I am Brucker, and I approve of this message.

Voting is a funny thing. Don't get me wrong. In the midst of all I have to say here, I am certainly not trying to say that voting is a bad idea. The democratic process is vital to a free society, it's just that it can be confusing trying to figure out what the results mean.

Back in 1991, there was a funny thing that happened in the world of voting outside of politics: Rolling Stone magazine had readers vote for what album they thought was the best album of the year. The results: Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion. I don't personally remember the album, as I've never been much of a fan of the band, but it was a double album that debuted at the top two slots in the Billboard charts, something that nobody else has managed to do (not that a lot of double albums like that are released too often). The funny part? Rolling Stone also allowed readers to vote for worst album of the year, and in case you couldn't see it coming, yes, Use Your Illusion was voted worst as well. I recall the editors expressing some confusion about the matter, but it really made sense to me. It simply was an album (and a band, for that matter) that few people were neutral concerning.

An article in the current issue of Newsweek talks about similar irregularities in politics that never show up because we don't get to vote that way. The way voting works is generally taken for granted: You vote for your favorite, and the one with the most votes wins. Why do it any other way?

The article pointed out that as most people know, President Bush has actually been elected president with a smaller number of popular votes than the second-place candidate. (I don't recall which election it was, or if it was even both of them.) The odd thing that was pointed out in the article was that while Bush won the (so-called) popular vote in Florida in 2000, it's quite likely that he was the least-liked candidate by Floridans in general! If you assume (although it's not necessarily so) that most voters who voted for Gore would have rather had Nader than Bush, and of course those who voted for Nader would have rather had Gore than Bush, then more than 50% of the voters in Florida had Bush as their least favorite candidate! But voting doesn't always work to get rid of such a candidate, obviously.

The really thought-provoking part of the article was this:

Consider an election with 30 voters, who mentally rank the candidates this way:

Three voters prefer John McCain to Mike Huckabee to Mitt Romney to Rudy Giuliani, in that order.
Six prefer McCain to Romney to Huckabee to Giuliani.
Three prefer Giuliani to Huckabee to Romney to McCain.
Five prefer Giuliani to Romney to Huckabee to McCain.
Two prefer Huckabee to Giuliani to Romney to McCain.
Five prefer Huckabee to Romney to Giuliani to McCain.
Two prefer Romney to Giuliani to Huckabee to McCain.
Four prefer Romney to Huckabee to Giuliani to McCain.

In our system, McCain wins, with nine first-place votes, trailed by Giuliani (eight), Huckabee (seven) and Romney (six). Now let's say Huckabee drops out. Cross out his name where he came in first, and notice who is now the first choice of his former supporters: two go with Giuliani and five with Romney. That pushes Romney, formerly in last place, to the top, with 11 first-place votes. As the GOP field prunes itself, don't be surprised if the new leader comes from the back of the pack.

This is fascinating to me. Not just for the simple claim that it makes, but the other implications of this setup, which I suspect the author put in for people like me who can't help but analyze these sorts of things to death. You'd think intuitively that if a candidate drops out, the remaining candidates would stay in the same relative order, but not only does Romney move from last to first if Huckabee drops out, but McCain moves from first to last, reversing the order of the remaining three! In fact, losing any of the candidates causes the other three to switch order of preference, meaning that Romney wins any three-way race of which he's a part. Furthermore, any pairwise matching also reverses the original order, meaning that while Giuliani comes in second to McCain in the four-way race, the only race he can win out of all possible combos is a one-on-one match up with McCain.

The author suggests a form of voting known as "approval voting", a form of voting that can be confusing for some, but has certain benefits. It comes in many forms, but here's one I suggest for this scenario: each person votes for their favorite two candidates, and the one with the most votes wins. In that scenario, Romney gets 22, Huckabee 17, Giuliani 12 and McCain 9. Once again, the complete opposite result, but perhaps one that best reveals the will of the voters. Sometimes it's hard for some people to quite fathom voting for more than one candidate when only one wins in the end, but if that hurdle can be passed, what I really like about this is how much this gives more power to third-party and dark horse candidates. Think back to 1992, when Ross Perot was running for president. He actually got quite a few votes, but it's likely that many people who were considering him were afraid of "throwing away their vote". How many would have voted for him if they could have also voted for either Clinton or Bush at the same time? If we had approval voting, we probably wouldn't have had eight years of either Clinton or Dubya! (I think there's something in there to appeal to just about anyone.)

