Unhappy With Choices, Freedonians Seek to Vote in US

GRVNKIZ, Freedonia.  Myornik Dozlobo is a tractor repair-woman third class who usually doesn’t pay much attention to politics, but this year is different, she says.  “I cannot stomach that man Zbirgniew Olaksik,” she says of Freedonia’s prime minister, who is currently serving the last six months of a prison sentence for embezzling weasels, which back the nation’s currency.  “On the other hand, this Elianali Dorzibna is a slut,” she says, referring to a back-bencher in the lower house of Freedonia’s legislature who broke a budgetary deadlock by lifting her peasant’s blouse when the opposition party shouted in unison “Show us your blopskis,” vulgar slang for mammary glands.

Dozlobo: “You want your gears greased?”

 

So Dozlobo, like a growing number of similarly-disgusted Freedonians, is turning her frustrated eyes to America where she finds the presidential candidates of the two main political parties “not so bad,” despite the widespread disgust felt by voters in the U.S. at the choices their democracy has left them with.  “They are both relatively handsome men,” Dozlobo says.  “Biden’s hair-plugger did a good job on him, and how Trump always looks so tan is a mystery to me.”

Elianali Dorzibna: “Yes I show boobs to get budget passed–so what?”

As a result there is a movement here to allow Freedonians to vote in both primary and general presidential elections, a cause that would seem hopelessly quixotic were it not for efforts across America to allow non-citizens to cast ballots, a Democratic strategy that makes a mockery of political science, but eminent good sense politically.  “It used to be you had to pay ‘walking around money’ to get people to vote illegally,” says campaign strategist Zack Gabriel.  “Freedonians can be bought off cheap with chewing gum, shoelaces and rubber washers, so your corruption dollar goes much further.”

“Snack-pak” of rubber washers in various sizes: Yum!

Republicans find themselves playing “catch-up” in some states where Freedonians are already registering to vote on-line using procedures put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.  “Why should I have to live in a first-world shit-hole like Chicago just to vote there,” says Naruzkzi Gometrickz, a goat-breeder whose barn walls are covered with blue ribbons from local and provincial livestock expositions.  “I vote from the comfort of my home in my third-world shit-hole, I don’t even have to go through the second-world.”

“We’re having a two-votes-for-the-price-of-one special!”

Non-citizen voting has become a contentious issue in American politics for many years, despite its facial absurdity, with legal scholars pointing to an 18th century Massachusetts precedent that allowed males to vote regardless of citizenship so long as they were at least 21 years old and had an annual income of three pounds or an estate worth sixty pounds.  When told of this forgotten history, Dozlobo was encouraged.  “I may not be male,” she said, “but I fix tractor just as good and I gained more than three pounds last year.”

Hot ‘n Sexy With the New FDIC

An audit of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation by an outside law firm exposed years of sexual harassment of junior females by senior males.

It’s Friday at the FDIC, the federal agency that stands behind the bank deposits of every man, woman and dog in the good ol’ U.S. of A., so in addition to the usual horsing-around, hijinks and grab-ass, it’s time to crank things up a notch.

I’m thinking maybe lunch at a strip club, or fiddling around with one of the more buxom young bank examiners.  After all, I’m twice the age and twice the pay grade of some of the bodacious babes that we’ve hired in our dogged efforts to achieve “diversity.”  Our job is to protect the life savings of widows and orphans, not to mention the uninsured deposits of high-flying institutions that cater to tech billionaires and big political donors, like Silicon Valley Bank, and a little eye-candy helps to keep red-blooded lifers like me awake.  The FDIC can never sleep–unless it’s with a junior employee who has humongous knockers and is looking to claw her way up the org chart over the backs of less attractive colleagues.

I decide to get things rolling with a photo of my “private” parts–ha!  Maybe private at a boring federal agency like the Department of Defense, which has to be ready to attack an off-brand ally of a despotic regime, or Health and Human Services, with all their goo-goo female watchdogs to monitor the natural, free-flowing erotic office interactions between employees that keep the engines of bureaucracy running smoothly–but not at the new Hot ‘n Sexy FDIC!

I shoot my “dick pic” over to Estelle de Bourgeois–hey, I’m no Marxist with their shopworn prejudices against the bourgeoisie!  Thanks to my government-issued cellphone it will be the work of a second to send an image of my crown jewels winging their way to Estelle.  She works on the same floor as me but for some reason uses the ladies’ room in another building.  Maybe she just hasn’t sniffed the manly scent given off by my Brut Soap-on-a-Rope–but I’ll get her yet!

