Tip of the Week:
Time to move on
A few signs that it may be time to switch careers:

• Your dissatisfaction manifests itself in physical and emotional symptoms, including headaches, stomachaches, insomnia or depression.
• Reality check: my headaches come from drinking myself blind every night hoping that I will awaken as Tom Selleck or a younger Ray Bradbury. Regardless, I am usually depressed.
• You don't see any opportunity for advancement.
• Reality check: After having been with the company over four years, a new hire who I trained six weeks earlier at one of the ten gates I'm familiar with, on one of the the three computer systems I'm also familiar with, was promoted from an hourly officer to salaried Captain right in front of my eyes. I've seen my work load increase more than 56% and I consider myself fortunate to have gotten my (sometimes annual) 3% COLA raises <grin> tacked on to my already Blimpie's Sandwich Shop sized wages.
• You're constantly bored or constantly overworked.
• Reality check: Because I can always read or write I am rarely bored. Since I have expanded the parameters of my job far, far beyond their norms, even on a slow day, I am or easily could be constantly overworked.
• You chafe against your company's policies.
• Reality check: If you have ever been a resident living under the auspices of a Home Owner's Association and violated any of their 2,213 CC&R's you have felt only a sliver from the thirty ton oak of H.O.A. demands that threaten daily to crush a gate sergeant.
• Weekends and vacations are the only good things about your job.
• Reality check: This final 'sign' is the stake in the heart of this grossly under paid profession. That is because in over four years of employment I have been able to enjoy a mere two days of paid vacation. And a non-working weekend for me comes around as often as does a paid holiday for most people.
• - - - Washington Post

Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

June 8^th 2005:
Not Enough
In one of our favorite movies (yet to appear in DVD format - drat!) a pirate is offering the huge island king, trinket after trinket. To each offering the king spits out "Not Enough!" Again and again we hear the words, "Not enough!" Just like the island king, my meager list of needs and wants (which doesn't include a credit card payment, alimony, college tuition payments or a car payment) continues to consume every single dollar I earn. Even though for the past fourteen days, I added fifty three overtime hours to each weekly pay period, I am in danger of bouncing checks. Keerist! Do I still require reasons to search for employment that pays more? Perhaps I love to complain about my job, maybe that's why I'm still not looking. The other afternoon, as I was filling-in at another gated community, all of a sudden the sergeant blew up, and, blowing steam and slinging slobber, claimed I was trashing-up his guardhouse by my fifteen or so unread issues of The Financial Times being stowed in a never-used cubby-hole. As I put the stench of the undiscovered dead mammal that had scented the guardhouse for months out of my mind, and glanced down at the floor that hadn't been mopped, most likely, once this year, I pondered what had brought about his absurd declaration. I decided it was all about exercising power. The sergeant's final demonstration of power would be to order the temporary man, not to "trash-up" his place. Har! How very sad. Being it was Sunday, earlier I had removed the employer want-ad section out of the two dollar paper and concealed it in my backpack. Suddenly, like a bull elephant in rutting season, Sarge launched his three hundred pounds across the guardhouse charging for the newspaper as if it were a box of soft, steaming and sticky Krispy Kreme's. I thought to myself, "Oh-my-gawd, he's going to look for the want-ads, not find 'em, and I'll be accused of stealing too! Great." But, I had forgotten I was dealing with a security guard. Hungrily paging through the three pounds of newsprint he stopped, turned to me, and asked, "Where are the lottery numbers?" What the hell am I doing here?
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

