COLUMN: I'm Not Going to Face It

By Tobin Barnes
Been a lot a buzz lately about social networking sites on the Internet. But haven’t really been interested in them even though I spend a lot of time on my computer.

I’m mostly a facts and opinions sort a guy. Maybe a few laughs here and there. That’s how my time’s spent on the Internet.

Like I said, a lot of time. Almost unhealthily so.

But making friends in cyberspace? Instant messaging? Chit chat? Eh...not really interested.

Maybe it’s because I’m not all that social. Maybe kind of a crank, actually.

Sure, I like my friends, relatives, and acquaintances. Hey, after all, I’m not a mole under a rock. But I’m not particularly looking for more. Instead, I’ll take ’em when I get ’em.

Nevertheless, there’s been all this falderal about social networking, particularly the Facebook site. Big article in Newsweek for one. Talked about the founder Mark Zuckerberg who at 19 started this online phenomenon at Harvard.

Facebook started as a way for students to interact at a college where you don’t exactly mass enroll with a bunch of your buddies. Because Harvard’s so selective--over 90% of applicants are rejected--incoming freshmen probably don’t know anyone else when they arrive on campus.

The Facebook concept quickly spread to other colleges--like wildfire, that is, and just last year they opened things up to non-college students as well. Now more than half of
Facebook’s 35 million active users are not in college.

On the site, users post pictures and news and links and you name it. People get addicted to checking out their “friends” sites on a disturbingly frequent basis.

One of the co-founders reportedly said, "In five years, we'll have everybody on the planet on Facebook."

When Facebook went “viral,” as they say in Internet parlance, young Zuckerberg dropped out of Harvard feeling the institution no longer had much more to offer him. Probably right. Internet behemoth Yahoo! offered him a billion dollars for his company. He turned that chump change down, thinking the sky’s the limit.

Well, Zuckerberg doesn’t know me and my ilk, I guess. There’s going to be at least one missing active member on the planet. I’m thinking there might be more.

Sure, I went to the site and registered. I’m a curious guy.

Didn’t stay there long, though. Filling out the profile kinda knocked me off the rails. My creep-o-meter went to red almost immediately.

First off, it asked for my sex. No big deal there, but then it asked me to check off which I was “Interested in,” men or women. Man there’s a loaded response. Interested in what sense?

Next, it asked for my “Relationship Status.” Choices were these: Single, In a Relationship, In an Open Relationship, Engaged, Married, and It’s Complicated.

Yeah, well they’re all complicated.

Then, I was supposed to check off what I was “Looking for.” Here were my choices: Friendship, A Relationship, Dating, Random Play, and Whatever I can get.

When I saw those last two, I knew I was done with Facebook. Either that, or my wife would be done with me. Messing around on this site, I knew I’d eventually have a lot of “splainin to do.” Not that I would have checked off “Random Play” or God forbid “Whatever I can get,” but I was sensing this whole thing just wasn’t me.

Not being the type who’s actively looking for new friends in the first place, I surmised that some of my future Facebook “friends” might have some bizarre agendas.

Leaving the above questions unanswered, I sure as heck wasn’t going to move on to “Political Views” and “Religious Views.” Answering those questions is more likely to get you enemies than friends.

Oh, I fully realize what’s going on with this. I see their point. After all, you have to share information if you want to make friends. And the questions have to be pretty generalized. That is, if you’re going to make a place for “everyone on the planet.”

Obviously, this stuff fits some people to a tee.

But I guess they’ll just have to do the best they can without my little piece of the globe. And I doubt if I’ll be missed.

THE ETHICIST: A Couple Tough Ones

Laugh Lines as Collected by the New York Times

THE ONION: 100 Years Old and Still on the Job

World's Oldest Neurosurgeon Turns 100

COLUMN: Watching the Dog Chew a Bone

By Tobin Barnes
I’m sitting on my porch watching my dog chew a bone...or, as they used to say, “worry a bone.”

Neat expression. Folksy.

And like most folksy expressions, it’s got a kernel of truth because if you’re paying attention to the dog, as I am now, not much seems to be happening to the bone while the dog’s working on it. Just kind of irritating it is all.

Matter of fact, the process seems futile--gnaw, gnaw, gnaw and nothing. Not much of a show even.

But if you’re patient, like the dog, every once in a while you’ll hear a crack, and that’s progress. Time passes--depends on how often the dog takes it on and then leaves it off--and eventually, there’s not much left of that bone.