Oops–almost forgot to include a personal note.  Hmm–let’s see, can’t come on too strong due to our onerous–and completely unnecessary!–“Dignity in the Workplace” policy.  Gotta keep it professional.  How about–“Dearest Estelle, hope you’ll accompany me to my upcoming on-site examination of First, Third, Shortstop Savings & Loan.  There’s not much to do in Osawatomie, Kansas, and we can save the taxpayers money by sharing a room!”

Totally professional–nobody can fault me for such a bland statement of shared institutional purpose.

Well, better get to work, emails are piling up.  Let’s see, what’s going on: violations of Tier III capital ratios (*yawn*), new Code of Federal Regulations sections, upsurge in bank robberies–they don’t pay me enough to care about this crap!

Here’s one from a fellow “F-DICKER”–Chuck in Enforcement.  “Want to grab Chinese for lunch?”  Being an aggressive alpha-male type unlike the pansies in the back office, Chuck has a hunger that could cast a shadow at high noon.

“Chuckles,” I respond, chuckling to myself.  “You’ve got to expand your culinary horizons.  The waitresses at Happy Luck Panda wear standard-issue uniforms, the gals at ‘Pho Sho’ wear string bikinis–the choice is yours.”

“Ha ha good one,” Chuck replies.  “I don’t know much about Vietnamese cuisine so maybe I can get one of the ‘gals’ to bend over and help me with the menu.”

“You horn dog!” I respond.  “See you at 11:30.”

“Why so early?”

I roll my eyes so hard it hurts.  “Sometimes, Chuck, I wonder if your mother dropped you on your head when you were a baby.  Rush hour for federal bureaucrats in D.C. starts at 2:30–do you want to be stuck in traffic forever?”

“Right, right.  Meet you in the lobby.”

Well, at least I’ve got something to look forward to on this, the Day That Drags On the Longest.  Between then and now I have to find some work, or at least look busy.

I suppose I should tackle this stack of performance reviews that threatens to crash through the floor unless I can get the guys in office maintenance to add structural supports beneath my desk.  Let’s see, Mindy Arlington–which one is she?  Oh, right, the one Chuck says looks like a “grizzly bear with tits.”  I thought that was unfair–after all, female grizzly bears have tits too!  I fill in the little circles with a #2 lead pencil–I want to be able to change a rating in case one of the “gals” agrees to let me come over to her apartment for some “overtime” perusal of community bank call reports.

“Mindy is not performing at the level expected of a junior field manager and should consider joining a health club as she is currently TFTF (too fat to fuck),” I begin with admirable asperity.  “I have made several suggestions as to how she might improve her chances of promotion, such as switching to Diet Coke and washing my F-100 pickup in a wet t-shirt, but she has not accepted my career guidance.”

I’ll make a copy and show it to Mindy–maybe she can finally “get a clue” and lose her loser attitude–you can’t expect to get anywhere in life if you turn down sexual advances from superiors!

Enough negativity, time to turn back to what we’re here for–you can’t spell “fun” without the “F” in “FDIC”!

Think I’ll see how Eric in Accounting is doing.  “Eric,” I tap on my phone, “we’re going to a strip club Monday to celebrate National Federal Bureaucrats Day–you in?”

I see a little bubble with dots in it, so I know he’s texting me back.

“Which one?” appears on my screen.

“The Golden Sausage.”

“Sorry–I’m banned for life there.”

“Why?”

“They called it ‘inappropriate touching’ of an ‘exotic dancer,’ but I say as a federal bank examiner I need unfettered ability to inspect a woman to determine whether she is ‘well-endowed’ or has ‘artificially inflated assets.'”

That’s Eric for you–totally committed to the FDIC’s mission, which is–we could make more in the private sector, so we’re entitled to fool around a little.  Or a lot.

“That’s tough,” I say.  “Thank God our friends in Congress have our backs, otherwise crackpot proposals for private deposit insurance might get some traction.”

“We have friends in Congress?”

“Well, not many right now because of all the skirt-chasing and sexual harassment we’re involved in, but a few.”

“Like who?”

“Feminist heroine, Elizabeth Warren!”

See Report for the Special Review Committee of the Board of Directors of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation–so hot it’s almost NSFW anywhere but the FDIC.

For Sisters of Roller Derby, the Jam is Always On

SAN FRANCISCO.  In an alley off Market Street here the rays of the sunrise to the east are an unwelcome intruder as several men sleeping off hangovers from cheap “bum wine” shield their eyes from the glare.  “I don’t know why they can’t start with soft-white bulbs,” says a man who goes by “Mickey” as he pulls a heavy grey moving blanket over his eyes.  “It certainly ruins the ambiance, which is in short supply to begin with.”

