Ad Hudler's Blog, page 22

My coolest friend on facebook ...

There's a little square box on the left-hand side of everyone's facebook page in which you can pen a description of yourself. Here's my favorite one to date:
Musician, one-man-keyboard band with lots of experience working full-time on large boats, very proud father, husband, race car builder and driver, motorcycle rider, and CPA.
Can you say well-rounded? Seriously, this guys the true Renaissance man. (Sorry, ladies, but he's happily married.)
'Feeling kinda dull.

In poor taste, but ...

I just realized something odd: the name of the hospice in my hometown is Hope Hospice.
Think about it. They allow you into a hospice only when your days are numbered -- and thank God they're there. But hope for what? There is no hope in a hospice. You go to a hospice to die, right?

Parenting 101: A word about "Modern Family"

... the funny TV show that I like. In this week's episode, Claire, the mother, is frustrated with her family's addiction to electronic devices, and she declares a week-long moratorium on anything electronic. No computers, no cell phones, nothing. Phil, her dim-witted husband, promises his oldest daughter that he will buy her a car if she can make it through the week, assuming that she won't be able to last that long.
Well, guess what? She does. And then, as they so often do, Claire and dim-witted husband don't follow through with their promise. They NEVER follow through with their promises or threats with their children.
In reality, kids with parents like this turn out to be big problems. I've seen it with friends of my daughter. The parents are all about threats and they are horrible on follow-through, so the children know no consequences. So they start pushing and testing, misbehaving in a big way to see if anything they do will have consequences. Children WANT consequences. They want to know parents are watching and that they will punish them if they do something wrong. It gives them a feeling of security.
Phil and Claire: Buy the girl her damned car. YOU PROMISED. If you don't, your words will be empty and meaningless to her, and she will cease listening to you.

Don Draper and his secretary

So I finally watched the season finale of Mad Men. Were we supposed to be surprised by the ending? Don proposing to his secretary?
I knew he was going to marry one of his secretaries some time. I mean, it's a natural thing for a man to do. Don't we all know someone who married his secretary? (ASSISTANT is the new PC term). I can think of perhaps six acquaintances who did what Don Draper did. (My bad: I can't even think of her name. I stopped remembering Don's Dames' names after #3,417)
It makes perfect sense for a man to marry his secretary. First of all, both parties know each other's quirks, strengths, weaknesses. She knows how and when you deceive people, and can see through your lies. She knows what makes you weak in the knees and what makes you cry. She knows all your hot buttons. Honestly, there would be few surprises after saying "I do."
A secretary has your back. She protects you, and you protect her in the bare-fangs corporate environment. You are a team, like soldiers paired together in a foxhole. You know that she knows how to take care of you -- and most men, as we know, need taken care of.
Each of you knows each other's dislikes and likes. You'd be able to pick out swell birthday gifts for each other.
And if she's pretty, like what's-her-name ... OF COURSE you'd consider her as marriage material. Instant wife. No courtship necessary. She knows you as well as mom or former wife does.
So here ... take this ring. Let's go to the courthouse over lunch hour.

Brave cops

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Scene from downtown Nashville that I'd never seen: 18 motorcycles getting ticketed and towed.They brought in a huge flatbed truck and loaded them up like cattle. And the bikes' owners were nowhere to be found.



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Reasons to Stay Home: #4571FW

True story: A hairdresser on vacation decides to treat herself and get her hair cut and colored by someone new, and when she gets there she's told that she has head lice running about her scalp.
Now, this gal is smart ... and she's wondering how in tarnation she got the lice ... think, think, think, think ... and when she returned to her hotel room she looked at the bed she'd slept in the night before and ... AHA!
The bed had an upholstered headboard with a nice nubby weave that would make a swell habitat for ... well ... for little tiny, crawling creatures.
Indeed, after further scrutiny, she discovered a Tokyo of head lice.
These days, when she books a room, she asks what the headboards are made of. Because if she didn't she'd probably end up having a louse-y time.(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

A new name?

