If you live in Michigan, let me apologize ahead of time. Sorry.

Yesterday my 9-year-old son had his nose in an almanac. He was reading facts about the states.

"This state's state bird is this ... that state's state tree is that ... the other state's flower is some other thing."

Nice. Nice.

"Michigan's state motto is:
If you are seeking a pleasant peninsula, look around you."

Of course they say it in Latin:
Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam, circum spice.

... in the life of a friend.

I have a collection of my own, personal religious books. Sure, there's the usual fodder of holy books: I have The Complete Gospels in there (which includes all the known Jesus stories of antiquity--less the recently decoded Judas Gospel). There's poetry: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. And philosophy: The Art of Living by Epictetus. Folksy stories: All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (and everything else by Fulghum). Psychology: Memories, Dreams, Reflections by Carl Jung. And on and on. One day I'll catalog those books that make it to the closest shelves.

But I want to quote from an advertising book that has made my Order of Holy Books: It's Not How Good You Are, It's How Good You Want to Be by Paul Arden. According to AdLand, Paul Arden is "one of the best advertising people in the entire world." I quote from Mr. Arden thusly (because it speaks to me, maybe it will you):

DO NOT SEEK PRAISE.
SEEK CRITICISM.

It is quite easy to get approval if we ask enough people, or if we ask those who are likely to tell us what we want to hear.

The likelihood is that they will say nice things rather than be too critical. Also, we tend to edit out the bad so that we hear only what we want to hear.

So if you have produced a pleasantly acceptable piece of work, you will have proved yourself that it is good simply because others have said so.

It is probably okay. But then it's probably not great either.

If, instead of seeking approval, you ask, "What's wrong with it? How can you make it better?', you are more likely to get a truthful, critical answer.

You may even get an improvement on your idea.

And you are still in a position to reject the criticism if you think it wrong.

Can you find fault with this?

Unky Rich:
Are you going to post anything on JimFormation again?

Me:
It's been a while, huh?

Unky Rich:
Yeh. How come you're not writing?

Me:
Well, after you haven't posted for a while, you feel the next thing you post should be really important.

Unky Rich:
Yeh. I understand.

So much time was taken between laying down primer and the final finished coat of paint that much of the masking tape got bonded to the wall and had to painstakingly be removed with razor blades. Judicious use of caulk was needed to cover-up some crap that we initially thought needed to be totally redone.

In the end the rooms look great. This morning we finally put everything back together--including book cases against the wall and books in said cases. I grabbed one of the books, a ratty old (printed 1925) hardcover version of A. A. Milne's classic "When We Were Very Young" (hear the introduction--from the North Carolina digital library), sat in my big brown leather chair, feet up, and read.

Below is one of my favorite poems from this small tome:

DISOBEDIENCE

James James
Morrison Morrison
Weatherby George Dupree
Took great
Care of his Mother,
Though he was only three.
James James Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he;
"You must never go down to the end of the town, if you don't go down with me."

James James
Morrison's Mother
Put on a golden gown.
James James Morrison's Mother
Drove to the end of the town.
James James Morrison's Mother
Said to herself, said she:
"I can get right down to the end of the town and be back in time for tea."

King John
Put up a notice,
"LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!
JAMES JAMES MORRISON'S MOTHER
SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN MISLAID.
LAST SEEN
WANDERING VAGUELY:
QUITE OF HER OWN ACCORD,
SHE TRIED TO GET DOWN
TO THE END OF THE TOWN -FORTY SHILLINGS REWARD!"

James James
Morrison Morrison
(Commonly known as Jim)
Told his
Other relations
Not to go blaming him.
James James
Said to his Mother,
"Mother," he said, said he:
"You must never go down to the end of the town without consulting me."

James James
Morrison's mother
Hasn't been heard of since.
King John said he was sorry,
So did the Queen and Prince.
King John
(Somebody told me)
Said to a man he knew:
If people go down to the end of the town, well, what can anyone do?"

