Worst . . . Mother . . . Ever?

On this day created by the Greeting Card Industrial Complex to honor what are now fashionably referred to as “birthing persons,” you may find yourself beset by what the Existentialists call–“mauvais foi”–a troubled conscience.  You may harbor doubts as to whether you have been (or were, if she’s dead) good enough to your mother during your years on this world together.

Perhaps you got in an argument with her about whether you should wear a certain slovenly outfit to school, or came home high (or low) on a controlled substance or intoxicating beverage.  Thus, while everyone you meet is saying their mothers were the best ever, you find yourself on the one hand questioning your intellectual honesty if you say the same thing (which is, of course, a mathematical impossibility), or filial piety on the other–you ungrateful jerk.

Richard Savage, after liberal application of Dippity-Do.

Not to worry.  Whatever your mother’s faults, she finished out of the money in the Bad Mother Sweepstakes.  Consider, in support of this claim, Anne Brett, Countess of Macclesfield, mother of Richard Savage, 18th century poet honored by Samuel Johnson in his “Lives of the Poets.”  Johnson describes Savage as “a man whose writings entitle him to an eminent rank in the classes of learning,” but “whose misfortunes claim a degree of compassion . . . as they were often the consequences of the crimes of others”–chief among them, his mom.

Anne, Countess of Macclesfield

Savage was conceived–physically and intellectually–as an escape from Anne’s unhappy marriage.  “In the year 1697,” Johnson wrote, “having lived for some time upon very uneasy terms with her husband, [she] thought a public confession of adultery the most obvious and expeditious method of obtaining her liberty.”  She accordingly cheated on him with the 4th Earl Rivers, became pregnant, and gave birth to Richard.  Her desired divorce was granted, but she gave away her son to a poor nurse with instructions never to tell him the facts of his birth.  As a result of the divorce, Anne again became entitled to an estate of 12,000 pounds that had been hers before the marriage; adjusted for inflation, she was worth around 1,833,200 pounds sterling, or $2,300,000.

Dr. Johnson: “Un . . . freaking . . . believable!”

Savage was thus raised in poverty apart from his wealthy parents, but on his deathbed his father asked Anne whatever happened to their son–he wanted to leave him some money.  Anne told Rivers that their son was dead, so the father did not provide for Savage in his will.  Johnson calls this “perhaps the first instance of a [lie] invented by a mother to deprive her son of a provision which was designed him by another, and which she could not expect herself, though he should lose it.”  Hoping to avoid future claims by her son, Anne tried to ship him off to America but was unable to find any accomplices to assist her.

Savage was then apprenticed to a shoemaker, but when the poor nurse who cared for him died, he discovered among her personal effects letters from his grandmother, Lady Mason, describing his noble birth.  He “without scruple applied to” his mother for her support, but  “neither his letters, nor the interposition of those friends which his merit or his distress procured him, made any impression upon her mind,” according to Johnson.  She continued to neglect him, but “could no longer disown him.”

Savage was “so touched with the discovery of his real mother, that it was his frequent practice to walk in the dark evenings for several hours before her door, in hopes of seeing her as she might come by accident to the window, or cross her apartment with a candle in her hand.”  Pathetic scene!

Nothing could soften the woman’s heart, however, and Savage “was therefore obliged to seek some other means of support.”  In what will seem an improbable strategy to those who try to make a living as a writer, he “became by necessity an author.”

But against the odds Savage became a popular poet and, with the power of his writer’s voice filling his sails, he managed to extort a pension of 200 pounds a year from his heartless mother by threatening to lampoon her.

I have shopped Savage’s tale of perseverance and triumph over a heartless mother around without success, even when I gave editors ample lead time for special Mother’s Day editions.

It is the ultimate irony, in this age of Artificial Intelligence content generators:

You finally come up with copy that could not possibly have been written by a bot, and no one believes you.

 

 

The I Hate Sex Book

Peg Bracken was the author of “The I Hate to Cook Book,” “The I Hate to Houseclean Book,” and other send-ups of 1950’s household hint collections.  The following was not found among her papers when she died.

*******************************

Some women, it is said, like sex.

This book–The I Hate Sex Book–is not for them.

This book is for those of us who hate sex, and who have learned that it is one of life’s unpleasant experiences–like paying taxes, or renewing a driver’s license–that does not become less painful through repetition.

This book is for the woman who wants to put out just enough to keep her man’s mind off other women:

Men’s Magazines–A housewife’s best friend!  Keep your bathroom stocked with an ample supply of moisturizing lotion and men’s magazines, and I don’t mean the huntin’ ‘n fishin’ kind.  When your husband starts to look at you like a wall-eyed pike, tell him to go screw-himself!

Quik ‘n Easy Vixen Steak:  If you want to get sex over with, pretend you like it and go at it like a bitch mink in heat.  The male orgasm is basically the equivalent of a sneeze, and he won’t be able to stop once you get going.  Cooking time:  30 seconds.

“Sure we had sex last night–don’t you remember?”

Get him drunk:   Worried about what will follow the annual Scotch-Mixed Doubles Dinner Dance at your country club?  Pump your man full of Manhattans and Rob Roys and he’ll fall asleep before you know it.  In the morning, tell him “That was the best sex of my life!”, and you won’t have to copulate for another month.

Va-va-voom!

 

Don’t dress for ingress!  Clothes make the man, according to Mark Twain, but your nightgown can unmake your man as well.  Choose a flannel night gown with a lace ruff and a high collar and you’ll have about as much feminine sex appeal as Samuel Langhorne Clemens himself.

Rabid marmots:  “I wuv you too!”