On top of all that, it seems to me that an alternative voting system gets people more involved in politics. Think about it: how many times have you thought to yourself or even heard someone else proclaim "I don't feel like my one vote makes a difference!" This is probably true, but then, what if you had more than one vote? No longer do you think of voting as choosing the lesser of two evils, but instead, it's a matter of examining the whole field of candidates and choosing the ones you like best. More options instead of singular decisions, more examinations of issues instead of popularity contests, more candidates declaring their own worth instead of slinging mud at their biggest rival(s)--what more could you want?

Our current system has its flaws, but I don't think it's completely broken. Rather than complaining about the system, people should be examining what parts of the system work and what parts don't. Why does the electoral college exist, and is that reason a good reason to keep it, or throw it away? How can we help people make informed decisions about government instead of passing laws like term limits and balanced-budget amendments that effectively put the government on auto-pilot? What can we do to make elections into a contest of individual candidates with personal convictions rather than cookie-cutter images of the same two party platforms over and over? There's always potential to improve and streamline the system, whatever it is. Can we find ways to make it happen though?

American Idolatry

So, tonight's the big night that the new season of "American Idol" starts (or maybe last night, by the time I get this posted), and everyone will be tuning in to see wave after wave of people who really want to be stars. I seem to recall that I attempted to write about this topic at the beginning of last season, when a young woman came on the tryouts with (like so many) virtually no singing ability whatsoever, but unlike most of the other bad singers, she knew that she could not sing! She explained to the judges that it would be really cool if the next American Idol was someone who had no singing ability at the beginning, but in the course of the show, learned how to sing!

Like so many who are clueless in other ways, she was tossed out. The thing that's odd about these people to me is how surprised they are to be tossed out! I mean really, don't most of the people watch the show before they try out? I consider myself to be a pretty good singer, but I know I'm not destined to be famous for my singing ability, because it's slightly above average at best. I know I wouldn't make it, because despite being not awful, I have a realistic view of my own abilities, and a realistic view of Simon Cowell. How do these people not know that they're horrible singers? How is it that they think they can stand before those judges and be praised when even many good singers get booted, and more than a few of those who are good enough to make it on the show get told by the judges that they've got some serious work to do have a chance to be the winner? So many people come out of the room with the judges with tears streaming down their faces, crying out something along the lines of "I can't believe that they were so mean!" Seriously, have you watched the show before you tried out?

But as usual, I'm taking a circuitous route to my main topic. While my first admonition for would-be idols is a tiny dose of realism in the form of (1) realize you probably don't sing as well as you think you do, (2) expect to be told that you are the worst singer in the world and be made fun of on national television, there are some things I would also like to say in comfort to the losers.

What portion of the people in the world today who are famous for their singing got their start on "American Idol"? I think I heard it said that this is season seven, so at most, if everyone who made it as one of the 12 contestants (I don't watch the show, only the tryouts, so sorry if I'm getting details wrong) became famous, that's only about 70 people out of hundreds and hundreds of recording artists. Being on "American Idol" is not the normal way to become famous. Just a few years back, the show didn't even exist, and there were still people singing for a living. If you really want to be a professional singer, and you really have the talent to do it, you don't need reality television to get there.

The thing that I pause to mention, but only a little because in some ways it's the most important point of all, is that you don't even really need singing talent to become a star. I remember back in the '90s, I heard many a deejay comment after playing a Sugar Ray song, "Crap, if that's what a rock star sounds like, I could do it!" That was just one band out of many that could be listed. Rage Against The Machine, Cake, Bob Dylan, Violent Femmes, all of these and many more are great bands/musicians that don't sing pretty, but it's not about singing pretty, is it? I'm a big fan of Johnny Cash, and towards the end of his life, when health problems caused his voice to start to fail him, he did some powerful work in the studio. Sure, you can't be completely tone deaf (well, a rapper could be, I suppose, but that's a musical form with its own challenges), but what really counts to most people who listen to music is that it speaks to them emotionally. Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins has the ability to sing beautifully, but a lot of his songs are little more than screeching and yelling into the mike, and his fans love it all.

Last year during the tryouts, there was also a teenage boy who when kicked out complained through tears that all he wanted to do was "be famous". This is the biggest mystery of all to me, and yet, it is the thing that makes the title of the show seem so particularly apropos. In the end, although one has to be a great singer in order to be the next American Idol, the show isn't about people who want to be singers. No, the show is people who already are singers trying to show that they are better singers than other contestants. For both those who can and cannot sing, the show is about people who want to be famous. Face it, there are a lot of people in the world today who would much rather be the next William Hung than be an unknown face who sings beautifully in their church choir or local musical theatre. There's this odd draw to being a person who, when they go down the street, people point and shout, "Hey, it's that famous person!"

