Friday, December 20, 2013

Waiting Room Woes


It took me a while to find the right waiting room in the hospital.

Me: Can you please tell me where the waiting room for nuclear multi-syllable chromosomal stratospheric endocrinal-catheterization is?

Random person wearing a white coat in the hospital: Follow the green line

Me: Which one?

Random person: The one on the floor

After following the green line for 45 minutes I ended up at a garbage dump full of green bins with a big sign on them: “Danger: Radiologic Biologic Morphologic Recycling.” I somehow figured that my friend, who just had a multi-syllabic procedure wasn’t there.

Me: Can you please tell me how to get to the information desk?

Different random person wearing a stethoscope around his neck and carrying a 2 gallon coke bottle in his pocket: Follow the red line

Me: The one on the floor?

Same different random person, now drinking from 2 gallon coke bottle, drooling all over his stethoscope: Of course moron!

After following the red line for 90 minutes I arrived at the information desk, of Macy’s. At that point I discovered that I was color blind, but a nice lady guided me back to the hospital. I eventually found the department of nuclear multi-syllable chromosomal stratospheric endocrinal-catheterization.

Me: Can you please tell me where I can find Isaiah Franklin, my friend, who just had a gastro morphologic orchiectomy?

Nurse carrying a 3 gallon coke bottle: He is doing well but we also had to perform a myringotomy and a diverticulectomy abdominoplasty because he was constipated. He is in room 323. Just follow the yellow line.

Me: I’m sorry, I’m color blind.

Nurse: Second door on the right

Me: Can you also point me to the restroom?

Nurse: Just follow the smell.

Relieved that I had found my way back to the waiting room, I sat in the small room, turned off the annoying TV, which usually advertises discounted gonadectomies, and turned on my kindle for some quiet time. No sooner did I start reading than three incredibly loud women, each one the size of a small Toyota, sat next to me, talking in Spanish, in detail, about their father’s scrotoplasty. To add insult to injury they turned on the TV and started watching La Rosa de Guadalupe in Univision. I pretended I did not speak Spanish to avoid unsolicited conversation about scrotoplasties or Fidel Castro, but I could not help being distracted by the Telenovela. A very big woman was trying to rescue a very young woman from what looked like a very bad pimp. She succeeded but only temporarily. As soon as the very big lady drove away with the very young lady, the very bad pimp telephoned another pimp who brought 98 other pimps to the rescue house, where it seemed like very young girls were rehabilitating themselves from a life of very bad things. The 99 pimps came with very big guns to the house and then there was a very long commercial break advertising Dos Equis beer and all kind of random nonsense with semi-nude women hugging Camaros and the Mexican soccer team selling tortillas.

To distract myself I fantasized: What if I pressed the emergency button by the stretcher next to me? What if I responded to a Code Blue and showed up at the emergency room before the real doctors? (I have only a PhD, which in Jewish families is as good as a high school diploma). What if I walked into one of the rooms and conducted a diverticulectomy abdominoplasty on some random patient? Any of these options would have been better than suffering all the scrotoplasty talk, but my superego took over and I resigned myself to watching La Rosa de Guadalupe. 

As I was getting into La Rosa de Guadalupe the phone of the Nissan next to me started ringing uncontrollably. The phone owner, who was describing in gruesome detail the scrotoplasty to her mother and sister, could not be bothered to answer. The conversation got even louder when the Spanish speaking nurse offered us in the waiting room some Jell-O, which I would never touch because it must have colorant, sugar, and 2987 different kinds of germs. As they swallowed the green Jell-O, my companions asked the nurse how their relative was doing. Displaying great surgical erudition, the nurse went on and on for 45 minutes describing more body parts than you would ever learn in a whole season of Grey’s anatomy. At that point I wanted to have a morphologic orchiectomy myself. Alternatively, I would have swum to Guantanamo for some quiet time.

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Experiences are better than purchases, if you survive them

My latest column from the Miami Herald

My adorable and inquisitive wife Ora, who keeps up with the latest research on well-being, read that experiences are a much better investment in well-being than purchases. Serious studies with more than 2 participants unrelated to the researcher and a margin of error of + or – 0.00385541% show that if you have a little extra cash, better invest in experiences that will cultivate nostalgic moments for the future, rather than in objects. This is provided you don’t get killed or traumatized during one of these experiences.

Investigators have demonstrated that buying things does not improve your well-being much. Experiences, on the other hand, have the potential to improve happiness by providing a source of distorted memories that make family vacations sound idyllic. Study after study prove that buying a pair of red shoes, or a red corvette, does not improve your happiness as much as having a meaningful experience with loved ones.

Persuaded by the research, Ora decided to improve our well-being by having a new experience: Five consecutive days of shopping at Miami’s finest malls.

