FilteringCraig

As some of the more faithful readers know, I taught a second grade class for a little over a month through a program at work. I recounted a couple funny stories on this site. Now it is done and it definitely saddens me not to have that distraction every week.

Little did I know that those kids would put a smile on my face one more time. I mean a big smile too. I received some thank-you notes in the mail from them. I am going to share the funnier ones with you. Now that I think of it, I shouldn�t allow comments on this post, but oh well.

What they wrote is in quotes. Italics are mine.
Enjoy!!!

�Thank you for letting us participate and teaching us big words. The games were outrageous and you have good manners. You�re a great guy! Thank you for missing work to teach us!�

I wouldn�t say I was exactly missing it.

�Thank you for teaching us. It was an honor to spend time with you. It was fun to have you teach us and it was nice and very kind of you to not b shy��

B-ing shy is not something I am familiar with.

�Thank you for teaching us about communities government services and taking time in our classroom. Thank you also for the award. I learned a lot. You�re a great man and you always will be. Make your days the best!�

I don�t know if I taught this kid or walked on the moon, but I appreciate the compliment. He’s probably the one who farted.

�Thank you for all the awesome stuff that you did for us. You taught us a lot Mr. Lyndall! Thank you for teaching us about our community. Thank you again for all the awesome stuff that you did for us.�

Ahh, the vernacular of a second grader. Awesome stuff!

�Thank you for teaching us about communities, I learned a lot. It was really thoughtful to take time in our classroom. I enjoyed you teaching us and letting us participate. When you were teaching us about assembly lines, I really liked it. It was great because we got to pretend we worked in a donut shop. Thank you again for taking time in our classroom.�

That�s right, I taught them to forget about college. Either work in a donut shop or on an assembly line. That will take you places!

�Thank you for coming to our school. It was fun having you teach us about our community. I hope you can come back. It was fun when we did the donuts. Do you really work at a donut shop?�

Not bad kid, but I think I will do the jokes around here. Got it?

That�s it. Those were the highlights. Maybe soon I will scan the pictures that some of them drew on their sheets. Those were some seriously skinny, Calista Flockheart style representations of me (stick figures mostly.) Anyway, I can�t wait to find another class in the fall.
Until then�

I have recorded a new song and put it up on the site so you can hear it. I recorded it with one microphone to cover my acoustic guitar and me. It has kind of a live sound as a result.

Download it and let me know what you think. Right Click on the link below and save it.

ROCK!

I am not having a very good week. I have been stressed out about a variety of different things this week, and it was really starting to take its toll on me by last night. I didn�t feel like doing anything. I didn�t feel like watching the NCAA games. I kept opening browser windows, but I couldn�t think of a website that I even wanted to read. I had no desire to play video games. Just completely stressed out and nothing to do about it.

I don�t know what it was, but it is the kind of night that would make you believe in some sort of higher power. Maybe the sun and moon were aligned. That combined with a specific wind coming out of the northwest? I don�t know.

There are exactly 8 people in this world that I know, not counting family, whom I hold in the absolute highest regard. These 8 people know me better than anyone else. They all happen to be brilliant and beautiful people, and based on different life experiences, they have come to be friends of mine. The funny thing about it is that most of these 8 people don�t know any of the other 8. They live in different geographic locations, but even if they all did live in the same city, I don�t know that their paths would cross.

That is what makes last night so amazing. I was pretty low. I wasn�t feeling good about anything, and my phone rang. Just randomly, one of the magic 8 called to �catch up.� I ended up talking with this person for a while, and I felt a lot better. Then, as if my feelings had been turned into some sort of a �bat signal� type beacon that all my friends could see, my phone rang again. A second member of the magic 8 called me and we talked for about 2 or 3 hours.

So, I am thankful that these people exist. I am thankful for their insight, and that they actually care to keep in touch with yours truly. Last night I was thankful for the coincidence or whatever it was. I hope everyone has a magic 8, or a magic 1,345,678.

(If you do happen to have a group of 8, you will have to call them the “great 8″ or something. The Magic 8 is taken, and patents are pending.)

I read a letter to the editor today in which one anti-war person was responding to a previous letter by a pro-war person. The first letter by the pro-war person had said something like if you are anti-war, it is time to shut your mouth and support your peers.

Then in the second letter, the anti-war person was saying how this was �nonsensical.� He then goes on to say,
�Whether we are fighting for the freedom of the oppressed or control of oil fields, if we do not exercise the rights that the soldiers in Iraq are fighting to preserve, then we are fighting for nothing.�

I think this might be the most ridiculous round of banter I have ever heard in my life.

