Stephen King

Stephen King:

This one isn't going to be much of a mystery when it comes to the ultimate grade, so I'll save you the suspense.  He gets an A+.

I once read a quote by  person attempting to put down Mr. King's work in which they said something along the lines of, "He's the McDonald's of horror."

I assume they meant that he's written quite a lot and that it seems made for the masses and thus isn't true literature.  If you ask me, in the end, it's not much of an insult.  If I could be the McDonald's of anything, I'd jump right on that opportunity.  [1]  Millions of dollars and millions of fans sounds pretty good to me.

Just because something is popular, doesn't make it bad.  Just because something isn't Moby Dick, doesn't make it bad either.  Stephen King books manage to itch some back, dark corner of your brain that needs a scratch every now and again.  Sure there are probably lots of other creepier, scarier writers out there.  I don't care.

I loves me some Stephen King books.  

As the Pook can attest, I literally own them all.

And I've read them all.

He is one of my three favorite authors. [2]

While Mr. King is still putting out new material, it doesn't come out nearly as fast as I'd like, so to get an appropriate King fix, I've made the following decision.

I'm going to reread all of them.

Yes, all of them.

From the really good (Misery, Salem's Lot, Firestarter) to the really bad (Insomnia, Tommyknockers).

From the short (The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, Carrie, Thinner) to the seriously long (The [uncut] Stand, The Dark Tower Series).

and

From the tame (Eyes of the Dragon) to the downright creepy and dark stuff (All Dark No Stars).

And of course, I'll give it all a grade.

My current plan is to go chronologically. [3]

Feel free to read along if you'd like.

Stephen King: A+ [4]

[1] Heck, I'd be the Wendy's of anything.
[2] The other two are Dick/Felix Francis and Nick Hornby.  I own everything by them as well.  In fact if you are looking for something new to read, I would heartily recommend any of the three.
[3] I've actually already started Carrie.  I'm about 40 pages in.
[4] Told you so.  Also, I should probably be clear that I am just talking about the books.  Some of the movies are good.  I few are great.  Most kind of blow.  The TV shows don't fare much better.

A Movie Plot

A Movie Plot:

Imagine this movie:

The main character is a young man without a whole lot of prospects.  Living in the shadow of his older siblings and with no real likelihood of getting/inheriting anything on the home front, he heads out to make his own way.

Naturally he meets a girl and they immediately connect.  They seem like a perfect match.  But of course her family disapproves of their whirlwind romance.

Determined to make it all work out the hero starts manipulating things.  He's doing a little deceiving and he's working all the angles. He's got a lot of balls up the air and he's managing to keep everything in motion.   And while what he's doing isn't exactly on the most honest and straight and narrow of paths, his heart is in the right place.  He has a girl to win and a fortune to claim.

Of course things start to spiral out of control and then just as it seems there is no way he can pull it off, *****[1] everything comes together.  The girl is his and he's made a name for himself.

Roll Credits.

Perhaps at this point you are saying, "Mister B, this is not a very original movie plot."

Well you would be right.  There are countless movies that follow this general script.  Off of the top of my head: The Secret of My Success, Some Kind of Wonderful, Opportunity Knocks, 10 Things I Hate About You, etc, etc, etc.  Really just about every other movie made in the 80's

Okay, now go back to the place marked with the five asterisks (*****) and change the ending.  Scrap everything after that point and change it to:

everything gets worse.  The more he tries to keep it together the more things spiral out of control.  The more they spiral out of control, the more frantic he gets.  In the heat of the moment he starts making some bad decisions and before he knows what's really going on, he's stepped a bit too far over the line.  Instead of the hero of our plot, he's the villain.

I've just described Hans from Frozen.

The more I watch this movie [2] the more I feel bad for him.  One little twist of fate in the other direction and the credits are rolling, everyone is happy and he's got the girl.

Yes, I know.  You want Anna to end up with Kristoff.  That's only because you've seen the movie as scripted.  You've seen the wheels come off the wagon.  But you can't deny Anna and Hans have a connection at the beginning of the movie.  I don't know about you but I've never met someone before that I could immediately sing a complicated duet with. [3]  They were BOTH singing, "You and I were just meant to be."

If there was no Kristoff and the movie was scripted differently, you'd have been cheering at the end when they ended up together.