 

Spice down your love life!  Role-playing can be used to spice sex up, but some spices, such as cardamom, are used for just one recipe, then put back on the Lazy Susan and forgotten.  Try this one: “Let’s pretend I’m a rabid marmot and you’re a big, strong fish and game warden trying to remove my head and send it off to the state Department of Infectious Diseases for testing.”  It has been known to work wonders on even the most amorous males.

If you must have sex, get something out of it!  Keeping your man’s expectations low means he has to pay through the nose if he wants to “score”.  “I can’t really get in the mood for sex in the continental United States or Canada,” you say.  “How about a getaway weekend, and I don’t mean Alaska.”

TGIF With a Big-Balled Yogurt-Eating Mouse

          In an experiment at MIT mice fed yogurt as compared to junk food developed luxuriantly thicker fur and bigger testicles that they projected outwards, giving them an air of “mouse swagger.”

                                                               Scientific American

It’s Friday night and, like every other mouse in the lab, I’m cruisin’ the scene–TGIF and all that.  I reached sexual maturity when I was 35 days old, but my life expectancy is only two years even in the climate-controlled comfort of the lab, so I’ve got to grab all the gusto I can get while the gettin’s good.

I can’t believe what some of these guys eat.  High-fat, low-fiber crap, the Andy Capp Pub Fries of the rodent world.  They’ve all got premature pot bellies and–I hoff ta loff as they say here in Boston–chin scrotums.  Gross.

Not me, I’ve been hooked on yogurt since that fateful day at The Bandersnatch, the snack bar at the University of Chicago where I was born.  I was crawling around under the grill, scarfing down a french fry here, a hamburger roll there, when I spied a little puddle of something that looked like pudding.  I licked it up and–it was like I’d seen the face of the godhead or something.  My blood sugar shot up, and I felt like I’d passed through the doors of nutrition perception.  This, I said to myself, is the stuff I’ll be eating for the rest of my days, and my self said “If you know what’s good for you” right back at me.  I had entered a realm of higher consciousness, and suddenly all the hamburger crumblies and onion rings seemed like so much awful offal.

I started to read more about the magical properties of this nectar of the gods called yogurt.  I was given a mystery novel written by common-law husband and wife team Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo and discovered that Martin Beck, their fictional Swedish police detective, subsisted on yogurt, coffee and beer–just like me!  I adopted his cool, detached, self-deprecatory manner as my own.  Why not?  I–like he–had the biggest pair of balls around.  I was comfortable in my luxuriously fur-covered skin.  I had–there’s no other way to put it–mouse swagger.

Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo

When I arrived in Cambridge I have to say I was not impressed with the supposedly world-class mice I’d be working with.  They seemed a bit effete, distracted, almost as if they weren’t eating right.  Me?  I went through yogurt by the ton.

First Dannon fruit-on-the-bottom, then Yoplait in the plastic cones that drive skunks wild.  Then–incroyable–coffee-flavored yogurt!  And more recently, all-natural maple-flavored yogurt from hip, ironic cows in Vermont.  They’re spoiled up there, what with all the Manhattanites coming up for the weekend, leaving New Yorker cartoons lying around.

I belly up to the bar and try to block out the puerile jabbering of the hyperactive junk-food addicts who surround me.  I look at the crap they’re shoving down their pellet-holes–Jesus H. Christ.  Fatty crap you wouldn’t feed to a Goth gamester, or a couch potato sports fan who stays up all night because he can’t pry himself away from Australian rules football.

“What’ll ya have?” Smitty the graduate student assistant asks.

“The usual.”

“One strawberry-banana smoothie with wheat germ, coming right up!”

I pull myself up to my full ten centimeters in length, and the crowd of slumping schlumps parts like the Red Sea.

“Who’s the health nut?” one of them says snidely out of the side of his mouth.  I could pop him one but hey–I’m above that sort of stereotypical lab rat behavior.  I’m cool, calm, collected, and have a set of cojones that make his look like shriveled-up capers from the Museum of Forgotten Groceries.

I care not what such an inconsequential being thinks of me.  I’ll show him a thing or two once the action gets hot and heavy and . . .

And then she appeared–as if in a dream.  The most gorgeous specimen of Mus musculus I’d ever seen in my life.  And she’s making eyes at me!

The other males start to preen and strut their little courtship dance, but it’s no use.  Our eyes lock as our lips and then (I hope) our groins will a little later on.

“Hel-lo there,” I say, giving her the look–one eyebrow raised, the other slanting downwards–that the notorious faculty lothario Thorstein Veblen used to call the “physiognomy of astuteness.”  She’s cute, I’m astute–Q.E.D.

“Hi,” she says, batting her shy little eyelashes.  “I couldn’t help but notice your thick luxurious fur,” she says.  Hey–we’re mice, not Nobel Prize winners.

Veblen: “Oh what a cad am I of the academy.”

 

“Thanks.  You look like you keep yourself in great shape,” I say, the tried-and-true Esperanto version of “I want to jump your bones.”

“I eat right–nothing but yogurt for me,” she says.  “What’s that you’re drinking?”

“I stick to the traditional cocktails–a yogurt smoothie.  Can I . . . buy you one?”

“Sure,” she says.  Smitty belies his scientific demeanor with an extra-sensory perception of the situation and has a drink for the lady in front of her before you can say “National Science Foundation.”

“So . . . do you live around here?” I ask.  Always good to get the lay of the land right away.

“Over in Kendall Square–the Nerd Capital of New England,” she replies.

We exchange knowing glances–I put hers away in case she needs it later–and we make goo-goo eyes at each other as we sip our drinks, the way swingin’ teens used to do in malt shoppes of the 50′s.

When I reach the bottom of my drink I hesitate, knowing my next step involves a significant degree of risk.  I size her up; she’s everything a guy could want in a mouse, so fresh and un-experimented upon.  I decide to go for it–and make a gigantic slurping sound as I suck the dregs of my smoothie up my straw!