May 18^th 2005:
The Constipation of Inertia
What a piece of shit I am. Ouch. That's not good self-talk is it? Should I value "good" ahead of "truth?" And the truth is, I am a piece of shit. Continuing to waste my existence like a turd (plumber's call them 'brown boats') in the sewer of life being shoved along by each glug-glug of the toilet. Damn. What a great analogy! Okay, it stinks. What a great pun! Okay let's flush the toilet talk. And one final thing, I hope we don't have an electrical brown-out this summer. Aha, ha, ha. I've finally flipped. I was reading in Dan Miller's daily e-mail that some studies prove that what pushes people to make the move to a job or income producing situation more suited to their skills or psyche is, as counterintuitive as it seems, not their currently horrible working conditions, but thoughts centering on how good things would be in their new position. In their new job. Which proves a problem for your Mr.Wonderful, for I re-took the tests in my favorite book, "Learned Optimism" by Martin E. Seligman, and while I noted a general trend in my becoming more optimistic over the years, I am still at Dr. Seligman's very highest measure of personal pessimism. Virtually suicidal. And that makes the task of your Mr.Wonderful thinking of rainbows, joy and jellybeans about as feasible as running a handful of lime Jell-O through a shiny silver cheese grater. However, there is something that occurred to me the other day. And that is, I signed up for a security job because of the swing shift (long gone) that would allow me time to act off the job, and time to memorize lines on the job. And, because security work was 'easy.' Well, I hate my job, my uniform, my manager, my hours and my meager pay. And then I keep insisting that I'm not going to work at a replacement job that I hate? Well, what exactly is the difference between being in a job I hate, making X dollars a month vs. being in a job I hate making 5 times X dollars a month? A real "aha" moment for me.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
May 5^th 2005:
The Stall

"27 Days to the Work I Love" and I have not even picked out companies that I will seek out for employment. The hardest part in looking for any job, I sincerely believe, is the job of summing up your employment history within the boundaries of a single sheet of paper. That is, writing your resumé.

And it is doubly tough when you want to move to a different industry, for who in their right mind would willingly chose to remain in the security guard business? (Especially after hearing from my manager, that,  yes we appreciate the dozens of the extra services you provide, the thousands of hours you've helped at other posts, the fact that you have only taken two days of vacation in three years, and have worked-off the clock-about fifteen hours per month since 2001 . . . but no we simply can't increase your pay rate because, blah, blah, blah. What a slap in the face, eh? Were my fellow, low-IQ'ed, low-inertia peers correct in thinking me stupid for working so hard? Yes or No?) Thank God the book, "48 Days to the Work You Love: And Leaving the Job You Hate" has everything you'll need to find the perfect job. The problem is with our thinking processes when some of us go a-job hunting. Understand that many seekers venture out with a specific job title in mind: human resources, editor or fireman. However, when you are changing industries you are transferring specific talents ("transferable talents" author Miller terms them) between places of employment. "Places of employment" which he states will change, on the average, every 3.2 years. (Are you ready?) In other words, I have my transferable talents enumerated, but no job title attached to them. So it's kinda hard to tell people what kind of job I'm looking for because everyone wants to know, "What position are you after?" I both hear and feel resident's vehicles virtually skid to a stop at my exit gates as they anxiously pound their steering wheels while they wait the seven seconds it takes the twin three hundred pound steel sections to swing open. Then I marvel as they zoom off at a throaty half-throttle, only to screech to a stop again three hundred feet later. I sometimes get intolerant of their impatience. Angry at their rush for their first vente at Starbucks. Or am I jealous? Yes, I'm jealous of the time, the freedom they have. Hell, I can't even leave for lunch. And I have a line of steaming trucks and cars waiting for me when I exit the restroom after a hasty and unsatisfying dump. (Imagine, a job where you can't even relax your can a moment on the can.) However, your Mr.Wonderful is not at all jealous of how many of these wealthy conduct their often sad lives. And next I was going to get into all the incredible bullshit that I daily endure ... how I'm questioned on every informational sign I hang up, by resident's with lives so vacant they've taken it upon themselves to keep an eye on the hardest working, most intelligent, most conscientious, security officer they will ever meet. And certainly the only one, in the history of security officers, who is a graduate of two semesters of Dale Carnegie courses and former president of a Toastmaster's local. (That's "Toastmaster's" not "Teamster's" <grin>.) And some still gripe. And I was going to go on and on ... but I've been going on and on for almost four years. What the hell am I worried about? Rather than go on and on for another four years, it is clearly time to move on. To shout "adios!" Every time I allow myself the luxury of imagining leaving the financial and job fulfillment poverty security work provides, my heart soars. And all these damned difficulties are shed like the skin of a spring-time rattler scraped against the sharpness of a desert boulder recently warmed by the rising and sizzling Sonoran sun.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

