Just for the Fun of it

Every so often I get a link to something called The Fun Theory. It's a project developed, apparently, by the European advertisers for Volkswagen, although the videos have nothing to do with cars.
The campaign is about using fun as a motivation to get people to do things they normally don't like to do. Here's the first video, which appeared in a music list serve I'm on:




There have been two other videos since. In one, a trash can has been rigged up with a sound speaker to give the impression that whatever is thrown inside is falling miles before it hits the bottom of the can. And the latest one has a scoreboard that turns glass recycling into a game. (Apparently, the Swedes don't get compensated for recycling glass--just like here.)
It's worth mentioning that this is a contest with a 2,500 euro prize. If you go to the site, you can look at all the videos, plus other submissions, which include singing bathroom hand dryers and light switches, to name a couple.
So VW, when are you going to start a fun project here? Because I gotta tell you, we Americans are in serious need of some fun. All the celebrity gossip and judging of our neighbors is beginning to wear thin. And there's only so much Jon & Kate and American Idol and Runway you can absorb before the thought hits you: This is just second-hand fun. I'm just sitting at a distance, judging someone else's fun. I want to play on the funny stairs! I want to drop stuff in the whistling garbage can! I want to win 2,500 euros!
According to the statistics kept by the contest organizers (Yes. They kept statistics of how many people walked up the piano stairs, versus the obesity-friendly escalator), we can change human avoidance of unpopular chores by adding a little fun into the mix. More people used the "fun" machines in all three of the videos, according to the site.
So I have a bigger proposition for Volkswagen: Can we also get large corporations to behave differently by adding fun? After all, corporations are considered people by the law.
So let's see...
You know what's fun? Dominoes!




What if we used a domino reward for, say, corporate morality and health care? Each domino could represent a person who's life was saved by the public option, then whichever insurance CEO's company lost the most money could knock...Uh, wait a minute.
How about this? Each domino represents $500 saved by small businesses and taxpayers for health care reform. Then when it was knocked over, it would reveal a valentine heart and message, "Thank you, insurance industry, for the sacrifice you made for your country."

Know what else is fun? Houses of cards.




What if we tied a house of cards reward to the mortgage industry? These mortgage guys hate the idea of Washington regulation, don't they? So OK, hire this card stacking guy to build replicas of the hated government symbols, the Capitol, White House, etc. Knocking them over can be the consolation prize for the reforms that disallow some past business abuses. No hard feelings, guys.

OK. One more. Mandalas.






You know the go-go financial whizzes we've been reading about? The Masters of the Universe? The ones who like to bet everything on risky derivatives? They should each be required by law to do one of the ceremonies illustrated above each year. Just sit there, staying out of the marketplace, concentrating on the sand and the god of compassion. And they should have robes and bells and headgear, too.
If it didn't help their chi, at least they'd be in a place where they couldn't hurt us for four days. Problem solved.

Hit the button

Why isn't there a Reset button for weeks like this? Surely, if there was such a thing, I'd be slapping my palm down on it repeatedly today. I'd restart the day without the dog-induced tension at 6:30 a.m., without the cat in my face, without the last-minute bleary-eyed run to school. And without the near miss of my daughter's friend's car, parked on the side of the street. (It's a state trooper car.)
I'd rewind to my morning check of Facebook. Once there, I'd skim over a link to a money advice columnist named Kat Hnatyshyn. I wouldn't click it. I wouldn't read it. Because I already have too much free-floating rage going this morning.
The blog post in question can be found on Kat's Money Corner on KansasCity.com, entitled "Show me some attitude."
Kat's topic is reining in your spendthrift urges, freezing that credit card in a block of ice, quelling that unchecked frivolity that so many of us have these days:

Saying “no” to those little indulgences – like a $4 mocha latte – may be the hardest change of all, but those little expenses add up. Use a goal-setting technique: Start a savings account for something special, such as a nice vacation. Every time you feel the urge for one of those indulgences, stash that money instead in a place reserved especially for that....

