Mid-term elections change absolutely nothing

By Daniel B. Kline

With the mid-term elections only a few days away, I see little hope that anything will actually be different in Washington after we finish voting. Some of the names will change and instead of vague liberal inertia, we might get vague conservative inertia, but the difference is like changing the color of your house from white to off-white.

For all the outrage and all the attack ads being run throughout the country, the two-party system makes it nearly impossible for real change to occur. Just look at the last two years – where the Democrats controlled the White House and held a large majority in Congress – and you can see that even with overwhelming majorities, it’s nearly impossible to get anything done.

Politicians in both parties care more about their political affiliation than helping their constituents. Congressmen vote along party lines on nearly all occasions with the only exception being when their vote won’t change the result and disagreeing looks good.

Both Republicans and Democrats have a distinct interest in maintaining the status quo. If they make loud statement about their political beliefs they get the publicity they need and look like they are fighting on behalf of their party.

Of course, the rhetoric rarely becomes law, so neither party has to admit defeat. Instead, most things stay the same and control just shifts subtly every two years.

Nearly every commercial being run by non-incumbent office-seekers talks about how Candidate X won’t be beholden to their party. In reality, the second Candidate X hits office, everything from his reelection chances to his locker at the congressional gym hinges on his party loyalty.

We don’t have a government, we have two fraternities with only slightly different beliefs focused on staying at the party. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the frat the prefers keg parties or the one that likes doing shots – at the end of the day you’re still drunk and not quite sure where you are or who’s in bed with you.

Real change can only come from electing actual independent thinkers not affiliated with either party in large numbers. I’m not talking about fringe groups that are really just Democrats or Republicans under a different name, but actual radical thinkers in large numbers.

We need Congressmen not beholden to any political agenda. Thoughtful people whose opinions can be swayed by strong arguments – people who know how to compromise for the greater good.

Unfortunately, we will likely elect intelligent non-party-affiliated people to Congress right around the time we let people who are not super good looking take up all the slots on TV and in the movies. As a country, we need to stop thinking, “hey this guy thinks like me” and start thinking, “hey, this guy thinks.”

Until we do that, we’ll just get more of the same from people who say they want to serve the people, but really only serve themselves, their friends and their political party.

Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com or hear his podcast at Worstideasever.com. Follow him on Twitter, @worstideas.

Get fit, get fat, repeat

By Daniel B. Kline

My relationship with exercise has been an on-again/off-again affair. Generally, I work out in bunches, getting almost into shape before slacking off and sliding back into “uh oh, my pants don’t button” territory.

During the period I am hitting the gym regularly I never see my undoing. Once I get into an exercise routine it seems impossible to me that I will ultimately fall back into a period of sloth. It’s not that I so enjoy working out that I can’t imagine not doing it; it’s more that I enjoy being less fat and not wanting to wear a rain poncho in the shower.

My last run of fitness lasted exactly a year. I was running a very large toy store and since we didn’t open until ten (and I came in around seven) I had time each morning to meet a very fit coworker at they gym. Having a workout partner was very motivating and, of the first time ever, I was seriously lifting weights.

Unfortunately, while some people can lift weights and put on visible muscle, I have a body type that defies muscularity. I could certainly lift more and more each month, but aside from one freakishly large bicep, I mostly looked the same – albeit thinner.

My clothes fit better though and I genuinely felt good about my appearance making it seem impossible that I would go back to my lazy old ways. Even when my workout partner and I barely made it to the gym for the month of December we rationalized it by pointing out how hard we worked in the store during the month of December.

Certainly unloading pallet after pallet of toys for eager holiday shoppers and being on our feet for 12 hour stretches made up for a few missed workouts? In January we would get back to business pushing up stacks of weights next to the ‘roided out muscleheads and nearly dead elderly folks who populated our gym.

For the first few weeks of January, we even stuck to that promise. We managed to wade our way through the endless drooping parade of naked old people who hung out in the locker room and we even avoided a pumped up veteran who threatened to kill us when I made a joke about Kid Rock.

I was back on track and my ability to fit into my dress pants seemed safe. Then, of course, I quit my job.

Theoretically, this should have allowed me more time to exercise. No longer beholden to the clock, I was now living the glorious freelance lifestyle and should easily be able to find 45 minutes a day for exercise.

In reality, however, not having steady work sent me into a state of paralysis by electronics. Given that every phone call could be from a client and every email from a possible client, I became chained to my laptop and cell phone.

I had time to work out, but fear of missing an opportunity had me skipping trips to the gym. It wasn’t sudden, more of a gradual trail off, but by March I was not exercising at all and when we hit October, 1, well, let’s just say putting on a suit required hiring the guy Jennifer Lopez uses to get into her skinny jeans.

So, it was with a supreme desire to not have to spend the money on bigger pants that I returned to the gym. I’m two weeks into my new program which mixes weightlifting with “running” (walking a the moment, but running eventually remains a distant goal).

I struggled through the first week of soreness that always accompanies lifting weights and I can now once again brush my hair without help. I’d love to say I’ve seen some tangible benefits, but realistically, it has only been two weeks.

I’d also like to promise that this time, I have made a permanent life switch and that going to the gym will now and forever be part of my life. Unfortunately, I think we all know that I will be writing this column again two years from now.

Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com or befriend him at facebook.com/dankline. Follow him on Twitter, @worstideas.

