Which Came First

These are indeed tense times, and I hesitate to raise this subject right now, but it’s been weighing heavy on me and I must get it off my chest.  I’ve been watching a bunch of You Tube episodes of The Jetsons.  Whatever your political or philosophical affiliation, you simply have to admit that Scooby Doo was totally an Astro rip-off.  That said, since on the show (set in 2062) Astro exists 100 years AFTER Scooby Doo, it could be argued that Astro was in fact a rip-off of Scooby Doo.  I am frankly surprised that Hanna-Barbera didn’t get more heat over this glaring and obvious comparison back when Scooby Doo debuted.  Anyway, since there’s no winning this debate, and in the interest of harmony, let’s just agree to disagree. 

Toilets and Covid-19

I am not sure that this is exactly or necessarily related directly to the worldwide Covid-19 pandemic, but I think I may be on to something here.  I have heard that there are parts of the world where toilets drain in a different direction than they do here in America.  I mean, they still drain downward, but they swirl differently, like clockwise or whatever.  I’m actually not really sure which direction my toilet drains in, which is kind of strange because I ALWAYs watch, but I think that it would be just horrible to all of the sudden have it drain in the opposite direction.  My point is that this could have happened already, like in the middle of the night, without anyone checking.  How would we know?  Now, I’m not a conspiracy guy looking to make trouble, and I don’t plan to mention this to the CDC or WHO, but I’d like some answers.   Maybe some of you kids could set up one of your Zooms or whatever and discuss it.  I have no idea how that works, but I’m available for a swab if you need one.

Naming It

Naming a pet is a big decision and hard, because it’s such a commitment.  If you’re going to be calling to the pet a thousand times a day, you want the name to be something that rolls off the tongue and is cool, or maybe one that other people will think is cool when they hear it and therefore think you are cool.  Except for when the pet is a gerbil or a fish or a hermit clam or something.  Then you can name him something lame because you’ll probably only call to him to say things like, “Oh, shit, Boinky, we forgot to leave food for you last month when we went on vacation!”   

The Wish Book

 

When I was a kid, my mom told me stories about growing up on a small farm.  She told me that when she was young, her family had an outhouse behind their residence.  She told me that winters really sucked.  She told me that they had the Sears “Wish Book” catalog in the outhouse to use as toilet paper.  The anecdote was relevant to me then only because Sears still sent out the 300-plus page wish book (Montgomery Ward did, too) as a pre-interweb marketing tool.   I freakin loved looking through the wish book and dreaming about all the stuff I’d put on my Christmas list, but the thought of wiping my butt with its pages seemed primitive and disgusting, even in the 1960s.  Anyway, she said that back then when she was in the outhouse (it was a one-holer, she said, but some wealthier neighbors had two-holers, which to me now doesn’t seem like it’d better than a one-holer, I mean, do you sit next to each other and compare notes, or what?  Just saying..) she would tear a page out of the wish book when it was time, and she’d rub it in her hands until it  was warmer and softer and less crinkly and then she’d, well, you know. 

So, I only tell you this tale in order to say I bet my mom would laugh her ass off at people today fighting at Walmart over toilet paper, even during a pandemic, or whatever.

The Elbow

The elbow wasn’t designed to be sneezed into or “bumped” as a greeting.  It was meant to lean on and to nudge, and as a pointy thing to push through crowds and sometimes for “elbow grease”, which you hardly hear about anymore but was once a thing.  Any other uses are man-made stressors.  Proceed at your own peril.

What The Kids Are Saying

I’m trying to stay current with the language the kids are using.  So, I like to say, “I’m an OG at dealin’ with all of my original plans and dreams and hopes fallin’ to shit, yo.”  I think the ”G” stands for “gangsta”, which is totally me, and I think that “yo” in this case is referring to you, or whoever I’m speaking to in the moment, if I understand it correctly, which is funny because “yo” means “I” in Spanish, but whatever.  If I’m wrong, I accept that, which would be just another in a chain of failures which I’ll deal with, as the OG I am, yo.

Grandpa and the Toboggan

 

 

I feel like my grandfather only said about 53 words directly to me the whole time I knew him, but I always knew for certain that he loved me so much.  One perfect winter/Christmas memory of him is from when I was about 7 years old, and visiting my grandparents, who lived nearby.  Typically, when I visited my grandparents, I, being an only child, would happily occupy myself on their property in the country in Lake George, New York.  I was a suburban kid, so their “spread” seemed exciting and endless to me, and I could always find fun ways to pass the days. 

