Winter, Under Armour, and the Last Few Shreds of My Dignity

All About Me, Home Life, Uncategorized, Wives

This winter just keeps tightening its icy claws on the tattered remains of my dignity. Friday, I got up early to go help move some folks from our church into an assisted living facility. Since it was about -100 with the wind chill, I felt it a good idea to dress warmly, so I grabbed the Under Armour ColdGear. You know what I’m talking about. The stuff all the pro footballers wear (and everybody who gets their fashion tips from the NFL. You know who you are.). It’s been a long time since I’ve put it on, and yes, I’ve gained a little weight, but still, what are essentially very stretchy, form-fitting longjohns should not be that hard to get into. I’d forgotten what a pain in the backside (and aren’t you proud of me for saying “backside” instead of what I’m thinking?) it is to get into the Under Armour, especially if you’re a middle-aged man with a tendency toward portliness. Trying to get those pants on is just tough, especially when you’re standing up and too stiff to be able to reach your feet for any length of time without overbalancing and having to stop trying to wrestle your foot through that stretchy tube so you can grab a wall to keep from toppling over like a Weeble on a stick and cracking your head on the sink (and if you think that sentence was overly complex and difficult to read, it’s nothing compared to putting on a pair of Under Armour pants for a middle-aged fat, I mean portly, man).

It was not made any easier by the fact that my wife, the merciless and easily amused Jess, was still lying in bed, giggling her butt off watching my frantic efforts to get dressed with incurring any permanent injury. Eventually I got both feet all the way through the legs of the Under Armour, and was able to start wrestling them the rest of the way up. Now I don’t know what kind of freakishly-shaped people work for Under Armor, but their products are obviously designed for people with about 6 more inches of leg, and a much higher waist than I’m equipped with. By the time I got them pulled up, there were still excess Under Armour leg bunched up around my stumpy little legs, and the waistband was all the way up around my nipples, and so tight that the drawstring was just kind of insulting (nobody with less than a 20 inch waist would need that drawstring). Next, it was time to attempt the shirt.

Like the pants, the shirt was obviously designed for someone of a completely different shape, apparently someone with a teeny-tiny little head. Trying to get my head through the neck hole reminded me of how being born must have felt. I finally got my head and arms through, and got the rest of it stretched over my torso, listening to Jess giggling the whole time. Finally, I looked in the mirror. Standing there encased head-to-toe in black, extremely form-fitting Under Armour, I realized I looked like the cousin that the Michelin Man’s family never talks about. It was not a good look for me. Jess thought it was hilarious.

I quickly finished dressing and went down to the truck. Fortunately, thanks to Monday’s exertions (if you’re unfamiliar with that story, feel free to read my previous blog post) the truck started right up. I drove up to the barn to pick up the trailer and my son-in-law. We got the trailer hooked up and had to wait for the other guys who were going to help, our preacher and one of the other guys from church. We waited, and then we had a smoke, and then we waited some more. Finally, I called Troy (the preacher) to find out what was going on. It turned out the other guy, who shall remain nameless (you know who you are, Steve Thornburg), was running late.

They finally arrived, and we set off. I’ll spare you the mundane details of the move: suffice to say that we got everything done, and only nearly died two or three times. Eventually, I made it home. I went inside to get undressed, got my pants off, and remembered something I needed from the den. In getting to the den, I had to walk right in front of Jess, who just had to make a comment about how cute I looked in my “tights”. I pointed out to her that they were not “tights” and were, in fact, very manly cold-weather gear of a type favored by professional athletes. I also pointed out to her that she wouldn’t tell Mean Joe Green (I don’t actually watch football, ok? I prefer more “cerebral” entertainment, like Downton Abbey.) that he was wearing “tights” (although, to be honest, she probably would. She’s very much a “calls-’em-as-she-sees-’em kind of girl). She just laughed and said I could call the Under Armour anything I liked, but they were still “tights”.

It was at that point that I remembered all the fuss about Joe Namath wearing panty hose back in the ’70s, and I realized what the evil geniuses at Under Armour have done. They had figured out a way to butch up panty hose, jack up the price, and sell them to guys. Winter has made me a cross-dresser! I’m not happy about this. OK, I’ll grant you, they are warm, presumably they look good on some guys (obviously I’m not one of those select few), and I do have a newfound respect for what women go through getting into panty hose to look good for us guys, but I’m still not happy about it. At least they haven’t figured out a way to get athletes to wear spiked heels (Great for cornering and sudden stops! Gives you up to 6″ extra reach for those “just a little too high” passes!), although I’ll bet they’re working on it.

I don’t think this winter’s ever going to end. Still, I guess it could be worse. I may be running low on dignity, but my comedy reservoir seems pretty full.

 

Winter Is Back: A Frozen Comedy of Errors and Counting My Blessings

All About Me, Home Life, Pets, Uncategorized

Winter is back. I’m not happy about it. I used to love winter. Snow days, demolition derby sledding, snowball fights, snow angels, and no work, it was awesome. I remember playing outside until we were virtually frozen solid, then coming inside and mom using the broom to knock off the snow that was caked on David and me. Those were the days.

And then winter changed on me. It got cold for one thing. Really cold. Bitter, cuts through you like a knife, chills you to the bone, just want to hunker down under a pile of blankets and hibernate kind of cold. I don’t know about “Global Warming”, but climate change is real folks. How else can you explain the difference from the winters of my youth which were a veritable winter wonderland, to the frozen hellscape that Indiana turns into every year now? The difference has to be in the climate, because it’s certainly not in me. If anything, the changes that have taken place in me should have made me even more resistant to the cold. For one thing, I’m much, much better insulated than I was as a kid and yet the cold hits me instantly now, whereas when I was a scrawny little kid, I barely even noticed it.

There is no doubt in my mind. Winter sucks. Take last Monday for example. Sunday night, I stayed up too late reading, so Monday morning, my wife, the generous, kind, and loving Jess, let me sleep in. She had to take her new puppy “Dude” to the vet for some kind of vaccination, and the garage door opening and closing woke me up. I thought (briefly) about getting up, and then dozed off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was our preacher checking up on something I’d told him I would do. I told him I hadn’t gotten it done yet, hung up, thought again about getting up, and dozed back off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was our preacher, with another question. I answered it, hung up, thought about getting up, and started to doze off. A few minutes later, the phone rang. It was not our preacher, it was Jess. She was at the vet’s office, and her jeep wouldn’t start.

I told her I’d be there as soon as I could, got up, dressed, and went down to start the truck up so it could warm up while I finished my ablutions. I climbed in, turned the key to warm up the glow plugs (it’s a diesel), and then tried to start the truck. Unfortunately, instead of the roar of the diesel springing to life, I got the RRRrrrRRRrrr RRRrrrRRRrrr of the infamous dead battery. The batteries had been getting weak, and I’d forgotten to plug in the block heater. I was not happy.

No need to panic, I thought, Jess is someplace she can get out of the cold. I called my son-in-law and asked him to come jump-start the truck. He came back with his Blazer, and we hooked it up. We let it charge for a few minutes, and tried it. It cranked a little more, but still wouldn’t start. We continued to try for another hour or so before we gave up.

I took the Blazer to pick up Jess while he got my battery charger from his house and hooked it up to the truck. Naturally, the heater didn’t work worth a darn in the Blazer. I didn’t have time to mess with the Jeep because my daughter needed the Blazer to get to work, but I quickly checked it out, in case it just needed a jump. There was something seriously wrong. Nothing happened at all when I tried the key, and there was a weird electrical buzzing sound both inside the Jeep, and under the hood. This was going to take more than a quick jump-start (although I was beginning to believe that there was no such thing as a quick jump). So I got Jess and Dude picked up and brought home, checked that the battery charger was hooked up, and went inside to warm up.

After an hour or so, I went down to try the truck again. Still no good. I checked the battery charger, and the positive cable had come loose from the clamp. This did not make me happy. I took it inside, found my tools and fixed the charger, put it back on the truck and went back inside.

