Winter!

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of laserstars

To me winter means three months without sunlight. Three months of driveway shoveling. Three months of double-long commutes. Three months of wondering whether this will be the day I drive into a ditch for the third time (What? You haven’t done that before?). Three months of bulky winter coats. Three months of salt marks on my shoes. Three months of our dog Monty dragging me like a dogsled through the snow on walks. Three months without my bike or my running shoes. Three months of chapped lips. Three months of depression. In short, I’m not a big fan of winter. If it wasn’t for people around here that I really love and like, I’d be out of Rochester. I would move to the south and spend Christmas on the beach. I know that some of you probably look forward to the winter and cherish such things as snowmobiling, skiing, or snowboarding. Personally, these are all sports I could do without. If I have to dress like an Eskimo to do something, there is no way it can be fun. If I was sure that global warming had the potential to eliminate winter, I would buy a Hummer and spray aerosol like it’s the 80’s. There are, however, exactly two good things about winter. The first is snow days. As a teacher, I get to stay home on snow days – this is ridiculously awesome. The second good thing about winter happened to me today for the first time.

Getting on the road on the way home from work today, it was clear that it was not going to be a normal drive home. Usually my drive home from school is my own personal NASCAR race, but in the snow I turn into an elderly woman. This evening, the roads were bad enough that just about everyone had gone into grandmother mode (no offense grandmothers). It took me forty-five minutes to make a drive that normally takes me eighteen minutes. And this, believe it or not, is the other thing that I really like about winter. A couple of times each winter, the weather is bad enough, that everybody’s plans get wrecked and everything slows down or comes to a stop. I look forward to these days. We all know that we move too fast in our world, but very few of us will take the initiative to slow down on our own. These bad weather days feel like a reminder that there are bigger and more powerful things than our busy schedules and to-do lists. I think that God loves these days, too. We are forced to be slow, be still, and peel back the layers busyness and stress. The only way we can mess up these wonderful days is to fight the slow-down. I suggest we just succumb to the slowness, give up our to-do lists, and enjoy. Or we could all move down south…

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A Note From Thanksgiving

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of carbonnyc

Hi, I’m Thanksgiving and today is my day. I don’t usually get a lot of publicity outside of today, and that’s usually the way I like it, but there are some things going on with the other holidays that I don’t really appreciate. It’s time for me to step up and be recognized for what I am: the best holiday on the calendar. It didn’t used to be this way; there was a time when I was clearly no better than 3rd or 4th on the list, but times have changed.

Normally, I wouldn’t talk badly about others, it’s not what I’m about – usually I’m the thankful sort. But some of the other holidays have lost their way and they need to be called out. Take Christmas for instance. When I was first born on that wonderful fall evening in 1621, I looked up to Christmas as a role model. He was a holiday with such strong values. He was all about Jesus, family, and giving, and everywhere he went, love went with him. Truly, he was an inspiration and I wish you could have known him back then. Today? Well, he seems to be caught up in the material possessions a little too much. He wears thousand dollar suits everywhere he goes; he drives a Bentley; he wears gold watches; and instead of spending time with the rest of us, he just sends us pricey gifts as if that makes up for love. Not only that, but he has also monopolized a good share of the calendar. It used to be that he only had control of December, but over the past few years, he has reached into November, past Thanksgiving, and this year he even reached past Halloween. He now controls all of November and December – that’s 17% of the year! I am not one to complain, so I didn’t say anything when he started taking over my territory, but I’m not sure if Halloween will take it so well – I wouldn’t be surprised to see Santa’s sleigh get TP’d this year. Personally, I’m kind of worried for Christmas. When I talk to him now, he seems distant and sad. He only cares about things and I have even seen him spiking his eggnog at gatherings.

Christmas isn’t the only one who has lost his way, though. After Christmas started getting territorial, some of the other Holidays followed suit. St. Valentine has claimed everything in January and February, and Easter has claimed most of March and April. Materialism is spreading far and wide, too. St. Valentine has replaced true romance with fancy dinners and expensive gifts. Even Easter is getting in on the materialism. Every spring, she worries about finding the perfect dress and insists on pushing her pastel candy on everyone. It makes me sad. She and Christmas used to be quite the pair celebrating the birth and resurrection of our savior, but they barely even speak to each other now. It’s kind of like a couple who used to be really young and in love but kind of forgot each other and married their careers instead. Every time I look at them I feel empty.

There is good news, though: I have stayed true to myself. You may not have noticed because I’m not as flashy as Christmas, as sexy as St. Valentine, not as pretty as Easter, or as mysterious as Halloween, but I am the best holiday you have left. My values are simple – family and thankfulness. I represent the thankfulness that the pilgrims had when God provided them with food and friendly neighbors to help grow the food. Today you are probably gathering with your family to celebrate each other and all of your blessings. You won’t be exchanging expensive gifts, just sharing good food, and you haven’t been stressing about me for the last two months, you’re just appreciating me today. And today, on my day, I’m asking you just one thing: Don’t change me! I like myself just the way I am. Please don’t ever start exchanging presents on my day. Don’t get caught up in shopping for the meal (the food is just a trick to get your families together). Don’t start decorating for me months in advance. And please, don’t lose sight of my values. God has blessed you. Be thankful. Celebrate with your family.

