Mostly, people were all over Bud Selig for not instituting instant replay last year. Bud Selig is an easy guy to get mad at because he’s never apologized for anything he or baseball has ever done wrong. When MLB reviewed and denied the use of replay, Bud said he wanted the Human Element as part of baseball. I think you could get this pretty well from the baseball players because I’m pretty sure they’re all human no matter 
how many steroids they are taking. But Bud thought the umpires ought to be human too. The UmpBot stock I bought went right in the toilet when he said that.

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NPR ran a story a few days ago about Senate Secret Holds. I listened to the story because I thought it was about professional wrestling. I imagined John McCain climbing to the top of Joe Biden’s giant desk and leaping across the chamber to drop a double axe-handle on Charles Schumer. I think McCain is the toughest member of the Senate. He’s scrappy and I wouldn’t bet against him, even if it was all fixed.

As it turns out, a secret hold is a lot like a filibuster, except it keeps the motion from ever getting to the Senate floor. And it’s anonymous. A senator can go to his or her party leadership and say ask for a hold without ever being identified on the floor. Listening to the story, it felt a little bit like a man walking into a 7-11 and asking for all the cash in the register because there’s a man outside with his hand in his pocket claiming he has a gun.

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Maybe Senators are smarter than we give them credit for. We Americans are pretty easy to wait out. In the short time since I started writing this post, no one is talking about Armando Galarraga. We’ve moved on to Stephen Strausberg, NBA playoffs, who’s holding out of NFL OTAs and college conference realignment. The first 28 out perfect game seems like last season.

It will be two weeks on Wednesday.

National news isn’t that different. We are always interested in right now. It’s true. Watch any of the cable news channels for a day. There is no “news.” There’s only “breaking news.” And that doesn’t mean it’s the most important. Around 16000 kids die every day from hunger. Fox News wants to tell you about “Stars With Sex Tapes”. MSNBC says “Pickup sales perk up along with economy”.

Twitter is breaking news on steroids.

Nick Carr and others have asked if our technology is making us stupid. It isn’t, but only in the sense that guns don’t kill people. We are choosing to buy in—to believe that the stories on the news or in our twitter feeds are the stories. We are choosing to live contextualess lives that move from one outrage to the next.

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In his last two starts, Galarraga has only given up three runs. Detroit has won both games. He’s pitching lights out.

No word yet on if John McCain will add the Flying Elbow to his arsenal.

Breaking news as it happens.

In the race between ‘who’ and ‘how many’, who usually wins–if action is your goal. Find the right people, those that are willing to listen to what you have to say, and ignore the masses that are just going to race on, unchanged. —Seth Godin, Driveby culture and the endless search for wow

The irony of this quote is that because I mentioned marketing in my tweet, I’ll get 5-10 twitter followers claiming to be marketing experts who are already following eight to ten thousand people.

We invented a myriad of extra rules to enhance the game. If you had the exact same card as the one that was just played, you could play it and play resumes from your spot. Play three skips in a row, everyone draws a card. Three reverses in a row, everyone passes their hand to the left. If you throw a card to the pile and miss, you get your card back and lose your turn. Drop a green three and you got to try slapping the cards out of someone’s hand. During Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas, play a red following a green, proclaim Merry Christmas in any number of languages, and get rid of any card in your hand.

The most notable rule was that penalties accumulated. If someone plays a draw two on you, no problem—just play another draw two and the next sucker has to draw four. If she plays one, the next guy is drawing six. And so on. If it comes all the way back to you, your penalty doubles. After one guy played a draw four, he watched in horror as seven more were played as it came back to him, he found himself picking up 64 cards.

Green three!

Whenever we got stuck drawing a fist full of cards, my friend John was quick to remind the unlucky soul, “You don’t have to draw 32, you get to draw 32.”

He was right, you know. You didn’t have to draw. You could walk away, go back to work and get on with your day sans half the deck.

But we didn’t quit. Drawing cards was part of playing. Playing was what we wanted to do, even if that meant picking up 16 honey mustard stained cards off the floor.

We don’t do things because we have to. It might seem like we have to, but we don’t. My friend Jim pays taxes because he doesn’t want to go to jail. Teresa does the laundry because she enjoys clean clothes. Paul test his blood sugar and injects himself with insulin because his body and brain to function correctly. Matt has to brush his teeth if he doesn’t want them to fall out. Makeesha mentioned urinating. She’s right. But you don’t have to use the bathroom. Former NFL lineman Mark Schlereth used to pee his pants during games because he didn’t want to walk back to the locker room.

