What Day Is It? Say That Again! It's WHAT?! What Kind of Calander Do YOU Have?!
Before I just chuck out some filler I may want to read over in a few years, I have something to say that's been bugging me lately.
I think back to the days where Paul and I would have Movie Night. A Joyous event filled with me smoking more than a reasonable amount, and drinking more than a reasonable amount, and then at the end of the 6 or so hours of movies (until it's twilight year) Paul and I just bullshitting, or working on RP stuff, or reading the dictionary for shits and giggles.
During it's last few months of existing, I started to enjoy it less. I blamed that on several reasons. One being that I just grow sick of things eventually. I also blamed it on the fact that I worked full time, and half the fun of Movie Night was getting the movies, and getting snacks, and being horrified by Paul's Father. Or goading him into horrifying Paul.
Also, it was getting to the point that Movie Night was the only time I got to spend any real amount of time with Paul. It felt like we should be doing something more than sitting in front of a TV.
Now I watch movies nearly every night at home. It doesn't seem wastful to me because it's only one movie a night, and I still do some things before and after the movie (usually).
Now, what little time I spend at Paul's house is used for D&Ding. Which I (stll) very much enjoy. Usually. I am, for the most part, very much enjoying Green's campaign. And I always look forward to seeing what happens next in his Story Line.
But, as is usually the case with DMs, Green does run out of stuff he has prearranged. And too many random encounters will give us more XP than he's prepared for us to have. I understand that (to an extent), but it's still frustrating.
*shrug*
That's just a personal problem I need to deal with. I'm not using this post to bitch about Green.
The bitch that I have is that I don't really like watching movies at Paul's house.
At times, like with the "Flying Monkey, Fisting Snake" thing...
Oh, sorry... "Monkey Fist, Floating Snake" movie. That was a good night, at least for me.
But watching movies every time we don't RP... I'm really beginning to hate it. For the most part, I'd rather just stay home and watch a movie by myself.
I just feel it's a waste of time.
I don't have any suggestions. We really can't do much, like going for a walk, at midnight.
Just wishing things were as fun and meaingful as they used to be.
That is, however, just another part of advancing in life.
Which brings me to the Annual Walk.
I've been thinking it over and I would kind of like to give it another shot.
However my "hey, the more the merrier" idea I've had for some many years is wrong.
Bookmark this post, boys and girls. I was VERY wrong. VERY!
So this year, if you want to come, I don't want you to bring a guest.
If that's any sort of problem with you, please bring it up to me and we can discuss it.
Also, if there is a walk, it's going to be on railroad tracks.
I'll be looking into it myself soon, I hope.
I don't want yet another walk where we have to stop after 5 hours.
The UPS picked up those minatures I recieve in error.
I was hoping to keep them for free, deep down in my thieving parts.
Well, that's as far as I'm going to go with that, tonight.
Feel free to drown in this filler, though! Breathe it in REAL deep!
grift \GRIFT\ verb
: to obtain (money) illicitly (as in a confidence game)
Example sentence:
"One Caribbean-based gambling Web site grifted $10,000 in a phony deposit scam." (Robert J. Hawkins, The San Diego Union Tribune, February 1998)
Did you know?
"Grift" was born in the argot of the underworld, a realm in which a "grifter" might be a pickpocket, a crooked gambler, or a confidence man - any criminal who relied on skill and wits rather than physical violence - and to be "on the grift" was to make a living by stings and clever thefts. "Grift" may have evolved from "graft," a slightly older word meaning "to acquire dishonestly," but its exact origins are uncertain. We do know that the verb "grift" first finagled its way into print in 1915 in George Bronson-Howard's God's Man: "Grifting ain't what it used to be. Fourteenth Street's got protection down to a system - a regular underworld tariff on larceny."
"This just in: single people lie. And now this update: ugly, desperate single people lie more often.
The other night, as Jake Gyllenhaal shoved his tongue down the throat of Heath Ledger, right there in my living room, my wife looked on, enthralled, and I played a little game in my head called “What Would I Be Doing Right Now If I Was Single?”
It's a game most people in relationships play. None of us want to leave the person sitting in the other chair and understand all too well that without them we'd be lonely dregs plodding our way through a life less fulfilled. But there are times that we fantasize. For me, this is usually during crawlingly slow chick flicks. For others, the game is sometimes played at the car dealer, as you're handed the keys to the new Camry, all the while staring at that new Corvette. Some women enjoy playing the “What Would I Be Doing?” game as they lay under some grunting buffoon, pausing in the game just long enough to moan half-heartedly as they think thoughts like, “I could have been vice-president of the firm by now”.
I'll tell you the one activity I would not be participating in if I was a single man.
Dating.
As I prepare to round the final turn and head right into the home stretch toward the ripe old age of fifty (fifty!), the one place I know for a fact that I would not want to be is standing at someone's doorstep with flowers and hopes of fun night out with a near stranger. The mere thought of it makes me check the gun cabinet.
I promise, honey. I'll watch all the gay cowboy movies you can round up. Just don't leave me out here in this cold, cruel world alone. For I know, deep down inside, that's exactly how I would stay until the grim reaper showed up (with flowers and hopes of a fun night out with a near stranger).
I know I would not be good at dating because, in truth, my “single” fantasy rarely has anything to do with sex or women. Instead, it consists of season tickets to the Pirates. If fantasies are to be believed, had I never met my wife I would have ended up as one of those smelly guys who eat hot dogs every night, smoke cigars and watch baseball.
In short, I'd be a sportswriter.
Fantasies aside, the world of adult dating looks completely disgusting to someone staring from the sidelines. It's not a game I have any interest in owning season tickets to. I wouldn't invest in a ten-game plan. I'm not even sure if I'd watch it on TV.