April 12^th2005:
The Depression
I fell into a terrible depression on the way to work this morning. Most likely that happened because that disposition is what my (alcoholic) mother modeled for the young Mr.Wonderful. I accepted the model back when my brain was pliable, and, then, the glue of 'adulthood' set, and depression became part of me as surely as during another lonely summer vacation, when I placed the cement-wetted clear cockpit on the silver plastic P51 Mustang WWII fighter, became part of its fuselage. I see everything through that cockpit of depression. Which is not an excuse, but simply an explanation. That's why parents are so damned important. And we typically don't realize it, dad's anyway, until our precious little babies are adults themselves. My job situation has me laughing and crying at the same time, just as if I were visiting my father (God rest his soul) at the Alzheimer's section of the Lutheran Brotherhood rest home. And it makes just about as much sense as patients did in the Alzheimer's wing. (I'll always remember when the impeccably dressed senior citizen, who we did not think was an Alzheimer's victim, turned to us, smiled, and then asked, "Is this your first trip on the train?") Like probably more us than would like to admit, this morning on my journey to the job I hate, I'm going over and over in my head how I can work more overtime and if not, which expenses I can cut to make ends meet i.e., doing what I've always done. That was the father of the aforementioned depression. That and instead of losing two pounds last week, I gained two pounds! However, what I should be concentrating on is, number one: finding work which I look forward to going to, a job I would enjoy (which I am in a much 'better' place than most people my age, since my 2,080 hour annual income is barely more than $24,000 hence I can afford to start at the 'bottom') and, number two: to prod me to change, I should be constantly rumininating on all the things that I disliked or downright hated for the last three years, eight months, thirteen days, one hour and forty minutes about my current position. I just stepped outside to see where a ivory streak cutting across the blue of an Arizona morning ended, and there it was pushing a white commercial jetliner across the sky. I involuntarily shouted, "Gawd-damned I wish I was on that!" Last night, in the midst of a fifty plus sneeze-day which propelled warm snot at the speed of sound into floors and walls, mirrors and countertops, I thought, "What if the sole owner of my company sells it? What if his finances are out of whack and it goes out of business? What if the newly elected board of the HOA hates me and demands my removal? What if one of my felon-resident's decides I know too much and plants a bomb in one of my tuna fish cans?" The question to be answered is: "Who is going to decide my future? Fate? Some disgruntled home owner? An effing bank? The son of the founder? A piece of tuna-fish-oil-proof C4 explosive?" And with the exception of the last question, many of my reader's need to honestly answer these questions too.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

