I’ve never given much thought to how I  look.  I’ve basically looked the same for a long time.  I pretty much wear the same stuff all the time.  As a matter of fact, I’ve been wearing the same stuff for so long that it came back in style.  That’s kind of nice.  I’ve gotten to look in style twice in my life.  As for my physical appearance, it hasn’t changed much either in twenty years or so.  Lately though I’ve been noticing the infomercials that deal with a person physical appearance.  I must say infomercials are starting to speak to me a little.  They’re finally getting through.

The hair restoration infomercials are really peaking my interest.  I mean I’m thinning up there.  Oh what the hell, I’ve got like an even dozen hairs on the top of my head.  I’ve got one per square inch of scalp up top.  That’s not enough to comb.  It’s alright though.  It hasn’t progressed down yet.  I  still have plenty on the sides and if I wear a hat or cap I look like I still have a full head of hair.  It’s not exactly false advertisement, it’s more like voluntarily witholding information.  I’m used to it by now.  I  started losing the hair up top when I was in High School.  Back then I wouldn’t take my hat off  for anything.  Anything!  I bathed with my hat on.  I swam  with my hat on.  That hat was not coming off.  If I met a young lady the  hat remained the one constant of our relationship.  If I thought I would be put in a situation where I might have to take my hat off I didn’t go.  Pretty soon the hat question would arise and I would have to find another girlfriend.  Better to have loved and lost than to have to take off your hat.  As I’ve aged I’ve become less stringent.  My wife says I look strange with hair in the pictures of my youth.  That’s a nice thing to say even though it’s a damn lie.  Still, it’s a nice thing to say.  But back to those hair re-growth infomercials.  The before and after pictures are the seller.  The before picture has a very unhappy bald guy in drab surroundings possibly chained to a five hundred pound woman.  The after picture is of the same guy resplendent with hair in luxurious surroundings with his arm around a sleek bikini clad love goddess.  Man that’s an image.  It makes you think, “if I had that hair treatment I maybe could get me a  young love goddess.”  Your mind starts to race.  Your pulse quickens.  Your hand quivers as it searches for pen and paper.  The number flashes on the screen.  You feel like a teenager again.  Then you hear this voice.  It’s not your voice.  It’s coming from the T.V.  It’s telling you that the ingredients in the hair treatment has caused Spontaneous Penis Explosion Syndrome or S.P.E.S. and if you experience a penis explosion you should seek medical treatment immediately.  Then the voice for warns of other potential problems  in women such as Animated Vaginal Dislocation and Zombification Syndrome  or A.V.D.Z.S.  Some women, while using the treatment, experience their vaginas leaping off of them and attacking pets and people.  If you experience a vagina zombification you should seek medical attention immediately.  I’m wondering if I’ve heard all this correctly.  My hand has stopped trembling and my life is starting to regain it’s focus.  My real love goddess walks in carrying a load of laundry to be folded.  She sees me with pad and pen watching the bald commercial.  She uses the look on me.   Every person in a long standing relationship knows the look.  I put the pen and paper down and change the channel.  I notice that I am still wearing my hat.  I don’t need anymore hair up there.  The look is right.  I need to keep her happy.  Maybe they’ll make a drug that helps guys keep their wives happy.  My hands start to tremble as I begin scouring the channels looking for another infomercial.  Explosions, zombies and the look be damned.

