Inter-spection Maven

I reached into the small change pocket of my brand new jeans and pulled out a small piece of paper that read, "23" - of course meaning inspected by our fastidious friend Number 23. This can only mean that there are, at last count, at least 23 different agents whose task it is to look over my jeans and determine if they are well enough made that they are worth the $9.00 I will pay for them at Walmart. These dedicated individuals have a difficult task. I'm not sure I'm detail-oriented enough to look at several pairs of jeans and discern their worth based on expected manufacturing standards.

I wonder if God has genes inspectors who determine if a newly created human is ready for dispatch. I must make a note to remind myself to look around my skin for the supernal equivalent to "23" stamped somewhere. It's probably not viewable...

I love 23's work. Her commitment to detail is reassuring. I suppose I could rifle through all the jeans on the store shelves to find only those products that have passed her scrutiny - just to make sure I'm getting a quality pair of $9 jeans.

Do you think on dyslexic days she goes by the alias "32"? It is conceivable that she may feel "permissive" and let a few things slide. Perhaps she has a couple of different numbers that she uses depending on her mood. She unpredictable that way.

I can almost hear the customer service representative on the other end of a jean quality complaint telephone call: "OK, sir, now slip your finger into the change pocket of your jeans - you aren't wearing them now, are you?!? - and locate the inspector's number...now read me that number so we know who is to blame for this unfortunate stitching incident."

It isn't that I'm obsessed with 23 - I like her for her mind, not her number.

Fresh as a Dazey

Suppose I had a business of making stuff up. I would enjoy that immensely. I make stuff up all the time. My mind continuously makes stuff up. That is not to say that I'm a liar. I just have a vast, open mind filled with junk waiting to be dumped out. No idea where it comes from, no idea how to use it. It just sits. And ripens (or rots depending on the case) and I periodically take the time to empty the trash. Usually in a Facebook status and a subsequent blog. Much like this one.

So, what if I had a headline-generating business, for example? "Trust the caring professionals at 'Head Acres' for all your headline needs. Guaranteed to be pithy, zany, though-provoking, and un-plagiarized. We specialize in alliterations and double-entendre (which in French means two entendres). Never ludicrous or misleading unless that is the intention. Licensed, unbounded and ensured. Your statusfaction guaranteed." (Portmanteau intended)

My real purpose here was to include a portmanteau just to keep everyone off balance. I have a real fascination with things like this. One of my favorite pass-times is trying to figure out why so much of entertainment is so lame. I guess not all movies, tv shows, radio shows, podcasts, songs, and circus extravaganzas can be quality but I'm amazed how many are just plain plain. Mean. Average. I apply the standard that if I could have done an equal to or better job writing/producing/directing and starring in the event then it is, by definition, lame. I dislike J. Lennno for the same reason. 98.4% of his humor is low-brow, dumbed-down, obvious, and un-funny.

He does have lots of cars, though. Perhaps I should re-think this.

Staycation Quotation

OK, so I have a real problem with the portmanteau "staycation." See what I did there? I replaced the part of the word with another word thus changing the meaning. It's a Frankenword. Staycations, if I can use that word from now on without quotations, are a reported way to save money by vacationing close to home. I think in some instances (certainly not my instance) it means to stay in the United States instead of vacationing abroad with a broad, senator.

The issue I have with staycations is that it conjures an image of sitting around my house unshowered in my underpants surfing the net, napping, or surfing the net. The image repulses me (though the activity is strangely alluring). I think it is unfair to call vacationing in another part of the US, and for most Arizona residents this means California, a staycation. It undermines the very reason for vacationing. To vacate. Even if it involves going to Scottsdale and holing up in the Scottsdale Princess Resort for a few days away from it all, it is still a vacation. After all, Germans often come here on vacation.

Who is to say that whenever we get away from the routine it can't be classified as a vacation? I guess the main argument against such classification is that those days when a trip to Fry's Electronics in Tempe is in order would count against the 2-weeks vacation time allotted by employers. Scratch that idea.

So, perhaps using this logic, if it is called a staycation we still have 2-weeks vacation coming to us regardless of how much staycation time we have taken. I'm starting to warm up to the idea.

I think I'll invent a the concept of "straycation." As long as we are inventing words we may as well mutilate the concept as well. A straycation (now I'm just too lazy to use quotes) has the following rules:
1. Set amount of time away
2. No set destination
3. Random amount of gasoline in the car
4. Drive. Exit when you want, turn when you want, drive some more.
5. When the "Low Fuel" indicator light illuminates, stay there.
6. Repeat until arriving somewhere enjoyable and distant.
7. Meet and participate in a community event in the stray location.
8. Find a different way home.

Straycations are intended to perpetuate and simulate the stress imposed by daily life. This way we feel comfortable basking in the joy of pain and don't have to suffer the adverse effects of time off.

What's the use of going to work when you just have to turn around and go back on vacation?

