The Buck Shops Here

Out back in the shed, I keep yard stuff and a few items for the very few auto and truck maintenance chores I am qualified to undertake (changing the oil and vacuuming the floor mats seem to be the entire list these days.) Rummaging out there the other day for either duct tape or WD40 - if you have those two items plus a good Arrow stapler, you can handle most any spot repairs - I found an old funnel that I use for pouring oil into the crankcase of the car or truck.

I'm not talking about the price of oil here. It was the price of the funnel that caught my eye. It's so old, it was bought in the day when stores affixed a little gummy sticker bearing the price of an item directly onto the item. Before bar codes and UPC numbers and self-serve checkout stations, this was how they did things. It's interesting to note that I paid $1.69 for this funnel, what, 30 years ago? (It's had more oil poured through it than Halliburton pipelines!) Also interesting that I bought it at a drug store - Drug Fair, to be exact, whose motto was, "Don't say drug store, say Drug Fair: there's a difference!". Drug Fair became Revco, which then became CVS, which will never become the place I would head for when I need to buy a new funnel. That's also a difference.

No, my destination of choice for funnels, books that were just at Barnes and Noble two weeks ago for $24.95, catsup, shower gels and greeting cards is the wonderful Dollar Tree chain. You go there today, and you can have three funnels of varying sizes, nested together and held with a plastic string, for one dollar.

NPR had a story this morning about people who never thought to shop at "the Tree," as we in the know call it, until this economic downturn forced them to stop calling noodles "pasta" and hair goo, "product." We welcome our new friends to the marvelous adventure of strolling down the aisles of the Tree, green basket in hand, happily tossing in one-dollar picture frames and one-dollar foot-itch powder. Nothing's out of date, nothing's stale, nothing's rancid.

To those beginners, though, one caveat: better stop at Try'n'Buy on the way home, and stick with the big-name famous brands of razor blades and toilet paper. You only have one face, and, well.....

The Importance of Being Ernest

The one musical I will watch is "The Music Man," and a large part of the fun of that story is how Professor Harold Hill charms the "bow-necked Hawkeyes" who are so "Iowa stubborn, they can stand touching noses for a week at a time and never see eye-to-eye."

Comes now the distinguished US Senator from the land of corn, the honorable CharlesGrassley. I'll let FOX News tell you the story, as if you haven't heard if already...

IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley suggested on Monday that AIG executives should take a Japanese approach toward accepting responsibility for the collapse of the insurance giant by resigning or killing themselves.

The Republican lawmaker's harsh comments came during an interview with Cedar Rapids, Iowa, radio station WMT. They echo remarks he has made in the past about corporate executives and public apologies, but went further in suggesting suicide.

"I suggest, you know, obviously, maybe they ought to be removed," Grassley said. "But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.

"And in the case of the Japanese, they usually commit suicide before they make any apology."

And remember, folks, this wingnut goes from Iowa to DC to make laws for all of us, and he suggests suicide as a painless way out of this fiscal crisis that his party engendered through their reckless deregulation. Fall on your swords, o ye who would save face!

I dunno, this Grassley reminds me of someone. Know what I mean, Vern?

UPDATE! Late-breaking earth-shattering additional Grassley information. We get this today from Salon:

OK, so Sen. Charles Grassley doesn't really want AIG executives who accept lavish bonuses to "commit suicide," as he suggested in an interview Monday. He walked that order back a few steps on Tuesday.
But the Iowa Republican had some other choice words for the bailed-out insurance giant.
"From my standpoint, it's irresponsible for corporations to give bonuses at this time when they're sucking the tit of the taxpayer," Grassley explained.

Charles? Perhaps it's better to change topics now. You've clearly said all there is to say about this one in an unforgettable statesmanlike manner.

Tuxedo Dysfunction

From the wires of the Associated Press:

LEBANON, Ind. (AP) - A Lebanon High School senior is suing the school after her principal said she couldn't wear a tuxedo to the school's prom.

Court filings say the 17-year-old girl, whose name is not revealed in the lawsuit, is a lesbian and doesn't wear dresses because they represent a sexual identity she rejects.

The lawsuit filed yesterday says that the principal told the girl a special dress code for prom requires female students to wear a formal dress.

The lawsuit filed on the girl's behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana says that the dress code discriminates based on gender and that because the school receives federal funds, the policy violates federal law.

Lebanon Community school district attorney Kent Frandsen says the school will follow the ruling of the court.

