The Thank You For Holding, Your Call Is Important To Us, Title 17 Anti-Muzak Amendment for Public Mental Health

It’s hard to predict all the small ways in which life is going to change as the economy continues to go down the toilet, but one thing for sure is that we are all going to spend a lot more time on hold. With each round of layoffs and corporate consolidations, human contact on the phone will be one notch more elusive. And what will follow each affirmation by an infuriatingly friendly-sounding woman that your call is important to her? More Muzak.

Muzak is among the worst of all human creations. In the list of things humanity can be proud of, Muzak ranks somewhere between the Tuskegee experiment and the dropping of the second H bomb. As more of this artistic abomination is forced upon us, what is now a moderate germ of annoyance is going to balloon into a pandemic.

Why do we have to listen to Muzak?

When the nice lady on the phone tells you that your call is important to her and that the estimated wait time for a customer service representative is 37 minutes, what she really means is this: “the company with which you are waiting to do business has conducted a cost / benefit analysis and determined that connecting you with a customer service representative in 36 minutes would cost just slightly more than the risk of losing you as a customer, and that making you wait 38 minutes to speak with a customer service representative might be just aggravating enough that you decide to screw it and just live without electricity / life insurance / gas / frequent flier miles. And when you are being pushed right up to, but not over, the brink of gouging out your own eyeballs, the theory goes, a little light music would be nice.

OK. Nothing wrong with that. Everyone likes music. Soothing is good. But why does it have to be bowel-loosening, soprano saxophone, duel-octave, no-reverb guitar lick drivel? Musical taste is subjective, but only up to a point. Muzak crosses the threshold: objectively speaking, it is a cold, hard scientific fact that Muzak is absolute shit. Calm, soothing music does not have to be absolute shit. Think of a Miles Davis ballad – wispy, muted trumpet phrases so hauntingly beautiful they could move a person to tears. Or some nice bluegrass - Jerry Douglas creating such entrancing sounds with his dobro. Yo-Yo Ma and his cello. Or even some Steely Dan. So how does laxitive-esque bowel-of-the-creative-universe trash beat out the crown jewels of human artistic achievement in the telephonic broadcast realm? The latter just can’t compete on cost. Muzak is cheap; good music is not.

A Few Legal Concepts to Frame the Issue

United States copyright law is built upon the premise that you should not be able to steal a person’s work. Just as, if a carpenter builds a house, you can’t have it unless you pay him for it, you can’t take a musician’s song without throwing a little cash compensation his way. An artistic product is the property of its creator (I don’t mean God; I mean the starving singer-songwriter). But there are exceptions to all property laws. Under the concept of eminent domain, for example, the government can confiscate private property if the greater public good requires it. Finally, while a person is generally free to do whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t harm others, there are even some legal limits to that concept. You are not allowed to sell yourself into slavery or hawk your organs on E-Bay, even if you decide it would be in your best interest to do so.

Let’s apply all of this to life-on-hold. At some point, the decision as to whether to keep holding for the next customer service representative, to whom your business is important, is really not a choice. You have to do it. If you hang up and your electricity account gets cancelled, and you can’t heat your house or watch Two And A Half Men, you are effectively surrendering an essential freedom. You are being held against your will and having Muzak forced upon you, and that is akin to slavery. There being no practical way to end this modern fact of life, at the very least, its harmful effects need to be mitigated. Muzak must be banned and good music provided in its place.

Proposed Revisions to United States Copyright Law

Title 17 of the United States Code outlines the parameters of copyright protections and exceptions. As explained by the revered Justice Potter Stewart, “the ultimate aim of [our copyright law] is to stimulate artistic creativity for the general public good.” While copyright law generally requires that an artist be compensated for the use of his music, there are exceptions, such as fair use, when the benefit to the public of having access to the music outweighs the loss to the artist of not being compensated for it. Royalty-free broadcasting of an artist’s work over the phone lines for the segment of the population that is waiting for the next available customer service representative to whom its business is important would be of great benefit to the general public. Such permitted use should be the law.

No evaluation has ever been conducted of the loss to society due to insanity, suicide and worse, resulting from forced exposure to Muzak. But, unquestionably, such loss is staggering. The benefit of preventing these widespread atrocities would far outweigh any loss to the artistic community. The forced licensing of good, soothing music, could actually stimulate creativity. The billions of man-hours spent on hold could foster a whole new generation of creative minds.