Day 1: Aventura Mall

Day 2: Dolphin Mall

Day 3: Merrick Place

Day 4: Dadeland

Day 5: The Falls

I tried telling Ora that by the end of day five she would be the only one with memories because I would be dead, but she told me to quit whining and get some extra cash from the ATM in case we maxed out on our credit card. Of course she had a perfectly good excuse to drag me into this. Our son Matan was about to get married during the summer and she insisted that I buy some new clothes to impress my daughter in law’s family. To say nothing of what Ora had to buy for the occasion. It’s not every day we marry our son, and I did need new underwear.

What I thought was going to be just a horrible experience turned out to be a sequence of atrociously traumatizing near-death experiences, which will be very memorable indeed – I give Ora that much. In the first day alone we spent close to 11 hours in Aventura mall buying and returning items in a never ending cycle of hunting for bargains, comparing prices, losing my wife, calling each other on the phone, not hearing the phone because of the obnoxious music in stores designed to replace Guantanamo, matching colors, fighting for a dressing room, dressing and undressing, trying on 53 items, leaving a complete mess in the dressing room, buying items, refusing to get a new credit card from the Banana Republic, schlepping bags to the car, going back to the mall, finding a better bargain, fighting for a dressing room, standing in line behind 27 Brazilian women and 27 nannies maneuvering strollers the size of an SUV, paying, and going to the car to leave the new purchases and retrieve the old ones which Ora decided we needed to return because she found a comparable item for 34 cents less in Chico, which usually charges 0.34% more than Express, which offers discounts on Thursdays and Fridays from 9 to 11 am which are 0.00021% better than the bargains at Ann Taylor Loft.

Meanwhile, I could never find Intimissi underwear, which I usually buy in Europe. If they have it in Europe, I figured they would have it at Aventura Mall, which is the size of Montenegro and Luxembourg combined. To my dismay, no store in Aventura carry Intimissi cotton briefs with elasticized waistband, 93% cotton and 7% elastane. Determined to get the only underwear especially suited for my European anatomy I used my iphone to check the Intimissi website while Ora left me in the husband deposit area of The Loft with other equally comatose males. The Intimissi website listed 29 countries where you can find a store, including Qatar, Croatia, and Saudi Arabia, but the United States of Consumerism was not one of them. Resigned to have to buy online I discovered that you CANNOT BUY INTIMISSI UNDERWEAR ONLINE FROM THE UNITED STATES, which is ground for retaliation and military invasion of whichever country manufactures Intimissi. 

Undeterred by setbacks, I thought that I would be the first one to open an Intimissi store in the US, which would make us rich enough to clone myself and send my alternate ego with Ora to the mall while I schemed a takeover of Intimissi Europe, which led me to ponder some other revenue generating ventures at Aventura Mall that could eliminate unemployment in South Florida.

1.       English school for Brazilian nannies.

2.       Export of nannies to Brazil.

3.       Manners schooling for children of Latin American dictators and drug lords.

 

Sunday, December 8, 2013

United in Judgment

Critics of Miami often claim that our city is divided and fragmented. Well, they are wrong. All of us in Miami have something very special in common: We are all judgmental. Hondurans are critical of Salvadorians, Dominicans fight with Haitians, Cubans don’t like to be confused with Puerto Ricans, and the poor Argentineans from Buenos Aires cannot talk to those of us from Cordoba because we are not as erudite, sophisticated, and pretentious as they are. But in times of need, we all come together around something we all love in Miami: plastic surgery. When it comes to flesh and flash, we all lower our defenses, show solidarity, and compare prices between Dr. Buttsky and Dr. Bustos.

No doubt, we need more opportunities to suspend judgment and collaborate, which is not easy. Take me, for example. I try really hard not to be judgmental of people who are judgmental, but if I don’t judge their judgmental attitude, they will continue to judge others, generating in their victims a judgmental attitude that they will perpetuate for generations to come, because, as everybody knows, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree and silicone implants don’t grow on trees.

I believe that change starts within you, which is why I joined Judgmentals Anonymous (JA). After we all recited the prayer and reviewed the 12 steps, it was time for each of us to share our innermost judgmental attitudes. After hearing a litany of sexist, racist, classist, homophobic, ethnocentric, discriminatory, abusive comments about every possible group in Miami, my judgmentalism looked pretty innocuous. “I’m judgmental of people who are judgmental,” I said, to which everybody said I’m not being honest. “Really,” I said, “that’s my problem, I swear.” That did not go down well and they all started judging me for not being honest and insisting that I must harbor some resentment toward some group, some deep seated hatred. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here” they said. Eventually they kicked me out of the group for being a phony judgmental, which I thought was the worst kind of judgmentalism.

