Anniversary Eve Thoughts

Tomorrow Kim and I will commemorate 13 years of wedded bliss. I was feeling pretty good about us and our future -- until I read an article in The Week magazine that said that wives lose interest in sex after 4 years of marriage and men are still going strong after 40.
That was pretty terrrifying, so I've decided to give up reading -- and burn that issue before Kim sees it.

Something else I don't understand

So, I take my youngest daughter Cricket along with her brother Dylan to Subway on Friday night. She got the same thing she always gets, the same thing she has gotten every single time she's ever gone to Subway -- a Ham and cheese on white with a couple quarts of vinegar. I even pointed out to her that Subway has lots of different sandwich possibilities and asked her if she was ever going to try anything else there. Her answer: "Nope."
Okay, fine, you find something you like and you stick with it, I don't have a problem with that. But tonight I fixed a pizza for dinner -- a ham and cheese pizza. Cricket crinkles her nose and says, "Is that ham?" I say yes and she decides to have carrots for dinner instead. I asked her why she wasn't having pizza and she says "I don't like ham." I reminded her of Friday night at the subway and her undying devotion to ham, and she says, "Well, I like it on sandwiches but not on pizza."
Okay, fine, your taste buds are unreliable, I don't have a problem with that. But 45 minutes after she opted for carrots, she comes downstairs and wants me to fix her something else to eat.
Now that I have a problem with.

I don't get it

Why does everything have to turn out more difficult than you thought it was going to be?
ESPECIALLY home repair.
And I know I can't tell a socket wrench from a circular saw; "Lefty-loosey, righty-tighty" is just doggerel to me cuz I have a hard time with concepts like left and right; so I expect home repair to be difficult, but DAMN!
I have spent my entire Saturday trying to put a piece of rubber on the bottom of my garage door, so that when it rains (as it seems to just about every day lately) the garage won't flood and seep into my office. I sit here 48 dollars poorer and with no rubber on my garage door -- no metal either -- carpal tunnel from drilling through aluminum (what numbskull called this stuff "soft metal?) and praying it doesn't rain.
I started out by cutting a piece of the rubber under-the-garage-door stuff I need, cuz I don't speak hardware and I don't know what it's called, but at the hardware store they just look at my doohickey and say "Where did you get this?" and I have to say it's an under-the-garage-door-rubber thing, and they have something sort of like that, but it's for wooden doors, is your door wooden? A quick surreptitious phone call home lets me know that my door is metal. (And yes, I know I should have noticed some time during the seven years I've lived here; I told you I was bad at this.)
At the big home improvement store all the way across town they have lots of garage door rubber stuff, but nobody will talk to me, and I just buy the most expensive thing they have -- which may not sound economically foolish but is actually a frugal move on my part; past experience has taught me that only the most expensive thing has a chance of working and it's cheaper to just buy that right off the bat than buy something cheaper and then have to come back for the pricier piece.
(Pretty shrewd, huh?)
Back home, of course, the rubber doesn't fit in the old metal so I have to unscrew all the old metal -- and it's not really screws holding it up, it's whatever you use when you use a wrench, so it takes forever with a pair of pliers (which is the only tool I really understand other than a hammer) then comes the drilling in the new aluminum and the sweating and the cursing and finally the darkness with the job as yet unfinished.
Why?

Another odd book in my collection

Now this is a treasure. It's got all those songs and poems kids love to sing and recite -- stuff like "Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts" and "Miss Lucy had a steamboat" and everybody's favorite "There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance."
But wait. That's not all. You also get: "Beans, beans, the musical fruit!" and of course "Found a peanut" and the timeless holiday classic "Jingle bells, Batman smells."
And that's still not all. You get all the regional variations of these odes as well as place and date of origin (when known).
Fascinating stuff. It's out of print now unfortunately, and I bet you if they ever bring it back it will be in a heavily-censored version. There's no way you could put out a book these days with page after page of songs about burning down the school, killing the teacher and flushing her body down the potty.

