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.

Man v. Woman v. Dog

I’m going to share a breakthrough.  I’m a little apprehensive since, like so many groundbreaking thoughts, this will be controversial.   

You know how it goes:  People read a headline and “go off” before they understand the context.   

But because it’s important, I will press on.  Just bear with me and you’ll see the genius of it: 

Now, cringing as I write, I offer the headline:  Women's Brains Smaller than Men's, but Used More Efficiently. 

All right you guys!  Did you even read the whole sentence?  No fair to stop at the comma! 

And Women, it’s OK.  Breathe...!  And breathe...! 

Men, if you’re still there, quit high-fiving and read on.  

This research out of the University of California says that while women average 8% less brain mass, they maintain equal intelligence to big-brained men.   

We’ve been trying to tell you forever that size doesn’t matter! 

And guys, I just tossed you that bone to soften the blow this mind-blowing revelation will deliver:  Women’s little brains are more like dogs’ brains than men’s big brains are.   

I know.  Men take pride in their dog brains.  They cling to and cultivate their canine heritage.   

Conventional wisdom has assured us for decades that men’s brains and dogs’ brains reflect parallel composition.  This conclusion is well supported by evidence and readily observed in the equivalent preoccupations of man and his buddy. 

As an example, both dogs and men have significant chunks of gray matter dedicated to mindless, repetitive activities – for dogs, it’s chasing thrown objects; for men, it’s air guitar. 

Both dogs and men have entire lobes of their brains devoted to ball sports, reflected by the endless repetition demanded by every canine that ever dropped a slobbery orb at his master’s feet, and the interminable playing or watching of ball sports on TV by adult males. 

But I got to thinking about it this week after I read more redundant research in the category of “gender challenges” titled, New Research Proves MenReally Don't Understand Women. 

The study comes out of Germany and concludes that men fail to recognize fairly obvious nonverbal signals, such as expressions of fear or disgust, when conveyed by the eyes of women.  Duh.  And, it goes on; when they’re communicating with other men they do just fine!  Double duh. 

In fact, brain scan data showed that when looking at the eyes of other men, but not women, male participants showed “heightened activation of the right amygdala,” which is that small, almond-shaped part of their big ole brain that plays a key role in the processing of emotions.  

“The finding that men are superior in recognizing [the] emotions [and] mental states of other men, as compared to women, might be surprising,” said the research team leader, psychiatrist Boris Schiffer.  

Well, maybe it was surprising to Boris, but the rest of us are rolling our eyes.  We just keep on proving what we already know.  

So here’s where the trailblazing begins: 

After painstaking and diligent review of that internet article, an array of single pane, hand-drawn cartoons about brains and numerous stand-up comedy routines, I contend that we have fallen victim to confirmation bias, only seeing what supports our foregone conclusions.  

We have rushed to judgment.  We have only protected the punch lines of all our sexist jokes!  The truth is - Men can NOT claim dog brains! 

As proof, consider the classic Berman cartoon “Comparative Anatomy: BRAINS – Dogs v. Men” which offers a graphic depiction of specks in a man’s brain labeled “Commitment Molecule,” and “Listening Particle.”  These two, when paired the almond-shaped sliver dedicated to detection of the emotions of women should put to rest the long-held notion that men have brains comparable to dogs’ brains. 

That’s right.  We know the unwavering, loving gaze of our dogs.  They listen to us for the sheer joy of hearing our voices!  In contrast to man’s “Interruption Lobe,” the dog brain encompasses an expanse entitled “Selfless Devotion to Loved Ones” and a gland reserved solely for “Commitment to Family.”  

Now honestly, what man hangs on your every word or gives you the first cookie out of the oven?  No!  But a woman does.  Woman and her little dog-brain!  

Well.  That didn’t come out right.   

And I thought I had a victory.

Aldous Huxley got it right

Item:  Man uses mind to control rat’s tail. 

OK.  Set aside your common sense reaction:  A man decides to use his mind and he uses it for that?  To control a rat’s tail?!   

What about the rat’s breeding habits, or his choice of residence, for example.  Why not use your mind to control one of those more pressing rat proclivities? 

Or how about a man controlling his own impulse to browse the channels for hours on end while the cable guide obscures the picture from other viewers in the room?  What about that? 

Or what if such a man used his mind to remember someone’s birthday, as a suggestion, or her ring size? 

But I digress. 

The point of the news out of BBC Future is that a man in the United States has successfully used his mind to control a rat’s tail in Brazil.  It’s scientifically documented. 

Yeah, me too.  I’m still hung up on the why of it all, but let’s press on. 