Are there really people left out there who still have difficulty with the $4 mocha latte question? Is there someone, right now, in Kat's office (at CommunityAmerica Credit Union) saying, "I'm not sure what I should do with all this extra money and vacation time I have. Do you think I should put it in savings, or should I splurge on a flat-screen TV?" If so, I definitely don't want to read about them.
Right now we have less than $100 of "mad money" to cover our gas and milk purchases until a week from Friday. And our daughter's birthday is this weekend. We'll have to go into savings if we want to give her any kind of present (and we do).
Not that I'm asking for any pity or sympathy. We're still better off than a lot of people who are completely unemployed.
Just about everyone I know has suffered some kind of major lifestyle cutback. If they aren't laid off, they're dealing with an unpaid furlough or a cutback in the business they own. No one is having any trouble saying no to the mocha latte. As for the impulse to run up the credit cards--well, JC Penney just sent us a note saying their new store credit card rate will be 23.99 percent! So I'll have no trouble staying off the card (and perhaps staying out of their stores, as well.).
Believe us, Kat, we'd all love to be optimistic enough about our futures to go on a little spending spree. Maybe replace that bathrobe with the gaping hole in the elbow. Or go all out and buy a toaster oven from a store, rather than a garage sale. Or maybe just buy our families something nice for Christmas after a grindingly long year.
But we're not stupid. Every indication is that things will continue to be bad for a long, long time.
Oops. Sorry about the angry, downer ending. Guess I need a

All I'm asking...

I went to the psychic fair.
The readers and shamans were there.
Went into a trance
Now I'll take a chance
On McClatchy, five dollars a share.

OK, maybe I'm overdoing the optimism a little, here. At last look up, McClatchy was at 3.42 (down .23, or 6.3 percent)
Silliness aside, I did go to the psychic fair this weekend. Or maybe that's silliness front and center.
I've been wanting to go to this event for at least five years--ever since seeing the signs up along Wornall on my way to UMKC. But usually I only saw them after the fact, when the fair had already happened. This fall, however, the stars were perfectly aligned. The fair was on a day I could go. Add that to the fact that the economy has quadrupled my interest in seers and omens. I put it on the schedule. Mike went, too. Hell yes, take the whole family.
The Psychic Fair, put on twice a year by the Psychical Research Society, is made up of tarot readers, shamans and other psychic advice givers doing their thing, surrounded by vendors from every crystal, herbal, aromatherapy and acupuncture place you've ever heard of. Off in one corner, there were various lectures on the hour.
Two were of particular interest: Changing negative energy into positive energy! and Animal Totems (for previous post on my interest in animal totems and the Great Blue Heron, click here).
Talk about your slam dunk.
Sixteen of us waited in the curtained-off lecture hall for AKA Santa Shaman to enter. Here's how the brochure described the talk:
This experiential lecture will help you transcend negative thoughts and feelings, and instead, think and feel more positively. It will help you create a totally different energy and conjure up hope and joy in your heart.
Well allrighty then. This sounds like just the thing.
At around ten past the hour, Santa Shaman entered. He was a diminutive man with long salt-and-pepper hair and beard tucked under a ball cap (was that Kokopelli on the front? I forgot to ask)
He walked slowly with a cart and some plastic tubing at his nose. He explained he'd had a bout with cancer and heart disease, and in fact, was supposed to have died in 2003.
Then he took a handful of bright, artificially colored feathers and shook them at us. "Hey, hey, hey, hey."
"Does that make you feel better?" he asked afterwards.
Um...
"Who wants to come up and heal me? I've been having some trouble with my knee."
A young lady who said she was a healer went to the front of the room. He made some motions over her open palm, first one hand, then the other. Then she bent down, touched his knee and fell a little sideways to the floor.
Santa Shaman then launched into a lengthy story about his quest to become a medicine man, his life as an ordained minister and truck driver, his law degree and his favorite horse (who was struck by lightning the same day the shaman was supposed to have died, which was also the day he had cancer surgery. This horse will be awaiting him when he crosses the Rainbow Bridge, he said he believes.)
"Who wants to be empowered?" he asked us.
Um...
And again with the shaking of the feathers and the "Hey, hey, hey." About a half hour had passed and still no mention of the advertised talk on optimism. Are there any questions so far?
"What about the positive energy?" one of us asked, timidly.
"You are all natural healers," he replied. Then he had us put our hands to our foreheads at the "third eye" and wait to feel the warmth. When that happened, we would put our hands on top of our heads, and SS would draw another volunteer.
He called on another lady, who stood patiently at the front while SS talked some more about his experiences in the armed services and the force of the pendulum. She got to sit down, without doing anything.
A few people got up to leave.
And then, he remembered. When you get those negative thoughts, he said, "go back to your inner child" and think about the things you did that were the most fun to you. "You'll be amazed how fast the gloomy days will go away."
End of lecture number one.
I saw Mike, as I waited for the animal totems lecture. He was just coming out of the talk on guardian angels and looked blissed out. Apparently there'd been some group hypnosis involved. "That was all right," he said, dreamily. (Read his experience here.)
The animal totems talk, by Cliff Humphrey was a little easier to follow. Animal totems are like guides that come to us to offer help and wisdom, if we are still enough to listen. You sit and wait and see what appears. And even though you may not be able to get into the woods for solitude, you can still look for them on a park bench (although, presumably, they'd be ants, pigeons and dogs. Or, if on the beach, seagulls, though I would think everyone who's ever visited a beach has a seagull totem.)
But apparently it's more complicated because it takes a wiser elder, like a tribal grandmother, to notice what particular animals you attract--say a dragonfly in your hair--and tell you to look to those animals for answers and...just as my thoughts began to wander I heard him say "Great Blue Heron."
What? What about the Great Blue Heron? My head snapped up.
And what does it mean that a Great Blue Heron swooped down during a wedding anniversary ceremony...I didn't catch it all.
"It's a blessing."
Well, I tried.
During the hour I had to kill between lectures, I looked around at some of the vendors' booths. At one was a Magic Eye game, which is kind of like a Ouija board only with a pendulum. You hold the pendulum over the dot in the middle, which seems to be magnetized, and the pendulum swings to and fro to spell out answers to the question you're thinking. It was free.
OK. I picked it up.
"Will the Kansas City Wizards win their last match tonight?"
NO
And they didn't (sigh). But they didn't lose, either. They tied, ruining DC United's hopes to get a playoff spot. That made me happy, in a mean-spirited kind of way.
One more question: "Will Mike's employment status change for the better?"
I watched it swing. Yes, No, Luck and then...
Earth.
Earth? Really? I started to walk away but turned around. This was much too important a question to ask with my non-dominant hand. I picked it up again, this time left-handed.
Yes, No, Yes, Luck. It swung wildly. It started to settle on No, so I moved my hand just a little. And the final answer, ladies and gentlemen: Air. Or Money.
Money it is.