(Now then, very softly)
J.J.
M.M.
W.G.Du P.
Took great
C/0 his M*****
Though he was only 3.
J.J. said to his M*****
"M*****," he said, said he:
"You-must-never-go-down-to-the-end-of-the-town-if-you-
don't-go-down-with-ME!"

I'm a simple man with simple pleasures. Thanks for reading this far.

I promise more entries. Promise.

Check this out from 2 Kings verses 2:23-2:24:

(Elisha) was walking along the road, some youths came out of the town and jeered at him. "Go on up, you baldhead!" they said. "Go on up, you baldhead!" He turned around, looked at them and called down a curse on them in the name of the LORD. Then two bears came out of the woods and mauled forty-two of the youths.

Two bears killed forty-two kids because they teased one of God's Chosen Ones!

Now you can't even call down a simple pox on the families of Palestinians who blow themselves up in front of an Israeli internet café. I wonder what's going on.

Footnote:
For what it's worth, Elisha is also considered a prophet of Islam and goes by the name "Al-Yasa" in the Qur'an. This further complicates my Palestinian dilemma above.

Regardless, something wacky is going on.

As this is her first job ever, I thought it was my obligation to familiarize myself with the Employee Manual. It was all routine stuff until I hit the section on what one should do if another employee or customer gets hurt.

I figured that there should be some sort of training on immediate triage and basic first aide can be rendered. I figured wrong.

I looked up from the manual and quizzed my daughter, "What do you do if someone gets hurt while you are working?"

"Immediately tell my supervisor," she answered quickly.

"Why?"

She puffed out her chest. She knows this answer:

"So that the appropriate paperwork can be filled out."

So I walk into morning report, as I do every morning. There's six or eight people around a conference table. Everyone is decked out in their finest green shirts and sweaters. The one guy in the room has a green tie. I am wearing a blue polo shirt and khaki pants.

Everyone was incredulous. "Where's your green? You're Irish!"

In case you didn't know, my last name is McCormick. Two "Micks" in there, you know, just in case you didn't know I was Irish at the first syllable I hit it you with it again at the last. Mick-Cor-Mick. Irish-Guy-Irish.

"Oh. I didn't realize it was St. Patrick's Day." I sat down to more gasps and guffaws. Murmurs and consternation.

"Listen," I said with a pause long enough to get everyone's attention. "There are two types of people in this world: The Irish and those that want to be Irish. Those that want to be Irish wear green on St. Patrick's Day."

I was promptly hit with about a ream of crumpled-up papers from my compatriots.

In the evening I mixed myself an old fashioned Black-and-Tan like you might get in a Dublin pub. I mixed one for my wife too. And Unky Rich. His last name is Kelly. He wasn't wearing green either.

Happy belated St. Patrick's Day.

Buy yourself a Guiness. On me.

She agreed and followed with, "It's a shame he had to resign. It seems like the Bush administration had to let go of the one person in the administration that had the ability to think things through."

It says here on my Wawa disposable coffee cup that, in 1773, the Continental Congress declared coffee the official national beverage. I thought, "Even back before this country was a country our elected officials were wasting time debating and voting on useless crap."

 But then I thought about it, back during the Revolution we were thumbing our nose at England and King George. Around the time of the naming of the national beverage, old Georgie was imposing a tea tax. Maybe this was the Congress's way of giving England the old F U.

Still, I think it's a waste of time.

...

It's a Caper

Did you catch the White House Aide, Claude Allen, who got caught up in a "retail theft scheme"? According to the news, here's what went down:

After receiving the refund he left the store without paying for the additional merchandise in the shopping cart. He was apprehended by the store employee.On January 2, 2006, a Target store Loss Prevention Manger observed (Claude Allen) enter the store … He was observed in the store with an empty Target bag in a shopping cart. The man was then seen selecting merchandise throughout the store and placing items in the Target bag. He put additional items in his cart. The man then went to guest services where he produced a receipt and received a refund for the items he had just selected from the store shelves.

