Best Song Lyrics (Part X)

You may have noticed that in the past IX installments of this recurring series, I haven't included anyone from the hip-hop genre.  Nor will I this time.

It isn't that there aren't some candidates.  It's that in order to be considered a great lyricist to me, the songs have to be able to span generations.  Hip-hip simply hasn't been around long enough to qualify.

I thought about this generation span the other day when I heard some teens singing along to James Taylor's recording of You've Got A Friend.  I don't know where they learned it, although I sincerely doubt it came from watching another episode of Glee.  (The one and only one redeeming thing about that show is, it does occasionally bring my generation's music to a younger crowd.)

James Taylor not only has great lyrical music, but he still has an incredible mellow-sounding voice that makes his music even better.  While he has many classics, I prefer the 1970 song Fire And Rain.  While it may seem the song is all about losing a loved one, in fact these last two verses allude to his struggles with depression and addiction:

Won't you look down upon me, Jesus, You've got to help me make a stand.
You've just got to see me through another day.
My body's aching and my time is at hand, and I won't make it any other way.
Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
but I always thought that I'd see you again.

Been walking my mind to an easy time, my back turned towards the sun.
Lord knows when the cold wind blows it'll turn your head around.
Well, there's hours of time on the telephone line, to talk about things to come.
Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.
Oh, I've seen fire and I've seen rain.
I've seen sunny days that I thought would never end.
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend,
but I always thought that I'd see you baby, one more time again.

Breaking Down the Summer Olympics

There are 36 Summer Olympic sports with at total of around 300 events.  So for example, tennis is 1 sport, but with 5 events - men's and women's singles and doubles, plus mixed doubles.

Over the past two weeks, I've been able to watch, via TV or computer, at least parts of every one of these so-called 'sports.'  Here are my comments on all of them:

Archery - modestly interesting, mostly because my daughter's high school classmate is an Olympic athlete in this category.

Athletics (Track & Field) - I would not walk across the street to see a high school or college track meet, but for the Olympics, I'll make an exception.  Watching Usain Bolt both on and off the track was worth it alone.  And seeing Oscar Pistorius, the South African runner on artificial legs, was very cool.

Badminton - I played this in a college class and was pretty good at it, so it was kind of interesting to watch the pros.  Until some of them decided to intentionally lose.

Basketball - Great combination: The probably the most entertaining Olympic sport to watch, with the best U.S. professional players together on the same team.

Beach Volleyball - Looked like a fun venue to be at in person, but let's get real, without the American teams, it would not have been that entertaining to watch.

Boxing - Growing up, in the 70s, this was one of the showcase events.  Now, because the sport of boxing in this country has been run into the ground, nobody wants to watch it anymore.

Canoe Slalom - Just couldn't get into it.  Can anyone name the best canoe/kayaker of all-time?  If so, you have too much spare time.

Canoe Sprint - Looked like a very modernized Lewis & Clark expedition down a man-made waterway, except more aerobic.

Cycling BMX - Belongs in the X-Games, not the Olympic Games.

Cycling Mountain Bike - Moderately interesting, although I felt the course should have had more obstacles.

Cycling Road - I appreciated it as a cyclist, but it was anti-climatic coming on the heels of the Tour de France.

Cycling Track - The indoor velodrome races were kind of cool, and had some drama, not just because the bikes had no gears or brakes.

Diving - I tweeted about this more than once:  Why did diving get so much prime time TV exposure?  It's boring, and it's not like most Americans are divers.  (On that basis, we should have seen more table tennis.)  Plus, what makes a person become a synchronized diver?  As one blogger wrote, could they not stand the crushing loneliness of being more than three meters from another diver?.

Equestrian - Dressage is goofy, but the jumping is kind of interesting.  The medals should go to the horses for what they do, not the riders

Fencing - Near as I can tell, you need to shout and act like you made contact on each thrust, lest the judges think you didn't win the point.  If they used actual sabres and swords, there would be less confusion about that.

Football (Soccer) - Just like regular soccer, meaning mostly boring, and made moreso that way since the U.S. men didn't even qualify.  But it was fun to watch the U.S. women win, right up until their post-gold medal media interviews, when they couldn't seem to stop talking about how great they were.

Gymnastics Artistic - Don't really mind watching it.  Pound for pound, no one is stronger than men or women gymnasts.  Also, 'local' angle since gold-medalist Gabby Douglas trains in West Des Moines at a complex close to my office.  But would someone also please give the U.S. women some media training?  If I hear another one of those teens use the word "definitely" in a sentence, I'm going to puke.

Gymnastics Rhythmic - Strangely compelling to see the flexibility and balance.  What they do with balls and hoops might be illegal in many bible belt states.

