Another Marlon Brando New Year

Let’s be real.  For once.  It’s OK.  Go ahead and let it out:  We’re not keeping our New Year’s resolutions, are we?

There now.  Doesn’t that feel better? 

Oh sure, we mean well.  We have every intention.  We do so want to improve.  But do we even remember what we resolved with such fervor on January 1, 2014?

No.  No we don’t.  Unless of course we are coming up on January 1, 2015, fixin’ to resolve it all over again.  With a straight face.  Like it never even happened.

But aw shucks, Miss Carolyn!  We was just funnin’!  Honest!  We was just kiddin’ anyway!  What’s all the fuss about?!

Year after year we flap our lips!  Expel hot air into an already warming global climate. 

When if we’d kept our own promises TO OURSELVES, we could’ve been better by now.  We could’ve had class.  We could’ve been somebody.  We could’ve been contenders!  Instead of a bunch of bums.  Which is what we are – let’s face it.

Last year right about this time we punched our one-way tickets to Palookaville. And this year, if we don’t make some changes, we’re climbing on board the express train!

The Wall Street Journal quantifies the phenomenon for us: 88% of New Year’s resolutions fail!  So who are we kidding anyway?  Really – Who?

As I see it, if we want to hold our heads up, we have two courses of action available:

Option one:  Follow the advice of Oliver Burkeman, also known as Mr. Grumpy Gills at The Guardian, who says – Abandon your resolutions now “rather than waiting a week or two for the moment when [they] will inevitably collapse in a quagmire of failed hopes, self-reproach and packets of Pringles.”

Geez!  That’s a little harsh!  All right, it’s true.  But harsh. 

Interestingly, his crabby cynicism has the opposite effect on me.  Rather than give up before I begin, his defeatism on my behalf makes me want to prove him wrong.  Just show him that I can keep my resolutions even though my track record mirrors that of Charlie Brown’s classic football kick. 

Maybe I am doomed to fail.  Maybe the Lucys of the world have conspired to pull that ball away from me; or maybe I’ve done it to myself.  But no matter how many times I land on my back screaming “Augh!” I want to get up and try again. 

Ever hopeful.  Ever optimistic.  All right – ever naive.

Senor Crabbiness explains: “The lure of making a ‘complete fresh start’ can be hard to resist… But in fact, aiming for across-the-board change – to get fitter, eat better, spend more time with the family and less time playing Angry Birds, all at the same time – is exactly the wrong way to change habits.”

He and the WSJ agree – we should respect the feebleness of our self-control.

The prefrontal cortex is responsible for willpower and it has lots of other things to worry about besides our half-hearted New Year's resolutions.

“Willpower is a depletable resource, which means investing energy in any one goal will leave less remaining energy for the others; so your resolutions end up fighting each other.”

Sabotaged by a weakened wherewithal!  That explains why I have no recollection of my earnestly enumerated good intentions.  They paired up and knocked each other out!

Far better, according to the Grinch, is to aim for one new habit every couple of months.  Maybe it could be worth a try – In January swear off the Law & Order marathons.  Then in March…I don’t know…dust?

Or, says he, you can manipulate your surroundings and totally eliminate the need to spend your precious reserves of willpower.  For example, it's much easier to watch less TV when you don't have one.  Right.  Like that’s going to happen! 

Make things automatic, he says, so you don’t have to strive constantly to be better.  It’s too hard on your pea brain!  But despite your handicap, you can automatically use your credit card less if you hide it in your sock drawer.  That’s exactly how I wound up with a surplus of sox!

This year, I think I’ll simplify.  Opt for Plan B:  Line up your excuses in advance.

I plan to blame my brain.

A cautionary tale in the junk mail age

My father-in-law tried to kill Byron Farquhar. 

But Farquhar lives.  Invincible, he badgers and taunts the old man.   

