Plan More Betterly America

Ok, now that I have your attention let's you and I have a little chat, mmkay?

Who in the reading audience likes palindromes? Who doesn’t right? Who hasn’t broken out a few good palindromes at a party to spice it up? Good, very good. Now, who in the reading audience knows what a palindrome is? Hmm I see. Well don’t be ashamed if you don’t know what they are, you are probably more familiar with them than you give yourself credit for. Oh yeah, I’m not trying to say I am smarter than you are, heck I ended the last sentence with a preposition. (ha ha, use the link dumbass). A simple palindrome, is “mom” or “dad”, as they spell the same way backwards as they do forwards. Longer ones are “racecar” or my favorite palindromic sentence, “a man a can a canal panama”. Now, as an old lady smoking a cigar while pumping her gas once told me,

“Palindromes aren’t solely words that spell the same way front and backwards, they are also words or phrases that can be re-arranged to spell different words using the same letters”. Yeah what she said. God bless her for filling us in on that. Wait isn’t that an anagram? Now I’m confused. An example would be “Osama Bin Laden” into “Old man in a base”. Funnier if you know that Al-Qaeda translates in English to “The Base”. Ok maybe that was only funny to me. The point is I wanted to share the above with you for the simple reason that if you glean nothing else from this post, you have learned a little about palindromes and quite possibly anagrams. If nothing else, these kids will help you find really smart people who can help solve all the world's problems. Wait or maybe they have the answer all along.

So let's get to work here right? Ok but now into the real purpose of this post. Ever tried to plan stuff with a group of people? Sure, we all have. Be it an office party which inevitably turns into Phil from accounting copying his butt cheeks on the office copier, an outing on the town that graduates into drucanery (that’s drunken chicanery for those also creating their own words at home) , or a vacation to some great out of country location that results in your incarceration in the local jail as your cellmate El Hefe forces you to sleep on your stomach with your boxers turned around to backside…proper planning with a group of friends can be the lynch pin that ensures success. Alas, as you have probably found out via El Hefe or other sources, it can be a pain in the ass (ha, no pun intended there amigo) to try to get the gang firing on a cylinders towards a plan. Usually, you go through a non-scientifical (that's a word, honest) scientific process during planning. It closely resembles coming up with an idea, “Hey guys, let’s go to the Super Bowl this year!” followed by an immediate synchronized response from the gang of, “oh hell yeah bro, I am so there, oh hell yeah”. That puts the wheels in motion so let's pile everyone into the pickup and head down there!

For the next couple of hours or days you and the gang are all energized, looking at prices on tickets, hotel packages, and making your picks on who will “go all the way”, excluding the obvious choice of the chick in high school who did indeed go all the way but has no relevance to a conversation regarding the game of pro football. Now what seemed so damn supported early on, encounters in its middle-to-late stages what I like call “buddy bailing” or “friend flaking”. Alliterations aside, this is the fine art and practice of an individual evaluation of the situation applying such contributing factors as, “the wife”, “the kids”, “the bank account”, and also quite possibly “the rash that you thought would go away in a day or two but seems to burn on like an oil-well fire for yet another week”. That being said, when you and the gang meet up days later the chorus is still a resounding, “Dude we are so going to the Super Bowl this year, we are gonna do it this year baby, oh hell yeah!” Let’s say you are the one who is planning and organizing this holy pilgrimage to every man’s Mecca. It is a safe bet that you got a pretty strong commitment from your buddies that the trip will go down as planned. Plus you have been told your buddies are pretty good parents to. So if they can plan and raise a kid, then this should be easy right?

A month passes and you bring it up maybe once or twice a day, something to the effect of, “dude can’t believe we are gonna go to the Super Bowl, oh hell yeah”. Some kind of strange exotic man dance ensues shortly after the exchange and then a high five seals it. The elation can…not…be…de-nied! Then, weeks or even days prior to the big day, carefully planned and rehearsed bailing and flaking operations commence. It is the forecast that no weatherman wants to predict on the innocent masses,

“tonight folks it looks like we have prevailing wind and rain coming from the northeast into the metro area with a 100% chance of a shitstorm hitting you when you least expect it”. Indeed, one by one, they approach you, “hey man, my wife and I talked about it last night, and she really wants me to stay home cause of bills and stuff”. Hmm bills and stuff. Dude just threw up the stiff-arm, showed off his best Heisman move, and placed all bets on the home team. The rest follow suit in similar fashion, “dude, I think I am coming down with some kind of cancer, my knees are always popping when I wake up in the morning, I gotta see the doctor that weekend we were supposed to go”. Right dude, thanks, I can tell you got your medical degree from playing the board game “Operation” when you were a wee laddy. As you get hit with each reason, they get better and better as if the stakes were being raised each time. “Umm hey, remember those Super Bowl plans (why no I don’t, we made plans for the Super Bowl? Wow that is news to me!), yeah it looks like, and dude you’re not gonna believe this (oh yeah is that so? Try me oh mysterious mystic mystery wonder of mysteriousness) but um, yeah, my dad just got admitted to the hospital cause some guy kneed him in the junk at Wal-Mart while he was sock shopping”. Yeah? Really? Wowsers, I guess I will just go by myself and wear all nine of the individually lettered jerseys we all bought together that spell “GO FALCONS”. Yes, reader, the Atlanta Falcons will soon return to greatness. If you are unsure of who the Atlanta Falcons are, close this blog, hit yourself once in the head, open the blog back up and continue reading. No Mike Vick comments please. Now here is a great picture of an Alabama cell phone.

So, whatever the case, planning a group excursion to whatever glorious destination seems to be an arduous process at times. I mean when is it easy to get a group of people to come to a conclusive endstate without a little compromise along the way? Would we really have an operating body of government in these great United States if we didn’t have a bunch of people deciding on plans in advance, adding their own opinions and options, backing out at the last minute, and then leaving it up to one person to dictate policy and procedure and follow through on said plans? Wait, now wait a doggone minute, the Super Bowl has nothing to do with governing or bodies of government. But this dog just might!

What was I thinking? Must have had my mind on anagrams. Nevertheless, planning doesn’t have to be as grueling and demanding as cat herding nor as painful and uncalculated as masturbating with a cheese-grater. Which the just mentioned, by all accounts, measures high on cost and relatively low on benefit.

So to enable, nay empower you to be a perfect planning guru I have devised a way for you to come out smelling like roses at the end, regardless of the situation and circumstances that present themselves. To apply some credibility to this course of action to perfect planning I am about to relay to you, I want to say that over thirty years on my behalf have been applied to research and development regarding this subject. Moreover, here I am, passing the savings on to you at this very moment. Yes, even as a young kid and through my teenage years to my twenties I have been experimenting with the best way to plan for such occasions. The result and answer is quite simple…get someone else to plan it. Credits roll. Can I get a “Bling, Bling” from the audience? Oh hell yeah.

Ending not to your liking? Ok let's end it with another nice picture for you. Here, happy? Doesn't this look like fun?