Which is more pretentious, to say, “en hommage a,” or “with a
tip of the hat to?” One’s French, the other one smacks of smug
British intellectuals. It’s a tough call. So this post is en
hommage a, and with a stylistic tip of the cap to – Dan O’Sullivan.
There – that’s enough pretention to make Mother Teresa want to
punch me in the nose. (I know I want to.)
So I was sitting at the bus station last night, and somebody handed
me a couple of brownies. I took out my battered laptop and started
writing. I felt strange – free – not nearly as pissed at the
world as I usually feel.
I like brownies. Brownies are good. Here’s what appeared on my
scratched and grubby screen.
The Flow of Words
I love words like onomatopoeia. Sure it doesn’t
sound like what it is, but what the heck – it’s rhythmic –
though it does sound like a place you get lunch out of vending
machines. Most words are utilitarian, like they came out of the
snack machine of word formation to add empty calories to our
vocabulary. Words like onomatopoeia are lyrical. They are crafted
for form as well as function.
Whoops – got a little artsy there.
Existential is a crafted word. It’s so special
that people use it all the time without having a clue what it means.
I don’t mean just stupid people. I don’t think Camus or Sartre
understood the word Existential any more than Thoreau or Emerson
understood Transcendental.
Now I’m sounding philosophical. I think I need a
beer. Maybe I should order a pizza. Anybody got ten bucks?
But what I’m saying is… who really gives a Flying
Wallenda what some words really mean? There are words that are fun
to say and should be said in blissful ignorance just to hear them fly
by our ear lobes.
Sometimes they come in pairs. I remember the first
time I heard my brother talk about Woofers and Tweeters. Of course I
giggled. I thought he was talking dirty. It turned out he was just
being an… audiophile. (I like the sound of that!)
Warp and woof is another good pair. It makes my bed
sheet sound like it’s woven out of Star Wars characters.
Excrement is a crappy word. Elimination was much
more pleasant until American Idol ruined it.
Olfactory should be one of the good ones, but
something about it just doesn’t smell right.
Abbreviation seems like an unusually long word for
what it means.
Interrogative makes me think of ogres beating me with
clubs. I guess I don’t like being questioned.
Interjection sounds like an act of stabbing.
“Damn straight!” says the drunk looking over my
shoulder. I gotta find someplace better to write.
What is a participle, and why does it only seem to
live in the past? Who can tell me (without looking it up) the
difference between transitive and intransitive? You won’t answer?
You’re just being intransigent - or maybe you're like me. You looked it up and still have no idea.
Do you think this post is abnormal? We can’t
always be normal.
Does it sound absurd? How do we make it more surd?
Is it abstract? How do we make it more stract?
Do you feel abused? Would you rather feel used?
If I surrender Dorothy, am I not also rendering
Dorothy? I think I need my prefixes fixed.
Don’t worry about the tense or the intent. If you
feel intensely, your meaning will be intelligible.
Who cares what words mean? Just let them flow.
Mellifluously, meandering, leaving behind the correct
change only miasma of snack machine vocabulary.
Mail’s in. Letters and notes (real or imagined,) have flooded into
my inbox in recent weeks. Well, flooded might not be the right term,
but the heel of my left shoe got wet somehow, and not just because I
was standing near the bus station urinals. Of course, I’m going to
have to hide the identity of the senders, ‘cause I can’t afford a
lawyer.
Being a talking bird, I am having a hard time
identifying with the birds in these jokes - Cornelius Cockatoo,
Clifton Park, NY.
You’re a talking bird – cute. What kind of bird is a Cornelius,
anyway?
I am saddened and disappointed in the cruel and
pointless savagery of America’s greatest intrepid reporter, Geraldo
Rivera, in your recent post, Talking Birds. Was this some pointless
stunt to get ratings? You would do better to learn from Geraldo’s
sterling example. Mr. Rivera has exemplified the pinnacle of courage
and professionalism in the field of television journalism for more
than a generation (which is amazing because he still looks so
incredibly handsome and youthful.) – Gerry Rivers, Fox Studios.