I gave it another hour and a half, went back down, and tried it again. This time it fired right up, so Jess and I climbed in and took off back to the vet’s. We had made sure that the Jeep wasn’t locked, but when we got there, the doors were all locked, and the unlock button wouldn’t work. The back hatch opened, so Jess climbed through and unlocked the door. I still couldn’t figure out what the problem was (although honestly, me trying to do anything mechanical is rather like watching a monkey play football. Sure it’s funny, but he’s not going to make the team), so we called the Jeep dealership, since it’s still under warranty.

Three phone calls, and an hour later, I was still no closer to success. Finally the Jeep dealership got an actual mechanic on the line. He listened to my description of the problem, and said, “Oh yeah, your battery’s dead. When the battery goes dead, it messes with the computer and all kinds of weird stuff happens. You just need to jump it.”

I was still not filled with confidence. Who would design a car so that, if the battery gets low, the whole thing just shuts down, except the locks, which just keep locking themselves, preventing you from getting to the hood release? Apparently every car manufacturer in the world these days. I got the jumper cables hooked up (after a few exciting moments having Jess try to move the truck close enough for the cables to reach without hitting the Jeep), and immediately, all the weirdness stopped. The doors stayed unlocked, the buzzing stopped, and it acted like a car with a bad battery.

Problem solved right? Wrong! I could not get it to take a charge. We sat there for almost an hour with the cables hooked up, and it still wouldn’t start. Now it was starting to get dark, so I decided to pull the battery, and go get a new one. We had to stop and fill the truck up first, of course, because it was low on fuel. I went in to the truck stop to get diesel fuel treatment and a Diet Coke, and had a weird conversation with a trucker who was filling a three-gallon mug full of soda. Only when he walked away, still talking, did I realize that he was talking to someone on his phone, using one of those Star Trek earpiece things. Ah, the wonders of technology. Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any weirder.

Anyway, now that he was out of the way, I filled a cup at the fountain machine, but when I pulled the cup away, the machine kept pouring, so my hand got covered with Diet Coke. I tried to reach underneath to pop the little lever to shut it off. That worked, but I triggered the Sprite lever, so my other hand got soaked with Sprite. By now, I was even less happy, but I was still maintaining my composure pretty well, still trying to see the humor in the situation.

At least the truck started, so off we went in search of a battery. We found an AutoZone that checked it out, and sure enough, it was shot. While we were there, I asked them to check out my truck batteries, and went out to disconnect them. Sure enough, both of them were shot too. At least I had my tools with me, so no problem, right? Wrong again, but thanks for playing! For one thing, my truck is a 4×4, 1-ton Dodge Ram, which means it is very, very tall. I am my father’s son, which means I am not. While I could reach the battery cables to disconnect them, there was no way I could reach the little blocks that hold the batteries in, much less get enough leverage to lift the batteries out. Another problem was that the ever-helpful and well-intentioned Jess had left the ratchet, socket, and extension in the Jeep, so it would be handy when we got back. OK, that’s inconvenient, but I could borrow tools, so still manageable.

Really, I think I handled myself pretty well. So far, I hadn’t gotten angry, or become too frustrated. I’d barely cursed at all. All in all, I had handled the whole situation with admirable dignity, decorum, and patience, right up until the third time I hit my head on the hood which was being held up by a piece of plastic pipe of insufficient length. The weather was well below freezing, and the hydraulic braces on the hood couldn’t hold it up, so I had stuck this pipe in to brace it. Unfortunately, that put the front edge of the hood right at forehead level, and just out of my line of sight, thanks to my baseball hat, which turned out to be great for impairing my vision, but much less effective at diminishing impact. It was at this point that my Zoloft gave up the fight, and I completely lost my mind (for reference, watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, the scene where Clark loses it over the exterior lighting).

Judging by the looks on their faces, the good folks at AutoZone found the sight of a short, fat, middle-aged man doing an impromptu Zulu war dance while rhythmically chanting an unbroken stream of profanity, obscenity, and vulgarity calling down the vengeance of the Gods on all designers, makers, and purveyors of automobiles and automobile parts in their parking lot to be deeply unsettling. On the other hand, after the dust had settled they seemed much more eager to assist in any way they could, loaning me a folding-chair to stand on so I could lift the batteries out, helping Jess to fish out the wrench she dropped between the radiator and the grill, and things like that. In between instances of assistance, they would retreat to the safety (and warmth) of the store to watch the show.

Eventually, I got both batteries in the truck replaced, and we headed back to finish rescuing the Jeep. That, thankfully, proved to be much simpler, thanks to the smaller battery size, lower vehicle, and Jess’s somewhat misplaced foresight in leaving all the necessary tools in the Jeep. I got the new battery installed, and the Jeep fired right up, and we finally headed for home and warmth. We realized that neither of us had eaten all day, so I stopped and picked up some carry-out on the way home.

We finally made it home, and were ready to call it a night, but wait, there’s more! Once we were full and warm, we got to talking about the little dog that had gotten dumped at the neighbor’s house about a week ago. The neighbors were feeding it, and it was staying on their porch, but the weather was supposed to get down to like 7 below, and 4-6 inches of snow. The more we sat there in our house, all full of food and warm, the more we both found ourselves worrying about that freakin’ dog. Which was how we found ourselves tramping through the wind and the snow at 10:30 at night to steal a dog that apparently nobody wanted. Jess was able to eventually get close enough to her to get a leash on her, and we got her back to our house, and bedded down in our basement with warm blankets, fresh water, and food. Jess checked her out and announced that she was about a year and a half old, just coming out of heat, and, in all likelihood pregnant, which is probably why she was dumped in the first place.

As we drifted off to sleep that night, tired and sore, but satisfied that we had done the right thing, I felt compelled to count my blessings. Sure, I might be a lousy mechanic, and we might have added a new dog, but I’ve got a warm house, I’m reasonably healthy, I’ve got family and friends that I can rely on, and Jess is not going to leave me to freeze to death in the middle of nowhere for something that might be an inconvenience (although I’m sure the thought has probably occurred to her from time to time). All in all, I’m a lucky and blessed guy.

I’m still not happy about winter though.

 

Bah, Humbug: A Christmas Rant Just For You

All About Me, Culture, Home Life, Politics & Culture, Religion, Wives

Ok, I’ll admit it: I’ve had it with Christmas this year. I just can’t get into the spirit of things. I tried. I really did. I helped the wonderfully naughty and divinely nice Jess put up the tree and the lights on the house. I went Christmas shopping for the Grandkids, and felt like we got them some pretty cool stuff that was both inexpensive and useful/practical/fun.

Then I went shopping for Jess, and things just nosedived. I found what she had asked for pretty quickly, but I also always try to get her something as a surprise. Nothing expensive, just something not mass-produced, or at least not in this century. Every store I went to to try to find her something special or cool and unusual/unexpected this year was closed. That was disappointing.

I also had to get something for our family White Elephant gift exchange. I thought I’d go to the local “bookstore”, because they’ve got a lot of different stuff, and I thought I should be able to find something suitably stupid/funny. Wrong. First of all, I don’t think it really qualifies as a bookstore anymore. There are hardly any books, and of the books there are, 75 % of them are kid’s books, or “young adult” books. “Young adult”. Who are they kidding? Although it is a much nicer term than “basically grown-up and functionally illiterate, but still thinks carrying a book around will make them look smart”.

They do usually have a pretty good selection of novelty items (cheap, stupid junk that’s good for at least a half-hearted laugh), but not this year. Not unless you’re in the market for a Dr. Who action figure, or even worse, a Game of Thrones action figure (at least Dr. Who has been around for 40 or 50 years). It left me wondering, who do they sell this crap to? Who would want it? Let’s face it, if you’re old enough to watch Game of Thrones, then your action figure days really should be behind you. Way behind you.

Then of course, my guts went sideways on me. You know the feeling. You’re standing there, minding your own business, and suddenly it feels like giant hands are twisting your guts into balloon animals at the world’s worst children’s party. Somehow, this always happens to me when I’m in a bookstore, I’m not sure why. I think it’s just the smell of the books. It gets me all excited I guess. The only thing surprising about all this is that there are still enough real books in the place to get to me. Anyway, I head for the bathroom in that tense, walking-from-the-knees-down-only, whole body clinch (don’t try to deny it, you know what I’m talking about), and when I get there, what do I find? No seat. Seriously. It was deeply, deeply disappointing to say the least.