Now at this point, some people would launch into a “life lesson” based on a dog and a bone, but not me. It’d be a cheap shot. Besides, I’ve had enough of those instructive moments, and I know you probably have, too. Only so many life lessons a person can take in a life. At a certain point, you’ve got it or you’re never going to get it. Don’t need someone harping on you with another lesson.

Being a high school teacher, I see it in teenagers all the time, and they’re the ones who could still use a few more lessons. Some well-intentioned someone starts in on them way too directly, and they almost always immediately roll their eyes and shut down. Doesn’t take a philosopher to understand why, but you’d be surprised how many advice-givers could use some more philosophy.

Then again, this isn’t about that. This is just about me watching my dog. It’s a relaxing thing to do, watching a dog. I suspect it’s the reason people have dogs so they can sit there and watch them. Dogs’re kind of like us but mostly not. Makes them interesting.

Of course, sitting watching your dog conjures up a family of rednecks out on their porch on a steamy southern evening watching their dogs work over the leftovers: ribs and ham hocks and such. I’m not looking down my nose at rednecks. Not on this particular, anyway--watching dogs for entertainment--here they’ve got the right idea as far as I can see.

As I watch my dog chew the bone, I think it’s better than what she used to chew on when she was young and dumb, which was just about everything, and that wasn’t nearly as enjoyable for me.

She’d chew the wood trim around the outside door jam. She’d chew up our water hoses. The tin dryer vent on the side of the house, for crying out loud. She even chewed off all the lattice I’d so painstakingly installed around the bottom of the deck. Every last slat.

And I was lucky. An acquaintance said his dog chewed the foam seat right off his riding lawn mower.

All this chewing, evidently, to prepare for the real work of a dog’s life, bones.

But I think the bone burying thing is a cartoon myth. Leastwise, I’ve never seen it. She’s hid her bones plenty, and she won’t let me have them when I come close--you know, not that I’d really want them--but I’ve never seen her bury one and dig it up later. That’d present a whole nother set of problems with holes around the yard. The urine dead spots are bad enough.

So yeah, my dog’s been strictly a bone chewer, thank goodness, for the last eight years or so. No more dryer vents.

But she’s getting old now. In her seventies, according to the dog-year charts. Meantime, I’ve aged, too. Nothing, however, like her sprint through life. She’s gone from gangly, stupid pupdom to elder-statesman complacency in seemingly no time flat.

And I’ve watched her all this time and I’ve seen her watching me, too. We’re both, no doubt, puzzled by the other.

Difference is, I think she thinks not much has changed through the years. And I’m pretty sure they have.

But she may be right. Another day, another bone.

THE ONION: NASCAR Drivers Need to Go Fast

NASCAR Coach Reveals Winning Strategy: 'Drive Fast'

The Ethicist

Randy Cohen - The Ethicist - New York Times

Coach, Wrong Ball

(Sent by Roy Wilson)

These Voters Will Determine Next Election Results

It's a hoot.

In The Know: Candidates Compete For Vital Idgit Vote

What's Your Emergency?

(Sent by Joey Larson)
BELIEVE it or not, these are REAL 911 Calls!

Dispatcher : 9-1-1 What is your emergency?

Caller: I heard what sounded like gunshots coming from the brown house on the corner.

Dispatcher: Do you have an address?

Caller: No, I have on a blouse and slacks, why?

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is your emergency?

Caller: Someone broke into my house and took a bite out of my ham and cheese sandwich.

Dispatcher: Excuse me?

Caller: I made a ham and cheese sandwich and left it on the kitchen table and when I came back from the bathroom, someone had taken a bite out of it.

Dispatcher: Was anything else taken?

Caller: No, but this has happened to me before and I'm sick and tired of it!

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What is the nature of your emergency?

Caller: I'm trying to reach nine eleven but my phone doesn't have an eleven on it.

Dispatcher: This is nine eleven.

Caller: I thought you just said it was nine-one-one.

Dispatcher: Yes, ma'am, nine-one-one and nine-eleven are the same thing.

Caller: Honey, I may be old, but I'm not stupid.

My Personal Favorite!

Dispatcher: 9-1-1 What's the nature of your emergency?

Caller: My wife is pregnant and her contractions are only two minutes apart.

Dispatcher: Is this her first child?

Caller: No, you idiot! This is her husband!

And the winner is..........

Dispatcher: 9-1-1.

Caller: Yeah, I'm having trouble breathing. I'm all out of breath. Darn....I think I'm going to pass out.

Dispatcher: Sir, where are you calling from?

Caller: I'm at a pay phone. North and Foster.

