Revenge of the Nerds

Online social networking has been a fascinating and highly entertaining experience for me for a variety of reasons. First, it’s interactive. It isn’t “read only.” I can actually speak with or share things with people I know. Or knew. Or figure I should know since we share 85 friends but can’t remember who the hell they actually are. Secondly, it exposes people’s nuances, intricacies, weaknesses, and talents. I never knew I had so many friends that were brilliant artists, gifted writers, angry activists, and political soapboxers. I know who is grammatically challenged. Some have aged well. Others have done something to piss off Father Time. I have a bone to pick with that grey-bearded bastard.

More than anything, though, I think online networking gives insight into the nature of karma and/or the chaotic, natural flow of life. Let’s face it….we are all pinballs in the wizard’s game, knocked hither, thither, and yon. Where we end up is pure chance. Or luck. Or is it? Is there some element of karma involved? Are hard work, perseverance, and difficult patience through formative years rewarded with glory, riches, and love later in life? On the other side, have the cruel and indifferent been punished with misery and woe?

Throughout time there have been legendary battles between fierce rivals. Palestine and Israel. Green Bay and Minnesota. Fire and Rain. Cake and Pie. Age and Cher. Plastic Surgery and Kenny Rogers. Hippies and Metalheads. Jocks and Nerds. Some rage on, i.e. Palestine and Israel. Others have been tragically but emphatically decided, i.e. poor Kenny Rogers. And lately the Jocks suffered a crushing blow, much like Kenny’s face, which ended their war. The Nerds have prevailed, courtesy of Fantasy Football.

Look, I’m a sports guy. I’ve played several sports and was pretty decent at a few of them, so I can identify with the jocks. I’ve also bumped pocket protectors with the nerds. Hell, I have hundreds Phish concerts on CD, meticulously labeled and cataloged chronologically on Japanese-only compact discs, stored such that no man or child could possibly reach or damage them. I played EverQuest for years, spending hours of my day as Rutherforrd Gnarlyarmour….barbarian warrior in Norrath. THAT is nerdy. But, my friends, nothing I have ever done in my life on earth has been as nerdy as playing fantasy football this year.

My neighbor Jeb invited me to play Fanasy Football with him and some of his friends. I was loathe to do it, but I saw myself slowly (through little fault of my own) becoming “that guy”….the one that always has an excuse to not participate in anything he’s invited to do. I like Jeb so I reluctantly agreed. How involved could it be, right? I just get a few players and let them rack up points for playing well. No? HELL-tutha-no.

I knew I was in trouble when I went to Jeb’s brother’s house for “draft day” and we sat around in a group of 12 with spreadsheets and expert forecasts as to who would be the best players to pick. We went through 16 individual rounds of a draft. By pick #9 or so I’d had it. My butt was sore from sitting and I had no clue who the remaining players were. We rushed through the last hour, taking the total to THREE, and finally finished the draft.

That was the easy part.

There’s no sitting on your laurels in fantasy football. Each week you have to look at projections, compare stats, and manage your lineup. There are complex algorithms involved in calculating points after a performance. (Catches+Receiving Yards) – Dropped Balls / Yards After Contact x Touchdowns. Or some nonsense.

Did you see that, jocks? I just said “calculating” and “algorithm” in a paragraph that is talking about YOU. You all have triumphantly BECOME the NERDS!

Memo to FF-playing jocks. You are nerdy. Professional cup stackers think you are nerds. Anime manga collectors wouldn’t be seen with you in public. Star Trek conventions would ban you from the premises. You can retire the jersey and don the hammer pants because you are nerds. Sheldon Cooper is jealous. And he can build Tesla Coils and speak KLINGON. And I don’t want to hear, “it’s not even the same dude, we’re talking about sports!” No you’re not. You’re talking about MATH. True football fans are the ones that lock themselves in their man caves and violently cheer for their team to beat the bloody hell out of whoever dares line up across the ball from them. They don’t cheer for Brett Favre to throw touchdowns just because he is on their fantasy team. They know he’s a filthy loser and want him to throw countless interceptions before having his knee folded back by Julius Peppers. Hoping enemy players do well goes against the grain of logic and is foreign to the lifeblood of the true sports fan. Bottom line, the word “fantasy” should clue you in that you are in nerd territory. Do you know what lives in fantasy? Hobbits. Dragons. Unicorns. Spiderman. The Easter Bunny. Beautiful women in fur bikinis that fan you with palm fronds and grill a mean steak. And YOU if you think you are anything but a nerd. A true fantasy team would have Juggernaut at tailback, Legolas and The Flash at receiver, a Minotaur kicker, Darth Vader at tight end, an offensive line of Golems, and Moses under center.

The circle is now complete.

Nerds-1 \\\///Jocks-DONE

Why the Fear?

For someone that professes political ambiguity and general indifference, I sure do write about politics a lot. As stated in other posts, I’m largely confused and torn politically. I consider myself a conservative and I consider myself a liberal but I don’t consider myself a moderate…if that’s even possible. Maybe it’s just easier to incessantly bitch about things when you’re that uncommitted. And I guess it’s a general feeling of helplessness and disdain that motivates me to think and write politically. And right now I feel both.

I’ve been overly sensitive to Facebook Prophets as of late. Those soap-boxers that use FB as a vehicle to vilify Obama or Glenn Beck. Thank God for the “hide” function. I’m routinely astounded at how narrow-minded and silly people can be. Obama is not the anti-Christ. Beck is not the hate-mongering harbinger of death. Liberals have an agenda and they use media to promote it, i.e. Bill Maher and John Stewart (who is brilliant by the way.) Conservatives also use media to promote their agenda, i.e. Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. Each side can be valid and each side can go full retard. What hurts me is the chaos that is created by such clashing. It is dark and it is ugly. We Americans have lost respect for the system and its offices and I blame the partisan media.

Yesterday my two boys brought home permission forms from school, demanding parental consent for them to watch an upcoming presidential address to American students on the importance of education. You actually had to sign it to allow your child to participate. Not to decline it, but to allow it. In other words, the district’s default position was to keep the kids away from the address unless otherwise stated by their parents. I was dumbfounded.


I cannot believe we have come to live in such a fearful society. What in the hell are we afraid of? Do we think that Obama is going to use this opportunity to brainwash our children into supporting gay marriage or immigration reform? Is he going to subliminally command them to kill the prime minister of Malaysia? Why the fear?!

When I was a child I was taught that the president of the United States of America held an important, almost sacred office. Not because it was Regan, but because he was the leader of the free world. The office stood for freedom and justice. Not the man. The OFFICE. Regan had issues. Bush had issues. Clinton had issues. The other Bush had issues. Obama has issues. But he holds the most important office on the planet and it is our duty to listen to what he has to say, then use our God-given judgment to discern what we believe to be right or wrong, true or false. I believe that he, at his core, stands for freedom and justice…just as Regan did. I am not an Obama guy. Some of his ideas scare me. But I believe his intentions and motivations with regards to my children’s education are pure.

