Big Man

I have ants in my shower. And only in my shower. And only, like, one ant at a time. I know it's not the exact same ant because I've killed a few of them. But then I've let a few of them live too, because I'm beneficent.
   I wonder what they think of me. Assuming they can register the concept of me, since I'm so much larger than they are. It would be like me trying to conceive of a two-mile-tall person, a concept I can't even begin to get my head around. And I wonder what they think of the shower with its expanses of white tiles like acres of porcelain Heaven. I also wonder how they're getting in there, since I don't see ants anywhere else in the house. If you see one or two or three you know there are many more somewhere else. Ants don't go it alone.
   I also feel guilty for subjecting them to what must be the worst hurricane they've ever experienced. There's almost always one ant in the shower no matter when I get in, and they're gone when I'm done. Which means they must be - whoosh! - down the drain.
   Does that ant's best friend miss it when it doesn't come back from foraging? Do the others organize search parties? Have I unwittingly become the ant Bermuda Triangle? Do ant conspiracy theorists believe aliens are spiriting their brethren away when in fact it's just me trying to wash off the day's grime? These are the thoughts that keep me awake sometimes.
   Mostly, though I wonder what ants must think of my junk. I mean, really, my wiener has to be immense to them. Truly gargantuan on a scale that's like nothing they've ever seen. Maybe that's it... they've come to pay their respects. Like a cargo cult. For my penis. Sure, let's go with that.

Diet Poison

If you didn't already know that anything presented by American food companies was nothing more than a tarted-up lie smothered in rich, velvety caramel, yet another group of researchers has linked diet soda consumption to very bad things.
   Even better, the work was done right here in San Antonio, currently the 3rd fattest city in the nation.* Seems that in a decades-long study, people who consumed lots o' diet soder had, on average, 70 percent more belly fat than those who didn't consume said soder.
   Christ on a crutch! SEVENTY percent?! If the guys who did the study weren't wearing white coats I almost wouldn't believe it. That's enough fat to float a boat, which is a truly disgusting image if you think about it long enough.
   Of course, correlation does not equal causation. It could be that people who gained a lot of weight consumed more diet soda because they were trying to slim down, rather than gaining weight because of their aspartame intake. You need more to make the link between consuming aspartame and becoming a big fat sucker.
   And there is more - in a related study, mice given a diet spiked with aspartame had elevated glucose levels but decreased insulin levels. In other words, they were becoming diabetic. Take this study with the increased belly fat study and it's hard to argue that artificial sweetener has any benefits at all.
   So the verdict is essentially in with this one. Diet soda is poison. More specifically aspartame is poison. There ain't nothing good about it.
   Which means I have no excuse now to keep drinking soda. Oh yeah, I'm off the wagon again, if I hadn't mentioned that. I need to stop drinking soda. For real. I wouldn't keep drinking rat poison if someone pointed out to me that strychnine was causing my convulsions, and I don't need any more diet soda now that someone has pointed out to me my spare tire is exacerbated by aspartame.
   It's hard. Just look at the number of times I've stopped and started right back up again. The stuff is like cigarettes you don't have to light. But it's poison, and I need to give it up. So I'm gonna. Starting tomorrow.



* because we're not trying hard enough to be Number One, evidently

I Need A Theme Song

I was watching Guys and Dolls last night, the movie version with Frank Sinatra and Marlon Brando. Yes, I own a copy, you got a problem with that? I didn't think so...
   Anyway... Sinatra sings most every song in the movie, EXCEPT for the one he's probably most recognized for. In the movie Brando sings 'Luck Be A Lady' not Sinatra. Yes, Brando sings, and evidently he really did, they say that's his voice on the soundtrack. But, aside from 'New York, New York' that song, 'Luck Be A Lady' is what most people know Sinatra for, especially with the Baise orchestra backing him. It's kind of his theme song. Whenever I think of this song I think of Sinatra, and whenever I think of Sinatra I think of this song.
   I need a musical score like that. You know, something iconic, something that ties me to it and it to me down through the ages. Something that could accompany me as I make my rounds in the salons, imparting my bon mots to a mildly amused intelligentsia.
   So I thought it through and came up with a few suggestions. I went through a few iterations before I found the perfect one.

Some Kind of Wonderful, Grand Funk Railroad.
   Hold on, this is about a girl... maybe not. Besides, who remembers the Railroad except hippie burnouts? Well, and me.

