Man Martin's Blog, page 92

Is Your Soul Eternally Darned to Heck?

What is Heck?

Heck is a region of mild eternal torment.  Writers have described it as an unpleasant ninety degrees with very high humidity that makes it feel like ninety-five or ninety six.  There is nothing good on TV there and no cellphone connection.  Internet?  Forget it.  The exact location is unknown, although probably deep underground.  Some theologians maintain it's in that guy Steve What's-his-name's basement bedroom, you know, the guy with the strange BO who still lives with his mother.

Who ends up in Heck?

When you die, you're given a questionnaire to fill out with questions such as, "Did you ever say, 'G.D.' in anger?" and "Have you ever coveted your neighbor's kitten?"  The wrong answers could win you a one-way ticket straight to Heck.  Fortunately, most of the questions are either true-false or multiple-choice.

Who's in Charge of Heck?

Blue Devils.  Sounds scary, doesn't it?  It is.  The Duke Blue Devils are believed by many to be the worst football team in the ACC.  From 1999 to 2007, Duke's football win-loss record was at 13-90; from 2005 to 2007 Duke suffered a 22-game losing streak.  The Blue Devils torture the souls of the darned by poking them with tuning forks.  This is not painful, exactly, but it really gets annoying after a while.

(Originally posted 2012)

Ask the Cranky Old Man Next Door

Dear Cranky Old Man:
Last year I installed a ceiling fan, then just last month my wife noticed it started making these noises.  She says on slow, it just goes wurrrr, wurrr, wurrr, but then on medium, it goes whacka, whacka, and on high, it's tickity-tickity-tickity.  I've turned on the fan myself, but I don't hear anything.  What should I do?
 - Noisy in Boise

Dear Noisy:
My mother was right.  I should've been a doctor, then I wouldn't have to put up with numb-skulls like you.  This is easy to fix.  Take a big roll of duct tape and some extra-large cotton balls.  Then tape the cotton balls in her ears and ask if the fan still bothers her.  While you're at it, tape her mouth shut.  Now leave me alone.

Dear Cranky Old Man:
Last spring I married the most wonderful man in the world, except for one thing - my new mother-in-law.  She comes over almost everyday, and I know she's snooping.  For example, the other day she asked to use my bathroom, and later she was asking if everything was alright between me and Jim because she noticed a bottle of Prozac and were either of us feeling depressed.  She'd been going through my medicine cabinet!  I guess she means well, but I just want her out of my business.  How should I handle this.
- Harried Newly-Married

Dear Harried:
Thank God the liquor stores open early today, I'll need a good belt after dealing with you nit-wits.  Go to a toy store and buy out all their marbles.  A couple or thousand or so should take care of it.  Then carefully - and I mean carefully - put all those bad boys in your medicine cabinet and close the door quick before any come out.  Next time that old battle-ax uses the restroom and takes a peek in the medicine cabinet - WHOOM!  All them marbles come out, and problem solved.  She won't go snooping in your house anymore.  Now leave me alone.

Dear Cranky Old Man:
I'm a high-school principal and I'm sick and tired of dealing with young men and their sagging trousers.  We've tried everything from assigning detention to writing the parents and tightening up the dress code, but they still come to school waddling in the doors because their pants are so lose.  Every teenage boy in the school needs one hand free just to hold his pants up.  I'm at my wits end.
- Helpless in High School

Dear Helpless:
You sound like just the sort of namby-pamby I'd expect in a public school.  No wonder the country's going to hell in a hand basket.  What you need is a good big tiger.  If you can't get a tiger, a mountain lion would do, but a tiger would work best.  Feed it as little as possible and get it real hungry.  Then once a day, while the kids are changing classes, let that rascal loose in the hallway.  It won't eat more than one, but it'll eat the slowest one.  That'll learn 'em to wear pants that fit.  Now leave me alone.

(Originally posted 2012)

Getting in Shape

Do you know how much money Americans spend each year on exercise equipment?  Do you?  Well, I don't know either, but it's a lot.  If you took all the hours people actually use this equipment and divide it by the number of hours they spend watching viral kitten videos on the internet, you'd....  Okay, I forgot where I was going with this statistic, but it's pretty dang impressive, and can tell you, and would really make you stop and think.  It would.  So the time has come to find more effective uses for that expensive junk cluttering up your basement.

An elliptical machine weighs between 200 and 400 pounds.  Buy one.  Stick it in front the refrigerator.

Armbands are basically handles attached to bungee cords.  Take one of these and wrap it around your jaw so you can't eat.

Some people say dumbbells are old-fashioned.  Not so!  Used correctly, they can significantly reduce weight.  Every time you feel like eating, drop one on your toe.

You can install a chin-up bar in less than fifteen minutes.  Put it real close to the ceiling and do a chin-up as fast as you can.  You'll knock yourself out and won't be able to eat.

Get your treadmill going as fast as you can.  Once it's going full blast, suddenly stop running.  After the doctors have wired your jaw shut, you won't be able to eat as much.

Exercise clothes.  These are more important than most people realize.  Get yourself a bright day-glo spandex outfit and wear it everyday.  Don't wear anything but this outfit.  You'll be too embarrassed to leave the house and drive to Burger King.

(Originally posted 2012)

How Do You Come Up with These Ideas?

"How do you come up with all your ideas? is what concerned Americans want to know.  Another thing they want to know is why I keep coming up with them.