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So I check into the author suite at the Southern Festival of the Book and find this name tag for me.

Not sure what substance the typist was taking at the time. But I kind of like it.

You can call me Cud for short.Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.9

Teacher appreciation: AaaaaaaaaaaaCHEW!

I travel a lot, and I'm in airports just about every ten days or so ... and I've noticed something: The transition is complete: I see more people nowadays stifling a cough or sneeze with their elbows (the bend in the arm) instead of their hands.
Of course, everyone over the age of 30 was taught to cover their mouths with their hands, and in doing so we were actually hastening the spread of the germs: Hand catches virus, hand touches door knob, next Sorry Joe comes along to the same door ... and then it's he who has the previous person's cooties. New definition for hand-to-hand combat.
So ... good job, Germ Police. I'm guessing that school teachers are to thank for this (They showed our children, and our children showed us.) Another wonderful thing they have done to help society.
Why don't we pay school teachers more? It's a sin that football players and actors earn millions a year, and our teachers barely make poverty wages. Some day the history books will say this: The civilization declined and, eventually, collapsed, largely because school teachers were not compensated fairly for their work, which symbolized the culture's lack of concern for education or the future."
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"Hello? Mayflower?"

Signs that your neighborhood is going to seed:
1. The third "botanica" store opens within a mile from your house. These are what I call "voodoo stores," which sell powders and potions and candles and such for the native Caribbean crowd.
2. Lap dances are now cheaper than a pitcher of beer at the strip club down the street.
3. You have so many prostitutes in your neighborhood that you start giving them names (in your mind) ... and when one disappears you wonder, "Gosh, I hope she's okay. I mean, I hope she's not dead."
4. The plasma donation center is doing so well they remodel the front entrance.
5. More pawn shops than fast-food outlets.

I, too, don't give a damn

Just finished reading Gone with the Wind for the first time, and let me say I think it's one of the best books I've ever read. Yes, it's filled with plenty of female drama (a little too much for my taste), but it's also a great history lesson about the Civil War. Lots of action! And Margaret Mitchell plotted that book as expertly as someone who'd written fifty novels.
Now, a word about Scarlett. I understand why she's so popular among Southern women. This girl's a survivor, no doubt, and she was a great conduit for Southerners to channel their frustration and anger toward the Yankees. (For those of you who have never lived in the South, we still do use the word "Yankee" in conversation down here.) My southern daughter, who is going to college in the Midwest but has sworn to return to Dixie to for law school and to raise a family, idolizes Scarlett. And now that I've read the book, I must say this disturbs me a little.
Indeed, we can call Scarlett scrappy and tough and resourceful. She's definitely someone you'd want on the wagon with you, heading out West to the unknown territories.
But, my dear daughter ... she is also a conniving, self-centered, spoiled girl with no moral compass. In my opinion, Scarlett did one act of kindness in the whole book, and that was to give her dead father's watch to the black man who had been his personal servant. Honestly, now that I've finished the book, I think Ms. Mitchell shouldn't have included this scene because it's totally out of character for Scarlet to do such a thing. It could have foreshadowed a change in personality, showing Scarlett maturing and moving the focus from herself, to others ... but this never happens. In the end, she is just as self-centered and self-serving as she was while a catered-to teenager, manipulating the young men at parties at Tara.
It is almost incomprehensible to me that all those horrific experiences Scarlett endured did not make her a more humane person. And what does this say about her character? That's she's a survivor? Sure, I'll give her that. It also shows she's simply a bad seed. Some people are born with a shard of glass in their hearts, and they can't change. Scarlet is one of those people.
Some would say Scarlett is the novel's protagonist. I would call her the antagonist.
With apologies to Willie Nelson ... "Momma's, don't let your babies grow up to be Scarletts."
That said, thank you, Ms. Mitchell, for one fine read.