What I Intend To Do About It

I am moving to Washington, DC soon and, when I get there, will immediately start lobbying congress to pass my first bill: the Thank You For Holding, Your Call Is Important To Us Title 17 Amendment for Public Mental Health. This legislation will be simple to draft – no royalties due for any music broadcast over the phone lines to any person who is on hold – and even simpler to pass since, for the past 32 years, the entirety of the U.S. copyright regime has become the unabashed whore of corporate interests, led by Sonny Bono and Mickey Mouse (I’m not making this up; these are the facts). Passing this legislation will be in the best interest of the corporate community since it will pacify, and increase the lifespan of, its customer base. I’ll get to DC on a Monday and, assuming I can set up a quick lunch date with Walt Disney’s lobbying firm, I’d expect this to be signed into law by a week from Tuesday. If that fails, I’ll look into gathering some funds to purchase a sovereign nation (one of the many abandoned oil rigs located just far enough off the coast to be in international waters, which used to house most of the world’s porn and gambling servers and which, following the Y2K dot-com crash, can be had for cheap). From there, I could set up some phone banks from which good music could be broadcast subject only to my country’s own copyright laws (drafted, of course, by yours truly with, maybe, a little help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation).

Muzak is a disease that must be eliminated! The future of humanity depends on it! Give it some thought the next time you’re on hold. Do not give in. The time for change is now!

The Running Kool-Aid: Why I Have Drunk It and Why You Should Too

My aunt and uncle had two things they swore they wouldn’t do when they had kids: make guests listen to their kids play musical instruments and have their kids leave the message on the answering machine. They put up a noble fight but, in the end, they succumbed. A few short years after the promise, there I was, on the couch, when the suggestion was floated out there: maybe cousin Ricky should drag his trombone up from the basement and serenade me with a few toots. And sure enough, when I called on the phone and nobody was home, whose adorable voice did I hear asking me to leave a message? Three year-old cousin Lyla’s. There are some forces you just can’t beat.

And, when I took up running a few years ago, I swore that I would not become THAT GUY who had to preach on and on about how absolutely wonderful running is and why you just absolutely had to give it a try yourself. I think we all know where this is going. What can I say? When you find God or Amway or crack cocaine or whatever it is that gets you out of bed in the morning, you want to yell it in the streets. Or at least e-mail it to your closest 200 friends. Or, better yet, post it on your blog. You can stop reading any time now. Unless you’re already a runner, this could get nauseating. If you care to read on, here are my top five reasons you should start running.

Reason Number One: Running is Easy

Professional runners will deny this, but running is easy. They will tell you that, like any sport, becoming a great runner takes a lifetime of practice and commitment, that there are a million subtleties to conquer. Not true. You’ve seen people run. All you have to remember is that after you put your left foot forward, you then have to put your right foot forward. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. That’s it. If you mess up and do, for example, two left foots in a row, you’ll be skipping. And it’s hard not to notice when you’re skipping. I’ve glossed over a few steps. You should drink a glass of water before you go out for a run, and you need to know how to tie shoes. If you have a hard time with either of those, you should probably stay away from sports generally.

Reason Number Two: Running is Cheap

This point can be made most powerfully if we compare running to another sport. Pick a sport, any sport. Let’s say, I don’t know, how about polo. If you want to give polo a shot, you need a stable of horses, boots, one of those black fuzzy helmets and a big mallet thing. Once you throw in all the peripherals – a Jaguar XJ8, a horse trainer, prep school tuition, some rope – you’re talking probably half a million bucks just to get started. To be a runner, on the other hand, all you need is a pair of shoes. Some of the most elite Kenyan marathoners started out, as kids, running with rubber flip-flops. You could pick up a second hand pair of those for under fifty cents. Even if you want to go seriously high end, you can get shoes custom-fitted, by a guy with a PhD, to match your exact pronation and arch for about $110. That is the absolute upper limit. You just cannot spend more than that on a pair of running shoes, even if you are specifically trying to get gouged. I guess you need socks too. So add another seven bucks for a real fancy pair. That’s it. You’ll hear runners talk about wicking shirts, anti-chafing shorts, Gu, GPSs, UV shades, and on and on, but that’s all just first-worldy running magazine-marketed stuff designed to keep cash flowing and make runners feel like they’re part of some real sport. Even clothes are optional. You hear from time to time, seriously, about naked 10Ks. Up to you. This may sound sexy, but I’m sure it’s really not. Also, do a quick read through your local indecency ordinances before setting out in the buff.

Reason Number Three: Running Lets You be Holier Than Thou

Be honest with yourself for a moment. What is your main motivation for doing anything? Mostly so that you can think you’re better than other people. Right? Come on, of course it is. Unless you live in Boulder, Colorado, there will be an article in your local newspaper every single day from tomorrow until the end of time about how obese and unhealthy everyone in your community is. Running doesn’t solve all health problems, but it’s generally good for you, so that’s close enough. That means that, if you’re a runner, you can turn your nose up at every article pointing out what a public health crash course we’re on, or how horrifically complacent and out of shape the general population is, knowing what a long, healthy, lovely life you are going to live. Applying this to your workaday life, you can paste on a smug little smile with the knowledge that every jerk that cuts you off on the highway or boss that only skims your emails probably has a higher body mass index than you.

