A year ago I asked: If you experienced the worst day of your life…something truly horrible…and there was a drug that made you forget the previous 24 hours, would you take it?

I was reminded of this today when I had to send my Thinkpad back in time to a “restore point” where life was good. To a time (last night) before it got so screwed up it wouldn’t even boot up. Man, what a great feature and pretty damned close to a time machine.

Some of us would wear that Button out, hoping for a better day today. Might work if we only got to use it, say, three times in a lifetime. Yeah, today sucked… but do I really want to use up one of my “go back to yesterday” options?

It only works because –with my laptop– I can change the future. I know what I did to screw the pooch so I won’t do that again. Could we be trusted with that knowledge in life?

Just spent a fascinating two hours drinking beer with Steve Mays (we agreed that–when in Seattle– I would be the “other” Steve Mays). He’s a 42 year old attorney. Married. Child free. (Like me). He had a very successful radio career that started in Oklahoma City and wound up in San Francisco. (Sort of like me, except for the success part). He went to law school. Like me. But instead of dropping out after three months, he graduated and has a small but successful practice here in Seattle. And next week he joins a software company as in-house council.

Sitting in the bar waiting for him felt uncomfortably like a blind date. But after we sucked down a few of the delicious Seattle micro-brews, it was like…two guys with the same name. I was a little amazed at how much we had in common besides our name. My plan is to track down *all* of the Steve Mays’ and see what they’re like.

Got a call today from a guy I knew from my affiliate relations days. He left the radio business for a couple years but is once again managing a station in southern Missouri. When I mentioned this to Data Daddy David, he said it reminded him those movies where where somebody escapes, is recaptured, and paraded before the other prisoners as the screws take him back to his cell.

“Like in Cool Hand Luke,” I observed.

“I was actually thinking of Steve McQueen in The Great Escape,” DDD replied. “I can see the guy sitting on the floor of his office, bouncing that baseball off the wall, hour after hour.”

I’ve been trying to come up with other movies where someone escapes, is captured, and brought back. Submissions may sent to stevemays@hotmail.com.

I, Steve Mays, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by any artificial means. Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of peckerhead politicians who couldn’t pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it.

If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to sit up and ask for a cold beer, it should be presumed that I won’t do so ever again. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day. Under no circumstances shall the members of the Legislature enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Americans who aren’t in a permanent coma and who nonetheless may be in need of nourishment.

Under no circumstances shall any politicians butt into this case. I don’t care how many fundamentalist votes they’re trying to scrounge for their run for the presidency in 2008, it is my wish that they play politics with someone else’s life and leave me alone to die in peace. I couldn’t care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don’t know these people, and I certainly haven’t authorized them to preach and/or crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own damn business,too.

If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living hell.

— Author unknown