Dave Mows Grass Producion System

All huge multinational corporations have some systematic strategy for eliminating waste from all aspects of their operations. They usually have their own bastardizations of TPM, 5-S, VSM, and other stupid acronyms that Toyota came up with. They put their own name on it and brag about it to their shareholders. At the end of the day, though, they end up doing only an average job of eliminating waste because they are doing the same exact thing that every other huge multinational corporation is doing. But not at Dave Mows Grass.

The Dave Mows Grass Production System really is different. The Dave Mows Grass Production System is like the Carthaginian Solution to waste. The Dave Mows Grass Production System is not satisfied with simply vanquishing waste on the battlefield. Instead, it captures waste and drags it to the square where it puts it on the rack and stretches it till its joints pop. Then it disembowels waste with dull implements and chops its head with an axe. But the Dave Mows Grass Production System does not stop there. It takes waste's wife into waste's own bed and has her until it is bored and it sends her to work with her children in the salt mines. Then it burns waste's city until not a single splinter remains standing. The Dave Mows Grass Production System stands before waste like a Roman general saying, "I hold within the folds of my toga both peace and war. Which should I let drop?" Before waste can answer, it shouts, "I choose war!"

Well, the war starts tonight! Actually tomorrow. Tonight, the Dave Mows Grass Production System is playing boatball at Riverside Park.

DMG Gains Foothold in War for Playroom

For many years, no one challenged DMG's dominion over his playroom. DMG filled it with toys and exercise equipment which he never used. He would lay on the floor for hours doing sudoku puzzles and listening to music. It was his favorite escape from a world that hated him. But that all changed.

Three years ago, DMG had a son named DMG Jr. From the day he was born, DMG Jr. has been driven by greed. Whatever he wanted, he got, and the thing he wanted most was DMG's playroom. Piece by piece, DMG's things got moved to storage, pawned off to DMG Jr's surrogates, or sent to the landfill. Whenever one of DMG's toys was removed, DMG Jr. would consolidate the victory by instantly filling the vacant floorspace with a toy of his own. A skilled diplomat, DMG Jr. formed a strategic alliance with his mother, Mrs. DMG, who wielded her considerable influence over DMG to further her son's conquest over the all-but-lost playroom. This pressure from all sides eventually forced DMG to surrender and withdraw completely from the space he loved so much. The terms of the surrender were humiliating. Fearing that DMG Jr. would go on to conquer the entire house, DMG agreed to buy the new king an oak crib using his own money and paint the whole room a pale blue color in exchange for a truce. That truce held for almost three years.

The unrest began last month when DMG Jr. and his mother travelled together to Asia to advance their interests there. Seeing that the playroom had been left undefended, DMG launched a series of raids in which he filled an entire 42-gallon garbage bag with toys that were no longer appropriate for his 3 year-old son. He felt a double-dose of schadenfreude as he heaved the heavy bag into the dumpster remembering how his own toys had met the same fate. He even removed some large items including a green plastic dragon with a series of chutes where DMG Jr. would laugh at funny electronic sounds as translucent balls roll down convoluted paths to the beige carpet floor. In the end, DMG had completely cleared the southeast corner of his former playroom. Following his son's strategy, he occupied the space with an object so large and bulky that he knew DMG Jr. would not be able to remove it. To be sure, he even anchored the object to the wall using a green bungee cord with the ends affixed well out of his young son's reach. So far, DMG's foothold in this ugly war of attrition has held. But with DMG Jr. back in town and his alliance with his mother as strong as ever, DMG has little reason to believe he will ever recapture the entire playroom that he loved so much.

My body is a temple,

a Buddhist temple. It is a big, fat Buddhist temple which sits on the couch with its stomach distending over its belt watching the 1994 Stanley Cup Finals on DVD because its small and inadequate air conditioner does somehow manage to keep it a few degrees cooler on the inside than on the outside and any little bit helps.