THE FEEL GOOD INDEX!

What has become of the days of toughing it out? Today we spend all of our time trying to measure concrete formulaic principals in terms of “feelings”! This may be a mistake. It is sort of the difference between Math and English in school. Mathematics is the cold hard reality of absolutes that truth brings. There is no gray area or wiggle room; kind of like with your spouse if you’ve been married too long. Sometimes in the great marriage horserace of life you need to go to the whip to make sure ol’ reliable will still move for ya from time to time!

In math, one plus one is always two. In English however there are high theoretical concepts applied where one plus one may be two, but if there are others playing the game you must find a way to comprehend their sentences so to spare their feelings even if they sound like Charo with thick lips and a fat tongue. Similar to Math however, in English there is a specific order that must be followed for the language to ring true to the ear. Accents are fine and people can be understood even if the speaker’s subordinate clauses are spoken sideways. On the other hand Math offers graphic differences. It is one thing to house .000024 worms as opposed to 240,000. One is a barely visible microscopic portion of the creature hardly fit for fishing, and the other could have you in the bait and tackle business for an eternity not to mention increase your popularity among countless feathery friends of bird species. You must make that non-English speaker feel comfortable even though they’ve ordered that bottle of Rose’ Brut by asking for a bottle of rosy butt! That may be what every one wants when they order a shapely bottle of French wine however, your broken-English associate might be more useful as a tagalong in a New Orleans brothel.

Remember in the old days when you wanted to know how cold it was outside? It use to be that you could get an accurate idea by the weatherman’s report of the temperature. Fifty degrees was pretty cool and you knew you needed to wear a lightweight jacket.

In the post Generation X culture that we live in today however fifty is not fifty. It “feels like” thirty if the wind is from the north and blowing strong enough. The TV weatherman's map is unique. The guy is paid thousands of dollars to stand in front of it and can’t wear green because if he does he’ll disappear The blank screen in his studio when displayed on your TV with all of its high tech gadgetry still says fifty degrees, but wear that lightweight coat not knowing the wind chill factor and you might freeze off a dangling participle. If I had known I’d need to be acquainted with barometric pressure, wind speeds and cloud formations I would have majored in meteorology in college. On a side note, what do meteors have to do with the weather except during a shower one must remember to bring a lead lined umbrella? Obviously now you can understand how well I faired while in the post secondary education system.

If Americans aren’t driving down the road offering high hand gestures to bad drivers (and crappy drivers are always the other guy), then we’re finding some other way that someone else has made us “feel” wronged. The guy in the parking lot has zoomed into the parking space two feet in front of us from three aisles over at supersonic speed and we feel incensed. The battle ensues when two of us reach for the same article of clothing on the discount clearance rack at Slut-Mart (soon to be a registered trademark, guaranteed to lure both men and women to such an attractively named store of such potential for both genders). Our dinner engagement didn’t put up a fight when we offered to pay the check. Now we’re stuck with their doggie bag and their high liquor bill. That’s what you get when making dates with alcoholics. Hell, who wants to go out with someone having no drinking problem? Those kinds are usually stiff and prudish. The liquored up partners are always eager to unsnap things and can usually go from full evening attire to their birthday suit faster than the guy who stole your parking space. Talk about “feelings”. What better way to feel someone than while in the midst of a buzz induced night of partying.

In hospital emergency rooms there is even a chart on the wall of smiley faces designating a range of feelings. Of course their jobs are to assess how you feel. The happiest smile on the chart means the least amount of pain. As a matter of fact that smiley face feeling is about the same as a couple waking up after a night of carnal indulgence except the smiley face is much more clear-eyed and doesn’t wake up with panties in its mouth. At the opposite end of the chart the smile is turned upside down indicating extreme pain. This un-smiley face is indicative of the “feeling” Lorena Bobbitt imparted to her husband after she did some shearing of the old family jewels before sending the main meat flying from the car window to flop on the ground like a pouch of wet jelly. Does anyone in an emergency room who is still conscious ever tell the admitting nurse that their pain is a ten? I would bet there are plenty of dramatists who exaggerate their pain for a little sympathy and a big industrial sized pain relief suitcase of medicine. We after all have become a pill popping, touchy, feely, mommy it hurts collection of whimpering snivlets! Not only have we allowed this to happen, but we’ve embraced the idea that we are better people somehow if we feel everybody’s pain. It’s the easiest way we have of assessing our own and trying to see how we can top theirs.

Look around you over the course of any given week and see how many areas of life that were once bastions of clear cut black and white reality have degenerated into an ego stroking cultural sensitivity class; making us feel as if we have more value than we do. It is such a sad state of affairs that many ignore the slide toward pseudo-sensitivity, or go completely another way.
As for me I like to drown my feelings as often as I can with some unique hand gestures, tablets from my own pain relief suitcase, and a nice compliment of rosy butt.

Absurdities!

Absurd (ab-surd) adj. contrary to all reason or common sense; illogical, ridiculous.

