Golly gee! I’ve been tagged. I don’t think I’ve ever been tagged online before, so this is sorta disorienting. But, when a famous person tags you, you play like you’re IT. Them’s there’s the rules.

And here’s the rules about this here tagging business:

List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether or not they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they’re listening to. If you want.

So there’s the instructions, now here’s the tunes (in no particular order):

1. “Whatever Happened to Christmas” Aimee Mann One More Drifter In The Snow
2. “Patience (Herbert the Snail)” Music Machine Yes, that lively little gem from 70’s Christian Children’s Music.
3. “Darlin’ (Christmas is Coming)” Over the Rhine Snow Angels
4. “I’m On A Roll” Over the Rhine The Trumpet Child
5. Any cut from Vince Guraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas
6. “Either Way” Wilco Sky Blue Sky
7. “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again” Bob Dylan Blonde on Blonde

The hardest part of this exercise if probably going to be coming up with seven people I know who have blogs/livejournals etc. Let’s see…I tag the three Morefields–Ken, Cindy, and Laura, Wade, and Rich. I think Sherry’s over on facebook. And…nope. That’s it. Six tags. If you want.

On the floor, holding his wounded arm, the mayor looked up. “Put down your gun. You’re hurting yourself. You’ve never believed, and now that you think you believe, you hurt people because of it.”

–Ray Bradbury, “The Man,” 1948

“The Man” is one of those classic sci-fi stories that does what sci-fi ought to do: provide an environment to explore ideas that wouldn’t exactly fly in “realistic” fiction. “The Man” begins with a trio of space craft landing on a far away planet in another galaxy. The inhabitants of this planet aren’t really all that interested in the space travelers because they themselves have just been visited by “a remarkable man…good, intelligent, compassionate, and infinitely wise,” a man who “healed the sick and comforted the poor…fought hypocrisy and dirty politics and sat among the people, talking, through the day.” The story ends with the captain, who refused to believe until it was too late, setting off in chase of this man while most of his men stay in the place where “The Man” had visited.

Apart from asking that often niggling question about what would WE modern people do if Jesus Christ appeared in our midst the way he did during the Roman Empire, Bradbury explores two other, perhaps more interesting and certainly more disturbing, aspects of belief. The first is the unsettling idea that we have a limited chance at believing and that if we miss it, well, then we’ve missed it. The man who first goes into the alien town to see what’s going on, Martin, comes back believing; he never saw the Man, but he saw the effect of the Man on the town and believed. Captain Hart is so wrapped up on being the first of the three ships to land on the planet and protecting his fame that he dismisses the Man at first. Hart hears testimony of the Man and still refuses to believe. It is only when the other two ships are accounted for that Hart allows himself to “think he believes.” Unfortunately, his belief brings him none of the tranquility he desires. It’s clear that he’s going to spend the rest of his life chasing the Man but that his method is going to preclude him ever finding his goal.

Bradbury uses Hart’s frustration to examine a second disturbing aspect of belief: the rise of violence in service of faith. The Mayor states the problem rather succinctly. Hart never once believed that the Man was who everyone else thought He was. Even after hearing a thousand testimonies, Hart doesn’t really believe in the Man. He believes that he’s missed out on someTHING, and he wants to have IT. The Mayor can’t give him the answers he wants which increases Hart’s frustration. He knows that he has missed out on the most important event of a lifetime. He knows that these people have had that experience. Now he wants to have it as well. Therefore, is he not justified in using any means necessary to achieve the most important experience in a lifetime? The irony, of course, is that his violent act only makes his finding the Man more impossible. As the Mayor says, “Your hurting yourself.” The final irony of the story is that as Hart goes off into the the galaxy to chase down the Man, the Mayor “beckoned to the others and turned. ‘Come along now. We mustn’t keep him waiting.’ They walked into the City.”

Our friend KP in Illinois is a woman with theories. One of our favorites is the idea of The Five Questions. These are five simple questions that if people would ask before they do something just might alleviate the vast majority of behavior caused problems. The questions were first formulated in a teaching environment, but over time we’ve applied the five questions to many events both local and worldwide with satisfactory results. Lately several people has asked for a list of the five questions, so here they are.

1. What did you think was going to happen?
The power of the five questions was revealed back when Prince Harry wore a Nazi uniform. Imagine how Harry’s life might have been different had he simply asked himself, seriously, what might happen if the young man third in line to the British throne were to don the uniform not only of the most reviled regime in history but also of the army that almost bombed his own country back into the stone age. In general, this question can help avoid many problems simply by forcing one to think realistically about the consequences of one’s actions.

2. What’s that supposed to mean?
People often toss off comments without thinking or try to hide their true feelings with obfuscation. These attempts often lead to trouble, trouble that can often be averted by asking the question.

3. How long have you known about this?
Originally formulate as “When was this assigned?”, “How long have you known about this?” is the question to ask people when they’ve obviously known that something was going to happen for quite some time but failed to act on it. In the classroom, this is the question usually asked of students who are desperately trying to get an extension on an assignment they’ve had for three weeks but only started working on three days before the due date.

4. When were you going to tell me about this?
Related to question #3 but bringing something special to table, this question deals with information that people have known for quite some time, information that may have been beneficial for others to know, but for reasons unclear to all has been withheld.

5. How’s that working out for you?
Along with question one, Question 5 is perhaps the workhorse of the bunch. Usually asked of people who are explaining (or making an excuse) their plan of action that is clearly not working but that they clearly persist in enacting.

