I often make jokes about how men are smarter than women. I'm sure if you spent five minutes looking through the archives of this blog, you could find ten examples of that fact. The truth is, men don't even come close.
You may be reading this and thinking that I'm trying to set up a really funny joke that proves how men are really smarter than women. If you are thinking that, you're probably a man. That's how men think. A man would read the title of this post and think to himself, "Ooooh, this is probably going to be a good joke." A woman would read it and think, "Only a man would try to explain a universal fact."
It is true that men should be smarter than women. We have larger brains, which gives us the capacity to retain more information. We've only recently given women the same rights that we have, so we have centuries of learning and education that women are trying to make up. We have little things we like to call "reason" and "logic;" things for which women have no need.
What women do have is the trump of all trumps. It doesn't matter how much smarter men should be, we will never be as smart as women. This is because women have what they call "A Woman's Intuition." Men don't like to acknowledge that this intuition is more useful than all of their knowledge, skill, and experience combined. That doesn't change the facts.
Intuition follows no logical pattern; it changes at random. It seems to mold itself to fit the woman's will. I would almost go so far as to say that A Woman's Intuition has the ability to influence time and space. What should logically never happen, suddenly becomes commonplace when A Woman's Intuition tells her it should be so.
An example of this is when a woman fills out her NCAA Tournament bracket. Using nothing but her intuition, she can out-pick the most knowledgable, intelligent college basketball analysts on the planet.
Another example is when your wife tells you it's time to get a new car.
This is my last week at my current job and I'm having a heck of a time staying focused on my work. I work in a room with four other people and we all have our own desks. My old ping-pong opponent works across the room from me. He never does any work anyways, so he'll frequently pester me with random questions or throw Nerf-type balls at me throughout the day.
In retaliation, I frequently shot rubber bands at him. Today I found out that he has been throwing away the rubber bands, so I can't keep using them. So I've decided to start using walkabites.
Walkabites are pieces of ammunition made from paper or paperclips. You take a small piece of paper and fold it into a smaller "bullet." I prefer the 3X2 walkabite. This means folding the paper length-wise three times and then two times over that. This should give you a sturdy walkabite.
Then you place a rubberband in between your thumb and middle finger (left hand if you're right-handed). Put the walkabite into the rubberband and you've created a type of slingshot. Pull back on the walkabite and let 'er rip.
I just shot my coworker in the cheek from about ten yards away. It's more fun than you can possibly imagine.
Using a paperclip is like making armor piercing walkabites. They should only be used in the most extreme cases.
If you can think of anything else funny and somewhat harmless that I can do for the next few days, please leave a comment and let me know. Your brilliance is appreciated.
I feel compelled to write something about this tragedy. Surely everyone has heard of this by now, so I will spare the details. It's difficult to imagine what that community is going through right now and it almost feels wrong to even talk about it. Those people are going through so much pain and grief, more than I could ever imagine. The worst thing about it all, is the randomness. The senseless, pointless, destruction of life.
In the next few weeks we're going to hear a lot of details come out about this story. Many will try to make sense of it all, and as often happens when we experience immense pain, we will all question "Why?" Why did this happen? We will hear how easy it is to get a handgun and that the NRA is at fault. We will hear how the administrators at Virginia Tech did not act quickly enough. How police officials could have done more. We'll hear how friends and acquaintenances of the shooter noticed seemingly insignificant tell-tale signs that they should have responded to. We'll hear how the Asian culture puts so much pressure on their children to succeed. Of course we'll hear about video game, music, and television violence and their impact on our society. We'll hear from other schools about their security and their plans to avoid a similar catastrophe and what Virginia Tech should have done. We'll all try to make sense of this mess, and eventually, most of us will move on. At least those of us who are far enough removed from the event.
So why did this happen? And why is it so important for us to figure out how it happened? Obviously we like to learn from our mistakes and we want to do everything we can to prevent something like this happening again. That's why we're not allowed to bring liquids onto a plane.
I don't know why this happened. I know it wasn't the fault of any one organization, any breach of security, any one rule, video game, or individual. I think part of the reason we want an answer so badly is because we all feel a sense of guilt over something like this. We want to pinpoint exactly where we can do better and then we want to make that change. We all feel like we could have done more. That we should have done more. And we're all probably right.
Somehow, we all feel guilty about this. We all want reconciliation for what happened. We want answers and we never want to hear of something like this again. I don't know what we can do.
