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If At First You Don't Succeed...Aw, Forget It
by Mad Dog


There’s a fine line between tenacity and wasting your time.
Growing up we were always told that “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Of course that was before Obsessive Compulsive Disorder became a parental fear second only to finding razor blades in Halloween candy or having a child who—gasp!— doesn’t want to grow up to have an MBA. Is it any wonder so many parents check on their kids five, six, seven times a day? Okay, an hour. But hey, you can never be too careful.

   The idea behind the adage was that you shouldn’t give up. Ever. Failure was unacceptable and grounds for committing Hara-kiri, which confused us no end since we couldn’t figure out why a sports announcer or old Western star should have to go into the mental hospital just because we were incompetent underachievers who didn’t know what the word “tenacity” meant. Or Hari-kari, obviously. The point was, we were supposed to keep at it.

   This is still good advice, though even tenacity has its limits. Take the 68-year-old South Korean woman who has taken, and failed, her written driver’s test 771 times since 2005. And plans on taking it until she passes, even though she’s already spent $3,000 on exam fees, sells items from a handcart, and even if she does manage to pass will still need to take the road exam. Like Rod Blagojevich, you don’t see her quitting. Though maybe she should. After all, there’s a fine line between tenacity and wasting your time.


The union that represented the laid-off workers is predictably in an uproar, though the truth is they should be embarrassed that it’s taking half as many prisoners to do the work their members used to do.
   Then there’s Harry Stonebraker, who ran for mayor of Winfield, MO, and was elected to his fourth term, garnering 90 percent of the votes. So what if he died a month before the election, that’s not important. What is important is that even in death he continued to show the kind of stick-to-it-iveness that would make any parent proud. Whether they’d be so proud of those who voted for him is another question altogether.

   Tenacity is an important virtue to have these days. It’s what we need if we’re going to get through the current global financial crisis with our homes, bank accounts, and retirement years intact, though I have to admit that just to play it safe I’ve been working on a new retirement plan—standing in front of the mirror practicing saying, “Would you like fries with that?” While the government is working on the problem, it’s using its own version of the adage: “If at first you don’t succeed, throw more money at it,” which is pretty scary in itself. After all, no two economists—better yet experts like cab drivers—agree on what will work, which is why the fiscal crisis is being treated by trial and error. While this pretty much is the definition of “try, try again,” it doesn’t exactly instill confidence.

   Since tenacity alone won’t get us through this, we also need to be innovative and creative, like they are in Navestock, a village 25 miles outside of London. They’re considering helping their fiscal situation by not bothering to repair potholes. They figure that by doing nothing they’ll not only save money, but will save lives as well by forcing drivers to slow down. Think: negative speed bumps. Sure it might wind up costing car owners a little extra when a wheel gets knocked out of round, the front-end needs to be aligned, or a silly old tie-rod breaks, but that’s a small price to pay to save the government a few bucks. After all, as any taxpayer knows, even though money can be both created and destroyed, it will always come out of your pocket.


Why not let prisoners sleep in museums? Since most of the art is hanging on the walls, there’s a lot of unused floor space. And the building’s aren’t being used during the night.
   Another innovative idea comes from the state of Ohio, which because of budget cuts laid off 17 janitors and groundskeepers from the Statehouse staff in Columbus. Okay, that part’s not particularly innovative, but since it’s obvious the legislators aren’t about to mow the lawn or take out their trash, the board that operates the Statehouse decided to use seven prisoners to help out. The union that represented the laid-off workers is predictably in an uproar, though the truth is they should be embarrassed that it’s taking half as many prisoners to do the work their members used to do.

   Speaking of saving money and prisoners, one place we could save big time would be by figuring out how to rein in the cost of housing them. Experts say the prison population in the United States will grow by more than 600,000 over the next 10 years. To put that into perspective, it’s nearly the number of new stores Starbucks will open during the same time period. Where will we put them all? Not the Starbucks—lord knows there are more than enough blocks that don’t have three of them yet—but rather where are we going to house the new prisoners?

   Why not let them sleep in museums? Since most of the art is hanging on the walls, there’s a lot of unused floor space. And the building’s aren’t being used during the night. Not to mention that any museum worth a line item in a state budget already has a full compliment of guards, surveillance cameras in every corner, and a security system even George Clooney would find daunting in Oceans 18.

   This is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and each one is worth a try. And if these ideas don’t work, well, we can always try, try again.

©2009 Mad Dog Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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