Today’s guest post comes from Congressman Loomis Beechly, representing all the water surface area in the State of Minnesota.

Greetings, Constituents!

Tonight marks the umpteenth time I will have attended the President’s annual State of the Union address.

Many times I have wondered about the appropriate way to behave in such an historic setting, and each time I come away with the feeling that I’ve somehow missed the boat. I sit when I should stand. I stand up when I should remain seated. It’s very confusing. Then as soon as the president is done speaking, the word spinning starts and when I look at my newspaper the next morning I’m surprised to see what the speech was really about, even though I was there!

As your congressman, I try not to be starstruck by all the famous people. They’re completely ordinary – right up to the president himself! A lot of Representatives will fall all over themselves anyway, jockeying to be on the aisle so they can shake his hand as he goes by and possibly get their picture in the paper. I can assure you – you won’t see me making such a spectacle out of myself. I don’t have the seniority to get that close to the aisle. And anyway, I’m not some giddy teenager. I’ve been to the dance a few times now.

Tonight, I expect the president will make a strong case for his proposed new policy on guns. He’ll present it as a measure to improve safety for our most vulnerable citizens, and his opponents will fight him on the grounds that holding powerful firearms insures the safety of those who disagree with a vindictive and too-powerful government.

Some people would say these differences can’t be bridged, but I say “Hey, at least they agree that everyone is threatened to the point of needing to take deadly action against a stranger!” That’s a start, even if it’s make-believe. Perhaps somewhere down that contentious road they will find a compromise. Or settle it with a shoot out at twenty paces. In a violent culture, anything is possible!

I, for one, don’t care much about guns. I just hope the president doesn’t listen to his power hungry advisors who want him to extend his safety compulsion to fishing lures. That’s a touchy subject for me and my constituents. A rumor went around the other day that he was going to require that everyone use Safety Lures – not just children.

That’s insane! Imagine not only the expense but the great inconvenience for people like myself who already have a tackle box full of pointy things! All I can say, is, the president can have my exposed-hook lure when he is willing to pull the rusty barb out of my cold, dead finger.

And if he’s willing to do that, it means he’s probably in my boat with me. Imagine, me and the president, fishing!

I hope he’ll have a few beers and spend the afternoon!

Your Congressman,
Loomis Beechly

Name a safety measure or device that has spared you some amount of pain.

Today’s guest post comes from perennial sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey, Mr. C!

I think I found my career, finally.

I know I’ve said that about some other things, like being a planet hunter, and watching things blow up. But this time I think I really mean it because the job I have in mind is a real one that people actually do every day, and I already have some experience with it.

I want to be a Forensic Electrical Engineer.

In case you’re wondering what that is, I didn’t know either. Not until I saw this article about why the lights went out at the Super Bowl last Sunday. It turns out the blackout was caused by this very expensive electrical relay that was put in to keep a blackout from happening.

I think that is so cool! Mostly because it is totally ironic.

And now people are arguing about whose fault it was, really. The power company says it wasn’t their fault, and the New Orleans city leaders are kind of hoping it wasn’t the fault of anybody in Louisiana. They’re hoping it can be blamed on the company that made the relay. But the company that made the relay says their relay worked fine – it was the people who messed up.

So there!

And here’s the best part – Forensic Electrical Engineers are going to be really important in deciding who to blame. That’s why I’d like to be one – you get to be the finger pointer instead of having the finger pointed at you all the time, and believe me, I’ve been on the receiving end a lot! So having an important job in the blame placing industry would be great.

I found this job description online – the most important part is highlighted – by me!

“… forensic electrical engineers have investigated the causes of events such as the 1979 accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant and the widespread blackouts across the Northeastern United States and Canada in the 1960s and in 2003. They also work on smaller scale incidents such as an individual being electrocuted by her toaster. They are usually called in when death or injury has occurred, or a large sum of money is at stake.”

Imagine that – I’d get to cast blame on other people in cases where there’s a dead person, or tons of money, or both! I know I’d be great at this because I’m really good at being exasperated at things other people have done, so I could work on my tut-tutting, my eye rolling and my heavy sighing, especially when one person has really, really screwed up.

Please tell me this is a great idea!

That way, if it turns out that I don’t like it or am not very good at it, I can always say you pushed me into the field!

Your Pal,
Bubby

I told Bubby there is a lot of math involved in being an electrical engineer, and that the people he would be dumping blame on would have their own lawyers with sharp criticisms of himself and his methods. When it is your job to find responsibility in cases where there has been a death or “a lot of money is at stake,” you are not allowed to pass through unscathed, and if your testimony winds up costing someone money, a counter-suit is possible. Blame placing has its own risks.

I suggested it might actually be safer for him to look for a dull career in the Blowing Up Things Industry.

When you place blame on someone other than yourself, how’s your accuracy?

I’m fascinated by the first entries in Paul Salopek’s Walk Out of Eden, his seven year project to travel by foot from Africa’s rift valley to Tierra del Fuego at the southern tip of South America. In one of his recent posts we discovered that African nomads, who live lives very different from our own, are increasingly reliant on their cell phones.  One catch is the absence of an electric grid for re-charging, so services are springing up to provide desert plug-ins.

Let that be a lesson for the American luddite who has every new tool at his disposal but refuses to use them. You may see computers and smart phones as meaningless and inauthentic, but nomadic Ethiopian shepherds are using digital technology to stay current on the price of goats. They’re also walking great distances in light, inexpensive plastic sandals – to such an extent that the footwear has been memorialized by a public sculpture in Eritrea.

While the nomads are leaping forward technologically, Salopek is turning back time when it comes to modes of travel, abandoning modern conveyances for the most basic transport of all. It’s an attention-getting move to decide to take a long walk in the modern western world.  

