Laugh Lines: Jay Leno

"The Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans is out and everyone on the list is now a billionaire. You can’t even be a millionaire and be on the list; you have to be a billionaire to be on the list. See, those Bush tax cuts are working. You see!"

COLUMN: I Prefer Mine Open, Thank You

By Tobin Barnes
Just ran into this quote by Malcolm Forbes. The guy was rich and notoriously playful, but I suppose he had his serious side, too.

Here it is: “Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.”

Pretty good, huh?

I love witty turn-of-phrase aphorisms like that, especially when there’s a gold nugget of truth inside them.

But maybe you don’t go along with the idea. Maybe you’re of the persuasion that says education is for picking up skills and abilities and knowledge. Molding clay into usable containers. Creating a product.

Well, me, too. But all that good stuff goes for naught without the open-mindedness attached. The product needs to be able to service itself.

Heck, knowledge is out there by the bushel load. Unlike past times, it’s easily at our finger tips. We’re a push button away from standing on the shoulders of giants. They’ve lifted us up. All we have to do is seek even higher.

Developing open minds, on the other hand? Well, that’s a little trickier. Takes some nurturing. Takes some pats on the back, takes some burping.

But open minds are worth the trouble.

Open minds tend to be self-educating.

Once open-mindedness is achieved, the education doesn’t stop. Open minds are self-lubricating.

Those minds are less likely to fall for the latest fad, freak show, or rabble rouser. They’re more immune to nonsense.

Not totally, but more.

Because they’re open, they’ll maybe take a quick look at this, that, or the other thing, but that doesn’t worry me. Open minds are quicker to detect the baloney and just as quick to reject it.

Dull, closed minds might stay awhile.

Open minds are skeptical—in a good way. Can’t be easily led down a garden path.

They’ll look at demagogues like Warren Jeffs, Senator Joe McCarthy, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jung-il and their kith and kin—the list and the history is fairly endless, a rogue’s gallery—and they’ll laugh. They’ll also cringe. But laughing is always a good start with that type. And the sooner the better.

Those guys and their ilk prey on closed minds—whether self-inflicted or forced.

So yeah, I’m a subscriber to the education/open-mind thing. Dearly departed Malcolm Forbes had it right.

Problem is, from the look of things on the world scene, we’ve been failing good old Malcolm’s idea big time. Have been since the dawn of man. And a big part of the problem is that few think their minds are closed. It’s the other guy.

Nevertheless, down the trail of history, it sometimes seems the open-minded moments are well-spaced and relatively infrequent. And worse, it seems like that’s the way some people like it.

Less pressure to think that way. Less examination of the flavor-of-the-day cracked-pot idea.

Strange to say, but we’ve got to keep reminding ourselves that thinking is a good thing.

SLATE VIDEO: The Presidency Isn't an Economic Sacrifice

Speaks for Itself

Simply Omazing

(Sent by Roy Wilson)
You'll only be able to take about a minute of this guy, but it's a hoot, nonetheless. He finds himself in an impossible situation but still brasses it out.

COLUMN: The Mother of All Nightmares

By Tobin Barnes
Here’s the stuff of nightmares:

Guy wakes up in excruciating pain.

The source?

Medical examiners are beginning an autopsy.

That’s right, on him.

So says a Reuters news story from Caracas, Venezuela. Maybe you’ve read it.

“Carlos Camejo, 33, was declared dead after a highway accident and taken to the morgue, where examiners began an autopsy only to realize something was amiss when he started bleeding.”

Amiss? Man, we’re talking “Twilight Zone” on crack.

“I woke up because the pain was unbearable,” Camejo said.

Yeah, a live autopsy could be brutal.

They moved him out into the corridor and that’s where his grieving wife found him.

Weird, huh?

So I’m thinking, hey, if anyone thinks I’m dead, pump about five bullets into me to make sure, okay. I’ll forgo any remote chances of a miraculous recovery to avoid waking up in a morgue refrigerator or cremation unit.

And I’m not the only one.

Back in the days before embalming, people used to freak at the idea of being buried alive. I’ve read how some people gave explicit directions that their hearts should be removed from their bodies after death to avoid the issue altogether.

I’ve also run across some urban legend-type stuff that you may or may not want to take with a grain of salt.

