Steve, I love you but ...

... each episode of Blues Clues ends with a salutation to a lie —
     "You can do anything that you wanna do."
   Earnest in its appeal, buoyant in its confidence building, it is nevertheless a lie nailed into the soft heads which are mesmerized by Mr. Burns googley eyes.
   At heart, the liberal mantra is well-meaning: through hard work, help and a tad of luck, you may be able to conquer a discipline to the point that you can be crowned an expert or guru or president. But even the president does not get to do "anything" he wants to do. Because he (and before too long, she) is saddled with responsibility, just like the rest of us.
   I would contend most of the time we must do what we have to do, whether we like it or not. That is responsibility: to ourselves, to our family, to society as a whole.
   If we all felt we could "do anything that you wanna do," there would be a wreck at every intersection followed by a shoot-out and a chase. Laws would have no merit as they would impede on doing whatever it is I wanna do.
   Now I'm sure Libertarians have an answer to this one, but I'm more concerned about what my daughter hears and interprets as the truth and for this reason the popularity of Blues Clues makes me cringe, because you can't jump off a roof and fly just because you "wanna".

What's in a name? Plenty

   There's always much ado about what to name the offspring. Family names seem almost immediately considered (with certain ones immediately nixed).
  One other issue, is where the actual pronunciation in its original tongue can make for some beautiful and exotic sounds, when the name is Anglicized — or more brutally 'Americanized' — the result could scar the child especially in the early years when the little monsters earn their monikers without trying.
   But with all that in mind, the one other factor one should consider is the length of the child's name and while it may seem shallow, consider that day care operations require you to write you child's name on every piece of clothing and sleeping needs that the munchkin will need.
   Hear that Summerlee or Mikayleigh or Aloysius or Damaskenos or Tamerlane?
   Keep it short. Keep it simple. You'll thank me later.

It's about time

   No matter how many things there are to do, there's only 24 hours in a day: 18 available ones if you cheat yourself two hours of sleep.
  And yet our society pushes us sometimes at hyper-speed to accomplish more or take on more that can possibly be managed. The relentless drumbeat of "news" and hucksters we are subjected to reminds us of all the things we "should" or "need" to have. This vomitous barrage of dilemmas and choices and guilt and need by themselves can drain the soul of a single person. But when, not so much a marriage, but a family — a child — enters the scene, the choices dilemmas, obliteration of time, are at times overwhelming, at times even temporarily paralyzing.

Breathe in, breathe out

   Graduation ceremonies and gowns for VPK participants? You've got to be kidding me!
   I know in an earlier post I basked in my daughter's glow of her first poop in the pot, but we didn't turn it into some kind of conquest of Everest or anything.
   But yes, a couple of weeks back as my 3 year old and I arrived for her daily day-care shenanigans, we were beset by a sea of folding chairs, replete with a cacophony of parents and grandmas grappling with cameras and jostling for just the right position to capture the moment of joy capping the tot's mastery of SHOWING UP FOR SCHOOL.
   Good God, what's next? A gold star for successfully breathing?

Too much time, too little sense

   Well, South Korea has much to be proud of not the least the fastest broadband available nationally in the world.
   But with that speed comes consequences (there are always consequences for having the most or fastest of anything). The need for speed has turned some of the youngsters into addicts; crazed enough to earn their way into "boot camps" of sorts to shake the Web monkeys off their backs. As far back as 2007, South Korea knew it had a serious problem.
   "Inmates" at the Jump Up Internet Rescue School "are pushed over assault courses and learn to ride horses, as well as being given therapy workshops on more creative pursuits such as pottery and drumming.
   But the aim is not to wean them off drugs, alcohol or crime, but on their obsessive use of computers in a country with almost universal Internet access."
   In South Korea, where 90 per cent of homes have high-speed broadband connections and some online gameplayers have died from exhaustion after playing for days on end, police have found a new wrinkle in the virtual world or virtual worlders.
   According to CNN, police arrested the parents of a toddler who starved to death while the pair were glued to raising a virtual child online.
   The 3-month-old daughter was fed once a day between epic stretches in a local Internet cafe, where they were raising a virtual child in the fantasy role-playing game.
   Prius Online is a 3-D game in which players nurture an online companion, Anima, a young girl with mysterious powers who grows and increases her skills as the game progresses.
   Apparently the couple had lost their jobs and used the game as an escape from reality, especially after the birth of their premature baby.
   It may be wise to keep an eye on the people of the peninsula to see what might be coming down the road toward us.