But bright light isn’t the only wake-up call for Mickey and three other men huddled beneath a loading dock.  From the end of the alley one hears the whir of rubber wheels, announcing a mission of mercy by the Sisters of Roller Derby, the only Catholic religious order to carry out its mission on skates.

“Up and at ’em, you mooks,” barks Sister Mary Joseph McCarthy, the 5′ 10″ Mother Superior at the local convent.  “Stop feeling sorry for yourselves and let’s get something on your badly-abused stomachs.”

“You self-pitying bunch of losers!”

 

The men sit up slowly, rub the crud from their eyes, then line up for a breakfast of cold cereal in Kellogg’s “Snack Packs” into which Sister Carmelo Anthony, a novice of the order, pours 1% milk.  “Thank you,” says a man who goes by the moniker “Red Dog,” an outdated football term for rushing the quarterback that reveals his age–70–and the cause of the post-concussion syndrome that bring him nightmares.  “Repeated blunt trauma to the head never hurt anybody,” says “Sister Joe” with scorn.  “It’s that damn Mad Dog you guzzle down every night,” she adds, referring to Mogen David wine, known on the streets as  “MD 20/20” for its high alcohol content.

The Sisters of Roller Derby were founded in 1972 as a reaction to the more-lenient ministerial styles of other religious orders.  “The Roller Derby Sisters adopted Joanie Weston as their model because the goody-goody nuns didn’t seem to be getting results,” says church historian Father Francis K. Loff, referring to the most famous personality in roller derby history.  “Weston was known for the vicious elbows to the chops she threw.  The sisters incorporated that into the Christian philosophy of turning the other cheek and hit you on both sides of the mouth to make sure you get the message.”

“Take THAT, sucker!”

Roller derby is a contact sport in which a skater known as a “jammer” scores points for her team by lapping members of the opponent.  “Blockers” try to prevent the opposing “jammer” from scoring by “blocking” her, and while blocking with elbows is prohibited, players frequently use this joint to inflict injury on opponents to render them less effective.  “It’s a very honest sport,” says Max Carmacki of Roller Derby Today.  “In basketball you’d get called for a foul for doing that, but in ‘derby’ everybody agrees it’s just good, clean, dirty fun.”

Efforts to have Weston canonized as a saint have faltered in the past due to the high level of violence involved in roller derby, but her acolytes in the order think they have found an ally in Pope Francis I, an enthusiastic devotee of the sport.  “Francis ‘gets it,” says “Sister Joe.”  “Do you really think you can save souls with a bunch of nuns who just play ping-pong in church basements?”

Available in Kindle format on amazon.com as part of the collection “Fun With Nuns!”

Peanut Brittle Prices Soar as Ozarks New Center of US

GUM CREEK, Mo.  Clell Fulsom, a crawdaddy fisherman and long-time postmaster of this town of 230, is mildly surprised when this reporter tells him it would be considered “tacky” in other parts of America to park a dilapidated truck in one’s front yard for parts, as he has done.

Crawdaddy: Mini-lobster of the Midwest

“Huh,” he says, unimpressed.  “Looks like the rest of the country has some catchin’ up to do with us on a lot of things.”

You have to admit, it could come in handy.

Fulsom is referring to a report released this week by the US Census Bureau that the mean center of population in America is now Plato, Missouri, an Ozarks village with a population of 109.  “It’s a quiet little town,” Fulsom says as he scratches the scalp beneath his Dekalb Seed Corn plastic “gimme” cap.  “‘Course people there aren’t as sophisticated as us, since we got us a post office.”

“Buy peanut brittle–sell divinity!”

The population center is defined as the place where an imaginary, flat and weightless map of the United States would balance perfectly if the nation’s three hundred million residents were of identical weight.  “It is necessarily an approximation,” says demographer Clinton Grenier of the University of Missouri-Chillicothe.  “Many farmer’s wives are quite heavy, and they stay in the cab when their husbands drive their trucks to the grain elevator to fudge the gross weight.”

Tasteful Ozark outhouse collectible

Commodities markets reacted strongly, with contracts for December delivery of peanut brittle, a staple of Ozarks gift shops, rising sharply.  “I’m wary of inflation trends at work in today’s economy,” said legendary investor Warren Buffet.  “A dollar can decline in value, but a genuine Ozark outhouse collectible is a joy forever.”

