet paper and water to flush (for some several times), and cut down on their paper and water consumption at home.   It makes perfect sense.

Now we need someone to come up with a way to filter workplace bathroom air so fellow employees are not exposed to gasses that cause them to hold their breath for long periods of time while exiting their bladders…The Lysol and Fabreeze just ain’t cutting it folks!

First Blog….now what?

The intent of this blog is to hopefully amuse you with my perspective on life.   I have to warn you that I occasionally misspell words, screw up on my punctuation, and leave empty bowls that contained ice cream around the house, which upsets my wife for some strange reason.  The bowls eventually make it to the sink for cleaning about the same time we need clean bowls, and this is just not in the time frame my wife desires.  I digress, which is another thing I will do a lot of in these blogs.

Which brings me to the point of this blog, digression.  Everyone digresses eventually in conversation.  One moment you’re talking to your boss about the next step in the pending issue at work, and the next thing you know you find yourself intensely talking about how awful the officiating is in little league baseball, or how they never seem to fix that road we drive to work on, or how annoying other employees can be who just don’t understand what its like to work in our department.  WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE GET ME A BEER!

This kind of talk goes on in our daily lives everyday and no one seems to care or notice unless they have a point to make and I am not sticking to their topic at hand.  Then things can get heated, and it’s usually not about the topic at hand, but more about how I never listen, and I keep interrupting them with my nonsense about stuff I want to talk about and eventually I just get up, walk out and tell the nurse to tell the doctor to email me the results because all he ever does is manipulate the conversation.  Geez, some people!

ANYWAY, where was I?  Oh yes digression.  I think we all digress simply because of all the distractions we have in life.  With smart phones that constantly update us every time someone snaps a picture of their half eaten steak and throws it up on Facebook or Twitter, or the constant barrage of advertising on every web page you visit we are constantly drawn in 50 different directions with a bit of knowledge that we all feel we must consume.  Therefore I think this is why our conversations are so fragmented.  Few of us have the ability to focus on one topic for more than 30 seconds anymore.  It’s almost as if we are saying “alright I’ve had enough of your topic, have digested your point, and need to move on to another topic or I’ll move on to another face to converse with”.

So, as I digress to the close of this first blog I hope you’ve had just enough silliness to cause a smile or two and you quickly move on to another blog, post, or tweet so your brain doesn’t starve from having to focus too long on this arrangement of words.

 

Thank you, and stay on the right side of the dirt!