How To Eat M & M's

There is an age-old question that's been around for, uh, ages, I guess. And the question is: "How shall I eat my M & M's?" This question is just slightly more prevalent than: "How is M & M's spelled? Lowercase "m's" (m & m's) or uppercase?" Or this one: "Are there spaces between the M's and the ampersand or not (M&M's)?"

While I am no expert concerning candy grammar, I can give you some tips on consuming said candy. This is how I do it:

First, I sort the candy-coated chocolates by color. Then begin eating with the longest line. In this case, both red and blue are equally long, so I eat one of each.

That will yield the arrangement below.

Again, choose from the longest line(s), in this case, red, yellow, blue, and brown will each be equally long and so taking one of each will net you a 4-candy mouthful. You see what's happening? As I progress, the amount of candy consumed in a bite gets larger. It's like counting the days until Christmas. Or something.

So, again eating from the the longest lines gets me to here:

Yes. There are 5 lines that are longest. That means I get to eat 5. And when I do . . .

There remains just one multi-colored, six-candy row of goodness.

I eat them.

That is how to eat M & M's. I recommend the Peanut Butter version, but use the variety that gives you the best results. By following these very simple instructions briskly, you can be sure the candy will melt in your mouth and not in your hand.

Feel free to use this at a Lunch 'n' Learn. There is no YouTube version, but scrolling up and down real fast might work for you.

Small Story of a Lot

The Providence of God is most amazing to me.

He showers blessings and calamities where He will, our seeming 'free' decisions serve His purposes, His plans.

How is it that Lot chose the valley of Jordan, leaving Canaan to Abram? (Genesis 13:8-13) Which, by the way, is precisely the area of land that God said He would give to Abram.

It is a small story, but it illustrates this attribute of God, His Providence, very well.

Out Of Touch

Here is a tremendous story from Malcolm Gladwell:

"I don't believe that the world was always better in the past. But I do believe that there are moments when the particular mix of available technologies don't actually combine to make your life better — and I think we're in one of those moments now. I can remember when I worked in the New York bureau of the Washington Post, and Jackie Onassis was near death and I was responsible for writing the story if she died. What I really wanted to do was go to dinner. So what did I do? I went to dinner, and she died —and the office had no way to reach me.


Can we pause, for a moment, and recognize how magical that fact was? I actually remember where I had dinner — The Odeon in Tribeca. There I was in the middle of one of the most important cities in the world, having steak frites at a well-known restaurant two blocks from my apartment, and to the editors of one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world I was effectively invisible. And when they finally tracked me down the next day, I simply apologized for being …out of touch. No one has said the phrase out of touch for at least a decade. There is an entire generation of young people out there who don't even know that those three words can be used in combination."

This is from an e-mail exchange between Gladwell and Bill Simmons, the rest of which you can read here.

Obama's Economy Illustrated

Jay Cost with three charts that show how poorly the economy has performed over the past year or two:

"This is President Obama’s big problem for the November election. This last chart suggests that the answer to Reagan’s old question – “are you better off now than you were four years ago” – is no. The average person is worse off under Obama."

Read the whole thing.

01/20/13 - President Romney?

At the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol weighs in with his view of the upcoming race for the presidency.

"(I)f I had to put money down now, I'd bet that Mitt Romney will win an easy victory after a relatively predictable, issue-focused, and not-too-nasty campaign. Indeed, I'd bet Romney will win precisely if he runs such a campaign. But if he allow the race to degenerate into name-calling and gotcha gimmicks, he could lose. Democrats are better than Republicans at the small and nasty stuff."

There is starting to be a little momentum amongst the commentating class regarding the likelihood of a Romney victory. I've kind of been thinking this way, too. I really believe he has a chance to win this thing in a big way. I heard Mary Matalin say the same thing Monday. (I'm not claiming to be an expert. At one point, I didn't think there was any way Obama would win in '08.)

Here's hoping it comes to pass. The sooner the policies of President Obama are history, the sooner we can begin to get the country moving again.

Fenway and Pedro

An article at Grantland.com recounts the weekend the Boston Red Sox just completed, including the celebration observing the 100th Anniversary of the Fenway Park, the home field. Former pitcher Pedro Martinez talked about the Fenway experience:

"My feeling here is unique to Fenway. The funny thing is, you can't find it anywhere else. It must be the closeness of the people to you here. You mess it up, you're going to hear it. You do it well, you're going to hear it, too. You can feel the people breathing close to you. The only other place you can go to get that feeling? You got to go to winter ball (in the Dominican Republic)."

Mizzou, the 'M', and the Uniforms

Saturday was the day Missouri uniform geeks waited for. Saturday was the day the new Nike uniforms would be unveiled for the first time. There was excitement and fear. Excitement because it would be new, probably would be slick, and it would appeal to 21st Century tastes regarding sports uniforms. Fear because it probably would be slick and appeal to 21st Century tastes regarding sports uniforms.