Been Caught Stealing, Jane's Addiction
   Except I haven't been caught. Not that I steal. That any of you people know of. Don't need to call attention to that. So that one's out.

Free For All, Ted Nugent
   Uh... while I might be The Nuge where it counts, deep inside - and the tune is definitely catchy - I think people might get the wrong idea if they heard this whenever I was around. Or maybe too much of the right idea. Keep looking.

Nobody Home, Pink Floyd
   Quite possibly my favorite Floyd tune. But it's about a guy slowly going crazy as his wife cheats on him. Mebbe not just yet for this one.

Sex Machine, James Brown
   Nah, hits too close to home and sounds more like an advertisement or testimonial. Or bragging. Try again.

If I Should Fall From Grace With God, The Pogues
   And... we have a winner. A jaunty Irish tune that's filled with macabre imagery sung by a man who got kicked out of an Irish band for drinking too much. Yup, that's right. He was too drunk for an Irish band.

So now you can all imagine that song following me wherever I go. The grocery store, the gas station, the gym, the office. You know, everywhere a reel performed by an inveterate lush is appropriate.

Everything Old Is New Again

I was in Austin Friday, going to tech startup/incubator/mentoring quasi-business quasi-service provider. It's the kind of place that's all over Silicon Valley, and which the owners of the place in Austin are trying to get going in Texas. I met a lot of engaging entrepreneurs, I saw that my brother-in-law and I are farther along than most people, and I heard some interesting ideas. But one business in particular struck me as something you could really only get going in Austin, and yet it was also something that my grandmother must have done in the depths of the Depression.
   One guy has started a business recovering yarn from old sweaters. Really. And he's making money doing it.
   I had a few thoughts. My first was 'Only in Austin' my second was 'He must have been laid off in the last two years,' my third was 'That's actually kind of cool' and my fourth was 'What else did my grandmother do that no one's doing now?'
   Back in the Depression people recycled everything. EVERYTHING. That's why things like old tin toys and copies of Action Comics #1 are so rare, they were all recycled. When clothes got worn enough that they weren't presentable for company they became work clothes, and when they were worn enough that they weren't suitable for that they became rags and when they were so used up they couldn't be rags any more they got left for the rag picker who probably sold the scraps to be incorporated into paper currency. The ultimate in economically-enforced frugality.
   And this guy, the sweater recycler guy, probably hit on his idea independently, I don't imagine he studied Depression-era re-use principles. Although it is Austin, maybe the dude's got a PhD in it.
   It's with the Baby Boomers that we got the throwaway economy. Growth predicated on planned obsolescence. That crap don't fly no more. People are keeping things longer, cars, clothes, houses, furniture, what have you. And they're looking for sustainability; they don't want fresh-cut timber, they want the wood that's re-used from the demolished factory. And if they knit they want yarn that's recovered from discarded sweaters.
   I think his idea has legs. And not just for yarn, for everything. I know I like to buy things once. If I buy a vacuum cleaner I'm going to have that appliance until the color fades and the wheels drop off. Same with my cars. Same with my clothes. And furniture. And pots and pans. So if I were an entrepreneur, perhaps with a mind to manufacture things, I'd go for quality right now. Made in the USA, durable, quality stuff. You could charge more for it because it would last. And I know customers would respond.
   And if you could figure a way to dismantle, say, a couch into its component parts and re-purpose them, you'd have something. For as long as you had discarded couches, I suppose.

Judgement Day

This my 666th post to this blog. Really. I don't feel particularly evil but I must be since this is my 666th post. There you are, some nice circular logic to start off with.
   You know we just had a judgement day come and go with nary a person raptured up into the sky. But there's another one coming - they assure us it's for reals this time - in October, just a few months away. Which got me to thinking: do I really want to chance going to meet my maker without being absolved of my sins? I've got a skeleton or two in my closet that might just keep me from being raptured, assuming they check that sort of thing. I better come clean. I'm not Catholic but I do approve of the sacrament of confession, it keeps you honest.

So in honor of my 666th post, here are my confessions, in no particular order.

