Idea Man

Idea Man.

Idea Man

It would be nice to get paid by someone who recognizes my ability to come up with stupendous ideas.  I’ve tormented myself as to whether or not I should mention some of them here so you, my faithful reader, could see just how stupendous my ideas are, because once I put it out there anyone can snatch it up and claim it for themselves.  Then I came up with another stupendous idea that would protect my other stupendous ideas, and it was so easy I dare call it stupendous: any ideas mentioned in this article are mine, and if you steal it without asking me first, you’ll owe me half a trillion dollars.  How’s that for a legally binding comment?  Now all I have to do is sit back and wait for some poor schmo to take one of my ideas.  I’m already spending the moolah in my head.

I was born with great ideas literally spewing out of my bodily orifices.  Unfortunately, I was so young I had no idea how to keep my ideas to myself, and so I blurted out every great idea the world had from 1958 to 1966.  If I’d had that idea first (keeping my ideas to myself), I’d be a multi trillionaire by now.  Of course, in reality, no one really owns an idea until it gets nailed down.  History is full of folks jumping over each other trying to be the first to come up with something.  I can see it now.  Alexander Graham Bell yelled into his telephone, “Watson, come here!  I want to see you!”  As soon as Watson arrived, he said, “Leave that rapscallion Sherlock Holmes alone for a few minutes and do me two favors.  First, go into my pantry and fetch me those crackers I just invented, and then get to the Patent office with my idea for this telephone before that ne’er-do-well Elisha Grey steals my thunder!”  Henry Ford had to compete with Abraham Lincoln and Freddy Mercury to get the first car out, but he just bought them out and used their names.  Even Mark Zuckerberg bought out Everett Facebook, and we know what happened there.  So, history shows us idea makers that we have to be the really early bird if we want to catch the wormhole. 

But back in 1966 when I realized I was spewing out ideas left and right for others to just sweep up and call their own, it wasn’t enough to just keep my yapper closed.  That just meant all the other idea guys had to come up with their own ideas instead of following this kid around.  The next ten years of my life was pretty lonely.  My problem was that I didn’t know what to do with all my stupendous ideas.  Oh, sure, I had stopped handing out my great ideas like candy, but they still floated out there for anyone to snag and tag.  It wasn’t until I was 18 that I came up with the idea of writing my ideas down.  That’s when God decided to play a practical joke on me by giving me fantastic ideas that have already been used!  Hey, how did I know Edouard Benedictus invented safety glass in 1903?  I must have been sleeping when my history teacher told everyone that Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin, and I don’t even drink.  Here I was, still wet behind the gills with life, feverishly writing down all these life-shattering ideas that other people thought of.

It wasn’t until I was 28 that I realized God had pulled a fast one on me when I took my notebook full of previously used ideas to the patent office and got laughed out of the building.  It took me another twenty years just to weed out all the old, stale ideas floating around my noggin.  That leaves me working the past five years making sure any ideas I have are fresh from the vine.  Now I’ve got a bushel full of wonderful plans and inventions just waiting to find an agent willing to hook me up with the right resources so I can start making my trillions.

Now, I bet you’ve been waiting all this time to see if I slip up and give you an idea that you can take to the bank.  Ha!  The joke’s on you.  I’m not even going to hint at my latest idea for snake diapers, just so you can . . . crap.  Did it again.

Absentmindedness

Absentmindedness.

The Evil Dead (2013): Movie Review

The Evil Dead (2013): Movie Review.