Pro-war: �I think it�s time for anti-war people to keep their mouths shut and support their peers.�
Anti-war: �Ha, if I keep my mouth shut then the terrorists win! That is nonsensical.�
Pro-war: �I am expressing my free-speech rights by telling you to shut your mouth.�
Anti-war: �I am expressing my rights by defying you and protesting.�
Pro-war: �FINE!�
Anti-war: �FINE!�
Pro-war: �FINE TIMES 10, HA!�
Anti-war: �FINE, INFINITY, HAHA!�
Pro-war: �Fine, INFINITY TIMES TEN, HAHAHA!�
Anti-war: �You can�t multiply infinity times ten, idiot.�
Pro-war: �I just did, you tree hugger.�
Anti-war: �Keep it up you unenlightened Mongoloid.�
Pro-war: �You are the Mongoloid.�
Anti-war: �Good one dumbass.�
Pro-war: �Talk to me if you are a bitch.�
Anti-war: �Your mom.�
Pro-war: �Oh yeah, YOUR mom.�

Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah and it continues.

The issue is the war. How does it affect Iraqis, soldiers and world opinion of this country? Just like the self-centered Americans that the world accuses us of being, we have turned this into an issue about us, at home, the people who aren�t actually doing anything other than paying taxes. Keep it on the issues and don�t bother me with this disgusting infighting between the representative bird metaphors. I KNOW IT IS PROTECTED SPEECH, but that doesn�t make it productive.

I read today that McDonald�s may be seeking buyers for its smaller diversified food chains. These include Chipotle, the Mexican burrito joint, and Donato�s, a pizza place. The Chicago Tribune is suggesting that this might be proof that the new CEO James Catalupo is going with a �back to basics� strategy to bring McDonalds back to supremacy in the food universe. I don�t think this is the right strategy.

In business school, they teach you that one of the intangibles that a company can have that is an invaluable asset is brand name or brand equity. Nike has the inimitable �swoosh.� Adidas has the three stripes. MGM has the lion that roars before the movies. NBC has the peacock. I could go on for days. McDonalds has the golden arches and Ronald. These are great assets to a company as far as being recognizable and famous. Everyone knows these symbols. The problem is that now they are associated with the wrong things.

The arches have come to represent fat grams. The possibility of ordering a diet beverage with a super-sized meal has become a punch line. Chicken nuggets have become synonymous with mystery meat. Their coffee is always associated with the lady who got serious burns in her lap after spilling it. People still wonder what in the hell Grimace is not to mention how downright scary the Hamburglar is.

So, we have a brand with lots of brand power, but now if I were CEO I would be looking for a way to distance myself from all these images, but how do you spit in the face of your largest asset, the golden arches? How do you recreate an American classic like McDonalds?

I am not sure that you can do anything but wait and hope that America changes its mind about fast food. While you are waiting and hoping for people to come back to your restaurant, you can assume that some other company who offers a replacement service is going to take your sales from you. Is it Burger King? Is it Wendy�s? Is it Subway?

Why shouldn�t it be Donato�s and Chipotle? If someone is going to steal your sales, why not let it be you? While you are waiting for McDonald�s why not try to cash in with other companies. The market size hasn�t changed; the tastes of the market have been changing slowly over time. Just in case people are never going to come back, make sure you are positioned to move on.

One final note I will leave you with is the Procter and Gamble model. Procter and Gamble has products in the same market to appeal to all the different types of people in that market. Let�s take laundry detergent for example. P&G knows that many different types of people are going to buy different types of cleaning products for their clothes. So what do they do? Do they try to convince EVERYONE to buy Tide? No, they have a diversified group of products so that if they are going to lose market share to another product, they will own them all.

Procter and Gamble owns Tide, Downey, Gain, Cheer, Bounce, Era, Febreeze, Dreft, Dryel, Ivory Snow and Bold. That sounds like a good percentage of the choices on a Wal-Mart shelf if you ask me.

My Point is, don�t ONLY try to make everyone love McDonald�s (again.) Make sure if they are going to choose against McDonald�s you are picking up the sale under another name. Which means maybe selling Donato�s and Chipotle is a bad idea.

My brother is in college and is using Microsoft Powerpoint to do a project for the first time. He seems to understand how to use it, but let’s just say that he has yet to have enough experience to deal with the finer points and intricacies of doing projects with Microsoft products. In other words, sometimes they format weird and you have no idea how the hell it came to look like that. Anyone with experience knows exactly what I am talking about. So here is a quote from the email my brother sent me.

Do you remember being a first time user of a Microsoft product? Did you feel like this?

Mark’s Email:
“All the slides are in now and the text is all written in. But I
really need help fixing a lot of shit in this thing. None of the bullets
match and the font sizes are all different.

Anyways its 10:30 and I have been playing around with this fucking thing too long. When you get this sometime tonight give me a call. Power Point can eat my ass I don’t know if its me or this program but the fucking thing never does
what I want it to.”

