Cornered by Mike Baldwin for July 25, 2010

In a perfect world, everyone would be accountable.

So you think everyone should be a perfect human bean, Sheik?

There is more truth to this than most of us are comfortable with, I bet.

I’m scared that Above in a perfect world, someones been counting my beans.

There was an episode of the old Addams Family TV show where the running joke was some visiting Russians who took every figure of speech literally. When someone referred to losing one’s job as “getting the ax”, the Russians wrote down “American capitalist overlords execute unwanted workers” which, based on my experiences in the workplace, isn’t far off the mark.

Nice use of irony, Runar. Say, is that a Russian name? Nah, sounds Nordic. Plural of “rune” maybe? But then, the first Russian state was founded by Vikings called the Rus, so who knows.

My corporate experience, watching my former employer decline from 250,000 employees to 24,000 last year, is that they hardly ever killed anyone. Almost never. Well, actually never.

(In a perfect world, trial lawyers would be so tired from running after ambulances that they’d have no energy left to cause trouble.)

Since we are not and never will be in a perfect world, if we got rid of the lawyers without eliminating the need for them, would we be better or worse off then we are now?

In a perfect world there would be no doctors and no need for them. In a perfect world there would be no policemen and no need for them. In a perfect world there would be no soldiers and no need for them. In a perfect world there would be no emergency plumbers and no need for them. In a perfect world there would be no firemen and no need for them. In a perfect world…

pschearer, you are correct in assuming Nordic origins for my user name, but while it is similar to the word “rune” it is not, in fact, etymologically related. It is a personal name that survives to some extent in modern Norwegian, and is the closest I can come to my given name in Old Norse. And yes, while the kingdom of the Rus was founded by Viking traders headquartered in the vicinity of Kiev, they almost completely assimilated into the surrounding Slavic population to the point where almost no linguistic traces of Germanicorigin remain. It does, however, explain why there are a fair number of blonde Russians when Slavs as a group tend to be darker.

Growing up in Central Illinois, two summer jobs that were always available for teenagers were detassling cornstalks and “walking beans” (soybeans).

I never did either, but while I know the “what” and the “why” of detassling, I have no idea what “walking beans” is. Probably something more than counting them, though…

fritzoid, I detassled corn as a kid – in Central Illinois! Dare I ask where you’re from?

I never walked beans, though. I believe that’s picking beans, but don’t quote me on it.

cdward, I grew up in Champaign.

ElDo, I don’t know about a perfect world, but given that “All is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds”, it is certainly good that he did so. But to bring us back to the cartoon, “That’s as may be, but we still must tend our garden.”

Walking beans means weeding the rows of soybeans, picking everything but the beans.