January, 2005 

Well, it’s a new year and you’re probably wondering what you can do to make your life better but you don’t want to go to a lot of trouble to come up with a list of New Year’s Resolutions all by yourself. Yeah, yeah, New Year’s Day was almost a month ago. Whatever. I’m doing this as a public service for you procrastinators. Fortunately for you, I have gone to the trouble of coming up with a few common sense things that you can do to improve your life with little or no effort.

And so, I present you with: Chuck’s Common Sense Tips to Better Living. 

What brought this to mind is what- to me – seems to be a rash of fatal car accidents in South Florida lately. Almost every day we hear about another wreck where a vehicle runs off the road, crosses a median or runs into a tree and one or more occupants is killed. While some of these accidents are attributable to excessive speed (in other words: “Nobody to blame but yourself”) the common denominator in most of these fatalities is: “none of the occupants was wearing a seat belt.” Well, DUH!

Oddly enough, the survivors (if any) invariably tend to cast the blame on “the other guy” that ran them off the road or “poor road conditions” or some other cause. Anything except their own negligence. Well, guess what? Here comes the Clue Train! If you drive or ride in a car without a seat belt you will most likely be seriously injured or die in an accident! The sad thing is that most often it’s children that are the innocent victims of their own parents’ negligence.

So, here’s Chuck’s Common Sense Tip to Better Living #1: Fasten your seat belt. If you are injured in a car accident and aren’t wearing a seat belt then you don’t get to go on the TV news and tell us how “the other guy ruined your life.”

Next up, we have an E-Mail I received the other day from the “Parents Television Council” – or whatever it’s called. A year ago I told them to quit spamming me but they just won’t stop. I don’t mind it too much since they only send out one or two E-Mails a year. What DOES bother me, though, is that they are only concerned with putting and end to certain television CONTENT and that they don’t care about QUALITY.

I’m sure we all agree that there are some things that we’d like to see on television as adults but that we wouldn’t want our children to watch - like news from Iraq – but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t BE on TV! What seems to have started this whole controversy was Janet Jackson’s “Wardrobe Malfunction” at last year’s Super Bowl. Now, I ask you: did you see it live? Did you notice anything amiss as it happened? The whole thing is just ridiculous. There is nothing titillating about Janet Jackson’s, um, “thingies.” Here comes the Clue Train again!

Chuck’s Common Sense Tip to Better Living #2: Turn off the TV if you don’t like what’s on it. Go read a book and – I want to make this perfectly clear: don’t send me E-Mails about it.

Chuck’s Bonus Common Sense Tip to Better Living: If you happen to be Janet Jackson, call your brother and get the name of a good plastic surgeon.

Now, my last tip might come off as way too obvious to even be considered a tip but I’m going to give it to you anyway. As I’m sure you’re all aware by now, there has been a major snowstorm throughout most of the US. We have even felt its effects here in South Florida. Some of its side-effects have been delayed or cancelled flights across the country and thousands of people being unable to go to work or school because of the inclement weather.

Every night the TV news shows us pictures of people in New York shoveling snow off their driveways and other people stuck at MIA because their flight was cancelled due to the snow storm. Invariably, these people always seem surprised – as if this is the first time something like this has ever happened.

If I ran a TV news program, I wouldn’t bother sending a camera crew out each time it snowed. Instead, I’d just pull out the same file footage every January and run it, year after year, as if it had just happened. If anybody complained, I’d refer them to my Common Sense Tip #2! As for the people stuck at the airport with no TV reporters to talk to, I offer this common sense tip the size of an Airbus A-380:

Chuck’s Common Sense Tip to Better Living #3: Always take a pillow and a blanket with you when you travel during the winter months. That way, you can relax in comfort instead of boring the rest of us with your insight as to how the airline should somehow put you on a plane from Miami to New York when said plane is sitting on the ground in Chicago covered in ice.

So there you have it; three easy-to-follow tips that will have you leading a safer, fuller and more comfortable life in no time.