All posts by Dale Connelly

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The Not So Lazy Days of Summer

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey Mr. C.,

Even though school is almost over for this year, the work never ends for us kids!

That’s right, it’s summer job time again, which means me and my friends have to sweat bullets to come up with a fresh list of reasons for why we don’t have summer jobs!

This is good practice because it helps build up a life skill – deflecting unwanted questions.  And that’s tougher now than it was in the olden times, like two years ago. Back then all you had to say was “tough economy” and everybody was like, “Well, yeah!”. But now you say “tough economy” and they say “I heard it was getting better”.

And maybe it is, but not for teenagers!

People always think we can go get work in some fast food place, like there are suddenly thousands of open jobs as soon as school lets out because teenagers are hanging around all day to eat more and more fast food in the summer. But we don’t eat more fast food because we don’t have any money because we don’t have jobs. And if the fast food joints hired us so we could have money, then we could buy the food but we wouldn’t because we can already eat the spillage and wrong orders and leftovers behind the counter during our shifts!

Economics sure gets complicated!

The only other people who would have more time to go to a burger joint between June and September are the teachers, but when they place an order with a kid behind the counter who is also one of their students, the teachers kinda expect to get their fries upsized for free. And the kids do it because who knows if that teacher is the one who will hold your whole future in her hand when she decides whether you got a “B” or a “C” on that essay?

That takes a real mental toll, trying to decide if it’s ethical to bribe a teacher with french fries. It’s almost as taxing as writing and rehearsing that no-job excuse.

Speaking of which, here are some of the best ones I’ve heard so far:

  • I’m going to summer school to (catch up on / get ahead of) my regular classroom work.
  • I’m doing super-honorable extracurricular volunteer stuff to pad my college application and make me seem like I’m a much better person than I am.
  • I’ve taken an unpaid internship so I can get experience being overworked and under appreciated.

People tell me that last one will really prepare me for life in the adult world, but they’re all good excuses. One bad thing, though. They all require extra explaining because adults will pepper you with questions like: Where are you going to summer school? What are you studying? Where do you volunteer? What colleges are you going to apply for? Where is the internship? How awful is that boss? Etc, etc, etc.

More work for us, because making up things is hard, especially when the stories have to be believable.

So whenever you see a report that says American teens don’t want to work, you should ask us what we’re doing with our time this summer. You’ll see us working pretty darn hard to deflect that question!

Your pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby that I agree – using your brain to be coy can be great practice for life in the real world. Unfortunately, the only field I know of where you can get paid specifically to deflect questions is politics.

How do you answer the uncomfortable question?

Poems, Science

A Polluter’s Lament

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Featured Image taken by Dori (dori@merr.info)

Last week’s White House National Climate Assessment was remarkably blunt about the reality of our situation – that we are already experiencing the effects of an environmental shift.

For some of us in the baby boom generation who have been following this issue for a long time, this comes as a surprising development. Yes, we had heard that our habits of consumption were contributing to a potential catastrophe, but it always felt our role was simple – to create the problem and then to start a conversation about how later generations would face it and solve it.

Sorry about the mess, guys. Good luck!

Now this latest report seems to suggest the we are not going to be able to skip out on the check after all. Any chance I can go back and un-drive all those miles and un-click all those switches that let the power flow?

I didn’t think so. Would a poem of atonement help? I asked Trail Baboon sing-song poet laureate Tyler Schuyler Wyler to write one up, and he agreed because every stanza could include a reference to death – his favorite subject.

The warming fields and rising seas
The melting ice and dying trees
The drying lakes that will not freeze
This all has come up by degrees.

We’d heard it was a thing to dread.
And by our habits it was sped.
But also was it often said,
It won’t get bad ’til we are dead.

But now they say it has arrived!
Not something still to be derived
for our descendants to survive.
It came while we are still alive!

Our sadness, is, of course, profound.
For glacial ice now in the sound
and forest creatures elsewhere bound,
and us, that we remain around.

What have you witnessed that you thought you would never get to see?

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Ask Dr. Babooner

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Dear Dr. Babooner,

Almost 20 years ago I had a prolonged fling with a powerful married man. I was silly and he was foolish and it got into the press (because he was kind of important) and it almost cost him his job. But he survived the scandal and is still taken seriously today.