Now, I don’t have particularly high standards when it comes to bathrooms. I’m not overly finicky, but I do have some minimal expectations. Enough toilet paper, some perfunctory attempt at cleanliness, and a seat. That’s all I ask. The door doesn’t have to latch, I can hold it shut. The seat doesn’t even have to be bolted down securely. I prefer it to be, of course, but I can deal with some swivel in the seat. But there does have to be a seat. Now I’ll admit that I’ve gone into bathrooms that didn’t even have a toilet, just a hole in the floor, with a ceramic footprint on either side of it, but that was in places like Turkey and Kuwait, and it’s a matter of culture, not basic maintenance. At least those were clean.

This was no matter of culture . . . or was it? You know what? I’ll save that rant for another day. Suffice to say that thanks to an act of will perhaps unparallelled in modern times, I managed to duck-walk my way to the parking lot, climbed into my way-too-tall pickup, carefully worked the clutch and standard transmission all the way home, climbed down from my still way-too-tall truck, got into the house, ran the gauntlet of dogs, and made it to my own fully functioning bathroom without befouling myself. That turned out to be the highlight of my day. A little bit later, I went out to get the mail, and what to my wondering eyes should appear? A membership application from AARP.

Honestly, I think Christmas started going south on me a couple of weeks ago when I joined the choir at church. I’m not much of a singer, although I can do a pretty good Neil Young or Tom Petty, but they said they needed help, so I said why not. Now I wake up every morning with those horrible songs running through my head. In case you hadn’t guessed, I really don’t care much for religious music, much less religious Christmas music. It always just seems kind of vapid and fake. All that silent night, no crying, Mary smiling sweetly, Joseph looking on in wonder, Wise Men, solemn shepherds, everything just so . . . precious.

Think about it. Mary had just arrived in Bethlehem after walking, or at best, riding a donkey who knows how far in the extremely late stages of pregnancy. Think about how miserable women today are on a car ride to the hospital to give birth. Imagine if you asked one of them to give birth in a stable, with no drugs, no doctor, just her, Joseph, and maybe a bale or two of hay. There would not be a lot of sweet smiling going on. Not to mention the practical side of a virgin birth. Sure, it sounds wonderful to us, but how would you like to try squeezing a kid out through an intact hymen? Yikes. And then 3 weird rich guys turn up bearing gifts. The gold and the frankincense would be ok, but myrrh was used in funeral preparations. How would you like it if someone brought a coffin to your baby shower?

I think about Joseph, and I think; that poor guy. It’s tough enough for anybody to be a Step-Father, let alone Step-Father when God is the Baby Daddy. Talk about pressure. If he screws this kid up, he’s not going to end up in court. Plus he’s got all the neighbors whispering and giggling (you know they did, and you know we would too), and gossiping. How’s he going to discipline this kid. When this kid says, “You’re not the boss of me,” he’s right. Look closely at your Nativity set. Joseph’s not looking on in wonder, he’s catatonic with shock.

Now, I know some of you are saying that it wasn’t like that, it was just like in Silent Night. God could make it nice, and sweet, and painless, and wonderful. He’s God, he can do anything he wants. My response to that is why would he. God never pulled his punches on any of his other chosen people. He never even held back suffering from his own son.

When we think of all the heroes of the bible, we think of suffering. John and Paul in prison, Peter being crucified, Stephen being stoned (and not in a good way), and most of all, Jesus on the cross, suffering for all of us. It seems to me that maybe by sanitizing and preciousizing Christ’s birth, we do Mary and Joseph an injustice. That maybe we minimize and marginalize their roles, the roles that God chose them for. Because they did have to be very special people. Very strong people, very Godly people, people who knew right from wrong, and good, not only from evil, but from legal. What they did was extremely important, and like anything truly important, it could not have been easy.

Of course, maybe I just picked the wrong time of the year to quit smoking. Bah Humbug, and Merry Christmas anyway.

 

 

Things I don’t understand #3: Harry Potter and the Epicization of Everything

All About Me, Arts, Books and Literature, Culture, Movies, Politics & Culture

So I’m sitting in class today, and the professor is telling us about a meeting of the Honors Club that she’d like us to go to. She’s very excited about it, and then drops what she apparently thinks will be the big draw: the subject for discussion at the meeting will be . . . wait for it . . . HARRY POTTER!!!!! I’ll wait while you seethe in jealousy at the fact that you won’t be able to attend. Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah.

Oddly enough, I lost all interest in attending at that precise moment. I mean, seriously, this is college. This is where you’re supposed to get educated, to learn about new ideas, big ideas, and discuss them, and solve all the problems of the world, and harness all of our youthful enthusiasm (and I’m writing as a typical college student here, and not the crusty old fart that I actually am. What can I say, I got to the game late. Very Very Late.) to go out and set the world to rights. And the Honors Club (Arguably, perhaps even dubiously) the best and the brightest that the campus has to offer is meeting to discuss HARRY POTTER!!!!!

To be honest, I found it to be more than a little disconcerting. Can anybody please explain to me what is the big deal? Now I’ll admit that I’ve never actually read any of them. I did watch the first movie, and I’ve seen bits and pieces of the others. Nothing that I’ve seen has made me think that I’m missing anything. And yet, I’m surrounded by people, intelligent people (or at least people that I consider intelligent) and they freaking’ looooove HARRY POTTER!!!!! (Note. Please understand that the exclamation marks are an attempt to mimic the enthusiasm that otherwise normal people feel for HARRY POTTER!!!!! They are not meant to affect the entire sentence preceding the name HARRY POTTER!!!!! Please also note that I am using 5 exclamation marks, and all capital letters, both universally accepted signs of a diseased mind.)

Why are all these otherwise reasonably intelligent people so worked up about a series of children’s books? Is there anything actually original in them? Anything that hasn’t been done before about a thousand times? Or is it, as I suspect, just a matter of packaging and marketing? The special effects are SOOOO good!

Honestly, HARRY POTTER!!!!! isn’t the only aspect of modern popular culture (and I’m using the term loosely) that I don’t understand. Take the Hunger Games. Please. I took this kid I know to see one of them, and he was so excited. When it was over, I asked him what the big deal is. He started going on about how new and fresh it was, how it had never been done before, etc., etc. He was pretty much unfazed, even when I told him that it had been done before, in the Richard Bachman stories The Long Walk, and The Running Man, and that they had even made a movie out of The Running Man, with Arnold Schwarzeneggar, complete with people killing each other on a game show with a flaky host in a dystopian future, and it was done 30-40 years ago. Ok, I’ll grant you that Jennifer Lawrence is a whole lot hotter than Arnold, but still. Why did they need three books to basically cover something that Stephen King (Bachman was a nom de plume) did in two short and unrelated novellas?

Why does everything have to be so epic? Look at The Hobbit. One of the greatest and best-loved adventure stories of the 20th century. Then Peter Jackson gets hold of it, and it becomes a 9-hour epic. Of course, he had to make up a ton of stuff that wasn’t in the book in order to pad a great adventure into an epic. Granted, the movies are well made (as are the HARRY POTTER!!!!! and Hunger Games movies), but that’s not the point. My dad had a saying, “10 pounds of shit in a 5 pound bag” to describe a situation where too much stuff is crammed in. These epics have the opposite problem, “5 pounds of gold in a 10 pound bag of shit”. There is lots of good stuff, even in these movies, but it’s completely overwhelmed by all the pointless, repetitious, and just dull filler. And seriously, what’s the deal with the freaking Elves defying gravity and skateboarding across everything? That looked stupid, even in the Disney animated version of  Tarzan.

It’s not just movies, or movie series either. This epicization extends to individual scenes. The interminable fight scenes where, 5 minutes into it, I’m thinking, don’t any of these bad guys have a gun? Somebody please take two steps back and shoot Bruce Willis (or Stallone, or Jason Statham, or Jet Li, or whoever’s kung-fuing his way through hordes of bad guys tonight), so it can end. I don’t care if the bad guys win, I just want this fight to end. Then there’s the ever-popular chase scene. Those have gotten so endless that I don’t even pause the movie to go to the bathroom. Frankly, they’ve gotten so big they’re just dull. Everybody is so busy making things bigger, better, louder, (insert your own favorite _____er here).