Judging from what I've read recently, dating as an adult is a sad and often untruthful adventure. In their book “Freakonomics”, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt report the findings of some research they did concerning online dating sites. While I'm sure the percentage of people searching for someone to share gay cowboy movie night on the internet is much lower than those cruising the laundromat, grocery or book stores, what these guys found out is eye-opening, to say the least.
In the broadest term, single people lie.
Furthermore, ugly, desperate single people lie lots more.
In a given year, forty million people use online dating sites like Match.com, eHarmony.com and Yahoo Singles to find a partner. Some of these participants, no doubt, are honest people who end up hooking up with nice, normal singles. Reading the two Steves' data, however, I'm not so sure.
More than four percent of online daters claimed to earn more than $200,000 a year, whereas just one percent of all internet users are documented to have such income. That means three out of four folks filling out those questionnaires lie like a rug when it comes to their paycheck. Both male and female participants revealed they are an inch taller than the national average. In addition, women typically said they weighed about 20 pounds less than the national average. Either people using the internet are richer, taller and thinner than the rest of the country, or somebody's fibbing at the keyboard.
When asked a general question about their looks, seventy percent of women dating online claimed to have “above average” looks, including twenty-four percent who said they have “very good looks”. Online men were gorgeous as well. Sixty-seven percent claimed to be “above average” and twenty-one percent claimed to be “very good looking”. Twenty-eight percent of women claim to be blonde. This is an astounding number, given that fourteen percent of women nationwide possess golden hair.
So with all this bending of the truth going on, how many are getting dates? Not too many. Fifty-seven percent of guys who post online never get a reply. Not one single reply. Twenty-three percent of women don't get a response. If you want to be successful, say the authors, there are some basic rules of engagement. Women, by and large, are looking for a man with a big income. Men, says the study, want a woman who looks good. Men want to date students, artists, musicians and veterinarians, while avoiding secretaries, retirees and women in law enforcement. Women do want to date policemen, along with firefighters, lawyers and financial executives, while avoiding people who claim to be actors, students and food service workers.
For men, being short is “a big disadvantage”. For women, being overweight is “deadly”. For men, having red hair or being bald will not get you anywhere online, but a shaved head is okay. For a woman, “salt and pepper hair is bad”, but “having a head full of blonde hair is worth about the same as having a college degree”.
Let's see.
A hundred bucks for a dye job.
A hundred grand for a degree.
Hmm. Let me think about that, she says, while I finish watching this gay cowboy movie, alone.
If the internet is to be believed, the world of the single dating adult is full of liars, truth benders and those who are living in a fantasy world. It is a place where short, bald guys tell short, fat women that they are tall, thin guys who would be delighted to meet what they believe to be a blonde.
And if that's what the world of the middle-aged dater, my fantasy will remain what it has been lo these many years - a day-night double header, free parking and the heretofore-unknown guiltless hotdog.
But for now, please excuse me.
Jake has removed his tongue from Heath.
I can go back to the movie now, and back to my wife, who is truthful, tall, thin and blonde.
Cleaning of the sheath! The Cleaning of the sheath! We will come rejoicing, cleaning of the sheath!
The vet came by the other day, proving that some doctors still make house calls. It was not an emergency, but a routine maintenance. The horse had reached 25,000 miles. It was time to have his teeth floated and his sheath cleaned.
I'm pretty new to the farm animal game. Sure, I've been the overseer, feeder and beater of plenty of domestics in the past, including some that could be called animals. In the past, we've kept dogs, maids, cats, gardeners, fish and in-laws by choice, as well as housing mice, rats, snakes and at least one insane chipmunk. I've been present at births, held pets during their last moments on Earth and scraped several off the road to have them stitched back together again, Humpty-Dumpty style. I've buried a few and kept others from digging them up again.
However, nothing prepared me for the horse's routine maintenance.
The Vet unpacked her instruments of mass inspection as I tried to convey to the horse that we couldn't possibly attach a metal clamp to his gonads again. They were no longer there. That particular inconvenience was a once-in-a-lifetime amusement park ride that, I assured the big fella, would never, ever happen again. "There's no reason to pin your ears back," I told him. "The Vet's just here for your 25,000 mile check up and tire rotation."
That's about the time the doctor came in with the biggest set of metal files I've ever seen. From what I could tell by the way the horse was rocking back and forth and looking toward the pasture, they were also the biggest set of files he'd ever seen.
“Don't worry, big guy,” I told him. “I don't think that's for your sheath. I believe she's going to use those on your teeth.”
A lot of reassurance that brought.
It was then I discovered how close humans are to the animal kingdom. You see? None of us likes to go to the dentist either. For horses, the experience is completely frills-free. There was no easy-listening music to relax him. There was no cool chair to grip him in place. There was no poster of the beach at Maui tacked to the ceiling to take his mind off what was going on in his mouth. There was only the Vet, a huge set of files, a bucket to catch his blood and me.
Did I say, “Catch his blood”?
See? Just like when humans go to the dentist.
I'm not sure what the term “floating” the teeth means. The actual process turned out to be filing the teeth down. As medical procedures go, this one was rather simple. To file a horse's teeth down, the veterinarian takes a gigantic file, sticks it into the horse's mouth and, well, files until her little arms quiver.
To think that at one time, back there in high school metal shop, I was so close to becoming an animal doctor and didn't even realize it.
A visit from the horse doctor requires participation from the horse owner. While my teeth were not filed and my sheath was not cleaned (at least, not by the doctor) I was needed to hold the valiant steed's head up while the Vet filed away, deep inside his many-toothed mouth. This was not, as I suspected, because the horse would be scared and want to run away. It was, instead, because the horse was drugged and wanted to lay down. Once again, just like in college, my job was to keep the big smelly guy who was full of drugs upright until it was time to go home.