I'm not big-boned, I really am fat.
   I'm the one who threw the spit wad
I bought beer for minors in college. I actually made some decent walking-around money too.
   You know that thing, that one time, that you thought someone else did? I did it.
I never thought Gore Vidal's articles in Playboy were very good.
   I used to pee off the balcony of my apartment when it rained at night.
I don't care about the Spurs or the Cowboys. The latest plot twists of 90210 concern me more, and I don't even know what channel that show's on.
   I didn't take complete advantage of the opportunities that were presented to me in college. Like Mary Ellen - her real name - I could have totally hit that and I never did.*
I stole the office chair I'm sitting in right now.
   I think most newborns are ugly. Except my nieces and nephew, of course.
I was cruel to Dave when he needed kindness. But he was a real dick so it's actually not that bad.
   I didn't like M*A*S*H without Frank Burns. Just didn't work.
As a font, Garamond doesn't do it for me.
   Pussy Galore? Who names their kid... oooohhh... I just got it...


* words of advice given to me by a wise Okie friend of mine: 'Every piece of tail you turn down puts you one behind for the rest of your life.'

Passing The Torch

Last week my older niece got a job as a waiter.* Her younger sister starts the same job in a month or so.
   I am now officially NOT the only person in my family to have been a waiter.
   It's been my contention since I brought my first plate of lasagna to my first ungrateful and undeserving customer that everyone should have to work a food service job early on in life. Much like the Swiss have mandatory military service for all their citizens, we should have mandatory restaurant duty. You don't necessarily have to be a waiter, you could be a busser, a bartender, even a hostess, any job where you have to deal with the Great Unwashed on a daily basis.
   See, having to deal with people on a decidedly unequal footing - your job is to bring them their food, presumably spit-free** - makes you realize how poorly you've been treating others. Slinging hash, or spaghetti, or burgers, or in my niece's case tortillas, brings you into contact with some genuine people. And by that I mean not only genuinely nice people, I mean genuine assholes. There are customers who come in the door looking to take their bad day out one someone, and since the waiter has the apron he's elected.
   It's a learning experience for sure, not only in reading people and their intentions but also in controlling yourself. And in controlling your finances, and in managing not only your work but others' work as well. When you're first on the Tuesday evening shift and the cook is coming down off some righteous bud you need to plan for his inevitable screwing-up of the order and general lack of urgency to repair his own mistake. And at the same time your customers don't want to hear any excuses, especially lame ones about the cook being stoned off his ass. It's a PR job and the first acting gig I ever had.
   It builds character. When you dance like a trained monkey for 15% or less, you learn to find inner validation. And then, when the night is done and the restaurant is closed and you're so tired you can't hardly stand up, you discover that everything - EVERYTHING - is the funniest thing you've ever heard. My best friends are people I worked with when I was a waiter. Good times, good times.
   So congratulations to my nieces on their new adult jobs. Welcome to the working world, it sucks worse than you can possibly imagine. But if anybody gives you a hard time let me know, me and my boys will take care of it.


* waitress, server, waitron, wage slave, food getter... it's all good and all means the same thing

** no guarantees

Eco-Friendly LED Pot

I've been slowly converting the light bulbs in my house to LEDs. Slowly because LEDs are expensive - REALLY expensive - and because sometimes they don't give enough light for my purposes. I think LEDs are the way to go for the sustainable future instead of poisonous and awful compact flourescents, which I predict will become the 8-track tapes of the lighting world. Let's hope.
   Today as I was surfing the web looking for what's on the cutting edge of LED technology (you can't rely on Lowe's to lead innovation), I saw an application that had never crossed my mind.
   Grow lights. Indoor grow lights.
   I know, I know there are legitimate uses for indoor grow lights. Like... uh... well, I'm sure there are some. But I know and you know and everybody in the country knows the real use for indoor grow lights is pot farming.
   I had an Indian friend* who bought a house years ago. It was a bank repo long before that was common, and he got a fantastic deal on it, mostly because the previous owner defaulted after some legal problems. Criminal legal problems.
   My friend had me over to his new castle and showed me around. It was an older house in Pasadena and so didn't have AC. Except, he pronounced, in the attic which was colder than penguin turds. When he and his wife wanted AC they just pulled down the step ladder and let the cool air waft over them.
   He showed me into the attic, which was indeed painted perfectly, finished out, with a great-big AC unit in one end. There were also electrical outlets every 18 inches on-center, and a hook above a weathered circle in the finished attic floor between each and every rafter for the length of the house, both sides.
   "You know what this used to be, don't you?" I asked him. Blank stare back. "Pot farm."
   He didn't believe me. At first. But as he looked I saw the realization dawn in his eyes; the guy before had one marijuana plant between every set of rafters, a huge grow light hanging from the hook above each plant, a pan to catch the water below, and Arctic air conditioning to keep his stash from wilting in the heat. Pretty slick setup except for managing the heat from all those grow lights.
   Fast forward to today and the modern, eco-minded pot farmer. If you used LED grow lights you wouldn't have any of the temperature control problems you have with regular grow lights. And no heat would mean your pot farm wouldn't be betrayed to infrared sensors on police helicopters. PLUS you'd be saving electricity which means more profit for your illegal operation. Win-win-win all around. Of course, you'd have to not be totally baked all the time to have your wits about you enough to make this a reality. It could happen.
   Like everything else, I'll bet vice drives innovation in the LED lighting market too.