Why? Why do people want that? Because it works out so well for Britney Spears? Because fame brings out the best in Amy Winehouse? Because of the great way that fame changed the life of Kurt Cobain? When I look at the way famous people live their lives, it seems like the definition of it is having thousands of people in the world who care about the way you live your life, but don't really care about you. Famous people have the whole world following their every move, but never really knowing them in a personal way. As for me, I would rather be given a hug by one person who really knows me than have a standing ovation by 50,000 complete strangers. Does that make me weird? How many famous people are there that not only have a successful career, but a stable personal life? It seems pretty rare.

I guess what I'm saying is that for those who really want to be a famous singer, don't bother with "American Idol" unless you're prepared to have your ego crushed. And if you think you are truly willing to lay down your life as a sacrifice on the altar of fame, be sure, because you may very well have to give up your life. As for me, I'm just happy if my kids like my singing.

New Year's Irresolution

So, tomorrow is New Year's Day, right? This may not be a rhetorical question.

Within the year commonly referred to as 2008, Jews will celebrate the beginning of the year 5769 on September 29th. Many people in Asia will mark February 7th as the beginning of the year of the (Earth) Rat. For Muslims, the year 1429 starts on January 10th, and the year 1430 starts on December 29th. This can conceivably be confusing, you may imagine.

The fact is, I've always felt that celebrating new years and anniversaries was a custom that was somewhat questionable. The amount of time it takes the earth to orbit around the sun is really in some sense only interesting when it comes to agriculture, and not personally being a farmer, why should I care? We mark the days to give them significance, not because they have any inherent significance in themselves.

Even if they did have significance for their own sake, then we have to wonder, how do we properly mark that significance? There are, as implied above, numerous calendar systems, and there is no inherent reason to assume that any one of them is the best. The calendar we use here in the west has a 365-day year, but of course, that's not the actual time that it takes for the earth to move around the sun. How long does it take? Well, it's not 365.25 days, either, as you may have been led to believe. I'm not sure which is the exact measure one might wsh to use, but according to what I have read, the "Gaussian year" is 365.2568983 days, the "Sidereal year" is 365.2563604 days, and the "Tropical year" is 365.2421904 days. The odd upshot of the fractional part of the year and our attempts to adjust for it in our calendars is that a child born on New Year's Day 2008 would likely have the true anniversary of his/her birth on December 31st, 2008, due to the extra day we will be adding in February. Weird.

Really, though, I had a point in all of this, and it wasn't supposed to be a downer about the futility of trying to mark the passage of time in a universe that works like clockwork, if by "clockwork" we mean in the sense of a watch that that loses about a minute per day. The fact is that like so many things in our world that we have laid down as arbitrary rules and measurings of what's right, there is still a purpose, and a good one. So many of us, myself included, have some odd internal preference to live like anarchists and say, "Throw out the rules, all of them, and let me live as I choose, not by your schedule, not by your standards, not by your rules, but with true freedom!" But it is those very rules that give us the freedom that we really truly desire.

I hate living at the mercy of the clock and my work schedule, and I hate to have someone say, you must be sitting at your desk at such-and-such time, and you must take your break at this hour, and you have to stay here until such time as I say. I have to work the same time every day from Monday through Friday, although I'd much rather have the freedom to simply put in as many hours as I wish at whatever time interval I wish, on whichever days I wish. Yet... I said to a friend the other day, "Meet me for lunch on Thursday at 11, okay?" I would not have had the chance to meet with my friend without the common rules of the clock, an understanding of the days of the week, and the annual commemoration (artificial though it is on many levels) of the birth of Christ, which had given him occasion to be in town and visit family.

Yes, like so many of the building blocks of our society, I have a love-hate relationship with the calendar and the clock. I'm a horrible procrastinator, and the people and institutions of the world around me constantly push me with deadlines that I hate, but if they chose not to, I wouldn't give them the time of day, as they say.

Confession time: In 2007, I procrastinated in sending in my vehicle registration papers. I ended up paying a late fee. When I finally sent in the papers, I got my registration sticker, but procrastinated in putting it on the car. I got pulled over and ticketed. I procrastinated in paying off the ticket. Due to further procrastination, what should have been a $10 fine ended up turning into an astronomical amount that I shall not disclose here, and on top of that, because I procrastinated in reading my mail and paying of that increased fine in time, my license was suspended, and I will have to pay to get it reinstated. I am a victim of the calendar, but it's certainly not the calendar's fault, it's my own fault for ignoring it when it came knocking at my door.

