My son got a "LeapFrog My Own Leaptop". Ignoring, for a moment, the absurdly long and vacuuous title, it needs to be personalized. Off I go to leapfrog.com.

First, I download a 13Mb "installer". As far as I can tell, this program's primary purpose is to take up a chunk of my screen and display ads to me while it downloads the real program.Having just downloaded 13 megabytes, the "installer" now downloads 3 times that much. Want to save 25% of my time and 25% of your bandwidth? Get rid of the stupid advertising installer!

Here's an example ad:

While it is true that in many countries, they write "personalise" instead of "personalize", do you really have to put a slash there and put both words? Do you really think someone who normally writes with a z will not understand when it is written with an s? They don't do it just once, they do it twice: in both the green ad copy and in the little dialog of blue letters coming out of the leaptop on the left. It's one thing if the word were totally different (like the way the British call the storage area in the back of a car the "boot" and Americans call it the "trunk"). But this is the same word. It is silly and stupid. (Nevermind that they've been PAID their money. I do not need additional advertisements).

And some of their "research" is dodgy, too. Here's a not-so-surprising fact: LeapFrog was somehow determined to be the #1 Reading System (it doesn't say whether that's through volumes of sales, dollars of sales, voting by consumers, etc). What it does say in the fine print is that several of the studies used "Reading Toys as defined by LeapFrog" or "Reading System brands as defined by LeapFrog". I suppose there's nothing unusual about coming first in a category you define. I'm sure the studies were completely independent and the gerrymandering of the category had nothing to do with LeapFrog finishing at the top.

After installing, they want me to reboot my computer. I'm sorry, LeapFrog. You are not important enough for that. And this is a Mac anyways. It all works fine without rebooting. If you don't know how to launch your software after it has installed, you have no business writing Mac software. The days of "close all other programs while we install" and "reboot your computer after installing" are long gone. Of course, LeapFrog says to do both.

I will do my best never to run this software again.

In the end, we made two orders: one from Amazon and one from Tesco. We saved a non-trivial amount of money. This is in pounds. So at today's rates, £26.78 is worth about $41.79. Worth the effort we spent.

The only other question is stuff like shipping. Shipping was free in both cases. Amazon was also better on price in the 3D Land game, but they're shipping time on the cheap one was 2-4 weeks, which wouldn't make it for Christmas. So the price I show above is for an Amazon retailer who had it in stock and could ship this week.

I've done a couple. They're fun.

Communications in Marriage

First Day At the Office

Building Code

Anyone who has ever stayed in a hotel in London probably has experienced the seemingly endless series of small doors you have to pass through to get from the lobby to your room. If you bring an American sized suitcase and you're lugging it down these Lilliputian corridors, it's annoying to pass through tiny doors every 20 feet or so.

This same thing happens in houses. Not only do you have doors to bedrooms, as you expect, but you often have doors at the ends of hallways and doors in between inner rooms that, in modern American houses, you wouldn't have. I thought this would annoy me. It doesn't. In fact, I find them jolly convenient as I can use them to isolate kids, dogs, or noise. With different doors closed (and sometimes they actually have locks on them), I can really make a small house feel not-so-cramped because I can get some separation from the other inhabitants. Even if they happen to be quite loud.

Packaging

People complain that things are more expensive here. And they are. I have a handful of reasons that I think that's true. For one thing, I find the most trivial of foods and small items come in stronger, more durable packaging than they would in the States. There are these fabulous Gü puddings that come in nice glass dishes. I mean really: for two puddings that you're going to eat, do you really need nice glass dishes in the cardboard box? And the plastic that they use to pack things like power transformers and cables and detritus that comes with electronics: it's all a few microns thicker than what we get in the States. I wonder if this doesn't contribute to the higher prices of things.

"Unlimited" Marketing

The fact of life here in the UK is that nothing is truly unlimited. You pay for everything by the minute, by the megabyte, whatever. They try hard to hide this fact. Any time they can advertise something as "unlimited" or "lifetime" or something else that implies boundlessness, they will.

In the US, we've grown accustomed to words like "Natural" being abused in marketing. I mean, what are you differentiating between when you say "natural" cereal, or "natural" wood? Over here, they will say things like "Unlimited downloads (1GB fair use limit)." At first glance you might think it fair. I mean, after all, we do have fair use limits in the US. But over here, you can find a mobile internet provider offering 3 different plans for the same device that all say "Unlimited," but they have different prices. The difference in the plans is the fair use limit. So "Unlimited" with 3GB fair use is more expensive than "Unlimited" with 1GB fair use. Vauxhall recently started advertising a car with a "lifetime" warranty that is actually just 100,000 miles and is limited to the first owner. Only in the event that the first owner dies before driving 100,000 miles is it a "lifetime" warranty.