* Slurpee Indian, not casino Indian

Black Gold... Texas Tea...

You know what you almost never seen any more? Big puddles of oil in parking lots. That's not to say that there isn't any oil at all in parking lots because there is, but not like there used to be back in the old days.
   I remember my grandfather would put down cardboard and newspaper underneath his cars in the garage, and he'd change out the newspaper weekly, as regular as mowing the lawn. Dripping oil was just a fact of car ownership, something you dealt with. You expressed a drive from San Antonio to Dallas in miles, gallons of gas, and quarts of oil. That's about 290 miles, sixteen or seventeen gallons of gas and at least a quart of oil, maybe two.
   Not so much any more. It's so rare to see anything dripping in parking lots that when I see a fresh, glistening streak of wetness underneath my truck I'm instantly alert. I look at the placement of the drip, where it might have come from if it's from my truck, what kind of fluid it might be. I become a truck doctor. It's never from my truck, of course, it's always someone else's problem. Back when I had my '72 Chevelle the only time I would have been concerned is if I'd come out of a store and hadn't noticed any drips. That would have meant I was running dry on one of the car's vital fluids. I loved that car but it leaked like a Civil War battle survivor.
   Are cars that much better-made now? Absolutely. And not just tighter engines built to smaller tolerances either, the whole thing's just better. I'd trust my convertible more in a crash than I ever would have my 3000 lbs of Detroit steel Chevelle.
   But... I don't know... while no drips is certainly better for the environment - especially when multiplied by all the cars on the road - it's just not the same. I think people put too much trust in their cars now, they're too reliable. You ever see someone broken down on the side of the road these days? They're helpless, utterly beside themselves and at total loss as to how to get themselves out of the jam they're in. I used to drive with a tool box in the trunk so I could fix whatever went wrong as it was happening.
   Less oil on the road means less need to know how to fix things which means more reliance on other to make those repairs which means we're becoming a nation of passive aid-seekers rather than a nation of problem-solvers. I think we need more oil in parking lots, more breakdowns, more self-reliance and less calling for AAA.
   Unless it's too hot outside. Then you should definitely call the tow truck. AAAAARRRRGH! See? It's happening to me now!

Amazing Powers Of Observation

I feel like Sherlock Holmes today. Or Sherlock Hemlock, who was green and fuzzy but no less a deductive genius.
   I was leaving the house this evening and the garage door wouldn't close. Just wouldn't budge. It went up and down perfectly fine when I got home an hour or so before, and it went up like normal once again but for some reason it decided that going down just wasn't in the cards tonight.
   So I got out of the truck and thought about it. Cogitated. Ciphered, if you're Jethro Clampett. Then I realized that the setting sun was shining directly into the safety lens. That's the electric eye thingy that keeps little kids and pets from getting crushed under the garage door. Bright sun meant the electric eye thought there was a little kid or a vulture or a leprechaun standing under the door and so it did what it was supposed to do and kept the door from working. I stood so my shadow fell on the lens and - voila! - door goes down.
   An amazing display of deductive ability, if I do say so myself. But the question now is: what do I do with my skills?
   I could put on a deerstalker hat and try to solve crimes in Victorian England... but that's already been done. I could put on a bat costume and fight crime with my brains and my fists. And an underage sidekick. So maybe we'll hold off on that one for the moment. If I were Asian and had a Number-One son I could solve crimes in Chinatown. I could always wear a snap-brim hat and suspenders and work in a dirty corrupt city where it's always dusk. Or I could put on the Who's greatest hits and deliver snappy one-liners in CSI:San Antonio.
   Maybe I'll just chalk this up to good luck and forget about a career change for right now. I gotta say, though... that bat costume is looking mighty tempting...