The police think he's done this about 25 times. It just adds credibility to Dane Cook's assertion that men want to be involved in a caper more than they want sex.

...

Rock God

Have you seen Iggy Pop lately? I mean, the dude is almost 60-years-old and he's got the body of a swimmer (some people have said that Jesus had a "swimmer's body", but that's another discussion). I'd really like to know what he eats, how he works out, and anything else he does to stay fit and trim.

You don't have to trust me. Go to his website and check out his physique on the front page. You know what? Front pages change, let me grab a screen shot or some such for you. I'll be right back. Talk amongst yourselves ...

Okay, here you go:

Iggy Pop's 60-year-old Body.

...

WYSIWYG

I've been using Xinha Here! to write some of these posts. Xinha Here! is a Firefox extension that enables an HTML editor to open any time you right-click into a textbox or form area. It's nifty. The code has to be cleaned up a little sometimes, but it's a worthy little application. I give it 3 stars out of 4.

I didn't use Xinha Here! for this section. Hypocrite.

...

But I do have a story. A story of enlightenment.

I stepped into the conference room. It's morning report. A time when we go over problems, issues, and generally direct the day's operations.

The administrator starts off with a little speech. "We've all been uptight over the last few weeks. We've all noticed it. Half of us are crawling up the other half's back; we're talking behind each other's backs; we're snippy with each other. I don't think I'm making any news saying this."

And he wasn't making any news. The Department of Health recently did their annual survey and it was a nit-picky and frustrating experience. Many of us still harbored the feelings we had during that week.

"I hope you'll all bear with me," he continued. "I've got a stress reduction video that I want us all to watch. Again, I know it's different, but we need it."

He turned on the television in the corner and pressed play on the VCR. An English gentleman is interviewing a woman. I immediately knew it was a Monty Python skit and sat back with a smile:

Announcer:
The stuff of history is indeed woven in the woof. Pearl Harbour. There are pages in history's book which are written on the grand scale. Events so momentous that they dwarf man and time alike. And such is the Battle of Pearl Harbour, re-enacted for us now by the women of Barley Townswomen's Guild.

Cut to a muddy corner of a field. Miss Rita Fairbanks stands talking straight to camera. Behind her lurk five more pepperpots.

Announcer:
Miss Rita Fairbanks - you organized this reconstruction of the Battle of Pearl Harbour - why?

Rita:
Well we've always been extremely interested in modern drama ... we were of course the first Townswomen's Guild to perform 'Camp On Blood Island', and last year we did our extremely popular re-enactment of 'Nazi War Atrocities'. So this year we thought we would like to do something in a lighter vein...

Announcer:
So you chose the Battle of Pearl Harbour?

Rita:
Yes, that's right, we did.

Announcer:
Well I can see you're all ready to go. So I'll just wish you good luck in your latest venture.

Rita:
Thank you very much, young man.

She retreats, and joins the other ladies who meanwhile separate into two opposing sides facing each other.

Announcer:
(reverential voice over) Ladies and gentlemen, the World of History is proud to present the premiere of the Batley Townswomen's Guild's re-enactment of 'The Battle of Pearl Harbour'.

A whistle blows and the two sides set about each other with handbags etc., speeded up 50% just to give it a bit of edge. Mud and elbows and fists and feet flying. A pile of cross-dressed men in floral dresses mixing it up on some English field.

Thus ended the stress reduction video.

There was a special 3 o'clock showing of "The Upperclass Twit of the Year." I attended.

That said, there's no use in you being punished for my lack of creativity. Why not go over and read the little story that the Ruminator posted? Problem is that by the time I've referred to it, it's a fourth-hand story but, by God, I hope it's a true story. It's right up my alley:

The $2 Bill

Go ahead. Read it. I'll stick around here.

Why'd you come back? Did you really think I was going to write a little more while you were gone?