I offer this true story to you, Dear Reader, in hope of saving you from my father-in-law’s fate.  If you believe you can elude the Junk Mail Man, consider wisely: 

It began before pop up ads and sponsored posts, as a ruse devised by my father-in-law; I’ll call him “Nigel.”  Nigel wanted to ascertain which direct mail retailer was selling his name to other retail mailing lists, thereby congesting his mailbox with junk.   

A crafty old curmudgeon, Nigel subscribed to Forbes magazine under the fictional name of Byron Farquhar, just to see which solicitations would arrive in that name thereafter. 

At first, Nigel triumphed.  When a 3-fold petition bearing Farquhar’s moniker arrived by post, urging him to subscribe to the Kiplinger Newsletter, Nigel laughed gleefully.  “Forbes!” he exclaimed, and set about composing a letter to Forbes, deriding them for selling his, that is, Farquhar’s name to unsolicited solicitors.   

But before he could mail his complaint, a special offer arrived simultaneously for himself and Farquhar.  It included, for a short time only, 67% off the newsstand price of two journals, the Wall Street and the Ladies Home.  Neither Nigel nor his wife could pass up the savings.  

The masquerade snowballed when each plea for Byron Farquhar’s attention came accompanied by a duplicate offer for Nigel himself.    

Stalwart, and determined to follow his plan to a conclusion, Nigel established a separate collection point on the kitchen counter for Farquhar’s mail.  In short order, Farquhar accumulated a formidable stack of missives which Nigel dated and paired with their counterparts in his own mail.  

But soon, it became muddled as to whether these offers arrived because Byron, who seemed increasingly animate, had subscribed to Forbes?  Or was it because Nigel and his bride were valued and preferred customers with Farquhar as a credible tenant at the same address? 

And yes, there lurked in Nigel’s mind a darker possibility:  Farquhar lived. 

The paperwork overwhelmed Nigel.  His tracking system presented loopholes and jukes that could defy the most diligent detective.  That’s when a shift occurred in Nigel’s state of mind. 

Farquhar, he thought, must go. 

But Farquhar would not go.  He delighted in living off Nigel and his wife, slipping around the house, hiding sox and drinking the last Perrier.  He branched out in his interests garnering correspondence from credit card companies and insurance agencies.  He accepted samples of inscribed ballpoint pens and personalized key fobs.   

And catalogs!  Farquhar loved to shop!  When Nigel tried to staunch their delivery, he had to sign onto the list-blocking site with his email address.  Now his e-mailbox overflowed as well!  

Byron Farquhar!  He stalked Nigel’s every movement.  There was no escape.  

Nigel began cursing Farquhar and tearing his mail in half, shaking it at the sky before dashing it into the recycling bin.  For a while, he wrote “Return to Sender” across each piece of junk mail and dropped it into the collection box.  But the flow only swelled. 

Desperate, Nigel’s thoughts became chaotic.  Now gaunt and ashen, he took the latest arrivals and scrawled “ADDRESSEE DECEASED” across each one and drove them to the post office himself. 

But more mail came for Byron Farquhar.  And more.  Soon, Farquhar’s popularity eclipsed that of Nigel.  Nigel’s wife told him to ignore it, but ultimately, he observed her sniffing the envelopes and running her fingers along the seams.  Were they somehow involved?  A collusion? 

At last, Nigel succumbed to Farquhar’s onslaught.  A distracted and angry man with poor posture he huddles on his porch each noonday, anticipating the arrival of the letter carrier, whom he suspects of being Farquhar, or Farquhar’s minion. 

Byron Farquhar broke Nigel with the sheer force of his unrelenting persistence.  And he will break you, too, if you struggle against him.  Like me, you’ve visited a website.  You’ve clicked on a link.  You created an account.  You sent flowers, or bought shoes.  Somewhere, we passed the point of no return. 

Our snail mailboxes are crammed with junk and electronic junk flows from a tireless, infinite source.  Block it?  OK.  Delete it?  No matter. 

