Yet Another Modest Proposal

The Nobel committee is sure to get letters about this one. This idea is so scathingly brilliant that they are bound to make next year's award by acclamation.

It all started when I got to thinking about some national problems:

• Americans are “expanding” (we’re fat)

• Americans need about 20 million barrels of oil every day

• Americans use a lot of the world’s resources

• Americans need our economy constantly stimulated

• Americans need to have a sense of patriotism

The solution? Turn our ability to make fat into an asset! Use Americans to produce biofuel!

Here’s how it works: 350,000,000 Americans, say 65% adults. We start by taking the largest 10% of adults and rendering them directly into biofuel. We produce about a barrel of fuel per 300-pound person. So we get over 22 million barrels right there, and we reduce our consumption of fuel (and every other resource) by 10%. Plus, a lot of these very large people are probably now-or in the near future-big (pun intended) users of health care services. Bingo! More savings!

But that’s not all. Imagine if we could get each person (fun for kids, too!) to produce 20 pounds of fat by liposuction four times a year? That would give us another 86 million barrels per year. Yes, it would be a challenge, but we Americans have always risen to a challenge. And now it can be patriotic: “Just one more potato chip, dear. Do it for your country!”

Oh, it will take subsidies and stimuluses, and the kind of grit we had to muster to see us through the big one, WWII. Of course a new industry will be created: those who “harvest” and process the fuel. But we could train liposuctioning fat-suckers like the health care industry trains blood takers. Instead of calling them phlebotomists, we could call them fat-bottomists! Har! I’m very proud of that one! And bingo, our economy is energized (pun intended)!

So our little scheme will produce about 110 million barrels in the first year, or about 4-5 days of consumption. I know 10% doesn’t sound like much, and it might decline a little in subsequent years as our repeated harvest of the top ten percent will thin the herd (pun intended) a bit. And it might be hard to sustain.

But isn’t that what Europeans and Asians are for? It would be the American way.

(Apologies to J. Swift. And I'm not the first with this idea...)

Ten Things I Don't Understand

Why do we do this to ourselves? "Fashion" doesn't begin to explain it to me.

1. Foot binding.

2. Stiletto heels

3. Saggy baggy

4. Corsets

5. Waxing

6. Long nails

7. Piercing

8. Hobble skirts

9. Liposuction

10. Botox

Next Blog

On the command line of many blogs in the Blogspot family is an option called "next blog." Click it and you are transported to a random blog. It is a little voyeuristic, I admit, but I have learned a lot about the total irrelevance of my blog.

There are a lot of blogs out there, and I understand some of them, but not all. One of the reasons I can’t understand some blogs is that they are in foreign languages. I try to figure out what the language is: Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, French, Korean, Thai, Tagalog, several Indian languages, German, Malay, Swedish, Finnish, Polish, Russian, Greek, Indonesian…. With a little Latin, I can guess the topic.

I understand family-update and travelogue blogs: it’s a great way for friends and relatives to keep up when families are scattered. Some blogs are obviously class assignments, and many blogs on scrapbooking, cooking, flowers, and kids clothes are actually businesses.

I’m more intrigued by deep archive blogs than one-hit wonders. I’m least interested in bad poetry, bad photography and Hello Kitty décor. These things abound.

There aren’t many entries with substance, and even fewer with tolerable writing. But I have learned one important thing: my blog is utterly irrelevant.

I could pour my heart out, or plot savage violence; I could be the wisest guru in the blogosphere, posting prophecies or world-saving profoundness. But few will read, and fewer will care.

Then why blog?

Because I can’t not write. It is how I taste the world. Like a baby puts things in her mouth to experience them, I write to make sense.

I once read about a writing class where the first assignment was to write your very best poem, but to not show anyone. Then you were supposed to destroy it, still without letting anyone at all see it. The point was to teach you to write for the sake of the art and not for popularity or praise.

I’m not that pure, but read this, or don’t; I’ll still write.

Next blog.

Grace-a-thon

Always fun to have Grace visit.  This time she stayed four days.

We had Cheerios...

...and tried on costumes.  This is a NASA hat from 20 years ago, but astronaut is not out of reach for this girl.

Worked in the yard with Bumpah.

Clowned around with cousins.

Went to church all pretty.

Can't wait for the next Grace-a-thon.

Notes from the Chicago Aquarium

If you sit down near the big central tank and wait, eventually all of them will come past you. The brightly colored intermingle with the plain. Some flit past, chasing and sprinting, while others slowly glide by. Some of the juveniles look just like miniatures of the adults and some are so different as to be unrecognizable. Some are angular with sharp edges, but graceful; others are ungainly, unnatural, clumsy.

Some seem obsessed with the endless, relentless pursuit of food. Others, usually the littlest ones, look like they are playing. Many of them are in some sort of a group. Although most don’t interact with each other, some look like bullies, and there are a number of varieties that probably shouldn’t be together in one confined space. But no one gets eaten while we are watching.

Most couldn’t care less and don’t even acknowledge our presence, but once in a while, one of them will stare back at me. This is why I love places like this; there are so many different varieties, so many different sizes, so many different origins, so many different shapes and colors.

Oh, and the fish are pretty interesting, too.

Art. Is. Important.

The importance of art lies not in the theme, the symbols, the texture, the light, or the message of the creation. 

Art's importance is that it exists at all.  Because people never create when survival is on the line.  There is only space for creativity when we get beyond the raw struggle for bare survival, when there is time and energy for something--anything--else. 

When art exists, then it necessarily follows that man is more than muscle. And that there is value in more than just the physical beast; there is value in the mind.  There is value in the heart.  There is value in the spirit.  So art is important because it shows that life can be more than long slogs through grey days.

Engaging art is more than just the recharging of batteries; it is the very existence of art that even makes the concept of batteries possible.  And art must not just include the unwashed masses, but it must be especially for them.  Us. 

So my entire Friday in the Chicago Institute of Art was important.

“Don’t Blog Me, Bro!”

Inspiration is where you find it.  For the observant writer, ideas are everywhere, especially—as every columnist or blogger knows—in your family.  Many creative people get ideas from their own lives; you’ve seen Shakespeare in Love, and probably George Lucas in Love.  It’s sort of like that.  Very sort of.

My wife is used to this personal creative process.  When I wrote columns for a local publication, she would even help me with the ideas—the better ones.  And you’ll never catch me writing one of those snarky boys-are-smarter-than-girls columns.  The garage is a cold and lonely place to sleep.

The kids didn’t always appreciate being mentioned in my writing, but then again, for so many years my very existence on the planet embarrassed them far more than a vague column could.  Besides, they are off living their own lives now and my idea-radar has to sweep a little wider. 

So I’m at a family gathering, and my brother confesses that some days he is so busy that…. A light bulb over my head turns on and I reach for a pen to record the confession.  Yeah, this’ll make a dandy post. Then he tells a story about his neighborhood.  Scribble, scribble, heh, heh, heh. This is meaty stuff, and I could splash his dirty—but well coordinated—laundry across the blogosphere, garner another reader or two, get some laughs.  But for some reason I stop. He can probably still beat me up, and as a doctor, his health benefits are sure to be better than mine.  I briefly wonder if a better strategy for fleeting fame is to catch him doing something embarrassing on video and posting it to YouTube…

Then a faint Jiminy Cricket voice pleads, “Don’t blog me, bro!”  Sigh.  I have considerable experience with the insistence of this conscience.  So I restrain myself, step away from the pen.  

In the end, inspiration is where you find it.  And sometimes where you'd better leave it.