Here are some random observations about Halloween:

I always enjoyed Halloween when I was a kid. Then, for about 15 years it left my consciousness as I grew up and joined the real world.

Now it's back in my head. Why? Because I have a two year old, and because I live in a neighbourhood with hundreds of children.

Here are some observations about Halloween:

* I've run out of candy 2 years in a row. Too many kids. I shut the lights off, but they still knock on the door. So I run upstairs and hide, and try to be really quiet.

* I want to give only one candy. One gum ball or one chocolate bar, but Cindy says I should give two or three candies. I guess I'm cheap.

* Those mini chocolate bars that come out around Halloween are even smaller nowadays. They're more like mini-mini bars. Seriously, now they're the size of your knuckle. The wrapping weighs more than the chocolate.

* A truck crashed into the porch of a house two streets over from ours, knocking the supporting beam down. There's yellow crime-scene tape over the house. But if you just glance, it looks like all the other houses with yellow crime-scene tape decorated for Halloween.

* There's two types of Halloween decorations: Cute (smiling pumpkins, cartoony monsters) and scary (bloody masks, knives slitting throats). I prefer the scary stuff. Mostly in my neighbourhood it's the cute stuff.

* I think grown adults who dress up for Halloween are kind of weird. I don't mean putting on a witch's hat. That's fine. I mean those adults who go way overboard with a full-blown costume.

* In my last job I started on Halloween day. Half the office was dressed up on my first day of work. They walked me around the office to introduce me to everyone. The next day people weren't dressed up anymore, and they all looked unfamiliar.

Radical honesty.

I was reading The Guinea Pig Diaries: My Life as an Experiment by AJ Jacobs. He writes a chapter about "radical honesty" a self-improvement technique invented by Dr. Brad Blanton.

The goal is to be completely, 100% honest all the time, in every circumstance. Not only that, but you're also not supposed to filter any thoughts that come to your mind. If you glance at a woman and find her attractive you're supposed to tell her, right then and there.

Hmm. Sounds disastrous. Jacobs attempted to follow radical honesty most of the time. He reported being stressed out. A few times he just couldn't do it.

Blanton says that lying to people is cruel. If grandma makes you cookies and they taste horrible, you should be kind and tell her they taste bad. If she gets offended, that's her issue. Umm okay.

How long would it take you to lose all your friends practicing radical honesty? How would you ever date the opposite sex or remain in a relationship? How would you ever get hired and/or keep a job?

I do grant that being radically honest at work would be simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. You'd feel good for telling the truth. You'd feel great! But these "good feelings" would be overwhelmed by the sense of dread at being fired.

Clean up all the clutter!

I'm reading a book titled Throw Out Fifty Things: Clear the Clutter, Find Your Life by Gail Blanke. The idea here is that clutter makes you feel like crap. If you throw it out, you feel liberated. A pleasant side effect is that your mind also tends to clean itself up.

I'm totally into cleaning and throwing stuff out. Unfortunately, Cindy's the opposite. She's a bit of a pack rat. Last night I told her I got her a book from the library and I showed it to her. She read the title and laughed at me.

First, I'm amazed that the book is so long: 200 pages. I'm skimming it. Do I really need to read 200 pages of this? Sure, it's a good idea. But a whole book? There were 20 holds on it at the library and Amazon readers give it 4 stars. So apparently it's successful, and needed in the world.

(A side issue: I've noticed a lot of books centred around one, single, common-sensed idea. I don't think this is a great trend. Books should have tons of good and interesting ideas. But I suppose in this day and age of short attention spas, these are the kind of books demanded by consumers.)

Second, the "50 things" actually means "50 groups of things". In other words, you can't just throw out 50 CDs. That only counts as 1 thing.

Finally, I'm still amazed at how much stuff we have in our house. Specifically our basement. I can't believe that that stuff fit in our last (small) apartment in downtown Vancouver. I'm baffled.

This is my 100th post to the blog.