Puzzled by my dilemmas I consulted with Dr. Clearhead from the Department of Philosophy at Cambridge University. I wanted to know how to overcome my negative perceptions of people who are judgmental without perpetuating, at the same time, their judgmental attitude by adopting a passive attitude myself towards their judgmentalism. He told me that this is known as “The Judgmental’s Paradox” and that I should try some plastic surgery instead of worrying about silly things.

Dejected by the lack of psychological and philosophical answers to my dilemma, I decided to ask someone who was pragmatic, fair and balanced, so I contacted Fox News. A spokesman for the organization told me that the best way to overcome my paradox is to repeal Obamacare.

I resorted to some introspection. I tried to remember a time when I was the subject of judgmentalism. Perhaps I had some repressed memories that were bugging me. Perhaps the folk in JA were right after all. Without much effort I recalled the following event, which was, unlike most of the things I write about, true. I was invited to Sydney, Australia, to give a keynote address at a conference. This was soon after I had published a book with a friend on the topic of the conference. After a long day at the conference, I was invited by some local colleagues to have dinner with them. Not all of us had met before, and no sooner did we sit down that we started talking about my book. Professor Magnum (not his real name), who did not know that I was the author of the book, started berating my work big time. While others around the table were trying to motion to him that I was right there, sitting in front of him, he kept talking about flaws in the book. When finally somebody whispered to him that I was one of the authors of the book, he turned beet red and tried to get out of it diplomatically. It’s not like I can’t handle criticism, but the guy had no idea what he was talking about. He was aggrandizing himself and pompously reciting other authors to show off his knowledge. Never mind he hasn’t published anything of importance himself, or ever made the minutest contribution to any field of inquiry. Not to mention he had bad breadth. The guy was a pretentious snobbish arrogant, intellectually inferior academic with no original idea of his own. He reminded me of so many others like him who make a career criticizing others instead of doing something useful themselves. These people are intolerable. I tell you, I can’t stand them!

I wonder if I could go back to JA.


 

Saturday, November 30, 2013

The Evolution of "Thank You"

My latest column from the Miami Herald
 
As we were leaving, I held the door open for the couple coming into the restaurant. I could tell they were pretentious because of their clothing, perfume, watches, shoes, glasses, hairdo, height, accent, and eyelashes. Neither said thank you though, which wouldn’t have surprised me had they been from Miami, but they looked from the North East. Don’t ask me how, but I just knew it. They had an arrogant flair that comes only from certain parts of New England. Their rudeness was distinct from Miami rude, which is less haughty and more egotistical. Whereas Northerners actively ignore you, Miamians actively attend only to themselves. Whereas the former signal “you are beneath me,” the latter signal “you are beneath my augmented breasts. I can’t see you. Get out of there!”

According to evolutionary theory people are nice to you only if they think they will ever need you, which explains why a lot of people in Miami are only nice to plastic surgeons and judges. If you fall in neither category you can forget about civility, which is why I’m considering going to law and medical school, which would be easier than instilling manners in Miami-Dade County.

I would have thought that going into Thanksgiving folks would be a little more courteous, a little more generous, but everybody is going crazy. People are more dangerous than ever, especially, but not only, to turkeys. Take George Zimmerman, the poor soul is experiencing attacks from everyone: the media, prosecutors, former girlfriends; even the NRA is after him for giving the organization a bad name. Nobody says thank you George for leaving no more weapons in the stores. No wonder he is reacting aggressively. Or take Richie Incognito from the Miami Dolphins. Nobody thanks him for self-disclosing a very bad case of arrested moral development. Instead of thanking George and Richard for giving newspapers what to write about, all they get is bad press.    

Not to be outdone, the Republicans refuse to say thank you to President Obama for handing them the easiest exit strategy from their government shutdown debacle. Instead of thanking him for the botched launch of HealthCare.gov, they accuse him for failing to start something they desperately want to stop.

Intrigued by the whole thank you thing I did some research into civility. In a highly publicized study, Dacher Keltner and his research team at UC Berkeley reported that rich people are less polite and more inconsiderate than people from low socioeconomic status. While you might be tempted to believe the findings because they come from BERKELEY, to me the whole thing sounds like a communist plot. This is yet another attempt to disparage the wealthy. After all, this study was done at BERKELEY, which, need I remind you, is a hotbed of radicalism. To be convinced I would want to have the study replicated by the Heritage Foundation.

To probe further, I did some research into the history of thank you. The first person to ever say thank you was Adam. He had to go to the toilet and asked Eve for the only leaves that up to that point were covering her private parts. He said “thank you” and she said “I hope the paparazzi are not around.”

The Jewish people had a conflictive relationship with “thank you.” They were all very appreciative when Moses took them out of Egypt, but complained profusely when they realized that he had taken them on a forty year journey through the desert on a diet of water and unleavened bread.

