My outsourced life

I just finished reading an article published in the September issue of Esquire that made me laugh aloud. I do not usually read Esquire, although perhaps folks in my line of work should--for the name, if nothing else. But this one was worthwhile.

The writer was A.J. Jacobs, whom I recognize as the guy who appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition periodically to describe his progress in reading the encyclopedia. The article began as he was pondering the outsourcing trend. It occurred to him that he might spend a month outsourcing the "low-end" life tasks that he disliked. Researching stories ... calling his parents ... apologizing to his wife--all assignments that he issued to his personal assistants in India.

As the month wore on, he found himself pushing the envelope, nudging ever closer to an assignment that would constitute an abuse of power.

"I've become addicted to outsourcing. I am desparate to delegate everything in my life but have to face the depressing reality that there are limits. I can't outsource those horrible 25-minute StairMaster sessions. I can't ousource [restroom duties]. I can't outsource sex with Julie. Not that I dislike it, but we're trying to have another kid, which means a whole bunch of sex, and enough is enough, you know? It gets tiring. I can't outsource watering the ficus."

The closest that he gets to abuse of power is having an assistant read to his son, live from India, over speakerphone--from the business section of the newspaper. But his son seemed to enjoy it, and the assistant was reading the newspaper anyway ... so, no harm, no foul.

Here is the link, but Esquire reserves all but a snippet for its subscribers, so you may not be able to read it. (I have hard copy.) Bummer for you. However, the article apparently has been optioned as a motion picture, so you may be able to see it on screen in 2007.

Thanks to my colleague David, who, despite graduating from a second-tier school in Kansas (K-State), apparently has an eye for quality writing.

What's YOUR excuse?

My apologies for the radio silence. In the past week, I have gone on long, eloquent rants in my head while driving, but have opted to do other things while sitting in front of the computer.

I regret that I have but one life to give to my blog ... and my job ... and most of all, my family. I shall endeavor to get back on the horse in the near future. (Damned horses.)

Ads are all about placement

This story caught my eye on its own: A heard of Russian cows will eat marijuana all winter after authorities destroyed the feed crops in which the marijuana was planted. Amusing thought.

But in the middle of the story was an ad space that rotates. When I looked at the story, the ad was for "Oprah's weight loss secret." Hmmmmmmm.

Tiger kills teen posing for photo

This is a tragic story--no doubt about it. But when I saw the headline, my first thought was that the world's greatest golfer had finally snapped.

The fact that "Eldrick Woods" has replaced "big cats" as the definition of "Tiger" in my head means something, but I am not yet sure what.

Theories, anyone?

SpongeBob takes it in the shorts

On Sunday, the A-Train and I went to a birthday party for a friend of his who was turning five. There was pizza, and running, and playing on the restaurant's play equipment, and video games, and ... a SpongeBob SquarePants pinata.


The Victim

The children at this party ranged from 2 to 8 years old, so the pinata was about the same size as they averaged. Thanks to my fellow attorneys, I am sure, this pinata was not designed to be hammered with a stick or a bat, as pinatas should. Instead, this model had about 15 thin ribbons attached directly to (there's no polite way to say this) SpongeBob's groin area. I found that mildly disturbing.

The party boy's mom held up SpongeBob, and the children took turns yanking his chains. As the A-train took his second turn, I imagined what it would look like when the final string was pulled. The cork (or whatever) would break free, and candy would come cascading out of SpongeBob's nether regions. This prospect, I found even more disturbing.

For better or worse, it did not happen. Instead, when the last ribbon was pulled, nothing happened. Apparently, SpongeBob's nether regions were defective.

Party boy's mom hesitated only a moment, then decided to let the children try other tools. She laid down SpongeBob in the middle of the circled children.

"Jump up and down on it," she instructed. "Take turns, now."

The children complied with relish.

Had SpongeBob been human, he would have sustained massive internal injury. One enterprising boy bent down and ripped off a leg, then hoisted it into the air as a trophy.

I thought I was beyond disturbance at this point. It did not turn out to be true.

Party boy's mom, seeing that SpongeBob was seriously wounded, decided to finish the job herself. She backed the children off and picked him up. She then performed, by hand, a rough surgical procedure that I hesitate to describe in a family blog.

SpongeBob continued to smile as candy poured from the newly created orifice, but I don't think he was as comfortable as he made out. I did not see him ingest a muscle relaxant, and there was ripping. I certainly squirmed in my own SquarePants.

The A-Train seems to have come through without any emotional scarring, perhaps due to his focus on the candy harvest, but I expect to have nightmares for weeks.

The continuing education of Daddy

The A-Train and I were playing a game based loosely on that Parker Brothers favorite, "Scholastic Aptitude Test."

If you are my son, then I am your .... "Dad," he filled in.

If the Franchise your brother, then he is my ... "Son."

Good. And if I am Mommy's husband, then she is my ... "Woman," he finished confidently.

My beloved spouse tried to glare at me, but she found it difficult while laughing.

------------

This morning, the A-Train was frustrated by his wardrobe, and I called him in to discuss the problem.

"This shirt won't turn inside out," he explained. "I keep turning it inside out, but it's always the inside."

Bring it here.

"See? I just want to see what is on the front."

This is a plain white t-shirt. There's nothing on it.

"Oh." He returned to his room and started over with a new shirt.

Carter Franke returns

As you know, I have been tracking the piles of mail from various credit card companies, who are doing their part to keep the U.S. Postal Service in business. Between my last report and today, Carter Franke of Chase Card Services and Pat W. Johnston of Capital One each surged.

This is why (1) Chase and Capital One are among the nation's market leaders in the credit card industry and (2) Carter Franke and Pat W. Johnston are as popular as aged cabbage in my house.