When you consider my busy schedule - bon vivant, crime fighter, adored idol of millions - one is astounded that I'm able on top of all this to write a daily blog of such sparkle and effervescence.  "Don't you ever just want to stay and bed and sleep?" people ask, "And wouldn't we all be better off?"

First thing I do, is get up and turn on the computer.  This is essential, and I cannot stress this enough.  You can type and type all day, but if your computer isn't turned on, you're just living in a fool's paradise.  Then, once the computer is on, I usually play a few games of computer solitaire.  Some people shilly-shally before getting down to computer solitaire, but not me.  "A shirker never wins," is my motto.  "And potatoes planted in May are au gratin by June."  So when it comes to playing solitaire, I get right down to business.

But finally I open up my blog and hit the little pencil icon that shows I want to write a new post.  This is very odd because you don't write blogs with a pencil, and if you did, it wouldn't work very well.  The icon might as well be a pair of hedge-clippers or a crescent wrench.  But I digress.  Once I am looking at the snowy expanse of unwritten blog space on my computer screen, then begins, as Shakespeare puts it, the tempest to my soul.  There are a few things on this earth that truly terrify me: those big black cockroaches that scoot out from under something and run straight at you, global warming, and white space waiting to be written on. 

At this point I usually do some cussing.  Then I visit all the other blogs I know, and see what they're writing about.  If I don't find anything I can stea...  Ahem, I mean, if I'm still not inspired, I go back to cussing.  If that doesn't work, I play some more computer solitaire.  Sooner or later, I come up with something, and with a feeling of relief and creeping self-loathing, I write it.

I hope this answers your questions.
Now I'm going to play some computer solitaire.

(Originally posted 2012)

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 Belinda left you for for your ex-friend, 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 ale 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 stay with you; twenty-three to forty years is the average life expectancy, so while your kinkajou won't outlast that unfortunate tattoo you decided to get on your left shoulder, it'll stick 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.

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!

(Originally posted 2012)

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 tell 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 start 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.

(Originally posted 2012)

Planning My Funeral

Whenever I need cheering up, I find planning my funeral usually does the trick.

A good hired mourner will set up a wail
which will drown out any unwanted laughterI 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 Dixieland 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.

Another 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.

(Originally posted 2012)

The Bra, A History

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 a while, 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 that guy's 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.

(Originally posted 2012)

Shopping 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. 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 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.  You feel as though the other browsers regard you suspiciously, wondering, 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.

(Originally posted 2012)

Here Come the Armadillos!

One of the weirder side-effects unforeseen by the climate change guys is the spread of armadillos into north Georgia.  They've been creeping up slowly from Florida for years, but recently I've sighted them in south Metro Atlanta.  Armadillos are shy creatures, and if you were an armadillo you'd be shy too.

Most of us who've seen one at all have only seen them as roadkill.  As far as most people know, the natural habitat of an armadillo is the middle of a blacktop road with a Uniroyal tire tread running down the middle of its back.  In reality, most armadillos live a full, active, fulfilling existence - burrowing, hunting for grubs and invertebrates.  Now it is also evident that also have rich and rewarding sex lives and like to travel.

Armadillos didn't originate from Florida; before 1924 the only armadillos in Florida were in a zoo.  In those days Floridians, thinking armadillos were interesting and exotic, wanted to see one for themselves.  Be careful what you wish for.

Joshua Nixon, a zoologist specializing in armadillos (my goodness, the careers people have!) conjectures that armadillos may even be traveling by train.  This is not entirely unheard-of; New York pigeons have long been known to commute by subway; nevertheless, it's hard to imagine an armadillo dashing alongside a moving boxcar and leaping on.  Parenthetically, Nixon lives in Michigan, which is about as far from where the armadillos are as you can get, which ought to tell you something.

Armadillos are harmless unless you're an insect or an invertebrate, or unless you're a plant growing on top of where an armadillo thinks there might be insects or invertebrates, or unless you have a yard. 

Fortunately, armadillos are edible.  I have appended an actual recipe below.  I don't know what armadillo tastes like, never having eaten it.  Normally, outre entrees are compared to chicken, but I could not find a single internet reference comparing armadillo to the taste of chicken.  This may be a warning.  Here's the recipe:


Armadillo Au Vin   

INGREDIENTS:1 1/4 cup dry white wine1/2 cup oil2 cloves garlic, crushed (optional)1/4 cup buttersalt and pepper, to taste1/2 teaspoon thyme1/2 teaspoon rosemary1 medium onion, sliced thin1 armadillo, cleaned and cut into serving pieces1 1/4 cup light cream1 tablespoon brown mustard1 tablespoon cornstarchDIRECTIONS:Mix all ingredients of marinade and add armadillo. Marinate about 8 hours, turning meat occasionally. Remove armadillo and reserve marinade. Melt butter in deep skillet and brown armadillo pieces. Pour in marinade and bring to a boil. Stir in seasoning, cover and simmer until tender (about 1 to 1 1/4 hours.) Remove skillet from the fire and place armadillo pieces on a warmed platter. Mix mustard and cornstarch, then mix in cream. Return skillet to low heat and stir in this mixture a little at a time. Stir sauce until hot, but not boiling, and thickened. Pour sauce over armadillo. Serve with steamed rice.
Sounds almost good enough to eat, doesn't it?    Unfortunately, The New England Journal of Medicine has linked eating armadillo meat to leprosy in humans.  But that's only if you eat it frequently, and, after all, how many nights a week are you going to eat Armadillo au Vin anyways?

(Originally posted 2012)