Mischief Magic

It's not a rational world. What's the most irrational about our irrational world is that we pretend that our irrational world is actually rational.

Don't believe me.

I might not know you. I might never have met you. I don't know your house, apartment, cardboard box or what-ever, but I GUARANTEE that this has happened to you.

(Guarantee is not backed by financial or contractual obligations.)

You're missing something - maybe your keys, your phone, your nose-hair clipper. You're looking all over. You think you left it on/in/under the XXXX. For that reason you naturally look on/in/under the XXXX first. As it begins to drive you crazy, you start looking at places you've already looked. You look on/in/under the XXXX a second time. Finally you throw up your hands (you never should have eaten them in the first place,) and give up. You sit on the couch in a funk and start watching an old re-run of Tool Time. You don't change the channel even though you can't stand Tim Allen.

   It turns out to be a Tool Time marathon - 56 hours of Tool Time, uninterrupted by commercials.

You still don't change the channel. You are really in a funk.

After innumerable Tim Allen gratuitous grunts, your kid, significant other, neighborhood busybody comes in and sees you slumped on your couch in depression and self-hatred.

"You don't like that show, do you?" asks your kid, significant other, your neighborhood busybody.

(The busybody - who does like the show - shoves you over and sits next to you.)

"You're right!" you scream, "but I can't find my keys, phone, or nose-hair clipper."

"You mean this?" asks your kid or significant other. (The busybody pockets the item because he/she has really course nose hairs.)

"Where did you find that?" you scream to your kid or significant other. (Your busybody neighbor is already at home, plugging in your nose-hair clipper.)

It was right here on/in/under the XXXX.

You throw up your hands again (an odd form of bulimia.) Unfortunately, you can't see to clean up the mess because your busybody neighbor blew a transformer

 
(or maybe it was a Polly Pocket,) from drawing too much juice trying to clip his/her nose hairs.

But you figure that you're going blind or crazy or both. You don't blame mischief magic, and you never ask your neighbor for your nose-hair clipper back (probably a good call on that one.)

So the elves, gnomes, and Donald Segretti

are safe to do their mischief another day.

All because you don’t believe in mischief magic (and you neighbor has hirsute DNA.)

I don't know if this is magical - unless stupid is magic.

Male Mosquitoes

“Look at that male mosquito,” says my female co-worker at Amalgamated Monster. “It’s big, flimsy, clumsy, too stupid to get out of its own way.”

“Yeah,” I reply, because I can’t think of anything else to say.

She looks at me and then at the mosquito. “Typical male,” she says.

It didn’t used to be this way!

I remember my father, Horatio Hauser, and my grandfather, Hornblower Hauser. These were what used to be called, men’s men. They were like lions, whose single growl brought the whole family to attention, and whose roar made the mountains tremble (warning – possible hyperbole in the last sentence.)

Now a man’s man is just another term for gay.

TV programs were full of men’s men. There was Matt Dillon, Daniel Boone, Joe Friday, Paladin. Bonanza had four of them in one program. Manliness was so prevalent that even sit-coms frequently dispensed with mothers in shows like Bachelor Father, Family Affair, My Three Sons, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father… oh, and Bonanza again.

If we had a show named Father Knows Best today, it would be meant ironically.

What happened?

We can look at the easy answers – the woman’s movement, easy living, Dr. Spock (maybe even Mr. Spock,) but I think it’s not a social change – it’s an evolutionary one…

Our human race is transitioning from mammal, to insect. Guys are typically referred to as slugs, while women are busy bees.

You know what happens to male bees after mating don’t you? Or even worse, what happens to preying mantises.

Pray we don’t evolve into them.

You don’t believe me? Twenty years ago, people didn't buzz Now try sitting through a movie or even a wedding without hearing somebody’s cell phone vibrate.

It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for what was happening in the insect world. More and more species are evolving to reproduce without male involvement. There’s even an insect in Brazil where the females are growing their own euphemisms.

What’s the answer mankind (as opposed to humankind?) Tim Taylor tried expressing his manliness with grunting, growling and scratching himself. He just became an object of ridicule.

Last weekend I wandered up to the wilderness and tried to join a wolf pack. At first they welcomed me, but they got tired of waiting for me to tie my shoes when we went on the prowl, and when I snuck out a Pop Tart during the evening raw rabbit feed, they all looked at me as if to say – really?

So instead I sit at my work station at Amalgamated Monster, watching the stupid male mosquito bounce himself against the flickering florescent light, hearing the misandrist comments of my female co-workers.

And I wonder how long it will take for the great evolutionary bug zapper of history to end our existence.

Until then – I’m through dating. No sense rushing things along.

Four videos in this post!  Four!  Talk about extra value!