Just saying. [4]

Hans [5]: B-

[1] - Note this place.  It will become important later.
[2] - It's the Bean's favorite.  We watch it and/or listen to the soundtrack a lot.
[3] - Not even the Pook.
[4] - Yes, I know he tries to kill Elsa with a sword.  At that point, everything is so chaotic and out of whack he's been taken over by temporary insanity.  You may be laughing now, but there are plenty of real world stories (and movie stories) in which someone gets caught up in the moment and takes things one step too far without really realizing how far over the line they've managed to get.
[5] - Either a victim of bad luck or perhaps just simply on the wrong side of that Disney Magic.

Led Zeppelin IV and Taylor Swift Red

Led Zeppelin IV and Taylor Swift Red:

I wandered into my local Disc-Go-Round [1] looking for a David Bowie CD [2].  I was unable to find the Bowie disc, so I began browsing looking to see if something else caught my eye. [3]  It was then I remembered that my music collection was sadly lacking in that I actually didn't own any Zeppelin. [4]  So I picked up Zeppelin IV and then Taylor Swift's Red CD caught my eye.  I also didn't own any of her CD's, but in one of those weird serendipitous cosmic sets of coincidences, she and her music had come up a lot in several recent unconnected conversations and programs. [5]  So I took it as a sign that I should get both.

Before I actually gave either a listen it seemed obvious that this would be a perfect opportunity to compare the two.  If not necessarily a fair two things to compare.

Granted that while as I previously mentioned I didn't own and had never owned any Zeppelin CD's before,  [6] I have heard plenty of their songs.  As for Taylor Swift, I think I could count the number of her songs I'd previously heard on one hand and I probably couldn't name the title of a single one, save Blank Space. [7]

So without further ado, after having twice listened to both CD's completely, a comparison of Led Zeppelin IV and Taylor Swift's Red.

1) Length:

Zeppelin IV has eight tracks on it.  Red has sixteen.  Personally if I get a CD and it only has eight songs I usually feel kind of ripped off.  [8]  There are exceptions to the rule, Donald Fagan's Nightfly for example.  Of course there are also CD's that have plenty more songs, but it's clear that the artist was scraping things off the sides of barrel to fill up the disc.  So, I'd rather have a shorter disc of awesome songs, than a longer one of crap.  Sixteen songs is on the other side of the spectrum.  Too many songs and I've quit paying attention by the end.  Surely not all sixteen of these are quality?

In these instances both are exceptions to the rule.  Zeppelin IV is eight songs and there is nothing you regret hearing.  They could have put more, but the CD is enough.  Red goes on for sixteen, but there is nothing you want taken out of the list.

The Winner: A tie.

2) Catchy-ness of songs:  

There is no denying that the Zeppelin songs have staying power.  Of the eight songs, I already knew five of them by heart and I was at least familiar with one of the others (Battle of Evermore).  Thus only two of them were relatively unfamiliar to me (Four Sticks, When the Levee Breaks).

I don't think I'd ever heard a single song off of Red before.[9]  Of course I don't typically listen to any radio station that would be playing Taylor Swift songs, so it's possible they are all played non-stop somewhere else on the dial. [10]  There were several of the songs that I caught myself singing later (22, Stay Stay Stay, and Red at the minimum.)  But that was immediately after listening to the disc and I haven't done it again since.

The Winner: Zeppelin

3) Replayability:

Granted this is a lot like the previous topic, but it is not the same.  Uncatchy songs would lead to low replayability, but catchy songs that don't go together, go on too long, or are too much the of the same [11] make CD's non-replayable as well.

Zeppelin IV has decent replayability.  Again since five of the eight songs are legitimate hits, even if you don't particularly like the other three, you need only wait a few minutes and you're back to a hit.  However, the songs do all have a very similar feel to them.  The same guitar sound that pretty much defines Zeppelin dominates all of the songs and let's face it Robert Plant pretty much sounds the same every time as well. [12]

Red also has decent replayability.  The CD is sixteen songs, but there is quite a range of styles and sounds. For instance, some of the CD sounds downright country.  Others are clearly rock, pop or a kind of bluesy romantic.  Swift also sings in a variety of styles.  The result is a lot of variety that keeps the CD fresh sounding.

The Winner: Swift [13]

4) Topics of songs

As previously stated my exposure to Taylor Swift is limited to these sixteen songs and a handful of others.  So, perhaps this next statement isn't true, but it sure seems it to me.

