The Writer's Poke

The only Cookie Monster my daughter knows plays soccer with Ernie, ice skates with Big Bird, and likes to eat healthy foods, such as apples, salad, and milk. This was not the Cookie Monster I grew up with. In the 1970s, Cookie Monster was always shoving cookies into his mouth. But even at the age of 5, I could tell that he wasn't actually eating any of the cookies. You see, the Cookie Monster didn't have a throat, and un -eaten cookies were obviously flying everywhere. Nevertheless, the good people at the Children's Television Network decided in 2006 that the Cookie Monster was a bad example for children, and soon thereafter, he was shown exercising and eating healthy snacks. He can still "eat" the occasional cookie, but for all intents and purposes, he's been neutered. Not surprisingly, no one seems to care that Cookie Monster doesn't speak grammatically-correct English. When he talks, he sounds like he learned English from either Frankenstein...

Vin Diesel has a facebook site for his fans, and he recently posted a picture of himself in Japan. He's over there to promote the premiere of a new film, and one of the captions for a photo in his online album reads: "Hiding in plain sight." Vin is standing on a Tokyo street, and none of the passersby seem to notice him. Certainly, they notice that he's an American, and perhaps they know that he is Vin Diesel. Maybe it's the culture that allows him to be out in the open without a mob of fans attacking him. If he tried to walk down the street in any American city, he'd probably need body guards, and I'm sure there'd be professional photographers out stalking his every move. When I saw this picture, I thought: I'd like to be Vin Diesel for a day. I'd have no interest in switching lives with him, or anyone else, on a permanent basis, but wouldn't it be fun to be someone else for a day? I'm not sure exactly how that would work, as you...

Tavi decided that she doesn't like going to daycare. Her mom and I both work full-time gigs, so while we'd both love to stay home and play with her all day, every day, that's simply not an option. Seeing her get upset is, well, upsetting. And spending the mornings worrying that the phone will ring ("Please come get your uncontrollably-crying daughter, Mr. Fuller") sucks. Dori in Finding Nemo has a wonderful philosophy that I like to use in times like these: "Just keep swimming." If you're a fish, what choice do you have really? As far as I know, fish can't drown. I hate to complain. My name isn't Job, and I recognize how good my life is. It's just that little stresses have the same weight as gigantic ones. How is that possible? Okay. You don't care about my troubles, and so I will put my violin away. Do you have a violin of your own that you want to play? Please, be my guest. What stresses you out? Maybe writing about it would help. ...

KISS is releasing its first studio album in eleven years later this fall. Why did it take them eleven years? In part, because Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley think they know what the fans want. The fans want to hear "Rock and Roll All Nite," "Deuce," and "Strutter." They do not, according to Simmons and Stanley, want to listen to new material. Is that true? Do KISS fans only want to listen to the same ten or twenty songs over and over again? I find that very hard to believe. Then again, there's something comforting about listening to what you already know, as opposed to having to break in new material. And how in the world can a new song compete with one that you've heard hundreds of times? If your favorite songs act as the soundtrack to your life, then KISS fans may simply want to tap into the past. New songs are best sung by new artists for young people whose pasts are not yet formed. Now, you might think this is a bit of a stretch, but groups like...

One of my favorite literal videos. Almost as good as Rick Astley's "Never Going to Give You Up."

One of the common criticisms of William Shakespeare's Hamlet is that he thinks too much. While there's nothing wrong with thinking, per se, and while most would acknowledge that thinking is probably a good thing when used in moderation, thinking too much can lead to the prison of inaction. I don't know that Hamlet's flaw was over-thinking. And, it's not clear to me that Hamlet was guilty of inaction. But this isn't a lesson on Hamlet, and I don't want to spend too much time thinking about it. Let's just take as a starting place that Hamlet thinks a lot. Othello, on the other extreme, is an impulsive chap. Some would say that impulse is his downfall, and that he acts too quickly and doesn't think things through sufficiently. Again, I'm not saying I necessarily buy into that analysis, okay? So cut me some slack here. My point is simply thus: some of us are more like Hamlet, and some of us are more like Othello. And some of us are more like one of t...

Yes, I used to listen to AM talk radio. Why? Well, back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, I lived within range of WLS , the "50,000 Watt Flamethrower" out of Chicago. In addition to syndicated programs like The Rush Limbaugh Show and Art Bell's Coast to Coast , I really enjoyed listening to local host Roe Conn's Saturday morning and weekday afternoon shows. All of these shows were entertaining, and that's why I listened. By the end of the 1990s, however, entertaining no longer seemed to be a prerequisite to getting a show, or growing an audience. Have you ever heard The Sean Hannity Show ? Here's a show with no redeeming value, and I say that not just because I disagree with the man's narrow-minded politics. Even today I can still listen to Rush, for example, because he's interesting, at least most of the time. Rush prepares for his shows and always has a "stack of stuff" to talk about. Hannity , on the other hand, never seems to prepare....