No, upon second reading, better take the salt.

According to London trivia expert Sam Bali, gravesites were reused in old England because of lack of space. They’d dig up coffins, take the bones out and compactly put them in a “bone-house,” then use the grave again. On the lids of one out of twenty-five coffins, he says, they found scratch marks of people trying to get out.

Uh huh.

Bali says they realized they’d been mistakenly burying people alive.

Yowsa!

So they came up with contraptions to avoid such a calamity, like tying a string to the supposed corpse’s wrist that led up through the ground to a bell. Whence comes our oft-used “saved by the bell” and “dead ringer.”

People paid to spend nights listening for the bell (or presumably “bells” on busy nights) were working “the graveyard shift.”

Trivialist Bali says that the origins of a “wake” are not far removed. And that the period between perceived death and burial was spent with people gathered around the body eating and drinking and waiting for the off-chance that the deceased wasn’t really dead.

Upon further investigation, however, I found that the word maven at word-detective.com thinks that’s just a bunch of hooey--that no one really expected the body to wake up at a “wake.”

Maybe the “dead ringer” stuff is just a bunch of hooey, too. Lot of hooey out there, as you well know.

But they’re good stories, nonetheless.

Creepy.

Kind of stuff that makes me want to have someone pump maybe five bullets in me before they call the undertaker. And if I don’t bleed, we’re good to go.

THE ETHICIST: Bad Business

SLATE VIDEO: Five Brothers

Great satire.

VIDEO: Could The Electric Car Save Us

In case you missed it, this David Pogue segment first aired on CBS Sunday Morning. Very interesting. Maybe we're finally headed in the right direction.

COLUMN: Son, You Need to Slow Down

By Tobin Barnes
I crashed my home computer.

Again.

Yeah, it’s happened before. Couple times, actually.

This time I was taking a corner too sharply, I guess. Ran off the road and flew into a digital abyss. Fortunately, no one got hurt, but I wasn’t particularly perky when I found myself sitting amongst the wreckage.

Like a lot of other racers, I’ve never really known what the heck’s under the hood, but I fancy myself a top-notch driver, nevertheless. Learned a lot of tricks along the way so I can burn rubber in cyberspace.

Problem is, I get a little cocky sometimes. Old lead-foot syndrome. I like the pedal to the metal, see. After all, it’s all about speed, isn’t it?

But that’s what gets me in trouble.

Doesn’t mean I’m not concerned with safety, though. I’ve got a pit crew that supports me 100 percent. Or so I’d like to think.

My pit crew’s a back-up plan. Everywhere you look, they tell you to have a back-up plan. I had one.

I back up my stuff on CD’s and I even back up my stuff on an Internet site. But maybe that’s why I get cocky.

Start thinking crashes can’t be all that bad.

But hold on there, Parnelli. They can be. Oh lordy me, yes.

I figure it’ll take a couple weeks to get back where I was before.

Ironically, my last crash happened as I was supposedly backing up my system so future crashes wouldn’t affect me. For some dumb reason, I thought I could stop the backup midway through—a kind of digitalus interruptus.

Immediately, I got the message, “Stopping the backup now may leave your system in an inconsistent state.”

That would halt most geeks, but not me. Heck, inconsistent state? There’s a lot of inconsistencies in life. What’s one more? Ralph Waldo Emerson even said, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

I clicked “Continue.”

And oh, fellow sinner...it was a mistake. I was already over the speed limit, hurtling for the hairpin turn and the greedy abyss below.

Yet even at that point I could have recovered, but no. A spasm of ineptitude overcame me instead, and I blundered into a series of bad decisions that produced a perfect storm of cyberspace destruction that seemingly laughed at my backup plan, then slapped it silly.

It left my computer virtually mindless.

When I tried to make it do something, its only reply was, “Huh?”

Well...I’ve learned my lesson...for the third time. I’m practicing safe computing from now on. Warnings will be heeded. Inconsistencies will be avoided. I will not “Continue.”

No saucy race course attitudes from me any more.

That is, until maybe next time when I feel the need for speed.

Laugh Lines as Collected by The New York Times

God and Golf

(sent by Roy Wilson)
God asks Arnie first: "What do you believe?" Arnie thinks long and hard, looks God in the eye, and says, "I believe in hard work, and in staying true to family and friends. I believe in giving. I was lucky, but I always tried to do right by my fans."

