Not So Clever After All … A Typical Blog

As I’m sure you already know, my grandfather passed away (died) a few years ago. It was a sad time. Despite the sadness, I am happy to say, though, that I have finally fulfilled his dying wish.

Throughout my life, my grandfather used to tell me stories. You know, about things he’d seen and done and people he knew. That kind of thing. Those kind of stories.

After my grandmother died (passed away), he was obviously distraught. Shortly thereafter he told me his final story. It’s one he had never told me, and one I would guess he had never told anyone before.

He was in the army and was stationed in Honolulu during World War II. The day Pearl Harbor was attacked, he was there. Not “there” there, but nearby. He was a medic. Another soldier was brought in wounded, and my grandfather tended to him. His name was Hank. He recovered and he and my grandfather became friends.

After the war, they found themselves living in the same town. Hank became a bit of a hard-drinking man (war terrors, I would suppose), while my grandfather remained moderate. Hank found himself a pretty little girlfriend, who he tended to knock about when he was drunk. My grandfather also found himself a pretty little girlfriend. It just so happened to be the same one Hank found, though my grandfather’s was a secret.

While it was never confirmed, it was suspected that Hank discovered this secret, and one night when the spirits were particularly haunting (not Halloween), Hank knocked a little too hard. Terrified at what he had done, he called up my grandfather, who rushed over.

She was dead (killed).

Through whatever means occur to someone in this horrible predicament, Hank was able to convince (through guilt, camaraderie, pleading) my grandfather to help him conceal this fact with a staged suicide of a desperate leap from atop a too-tall building. 

This, as you may guess, tormented my grandfather his entire life. But moreso, he hated himself for his own cowardice at going along with the plan and allowing his remorse over the affair to keep him quiet thereafter.

Hank “forgot” the incident (or chose to believe she actually did kill herself) and he and my grandfather became estranged. He ultimately stopped drinking and disappeared, leaving town. My grandfather never pursued him and they never spoke again.

When my grandfather told me this story, I was obviously horrified. And then he asked me something. He asked me to find Hank, if he was still alive, and to do what he was never able to do. Confront him with the truth. Clear up the past. Not legally, but morally.

This was the last thing my grandfather asked of me.

Thanks to the internet, I was able to research old military records and found a number of men named Henry that were stationed at Pearl Harbor at the same time my grandfather was in Honolulu. I also followed the records of one of those men to that same town. After that, where I knew the facts of the story, I had a good year of empty leads. But finally, as you may’ve guessed, I found him.

Hank left town, traveled about for awhile, and finally chose a life of God, becoming a preacher. He never married. When I found him, he was in a nursing home, feeble-minded with Alzheimer’s. He was barely intelligible and I am not sure he could totally comprehend everything I told him.

I visited him numerous times, telling and re-telling him the story. Trying to get him to acknowledge the truth of his grave youthful mistake. I did not want to punish him, but I didn’t want him to go unpunished, either.

The last time I saw him, he was the most aware yet. He seemed to have a faint recognition of who I was (though I do look strikingly like my grandfather when he was young and it may’ve been that connection he was making). As I told him again the story, I saw a spark of knowledge and deep regret cross his otherwise mask-like face. It seemed to pain him greatly. I felt bad, but knew this was going to be the last time I had to tell this story to him.

Hank passed away (suicide) later that same day.

Some might contend that I took advantage and manipulated an old senile man, but you see, I have plenty of experience dealing with the unfortunate weaknesses of senility. My grandfather, in fact, the last time I saw him, the time he told me this story, suffered from extreme dementia. He was bat-shit crazy and spoke almost entirely gibberish.  Luckily, I was able to interpret and imagine the story he was probably trying to tell from the approximate ten words (if you could even call them words) he garbled out.

And besides, a dying wish is a dying wish, so what else could I have done?

I joined a secret boys-only club recently.

I’m the oldest guy in the group, but the boys let me join as long as I shared my big bag of candy with them. I didn’t mind. I brought plenty.

We use my van as our clubhouse. It’s parked in the woods behind the elementary school. They come out during recess and we play some fun games I invented.