You'll thank me later.

Here's some advice for all you job seekers -- do NOT send your resume to your prospective employer by certified mail -- or registered mail or express mail or anything other than good old first class. What are you hoping to accomplish? Do you really think that people are going to think your resume is impressive because you put extra postage on it?
All you've done is piss off the guy who has to stand in line at the Post Office to pick up your unnecessarily complicated crap. And you don't want to piss off that guy cuz every time I get one like that I take it the Human Resources department and say "Here's another knucklehead who doesn't have a job but is spending four dollars and sixty-four cents to mail something that should have only cost him thirty-nine cents. If he's that foolish with his own money, imagine what he would do if he had any control over the company's assets. Is this the type of person we want working here?"
And the HR people will sigh and reassure me once again that they have never hired anybody who sent in their application via certified mail.
So don't do it.

SIRF

Here's something else that has lodged itself in my memory for some reason.
I was in the third grade. I was walking around the neighborhood with my cousin Sue. I was telling her a story about something that happened in school that day. My teacher Mrs. Sobel had said something about the month -- which was December -- and she said that "December" was a long word.
I told Sue that was ridiculous. "December" was not a long word. "Dictation" was a long word. And Sue laughed at me.
I think that's why I remember this incident. It was embarrassing. I was trying to show off my vocabulary to cousin Sue and I couldn't figure out why she laughed at me.
Still can't, to tell you the truth, I mean "Dictation" is longer than "December."

Let's all smoke

Personally I love seeing cartoon characters smoke. Here's Fred Flintstone at the Bedrock Quick Stop picking up a pack of Winston:
http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2006_08_22.html#011947

Desecration

So Turner Broadcasting in England is going through every single Tom and Jerry cartoon as well as the Flintstones and Scooby Doo, and cutting out any scenes that appear to "condone, accept or glamorize cigaertte smoking."
Why? is it because toddlers in the U.K. are lighting up and having to deal with black lung as well as diaper rash?
No, it's one tight-ass, priggish, bluenose, self-righteous, killjoy son of a bitch objected, said such scenes "were not appropriate in a cartoon aimed at children."
So, apparently dropping anvils on your playmates heads is all right. Eating them alive, that's no problem. And you can smack them square in the face with a cast iron frying pan -- as long as you don't smoke while you do it.
Damn, this makes me so mad!
And I can't get over the fact that all it takes is one asshole to ruin it for everybody. Well, I guess I should by now. That's the same reason you can't find "The Catcher in the Rye" on most school library shelves.
Bad enough that Disney wants to bury "Song of the South", but going back and gutting these works of art that are still popular after 50 years because we're so uptight nowadays just burns me up. Cuz you know what's next -- Humphrey Bogart and all the great old movies where everybody smokes, then the drinking, then anybody in any video entertainment anywhere who looks like they might be enjoying themselves.

Whoops

Well so much for that resolution. I said I was going to write something here every day and I just plain forgot yesterday. Sorry. I got caught up in my fantasy baseball games. There are three weeks left in the regular season, and I've got one team that's all but clinched their division, one team that's completely out of contention and three more scrambling for a playoff berth. (And if you think 5 fantasy baseball teams is too much, feel free to sign my wife's petition.)
Here's the way things look for my best team:

West Division
Team	W	L	T	PCT	GB	Strk	Div	Wks	PF	Back	PA
Gotham City Gargoyles	13	7	0	0.650	0	W4	7-2-0	2	6628.2	368.8	6744.3
Perez Hilton	10	10	0	0.500	3	L4	6-4-0	2	6442.0	555.0	6613.7
DoopDoops	9	11	0	0.450	4	W1	4-6-0	0	6620.7	376.3	6987.5
Mac Daddy	8	12	0	0.400	5	L1	4-6-0	2	6717.7	279.3	6840.8
Swingers Inc.	8	12	0	0.400	5	L1	3-6-0	0	6329.2	667.8	6803.5
East Division
Team	W	L	T	PCT	GB	Strk	Div	Wks	PF	Back	PA
Dreadhead's	15	5	0	0.750	0	W3	8-2-0	3	6975.2	21.8	6013.2
Charlie's Chumps	11	9	0	0.550	4	W1	6-3-0	4	6997.0	0.0	6408.8
Layeth the Smackdown	9	11	0	0.450	6	L2	2-7-0	2	6762.3	234.7	6758.7
sir bucky	9	11	0	0.450	6	L3	4-6-0	3	6659.7	337.3	6819.3
Mad Dogs	8	12	0	0.400	7	W2	4-6-0	2	6743.3	253.7	6885.3

I think everything's pretty self-explanatory, but if you don't know PF is "points for" (or the total number of points we've scored all year.) PA is "points against" "Back" is how far back (in points you are from the person who has the most points. But ultimately points are less important than standings and as you can see I'm standing in first.

Today's history lesson

Recognize this handsome chap? That's Tycho Brahe, a famous Danish astronomer. You can read more about him here, but his major contributions to astronomy were:

1. He made the most precise observations that had yet been made by devising the best instruments available before the invention of the telescope.

2. His observations of planetary motion, particularly that of Mars, provided the crucial data for later astronomers like Kepler to construct our present model of the solar system.

He evidently also made some contributions to rhinoplasty as well. While at the University of Copenhagen in 1566 Brahe allegedly challenged a fellow student to a duel with swords in a dispute over who was the better mathematician. Brahe's nose was partially cut off, and he was said to wear a gold and silver replacement upon which he would continually rub oil. He also according to Cecil Adams "didn't marry the mother of his eight children, employed a dwarf as a jester, kept a pet elk (which died after breaking a leg while going downstairs drunk), dabbled in alchemy, and tyrannized the local peasantry. After his royal patron died of excessive drink he managed to tick off everyone in Denmark, had his subsidies revoked, and eventually found it wise to leave the country."

But he is most famous for the way he died. His death occurred on October 24th, 1601, eleven agonizing days after his bladder burst at a banquet attended by royalty. Evidently it was considered bad manners to take a pee break while amongst the peerage. (Some revisionists are now trying to say that he may have died from mercury poisoning -- which I guess would be ironic for an astronomer -- but don't you believe it. He died from an overdose of urine after knocking back too many Tuborg Golds.) He is believed to be the only man in history to have died of this cause, but I have come close on many occasions -- usually in a traffic jam.

You can't go home again -- except when you can.

I don't have near as much time to read as I used to, so what I've been doing a lot of is rereading -- I mean, reading stuff that I know I will love cuz I've already read and loved it before. It's interesting cuz some of the stuff I haven't read for decades. Most of the time I impress myself with my impeccable taste, but some things don't hold up as well as others.
So for that reason I was a little nervous about going back and rereading Carter Brown. I loved these books; I had dozens of them -- Carter was nothing if not prolific. I remembered them as being funny, sexy, exciting and all about 120 pages so you could read it in a couple hours. And those covers by Robert McGinnis -- well, I didn't know his name then, but i sure recognized his style. They were the sexiest things I'd ever seen.
I'm happy to report that although not as witty as I remembered them, they are miles above other detective books as far as repartee goes. They're not as sexy either, in fact it all seems very tame, but that's okay, cuz I enjoy innuendoes and double entendres and those things our culture seems to be losing the ability to appreciate as we get clubbed over the head almost hourly with blatant sex and violence. They still have those great McGinnis covers -- and they're still sexy as hell -- the mysteries are compelling, the characters are well-drawn. But I can't force myself to plow through 120 pages of it.
Why?
Cuz I hate adverbs. Adverbs to me are the sign of a lazy writer who couldn't be bothered to find the right nouns and verbs and so propped up his prose with those damn adverbs. Hey, I'm all for free speech and everything but it wouldn't bother me a bit if adverbs were banned from the English language. And as much as I hate adverbs, that's how much Carter Brown adores them. He has several on every page. Think I'm exagerating? I'll pick out a page at random from the closest Carter Brown book (which happens to be The Sad-Eyed Seductress).
Here we go, here are the adverbs on page 48:
"bellowed angrily" (how else is somebody going to bellow?
"looked at him nastily"
"I said shortly"
"watched me doubtfully"
"I said carefully"
"he said icily"
"he said heavily"
At that is typical. Every page is laden with a-bombs and I find myself flinching at each one and cringing at the one I know is coming up real soon.
So I can't recommend Carter Brown books -- well, except for the covers. McGinnis is the man!