Bottom line, this is an address on the importance of education. I don’t care if it’s the president, Glenn Beck, or Charles freaking Manson speaking. Any help in strengthening the importance of education in the minds of my children is quite welcome. It doesn't matter if the office is held by a democrat, republican, libertarian, or whig. My children will grow up to respect that office and hopefully aspire to it.

Come Fly the Not-So-Friendly Skies

I caught this story in USA Today where over 2,000 airline passengers were polled to see if they would prefer a “family section” on flights. Nearly 60% said yes. In addition, 20% said they would prefer child-free flights. The survey came on the heels of a law suit filed by a 67-year-old American that sued an Australian airline after a 3-year-old child screamed on her flight causing pain in her ear.

To be fair, most of the 60% that favored family sections or kidless flights didn’t have children of their own, so there is some disconnect and lack of empathy there. But I don’t care. They are all idiots.

Have these people never been around children? Unless they are People Under the Stairs or haters of innocence and purity, I don’t understand how these tools could want to ban families from flying. Or quarantine them. Can a crying baby be obnoxious? Certainly. But so can you elitist bastards with your noise-cancelling headphones and iPads. I realize that you are a “business professional” and that you work exceptionally hard, but you are not working any harder than the dad that busted ass for three years to afford the magical Disneyland vacation for his young family. Not everyone works to luxuriate in snooty opulence, sipping red wine and stroking lap dogs while listening to Haydn. That child’s trip from point A to point B is every bit as valid as yours. You can deal with a little discomfort for a few hours. And if you are flying Southwest then you are exposing even more of your idiocy. Southwest is a bus in the sky. The only thing missing are livestock and chickens milling about the passengers to have a complete third-world charter.

What a silly survey. It doesn’t even make business sense to do such a thing. The airline industry lives and dies by ticket sales. There is no chance in hell they would risk losing seat sales by blocking off designated areas for families or children.

Designated areas. Doesn’t that just sound terrible? It screams of segregation to me. Hey…I know…let’s designate areas for fat people like Taco Cabana Lady. Do they know how horrible it is to sit next to someone whose lard is spilling 10” over the armrest? Trust me, I know. People glare at me when they see they drew the short straw with a seat adjacent to mine. Let’s stick anyone over 250 lbs. in the back of the plane. In fact, if you are over three bills then you aren’t allowed onboard, period. And Asian people smell funny, so let’s have an Asian section too. And old people annoy the hell out of me. They had their time to fly when they were young and actually WORTH something. But that ship has sailed Get your mothballed turtle asses back home and watch your programs in your wicker furniture-filled, wood-paneled parlors.

Now I believe that people should exercise common sense and human courtesy. I believe that families with small children should move toward the back of the airplane as a courtesy to other travelers. I believe they should try very hard to keep them quiet and calm. I also believe that very young children should not sit in first class. That is one area where business travelers can pay a premium to fly in peace. If you want to offer designated seating for families with discounted pricing or kidless sections at added premiums, then fine. That could be an option. However, I do NOT believe that anyone has the right to demand where people sit. Rosa Parks wasn’t down. Why would I be?

Caller ID - The Bane of Initiative and Propriety

I believe that Caller ID is to blame for the general laziness of society. In fact, I think you can basically follow the (de)evolution of telephone technology for a brilliant timeline into the world's descent into pitiful lethargy.

"Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you." Those were the first words uttered electrically by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876. The full history of telephone technology is lengthy and terribly tedious reading, so we'll skip ahead to the 1950s to begin our slippery timeline of laziness. In the 1950s, telephones were heavy. They were bulky. They sat down in a specific, permanent spot and took up obnoxious amounts of space. They were generally located near a desk or a countertop, where messages could easily be written.

When the phone rang, it actually rang. I mean there was a sound emanating from the thing that sounded like an actual bell ringing. When the phone rang you had to answer it to know who was calling on the other line. It was a complete mystery...until you picked up. It could be a bill collector or it could be old Ed McMahon with Publisher's Clearing house informing you that you'd won the million. And yes, Ed was old...even in the 50s.

Further, most telephone lines belonged to multiple families. You could pick up the receiver to make a phone call and your neighbor could be rapping on the phone with a friend. I'm sure it made for lovely eavesdropping.

Dialing a phone number in the 1950s took an eternity to accomplish. There were no magic buttons to push. You had to stick your finger in the hole on the rotary dial that corresponded with the desired number and you had to spin the wheel clockwise....then wait while the wheel "click-click-clickity-clicked" counter-clockwise to its original position. Luckily there were fewer numbers to dial back then. My dad's phone number was simply 2596 when he was a lad.

The 1960s
Toward the end of the 1950s, wall-mounted telephones were invented. They were slimmed down, reworked versions of the same device...just designed to hang on a wall. This did nothing more than clear desk space. You were still forced to rise, walk, pick up, and speak into the receiver.

In 1964 the world was introduced to the "Touch Tone" telephone. No more annoying time-waster of a dial to turn. Now you simply had to push a button for the number you wanted, easily shaving 15 seconds from your dialing! People got a little bit lazier.

While phone units continued to get smaller and lighter, no other real advances were made in telephone technology.

The 1970s
Technology held firm in the 70s. A "Picturephone" was released where video was transmitted (a snapshot every 2 seconds) but it went over like a lead balloon. It was bulky and insanely expensive.

More than anything else, the 1970s were about STYLE. Phones were manufactured in all sorts of groovy shapes and far out colors. Want a translucent phone that glows next to your lava lamp? No problem. One that mounts in the center of your black light poster? No sweat. The sound changed too! You could get a cool robotic, electric sounding ring instead of the actual bell.

In 1973, a company called Motorola invented the first cellular portable telephone to be commercialized. The technology had existed and had been used by the military and such, but this was the first time said technology was released for commercial consumption. It was a true beast of a machine, but it could be carried with you and used anywhere you received cell reception.

The 1980s
This is the decade where things started to really change and the descent into laziness went supersonic.

Right around 1980 the first cordless phone hit the market. All of a sudden, you didn't need to get up from the couch to walk to the wall or the telephone desk to answer the phone. You could fire it up right in the middle of MASH without missing a witty Hawkeye line or Klinger outfit. Granted, the 27MHz frequency and limited range made it sound like you were standing in the eye of a hurricane, but quality was a fair trade-off for the massive amounts of energy saved from having to rise to your feet and walk across the room. The low frequency, however, made it so that people that were talking on cordless phones in the same vicinity could hear each other and even speak to each other. This was more annoying to the phone company than to the consumer. People were able to have free 3-way calling adventures. Free is bad. In 1986, a cordless phone with a 49 MHz frequency was released to combat the 3-way calling issue.

In 1984, a market trial for a new device was held by Bell Atlantic in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. For the past 15 years, technology was being developed to allow identification information from the call originator to be transmitted and displayed to the recipient. This was the effective birth of "Caller ID." And the death of American initiative. Based on this market trial and others in the late 1980s, Caller ID became a mainstream hit and massive revenue stream for all major telecommunications companies by the mid-1990s. Suddenly it was possible to pick and choose which calls you wanted to answer based on who was calling. People, again, got a little bit lazier.

Constant advancements were also made to cellular technology. Networks were expanded and devices were improved, getting smaller and more powerful.