Dispatcher: Sir, an ambulance is on the way. Are you an asthmatic?

Caller: No

Dispatcher: What were you doing before you started having trouble breathing?

Caller: Running from the Police.

Boo Weekley Interview

He's a good ol' boy playing some golf, but he'd rather be hunting and fishing. (Sent by Roy Wilson)

JON STEWART: What Cheney Doesn't Know

SLATE VIDEO: Funeral Directors' Convention

They'll be the last ones to let you down, but it seems they're concerned about the trend towards cremation.

COLUMN: It isn't easy being green

By Tobin Barnes
I’m going to be talking about two tangentially related topics. Yeah, I know. I do that a lot. Sorry, but bear with me.

First, it’s occurred to me that we buy about two-thirds more stuff than we need. Of course, as usual, I have nothing to back this up other than off-the-cuff, self-generated, baloney theoretics, but think about it. And while you’re doing that, take clothes as an example.

Tell me you don’t wear only about one-third of the clothes in your closet--if that. The vast majority of the stuff in there you hardly ever touch, and then it’s to get it out of the way. Some of the things you tried on but didn’t like after all or finally admitted didn’t fit. Should have taken them back, but you never did. Money down the drain. Kind of a guilt trip when you happen to notice them.

Other stuff, the distinct minority, you absolutely adore. Some of it you’d wear every day if people wouldn’t look at you weird. Those clothes fit right and feel right. For good or ill, they’re you, gosh darn it. You know those clothes and they know you. Only wish you could buy their kith and kin every time you walked into a store and thereby avoid the mistakes now haunting your closet, glumly hanging there rubbing shoulders with your buddies.

And that goes for all the other stuff we own, too. Two-thirds takes up space--it’s destined to be finally tossed some clear-headed day--and one-third we constantly use, admire, and love--yes, love. We’d pat them on the back and say nice things to them if only they were animate and not dumb things blankly sitting there.

So two-thirds of the stuff surrounding us is utter dreck. Maybe you should have thought harder before you bought all that self-inflicted clutter, but you didn’t.

And realistically, just how much analysis should you put into buying a shirt or some such thing to avoid being wasteful? Ten minutes, twenty, sixty, ninety--a day, a week? At some point, that type of painful, in-depth scrutiny before you pull the trigger on a crummy shirt seems wasteful, too. Someone’s going to see that angst, do the right thing, and put you away.

Besides, a lot of jobs depend on our collective wasteful purchases. The two-thirds, one-third process keeps the economy humming, heaven help us. Children would go hungry if we consumers weren’t busily snapping up useless production. Our standard of living depends on our constant shopping, spending, and tossing. It’s a finely tuned productive cycle based on waste. Amen.

And that brings us to global warming.

Huh?

Again, bear with me.

Rampant production, of course, necessarily loads the atmosphere with carbon, but then so does sitting there in your chair reading this. From what I understand, it’d be better for everyone else if you and I stopped breathing altogether.

Amidst all the desperately necessary study of global warming, we’re starting to get some bizarro-world reports that baffle us generally well-intentioned inhabitants (read non-Dummer drivers) of this all-too-fragile earth. And my suspicion is that some of these “facts” and “statistics” are nothing more than a smoke screen blown into the media, for some contrary reason, to blunt environmental progress. Make us think we’re darned if we do and darned if we don’t.

Take this for example. I was reading this thing by Tobin Harshaw the other day called “Confused About Carbon.” He quotes The Times of London as reporting this: “Walking does more than driving to cause global warming, a leading environmentalist has calculated.” The environmentalist Chris Goodall, author of “How to Live a Low-Carbon Life,” goes on to say: “Food production is now so energy-intensive that more carbon is emitted providing a person with enough calories to walk to the shops than a car would emit over the same distance.”

And therefore, for crying out loud, “The climate could benefit if people avoided exercise, ate less and became couch potatoes. Provided, of course, they remembered to switch off the TV rather than leaving it on standby.”

Well, if that’s true, somebody shoot me now!

Either that or let’s find an Einstein, pronto, who can calculate some sense out of all this intertwined, convoluted, contradictory madness.

I know we’d do the right thing about global warming and earth stewardship if someone would show us how while not at the same time confusing us.

