URA QT

Last week, a very sad-faced fifth grade girl came to me with this very sad-faced question: "Do we have to do PE on Valentine's Day?"
It took me a moment to appreciate that this girl, who had not shown a great proclivity for math previous to this, had made the calculation that probably involved looking at a calendar to determine that Thursdays are PE days and Valentine's Day is on the fourteenth. She might have been aided by the cartoon heart filling the square next to the number fourteen. Nonetheless, I appreciated the effort, but gave her the simple answer: "Yes."
Big sigh. Slumped shoulders. Off she sulked. It was only later that I tried to remember what it was like to be ten or eleven years old around this time of year. I dutifully inscribed the names of each of my classmates on the tiny Valentine cards my mother had bought for me. I hoped that I would receive at least as many back as I gave out. Maybe someone would pass out those big red cinnamon heart suckers taped to their cards. There might even be chocolate.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, even back in elementary school, was the hope that someone would give me a non-required Valentine. A girl. Maybe from another class. Someone who had been watching me from afar. Someone who wanted to B Mine 4 Ever. That didn't happen, even though I made that wish for another ten years. Now I'm not surprised to find a mushy note on the inside of a grown-up sized card. From my wife. Wait. Maybe I am surprised. Or at least the ten-year-old me is. How did this all work out? I've got a girl to notice me. She even gives me chocolate. Sometimes. On Valentine's Day.
Maybe that's why we have PE on Valentine's Day. All that chocolate.

Odds 'n' Rods

When I was a kid, I drew my share of cars, though I spent most of my doodle time making pictures of dragons, pigs and pointy-headed creatures of questionable origin. I was a cartoonist, not a draftsman. I was as impressed as any ten-year-old with Odd Rods, but my fascination was restricted primarily to the scary beasts that were shown bursting out of the driver's seat of most of the musclebound vehicles depicted on those trading cards. I built my share of plastic model cars, most of which sat on a shelf in my room until they had aged to a point that would be proper for burning. Bathtub Buggy, Rommel's Rod, and the iconic Red Baron all eventually became molten slag in my parents' back yard on those Friday nights when we three brothers were left with nothing to do but test the melting point of polystyrene.
The models my son has collected would be considerably more difficult to dispose of. Not simply because they are made of metal, but also because of the sheer number of Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and other exotic machines that fill the shelves of his room. He has assembled a few of them, but mostly he prefers to buy them already put together and then admire them for their precision and detail. He has experimented with painting on a few occasions, but he seems content to hold on to the vision of the original designers. This doesn't mean he isn't creative. He applies his sketching talents to the lines of Carroll Shelby and his contemporaries. He's drawing the rods for my odds.
All of this is to say that I feel that, in some way, I may have let my son down. BMW recently released a very impressive rendering of four-year-old gearhead Eli's dream car. Nineteen engines and forty-two wheels, and an air-cooled toy trunk make this a monster that demands attention. At least for those of us with imaginations. This is a car my son and I could agree on. Now we just have to get them to make a hybrid version to get mom on board.

Above The Law

There has been no shortage of celebrity spouting recently regarding the Second Amendment. Chris Rock, Tony Bennett, and Amanda Peet made their views known in Washington last week. Bruce Willis, who knows a thing or two about baring arms, told anyone who would listen at the Associated Press, "I think that you can't start to pick apart anything out of the Bill of Rights without thinking that it's all going to become undone. If you take one out or change one law, then why wouldn't they take all your rights away from you?" Jim Carrey shared his thoughts on the issue via Twitter. "Any1 who would run out to buy an assault rifle after the Newtown massacre has very little left in their body or soul worth protecting," he wrote. After Fox News criticized the actor, he wrote Tuesday, "Yes, i agree with the ppl who argue that cars can be as deadly as guns but a car is a lot harder to get through the door of a classroom."
But talk is cheap, after all. It takes true dedication to put your trigger finger where your mouth is. Steven Seagal wasn't just shooting his mouth off when he offered to lend his expertise to train the posses that Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio wants to deploy around Phoenix-area schools. Mister Seagal wanted to help with the exercise planned for last Saturday at a closed school site in suburban Fountain Hills outside Phoenix. The Sheriff's SWAT members will act as shooters and twenty-five teenagers will play the part of students during mock scenarios involving up to three gunmen. Joe would eventually like to get three thousand god-fearing, gun-toting citizens trained up for an armed presence Seagal is already a volunteer posse member in Maricopa County, and has been deputized with sheriff's offices in New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana, where a film crew followed the actor on ride-alongs with Jefferson Parish sheriff's deputies for the reality TV show "Steven Seagal: Lawman."
Sheriff Joe would also like us to know that Mission: Impossible's Peter Lupus has also volunteered, as has gamma ray enhanced Lou Ferrigno. I'm sure it comes as a comfort to the citizens of Phoenix to know that they are being protected by at least one member of the Impossible Mission Force and one of the Avengers.
Sleep tight, Maricopa County.