100 posts! And I haven't missed a day yet. I should celebrate with some kind of small, obscure personal event. Maybe when I'm driving I'llraise my arm out the window in a victory fist.

Or maybe I'll eat a forbidden and potentially dangerous, but extremely tasty piece of food.

There's a website that lists cool facts about each number. For 100 it says, "100 is the smallest square which is also the sum of 4 consecutive cubes." That doesn't sound very interesting to me.

I say 100 is a cool number because it's the first really big number you learn as a kid. Then, when you're an adult, 100 becomes a tiny, almost inconsequential number compared to some of the other numbers out there.

The biggest number in the world is a googplex, which looks like this:

10(10)(100) or Ten to the tenth power to the hundredth power. The number is so huge that there isn't enough room in the known universe to write out all the zeros. Also, the number could never be read or written because it would take more time than the age of the universe to read or write the number.

That's a big number.

But back to 100. One hundred is also cool because it's hundred times better or bigger than one. Meaning, if you just do one thing in your life, someone who does a hundred of these things is 100 times more experienced/wiser/better than you.

The self-help industry is a way to brain wash people.

A few days ago I wrote a blog post in which I proved that the self-help industry is useless. (Essentially I said if it worked, there wouldn't be any need for an industry.)

Yesterday I ordered Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich from the library. Apparently she argues that the "positive thinking movement" is a way that rich, wealthy, powerful people brainwash us.

I had never thought about it that way. If we're constantly told to stay positive and look at the bright side of things, then when we're let down or fired or abused or taken advantage of, we're not allowed to be upset.

It's the perfect scam! A corporation lays off all it's employees and says, "Don't worry, we're hiring a motivational speaker!"

The company says, "You have to stay positive! Things are going great for you! Look at the bright side!"

Positive thinking is hardly every questioned in our culture. It's just assumed that you should be doing it and you should be doing a lot of it.

If we are taught that "it's all in our mind, everything happens for a reason, you control your destiny, look on the bright side", we're taught to accept negativity and abuse.

Maybe people need to be pessimistic and angry. Maybe that will change things.

We want to be afraid of things.

You know how sometimes you want to go see a scary movie? You get in the safe theatre and eat your safe popcorn, and then you watch this terrifying movie? And even though it's terrifying it's also kind of fun and exciting?

That's how we want it to be all the time. We want to be scared, but safely scared. We want to be scared for other people. We want to be told what to do by experts to lessen our fear.

The media has realized this and tries to make us as scared as possible. The media tries to satisfy our needs. Newspapers or movies or TV shows or news shows that scare you are rewarded more through attention, ratings, gossip and ultimately money.

The government is happy! It knows that we want to be scared so they gladly oblige. They pass laws and spend our money to protect us. This gives them more power.

Corporations are happy to scare us as well. They can sell more products and services if we're scared.

So it's pluses all around. We want to be scared and we ask the media, government and business world to scare us. The media, government and corporations try their best to scare us and, in turn, benefit through more attention, power or money.

That's why today there are murderers everywhere, wars, impending natural disasters, pandemics, terrorists, rapists, corrupt governments and a million other things that will ruin our lives forever.

Two weird things I do at work.

1) I found this cup filled with pens, pencils, highlighters, a toothbrush (?), markers and a ruler. It's one of those old-fashioned, wood rulers from way back in elementary schools. I now carry this ruler around wherever I go at work.

I love holding it! It has just the right amount of weight and thickness. I often slap my palm with the ruler as I walk around. If I'm going to a meeting and I walk into the office, SLAP! If someone asks me a question and I need to think for a few moments, I use the ruler to rapidly slap my palm as I think. SLAP, SLAP, SLAP.

Occasionally I use the ruler for drawing straight lines. For example, I use a marker to scratch out entries into the computer program. I always used to free-draw the line and it looked horrible. Now, with my ruler, I draw a perfectly straight line.