Do Not Pass Go

It's all too easy to be glum about the way things have gone this year. But as it's Friday and the beginning of another beautiful weekend, I'd rather end on a happy note of gratitude.
Yes, that's right. I'm grateful that my prayers, such as they are, are being answered.
Back when another administration had just won it's second term and I was a little less jaded about church, I used to pray. I didn't pray for specific election results, or particular things to pass or fail in Washington. I didn't pray for public officials (or Supreme Court justices) to die. I'd just, once in a while, pray that the true character of elected officials would be revealed and that the people would take note. That left room for me being wrong.
And, as the term went on, my prayer was answered--event after character-revealing event. We had hurricanes and financial meltdowns (not that I'd ever pray for any of these things) and the officials reactions were noted.
I don't pray as often these days, but when I do, it's still the same prayer. And it's been making me nervous lately. Sure, we've had the push for health care reform. But it was beginning to look like the true character of this administration was to hand over everyone's money to the upper crust and trust in the same, sorry old "trickle down" theory that got us into so much trouble in the first place.
So I was heartened this week when the White House demanded 50 percent pay cuts and caps on benefits for the top management running companies that got so much government bailout money.
(Here's a story on Bloomberg.com.)
At last, evidence of a spine. Despite the fact that, just the day before, Goldman Sachs International adviser Brian Griffiths made news for defending the obscene pay packages the financial industry was preparing to shower on it's top earners. Sachs suggested banks make larger charitable contributions (a public relations ploy to salvage their reputations, I suppose.).
And he went on to say:
“It was the failed moral compass of bankers which was primarily responsible for why we had this crisis,” he said. “The question is: what can we do in the culture of institutions to make them behave in a more socially responsible way?” (whole story here)
Failed moral compass? Really?
If you want to see where these guy's moral compasses have been the past decade, check out this depressing chart of Wall Street bonuses versus average annual pay in the Huffington Post.
I've always wondered at the affinity that certain Christian church leaders have for laissez-faire capitalism. Considering that money changers, rich people and hypocrites were often sore points with Jesus, why is unrestrained capitalism the only economy accepted by them?
Capitalism has no moral compass, beyond self interest. Just ask Ayn Rand. The only point of capitalism is to make money, pure and simple. If that means using tax money of the strapped middle class for a second home, or throwing out a worker because his illness costs your company too much, so be it. Moral compasses are for clerics and philosophers.
So Pres. Obama. Keep it up.
Oh, and here's a great screed from Bob Herbert earlier this week in the New York Times.

