​Driving past a local Lutheran school last week, the person who owns the adjacent land created a huge pile of trees and brush, then set it ablaze. It rained that night. The next morning, it continued to smolder. Those were tough carbon-based life forms to extinguish.
 
Seeing the smoke reminded me of a newly suggested method to get rid of tough roots from your yard, like diseased rose bushes or trees that send their tentacles far and wide to find water. Those suckers are tough. They spend a lot of time worming their way through the earth to get every last drop of water, so I guess it stands to reason that they’re not going to give themselves up easily.
 
Two friends of mine suggested smoking them out. Pour some gasoline on those bastards and toss the match in. Watch them burn.
 
If you hate digging out deeply rooted tree stumps, drill a bunch of holes in the stump, soak it in kerosene and light that baby up! The neighbors will talk about the “burning bush” for years.
 
But seriously, there is some merit to this. Beyond easing your physical labor needs, burning the roots gives an opportunity to start a new business: Root-smoke barbecue. This is already a delicacy in many countries around the world that have root problems. They figured out long before us slowpokes in the United States that you can cook meat in burning earth. In fact, if I remember some roasting sessions with friends who served in the Peace Corps, there are very specific methods used to wrap certain meats, then putting them back into the earth to be covered up and cooked.
 
The meat comes out smoked, tender and tasty. They’ve got the method down.
 
This may not fly in the suburbs. The neighbors may wonder if you’re digging up a body in the backyard. SOmake sure you tell them you’re starting a new barbecuing technique, and invite them over to sample your wares later in the day after a few cocktails. That will loosen up the conversation and hopefully everyone will overlook the smoke you’re pouring into the atmosphere.
 
The tree stump burning removal method has actually worked according to one of my good friends. He set the stump ablaze, and it burned for about 30 minutes. Then it smoked for 3 days! Actually, I’m lying. It only smoked for 3 hours, according to his email, but 3 days sounded more amusing.
 
Three hours is enough to cook most meat. Think root roasted barbecued pork ribs.  MMMMMMMNMM!!
 
Lather them up in your favorite sauce. Wrap them in aluminum foil. Test the heat of the burning/smoldering roots. Toss the rack in the dirt pit. Cover them up with some dirt.  See how they come out in a few hours. If they aren’t cooked, have some Cole slaw for dinner.
 
If you don’t think covering them up with the burning roots in the pit with dirt will work, perhaps place them on top of the smoking tree stump. You’ll need to figure out how best to enclose the heat so it is trapped and the ribs tenderize on both sides. I’ll leave that equation up to you.
 
The point is: Be creative with your tree stumps. Turn them into smokers. Advertise this new taste to friends and neighbors. If it catches on, you can go around to houses in your neighborhood and ask to burn their roots out while you cook some ribs or other tenderized meat dishes.
 
Just make sure you cook a big enough batch so you can share.

​Two weeks ago, I wanted to see the movie, “Colossal.” It had come out recently. That meant it still had to be in theaters. WRONG!
 
After searching every theater within 30 minutes of our house, it became clear that “Colossal” must have been a massive colossal movie failure. It was gone.
 
That seemed odd to me because scanning the offerings, there was nothing worth seeing as far as I was concerned. I like off-beat movies, something out of the ordinary that makes you think or challenge assumptions. Colossal fit that bill. But, clearly, I am in the significant minority because no one was flocking to watch it.
 
Instead, as seems to be the case for many years now, what theaters bring in, and retain, are all the tried and true formulas that numb your brain, dumb you down and predictably churn out the bucks. “We know it’s going to turn a $49 million profit, so let’s do it” seems to be the bigwigs’ mantra. Taking a chance on a lesser quantity becomes a more dangerous expedition, so we don’t get many flicks outside the status quo.

As I screened the Internet to find Colossal, I was struck by the sameness and repetitiveness of the other choices.  For example, there was, of course, the second installment of a super hero movie that did great the first time in the box office.  Man, gotta make a second one of those.  And a third! I went to the first and found it entirely predictable (and a bit amusing, with some good songs), but not worthy of investing psychic energy into another round with the characters.
 
Then, there was 15th remake of the “Fast and the Furious.” Wait, you mean it was only the ninth? Egads, who would have thought? I guess the viewing public just can’t get enough of car crashes, speeding vehicles, attractive actors, guns and bikinis.
 
There was also the obligatory kids’ animated movie. The name escapes me. You can insert one here, just make it up, it will probably be just as good as what was in the theaters.
 
Another offering was a classic fantasy model, a love story based centuries ago. Who likes those? I don’t know.

And, there had to be one of those movies about knights with swords, spears and bow and arrow activity, wearing armor plating and talking in English accents from eons ago, like everyone just wants to hear that and ape over how well spoken the Brits were back then. Spare me.
 
Is it the lowest common denominator that brings these movies to the screen? “They’re safe, let’s do them.”
 
Are they lower risk? Do they make it because they’re the proven commodity? I don’t get to make those decisions, so I can’t give the answer, but it’s safe to say it’s about the money and squeezing as much cash as you can out of the enterprise.
 
I wish the executives would take more risks. I wish people in the movie industry with money would mainstream more movies that challenge us, bring idea innovations to the screen, or just something plain DIFFERENT.
 
It’s hard to count the number of times I’ve wanted to go to the movies and there are 13 showing (all the same movies, BTW, are also at everyone of the surrounding theaters, so there isn’t even the chance to get an extra choice based on trying other locations) and I can’t find one that motivates me. But I’m weird. I’m the frustrated anomaly, and it’s probably going to stay that way.