2) I hike my pants up pretty high. So my waist is just under my belly button. Sometimes I tuck my shirt in as well. It looks awful, ridiculous. When I do this at home, Cindy lambastes me and rightly. The thing is, this look feels so naturally in an office. Hiking your pants up like a dweeb feels good. It feels right. The only problem is that it makes your ass look huge. Because the ass part of your pants is halfway up your back.

I haven't come across people who trust the swine flu vaccine.

When did we stop trusting vaccines?

I've only come across a few people who've said categorically that they're going to get the swine flu vaccine.

(Mind you, I haven't asked a lot of people - so this is very small sample. Still, with the eradication of small pox and other old fashioned diseases, you'd think people would WANT to get vaccinated from swine flu.)

Part of this distrust toward vaccines has been because of the faulty science of the purported link to autism.

People also say stuff like, "I never get sick and as soon as I got the flu shot, I caught the flu." They're suggesting that the flu shot either gave them the flu or made them more susceptible to the flu.

A few weeks back my Mom sent me an article that basically said the scientists developing the vaccine are bumbling idiots who have no idea what they're doing.

And you can read lots of articles that say things like, "The swine flu vaccine in the 1970s killed more people than the flu itself."

Okay, but how many people did it save?

No vaccine is 100% effective. And all vaccines carry risks. But - the benefits far, far outweigh the risks. Or so I'm told.

I don't know anyone who has smallpox.

There's a group of people in my organization trying to overthrow my boss.

My boss was upset yesterday when she got wind of a coup d'etat. Apparently there's a group of people in our organization plotting her demise.

Ho hum. What's new? I think in any large, controversial organization there is always a group of people planning a regime change. That's just life.

This is especially true when you organization loses funding, and its viability has become shaky. Even if it's not the boss's fault (which it's not), some people will still want heads to roll.

That's what happens when you're the top staffer at an organization. The benefits are lots of money and power. The risks are fast, ignoble firings.

I'm surprised she didn't see this coming. Or maybe she did and is simply feigning outrage to the board of directors to get them more involved in our plight. (To get them to care. Those bored, stoney-faced bastards. Good luck.)

I love drama at work. Makes things so exciting!

We've noticed that parents nowadays sleep with their young kids. Was this always the case?

I didn't think parents slept with their young children. Say - age 4 and under. But apparently lots of people we know - friends, co-workers, etc - sleep with their young kids.

I mentioned this to a slightly older co-worker and she said that about 50% of her contemporaries slept with their kids. She heard on the news the other day that 75% cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome occur when parents sleep with their children.

Of the people we know, A LOT of the kids who sleep with their parents have sleeping problems. They can't sleep on their own. One couple we know has a 6 month old in a sleep study. The kid can't sleep more than an hour a day.

Others can't sleep in their own bed, and can't stay asleep the whole night.

Jake has a bad habit of waking up early. 4am. He calls, "Mom?" a few times then goes back to sleep when we ignore him. Until 5:30am. At that point, he's up. We bring him in our bed and let him play for awhile before we get up.

When did parents start sleeping with their kids? I don't recall sleeping with my parents. Mom - did you sleep with kids? Did your contemporaries sleep with kids? I would think not.

I remember one time when Cindy was pregnant I saw a book in my mid-wife's office. It was called, "Why you should sleep with your kids" or something. It was written by some hippie-nazi, and looked to be published in the 80s or early 90s.

Jake had 4 women surrounding and praising him all day.

What a lucky guy. Yesterday he had 4 women praising him all day. Four women laughing at all his jokes and fawning at every single thing that he did.

Cindy said he loved it. Well, yeah!

He had 1) the feeding therapist 2) her assistant 3) his daycare worker and 4) his mom. Imagine getting that much attention from women!

Mind you, 3 of them were being paid - but that means nothing to Jake. All he knew was that these women were at his beck and call, and they satisfied his every whim.

He makes a sound and suddenly, "Good boy! Great talking." He takes a bite of food. "Excellent eating! You're amazing!"