The 1990s
Cordless phones owned the 90s. In 1990 a 900 MHz phone was released, allowing you to go further from the base unit than ever before while speaking with a newfound clarity. Further advancements were made in 1994, 1996, and finally in 1998 with the release of a 2.4 GHz phone. Now you could walk around the freaking block on a non-cellular telephone with corded-phone clarity.

In 1995, Type II Caller ID was released and spread to the masses. This new technology allowed you to actually see caller information while you were already on the telephone. Caller ID displays were now being built onto actual cordless handsets, eliminating the need for older Caller ID boxes. Now you can screen and ignore calls without walking to look at the box. Another foot into the lazy river of laziness.

Cellular technology continued to improve. Now we have devices that are not just functional telephones, but also planners, calendars, and small computers.

The 2000s - Today
Having a telephone device entirely independent of wires or "bases" apparently wasn't enough. In 2001, the first "bluetooth" headset was released, allowing the user to actually speak on a cellular telephone without holding the damned thing to his ear.

Cellular technology is no longer its own technology...it's simply a small piece in a larger unit that we now call iPhones, Androids, and Blackberries.

Many American families have absolutely no need for "land line" telephones due to the cost-effectiveness and pervasiveness of mobile phones, but advancements are still made to said land lines.

Commonly, people consider advancements in technology to be improvements to life. Things get smaller, cheaper, smarter, faster, and more available. Technology allows professionals to be more "plugged in." But there is always a side effect.

In the 1950s people were compelled to answer their phone to know who was calling. People were forced to deal with salespeople or talk to that pesky mother in law that has nothing but evil to speak. They had to confront those annoyances head on, and I guarantee that lessons were learned in the process. Today I don't need to move a muscle to know who is calling. I don't even need to move my eyeballs. I barely have to pause my DVR to read the name and number of the person calling which is now displayed on the freaking television screen that I can't peel myself away from, courtesy of AT&T U-Verse. If my eyeballs are too tired then I need but listen to the ridiculous "Microsoft Sam"ish voice emanating from my 5-handset 6 GHz landline unit that tells me who is calling. I can literally and completely ignore you without expending a single joul of energy.

Is that healthy? No. Is there any bleed-through effect in life? I think so. Just like ignoring your annoying-ass phone call, I find it too easy to ignore those other annoyances in life. We're a lazy people and I'm your chief. Prime offender. I know people that won't answer or return phone calls. "If you want to talk to me, text me." How 'tarded is that?

Cell phones and mobile devices have thrown propriety completely out the door. I see people texting and even talking on cell phones during movies. I see Lobots wearing bluetooth headsets in church. I see idiots texting behind the wheel. I see women speeding through school zones talking on their phones. I even have kids that play around with iPhone apps during Sunday School lessons, oblivious to the fact that an adult is trying to teach them about baby Jesus. I can't imagine how hard it is to be a teacher in this day and age. These devices have made lazy, disrespectful lamers of kids and adults alike.


Technology has made it all-too-easy to avoid building real relationships. We are becoming robotic. In my last job I was able to manage accounts as a salesperson without ever having to meet or speak to someone. From initial contact to RFP to completed sale to daily management, I could handle everything from a Blackberry without even using it is a phone. Is that a good way to build a relationship?

So, in a personal effort to DO more and CRY less, I'm going to take the following action:

- I will answer the phone when it rings, regardless of who is calling.
- I will make an effort to not look at Caller ID or listen to Sam.
- I will leave the phone in the kitchen and go to it when it rings.

Will this instantly make me a die-hard go-getter in life? Probably not. Will it make me less of a lazy sofa-dweller? I sure as hell hope so. Those stairs are murder.

Duggars and Degeneri and Dogs. Oh my....

Sherri wants to be a Duggar. A what, you ask? A Duggar can be any one of the 21 stars of the hit TLC program “19 Kinds and Counting” featuring the Duggar Family. There’s Jim Bob and Michelle, then a whole slew of kids named J____. Josie, Joe Jack, Jarvis, Jezebel, Jiminy Cricket, etc. I hate the show. I detest it. Since I love my wife (and value my life) I won’t share my full opinion with you, other than to say that I wish they’d stop squeezing out kids and start acting responsibly. When your mindless procreation starts producing 1 lb. babies it’s time to stop. And they’re running out of J names. I’m starting a petition to change the name of the show to “19 Kids and Satisfied.”

I want to be a Chapman. Have you seen “Dog the Bounty Hunter?” This dude is like a bastardized hybrid of Geronimo and Thor. “Dog” Duane Chapman, together with his team, busts fugitives that jump their bond or fail to appear in court in the states of Hawaii and Colorado. The cat is bizarre. He is a former soldier for a motorcycle gang who was convicted on a murder 1 charge in his early 20s. After doing two years, he turned to the life of bail bondsman and has been wtfpwning bad guys’ souls ever since.

I love the show and the guy, faults notwithstanding. First off he smokes 6 packs of cigarettes per day. Let’s do some math. There are 20 cigarettes in a pack. That’s 120 cigarettes a day. Let’s assume he’s an ambitious man and is awake from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. That is 16 hours per day where he could potentially be smoking. There are 60 minutes in an hour, so he is awake 840 minutes per day. The number of minutes awake divided by the number of cigarettes available in six packs is seven. Dog Chapman smokes one cigarette every 7 minutes for 14 hours straight. Every day. No wonder his skin is bright freaking red. The smoke has got to be trying to escape through the pores of his skin.

More math. A pack of brand name cigarettes in Austin is about $6.95 per pack. Hawaii is generally more expensive than anywhere else on the planet, so let’s bump that to $7.50 including sales tax. Six packs per day at $7.50 per pack is $45 per day, $315 per week, $1260 per month. No wonder Dog is so ferocious when hunting down fugitives. He’s got an entire mortgage caught up in poison that he huffs into his lungs.

But I can look past the chimney and lobster-red skin. Behind those rad Oakleys is a soft, compassionate, trusting dude that genuinely cares about the people he puts in jail. “Find ‘em and Fix ‘em” is his motto. He and his team regularly pray together in a circle before and/or after a hunt, and I like that. He is also an obvious family man. His interactions with his wife and kids are sweet and entirely genuine. He had one major screw up with the racial slur thing, but he owned it and apologized like a true man. No written statements, no publicists. Just Dog on camera humbly begging the forgiveness of an entire racial community at every opportunity. He actually met with leaders of that community and received their blessing to keep his show on the air.

The characters are compelling and strong, the message is clear and concise, and there’s nothing more entertaining than watching a 5’8” bulldog of a Norse Cherokee kicking doors down with 4” heeled, gold-capped boots, screaming “on the floor mother &%$ker!”

American Idol is slipping. Simon Cowell looks incredibly annoyed, clearly showing that he wants off the show. All three judges that matter are constantly contradicting themselves, telling the contestants to be original and inventive, yet crucifying them when they try. Degeneres has NO business giving any criticism on anything remotely related to music. Memo to Ellen: If you want to comment on their hair, or their shoes, or their showmanship, then please…by all means, do. But in all matters of the sonic wave, you need to stfu and keep your unqualified opinions to yourself. Until you establish your merit in that industry you should just sit there and be funny. You are to AI what Dennis Miller was to MNF…a sideshow. A distraction. A clown to failingly entertain during awkward silences after qualified men speak. And you’re not doing enough of that, either. Stop trying to be serious. No one takes you seriously. Start being funny.

