Max's Theorem Revisited

James McMurtry talking about his friend Max (from his latest album Live In Aught-Three):

Max told me that a good old boy can become an intellectual, but an intellectual cannot become a good old boy. I believe that to be true.

So why is it that the son of a couple of blue-blooded erudite Connecticut yankees gets to stand behind the Presidential podium and talk about nuc-you-lar weapons?

I mean Jeb Bush doesn't say nuc-you-lar. You know good and damn well Barbara doesn't say nuc-you-lar.

I posted these lyrics about five weeks ago and a small discussion was sparked about Bush's speaking style and whether or not it was authentic. Click here and scroll down to the April 11 entry to re-read this.

I am re-hashing all this because On The Media, the greatest radio show ever, just ran a story last week on this very topic when they interviewed Geofrey Numberg.

Geofrey Numberg has written a book called Going Nucular: Language, Politics and Culture in Confrontational Times. The interview covers topics like Bush's use of "evildoer" and the GOPs hijacking of the word "values." But the part I have to highlight takes James McMurtry quote a step further. Numberg says:

Nuclear is really no harder to pronounce than likelier. And what's more, this is a word that Bush's father pronounced correctly, that Bush would have grown up hearing pronounced properly, whether around the table in Kennebunkport or when he was at Andover or when he was at Yale, and at a certain point, I think it became for him a conscious choice. I call it a, a "faux-Bubba" pronunciation. To my mind, when somebody like that says the word, it doesn't count the same way it does when Homer Simpson says it as nucular. It's rather a way of saying you know-- I got my finger on this button, and I'll call these things whatever I damn well please.

Click here to read the transcript. It will be five minutes well-spent.

Want Fries With That Shake Rattle & Roll DVD?

McDonald's is testing the idea of putting DVD rental kiosks in all their locations.

I know, I know. This concept contradicts the "active lifestyle" McDonald's supposedly supports by putting odometers in adult Happy Meals. And it represents dinner and a movie the Wal-Mart way: one-stop shopping.

But, this idea is pure capitalism genius. Espcially when you consider McDonald's would allow you return the DVD to ANY location. Imagine a road-tripping family with a DVD player in their family van/SUV. Pick up a DVD on a lunch break in Des Moines and drop off when you go for dinner in Wichata.

And as the story I referenced below points out, how tempting will it be to buy a quick McSnack when you drop off the movie?

Click here for more information.

Cripes. Ronald and the gang are one step closer to global domination.

Mike's Theorem

This will be a long post all about me. I apologize for that, but also urge you to read this post anyway and apply Mike's Theorem to your own life.

A friend of mine from college sent me an e-mail today reminding of some bullshit theory I spouted off back in college.

Mike's Theorem is built around the premise that there are three primary spheres in the world of the student-athlete (and upon reflection I now appreciate just how spoiled I was and how easy life was back then). These spheres are:

1. Running (or whatever sport you went to college for)
2. Romance
3. Academics

The crux of the theory is that one of these spheres has to ALWAYS be a polar opposite of the other two. This could be a bad thing. If your running and booklearning are copacetic, then you might as well kiss goodbye your chances with that woman in your American Literature course.

But Mike's Theorem could also be a good thing, especially when things look their worst. If you are without romantic prospect and close to failing out of school, according to Mike's Theorem, you are well on your way to being an All-American in three different sports.

The sticky wicket occurs when one area is going well, while another bites ass. Since two spheres are already polarized, the third sphere is free to swing either pole, which it inevitably will. Say you're running poorly but loving well. When it comes time for the rubber to hit the road for sphere #3 (i.e. your professor is distributing the Biochemistry final), Mike's Theorem has no predicitve power, and you are sitting in your seat shitting bricks and sweating bullets. You could get an A or and F+. Things could go either way.

So I forgot all about Mike's Theorem until my friend e-mailed me today, applying it to life as a 30-something. If you tweak it a little, it's still valid. The new spheres would simply be:

1. Physical Fitness
2. Dating/Family
3. Career/Finances

Take me for example. I started dating Emily back in 1999 (success in sphere #2), when I was excercising everyday and down to my college running weight (success in sphere #1). BUT, I was a dirt poor in grad student whose meager teaching/research assistant paycheck was subsidized by my best friend at the time, Citibank Visa (not so great sphere #3).

