The Devil's Advocate

Giosue'

2009-05-18T06:20:00.000-07:00

VACATION!

2009-05-18T06:19:00.000-07:00

Is there any more stirring moment than a Friday afternoon for the working man or woman? People who start Monday with the growl of the proverbial lion with a thorn in their paw on Friday are smiling gently as refined creatures of almost angelic proportions. They are at their happiest when the weekend looms! Actually who we are on Monday is a good gage of where we are as a society. On Friday we fulfill the potential of the human race and engage one another as we would like to be treated. That is until we leave the office. Then out on the highway the carnage begins. Who gets somewhere the fastest to reclaim the lost part of their life can look ugly especially at the beginning of the weekend. Only the drive to the office Monday morning could be worse.

Criminal statistics suggest that most individuals are victims of violence after dark. What they don’t tell you is that most such mayhem occurs between people driving to work in rush hour traffic before the sun comes up. If not overly aggressive there is certainly very entertaining creativity in the art of in-cockpit driver gestures toward fellow commuters. The faces made are tortured, precious, and comical. It is like watching the contortions of Donald Duck!

Donald’s gesticulations are similar to your boss’s at times when the vein in his neck begins to bulge. That usually happens over something as simple as
your mistakenly sending his secret computer file of girlie pictures to corporate headquarters “NO I SAID SEND THE TIT FOR TAT FILE TO MY HOME, NOT THE HOME OFFICE!!! Sheesh ya make one small flub and the old boy has a conniption!

Somewhere between Monday and Friday people have varying degrees of stress and reprieve from it. The relief is akin to how we feel when we take vacation. The behavior is nothing short of a series of weekends strung together through an entire week. If you’re not drinking and you’re on leave for a week just decompressing at home it is kind of eerie around the neighborhood. Actually it’s reminiscent of being in a desert on the moon. Your little neighborhood, which you only really know on the weekend, is no longer bustling with the buzz of assorted activity. It has become a ghost town! You are the only one there and the streets are empty except the homemaker whose husband is still able to support his wife and 2.1 children with a job at the sludge factory. You never knew there was so much money in waste! He must be wealthy and just never flaunted it. Argh! Now how do you keep up with the Jones’ after that new discovery?!

Nevertheless you get to hear the sounds of the newspaper delivery boy, sanitation workers, the mailman, and the neighborhood recluse who keeps stealing you kid’s two-wheeler from your front porch. He has secretly ridden it daily for years to the nearest store to buy himself a pack of smokes, a Slim Jim snack, a slurpee and to flirt with the counter help. He apparently is partial to foreign women with thick unrecognizable accents! You always thought the cherry slurpee stains on the bike were from your sloppy kid. Now you learn the truth! She has recluse potential!

Vacation gives you perspective whereas you get to see everyday stuff you normally miss because of work. Some of it is scary, but most of it is refreshing. If folks really knew what went on in their neighborhoods when they’re working they would stay in bed under the covers quivering at how much the usual laws of nature don’t seem to apply during the week.

You can rise above the oddity of this new world because most importantly YOU ARE OFF WORK! Nothing you’ve thought has carried that much reverence and at the same time fear since you were a child willing to give great grandmother a kiss because you knew she was gonna reward ya with bucks!. Good old reliable great grandma, her whiskers, and her money!

When we grew up our parents (our mom’s at least) knew the weekday environs and their oddities as everyday happenings. But as a culture we have forgotten stuff much like the Native Americans no longer remember how to perform their cultural rain dance. I think they’ve forgotten. Could be in those years of harsh drought when we go months not being able to water the lawn because of the lack of rainfall Native Americans are chugging from water coolers just laughing their asses off at the rest of us in some sort of self imposed cultural reparation. It’s either that or a memory lapse of how to get the sky to open by pleasing the rain god.

If you are taking time away from work to go somewhere on a trip well then this can be even more exasperating than going to the office. True the attitude is usually laid back at the beginning of the excursion. However, traveling with your kids or even worse, the in-laws, could be a harsh sanity stealing, nail on the blackboard, heart palpitating environment all it’s own.

You certainly have moments of fun but there always seems to be a Russian roulette of emotions being played on those getaways. One person it seems is always unhappy. The rest of the group is saying things like “I don’t know what’s wrong with him, but what do you expect from a guy who’s favorite dwarf is grumpy,” or the guys whisper “PMS” under their breath. The journey seldom lives up to your expectation because there is always some sort of irritation. Whether it is that check-out is at dawn and check-in is at dinner time, or that the room has hangers that don’t come off the rod, it seems like you always end up with some bizarre hotel neighbors. My last trip included a lodge booked with a convention of transvestite truckers.

Traveling with my family always seems like I’m in an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. It’s pleasant and down home yes, but how relaxing can it be it when the family’s idea of take out food is going behind the shack to “blast some critters?”

No matter how your vacation turns out however there is always one grim fact. It has to end and you have to go back to work. That is even worse than a bad holiday expedition. You knew it when you first left for vacation. You counted the days. It seemed in the beginning like such a large amount of time. Then it creeps into your mind midweek that it’s half over. You give it scant thought at that time. By the second weekend you are lamenting the coming Monday. Sunday night before going back to work you end up staying awake until 3:00 a.m. just to squeeze every last ounce out of the time you deserve for yourself. The next day you’re off to work like a lion with a thorn in your paw that can barely keep its eyes open. It’s better that way though. After all what’s there to look at now that the boss’s “fun files” are gone!

2009-04-03T20:47:00.002-07:00

The Art of the Wait

What is worse than going to the doctor’s office to “turn your head and cough” or hearing those immortal ear stimulating words that turns the average body to a quivering mass “put your feet up in the stirrups?” Waiting in line to do it! While spending your day in a medical office you can distract yourself in the latest magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, or Teen Scene (yea us guys really like those). Note to Doctor’s office managers MAGAZINE VARIETY PLEASE! Give me something with some teeth like Highlights kids magazine. At lease that’s challenging and reminds me of being a juvenile again when hanging around wasn’t really a conscious issue. There are no articles in Highlights about “How to get your man to say your size 18 butt looks wonderful in those size 9 pants so you feel good about yourself!” You would think that a culture that is so in tuned to having it all, and having it now, would have found a way to avoid having to stand in line!

Delay! Is there anything that moves the soul in such a way? Waiting in lines and hopping from foot to foot is a great way to pass time and the benefits are untold. I think that’s how I learned to dance! Why is it everyplace I go there is a wait? Heck you don’t even have to leave the house to spend your time waiting. If you’ve got a large family there is always a wait for bathroom time which is why the proper industrial strength bathroom door lock is so important. As you know most 5 year olds can pick nearly any door lock just by turning the knob. This is because of the supernatural lock melting mechanism hidden cleverly under the skin up their sleeves. If yours doesn’t have the power consider yourself fortunate. They do this mind you at the worst possible moment. It doesn’t matter how private or intimate the moment. The precious so and so’s can just make you just lose it. At least in the bathroom you’re in the right place!

Simply making a phone call can result in you practicing the art of the wait! Before call waiting the “busy signal was the height of disappointment. Today nothing can equal saying hello and spouting off your complaint in a well rehearsed diatribe and then realizing you’ve dialed into an automated phone system. Typically after you realize you’re talking to a machine the response goes like this:

“Thank you for calling Don and Fred’s Pulled Pork Stand. Your call is very important to us” (understood to mean: you’re a boob for interrupting our employees during our office’s big computer solitaire tournament. That is why we have you trying to talk to a mechanical disembodied voice on this end). “Due

to the great pig fiasco at Mrs. O’Leary’s Farm our representatives have been inundated with a high volume of calls. Please stay on the line and a representative will be with you shortly.” Now if I’ve managed to figure out how to maneuver through the first fourteen levels of the automation by pounding the right buttons when prompted just to get to this message I’m vested! I gotta stay with the call to find out what kind of a fiasco can befall swine. After three to five additional seconds of silence they always add information which turns out to be a twist of the knife to the most patient caller. “There are 753 calls ahead of you and your approximate wait time will be a fortnight.” I can feel the pressure building behind my eyeballs as they begin to protrude making me look like Marty Feldman on steroids.

It all started at birth. I wanted out but something akin to the Marx Brothers was running the medical team and they held me back. When they finally got the forceps (which is Latin for suction cup boxing gloves) around my head to pull me out you would have thought it was a taffy pulling contest. This made for a lifetime of bewildered people asking “who’s the baby prizefighter with the black eyes?” Of course I had to live down the stigma of being two weeks late on top of looking like Rocky Balboa after a brawl.

In my high school yearbook the theme was “the line.” I should have known that it was a foreshadowing of greater things to come. It’s not so much the fact that you have to wait your turn that is frustrating. It’s more about sharing precious moments of your life surrounded by such colorful characters. Stimulating yes but I’m beginning to wonder if the powers that be are having a good laugh. I always manage to get behind either the guy who doesn’t know what a shower is or the lady who is spending her time in line laughing. Unfortunately she’s standing by herself. It never seems that I can find the “patience is a virtue” line either. Someone is either stressed, angry, crazy, or stinky!

Typically long lines include the pressed for time guy. We’ve all been him at one time or another. When it’s not you however it looks silly. He’s hopping from foot to foot in a pressure paced tension to get to the front of the line. Usually you can see the vein bulging in his neck and even count the heartbeat pulsation if you gawk long enough. The one I chuckle at the most is the crazy dude. You know the Charles Manson look alike with the spooky stare in his eyes. He handles his time waiting in an even more tense fashion. He screams about the injustice of having this unreasonable delay for something so trivial. It’s as if he’s too important to be forced to wait behind the dregs of society in the bank line just to be able to pick up money so he can get his months supply of peanut brittle. His favorite repeated and very audible sigh is “HUMPH!” I snicker very quietly to myself so as to not upset Charlie anymore.

The wacky woman who is going over her recipe for guacamole stew (out loud I might add) while asking her imaginary friend what they want for the dinner also amusingly helps pass the time. It also reminds me that I have to pick up a quart of milk, a lime and toenail clippers at the next stop I still have to make. I breathe a deep sigh as I wait. “Great” I think, “I’m sure at the grocery store there will be another line!”

Cars From Mars

2009-03-29T19:34:00.000-07:00

The powers that be could vote to change America’s car fleet fuel system at any time. In order to switch from dead dinosaur-goo powered propulsion to water, or air-driven engines to save the planet from the Abominable Global-Warming Monster, all Congress has to do is wave its petroleum soaked wand. Abracadabra! We could change into a gluttonous sweet-toothed, sugar-cane driven nation to fuel our cars. We would force ourselves to eat less too. Not only would it trim our waistlines but eliminating the foggy cloud resulting from fossil fuels would enable us to see angels smiling upon us and birds gleefully tweeting. Then living in such a Madison Avenue commercial could be in our future.

The only resistance Americans offer to such a dramatic economic transformation comes when examining futuristic car manufacturer offerings. The blazing trail of new vehicle creations, from the seemingly two-year-old mindset, appears to have been designed on the drawing board with crayons. Advancement in automotive technology today resembles the prototypes of the late 1970’s when America rumbled seriously about dealing with its dependence on foreign oil. Similar blueprints from then seem to be on today’s laptops of American Automotive genius’s! Why do they always want to create cars that look like they should be driven by E.T.? Do the clods t the drafting board ever step foot in a car? Are they the pencil necked geeks from grade-school that could readily offer the numerical sequence for Pi, yet not be able to color coordinate their clothes? These odd fellows always got a super-wedgie from the class bully while the rest of the student body cackled and egged-on such crack-challenging demonstrations. Can someone hanging from the highest yardarm by the elastic of their underwear really inspire any response other than the label “unimaginative Goober?”

The only auto ever to come close to acceptance appeared to be a bubble-mobile on steroids. This hideous design of the 1970’s AMC Pacer, much in the same vein as the new green friendly garbage they are trying to pass off as acceptable, was something akin to a pregnant VW bug that had spread out its hips and been adorned with more window space than a glass house. It was gas efficient however. Thus this notion that consumers will drive anything if it gets fifty miles to the gallon was born. These modern super sub- compact cars remind one of the glass enclosed phone booth that became known as the Pope-mobile.

The difference between the unsightly Pacer and today’s gruesome pod-sized atmosphere- friendly designs is that the Pacer seemed to be made out of metal. The modern death traps that the industry is offering a nervous public seem too lightweight. They could fly if each passenger put an arm out of a window at the same time. That might be necessary given the limited creature comforts, such as space, that these mechanized midgets present. They do not inspire safety, or an esthetically pleasing sense of taste. They completely ignore the cool factor.

Guys who thought being seen behind the wheel of a soccer-mom sporty van shudder when they see the Mork from Ork motor vehicles that salivating granola munching environmentalists seem to favor in the current crop of earth friendly autos. These cars from mars remind one of the Merry Melodies cartoons of ages past featuring Marvin the Martian. He was about as popular as the Edsel too! He didn’t drive a car, but in a turnabout with Bugs Bunny, Marvin would be the instigator of antics that the poor rabbit endured trying to save the Earth from the odd looking Martian. The zany antics come to mind when one views the designs of the “inventive offerings’ of modern earth-favorables from the auto industry. Like Marvin we might seek destruction of the earth rather than its salvation after we spend any time squished in one of these modern mechanical monstrosities. The feeling inspired by their appearance and performance is a desire to drive the ever so clean, fuel efficient, four-wheeler, off nearest cliff.

Muscle cars represented power and the zenith of American status. The whimpering, sniveling, fuel efficient, friendly-fueled, bug-sized design of the future needs an appropriate moniker that captures the essence of tomorrows driving experience. No longer referred to as the bug-eyed bubble-mobile we can simply refer to it as “The Marvin.”

WHO'S THE DOG?

2009-03-06T10:00:00.000-07:00

We have a new puppy in our house. A decade of fighting against the inevitable, down the drain! My mind was against a pet for so long because my daughter wasn’t old enough or responsible enough to clean up after herself let alone another living creature.

A few months ago out of sheer chance we attended a family function complete with new puppies. Damn the family! Finally mom and dad relented and consented. Alas, another hungry mouth to feed at home.

She is a loving creature, but much more of a baby than our daughter use to be in her infancy. When we leave the house and puppy stays behind. She whines like Rocker Axl Rose trying to hit notes three octaves too high. She sort of sounds like an alley cat on steroids hanging from a cliff or Rod Steward after a regular night on the town; which is kinda the same thing. I like a little noise to make sure I still have my hearing, but the only kind of high pitched whining I want to hear is one that is calling out God’s name. Its the one that always has my neighbors whispering to each other when my wife and I reappear from our house.

The new puppy follows the Mrs. Around like she’s a baby duckling. She is afraid of my manly voice, and of course she pays little attention to her true owner; our “I swear I’ll take care of her” daughter!

When we go outside the puppy must follow. When we go in the bathroom the dog is there. When we hit the sack the new addition is between us. I like a little affection as much as the next guy, but our home is quite warm so I’m not really looking for a three-dog-night. We never let our daughter sleep with us when she was a child, but the dog gets away with everything.

She chews up shoes. and doesn’t get spanked. She chews up electrical power cords, and doesn’t get electrocuted. She eats pens like they were bon-bons, and I swear she laughs at us whenever our backs are turned.

There is a critical part in the movie “When Harry Met Sally” when Harry (Billy Crystal) explains to Sally (Meg Ryan) that he slept with her out of pity, effectively ruining their friendship. He says she had looked up at him with those big sad puppy dog eyes in her moment of weakness. “What was I suppose to do?” he asks her. Is one of us supposed to be a dog in this scenario?” she boils. "Yes you are" he replies. “I’m the dog?” she says repeatedly angry, and not believing her ears. Sex for almost any reason, even pity, will get men into trouble. The same may be true in the dog world.

Outside on a leash our puppy romps after birds, barks and whines at passing dogs and longs to enjoy the good life. It puts me in mind of my own youth. The older I get the younger everyone else looks, especially women. It is a place where I can no longer go! When I was growing up all of the attractive ladies were just that, ladies. They were at least in their 20’s. As every decade has passed the sleek bodies and trim waistlines have garnered more and more of my attention. The problem is that they have gotten progressively sexier and much younger too.

Madonna and Brittany Spears are to blame for pointing out that fourteen year old Lolita's can be in every household. Now there are girls that are not even teenagers that look like those “women” I use to adore looking at when I was twelve. Unfortunately today they are the twelve year olds!

My daughter played soccer this fall and her teammates, all 10 and 11 year olds, had a higher proportion of boobs per capita than any group of girls has a right to claim. It worries me for our future, mine and the dog.

Is it wrong to notice these things, or is it more improper to be pushing sex upon our young children? Is it improper to keep introducing steroids into our food supply (beef, and pork) that causes these young girls to have bigger chests than Dolly (Parton not the family cow)? The same chemicals create little girls with tushies large enough to make Sir-Mix-A-Lot sing! heck the food contamination is spread so evenly even the boys are getting boobs!

Perhaps it is that I am observant, or maybe I’m turning into a dirty old man. The problem is that I’m not that old. Old keeps getting older, the older I get!

In the puppy’s world, owners have to be careful because the males know when a bitch comes into heart. Since I hit middle age, I have the same keen canine sense when it comes to that sort of lady. I should be worried, but I’m too preoccupied with every curve and the wiggle that goes with them.

As it turns out what I notice most now is that which is not available to me. The skirt chasing days were put to bed when I woke up from a foggish stupor uttering the words “I do.” Still in my older years I can put my sniffer to the wind and find the red hot mammas. Oh yes it is well known in my house; I’m the dog.!

Giosue'

2009-02-26T12:32:00.001-07:00

DIRTY JOBS!

2009-02-26T12:20:00.002-07:00

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it” is a phrase often used regarding performing duties that are anything but pleasant. For instance being a sewer worker is not on the top of the hope lists of many, unless you are “The Honeymooner’s Ed Norton, or a member of a rodent family. The phrase is also used sarcastically for those things that are pleasant experiences. For example, waterskiing nude with Jennifer Anniston would be a welcome chore to many a man, but of course, we’d force ourself to do it.

There is actually a program on the Discovery Channel devoted to bringing you less than stellar jobs which are performed each episode by the lively host, Mike Rowe. Their program brings you such activities as working in a rock quarry, digging caves for wine, and a perennial favorite, Yak farming. Now of course there are plenty of jobs Mr. Rowe performs that involve, mud, dust, dirt and waste.

In everyday life there are some pretty monotonous work most of us have to put up with, but sweeping the floor or scrubbing the bathroom toilet with a toothbrush is about as far as it goes. Now mind you, if that sweeping involves using the family dog as the dust-mop, or utilizing your annoying little brother’s toothbrush for the bathroom, then it is not so unbearable. Actually it can involve a little bit of snickering on your part.

Traversing under the house in a crawlspace can be pretty bothersome, but its nothing compared to getting caught in your parent’s bedroom closet while searching for dad’s porno magazines or mom’s special marital aids. It’s much worse if you hear them coming, hide in the closet, and then dear ol’ mom and dad, thinking you are out of the house, decide to “get it on.” By the way, that’s the phrase that their generation used for it “back in the day.” Timeline-wise, that would be somewhere between the disappearance of the dinosaurs and the invention of dirt. Having to endure “the moves of the ancients” can be life altering if the closet is one of those with slats in the door.

One of the dirtiest jobs I ever dealt with was at gunpoint from a woman named Melissa, who practically attacked unusual parts of my body while I rested under a banyan tree in the Caribbean. Now that is pressure, but she certainly could perform being a dirty girl, and luckily finding the right dirty white boy for her antics. Not so comical but definitely a point loss for the heavenly bound.

One of the hardest jobs to achieve is to make people laugh. For every five tries you might get a snicker. Try for ten and you might get someone to really relieving stress with laughter. At my house I’m the funny one. Ever sarcastic, and with a captive audience, I can perpetrate humor upon my housemates until they either laugh, or throw me into the nearest wishing-well. Naturally the well is dry, and I’m too big for it, so once they realize their mistake, guilt will set in, and they’ll eventually have to find a troupe of Amish barn builders to gather the team of mules and pull me to safety. I know the fanfare, and it will be on every network. Until then, I’m just stuck here typing away on my laughter, trying to get a rise out of you. It’s a dirty filthy place to be working from. Then again, it’s a dirty job and somebody’s got to do it!

ROAD RAGE!

2009-02-06T13:52:00.001-07:00

What is wrong with people? I know a little lady who thinks that yelling and screaming at people driving stupidly from behind a steering wheel is a sign of “road rage.” The latest namby-pamby coin of a phrase from doctoral eggheads looking to justify their existence, not only has turned “road rage” into an axiom, but it has pushed the concept into the American psychological lexicon. In the course of the average week, what big city commuter doesn’t have a couple of eye-popping, vein bulging gasket blowing, conniptions behind the wheel? This isn’t road-rage! It is merely the free expression of healthy ideas; mainly that the other guy needs to learn to care about us by getting the hell out of our way, or else crawl off to the shoulder and die.

This dynamic is what folks in the 1970’s, and before, simply referred to as driving. It was back in the day before seatbelts were introduced into cars. People were tough then;. even riders and children who were assured of their toughness by the hardness of their skulls bashing against dashboards all over America. Thank goodness you could put a Saint Christopher statue on your dash to watch over your bloody scalp without it being banned by politically correct anti-religious zealots! It is the great American past time to add some gentle critique on every other drivers skill level while emphasizing the high points with selected, suggestive gesturing.

Unfortunately the collegiate think-tanks have invented the concept of “anger management.” Of course “road rage” is one small portion which falls under the behemoth category of “anger management.”. You are heaped into this large category of offenders if you articulate your points of view emphatically while driving. This of course tends to frighten the timid bleeding heart, idealistic, commune-dwelling types. They are really at the heart of this big anger conspiracy. Their mommy’s didn’t hold them often enough when they were baby monkeys, and now everything scares them, including loud voices, backfiring cars, and people who disagree with them in the work place enough to staple their fingers to their desktop..

Immediately vocalizing your feelings rather than creating a pent up frustration has medical value. It is much healthier to express those feelings right away than to hold them back. Behind the wheel of a motorized, propelled, three ton vehicle, it is imperative to remain healthy! Much like the pressure cooker on a stovetop, the little safety valve of yelling and screaming through a closed window at complete strangers that just denied you a road-wise courtesy prevents maladies such as busting blood vessels that would explode and shoot your eyeballs from their sockets up against the inside of your car’s windshield. Unless you were wearing glasses, the outcome could delay arriving at your destination on time.

The real wacky ones are the drivers who stop their car, open the door and try to challenge you at your door side. Now that is taking speech into the realm of action, and is one step too far. That is how you can tell if there is really road rage. So be wary of loopy psychos that don’t know where to draw the line. The next time that some “fruit-loop” exits their vehicle to tell you how you didn’t give enough “signal time” before you changed lanes in front of him; you know you are facing road rage. As long as you keep your doors locked and your windows rolled up you should feel comfortable telling him what you think of him. Use selected fingers to dot your exclamation point. Now once he takes a swing at your window only then maybe, can you run him over!

WINKIN' LINCOLN

2009-01-23T13:45:00.000-07:00

The Rock band “Faces” utilized a clever phrase with their 1971 album “A Wink is as Good as a Nod to a Blind Horse.” That axiom comes in handy when looking in retrospect at the gala Presidential inaugural held recently in the shadow of the Smithsonian. The astronomically priced festivities remind us of the excess found at a full blown pink-satin Rod Stewart post concert party. The Capital, where all of the important swearing-in occurred, lies at one end of the Washington Mall. Given the tons of garbage left behind, the aftermath reveals that those in attendance were surely not “earth-friendly” but rather a Styrofoam generating throng of star struck drooling followers. If you could cut through the astral plain you might have heard a few different choice words coming from the Lincoln Memorial at the other end of the Ellipse. The large white statue depicting arguably the most important U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, could have been the place to hear after-life murmurs of a different kind of swearing.

That is not to say that Lincoln wouldn’t like Obama, or the people he attracts, he probably would. The pair does share some connections. Both now belong to quite an exclusive club consisting of a mere 44 males. No it is not a Dumbo-sized ear club for men! All the President’s have been men of course. It sounds a bit sexist, but why would anyone want to be ruled by an administration headed by a woman anyway? Heck that would be just like being married! Perhaps that is the reason that both Hilary and Sarah bumped their noggins on that glass ceiling.

The similarities between Abe and Barrack don’t simply end with the fact that both of these bean-poles are from Illinois. With a little make up and some straw they could be used in corn fields to scare crows. Lincoln’s tall gangly countenance reminds us that his hideously large sized ears were the things holding up those top-hats. The current large-lobe challenged President hasn’t yet discovered the virtue of hats, but nevertheless has magically been deemed qualified to be placed among the D.C. marble. This, despite the fact that he hasn’t even served a hundred days yet! Lincoln had to put up with Mary Todd, but still gave it his all. Obama merely gave us a good campaign and some wild dancing on Oprah. Still, there were no less that 3 commercial products depicting smiling Barack on coins, plates and guacamole dip.