I feel bad. Poor, Geraldo Rivera. All he does is makes huge money
doing the kind of television that reduces America’s collective IQ.
By the way, “Gerry,” you used example and exemplified in
adjoining sentences. You might want to edit that before you go to
air.
Headley: You blew the “Bird that Can Talk”
joke. If I knew you were going to screw it up, I never would have
told you the joke back in ’76. And you wonder why I never return
your calls. – Bill W. World Traveler, Earth.
Hi Bill: Sorry about that. Thanks for embarrassing me. If you feel
like seeing other planets besides Earth, come by sometime. I just
bought a new hammer.
Dear Headley: Long time no see? Remember me? We
went to high school together. Remember how in algebra class, Miss
Stricter once made you stand at the board the whole class period
until you could show the work on the answers you bought from
Bobbie-Jeanne on the only test you passed that year? Remember how
you cried and sniffed, till snot ran down your collar?
You remember that, don’t you, Buddy? That was
the day that the super-hot foreign exchange babe from Norway said
something to you in the lunch room and you were sure she wanted you
until we looked up the words in the library and they were, “you’ve
got snot on your collar?”
Man that was the best day! Later, at gym, you
forgot to leave your underwear on under your gym shorts and Coach
Sadist made you climb the rope. Everyone was calling you, Pee Wee
the rest of the year (except the people that were calling you,
Snotty.)
Wow, it’s great catching up with you, Buddy! I
remember that Robin costume hanging in your closet. I always
wondered what that was all about. Man, what great memories! We
gotta get together some time and relive the old times – Best
Friend, Home Town, USA.
Dear Best: You seem to have me confused with someone else. We’ve
never met.
I need a tutorial on how to comment at Go Figure
Reads. (please.) – Poetry Lady, Winston-Salem, NC.
Dear Poetry - This is why I got that hammer I was talking to Bill W.
about. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work. The people at Go Figure
Reads are too good at ducking.
Did you mean Poisson or was that part of the
humor? Historical Editor – the Great Southwest.
Dear Historical – Anything that makes you laugh is absolutely
intentional – no matter what anybody (even I (see, I said I even
though me sounds more natural) says.)
I have time for one more before my computer reformats the hard drive
again (everyone’s a critic.) I’m not sure what post they’re
responding to, possibly Gadgets? I’m very excited about this one.
From: Mr. Wong Du
Seoul, South Korea.
I will introduce myself I am Mr. Wong du a Banker
working in a bank in south Korea Until now I am the account officer
to most of the south Korea government accounts and I have since
discovered that most of the account are dormant account with a lot of
money in the account on further investigation I found out that one
particular account belong to the former president of south Korean MR
PARK CHUNG HEE, who ruled south Korean from 1963-1979 and this
particular account has a deposit of $48m with no next of kin.
My proposal is that since I am the account officer
and the money or the account is dormant and there is no next of kin
obviously the account owner the former president of South Korea has
died long time ago, that you should provide an account for the money
to be transferred.
The money that is floating in the bank right now
is $48m and this is what I want to transfer to your account for our
mutual benefit.
Please if this is okay by you I will advice that
you contact me through my direct email address.
Please this transaction should be kept
confidential. For your assistance as the account owner we shall share
the money on equal basis.
Your reply will be appreciated,
Thank you.
Wong Du
My ship has come in! My next post will be from my castle in the
Bahamas! If they don’t have any, I’ll buy a spare one and ship it over! I KNEW this blogging thing would work
out!
Some years back, everybody decided that it was time to
send business envelopes that opened at the bottom instead of the top.
There was no grand announcement, no note of explanation – it just
started happening. I remember the first time I got one from
Scurrilous and Scummy, a temp agency I worked for. I thought –
isn’t this like Scurrilous and Scummy to have their envelopes
printed upside down.
