Let me be perfectly clear…(King James Version)

 

The following is excerpted from Lamentations of the Father by Ian Frazier.  Anyone who has ever raised kids will immediately identify with the frustrations which led him to write the piece, which I found hilarious and had to share  with you. There are three books by Frazier in our local library.

Laws Pertaining to Dessert

For we judge between the plate that is unclean and the plate that is clean, saying first, if the plate is clean, then you shall have dessert. But of the unclean plate, the laws are these: If you have eaten most of your meat, and two bites of your peas, with each bite consisting of not fewer than three peas each, or in total six peas, eaten where I can see, and you have eaten enough of your potatoes to fill two forks, both forkfuls eaten where I can see, then you shall have dessert.  But if you eat a lesser number of peas,  and yet you eat the potatoes, still you shall not have dessert; and if you eat the peas yet leave the potatoes uneaten, you shall not have dessert, no, not even a small portion thereof. And if you try to deceive by moving the potatoes and peas around with a fork, that it may appear you have eaten what you have not, you will fall into iniquity. And I will know, and you shall have no dessert.

 On Screaming

 Do not scream; for it is as if you scream all the time.  If you are given a plate on which two foods you do not wish to touch each other are touching each other, your voice rises up even to the ceiling, while you point to the offense with the finger of your right hand; but I say to you, scream not, only remonstrate gently with the server, that the server may correct the fault.  Likewise if you receive a portion of fish from which every piece of herbal seasoning has not been scraped off, and the herbal seasoning is loathsome to you, and steeped in vileness, again I say, refrain from screaming. Though the vileness overwhelm you, and cause you a faint unto death, make no sound from within your throat, neither cover your face, nor press your fingers to your nose.  For even now I have made the fish as it should be; behold, I eat of it myself, yet do not die.

 Laws When at Table

 And if you are seated  in your high chair, or in a chair such as a greater person might use, keep your legs and feet below you as they were.  Neither raise up your knees, nor place your feet on the table, for that is and abomination to me.  Yes, even when you have an interesting bandage to  show, your feet upon the table are an abomination, and worthy of rebuke.  Drink your milk as it is given you, neither use it on any utensil, nor fork, nor knife, nor spoon, for that is not what they are for; if you will dip your blocks in the milk and lick it off, you will be sent away.  When you have drunk, let the empty cup remain upon the table, and do not bite it upon its edge and by your teeth hold it to your face in order to make noises in it sounding like a duck; for you will be sent away.

 Complaints and Lamentations

 O my children, you are disobedient.  For when I tell you what you must do, you argue and dispute hotly even to the littlest detail; and when I do not accede, you cry out, and hit and kick. Yes, and even sometimes do you spit, and shout “stupid-head” and other blasphemies, and hit and kick the wall and the molding thereof when you are sent to the corner.  And though the law teaches that no one shall be sent to the corner for more minutes than he has year of age, yet I would leave you there all day, so mighty am I in anger.

 Leave the cat alone, for what has the cat done, that you should so afflict it with tape?  And hum not that humming in your nose as I read, nor stand between the light and the book. Indeed, it will drive me to madness.  Nor forget what I said about the tape.

Government for (some of) the people

Just about the time that Andy Rooney was signing off for the last time, I was watching 60 Minutes present an interview by Steve Kroft with a guy named Grover Norquist, a lobbyist.  I had missed the beginning of the program, so I was not sure at first what they were talking about.  Finding out didn’t make me happy.

Lobbyists are handsomely paid by special interest groups to hang out with congressmen and influence them––by making large contributions to their reelection fund or flying them to Hawaii for “important meetings”––to vote favorably for whatever legislation the special interest group is promoting.  (The congressmen, of course, remain purely objective. They are only interested in what is best for the folks back home and refuse to be influenced by these smooth talkers.)  (Yeah, right.)

Anyhow, it seems that Grover Norquist is a lobbyist for the non-profit Americans for Tax Reform.  He has gotten 238 (out of 435) members of the House of Representatives and 41 (out of 100) Senators to sign pledges not to raise taxes.  Ever.  Under any circumstances. Even if the country has a $14 trillion problem, and 1% of the citizens have most of the wealth and escape with minimal taxes.And why do our duly-elected-to-do-what’s-best-for-the-folks-at-home representatives sign these pledges?  For two reasons.  One, Americans for Tax Reform will contribute large chunks (millions) of money to their reelection campaigns, helping to reassure reelection.  And more trips to Hawaii.  Two, if the representative should break his pledge and vote for increased taxes, when it’s time for reelection, Americans for Tax Reform will contribute large chunks of money (millions) to his opponent.

