Cheap Trix
Well, what I believed was yet another case of tonsilitis was infact, an upper-respiratory infect. I would have guessed that at the beginning if my lungs had burned every time in inhaled prior to Monday night. I just had a cough and insanely inflamated tonsils. My magickal reverse-dragon powers didn't begin until after I got to work.
My medication cost my nearly a hundred dollars. Surely it will work!
And it did work, for a while. I am indeed much better than I was. Plenty of hot tea, medication, and walking at the speed of a crippled old woman have improved my state of health substantially.
But I'm still as sick as I was Thursday afternoon. Thursday night I got pretty bad after taking out the boxes, garbages, and bar buckets. Rodney did offer to mop for me, but after I did everything else I figured I'd just finish the night.
My voice has returned, for the most part. So I'm trying to speak as little as possible. That's not working out very well. Everyone at work not only has something to tell me, but all sorts of questions to ask. Even Danielle, who never speaks, asked me stuff lastnight. To top it all off, Matt is covering for me on the stove while I work with Rhonda because Mrs. B. is very ill, again.
For those of you who have no idea about anything in my life; Rhonda and Matt talk constantly. Rhonda is worse, where as she'll talk when no one is there. She talks to herself, yes. But she'll will talk to empty space. Not just thinking outloud, or cursing when injured (she does these things).
Matt also loves to talk. He has an endless supply of stories and queries. Donna won't let me be either. Every chance she gets she needs to know how I'm doing. Am I o-k? Do I need help? Do I have a fever? Will I be all right to work? She seems convinced that I'm going to suddenly get a high-fever.
I guess that's understandable given that over the summer I seemed to have a fever or pooping/vomitting thing every other week and had to miss a lot of work. My medication, I am guessing, has been causing my some stomach ailments, but it's usually after I'm home. I did become sick to my stomach at work lastnight. But it was off and on, and eventaully went away.
Since I was on antibiotics Tuesday, it was been five days since I have had alcohol of any kind. So far, easier than quitting smoking... But I could really use a drink. This has overshaddowed the no meat thing, though. I'd rather have a beer than a steak. Rodney says that's not right, and it hints to me having an alcohol problem.
snickersnee \SNIK-er-snee\ noun
: a large knife
Example sentence:
"The Lord High Executioner in The Mikado is someone who couldn't bring himself to execute a fly with a newspaper let alone a fellow human being with a razor-sharp snickersnee." (Canberra Times, November 30, 2003)
Did you know?
Back when pirates were swashbuckling around the seven seas, someone who got into "steake or snye" was engaging in cut-and-thrust sword and dagger fighting. "Steake or snye," which came from a Dutch term meaning "to thrust or cut," was eventually modified into "snick or snee," but the meaning of the phrase remained the same. By around 1775, the phrase had been compressed into the single word "snickersnee," which was used both as a verb for the act of such fighting and as a noun naming the knife used in such clashes.
"When the clock strikes midnight, the calendar will turn from Fat Tuesday to Lent. At that point, we will each stare into the mirror and realize we have thirty days or so before spring - a month, roughly, to whip ourselves into shape, to return from the land of darkness and television, ice cream and chips, beers and pork rinds. We must prepare to burst forth into the land of water-skis, bikinis, and (if today is any indication) deep, deep navel caverns.
Maybe it's time to go on a diet, eh?
I have found that the best way to corner the conversation in any gathering of two or more is to mention that you've just tried a great new diet. The simple fact is that no matter what a person's weight happens to be, they think it's just too much. I'm sure that Mahatma Gandhi on more than one occasion glanced at the love handles under his robe and passed on the cheesecake.
Everyone thinks that they're too fat.
Before we get into the deep details of my new diet, I'd like to pass along a bit of knowledge from my grandmother. A friend of hers once refused a second bowl of pasta, explaining that she had to go on a diet - doctors orders. My grandmother, holding a wooden spatula, dripping with melted cheese, looked her friend in the face and said, “Oh. Well, why don't you eat something? You'll feel better about yourself.”
That woman just wanted what everyone wants. We all want to be able to take our shirt off, or put a swimsuit on, or just button a pair of last year's pants without the help of a winch. Most of all, we want someone, anyone, to tell us that we look good.
This time of year brings the fattening hoards to local gymnasiums, sporting goods stores, and the pill factories that disguise themselves as “nutrition centers”. And at the gym, we get that. They employ people to tell you that you look good and that you're making progress. They tell you to “feel the burn.” In the fitness field, these people are called “personal trainers”. In the real world, they're called “car salesmen”. They have the same people in clothing stores. They're the ones who stand around outside your fitting room and wait for your reemergence. And when you step out? They ask if you've ever modeled. “Yes,” I always tell them. “I have. I was in the porn industry. I have quite a package. It's very photogenic.” They usually scamper off at that point in the conversation.
It would be so much easier if we could all afford to have personal trainers and clothing salesmen follow us around all day to reaffirm that we are indeed, thin and beautiful. But we all can't afford that. The only people, it seems, who can afford to have people follow them around all day, acting as their entourage, telling them they look good, are good looking people.
The rest of us? We go on a diet, hoping that when we finally do take our shirts off, when we finally do put that swimsuit on, that no one runs, screaming into the distance. We hope to receive a compliment or two, to make us feel better. We hope that no one laughs.
The United States is the fattest country on record. We have more obese people than ever before. And for some reason, we're not very proud of that. And we should be, logically. More fat people means that we're doing better, monetarily, than any one else on the planet. You don't see a lot of obese third-worlders. But do we brag? Do we boast? Do we stuff our faces with cake and giggle like a bowl of Jello? No! We get guilty and go on a diet.
And let's not kid ourselves. We don't care about our hearts. We don't care about our lungs. Oh, I'm sure some people, people whose doctors gave them the “if you eat one more doughnut you're going to drop dead” speech, are dieting for health - someone whose cholesterol would win the American League Batting Title. But the rest of us? The rest of us diet for one reason and one reason only.
We want someone, anyone, to tell us we look good. No matter what the mirror tells us. The mirror may say that we're the fairest in the land, but the mirror lies. Our friends, however, are ruthless.
Let's face facts. Me talking about diets is like me dolling out advice about menstrual cramps. No matter how many times I say to the women in my life, “Aaah, just walk it off”, it just doesn't have the same impact as a person who has actually experienced them. But with that warning, let me give you some dieting advice.
Eat a little less. Exercise a little more.
I know. It's crazy. It's a wild idea. It's radical. And it may not be so easy at first. And some of you just won't be able to do it. Instead, you'll go the bookstore and try any number of great diets that are on the shelves:
“The All-Bran Diet”
“The Amazing Tapeworm Diet”
“Drink Other People's Liquids and Lose”
All of these are wonderful books and hopefully will provide you with the stimulation you need to change your current corpulent lifestyle. I have found in research, however, that most people do not actually read these books. They merely keep them around the house and occasionally press them firmly against their thighs and buttocks.
And so, might I offer an alternative? Would you like to hear about my new diet plan? Here it is. Step one. Turn your radio up. Step two. Pay attention to what I'm about to say.
You look really good. No, really. I mean it. Have you lost some weight? Have you ever done any modeling?
There. That's my new diet plan.
See? Dieting isn't that tough, is it?
And now, if you don't mind - pass the pork rinds. I've still got four more hours until Fat Tuesday is over, officially.
Quit biting your nails! And put those screws down as well!
When I was nineteen or so I moved into my first apartment. The guy who lived above me, in apartment 3-G, was named John, or, as he nearly immediately corrected me, “Big John”. It was a joke, you see, because John was very small. Big John told lots of jokes and before too long, we became good friends, sharing many adventures, some of which involved women, alcohol, or a combination of the two.
In any relationship, whether it's a love affair or adventures with the upstairs neighbor, there comes a time when that relationship can make the leap to the next plateau. This forward movement comes in three different forms: A ride to the airport, help with moving, or a pick up from the hospital following day surgery. You're not really a close friend until you've been asked to perform one of these tasks.
Big John knocked on my door one night, just after midnight, to ask. “Hey, man,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow morning?”
Sleeping, I thought.
“Thing is, I'm having a little outpatient surgery thing and they're going to pump me full of drugs and they don't want me to drive myself and so I thought maybe if you weren't doing anything, maybe you could pick me up. I can drive myself there and just leave my car.” John's car at the time was a '63 Plymouth Valiant mostly covered with indoor-outdoor carpeting, purchased for fifty dollars from a going-out-of-business carpet store out on the pike. I had never seen it run.
Sure, I replied. I'll take you.
Some of you (mostly women, I'm guessing) will, at this point in my story, ask a simple question. “What kind of surgery was he having?” It's a good question and one I would have asked him myself, had I been born a woman. There is, however, a fundamental difference between men and women when it comes to information. That fundamental difference is that men can do without it. Had Big John wanted me to know what kind of surgery he was having, he would have told me. I never thought to ask. That's how men are, even men who are nineteen. Once, when helping another friend install a set of headers, he mentioned he was getting a divorce. “Oh, yeah. I'm getting a divorce,” he said. I waited to see if he'd say more, which he did not, then replied, “Bummer. Pass the wrench.”
The next morning, I dropped Big John off at the big medical building on the other side of town, promising to return at two that afternoon to haul his drugged butt home. He, in turn, promised to push the doctor for more pain pills than needed. After all, there were more adventures ahead.
I returned, walked into the waiting area and took a seat among the other worried looking folks. “Can I help you?” the receptionist asked. I explained who I was there for and she asked that I take a seat. A few minutes later, a nurse appeared to explain that Big John would not be going home that day. As it turned out, he would be needing more than day patient surgery. She pointed me in the direction of his room.
Heavy lidded, he was sitting up in bed watching a soap opera, a tray of untouched hospital food sitting on the table in front of him. “Hey, man,” he said. “Turns out I've got some bezoars. Gonna be in here a couple of days. Could you feed my fish?”
He had no fish. Funny guy.
“Ever heard of that?” he asked, opening the invisible door in guy-to-guy conversation. It was my cue to find out what the heck was going on. Had he not asked if I'd ever heard of bezoars, I probably would have left and returned two days later, fish fed, no questions asked.
John had been having stomach problems. I already knew this, due to the fact that in his refrigerator, he kept mostly beer and Mylanta. He was always popping Tums. Call me Sherlock Holmes. The day surgery I shuttled him to that morning was just a look-see at his innards. Once they got the pictures back, Big John explained, they found some calcified stones in his stomach, undigested masses of metal called bezoars.
Metal? I wondered.
“I chew my nails,” said Big John.
I stood with the look of a dog watching television for a few minutes, wanting to break the guy's code of silence, but unable. Finally, he gave up the details. “When I'm nervous, I eat small bits of metal. Pennies, little bolts, sometimes a nail. It's called PICA. They've decided they're going to go in tomorrow and scrape some of the junk out.”
He chewed his nails. Funny guy.
“Bummer,” I said. “You gonna eat that Jell-o?”
He recovered well from the surgery. His treatment was nearly as odd as he. The doctor prescribed, of all things, mineral supplements. Iron pills. Some people, explained Big John, theorize that PICA is caused by a mineral deficiency.
Some people, I thought, eat pennies when they're bored.
Big John and I remained friends for a long time, sharing many adventures, some of which involved women, alcohol or a combination of the two. I never saw him eat any metal objects and wonder, now and again, whether that was the real reason for his trip to the hospital or just another of his fantastic stories. Whatever the case, I had decided after his confession about PICA that I would not abandon my friendship over fear that one day I would walk into my kitchen to find John nibbling on my only spoon. Truth be told, a true friend doesn't abandon someone after discovering their oddities.
And we were true friends.
After all, he had asked for a ride to the hospital.
Want to hear a hot new investment tip? Quit spending.
Because I want to be a good, scared American, I have been watching the news nearly nightly since nine-eleven. The upshot of this is that there has not been a period of time longer than two or three days when I have not been apprehensive, frightened and distrustful of nearly every other human being on the planet. If it's not al-Qaeda, it's the Democrats. If it's not them, it's the evil sneaky President and his sinister bird hunting cronies that are after me. The good news is that, if none of those groups are successful in their efforts to hurt me, there's always Arabs guarding our ports, allowing shipments of bird flu and snakehead fish into America.
I'm so proud to be scared and paranoid in the U.S.A.!
The bad part is that I now watch enough TV that I have now seen a number of commercials for the two main advertisers of news programming - drug makers and investment companies. In the past I have railed against the big pill companies for convincing most of us that we need to be on something, if not more than one “somethings”, to make us feel more normal. It couldn't be the fact that we're all watching TV every night, looking on as they report about hatred and violence and the thousands of pitfalls that could end our lives today.
Some side effects could include oily, bloody discharges. Erections of more than four hours are not normal.
Fun.
But not normal.
The other half of the dynamic duo of news advertisers is the investment industry, who, for some reason, think we have money to invest in the stock market. Where do they get this idea? It's been shown that most households in America average more than $8,000 in credit card debt alone. That's an average. Add to that a mortgage, car payment and ballooning drug habit and where, exactly, do the investment companies think we're going to get the money to invest in big business, even if we wanted to?
The good news is that even those who don't have the means to partake in the investment companies get-rich-quick schemes can still enjoy the commercials. I've never seen anything like them. They're highly entertaining. The latest trend in stock trading spots is a series whose main pitch is that you, the investor, can sometimes be smarter than they, the investment company. Why pay them for investing advice, the ads seem to say, when you can pay them to do it yourself, using their charts and graphs?
Think about that. Have you ever seen another industry make this concept work? “Hi, I'm Dave at Dave's Plumbing, reminding you that you're probably a better plumber than me, so why not fix that leak yourself? For a nominal fee, I'll let you use my wrenches.”
The gamble that investment companies are making is that you hate the people working there so much, you'll do nearly anything to avoid talking to them. It's not a bad idea, in theory. There's a reason so much car insurance is sold on line. It's because people don't want to talk to insurance salesmen.
The ads vary slightly but all contain the same basic concept: a middle-aged investor, noticing what he perceives to be a trend, runs to a computer and buys stock in the appropriate company. One is about a guy running in a marathon who notices plenty of other runners wearing the same brand of shoes. After bothering a number of heavy breathing death camp look-alikes for the name of those groovy shoes, our hero, the self-investor, sees a woman enjoying an outdoor lunch with her laptop computer. He veers off course, jogs over to her table, and panting, asks if he can use her computer for just a moment.
Good thing he doesn't look Middle Eastern.
Because this is not reality, she passes the laptop over to him as though it was the saltshaker. Because this is not reality, he can see the screen in the bright sunlight. Lastly, because this not reality, he looks up the shoe company and deciding in eight seconds that they are a good way to lock up his life savings, clicks a button and is richer. Another TV spot concerns a dad, who is asked by his pre-teen daughter for a loan of eighty dollars so she can buy the latest brand of jeans that “everybody” is wearing. He hands her the eighty bucks, then runs to his laptop to check out the jeans company. In eight seconds, his trading skill and huge brain determines that brand of jean to be the road to his financial security. Meanwhile, I imagine that his daughter immediately takes the eighty dollars and buys drugs from a former investment representative, who now works out of a van behind the mall. He lost his job selling stock because his company aired commercials touting Joe Average's ability to self-invest in big business.
To be brutally honest, I trust investment companies about as much as I trust politicians. The former tells me to trust my own judgment, when it's obvious with each passing day that I really don't know what I'm doing. The latter tells me to trust their judgment, when it's obvious with each passing day that they don't know what they're doing.
I guess it doesn't really matter, because, according to the TV news channels, any day now the Arabs running America's ports will allow bird flu to infect us all.
Hey...
Is there a small, up and coming young company with a snappy logo making a bird flu vaccine? Hey, lady. Could I borrow your laptop for a minute? I need to be rich. My daughter has a taste for eighty-dollar pants.
Geez. How do read this thing sitting out here, eating lunch in the sun? It looked so easy on TV.
Get in there and don't come out until you've laid an egg!
A woman from Ohio who stands accused of child endangerment defended her actions this week and demanded to once again receive custody of the kids, stating she imprisoned her eleven foster children only after they asked to be caged.
Mom? Dad? I know all the other kids have Gameboys, but what I'd really, really like is a chicken wire pen of my very own.
Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!
Sharon Gravelle of Norwalk, Ohio and her husband Michael will stand trial later this year for many child abuse accusations, the headline-grabber of which is that they supposedly locked some of their eleven foster children in chicken coop-like cages when they were bad. In the meantime, Huron County officials have taken custody of the kids and tossed them into yet another set of foster homes pending the trial. The Gravelles, who claim undying love of these children, are in court this week in an attempt to regain custody.
They just hate coming home to those empty cages.
Nearly everyone knows that you don't keep the kids in cages, even if they ask. You would think that would go without saying, but the obvious conclusion is that in today's world it does not. So, in case you missed it, let us repeat for all those who wish to emulate the fine traditions of the orphan homes portrayed in Little Orphan Annie, Oliver Twist and The Brady Bunch: cages are for veal and that wacky naked woman who paints herself like a tiger to protest the arrival of the circus. They're not for kids.
I'm sure there were times in my mother's life when she might have argued that point.
The train hopping incident.
The shoplifting incident.
The cow tipping incident.
You get the idea.
There must come a point in every parent's life when penning the rug rats appears to be a viable option. If you doubt me, take a walk into your local Wal-Mart on a Friday night. You won't travel too much past the ancient smiling underpaid greeter before you are witness to what the courts might classify as child endangerment. That's what they call it now. Back when I was a child, it was called getting a beating.
It's a tough thing for those of us who have no kids to witness, but I have noticed one thing about the Wal-Mart beatings - they immediately separate the viewing audience into two camps. The first half of the onlookers consist of people who are childless. They are shocked and amazed that no one is jumping in to snatch the poor youngster from his abusive parent, teetering between dialing 911 on their cell phone or jumping into the fray to rescue the poor abused toddler. “That poor child!” they think. “What has he done to deserve such punishment? Why doesn't someone help?”
The second group looking on consists of other parents. Witnessing the same situation, that of a screaming, caterwauling noncompliant ankle biter abusing its parent, they have a slightly different reaction. “Look at that poor woman !” they think. “What has she done to deserve such punishment? Why doesn't someone help the poor thing?”
The cagers from Ohio will meet a nasty fate. Yes, sometimes children's behavior is pretty darned childlike. And yes, sometimes a bit of punishment is needed. Whether that punishment is physical or emotional, it can be effective and long-lasting.
That still doesn't excuse you from locking your foster kids in cages.
Even if, as you claim, they ask.
I can't remember my parents hitting me, ever. This is because of one of two reasons. Either I was a perfectly behaved wonderment of a child, or they hit me so hard it caused amnesia. I'd like to remember it as being because I was perfect, although every once in a while I flinch for no reason after using a curse word at the dinner table.
“What?” my wife will ask. “God, you're weird.”
Mrs. Gravelle testified that before she and the husband built chicken coops for them, the children would sometimes wander around in the middle of night. "They just didn't seem normal to me, I mean the behavior didn't and I didn't know what to do," she said.
Their behavior did not seem normal.
They wandered, you see.
In the middle of the night.
Let's all take just a moment from our busy day and thank the heavens above that we did not end up with this twisted soul as our Momma. I can't testify for everyone in the listening audience, only for myself. Let me assure you that “He just didn't seem normal” was a mantra that could have been chanted every day of my parents' lives from the time I was old enough to talk until the day I moved from their house.
Never once did they lock me in a cage, even when I asked them to. For that, I thank you every day, Mr. and Mrs. Paulsen. You let me be an odd child and look what I've become.
An odd man.
A successful, semi-well-adjusted odd man, who for some reason is mortally frightened at the sight of a paddle-ball paddle and jumps when confronted by sections of Hot Wheels track. But honestly, I don't remember them ever hitting me.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to my cage. I always wanted one as a kid, but my parents never gave me what I wanted. No mini-bike. No pet monkey. No cage.
They were pretty mean, huh?"
My medication cost my nearly a hundred dollars. Surely it will work!
And it did work, for a while. I am indeed much better than I was. Plenty of hot tea, medication, and walking at the speed of a crippled old woman have improved my state of health substantially.
But I'm still as sick as I was Thursday afternoon. Thursday night I got pretty bad after taking out the boxes, garbages, and bar buckets. Rodney did offer to mop for me, but after I did everything else I figured I'd just finish the night.
My voice has returned, for the most part. So I'm trying to speak as little as possible. That's not working out very well. Everyone at work not only has something to tell me, but all sorts of questions to ask. Even Danielle, who never speaks, asked me stuff lastnight. To top it all off, Matt is covering for me on the stove while I work with Rhonda because Mrs. B. is very ill, again.
For those of you who have no idea about anything in my life; Rhonda and Matt talk constantly. Rhonda is worse, where as she'll talk when no one is there. She talks to herself, yes. But she'll will talk to empty space. Not just thinking outloud, or cursing when injured (she does these things).
Matt also loves to talk. He has an endless supply of stories and queries. Donna won't let me be either. Every chance she gets she needs to know how I'm doing. Am I o-k? Do I need help? Do I have a fever? Will I be all right to work? She seems convinced that I'm going to suddenly get a high-fever.
I guess that's understandable given that over the summer I seemed to have a fever or pooping/vomitting thing every other week and had to miss a lot of work. My medication, I am guessing, has been causing my some stomach ailments, but it's usually after I'm home. I did become sick to my stomach at work lastnight. But it was off and on, and eventaully went away.
Since I was on antibiotics Tuesday, it was been five days since I have had alcohol of any kind. So far, easier than quitting smoking... But I could really use a drink. This has overshaddowed the no meat thing, though. I'd rather have a beer than a steak. Rodney says that's not right, and it hints to me having an alcohol problem.
snickersnee \SNIK-er-snee\ noun
: a large knife
Example sentence:
"The Lord High Executioner in The Mikado is someone who couldn't bring himself to execute a fly with a newspaper let alone a fellow human being with a razor-sharp snickersnee." (Canberra Times, November 30, 2003)
Did you know?
Back when pirates were swashbuckling around the seven seas, someone who got into "steake or snye" was engaging in cut-and-thrust sword and dagger fighting. "Steake or snye," which came from a Dutch term meaning "to thrust or cut," was eventually modified into "snick or snee," but the meaning of the phrase remained the same. By around 1775, the phrase had been compressed into the single word "snickersnee," which was used both as a verb for the act of such fighting and as a noun naming the knife used in such clashes.
"When the clock strikes midnight, the calendar will turn from Fat Tuesday to Lent. At that point, we will each stare into the mirror and realize we have thirty days or so before spring - a month, roughly, to whip ourselves into shape, to return from the land of darkness and television, ice cream and chips, beers and pork rinds. We must prepare to burst forth into the land of water-skis, bikinis, and (if today is any indication) deep, deep navel caverns.
Maybe it's time to go on a diet, eh?
I have found that the best way to corner the conversation in any gathering of two or more is to mention that you've just tried a great new diet. The simple fact is that no matter what a person's weight happens to be, they think it's just too much. I'm sure that Mahatma Gandhi on more than one occasion glanced at the love handles under his robe and passed on the cheesecake.
Everyone thinks that they're too fat.
Before we get into the deep details of my new diet, I'd like to pass along a bit of knowledge from my grandmother. A friend of hers once refused a second bowl of pasta, explaining that she had to go on a diet - doctors orders. My grandmother, holding a wooden spatula, dripping with melted cheese, looked her friend in the face and said, “Oh. Well, why don't you eat something? You'll feel better about yourself.”
That woman just wanted what everyone wants. We all want to be able to take our shirt off, or put a swimsuit on, or just button a pair of last year's pants without the help of a winch. Most of all, we want someone, anyone, to tell us that we look good.
This time of year brings the fattening hoards to local gymnasiums, sporting goods stores, and the pill factories that disguise themselves as “nutrition centers”. And at the gym, we get that. They employ people to tell you that you look good and that you're making progress. They tell you to “feel the burn.” In the fitness field, these people are called “personal trainers”. In the real world, they're called “car salesmen”. They have the same people in clothing stores. They're the ones who stand around outside your fitting room and wait for your reemergence. And when you step out? They ask if you've ever modeled. “Yes,” I always tell them. “I have. I was in the porn industry. I have quite a package. It's very photogenic.” They usually scamper off at that point in the conversation.
It would be so much easier if we could all afford to have personal trainers and clothing salesmen follow us around all day to reaffirm that we are indeed, thin and beautiful. But we all can't afford that. The only people, it seems, who can afford to have people follow them around all day, acting as their entourage, telling them they look good, are good looking people.
The rest of us? We go on a diet, hoping that when we finally do take our shirts off, when we finally do put that swimsuit on, that no one runs, screaming into the distance. We hope to receive a compliment or two, to make us feel better. We hope that no one laughs.
The United States is the fattest country on record. We have more obese people than ever before. And for some reason, we're not very proud of that. And we should be, logically. More fat people means that we're doing better, monetarily, than any one else on the planet. You don't see a lot of obese third-worlders. But do we brag? Do we boast? Do we stuff our faces with cake and giggle like a bowl of Jello? No! We get guilty and go on a diet.
And let's not kid ourselves. We don't care about our hearts. We don't care about our lungs. Oh, I'm sure some people, people whose doctors gave them the “if you eat one more doughnut you're going to drop dead” speech, are dieting for health - someone whose cholesterol would win the American League Batting Title. But the rest of us? The rest of us diet for one reason and one reason only.
We want someone, anyone, to tell us we look good. No matter what the mirror tells us. The mirror may say that we're the fairest in the land, but the mirror lies. Our friends, however, are ruthless.
Let's face facts. Me talking about diets is like me dolling out advice about menstrual cramps. No matter how many times I say to the women in my life, “Aaah, just walk it off”, it just doesn't have the same impact as a person who has actually experienced them. But with that warning, let me give you some dieting advice.
Eat a little less. Exercise a little more.
I know. It's crazy. It's a wild idea. It's radical. And it may not be so easy at first. And some of you just won't be able to do it. Instead, you'll go the bookstore and try any number of great diets that are on the shelves:
“The All-Bran Diet”
“The Amazing Tapeworm Diet”
“Drink Other People's Liquids and Lose”
All of these are wonderful books and hopefully will provide you with the stimulation you need to change your current corpulent lifestyle. I have found in research, however, that most people do not actually read these books. They merely keep them around the house and occasionally press them firmly against their thighs and buttocks.
And so, might I offer an alternative? Would you like to hear about my new diet plan? Here it is. Step one. Turn your radio up. Step two. Pay attention to what I'm about to say.
You look really good. No, really. I mean it. Have you lost some weight? Have you ever done any modeling?
There. That's my new diet plan.
See? Dieting isn't that tough, is it?
And now, if you don't mind - pass the pork rinds. I've still got four more hours until Fat Tuesday is over, officially.
Quit biting your nails! And put those screws down as well!
When I was nineteen or so I moved into my first apartment. The guy who lived above me, in apartment 3-G, was named John, or, as he nearly immediately corrected me, “Big John”. It was a joke, you see, because John was very small. Big John told lots of jokes and before too long, we became good friends, sharing many adventures, some of which involved women, alcohol, or a combination of the two.
In any relationship, whether it's a love affair or adventures with the upstairs neighbor, there comes a time when that relationship can make the leap to the next plateau. This forward movement comes in three different forms: A ride to the airport, help with moving, or a pick up from the hospital following day surgery. You're not really a close friend until you've been asked to perform one of these tasks.
Big John knocked on my door one night, just after midnight, to ask. “Hey, man,” he said. “What are you doing tomorrow morning?”
Sleeping, I thought.
“Thing is, I'm having a little outpatient surgery thing and they're going to pump me full of drugs and they don't want me to drive myself and so I thought maybe if you weren't doing anything, maybe you could pick me up. I can drive myself there and just leave my car.” John's car at the time was a '63 Plymouth Valiant mostly covered with indoor-outdoor carpeting, purchased for fifty dollars from a going-out-of-business carpet store out on the pike. I had never seen it run.
Sure, I replied. I'll take you.
Some of you (mostly women, I'm guessing) will, at this point in my story, ask a simple question. “What kind of surgery was he having?” It's a good question and one I would have asked him myself, had I been born a woman. There is, however, a fundamental difference between men and women when it comes to information. That fundamental difference is that men can do without it. Had Big John wanted me to know what kind of surgery he was having, he would have told me. I never thought to ask. That's how men are, even men who are nineteen. Once, when helping another friend install a set of headers, he mentioned he was getting a divorce. “Oh, yeah. I'm getting a divorce,” he said. I waited to see if he'd say more, which he did not, then replied, “Bummer. Pass the wrench.”
The next morning, I dropped Big John off at the big medical building on the other side of town, promising to return at two that afternoon to haul his drugged butt home. He, in turn, promised to push the doctor for more pain pills than needed. After all, there were more adventures ahead.
I returned, walked into the waiting area and took a seat among the other worried looking folks. “Can I help you?” the receptionist asked. I explained who I was there for and she asked that I take a seat. A few minutes later, a nurse appeared to explain that Big John would not be going home that day. As it turned out, he would be needing more than day patient surgery. She pointed me in the direction of his room.
Heavy lidded, he was sitting up in bed watching a soap opera, a tray of untouched hospital food sitting on the table in front of him. “Hey, man,” he said. “Turns out I've got some bezoars. Gonna be in here a couple of days. Could you feed my fish?”
He had no fish. Funny guy.
“Ever heard of that?” he asked, opening the invisible door in guy-to-guy conversation. It was my cue to find out what the heck was going on. Had he not asked if I'd ever heard of bezoars, I probably would have left and returned two days later, fish fed, no questions asked.
John had been having stomach problems. I already knew this, due to the fact that in his refrigerator, he kept mostly beer and Mylanta. He was always popping Tums. Call me Sherlock Holmes. The day surgery I shuttled him to that morning was just a look-see at his innards. Once they got the pictures back, Big John explained, they found some calcified stones in his stomach, undigested masses of metal called bezoars.
Metal? I wondered.
“I chew my nails,” said Big John.
I stood with the look of a dog watching television for a few minutes, wanting to break the guy's code of silence, but unable. Finally, he gave up the details. “When I'm nervous, I eat small bits of metal. Pennies, little bolts, sometimes a nail. It's called PICA. They've decided they're going to go in tomorrow and scrape some of the junk out.”
He chewed his nails. Funny guy.
“Bummer,” I said. “You gonna eat that Jell-o?”
He recovered well from the surgery. His treatment was nearly as odd as he. The doctor prescribed, of all things, mineral supplements. Iron pills. Some people, explained Big John, theorize that PICA is caused by a mineral deficiency.
Some people, I thought, eat pennies when they're bored.
Big John and I remained friends for a long time, sharing many adventures, some of which involved women, alcohol or a combination of the two. I never saw him eat any metal objects and wonder, now and again, whether that was the real reason for his trip to the hospital or just another of his fantastic stories. Whatever the case, I had decided after his confession about PICA that I would not abandon my friendship over fear that one day I would walk into my kitchen to find John nibbling on my only spoon. Truth be told, a true friend doesn't abandon someone after discovering their oddities.
And we were true friends.
After all, he had asked for a ride to the hospital.
Want to hear a hot new investment tip? Quit spending.
Because I want to be a good, scared American, I have been watching the news nearly nightly since nine-eleven. The upshot of this is that there has not been a period of time longer than two or three days when I have not been apprehensive, frightened and distrustful of nearly every other human being on the planet. If it's not al-Qaeda, it's the Democrats. If it's not them, it's the evil sneaky President and his sinister bird hunting cronies that are after me. The good news is that, if none of those groups are successful in their efforts to hurt me, there's always Arabs guarding our ports, allowing shipments of bird flu and snakehead fish into America.
I'm so proud to be scared and paranoid in the U.S.A.!
The bad part is that I now watch enough TV that I have now seen a number of commercials for the two main advertisers of news programming - drug makers and investment companies. In the past I have railed against the big pill companies for convincing most of us that we need to be on something, if not more than one “somethings”, to make us feel more normal. It couldn't be the fact that we're all watching TV every night, looking on as they report about hatred and violence and the thousands of pitfalls that could end our lives today.
Some side effects could include oily, bloody discharges. Erections of more than four hours are not normal.
Fun.
But not normal.
The other half of the dynamic duo of news advertisers is the investment industry, who, for some reason, think we have money to invest in the stock market. Where do they get this idea? It's been shown that most households in America average more than $8,000 in credit card debt alone. That's an average. Add to that a mortgage, car payment and ballooning drug habit and where, exactly, do the investment companies think we're going to get the money to invest in big business, even if we wanted to?
The good news is that even those who don't have the means to partake in the investment companies get-rich-quick schemes can still enjoy the commercials. I've never seen anything like them. They're highly entertaining. The latest trend in stock trading spots is a series whose main pitch is that you, the investor, can sometimes be smarter than they, the investment company. Why pay them for investing advice, the ads seem to say, when you can pay them to do it yourself, using their charts and graphs?
Think about that. Have you ever seen another industry make this concept work? “Hi, I'm Dave at Dave's Plumbing, reminding you that you're probably a better plumber than me, so why not fix that leak yourself? For a nominal fee, I'll let you use my wrenches.”
The gamble that investment companies are making is that you hate the people working there so much, you'll do nearly anything to avoid talking to them. It's not a bad idea, in theory. There's a reason so much car insurance is sold on line. It's because people don't want to talk to insurance salesmen.
The ads vary slightly but all contain the same basic concept: a middle-aged investor, noticing what he perceives to be a trend, runs to a computer and buys stock in the appropriate company. One is about a guy running in a marathon who notices plenty of other runners wearing the same brand of shoes. After bothering a number of heavy breathing death camp look-alikes for the name of those groovy shoes, our hero, the self-investor, sees a woman enjoying an outdoor lunch with her laptop computer. He veers off course, jogs over to her table, and panting, asks if he can use her computer for just a moment.
Good thing he doesn't look Middle Eastern.
Because this is not reality, she passes the laptop over to him as though it was the saltshaker. Because this is not reality, he can see the screen in the bright sunlight. Lastly, because this not reality, he looks up the shoe company and deciding in eight seconds that they are a good way to lock up his life savings, clicks a button and is richer. Another TV spot concerns a dad, who is asked by his pre-teen daughter for a loan of eighty dollars so she can buy the latest brand of jeans that “everybody” is wearing. He hands her the eighty bucks, then runs to his laptop to check out the jeans company. In eight seconds, his trading skill and huge brain determines that brand of jean to be the road to his financial security. Meanwhile, I imagine that his daughter immediately takes the eighty dollars and buys drugs from a former investment representative, who now works out of a van behind the mall. He lost his job selling stock because his company aired commercials touting Joe Average's ability to self-invest in big business.