Tales From My Past - That'll Learn Ya...

I used to be a waiter, back when the world was young and Noah hadn't yet learned what a cubit was. It was a good gig right out of college, cash business, never too many hours at work, could take the day off when I wanted to. Not a real climb-the-ladder career, though, so I had to give it up.
   But not before I had some fun. At someone else's expense.
   There were many personalities in the restaurant, single mother, smart-alec and underemployed college grads like me, felons, burn-outs, people on their way to something else. A melting pot. We had one lady in particular, who used to be an accountant but had ended up a waiter. DR we called her, for her initials. She was pleasant enough to be around, but she was stickler for the rules. She worked as a cashier too, and you always had to have your papers in order or it was trouble for sure. By-the-book is what I'm trying to say.
   Except for one particular Friday night. DR was working on the North side of the restaurant, but the dish area was on the South side. Protocol called for waiters to take dirty dishes through the dining room, North to South, rather than come through the server alley because it was just too congested to have people dodging the debris from bussed tables.
   DR decided that rule didn't apply to her. She was at the very, very front of the restaurant, about as far from the dish area as you could get without going outside, and she carried her trays of empty plates right through the server alley. And DR didn't dance around people, she was a big girl and bulled right through.
   I asked her not to do it, to go through the dining room instead. I heard at least three other waiters ask her the same thing, some much more politely than I. DR wouldn't hear it. She had to go through the server alley for some reason.
   Friday night wore on and the restaurant became crowded. Full house of customers and full staff of waiters. And DR insists on endangering everyone by charging through the server alley with a large tray of dishes held high. Right towards the dish area where the floor had become soaking wet with soapy water from an overflowing dish washing machine.
   In my mind I can still see happen it like I'm standing by the soda fountain. I hear the North door slam open. I see DR practically running through the alley towards me and the dish area, a butch-cut tractor plowing a furrow through her fellow waiters. I glance at the sopping wet floor. I think, for just a moment, that I should tell DR to slow down. I decide against it. She comes forward like a wide-hipped freight train. She gets one step into the puddle. Two steps.
   And then... it's like a cartoon. Her feet slip, and then she starts to bicycle pedal. In mid-air. I swear to all I hold holy this is true. Her feet move frantically as she tries to keep her balance and keep from spilling the thirty pounds of dishes she has on her tray. Then... both her legs go rigid - straight out in front of her - and she's suspended in mid-air. Nothing between her and the floor but atmosphere.
   She hits the floor and dishes go EVERYWHERE. Crash, bang, crash, clatter, splinter, with the metallic tinkle of silverware and the brittle cracking of glasses added to the symphony of destruction. Being a big girl DR has a lot of momentum, which carries her into the garbage cans where we discarded food and then UNDER the dish counter.
   Out of nowhere, Christine - very sexy Christine who played softball and wore the most amazing perfume - appears and shouts 'Safe!' I spent the next ten minutes laughing out loud.
   The only thing DR hurt was her considerable pride. And her pants got soaked. And she broke about $200 worth of dishware, wholesale. But for the rest of the night and every shift after that she went through the dining room. The hardest lessons learned are often the best lessons learned.
   Ah... good times, good times. But I am so glad I'm not a waiter any more.