Reason Number Four: Running Lets You Eat Anything in the World

If you run enough, you can eat ANYTHING you want. A good, long run burns around 2000 calories. That’s about as much as you need to eat in a day, which means that if you eat a healthy breakfast, a sensible lunch and a full dinner and then run 20 miles, when you get home, you can eat another entire healthy breakfast, sensible lunch and full dinner without gaining an ounce. Or you can stick to the regular number of meals and live off of a three-beer-and-a-bacon-cheeseburger-a-day diet with no net caloric change at all. One caveat here is that the beer does still tend to go to the gut and so, if you’re trying to avoid the ridiculous-looking beer-swilling runner’s physique (120 pounds, half of which protrude from between your waist and your nipples), you’ll want to think about adding on some kind of abdominal regiment as well. Otherwise, you’re free to pound the pavement and then settle down every evening on your regular stool at the Cheesecake Factory bar.

Reason Number Five: Running Makes You Feel Good

And finally, the clincher: running makes you feel good. It’s the endorphins. Endorphins are as much fun as any other drug, and they’re free, transportable across state borders and don’t have to be purchased from some sketchy high school dropout. Endorphins are designed to mitigate extreme pain. They’re supposed to be secreted right before something horrible happens so that your body doesn’t go into shock. Running manipulates your body into producing a dose of self-medication that lasts all day long. Some would say that there’s no manipulation involved, that running is exactly the kind of “something horrible” that endorphins are meant to counter. I won’t argue with that. Despite the whole poetic wax-job in the preceding paragraphs, I’ll be the first to admit that running itself sucks. The first five miles of any run are horrible. All the rest of the miles are slightly less horrible, but certainly not at all pleasurable. It’s when you get done that you start to feel good. Kind of a reverse hangover. Pain first, then pleasure, and only very rare instances of doing something stupid that you don’t remember, but later discover on YouTube. For the 18 hours following your run, you’ll feel relaxed and generally more equipped to deal with whatever shit the universe deals you over the course of the day.

So there you have it – my little unsolicited dose of self-righteous prosthelytizing. You can take it or leave it. But even if you don’t immediately start living the nirvana of a life I’ve offered up for you, at least you’ll understand why the guy in tights you see every morning checking his pulse by the sidewalk looks so appallingly serene.

P.S. Here is a video dispatch from my tri-state Thanksgiving run through South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEd4E6RJSnE

The IROC-Z Quotient. Standardized Testing for Jerks.

The modern world is a complicated place. Very often, we don't have the time, energy or resources to evaluate for ourselves the full nature of a person or a situation, and so have to rely on some kind of quantitative shorthand. And as surely as water runs downhill, the world teaches to the test.

One hundred out of one hundred university provosts will tell you that choosing a college is a complicated, intimate decision and that the U.S. News and World Report college rankings are meaningless drivel. But, of course, twenty-five out of twenty-five colleges that rank in the top twenty-five splash their statistic all over every prospective-bound brochure. A 17 point drop in the S&P 500 or a 53% percent chance of rain are utterly meaningless figures. They do absolutely nothing to describe the world or predict the future. Yet these numbers are, almost without exception, among the first things we hear on a newscast. They are scientific calculations after all, right?, and so, even if imperfect, they have to mean SOMETHING.

Over time, numeric proxies start to eclipse reality itself. The CEO spouts effusive corporate-speak to nudge up a share price. The parent enlists Kaplan to brainwash his kids for an average net, money-back guaranteed 50 point SAT score increase. The golfer gives himself a putt. Slowly, imperceptibly, we forget about the whole sausage factory that reduces the vast, crazy world to digits and start worshiping the shorthand itself.

It’s only natural, of course. We’re busy people. To figure out how smart a person is takes a lot of effort. It’s rude to probe too hard, so we just wait for a passing reference to a person’s having “spent some time in New Haven” to clarify that he graduated in the top 2% of his prep school class. Front and center – the Mac Daddy of all signifiers – is the almighty dollar. That’s a little easier to suss out than intelligence; we just have to wait to peek at a little slice of Patek Philippe hand-chiseled bezel poking out from the edge of a monogrammed cuff. We’re all taught that money isn’t everything and that money can’t buy happiness. And we all know, from about age seven, that that’s bullshit. Money buys freedom. Money buys influence. Money buys security. And no matter how much we swear that it’s noble to be a social worker or a school teacher, and no matter how much we deeply, truly believe that, not a single one of us can help but have some lingering sense that the dude with the Rolex has done a better job of doing whatever it is we’re all supposed to be doing.