She’s taken aback for a second, so I pounce.

“You know what that sound means in Texas?” I ask.

“No–what?”

“There ain’t no more!”

She laughs, and I know I’ve got her eating out my hand.  “C’mon–let’s blow this pop stand!” I say as I grab her hand and lift her up in my arms where she belongs, like I’m Joe Cocker and she’s Jennifer Warnes or something.

We start to leave but suddenly I’m surrounded by the round-shouldered dweebs who’ve been eyeing me jealously while I put the moves on my Minnie.

“Where you think you’re going?” one of them says.

“Is that a slide rule, or are you just glad to see me?” my new-found girlfriend snaps at him.  She’s got spunk.

“Why don’t you dump Mr. Fitness here and give one of us a chance?” another says.

“I wouldn’t fuck you for practice,” she says sharply.  Must have been a stand-up comic before she settled down to a life of science.

“C’mon–what’s he got that we haven’t got?” a third interjects, and she looks lasciviously down at my crotch where the healthiest set of testicles this side of the mule barn at the Missouri State Fair are on display.

“This may be America,” she says, “but a girl still craves the crown jewels.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Wild Animals of Nature!”

Is That Your Cat or Are We Having Guacamole?

          An image that Google correctly categorized as a tabby cat was, with only a few pixels changed, subsequently identified by the same algorithm as guacamole.

The Boston Globe

We’re heading into summer, which means that my cats are even lazier than usual.  They stay indoors most of the day, venturing outside only in the cool of the evening to chill their ever-widening bellies on our bluestone patio, before rushing off into the dark to wreak havoc on chipmunks and squirrels.

Rocco left, Okie right.

“I’m getting concerned about your lifestyles,” I say to them as they take the two Adirondack chairs for a change of pace.

“Says the guy who drank an entire bottle of Malbec by himself last night,” Rocco says out of the side of his mouth.

“I’m serious,” I say, trying to re-take the moral high ground.  “You lie around all day, then you’re out all night.  You’re not twenty-one in cat years anymore.”

“How do you do the math in your head so fast?” Okie asks.  He’s the handsome grey tabby who’s gotten by on his looks, not his wits, his entire life.

“Don’t you remember anything?” Rocco snaps.  “He’s the former Boy Scout/Altar Boy who does fractions in his head when he’s swimming laps.”

“Seven and 15/16 laps.”

“Fractions–ugh!” Okie groans.  He’s lived the life of the beta male ever since his younger brother Rocco arrived on the scene.  For some reason whenever the cat food is divided in half, he only gets 40%.

“I’m only saying this because we love you guys,” I say.  I found this rhetorical turn to be very helpful when dealing with our sons as they grew up.  In essence, it boils down to “Don’t break your mother’s heart, you sullen teenager, you.”

“We have to live our own lives,” Rocco says as he gets up to follow the path of a chipmunk, who disappears under the wooden fence we put up around the air conditioning units.

“Do you remember a few summers ago, when Okie disappeared for weeks?” I say in an imploring tone of voice.  “How are we not supposed to be worried when something like that happens?”  When I want to, I can really implore.

“One for you, two for me.  One for you, three for me.”

“That was then, this is now,” Rocco says as he sits back down.  “If you want to be able to find us, just give us Google chip implants.”

“Yeah, sort of like the Italian dad down the street who put a GPS device in his daughter’s car so he could break the legs of any boy who tried to slide into home with her,” Okie adds.  He apparently listens when we talk at the dinner table.

I give them a look of pitiless contempt.  “You guys think you’re so smart–you’ve been watching too many cute cat food commercials that glorify the feline brain.”

“It’s true,” Rocco says.  “I read it on the internet.”

“Well, maybe you should pick up a newspaper some time.”

“What’s a newspaper?” Okie asks.

“It’s that stuff he puts in our litter boxes,” Rocco advises him.

“What’s a four-letter word for ‘excrement’?”

“It has other uses.”

“Right,” Rocco says.  “You can also line parakeet cages with it.”

“While that is generally true of The Boston Globe, every now and then you come across something useful in it besides the comics.”

“I like Garfield!” Okie says–figures.

“No, I mean stories like this,” I say, and point them to an article about an Artificial Intelligence conference where the shortcomings of the technology were demonstrated.  “Change just a few pixels, and Google thinks you two are guacamole.”

“You’re not going to put me on a nacho chip, are you?”

They are both silent for a moment, as they walk over the Business section.  “Gosh–I had no idea,” Rocco says, for once sounding . . . almost humble.

“So let that be a lesson to you, okay?” I say as I give them both a scritch on the head.

“What’s the lesson?” Okie asks, as usual missing the self-evident.

“Simple,” Rocco says, stepping in like teacher’s pet to explain.  “The difference between your brain and guacamole is, like, one avocado.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Cats Say the Darndest Things.”

Among the Sexist Bonobos

Among the make-love-not-war bonobos . . . males are about 25% larger than females and sometimes bully them.  But females are on balance more powerful, because of their girlfriend coalitions.  Once . . . four females attacked an alpha male that was part of a group of four males who were harassing an estrous female, when out of nowhere, her three coalition partners came swooping in to her aid.  The females attack the male mercilessly, and he barely escaped with his life.

David P. Barash, review of “Power in the Wild” by Lee Alan Dugatkin, The Wall Street Journal

 

I was hanging with my buddies—Kruk, Alanalda and Thwok—commiserating about (what else) females.

“I don’t get it,” Kruk said.  “Why is it that they won’t give us something that means so little to them, and so much to us.”