Litter

London is dirty. One of the side-effects of the IRA's bombings and such (they had terrorism long before the US did) is that most public trash cans have been removed. At a really busy train station like Clapham Junction (the busiest in Britain), you'll find maybe one per platform. In my section of Canary Wharf, they have a few public rubbish bins that are almost always overflowing. There's simply no place to put that drink bottle, sandwich wrapper, or plastic bag when you're done with it. I've witnessed people walking down the street and  they just chuck a bottle or something behind a bush or leave it behind a lamppost. Like the litter fairy is going to come and clean it up. On the one hand: holy crap—pick up the litter, people! On the other hand: where should they put it?

Housing Density

There are plenty of towns and villages that have American-sized suburbs where you have to drive to get anywhere. But there's a lot more little towns, like the one we live in, that have much more dense buildings. In the Virginia suburbs, school districts are huge because you have to go quite far from the school itself to get enough households with children that will fill a school. To get to school we're compelled to drive big fleets of buses and cars because nobody can reasonably walk to school.

In the UK, though, you can have a school where over half the kids come from within a 1-mile radius. My boys go to two schools that are next door to each other, and the start times are staggered by 5 minutes. You take the youngest in, then the oldest, and it works perfectly. It is a short walk. You can do this in a major city in the US, but not the suburbs.

Bathrooms

In very modern (i.e., renovated this year) bathrooms, you might find sinks with separate hot and cold water taps. They're for sale in your local hardware store, and people still choose them for some reason. I can't imagine why someone would choose this.

You'll never find a light switch on the wall or an electric outlet on the wall in a bathroom. The light switch is outside the bathroom, or it's a pull-chain from the ceiling. You can find shaver outlets from time to time in bathrooms, but never a full-blown electrical socket.

Heated towel racks are quite common in bathrooms. Since most people have radiator heating, they often run a special radiator into the bathroom. You hang your towels on it and they get piping hot. Ahhhhh. It's wonderful.

Opening times

Shops are pretty universal in opening from 10:00am to 5:00pm. Some will open earlier, others may stay open a bit later. A handful of things are open on Sundays. What I find so mindboggling about this system is the question "who is doing the shopping other than OAPs?" (OAP = Old Age Pensioner, not a derogatory term here in the UK). I mean really: if I have to work 9-6, and the shops are open 9-6, when will I shop? The short answer is Saturday. People shop at lunchtimes and on Saturdays.

A side-effect of this paradox is that, at least in the major London area, virtually anything can be delivered cheaply and quickly. You can order office supplies, groceries, furniture, tools, you name it and it will all be delivered often on the same day. Now to be sure, we have delivery in the US. But it's usually FedEx or the postal service or something similar. Here, they just have fleets of independent couriers and delivery vans and such. Probably a lot like what a major city like New York, Boston, or Chicago might have. Since none of us own American-sized SUVs or minivans or the like, delivery is a way of life in certain kinds of shopping.

Telephones

Wow do telephones work. Now, they're complicated and annoying, but the market has been deregulated for some time, and pricing and competition are alive and well. If any American thinks he has seen free market economics at work, he should take a look at the British mobile phone market (and, to a lesser degree, the landline market). You can walk into a store, pay a few quid, and walk out with a phone. Pay as you go (PAYG) is plentiful, cheap, and easy to get. I can go into the fanciest shopping mall and get a 3G dongle for my laptop for £10 (about $16 at the time of this writing) and then pay £15 for a month's "unlimited" service (about $23). That's pay as you go, no contract, no nothing. Try that in the States, just try. Can't be done. Not only that, but I did full motion video conferencing with it back to the US and the quality was good. The telephone infrastructure and payment structure are awesome.

Plumbing

No two sinks, toilets, tubs, showers, dishwashers or washing machines are the same. The hot is not always on the left. To flush a toilet you might push a button, step on a button, pull a chain, turn a knob, or step on a pedal.

Appliances

Most appliances are labeled in hieroglyphics. I guess they figure that they can't be accused of discriminating against some group of people if everyone finds the instructions impossible to decipher. I've seen symbols on microwave ovens that resemble those on a VCR. Goodness knows what it means to press "fast forward" on my microwave. My oven has a symbol that looks like "next track" on a CD player.

Air conditioning

Surely you jest. No, there is no air conditioning (or "air con" as they call it) here. Every house and flat is equipped, however, with windows that open. Only the big, very modern skyscraper office buildings have windows that don't open. However, they never have screens in the windows or doors. Now, true Brits would tell you that's because there are no infestations of mosquitoes and such here. That might be true, but they still have bugs, and enough of them that you'd like screens.

What the windows do have are lots of interesting ways to open. Many can be opened in the rain and they cantilever one way or another to prevent rain from pouring in. Pretty necessary in a place like this.

