Uh-Oh SpaghettiO's

Authors Note:  The following is a copy of an e-mail sent to Campbell’s Soup on 2/10/2011.  I hope to get a response back, and I’ll post it when I do.

Dear Campbell's Soup,

Just yesterday, I opened a can of Alphabet SpaghettiOs for my eldest son to eat.  When I saw the label claiming 'All Letters A to Z', I had to admit that I was very skeptical.  Being experts in the alphabet, as no doubt you are, I'm sure you understand the lonely plight of the letter 'Q'.  This poor, misunderstood consonant has silently suffered years of abuse and neglect from not just the local public but nearly the entire world.

For example, did you know that 'Q' is the only letter in the alphabet that doesn't appear in the name of any of the United States?  And though it's not the only one, 'Q' has been intentionally excluded from the list as a possible first letter in any Hurricane Name.  Worse than that, this meek, unassuming letter has been entirely banned in the country of Turkey under article 222 of the Turkish penal code.  Apparently it's just not "Turkish" enough!

Since Q is usually buffered from contact with other letters by U, it's been said that “the letter Q is a useless, co-dependent letter that is utterly incapable of doing anything on its own.”  That's why I'm so happy to see that your company has chosen to take a stand and not discriminate against it!  When I saw 'Q' lying on a pile of SpaghettiOs atop my son's spoon, I was overjoyed.

Though everyone is quick to judge Q for its seeming lazy attitude, I ask you, where would James Bond be without his master of gadgets, Q?  What kind of heathens would our children grow up to be if we couldn't tell them to mind their Ps and Qs?  How would NASA know the maximum point of aerodynamic stress on a spacecraft in atmospheric flight if they couldn't calculate the Max Q?

With bold steps, like your company has taken, we may someday live in a society that no longer rejects letters based on their infrequency of use.  If more industry leaders would step forward and follow your lead, and if we could get Gottlieb to re-release the arcade game Q-bert, we could very possibly correct the unjust treatment of this gentle letter.

Thank you for all you've done to advance this worthy cause.  And, by the way, the SpaghettiOs were delicious.

Sincerely,

Michael Thomas

You can read there response here.

Beware The Teen

This past weekend, we enjoyed getting to spend some time with our nephew and niece from Northwest Arkansas.  Dexter and Alex stayed with us from Thursday to Sunday evening, much to the delight of our own children.  Our kids love their cousins and have never gotten to spend this much time with them, so we were all glad to have their company for a few days.

Now, that being said, our house is quite small, and when you go from three kids to five kids, it presents a bit of a challenge.  But beyond that, there are certain considerations that must be taken into account when you have a teen and pre-teen in the house.  They just don’t operate the same way as the little ones.

I’m not saying that they’re any harder to deal with, by any means.  Dexter, for example, is very easy to entertain if you are willing to give up your TV and gaming system.  Ever the scientific minded one, this young man religiously follows Newton’s First Law of Motion, which for our purposes states:  Every object in a state of rest (in front of the playstation) will remain at rest (in front of the playstation) unless acted upon by an outside force (like a baseball bat…or hunger pains).

This brings me to another point…food.  Did you know that the average teen/pre-teen, in a single day, can consume twice their body weight in chocolate chip or blueberry muffins?  I personally saw it happen and was amazed.  My wife looked at me on Sunday morning and said, “We’ve got to go to the store and get some more food, we’re out of stuff to fix.”  And so, on my way back through town that day I stopped at Wal-Mart and resupplied.  Upon reaching home, I brought the first bags of groceries in and went back to the truck for the others.  When I returned to the kitchen, Dex and Alex had annihilated the first load and were chewing on the empty plastic bags I had used to haul them in.  I admit that I may be exaggerating to an extent, but hold on to that mental picture because it’s not way too far off.

Though they share a penchant for ravenous appetites, pre-teen girls differ from teenage boys in most every other way.  You can’t just stick them down in front of the playstation and expect them to be content.  No, they often suffer from an affliction known as Chronic Boredom.  As you can imagine, this condition was only compounded by the fact that we’ve had such foul weather.  And in a house that has been dominated by boys for the last five years, there are just not a whole lot of ‘girly’ things around.  Thankfully we have many art supplies and she often contented herself to drawing pictures.  She’s very talented.  However, I began to notice that most drawings bore a frightening resemblance to the layout of our house, and more specifically ways that a person could escape our house and get out into the world at large.  Good thing her mother picked her up on Sunday.

Overall, we had a lot of fun with them.  We managed to pull a lot of board games out of the closet and dust them off, and though no one was keeping track, I don’t think Alex won a single time.  Still, a good time was had by all, and they were missed when they left.

New Exercise Program

I am somewhat new to the exercise scene.  In my younger days, I was so physically active that I never worried about staying fit, it just happened.  But life has a way of pushing you toward a sedentary existence, and as a result, my waistline has expanded far beyond where it should be.  I find that I now need someone to explicitly tell me the details of how and when I should be working out, and let me tell you, there’s no end of fitness guru’s willing to step up and take that position.

When I bothered to start listening, I heard about all these cool exercise programs with mysterious names.  P90X and C25K quickly funneled themselves to the top of my list, and I got excited about taking my future health into my own hands.  That feeling quickly wore off.

You see, I have a theory about people.  I think that when most people start a job, they are excited about going to work and think it’s because they want a career.  A little ways down the road, they figure out that they didn’t really want a career, they just wanted paychecks.  It’s very similar with exercise.  I don’t think people want to exercise because they like to exercise.  They exercise because they want to be thin.

With that goal in mind, I decided to try and make my own exercise program.  Like any good routine, I needed a cool name to go along with it.  Following the current trend, I made a random character generator and it gave me *22_ (That’s pronounced Splat Twenty-Two Underscore).  In retrospect, I realized my programming left out a few important limits, but decided to stick with it because it’s really unique.

The entire brunt of the Splat Twenty-Two Underscore workout is very simple.  You always walk to the mailbox.  That’s it.  It’s not complicated, it’s not complex.  Every day you walk to the mailbox.  Admittedly, those of you who live in the country and rent a P.O. Box are going to get a much bigger workout than those of us who get their mail at the curb, but that’s the way the low-fat cookie crumbles.

Now, here’s the catch, and I’m not even putting it in small print at the bottom of the page.  Like any exercise program, the real secret to the effectiveness lies in the diet.  The Splat Twenty-Two Underscore diet is as simple as the physical regimen.  Eat anything you want…but if it’s bad for you, you have to spit it out when you’re done chewing on it.  This, in part, is why I decided to keep the randomly generated name.  Splat is an accurate description of how your half-chewed food will sound as it rolls out of your mouth and hits the plate.  An added effect is that when one family member is on this unrestrictive diet, the rest of the family will probably tend to shed pounds due to a loss of appetite.  It’s a win-win situation for everyone!

As with most of my Blogging suggestions, I have no intention of giving this a whirl.  I’m sticking with C25K for the time being.  But, if anyone is crazy brave enough to give it a try, please let me know how it works out.  I’d love to get rich off this idea and quit worrying about a career.