“You’ve got to talk to them,” Alanalda said.  He’s the consummate beta male, always smiling at women, asking them how they’re doing, etc.  If there’s even a hint that they’re unhappy, he’ll look deeply into their eyes, give them his sad puppy dog look, then move in for the kill; full-bore sympathy, then a hug, which ruins the curve for all the other guys in class.

“Thwok no talk to them,” the brutish alpha male of our pack said.  “Thwok do his talking with this,” he added, pointing downwards to his groin.

“Good thing, that’s where most of your I.Q. is located.”  That was Kruk, a wiseguy like me.

“OOT OOT OOT!” Thwok screeched, standing up and beating his chest.  He thought he’d been complimented.

“Oh, put a sock in it.”

 

“We’re going to have to agree to disagree on that point, old sport,” Alanalda said.  He picked up the jazz age lingo from a weather-beaten copy The Great Gatsby left behind by some American eco-tourists.

“NO AGREE!” I guess you can tell from the capital letters that was Thwok again.

“Precisely,” Alanalda said.  “This is a subject on which reasonable primates can hold divergent . . .”

Thwok started to circle Alanalda, but reason—in the diluted form of Kruk—intervened.

“Lighten up,” he said, and stood up to block Thwok’s advance.  “He’s just talking about mating, not stealing a female from you.”

“Him no steal female from me,” Thwok said, and I had to say I was surprised at his eloquence.  I didn’t know he was capable of italics.

“You up for a friendly wager?” I said, hoping to make this boring braggadocio fest interesting.

“Sure,” Thwok said.  “Me get any female me want!” and went into a little macho dance that foreshadowed an end zone celebration that would merit an excessive celebration penalty eons in the future.

“Oh really?” I said.

“Are you crazy?” Kruk asked me.

“Yes but so what if I am?”

“If you lose, Thwok gloats.  If you win, he beats the crap out of you with the jawbone of a dead chimpanzee.”

“That’s better than getting beaten with the jawbone of a live chimpanzee.”

“You’re asking for trouble.”

“I know something,” I said, tapping a temple with one of the articulated digits that gave me prehensile ability.  Such a handy tool for the evolving bonobo!

“Fine, but it’s your funeral.”

I gave him a smug smile.  “Hide and watch my friend.”

I got up and walked over to where Thwok was still doing his happy dance.  “Okay, big guy, you’re on.  You said you could get any female—right?”

“Right!”

“Okay, why don’t we say”—and here I adopted the attitude of a non-partisan arbiter of a close but disputed question—“Daisy over there.”

“Mom–where’s my daddy?”

 

Thwok’s mouth formed into a sly smile.  “Ha ha you dumb,” he said.  “Daisy and me do the dirty alla time.”

“Is that so,” I said thoughtfully.  “Well, I’ll bet you two bunches of bananas she won’t let you mount her.”

“YOU ON!” Thwok said with a look of idiotic glee.

As Thwok ambled off Kruk and Alanalda looked at me in disbelief.  “You’d better start gathering bananas, pal,” Alanalda said.

“Let’s see how this plays out.”

“If you don’t pay up, he’s gonna kill you!” Kruk said with alarm.

“Ever hear of a sucker bet?” I asked them.

“No, but you’re a sucker if you think Thwok’s going to go easy on you.”

“Let’s just say I have some inside dope.”

“What’s that?”

“Mr. Big Balls hasn’t been as attentive to Daisy as he should have been since she emerged from her last estrus phase.”

“What’s estrus?” Alanalda asked.  So simple, so naif—no wonder women love him.

“It’s when the females are in heat.”

“Heat?”

“In the words of an on-line dictionary that will someday be written, a period of sexual receptivity and fertility.”

“So—he was just doin’ what comes naturally,” Kruk said.

“It’s what he was supposed to be doin’ afterwards that counts,” I said.

“Like what?”

“Stay in touch, follow up, gather some flowers for her.”

“Sounds about right,” Alanalda said.  “I wouldn’t expect that from Thwok.”

“But she would,” I said.  “Instead, he did what insensitive males will be doing until the end of time.”

“What?”

“He got his, and then moved on.”

We watched as Thwok approached Daisy, who was talking to three of her friends.

“Look who’s coming,” one of them said.

“Who?”

“Old Dribble Dick himself,” another said.

Thwok walked up like the cock of the walk; confident, swaggering, nonchalant.  His back was turned to us, but I could tell from the furrows that extended to the nape of his neck that he had one eyebrow arched high in an expression of presumption; like Jean-Paul Belmondo, he knew he was going to get his girl.

Belmondo

“HEY DAISY!” Thwok called out.  “I have bet I can score with you!”

“What makes you think you can?”

“WE DID BEFORE!”

“Yes,” Daisy said, and now it was her turn to raise an eyebrow.  “That we did, that we did.”

Thwok gave her a goofy smile, like he was getting both a cupcake and a surprise creme filling inside.  I thought I heard him laugh with that gloating “Hyuk-nuk!” sound he always made when he stole food from a smaller male.

“So now we do again—right?”

“Actually,” Daisy began, “since I didn’t hear from you . . .”

“Yes?”

“And you didn’t come around to take care of that baby we had . . .”

“Yes?”

“I think maybe instead of sex, let’s try a little violence.”

And with that her three friends pounced on Thwok’s back and began to beat him mercilessly, like a bass drum in a parade.  The last I saw of him he had climbed a tree, and the girl gang was standing guard to resume their tender mercies when he came back down.

“I guess you were right,” Alanalda said.

“Although I doubt you’ll ever collect,” Kruk said.

“That’s okay,” I replied.  “I derive enormous satisfaction from alpha male beatdowns.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Wild Animals of Nature!”

