Man Martin's Blog, page 188

Hark, Hark, the Dogs do Bark!

Our dog Zoe is a wonderful dog in many respects.  She is also a barker, and lately even more so.  Perhaps this is because she gets so much practice at it.  But she only barks when there's an urgent reason such as:
Someone is in the yardSomeone is walking on the streetSomeone is at the doorSomeone rings the doorbell on TVIt's been a while since anybody let out a good barkShe regularly is transmitting this vital information to us in the clearest and most repetitive way imaginable, and our attempts to shush her avail not.  Even after we succeed in silencing her, more or less, she gets in one last muted woof, a sort of "I-told-you-so" woof, a woof of put-upon patience with her owners, a woof that says, "Neither of you are willing to do the barking around here, and barking won't do itself." Nothing rouses you out of a nice nap on the sofa
like an unexpected explosion of barking.She sounds pretty fierce, I'll admit, and nothing rouses you out of a nap on the sofa like a nice unexpected explosion of barking.  I'm sure the mailman, water meter man, and passing pedestrians will think twice before  messing with our house.  And as far as those doorbell-ringing actors on TV, forget about it!  They'll stay right in that little box where they belong and behave themselves.The only catch is, as soon as someone crosses the threshold, the tough act ends, and Zoe goes from barking to tail-wagging.  Zoe's all like, "My goodness was there someone barking?  How rude!  Welcome, welcome!  Make yourself at home!  Here, let me sit on your foot."Sitting on someone's foot is Zoe's trick for getting attention.  She's very nonchalant about it - the uninitiated might think she just chose a spot to sit at random, and that their foot just happened to occupy it.  But she's not fooling us.  Zoe's kind of a slut when it comes to getting petted.  You hear about how wonderful dogs are with their unconditional love and all, but actually it's not as great as you might think.  When it comes to love, you want it to be at least a little bit conditional.  Loving on family members and even invited guests is one thing, but you don't want your dog sucking up to home-invading miscreants and cat burglars.  (Even if cat burglars were actually cats, which few of them really are, Zoe would not take action.  When it comes to the civil rights of the feline persuasion, Zoe is respectful to a point that borders on rank cowardice.)With luck, if we ever suffer a burglary, the culprit, having been first stunned by vociferous barking, will not foresee the sitting-on-the-foot maneuver, and caught off-guard, will trip, and falling prone to the floor, will be licked in the face until he turns tail from disgust and humiliation.  Not likely, I know, but we cling to what straws we can.

Happy Birthday, Spencer

I love this photo.Today is my daughter Spencer's birthday.  We're giving her a ring.  Don't worry that the surprise will be spoiled; she already sent Nancy a helpful email link to let her know exactly what she wanted.
She was always that way, from birth if not before.  She takes after Nancy in that regard.  There is a saying, "As independent as a hog on ice" to describe especially determined, strong-willed people.  When people are stuck for a term to describe an especially determined, strong-willed hog on ice, they say, "That hog on ice is as independent as Nancy and Spencer Martin."
This is Spencer at Scottish Rite Hospital when she
had a bout with Cat Scratch Fever. This is a real illness,
not just a Ted Nugent song. Don't be fooled by her
smile; it was extremely serious. She was hospitalized
for days.  Her doctor talked about  writing up her case for The New England Journal.For example, there's the time when she was very little - four or five in my recollection - that she got the keys to the car, went outside, and started the engine.  Fortunately, she was unable to reach the pedals, or we might never have seen her again.  She used to insist on dressing herself when she was very little, and sometimes went through as many as four or five costume changes in a day.  Nancy recalls Spencer's ensemble as being somewhat outre, but I recall she put together quite fetching combinations.  But then, you'd have to know how I dress.  Then came that Summer vacation in Destin Beach.  After watching with a studious frown as her older sister and I cavorted in the pool, she calmly walked to the deep end, and leaped in.  She had been to "swimming lessons" at the Y, but thus far had only progressed to the putting her face under water and blowing bubbles stage.  None of the witnesses at the pool doubted her ability to blow bubbles, in the bubble-blowing area she was at the top of the class, it was that as far as we knew, she had no idea how to actually swim.
Before we could dive in to rescue her, she bobbed to the surface, and slowly powered her way to the other side; when she reached the other side, she - with the same steady, fierce determination - powered her way back.  Every day on vacation, she did the same - stopping only to eat and sleep (I fear she didn't even stop to pee, but I've never had the nerve to inquire.)
When we bought a house with a pool, she raced me every day until she could beat me.  This did not take as long as I would have liked.  Recently, she got me to train for a triathalon sprint, and when I told her proudly I was swimming a quarter mile, she told me to increase it to a half.  I'm up to a half mile now, awaiting further instructions.
You don't disappoint someone like Spencer.
Happy birthday, darling.