But it wasn’t just S&S. I started
getting them from everywhere. If everyone but you is in on it, does
that still count as a conspiracy? Maybe it’s just an update of my
getting picked for kickball experience. I knew when they picked everyone,
including a sleeping cat, but me – and nobody
said a word that I was the only person not in
on it.
Sneaky cat – pretending to sleep and hiding his little
feline snickers.
I feel that way about poetry. What is good poetry?
Everybody else seems to know, but me. In grade school it was a
mystery to everyone. We’d have a passage like:
Come not, when I am dead, To
drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen
head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let
the wind sweep and the plover cry; But thou, go by.
All of us kids would scrunch our underdeveloped noses
while the teacher would go on about how brilliant Mr. Pompous Dead
Poet was. Then years later – my classmates stopped scrunching
their noses and said – “yeah, cool.”
Heck! Even Robin Williams, a guy I usually understand,
is in on this one. He did a whole movie about how great poetry is,
and how it’s supposed to drive adolescent boys to suicide.
Did anyone else understand this? Really?
Stop saying arrested development; I think it’s mass
hypnosis. We knew better in third grade, now it’s, “Oh, poetry
is so beautiful, meaningful, moving… except Headley’s”
Even at Go Figure Reads – a place you’d think would
be on my side at least once, they talk about Stanley's poetry. “Stanley, I was so
moved about how you went to church and talk about God and stuff.”
Then they talk about Will's poetry. “Will, I love your little children’s
story poems about ships and ducks and baseball.”
Church, God, ships, ducks, and baseball? C’mon,
what’s so hard about that? It looks pretty easy to me. So I write
a couple of poems and submit them to Go Figure Reads…
Nobody says a word, but I swear I heard a cat
snickering.
Okay, I get it. Go Figure Reads is not going to publish
my poems, but I have this blog, now. I sorted through my collection
and found the one that’s not a lymric – maybe I’ll give you
those later.
Sir Isaac
Phishernife
Sir Isaac
Phishernife
Had but
one goal in life
Which was
fine with his wife
She was
not one for strife
Though a very small lad
He heard
from his dad
There was
much to be had
So he
should be glad
Though he
would prefer
To seek
possion du jour
He put
away line and lure
And to his
duty made sure
As a young
squire
He was
urged by his sire
To seek
and acquire
More
knightly attire
While
still a young knight
He was
sent out to fight
Any
monster or blight
That was
fearsome of sight
When the
peers did accord
To make
him a lord
He gave
out from his hoard
Gifts he
could not afford
As an earl
of the realm
Wearing
buckler and helm
He did
host the Duke Ghelm
Though the
costs overwhelm
When a
Duke he was made
To the
king he was bade
And before
him were laid
Tasks that
made him afraid
And then
he was prince
No more
need to wear chintz
There were
whispers and hints
He’d be
king not long since
And then
golden plate
They did
lay on his pate
But he
took hold of his fate
And said,
“I abdicate!”
He
declared with a jeer
“I’ll
not be king, duke or peer
But by
stream, lake or mere
I will set
down my rear
And my
tasks now shall be
To lean
back on a tree
And with
lure, worm or bee
Try to
catch two or three”
So Sir
Isaac and Ma’am
Live and
fish by the dam
And if no
fish nearby swam?
They just
bake a nice ham
So, what do you think,
huh? Send me an email: headleyh@hotmail.com
I once bought something out of a catalog. I’m not sure why I did
it. I think it was a subliminal thing like the vending machine
impulse. You look at a vending machine with all those curly-queue
prongs holding up bags of chips and crackers. Nothing looks good to
you, but you pump sixty-five cents into the machine to see the prongs
turn and half-hope that the bag of chips will get stuck against the
Plexiglas wall so you can rock the machine.
Of course you eat the chips – what else are you going to do with
them? But what you really paid for was the idea of seeing the
machine work.