God can't help but see the essential goodness of Palmer, and offers him a seat to his left.

Then God turns to Nicklaus and says, "What do you believe?" Jack says, "I believe passion, discipline, courage and honor are the fundamentals of life. I, too, have been lucky, but win or lose, I've always tried to be a true sportsman, both on and off the playing fields."

God is greatly moved by Jack's high-pitched eloquence, and he offers him a seat to his right.

Finally, God turns to Woods: "And you, Tiger, what do you believe?"

Tiger replies, "I believe you're in my seat."

COLUMN: Smoking Out the Madmen

By Tobin Barnes
I’ve been watching the TV show “Madmen” lately. You can find it on the AMC cable channel. It’s gotten rave reviews.

The “madmen” of the title are actually “admen” working the advertising business on New York’s Madison Avenue in the early 1960’s. I guess it’s the Madison Avenue part that makes them the “madmen.” (Have to admit, I just got that.)

Despite the gray flannel suits, thin ties, and Brylcreemed hair, “Madmen” isn’t another “Leave It to Beaver” or “Father Knows Best.” Far from it. Tad on the dark side, actually. The leading man’s somewhat of a cad, unlike the bright and shiny Jim Anderson played by good old Robert Young.

If anything, this is “Father Knows Best” on giant draughts of nicotine. Also, throw in healthy doses of male chauvinism, adultery, and plenty of angst.

Of course, my early 1960’s, when I was eight or nine, never looked like the sanitized “Ozzie and Harriet” sitcoms of that era. Far as I could tell, my mother wasn’t the only one in my neighborhood not prancing around in day dresses and pearls.

Sure, those sitcoms were good for a few laughs, but they were only tangentially related to everyday life. It took “All in the Family” later on to break that mold.

But then “Madmen” isn’t like my 1960’s, either. The New York City high life was far removed from my small-town South Dakota experiences. Nevertheless, I continually get flashbacks watching that show.

Particularly from all the cigarette smoking going on.

Even if the actors never touch a cigarette off set, they’re still doomed for the oncology ward a few years from now. (They’re obviously sacrificing for their art.)

Almost every scene in “Madmen,” and I’m not exaggerating, is filled with cigarette smoke. Characters, including the women, are constantly flicking ashes. In many ways, lighting up and inhaling smoke is the main action in this series dominated by relatively stagnant office, restaurant, and at-home scenes.

At first, all that smoking is almost distracting. Kinda like, “What’s up with that? Thought Hollywood was supposed to start cutting down on the cigs.” Then you start realizing: “Hey, but that’s the way it used to be.”

The producers of “Madmen” are throwing cold water in their viewers' faces—that is, those of a certain age--with the ubiquitous cigarette smoke and saying, “Remember?”

And, yes, I do.

The World War II generation, despite their countless exemplary qualities, smoked it up big time. Wasn’t their fault, though. Didn’t know the consequences. And they’d been sold the habit as part of the American Dream by the very admen portrayed in the show I’m talking about.

Of course, the government played a part, too. From what I understand, cigarettes were an essential part of soldiers’ and sailors’ rations during WWII. If they weren’t smokers before, they turned into smokers on the battle fronts, and who can blame them?

So we baby boomers grew up in billowing clouds of tobacco smoke.

Second hand? My dad was three packs a day. I was inhaling just like him in the house and especially in the car.

Ash trays were all over the place at home and in public. And I don’t remember too many people saying, “Do you mind if I smoke?” It was a given. Actually, people got a little shirty if someone answered, “Yes.”

Granted, people didn’t know the full impact of the health consequences back then, but the nasty characteristics, including hacker’s cough and yellow teeth, were obviously apparent. The commercials and magazine ads didn’t show any of that. Not part of the adman’s American Dream. And certainly, the same manipulation goes on today but with other products.

Anyway, like I said, I’ve been watching “Madmen,” following the usually grim story line, and appreciating the uncanny reproduction of a time period but also finding myself sitting there watching the inhales and exhales of smoke and thinking, “Wow, I grew up in all that.”

Laugh Lines

THE ONION: The Rich and Super-Rich

In The Know: Are America's Rich Falling Behind The Super-Rich?