Dealing with Weight Watchers

I'm trying to lose a couple of pounds (and by a couple, I mean twenty).  And I've signed up for Weight Watchers online.  I've had good success with them in the past, and their approach makes sense to me.  It's not just about calories or carbs, but about what you put into your mouth and how much.  So, for example, I can eat all the fresh fruit I want, but when it comes to alcohol...  Well, suffice to say, I subjected every adult beverage I could think of from kamikaze shots to pernod to WeightWatchers' analysis and discovered it's all pretty bad for you.  Not that you can't drink it, but it costs you a lot of "points" which WeightWatchers' enthusiasts hoard up like vintage baseball cards.  Those who know me will tell you I've never touched a drop in my life, but I've always expressed a tender curiosity to do so one day, and the discovery that if and when I do, my drinking will be sharply curtailed, came as a keen disappointment to me.
The other drawback to the online program is you key in whatever foods you eat - for example, "pork chop" or "broccoli."  This works great as long as you're eating pork chops and broccoli, but life doesn't always work that way.  The other night, to wit, my wife made something - it was delicious - that came out as a green mass served over rice.  The rice part is easy, type in "rice," and it'll show you a drop-down menu of everything from rice krispies to rice wine.  The problem comes in with the rest.
"What's in this?" is my query.
"Shrimp, yellow tomatoes, red peppers, avocado, onion, a little cream."
"So how many avocados are in a serving?"
"I put in two."
"So if I ate the whole pan, it would be two."
"Don't eat the whole pan."
"I'm just saying, so if I divide two avocados by the fraction of the pan I do eat..."
"I thought with fractions, you multiply instead of divide."
"Right.  How much cream is there?"
"I poured in about this much."  She indicates a stream of about two inches.
"Can you give me that in grams?"  Nancy serves herself a plate and begins eating, while I'm in the other room on the computer.
"What are you doing in there?" comes her dulcet voice.
"Keying in this damn meal."
And so as I enjoyed my delicious dinner, I also tackled a puzzle involving fractions, factoring, and solid geometry.  Finally, I decided to take the most point-heavy of the five ingredients, divide by five, and multiply by the quantity I ate.
"But there weren't five ingredients," Nancy said.  "There were six.  And I didn't put in equal portions."
I need a drink.

Getting the Most Out of Your New Kinkajou!

One of the many surprises in store for you as the
owner of a Kinajou is just how long their tongues are!Congratulations on your purchase of an adorable, playful KINKAJOU!  You will find this pet is just the thing to improve your self-esteem after that bitch-goddess Belinda left you for Barry.  Although its prehensile tail and wonderful dexterous "hands" make it resemble a monkey, a kinkajou is actually more closely related to a raccoon.  Its fondness for nectar has earned it the nickname "honey bear."  These are just a couple of the interesting facts you'll be able to smugly inform friends, acquaintances, and even random strangers now that you have a kinkajou of your very own.  Having this wonderful, exotic pet will certainly make Belinda realize what an interesting person you are and worry about "what she is missing."
In captivity, unlike Belinda, your kinkakou will be with you a long time; twenty-three years is the average life expectancy, with some as long-lived as forty, so while your kinkajou won't be with you as long as that unfortunate tattoo you decided to get on your left shoulder, it'll be around plenty long enough for the novelty to wear off, everyone around you to know it's more closely related to a raccoon than a primate, the drudgery of feeding and cleaning up after it to wear on you like the incessant drip of water on a stone, and to fully realize that in spite of having an exotic pet, you are no more interesting and worthwhile to be around than you ever were and that Belinda was probably right to leave you for Barry.
The Kinkajou only reaches seven pounds, but still has adorable sharp teeth and is prone to bite, so be careful.  They also have lovable claws, with which to attack, not to mention an endearing high-pitched shriek when alarmed.  They are nocturnal, which means you have to be quiet during the day when they are asleep for risk of waking them and making them shriek and attack you with their cute little claws and teeth.  Needless to say, they will also be active keeping you awake at night, scurrying around searching through your pantry for insects and plastic jars of honey.  It is recommended you either get a night job or develop insomnia.  Some kinkajou also carry a certain kind of roundworm than can cause extreme illness or in rare cases death of its owner, which is all a part of the fun of owning one!
Remember, no matter how many regrets you may have about bad decisions in the past, the kinkajou is guaranteed to be near the top of the list.
Again, congratulations, have fun, and watch out for those claws!