I, however, was mocked and scorned and I lost all the jobs that I might have had – ever. The only real employment I could get from that moment on was in the global punchline industry. As the unpaid butt of a billion jokes, I heard my name mentioned everywhere as I saw my once-promising future become bimbo-ized. So rather than hide and weep I went on TV to talk about it with Barbara Walters and sat for interviews so someone could write a book on the whole incident from my point of view.

Then I tried to make handbags for a living and when that didn’t work out, I hosted a reality show but people were only interested in the much more dramatic reality show I had lived through. So I didn’t say much for a long time, hoping it would all blow over. But now I’m back and guess what? Nothing has changed! People are acting like I’ve never talked about it at all and that I’ve been in hiding all this time, even though I’ve been desperately trying to get attention for something (anything!) else.

In spite of it all, I’m still ‘that girl’ even though I’m 40 years old!

I can see clearly now how things will go unless I’m somehow able to re-write the end of my story. But how can I do that? Should I change my name? Should I do a total makeover and move to Madagascar? But disappearing won’t do anything to salvage my name, and of course politics is completely out of the question.

Please, Dr. Babooner, point me in a direction that will head me out of this eternal dead-end!

Sincerely,
Saucy Beret

I told Saucy Beret she is completely out of luck if she hopes to write this “shameful episode” out of her someday obituary, because as a somewhat famous person her obituary is already partly written and it’s in there for keeps! Her only hope is to minimize the dalliance with an outsized, separate accomplishment of some significant sort. I recommend finding a cure for cancer, which would not only give her something to talk about besides her youthful indiscretions, it would also tangentially benefit a few other people she’s never even met!

Short of that, her only option is to grin and bear it.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Science

Amateur Jugglers Rejoice!

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I’m sure I learned something in college, though I’m not certain I can put it into words. My major was Radio-Television, and I’ve worked in radio all my adult life. But the skills I use every day are not things I learned in class. I picked them up while working at the campus radio station.

When it comes to classwork, the greatest course of my entire post-secondary career wasn’t even in the Radio-TV Department, it was taught out of the campus auditorium and it was called “Vaudeville”.

Yes, I took the most academically rigorous route available.

When questioned about this choice by my cash-strapped parents I explained that my mission was to succeed in the media, and since radio and television are entertainment mediums, it was necessary for me to be conversant in other, historic forms of mass amusement.

They acknowledged my logic but still did not pay for the pricier tap shoes.

In spite of my being personally underfunded for this particular class, as part of “Vaudeville” the instructor, Jo Mack Witwer, did managed to teach me to tap dance and to juggle.

Like virtually everything else I learned in class during those years, I didn’t keep up the daily practice and eventually forgot my hoofing and juggling skills though I do like thinking of myself as someone who can, in a pinch, do both.

This all comes rushing back because scientists have successfully duplicated an earlier attempt to create a super-heavy element, a metal known currently as ununseptium, soon to throw its atomic weight around the periodic table under a different, freshly-minted name.

Ununseptium doesn’t exist in nature – it has to be created in the laboratory by bombarding radioactive berkelium-249 with calcium-ion beams. And then as soon as it exists, this inherently unstable element starts to decay , breaking down into other unstable elements before it finally devolves into parts that are capable of existing for a span of time that actually registers with our conscious minds.

But existing for a few milliseconds in repeated experiments is enough to qualify ununseptium for a new name and permanent inclusion in the table of elements. I admire the scientists who managed this and am in awe of their achievement, though with entirely selfish motives.

Here’s why – if ununseptium is an element, then I am still a juggler.

I discovered through experimentation that if I practice for two days straight, I can juggle three balls for five seconds before my eye-hand coordination goes kerflooey and everything hits the floor. But those five seconds are golden, and they make up a span of time that’s much longer than any atom of ununseptium has ever existed.

Mission accomplished!

What are you good at for only a very short time?

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A Brief Pressing

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Today’s post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey Mr. C.,

I thought it was pretty cool the other day when that kid from New York who got accepted into all eight Ivy League colleges held a press conference at his school to announce that he had chosen Yale.

That’s a pretty awesome decision.