You know what’s funny about this? Besides nothing? I was just thinking about Paul Harvey and then I stumbled across this story and all I could think of is how old Paul would have told that tale…some comment about how people just want to change everything, things ought to stay the way they are, what was good enough for Gramps and Grammy oughta be good enough for today, blah blah blah.

You can take that to another level. What if we just kept all the old policies in place? Let’s do a system reset on American History to, let’s say, 1856. People still literally own other people, people are still ill-fed, ill-clothed and ill-housed, women can’t vote, there are no planes or automobiles…wouldn’t want to go back that far?

All righteeo. 1956. You can’t own slaves, but you can keep people out of public accommodations based on their race, and woe betide you if you fall in love in the wrong way. A woman pregnant and unmarried was just about cast out of the village, forced to move out of town while the family claimed she was under treatment for her asthma or something – or, the ill-prepared young couple was hustled up to the Justice of the Peace, prodded along with a Remington 30.06, right into the vows of matrimony at a time when the most appropriate vow for most of them would have been the Boy Scout Oath or something similar. “Jest as long as that child has a last name, by cracky!” And of course, sometimes it didn’t work out, did it? Isn’t that right, Bristol and Levi?

The old “your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins” doctrine is in full effect here. If this young woman chooses to wear a tuxedo or a flour sack or a knight’s chainmail or a letter carrier’s uniform, tell me how that affects you. I just wish that we could learn to let people do what they think is best for them. If they step off a curb, not seeing an oncoming vehicle, yes, by all means, run out there and push them to safety. But if they step off a curb and you don’t happen to like what they’re wearing, keep it to yourself. MYOGDB.

Mr Shakespeare, you wished to say…?

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

   If this be error and upon me proved,

   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

So maybe it would be better to keep our impediments to ourselves!  Unless you can
provide proof that the wearing of a tuxedo by an unnamed young woman out in
the heartland will damage our lives here.  OK thanks!

He was the FIRST to say "Ay Caramba!" on TV!

Yesterday was the family party to celebrate the birthday of both my nephew Jay and his lovely wife Jamie, although their birthdays are 6 and 9 days off, respectively.


I'd like to share with you the Cliff's Notes version of what happened on the day Jay was born, March 25, 1977. I was working as a midday DJ at the time, and between a Conway Twitty record and something by Johnny Paycheck, I got a call from Mom saying that my sister had given birth to her second child. This came as no surprise to me, because it was well known that she was, indeed, going to have her second baby. The only question was, when? Mom said the name of the hospital, gave us the visiting hour times and so forth, and I said we'll see you later.

That evening, Peggy and I headed to Towson with the full intent of seeing the little baby. On the way, we passed by a store called Greetings and Readings, a book-card-stationery and novelty store then located right outside Towson. A huge sign out by the road proclaimed "Tonight Only! Desi Arnaz in person - will autograph copies of his autobiography!"

Well, now, how often does one have the chance to commune with one of the all-time greats of show business? I thought hey, we'll zip in, grab a book, get him to sign it, and be on our way.

Towson in 1977 was not quite the cosmopolitan hub it has now become. Approximately 27,000 people were ahead of us in line. It really started to resemble Woodstock, without the mud, the nakedness, the music and Wavy Gravy.

Well, all right. Maybe we were #78 and 79 in line, but the line seemed to move very slowly, owing mainly to Mr Arnaz's charming way of holding a conversation with every person who ponied up the price of a book. As the first valuable seconds, minutes and hours of baby Jay's young life ticked off in the relentless march of my Timex Glo-In-The Dark watch, I became more and more restive, fidgeting about in line so obviously that passers-by became concerned for my well-being. But at last, the sea of humanity parted, and there we were, face to face with the great man himself. He took our book and inscribed on the inside cover "To Mark and Peggy GRACIAS Desi Arnaz" and slid the now-priceless tome back toward me. Time was still on my mind, had to get to the hospital, but then I saw a well-worn fedora by his side and I just had to ask if it were the same hat he wore on the show. He said it was, indeed, and I asked him if he would say those words he said every time he got back to the Mertz's apartment house after working at the Copacabana, doffing his hat as he entered, with Lucy in both an apron and a dither, and he said...
"You mean...."HELLO LUCY I'M HOOOOOOOOOOOOOME!!!!!!!"

Yes yes yes! It was worth every second of the wait. We thanked the Cuban comedy legend, scooted out, hopped in the car and headed off for the hospital, skirting past people who were all ready to lock up for the night like Rickey Henderson sliding into second. In just a twinkling, we found the maternity ward, and there lay Jay in a little kiddy-cubby as the entire family pressed noses to the glass, waiting for him to do, who knows what? Get up and dance?

