www.leefur.com

So I was thinking about the alphabet, and I realized something.

Say "trip" out loud (in your head, please). Now say "chip" out loud. Now say "chrip".

Amazing! "tr" = "chr"!

Why is "mishaps" pronounced like "miss-haps" and not like "my-shaps" or "mish-apes"?

Also, if:
"20" is pronounced "twenty",
"21" is pronounced "twenty one", and
"29" is pronounced "twenty nine" (and so on);

Why is:
"10" pronounced "ten", but
"11" is NOT pronounced "ten one", and
"19" is NOT pronounced "ten nine"?

And what's with those airline peanuts? Could the bag BE any harder to open?

How come so many so-called "fancy" pens have really smooth (often shiny metal) casings so that as you write, your hand slides down the pen? If a pen is going to cost more than $3, it should at least function better than a $0.03 Bic.

Hi all ...

Now let me begin by saying that I am not intending to be dead anytime soon. At all.

However, inspired by a piece of media I consumed today, I am attempting an exercise that is aimed, quite contrarily, at understanding my life. If you do not understand that distinction, that is okay, but you should probably not attempt this exercise. For anyone else, I would really, truly love to hear that you gave this a shot. Ah and if you can guess the 'media', congratulations - you've just won two copies; one for you, and one for you to give to someone you think will 'get it'.

The exercise: I would like you to write your Last Will & Testament. I have no idea what these generally look like. That doesn't so much matter. But I would like you to pretend, for just a moment, that you are truly dying. Your end is imminent. And you have to write your last words to the world. You also have to figure out how to divide your belongings.

This is probably a multi-hour activity, at the minimum. I ask only that you give this 10 minutes. I recommend that you do this in Notepad, or whatever your most basic editor is (or on paper). This will help keep you focused on the words.

Some final points on my attempt here - I am writing this in my apartment (last night), where I have no internet, and no wills laying around. So I have no idea where to start. I spent about a half hour on it. To give you an idea, here's how I started.

The Last Will and Testament of Lee Jason Fuhr

Created: Monday, February 28, 2005
Last Edited: Monday, February 28, 2005, 11:55pm

I will begin by saying that I do not know the standards around a document of this type. More importantly, I am not concerned with this.

That said, the first thing I want to say is that I have an unbounding and powerful love for my family. There are no words that can sufficiently capture the positive force that this nucleus has provided in my life, but I shall try.

I will gladly share my result with anyone who gives this an earnest effort and shares it with me. I know this is very personal. But it is also meant to be read publicly. And it can have a profound effect on you.

Please don't bother mocking this. I know it's easy to. But I'll just delete your comments if you do, and you're stealing the point here. As evidence of the realism I intend here, I state here that in the unfortunate and unexpected event that I do pass in the near future, please use this document as my standing Will.

Now ... really ... imagine you have a rare form of progressive, inoperable stomach cancer. You have one month to live. You are scared in a way that you have never been scared. You can feel your mind race with the things you haven't yet done, and with the things you have. Now, write to the world.

CNN article: Parents challenge weekly Bible classes

This is positively upsetting. Super-quick version: a few parents in a school district in the Shenendoah Valley in Virginia are protesting weekly school trips to a church for Bible lessons. And they're losing the fight! I don't think the injustice of this is clear from just what I've said here. Allow me to pull a couple quotes:

Without religious classes, he said, "kids get into trouble and have no moral structure on which to combat drugs, sex, pornography and all that."
[How about ... I dunno ... moral parenting?]

The lessons were conducted inside public school classrooms until 1948, when the Supreme Court ruled that the lessons violated the principle of separation of church and state. A few years later, the court revisited the issue and approved classes held away from school premises.
[Oh for the love of god how does that make sense!!!???]

Beverly Ridell [...] teaches first- and second-grade Sunday school at church and opposes religious classes during school time. "I asked them whether Jesus was a Christian and they said 'yes.' When I said, 'Jesus was a Jew,' one girl said, 'But Jesus was a good person,"' Ridell said.
[How depressing. Our schools essentially teaching religious bigotry. Sigh.]

So I would like to tell you all why Southwest Airlines rules.

1. They're inexpensive.
The usually show up as the cheapest alternative for almost any flight I look up, especially ...

2. They are amazing in/around California.
So I can fly to San Francisco for friggin $39? Or L.A., or Sacramento, or Vegas, or Phoenix...

