Scott Cramer wrote this.

I was feeding my daughter at a restaurant recently and a family at another table was watching as if we were dinner theatre. My wife was eating and talking to a friend of ours. I was a part of the conversation, but was spooning in the apple/pear babyfood while deftly dodging waving baby hands. No big deal. When we are out I like to give Erin a break and let her eat in peace since she has Maddie a lot while I am working with clients during the day. However, even after the 80’s and 90’s sensitive-pony-tail-quiche-eating-yet-somehow-still-manly revolution, people are amazed at a father taking care of a baby – in public, no less! Now, if your wife is dead then it’s a different story – very much akin to how a blind person’s other senses heighten to make up for the lack of sight. A widowed father channels the ghost of a British nanny, and people don’t think twice about it. Erin, as evidenced by the hearty whacks in the arm I get for bad humor told too loudly in public, is not deceased. And yet, I’ve never accidentally fed my daughter the mexican hot salsa, or left the cudgel sized steakhouse knife within her reach at the local House of Meat. I’m actually getting worried that I’ll be turned in to some citizen’s action coalition for disrupting the American way of life. I mean, really, how’s a man supposed to swill beer and wave the flag with a half masticated soggy french fry on his shoulder?

I’m ordering at the McD’s drive-thru and I’m saying “please” and “thank-you” to the tinny voice on the speaker. You’d think being polite made me some kind of alien. I halfway think the girl taking the orders thought I was being sarcastic. I was at the grocery and struck up a congenial conversation with the checkout girl – once again, the Martians had landed! When did the general public trust move so far away from social niceties? No, it doesn’t count if people are contractually obligated by the terms of their employment to say, “Have a nice day.” I have to resist the urge to turn to the dark side and throttle these people. “No Sir, we’re very sorry we are unable to take the slightest effort and help you resolve your problem. But, please, have a nice day! B’bye!” Grrr…

I know I’m getting older. I’ve even sat on the swing on my porch – on purpose, not just because I was locked out of the house. I’m not ready to say “In my day we only… blah blah blah.” I’m not just talking about unpolite kids younger than me; I’m seeing a decline across the board. I’ve had just as many senior citizens blow me off as high schoolers. I checked my deodorant – still working. I even bought some breath mints just in case. People ignore minty-fresh politeness just as much as onion-burrito-for-lunch politeness.

It’s that darn rap music isn’t it? No wait, baby boomers did this! No, yuppies and their latch-key kids! What about sexual content on TV? Violence in the movies? Bad David Spade films?

It doesn’t matter.

Try and make a social contract. Say please. Say thank-you. Smile once in a while.

And mean it.

Damnit.

Sleep is highly overrated.

Falling asleep in front of the computer, then, is off the charts.

If you thought drool on your pillow was bad, just wait until you short out your keyboard.

O.h w.ell, w/ho n.ee.ddds key.s.

Even if there were more than 24 hours in a day, we’d still somehow find a way to have overtime.

There are days I don’t even want to watch TV but I’ll turn on the TiVo just to hear that funny little ba-Blip sound it makes when you push the buttons on the remote.

Ever notice how when you press the fast forward button three times it sounds like you’re playing “Pop Goes the Weasel?”

Umm… me neither.

Today was a shared birthday party for my 1-year-old daughter Maddie and my nephew Jeffy, who’s actually 26 but we still call him Jeffy sometimes because, well, old habits are hard to break. My family is big on banking birthdays that fall within the same week and throwing a combined multiple birthday bash. The way we sing, that’s our best bet. We’re lucky to get through one full “Happy Birthday” song every couple months, let alone multiple renditions within a week’s time.

Conversations at events with Jeffy, er, Jeff, usually turn toward sports at some point during the evening. Basketball, Football, Baseball, Pygmy LaCrosse – it doesn’t really matter. With the advent of satellite television, there is always something in season somewhere in the world. Tonight’s conversation was on Tiger Woods. For those of you who havn’t heard of Tiger, he plays golf. Actually, I’m not sure that is a fair assessment. Tiger hits the ball and it goes into the hole. Every time. That sums it up a bit better. In any case, Jeff tells me that Tiger wouldn’t need to play in a tournament for, like, two years and he’d still be ranked No. 1. He could be mortally wounded in a golfing accident (hey, I’ve seen Caddyshack!) and still be ranked No. 1.

