Category Archives: By Request

What Jeff Likes this Week

Posted on by

It’s harder than you might thing to pinpoint what I like this week. I’m going to attribute that to the fact that the last seven days were brutal even in the face of my already pessimistic expectations. It’s tempting to say that the only thing I really like about the past week is the fact that it’s now over. That would be the easy answer. It would also have the benefit of being a statement of fact. It’s a happy coincidence when those two fall into line together.

Although it would be the easy and truthful answer, there’s something slightly more tangible that should come at the top of this week’s list – the fact that this past Monday saw the total number of people working in my office increase by 66%. That’s an impressive figure at first blush, though it loses some of its luster when you realize that even with those additional hands we’re still only staffed at 56% of the total number of people we had when I started working there.

Still, I’m glad to see two more bodies available to throw into the fight. It buys a little more breathing room. It means there might be a chance to actually be a little thoughtful and do a little analysis before recommending a course of action. It means there’s the ghost of a chance of doing more than hoping for the best from week after week of responding to situations with little more than knee jerk reactions.

So, if anyone asks, what Jeff likes this week is the simple fact that two people showed up. Now of course how long they stick around is another matter entirely. I’m happy enough leaving that for a different post at a different time.

Note: This is the 1st in a six-part series appearing on jeffreytharp.com by request.

You’ve got questions, I’ve got answers…

Posted on by

Because I’m perfectly comfortable being lazy and letting blog-worthy ideas come to me instead of chasing them down, I’m opting to respond to a question posted on my Facebook page in response to last night’s blog post. I’ll apologize in advance for the 24 hours delay in getting back to you, Jess, but I hope the fully formed response makes up for its less than timely delivery.

The question: What tools do you use to keep this list and how often do you go to it? And is that just the blog list? What about ideas for books and such? How do you keep track of everything when there is limited time to address any of it? Inquiring minds want to know.

The answer: Starting from the last part of your question, let me go on the record as saying dealing with limited time is the bane of my existence. I’m going to assume for purposes of discussion that I’m not alone in that sentiment. Between a day job, the blog, a couple of longer-term writing projects, and the other mandatory ephemera of life demanding attention, there is always more to do than there is time to do it. I try to keep this in check by an occasional ruthless culling of priorities. Every few months I physically make a list of everything I do as part of my day-to-day routine, rank order them, and then cut away as may at the bottom of the list as I can get away with eliminating.

This method has the unfortunate side effect of having sliced away most of what you might consider hobbies, unfortunately. It’s also led to a greater than reasonable volume of dog hair residing under furniture and in the photocarpets than I’m entirely comfortable with. Having, as I do, a fairly wide OCD streak, learning to accept that dust is unsightly but probably isn’t going to kill you has been a particularly difficult lesson to digest. I’m sure there are very good writers who find some other way of managing their time and getting it all done, but this is a method that works for me. Mostly. If you’re out there with kids or husbands or wives demanding attention, yeah, I’m not sure how you’ll make all that fit. Mercifully the only living creatures I’m responsible for are basically satisfied sleeping under the kitchen table while I do my thing.

Now when it comes to the meat of keeping track of ideas I try to keep it as simple as possible. I know there are a metric crapload of apps specifically designed for list making, but I tend to rely on something simple and understated – the Notes app that came installed on my phone. I chunk out the big ideas into either blog ideas or book ideas with one extra category left over specifically for issues I want to feature on Thursdays as part of What Annoys Jeff this Week. Since I usually have one or two other works in progress on hand at any given time, those generally have their own “note” as well so I can keep them segregated and avoid having a list so long as to make it functionally useless.

I refer to my lists fairly often, though some see more action than others. I try to add ideas as they come to me during the day or especially at night if I wake up with something that feels particularly important. As an aside, no matter what idea comes to you in the middle of the night, write it down so you can give it another look in the light of day. 3AM is a terrible time to make decisions about the virtue of half formed thoughts. Likewise, whipping out your phone in the middle of a deadly dull meeting to jot down the most unintentionally funny thought of the day is frowned upon. When I find myself in those circumstances, painfully separated from the electronic world, there’s no substitute for ye olde pen and paper (provided you transcribe the important parts over to your electronic filing system before your great ideas are lost to the shredder). I’ve lost more “good ideas” than I can imagine by simply assuring myself that I’m sure I’ll remember it later. The hard truth is there isn’t one chance in a hundred that you’re going to remember anything more than the fact that you had an idea that you neglected to write down.