Trivial Pursuits

Seems most people have an appetite for lesser known facts and useless trivia, especially if it involves misfortune, as we are adept at creating bad luck. (Murphy’s Law #3. Left to themselves, things tend to go from bad to worse.)  The lowly opossum is a prime example: when they are playing possum, they are not “playing”.  They actually pass out from sheer terror.  This sort of ditty is just what folks want to know.  Of course there will always be interest in local trivia, such as is the case of kudzu.  Did you know it has taken over as much combined area as the state of Vermont?  Perhaps there’s a future in kudzu real estate, and if so, I’m turning my five acres into condos, a doughnut store and a full time flea market.  Overall, though, we tend to have a fascination with rare bits of information that involves adversity.  The ‘whys’ of this phenomenon should be debated by deep-thinking philosophers, otherwise there would be an excess of finger wagging and name calling.  Personally, I believe we are all students of human nature, and it is the nature of humans to drawn toward the calamitous, as long as it doesn’t involve us.  (Murphy’s Law #5: The buddy system is essential to your survival, it gives the enemy somebody else to shoot at.)

If you have a friend with insectophobia, you can share this interesting piece of information: there are more bugs in one square mile of rural land than there are human beings in the world.  Maybe that’s why so many of us are leery of them – get one relatively smart insect angry at you, and you’re liable to get carried away by a swarm.  Ask a praying mantis why he does that and he’ll probably answer that he prays that we’ll all be in trouble when the cockroaches realize they’re invulnerable.  There’s a pest control commercial making the rounds these days, where a man-sized insect rings someone’s doorbell pretending to deliver a pizza.  Right.  If the bugger’s that big he won’t need to sneak his way in, especially if he has a couple of home boys with him.  I read once that the average human swallows around five spiders in their sleep during a lifetime.  Now I duct tape my jaw shut at night now.  In the morning when I pry it off it works better than a razor, too.

Soccer has been a huge European sport for ages, and we all know they call it ‘futball’, but the game was actually invented by the English while they were kicking around the heads of slaughtered Danish invaders.  Those Brits are a tough group.  The middle finger salute came into being via the English, too.  Back in the day of longbowmen, the British and French were always fighting over something or other.  The Limeys were so good with their bows that whenever one was captured by the French, the finger they drew their bow back with (of course, the birdie finger) was chopped off.  Consequently, whenever the English came within sight of a Frenchman, they would show off their bow finger as proof they could still function.  We’ve come a long way, baby.  In this case, it seems we’ve gone backwards.  Whatever you do, though, be nice to the Queen.  She literally owns every single swan in the empire.  Wouldn’t want them flying overhead just after tea time.

Now there are some, especially in the political and financial arena (wait, that’s the same thing now, isn’t it) who use statistics as if it were fact.  One of my heroes, Mark Twain, said there were three kinds of lies: lies, damn lies and statistics.  He also said a lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is still putting its shoes on.  Try this one on for size: more than 2500 left-handed people are killed every year from using right handed products.  Give me a break.  I’m a southpaw and have used my right handed can opener for years with nothing more than a rash to show for it.

Finally, there are trivialities that are just too outrageous to be believable, although there are those who will believe anything. For example, did you know that you are officially the one millionth person to read this blog post? (Murphy’s Law #9: Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he’ll believe you.  Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he’ll have to touch it to be sure.)  By the way, you have paint all over your back. Have a nice day! (For your information, the average person has three nice days per week. I used all mine up in the seventies.)

Its No Fun Being a Genius

It is no fun being a genius.  Especially one that’s a little slow on the uptake.  That’s what confuses people about me.  Who said geniuses had to be quick witted?  Actually, my particular type of brilliance only shines when no one else is around.  Remember the 1999 movie “Mystery Men”?  One of the superheroes, Invisible Boy, could only become invisible if no one was looking.  I’m like that, except when others are around my brain is invisible.  There’s even a name for it: Esprit de l’escalier, the witty comment or snappy reply you wish you had said to someone earlier if you had only thought of it.  I always come up with a clever retort, but only three days later.

It’s like being the smartest computer in the world with a hamster in a wheel for a processor.  I always thought I could be a doctor or a lawyer, but they don’t give picture exams.  The only college classes I could excel in were in Philosophy, because all you have to do is argue.  If there’s anything I’ve learned by being married four times, it’s arguing.  Maybe that’s why I was married four times.  It only took me that many marriages to figure out how not to argue.  See?  I’ve always been burdened with molasses for brains.  It took me six kids to figure out what caused them.  The seventh was a scientific experiment to prove what I had learned.  Hey, no one ever told me.