The Joke's on Me

There was an old Saturday Night Live running gag where on Weekend Update they would tell a news story and then follow it up with, "prompting George Steinbrenner to Fire Billy Martin." You see, George fired Billy many times. Rehired him and then fired him again. It's like those people who you hear about who get a divorce and then re-marry the same person again.

It's hard to comprehend but then again easy to understand. We all change in life. We view things differently. We discover that the things that bugged us before don't really bug us anymore. We find out the hard way that the greener grass on the other side of the fence has rodents and spikes in it as well and that our green grass is just fine. So in that sense I accept the notion that the spouse or coach you pitched out in a rage can once again gain favor with you and you can ultimately see fit to re-enter that relationship.

My point is this: the following joke will be made by the end of today by someone else and so I will be the first to record it:

George Steinbrenner died today at the age of 80. His first order of business in heaven: Fire Billy Martin. I don't think that joke is necessarily funny but I wanted to be the first one on record to say it. There will be others but they are all comparative posers.

Oh, and I still dislike Derek Jeeter. And Kobe.

Invective Castigation

Those who really know me understand that this is mostly a joke. I did get caught, though, assisting someone who, as my father-in-law would say, is "not scholarship material." I grew tired of their inability to listen to me but worse, I was helping them with things I had no business being involved with - like advanced domain server configuration for free. As I became more and more frustrated that I had to answer his many uninformed questions I found myself in the midst of what I will call a 'patience deficit' situation. When this happens to me, I usually don't react to it as there is nothing that can be done to help their circumstance. I am not able to, for example, make this difficult task any easier or make them inherently smarter. So, as a result, I feel helpless but none the less resigned to accept it. This character trait makes me good at my job and frustrating to my smokin' hot wife. She'd like to see a little more ire once in a while I'm afraid.

What I hate is when I get thanked for my patience - especially when I'm not being patient. Right in the middle of a sarcastic, snide, cynical, caustic, mocking, irascible comment to an arguably deserving dolt, if said dolt congratulates me for my patience it usually derails my vitriol and I end up calming down and being forced toward rationality. Just as I sink my teeth into a juicy diatribe with the intent of making the recipient feel 'like a penny waiting for change,' (Thanks Papa Woods for the colloquialism) I get dipped in a figurative icy depth.

Where's the delicious satisfaction in that?

Fluorescent Camo

The blind, cold-blooded scorpion, Lester, kicks back in the heat for a few hours. He can tell when it is day because he can feel the rejuvenating sunlight warming his body. Back from a day of harvesting and sunning, he engages in a quick chat with a few of his buddies. "I've seen things you critters wouldn't believe," he says. "Well, 'seen' is a little strong a word as we're all blind, but you get my point." The wife strolls through with 70 babies on her back. She don't mind.

"Yep," Lester says, "sensed another human today. I try to hold still and blend in to the wood I'm standing on. The block fence we live in is brown so the story goes. When I'm on that thing ain't nobody can see me even in broad daylight - not that I have a concept of that."

"Lester," a sheepish voice from the buddy corp chimes in, "you still sound sore that our species lacks vision. We have shape-shifting bodies, exoskeleton, and the most awesome stinger and it's filled with poison to boot. Yet all you can talk about is how you can't see. What's so great about seeing anyway? Are you a visual varmint? How would you know if you were? So why the constant complaint about sight? I don't get it."

Lester seems more indignant than before and boasts, "...so I evade humans with the best of them even though they can see and I can't. I blend in. Nothing to see here, I'm just a stick and a leaf. Move along little giant human. What's that? I what? Be careful at night? Why? I frickin' glow in black light? You've got to be KIDDING me!"

Earth Tones

Before the introduction of this poisonous gas called oxygen, the Earth would have appeared green from outer space. To this I say, "Thank you, oxygen!" I would hate to clash with the other heavenly bodies in our solar system. Green Earth and orange Mars just sounds like a bad 70's shag carpet. And given the yellow Sun if Earth were green we would have to call it the LemonLime System - which is just wimpy!

Rabid Chipmunk

When I was growing up we were forced to be afraid of dog bites (or rat bites, or bat bites, or bites from a crazed, rabid chipmunk, etc.) because these animals were all known to have rabies. Now, I've not done a study to find out how true this is - mainly because I'm too scared - but it can't be as widespread as we were lead to believe by the neighborhood fraidy-cats (also known by their pseudonym scardey-cats). I wonder if fraidy-cats have rabies too.

What if rabies were carcinogenic? "Well, sir, I have good news and bad news," the doctor would say. "The good news is that the 30 shots in your eyeball (or stomach depending on which neighborhood you grew up in) seems to have cured your rabies. The bad news is that rabies causes cancer in laboratory rats. Shall I pour you up a Chemo-cocktail now or wait for symptoms?"

