Things I Know

• At any given moment, things are neither as good as people say, nor as bad as people think.
• It is easier for me to do things for others than it is for me to do the exact same things for myself. Similarly, it is easier for me to wax enthusiastic about somebody else’s work than it is to trumpet my own accomplishments.
• I am my own harshest critic.
• Every generation sees things as getting worse.
• Language is often used to confuse rather than to communicate.

• Popularity polls are the league standings of politics.
• Most folks who read the newspaper will reach first for the sports pages.
• Everybody likes some kind of music.
• What is popular is not always good, and vice versa.
• Sometimes I laugh so hard I can’t breathe for a moment.
• Celebrities in trouble appear to get a lot of breaks that “regular” people wouldn’t.
• Most conversation is about trivial matters.
• A lot of our problems stem from focusing too narrowly on things that go wrong.
• As much as I like The Who, they should have stopped performing as The Who when Keith Moon died.
• Elton John is too old to still be singing “Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”.
• Every day is a new beginning for some people, and a new ending for others.
• The only people who know the truth about what, if anything, happens after death are already dead.
• The state of education won’t improve until our attitudes about intelligence, education, and achievement improve.
• People in Seattle don’t know how to drive in the rain. Or the snow. Or the sun. I’m just saying.
• The United States today is repeating the mistakes of Japan 20 years ago.
• More and more people I know are finding it harder to adjust to Daylight Saving Time.
• The stock market is *not* the economy.
• An “age of leisure” will never truly exist as long as we let advances in technology force us to do more instead of simply allowing us to accomplish the same things in less time.
• Perception is reality.
• I don’t know everything.
• I don’t need to know everything.
• I don’t want to know everything.

Things I Don’t Know

• The truth about existence.
• Why otherwise reasonable people seem to have such unreasonable beliefs and expectations.
• Why we value so much that is bad for us.
• Why there’s no sun up in the sky… stormy weather.
• Why popular tastes are automatically bad.
• Whether the colors I see are the same as the colors you see. (For all I know, my red could be your blue.)
• The other day, I was helping a friend move. A couple of hours into the move, I noticed a cut on my hand. How did that happen?
• Why most new car models produced in the last 10–15 years look like 1980s “dream cars”.
• Why Americans are expected to accommodate the customs of others regardless of whether we’re travelling or at home. If we’re supposed to be sensitive to those things when we’re travelling, shouldn’t travellers be sensitive to American customs when they’re in America?
• When Americans stopped doubling the consonants of some words when adding suffixes. All I know is that, at some point, “travelling” turned into “traveling”; this and similar cases make no sense to me. I mean, shouldn’t there have been a news story about it or something?
• Why some companies think that voice menus are helpful. I’m not going to have a conversation with a recording, thank you very much.
• Why companies continue to outsource customer service to India when they know that most people find the practice irritating. You’d think the cost of the negative impressions created would more than cancel out the benefits of reduced labor costs.
• Why businesses put people with unintelligible accents in customer service positions. Unless your product or service is that outstanding, if I can’t understand the people I’m dealing with, eventually I’m going to take my business elsewhere.
• Why our cat Lucy is still so skittish after all these years.
• Why annoying TV commercial jingles are so danged catchy.
• Why American Idol is still so popular.
• Does God have a sense of humor?
• And too many more things to mention…