Here is a story line:

A) Girl desires boy [14]
B) Girl and boy start seeing each other
C) It gets serious
D) Everything is wonderful
E) Conflict and tension arrises
F) Things aren't going so good
G)They either resolve things (go back to "D") or things fall apart (go on to "H")
H) They break up
I) Girl thinks back on relationship
J) Go back to "A" [15]

Every single Taylor Swift song follows this story line.  EVERY SINGLE ONE.  Granted some of them do not go through the entire story and may only focus on one, two or three parts of it.  But they are all there.  I know this is true for her Red album because I realized this halfway through the first listening and so on the second listening I identified where in the story line each song was.

I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that, [16] and I'm sure there are people who really, really, really like focusing on that topic, but for me it gets kind of worn out.

Zeppelin IV does not have this problem.  Sure there are some songs here about girls.  There is also a song that just about walking around the city and stuff happens (Misty Mountain Hop), a song about rock and roll  and girls (Rock and Roll), a song about trying to buy your way into the afterlife (Stairway to Heaven) and a song about the battle between good and evil [17] (Battle of Evermore).  If I have a complaint about the CD it's that there are times when the songs seem to lose their continuity.  Honestly there are times when I think Plant no longer knows what he's talking about and is just filling space with lines that rhyme.

The Winner: Zeppelin IV by a long shot.

5) Cuteness of Artist

Have you looked at recent pictures of Plant?  Even at their best the guys from Zeppelin are kind of shaggy, and unkempt.  And I don't know why, but I suspect that they didn't necessarily smell so good either.

Taylor Swift is gorgeous.  There are sometimes where she has this slight oddness and angularity to her look that I can't quite put my finger on, but whatever.  She's a hottie.

The Winner: Taylor Swift by a really really long shot.

Doing a quick tally the verdict is 2.5 for Zeppelin IV and 2.5 for Taylor Swift's Red.  Thus a tie and a need for a tie breaker category.

Here it is:

Tie Breaker: If I was out of space on my iPhone which would I delete first to make space?

Taylor Swift's good looks notwithstanding, Red would get deleted without a second thought.

The Final Winner: Led Zeppelin IV


Led Zeppelin IV: A-
Taylor Swifts- Red: A-

[1] - Except I've already lied to you as it is now a CD Warehouse and hasn't been Disc-Go-Round in years. I evidently have issues with change.
[2] - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars to be specific.  Perhaps I have a problem with letting go of the past instead.
[3] - This was one of those rare moments when I'm child free and suddenly find that I am free to browse and not focused on just keeping the Bean from destroying the universe.
[4] - I know.  I know.  Please don't tell anyone.  I've gotten past it now.
[5] - Mostly stuff on the radio (NPR ftw), but also on other media types
[6] - Unless the Encomium tribute album counts and it shouldn't.
[7] - But only because it was the topic of one of the coincidental Taylor Swift occurrences that had occurred in the previous couple days.
[8] - Counting Crows don't think I didn't note that your newest 11 track offering includes two demo versions of two of the songs, so really only has nine songs.  You aren't fooling anyone.
[9] - It's possible I heard 22 before, but I don't think I actually had.  More likely is that I heard someone else singing snippets of it.
[10] - But I doubt that.
[11] - Any Boston CD for example.
[12] - Changing volume level or speed doesn't count.
[13] - But just barely.
[14] - Typically one if not both of them are of the "bad girl" or "bad boy" variety
[15] - Usually with a new boy
[16] - Especially if you are a teenage high school or college girl who's life is surrounded by that kind of drama.
[17] - And maybe a little Tolkein

Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch

Cap'n Crunch's Sprinkled Donut Crunch Cereal:

There are several different varieties of Cap’n Crunch and to be sure I’ve tried them all.  Except for a brief, unrepeated stint in my early years, I’ve never been a huge fan of the peanut butter flavor and I found the Chocolate Crunch to be unappetizing, but all of the other varieties grace my bowl from time to time. [1]

Given all of that, you might have thought that when I and the family entered our local Target and saw the Cap’n’s newest offering I would have been eager with anticipation, but it wasn’t like that at all.

Somehow the idea of the already sugary sweet Cap’n Crunch being combined with frosted donuts seemed to take things much too far. [2] 

The Pook wasn’t nearby while the Bear and I made our initial opinions.  As I’ve already said, I was immediately a ‘no go’ on this one, but after gazing at the box the Bear looked up at me and said, “Let’s get it!”