You won’t believe how difficult it is to suffer from lethologica (the inability to recall a word that is on the tip of one’s tongue), hypophora (reasoning with oneself outloud) and chronic circumlocution (evasive or indirect language achieved by excessive wordiness).  If it weren’t for my being a genius I’d be in a hopeless state.  I’ve always envied intellectuals who can fly off at the lips without hesitation and make sense all at once.  But then again, I have an ability the average genius can’t begin to comprehend.  I fool people into believing I’m slow-witted, and when I’ve got them right where I want them (usually two counties away), I flash my superior brains and humiliate all the doubters into submission.

I’ve been honing this skill my entire life.  As a child I would lull my audience into believing I’d just finished reading “Hop On Pop” when I’d really polished off “War and Peace”.  Once I even hid Einstein’s Theory of Relativity inside a Superman comic book just so my parents would think I was turning my brain into mush.  My specialty, though, was and always has been the art of debate.  My mother once said I would argue with a fence post.  Well, that’s how I practiced.  Oh, anyone can banter a point back and forth.  It takes someone with real smarts, though, to make the other guy think they’re winning the argument when they’re really not.  There’s a name for this, too, believe it or not: Socratic Irony, feigning ignorance in a debate in order to win a point.  I’ve got that technique down pat.

But as I’ve mentioned already, it’s no fun being a genius with all the special talents I have, and all the mental insufficiencies I’ve had to overcome.  Look, I even have to disguise my face so people don’t notice that glint of brilliance in my eyes, the intelligent curve of my forehead and the brainy jutting of my jaw.  So, you’ve been warned, dear reader.  I may appear to enter a war of wits unarmed, but my back pockets are full of secret weapons.

Finding Dog Boy

Yesterday while pounding a “FOR SALE” sign into the front yard of Papa’s house, the last on a dead end street, a man ambled toward me from next door. I had not met any of Papa’s neighbors; he was very jealous of our time together and would not abide my chatting over the fence with anyone. Now that Papa is in a long-term care facility, I had been expecting curious contact by one of them as they had no doubt noticed the lack of his boisterous presence. I met the man, a very pleasant fellow about my age, and we discussed the news about Papa’s hip fracture and subsequent decline in health. He told how when Papa first moved in about ten years prior, he had a habit of wearing Speedo shorts and nothing else around the yard. This in itself was a somewhat painful visualization, given Papa’s skin-on-bones physique, but he told me that whenever Papa bent over, his man-parts would make a grand entrance. I tried gouging my eyes out, but the neighbor stopped me from going through with it.

Finally he asked me my name and I told him, and he stared hard at me a moment and then asked me where I went to middle school. When I said it had been in Muscle Shoals in the late sixties and early seventies, the man excitedly told me where I had lived, who my neighbors and friends were, and where he lived, too, then exclaimed “I’m Mike.”

For a few seconds it didn’t register, but then memories flooded me like a thunderclap. “Mickey!” I yelled in glee, then gave him an unsolicited bear hug and bit of joyful pounding on the back. Mickey had been one of my very best friends in the seventh and eighth grade. We only lived a block apart and practically lived at each others’ houses. Good ole Mickey!  My God, it had been forty three years since we had seen each other! We started chattering away, not bothering to tell each other what we had been doing all those years, because we were suddenly swept up in our past.  Mickey!