The best and only advice I can give on any of this is to find a system that works for you and apply it mercilessly all day, every day. If you’re going to write five, six, seven times a week, it’s the only way I’ve come up with to even attempt to keep the pipeline full of new and semi-interesting ideas.

A trip to Walmart (or Barbarians at the gates)…

Posted on by

When it comes to grocery shopping in southern Cecil County, Walmart represents the least objectionable of three craptastic choices. Right off the bat that should tell you everything you need to know about the grocery situation here in the northeastern corner of Maryland. I would seriously consider selling a kidney if someone would build a Giant, a Safeway, or a Kroger somewhere closer than the current 90 minute round trip drive to get to any one of those options.

Since it’s the lesser of the local evils, that’s were I end up most weekends. I was there yesterday and here are my studied observations on the experience:

walmart1. There are approximately 237 billion parking spots surrounding Walmart, yet nine times out of ten I end up pulling down the lane behind someone who will sit and wait for the family of six to load their two carts of groceries, buckle the kids into their seats, adjust their mirrors, turn on their GPS and select the “home” option, back halfway out of the spot, stop for no apparent reason for 30 seconds, back the rest of the way out into the lane, spend 20 seconds trying to shift into drive, stall out, restart the car, and then drift away at approximately .175 miles per hour. All of this might even be acceptable if it were midnight on the day after Thanksgiving, but it’s 11AM on a Friday. There are acres of open spots as far as the eye can see, but the douchtard in front of me wants this exact spot for some reason. Well, congratulations. You got it. You saved yourself at least 15 extra steps you’d have had to take from one of the already available spots. This trip is not going well and I haven’t even gotten out of the truck yet.

2. There are three carts inside the door. One filled with some combination of leaves, trash, and possibly a diaper, one that has apparently hosted a seagull convention, and the third and final option… That one apparently doesn’t have any bearings in one of its wheels, so I get to spend the next 40 minutes wiping bird shit off my hands or listening to THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE, THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE every time I take a step. I don’t know if there’s a hell or not, but If there is, I’m absolutely convinced the background noise is THUNK, THUNK, RATTLE.

3. Walked by the ammunition case. No ammo. Or more specifically no ammo for guns that anyone actually owns or uses on a regular basis. Can’t blame Walmart for that one, really. It’s just another disappointing part of this little voyage of the damned.

4. Milk, eggs, bread… Even Walmart cant screw up the staples too badly. Just when I thought things might be turning a corner a three year old girl came charging out of nowhere and flung herself at my cart. Looking up to see what she probably expected to be the face her theoretically loving parent, what she got was a surly look from an unknown middle aged guy with a goatee. Clearly this was not what she was anticipating as the result was a yelp that I can only equate with what happens when you step on a dog’s paw and the child attempting to sprint away and running directly into a bottled water display set up in the middle of the aisle. It seems that with enough momentum, one can really bounce off the side of a few pallets of bottled water. Who knew, right? The last thing I saw was her theoretically loving parent showing up from the next aisle over and clearly wondering why her little darling was lying flat out on Walmart’s floor.

4. I wanted to make a roast on Sunday. Roast beef was a regular fixture at Sunday dinner at my grandmother’s house and about once a month I pull out the stops and make one with all the trimmings. I have found decent cuts of beef at Walmart from time to time, but they’re few and far between… as you might expect, this trip was not one of the exceptions to the rule. It looks like I’ll be partaking in the much more recent family tradition of Taco Sunday again this week.