Using a time honored and proven strategy passed down from generations, I immediately said, “Let’s see what mom says.”  I was semi-sure that she would be as put off by the whole thing as I was.  However, when she wheeled the Bean up to us in the red target buggy and saw giant display of the cereal in question she immediately said, “Let’s get it!”

That evening, though dinner had long past and breakfast was but a distant memory, the Bear asked if he could have a snack.  When told that he could, he asked if he could have some of the new donut cereal.[3]  And thus we broke into the box.

The cereal is more akin to Quaker “Oh’s” than Cap’n Crunch.  Each bit is shaped like a small donut and they definitely lives up to their name and are very crunchy.  In fact it is one of the few cereals that benefits from sitting for a few seconds so that it can soak up some of the milk and soften a bit.[4]

There are in fact, tiny sprinkles on each of the rings, though honestly I don’t know that they provide any real flavor to the dish.  They do have the unfortunate side effect of coloring your milk.  Usually I’m all for colored milk, but because the sprinkles are a variety of colors the end result is a kind of gray with a slight blue tint that does not look appetizing at all. [5]

And what about the flavor you ask?

Surprisingly they are downright tasty.  The four of us ate over half of the box that night eating the cereal dry right out of the box.  It makes for a great snack when eaten that way.

The next morning I had it for breakfast with milk and it is equally tasty eaten in the traditional manner.  Again it strongly reminds me of “Oh’s” in its flavor as well has shape and texture.

In fact, since it was on sale and tasted so good that the Pook went back to Target that day and bought two more boxes.

Cap’n Crunch’s Sprinkled Donut Crunch: A-

[1] – To be completely honest, in recent years I have found the Crunch Berries and Oops! All Berries to be too sugary sweet and thus I pretty much only eat the regular Cap’n Crunch at this point.

[2] – My stomach actually gave a little squirch of distaste as I gazed at the purple box.

[3] – Because cereal is by no means just for breakfast.

[4] – As opposed to most cereals which are of the “eat fast before it sogs” variety.

[5] – Of course, I never drink the milk from regular Cap’n Crunch either as it is so sugary sweet it promises an instant case of diabetes

Minimum Wage

This post was prompted by a FB post from an old high school friend of mine and isn't something I normally spout on about, but for better or worse here goes.[1]  

Minimum Wage:

Labor like all other goods and services is controlled by the interaction of Supply and Demand.  In short the market demand for something is the ability and desire of everyone in the market to purchase that item at all prices and market supply is the ability and desire of all the businesses in the market to create/sell them at all prices. [2]

This is a simple graph of just that. [3]

The place where the supply line and the demand line cross is called equilibrium.  If you price a product at equilibrium price (P*) you will succeed in having an equilibrium quantity (Q*). 

This is awesome for several reasons.  First because the quantity demanded by the consumers will be exactly the same as the quantity supplied by the producers. [4]  Which means that at that price level every consumer who wants to purchase at that price level gets to do so and every items created by the suppliers at that price level gets sold.  This is good because it means we aren't wasting resources and we don't have unhappy customers.  But for the businesses this is extra good because it is also where profit is maximized. [5]

"Okay, Mr. B," you say, "but what does any of that have to do with minimum wage?"

Hold your horses, I'm getting there.

Let me try to add one more concept, without drawing a lot of graphs and writing a lot of paragraphs.  So to save time, put your finger on the graph above and pretend it is the price line.[6]   Now move your finger up or down on the graph, but be sure to keep it horizontal.  

You should be able to see that at every other price, the price line will hit the supply and demand line at different locations.  And thus at each of these locations either the resulting Quantity Supplied or Quantity Demanded will be greater than the other.  This will result in either a surplus of a product if the price is above equilibrium or a shortage of a product if the price is below equilibrium [7].

"Um, Mr. B, minimum wage?"

Right, well it should come as no surprise that minimum wage works just the same way.  Only because this is the labor market and not the product market we typically think of, the roles are switched around.  Thus in the labor market the demand is not customers wanting to buy a product, but instead is businesses demanding employees to hire.  And the supply is not businesses providing products for sale, but instead is people wanting to supply their work to the labor market.  And finally the price line doesn't determine the price of a product but instead determines the wage that market should charge.  

Of course there is going to be a different graph for every different market or job.  So the equilibrium wage for a doctor is different than that of a plumber or a butcher or someone working the drive through at a burger joint.  But if the market is left alone, the market will automatically find the equilibrium price or wage [8] and the market will be efficient and profit will be maximized [9]

This means that if the equilibrium wage for a doctor is $150,000 a year then that's what they will get paid and if the equilibrium wage for a butcher is $45,000/yr that is what they will get paid and if the equilibrium wage for a person working the drive through at a burger joint is $12,000/yr that is what they will get paid.

