Be-Headings in The Workplace, High Alert Status, Porch Reflections, etc.

·         I guess if you’re a criminal forensic psychologist or FBI profiler person, it’d be important to know what led a guy to kill and behead his co-worker.  It’d probably help you understand how to track and thwart future would-be be-headers.  I think that the rest of the folks who are so interested in the “why would he kill and be-head his co-worker?” reasons  probably know the answer but hope it’s not true, or maybe a small percentage could even picture themselves doing the same thing on a really bad day at work.  Whether the guy killed and be-headed his co-worker because he’s connected to a larger global network of be-headers, or if he just was inspired by what he’s heard they’ve done, and whether he shouted a prayer of exultation during or after the be-heading or not, I don’t think the term “workplace violence” is an accurate or strong enough descriptor for this behavior.  Perhaps if people start stoning co-workers, we’ll rethink the definition.

 

·         We keep hearing about how our nation is on high alert, and I guess that’s a good thing generally, and especially considering the tumult around the world.  But it’s pretty disturbing that in this past month several news stories have come and gone, with hardly a word connecting them to larger security issues.  A Tennessee youth detention center has experienced three successful and violent “prison breaks” by several of its inmates.   Then several Afghani nationals, in Cape Cod for military training (apparently the Cape is known for its Middle East-like desert and mountain terrain), managed to walk away (to the Canadian border) supposedly in an effort to defect.  Then a couple of “troubled souls” managed to breach White House security to the point where one of them actually made it inside before being tackled by security.  Also, I haven’t heard about any systemic resolution to the unchecked influx of Central American children across the Texas border.  Was that “immigration crisis” taken care of and I missed it?  Anyway, how much higher would our national level of alert need to be to protect us from these seemingly boneheaded security failures, much less those coordinated by organized and well-funded organizations looking to hurt us?

 

·         On A Lighter Note:

As I sat on my porch at about dusk one evening, a group of three people, all wearing sunglasses, silently walked by my house.   It occurred to me all of the sudden, “wow, it’s really been a looong time since I smoked pot.”

Birds, Phrases, Dementia, The Border, Family Guy, Hitler, etc.

·         Bird Corner

If birds gossip, I bet that Cardinals are the most trash talked of all birds.

I bet that Mourning doves don’t mind if you refer to them as Morning doves by mistake.  Some of them probably wish you’d call them Turtle doves every now and then, although they probably won’t mention it out of politeness.  But I bet that all Mourning doves hate being called Pigeons; they've worked too hard to be denied the distinction.  I also bet a Pigeon will never correct you if you mistakenly refer to him as a Mourning dove.  Posers.

·         “..Or what not”, "I have to tell you.." and “that being said..” have joined other popular and meaningless phrases including,  “...and things of that nature..” that simply fill up time during a conversation.   It makes me miss “Um” and “..and like…”, which while still distracting, are shorter. 

 

·         When I was a kid, if an old person went “off the rails”, he or she had “hardening of the arteries”.  It usually happened to “really old people”, and back then most people usually died in their sixties.  Now the majority of us are living to be really old by comparison to those days, and everyone I know has a relative with dementia or Alzheimer’s.  Still, I hear the word awkwardly and even intentionally mispronounced as “old-timers” or “Alltimers”.   Is it because of the fear that most of us have a fairly good chance of ending up with Alzheimer’s or watching and helping a loved one live with it that causes this reluctance to use the correct words and accept the challenges of the disease into our collective fluent consciousness?

 

·         I’ve known a few people who are always starting a project to fix something, usually because someone has pressured or nagged him or her into it.  Invariably the project, although still worthwhile and necessary, loses its status as “the most important thing that must be addressed right away” and stalls.   At that point, the project doer gives a sigh of relief that the spotlight is off  and the nagging has ceased,  and throws a tarp over the project.  I’ve noticed that the United States has a bunch of these urgent must do projects that have petered out without resolution after having their focus replaced with a newer, sexier or more dangerous scandal/emergency/tragedy fix of the moment.   I wonder how these hot problems seem to cool and fall off the radar without notice.  The government must go through a lot of tarps.

 

Old News

·         This situation seems to have fallen into the forgotten project category, but I heard a pretty good suggestion for addressing the recent (and apparently now stalled and tarp- shrouded) “Border Crisis”.  When an illegal adult tries to come across the border, we should send him or her back across the border immediately.  When an illegal and unaccompanied child tries to come across the border, we should provide medical care and safe living accommodations while determining the child’s nation of origin, and then send the kid back to that country.  We should then send the nation of origin a notification with an itemized reduction in international aid paid to that country for all costs associated with the care and return travel expenses of said child.   Sounds reasonable to me.

 

On the bright side, if things continue as they are with loosey goosey mass and government sanctioned illegal immigration of kiddies, there’s a good bet that in about ten years the USA will start a winning streak in the World Cup.

 

·         Call them lost opportunities, but there have been a bunch of disappointing and even painful moments in my life when it just didn’t occur to me to start looting area businesses.

 

·         I saw Seth MacFarlane on a talk show.  He did some Family Guy voices at the gushing behest of the host.  The delighted and enthusiastic audience just went wild with crazy laughter and applause.  Apparently he was able to sound just like the animated characters he created and voices every week.

 

·         I hear people comparing the growth of modern day terrorism to the rise of Nazism.  Some argue that the comparison isn't valid, but I do wonder if any world leaders in the 1930s publically considered “containing" Hitler, or in the 1940s described his actions as being “extraordinarily irresponsible.”  If Twitter existed back then, I bet Hitler would have been the subject of some very strong hashtags.

 

Problem Solving and Randomness, etc.

 

 

Problem Solving and Human Behavior Types:  The Burned Out Car Headlight

Human behavior and priorities and  perspectives are reflected in the way individuals address the most mundane of life’s challenges.  Although the following certainly could be subject to some variations, I think they serve as an oversimplified breakdown of 7 general behavior types.

                                   Do you see your type in this list?

            Scenario:      You have a burned -out car headlight, so you……..

Behavior Type #1:  Only drive during daylight.

Behavior Type #2:  Drive with one headlight and/or using your high beams until you get a ticket or until the other headlight burns out.  If the latter occurs, consider Behavior type #1.

Behavior Type #3:  Ask someone else to take your car to a mechanic.

Behavior Type #4:  Take the car to a mechanic yourself.

Behavior Type#5:  Buy a headlight bulb and ask someone else to replace the burned out one for you.

Behavior Type #6:  Buy a headlight bulb and replace the burned out one yourself.

Behavior Type #7:  In anticipation of the second bulb burning out as well, buy two bulbs, and replace the burned out one yourself.

 

                    Randomness

…I saw this YouTube video of a guy doing an impression of how Homer Simpson sounds when the Simpsons in translated into French.  I don’t speak French, but I think the guy nailed it.

 

…Considering and planning for the needs of illegal immigrants because they are accepted as the largest growing segment of our population is like considering how best to nurture crabgrass as a welcome addition to ones lawn.

 

…I’ve heard that there are parts of the world where toilets drain in a different direction than they do here in America.  I mean, it’s still downward, but it swirls differently, like clockwise or whatever.  I’m actually not really sure which direction our toilets drain in, which is kind of strange because I often watch, but I think that it would be just horrible to all of the sudden have them drain the other way, and that just gives me one more reason to proudly live here in America.