But there followed a pithy question-and-answer period, in which the question was "Where have you two been? Visiting hours are over in like 5 minutes!" and the answer was, proudly, "We've been with Desi Arnaz!"

Came this to that:

"Well, if you don't want to tell us where you really were, don't say something silly!"

We still have the book; we proffered it as proof of our valid lateness, and every year at this time, we like to take that book down off the shelf, read aloud the chapter about the first time Desi met Lucy, in the manner of a Yuletide family reading from Dickens, and dance around to his records of "Cuban Pete" and "Babaloo." Desi's records, not Dickens's.

It's a simple life, yet ultimately rewarding, if you just follow the signs.

Still considering

Everyone knows people with what I guess are self-esteem issues, issues that lead them into relationships at best unsatisfying and degrading and at worst physically and emotionally harmful.

I worry about such things, because I would like to have everyone I know be happy and safe. Not gonna happen, I know.

I'm that lucky guy with a one-of-a-kind marriage. I appreciate the fact that I was sent an angel to love, and I just wish the same all around.

But sitting here at 0648 on a drizzly Sunday morning, I hear birds chirping outside. Spring starts Friday. The earth continues to revolve, and I think of Arthur Lee, who said, "Love on earth must be."

I know it takes the skills and education of a therapist to help people with these issues, but for those of us without that skill and expertise, there ought to be a way to help. All I can think of is to show more love.

Like chicken soup, it can't hurt...

Consider this

"We accept the love we think we deserve" True or false. Let's discuss! Comment please!

Tearing his heaven all to hell

"We started out as friends, and we were great friends, and then we thought we'd try dating, and now this!!!!!!!," the tall young lady was saying. Dating and romantic problems are right up my alley, all grist for my mill, if you will, because, you see, I used to be a country DJ. So, I've heard so many scenarios, heard the keening of so many hearts. I've heard a guy call in for a dedication to his sweetheart, his lover of many years, the temple within which he had built the altar of his love, upon which he hoisted his inamorata. He wanted to hear "Your Cheatin' Heart."

She's young, maybe 19 or 20, I guess, and I only know her casually, but she seemed to share all this, and I was glad to listen. She is such a sweet girl, and I want to help, if only by listening. Listening costs nothing, and who knows? Now and again, you might just be able to toss an insight, a little shared experience out there, that might help. I hope so. One thing I have learned in such situations is, no matter how clear-cut the proper steps might be to someone who has strutted down life's hallways three times as long as the other person, you just don't want to say,"Here's what you ought to do." It's a better learning and sharing experience when the approach is more like,"You know, I know someone who went through this one time, and here's what (s)he found was a pretty good way to handle it..."

That was the drill. They were friends, and he had this big idea to date, and they had been dating for six months or so, and now he really has it bad. In story and song, he's rapturously saluting the day in history on which they met, he's talking about the kids they will have, he's planning weddings, honeymoons, furniture for the cozy little love nest they will soon inhabit. He is over-the-moon-in love.

And she is not.


And she feels horrible about it, and has been postponing the inevitable for some time, while she figures out a way to put the guy wise. A gentle way, a poetic way, a way that will restore the happy giddy go-to-the-movies together kind of friendship they once enjoyed and shall again.

Buddy Holly lyric time:
When you love her and she doesn't love you
You're only learning the game

When she says that you're the only one she'll ever love
Then you find that you are not the one she's thinking of

Feeling so sad and you're all alone and blue
That's when you're learning the game

So everyone goes through it, this thing called Learning the Game. Sinatra called it Learnin' the Blues...ring-a-ding-ding, baby. We've all been through it, or should have been - everyone's been the dumpee; everyone's been the dumper (sometimes without even knowing it!)

My thought was to tell her NOT to go to cliches about how "we can still be friends - great friends! - better than ever, because now the mystery of what it would have been like if we had dated is not hanging over us." He doesn't want to hear that.


Ditto for "It's not you, it's me." (Of course, a grammatically-conscious dumper would say "it's not you, it's I" and then the dumpee would be all "What?" "Who?")

And of course, let's rule out,"At least we tried, and it just didn't work out. Sorry!"

I told her of a friend who handled this by leaving the "you" and "me" out of it entirely, and just pointed out that "we" tried and the levels of attraction just didn't match up.