You don’t believe me? Then why do so many people get their videos
out of Red Box instead of their public library? It’s the only
reason some movies are seen at all.
So I ordered something from a catalog, savored the anticipation of
its arrival, was disappointed with what it was, and probably gave it
to Goodwill a few months later. I don’t even remember what it was,
but I have a lasting remembrance of the experience – my mailbox
hosts ten or twelve catalogs a month.
Finding late nineteenth century Russian literature a little slow
going, I’ve become an avid catalog reader – Harriet Carter,
Heartland America, Carol Wright – even Publisher’s Clearinghouse
who constantly threatens me with money lost if I don’t respond. It
kind of reminds me of the classic, Santa will put coal in your
stocking threat. Most of the catalogs are in the standard
magazine form, but some like to give you an envelope full of one-page
glossy ads. I love them all. The envelope makes a bigger mess of my
couch, but each glossy page is the perfect size and shape for a paper
airplane.
There doesn’t seem to be a rhyme or reason why each catalog comes
to me. I’ve gotten catalogs for professional women, or for new
mothers. I even get scary catalogs full of knives, crossbows, and
instruction booklets on how to properly filet Federal agents. (I
usually forward those to my Congressperson.)
So why am I obsessed with this ersatz form of literature? I’d tell
you if I had any idea what ersatz meant. There’s no plot, and so
reading the last page doesn’t ruin the mystery. (Actually, I can’t
read a mystery without reading the ending first. If I don’t feel
superior to the detective and his/her host of two-dimensional
flunkies, what’s the point of reading that genre at all? BTW, this
might be a good time to announce that book four of the Headley Hauser
genre series will be a mystery, tentatively titled, Staying Dead
in LA.)
So why do I read catalogs? I read them for their one common theme –
gadgets.
You’re not going to make your living sending out catalogs, and
charging exorbitant shipping, if you’re going to offer the same
stuff people can find at their local WalMart. People are only going
to risk sending their credit card information to your minimum wage
customer service personnel (read: potential identity thieves,) if
what you offer is something they never knew existed.
One of my favorite catalogs was actually titled: Things You Never Knew Existed. I loved that catalog, but sadly, they stopped
sending it to me. I guess they didn’t appreciate the gratis
service I provided for them. On each order form I scribbled down
dozens of item numbers and wrote in the payment section, “I knew
these existed.” Then I sealed my helpful message up in their
postage paid envelope.
Some people can’t accept a favor.
I could still go to the website, but who wants to read off the
computer? (This would be a good time to mention that the Headley
Hauser genre series is available for download so you can read it on
your PC or Mac.) (Of course, the Genre Series is only Trouble in
Taos for now, ‘cause Go Figure Reads moves like a seven-year-old
sent to fetch canned broccoli when it comes to publishing my
stories.)
Like most works of fiction, catalogs draw you through long pages of
mundane to get to the good stuff.
Nothing like a personal bidet – as long as your aim is good. For
every Personal Hygene Refresher, you see a dozen workout machines
that promise rock-hard abs in twelve seconds a day.
The Solar Tropical Birds – they sit there conspiratorially all day
and jiggle about when the wind blows, then having sucked up sunlight,
they glow and disturb your dreams each night. If you’ve always
wanted to be haunted by Disney World’s Tiki Room, these are the
gadgets for you!
The Squirrel Chaser (three to a box.) They say that these little
pouches contain a scent that squirrels don’t like. Clearly, the
intent of these gadgets is to spank the little critters, presumably
to encourage them to get better grades in rodent school. (It never
worked for me.)
Or how about this one from a catalog I can't recall?
Yup – gophers to light your walkway at night. Freddy Kruger would
shiver at that sight.
If I may be serious for a moment (seriously serious,) I would like to
propose gadgets that I’ve never seen that certainly should have
been invented by now. These ideas are gold that I am throwing out
into the winds of blogdom. Some scrappy entrepreneur will snag these
up and make millions off them. (I expect a generous gratuity.)