Nancy on the Phone

Nancy was on an important phone call, and I needed something out of the office.
You can stop reading here if you already know where this is heading.
I don't know what it is about Nancy's being on the phone - what sort of electrical signals are transmitted directly to my brain that tells me I must get the heaviest thing I can find off the top shelf or check to see if all our skyrockets are in working order, but whatever it is, as soon as I hear Nancy in the midst of a high-level conference call, something compels me to go in the office and stop rummaging around, and I am helpless as if in the grip of a demonic puppet master.

SCENE: Interior, Daylight.  NANCY sits at computer, talking on speaker phone.  MAN enters, stage left, on tip-toe and enters closet.

NANCY: Yes, Mr. President, I believe it may yet be possible to salvage the global economy and find a cure for cancer, but my data shows...

SOUND EFFECT: Tubes of watercolors falling from shelf in closet.

NANCY: (Putting speakerphone on mute.) Jesus, Man, what are you doing?

MAN: Just getting some art supplies.  I'll be done in a second.  (MAN begins setting up special portable easel in far side of room.)

PRESIDENT OBAMA (On speakerphone):  So, Nancy, you were saying about this data, involving the cure for cancer and the global economy.

NANCY: Yes, we just need to...

SOUND EFFECT: Portable easel collapses: loud crash followed by several slightly softer crashes.

MAN: (Softly) Sorry.

OBAMA:  Good Lord, what was that?

NANCY: It was my husband.

MAN: Sorry, Mr. President.  I'm almost done.  (Returns to closet.  Sounds of soft rummaging.)

NANCY: (After a pause)  So anyway, Mr. President, what I was saying about this new data...

SOUND EFFECT: Incredibly loud crashes of shelves falling from brackets, amplified by unexpected acoustic qualities of closet.  25-pound weights, snare-drum sets and bowling balls strike floor accompanied by muffled screams of terror.

SILENCE.  (If possible stage manager should contrive to have flecks of plaster float down from ceiling.)

OBAMA: Your husband?

MAN: (From inside closet. From the quality of his voice, we can tell he is lying prone amid the wreckage.) Sorry.

OBAMA: You know, Nancy, we have special operatives who take care of this sort of thing.  Like with Bin Laden.

NANCY: Believe me.  I'm considering it.

Tearing Up the Garden

Yesterday I tore up the garden.  This entails pulling up the old tomato plants, putting away the cages, chopping a few stubborn weeds out of the ground with a hoe.  I left the okra plants, which are still producing, and one squash plant, producing one last dumbbell-shaped autumnal squash.  I discovered a wild rose had migrated from a nearby bed and was poking a carmine bloom up from the dirt.
If I were a poet like Keats, I could express the melancholy loveliness of the morning.  The sun came in beams from behind a screen of trees, and the air was cool.  The garden had represented a spring of hope and a summer of effort.  My friend David Cummings says gardening is easy, "Just plant what your family likes to eat."  But for me, somehow it's never that simple.  It's not just planting, it's getting what you planted to mature (Chickens ravaged our early plantings.  Lesson learned.)  And then deterring critters from eating what you did plant.  They especially like our tomatoes, and putting in a motion-detector sprinkler and sprinkling the plants with cayenne did little to stop them from eating them.  Even the apparently foolproof step of "planting what your family likes" proved tricky this year.  Whether because pots were mislabeled at the store, or because I was just plain careless, or what, we ended up with a lot of things we didn't intend.  I got a variety of eggplant instead of purple beauty, which produces long tear-drop shaped white fruits streaked with lavender.  I got banana peppers instead of bell peppers.
Pulling out one tomato which had over-topped its cage, I was reminded of a line from Frost who compares birch trees bent over from the weight of an ice storm, trailing leaves along the ground, to "girls on hands and knees that throw their hair before them over their heads to dry in the sun."  This plant was something like that, if the hair had been a wilder, thicker tangle and perfumed with the wild fragrance of tomato vine.
The birds were singing when I put the garden in, and they are still singing when I take it out, but their song is different now.  Before, they were singing, "It's spring!  The worms are fat!  Let's build a nest, lay some eggs, and raise, a family!"  Even to a non-bird such as I, it was perfectly clear what they were saying.  Now, their notes are isolated, and distant.  They are either different birds or sing a different song.  I do not know what it means.  It sounds like, "Where?  Where?" but it probably is something else.
I put the weeds in the composter, and left the wild hair of the tomatoes trailing the ground where I'd pulled them.  I put up the cages in the tool room, and took my final harvest of green tomatoes, eggplant, banana peppers, and cucumbers to the house.  Birds sang unlikely songs overhead, and one wild rose bloomed.  Hope and struggle put away for another year.