Way to go, Einstein

The inevitable happened yesterday. When I wasn't looking, the dog (Einstein) ripped a gash of several inches in the largest cushion of our sectional couch.
I'm doing a great job of staying very, very calm about the whole thing. See how steady I'm holding my hand? I haven't dissolved into a screaming fury or wept or done any of the other things I usually do when something is ruined that costs major money that I don't have to fix. Instead, I quietly step back and observe Roxie's life of the past year as if watching it happen to someone else. Psychologists call this "dissociation," I think.
After it happened, I spent some time perched on the arm of the couch, discussing it with Mike in rational, adult tones. The couch was already threadbare on this particular cushion, which could not be turned over. And it was probably seven or eight years old, and nothing lasts forever. And it wasn't my fault because I couldn't be expected to follow the dog around every second.
No angry rants about evil forces beyond my control. Just resigned acceptance. See? I'm learning.
Of course it was tempting to look over at the blank space next to the couch which was once occupied by the recliner that fell apart several years ago. Because we've been trying to live with little debt, we've gone years without replacing that recliner. Same with the minivan, which was hauled off to the Salvation Army when it could no longer be repaired for reasonable money. Living with one car has been a challenge, but we've managed.
But still, I can't help wondering whether trying to reduce debt has been such a great idea, given the circumstances we're now in.
Even before Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover, we were big believers in keeping our debt to a minimum. So while others lived it up, we went without a lot of things, and put off repairs. We did borrow for certain things: The house, the car, medical care for the dog, college. But except for vacations, which we repaid ourselves within a year, that was it.
We thought we were building a secure life for ourselves. But now that the recession has cut our income by a devastating amount, we find ourselves with a lot of big-ticket items on their last legs and no resources to repair or replace them.
I can't help wondering if we--and others like us--would have been better off if we'd just gone into debt and bought a new car or stove or couch that would last us through these bad times. We'd have the payments, sure, but there would have been hope of negotiating lower payments, or simply paying the minimum for a while until things get better.
Oh, well. Probably not. I've never been the type to gamble and anyway, it would take a huge personality shift for me to gamble my daughter's college on the hope of things getting better.
Guess I'm just not that much of an optimist.

It's Here

Top of the list of things that cheer me up this week:
We have a book. It's no longer just in our imaginations. It's a real, concrete thing you can hold in your hands.
After thinking about it and planning it and worrying about it for months, it is now, miraculously, off the press and available for sale. I'd compare this to childbirth, but that would be trite (and anyway, childbirth is much, much more painful. No contest.)
Mike made the short trip over to the warehouse yesterday and picked up copies of Mike & Roxie's Vegetable Paradise so we could have some to show--and hopefully sell--at our booth in the Lenexa Chili Challenge this weekend.
I should be tap dancing on the tabletop, right?
But honestly, I feel a little...freaked out. It's been a long time since the last time I worked in the print media. My freelancing pretty much ended in the 1990s. In the time since, I've watched Mike's column and seen how people--some people--discuss things in the 2000s. And it doesn't encourage me to change any of my natural hermit tendencies.
Can we do a garden how-to book without death threats? I guess I'll find out. But it does feel good to have it out there. And hopefully it will entertain a few people and help some others get started on their own vegetable gardens.
The warehouse just got them yesterday, so they'll be in stores (the two that I know of are the Kansas City Store and Borders) in a few more days. But they're available online at The Kansas City Store right now. And of course, if you stop by the Chili Challenge, we'll sign you a copy.

That's better

As I said in the last post, this week is devoted to digging myself out of the huge funk of last week and finding things to cheer me up.
Last week, I was not a pleasant person to be around. Well, ok. let's say I was even more unpleasant than usual. I moped. I picked fights. I obsessed on our finances.
But things are going to be different this week.
And, so far...so good. I forced myself to run and lift some weights. More than just once in the week. That's helped, no denying it. But with the downsizing at the six month mark and things not that much improved, it will take more than just exercising.
So today, in an effort to keep a happy face, I'll be writing exclusively about things that lift my spirits.