1) The bend-over shoulder strap. You’re headed out to social
services; you have a knapsack on one shoulder and a laptop bag on the
other. You exit your apartment and as you lock your door, you notice
a rent overdue notice lying inconveniently on your no; you’re
not welcome, go away mat. You can’t just leave it there for
the loan shark to see when he comes to break you pinkies later, so
you bend over to pick it up… Crash, crash! Down comes your
knapsack on top of your over-aged laptop. The loan shark and the
land lord hear the destruction of your singular tool of writing hope,
and an ugly and digitally inauspicious scene ensues.
For the benefit of fingers, laptop, and overall stealth, why don’t
they have shoulder straps that stay on your shoulders? Sure, I could
put BOTH shoulder straps on with my knapsack, but that’s too much
work. The purpose of modern technology is to allow cretins such as
myself do as little as possible and still keep working pinkies.
2) Faucet with temperature memory buttons. This seems like a
no-brainer. They have memory settings on radios where the worst
thing that might happen to you is you get a second and a half of
steel guitar on the way to repeat audio broadcasts of Headley and
the Rug (and Cral.) Sink and especially shower faucets can scar
you for life with 211, or 33 degree water when you first turn it on.
Plus, I’m not too good maneuvering my joystick… I mean the one on
the faucet. I can never get it to the right position for the
temperature I want. I end up with warm Cool-Aid and cold dishwashing
soap (or would if I ever got around to washing my dishes.)
3) A master shut-off switch. Visitors come to call – unwelcome
mat notwithstanding. In every generation we seem to breed a certain
percentage of drop-ins. Shooting them is illegal in forty-nine
states, but fooling them isn’t. The problem is that at any given
time, you have half a dozen lights or entertainment gadgets going
when you’re home. There’s never time to shut everything down
before they get to your door. How hard would it be to have one
switch that turns off all the stuff they see without also turning off
the refrigerator, the alarm system, and Uncle Herbert’s respirator?
4) A Tim greet. Do you hate tail-gaiters? What to do? Back in
upstate NY, I knew a guy named Tim. Tim didn’t like people
crowding him in line. His solution was that he learned to fart on
demand. (He could also belch the alphabet through Q, but that’s
not important.) Unfortunately, if you fart when someone tailgates
you, you are the only one to suffer. A single shot of concentrated
methane coming out of your (vehicular) tailpipe might do the trick.
In the winter it would be methane vapors, which would attach
themselves to the heater coils of the offending tailgater – a
slower, but more lasting reminder to stay five car lengths back!
Even if these gadgets don’t work as advertised, there’s money to
be made here. Just like the over-priced potato (potatoe if you’re
a former VP,) chips in vending machine, the purpose of the gadget is
not the quality of the product – just the idea of seeing the
machine work.
I have trouble remembering jokes. I’ll hear a joke and think, “I
gotta remember to tell Elmer that next time I see him.”
I see Elmer. I open my mouth. The only words I remember are, “I
gotta remember to tell Elmer that next time I see him.” I decided
it would work better if I said to myself, “I gotta remember to tell
Elmer (insert joke here) next time I see him.” Of course if it’s
a long joke that can make a pretty hefty moment of reverie for me. I
tend to stare off in space with my mouth open when I having a moment
of silent reflection. Those few who know me are used to it.
“Look, Headley’s trying to remember your joke to steal it later.”
“He’ll never pay me for it.”
“That’s okay, nobody pays him either!” Derisive laughter
follows.
The way I measure true friends are those who relish schadenfreude.
If I’m going to live a miserable existence, I want people I like to
get some joy of it.
There’s something about a talking bird though, that helps me
remember a joke. Whenever my sister, Henrietta had a secret, she
always attributed it to a little bird telling her. Henrietta didn’t
laugh so much. Maybe her birds weren’t so funny. I thought these
three were, so here are three talking bird jokes that I’ve stolen…
just for you. (The just for you part makes it sound special, and
maybe less morally and legally (?) wrong.)