And where, you ask, if you have been paying attention, does Americans for Tax Reform get all these millions of dollars to persuade 54% of our duly elected from the House of Representatives and 41% of our duly elected from the Senate to sign a pledge not to raise taxes?  Well, duh, from contributions from the 1%, the wealthiest individuals, and the giant corporations of course. And who, specifically, are these contributors, that we might single them out and admonish them for buying our representatives?  We can only guess. Americans for Tax Reform does not have to reveal the source of the contributions. It’ s non-profit. Especially for you and me.

PLACES I’VE BE…

PLACES I’VE BEEN

I have been in many places, but I’ve never been in Cahoots. Apparently, you
can’t go alone. You have to be in Cahoots with someone.

I’ve also never been in Cognito. I hear no one recognizes you there.

I have, however, been in Sane. They don’t have an airport; you have to be
driven. I have made several trips, thanks to my friends, family
and work.

I would like to go to Conclusions, but you have to jump, and I’m not too
much on physical activity anymore.

I have also been in Doubt. That is a sad place to go, and I try not to
visit there too often.

I’ve been in Flexible, but only when it was very important to stand firm.

Sometimes I’m in Capable, and I go there more often as I’m getting older.

One of my favorite places to be is in Suspense! It really gets the
adrenalin flowing.

I may have been in Continent, but I don’t remember what country I was in.
It’s an age thing.

I’ve been in Consequential. It wasn’t much.

I’ve been in Cline. Quite hilly there.

I’ve been in Verse, but never re Verse.

I’ve been in Jury… with eleven others.

I’ve never been in Conspicuous.

I once was in Ebriated, headed toward in Tolerable, but luckily ended up in Tact.

Spy nabbed

UPS-New York

Authorities today announced that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran, has been arrested and charged with spying. Ahmadinejad, in New York attending a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, apparently stepped off the sidewalk in front of the UN onto 1st Ave. and was immediately seized by secret service agents.  Different authorities, not the ones who made the announcement, charged that Ahmadinejad was apparently attempting to observe ferry traffic on the East River.  Spying is a bad thing, so Ahmadinejad could be held in jail for two years, tried by a jury of Jewish merchants and, if found guilty, given up to eight years in prison. The ACLU has filed a protest, claiming violation of civil rights.

Dyslexia for the common man

We have plenty to worry about these days. If you live near Romney, you might be worried about lumpy sidewalks, drinking water contamination from the Marcellus developers, downtown clear-cut deforestation, and a leaky and closed Wellness Center. Worrying on a larger scale,  there’s our dysfunctional federal government which we elected to give us a 14 trillion dollar problem, the heat wave caused by global warming which they say doesn’t really exist because it was just made up by a bunch of scientists with nothing better to do than explain facts, and, of course, the spreading national bedbug infestation.

So, while you’re waiting in the long line of cars for the FOLLOW ME truck to lead you past the freshly applied asphalt, or have become hopelessly trapped on Hwy. 50 by the county fair parade, occupy your brain with less worrisome activities. They say keeping one’s mind busy with challenges might help prevent early dementia. I know of an activity that’s sure to impress your friends when you tell them about it.

All you have to do is switch the first letter of your friends’ (married couples) first names to hear how it sounds. For instance, our friends Peggy and Earl would be Eggy and Pearl, Dick and Inga would be Ick and Dinga.  Others we know are Bathe and Kill, Bee and Lob, Dred and Foris. Don’t you just love the new sounds this makes?  This is because the diphthongs and fricatives have been reversed to create a new lingua franca.

This works for celebrities, too. But, since many of them have been married several times, the names of their spouses might not come to mind. In that case, you just switch first letters of first and last names, e.g., Hob Bope, Back Jenny, Cing Brosby, Bumphrey Hogart, Bucille Lall, Reddy Toosevelt, Beorge Werbert Halker Gush, Wiger Toods, Nichard Rixon and Weorge Gashington––cather of our fountry. The possibilities are endless.

I have to go now.  Binny says there are some men at the front door with white coats and a net who want to talk to me.

 

 

Number 11…and counting

Some guy with lots of money and nothing better to do started buying up large chunks of stock in the company I worked for. Pretty soon he tried to take control of the whole company ($4.4 billion). This (hostile takeover attempt) made senior management really nervous and unhappy. So they found a group of investors (white knights) who weren’t hostile, and they bought up most of the stock and senior management got to keep their jobs. But now the company owed a lot of money ($3.1 billion) to the white knights and had to sell off company assets in order to repay it. The first asset they sold, highly profitable and therefore highly saleable, was the division I worked in ($700 million).

The new owners had an entirely different philosophy and management style, and soon almost no one was happy, including me. Within five years, the number of branch offices in our division had been reduced from 350 to 3 with corresponding reductions in employees. Shredded. And so it came to pass that after 23 years, I was given some money (golden parachute [10-karat]) and shown the door. This really made me mad because employees were given a walnut grandfathers clock in recognition of 25 years of service, and I was just two years short.