Your Stuffed Animal Advisor

Animals are our friends, but pets can also upchuck on our white wall-to-wall carpeting, or tear up a new pair of pumps we just bought last week on sale.  That’s why stuffed animals are often better friends than real ones.  Got a question about our fake little furry friends? Ask Your Stuffed Animal Advisor!

Save the manatees–collect them.

Dear Stuffed Animal Advisor:

When I broke up with my boyfriend “Todd” a year ago because he could never bring himself to “pop the question,” I did not go out and get a cat like a lot of women I know.  I was not going to end up like them, making popcorn on a Saturday night and watching Lifetime movies with fourteen pounds of fur named “Kitzi” on my lap. So I began to collect stuffed animals which as you suggest are a lot easier to take care of.  They never escape outside and have to be lured back in by leaving a plate of food on the back porch like my girlfriends Mary Anne and Jeanie do whenever their cats run off into the woods.  Also they don’t pee on the rug.  The cats, not my girlfriends.

Now that I have joined the ranks of “virtual pet owners” I have a question.  I have a growing collection of stuffed dogs, cats and turtles.  I checked our local zoning code and it says nothing about legal occupancy for a one-bedroom apartment by unrelated inanimate figurines.  Is 162 (not including me) too many, or can I get the “My Little Puppy Friends” special Christmas edition when it arrives in stores next week?

Miriam Urshel, North Hollywood, Florida

Dear Miriam:

Your Stuffed Animal Advisor says “The more the merrier!” when it comes to the toy buddies that make our lives so rewarding when human beings like “Todd” prove incapable of making a commitment.  Make sure you don’t block fire exits with your little furry friends, and you may want to buy a free-standing storage shelter to hide your “stuffed stuff” when nosy mental health professionals from local government bodies come snooping around.

Get the Grab ‘n Go Sixpack.

Dear Your Stuff Animal Advisor:

I am a guy, as you can probably deduce from my name below.  As a boy I was excluded from many youth sports activities because of the crippling effects of Osgood Schlatter’s Disease, and as a result I remained attached to my stuffed animals longer than most young men.

I have now become engaged to a wonderful young lady–I will call her “Opal” because that is her name–who is a real “go-getter.”  She was recently re-elected to a second term as County Prothonotary, the second highest-ranking official around here with plenary powers to issue and revoke licenses for fishing and all-terrain vehicles. Opal has her eye on County Commissioner, and a run for higher office would put her in the local “media spotlight,” which is pretty intense around here what with a newspaper and two radio stations, one “Classic Country” the other “Top 40” format. My concern is that some jerk reporter will find out about my collection–which is now in the high three figures–and try to make an “expose” out of it.

I am willing to take the heat, but I do not want to impede Opal’s career and so am wondering if I should switch to a more conventional hobby such as bowling or fishing.

Norman “Bud” Ohlrich, Keokuk, Iowa

Dear Bud:

The stigma formerly attached to adult male stuffed animal collectors has declined over the years as our society has become more “accepting” of our nation’s hobby diversity.  I say turn what some people may consider a liability into a campaign asset by becoming an “out-and-proud” stuffed animal nut!  Pollster Ed Francis of Mid-States Political Consultants says a lot of weird hobbyists are “swing” voters who can tilt an election against an anti-stuffed animal candidate in a close race.

Dear Stuffed Animal Advisor Lady:

Please settle an “e-commerce” dispute for me.  I recently bought what was advertised as an original issue, limited edition “Furby” on stuffedanimalsauction.com from a seller named lloydinknobnoster.  When the package arrived the thing didn’t look right so I turned it upside down and the label said “Fruby,” made in Deng Xiaoping City, China.  I tried to stop payment but it was too late, so I filed a complaint with the webmaster who says there was nothing they can do, “lloydinknobnoster” is a “Platinum” member with an unimpeachable record.

I contacted “Lloyd” by mail–there are not that many people in Knob Noster so the postmaster knew who it was.  “Lloyd” says I should be thanking him, not complaining, it’s a collector’s item.  I said I wouldn’t take him to small claims court if he would abide by your decision and he agreed although he said he wasn’t waiving “sovereign immunity” whatever that means.

Curt Dwinnel, Hill Jack, MO

Dear Curt–

I’m afraid I’m going to have to side with Lloyd on this one.  Furbies with the spelling “Fruby” down in the crotch where you insert the two “D” batteries are commanding top prices on world collectible markets.  Apparently Chinese stuffed animal workers are only given one bathroom break per week and as a result sometimes lose consciousness while impressing plastic parts with basic information such as product name, serial number, and toll-free number to call if you spill something on the fur. I hope your new acquisition brings peace to your life.  If not, please stay off stuffed animal websites for awhile as I’m bidding on a number of items and don’t want to get caught up in your legal hurricane, thank you very much.

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Take My Advice–I Wasn’t Using it Anyway.”

My Quest to Bring Karaoke to Mt. Everest

Sometimes, it takes a tragedy to change the way we view the world. For me, it was the story of David Sharp.

Sharp was a climber in distress who died 300 feet from the summit of Mt. Everest. A number of parties, including that of double-amputee Mark Inglis, passed him by, oblivious to his plight as they sought the small beer glory that comes to those who scale the world’s highest mountain long after the feat has become commonplace.

When I learned of Sharp’s death, I could only sigh in disgust at my fellow man (and the overwhelming majority of the world’s premier climbers are men).

And then it struck me–this never would have happened if the many highly-competitive egotists who passed Sharp by had only stopped to partake in the camaraderie of karaoke as they made their way up and down the mountain.

Since it was first developed in the 1970′s, karaoke has become a staple of after-work get-togethers around the world. The term is derived from two Japanese words, kara and okestura, which roughly translated mean “bad singing.”