Handball - Not handball, TEAM handball.  Odd, but watchable.  The U.S. would dominate this sport, if we cared about it, which we don't.

Hockey (Field Hockey) - Seems like it should have been more entertaining to watch, like ice hockey, but it was more like soccer, which is to say kind of boring.  Maybe it's because I never quite understood all of the rules.

Judo - See taekwondo.

Modern Pentathlon - Did you even know about this?  A one-day event on the last day of the Olympics, consisting of fencing, swimming, horse riding, shooting and running.  Only medieval knights apply.

Rowing - The sport was OK, but the venue was better in how it allowed people on bicycles to ride alongside as the competition occurred. (Same as canoe sprint.)

Sailing - The only drama comes before the race even starts, when the boats jockey for position at the start.  Otherwise, it's like watching paint dry.

Shooting - Kind of alarming to think people can shoot moving targets that fast.  For sport.

Swimming - Don't mind watching it, but all of the events tend to dilute interest.  Also, please stop showing me Michael Phelps, and Michael Phelps' mom.

Synchronized Swimming - Sort of mesmerizing to watch, like a kaleidoscope, but in the end, it's synchronized swimming.

Table Tennis - Crazy how good these folks are at ping-pong, but could today's players beat the best of all-time, Forrest Gump?

Taekwondo - See judo.

Tennis - How many more times will Wimbledon be held this year?

Trampoline - Not a sport.  Cirque do Soleil is calling on line 1.

Triathlon - Fits the 'faster/higher/stronger' theme of the Olympics better than any other event.  From a spectator standpoint, it just takes too long from start to finish.

Volleyball - I get the sport, and the toughness needed to play it at the Olympic level.  I don't get all of the hugging and touching after every single point.

Water Polo - Enjoyed watching both men and women, wondering how hard it must be to swim or tread water for so long.  But it was a little unsettling to see so many larger women in thong-ish one-piece suits.  And as one media outlet said, the headgear makes them look like aquatic teletubbies.

Weightlifting - Would have been totally forgettable if not for the dude who dropped the bar on his head, and somehow didn't get injured.

Wrestling - On the down side, not as good to watch as college or even pro wrestling.  On the plus side, they allow women to compete without controversy.

Looking forward to golf in 2016!

You Are Not Well At Grammar

Not much time to write this week, so I'm going to pass along an excerpt from a terrific blog post I read on grammar usage by a blogger named Kyle Wiens:

If you think an apostrophe was one of the 12 disciples of Jesus, you will never work for me. If you think a semicolon is a regular colon with an identity crisis, I will not hire you. If you scatter commas into a sentence with all the discrimination of a shotgun, you might make it to the foyer before we politely escort you from the building.

Some might call my approach to grammar extreme, but I prefer Lynne Truss's more cuddly phraseology: I am a grammar "stickler." And, like Truss — author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves — I have a "zero tolerance approach" to grammar mistakes that make people look stupid.

Now, Truss and I disagree on what it means to have "zero tolerance." She thinks that people who mix up their itses "deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave," while I just think they deserve to be passed over for a job — even if they are otherwise qualified for the position.

Everyone who applies for a position my company takes a mandatory grammar test. Extenuating circumstances aside (dyslexia, English language learners, etc.), if job hopefuls can't distinguish between "to" and "too," their applications go into the bin.

Good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet. In blog posts, on Facebook statuses, in e-mails, and on company websites, your words are all you have. They are a projection of you in your physical absence. And, for better or worse, people judge you if you can't tell the difference between their, there, and they're.

On the face of it, my zero tolerance approach to grammar errors might seem a little unfair. After all, grammar has nothing to do with job performance, or creativity, or intelligence, right?

Wrong. If it takes someone more than 20 years to notice how to properly use "it's," then that's not a learning curve I'm comfortable with. So, even in this hyper-competitive market, I will pass on a great programmer who cannot write.

Grammar signifies more than just a person's ability to remember high school English. I've found that people who make fewer mistakes on a grammar test also make fewer mistakes when they are doing something completely unrelated to writing — like stocking shelves or labeling parts.

I hire people who care about those details. Applicants who don't think writing is important are likely to think lots of other (important) things also aren't important. And I guarantee that even if other companies aren't issuing grammar tests, they pay attention to sloppy mistakes on résumés. After all, sloppy is as sloppy does.

That's why I grammar test people who walk in the door looking for a job. Grammar is my litmus test. All applicants say they're detail-oriented; I just make my employees prove it.

Here's What Is The Matter With People

Lately I've been boiling down my frustration with the actions of others through a simple statement of, "What's the matter with people?"