Farquhar is Borg.  We have been assimilated.  Resistance is futile.

Fake money in the real world

So someone just made up some Monopoly money and is spending it all over town.   

Not only that, other people must think it’s cool or real money or something because now they’re hoarding it, stacking up this imaginary play dough in their fantasy bank accounts.   

According to Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, this brand new currency is held mostly by speculators hoping to profit from price fluctuations, which have been especially volatile in recent weeks.   

Real people are watching market variations on make-believe money. 

Oh yeah.  Virtual currency – “Bitcoins.”   

I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry.  Bitcoins?!!  Somebody made this stuff up and now he’s going to make billions of dollars in real coins and nobody told me until it was too late.  

People are deep into buying, trading and even mining Bitcoins!   

Dad gummit! 

How can this happen?  How can it be that someone, “a pseudonymous developer,” named “Satoshi Nakamoto” can just describe a “non-existent digital cash-like currency” and start spending it and buying real stuff with it!?   

He made up his name and he made up some money and now he’s living in a virtual mansion on that famous “cloud” eating pie in the sky. 

Dad GUMMIT! 

“Bitcoins are exchanged peer-to-peer just like cash, making it the Internet’s trusted currency.”  What?  Says who? 

Why the Bitcoin community of course.  On the Bitcoin wiki, where you can go for all your Bitcoin information needs. 

Those folks are happy to tell you that Bitcoin is an “experimental, decentralized digital currency that enables instant payments to anyone, anywhere in the world.”  Translation:  They made it up!  They’re conducting an experiment.   

And it’s working!  They’re buying real jet skis with phony baloney. 

There’s more:  “Bitcoin uses peer-to-peer technology to operate with no central authority: managing transactions and issuing money are carried out collectively by the network.”  Did you get that?  “Issuing money.”  Issuing money!  In cyber space.  Digitally.  With zeroes and ones.    

And with no central authority.  It’s not that the cat’s away.  There is no cat. 

And when I think how my mom told me about the money tree and that it doesn’t exist, quashing my fragile imagination.  My dad winched every time I looked at his wallet.  Whenever I needed gas for the jalopy or a donut, he assured me there was only so much money, you know.    

But now I’m learning how wrong they were.  Bitcoin, an implementation of a concept called crypto-currency first described on the cypherpunks mailing list in 1998, is crankin’ out the moolah. 

It’s a flippin’ concept.  It’s a spendable concept.  Crypto-currency?  Cypherpunks?  They probably wear saggy cyber-pants.   

But you have to give them credit, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Building on the notion that “money is any object, or any sort of record, accepted as payment for goods and services,” these guys created Bitcoin using cryptography to build their own virtual treasury. 

It makes me so mad.  Why didn’t I think of it?  After all, it’s only a step or two away from the persnickety self-righteous record of stars and demerits I awarded my brother according to his treatment of me.  It was an 8-year-old’s idea of behavior modification, but he could have traded it for goods.  I would have swapped my scoop of ice cream, for example, for some peace and a few stars off his chart.   

But no!  He had to twist it.  He just started popping me with rubber bands and saying, “Add that to your little book!”   

Thus ended my future as a visionary entrepreneur in the marketplace. 

You can see why I’m so frustrated to learn that eBay and PayPal may soon integrate Bitcoins into their networks of buying and selling.  John Donahoe, chief executive of eBay, says that within five years, Bitcoin could be converted to cash and used in retail.  It’s already accepted on a few sites like Reddit and WordPress, as well as Pizzaforcoins.com. 

See.  That’s just wrong, getting pizza for Bitcoins.   

And why isn’t it counterfeit?  How are they getting away with making up money and spending it?  I want some free money! 

I’m boggled.  And scared.  What’s going to happen to my crumpled up old dollar bills?  Who’s going to want them when you can get crisp, germ-free ether bucks?  

Dad gummit.

