Hail To The Chief

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This November, America will elect a new president. And most voters will go to the polls and cast their vote for either John McCain or Barack Obama. And on the evening of November 4th, the major news networks (and CBS) will be competing to be the first network to declare one of these men the winner. Most Americans will vote for one of these men. But some voters will vote for someone else. Some will cast their vote for Ron Paul. Some will vote for Ralph Nader. Some will vote for the Green Party candidate, whoever that is. Some will even cast their vote for a candidate even more unknown than the Green Party candidate. Now I want to make this clear before I proceed - I understand the concept of standing by one's principles. I understand wanting to make a political statement. I understand being angry at the current political process. I understand the desire to boot out entrenched career politicians and get fresh blood into Congress. I understand the frustration with leaders who exempt themselves from the very laws and taxes that they impose on their constituency. I feel strongly about these and other political issues in the United States. But come November, there is one reality that we all should face: only John McCain or Barack Obama will be elected president. Barring some unexpected event, only those two men have the chance to be elected president this year, and only one of these two will be sworn-in next January. Ron Paul will not be elected - that is a political and mathematical certainty and reality in the current makeup of candidates. He will not be elected president, and neither will Ralph Nader. It is not possible for either of these men, or anyone except McCain and Obama, to be elected president this November. That is reality. And all of the political idealism and electorate dissatisfaction and heart-felt revolutionism you can muster up will not change that reality. And this has nothing to do with the kind of people Paul/Nader/whoever are - it's not about whether or not they are the best candidate for the job. It's not even about whether McCain or Obama are the best men for the job. It's about the reality that only McCain and Obama - only these two guy - will receive enough votes to possibly be elected president. The way things stand now, no one else will come close. No one else has a chance.

Yes, it's probably true that if everyone who didn't vote in 2004 suddenly went out and voted for Mr. Paul, he would win, and that is a great testimony to what could be accomplished if people would stand together on an issue. But that is not going to happen - many of those non-voters who have stayed home year after year will again stay at home, and the election will be decided by the usual percentage of the U.S. population that does vote. But if you are usually in that voting populace and you don't vote for either McCain or Obama, your vote could be ineffective. I'm not talking about wasting your vote - I think that term is a poor way to describe people who cannot in good conscience vote for the major political party candidates. The way I see it, if you take the time to vote, it's not a waste. But I believe that you can vote ineffectively, and voting in this November's presidential election for anyone besides McCain or Obama would make your vote ineffective because you would be voting for someone who is guaranteed to lose. You can either vote for McCain or Obama, or you can vote against one of them by voting for the other, but voting for anyone else besides these two will not get anyone else elected, and it just might do harm to the candidate that could best represent you.

If you want Mr. Paul to be president because you oppose an increase in government programs and taxes and you feel that this is what Mr. Obama would bring, yet you feel that you cannot vote for Mr. McCain, your vote in November for Mr. Paul would take a vote away from Mr. McCain, and could allow Mr. Obama to receive more votes than Mr. McCain. By voting for Mr. Paul, you could help elect Mr. Obama.

Or perhaps you are sick of corporate greed and the self-serving big business executives who don't pay taxes and who contribute to world environmental problems, and you feel that Mr. McCain would enable these people to continue in their destructive ways. And you think that Mr. Obama is just another part of the whole political system that is corrupt and will not do enough to curb these excesses, so you vote for Mr. Nader or perhaps the Green Party candidate. But your vote for Nader might keep Mr. Obama from getting the votes he needs to overcome Mr. McCain - by voting for Nader, you could help elect McCain.

Are you tired of 8 years of a Republican administration? Neither Ralph Nader or the Green Party candidate, or any other third-party liberal candidate, will collect enough votes to overcome McCain. Your best chance to stop McCain is to vote for Obama. Or do you think that liberal politics is what's ruining our government? OK, maybe John McCain isn't conservative enough for you. But he's certainly more conservative than Obama, and he's the only other candidate that has a chance of beating Obama and preventing a liberal-Democrat administration.

In this election season, there were many people who used their votes in their states' primaries to make political statements and take stands on principles. But now the time to make a political statements based on your principles has passed... it's time to choose between two men. Perhaps you need to look at this as picking the lesser of two evils, but however you look at it, there are only two viable choices. So, in the end, are you going to drop your vote into the "Guaranteed to Lose" category? Or are you going to make a vote that could help define the political landscape of the United States for the next four years?