Cobbler Elves In Hollywood

I've been thinking about fairy tales recently. Not the Disney-fied versions suitable for modern sensibilities, the Grimm versions, the oral history of German folklore full of blood and guts and betrayal. Not at all suitable for today's pansy children. Lord knows we don't want to expose kids to the real world until they get knocked on their asses by it.
   Anyhoo... I was thinking about the story about the poor cobbler* and the elves. This is the story where the destitute cobbler shows kindness to someone even less fortunate than he and the elves reward him with their shoe-making genius. The cobbler sells more elf shoes and the elves have a place to live, bada-bing, bada-boom story's over. If it were a cartoon - and it was - it would be eight minutes long or less.
   I got to thinking. Since evidently Hollywood has run out of new ideas and they've started releasing more sequels and remakes than ever, why not put in my two cents on a 'Elves and the Shoemaker' big-budget tentpole cinema event?
   First, let's work on the story. It doesn't come from the mind and MacBook of an established Hollywood hack, it's from German peasants 200 years ago. It's too... old world. Too grandpa and grandma, too preachy with almost no explosions or chase scenes. We need to fix that. Besides, no one knows what a cobbler is any more (unless you're Malaysian), so that's got to go. And helpful elves? Where's the conflict there? They need to be unhelpful elves. And they can't be tiny, that kind of CGI costs too much, they need to be person-sized. We can keep them elves because all that otherworldly stuff is playing really good these days, all that vampire, werewolf, zombie crap, the kids eat it up with a spoon.
   So we have person-sized elves who are hindering a... genetic researcher - that's a modern shoemaker, right? - who is trying to find a cure for cancer or something. They don't want him to find the cure because... well, we'll figure that out in a rewrite. The important thing is that the genetic researcher is being kept from his goal by person-sized elves. And... he falls in love with one of them. Yeah, that's good. Elves are hot, right? We'll have the female lead work out until you can see her ribs. It's all about getting the shot, right?
   That's the first act, genetic researcher falls in love with hot elf chick who is supposed to be keeping him from completing his work for some reason. They go on the run - that's the second act - while the elf commando squad comes after them. They don't use regular guns they use... something elfy. Leaf guns or magic beans or something. But the hero and his girl evade capture until... the elf girl has a change of heart. She realizes she needs to be true to her elf nature and leads him into a trap.
   End of second act. Now for the third act. The cobbler/ genetic researcher is in the hands of the elf commando squad and the head elf bad guy has orders to kill the scientist. Only he can't, see, because the scientist was kind to him earlier - we gotta keep the core of the original story, after all - and elf rules are to return kindness with kindness. So the commando squad ends up helping the scientist with his research, and since elves are really, really good with genetic research they complete his experiment in one night.
   It turns out that the research actually helps the elves who are... I don't know, dying or something... and if they'd killed him that would have sealed the fate of their entire race. The genetic researcher gets the hot elf chick, and everybody knows hot elf chicks are dynamite in the sack.
   Of course now the title has to go. In the original Grimm book the title in German was 'Die Wichtelmänner,' whatever the hell that means. We need something big, something with punch, something high-concept and relatable. So I'm thinking it's now called 'Hammer' since cobblers use hammers.

And there you are. One movie remake of the Elves and the Cobbler story, done up in Hollywood style. Why I don't have a high-rise office in Century City I'll never know.



* kids, a cobbler was/is a shoemaker, but not the kind of Malaysian child slave labor shoemakers Nike employs to make the $150 LeBron Air Max you're wearing

So Tired...

I fell asleep on the couch after work today. Like an old man. I'm pretty sure I was snoring too, even though I can't hear myself when I do. But it seems like something that should happen. I didn't drool though, so I got that going for me. Which ain't bad.
   That got me to thinking about sleep. Scientists still aren't certain why we sleep they just know that we all do. BUT - not all mammals sleep the same way. Dolphins, for example, sleep with half their brains at a time. Because they don't have comfy beds and they have to watch out for sharks and Aquaman and whatnot.
   What could I do if I slept with half my brain at a time? Glad you asked.

Do the dishes. I can't believe it takes your whole brain to wash a bowl. Maybe if I was an especially sloppy eater...
   Sweep the floor. Same reasoning.
Wait in line at the DMV. Hell, I could probably do that completely zonked out. Lord knows the people working there seem to be asleep on the job.
   Listen to timeshare presentations. I'm not going to buy anyway, I just want the free gift, even if it is a crappy coupon for a massage.
Get a massage, now that I think about it.
   Watch Jerry Springer. I think I might explode if I used my whole brain for this one.
Listen to AM talk radio. True fact: Using half your brain is a prerequisite to agreeing with anything Rush Limbaugh says.
   Read The Secret and not fall out of my chair laughing. Or in outrage.
Write a country song. Which I'm thinking about doing. Seriously, I'll keep you posted.
   Work at the TSA security checkpoint in the airport. Nah, I'm just kidding, those folks are keeping us safe from terrorists, they just need to cop a feel every once in a while. Isn't that a fair trade-off for the fine job they do keeping nail files and cigarette lighters off our airliners? If I have to let a stranger cup my balls to make sure no one gets more than 3.4 ounces of fluid on board, then cup away.
Enjoy the stylings of local singer/songwriters. Sometimes you can find a real diamond in the rough, most of the time it's just atonal warblings. I'd love the chance to let half my brain fall asleep during that kind of painful experience.