Karaoke first became popular among Japanese “salary men” who are expected to go out after long work days and socialize into the night. Their bosses hope that bonding through singing will improve team spirit, leading to greater corporate profits. Simply put, it is impossible not to feel a sense of common purpose with someone who has heard you sing Donna Summer’s “I Will Survive” after you’ve had three Margaritas.

My goal: To bring the bonhomie that karaoke engenders to the mountain known to sherpas, the Nepalese natives who guide foreigners to its peak, as “Chomolungma” or “Graveyard of Lousy Tippers.”

My sherpa’s name is Pemba Dorjie, and he recommends the VocoPro Karaoke King, a 7 Watt, 120 volt beauty with a Signal-to-Noise Ratio of 65 db and Wow and Flutter of 0.35% WRMS. “This bad boy has two microphone inputs with individual volume controls,” he notes in his native Tibetan tongue. “Duets can thus be performed with ease, cranking the fun up another notch.”

We choose the southwest ridge for our ascent, and make base camp at 17,600 feet above sea level. Pemba asks if he can be the first to try out the VocoPro, and I gladly agree. I know him to be a big Barry Manilow fan and–wouldn’t you know it–his first selection is “Copacabana,” the 1978 disco hit that combined Latin rhythm and Borscht Belt nightclub shtick to produce what Rolling Stone magazine called the worst song of the decade.

“Pemba–you rock!”

Pemba’s voice is strong and soulful as it echoes across the mountain face, triggering an avalanche that wipes out a party of five below us who were trying to become the first set of quintuplets of Lithuanian descent to reach the summit. “Tough luck,” says Pemba. “Avalanches are the leading cause of death here.”

After a few weeks to acclimatize ourselves to the altitude, we move up the Western Cwm to the base of the Lhotse face. Before we turn in for the night, we stare into our campfire and think the thoughts that come to men as they reach into the heavens.

“Pemba,” I say. “This Cwm–why does it have no vowel?”

Pemba is uneasy at first. “We are a poor nation,” he says after a while. “We cannot afford all the vowels that you rich Americans toss around so freely.” I nod my head in sympathy, then show him how a “y” is the Swiss Army knife of the alphabet and can be used as either a consonant or a vowel!

“Thanks,” Pemba says with a smile. “This will bring many hours of happiness to my children.”

Over the next two days we pass through the South Col, the Geneva Spur and the Yellow Band until we hit the Death Zone. At 26,000 feet, we can survive only two or three days in the rarefied atmosphere near the summit, where there are estimated to be corpses of over 100 climbers who died without realizing their goal.

I begin to have trouble breathing, and Pemba urges caution. “Here,” he says as he hands me an aerosol canister of Cheez Whiz, the processed cheese spread. “Stick this up a nostril and squirt.” I do as he instructs me, and after an initial blast of the orange, viscous liquid hits my soft palate, my nostrils clear from the gases that propel this delicious treat onto corn chips, hot dogs and cheesesteaks across America. “Wow,” I say as the fluorocarbons jolt me into a heightened state of consciousness. “What a rush! Hope it doesn’t poke a hole in the ozone layer.”

“You some kind of tree hugger?” Pemba asks scornfully. “Nature is your enemy, man.” And indeed, my concerns about global warming evaporate in the -100 degree Fahrenheit cold.

“That should last you a few hours,” Pemba says. “Just enough time to get set up.”

We hurry to hook a solar-powered generator up to the karaoke machine, then wait for teams of climbers to pass by. We notice one straggler, apparently disoriented from lack of oxygen to the brain, making his way up the slope. “Excuse me,” he shouts out as he draws nearer. “I’m looking for the Northeast Bancshares Spring Outing.”

Pemba and I exchange looks of concern. The man has been separated from his party, and is unlikely to survive a night alone. “You like Kool and the Gang?” Pemba asks tentatively.

“Who doesn’t?” the man replies, and before you can say “Jungle Boogie,” our new friend is laying down a loose groove of funky stuff to “Celebration.”

“Cel-e-brate good time–c’mon on!” he sings, not too well, but with more than enough gusto. The words ring out across the Kangshung Face and–out of nowhere–who should appear but Beth Lindsay, Director of Human Resources for the fourth-largest bank holding company in America.

“Ed Ferguson–we need you over on the northeast ridge for volleyball,” she says with concern as she checks her clipboard. “You two don’t mind if I steal Ed for awhile, do you?” she asks Pemba and me. “Karaoke doesn’t start until after dinner tonight.”

“Not a problem,” I reply with more than a little satisfaction at a mission accomplished. Pemba puts Ed’s microphone back into the VocoPro’s hard shell protective case, and we head back down the mountain.

“You know,” he says as we pass the body of a climber who was abandoned by his party after he fell forty feet from a ledge above us, “music can really bring people together.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Yes I Can’t!”

Emma Lazarus: The Poet as Politician – The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

Those who enter the U.S. illegally today bypass restrictions in addition to the “public charge” test that were in force when Lazarus wrote.
— Read on spectator.org/emma-lazarus-the-poet-as-politician/

Me and My Code Talker

It’s Saturday morning, which means the tension is starting to build for our weekly out-of-home social interaction. Regardless of whether we get together with people in a higher income bracket or a lower, my wife faults me for doing, saying, wearing, implying or inferring something I shouldn’t have.

“We tried a Choctaw for awhile, but we went back to Navajos.”

To give you a few examples: “You’re not going to wear that, are you?” are the words she usually says when she first sees the clothes I’ve put on. “Don’t mention anything about what I told you Lisa said about Jack, okay?”–whatever she said had been promptly forgotten by me as soon as I heard it.

But I live in a different world from her; tapping at my computer all day, yelling or being yelled at on the telephone, sending out bills, filling out timesheets. I rarely if ever come into actual contact with humans, and by that I mean to include some of my highly-educated knowledge industry colleagues. As a result, my social skills are admittedly . . . atrophied.