At twelve years old, our lives revolved around bicycles with extended forks, banana seats and tassels on the handlebars, and we knew every square inch of our neighborhood. We played golf in our back yards, pretending to be Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicholas. We spent hundreds of hours hanging out at Deer Park, an abandoned theme park about three blocks away, our imaginations turning the overgrown place into a wonderland of fun.  As we reminisced, a memory from our times together came up and smacked me in the head. “Do you remember that we used to wear superhero outfits and run around the neighborhood with a mission to help animals in need?” At that moment I was no longer fifty four years old, for I was sailing around the neighborhood on my chopped out bike, my cape flapping majestically as Mickey rode bravely beside me in his own costume.

“Yes!” Mickey exclaimed, and I could tell by the look in his eyes that he had migrated back to those days, too. “We used to climb up on boulders at Deer Park and jump off, hoping we would fly.”

Memories long buried flew to the surface. “I sent a letter to the President back then…it was Nixon, for crying out loud…asking him to give us jet packs so we could be proper super heroes! He sent a letter back with a photo of his dog Checkers and a note saying that even though he couldn’t fulfill our request, he admired our efforts and encouraged us to keep up the good work.  Man, I had forgotten all about that!”

We moved on to other tales of our exploits, and for almost an hour we carried on like a couple of school boys. Finally I had to leave, so we exchanged phone numbers and a few more laughs and hugs and promised to keep in touch.  I thought about Mickey all the way home and into the evening, still happily stunned at the wonderful synchronicity of our meeting.

Then as I prepared for bed I remembered our super hero names. I was Animal Man and he was Dog Boy. I laughed and laughed, and then chuckled myself to sleep.  Finally, after so many years, the dynamic duo had found each other. I dreamed of flying last night and had the second best time of my life.  Today I’m not so sure which one of us was Dog Boy, but that’s not important. I found a part of me that had been dreaming for far too long.

Smokin

Three years and three days ago I quit smoking.  It wasn’t my idea at the time, but the old ticker decided it was going to call a strike on Saint Patrick’s Day, and believe me, it’s no fun choosing between a cigarette and an ambulance. Besides, I’m a Welsh Jew, and that doesn’t bode well on an Irish holiday. I remember being splayed out on the floor, feeling like a trio of hippos were sumo wrestling on my chest and wishing they had trimmed their toenails. I had my cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other, and in my condition I tried smoking the cell phone. Let me tell you, it’s hard as hell trying to keep a cell phone lit. Eventually I gave up and tried to dial 911 with the cigarette, but as you can imagine it takes a steady hand to punch all those numbers in without tobacco flying everywhere. When the cardiologist saw me in the Emergency Room with the news that I was having a massive heart attack, he told me the next time I smoked a cigarette it would kill me. To this day I marvel at how he knew I was a smoker. Must have been all that tobacco in my ear. As much as I want to prove him wrong, you won’t catch me having another one. At least not today. We recovering cigarette addicts have to take it one day at a time.

I’ve always said that in the distant future, historians will note that tobacco was the most addictive substance known to man in the 20^th century. They will also note that Facebook put tobacco to shame in the 21^st century.  Whoever can figure out how to roll Facebook up and smoke it, he or she would be the wealthiest person in the history of modern civilization.  Hey, that’s an idea. Look, if I can puff on a burning cell phone, smoking Facebook can’t be much more difficult. For now, though, cigarettes rule the roost when it comes to addiction. I read a story years ago about a rehab for heroin addicts in New York City that tried telling the residents they couldn’t smoke while in the program. The counselors’ bodies have yet to be found.

When I smoked I had my priorities set thusly: cigarettes and then everything else. I’m serious. The only thing I valued as much as smoking was breathing, and that was only because it was the mechanism that aided my habit. I built my entire life around cigarettes, and even had a set of rules designed to maximize my smoking experience. First and foremost, Rule Number One was this: Never, ever, under any circumstance run out of cigarettes. If I only had one cancer stick to my name I would guard it zealously until I was able to obtain more. I once went two weeks without smoking because I had one cigarette left. The other rules dealt with making choices about where and when I could and could not smoke. For example, it is almost impossible to smoke while sleeping. Note I said almost.  It is ok to smoke in church, as long as you don’t exhale. Smoking during a wedding is generally frowned upon, and makes it more difficult to recite the vows or kiss your bride.  Also, it is not a good idea to light a cigarette while on pure oxygen. If you don’t believe me try it yourself. It’s liable to make you want to give up oxygen.