I hope it works out, for the sake of both of them. Again, she is a very nice young lady, and for the life of her, she does not want to hurt the guy, which is so admirable! It tears me up to see the pain she's in. Twenty, thirty years from now, their eyes might meet in some mall or muffineria or in the big state-operated recharging station where everyone has to go once a month or so for fifteen minutes to recharge their long-range electric cars. This happens all the time, and it's nice when people - such as she is doing - handle it with sensitivity and kindness.

Let's hope they both realize they were important steps for each other in the way of building stronger hearts, not breaking them.

If you've been there, you know what I mean. If you haven't, remember, " 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1850.

Or, "I'd rather love and lose you than never know your love at all." Charley Pride, 1971.

I tell you this, there is no problem on this earth yet to be discussed by either old-school country music or The Simpsons!

They don't line up; they form a queue.

Over in England, even the colleges have classy names. So whereas here in America, one might matriculate at Austin Peay or C.W. Post, the English hop on their bikes with their tweed suits and caps on and enroll at Nottingham Trent University.

Maybe I should say they hop on their "double-decker bus" or "tube" (subway), because the researchers at good old Nottingham Trent asked people who commuted to work via public transportation what it was that cheesed them off the most about their ride. They listed lack of space, loud music, delays and obnoxious smells.

How to get past those problems? I mean, what do you do when you're jammed on the Shropshire Ltd. and you can't move an arm or a leg, and some rakehell is blasting music by that hot new group I H8 U in your ear, and the train is held up because there is a loose cow on the tracks, and the guy next to you slept a little late and so did not have time for a shower, but did have time enough to douse himself in Eau de Musk?

#1 answer - sing or talk to yourself. Be the Bing you were meant to be; envision yourself crooning "Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day" before a packed house in some revue.
#2 - plan the day ahead. Most jobs, you can hardly plan your next visit to the restroom without a dozen phone calls and people wandering up to your desk asking for this and that. But, really, go, plan!
#3 - work on the laptop, write or read. But if there's no space, not gonna work.
#4 - "emotion-focused coping." This is defined as venting anger or looking at attractive commuters. I don't recommend venting in a packed, smelly vehicle, and let me state right now that we attractive people are just so sick and tired of being ogled all the time. Ha ha. While I am not attractive, I was considered quite a catch in my day. I got caught by the police, I got caught by teachers, principals, lifeguards...you name it.
#5 - seek counseling. Apparently the British transport system has counselors on public conveyances for the convenience of their anguished riders?
#6 - listen to audio books or music. That would be my way to go.
#7 - chew gum, snack or chat. All at once? And right after breakfast or right before dinner? I don't think it wise. And food is illegal in Baltimore's transit system. Tonight, deep in the holding tanks of our penal system, sit dozens of hardened criminals, all doing time for eating chicken nuggets on the #8.
#8 - smoke or drink alcohol. Hello? What about the obnoxious smell you were just hollering about? And do you know what it's like to talk to someone in close quarters as they guzzle cheap gin?
#9 - meditate or pray.

It sounds to me like the English like their party buses, you know what I'm saying to you? Gotta reconsider that trip to see the Whitecliffs...

I kneed your love

Juxtaposed thusly on the lightboard at my orthopedic surgeon's office, these x-rays would seem to show a pair of legs getting ready to do a little soft-shoe...kind of a Jackie Gleason "and awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay we goooooooooooooo!" step. But it's two different pictures of the same knee. My left one, as it were. First injured in a ninth-grade football game, it wore down and lost cartilage like Limbaugh loses credulity until 1999, when Dr Jacobs and I decided that I would ring in the new millennium with a total knee replacement.

It's a fairly simple procedure...they cut you open in front from lower thigh to upper calf, then they saw through the bone above and below the knee, creating a place in the bottom part for the device that sort of looks like a golf tee to be inserted into the marrow, and then the top half is glued to the bone. What you don't see in the x-ray is the thin little piece of plastic that serves as a fake cartilage between the two halves.

The miracles of modern science! Forty years ago, guys such as I were just told, "tough noogies, walk with a limp," but now I can do anything except play basketball or tennis, run long distances and dance at weddings. OK, the first three for sure.

Check this out

I was all worked up yesterday about seeing the new library for my area. The old Perry Hall Library branch was a smallish kind of place, not really much bigger than a lot of houses, and the County has been planning and building its replacement for many years. All that hard work paid off majorly; it's a beautiful building with 125,000 books (the old one had 50,000.) I've been a library card holder since I was a kid; it's always been a tremendous thrill to me to be able to ankle into a building and - for free! - borrow books, CDs, DVDs, and I don't know what-all else. For free!