I don’t know if Jeff bought into my theory but I think Tiger’s just biding his time until he can get onto the pro bowler’s circuit.

I was looking at a can of Coke and saw the picture of the old Coke bottle they put on the can – the stylish curved glass bottle with condensation glistening from it’s smooth cool surface.

And I thought to myself, maybe all of us should get tattooed with images from when we were younger and sexier too.

I was recently shopping for new shorts this season. I wasn’t looking for anything special, just a pair of jean shorts that fall somewhere six inches longer than indecent but still above the knee. All I could find were just shy of regular long pants. What, I ask you, is the point of allowing only four inches of one’s calf and shin to see the light of day? The worst of both worlds – too long for a hot day and too air conditioned for a cool day. After much searching I finally found a risqu? pair that falls just above the knee. I had to abandon all sense of style and go to Sam’s club. I’m over 30. I’m married. I’m a parent. People don’t expect much of me in the style department anymore – so I bought two.

In my wanderings, though, I noticed a phenomenon I’ve come to call The Natural Conservation of Short’s Material (NCOSM for short). I’m not sure if scientists have picked up on this bizarre happening yet, but there appears to be an inverse relationship going on between the length of men’s and women’s shorts. As I walked by racks upon racks of summer apparel in multiple retail stores (please don’t tell Sam’s Club – I might not qualify for my prestigious membership) I saw all of the aforementioned long men’s shorts and very (I’m talking Charlie’s Angels and Daisy Duke here) short women’s shorts. I mistakenly picked one pair up thinking some errant clerk had put the sweatbands in the clothing aisle. What I have come up with through extensive follow-up research (it only just looked like I was ogling women at the mall) is that NCOSM helps keep a balance of fabric in the universe. I remember when I was younger and boy’s and girl’s short were all relatively the same length. Now I see that men’s shorts are ridiculously longer each season and women’s shorts, adhering to the principles of NCOSM, are shorter.

In the interest of further scientific study, I hereby encourage all men to start buying only boxers instead of briefs, and I’m looking for funding to bring back the 1920’s style men’s bathing suits. We all owe it to the scientific community at large to follow this through to the very (uncovered) end.

5.2 of today’s billable hours just paid for the new lawnmower I bought. One minute the hours-to-dollars ratio was all about electronic equipment and computer toys and then the next, yard equipment and domestic supplies. Standing in Sears, I was actually excited about firing up that 6 hp Briggs & Stratton engine on the shiny new 22″ deck with, I might add, the large back tires. Tres lawn chic!

Wait a minute – I don’t even like mowing! Now I’m spouting cute French sayings about the mower? There’s something sinister about this domesticity stuff. I remember when “model” wasn’t a part of “remodeling” and Nine Inch Nails weren’t literally nine-inch nails.

I tell myself, though, there’s still hope.

I don’t own a minivan.

I had a dream about the afterlife. I was walking around what I assumed was Heaven. Everything was white and fluffy with little cloudy wisps here and there. It struck me odd – not that I was there – but that walking on clouds wasn’t springy, or even soft; it was more like walking across a tile floor. Odd, the thoughts that come to you when you aren’t burdened with things like timeclocks and taxes. After walking for a bit, I ran into what I can only describe as a concierge or events director. No wings or halo and he was dressed a lot like Gopher from the Love Boat (white uniform with shorts and a cap). Maybe everyone’s vision of heaven is uniquely their own, or maybe I had arrived further south than I originally surmised. In either case, I was worried.

Gopher – he didn’t have a nametag – was carrying a clipboard. It was, he said, a signup sheet. He explained to me that every new arrival gets to sign up for a one-on-one meeting with any ten souls he, she, or it (I didn’t question the “it” but I did think I had stepped on at least one squishy thing in my walking to this point), would like to see. Anyone at all. Before I had a chance to speak, he added that family members did not count and, in fact, there was an entirely separate sheet for folks with whom you’d like to remain “unlisted”.