April 6^th2005:
The Search
I've been investing the pre-sunrise hour at the gate house re-reading, underlining, and pondering again the questions at the back of each chapter in the book "48 Days . . ." In black, fine-point measured ink, I carefully print my answers right in the book. Which, considering the bibliophile that I am, feels like scrawling graffiti on a paper wall. However, since I took to Half-Price Books, over six dozen pristine hard-backs from my library to sell prior to moving in 2003, and received nearly eighteen bucks, I'm not so concerned with keeping my books from looking used. From looking like someone actually may have read them and learned from them. There are two kinds of jobs: one in which you love your work, and never have enough time to do what you need to do. And two, one in which you hate your work and time can't fly by fast enough. As my workdays fly by I know I must change my profession (if it can be termed that) and I am immediately reminded of two individuals who held the same rank I do. Who are both on medical leave; or recently retired. They did not chose or desire to leave the job (why is anyone's guess ... low self-worth?) their doctor's told them to. One guard's departure was not surprising, being a once retired gent probably in his late seventies, he was forced to vacate his post due to a heart attack. The other, probably a decade and one-half younger than your Mr.Wonderful, a non-smoker, non-mega-fat-ass, in good health, suffered, the doctors think . . . a heart attack. And that got me to thinking of just how physically and emotionally wrenching this gawddamned job is. And how my own heart begins to race when I see an Arby's-sized cement mixer blocking the sun as it pulls up my one-hundred yard long driveway and squats, steaming on ten squished, wading-pool-sized, knobbed tires. Rumbling like a portable earthquake. Waiting. And knowing my job is to step out and step up on the side of this shivering and tumbling behemoth to tell the always-surprised pilot that he cannot enter through this gate. And then to guide him in a dozen point u-turn amidst a stream of traffic wanting entry and a second stream pouring out, consisting of Escalades, Cayennes, Corvettes, Touregs, Navigators, Vipers and Gallardos and simultaneously halting both streams. (There were signs redirecting commercial vehicles to another gate, but they were removed. Because they were "ugly.") Our manager's back at the bombproof, bulletproof, and hermetically-sealed office may mouth that they understand our stress, but once you have stepped away from the always on your feet, hour to hour chore of running a humming gate house, you no longer can comprehend sufficiently the stresses that burden the sergeant virtually forty-five seconds of every minute of his shift. Like Custer, you're surrounded. Out front, downhill of your position, the unknown hordes are wanting entry. Behind you, with the camps of your residents wanting protection, but only if it doesn't delay their own movements by less than the time it takes to shake a packet of Sweet and Low into their Venti-sized Starbucks. 99% of our residents could not or would not, for any realistic amount of money, dare to face the unsatisfying, unfulfilling, and unrelenting abuse of manning the very gate house that protects the portal of their community. And still, they find people like me . . . To add to the perceived abuse (since they believe the real work is borne by the negotiators in the corporate office) management is willing to bestow no more than an occasional and obviously forced and faked, "Thank yous", or send out $6 movie tickets for taking away Christmas or a toilet-hugging-drunk New Year's Day. With performance reviews only given when you've been caught in any one of the two to three hundred errors you can make in any one day, reported by any of your three hundred to three thousand residents, it's a slight wonder at the massive turnover and the fact that a large number of the gate house employees perform their job to the letter and not a jot or tittle more. Unlike your 'Snake-Handling' Mr.Wonderful, who yesterday, off the clock, snatched a thirty-two inch rattler off a resident's - who has always wanted me fired - driveway. What the hell's the matter with me? What am I waiting for?
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

March 31st, 2005:
48 Days
With the Biblical amount of rain Arizona has been enjoying ("enjoying" because we had been in the middle of a ten year drought, which brought us 30% less than our meager desert average of seven inches each year) the blooming plants have spewed out their histamine generating pollens at hundreds of times their normal pace. Your Mr.Wonderful and probably most of this Valley of the Sun, are suffering from allergies on an unprecedented scale. This morning I recorded eight violent sneezes myself. So massive are these sternutations that I must firmly press my palm against my eyelids so that my pupils don't pop out and end up dangling by their optic nerves onto my cheeks. Which is why I need a new job. Dan Miller's book: "48 Days to the Work You Love: And Leaving the Job You Hate" gave me the idea, the hope, that I could actually score a decent job without a college degree. As I'm reading the book for the second time, I see in the Chapter titled, "Finding Your Unique Path;" a single question on page 116 of the hardback edition that asks: "How do you know when to change jobs or careers?" A question for which I did not have to flip back through the pages to locate the 'correct' answer. Just off the top of my head I came up with a few indications that a job search is in order:

