Leadership Abilities

People love leaders, and admire leadership abilities. It's strange because no one can really define what leadership is. I mean, what is it that makes people listen when certain people speak? Especially to listen when another person saying the same thing would be completely ignored?

Some people could tell you to jump off a bridge, it seems like, and no one would question it. Other people, you wouldn't listen to them if they told you to piss with your pants on fire. We all know these kinds of people and we either follow them or we roll our eyes and make fun of them behind their backs, regardless of their position or authority over us.

There are different things we look for, even subconciously. We follow people if we get the sense that they know what they're doing, or that they care what happens to us, or that the mutual goal we are working toward is important. But leadership ability is more than even the sum of these things: It's the ability to convey them to people even when you don't know what you're doing and couldn't give a damn about anyone but yourself. And nobody's ever really been able to explain it, but it seems to me we just call it "leadership ability" and are just content to leave it at that.

But we admire leadership ability, and we encourage it and cultivate it. Leaders are generals and Kings and Captains of ships.

Sometimes the leader is like Captain Picard, you know, like he's in charge and everyone knows it. Others are just more like Jerry Seinfeld, who was the leader of his circle of friends just because he was the funniest and most likeable.

The thing is, everyone wants to be a leader, but very few people actually can be.

I guess what it boils down to is that "Leadership Abilities" are just ways to get other people to do what you want. And this is what we admire in others and encourage in our children. Aren't these the same qualities we saw in Hitler, or Jesse James, or even con men and common thieves? You can be a leader and still be a jerk.

People also love the mavericks and lone wolves who make up their own rules and do things their own way. You see it all the time on TV and movies. Somehow these guys always manage to get things done, and they ALWAYS, without fail, do it better than everyone else.

It's always some cop or soldier who doesn't like the rules. Rules that they ignore despite the fact that hundreds of years of law enforcement and military protocol went into establishing the rules. So my question is, if even one of these guys comes along who really does know better than everyone else alive and everyone else in history, then why don't they make up all new rules for everyone else to follow?

Anyway, here are the people we look up to and admire: The Leaders and the Mavericks. These are the people who make all the decisions and assume all the responsibility.

There's one last type of person, though, and it's one we totally don't like or admire. The followers. They're sheep. They don't think for themselves or make any decisions. They don't take any responsibility when things go wrong, either.

Followers get a bad rap, though. First of all, everyone is a follower of someone. Second, everyone thinks a follower's got less decisions to make, but most people aren't comfortable letting others make their decisions for them, and even a follower's got to make up their mind about something. You have to be smart enough to listen, understand what you're being told to do, and then do it. That's not easy, especially when you don't always see the big picture.

And why are followers always "sheep"? A leader's got it easy. He has to decide what to do and how to do it and then everyone else just goes along with him. A follower has to do all that AND THEN decide who to follow.

Writer's Block, Part I

Whoever thought of the "infomercial"? It's a half-hour long commercial. Does anyone willingly watch commercials? Especially ones with a guy on them who talks to you like you're two years old and you've never seen dirt come off something or watched meat cook before.

There are syndicated adventure shows like Hercules and Xena, even though those two don't come on anymore, there's still one that's like a female Zorro where the lead kind of looks like Catherine Zeta Jones, and then there's Beastmaster, and Sheena, and the Lost World. And they all have these INCREDIBLY good-looking people on them who can't act. But on the plus side, they're half-naked. All these shows claim to be feminist, but the only reason they even have female leads is, of course, to show them half-naked. And they're always set in some mythical past so they can have a logical reason to show them in leather.

Then there's talk shows, old (and I mean OLD) reruns, and even older movies. None of them are things you would willingly watch. In fact, they seem designed to help you get back to sleep. I wonder does the government fund this public service?

So here I am watching old tapes of Star Wars. I don't buy this whole "Force" thing. I mean, maybe it helped those Jedi guys move boxes and things, but it seems to me that's a poor trade-off because you to be a Jedi you also have to be a dork. Plus, it didn't seem to make them any smarter. Darth Vader was supposed to be this great mind-reader, but how come it took him til the third movie to figure out that Leia was his daughter? And how come he could read Luke's mind when they were fighting in Return of the Jedi, but he spent the whole first half of Star Wars trying to get Leia to tell him where the rebel base was? And in the first movie, Obi-Wan and Luke are trying to get off Tatooine with two droids that the whole Empire is looking for, so they LEAVE THEM OUTSIDE while they get in a bar fight. And Luke just screws up everything. Also, Is everyone in these movies kin to one another? Han knows everybody in the galaxy. Luke and Darth and Leia are all one big inter-marrying redneck family. And it just got worse in the last movie. So Darth Vader built C3PO? Did they ever explain why he made him gay?

My butt's sore from sitting in this chair.

Why are models on TV so anorexic? Who told them that was a good look? It's gross. They got their hip bones all sticking out and their faces all sunken in and they barely have any curves. They just look sick. I want to know what heroin addict got to decide that this was good-looking. I mean, look at Teri Hatcher and Ashley Judd: They were both knockouts til they went all anorexic.

Reading The Obituaries

Every time I get a local paper, one of the first things I look at is the obituaries. I don't know why. I'm not obsessed with death or dying. But I always look to see who died, how old they were, and what they died from. They hardly ever tell you what they died from, which in most cases I understand I guess. When you see "John Doolittle, 87" you don't really wonder what he died from, because even if it was a car accident you figure he was bound to go pretty soon anyway, and he had a full life. But any younger than 50, I'm thinking, was it an accident, were they sick, what? It would help me to know. You can't really call and ask, especially if you didn't know them. Sometimes they do say, and sometimes they will tack something on at the end like "In lieu of flowers, the family is asking that you give to the United Cancer Foundation", which will clue you in unless you're really stupid. Another thing that irks me is when the person is 108 years old and they get a line of two, especially if that person is a veteran. Someone that old probably fought in World War I, we should be writing big newspaper articles about them, and instead they get "John Macy, 87, passed away in his bed. Funeral arrangements to be announced." I want mine to say something like "John J. Doolittle, 41, died saving the earth. Check out his homepage!!"

I don't think any of this is morbid. I read the obituaries and I'm glad to be alive.