Since then I got married (well done, sphere #2) and have a good job that I enjoy and just bought a house (well done sphere #3). BUT, as you can guess, I now weigh a whopping 25 pounds more than I did back in 1999 (sphere #1 fails).

Consider this. Now that Emily is off in Sweden and I miss her, sphere #2 is in the decline. But guess what? I am now getting up at 6 a.m. every morning to run and then I go for a bike ride or walk in the evening. Looks like with sphere #2 falling, sphere #1 is free to make a comeback!!!!

So there you have it. An update of Mike's Theorem. Can anyone out there disprove my theory? Swallow your pride and 'fess up if all three spheres are hurting right now. Or if you have the hubris to tempt the Mike's Theorem Gods, go ahead an let us know how great all three spheres of your life are. I dare you. Until then, Mike's Theorem stands.

THEOREM ADDENDUM

I decided to post a chunk of the e-mail that my friend (we'll name him Pinkie) sent me. What I am posting is actually from a friend of Pinkie. I am doing so without Pinkie's friend's permission. In fact I have never met Pinkie's friend. He may want to kick my ass if he finds out a complete stranger put his text out on the web. Well fuck him if he's pissed. I can take him. My Physical Fitness sphere is on the upswing, remember? So without further ado, here is "Pinkie's Friend's Extrapolation of Mike's Theorem"

So I was thinking about your friend's division of life into three broad categories and thought that probably one would be most fulfilled and content with his life if he were a successful professional athlete. You would kill two birds--the "running" and career categories--with one stone, and then you'd have time left over to devote to your woman, family, kids. Plus since you'd be a professional athlete, she'd be a hottie like Cheryl Crow.

While I respectfully disagree with the notion that Cheryl Crow is a hottie, everything else Pinkie's Friend has offered to the discussion on Mike's Theorem is very solid and worth further contemplation.

Don't Mess With Texas Kids

From the Houston Chronicle:

Neighbors with bats, sticks capture suspected child predator
May 24, 2004, 7:11PM


Wielding baseball bats and sticks, a crowd in northwest Houston on Sunday chased down a man suspected of preying on neighborhood children in recent weeks....

...Neighborhood children initiated the pursuit of the suspected child predator.

"The little kids spotted him. The little kids started the chase," Gonzalez said. "All the little kids in the neighborhood -- they had sticks and everything."

About 20 children, mostly armed with sticks, began following the man when they spotted him at 12:45 p.m. near Peg and Bolin.

Adults joined in the chase when the man threatened the youngsters.

"I came out with a baseball bat," Gonzalez said. "When he saw the men coming, he ran."

Only in Texas.

Click here for the whole story.

Whar's Me Wife?

Emily is in Sweden until like 2007 (okay just until mid-June), meaning my future involves a lot of pizza and popcorn for dinner. She went there to study exercise physiology at some hoity-toity Swedish institute.

And I have nothing but respect for Swedish scientists. For example, here's the latest study out of Sweden:

METALLICA has been awarded the dubious title of the world’s smelliest band by Swedish showbiz expert Mikeal Jagerbrand. The Swedish tabloid writer ranked the top ten smelly stars for the Swedish newspaper AFTONBLADET, basing it on interviews in the press where other celebrities talked about their co-stars’ hygiene. Here is the top ten
1) BRAD PITT
2) RUSSELL CROWE
3) HAYDEN CHRISTENSEN
4) DAVID BOWIE
5) COURTNEY COX
6) ROBIN WILLIAMS
7) CHRISTINA AGUILERA
8) CAMERON DIAZ
9) METALLICA
10) BOB DYLAN

Story from www.wccc.com

I do enjoy Top Ten lists. I am curious to see what Top Ten List Emily will come home with after all her research in Sweden. I assume she will be doing a collaberative effort with Dr. Mikeal Jagerbrand.

