How to be Productive
One of my favorite sketch shows of all time is The Kids in the Hall.
My favorite kid in said Hall was Kevin McDonald.
This is a sketch he wrote and starred in about a guy with a to do list.
I’ve always enjoyed that sketch, but I appreciated it far more after I learned that it was inspired by a conversation he had with Dave Foley in which Foley made fun of McDonald after seeing that he had a beat up, tattered to do list, the final item on which was “Make new list.”
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How to Talk Nonsense
When I was a kid, I heard the term “hiding your light under a bushel” and couldn’t figure out what it meant. I asked my mom, who explained the concept.
When she was done, I believe the three primary questions I asked were:
Why would somebody do that?
A bushel of what?
and
Wouldn’t the bushel catch fire when the lightbulb gets hot?
I was a very literal-minded child.
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How to Recast a Superhero
Apparently Michael Keaton is coming back as Batman in the next Flash movie, which they’re making as I write this. I hope they have to go to Arkham Asylum and question Jack Nicholson’s Joker. I know there’s a continuity problem with that, but I propose the following dialog to fix it.
Flash – He’s still alive? I thought he fell to his death.
Batman – He faked his death.
Joker – That actually fooled you?! It was all done with toy helicopters and cartoons!
How to Learn from History
When I was a kid, we used to save all of our pop and beer cans. (The beer inside the beer cans were 100% my parents’ property, but once they were empty, and essentially trash, the cans belonged to all of us. There’s some sort of lesson in that, I think.) We would collect them in giant garbage bags for that one time a year when we would drive down to Oregon to visit family, because you were paid something like 25 cents a pound to recycle aluminum in Washington, but in Oregon you could turn in the cans for a refund of the 5-cents-per-can deposit all Oregonians had to pay. We didn’t pay the deposit, but got the refund anyway.
I often suspected that a lot of Washingtonians were drawn to vacation in northern Oregon by that deposit, but only the cheapest Washingtonians, which might have fed into why Oregonians seemed to resent Washingtonians so much.
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How to Understand Folk Wisdom
I put a lot of effort into trying to write a male equivalent to “happy wife, happy life.” The best I came up with was: “use the broom, happy groom.”
I’m not proud that I wrote that. Any man who actually uses that rhyme and means it doesn’t deserve a relationship.
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How to Appreciate Your Favorite Band
The three lead singers of Genesis were: Peter Gabriel, Phil Collins, and Ray Wilson.
I look at that list and I’m honestly not sure if I envy Ray Wilson for being on it with two towering talents, or feel sorry for him for knowing he can never live up to them.
He was a young, talented, good looking guy they brought in for one album when Phil left the band in the late 1990s.
If the actuarial tables are right, there will come a day that Ray Wilson will be the last remaining living member of the band Genesis. That will be a sad day, but if Mike Rutherford was ever mean to him, that’s when we’ll hear about it.
Note from Missy: Heyyy, now, look. Yes, the guys from Duran Duran were (and mostly still are) very attractive. But their debut studio album just turned 40 this year, and they have a new album coming out this year. I think we can all agree that they’re more to them than their (very) pretty faces.
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How to Evaluate a New Technology
3D Printers, CNC routers, and laser cutters fall into the category of items that are really cool but don’t have a place in my life at the moment. They are things that I would use to make things I don’t need, which makes them also things I don’t need.
You can buy the specialized parts you need to build a 3D printer online and assemble the rest using stuff you can buy at any home center. If I went that route, I’d be building a thing I don’t need that builds things I don’t need. I’ve read that often, when someone builds their first 3D printer, one of the first things they do is use it to make a better 3D printer; so I could conceivably be building a thing I don’t need that will build a thing I don’t need that builds things I don’t need.
I think the takeaway here is that if I ever get into 3D printing, I will start a chain reaction that will one day destroy the world. Instead of pollution or nanobot gray goo, we would be buried under an avalanche of old 3D printers and plastic doodads that look like they’re made from bright orange shredded wheat.
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