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Adventures in Awful: CSI Miami

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of mercuryrising9572000

I am so excited about this week’s Adventure in Awful. CSI Miami holds a special place in my heart. It is one of the most poorly written and acted shows on television, and I can’t get enough of it. It is half drama, half unintentional comedy. It’s kind of like eating Kraft Macaroni and Cheese: you know it’s not high quality, but man is it enjoyable. Most of the plots have more holes than the Bills’ defense (ah, making fun makes the losing hurt less). If the methods they use to catch killers were actually possible, there would be no crime in our world. On a weekly basis, they perform an impossible miracle of science.

Aside from the plots, there is also the wonderful portrayal of Miami. Before we even see a single actor or landscape shot, Bridget and I can recognize a CSI Miami clip by the unmistakable orange tint and the parade of over-made-up, botoxed rich women. Above all, however, the highlight of the show is watching the pure-cheese acting of David Caruso playing tough guy Horatio Caine. I love that he stands sideways in every single scene, never facing anybody. I love how he takes his sunglasses on or off to accentuate every dramatic moment. And I love his one-liners. Man do I love his one-liners. If the show didn’t bother Bridget so much, I would wander around our house standing sideways and throwing out one-liners like Horatio every night. It would never get old.

I honestly don’t even know if I have a point with this whole thing; I just knew I needed to tell you about CSI Miami. I guess the point would be that it’s good to have something cheesy in your life. It makes you smile; It reminds you that there is room in this world for laughter; it reminds you that there are people stupider than you out there. Before you leave this webpage, please watch this YouTube video. It is a wonderful montage of David Caruso one-liners. You will smile – guaranteed.

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Adventures in Awful: Ditching People for Tools

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of thisisbossi

I ditched you last Thursday. But you shouldn’t feel bad: you’re not alone. I ditched my friends on a cider-making date; I ditched friends on our football watching the following day; I ditched friends going to the movies. I ditched church; I ditched my diet (not that I normally eat well, but I survived the last 2 weeks on a straight Mountain Dew diet); I ditched things that I’d rather not report publicly; and I even ditched Bridget (but not in the “I’m leaving you” way, just in the “I’m not spending quality time with you” way). Clearly, you are in good company because God, Bridget, friends, and football are some of the most important things in my life. So do you feel better about being ditched yet? Probably not because being ditched stinks and I realize that, and it’s something I tend to do a little too frequently. Therefore, this week’s Adventure in Awful is my bad habit of ditching people.

Before we start, you need to know what causes these sprees of irresponsible and inconsiderate behavior. The first cause is that I tend to overestimate my ability to finish things quickly, especially house projects. The second cause is that once I start something, I have to finish it before I can move on with the rest of my life. Last February, for example, my wife and I decided we would remodel our bathroom. I estimated that we should be able to finish the project (which included a new tub with plumbing, a tile floor, removing wallpaper, painting, a new vanity, a new toilet, a new exhaust fan, new lighting, refinishing a door, new molding, and hanging new décor) over the course of February break – one week. Needless to say the project wasn’t finished until April and it hung over my head like a gray winter sky for the entire two months I was working on it. No matter what I was doing, all I could think about was finishing the bathroom project. As a result, I became quite irresponsible with relationships and responsibilities for those two months. You would think after this experience that I would have been better prepared to deal with this during my most recent remodeling project, our bedroom, but I must not have learned anything.

On October 24th, I decided that I was going to remodel our bedroom for Bridget’s birthday, which was November 3rd, a mere 10 days later. I figured that removing wallpaper, painting, new lighting, buying new bedding and curtains, and fixing the door would only take a couple of days, so I decided to make a bed while I was at it because how hard could that be? Let’s just say that if I was a contractor for a construction company who had to estimate times for project completion, I would drive the company into bankruptcy within a year, guaranteed. Anyway, that first day, October 24th should have been a clue that the project would not be so quick and easy because I spent the entire day shopping for the bedding, area rug, curtains, and paint. Who knew color coordination could be so hard?

Over the next week, I worked on removing wallpaper and cursing the idiot who invented that awful stuff. Before I knew it, I had already used seven of my ten days and had almost nothing accomplished. This is when my need to finish the project began to kick in. When I go into this mode, everything takes a back seat to whatever I am focusing on. I wrote ninety percent of my college essays in this mode, usually at three or four o’clock in the morning. That next weekend, Halloween weekend, I began ditching everything and everyone. I skipped church, skipped out on two different hang out times with friends that I had already agreed to, and said no to a chance to go to the movies on Monday. It was all downhill from there. At work I began operating at about fifty percent capacity. At home I ignored piles of laundry and dishes (normally things I wouldn’t let slide). I stopped praying and reading my Bible for a couple of days. I avoided my phone even more than I normally do, and when Wednesday night rolled around, I was polyurethaning the wood for the bed when I was supposed to be writing an article for you.

This past weekend, I pulled an all-nighter and finished up the project, even painting an extra room (ah, ambition) while I was at it. In the end, I was pretty happy with the results, but I also knew that I had a lot of fixing to do at work, with God, with friends, and with Bridget because of my complete focus on the project. I really wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole thing. Is it good that I have the ability to focus and work hard at something for that long, or is it bad because I put the project before people and things in my life that are more important? Predictably, the answer is probably a little bit of both. Being able to focus and work hard on something is probably a good quality, but I realized that the way I ditch everything else in my life is probably a result of pride or self-reliance – my desire to accomplish things on my own apart from God or anyone else. Self-reliance and pride are dangerous and sneaky. They are destructive things that pretend to be good. They can help people accomplish great and remarkable things, but they have a high cost. For my part, I know I need to trust that, even when I’m working on a project, I need to keep doing the important things in my life, like building relationships, praying, and eating something other than Reeses and soda.

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Adventures in Awful: Autotune, Eggnog, and Masterminds?