I’m celebrating three years of being an ex-smoker. If I ever have the opportunity to get a new heart, I guarantee you I’ll smoke one three miles long. It better have a user-friendly keypad, too. 

Circular Reasoning

Like a pedigree bloodhound bred to hunt, another far-out scientific study has been unearthed and exposed to the light of incredulous reason by this writer.  No, it is not research on the interspecies mating habits of whales and mollusks, nor is it a finding that proves a man who goes to bed with an itchy behind wakes up with a smelly finger.  This study was done in Germany, home of bratwurst and Volkswagens and Shamwows, and a pack of scientists there have determined that when people become lost, they really do go in circles.

Let’s pretend for a moment that this study was not a fabrication of some GPS manufacturer, and was conducted merely to prove a scientific point.  Great googly woogly, don’t these people have more important things to research, like why scientists tend to come up with the craziest things to research?  Personally, I think these wackos were bottle fed.  Nevertheless, an unsuspecting institution of higher learning chucked out major Euro dollars just so some scientist could take a hike.  I admit to being somewhat peeved about the scientific community’s waste of time and money, but I’m much more upset that I’m never around when they need volunteers.  I’d show those beer-drinking Germans how to walk a straight line.

Anyway, as these sorts of studies go, the head bean thought it would be nice to see if folks move in circles regardless of the terrain.  Ok, that would make sense.  I’m sure the research-granting board read the proposal and said, “Whew, I’m glad this study covers all kinds of environments.  We were worried it would take place in a casino like that last one that nearly broke us.  Here, give him a blank check.”  The research subjects were equipped with tracking devices, just so they couldn’t get lost (wait, I thought that was the point), and then dropped in unfamiliar territory like deserts, forests and Donald Trump’s mansion, and told to walk in a straight line.

The study learned that most of those who were lost in the desert quickly became buzzard meat.  The rest tended to weave left and right, but generally did move in a somewhat straight line.  This was supposedly because the test subjects used the arc of the sun to aid their travel.  Being somewhat skeptical, I tried this in a Wal-Mart parking lot.  When I started, the sun was just coming up, and I determined the best way to walk a straight line would be to go toward the sun.  This went well for half the day, but by the end of the day I ended up where I started.  Proved that one wrong, and am proud of it.

Another group was placed in a great body of water and told to row in a straight line.  The research’s finding was similar to those who were lost in the desert, so they naturally deduced the sun was the reason why.  Since I’d already proved that hypothesis wrong, and given the fact that I can’t swim and wouldn’t be caught dead in a boat with no sight of land, I decided this theory was bogus, too.

Now the group that caught my attention was the ones that were placed in the forest.  The study showed that without exception, these people did in fact walk in circles.  Ok, this is where I draw a line in the roots.  I can understand that Germany had to borrow a desert from the Egyptians and a large body of water from the Italians (as long as they returned them unscathed, mind you), but Germany is chock full of something called the Black Forest.  Raise your hand if you think you can make any sense of direction in something that’s all black.  This is a no-brainer.  To prove this, I took my youngest son down to the Bankhead National Forest, dropped him off at its western border, told him to walk a straight line and then waited for him at the Forest’s eastern border.  Being smarter than the average bear, I did let him have his cell phone, and called him from time to time to see if he sounded any closer. 

That was two weeks ago, about ten days after his cell phone battery went dead.  His mom believes he’s visiting relatives up north.  I don’t think he’s walking around in circles, though, because he’s a pretty level-headed guy.  Maybe he found an ancient Native American burial site and is waiting for me to hunt him down so we can share in the discovery.  He’s always thinking about his old man, too.  Good boy.  Hope he runs across a recharger in there so he can finally tell me where he is.