What is it that makes a bank robber not only hand the teller a note demanding all of her money but at the same time give her his paycheck and deposit slip with his name on it? What makes a visitor to the local fast food joint get out of the car to go inside to use the bathroom but then get back in the car and wait to go through to the drive thru window? Just what does make a 65 year old balding man go to the barber to get a hair cut? These are fascinating studies in human behavioral oddity and absolutely true cases. We have all probably heard of cases such as these but how many of us are willing to admit to out own similar stupidity? Not me brother! I meant to walk into that solid wooden door because I am conducting an acoustical study into how many different sounds can be categorized as a “thud.” That sound you heard when I was under the table trying to stand up was also part of the same project. I am secretly trying to find out how many lumps on one person can have on their head before they can no longer see strait. I am slowly approaching the state where I can no longer comfortably wear a baseball cap.

My child is in on the act too. She is trying to climb and fall from enough monkey bars, trip over as many curbs, and run into as many objects as she can to accumulate bruises. She’s trying to look like an over ripe banana.

The other woman in my life has always had as an ultimate goal having every part of her body hurt, broken, lumpy, oozing, or wiggling at one time or another during her lifespan. She’s been at it for as long as I’ve known her. Don’t stand next to her or she’ll take you down too. She loves to grab and fall! Her favorite phrase is “aawwwww shhhhhhh…..” I don’t want to say she has a balance problem but she does do a startlingly amusing slick stairway tap dance as anyone I have ever seen! Every time I think she has completed her task of hurting body parts she comes up with another one I’d almost forgot existed on a human being. You haven’t lived until you hear improbable words like “my eye lashes hurt.” “Stop letting the gopher pull them out” I tell her. She doesn’t listen. I’m sure that’s because she has earaches or something.

Human stupidity is never more evident then when watching Jerry Lewis, Jim Carey, or John Belushi in action. Theirs are case studies in the ability to harness observation of stupidity, exaggerate it, and play it back in a manner that has the average shmoe busting a gut. Once hooked we don’t mind shelling out hundreds of dollars to see these genius’ perform the material that we provide them! Who’s yankin’ who?

What passes for wisdom in the modern era is kind of like clutching the wind. You know its there somewhere but the forces of nature won’t let you see it. We all do things that seem out of character from time to time. However a woman’s salon that applies peanut butter instead of toenail polish would be a bit out there! Selling entrance through the pearly gates that guarantees you a spot in heaven is just such an idea whose time has come. There is actually a company who is making this claim. Looking back on my illustrious life I realize its time to belly up and pay!

Just think of all of the things you have done in your lifetime that are contrary to “normal" conventions. I don’t mean just the boo-boos that everyone has seen. I mean the truly nonsensical behavior that only your lover and an ER doctor with exceptionally cold hands has ever seen. Who would have thought that would get stuck in there?

For the amount of people on this planet it is rather remarkable that we are not hearing such absurdities excessively and laughing ourselves silly.

Look around you! Why do us overweight types always spend a mere 35 seconds choosing a restaurant? We have the innate ability to pass a local establishment, put our piggish noses in the air, and get a whiff of whether they serve enough calories per square inch in their slap happy deal! We require, by the way, enough caloric intake to make a pachyderm happy. We always select the restaurant with the absolutely worst, greasy, cholesterol raising, artery clogging, heart thickening version of food. Then to counter balance the bad karma we’ve created we all do the same thing. We order a diet soda to go with it!

Just listen to our conversations to see the kind of communication that typifies such farce? “I lost my keys and looked everywhere for them. I finally found them. It’s always in the last place ya look ya know!” That last part has become quite a catch phrase. Well who finds something and keeps looking for it? Of course it’s in the last place you looked you dunce!

This is the kind of stellar logic that we have been instilling in kids for years. They learn more of it in school too. They can’t add, read, or write, but they sure can choose the correct eye popping ensemble to impress the recess crowd! They can’t play dodge ball anymore because someone might get hit by the ball and their face could fall off. You can’t let 'em swing from the swing set too high or they might go too far, fall off, and bruise their tush. Apparently all of those teacher in service day holidays that leave your kids a day off every month is in place so the teachers try to recover. Just try dealing with the least logical of us and you’d end up looking like a teacher too. Their eyes aren’t that wide open because their attentive. It’s because they spend so much time with illogical kids that the stress is forcing their eyes to bulge! There is little wonder why periodically you hear from your kid “I don’t like that teacher! Well guess what kid you’ve driven them to have to have a day away from you ever month just as a reality check! They don’t like you either!

At school ya can’t even let the children walk the hallways during classes any more unless they’re in pairs. This is how all of the adult ladies learned that they can’t go to the bathroom tinkle without a partner in the next stall. That’s why they go to the bathroom in pairs. Guys are not taught this in school. Contrarily boys learn individualism and competition usually in the form of some long distance whizzing competition when the teachers aren’t looking. That is equally remarkable because guys, who as children use to wave that thing over the bathroom, shelter themselves in the stall so no one will see what they’re hiding! Whatta ya got in there?

In any event, all of these amusing behaviors are perpetrated upon ourselves! Whenever self-inflicted stupidity rears its head you can bet that there is a partner there laughing with you and a cold handed ER doctor to laugh at you!