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of psd

For the past few weeks I’ve had a running list of items to include in an Adventures in Awful post, but none of them seems to justify an entire column, so here is a nice little collection of Adventures in Awful to mull over. Next week I’ll be back with a focused post that stays on a single topic – promise.

1. Auto-Tune – if you have never heard of auto-tune, it is a voice-recording program that helps achieve perfect pitch. In other words, it helps a singer hit the right notes in a recording when they can’t do it themselves. If you listen to any modern pop music, you have probably heard auto-tune. When you hear a song in which the voice sounds a little computerish (real word, right?), especially when the singer is hitting a difficult combination of high notes, that computerish sound is auto-tune. Between plastic surgery, imperfection touch-ups in magazine pictures, tanning beds, and auto-tune, people in our world are receiving so many false fronts of perfection it’s a wonder we have any confidence left in ourselves. By the way, if you want a hilarious example of auto-tune, check out this YouTube video with T-Pain and President Obama.

2. Eggnog – I actually don’t have a problem with eggnog itself. I have a problem with the fact that I saw eggnog in the store this past weekend – before Halloween. Bridget looked at the carton and found that the expiration date was November 4th or something like that. Seriously? People are buying a Christmas drink that will go bad almost two full months before Christmas? It wasn’t just eggnog either; Wegmans had their Christmas display set up in the center of the store last week (October 23rd). There was still more than a week until Halloween, but the Halloween stuff was gone and Christmas was in. AAAARRRRGGHHH! It’s terrible! Why do we have to hype Christmas months in advance? Isn’t the birth of the savior of the world enough to stand on its own without the American mass-marketing machine? One of my favorite sports columnists, Gregg Easterbrook, keeps a running tab of what he calls Christmas Creep (the idea that pre-Christmas hype happens earlier every year) and this year he found evidence of Christmas preparation in August. That’s sick. Truly. In all seriousness, we need to learn how to be satisfied with the moment, day, week, month, year that we are currently living in. If we get caught up in the American way, we will always have our heads stuck days, weeks, months, and years in the future and we will be drinking eggnog in June and wearing Santa hats to the beach.

3. Masterminds? – At my school yesterday, I was walking down our main stairwell and noticed a series of signs on the walls. Each sign said masterminds and had an arrow. This is not that weird because our stairwell frequently has signs pointing the way to different meetings and events in our school. The part that was interesting is that there was a sign on every single wall all the way up the stair well (3 floors worth). I would estimate that there was a sign every 15 feet. For most events, there is one sign at the bottom of the stairwell that has an arrow and a room number and another sign at the top of the stairwell with another arrow. Yup, two signs are typically sufficient to get most people where they need to go. Apparently, however, the masterminds need signs every 15 feet or else they might get lost. I laughed out loud to myself as I was walking down the stairs. The truth is, judging by the masterminds I know, they probably would have gotten lost without the signs. I think this is God’s way of keeping balance in the world and helping people to stay humble. Those with brilliant minds frequently lack common sense. Those with common sense frequently lack brilliant minds. Those who are great leaders might lack compassion. It’s a nifty little way to make sure we all stay connected and interdependent.

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Adventures in Awful: My Opinions

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of dalbera

Do you ever get sick of hearing yourself talk? Of hearing your own opinions? I’m there today. It’s not that I am talking too much; in fact, I’m a pretty quiet guy, so talking too much isn’t exactly a risk for me. It’s more that I feel like everything I would say is entirely fluff. We live in a crazy world where there are voices all over the radio and the TV spewing their opinions and thoughts about every conceivable topic. There are people vomiting opinions on their blogs and web pages (sheesh, who would do that?), and sometimes I get caught up in the sea of opinions and unsubstantiated claims, truths, and new angles. Then, usually, I get to a point where I just crave silence. I don’t want to hear anybody’s opinions, and, even more importantly, I don’t want to hear my own opinions.

This might sound depressing, but it is actually kind of exciting when this happens. I guess I kind of feel like God is telling me to just shut up and listen for a while so that I can remember that he’s God and I’m man; sometimes I get the two mixed up. It’s kind of like King Nebuchadnezzar from the book of Daniel in the Bible. He was a very proud king who was quite taken with himself (“I have build this great Babylon as my royal home. I build it by my power to show my glory and my majesty” – Daniel 4:30). God’s response? He took away the King’s power and sent him to live with the wild animals. King Nebuchadnezzar lost his sanity and became a disheveled mess with shaggy, unkempt hair and long, claw-like nails. He lived this way for seven years and then God gave back his sanity and Nebuchadnezzar immediately praised God (“God’s rule is forever, and his kingdom continues for all time… God does what he wants with the powers of heaven and the people of earth” – Daniel 4:35b-36a). If you’re looking for a good read, read all of Daniel chapter 4. It speaks to my heart every time I read about King Nebuchadnezzar going into the wilderness and living like a wild animal and finally coming to a point where he acknowledges that God is really God. And when I read it, I am so thankful that God just asks me to shut up for a couple of days instead of sending me off into the wild and taking my sanity. I’m going to stop writing now so that I don’t write something stupid and I’ll leave us both with some beautiful silence.

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Adventures in Awful: Failure

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of rockymountainhigh

For today’s edition of Adventures in Awful, I’m going with a little bit of creative writing. What follows is a story that I wrote for my students at school about something that happened on our family farm when I was about fifteen. It’s not a fun story, but it’s a true story. I guess if I have a point today, it would be that sometimes we get the idea that if we are doing our best or, as Christians, if we have enough faith, then life will go the right way. Truth is, sometimes it just doesn’t work that way. Sometimes our best efforts end in a big pile of failure and it can be confusing, sad, difficult, discouraging. In a weird way, I hope this story is encouraging to you; I hope it lets you know that failure happens and it’s our job to work through it and recover from it. Happy reading!

