King me

I don't know why this iconic character has such an effect on me. I read a study on BK's King, and the gist of it was that it conveyed a sassy and bold, humorous and vivid image that appealed across demographics.









There are some of these commercials that just wig me out, like Waking up with the King. Others are mildly amusing and do not traumatize me psychologically.






The King is so popular that Halloween masks have been made in his likeness. Websites adore him and sell his merchandise. I have reported sightings of him on billboards, buses, television, etc...

I even have a bobble head of him in my office.

I wonder what it says about our culture that we find this character so... so... interesting? curiously engaging? off-beat and hip? What IS it about the King?

I don't know that I've referenced this site here at MPark, but I've shared it with many people through the years. I find it more-than-amazing, whatever that might be. It's so very boggling to me just how many bizarre things are submitted for patent. Take a tour through the site--you will NOT believe it!
Patently Silly - The Humor of Invention - presented by Daniel Wright

Sleep Calculus

I am of the belief that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours after. That sure holds true in my lifestyle. If I sleep 9-midnight, I'm energized for the day--really! Typically I'll stay in bed and rest longer, but sometimes (about this time of year with hellish grading expectations) I sleep less and less.

When I was in college, I would visit my best friend in Hays, and he would not entertain the idea of sleep until nearly dawn (about when I typically get up). He would not let me sleep, either, until he was good and ready. Those visits about killed me.

Chalk it up to Ben Franklin (or whomever truly said it): Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. (I'd agree with healthy, anyway!)

Toward a more perfect Union

So I've been at this institution for about four years now. In this course of time I've been lucky enough to participate in the planning of this new student union, which had a ribbon cutting/grand opening today! My role was tiny, just conducting surveys in classes and offering input and doing a few walk throughs along the way...but actually being inside it today, full of folk--priceless!

I was reflecting with a colleague on how some of our finest memories of our college years were spent at the Union. It was a time to really get to know a professor as a person, to sometimes dive deep, sometimes go off the charts entirely. It was a place of fellowship and (for me, all too often) intense study.

I also must confess I spent my entire student loan there on pinball.

Today, I am feeling all warm and fuzzy, happy from head to toe, for I think this facility is just what this college needed at this site. I am going to hold a number of my office hours over there, and I hope to have some moments with my students like I once had with my profs.

Oh, and for the grand opening, they had some great finger food, too! I never missed any college function serving food, back in the day, and I've never been disappointed at the food served at this college, ever!

Well? Tell me!

I truly enjoy answering the "why" questions that my 3 sons throw at me constantly. I find it challenging to offer answers (and fun to make up answers, too). I looked forward to it from the time the oldest first began (and has never-since stopped) talking, and I will relish it as the last installment (due out in May) offers his questions, too.

Lately, however, the eldest has been asking real puzzlers. He has evolved to a new, very interesting, level of thinking.

Just this month he has asked me, while watching a video on firefighting, "Daddy, what happens if a firehouse catches on fire?" When I returned from the doctor the other day, "Daddy, what if the doctor gets sick?"

Soon he'll be posing really challenging conundrums. I'd better brace myself!

What's it all Mean?

I find teaching poetry in Intro to Lit to be liberating, for I am of the mind that most good poetry is more about experiencing the work than walking away with a single meaning. This, of course, drives some students mad. What does it matter, what it's all about?

I've long wondered why the Hokey Pokey espoused such self-importance.

What was the answer to the meaning of life in Monty Python?

Damning Recreation

This illustrates what NOT to do if you are a public figure.

The oldest man in the boat is my former Dean. I'll call him "Dean", here, to preserve whatever may be left of his reputation.

Once Dean had sat me down and lectured me forwards and back on how it was improper to have young college girls over to my house at all hours of the night. He made this claim after having observed my home through a privacy fence and about 100 yards that separated our properties. He said he was just looking out for me, but that I should not ever be seen w/students off the clock, especially at odd hours, especially at night, etc. It was quite the sermon. (At the time, I was just taken aback that he would be "spying" on me so much, that I was even a person of interest.)

Dean went on from my humble school to become President at another. His school became embroiled in the workstudy/college athlete scandal, but eventually after much gray hair and wrinkling, he emerged from that debacle okay.

Then, in August, this photo of him emerged, was published, and eventually led to his resignation. I wonder what happened to Dean's common sense, dignity, and sense of impropriety? I wonder what happens now to him, sans six-figure income?

That must have been one hell of a fun time to have cost him so very much.

Then again, why did it?

And for that matter, what was so improper about me having young ladies to my house back in the day? Maybe we were grant writing.

We are not clergy, not really of any office that should demand some kind of holier-than-thou lifestyle, right? Was pouring a drink for some young lass, off the clock, on the lake, such a crime? I would not have fired him for such an action, even if the whole crew of said boat were underage (which, in all likelihood, they were). So he wasn't a model of clean living at that moment. Maybe he wasn't living by his own advice...but so what?!

In this age, where cameras are ubiquitous, how can anyone expect to always be captured in a Norman Rockwellian moment? Who among us may occasionally sigh, "Whew, glad that wasn't on camera!"

I'm not proud of Dean getting caught with his shirt off there. I'm sure worse pictures of me are floating around (photoshopped, of course!)...and I know there are many moments of my life I'm not proud of, overall.

But really, morality police, get over it!

Fax me an iPod, will ya?

Rapid Prototyping has intrigued me for some time. I think I first saw a fictional version of it in action in the movie "Small Soldiers." In the film, Chip Hazard and other characters are formed with a laser-looking thing that squirts their image into 3-D.


