Let's Get Ready to Rumble, Comrade

In today's post we examine the upcoming Senatorial race
in Connecticut where Linda McMahon, who is the wife of World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon, is seeking the Republican nomination to replace retiring Democrat Chris Dodd. In keeping with our policy of sparing no effort or expense to give our readers the best information possible, we've arranged for a computer-generated artist's conception of a typical day in Congress if McMahon, seen in the photo on the right in a policy conference with famed intellectual "Stone Cold" Steve Austin, is elected.



Ok, so it's not really Congress. Dammit. It is, as you no doubt know by now, the Ukrainian parliament's idea of debate, in which the "filibuster" is replaced by the "head-buster". (Most people have probably watched this already, or at least heard about it, but since it's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time, I thought it was worth another mention.) Kind of makes the American Congress (which, for overseas readers, is divided into two houses, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal), seem like high tea. As evidenced by the video, it didn't take long for debate and compromise to devolve into eggs and smoke bombs. (Accounts vary as to whether the projectile-debating included tomatoes, but you get the idea.) You could ask why the members of Parliament had eggs and smoke bombs with them in the first place, but then you'd miss the real fun that came after. It was a riot. Literally.

The news media, as usual, have presented all of this out of context. The real story is that Ukrainian officials, upon separating from the former Soviet Union, sought to model their new government after our American democracy, and so decided to watch C-Span. Cable stations being different in the Ukraine than in the U.S., they ended up watching the MSG network instead and saw Rangers hockey fans up in the blue seats just after beer sales were cut off. Not knowing very much English, the Ukrainians never reali zed the mistake, and an unfortunate misunderstanding - not to mention several viral videos - were the result. Can't we all just get along?

Semi-Related Item: Speaking of People in Mysterious Faraway Places Behaving Badly...

This week, the government of the sovereign nation of Arizona (which shares a somewhat porous border with Mexico) passed a law that, in effect, allows Arizona police to ask anyone they think could possibly be an illegal immigrant for proof of citizenship and, if they can't produce it on the spot, take them into custody. While that does sound a bit like some World War II B-movie where a jack-booted brownshirt demands to see "your papers!", I don't think civil libertarians here need to be too concerned. Arizona law enforcement has stated very clearly that they will not use the new law as an opportunity to profile Hispanics. You believe them, don't you? The law is no doubt intended to have them stopping people with blond hair and blue eyes, in an effort to prosecute illegal Swedes who are flooding the market with bootleg Abba cd's. (I can hear the drums, Fernando...)

How I Spent My Sunday

Just the usual. Went to church, then the supermarket. Later on a memorial service. And, oh yeah, I made my first foray into video blogging. What do you think?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADBxf5dBzv4

Easy Rider

Just back from taking my new set of wheels for their first spin. It seemed like the right time to replace my old bike, considering a) I bought the old bike nearly thirty years ago and b) it was stolen last fall. After looking at several models I decided on a 7-speed Kent Glendale. (I was eying up a lovely 21-speed Schwinn for a bit more money, but since I'd never figured out what to do with three speeds back in the old days, it would have just seemed like a waste of good machinery.) I actually bought the new bike last week but today was my first opportunity to inflate the tires, adjust the brakes, attach the water bottle and the dorky reflector stickers and, most importantly, figure out if there really is anything to that expression about how something you never forget how to do is like riding a bike.

Happy to report it went great. I live near the bottom of a moderately steep hill and, as a young man, I was generally unable to bike to the top of the hill without stopping to rest. Having now advanced to the age when I have children who are older than I was in those "can't do the hill" days, it was no small triumph to make it to the top, slowly at times but without stopping. (I admit reading the manual about how to use speed settings helped some.) It ended up being a three and a half mile round trip along a main boulevard. I felt so good about my newly-restored healthy lifestyle I stopped along the way for a celebratory hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut. (The garlic in the sauerkraut is, after all, very good for you.)

Everything went so well that, upon my return, I felt compelled to pose for a photo. (It's amazing what you can accomplish nowadays with some photo editing software and a camera-phone propped up on a trash can.) After taking it, though, I did start wondering if it was uncomfortably close to another "take a picture of me posing" photo...

Unrelated Topic: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel from an Airplane

"No administration in America's history would, I think, ever have considered such a step that we just found out President Obama is supporting today. It's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me.' (Sarah Palin on Sean Hannity's Fox "News" program, April 7, 2010)

What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle?

All together now: "Lipstick!"