There's a lesson to be learned in this, (Setting aside the obvious lesson of "Brucker is an idiot"?) and for some people it may be obvious, while for others not so much. Most of us, when we think of evil, think of an act of causing harm to another individual by our actions. Nonetheless, there is a strong tendency to overlook another sort of evil, which is the evil of knowing what is the right action to take, and not taking it. What I see in the situation I have put myself in, and the situation that many of us contemplate in taking the New Year as a time of self-evaluation, is a corollary sort of evil: the evil of knowing that which is the right thing to do, and putting it off for later.

So often in life, we know what is right; we even know that there is an action that we should do that is right, and failing to do it is wrong. Yet still, we hesitate. Is there a nasty habit that you need to stop? Is there a problem that you need to fix, and have been putting off? Is there an uncomfortable truth that you need to come to grips with, and have mentally avoided as long as you can? If it has to be the New Year for you to face up to those things, then so be it, but whenever you happen to be reading this, it is the New Year. It may be some culture's day to commemorate the completion of a solar cycle, or it may be the anniversary of someone's birth that you know. Every single day is the anniversary of something, and every single day is a good day to do that which is right. I don't know what that is for you, but if you know, then there is no better day than today to do it.

Remembering the king of Kings

It's interesting to me that here in the United States of America, a land that is built on a foundation of religious freedom, we have a national holiday to commemorate the birth of a great religious leader. I mean, have no doubt, he was a great man, and although he was not understood by so many in his own lifetime. He was martyred while he was still young, but in the short time he walked this earth, he shook up society in a way that will probably never be forgotten. While I am a proponent of freedom of religion, and I realize that sometimes means keeping religion out of government, I wholly support the official status of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday.

While I am glad we commemorate this great man who may be one of the greatest Americans of all time, there is something about him that strikes me as interesting in the way it contrasts with that other great religious figure whose birthday we celebrate tomorrow. If a person were to do anything more with King's birthday than simply take a day off from work, they might take some time to review his great "I Have a Dream" speech, study his work in civil rights activism, take time to mentally devote yourself to King's teachings of non-violent political activism or some such thing. I am not aware of anybody who takes the time on King's birthday to sit down and look at King's baby pictures.

To tell you the truth, I've never seen a baby picture of Dr. King; who knows if any are in existence? But seeing as it's his birthday, it's really the commemoration of his birth; do people paint pictures of his mother and father bringing him home from the hospital? Do people make pilgrimages to Atlanta to see his birthplace (Maybe they do, I don't know)? We commemorate the day of his birth because we revere him for all the great things he did long after he was born.

Even on your own birthday I bet nobody pulls out the album and shows of pictures of your mother cradling you in her arms. The day of your birth is the day that we use to commemorate you, but not really to commemorate your infancy, because it was a far more important and memorable day to your mother than it will ever really be to you.

So what's the deal with Christmas, then? Why do we take a man who did so much in the late part of his life, and on his birthday, unlike anybody else in history, we actually take time to remember his actual birth? We buy big plastic glowing models of the manger scene and erect them in our yards, we buy small pewter ones and put them on our mantels, we buy tiny ones made of glass and hang them on branches of trees that we inexplicably have brought into our house. (Imagine telling your family in May that you want to go cut down a tree and put it in your living room! But that's another story...) We get together and reenact the story, making some teenage girl stuff a pillow in her dress and sit sidesaddle on a rented donkey while people parade by and ooh and ahh and say how wonderful it is for an unmarried teenage girl to be pregnant. Everything is about an infant that lived a couple thousand years ago, and in the midst of celebrating the birth, we do all sorts of crazy things that we would simply never do any other time of year for any other historical figure.

Why? It's funny, but there is actually a good reason.

When you look at King, the fact is, as I hinted at before, that the fact of his birth is not particularly important to his life. Who remembers the details other than his parents, who are both long-dead? All of his accomplishments, and those of pretty much everyone else, occurred much later in life, when we and they were adults. That's what makes them great, and why we remember them, the fact we use birthdays to honor people is just an arbitrary cultural way to devote a specific day to them.