Last night I watched the final HBO special George Carlin filmed before he died. Some will say that he was smart, but too vulgar, that he was more than a comedian, but spent most of the time speaking to the already converted. Call him what you will, but I call him irreplaceable. We are not going to see another comedian/philosopher/prophet like him again for a long time, if ever. And I started thinking about other individuals that have shaped my philosophy and worldview. In addition to Carlin, four others came to mind immediately: Socrates, Lao Tzu , Carl Sagan, and Kurt Vonnegut. What attracts me to these men? All of them were thinkers. All of them were willing to question everything. On one end of the spectrum, Vonnegut and Carlin could come off as bitter, but part of that was simply part of their act. Both, I think, admitted that the spark of idealism was still within them. It might be deeply buried, but it was still there. On the other end of the spectrum, Sagan and Socrates exhibite...

Whenever people talk about their favorite syndicated cartoons, they usually mention strips like The Far Side, Calvin and Hobbes, and Dilbert. Sally Forth is not one that generally comes up, but I think it's pretty good. In a lot of ways, I think it's just as smart as the cartoons referred to above, but maybe it's just not as flashy. I guess you could describe it as understated, and not a cartoon for kids, per se . Nevertheless, it's funny enough that it probably should be appreciated by old and young alike. One of the ongoing story lines is Ted's office romance with Aria. Ted and Sally's marriage seems solid. They don't have any issues that might cause Ted to stray. And if you asked Ted what his relationship with Aria is all about, he would most likely look at you blankly. In Ted's mind, he and Aria are just friends. They share a lot of the same interests, and the chemistry between them is clearly there. But Ted isn't a dog, and the thought of havin...

A student of a colleague of mine recently got very upset with him because he used Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States as the class's textbook. She didn't appreciate what she saw as Zinn's liberal slant. Of course until very recently, the common person wasn't even worth historical investigation. History has typically been reserved for gods and generals. "Does history change?" I ask my students. Of course it does, one responded. After all, historians dig into the archives , find out new information, and that new evidence changes the way we think about what has happened. In truth, history is all about evidence, to be sure. But more than that, it's about focus and interpretation. And, that, my friends, is why history changes. There is no such thing as the past. It's all constructed. And as Winston Churchill himself once said, "History is written by the victors." That doesn't mean that all victors are liars, but it ...

Longing and lust are connected. I don't think there's any argument about that. And while I don't want to offend anyone, I really believe that the longing to believe in the existence of God can easily turn into lust. The extreme examples of spiritual lust are people that speak in tongues, chant Jesus's name, or get lost in a wave of emotion. Some will say, "These are just folks wrapped up in the Holy Ghost." Call it what you want, but it doesn't seem very much different to me than people caught up in a lustful romp. Don't get me wrong: there's nothing necessarily wrong with a good, lusty romp. But let's call it what it is. On the show 30 Rock , Tina Fey's character, Liz Lemon, carries the torch for "Flower Guy." When she sees him walking into a church on a Tuesday, however, she views that as a major warning sign. Why do some guys, she wonders, seem so normal, and yet have weird obsessions and dark secrets? In Flower Guy's case...

Earth, as we know, is the perfect distance from the Sun for human life. Venus is too hot and Mars is too cold, but the Earth is like Goldilocks's porridge: just right. The gravitational pull of the Sun is pretty incredible, though, when you think about how far away a planet like Neptune is. In fact, scientists believe that there are celestial bodies farther out than the dwarf world of Pluto that still find themselves in orbit around the Sun. Tonight I was just sitting around thinking about love, as I am wont to do, and I thought: people have orbits, too. Think about the friend that you don't see for a year, for example. Everyone seems to have someone like that, a Haley's comet friend that they can "pick right up with" as though no time has passed by. And then there are the people you interact with daily, much like the Moon interacts with the Earth, say. Some people might be like the Sun, attracting a whole solar system of folks, whereas others might be more like o...