My mind was racing. This was amazing! Anyone in the entire history of mankind! And of course, I couldn’t think of a single dead person. How comforting to know Murphy’s Law still applies in the afterlife. I asked Gopher if I could get back to him. Hey, I figured, I’ve got an eternity. Surprisingly, Gopher said that due to the incredible number of requests they have to process, he could only give me another ten minutes. Oy. He then quipped about Murphy’s Law still applying in the afterlife. Great – irony too.

Okay, concentration time. Suddenly, it came to me. For my first choice, Jesus Christ. Gopher nodded. It was, he said, a very popular choice. The waiting list, however, was approximately a billion years. If I wanted to do a group session, I could get in a millenia early, plus free wine and all the bread I could eat. Never one to pass on a bargain I went for the deal and he scribbled what appeared to be “apostle special” after my name.

Hoping for something a bit sooner than unimaginably far off, my second choice was Elvis. As an afterthought, I’m rather glad the choices randomly came to me in this order. Gopher shook his head and informed me that Elvis wasn’t dead yet. I knew it! I thought about asking for Sasquatch, but was rather afraid he might be real – and dead – or even worse, that Gopher would remind me that family members didn’t count. Gopher informed me that I could, if I wished, combine two choices and be put on an express list for when Elvis did pass away. It was similar, he said, to selling short in the stock market. Regis Philbin was one of their top express celebrity lists. It turns out a lot of people really were sick to death of that “Is that your final answer?” catch phrase. Time was running short (in eternity, go figure) so I opted to use choices two and three to get on the list for The King.

Choices four through eight went pretty quick. Albert Einstein, Jim Morrison, Adam&Eve (they were running a special), Hercules (not a myth), and Genghis Khan. Hey, I was pressed for time!

I ran into a glitch looking for number nine. Harry Houdini (missing), Claude Raines (nobody had seen him), George Burns (bet wrong on God’s sense of humor), and Steve “The Crocodile Hunter” Irwin (not dead yet; I missed a few episodes and figured I’d give it a try). Gopher was looking a little peeved so I settled on Crazy Larry. He was a homeless guy I used to pass on the way to work. I always wanted to know how he did that weird thing with his eyes whenever you dropped change in his cup.

Gopher was tapping his watch. A minute to go and one more choice to make. As I was trying to narrow it down between Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa I was curtly informed that I was out of time. However, in fairness, I would receive a random selection for my tenth and final choice. Gopher picked up a laptop from the cloudy wisps around our feet and fired it up (I could swear it was running Linux). He keyed in my earlier picks and clicked a randomize button by the empty slot for number ten. Richard Nixon. Hey, I was as surprised as anybody!

Gopher snapped the laptop shut, tucked it neatly under his arm, and started to walk off. I opened my mouth to ask what I was supposed to do now and before I could get out a sound he pointed at a sign I hadn’t noticed before. “Waiting Room”. All in all it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. All the magazines were up-to-date, the music they piped in was pretty snappy, and they even had a lot of lesser known famous people milling about to help you pass the time.

After an eternity (I mean that) of small talk, I was invited to sit in on a Poker game with Dick York (Darrin #1 from Bewitched), David Zaiden (inventor of the hula doll), and Og (successfully proved Tyranasaurus Rex was a meat-eater). I was next in line for the first of my after-life meetings (Nixon) and was about to lay down a royal flush (life, err, death was good!) when suddenly… I woke up back on Earth.

Sigh. Reincarnation’s a b*tch.

Oy vey.

Now if only his head bobbled up and down…

[People] want to be spoon-fed. They need “art porridge” so that they can swallow it easily, without effort. People do not understand one another, so how is it possible for them to fathom the world?
—Javad Mirjavad

For several nights I have been adrift on the world wide web, picking up strong currents of interest and letting them take me to where they meet another current, then another, and another. No, I don’t get a lot of sleep. However, it’s a pretty good bet I would not have run into Javad any other way. His art alone would not have made me stay at the site I visited but I found meaning in his words. To tell the truth, I don’t even remember the link that led me to the site about him. I believe I was searching for a poem about Leonardo da Vinci and his search for the human soul – but that’s another story (I just wanted to mention it to sound scholarly).