The Romans, in turn, forced all their victims not only to surrender, but also to send Thank You cards to the Emperor for enslaving them. This Italian tradition continues to this day. The mafia requests Hallmark Love You cards from businesses under their protection plan.

I also looked into famous thank you lines to see what I can learn from wiser people and found the following from Benjamin Disraeli: I feel a very unusual sensation – if it is not indigestion, I think it must be gratitude. Can you imagine being led by such grouch? No wonder the British Empire has been in decline ever since the twice Prime Minister was in office in the 1800s.

The most important piece of research I found though was that practicing gratitude is good for you. So here it goes: I’m thankful for living in Miami, I’m thankful for having health insurance through my employer – which I can keep -- and I’m thankful for the Nobel Prize committee for considering me.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

How to Fix Education


With all the talk about the United States falling behind in international rankings of education, I decided to do some research of my own. I consulted with one of my key informants, Professor Newt Rall, from the University of Objek Teef. Excerpts from our dialogue:

Isaac: Why is the United States falling behind in reading, science and math?

Newt Rall: The United States has a much higher rate of poverty and inequality than other OECD countries. Poverty accounts for a great deal of educational failure in this country. Children from affluent communities or private schools in the US do very well in international rankings.

Isaac: Then why don’t we report just the results for rich children?

Newt Rall: That would be unethical.

Isaac: Ok then, so why is there so much poverty in the United States?

Newt Rall: Without poor children there wouldn’t be employment opportunities for all the people telling the poor how to get out of poverty.

Isaac: I hear that when community schools fail to make progress the government shuts them down. When investment banks fail and send millions of people bankrupt, the government bails them out. Why is that?

Newt Rall: The government is afraid that investment bankers will go into teaching.

Isaac: The government just cut food stamps. Did they do that to teach poor children resilience?

Newt Rall: I don’t think so.

Isaac: If another country deprived our children of food, would we invade that country?

Newt Rall: Probably.

Isaac: Preventable medical errors account for about 98,000 deaths per year. Should doctors be fired like teachers and hospitals shut down like poor performing schools?

Newt Rall: You ask tough questions.

Isaac: I hear Finland has one of the best education systems in the world. I hear they pay teachers well, teachers are highly respected, have time to prepare lessons and learn from one another. Also, I hear they don’t test kids to death. Why don’t we copy what they do?

Newt Rall: It wouldn’t work here.

Isaac: Why?

Newt Rall: Because our teachers don’t speak Finnish.

Isaac: I hear Finland is also a very egalitarian country. Why don’t we try that?

Newt Rall: Because we would have to fire a lot of people telling the poor how to stop being poor, generating unemployment among highly paid consultants. Their egos couldn’t handle that.

Isaac: I hear that a lot of these new teachers without clinical experience don’t last more than two years. Why is that?

Newt Rall: Because after two years they become consultants.

Isaac: Is teacher bashing working in improving education?

Newt Rall: No.

Isaac: Perhaps they are not bashing them hard enough.

Newt Rall: Oh no, they are bashing them hard alright.

Isaac: Who is next?

Newt Rall: My sources tell me they are going after parents, deans of schools of education, professors of education, janitors, children, and the Prime Minister of Finland.

Isaac: I just attended an educational policy conference where I heard that the key to educational success is for all the states to adopt the common core standards, tell liberals to stop whining about poverty, tell hungry children to toughen up, use homelessness as a bonding experience for the entire family, replace all public schools with for profit charter schools, determine teacher pay on the ability of their school to shame others, and send 28 million children from the US to South Korea to learn discipline. Do you agree?

Newt Rall: You said a lot of things. Can you be more specific?

Isaac: Oh academics! Never mind. I hear the results of the new National Assessment of Educational Progress show that there is a constant improvement in reading and math for White, African American, Asian and Hispanic children. If that is the case, why do so many reformers say the opposite?

Newt Rall: If you have good PR the truth is irrelevant.

Isaac: If minorities are not advancing fast enough to close the achievement gap, can we give rich kids a break for two years until other kids catch up?

Newt Rall: That hasn’t been tried before.

Isaac: Can we blame the educational problems of our country on the failed launch of Obamacare?

Newt Rall: That hasn’t been tried before either.

Isaac: What has been tried then?

Newt Rall: A hodgepodge of charter schools, testing, more testing, de-professionalization of the teaching profession along with calls for more highly qualified teachers, turn around consultants, and no teacher left un-bashed.

Isaac: Have these strategies been subjected to rigorous longitudinal randomized controlled trials?

Newt Rall: Yes, Finland is the experimental condition and we are the comparison group.

Isaac: So who won?

Newt Rall: Finland

Isaac: So why are we not invading Finland?