It’s really kind of silly, but we just keep buying it. Literally. We bought the DVD, and the video game, and the movie-tie-in version of the book, and the soundtrack, and then the Blur-Ray, and then the Director’s Cut, and then the 10th anniversary edition (because it’s got all those cool “special” features), and the DVD’s and Blu-Rays of all the sequels, because, even though they weren’t really as good as the first, and the last 2 or 3 sucked, it would be aesthetically wrong to not have the whole epic.

It’s even affecting real life. People can’t just like anything any more, they have to be “obsessed” with it. I know people who are “obsessed” with this book, that author, that director, that movie series, those shoes, that tv show, the new flavor at Starbucks. Just liking it isn’t enough. Even loving it isn’t enough. Of course, maybe those people need to become obsessed briefly with a dictionary.

Now I’ll grant that when I was a kid, I got pretty carried away with a lot of things. Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings were my big things. But I got over it. I still really like them, but I’m certainly not obsessed with them. Honestly, I’ve still got a few things like authors that I get carried away with, and will buy pretty much anything they write. I like them a lot, and recommend them to everybody. But I also realize that they’re not everybody’s cup of tea. Frankly, I’d feel a little silly enthusing over a book or movie like a 12 year-old girl with a new copy of Tiger Beat with a fold-out of Justin Bieber (speaking of things I don’t understand).

I think it probably concerns me most because it makes me feel more mature in comparison to those overly enthusiastic fans of anything. Honestly, anything that makes me feel like the adult in any situation concerns me because I know how phenomenally immature I really am.

I just don’t understand.

 

Michigan Renaissance Festival: A little slice of Heaven?

All About Me, Culture, Home Life, Politics & Culture, Religion, Wives

Last month my wife, the lovely and no-longer-dying Jess, and I went up to the Renaissance Festival in Holly, Michigan. I’ve got to admit, I approached the whole thing with significantly less enthusiasm than curiosity. Neither Jess nor I are into that sort of thing. We only went because it was an opportunity to hang out with her sister and her boyfriend, who are into that whole thing.

My initial impression was, I’ll admit, kind of judgmental. Anachronisms abounded. There were pirates with Ray-Bans, elves with cameras, Vikings with laptops, a couple of noblemen on scooters, and of course everyone had a cell phone.

As far as I can recall, the Renaissance was mostly the Black Death, art, music, literature, religion, architecture, and philosophy, and more Black Death. It had something for everybody, especially MOOOORE BLACK DEATH! Now with EXTRA DEATH! Ok I just checked Wikipedia (it’s ok, this is just a blog. Accuracy is optional) and I’m right. Art, science, literature, philosophy, religion, architecture and MOOOORE BLACK DEATH! (admit it, you laughed). However, plague sufferers were entirely absent at the fair (there weren’t even any funny, Monty Python-type sufferers).

There were a lot of really cool and elaborate costumes,  but again, many seemed wildly inaccurate if not just out of place. I quickly realized that the term “Renaissance” was applied very loosely. There were (in addition to the expected pirates, priests, nobles, merchants and peasants) scores of elves, hobbits, wizards, video game assassins, fairies, at least one Shrek, an Ash (from “Army of Darkness”, complete with chainsaw hand) and Spiderman in the costume of a Knight Templar.

Also, I never realized that bare midriffs were so popular during the renaissance. They were certainly in abundance at the festival. All kinds of bare midriffs. Toned ones, muscular ones, less-than toned ones, paunchy ones, even a couple of pregnant ones. Everywhere you looked, there were bare midriffs. Bare midriffs and cleavage. Lots of cleavage. Possibly even miles of cleavage. There was elf cleavage, pirate cleavage, peasant cleavage, noble cleavage, tattooed cleavage, sparkly cleavage, celtic cleavage, fairy cleavage, gypsy cleavage, young cleavage, old cleavage, sparse cleavage, ample cleavage, and even, in one or two unfortunate cases, long cleavage. There was every degree of cleavage, from reasonably demure, to the more brash, if-you’ve-got-it-flaunt-it type, to the extreme one-hop-and-she’s-topless type. Just to be clear, there was a LOT of cleavage.

Oh yeah, there was some shopping as well.

Anyway, at some point, I got to thinking about the world, and Heaven. I’m not sure why (it wasn’t the cleavage and bare midriffs, or at least not entirely). I think it was just because everyone was so happy. They were all just doing their own thing, together. I didn’t see any groups of Ladies in elaborate gowns bad-mouthing the “trampy” pirate girls. The Vikings weren’t beating up the Fairies. There were no hardcore Renaissance types complaining about how the hobbits were making a travesty of their festival. There were no hardbodies making fun of the heavy-set set for showing a little skin (or even a lot). Those who had probably made their own costumes weren’t looking down on those who’d bought theirs. Those who’d obviously spent hundreds, or even thousands of dollars on their costumes weren’t making fun of those who obviously hadn’t, and the ones who either couldn’t or wouldn’t spend much didn’t seem envious or intimidated by those who had. Everybody just seemed to take it for granted that everybody belonged. They were all free to be who they were (or maybe who they wish they were, or who they are in their hearts).

There was a real live-and-let-live vibe going on that I think we could use in the real world. I’m not talking about abandoning all principles and social norms, I’m just suggesting that maybe we should stop taking them quite so seriously. Just because someone votes Democrat doesn’t mean they want to destroy freedom and enslave us all to the government. Most Republicans probably don’t want to destroy the government and enslave us all to our capitalist overlords. Most Muslims don’t want to kill all Christians any more than most Christians want to kill all Muslims. Most gays don’t want to destroy your marriage. Certainly none of them seem intent on destroying mine. There are no gay guys beating down my door to convince me to switch teams (and what’s the deal with that anyway? Not that I’m interested, but it’d be nice to be asked, ya know? Hurtful bastards.), and most of the lesbians we know are related to me, so they’re leaving Jess alone. I mean, that would just be weird.

We’ve gotten so good at making mountains out of molehills, that we’ve forgotten what mountains look like. Nazi Germany was a mountain. 9/11 was a mountain. AIDS is a mountain. Hunger, poverty, racism,and disease are mountains. Obama doing the same thing that every other president before him has done is a molehill.

It seems to me that it would be a much better world if we all stepped back, and kind of re-prioritized things. Spent more time doing something about the actual mountains and less time bitching about the lowering of standards because the kid at the drive-through has turned his earlobes into handles.

Sometimes I think that Heaven’s gonna be kind of like that Renaissance Fair. Everybody (or at least everybody who gets in) free to worship God as they are, as He created them. There will be room for the guys from the Heavy-Metal Church of Christ (seriously, there is such a thing) and the Methodists, etc. We Christians all like to joke (usually smugly) about how we’re all going to be surprised by who will actually get into heaven and who won’t make the cut. Oddly enough though, I get the feeling that when the surprise sets in, everybody there is going to be pissed.

Of course, I could be wrong and Heaven’s just gonna be one big Southern Baptist Jamboree.

Revenge: A dish best left alone

All About Me, Home Life, Wives
Jess and I at Lake Windemere before she perfected her method for manufacturing fish food.
Jess and I at Lake Windemere before she perfected her method for manufacturing fish food.

The Sicilians say that revenge is a dish best served cold. Alfred Hitchcock said that, “Revenge is sweet and not fattening.” George Herbert said, “The best revenge is living well.” There are, of course, lots of quotes about how revenge is bad, but they’re not nearly as much fun.

What nobody seems to talk about is how messy and disgusting revenge often is. I’m not talking about messy and disgusting philosophically or emotionally, although it is that too. No, what I’m talking about is just full-on physical disgustingness.

You know what I’m talking about. When Joe Pesci beats that dude up for asking for a shoeshine in “Goodfellas”, there’s blood everywhere. Actually, most Mafia movies center around revenge, and it’s always a blood-bath. It’s the same with all horror movies, and really anything dramatizing revenge. It’s always a helluva mess. I always think, “Man, I pity the poor schmuck who’s gonna have to clean up after that.”