The Little Calf
    “Don’t do this to me,” I pleaded with the little calf. “You’ve gotta eat.” I pulled the bottle back out of her mouth and as I let go of her head, it fell immediately to the ground. Her body looked frail and skeletal; her rib cage seemed to be protruding from her skin and her eyes were sunken. It was as if death was pulling her inward and she seemed to be giving in. Only the occasional whisp of visible breath in the cold air gave away the fact that she was still alive.
    I stood up and felt worry pinch in my gut. We had just had a calf die the day before and if this little calf didn’t eat, she would die, too. I didn’t want to be responsible for another death, another life snuffed out. I have to find Dad, I thought. He’ll fix it.
I blew into my hands for warmth and grabbed the cold wire fence and hurled myself over, out of the little calf’s hutch. I ran down the gravel path to the barn and burst into the milking parlor. John was in the pit hooking up the milking machines to the row of udders in front of him.
    “Have you seen my dad around?”
    John pulled down the last machine and let it suction its way onto the last cow in the row. “Jeez, I ain’t seen your dad since this morning. Check with your grandma, I think he might have run out to get parts for the tractor.” John turned around to face the next row of cows and began spraying iodine and wiping down the udders. I thought about asking him for help, but just as I was about to ask, one of the cows stepped on the hose to her milking machine and John punched her leg and started swearing at her. I remembered why John didn’t help with the calves, so I turned and ran out of the barn to go see my grandmother.
    My grandma’s house sat on the other side of the farm, so I took off running past our silos and through the other barn. As I jumped up the steps to her door, I started to realize that my dad might not be around. His truck wasn’t by the barn and it wasn’t in front of the house either. My mind began to process – if he wasn’t there…
    “Grandma!?” I opened the front door, a little breathless from the run.
    “Whatsthematter?” she asked. When grandma asked what the matter was, it wasn’t in a kindly grandmotherly way; she was always in a rush with eyebrows furrowed and followed the whatsthematter with a big sigh.
    “Have you seen my dad?”
    “No, he went to Palmyra to get parts.” I felt my heart sink when I realized he really wasn’t there. “What do you need him for?”
    “One of the calves is sick; she won’t eat.”
    “Well, why don’t you just tube feed it,” she asked. “You know how, right?”
    “Uh… yeah,” I lied.
    “Alright then, problem solved.” She shooed me out the door and closed it behind me.
    I walked slowly back to the barn and took down the tube feeding bottle from the shelf in the supply room. According to the directions, as soon as the tube is inserted past the calf’s tongue it would begin swallowing, then the tube would just need to be pushed down into the esophagus. It sounded easy enough, but I still didn’t feel sure. What if the calf was too weak to swallow? Despite my anxiety, I knew I didn’t have any other option, so I grabbed the medicine mix, poured the powder into the bottle and filled it full with warm water.
    Walking back to the calf’s hutch, I paused to take one last look around for my dad’s truck, but it was nowhere to be found. I climbed over the wire fence, ducked under the roof of the hutch, and kneeled in the straw next to the calf. At first, I thought I might have been too late, but then I saw her rib cage move and heard a small wheeze come from her mouth. She was laying on her side with her legs sticking straight out. I needed to have her sitting up to use the tube, so I folded her legs underneath her and pulled her body up. As I moved her, her head just flopped on the ground – she was not in good shape. I took a deep breath and lifted her head up.
    “Let’s hope this works.” I pressed the sides of her mouth and her jaw opened a little so that I could start to slide the tube in. It was difficult to hold her head and maneuver the tube into her mouth, but I got the tube to the back of her mouth. She was supposed to swallow, but she wasn’t. I tried rubbing her throat, but she still wouldn’t swallow, so I began to push the tube a little farther down her throat. The directions said that if the tube went easily, it was in the esophagus, and the tube was going easily, so I figured I was doing it correctly. The calf gagged a little, but I kept pushing gently and soon the tube was all the way in.
    “Please God,” I prayed while I tipped the bottle upside down and watched the liquid flow out. The bottle was emptying and I started to feel relieved, but I noticed the calf was beginning to squirm. I wondered if that was normal and remembered calves that I had seen my dad tube feed – none of them had squirmed. The bottle was almost empty and the calf began to squirm more. Something was wrong. I pulled the tube out of her mouth and the last of the liquid spilled on the straw. The calf was still squirming and her eyes bulged and her neck strained like she was trying to cough. Something was very wrong and realization swept over me – I had missed the esophagus.
    I had emptied the entire bottle into her lungs and she was suffocating. Ideas rushed through my head – should I try CPR? The Heimlich maneuver? But it was too late. All I could do was watch her squirm and watch her little body heave back and forth. I was still holding her head when the last little breath squeezed out and her eyes closed. I felt numb inside looking at her lifeless body. I had to turn away and I looked toward the house just as I saw my dad’s truck pulling in.