Javad’s concept was on the mark – but I think it goes far deeper than a bowl of porridge. The majority of people I see wouldn’t even take the time to microwave a batch of “art porridge”. That would involve getting out the bowl, the porridge, the milk, doing some mixing, and figuring out how long to nuke it for one’s personal art tastes. Much much simpler to drive on down to McArtdonalds and get a Happy Art Meal to go. They fix it their way, you know what to expect, and you gobble it down. You’re sated, you belch, you go back home and watch Cops. Perhaps I am being a bit facetious but if they hung the paintings on the outside of the museums so people could just drive by and look, I’d bet there would be a lot more “art lovers”. The refrigerator magnet business would probably take off like a rocket! Monet pinning up “Scribble in crayon at age 2.”

As a race, we’re too busy flipping each other off on the highway or blowing each other up for differences in opinion. Who’s got time to study the subtleties of this art thing? Can’t we just listen to the radio and watch the movie of the week – or hey, what about those Lifetime Movies for Women? I’ve got TiVo all set up for A&E’s bio of Jeff Foxworthy – surely that has to count for a couple art points. Okay, okay, facetious again.

One thing that I am getting at – or trudging knee deep in muck towards, depending on your viewpoint – is that people gravitate more and more toward the instant gratification, at the expense of the more time consuming appreciation and, more importantly, understanding of a material. The former requires little more than a passive viewer. The latter requires a person to interact and/or experience a material, to think about it, discover it’s background, predict it’s future. In paintings, music, or writing, so many people walk away with just the surface experience. It was a pretty picture, nice tune, or a good story – The Mona Lisa, Mozart Symphony, or Moby Dick. Dig deeper, look at the impact, the social relevance, the statements that were made. What of the Mona Lisa’s subtle smile? Mozart’s depression? Moby Dick’s symbolism? If it ain’t on the test, forgot about it! If it is, grab the Cliff’s Notes!

How many dimensions, how many intricasies, does the human soul contain? What of the mystery of life? We may have to wait for the MTV special report to find out.

“I live life in the margins of society. And the rules of normal society don’t apply in the margins.”
—Tamara de Lempicka

There’s a certain arrogance to throwing down the rule book and not playing the game like the other six billion people on the planet. Our elders solidly in the middle of the game. The younger generation too naieve to understand anything outside of the game. Our handfuls of eclectic friends, all holding on to eccentricities as shields against the norm. We look in at the circle of society in front of us; at how blissfully ignorant these other people are, running around playing by their quaint little rules. We step back out of their way – trying the best we can to keep their shadows from falling on our enlightenment. Nobody can tell us anything!

Except, perhaps, the people that stepped over the edge before us. The author of the quote at the beginning – she died 21 years ago at the age of 82. We have a tendency to think we’re the first ones to ever color outside the lines, but enlightenment’s been going on for a long time. It’s not wrong to throw down the rule book but perhaps when we do, we take on a deceptive arrogance. I started thinking that there were, after all, people outside the rules long before I could even read rules, let alone abandon them. I started thinking about who might be standing outside my little circle. Looking over my shoulder. Lamenting my ignorance.

And then I thought perhaps, hopefully, I just joined them.

There is no greater sound than my daughter’s laugh. No greater sight than her smile. The look of joy in her eyes because she is with me and I’m flying her effortlessly through the living room. No screaming or mistrust. No generation gap. Not yet. I’d step in front of a bullet for her. It wouldn’t take a second thought. I’d stand up to God for her. I never knew the depth of love and devotion before she came into this world. And one day I’ll let her go. She’ll start her own journey and make her own mistakes. I’ll be strong for her. I’ll cry for both of us. But for now, there is her laugh. Her smile. Everything else is tomorrow.

I finally saw the movie Pay It Forward on video tonight. Hollywood took a simple but powerful concept and made it work on film. You do something good for three people – not just leaving an extra 2% tip or dropping your McDonald’s change into the charity box at the drivethrough, but something that can change lives. The concept is that these people then give, or pay it forward, to three other people, and so on, and so on. Think of it as if God started an MLM pyramid scam, or what you might get if you crossed the Boy Scouts with Amway.