Newt Rall: The President is busy fixing the Affordable Care Act

 

 

 

 

 

 

 






 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Culturally Clueless, Linguistically Lost

My recent column from the Miami Herald

 
With all the talk about immigration reform, it is about time I weigh in. I was way ahead of the curve on this one.

 Anticipating waves of globalization and mass migration, I decided at a young age to be more culturally clueless and linguistically lost than anybody else. I knew that eventually 7 billion people would feel that way, so I set out to beat the crowd by living in several countries and learning a few languages. If I could figure out how to survive in places and cultures foreign to me, I could monetize that by creating the First International Online Academy for the Culturally Clueless and the Linguistically Lost, better known for its simple acronym FIOAFTCCATLL, which rhymes with Quetzalcoatl, which, as everybody knows, is a midfielder in the Mexican national soccer team. 

To build the curriculum for FIOAFTCCATLL I started travelling and moving places. To prepare myself for my first move from Argentina to Israel, I went to Hebrew School for 11 years, at the end of which I could say, but not necessarily spell, three things: Shalom, Bar Mitzvah, and Yom Kippur. As if I didn’t feel incompetent enough in Hebrew, my wife’s parents were both Hebrew teachers, who subjected me to etymological colonoscopies for hours on end. They loved me so much that they wanted me to speak perfect Hebrew. 

First lesson for my curriculum: Practice selective deafness with in-laws. 

Then we moved to Canada and I finally had to study English properly. All I could say after 15 years of English study in Argentina and Israel was CNN. After 15 years in Canada I was also able to say NHL, Wayne Gretzky, and Eh?

In my eagerness to show that I was not a complete idiot, I tried to Anglicize many Spanish words, hoping they would make me sound smart. Little did I know that these “false friends” would lead me into a whole lot of trouble! 

Instead of “success” I often used the word “exit,” asking people to head for the door when I thought I was congratulating them (éxito in Spanish means success).

But I got into real trouble when I confidently asked a young lady at a store “if I may molest you?” In Spanish molestar means to disturb. La podria molestar means “may I disturb you?” I thought I was being polite by approaching the store clerk with my respectful “may I molest you.” She thought otherwise.

Lesson No. 2: Avoid false friends.

As if my linguistic challenges were not enough, I faced my share of cultural cluelessness. Nothing prepared me for what folks in North America call football, which is a strange form of wrestling played with a giant suppository. For me, there was only one kind of football, and that was soccer. 

In Australia I had to learn a bunch of new sayings, such as chuck a sickie (stay home from work pretending you are sick), chuck a wobbly (throw a temper tantrum), and crack a fat (for which they recommend Crackiagra or Crackialis). 

Lesson No. 3: Put www.australianexplorer.com/slang in your favorites. 

After Australia we moved to Nashville. The least we could do to fit into American culture was to get a DVR. After pressing buttons at random for 17 hours I thought I figured out how to record Comedy Central’s The Daily Show. It took me several months to learn how to play back what I recorded. When I finally figured it out I realized I had recorded 239 episodes of Best Monsoons in History from the Weather Channel. The Daily Show was nowhere to be found. 

Lesson No. 4: Marry a techie. 

Then we moved to Miami, the land of quitar and freakiar. I learned these from my hairdresser, who told me in Spanish about a friend who quiteo her job and started to freakiar because she had no money. 

Lesson No. 5: If you don’t know Spanglish, just add “ar” to any English verb and you will get by in Miami just fine. 

With all the talk about immigration reform, it is about time President Obama called me to lend my expertise to the country. My first move would be to teach all 117 million Mexicans proper English. The second move would be to create a wall separating the United States and China. Next, I would send all members of Congress to the Sahara desert for a six-month, team-building exercise. They would not be allowed back in the country until they came together on immigration reform. If they don’t, they will have to go through cultural sensitivity training at FIOAFTCCATLL. 

 

 

Saturday, October 26, 2013

Crowdsourcing Diseases Good for Economy


Every few years the American Psychiatric Association (APA) updates its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental and Emotional Disorders. The manual, usually called the DSM, is now in its fifth edition and sells like hot cakes. It is worth noting that the number of psychiatric conditions has grown approximately 7982% from the first edition to the latest, leaving only three people on the planet who can legitimately claim they are not kookoo. I’m not going to mention who these people are because the remaining 6,334,999,485,230 will likely sue me for defamation and Obamacare doesn’t protect you from kookoos. You will have to guess if you are one of these people. If you don’t want to guess, you will have to buy a copy of the DSM and review its 27,812,903,225 conditions to see if any apply to you. The problem is that if you did not have a psychiatric condition when you started reading the manual, you surely will have one by the time you finish the book, leaving only two sane people on the entire planet, throwing off my statistical calculations by 0.0000000000000004%; which is very inconsiderate.