This library has a couple dozen pcs for the public to use, lots of books and books on CD and music CDs and movies on DVD and small group study rooms, a large community meeting room, and a really cool quiet study room with magazines and newspapers and a working fireplace! It's a tad late in the season now to be planning for this, but you watch: a lot of 50+ guys from my area will be hanging around there, warming our naugahydes by the fire and reading. In fact, most of us will.

I have a plan to test things. If someone has a new dictionary, I always look for the word "eleemosynary" (charitable) and if it's in there, the dictionary is complete enough for me. If not, then it's a little skimpy. "Eleemosynary" seems to be the Rubicon separating thorough dictionaries from less-detailed volumes. Same thing with libraries: I look through their catalog, and if they don't have at least a book or two by Ring Lardner, the great colloquial humorist, then they loaded up too much on Robert Ludlum and Dr Phil. That seemed to be the case here, but all in all, I give our new local library very high grades. Not that many of us are into Ring Lardner these days, it would seem. Maybe I could be so eleemosynary as to donate to them a copy or two of his masterworks.

Discuss: what th' heck ever happened to silence being the word in a library? There were a few people passing through the book area, just gabbling on like we all wanted to hear about their brother-in-law's legal woes, or why their daughter didn't go out for the school play this spring ("Too busy with homework"). I guess that 'silence' concept went out with service station attendants wearing leather bow ties and police-style hats and cleaning your windshield before checking your oil while pumping your Buick Roadmaster full of 28.9 ¢ per gallon gas.

My new plan to is spark big interest in the work of Ring Lardner by telling the neighborhood posse that he invented ringtones and they named them after him.

I'd like to be a clone with you

Nice-looking woman here, you'd say, am I wrong? Pretty smile, well-dressed, well-coiffed...the kind of person you'd like to meet and hang around with, correct?

Except..you can't meet her. Not because she's far away or locked behind castle walls or anything.

You can't meet her because she does not exist. She is no more real than a Republican tax break for the working class.

"Tica," as they call her, is the creation of Blair Art Studios. It took 70 hours to create her by the use of PhotoShop. See the process here and wonder why people do this sort of thing. I guess it's better than cloning people in some Frankenstein-type lab, but geez, it gives me the Willies.





Two of whom are real...

Psyche Out

Well, the big story on CBS Sunday Morning yesterday was the furor among the psychological/psychiatric community as to whether DID (Dissociative Identity Disorder) exists or not. This is the malady once known (and still known in some quarters) as Multiple Personality Disorder, or Robin Williams Syndrome.

Doctors in favor of labeling this disorder an official diagnosis point out that it's rarely spotted outside North America. Equally vocal are the doctors on the other side, who point out that the case loads for doctors treating this problem soar right after movies such as "The Three Faces of Eve," "Sybil," and "Revolutionary Road" come out. They also feel that many people presenting at therapists' offices under a state of hysteria are more suggestible than most...so if the doctor says, "Do you have more than one personality, by any chance?" the answer that takes the patient down the hall for much more therapy is a firm "You betcha!"

But, back to those who think it's for the real, they state that they see people with all these people inside of them, and they don't want them there, so whaddya gonna do?

I don't know what the answer is. I'm of two minds about the whole thing.

A lovely neighborhood called Audrey Meadows

Yesterday’s entry used the word “tawdry,” and I had heard the word had an interesting etymology, so what I did was, I looked it up. The story reads like “The Princess Bride,” or something from the Brothers Grimm.

Around 640, there lived an English princess named Ethelreda, better known as Audrey. ( Perhaps she did not wish to be confused with Ethel Mertz.) She married a guy to help her father, King Anna (listen! I’m not making these names up!) but hubby #1 bought the farm within three years, and in all that time, they had never got around to consummating the marriage. Even though she had taken a vow of virginity, she got married again, when her Uncle Ethelwold (!) thought it would be a great idea if she tied the knot with Egfrid, son of King Oswy of Northumberland. Old Egfrid wouldn’t go along with the chastity pledge, being married and everything, and so he started making moves on her, to no avail. He attempted to bribe the local bishop, Saint Wilfrid of York, to release Audrey from her vows. Saint Wilfrid refused, and helped Audrey get away. She fled south, with her husband right on her heels. They reached a promontory known as Colbert's Head(sorry - wrong picture!) (there it is!) and it was there that suddenly the waters started to rise, and for seven days Egfrid had to cool his own heels in the muddy waters.(I am going to pause here to tell you that this Colbert's Head is near Dover, and to remind you if you ever go to England and have someone ask you if you saw the White Cliffs of Dover upon your return, the only possible answer is "See them? I had dinner with them on Thursday!"). I mean, "E" was only a man, and he wasn‘t going to hang around forever without his connubials, so he took off and married someone with a more conventional view of marriage. Audrey, taking a conventional view herself, moved to a convent, and went on to build an abbey.