Such a beautifully simple plan, and Hollywood – the same Hollywood that brought us Highlander 2 and Dude, Who Stole My Script – showed us how it could work.

Movie spoiler coming up here, so go watch the movie and come back in a couple hours.

Okay, so let’s ignore the fact that the main character dies a terribly unfair death by stabbing at the end of the film – hey, I give Hollywood credit, I didn’t say they were the Pope. The Pay It Forward idea makes a lot of sense. There’s no big obstacle that would keep it from working. You don’t pay into the plan with $250 and then sucker in your friends. You don’t send chain letters threatening severe gastrointestinal distress (you didn’t get one of those?) if you break the chain. All you have to do is care – and maybe, just maybe miss an episode of Friends and go out and actually do something.

The irony that I’m getting at is the idea, however logical and pathetically simple it is to comprehend, would never work in real life. Why? Because in real life – our religious, ethical, Save the Whales real life – most people don’t measure up to the flickering man-made illusion of the movie. In real life we’re looking forward to another tub of popcorn and bottomless Coke waiting for Pay It Forward 2, the sequel.

We go to the movies for escapism and watch what we should be doing in real life – so we can go home and not worry about it.

Twisted.

http://www.monkeyphonecall.com/

Suddenly my dumb ideas seem brighter.

My wife told me about a show she watched on one of those Nature cable channels. It was all about this guy who took tourists out with him while he fed sharks. He’d get the sharks to jump right up to the boat’s deck to eat the bait. One day he decided he wanted to pet one of the sharks (hey, it’s his arm). Something unusual happened, though. He discovered that when he hit the shark in just the right place on the head it went into a trance-like stupor for several minutes.

And I thought to myself, wouldn’t that be nice if you could do that to your boss?

I’m intrigued by this whole Disclosure Project thing.

If the UFO and extraterrestrial conspiracy and cover-up is so damn secret then why don’t “they” (CIA, KGB, secret government, or hey, even Chris Carter’s copyright lawyers) just kill Steven Greer? “They” could always say a kook did it – like to John Lennon. Maybe “they” don’t want a martyr – like in the whole X-Files / Agent Mulder storyline. I don’t mean to draw a blueprint here or advocate the demise or pain of anyone, but “they” could always just give Doctor Greer a fast moving cancer and let him “go naturally.” He could even contract it as a matter of course in his profession performing emergency medicine. Does anyone know if Doctor Greer still performs emergency medicine – or still works at all?

Perhaps, even at this level and with his growing media profile, Doctor Greer is still just an insignificant little gnat. “They” (should) have things so under control that none of Doctor Greer’s call to arms matter, including petty little Congressional hearings. Hey, you thought Monica Lewinsky blowing President Clinton was a circus? Perhaps “they” want the hearing, and will control it. “They”, I would imagine, have a lot of powerful momentum going from the 1940’s to present. Steven Greer’s got less than a decade; the tortoise to “their” hare. Maybe Steven Greer is even working for “them.” If so, unknowingly – or knowingly? Conspiracy theory runs both sides of the street.

Personally, I want to believe in Disclosure Project. If he’s honest, Doctor Greer has a job of David and Goliath proportions. In our age, though, David’s slingshot and ammo are a lot more expensive so I understand that he needs funding. His funding appears to come from donations, video sales, books, or whatever can generate the currency. Being the capitalistic cynic that I am, though, I’d like to see where all the profits are going (and yes, I have trouble with world hunger organizations too). What does Steven Greer – the man, not the mythic hero – get out of all this monetarily? In this arena I call for open Disclosure of accounting of his bank statement.

In the end, and I said it earlier, I want to believe. Maybe Doctor Steven Greer really is the tortoise to “their” hare. Maybe it will turn out just like that story. I hope so. Good luck Doctor Greer. You’ve got your soap-box – now just don’t fall off.

If you are curious where the ThoughtDiver name came from, it was from a letter written by Herman Melville I found published many years ago. Some nice people have made the text availalble online if anyone would like to read it or other Melville writings.

Go to: Melville’s Reflections

For the ThoughtDiver quote, search down the page for, “On Ralph Waldo Emerson and his Philosophy”.