The APA is unfairly accused of inventing new psychiatric problems to provide job security for psychiatrists and Nespresso machines for all its employees. To assist the APA with its current woes, I have devised a system that would turn the DSM into an engine of economic opportunity for the entire nation and make APA the most loved professional organization in the world: Crowdsourcing updates for the DSM.

This is how this would work. People would submit new psychiatric conditions to the APA. If accepted, submitters would receive a $ 5 rebate every time they saw a psychiatrist and a 15% discount on future medications developed to treat the condition they proposed. Given that only three people on the planet are not diagnosed with a psychiatric condition, most of us will benefit from this win-win-win solution: Patients get a discount and participate in the democratic and scientific process of inventing diseases, the APA improves its tarnished reputation, and pharmaceuticals have a never ending stream of conditions on which to try medications that never worked for their intended purpose.

In anticipation, I came up with 54 psychiatric conditions I wish to submit for inclusion in the next DSM. My top three:

1.       Voice induced gender identity confusion

2.       First class envy

3.       Big ears trauma

For years I have suffered from people confusing me with members of the opposite sex on the phone. I have yet to come up with a proper response when people on the other end of the line call me Mrs. To prevent such embarrassment I have occasionally tried to project a very manly voice on the phone, especially with service people I don’t know. Alternatively I say “this is ISAAC Prilleltensky calling,” to which people often reply “how can I help you Ma’am?” I’m sure I’m not the only person suffering from such common but yet undiagnosed condition. Therefore, I came up with a solution that would solve the problem forever and provide jobs not just to psychiatrists but also to surgeons and music engineers: vocal chords transplant. Enterprising music engineering students would devise a menu of manly voices to choose from:

1.       Luciano Pavarotti

2.       Placido Domingo

3.       Frank Sinatra

4.       Marlon Brando

“I’ll take Placido please, with a little more baritone.” I’m sure by the time I finish publishing this there will be a dozen start-up companies working on my cure.

First class envy is a condition afflicting millions of people who fly economy, especially those who fly long hours with their knees up to their chins. We recently flew to Israel with our knees and feet kissing our foreheads. To make sure we did not think much about our leg problems two adorable brothers aged 8 and 5 kept kicking the back of my seat every time I started falling asleep. The only thing I could think of other than opening the emergency exit and disposing of the kids was how nice it must be to fly first class.

To cope with this malady I have a number of recommendations:

1.       Overthrow the government, nationalize the airlines, and eliminate first class

2.       Develop an envy elimination pill

3.       Stay home
Big ears trauma is a particularly challenging condition, especially because I can hear so loud and clear when people on the phone say to me “how can I help you Ma’am?” This is probably a case of co-morbidity: Big ears, girly voice. The only thing that stops me from doing plastic surgery on my ears is saving for vocal chords transplant and first class seats.

Saturday, October 19, 2013

Nobel Committee, I'm not Bitter


My latest column from the Miami Herald

The phone call never came. I freed up most of my days for the last couple of weeks in anticipation of the phone call from the Nobel Committee, but it never came. Although I’m not bitter, I have to admit I’m surprised. Considering that I was nominated in several categories, it was hard to believe that, once again, I was skipped over for the Nobel Prize. Admirers the world over recommended me in several fields. Here’s a short list of categories and my corresponding achievements or discoveries, as the case may be:

1.       Anthropology: Immigration from lawless countries, when combined with a high concentration of plastic surgery billboards, in regions with annual average temperatures above 86 Fahrenheit, results in reckless driving and higher than average Medicare and tax fraud. 

2.       Linguistics: Based upon observational studies in Hialeah, I discovered that no matter how long or how well Hispanics speak English, they cannot bring themselves to use the word “but” instead of the Spanish “pero.” They can speak flawless English, but the “but” will never replace the genetically and culturally imprinted “pero.”

3.       Complaining: This one was recommended by a Herald reader who commented that I was the biggest tool in the world for complaining so much about everything. I am very gratified by his newfound sense of irony and humbled by his nomination.

4.       Literature: This one is obvious.

5.       Chemistry: I discovered that no matter how tasteless the food is in our house, if you add liquid aminos, which is an all purpose condiment made from soy, it prevents vomiting.

6.       Peace: I moved to Israel from Argentina in 1976. In 1977 Anwar El Sadat came to the Holy Land and in 1979 signed the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel with Menachem Begin. Say no more.

7.       Medicine: The failed launch of Obamacare is causing heartburn to the Democrats. The successful launch will cause heartburn to the Republicans.  

8.       Economics: When the GDP (Gazillion Debt per Person) of the United States is equal or higher than the gap between the actual and reported rate of inflation in Argentina, the Chinese burst in laughter and go on a shopping spree, growing consumer demand, and raising commodity prices in Australia, leading to record sales of beer and wine Down Under.

