Books By MSK

Ah, the classic: The dog ate my homework. I miss the simplicity of that excuse. Here are some not so simple, yet highly entertaining, excuses:

 Why were you late to class?

I forgot my pants.

 Why do you want to cancel your membership?

No speak English. (Um, the membership was written in English and the classes are taught in English…)

 Why were you late for the meeting?

I got held up in the shower.

 Why do you have potato chips in your (martial arts) uniform?

Because we didn’t have any ziplock bags. (And of course, they were salt and vinegar chips!)

Why were you speeding?

Because I was about to run out of gas, and I was trying to make to the gas station. (By the way, the more you accelerate, the more gas you use.)

Yes, these are all excuse I’ve actually heard. Crazy, right?

Have you heard any wild excuses? SHARE!

Belief in Santa Claus means human beings still have a soul, a collective deeper meaning and belief system. Believing in God means you believe our existence isn’t an accident and that there is a supreme being, but believing in Santa means you believe, not only in a higher power, but in a better way of doing things. Santa, a human man, not a god, lives solely to give, to cause happiness in others, strangers. He understands the beauty of the innocence of children—as well as the need to expect good behavior and self-control. His ideals are simple and make sense. We need more ideals like that.

 I believe in Santa Claus, in the idea that men like that exist, that we as people can be truly caring and give without the expectation of receiving anything in return. I need to believe that. Maybe Santa doesn’t wear a red suit and live at the North Pole—but he’s out there somewhere. And, heck, maybe he is at the North Pole. Why not?

“It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” William James, psychologist, and Brother of Henry James

But what constitutes sufficient evidence? That is a subjective term, especially when considering certain things, and with a qualifying term such as “sufficient.” How much is sufficient? It’s like when my mom says add a pinch of salt. I don’t cook, so how am I supposed to know what a pinch is exactly? The same holds true for everything—if you’re looking for evidence to decide if you should believe something, that means you probably don’t know much about it, which means you don’t know enough to judge what would be sufficient evidence.

Also, your sufficient evidence may not be the same as my sufficient evidence. Personal biases and history color everything we see and think, no matter how neutral a person tries to be. That’s part of what makes us human—and is not a bad thing.

I’m tired of scientists trying to tell everyone things that they can’t really know and coming up with theories that don’t quite make sense. Now, maybe I just don’t know enough to be able to understand (very possible), but let’s think about the Big Bang theory. Seriously, people think that makes more sense than the possibility of a higher power? And I’m not even talking about faith or religion necessarily. The earth and the solar system are, in so many ways, perfectly designed and balanced (it’s only we humans who mess up that balance), and people think it was all an accident? It makes more logical sense to think that someone or something planned it all, doesn’t it? If you opened a pack of cards and found that they were arranged in perfect order (all Club cards from Ace to King, and so on), wouldn’t you assume someone had done it on purpose, not that it had randomly been stuffed into the packaging that way?

Of course, no one will ever be able to offer “sufficient evidence” of the existence of a higher power (that’s where the concept of faith comes in, and I suppose that’s the whole point). But I wish people would start looking at the world and stop dismissing certain things because they have a “scientific mind” (whatever that is) and start honestly considering all the possibilities. 

I’m sure I’ll catch some slack for this post, but whatever. You can burn me at the stake if you want.

Over my years of study of the human population, I have observed certain behaviors that show much more about a person than their dreams. And who wants to hear another Freudian analysis anyway? These are everyday things you can watch for…and determine what kind of personality the people around you really have.

 Never stays in the allotted space when filling out a document, writes on whatever line is convenient and leaves it to the next person to figure out what they mean. Argh, this kind of person drives me nuts. Do I work with one, you say? Uh…I hope she doesn’t read this blog post.

 Which bathroom stall you use (closest or furthest)–either you’re lazy or in a hurry, or you’re really shy, one of those people who can’t pee if people are around, as if trying to hide the fact that you have all the same bodily functions we all do. Everybody pees. Get over it.

 Men who use a stall instead of a urinal–do I really need to say why they would do that? (This is supposed to be a family-friendly blog.)

 People who write on everything–like a dog marking its territory. Why do people feel the need to write on my hand? Numbers and swirls and flowers… It’s called paper–ever hear of it?

 Where you sit in a classroom–either you’re a nerd, blind, and deaf–or you’re a trouble maker. But I wonder about the people who sit in the middle… Are they people who are really trouble but are trying to pretend they’re not? Or are they nerds pretending? Maybe they’re some kind of crossover, people who do their homework and pay attention to the teacher, and then make horrible dirty jokes at lunch, you know, the kind that are told with such a straight face it takes a few seconds for people to realize it was a joke. (Yeah, I always sit in the middle.)

 People who wear their bluetooth headset even when they’re not talking to someone–as if they’re about to receive a life and death call at any moment! Really? Put the freaking thing away. (And let’s not talk about the people who walk around stores talking on their headsets, looking like they’re conversing with themselves. They remind me of people in mental institutions talking to the leprechaun on their shoulder.)

 People who circle the parking lot looking for just the right space, when they could have taken the first space they saw and been in the store ten minutes ago. Maybe they just really don’t want to walk, or maybe it’s a pride thing, you know, who got the closest space, who got the hot girl, who has the biggest…       I don’t know what you people are thinking–I was totally thinking engine size. (family-friendly, remember?)

 The way people wear their hair. No, I think I’ll save this one for later. It deserves it’s own post.

Awhile ago I heard the term “functioning illiteracy.”  Since then, I have paid attention to the writing and reading comprehension of the people around me.  Until I took my current job, I never realized how horribly deficient these skills are in the country.  I have been blessed with an intelligent family and husband.  We are not necessarily the most educated bunch.  Neither my husband nor I have a college degree.  But we can communicate in writing.  I have realized this is fairly unusual–and it scares the crap out of me.

I’m not talking about literary writing skills here.  I’m talking about being a able to form a comprehensive sentence. I’m certainly not one of those hoity toity people who looks down on people who only use words with three syllables or less.  I don’t use fancy words in my writing–I don’t honestly know that many, and I want my readers to enjoy my stories, not get a vocabulary lesson.

In my job, I deal with the public much, mostly questions about the memberships and services the company I work for offers.  Most of this communication is in writing.  I’ve seen everything–entire pages of writing with only one period at the very end; misspelled everything, so bad that I had to call the person to make sure I understood what they wanted; sentences that make no sense, no matter how many times I read them.  Sometimes it seems as though the person was just too lazy to go back and check what they’ve written–that’s a whole other problem that I won’t go into.  Much of the time, though, I can see the person just has no idea how to form thoughts onto a page.

My fear is what in the world is going to happen to this world if we lose the ability to communicate effectively in writing?  Not only will literature cease to be produced–or heck, even just comic books.  All the writing we have available to us, the works that have come before us, will lose potency.  We will stop learning from the great minds that came before.

I don’t think it’s that we will stop being able to read at all, hence the title functioning illiteracy.  The basics are still understood–you know, “see spot run.”  But anything more complicated than that seems to be getting lost, slowly.  I believe depth of thought is not possible without depth of reading comprehension.  We learn from great people that came before then learn how to think for ourselves.