Conclusion

So that's a few things that are different. I like it over here, generally. But there are definitely a few bits that make me scratch my head and say "huh?"

Often the poem is part of the author's catharsis and a waypoint on their journey to regain their emotional balance. These are the authors I am addressing. I am writing these tips, however, not in an effort to help them overcome whatever emotions they're dealing with. Rather, I'm hoping they will write better poems. I'm not opposed to cathartic poems that express betrayal and decry lost love. I just want it to be better poetry. Later on, I will describe why I think we can have 'good' poems and 'bad' poems. It's not all relative. There's good and there's bad and not everyone gets a trophy.

Tips

1. Don't give me conclusions.

If you want me to feel what you felt, I probably need to experience what you experienced. If your poem is written entirely in the present tense, "I am angry," and "I hate" and "I loathe" and so on, that's the result. I don't understand the result. Imagine that I told you that I had a really hard math problem to do, and I worked and worked and worked, and finally I discovered the answer was 204. You have no idea what the math problem was like, why I found it hard, or what it meant for me to "work and work and work." The number 204 sure doesn't seem frightening. How hard was the math, really? If your poem only discusses where you are now in your thinking (e.g., how angry you are now, how betrayed you feel now, etc.), it's like telling me 204.

Let me explain it from a totally different direction. Forget love for a second. Imagine trying to tell a scary story. If the person said "I went into this house, and it was spooky. I got scared and ran home." Would you be scared? No way. If they went into vivid detail about eerie sights and sounds and smells, and unexpected things happening, they might spook you a little. Then you'd be feeling something similar to what they felt at the time. Same thing for love, hate, and other emotions. You have to build up the scene and explain where those emotions come from.

Given that:

2. Relive it.

If you loved someone once, there was a reason. Even if you totally despise that person now, you loved them once and it made sense then. Get in your time machine and go back there. Relive that emotion. It was pleasant at the time. Set me up. Get me, the reader, feeling what you felt when you fell in love. I want to fall in love with the object of your contempt. Bring me up to that high level where you were.

3. Include the betrayal.

Whatever the event was that caused this emotional hurt, put it in. For me as a reader to feel the same level of anger, betrayal, rejection, or whatever negative emotion you feel now, I have to start at the same high place and fall with you. I have to hit the same rocky bottom you did to see these emotional injuries and hate the person who pushed you off that cliff.

If it is too painful to relive literally, don't worry—this is poetry. Make something up that is good enough. Can't bear to talk about the lies your ex used to cover up philandering? Make up lies your ex used to cover up stealing from you. All you have to do is get me, the reader, to feel your pain. It doesn't have to be exact. The mistake many writers make is to start off by saying "I used to love you" and end by saying "now I hate you" and they leave out the whole bit in the middle where love turned to hate.

4. Touch the senses.

Tell me how warm his hands were. Tell me what her perfume smelled like and how it made her real and alive in the room hours after she left. Tell me how the sound of his voice vibrated in your body and put your jangled nerves at ease. Tell me about the floppy straw sun hat she wore strawberry picking that she had to keep pushing up so she could see what she was doing. Something, anything that I can see, hear, smell, taste, or touch.

5. Remember: this is poetry.

Make !@#%!@ up. It does not have to be perfectly faithful to exactly what you went through. Get the right emotion into the poem. Leave out unnecessary details. Simplify what really happened so you get to the essence of what is important.

Remember also that the person in the poem doesn't have to be you. It can be someone else. It can be a fictitious character who goes through something similar to what you went through. Don't feel compelled to bare your soul directly in your poem. Use the poem as a vehicle for the emotions. Create a persona that goes through the situation in the way that you want, so that the right emotions come out.

6. Don't use trite expressions

There's too much vague crap out there. "I am empty and alone," or "I trusted you with my life, but you turned your back on me," "you were my everything." All these phrases are fine when they sum up something that has been made clear. These phrases are no good by themselves. They're conclusions. They're the summation of the emotions you've been through. I won't feel like you did just because I read one of these stock phrases. They're also a bit like perfume. Even fine perfume will stink if you spray enough of it. Pick trite phrases carefully and use them sparingly.

Good and Bad Poetry

Am I some literary scholar whose opinion on this matter carries weight? No. In the words of a friend of mine "I bring nothing to the table." I have a blog and I post my opinions, use or discard them at will. Having said that, yes, I do believe there is good and bad poetry.

I am a liberal believer that capitalization, punctuation, line structure, rime, meter and all these things are up for grabs in poetry. Everything's fair game in making your poem into a literary work of art. Having said that, it is not a poem just because you break the lines in odd places. If I fix the line breaks and it reads like a really boring paragraph, it's probably not much of a poem, either.