9.       Psychology: I discovered that when members of a particular political party lose the elections they develop electile dysfunction, which is characterized by regression to the temper tantrum age of two, the impulse to destroy the country, and political suicide.

10.   Physics: In Miami the wavelength of the colors yellow, green, and red are the same.

Not since Leonardo da Vinci has anyone come up with so many discoveries to improve the human condition, but I’m not bitter. I’m just curious. At first I thought that the Nobel Committee did not pick me because I was Jewish, but then I read about all the Jews who were given the Nobel Prize and I figured it must be something else. 

I wonder if my nomination went to spam. No, wait, I wonder if the paper copies were not delivered because of the government shutdown. That must be it! USPS must have not delivered the package! While I was worried sick that my scientific and artistic attainments did not reach Nobel level, there is a more sensible explanation: my materials did not reach the committee. Next year I will UPS the submission, with a copy via FedEx. I tell you, you cannot trust government services.  

I know what you are thinking, that I’m full of s_ _ _ , pero I want you to know that I did have an uncle who received the Nobel Prize in Medicine. César Milstein, who received the Nobel Prize in 1984, was married to my dad’s cousin, Celia Prilleltensky, which goes to show that in my family we are smart enough to marry Nobel material, which is not a far cry from getting the Nobel Prize ourselves. 

I know I’m getting close because Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist, like me, who lived in Israel and then the United States, like me, received the Nobel Prize in 2002. This year, the writer Alice Munro, who is Canadian, like me, received the Nobel Prize in Literature for writing short stories, like me. My uncle César Milstein left Argentina because of political instability, like me. I just have to make sure that my materials get to the Nobel Committee in time next year. I’m already working on the press release. I’m blocking off the entire month of October. The phone call is coming. I know it.   

 

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Condo Living: Behave or go to Raiford Prison

Just outside the door of our condo in Hollywood Beach there is a fire extinguisher with an ominous warning: If you tamper with it you will go to RAIFORD PRISON. Apparently previous signs with mere warnings of incarceration did nothing to deter the elderly Jewish ladies from having wild foam parties. What the sign does not mention, however, is that the town of Raiford is home to both Union Correctional Institution AND Florida State Prison, leading to great confusion among residents. This is especially the case since Wikipedia states that both “house inmates in death row facilities, but only Florida State Prison does executions.” Keep the bastards guessing!

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Complete Shutdown Only Way to Fix Obamacare


Every human being on the planet knows that the best way to solve computer problems is to shut the whole thing down. Not just one program, but the entire system: COMPLETE SHUTDOWN. You turn it off, and then you turn it on, and the problem is fixed. If Obama would only listen to the GOP, all the problems accessing health exchanges online would be solved in a minute.

The simplest way to get my computer unstuck is to shut it down. This is what my tech people tell me all the time, and guess what, it works! Isn’t this what you do when your computer gets stuck?

It turns out that Republicans unconsciously want Obamacare, and this is why they are pressing the Obama administration to shut down the entire government. If Obama did a complete shutdown, not a partial one, the online access to the health exchanges would be fixed right away.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Preventing Syria from becoming the new AfghanIraq


I have been so busy diagnosing the Republican lunacy and trying to access the healthcare exchanges that I forgot to take credit for my role in preventing Syria from becoming the new AfghanIraq.

As you may recall, prior to the government shutdown, a million Republican temper tantrums ago, we were about to bomb Syria. Obama was very hesitant. He vacillated between diplomacy and military action. To help the President, I sent him an email with an offer he could not refuse. He has written me several times asking for money, so I figured he has me on his Blackberry. I suggested creating a simple decision matrix with pros, cons, short term, and long term. This simple “two by two” chart could help him decide whether to bomb Syria or work for the elimination of chemical weapons. His answers revealed a close call. See for yourself:

Option 1: Bombing Syria to send a strong message that chemical weapons are not nice

Pros long term: More jobs for our weapons industry to replace missiles used in Syria. Economy improves.  

Cons long term: Syria becomes the new AfghanIraq. Michelle said that if I bomb Syria she will stop baking chocolate chip cookies for me.

Pros short term: Show critics that I can also make thoughtless decisions.

Cons short term: Will miss basketball practice.

Option 2: Eliminating chemical weapons with the help of nice people like Putin

Pros long term: More jobs for our chemical weapons cleanup industry. Economy improves.  

Cons long term: Syria becomes the new AfghanIraq. Putin will never stop talking about it.

Pros short term: Michelle will bake chocolate chip cookies for me on Sunday.

Cons short term: Will miss basketball practice.

Presidential historians say that most decisions by commanders in chief are a close call, unless you are George W. Bush, who was a self-proclaimed decider, and had no idea where Syria was.