In the movies, somebody else always has to clean up the mess. In real life it’s usually you. You know when somebody really makes a mess in the bathroom at work, that whoever’s in dutch with the boss is gonna have to clean it up (at least if your company doesn’t employ a janitor). Even when it’s just a matter of making the new guy do it, there’s an aspect of revenge (I had to do it when I was the new guy, so it’s his turn. Kind of a pay-it-forward revenge).

Let’s face it, revenge is a nasty business, even when it’s accidental.

Last week, I posted about accidentally serving my wife, the lovely and currently recuperating Jess, a glass of spoiled milk for her upset stomach. Although she was pretty put out with me at the time, eventually even she had to admit it was kind of funny, and at the very least gave her ammunition to punish me with later.

Unfortunately, that incident seems to have put us on a path of accidentally assured mutual destruction.

After a week, she was getting worse rather than better, so our doctor changed her prescription to a more powerful antibiotic. The two main side-effects of this medicine are feeling nauseous, and vomiting. So, a couple of nights later, we’re getting ready for bed. I’m sitting on the john reading (it sits in it’s own secluded little cubbyhole. We’re not savages), and she decided to use her Neti-Pot (or as I call it her snot-pot) to wash out her sinuses, a practice which I personally find disgusting and singularly abhorrent.

It did not go well. While I’m not sure of the efficacy of the snot-pot to clean out her sinuses, it did an amazing job of triggering her gag reflex. Naturally, since I was firmly ensconced on the fixture normally reserved for voiding the guts, she hurled (and hurled, and hurled, and hurled some more) in the sink.

Sadly, our bathroom sink was draining slow as it was, due to the enormous amount of Jess’ bounteous hair that gets washed down it every day. The introduction into it of everything she had eaten that day did not help matters. Equally sadly, at least as far as I’m concerned anyway, I’m the family plumber, which is how I ended up wrist-deep in used Taco Bell and Oreo Blizzard the other night.

Now I love my wife, and since I’ve been telling her for 20 years that I’d do anything for her, this could be seen as a golden (actually more of a grayish-brown) opportunity to prove it. I tried to take that approach. I really did. I tried to stay cheerful and upbeat about it. I know she felt terrible before THE INCIDENT, and felt even worse after, so I tried not to make her feel even worse about it, telling her it was ok, and cracking jokes as I fished . . . insert the worst imaginable thing you can think of here. . . out of the sink.

I’ve got to admit though, the joking diminished as I worked. It had pretty much completely disappeared by the time I’d worked my way down to the drain and it was still refusing to drain. As I fumbled around trying to unscrew the drain stopper and trying to control my own involuntary gagging, my good humor became more and more forced.

By the time I was forced to go looking for a pair of needle-nosed pliers to try to reach down the drain, it had pretty much vanished. Naturally, I couldn’t find the pliers. I decided to try plunging the sink, maybe I could force the blockage through.

Nope. Thanks to the overflow channel, all plunging the sink accomplished was turning the sink into a kind of puke fountain. Not a good thing. Next, I went out to my truck to get my leatherman, hoping it would reach far enough down the drain to get it flowing. Nope. Nothing was working.

Adding hot water to dilute “things” certainly didn’t help. It just re-warmed everything and got the odor going again.

Finally, I decided that the only thing left to do was to take the drain apart below the sink. Of course, by now, both hands were too wet and slick (on a side note, I think it was probably good for my hands. Fresh stomach acid – softens your hands while it exfoliates. VOMIT – You’re soaking in it. Even Madge might have a hard time selling that one.) to get a good grip on the pipes, so the search for tools was back on.

I’ve kept a couple pairs of Channel-lock pliers in my truck for years now. Naturally, they had magically disappeared. By this time, my mood had definitely taken a darker turn. There’s really nothing like a little late-night plumbing right before bed to put you in the mood . . . for homicide.

Eventually, I found a pair of channel-locks and got the pipes apart. I’ll spare you the rest of the gory details of what it took to get the drain unstopped. Suffice to say that it was not at all pleasant, and by the time it was all over, I had to take a shower, because simply washing my hands just was not gonna do it.

By the time it was all finished up, we both agreed that it wasn’t her fault, and that however inadvertent it may have been, her vengeance for the spoiled milk incident was more than complete, that she was, in fact, way ahead on the Mullins Gross-o-Meter.

We decided that we would just call it even, and say no more about it.

Obviously, no cease-fire lasts forever. Ours lasted until the following morning.

The morning started out normal enough. I got up took the dogs out, had a smoke, took a shower, and got dressed, just my morning routine. It all went horribly wrong though, when I headed for the kitchen. I’m not a big breakfast eater, but I do have a glass of juice with my morning pills (to be honest, by the time I get all my pills down, between medicine and various supplements and what-not that Jess has me on, there’s no room for food).

I am, and always have been, a creature of habit. I’m not a neat freak or anything, but some things have a specific place where they belong, and moving them has consequences. Jess knows this and yet she still insists on moving things. Personally, I think she does it on purpose, because she thinks it’s funny to see me standing there, staring at the cabinet, wondering where the damned paper plates are. I mean, we’ve kept them in that cabinet for years, and it’s always worked perfectly well. Why mess with it? But I digress.

So, on the morning in question, I fixed my juice, and turned to the microwave to get my pill container (we keep them on top, not inside, in case you’re wondering). I dumped the a.m. side into my hand and jauntily flung them into my mouth (I hate taking pills, but if you gotta do it, you might as well do it with panache). I was just reaching for the juice, when it occurred to me, where’d that blue one come from? I don’t take any blue pills.

I looked to the pill container, and sure enough, Jess’ pill container was sitting on the left, exactly where mine should be. Well, I don’t even like taking my own pills. I’m certainly not going to take someone else’s. So naturally, I spit them back into my hand.

Well now what do I do with them? I don’t want to throw them in the trash, those things are expensive. I’ve got to act quick, because they’re really starting to stick to my hand. Well, I’ll just put them back where I got them from. I mean really, what’s the harm, it’s not like we’re strangers to the concept of swapping spit, although we normally prefer to do it on a more personal level.

Anyway, I figured I’d call her from work and warn her. Unfortunately, I got caught up in stuff at work, and forgot all about it until I got home. Fortunately, by that time, she was feeling quite a bit better and eventually was able to see the humor in it. I was also relieved to find that I had made the right decision about not just swallowing them. Although most of the stuff we’re on is pretty much identical (blood pressure, cholesterol, etc.) I’m pretty sure her estrogen pill would not have done me a bit of good.

So all’s well that ends well, I guess. I just hope we can finally break the cycle of disgusting and inadvertent revenge.

Darth Vader, Swamp Things, and the Short-Winded Valkyrie of Vengeance

All About Me, Home Life, Wives
Jess and I in happier times.
Jess and I in happier times.

Well, I’ve done it again.

First, a little background: last weekend my wife, the currently respiratorially impaired and humor deficient Jess Vader (or should that be Darth Jess?) caught a cold which quickly turned into bronchitis. She is not a happy camper. Just getting off the couch wipes her out. Her breathing makes noises that you would never guess had any connection with the passage of air.

Most of the time, her breathing sounds like a rock crusher crossed with an espresso machine, but then it will change and sound like somebody slowly letting the air out of balloon. The other night, we were watching tv, and I could swear that there was a dog howling in pain behind our house. I muted the tv to listen, and the noise stopped. I started the tv up again, and the noise started up again. I wasn’t sure if I was imagining it, or if there was something wrong with the tv, or if there really was a dog in terrible trouble.

I paused the tv a couple more times to listen, and was on the verge of getting up to go outside to look for Ralph, the stray dog who’s lived with us for the last 7 or so years, when I realized that the noise was Jess breathing. Every time I’d stop the tv to listen, she’d hold her breath to listen too.

Well, I was glad that Ralph was ok, but I was really starting to worry about Jess.

Anyway, with her being so miserable, she was obviously not in the mood to do any cooking, so I’ve been trying to help out by picking up carryout on the way home. Now, I’ll grant you that I’m probably the last person that anybody would (or should) choose to cater their imminent demise, but I do my best.

To be honest, cockroaches would probably die of malnutrition if they had to rely on me. Even Keith Richards probably eats healthier than I do when left to my own devices, but hey, at least I try.