Weird

Blogger.com lists this site as one of its featured blogs. Anyone know anything more about it? I'm sure it's a hoax, but it's still interesting to read the comments. We have Elvis impersonaters; why not have Andy Kaufman impersonaters? Whoever is behind this came up with a prank that is vintage Andy Kaufman. Click here to visit the site.

The Closest I'll Get to a Free Lunch

I'm going to my local movie theater, The Riverview, with a couple friends, to watch the Wolves/Lakers game.

It's pretty fun. They show the game on the movie screen so guys like me who don't have cable and/or a huge digital TV in our basement can still watch the game on a big screen.

The best part? It's free!

Click here for more information.

Go Wolves???

It just doesn't sound right coming from me. I can't say it with enough conviction for anyone to believe I really want the Wolves to win.

But I do want the Lakers to lose. My preference would be for LA to sweep Minnesota and then get beat in the Finals by a very good Detroit or Indiana team. It's noy likely anyone can beat The Faker Machine and the Spurs will indeed look to be the second best team when all is said and done.

In conclusion, I would like say, "DON'T GO LA!" more than I would like to say "go wolves."

Gone Fishin'

I figured I'd like make the Spurs and go fishing while the Wolves and Lakers duke it out in the Western Conference Finals.

The Minnesota fishing opener was last weekend, so if I were a REAL Minnesotan this would have been my second time fishing this year. But I'm only quasi-Minnesota so I didn't go until this weeekend. A friend of mine has a plot of land up in Breezy Point, which is near Brainerd, for you native Minnesotans.

It was cold and windy. Fishing is no fun if you can't enjoy the water and the weather. It's even less fun when the fish aren't biting. I caught a 4 pound walleye, but my friend didn't catch anything. We ended up throwing my fish back and settling for burgers and the Twins game on TV at a local bar.

A small highlight of the weekend came when an old retired type guy bellied up to the bar next to me after we had been there for about half an hour. He was clearly a regular. The bartender said hi to him and asked, "You want the usual?" I get this question two or three times a week from guy with bad teeth at my local coffee shop, whenever I stroll into Riverview Coffee around 7:30 a.m. on a weekday.

Of course my barmate's "usual" was not 16 ounces of "Breakfast Blend." Rather, it was some brandy-smelling mixed drink I couldn't identify and an empty basket (the plastic baskets that fries come in). Naturally, I asked myself, "What the hell is the plastic basket for?" I soon found out after he slapped $100.00 bill on the bar for....

All REAL Minnesotans should already know what the $100 bill was for, but non-natives read on.

....he slapped $100.00 bill on the bar for pull tabs! The basket was for his losing pull tab carcasses. After plowing through 100 non-winnig pulltabs, he went on to spend $220 more on pulltabs. He ended up winning $6. Not bad. $314.00 in the red for half an hour's worth of fun opening pull tabs.

I guess when you are retired you can do whatever the hell you want to with your money. But that $320 would have helped me out a lot more than the $10 the local 4H club will benefit from his pull tab indulgence. Hell, he could have given the $320 to me and I would have been much more entertaining than 320 pull tabs. I could have done a stand-up routine, lip synched, jumping jacks, made jokes about people in the bar, whatever he wanted me to do. It would have been a win-win situation. Although I must admit, watching a guy blow $320 in a bar in half an hour was pretty damn entertaining for me, in the guilty-pleasure sort of way. Kind of like watching COPS or reality TV. It's fun for awhile but it soon gets very depressing.

My friend told the guy we didn't have any luck fishing and it must just be an unlucky day. He told us now he needed to take a second mortgage out on his home.

We assumed he was kidding.

Dumbest Freaking Lyrics I've Heard Recently

I don't care how much irony you dip these lyrics in. Even if they were part of a Christopher Guest movie, they'd be stupid:

You're out of this world
Except you're not green.

Strong work there, Justin Timberlake.

Did My Wife Get A Haircut??