Macaroni

There were only three times a day while in Army basic training when I was completely alone, and that was in the port-a-johns just outside of the mess hall. It became the only time I would be able to smoke, so I developed the habit of wolfing my chow down then holing up in the crapper hot-boxing a cigarette.

It was a brilliantly blistering July day, and we had just arrived for lunch en masse, standing at attention in our uniforms, web gear and helmets. As was the established routine, at command and in unison, we all took our helmets off and held them in front of us until we heard the barked order to place them on the tarmac between our feet, and it had better be with one sound of fifty helmets clopping onto the pavement or we’d do it again until we got it right. Then came the web suit – a wide, strong utility belt with thick suspenders designed to hold a rucksack, a canteen, a small shovel, two full clips of .22 shells for our M16A1, and various metal loops for grenades – placed around the helmet, also in unanimity.

The drill sergeants had us go into the chow hall in single file, take our plate of food and eat it as quickly as we could. I always tried to be one of the first ones out, just so I could get a prime seat in the portable toilets outside and smoke. This day, as I puffed away, trying not to notice the lung-searing chemical smell wafting up from below, I spotted a pigeon feather caught in the vent. Almost unconsciously, I picked it free and sat twirling it between my thumb and forefinger as I inhaled smoke.

In a couple of minutes I was done, so I hot-footed it over to my position in the platoon and waited. About half the group was already milling about, chatting with each other. As there was nobody close to me, I squatted down and sat on my helmet, absentmindedly putting the feather in an elastic headband wrapped around the helmet’s base, designed to hold the forest-colored liner in place. And then I forgot it was there, plain and simple.

Soon, the drill sergeants sauntered out of the mess hall and the entire platoon stood behind their gear. A couple of commands away, and we had out gear back on and were marching back to the barracks
              when one of the drill sergeants yelled at the platoon to stop, came within an inch of my face and screamed, “Harding, what in the hell are you doing with a goddamned feather in your helmet?”

Without hesitation I stammered, “Whawhat feather?”

The DI yanked it out of my headband and held it out in front of me, and though he didn’t say a word to me, I could feel his eyes burning into me. I’m sure my own eyes must have been as large as frisbees as I felt all the blood drain from my head, threatening to take me down in a white cloud of unconsciousness. My brain screamed Deny!, and I found my voice squeaking, “I . . .duhdon’t know!”

Instead of scorching me with his tongue, the drill sergeant took a step back, held the feather up high for everyone to see, and thundered, “So which one of you shitheads thought it would be a good joke to pull on your platoon leader (me, btw)?” After a few seconds of nothing but fifty scared men breathing and looking around, the sergeant added, “Somebody better come clean, or you’ll all be low-crawling all over the company grounds!”

Nothing.

The drill sergeant had us double time (meaning a jogging run) to our barracks and proceeded to make everyone but me hit the ground and crawl themselves through a maze of dirty obstacles. I stood next to the sergeant as he punished the platoon, reminding them that one of our number had brought this about, and that when he found out who the culprit was, he’d make sure they all found out who the clown was. One of the things he said was, “I’m not going to punish Harding, because he was the object of your little prank!” Knowing I was indeed the one who had done this, I felt shame as I’d never known before, witnessing the entire platoon being grilled in the indomitable heat.

Finally unable to take it anymore, I approached the drill instructor and blurted out the truth, willing to face whatever derision would befall me. To my utter shock, the sergeant made the platoon stop and stumble into formation, then told the ragged lot, “Your platoon leader has just informed me that he’s willing to take the blame for this, and I find that so damned honorable I’m going to show each one of you how unworthy you are to be in his presence! Now back to your bellies and crawl!” If this story happens across the view of any of those poor guys in my platoon, I want you to know that life has a way of balancing everything out, and I’m sure at least three of my own personal hells were in payment for that day.