There you have it. I'm sure there are more, but I'm nodding off here, even after my nap. I'm running on empty.

We Need A Monster

I had a dream the other night that I was sitting around a poker table with the Universal Monsters. You know the guys, Frankenstein, the Wolfman, the Mummy, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dracula and the Invisible Man. Don't ask why we were playing poker, it was a dream, we just were. As I recall the Invisible Man was cheating and Frankenstein was eating the chips. Then I went all-in even though I was holding a pair of twos and they came for me menacingly. Then I woke up.
   Sure, it ended on a slightly scary note - who wants to be surrounded by the Universal Monsters? - but it wasn't bloody or violent or alarmingly realistic. It was the good sort of scary, the safe sort of scary, like I got when I was eight years old and saw the Creature from the Black Lagoon for the first time. On a Saturday afternoon, when all good monster movies should be shown.
   We need that kind of scary back again. We need monsters who are frightening but not too frightening. We get enough realism with the country fighting two or three wars, with all the financial parasites ruining the economy, with clearly incompetent government officials texting and having affairs and meeting for trysts in bathrooms. It's crazy out there, why does our entertainment have to be crazier? Can't it be gentler? Sweeter? A release instead of a reminder? Say what you will about the Hays Commission and its somewhat arbitrary standards, movie studios adhering to its code produced some really, really fine works of art.
   I think tonight I want to dream about playing football with Frankenstein and the Mummy. I might not be the fastest sprinter, but I'm for damn sure faster than those two.


* just had another one of those deja vu moments, right in front of the computer. Freaky.

I Can Do What I Want

The other day I was sitting at this computer and letting my iTunes playlist entertain me while I did some tedious but necessary paperwork. I got thirsty. I went into the kitchen to get a glass of iced tea and I could still hear my music playing even though my office is in a bedroom at the front of the house. So I thought to myself, ‘self, that music’s kind of loud,’ and hurried back to turn it down. I stopped by the couch, though, as a sudden thought took me.
   I don’t live in an apartment any more. The music that I can hear in the kitchen doesn’t pass the walls of my rental house. I can be as loud as I damn well please.
   I have to admit I was a bit taken aback by this. For years now, far too many years, I’ve been an apartment dweller. I’ve had to consider what I do and when I do it very carefully, since I don’t want to be a bother to anyone else. I really do try to live the golden rule; if I wouldn’t want someone taking a shower at three in the morning then it’s not something I want to subject others to.
   But now… I live in a house. A detached, two-car garage house with solid walls and a tile roof and a thick front door. The closest neighbors are ten yards away, on the other side of a brick wall and past their own garage. The neighbors on the other side are twenty yards away, and over a fence.
   I can make lots and lots and lots and lots of noise now and I won’t be disturbing anyone. I can walk as heavily as I dare on my own floors , I can run the dishwasher at midnight, I can crank up Tom Jones as loud as I can stand it and no one is going to come knocking on my front door in a stained bathrobe to wag an admonishing finger at me.
   I’m free.
   Now… what can I do with my newfound liberty? Midnight smoothie party? Twenty-four hours of darts? Line dancing in the living room? Yodeling competition? Man, the sky’s the limit.