We were told that the cure for rabies is 30 shots in various parts of the body. Essentially, there isn't a cure as I've come to find out. Rabies is a virus. We can't kill them without killing the host. But as kids we were convinced that 30 shots was the answer. And by the way, why in the world did we believe that? What can they do with 30 shots that they can't do with one REALLY BIG shot? Or, is the elemental mixture of chemicals so delicate as to not be allowed to come in contact with each other outside the host? Why is it OK inside the host? Who knows. Whether it was in the eyeball, in the stomach, or under the fingernails, I was committed to avoiding the treatment for rabies altogether.

Now if I can just cast out the demons associated with a fictitious crab-like creature called a 'Lotus' that lived across the street from my cousin's house in Phoenix I would be fairly well adjusted. Wow, I was really scared of that thing.

The Making of...

Facebook | Jeff Crandall

Movieland Bucketlist #22: Blinded by the light, I pull my way to freedom. The lines on my face are deep and unfamiliar. The only time I saw my reflection in the last 27 years was in a pool of sweat on the stone prison floor. To escape, I wove a rope from the hair I found in my food, or that which I was able to harvest from passing rats. I can't decide what I missed more: Mexican food or movie-house popcorn..."

The making of Movieland Bucketlist #22. I have long been a fan of movies. I think there are quite a few things that happen in movies that I would like to do: run on top of a moving train, slide in the mud down a long hill into a ravine, or kiss my smokin' hot wife just before exiting the gondola, skiing down the Swiss Alps with my AK-47 in hand spraying bad guys with a shower of bullets, and then slide on in to the lodge where I order up a hot chocolate with those little miniature marshmallows on top only to be greeted by my arch nemesis holding a mug and a Glock. Fortunately my smokin' hot wife emerges from the other door and takes Ms. Nemesis out and I manage to catch the mug without spilling a drop.

So, #22 starts out with me in prison harvesting any material available to weave a rope that I can use to escape. After wrongfully being incarcerated for 27 years I can think of so many other things that would be important to me that the two most trivial things - Mexican food and popcorn - seem ridiculously appropriate thereby amusing to me.

I often write things just to amuse myself.

You Spin Me Right Round

I've decided I won't be doing anything "for the record" anymore. I've heard too many people who pontificate endlessly about nothing but when they really want to be serious or really make a point, they way, "...for the record." This puts the recorder on notice that not only is next thought important, but the last 20 minutes is completely forgettable. This can be handy in denial. This goes along with the phrase, "I mean it!" As soon as someone says, "I mean it," I immediately wonder whether they did not mean anything else they have said.

And if anyone says "...for the record" to me, I'm going to have to inform them that I am not keeping any records either. Beyond the record loosely kept in my head, no official record of their 'for the record' will be kept and reference back to that will be suspect. I have yet to join in a conversation where the other person reminded me that they went on record as having said or meant something. I consider this unfair anyway because they did not witness me writing anything down.

And by the way, where is the proverbial "permanent record" we were all threatened with when we were in elementary school. Too often others have access to it and that berry fight comes back to haunt me again.

Does this Space Shuttle make me look fat?

What if astronauts could take a friend? As an astronaut you are granted a buddy pass. "Hey, dude, I'm going to the moon, wanna come with?" I can see astronauts passing all the physicals, all the rigorous testing, all the mental, physical, and emotional screening and then when they finally complete the process, the only thing they can think to do is invite their buddies to join in on the success. Oh the Astro-Frat parties that they would throw in the name of achievement. "Look at me, I'm an astronaut. And by the way, while I'm orbiting Earth don't think I won't be creating a little moonlight of my own out the window. "Endeavor this!"

Or better yet, "Hey, babe, there's room in this capsule for one more..." Although this sounds nice, I'm sure I'd ask a self-conscious girl, "No way," she'd say, "what if I get up there and everyone else is weightless EXCEPT ME?!?" Heh, pickup lines from an astronaut don't really have to be all that clever. "You are out of this world..." or "Want to take a ride in my rocket? We'll have a blast..." or "Sure you have to, but those space suits are slimming so no worries."

If it is our goal to one day inhabit space, we've got to start taking out civilians and test some of the gear on "end users." That way we know if they have been designed for the masses or just for the few highly skilled casanovastronauts.

Strained Peas

I remember hearing a song with my dad once and naming the band. We must have been in a store or something - I don't think I was somewhere "tuning out" with my dad. "It's The Cure," I said, "I really like them." His reply was classic, "They are called 'Penicillin'?" For the young whipper-snappers that is what they used to call penicillin back in the day because once it was discovered it could cure anything. They didn't know that my smokin' hot wife would be allergic to it.

What frightens me is some day I will also be trapped into references so ancient that nobody remembers them anymore. "Where's the beef," I'll ask with a knowing grin to which they will reply, "Gramps, it's blended in with your strained peas."

Growing old is bittersweet.