So there they are, the Five Questions. We’d love to hear your examples. Who knows, if response is good enough we might even make up a Five Questions website.

Believing that it is right manly to occasionally perform automobile maintenance oneself, I endeavored yesterday to do so. What? Oh, right, must right manly about attempts to be manly. So, for various and sundry reasons, I cooked up the following plan for a really frustrating day.

Day Before

1. Tell mechanically inclined friend that you’re finally going to take care of that pesky car problem he’s been hinting at for weeks.
2. Go to three auto parts suppliers to acquire: wiper blades, air filter, PCV valve, and fuel filter.
3. After teaching, remember that you don’t know what you’re doing. Go back to auto parts store and buy book on how to fix your 1998 Escort.
4. Read pertinent parts of the manual.
5. Go to bed with a plan in your head, confidence in your soul, and a song in your heart.

The Big Day
NOTE: Setting aside a full day to take care of your car maintenance issues not only provides ample time for the ingredients to simmer, but also allows a wonderful bouquet to develop. Of course, packing all of this into a pressurized morning or afternoon brings its own subtle nicities.

1. Be sure that the high temperature for your work day is not above freezing.
2. Drop off spouse at work and head off to the Mega-Lo-Mart to acquire the jackstands and jack you do not have.
3. Stand for 10 minutes in front of the various choices of jack/jackstands. You don’t want to cheap out on the things holding a ton of car above the cement garage floor with your head in between. Leave with a moderately priced jack and the heavy duty jackstands.
4. Arrive home and arrange your materials.
5. Successfully install air filter and wiper blades. This step builds confidence; the more confidence you have, the more can be crushed, and the higher your frustration yield will be.
6. Consult newly purchased manual and change PCV valve. Notice small hole in the hose leading to the PCV valve. Set aside.
7. Visually locate fuel pump.
8. Try to reach fuel pump and fail. Notice that the path to the fuel pump is crossed many times by rigid, steel tubes not pictured in your manual. (Probably very important parts of the air conditioning system.) Finally succeed in touching fuel pump, even to the point of discovering which way the fuel flows, but be sure that even though you can touch it, you can’t actually get a purchase on the thing anywhere to be able to manipulate it in any way. This step begins the breakdown of confidence into frustration.
9. Believe that perhaps you can reach it better from below the car.
10. Unpack new jack and jackstands. Read instructions.
11. Following procedure in manual, depressurize fuel system and disconnect battery, rendering the car inoperable.
12. Fiddle around for 10 minutes–sweep floor, consult manual, change burned out bulb in shop light, crawl around under car–figuring out where to place the jack so that it lifts the car without pushing the engine through the hood.
13. Surprise yourself by operating the jack successfully. Very important to feel good about your work thus far or else frustration will not have ample confidence upon which to work.
14. Discover that the jackstands are too tall to fit under the car.
15. Double check max. lift height on jack with min height of stands. See that the stands SHOULD fit under the car. But don’t.
16. Your instinct here will be to halt the frustration flow. Go with that instinct. It will help build the frustration pressure. Try various methods of inserting the stands. Stare at the fuel pump. Inspect the heat shields.
17. Finally notice that the box for the jackstands lists SUV’s as the primary use, autos are last. Realize you must return the jackstands.
18. Lower the car, reconnect the battery, repressurize the fuel system. Notice how any joy you might have in completing these tasks is robbed by the impending sense of failure.
19. Eat lunch.
20. Decide that the fuel pump can wait. Gather all applicable receipts. For extra flavor, misplace the receipts.
21. Toddle off to the Mega-Lo-Mart to return the jackstands. Wander aimlessly about the store having your soul sucked out while listening to holiday music and eyeing various ridiculous animals made of lights and baling wire. Purchase “icicle” lights.
22. Enter NAPA Autoparts store and return fuel pump. If you’re recipe is going well, the clerk will take the part from you without asking questions but will give you a look that very clearly says, “Geesh, can’t be a M-A-N can’t change out a silly ol’ fuel pump.”
23. Turn to the PCV problem you put aside earlier. Bring up the part with a hole in it. Show clerk the part on the car. The goal here is to get the manager involved in locating a hard to find part. Self-esteem will build at this moment, which is required for complete frustration extraction.
24. After an impressively long search through the computer and many grunts, manager will tell you the part is not only not available to them (and you) but is probably a “dealer part.”
25. Leave the store with return receipt in hand. Drive down the street to the Ford dealer.
26. Repeat PCV problem steps. Parts guy will tell you that he can get the part but not today. Delaying the completion of the job is very important. Furthermore, he will show you the price of the part, which can only be obtained as part of an assembly. Part will be 5 times more expensive than the PCV valve you replaced.
27. Parts guy will suggest that it’s not worth replacing and hand you the printout with the part number.
28. Mumble something about “I’ll try something at home.
29. Go to hardware store to find power adapter for the icicle lights you just bought.
30. Return home. Spend 20 minutes going through your woefully disorganized garage and tools. Finally locate black electrical tape in the back of some drawer in the house.
31. Wrap tape around PCV hose. Call it done.
32. Go on to porch to install lights you just purchased.
33. Realize that your entire house is clad in aluminum. There isn’t a wood surface to be found. Notice that the light clips you purchased will only sort of work on one side of the area you wanted to string with lights.
34. Having now spent the vast part of the day standing out in the sub-freezing cold not getting anything done, go inside.

At the end of the process, you’ll have a wonderfully heady brew of frustration.