No freshman rookie gets their face plastered on the Mount Rushmore of Mexican dishes until he has done phenomenal feats such as inventing the sombrero. Occasionally however, along comes a personality so revered that the entire population takes a siesta for four years, or the cacophony inverts so loudly that the poles reverse. Obama is just such a figure. In his case no one is sleeping because the grating noise of well wishers is loud enough to make a grown man squint.

So would the man who freed the slaves be happy about America’s election of a man of color? In Honest Abe’s case, there is no telling if his response to Obama’s ascension is a wince of distain, or an approving wink to go with the invisible nod. To the masses who are the blind horses in all of this, it doesn’t matter because once you are big enough to be pictured on food, it doesn’t matter how well sighted the horse. All that matters is that we giddy up!

C'MON EVERYBODY, EXERCISE!

2009-01-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

I have a theory as to why America has gotten so obese! Even our children have become little porkers. I can’t remember more than one person in my elementary school class that was overweight all of those years ago. Of course that one poor little fat kid that we nicknamed “Hunky Chunky Monkey” was excoriated ruthlessly by the rest of us thinner children in the name of comic relief. The only thing more interesting to talk about was Alana. She was the only other classmate aside from the chunky one who required a bra. She was popular because her chest was fat not despite it.

The rise in per capita weight within the citizenry coincides with the decline of the teen pregnancy rate. Kids are binging still, but no longer upon one another. In the 1980’s carnal snacking was quite the rage and created unwanted babies at an alarming rate. Kids were plopped onto the planet by unwed child-mothers who had the bodies of sticks and all of the sensuality of salmon swimming upstream. Somehow the boy population in those days didn’t need anything more than to share their testosterone with nearest shapeless girl as a societal pressure relief valve.

This phenomenon is not that different than what you find in marriages today. At the beginning, newlyweds are bumping and grinding like rabbits. You can tell who’s a recently married couple by simply taking a walk around the neighborhood on a few successive nights. The houses you hear all of those strange noises coming from all of the time are the ones with the bride and groom actively romping through their pleasure room. Listen long enough and you’ll hear performing feats of spectacular delight with a repertoire befitting its own chapter in the Kama Sutra. It may sound like she is being knifed, or he is doing a mad- bull stuck in a tar pit imitation, but really those are just the sound of true love (or some sloppy rendering, pleasures of the flesh).

Once the children start arriving for a couple the libido death knell is sounded. The ladies usually lose interest; the men forget what made them famous in the courtship, and focus more on how to land their lips around the tip of a long neck bottle of beer rather than around their woman in the same seductive way.

Then after a period of time, couples start to swallow all of the pent up sexual frustration. Just because there is no getting-it-on in great frequency anymore doesn’t mean the hormones don’t still rage. Fools start to consume their frustration in various forms of food and drink. To excess they go as they replace their favorite well positioned activities with a different sensory stimulation geared toward the taste buds. With the world of processed high fat foods the next thing you find is that the 9 months of gestation is replaced by 9 months of ingestion resulting in that mound above your waistline; it isn’t a baby either, it’s a beer belly.

If you want to find the most sexually frustrated folks in the neighborhood check out the largest ones. They are making their moves on a box of frosted flakes, a bowl of ice cream, a load of Oreo cookies, and a box of donuts instead of upon their spouse. You’ll notice that the ones gaining weight are on the down slope of the Saturday night love-machine frolics, while the ones getting in shape are rolling in the hay most often. Note that silent skinny person in the neighborhood; they don’t talk ‘cause their hoarse from all of that midnight vocalization between the sheets. They’re happy and making it, laughing all the way to the Lovin’ Time’s store for more supplies.

Staying in shape certainly means more than it use to in our modern society and now you know where one needs to be to properly exercise your mind, body and your demons. The bedroom is America’s gymnasium and playground. More couples need to get back to that regular role-playing slurp-sounding, great-to-be-alive style of exercise.

Christmas Magic

2008-12-12T07:29:00.000-07:00

As far as the true magic of the season, it rests in all of our traditions. Who can get through it without a couple of good size turkeys making the ultimate sacrifice? This of course is so that we can sit our overstuffed carcasses in front of an oversized flat screen plasma TV and nod off, resting upon our oversized double chins during special football games. As usual the teams are a pair; one superior display of talent against a group that plays like a collection of women from the Red Hat Society. Nevertheless the whole family laying about the hovel like they were a bunch of tired basset hounds back after a long day’s hunt is pretty typical. It’s sort of a Norman Rockwell meets the Beverly Hillbillies; picturesque but not exactly inspiring of Christmas’ past.

The erosion of the true holiday’s message, giving each other gold and frankincense (no one can seem to find myrrh anymore), has been gradual, steady and to benefit of Mr. Claus’ celebrity status. Here’s a guy who invades your home (breaking and entering), dressed in a red furry suit (fashion disaster), and not only does he not take anything, but he leaves you stuff (insanity). Of course in our materialistic society, he’s going to be a right popular ol’ elf! His mode of transportation is also out of this world too (space alien). How does one get a gig like this? Imagine working one day a year, giving stuff away to the needy and the greedy, and being revered more than Brittany Spear’s silicone implanted trailer trash play humps: sounds like every youngsters dream!

As an adult of course things are a bit different. You become a bit more jaded, cynical and the closets are no longer big enough to hide from unwanted hairy-faced family. As a matter of fact people can get so swept up by the holiday that they actually sit and talk with Aunt Gertie now, pretending as if her face full of hair is not a good conversation starter. The magic may still be there and you can view it in the wonder-filled eyes of your snot-nosed children; they’re sort of just like you use to before adulthood transformed you into a neurotic shell-shocked whimpering remnant of your former self.

The traditions are still wonderful though a bit more varied, diluted, or disappointing. Stockings are still hung and by the chimney with care but mistletoe for instance, is something that’s missing. For countless Christmas’ as a child the “love bush” hung in the doorway so that when guests came over like Aunt Gertie with her face of stubble she could righteously expect a lip-smacking welcome. It was after all the closest she got to intimacy after Uncle Herbie up and perished in that mysterious backyard mineshaft disaster. All they ever found of him was his little black book, the one with five stars next to that mysterious girls name (Bambi) written in lipstick. However, today when you need decent noticeable size mistletoe vegetation, you can’t find the stuff to hang up anymore. Too bad because there are finally some good looking neighbors worth planting one on and you’re interested to see if they offer egg-nog induced tongue action..

Yet, despite it all we still find a quiet moment on Christmas Eve. Usually it is 3:00am after the last minute round of midnight madness shopping at the all night 7-11 (yeah, Slurpees and meat snacks for everyone’s stocking). When the wheezing from all of the rushing around has finally died down, we can reflect on the real meaning of the holiday; never getting what you really wanted!

You see if you look hard enough some things don’t change throughout your entire life whether its prickly facial encounters or the roundness of a fat man in the room on Christmas - never mind that he is now your husband instead of your father. The presents may be smaller; the joy a bit more tempered yet there is magic just the same. The Christmas tree blinks its silent message in the stillness as you reach to place the last of the presents under the tree before Santa shows up.

Of course reaching under the tree with your face in the bottom branches sort of reminds you of kissing Aunt Gertrude and her pine needle whiskers. You may shudder, but it’s really the chill of an ol’ familiar feeling.

CARS FROM MARS

2008-12-01T09:32:00.000-07:00

The only resistance Americans offer to such a dramatic economic transformation comes when examining futuristic car manufacturer offerings. The blazing trail of new vehicle creations, from the seemingly two-year-old mindset, appears to have been designed on the drawing board with crayons. Advancement in automotive technology today resembles the prototypes of the late 1970’s when America rumbled seriously about dealing with its dependence on foreign oil. Similar blueprints from then seem to be on today’s laptops of American Automotive genius’s! Why do they always want to create cars that look like they should be driven by E.T.? Do the clods at the drafting board ever step foot in a car? Are they the pencil necked geeks from grade-school that could readily offer the numerical sequence for Pi, yet not be able to color coordinate their clothes? These odd fellows always got a super-wedgie from the class bully while the rest of the student body cackled and egged-on such crack-challenging demonstrations. Can someone hanging from the highest yardarm by the elastic of their underwear really inspire any response other than the label “unimaginative Goober?”

The only auto ever to come close to acceptance appeared to be a bubble-mobile on steroids. The hideous design of the 1970’s AMC Pacer, much in the same vein as the new green friendly garbage they are trying to pass off as acceptable, was something akin to a pregnant VW bug that had spread out its hips and been adorned with more window space than a glass house. It was gas efficient however. Thus this notion that consumers will drive anything if it gets fifty miles to the gallon was born. These modern super sub- compact cars remind one of the glass enclosed phone booth that became known as the Pope-mobile.

Muscle cars represented power and the zenith of American status. The whimpering, sniveling, fuel efficient, friendly-fueled, bug-sized design of the future needs an appropriate moniker that captures the essence of tomorrows driving experience. We won't have to refer to the car of the future as being the bug-eyed bubble-mobile we can simply refer to it as “The Marvin.”

THE NEW AMERICAN BIRD!

2008-11-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

Ben Franklin, the consummate in-depth thinker, all around colonial genius and well rounded panty-chaser is about to be proven insightful once more. Living in a time without Rogain (note his bald head on the $100 bill) and knickers, the “creator extraordinaire” laid down his own personality template. I’m not just talking about the sex drive of an old man sliding his hands on supple naked lady-ness well into his eighties. The history suggests he may have had long term vision, and it wasn’t because of his new fangled invention (wire rimmed eye glasses).

The leaders of his day struggled for a Declaration of Independence while Franklin was one of the proponents of creating a national emblem befitting of the colonies heritage and traditions. You might think it would be a “wild hare” given its proclivity to reproduce almost as much as Franklin himself. The Philadelphian and most popular founding father pictured on U.S. money that was never a President however, wanted the national bird to be the turkey.

How could such an gifted man propose that a bird willing to stand with its head stretched in the air facing skyward, mouth opened catching raindrops until the damn thing drowns was indicative of America. Did he really think it resembled anything of the America he helped to birth? The answer is that his insight was long and far reaching though a bit muddled by lacey bodices.

The feathery gobbler after all was an emblem of all that was good in America between original settlers and the Native Americans they found when Europeans landed on her shores. Given the source, you might have expected the back of the $100 bill to picture a brothel instead of Independence Hall. Nevertheless Franklin was a man of passion decision, opinion, and as it turns out extra sensory perception (ESP).

Look around yourself today. Culturally you will notice little resemblance to even the 1980’s. The traditions have been sliding down the proverbial slippery slope for at least that long. It is almost as if we are virgins that have plunked down our first $25 waiting to see what kind of whore and bottle of booze it will buy us. We are as oblivious as Tom the Turkey; ever satisfied to keep overstuffing ourselves. The country is drunk with success, pomp and circumstance, singing glory to ourselves while the lumberjack sharpens his Thanksgiving Day ax right before our eyes.

The bald eagle surely symbolized the more than two hundred years reflecting America’s rugged individualism that carried the nation. Today that eagle is much more of a turkey. The eagle a fierce-looking, domineering hunter ever vigilant to guard and defend her territory once survived on its wits. The sustenance upon the weak and more venerable of Mother Nature’s domain had been replaced by a sniveling whiney geekish kind of existence. A country that was once John Wayne has become a society of Don Knotts.

Today one can conclude that maybe Franklin had it right, we were destined to be a nation of turkey’s not eagles! He might have been stimulated by our loose moral values in the name of sexual gratification, but he likely wouldn’t have enjoyed the last 20 years of American politics.

In the movie 1776 John Adams (played by William Daniels) moans to Franklin (William De Silva) that he would be forgotten by posterity. He muses that Franklin will be credited for its success. “Franklin did this, and Franklin did that.” Adams states. “Franklin smoked the ground and out popped George Washington on his horse. Then he, Franklin, and the horse defeated the British all by themselves. Franklin responds “I like it!” He is remembered as a serious man with a sense of humor. Until about 200 years after the fathers founded the country it seemed likely that men with so much on the ball, like Franklin would be perfect candidates for President.

Most recently, that eagle had to be rescued by Ronald Reagan. In a mere short 20 years since the country has once again molted turkishly. It now waddles around the holding pen at Thanksgiving time waiting for the much talked-about grand feast; still not realizing that it is the guest of honor on the table not at it.

Franklin and his extensive hanky panky would have been right in fighting for a Rhode Island Red emblem. For today’s sexually charged culture both our propensity for nakedness and all things foul are two enduring legacies of the American dream. Maybe Franklin who liked women’s legs more, saw through the history of mankind enough to know that one day our sturdy cowboy haunches would end up as turkey legs.

ANOTHER F-ING HOLIDAY!

2008-11-03T08:17:00.001-07:00

After all of those years of mutual assured destruction, duck and cover jingles in the classroom, and downright dreaded doom of cold war reality, there is finally something about Russia to be admired. The headline in the Denver Post from late summer said it all! Russians get day off to procreate, then win prizes. It almost makes one want to become a communist.

As the story goes the Russian region of Ulyanovsk is fighting the Russian trend of a population decline. More Russians are dying than being born. That might have cause great cheer 30 years ago, but today the solution is inspiring. Russia has one-seventh of the worlds land mass, but only141 million people occupy the space. This region is offering a unique way for folks to give birth to “a patriot” on Russia’s national day.

Their procreation day dubbed the “Day of Conception” is September 12th. Who could argue with a holiday for something called the National Day of Conception, no matter when it’s celebrated? I can almost guarantee that 99 44/100% of the male population of the U.S. would line up the night before to participate in that holiday! On top of that if you give birth on Independence Day you stand a chance of winning prizes! Last year’s Russian couple collected an SUV. Others won TV’s, refrigerators, washing machines, and the like. In America such an SUV could be manufactured on a strictly limited basis. Produce only one of them a year for the contest winner and it will be deemed an instant “classic”. Of course the SUV could be produced by any car company as long as the model has a name like “the Sexcapade”, or we could just give the winner a hummer….again. Imagine finally being able to claim a trophy for your bedroom antics!

The U.S. would go wild for that especially if that means we get a “day off”, so to speak. Imagine the sounds around your neighborhood as everybody did their part and “pitched in.” Not only would it be rhythmic, but it would probably prove melodic and ear-plug worthy if the neighbor’s are anything like the people at my house. The holiday would be guaranteed to surpass Halloween and all of the others combined with the exception of Christmas. Christmas is mainly for children anyway so why not give the adults that are still young at heart their own humping holiday?

Since July 4th is our day of Independence, 9 months prior would be October 4th. That just so happens to be my wife’s birthday so it works doubly well for me. Who wouldn’t want to have their birthday off from work in order to lather up? I mean on your birthday you practically have to be in a coma not to get lucky! Even comatose patience sometimes “get some” depending on the quality of care of the nursing home they’ve been placed in unwittingly.

A day off for carnal knowledge as a goal sounds much more American than Russian. It also sounds like any night in every singles bar, but this would be different. It would be the duty of every citizen to “give it their all” for the good America’s future. It would be your duty damn it, your duty! Even the weirdo’s, grosso’s, fatso’s, and the freakishly hideous would have a sporting chance. Think of it as a holiday you’d be eager to celebrate; akin to those desperate last moments of your life. How else would you want to spend that time other than going out with a bang?

As the years go by, this annual holiday would give the U.S. all of the little rugrats that it will need to someday pay and reconstitute a sagging Social Security system. We’ll grow are way out of the looming Social Security crisis. The government for generations to come will be able to keep dipping their corrupt hands into the Social Security Fund, all because of our newly found holiday. We won’t have to worry about worker-to-retiree ratios anymore, or how much money is in the fund. When there are enough of the little buggers born, then we could curtail the program or give out condoms. No need to cut benefits, or raise premiums. Heck we could probably lower the cost to each of us. This is after all the country that gave us the sexual revolution, the pill, aids, Madonna, Brittany Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and a cast of Hollywood tramps dedicated to flaunting the human form; especially without underpants.

The years that October 4th would fall on a Wednesday would give new meaning to the phrase “Hump Day”. In any event the only way to traverse the ills of this country is through a national procreation day. Grow, grow, grow should be our chant. That is the same tune sung by many women any night of the week in most married person’s bedrooms around the country. The guy’s part of the process is like that of the blind man on the corner, only there’s no cup, no pencils; just an equal amount of begging. In a few years I’m sure the day destined to be the happiest of all holidays will carry it’s own slogan; something like “National Procreation Day, America’s favorite F-ing holiday!”

THE SEASON OF FEAR!

2008-10-21T08:24:00.000-07:00

The Season of Fear
By Giosue Santarelli

When was the last time that you had a good scare? Don’t count the kind of bone chilling that has you reviewing at your depleted 401K account and looking for the nearest bolder to tie around your neck. Halloween rolls around every year and as dependable as the decline of the stock market in the fall, autumn’s ghoulish goblins conjure up all sorts of haunts.

So many years ago when trick or treating was more simplistic, so were the kids and their imaginations. Jumping out from behind a bush could make a youngster scale the nearest tree in two seconds flat, but spending time with crazy Aunt Helen was a more dicey experience. Her propensity to wear oversized droopy stockings always made her appear as if she had elephant-skin legs, not to mention her propensity to leave the bathroom door open at the worst possible time. If you thought Halloween was frightening, that kind of stuff could scare the heebie geebies out of you.

The fall is our time to fear. It seems to parallel hurricane season. Perhaps it is the winds of change blowing in the remnants of old dead sea-faring pirates ashore. Their spirits, which have found no rest (and no buries treasure), stir up frightful notions. Those pesky Jack Sparrow look-a-likes are everywhere leading up to the end of October. You wouldn’t want Johnny Depp showing up at your house either. He’s always got a far away look in his eyes and his demeanor can be more like Edward Scissor Hands than the regular guy next door. Here’s a guy who prefers to live in France, a place that has even more ancient haunts and creepy castles than the U.S. How sane is that?

The season of fear often starts during back to school shopping. Candy corn often starts the trend. Can there be anything more Hellish than candy corn or more frightening than the prospect of having to eat more than a hand full of the sickeningly sweet harvest colored confection? I think I still have some candy corn from my trick or treating days back in 1966. The stuff never goes away! It is like the cockroach of candy. It has always been around and would probably survive a nuclear holocaust.

Scary displays of skeletons that only use to be available in the school science lab show up in store aisles too. Something that looks like Ferdinand the peg-leg sailor who donated his old dried carcass to medical science so that he’d have enough money to be buried shows up regularly in the Halloween displays. What kind of a school accepts a peg leg skeleton anyway? Of course old Ferdie would have preferred to be buried at sea, but he splurged his after-life money on big bottles of booze and wenches with big boobs. That is why skeletons always look as if they are smiling!

Pumpkins show up in stores as if they belong there. In decades past there were simple triangular eyes, nose and a few teeth in a hastily engraved mouth. Today there are kits with elaborate templates that require more carving skill than Jack the Ripper. With the right kit you can make your Jack-O-Lantern look like Vincent Price in the aftermath of a Michael Jackson video. Now that’s scary!

If you’re cable connected there are plenty of ghostly shows about real life encounters with spirits and other deceased wanderers. These programs often look like they were filmed by the same demented crew from the Blair Witch Project. Some whole networks are devoted to paranormal and use night-vision film to record much of their eerie atmosphere. It is like watching a reality show version of Poltergeist, only it is filled with delusional story tellers named Bubba and Lorleen. It always seems that their haunted houses are in the country highlighted with cold spots and of particular interest is the camera taking parapsychologists who make the Ghost Busters look like intellectual geniuses. These shysters can somehow always find a plethora of slightly deranged citizens to let you know about their basement rattlings or how the ghost of their dead uncle Clyde knocks on the ceiling from the attic space twice a night because he’s looking for his missing pooch, hector. These characters of course display no action at all when the camera is in place. Watching those folks can send a shiver down your spine when you realize that they are the very people listed in political surveys as “likely voters.’ Now that reveals something really scary this Halloween season!

A RAT PACK OF PACK RATS!

2008-10-21T07:02:00.000-07:00

Groundhog Day is usually a sign one way or the other of the duration left in winter. To me that means 6 more weeks of hibernation. For my wife however it means SPRING CLEANING! In a normal household the conversation would go like this:
Wife: It’s Groundhog Day!
Husband: Yeah six more weeks to hide in the house and doze.
Wife: No that means spring cleaning!
Husband: But there are 6 more weeks of winter!
Wife: Time to clean; this place is a filthy mess!
Husband: But that makes no sense…
Wife: Help me straighten up or else.
Husband: But 6 weeks…
Wife: If you don’t get off your lazy butt the first thing that will be outta
here is you!
Husband: Yes dear.

It always seems to start the same way. The proud parents push their child to clean her room. If you can open the door to get into the space you notice that it looks like a Toys “R” Us exploded in there. With a path as treacherous as Lewis and Clark’s journey to find the Northwest Passage you risk your neck stepping into the mountainous terrain of the play zone. Everything has been shoved to the edges of the room (that’s my daughter’s idea of straightening up). Another oddity is that during the cleaning you will find 37 and a half dolls (and yes there is always one that is only half of a doll baby) and two thirds of them are naked. Should I be worried?

Part of the clean up phenomenon in this part of the house is that no matter how much is threatened to be “thrown out,” the bags of toys that always end up staying, out ranks the “toss out” pile by 5 to 1. So basically it’s just a straightening up operation which wouldn’t be necessary IF THE KID WOULD JUST PUT THINGS AWAY IN THE FIRST PLACE! My mother, who was one of the foremost authorities on pig sty’s swore to me that my room, like all boys rooms, belonged near the barn and not in the house. I use to try to get my prissy daughter to become a tomboy and gave up because I thought it didn’t work. I was wrong. One look at her room would make a hog proud!

But, not to leave out another pack rat in our “rat pack,” let’s not forget the lady of the house herself. The top floor has an unusually large closet though you wouldn’t know to look at it. Amidst her childhood stuffed elephant set and size AA brazier collection neatly tucked away you will find an expanse full of clothing. Some of them are even packed away inside of a trash can! Are the powers that be sending us a message about this stuff? Dear, take the hint! They’re not winter clothes held there in the summer or summer clothes held there in the winter. No it’s more like clothing of when my wife’s shapely figure had curves instead of cliffs. Why are they here?

Because every woman has a delusion that someday she will get back to her “playing weight” and fit back into that size 2 dress. Honey, that’s back in the day when you had more men interested in you than you could shake a stick at. “They are nice dresses” she says. They will perhaps be passed on to my thin daughter if the moths don’t get to them first. When my girl is a teen I won’t have to worry about her going on dates because the boys won’t come around. They’ll be afraid of her unsightly partially devoured wardrobe. It’s worse at my home because in my wife’s heyday she bottomed out in a size zero! Does a size zero indicate an invisible person? That’s why I fell in love with her (I’m sucking up again in case she didn’t like the bodily “cliff” remark 8 sentences ago). She was so tiny and practically invisible. There was no talk of cleaning back then. She, like most wives who’ve been married for some time, needs her fantasies. And if I keep writing about this I’m sure that all of my “fun time” with her will be made up of only “fantasy.”

Next there is the attack of my things usually most of which have been exiled to the basement or onto the curb like the old wagon wheel coffee table scene in the movie When Harry Met Sally. “It’s outta the way so what’s the problem?” Like most basements the storage space becomes quite a safari to maneuver. The Mrs. doesn’t fancy a good hunt like most of us men do. It wouldn’t be so bad if she didn’t attack those vitally useful, precious items of mine like the old time medicine cabinet which hangs on the wall. It’s the kind with the two blinding fluorescent (sun like) side lights. It doesn’t light, mind you, so no shades or radiation tests are needed. “It is the only mirror in the house that works” I say as if such nonsensical statements will make a difference to a cleaning czar bent on a dust busting spastic mission. That kind of humor seems to prod her the other way. The cabinet which I picked up at a flea market 35 years ago I got for a song (I think it was the theme from Sanford and Son). It’s not even hooked up to the electricity in our home. But it houses my rare potato chip collection that I’ve had since my teen angst years. You know the rare anomalous chips that you run across that have unusual shapes and resemble different people. My prize chip is the one that looks like Abe Lincoln.

Are my children doomed? They can’t be any worse at being pack rats than the 84 year old Annapolis woman who was found in her overrun home. She had so much stuff in her house that when the floor to ceiling mountainous towers of refuse fell she became trapped. Her only comment was “arrrrgh!” It was such a problem the fire department had trouble getting into her house and extricating her. You hear about one of these kinds of stories every so often and it never ceases to amaze me! “Those people” are nuts! Our ability to rationalize our own “mental-ness’ knows no boundaries.

So when warm weather is here, while most husbands battle it out to avoid dusting for weeks I perform my dutiful cleaning because if I don’t the only thing that will get a stick shaken at it is me!

THE ART OF THE WAIT!