Imagine what that could do to your ego? Luckily, he's only 2 so he doesn't have much of an ego yet. Sadly, he'll probably forget the specifics of this day. Which is too bad. It would be nice to remember days like this when you're older. As a guy, I can tell you they don't happen often. You rarely get 4 women praising your every move unless you're a handsome male celebrity, and even in these cases, half the women are stalkers.

So Jake, I hope you enjoyed your day. Don't expect that when you get older. However, I intend to remind you of this day throughout the years.

I have a theory that anything "self-help" doesn't really work.

If self-help really worked, then there would NOT be an industry of books, videos, techniques and websites.

You would read one or two self-help books and voila, you'd be improved. No more need for self-help. The self-help gurus like Tony Robbins or Dr. Phil would only have one book published. One system. The book stores wouldn't have a self-help shelf. And so on.

Of course that's not the case. Robbins and the other self-help gurus have a plethora of books and systems and seminars and followers. That just proves to me that self-help doesn't work.

Besides, we all know what we need to do to improve things right? Deep down we know the answers? I think so. We all know what we should do. Most of us just don't bother doing these things - because they're too hard.

A real self-help program wouldn't be about telling us what we need to do. It would be about making us actually do them, actually complete the tasks. And since we can't be forced to do anything we don't want to, self-help fails.

My boss says I use email too much.

A few days ago my boss called me the "king of email". She often tells me that I use email too much, and says that I need to phone more.

About a week after I first started she came in my office and told me she doesn't like getting a lot of email. I took the hint and stopped emailing her every little thing.

A month after that she called me in my office and told me to stop using email so much. I said ok.

Then a few weeks ago I got this email from saying something like: "Please call people on the phone."

She's a Luddite but, to be fair, I do use email an awful lot. I like it because it leaves a record of all communications. In this job things sometimes come back to bite you and I want a written record of things I said and did.

I also use my email program (Outlook) as a task manager and to do list. It's the way I keep organized. So I often turn emails into tasks that I must complete by a certain date.

I deal with teachers a lot so calling them during the day doesn't work. They're teaching class. Emailing is more convenient.

Mostly I use email so I can avoid talking to people on the phone. I don't like the phone very much.

At what age do you realize you were wrong about life?

When you're a kid you think that when you grow up you'll be special. Maybe you'll be rich or famous or powerful. An astronaut, scientist, explorer, inventor. You'll do something unique, be remembered forever, work hard and succeed at something.

Then, as you get older, you realize that in fact you're not special. You're pretty mediocre. There are millions of people like you. There are millions of people better than you.

You have accomplished very little, don't have much money, you are physically past your prime. At what age do you finally realize you will never become the adult that you dreamed about as a child?

I say 30. In your teens, you're still very young and naive. You still think you're special, and you haven't started college or lived on your own in the real world.

In your 20s, you start to get an inkling that maybe you won't be a smashing success after all. But you're still hopeful! Maybe you'll catch that break! Maybe something's going to change.

By the time you hit 30 it's sunk in. Sorry, you ain't special. You still have a small chance, perhaps, but probably will never be the roaring success you thought. You're running on the treadmill faster and faster, just to maintain.

This could lead to depression (mid-life crisis in 30s or 40s). Hopefully you will simply accept it and move on. Try your best at the few things you're good at. Or maybe you'll be motivated to try even harder and become the success you dreamed.

Who knows?

Jake sits forward now in the car.

When you have a kid you start noticing small milestones of growth. The latest one for Jake was that we turned his car seat around. Now he faces forward like a big boy!

When we first put him in the car seat, he looked around, confused. He knew something was different and was pretty excited about facing forward.

We started driving and a huge smile broke out over his face. He could now see out the windows, and he could see Dad and Mom in the rear view mirror. I enjoyed watching him in the rear view mirror as I drove.

When I reach behind me I can grab his foot and give his leg a shake. He also leans forward against the straps because he wants to see better. He hasn't figured out that he can lean back and still see the same amount.

What's wrong with liberals.