But then someone in the government says, "Hold on a second.  You can't live on $12,000/yr.  Let's make it illegal to sell your labor for less than $14,500/yr.[10]  

When someone, in this case the government, says you can't sell something below a certain price, this is called a price floor.  And price floors [11] always cause a surplus.

"Woohoo!" you say, "That means there are more jobs than people looking for them! Right?"

Not so fast.  Remember in the labor market the roles are switched and a surplus means the quantity supplied of people wanting a job will be larger than the number of employees demanded by businesses.  So, what it means is that a lot of people are going to not be able to find the job they want.

Here's the graph you know you are wanting:

Pf is the Price Floor.  Qd is the quantity demanded and Qs is the quantity supplied. The distance between Qd and Qs is the amount of the surplus in the market.  In other words it is the difference between the number of people who want to work at a given price for a given job and the number of jobs businesses are willing to fill at that same price.  

But really that number is less important than the difference between Q* and Qd.  Because that number is the number of jobs that will disappear because of the price floor or in this case because of the minimum wage.

"So, then if we raise the minimum wage to $10.10/hr how many people will lose their job?" you ask.

Good question.  The answer is that nobody knows for sure.  Looking around you can find a veritable mixed bag of answers from some people saying that nobody will lose their jobs to others estimating that around 1 million jobs will be lost.  

I obviously don't know, but I do know that I have read articles about things like McDonald's in anticipation of a higher minimum wage creating test stores in which all of the food production is completely automated and thus cutting the number of employees that they would need to hire.  I've seen stories about parks that fired all of their gate attendants and replaced them with automated ticket taking machines.  And if you are old enough to remember when gas stations had someone who would fill up your gas and clean your windows for free and always wondered what happen to those jobs and who's to blame for them disappearing, you need look no further than minimum wage. So, I have to think there will be some impact.

Thus, in my mind strike one against the minimum wage is that it causes jobs to go away.

"Okay, we don't know how many, but do we know what kind of jobs will go away?" you ask.

While we don't for sure what jobs will go and which ones won't, we can make some pretty good guesses.  Just looking at the examples I gave above you can see that they are low skill jobs that offer low pay.  They are jobs that aren't intended to be careers.  They are jobs in short that are pretty much meant to be for high school teens looking for extra cash or for a place to get experience, a foot in the door as it were.

So mostly the jobs that would disappear would mean more teenagers without jobs.

"But I know of several people who are working two minimum wage jobs just to try and stay alive," you say.

I agree that's a problem, but remember that we are currently coming out of the Great Recession and that the job market is not by any means back to where it should be.  When the job market and the economy is working correctly the percentage of people making minimum wage is only around 3-5% of the workforce and the vast majority of those people are, as we've already said, teenagers.

That's not surprising since as we said minimum wage is not meant to be a wage level that people earn for their career.  It's an entry level position or a summer job for a teenager. 

"So, if minimum wage goes up only teenagers will lose their jobs?"

Or we could say that if we got rid of minimum wage it would mostly be teenagers who saw their wages go down.

"Get rid of minimum wage?  If we did that business would just offer a tiny amount for their jobs."

Nope they wouldn't.  Because it works both ways.  If the business offers less than equilibrium they will be giving a price below equilibrium and as we already said that will just cause a shortage.  In this case we would have a large quantity of businesses demanding employees at this low wage and a very small quantity of people willing to supply their labor at such a low price.  

If a burger business really did say that they were only going to offer $3.00/hr for the job of working at their drive through they would quickly find the only people willing to work there would be people who couldn't get jobs anywhere else because they were such horrible employees nobody offer a better wage was willing to hire them and the business would find their customers did really enjoy ordering from them and they would start to take their business elsewhere.  In other words, the more a money a business offers the more people willing to work there and the better the pool of potential employees they have to choose from.  Which means happier customers and more profits.

And I know this is true because in a normal economy only 3-5% of people are even making minimum wage.  Thus most business already offer more than minimum wage.  In part because their job may be more difficult, but also because they want to attract the best employee that they can afford.