Well, 2 or 3 days into her affliction, Jess was struck down even further, this time by heartburn and indigestion (in retrospect, we probably should have seen this coming), rendering her even more miserable and dejected. However, not being the sort to be kept down for long by anything, and realizing that after 3 days she was approaching a level of personal hygiene that even the French would turn up their noses at (in her own words, she was feeling “kinda swampy”), she announced that she was going to take a shower.

I pulled her up off the couch and kept her upright while she adjusted to verticality, and then went into the den to play Spider Solitaire. I heard her rattling around in the kitchen, so I looked over to see what she was doing. She was pouring a glass of milk. I asked if she was ok (I’m not completely insensitive), and she said “yeah, just some indigestion,” so I went back to my game (she’s a strong, independent woman, and I’m far too considerate to take that away from her. Besides, I was winning.).

I will admit (at the price of sounding condescending) that I left the sound off so I could hear her if she fell or called for help (I’m not a monster, you know). After a successful hosing down of all her bits, apparently her stomach was still bothering her, so she called for me, and I immediately sprang into action. She asked me to fix her a glass of milk to calm her stomach, so I went to the kitchen to get it. I got a glass, and was going to the fridge for the milk, when I noticed that she’d left the milk on the counter.

Now, that seemed a little irresponsible, even to me. I just figured that she wasn’t feeling good, and probably thought she’d need some more. So I poured the rest of the milk into the glass, and carried it in to her. She drank it, and I took the glass and set it aside.

I asked if there was anything else I could do for her, and she asked if I would comb out her hair for her. Well, I’ll try anything for her. At this point, I should explain that Jess has lovely long, very thick hair. At this time, of course, it was also very wet and looked awfully tangled to me. I grabbed the comb, and told her I’d try not to hurt her too much (give me a break. Most of the time, I don’t even comb my own hair. I just run my hand through it and trap it under a hat until it gives up and lays down.)

She stopped me before I even got started, and told me to squirt some hair goo onto my hands and to rub it into her hair. Well, I did it, and I have to say, it looked even more bedraggled and tangled than before. I got about halfway through the 1st swipe with the comb, and she took it away from me.

Then, she sort of burped (you know, the kind of inverted burp you do when you’re trying to keep your insides inside), and asked me if I’d gotten the milk out of the fridge. I said, “No, you left the milk on the counter. You know that’s not a good idea, don’t you?”

Wrong answer. Then, after she’d told me that the milk on the counter had gone bad, and that there was a jug of fresh milk in the refrigerator, I compounded the error by asking her why didn’t she dump the bad milk out. She explained (unnecessarily heatedly, I felt) that she hadn’t bothered to dump it out because SHE FELT LOUSY.

Well, you know me (or at least you’re starting to), I’m not one to stop while I’m only a little bit behind, so I laughed and asked her why she didn’t at least tell me about it. Again, she curtly explained that it was because SHE DIDN”T THINK I”D BE DUMBASS ENOUGH TO NOT LOOK IN THE FRIDGE FOR MILK! 

Well, while it’s nice to know that after 20 years of marriage I can still surprise her, I was kind of hurt by her tone. I mean, that’s just, . . . well, mean, you know? Think about it. Here I was, at her beck and call (more or less), even willing to leave a winning streak at Spider Solitaire (and if you’ve ever played, you know how rare that is), existing only to serve her. When you think about it, my only real mistake was in being overly eager to service her needs quickly, and she acts like that. Women (even the best of them, which Jess certainly is) can be so ungrateful.

On the other hand, after having her hair wadded into industrial-strength tangles and pulled and then being served bad milk on an upset stomach when she can’t breathe well enough to comb her own hair, I suppose I’ll just have to be the bigger man and forgive her. She’s a lucky, lucky girl. And I, of course, am a lucky guy, especially in that, in her current condition, my bronchial Goddess of Grumpiness, my wheezy Valkyrie of Vengeance, my not-quite-so-sweet-as-usual little Swamp Thing can’t draw enough breath to even the score.

God help me the next time I get sick.

Choices: Things I don’t understand #2

All About Me, Culture, Home Life, Politics & Culture
Thanks to Kim Waggoner for the picture!
Thanks to Kim Waggoner for the picture!

I hate going to the store, especially if I have to get stuff from the pharmacy section or anything health-related. There are just too many choices. It’s way too complicated. I mean, just trying to buy toothpaste is enough to induce an anxiety attack.

When I was a kid, you had Crest or Colgate, and, for the late 70’s equivalent of a metro-sexual, Aqua Fresh. That’s it. We were Crest people, so if we needed toothpaste, all mom had to decide was what size tube to get. It was simple. Those days are over. The last time I went to buy toothpaste, my brain just about melted.

Which Crest should I get? Should I get the one with baking soda, or the one with extra whitening? Ooooh, maybe I should get the one with Scope. Or how about the tarter control one? That sounds pretty important. But wait, there’s the Crest Total. Maybe that one would cover all the bases. Of course, if it’s so “total” then why do they need all those other ones? My teeth could all fall out waiting for me to decide.

I decided to get some toothpaste for my wife, the orally hygienic and toothsome Jess. She grew up in a Colgate house, and refuses to recognize the superiority of Crest, so I humor her. Unfortunately, it’s the same with Colgate. 42 varieties.

Ok, I decided, you’re a smart guy, reason it out. . .

Turns out, I’m not that smart. I know, compare the ingredients. Nope, they’re all pretty much identical, and (I’m not too proud to admit), I have no idea what any of them are, or what they do.

Finally, I just closed my eyes, and grabbed one of Crest and one of Colgate, regardless of their purported properties.

It’s the same thing with everything these days. Toothpaste, shampoo, soap, shaving cream, mouthwash, toothbrushes. Even razor blades. Should I get the old twin blade razor, or go for the 6-blade “Decapitator” model?

Why should I have to know what kind of hair I have before I can buy shampoo? Is my hair dry or oily, or frizzy? It really depends on the time of day, doesn’t it? About mid-morning, it’s dry. Towards evening, I guess it’s getting kind of oily (especially on weekends when showers are on more of an as really needed, or as I like to put it, European basis. You know you’re like that too). If I just woke up, it’s definitely frizzy. Do I have problems with split ends? I don’t really even know what split ends are, but it sounds painful.

I don’t want to have to think about what kind of skin I’ve got. I’m not that sensitive (although if I were, there are about 40 “different” soaps for it). I just want soap that will get the dirt off of me.

Who cares what the shaving cream smells like? I don’t know that I want eucalyptus in my shaving cream. I just want to be able to scrape the hair off without losing too much hide. Is that too much to ask?

God help you if you get a cold. There are 10 different types of every cold remedy, no single one of which actually covers all your symptoms. It’s ridiculous.

Even generics have jumped on the choice bandwagon. I remember when generics first came out. Just plain old white containers with labels like “green beans”, or “toothpaste” or even “beer”. Not anymore. Even generics have brand names like “Equate” and just as many choices as the brand names.

This kind of stuff can really get to you when taken on an individual basis, but think about the trauma of a single guy at the store. He makes all his selections, then spends some time cruising up and down, looking for the line with the cutest cashier (you know you do it), waits in line behind all the other guys, puts his purchases on the conveyor belt, flashes her his most winning smile, and, just as she starts to scan his items, he realizes that he’s bought soap for sensitive skin, shampoo for oily hair, shaving cream that smells like a field of daisies in Australia, toothpaste for sensitive teeth, extra-strength mouthwash, and a pink shower puff (I thought it was light red!).

Not only does he look like he’s preparing for a remake of the end of “Blazing Saddles”, but it totally contradicts the manly look he’s so carefully calculated with his Realtree camouflage pants and “Who Farted” t-shirt. Plus, it’s all “Equate” brand stuff. Sure, it looks like brand-name packaging, but they’re not fooling her. This dude is broke. This dude is never going to get a date.

Don’t get me wrong, I like choices in some things, even most things. Pizza toppings? The more the merrier. Ice cream flavors? Bring it on. Books, movies, music, tv, news outlets, any number of things really. I’m all about having choices.