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Adventures in Awful: Selling Out

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of rockymountainhigh

Bridget (my wife, in case you don’t know) has frequently stated her desire to have Jillian Michaels from Biggest Loser be her personal trainer for one day. If you’ve ever seen Biggest Loser, you know Bridget is crazy to ever wish this upon herself. Jillian Michaels devours people. She is a human pit-bull, barking orders, snapping at people, ruthlessly going in for the kill. Whether Bridget is crazy or not, I must admit that I kind of like Jillian Michaels – not the marital infidelity sort of like, but the I-think-she-could-bench-press-me kind of like. I watch Biggest Loser every week and endure the bad drama and staged promotional scenes because I like what the show teaches us: through hard work and discipline, anyone can change their life. You can imagine my dismay, then, when Bridget and I were walking through Walgreens and saw a promotional display for Jillian Michaels Maximum Strength Calorie Control pills and Jillian Michaels Fat Burner pills. This week’s Adventure in Awful: Jillian Michaels – the sell-out.

One thing I’ve always enjoyed about Biggest Loser is that I’ve felt like they encourage doing weight loss the correct way. Our country has a quick-fix obsession and an inherent laziness that draws us toward fitness plans and programs that make grand promises of easy weight loss. On Biggest Loser, they preach lifestyle change. The show promotes the idea that the only way to lose weight for the long haul is to change your habits, work hard, and exhibit discipline. Every week the contestants on the show engage in grueling exercise and eat balanced healthy diets. This structure allows exercise and healthy eating to become habits that can carry on even after weight has been lost. Quick fixes will never work because they don’t change habits. Even though I have no proof, I would be willing to bet that the majority of people who try fad diets and products (Atkins, South Beach, Slim Fast, NutraSystem, etc.) gain the weight back within a year if they even lose any weight in the first place. As hard as it is for our get-it-your-way-right-now American minds to believe, quick fixes don’t work. Therefore, seeing Jillian Michaels promoting a quick-fix pill is like seeing Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman promote a credit card spending spree. It just isn’t right; it’s against everything she stands for, or so I thought.

Selling out is bad enough, but Jillian Michaels is worse than your average hypocrite. The worst part of this whole thing is that her endorsement of these products can and will bring harm to others. First of all, there is the fact that people in search of a quick fix who see Jillian’s picture will automatically assume that these pills will make them just like the Biggest Loser contestants. Although these people are naïve and partially deserve what they get, it is unfair of Jillian to take advantage of their naivety just to boost her bank account. Secondly, many of the people who buy these pills won’t bother to research the products and, consequently, won’t realize that these pills are basically super-caffeinated stimulants – uppers. The product contains the following warning, “Note: Limit the use of caffeine-containing medications, foods, or beverages while taking this product because too much caffeine may cause nervousness, irritability, sleeplessness and occasionally, rapid heartbeat.” Is that really a product we need to be promoting?

If you have ever seen the movie Requiem for a Dream, the movie is a heart-shattering glimpse of how drugs ruin lives. One of the characters is a fifty or sixty year old woman who wants to lose weight and gets prescribed pills by her doctor. The pills are basically stimulants that are too much for her system and proceed to ruin her body and mind, sending her to the hospital. I know that the pills being promoted by Jillian Michaels are probably safer than that, but taking highly-caffeinated stimulants is certainly not good for our bodies and does not promote the healthy living that she seems to stand for. How many people, naively thinking they are improving their health, will actually become less healthy because of her products? She is smart enough to know that these pills aren’t healthy, so it makes you wonder how far she would go to make a buck. I hear that smoking helps people keep weight off, maybe she should try that. Crackheads and Meth addicts seem pretty skinny, too. How about that?

No good can come from this. No good ever comes when people choose money over beliefs. If Jillian’s personality on the show is at all real, then she believes in hard work and healthy living. But she has chosen money over those beliefs, and it makes me sad. I’m sad for the people who buy her product. I’m sad for the people who will continue believing that easy fixes exist. I’m even sad for Jillian – compromising beliefs destroys people from the inside out – just like the pills she’s compromising for.

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Adventures in Awful: Nice Lyrics, Genius

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of Seo2 | Relativo & Absoluto

If you happen to drive by me on my way to work in the morning, you might just catch me doing some head-bobbing, steering-wheel-drumming, early-morning singing. See, I have a problem – I like hip-hop music. This might not seem like a problem, but you have to understand that I grew up on a farm way out in the country, so it makes me look like quite a poser (rhythmically challenged poser) when I am head-bobbing to hip-hop. The other part of the problem is that the first time I hear a song, I just listen to how it sounds, and usually I like it, but by the third or fourth time I hear a song, I begin to listen to the lyrics – major trouble. Sometimes I just shake my head in disbelief (I still can’t believe how graphic some of the lyrics are). Sometimes they make me angry. Sometimes I just feel sad that people actually believe these things, and sometimes I just laugh out loud at the idea that anyone can write something so stupid. For this week’s awful, I’m going to share two of my favorite, and by favorite I mean jaw-droppingly ridiculous, hip-hop lyrics, and explain the stupidity they represent.

But when I become a star we’ll be living so large
I’ll do anything for you
- From Watcha Say by Jason DeRulo

Why it’s ridiculous: The whole premise of this song is one that, sadly, is not uncommon in popular music. The man in the song was caught cheating on his girlfriend and is trying to win her back (I don’t want you to leave me/though you caught me cheatin’). He expresses his regret over letting their love go and then makes the promise in the lyric above. As best I can interpret it, the essence of the song is this: I’m sorry that I cheated on you, but someday I’ll be rich and famous, so that should make it up to you! He never promises to be faithful in the future, he doesn’t promise to settle down. He never promises to put her before his career.