And what the hell happened to Seacrest? He used to walk that thin line between geekily awkward and refreshingly cool. Now he’s neither. His jokes are bad and his mannerisms are odd. Back to the radio you go son. I say we bring back the Dunkleman, or give the gig to Conan. He’s probably bored.

Does Max Hall have Jake Abs? Secret...

Hanging out at the Fleabag Hotel in Austin, watching Rush Hour 2 which was barely watchable the first time but manages to maintain its value with lines like "I will bitch slap you back to Africa" and "Do I look like Chicken George to YOU?!"

Speaking of movies, I saw New Moon with Sherri last night. I think I finally understand why so many women insist on loving these terrible movies. I call it the Langdon Factor. Angels and Demons was a brilliant book. It's one of the very few novels that I physically could NOT put down. I bought it at the SLC airport and read it nonstop through to Atlanta. I read it in the cab to the hotel. And I continued reading in the hotel room without changing clothes or unpacking until 10:00 p.m. when I finally finished. Then I talked to everyone I met about how incredible this book was. Imagine my dismay when I tried to watch this pathetic piece of HollycArp on the big screen. It is unwatchable. The acting is terrible and the plot is uninteresting. I didn't make it halfway through before turning it off. I realize now that Robert Langdon is a character that can't justly be played in a standard length screen production. The plot line, with all its intricacies, cannot be translated to film without sucking.

This is the problem with the Twilight films. It is a series of novels that, for whatever crazed reason, is beloved by romantic women everywhere. But the movies are epic failures. I sincerely hope that the novels were good....and I'm willing to finally concede that point if they indeed were well written. Call it mercy. Because the movies are terrible. Back out the cool wolves and the Italian Vampire Lords scene and all you have is a poorly-acted emodrama with chiseled Jake abs and lines like "you breathing is all I need" from a fiercely annoying Edward that should have kept his abs hidden. Homey, take some advice from an abless brother. If you ain't got it...don't flaunt it. So, ladies, consider this concession a small victory. The books might have been good but the movies are not.

Secret Deodorant may be PH balanced for a woman but that stuff is absolutely strong enough for a man. I forgot my Speed Stick in Austin and had to resort to the only thing available when I joined my bride and kids in SLC. Sherri's lovely floral Secret stick. I applied it in the morning then put in 14 hours of unrelenting physical manual labor loading trucks, packing boxes, and hauling furniture. I'm a big dude. I sweat like a big dude. My pits had to look like Richard Simmons' oiled-up body after Sweatin' to the Oldies. After a short and fairly restless sleep, I hit the shower the following morning only to find that Sherri's Secret was still fully intact and clinging to my caves like spackle. So I didn't reapply. I let it roll for day two of rigorous man work. The following morning I found the same result. Secret Spackle was still alive and well. I'm actually considering switching. I'll sluff off the fresh floral scent as a new fabric softener or something. It will be my little Secret.

Words cannot express how glad I am to be out of Utah and away from "The Holy War." BYU and U of U fans are intolerably annoying. I can't stand it anymore.

Memo to Utah fans. You are not the only people in the state of Utah that are entitled to your level of hate and vitriol. Your animosity and hate is astounding. It is ridiculous. It is childish and stupid. Let it go. If you refuse to let it go, then you should allow other people the same hate without getting monumentally butthurt over others' comments, i.e. Max Hall. Did he get carried away with his comments? Yes. Was he genuinely disgusted and hurt? Yes. Did he have cause to be pissed? Yes. Should he have STFU and let the scoreboard do his talking? Yes. But all that aside, he has just as much right to speak as you do...ambassador of the school or not. To refresh our minds and re-open the wounds, here it is:



The only Ute fans that have any room to be pissed are those that are actually open-minded enough to not loathe BYU. I challenge you to find me 10 such fans. Like Bigfoot and the Easterfreaking Bunny...they don't exist. If you think it and believe it, so can Max Hall.

Memo to BYU fans. Your program is tired and your team is boring. Your road is not the higher road. Any insinuation, lighthearted or not, that yours is "the Lord's team" is inappropriate drivel. There is no divine call to play for, or cheer for, the Cougars. Any hint that Utes are beer-swilling Babylonian pigs, therefore your team is the higher team, is nonsense. There's just as much boozing, partying and rabble rousing at Helm's Deep (thanks Dylan) as there is in SLC...except you people hide it in shame. Get it through your heads....God does not care about BYU winning or losing. He is a Texas fan. Hook 'em.

Rivalries are good. They are healthy. Hate isn't. But if you're going to hate, let the other side hate back.

Dead Animals and Football

This week I visited one of my Farmers Insurance agents. Farmers is generally pro-Safelite. We have a corporate program with them and treat their policy holders like greek gods. I was hired to replace an area sales manager that had been covering his area for just shy of 30 years and was very well-liked. When I met this particular agent's staff, they were quite sad that their old rep wasn't around anymore. After some friendly banter that lessened the tension, the girl at the front said "well as long as you like huntin' fishin' and football, you'll do just fine" in her mild Texas drawl.

Uh oh.

I get the feeling that I'm not dealing with people that can discuss the artistic brilliance of Wade Robson's contemporary piece from Wednesday. Likely no debate as to which traveling cast of Wicked is best. Maybe we can swap intricate theories about the Dharma Initiative and the Shepherds' connection to The Others. No? HELL-tutha-NO.

Football
I'm a sports guy. I dig football. I admit, I've slacked a little on my college football prowess, but that's mostly because I'm so bloody fed up with the lunatic fans in Utah and their retarded Holy War. But I've historically been able to rap with the best about conferences, BCS absurdity, and all other general specifics pertaining to the pigskin. I'm even MORE dangerous in the pro arena. I know my Packers and I have a general grasp of what's going on in the NFL.

But I pale in comparison to these Texans. Everyone in this city (and I assume state), whether man woman or child, knows football. Not just if their team won on Saturday, or even what conference stats were, but they know everything that happened on gameday. They know who won and lost and what implications they had on their beloved Longhorns and the BCS race in general. They know current stats and glorious facts from the days or yore when they were playing in leather helmets. There are Longhorn propa-promo items everywhere. Every other house has a burnt orange flag flying and there are Longhorns logos everywhere. These people LOVE their football. Age and gender mean nothing. Everyone knows it. They live it.

Hunting
I hate it. I can't do it. It's not so much an ethical issue for me as an issue of complete boredom and lack of respect for the "sport." Please...for the love of the bearded holy One on high, do not tell me that hunting is sport. It is not. Unless you are strapping on a loincloth, fashioning your own recurve and arrows from saplings with a Rambo knife, and stalking your prey in the wild, you are not impressive. You are killing animals with a freaking rocket launcher that is better suited for hunting dragons. Go kill those. If you can ice an elk from 1500 yards across a ravine from the back of your truck, you are not impressive. If you are speaking to ducks in their native tongue through a device you bought for $30 at Gart's, luring it to your masterfully camouflaged "blind" with an exact replica of the duck's likely-dead wife, you are not impressive. Anyone that actually pays to hunt "game" that is stocked or placed on a stamp of land for the sole purpose of being clipped by YOU is beyond unimpressive. Before long you'll be able to luxuriously waste animals from the comfort of your own home, courtesy of XBOX's new "REAL Big Game Hunter." If you want to impress me, wax your animals with a sling. Or a rope. Or your bare hands. Wrestle a bear or a gator. That's manly.