Current standings:
Pat W. Johnston (Capital One): 7 letters
Carter Franke (Chase): 6 letters
Susan Sobbott (American Express): 4 letters
Matthew McKenna (Bank of America): 4 letters
Janine D. Marrone (MNBA): 3 letters
Thrivent Financial Bank, GM Card, Sallie Mae (Other): 4 letters
Combined Total since July 2, 2005: 28 offers

15 minutes of fame ... er ... prominence ... um ...

Whatever. The American Bar Association e-Report published my essay on Law Practice: The Dream and the Reality. I did not win anything--in fact, my essay is getting its butt thoroughly kicked by an essay about a foster child in Mississippi--but it still feels good.

I may just take myself out to lunch.

Congratulations to King Abdullah

Just a quick shout out to Saudi Arabia's new king, Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz al Saud. He has been ruling as Crown Prince since 1995, when Fahd's strokes began, but still--it's a whole new ball game to be the actual King.

I was a bit disappointed that I was not named the new Crown Prince. I am not, technically, a member of the Saudi royal family, but I have always felt a kinship in our mutual appreciation of gold-plated, German-engineered knicknacks, so I had hoped to feel some love.

On the bright side, being passed over this time leaves me available to help out the Sultan of Brunei when he needs an heir.

Fun with Medical Malpractice

OK, it's not fun. But we have been seeing a lot of heated rhetoric on the topic for the past couple of years, and now that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has weighed in incorrectly, I will join the chorus.

Medical malpractice occurs when a physician blows a call so badly that his or her colleagues are aghast. Patient is damaged and sues (or the patient dies, and the estate sues) for an amount of money that approximates the value of the patient's health (or life)--usually a pretty steep amount, in the case of death. This is as close as the patient can get to "justice," so it makes sense.

In most states, physicians are required to have insurance against malpractice. In recent years, jury awards for damage to patients have been rising dramatically. Why? Maybe the big money in the 90s dot-com boom made jurors add zeroes to the ends of numbers. Maybe it is just psychological inflation. We don't know precisely.

At the same time that the zeroes have been climbing, so have the premiums for physicians' malpractice insurance. (To get a flavor for annual costs, multiply your auto insurance premium for your nicest car by about 100. That should be in the ballpark for a general practitioner (meaning low-risk). For neurosurgeons and obstetricians, multiply by 250.) Then consider this: It has not been uncommon to see 20 percent annual increases in some places.

Why the increases in premiums? Well, that's what all the venom is about. Physicians and insurers tend to point to the rising jury verdicts and the greed of plaintiffs' lawyers who win them. Plaintiff's lawyers and consumer groups tend to point to insurers' greed and bad investment decisions.

My impression is that this is a many-headed hydra. I do not have a full solution to the problem (socialized medicine would bring problems of its own), but I do agree that the increase in jury awards is a contributing factor. I rely on the General Accounting Office, which issued a report on the problem in 2003.

Oddly enough, the Wisconsin Supreme Court cited the GAO report for the proposition that the increase in jury awards was not a definite cause of the increase in malpractice premiums:

¶124 One General Accounting Office study concluded that malpractice claims payments against all physicians between 1996 and 2002 tended to be lower and grew less rapidly in states with noneconomic damage caps.[143] The Office's ultimate conclusion was that these averages obscured wide variation between states and within a state from year to year.[144] The study's malpractice claims payments in cap and non-cap states therefore do not provide a rational basis for the connection between the cap and lower premiums.

While I agree that the report was inconclusive in many respects, I read it to say that the two shared at least a partial cause-effect relationship. That, my friends, is a rational basis.

Although I am not technically on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, I respectfully dissent.

The Burning Nipple Question

Shortly after we brought the Franchise home from the hospital four months ago, the A-Train volunteered to feed him. His mother declined.

"I can do it," he insisted. "See, I have nipples." He pulled up his shirt to show us.

I spoke up. "Yes, but those are as useless as--"

"They don't work," his mom interrupted.

Now, a doctor has written a book that explains, among other things, why we have nipples at all:

And why do men have nipples?

"While only females have mammary glands, we all start out in a similar way in the embryo, the authors explain. The embryo follows a female template until about six weeks, when the male sex chromosome kicks in.

"Men, however, have already developed nipples."

In my opinion, this also explains why we can discern about eight colors, rather than the 8,000 that my beloved spouse must consider before painting a room.

Hair mints

The A-Train, at three years old, is constantly making new connections. This morning I gave him a cinnamon mint about the size of a tic-tac. He exclaimed over its pinkness and inquired as to how it was made. I explained that it involved cinnamon, sugar, water, and a mold to give it its shape.

He was quiet for a few seconds, then ...

"I really like hair mints," he said. Excuse me?

"Hair mints. Remember when we went to the fair with Peter and Samuel and Craig and Karen, and we had hair mints? Those were really good."

Oh. Pink stuff that looked like hair, from the fair?

"Yes. It was really good." That's called cotton candy.

Hair mints is one that I would not have come up with. I would not trade these conversations for all of the gold in the world.

Carter Franke, Part III

When last we checked, Carter Franke (and his bank, Chase) were trailing Capital One in the race to bury me alive in credit card offers. For whatever reason, Capital One decided to take the week off. Thank you, Capital One.

Meanwhile, Bank of America joined the race and pulled into a tie for the lead, with new entry American Express jumping in with two offers.

Current standings:

Pat W. Johnston (Capital One): 3 letters
Carter Franke (Chase): 3 letters
Matthew McKenna (Bank of America) 3 letters
Susan Sobbott (American Express): 2 letters
MNBA, Thrivent Financial Bank (Other): 3 letters
Combined Total since July 2, 2005: 14 offers