Leave the details to me

I could be your virtual assistant. 

Come on…!  You know you want one.  And I’m ideal.  I’m cheap, for one thing.  And of course, I’m virtual. 

As a citizen of the 21^st century, I do almost everything on my own personal to do list in a virtual manner.  That is to say, I execute virtually everything in cyberspace; meaning I accomplish virtually nothing in actual time and space.    

And for a nominal fee, I can do the same for you. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, Personal Assistants manage all the bothersome bailiwicks that eat up the good humor of the harried.   

Virtual Assistants simply do it online!  They never meet their clients, communicating instead by email, instant message, or videoconference.  Virtual Assistants maintain an air of mystery, perhaps living continents away from their customers.  That’s perfect for me!  I can be enigmatic. 

Virtual Assistants might be students working their way through college, parents who want to work from home or older people (ahem!) who are semi-retired. 

So far, I meet all the stipulations:  I’m virtual, mature (!), and mysterious. 

Virtual Assistants work selflessly to unsnarl busy people's lives, taking on everything from scheduling their doctor's appointments and coordinating their calendars to finding them the perfect pair of pants.  Yeah, that’s me, me, me!   

I’m your invisible Man Friday.  Jeeves in the Ether.  I’m Miss Money-penny in the cloud.   

Let’s just run a test case:  Consider your hair appointments, for example.   

As an industrious person preoccupied with say, feeding the hungry, you cannot devote precious time to personal grooming.  But to your dismay, a glimpse in the mirror reveals white roots.  You rationalize that white is almost blonde and no one is likely to notice.  You consider going white.  Then your stomach growls.  Let it grow! 

Still you must soon acknowledge the sharp demarcation between one inch of white roots and your remaining yellow hair.  You consider the expense of professional coloring.  Pet your wallet.  Soothe it. 

You go to the beauty supply store and purchase the chemicals necessary to color your own hair.  Don’t forget the rubber gloves and gas mask.  Goop up.  Rinse.   

Finally, save money, if not face, with a no-appointment-necessary visit to Supercuts.  And voila!  All you need is a cheap pair of shoes to complete your nutty professor ambience. 

Please!  Let me help you with that.  It’s no biggy.  A day in the life.  I can arrange all those things for you. It’s effortless for me, therefore making me a natural for helping others.   

Of course, if you’re a no-nonsense, bottom line kind of person, just want to get the darned haircut, I can set that up for you too. 

Let’s say you’ve been putting off getting that membership at the gym.  I can do it for you.   

Ha ha ha!  I don’t mean I can procrastinate for you!  I’m pretty busy doing that for myself.  So many things not to do! 

No, I mean I can sign up at the gym for you.  Sure!  I’ll take care of all the pesky details.  Get your yoga mat and your stretchy pants.  Rent a locker and never use it.  Heck, for an added premium, I’ll even perspire some virtual sweat for you.  Say the word. 

I have a client now who says he doesn’t have time to socialize with his friends.  (OK.  I don’t really have a client.  Just run with me on this.) 

He doesn’t have time to call people, send cards, go out to lunch, you know, act like a caring human being.  So I do all that for him. 

He hands over his contact list and I hang out with his friends in virtual reality.  I ‘like’ their stuff on Facebook.  I ‘lol’ all over the place.  They think he’s the greatest, most attentive, thoughtful friend they hardly know.  Conversely, he is freed of the burden of interaction and involvement.  And I make a little dough. 

Win, win, WIN! 

Oh yeah, I’m all over this Virtual Assistant thing.   

I can charge by the hour or by the job.  Fleet rates.  Flat rates.  We can work out a payment plan so long as your genuine check is in the authentic mail.   

Otherwise I’ll have to crack your cybernetic kneecaps.

 

To Breathe or Not to Breathe

Exhaust fumes kill brain cells! 