1. Well-timed focus groups. If you're lucky, someone will call at just the low point in your pay cycle and ask you to drop by and spout opinions about some products, for which you'll be paid. Of course, they'll also make you disavow any knowledge of their existence. Which is why I'm absolutely not saying I'm going to be in one, or that I've ever been in one, or what the subject matter would be. But it does cheer me up when they call, just at the precise right moment, and I have the time free and I qualify. Is all I'm saying.

2.Beautiful goals. The Wizards haven't been consistently that great this year, so I don't necessarily mean them. In this case, I'm talking about my daughter's goal Sunday. Not just a goal, but a game-winning goal. It was beautiful, an arcing shot at speed from the left side that looked so high I was sure it wasn't going in. Then at the last second it dropped down and into the sweet spot in the far corner of the net. And off her right foot, too. I replayed the mental tape of that goal several times, when I was having trouble getting to sleep.

3.Elephants that paint pictures. Or maybe I should say elephants who paint pictures. I came across this video, which has apparently been verified enough to be on National Geographic.



Now if she'd only sign it.

4. Engrish. Those badly translated signs from Japan (China or other Asian languages) are always fun. Here's one I lifted off the Oddee site. Click here for more examples from this site.

("A Time Sex Thing") Should have said, "articles for daily use."

The Loop of Doom

"Doom loops," and "self vandalism" are two interesting terms that came up last week with regards to the Great Recession. (Seriously, we've got to think up a more colorful name for it.) They're the terms a Harvard professor uses to describe what happens in a company when cost-cutting becomes the only goal and everyone's afraid of being laid off. (Read Mike's column about it here.)
In a doom loop, the scared-s**less employees clam up just when their innovation and brain power is needed most. Because they are afraid of offending the boss in any way, they don't mention how some process could be done better or cheaper. And that leads to the "self vandalism."
The column's emphasis was on doom loops in the workplace. But I think they can also loop their evil way into your head and affect your home life as well.
Example: I didn't get in enough running (or do much of any exercise) last week, which put me in a very bad mood. The depressed and gloomy mood then kept me from running because, really, what's the use of anything? The more the days went by, the worse I felt and the less I wanted to exercise.
Instead, I did what I wanted to do, which was watch television. I watched the Food Network. I watched Alton Brown--not in his normally excellent "Good Eats" but in some bizarre staged 10th anniversary show of a type I would not normally sit still for. I did not cook, because I was so, so defeated from a heroic (and ultimately futile) attempt to keep the two-week grocery bill for the three of us under $200. I should have been able to do that with all the garden stuff, shouldn't I? Proof again that no matter what you do, you lose. Might as well lie still as a stick on the couch watching Food Network until you die.
In fact I've spent the past week curled up in a tight mental ball, wishing for time to pass more quickly (until the financial troubles have passed) and yet more slowly (so we have more time before the college forbearance loans expire). A tight little ball of fermenting cabbage in the dark and gloomy basement (another Alton Brown episode).
Doom loop indeed.
The trouble is, you're not very receptive to new money-making ideas when you're hunkered down, waiting for things to pass. And that's a bad thing indeed.
So this week is dedicated to thinking of things that cheer me up. For instance: I made up a toe-tapper about a...um...little walk I'd like to take the dog on. Humming it brightens things up a little. (Don't worry. I'd never really do any of those horrible things in the song.)
It's a start. Maybe I'll think of more things later. But right now, I've got to get my shoes on and head out to exercise.