A couple days ago I wrote about what was wrong with conservatives. Now I'll return the favour for liberals. So what's wrong with them?

- They push their own "morality" on society. (Political correctness, forced green initiatives, etc.)

- They meddle too much with the economy.

- They pursue a political strategy of appeasement with enemies and aggressive nations.

- They have a sense of entitlement (I should be provided free medical care, welfare, employment insurance, benefits)

In short, they're typically young and naive. They don't understand the world very well and they think that the government can solve all their problems. Most annoyingly, they think the government can "pay" for everything.

Guess where the government gets its money from? You and me. One more question: is the government good at doing things? Are government bureucrats successful in their various efforts? No, of course not.

Oh you liberals!

Thank you for doing your job.

The other day the mailman stopped by our office to deliver mail. He noticed a stamped envelope we had put on the chair, ready to be mailed. He picked up the envelope and said, "I'll take this!"

Apparently, this is surprising. We are supposed to walk to the corner of the street and put our mail in the mailbox.

He looked at us for a moment, expecting a huge, grateful "thank you!".

I said, "Thank you?" Like, I'm supposed to thank you for doing your job? He smiled and left, feeling good about himself.

Thank you for doing your job. Should we really be thanking people for doing their job? I say, yes, as a courtesy. To be polite. But such thank-yous are strictly not necessary. People doing their jobs are being paid to do their jobs after all or else they probably wouldn't be doing them.

Another gripe I have with the post office is insurance on lost items. You can pay more to "cover" the cost of a lost item, in case the post office screws up. Here's what the post office is essentially saying:

"Here's the cost for mailing a letter. Now, if you pay more, and we screw up, you'll get your money back." Umm, shouldn't you get your money back, regardless? They didn't do their job.

Let's apply the insurance idea to other industries:

Servers at restaurants. Here's the price of the items on the menu, but if you pay more, and our server delivers the wrong food, you can get the right food delivered to you!

Sports tickets. Here's the cost of the ticket. But if you pay more and the team decides not to show up, we'll give you your money back.

Amazon.com. Here's the cost of a book. But if you pay more and we end up not sending you your book, we'll send you the right book.

Makes no sense.

Jake tries to pick things up.

Jake's in a phase where he tries to pick up large objects and carry them. But since he can't walk, this is difficult. I have to hold him under his arms so that his hands are free to carry large toys. Then his little legs pump quickly as he tries to walk somewhere else with his toy.

I have no idea why he'd want to move a toy from one location to another location five feet away. A lot of times the toy is too heavy and he drops it on his foot or on the floor. He likes this. It makes a big sound and the toy does a couple flips. It amuses him.

He might remember to try and pick it up again, but more often then not he forgets that he was carrying it somewhere and sits down and continues playing with the toy.

In his crib, he will pick up his block and try to drop it over the side onto the floor. He manages to do this about 50% of the time. The other 50% of the time he drops the block or loses his grip. When he starts throwing or dropping his toys out of his crib, we know he wants out.

We encourage him to simply ask us.

I remember pay phones.

Those were the days! You'd walk down the sidewalk and see a little phone stand. A payphone! The old-style ones had a slot for your quarter, a phone book in a black case, hanging from a chain, and that's about it.

The new ones had a slot for your quarter and a credit card, and a little screen with text messages in green digital numbers. The screen would say something like, "Enter a quarter to make a phone call."


How quaint. I remember you'd dial a long-distance number and it would wait for a moment, as it calculates. Then the screen would ask for $3.40. As you talked, a voice would come on and tell you to enter more money if you were running low.


I remember lines of pay phones in malls. There would be numerous people chatting on the phones. Occasionally, you'd have to lineup and you'd become annoyed at the person who was taking so much time on the phone.

As soon as you hung up, you looked at your hands in disgust. They had to be so dirty. Not to mention that your mouth was basically sharing the receiver with the last person's bad breath molecules. You wanted badly to use hand-sanitizer, but it wasn't invented yet.

What's wrong with conservatives.