Good poetry has a point. It uses some of its structure to draw you in, but the words ultimately do the heavy lifting. You know something when you're done reading a good poem. You know what someone thinks, what they saw, what they did, what they felt. Something.

Bad poetry might have a point, but it is undermined by too many weaknesses. It is trite and belabors old tropes in well-worn ways. It's structure is either nonsensical, random, or out-of-touch with the poem. The vocabulary is weak, using commonplace words in common ways with no novel effect. Note that you don't have to use ten dollar words to make a good poem, but you can't pull a bunch of lines from a bunch of 1980s hair band lyrics and get great art from them.

For those who may wonder what my favorite poems might be, two that come to mind are by Robert Frost. Now, most people think of Robert Frost as a grandfatherly figure who gave us such lyrical and memorable poems as Stopping By Woods on a Snowing Evening and The Road Not Taken. My two favorites, however, are powerful and dark. Out Out, and Home Burial.

Here's four examples, starting with the trivial and working up to the biggies. I do it this way because the biggies are well-trodden at this point. Warning: I'm cranky this morning.

Reusable Grocery Bags

Good idea, right? Of course. While some of us paid for them, though, there are literally millions of them being given away. These are people who wouldn't otherwise do their share. They need both the carrot and the stick. They keep using the environmentally-polluting bags until someone gives them a bag, and even then we have to threaten with taxes or fees just to make them use it. So your reward for not spending the $6 or $7 to get 6 or 7 reusable grocery bags is that you will have them given to you. Your reward for buying them 18 months ago: priceless—as in zero.

Maryland's Tax Amnesty

At the end of a booming stock market, as we've slid deep into a recession, the state of Maryland is trying to boost its tax revenues. Its plan is a tax amnesty, the second one this decade. So what does this tell you? If you live or pay taxes in Maryland, don't pay your taxes on time or in full. Use that money to invest in a booming stock market, make a bunch of profits and then pay the taxes during an amnesty. Done well, your market winnings should easily exceed the reduced interest and waived fees during the amnesty. If you don't make a big bundle on the stock market, that's OK. It wasn't your money you were gambling anyways. And all the people who paid their taxes on time? They see no relief or reward.

Cash for Clunkers

I know of few other laws that slap good people in the face like this one. If you're making good money and you drive a responsible car: keep doing that because we're gonna take that for granted. People who drive gas guzzlers (which should never have been manufactured in the first place) will get a check, practically made out to GM, that lets them get a car more easily. Most importantly, the teeming millions who drive reasonable cars that are neither gas guzzlers nor hybrids get nothing. If you drive a gas guzzling beater and pollute to high heaven for years on end,  you'll get a nice government handout. Be responsible and pick a middle-of-the road car? We have nothing for you.

Gross Mismanagement? There, there, it's not so bad, have a few billion...

As I said, I'm leaving this for last because it's the biggest and it's well trodden. The whole concept of capitalism, however, is that market forces pick the winners, thin the herd, etc. However, the new measure of corporate success is not being a blue-chip stock. That's so 20th century. The new measure of corporate success is TBTF: too big to fail. Given the bailouts we've seen lately, why does it not make sense to build behemoth companies that acquire tons of strategic business units. Profit like mad as you grow, then when it falls, hand it to the government to clean up the mess. The list of companies where this is happening is staggering.

The problem with this one is that I'm way out of my league here. I have no solution. Economic armaggeddon might be a bit of a high price to pay to "teach those guys a lesson." Fine. But surely there is something else we can do other than saddle our grandchildren's grandchildren with the debts that our own grandparents created. I can't believe that the best solution is to throw it in the landfill of public debt and let it become someone else's problem.

For whatever reason, I always start with whites. After all, they need special handling (don't put the red T-shirt in with them, right Jenny?). It also seems like you get a lot done by starting with whites.

When I fold them and put them away, I often notice that I've done more for myself than I have for the others in the family. It sorta dawned on me today. Duh.

All my underwear are white. Not suprising. That's probably true for most men. I've got a pile of white undershirts and I wear one a day. Most of my business dress shirts are either white or mostly white. Doing whites goes a long way for me. My boys have all different color underwear with characters on them, they have shirts of every conceivable color (and character) and such. My clothes are all different colors, too. This isn't to say that I'm somehow monochromatic, but a load of whites dos a lot more for me (and probably many men) than it does for them. Duh.

Next time, I'll start with darks.

I scraped the sticker off before I got to the register. No credit for non-service.

I started listening to my own speech. So did my wife. I discovered that I begin sentences like this all the time. Someone says something to me, and my response is "yeah, but..." This habit is a half-baked attempt to accept someone's point of view while expressing my own. It actually serves to succinctly dismiss their point of view and substitute my own. The more I think about it, the more disappointed I am in myself for it. I'm going to have to start catching myself and thinking more before dismissing someone else's opinion.