I don’t mean the decision about going to Yale. Ho hum to that. I mean deciding to have a PRESS CONFERENCE at your SCHOOL!  And one that real reporters would actually come to!

Amazing!

It got us talking in 5th hour Life Skills about what it takes to get attention from journalists and how each of us would handle the pressure if we knew we had to face the press.

Mr. Boozenporn said the key is to know your message and state it clearly. And take only a few questions – the minimum needed to give the impression that you care about what the press wants to know, which of course you DON’T.

You want to make them think you’re being open, you hope they swallow your bull, and then you go home.

Then he assigned us to write a two sentence opening statement for a press conference that could be about anything we want – world issues, personal statements, the weather, etc. And to make it as much like the real thing as possible, we had to get up and read our statement while a guy from the A/V department set off strobe lights and then our classmates got to shout angry questions at us for one minute.  

It was pretty cool.

Here are some of the statements kids came up with.

“I called you all here to confess that the rumors are true. I have been rejected by all eight Ivy League schools and have decided to attend Hamburger U. in the fall.”

“After an in-depth review of electronic records, I have decided I am going to un-friend Derek for the fifth, and final, time. If he tells you we are still ‘friends’, you will know he is a liar, which is something I have known all along but I have only recently decided to believe 24/7, rather than only every once in a while.”

“I have called the world’s press together to announce that I, too, have decided to put a ring in my nose, because piercing is our generation’s way of expression our unique individuality. And besides, everyone’s doing it.”

I’m surprised at how nervous I got when it came time for me to make my statement. But I swallowed hard, got up there, looked into the lights and said this:

“I called this press conference today to publicly challenge Alicia Erickson to a date, at a time and place yet to be determined, and under the rules of the Geneva Convention. I will name a delegation to negotiate the details with her representatives during tomorrow’s second hour study hall, where I have spent the last eight months staring at the back of her head, wishing she would turn around and speak to me.”

Well you can imagine that I got a lot of questions after that about what makes me think somebody as cool as Alicia would go out with me (nothing) and what do the Geneva Conventions have to do with dating (lots), but I said as little as possible and then sat down.

When Alicia got up and gave her press statement ten minutes later it was about pesticides, so I was happy she didn’t include anything about my date challenge in that. But she did look at me a couple of times and she might have smiled once, so I’m feeling pretty hopeful about it.

Your Pal,
Bubby

What is your two-line opening statement?

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Bad Advice

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We are ALL Dr. Babooner.

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I was giving my girlfriend some advice the other day about who she shouldn’t be seen with, based on a companion-complexion social yardstick I came up with for no particular reason. It was just a bit of harmless counseling delivered by an elderly fellow to a younger person.

That’s what we 80 year old tycoons do with our 30-something girlfriends. We tell them how to live, because that’s what attracts them to us – our wisdom.

So I simply told her to think about how things look to other people, and I only did it because I’m so sensitive to appearances. Yes, I fancy myself kind of a public relations expert!

What I should have told her was “Don’t record this!”

Now the tape of my comments has been shared far and wide and people are saying I’m scum. And newspapers and websites are publishing unflattering photos of me, especially that one with my hands folded over my belly.

I admit that I’m surprised. I thought I was still hot! Really!

And I guess that’s just another one of the bizarre thoughts rolling around in my head that is apparently not true!

So now people I’ve known for years have banished me.

I’m an outcast and they won’t return my calls! Which is kind of an ironic result to come out of my who-to-be-seen-with advice.

Dr. Babooner, it feels like my brain is stuffed with ideas that just get me into trouble when I let them out. Plus, I now have no friends, no business associates, and no girlfriend to live within the inexplicable boundaries I feel compelled to enforce!

How can I make everything right?

Dizzily,
Done Don

I told Triple D that it is simply not possible to make “everything” right. Making “anything” right might be a stretch at this point. But offering sincere apologies and examining your attitudes is a good place to start.

And going forward, it is better not to worry about who other people associate with, unless you are a parent and the person in question is your son or daughter. And if the person in question is young enough to be your granddaughter, but isn’t, don’t let that confuse you. Truly, it’s none of your concern.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

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Fortune Hunters

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Today’s post comes from Captain Billy, Skipper of the Pirate Ship “Muskellunge.”