A storm rolls in about one in the morning.  There are so many lightning strikes that it’s light in the house much more than it’s dark.  I’m not asleep because of a lone cricket doing his best Charlie Daniels impression.  This cricket must be hard up for some loving.  I’ve heard a cricket’s chirp before, but this was ridiculous.  I swear he was playing “the devil went down to Georgia.”  At first I thought it was cool.  I got to whispering to him “go Charlie go.”  I was sure some female cricket would be impressed and soon the song would change to ” let’s get it on.”  Unfortunately female crickets are not impressed by Charlie Daniels songs.  They like smooth chirping like  Kenny G. or something.  The frantic sawing of my cricket was getting no action.  Finally I could take it no more.  I decided that this particular variation in cricket evolution wasn’t going to catch on.  The Charlie Daniels cricket was destined for a life of loneliness and heartache.  I can see well enough from the lightening strikes to find him.  I arm myself with a shoe and a spray bottle with some form of cleaner in it.  It’s either going to be chemical warfare or hand to hand combat.  I’m prepared for both.  Little Charlie quit sawing while I was looking for my weapons. I quickly got down on all fours and waited for him to rosin up his wings.  A few minutes pass and I hear the familiar tune…”chicken in the bread pan pickin’ out dough, granny does your dog bite?  No child no.”  I creep closer to the sound.  He’s launching into the fiddle solo.  I creep closer as the lightening strikes illuminate the room.  The sound is very loud now.  I feel like a Navy Seal.  I have a grim icy stare.  My body is poised to administer whatever force is needed.  I have my head over the epicenter of the sound.  No cricket.  How can there be this much sound and no cricket?  I decide that a new strategy is in order.  I’m going to use “shock and awe.”  I count down silently “three, two ,one and then I commence to spraying and wooping all around the area.  After an extended show of force I am spent.  I lay back down in bed with adrenaline pumping and the smell of bleach filling the air.  The house is quiet except for the storm noises.

The excitement of my conquest had me fully awake.  My mind turned to something that’s been bothering me.  I write this blog.  I like to write this blog.  It’s enjoyable for me to do.  I have no  idea if anyone else gets any enjoyment out of it.  When I first started doing it I would get so excited when there would be a comment waiting for my approval.  That excitement has now waned.  I get all kinds of comments about my blog now.  They’re not comments though.  They’re spam.  I get comments like… “the information in your article is very informative, good job.”  First, there is no “information” in my blog posts.  Secondly, they are not informative.  I don’t know what they are and I wrote the damn things.  I’ve learned to spot spam a mile away.  The corresponding email address to the comment always has something to do about making my penis bigger or getting more traffic to my site.  I’m thinking about commenting on other peoples blogs with the name “large/spam/penis/traffic/oscilator.com.”  I’m starting to get sleepy at this point.  The storm is diminishing.  My rant about spam is losing steam.  I feel a deep sleep washing over me.  As I loosen my grip on consciousness  I hear…”Purple haze all in my brain.”  The cleaner has my cricket tripping.

You hear a lot of talk about the sanctitiy of marriage by politicians and religious leaders. This topic comes up when a law concerning who can and who can’t get officially married is being debated. We have a seventy one percent divorce rate in Oklahoma. Yes you heard right. Seventy one percent of all marriages in Oklahoma end in divorce. We’ve actually changed the phrase “’til death do us part”, to “’til the first time this dummy pisses me off do us part.” I have to say it’s good for certain parts of our economy. The cheap suit and flower industries are booming as well as the rice industry. So much rice has been thrown in Oklahoma church yards that vast rice paddies are taking over the lawns. It’s common these days to witness a bird explosion in Oklahoma. After a nice ceremony you’ll see a rather obese bird struggling to fly after it has gotten a drink and it’s oh the humanity time. Oh, and the lawyers, how could I forget the lawyers. If you are ever in Oklahoma and you see a person with a permenant smile and spring in their step, that my friend is a divorce lawyer. They know that as soon as they get to the office, Jim Bob and Betty Lou are going to want to fight over who gets custody of the deer heads. I think I know why there are so many divorces in Oklahoma. It’s all about the house.
Let me first disclose that I have never been divorced. I am going on seventeen years of marriage and so far so good. I think I’ve bypassed the most common cause for a divorce in Oklahoma which is building your wife a new house. I have seen this play out many times. Old Jim Bob and Betty Lou get married and they don’t have much. They buy themselves an old trailer house. They buy garage sale furniture to decorate it and they make themselves a home. The ceilings are water stained and the floors are soft and bouncy. The carpet isn’t any color per se, it’s stained color. It has different flavors of Kool Aid stains. It has blood stains where junoir fell off the couch and left a couple of his teeth in the coffee table on the way to the floor. There’s oil and gas stains were Jim Bob rebuilt the carbuerator for his truck and no trailer house carpet would be complete without numerous pet accident stains mixed in with small accidental fire stains where kids decided to light fireworks in the house. It is a home though. It doesn’t matter that the wind from the neighbors leaf blower causes it rock and shake violently and a tornado two states over could potentially launch it like the space shuttle. It’s a home. Betty Lou fills it with love smoke from the oven where her attempt at making anything French sounding has gone terribly array. It’s a home. Notice I keep coming back to this “home” thing. At some point in an Oklahoma marriage Betty Lou is going to start asking for a new house. This is the moment in an Oklahoma marriage that determines the outcome.