Jesus is Watching
So Geraldo Rivera (there is no reason to
make this about Geraldo Rivera – I just don’t like him,) having
cased a house and determined that no one is home, goes in to commit
grand larceny. Right away he sees he’s going to do better than he
did with Al Capone’s crypt as there’s a high end stereo and
autographed Beatle’s albums in the living room. As he’s walking
out with a stack of 50-year-old LPs including Rubber Soul, he hears,
“Jesus is watching you.” Geraldo spins around so fast he almost
drops his revolver (the album, he’s not armed. Can you
imagine Geraldo armed? He’s shoot his foot off.)
Geraldo sees no one, so he continues his felonious
ways. He finds a signed, prototype George Forman grill in the
kitchen, along with many other gadgets he’s seen plied on cooking
segments but couldn’t use to save his life. As he gathers them all
up, he hears, “Jesus is watching you.” Geraldo jumps so high
that George Forman knocks him dizzy, but when he comes to, Geraldo
doesn’t see anyone, so he goes back to creeping. (He’s
good at creeping – ask any network he’s worked for. He’s a
first class creep.)
Geraldo gets to the bedroom. There he finds a wide
selection of top quality sex toys. Finally! something a dil.. like
Geraldo can relate to! He’s gathering up the toys when he hears
for a third time (says the joke teller unnecessarily as
you all can count,) “Jesus is watching you.”
There in the bedroom is a parrot on a perch. (Which
is a little unsettling considering all the sex toys in the room, but
the joke is not related to that – or at least so the monsignor who
related the joke to me reported when I asked.)
“Did you say that?” asks Geraldo Rivera.
“Yes,” says the parrot obligingly. “I’m
Moses, the talking parrot.” (Yeah redundant – what
are you gonna do?)
Geraldo laughs in that boisterous, condescending,
disingenuous, and irritating way that has gotten him punched in the
nose on a few glorious occasions.
“What kind of people name their
parrot, Moses?!?”
The parrot motions over to the solitary exit from the
bedroom, and says, “the same kind of people that name their
Doberman, Jesus.”
Don’t like that one? Don’t worry, they get worse.
A Bird that Can Talk
A man walks into a pet store. (No, I have
no idea why it has to be a man – presumably it wasn’t a panda,
but it could easily have been a woman – but Bill Whitford, who told
me this joke 37 years ago and is not returning my calls anymore,
didn’t elaborate. Maybe he was frustrated by my overuse of
parenthetical expressions. Hey! at least I don’t use hand quotes –
those are really annoying.)
He says to the owner,
“do you have a bird that can talk? I’ve always wanted a bird
that can talk.”
The pet store owner motions to a bird and says, “this
type of bird can talk. You can have him for a thousand dollars.”
(Bill used a lower figure, but those were 1976 dollars
which were worth a lot more, though when I spend a bicentennial
quarter, nobody is interested in giving me anything extra for it.)
“Gee,” says the nameless adult male that walked
into a pet store, “a thousand dollars is a lot of money,”
“He comes with the cage,” says the owner to keep
the joke moving. (Imagine if I had to go through the whole
process of him buying the cage, the feed, the little bird mirror, and
all the other stuff that pet store owners say you HAVE TO buy after
you’ve purchased a bird or they will report you to the ASPCA.)
(I wonder if Geraldo Rivera was ever a pet store owner.)
“Alright,” says the man in the joke that doesn’t
own the pet store. (The pet store owner is gender
non-identified. I think Geraldo once did a special on gender
non-identified pet store owners, but was – sadly – not punched in
the nose, so don’t bother looking for it.)
He (the gender identified customer) pays
the (gender non-identified) owner, takes
the bird and leaves.