Ahoy!

Me an’ me boys was enjoyin’ a pleasant mornin’ readin’ th’ Sunday New York Times out loud to one another on th’ poop deck when we was thunderstruck by this story claimin’ that Russian President Vladimir Putin has vast amounts of hidden wealth!

Accordin’ to th’ account, U.S. officials did a very unusual thing, leavin’ a broad hint that they knows th’ whereabouts of Putin’s gold – that he stashed it in a commodities tradin’ company called the Gunvor Group.

“… buried in the Treasury Department announcement were a dozen words that President Obama and his team knew would not escape the attention of Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin. “Putin,” the statement said, “has investments in Gunvor and may have access to Gunvor funds.”

When me an’ the boys read this, we realized right away what them Obama administration investigators was up to. It was th’ “Red Weasel” scenario.

See, we once had this pirate on th’ Muskellunge who we called th’ “Red Weasel” on account of the fact he had these little tiny rodent-like eyes an’ was painfully affected by th’ merciless sun. An’ th’ boys got this notion in their heads that th’ Red Weasel was skimmin’ wealth off’n the top of our plunderin’ an’ pillagin’ an’ stashin’ his ill-gotten gains in a trunk what was secreted away in a dark corner of th’ hold, far below decks.

So they let it be known far an’ wide that they was suspicious! Far an’ wide enough t’ be certain the Weasel would find out! An’ in the rumors that was spread, generous details was offered about th’ Red Weasel’s fortune bein’ inside said trunk hidden in aforementioned hold. Then the boys stationed lookouts an’ waited, an’ sure enough before long th’ Weasel came creepin’ down t’ th’ hold t’ be sure his riches was safe!

Needless t’ say, th’ Red Weasel was keelhauled an’ flummoxed an’ de-pantsed and subjected t’ every indignity we could imagine, before he was tossed overboard an’ forgotten about until now!

Lesson: Makin’ a cheater think you knows th’ location of his gold is a time-honored way t’ get him t’ lead you t’ his gold!

So hats off t’ th’ Obama Administration fer tryin’ this traditional ruse.

An’ also a head slap – what are ya thinkin? Nobody in his right mind would fall fer such a traditional ruse! You’ll have t’ up yer game if’n ya thinks this Vlad is gonna take yer bait.

Of course another option would be t’ hire consultants from th’ pillagin’ an’ plunderin’ industries t’ help ya chase down Putin’s treasure. Either oil company executives or pirates would be fine, though them oil company fellas has busier schedules than me an’ th’ boys, who is available on a moment’s notice.

I’m just sayin’, that’s all.

Yer piratical pal,
Capt’n Billy.

How are you at hide and seek?

Poems

No Coots Like Old Coots

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We know that older fellows can get a little grumpy. Even guys who have been perfectly good company for most of their lives can bend towards gruffness in later years, and now some researchers have identified the tipping point at age 70.

That’s when it really starts to go downhill.

The headline from Oregon State’s news service took a glass-half-full approach, choosing to emphasize the uplifting and hassle-free late-60’s over the spiraling-downward-into-the-abyss 70’s. The progression, however, is clear.

No one knows why the data shows such a sharp decline in cheerfulness and sociability after 70, but there it is. And it’s left to those of us on this side of the divide to try to explain it, because those over-70 coots don’t give a damn whether we figure out how brain biology works or not.

“Who the Hell cares?  I didn’t live this long just to waste my time explaining crap to you!”

Perhaps more rigorous study and solid scientific proof of this cognitive change could help the exasperated elderly mediate some of their tirades.  But it’s hard to take in new information when you are already seething, so let’s step back a bit and reduce the journey from sweet to sullen to a simple, lilting rhyme!