It’s a breakthrough, you understand.  The man wired up in a lab here thought “twitch” into an internet connection with the rat’s brain in South America, and voila!  That rodent wagged his hairless appendage as though he thought to do it himself. 

Still feeling a little underwhelmed. 

And they don’t mention any concern regarding reverse signals, from rat brain to man brain.  Nevertheless. 

Very serious grown men with clipboards and grant money, neuroscientists at Duke University, Harvard and the Pentagon, are focused on such brain-computer interfaces.  They are hell-bent it seems, to take steps beyond the already established ability of human brains to commandeer computer cursors, artificial limbs and virtual drones. 

We can extrapolate with confidence that they want that rat to dance to whatever tune is stuck in their heads.  It’s a small world after all.  (Sorry.)  Achieving that pinnacle they most certainly will move on to bigger and more bizarre brain-to-brain interactions. 

Hold that thought.   

Item:  Researchers at the 2012 conference for the International Association for the Study of Dreams report lucid dreamers sending signals to each other over the internet while in the dream state. 

These guys strap on their brainwave headbands and when the EEG recognizes they’re in the dream state via rapid eye movement, it alerts them.  The first one to get that signal becomes lucid - self-aware in the dream state - and signals his pal who’s sleeping in another room, or another state.  

These Avant guard techies even created a rudimentary competition in which the dreamer who signals his counterpart first, wins.  Now they’re exploring dreaming-brain-to-dreaming-brain connections via social media.  What a time saver!  Find your perfect mate while you sleep. 

The dream guys jumped ahead of the Pentagon guys and their pet Brazilian rat.  They established a conscious - at least lucid - contact between two human brains in remote locations.  The difference is that the dreamers aren’t trying to control each other, they just want to play. 

And finally:  

Item:  Google has opened a new service to let people control their email, blog posts and online photos posthumously, as concern grows over what happens to a user’s "digital life" when he dies. 

This service allows living Googlers to set up binding instructions for what happens to their electronic legacies when they pass into that great Ethernet in “the cloud.”  It heralds a common clause in wills of the future.  

And it’s worrisome for those of us who’ve had this experience:  One of my LinkedIn connections died a couple of years ago but he continues to ask for my endorsements.  “Does ‘John’ know about project management?” the screen prompts hopefully.  “Does ‘John’ know about Microsoft Word?” 

It’s creepy.  And by the way, “John” was creepy when he was alive.  I didn’t like him in the first place.  We started out as Facebook “friends” because we worked together and I didn’t want to draw his attention by declining his request.  Twisted, I know.  Then, he never even “liked” my posts or LOL’d one time!  I guess he wants sympathy endorsements now! 

In summary:  Mad scientists work feverishly toward methods of controlling us from afar.  Fun-loving researchers develop dazzling means to connect and entertain us.  And search engines allow us to communicate from beyond the grave. 

We have, indeed, a Brave New Electronic World.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley

I left it in the living room

The scene:  Baby Boomer working diligently at her desk.  She’s concentrating, writing, editing, rewriting, working toward deadline.  She’s a master.  A wizard.   

Then, a pause.  She pushes away from her keyboard, jumps to her feet and dashes - dashes mind you - downstairs into the living room to get … something.   

Something very important.  

Something warranting a dash for goodness sake. 

What the heck did she go there for?!!! 

Then, because the room looks familiar but the goal remains enigmatic, resignation sets in.  Shoulders sag.  She must turn and climb the stairs with a little wrinkle in her brow while reviewing the circumstances of her journey.  She retraces her steps in faint hope of regenerating the same urgency she felt so … urgently just moments ago. 

Let’s see…I was sitting right here.  Writing my column.  Then I jumped up and ran to the living room for…for…Dang it!  Why did I get up and run out of the room?! 

She tries to calm herself.  It’s no big deal, she says.  Everyone does that, right?  We’re all jumping up from our desks, hurrying around the house pointedly seeking something, only to have to shrug, abandon the mission and settle down again.   

Perhaps it’s not material, but an esoteric sort of metaphysical thing we seek.  Inner meaning.  Purpose of life.  No need to prowl the world, thank God, when peace of mind is within your own home, your metaphorical self.  Perhaps our built-in internal yearning for depth of experience compels us … OK.  I’m not buying it either.  

Pretty sure it was more mundane than that.  I was probably looking for that new pencil with the fresh eraser I just bought at…where’d I get that thing?  More important, where’d I put that thing?  I don’t know.  Doesn’t matter.  Look!  A squirrel!  