This memory had me crashing down their sloping yard on a toboggan.  I kind of remember that the hill in their yard was huge, but I also know that it wasn’t.  Anyway, I remember sliding recklessly fast down the tremendous hill (actually, slowly, and the hill wasn’t tremendous by any calculation) over and over and over, and the horrendous trudging climb back up the hill each time (really neither horrendous nor trudging, I was 7). 

After what seemed like thousands of trips up and down the hill (really, probably 5 trips) I landed at the bottom, and my grandfather pulled into the driveway in his big green truck.  I was always glad to see grandpa, but I had no idea why he was home; I was always lost in time in the country.  He smiled as he walked over to me and said, “ready?”.   When I was 7, I never EVER knew what people meant when they said, “ready?” or pretty much when anyone especially grownups asked me anything. 

So, I said, “yup”.   With that, grandpa grabbed the thick rope on the toboggan and started to run, pulling me down the driveway and onto Middle Road, the country lane that bordered his property.  For a surreal few seconds, gramps trotted ahead of me on the toboggan as I clung-on in utter disbelief.  In my mind, at the time, my grandfather was ancient, and I was amazed that he could run at all, and I was a little concerned that he would drop dead in front of me, although that concern was conflicted by an intense desire to see how far he could take me.   Any concern I had for grandpa confirms what a stupid kid I was; a conclusion to which my readers have probably long since arrived.  In reality, he was then probably only in his early 60s, not far beyond my age now, and he probably felt (and was) virile as ever (as I do and am).   

Anyway, at last, pooped or maybe just hungry for lunch, grandpa pulled me back up into the driveway and walked into the house, without saying another word.  I sat on the toboggan in the driveway, stupefied in the silence of the country, and smiling widely.  I wasn’t sure that the hell had just happened, but I sure knew where I stood with gramps.

France for the Holidays!

If you were going to France for the holidays and one of your kids was just being a total shit and you “accidently” forgot to bring him, but it was totally confusing when you left because you overslept that morning and your stupid niece screwed up counting the kids or whatever, and then you suddenly realized you forgot him after your plane took off, would there be any legal issues, or would you have a solid case?  I mean, we called home when we got there and everything, but the police were kinda like, “sure, okay” or whatever, which seemed kind of like strange to us.

Asking for a friend.

Life Saving Information

When I see a scientist from Europe on a documentary talking about some new discovery based on decades of research that I should put into place immediately to save my life, but the details are all presented in metric measurements, I figure, “Oh well, no way I can extrapolate this shit.  Guess I’ll carry on with my normal sketchy lifestyle and just hope for the best.”

You Want To See My What?

Whether you consider it pretentious or not, on job applications “CV” is sometimes a replacement for the word resume.  CV in this case stands for Curriculum Vitae, which is Latin for “course of one’s life”.  CV is also an abbreviation for cardiovascular.  If an employer asks you for your CV, you may want to clarify whether he wants your resume, or the account of the "course of your life”, which let’s face it, could be messy, or your cardiovascular record.  Posting for a friend (me).

Blame The Pilgrims

Really cool Halloween decorations looks so lame November first, but people leave them up because there are really no good Thanksgiving decorations.  People put up corn stalks and Indian corn and cornucopia displays at the end of September, but it’s mostly because it’s too early for skeletons and zombies; it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving and feels desperate, then.  And so then the world is decorated orange and yellow and brown for a few months, with funny turkey pictures slipped in in mid-November but it’s just seemingly pointless, meaningless.  I know that this will be controversial, but I blame the Pilgrims.  I know that public relations were not a primary consideration back then, but what were they thinking with the big buckles and stupid hats and knickers and big-ass barreled blunderbusses?  They created the least sexy image for anyone to recreate with decorations.  And to be honest, they mostly did without, and sacrificed, and froze and starved, even though the native Americans showed them really good ways to not freeze and starve.  So now here we are, like five hundred years later or whatever, and how can you decorate your house with freakin’ starved and frozen Pilgrims (except by maybe leaving the skeletons up)?  So anyway, yeah, when you’re tired of the corn (which the Pilgrims also stole from the Indians) decorations, go ahead and put up your Christmas trees and lights.  What the hell, I give up.  Happy Thanksgiving and No ‘el, everyone.