Your choice.

Memory Lane

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Several years ago I knew this man who was a very intelligent guy. He was born in Southern California - his father was from New Mexico and was Hispanic and Native American, and his mother was born in Mexico City. Not surprisingly, Spanish was his first language, but by the time he was a young adult he had learned to speak English fluently and taught himself to speak without an accent. He enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and eventually became a 2nd Lieutenant and a pilot, flying those large cargo planes and taking skydivers up for training. At some point the Air Force doctors discovered that he had a congenital heart defect - a hole in one of his heart valves - and they grounded him which, as I was later told, was a big disappointment for him. Back in civilian life, he taught himself things like auto repair, electronics, television repair and even some carpentry. He made extra money by fixing old tube stereo amplifiers and televisions in his spare time. He once ordered one of those entertainment center kits - unfinished wood and electronic parts - and he built and finished the cabinets and assembled and installed the stereo amp, and it ended up looking and working great. He got a job as a civilian employee at a U.S. Navy base, and he went to college at night on the VA Bill to help him get promotions. He owned an older house on a 1/2 acre of land and remodeled it himself, and built (as in, he sawed/hammered/roofed) a two-story garage/shop in the back yard which was where he restored his 1967 Cadillac. He was a coach for his son's sports team - overall he and his wife were pretty involved in their son's life, and his family was quite devastated when he died in 1998 of complications from a seizure.

I also knew a man who wasn't as involved in his children's lives. This man was one of those people who carried a lot of anger inside most of his life. Now this man had had a very cruel father, a father who beat him and his siblings, a father who cheated on the man's mother. Eventually this man's father left the man's mother and family for another woman and started another family. So this man, who was the oldest child, was left to be the "father" of his home, which probably had a lot to do with the anger this man lived with, but even as an adult he never found a healthy way to release his anger. He married a county girl from Kentucky and they had a son, but the man's anger soon revealed itself in their marriage. One day, the young son was on the floor of their home playing with a new toy truck given to him by a sweet older neighbor lady. The man came home from work and asked the son where the new toy had come from. The son told the man that the neighbor lady had given it as a gift. The man didn't like the neighbor lady - he had told his wife that he didn't want her talking to the neighbor lady - so when the son told the man who the toy had come from, the man walked over, lifted his foot and crushed the toy, right in front of the son. That is the earliest memory that the son has of the man. Later, more children were born, another boy and three girls, and as they got older and needed discipline like all children do, the man began to be more and more harsh with the children, and eventually the man started beating his children. And the man also started beating his wife and cheating on her. And he later left her with the children and started a new family with another woman.

And the smart guy and the angry man have something in common - they were both my father.

But everybody's scared of this place...

Peace On Earth

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A few weeks ago Emily and I were driving through town and stopped at an intersection. On the corner there were a few women, dressed in black and standing quietly while holding signs in protest of the war in Iraq. I later discovered that these women are part of an organization called Women In Black and that is one of the ways their group protests, by standing in silence dressed in black. A couple of weekends later, on another street corner, there was a small group of people holding up more signs protesting the Iraq war. This second group were dressed in normal multi-colored attire and were waving their signs, and some were even shouting at the passers-by. This is probably a lot more typical of anti-war protesting here in America, but the thing about this kind of protest, no matter how you are dressed or how noisy you are, is that it really doesn't do anything to stop the war. Sure, the protesters like to say that they are raising awareness. But it's a pretty safe bet that everyone driving by already knows about the war and already has an opinion about it, an opinion that isn't going to be changed by a few Magic Marker signs being waved around over on the side of the road. So really, the only awareness that is raised is the awareness of whatever group is protesting - basically, it's just advertising for the protesting group/organization. And it has always seemed to me that if these groups really want to make an impact on worldwide violence, protesting in America is only addressing part of the problem. These groups should also be protesting on street corners in Baghdad, Kabul, Bukavu, Harare, Tehran or Beirut. Of course, it's much safer to protest in America - you can stand all day on any street corner in America and the worst thing that might happen is that some right-wing war hawks might shout out an F bomb while driving by, while on the other hand you probably wouldn't last 20 minutes standing on a street corner in Mosul carrying peace signs and dressed in black. Nonetheless, I have a difficult time taking these street-side war protesters seriously, because I think that if they really wanted to make a difference, they won't be standing in relative safety on a street corner distracting uninterested drivers who are trying to simultaneously drive and talk/text on their cell phones. But that doesn't mean that I don't want to stop war. War is hell, right? Isn't that what eleven seasons of M*A*S*H taught us? (Actually, most of us realized that war was bad well before M*A*S*H - what M*A*S*H really taught us was that we were supposed to find it humorous that a self-absorbed alcoholic chauvinist was allowed to sexually objectify women - but I digress.) I hate war and want to see it ended - I want the U.S. to be able to leave Iraq with no further violence there after we've left. I want to see peace in the Congo and an end to the horrible travesties against the women there. I want to see peace in Israel, in Afghanistan, in Sudan. I want to see Albanians and Serbians living together in peace with no threat of war. I would like peace to encircle the Earth for centuries to come...