Now here’s where the story takes an interesting turn. Audrey was to die of an huge tumor on her neck, and thought this was visited upon her because, in her youth, she liked to wear many necklaces. But, prior to her death, she had become enormously popular in her area, owing to her many good deeds and steadfast faith, so throughout the Middle Ages, a festival, "St. Audrey's Fair", was held in her town of Ely on her feast day. People, as they will, bought all sorts of cheesy merchandise at these fairs, and the necklaces and neckerchiefs for sale in her honor were considered low-grade, but still, they were dedicated “to Audrey,” and that became corrupted to the present-day word “tawdry.“

Still no explanation on why her father’s name was Anna. This is all true, I’m telling ya!

Now I’m going to look up why I’ve never met a girl named “Jackie” (or any alternative spelling thereof) who wasn’t a heck of a lot of fun to be around.

Tawdry seems to be the hardest word

I just can't get enough of the Republicans kowtowing to this hot air buffoon. First they get an attack of conscience and say the truth about him, and then, sensing that the dittoheads are upset by the truth, they beg for his forgiveness.

If you feel that you may have offended The Great Man or his cat, please go here and find a simple, E-Z to fill-out form. May he cause the light of his exoneration to shine upon you and yours.

Remember, those of you who find him to be a refreshing representative of all that's good and American and right, he is the horse's patootie who claimed that Parkinson's victim Michael J. Fox is either "acting or forgot to take his medicine."

That's vile. That's Rush. You can do better.

And by the way, it's the DEMOCRATIC party. This Republican habit of shortening that reminds me quite a lot of the aristocrats who would deliberately mispronounce the names of the hired help in order to minimize them.

A True Story

This actually happened. I'm 19, and out for a night of carousing with some of my elegant friends, strangers all to the debutante ball circuit, but well known among the taverns of Towson, where the people who checked ID's were not too particular.

So we wind up heading West on this evening, which happened to be Thanksgiving night. One or more of us decided to get out of Joe's Malibu and dampen the ground along Old Court Rd in Ruxton, as a fire prevention measure. Having no buckets of water, we were forced to improvise.

A car or two passed by as we shook hands with the governors, but we were not the sort of guys who stood on ceremony, so we finished with the business at hand (so to speak) and got back into the Malibu, with the probable intent of obtaining more Slim Jims, pickled tomatoes, red hot floating brine sausages and suds. The rest of the night is lost in the miasma of history.

Except that on Christmas night that year, my brother-in-law's cousin's husband from New Jersey (sounds like a song by Ray Stevens, does it not?) sidled up to me and says, in the confidential guy-to-guy tone favored by guys everywhere guys congregate, "You know you can't get away with a #*$&@ thing these days..."

Requiring elaboration, I asked for more confidential details, and he said, "I saw you and your buddies peeing on Old Court Rd on Thanksgiving night."

He lived in New Jersey. What th'?

The Jean Pool

I keep going back to Owen Wilson's line in "Wedding Crashers." With the sincere insincerity that permeates every character he plays, he tells a woman with whom he wishes to engage in coitus that "they say we only use ten percent of our brains....I think we only use ten percent of our HEARTS!"

I now have evidence about the use of ten percent of our brains. A woman appeared on the Marketplace show on NPR tonight (that radio network with no Rush!) and she was some sort of fashion expert. Her deal was that we all need to "support the high-end" fashion merchandisers, lest they go out of business. Hang on, Ralph Lauren! Payday is this Friday; I bet I can afford to pick up a couple of your sweaters to help you get past this economic downturn.

And the woman also commented on how people might be forced to choose between $50 jeans and $250 jeans.

I would like a list of names of all the people who would pay 250 smackers for a pair of blue jeans. Now I mean, really!

And then I heard a story about the reaction to the reactionary voting in California which outlawed same-sex marriage, on the ridiculous notion that not everyone has the same rights. The people who supported the needless amendment raised 45 million dollars. I know one person right this second whose whole life could be vastly improved by having 45 dollars. 450 dollars would be a nice weekend getaway for a happy couple - no matter their persuasion! $4500 could buy a fairly decent used car to help someone get back and forth to a job and/or an education. $45,000 is an adequate yearly salary, probably enough for a small family as long as no one insists on only "high-end" clothing. $450,000 is grant money enough to fund a program to assist people in need, people without food, shelter, hope. $4,500,000 is a good salary for medium-range football star, who will play in a large outdoor stadium for people wearing $250 jeans and drinking $9 cans of beer.