5. I walked up to a checkout counter that had just cleared its last customer. Not waiting in line to checkout is practically unheard of here at my local Walmart and I thought maybe I was going to get a break here at the end of this test of my endurance. Of course it wasn’t. The cashier was apparently engrossed in her conversation with the last customer. After unloading my cart onto the belt, she was still engrossed. I pushed the cart forward so I was standing directly in front of her and she was still engrossed. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t started adding my two cents to their conversation, she would probably still be engrossed. Look lady, I don’t need you to be happy to be there. I don’t even need you to be pleasant. All I need you to do is slide my crap across the little scanner thingy, take my money, and let me get on with the rest of my day. The sooner that happens the happier we can all be.

Basically, the only good thing I can ever really say about a trip to Walmart is that no one has yet set my truck on fire in the parking lot. That’s probably only a matter of time, though, because truly the barbarians are at the gates.

Today’s post is the latest installment of “By Request,” where the readers pick the topic and I rant about it.

From the Mailbag: Energy Shot

Posted on by

The Question: How about you take on buying “energy shots” to make it through the day versus getting enough sleep to make it through the day?

The Answer: I wish this is one I could take on with some authority, but I don’t have any actual firsthand experience with these newfangled energy drinks. In the finest traditions of blogs everywhere, though, I’m not going to let my lack of expertise or experience stand in the way of issuing a definitive opinion on the matter.

The closest I’ve come to trying an energy drink was an unfortunate episode when a bartender handed me a drink made with Red Bull. As I recall, it tasted almost exactly like red cough syrup. That’s a flavor I don’t find particular appealing in an adult beverage and as I recall, most of it was left sitting on the bar.

While I can’t speak with any competence on Red Bull or 5-Hour Energy, I do have a certain familiarity with coffee – civilization’s original energy drink. I’d be hard pressed to function without its steady rush into my system throughout the day. At the moment, I’d say I average somewhere in the vicinity of a pot a day. Some days it’s a little more, some a little less. When it gets to be a lot less, then the blinding headaches start so that doesn’t happen very often.

I’m sure there’s plenty of virtue in getting a “full night’s sleep”, whatever that is. Personally, if I spend more than about six hours in bed I can’t quite shake the feeling that I’m wasting too much time just laying around being more or less unconscious. In fact I’m pretty annoyed that sleep demands even that fifth of my day, when there always seems like something more productive or at least more interesting that I could do with that time.

Maybe it’s the wimp’s way out, but I suspect that right combination of stimulants and sleep are probably intensely personal. What works for me probably won’t work for someone else. How else could I explain people who seem to spend their whole weekend in bed (other than calling them out as incredible slackers, of course)? As it stands, I’ve got maybe 35 good years left on this rock and I don’t intend to spend a third of them abed.

From the Mailbag: On Wisconsin

Posted on by

The Question: What are your thoughts on the recall election in Wisconsin?

The Answer: As a rule, I’m not a fan of recall elections. Every four years we go to a lot of time, expense, and trouble of electing our state governors. Thanks to a spastic media and more political blogs than anyone could ever possible read, we pretty much know what we’re going to get in a candidate. If someone, like Scott Walker campaigns on a platform of lowering the cost of state government, reducing its size, and decreasing the influence of public sector unions, well, it stands to reason that he’s going to at least try to do some of those things when he gets elected. Trying to recall the guy for doing something that you don’t like smacks of childish tantrum-throwing, especially when you’re going to have a regularly scheduled opportunity to throw the bum out in two years.

I don’t have any great love for public sector unions. As a teacher I was forced to be a dues paying member of one as a condition of employment. Even now, I’m nominally “represented” by a union, though it lacks the ability to negotiate pay or really do much of any substance. At least I don’t have to pay for the privilege this time around. As a public sector employee, I’d be up in arms too if the powers that be unilaterally decided to slash my pay, cut my benefits, or otherwise endanger my livelihood. Given the state of the federal budget for the foreseeable future, it’s an issue I’ve actually give a lot of thought to lately. After two years of a pay freeze, and a massive impending cut to my department’s budget next year, it’s not all that hard to see myself screaming bloody murder from the atop the barricades. Even so, I think history has proven recall elections to be little more than an enormous waste of money for everyone involved.