One that they seem to really enjoy is called "Hide the Sausage". Before the bell rings, I cook and hide a Jimmy Dean in the nearby woods. The first one to find it gets to eat it. Usually Timmy sniffs it out first. He’s getting a little chubby (but so am I, if you want to truth, so I don’t judge).

Another fun one is "Knob Goblin". I’ve built a wall of drawers and cabinets in the back of the clubhouse, and each boy gets to pull a knob in turn until one comes out the winner. To win you have to reveal the secret hiding place of The Goblin. The Goblin is a little rubber monster I picked up at a specialty shop. Sometimes the kids get scared when they first see it, but they always like it in the end.

There are a couple community-oriented games we play, like "Watch It Grow" and "Butts, Butts Everywhere" where we plant trees and clean up discarded cigarettes.

We have lots of fun, me and the Lil’ Snakes. That’s what they call themselves. I’m "Man Snake". It’s a pretty cool name, right?

I promised I’d bring a sack of walnuts later today so I could teach them some nut juggling. I can’t wait! George was so excited, he said he was going to run home and tell his mom. I think she’d like some of the games we play.

.

Hey, someone’s at my door.

It’s the police.

I wonder what they want. Probably selling tickets to the Policeman’s Ball (that sounds perverted, doesn’t it?).

Gotta run.

I’m only human, but today I did something inhuman. I participated in the no-win game of road rage.

Now I know what you’re thinking ("give me candy!"), but just wait a minute and you’ll get your damn candy* if you pay attention for the duration of the story.

*candy not guaranteed

I can understand your typical run-of-the-mill road rage when someone cuts you off and you run them off the road over a cliff. Fine, that is perfectly acceptable, but the type of road rage I engaged in was inexcusable and unconscionable. It was a new strain of road rage. A new breed of random hatred and anger.

There I was, driving along, smiling happily as I listened to an interview with Jim Gaffigan on my local radio station, when all of a sudden my happiness had a bi-polar seismic shift.

I leaned over toward the passenger side of my car and yelled vehemently, "You slow down, fucker!", emphasizing the "you" and the "fucker".

Nothing so unusual in a road rage scenario, right? Wrong!

What caused my umbrage, the impetus for my asperity, was not an inconsiderate fellow driver, nor was it the ill-tempered rebuttal to a malicious proclamation from Joe Citizen in his Goody-Two-Shoes and a bee in his bonnet telling me how I should drive. No, it was nothing of the sort.

The recipient of my anger and vociferous explicative response was a road sign flashing the message, "SLOW DOWN" to all cars as an alert of upcoming road construction. This attempt at ensuring my safety elicited such violence in me. How dare this inanimate object animatedly try to give me advice. "You slow down, fucker!"

I certainly told it!

I felt pretty big after that, and more importantly, I made the sign feel small.

Fuck you, sign. Fuck you right in your electronic soul.

Plenty has been said about me in my day, some good, some bad, but none so hurtful as when people (either jokingly, or even worse, seriously) say I have OCD. For the most part, these are not clinical professionals. These diagnoses come from supposed friends (some with clinical degrees, yes, just not in Psychology). I take no issue with the Obsessive or the Compulsive; it’s the Disorder I despise.

I am obsessed with order. I am compelled to place things in their ordered place. I abhor disorder. It is a cruel use of language to include this specific word in labeling those of us striving for orderliness in our surroundings. Those smug sadists with their special naming powers must be giggling to themselves at our continued torment. For shame!

And it’s not a disease. At least not for me it isn’t. I am well at ease with my “condition”. There are some, though, who are crippled by it. They have problems. They are diseased. They didn’t know when to say when. Everything in moderation, folks.

Example: an unsightly black thread haphazardly fallen upon a white couch. Simple solution: remove it, check for others, remove them if found. Same rules apply for crumbs on a table, lint on a sweater, hair in abnormal places, crusty food residue on supposedly clean tableware, etc. Pick at these things until there is no visible trace they existed. It helps if you contort your face into as disgusted an expression as you can muster.