To be brutally honest, I trust investment companies about as much as I trust politicians. The former tells me to trust my own judgment, when it's obvious with each passing day that I really don't know what I'm doing. The latter tells me to trust their judgment, when it's obvious with each passing day that they don't know what they're doing.
I guess it doesn't really matter, because, according to the TV news channels, any day now the Arabs running America's ports will allow bird flu to infect us all.
Hey...
Is there a small, up and coming young company with a snappy logo making a bird flu vaccine? Hey, lady. Could I borrow your laptop for a minute? I need to be rich. My daughter has a taste for eighty-dollar pants.
Geez. How do read this thing sitting out here, eating lunch in the sun? It looked so easy on TV.
Get in there and don't come out until you've laid an egg!
A woman from Ohio who stands accused of child endangerment defended her actions this week and demanded to once again receive custody of the kids, stating she imprisoned her eleven foster children only after they asked to be caged.
Mom? Dad? I know all the other kids have Gameboys, but what I'd really, really like is a chicken wire pen of my very own.
Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease!
Sharon Gravelle of Norwalk, Ohio and her husband Michael will stand trial later this year for many child abuse accusations, the headline-grabber of which is that they supposedly locked some of their eleven foster children in chicken coop-like cages when they were bad. In the meantime, Huron County officials have taken custody of the kids and tossed them into yet another set of foster homes pending the trial. The Gravelles, who claim undying love of these children, are in court this week in an attempt to regain custody.
They just hate coming home to those empty cages.
Nearly everyone knows that you don't keep the kids in cages, even if they ask. You would think that would go without saying, but the obvious conclusion is that in today's world it does not. So, in case you missed it, let us repeat for all those who wish to emulate the fine traditions of the orphan homes portrayed in Little Orphan Annie, Oliver Twist and The Brady Bunch: cages are for veal and that wacky naked woman who paints herself like a tiger to protest the arrival of the circus. They're not for kids.
I'm sure there were times in my mother's life when she might have argued that point.
The train hopping incident.
The shoplifting incident.
The cow tipping incident.
You get the idea.
There must come a point in every parent's life when penning the rug rats appears to be a viable option. If you doubt me, take a walk into your local Wal-Mart on a Friday night. You won't travel too much past the ancient smiling underpaid greeter before you are witness to what the courts might classify as child endangerment. That's what they call it now. Back when I was a child, it was called getting a beating.
It's a tough thing for those of us who have no kids to witness, but I have noticed one thing about the Wal-Mart beatings - they immediately separate the viewing audience into two camps. The first half of the onlookers consist of people who are childless. They are shocked and amazed that no one is jumping in to snatch the poor youngster from his abusive parent, teetering between dialing 911 on their cell phone or jumping into the fray to rescue the poor abused toddler. “That poor child!” they think. “What has he done to deserve such punishment? Why doesn't someone help?”
The second group looking on consists of other parents. Witnessing the same situation, that of a screaming, caterwauling noncompliant ankle biter abusing its parent, they have a slightly different reaction. “Look at that poor woman !” they think. “What has she done to deserve such punishment? Why doesn't someone help the poor thing?”
The cagers from Ohio will meet a nasty fate. Yes, sometimes children's behavior is pretty darned childlike. And yes, sometimes a bit of punishment is needed. Whether that punishment is physical or emotional, it can be effective and long-lasting.
That still doesn't excuse you from locking your foster kids in cages.
Even if, as you claim, they ask.
I can't remember my parents hitting me, ever. This is because of one of two reasons. Either I was a perfectly behaved wonderment of a child, or they hit me so hard it caused amnesia. I'd like to remember it as being because I was perfect, although every once in a while I flinch for no reason after using a curse word at the dinner table.
“What?” my wife will ask. “God, you're weird.”
Mrs. Gravelle testified that before she and the husband built chicken coops for them, the children would sometimes wander around in the middle of night. "They just didn't seem normal to me, I mean the behavior didn't and I didn't know what to do," she said.
Their behavior did not seem normal.
They wandered, you see.
In the middle of the night.
Let's all take just a moment from our busy day and thank the heavens above that we did not end up with this twisted soul as our Momma. I can't testify for everyone in the listening audience, only for myself. Let me assure you that “He just didn't seem normal” was a mantra that could have been chanted every day of my parents' lives from the time I was old enough to talk until the day I moved from their house.
Never once did they lock me in a cage, even when I asked them to. For that, I thank you every day, Mr. and Mrs. Paulsen. You let me be an odd child and look what I've become.
An odd man.
A successful, semi-well-adjusted odd man, who for some reason is mortally frightened at the sight of a paddle-ball paddle and jumps when confronted by sections of Hot Wheels track. But honestly, I don't remember them ever hitting me.
And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go back to my cage. I always wanted one as a kid, but my parents never gave me what I wanted. No mini-bike. No pet monkey. No cage.
They were pretty mean, huh?"