But I was prepared. I knew from the rumor mill that I was to be downsized and outcast on January 6th; by the next day, January 7th, I was a full-time student at California State University, finishing my degree in English. We sold the little house by the Big House in Folsom and that September, as I was finishing up my final classes in summer school, the Mrs. went back to Albuquerque to buy another house, our eleventh.

Now it’s kind of tricky buying a house without a job. She found one though through an old high school buddy of our daughter, a nice house with an assumable loan––just pay the seller their equity and take over the payments. It was a typical New Mexico stucco house, on the corner, a former show home near the golf course, now outfitted with decorative, wrought iron grill work on the doors and windows to keep the drug users from breaking in. (There are now an estimated 15,000 gang members hanging about in Albuquerque. But, what the heck, the sun shines 300 days a year and the humidity is low.)

Most Albuquerque back yards are surrounded by 5 foot high, cement block walls within which one finds grass, flowers and trees––all watered by sprinklers of one type or another. Front yards have typical Southwestern landscaping comprised of 1-2″ white stone and an occasional yucca, cactus or pampas grass. Spartan, but necessary due to very low annual rainfall (Albuquerque 9”, Romney 40”) and not-infrequent water restrictions. In addition to the foregoing, previous owners of our new home had the bad sense to populate the yards, front and back, with a dozen pyracantha bushes which had grown to be 8 feet tall. If you are unfamiliar with pyracantha (aka. firethorn), think of it as a beautiful, barbed wire, out-of-control, monster. I say beautiful because they display clusters of flowers and orange berries. I say out-of-control monster because they are covered with 1″ needle-like thorns, grow like weeds and require frequent pruning, which I could only accomplish while balancing on a tall step ladder. Trying to dispose of the cuttings in plastic garbage bags is like trying to stuff your cat into a sock. But, these thorny monsters probably helped keep the banditos, rustlers and gang members from hopping over the wall and stealing our gold.

Number 10

But I digress.  I’m supposed to be describing the joys and frustrations of buying and selling the twelve houses we’ve lived in.  As you may recall, we were back in Sacramento, me and the Mrs. (And please don’t send comments criticizing my grammar. I know it ain’t right to say me and the Mrs., but Hawkeye Pierce said it on an episode of MASH, and I liked its alliterative sound.).  Anyhow, we, me and the Mrs., hadn’t moved for a few years and were starting to get restless.  So we started driving around the suburbs looking at model homes in new subdivisions. Usually a developer built and furnished four or five show homes with different floor plans, offering a variety of carpeting, tile, colors, etc. that one could walk through to get a better idea of what it might be like if one actually owned it. Each of the models would have an exotic name such as “The Titanic” or “The Shangrila” or “The Hairy Truman.” And then one could say to one’s spouse, “But dear, I liked the fireplace in the garage in the Shangrila, didn’t you?” And so in Folsom, small town of prison fame, we discovered a lovely “3-br, shk-rf, frpl, 3-car gar.” The price was in range, and we were impulsive, young and foolish.  Our first brand new house. We got to pick the colors and the carpet and everything!  The little house by the Big House.

It came with a 10-year builder’s warranty.  The first call went out the day after we moved in when rain water started dripping onto the electric stove.  The construction foreman came out to explain that the leak was from a vent pipe on the roof.  “But I can’t send nobody up there in this rain. Them shake shingles is slipperier than snot on a door knob.”  Clear enough.

And so we settled in.  New neighbors, new restaurants, new mortgage payments.  But after just a couple of years, the exterior stain started to peel off the siding.  Sadly, the 10-year warranty did not cover paint for 10 years.  It seems that paint was warranted only for the day we actually moved in.  So I started painting, a fairly easy process on a one-story house on level ground.  Except at one place where there was a second gable set back about 10 feet from the edge of the roof.  Having completed the other three sides, this was to be the final day.  It was a fine, beautiful California day––sunny and warm.  The Mrs. had gone off to buy shoes, and I was home alone.  I rested the top of the ladder against the gutter, positioned its base against the retaining wall and started up with my bucket and brush.  I stepped onto the roof and sat down in front of the short, triangular gable rising about four feet from the edge and began to apply paint. The paint can is resting on the sloped roof.  I am thinking about what a neat job I have done overall on this project when I feel an unwelcome dampness in the area of the buttocks––a signal that all is not well.  The paint can, which had been half full, and which had been more or less situated behind me, is now empty, its light- gray, guaranteed- one-coat contents enveloping my pants, shorts, socks and shoes. The remainder is running down the brown cedar shakes into the rain gutter.  Checkmate.

No one at home, no one visible about the neighborhood.  Having no other choice, I took off my saturated pants, shoes and socks and slip-sloped and butt-slimed over to the ladder, trying very hard to hold back the viscous tide from dripping down onto the newly installed brick patio. Two hours later, I have more or less sopped up the paint with about ten roles of the Quicker-Picker-Upper and am contemplating filing for idiocy when the little woman comes back home to ask, pleasantly, how it went.