You know it's time to change jobs:
• When you finally cobble together an amiable, street smart and conscientious team of co-workers, that you trained in the midst of chronic turnover, and your team is split asunder with no consultation and a mere two hours notice, because another manager can't manage his own people
• When you do not chose your co-workers and have marginal influence on their tenure, but yet are held responsible for their actions (or non-actions) in your absence.
• When the majority of your office supplies are purchased by you: ink cartridges, paper, pens, up to and including coffee, toilet paper and paper towels.
• When you work seven days a week, up to twenty-six weeks straight without a single day off.
• When you work over 3,000 hours in a single year just to make ends meet.
• When you work on holidays including Christmas Eve, Christmas, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
• When you've been the first employee ever to endure three consecutive years at your post . . . and you are the only person who notices.
• When you see medical co-pays raised and benefits cut while the company continues to interview, screen, test and hire individuals who, prima facie are in poor health and burdened with clearly unhealthy habits, like having the entire McDonald's menu committed to memory.
• When you never use your two-week vacation, never miss a day of work, never turn down overtime assignments and in reward get occasional movie tickets (which you have no time to use) and pay raises that a salt-mine slave would scoff at.
• When even though you give 200% effort every day, customer's continue to phone your manager and his manager in an attempt to get you fired.
• When, to top it all off, you are on-call twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Three hundred and sixty-six on leap years and of course subject to random drug tests.

Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

March 22^nd 2005:
Stuck in the Rut
Still groggy from a seventeen and one-half hour workday, I was on auto-pilot in the black of pre-dawn as the mighty Hyundai found its way to work. I was imagining that it was going to be really tight this month making ends meet. Squeaky tight. I may have to crack open some soup cans that are older than my dogs. Only I no longer own dogs. As my regular readers may remember, because they could not survive the confines of apartment life (hell, I barely can) I had to have Dr. Welby (no kidding) make a house call and euthanize the sometimes insane Shadrach. While Sport and a Hamilton got dropped off at the Hatcher Road animal shelter. There, the sweet but pea-sized bladder equipped family member, seemed to know he was destined for the showers of his own Auschwitz. I was so proud of myself for being the tough guy by only allowing a few tears to dribble down my cheeks as I maneuvered the oven-hot Suburban Assault Vehicle out of the black and almost bubbling September parking lot. A few weeks ago, I began scribbling out a budget; the vendor name in one column and the monthly dollar amount in the other. I could probably do it all from memory, but I left the list incomplete. Because I knew it would show, that even living about as "large" as a widowed school marm on Social Security and enduring work weeks as long as ninety two hours, I still can't seem to accumulate any savings. But we've got one hell of a DVD collection. Escapism. That's what I'm after, an easy way to shove my tedious situation behind the colored pixels of a flatscreen while wielding an ash gray remote control in one hand and a straight golden shot of Cuervo in the other. As my regular readers also know for a fact, I have the answers for everybody but me. It's easier that way isn't it? "Learned helplessness", that's what the psychologists term it. I guess I'm still hearing my father shout that I'll never be as good as he was, and rather than using his insane and unlikely claims to spur me on to prove him wrong, I'm adopting the same coping mechanisms I watched my own mother deploy. (My mom, God rest her soul, whose formerly fermented and amazing liver, is currently being used to desalinize enough water for an African coastal town of 2,500.) My financial rut? Rather than actually step out and take a minimal risk, especially after learning one of my residents earned a $15,000,000 payday with a few months pencil pushing, I decide to work harder and to work more hours. I decide to run the rat race faster on a oval track with no finish line, with no upside, only downside . . . because, like the old bloodhound laying on the porch, quietly whimpering because of a nail sticking up through the lumber and into his underside, I guess I don't hurt enough yet to move.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