But so what?  Everyone misplaces her car keys now and then.  No need to worry until you misplace your car!  Let me just check.  Yep, it’s there, safe in the garage. 

I’m OK, I tell ya!  

But you can see why I glommed onto “brain games” with millions of other Boomers.   

Thank God, I thought.  These intellectual games will save my withered walnut of a brain from further shrinkage!  If I race around these mental agility wheels frantically enough I won’t have to careen around the house like a pinball.  Sign me up.  I’ll do it! 

I jumped in with both lobes.  I couldn’t wait for the “positive and often remarkable results” including “better face-name recall, faster problem-solving skills and a quicker memory.” 

Oh yeah, just 10-15 minutes a day of synapse gymnastics will “reorganize my brain by confronting it with new challenges,” thereby improving my ability “to dynamically allocate attention,” not to mention split infinitives.  

I began to feel top heavy in a hurry. 

But wait.  What’s this from the NewYorker?  “Brain Games are Bogus.”  

Uh oh. 

See that headline’s a problem for me.  I’ve devoted some serious time to feeling all good and smug about my calisthenics for neuroplasticity.  I have an emotional investment in brain games.  These brain games may be the final fragile filament holding my pale gray matter intact!  You can’t take away my brain games!  

And what does the New Yorker know anyway?  

Oh, right.  They collected information from analysts at the University of Oslo and Georgia Tech who investigated claims made in the multi-million dollar brain game industry and came up with a pretty big goose egg.  

Sure, they say, diligent hours of playing games supposedly designed to improve “working memory and fluid intelligence” does produce growth in one’s performance on those games.   

But that’s it.  The scientists who gathered all of the best research—twenty-three investigations of memory training by teams around the world—and employed a standard statistical technique (called meta-analysis) conclude:  "The games may yield improvements in the narrow task being trained, but this does not transfer to broader skills like the ability to read or do arithmetic, or to other measures of intelligence.” 

In short, “Playing the games makes you better at the games … but not at anything anyone might care about in real life." 

Well that’s just great.   

Excuse me for a moment.  I have to get something from the living room.

Everyday life in the City of Drones

In the category of What Could Possibly Go Wrong we find this item from Reuters:  U.S. authorities grapple with regulating the use of unarmed drones in U.S. skies as they are already flying.  Rapidly evolving drone technology is reshaping disaster response, crime scene reconstruction, crisis management and tactical operations.   

So that should be good.   

But coupled with this from staff at Business Insider:  [I] “tried to fly a drone and failed miserably,” questions arise.

Admittedly, these were not the highly trained police, first responders and expert personnel one might expect to be at the controls of such hi-tech machinery.  Nevertheless, a couple of young techies were goofing around, er, testing their skills in the offices of the magazine.  They posted a 65-second video showing 11 full-on crashes of their PTAP F-0700 AR.Drone – purchased online for $45.95.   

It’s the newest craze.  And therein lies the problem:  Soon everyone will be flying a drone.  Or at least looking up at one! 

The kids at Business Insider were toying with an apparatus that looks like an oversized water bug.  You know, the insect that lives spread-eagled on the surface of a pond, scooting around with amazing agility.  The F-0700 is an expanded, airborne, polypropylene version of that.  Look for one soon in the skies above you. 

Under these kids’ control, it wobbled chest high, thumped into walls, crashed into doorjambs and repeatedly capsized onto the floor.  You’d think with their video game trained thumbs, they’d do better than that. 

They said flying it was “ridiculously hard.” 

I can so relate. 

I wasn’t very good at it either.  Flying drones.   

Oh yeah.  I was a drone pilot myself, back in the day.  I worked undercover in JC Penny’s seasonal toy department as an SA.  Okay, Sales Associate.  I was working retail, all right?  I was only 16 years old, after all! 

Anyway, the must-have item in the toy department that year was the radio-controlled helicopter.  I flew that little sucker up and down the aisles, all the way through housewares and straight into men’s underwear (the department!).   

That’s where I got into trouble.  Concentrating on my flight pattern, I’d left the toy department unattended.  Some mom reported me!  Merry Christmas. 

But the point is that the drone led me around the store.  I didn’t so much control it as follow it.   

And this is why now, with the explosion of this really cheap, cool, and highly functional technology, the Federal Aviation Administration must determine who gets to fly these unmanned aircraft in America, and where they get to go.   

Uh oh. 

While the Feds assure us that for more than five decades they have a “proven track record of introducing new technology and aircraft safely into the National Airspace System (NAS)…” 

And that they’re now working on the safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into that self-same NAS.  

Accordingly, “Federal, state and local government entities must obtain an FAA Certificate of Waiver or Authorization (COA) before flying UAS in the NAS.” 