We were given a warning early and it was probably wise to give it. The 'M' was leaving the helmet. This is bad news to me. It is a very classy look, as far as I'm concerned. I would have liked to see a return to a more traditional uniform, but I knew this would not happen.

Here's what we were afraid of. Another Oregon mess. Nike made the uniforms for Oregon and well, you can see what happened:

Four or five helmets, feathers on the shoulders, and why not the most obvious combination here? Yellow jersey and green pants? You know, the actual school colors? This was the fear.

As it turns out, our fears were mostly unwarranted. After being prepared for the disappearance of the 'M', the actual uniform was, in my mind, a nice presentation that is definitely up-to-date, yet has a traditional feel. I am not crabby about these:

I think the black jersey and gold pants is the best combo. It pleases my eye the most, and, yes, it does look more 'traditional'. But I can live with any of it. The all black is terrible, I think. There is a lot of black in uniforms these days and mostly that's a bad idea. Some teams have black as one of the team colors, Steelers, Raiders, Penguins, Bulls, Heat. Even so, all black just looks terrible, I think. And if it's not one of your colors - leave it alone.

Overall, well done Mizzou and Nike.

Four Songs, All Different

Driving home the other day and heard, for what I believe to be the first time, a song called "Walk Between Raindrops" performed by Donald Fagen. Not ever hearing the song before, it should be no surprise to acknowledge that I had no idea who Donald Fagen was. Ah, well, I have learned. Even at my age, though, Fagen is probably someone whose name I should have had some familiarity with, given the span of his career. All that aside, "Raindrops" is a happy little tune.



As I often do after hearing a song on the Tube of You, I looked at the other selections offered on the page. Well, I found this. It's Michael McDonald doing "Lonely Teardrops", a classic, old song. The piano player is Fagen.



I decided to change gears and hear something really different. The Beat Farmers fit the bill.



And we finished up with Junior Brown. I really dig the Beach Boys reaction to Brown's take on their song.

It's Poetry. It's Beauty. And It Smells Great.

Baseball is back.

Dark Is Easy. Bright Is Hard.

One of my very favorite writers, his blog is a daily 'must read', is James Lileks. What follows is a summation of a conversation, a teachable moment, he had with his daughter.

It's a teachable moment for all of us who are not his daughter, as well.

Anyway, I was exulting in the Non-Standard No-Routine Saturday, when my daughter came into my study and asked me to read what she’s been writing.

And here I have a dilemma. Let me tell you about the fiction young girls are writing: it’s horrible. Not in the literary sense, necessarily, although that’s often the case. It’s the subject matter. Thanks to the influence of Harry Potter, stories usually begin with the death of the parents, the discovery of Powers, and so on. The darkness is a constant. She shows me the work of her peers, and it’s all horribly dark - and these are kids with happy merry easy lives. On one hand I get it: you write the opposite, summon the fears, confront them. But on the other hand: for heaven’s sake, what’s the matter here? You’re all eleven or twelve or 13 - that tremulous witching year - and you associate the Dark with the Profound. I get it. But as I told my daughter: Dark is easy. Bright is hard.

She told me how she wanted to end her story, and it had a flat rote nihilistic twist. Not because she’s dark or goth or anything, but because that’s the dominant literary model. So I kept posing questions: what if this happened? Or that? Or this? Trying to push her to see the twist at the end of the story as a release, a flock of aspirations taking flight, a break in the clouds. Oh my vs. uh huh. And she got it.

Dark is easy. Bright is hard.

Find Lileks here.

The Last Time It Took Too Long

Recently Andrew Breitbart died. He was, by all accounts, a force to be reckoned with, brimming with energy and ideas. I found this neat little story among the remembrances of the man:

We talked about aging, as two middle-aged guys who get into the Bloody Mary cart at 11 in the morning sometimes will. I told Andrew that his good friend, Five for Fighting’s John Ondrasik, had a hit song called “100 Years” – about aging – that never ceases to freak me out. The protagonist of the song describes the different ages of his life – 15, 33, 45, and so on – that tick by in a blink. It doesn’t help, I told Andrew, that I was 33 when the song seemingly came out yesterday, but that I am closer to 45 now, thus illustrating Ondrasik’s point.

In a very rare spell of silence, Breitbart stewed for several minutes. Then, he wistfully replied, “Don’t worry, man. It’s something that bothers me, too. But I have it all figured out. We all need to go to work together every day from 9 am to 3 pm, whether we need to or not. In a classroom. We’ll even sit at those peninsula-shaped desks, with our pencil sharpeners and Elmer’s glue. And we’ll do it for nine months out of every year.”

“Why on earth?” I asked, puzzled.

“Because,” he said. “When we were in school, that was the last time we watched the clock, and wanted it to hurry up. The last time it took too long to get to the next thing.”