The dollar shouldn’t be the end-all-be-all of human metrics. The meritocratic faithful will tell you that rich people are rich because of their skills and resourcefulness. I’d estimate that to be true about 4% of the time. From time to time, yes, a person works hard, focuses intently and walks himself down the path to one of the half dozen kinds of careers that pays big, or thinks outside the box and comes up with the next Post-It Note. The remaining 96%? Duh. C’mon, say it with me - Born with it. The sample size of the group of investment bankers I know personally is large enough for me to justify generalizing: having lots of dough means no more than that you have been graced with the subtle, acquired ability to pick out the right style suit and hint at the right summer vacation paradise to get your foot in whatever door leads to more dough. And that’s it.

Most people would agree that, when trying to figure out how worthwhile a person is, such characteristics as love, happiness, kindness and commitment are more important than money. But because human beings are so hard-wired to overestimate the importance of things that can be quantified, it’s futile to try to make people focus on these kinds of amorphous concepts. What we need, then, is a new and improved matrix, one that measures the things that are really important. If we can get that right, teaching to the test will better all of humanity.

I propose the Individualized Reconnaissance of Compassion – Zeitgeist 2009 (“IROC-Z”) Quotient. (As a side note, it is an amazing coincidence that the acronym for this matrix is the same as the name of a certain 1980’s Chevy. All of the great minds in the automotive and sociological communities are in agreement that, because of some inexplicable convergence of engineering and marketing, there is a perfect one-to-one correlation between owning this make and model car and being a dick.) Based on a few informational tidbits, the IROC-Z process would be able to quantify all of the factors that make a person good and likable. Have you ever kicked a dog? Made a child who’s not yours cry? Did you read a book last year? What’s your mother in-law’s birthday? Do you let people merge from on-ramps? How much do you tip? Between Google, the Department of Homeland Security, Amazon.com and Visa, all the necessary information has already been collected, so producing the results would just require a little number crunching. Some MIT work-study kid could do it in a week. The IROC-Z Quotient would be a 1-100 scale (so that it would work in metric system countries too), with 1 being the best – a person almost entirely devoid of dickish qualities, resembling a combination of Mother Theresa, Jim Hensen, Nelson Mandela, Bono, Oprah and Captain Steubing – and 100 being the worst – a person who is dickish to the core, resembling a combination of Hitler, Carrot Top, Jack Abramoff, Barney, Imelda Marcos and Jerry Springer.

Ratings would be documented with an ID card, renewable annually like your car registration. And the whole process could be administered by some pseudo-public agency, like the post-office, that would be revenue-neutral via customized add-ons, marketed at a sensible price point, for every taste and style. It wouldn’t have to be mandatory – so no complaints from the libertarians or the ACLU – just highly inconvenient if you didn’t do it, like not having a CVS card.

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to hire a new employee based on this scale? Assuming you were among the chosen few, how wonderful to join a country club / fraternity / Oddfellows lodge where everyone was as wonderful as you. Nice people-only bars! “Sorry dude, can’t let you in” says the bouncer, “says right here you’re a dick.” Or, if you needed a little a little schadenfreude rush, you could more easily hang out with people who were a few notches less wonderful then you. And, just as, when you’re about to let your mortgage check bounce, you have at least a fleeting thought about the effect on your credit score, you might think twice before berating the fast food register guy about how long your Baconater is taking. Doing so could cause your toddler to be booted from his exclusive IROC-Z-rated preschool. A whole universe of paraphernalia would follow: the “My Son is a 9 IROC-Z Student at Sunnyville M.S.” bumper sticker (and of course, the inevitable “My 97 IROC-Z Student Beat Up Your 9 IROC-Z Student”). 90th percentile-only IROC-Z internet dating sites. IROC-Z ties and lapel pins. IROC-Z mixers and fundraisers. If you wanted to be a snob, you could at least be a snob for the right reasons. If you’re a smart, loving person with a great sense of humor who tells engrossing stories and remembers people's birthdays, why wouldn’t you want to try to steer clear of all the riffraff with bad attitudes and weak social connections? And, for the time being at least, there’s no constitutional prohibition on discriminating against people who are just jerks.

Numbers vastly over-simplify the world, but that’s just the way it is. So until we can figure out how to eradicate the wayward human tendency to rely on numeric drivel, we might as well start focusing on numbers that matter. Send a note to your senator; yell it from the rooftop; tell all your friends: Assholes are everywhere! We demand full disclosure! The universal IROC-Z quotient system must become the law of the land!

If You Can Always Be with the One You Love, No Need to Love the One You’re With

Be here now. Stop and smell the roses. Carpe diem. In some circles, enlightenment means achieving such intense focus on the present moment that the rest or the world fades completely away. Living well is as simple as being able to slow down enough to be aware of all of the mundane wonders that surround each of us. At some level, we all know this is true. It feels good just to relax and enjoy, even if just for a brief moment. And that's why, whatever your race, creed, color or religion, you want to do something horrible to that asshole on the cell phone who just cut in front of you in line at Starbucks.

The brilliance of, and the problem with, technology is its power to transport us, real-time, to another world and to connect us with the exact people we want to be connected with. A new kind of global provincialism seems to be in the works.