Jesus, however, is different. Because of who he was, and what his life meant, because he is both God and the Son of God, because for him, being born was actually a volitional choice, the day of his birth is in many ways the most important day of Jesus' life, and the beginning of his life's work. In order for Jesus to die for us, he first had to be born in a human body for us.

So many of us, in searching for miracles, forget that miracles happen every day when new lives start. It's an amazing thing for a single-celled zygote to grow and mature within the womb and become a living human being. Life itself is a miracle, and to think that the creator of life himself would take on the mantle of life and live through it himself? For the being who is so great that the universe cannot contain him to force himself to be contained by the womb of a peasant girl?

For Jesus, birth itself was one of his greatest accomplishments and one of his greatest blessings to us, and as odd as it may be, it is right, very right for us to celebrate not just the man Jesus, but his very act of being born into this world so that we could have Emmanuel, "God with us."

Merry Christmas.

A Mormon as President? Why not?

I decided not to make this have a clever title, nor to drone on about my own opinion here for overly long because I wanted to mainly drop a simple question out for consideration.

I know Mitt Romney in particular has a few personal quirks that someone might not like to see in their presidential candidates, like the fact he's waffled on a few issues, but set those aside and ask the generic question. What's wrong with having a Mormon in the White House?

We're looking at an election year where we're likely to see a demographic breakthrough for our leader. The next President is likely to be either Black, female, Hispanic, Mormon, or Italian. While I think we probably have come to the point in this country where race matters very little, we do still care about gender to some degree, and we certainly care about a person's beliefs, as they should say something about that person. While I tend to mostly disagree with the reasons people feel a woman does not belong in the Oval Office (yes, women are different, and they lead differently; is that necessarily so bad, though?) I seriously don't get the Mormon thing.

Sure, I don't think that Mormon theology is correct. In fact, I think it's rather strange. But what issue is that insofar as being President? The President isn't going to be teaching the country about God. They're not going to be explaining scripture to us. We're voting for a political leader, not a high priest. Mormon moral values are pretty darned American, as far as I can tell. There is a very short list of religious affiliations that I would hate to see our President have, and Mormonism is not on it.

What is it that people realistically fear a Mormon President would or could do to this country? I'd like to know, because I frankly don't see it.

FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: ad nauseam

So after some difficulties this morning and over the preceding weekend, I finally got into my e-mail this afternoon and found that I'd actually received quite a bit of electronic correspondence over the last few days. Interestingly enough, I really don't get a lot of spam, and this time was no exception. Emails giving me information that I had actually asked for, notes from family and friends, and info from guys at my church who are involved with and/or leading groups with which I'm involved. And there was the one fly in the ointment.

There's this guy, see. He's a nice guy, a good Christian, and someone who I enjoy talking with face-to-face. However, over the weekend he had sent me an e-mail with a picture of and little blurb concerning Barack Hussein Obama (with a noted emphasis on the fact that yes, that's his middle name!). This isn't the first time that he's sent me an e-mail with a subject line starting "FW: fwd: fwd:" or whatever. No, there was some matter of signing a petition that would do something having to do with prayer in schools or some such thing that of course turned out to be completely meaningless on a quick check of Snopes.com.

This time was different, though, and to tell you the truth, I was simultaneously unhappy and glad that it was different. It turned out that the bare content (minus editorializing) of the e-mail was correct! This happens so rarely in these situations, it threw me for a bit of a loop. I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't just fire back, "No; this is all wrong; please stop forwarding these to me; can't you see what this is doing to your personal credibility?!" You know, I'll admit that I actually get a bit of smug self-satisfaction from sending out such an e-mail, but you can't send out that e-mail when the person sending you info happens to be right.

So what was the part that made me glad? It was the dawning of a realization that came as much less of a surprise to me than the discovery that the e-mail was technically true: I DON'T CARE! It doesn't matter to me if you find out that Hillary Clinton's a lesbian, John Edwards has made a hobby of torturing puppies, Mitt Romney has seven wives, or Rudy Giuliani was really the mastermind behind 9/11! It doesn't matter whether you have a reputable source or not, whether there's a photo attached or not, or whether there is an action required of me or not. I don't care if you have twenty pictures of cute kittens playing with balls of string, or a heartwarming poem to remind me of what's so great about mothers, or even a coupon for free ice cream. If the subject already starts with even one "FW:", don't click a button and send me a "FW: FW:" because I DON'T WANT IT!

Obsessive forwarders of the world, I'm cutting you off. If you want to send me your own e-mail, please do. I'm not going to read anyone else's.