The Art and Mystery of the Hi-Hat

The modern drum kit evolved from the two-drum line-up of New Orleans marching bands; the snare drummer beat his instrument with both hands, the bass drummer used his right hand to beat his drum, and in his left hand held a wire beater that he used to play a cymbal.  For non-peripatetic engagements, the snare was placed on a stand and played along with a number of “contraptions,” such as wood blocks, cowbells and cymbals—hence the term “trap set,” an alternative name by which the drummer’s implements were known.

The bass drum rested on the floor and was played by a pedal, the first of which is believed to have been created by Edward “Dee Dee” Chandler in the mid-1890’s when he played with the John Robichaux Orchestra.  With the invention of this accessory, a drummer was able to play both bass and snare (and tom-toms) at the same time.

The only element that was missing was the satisfying clash of cymbals familiar to parade-goers; a punctuation mark, a flourish that signaled the end of a musical phrase or a song.

To fill this need, the “hi-hat”—a device that brought two cymbals together by a foot pedal—was invented.  While there are several claims of paternity to this invention, the one that has the legacy of commercial success to support it is that of Bernard Eric “Barney” Walberg, a partner in a musical instrument business in Worcester, Mass.

Walberg entered the world of musical equipment in 1903 by buying a half-interest in Taylor & Auge, a manufacturer of musical instruments that came to specialize in drum hardware under Walberg’s direction.  In 1920 The Music Trade Review blamed Walberg and his inventions—among them the first cow bell holder–for the “Advent of Jazz.”  Shortly thereafter, he invented his version of the hi-hat stand out of a low boy or ”sock” cymbal stand the company made.

               Jo Jones

There are also competing claimants to the hi-hat’s parentage among drummers themselves, the most assertive being Jonathan “Papa Jo” Jones, best known for his work with Count Basie.  “I was the only bum out here with a sock cymbal,” he noted on his album The Drums, but his claim in undercut by others.  As recounted by Walter Harrold, a drummer who played in several midwestern territory bands, he met Jones when the latter came “to Omaha with a carnival group” that was playing at the Nebraska State Fair.  “Jo was playing piano at that time, he wasn’t playing drums,” Harrold recalled.  Harrold’s father decided that Jones would make a better drummer than a pianist because, as he put it, “He’s got the beat and got the feel.”  He began to give Jones lessons and, according to his son, taught Jones how to use the high hat. Another drummer who may have created a makeshift hi-hat for his own use was William “O’Neill” Spencer, born in 1909.  Drummer Joseph “Philly Joe” Jones—not to be confused with Jo Jones—said Spencer taught him how to use the hi-hat in Philadelphia in 1943.

    “Philly Joe” Jones

But if either Jones came up with a primitive form of the hi-hat, they failed to develop it into a replicable product, which is why Walberg deserves credit for the invention.  The hi-hat can be heard on the 1929 number “Squabblin’,” one of only two songs recorded by Walter Page’s Blue Devils, played by Alvin “Mouse” Burroughs, born in 1911.  Nonetheless, it was Jo (not Joe) Jones who is credited with using the hi-hat to shift the rhythm of jazz away from the heavy sound of the bass drum in its early days to the lighter touch possible with cymbals.  As Gunther Schuller put it in The Swing Era, Jones “transformed the percussion from its earlier, solely time-keeping and mostly vertical sounding role into a melodic-linear one, in which cymbals, with their ringing capacity and their ability to elongate sound, became a new voice in the horizontalization and linearization of jazz, and with this last innovation swing was finally achievable.”  At least one Basie alum, singer Jimmy Rushing, claimed to miss the old days before Jones modernized jazz drumming: “The Blue Devils . . . used to play that four on the bass drum,” he said in 1963.  “They all played but one way.  Where they got this thing about neglecting the bass drum and carrying all the time on top, I don’t know.”

Alvin “Mouse” Burroughs (holding drumsticks)

Walberg & Auge has been revived by Jeremy Esposito as a non-profit corporation whose mission is “to preserve and restore the historical significance and musical instruments” of Walberg & Auge, which changed the art of drumming.  Mr. Esposito has also published a history of the company, available on amazon.com.

The hi-hat is capable of a number of effects now considered essential in jazz, rock and rhythm and blues, from the “chick” sound made when it is struck closed or played solely with the pedal, to “cooking” in shuffle time, a technique that involves striking the cymbals twice in succession, the first time closed, the second time just after the cymbal is opened.

All rather funky stuff from a guy who started out in a Worcester drum shop.

            Con Chapman is the author of “Kansas City Jazz: A Little Evil Will Do You Good,” in which portions of the foregoing appear.

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.”

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!”

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/