Who needs all those freaky telekinetic weirdos. I prefer a more hands on approach… er… spoon-on approach.

I can bend minds with my spoon.

And now, for your surfing pleasure, is this week’s white board quip.

The voices in my head may not be real, but they have some good ideas!

I think the difference between me and a normal person is that, once in a while, I actually implement those ideas.

Why is the alphabet in that order? Is it because of that song?
– Steven Wright

Did you know that tune can be sung to lot’s of nursery rhymes?

• Twinkle Twinkle Little Star
• Humpty Dumpty
• There was an Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe

Curious.

It’s finally here. The presidential election season starts today with the Democratic National Convention. Boy, it’s about time we started hearing news about the election, huh? I wonder why the media waited so long to start covering the race.

Oh, wait. That’s right. They’ve been beating us over the head with it for over a year already!

The next time we elect a president, for God’s sake can we do a background check?
– David Letterman

Amen. So how much do you know about your candidate of choice? Hmmmm?

This week’s white board quip comes from a Dilbert comic, but was chosen because I’m overwhelmed with political, international, and sports news this week, all of which remind me of the hopelessness of the human condition.

When things don’t sound evil enough on their own, I like to toss in a “BU-WHA-HA-HA-HA!”
– Catbert, Evil Director of Human Resources

Let’s start off with this week’s white board quip.

I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.
– Steven Wright

That means that, once again, I have two WBQotW posts back-to-back. Which means that I have, once again, gotten lazy about blogging. Yes, I know. I said that I’d be busy and that posts would get scarce, but it’s not just the blog that has fallen behind.

So, I’m back to that point in the cycle of my life where I’m irritated at myself. Call it procrastination. Call it sloth. Call it plain old lazy. Whatever it is, it’s crept back into my life. Time for a change.

Change. There’s been a lot of talk about “Change” in the last year thanks to one particularly shallow and insipid presidential campaign. Change is a dangerous word if left to itself. Change what? Why? How? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, then change can ruin.

In my personal case, the “what” is my attitude toward tasks and goals, my level of self discipline, my work ethic. These things need to change. The “why” is pretty basic. I have a lot of things to do that aren’t getting done. This reflects poorly on me both personally and professionally. The “how” is more complex (as it always should be). I need to get back to making lists and accomplishing those lists. I need to more closely manage my time. I need to get back into an attitude-building routine.

But what if you seek change without answering the qualifying questions? “We need change.” Ok. From now on, your salary will be paid not in US dollars, but in monopoly money. That’s change. Or, from now on, police officers will be allowed to shoot you if they think you’re ugly. That’s change. Or, from now on, you’re only allowed to eat lawn trimmings and dog turds. That’s change. What if change means destroying the economy with huge tax increases, taking away basic freedoms, protecting trees and bugs while declaring human life expendable, and making the pursuit of happiness impossible?

I hope you see where I’m going with this. Sometimes change is needed, but only when you can answer the what, why and how. If you want change just for the sake of change, you’d better not be ugly and you better have the stomach for some mulch and dog turd stew.

I’m back from the San Antonio mission trip. I’m pretty tired and have tons of stuff to do. I need to compile hundreds of pictures and a couple hours of video into two slide shows (one for Mexico, one for San Antonio). I’m about half way through a blog page on the Mexico trip and haven’t started one yet for S.A. I’ve got stuff piled up at work and a have a private client waiting for me to design his web site. That and I’ve started another book that I’d like to have finished before… oh, you know… 2009. In the mean time…

I’m writing an unauthorized autobiography.
– Steven Wright

P.S. Happy birthday, Dad!!

So, if I post my own quote, does that make me an egotistical jerk, or merely a “self-proclaimed” sage?

It seems that every human has a miraculous, powerful, innate ability to justify the dumb things they do.
-Trint Ladd

I’m back from Mexico and busy as ever. I hope to find the time to compile a short video from the trip and write a long post about my experience. But for now, I’ll have to settle for a white board quip.

There are many kinds of tired. There’s the “I shouldn’t have stayed up that late just to see the end of a crappy movie” tired. Theres the “I spent my weekend stacking 750 bales of hay” tired. And then there’s “mission trip” tired, where you’re spiritually, emotionally, and physically drained to the point where your brain just isn’t able to cope with daily life.

Case in point, from my dear Miss Katie:

Dang! I got conversation all over my pants.

Some of you may not have been around when I first explained the White Board Quip of the Week. I touched on its origins in the first WBQotW post. There I mention the first true weekly quips that showed up on my cubicle white board when I interned at Hewlett Packard, my first “real” job in the industry, in 1998. But really, the tradition has deeper roots.

The real impetus was a college calculus class in 1994. My friend Galyn and I would usually arrive early for class. It was in a newly renovated building, one of the first to have white boards rather than chalk boards. Galyn and I were both (and still are) given to odd sayings. We were both fans of Ren and Stimpy, odd t-shirts, and funny bumper stickers. So, we began anonymously writing the weirdest things we could think of on the white board, just to see the reactions of our classmates as they came into the room.

This week’s quip was one of the first from those crazy days at Amarillo College. (It’s a weird one that you have to think about. It was written in the form of a mathematical proof.)

1 Funeral Procession = Absolute Right of Way
> 1 Funeral Procession = Funeral Processions Increasing w/out Bound