It's A Crazy Afterlife

Here's a question you can pose to your pastor on this fine Sunday morning. Or you can wait until this coming Friday or Saturday, if that's when your holy day falls.
   Are crazy people crazy in the afterlife?
   The first assumption is that an afterlife exists, let's agree that's the case. Let's further agree that people made crazy at some point in their life - by brain injury, drugs, what have you - will be restored to their previous non-crazy status in the afterlife. That leaves people who are born crazy. And these people do exist, talk to any mental health professional. What happens to them? Their natural state is disordered, it's the way their brains were wired during fetal development, nothing happened to them to make them crazy, it's just the way the are. The way they were meant to be.
   Do they become non-crazy in the afterlife? If so, what was the point of them being crazy in this life? And don't spout me that 'God's ways are unknowable' stuff, if someone was naturally crazy in this life and they become non-crazy in the afterlife, there had to have been some point to it all, both to the being crazy and to the switch to non-crazy.
   Let's extend this a bit. So far you've probably assumed I've been talking about someone schizophrenic or psychotic or manic-depressive, something relatively benign, at least from a social perspective. What about someone psychopathic? If that's a natural condition, and we have no reason to believe it's not, are there psychopaths in the afterlife? Why wouldn't there be? And if being a psychopath is their natural state, and assuming they haven't transgressed or been absolved of their transgressions, they should be in paradise with everyone else. But if they were, would the afterlife be a paradise? It might be for them, but what about for everyone else?
   But let's assume that crazy people don't get into paradise. For some reason. Which would make paradise better for non-crazy people, but would automatically consign crazy people to damnation for no other offense than being true to their God-given nature. That hardly seems fair.
   Go on, ask your religious professional, I want to hear what they have to say. Go ahead, I'll wait right here.

How I Know I'm Getting Older

It's inevitable, time marches on for all of us. At least until I figure out what time is and how to stop it, at least for me.* Until then, though, I must recognize what is happening to me and deal with it accordingly.
   How I Know I'm Getting Older: I ask questions I never would have before.
   For example, construction crews have been putting in a sidewalk along a stretch of road just outside my subdivision. Back before there were houses here this part of town was pasture land complete with cows and not much else. No need for sidewalks. But now there are kids and schools and a big church which I'm never going to visit and sidewalks are a must.
   The construction has been going on for a month or so, they take a two days to clear the land and fit the forms, another day to pour the cement and another day to spread topsoil and plant grass. It's a system. And today they were working away by 8 AM, with the beeping and the scraping and the grinding and the blocking traffic. They're at a part of the road I can see from my front door, so I was watching them.
   Do you know what popped into my head? Not a thought about how hot it must be for these guys, or how glad I am that I don't do that kind of work, or a marvel at the exactness of the engineering that has to go into something as mundane as a sidewalk, or even how thirsty those guys must get even at 10 in the morning. None of that crossed my mind. As I stood at my front door and gazed over the cow pasture at the guy whipping around in the Bobcat and the guy with the hand-held Stop sign, I could only think of one thing.
   How much do they pay those guys to work on a Saturday?
   When I realized what I was thinking I ran to the mirror, wondering if liver spots and deep wrinkles had suddenly marred my flawless complexion. I mean, how old-man can you possibly get? How much do they get paid for Saturdays? What is wrong with me? I know that I'm becoming a geezer far before my time, but I had absolutely no idea how bad it had gotten. Next thing you know I'll be out there shaking a fist at them for blocking a lane of traffic. My lane of traffic.
   How am I gonna stop this? I don't want to wear jumpsuits or drive a huge American land yacht or wear black shoes and black socks as I mow the lawn. I want to be me. Me now, not me in thirty years.
   There's got to be a way to avoid this. Time machine... that's it... I'll invent a time machine. How hard could it be?



* insert super-villain laugh here

The Laxity Of The Masses

I went into Wal-Mart in workout clothes today. Sweaty workout clothes, since I had just left the gym.
   I was not ashamed.
   Time was, the only place I would go after a workout would be home, or to buy a lotto ticket at a convenience store. You can't win if you don't play, after all. I've been back home two months now, and after perusing my favorite train wrecks at People of Wal-Mart, I realized that I could go into that store soaking wet and nearly naked and I still wouldn't stand out very much. Plus, there's no one in Wal-Mart I care about enough to want to make a good impression with. Wearing sweaty workout clothes? Need groceries at the same time? Bada-bing, bada-boom, and Don's walking through the aisles of Wally World with dark sweat rings around his neck and under his arms, and probably trailing a musky, provocative odor behind. Just one more redneck in several enclosed acres full of them.
   It's freeing, this hewing to the lowest common denominator. I'm a fairly educated person - and a bit of a smarty-pants too - and you couldn't tell me apart from anyone else in there, ditchdigger or physicist or anything in between. That kind of bland anonymity is comforting, like a dirty NASCAR blanket thrown around my shoulders in my time of need. I'm just there to get my pickles and American cheese like everybody else.
   Next time, I'm thinking of wearing my Fishnet Speedo Jr. and lobster hat. Just to push the envelope and see how far I can take 'casual Friday' before someone's forced to call the cops.