When, late at night, I get done drafting an agreement, with a few keystrokes, I can zap my work off from my lonely office in Boston to the lonely office of the one person in the universe (poor bastard) who needs to see it, even if the person in lonely office #2 is five thousand miles away. Geography be damned. With the touch of one auto-dial cell phone button, I can transport myself out of my physical surroundings and whisper sweet Bluetooth nothings in my honey’s ear, no matter where she is. If you know a person's digital coordinates, you can communicate from almost any spot on the face of the earth. But the same technology also makes it easier than ever before to be absolutely, 100% oblivious to the person who’s been sitting next to you on the bus every morning of your working life, or to some amazing moment unfolding right in front of your eyes. Precision in communication comes at the expense of randomness, and randomness is a critical ingredient in making human beings human.

The Internet often gets billed as a revolutionary medium for sharing thoughts. It has become vastly easier for any given person to upload his thoughts to the cyber-marketplace of ideas. So, in theory, the universe of human discourse should be broader and richer than ever. But, because you have to point your browser to one ultra-specific point in the virtual universe, it may be that the Internet has become, instead of the virtual commons where ideas are shared and debated, just a conduit for matching like-minded people up with one another. It’s easier to ignore different views, or to never even encounter them in the first place.

Self-segregation is a natural human tendency. We like to be around people who are like us. If you turn and look at the person sitting to your left in the board room, in the prison cafeteria, at your neighborhood Applebee’s, chances are he’s wearing the same brand of loafers (exception for prison cafeteria) and is appalled by the same political action group as you are. As rigid as our daily routines tend to be, there is still at least some chance on any given day that we’ll bump into a random person, or have to talk to somebody for some reason we hadn’t intended. That’s not the case on-line. What’s the cyber equivalent of, “you’re not gonna believe what happened to me this afternoon.”?

And what about living in the moment? Worrying too much about documenting the moment and sharing the moment can eliminate the moment altogether. Old Faithful is by far the most visited site in Yellowstone. It’s a crowded attraction, but still impressive. When I saw Old Faithful erupt for the first time, half of the crowd around me, it seemed, was witnessing this wonder of nature through a three inch LCD screen, and the other half was recounting it to their cousins in Cleveland. How was the experience stored in their minds? Did they really have the experience at all? And what about the group bond of witnessing something extraordinary together? Were we really together? Or were they, despite standing next to me, really more present in some nether world, having some kind of parallel experience with whoever was at the receiving end of the microwaves? I’ve heard similar stories about runners in marathons. Nice that aunt Betty can get the mile by mile update, but the rest of the runners – the proud, excited group that should all be in this together – aren’t part of the picture any more. You don’t have to say it out loud when talking on a cell phone, but everyone standing next to you understands the message anyway – “there is someone more important than you out there that I want to share this experience with.”

So what do we do about all this? There’s nothing wrong with being a Luddite, except that it’s futile approximately 100% of the time. Technological progression is almost a force of nature, like gravity, or the Coriolis effect. It just is. How can we rearrange the world so that people have to interact with people who are different than they are? Outside of a fraternity, forced kidnapping is generally not an option. Other than during jury duty (i.e. judge, bailiff with gun), there is almost no-place in the first world where you can ask a person to turn off his cell phone without being ridiculed or beaten. People of all walks of life are forced to comingle at the DMV. But everyone there is furious. So that may not be the best place to showcase the loveliness of humanity. War veterans seem to have nice stories about the different kinds of folks they met in foxholes, gunning down foreigners and eating worms together. Not sure we want to start another war just on that account, though. And that never included grad students, the rich, anyone with connections or, well, OK, forget it, bad example.

I think we may have to take a more voluntary approach. Maybe some public service announcements: “Does your girlfriend really, really need to know at this EXACT SECOND that you just ran into a guy you worked with three jobs ago?” Or “If you are about to call someone to tell them that you will be somewhere in ten minutes, they will find out on their own in ten minutes.” Or maybe some corporate incentives: 5% off your next latte if you can tell us the first name of one of your baristas after less than five hundred visits to this location. Maybe our appliances should be designed to mix it up a little. Internet browsers should have to have built in algorithms that direct you sites you don’t want. One time in ten, when you search for chihuahuas, you should be directed to a site for people who think chihuahuas are the most horrible breed of dog on earth. When you tune into Terry Gross, your radio should occasionally give you Rush Limbaugh. Cell phones should dial wrong numbers. GPSs should get you lost.

In the end, nobody can force us to hang up and focus on the world around us. We’ve each got to figure out how to get some kind of fly in our own uber-programmed ointment of technological efficiency. So, unless you’re the first one at the scene of a twelve school bus pile-up or you’ve fallen down a well, consider giving the cell phone a rest and join us back here on earth. Or at least be aware that the guy eyeballing you maliciously from across the room is thinking about dumping a hot cappuccino in your lap.