2008-09-26T07:09:00.000-07:00

What is worse than going to the doctor’s office to “turn your head and cough” or hearing those immortal ear stimulating words that turns the average body to a quivering mass “put your feet up in the stirrups?” Waiting in line to do it! You would think that a culture that is so in tuned to having it all, and having it now, would have found a way to avoid having to stand in line!

Waiting and hopping from foot to foot is a great way to pass time and the benefits are untold. I think that’s how I learned to dance! Heck, you don’t even have to leave the house to spend your time waiting. If you’ve got a large family there is always a wait for bathroom time which is why the proper industrial strength bathroom door lock is so important. As you know most 5 year olds can pick nearly any door lock just by turning the knob. If yours doesn’t have the power, consider yourself fortunate. They do this mind you at the worst possible moment. It doesn’t matter how private or intimate the moment. The precious so and so’s can just make you just lose it. At least in the bathroom you’re in the right place!

Simply making a phone call can result in you practicing the art of the wait! Before call waiting the “busy signal was the height of disappointment. Today nothing can equal saying hello and spouting off your complaint in a well rehearsed diatribe and then realizing you’ve dialed into an automated phone system. Typically after you realize you’re talking to a machine the response goes like this:
“Thank you for calling Don and Fred’s Pulled Pork Stand. Your call is very important to us” (understood to mean: you’re a boob for interrupting our employees during our office’s big computer solitaire tournament). “Due to the great pig fiasco at Mrs. O’Leary’s Farm our representatives have been inundated with a high volume of calls. Please stay on the line and a representative will be with you shortly.”

Now if I’ve managed to figure out how to maneuver through the first fourteen levels of the automation by pounding the right buttons when prompted just to get to this message I’m vested! I gotta stay with the call to find out what kind of a fiasco can befall swine.
“There are 753 calls ahead of you and your approximate wait time will be a fortnight.”
I can feel the pressure building behind my eyeballs as they begin to protrude making me look like Marty Feldman on steroids.

In my high school yearbook the theme was “the line.” I should have known that it was a foreshadowing of greater things to come. It’s not the fact that you have to wait your turn that is frustrating. It’s more about sharing precious moments of your life surrounded by such colorful characters. I always manage to get behind either the guy who doesn’t know what a shower is, or the lady who is spending her time in line laughing. Unfortunately, she’s standing by herself. Someone is either stressed, angry, crazy, or stinky!

Typically long lines include the pressed for time guy. He’s hopping from foot to foot in a pressure paced tension to get to the front of the line. Usually you can see the vein bulging in his neck and even count the heartbeat pulsation if you gawk long enough. The one I chuckle at the most is the crazy dude. You know the Charles Manson look alike with the spooky stare in his eyes. He handles his time waiting in an even more tense fashion. It’s as if he’s too important to be forced to wait behind the dregs of society in the bank line just to be able to pick up money so he can get his months supply of peanut brittle. His favorite repeated and very audible sigh is “HUMPH!” I snicker very quietly to myself so as to not upset Charlie anymore.

The wacky woman who is going over her recipe for guacamole stew (out loud I might add) while asking her imaginary friend what they want for the dinner also amusingly helps pass the time. It also reminds me that I have to pick up a quart of milk, a lime and toenail clippers at my next stop. I breathe a deep sigh as I wait. “Great” I think, “I’m sure at the grocery store there will be another line!”

THE BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE

2008-09-08T12:32:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed that even though beauty may be in the eye of the beholder there are some folks whom the good fairy has touched with a magic prettiness wand? Bodies can be stunning but without a face to go with it the package becomes a reduced value in today’s society. We can all generally agree these specially blest individuals belong to the sect of beautiful people. Not only are they far and above better looking than us all but they flaunt a pretty power by only going to certain places while avoiding other select areas. Their presence can make an establishment chic or a location the in place. The rest of us schlogs and also-rans simply don’t measure up in the attractiveness pageant of life.

Universities are one example where you will find a higher percentage of beautiful people per capita. By sheer numbers good lookers are found in large colleges and educational settings. Perhaps beauty knows that education is a good thing. It’s either that or student’s parents send them away to college investing thousands in a sort of reverse cosmetic surgery procedure. Parents bank on college lore. Their secret desire is for their looker of a child to drink too much, party too much, and somehow ruin their stunning good looks in the college coed frat house.

On the sly, parents hope their kid will get in with the self-abusive roommate type in the dorm that can lead miss cuteness down the path toward the facially challenged. The parents are always less attractive than the coed they are paying to send to the institution of higher learning too. If your parents pushed you repeatedly in your high school years to “get a good education, go to college, make something of yourself” (all which are code words in their diabolically hideous and deceptive plan to ruin your beauty) now you know the real reason for their entire non-stop pushing and prodding. It is because you are better looking than them, or at least you were until you went to college and started the long slide into plainness. Want proof? Hold your college freshman yearbook picture in one hand and then look in the mirror. After the initial scream and jolt you’ll see the truth. Remember when you were more beautiful?

As you look back now I’m sure it’s clear why you noe hear the whispers from your contemporaries. “What happened to them” is a common phrase gently spoken between two of your colleagues as they snicker and work hard not to point noticeably at you. The one asking the question is always someone with more bugged out eyes or a disappointed disgusted look on their face. Remember this is all the work of your parents! Parents are the same couple of people who told us “I see you making that face behind my back. You better stop it or your face will get stuck that way!” They tell us so many stories its hard to know which ones are true!

There are certainly definable categories of good looks. The upper echelon involves the model kind of looks. This is the Christy Brinkly, Tyra Banks, Cheryl Tiegs type who have made a living with their face and form. Generally they are tall long legged beauties that are built with stick like figures reflecting their daily diet of rice cakes, scallions, bean sprouts and Diet Sprite soda portioned into quantities fit for feeding small animals or birds.

“You eat like a bird.” I remember that phrase my father use to tell me all the time when I was growing up. So averse to eating was I that I use to sneak off to the bathroom every night at dinner and not return until the plates were being cleared from the table. That could take hours! I could tell you stories about how to survive in a bathroom for days but that’s another column all together.

The food razzing eventually got my attention and I started eating more and more until I discovered I was in love with food. By then it was too late! That’s another one of those ways parents steal your beauty. They turn you on to some intoxicating substance knowing all the while that your above average youthful looks are doomed with the first bite of cheesecake. Ever wonder why the folks are always pleading with you to eat? Now you know!

The Farrah Fawcett types of individuals are in the Helen category. The term Helen is lifted from David Lance Goins 1987 writing that suggests that Helen of Troy, daughter of Zeus and Leda, had a face that ". . . launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium." Goins' conclusion is that “Here we have a useful, dispassionate, scientific measure of beauty: a helen. One helen is sufficient good looks to launch one thousand ships, and to cause the destruction by fire of an entire city.” It’s no wonder such beauty is often described by over zealous lonely men as “Smokin’! Those objectifying guys (which is another way to say all men) are always from one of the lesser looks variety that I am about to describe.

Beneath the Helen grouping is the generally good looking set of folks. Most of us in any lower class in the beauty procession of life would consider ourselves blessed to have a date with one of the good looking people. The next category into which most of us fall is the plain crowd. The unfortunate buggers on the descending scale next are the homely followed by the ugly and finally the eeewwwweeee what happened to them category.

Recently I was on a beach where one could view slinky blonds, lanky brunettes, and sultry redheads scantily clad in the latest fashion of skimpy swimwear showing as much skin as possible without being hauled off to jail for indecent exposure. Beauties go to the beach! It’s like a flesh smorgasbord. Find a nude beach and you’ve got Playboy Magazine live! For most of us beaches of any kind is a nice atmosphere as sun worshippers in all shapes and sizes enjoy this form of Mother Nature. Some of us however simply out rank others in the pursuit of age defying personage as we struggle to appear as if we have found the fountain of youth.

Take a look at the street where you live. There are certainly one or two people who could be considered truly beautiful. On my block there are a couple sets of those types (I put that in there so my neighbors will wonder who else (besides themselves) might win the “mirror mirror on the wall” contest. Some have it naturally; others work hard to achieve and maintain the gorgeousness mask. It is a mask you know. Eventually those who buy into all of this exterior beauty nonsense are destined to be disappointed. “Time will take its toll upon you no matter what.” That’s another one my parents drilled into my head. You could end up looking like Joan Rivers. She’s had so many facelifts that when her knees knock she gets a headache! Beauty should not be that important. Interior good looks are a much better quality. You have to be somebody who can see past all of the good looking flesh though in order to find that.

Sometimes you can look at a group of folks and see the physical beauty they once possessed. As the year goes by it becomes harder to detect. There is the young who stand the best chance of being a beauty. In adulthood we peak in our attractive physique. By middle age the wrinkles are starting to pop up like you made a face and it got stuck that way. Oh my goodness my parents were right!

DREAMS!

2008-08-25T12:40:00.000-07:00

One of the greatest inventions known to man is the sleep to wake cycle; especially the sleeping part. Okay it’s really a marvel of evolution that the gods provide as a mechanism of rest from the pencil pushing, butt kissing, shoe licking, desperate groveling mode that most of us call work. Nowhere can we find a complete culmination of laziness more than when flopping on the mattress long before it is time to do so.

The folks who stand out the most however, are the ones who are on their way out of the door after work claiming “the only thing I’m doin’ when I get home is getting in the bed.” It is never my bed it is always the bed, as if there is some club-med oasis secluded in their very own home.

Who can blame us? Where else can we close our eyes and live a completely different life? We are forever young in our dreams. We can touch forbidden things, and perform feats without consequence. All of it is tailored by our own desires. When sleeping, our mind goes where it wants to and there is an assumption that we are not to blame. A spouse can have a fling in a dream, and there’s not much a partner can do about it.

It is a fair bet that most of us have affairs in our own beds while our spouse lies right next to us. A typical explanation is “after all it was only a dream.” If you ever try this method, then beware. Dreams can also cause black eyes, brusies, and a weekend sleeping on the couch.

This special alternative universe of the subconscious is valuable. We are spoken to from the great beyond, receive premonitions or are given tonight’s winning lottery numbers. The one who tries to pass off the winning numbers to us inevitably wears broken glasses because they are never correct. In this mysterious mode we are capable of solving the worlds problems, delivering consequential answers to questions of the age, and seeing our favorite sexy neighbor naked after all these years.

Of course there are those out of control experiences where we dream about falling, losing control of the steering wheel or the bluebird of happiness pooping on our head.

Another problem with the unconscious state of mind is that we often wake and after a period of time don’t remember some of the juicier visions. In the morning it is fresh and easy to describe just how somebody’s butt wiggled as we watched them falling off their bicycle into a thorn bush. By the time the day is over though we’ll forget about every detail; except the throny rump twitching like a pair of hams . Even with the loss of dream details there are some things that we consistently commit to our brain permanently. It’s like storing secrets under our mattress. Thank goodness no one else goes there to find them.

Sometimes that recall refuge is seen on our faces as we daydream in front of our work computers. It looks like we’re concentrating on the bosses important excel spreadsheet when, in fact, we’re looking in our brain at a completely different spread altogether.

It’s even tougher to summon up the good dream material once senility sets in. Ask an elderly person about their dreams and they’ll likely tell you something convoluted. Usually it is about their pacifier, or a story about how they spent a long winter at Mount Vernon. There are only short moments of lucidity for the elderly, but in those times the ultimate memory is from their dreams regarding that special someone’s keester; even if it belongs to Martha Washington.

SIZE MATTERS!

2008-08-08T06:49:00.000-07:00

Aside from the regular cackling heard during “girl’s night out” regarding this column’s title, the axiom’s validity can now be heard on the, lips of disgruntled grocery store patrons everywhere. Let’s clarify what we’re shopping for here. Similar to a women’s fantasy, there needs to be some “bulk” in the supermarket products we buy, or our price-per-pound will seem like lopsided chicanery has grasped our food supply.

For instance, check out the half gallon of Edy’s ice cream, and you might find that it suffered the spell of a head-shrinking witchdoctor. It looks as cylindrical in its usual creamy good packaging, but in reality the company has shrunk that sucker enough to fool the hasty 5-items-or-less-aisle customer. On top of that the price has risen a bit. Now we get less ice-cream at a higher cost. Cows might find it uncomfortable having to retain more milk in their smooshy parts, but those of us with astronomical cholesterol levels whose blood consistency is that of a chunky monkey ooze quality are offended. Did they think that women wouldn’t notice the size of their package? Think again. Ladies are avarice shoppers. They know what it takes to satisfy, and the latest slight of hand could have some ol’ favorites in the dog house.

The dollar doesn’t have the power it once did. If I have to hear about “stretching it” any more I’ll scream. Let’s forget about that, and discuss making the dollar go farther.

Quantity over quality has exploded upon the economic scene, and the reduction of the former is an attempt to fool you as long as they keep the latter in check. If they would just put a picture of a clown on all of the affected packages most folks would be even more distracted and oblivious. After all, manufacturers keep treating consumers like children. Of course the Mrs. would never buy a clown-faced product. She’d likely be sent shrieking from the store trembling in a neurotic state of quivering confusion. Everybody knows that clowns are actually not cheerful kid playmates, but rather knife wielding homicidal maniacs who simply never took a class on the proper application of theatrical makeup. Well if you find any painted jester in a store these days the packaging they find probably has them wearing a sad clown-face. Ramein soup noodles, frozen burritos, snack chips, pork rinds other staples of the American diet, especially among carny folk and people who live in houses with front porches, have begun to shrink in size! One could barely ever find a reasonable schnitzel before this latest food package shrinkage scandal. Now what’s a krout lover to do?

Of course the blame for this belongs with those oil rich nations in the Middle East. Our truckers have to charge more to get piggy to market. We are left holding the bag, and not only is it the stretchy thin plastic kind that won’t degrade for a million half lives or until Joan Rivers has her last facelift, but it is a much lighter bag than in years past. The high cost of fuel is choking our economy while the sheiks with their harems throw wild petroleum parties complete with veiled virgins in palaces playfully riding the slip-n-slide greased by revenue from American shoppers.

Recently heard in the checkout aisle amongst the divorcees is the lament that “I want my normal half- smoke big boy not the Pewee Herman sized sausage.” It’s tough these days in the meat section!” With that kind of sentiment can banana shrinkage be far behind? The country’s desire for largess is as big as ever? True you have to pay a little more, but in the past more always meant better. Just ask any married women!

THE UNCOORDINATED!

2008-07-25T12:44:00.000-07:00

With the ever aging baby boom generation coming into its glory, can I tell you that all I see are signs of crisis? The adult teams are being chosen around me and now the world doesn’t have Sister Mary Guilt-A-Lot to tame it. Many are about to be stung all over again. Being one of those baby boom mentioned types looking at big numbers of candles on my birthday cake I must say that aging is nothing like I thought it would be. Who would have thought that wearing diapers, eating pureed food and crying until someone comes to hold you would carry the same weight at both ends of your life? Actually I didn’t spend enough time thinking about what it would be like at all!

As Young Turks we all think of ourselves as invincible; boys profess this outright while girls seem merely to believe it. As we grow from our indestructible teen years and early twenties into our thirties, forties, fifties and beyond it becomes apparent that there are certain things we will no longer be able to enjoy completely. For guys, long distance whizzing is out of the question, and ladies need a medical device around their neck in case they get down on the toilet and can’t get up again!

Like the prepubescent geeky years, here comes the constant reminder that we are no longer worthy. Young girls in phone calls talking about whether the cute guy is going to be at the party tonight no longer includes you as the person they might be talking about. Second glances thrown your way from a good looking member of the opposite sex is one resembling a reaction more of horror than one of lust. No one is checking out your shape anymore unless they want a person to model their Humpty Dumpty costume for the community playhouse.

Amidst all of the missed opportunities of your life it seems like the ones you felt strongest about yet never achieved come haunting. Licking the whip cream off of the thigh high boot of a buxom blonde behind the bleachers of the soccer field is not going to include someone with as much gray hair as you. You’re more likely to be the one snapping photos of the pair under there but you’re also predictably going to be hauled off to the hoosegow to be charged with being a pervert. It’s all because no one ever warned you to live life beyond the fullest. They always told you to settle down and spend your life with that special someone. That is a great life I’ll admit it. However, when you come out on the other end of the aging tunnel you can see back to the beginning and the things that filled your loins with passion and vigor all belong to a younger generation.

There could be worse things in life than not being picked for the ball team unless it’s a toss up between you and Norvall the one armed, one eyed, paraplegic midget who talks with a lisp, and tends to drool allot. Still, as you age and the great creator in the sky starts calling the geriatric class home for his ball club, you might find that being picked last for that team is a lot like winning the lottery. You’ll get to see all of those contemporaries of yours who made your life so miserable go before you. You’ll get to witness more sunrise’s and sunsets, and who knows you might get lucky with Granny Gertrude in the old folks home that the kids put you in, if she happens to have narcolepsy and is partially blind. Perhaps she was never into sports and doesn’t mind that you pitch a baseball like a girl.

When you’re a hundred eight years old and your body acts like it at every turn creaking and offering new insights into the true meaning of the words ache and pain you might long to be chosen for that great gig in the sky. Many of us who fought for life never ending might find that being selected last still sucks as much as when you were a kid. Live large and ride a wild one as long and as often as you can before doing so causes you to bust a gut or fling your dentures across the room. You might poke someone’s eye out. Then they wouldn't want to pick you for their team!

HORNY DRIVERS

2008-07-17T12:08:00.000-07:00

There are parts in automobiles primarily as safety devices. Modern vehicles have air-bags, padded dash-boards, and specially designed head rests. Simple devices such as seat-belts were auto after-thoughts long after baby boomer childhoods. I have the radio button pocked-forehead scars to prove it. We’ve come a long way, or have we? The most misused safety feature on a car is the horn. Never mind that roadways are strewn with carnage like fans in the aftermath of a World Cup soccer match gone awry. Spend any time driving in rush hour traffic, and you’d think you were at a Green Bay Packers football game during the Lombardi era. These abundant loud blasts emanating from cars carry the sentiment much worse than a Bronx cheer.

Originally designed to warn other motorists “Hey don’t drive in front of me that’s dangerous,” has more aptly become Honk, “you stupid @%$!& moron, who the #@&”!$% taught you how to drive?” Often the horn is accompanied by specific hand gestures, and uncontrolled contorted muscle gesticulations. Now in a split second after someone cuts us off on the highway we shoot our anger down our arm through the horn and right at the offender. It’s almost like turning on an electrical switch to a bolt of lightning. If we were in a James Bond 007 hot-rod we would have hit the rocket firing button to vaporize the road perpetrator into a mere Ford Taurus dust cloud.

Today the horn has become somewhat more of a safety device not to warn other drivers, but to curse them once the offense has been committed. Thus it keeps the offended safe. Driving down a roadway going the speed limit, and having someone pull their car out in front of you ten feet before you arrive is frustrating, and bruising to your brake pedal foot. Then when they have the audacity to drive 7 milers per hour in front of you afterward, it sends most drivers’ hands to the steering wheel to sound the alarm. Eventually you pull behind them at a stop light, and if you hadn’t blasted your horn you might get out and confront the #&%@%*% knucklehead. So the horn performs a service for you without having to actually exercise your body by getting out of your car, pulling them from theirs, and beating the crap out of the inconsiderate @%$#&!%.

Of course doing so is the result of the much dreaded and conveniently invented “road rage.” Let’s face it; some people deserve a good smacking to stimulate their driving skills. Getting a driver’s attention after all is the main design of the much dreaded “speed trap,” utilized by the authorities. Teenagers, soccer moms, little ol’ ladies, old men over 80 years old, and folks who can’t see over the steering wheel should not have licenses. However, any one of these is confrontable once they’ve misguidedly slid in your lane like a black cat crossing your path. As such, something bad is going to happen. It can be a simple horn blast and raised finger, or it could be worse.

Your mother would think you crazy if you got out of your car to vent your displeasure with other drivers. She’d say something like “what if that person was built like Mike Tyson or something? You don’t know what they’ve got in their car!” Aside from potentially having your ear bitten off, telling the other driver what you think of their performance is an American tradition. We have only in the last decade or so decided to deliver the message in person. The horn protects us from such hazardous work. After all those other guys always drive like @^&%$#* imbeciles, and you are the model of highway perfection.

If things don’t escalate after you are perturbed enough to jump from your car and visit their front door at the stop light, you still might find yourself being shipped off to anger management classes if the scene is witnessed by the “police officer donut patrol.” So ya see it might be better just to stay in your car and channel your distress via the horn. However, if you have a compact car with the horn volume similar to that of an annoying yapping Chihuahua, you might want to install a super decibel delivering Mack Truck size diesel horn capable of delivering a rear window shattering blast. That would teach those #$@^%’s to stay out of your way, or at least make you memorable, with a great story to tell in anger management class!

THE SECOND COMING!

2008-06-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly 30 years since we had a bonified energy crisis. Initially after the first oil embargo in the early 1970’s, it’s long gas lines, odd and even rationing and the virtual disappearance of the station wagon, America responded by producing a collection “gas efficient” automobiles. These lovelies were not only the opposite of the much heralded muscle car, but they could be dubbed part of the “eye-sore” era of autos. In a word they were fugly; and unfortunately a little more popular than the granddaddy of all design mistakes, the Edsall. It was the 1970’s mind you so; weird things were “in” like bizarre color schemes, free-love, and Twiggy, a girl so thin that she could hide from you simply by turning sideways.

These automotive oddballs still haunt the American psyche. Leading the pack of misguided design was the American Motor Corporation. AMC, as it was known, invested heavily in peculiar looking autos, and promptly disappeared from the auto world by the 1980’s. It produced a couple of classics worthy of the “don’t let this happen to you” prize of distinction as the worst looking and least comfortable cars. The Gremlin is the first that comes to mind. A vehicle composed seemingly of tin in a clunky squared off stature; the hatchback looked as if Lorena Bobbitt had practiced slicing on it before utilizing her deft skills on a two-timing gigolo of a spouse.

The AMC Pacer was probably the king of tastelessness. A deformed VW Beetle- looking creation, the Pacer was somewhat akin to a swollen walrus, with an overactive feeding habit, sort of like beer guzzling sports fans named Hal that come over to your house to visit your dad, and sit ever too close to your kid sister. Known mostly for his beer-gut, Hal was the guy that seemed to have a diet only comprised of fast food pork rinds, and too many ding dongs. The Pacer had a bubbled-out rear window and windshield that gave it a swollen appearance. It was akin to what your sexy girlfriend will look like after she becomes your wife, has 3 kids, and a decades worth of nightly rocky road ice cream gallon parties to produce hips that seem out of place on her body. The Pacer was a short squatty styled sedan. What’s worse is that a ton of people bought these hideous things for a while, and gave hope to middle aged ice cream fetish mothers that their own bodies were somehow still in vogue.

Lincoln Mercury’s Capri was a sports car that was big enough for two bodies and a few pair of legs, provided they were attached to people in the front seat. It made a spirited sound similar to dad in the Lazy-boy recliner any night after a cheese and bean burrito festival. The VW Bug fits into the same category with the ingenious trunk up front, and the engine in the rear. Many women spent many an enjoyable time sitting in the back seat overtop of the battery and vibrating engine of the egg shaped classic fuel efficient car of all time.

The Subaru Justy was a rather small subcompact car. It was so small that the whole thing could fit inside of a corner telephone booth. That’s how cramped it seemed inside. Another tin can of the automobile sect, the driver and passenger could stick their arms out each window simultaneously, and the damn thing would have taken off like a lightweight biplane. Orville and Wilbur Wright would have been happy with a Justy! The only car smaller at its inception was the Honda Civic. A survivor into the modern era because it grew, initially it was about the size of a baby’s high-chair. It was practically a round ball and big enough to carry a load of dirty clothes from the hamper to the washer. Unfortunately, loading it would have left no room for the driver.

These hideous classics have been the product of two lapses in judgment given the temporary nature of energy shortfalls of their time. Look out because here we go again! With gas priced at over $4 per gallon, and little Al Gore minions running around clucking that the global warming sky is falling, can it be far behind that modern technology will provide the next round of automotive nightmares. What’s coming may make us long for the day of the Pacer and Gremlin.

Auto producers already offloaded the first gaff of the modern era in the form of “The Smart Car.” As aptly named as “geek” is to the pocket pencil protector carrying four eyed math whiz crowd, these little gems are just as misnamed. They are not smart at all. Unless you are a munchkin from the merry ol’ land of Oz you’ll find that there is barely enough room for two adults in a smart car. If you don’t mind riding 6 inches off of the speeding pavement in a box fit for sardines, then this car may be right for you. I imagine that it comes with a special key so you can roll the doors open much like you do with a sardine can lid.

Children have ridden similar sized vehicles on sidewalks for years. These things are little more than double seated go-carts with an egg shell body placed futuristically atop. It is hideous and already reaching preposterous proportions. The little thing will become like the proverbial squashed bug in the grill of the still much larger vehicles on the road when push comes to shove. Who wants such an ugly hood ornament as that?