Once this occurs to Betty Lou she will never let it go. She will have her house. The trailer has become a symbol of the marriage to her. It is no longer good enough. Therefore, you are no longer good enough if you chose to do nothing about her request. A word of advice here. There are three choices you can make. I am convinced two of them will lead to divorce. If you choose to remain in the trailer she will divorce you and find someone with a house. If you choose to build a new house she will divorce you immediately upon completion. She is not living in the trailer any longer. This is not a viable option. Her favorite magazines and television shows are filled to the brim with smiling women in luxurious surroundings. She looks at her old trailer and then she looks at you in your over sized reclining chair with your beer in hand watching lap after lap of the nascar race. She doesn’t see luxury. She sees you being way too happy, way too content. This will not work. The first momma’s boy that comes along that never got married but has a nice house and she is gone. Building a new house is just as bad. A new house has one big problem with it, YOU! Think about it. You’ve just built this luxurious new house. Everything is sparkling and new. She looks like the women in those damn magazines. I promise you none of those women in those magazines have some dude in an over-sized recliner sipping a beer with a goofy looking grin on his face as he watches someone in a race car do firey flips down the back straight in the picture. If there is a dude in the picture he’ll have on some douchy looking turtle neck sweater and a look on his face that says “I’ll do whatever you say, just don’t divorce me.” You are not good enough for her new house and you are not going to change. The only viable option is to buy a fixer upper. Buy something that old Jim Bob can fix up himself. Take your time Jim Bob. Do just enough to keep her thinking it’s actually going to get completed some day. You need to time it so that when you are completely done with the project, the rooms you fixed up first need fixing up again or you’re too old to give a damn if you get divorced or not. Either way that over-sized recliner is going to feel real good for a long time.

Is there any reality in politics? Political fantasy is what I see. It’s such a game. It usually a makes for good watching, but there is a lot riding on the outcome of this game. Can I ask you a question? I don’t want to offend anyone by asking this question, but I feel compelled to know the answer. I’ll just ask. Do politicians seem genuine to you? Do you believe they’re out only for your best interests? I must know. I have sometimes thought that certain ones are genuine. I have been proven wrong scandal after scandal. I don’t mean to be pessimistic. I’m usually upbeat about our political system. Over the years I have had a fantastic time watching the soap opera type drama that sometimes unfolds. Old Bill Clinton certainly gave us something dramatic to watch. Old George Bush the whatevereth made for some damn good watching on occasion. There is a huge television industry that lives off politicians. Some stations lean left, some right, and countless pundits get trotted out to decode what the politicians say. This all works great when times are good and we don’t have any major political work to be done. We watch and get angry when the other guys are in control but we don’t mind that much. What the hell, times are good. But when times are bad we don’t want to watch a good dramatic comedy. We actually want you to do something and guess what, if you have to compromise to get it done then do it. Stop the fooling around for now. Give it a break for just a bit. We promise when times are good we will let you get right back to it. Hell, we’ll demand it. For now though, please do us a favor and do some work. Do what you have to do to get things straightened out. If I am asked to sacrifice some, I’m more than willing. It’s the least I can do for my country. There are men and women as we speak giving up far more. You know who I’m talking about. Those guys and gals sporting a military uniform. They are putting their lives on the line for this country and you don’t think I can sacrafice more money for taxes. What kind of American do you think I am? Don’t question my patriotism unless you want your nose broken. Yes I can sacrifice, just ask. I’ll proudly do whatever my country needs. So shake the guy’s hand on the other side of the isle and do something. It won’t be held against you. Things have gotten too serious for us. We actually need you now. I promise when things have gotten better and we’re out of trouble you can go back to doing your thing. You can speak in code. You can cheat and lie as long as a few of you get caught. You can go back to making the guy on the other side of the aisle look like a child molesting terrorist. We love that stuff. We really do. For now I’m begging you, do your job. We know we are in trouble. The blame game doesn’t even matter right now. We’re already in trouble. Stop the blaming and ask us to help. I want to help. It really is the very least I can do.