“Tell her she has on a lovely dress, but DON’T look at her knockers.”

“The problem is you never give me any guidance–any context–until we’re on the other couple’s doorstep,” I say.

“Your problem is you’re not good at understanding code,” she says, and not with a great deal of sympathy. “You take things literally that aren’t meant seriously, and vice versa.”

“What do you mean ‘code’?”

“There are certain things you don’t say, certain things you don’t do–and they change depending on whose house we’re at. Like tonight you have to get dressed up, but next Saturday is a ‘nice’ blue jean night–okay?”

I was, if anything, more confused than before. “Can you buy flash cards or a crib sheet on this stuff?”

“I don’t think so,” my wife said. “Part of the attraction of conventions is you can use them to weed out others, so all the better social sets keep them a secret.”

“Says he’s ‘Doing great’? Must have lost his job.”

I didn’t see anyway out of my predicament. “Well, I don’t want to just stick by your side all night wherever we go.”

“I don’t want you to either,” she said, staring out at the middle distance, plainly frustrated. “Maybe we should get you a code talker.”

“What’s a code talker?”

“They’re members of Indian . . .”

“You mean Native American . . .”

“Whatever–tribes that have really complex languages, so they can talk in code and they can deciper codes.”

My wife is not generally known for graduate-level inquiries into questions of the nature of language, so I was suspicious. “Where’d you learn that?”

“We’ll be right back with more tips on decorating your kids.”

“It was on Martha Stewart Living, right after a segment on stenciling your children.”

I considered her suggestion for a second; if some Native American could serve as my guide through the wilds of the metrowest suburbs of Boston and help me avoid a long uncomfortable silence on the road home from a stylish–but casual!–party, it would be money well spent.

“Okay–I’ll give it a try,” I said, “but where am I going to find a code talker in two days?”

“Try that rental place down by the falls–they have everything.”

So after I took the trash to the town dump I dropped by the You-Rentz-It franchise and asked the guy at the counter if they rented code talkers.

“What kind ya lookin’ for?” he asked, as if it was the most routine request in the world.

“Her kid got into Penn? Tell her how sorry you are to hear it.”

“I don’t know–what do you have?”

“We’ve got Navajos, Choctaws, Comanches. I’ve got a Basque that’s gonna be returned tonight.”

“What kind’s the best?”

“Navajos are the top of the line.”

“Which is cheapest?”

“Comanches. What kind of shindig is it?”

“Cocktail party.”

“How many people?”

“Probably . . . at least twenty.”

“I dunno,” he said scratching his head, Will Rogers-style. “I don’t think you want to pinch pennies on an affair like that. You’ll end up paying for it in the long run.”

I seemed to recall from my childhood watching westerns that Comanches were fierce warriors. Probably best not to stint.

“I’ll go with a Navajo for Saturday night.”

“I’ll need a credit card for the deposit. You can pick him up at 5.”

“Is there an instruction manual so I know what to do with him?”

“Don’t worry. He’ll know what to do.”

I paid and went home to tell my wife. She was watching an episode of Grey’s Anatomy she’d taped, and so she was in defcon alert posture, poised to block out all extraneous stimuli such as husbands.

“We’re all set with the code talker,” I said.

“Um-hmm,” she replied, not wanting to waste precious energy she might need for sobbing later.

When the time came, I picked up Chester Joe Leader and his kit of code-cracking equipment.

“What kind of grub are they serving tonight?” was his first question after we were in the car.

“Finger food,” I said. “Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto, mini-quiche, stuff like that.”

“No little ham sandwiches?”

“People usually don’t do that until the holidays,” I said. “So, how exactly do we do this?”

“I get you wired up, and I set up outside,” he said with all the emotion of Sergeant Joe Friday on Dragnet.

“Okay.”

“I can hear what people are saying, but they can’t hear me. Only you can, through your earpiece.”

He held up what looked to be an old-style hearing aid, the kind my mom used to wear that gave off more feedback than a Jimi Hendrix solo. “Okay.”

“I listen to what people say and decipher it for you.”

“You spent much time in the western suburbs?”

“It’s pretty plain vanilla. The North Shore’s tougher, summer colonies in Maine are impossible.” The guy apparently knew his stuff.

When I got home my wife was ready for once because she’d agreed to bring an hors d’oeuvre and we had to arrive early to warm it up.

“Sweetie, I’d like you to meet Chester Joe Leader, my code talker.”

How-do-you-dos were exchanged, and we got in the car after I grabbed the obligatory bottle of white wine we’d been trading back-and-forth with our hosts for the past two years. It’s a fruity Burgundy that we’re both afraid to try.

“Do these people have shrubbery?” Chester asked.

“HUGE rhododendrons,” I said. “The kind Virginia Woolf compared to suburban stockbrokers, which is what our host is.”

“Good. They give you lots of cover without being prickly.”

Woolf: “Do me a favor and leave me out of your stupid posts.”

We dropped Chester off the length of a football field from our destination, and he made his way by stealth up the lawn and into the bushes.

“Let’s hope this works,” I said.

“It better,” my wife said with an expression that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the face of the gas chamber attendant at a maximum security prison.

Our hostess greeted us and we were ushered into the party, which was in full swing. There was a bartender so the usual struggle to get a drink wasn’t a problem, and we began to circulate.

“Danger dead ahead,” my wife said.

“What?”

“That’s Missy and Mark Wainwright.”

“What’s the problem?”

“Her parents gave him $200,000 to buy some stupid franchise, and it’s draining money like the Hoover Dam.”

“Okay, I’ll watch myself,” I said. “Chester–you copy that?”