Of course, I'm not saying that some jobs wouldn't lower their wages, but most wouldn't and I know most teenagers don't want to admit it, but I suspect if you asked and they were honest, most of them would admit that they could get by even if their job only paid $6.00/hr.

"What about the people who have minimum wage jobs and aren't teenagers?  Lowering their pay rate might make it where they can't survive."

True, but to me the solution there is that they need to get a better job and before you get irate and start shouting about people stuck in dead end jobs and lack of skills and no money for college, etc, etc, etc.  Let me say that for those people the solution to me would be to help them get skills, training and school so that they can get out of those jobs and not to artificially inflate wages across the board.

So strike two for minimum wage in my mind is that it really isn't helping the people we want it to help at all.

Finally, there's inflation.

I don't have the room to give a full rundown on inflation, but the gist is that over time the purchasing power of money can get eroded.  Thus you may find that if you took $100 to the store today and bought a small pile of goods with it and then next year you went back to the same store and tried to buy the exact same pile of goods, you would find that you couldn't.  Inflation would have made it to where the cost of those goods had risen. [12]

There are a lot of things that can cause inflation but one of the major contributors is too much money in the market place.  

For instance let's pretend that all of the money in the country was only $1,000.  And that in the market place the equilibrium price for bread was $1 per loaf.  If we suddenly increased  the amount of money in the marketplace to $2,000 what would happen?

Well since the price of bread was determined by the equilibrium price, if suddenly everyone had more money [13] we would suddenly see demand for products rise.  In fact an increase in income is one of the things that determines that demand line we talked about way back at the first graph and as I just said an increase in income will cause an increase in demand.  So what happens when you increase demand?  Here's a graph that shows it: 

Demand has shifted to the right (from D1 to D2) and prices have risen (from P1 to P2).

Thus giving everyone more money just means that they will drive the price of bread up.  So, in our example, doubling the money supply from $1,000 to $2,000 will just cause the price of bread to double from $1 to $2.  

Sure there will be a brief period in which people will have extra money in their pockets, but quickly they will find that prices have adjusted so that however much they could buy with their paychecks before the money supply doubled, that is exactly how much they would be able to buy after the money supply doubled.

This is no less true for minimum wage.  But instead of doubling the amount of money in the money supply we are trying to artificially increase incomes with a different method, but the result will be the same.  More money = more demand = higher prices.  

To add an additional problem from the other side of the coin, if we tell the burger joint that they have to increase their employees wages by x%, the burger joint will have to raise its prices to accomplish this and so will everyone other job that hires at minimum wage and this will have a ripple effect through society.  So the prices of products will also rise because of this. [14]

Thus in my mind the third strike against minimum wage is that in the long run we aren't really even helping the few people who do get that pay raise, because in the end the increase in demand combined with the decrease in supply will mean that inflation will raise the prices for everyone.  

Again, I'm not saying that there aren't people out there working minimum wage jobs that are struggling to survive and who desperately need to get paid more.  What I am saying is that those people need new jobs, not an artificial increase in the wage of their old job.  They don't need to stay in a low skill, low pay, minimum wage entry level job.  They need to find a better career job that they can do and if there isn't such a job then they need to improve their skills set and situation so that those jobs are accessible.  And if their situation is so bad that they can't afford to do that or they are unable to do that, then society, the government, or others need to act to help them so that they can.

In summary, in my mind, raising minimum wage so that:

a) jobs disappear
b) few of the people who really need it are actually helped by it; and
c) it causes prices across the board to rise and ultimately negate any minimum wage increase anyway

seems like a giant failure.

Minimum Wage: D+[15]