It wasn't easy.
As Jethro Tull once sang, horses are heavy.
His teeth having passed muster, once again ready to chew corn right off the cob, our new favorite hobby animal was now prepared to have his sheath cleaned. If you're like I was (up until a few days ago) you probably don't connect the word “sheath” with any part of the anatomy, either human or equestrian. To help you along, while trying to be as non-offensive as possible, I will describe it in this manner.
Our horse is not Jewish.
Compounding this problem is the fact that he has no opposable thumbs.
Frankly, he can't do it himself. If he could, I'm sure that's all he would be doing.
That is, if he wasn't a gelding.
Although he has been surgically qualified to sing soprano with the Vienna Horse Choir, his equipment does need the occasional tune-up and cleaning. For this, the veterinarian put on rubber gloves.
I must pause in this story for a moment to let you know how funny I think the word “penis” is. It's one of those formal, medical words that no one uses unless they're in an embarrassing situation; therefore, I have always found it hilarious. Clinical words make me laugh. If my company provided free analysis in our so-called medical plan, I'd get it checked out. Until then, let's just say penis makes me laugh and leave it at that.
Because I am a relatively new horse owner and this was the first visit from a relatively new vet, she found it necessary to explain each procedure she performed, making sure to say the word “penis” about eleven hundred times in fifteen minutes.
Later, I explained to the horse that I was not laughing at him. “Really,” I said. “You're just fine. It's not funny looking at all. It's just the word. As a matter of fact, to be frank, you're hung like a horse.”
Midway through the sheath cleaning, the doctor noticed that my boy had become sunburned.
That's right.
Sunburned.
All we white boys have a problem with that. Ask anyone who just returned from their first visit to the nude beach.
“It's an easy problem to fix,” she said. “You can just apply some regular old sunscreen, just like you use.”
You mean like I use on my penis? I wondered.
After the horse received a good report and his new inspection was stuck to the inside of his windshield, the Vet left with some of my money and the two of us were left alone. He was still a bit woozy from the drugs. I was still a bit tired from holding him up. But neither of us were too tired to talk. After I reassured him that he'd only have to go through this exercise twice a year, I told him that, if he didn't mind, he was going to be sunburned this year.
I like you, I told him.
I just don't like you quite that much.
Some advice? Keep it out of the sun.
There goes Keith, falling from a tree. Isn't that just like him?
There are certain celebrities who, when strangeness befalls them, create no surprise. Whether it's because of their personalities, the circle of acquaintances they frequent or past histories of adventure and mayhem, when oddball things happen to some celebrities, nobody is surprised.
Let me give you an example.
Keith Richards was admitted to a hospital in New Zealand the other day for treatment of a concussion. This caused some interest and reaction, mostly because Mr. Richards, in addition to being a famous rock star, is 62 years old. Anyone of that somewhat advanced age who receives a concussion is newsworthy. What amazes me is the fact that when the explanation of how Keith bopped his head became public, no one flinched. In fact, most people took it completely in stride, as if it was an everyday happening and completely expected.
He fell while trying to climb up a palm tree on the island of Fiji.
Had this happened to your next-door neighbor you would still be telling the story to total strangers you met at the store. “Hi, you don't know me, but wait until you hear about this! My neighbor (who's 62, mind you) is in the hospital with a concussion. You wanna know how he got it? He fell out of a palm tree! In Fiji! He was climbing it!”
Unfortunately for Keith, most people are not surprised to hear about his accident. In fact, most folks who recognize the name probably think it's quite normal for him to fall while climbing for cocoanuts.
When word filtered ‘round the globe about the ‘Stone's space walk, no one flinched. It was almost as if we expected it. Eventually, we all figured, it would happen. It was only a matter of time. You know Keith.
Even after the news turned grim and reports aired that, rather than a “mild concussion” as was first reported, Keith in fact has suffered some more complicated problems from the fall, it is still being sloughed off as if another one of his wacky gags.
Toss a TV from a hotel room.
Endure a drug bust.
Have your blood changed at the local Quickee Lube.
Word comes this week that the fall is, indeed, more serious than first reported. The latest news, being reported in Great Britain, is that Keith is suffering from a brain hemorrhage and has been scheduled for an operation in which doctors will drill a hole into his skull to relieve some pressure from excess blood build up.
That crazy Keith.
There he goes again.
Having his skull drilled.
Isn't that just like him?
Bet he was high.
Because he has survived seemingly a road-to-ruin lifestyle, Keith remains nearly indestructible to many of us. Nothing can hurt him. Nothing he does surprises us. He is the chicken little of rock.
There are others.
Robert Downey, Junior. Billy Bob Thornton. Angelina Jolie. Michael Jackson, somewhat. Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter. That guy that runs the Virgin company. Lance Armstrong.
The late, great Jim Morrison was such a chicken little celebrity that there are many who still think the cat's alive somewhere. He didn't die. He staged the whole thing.
That crazy Mr. Mojo Risin.
There he goes again.
Faking his death.
Isn't that just like him?
Bet he was drunk.
Remember a couple of years ago when Jimmy Buffet crashed an airplane? Back in 1996, Buffet stuck his two-seater airplane nose-down into water. It wasn't a seaplane. The runway was over there, on the land. Jimmy suffered some pretty serious injuries and came dangerously close to drowning in the surf.
People's reactions?
That crazy Jimmy Buffet.
There he goes again.
Crashing his plane.
Isn't that just like him?
Bet he was drunk and high.
I guess, as Dad used to say, you make your bed, you sleep in it. (Interestingly enough, I never saw my father ever make a bed. He slept a lot, though.) If you create a persona of balls-to-the-wall survival, when the real world comes cascading down around you and fate serves you up a heaping helping of bad fortune, nobody's going to blink twice.
There isn't much in the way of sympathy for the Devil.
And it's all in the perception.
John Denver crashes a plane and everybody is shocked. “We didn't even know he could fly!” Jimmy Buffet crashes a plane and it's as if it happens everyday.
There will come a day (hopefully not too soon) when the death of Keith Richards will be reported. It will probably be of something very common, like cancer or heart failure.
No one, of course, will believe it.
Keith would never die like that.
On the other hand, if one day your local trusted news reporter comes to the screen to announce that Mr. Richards, former Rolling Stone, succumbed after being trampled by a pack of wild water buffalo while attempting to retrieve his Zippo lighter that had fallen from his pocket while on safari, not only would we all believe it, but we'd all have the same reaction.
That crazy Keith.
There he goes again.
Dying.
Isn't that just like him?
You can always tell when things are getting a bit tight, financially. The types of crime committed take a severe turn toward the strange and unexpected.
During the summer of 1978 I was hired by the Ogden Corporation to be a security guard. I applied for a job mucking out stables at Waterford Park horse race track. I didn't get that position. Instead, days later, the same people responsible for deciding who gets to shovel horse poop called to ask if I had a license.
“Sure, I've got a license,” I told them. “I've been driving for three years now.”
“That's good,” Mr. Ogden man replied. “Now how about a gun license?”
The job was to sit, alone, each night between ten p.m. and six in the morning at a chemical plant on Route 2, just down the road from where other college aged boys were cleaning stables. The plant worked only during the day. At night, all night, I was left alone with my polyester uniform, full access to the coffee machine and the heavy responsibility of keeping thieves away.
Were the owners afraid some miscreants would storm the gates, attempting to steal whatever odd gases were being percolated in the giant tanks that towered above my security trailer? No. Were they alert to the fact that covering nearly every square inch of ground were tools, expensive tools, tools easily tossed into beds of getaway pickup trucks? Yes, but they were not concerned. What bothered the owners of Newell Specialty Chemicals enough to hire a security guard from the Ogden Corporation (the same people who cleaned your horse stall) was the fact that months earlier, 3,000 pounds of copper pipe had been cut from the plant and hauled off.
Forget the chemicals.
Screw the tools.
Skip the coffee maker.
Let's steal some pipe. And steal they did. Do you have any idea how much copper pipe it would take to add up to a ton and a half? Me neither. I applied to muck race stalls. But I immediately knew one thing. Copper must be worth some money.
Luckily, no one ever came by in the middle of the night to steal more pipe. My big fear of a reoccurrence was not that I would have to use that gun license but that whatever the copper pipe was connected to would, after a theft, be spewing into the atmosphere of the Northern Panhandle. I never knew what they made at the chemical plant, but, judging from all the warning stickers, it wasn't good.
A few years later I was running with a crowd that could be described as “left of the law”. They were always looking for an easy way to make some quick money. For reasons unknown to me, they knew every scrap dealer in the tri-state. One night I learned why.
I had hoped that the guy named Bill was a plumber. That would have explained the fact that he always had all lengths and quality of loose pipe in his truck bed. They never stayed for long. And shortly afterwards, he bought beers for everybody.
I never knew where he procured the stolen pipe. I was not that close a friend. I did, however, drink the beer. That makes me just as guilty, I guess, in a Sunday School way of thinking.
Speaking of which, just a few years ago I bought my wife a beautiful stained glass window from a trendy south side antique store. When I asked the dealer where it had come from, he replied, “A church.” Pressed for details, he noted that sometimes, it was just better to not ask.
When I see those ads on TV for home security systems, they infer that some night a group of left of the law individuals might visit while you're at your in-laws and take your valuables. I've never seen them mention pipes or windows as being one of the items taken.
Or, perhaps, you 400-pound bell.
A 400-pound church bell, stolen from a Washington County family's backyard, has been recovered after two men took it to a local scrap yard. That's what the Associated Press is reporting tonight. Police in Followfield Township say they have surveillance video of the two guys hauling the big copper bell into the scrap yard. The 400-pounder once hung at Calvary Bible Church.
No doubt, those folks hired a college kid from Ogden Security to watch it.
He just wanted to muck stalls.
The bell will be returned to the family.
At least one of the men will be charged with theft.
And you may be wondering why someone would risk at least a hernia and most possibly jail time to lift a 400-pound copper and brass bell from someone's yard.
The price of copper closed this afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange at $3.49 a pound. I know that's it's been a long week and you don't want to do math, so I'll help you.
That bell is worth $1400.
Strangely enough, that's the same amount the idiots who stole it will have in fines and court costs once they're processed.
And, by the way, it's the same amount I made over the course of a summer working as a security guard. Had I put my gun down for a moment and picked up one of the many torches laying around the job site, I could have made a little more.
You can always tell when things are getting a bit tight, financially. The types of crime committed take a severe turn toward the strange and unexpected."
saltation \sal-TAY-shun\ noun
1 *a : the action or process of leaping or jumping b : dance
2 a : the origin of a new species or a higher taxon in essentially a single evolutionary step that in some especially former theories is held to be due to a major mutation or to unknown causes b : mutation
Example sentence:
The kangaroo, the frog, and the flea all move by means of saltation, using their powerful hind legs to propel their bodies through the air.
Did you know?
"Saltation" comes from Latin, deriving ultimately from the verb "salire," meaning "to leap." Etymologists think it meant "leap" or "jump" when it was first used in English, too, but documented evidence of early use in that sense is scarce. Instead, the oldest manuscripts containing the word (which date from the 1620s) show it used as a synonym of "dancing." The first recorded incidence of the "leaping" sense dates from 1646, when British physician and author Sir Thomas Browne used it in an entomological context: "Locusts ... being ordained for saltation, their hinder legs doe far exceed the other." The word made the leap to evolutionary theory in the late 19th century.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.
I think back to the days where Paul and I would have Movie Night. A Joyous event filled with me smoking more than a reasonable amount, and drinking more than a reasonable amount, and then at the end of the 6 or so hours of movies (until it's twilight year) Paul and I just bullshitting, or working on RP stuff, or reading the dictionary for shits and giggles.
During it's last few months of existing, I started to enjoy it less. I blamed that on several reasons. One being that I just grow sick of things eventually. I also blamed it on the fact that I worked full time, and half the fun of Movie Night was getting the movies, and getting snacks, and being horrified by Paul's Father. Or goading him into horrifying Paul.
Also, it was getting to the point that Movie Night was the only time I got to spend any real amount of time with Paul. It felt like we should be doing something more than sitting in front of a TV.
Now I watch movies nearly every night at home. It doesn't seem wastful to me because it's only one movie a night, and I still do some things before and after the movie (usually).
Now, what little time I spend at Paul's house is used for D&Ding. Which I (stll) very much enjoy. Usually. I am, for the most part, very much enjoying Green's campaign. And I always look forward to seeing what happens next in his Story Line.
But, as is usually the case with DMs, Green does run out of stuff he has prearranged. And too many random encounters will give us more XP than he's prepared for us to have. I understand that (to an extent), but it's still frustrating.
*shrug*
That's just a personal problem I need to deal with. I'm not using this post to bitch about Green.
The bitch that I have is that I don't really like watching movies at Paul's house.
At times, like with the "Flying Monkey, Fisting Snake" thing...
Oh, sorry... "Monkey Fist, Floating Snake" movie. That was a good night, at least for me.
But watching movies every time we don't RP... I'm really beginning to hate it. For the most part, I'd rather just stay home and watch a movie by myself.
I just feel it's a waste of time.
I don't have any suggestions. We really can't do much, like going for a walk, at midnight.
Just wishing things were as fun and meaingful as they used to be.
That is, however, just another part of advancing in life.
Which brings me to the Annual Walk.
I've been thinking it over and I would kind of like to give it another shot.
However my "hey, the more the merrier" idea I've had for some many years is wrong.
Bookmark this post, boys and girls. I was VERY wrong. VERY!
So this year, if you want to come, I don't want you to bring a guest.
If that's any sort of problem with you, please bring it up to me and we can discuss it.
Also, if there is a walk, it's going to be on railroad tracks.
I'll be looking into it myself soon, I hope.
I don't want yet another walk where we have to stop after 5 hours.
The UPS picked up those minatures I recieve in error.
I was hoping to keep them for free, deep down in my thieving parts.
Well, that's as far as I'm going to go with that, tonight.
Feel free to drown in this filler, though! Breathe it in REAL deep!
grift \GRIFT\ verb
: to obtain (money) illicitly (as in a confidence game)
Example sentence:
"One Caribbean-based gambling Web site grifted $10,000 in a phony deposit scam." (Robert J. Hawkins, The San Diego Union Tribune, February 1998)
Did you know?
"Grift" was born in the argot of the underworld, a realm in which a "grifter" might be a pickpocket, a crooked gambler, or a confidence man - any criminal who relied on skill and wits rather than physical violence - and to be "on the grift" was to make a living by stings and clever thefts. "Grift" may have evolved from "graft," a slightly older word meaning "to acquire dishonestly," but its exact origins are uncertain. We do know that the verb "grift" first finagled its way into print in 1915 in George Bronson-Howard's God's Man: "Grifting ain't what it used to be. Fourteenth Street's got protection down to a system - a regular underworld tariff on larceny."
"This just in: single people lie. And now this update: ugly, desperate single people lie more often.
The other night, as Jake Gyllenhaal shoved his tongue down the throat of Heath Ledger, right there in my living room, my wife looked on, enthralled, and I played a little game in my head called “What Would I Be Doing Right Now If I Was Single?”
It's a game most people in relationships play. None of us want to leave the person sitting in the other chair and understand all too well that without them we'd be lonely dregs plodding our way through a life less fulfilled. But there are times that we fantasize. For me, this is usually during crawlingly slow chick flicks. For others, the game is sometimes played at the car dealer, as you're handed the keys to the new Camry, all the while staring at that new Corvette. Some women enjoy playing the “What Would I Be Doing?” game as they lay under some grunting buffoon, pausing in the game just long enough to moan half-heartedly as they think thoughts like, “I could have been vice-president of the firm by now”.
I'll tell you the one activity I would not be participating in if I was a single man.
Dating.
As I prepare to round the final turn and head right into the home stretch toward the ripe old age of fifty (fifty!), the one place I know for a fact that I would not want to be is standing at someone's doorstep with flowers and hopes of fun night out with a near stranger. The mere thought of it makes me check the gun cabinet.
I promise, honey. I'll watch all the gay cowboy movies you can round up. Just don't leave me out here in this cold, cruel world alone. For I know, deep down inside, that's exactly how I would stay until the grim reaper showed up (with flowers and hopes of a fun night out with a near stranger).
I know I would not be good at dating because, in truth, my “single” fantasy rarely has anything to do with sex or women. Instead, it consists of season tickets to the Pirates. If fantasies are to be believed, had I never met my wife I would have ended up as one of those smelly guys who eat hot dogs every night, smoke cigars and watch baseball.
In short, I'd be a sportswriter.
Fantasies aside, the world of adult dating looks completely disgusting to someone staring from the sidelines. It's not a game I have any interest in owning season tickets to. I wouldn't invest in a ten-game plan. I'm not even sure if I'd watch it on TV.
Judging from what I've read recently, dating as an adult is a sad and often untruthful adventure. In their book “Freakonomics”, Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt report the findings of some research they did concerning online dating sites. While I'm sure the percentage of people searching for someone to share gay cowboy movie night on the internet is much lower than those cruising the laundromat, grocery or book stores, what these guys found out is eye-opening, to say the least.
In the broadest term, single people lie.
Furthermore, ugly, desperate single people lie lots more.
In a given year, forty million people use online dating sites like Match.com, eHarmony.com and Yahoo Singles to find a partner. Some of these participants, no doubt, are honest people who end up hooking up with nice, normal singles. Reading the two Steves' data, however, I'm not so sure.
More than four percent of online daters claimed to earn more than $200,000 a year, whereas just one percent of all internet users are documented to have such income. That means three out of four folks filling out those questionnaires lie like a rug when it comes to their paycheck. Both male and female participants revealed they are an inch taller than the national average. In addition, women typically said they weighed about 20 pounds less than the national average. Either people using the internet are richer, taller and thinner than the rest of the country, or somebody's fibbing at the keyboard.
When asked a general question about their looks, seventy percent of women dating online claimed to have “above average” looks, including twenty-four percent who said they have “very good looks”. Online men were gorgeous as well. Sixty-seven percent claimed to be “above average” and twenty-one percent claimed to be “very good looking”. Twenty-eight percent of women claim to be blonde. This is an astounding number, given that fourteen percent of women nationwide possess golden hair.
So with all this bending of the truth going on, how many are getting dates? Not too many. Fifty-seven percent of guys who post online never get a reply. Not one single reply. Twenty-three percent of women don't get a response. If you want to be successful, say the authors, there are some basic rules of engagement. Women, by and large, are looking for a man with a big income. Men, says the study, want a woman who looks good. Men want to date students, artists, musicians and veterinarians, while avoiding secretaries, retirees and women in law enforcement. Women do want to date policemen, along with firefighters, lawyers and financial executives, while avoiding people who claim to be actors, students and food service workers.
For men, being short is “a big disadvantage”. For women, being overweight is “deadly”. For men, having red hair or being bald will not get you anywhere online, but a shaved head is okay. For a woman, “salt and pepper hair is bad”, but “having a head full of blonde hair is worth about the same as having a college degree”.
Let's see.
A hundred bucks for a dye job.
A hundred grand for a degree.
Hmm. Let me think about that, she says, while I finish watching this gay cowboy movie, alone.
If the internet is to be believed, the world of the single dating adult is full of liars, truth benders and those who are living in a fantasy world. It is a place where short, bald guys tell short, fat women that they are tall, thin guys who would be delighted to meet what they believe to be a blonde.
And if that's what the world of the middle-aged dater, my fantasy will remain what it has been lo these many years - a day-night double header, free parking and the heretofore-unknown guiltless hotdog.
But for now, please excuse me.
Jake has removed his tongue from Heath.
I can go back to the movie now, and back to my wife, who is truthful, tall, thin and blonde.
Cleaning of the sheath! The Cleaning of the sheath! We will come rejoicing, cleaning of the sheath!
The vet came by the other day, proving that some doctors still make house calls. It was not an emergency, but a routine maintenance. The horse had reached 25,000 miles. It was time to have his teeth floated and his sheath cleaned.
I'm pretty new to the farm animal game. Sure, I've been the overseer, feeder and beater of plenty of domestics in the past, including some that could be called animals. In the past, we've kept dogs, maids, cats, gardeners, fish and in-laws by choice, as well as housing mice, rats, snakes and at least one insane chipmunk. I've been present at births, held pets during their last moments on Earth and scraped several off the road to have them stitched back together again, Humpty-Dumpty style. I've buried a few and kept others from digging them up again.
However, nothing prepared me for the horse's routine maintenance.
The Vet unpacked her instruments of mass inspection as I tried to convey to the horse that we couldn't possibly attach a metal clamp to his gonads again. They were no longer there. That particular inconvenience was a once-in-a-lifetime amusement park ride that, I assured the big fella, would never, ever happen again. "There's no reason to pin your ears back," I told him. "The Vet's just here for your 25,000 mile check up and tire rotation."
That's about the time the doctor came in with the biggest set of metal files I've ever seen. From what I could tell by the way the horse was rocking back and forth and looking toward the pasture, they were also the biggest set of files he'd ever seen.
“Don't worry, big guy,” I told him. “I don't think that's for your sheath. I believe she's going to use those on your teeth.”
A lot of reassurance that brought.
It was then I discovered how close humans are to the animal kingdom. You see? None of us likes to go to the dentist either. For horses, the experience is completely frills-free. There was no easy-listening music to relax him. There was no cool chair to grip him in place. There was no poster of the beach at Maui tacked to the ceiling to take his mind off what was going on in his mouth. There was only the Vet, a huge set of files, a bucket to catch his blood and me.
Did I say, “Catch his blood”?
See? Just like when humans go to the dentist.
I'm not sure what the term “floating” the teeth means. The actual process turned out to be filing the teeth down. As medical procedures go, this one was rather simple. To file a horse's teeth down, the veterinarian takes a gigantic file, sticks it into the horse's mouth and, well, files until her little arms quiver.
To think that at one time, back there in high school metal shop, I was so close to becoming an animal doctor and didn't even realize it.
A visit from the horse doctor requires participation from the horse owner. While my teeth were not filed and my sheath was not cleaned (at least, not by the doctor) I was needed to hold the valiant steed's head up while the Vet filed away, deep inside his many-toothed mouth. This was not, as I suspected, because the horse would be scared and want to run away. It was, instead, because the horse was drugged and wanted to lay down. Once again, just like in college, my job was to keep the big smelly guy who was full of drugs upright until it was time to go home.
It wasn't easy.
As Jethro Tull once sang, horses are heavy.