Unfortunately, when it comes to choices I like, they seem to actually be diminishing. Movies and TV shows are becoming more and more the same. Endless car chases, fight scenes that go on so long you don’t even hit pause to go to the bathroom, fart jokes, inappropriate behavior from children, foul-mouthed women, gratuitous nudity (particularly male. When did that start seeming like a good idea?), CGI characters, bottomless gun magazines, and stuff blowing up (mind you, I’m not saying all this stuff is bad, just unimaginative. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which of these I don’t mind). And let’s not forget all those stupid, cookie cutter romantic comedies (does Jennifer Aniston really need that much work?).

Some film-makers have abandoned all pretense at originality. Do we really need 12 “Fast and Furious” movies, or 7 “Transformers”? Anyone who’s seen it knows that the world would be a better place with one less “Die Hard” movie. How many knock-offs of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, “CSI”, or “Law & Order” before TV reaches critical mass and collapses into a black hole under the weight of all that accumulated apathy (and yes, I realize that looking at it from a physics point of view, that sentence probably made no sense at all. Get over it, I’m a writer, not a physics guy, and you’ve got to admit, it sounds good).

It’s the same for books, music, etc. For every truly original writer like Joe R. Lansdale or Christopher Moore making due with little more than a cult following, there are a dozen John Grisham or Tom Clancy knockoffs topping the best-sellers lists, and getting movie deals. It’s kind of depressing, really.

It seems like I spend way too much time having to make choices that really don’t make any difference to me, and like the choices I spend time on because they do matter to me turn out to be pointless. I just don’t understand.

Things I don’t understand #1: Tattoos

All About Me, Culture, Politics & Culture

Hi there, and welcome back to my blog. This is the 1st in an ongoing series that will examine things I don’t understand, and why I don’t understand them. I find as I get older, the list of things I don’t understand gets longer and longer, so this may be a lengthy series. I want to say here at the outset, that I’m not meaning to condemn or judge anyone, because I’m just as guilty as anyone about a lot of these. If, at some point, I do want to condemn or judge anyone (and lets face it, I probably won’t be able to help myself), I’ll try to make it pretty obvious. Enjoy!

Things I don’t understand #1: Tattoos

I just don’t understand. I’ve known a lot of people with tattoos, in fact, many of my favorite people have them. And I’m not talking about the “normal” military tattoos. Those I understand. I even kind of understand prison tattoos or those Russian mob tattoos. I personally think they’re kind of like walking around with a billboard saying, “Attention police personell! I am a criminal! Make sure you keep an eye on me!!!,” but, you know, to each his own. At the very least, those tattoos have some actual significance.

What I’m talking about is the tattoos all these young kids (and some not so young) are getting. Like tribal tattoos. It’s one thing if you’re an actual member of an actual tribe, and that’s your tribe’s thing, or you’re an actual 7th century Celtic warrior, but most of the people who I’ve seen with them should be getting a wasp as a tribal tattoo. If I was a guessing man (and I am), I’d guess that very few of them could even trace their geneology back more than two generations.

I looked up tribal tattoos on the interweb, just to make sure I was talking about what I thought I was talking about. Yep, I was. You know what I’m talking about, those twisty, cur-le-que ones with all the pointy bits. I looked up some sites to see what they meant. I didn’t get much information on what they actually mean, but I did find out that they’re supposed to make you look valiant, courageous, tough, fertile (who would want to advertise that?), religious, and (this is my favorite one) ethnic.

For more info on tribal tattoo meanings, here’s a place to start. http://stylesatlife.com/articles/best-tribal-tattoo-designs/

I thought you were what made you look ethnic. I mean, look at me. I don’t need a tattoo to let people know what tribe I’m a part of. I’m obviously a member of the Doughboy tribe. I don’t need a tattoo to warn people that I belong to a dangerous tribe. It’s pretty obvious that there are tons of us. So watch what you say.

Then there’s the universally-acknowledged stupidity of getting your boyfriend/girlfriend’s name tattooed on yourself. I don’t think I’ve ever known anybody that thought that was a good idea. Especially people who’ve had it done. And yet, people just keep on doing it. I’ll also add in getting any band name, celebrity’s name or face and things like that into this category. Let’s face it, most of the people who get these tattoos have trouble committing to a game system for more than a year, but “I’m gonna love you forever!!!,” or they’re gonna love Dale Earnhart Jr. forever, or Justin Bieber, or Green Day. Too obvious product placement in a movie or TV show annoys me, but it’s big money, so I can understand why they do it. I just don’t understand why someone would pay to do that to themself.

I also don’t get the “it expresses who I am on the inside, the real me” tattoo. Seriously? On the inside, the real you is a unicorn? Are you saying you don’t really exist? The same applies for the innumerable tattoos of teddy bears, kittens, dolphins, roses, skulls, lions, sharks, etc. A tattoo isn’t going to make you cute, or cuddly, or sensitive. It’s certainly not going to make you a badass. Most of the real badasses I’ve ever known, you never knew they were a badass until it was too late (for you, that is).

If a tattoo could make you something you’re not, then I’d just get two full-length tattoos of skinny guys and be thin siamese twins. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about losing weight anymore.

Or how about the broken heart tattoo? Now I’ll admit I’ve done a lot of stupid things, romantically speaking, but, to tell the truth, some of the people I was doing those stupid things with had broken heart tattoos, and it didn’t seem to slow them down. I get all the reminders I need of the stupid things I’ve done by just looking in the mirror (here’s a hint for all of you recently broken-hearted: you never forget. The best you can do is get over it, and don’t do it again. A tattoo isn’t gonna help with that.)

Tramp stamps are pretty much incomprehensible to me. Why get a tattoo that you can’t even see? How do you even know they gave you what you want until it’s too late? I suppose some think it’s sexy. I’ll even concede that on some women, it is, but honestly, I’d think it would ultimately just be distracting.

When it comes to kids, the worst is the “I’m gonna piss off mom or dad” tattoo. Kids do a lot of stupid things to piss off their parents. Besides tattoos, They do all kinds of weird stuff with their hair, they get their ears, noses, lips, tongues, eyebrows, and pretty much anything else that you can shove a needle through pierced, etc., and all of those things work equally well. The only difference is hair will grow out. Earrings and piercings come out. They’ll piss your folks off, but won’t keep you from getting a good job later.

I know tattoos are becoming more and more popular all the time. There are magazines and even TV shows devoted to them. Like I said, most of my favorite people in the world have tattoos, and most are quite happy about them, even proud of them. The tattoos don’t affect how I feel about them, or what I think of them. I just don’t understand the appeal. If you do, feel free to comment below, and help me understand (or just tell me I’m being an pinhead. It’s ok, I can take it. I’ve got pretty thick skin, even without a tattoo of a rhino to prove it).

Coming soon!!!

More stuff I don’t understand

Like

Why do they put the toilet paper dispensers below the rail in handicapped bathroom stalls?

Why does anybody care what Donald Trump, Ted Nugent, or really, any of those guys have to say?

Why do websites like Facebook, Netflix, etc., keep moving things?

Why do I actually know so few of my Facebook friends?

Why am I, and apparently everybody else in the world, so fascinated with Facebook?

and much, much more. Let’s face it, there is virtually no end to the things I don’t understand.

Happy reading!

Grandkids, Knowing Your Limitations, and the Wayne County Fair Carnival of Death

All About Me, Home Life, Kids & Grandkids
Me in one of my preferred recreational activities
Me in one of my preferred recreational activities

I’ve always prided myself on being kind of a tough guy. Not particularly strong or courageous, but tough, in the sense that I could absorb a lot of punishment and keep going. Lately, I find myself forced to rethink that. It seems that the older I get, the less tough I get, and to add insult to injury, I don’t seem to be getting any smarter in order to compensate for it.

Last friday, my wife, the fun-loving and adventurous Jess and I took our grandson, Austin, age 12, and granddaughter Sharon, age 3 1/2, to the Wayne county fair. It had already been a long day for me, covering the livestock auction for our local paper, where I’m currently employed as the world’s oldest unpaid intern. I got home that evening soaked with sweat and covered with bug bites.

We loaded the kids up and headed into town. We stopped at Clara’s Pizza King for supper, because neither Jess nor I had had anything to eat all day. This was my first tragic error in judgement for the night. Not that there was anything wrong with the food or the service, both were excellent, but it showed an astonishing lack of foresight on my part.