I’m sitting at work talking to a couple of friends of mine. I could tell we were almost done talking by how long the pauses or silence had grown between each topic. In one of these long silences one of my friends had this to say, “Ya knoe, we art ta go over and sea ole sutch and sutch.” My ears were not prepared for this. Usually my ears filter this kind of speech, even when I do it, and I should have heard, “I say my good man, we shall desire to have a repose with the honorable sir.” Instead I heard how we really sound. It was shocking. I was born and raised in Oklahoma and I know we sound like hillbillies. I know this. I’ve trained my brain to translate okie-speak into something more dignified. I think all of us from the hick regions do this. For some reason the translator broke today. I heard what we really sound like. Damn!
I told my friend that “art” wasn’t a verb. He replied that he did not say “art”. But both my other friend and I heard it clearly. He definitely said art. I mean art isn’t a bad thing. There’s the song “how great thou art.” Evidently “art” is great. At least that’s what the song says and it’s a religious song so it carries a certain weight among songs. There’s the art that people create. You know art. Velvet paintings and angel sculptors or those little dolls people collect. I can’t remember what they’re called. Not the cabbage patch ones, they were just toys, those uhhhh beanie babies. Yeah, beanie babies, that kind of art. Still though it’s tough to make a case for art as a verb. I guess one of those velvet artist could say if someone asks what he is doing, “I’m arting.” “I’ve been arting all day.” “This arting is killing me.” “This arting stinks.” It doesn’t sound right though. I think we could get used to it over time but it doesn’t sound right.
When my friend arted it brought back memories of other times my translator didn’t work. I remember when I had first gotten married and me and my wife we’re riding in the back seat of my parents’ car coming home from dinner in town. It was a little stormy that night and it had begun to rain fairly hard. A particularly bright bolt of lightening struck not to far from the car when my mother turned around to tell us something. She said, “yall better git en tha fraidy hole with us befer uh torpeda gets Yuh.” I guess at that moment my mind was busy thinking of the storm and the translator didn’t work. I heard how my mother really speaks. I should have heard, “Upon arrival to our home, we shall repose to yon safe domicile for the weather is atrocious.” If you think I was shocked you should have seen my wife. I will never forget that look. That’s probably why I can remember this so clearly. My wife speaks three languages fluently. She loves language and words. She teaches Spanish at the local high school. Words are her thing. When my mother finished her sentence my wife stared at her, then at me. Her jaw was slack. Her mouth was open. She looked confused and horrified. Seeing this I quickly spoke up and said, “yes, we had better get in the Above Ground Storm Shelter in case a Tornado forms. My wife breathed a sigh of relief. When my mom turned around she had to work hard to contain her laughter as did I.
The other memory that hit me when my friend arted is a golf memory. I remembered standing on the first tee box years ago before my dad died. Every year we would have this tournament called the “Spit Cup” when my relatives came to fish for a week in the spring. We would choose two-man teams and have a golf tournament. We had a nice trophy and many accusations of cheating. None have been proven so far. Anyway, we were standing on the first tee and introducing each player as they do in a real tournament. An old friend of mine and my dad’s, I won’t say who he is, just that he’s a cheater, was warming up to tee off. Someone in our little gallery had something derogatory to say about his golf swing and how the ball was either going no where or going out of bounds. He looked up and said this, “Yew just keep yor peepers opun bowee. I’ma gonna warp this muther out uh sight.” Maybe it was because I was nervous about hitting my first tee or something, but the translator didn’t function at that moment. I should have heard, “Excuse me fine sir, but shall you refrain from pronunciating whilst I address thus ball hither.” He really did warp that mother. It went straight and long. He strutted back to the group and started really talking trash to whoever was next. I guess warp is acceptable. “I’ll warp you upside the head.” I’ve heard that expression on occasion. We art to warp this nag and git outa here befour that torpeda gits us. I’m getting my translator fixed.

We are social animals. I know this. I try to be social whenever possible. When I say social I mean being polite. Having something nice to say about anything without being contreversial or confrontational. We can’t know everyone on the planet. So when humans meet other unknown humans we try and be social. We say something nice about the weather, not something nice, or not nice, about abortion. In this way we feel connected and good about one and another. We are all sharing this planet. We need to get along as best we can. We already have shouting matches with friends and family over issues. Why do that with people we are only going to be around for a few mintues?