Canadian professional wrestler and former World Champion Bret "Hitman" Hart released his autobiography a couple of years ago. The problem was, it was initially only released by his publisher, Random House, in Canada. Fans and readers in the United States would have to wait an additional year for the book to be published south of the border. I didn't feel like waiting, so I jumped on to the Canadian version of Amazon and placed my international order. In addition to the main amazon.com site, amazon also has international sites for Canada, the UK, China, Japan, Germany, and France. If you haven't looked at the international amazons, I'd encourage you to do so. It's interesting to see what pops up on the various home pages. Japan's, for example, promotes watches, shoes, and anime, whereas Germany is apparently more interested in DVD's, digital cameras, and electronics. Although I only speak English, I think I could navigate my way through the non-English ...

On our flight to Zurich, I had some time to kill. Fortunately, most airlines these days come equipped with monitors attached to the back of each seat. And Swiss Air offered us a variety of time-killing options. I was happy to see that one of the free games available was Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I always do pretty good at the questions when I'm watching the TV show at home, but once I started playing the game on the plane, I realized just how little I really know. Swiss Air's version of Millionaire was from the UK, and since I don't know much about soccer or cricket or UK geography or UK pop culture, I had trouble getting past even the first or second question. In other words, anyone from the UK that happened to be watching me play would undoubtedly have thought that I was one great big dummy. Knowledge, it seems, has a cultural context. How often we overlook that. How has your culture informed what you know? "The only source of knowledge is experience." -- A...

"If there's a camel up a hill..." Wow. I'm totally speechless.

People are speculating on what Palin's next move will be now that she's resigned her governorship . I wonder if Hugh Hefner's or Larry Flynt's people have made her an offer... By the way, what are the main duties of the governor of Alaska, anyway? And if Palin cannot fulfill the duties, does that mean that the first runner-up assumes the throne? Does the runner-up get her crown, too? Photo from http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

I carried her into the room and sat her down on the metal examination table. The doctor knocked on the door, entered, and briefly explained how the shot would work. He explained that I could stay or go; I elected to stay, and I watched as he injected death into her body. She was too weak to fight it, and in a matter of seconds, she was dead. The hardest part was watching her body briefly contort and convulse. As the magic potion did its work, she lost all muscle control. And then she was still. What was once a living, breathing being was now eight pounds of biohazardous waste. Other than when I've killed the occasional fly or bug, the euthanizing of a cat is the closest I've come to the death experience. But I've always had a morbid curiosity about the process of dying. At one moment in time, a person could be both instantaneously alive and dead. What is that moment like? Actually, the state of death isn't so clear cut. The body starts preparing for it weeks, if not m...

People that go through Near Death Experiences ( NDEs ) describe how their spirits leave their bodies. They might watch from above, for example, as doctors work frantically to save their lives. But whether real or imagined, survivors of NDEs often find that the purposes of their lives have totally changed. For some, the NDE itself gives life a purpose that it had heretofore lacked. Most of us will never have a NDE , and there's no reason to wait for one, or heaven forbid, seek one out. Although it might not be nearly as sexy among the paranormal clique, why not have your own Near Life Experience (N LE )? That is, go off to the woods like Henry David Thoreau for a few years. Or, hell, if you insist on being more practical, just go to the local Holiday Inn for a weekend. Bottom line, set time aside to be by yourself, and focus solely on where you are, where you've been, and where you want to be. How many people do that? Why should it take the scare of death to wake you up to how...

My wife would have you believe that I'm a sexy beast. But here's the world's worst kept secret: For just about everyone in the world except her, I'm not. Would I mind being a popular object of desire? That's an interesting question. And I guess the answer would be: no, I wouldn't mind, as long as being objectified didn't turn me into a Fabio-style running joke. It's always made me curious, though: how do hot chicks feel about being sexualized ? Do they dig it? Children, I know there's no right or wrong answer to my query, but most must. Although we've been told that the objectification of women is wrong, because it inevitably leads to viewing women as less than human, we know that such a belief is incomplete. In fact, such a belief is probably more damaging than the potential problem it warns us against. Tangent: Ever notice that no one complains if you objectify someone for their IQ? Maybe it's time for fans of Einstein to unite and put an e...

The past is farther away than the nearest star. We reach for it with our memories, but like a pawn in a game of chess, we can never move backwards. How does one measure ten years? A decade is such a short period of time, and yet as I look back ten years, I make startling discoveries. Ten years ago, I wasn't married. Ten years ago, I had lived in the same state my entire life. Ten years ago, I had never made more than $20,000 in a year. When we look at the stars, we see them from the perspective of the Earth, as though where we are in the universe is the center, and the stars are on the periphery. Likewise, when we look to the past, we assume that the present moment is the place we start when measuring distances of time. With each passing day, we have the opportunity to achieve more. But paradoxically, the more we achieve, the less satisfied we may become. Achievement becomes a burden that some cannot escape, and the longing for a simpler time draws us back to the past. We may or m...