I'm reading Liberty and tyranny : a conservative manifesto by Mark R. Levin. He basically outlines conservatism as the perfect political outlook, and his descriptions of conservatism sound fantastic. If you didn't know better, you'd say, "Yeah I'm a conservative!"

He starts to go wrong when he begins describing liberals (or "stateists"). He exaggerates their position, and talks about all their bad ideas. He says that liberalism is basically a soft form of tyranny because liberals want the power to control your life with laws and regulations.

In other words, they're busy-body do-gooders that want to mother you and protect you like a nanny. Partly true, of course. But he doesn't mention the problems with conservatives. I'd thought I'd share a few in my opinion:

- They're close-minded and stubborn.
- They don't like "change", and are often against progressive or new ideas.
- They're pro-military and aggressive
- They're socially dogmatic and often push religious views on people.

tl:dr stands for "too long; didn't read"

There's a new short form on the internets: tl;dr.

It means "too long;didn't read". I love it! I want to use it at work - after someone writes a really long email message. I just want to reply "tl;dr".

Then when they respond to that with a, "I'm sorry I didn't understand," my next response will be "too long; didn't read".

I think it's great that you're not allowed to be long-winded on the internet. Too long; didn't read. Perfect. We simply don't have the time or desire to read much - UNLESS we're considering spending a lot of money on something. Then we want to read a lot about it before we make our purchase.

A lot of people on message sites like "reddit" post a long answer or discussion and then, at the end, type "tl;dr:" and write a short, one-sentence summary of what they just said. For all the people who don't read long posts.

In the business world this is called "Executive Summary".

5 Random Things I Hate (part 2)

1) I hate it when you've just bought something on your credit card and they print the receipt for you to sign and the GODDAMN thing is curly. It curls up in a little ball and you have to straighten it with one hand just to sign it. The paper is so cheap and flimsy and you can hardly see the text! We can send people to the moon and we can't print out a receipt that's worth wiping my ass on!

2) Speaking of credit cards, I HATE it when they send you letters asking you to pay $50 for enhanced security on your card to protect against thieves. Or they phone you after you make a large purchase just to double check your card is valid - BUT then they mail you blank cheques every 2 weeks with your name and credit card number printed all over them! Any joe can steal your mail or steal the cheques from your garbage. I have to shred the bloody things! Idiots! If you truly care about my security don't send blank cheques in the mail - especially since I've never used one in the last 14 years I've had my credit card!!! My face is bright red right now I'm so mad.

3) When people try to look at the cover of the book or magazine that you're carrying. It's none of their business what you're reading! That's why I always turn the cover inside toward my body. Let them strain their vision trying to read the small type at the back of the book. May their eyes tear up in pain!

4) When people say, "I have no regrets." What!! Everyone has regrets. Are you just too cool to admit it? I hate you for living the perfect life. Everything about you is perfect and all your decisions have been perfect. IDIOT!

5) I hate it when you're in a hurry and you press the wheelchair button on a door so you don't have to open the door yourself, and the mechanism is so SLOW. The door moves a centimeter an hour and you're just standing there, tapping your foot, waiting for the automatic door to open, and you're realizing that you should have just opened the door with your hand, so you grab the door to pull it more open - to help it along - but the door is stiff and resistant because it's on "automatic" mode now and it's robotically moving open at a certain rate. God I hate that.

Read "Things I Hate" part 1

I like a nice, clean email inbox.

I've never understood why people keep hundreds or thousands of emails in their inbox. Don't you like a nice empty inbox? A clean box with just a few emails that have just arrived?

I like to create folders and move the emails into the appropriate folder. The fewer folders the better. "To Do", "Archive", "Hold". That's it.

This way I can keep my inbox as a to do list. Usually I start the day with about 20 emails. Then maybe another 20 arrive during the day. My goal is to get my inbox down to zero before I leave.
If I need to find an email in the past, I just do a search for key words.