Not a smart car, but a coffin car; that’s what they should be called, and for what 60 mpg? (That’s miles per grief). Why not? People bury themselves in their classic cars all of the time. Why not have a smart car you can plug in, and recharge for the run-about town driving sensation, and the permanent burial place when you’re in it and get flattened like a Hummer pancake? It’s about the size of a cemetery plot for you and the misses anyway. Maybe it will help you to drive it through the pearly gates. It is well known that the main entrance to heaven is only about the size of the eye of a needle anyway. In a smart car the occupants might make it.

Mystery of Electric and Gas Shortages Solved

2008-06-17T09:26:00.000-07:00

If you own the power you own it all! Anybody who ever reigned supreme in a game of Monopoly can tell you that it’s true. That is unless of course you play some new version of the game. You know the new editions that have diluted the financial message of the early 1900’s board game whose only purpose now is to exploit your pocketbook by way of your emotions. Today on the market there’s foreign language monopoly, Barney I Love You” monopoly, Dukes of Hazard monopoly and even University monopoly. The college version is useful in making NCAA schools worth attending, as undergraduates stay up all night vying to see how they can meld some form of monopoly into the wild, carousing, over drinking college lifestyle that Universities have come to represent.

Nevertheless, owning the power means you are king! That seems to be the sentiment of many in this country who look at the high cost of gasoline and electricity. The good old days are gone; you know the ones with block long lines waiting for a fill up, and the rolling blackouts inflicted upon California. The good old days? Heck yea! Then even though there were shortages your gallon of gas was still well below a dollar a gallon. There was much whining then because we don’t like to wait for the goods and services we feel we deserve. We’ll pay through the nose just don’t make us wait! Witness as proof that of any Bridal Gown discount sale. The outlet, at great risk to its very infrastructure, will sell thousand dollar symbols of purity to women who’ve had more sex than Heidi Fleiss on a slow night; for about a dollar ninety eight over cost! This creates a stampede akin to a cattle drive gone awry as typified by a bad John Wayne movie. The virtuous young ladies attack each other to get the garment of their choice that they’ll wear for a total of four hours. The whole ruckus is an affair that reminds one of Wreslemania on a rainy Saturday night in Alabammy.

Now there are no gas lines but we’re approaching the cost equivalent to a gallon of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Put some Chunky Monkey in your tank and see if that’ll make your motor run! If they could figure a way to make Hagen Daz combustible we’d have another energy source for about the same cost.
With exorbitant costs, there is finally a whimper out of the public’s collective mouth, and that’s just about the ice cream.

The West Coast blackouts were a different story. In 2001 and 2002 darkness could reign down upon your home without much warning jut like nightfall! Panic stricken people reacted as if it were the stone-age during a solar eclipse. People ran trembling through the streets as if the sky was falling, and the gods were angry with them. On top of that tension, prices spiked to ridiculous amounts per kilowatt hour, similar to the cost of hair darkening grease during the Reagan administration. Of course certain energy companies and high government officers were in on the shenanigans. Then to top it off California became saddled with Arnold, The Governator. Someone has been pulling pranks on the costal states ever since. The most popular commentary after a Schwarzenegger political speech is Huh? What did he say?

Many people complained that we are restrained in that we have plenty of product but no way to refine petroleum, and turn material into electricity (without charging a gazillion dollars per unit). That of course is so energy company CEO’s can drive around in bullet proof limos. What do you think they are afraid of anyway? As long as they stay in the limo smoking their big fat cigars made from illegal Cuban tobacco, and rolled with American hundred dollar bills they won’t have to worry.

The refinery shortfall premise does have some merit. There is one particular yet seldom mentioned theory on why there isn’t enough petroleum, gasoline or electricity. It’s not that our refinery capacity is lacking. It’s not even that evil conservatives have a hand on the lever of such power, and another one in my back pocket.

Have you ever driven past a field that has high tension power lines? The towers stretch in pairs across roadways, grassland to the horizon and beyond. They always look exactly the same no matter where you find them! The hypothesis is that this delivery system is simply not enough to carry the glut of that has built up behind the mysterious bottle neck of energy. There is only really one set of power lines and they go around the world! Each time you see a set in a field, realize it’s the same ones you saw across town, in another state, near the zoo, or in any number of “Ultra Man” episodes and “Godzilla” movies! They all look alike, they all stretch in the same direction and they are not enough to carry the world’s energy.

There are some positives to this situation. If you are ever lost and you run across a power line field, if you follow them toward the horizon eventually you will find your way home or to a good b-movie monster fight. The illusion is that many of these lines are stretching criss-crossing the country delivering all of our electricity. In reality there is only one set of towers erected by some guy named Mort. He of course has been subcontracted by your electric company to give the impression that they are everywhere. You hardly notice. The only person doing well outside of limo bound fat cats is Mort. Nobody knows why this lowly electrical worker has yachts, Lear jets, and his picture on a box of Wheaties. Now that his secret is out I bet you won’t be able to find his picture on cereal boxes anymore!

Take time to look carefully the next time you come across such a field and you’ll find they always run in the same direction. Clever Mort, but not slick enough to fool the watchful eye. You may have fooled us in the past but with prices going out of site your shrewd tactics have been discovered. How did you ever think you were going to get away with it?

What could possibly happen next? Will power lines cease to carry the glut of electricity those power brokers are sitting upon? Hardly. As long as the power is in the hand of a few guys the power lines will stand as picturesque as a symbol (like a stature of liberty) to the wealthy. Isn’t America a great place to live? It is especially true if you’re a big-wig, a guy named Mort, or Godzilla!

BATHROOMS!

2008-06-05T11:57:00.000-07:00

In a free capitalistic country such as America, it is really refreshing to know that freedom abounds in all areas. Take for example lavatories. While men usually have no specific requirement beyond a bush, open road, or a tire that is still upon a car, women need more creature comforts even in this; the most oddest of places. Can you picture your wife squatting in a field with a roll of leaves in her hand? Probably not, but many men can picture it of themselves out of true life experience; and that is just during pledge week at the college fraternity!

Bathrooms are perhaps one of the most intimate places on earth. We spend a lot of time naked in there, and there are usually mirrors. What greater example of vulnerability and hideousness is there than that? If you’re not in one with a moon cut out on the door then you are probably in some sort of modern version of the crapper. With a few stalls and urinals on the wall most men are satisfied. When manufacturers get clever with group canal basins in the middle of the bathroom for whizzing, many guys get uncomfortable. Perhaps it is the fact of whipping yourself out and waving it all over the place that has the modest a bit wary of this bathhouse style fixture. There are still also, great feelings of homophobia among many males in this society. The penile aversion even goes so deep as to inspire the catchy men's room phrase "if you shake it more than three times, you're playing with it".

Women on the other hand will often join hands, hop skip and jump their way from the restaurant dinner table to the restroom together. This for men is a big no no! Aside from the obvious discomfort among patrons when men might hold hands, most he-men are not coordinated enough to hop or skip without tripping over themselves and thus looking like a boob.

Ladies use these bathroom breaks as social interludes with likeminded compatriots to gossip and make fun of their dates. Guys who might be forced to stand in line on mass at a sporting event have a more Neanderthal socialization. It is often accompanied by loud drunken rhetoric, and cattle sounds including the famous moo-cow calls as they wait to relieve themselves. Now you know why Bessie is always loudest when she is standing in the field. She's full and needs to be tapped!

Sparse as male restrooms can be, the contrast is that some women’s rooms actually have furniture. What better place to sit and wait for your friends who are doing their business than in a chase lounge by the sink area? Upscale locations have their own separate sitting room; sort of like a classy family room for the urinally challenged. Who wants to talk to someone through a stall room door when we can converse in the comforts of home and still share a urethral experience?

At swanky hotels and establishments there are often finely dressed gentlemen standing at the wait with fine linen towels, a smile, and a plate that you are suppose to fill with money. For guys, the general consensus is “look dude I’m already in here because of waste so don’t expect me to give away my money as an additional cost to pooping”. That doesn't work. Thank goodness they don't charge dimes anymore to enter bathroom stalls. That was a post World War II idea that must have come from the ranks of Third Reich bathroom designers. More refined once again, the ladies might not mind it if there was a finely dressed man in their bathroom if he was perhaps, Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, or Brad Pitt. Nevertheless giving guys money in a bathroom would seem somewhat tawdry as demonstrated by Richard Gere in the movie American Gigolo.

Technological advances such as the bidet are mind blowing. Somebody dedicated their life to the pursuit of such a device! Do you realize how many hours have been contributed by countless engineers, designers, and craftsman so they could create a piece of equipment to wash your tooshie hands free? A lofty goal perhaps, but can anyone take credit for such an invention with a strait face? “I invented the crack washer and it made me a zillion-air; mostly because women don’t like to touch themselves down there!” How would you like to ride the crest of that wave all the way to the bank?

Of course this is the 21st century and there are those who think we have evolved enough to have unisex bathrooms. This seems to be an invitation to trouble. Not since they started putting infant changing tables in men’s bathrooms has such obvious evidence surfaced that the women are guiding the unisex concept. Where else can she slap the unsavory for not lowering the seat, chastise those without aim, and enhance her love life by meeting that one in a million good-looker? After all Brad Pitt has to whiz just like the rest of us.

GAS APPRECIATION!

2008-05-16T07:32:00.000-07:00

Don’t be misled by the title of this column. It’s a touchy odiferous subject, but harnessing the power of gas could save the world! It is somehow always credited to dad, his nightly bottle of beer and his three bean cassarole. However, there is something to be said for the ancient dinosaurs that gave their lives to become the goo in the ground that have powered incalculable numbers of batteries in countless vibrators (note the sexual overtone).

It seems that the U.S. population is looking at the current economic energy worries from the wrong perspective. The snooty owners of art pieces are familiar with the prospect of products that appreciate in value rather than steadily becoming as worthless as your dad’s underwear with its stringy worn out elastic. Those are the ones dear old dad wears until there are so many holes in them that there is no longer a mystery for the declining population problem. What’s with all of this picking on poppa?

The spiraling price of petroleum offers an example of gas appreciation. Sure gasoline is $4 per gallon at the pump and a barrel of oil is worth over $127 per barrel. The gloomy middle class is complaining when they should be reveling! The value of that super-tanker SUV that they’ve been forced to park in their driveway with the full tank of gas in it keeps appreciating in value everyday, thanks to gas. Had owners wisely parked them a year ago, the fuel inside would be worth at least at least 33% more. Where else could the common man have invested so little and gained a return to rival that of the legendary Hillary cattle futures swindle…..er….revenue?

Think about profit rather than cost and it will put your mind at ease. The 5 gallon gas-can parked by the lawn mower now needs its own security detail because its contents have become so valuable. Last year a pauper could have purchased one of those gold-securing red plastic beauties, but now middle class working folk are struggling to keep hold of theirs! We can’t be too destitute though, if we all still leave $20 bills laying around in our gardening sheds in the form of unguarded fuel in those plastic cans that are ripe for the plucking. Somebody with enough stealth who could have invaded the gasoline henhouse and filled their tank when oil was $10 a barrel, but now they risk being set upon by the family Doberman trained to sniff stray gas fumes on the crotch of thieves. Nobody wants a Pincher wrapped around them humping their leg, or sinking its teeth into their tush, but the gamble might be worth it now that gas is so valuable.

Keep in mind also, that there are plenty of other valuable fuels that are much more expensive. McAnything meals are valued at over $5 each, a gallon of whisky is worth over $20, and KY Jelly is a $265 per gallon commodity; so astronomical in price that it boggles the mind even when it is not trembling thighs.

So what are we to make of the rising value of gas? The ecological ninny’s that run around to complain are ruining the greatest commodity appreciation for the working man in a generation by demanding something silly like fuel efficiency. The fear of running out of the stuff, and increased demand are wedge arguments that rob American’s the reward of seeing their big trucks filled up one day, and the same fuel being worth 50% more a week later. You couldn’t receive such a return had you cornered the wiener market at a dachshund convention. With all of the tree hugging namby-pamby crunch- granola types whining about waste, perhaps they could put their own energy into a useful venture. Maybe they should start a movement to capture some methane that is being wasted at the number one natural gas producing location in America; dear old dad reclining nightly in his Lazy-Boy rocker. He is a reliable source, and given the usual the noises, one could believe that it is possible to harness enough energy to light up an entire household from one simple taco guacamole and bean chalupa. Of course we won’t have the same appreciation for gas like we do now, but then again someone has to make the sacrifice for the good of the country in order to appreciate gas!

THE MESSAGE OF FAT!

2008-05-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

The rise in per capita weight within the citizenry coincides with the decline of the teen pregnancy rate. Kids are binging still, but no longer upon one another. In the 1980’s carnal snacking was quite the rage and created unwanted babies at an alarming rate. Kids were plopped onto the planet by unwed child-mothers who had the bodies of sticks and all of the sensuality of salmon swimming upstream. Somehow the boy population in those days didn’t need anything more than to share their testosterone with nearest shapeless girl as a societal pressure relief valve.

This phenomenon is not that different than what you find in marriages today. At the beginning, newlyweds are bumping and grinding like rabbits. You can tell who’s a recently married couple by simply taking a walk around the neighborhood on a few successive nights. The houses you hear all of those strange noises coming from all of the time are the ones with the bride and groom actively romping through their pleasure room. Listen long enough and you’ll hear performing feats of spectacular delight with a repertoire befitting its own chapter in the Kama Sutra. It may sound like she is being knifed, or he is doing a mad- bull stuck in a tarpit imitation, but really those are just the sound of true love (or some sloppy rendering, pleasures of the flesh thereof).

Once the children start arriving for a couple the libido death knell is sounded. The ladies usually lose interest; the men forget what made them famous in the courtship, and focus more on how to land their lips around the tip of a long neck bottle of beer rather than around their woman in the same seductive way.

Then after a period of time couples start to swallow all of the pent up sexual frustration. Just because there is no getting-it-on in great frequency anymore doesn’t mean the hormones don’t still rage. Fools start to consume their frustration in various forms of food and drink. To excess they go, as they replace their favorite well positioned activities with a different sensory stimulation geared toward the taste buds. With the world of processed high fat foods the next thing you find is that the 9 months of gestation is replaced by 9 months of ingestion resulting in that mound above your waistline; it isn’t a baby belly it’s a beer belly.

If you want to find the most sexually frustrated folks in the neighborhood check out the largest ones. Being overweight is just a primal scream of lust. They are doing their moves on a box of frosted flakes, a bowl of ice cream a load of Oreo cookies and a box of donuts instead of upon their spouse. You’ll notice that the ones gaining weight are on the down slope of the Saturday night love-machine frolics while the ones getting in shape are getting in the hay most often. Note that silent skinny person in the neighborhood; they don’t talk ‘cause their hoarse from all of that midnight noise between the sheets. They’re happy and making it, laughing all the way to the Lovin’ Time’s store for more supplies.

Staying in shape certainly means more than it use to in our modern society and now you know where one needs to be to properly exercise your mind, body and your demons. The bedroom is America’s gymnasium and playground. More couples need to get back to using it regularly.

THE VIRTUE OF HATS!

2008-04-11T06:24:00.000-07:00

I spent my early youth living less that one mile from a city that had a Major League Baseball team. If you qualify the D.C. team as having been “major league” caliber then you didn’t spend much time at the ballpark. Some of the grade school teams performed more consistently. While having close proximity to a team can be considered a boon it can also at times prove debilitating. Take for example the typical spasm on opening day when it seems every employee in most offices call in sick with some mysterious 24 hour flu. It happens every April! The traffic that day on rush hour routes is miraculously light. The lines around the ballpark however are longer than the rooster line waiting to get into the henhouse at laying time. It certainly is good training that helps later in your work life with the special hijinks required to sneak away from the office when the 7-11 chili and cheese hot dog calls your name in the middle of the afternoon.

Having a home team added quite a bit of spice to my young impressionable life. I can remember sitting in the stands with my Washington Senators baseball cap on my head. I can almost picture it. A box of pop corn on my lap, a cold soda nearby, with peanuts and the ballpark hot dogs provide quite a bit of fond memories. You’d have thought I just went there to eat! If you knew what the folks fed us four nights a week you’d realize the ballpark served fine cuisine. I could get a baseball program with pages to score the game with each players name and how they batted each time they were up. It was magical I tell you, especially the part about throwing money at a guy a half an aisle away to have food tossed back at you. You’ve never lived until a large peanut bag beans your noggin creating a knot on your forehead. You certainly stood a better chance of catching the nuts than a fly ball on any given day.

Then my team took off to the Southwest and left me with a kid size baseball cap to fit around an ever enlarging crown. The peanut knots and welts had receded by then. It didn’t help that my head size went from cantaloupe size to that of a watermelon. It took a big head for all that brain capacity inside! My wife might argue about the validity of that last point. She has often complained about how she was hoodwinked into marrying someone who’s favorite childhood trophy was awarded for long distance peeing. She tells me that I don’t know where anything belongs, how to lower the toilet seat, and most of all that I barely know the mathematical meaning of pi. That last part is very important to her (that and the peeing). Her credo is “if you can’t find the square root of the universe you certainly won’t be able to cook a good meal!” How they relate I couldn’t tell you. Don’t tell her that I don’t get it though because I have her convinced that I know what I’m doing (in the kitchen if not the bathroom).

Well, I do know hats and math too for that matter. Here is something she doesn’t even know. You can find your own hat size by measuring the circumference of your head and dividing by the mathematical formula pi (3.1459265)! For example the circumference of my head is 23.25 inches. When divided by pi that leaves me with a 7 ½ hat size, also known in some circles as “fathead.” If she wants to know how her butt looks in a pair of pants lets see her figure it out with math! When she asks, I pull the brim of my cap down over my eyes, shake my head, and hope she goes away.

That aside, one thing is for sure. I spent t30 plus years waiting to get a genuine Washington Senators baseball cap. How lucky it is for me that the new version of the team, The Washington Nationals caps are exactly the same color and scheme as was the Senators’. The signature “W” on the front is also exactly the same! I’m in heaven! You don’t know how sad it can be until you see the face on a 35 year old that has his head squished into a cap sized to fit a 12 year old. It made for a lot of bad pictures.

Actually there are hat people and non-fedora individuals. There are those that should be instructed to wear the cap over their face, but that is another matter all together. In the 34 years without a long-ball fence at RFK stadium the hat has gone through many a change. If you haven’t noticed then you’re one of those afore mentioned bonnet haters. You are probably among a group with usually odd shaped heads (sometimes known as blockheads or knuckleheads). You could use a cap most effectively to cover your need to be in a traveling circus freak show.

Back in the good ol’ hat days each one had an individual size to it. They had little tags on the inside of the rim that stated the size. As a kid once you knew the size you didn’t have to put your head in each one to see if it fit. Just looking for the tag could avoid a lot of useless sweating on some hat store guy’s inventory. Today the haberdashery is not a common site in the mall. As the commitment to caps waned the addition of the adjustable strap in the rear of the cap meant you could keep a hat from cradle to grave. Too bad they didn’t think of that before my team headed to the oilfields of Texas. Those caps however lacked a certain quality. In a word they sucked! Usually some synthetic inferior material was used and passed off as convenient to us which made them very affordable. Now even those types of hats are on the way out.

The newest trend is in the one size fits all elastic band baseball cap. There are actually stores dedicated to selling nothing more than sports caps. What kind of lonely, axe wielding type of individual owns such a one dimensional shop? I can live with the newest kind of hats most of the time. The one I found I like however, looks like I’m wearing a jockey’s riding cap. Not a good thing when you’re of a smaller stature. I don’t need to wear it at the horse racing track lest I get corralled by some trainer and be told to “mount up.” That kind of instruction only works at home on a weekend evening after a couple of adult beverages.

What is more precious, concealing, and easier on the eye than the ability to cover a bad hair day?The hat is a common device used by many a models especially in Hollywood. I’m convinced that those celebrities you see often with hats on who are caught off guard on the cover of The National Enquirer would shock you if you saw them with no make up at all. I think that especially of the cute and insane ones like Brittany Spears. I’m sure without all of the pancake batter and gunk on her face she’d look like Earnest Borgnine after a long Saturday night at the bar in New Caladonia!

Those of us in the common folk arena know the virtue of a well placed baseball cap. I’m not talking about the kids that wear them backwards or sideways. They are really wearing them strait it’s their heads that are on crooked! These are the same guys who think their waist is around their thighs and that we want to know what color boxers they have on. That is almost as bad as the plumbers that work on you house, and God knows hey don’t wear any underwear! I’m talking about a fine well made cap that makes a statement, not in the way it’s worn but simply for the insignia like my Senators hat. Of course that hat always said “I root for losers,” but then again you have to be one to root for one. So there’s a new team in town with a completely new ballpark, and an old familiar hat that finally fits once again. Now if I could just understand how pi fits into the ballgame I’m sure I could learn how to cook. Then again why bother. There’s always ballpark food!

THE FEEL GOOD INDEX!

2008-03-25T06:46:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-03-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-02-08T10:21:00.000-07:00

The Birds, the Bees and the Trees

Spring; when a young man’s fancy turns to…..aaaachooooo! That’s right. With all of the joys and awakenings of warmer weather comes the bane of many a sensitive schnoz. This is the season that tissue manufacturers love. Pollen is in the air and while a romp in the hay may be a wonderful thing, for many it is not so – not with birds, bees, trees and plants looking to spawn! The itchy noses and watery eyes are not usually signs of amoré. When it comes to plants, however, your sniffer is a good indicator that love is in the air. Most people don’t know that they are involved in such an elaborate, intimate dance with their surroundings. If you stop to think about it, people do an awful lot of breathing so it is impossible to avoid inhaling those things that are used for the birds and the bees by many a plant.

A report from the International Archives of Allergy and Immunology indicates that there are over 250,000 species of pollen-producing species. Holy cow, talk about Sodom and Gomorrah of the Environment! There are only about 100 types of trees, still an ecological harem, that causes the nose to know what it knows, ya know? The stuff can be downright irritating. Not like the “hey, you’re on my hair” annoyance, that you might be willing to put up with, but more like the uncontrollable, premature kind of a dog trying to mark his territory on the wall, couch, rug, closet, your foot, or any other surface that he deems in needing of identification.

Most things of illustrious beauty - for instance, plants trees, flowers and Cheryl Tiegs displayed on the hood of a Porsche all exhibit the same eye-watering characteristics. Their stuff gets under your eye lids enough to make you cry. It gives new meaning to the saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” It’s more like a finger in your socket as opposed to something soft and soothing. So what are you willing to sacrifice in the name of beauty? How much Visine are you willing to carry for your comfort while this orgy of replication continues?

The evidence of this reproductive decadence is all around us on certain spring mornings when you take a gander at your automobile. There is enough pollen on it to make you think that little green men from outer space with severe dandruff conditions have been walking across the hood. The green powder is everywhere. Is it any wonder that with so much “seed” around looking for a place to go that people start acting weird? There is restlessness, the desire to want to romp, and the renewed energy of a puppy’s enthusiasm to grab a hold of the first leg passing by for a fast-paced waltz.

Of course, humankind has taken this bit of nature and turned its need for pill-popping, antihistamine-taking and syrup-swallowing into a multibillion dollar industry. There are medicines, devices, masks and all sorts of things to make your body unaware of the relentless bombardment of the reproductive cycle to which you are being exposed (and without a raincoat, too). So thorough is man’s allergic reaction that these medical comforts distract your body enough that you’d never know you were surrounded by so much of nature’s pornography. It’s not like you’re going to find much of a centerfold, though, unless you happen to be reading Home and Garden.

IF THE SHOE FITS!

2008-01-27T08:32:00.000-07:00

How do you fit twelve pounds of sausage into a bag fit for six? Any trip with your favorite lady to the store reveals the latest ridiculous trend in women’s shoes, and coincidentally offers a comparative answer to the sausage question. Pointed shoes are all the rage lately. Not since the Spanish Inquisition have such devices been employed upon the human body.Given that most women even with a curvaceous foot have significant width from heel to toe, it is remarkable to note that they not only attempt, but also succeed in squeezing 5 toes in the tapering space fit for a drinking straw.Of course if you’ve spent any time out while your lady is in a pair of these torture devices you know you’re in for a night with the queen of mood, shooting looks at you as if you were the one turning the screws on her foot dilemma. Later, you’re assured to be servicing her with a foot massage worthy of Cleopatra.

Like most men who have dreamt of that spare room in their house becoming the den, you end up losing the space with the formation of the “shoe room”. You give it up quite easily when she threatens that either she gets proper space for her abundance of footgear or she wants another baby. Since men desire children slightly less than a trip to the proctologist for a classic turn your head and cough visit, she wins the day and your auspicious library becomes the Imelda Marcos Memorial Footwear Gallery.

How can a woman who only has two feet require so many shoes? Men generally can live with a pair of athletic shoes, a pair of boots, one set of dress shoes and a pair of sandals for use during those Jesus Complex moments. Women faced with such few footwear choices would wither, and be blown away in the faintest of winds.