What is wrong with people?

In the last two nights I've heard three of my beloved family members say they can't wait for winter.
It's a world gone mad.

I'm not eating that

I know as a recovering vegetarian I'm probably prejudiced, but is there any food more disgusting-sounding that baby back ribs? It sounds like you're about to devour an infant, starting right around the spine.

Not only are they crooked, they're stupid too!

So, we recently had the pleasure of buying a new car from Gene Reed Toyota. (And by "pleasure" I mean ginormous pain in the arse.) Everybody knows what crooks car salesmen are, so that won't come as a surprise to anyone. But evidently they're so stupid they don't even know how to pump gas. The guy said he would fill the car up after we signed our life away to obtain it, and I didn't realize till I was almost home that he had only "filled" it a little more than halfway. So I took it back a few days later. A different guy went to put petrol in the Prius. (By now it was only 3/8ths full.) He came back and said there must be something wrong with my gas gauge cuz it only took a couple gallons. I scheduled an appointment to get the car serviced. But I figured I might as well try and see if I could get any gas in it. I could. At Citgo I put in 16 dollars worth.
So I called them up. And they said just bring in your receipt we'll reimburse you. So I went back again, but wouldn't you know it, the cashier had left for the day. But come on back again another day and we'll damn sure have it for you. So now I've gotta go back again.
I know I'm stupid to believe them -- and stupid for burning up more than 16 dollars worth of gas trying to get these weasels to do the right thing.
Now if I was just crooked as well as stupid I could be a car salesman.

the root of all art

Anybody know where I can get 250 dollars quick? I just found out my favorite comic book artist Gene Colan is retiring (at age 84, comic artists didn't get pensions in those days), but before he does he's doing one last round of commission sketches for the baragin price of two hundred and fifty bucks -- seriously, it used to be 400. This is the guy who gave the world Howard the Duck and Tomb of Dracula. A bargain at twice the price.
Any suggestions?

Old Girlfriends, Part Two

LAURA B

Picking up where we left off:

I don’t remember exactly where I met Laura Brown either. Either my memory is getting as bad as my eyesight or neither of these two ladies made much of a first impression.
Quite possibly I met Laura B in Summer school that year too. Certainly the girl was no genius. Unlike Cindy, she wasn’t that much of a looker either. She wasn’t ugly – although some people – most memorably my brother John – kept telling me she was – but she did have big teeth.
Now that I think about it I’m pretty sure I did meet her at Summer school. She must have been a friend or at least an acquaintance of Cindy’s. I don’t remember there being any jealousy in my relationship so I don’t think we did much flirting or anything while I was with Cindy, but we must have got together after Cindy got put on restriction. Maybe I was concentrating on Laura when Cindy got off restriction and that’s why we didn’t have the big finish.
I’m not even sure how long it lasted but I don’t think it was long. I don’t remember going out with her, just hanging out at her house. I remember going with her to pick out an anniversary card for her father to give to her mother, don’t know why he couldn’t pick his own card.
And I remember that I broke up with her to pursue somebody else (don’t ask me who) and when that didn’t pan out I called her up and suggested we get back together. She said okay but then called me immediately right back and said on second thought, she would pass on my generous offer.
I saw her once during the early 1980s when I was working a temp job moving furniture around at some company she worked for. I pretended I didn’t recognize her and she either did not recognize or she did a pretty good job of pretending herself.

