As IF Times

link Repairman Faces Charges Of Cleaning Out Bay Area ATMs, Refilling Them With Counterfeit Bills « CBS San Francisco.

 It was hard for me at first to determine my immediate response to this story.  Is it amusing because of the man’s stupidity?  Is it amusing because of the man’s creativity? Does it provoke feelings of empathy? Or outrage? Is it banal, or is it fascinating?  Upon consideration, I think the story actually stirs feelings of resignation coupled with a slight tinge of sadness.  Like many ‘headlines’ to be found in the news aggregators today, the story is just plain weird.  As  an example, take a look at some of the other nuggets listed on Drudge’s site today, I have not made up any of them:

 Postal worker caught defecating in yard keeps job, gets new route…

Reality show about swingers…

Zuckerberg Shock: ‘Only meat I’m eating is from animals I’ve killed myself’…

Iron Thieves Caught Dismantling 100 Yards Of Railroad Tracks…

Naked man crashes truck into house, tenant fights off with hammer…

NYC GOES WILD: Man In Briefs, Stilettos Pole Dances On Subway; Flash Mob Dance Party Breaks Out…

Are people becoming more crazy or is it just that there’s more reporting of crazy activity in the Internet age? There’s no question that with the pervasiveness of YouTube, an entire industry of exhibitionists have emerged to display their talents and or eccentricities to the world.  It must be hard wired into the human psyche to crave attention and notoriety.   Those lucky enough to be endowed with good looks can satisfy this need by going into the entertainment industry.  Those not so blessed with obvious looks or talent use the back doors of YouTube or some other such media conduit. 

As more and more people  vy for other people’s attention, the bar of entry gets higher and higher.  Stunts and activities have to become more and more outrageous to merit any kind of attention at all to the jaded consumer.  Weird is the new normal. Years ago, some idiots made a film called Jackass, which essentially chronicled the self destructive activities of some Darwin challenging kids.  Surprisingly, or not, depending on your take on pop culture, the film became a huge hit.  A 5 million dollar ‘investment’ wound up grossing 80 million in ticket sales.  Not to mention sequels and spin offs as well as spawning imitators from everywhere.  So now, self mutilation, testicular destruction and skull fractures are mainstream entertainment.

In essence, stupid is being glorified and even worse, can be financially beneficial.  Somehow, over the past decade or so, the barrier separating people from outrageous, anti-social behavior has been totally removed!  It seems that there are no boundaries for what used to be considered decent behaviour.  There seems to be very few consequences to ‘coloring outside of the lines’ of society.  Heck, if your deed is ridiculous enough, you may even get famous or rich.  Those that breach society’s protocols are celebrated as anti heroes rather than being marginalized.   

Getting back to this poor guy who emptied cash from ATM machines and replaced them with Xerox notes,  I’m sure publicity was not his main intent.  He, however probably did consider, “what’s the downside?’  In the big scheme of things, he was probably right.  Sure he may get some prison time, but overall, he must have thought it worth a shot.   And that is the big risk.  When everybody thinks it’s worth the shot and there are no consequences.

link Tiger Woods out of the World Golf Ranking top 10 for first time since 1997 – News | FOX Sports on MSN.

In order to fix Tiger’s professional woes, nobody seems to want to address the elephant in the room solution.  He’s already gone the conventional route by trying to refine his swing by working with various high profile coaches from Harmon, to Haney and now to Canadian Sean Foley.  No doubt he has access to the best sports psychologists money can buy…and he can buy a lot of them.  For someone who until recently was destined to be the greatest player ever in the game, the lack of production over the last 2 seasons is unthinkable.  In his absence, a whole new flock of aspirants are fighting for his crown of Number 1 in the world.

The simple fix is, why not go back to what worked before?  When he came out in 1997, he lapped the field at the Masters cruising to the largest stroke margin of victory ever.  His swing was good enough then.  Of course we all know now that other things were transpiring in Mr. Wood’s life, things that didn’t play well in the press. 

But maybe that was part of the formula that made him good.  Maybe in his case you can’t have the good without the bad?

Who knows, maybe all that rampant testosterone in his double life also carried over into his professional life and made him the terror to other golfers that he was.  Maybe he needed to have all of those components in his life firing in order to perform at his high level.  This is not to cast admiration or support for his activities, it’s merely an observation.  Maybe he’s like drain cleaner; works well, but wrecks the pipes.

Years ago, McDonalds was the indisputable champion of the french fry business.  People could scoff at the rest of their menu items, but nobody didn’t like McDonalds fries.  They were like crack cocaine to most people.  Then a dark secret was leaked out.  Apparently over the years when they claimed to be using 100% vegetable oil in fry production, McDonalds had actually been using beef tallow or flavoring in their formula.  Lawsuits and moaning ensued and the company was forced to change their oil formula.   After switching to a more ‘healthy’ oil to fry the fries, the taste never became the same.  Sure they continue to sell fries, but the addictive quality of the previous iteration was gone.  Now, other fast food operations like Wendy’s claim the title as best french fry.  Do-gooders claimed victory, but what really should have happened was that people should have chosen not to buy the original fries if they thought they were harmful.  Too simple I guess.  Go figure, they want to legalize pot, but criminalize french fries.

Anyway, getting back to Tiger, the ignominy of his life has already been exposed, the consequences taken and the monies spent.  So now what?  If Tiger wants to play the recovering daddy role, that’s admirable.  But if he wants to regain the fire that put him on top of the golf world when he was younger, he may have to return to the original formula which put him there.  Tiger’s entire existence is owed to golf.  He has to regain the formula. He may be back on the circuit again soon.  And I don’t mean just golf.