“Shoes for every occasion”, means that she has as many pairs as Hallmark has greeting cards. If she needs that special pale blue spiked heel pump with the design on top resembling a yarmulka because she is participating in her nephews bar mitzvah, then she has to be prepared for it. The shoe room is the place you’ll find that special something.

So many pairs are there that she could open a shoe store of her own if she ever had the desire. Think of the carnage. Have you ever watched eager shoppers set loose on the latest Candies to hit the market during a special introductory offer? The elbowing strategy between women going for the limited supply is unspeakable. It might make interesting entertainment for some men, but such brinksmanship should not be condoned even if it looks similar to naked mud wrestling or a Saturday night in the roller derby rink.

Perhaps the truth of the matter is that women simply have so many shoes because they just don’t throw anything away. Over the years she’s collected shoes because she has to go shopping for a new pair for every birthday, wedding, and trash day that passes. So how come with a mountain of shoes occupying your potential solarium she still needs more? Men can’t figure it out.

The overabundance of probably means she is an older woman. Make no reference to such a thing unless you want to spend the next 6 weeks sleeping on the couch in between the punitive repercussions of having to polish all of that footwear to get back into her good graces. It’s hard to explain pink polish under your fingernails to the guys down at the rock quarry.

A wise fellow might envision a game room with a pinball, soccer, and billiard tables, or even Pacman to fill the void. Unfortunately, that pipedream has been replaced by a million soles that are stomping all over your dream. They’re taking up that space so her feet can be happy when a pair of oxfords is called for at the annual PTA meeting or karaoke night in front of the town drunks. “Hey as long as she’s happy”, the thought goes. Then you think that perhaps you can convince her that to put an addition on the house and get your game-room after all. You might get her to go along with the idea, but realize when she smiles at the prospect that she isn’t seeing late night billiards with a little bar in the corner and a drink in her hand. She’s actually calculating how many more racks of shoes will fit in the new space, and how many more years she has to fill it with the latest shoe fashions well into her geriatric years. When it finally hits you what she’s up to it’ll be too late.

After your stroke you can be sure she’ll give you a proper burial like that of the family pet; with a quick service in the backyard. Naturally she'll have the perfect shoes for the occasion. You of course will be laid to rest in a shoe box.

THE FRIENDLY SKIES?

2008-01-27T08:29:00.000-07:00

If ever you’ve been on an airplane, the experience can be as stressful as a day at the salt mine. To board your plane on time you have to arrive at the airport hours in advance while your jet is still refueling in Cucamonga.If you are lucky enough to traverse the maze of a metropolitan airport you know how much energy it takes to travel, and that’s just reaching a gate! It’s no wonder they call it a terminal! There are shops filled with $7 coffee, flip flops for $10 (you can get a bushel of ‘em for a buck at the dollar store), and my favorite, the airport bar. Getting a healthy airline size drink (the kind that comes in a Billy Barty baby sized bottle) can cost you twelve bucks. In my day that was a month of beer money.

The airline industry is the only one where you can buy a product (a ticket) and find out that “ooops we sold too many”. If you want to get squeezed on the plane you’ll have to sit in the bathroom for the flight. Talk about your mile high club!

You could of course wait in the airport for another flight. “There will be another one along shortly,” is attendant doublespeak meaning “pull up a trash-bag pillow for a few hours pal and enjoy a snooze on the floor of the skid row airport hotel”. Sometimes during holidays you’ll see rows of bodies in the airport Bowery.

You’ll find yourself wheezing when you finally arrive at your gate which is usually after a mile and a half jaunt. Often large airports take travelers to long distance gates via some sort of semi-altered golf cart. That thing is always loaded with enough people to make it look like monkeys clinging to the banana tree at harvest time.

All of these honors you get to endure after you have been subjected to security! If you look like Habib the Gypsy Boy then they may take a glance at you. Inexplicably though, if you seem more like Grandma Moses, Pa Kettle, or Average Joe you might have anything inflicted upon you from the shoe search given by a frustrated out of work porn actor tuned security wiz with a foot fetish, to a full out strip search by the guy who always wanted to be a proctologist but couldn’t cut it because of his oversized knuckles!

Once on the plane you have wonderful options of entertainment. The first course is the stewardess doing the crash run through to a chorus of cackles from the indifferent and sarcastic passengers. These fellow passengers will have the fear of God in their eye as they fight you for the flotation device that’s under your butt if the big nose dive comes.

Today’s stewardess crews are tougher than the prim and prissy types of the past. Though they have a pleasant smile they seem more like your sister during that time of the month. They’re not much fun in an enclosed space for five or ten thousand miles. It’s almost like enduring adolescence all over again.

Seats that are as comfortable as a bus terminal bench and poor ventilation make your trip all the more precious. Add a few screaming babies and you’d be in steerage on the boat from ol’ Calcutta.

Of course it’s not all bad. Modern marvels of aerospace technology have you going from coast to coast in a matter hours. You’ll be grateful enough that when you land you’ll kiss the ground under your feet. That is of course until you find out that while you may be in New York; your luggage is in Denmark having a better vacation than you!!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

2007-12-21T08:57:00.000-07:00

Let’s take a good look at the state of Christmas in America, also known as day of the jolly fat man. When Ulysses S. Grant signed into law that which established Christmas as a holiday in the 1800’s the U.S. wore their Christianity on its sleeve much more openly. Sure we would have to get over burning witches. Those kooky Salem residents could have used a healthy dose of Samantha and Daren to learn to laugh at being Bewitched! The sitcom was just a little too late for Lizzy Borden.

The average citizen feared God much more than their government historically, unless you include the passage of the tax code. For 80 years the initials I.R.S. were about as feared as the Second Coming! Today we’re afraid of many more things such as Russell Crowe movies, “What’s Happenin’” reruns, and Ernest Borgnine naked. The image of Christmas has lost it’s pizzazz in some circles. No longer are we comforted by the family around the tree as much as a Ferrari in the driveway, and a mistress in the back room.

Extremely progressive organizations will cite the first Article of the U.S. Constitution, selectively. The text says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” and here is the part the radicals forget “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." That means if my religious convictions have me in a ritual involving plastic dolls, leather whips, a shoebox, and a squirrel named Delores, it’s no one’s business; unless of course the playthings belong to a domineering mistress, in which case much frolicking play finds the rodent is afoot.

Organizations like the ACLU would have you believe that exercising religion in public, or on public governmental ground is an establishment of one religion over another. That would be like saying that your marriage vows are more important than the casual fling with a neighbor. This is the 21st century after all! Do they still perform wedding ceremonies?

Since the release of the movie Indecent Proposal where Robert Redford bought Demi Moore from Woody Harrelson for a one night fling, the standards of America have been up for sale to the highest bidder. That’s why the poor are always screaming about the unfair nature of the wealthy. It’s not that the poor are being shafted as much as they are not getting screwed! Any more cultural debauchery, and we’ll become the Roman Empire!

Since 85% of this country identifies themselves as Christian it stands to reason that the vast majority of them will be seen posumously in hell, given the high rate of infidelity among spouses, and sheep herders. Public displays of affection, much like Christmas decorations and the phrase "Merry Christmas" itself, seem to be a no-no in today’s culture. If you can’t ride a wild "Eve" through the snow this Christmas, then I don’t know what the world is coming too!

Take note. There should be no restriction on other faiths displaying the trappings of their religious occasions on public sites. With that kind of thinking, orgies are quite logical. Think of old Rome with its public bath’s, toga wearing citizens, and general nudity. Sounds like a constitutional right to me, but then I’m not a government worker as much as a horny little devil.

Instead of suing for the right to also be included in displays of a religious nature, the AUCLU should sue to allow bare breasted women to express themselves in flamboyant ways. New Orleans perhaps was getting it right with its voodoo practices, transgender dress, homosexual parades, and Mardi Gras party offering loose half-nude people flashing the opposite sex. Then it looks like God put an end to all the frivolity with a little mayhem of his own! C’mon God! How many parents have you heard say “I’d rather my children be exposed to sex than violence?” That was just New Orleans’ motto.

Culturally the phrase "Merry Christmas" is even being cast aside in favor of the phrase "Happy Holidays." Examining this we find that no one is “Merry” anymore, much in the same way that happy people are no longer gay! There is no other sanctioned holiday between Thanksgiving and Christmas so the phrase “Happy Holidays” is not applicable. Just to break up that dry 30 days or so, I suggest another federal holiday for adults only. It could be a swinger’s holiday. Now wouldn’t that be something for philanderers to be merry about? It certainly would give new meaning to the phrase "Thanksgiving" for unsatisfied wives willing to attemt their own fling.

The second officially sanctioned holiday is New Years Day and is quite secular. That has at times become the unofficial swinger’s holiday. Many office workers, friends and acquaintances get together for a pleasant night of dancing, loud music, drunkenness and the like, only to wake up in a strange bed with their college professor’s bride, a hangover pounding their head, and a brazier protruding from their mouth. Now that’s a happy holiday!

DREAMS

2007-12-17T13:15:00.000-07:00

CREATURES OF THE NIGHT!

2007-12-03T13:58:00.000-07:00

We have an obsession with things that scare us! Things that go bump in the night pique our interest. Most of my bizarre writing ideas strike me after the sun goes down. The topics irk me until I commit them to paper and you read the resulting horror….er.….humor! As a culture the interest in scary things has been heightened since the 1960’s. Rosemary’s Baby was the vehicle for that decade by which this dementia presented itself. The actress Mia Farrow played the trembling and naive victim of the evil one himself (and I don’t mean Woody Allen).

The Exorcist took it a step further with quite a visual depiction in the 1970’s. It also sent split pea soup stock into a tailspin. It might have done wonders for the chiropractic industry too. Too bad failing medical students still wanting to practice didn’t come up with the idea of being a witchdoctor sooner. Chiropractics use to be considered practicing something akin to voodoo medicine before becoming respectable. Who better to fix that 360 degree kink in Linda Blair’s neck than a chiropractor? On top of that ,our family pet wasn’t even allowed to walk on the carpet. When the character little innocent Meagan "let it leak" on the carpet in the movie and no one smacked or rubbed her nose in it, you knew you were in the presence of true evil!

Of course literary works were pervasive in our subconscious long before the 20th century. Terrifying writings included topics about vampires (Bram Stoker’s Dracula), the mystery of Jack the Ripper and those Dick and Jane books!

The fact that Italian families tend to pass on ridiculous superstitions also meant I was doomed to be haunted throughout my childhood by some malokya (muh-low’-kyah, which means evil eye). When the evil eye was determined to be upon you or odd things kept happening in our Italian household, you said a lot of prayers and hung a lot of garlic! Sure it was very old world and you smelled like you hadn’t bathed in 3 months, but at least it gave you the opportunity to ward off garlic hating spirits. It kept you alive so you could actually skip bathing for 3 months.

As children there was quite a bit of relating ghost stories, but a grandmother could spin a yarn scary enough to send you back to the womb. Their stories were true no matter how ridiculous! If they tell you that “the baby was in the crib when I left the room and then when I returned the infant was on the floor under the crib” you would then believe their conclusion that evil spirits lurked in the domicile. There was no questioning that there might have been a thud to mark the incident that went unheard! The ladies couldn’t hear something as simple as a baby doing a double summersault swan dive onto the floor among all of the banging of pots and pans that were normal everyday sounds for cooking in our house. We Italians use our hands a lot for emphasis when talking, so get out of the way before you get bopped upside the head with a garlic loaf, or your new white clothes get drenched in pasta sauce.

There are other kinds of horrors also that cross all cultural boundaries. We love a good eye popping, breath taking, heart thumping, underwear changing, head shaking story. Take for instance medical yarns. Every once in a while the local news will report something along the lines of this: "Mr. Jones who was admitted to the hospital on an outpatient basis to have a hangnail removed woke up from the operation only to have his keester fall off!" It’s not that having one’s hiney hit the floor without you in it would be so bad. For some of the derrière’s that I’ve seen (especially the ones I come across in mirrors) doing without would be okay. It would keep the Mrs. from asking that impossible to answer, breath stealing, you’re gonna sleep in the basement if you don’t answer correctly question, “does my butt look big in this?” On top of that they always ask it after they’ve squeezed their fanny into some ridiculous item in a size they would have worn when they first entered grade school. “Honey why don’t you let our 8 year old wear that” is not a good response.

It is a fact that as a culture we have great interest in the suffering of others. Sometimes the combination of fear and just plain stupidity entertains us. According to Psychic News of London, a French farmer had an unfortunate accident after watching a horror movie late at night. “It seems that shortly after retiring, Michel Maumond, 40, reported seeing "a ghost in white at the foot of my bed." The frightened Maumond grabbed his gun and subsequently shot-off the toes of one of his feet. Maumond has since determined that from now on he will stick to reading safe books at night.”

The darkness seems to be a natural setting for scaring us pantless. How many times did your parents tell you “there is nothing in the darkness that isn’t there in the light? “But mom” you’d plead in the terrified high pitched haunted tone. They never saw the horrid things that came out of the inside of my anxiety closet like my brother and his date. On dull yet stormy nights the biggest thing shaking wasn’t just me under the covers.

It didn’t help that as a child my daily afternoon ritual included watching Dark Shadows, the only soap opera ever aired devoted to vampires. Not to worry though, as a clever youth I had a plan of action if one of those blood suckers ever arrived at the foot of my bed. As I recall it involved a lot of screaming and bleeding.

If I could I would have slept with a silver bullet under my pillow, or a well sharpened stake on the nightstand. I could never get the old folks to agree to such risky items. At my house anything with a sharper point on it than a baseball was considered too dangerous for a young hand. I was forced to rely on my wits for my own defense when going to bed. Sleeping on my left side was the only hope I had available to me. Vampires you know (as Dark Shadows illustrated) only bite people on the left side of the neck. I scrunched my precious carotid artery ever so strategically next to the bed and cushioned around it extra thick fluffy pillows to assure the best hope I had to avoid being drained during the night. It was like wearing a neck brace. I spent a decade with a perpetual stiff neck. It was no wonder to me why my school class pictures always highlighted my head tilted ever so artistically. “How come you never smile in your class picture,” my parents would ask. Since they were no help and left me to fend for myself against the monsters they didn’t ever get the true answer that I WAS IN AGONY!

You also knew that the toe monster lurked under your bed too. Any attempt to get up in the night took a spectacular amount of bravery. It made for a swollen bladder and blood shot eyes come the morning. I still don’t understand how my daughter can get up in the morning and not run as fast as she can to the bathroom. She has to be reminded to get in there. I can still remember some nights just trembling and waiting to be devoured by some nondescript creature that lurked in the darkness and under the floor boards. You could hear them any evening. They always made noises, but only after dusk or was that my brother and his dates?

There were no cute and cuddly movies like Monster’s Inc. when I was growing up. No! We had The Outer Limits, and Rod Serling’s hallmarks, The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery. Rod Serling seemed like a creepy dude all by himself with his own eerie style of delivering monologues. I’m convinced that his most sinister creation is Stephen King. He carries on haunting us with his literature in Serling’s spirit even though Rod is no longer among us….or is he?

Our special Saturday night offering in the nation’s capital included a program called Creature Feature! It was a humorous to corny program for an adolescent, but it could make the eyes of a youngest bug out. This show was a different series of old horror movies introduced and commented upon during the commercials, by a campy stage host dressed like a vampire (his name was Count Gore Vidal). Count Gore, who offered bad makeup, jokes, sight gags, and B-movie horror flicks is still around. There was a reunion show with the Count that aired at the turn of the century during the Y2K scare. I even have a videotape of it though, I’m afraid to watch it!

There are the truly odd and real things that happen at night if you stop, look, and listen. As reported in West Memphis Tennessee newspapers and on various television news channels: West Memphis - Officers have arrested a man for making late-night runs along Airport Road in the nude. Officers said they used a Taser to subdue Fate Patterson, 39, who had dodged police for about six months. He was arrested after he ran past a police car, and ignored orders to stop.

What does one officer say to his partner upon landing the big electric jolt? “Hey man nice shot!” I think I’ve seen that scene in some x-rated genre Movies! There are probalby allot of other punch lines for jokes regarding the police, a naked man, and a taser gun, but I’ll let you amuse yourself by thinking up your own. I’ll wait! (Pause… while you think). Okay that’s enough!

The point is that we now build themeparks, make movies, and indulge in other icons devoted to scaring us out of our wits. What kind of sick twisted and perverted person is drawn to such hair-raising things? The one who is under an evil spell that’s who! Momma mia, I have been touched by the malokya. Check the baby! It’s time to hang the garlic!

WHO'S THE DOG?

2007-11-02T12:43:00.000-07:00

THE FRIENDLY SKIES?

2007-10-23T11:48:00.000-07:00

Is there anything like time away from the old grind? If ever you’ve been on an airplane, the experience can be as stressful as a day at the salt mine. To board your plane on time you have to arrive at the airport hours ahead of time while your jet is still refueling in Cucamonga.

If you are lucky enough to traverse the maze of a metropolitan airport you know how much energy it takes to travel, and that’s just reaching a gate! It’s no wonder they call it a terminal! You could die by the time you get there.

There are shops filled with $7 coffee, flip flops for $10 (you can get a bushel of ‘em for a buck at the dollar store), and my favorite, the airport bar. Getting a healthy airline size drink (the kind that comes in a Billy Barty baby sized bottle) can cost you twelve bucks. In my day that was a month of beer money, or a weeks worth of cover charges to Dr. Slaphappy’s massage and jerk parlor! Oh for the good old days.

The airline industry is the only one where you can buy a product (a ticket) and get to the airport to find out that “ooops we sold too many tickets”. If you want to get squeezed on the plane you’ll have to sit in the bathroom for the flight or out on the wing. Talk about your mile high club! You could of course wait in the airport for another flight. “There will be another one along shortly,” is attendant doublespeak meaning “pull up a trash-bag pillow for a few hours pal and enjoy a snooze on the floor of the skid row airport hotel”. Sometimes during holidays you’ll see rows and rows of bodies on the airport floor in a kind of Bowery holding pattern.

You’ll find yourself wheezing when you finally arrive at your gate which is usually after a mile and a half jaunt. Often large airports take travelers to long distance gates via some sort of semi-altered golf cart. That thing is always loaded with enough people to make it look like monkeys clinging to the banana tree at harvest time.

All of these honors you get to endure after you have been subjected to security! If you look like Habib the Gypsy Boy then they may take a glance at you. Inexplicably though, if you seem more like Grandma Moses, Pa Kettle, or Average Joe you might have anything inflicted upon you from the shoe search given by a frustrated out of work porn actor tuned security wiz witha foot fetish, to a full out strip search by the guy who always wanted to be a proctologist but couldn’t cut it because of his oversized knuckles!

Once on the plane you have wonderful options of entertainment. The first course is the stewardess doing the crash run through to a chorus of cackles from the indifferent and sarcastic passengers. These are the same folks who will have the fear of God in their eye as they fight you for the flotation device that’s under your butt when the big nose dive comes.

Fresh food out of a can and more tiny alcohol bottles are available on board served by stewardesses that use to look like super models and famous actresses. Today they are tougher and though they have a pleasant smile they seem more like your sister during that time of the month. They’re not much fun in an enclosed space for five or ten thousand miles. It’s almost like enduring adolescence all over again.

Seats that are as comfortable as a bus terminal bench and poor ventilation make your trip all the more precious. Add a few screaming babies and you’d be in steerage on the boat from ol’ Calcutta

Of course it’s not all bad. Modern marvels of aerospace technology have you going from coast to coast in a matter hours. You’ll be grateful enough that when you land you’ll kiss the ground under your feet after you disembark. That is of course until you find out that while you may be in New York; your luggage is in Denmark having a better vacation than you!

MONKEY BUSINESS!

2007-10-05T12:01:00.000-07:00

No one really knows when humor began. In prehistoric times one would be hard pressed to think of something ticklish to the funny bone. Perhaps the Flintstones might qualify but they’ve been in reruns long enough for Fred to actually have evolved. Of our past primitive ancestors, it could be that Og dropped a boulder on his best friend’s foot in Stone Age times and found reason to laugh at his buddy’s unfortunate pain. Og was always a bit of a slapstick kind of a caveman.

Man dragged himself away from the apes which might have been a mistake in retrospect since all good humor is known as monkey business. Then he learned to stand erect and not only could he reach the berries on low hanging branches of trees, but he could also see things from a different perspective. Of course the berry eater is the forerunner of your neighbor Hal who is hell bent on getting all of society eating tofu and plates of green sprouts every night. Hal also wants you to drive cars that make no sound at stop lights and to make sure that you do not use any trees for toilet paper; perhaps there is a use for old dead plant leaves after all.

Regular prehistoric man developed a taste for meat and blood. He enjoyed hunting and sinking his teeth into the hide of some defenseless critter (usually a weaker specimen named Blain) and ripping the flesh away from the bone as he devoured his prey. What could be more humorous than that? Actually Mr. Meat and Potato’s predator in modern times is better known as Mr. Couch Potato. He gets screamed at a lot by his lovely mate and he no longer drags her by the hair into the cave if he knows what’s good for him.

Still somewhere along the way from there to here man not only learned how to relieve tension with laughter, but actually perfected pushing each other’s buttons to make one another lose control in a fit of convulsive laughter. Who can resist the gentle sound of gas being passed in a church mass or some other solemn ceremony? It has sent many a teary eyed saint out the holy doors gasping for air at some nonsensical thing that we use as tension relief and define as humor. Of course our evolution to a high society of civility necessitated a highbrow sense of dignity and things to laugh about which is how we got Gilligan’s Island in the 1960’s. Yeah everybody was goo goo over Ginger, but what about Mrs. Howell? She was loaded, quirky, and a lot closer to the grave. In any event ya can’t keep a Ginger without a sugar mama like Lovey to foot the bill!

So refined did we become in our design of humor that people specialized in the field. I’m not talking about the court jester who was as much juggler as funny man. He was the guy who often found the last laugh was on him as he was being dragged off to the lion’s den in the coliseum for making fun of Mrs. Emperor’s watermelon smuggling figure.

The comedian rose in esteem as a purveyor of humor, societal commentator and artisan in his own right. Henny Youngman could deliver one-liners so badly that it was funny. Charlie Callas was adept at making faces and sound effects to go with them. No one beat the rapid fire delivery of Jonathan Winters or Robin Williams in their stand up comedy prime.

Nothing feels better than laughing. Well maybe what happens after couples undress does; and in many households that still involves a lot of laughing! The golden age of television ushered in specialists whose job was to make thousands laugh. There’s quite a bit of money in humor, and that’s no laughing matter.

Not much brings instant and short term escape like a good belly laugh or a side splitting few moments of watching someone else’s unintended suffering. That can be the only reason why shows like “The World’s Funniest Home Videos” still exist. People are replacing professional comedians these days as inspiring certain humor. Invariably that means your next door neighbor rides his bike down the hill, hitting a pothole and taking a spill headfirst into a thorn bush where the wasps nest is locked in a fierce battle with fire ants colony. The victims resulting wiggle-fest sets you into a full roar. While your neighbor wails and performs contortions including rhythmic howls from the repeated countless stings per second, the buzzing hum sends milk spewing from your nose like it is being shot from a newly untied garden hose. You just stand back laughing hysterically at his welt-ridden body. Who knew the guy could move that fast? Looks like a stunt from "Survivor" or some other reality show. To make it funnier of course, the neighbor is wearing a monkey suit.

2007-09-24T12:53:00.000-07:00

The Battle of the Bulge

Something happened on the way to middle age. It settled right in under my nose and under my belly button. Now that I’m part of the over 40 crowd I have inherited a family heirloom; a stomach that won’t go away! How can this be? I am still active and attempt to stay in shape by working out 3 times a week. Perhaps the 23 trips a day to the ice cream factory has something to do with it!

According to the website Obesity Help, 58 million Americans are well beyond overweight and fall into the obese category. That is one third of us. I can tell you just where that extra one third falls upon me. It’s between the waist and chest! Now wait a minute. Let’s think about that. I certainly must be in shape I’m carrying an extra 30 pounds around with me wherever I go. That’s like constantly exercising! If that doesn’t keep you in shape then I don’t know what will! Unfortunately the only dumbbell in this workout scenario is me.

Since the concoction of the food pyramid by the Department of Agriculture in the early 1970’s the population, including and especially children, has been swelling. Our ranks, and abdomens, are now near the popping stage.

It is difficult to drink the 64 ounces of water everyday that is recommended. However, I have been doing what I am able for the last 3 decades to max out the requirement for breads and grains. The sizes use to include 6-11 servings from the grain group per day. At that rate I’d just start eating at sun up and finish when dusk rolled around. Actually the only thing rolling around these days is me!

The USDA after taking years of ridicule for the failed dietary guidelines has finally said enough is enough. As unnamed high placed USDA sources were misquoted saying “ee gad we’ve created a nation of Pillsbury dough boy blobs, and their coming this way…lets revamp the pyramid quick before they mistake us for baking pans and sit on us!”