[1] - Also, fair warning, this obviously involves a good bit of economics and is a pretty involved topic that I'm trying to handle in a short space and as such that means I'm not going to be able to go into as much depth as I'd like in some areas.  However, if you want me to explain anything further, I'd be happy to.
[2] - In regular English that means if I found out the total amount of CD's everyone in the market would be willing to buy at $5, $10, $15, $20 and every other possible price and I put all that in a graph, I would get the market demand for CD's.  If I did the same thing at every price for people willing to sell/make CD's I would get market supply for CD's.
[3] - In the interest of time and expediency I'm not going to go into depth on why Supply and Demand are drawn like that.  Just trust me on this one.
[4] - Quantity demanded is determined by where a particular price moving horizontally across the graph strike the Demand line.  Quantity supplied is determined by where a particular price moving horizontally across the graph strikes the Supply line.  At equilibrium those are the same place. 
[5] - And anyone who tells you that a business is in business for any reason other than making money and maximizing profits is probably selling you on something.
[6] - If William Shatner shows up you're thinking of the wrong kind of price line.
[7] - A surplus is bad because it means we've wasted resources and have extra products sitting around being unbought and a shortage is bad because it means that some customers are not getting to buy when they wanted to.  But even more importantly the seller is not maximizing profit.
[8] - Invisible hand ftw
[9] - Profit is maximized in the market, not necessarily in any one person's pocket.
[10] - Which translates to roughly $7.25/hr and obviously minimum wage didn't start at $7.25/hr and if you want to find who really started minimum wage in the US, you can pretty much point that finger at FDR.
[11] - That are set above equilibrium price
[12] - Historically the inflation rate in the US tends to be around 2-3% per year.
[13] - Or even if a significant portion of the people had more money
[14] - This is called the Wage-Price spiral and to see the beginning of its effects without me drawing another graph, this is the opposite of the increase in demand.  It is a decrease in supply.  To see the effect put your finger on the graph over the supply line and then move it to the left.  Note how the spot where the demand line and your finger cross moves up.  An increase in prices.
[15] - Minimum wage's heart is in the right place.  So I didn't give it an "F".

High Five

The High Five:

If the Internet is to be believed. [1]  "Gimme five" or the "low five" has been popular since before WWII and is at least as old as the twenties. [2]

It took until the 70's for it to morph into it's mentally deficient cousin the "high five".

At the risk of giving away my feelings about this too early in this post, I can't stand high fives.

Wikipedia lists several possible origins of this overhead hand slap.  It seems the most likely [3] is Glenn Burke and Dusty Baker, who were both playing for the Dodgers back in 1977.  In a moment of pure happiness after Baker hit his 30th home run and secured the Dodgers place in the play-offs, Burke ran over to the plate to meet Baker with his hand over his head.  Baker, not knowing what else to do, reached up and slapped it with his own hand and thus this societal pain in the ass was born.

If it wasn't Burke and Baker who were responsible, all of the other possible origin stories also involve sports.  So whoever it was, we can at least be reasonably sure that the origin is sports related.  Which makes sense and truth be told I would have been glad to see whoever it was that invented it, performing it that first time.  Or during any other spontaneous celebration of a difficult victory.

You see my problem with the high five isn't that the action is stupid or that it is inappropriate in and of itself.  Instead my problem with it is two-fold.  The first is that it is over-used and the second is that once someone puts up their hand, you are now socially obligated to reciprocate.

To further elucidate [4]:

Any import given to or from a high five, any real sense of meaning was long ago washed away by overuse.  It is now akin to asking somebody, "How ya doing?"  Which has been asked so many times, that the speaker doesn't really want or expect any answer longer than 'fine'.  Which is okay with the person replying, because they don't want to give anything longer than that either.  It's just an extended form of exchanging hi's.

Similarly, the high five, which was created in a moment of spontaneous joy to celebrate a momentous occasion is now used to celebrate everything from unjamming a stapler to managing to open a door.  In fact, I suspect you can think of someone who asks for a high five every time you see them.

Gary [walking up to a group of friends]: Hey, what's up?
Toolbag: It's Gary! High five!
Gary: What exactly are we celebrating here?  My ability to walk over here or just the simple fact of my existence?

And while that's only semi-annoying, there are plenty of other similar examples of exchanges the have become so common place their real meaning/intent is lost.  For instance saying "Bless you" when someone sneezes, wishing someone, "Have a nice day" when they leave and the previously discussed "How are you?" just to name a few. [5]

What makes the high five more annoying is that it doesn't just require a short verbal response.  Instead you must physically join in on the celebration of the workaday and you really don't have any choice.  Because when presented with a raised palm and a verbal: "High five!" you cannot ignore it without causing yourself to look like the jerk.

Chuck [the most annoying person you know and somebody you usually try to avoid seeing never mind touching at all costs]: Hey look, we have on matching socks!  High five!
You: We both have on plain white socks.  If you look, you can see that they aren't even the same brand.
Chuck: [hand still raised expectantly] . . .
You: Sigh.

Why must I be forced to participate in another's celebration of the mundane or inane?

Did you just win the game for our team?  Then I believe a celebratory display is in order.  High fives, hugs, picking you up on our shoulders or something similar is not only okay, but is called for.

Did you just pick a stray paper clip up off of the floor?  Much like the hugs and parading you around on our shoulders is probably going a bit too far, perhaps it really isn't worth a high-five either?