So, I'll leave you with a quote from one of our own great poets. He was fortunate enough to have passed from this world before witnessing this recent reminder of what humankind is capable of doing to itself. But we've been doing this sort of thing for years.
"Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies:
God damn it, you've got to be kind." -Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
The problem with trying to write something funny about this news story is that nothing can possibly make it funnier. The only thing that makes this even better is that the "Faggot Family" actually has the real last name of Doody. I'll just let you read the rest of the article. You can't possibly make it funnier. Here are a few questionable quotes from the BBC news story:
"It's unfair because faggots were a British delicacy long before any of the others."
The competition was organised by faggot producer Mr Brain's Faggots.
Faggots were called "savoury ducks" in the Middle Ages.
"The great British faggot is full of flavour and a great belly warmer at this time of year."
Before I say anything more about this, please do yourself a huge favor and just read this article: Pearl's Before Breakfast- Washington Post. Yes, it is long. But if you're going to jump from this blog over to some other blog and spend the next half hour reading mindless stuff, mostly because it's now become your habit, then I strongly suggest you do something different. If just for today. Read the article; then, if you care, you can come back and read what I thought about it.
(Feel free to listen to Joshua Bell play while you read the rest of this post. This video just plays his music, nothing to see here.)
For those of you morons who ignored me and kept reading without going to that article, first of all- go read it! If you still won't, I'll briefly break it down. Joshua Bell, who is a world famous virtuoso violinist (and a native Hoosier), agreed to play in the Washington Metro for about an hour. It was an experiment set up by the Washington Post to see if ordinary people, in the midst of their ordinary routines, would have the capacity to recognize something truly extraordinary.
Bell brought along his 300-year old Stradivarius; the same one he uses in all his concerts and recordings; the same one that's worth just under $4 million. For forty-five minutes, Bell played some of the most powerful and demanding pieces of music ever written. The article quotes Brahms as saying (of one of the pieces), "If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind."
At the end of his performance, Bell had earned a total of $32.17. The more amazing thing was that for the most part, he went virtually unnoticed by the 1,000 or so people who passed him. Interestingly enough, every child who passed tried to stop and listen to Bell, only to be prodded along by their parents.
When I was traveling in Europe, I used to love all of the street performers. If I had the time, I would have stopped at every one to listen and frequently did. Part of this is because I live in a city where we don't really have any street performers. Except for that guy who plays Christmas songs on his trumpet underneath the Arts Garden at Washington and Illinois. So, I'm not really desensitized to it. I imagine that the main reason so many people ignored Joshua Bell, was because they were used to ignoring street performers. It does surprise me that his expertise didn't attract more onlookers, but I can understand why that happened.
The scary thing is to think of the many beautiful things in my life that I have become numb to. So much of my life is just routine. It's hard to enjoy a dull morning ride to work. It's much easier to just put everything on cruise control.
Yesterday at our Bright Monday Barbecue, The Tickler and I were stuck in line to get food. We were at the back of the line and going nowhere. He told me about a satirical sketch he had done with some friends, where the main characters would go stand in line for things (restaurants, clubs, etc.). When they finally made it to the front of the line, they would just leave and go stand in another long line. He made a comment along the lines of, "It's not the destination, it's the journey." We were talking about it jokingly, but it strikes me how true this really is.
The sad thing is that everybody already knows this. When I hear someone say, "be sure to stop and smell the roses," I don't even listen. I don't think about what that even means. Of course I know I'm supposed to enjoy everything, but I don't. I could be walking by a once in a lifetime opportunity to hear music that moves people to tears, and I wouldn't even know. That scares me.
Life slowly starts to choke the poetry out of us. -Billy Collins
Amazing fact about Joshua Bell:
He got his first music lessons when he was a 4-year-old in Bloomington, Ind. His parents, both psychologists, decided formal training might be a good idea after they saw that their son had strung rubber bands across his dresser drawers and was replicating classical tunes by ear, moving drawers in and out to vary the pitch.
(Props to Gene Weingarten, for writing the article and Freakonomics for the hat tip)
I waited to do a post on this because I wanted to give the parents enough time to tell everyone in person, but last Saturday, my second nephew was born. His name is Caleb Joachim. I hesitate to show any pictures, because I don't know how the parents would feel. Not to mention that anyone who really cares has probably already seen them.