So now quietly the USDA put into action a new colorful 3 dimensional pyramid. For someone my weight and stature I now should only eat 3 ½ whole grains per day. After 30 years of daily eating considerably more I fear that my body will shrivel up and blow away if I follow the new program!

Someone in the government must have figured a way to make workers do less by having them eat similarly. I know, I know! You don’t think it’s possible for government employees to do even less work. Being one of those worker government leeches too I find it all confusing. I’m so use to watermelon bellies that I don’t think I will recognize my fellow Americans when they get in shape simply by following the new eat less / more wisely food pyramid program. Hopefully I will be able to fully memorize and implement the new strategy. If the new pyramid is made out of something fattening I’m sure we’ll all notice it a lot quicker!

Dating vs. Relationships

2007-09-07T09:22:00.000-07:00

Aside from the obvious perks of having a long term steady significant other, there is an advantage to such dedicated lifestyles. Sure you have to deal with your partner’s family, mother in law, and strange Uncle Carl, but the sacrifice is worth it when you consider that having a steady partner in the bedroom is a great benefit, especially for men. Besides, they’ve never been able to convict Carnal Carl of anything even though he looks like Tom the Peeper.

In this partnering mode you don’t have to worry about feeding yourself, cleaning the house, going on annoying blind dates or when the next thump session will occur. That kind of constant whoopee happens by itself on a schedule from the gods. In the beginning of a long term relationship there is blissful agile romping with the help of Cupid (actually it is something akin to chipmunk paced interludes that are obscured by the fact that both people are usually drunk). Then substantial time passes by and you come to realize that you’re never alone. Even bathroom time is a challenge when you share space!

C’mon guys you know you’ve never had it as good as when you’re in the beginning of a relationship! It’s the only way you’ve gotten that much bedroom activity since your leg was in heat, at least according to your pet dog Fido.

Women however can accomplish all of that satisfaction practically without a man in the bedroom. Because the male is the desperate of the species in pursuit of the female, she is in command and can pick and choose her flings. Basically if you’re a guy you should bow to your woman for gracing your slovenly hideously hairy personage with some actual desire and willingness to spend time with you! Geez man look in the mirror! Get her to a shrink or simply thank her! If she has a heart she pity’s you of course and has done so since you made yourself such a pathetic target.

It usually begins when she first sees your swinging bachelor pad. No man can live in such Oscar Madison style without having a woman come to the rescue. That is her maternal instinct taking over that leads her to believe that you need her. Of course you do have needs and she fulfils them with her pogo stick-like hips! This feeling you’ve inspired in her is misidentified by women who have never been pregnant before. They think they are saving you when in fact you are drawing her into your life of a solo guy digs in a cleaver little gotcha dance. But who’s zoomin” who?

Can any man actually live in such poverty and sloth as his single apartment represents? If so then he really can’t respect himself very much. Debauchery, perversion, alcohol in volumes befitting an elephant and as we use to say “sex drugs and rock and roll” is the hallmark of the single guy (and college frat houses). One can only carry such hedonism so far before the intervals between encounters become overpowering for him and he realizes that a steady squeeze is the right way to go.

The ladies however display their I’m going to save him strategy in such a way as to actually lure men into believing that they are in it for him. Once there is a ring on her finger and a child on the way the man wakes up from his Rip Van Winkle fog to find out he has a mortgage, screaming mouths to feed, and a woman named Bertha that outweighs him by 50 pounds. The shocked look on his face is precious. But facial expressions are ever changing and the perplexed look is replaced by the dismayed one quickly when she screams at him over the office speaker phone to bring home a box of tampax, a package of diapers and some fruit.

The other viable method of pursuit is blitzkrieg dating. For many individuals this is a natural state of being if you are young or young at heart. Having countless freakazoids glomming your phone number throwing pebbles at your window (even though you live on the first floor) and dragging their potentially disease ridden parts into your silky linen covered mattress doesn’t phase you at all. The ultimate goal is to get as much and as many as possible.

There are clubs these days where you can wear appropriate colored wrist bands in a bar setting that display your intent of the type of get-together you are seeking. It’s advertising at its finest! The ability to party until 3 am thump all night long and then get up an hour later in order to work all day in the meat factory is genetically possible when in your youth.

For the older crowd however such work is tiresome and without a couple of power naps during the day (especially at the office) we’d be useless. Besides if we’ve been with someone a while we are pretty well trained to the partnership and know what wristband items we can get away with! It is an easy fit. To spite what you may hear about declining libido and grating nerves the underlying benefit to finding that special someone and sticking with them is a quantum leap ahead of one night stands especially if the Kama Sutra manual is what’s on the nightstand.

There is a proportional formula as to which lifestyle makes you happiest based upon the pleasures of the flesh frequency. The longer you go between lusty sessions the better the eventual romp will be and learning to hang from the chandelier also is helpful. If you’re getting it on every night it is more likely to become stale and routine. So in long term relationships being married to an ogre is actually a benefit if it keeps you apart for the required amount of time to make your togetherness times even keener. The dating scene’s natural catch as catch can type of timing is similar and keeps it enticing because when you do finally talk someone into sharing your lame bed it is usually a powerful pleasure pinnacle.

In new relationships there is the artificial glow that many people mistake for love. The word is lust and it is quite valuable but can lure more self centered individuals into a false sense of achieving what they’ve long sought. When the familiarity of your partner overpowers you then your sensuous princess looks like Phyllis Diller or your hunky macho partner seems like Porky Pig.

Friendship first is a good rule of thumb (that and plenty of bedroom toys). If you have been able to pal around with the member of the opposite sex for an extended length of time perhaps even living with them for a time in somewhat platonic situation you are more likely to go the distance when the thunderbolt strikes. Of course like anything else you must work hard and reinvent yourself by doing things outside of a normal routine to keep it fresh. Lots of whip cream seems to help! This will go along way to keeping the two of you together for a long time. It also helps if you don’t mind standing in the checkout line with a lime and a box of tampons.

ANOTHER F-ING HOLIDAY!

2007-08-24T12:39:00.000-07:00

C'MON EVERYBODY, EXERCISE!

2007-08-10T09:57:00.000-07:00

I have a theory as to why America has gotten so obese! Even our children have become little porkers. I can’t remember more than one person in my elementary school class that was overweight all of those years ago. Of course that one poor little fat kid that we nicknamed “Hunky Chunky Monkey” was excoriated ruthlessly by the rest of us thinner children in the name of comic relief. The only thing more interesting to talk about was Alana. She was the only other classmate aside from the chunky one who required a bra. She was popular because her chest was fat not despite it.

The rise in per capita weight within the citizenry coincides with the decline of the teen pregnancy rate. Kids are binging still, but no longer upon one another. In the 1980’s carnal snacking was quite the rage and created unwanted babies at an alarming rate. Kids were plopped onto the planet by unwed child-mothers who had the bodies of sticks and all of the sensuality of salmon swimming upstream. Somehow the boy population in those days didn’t need anything more than to share their testosterone with nearest shapeless girl as a societal pressure relief valve.

This phenomenon is not that different than what you find in marriages today. At the beginning, newlyweds are bumping and grinding like rabbits. You can tell who’s a recently married couple by simply taking a walk around the neighborhood on a few successive nights. The houses you hear all of those strange noises coming from all of the time are the ones with the bride and groom actively romping through their pleasure room. Listen long enough and you’ll hear performing feats of spectacular delight with a repertoire befitting its own chapter in the Kama Sutra. It may sound like she is being knifed, or he is doing a mad- bull stuck in a tar pit imitation, but really those are just the sound of true love (or some sloppy rendering, pleasures of the flesh).

Once the children start arriving for a couple the libido death knell is sounded. The ladies usually lose interest; the men forget what made them famous in the courtship, and focus more on how to land their lips around the tip of a long neck bottle of beer rather than around their woman in the same seductive way.

Then after a period of time, couples start to swallow all of the pent up sexual frustration. Just because there is no getting-it-on in great frequency anymore doesn’t mean the hormones don’t still rage. Fools start to consume their frustration in various forms of food and drink. To excess they go as they replace their favorite well positioned activities with a different sensory stimulation geared toward the taste buds. With the world of processed high fat foods the next thing you find is that the 9 months of gestation is replaced by 9 months of ingestion resulting in that mound above your waistline; it isn’t a baby either, it’s a beer belly.

If you want to find the most sexually frustrated folks in the neighborhood check out the largest ones. They are making their moves on a box of frosted flakes, a bowl of ice cream, a load of Oreo cookies, and a box of donuts instead of upon their spouse. You’ll notice that the ones gaining weight are on the down slope of the Saturday night love-machine frolics, while the ones getting in shape are rolling in the hay most often. Note that silent skinny person in the neighborhood; they don’t talk ‘cause their hoarse from all of that midnight vocalization between the sheets. They’re happy and making it, laughing all the way to the Lovin’ Time’s store for more supplies.

Staying in shape certainly means more than it use to in our modern society and now you know where one needs to be to properly exercise your mind, body and your demons. The bedroom is America’s gymnasium and playground. More couples need to get back to that regular role-playing slurp-sounding, great-to-be-alive style of exercise.

WHAT A CROC!

2007-07-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

What is the deal on humanity’s obsession with footwear? The mania with Crocs, the plastic footwear that hit the market several years ago is remarkable. They seem to be modeled after the famed Dutch boy wooden shoes often offered to tourists as trinket souvenirs when in the Netherlands. It’s not enough to be taking home a model windmill or Delft blue dinnerware when in the Nordic region, now we’re wearing enough replica footwear to equal the gross national product of one of those countries in the land of the splintered foot. It’s enough to make you want to change your name to Inga or Sven! It makes one wonder about a place where marijuana is legal, and if the ground zero of the Croc’s idea came from a later night college party in Amsterdam after making fun of the locals wearing wooden shoes! Those parties are like the American ones where someone ends up with underpants on their head and having the palm of their hands super-glued to their temples so when the drunken fool wakes up he looks like he’s in a constant state of panic and shock. Apparently higher education parties in then Netherlands are paying bigger dividends than their American counterparts. You haven’t seen the “underwear helmet” on the market yet have you?

Now of course there has been some negativity attached to this ingenious footwear product; the cost for one. Genuine Crocs (the original) cost upward of $50 a pair. Remember they are just molded plastic! The rest of society’s slobs would rather take the Chinese import knock offs available at Rip-Off- A-Mart for $5 a pair. These are the same folks that produce counterfeit auto part so that when you use their $1.95 set of hubcaps they come rolling off the car somewhere on the higheway. Ever see a stray hubcap? Now you know how it got their, all alone on the side of the road. As they say in the Far East “What a bah-gin!”

The Croc shoes have more holes in them than a block of Swiss cheese (another famous invention from the Netherlands). That however is really a benefit. If you’ve spent any time wearing leather enclosed, or athletic shoes that choke the air to your sweating feet then you know the benefit to Crocs. They are both cooling and aromatic. That cuts both ways depending on the company you are trying to impress or offend.

These shoes are also touted as good for diabetics in that they promote circulation of the extremities. Not that it’s a bad thing but many diabetics could benefit more from a regular exercise program to eliminate their obesity than stuffing the girth of swelled little piggy’s onto a very expensive and cleverly formed piece of plastic. Increasing blood flow through regular workouts is much better than standing at the hot dog stand at Coney Island in a pair of Crocs glomming down ungodly meats of unknown ingredients, and cholesterol laden French fries cooked in peanut oil and drenched in vinegar. The sneaking suspicion however, is that per capita, Crocs are owned by more couch potatoes than Olympic athletes, though there is no empirical evidence of that to date.

Until one tries on a pair of these foot products that seems to have cornered the market, they will be deceived. Once trying them the patron will be surprised. They are comfortable and habit forming for the feet. As a child if you had to wear shoes of plastic you would likely have been embarrassed enough to seek the first freight train to throw yourself in front of; much the feeling many youngsters use to have when having to wear Flip-Flops pushed on them by their cheap-skate parents during vacation. Crocs are the newest fashion annoyance since the invention of the flip flop. What’s worse than walking on plastic? Walking on Styrofoam with a strap between your toes and making a slapping noise like a Clydesdale coming down the sidewalk. They defy silent movement. Don’t try to sneak up on prey in them or you’ll be the one to get eaten. Get in on a seminar of Flip Flop wearers, and you’ll think you’re in a three stooge’s convention with all of that repetitive slapping.

For all the drawbacks, wearing this new accessory to your regular beachwear is quite useful, and a head turning experience. How many places can you wear neon green or orange shoes enough to blind the average person into looking the other way when going to church services, and yet still be accepted? You are a sinner after all so why not display your fashion sin in bright eye-popping colors?

Of course the person that invented these little gems is laughing all the way to the bank, and is probably lives on their own personal Croc Island somewhere with a Pina Colada in one hand and a member of the opposite sex on their lap. So many of these things are around that the inventor is probably among the few gillionaires in the world with their own island. He's next to the guy who invented the hoola- hoop and the one who came up with the Frisbee. Can you guess what they do on their islands? Why Hoola-hoop and Frisbee of course! A group of loyal minions and graveling yes men on Croc Island probably accompanies the Croc genius wherever he goes, and of course all of those folks in the entourage wear Crocs. At least they don’t make as much noise as the stooges of the gillionaire on Flip-Flop Island.

ODDS and ENDS!

2007-07-13T08:24:00.000-07:00

Leftover from a recent bathroom column: What kind of sadistic monster put faucets in lavatories that have to be held in the on position in order to use them? It’s no wonder teenagers are germ ridden little snots. In some old high schools you will find that all of the soap dispensers are empty. Now, the reason can be revealed. Most likely this situation exists because of a tale in the media about there being too much alcohol in such bathroom soaps. Kids are extracting the alcohol. In serious cases it can be absorbed through the skin and seep into the blood. How does your high school son or daughter explain to officer Dick that they blew a .15 on the breathalyzer because cleanliness is next to godliness?

Aside from that hurdle and realizing that we are a nation of pampered wimps living in a world of new fangled seeing-eye urinals, soap dispensers and faucets, I found that these Stone Age version faucets require one to physically keep your hand turned on them in order to get any water to flow out. Let go and the water stops flowing. In this situation you can get only one hand wet at a time. Even if there were soap to dispense it would take a miracle to rinse your hands of it. Of course as a final pillar of anti-cleanliness is the usual the lack of paper towels in the dispenser too. They must install the empty dispensers in tandem. 50% off the cost without the insert supply; what a bargin. The girls all know about these pitfalls because they are instructed by their mothers from an early age to search for toilet paper in a stall's dispenser before they sit down! Boys don't have dad's advise because dad has no such wisdom. Boys learn bathroom etiquette from their friends. It often goes something like this. "Hey man lets see who can whiz the farthest!" Perhaps the bathroom mechanisms are driving the high school kids to convert the soap into a six pack in the first place.

Of our changing physique: Has anyone noticed the growing trend (and I mean that literally) of women’s backsides? I contend that the situation has risen because of steroids in the food chain. Someone wants to have a Mr. Universe contest starring cows. Growing super sized Holstein’s has a domino effect that is creating a world of lopsided children. My tiny little girl looks like she has a ham attached to her behind. I can’t think of any teenage girl with a figure that doesn’t have a can the size of two overstuffed water-balloons in the last stage of “one more move and there will be a tidal wave”. It’s disproportionably disturbing.

In my day growing up if you saw one girl in the 7th or 8th grade requiring a bra it was a celebratory occasion; rare and most appreciated. You always knew the boy who had just discovered the blossoming female because his pupils were always fixed and dilated, and you could use his tongue for a red carpet. Some young ladies today have hooters that rival their keesters. The question is which squishy area is going to get more attention from the video camera or the local pervert. I was apparently born in the wrong decade because I certainly would have liked to have more things to look at in school other than my teacher’s scolding looks and Sister Mary No-You Don’ts chalkboard erasers rocketing toward my head. Can you guess what I was looking at when she used to launch those volleys?

Where have we gone wrong? Is it the fast food generation or has my ophthalmologist given me a super sizing magnifying eye-glass prescription? I’m a big fan of Jell-O so not to worry; as a dirty old man I know I will enjoy things that wiggle more. I’m just not sure I want my daughter to be one of them.

Truth is stranger than fiction: Getting back educational setting, it seems that outside of Washington D.C. is Flintstone High School. Can you imagine being a graduate? Sitting in desks made of stone may be one thing, but waiting for birds to fly back and forth between classes so as to give the principals announcements on the intercom must be annoying. I’m sure the boys don’t wear shoes and the girls all have bones in their hair too. Not to be out done, another D.C. area school oddity is a military school that goes by the name Fork Union. I don’t know what this has to do with anything, but what are the odds that the alumni reunion doesn’t have this said as the graduates reminisce back on their days on campus? “Good ol’ Fork U” they probably say. It’s no wonder school kids don’t respect anything anymore. I wonder if they have a high sign to go with their school moniker. If so I’ll bet it’s a hand gesture! It might make for a rough four years at school games in the sports arena with cheerleaders shouting “Fork U” while opponents undoubtedly get riled. Then again maybe the odds are against the adversaries because of the cheerleader’s Buick-sized hips that have their rivals in a hypnotic state with their tongues on the floor.

IF THE SHOE FITS!

2007-07-10T09:24:00.000-07:00

How do you fit twelve pounds of sausage into a bag fit for six? Any trip with your favorite lady to the store reveals the latest ridiculous trend in women’s shoes and coincidentally offers a comparative answer to the sausage question. Pointed shoes are all the rage lately. Not since the Spanish Inquisition have such devices been employed upon the human body.

Given that most women even with a curvaceous foot have significant width in their foot from heel to toe it is remarkable to note that they not only attempt, but also succeed in squeezing 5 toes in the tapering space fit for only a couple digits.

Of course if you’ve spent any time out with a lady in a pair of these torture devices you know you’re in for a night with the queen of mood, shooting looks at you as if you were the one turning the screws on her foot dilemma. Later, you’re assured to be servicing her with a foot massage worthy of Cleopatra. Add a bunch of grapes and hand held fans, and you could be in Egypt or some similar sort of bondage scene.

Like most men who have dreamt of that spare room becoming the den, you end up losing the space with the formation of the “shoe room”. You give it up quite easily when she threatens that either she gets proper space for her abundance of footgear or she wants another baby. Since men desire children slightly less than a trip to the proctologist for a classic turn your head and cough visit, she wins the day and your auspicious library becomes the Imelda Marcos Memorial Footwear Room.

How can a woman who only has two feet require so many thousands of shoes? Men generally can live with a pair of athletic shoes, a pair of boots, one set of dress shoes and a pair of sandals for those Jesus Complex moments. Women with so few footwear choices would wither, and be blown away in the faintest of winds.

“Shoes for every occasion”, means that she has as many pairs as Hallmark has greeting cards. If she needs that special pale blue spiked heel pump with the design on top resembling a yarmulka because she is participating in her nephews bar mitzvah, then she has to be prepared for it. The shoe room is the place you’ll find that special something.

So many pairs are there that she could open a shoe store of her own if she ever had the desire. Considering normal outlet peddlers, it is a good idea to stand aside when a group of ladies is set loose on the latest Candies that hit the market with the special introductory offer. The butchery between women in a race to beat one another to the limited supply is unspeakable. It might make interesting entertainment for some men, but such carnage should not be condoned even if it looks similar to naked mud wrestling down in the shoe pit.

Perhaps the truth of the matter is that women simply have so many shoes because they just don’t throw anything away. Over the years she’s collected shoes from the fact that she has to go shopping for a new pair for every birthday, wedding, and trash day that passes. So how come with a mountain of shoes occupying your potential solarium she still needs more? Men can’t figure it out. The more shoes she has probably means she is an older woman. Make no reference to such a thing unless you want to spend the next 6 weeks sleeping on the couch in between the punitive repercussions of having to polish all of those shoes to get back into her good graces. It’s hard to explain pink polish under your fingernails to the guys down art the rock quarry.

A wise fellow might dream of a game room with a pinball, soccer, and billiard tables, or Pacman to fill the void. Unfortunately, that pipedream has been replaced by a million soles that are stomping all over your dream. They’re taking up that space so her feet can be happy when a pair of oxfords is called for at the annual PTA meeting or karaoke night in front of the town drunks. “Hey as long as she’s happy”, the thought goes. Then perhaps I can convince her that we could put an addition on the house and get my game-room. You might get her to go along with the idea at last, but realize when she smiles at the prospect that she isn’t seeing late night billiards with a little bar in the corner and a drink in her hand. She’s actually calculating how many more racks of shoes will fit in the new space, and how many more years she has to fill it with the latest shoe fashions well into her geriatric years. When it finally hits you what she’s up to it’ll be too late. After your stroke you can be sure she’ll give you a proper burial like that of the family pet with a quick service in the backyard. Naturally she'll have the perfect shoes for the occasion. You of course will be laid to rest in a shoe box.

What’s a Daddy to Do?

2007-06-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

What can a child do for dad this Father's Day? This “holiday” conjures up images of wowing dad with a card, a fishing reel, or a trip somewhere. The feeling however, is not the same as the day set aside for mom. After all mother struggled for nine months to give you life, incurring every ache, pain, bloatation, and mood-swing known to humankind. You owe her big time. Dad’s part in that whole process was as coach, cheerleader, and late night delivery boy responsible for finding an all-night pistachio ice cream and sardine store at 3 o’ clock in the morning; all at a moment’s notice. Given the vast differences in such umbilical beginnings dad is at a distinct disadvantage.

He might be the one who has taught you to throw a ball, swing a club, or deliver a smooth line to a girl when trying to get to first base, but Father’s Day does not truly rival the hullabaloo of the guilt driven mothers day, which has a sacred halo status.

So how can you give tribute to this important man who, though overshadowed from an emotional standpoint by the woman of the house, still deserves something of appropriate honor? The options are limitless.

Many folks think of their dad as someone difficult to buy for. Sure you may think he has everything, but if you are careful to watch the interaction between mom and dad, then you’ll realize that dad either has nothing, does nothing, or looks like he does everything when in fact he does nothing. Dad is a clever character.

In the gift category you can usually buy dad something electronic. If it is a gadget that whizzes or bangs dad is usually as mesmerized as the family dog with the wind in his face, hanging his head out of the car window. Both have the same tail wagging experience when it comes to what they like. Satisfying dad is fairly easy. Why? Because compared to mom, dad is rather easy going. He’s seen the horrors of family life, and he knows to leave the heavy lifting to the General of the house. He’s happy he relinquished that role when the kids arrived! So cell-phones are nice, Tivo, Ipods, Palm Pilots and Blackberry’s will all suffice as a nice gift. A pinwheel with its wind driven motion would even keep the simple man entertained as long as there is enough of a breeze. It’s the same affect that you find with the family cat that is fascinated by the spot from a flashlight. You move it; they chase it, and bang their head on the closet door when the light runs up the wall. Dad is as easily distracted and amusing.

Where can you take him for a day of dad-like fun? Usually any sporting event will do. If there is a NASCAR, ladies, mud-wrestling, football game to be found he’ll be a happy camper. Hey camping; there’s another idea. Dad likes the great outdoors, sleeping with the insects and rolling around on a dirt floor. Usually dad is a couch potato so if you have a portable handheld television to drag with you wherever you take him, or transportation large enough to haul a couch, then you’re guaranteed to give him the best Father’s Day he’s ever known. Throw in a little dirt without a Laundromat and he’ll be in heaven.

For the outdoorsman dad, a nice day skeet shooting might be good. However, you might have to tolerate being seen with him in his puke green plaid shirts, vests and other hideous-like apparel. If he’s older he’ll need a belt. It’s hard to keep his pants waistband pulled up and secured around his chest without one. There is also the case of beer you can supply after such outdoor activity that will make him so happy that he’ll tell you stories that will make him cry.

You could also take dad to his favorite watering hole. No, not the tavern; I mean fishing. There he can show you the finer points of putting a worm on a hook, and of course how to drink enough beer to achieve a second- degree sunburn. How classic! Beet red on only his lower arms and legs; this is the hallmark of a happy dad.
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Still, a card is nice, or the old reliable standby, the tie, will show your appreciation too; especially if pictured on the tie is lady mud-wrestlers shooting, skeet from a stock-car while driving for a touchdown and casting out a line in hopes of catching the big one that got away.

One Man's Ceiling

2007-06-04T06:14:00.000-07:00

How is one person’s junk is another’s treasure? You could say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but backing up one cliché’ with another is likely to have the word police hunt down a writer and slap him silly with a thesaurus. So let’s just say that people have differing views as what falls into the realm of valuable.

Have you ever driven through the neighborhood on trash day? Very often some piece of discarded furniture will catch your eye. It’s like passing an accident where you know you shouldn’t stare. Human nature being what it is however, the surplus travesty found can have you envisioning all sorts of things. Inside your head a little voice says “hey that would look nice in our pleasure room!” It’s like you see right past the scars and the way the whole thing tilts on a 25 degree angle. You could solve that problem and nail that sucker to the wall. It’ll be perfect. You can see it in place in your mind’s eye. At times like this someone needs to smack your mind and put some glasses over its socket!