3. The rewards. Oh the rewards.
So I signed up for Rapid Rewards. They gave me two credits to start. Each time you book online - 1 credit. For each flight - 1 credit. So that's 3 for each flight I book online, no matter how far (or short, or cheap) it is. 16 credits buys you a flight anywhere. So after a few cheap $80 round-trip flights, I'll get a free $360 flight all the way back east.

4. Down with class stratification!
There aren't "classes" of seating. You get a letter. Get an A - board in the first group. Get a B, go second. Get a C, go third. End. Find a seat whereever you want (wait until the end of the group to avoid sitting with that giant, shower-phobic, endlessly hungry mouth-breather with the inflamed skin-flaking rash and thick-haired chin mole).

5. So flexible.
I had to change my flight from Thursday back to Wednesday. I called them Wednesday at like 2:30pm to tell them this. They said "What's your name? Okay. When do you want to fly? Okay. Which of these flights would you prefer? [lists 4 flight options] Okay, you're set."

6. So nice.
I think the stewardess chicks (I'm sorry, "flight attendant" is a shallow attempt at glorifying the job) are nicer, perhaps because the passengers are nicer because they didn't have to deal with a shitty airline.

7. Constant flights.
None of this would matter if they didn't fly when you wanted. That doesn't seem to be a problem, though.

So what the fuck is wrong with all these other airlines that keep needing government bail-outs? Losers.

(If you're gonna book a SW flight and don't fly it enough to be worth it, lemme know and you can help me out by using my Rapid Rewards number. And I'll give you a cookie.)

I'm on a plane right now, just got done cramming for 3 hours (after my work day) on this stupid document in the airport and then here folded into my airplane seat. I had a bunch of non-work-related things to blogger on about, but now I want to complain about something worky. So on with the angst:

Tell. Told. Emailed. Yelled. Wrote. Called. Talked over. Blabbed. Whispered.

When did these words become uncool? Did I miss a God damn memo? Better question - when did they become too vague, or too inaccurate? Now I haven't been in the ol' working world all that long. But even I remember a day when the sentence "Yeah, I communicated that to Bill the other day" would get a strange look and - if you were to use it repeatedly - perhaps a slap in the face. Now all these high-falutin' office monkeys find importance in using unnecessary (and in this case, unnecessarily vague) words to communicate. Did you see that? I used "communicate" because it made sense there; I was referring to various forms of communication - verbal, written, emailed, shouted, met and discussed at length, passed-in-the-hall-and-shouted-and-moved-along- too-quickly-to-allow-a-retort, etc. But these butt munches make such a feeble attempt at faking intelligence by saying "communicate" instead of the simpler and more accurate choices I laid out above. Typical example:

Lee, to Butt Munch: "Butt Munch, did you tell Manager Munch that there's no way we can do 13,000 hours of work by the end of next week?"

Butt Munch, to Lee: "Oh, yeah. I communicated that. I'm still waiting to hear back. I'll let you know."

Well, you fucking butt munch, in what form are you expecting to hear back, since we're apparently operating on such grand and vague terms? I imagine Manager Munch will probably hurredly (and self-importantly) rush past you in the hall and murmur some sort of dismissive acknowledgement of your "communication." But perhaps you'd prefer Manager Munch to use sky writing (but alas, he would never approve that expense report). So maybe in the form of a bagpipe from yonder hill? Perhaps war trumpets? Maybe an interpretive dance? Donkey call? Sonar blip? You fucking jackass.

Next time, Butt Munch, when I ask you a question like that, do me a favor and relax the shit-eating part of your brain for a moment, and lie to me instead by saying "Oh, yeah. I told him about that. He's gonna get back to me. I'll let you know."

I swear, at some point I'm gonna "communicate" with my fists.

. . .

That wasn't sufficiently cathartic. Let's hope the vodka cran helps. Oh - we're beginning our descent into San Diego where it's 70 degrees with a light breeze out of the north west. Faaaantastic! (I could continue this rant, but about the chicken-shit management phrase "growth opportunity" ... but I temporally digress)

You ever notice that when you are all sweaty and disgusting and you decide to take a nice, long, hot shower, it makes you really warm, and in turn when you get out of the shower, you dry off but don't stay dry for long cuz you're so hot that you keep sweating, and so after spending all that time in the shower, you end up with a layer of shower-induced sweat, thereby necessitating another shower, which - let's be honest - you generally don't do because for God's sake you just got out of the shower, barely able to move from the steamy dizziness and pruning and the last thing you want to do is get back in, so you just go to sleep with a new layer of sweat covering your body? Ever notice that?