"Can you hear me now?"

   It's always amused me in this country how, if something is deficient or problematic, that the solution always seems to hinge on 'more' of whatever.

   Years ago I was in a Frisch's restaurant taking in a breakfast buffet when I noticed the  sausage gravy tasted as though someone had dumped an ashtray into the mix. When I informed a waitress of the situation she replied, "Oh, well, we're about to bring out some more in a minute." More lousy food is not the solution. This concept, of course, was captured in the movie Annie Hall, where Woody Allen recounts one of his favorite jokes: Two women are sitting in a Catskill resort having lunch and the first one says, "The food here is terrible." The second one responds with, "I know, and such small portions."

   So it was no surprise really when wireless companies heard the wails from shell-shocked parents regarding their little heathens running up additional minutes on calling plans. From a marketing viewpoint the worst thing the companies wanted was to lose customers. Armed with the knowledge that American parents are loathe to rein in the children's' bad habits, gradually went to extended plans and finally "unlimited" plans.

   Is it me or is there something wrong with handing an adolescent a cell phone that has "unlimited" minutes?

  When have the words "children" and "unlimited" ever meant anything good?

   And let's not let scientific study get in the way of the temporary mollification of kids (Study Links Brain Cancer to Children Using Cell Phones) as long as 'more is better' in this country everybody feels they are getting a deal.

Twitter? Twitcher is more like it

  Amazing to me how little media attention was paid to this; perhaps the Information Biggies quietly backed out of the room when this item came across the desk.

  But to my surprise, it was the last story of Wednesday's ABC World News Tonight [now with Diane Sawyer {and I dunno, she seems a bit too cloying to the camera for me, I think the network is going to lose some viewers}].

   But the story in question regards the screamer from a Kaiser Family Foundation study entitled "Daily media use among children and teens up dramatically from five years ago."

  Here is the summary of what they found, under the subheading — Most Youth Say They Have No Rules About How Much Time They Can Spend With TV, Video Games, or Computers.

   "With technology allowing nearly 24-hour media access as children and teens go about their daily lives, the amount of time young people spend with entertainment media has risen dramatically, especially among minority youth ... 8-18 year-olds devote an average of 7 hours and 38 minutes (7:38) to using entertainment media across a typical day (more than 53 hours a week). And because they spend so much of that time ‘media multitasking’ (using more than one medium at a time), they actually manage to pack a total of 10 hours and 45 minutes (10:45) worth of media content into those 7½ hours.

  The amount of time spent with media increased by an hour and seventeen minutes a day over the past five years, from 6:21 in 2004 to 7:38 today. And because of media multitasking, the total amount of media content consumed during that period has increased from 8:33 in 2004 to 10:45 today."

   That's TEN HOURS AND 45 MINUTES in an instantaneous, unlimited technological whirlwind of consumption: constant stimulation which doesn't allow the mind to settle on one focused, uncluttered train of thought because it's crammed into 7½ hours.

  Okay, that leaves 16½ hours left in the cycle and let's be optimistic and say the child gets 8 hours of sleep, which leaves 8½ hours.

   Eight and one-half hours a day.

   Eight and one-half hours a day that needs to include: time in a classroom (and maybe I'm wrong, but doesn't a child in an American public school spend at least five hours a day in a classroom?); time for homework; time for meals; time for bathing and going to the bathroom; time for exercise (perhaps they are running with their iPods and watching TV at the same time); time for after-school activities such as sports or music lessons, etc.; time for housework, or cutting the lawn, or reintroducing themselves to their parents.

   This should have been the lead story for every news outlet, but then again, they're part of the problem.