For my own edification (apparently)

I'll admit that unless I wanted to provide the world with a play-by-play of my child's daycare experiences, my own lack of going to the gym due to an aggravated back injury, or a continuous storyline about how boring my job is, I really don't have that much to tell people about. So, my daily life would fall under the "pasttimes" portion of my blog title.

On the other hand, there's the "postulates" part. A Postulate, if you skipped 10th grade math (in the Mobile, AL public school system, Geometry was a 10th grade subject) is basically an assertion--a starting point for other ideas if you will. And it is the postulate side of things that I personally feel makes for a better read. Some of my best mental meandering comes from an idea about something else. The mind starts thinking about one thing and before you know it, you're six degrees of separation away from the original thought, onto something completely different, yet strangely connected.

As I was perusing my usual cadre of Web sites this morning (AKA: wasting time), I came across an article on MSN where the author discussed which was better: boxers or briefs for men. It wasn't so much the article that piqued my interest as much as it was my response to it. The author completely ignored Boxer Briefs, which combines the best of both boxer and brief worlds. And it is these very undergarments that I prefer 2:1 over the other leading national brand. In response, I left note in the forum regarding boxer briefs, and I also left my personal brand preference, Calvin Klein; noting however, that they are very expensive, but oh so worth it!

Hence...a Postulate.

It's no secret that my wife and I do well financially. We have a nice house, our children attend a good daycare. We don't live extravagantly, but we also don't want for much either. We drive moderately nice cars (I drive a 3 year old Dodge Dakota and my wife drives a 6 year old Hyundai Santa Fe with 100K miles). But, having money through a dual-income family comes with a price of course...which I won't go into.

But this whole underwear thing got me to thinking about money--having money specifically, and what the benefits are. And I came up with a thought that I feel was slightly profound.

Having enough money to live comfortably allows you to enjoy some of life's little luxuries and it is often these "little" luxuries that make the biggest difference.

Case in point: Calvin Klein boxer brief underwear. Now, I've tried a lot of different types:

• Target stores brand Merona


• Fruit of the Loom


• Kohl's store brand Sonoma


• Jockey (yes, the have them for men too)


• Tommy Hilfiger (found at Macy's)


• Calvin Klein

So, for those out there who think I'm just a brand freak and only buy expensive clothes because I can, you can see that's not the case. It's just that the Calvin Klein brand trumps them all with the perfect combination of cloth material and weight, snugness, durability, length and stylish good looks and I can thankfully afford to indulge in a personal preference department rivaled only perhaps by a woman's choice of hair dryer.

I hope that having an underwear preference (fetish even?...nah!) doesn't mean that I now fall under a "metrosexual" label or anything, because I still wear pleated pants; however, I do know how to decorate and coordinate colors. Hmmm.

Whatever! That's my Postulate for the day and perhaps TMI to boot. But the truth is, nobody reads this anyway, so mostly this was for my own edification and oh look, it's now time for me to leave for my Dr.'s appointment where I get to strip down to my shirt, dress socks and an XXL pair of paper boxer shorts so I can traipse down the hall of my orthopedic surgeons office only to stand in front of an x-ray machine operated by some 20-something year old hottie who probably thinks, "He's cute, but my Lord he's decrepit!" Yaaah!

MSNBC "My Snobby News Broadcasting Company"

Having a pickup truck, I realize that I use more gasoline than I need to. However, when one considers how much money I save each year in delivery charges for all the stuff that I haul in my truck (mulch, lumber, plants, etc.) I more than make up for it. This also means that a pickup truck is a necessity for me. Is it what I would choose had it my way? No. I’d have a passenger car so that I’d room for myself, my junk and my two kids’ car-seats.

That’s why news stories like those run on MSNBC, titled, “Gas Price Woes” tick me off so much. In this video, a reporter interviews people on the street about their gas usage. Now, I’m sure they handpicked which interviews to include, therefore it is both a politically- correct spot, including both white-bread and minority Americans, and a spot that covers all intelligence levels.

For complete coverage, there is the cab-driver, who barely speaks any English, claiming that all oil “sucks.” There is the lucid soccer-mom defending her SUV by saying that with two kids, she needs a larger automobile just to be able to take them and a friend anywhere (because remember, you can’t put children under 85lbs in a front seat). And finally, there is the attractive minority figure exhaulting public transportation.

The kicker though, is the ending where the report first shows two people side-by-side—one biking, the other roller-blading—and the reporter can be heard saying, “Soaring gas prices have some people considering alternative methods of transportation, but others…just don’t seem to care.”

As a writer, I know that anything you say in a story should relate back to the material referenced within the story. Given that, the reporter must be referring to the callous soccer mom who refuses to sell her mini-van so that she can pay $5K more for a “green” SUV that, when you consider any loss she takes on her current vehicle, plus the additional cost of the new vehicle, “might” pay for itself after 3-4 years.

Or perhaps she’s talking about the millions of Americans who do not live in New York or some other major metropolis where riding the subway to work is an accepted way of life. Excuse me for wanting to live in the relative quiet of the suburbs, which also means that in order to get to my office, I have to drive for 30-40 minutes.

Ms. Reporter, it’s not that people don’t care, we don’t have a choice. If we all went out and tried to sell our SUVs today, it would tank the market and nobody would get anything out of it to put forward on a new vehicle. Sure, it’d be great for the auto-makers, but not so hot for the consumer. I guess I could stop going to the grocery store, or maybe I could just quit work and sponge off the government. Nah, that won’t work either. Oh, I know, let’s stop driving to church and quit going to shopping malls where our hard-earned dollars help keep the economy going.

Truly, the ignorance in this country is astounding. And the media are as liberally biased as they ever were. The sad thing is, America has the resources within our own soil to fix this problem, albeit temporarily (for like 150 years in the future), but every time we make a real attempt at tapping into it, the oil barons lower crude oil prices to a point where Shale oil production can't compete. Then, once all Shale technology development and production has stopped, guess what? Yep, crude oil prices skyrocket again.


Couple that with America being too afraid of alienating our foreign friends to do anything about OPEC's monopoly and we get what we've gotten. It makes me sick, it really does.


I weep for my children’s future, and I apologize for the legacy we’re leaving them.