Those optimistic Norwegians

When I was more of a churchgoer, I used to hear a lot about "stepping out on faith." The concept: It isn't enough just to believe you know what God wants. You also have to act. And sometimes you have to trust in your beliefs enough to act, even though you're not sure what the outcome will be.
The big example of this usually came at pledge time, when everyone was urged to commit their dollars for the coming year, even though they were unsure of their future bank accounts. After all, "His eye is on the sparrow."
What makes me think of this today is the announcement that President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize. This despite the fact that he has been president nowhere near long enough to have much of an impact on world peace. The committee apparently felt his election was enough to give hope of world peace after such a long reign by the Bush family.
It's the ultimate optimistic act. In naming Obama, the committee has stepped out on faith--warranted or not--that good things will come of his presidency.
Okay. So the message is, take action based on your trust in a good outcome.
But I don't mind admitting, even as a committed leftist, liberal hippie wannabe (fill in more character slurs of your choice) I have trouble with this concept, because it has so much to do with what's gone wrong with everything. Sure, that house (or car, or computer) is a little more than we can afford. But things are looking good. Let's overextend our credit--just for a year or so. And no, we don't have much saved for college, but with the way the stock market is going, it will double in no time. In fact, maybe the markets would be the best place for everyone's Social Security.
We all know how well that would have worked out.
Nevertheless, the Nobel committee apparently believes in stepping out on faith. Let's hope Obama doesn't let them (or us) down. As for me, I'm happy to reserve judgement until some data starts coming in.
What's that saying of Obama's I was so fond of a few months ago? Oh, yeah.
"I'm an optimist. Not a sap."

Ayn it a Shame?

The name Ayn Rand kept popping up today. First it was in an ad I scanned on my way somewhere else on the web. Something about downloading Atlas Shrugged on your Kindle. ( As if!) Then, as I was looking about for items on optimism, I came across this on YouTube (Reasons to be Optimistic about Ayn Rand's Influence on American Culture). From March, 2008. (Sorry for the length)




This is so touching. Here's this guy, from the Ayn Rand Institute (? !) all earnest about how we need to get schools to teach her books so then her ideas will sound mainstream and not so nutty and far out. You gotta love it.
The Institute will pay your kid big bucks for a little indoctrination, BTW. First place in the high school essay contest brings in $10,000.
I read The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged in college--not because they were required but because my friends recommended them as good old-fashioned bodice rippers. They were all full of virile men with strong jaws battling society and winning their women by the sheer power of their macho manliness. Not much sex in them, as I recall, but they were hot, in a repressed college girl kind of way.
Now I hear middle-aged Republican men are totally into Ayn Rand, and I can't get past the hilarious image of some balding guy in tasseled loafers up in his bedroom all engrossed in the plot. Honey, have you done your homework yet?
Reading Ayn Rand and actually paying attention to the ideas on capitalism is a lot more painful. Ideologically, she has all the subtlety of one of those 1930s posters from the Soviet Union celebrating the masses. Only everything is in reverse. That guy with hands on hips facing into the wind is not a farmer or factory worker but a determined corporate CEO or top investor, fighting the mewling complaints of those envious of his life.
To read these books you had to suspend reality to get around the completely ridiculous plot. In Atlas Shrugged, the hero, John Galt, is a wealthy industrialist so enraged by demands on his genius by the inferior masses that he drops out of capitalism, takes some others with him and retires to watch the end of society as we know it. Because as we know, all the credit for any successful business goes to the two or three guys at the top. They could put out the product all by themselves. We should just be thankful they're generous enough to give out jobs to us undeserving users.
For a time after Obama took office, you'd hear a lot about outraged upper class guys wanting to take their marbles and go home, "go John Galt." You don't so much any more, though.
Maybe it's the realization that this is real life and real money. It's one thing to go Galt on your family, but quite another to abandon your business. Or maybe the ego bubble is beginning to deflate. Maybe they realize that it wouldn't be that hard to find somebody else in short order who could do a better job.
So, reason number one to be optimistic about the influence of Ayn Rand: Recent economic deveolpments have finally proved how ridiculous she was.

How many dead peasants does it take to screw in a revolution?

They say that even a "great recession" has its up side. Talented people, who might have stayed comfortably as small cogs in the great wheel of industry, get booted out into the cold. They invent dynamic new businesses. They create inventions. They branch out and bring new ideas to the new careers they are forced into.
Or, as in my case, they obsess on get-rich-quick schemes.
How, oh how, to get some of that money back? Because I've got news. My daughter is going to college. Thanks to a weekend trip to see Michael Moores' Capitalism: A Love Story, I now have a plan.
I'm taking out a life insurance policy. On Rupert Murdoch. Or Bill Gates. Or Warren Buffet. Or--oh hell, who cares? One of those top-paid CEOs we're always reading so much about. (For an interesting graphic look at executive pay, check out this from GOOD)
Apparently, taking out life insurance policies on lower-rung workers in a large corporation, has been all the rage the past decade or so. The employer takes out a policy in secret on, say, a deli meat cutter, and names itself as the beneficiary. Then, if the meat cutter dies, the company collects--and does not share with the family--the tax-free benefit. It was controversial long before Moore's film, but seeing it again just reminded me of its evil genius. (There was no mention in the film of possible conflict of interest the company has as it doles out health insurance benefits. Or am I just being paranoid?)
It's called "dead peasant" insurance. Revealing, huh?
My version would be called "dead plutocrat" insurance.
I know what you're thinking. "But Roxie, the dead peasant has a relationship with his employer. If he dies, the corporation suffers. You, on the other hand, are not related to any of these high-rollers."
Tut, tut. If you mull it over, if you obsess for hours, the evil logic will come. Have a little faith.
Here's my thinking:

1. All of the company's brains are in the highest rung of its management. In fact, they are the only smart people in the country. Otherwise, why would they be paid so much more? I've resisted this idea for years, but now I see the truth. These people are getting paid so much because without them, the corporations would collapse within seconds. We have to keep paying them protection money, otherwise the corporations and, yea, the whole United States, will be brought to a crushing monetary (and maybe even military) disaster that none of the rest of us are smart enough to deal with.
2. I depend on these companies for my daily existence. This computer I'm using right now, the Internet. What would happen if they suddenly quit working? Or if the power went out. How would I go on? I wouldn't, is the answer. I--and perhaps my family--would die. Or we'd at least lose our livelihoods and go bankrupt.
3.Ergo, the leaders of these mega-corps have life and death power over me, the unschooled peasant. What could be more practical than a policy to propect myself should one of them suffer an unfortunate accident?
Of course, it would be barbaric to root for the death of our country's great fiduciary leaders, and I'm certainly not suggesting such a thing. But on the other hand, we sure do need a new stove. Or money for college. Just one payoff might allow us to swing an extra degree of heat from the furnace this winter.
Think about it.

In related news
Mike Hendricks, Kansas City Star columnist and my husband, posted Monday on executive "incentive" pay at the Tribune Co.
Yes, his blog is back, and open to the general public. The name is changed from "Mike's Place" to just "Mike Hendricks."

Action speaks louder

Sometimes it seems the cosmos are trying to tell me something. The morning of an eye exam, one of the NYT crossword answers will be "glass eye." (True! But everything turned out OK.) Or I'll notice a large spot of bird crap on the car window looks like a blue heron, and then I'll round a corner in a Lenexa park and be surprised by a heron standing in the water while other trail walkers go chattering on. (Don't they see it? Or is it a heron just for me? Spooky!)
This week, soon after I'd read Newsweek writer Julie Baird and author Barbara Ehrenreich questioning whether the whole positive attitude industry is ruining America, I found another item in my new favorite web site, GOOD, headlined "Political activism is good for your head." (Read it here)
This post came about as the result of another study by psychologists that found that engaging in some kind of political activism made people happier and more fulfilled. Here's more.
If you read any of Ehrenreich's other books (Nickel and Dimed, This land is their Land) you'll know she has often sought fairer treatment of the poor and working classes. And--I haven't read the newest book yet--it appears she does the same in her critique of the "positive thinking" industry. If you're always concentrating on your shortcomings for complaining about your life, chances are you'll never take any action to do something about it.
I find myself agreeing more and more with the "take action" approach. Not that I haven't enjoyed the laughing yoga and brain waves tapes (mmmm. Brain waves). They are enjoyable in the short term. But so far I'm learning that anything with a lasting affect on my sour mood usually involves some kind of action. It's a choice: I can sit around, wondering what new fresh hell will come from my way and what I ever did to deserve it. Or I can go on the offense. No question which feels better.
There was one caveat in the new psychological study, though. It seems extreme activism--say the kind that gets you arrested--did not make the subjects feel happier. So no dripping deer heads, please.

Thanks
That said, I still may try some positive attitude self help because--I don't know--because I just can't help it. So I'll try to get some reason to be thankful in here on a semi-regular basis. I can't promise every day. And I can't promise they will all be serious.

Today I'm thankful that the final proofreading on Mike & Roxie's Vegetable Paradise is almost done and the book will be released in only a couple of weeks. You're all invited to come see us at the Lenexa Chili Challenge (Oct. 17). We may have some copies there. In the meantime, here's the cover: