+

Rants January 6, 2013

+

1. While looking up microchip cat flaps I found an advertisement that said, “Keep Your Cat Safe with Savings on Sturdy Outdoor Pet Enclosures!” Outdoor Pet Enclosures. Another person might look at your Outdoor Pet Enclosures and accuse you of confining Mother Nature’s creatures in an inhuman, cruel and unsanitary cage. The only difference between a sturdy outdoor pet enclosure and an inhuman, cruel and unsanitary cage is in the eye of the beholder. I’m extremely grateful for this sociological phenomenon that you and I call the eye of the beholder. Were it not for the inherent differences in the eyes of beholders, several billion men would be trying to arrange my demise so they could marry my wife.

+

2. Some letters to the local newspaper reminded me of something I saw yesterday while standing in line to get a flu shot. When the man in front of me finished registering at the counter, he squirted some liquid from a bottle on the counter onto his hands and walked off, rubbing his hands. No one behind the counter suggested that I do so and it never occurred to me until now that it might have been a good idea. This squirting the hands to kill germs is something new and many of us old people aren’t used to doing it. I’m just one generation away from my old neighbor Captain Freddy who didn’t even believe in germs. It wouldn’t hurt if healthcare workers and our doctors took a few seconds to tell us old folks about these strange and unfamiliar new things that might enable us to squeeze a couple of more years out of our Social Security. And the next time they see us they should remind us again. Do you squirt stuff on your hands when you can’t wash with hot soap and water?

+

3. When I told my wife Marsha, The Almost Perfect Woman, about germ killer in a bottle, she said, "everybody knows it." Then she comes back a few minutes later and says: “You know those three round tubes that roll around on the floor in the back seat?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what they are?”

“No”

“One of them is to wash the windows and the other two are hand sanitizers that clean germs off your hands. People use them before touching the handle on a shopping cart. I’ve been telling you about them for years.” I think it might have been Aristotle who first said, “Show me a person who is always washing his hands and I’ll show you a person who sucks on this thumb and picks his nose.” I’ve seen those slimy things you wipe your hands on while going on long trips in the car and I never believed in them. But now I guess I will start using them, now that I know what they can do for me when I’m not near a sink where I can wash my hands. Is it possible that a man who went to college until he was 34 and then was single until he was 54 could miss out learning about a lot of things that people who could afford to have children take for granted? Not being married like “normal” people might be compared with language learning: if somebody doesn’t teach you how to articulate coherent morphemes until you’re 54 there’s a good chance you’ll never get it and will continue to howl like a wolf whenever you’re hungry.

+

4. One morning my wife’s youngest grandchild walked through the room while chewing on the handle of a fly swatter. My brother, who saw this and knows more about these things than I do, said that that was the way children immunized themselves against disease. And when you hear this example of what happens to kids who don’t chew on fly swatters, you might agree that he is right. My brother Jim mentioned mother’s cousin Will Williamson, who lived up near the corner of Gleason Street in Thomaston. Cousin Will perished with some childhood disease back in the 1920s. I can remember going into Uncle Dell’s house in the early 1940’s and seeing a cardboard doll of Charlie McCarthy on the wall and I remember being aware that Cousin Will had died before his time. But it wasn’t until that morning that my brother told me what had killed Little Will. His parents, Uncle Dell and Aunt Eva, were protective. They insisted that he carry a hand sanitizer that kept him from ever catching anything from other children or anyone else. When the day finally came when he did catch something, his body couldn’t handle it. That hand sanitizer had kept Cousin Will so clean and pure that without realizing what they were doing, his parents actually hand-sanitized him to death.

+

5. How many times have you been working on a project when some lemme show ya boy looks over your shoulder and offers advice? If you are not careful, it is not long before the lemme show ya boy has pushed you aside and has taken the burden of the entire project upon his own shoulders. It is usually about that time that you notice that there is an alarming correlation between a lemme show ya boy’s ineptitude and his eagerness to help you.

+

6. You read of the Maine man who was shot in the shoulder by an intruder. Because the facts of the case were not fully reported in the newspaper, the reader is left to assume that the intruder overpowered the home owner who was trying to defend the inviolate integrity of his home, took away his gun, and shot him in the shoulder.

+

7. Please listen to this. I read it in the paper. "I have driven close to 1 million miles in all kinds of weather, traffic, urban commutes, rural commutes, various obstacles, blinding sun, and never had a crash." It takes a certain kind of person to be able to write this. I couldn't do it, could you? Would you dare say that you’d never crashed in an automobile? Do you know what would happen to me tomorrow if I said that I’d never been struck by lightning or crashed in a car?

+

8. We read of a young man who flipped his van while playing with his cell phone. It’s my understanding that cell phones can cost up to $400. Does causing accidents really require that much technology or expense? Back in the good old days when we wanted to flip the pickup --- or just live dangerously --- we’d simply drive to town with an unrestrained dog in the cab.

+

9. Not much of anything exciting in this morning's email. A diatribe against politicians from a libertarian friend, copied from the North Carolina Gun Owner's web site. Do you find it interesting to realize that to the libertarian mind, all politicians are evil and have no origin? Politicians seem to suddenly appear out of nowhere, fully developed like Venus on a huge clamshell out of the sea. Should it become common knowledge that people get the government they vote for, would our libertarian friends have to find another straw man on which to blame the world’s troubles? The way I understand it, there is a process called election that creates these politician things that are so vilified by libertarians. And one senatorial election which morphs a common, everyday lawyer into a politician can cost over 80 million dollars. In any society there are groups of people who have their own ideas of where tax money should be spent. One very large group might like the money to be spent on infrastructure, education, social services or healthcare. Another group, that might own stock in war related industries, would naturally be in favor of a strong “national defense.” There is also a good chance that this group is not all that concerned with infrastructure, education, social services or healthcare because they have their own private tutors and helicopters. You’re not likely to run into them at the supermarket or when you’re topping off your tank at the gas station. The decisions as to whether tax dollars will go to enrich one group through continual wars, or to repair the roads and maintain a civilized society in general are made by politicians. And now, if you’ve been listening closely, you might understand why 80 million dollars is a small price to pay to own a politician who will funnel billions of tax dollars your way. If he or she doesn’t, the system is obviously not working the way it is supposed to. I can’t say this too many times. If libertarians don’t like our current crop of politicians, let them go out and buy their own.

+

10. A few years ago a friend gave me a crash course on how to pick up women. At the time he imparted this information I was married, but very quickly realized that many young men would pay to have it. So we sat down by a mike and spent an hour or so reviewing and recording the more salient points of picking up women wherever you might be. Like building a computer or choreographing an elaborate ballet, it is an exact and almost infallible science. When I transcribed the whole business later, I had several pages of 12 point type. But --- by the time my friend came around later to help me polish the document I realized I had a dangerous, powerful tool in my hands. From what you’ve seen on TV you know that bad guys can already cause enough trouble without adding to their bag of tricks, so I’ve abandoned this branch of the social sciences. Because this information might be misused to hurt someone, I don’t feel it would be morally right for me to blab it around. So it was inevitable that my voluntarily suppressed pamphlet on how to pick up women came to mind when I heard that a man was arrested for selling a how-to pedophile book. You might have also heard that the lawman who arrested him keeps a Bible on his desk. And you might ask yourself which of those two books has caused the most death and destruction. Anyway, one day while thinking about my little how-to pick up women pamphlet, I asked a very smart woman if there were any special techniques women use to pick up men. She said, “You look them in the eye and snap your fingers as you point at the floor in front of you. When they walk over, you pat them on the head.”

+

11. Our bathroom in the garage is over 100 feet from the tiny trailer we call our winter home, but Marsha said she heard me laughing in bed while she was in the shower. Earlier, she was surprised to hear me laughing at the book I was reading. And she was even more surprised to hear that the book was in English. Because I already know how to read English I feel that reading English is a waste of time. Of course, I'm only reading it in English because I couldn't understand the German copy the man from Switzerland gave me two weeks ago. I could, of course, read a lot of the words, but they didn't make sense. And in reading it in English I can see why because it doesn't make sense in English, either. On page 84 --- I'm laughing now and the tears are in my eyes just thinking about it --- I laughed until I cried. This guy, Terry Pratchett, who wrote Thief of Time, and dozens of other books, is too much. Even if there isn't anything else in the book except what I read on page 84, it is worth reading. Now that I know what's going on and can follow the story, I'm anxious to read it in German. I should get a French copy Everyone needs to laugh as much as possible every day and this book is doing the job for me.

+

12. Marsha sends out a yearly newsletter. It is a blatant attempt to boast of grandchildren and the financial successes of everyone even remotely associated with the family. On the bottom of 2012 I posted a picture of 11 baited mousetraps next to a hole inhabited by moles or voles on the sunny south side of out old farm house. As might be expected, we received several treatises back from our academic friends outlining in detail their various adventures as exterminators of little furry animals. Jeremy, a neurologist at one of our leading universities, gets between their ears as it were, and says: “I think I noted … that you had baited some traps with what looked to be cheese. Professional exterminators usually use something sweet that cannot easily be taken from the bait holder. I have used soft cookies that I can smush onto the holder, and also gum drops - both are very effective.” Jeremy should know that the picture was deceiving because I bait with peanut butter. When I’m in an unforgiving mood I tie on a piece of bacon with string. I had never thought of gum drops but sweet, sticky gum drops sound good. If the trap doesn't get them, they’ll perish with diabetes.

+