BE HONEST. Call it what it is. You like to kill crap. It's bloodlust. You get a rush by snuffing the life from animals. It is instinctual. The thrill of the kill is still engrained in most humans from thousands of years of surviving in nature. We don't all love it, but you hunters do. I will accept any reasonable explanation for traditional hunting. Like the meat? Fine. Environmentally conscious population control? Cool. Revenge for the tragic goring death of your great grandfather at the horns of a crazed buffalo? Groovy. You can even quote the bible and tell me that God put animals here for the benefit of man and we're just fulfilling our end of the covenant and thanking Hod for His bountiful gifts by capping beasts. Just don't say it's for the sport. It's insulting.

Fishing
"It's ok to eat fish, 'cause they don't have any feelings." - Kurt Cobain, "Something in the Way."

I've fished, but I've never liked it. There's nothing more disturbing than yanking a swallowed hook from a writhing trout's stomach to find that your power bait has been joined by the fish's liver and spleen. I know, I know...I'm doing it wrong. I should be fly fishing. And a TRUE fisher"man" will hook the fish by the lip where there are no nerve endings AND ultimately releases the fish anyhow so....no harm done.

Ok, let's follow that line of logic. Assuming you are actually qualified to instruct on the anatomy of Salvelinus Fontinalis, and fish indeed cannot feel the barb of the hook, I'm pretty sure the fish doesn't enjoy the sensation of being ripped from its aquatic home. Nemo endures many agonizing long seconds or minutes of fighting against this unseen, PAINLESS, force slowly pulling it from the sanctuary of liquid bliss, to be pulled into suffocating weightlessness and blinding light, handled and measured by a hideous pink beast, then tossed back into the depths. Only for it to happen again and again and again until someone mercifully bashes it over the head with a screwdriver and eats it for breakfast. I know the fishie's brain can't be that big, but I can't bring myself to believe that it just randomly swims around and occasionally gets caught, enjoys the ride, then forgets about it when it's tossed back in. These are Nemos. Not Dorys.

Let me be clear. I don't have issues with people that hunt or fish. Once that animal is dead I'll gut it, cook it, and eat it. I just don't enjoy the process of getting it to that point and I don't agree with 90% of the ideas of people that do.

This limits my ability to connect to these Texas folk. I complimented someone today on their "antlers" that were hung on the wall of the office of a very nice lady in her mid 40s. I was pretty sure I shouldn't call them a "rack" or a "set" given the situation, so I went with antlers. I was immediately exposed as A) a yankee, and B) a non-hunter because they are not antlers. They are HORNS. I refrained from informing her that horns are found in cars and on unicorns.

So I need to become a hunter, fisher, and football fanatic. I'm in sales. Pretending is part of my job.

The Smiley

The internet has revolutionized communication through the introduction of The Smiley.

When I was a kid, profanity was entirely verboten. But let’s face it…the cool kids swore. They also wore rad Iron Maiden shirts and had cool combs in their back pockets. Maybe some Vuarnet sunglasses and a thin porn-stache gracing their upper lips. And such colorful language! These people could string together phrases that were full of creativity, emotion, and blissfully beautiful filth. I so wanted to be that guy…it wasn’t long before I found a loophole.

I realized that if I were repeating or “quoting” someone or something else, then the responsibility for whatever had been said was not my own. The blame fell squarely on the shoulders of the original offender. You don’t throw the messenger boy out the window of the castle tower for delivering the severed head of your defeated nephew. No no…the messenger boy goes on his merry way, then you summon conscripts from Ireland and seduce the treacherous Robert the Bruce to deliver William Wallace’s heart on a platter. So I became a messenger boy with a license to offend.

As long as I prefaced my profanity with “QUOTE” and closed it with “UNQUOTE”, anything I said was perfectly fine. An example: David just kicked my new soccer ball over the fence at the park and into the canal. “QUOTE! David, you effing worthless piece of shift. Why don’t you….(insert bizarre string of magnificent expletives here) UNQUOTE!” It was beautiful. Full of filth and flawed logic. I could hang with the profanest of the profane with zero accountability.

The Smiley today has essentially the same function as The Quote. One can rattle off the most offensive and insulting sentence in chat, email, or text, but the presence of a Smiley in many of its myriad forms makes the sentence completely innocuous…even funny or complimentary. A commenter on this blog could post “You’re an idiot” at the end of one of my posts and I would be sad. “You’re an idiot ;)” however is perfectly fine and totally welcome. That sly little wink at the end really just means, “ha ha silly boy, you are so funny.” Likewise, “You are the worst writer in the world and your opinion is total cArp =P” is actually denoting sarcasm because of the little guy with the tongue sticking out. That offensive sentence is actually a COMPLIMENT!

Naturally, The Smiley is so overused (like the exclamation point) that its true power is rapidly being lost. Its intent is fuzzy. What if the sarcastic smiley winker dude was actually placed sarcastically, intending for the hateful sentence to actually be sincere, mocking me with its little punctuation features?

Lobot the Lame

There are certain products sold to the public that have one singular appropriate use. For example, fanny packs are for hiking. End of story, goodbye. There is no other appropriate circumstance for rocking a fanny pack. I don’t care if it is the most convenient place to store your crap; wearing a fanny pack anywhere but on a mountain trail is not only a bullet to the brain of fashion, but a crime against humanity worthy of Nuremberg tribunals. If you wear a fanny pack in public, you are a loser.

My detest for fanny packers has given way lately to the increasingly alarming populous of idiots and their Bluetooth headsets. Like the fanny pack, the Bluetooth accessory has one singularly appropriate purpose…keeping drivers from killing people. The End. Unless you are operating a vehicle, hands-free cell phone gadgets make you a lameass wannabe Lobot.

I am a child of the 80s. Like any other human male child of the 80s with the faintest trace of a beating American heart, I am a Star Wars fan. Other than all things Biblical, never has there been a more epic and gripping saga than that told by the first three…err, second three Star Wars films. The trilogy is a microcosm of life. It gracefully touches on themes of faith, love, hate, and hope. The relationships are enormous and the characters are the strongest ever written. Han Solo! Luke Skywalker! Ben Kenobi! Yoda! Chewy! LOBOT!

You know, Lobot…the mute half-cyborg assistant to Cloud City’s administrator Lando Calrissian and unsung hero of The Empire Strikes Back? He had that really cool bald head and walked like a broom was crammed 29” up his “dang-near-killed-‘um.” Raddest of all was the ginormous Bluetooth headset permanently drilled into his cranium that constantly and directly linked his brain to the entire city’s mainframe!