Getting a Lobotomy - Pros and Cons

I was watching the cat one night, after a stressful and aggravating day in the office, and thinking, what a life. No worries. No stress. What’s the worst thing that can happen to an indoor cat in a day? And then, another thought: I could live that life. Maybe I should get a lobotomy.

Getting a lobotomy is a major life change. And, as far as I am aware, it’s irreversible. So before running out and taking the plunge, you want to spend a few minutes thinking this through. I thought a list of pros and cons might help focus my reasoning. Here’s what I came up with:

Consideration #1 – Cost of the Procedure

First, there is the cost of the lobotomy itself. No idea what the going rate is these days. The main question would be, is this covered by my HMO plan? If so, it would probably just cost me a hundred bucks or so – whatever the co-pay is on brain surgery. I’d probably need some kind of referral. I guess I would start with my primary care physician, see if she has the authority to say, yes, you do need a lobotomy, here’s a prescription, call specialist so-and-so, etc. It’s probably negotiable like a lot of things with the doctor. C’mon doc, I’m telling you, I really need this procedure. Remember last year when you wrote me a prescription for a whole six months of Claritin? That wasn’t totally kosher either. Can’t you just work with me here? If doc says no, or if it turns out that a lobotomy is not something covered by my plan, I assume it would be financially out of reach for me in this country. I don’t know anyone who’s had to pay for his own brain surgery out-of-pocket, but I’m sure it would run you six figures. I could probably get it done in Mexico. When I lived in San Diego and took a day trip down to Tijuana, it didn’t look like there was much of anything you couldn’t have done there. The guy that sells horse tranquilizers might be able to do a lobotomy, or, if not, I’m sure he would know someone that could. So figure airfare to San Diego, rental car, few nights in a hotel after, incidentals. I bet I could work it so that the whole thing would come in at under two grand.

Consideration #2 – Longer-Term Financial Impact

Then there’s the longer-term calculation of life earnings. Sadly, I have no trust fund or annuity to draw on. So, my income for the rest of my life will be based on what I can earn the old-fashioned way – by working. I had great support from my parents growing up. They paid for college. I don’t have too much law school debt left. And, working at a large law firm, I’ve made it up to one of the pretty high echelons of earning potential. That would probably change if I got a lobotomy. I think people with lobotomies are still employable, but mostly for a different kind of work. Less mental / intellectual kind of stuff. More task oriented. Repetitive is probably good. I could probably get a job in the fast food industry. Not management, or register. Maybe fries? Restocking cups? Or maybe something sweatshop-like. Making sure each Nike shoe has a swoosh on it? I’m sure there would be opportunities out there. Pay would probably be less though. So I’d probably have to eat out less, maybe cancel my subscription to The Atlantic.

Consideration #3 – Social Interactions; Marriage

I’ve got a really nice circle of friends and a terrific wife. I’m at ease around them. They like me for who I am. I don’t think any of them would purposefully look down on a person who had a portion of his brain disconnected, but you just never know until it happens. It would probably be different hanging out with me before and after. Now, when I go out with friends, we talk about books and politics and all kinds of college-grad stuff. If I had a lobotomy, I’d probably just want to talk about what I had for lunch, or about restocking cups. I’d probably be OK with still hanging out with my same friends, even if I couldn’t quite understand all of what they were talking about. But I wonder if they would get bored of me. All the same considerations would apply equally to my wife. I don’t know for sure if, when she said “through sickness and health,” she meant for that to include elective surgery that turns you into sort of a zombie. And, in addition to having to live with a pretty different person than she first bargained for, she might be mad about having to sell the house and cancel all her magazine subscriptions. I’d probably be bad at remembering to feed the cats too.

Consideration #4 – Hobbies; Transportation

When I’m not working, there are lots of luxurious, first-world kinds of things I like to do to keep busy. Reading, running, biking, going out to see music, goofing around on-line. These indulgences keep me feeling human, interested in the world. I even like to just drive around in my car. I could probably find new hobbies if I got a lobotomy. I’d need to learn more about what kinds of things people with lobotomies are generally into. Would I forget everything I had read? Could I keep reading my favorite book over and over again? Would it still be my favorite book? Could I drive? Is there a limit in my On-Star contract to the number of times I can ask for directions?

Conclusion

I should probably sleep on this for another few nights. The whole thing sounds a little scary. On the other hand, if I got a lobotomy, I might not be able to experience fear anymore, or anything else. So if my wife and friends left me, the bank foreclosed on my house and I had to spend the rest of my days sitting alone, with no recollection of any of the things that used to be important to me, I dunno, maybe that wouldn’t be so bad. No stress, at least.

