How we spend our days

How we spend our days. This is a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2008. To this typical day I would like to add the following:

Processing Microsoft updates: 25 minutes

Processing Virus protection updates: 15 minutes

Processing I tunes updates: 10 minutes ( 60 minutes a week divided by 6)

Cleaning my hard drive: 15 minutes

Defragging my hard drive: 15 minutes.

One extra hour of every day of my life is spent doing these activities. I want to check my email; but first I must perform an update to my operating system. I want to download one of my favorite pods. But first I must update I tunes. Then at the end of the day there is disc cleanup and defragmenting. Now does this time come out of my sleep time, my eating time or my work time? I guess it comes out of the time I would otherwise spend on sports.

Dreams from my Father

I have just finished Dreams from my father by Barack Obama. Being cheap, I borrowed it as a library book and after some searching, managed to procure a paperback, taped on both front and back covers. A bildungsroman of an individual who has a racially mixed background who looks for his African ancestors and discovered and in fact met some of them. He also played basketball and did some politicking in Chicago with American born African Americans. Like many people of mixed ancestry, he got to see the strengths as well as the disappointments of his peoples. A dilettante of people but not a true member of any group. The description of his life in Indonesia is also interesting and describes some of his childhood.

If he was an obscure senator in Illinois, this book might have become the darling of the academics and been assigned in high schools and colleges nationwide but because he is now our president, he can't be assigned without it looking overly political. It is a good book. Someone who wrote a decent book is now our president. That's really scary. Americans prefer B students who are well liked for their presidents.

Ah counters

As this recession drags on, many people are looking into other professions where there is hiring. According to the Occupational Outlook Survey, one of the fields with good prospects is that of the "ah" counter. This is a position where you sit at a table and whenever the speaker says "uh", "er", "like", or makes other useless interjections, the "ah" counter makes a little mark with a pencil. At the end of the speech, the "ah" counter tells the speaker how many times he said "ah". Fines or, in some cases, thrashings are then administered.

As a full time salary, an "ah" counter can be expected to clear over $80,000 a year. There has been a creeping towards piecework in the field, however, ie. payment for "ah"s. In this system the "ah" counter is paid a set amount for each "ah" he counts.


While I was an English major at college, I thought I might be a poet. I'd toss off a poem every week, make humongous amounts of money, and spend the rest of my time drinking beer with my friends. I was disappointed when the professor told the class that poets get virtually no payment for their work unless they are endowed by a major university. As good a deal as being an "ah" counter seems, it could turn out to be another fleeting position where the aesthetic rewards outstrip the monetary. Sort of like being a librarian.

Editor's note: Apologies to Toastmasters. "Ah counters" are volunteer positions.

I went to sleep a Democrat and woke up a Republican

After being born a Democrat, Wednesday morning I woke up a Republican. It felt funny at first. I still remember my Democratic upbringing and the wild parties with the Young Dems I was subjected to as a child. I went through my pseudo

college radicalism in college, then through adulthood easily slipping into the whiny liberalism of a mainstream Democrat. Then when I woke up and heard the election results, I realized I was now in the army of service to Republicanism.

Lifestyle changes can be abrupt. David Letterman will have to go and certainly no more Chelsea Lately. From now on I will watch the Jay Leno show. The mustache is toast. Maybe I can get a good deal on a General Motors SUV.

Now that I am a Republican I can safely eat at Denny's and enjoy the breakfast specials at Bob Evan's without feeling guilty. I will have to give up WXPN radio now and learn to listen to country western. Glad I didn't throw out my ties. I'll need them now. After all, I'm a Republican. Anybody want to go to Branson Missouri for a show?

Editor's note: Paul Krugman, the New York Times Nobel laureate and Princeton professor has a good article on Obama's dilemma.

Driving ages

An article in Governing magazine discusses the age at which a youth should be accorded the rights of an adult. Drinking is 21 but you can enlist in the Army at 17 with a parent's signature when you become 18. I was just talking to a young man who just signed up to help Uncle Sam when he graduates high school. However, even the Army no longer allows under age privates to take a drink.

Driving ages vary from state to state. New Jersey has a rather complicated set of rules for setting down the road legally. Ruminating on this topic led me down memory lane and my trips to Texas as a twelve year old to visit with dear Mama's kinfolk.

I remember she set me out to play with my young female second cousins. One was thirteen and one was ten. "Y'all want to come for a ride, Yankee boy?" the older cousin yelled. First thing I knew I was aboard a 52 Chevy Impala and the thirteen year old was driving the three of us around the byways of rural East Texas. Soon we came to a gas station and we all emptied out nickels and pennies from our pockets and bought thirty five cents of gas. The younger cousin wanted to drive too, so, to be fair, her older sister let her take the wheel for the ten miles or so back home where chicken and hush puppies awaited us.

My mother explained to me that down in Texas kids drove all over but mostly stuck to country roads. They also shot quail, chewed tobacco, and drank corn liquor before they were fourteen. After reading the article in Governing I was curious if what I saw was routine or out of the ordinary. Please let me know if you grew up in a rural area and drove before you were twelve. I'm just curious.

The recession is over

Today the New York Times reported that the Gross Domestic Product had gone up, technically ending the recession. As I passed out the GDP report this morning, one of the economists congratulated me on ending the recession. I am happy to be of service. Here is the technical definition of a recession.

This does not mean everybody is going to go back to work or that everyone will remain in their homes. It does mean that most people will be okay economically in a year or so.

Next year the good times will be back. Everyone will be happy, sexually satisfied, and will get raises in their jobs. Happy Halloween.

Monday mornings

The time in life when you feel most alive and most part of the working world is when you get up late on a cold Monday morning. You gulp down your coffee, skip breakfast, rush to take a shower. The water takes a long time to get warm. Oh %&%$$79 I'm going to be late. Oh why do they schedule those stupid meetings for Monday morning!

You manage to get dressed. Your tie is on wrong but you can fix that when you get to work. You go outside. NOOOO %)(*&^&^% there's ice on the windshield. You don't have time to warm up the car properly so you get out the darn ice scraper. You scrape it off. It is hard and the ice comes off only with a great effort. You drive down the street with a peephole that you can see out of. Oh *&^%^&()*) the darn sun is making it impossible to see.

The best part of retirement must be those Monday mornings when you can have a second cup of coffee and listen to the witty people on the radio. You don't have to scrape ice off of your windshield. You can let the sun do it's hard work.

Editor's note: I just read in Newsweek that I won't be able to retire after all. I need another cup of coffee.