There’s a reason why we 80s kids have never heard the phrase, “hey, no fair! You always get to be Lobot!” when playing Star Wars in the basement with pool cues and cardboard tubes as light sabers. It’s because Lobot was lame and we didn’t even know who he was. Everyone wants to be Han Solo because he’s the ultimate badass, in any galaxy. No one wants to be Lobot. According to Star Wars lore, his name is “a corruption of ‘lobotomy’.” Who the hell wants to be THAT guy?

You Bluetooth abusers are all Lobots. Nobody wants to BE YOU. There is no reason to have your cell phone strapped to your face. Sure, you can eat barbecued possum more efficiently and you can bowl, drink beer, AND talk on the phone at the same time. And you’re still a retard. I have seen Lobots everywhere. I see them at grocery stores, restaurants, shopping malls, street corners. I’ve seen 14-year-old Lobots on skateboards. I saw a Lobot at Sam’s Club carrying a bulk pack of Ramen Noodles talking about his off-shore accounts. What kind of millionaire yuppie buys the cheapest food item known to man at the cheapest bulk store in the most impoverished area of the Salt Lake Valley?

There is even a 78-year-old Lobot in my Sunday church congregation. I mean seriously, if you get a phone call in the middle of the holy sacrament, are you going to answer it? Memo to all Church-Service-Lobots: I’m relatively confident that God doesn’t communicate via Bluetooth. The omnipotent and omniscient Alpha and Omega doesn’t need freaking cell towers to carry his digitized voice. When God wants to speak to you he’ll go Moses, lighting shrubbery on fire and aging you 40 years. No headset required.

Lobots of the world, do us all a favor and keep your Bluetooth in the car where it belongs. The glowing blue plastic thingy protruding from your ear does not make you cool. It does not make you important. It does not make you rich. It simply reveals your lameness to the masses.

Do Exploited Children Make Good Snipers?

Writer’s Block sucks. The combination of a world devoid of anything interesting, personal apathy, and complete indifference, has made for a relatively long and painful dry spell on the blog. But something surfaced last week that finally made me think. I mean really think.

Many of you may have seen the following advertisement for quit.org. The little boy is an actor, but the producers of the ad say the tears are real, having simulated the depicted scenario:





The commercial has sparked an intense debate. On the one hand, how dare someone exploit a 3 ½-year-old CHILD in order to make a social statement for a health crusade? On the other hand, the emotional response caused by the ad has effectively flooded the quit-smoking help line with phone calls from touched would-be quitters. Do the means justify the end? Is the momentary despair and terror in a helpless child a small price to pay for “saving lives?”

It has taken me several days to form my own opinion. I’ve had a Wrestlemania worthy of pay-per-view going on in my brain. I was disturbed by the ad…but is that necessarily a bad thing? I don’t think the point of the ad was to make people feel pink and tingly inside. We were supposed to be disturbed. It all boiled down to one thing for me…what are the long-term effects on the child? Was he truly exploited? Will this experience damage his psyche and turn him into a trench coat-wearing college campus sniper? Ultimately I came to the conclusion that if those 10 seconds of desperation could possibly harm the child long-term, converting him to a deranged sociopath, then I’d have made Charlie Manson seem like Mr. Rogers YEARS AGO.

01) My mother used to leave me in the car for extended periods of time while she went shopping for groceries or crafts. No shooting spree. It beat the hell out of actually having to spend any time inside Jobber’s Odd Lot.
02) I was forced to wear a frilly white shirt, purple satin knickers, and makeup as I portrayed Anna’s son in a church production of The King and I. No shooting spree.
03) I was locked out of the house for extended periods of time in the summer, drinking from garden hoses and eating fruit from trees. No shooting spree.
04) I had to do “the worm” across the stage at one of my mother’s dance concerts in front of 1500 people. No spree.
05) I’ve unwillingly performed countless piano pieces for total strangers in churches, hotel lobbies, living rooms, and shopping malls. No sniper spree.
06) I was in a commercial for an auto glass company hitting a baseball through a 1978 OldsmoBuick’s windshield. This commercial portraying, at worst, vandalistic deviant behavior or, at best, a really crappy batter, didn’t turn me into a lunatic psychopath. No shooting spree.
07) My mother made me wear clothing that matched, or at least complimented, my sisters’ matching dresses for holidays or vacations. No shooting spree.
08) I had to ride a unicycle in the Magna parade behind a boat blasting Beach Boys music wearing royal blue rayon short shorts, red and white striped tube socks, boat shoes, and a white tank top. Again…no shooting spree.
09) I’ve been forgotten, or at least picked up very…very late, at various camps, clinics, and lessons as a child. No kill count.
10) I was paraded in front of politicians, business associates, or social connections, dressed in completely silly attire, and I still didn’t kill anybody.

Bottom line…this kid is going to be fine. He may remember his 10 seconds of tears, just as keenly as I remember my gay purple satin knickers, but his discomfort is not going to negatively affect his development as a child, his character as an adult, or his career as a criminal. In fact, it might just make him stronger. Or at least more funny.

So, memo to all the lunatics and zealots crying BAD FORM! Children are being exploited everywhere. If you laughed at a single episode of Webster then you supported the exploitation of a child. If you’ve ever submitted a photo to a “cutest kid contest” then you are exploiting. If your issue is with exploitation, then get over yourselves because it goes on everywhere. If your beef is with the effect of the 10-second separation from his mother on his young psyche, then you are an idiot. That kid, like children everywhere, will have COUNTLESS experiences in his young years where there are tears, fear, anxiety, shame, and sadness. And he will bounce back. Kids are resilient. He’ll be fine. And he never had to wear tube socks in a parade.

Ostensible Parenting

Parents are failing their children on an epic scale. A guitar hero buddy of mine in Cincinnati wrote a stellar blog piece about a year ago that detailed how “helicopter parents” are sheltering their kids from rejection and disappointment. Clearly that’s setting the stage for monumental disaster later in that child’s life when he realizes that the world is not made of sunshine and dancing unicorn dust. Girl Scout cookies don’t magically sell themselves and you actually have to try out for basketball teams. I’m no expert on parenting, but I’m a decent observer. And what I observe is ugly.

Many parents expect the public school system to raise their children. My brother in law is a counselor at a middle school in southern Utah. He has shared numerous stories of how parents refuse to take accountability for their misbehaving children and expect the school to handle the discipline and reform…as long as it doesn’t hurt little Timmy’s feelings. Parents also expect the school system to create intelligent, witty, creative, courteous kids that naturally turn into successful and motivated adults. News flash…the public school system is in place to ASSIST in the education of children. It is YOUR responsibility to actually teach and raise your kids. The system is there to provide proven and effective methods to present information to young people by adults that are knowledgeable and skilled communicators. Parents are there to make damn sure their kids understand the information given or, better yet, instill a hunger to MASTER the subject matter and have fun doing it. Schools don’t create scholars. Schools don’t make CEOs, professors, and presidents. Parents do.

I was sickened when I read this article today about New Mexico parents failing to pay their school lunch tab. Children whose parents are behind are being given a plain cheese sandwich, some fruit, and some milk instead of being given normal lunch like the kids whose parents are current. I need to bullet my points here, otherwise I’ll ramble:

1) I understand that times are hard. The recession blows.