​You may have seen or heard the news of the Spirit Airline brawl last week. Some fisticuffs broke out in the Ft. Lauderdale airport as pilots were not responding to call-ins, hence the routes were not being serviced. Customers got irate. They took it out on the people behind the counter, then some took it further, throwing fists, shouting, getting crazy.
 
This was not a story about “all” the customers. Only some of them, and probably a minority. But it made for timely news coverage in our seemingly increasingly coarse and angry era.
 
I shook my head when reading the stories. Then I put on my journalistic cap and began asking friends what they thought about the situation, and was this type of event happening more frequently today than 5 years ago, and if so, why.
 
 There was full agreement in the 6-7 people I quizzed that these situations have increased in frequency and intensity the past 3-5 years, and that social media is the primary cause. As two people responded, “Look at all the people taking selfies and posting them online. It’s all about them. That’s all they care about. They don’t think about others or how their actions affect others. All they care about is themselves.”
 
I hadn’t thought of social media – Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat probably being the primary platforms – as self-absorbing technologies, but when you think about it, that is clearly the case. You are trumpeting your position. You want to get your name and face out there. You want to shout your position. It’s about you. It’s not about other people. The individual vs. the collective good or the team.
 
The “me first” mentality also ties into the lack of etiquette. As old etiquette weakens, people pay less attention to social mores and choose to do whatever they want. The individual’s needs rise above all else. There is less empathy and less consideration about how something will be perceived. People don’t put themselves in the shoes of others.
 
My informal polling also brought out our current desire for “instantaneous” reactions. People don’t take time to think things through. They want to immediately judge someone or a situation.

Throw in a crowded and stressful place like an airport and you have the perfect toxic brew. People don’t want to wait. They are in a hurry to get somewhere, whether it is for work or vacation. Any change to a schedule is an inconvenience. Tempers rise. People on edge act crazy. We shouldn’t be surprised, I guess.

The people I respect are the ones who understand there is nothing you can do in that situation. Give the people behind the counter consideration for doing the best they can at their jobs. Stay calm. Be kind to others. See if you can help find a solution. Several people were interviewed in the Spirit incident who adopted this perspective and it was good to hear their voice. But the rage in the cage gets the page for the most part.
 
More situations like this will occur in the years ahead as we close in on each other and the planet gets more and more crowded: Traffic jams; public transportation; office spaces; sporting events.
 
Going postal makes for great video on the 6 o’clock news. General sensory overload from social media and life in general contribute to the problem.
 
Tick tock, and someone will snap.  Don’t let it be you.
 
Deep breath in, deep breath out. Remember what you can control and what you can’t. Take the long view. Help someone up rather than knocking someone down. Now go out and do it.

​Several weeks ago, my wife and I were given a prime lesson why you shouldn’t listen to talk radio.
 
It took some persuading, but I got her to join me for a night out to sit in on a public forum with five talk radio hosts in the Wisconsin market. The “discussion” was designed and promoted as addressing two key issues: 1) How the political right in the U.S. will evolve and use talk radio as a positive force now that it has the key levers of power nationally, and 2) how the political left can use talk radio to engage listeners because it has not done so effectively for the most part.
 
Both topics peaked my curiosity. I wanted to hear what was said.
 
We got there early. The place held about 170 people. Ultimately, people filled up to about a third of the seats.  Kind of a sad statement about our civic involvement.
 
There were two moderators and five panelists – three from the political right and two from the political left. After introductions, the verbal jousting began.
 
We did not sign up for that. We came to hear a civic discussion wrapped around issues so both sides could propose and walk away with constructive solutions. Instead, we got ramblings, ripping unsubstantiated statements, yelling, talking over the other panelists and long boring monologues that allowed the speaker to dominate the proceedings with no rebuttals.
 
It was a sad statement about talk radio. My wife and I left early. We agreed on the drive home that it was a classic reason NOT to listen to talk radio.

There are many reasons to eliminate talk radio from your diet. Here are a few: 1) Fundamentally, it is designed to make you angry by the announcer yelling, raising his voice and use choice adjectives and examples designed to boil your blood. Why would people CHOOSE to make themselves angry? I don’t get it.
 
2) The person who hosts a talk radio show basically has carte blanche to say whatever the heck he or she wants. There are no ombudsmen on the shows. No one is fact checking. That allows someone with an agenda to head off in any direction s/he wishes with nothing reining them in.
 
3) Episodes degenerate. They may start on topic (like the forum we attended did), but then quickly devolve into shouting matches, finger pointing and topics no one cares about.
 
4) If you continue listening to a show, the same tired arguments come up over and over. New material isn’t introduced. You can reinforce your views or challenge your views. You can listen to someone scream over the air who completely tracks your views and get excited in your car as you listen, but I’ll bet most people don’t keep listening when a different speaker raises another point-of-view dramatically counter to your own.
 
That night on the east side of Milwaukee, the audience was given a HUGE dose of all those negatives, in particular the quick degeneration from a civil discussion to a shouting match on an issue not featured – voter registration. “We didn’t sign up for this,” I said to my wife.
 
Soon thereafter, we got up and left, and the show wasn’t even half over. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, but I was saddened by the entire affair.
 
It demonstrated exactly why you SHOULDN’T listen to talk radio. And why I don’t.
 
The radio hosts get so used to saying whatever the heck they want for as long as they want that they don’t know how to check themselves. And no one else checks them, so the rant goes on.
 
As we drove home, I wondered how those on the panel relate to their spouses or others in their lives outside of work. Do they adopt the same type of posturing used on the air?  I hope not.