The Priorities of my Congressman

My Congressman is James Sensenbrenner (Republican Wisconsin). Turns out Jim was born into a very wealthy family (Kimberly-Clark), grew up in an affluent neighborhood of Milwaukee (Shorewood), and graduated from an elite "private day care school". He later went on to Stanford University where he received a BA in Political Science. Kind of reminds me of my background growing up.......NOT!!! I doubt James and I have anything in common, other than we both live in Wisconsin, and unfortunately he is my representative in the U.S. House. Make me proud Jimbo!!!







Today I received Sensenbrenner's "Weekly Newsletter" dated April 28, 2011, his subject: The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). In a time that our nation is engaged in 3 wars, tornadoes have just killed 283 in the south, there is a nuclear meltdown in Japan, a major Tsunami recovery effort going on....Jim decides it's a great time to demonstrate his bigotry, by once again bashing the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transexual community. Don't you think he could have picked a more meaningful or timely topic like say uh......"Obama's Birth Certificate" or "The Royal Wedding" or even "How bout that Donald Trump's Hair?".




Now let me see if I can bring myself to discuss DOMA. First off I have substantial experience in DOMA!!! I have been married to somebody, or somebody else for virtually all of my adult life. In defending my first marriage, I found myself trying to defend against adultery, drug addictions, money problems, alcoholism, and bad jokes. Yep, you guessed right, I was responsible for the bad jokes, the rest of them were her issues. Not once in that 22 year struggle did any gay men attempt to lead me astray. Nor did any Lesbians appear and ask us about three-some. As far as the Bisexuals go, I have always admired them since it seemed to me they had twice as good of chance of getting a date as I did. Finally, on the transexual front, my buddy Pete and I ran into a pair of them in New Orleans. We'd been drinking hurricanes and as I recall they had long legs and very short skirts. When one of them said "hello boys", with a voice deeper than Bill Golden's....we sobered up quick and headed back home.... swerving down the sidewalk as fast as we could ....and on the double too. That's about as close as any GLBT person ever threaten me or my marriage.....however...the bad jokes....that's the straw that broke the Camel's Back.




Now we come to my second marriage. For 15 years, I have been married to the lovely Nancy Jeane Roberts a Chicago gal with a weird since of humor who doesn't mind that I am a slob and can tell some really bad jokes. Today, I find myself defending this marriage against old age, health problems, and the irresponsible behavior of our two wild miniature schnauzers. Maybe I am missing something, but somehow, the GLBT community seems to be ignoring me. Maybe it is just because I have a skinny little booty or maybe it is because I tell bad jokes. In any case, I still feel pretty safe, from attack by folks who have a different sexual preference than me.




Now let's get back to my Congressman James Sensenbrenner. Here's my suggestion to help Old Jim out.... Jimbo why don't you correct the name of your weekly publication - that is to say; give it a more appropriate name something like The Crown Prince of Kotex's WEAKLY Newletter??? I hope this helps.




All the best!



mike

Let Go and Torch Your Inbox!!!

Caution: if you have less than a 1000 emails in your inbox, this is probably of little interest. However: With over 5500 emails in my inbox this week, some 1900 of them unread, coupled with the fact I can't find a thing for all the clutter. I went on the attack. Honestly, if all of those had been pieces of paper, I'd have dumped them in a ditch somewhere, used a little gasoline, and flicked a match into the whole big messy pile. Here's a picture that gives a pretty good understanding of my situation, looked like before I began to try and figure out how to deal with it. Hopefully, none of you ever get into this situation. But if you do, I learned some things that may be helpful if you decide to "torch your inbox". My first concern was the unread emails. Were any of them important, why were they unread, and how can I sort them out....without deleting something that's going to cost me. Here's how I approached the 1900 unread emails. Go to your inbox and come to your first week old unread email, why is it unread?

• Is it an advertisement? I had 100's of emails from American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, Grocery Stores, etc. Why, because I like to get cheap airline tickets and buy stuff o n sale. So all you have to do, is type in EddieBauer.com and hit search. What comes up is a list of all of these adevertisements I never had the time or interest to read. Worse yet, I found one from Pajamagram.com, from when I bought Mom a Christmas present two years ago. I have been receiving these every couple of weeks now for years. I deleted most of these suckers first since the sales from last August are more than likely to be over and honestly, I don't buy a whole lot of women's pjs.


• Is it an "Autoreply"? These are things that say "Autoreply. Jim is out of the office and won't return until the 4th of July." These are aggravating, because it means your message isn't going to be seen until some future date and secondly you get the "stupid autoreply". A search of "autoreply" enabled me to kill several hundred unreads in one shot.


• Is it a Newspaper update ?- I subscribe to several different newspapers online. Honestly, I don't have time to read all of them most of the time. But I always tell myself, I'll read that when I get around to it. Problem is, I never get a "round toit". So long, Dallas Morning News! These things come daily and somertimes more often, they add up fast.


• Is it some Political Stuff ?- I figured out, if the email said "from the Whitehouse" or "from Senator So and So", that it probably was not an invitation to dinner, but more than likely a request for cash.


• Does it say "Accepted / Rejected"? - if you are in business or use your email and calendar to schedule meetings and events, you get an email everytime someone accepts or rejects your invitation. One thing for sure, you don't need to keep these if the meeting has been over for a week or more. Give em the eighty-six.


• Unopened Email from your Boss or Coworkers - Yikes! How can this happen? Well, about half the time or better, I have already found whatever the email says before I get the email. This being the case, why bother to open it? If it is something you already know. Is it because I am clairvoyant, Hell No! It's because they call me first and tell it to me and then the dummies feel the moral obligation to remind me in an email. Kill 'em.

Using these techniques, I whittled down the "unread to just 12 unread emails". These were important, so I saved them in a folder called "important". Now what about the other 3600 emails in my inbox that had been read, but never deleted? Here's how I approached this monster batch of emails;

• Is it from a friend? A lot of my friends send me jokes, which is great, but I always kind of felt obligated to keep them since they came from my friends. Further, my friends and family share important stuff either in person or on the phone. I deleted all of these. So now, you can email me an old joke and I'll probably laugh again. But this time I'm deleting it after I read it.


• Is it from a business associate? OK, now some of these can be important. What to do? Tag all of the ones that are older than 90 days, and store them under a file name or label on your email. "Archiving" works also.

Using these and several other "home-made" efforts, I was able to go from 5500 emails in my inbox to only about 150. However, as in many things "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure". What you read above took me about 8 hours; and it was the pound of cure...that I had to do. Here are some ideas for preventing the problem in the first place:

• Unsubscribe - to emails and newsletters that are no longer of interest to you.


• Practice the 4 D method - when you check your email: 1. "Delete" any obvious junk. 2. "Do" any tasks that will take less that 5 minutes. 3. "Delegate" the task if you can. 4. "Defer" more lengthy tasks, until after you have cleared your inbox. Obviously, I didn't think this one up; it is very unlike my usual habit of using #4 exclusively.


• Create a "read later" folder, for things you may be interested in but don't have time to read now.

I hope this was helpful and I hope I haven't bored you to tears with this effort. However, I am kind of amazed that I got through the mess.

All the best,

Mike