But $45,000,000 is the price it takes to tell millions of members of our American family that their love is not good enough. How about, we take that swag and divvy it up among the haters? Let them sit home, listen to Limbaugh and decide how everyone else ought to live and love. How about how stupid that is?

My number at work used to be 911

From the Associated Press:

FORT PIERCE, Fla. - Authorities say a Florida woman called 911 three times after McDonald's employees told her they were out of McNuggets. A police report said 27-year-old Fort Pierce resident Latreasa L. Goodman told authorities she paid for a 10-piece last week but was later informed the restaurant had run out.

She says she was refused a refund and told all sales were final. A cashier told police she offered Goodman a larger portion of different food for the same price, but Goodman became irate.

Police say Goodman was cited on a misuse of 911 charge. A current phone listing for Goodman couldn't be found.

A McDonald's spokesman says Goodman should have been given a refund, and she's being sent a gift card for a free meal.

America, I am of two minds on this story. The consumer in me - and I can't say that I spend much time in line under the golden arches purchasing 10-nugget Chicken McPieces (notice how I turned that around?) - but I still will raise my voice in protest over shoddy service, insolent service or total lack of service - shouts "right on!" to Latreasa L. Goodman of Fort Pierce, Fla. You pay for 10 pieces of "chicken," you should receive 10 pieces of "chicken," plus one or two containers of that artificially flavored dipping "sauce."

On the proverbial other hand...the part of me that spent 18.5 years laboring in the vineyard of a real-life 911 Center, where danger, intrigue, derring-do and excitement were on the menu every day (and that was even before the shift began!) wishes to state that there is a lot of misuse of 911. For one thing, people tend not to know the diff between a legal matter (someone hit you all up in the head) and a civil matter (someone built a shed all up in your property line) so they call 911 for either.

Or they should call (maternity: birth imminent, chest pains, subject prying neighbor's door open, sparks flying out of wall socket, ill-informed president engineers illegal and immoral invasion of sovereign foreign nation in order to revarnish his father's tarnished reputation and enrich his friends in various materiel concerns) (ok, maybe not the last one, but you get the point) but they don't. So many times, small fires become huge ones because people "don't want to trouble the firefighters."

Crimes are committed under the watchful eyes of citizens who then decide to do nothing with this information because it's "none of my business."

Or - and we would get this call on many a morning - "My son won't get out of bed and go to school; send the police to make him get up and go."

So, lessons learned tonight: Call 911 when you should. Don't call when you shouldn't. Give people their 10 deep-fried poultry chunks when they pay for them, and don't rip them off.

Tomorrow: How to handle an annoying friend who insists on recreating the vocal style of every American Idol contestant every Wednesday morning. The answers might surprise you!

His 20-minute speech took over an hour to deliver!

A friend from the blogolopolis and I were discussing something she wrote on her blog ( I won't link to it; she is a very private person and I respect that) and I told her that I find her blog as "poignant as it is sporadic."

She retorted that I only put mine out daily because I am OCD.

I'll admit to a certain amount of that, although I'm not nearly as bad as I used to be. I've forsworn my habit of not leaving the house without having exactly six nickels, six dimes, six quarters and six pennies in my pocket, for instance. Things like that just seem less important as the years go by. I do, however, make sure that I always have my various tools, two pens, and several other items, but they are useful, and not just talismans of good luck or something.

The rabbit's foot that people used to carry didn't do much for the rabbit in question, did it?

I do find that the discipline, if you will, of putting a blog entry together every single day is worthwhile and keeps my head in the game. I'm not artistic, one of those who has to wait for a flash of inspiration to pick up my palette and begin daubing. Blogging is just typing up a conversation I might have already had, to me.

Which is why I lack the profundity of, say, Rush Limbaugh, who publicly avers that he wants our president to fail. Nice touch, you logorrheic demagogue. I chanced to see him babbling on CNN at some sort of "Look at how conservative I am!" convention and he just played that audience like a snake oil salesman. The rubes were jumping out of their seats to hand him their money and fealty. I want him to stop talking like a know-it-all caller on a local sports call-in show.

Wonder who will get his wish first?

"Stand by! For News!"