A few months ago, my first nephew was born. At that time I had written a few things that I learned from that birth (you can go back and read about it, good stuff). I have a few more thoughts about this newest baby.
You can imagine how terrifying this is. We all expect this young man to grow up in his father's footsteps. All I'll say is that it's good to be an uncle. I can't wait till that kid is like 9 years old. Yeah, Crazy Caleb. Good stuff.
The other interesting things was watching how much different "mom" interacted with this child (they have a 2 1/2 year old daughter). When their first child was born, she was always looking around to see who was holding her, making sure everyone washed their hands, got nervous if the baby cried, etc. With baby Caleb, we could've walked out of the room with him and she wouldn't have even noticed. Interesting.
The last thing that was funny was when their daughter came in and looked at her mom's stomach. She pointed at it and said, "Another baby?" Or something similar. I wasn't there to witness that, but I bet it was funny.
So anyways, congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Buttrocket Guy and the newest edition to their family. I expect to see many buttrockets in the not-to-distant future.
Google Maps is truly an amazing navigational tool. You can get directions to just about anywhere. And I mean anywhere.
I decided to find out how long it would take to drive from Indianapolis, Indiana to London, UK. Google Maps was up to the challenge. Not only did they find directions, they found a way to do it in less than a month! (results here)
According to Google Maps- "Drive: 4,671 mi (about 29 days 21 hours)"
After looking at that map, I know what you're thinking. "But Arthur, that route has me driving over the Atlantic Ocean. My car doesn't float!"
Ahh, ye of little faith. You forgot that Google Maps was at the helm. If you'll look closely at the directions, you can clearly see that they take care of this minor obstacle in step #18:
So, 3,462 miles later, you will arrive in...France? I must admit, this had me questioning the navigational skills of Google Maps. I mean, if I were to swim across the Atlantic Ocean to get to London, I would think the fastest way would be to swim right up into England.
However, we are instructed to swim into France. I know Google is never wrong, so I started thinking about why they would send us to France?
I assume it is because they have our health in mind and the rocky shores of Southwestern England is no place for a tourist to be swimming. Not to mention the fact that Americans are familiar with the beaches of Normandy, so this would be a logical destination. Maybe Google gets a referral bonus from the A29 autoroute. Whatever the reason, you can rest assure that this is the fastest route possible.
Now, before you go do anything stupid, like trying to drive across the Pacific Ocean, you need to know that- unlike the Atlantic Ocean- it can't be done. I tried to find directions to Hawaii, and there appears to be a big ocean in the way.
Today, Indianapolis will submit its bid to host the 2011 Super Bowl. Today is the deadline for cities to turn in their bids, and a decision will be made by May 23.
So, cross your fingers, cause this would be sweet for Indianapolis. I don't want to get too excited about anything yet, but nobody should have to tell you that this would be HUGE for our city. Especiallly if the Colts win the next three Super Bowls and then get a chance to play for five rings in a row at home. Yeah, that'd be awesome.
The full story can be read here from IndyStar. But here are a few highlights, as reported by Karen Eschbacher:
Decision is 7 weeks away • Today: Allison Melangton, senior vice president of event management for the Indiana Sports Corp., flies to New York to hand-deliver the city's bid to the NFL offices.
• April 10: Representatives from Indianapolis 2011 Inc. will meet with NFL staff in Philadelphia to review the bid and discuss possible improvements. The city can continue refining its proposal until shortly before a location is chosen.
• May 21-23: NFL team owners will hold their spring meeting in Nashville, Tenn., and are expected to choose a location for the 2011 Super Bowl. Decision is 7 weeks away
The process Each location hoping to host the Super Bowl will make a 10-minute presentation during the owners' spring meeting in Nashville, Tenn. The NFL says the schedule is being finalized, but representatives from Indianapolis said they have been told presentations will take place May 23.
NFL staff will provide the owners an analysis of each bid. The owners of the three teams competing to host the Super Bowl will make closing remarks.
Owners vote by secret ballot. A location needs 75 percent of the votes to win on the first ballot. If no location gets enough support, the lowest vote-getter will be eliminated and then only a simple majority of votes will be needed.
My Father-In-Law made me watch this over the weekend, along with a few other MADtv skits. I actually thought this one was hilarious, so I'm sharing it with you. Happy Monday?
