First Snow: And brainwashing little kids

Well, I'm pleased to announce Provo's first substantial snowfall. We've got about an inch or two covering the ground and there are still some flurries shaking things up a bit as I write. The snow makes me happy, and reminds me that all of those Christmas movies with snow in them are still accurate even with the horrible Armageddon-like global warming that is sure to destroy humanity as we know it. 

But there's another thing that made me smile. I was watching a movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Emma Thompson called 'In the Name of the Father' which tells the story of the Guilford Four, a group of Irishmen who were accused of an IRA bombing that they did not commit. I highly recommend the movie. But the movie is not what I want to talk about. I was watching the film on hulu (an online aggregator of TV shows and movies made available legally online), and as I watched it, all of the commercials on it were sponsored by the Ad Council.

The Ad Council has some good messages, and some brain-washing ones. The one that struck me most powerfully was on global warming (Remember I was watching it as the snow was cascading down outside, as it still is). The ad had a bunch of little kids between the ages of probaby 5-9 who say the word 'tick' and 'tock' with cuts between the kids to make it all add up to this crescendo as if they're part of a time bomb. Then they ask the current generation to save them from "massive heat waves," "severe drought," "devastating hurricanes," saying, "Our future is up to you, go to fightglobalwarming.com, while there's still time." I was nauseated.

Once again little children are used as pawns in an effort to brainwash people into thinking the world is coming to an end. And it's all because of that evil, insidious gas called CO2. Yeah, that's right, the stuff you exhale every time you breathe is going to destroy the world for your grandchildren.

Here's the ad.

Here's my two cents: Fight the hysteria! Fight the real battles of AIDs, malaria, extreme poverty, water pollution, illiteracy, and malnutrition. Fight against problems that are proven, and that we can most surely fix. Global warming is not even directly correlated to man's CO2 production. How can you fight a problem that may not even be causally linked to man? Well, quite simply you can't. You cannot fight anything if you do not know what causes it. Do we know what causes water pollution? Do we know what causes illiteracy? Do we know what causes malaria? Yes. Yes. And Yes. Would it stifle innovation and cost an unforeseeable amount to attack these known problems? No. Can the fight against global warming say the same? No. Bjorn Lomborg gets the priorities right in this video.

So what is the solution? Better research. Level-headed research that doesn't politicize science. Saying that man-made CO2 will bring about the end of the world is as valid as me saying having a glass of wine a day will make you explode in 30 years.

Armageddon!

I've heard a lot of people talk about how Armageddon is at hand because of the global financial collapse, pirates, Jesus moving into the White House, and even 200 narwhals getting trapped by encroaching winter ice. Well, I'm feeling a bit left out of the mix. So, I'm joining the chorus that believes Armageddon is upon us. Why, the moon even is turning red (when I look through my 3D glasses).

Here are some reasons to believe the end is near:

1. There is a huge pile of leaves in my front yard and no trees nearby

2. The entire BYU campus is being taken over by deer and quail

3. I don't have a car

4. global cooling - Narwhals trapped in ice and citrus crops plagued by frost

5. global warming - the Sahara desert is taking over the world

6. Androids are taking over (Haley Joel Osment)

7. Hillary Clinton is going to be Secretary of State

8. My room mate is a pirate

9. My front door is broken

10. I nearly choked on a granola bar the other day

11. Chavez is my next door neighbor

12. The book Twilight was made into a feature film

13. Sylvester Stallone made another Rambo film at 60 years old

14. No American in their right mind would by an American car

15. Iran is rounding up spy pigeons to be executed (last year it was squirrels)

16. Pandas are biting people who want to hug them

17. The new James Bond movie wasn't as good as the last one

18. Harry Potter is on the Queen's short list as "heir apparent"

19. I asked for my eggs to be over easy and they were scrambled

20. Hillary Clinton will be my boss if I get into the Foreign Service

21. 1 out of every 5 people have had their brains removed by video games

22. The East is relevant again in the NBA with: Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, Orlando & Indianapolis

23. Michael Jordan is doing Hanes commercials with Charlie Sheen

24. Obama is eating more corned beef

25. The Weather Channel is laying people off

26. Kids are getting arrested for farting

27. The astronauts fixing the space station can't even drink their own urine when they want to

28. Walmart is not having success in Russia

29. Martha Stewart might get a Presidential pardon

30. Val Kilmer is well over 200 pounds:More incriminating evidence

Stop the melodrama!

Melodrama. Ideally, given how it sounds, it should be a moderate or 'mellow' type of drama. Of course even more ideally, it would be nice if there was no drama at all. But alas, melodrama disappoints. Again. And again.

In my family, I am proud to announce that we are very good at melodrama. Molehills become mountains, mice become elephants, and a stain on a shirt becomes a ruined life (there is oxiclean).

Generally, most of us in my family are pretty chill. I would even say 'mellow'. And some of our coping strategies, like mine are: "I'm not dead, I'm moderately healthy, I have friends and family, and I'm doing the best I can right now with what I've got." Then there are other strategies like this one: "I need everything in my life to run like clockwork; because I have absolutely perfectionist standards nothing ever goes right and I will take my self-induced stress out on everyone." It is very difficult to choose which is more healthy. I prefer the latter. Why? Because I can compare it to my life and breathe easy. 

I don't like to see people stressed out, and I don't like to see people suffer (especially close family), but it is nice to see that I have developed successful life-coping skills. Armageddon is not upon us because we are 6 minutes late to lunch, or if we get stuck in traffic. Life happens (while we are making other plans). Now, that does not mean we all should be lazy and unproductive, but it means we need to have balance. When some load of crap gets piled on our plate, instead of whining about it, pouting, and throwing a hissy fit, we can grin resourcefully and dump it on our garden, using it as fertilizer. As cliche as it sounds, when life gives you lemons, squeeze them in the eyes of someone who is stressing out for no reason, and laugh at them. Then maybe you'll start a fight with them - win or lose - they will probably forget about what was stressing them out in the first place.