But that's not going to happen. No matter how much you and I want that, there is not going to be that kind of peace on Earth. Even if we convinced everyone we know, and eventually convinced our whole country, even if all countries and nations and governments decided to stop war, even if the whole world agreed... we still would not be able to sustain a real peace. Even if the whole of the Earth, in a moment of united humanity, decided to stop war, we could only stop war for the briefest of moments. And that's because once the whole world had visualized world peace and put down its weapons and stopped fighting, once everyone had stopped the wars and the violence, once we had attained that covenanted moment of global peace... someone, somewhere would take advantage of this peace for his or her own selfish gain. Someone, somewhere would try to take control or steal or harm another or murder or rape. It may not be you or me, or anyone we know, but without a doubt, somewhere, somebody would certainly do this - and again we would not have peace. And this sin of selfishness - of putting one's own desires ahead of the needs of others - is buried deep in our human nature. It's in all of us, although most of us try to control it. But it will always be there within us to some extent, and there will always, always be some who do not care to control it, and that is why we will never have true peace as long as humans are living on this planet.

Now you may think that I'm being cynical, that I'm looking at the worst of our human nature, that I'm a philosophical pessimist, a naysayer and a really bad egg. Except for maybe the egg thing, I'm really not those other things - I believe in the "better angels of our nature", that there is immense good in most people everywhere, that most people want to live in peace, that many people from all over the globe would help someone in distress or share out of what they have for the less fortunate. In my life, I have been the recipient of that kind of goodness, and my belief in the good of human nature is based on my experiences. But, like many of you, I've also experienced the ugliest underside of human nature, and we all experience it even more now that the Internet brings stories and pictures from all over the world into our homes and offices. This dark side of humanity has always been with us, as far back as history can reveal, and it will always be with us. This isn't about declaring that the glass is half empty - this is about looking realistically at our strengths and flaws, and preparing ourselves for both the best and the worst in people. And this is what convinces me, in spite of the incredible human capacity for goodness, that short of the Second Coming of Christ we will never have peace on Earth.

But that doesn't mean that we should give up and wallow in hopelessness. I try to remember that catch phrase from the 60's: "Think Globally, Act Locally". I can't personally feed the starving Nigerian children, I can't end the fighting in Iraq and Darfur, and there's very little I can do about the atrocities happening in the Congo (yes, I know that I can give money to help most of these causes; however, actually going to these people and making an immediate difference in their lives is beyond what most of us are able to do). But I can support and donate food to the homeless shelter here in my town, I can buy a sandwich for the lady sitting on the ground next to the exit of a shopping center, I can offer a ride to a safe place to the woman who just had a fight with her boyfriend and is walking down my street at night carrying her suitcases, I can buy a pizza as a way of saying "Welcome to the Neighborhood" for my new neighbors who just moved in, and I can buy a fan belt and install it for a UCSB student who's Volkswagen broke down at a dark, lonely Highway 101 offramp. And I can decide to respond peacefully even when I'm wronged, like I was recently by the jerk who kept my daughter's $50 deposit after she decided not to buy his car. Even though I often feel that selfishness welling up inside me, the desire to either get ahead or get even, the temptation to put what I want ahead of what might help others, in spite of all of this - in spite of myself - I can try to do what I can to bring peace to my small portion of the world. And I think that that may be the most peace on Earth that most of us will ever know.

All we are saying...

The Weight Of The Words

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I recently discovered a web site that rates blogs on readability, or the "level of education that is required to understand your blog". I hadn't really thought about this before - I've just assumed that most everyone who has a basic command of the English language could understand what I've written. But now the people at Critics Rant have created a web script that analyzes web pages and determines what level of education is needed to read the analyzed web site. I don't know what parameters they use to make their determination, but it seems to me that there are too many variables involved to accurately assign an educational grade level to the reading level a particular web site using only scripting code. So I don't put a lot of stock in this rating, but it's interesting to me in a technological way - someone wrote the code to search blogs (it also works on web sites), rate the type of words used, and determine a level of comparative educational understanding. Cool, but it's really all for fun - after all, you'd think that a guy in his fifties who got A's in college English could write better than high school level, but according to Critics Rant, that apparently not in the case... maybe if I had written more sentences like "She remained entirely pusillanimous and supercilious, yet her enticing pulchritude and luminosity were thoroughly debilitating" I would have gotten a better score.



More sagacious than pedantic

Eat It

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Emily and I have found our new favorite food place - it's a Mexican-food restaurant chain called Chipotle. They actually have a fairly small menu - just burritos and tacos with salads available - but they do a excellent job providing variety within their menu. You can order your burrito or taco choosing from four different types of meats (or have it vegetarian) and all of their food is made fresh. They get you through the line quickly, or you can order online to have your food ready when you get there. Chipotle advertises that they use ingredients like organic beans and open-range pork and beef, and they offer fresh salsa and the best guacamole I have ever tasted. And even better, their prices are reasonable - Emily and I split a shredded beef burrito and have chips, guacamole and drinks, and can eat for less than $12. Fast food prices and quick service, but their food is of such good quality that I'm hesitant to label Chipotle as "fast food" - it certainly doesn't taste like it. We both work day jobs, so sometimes it's nice to be able to eat out, get great food, and not spend a lot of money. In fact, it feels so nice, and the food is so good, that sometimes we eat at Chipotle more than once a week - yeah, we really like Chipotle.

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And while I'm on the subject of food, I really like a good cup of hot chocolate. I don't drink coffee, so when I want a hot drink, it's hot chocolate for me. But I've found, at least in my town, that most coffee shops don't make good hot chocolate. Starbucks makes terrible hot chocolate, and even the locally-owned coffee shops, while usually doing better than Starbucks, still don't make really good hot chocolate. Most just squirt some Hersey's Chocolate Syrup into some warm milk, but so much of the time they don't use enough syrup, and I usually end up with a warm cup of milk that has a slight chocolate flavor. Until I visited Maui Wowi. A new Maui Wowi shop opened here a few months ago, and I stopped by to check out their hot chocolate. Now I admit that Maui Wowi is just another franchise that is capitalizing on the boutique coffee fad started by Starbucks. Maui Wowi serves Kona Coffee, and according to Emily it is very good coffee. But I discovered that Maui Wowi uses a special hot chocolate mix made by the Ghirardelli Chocolate Company. If you know anything about good chocolate, you know that Ghirardelli's is a world-class maker of fine chocolate. And the hot chocolate mix used by Maui Wowi tastes excellent - they easily have the best hot chocolate in town. I've already filled up two punch cards (for two free hot chocolates) and I've almost finished my third card. It's very good and highly recommended if you like good hot chocolate.

Hey There Delilah

My 8-year-old granddaughter Katie made her singing debut last week, singing Plain White T's song Hey There Delilah acapella at her school talent show. I am very proud of her - she can sometimes be shy, but she got up in front of a large group of parents and sang through the whole song, alone in front of the microphone. I had never heard her sing before - she definitely is able hear and sing a tune, and she sounds like an alto. So I'm thinking and a Grandpa/Granddaughter act may be in our future.

Way to go, Katie! Good Job!

Funny Girl



Boom Boom Girl

Ain't She Sweet

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Today we're discussing Internet domain names - the names you type into your browser, like microsoft.com or yahoo.com, to get to your favorite web sites. For those of you who glaze over whenever computer geeks begin talking about computers, you are forewarned that this posts contains some computer terms and references, but I will try and keep it simple. And if you are involved in managing an Internet web site or need information about domain names, you may find this post helpful.

I began my computer career in the mid-90s building web sites for local area businesses, and since that time have been involved in helping to set up every aspect of a web site, including the domain name. A domain name is simply the main address name - it's a user-friendly name that makes it easy to remember a web site's address. The Internet actually works on a numbering scheme - for example, Microsoft's address number is 207.46.232.182. If you paste that number into your Internet browser, you will see the Microsoft Corp. main web page. But "microsoft.com" is easier to remember and deal with than "207.46.232.182", so domain names are a big help and are pretty much required for promoting a web site, and because of that they have become important. And buying and selling domain names is a big business on the Internet. Now, you can make up your own domain name and register it as long as no one has used it before. But if the name you want is taken, your only choices are to think up a different name or offer to buy the name you want, which may not be an option at all because the person owning the name may not want to sell it. To register your name, you would use a Domain Registrar. Network Solutions was the first domain registrar, and for the first years of the Internet they had the monopoly on registering and selling domain names. But the monopoly was ended and now many companies are available for registering domain names, which has brought the prices down considerably - Network Solutions used to charge $70 per name/per year when they were the only game in town. Now you can register your domain name with many companies for less than $10/year.

One of the most popular and visible domain registrars is GoDaddy. They have registered a large percentage of domain names, they have low prices, and many people know of them from their "titillating" ads, especially their Super Bowl ads. I've been using GoDaddy for a while now - I started using them when they were new on the scene so I've been with them for several years and, up until now, have all of my domain names registered through them. Their tech support has been good for me - you can search the Internet and find customers who have issues with them, but by and large I think they do a good job, and I've always been able to get support when I need it. They tend to be heavy-handed with their sales promotions - when registering a domain name, the customer will have to click through a few pages of colorful ads designed to sell more products like GoDaddy web hosting or GoDaddy email services. And they send out similar full-color ads to customers, advertising GoDaddy products and sales promotions. But that's not the worst of it for me, and that's not why I'm leaving GoDaddy.

I'm leaving GoDaddy because of the GoDaddy girls. The female race car driver on the GoDaddy website who's also in all of my GoDaddy email ads. The buxom scantily clad models in those Super Bowl ads. The perfect-looking faces that smile at me while I'm using the GoDaddy site. These are the reasons that I'm leaving GoDaddy. Don't misunderstand - I'm not a misogynist, and I'm "hetro from the word go". But the sales philosophy of GoDaddy seems to be "put a pretty girl in front of guys and they'll buy anything". And that bothers me on several levels, starting with my pride. Because even though I've done some stupid things in my life, I'm not a stupid person. So when GoDaddy thinks they can get me to use their services because they show a large-breasted female in their Super Bowl ad, I am insulted. Instead of appealing to my intelligence or common sense or even my wallet, they appeal to my hormones and apparently think that that's all it takes to win me over. And the more I think about it, the more offended I feel - that's what GoDaddy thinks of customers like me, that all they need to do is put a female in our line of sight and we simply start salivating and pull out the credit card to order.

But besides my self-important pride, there is another issue here. I am opposed to the sexual objectification of women. Because I like women. I've met a lot of them, and they're some of my favorite people. Many of them have helped me during my life. Some of them have been very good friends. One of them is my best friend. And using their image as a sexual lure, appealing to a base instinct for the purpose of selling product and making money, is more than a bit disgusting to me. Yes, I know lots of businesses do it, and I know that "sex sells". I know I'm not going to change the world with my little Internet diatribe. But as I've watched this marketing campaign develop over the years at GoDaddy, I've become more and more uncomfortable with it, and now I no longer want to do business with them. So I am in the process of moving my domain name management to other registrars.

I did my online research and came up with two registrars who received consistently good reviews - NameCheap and Moniker. Both offer good prices and have good reputations, so I opened accounts with both of them to explore their services and support. The basic experience with both has been smooth - easy sign-up and domain transfer - but NameCheap offers free email and URL forwarding, and Moniker charges extra for these services. In fact, with their web interface and features, NameCheap seems the best candidate for GoDaddy's former customers. Over the next few months, as the yearly fees for my domains with GoDaddy come due, I will be moving my domain names to one or both of these registrars. If you need to register a domain name, either of these two domain registrars would serve you well - unless you're just looking for boobs.

Blister Soul

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Back at the beginning of 2008, I started listening to a musician who's been around since the early 1990s. Over the years I've seen reviews and articles about Bill Mallonee and his band the Vigilantes of Love but I had never heard any of his music until a few months ago. Following a link from a blog, I listened to a couple of VoL songs and was immediately drawn to Bill's style, both band-wise and songwriting. Bill's music has been categorized as everything from roots-folk-Americana to Brit-pop, and while the strong influence of artists like Bob Dylan and Neil Young is evident, VoL sometimes sounds like Tom Petty, R.E.M, the Gin Blossoms or even an alt-country band. Put all of that together and you get a hint of Bill's music, which I am enjoying as I try to catch up on 15 or more VoL albums as well as Bill's 10+ solo recordings.

As a songwriter, Bill is both prolific and quite interesting - deep, thoughtful, even spiritual, his songs reflect brokenness and struggles that relate in a real-life way, yet are not so depressing that the listener loses hope. In fact, I think many of his songs inspire hope because of their realism and sensitivity. I'm very impressed with his ability to be revealing and honest, and to put the honesty of his thoughts and feeling into his songs. I find music like this refreshing - because it's not the sugar-coated, false love, hyped sexuality that many "hit" records are made of. Bill is a song-crafter with years of good work behind him. And yet his story is not what many would call a success story. The Vigilantes of Love broke up in the early 2000s, mainly because they couldn't afford to stay together. They had been dropped by their record company, which, in spite of several very good albums, hadn't been able to "sell" them well enough. For a while the band did very well on AAA (Adult Album Alternative) radio, but exposure through AAA does not always translate into high sales. So Bill found himself without a label and without a band, and began a solo career that hasn't even always paid the bills. In an interview from October 2007 Bill talked about the 2006 Christmas season when he had to sell a guitar to pay the rent and couldn't get part-time Christmas work from a temp agency because the only experience he had for the past 10 years was "... I was a songwriter, I managed a band and made records". And I find it interestingly sad that a talented songwriter like Bill, someone who is obviously successful at writing good songs and with a catalog of good music to be enjoyed, is getting such a seemingly poor response to his work. It certainly deserves a lot more.

So I've been searching eBay and Amazon.Com for Bill's older albums, and many of them are also available for purchase and download at volsounds.com - if you've never heard Bill's music, this is a good way to get to know him and his songs for low cost. I fully recommend his music - I believe that you will enjoy it. I am, and this is what I've collected so far:

Blister Soul (1995)
V.O.L (1996 - compilation)
To The Roof Of The Sky (1998)
Audible Sigh (2000)
Summershine (2001)
Perfumed Letter (2003)

Take a listen - to pique your interest here are a couple of MP3s from the Vigilantes of Love albums Blister Soul and Summershine - just click to listen:

You Know That (Is Nothing New) from Summershine
Offer from Blister Soul

A sweep of a feather....

I've Gotta Get a Message to You

Today I received another of what I call "guilt email" messages. You've probably received these before... they start off with a story - it could be a cute, religious, patriotic, medical or philosophical story, or sometimes it is all of the above. The story is meant to encourage, inspire or just entertain, and at the end of the story the receiver is bidden to forward the message to others, usually with a directive like "if you care about (whatever) forward this email to 10 friends...". And it's that "if" that bothers me the most. Because the message will state something like "if you really care/believe/whatever" with the implication that if you don't forward the message, you are uncaring, insensitive or don't really love God/Jesus/Mom/your country/your friends/cute little animals. Now I believe in Jesus, I like my country and I care about my friends, but my faith in Jesus, my feelings for my cat, and my concerns for my friends have nothing to do with whether or not I forward an email. In fact, I generally don't forward email messages. Working in the computer industry I'm aware that the volume of email on the Internet is tremendous, and that's primarily because of spam, but I don't think I need to add to it by forwarding every cute joke I receive from friends. And emails with attachments are even worse, using more Internet bandwidth and taking up more space on your hard drive. So usually don't forward email stories/jokes, but in spite of what these messages imply, that doesn't make me a bad or insensitive person for not wanting to clutter the Internet with forwarded email. I also don't like being someone who fills up my friends' mailboxes with alot of email - if my friends are anything like me, they already get alot of email, and don't always have time to read what they've already received. But I've noticed that sometimes, when someone realizes I didn't forward their email, their reaction indicates some degree of surprise and/or disappointment. Surprise that I didn't just forward the message along (like they did) and disappointment in me for not forwarding something they sent to me. Hey, it's nothing personal... I still like you, your kids and and your dog - I'm just trying to do my part to reduce email.

