• Inappropriate metaphors

    (Author’s note: this entry makes a little more sense knowing it was written two weeks ago.)

    Your body is not a bank. In so far as you are not made up of mortar, timber or stone, this is pretty obvious. The bank as a metaphor for your body’s function doesn’t work well, on many levels. You see… with a bank you can’t continue to make withdrawals without the occasional deposit. The horrible reality of my body is that I can continue to make withdrawals long after a bank would have cut me off. The occasion of this observation is an example of bad judgment, whose consequences I reap at this very moment. Last night I offered my sleep on the altar of sacrifice to the football gods, in hopes that the fortunes of at least one of my favorite teams would improve (the mighty – if slightly overrated – Gators not withstanding; their accomplishments having faded with the awful performances witnessed yesterday).

    Earlier in the day the home team (the Bucs) came to the stadium pick up their paychecks. They stuck around for a few hours, shedding a few pounds of pride, and making a few fans nostalgic for the days of Sam Wyche. Later that evening, my alternate team took the field in prime time, looking to spoil the perfect start of the team formerly from Baltimore. They spent the first half playing to the strengths of the Equus Shoes… stacking the line and playing single-coverage on their exceptional wide-outs on defense, and attacking the edges of their undersized (but fast) defensive line on offense. It was during this display of the Patriot’s coaching staff out-smarting themselves that I made the decision to make my sacrifice. Rather than go to bed (like a sane person), I stayed up to watch the whole thing.

    The butcher’s bill for the evening (besides a couple of disappointing football scores) was three and a half hours of sleep.

    Assuming my wife has any pity for me (she doesn’t), my kids could play quietly after dinner (I don’t have anything else to say about that), and the bank metaphor of physiology holds more water than your average fork; I could just go to bed around six this evening to balance the books. Even if I could… I just can’t. After working all day, coming home to chores, child bed-time prep, and dinner; going straight to bed feels like betrayal. I can’t just go to sleep with out doing something just for me.

    No, I won’t be catching up on my sleep anytime soon. In fact, I may make matters worse tonight (I’ve been itching to play Halo 2 again).

    My mind is cruel this way, when it comes to sleep. The truly troubling aspect of this ordeal is that I knew all of this going into last night, and I still stayed up late to watch the Patriots lose to the Equus Shoes. I knew I’d spend all week not catching up on my sleep, regretting it every single morning, and repeating the performance the following night.

    Hello. My name is John and I’m an idiot.

  • Small change

    If I had a nickel for every time my wife said, “don’t you dare write about that on your web site,” there’d be a world wide shortage of certain kinds of metals commonly associated with minting… not to mention I’d be buried up to my arm pits in those stacks of empty coin rolls you get at the bank. And don’t get me started on what kind of pain in the ass it is to roll coins. On second thought, keep your damn nickels to yourself.

    On a Saturday (a few weeks back) we did something a little different: we did grocery shopping as a family. To get the same cumulative effect I could have just gone out to the wood shed and given myself a couple good thumps on the head with a log and been done with it. This Friday (Black Friday), we had this ingenious idea to go grocery shopping on our normal day – which happened to occur on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. (Retail experts say that contrary to popular perception, “Black Friday” is not the busiest shopping day of the year… that day usually falls on either December 23rd or 24th – thanks to my people.) That’s the long way of saying I found a bigger log and recruited someone else to do the swinging (to overcome the inherent leverage problems with hitting yourself with something heavy).

    None of this is anything my wife deemed verboten, but it sure makes you wonder what was left out… doesn’t it?

  • What is in a name?

    (Foreword: I’ve got unflattering things to say about folks from both political parties… so if you’re feeling unfairly picked on… have patience, keep reading. If you’ve read it all and you still feel unfairly picked on… please feel free post a comment and pick on me.)

    This morning on the radio a sound byte was played from the first American President in Estonia. The debate point for the day (again) was: “Civil War, is it or isn’t it?” The President laid out his position on the subject.

    “What we’re seeing in Iraq right now is a pattern of violence that started in February.”

    Whew! That’s a relief. A pattern of violence sounds much better than a Civil War.

    Wait a fight pickin’ minute. That’s nine months. The word “pattern” suggests order… the opposite of random… distinct factions attacking each other. What exactly does nine months of ordered violence suggest? Even if you buy into the theory that it was all “sparked” by al Qaeda “months ago,” doesn’t a “pattern” of internal and reciprocal violence begin to add up to a Civil War at some point? It’s been argued that Iraq is not in a Civil War because most of the fighting has happened in Baghdad. I’ve heard it suggested that the same argument could be used to say the pattern of violence between the United States in the 1860’s wasn’t a Civil War because no fighting took place in Maine (and I would add that none of it occurred in the major population centers of the time… Boston, New York, Philadelphia… or anywhere in the northeast). I’ve also heard it said that more than a quarter of the Iraqi population is in Baghdad.

    At this rate, if the president doesn’t watch his step he’s going to have to give up his membership card to The American Association for the Advancement of Hyperbole (A.A.A.H.! for short).

    My biggest regret posting this message is that I’m contributing to a (mostly) meaningless debate. The energies devoted to all of this haggling over a label would be better spent haggling over a solution. Democrats need to get their imagination out of cold storage (where it’s been safely preserved since the late sixties), and start positioning themselves as a REAL solution to the problem (instead of playing one on TV).

    There’s more to this problem than a label.