The ultimate problem is that some people just really, really love to get/give high fives.  Is it that they are just so overflowing with joy that they feel compelled to share it?  Or perhaps they are deprived of human contact?  Maybe social interaction such a rarity for them that the momentary smack of palm on palm is an oasis in a desert.  Maybe it's some sort of brainwashing.

I think that from now on when I find myself on the receiving end of a high five request, I'll just hug the person instead.

Or perhaps I should carry around a pocket full of confetti that I can throw to up the celebration one more notch into the absurd.

Or it might be that I'm just a grump.

High-fives: D+

[1] - And why wouldn't we believe the Interwebs?
[2] - You can evidently see Al Jolson doing it in the Jazz Singer.
[3] - Or at least the most commonly believed.  And eventually what else matters?
[4] - It's an SAT word.  Go look it up.  Fine, I'll look it up for you.  Here.
[5] - It's not that there is anything wrong with these. But when you say, "Bless you" after someone sneezes do you really mean that you hope they receive some sort of blessing or are you just filling the space with the socially normed response?

Spaghettle Noodies

Spaghettle Noodies:

I was picking up the boys after work today.  Because it's election day, the Bear was out of Kindergarten and he got to spend the day with the lady who watches the Bean and used to watch him for day care.  As we were getting ready to leave, the topic of dinner came up.  I had previously mentioned making spaghetti a few days before and the Bear was trying to tell me that's what he wanted for dinner.

In case I haven't mentioned it before, the Bear is incredibly articulate for a five year old.  He has no problem speaking and the only words he regularly mispronounces are the ones that we haven't told him he's saying wrong because it's just too darn cute. [1]

Only on this occasion his brain got kerfuttled [2] and he spoonerized [3] the words.  Only it was one of those occasions where as you're speaking you know it's coming out wrong but you can't stop it and attempts to fix it just make it worse.

If you want to hear someone else discussing it, go look up "Brian Regan take luck" on youtube.  Or just click this link [4].

At any rate, despite the Bear's best efforts otherwise, all he could manage to say was "Spaghettle Noodies"[5] over and over again.  He kept trying to say something else, with many false starts and stops, but to no avail.

Having been the victim myself of such mental malfunctions many time in the past, I immediately started laughing.  The Bear's old day-care Nana, could only make out what sounds like "Nudies" and simply stared at him.  It was good times.

Fast forward to us getting home and making dinner.  The Pook is in full school play costume mode and is away slaving over a sewing machine, so it was just the men in the kitchen

The Bear helped me make the spaghetti sauce [6] and then once the noodles were done it was time to eat.

I don't know if you've ever eaten spaghetti with a two-year old and a five year old, but in case you haven't let me illuminate you as to a crucial fact or two.

The possibility that the two year old will not end up with sauce on every part of his being is so remote as to be non-existent.  The five year old has better odds, but they're still nothing you'd want to take to Vegas. Thus you'd better be prepared to clean up afterwards and if they are wearing any clothes you want to remain unstained with red sauce you'd better remove them prior to the event.[7]  

And thus it was that the Bean was promptly stripped down to his diaper and the Bear was told to take off his shirt.

I sat down myself, but in the short span of time it had taken me to go from seating the Bean, to the counter to pick up my plate and back to the table, he'd already painted his portion of the town red.  So, I promptly stood back up and took off my own shirt. [8]

So there we three sat, happily munching on [9] our pasta.

And as I looked around the table at our various states of undress, I thought:

Spaghettle Noodies it is.

Spaghettle Noodies: A+

[1] - Like Pretzel.  He still calls them Prentzels and we're okay with that.
[2] - Technical term
[3] - An actual linguistic term, as opposed to kerfuttled.
[4] - Any of the first two videos have the clip.  But do yourself a favor and listen to the longer one, because Brian Regan is hilarious.  Or if stand-up turned into a Coke ad is more your speed, click this.
[5] - Prounced "Spag-ettle" and "New-dees"
[6] - Yes, I make my own sauce.  It doesn't take that long and it tastes way better than anything from a jar.  If you ask nice, maybe I'll give you the recipe.
[7] - In truth, the Bear likes his with no sauce and just butter and Parmesan cheese, but not surprisingly it doesn't really cut down on the mess that much.
[8] - After all it's a fool that doesn't take his own advice.
[9] - And in the Bean's case, wearing.