Arranging for My Funeral

Whenever I need cheering up, I find planning my funeral usually does the trick.
I have known people who put off planning for their own funerals, and I warn against it strenuously.  An acquaintance of mine passed away, but hadn't put a thought to what sort of funeral he had in mind, so naturally he was very disappointed.  We explained to him, "Look, you can't possibly expect to plan a decent funeral without a least a month's planning," but did he listen?  He did not.  His widow said that was just his way.  As a result, the whole thing was a muddle.  Here everybody's looking forward to enjoying themselves at a nice funeral, and instead the caterers were late, and the trained doves that were supposed to pop out of the funeral cake had been accidentally cooked inside, and that put a damper on the whole affair.
I myself, have been planning my funeral for twenty years off and on.  Currently the instructions run about three hundred pages single spaced.  I expect to have a Dixie-land band, and at least three separate formal services - one for when I'm buried in a humble wooden coffin beneath a spreading oak tree, one for when my ashes are scattered from a biplane across the Shenandoah (in an earlier draft, I specified a hot-air balloon, but that would be just silly) and another for when my flag-draped coffin is dropped into the sea.  This will call for some lively work and a certain amount of unearthing and retrieval if I'm going to get all three services.  For example, if I'm cremated first, then burial at sea is hardly going to be an option later on.  I figure, first the conventional grave, then burial at sea, then cremation.  That way I'll get maximum value for my  funeral dollar and everyone will have a good time.
A good hired mourner will set up a wail
which will drown out any unwanted laughterAnother matter you need to consider is professional mourners.  I know a lot of people make do with amateurs, and sometimes that works out well enough, but think carefully about who's really likely to show up at your funeral.  How many of them will be secretly or even publicly relieved?  Some people assuage grief through inappropriate laughter; I'm an inappropriate laugher myself, and know what it's like.  And once that gets started, it's infectious.  You don't want your eulogy interrupted by an untimely fit of giggles breaking out among the bereaved.  A few good hired mourners will set up a good wail which will drown out any unwanted laughter among your nearest and dearest, plus they set the tone for the whole thing.  I think for a price, a pro will even jump into the grave on top of the coffin - and once the guests see that, they'll sit up and take notice.  Everyone will be talking about it for weeks.
I told Nancy about my funeral plans: the Dixie-Land band, the three services, the hired mourners, the doves bursting out of the funeral cake, and she was very excited.  She said she can't wait.