10 things about me

Hmph, more like 42, if you ask me. Marauder has once again tagged me for one of these things because he knows I often reply against my better judgment.

1. What were you doing 10 years ago?

I had recently gotten married, and was working for a mortgage company, which I considered to be my first "real job". It was one of those magical times that people talk about where we lived in a small apartment with our only furniture being a deck lounge for a sofa and a futon mattress for a bed, and of course it was one of the happier times in our lives, living so simply. As a bit of technological nostalgia, we didn't own a computer, so if we wanted to check our e-mails, we had to use my father-in-law's computer, which had a 16 MHz processor running Windows 3.1. Of course even then it was out-of date, but it got the job done.

2. What were you doing one year ago?

I was still working at my job at a missionary organization as a statistician, but was in the process of looking for a secular job that would pay more so I could better support my family. My kids were just starting their first year of school (I have twins, for those not in the know), and in my spare time I was following the lonelygirl15 series, which had recently been revealed to be a hoax, but fascinated me for being a sort of new art form. On the tech note, so long as I did it above, I was doing most of my work on an 833 MHz machine running Windows ME using Office 2000 and SQL. As of now, I have a secular job in I.T. working on a 3.0 GHz machine running Windows NT Professional, I do a lot of my work in PHP and JavaScript, and will soon be training my co-workers in how to understand Office 2007.

3. What are five snacks you enjoy?

• Starbucks pumpkin scones
• Salt & vinegar potato chips
• Jalapeño poppers
• Frosted mini-wheats
• M&Ms

4. What are five songs you know the lyrics to?

Sheesh, like Marauder, I'm a lyrics freak, so I know a lot of lyrics. It might be more to the point to ask for five albums I know the lyrics to. For instance, if I get a song from the Beatles' White Album stick in my head, I'll usually run through the entire album mentally. Let me think of some unusual songs I know...

• "Penis Song" by Eric Idle
• "Fidelity Fiduciary Bank" from Mary Poppins
• "De Colores" traditional Spanish folk song
• "different town" by Strong Bad and TMBG
• The Spongebob Squarepants theme
  

5. Five Things You Would Do If You Were A Millionaire

• Invest in real estate.
• Get a graduate degree.
• Travel around the world.
• Give $1,000 to 1,000 people and tell them to change the world.
• Never wear the same pair of socks twice.

6. Five Things Your Kids Have Taught You

• Sometimes having a good laugh is as important as actually being funny. The humor of a four-year-old seldom makes sense, but it's always funny to them.
• Macaroni and cheese is always a good meal choice when in doubt. Goes without saying.
• All animals are really cool. One of my daughters loves dogs, but she'll be nearly as excited about touching a spider as a puppy.
• There's inherent excitement in trying something new and different. 99% of the time, my kids ride in my wife's car, but on the rare occasions that I've moved their car seats to my car, even a trip to the grocery store is an adventure to them.
• Having my own children has taught me a lot about how God looks at us as His children.

7. Five Things You Like To Do

• Constructing artificial languages.
• Studying typefaces.
• Solving British crosswords.
• Debating philosophy.
• Writing crap like this blog.

8. Five Things You Would Never Wear

Never? I don't know that I can imagine, let's see...

• A toupee. If I ever go bald, I hope to do so with dignity.
• A nosering. I had been considering getting my nose pierced shortly before I first met my wife, and she told me she didn't like piercings. I don't even wear my earrings anymore.
• More tattoos. On a semi-related note, I had two tattoos when I met my wife, and have abstained from getting additional ones. Most people who have tattoos seem to have several, as it's actually sort of addicting in a way that's hard to explain. While I'm happy with the ones I have, I realized that there's something oxymoronic and silly about making a permanent fashion statement.
• A pair of shoes that cost more than a day's wage.
  
• A speedo. Ew.
  

9. Five Favorite Toys

• I have this windup toy that is sort of hard to describe. Ah, here it is, the Critter. For some reason the thing cracks me up to no end.
• The Rubik's Cube. I couldn't solve I back in the day when it was hot, but eventually figured out how to solve it (although not very fast) about five years or so after its heyday. A fun mental exercise in algorithmic processes.
• Scrabble. (Does a board game count as a toy?)
• Kittens. Awesome.
  
• This blog.
  

10. Five Things You Hate To Do

• Being forced to come up with five of everything
  

Okay, I tag Pervez Musharraf, the unknown person who is in current possession of my senior class ring, Bertie Wooster, Ganesha, and the concept of Lazer Tag.