March 4th 2005:
The Diet Meats
Little play on words here, "diet" is also a legislative body in some countries, like our congress. Har. Okay, day three on the MW/Atkins' Diet and your Mr.Wonderful has already lost over six pounds. Actually what I believed transpired is, that when one consumes all the salt-encrusted and fat laden foods available in any aisle of the grocery store, or drive-thru fast-food lane, your weight on the bathroom scale can fluctuate wildly from week to week. Keep in mind that sodium chloride (salt) when introduced into our body's cells, attracts and traps water within them. And since humans are mostly water, you can understand how a high salt intake can increase how much we weigh and how our clothes fit. If you did not know, for centuries clever food entrepreneurs have been purposely over-salting their customer's snacks, knowing that that will make them want to purchase beverages to quench their salt-induced thirst. And only in the Twentieth Century did clever American refreshment chemists devise a drink which did not actually end thirst, but prolonged it. The most familiar and famous of these concoctions is Coca-Cola. One sure way to manage your weight is to steer clear from these manufactured foods and libations. And that is exactly what the Atkins' Diet does. Oh sure, the people who took over from the good doctor have come up with the term "Net Carbs" so they can sell us their high-profit factory-fabricated foodstuffs, but you don't need to consume any of these incredibly priced treats. Losing weight does require will power and if you think that you are going to be able to eat anything like the way that turned you into a fat tub of goo, you also probably believe Michael Jackson is innocent of molesting charges. The real impetus to pen this article (with my keyboard, no less) is that my heartburn, gas and headaches have already disappeared. Also vanished are the morning hour hunger pangs that felt like Ving Rhames was gut-punching me. Now whether these lost sensations are actually caused by the loss of the six plus pounds, or if it is due to the fact that I am consuming virtually no carbohydrates while ingesting massive quantities of chicken, cheese, beef, salads and drinking only coffee, tea and tequila, I know not. But I do know I sure do feel better. Already. Now, if I could only get control of my BPH, so I might sleep a solid six hours rather than the two hour segments I've grown used to.
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

February 21st 2005:
These Three Things
Headaches, acid reflux, gas and listlessness. If I hadn't lost fifty pounds I would ascribe these 21st Century maladies to the inescapable burdens of being middle-aged. However, I know the headaches, the heartburn, the gas and the listlessness are the products of gaining back just a little too many of those same lost pounds. I remember hearing a cardiologist reveal that there is now conjecture in the medical community that the blubber we accumulate around our middle (causing us men to wear our pants low like gun slinging Wild-West cowboys) actually functions as a gland pumping out unnatural hormones. Hormones that cause us to crave Pizza Hut pizza, Hebrew National hotdogs buried in steaming Wolf brand chili smothered under factory-shredded sharp cheddar cheese, and Jack-in-the-Box large chocolate shakes at 10:30PM on the way home from work. All those in the medical profession, who regularly cautioned us of the dangers of the Atkins' diet are rejoicing. Because, if I were an average American male, I'd be back in my doctor's office complaining about: headaches, acid reflux, flaming farts and listlessness. Multitasking, he'd be nodding his head most compassionately, while billing my health insurance company (Good Samaritan Insurance of Somolia) $75 per visit and contemplating a $35,000 faux finish at the house to keep his wife off his back. It all boils down to how many calories we consume per day versus how many calories we burn. That is exactly what a recent study of the Atkins' Diet concluded. The study proved that the reason Atkinsnittes' shed pounds immediately and with so little trauma is that they simply consume up to 40% less calories. Those on the study consumed less because they were not as hungry, as often, as was the control group. Because, on the Atkins' diet, carbohydrate intake was as little as 10% of what the ADA recommends. Listen to me now and hear me later: carbohydrates stoke the fires of hunger. A hunger whose flames only grow higher the more carbs that are fed into it. Since I've dropped off the Atkins' regime and my work week has also dropped from as many as 94 hours per week to a mere 56, I have almost a day more each week to mope around the apartment, trickle tequila down my gullet and thoughtlessly obey the hormonal-instructions seeping out of my waistbound gland. Currently I'm at the point where I must drop five to ten pounds to rid myself of these obviously fat-borne maladies. I should drop about forty pounds to unveil the stud I am on the inside on my outside. The one thing that us American's know, but don't usually verbalize, is that the fatter a person is, almost always, the older that person is assumed to be. And if many of my peers (in age only, of course) are fat-asses and I'm slim, I'll be perceived as being far younger. Which only matters if a fifty year old guy is: 1) Looking for a much higher paying job, 2) Looking for a variety of acting roles other than being the fat father or grandfather, 3) Attempting to attract a younger replacement wife. So, for your Mr.Wonderful, it matters, because I am attempting all three. Or, I plan to attempt all three. Or, think about planning all three . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

