Random Thursday

Random Thursday will commence shortly but first I need to inform you that I’ve run into some problems with the next installment of Fire Ant Theatre. I’m in desperate need of a Spanish/Klingon dictionary, and it wouldn’t hurt if you could direct me to an audio loop of Red Skelton’s impersonation of Marilyn Monroe.

Now, where were we?

• I see where some folks are proposing random drug testing for members of Congress, using the logic that if it’s advisable for public corporations, why not for public officials? Well, I’m not in favor of this proposal. My fear is that our Congresspersonages will all pass the screenings, and we’re then left to ponder the implications that they’re doing what they’re doing with full possession of their faculties. I’m not sure I can handle the cognitive dissonance.

• We underwent “wellness testing” yesterday, courtesy of MLB‘s employer. I dislike the term, “wellness.” It’s one of those new-agey sounding words that isn’t very good at its job. “Wellness” is all soft and formless, not nearly as meaningful as the correct word, “health.” Anyway. While it’s nice that the company pays what is probably a very large sum for each employee and spouse to get this testing done, I have to question some of the methods and results. For example, they had these high-tech cholesterol measurement machines that gave complete readings in five minutes. OK, that’s cool. But at the next station, where flexibility, BMI and body fat percentage were computed, the tool for measuring height was a tape measure affixed to the wall, with someone eyeballing where they thought the top of your head matched a marking. My wife gained an inch in height via the process, while I lost one (so I guess we averaged out just fine).

• And don’t get me started about the body fat measurement. I’ve never in my life measured more than 14%, and this one — using some little device that looked suspiciously like a Nintendo game controller — yielded a reading of 18.9%. The attendant said we could probably subtract five percentage points from the reading, which really adds to the credibility of the process. My question is this: whenever these things make errors, why is it inevitable that the error serves to make things seem worse than they really are?

• It was interesting that they hid the scale in a supply closet, I guess so nobody had to worry about someone else finding out what they weighed. And I wonder, why are we not equally sensitive about our heights (the tape-measure-taped-to-the-wall setup was out in the open)? I mean, weight is relevant only if correlated to height (so what if you need to be 12 feet tall to justify your weight…it’s the principle of the matter!), so logically we should be just as sensitive to the idea of others knowing how tall we are. “But,” you counter, “everyone can tell how tall you are just by looking at you.” Uh, like they can’t (and don’t) decide for themselves how much you weigh just by looking at you? It’s all very strange and human-like.

• Someday, I’d like to have a mountain bike with a Rhino Lining coating the frame.

• And, speaking of non-mountain non-bicycles, ever wonder what the most expensive motorcycle in the world sells for? Try $150,000, which may explain why Jay Leno might be the only guy who has one. Sure, it makes 286 horsepower at the rear wheel, but the neat thing is that you don’t have to settle for a rearview mirror, as it comes with a rear mounted camera with LCD color
  display (plus side mirrors) so you can see what you’ve just left behind.