As I have written before, I now own a CNG powered pickup. I am very proud of this purchase. Yes I am saving a fortune on fuel and yes it also happens to burn cleaner which is good for the environment. What part of this equation is bad? So I’m parked at the CNG station filling my pickup. It’s a lovely spring day, birds are chirping, insects are procreating when this CNG powered car pulls up to the pumps. A twenty-something girl gets out of the drivers side and a fifty-something looking fellow gets out of the passenger side. I’m happy to see them. I’m happy to see one of my people, CNG people. I don’t know them so I employ being social. I say “good morning fellow CNG people.” The man looks at me with a scowl and said, “excuse me!” I say “We’re CNG people, we’re saving the environment.” The man looks right at me and says something that has reverberated in my mind since. He said,”I don’t give a damn about the environment!” I didn’t have anything to say after that. It shocked me. I still don’t quite understand what he was saying. Who doesn’t give a damn about the environment. We need air and water and stuff. It’s pretty important. I didn’t say I wanted to shoot people who own chainsaws or make everyone smoke hemp. I said we are saving the environment. It’s a bit of an over-statement but it’s a fact that we are leaving a smaller carbon foot print. That’s a good thing. The only explanation I can come up with for him saying such a thing is that he wanted me to know right up front that he was not on my team whatever team that is. I believe I’m fairly moderate about environmental things. I really want us to do whatever is best to keep our air and water clean. If CNG is around and cheap and is better for the environment then let’s use that. He wanted to make sure that he wasn’t on my CNG team. He doesn’t give a damn about the enviroment was meant to mean he doesn’t give a damn about me and my hippie, tree-hugging type. That’s fine. He could have smiled and said “I like it because it’s cheap.” That would have been something we both could have agreed and been happy. Oh no, he had to mistake the short haired hillbilly standing at the pump for an environmental terrorist. Next time I’ll say something about weather. If someone says “I don’t give a damn about the weather” I’m punching that sucker in the face. Save your comments. I already know what you’re going to write. I’ll save you the trouble. I don’t give a damn about this blog post.

We’re going to celebrate Mother’s day this weekend. Mom gets singled out for her long suffering. She gets a meal, a card, some flowers and a pat on the back for helping keep our species going. We only give her one day for keeping all this going. It doesn’t seem fair. We should give Mothers another holiday. At least one more. We don’t have to make a completely new one. We’ll just change an existing one.
Let’s see…How about New Years Eve? We’ve just had Christmas. We’ve given and recieved gifts and we are full of a generous human spirit. We’ve fattened up a little with all the eating that comes with hanging out with family—you have to eat a lot when hanging out with family. You don’t want to be talking too much with those nuts. You feel good about the world. Then we go and ruin it on a wild drunken spree that ends with you making out with your pet or your toilet. One or the other, or both will happen. You know it. We should give New Years Eve to Mothers. It’ll make them happy. We won’t be out embarrassing ourselves until late in the night. Instead we will be eating a nice meal with her and going to bed at a reasonable hour. How nice of us. It’s a win, win situation.
Don’t want to give up New Year’s Eve? We’ll pick another one. How about Father’s Day? Do we really need a day? I don’t. We’re really not going to do anything that different anyways. We’ll just lay around and watch TV. We’ll basically waste it. I guess cards are nice but I’ve never really been moved by one. I read them and think to myself “wow, someone get’s paid to write this crap.” I got birthday cards with money in them a few times. Those were the best cards ever. I can remember the money. I remember nothing about what the card said. We’re not worth having a special day. I freely admit this. We’re sneaky as hell. We take days off all the time. It’s more fun to sneak a day off than it is to have one forced on you. It’s much more of a challenge. Let’s scrap the New Year’s Eve idea. Let’s replace Father’s day with another Mother’s day. They deserve it. I’ll just sneak another day off for myself sometime during the year. Here’s to having two Mother’s days. You gals deserve it.