Breathing Oxygen for a Cure

Don't get me wrong. I am as opposed to breast cancer, autism and multiple sclerosis as the next guy. These are all terrible diseases and it's a great thing that so much is being done to find cures for them. But it just might possibly be that the world of do-something-to-find-a-cure has gotten a bit out of hand. This occurred to me one morning when I bumbled into the kitchen, pulled my breakfast-making supplies out of the 'fridge, and realized that my english muffins and my creamcheese were breast cancer awareness english muffins and breast cancer awareness creamcheese. The pink ribbons on the packages said it all, almost, and the glowing narratives on the back filled in all the gaps. What a heroic person I was for having purchased such an altruistic breakfast.

Raising money for good causes isn't anything new. But the feel of it has changed. In the not so distant past, didn’t awareness campaigns center on big, crazy endeavors? Like walking across the country? Or, if you were missing a leg, hobbling across the country on crutches? Or, if you were missing both legs, dragging yourself across the country with your arms? Seems like the stakes have been reduced. Locally, in my neck of the woods, there's the Pan-Mass challenge, where people ride bikes across the state of Massachusetts. That's a big deal. And there are all kinds of breast cancer walks. Lots of people take part. So OK, very inclusive. Some of the walks are long-ish, some just a mile or two. Nice thought; not a huge commitment.

But spreading creamcheese on a piece of bread and eating it with your coffee and morning paper? Really not all that impressive. Are we supposed to feel like, by buying food with a pink ribbon painted on the wrapper, we’re really doing something to further a good cause? Maybe all of this is related to the grade-inflated, self-esteem-obsessed, Lake Wobegon world that the upper echelon of the U.S. has become. In the mean old days, you had to do something meaningful and hard to raise awareness for a cause. Now you just have to eat breakfast.

OK. But why not? We don’t all have the will / time / resources/ commitment to shelf our daily lives and set out to windsurf across the Atlantic or moon-walk up the side of Kilimanjaro. Is there really something wrong with chipping in a few cents via our processed breakfast condiments for a good cause? Well maybe yeah. I’m skeptical about any charitable anything that happens through a corporation. Corporations are set up for one purpose and one purpose only – creating value for their shareholders. Corporations aren’t people. They can’t experience altruism. They don’t exist to make the world a better place. And if they do too many things that reduce profits for their owners, their owners dump them for other corporations that treat them better.

But how can that be, when every CEO says that being a good corporate citizen is good business (see e.g. interview with CEO of sponsoring company at the end of every PGA tour event ever in history)? Being a good citizen is good advertising. Advertising, if it hits a nerve, is good business. Being a good corporate citizen is good business if, by being a good corporate citizen, the corporation is supporting something that everyone likes, creating good will in the minds of consumers. You’re not likely to ever come across NAMBLA orange juice or greyhound racing bottled water. There’s nothing wrong with corporations doing what corporations do. What’s wrong is when advertising is dressed up to look like something more than what it is. I’m sure that some portion of the profits from my creamcheese does go to support breast cancer research. But how would I know how much? The corporation that makes my creamy morning deliciousness would gladly disclose in a press release the big figure that is donated each year, but it’s still just an ad. And I am positive that, whatever the number is, it would be exponentially higher if people gave a little spare change here and there to Good Cause Charity itself instead of to Good Cause Charity via Monsanto / Kraft / Pepsico / Unilever.

As consumers, we all know how to play the advertising game. We’re told that buying a product will make us stronger, sexier (some chance of a four hour erection, but that’s rare), richer and less bald, but we know, sort of, at some level, that it’s not true. Buying a fight-for-a-cure-product is no different. It maybe kinda does do something good but, in the end, it’s really just another focus group-tested campaign designed to separate us from a dollar. So kudos to us all for walking a mile for a good cause. Really. It’s great exposure and it does certainly get some money to where it should go. But let’s cut out the corporate middle man and let breakfast just be breakfast.

What happened, California?

I thought California was supposed to be cool and hip and modern. The vote last week to amend California’s constitution to ban gay marriage didn’t pass by much, but it passed. I really don’t get it.

I know that, culturally, California is a bizarre bi-polar state that includes the hippy dippy Berkeley lefties and the tummy-tucked Irvine Reaganites, and that that combination can lead to some pretty strange results like, oh, I don’t know, the election of the Terminator as governor. But aren’t all Californians supposed to buy into the live-and-let-live mentality? I thought the Reagan right version of conservatism was just about kicking the poor a little more while they were down, all with a friendly smile and a nice optimistic attitude about the great future of our country, and that people were supposed to be able to do whatever they wanted, as long as they did it all themselves, without stealing any of the right’s hard earned dollars to pay for it. I didn’t hear about any gay couples asking for a handout to subsidize their weddings. And don’t all the really super wacko Bible thumping types live a few states over?