Some days later, while I am painting the now light- gray roofing shingles a rich brown, our kitty-corner-across-the street neighbor, Pete, came over to tell me how he and his wife had watched the whole incident from their second floor bedroom that day and thought that I had nice legs.

Murder on Main Street

Learning that the City of Romney had destroyed the Bradford pear trees (in full bloom at the time) on our main thoroughfare, I was inspired to write a poem and thought…

“Whose woods these are…”  No, that’s been done.

“A thing of beauty is a joy…”  Nope, somebody beat me to it.

“I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a…”  Too late.

I know!

Ode to a Stump

The people now all wear a frown,

Pearwood Forest has been cut down,

Robbin’ the ‘hood of shade and beauty,

The Mayor says, “I’ve done my duty.”

Now we gaze at gray cement,

Reflecting on how our tax is spent,

Our street of blossoms is now bereft,

The partridge sees there’s nothing left.

Clear thinking

Someone sent the following to me in an e-mail.  I didn’t write it, but I think it makes more sense than anything else I’ve read about why things seem to be in such a mess.

Charley Reese’s final column for the Orlando Sentinel…

He has been a journalist for 49 years.

He is retiring and this is his last column.

 

545 vs. 300,000,000 People

-By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and

then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans

are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation

and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don’t propose a federal budget. The President does.

You and I don’t have the Constitutional authority to vote on

appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don’t write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don’t set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don’t control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one President, and nine Supreme

Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million

are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the

domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that

problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its

Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally

chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason.

They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a

senator, a congressman, or a President to do one cotton-picking

thing. I don’t care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in

cash.

The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the

lobbyist promises, it is the legislator’s responsibility to determine

how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that

what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con

regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an

excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall

of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating

deficits. The President can only propose a budget. He cannot force

the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole

responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and

approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House?

John Boehner. He is the leader of the majority party. He and fellow

House members, not the President, can approve any budget they want.

If the President vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million cannot

replace 545 people who stand convicted — by present facts — of

incompetence and irresponsibility. I can’t think of a single

domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people.

When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the

power of the federal government, then it must follow that what

exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it’s because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it’s because they want it in the red.

If the Army & Marines are in Iraq and Afghanistan it’s because they

want them in Iraq and Afghanistan ….

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement

plan not available to the people, it’s because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they

hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and

advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power

to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not

let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied

mystical forces like “the economy,” “inflation,” or “politics” that

prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who

are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees…

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Death by decibel

“You should try it.  It’s really good. They give you free peanuts while you wait for your order,” someone said, referring to Five Guys, then a new hamburger joint. So we tried it, me and the Mrs., one spring day.  Free peanuts! And, they also provide music!  For the benefit of the employees.  Not music by Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra who sang words you could understand (I can imagine the reader mentally carbon dating my approximate age to determine whether I was born before or after the discovery of fire), but music so loud as to render all possibility of conversation impossible.  Painful music.  Music to alter the cellular composition of your brain. Music for people with no brain.

The counter person was a young female with a metal thingy in the side of her nose vibrating to the sounds, in three-part harmony, with the metal thingy in her tongue and the braces on her teeth, her hair a beautiful bituminous black with orange highlights–lipstick and fingernails to match.  She was in charge of the music-making machine.

After shouting our order and observing only one other set of diners, an equally ancient couple, I attempted to communicate with her. I am familiar with some of the language used by this age group, the new Deformed English, and can sometimes make myself understood.

“So, like, would you mind turning down the music, dude?  It’s too loud.”

“OMG! It ain”t loud! No way.”

A minor discussion ensued, but I could not prevail. She knew her rights.

Lest we be denied access to the free peanuts, we took our food outside.  And while seated at a thoughtfully-provided table, what to my wandering eye should appear but a sign which read, as I recall:

HOW ARE WE DOING?

CALL US WITH YOUR COMMENTS AND SUGGESTIONS

1-800-FIVEGUYS

A wholly owned subsidiary of Two and a-Half-Men

 

I called with my comments and suggestions.

 

That scenario was brought to mind this week when we, me and the Mrs., stopped at a large shopping mall, the Mrs. to supplement her meager supply of shoes. I, wandering aimlessly, saw the storefront for Abercrombie & Fitch, once a name associated with outfitting hunters and explorers, so I was curious.  The interior was very dimly lighted, as if by candles, while music, blasting at the Five Guy level, rocked the mannequins.  A tastefully dressed young woman, the only person in the store, leaned against a display.  So I asked her, in a normal speaking level, “What if I had a question about the clothing?  Could you hear me?”  She said, “WHAT?”  I said, “Is this level of noise approved by management for increasing sales?”  She said, “HUH?”

No wonder unemployment is high.