Emily has a "to do" list by the computer. One of the things on the list is "haircut," which has since been crossed out. Unlike some people, we don't have an aircraft carrier and a MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner at our disposal. So consider a green line through a "to do" list item as Emily's way of saying "mission accomplished."

Unfortunately, I could use a major press conference to alert me to Emily's new haircut. If she did indeed get her hair done, it's news to me. Must... be.... more... observant.

Say that reminds me of a kid at work today who asked me if I got a new desk in my office.

"Uh yeah, about a month ago," I told him.

"Oh I just noticed," he told me.

"I like your style,"I told him.

But I digress. Did Emily get a haircut? Maybe she just scheduled it and that's why it's crossed out. But maybe she got one of them touch-up jobs girls are wont to get. What do I do here? Maybe I'll lay low and wait to see if one her girlfirends compliments her hairdo tomorrow night, then I'll swoop in and compliment the shit out of her. But something tells me that's a bad idea.

You know what's a worse idea? Ruminating over the whole "Did she get a haircut or not?" issue on a blog, publishing it, and then having her read it. Hmmm. That would be an awful idea. Kind of like not fouling Derrick Fisher when you have a foul to give and he's breaking towards the ball.

Oh well too late.

#&*$*()@)(*#)*@&*!!!!

The last .4 seconds of tonight's Spurs/Lakers tilt was absurd. If the Spurs had won, however, I would have felt they stole the game from the better the team.

After a game like that, I have to remind myself I shouldn't let the goings-on of a bunch of millionaires who don't even know who I am (and wouldn't care about me if they did know me) affect my emotional state.

That being said, I think that shot from Fisher killed the Spurs' season. I hope I'm wrong.

But win or lose, Spurs rule and the pince Lakers (copyright Justin) bite ass.

Feeling Minnesota

It took an overnight stay in Dallas, three revised flight itineraries, three canceled flights, a $10.00 cab ride to go three miles, and three canceled appointments at work. But we are finally back in Minnesota.

Had a good time in Texas, but today was a little rough as I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to catch our 6:45 a.m. flight out of DFW and went straight to work from the MSP airport.

But leave it up to those crazy kids to make my day worthwhile. If you haven't been to www.homestarrunner.com yet, click here.

If you have, but have not seen the Cheat's theme song, or need a refresher, click here.


The point to all this is there's a kid who has a teddy bear he named "Peef," for fairly obvious reasons (hint: look on the bear's paw).



Image from http://www.princesstoys.com


So Peef joins him in all his sessions with me. It has always been the policy in my office to offer all stuffed animals a chair at the table. Peef obliges. Out of sheer boredom I have been using the tune from "The Cheat Theme Song," to sing songs about Peef. I began with my own lyrics like,

"Who's the bear sitting in a seat?
The Peef. The Peef.
Name the bear with multi-colored feet.
The Peef. The Peef.
Who's gonna beat Mike at Go Fish?
Not The Peef. Not The Peef"

Now I sing it in my head throughout the day and outloud whenever Peef and the kid come to therapy. Peef's owner doesn't like the part when I croon "The Peef is in the house," as you hear in "The Cheat Theme Song," but otherwise he always sings the refrain, "The Peef. The Peef."

And today he actually requested "The Peef song." And came up with his own lyrics. I have no idea what the hell these lyrics were, which means we still have a lot more work to do on the speech therapy front. But it was a long day and if it weren't for "The Peef Theme Song," I may have fallen asleep halfway through it.

The Peef is in the house!!!

How Many More Freaking Tell-All Books Are Left?!?!?!

Joseph Wilson has chimed in with his new book detailing just how scary the current administration is (or the people manning the administration's puppet strings is more apt).

Click here for an excerpt.

It would be cool to see if Howard Dean could catalog all these authors the same way he tried to name all 50 states in one breath before his infamous scream.

"YOU GOT O'NEIL AND CLARKE. WOODWARD ALL THE WAY TO MANN AND..." okay that's all I can think of off the top of my head, but there are others.

Do all of these books make a difference? Sure they give the Democratic base more ammo and anger, but is the swing voter affected by this? This is a terribly scary administration, and there is mounting evidence to back that claim up.