His politics aside, Paul Harvey was a giant force in radio, and for anyone who appreciates radio as an art (just go ahead and say you do, please!) he was a long-time icon in the field.

His death on Saturday stilled his baritone voice, but what he did for all the years before will live on. Again, I'll agree with Garrison Keillor and say that I couldn't have disagreed more with his Goldwater-style politics, but if you ever listened to him, you were hearing someone who literally shaped a whole way of broadcasting.

The man lived to be 90, and was technically still working for ABC radio. In 2002, he signed a ten-year contract (for $100 million) and even though he faced several major health threats and lost his beloved wife and producer Angel a year ago, he kept on. He cut back on broadcasts, and had not been heard regularly for some months, but he was still a force. At 90!

When I did middays on the radio, he was my lunch break, and even today, when I hear that voice cry out, "Hello Americans! This is PAUL HARVEY! Stand by! for news!" I reach for a sandwich and a bottle of water. Maybe some Andy Capp's Hot Fries, or a TastyKake pie, or an apple. "Paul Harvey News and Comment" was 15 minutes in length, and all I had to do was pop in one 60-second commercial at about 10 minutes in. For those 15 minutes, Mr Harvey held forth. One beauty of the show was the juxtaposition of the big (invasion of hostile forces into an American embassy forces diplomats to flee!) and the mundane (invasion of bees at a picnic forces family forces family to flee!) It wasn't a place to get reliable unbiased news; it was more like a visit to the barber shop to catch the local scoops.

The other beauty of the show was the commercials. Have you ever noticed that you'll see (or hear) a commercial, and when it's over, you have no idea what product was being sold? That's called style over substance, and it's also called wasting your money if you happen to be the owner of "Mr Chimney Sweep" and your business is down because the guy who writes your spots is so doggone clever, he thought that people would really love to see a commercial in which some schlimozel keeps falling down the stairs or something. Funny, in that "Funniest Home Videos" sort of way, but it doesn't sell your service or product effectively.

Paul Harvey would sell your service or product effectively, all right. First of all, he had to use what you were selling before he would agree to endorse it, and then, when he did, he sold like a son of a gun. There would be days when I'd be halfway through my roast beef 'n' muenster and Mr Harvey would be talking about a pair of work gloves or a steel shed or an appetite suppressant or I don't know what-all else, and before I could cue up another Conway Twitty record, I'd be planning to stop off at the Buy-1-More and load up.

Paul Harvey used silence like some use words. He would pause in the middle of a sentence for such dramatic emphasis that you just couldn't miss his point. It was said that he said more with what he DIDN'T say than most say with what they do. It's true. He never had the chance to say goodbye to us.

Good day, Mr Harvey!

Snow Use Worrying About It

Today here in Baltimore, all the meteorologists are gazing into their crystal balls and Radaranges, and what do you think they see?

Snow. Lots and lots of snow.

Well, by "lots and lots," I mean, last night some dude on Channel 11, whom I've never seen before, said 3" - 6" from this afternoon to tomorrow morning, and if that comes true, it's more than enough to engender a full-blown - or at least partially-blown - Baltimore BMTP alert.

BMTP? Yes. You see, some 50 years ago or so, Baltimore was hit with an unexpectedly heavy snowfall, and many people were unable to get to the grocery store for several days. It's for this reason that grocers all around our area know that when snow is on the menu, the local lords and ladies will break their necks to get to the Bag-Ur-Self and stock up on bread, milk, and toilet paper...the holy trinity of wintertime supplies for our city by the Bay.

It's not only that. February is over - the driest on record for our area since they started wasting paper saving such records - and we've hardly had goodly-squat worth of snow this whole winter. Now that March is here, it suddenly wants to snow?

That's like your neighbor showing up at your house dressed as a leprechaun, swinging a shillelagh and inviting you to come out for a wee bit of a St Patty's Day party on August 3.

It's like someone bringing out the red beans and rice after you've had dessert.

It's like going to the beach and some GQ reader wants to stroll the boardwalk in a fine silk suit.

It's too late, thanks. The time for snow is - Thanksgiving morning...any time leading up to a White Christmas...any morning in January, and President's Day weekend.

We had a blizzard in the middle of March, 1993, and by the time I finished shoveling all the snow out of our driveway, it was April, baseball had begun, and I was wearing shorts.

This is a scheduling conflict, and I'm sure that an committee will be appointed to resolve it. Meanwhile, the forecast for tonight calls for 3- 6 inches of snow, followed by little kids on sleds.