It’s not as if we didn’t know.  Or that we somehow felt OK about sucking in diesel vapors and billows of petroleum rich emissions while we sat stacked up at the toll plaza with James Taylor on the airwaves.  Damn!  This traffic jam! 

But now, the Wall Street Journal reports that commuters in high traffic corridors are spending record amounts of time inhaling tailpipe gases.  In fact, drivers traveling the 10-worst U.S. traffic corridors each year spend an average of 140 hours breathing in and out behind the wheel, idling in traffic.  That’s a month’s worth of grey matter, up in smoke.   

And it’s not just 'rush-hour' congestion anymore, what with midday and overnight traffic jams accounting for almost 40% of total delays.  The wait in line for an average commuter rose to 34 hours in 2010.  In the 15 largest urban areas, commuters wasted 52 hours every year, each burning 25 extra gallons of gasoline.   

Researchers suspect that the tailpipe exhaust from cars and trucks—especially tiny carbon particles already implicated in heart disease, cancer and respiratory ailments—may also injure brain cells and synapses key to learning and memory. 

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have any synapses or cells to spare. 

And guess what?  The Washington, D.C., area had the most wasted hours for commuters last year, the most exhaust fumes taken in, the greatest number of brain cells compromised and the maximum number of synapses snapped. 

It all adds up, doesn’t it?   

Rick Perry can’t remember the government agencies he’d scrap if elected president:  Let’s see…Education, Commerce, and…doh!   

Herman Cain has “so many things twirling around in his brain” that Libya doesn’t sound familiar.   

Perry said, “Oops;” Cain swatted gnats.  They could have blamed their campaign dampening brain freezes on traffic in the beltway!  After all, these new public-health studies and laboratory experiments suggest that traffic fumes exact a measurable toll on mental capacity, intelligence and emotional stability.   

Congressional gridlock may be due to rush hour gridlock!   

Oh, right.  Perry and Cain aren’t in Washington.  Traffic must be horrible on the campaign trail. 

Remember the research that cautioned us against buying a car built on a Monday?  The hangover effect:  Assembly line workers needed a full workday to recover from their weekend.  The cars they put together on Mondays manifested problems reflecting their diminished mental capacities, maybe the residual effects of too many brews. 

This new research could be extrapolated to conclude that bills passing Congress on Tuesdays may be similarly suspect:  Tuesday is the busiest morning peak period for traffic backups and fume inspiration.  Woozy legislators make cloudy laws.   

Pedestrians and bicyclists need also beware:  The Journal reviews recent studies that show breathing street-level fumes for just 30 minutes can intensify electrical activity in regions of the brain responsible for behavior, personality, and decision-making.  No question where this will end up ~ in the courtroom.  It’s the next Twinkie defense!  Air pollution made me do it.  No wonder road rage is on the rise. 

Scientists say they don’t know yet whether regular commuters breathing heavy traffic fumes suffer any lasting brain effect, but it seems likely.  Just look around the office.  You can spot the long-term, long-range commuters.  They’re the ones with the hazy eyes, vague expressions, and crabby attitudes.  They can’t complete a sentence without taking a swig of their dark roast Kona and gasping like Perry Mason.  Best to steer clear until research provides us a better antidote than caffeine.  It may be exacerbating the syndrome. 

The scary thing is exhaust fumes can extend farther from roadways than once thought.  Traffic fumes from some major L.A. freeways for example, reached as far as 1.5 miles downwind—10 times farther than previously believed.  It’s creeping into homes, parks, even schools. 

Children in areas affected by high levels of emissions scored more poorly on intelligence tests, were more prone to depression, anxiety, attention problems, and were twice as likely to have autism as children growing up in cleaner air. 

Thank Heaven researchers are exploring ways to alleviate traffic and its toxic exhaust.  Some simple solutions ~ E-Z pass carpool lanes, rerouting cars away from high congestions areas ~ already provide significant improvement.  

Children need their brain cells!  They have a long way to go.   

You and I may just have to hold our breath.