I recently watched the old movie Bonnie and Clyde. It struck me how easy it was to be a crook back before cell phones. You could easily steal a car, rob a bank, and then eat dinner at a restaurant a few towns over. No one knew what you looked like and once you were gone from the immediate vecinity you were back to being anonymous, just another person. Think about that for a minute. You could actually do all kinds of stuff in public and in private and not worry one second about anyone ever seeing you do that particular thing again. As long as no one took a picture it was history as soon as it happened. Wow, what a foreign concept for this generation. My generation and generations before me had things much better. When we wanted to do things with a certain amount of anonymity we just went a little ways down the road. Our parents actually had to have their eyes trained on us to catch us doing stuff. How simplistic our lives were. We had much more freedom. With all this anonymity you could become a famous outlaw or you might want to go the other direction and become a famous law man. The point is you had enough space between your actions and everyone else that you could get away with a few mishaps or missteps. You could always deny stuff. There was no video of the action. Just deny it and it’s your word against whoever was there.
When I was a teenager I occasionally went out with friends. This going out was always couched in terms of doing something wholesome together with friends when speaking of it to parents. I’m not saying we lied or anything, we just left out key pieces of information about the whereabouts and the actual goings on of the event. They didn’t really need to know exactly what went on anyways. It wouldn’t have done my parents or me any good at all to know each others private business. I never asked my parents what went on in their bedroom and they never told me. I will never want to know that information. I will drive ice picks in my ears if I ever hear it. I knew they went in there every night. That’s is all the info I need to know. They gave me the same privacy when I was going out with friends. They knew I was going out. They had a vague idea about where I was going and with whom. They really didn’t want to know exactly what I was doing. They trusted in the fact that I was raised by them and that would have to be enough for me to do the right thing. Sounds crazy as I’m typing it. I didn’t always do the right thing but I never did anything really terrible either. I’m not telling what I did either. There is no video evidence of it. No one caught it on their cell phone. If someone tells you a story of me being bad at these little gatherings just come and ask me about it. I’ll deny it ’til the cows come home. When I left the house I was gone. I was incomunicado. I was personae non grata. Until the minute I showed back up I was simply gone with only my wit to guide me through whatever happened.
Today’s generation is never left unattended. It doesn’t matter how far they are away from their parents. They are not gone. They can be reached. They also cannot act in any manner they may wish to act in. Acting badly, or funly as my generation would call it, always runs the risk of being recorded and sent around to everyone. They have no anonymity. I remember the time when a girl hoisting a shirt up would immediately cause your eyes and brain to go into picture and store mode. You had no choice. In order to save such a unique and amazing experience we would have to take a mental picture and store it. I’m glad I learned this skill. I’m forty three years old and I have some lovely twenty five year old mental snapshots. They are in prestine condition. I still look at them from time to time. Here is the point, I’m the only one that can look at them. We haven’t evolved the capacity to telepathically send these mental pictures to each other. When that day comes we are truly screwed. There’s a few ladies, you know who you are, who would be rather embarrassed if their children, who think they cannot do wrong and have not done wrong, were to see a few of my mental snapshots out of my private collection. For now they are safely stored in my mind only. I can’t imagine having images and/or video of my various teenage escapades floating around cyberspace for all to see. What if I want to run for president some day? Those kinds of images could be damaging and we would have been snapping photos and shooting videos like crazy. Such is the stupidity of youth. I shudder as I think of it. However, there is another dynamic that is equally disturbing.
What about these people who voluntarily take compromising pictures and video of themselves and send them around? I could see me and my friends back in our teenage days doing that. If we would have had cell phone technology back then our children would live in perpetual embarrassment today. The images and video would be horrifying to them and us I imagine. These kids today who voluntarily do this are really asking for it later in life unless they plan to become pornographers or something. They don’t have the luxury of anonymity like we did. Their bad behavior is going to follow them around forever. I feel for them. I can hear their children ask them years from now things like, “mom, why are you holding a beer with one hand while exposing yourself with the other?” Maybe some child will ask his father why he decided to drive the lawn mower into the swimming pool naked. Those are going to be tricky conversations. The images and the video doesn’t lie. They can’t deny everything. The best method of protection for this generation is not to do anything. They stick their heads inside their gadgets and rarely come out. Their parents are a green button away at all times. Their behavior is just a button push away from going viral. No wonder their heads are down and they don’t make eye contact. They can’t risk it. Hey, they are safer. That’s good. They are boring. That’s bad. I can’t imagine growing up with parents who had that kind of control. I needed space. I needed room to mess up and figure things out myself. Bonnie and Clyde would have never gotten started if they had been born in this generation. That’s probably a good thing. Damn, their movie would have been so boring though. I don’t think I could have watched it.