2) It’s gut-wrenching for me to envision a sweet, timid 1st grader, like my son, being physically pulled from the lunch line and handed a white sack with a stale cheese sandwich and a mushy apple inside while his peers point and laugh. White sack = poor kid. That is the kind of public ridicule that will instantly and forever damage that kid’s self image. His peers will always remember him as one of the “white-baggers” from 1st grade, just like Chas remembers me for my crappy shoes that slid all over the basketball court…25 years ago.

3) It is pathetic that parents don’t have to share in their children’s shame. Shielding yourselves with your own kids is disgusting, intended or not.

4) It is commendable that the school district is trying to make sure that each child has something to eat for lunch. The system might be flawed and not well planned, but the effort is there. Hunger is a verb that most all of us will never fully know. Being hungry is one thing…hunger is quite another. It motivates people to steal and kill. Hunger sucks, and I applaud the district for fighting it.

5) It is commendable that the school system is holding parents accountable and not allowing them to get everything for nothing.

6) It is sad that this ^^ comes at the expense of children.

The school system is on track to lose $300,000 this year on unpaid student lunch bills alone. That is six times the amount in 2006. In order to cover the debt, the schools will have to pull from other departments in the budget since not even the federal lunch program money given, from OUR tax dollars, can cover. So all students will suffer from the inability and ineptitude of bad parents.

I fully understand that there is poverty in the world and that parents are struggling to feed their kids. My “bad parents” claim might seem harsh. I counter that with the following question. If your child were NOT in school and were home for the summer, would you expect him to starve or would you find a way, no matter how creative, to feed him? Easy. You’d feed the kid. Now, take that same creativity, throw it in a lunch box and send it to school with the boy.

In my opinion the solution is simple. Completely do away with school lunch programs. I sell cookies to school districts and buying groups all over the country. It is astounding how much time, effort, and MONEY is put into child nutrition. That shouldn’t be their job! You don’t need a cookie that has no fat or sugar and tastes like cardboard. What you need is to tell Timmy to turn off the Playstation, get off his lardass, and mix in some kickball.

It is not the school’s responsibility to teach, raise, discipline, AND feed our children. By doing away with the program you put all children on a level playing field. If all the kids are bringing white sacks to school, no one will care if one houses a cheese sandwich or a cheesesteak. The sack itself is the equalizer. When kids “forget” their lunch, call the parents. If it persists, call in the cavalry. Get DCFS involved. For the truly willing and CARING, there are programs out there to make sure your kids don’t go hungry. The public school system, however, is NOT one of those programs.

Disgusted With the Media

I first caught glimpse of the power and influence of the media during the Columbine shootings. I was home on the couch watching the news when the switch to live coverage happened. I was floored at how quickly and deftly the media could maneuver coverage and gather information. It all was unfolding real time right in front of my eyes. What really struck me during the aftermath was how some information was accurate and some was not. Some reports were dreadfully wrong. Regardless of accuracy, I learned that what I am told on the news I believe whole-heartedly. I learned that my assumption was that the news was objective and the media reported proven facts only, stripped of bias and haze. Since then I have gradually learned and adapted my understanding to what it is today: The media is a circus that is interested in one thing and one thing only. Viewership. Right and wrong mean nothing. The story is everything. Below are three recent monumental media failures:

1) Nadya Suleman. This woman should be arrested and tried for neglect rather than paraded all over the media. She is unemployed. She has been living on now-exhausted student loans allegedly totaled at $50,000. She is in school pursuing a career in social work. And she unethically had SIX embryos transplanted instead of the typical maximum of 2-3. She now has 14 children to raise by herself in a two-bedroom apartment with no income, no husband/partner, and $459 per month for food stamps. Her infinite medical bills will inevitably be taken care of through taxpayer funds, not to mention her cost of living.

The sickening thing is that the media blitz is likely falling in line with her diabolical plan. She wants attention. She wants money. And the media will lap it up and shell out the dough. Ann Curry’s interview made me sick, overstressing the point that NBC was NOT paying Suleman for the interview. Memo to Ann: She doesn’t care. Your show/network/interview was nothing more than a launching pad to put Suleman in the crosshairs of countless programs and periodicals that WILL pay top dollar for her story and photos. You have enabled and promoted her scheme of profiting from her neglected children. This is no “John and Kate Plus Eight” or “18 Kids and Counting.” Those kids were born into legitimate families that love and support them without taxpayer funds. They were responsible and ethical decisions. Without the media attention, Nadya Suleman would be forced to do the right thing…place those children in the care of families that have the ABILITY to love and care for them. Shameful.

2) Pregnant man. How ridiculous. My beef with this deal has nothing to do with moral and ethical dilemmas surrounding sexual orientation, civil unions, or gay marriage. My personal opinions on those subjects are just that…personal. And they probably aren’t popular with either side of the issue. My problem with this story is from a medical or physiological viewpoint. THIS IS NOT A MAN. It is a woman in a wicked-clever and highly expensive man suit. Gender is not a state of mind. Gender is not misplaced or improperly assigned. You are born with the equipment that you have and that characterizes you as male or female. Penis=male. Vagina=female. You can have parts lopped off or surgically attached, but you are still the woman or man you were before the alteration. If you are a man attracted to other men, that’s fine. If you are a woman attracted to other women, that’s great. But you can’t whack off your wiener, take some estrogen, and magically become a woman. It is a costume. That is all. So, memo to “Pregnant (wo)Man”:

womb + ovaries + vajaja = WOMAN

The media has made this far more interesting than it really is. This is a lesbian woman in a man costume that had a baby. Pretty bland really. I'm also pissed that her beard is better than mine.

3) Michael Phelps. This dude is a stud. He is a national hero (if you subscribe to Olympic athletes as heroes.) He eats 12,000 calories a day and has an upper body that has to be greased down with Crisco to get him through doorways. And guess what world…HE’S A KID. It is unfair that we force young national figures to live by pristine adult standards. I can think of very few examples of young people that miss their childhood/teenage/young adult years that end up ok. Just look at teen actors.

Michael Phelps hit the bong. Who the hell cares? Punishing a kid for something he did at a party five months prior to the 4x6 photo that some jealous tool posted and leaked to the media is a waste of time and taxpayer money. I’m pretty sure that if I posted a picture of myself hoisting an apple bong over my head to Flickr, Facebook, and this blog, I would get ZERO legal heat. It’s unfair that Michael Phelps is being focused so hard. The young man already did the right thing by sacking up and publicly apologizing for poor judgment and irresponsible behavior. Let the kid go. He's actually losing sponsors over this. He deserves better treatment after having brought so much pride to an entire nation. Is Phelps a role model? Yes. Do kids look to him as an example? Yes. Is marijuana illegal? Yes. Should it be punishable by law? Yes. Should Phelps receive excess heat because of his public status and role model position? Absolutely not. The law should apply to all people equally, with equal ferocity and callousness. And Phelps is receiving undue ferocity and callousness from the law, pushed relentlessly by the media.