Of course you find the occasional refrigerator, couch, or table that looks in better condition than what currently occupies your abode. It becomes tempting to trade the neighbor’s garbage with your own in-use furnishings. Talk about curbside appeal! No one wants to negotiate with the trash man to keep it from his clutches. Trash men are sort of like the mailmen. They have their appointed rounds, and some folks even give them Christmas cards. Grab that three legged table from the trash pile as he’s reaching for it and you might have a skirmish on your hands. No one wants the embarrassment of negotiating with the garbage engineer. After successfully bargaining the item from the grips of the city dump wagon, how tacky it is if you are seen smuggling refuse from someone’s heap and lugging it up the street. It’s better to wait for midnight, or at least night fall to make your move on that glorious early American replica yet legless foot stool. Not to worry you’ll find some use for it!

Many times before these cherished pieces hit the street an owner will try to unload it at the yard sale. Another favorite American tradition, this display of “crap I no longer want”, can be found in most towns and cities on any warm Saturday morning. Of course there are quasi-professional’s that attend these functions. They scour the classifieds and pay close attention to telephone pole sign postings of such impending loot free-for-alls. Many times they are so attracted toward these announcements that you can tell when they have found the event that they want to attend by the way their tongue hangs out of their mouth. The heavier the panting the better the prospect! You’ll know a pro because they are the one’s that show up considerably earlier than the start time listed on the yard sale announcement. Usually seasoned yard sale shoppers are eyeing the goods as the owner is still in “set up” mode, or for the real hard core early cases while the seller is still in “wake up” mode. When they find something they want it’s no matter to them that they are there before the sun comes up. Even if the owner is in their bathrobe they start in with the inquisition. They ask questions like a drill sergeant at Paris Island inspecting new recruits. So many questions are asked that the annoyed owner offers them the family heirloom armoire for a buck ninety eight just to shut them up and move them along before the bulk of the crowd really shows up. What the heck, they’d like to shower and have breakfast before the long day of selling anyway. These early shoppers are usually the persnickety type; sort of like your Aunt Bernice! She’s your parent’s sister that is always snickered about at the family function by those gathered in the kitchen while she is creating more controversy at the dinner table. These experienced yard sale folk want to out-do the average schlub and grab up all the good trash before the rest of us get there to find even slimmer pickin’s.

The dregs of the yard sale usually end up in the last round up where the trash truck has it in its sights. Still if it piques your curiosity there is no telling what lengths you’ll go to have the neighbor’s selected cast-off replaced by your own reject at your own curbside.

Of course there are many times when roaming through the housing development you’ll see something and say “geeze, can you believe the Joneses had such a dilapidated relic on display in their showplace of a home? It looks so bad that it could belong in our house”. Usually you have such a high opinion of the Joneses and their mantle boasts picture perfect smiles with an appropriate portrait fitting of being on the cover of Life Magazine. Two beautiful people with four lovely children who all have make-up and style down to the quintessential art form. It makes the rest of the neighborhood look like a gang of refugees from a third world nation who has just arrived via garbage scow. Nevertheless it is in their hideous reject where you could conclude that this glimpse of reality proves that they are no better than you, at least beneath the surface. In fact that couldn’t possibly be true. They have their groceries delivered, drive fancy cars and don’t pick through other people’s garbage. Their discards are usually the treasures for the rest of us. For them the sky’s the limit. After all one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor. Look out! I hear the waffling sound of a word police thesaurus being aimed at my noggin.

BATHROOMS!

2007-05-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

In a free capitalistic country such as America, it is really refreshing to know that freedom abounds in all areas. Take for example lavatories. While men usually have no specific requirement beyond a bush, open road, or a tire that is still upon a car, women need more creature comforts even in this; the most odd of places. Can you picture your wife squatting in a field with a roll of leaves in her hand? Probably not, but many men can picture it of themselves out of true life experience; and that is just during pledge week at the college fraternity!

Bathrooms are perhaps one of the most intimate places on earth. We spend a lot of time naked in there, and there are usually mirrors. What greater example of vulnerability and hideousness is there than that? If you’re not in one with a moon cut out on the door then you are probably in some sort of modern version of the crapper. With a few stalls and urinals on the wall most men are satisfied. When manufacturers get clever with group canal basins in the middle of the bathroom for whizzing, many guys get uncomfortable. Perhaps it is the fact of whipping yourself out and waving it all over the place that has the modest a bit wary of this bathhouse style fixture. There are still also, great feelings of homophobia among many males in this society. The penile aversion even goes so deep as to inspire the catchy men's room phrase "if you shake it more than three times, you're playing with it".

Women on the other hand will often join hands, hop skip and jump their way from the restaurant dinner table to the restroom together. This for men is a big no no! Aside from the obvious discomfort among patrons when men might hold hands, most he-men are not coordinated enough to hop or skip without tripping over themselves and thus looking like a boob.

Ladies use these bathroom breaks as social interludes with likeminded compatriots to gossip and make fun of their dates. Guys who might be forced to stand in line on mass at a sporting event have a more Neanderthal socialization. It is often accompanied by loud drunken rhetoric, and cattle sounds including the famous moo-cow calls as they wait to relieve themselves. Now you know why Bessie is always loudest when she is standing in the field. She's full and needs to be tapped!

Sparse as male restrooms can be, the contrast is that some women’s rooms actually have furniture. What better place to sit and wait for your friends who are doing their business than in a chase lounge by the sink area? Upscale locations have their own separate sitting room; sort of like a classy family room for the urinally challenged. Who wants to talk to someone through a stall room door when we can converse in the comforts of home and still share a urethral experience?

At swanky hotels and establishments there are often finely dressed gentlemen standing at the wait with fine linen towels, a smile, and a plate that you are suppose to fill with money. For guys, the general consensus is “look dude I’m already in here because of waste so don’t expect me to give away my money as an additional cost to pooping”. That doesn't work. Thank goodness they don't charge dimes anymore to enter bathroom stalls. That was a post World War II idea that must have come from the ranks of Third Reich bathroom designers. More refined once again, the ladies might not mind it if there was a finely dressed man in their bathroom if he was perhaps, Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, or Brad Pitt. Nevertheless giving guys money in a bathroom would seem somewhat tawdry as demonstrated by Richard Gere in the movie American Gigolo.

Technological advances such as the bidet are mind blowing. Somebody dedicated their life to the pursuit of such a device! Do you realize how many hours have been contributed by countless engineers, designers, and craftsman so they could create a piece of equipment to wash your tooshie hands free? A lofty goal perhaps, but can anyone take credit for such an invention with a strait face? “I invented the crack washer and it made me a zillion-air; mostly because women don’t like to touch themselves down there!” How would you like to ride the crest of that wave all the way to the bank?

Of course this is the 21st century and there are those who think we have evolved enough to have unisex bathrooms. This seems to be an invitation to trouble. Not since they started putting infant changing tables in men’s bathrooms has such obvious evidence surfaced that the women are guiding the unisex concept. Where else can she slap the unsavory for not lowering the seat, chastise those without aim, and enhance her love life by meeting that one in a million good-looker? After all Brad Pitt has to whiz just like the rest of us.

The Birds, the Bees and the Trees

2007-05-09T06:11:00.000-07:00

Spring; when a young man’s fancy turns to…..aaaachooooo! That’s right. With all of the joys and awakenings of warmer weather comes the bane of many a sensitive schnoz. This is the season that tissue manufacturers love. Pollen is in the air and while a romp in the hay may be a wonderful thing, for many it is not so – not with birds, bees, trees and plants looking to spawn! The itchy noses and watery eyes are not usually signs of amoré. When it comes to plants, however, your sniffer is a good indicator that love is in the air. Most people don’t know that they are involved in such an elaborate, intimate dance with their surroundings. If you stop to think about it, people do an awful lot of breathing so it is impossible to avoid inhaling those things that are used for the birds and the bees by many a plant.

A report from the International Archives of Allergy and Immunology indicates that there are over 250,000 species of pollen-producing species. Holy cow, talk about Sodom and Gomorrah of the Environment! There are only about 100 types of trees, still an ecological harem, that causes the nose to know what it knows, ya know? The stuff can be downright irritating. Not like the “hey, you’re on my hair” annoyance, that you might be willing to put up with, but more like the uncontrollable, premature kind of a dog trying to mark his territory on the wall, couch, rug, closet, your foot, or any other surface that he deems in needing of identification.

Most things of illustrious beauty - for instance, plants trees, flowers and Cheryl Tiegs displayed on the hood of a Porsche all exhibit the same eye-watering characteristics. Their stuff gets under your eye lids enough to make you cry. It gives new meaning to the saying that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” It’s more like a finger in your socket as opposed to something soft and soothing. So what are you willing to sacrifice in the name of beauty? How much Visine are you willing to carry for your comfort while this orgy of replication continues?

The evidence of this reproductive decadence is all around us on certain spring mornings when you take a gander at your automobile. There is enough pollen on it to make you think that little green men from outer space with severe dandruff conditions have been walking across the hood. The green powder is everywhere. Is it any wonder that with so much “seed” around looking for a place to go that people start acting weird? There is restlessness, the desire to want to romp, and the renewed energy of a puppy’s enthusiasm to grab a hold of the first leg passing by for a fast-paced waltz.

Of course, humankind has taken this bit of nature and turned its need for pill-popping, antihistamine-taking and syrup-swallowing into a multibillion dollar industry. There are medicines, devices, masks and all sorts of things to make your body unaware of the relentless bombardment of the reproductive cycle to which you are being exposed (and without a raincoat, too). So thorough is man’s allergic reaction that these medical comforts distract your body enough that you’d never know you were surrounded by so much of nature’s pornography. It’s not like you’re going to find much of a centerfold, though, unless you happen to be reading Home and Garden.

The Beautiful People

2007-05-02T10:36:00.000-07:00

VACATION!

2007-04-09T07:19:00.000-07:00

GOING POSTAL!

2007-03-26T11:31:00.000-07:00

After viewing a recent story on a local cable news channel about a U.S. Postal worker that only wears his uniform shorts when making his rounds it made me wonder. It is not so unusual that a postal worker might wear shorts if they work somewhere around the Equator. This guy however worked in the upper Midwest of the U.S. As I remember my geography from Mrs. Miller’s third grade class for the short and geographically challenged, I seem to remember that Minnesota is quite a few degrees north of the world’s belt buckle which as everybody knows is its regular hot spot especially on Saturday night after doing the cha cha with some other hot worldly mamma planet. Of course the day they did the story on the postal worker there was snow on the ground, and it was 20 degrees below zero. He still delivered the mail in his uniform shorts. What a knucklehead….er….character!

Given all of the hoopla and reputation hits that the Post Office has taken in the last two decades is it any wonder that the phrase “going postal” has become a regular part of the vernacular? This former U.S. Governmental Agency which is now a quasi-private company has quite a collection of lunatics within its walls yet its make up is by and large of normal everyday citizens like you and me. They’re the folks who like you and I have no problem playing especially when it comes to making sure the mail goes through….through all kinds of torment before it gets to me. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had mangled letters, crushed packagers and fractured fruitcakes thanks to the mail system. As far as the fruit cake goes they could have incinerated that as far as I am concerned, just as long as they don’t tell crazy Aunt Rita that I never received it. I think she grows every fruit by hand on her windowsill and somehow gelatinizes them to make each tasty morsel the consistency of rubber suitable for retreading tires on a 1957 Buick.

As far at that lunatic comment regarding postal workers, I think I am eminently qualified to comment especially on the changes. My father, brother and cousin all worked in the much maligned organization. What once was glamorized and romanticized by the pony express and a reputation that the mail must go through no matter what, saw the tide begin to change after the 1960’s. It was an especially turbulent time for psychedelic indulgent postal employees. The revamping of stodgy uniforms with the addition of shorts and the pith helmet might have confused some, but if there were ever a contingent of postal workers on the Serengeti of Africa chasing big game at least they would be properly dressed for the hunt.

As someone who spent quite a number of years in an entertainment industry one half of a step above gutter level I can honestly say that we use to joke that if we ever got fired that at lease we could work in the Post Office. How funny that is the case with some postal workers. The organization has become the employer of some of the dregs of society who could not make an honest living based on tangible skills. The souls I am talking about not only use to work in the Post Office but their acts within its inner sanctum earned them the right to have their wanted poster hung in front on public display.

When you are willing to hire the unskilled to perform manual labor that the average marsupials could perform in his sleep and put some of them at the helm of the machine is it any wonder that there might be a banana peel or two to slip upon? The once proud organization has slid into a tri-annual postage raise groveling society that is out to get your money in order for them to compete with more competent less bloated commercial organizations. In the Pony Express days the outlaws use to steal from postal riders. Now some of those very elements are running the show and seem to be within the organization. When my mail from across town comes in three weeks instead of three days, this post modern organization has me doing a double take and thanking my lucky stars that I received anything at all. Of course when I notice that it always seems to be some sort of junk mail or a bill I entertain my own postal eruption in my mind. Then I calm down and think well if I ever get fired I might still end up working there. Then I see the postman coming down my street in his shorts and “World of Commander McBragg” style pit helmet. This sets me to giggle to myself and “whew” a small sigh of relief. It’s enough to make me tell the postman “thanks for the service!”

2007-03-13T09:53:00.000-07:00

I thought that, on the anniversary of his birth, I would honor the man who inspired this column by publishing it again. It may be one of my favorites.

It is true that time bestows upon us wiadom. Overcoming the turbulance of our relationship during my adolecence, he later told me he was my best friend. Perhaps, I was his only one.

In retrospect I know he was correct. For the words I left unspoken, for his dedication to loyaly and the generational consistancey the universal impact of the parent-child relationship imparts, there is an eternal quality that cannot be underestimated. My children will thank you for the lessons. In them your immortality is assured, and so is mine. Happy Birthday to you, Daddy-O!

PETS!

What is the fascination of children toward pets? GI Joe and Barbie are good enough to hold the average scurrying rug-rat but only for a few years. Invariably the subject of having a pet arises. You can run but can’t hide! Having a pet is apparently a prerequisite to becoming an adolescent! It is accompanied by that whiney, grating, noisy, flopping up and down, thrashing on the ground, holding ones breath until you get what you want scene, and that’s just me protesting!. Oh yeah, this is the same behavior youngsters have in the pet store in an effort to persuade you that having a pet is a good idea!

Pets come in all shapes and sizes, but it’s usually the big ones they want first. My daughter’s first request was for a pet elephant. If I remember correctly I think “peanut” was her first spoken word. It didn’t help that my wife is a fancier of such humongous, largely overweight animals. That’s why I’m the apple of her eye! She likes elephants too. This elephant desire was not easily squelched in our house because of the often watched episode of The Simpson’s where Bart wins a pachyderm in a radio station contest. “No honey,” we’d tell the youngster, “that’s just a cartoon! Elephants belong in the circus or the Republican party”. Come to think of it isn’t that the same thing?

When I was a kid I wanted a dolphin. I figured all you needed in the back yard was a pool and some kind of water tight truck to carry it up the highway from Sea World. Can you imagine the rear end of such a vehicle swaying as it drove up the highway? As a kid I could actually visualize it. Another clarion call was for my very own horse. Not such a big deal if you live on a farm or a place with a lot of land. We however lived on a postage stamp sized lot barely big enough for the house that sat upon it. Nevertheless it didn’t stop the yearlong nagging I put upon my parents. It wasn’t until I realized that they had invested heavily in the earplug market that I gave up the ghost on that idea.

Kids are funny but they grow up and then the real pressure for a less wacky domesticated animal comes into focus. The dog is a prime example. How many times can one parent say no to such a normal household pet? The older members of the family try the logical approach. “It’ll be good as a watchdog and make mom feel safe.” However when you end up with a dog that has a high pitched yap instead of a deep throated baritone growling bark that benefit flies out window. As I think back on my childhood I’m hearing the same arguments I heaped on my poor parents. My daughter is trying them out on me. “I’ll take care of it! I’ll feed it! I’ll walk it. I’ll clean up after it!” To this day when I review the family scrapbook I always come across that picture of my father with a pooper scooper in his hand, and he is not smiling! Children take as much care of the animal on the lowest rung of the family ladder as they would a brother or sister. Good heavens that would be considered animal cruelty!

Having a pet is like perpetually having an infant in your care. They can’t feed themselves. There are particular needs when cleaning up after them. They tend to chew on everything and create quite a mess of your shoes when they are growing (and that’s just the kids). You can’t leave the house or leave town without “special arrangements” or taking Fifi on vacation with you! The idea of spending 2,500 miles of highway time with a lap sitting Pekingese, their tongue flaps in my face from its necessity to stick its neck out the driver’s side window, isn’t overly appealing!

Man’s best friend? My family lineage consists of a long line of postal workers, utility company employees and various assorted other entities which required a work uniform. There’s nothing a watch dog likes more than to sink his teeth into the soft part of your tush when you wear one of those coordinated ensembles. It’s like waving a red flag at a bull. I never knew that postcards could fly until I saw them do just that out of a postman’s mail pouch. He was doing the 25 yard dash and high jump out of a neighbor’s yard. Postmen have to be very athletic or get used to spending time lying on their stomach as the family physician sews their wound in the shape of the Liberty Bell. If you know a postal delivery worker you can bet there is a bell on their butt!

Much has been made of being a “cat person,” versus being a “dog person.” These pet owners fancy their animals as extensions of their own personalities. I know more people that are dogs than are cats, I can tell you, and usually they are men! Some pet owners are merely confused folks because they treat “Fido” or “Twinkie” like they are the people of the house. There are complete pet wardrobes including sweaters, pants, and accessories (diamond studded jewelry). My favorites are pet eye glasses and dental braces. Not to be outdone there are equally delusional individuals practicing pet psychiatry! I can hear the conversation now:

Dr.: I know you were the seventh in a litter that had a mother who could only service six at a time but that doesn’t mean you should be pooping in your neighbors front yard!

Rex: I know it doc but sometimes I can’t help myself. I think I’m addicted to a swat on the nose from a rolled up newspaper!

Doggie psychiatrists are sure to confuse a pup. “How will I ever get him to stay off of the couch at home if the doctor requires him on it in his office?” Exactly what university in this country educates veterinarians and qualifies them as shrinks? There is a group of professors somewhere who needs to have their heads examined!

Alas no matter how much my objection, the tide eventually will turn against me. Since I want to be remembered as a dad that was a kind, soft-hearted, loving, gracious, father, instead of my true identity, eventually I know I will lose this battle. Mind you, I could go a whole lifetime without knocking the pet bowl of water all over the kitchen floor and still live a fulfilled satisfying life. I’ll be the one that has to clean that up too I’m sure. However, to be sure, I’ll be overrun in the family’s zeal to add another mouth to feed to our household one way or the other. I can see how this will all end.

Our beautiful little home will forever have a keepsake on the mantle over the fireplace in the living room. The family portrait will display us all together, including me, with a special look on my face, and a pooper scooper in my hand!

TATOOED!

2007-02-27T09:40:00.000-07:00

Every era has parents saying the same thing about their kids. “Where did we go wrong” is one of the most repetitive phrases in human parenting history. In prehistoric times a father that couldn’t get his son to drag a woman by the hair back to the home cavern felt he raised some sort of alien. Imagine the caveman whose son turned out to be a vegetarian and wore fig leafs to rebel. “Put on your loincloth,” the mother said but that only spurred the child to use an even smaller leaf. “What could I have done differently” the father thought to himself and then blamed the wife for allowing the boy to do whatever they wanted no matter how strange it looked. Those crazy kids!

For the last 15 years or more the post baby boomers and x-generation individuals have sought to mark themselves as completely different from those that preceded them. If you thought wearing pants below the waist low enough to qualify for the plumbers union was annoying take a good look around now! Mark themselves they have, literally! Charles Manson might have been the first to attempt carving symbols in ones own forehead. Effectively permanent Chuck but the technique needed a little bit of work. You’d have done us tax payers all a favor if you’d carved all the way through your skull with that knife.

Usually beginning in a pool of teenage angst the defiance of past generations such as the tasty and equally nutritious swallowing goldfish or growing ones hair to the ground has given way to something much heavier. An earring in a guy’s ear 30 years ago was quite a statement and was worn like a badge to communicate “I have arrived!” It was just as silly nevertheless for its time. I could never have imagined what teens do today; carrying the extra 5 pounds of jewelry on my face. These days the worry is about the extra 20 pounds carried around the waist to all of us grown ups.

The propensity to seek attention to oneself has been highlighted by tattoos, piercing, and any number of unnatural avenues to out mutilate the next guy. Today we’re at the “can you top this” place in our evolution. It is exemplified by the requirement among our youngsters to make sure their faces clink and clank when walking down the street. Carrying as much metal as possible by way of piercing is the newest attempt to shock society into noticing its youth. It’s the equivalent to that cave-teen wearing that fig leaf for the first time. It has become quite comical to the casual observer especially when you realize it’s a poison ivy leaf their wearing. If you walk by someone otherwise normal and they clatter like a muffled bell the odds are that the piercings are under their garments. Perhaps the items are being used to make sure their belly button doesn’t fall off. Could be the jewelry is being used to discourage babies from breast feeding. It might also be used in making Woodie heel or to highlight other unmentionable parts. How exciting! There are even clever names for such piercing; though I think Sir Walter Raleigh would not be amused.

Turning the human anatomy into various forms of billboards via such a route screams “look at me. Listen to what I have to say!” While their message may be worthy of listening to the method of display can be motivated by self esteem issues. The human body in its pristine birthday suit form is a masterpiece all in its own. Is there anyone worthy of improving upon such a perfect machine? There is nothing more beautiful to view than the human body especially if it’s somebody else’s other than mine. Doubt the body is beautiful in its natural state? Then how do you account for Playboy Magazine who led the “body is beautiful sexual revolution?” Today there are countless magazines proving the point that nudity is a wonderful thing. However tattoos and piercing will likely keep you out of Playboy.

Placing messages upon a masterpiece might get it noticed but cheapens and even ruins its value. It is like writing on or painting over the Mona Lisa. Whistler’s Mother might get up out of her chair, take the paint brush out of your hand and smack you! Is such behavior as clouding the existing exquisiteness something to be revered by a generation of individuals simply because they had messages worthy of being heard? The art world would think it something different.

The desire from the current generation to become sailors is remarkable. They swear like them, belch like them, act like them, and now have body art upon them for the rest of their life too. The only thing about the seafaring individual is that they will generally tell you at some point what a mistake it was to get a tattoo and how they were drunk at the time trying to drown their sorrows over some true love named Wanda. Mr. Sailor man maybe Wanda would never have left if you let her pierce your winkie! Then the tattooed spend the rest of their life with a half naked woman on their chest and try to explain it over and over to their latest wife.

What looks cool at 16 looks completely different at age 40. I still have the hole in my ear from that one earring that was daring in my day. Thank goodness it’s just the one hole. I’m afraid 25 years from now we’re going to have a generation of senators, congressman and the general population whose face and body parts looks like 10 miles of bad road. Oh where did we go wrong?

I can’t wait to see how my grandchildren defy their parents. I’m sure it will be graphic and something as yet unimagined. Maybe by then we’ll long for the days of wearing pants a foot and a half below the waist. Well that’s practically nude. What could be more beautiful than that masterpiece?

WebRing

2007-02-13T07:05:00.000-07:00

THE UNCOORDINATED!

2007-02-13T06:45:00.000-07:00

If you were ever the uncoordinated kid in class, or the brainaic in Harry Potter thick glasses wearing a bookworm facade then you are very familiar with being the last one picked for sports. We short folks were never worth the selection when it came to basketball and might have never been on a team had the Little Sisters of Righteousness School not inspired that everyone must play. With a kind word, a bizarre hand held clicking device, and rulers that could make your knuckles feel like they had just been hit with basketball-sized hailstones in a Midwest summer storm, the sisters enforced equality at the end of a wooden gun. Still that feeling of being left out and unwanted were stigmas after such drama played out on the court. Silently we hid the scar tissue on the inside lest we be seen as sissy mommas boys or crybaby little girls.

With the ever aging baby boom generation coming into its glory, can I tell you that all I see are signs of crisis? The adult teams are being chosen around me and now the world doesn’t have Sister Mary Guilt-A-Lot to tame it. Many are about to be stung all over again. Being one of those baby boom mentioned types looking at big numbers of candles on my birthday cake I must say that aging is nothing like I thought it would be. Who would have thought that wearing diapers, eating pureed food and crying until someone comes to hold you would carry the same weight at both ends of your life? Actually I didn’t spend enough time thinking about what it would be like at all!