Sir What?

I heard a guy excitedly refer to a steak he bought as a “sirLOIN”.  By his putting the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble (and thus making the name of the cut of meat sound comically regal as a bonus), I couldn’t be sure whether he was an idiot or pretentious or both. 

Greetings from Awkwardville

Them:     Hi.

Me:        Hi, how are you?

Them:    Good, how are you?

Me:    Good, how are you?

Me to Myself:  WalkawayNOW! WalkawayNOW! WalkawayNOW!!

Sage Advice From Long Ago

I want to share some sage advice I was given long ago: 

Never turn down the offer of a breath mint, and never accept the offer of a milk dud from a man with a monkey.

Team Building 101, Chapter 3

 

Business Training Elementals (Adirondack Books, 2018)


Team Building 101, Chapter 3, Section 3:   It is a big camaraderie boost when your team agrees unequivocally that a person needs to die.  The bond will grow exponentially after the event. 
   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dietary Suggestions

So I know that we only have like 12 years left or whatever, and we need to be stewards of the planet so we have to get this shit rolling and all that.  I reuse plastic whenever I can (using Walmart bags for my garbage), and I mostly gave up smoking cigars (except for celebrations……) because I got sick of the freakin pusses everyone gave me, and also to save the earth, for sure.  But one thing really has me bugged, and that’s all this talk about how red meat is killing the ozone.  They say everyone should be vegan, which I’m totally ok with for the most part, but with it I need a meat side dish; just give me like a little roast beef au jus or pork whatchamacallit and we’re good.  Alternative protein sources are bullshit.  Beans and I have a love hate relationship, and I know some of you will want to talk about lentils but, save it.  Nobody but PETA seems to care, but I’m ok living without chickens because they are nasty.  And please don’t tell me that seafood is my reasonable alternate meat resource.   I like salmon (with steak), but let’s not go crazy; we know what fish do in that water.    And I’m not sure what the ultimate plan is with a reduction in red meat consumption.  Will cows as a species be killed off?  And is the reason so that we can avoid cow farts?  I hope not, because cow farts are just about the funniest of all farts (they have five stomachs, comon, now!) and I mean no offense to anyone else out there who thinks they fart funnier.

Follow My Journey

Some of my readers are aware that I’ve been following a standard low carb eating plan combined with intermittent fasting, European invasive/toxic-sprouts, and self-delusion for the past few months.  Thanks to a totally enthusiastic and sporadic (that part isn’t technically adherent to the  intermittent part of this and doesn’t include “free Tuesdays and Thursdays") attention to this plan, I lost 50 pounds the first month and then gained 60 pounds the second month and then lost 50 pounds the third month and then gained it back.  I also incorporated the “Pepper System”, whereby I dump red pepper on all of my food prior to eating as a taste deterrent.  But it turns out I REALLY like red pepper, so I’m now also trying to wean off red pepper, AND lose the additional 18 pounds I gained eating peppery foods.

For my newer readers, with this plan, the net result is the primary focus, so please consider that as you follow my journey.  For you naysayers, I’m also doing a shit ton of modified pushups when I think of it, and parking my car far from the supermarket for extra walking (unless I’m doing that call- ahead, pick it up thing, which is so freakin great, just sayin, obviously) for extra calorie expenditure.   

The most important result so far is that I FEEL GREAT when resting (so wtf do you have to say about that, Doctor Lab guy?).  I know that reaching my goal will take time, and that until then I need to be kind to ME.  This is a journey, not a destination, and while there’s a better than decent probability that I’ll never reach my goal, acceptance of that almost certain failure is a gift I give myself.  Follow me for more.

Managing Your People (chapter 2)

In business, I think it’s important to set the tone early in the day.  For example, each morning you should greet your staff with a hearty (and if possible, maniacal,) “Good Morning!”, accompanied by an aggressive “air quotes” gesture.

How Do You Say It?

Probably no one has figured out how to translate the language of squirrels, so I can't prove this, but I bet they have at least 31 different ways to say "nuts".

What It Means

As a semi professional sociologist and linguist, I feel confident to state that the meaning of the expression, “oh, balls” (or a variation thereof)  is dependent upon the gender of the person making the comment.