Two days later he (being a male-specific
third person pronoun in a joke with only one gender-specific
character) returns with the bird. “You said this
bird can talk,” the man complains. “I’ve been talking to it
and feeding it crackers, but not a word.”
“Ah,” says the pet store owner, “sometimes
there’s a problem with this breed. Their beaks are so large and
heavy that they don’t lift them to talk. It’s easily solved
though. Someone (gender unspecified) that
knows what they’re doing can file it down. I know how to do it,
and will do it for two hundred dollars.”
“I don’t know,” says the man (exhibiting
stereotypical male cheapness,) “I’ll just do it
myself.”
“All right, but you better be careful,” says the
owner, “’cause if you file it down too short, you expose blood
vessels and you kill your bird.”
“I’ll be careful,” says the man.
The next day, the man returns to the pet store with
an empty cage. He’s looking very sad.
“You killed your bird, didn’t you,” says the
owner.
The man nods.
“You filed its beak too short?”
“No,” says the man. “I crushed its head in the
vice.”
This last joke is one I modified into song form for my popularly
ignored, and critically unclaimed hit: Headley and the Rug (and
Cral.) The tune is My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean.
Here's the tune
Amanda
I once had a parrot, Amanda
Who did constantly swear, curse, and grouse
I put her out on the veranda
but still hear her through all of the house
chorus
Stop that, stop that
Stop that, Amanda, I plead, I plead
Stop that, stop that
Your language is dreadful indeed.
verse 2
I’d yell, but she only got louder
I threw blanket and sheet o’er her cage
But I’d hear, loud and clear, through that shrouder
And that’s when I’d cry in my rage
repeat chorus
verse 3
The vet said I couldn’t use vice locks
I didn’t know what I should do
And so I threw her in the ice box
When I pulled her out, she’d turned blue
modified chorus
Warm up, warm up
Warm up, Amanda, I cry, I cry
Warm up, warm up
If you don’t thaw soon, you’ll die
instrumental interlude punctuated with Amanda
squawking.
So I’m talking to Walt at the palatial offices of Go Figure Reads
the other day. I want him to explain why he has three of my
submissions just sitting on the shelf. Other than carping about bad
grammar, he pretty much ignores my books. Instead he’s going on
and on about a book that Stanley McFarland is writing about the
Freedman movement after the Civil War, and how these champions of
liberty are ignored.
So I ask him – “what’s the difference between freedom and
liberty?”
Walt scratches his underworked head and points to a poster of
Stanley, an 8 by 10 of Will Wright, and a black and white thumbnail
of me. “Stanley,” he says, “is like liberty because he takes
stands to defend the rights of others. Will is like freedom because
he exercises those rights.”
“What about me,” I ask?
“It’s a logical progression,” says Walt. “Liberty, freedom,
freedumber.”
I don’t like Walt.
I don’t follow popular gossip. I never figured out how to get TV
channels after they left analog, and didn’t care enough to ask for
help. Mostly, I learn stuff from listening to others. That’s how
I heard about Tiger and Lindsey.
My first thought was that Tiger Woods was seeing Lindsey Lohan: a
match made in heaven! It turns out that it’s some other Lindsey.
She is pretty, and blonde, and known to the entire world – except
me. To me she is just – a Lindsey that is not a Lohan.
The notorious Thanksgiving incident that revealed Tiger’s
infidelity didn’t surprise me. They guy was trying too hard to
have a positive public image – like A-Rod, Marie Osmond, and gold
medal winning decathlete, Bruce Jenner. This is always a bad sign.
Now A-Rod’s steroid use is public knowledge and while Marie and
Bruce’s conspiracy to sneak malicious space aliens onto Dancing
With the Stars has not yet been confirmed – it’s just a matter of
time (and space) until the National Enquirer gives us all the
details.
People who try that hard are up to no good.
I worry about Tom Hanks.
But I have an additional reason to suspect Tiger Woods and the
apparent rehabilitation of his public image – he plays golf.