In choosing pizza, we failed to take into consideration my complete inability to know when to stop (and frankly, I blame Jess for this particular failure), as well as the heat at the fair, which was hotter than the hinges on the gates of hell.

Then we went to the fair. When I was a kid, I loved all the rides. The wilder the better, as far as I was concerned. Nothing ever bothered me. I saw no reason to suspect that anything had changed. We started off with Jess taking Sharon on the “Crazy Bus” kiddie ride, just to see how she would do on the rides. Austin and I got quite a few laughs, watching Jess trapped in that tiny bus with about 50 screaming little kids, going up and down in circles. Jess survived, Sharon loved it, and I had no idea how quickly I’d be getting my comeuppance.

Austin wanted to ride the “Sizzler”, one of those old classics where you’re locked into a seat and flung around in circles. Sharon was really disappointed that she wasn’t tall enough to ride. Austin still wanted to ride it, and I remembered that those rides are not nearly as much fun by yourself. When I was a kid, my little brother David and I always rode them together, and since we didn’t have any other kids with us, I decided to be a good Grandpa and ride it with him. Tragic error in judgement #2.

Like I said before, I wasn’t worried. When I was a kid, I loved those freakin’ things. David and I would ride them over and over again, waiving our hands in the air, and trying to find ways to make them even worse. I thought, “Sure I’m older and fatter, but so what? Gravity hasn’t changed. Besides, in the Air Force, I learned techniques for dealing with G-forces. I’ll just put that training to good use, and show this kid that the old man can still be a fun guy.” I wasn’t even fazed by the fact that it was a tight fit (embarrassingly so, actually). I just figured that it would just hold me in place even better, so I could just sit back and enjoy the ride while Austin’s skinny little body would be skidding all over the place.

Wrong.

The ride started up, and I really enjoyed it. For about the 1st 30 seconds or so. The next 2 1/2 hours of the 3 minute ride, not so much. Rarely ever, in a lifetime of being wrong, have I ever been so completely wrong about anything. Austin didn’t skid around, he was mashed securely and fairly comfortably right up against me, laughing like an idiot.

Gravity hadn’t changed since I was a kid, but I had neglected to consider how the changes in me would allow the same old gravity to affect me. I had absolutely failed to realize that the more of me there is, the more of me there is to be affected by gravity (and believe me, there’s a lot more of me now than there was back in my daredevil heyday). My Air Force training was all for nothing. I had thought that the safety rail crushing into me would kind of act like a G-suit, giving me something to push against. It didn’t. In fact, it seemed completely useless. I was wedged into the corner of the seat so tightly that no force on earth could have forced me out, even without the safety bar.

Frankly, it seemed to me that the only purpose it served was to put so much pressure on my midsection that I wasn’t sure which way I was going to lose my pizza, up or down (although if I was a betting man, and I am, my money would have been on both, simultaneously). After about 45 seconds, my neck muscles locked into place from the strain of keeping my massive skull from being ripped off my shoulders (it takes a huge cranium to store all these apparently dead brain cells) by the centrifugal forces, so I couldn’t turn my head. All I could do was sit there with a grimace of pain etched on my face (it’s finally starting to relax), and try to accomplish the near-impossible task of pushing against the G-forces while simultaneously trying to keep all possible exits from my body clamped tightly shut. At one point, I’m pretty sure I lost a partially digested breadstick through my right ear.

Eventually, the giant portable instrument of torture slowed to a stop, and the bar unlocked. I sat there and let Austin get out first. I’ll admit it, I was only pretending to be polite. I just couldn’t move. Austin jumped up and bounded out of the diabolical machine like it had never moved. It took a minute for me to even begin to be able to move. Finally, I mustered all the strength and determination I had left and climbed out, thanking God that the carny had stopped it when our car was over the platform. If it had been over the ground, I’d have never made it down without ending up flat on my face. As it was, my shoe came off, and it took me three tries to get it back on.

The carny came up and asked me if I was ok. “I’ve never seen someone in such a hurry to get off this thing that they walked out of their shoes,” he said. I tried to bluff my way through, muttering something about being fine, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t fooling anyone.

After that, I sicced Austin on the naive and good-natured Jess. Let her entertain the fearless, grandpa-killing little brute. I told her I’d take Sharon over to ride the kiddie train. As Jess and Austin went tra-la-la-ing on their way to the bumper cars, I slowly walked with Sharon over to the train. At this point, I was feeling nauseous, weak in the knees, and was soaked in flop-sweat. Not the usual flop-sweat that entertainers and comedians get when their act is dying, but the kind of flop-sweat you get when you’re in fear of actually flopping over dead. I was not a happy guy.

While we waited for the next train ride to start, Sharon started kind of dancing around. It wasn’t, as I had hoped, the I’m-so-happy excitement dance, but the dreaded pee-pee dance. Of course the only facilities nearby were Port-a-Johns. We had to wait for one of the handicapped ones to open up, because there’s no way we were going to both fit into a regular sized one without me knocking her into the hole. Finally one opened up, and in we went. Now I’ve had to use the bathroom in a lot of unpleasant circumstances, but even I balked at this. Sharon took one look at it, then looked at me and said, “Grandpa, I don’t have to potty.” She’s young, but she’s not stupid.

So back to the midway we went. Minutes later, of course, she’s doing the pee-pee dance again, so off we go, as fast as I could stagger, to try to find someplace where she could take care of business with a minimal risk of contamination. We finally found a clean bathroom in a building about a quarter mile away, where the goats, chickens, and rabbits were kept. Then, it was back to the midway to try to find Jess and Austin.

After searching high and low, all over the midway, we finally found them, about 20 feet from the entrance. Austin had talked Jess into several wild rides, so she was ready to turn him back over to me. That’s when he decided he wanted to ride the loop-de-loop roller coaster. That’s all it is, just a big loop. I said alright, and took him over so he could ride it.

While we’re standing in line, I tell him to have fun, and he says, “You’re coming with me aren’t you?” At this point, I abandoned all pretense at tough-guyness. I said, “Look kid, I’m old, I’m fat, I’m tired, I’ve already had one heart attack, and that last ride almost killed me. You’re on your own.”

Then he looks at me with those big, 12-year-old puppy dog eyes, filled with all the sadness of a child whose hero has fallen and says, “But I’m scared to ride it by myself.”

Well, shit. I’m not made of stone, dammit. Manipulative little jerk.

So a couple minutes later, I’m strapped into this mechanized instrument of death, telling myself, it’s okay, at least this one only goes two directions, forward and backward, and it has to stop before it can change directions. I’m telling Austin, “If I puke, I’m puking on you.”

And then, we were off. Once again, I quite enjoyed the first few seconds, but that quickly faded into a repeat of the “Sizzler” experience.

At last, I was right about something. It did stop to change directions. Repeatedly. At the top. Where we were hanging upside down.

I’ve heard a lot of people say, “Those things aren’t safe. Nothing that does that that gets put up in 30 minutes can be safe.” Those people are wrong. I know, because I spent the entire ride praying, “Please God, make it stop, or make it crash, or just take me now, but just please God, MAKE IT STOP!!!!!”

God must have been busy in the middle-east or something, because he was certainly taking no interest in my suffering at that moment. Eventually, the carny took pity on me, or time ran out, but finally it stopped. Once again, it took a few moments for me to collect myself before I could get down from it.

Even Austin had started to get worried about me. After it was all over, I heard him tell Jess, “I didn’t know someone’s head could turn that purple.” Then they laughed and laughed. Maybe he wasn’t all that worried after all.

The rest of the evening is just a blur of staggering from ride to ride, looking for a place to sit and sweat while the kids and Jess enjoyed the rides.

Frederick Nietzsche once said, “What does not kill us, only makes us stronger.”

I feel quite strongly that Herr Nietzsche was full of what I almost sprayed all over the midway. A more accurate saying, I believe, would be, “What does not kill us softens us up so that the next thing that comes along has a better chance.”

Clint Eastwood said, in one of his movies, “A man’s gotta know his limitations.” Never forget, loyal readers, those limitations are on a sliding scale, and slip lower as we get older.