Avoid Quick Fixes

Most problems have a root cause that is simple but challenging to resolve. Real improvement requires effort.

Human nature tries to avoid strain. We look for a more efficient path to a solution, a quick fix. Entire industries are built around the promise a quick fix.

Dissatisfied with your golf score? Buy new clubs. Not thrilled with the photos that you’re taking? Upgrade your phone or buy new lenses for your camera. Unhappy with your social life? Buy new clothes or cosmetics. Download the latest dating app. Schedule a Botox injection, even if you’re in your twenties.

A new purchase might bring you some satisfaction, and that’s wonderful. Enjoy the boost. But if it doesn’t address the root cause of your challenges, eventually you’ll be disappointed, and you’ll be tempted to spend more money on more stuff.

Think about it. If buying things made people happy, wouldn’t everyone be happy?

If you are struggling to meet an objective that is important to you, resist the temptation of quick fixes. Identify what’s holding you back, realizing that it’s probably something simple, and put a plan into place to address it.

A Tawdry Limerick

A Tawdry Limerick

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Please do not read this if you are easily offended!

If you proceed despite this warning, don’t blame me!

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I was asked by a gun-toting preacher

To become the new Sunday school teacher

The interview with his wife

Was the best of my life

That woman is one horny creature!

The Enduring Lesson Of Star Wars

The enduring lesson of Star Wars is that great power resides in the darkest impulses of humanity, power that can be overcome only through tireless and courageous dedication to higher ideals.

May the Fourth be with you!

Trans Fat

Transsexual athlete and candidate for governor Bruce Jenner wants to ban trans kids from participating in sports. I haven’t seen such hypocritical self-loathing since I watched Senator Tim Scott speak on Wednesday.

East Germany

I know someone who escaped from East Germany in the 1960s. - This is someone that I know personally, not some vague anecdotal reference. - She and her family were granted permission from the government to visit relatives in West Germany for a weekend. They were not permitted to take anything of value with them, no money, jewelry, family heirlooms, not even photographs. If they had tried to carry valuables out of East Germany, they authorities would have suspected that they were planning to defect. They were only permitted to carry out clothing and essentials for a weekend stay.

Further, they could not say goodbye to friends, neighbors, or associates. They had to pretend that they would be returning in a few days. If they had given any hint that they might not return, their neighbors would have picked up on it and informed the authorities, in which case their permission to travel would have been revoked.

This is what life was like behind the Iron Curtain. People were encouraged to spy on one another. If you suspected that one of your neighbors was going to sneak off to the freedom of the West, it was your duty to inform the police. If you knew and took no action, you, too, would get into trouble.

Keep this context in mind as read the following paragraph. Think about the horror of living in a place where neighbors are encouraged to spy on one another, where any hint of noncompliance with draconian government policies would put you into legal jeopardy.

This past week, a popular host of a Fox opinion program encouraged his viewers to confront anyone they saw wearing a mask. He suggested that they walk up to the person with the mask and demand that they remove it. The host suggested that this was necessary in order to “reclaiming the life we once knew.”

The host wasn’t finished. He made an even more dangerous suggestion about children. He claimed that having children wear a mask was “child abuse” - his exact words - and suggested that if you see children wearing masks in public, it was your duty to “call the police or child services” in order to report the parents, “and keep calling until someone shows up.”

Authoritarian communist control of East Germany ended three decades ago, but I’m sure that some of the administrators of that regime are still alive. Imagine their delight at watching a prominent political opinion personality in the United States suggest that Americans spy on one another, Iron Curtain style, and “call the authorities” on their neighbors. Because that’s what authoritarians do. It’s not what people do in a free and democratic society.

Pro Life

Former VP Mike Pence criticized the Biden Administration for “abandoning the right to life.” Think about that. The administration that ignored a global pandemic, whose ineptitude and callous disregard for human life resulted in the deaths of half a million American citizens, criticized the administration who saved countless lives by making vaccine distribution their highest priority. 

To Do List

To Do List

1. Do something that makes you laugh.

2. Do something that makes you smile.

3. Talk to someone who makes you feel appreciated.

4. Do something that makes you feel better physically.

5. Do something that improves your mood.

6. Do something that will put you in a better position tomorrow.

7. Do something that will bring a smile to someone’s face.

Getting Back In Touch

It’s gallant to reach out

To get back in touch

Perchance to rekindle

Good feelings and such

But do it with caution

Don’t be in a rush

You might find that old friends

Need you as much

As a Chrysler 

Parked in their living room

It might be naïve 

To expect them to Zoom

Or propose a reunion

Anytime soon

When all hopes of connecting

Are doomed

Variant Urgency

The virus has two advantages. First, it’s designed to infect as many living beings as possible. That’s how it regenerates itself. If it runs out of bodies to infect, the virus will cease to exist.

Secondly, it mutates very quickly. It mutates for the purpose of being more effective in its mission, i.e. more infectious.

When a mutations is more infectious, it spreads more quickly through the population. The most infectious strains dominate by infecting more beings than the less infectious versions.

New variants are being formed all the time, and that will keep happening until almost EVERYONE is vaccinated. If you had Covid-19 and recovered, I’m glad that you survived, but you may have contributed a new variant in the process.

Existing variants are more dangerous to children and young adults. Vaccines are not as effective at preventing infection by variant strains. Future variants will be even more resistant.

The only was to stop this diabolical scourge is to get as many people vaccinated as possible. It doesn’t matter if you feel fine or if you’ve already had the virus. 

The virus has a mission to infect as many people as possible. We need to make stopping it our mission, because left to its own devices, it’s only going to become a more serious problem.

Award Shows and Entertainment Marketing

I used to revere the Academy Awards. I didn’t always agree with the results, but I believed that an Oscar represented the highest recognition of excellence in filmmaking.

I became more cynical when I learned that studios and production companies spend millions of dollars lobbying Academy members for their votes. I’m not sure that anyone understands the impact of all of this schmoozing on the final vote tallies, but it suggests that votes are not cast simply based on merit.

Daytime and nighttime talk shows are part of the same marketing engine. People don’t appear on ‘The Tonight Show’ at random. They are booked to promote a specific project, a book, a movie, a television show, an album, a tour, etc. These shows are infomercials for the entertainment industry.

The most egregious marketing schmaltz of all has to be a certain music awards show, the name of which begins with the letter G.

The music industry is driven by numbers - record sales, single plays and downloads, ticket sales, and views of music videos. Record companies have a well-developed formula to maximize those numbers, and it has nothing to do with maximizing the quality of the music.

They recruit young, energetic, visually appealing performers with the potential to connect with large numbers of consumers aged 8 to 29. They pair the performer with a producer, give them a budget, and send them into studios to record songs and make videos. Another big chunk of the budget goes into a marketing blitz.

The awards show is the icing on the cake. As sales and buzz surge, this year’s Big Act does a featured performance early in the show. Later on, they win an award or two, surprise, surprise! The executives and producers involved in the project laugh all the way to the bank.

In a few years, people will wonder whatever became of Big Act. What happened was that there fortune was based more on the quality of their marketing than their ideas. The record companies move on and find new acts to fill the role of Primary Revenue Maker, and Big Act fades into the oblivion of tabloid headlines and reality TV.