Stupidity represented: This lyric is a product of the horrible myth that money and fame can solve problems. In this song, the male character is delusional enough to think that somehow his money and fame can somehow erase the pain and injury of infidelity. What’s even scarier is that the myth of money as a healer and problem-solver is ubiquitous in hip-hop music. Most love songs in the hip-hop genre include wild promises of lavish gifts, expensive trips, riding in nice cars, and credit-card spending sprees. It is sad to think of how many people buy into this type of thinking, and to think of how many relationships fail because they think the solution to their problem is a great windfall in their future. It would be easy to just point fingers and say, “yeah, what a bunch of idiots!” but if you and I are truly honest with ourselves, we can probably think of times pretty recently when we thought that money would solve a problem in our lives, maybe even in our marriages/relationships.

What it should be: In his song “The Way I Are,” Timbaland raps I ain’t got no money/I ain’t got no car to take you on a date/I can’t even buy you flowers/But together we can be the perfect soul mates. I love the idea of this song and there is something completely true about it. Remember a time when you were dirt poor and in love. It was fun, wasn’t it? You didn’t feel poor at all, did you? The real truth is that if you can’t get your relationships, marriage, and life together when you are poor, money will probably just make it worse. Money is difficult and it amplifies the parts of your life that are out of whack. If you are selfish, money will just make you more selfish. If you are addicted, money will just help you feed your addiction. If your marriage or relationship has tension, money will push it over the edge. And, contrary to what Jason DeRulo might tell you, if someone is cheating, getting more money and fame will just lead to more cheating. Now on to more stupidity…

It’s goin down on aisle three
I’ll bag you like some groceries
- From Make Love in this Club by Usher (featuring Young Jeezy)

Why it’s ridiculous: Do I even have to explain this one? This entire song is ridiculous. The entire premise is that Usher is inviting any females in the club to make love to him… in the club. If that’s not enough, the lyric above takes this insanity to a whole new level. In the line, rapped by Young Jeezy (not to be confused with Old Jeezy, I suppose), he actually offers ladies to be bagged… like groceries. The first time I heard this line, I laughed out loud. I laughed at first because it was one of the most outlandish lines I’ve ever heard, and then I laughed more when I realized that the idiot was serious about the line. This, apparently, is his pick-up line when he goes to clubs. Does this actually work for him? I hope he gets punched in the face at least five times a night by women who know how to throw a fist.

What it represents: Pretty much the downfall of western civilization. Seriously, though, as far as we’ve come in terms of gender equality and civil rights among groups of people, how is it that women can still be objectified so blatantly and so frequently? This song is not alone in its objectification of women; objectifying or derogatory terms are frequently used to refer to women in music (thing, that, it, ho, etc.). How can this be so widely accepted in our “enlightened” modern society? The fact that we can still so casually objectify women should scare us. Legally, women are more equal than ever, but this lyric is clearly showing us that there is still a great divide in the social perception of females.

What it should be: I think every time musicians and celebrities use objectifying or derogatory language in reference to women, they should be forced to enter the ring with Cyborg Santos. I’m pretty sure that would clear the problem up in about two weeks. In reality, though, the responsibility lies with people like you and me. The generation of kids growing up right now is getting a very misguided model of how to think of women and it won’t change unless people like you and me can refrain from using language that objectifies women and makes them less than human.

Those are just two of my favorites; trust me, there are many more. I could fill up pages of lyrics that would make Shakespeare, Longfellow, and Tennyson roll over in their collective graves.

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Adventures in Awful: The Meeting Killers

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of ghindo

I look forward to Tuesday meetings like my dog looks forward to baths. At first he tries to run when he realizes what I have in mind, then, as I push him toward the bathroom door, he scrapes and claws to get away, then, when I close the door, he realizes he is defeated and hangs his head to endure the watery torture. This is how I feel every Tuesday and if it wasn’t unprofessional to run from meeting rooms and try to claw and scrape my way out, I would do it. Instead, I just have to submit to defeat every Tuesday and march my dejected bum into our staff meetings at the school where I teach to endure the verbal torture. Seriously, there is nothing I dread more than Tuesday afternoons, and the worst Tuesdays are when we have full staff meetings followed by union meetings. A friend asked me how I felt about our meetings the other day and my response was that our staff meetings made me want to kill myself and our union meetings made me want to kill everyone else. That’s a whole lot of violent thoughts for somebody who actually likes his job, so what makes these meetings so awful? I think there are three major offenders who cause meetings to go into suicidal/homicidal territory, and I’m willing to bet you know these people, too. So, here we are, this week’s adventure in awful: a look at the people who ruin meetings.

1. The Story-Teller
Like the name says, this is the person who has a “relevant” story for every topic in the meeting, except that their idea of relevant is more like word association. She just said cheese. I ate cheese once. I should tell everyone about that time I ate cheese. This must be how their minds work because there is no other explanation for the stories people tell. At every single staff meeting, I can count on hearing a story about somebody’s kid who just rode his bike without training wheels, got an A on a test, is coming home from college to visit for a day, or ate all of her vegetables at dinner the night before; I can count on at least one story about something terrible a student said to an adult (stunning, you mean teenagers are rude? I never knew); and I can count on at least one story that I truly don’t even understand. Aren’t there better times for these people to tell their stories? Can’t they share them over lunch in the staff room? Can’t they just keep a couple of stories to themselves and save us the pain? Apparently, this person has no understanding of facial expressions because if they looked around the room, they would see eye rolls, heads hanging on tables, slumped shoulders, and me attempting to turn my Bic pen into a lethal weapon.