“I’m right here for you,” he said. “Proceed.”

We ambled up casually and, after the usual over-the-top faux surprise greeting, settled in to chew the fat, figuratively speaking.

“How’s everything at your shop?” Mark asked.

“Say fine and change the subject,” Chester said.

“Gotcha,” I said.

“What?” Mark asked.

“Sorry–I uh, felt a sneeze coming on. We’re doing fine thanks–considering the economy!”

“Tell me about it!” he exclaimed with a little-boy-lost look on his face. “We’re . . .”

“Now!” Chester snapped.

“Hey–what do you think of the Patriots’ draft?  What’s the guy’s name . . . Maye?”

“Uh . . . well, I guess he’s no Brady, but who is?”

I felt like a fencer who’d just parried a deadly thrust. We two men exchanged idiotic speculation on somebody we knew next to nothing about for five minutes, then the Wainwrights departed for a youth baseball game.

“Everything okay?” my wife asked dubiously.

“Just dodged a bullet there. Anybody else you want to warn me about?”

“Here come the Andersons,” my wife said, turning towards me like a pitcher in a jam on the mound so the other side couldn’t read her lips. “She doesn’t know it, but Susan saw Sam coming out of a restaurant with his secretary while Cindy was off for a girls’ weekend at an Arizona spa.”

“That could be awkward,” I said, and just in time as the Andersons bore down on us like a sailboat running downwind into a marina. “You there Chester?”

“I’m on it,” the code talker replied with a calm, even tone. I felt–reassured. “Do not ask about vacations–got it?” he said.

“Will do,” I said just as the cuckoldette reached our personal space.

“Hey you two!” Cindy said to us–big hug and party kiss from her, a handshake from the cheatin’ side of the family.

“Hello there, strangers!” my wife said. “Haven’t seen you since you got back. Was it fun?”

“I came back so relaxed!” Cindy said. “All that was gone in about a day!”

Back to the grind.

“Welcome back to the rat race!” my wife said. What’s she talking about, I wondered: the yoga, the pilates, or the spinning class?

Sam seemed to be suffering from a bout of mauvais foi, which is not a form of pate. It’s the gnawing guilty conscience over the lie you’re living. He was at a loss for words, and I didn’t want to fill up his tank.

“Don’t ask him what he did while the wife was away,” I heard Chester say in my earpiece. “Don’t ask him what he did last weekend.”

“I’m waiting for some positive suggestions,” I muttered into my hand as I pretended to cough.

“Ask him . . . what he thinks of the election.”

“Are you crazy?” I said, pulling myself away as I pretended to be fascinated by a bowl of mixed nuts. “I never bring up politics at parties!”

“You’ll have to trust me on this one,” Chester said.

I gulped, almost involuntarily; Chet was the expert, however, so I turned to meet my counterpart with a quiche-eating grin on my face.

“So, every day’s a wild ride with Biden in the White House, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Sam said thoughtfully, and a few heads turned at my obvious social faux pas. Our little suburb was reliably Republican fifteen years ago, but now it’s become fashionable to pretend you care about the poor beyond the value of the charitable deductions they so generously provide us. “But you know what I really, really like about the Democratic Party?” he began.

“What was that?” I asked.

“Hillary Clinton,” Sam said. “She always forgave Bill whenever he . . . uh . . . strayed.”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Blurbs From the Burbs.”

As School Year Ends, Some Ask if 6th Grade is Worth It

COLUMBIA, Missouri. Timmy Salmon has enjoyed his big brother Tom’s four years at the University of Missouri, visiting the Sigma Nu fraternity house on football game days and being fawned over by visiting sorority girls. “The Tri-Delts are pretty,” he says with the discerning eye of a budding ladies’ man, “but the Kappa Alpha Theta girls are yucky.”

C’mon, Timmy–cut ’em some slack.

Still, he’s not sure he wants to follow in the footsteps of an English major who so far has received only one job offer, a temporary minimum wage position reviewing mortgage documents for typos and punctuation errors that could undermine a bank’s rights. “They’re paying him $7.35 an hour,” Timmy says with apparent disgust. “I can make that much mowing lawns.”

So Timmy and his friend Scott Rouchka are taking a long, hard look at whether it makes more sense for them to cut their losses now before they invest precious time and effort in sixth grade, which has historically been viewed as the gateway to seventh grade and eventually a college degree.

“Sixth grade math is a BIG jump,” says Rouchka, who was fifth-grade arm-wrestling champion. “There’s fractions and decimals, which computers already know how to do.”

The two boys’ skepticism represents a worrisome sign for college admissions officers, who already struggle to keep male-female ratios in balance in order to avoid the “loathsome cad” effect; women now make up 57% of college students, and male students are emboldened to treat their distaff counterparts badly as the imbalance between their range of possible dating and mating prospects widens over those of coeds.

“I blame college dropout billionaires like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell,” says Dean Claus Ornstein of Glendon College in Normal, Illinois before this reporter interrupts him. “I could go on,” he says, but agrees to cut his list of examples short due to editorial restrictions.

Pigs in a blanket: The choice is clear.

A bachelor’s degree is still viewed as an essential credential for most white-collar jobs by many adults, but Timmy Salmon says times have changed. “When I told the President of the Tri Delts I made enough money to buy a bike last summer her eyes got REAL wide and she said ‘Wow!’” he recalls. “I’m pretty sure I could have kissed her but they had those pigs-in-a-blanket mini-hot dogs that I love and I didn’t want to leave the buffet.”

Big brother Tom says he thinks Timmy is wrong and that there is value to be gained by exposure to the humanities early in life. “When I smoked pot in high school I was totally clueless,” he recalls. “Now our drug-addled bullshit sessions are really deep.”