But a lot of very intelligent people don't see it this way, it doesn't matter how many DC insiders write a book. All they see is a nice guy, a straight talker, and a no nonsense fishing buddy. Based on that criteria, my boy Matt the Hatt should be President. He's a nice guy, a straight talker, and if he were to ever go fishing in his life, I'm sure he'd make an excellent fishing buddy. But there's no way in hell I'd vote for him in a Presidential election. And he doesn't even have a scary neoconservative agenda he wants to sneak past us as he winks and nods to big business. Matt does live in England now, which is criminal. But not nearly as criminal as what the GOP has been doing for the last 24 months.

I've never understood how personality over substance has won every election that I've been old enough to follow (since 1980). My hunch is it's about to happen again. John Edwards, where are you? If Kerry loses, I won't blame Nader, like many will. I place this one on all those Democrats who supported Kerry for no reason other than, "Uhhh, well all the other Dems seem to be voting for him, so I guess I should too." Seriously, the first person who can tell me one thing this guy stands for, other than "I'm not George Bush," gets a prize.

21 vs. 21

WARNING: Long basketball post.

Both Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett share the same number, same position, same height, and similar statistics. Both are idolized by their respective communities.

Being a Spurs fan, people up here always assume I'm being a homer when I say that I think Garnett, as great as he is, has some punkish behavior. Without a doubt he is this year's Most Valuable Player. But for years, the Minnesota fans and reporters have been treating him like he is a saint and a true class act. When I point to his behavior, quotes, and anticts that contradict this, most reasonable Minnesota Timerwolves fans agree somewhat, but others call me a homer and think I am biased.

Well, once again, Buck Harvey is the man, and he articulated my issues with Garnett in his column today. Sure Buck's another Spurs homer just like I am. But he can express, better than I can, why I think, stats aside, Duncan is the superior overall player:

Tim Duncan will win again...

He's the stable image of a stable franchise, and the contrast was there last week. Then, the heir to his MVP award, Kevin Garnett, tapped a Denver player in his nuggets.

Duncan has always been private, and there was Garnett, public with someone else's privates. Garnett followed by howling Friday night and mouthing a compound word that began with "mother," acting as if he'd won a title.

Duncan's face barely changed expression when he beat No. 8 seeds in the first round, and that's him. As consistent as he is skilled.

Click here for the whole column (it's a preview of the Spurs/Lakers series).

Garnett talks trash and gets into petty squabbles all the time. This year he tied for third in the league in technical fouls, and years past he has been second, right behind the poster boy for poor sportsmanship, Rasheed Wallace.

Garnett is the best player in the NBA, and a fierce competitor. But some of the fans and reporters around here need to quit acting like he is also the classiest.

I also have read a few stories in the Minneapolis paper that cites how the Spurs and Wolves are such similar franchises, in terms of personnel.

Click here and try to imagine the Spurs being at the center of this story. I don't think so.

By the way, Spurs/Lakers starts today. I am feeling confident going about my team's chances. That has never happened before. But I am worried that Buck Harvey picked the Spurs to win. He is a great columnist, but not a great prognosticator. Last year he predicted Lakers in six, and it was the Spurs who won in six.

Happy Shitty Anniversary part deux

This is not about Bush vs. Kerry or my anger towards the Bush adminsitration. This is about the awful year for the troops abroad. Today serves as my personal Thanksgiving. I am grateful to those with more courage than I have to enlist in the services. I am also grateful my economic standing and education gave me options after high school outside of joining the military.

I miss the signs that were on people's cars last year that said:

"Regime Change Begins At Home
VOTE"

The problem is I don't know how much change can be made by voting. I have no faith in Kerry whatsoever. He won't do anything to improve the situation in Iraq either. The only reason I can see to vote for him is that it's not simply about not just voting Bush out of office. It's about voting Bush's team out of office. We'll also be voting for or against Rummy, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Ashcroft. I see little difference between the shades of blue that is Kerry and Bush's blood. But at least Kerry's posse should be drastically different than Bush's.