Golf is that ubiquitous game for which millions of men pine all
work-week, then spend their few precious hours of weekend leisure
time building up a lather of frustration resulting in unappealing
foot odor.
Those less affluent, or in the northern climes watch it on TV,
usually through their eye-lids.
The Masters starts today, and it’s as good a time as any to blow
the lid off the conspiracy of how a game that is almost as exciting
to watch as checkers is so popular across the country.
Who’s behind the conspiracy, you ask? (You ask the best
questions.)
Who isn’t? I reply.
How about Major League Baseball?
What better way to make a game like
baseball look exciting than to have it on right after three hours of
guys walking slowly around a stationary ball, stand over it
carefully, and tap it with an over-priced upside-down cane? At least
in baseball, the shortstop or center fielder moves moderately fast
two or three times an hour.
The recliner manufacturers of America? Big Cliner (as I call them)
sells hundreds of thousands of truly ugly living room furnishings
every year. Six days a week these behemoths serve as places to lose
cheese puffs, remote controls, or small cats. On Sunday afternoons,
they suddenly justify their existence by providing a viable
environment for watching golf on television. You can watch golf on a
couch, but not if family members object to you stretching out. The
process of stretching out includes scrunching up and man-drooling the
decorative cushions – a natural process many American females find
objectionable.
No, I don’t understand why either.
Man-drool only seasons a recliner.
The Association for the Detection of Sleep Apnea. I’m not sure
this association really exists. When I was a kid, sleep apnea was
what we always called Dad snoring. What affection I might have for
golf comes not from watching it myself, but watching my father watch
golf. Fourteen minutes and thirty-seven seconds into each golf
broadcast, Dad slipped into eyelid observation mode. The recliner
back, and Diet Pepsi slowly slipping from the armrest, Dad punctuated
the sedate commentary with truly magnificent wood-sawing. Dad snored
so loud that Barney the hound dog that lived three doors down
couldn’t resist the temptation to add his own harmony. Just before
the reverberations caused damage to our house’s foundation (nothing
could hurt the recliner,) Dad would snort and wake up with a start.
He’d look around to see me laughing, often joined by siblings,
friends, or occasionally firemen called by neighbors fearing seismic
damage to the neighborhood.
“Quiet,” Dad would say, “Nicholas is putting. I want to hear
this.”
Like so many harmless diversions of yesterday, (dodge ball, airplane
glue, swirlies from which the NSA developed water-boarding) Dad
snoring has become a serious threat to the health and well-being of
the American public. Armies of public servants are now charged with
studying its effects between games of Spider on their government
computers.
Without golf on TV this vitally important bureaucracy would be forced
to find other ways to spend tax-payer money. As I said, I’m not
sure the Association for the Detection of Sleep Apnea exists, but no
conspiracy is worth its tin-foil hats without a government component.
The final component of our conspiracy… Wives.
I have to say this in a subdued tone because talking about wives is
no longer permissible in thirty-seven states. Henny Youngman never
made a single remark that didn’t disparage a domestic engineer.
He’d be in Guantanamo if he were alive today. Disparaging remarks
are now limited to men/husbands/fathers. If you don’t believe me,
let the TiVo remote lay there and watch some commercials.
But I don’t mean this in a disparaging fashion – more in a
forensic fashion. (BTW, forensic – a word used only by
professionals before Jack Klugman played Quincy, is now so ubiquitous
that it should be a crime.)
In any crime or conspiracy investigation, you must ask the question –
who benefits? With golf on TV each Sunday afternoon, millions of men
sleep peacefully in their recliners. What might all the wives of
those men accomplish?
The promotion of misandristic messaging on television commercials?
Postmortem incarceration of Henny Youngman?
Post-hypnotic obsessions for their husbands to leave the toilet seat
down?
It all makes sense when you think about it. The benefits of golf on
TV even moved women-kind to forgive Tiger Woods and let him date a
Lindsey that is not a Lohan.