2. The Over-Analyzer
Unlike the story-teller, this person appears to be a productive member of the meeting, but when you look closer, you find out that it just isn’t true. They fool you at first because everything they say is on-topic and usually makes sense. When I first started teaching, I thought the over-analyzers must be the really bright teachers who know what’s going on, the ones who make the building go. Then I looked closer, and I saw that the over-analyzer was just another meeting killer. The over-analyzer is the destroyer of progress. This is the person who, when you are completing an item on the meeting agenda and preparing to move forward, throws a stink bomb into the middle of things by bringing up a problem that nobody else sees. At first, it seems like this person is saving everyone from rushing into a terrible decision, but upon further investigation, you realize that the problem they identified is really just a minute detail that could have been worked out later with a couple of emails. I secretly believe that the over-analyzer relishes his/her role and purposefully waits until the last second before unleashing the progress-killing question. Ah, yesss, but what happens if it is a Tuesday after a holiday weekend during a leap year and it’s a full moon? Then what will we do? This person is the reason that I can usually look back at all of our faculty meetings from an entire school year and realize that I can count on one hand the amount of agenda items we actually finished.

3. The Griper
This person is like a mix of the story-teller and the over-analyzer, just with a big dose of grumpy. If you hand this person a $100 bill, they would probably complain about how crinkled it is, how $100 can’t possibly pay their bills, and how ugly Ben Franklin is. During meetings, this person is searching for any opportunity to tell a story that displays how oppressed he or she is, or find a problem that shows how hopeless our jobs, lives, or organization are. Their students are always the worst in the building, their room is the coldest in the winter and the warmest in the summer, their paycheck is always messed up, their schedule is the least desirable. The griper may be the worst offender of all in meetings. Story-tellers and over-analyzers are annoying, but the griper has the ability to hang a cloud of depression over an entire room and make every meeting feel like an exercise in futility. Organizations run on hope and the employees’ belief that they can make the organization great. The griper rips hope up, spits on it, and stomps on it like an angry little minion. This is the person who makes me want to turn my now-lethal Bic pen on myself.

Unfortunately, we can’t just point the finger at the gripers, story-tellers, and over-analyzers because the truth is that these people simply suffer from something that most of us suffer from: self-centeredness. They don’t realize how their actions affect everyone else. They don’t understand that when they tell that story, they are making everyone stay at work five more minutes when they could be home with their families or doing something important like playing video games. They don’t understand that their over-analyzing is just stalling necessary progress. And, the truly sad case, the gripers don’t understand what negativity does to people. They don’t understand the way it eats you from the inside out and steals your joy, hope, and energy.

We’re the same way, though, aren’t we? I am terribly self-centered. Heck, I write about myself every week and expect people to read it. But I’m self-centered in more important and awful ways, too. When I’m tired, I don’t think about how my cranky demeanor affects my students at school. When my wife wants to go to new restaurants on our date night, I immediately cringe inside because I want my type of food. When I sit in meetings, I only think about how painful it is for me. I never think about how much the story-teller just craves attention, or how much the over-analyzer craves validation, or how many times the griper has been burned by people. People are self-centered by nature and it takes effort to move past self-centeredness.

I can’t believe I’m about to say this because it is going to be painful for me, but I think it’s our job to move out of our self-centeredness that makes us annoyed by and judgmental toward the people who bug us and open our eyes to see their situations. Either that or invest in some very discreet iPod headphones and bob away in your next meeting.

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Adventures in Awful: The Introduction

Post written by Pete Strub.

photo courtesy of Salim Virji

On Sunday night, Kanye West stole the microphone from Taylor Swift’s hands at the Video Music Awards to tell the world that he thought her to be an unworthy winner. That is awful.

On Monday night, the Buffalo Bills outplayed the New England Patriots for 58 minutes before fumbling the ball on their own thirty yard line, effectively tying a big bow around the game and handing it to the Patriots. That is awful.

On Monday night, I fooled myself into believing that it would be different for the Bills this time; I fooled myself into thinking they had changed, and they wouldn’t let me down this time, like an abusive relationship. That is awful.

This summer in the Adirondacks I was walking back to my cabin and somehow dropped my keys, and my wedding ring which, for safety’s sake, was attached to my key chain – brilliant, I know. The Adirondacks aren’t a very easy place to locate a set of lost keys, so, needless to say, I never found them. That is awful.

Every Thursday, this is what I want to offer you – a whole big bunch of awful. Why? Because awful is fascinating, awful is funny, and when it’s somebody else, awful is even hysterical, but most of all, awful shows us the truth. Maybe I’m a bit of a sadist, but I am absolutely fascinated by the terrible things in our world, by the foolish and cruel things people do and by the stupid things I do. I think most of us share some of this fascination, and part of the reason is that seeing these snapshots of what life shouldn’t be allows us to see a little more truth about the way life should be. To whet your appetite, let’s take a little look at the four examples of awful listed above. By the time I’m done revealing my brilliant insights, you’ll be drooling in anticipation for next Thursday; I know it.

Example 1 – Kanye West steals the microphone from Taylor Swift. And what lesson can we learn here? Don’t trust short people. Yeah, you heard me. Kanye is supposedly 5’8”, but I don’t think he’s even that tall and I’m pretty sure he has a serious Napoleon complex. Seriously, why else would a guy who made forty-two million in 2008 (Billboard’s Moneymakers List) need to steal a microphone from a teenage girl and insult her in front of the world? So, next time you find yourself around a short person, guard your microphones carefully; they are not to be trusted. As for all of you short people reading this, your secret is out: we’re watching.