Yep.  You’ve gotta have an FAA COA to fly your UAS in the NAS; or, in spite of your best intentions just to have some fun, you could wind up in men’s underwear.  Just sayin’.

And who believes that that alphabet goulash will have any bearing on the rest of us amateur aviators?  You may have noticed there is an ongoing negotiation between what the law dictates and what people actually do.  Just think speed limits.  

Even though the use of drones for commercial purposes is outlawed, and hobbyists are forbidden from flying drones above 400 feet or in densely populated areas, rogue drone operators have posted already aerial videos of New York and San Francisco.  And, a commercial airline pilot has reported that a drone flying at an altitude of 1,700 feet came within 200 feet of the airliner!

It’s unenforceable.  A typical American free for all.  A quick Google and anyone with $450 can buy a sophisticated drone with a wireless mini cam and a 5-foot wingspan, like the ones used by the Air Force for medium-altitude long-endurance reconnaissance and surveillance. 

The same site offers costumes, props and magic tricks!

I’m thinking scavenger hunt!  Who’s up for a drone party?!!

www.jcp.com

I don't have a problem!

“I own 81 leather jackets, 75 pairs of boots, 41 pairs of leather pants, 32 pairs of haute couture jeans, 10 evening jackets, and 115 pairs of leather gloves.”  

So says Buzz Bissinger.  You know, the guy who wrote “Friday Night Lights.”  He confesses to spending $587,412.97 between 2010 and 2012.  On clothes!  Evidence of his shopping addiction.  No kidding.  He wrote about it in an essay published in GQ magazine this week.  He posed for a few pics as well. 

Bissinger says he keeps scrupulous records of his spending and has every expense category under control.  Except for the one, of course: Threads.  Leather, to be more precise.  Although I guess you can be “haute” without being leather. 

I can almost relate. 

Once, my friend who knows everything about clothing, shopping, dressing and accessorizing told me that I should color coordinate my closet to facilitate mixing and matching.  Hang blues with blues, greens with greens, and so on.   

So I did. 

That’s when I discovered I had 13 cream-colored sweaters!  V-necks, cable knits, turtlenecks, mock turtles, wrap-a-rounds.  Man, are they versatile!  

But honestly, that’s probably more about weak wardrobe awareness than shopping addiction.  Right?  

On the other hand, I do love me my sweaters.  And that ecru!  Oatmeal!  Crème brulee!  Goes with everything.  

Besides, I can stop whenever I want to.  

Anyway, by comparison, it’s mild, my affliction.  I was a classroom teacher in Oklahoma at the time I acquired those monochromatic multipurpose sweaters.  And I couldn’t get in that much trouble.  My 30-year, career financial plan did not enter the universe of $587K.  Those 13 sweaters probably represented a $300 expenditure over five years! 

Still, I have to admit such things can be problematic for a Costco shopper with a bad memory.  When in doubt I’ll just go ahead and pick up the item in question.  With big box packaging, it’s not long at all before one finds herself knee-deep in Q-tips and dental floss.  I keep the extra 3-packs of ketchup and mayo in the garage with the crates of OrvilleRedenbacher popcorn and Quaker oats.  Overflow paper products?  In the toolshed with the lawnmower and the surplus chardonnay. 

That’s different, anyway.  I’m not compulsive.  Like any Dust Bowl Okie, I don’t like to live too close to the bone. 

Nevertheless, I read an article on NBCNews.com:  “10 ways to escape a shopping addiction,” and found I’d already put one strategy into operation:  #8.  Find healthy alternatives.  

Not sure if the lip balm qualifies as a healthy alternative, though.  It is better than chapped lips, but I just counted 19 tubes of it in my make-up drawer.  I know, little waxy tubes of … wax don’t constitute actual make-up, but where else would I keep them?  Except in my jacket pockets, my desk drawer, the phone table, my purse, the toolbox, the cup holder of my car and of course, the clothes dryer.   

I just love the stuff.  Ever since Carmex added that little taste of what?  Menthol?  Eucalyptus?  Keeps a girl coming back.   

And what’s the harm?  Though the days of 79-cent Chap Stick are behind us.  It’s all flavored, tinted and scented specialty wax now; with added SPF it’s about $2.79 a pop.

My current favorite – Burt’s Bees Rejuvenating.  So smooth.  So worth it. 

And let’s see…19 @ $2.79 = $53.10, just about the price of a lovely, cream-colored cardigan.  

Do I seem defensive? 

When you feel overwhelmed by the urge to stockpile, says NBCNews.com, go for a walk or do some other form of exercise.  This can take your mind off the urge until it passes. 