Use the "delete" button

Call Any Vegetable

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Many people like vegetables. Emily really enjoys her vegetables. Our daughter Rachel has decided to stop eating most meat and just eat vegetables. There is even a Beach Boys song about vegetables:

I'm gonna be round my vegetables
I'm gonna chow down my vegetables
I love you most of all
My favorite vege-table

If you brought a big brown bag of them home
I'd jump up and down and hope you'd toss me a carrot

I'm gonna eat my, my vegetables
i'm gonna love my, my vegetables
I love you most of all
My favorite vege-table

Most people like vegetables, and some people really like them - my friend Suzanne makes elaborate dinners just out of vegetables. A few years ago she made me a breakfast omelet out of eggs and vegetables. It was very good - it tasted like it had sausage in it, but she did it with only vegetables. And every time I visited my friends Cy and Jane, I always knew that our meals would include vegetables. Cy once told me "We aren't vegetarians - we just love vegetables".

I don't love vegetables. I don't even like most vegetables. I do like tomatoes (which are technically fruits) and cucumbers, and lettuce and celery. And Emily has been feeding me spinach in my salads, which tastes alright when covered with tomatoes, cucumbers and celery. But I avoid most other vegetables. When they are served with a meal in a restaurant, I leave them to grow cold on the side of my plate, eventually carried away to their final rest by the server clearing our dishes. Sometimes Emily will have mercy on them and move them to her plate where they will be appreciated and enjoyed. Which is fine with me - more room on my plate for the meat. And now that I am well into my 5th decade, I really don't see this changing - I guess I'll be a veggie-hater for the remainder of my years.

Within the vegetable family, the worst for me is peas and carrots (Spanish Rice is just about as bad, but since this is a Vegetable post, I'll hold off on the rice until another day). When I was a young lad, my mom served peas and carrots at dinners. She had grown up in western Kentucky and had been eating vegetables all her life, and apparently my dad didn't mind (and he would always let us know when there was something that he did mind) so there was at least one meal each week that included peas and carrots. I still remember the disappointment I felt when I sat down for dinner and saw those nasty little green globes and orange squares on my dinner plate. It shouldn't have been so bad that I didn't like them - lots of kids don't. But my dad was one of those parents that wouldn't let his children leave the table until we had finished everything on our plates. So I spent some of my best young years sitting at the kitchen table, staring for hours at a dinner plate that, while stripped of every other morsel of edible food, contained now near-frozen organic remains. Sometimes, to get rid of them, I would scoop up a mouthful and quickly shovel it in, followed by about a quart of milk to wash it all down, swallowing as fast as I could so that none of the vile flavor would touch my sensitive taste buds. But my parents were insidious - they always made sure that the amount of peas and carrots on my plate was greater than the amount of milk in my glass (I think the usual serving of P&Cs weighted about 7.5 pounds). So I would sit there, not allowed to leave the table until my plate was clean, hour after hour, listening to the TV in the next room but denied the pleasure of seeing which amphibian Endora would turn Darrin into, or how Napoleon Solo and Illya Kuryakin were going to handle THRUSH that evening.

Until finally, I discovered a solution. I started hiding the peas and carrots. After the rest of my family finished their meal and left the table, leaving me alone again with my herbaceous nemesis (a semi-nightly event in our family) I would gather up the veggies and hide them on the kitchen window sill behind the curtains. I tried to remember to clean off the sill the next day, and that worked OK for a while, but I wasn't always able to get to it before school... eventually my mom discovered piles of dried-up peas and carrots on the window sill and she was pretty sure who to blame. So I had to re-adjust my strategy and find another hiding place. A few months later, my mom found it - while cleaning behind the refrigerator. Of course, I found other ways to dispose of unwanted food items - pushing the food through a window screen out into the dog pen worked for awhile - but eventually I got old enough to refuse to eat peas and carrots, or even to show up for dinner at all. Once I got my paper route and started making my own money, it was McDonald's most every night for me. After all, you don't have to worry about finding any asparagus or zucchini in a Big Mac.

You deserve a break today...