February 13th, 2005:
Circumcised and Pissed
On this wonderfully foggy February morning, with my car radio tuned to KFYI, I was listening to Dr. Dean Edell during my Sunday drive into work. He was once again on his "circumcision is against the way God designed us" rant. Mimicking Hillary Clinton recently talking about praying, the Liberal-biased Edell, will bring God into the argument when it suits his purposes. He claims that un-circumcised and circumcised men demonstrate no difference in rates of penile disease and infections. All I know is that an un-circumsised penis looks identical to the weapon my English Bulldog utilized to tear-o-rize any female pooch in heat whose owner was idiotic enough let her run unrestrained. Regardless of his comment, disagreement continues in the medical community over the instance of disease rates between circumcised and un-circumcised males. As I've written before, the good Doctor claims a loss of sensitivity during sexual intercourse (and, also, I imagine, the more common one-handed practice) among circumcised men is reason enough to end the primal surgery many American males face. But isn't it just what women need is for men's privates to be even more sensitive so that un-cut fellows can huff and puff and reach their goal in 15 seconds rather than 45? He states that only the United States and Israel practice wide-scale clipping. And then he casually throws in the billion and one-half people who are Muslims. Seems to me quite a few places practice circumcision. Dr. Edell asks about what the baby wants, telling his listeners that the parents should wait until he alone can decide. But yet, the doctor is for abortion on demand. It is within their rights for the mother, the dad, the cause of this amnio-enclosed infant, whether he be 54 weeks or 54 seconds from birth, to decide to kill it. He insists that something as painful as circumcision (or abortion?) should be left to the child, once he is older, to decide. Talk about the pain of a thirteen year old penis tip being cut with a razor! Is there any doubt of what the choice would be? Dr. Edell, as long as we are talking choices: What do you imagine the choice of every single one of the post-Roe-vs.-Wade-judicial-ruling fifty million aborted American infants would have been? Can you imagine them choosing death?
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

February 8th, 2005:
First Day
Two glasses of 2003 Merlot from Maison Nicolas and it's not even 2:55PM on Superbowl Sunday. What could be wrong with your Mr.Wonderful? What is "wrong" is that I am enjoying my first day off (that does not include at least one eight hour shift) since August 3rd, of 2003. That's what, one hundred and eighty-six days at work without a single break? Yup, I am The Man. When I ran the business my brother and I and the bank owned, I did not work myself like that. I would not have asked an employee to work like that. However, from my overly-generous management (who aren't mean, just unbelievably ignorant about employee relations) I received two movie tickets for giving up a Saturday and Sunday off in December. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day were spent working at some other sergeant's gate house. Just got back from shopping at my Albertson's. It was amazing, customers were bringing shopping carts in from the parking lot, not to be nice, but because there were so few left in the cart corral at the front of the store. I picked up a load of boneless New York Strip steaks at $5.00 off per pound. Once home, I was pleasantly surprised as my George Foreman grill cooked two up in under fourteen minutes. Too bad only the salt and the Jim Beam Steak Sauce gave them flavor. I turned on Superbowl XXXIX for a few minutes and it looked like the team in the white and blue jersey's were going to cream the ones in the ones in the green, so I turned it off. Understand, I am more concerned with what is going on in my own life, rather than giving up four hours of my precious time to watch a bunch of testosterone-pumped and gifted athletes paid incredible amounts of money doing their job. A job which, for many of them, they love. A job which they are proud of. A job which they strive each day to get better at. How great is that? Too bad we all don't have that pride and drive when it comes to our own "jobs", eh?
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org

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