Fame certainly has different levels

By Daniel B. Kline

A newspaper I read last week had an article on the woman whose hands appear holding an apple on the cover of one of the “Twilight” books. This perfectly nice-seeming lady, who also works as a foot model due to her oddly small feet, actually appears at conventions making her perhaps the least famous celebrity in America.

This almost-barely-sort of famous set of hands, of course, hopes to spin her role holding a piece of fruit while not moving into an acting career. More likely, she will spend the rest of her life signing book covers at sci-fi conventions and – if she’s lucky – basking in the glory of being the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question.

What once would have been a nice story to tell the grandkids has instead become a launching pad for fame. Never mind that acting and body part modeling have nothing to do with each other. Any whiff of celebrity seems to give nearly everyone an insatiable desire to be famous.

Fortunately, the bar for fame has been set especially low as the reality show era has created hundreds, if not thousands, of vaguely famous (and a few incredibly famous) people who possess no talent whatsoever. You no longer need to sing, dance, act or create anything to become famous, you can be a celebrity just for being a loudmouth or overly willing to take your clothes off.

We now have a famous guy whose chief appeal is his fabulous abs and dozens of “celebrities” who are well-known only because of how badly they act when drunk. Sadly, I become more reserved and careful when drunk or else I would attempt to turn tanning and alcoholism into a career.

Were I a good-looking woman or a woman with any sort of minor fame, I would, of course, accidentally misplace a tape of myself having sex with a washed up ‘80s rock star. These tapes not only bring in the bucks, they actually make you more famous.

Appearing in a sex tape (if you are a minor celebrity) lets you do the magazine cover/talk show rounds talking about how ashamed you are of the tape, which you, of course, actually fully intended the public to see. Be careful with this one because if you turn out to be not famous enough for this to work, the tape just becomes something for friends to laugh at.

Another sure path to very minor celebrity is to appear as a minor character in somebody else’s glorious achievement. This works better if that achievement happens to be a science fiction film or a horror movie.

The people who played victims in various slasher movies and every single bit player in a “Star Wars” film make money and achieve tiny bits of notoriety appearing at various conventions. I’m not sure having dorks pay $10 to sign pictures of your half second of screen time in the Jedi death montage from “Revenge of the Sith” makes you a celebrity, but it does put you way ahead of the hand model and still more famous than a writer (me) appearing in papers around the country.

I’m, of course, available as a hand model and plan to parlay that fame into a sex tape with the drummer from Vixen. After that, I plan to either gain a lot of weight so I can do “Celebrity Fit Club” or become some sort of addict so I can do “Celebrity Rehab.”

Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com. See new content daily at WorstIdeasEver.com and follow Kline on Twitter at @WorstIdeas.

Meaningless alert does absolutely nothing

By Daniel B. Kline

The federal government has issued an official terrorism alert regarding Americans travelling to Europe. This, of course, has everything to do with information gathered by intelligence sources and absolutely nothing to do with distracting the public from the failing economy.

The State Department – which, you have to assume, would have no interest in diverting attention from the president’s plummeting approval ratings and the complete failure to deliver any sort of meaningful economic recovery issued the alert. In it, they don’t recommend canceling your travel plans (as our European allies would get pretty mad about that); instead the alert calls on Americans to be vigilant when travelling.

Before the State Department issued this alert, most Americans were, of course, ignoring any signs of potential terrorists. That group of suspicious looking people abandoning luggage all over Heathrow Airport? They must just be especially forgetful. That swarthy guy with a bulky coat on a warm day with wires poking out? He’s probably a wire salesman with a naturally low body temperature.

Now that the State Department has issued an alert, I’m sure average American tourists in Europe will begin immediately increasing their vigilance which should result in all sorts of foiled terrorist plots. Evildoers beware, a guy with a camera trying to find the Eiffel Tower after a few glasses of red wine is now on the case.

The alert was issued, so the State Department says, because our intelligence sources have picked up increased activity. We don’t actually know anything, but we hear more people who may or may not be actual bad guys talking about stuff.

When this happens, of course, the correct response is to panic the public when there is absolutely nothing they can do. Like telling someone they have a better than average chance of contracting Alzheimer’s disease but that nothing they can do will increase or decrease their odds of getting it, the terror alert is panic for panic’s sake.

Essentially the alert tells us that something might happen. Of course, something always might happen. Terrorists might blow up a public building. An Englishman might start shooting Americans over our lack of respect for Benny Hill and the French might stop being subtly snooty towards us and start poisoning our croissants.

The federal government should not issue alerts based on theoretical threats because telling us they think something might happen somewhere on a pretty large continent full of tourist destinations accomplishes nothing. If we have credible information that Al Qaeda plans to take out the British Museum or that place that first started frying Mars bars, then by all means tell us.

Until you have credible evidence of an actual threat – not theoretical evidence of a possible threat—keep it to yourselves. Issuing warnings that tell people to be vigilant does absolutely nothing. At worst, it’s a government trying to distract us from the more pressing problems at home. At best, it’s a sad reminder of just how useless government can be and how out of touch with reality our leaders have become.

Daniel B. Kline's work appears in over 100 papers weekly. He can be reached at dan@notastep.com or you can see his archive at dbkline.com. See new content daily at WorstIdeasEver.com and follow Kline on Twitter at @WorstIdeas.