Do you remember when I told you about that house that I bought? Well, I finally stopped by to take some pictures yesterday.

This is a view from the sidewalk. I told you it was green. Try to imagine it with some white paint.

This is the living room. It is pretty big. I like that window.

Speaking of the window, this is what you will see when you look out of it. Who’s car is that?

If I do end up living in this place I will be using the finished basement as my recording studio. Those wooden walls should be ok with the sound, and it has its own stripper pole. ROCK!

I didn’t show the downstairs bedrooms because they are basic square rooms, but the upstairs is kind of unique. The pitched roof of the house and the built in dressers and things make this kind of nice up here.

Imagine if you bought a nice new grill and a cooler full of something. Look at the tree coming right up through the deck. I think that is a nice touch.

This is a small backyard, but it is just enough to mow. That shed in back is part of the property as well.

This is a view of the back of the house from the backyard. Again, try to imagine it with some white paint.

So, should I move in?

Just when I think that I am not going to be listening to anymore mainstream metal/hard rock, an album creeps up on me and gets me back into it. Previous albums to do this to me include:

Every album by the Deftones
Taproot - Gift
Staind - Break the Cycle
Slipknot
System of a Down

I have a new one that is doing it to me now. I have been really into the quieter sounds of indie. Death Cab for Cutie, Dismemberment Plan, Bright Eyes, Onelinedrawing and others, but someone made a recommendation the other day.

I went out and bought the new album titled Fallen by Evanescence and I am back into mainstream heavy music. This band does it a little different. They have a female lead singer named Amy Lee, who is incredible. I have always been a big fan of female singers anyway (Tori Amos, Bjork, The Sundays, Natalie Merchant, etc) so this album really caught on with me.

If I had to characterize the music, I would say it is kind of like Linkin Park with a female lead singer and a lot less rapping and screaming. It is just as emotional and angst-filled as many of the hard rock albums, but this band is from Little Rock, Arkansas, so they might actually have something to be pissed/downtrodden/depressed about. So, I urge you to check it out because I like it.

Perhaps the most crushing thing we learned was that most ordinary Iraqis thought Saddam Hussein had paid us to come to protest in Iraq. Although we explained that this was categorically not the case, I don’t think he believed us. Later he asked me: “Really, how much did Saddam pay you to come?”

(Daniel Pepper, a human shield in Iraq, on learning that some Iraqis are Pro-War)

All the protesters are anti-war because they think they know what’s best for the Iraqi people. Are the Iraqi people anti-war or pro-war? Would your own stance change if you thought a large portion of the Iraqi people were pro-war? I still think we are taking on too much worldwide responsibility as police, but maybe taking Saddam out of power ultimately is the right thing to do for the Iraqi people. This article definitely makes the protesters seem like out of touch, ignorant, self-serving people. I still think protesting means quite a bit less today than it did in the Vietnam era because there is no draft. They are representing their own interests instead of those who matter most; the Iraqis.

If you ask me whether this whole thing is right or wrong, I would have to say I don’t know. I don’t think the U.S. government is bombing solely for the humanitarian cause of liberating Iraq, but maybe this campaign can ultimately be justified by achieving that end result.

Or maybe Daniel Pepper is a propogandist. It is impossible to wade through all the details scientifically. I will just hope for the best.

1. If you had the chance to meet someone you’ve never met, from the past or present, who would it be?

Chris Farley � I never really thought about meeting him before, but I was trying to think of one of the funniest guys (dead or alive) on earth, and he was the first one to come to mind.

Honorable Mention � I have always thought it would be fun to hang with Norm Macdonald. I even though Dirty Work was funny, and I own the DVD. Artie Lang is a fat bastard.

2. If you had to live in a different century, past or future, which would it be?

I don�t like this question, but it is an easy answer. This century because we just started it and I want to see what happens.

3. If you had to move anywhere else on Earth, where would it be?

I haven�t seen enough places to answer this one properly, but right now, I would probably move somewhere west of the Mississippi. I have never been out there (anywhere) and that is all I can think of right now.

4. If you had to be a fictional character, who would it be?

Lately I have been obsessed with the movie High Fidelity, but I don�t want to be as quirky as any of those characters. There isn�t a single engaging character on TV lately. The last book I read was Prey by Michael Crichton, and there is no suitable character in that. I am at a loss, so I will say Chris from Chris Elliot�s Get a Life which I have been watching on DVD lately. I don�t know that I would really want to be that character, but it is really funny.

5. If you had to live with having someone else’s face as your own for the rest of your life, whose would it be?

I don�t like this question. Maybe I am just not feeling creative today. I will say Jim Carrey because he contorts his face like no human on earth. Did you expect me to pick some handsome guy like Brad Pitt? I hate this question. Enjoy.