The Bra: A History

Last June, researchers found remnants of several linen bras in an Austrian Castle, bras that may be as old as 600 years, overturning an entire sub-field of undergarment history, a field which many of us are unaware even exists.
For example, did you know the earliest bra was unearthed in Mesopotamia and was made of goat leather and woven reeds?  Did you know that the bras of the ancient Amazons had only one cup?  Did you know that bra was originally short for "abracadabra," meaning, "now-you-see-it, now-you-don't"?  Well, if you don't know these things, I'm not surprised because none of them are true.As you might expect, bras have risen and fallen on the whims of fashion, namely how men feel about women's breasts.  (The verb feel is being used as intransitive here.)  I'm generally in favor of women's breasts myself, as I would imagine are most men, and yet it turns out at various points in history people were against them.  For example, in Ancient Greece breasts were all the rage for awhile and it seemed like people just couldn't get enough of them, but then Socrates and that crowd shows up and suddenly - whammo! - it was all like, "Those things are disgusting.  Put them away somewhere so I don't have to look at them."  So women strapped themselves down, trying for all the world to look like they didn't have breasts.  So much for the Golden Age of Greece.Gradually breasts began making a comeback, peeping out here and there, and sometime along the Age of Reason someone invented the whalebone corset.  Makes you wonder, doesn't it.  Picture Isaac Newton and Galileo sitting around throwing a few beers back, gabbing about laws of motion and gravitation and whatnot, and someone at the back of the bar says, "Hey, I got an idea!  You know how women have these beautiful mammary glands on their chests?  Let's cut a piece of stiff cloth with a waist as narrow as we can possibly make it, and stick whale-bones down inside it, and wrap it around women.  Wouldn't it be great?"  Someone should have held his head down in a butt of malmsey until the bubbles stopped, but instead he gets funding and goes into manufacture.The whale-bone corset led to a lot of scientific advances: the whole edifice of modern psychiatry is built on the notion that "hysteria" resulted from a woman's uterus wandering at will around her body.  Given the tightness of the corset, the uterus probably did do a certain amount of wandering, along with the solar plexus and the spleen.In 1913 Mary Phelps Jacobs created the first modern bra out of a couple of silk handkerchiefs and a ribbon.  She patented her idea a year later, calling it the  Caresse Crosby. The Warner Brothers Corset Company bought the patent for $1,500.  For a time the corset and the bra were running neck-and-neck in popularity, and corsets continued to be widely manufactured, whalebone giving way to metal stays, but in the nineteen thirties the American government weighed in, urging women to stop strapping themselves down with old-fashioned corsets.  Metal, which had replaced whalebone for corset stays, was needed for armaments.  American women pulled through and switched to bras, saving an estimated 28,000 tons of metal., which makes you wonder how many whales might have been saved had the switch been made earlier.The above is an actual statistic I found on the internet so it has to be true.  Checking elsewhere, I find the US population in 1930 was 122,775, 046.   Assuming that half of those were women, (61,380,000) and only eighty percent of those were old enough to wear a bra (49,104,000) and only ninety percent of those made the switch (there must've been a few hold-outs who kept their whale bone corsets or who never wore anything at all.  There must've been.  Think of Lousianna.)  That leaves 44, 193, 600.  Since there are two thousand pounds in a ton, the war department saved 56,000,000 pounds of metal, or one and a third pounds of metal per corset.
My God.  The humanity.

A Dream I Had Last Night

I just woke up from a dream, which I don't attach much importance to, and  to which I don't think you should either, but which was very interesting nonetheless, and so here it is.
In my dream, in the far far future, Christianity had all but disappeared.  In fact, there was only one denomination left, the Catholics, and they were down to just one priest and three parishioners.  Since there was only one priest, he was pope, cardinal, bishop, monsignor, and priest in one.  The three remaining parishioners were all women.  The priest was very old and dying, and having no other choice, he ordained the women as priests to ensure Christianity's survival.  Immediately after ordaining the three new priests, the old priest died, and the three women got in their spaceships and traveled to the edges of the universe.  (This is the far future, remember?)
The women began to proselytize, and turned out to be so good at it, there were soon flocks of converts.  The women ordained other women who flew to other planets and proselytized there with equal success.  Christianity spread throughout the galaxies, and the Catholic Church lived up to its name - it was a universal church indeed, for even on tiny Tralfamadore, where the beings have eyes in the middles of their hands, there were Christians.
For thousands and thousands of years men had ruled the Catholic Church, and for an equal number of years afterwards, women ruled it, and it was wise, and kind, and thriving.  And at the end of time, when all the souls were gathered up, and all mysteries were revealed, we finally understood.
We thought God was playing favorites.  In reality, God was just making us take turns.
Anyway, for what it's worth, that was what I dreamed about.