From the Weekly Standard blog by Matt Labash

Hello, Anxiety, My Old Friend

Anxiety is as much a part of me as my hazel eyes and the wax in my ears. I would rather that it were not so, but no matter how I think I am doing fear-wise, something generally comes along to remind me of my weakness. Perhaps I come by it honestly. I remember my mother waiting up because one of her "chickens wasn't in the roost" yet. I remember my dad searching the churning sky as another springtime storm overtook Taney County.  These are behaviors I have repeated. Do I get them from mom and dad? It doesn't really matter. Even if I am wired this way, it's not somebody else's fault that I get anxious. I have to own it.

For example, when the furnace wasn't working the other day, I went to the anxious place. I began to fret and stew. I couldn't sit still, I didn't want to talk. I had to walk around and fidget. My thoughts were something on the order of, "What are we going to do?" and "Why did this have to happen?" This past year has been one of job loss and diminished resources and so the specter of a major appliance repair or, gasp!, replacement was frightening. At least for one who worries.

Also inherent in my questions are accusation. Maybe it's not wrong to ask questions of God when things seem to go wrong, but there was a tinge of accusation in my thoughts. I toyed with the idea that God wasn't being fair. And at that point, I've crossed a line. The nature of God is such that He cannot be unfair, but I get so focused on the scary stuff around me that I fail to elevate my imagination and remember what I actually know is true.

And what is true for the guy with the busted furnace? The same things that are true for the guy with a working furnace. God knows all about me. He is not caught off guard by my dilemma, in fact, if I understand the Bible properly, He has been right by my side as I approached it. In other words, the Shepherd has led me to this moment. It is actually good that I am here for He does all things well.

So, ideally, how does Busted-Furnace Man handle his lot in life? Listen to the Shepherd:

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (Matthew 6:25-27 ESV)

Indeed, which of us, by the power of Anxiety, can add a single hour to his span of life?

A Daisy A Day

In the only movie my lovely bride cares about seeing more than one time, "You've Got Mail", there is a conversation going on via e-mail between Kathleen Kelly, who owns a quaint Manhattan bookshop that caters to children, and the heir to the behemoth that is Fox Books, Joe Fox. At one point in one of their exchanges, she remarks that, "Daisies are the friendliest flower."

Well, my wife certainly agrees with that and I think I do, too. I mean, who wouldn't? Is there a more friendly flower than the Daisy? I don't think so. Roses, for example, aren't friendly. They have a reputation for being all about "love", but to me they look a bit more like, "We look good! Don't we? Don't we look good? Yeah, we look good." Roses are stuck on themselves.

Carnations? Carnations are the Prom flower and they are phonies. They look nice and come in all sorts of funky colors so they can match whatever the get up is that the girl finally settles on. But that matchy-matchy silliness is just there to distract you from thinking about the TWO-FOOT LONG HARPOON THAT IS HIDING JUST BEHIND THE FLOWER! This is just one more source of anxiety for the guy who is already chock-full of doubt. He'll be okay about the carnation though, because mom can pin the flower on his date, but he's really starting to second-guess the decision to grab burgers from the bowling alley for dinner.

Orchids, you say? Orchids are Royalty. They are all, "You may kiss the ring," and "We are not amused," and stuff like that. Orchids will not be seen in public with other flowers. Heck, they probably will not be seen in public with me. In fact you can't buy Orchids at any stores. You have to petition for an audience with an Orchid. You may catch a glimpse of one as a motorcade goes by, or hear rumors of an Orchid staying at a villa in the Caribbean, but don't ask about the Rose they were seen frolicking with on the beach.

The point of this silly exercise is to reinforce the idea that Daisies really are the friendliest flower and are near and dear to Kathy's heart. And I have a soft spot for things that she considers near and dear. So on Valentine's Day, I would give you bunches of Daisies, but I don't have any. (At least, not yet.) So, I will give you this, which I never fail to think about when you speak of your love of Daisies.

I Think I Look Good - If I Don't Look To Christ

From the Institutes of the Christian Religion, by John Calvin:

If, at mid-day, we either look down to the ground, or on the surrounding objects which lie open to our view, we think ourselves endued with a very strong and piercing eyesight; but when we look up to the sun, and gaze at it unveiled, the sight which did excellently well for the the earth is instantly so dazzled and confounded by the refulgence, as to oblige us to confess that our acuteness in discerning terrestrial objects is mere dimness when applied to the sun. Thus, too, it happens in estimating our spiritual qualities. So long as we do not look beyond the earth, we are quite pleased with our own righteousness, wisdom, and virtue; we address ourselves in the most flattering terms, and seem only less than demigods. But should we once begin to raise our thoughts to God, and reflect what kind of being he is, and how absolute the perfection of that righteousness, and wisdom, and virtue, to which, as a standard, we are bound to be conformed, what formerly delighted us by its false show of righteousness will become polluted with the greatest iniquity; what strangely imposed upon us under the name of wisdom will disgust by its extreme folly; and what presented the appearance of virtuous energy will be condemned as the most miserable impotence. So far are those qualities in us, which seem most perfect, from corresponding to the divine purity. (1.1.2)