His teeth having passed muster, once again ready to chew corn right off the cob, our new favorite hobby animal was now prepared to have his sheath cleaned. If you're like I was (up until a few days ago) you probably don't connect the word “sheath” with any part of the anatomy, either human or equestrian. To help you along, while trying to be as non-offensive as possible, I will describe it in this manner.
Our horse is not Jewish.
Compounding this problem is the fact that he has no opposable thumbs.
Frankly, he can't do it himself. If he could, I'm sure that's all he would be doing.
That is, if he wasn't a gelding.
Although he has been surgically qualified to sing soprano with the Vienna Horse Choir, his equipment does need the occasional tune-up and cleaning. For this, the veterinarian put on rubber gloves.
I must pause in this story for a moment to let you know how funny I think the word “penis” is. It's one of those formal, medical words that no one uses unless they're in an embarrassing situation; therefore, I have always found it hilarious. Clinical words make me laugh. If my company provided free analysis in our so-called medical plan, I'd get it checked out. Until then, let's just say penis makes me laugh and leave it at that.
Because I am a relatively new horse owner and this was the first visit from a relatively new vet, she found it necessary to explain each procedure she performed, making sure to say the word “penis” about eleven hundred times in fifteen minutes.
Later, I explained to the horse that I was not laughing at him. “Really,” I said. “You're just fine. It's not funny looking at all. It's just the word. As a matter of fact, to be frank, you're hung like a horse.”
Midway through the sheath cleaning, the doctor noticed that my boy had become sunburned.
That's right.
Sunburned.
All we white boys have a problem with that. Ask anyone who just returned from their first visit to the nude beach.
“It's an easy problem to fix,” she said. “You can just apply some regular old sunscreen, just like you use.”
You mean like I use on my penis? I wondered.
After the horse received a good report and his new inspection was stuck to the inside of his windshield, the Vet left with some of my money and the two of us were left alone. He was still a bit woozy from the drugs. I was still a bit tired from holding him up. But neither of us were too tired to talk. After I reassured him that he'd only have to go through this exercise twice a year, I told him that, if he didn't mind, he was going to be sunburned this year.
I like you, I told him.
I just don't like you quite that much.
Some advice? Keep it out of the sun.
There goes Keith, falling from a tree. Isn't that just like him?
There are certain celebrities who, when strangeness befalls them, create no surprise. Whether it's because of their personalities, the circle of acquaintances they frequent or past histories of adventure and mayhem, when oddball things happen to some celebrities, nobody is surprised.
Let me give you an example.
Keith Richards was admitted to a hospital in New Zealand the other day for treatment of a concussion. This caused some interest and reaction, mostly because Mr. Richards, in addition to being a famous rock star, is 62 years old. Anyone of that somewhat advanced age who receives a concussion is newsworthy. What amazes me is the fact that when the explanation of how Keith bopped his head became public, no one flinched. In fact, most people took it completely in stride, as if it was an everyday happening and completely expected.
He fell while trying to climb up a palm tree on the island of Fiji.
Had this happened to your next-door neighbor you would still be telling the story to total strangers you met at the store. “Hi, you don't know me, but wait until you hear about this! My neighbor (who's 62, mind you) is in the hospital with a concussion. You wanna know how he got it? He fell out of a palm tree! In Fiji! He was climbing it!”
Unfortunately for Keith, most people are not surprised to hear about his accident. In fact, most folks who recognize the name probably think it's quite normal for him to fall while climbing for cocoanuts.
When word filtered ‘round the globe about the ‘Stone's space walk, no one flinched. It was almost as if we expected it. Eventually, we all figured, it would happen. It was only a matter of time. You know Keith.
Even after the news turned grim and reports aired that, rather than a “mild concussion” as was first reported, Keith in fact has suffered some more complicated problems from the fall, it is still being sloughed off as if another one of his wacky gags.
Toss a TV from a hotel room.
Endure a drug bust.
Have your blood changed at the local Quickee Lube.
Word comes this week that the fall is, indeed, more serious than first reported. The latest news, being reported in Great Britain, is that Keith is suffering from a brain hemorrhage and has been scheduled for an operation in which doctors will drill a hole into his skull to relieve some pressure from excess blood build up.
That crazy Keith.
There he goes again.
Having his skull drilled.
Isn't that just like him?
Bet he was high.
Because he has survived seemingly a road-to-ruin lifestyle, Keith remains nearly indestructible to many of us. Nothing can hurt him. Nothing he does surprises us. He is the chicken little of rock.
There are others.
Robert Downey, Junior. Billy Bob Thornton. Angelina Jolie. Michael Jackson, somewhat. Steve Irwin, the crocodile hunter. That guy that runs the Virgin company. Lance Armstrong.
The late, great Jim Morrison was such a chicken little celebrity that there are many who still think the cat's alive somewhere. He didn't die. He staged the whole thing.
That crazy Mr. Mojo Risin.
There he goes again.
Faking his death.
Isn't that just like him?
Bet he was drunk.
Remember a couple of years ago when Jimmy Buffet crashed an airplane? Back in 1996, Buffet stuck his two-seater airplane nose-down into water. It wasn't a seaplane. The runway was over there, on the land. Jimmy suffered some pretty serious injuries and came dangerously close to drowning in the surf.
People's reactions?
That crazy Jimmy Buffet.
There he goes again.
Crashing his plane.
Isn't that just like him?
Bet he was drunk and high.
I guess, as Dad used to say, you make your bed, you sleep in it. (Interestingly enough, I never saw my father ever make a bed. He slept a lot, though.) If you create a persona of balls-to-the-wall survival, when the real world comes cascading down around you and fate serves you up a heaping helping of bad fortune, nobody's going to blink twice.
There isn't much in the way of sympathy for the Devil.
And it's all in the perception.