The media has no moral compass. There is no right or wrong to them. Only stories. They do not report fact. They do not pursue truth. They sell information, often swayed and always spun. There is no social responsibility with the media anymore. It is corporate-sponsored propaganda. The unfortunate reality is that we, the intelligent audience, have to exercise our best judgment when being fed information, wading through the spam to get to the guts of the message, because the media is certainly not going to course correct and actually report with a conscience.

Would You Have Invested?

No, it’s not The Allman Brothers Band. No, it’s not a collective mug shot of convicted pedophiles and sex offenders. No, it’s not the Kentucky State House of Representatives. This is a group photo of Microsoft Corporation taken December 1978. There were 11 members. You’ll likely recognize the squirrely kid on the bottom left. This was taken just prior to its first ever $1 million sales year. Not long before this photo was taken, the corporation was faced with a difficult dilemma…find a way to scrape together $7,000 to cover pay some outstanding notes or go belly up and close its doors. They borrowed the money. Within months after taking this photo, all 11 members moved to Washington State to launch their new office campus where they would eventually change the world, one PC at a time.

So now the question: If this misfit brigade had marched into your company’s conference room looking like Jim Henson and Charlie Manson and had given a 15-minute pitch via overhead projector about personal computers shaping the future, looking for venture capitalists, would you have invested? I think not. You’d have covered your groin with one hand and called security with the other. But can you imagine what your life would be like now if you HAD invested?

The Facts: Microsoft went public in 1986. Initial Public Offering (IPO) shares went for $21.00 per share. Since its IPO, Microsoft stock has split 9 times. If you had bought ONE share on March 13, 1986, you would now have 288 split-adjusted shares. ONE share bought in 1986 would be worth $4,976.64 today. ONE share bought in 1986 and sold in 2000 when Microsoft stock was at its peak would have been worth $17,280.00. Just imagine if you had invested $10,000 at IPO. Sold today you would have $2.4 million and sold in 2000 you would have $8.2 million. InFREAKINGsane.

How many times have we made decisions related to business, education, investments, purchases, trust, or confidence based on the messenger’s appearance? If Microsoft had entered the building in nicely pressed suits, beardless and well groomed, would they have attracted more investors? YES. The instant I have to board a plane for a food show or client meeting, you can bet your sweet ass that I’ll be clean-shaven and fauxhawkless. But is that fair? Does my hair, scruffy beard, hoodie, and flip-flops make me a less effective salesman and communicator? Two quick stories…

One early-marriage anniversary I booked a room at Little America for Sherri and myself. I’d heard it was a very nice hotel, but I quite frankly didn’t think much of it from the outside. This is not the GRAND America mind you, but the old Little America. Part of the anniversary included a dinner at the Little America restaurant. This was clearly fine dining, even if the building didn’t suggest it. The house salad was an entire, uncut wedge of lettuce with a variety of odd trimmings and foofery. I’d never had to cut a salad with a knife before. While we ate I noticed an old man going from table to table speaking with the patrons, apparently panhandling. He was wearing a bizarre combination of clothing. Blue polyester pants…the kind that has no belt loops, just the button strap across the front. Terribly battered old-man pleather shoes that neither laced nor latched. And a lime green sweater that was so thin at the elbows and shoulders you could see his yellowing white shirt underneath. Eventually he got to our table…

Transient: What a lovely couple. How are you young folks doing tonight?
Me: Fine, thanks.
Transient: Enjoying your meal?
Me: Yeah it’s pretty good
My Head: This old freaker smells like rotting flesh and mothballs.
Transient: That’s wonderful. Well, my name is Earl Holding and I own this hotel. Please enjoy your stay and your dinner and feel free to notify me should you need anything at all.
Me: Um, ok.
My Head: Impossible.

For the love of all things pure and holy in the world, that was Earl HOLDING. The man that owns ski resorts, hotels, and SINCLAIR OIL. He’s the 59th richest man in the world according to Forbes, clocking in at just over $4.2 billion in net worth. And I thought he was a homeless man begging for spare change or a bite of my lettuce wedge? Earl Holding looked like a bum but lives like a king.

I did college the hard way. Instead of hammering it out when I was young I decided to play computer games ‘til 2:00 a.m. then sleep in my car instead of going to class. After many years of anguish and regret I finally got it done at age 29 courtesy of University of Phoenix. I unfortunately needed a humanities credit and settled for a Western Religions class. “Oh great”, I thought, “another godless philosophy nut to tell me my entire belief system is a farce.” My fears were confirmed the first night of class when I walked in and saw the instructor for the first time, sprawled on one chair with his feet kicked up on another. He was wearing very old corduroy pants and an olive green/burgundy plaid shirt. He had wavy parted hair down to his shoulders and a fairly rad Jesus beard. His style was actually fine by me, but the dude was wearing a Dallas Cowboys coat…so I knew he was pure evil.

The department head visited our class that night and welcomed us all. He issued a challenge. At the end of the five-week course we were to place our bets as to what religion the instructor actually was. Early on I thought it would be some Zen like eastern religion like Baha’i or Buddhist. Maybe Sai Baba. But as the class progressed I realized he was probably Christian and my mind finally settled on “non-denominational Christian.” It’s free, it’s easy, it’s positive, and it’s Christian. Two things were certain about this guy…all faiths were fair game. He respected and poked fun at all churches equally. And he was a fabulous teacher. Besides teaching he also worked as the chaplain to hospice and the draper prison, working specifically with death row and gang unit inmates. His stories were fascinating.

When the big final night arrived we were all anxious to get through our final exam and presentations so we could finally learn the identity of our unmasked but bearded stranger. People started randomly shouting out religions, “Methodist! Lutheran! Jewish! Atheist! Christian! Buddhist!” etc. He chuckled with each one and wrote them all on the board. After about 60 seconds of wrong guesses, someone in a back corner snickered and yelled out, “LDS!” “Ahhhhhhh”, the instructor replied, and wrote the letters L – D – S in big block letters on the board and circled it. He confirmed that he is indeed LDS and gave us a quick 60-second reason, essentially a testimony, of why he belongs to this church. Several mouths were agape. Here is a man that has dedicated his entire life to the study of Theology and Ethics in Theology. He studied in the Middle East, Cambridge, and exclusive US universities. And after twelve years of academic scrutiny this man had come to the same conclusion about faith that I had…minus all the study and dissection. This bearded hippie Cowboy fan was a dedicated and loving member of one of the most conservative, strict organized religions in the world. His name is Matt Fellows and he bore a strong, educated, enlightened witness to the truth of things that fellow academics routinely tear apart and curse as false.

I learned two interesting things from those experiences:

1) Books can’t be judged by their covers. As cliché as that may sound, it is completely true. A faded sweater doth not a pauper make, nor a Cowboys Coat a villain.
2) Books are judged by their covers. Everyone does it. It’s not fair. It’s ignorant and narrow-minded. But it’s true.


You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and first impressions are sometimes all it takes in a professional environment to make or break you. Earl Holding can afford to look like the Fisher King. I can’t. As sad as it may be, I need to keep up pretenses. I need to look like a million bucks until I MAKE my million bucks so I can finally dress and groom how I want to.

And what of the Microsoft Misfits? Collectively they built a $279 billion empire and changed the world.