Cindy hates that I've set up our home email this way. She often gets angry when she can't find an email that I've moved into a folder. She's one of those people that hold all their emails in the inbox and her system works perfectly well for her.

By the way, I also love an empty computer desktop. I try to have as few items on it as possible. I can't stand cluttered desktops. I have 5 items on my computer right now and I'd love to only have 2. The problem is I'm "sharing" a computer and I don't want to ruin my co-worker's system when she comes back from leave.

Why "surveys" on websites and radio stations are useless.

I've seen so many surveys in local newspaper, websites or radio shows that ask questions like, "Do you think the government should build another sky train line?"

Or "Do you think we should have cameras on the HOV lane to catch cheaters?"

Duh. Of course everyone's going to say yes to these kinds of questions. Who wouldn't want better transit and punishment for cheating drivers?

The problem is that the questions never mention the consequence. Namely, money. It costs money to do the above things and that means you pay through your taxes.

I think the questions should have the following added to the end: "...if you had to send a cheque for $200 right now to cover the cost?"

In fact, I think any person (usually left, wing liberal) who says something like, "I think we should have more [blank] so that [the world will be a better place]" should be asked if they're willing to write a cheque then and there.

I'm going to try that from now on. Except I'm thinking it might come off as obnoxious. Ah, so what!

Three very satisfying things.

Here are three things that make me feel very satisfied for a brief second:

1) The smell of floor cleaner (Mr. Clean) when you mix it with hot water, and it gets all nice and soapy foamy. It smells so fresh! And clean! The actual mopping is a pain though.

2) The little beeps a cash register makes when the cashier types a number. Especially when they do it really fast. Beep, beep, beep, beep. The grocery store clerks fingers move so quickly! I admire them. I wish I could type something that gives off pleasant little beeps.

3) We have a red-ink stamp at work that says "FAXED" and "ENTERED". I love stamping piles of paperwork with these stamps. Stamp. Ahhh feels so good for a split second. One thing done. Stapling is also satisfying. The click-clack of a nice staple. Staples beat paperclips any day.

This is how you walk in the rain.

I love watching people without umbrellas walk in the pouring rain. They're typically hunched over, eyes squinting in pain, face in a snarl. They look like they're being tortured.

It's just rain! I'm amazed that rain can do that to people. Almost everyone hunches. I tried walking in the rain today and noticed that I too look like I'm being tortured to death. The hunching helps me prevent the rain from hitting my face.

But - rain in the face feels good. I tried standing up straight and it certainly began splashing my face. It was a little cold, but not uncomfortably so. As soon as I came inside, the rain dried. My clothes were a little wet but they dried too.

Walking in the rain isn't so bad - as long as it's not freezing outside. Next time it's raining I'm going to try smiling and looking totally normal. No running, grimacing or hunching of the shoulders.

When I’m pressured, I tell people I’m working on a pros and cons list.

If someone ever pressures you into a decision, a great delaying tactic is to tell them you’re working on a pros and cons list. I do this myself, though I’m rarely pressured into making decisions.

I wonder if anyone actually writes pros and cons lists before making decisions? I don’t think I ever have. If you’re so conflicted about a decision that you need to write a pros and cons list, you could probably make just as effective a decision by flipping a coin.

I’d also wager that most people making a pros and cons list, eventually decide on the “pro” choice. Why? Because you don’t need a list to tell you to say no to things. If you’ve invested enough psychic energy (toward a potential yes decision) to compel you to make list – you’ll probably say yes in the end anyway.

With the above in mind, creating a pros and cons list can actually be harmful. You’re delaying satisfaction by making a list, which ultimately will compel you to say yes in the end anyway. So why not just say yes now?

We could see the collapse of these 2 countries.

I'm sure many countries will collapse in our lifetime - especially many undeveloped countries. But here are 2 predictions for you:

In the next 5 years, I'm predicting the collapse of North Korea. Sure, they are an undeveloped country, but they've also been in existence since the late 40s, despite being shunned by the world. Well I think their time is up. They're currently suffering from another famine and many countries can't afford to send food aid because of the shaky world economy. Plus their "dear leader" is sick and may soon die. Look for North Korea to collapse.