I saw similar technology employed in Mission Impossible, when Tom Cruise has a mask made so he can infiltrate the bad guys' camp. Basically, it's a technology that builds up layer after layer of goop into a shape designed by a computer aided drafting/drawing (CAD) system. It's called "additive fabrication," for it builds by building on itself, one tiny layer at a time. Primitive versions of this actually use old ink jet printer technology, so renaming Rapid Prototyping "3-D printing" seems to be a good idea to me.

I've seen footage of an iPod case being manufactured via rapid prototyping. It reminded me of a monster-making kit I had when I was a kid, a "fright factory!"



I've read that in short order parts can be ordered via computer over long distances and then just "printed" at your location. This will require one to have the hardware, of course, but imagine if this were to catch on!? It could reduce transportation costs, eliminate the middle men, and generally speaking be pretty darn cool! From what I understand, as this technology evolves and is coupled with nanotechnology, even computer components will be "manufactured" by pouring substances as per advanced CAD directives. One may actually, someday, be able to order something like an iPod to be built on site, on demand!

I believe in Anxiety

I believe in anxiety, that is, I believe it is okay to be anxious, to embrace anxiety and squeeze the power from it. I have learned that painful uneasiness pushes me to perform. For all manner of things even remotely within my sphere of influence, anxiety has proven to be rocket fuel for my soul.

I was once self conscious of my anxiety. I would rarely confess it to anyone else, for I thought to be at all troubled was to be weak. The first time I learned that performance anxiety was not my own issue was when I shared my fear with a preacher. He sat me down on the edge of the stage and patted my shoulder. “Mark, if I were ever to take that pulpit and not be a little queasy, I’d flop.” It was a revelation to me. This man seemed so very charismatic, so large and in charge, so natural from the microphone (authentic, just like at that moment on the steps). He seemed strong and courageous, like there was nothing he could not talk about intelligently and forcefully.

I began to watch him closely. I started to notice the fidgeting leg as he sat waiting to take the pulpit after the choir. I watched him in his rituals, just like a major league ball player. First he would lay his bible on the pulpit, then smile at the crowd, then stroke the cover with an open palm. Every week he would do this same thing, and I could tell that somewhere in that ritual, he was finding his energy to combat his anxieties.

In college, it took me a while to harness the power of anxiety. I would flit from class to class, assignment to assignment, willy-nilly. I would never grapple with a calendar, what was due when…instead; I would constantly be surprised by deadlines, overwhelmed with homework. I would pull all-nighters and turn work in late. (This did, I suppose, help me with creativity, for I was able to manufacture some of the best excuses for late work I have ever heard!)

Finally, in my fifth year of college, I became an adrenaline junkie. I was doing my “teaching block” in a public school, and I had to ride the wave of anxiety daily. It would crest when I went into the classroom, and like my preacher, I had to grab it and pin it down for myself. I was able to learn to turn anxiousness to enthusiasm. Sure, I never knew how a class period would work out, and yes, some flopped. What happened, though, was that I was able to convert dread into power, failure into motive to do better.

Overtime, I became Mr. J, a persona of wild passion and caustic wit. I excised my anxiety by moving and by channeling it into charismatic delivery. I really have been able to burn white hot in class, and that’s likely why every day after class, I am exhausted.

Fly Naked

This image is from here which recently ran an article on Virtual Strip Search (backscatter) technology. A student brought this to my attention in a research paper, though x-ray searches have gone on since 9/11 in airports and even longer, so the articles say, in prisons.

The controversies surrounding this range from invasion of privacy to invasive technology, from kiddie "porn" to physical side effects. I've seen this in sci-fi movies for decades, and until I really thought about it, the whole thing seemed pretty cool.

My biology buddy even tells me the technology can detect drug running mules, seeing actually inside the body! Talk about invasive! I might not want my breast implants, colostomy bag, penile extensions, dirty laundry, etc. to be viewed by anyone w/o my express, immediate and intimate interest in them. I might not want my kids' neked images bandied about.

Thanks to terrorism scares, the Patriot Act, and the sheep that bleat consent at every legislative gesture, these days the technology is coming into the common place. My kids won't even balk at it, much like I don't think twice about being known by my social security number (something my father thought was a mark of the beast!)

I never knew I was so conservative until I started paying attention to just how many things are legislated for us, taken for granted. Privacy is no longer good form.

I think next time I fly I will cover myself in aluminum foil before going to the airport, you know, under my clothes, just to see what happens.

Hitler Youth to Brownshirts; Painted Babies to Beauty Queens

TLC premiered the pageant documentaries Painted Babies at 17 and Toddlers & Tiaras in September. I don't watch much TV, so I missed them.
I did, however, just watch this clip, and it makes me shudder. Kids are so very responsive to parent/guardian praise and punishment. They are so very eager to earn praise and to do good. I don't know if any other beastie in the animal kingdom is so hardwired for positive reinforcement. I do know that this kind of behavior on the part of a parent is deplorable.

Boys are far from immune, either. I've witnessed hapless youth manipulated into daddy's little (fill in the blank--mini-me). It was nationalized by the Germans when the Hitler Youth came into being, but it is widespread everywhere, even here in Kansas, today. Sporting events are the most obvious. I've seen parents at ballgames behaving in ways that would make even the Fuhrer embarrassed! I know of one daddy who drives his kids so very hard with insults that I have come close to intervening. It reminds me of an article I read last year about some parents pitting their kids against one another in a street fight, just to "toughen them up." I wouldn't be surprised if those same parents may have been taking side bets on the victor.

To me, it all goes back to letting kids be kids. Let them be little. Give them time to grow into whomever they are inclined to become. I hope I do not put too much of my direction on the shoulders of my little ones!