I've finally decided that, for the betterment of humanity, I will try to answer this question.  I think it comes down to three overarching items:

1)  People want attention.  It doesn't even matter whether it's for good or bad reasons, as long as those who seek attention get it.  This is both the cause and effect of reality television.  It's bad enough that people want to make their entire lives a show for the public, but then that's further encouraged by compensating (and even making celebrities out of) people for their asinine behavior.

2)  People are stupid.  I wrote about this a few years ago, and it's only gotten worse.  Most people will believe anything they read or hear.  They have no filter, no ability to discern whether something passes the 'smell' test.  The internet / social media make this problem worse, because people are constantly relying on it for all of their information.  If the United States could devise a way to tax anyone who forwards an electronic message that has little or no basis in fact, we would quickly solve our deficit problem.

3)  People are slackers.  The children and grandchildren of the 'greatest generation' are not nearly as motivated as their ancestors.  It seems that for every two Americans who try to make an honest living, there is one who doesn't give a damn.  Sometimes to avoid life, that one will use extreme measures, e.g. unqualified government assistance, illegal activity, or even living with their too-coddling parents, to avoid getting a real job.  On the minimally plus side, I always say that we need people in the service industry too, to take care of me when I'm on vacation.

So that's what's the matter with people.  Now that I've provided the answers, someone please come up with the solutions.

This Year On RAGBRAI (2012)

Cycled the first leg of the 40th Register's Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa this week.  It went through my hometown as well as a few other towns I spent a lot of time in growing up, so there was extra interest for me.  Here are this year's comments, to extend what I wrote in 2011 and 2010 :

* In the past, I've always ridden in the middle or front-half of the ride, meaning an equal amount of riders were behind me and in front of me.  I've always wondered if I was missing something wild by doing that.  After all, the old saying is that RAGBRAI is like a mullet - business in the front, party in the back!

This year it so happened that I stayed well to the back of the ride, and it turns out you miss MORE that way.  Some of the roadside stands that looked like fun places to stop were getting ready to shut down, and the riders weren't that much fun to talk with, because they were all just trying to survive the heat/ride. (That's one reason they were in the back.)  You want to be around as many people as possible during the ride and every stop within the ride, that's the best way to enjoy it.

* A couple of new team names that caught my eye were take-offs of the LiveStrong organization.  They were BeerStrong, and LiverStrong.  I'm not sure it's good form to use the name of a cancer-fighting organization to promote heavy drinking.

* A lot of folks talk about drinking alcohol on RAGBRAI.  A lot of folks actually do it.  But I think more folks talk about it than do it, especially on the hottest day in Iowa since 1988.  The most overheard, overused phrase on RAGBRAI is, "You can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning."  Most of them mean water.

* Ratio of fit, 20-something girls to overweight, 50+ year old men on the ride:  1-to-100.

RAGBRAI XL.  A little bit different than the RAGBRAI III I rode on in 1975.

The Less You Give, The More You Receive

On July 1, 2012, group retirement plan service providers are required by law to more fully disclose their fees.  These long-awaited federal regulations are primarily focused on 401(k) plans, to give both participants and sponsoring employers a more transparent view of the fees they are paying.

Why is this important?  Because whether you’re a 401(k) plan participant or not, low fees are at the heart of a good investment outcome for any portfolio.

According to a 2010 Morningstar study ¹ that encompassed a 5-year look-back period, low-cost funds categorically outperformed high-cost funds.  In fact, in every asset class over every time period, the least costly quintile of mutual funds produced higher total returns than the most expensive quintile.

Morningstar went so far as to say that expense ratios were the most dependable predictor of performance.  “Investors should make expense ratios a primary test in fund selection,” the study concluded.  “If there’s anything in the whole world of mutual funds that you can take to the bank, it’s that expense ratios help you make a better decision.”

As with 401(k) plans, the only way you can know whether your investment fees are low is to determine what those fees are, and how they compare with others.  If you have any doubt, contact someone who can help.

The Taxpayer Warrior Strikes Again

On July 2nd, The Des Moines Register smartly published another letter to the editor I sent them.  It went like this:

So Polk County supervisors are going to start paying part of their health insurance for the first time ever, effective July 1? It sounds like a great victory for taxpayers – until you consider it’s expected to save less than $3,000 annually.

In fact, those affected will only being paying between $15 and $25 per month for insurance premiums. While that’s more than zero, it’s hundreds of dollars less per month than most private sector employees pay.

Regardless, Supervisors Chairwoman Angela Connolly crowed, “We all have to pay our fair share in terms of insurance costs.” This is just another example of how far out of touch elected officials are with their constituents, and with the economy.

This took me all of 15 minutes to write and email to them, but I can confirm that I got a lot more than 15 minutes of enjoyment out of embarrassing a bunch of wasteful politicians!