Next prediction: Japan. This is a bold prediction considering they're currently the second largest economy in the world. I give them 40 more years. The big problem is that they're facing a HUGE demographic crisis. They're an aging country with a falling birth rate. Starting about 2015, they're population will fall drastically until 2095 at least. This is extremely bad news for any economy. Economies need growth and you can't grow if you're losing people. Most countries can fix this by immigration, but Japan is a deeply xenophobic country and net immigration is basically zero.

Bribing your child.

In the two years that we've tried to encourage Jake to eat, we've never had one doctor, community support worker, occupational therapist, physiotherapist, speech therapist or specialist suggest bribing our child.


All the books and articles I've read about getting your child to eat say, "Don't force your child; it's up to them and they'll eat when they want to."


I was telling this to our behaviour therapist yesterday and she sort of winced and said that all books and workers believe in a "child-centric" approach, which doesn't work. Especially for kids like Jake.


She said that all the behavioural academic literature says the exact opposite - you should "bribe" your children to eat and then phase out the bribe. She did say, "We don't call it 'bribing'. We call it reinforcement."


So why is there such a difference between the people in the field and the people doing the research? No idea. I can only think that as parents we've been brainwashed to think that reinforcement is bad. For some reason, the community workers think the same thing - or agree with general cultural wisdom that says you shouldn't manipulate your kids.



The funny thing is they don't get results. Whenever we asked for help with Jake they said, "We'll get you in touch with other parents whose kids are on a gtube."



No! I don't want a support group. I want advice that works. I don't want to talk to parents with the same problem. I want to talk to parents who fixed the same problem.

Listening to traffic reports on the radio is totally useless.

When I first started commuting I listened avidly to the traffic reports on the radio. Now I don't bother.

They don't help. First, they're often wrong and way out dated. They will still report an accident that happened hours ago. (They often beg people for updates. "If you're in the area let us know what's going on!" I want to yell, "Where's your chopper? You tell me!"

Second, there are only a few alternate routes and they're so slow that it isn't any faster taking them - even if the radio reports an accident on your route.

Third, often they say, "It's super slow, there's an accident on this road." When you get there, it isn't slow at all. In other words, the radio exaggerates the problem. I guess this is related to point #1 - they're wrong.

Finally, 95% of the information is useless. They say stuff like, "Mary Hill bypass is busy and slow going." Okay... So what? It's like that all the time. That doesn't tell me anything new.

I've concluded that traffic reports are simply for the illusion of control. Sort of like weather reports and child birth training. Pretend that you know what you're doing so you feel better about the random, uncontrollable situation.

The weather guy on the local news is always the "goofy" one.

I've noticed that usually the weather guy on the local news is kind of the goofy, lovable guy that everyone makes fun of. The other newscasters make jokes about him and he just laughs like a good sport.

Often they wear Hawaiian t-shirts or dress up for Halloween. They also go WAY off tangent and talk about other stuff besides the weather because - frankly - the weather is boring.

In other words, the weather guy is the LEAST boring member of a newscast. Yet he does the most boring thing. Interesting.

Are the weather guys on the local news actually trained meteorologists? I think some of them are. The news promo brags about it like "And now the weather with meteorologist Josh Smith."

But I would think most of them are not. I'd think they would just google the weather before hand and then come on and tell you what they just googled.

Sometimes they might make their own bold prediction like, "They're calling for rain all night but I think it will stop raining in a few hours!"

They always seem surprised the next day when it snowed and they didn't call it. "Wow, we got that surprised snow fall last night!" You would think after years of reporting the weather, they wouldn't be surprised when the weather changes unpredictably.

I think it would be such an awesomely easy job to be a weatherman in Vegas. Or any desert city. "Today is going to be hot and sunny. Tomorrow, hot and sunny. Basically, all summer hot and sunny."

But very dull. Do those places even need weathermen?