Shopping in WalMart with Nancy

     We were running errands, and Nancy wanted to stop by WalMart.
     "Why don't I just let you off at home?" Nancy asked.  "I can do WalMart on my own."
     "No, no," I said, giving the reply dutiful, "I can help out."
      So we got to WalMart and split up our list.  First things I got were a new bicycle lock and dog collar.   Nancy insisted I not get a collar in a "masculine color," because she was tired of Zoe being mistaken for a boy, to which I said it hardly mattered whether people thought she was a girl or not because she was neutered.  Besides I didn't want to go enforcing gender stereotypes on our dog by getting her a pink collar or something.  Nancy said she didn't want pink either, just something feminine, like "purple."  Since I was wearing a purple shirt at the time myself, I wasn't quite sure how to take this, but I said nothing and toddled off to get the collar and lock.  The WalMart collars on display seemed principally designed for the sort of canine you can carry in a pocketbook, and the ones that were Zoe's size came in only two colors: pink and red.  Pink was right out, so I reluctantly chose red, even though that's really a "winter" color - better suited to a Scottie - and Zoe, being a Golden Retriever, looks better in "fall" colors.
     I found the bike lock easily enough, although the brand name, "Kryptonite," left me mildly nonplussed.  I get the allusion, but it doesn't quite work, does it?  I mean, Kryptonite doesn't keep Superman out, it kills him, and besides, since Superman is good, Kryptonite is evil.  It's not once of those substances that can be used for either good or evil, having only one purpose, so far as I know.  But mine is not to quibble, and so I set out looking for Nancy.
     Then began, as Shakespeare puts it, the tempest to my soul.
     Imagine two lovers separated from each other and lost in the desert, but not just any desert, a desert filled with labyrinthine aisles with every sale-able good on display from steel-belted tires to beef jerky.
     Fortunately, I had my cell phone, and even more fortunately it was charged.  "Hello, sweetheart.  Where are you?"
     "I'm in the picture frames."
     After I found her in the picture frame aisle, she sent me for the next two items on our list: diet orange soda and Oxyclean.  Mission accomplished, I returned to the picture frame aisle to find her gone.  I had to wander the store a bit before I got any bars on my cell phone.
     "Hi, darlin'"
     "I'm in the bras."
     "What?"
     "I'm in the bras."
     "What?"
     "Bras.  Bras."
     "Blahs?  Boz?"
     "BRAS."
     "You're in the bras?"
     "Yes, yes!"
     I found the bra section easily enough.  There certainly seem to be a lot of bras in WalMart, I can tell you.  It gives a man a mild case of the cold-robbies wandering aisle after aisle of push-ups and strapless and wonder and whatever with two cases of diet orange soda and a bottle of Oxyclean.  You feel as though the other browsers regard you suspiciously wondering what you're doing there, and telling someone you're looking for your wife only increases the discomfort.  I've tried it.  But I found her soon enough.
     Few things make a man feel more useless than standing beside your wife as she picks out bras.  I browsed the nearby men's department to see if they had bow-ties.  They did not.  At one point I thought I'd spotted some bow-ties, but they turned out to be do-rags.  I felt almost as useless on the do-rag aisle as the bra aisle.
     Finally Nancy said she needed to try on her selections because once she left the store with them, she wouldn't be allowed to return them.  So I told her I'd be in sporting goods, and left her to her trying-on.  Unfortunately, I discovered my purchase of a Kryptonite Bike Lock had pretty much exhausted my interest in anything in the sporting goods line and while I did see a "strip-tease exercise video" (I am not making this up) I was unable to summon the gumption to actually pick it up and look at it.  So I returned to the bra section, but wasn't entirely sure where the changing room was.  So I went to the front of the store where my phone reception was best and called.  She did not pick up right away.
     "Are you still trying on bras?"
     "What?"
     "Are you still trying on bras?"
     "Where are you?"
     "I'm in the bra section.  Near you."
     "Are you in sporting goods?"
     "No, I'm in bras."
     "Are you in sporting goods?"
     "No... look, I'll just go back to sporting goods."
     "What?"
     "Sporting goods!"
     So I waited in sporting goods until my phone rang.
     "I'll meet you at the register," Nancy said.  She sounded strangely tense.  Evidently trying on bras had been an irritating experience.
     As we were checking out, I said, "We need to find a better system for shopping at WalMart."
     "I had a system," Nancy said coldly, "it was leaving you at home."
     Nancy makes odd remarks such as this from time to time, which you just can't figure out what she means.