Example 2 – The Buffalo Bills blow their lead against the New England Patriots. Lesson? It takes something extra to be a winner in this world. Yes, that sounds like cheesy, inspirational blather, but it’s true and I can’t get over it after watching that game Monday night (if you’re not a football fan, sorry – you should work on that). When there were five minutes left in the game, the Bills were up by eleven points. In other words, the game was theirs. There is no way a team should lose a football game when they are up eleven points with only five minutes left, yet there was this little whisper in my head. Don’t trust them. It’s not over. And it wasn’t. One of the worst parts about the loss is that there was a part of me that knew it would happen because the Bills don’t have that something extra that winners have. They are like that nice kid in high school who gets cut from the team, can’t quite make the honor roll, doesn’t get accepted into his first choice college, and watches the girl he has a crush on go out with the school jock. The Patriots? They are that school jock. They get the girl, the college, and earn honors the whole way through. Can a team or a person develop this something extra? I think they can. I hope they can. In the case of the Bills, they better be able to or else every fall of my life will be a case study in the effects of slow torture.

Example 3 – I keep coming back to the Bills even though they always let me down. Lesson? I bet you think I should say something about ditching the losers, but I won’t. Like I said, I keep coming back. Loyalty is seriously underrated in our hyper-ADD, get-it-your-way world, and maybe if we had a little more loyalty we wouldn’t have a 50% divorce rate. When the Bills lose an awful game like this, it reminds me that loyalty is tough, but there is something strong and good and beautiful about loyalty, whether it is a husband who sticks by his wife through thick and thin or an obese man at a football stadium with body paint on his chest in 15 degree weather.

Example 4 – I lose my keys and wedding ring in the Adirondacks. From this incident my friends, there are two very simple lessons. The safest place for your wedding ring is on your finger, and I should never be trusted with holding onto or remembering anything. I have lost two wallets, two cell phones, my social security card, and have forgotten everything from returning phone calls (happens very regularly) to forgetting to complete my graduate school application (and thereby not being accepted into grad. school).

See how great this is? We can all learn from awful and in the weeks to come I’ll have plenty more for you.

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My Grandmother Has Been Found!

Post written by Pete Strub. Pete writes a weekly article published every Thursday.

photo courtesy of Aurelijus Valeiša

I discovered my grandmother this year and it was quite a discovery. No, this is not a story involving private eyes or anything of that sort. My grandmother wasn’t hiding from the police (although that would be a great story) or lost somewhere, but I found her this year nonetheless. She was sitting in my sister’s kitchen for my nephew’s birthday. My grandmother has terrible arthritis and cannot walk very well, so she usually sets up shop in one location at gatherings. Sometimes, the party leaves the spot she is in and she is left sitting alone. During one of these alone times, my mother told me I should go talk to her. Yes, I am twenty-nine years old, and I still need my mother to tell me to go say hello to my grandmother. Before I continue, you must understand that I wasn’t avoiding talking to her because I dislike her or anything; I have a conversation disease. For some reason when I’m stuck in a one-on-one conversation, I’m like Shaq shooting free throws, lobbing awkward conversation pieces that turn out to be bricks, or like The Office – just lots of uncomfortable silence and fake smiles. Anyway, I followed my mother’s directions and went to talk to my grandmother. After getting through the easy parts (how is teaching going for me, how are my students, etc.), we went into awkward silence mode. This is the mode where you stay in close proximity to the person, but you try to avoid eye contact or pretend there is a really interesting stain on the floor because you have nothing left to say. In the middle of full awkward silence mode, my wife swept in to save the day. She is wonderful at this. Of all the great things about marrying my wife, one of the best is that she saves my butt in social conversation situations. Bridget began asking questions, and one of the other great things about her is that she has no restraint and will ask anything, so, before I knew it, we were listening to my grandmother tell stories about our family’s history. Wonderful stories about my grandfather, about our family lines, and about one of our ancestors from Holland who came to America because he was a cheat and a thief (Yes! There is criminal in my blood!) It was right there that I discovered my grandmother, and like I said, it was a wonderful discovery.

Cleaning
At this same birthday party, my parents set up a time for our family to get together at my grandmother’s house and clean. Her arthritis keeps her from being able to give her house the attention she would normally give it, so we thought we could help and set up a date for this past Saturday. The funny thing? For the past month leading up to going to her house to clean, I have been anticipating it the way you anticipate a good party with your friends or a cool trip. I couldn’t wait to hear more stories, find out more about her life, learn about this woman who I was just seeing for the first time. When we arrived at her house on Saturday, we all got to work washing walls, mopping floors, dusting trinkets, slaying spiders and sending cluster flies to meet their maker. My wife took on the role of question asker again (ain’t she the coolest?), and we heard about her life with grandpa, we found out that she stayed in the hospital with my uncle Andrew for three days before naming him because she had run out of names she liked (she and my grandfather had nine children, eight of them boys), I found out that Gone With the Wind is her favorite book, and I found out that she likes writing, too. How did I never know these things before? We talked about how my grandparents moved from the city to start a farm from scratch. I discovered her yearbooks, showing pictures of my grandfather playing football with nifty 1940’s captions (Strub on the loose, hold on tight boys), and thought about my grandfather going into the war instead of taking his football scholarship at Bucknell. It’s amazing what you find when you clean.

Rich
The point, I guess (you know your writing is good when you have to wave flashing signs saying what the main point is), is that I lived twenty-nine years of my life with these incredibly rich stories and my grandmother’s incredibly rich life right in front of me, but never took the time to look. From now on I will always look. And I will look in other places, too. What other rich things am I missing? What wonderfully rich people, experiences, and things are you and I missing? What things are we ignoring when the party moves into the other room?

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