Exception: if there are too many offenses to be reasonably tackled, leave. Don’t start a project you cannot finish. I know from experience that it’s hard to walk away when you’re compelled to obsessively remove (with the distal tips of your fingers) each greasy strand of dog hair clinging tenaciously to a stranger’s wool coat. Find the strength to let it go.

This brings me to another point: germs. Obsessive cleaning to rid your house, your things, and/or your body of germs is a waste of time. Besides, they’re invisible. Germs are far too numerous to be considered worth the effort. Frankly, obsessive cleaning borders too closely on “work”. But that’s just me. I’m lazy. If you want to spend all your time scrubbing everything you own, just to start at the beginning again when you finish, go crazy. Just don’t ask me to understand, because I think that’s nuts.

What isn’t nuts is knowing where everything belongs. My desk, messy as it may appear to some, has a place for everything. The stapler is one inch to the right of the tape dispenser. The staple remover is an inch and a half in front of the paperclip holder (which always has three paperclips sticking straight up – one from each magnetic hole) and both of these things are an inch to the right of the stapler. There are twelve stacks for papers (some catastrophically high), and each stack has a purpose.

There is an order, and it’s obvious when someone who doesn’t understand order (these are the people with the disorders!) has come to borrow something, as they typically upset the natural arrangement. A few quick adjustments can usually remedy this misfortune, but the blatant disrespect is intolerable.

Don’t even get me started on foods. I won’t eat anything that will leave “dirt” on my hands or face, thank you. Nothing I have to pick up with my fingers will be eaten unless it is innocuous and dry; therefore, no barbecued anything, nothing overtly greasy, no meat still attached to the bone, and no ethnic foods that aren’t accompanied by a knife and fork.

Also, a napkin is never to be so dirty that it is at risk of making me dirtier after using it. In this vein, it is less offensive to lick the rare dab of ketchup directly off my fingers than to wipe it on a napkin that will need to be essentially clean for the remainder of the meal. It’s just common sense.

So, call me finicky (though I dislike the feline connotations), call me persnickety, but don’t say I have OCD. Maybe it should be changed to Obsessive Compulsive Orderliness, OCO. I could live with that.

When I was six years old, in 1979, I dreamed of being an intergalactic bounty hunter.

Realizing this was foolish, at the age of 7, in 1980, I turned in my hopes of space-traveling criminal profiteering (that’s the kind of bounty hunter I was going to be) and set my sights on becoming the wealthiest man alive.

I was well on my way to this goal, when in a moment of foresightful clairvoyance, I sold my soul to change my life’s wish. It was a hard bargain, but ultimately my 10-year-old will (and the use of all my thus earned capital) won out.

So, then it was, that in 1983, I set out to, by the age of 31 or 32, become a blogger, blogging minutiaely for tens of people, on a couple of friend-connecting websites on the internet.

People said I was crazy. They said these sci-fi fantasies would never come to be. I stood fast, and look … dreams do come true!!!

The best part about getting together with friends (and Friendsters) is reminiscing about our respective childhoods and laughing together until we cry and stop laughing.

Everyone has stories about how scarringly embarrassing their families are, or how ridiculous serious things at the time look when seen from afar after many years. I’ve got a great story that just totally embodies these things.

OK, OK, OK, this is hilarious! I remember this one time when my brother, he must’ve been five or six, called the neighbors (unbeknownst to the rest of us). He was crying hysterically. He called them because he was scared. He told them that my step-father was beating up me and my sister. Isn’t that classic? When the neighbors called back, my mother told them not to call the police and that everything was fine and it was all over a misunderstanding.

Man, those were the good old days!!

Ha ha ha … ha …… ha. Gotta run to therapy now. See you all later! Ha ha … ha.

<resume repression now>

On Wednesday, April 5, 2006, it was the one year bjournalversary of ‘Not So Clever After All … A Typical Blog". That means you’ve been reading this rubbish for a year of your life. You can’t get that time back, my friends.

250 entries in a year. That’s not too bad, right? I bet I can match or fall shy of that in the coming year. Just you see if I don’t.

I thought this would be a good opportunity to delve into the inner workings of such a successful* ‘blog (*success not guaranteed). I know you’ve been dying to find out just how it’s done. Well, die no more.