Another Odd Book in my Collection

This book is just what it looks like, a collection of bathroom graffiti collected by a scholar with a lot of time on his hands. It makes me kinda sad, cuz I can't remember the last time I read anything clever or witty on a bathroom wall. Just the same old "For a good time call. . . " and "Here I sit broken-hearted. . . " but back in 1967 you could find a great graffito like:

"A toast to a German virgin -- Goesintight!"

or

"Stand up close. The next man might have holes in his shoes."

or:

"Don't write on our walls. We don't shit in your notebooks."

Odd books in my collection

I have a lot of books. Some of them are the same bestsellers on everybody's shelf. And some of them aren't.
Here's an example of the latter category.



What, why are you looking at me like that? This is a scholarly work written by a doctor -- well, a podiatrist, but podiatrists are doctors.

My songwriting career

I was going through the Microsoft Word files on my hard drive and I found this, simply titled "C&WSong". I honestly don't remember writing it. It obviously needs quite a bit of work, the rhyme scheme and meter go to hell after the first verse and I don't know of any country songs with the word "manifestations" in their lyrics, but it gave me a chuckle and I hope it will for you too.

She says she's leaving me cuz I never let my feelings show.
I wasn't trying to hide 'em; it's just I didn't know
How deep and wide they ran inside me
And I was afraid of what would happen
If I just let 'em go.

I can't ignore 'em now, her hand is on the door;
But I don't have any practise; I don't know how long
And how loud and how wet and how strong
To make these outward manifestations of the inner man.

So look in my eyes and tell me:
Are these teardrops?
Tell me when I've cried enough
and I'll do my best to stop em

Look at me; I'm walking the floor,
Don't that tell you something?
And if you're in love I've heard it said
You can't eat or sleep, well, just look here --
Ain't I wide awake?
And didn't I just put down my sandwich?

Christmas in July

Why do people send those stupid e-mails, you know the ones about how you can receive cash or gifts or answered prayers or good luck forever just for forwarding e-mail to people, or some sick kid with cancer who gets three cents every time you pass on her hard-luck story to some friend with more compassion than common sense. It seems people just can't wait to buy the biggest bunch of bull they can find.

More to the point, why do they send them to me, when they know I'm going to do what I always do, hit "reply all" and send them the relevant Snopes.com link debunking all that nonsense. What's weird is most people don't care it's true or not. I got one last night from somebody wanting me to sign an e-mail petition to Congress to stop them from voting to give Social Security to illegal aliens. I sent her the Snopes link, explained that wasn't what Congress was voting on -- and she writes back to tell me "It doesn't hurt to send 500 (or more) emails to them just for a reminder of how the American public feels." I think Congress already thinks we're gullible idiots, we don't have to e-mail and confirm them in that opinion.

Anyway, this brings me to one of my favorite e-mails. Around Christmas last year they had one going around about some little girl with cancer wanting to meet Santa, getting money for her treatment from from some omniscient billionaire who evidently watches everybody in the world and gives the little girl a couple pennies everytime sometimes forwards her e-mail. (What a chintzy billionaire, why can't he just pay for the kid's chemo without cluttering up my inbox?) I debunked it over and over, and a former co-worker sent me the following, which absolutely cracked me up.

(The modern attention span being what it is, I doubt you'll be to make it all the way through the following -- you probably even skipped some of my intro, didn't you? -- but you ought to at least read enough of the beginning to get the gist of the BS and then skip down to the red parts. If you want to read it all, feel free, of course.)

Happy Holidays!

This is touching, prayers can do miracles...

I cried a few tears over this maybe you will also. Love you and Merry Christmas.

Always believe in MIRACLES!!Three years ago, a little boy and his grandmother came to see Santa at Mayfair Mall in Wisconsin. The child climbed up on his lap, holding a picture of a little girl. "Who is this?" asked Santa, smiling. "Your friend? Your sister?"