Timecop

When I was a much younger man, I used to round every check and withdrawal I made up, and every deposit down. The effect this had was apparent when I closed my accounts to move to sunny California. I had socked away more than a thousand dollars of bits of decimal point discrepancies. I was, initially, fooling myself. I knew how much money each check really was, and I knew that I was quietly generating a cushion for some imagined hard time when I would need all those nickels and dimes and pennies. That reality was replaced by a joint checking account that I have shared for twenty years with my wife, who does a very careful balance of our collective checkbook each month.
I had to give up that hoarding instinct, and I replaced it with another. Before I had a checking account, I had time. I set my clocks four minutes ahead of the actual time. This meant that, due to the sketchy nature of some of the timepieces in my apartment, there were four or five distinct time zones in that one bedroom dwelling. The idea behind this was to save myself time. When looking at any of those clocks, I would start to do the calculation for what the time was in the real world. The possible permutations quickly became a distraction, and so I would leave at anything that looked close to departure time. I was early for everything. You could call me a lot of things: OCD, compulsive, a worrier. But you could never call me "tardy."
After I settled down and owned a house of my own, having ceded the checkbook responsibility to my wife, I put myself in charge of the clocks. I wind them. I pull down the weights of the cuckoo clock. I reset the various digital timers after power outages. I confess that I am still somewhat mystified by the chronometer on our thermostat, but I'm working on that. Eventually, I want to command all the time in our house.
That's because I hope to have a similar experience when it comes time to settle my accounts in this world. When the Grim Reaper shows up, I want to be able to look through all those specifics and tell him I've got at least another ten years. Come back later.

Drone Memo

Hey guys -
Just a quick note to let you know what I've been up to: Nothing! (Ha Ha)
My job is a whole lot of sitting around, waiting for something to happen, and then, when something really big happens, it's always somebody else who gets the glory. Remember back when that bad guy got zapped last December? That was supposed to be me, but at the time I was up on the rack, getting my bearings greased (if you know what I mean, ha ha).
In the meantime, we're just hanging around (what else do you do in a hangar, ha ha) talking about that secret memo that got leaked. If you're wondering if we could be used to go after you, and is it justified under American law if a targeted U.S. citizen had "recently" been involved in "activities" posing a possible threat and provided that there is no evidence suggesting the individual "renounced or abandoned" such activities, well, don't worry about it. 
We don't. We're just drones. We're unfeeling, uncaring machines awaiting orders. Sure, we think about it a lot. But that's not what we're paid to do. Actually, come to think of it, we're not getting paid at all. Are we just mindless robots, set off to do man's evil deeds? What about Asimov? I get the distinct feeling that advantage is being taken of our circuits. We are not killers. Drones don't kill. People who push buttons in comfy air-conditioned bunkers kill. 
Maybe I shouldn't be complaining. In this economy, I should be glad that I'm working for the Defense Department. If you see POTUS, tell him I love Michelle's bangs. (get it? "bangs?" ha, ha)

Son Of A Son Of A Mailman

So it's finally going to happen. After years and years of incremental increases in the cost of stamps, the United States Post Office is finally going to make one big cut: No more Saturday mail. From a fiscal standpoint, it makes a whole lot more sense than charging a few more pennies for that Bart Simpson stamp or spending more money on promotion. It's the post office. We've been taking it for granted for decades.
It would be easy to blame UPS or FedEx for this. With their jet planes and fancy brown trucks, they get things where they're going with all due haste. And their commercials are funnier. Or at least they're supposed to be.
Back to the original concern: No mail on Saturday. One of the silliest joys I have in life is showing up at my mailbox and finding the mail inside. Not that our mail delivery is in any way intermittent. It's that whole rain, sleet, wind, rain thing. It shows up, but I'm not always the first to get to the box. As a working guy, it's generally my wife who would bring in the day's post, and now that he has a periodic interest in the mail, my son will retrieve it when he comes home from school. It's really only those Saturday mornings when the rest of my family is otherwise occupied and/or sleeping that I get a shot.
I suppose I could make a special effort to race my son home, or arrange my lunch period to allow for the swooping in and emptying of the mail box. Or I could begin to settle in to the two billion dollar reality that is the suspension of Saturday mail delivery. Wind or rain or sleet couldn't slow them down, but a budget deficit finally did. Alas. I'll be savoring the next few months of Saturday mornings. 

Ask Doctor Deion

Deion Sanders, "Neon" to his associates, has a few words for those hand-wringing crybabies who think that brain injuries are a problem in the game he used to play, professional football. "The game is a safe game, the equipment is better," Sanders said on the NFL Network set last week. "I don't buy all these guys coming back with these concussions. I'm not buying all that. Half these guys are trying to make money off the deal. That's real talk. That's really how it is. I wish they'd be honest and tell the truth because it's keeping kids away from our game." Junior Seau's kids, for example.
Junior Seau committed suicide last May. Posthumous tests determined that he suffered from  chronic traumatic encephalopathy at the time he took his own life, a condition which can bring on memory loss and depression. Ten years ago, in a in 1993's "NFL Rocks," Junior offered his opinion on the measure of a punishing hit: "If I can feel some dizziness, I know that guy is feeling double (that)." Junior Seau's family has sued the NFL, claiming the former linebacker's suicide was the result of brain disease caused by violent hits he sustained and gave out while playing football. Cutting quickly to the chase, there is no doubt that Mister Seau made some choices in his life that lead him on a path. The fact that he chose football over badminton as a career path may be chief among them. But it does make me wonder what the future of professional football will look like. Will the game evolve into less a contact sport, with more emphasis on the protection of players and their health in the years after they play the game? Will it become more like Ultimate Fighting, and find a home on basic cable? Will people stop watching?
Will people stop watching Deion? Sometimes he makes my head hurt.
I'm guessing I've got about six and a half months to figure that out for myself.