As much as I don't want this journal to be reduced to a series of "Sarah Palin Says the Darnedest Things" essays, sometimes she just makes it too easy. (For my readers across the pond, Sarah Palin is something like our version of Prince Harry.) Palin, who still insists that interview debacle was Katie Couric's fault (as opposed to those hard-hitting questions people like Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Fox's other Palin-lapdogs throw at her), and who is considered to have done well in her VP debate simply because she avoided saying anything too laughable, is now the republican party's elder-statesperson on nuclear proliferation as it relates to foreign policy.

I'll pause a moment while you finish laughing.

The treaty which, according to Palin, has us saying "go ahead and do what you want to with me" calls for both the US and Russia each to reduce their nuclear arsenals from 2,200 deployed warheads to 1,550 over seven years, and their long-range missiles and launchers to 700. If she thinks those numbers leave us unarmed, it makes one wonder about a number of things, not the least of which is how large a weapons cache is stored her garage.

Perhaps my starting this by comparing Palin to Dan Quayle wasn't fair. At least Quayle eventually caught onto the fact that he was coming off like a fool and stopped issuing public statements.

It's a Jungle Out There

As I write this, I'm holed up in my bedroom while a DAR meeting takes place downstairs. I just know if I venture downstairs to the living room, even if it's just for a moment to snare a rice-krispy treat, they'll tie me up with their sashes, gag me with their white gloves and eat me. Or maybe not, but why take the chance?

Leave the Sword, Take the General Tsao's Chicken

A group at my office selects and then meets periodically during lunch to discuss management-related books. Titles and authors we've read in the past include Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People," Rudolph Giuliani's "Leadership," and RFK's "Thirteen Days." Some of the selections have been very worthwhile, others less so, but all have been the kind of book you'd expect a management reading group to choose. We're currently voting on our next selection, and a book that seems to be getting a lot of support is Sun Tzu's classic, "The Art of War." (That word - classic - has become overused at times, but we're talking here about a book written in the 6th century BC - literally, Biblical times - that, in business circles, is still widely read and discussed today.) If that book does get selected it will be interesting to see how some of its teaching - "Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve," for example - will be applied to the office setting.

Who Will Guard the Guardians?

Want to have some fun? The next time you hear someone railing about how idiot socialists in Washington have broken every law known to man and passed a health care reform bill that will turn the White House into the Kremlin, ask him/her simply to describe to you what's in the bill and see how many of them actually know.

And Another Thing...

Some years back, a movie was made of Thom Wolfe's great book about the Mercury space program, "The Right Stuff." As a movie it had its shortcomings - the Mercury astronauts themselves derided it as "Laurel and Hardy Go To Space" - but there was a great line in it when someone asked the Von Braun-like lead scientist if the German experts now in America were going to be able to out-do the German experts who were working for the Russians. He reassured them by saying, "Our Germans are better than their Germans."

With this in mind, I don't know about you, but I'm having a grand old time watching the right wing on television trying to explain why it's good when Republicans use the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to pass a bill and a violation of every law and moral principle known to man when Democrats do the same thing.

These days it seems like the only thing Republicans and Democrats can get together on - aside from the fervent hope that Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican party - is putting partisanship and self-interest before leadership. We do it to ourselves, folks.

Shifting the Paradigm into Low Gear

Maybe it's just my crankified mood of late, but I've thought of a new personal motto: "Don't know. Wasn't there. Didn't see it. Have other things to think about." Maybe it's more like a Vision Statement. Covers a lot of ground, and puts a whole new perspective on many things, including reading the newspaper, which now more than ever reminds me of the Thurber cartoon caption from ages ago: "Sometimes the news from Washington makes me think your mother and brother Ed are in charge."

Think I'm kidding? Here are some of today's stories from my local what-passes-for-a-newspaper. So help me, I'm not making any of this up.

• On Wednesday afternoon, a local charter school recently told by the state to shut down by June 30 held a rally in support of staying open. The next morning, police arrested a 16-year-old student there for having a loaded .32 caliber handgun in the cafeteria, and an 18-year-old student for punching out a security guard. (Although I'm second to none in my respect for the charter school's ability to fail miserably at half the cost-per-student of local district schools, this may be a sign it's time for the school in question to become a Starbuck's.)
• A 70-year-old man was stabbed in his apartment by his 46-year-old girlfriend, whom he a) had a restraining order against and b) was living with. What was the restraining order for, to keep her from putting any of her things in his half of the medicine cabinet? Not to make light of what is obviously a serious matter, but I can just hear Bill Engvall saying, "Here's your sign..." (In stark contrast to his apparent IQ, the man's injuries turned out to be non-life-threatening.)
  