I understand the President because I also have tough decisions to make, such as watching Dancing with the Stars or reruns of the Big Bang Theory; eating in or going out; brown rice or quinoa.

But unlike President Obama, I’m a decider. My family and I have moved around quite a bit, and every time we have to buy a house, I have a rule. I want to buy the first house we see. My discerning wife, on the contrary, likes to see 329 houses before we decide what to buy. When we moved to Miami, I was all set to buy the first condo the realtor showed us, until Ora reminded me, and the despondent realtor, that we had 328 to go before we could make a decision on a place.

Ora, my meticulous wife, likes to explore all angles of our decisions. Every airplane ticket we buy must be compared across 17 internet sites to get the best deal. By the time we compare and contrast, and want to buy the first one we saw, which usually has the best price, the ticket is gone because we took too long comparing. I never thought I would say this, but Ora is more like Obama, and I’m more like GW.

When we moved to Australia from Canada, I operated like GW. I landed in Sydney in May 1999 and after half an hour of landing I called Ora to tell her that we were moving to Australia, at which point she said that I was crazy. A few months later we moved to Australia and we looked at 329 houses before we bought the first one we saw.

Recently we were having dinner with a colleague who shared with me a fabulous tip: the 20 minute rule. No matter what he has to decide, he usually allocates 20 minutes to most decisions: get married – 20 minutes; buy a house – 20 minutes; move to another continent – 20 minutes; have surgery – 20 minutes. I really like that rule. I think President Obama should adopt it. After 20 minutes of playing basketball he should decide whether to bomb Syria or collaborate with Putin. In the end, he decided to go for the diplomatic solution, but I never got a thank you note. I’m sure his server went down. IT is trying to fix his Blackberry, but they are tied up fixing the health exchanges.

 

Monday, October 7, 2013

Boehnerictus fighting Cruzade against Obamacare


Historians around the country are trying to find precedents to the Cruzade that Boehnerictus is fighting against his own country. According to Professor Newt Rall from Princeton University, all the previous crusades were against other peoples and other countries. This Cruzade, claimed Newt Rall, “is unlike anything we’ve seen in the last thousand years.”  

But historians are not the only ones scratching their heads. Psychologists and psychiatrists met today to explore the collective memory loss experienced by Boehnerictus and his Cruzaders. Moderate members of the GOP convened a panel on the inability of their colleagues to remember that they lost the election in which Obamacare was fought. Worried that their colleagues might have also forgotten that slavery was abolished, the moderate Republicans invited behavioral scientists to help them in their quest to cure the Cruzaders and their Cantors.

Moderate Republicans are concerned that the people will accuse them of being passive bystanders while their fanatic colleagues destroy the country. Some of the judicious GOP members were seen consulting with psychologists after the panel.

Parenting experts are also trying to help moderate Republicans. Dr. Nev Ermind, appearing in The Today Show, claimed that the Cruzade is typical of two year olds and it will pass when they reach the maturity characteristic of three year olds.  

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Boehner and Cantor offered asylum in North Korea


Republican leaders are heroes in North Korea, Iran, and Russia. Cantor and Boehner are actively negotiating how to end the hostage situation and where to flee for refuge. “Having shut down government, deprived sick children of needed clinical trials, wreaked havoc in the country, and forced government employees to go without pay, our work is done” declared John Boehner in a conference call with Tea party loyalists.

Boehner was moved to tears when he got calls from the North Korean government offering him and Cantor permanent asylum. The pair is now negotiating with President Obama how to end the hostage situation. Sources close to the negotiation revealed the following demands by Cantor and Boehner:

1.       Guaranteed US health care for them and their families in North Korea

2.       Change the name of our electoral system from democracy to repocracy

3.       Add carvings of Cantor and Boehner to Mount Rushmore to secure their place in history alongside George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln

4.       End food stamps program to eliminate obesity among the poor

5.       President Obama to secure them a movie deal among his many Hollywood friends

6.       History books to omit the part about children with cancer going without treatment

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Benefits of Government Shutdown


A new poll released today shows that the vast majority of people favor a government shutdown. The scientific poll broke down the answers by groups:

Democrats in the Senate:

1.       We will not have to hear Republican Senator Ted Cruz talking about shutting down the government.

Republicans in the Senate:

2.       We will not have to contort ourselves trying to justify Senator Cruz’s 21 hour rant.

Chamber of Commerce:

3.       Government employees will have time to do their Christmas shopping early.

Bashar al-Assad:

4.       The Syrian government will look good.

President Obama:

5.       Time to play basketball.

Vladimir Putin:

6.       LOL

Health care industry in South Florida:

7.       Three more days of undetected Medicare fraud.

Snooki:

8.   Say what?