John Denver crashes a plane and everybody is shocked. “We didn't even know he could fly!” Jimmy Buffet crashes a plane and it's as if it happens everyday.
There will come a day (hopefully not too soon) when the death of Keith Richards will be reported. It will probably be of something very common, like cancer or heart failure.
No one, of course, will believe it.
Keith would never die like that.
On the other hand, if one day your local trusted news reporter comes to the screen to announce that Mr. Richards, former Rolling Stone, succumbed after being trampled by a pack of wild water buffalo while attempting to retrieve his Zippo lighter that had fallen from his pocket while on safari, not only would we all believe it, but we'd all have the same reaction.
That crazy Keith.
There he goes again.
Dying.
Isn't that just like him?
You can always tell when things are getting a bit tight, financially. The types of crime committed take a severe turn toward the strange and unexpected.
During the summer of 1978 I was hired by the Ogden Corporation to be a security guard. I applied for a job mucking out stables at Waterford Park horse race track. I didn't get that position. Instead, days later, the same people responsible for deciding who gets to shovel horse poop called to ask if I had a license.
“Sure, I've got a license,” I told them. “I've been driving for three years now.”
“That's good,” Mr. Ogden man replied. “Now how about a gun license?”
The job was to sit, alone, each night between ten p.m. and six in the morning at a chemical plant on Route 2, just down the road from where other college aged boys were cleaning stables. The plant worked only during the day. At night, all night, I was left alone with my polyester uniform, full access to the coffee machine and the heavy responsibility of keeping thieves away.
Were the owners afraid some miscreants would storm the gates, attempting to steal whatever odd gases were being percolated in the giant tanks that towered above my security trailer? No. Were they alert to the fact that covering nearly every square inch of ground were tools, expensive tools, tools easily tossed into beds of getaway pickup trucks? Yes, but they were not concerned. What bothered the owners of Newell Specialty Chemicals enough to hire a security guard from the Ogden Corporation (the same people who cleaned your horse stall) was the fact that months earlier, 3,000 pounds of copper pipe had been cut from the plant and hauled off.
Forget the chemicals.
Screw the tools.
Skip the coffee maker.
Let's steal some pipe. And steal they did. Do you have any idea how much copper pipe it would take to add up to a ton and a half? Me neither. I applied to muck race stalls. But I immediately knew one thing. Copper must be worth some money.
Luckily, no one ever came by in the middle of the night to steal more pipe. My big fear of a reoccurrence was not that I would have to use that gun license but that whatever the copper pipe was connected to would, after a theft, be spewing into the atmosphere of the Northern Panhandle. I never knew what they made at the chemical plant, but, judging from all the warning stickers, it wasn't good.
A few years later I was running with a crowd that could be described as “left of the law”. They were always looking for an easy way to make some quick money. For reasons unknown to me, they knew every scrap dealer in the tri-state. One night I learned why.
I had hoped that the guy named Bill was a plumber. That would have explained the fact that he always had all lengths and quality of loose pipe in his truck bed. They never stayed for long. And shortly afterwards, he bought beers for everybody.
I never knew where he procured the stolen pipe. I was not that close a friend. I did, however, drink the beer. That makes me just as guilty, I guess, in a Sunday School way of thinking.
Speaking of which, just a few years ago I bought my wife a beautiful stained glass window from a trendy south side antique store. When I asked the dealer where it had come from, he replied, “A church.” Pressed for details, he noted that sometimes, it was just better to not ask.
When I see those ads on TV for home security systems, they infer that some night a group of left of the law individuals might visit while you're at your in-laws and take your valuables. I've never seen them mention pipes or windows as being one of the items taken.
Or, perhaps, you 400-pound bell.
A 400-pound church bell, stolen from a Washington County family's backyard, has been recovered after two men took it to a local scrap yard. That's what the Associated Press is reporting tonight. Police in Followfield Township say they have surveillance video of the two guys hauling the big copper bell into the scrap yard. The 400-pounder once hung at Calvary Bible Church.
No doubt, those folks hired a college kid from Ogden Security to watch it.
He just wanted to muck stalls.
The bell will be returned to the family.
At least one of the men will be charged with theft.
And you may be wondering why someone would risk at least a hernia and most possibly jail time to lift a 400-pound copper and brass bell from someone's yard.
The price of copper closed this afternoon on the New York Stock Exchange at $3.49 a pound. I know that's it's been a long week and you don't want to do math, so I'll help you.
That bell is worth $1400.
Strangely enough, that's the same amount the idiots who stole it will have in fines and court costs once they're processed.
And, by the way, it's the same amount I made over the course of a summer working as a security guard. Had I put my gun down for a moment and picked up one of the many torches laying around the job site, I could have made a little more.
You can always tell when things are getting a bit tight, financially. The types of crime committed take a severe turn toward the strange and unexpected."
saltation \sal-TAY-shun\ noun
1 *a : the action or process of leaping or jumping b : dance
2 a : the origin of a new species or a higher taxon in essentially a single evolutionary step that in some especially former theories is held to be due to a major mutation or to unknown causes b : mutation
Example sentence:
The kangaroo, the frog, and the flea all move by means of saltation, using their powerful hind legs to propel their bodies through the air.
Did you know?
"Saltation" comes from Latin, deriving ultimately from the verb "salire," meaning "to leap." Etymologists think it meant "leap" or "jump" when it was first used in English, too, but documented evidence of early use in that sense is scarce. Instead, the oldest manuscripts containing the word (which date from the 1620s) show it used as a synonym of "dancing." The first recorded incidence of the "leaping" sense dates from 1646, when British physician and author Sir Thomas Browne used it in an entomological context: "Locusts ... being ordained for saltation, their hinder legs doe far exceed the other." The word made the leap to evolutionary theory in the late 19th century.
*Indicates the sense illustrated in the example sentence.