SLATE VIDEO: Chimps' Memory

Interesting stuff.

COLUMN: A Special Agent on Pop Bottle Surveillance Detail

By Tobin Barnes
My old man was a character.

If most people are vanilla, he was rocky road.

His standard dress most of the years I knew him was a t-shirt, Osh Kosh B’Gosh striped overalls, no socks and casual slip ons. Uh huh, unusual.

In winter, he’d throw on a grey sweatshirt when he’d go outside. But no matter how cold, I never saw him wear gloves or a coat or even a jacket. He was good at internal combustion. He ran hot.

Things could get him riled pretty easily. When my parents were in the motel business, we suffered a rash of thefts...of empty pop bottles, that is. Kids would walk by our pop machine with the rack of empties next to it and grab a few on their way by. Probably traded them in at the neighborhood grocery. They were worth two cents apiece. Bought candy with the pennies.

They most likely thought, who would miss a few bottles? Well, my old man would. And it burned his butt.

So he started watching out for the pop bottle thieves.

Now most people would say, “Two cents here, two cents there. Big deal.” They didn’t know my old man.

One summer day, either he or I saw a couple kids taking some bottles out of the rack. Actually, I think it was I who saw them. Though only seven or eight, I was his special agent on pop bottle surveillance detail.

Anyway, Dad blew out of the door after those kids like the Tasmanian Devil you see in cartoons.

And imagine this from the thieves’ point of view: Nearly three-hundred pounds of grim striped overalls bearing down on you. The image probably haunted their dreams for years. Might still get a flashback or two, even though they’re now in their 50’s.

Though big, my old man had played fullback in professional football, so he was on them in no time flat. The slowest of the two earned a punt kick in the pants (the old man’s ingrown toenail pained him for weeks after), but the kid only missed a half step in his dash to get the hell out of there. He was still clutching one of the bottles like a relay baton. The value of an empty pop bottle had just gone up.

Of course, if this would have happened nowadays, it’d be my old man in trouble. Parents would be prosecuting despite their own kids’ low-level thievery. But back then a man had the right to protect his property--two cents at a time--and people thought it took a village to set a kid straight.

Nevertheless, I’d see my old man do stuff like this and think, “My dad’s different.”

Like the time I was starting to take an interest in golf--maybe ten or eleven. I was over in the vacant lot chipping some golf balls around. My dad saw me, came over and asked for the club. He was going to show me how to develop a good swing. Though he no longer played, he’d shot a 29 for nine holes when he was in high school, a story I’d heard many times.

So without further adieu, he teed one up on a clump of grass, and without taking a practice swing, crushed it out into the neighborhood. His old-fashioned, whippy-style swing had produced a full-flushed shot that sailed up over some trees and houses and out into the ether and, like Hiawatha’s arrow, landed he knew not where.

The ball could have taken out a window, cracked a windshield, or bonked some guy out mowing his lawn. Most likely it bounced harmlessly into someone’s yard. We never knew and he didn’t seem to care.

No doubt I was impressed by this athletic side I’d often heard of but hadn’t seen before, but I was also stunned by such irresponsibility. Even at my age. It was like, “Who’s the adult here?”

And since we spent a lot of time together, I experienced many moments like this, wondering what was going to shake loose next.

But don’t get me wrong, this was the same man who spent countless hours volunteering his time umping little league games in the hot summer sun. The same guy who’d pack up a bunch of us neighbor kids in the car and drive us around looking for pop bottles in the ditches so we’d have spending money.

And when he had his taxi business, he was the darling of little old ladies from all over town who loved him for his attention, his wide-ranging conversation, and his concern for their needs.

It was a strange dichotomy going on with him. And certainly, all children eventually see confusing yin and yang revelations in their own parents. Mine came early and often.

Obviously, I still wonder about it.

Miss Teen USA Contestant Stupefied by Question

She's got a future in politics.

P.S. After I posted this classic, I discovered a number of satirical takeoffs on Miss South Carolina, poor dear. Try this link, which can lead you to others:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQc6oBCuDXk

And:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F226lI-lo5M&mode=related&search=

THE ETHICIST: A Soldier's Gift

Laugh Lines from Late Night TV