I tend to look at life as series of have-tos with a few get-tos dropped in here and there.

But it’s really not that way.

It’s mostly get-tos.

Maybe we think of them as have-tos because we forget why we’re doing them.

The two questions I can’t get away from and thus I ask you:

1. Are the things I see as have-tos getting me toward the things I want?

2. How can I make my have-tos and my get-tos line up more often?

Step 2: Be great at it.

Step 3: Get a different job with unrealistic expectations, no support, and an exclusive contract that keeps you in that job for multiple years.

Step 4: Whether or not it’s your fault, under-perform so badly that your employer is so unhappy that they will actually pay you to leave.

Step 5: Get paid.

Step 6 (optional): Repeat.

It worked for Conan and Charlie Weis. It can work for you too.

Most of the things are good for work, my computer especially. Somethings are for decoration.

All of them are meaningful.

There are other useful and interesting things that I have in my office, but I don’t want them on my desk for any extended period of time. I may get something new I’d like to add (like this, if you’re in a buying mood). There may be things, like my coffee press or a project I’m working on, that need to be on my desk for a short time.

But most things don’t need to be there all the time. When more things start to collect on my desk, it’s harder to find the things I actually want.

Social networks are like this.

It’s easy to fill up our Twitter feeds with tweets from thousands of users. It’s easy to friend every single person we have ever met and some we haven’t.

It’s easy to be a mile wide and an inch deep.

But being a good neighbor isn’t easy, is it?

Creating a meaningful feed is a great way to be a good neighbor. By filling your feeds with people you actually want updates from, it makes your life easier and validates your friends and those you follow. It’s a way of saying, “Here are people I really want to hear from.”

(Because of the different natures of Facebook and Twitter, I’ve broken out some ideas for creating meaningful feeds into two different sections.)

Creating a meaningful Facebook feed:

Creating a meaningful Twitter feed:

How do you create a meaningful social media feed?

The first real snow of December always pushes my mind further toward Christmas. But it’s not Christmas. It’s the second week of Advent and I’m waiting for all the wrong things.

And it’s making me cranky.

I’m waiting for other drivers out of my way. I’m waiting for the checker at Target to hurry up. I’m waiting for the girl at Starbucks to quit asking me if I’d like to try their new Carmel Bruleé latte so I can just order my coffee. More than anything, I’m waiting for the rediculously rewritten Christmas carols being used to sell TVs to get off of the air.

Sometimes waiting for Christmas feels like waiting for it to be over.

Maybe it’s time to steal the baby Jesus.

For my wife, stealing baby Jesus is a tradition going back as long as she can remember. Within hours of her mother setting out their hand-carved wooden nativity scene, Amy would sneak into the living room, leaving an empty manger subject to much adoration from a cast of barn animals and oak-colored people.

And just as sure as she would take Jesus out of his manger during Advent, she would return him on Christmas morning. “Jesus didn’t come until Christmas,” she reminds us.

Inspired, we tried pulling the same stunt at work one year. We snuck into the chapel, carefully removed the baby Jesus and placed a note in the manager he vacated: “Don’t rush me! Be back Dec. 25th.”

Predictably, this maneuver didn’t receive overwhelming praise from co-workers. But it is faithful to the story.

The church I became a Christian in emphasized self-examination leading up to communion. As we sat and waited for the trays of tiny biscuits and cups of grape juice to make their way down the row, we were supposed to think of what Jesus has done for us, how he gave himself, how we’ve failed to give ourselves and how he’s forgiven us for that. Advent is like that. It helps us wait and anticipate and hope for the Messiah to come again. Advent helps us appreciate Jesus coming. Advent gets us ready for one of the two best celebrations of the Christian year.

But instead of waiting, we get most of our celebrating out of our system beforehand. Offices are full of Christmas goodies right up until Christmas Day. The day after everyone’s signing up at the gym. We play Christmas music non-stop starting on Black Friday, but hum a bar or two of Jingle Bells on December 26th, you’ll probably get clubbed in the skull with fruitcake.

I wonder if we sell our celebration short. We spend about forty days shopping and baking and snacking and about a day and a half celebrating. Maybe if we prepared differently, waited, hoped, longed, our celebrations would be different. More exuberance and less frustration, more feasting and less munching, more joy. Maybe we’d celebrate a bit longer, a bit louder, with a bit more joy and exuberance. We wouldn’t ease in holiday and munch ourselves into a New Year’s resolution, but cannon ball right into the feast of Christmas and party until we’ve got nothing left to give.