As Young Turks we all think of ourselves as invincible; boys profess this outright while girls seem merely to believe it. As we grow from our indestructible teen years and early twenties into our thirties, forties, fifties and beyond it becomes apparent that there are certain things we will no longer be able to enjoy completely. For guys, long distance whizzing is out of the question, and ladies need a medical device around their neck in case they get down on the toilet and can’t get up again!

Like the prepubescent geeky years, here comes the constant reminder that we are no longer worthy. Young girls in phone calls talking about whether the cute guy is going to be at the party tonight no longer includes you as the person they might be talking about. Second glances thrown your way from a good looking member of the opposite sex is one inspiring a reaction more of horror than one of lust. No one is checking out your shape anymore unless they want a person to model their Humpty Dumpty costume for the community playhouse.

Amidst all of the missed opportunities of your life it seems like the ones you felt strongest about yet never achieved come haunting. Licking the whip cream off of the thigh high boot of a buxom blonde behind the bleachers of the soccer field is not going to include someone with as much gray hair as you. You’re more likely to be the one snapping photos of the pair under there but you’re also predictably going to be hauled off to the hoosegow to be charged with being a pervert. It’s all because no one ever warned you to live life beyond the fullest. They always told you to settle down and spend your life with that special someone. That is a great life I’ll admit it. However, when you come out on the other end of the aging tunnel you can see back to the beginning and the things that filled your loins with passion and vigor all belong to a younger generation.

There could be worse things in life than not being picked for the ball team unless it’s a toss up between you and Norvall the one armed, one eyed, paraplegic midget who talks with a lisp, and tends to drool allot. Still, as you age and the great creator in the sky starts calling the geriatric class home for his ball club, you might find that being picked last for that team is a lot like winning the lottery. You’ll get to see all of those contemporaries of yours who made your life so miserable go before you. You’ll get to witness more sunrise’s and sunsets, and who knows you might get lucky with Granny Gertrude in the old folks home that the kids put you in, if she happens to have narcolepsy and is partially blind. Perhaps she was never into sports and doesn’t mind that you pitch a baseball like a girl.

When you’re a hundred eight years old and your body acts like it at every turn creaking and offering new insights into the true meaning of the words ache and pain you might long to be chosen for that great gig in the sky. Many of us who fought for life never ending might find that being selected last still sucks as much as when you were a kid. Live large and ride a wild one as long and as often as you can before doing so causes you to bust a gut or fling your dentures across the room. You might poke someone’s eye out. Then they wouldn't want to pick you for their team!

The Reality of Television

2007-01-29T07:48:00.000-07:00

First there were the golden years of Hollywood. Even the eggs that rotten pictures laid are viewed in retrospect as golden gems. You certainly knew it was its own era when someone like Fatty Arbuckle (the Louie Anderson of his time) could be a star. Fat has always been funny. Then the little screen came along.

Today there are few places for fat people on TV. When you do see them it is something that keeps the tradition of seeing porkers as the punch line. Homer Simpson is probably the best known image of a fat person on television today. Think about that for a while. Serious shows are more of a sad exploitation. There was recently a show centering on competition of teams of fat people to see who can shed the most pounds each week.

Post World War II and television in the home changed movies forever. It certainly transformed the home, the living room, and the family unit in America. Sure mom still wore only dresses around the house, but now we lay on the floor in front of a box that showed us pictures along with our sound.

In the 1950’s creativity reigned and comedy is usually the format that is remembered most. Jack Benny, Milton Berle, and I love Lucy opened new avenues for television. The wackier the better!

That blueprint for quality television with creative writing lasted decades. Make no mistake there were plenty of stinkers in the procession of shows networks tried to entice you into watching over the years. Then you could smoke yourself to death on the screen. Heck, cigarette commercials were everywhere. By and large however the successful shows were anything from quirky, to socially conscious.

Speaking cars, families of vampires and monsters, talking horses, spy thriller spoofs, a goofy shipwrecked sailing group and country mishaps down on the farm all shaped some of the most memorable comedies of the 50’s and 60’s. Laughing silly was the goal during that age.

The talk genre of television which was so successfully launched and ruled by Phil how much blood has my heart spilled on the floor this show Donohue for so many years gave way to mundane hosts not willing to suffer the loss of their shows to bad ratings. Talk TV came to be as important as the situation comedy format. Luck and desperation became the mother of invention. Thus Trash TV was born, thank you Jerry Springer and Geraldo Rivera. The germination of a seed was planted which took a decade to come to fruition and infect the latest small screen landscape overhaul.

The marketing of this latest form of television was similar to Madison Avenue’s genius in selling us bottled water. The evolution from trash talk into the entertainment module of television has brought us Reality TV. This form displays average people exhibiting those things we use to hide in our closets. "Why should I hide the fact that I am a cross dressing, alcoholic hermaphrodite, drug dealer, that carries guns to my school, and has bouts of depression because I live in a big house where my parents don’t understand that I am different than my superstar siblings?" Book that guy as a guest!

Now instead of employing writers for dialogue to bang their heads against the wall with temperamental stars, Hollywood took the easy step of producing shows from a debauchery assembly line. They seem endless.

If you were going to write a generic script for most Trash and Reality Television it could probably include looking at all of the perversions in our cupboard. Let’s take a good look at our corrupt and bankrupt morals. Hell, let’s put all of our shortcomings on television for everyone to ogle instead of quietly trying to overcome the disease that causes it. Forget the sickness lets laugh at the symptoms! That is much more doable! The winner is the most depraved! “Johnny Olsen tell the paraplegic tap dancing, worm eating, bisexual, cowboy from Queens what he’s won just for participating!”

This is the same mindset that has unleashed Donald Trump on America’s television conscience. Fear Factor, and the can you top this sweepstakes of reality shows, have our trailer trash minds salivating over the prospect at what will be next. It’s sort of a real life cliff hanger. How far can we push the envelope of bad taste?

The junkyard of humanity is being laid bare to the delight of our own sick voyeuristic streak. We’ve gotta see who’s gonna be the next Idol, and what kind of an insect someone will eat to get off the island. We enjoy seeong how pissed off some gold digger is going to be when she finds out Joe Millionaire is a part time sewer worker, who is really a hillbilly from Des Moine’s and who’s favorite sport is yodeling.

Hollywood is selling America’s own muck to itself while quoting and confirming their own mantras; It’s a hit and Give ‘em what they want. What ever happened to always leave them wanting more? I have a better slogan. How about just Leave 'em?

The lack of Hollywood creativity is hopefully only a temporary rest period for writers so that they can recharge their exhausted bankrupted reputations. Alas, I fear that this mode may be with us to stay like goofy comedy reruns, trash talk TV, and 24 hour cable news leading us to believe that it is all entertainment. Watching Reality TV is more like being in a Dante undiscovered circle of hell. How on earth did we ever find it? We have simply risen to the level to which we have aspired!

Then again perhaps that whole classic piece of work could be turned into a reality show. “For a cool million who wants to visit Dante’s Inferno in the flesh?” What million bucks? The reality is that we visit hell nightly and pay the cable company for the honor.

THE 'FEEL GOOD' INDEX

2007-01-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

Christmas Magic

2006-12-22T07:51:00.000-07:00

How does a fat man get down a skinny chimney? Some of us barely fit through the front door! Well of course its Christmas magic. When you were a youngster anything was possible. The world was full of wonder, and excitement except when Aunt Gertrude came to town with her penchant for over-squeezing cheek pinching not knowing her own strength is a recognized vise grip, not to mention the uncountable whiskers on her chin! Then it was run for the nearest closet under the stairs and hope the family didn’t miss you during her stay.

As far as the true magic of the season, it rests in all of our traditions. Who can get through it without a couple of good size turkeys making the ultimate sacrifice? This of course is so that we can sit our overstuffed carcasses in front of an oversized flat screen plasma TV and nod off during special football games. Usually usual the teams are quite a pair; one superior display of talent against a group that plays like a collection of women from the Red Hat Society. Nevertheless the whole family laying about the hovel like they were a bunch of tired basset hounds back after a long day’s hunt is pretty typical. It’s sort of a Norman Rockwell meets the Beverly Hillbillies; picturesque but not exactly inspiring of Christmas’ past.

The erosion of the true holiday’s message, giving each other gold and frankincense (no one can seem to find myrrh anymore), has been gradual, steady and to the celebrity benefit of Mr. Claus. Here’s a guy who breaks into your home (breaking and entering), dressed in a red suit (fashion disaster), and not only does he not take anything, but he leaves you stuff (insanity). Of course in our materialistic society he’s going to be a right popular ol’ elf! His mode of transportation is also out of this world too (space alien). How does one get a gig like this? Work one day a year, give stuff away to the needy and the greedy, and be revered more than Brittany Spear’s silicone implanted trailer trash playthings: sounds like every youngsters dream!

As an adult of course things are a bit different. You become more jaded, cynical and the closets are no longer big enough to hide from unwanted hairy faced family. As a matter of fact people can get so swept up by the holiday so much so that they actually sit and talk with Aunt Gertie now pretending as if her face full of hair is not a good conversation starter. The magic may still be there and you can view it in the wonder filled eyes of your snot-nosed children; they’re sort of just like you use to before adulthood transformed you into a neurotic shell-shocked whimpering encasement of your former self.

The traditions are still wonderful though a bit more varied, diluted or disappointing. Stockings are still hung and by the chimney with care but mistletoe for instance, is something that’s no longer there! For countless Christmas’ as a child the “love bush” hung in the doorway so that when guests like Aunt Gertie with her face of stubble dropped by, she could righteously expect a lip smacking welcome. It was after all the closest she got to intimacy since Uncle Herbie up and perished in that mysterious backyard mineshaft disaster. All they ever found of him was his clothes and a little black book with five stars next to that mysterious girls name (Bambi), highlighted in lipstick. However, today when you need decent noticeable size mistletoe vegetation because there are finally some good looking neighbors worth planting one on to see if they offer egg-nog educed tongue action, you can’t find the stuff to hang up anymore. Santa doesn’t offer as many presents to adults either. The once hopeful holiday is now plays out with adults being screwed without a kiss.

Yet, despite it all we still find a quiet moment on Christmas Eve, usually at 4:00am after the last minute round of midnight madness shopping at the all night 7-11 (yeah, Slurpees and meat snacks for everyone’s stocking), and the wheezing from all of the rushing around has finally died down that we can reflect on the beauty of the holiday.

The Christmas tree blinks its silent message in the stillness as you reach to place the last of the presents under the tree before Santa shows up. Of course reaching under the tree with your face in the bottom branches sort of reminds you of kissing Aunt Gertrude and her pine needle whiskers. You may shudder, but it’s the chill of that ol’ hopeful feeling. You see if you look hard enough some things don’t change throughout your entire life whether its prickly facial encounters or the roundness of a fat man in the room on Christmas. The presents may be smaller and the joy a bit more tempered yet there is magic is waiting to be rediscovered!

Mystery of Electrical and Gas Shortages Unveiled

2006-12-12T10:04:00.000-07:00

If you own the power you own it all! Anybody who ever reigned supreme in a game of Monopoly can tell you that it’s true. That is unless of course you play some new version of the game. You know the new editions that have diluted the financial message of the early 1900’s board game whose only purpose now is to exploit your pocketbook by way of your emotions. Today on the market there’s foreign language monopoly, Barney I Love You” monopoly, Dukes of Hazard monopoly and even University monopoly. The college version is useful in to making NCAA schools worth going to as undergraduates stay up all night vying to see how they can meld some form of monopoly into the wild, carousing, over drinking college lifestyle that Universities have come to represent.

Nevertheless owning the power means you are king! That seems to be the sentiment of many in this country who look at the high cost of gasoline and electricity. The good old days are gone; you know the ones with block long lines waiting for a fill up and the rolling blackouts inflicted upon California. The good old days? Heck yea! Then even though there were shortages your gallon of gas was still well below a dollar a gallon. There was much whining then because we don’t like to wait for the goods and services we feel we deserve. We’ll pay through the nose just don’t make us wait! Witness as proof of that any Bridal Gown discount sale. The outlet, at great risk to its very infrastructure, will sell thousand dollar symbols of purity to women who’ve had more sex than Heidi Fleiss on a slow night; for about a dollar ninety eight! This creates a stampede akin to a cattle drive gone awry as typified by a bad John Wayne movie. The virtuous young ladies attack each other to get the garment of their choice that they’ll wear for a total of four hours. The whole ruckus is an affair that reminds one of Wreslemania on a rainy Saturday night in Alabammy.

Now there are no gas lines but we’re approaching the cost equivalent to a gallon of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. Put some Chunky Monkey in your tank and see if that’ll make your motor run! Still with exorbitant costs there is barely a whimper out of the public’s collective mouth. If they could figure a way to make Hagen Daz combustible we’d have another energy source for about the same cost.

The West Coast blackouts were a different story. In 2001 and 2002 darkness could reign down upon your home without much warning jut like nightfall! Panic stricken people reacted as if it were the stone-age during a solar eclipse. People ran trembling through the streets as if the sky was falling and the gods were mad at them. On top of that tension prices spiked to ridiculous amounts per kilowatt hour similar to the cost of hair darkening grease during the Reagan administration. Of course certain energy companies and high government officers were in on the shenanigans. Then to top it off California is saddled with Arnold The Governator. Someone has been pulling pranks on the costal states ever since. The most popular comment at a Schwarzenegger political speech is Huh? What did he say?

Many people complained that we are restrained in that we have plenty of product but no way to refine petroleum and turn material into electricity (without charging a gazillion dollars per unit). That of course is so energy company CEO’s can drove around in bullet proof limos. What do you think they are afraid of anyway? As long as they stay in the limo smoking their big fat cigars made from illegal Cuban tobacco and rolled with American hundred dollar bills they won’t have to worry.

The refinery shortfall premise does have some merit. I have my own theory however. It is not that there isn’t enough petroleum, gasoline or electricity. It’s not that our refinery capacity is lacking. It’s not even that evil conservatives have a hand on the lever of such power and another one in my back pocket.

Have you ever driven past a field that has high tension power lines? The towers stretch in pairs across roadways, grassland to the horizon and beyond. They always look exactly the same no matter where you find them! My hypothesis is that this delivery system is simply not enough to carry the glut of that has built up behind the mysterious bottle neck of energy. I surmise that there is only one set of power lines and they go around the world! Each time you see a set in a field realize it’s the same ones you saw across town, in another state, near the zoo, or in any number of Ultra Man episodes and Godzilla movies! They all look alike, they all stretch in the same direction and they are not enough to carry the world’s energy.

There are some positives to this situation. If you are ever lost and you run across a power line field, if you follow them toward the horizon eventually you will find your way home or at least to a location with which you are familiar. The illusion is that many of these lines are stretching criss-crossing the country delivering all of our electricity. In reality there is only one set of towers erected by some guy named Mort. He of course has been subcontracted by your electric company to give the impression that they are everywhere. You hardly notice. The only person doing well outside of limo bound fat cats is Mort. Nobody knows why this lowly electrical worker has yachts, Lear jets, and his picture on a box of Wheaties. Now that his secret is out I bet you won’t be able to find his picture on cereal boxes anymore!

Take time to look carefully the next time you come across such a field and you’ll find they always run in the same direction. Clever Mort, but not slick enough to fool the watchful eye. You may have fooled us in the past but with prices going out of site your shrewd tactics have been discovered. How did you ever think you were going to get away with it?

What could possibly happen next? Will power lines cease to carry the glut of electricity those power brokers are sitting upon? Hardly. As long as the power is in the hand of a few guys the power lines will stand as picturesque as a symbol (like a stature of liberty) to the wealthy. Isn’t America a great place to live? It is especially true if you’re a big-wig, a guy named Mort, or Godzilla!

MR. MOM!

2006-11-20T12:40:00.000-07:00

Building Blocks are a nice start for enabling youngsters to experience dexterity, grasp dimensions, and the laws of gravity. However when you, as Dad, have spent an entire afternoon sitting in cross legged position on the floor of the living room in front of the television which is showing rerun episodes of Barney and The Big Comfy Couch while you fight over puzzle pieces with your little one then you’ve been in the primary care role a little too long! If you haven’t banged your head silly from the “I love you” Barney song by then you might be a lost cause! It will take you years to get that blasted song out of you head.

Breaking traditional roles from a male perspective is a good thing but after a prolonged period of time the male constitution that Mother Nature has cultivated and been fostering in your overly testosteroned lineage for centuries will begin to turn your brain to mush. Don’t watch the afternoon soaps during nap time without a box of Kleenex, a phone, and a support group of stay at home moms in the neighborhood!

You can bet that you will start becoming a completely different individual. You’ll begin to see things in a whole new and yet foreign way. Dare I say that when pastel colors, fashion tips, and vacuuming the carpets become hallmarks and priorities of your week’s accomplishments then its time to reconsider your career choice.

Nothing can replace a parent being there for the first three years of a child’s life. Having a parent in the child’s life at every moment for these first years are crucial, but there are consequences! My wife and I chose the path where I would eventually become Mr. Mom because she was just beginning her career at the time and we knew down the road it would help establish her money making prowess that would dwarf my meager skills. Maybe that was it or maybe it was that my hair was longer than hers so we wanted to make sure the child had a positive long hair mommy model at home. Either way it was a wonderful experience for my daughter and me.

My wife suffered a bit for it but managed to fight all of those mommy instincts by trodding off to the office while her boobs were still leaking. I can’t imagine being in the boardroom looking like I had been attacked by a group of Shriners at an Atlantic City convention during the annual water balloon battle where I had been repeatedly nailed on the chest. The Mrs. was a good sport! I’m sure her bosses were not exactly amused. “Leaking” in the office is generally frowned upon. Men don’t know how to handle normal bodily functions. Gaseousness after all in the male repertoire is something viewed as high comedy! I on the other hand was left to fend for myself in this foreign land of diapers, house chores and grocery shopping.

At first it may be strange but the more time you spend focusing upon that little developing child a new perspective comes into view. It is actually a rediscovery for you! You relearn how marvelous the first time discoveries of life can be all over again. Jumping out of the crib, removing diapers and playing with what is found in there and putting everything and anything in ones mouth over and over again is great. Your kid will do that too! Even though you tell ‘em “no” their behavior reminds you somehow of your own first experiences on some subconscious level. As the walls close in on your adultness your inner child is released and you find joys you had forgotten existed from your own childhood. Napping becomes your friend!

By the time kindergarten comes rolling around you will not be recognizable as the same human being. You will be picking out drapes, doing the dishes, the laundry and having tea with your own bridge group.

Scared yet? Okay I jest; it’s not bad at all. As a matter of fact being with my daughter day after day for those first 3 or 4 years might have been the best time in my life when I look back upon it. I know it served a purpose
for its time and for the development of my daughter. If you are able to do it for your child I would urge you to give it a shot. Once in your life getting in touch with the mommy instinct within yourself would be a good thing.

I on the other hand may have another go round. I keep having this reoccurring dream. It has to do with my wife telling me she’s pregnant again. “There goes another one of my careers,” I think. Next I wake up to realize that I’m the one who’s done the leaking! Like the boardroom that isn’t funny in the bedroom either!

KEEPING UP APPEARANCES!

2006-11-09T08:37:00.000-07:00

At our house there are some peculiarities that I wonder about. I question if these unusual rules apply universally in other households or if I have somehow slipped into a domestic twilight zone. In our main bathroom, for instance, there is a set of special towels which hang from a rack. That’s not unusual. His and hers towels are on a different rack of their own as are the ones for the children. This special set of towels consisting of 2 full size ones, a single hand towel, and two wash cloths are hung in a choice location completely separate from everything else. You’d think they were guest towels. You’d be wrong! According to the lady of the house they are not to be used! Okay I can accept that they are decorative in nature. There are no instructions about this peculiar set of bath gear for the out of towner. Unsuspecting males however who make the wrong assumption about this set of decorative linen and use them for drying hands or (God help them for drying their body after a shower) may suffer a fate akin to castration.

The expression upon the face when guests make this faux pas is priceless; not their face but mine. It’s not often that anyone else gets yelled at in my house, but me when the queen is on a premenstrual rampage. When it happens to someone else I can empathize with them and yet I delight in it because it’s not me enduring the irrational wrath. A bewildered confused look is usually followed by a ducking motion as the woman flings the closest thing within grabbing range. I must have great (Bruce Lee-like) moves because she hasn’t nailed me yet!

That is not the strangest part of it however. Once the word has gone out to the regulars in the house that those towels are merely for observing they are left alone. They do just what the Mrs. has intended for them. They just hang there, look pretty and add accent to the room. No one uses them. The crazy woman however, still takes them down and launders them! Something is wrong with this picture! I mean we don’t go around washing our clothes then putting them in dressers only to take them out in their still cleaned state a week later to wash them again. Using them is what normally denotes their need to be laundered! Is this washing of clean items a common practice in other houses?

Another one of the domestic peculiarities is the brand of toilet paper in our home. Is it just a coincidence that this is another bathroom topic or have I developed some kind of fixation? Chosen for how many sheets are on the roll it is not such a bad thing to save money. We have three bathrooms and there are enough women around to use up a dozen rolls a week. What do they do with that stuff? I think they must be supplying the local track and field team with the rolls to use as finish line tapes for local events. Are they unrolling it looking for gold? Where does it go? Just once I’d like to go grocery shopping and not have to lug the 24 pack through the checkout line. I get some funny looks from cashiers who look like they’re thinking “This guy needs less fiber in his diet.”

Normally a roll of a thousand sheets would go a long way to help the bottom line so to speak. But when you start sacrificing comfort for economy it can really put a hurting on ya. The texture of newspaper is one step down from our brand. It’s not all that economical in the long run if you have to go out and buy Preparation H to help ease the problem you’ve created with the toilet sandpaper method of human hygiene.

In the bedroom (see there are other rooms in our house beside the one with the moon cut into the door) the sheets must be changed several times a week. Compared to the amount of fun things that happen on that bed it seems to me that maybe once a week would be sufficient. I’m not saying there is no action that goes on in there. As a matter of fact we are a prolific love machine reminiscent of an episode of Fritz the Cat behind closed doors working in close and yet sloppy unison. It’s just that bed breaking Kama Sutra techniques can be performed anywhere not merely upon a mattress.

The central air conditioning system that sits at a comfortable 77 degrees is normally in the man’s domain of adjusting. Ours keeps going up and down by itself! The fluctuation seems to coincide with phrases that the lady of the house makes like “I’m freakin’ cold,” “it’s freakin’ hot,” or “get that freakin’ thing off me!” I’m sure you know she doesn’t use the word freakin' during a hot flash either! She swears that she doesn’t touch the thermostat.

There is a ghost in our house who likes it cool when its 60 degrees outside and wants heat when its 90. Go figure. I think maybe there’s some sleep walking going on but haven’t been able to prove it yet. It’s either that or the previous owners keep coming back while we’re sleeping and changing the damn thing. That’s scary ‘cause they’re deceased!

Cleaning up the floors and such are often left to the man of the house too. Sweeping, mopping, vacuuming, and carpet shampooing are my specialties. If I didn’t write so much of the time the house might be cleaner. I however chose literary antics over the custodial arts. I usually sweep all of the dirt under the carpets. Soon I’ll have to open a spot in the floor boards to sweep all that dust down into before the rugs get too lumpy and guests start to notice. The problem is that I don’t think we own a dust pan!

I once offered my honey the opportunity for her to have outside help come in to clean the house on a regular basis. It was a birthday present. Now you know I’m a romantic at heart. She declined in favor of having the live-in staff do the stuff. I didn’t know at the time she meant me.

Still in between arriving guests, weekend drop-bys, and other more frequent visitors the place is a wreck. The reason is that we have children. The word children is Latin for “throw it on the floor!” Any logical place to use something such as a dining room table for food eating is mocked. Kids only know how to take their plate to their beds, desks, vanities and stereo systems. They also apparently try to eat off the floors. It just makes more work for the carpet shampooer; me! Each room has trash cans which of course stay empty until a parental tirade urges the kids to use the floor for walking instead of a refuse collection station.

When I was growing up there were not TV’s in bedrooms either. Heck there were only a maximum of 5 channels you could view on the tele and no one wanted be in bed with Captain Kangaroo. Today not only are there 150 channels in the bedroom but there are video game systems, CD players, DVD burners, Tivo, and premium channels with body parts flashing across them that I never even knew existed until I was an adult.

Actually it is not that the culture has changed but the youngsters now wag the dog with a manipulative, sniveling bag of tricks of contortions designed to make parents feel like cretins from a distant planet if all of the comforts of royalty are not placed at their young ever pampered feet. Have you ever had a pedicure? My kids get them monthly! Don’t paint those toes go kick someone with them!

Don’t try that manipulation shtick upon parents when they are in their prime because that is when they have fire in their bellies. They’ll knock you down a peg every time. By the time the last child comes along however parents are so tired they give in to their selfish desires because elderly nervous systems can’t take the screeching, crying and high piercing whaling perfected by the young ones. Adults just want quiet and will give most anything to achieve it. How nice it feels as we get older to discover the comfort of midday naps in bed. We’d be there more often but the sheets are usually in the wash!