You’ll need a sturdy pair of walking shoes.  A pedometer is nice.  A visor, polarized sunglasses, a lightweight jacket.  And of course, your lip balm. 

So that idea backfired. 

Maybe I’ll try #9.  “Expand your possibilities,” it says.  Instead of using all that time to shop, I could volunteer in my community, spend more time with my family, go back to school, read lots of great books.   

That’s a lot of pressure.  Stressful.  Maybe I’ll start with a magazine.  

Hey, here’s a copy of GQ.  Oh man!  Look at this guy Bissinger!  He blew half a million bucks on leather pants!  Now he has a problem.

Take the 'A' train to Elite-town

Hey!  I’m elite!  Who says I’m not elite?! 

I’m elite, I tell ya!  By definition.  And I don’t mean MerriamWebster’s middle-of-the-road, everybody-gets-it definition.  I’m talking about the big time, high falootin’, scientific, cultural definition.  You know - the one from American Enterprise Institution’s Fellow, Charles Murray.  That’s right. 

According to Mr. Murray, even someone like me can live in can “elitist bubble” if she cannot identify the NASCAR driver pictured in his quiz about the culture gap in the United States.  Those NASCAR guys all look the same to me (Sorry, Danica!); so that’s a step on the elitist staircase. 

Ever see “Transformers: Dark of the Moon.”  Me neither!  Step two!  I’m ascending toward elite-osity!   

Step 3:  I don’t hang out with people who smoke (unless they’re my friends and the patch just doesn’t work for them).  It turns out being a non-smoker is elite! 

Step 4:  All my friends made good grades, or at least they could have if they hadn’t gone anti-establishment and failed deliberately to get back at “the man.” 

This is so exciting!  After all those anxious years of yearning to be in, only to be sadly, awkwardly, gawkily out.  Painful memories linger!  So I was jazzed to stumble across Mr. Murray and his quiz.  

His measure of one’s residence in the “elite bubble” encompasses 25 questions to help determine a quizzee’s status by examining her activities.  He does this rather than calculating her earnings as do more traditional gauges of social status or preeminent elite-ness.   

For example Murray wants to know if you ever worked in a job where a part of your body hurt at the end of the day.  Duh!  I was a high school principal!  My brain hurt constantly!  That’s a pretty important body part.  AND my feet hurt too!   

But oops.  Pain in the anatomy gets chalked up on the non-elite side of the ledger. 

Evidently, the upper crust doesn’t relate to physical pain from work…hmmm. 

But I never worked on a factory floor, so I have that goin’ for me on the elite bubble point scale.   

What’s this?  Uh oh.  I’ve been fishing in the last five years.  Darn it!  I used bait, too!  A worm on a hook!  Yikes.  You can take the Okie out of the state, but she’ll never shake that hankerin’ for catfish.  Catch ‘em and skin ‘em; fry ‘em up with hushpuppies; add a red beer!  Now we’re talkin’! 

No fancy schmancy flies.  Catch and release?!  What’s the point? 

Oh…Methinks I doth digress too much.  I’ve wandered afield from the posh confines to which I aspire to become accustomed. 

Returning to Mr. Murray’s questionnaire, he wants to know if you have a close friend who’s an evangelical Christian, or a close friend with whom you have strong and wide-ranging political disagreements.  

Do I have to count family?  

‘Cause there’s my crazy “Uncle Earl” (name changed to protect the guilty).  When he learned how I voted in the 2012 election he called me a “sympathizer.”  And the last time I went to church with his family, the sermon was entitled “Satan Wants You Dead.”  

Decidedly non-elite.  

I don’t like this stupid survey anymore.  

I scored 12.  Middle of the pack.  Foot in both worlds kind of a deal.  Neither mainstream American nor elite American.  

Oh well.  Doesn’t matter.  I can hang out with the whoopti dos.  I can fit in.  I can blend.  I even get a little cocky with my adroit schmoozing.  

But inevitably I expose my non-elite side by lifting my Diet Coke when everyone else is ready to tilt stems on their Pinot. 

When I’m at the other end of the spectrum, family picnics can get a little icy.  My cousins don’t like it when I correct their grammar.  I guess elite people know how to keep their mouths shut.  You don’t see them rolling their eyes when someone shows up with a baby stroller and a six-pack of Bud Lite. 

So to heck with the elite bubble!  I’m happy here in my Lake Woebegone bubble, where all the women are strong; all the men are good looking; and all the children are above average.  No one to look down on and no snob left behind.
 
That’s my kind of elite.