"Yes, Santa," he replied. "My sister, Sarah, who is very sick," he said sadly.

Santa glanced over at the grandmother who was waiting nearby, and saw her dabbing her eyes with a tissue."She wanted to come with me to see you, oh, so very much, Santa!" the child exclaimed. "She misses you," he added softly.

Santa tried to be cheerful and encouraged a smile to the boy's face, asking him what he wanted Santa to bring him for Christmas.

When they finished their visit, the Grandmother came over to help the child off his lap, and started to say something to Santa, but halted. "What is it?" Santa asked warmly.

"Well, I know it's really too much to ask you, Santa, but .." the old woman began, shooing her grandson over to one of Santa's elves to collect the little gift which Santa gave all his young visitors. "The girl in the photograph... my granddaughter well, you see ... she has leukemia and isn't expected to make it even through the holidays," she said through tear-filled eyes. "Is there any way, Santa…any possible way that you could come see Sarah? That's all she's asked for, for Christmas, is to see Santa."

Santa blinked and swallowed hard and told the woman to leave information with his elves as to where Sarah was and he would see what he could do.

Santa thought of little else the rest of that afternoon. He knew what he had to do. "What if it were MY child lying in that hospital bed, dying, "he thought with a sinking heart, "this is the least I can do."

When Santa finished visiting with all the boys and girls that evening, he retrieved from his helper Rick the name of the hospital where Sarah was staying. He asked the assistant location manager how to get to Children's Hospital.

"Why?" Rick asked, with a puzzled look on his face.Santa relayed to him the conversation with Sarah's grandmother earlier that day.

"C'mon.... I'll take you there," Rick said softly.Rick drove them to the hospital and came inside with Santa. They found out which room Sarah was in. A pale Rick said he would wait out in the hall.Santa quietly peeked into the room through the half-closed door and saw little Sarah on the bed. The room was full of what appeared to be her family; there was the Grandmother and the girl's brother he had met earlier that day. A woman whom he guessed was Sarah's mother stood by the bed, gently pushing Sarah's thin hair off her forehead. And another woman who he discovered later was Sarah's aunt, sat in a chair near the bed with weary, sad look on her face. They were talking quietly, and Santa could sense the warmth and closeness of the family, and their love and concern for Sarah.

Taking a deep breath, and forcing a smile on his face, Santa entered the room, bellowing a hearty, "Ho, ho, ho!"

"Santa!" shrieked little Sarah weakly, as she tried to escape her bed to run to him, IVtubes intact. Santa rushed to her side and gave her a warm hug. A child the tender age of his own son -- 9 years old -- gazed up at him with wonder and excitement. Her skin was pale and her short tresses bore telltale bald patches from the effects of chemotherapy. But all he saw when he looked at her was a pair of huge, blue eyes. His heart melted, and he had to force himself to choke back tears.

Though his eyes were riveted upon Sarah's face, he could hear the gasps and quiet sobbing of the women in the room. As he and Sarah began talking, the family crept quietly to the bedside one by one, squeezing Santa's shoulder or his hand gratefully, whispering "thank you" as they gazed sincerely at him with shining eyes.

Santa and Sarah talked and talked, and she told him excitedly all the toys she wanted for Christmas, assuring him she'd been a very good girl that year. As their time together dwindled, Santa asked Sarah if there was anthing special he could do for her.

She turned to Santa and said "Yes, could you shove a lump of coal up Robert Loy's ass for me, that fucker has been telling people that I don't exist and the 3 cents that I get for every e-mail that gets forwarded for telling my story has gone down a bunch. I bet that granola munchin, beer swilling, son-of -a-bitch will even edit this e-mail, if I wasn't so tired from my chemo I'd kick his ass myself.

So Santa went and told one of his reindeer to put a "Contract" out on Robert Loy. And the last anyone heard, the proctologist was pulling antler splinters from Robert Loy's ass. And everyone, but Robert Loy, lived happily ever after.