The best idea is to start with an idea. That’s what I do. I sit down, stir up a topic, and type it up.

If, for example, I come up with a couple ideas at once, I’ll write down the extras on a 1.5 x 2 inch Post-It note for later use. I can usually fit 30-40 things on one note (more if I use the back - which I do - don’t want to be wasteful!). I’ve enclosed a picture of two such Idea Scraps. For dimension purposes I included in the photo the new Donut Gems 8-Pack (not to be missed!).

I’m sure you noticed that the actually writing on the Idea Scraps is blurred. I’d hate to give away what’s coming up. You might stop reading if you knew exactly what to expect. I know I would.

Now, every so often when perusing my subject stash, I’ll come across something I’ve written that makes absolutely no sense to me. For example: I have written as a potential future topic: car point. I have no clue what this means. I’m sure it used to be a brilliant idea, but now it is a baffling tinily written conundrum.

What the fuck is car point?

OK, so you’ve got a subject (car point, evidently). Now it’s time to write. What I do is just start typing (15 minutes max). Pretty much whatever comes out, is what gets posted. If a joke shows itself, great. If not, oh well, try again tomorrow. I don’t really edit, except for the rare spelling mistake. If at first you don’t succeed, turn in a shoddy product, I always say.

Next, you post … and wait. The replies usually come trickling in and then after zero to a few, they stop. It is like so magical. It’s very reaffirming. You have got to try it.

So, well, that’s it. That’s all there is to it. Like most backstage tours, this was pretty boring, yes? Yes, indeed!

Now it’s your turn.

I’ll get you started … car point. Go!

—————————————

I’m scratching "car point" off the list. It’s blogged!

I have a love/hate relationship with Karaoke.

The ironic thing is that I have a hate/hate relationship with the expression "love/hate relationship".

And the double irony is that this isn’t even irony.

P.S. You’re pretty safe in always saying something isn’t irony, even when it is, because most people have a loose grip on the actual definition of irony.

So … Karaoke (I’m easily distracted). The only thing I love about it is that it’s funny. Unintentionally. Even when people are trying to be funny while doing it, that’s not what’s funny. Unless I’m doing it, then it’s hilarious. Double standards? I don’t think so.

My least favorite type of Karaoke is Car Karaoke. Or Caraoke, if you want to play clever. Usually Caraoke (I guess I want to play clever) consists of singing (horribly) the last sound of the last word of every line that you kind of remember from a song you kind of like (but no one else does). It’s intolerable. If I’m driving and you’re Caraokeing, it makes me want to drive into a garage, lock the doors, and leave the car running until we both die of carbon-monoxide poisoning. You’d probably kind of sing the whole time. I hope I die first.

Ironically, I love Caraokeing myself. But when I do it, it’s hilarious.

I especially like Madonna songs.

…… irgin …… ime …… i-i-irgin …… artbeat …… ine!

-

I don’t know anything about other kinds of Karaoke. I’ve never gone to a place that tolerates such a thing. Ironic, huh?

I have crowned myself (because I’m pretty sure that’s how it works) the patron saint of patronization.

I’m sure you don’t know what "patronization" means, so I’ll tell you. It means condescension.

I probably lost you on that one, too.

Condescension is talking down to someone because they are totally stupid.

Never mind. It’s over your head. I assumed (correctly) that you wouldn’t get it.

Look … bright flashing colors. Ooooohhh …

I bet working in a Fudge Factory is a lot like working in a Fun Factory.

I mean, can you imagine all the jokes that must go around that place? It’s so easy to pretend to swear or to make some double entendres. And nothing is more fun that that!

Like, you can tell your employees to "get the fudge out of here" when they are slow to process the shipping. Or you can tell a hungry female co-worker to "go fudge herself". Or, like every day when you clock out, you can call it "fudging off". Or, if you’re off the factory floor, you can tell Johnny to "pack your fudge for you".

The possibilities are fudging endless!!

It seems the best thing about working in a Fudge Factory is how joyfully passive-aggressive you get to be. Well, that … and all the butt fucking.