If you have a nativity set, give it a try this year. Steal the baby Jesus. Until Christmas, look at the empty manger and imagine a world without a Savior. Wait for the only thing that really matters.

If I can’t find my keys, I’ll go from room to room looking under the bed, on the ironing board, inside the fridge, etc. But chances are, they were sitting in plain sight within five feet of the door. I’m sure there’s a psychological phenomena that explains this, but we tend to over look common things in common places, even if they are the most important thing.

Sometimes we forget that social networking should be social.

Duh, right?

Like my keys, the social interaction of social networking manages to elude many people’s sight. Facebook and Twitter can quickly dissolve from a social network to a digital megaphone where shouting individuals have not decibel receptacles for what anyone else is saying. People have always had problems talking past each other. The internet only makes it worse.

On the flip side, Facebook and Myspace are also home to a number of social voyeurs. These folks only get an account to see into others’ lives. When our neighbors do this in real life, we call them stalkers and get restraining orders. And just like in real life, they don’t actually add anything to the community.

Being a good neighbor online means being social. Share your life. Talk about what’s going on. Don’t share things that should stay private, but give something of yourself. Let someone else enjoy your updates the way you enjoy theirs.

And like real life, listen more than you talk. A lot more. You’re following or friends with these people. Read their updates. Look at their pictures. Hit the Like button liberally. Retweet. Respond kindly, even if not always agreeably. Don’t comment on everything, but respond at least twice as much as you update your status. Let your friends know you’re reading.

Put the social in your social networks.

Through my friendship with John, I’ve come to pay more attention to words. I pay more attention to what the words actually mean. This is especially true in marketing and fundraising. When a server at Old Chicago offers me a slice of Homemade Cheesecake, I’d really love to know whose home it’s made in. When Safeway checkers ask me if I’d like to donate to Prostate Cancer, I decline knowing that Prostate Cancer is killing plenty of people without my $5. And when a box promises me that “Anything is Possible with Popcorn“, I imagine the possibilities.

Yesterday Starbucks sent an email telling me that I could “help make a difference” on World AIDS Day and that I should “see how delicious doing good can be” with one of their holiday drinks. Awesome, right? Who wouldn’t want to help with that? Besides Fred Phelps, I mean.

The difference I could make? A nickel’s worth.

For every handcrafted beverage purchased, Starbucks will donate 5¢. These drinks cost somewhere around $3.25 each. The profit is somewhere around $2.50. Of the four million drinks sold daily, a conservative estimate is that 90% of these are considered handcrafted. This means Starbucks will donate around $180,000 today that they would otherwise put in their pocket. Kudos for that. But I can’t help but think that this email has less to do with the 2% donated to AIDS research and more to do with the 98% going to Starbucks shareholders.

I’m not anti-profit or anti-capitalism. I’m all for people making a living. But when you market and profit on a disease, maybe you’re not making a living. Maybe you’re making a killing.

If you’d like to contribute to the work going on with out buying anything, visit the designated giving page for RED. See how good doing good can be.

One of those answers was the parable of the good Samaritan. It wasn’t a random story Jesus told Peter at bedtime.  Jesus was asked, “Who is my neighbor?” after affirming that the second greatest commandment was “love your neighbor as yourself.”

I would have answered it with something smarmy about historical context and authorial intent. I would have wanted my answer to sound good on NPR, the kind of answer that would make Terry Gross thank me very much for talking with her.

Jesus responds with this story about a half-dead guy, a couple of people who refused to help him and a guy who did help him.

I would want to sound smart.

Jesus wants to change us.

In this story Jesus casts the widest possible net for treating someone else as we’d like to be treated ourselves. And he uses the most unlikely character to do so. I think the question Jesus is answering, and the one he wants us to ask, is “Who can I be a neighbor to?”

We all overlook someone we should be a neighbor to: Coworkers, customers, baristas, employees, family, grocery baggers, bosses, politicians, other drivers. Sometimes we over-spiritualize this teaching and forget that we should be neighbors to our neighbors. Everybody misses somebody.

How about your Twitter followers? Your Facebook friends? Your LinkedIn connections?

In the virtual world of social networking, it’s easy to get caught up in self. It’s your profile with your pictures and your words and your farmville (ugh). But social networks are about being connected. It’s the relational aspect of these sites that make them unique and popular.

If social networks are about relationships, then Jesus is calling us to be neighbors in these circles as well.

What does it look like to be a good neighbor on social networks? I have a few ideas, and I’ll share them here through at least the end of the year. I’m hoping that you have some ideas too because I’m sure I don’t have it all figured out.