It got my attention, anyway.

Taking a Big Walk is still an eye-opener here in the “developed” west – as surprising in our culture as it would be to the nomads if one of their own loaded his goats into the back of a Hummer and drove off into the sunset.  A remarkably long list of people have trekked across the USA to lose weight, change their attitude, honor a friend or relative, or raise money for a cause.

If you are thinking of doing the same thing, there is plenty of advice available. But it appears the stakes are rising.

When I was still a teenager, Dan Walker walked almost 1,200 miles across Illinois and wound up winning the state’s top political office. I think people were impressed that he managed to actually set a goal and accomplish  it – a rare feat in some political circles.   Walker later became one of Illinois’ imprisoned Governors – not a great distinction but I suppose he can take some pride in the knowledge that his jail-able offenses were committed AFTER he was in office.  Apparently on his long walk one thing he did NOT think about was whether or not there’s a significant difference between a federal law and a banking regulation.

Regardless, you have to respect the magnitude of the walk.

It would be hard to match the outsized significance of Salopek’s pilgrimage, but if you had the time, the stamina and the shoes for it, where would you take your 1,500 go 3,000 mile walk?

Today’s post comes from Trail Baboon’s Living and Loving correspondent B. Marty Barry.

I just want to take a moment here to congratulate everyone who hates hates hates hates winter. You know who you are – you’re the person who sees the months of November through March as a miserable ordeal that must be endured.

I’ve been having some extra sessions lately with my clients who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, so I’m more-than-usually attuned to the plight of the light-starved and warmth-hungry among us. The cold, the ice, the darkness, the Super Bowl – all of it is an affront to your senses.

Here’s the good news. You’ve almost cleared January!

January is the worst month of the year by far. All of January’s excitement happens at the beginning and then it’s dreary and painful and endless. January is ten times longer and fifty times nastier than any other month.

If the months of the year were all assigned a planet, January would be Jupiter. Big and cold, heavy with gravity and gas, marred by an unsightly blot that turns out to be a permanent storm. Blah! No wonder people find it oppressive.

Well all that awfulness is about to come to an end – tomorrow is the first of February! February is a giddy sprint by comparison – it’s groundhogs, hearts, presidents and kaput. Blink and it’s over. Then we’re into March, the leprechauns come out, and suddenly the end is in sight.

So smile because it’s January 31st! The end is nigh. It’s true we still have to endure the Super Bowl, but by Monday afternoon that will be forgotten and then it’s clear sailing! Before you know it we’ll have April flowers, May showers, June blooms, July fireworks, August fairs, September leaves …

But I’m getting too far ahead of myself. My message today is to enjoy this moment and smile, even if it happens to be horribly, perversely cold! And if you can’t smile, that’s OK too. Maybe your face is frozen. Maybe you’ve discovered that buying more assault weapons doesn’t perk you up the way you hoped it would. I’m not here to judge or to impose anything on you – I just want to cheer you to the furthest extent that you can be cheered, and not a single smile more.

But if you’re having trouble coping, think about Jim Nabors. He just got married to the love of his life and he’s 82! Doesn’t that warm your heart? His too-long wait for a change in status has finally come to an end. He also lives in Hawaii, but try not to think about that part of it. But if you do anyway and you’re still sad, remember that you’re not a failure. Your seasonal malaise may be justified but it doesn’t define you.

Not in my eyes, anyway. Because although I’ve never met you, I care about you very, very, very much.

Your friend and (I hope) confidant,
B. Marty Barry

What makes you happy when you know it’s finally over?

Today’s post comes from perpetual sophomore Bubby Spamden.

Hey, Mr. C.,

I was just about to ask you an important question about girls, but as soon as I started to write it I realized that you don’t know the answer. Not that you’re not old enough to have wisdom and all, because I’m pretty sure you are! But all the old dudes I’ve talked to about this kind of thing are pretty sure they know less about girls than they used to, which I think is totally weird.

How can you live such a long time and get dumber as you go? That doesn’t make any sense.

But then I read a newspaper article about this study that says your brain changes when you get older, and old brains have a harder time getting good sleep than young brains do. And it’s when you’re sleeping really good and deep that the stuff you just learned makes its move to transfer over just-found-out-about-it mode to long term memory! So if you can’t get what they call long wave sleep, it’s harder to learn anything new!

So now it kinda makes sense that you’re so clueless about a lot of new things, and haven’t really picked up any fresh insights since, say, 1975.

But don’t get me wrong. I still respect you for your wisdom and experience and all. I just have a better understanding of why you don’t know anything. So I’m forwarding you a link to the article. Take a look at it! Read it a couple of times for all the good it will do you.

One thing in there that sounds kind of cool – the idea of using electrodes pasted to the scalp to simulate the right brain waves to get the best kind of sleep. How long will it be before you older guys are plugging yourselves in at night, just like a cell phone or a Chevy Volt?

And since I know you’re going to ask anyway, the question I had about girls is why does my girlfriend get mad if I start to fall asleep while she’s talking to me? It’s not like I can help it. But to smooth things over, I told her it’s because I’m trying to commit what she’s saying to long term memory as soon as I hear it. I don’t get it, though. That argument just makes her madder. It’s like she doesn’t believe in science!

Your pal,
Bubby

I think Bubby has been a High School sophomore for so long, he’s the closest thing we have to a teenager/old man hybrid. Still, the most surprising thing in this message is that he thinks he has a girlfriend! I can only assume she comes from the same place as the one that beguiled that Notre Dame football player – Fantasyland. Although she sees through his sad explanation just as clearly as a real person would, so who knows?

What’s your most effective memory-keeping technique?