 

At Fifty Nine – Feeling Fine.
At Six and Zero – Still a Hero.
At Sixty One – Loads of Sun.
At Sixty Two – Yabba Dabba Doo!
At Sixty Three – Bright with Glee!
At Sixty Four – Ready for More.
At Sixty Five – Vibrant, Alive.
At Sixty Six – Full of Tricks.
At Sixty Seven – Oceans Eleven!
At Sixty Eight – Still Kinda Great.
At Sixty Nine – No, Really. Fine.
At Seven and Zero – Becoming Nero.
At Seventy One – Not Much Fun.
At Seventy Two – I’m Watching You!
At Seventy Three – You Talking to ME?
At Seventy Four – Always Sore.
At Seventy Five – A Hornet’s Hive.
At Seventy Six –  Literally Kicks.
At Seventy Seven – Won’t Leaven.
At Seventy Eight – Evil Incarnate.
At Seventy Nine – I’m tired of rhymes!

 

Where’s your tipping point?

 

 

Travel

Roll The Credits!

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Prepare yourselves for a string of new news-based celebrities, led by stowaway teen, the 16 year old who climbed into the wheel well of a passenger jet and hitchhiked through extremely low temperatures and dangerously thin air to the island of Maui, where he dropped on to the tarmac remarkably, and thankfully, alive.

Once he is identified, ST will face justice.

But he will also have an opportunity to appear on as many TV shows as he pleases. He can become extraordinarily famous and maybe a little bit wealthy if he decides to sell exclusive rights to his story to one deep pocketed outlet, even if that kind of arrangement and that level of exposure is not in his best interests right now.

Will he take the bait?

It would be a remarkable act of mature reasoning for anyone at any age to pass up offers of stardom and the pleas of network and cable producers.  And remember, he had not-quite-enough impulse control to resist climbing over a security fence and into the wheel well of an airplane headed to he Knew Not Where.

I’m betting we’ll see a lot of him.

Other personalities slated to appear:

  • (Former) Airport Security Employee (FASE) who was supposed to be monitoring the monitors, but clearly wasn’t.
  • Friend of Stowaway Teen (FOST) who knew he was going to do “something crazy” but never expected this.
  • Parents of Stowaway Teen (POST). Brave and Unappreciated, or Horrible and Clueless? Watch the story line develop.
  • Crusading Representatives and Senatorial Scolders (CRASS). Members of Congress will vow to Get To The Bottom of This.

I’m sure there will be many other characters to emerge before this whole thing is done.

If I was going to play one of them, I think I’d like to be Teacher Of Aforementioned Stowaway Teen (TOAST), who will marvel at the turn of events with a comment like: “I don’t know how he found the energy to climb into the wheel well of a jet. I couldn’t get him to lift his head off the desk.”

Help populate this story with a character we haven’t met yet, but will.  

Science, Travel

Ask Dr. Babooner

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We are ALL Dr. Babooner.

Dear Dr. Babooner,

Taking a cue from the government-funded activities of NASA, several years ago I purchased a powerful telescope and began looking around my immediate neighborhood for other homes that showed signs they could support life as comfortably as the home I live in now.

I’ve been studying the area very carefully and for the most part the places I see all have something terribly wrong – they’re way too big or far too small, they’re too close to a busy street or too far from the local park, they have aluminum or vinyl siding (which I hate), or smokers live there and the air inside the home is simply not breathable.

That last bit is something it took quite a while to learn, but now that I’ve had time to practice with the telescope I’ve become quite good at training it on windows and getting a clear sense of what goes on inside by measuring shadows as they pass in front of the interior lights.

Just the other day I found a house that is quite far from my own but it seems to have all the
elements I love about the place where I already live. The size and temperature are nearly perfect and I think there’s even liquid water inside. I’m pretty sure on that count because I saw someone taking a bath!

You can imagine how excited I was!

But just this afternoon the police came to my door and told me if I don’t start pointing my telescope at the sky rather than the other houses up and down the street, they will try to move me to a new home that is cold and desolate most of the time and has food water only at certain times which are not under my control.

Dr. Babooner, I thought scientific exploration was a pathway to a better life, but in this case it feels like all my work is taking me in the wrong direction. Should I stop, or keep pressing onward, hoping for a breakthrough?

Sincerely,
Curious K

I told “Curious K” that he (she?) should definitely stop peeping into other people’s homes and calling it research. The sad truth is that even if you found a place that could support your life as nicely as the place where you already live, the chances are slim that you could get there and even slimmer that you would be welcomed by the current inhabitants. It would be much better to take care of and learn to cherish the place you call home.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?