Laugh Lines as Collected by the New York Times

SLATE VIDEO: Analysis of YouTube Politics

South Dakota Editorial Cartoonist Scott L. Erishman

(Sent by Al Bender--click the title)

JON STEWART: Going, going, gun

FRUGAL TRAVELER: An American Road Trip: The Pacific Coast

This is the last of a nice series of 12 installments. (Click the title)

THE RALLY: Sturgis Street Blog

Want to know what the Sturgis motorcycle rally is like? The Rapid City Journal does a pretty good job covering it with this picture blog.

GOLF: Hear your swing

A short video of a physicist/golfer who's using sound to improve golf swings. (Click the title)

THE ETHICIST: Deal Redo/Snoring Neighbor

COLUMN: Remodeling goes to the movies

By Tobin Barnes
Note: Despite the unrelated introduction, this will eventually be about movies.

We’ve been having work done to the downstairs floors of our house. It’s been somewhat of an adulterated joy, to put it mildly.

No doubt the results have been great and the workmen nice to deal with, but as you know if you’ve been there, remodeling can be a major pain in the butt as far as consistency of lifestyle is concerned.

And as you have inferred over the years, I am about nothing if not consistent lifestyle. Some would go so far as to say that using the word “lifestyle” would be a gross misnomer as regards my existence. They’d say my daily drone instead might be more akin to that of a very short stick in some very thick mud.

Whatever. Have fun at my expense, but there’s something to be said for being in the same place doing the same thing at the same time on any given day. What’s lost in spontaneity is gained in clockwork. (For example, I don’t need a wristwatch.)

Anyway, when your floors are getting worked on, furniture necessarily gets moved here, then there, then back again. Things are generally scattershot.

Not only that, the familiar detritus of everyday life--the-small-but-oh-so-important stuff that you usually don’t think about but really need--gets shifted around and about to an eventual effective oblivion. Because it’s no longer reachable and/or findable, it no longer exists in a practical sense.

The process turns you into an alien in your own home, a stranger in a strange land in a science fiction/Robert Heinlein sort of way. It’s your place, but in many ways it isn’t. The needs of the floor now own the house, not you.

Because of the location and nature of the work, we oftentimes found ourselves confined to an upstairs bedroom. Admittedly, this was a hardship of no major significance in the greater scheme of things but confining nonetheless. And then, some days, we had to vacate the house altogether. The treatment they were putting on the floors went right to your eyes, nose, and lungs.

At that point, we went to the movies to avoid what we perceived as toxic shock.

And here’s the good news. We saw some fine movies.

First one I’d recommend is “Knocked Up.” (I had a hard time saying that to the ticket seller at the theater. I don’t know, it seemed a little weird. But don’t let that stop you.) The movie’s basically a guy’s doofus slacker dream. That is, be an irresponsible goof-off well into your twenties but still end up with the babe of your dreams and thereby finally accept adult responsibilities at the same time. In other words, everything turns out great though you did nothing to deserve it other than be your lazy crusty male, low-life self. Like I said, every guy’s dream.

Though it’s a lot of laughs, be advised. This isn’t your mother’s my-girl-friend-got-pregnant movie.

My next recommendation is “Sicko.” Though this movie is satirically witty, it’s definitely not funny. In many ways, it makes YOU sick. That’s because here’s the point of the movie: Our countries’ healthcare, though horrendously expensive and for millions unaffordable, ranks just above Slovenia with about every other industrialized country above us. And the worst part? It seems to be in a lot of people’s interest to keep us there because it’s profitable for them, and they’re not the ones getting the Slovenian healthcare.

People demonize Michael Moore, but this time he’s in your corner, and thank goodness someone is.

Next, we went to “The Simpsons: The Movie.” And if you like the TV version, you’ll like the movie, too. But as Homer tells us at the beginning, we must be stupid to pay for something we can get for free. Doh!

Finally, there’s “No Reservations.” She’s a control freak, top-notch chef in a fancy New York restaurant, but she’s strangely unhappy. Obviously--to the men in the audience at any rate--she needs a man in her life. Instead, she gets custody of her sister’s sweet little daughter when her sister dies in a car accident. The young ward, after a difficult adjustment, then helps the chef find her perfect man, who just happens to be another chef.

Seen something like this before? Well, it’s worth seeing again. Plus, you get a realistic trip back into the kitchen of a fancy restaurant. (Only problem with fancy food? To paraphrase Julia Child, with all that arrangement, you just know someone’s had their fingers all over it.)

Laugh Lines

SLATE VIDEO: Achilles Heel: Obama

Pretty good series on the Presidential candidates.

SLATE SLIDESHOW: Popeye

Some neat stuff on Popeye, from the origins through development with some neat videos from when he went cartoon--some parts you might remember. (Click the title)