• Major League Soccer players in the U.S. - and if that's not a contradiction in terms I don't know what would be - voted to strike if a new labor contract isn't agreed to before the season opens on March 25. Look at the bright side; this could be the opening into America's sports-heart that curling was waiting for.

Unrelated Item: Proof You Can Find Anything On You-Tube

While doing research recently for a youth-group slide presentation about the human spirit of exploration that connected Lewis and Clark with the U.S. Space Program 160 years later - yes, the day-to-day excitement of my life does become overwhelming at times - I came across something so good - and so unique - it demanded to be shared. In the hope rap master MC LaLa doesn't mind me sharing his marvelous creation, and with a dedication to faithful reader Alaina as one of my favorite stewards of young minds, I give you the "Lewis and Clark Educational Rap." Laugh if you want, by the time it's done I bet you'll be tapping your foot and singing, "Saca-sacagawea...Saca-sacagawea..."

The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Sarah Palin was on Leno Tuesday night doing stand-up. No joke. For those who missed it, and for those who did see it and who enjoy things like placing their hands on a hot stove till the flesh sears, here it is. (Remember, you were warned.)

Although I haven't heard anyone else say it, I can't possibly be the only person who watched this and thought, "Don't quit your day job. Oh wait...YOU DID."

I Thought Women's Curling Involved Blow Driers

These are tough days for anyone not very interested in the Olympics. I like sports, and even in unfamiliar ones a close match or a come-from-behind victory can be exciting, even inspirational. But the sheer obsessiveness of it all descends into fluff of the worst kind: endless/pointless human interest stories and the same athletes and their families being asked the same questions over and over during the broadcast, and then again on the morning shows. It's the sports equivalent of the American vice-presidency: we get all worked up about that every four years too as if nothing else mattered and, when we're done, we throw a coat or some spare linens over them and forget they're there for another four years. A few passing observations:

• I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to require the ice dancers to do something based on some country's traditional dances, but I've got to believe anything that involves a white couple from Russia dressing up like Australian Aborigines is probably not going to end well.
• Curling would be more interesting if small furry animals were used instead of flat stones.
• It looks like we can now file Johnny Weir right along side Posh Spice and Adam Lambert in the "You Didn't Invent a Cure for Cancer - Get Over Yourself" folder. (It's amazing how people see themselves as having star power when it's really just the general public's fascination with twisted metal at the side of the road.)

Anyway, I'm just back tonight from Williamsburg, VA, where I attended a children's entertainer's conference. Readers with me this time last year may remember the "Back to the Future" theme and the photos of a full-scale DeLorean made from balloons. This year's theme was "South of the Border.") As always with hotels, there were the challenges of yet another set of shower controls - whatever happened to the standard hot water on the left, cold water on the right, and you just turn each until you get the amount of water you want at the temperature you want? - and another in-room coffee maker (coffee maker first, by the way), and of being reminded that able-bodied people, even well-intentioned ones, have no idea how to design an accessible hotel room. (Hotels please note: it requires a little more than attaching a set of randomly-placed grab bars on one of the walls in the bathroom.) We've learned to carry our own shower bench and toilet handle bars when traveling. It's a lesson taught to me years ago in bartending school, and that I may have mentioned here before: Who's better at protecting your butt than you are? Nobody.

This year, there was also a large children's soccer tournament in the area that had several teams staying at the hotel. A couple of hundred entertainers (mostly clowns) and a couple of hundred kids in the same hotel. You connect the dots.

People sometimes ask about what goes on at children's entertainer's conferences? There are competitions, of course - balloon sculpting, skits, face-painting - but mostly it's about lectures and vendors. Topics this year included making low-cost props; magic; storytelling; make-up development; business promotion and sales; working restaurants; and protecting yourself and your audiences from diseases, allergies and people who like to hurt clowns. (Did you know that the glue on stickers often contains peanut oil? There, I just saved you a potential lawsuit. Remember where you heard it.)

It was a weekend of seeing old friends, too. Close friends my wife went to college with, others we get to talk to less often but that it's still great to see. One more year of being struck by the irony of how many people at a "happy" conference are in, or have left, really bad marriages. In one small group, people were swapping divorce stories the way middle-aged guys trade anecdotes about colonoscopies. I felt so left out, though one old friend I'd not seen in years had heard from someone that I'd gotten divorced a couple of years ago. This is not true, of course, at least as far as I know, though I'll confirm this with my wife and probably should check the tax records too.

Perhaps most significantly, on the long drive home I had my first Red Bull. I'll write more about that in a couple of days after I finally get to sleep.