It’s a bad time to be a government employee at any level – local, state, or federal. Budgets are going to continue to diminish, services are going to be reduced, and the number of employees is going to decrease. The public is pissed at the politicians and the only group the politicians can kick with impunity are the rank and file government employees. From the tealeaves I’m reading, I get the sense that times are going to look a lot bleaker before they even think about getting better. Even so, I think there are more productive uses of my time and effort that playing the recall game. I’d find it much more satisfying to see someone’s reelection campaign go down in flames head to head against a candidate I support. I’ve always felt it was better to vote for something I believe it rather than just voting against someone I don’t like.

From the Mailbag: The Last Crusade…

Posted on by

The Question: Why Indiana Jones and the Last Crusades is one of the greatest movies?

The Answer: The Last Crusade is one of the defining movies of my childhood. It holds a place of honor among such enduring classics as Back to the Future, The Goonies, Clue, Gremlins, Red Dawn, and The Hunt for Red October. There are a couple of key reasons I always think of it as the first among these worthies.

1. The Nazis. The Nazis are the best enemy ever. They’re devious and evil, but they’re smart. It’s always better when the hero defeats a smart foe.

2. It’s a family thing. Sean Connery and Harrison Ford are two of the 20th century’s great actors. It feels perfectly natural to see them as father and son and to understand the inevitable tension and conflict between them. I suspect that anyone who has been a father or a son can identify easily enough with that bit of the movie.

3. To seek the grail. The quest for the grail is one of our oldest legends. It’s one that’s stuck with us generation after generation for millennia. How can anyone watch Last Crusade and not ponder for a moment what eternal health, eternal youth, and eternal life might be like? The quest for immortality is just about as old as our species and it’s powerful because for all our advances, it remains just out of reach on the other side of the precipice.

4. It holds up. So many movies from childhood are a raging disappointment when you watch them again as an adult. The Last Crusade never disappoints. It’s a morality play about good and evil, about love and loss, and about following your passion and overcoming obstacles.

5. Histo-fiction is fun. The original Indiana Jones trilogy is a throwback to a historical 1930s that never was, but we like to imagine existed. A more innocent time, a time before the world tore itself apart in the last good war, and when the line between good and evil was pretty damned clear and heroes always rode off into the sunset.

Sure, it’s not an epic with the scope of Citizen Kane or Gone With the Wind, but a studio could do a lot worse than looking at The Last Crusade to find out how an action movie should be made. Tomb Raider and National Treasure do their best to emulate this kind of storytelling, but they’re at best pale shadows of the original archeological bad ass.

Liver…

Posted on by

… as in “I’m going to crack open your rib cage and feast on your liver.” The entomology of this phrase has several branches. The first and most obvious, is as a reference to Hannibal Lecter’s famous liver and fava bean dinner, the other is the ancient practice of eating the body of a slain enemy to gain his strength. In my case, this is a phrase almost exclusively reserved for those who quite simply have not demonstrated the ability to drive a motor vehicle.

Usage of this phrase reached its zenith with the daily commute between central Maryland and DC. At this time it has almost entirely passed from regular use. That’s not to say that drivers in Memphis are any better than those in the DC suburbs… there are just fewer of them and rush hour is considerably shorter. Drivers in the DC area are aggressive, that makes sense to me. If you know your fellow drivers are aggressive you can plan accordingly… In Memphis, on the other hand, it seems that many drivers tend more towards being oblivious to what they are doing and the world around them, which makes them unpredictable. Come to think of it, maybe I throw this one around more often than I think.

Goddamn wine in a box…

Posted on by

One of my personal favorite phrases and one that doesn’t get enough use once I left Frostburg, is the venerable “Goddamn wine in a box.” The phrase was coined when a friend blamed the consumption of, not surprisingly, a box of wine for sleeping with a girl we all affectionately called “Dumpy.” As best I can remember, she sort of looked like a bullfrog. What can I say, young adults can be a cruel lot when they’re traveling in a pack. And when the inevitable question “how could you sleep with Dumpy” was asked, I suppose the only natural response could be, “I don’t know, man… it was that goddamn wine in a box.” To this day, when I see a box of wine, I smirk and then laugh. *sighs* Thanks for the memories.