So what gives? The simplest explanation is that, at the end of the day, California has just as many plain old, straight up bigots as anywhere else. Gays are about the last group around about which it’s still pretty much acceptable most places to say, “you know, I just don’t like ‘em.” Most Californians may be cool enough not to come right out and say that – very un-Hollywood – but you don’t have to say it to think it, and voting results don’t lie. Feelings expressed through an anonymous, private vote are the real thing. There could be some outright fraud going on. In the year I lived in San Diego, I was approached more than once by people asking me to sign ballot initiative petitions for things there’s no way you could disagree with: end the torture of puppies; provide pencils for inner-city schools for kids with polio; eradicate acne on teen-agers. And just before I was about so sign, I would take a look at the actual text of the initiative (imagine that – an obvious future lawyer) only to find that the petition was in fact in support of one or another piece of anti-gay legislation. It was that brazen. All right there in the Carl’s Junior parking lot. So that could partially explain how the issue became a ballot initiative in the first place, but not how more than 50% of the population voted for it.

Well shame on you, California. We’ve been bumping off one prejudice after another, moving toward that wonderful world where we can all do our own thing in peace. Any you were supposed to be leading the way. We’ll get there someday. It’s just a matter of time before we produce a generation that’s shocked by the stories of the olden days where gays were treated as second-class citizens. But in the meantime, I guess your open-mindedness is just a cardboard movie set.

Do you really need to wear that BlackBerry on your belt? Really?

As anyone who's ever seen me leave the house for work in the morning can tell you, I'm no fashionista. All of my shirts match all of my pants (sort of; I think), so I can get dressed in the dark. And the whole pleated / flat front pants debate is utterly foreign to me. So for me to be aware of a fashion faux pas, it really has to be egregious. The BlackBerry-strapped-to-the-pants look that you’ll see on any city subway does rise to that level. BBs are so small, you can easily slip it into a pocket or toss it in a purse. So why would you leave it strapped on for everyone to see?

Is it a status thing? It could have been, circa 2002. Back then, having a BB might have meant that you were an early technology adapter, or at least that someone at your office thought you were important enough that they should spend a hundred bucks a month to be able to keep in touch with you. But now every middle manager has a BB. Scratch that, every assistant to a middle manager, or even every intern to the secretary of the assistant to every middle manager. Having a BB in the year 2008 says the world "I WORK IN AN OFFICE." Nice. That should sweep the ladies off their feet.

Maybe it's a utility thing? Easy access? Quick response? If you were a cowboy in the old west, there probably was a pretty good reason to keep your pistols holstered within lightning-fast drawing distance. An extra second fumbling around in your saddle bag looking for your six shooter really could be the difference between being the new sheriff in town and gettin' smoked. Same thing with a BB? Not likely. About 91% of all e-mail messages ever sent boil down to one of the following: 1) please resend me the message you sent before, which I know is somewhere in my in box, but which I can’t seem to find; 2) please send me some half-baked feedback on this even less-baked idea that we’ll have to have a phone call about anyway in the morning; or 3) please check out the two dozen new photos I just posted of my cat dressed up as a pumpkin. It’s possible that had you not needed to spend the extra five seconds digging your BB out of your pocket, you could have prevented a nuclear holocaust or ended a genocide. It’s just not likely.

I understand that this whole issue is not of exactly monumental importance. It will be a moot point soon enough when we all have e-mail / voicemail / text messaging chips inserted right into our heads. Then we won’t need any hardware at all. We’ll just think our thoughts, run a spell check and think “Send.” In the meantime, when you’re preparing for another day of battle in the financial jungle, take a look at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself whether the ol’ digital tether really needs to hang out there for the whole world to see.

Welcome to the DanJanifesto

Is this thing on? Well here it is, the much-anticipated debut of The DanJanifesto. I’ve been meaning to get to work on something like this for a long, long time. Problem is, I’m a lazy, lazy person. For years now, only my wife, my neighbors and my co-workers have been able to benefit from all of my fascinating insights into the nature of the universe, the government, earth, wind and fire, heaven and hell, and life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And since, so far, I’ve only had three or four of these actual insights, it appears that my audience may have already heard them a few times before.

I’m not really a native of the digital world. Been there, but people know I’m a tourist. Maybe more like a green card-carrying pseudo citizen. The Commodore 64 was the computer of my digital adolescence. Computer monitors were green as I matured into adulthood. Having a cell phone was a big deal. Now, in soon to be 2009, I know what a blog is, and I sometimes text people, but I’m not hard wired for the on-line social networking culture. I uploaded my 35 year-old self to Facebook recently. Probably the death knell for Facebook. I have a BlackBerry, but that represents a whole different kind of 24/7 wired-in connectivity. People can always contact me, but when they do, it usually just means they want me to do something. All of this is just a long preemptive disclaimer to whatever I manage to post in the future. I’m a bit out of my element in the blogosphere, so bear with me.

Thanks for reading my thoughts. I’m sure you will find every one of them riveting. If not, there’s probably something wrong with you, and maybe you should get help.