In Celebration of Independence Day

I am taking my kayak out for its initial run. In the meantime, I am again pilfering my past by providing you with this very true anecdote:


Independence Day Fireworks, Police Style

I am going to share a very interesting holiday experience with you. But allow me a quick observation before we start:

Ray Bradbury, in an introduction to the novel Dandelion Wine, wrote:

"This book, like most of my books and stories, was a surprise. I began to learn the nature of these surprises, thank God, when I was fairly young as a writer. Before that, I thought that you could beat, pummel and thrash an idea into existence. Under such treatment, of course, any decent idea folds up its paws, turns on its back, fixes its eyes on eternity and dies.

It was with great relief, then, that in my early twenties I floundered into a word association process in which I simply got out of bed each morning, walked to my desk, and put down any word or series of words that came into my head....First I rummaged through my mind for words that could describe my personal nightmares, fears of night and time from my childhood, and then shaped stories from these."

Ray wrote this introduction in 1974. The novel was penned in 1956.

I cannot take this approach. I'm not a writer, I suck at word associations, and I've driven my memory cells into a permanent state of menial submission. I cannot remember my ideas long enough to even be aware that I have had ideas in the first place.

So instead I drink. And every once in awhile a lonely beer molecule gets lucky and copulates with a random life event and ends up spawning a child named immodesty. And that's when I end up wanting to tell people something.

I present this unnecessary preamble because I want to tell y'all about the events of my July 4th holiday that resulted in the Jackson Police Department's SWAT team occupying my front lawn.

But I am getting ahead of myself. In truth it all started - Here we go: Life, meet Budweiser - with a round of golf, a cold beer and a phone call.

I'll share something with you: Celebrating the Fourth of July in Mississippi is a classic risk/reward scenario. Yes, you are not confined for the day to an office cubicle decorated with carpeted walls - did you ever stop to think about how many office workers in America toil in narrow cells surrounded by decoratively padded walls? - but the flip side is that it is mandatory that you cavort with the fifth and sixth Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Heat and Humidity. The two bastard parents of the mosquito, the State Bird of Hell. I am positive that after a weekend of basically being a walking hot lunch buffet for these creatures I have already been infected with a dormant case of Malarial Nile Fever, even though my physician is not competent enough to confirm this diagnosis.

I'll make a confession. If I were a doctor, I would agree with anything my patient suspected that they had. They want cancer? Fine, they've got it. I wouldn't care if John Smith came into my office convinced that he had somehow contracted ovarian cancer. Why fight it? If John wants ovarian cancer, John has ovarian cancer. I wouldn't even be conflicted over the technicality that John does not actually have ovaries - after all, it's marketing 101: The customer is always right. Perhaps I might steer him towards breast cancer just for the sake of plausibility, but that's as far as my ethics would force me.

So I spent Saturday golfing in the heat and humidity with Larry, watching him hit majestic drives that invariably led to me losing every bet while constantly getting re-infected with mosquito borne pathogens. Larry will retire wealthy, and he will have me to thank. He should write a book: "The Road to Wealth, Fifty Cents at a Time". By the time we are done, I am exhausted from saying "Nice shot" after each of his swings. So upon arriving at my home, I slide my drained body into my couch with a cold beer and drift happily into an early sleep.

That lasted about an hour, which is about 11 hours less than what I was hoping for. Instead of spending all of the evening having really cool dreams which I would not remember when I awake, much to my disappointment, I instead am greeted by a phone call. At 10:00 PM. Which means that it's Keith, who has just left his seventh little league all-star game of the day and desperately wants a beer to kill the itch of all of his pathogen-drenched mosquito bites. At least that is what I assumed, for I did not bother to pick up the phone as it meant leaving the couch, which I was emotionally unable to do. Unfortunately the phone call also awoke the dogs, who tend to sleep all day and consequently are not bothered by late night phone calls nearly as much as I can be. And they burst into full alarm mode, barking and howling until I am forced to crawl forth and peek out of my drawn curtains.

And a good thing I did, for there, parked 2 houses down in the middle of the street, is the biggest bus I have ever seen. Huge. So big it had 4 air-conditioning units on its roof. All of my neighbors are outside gawking. Instantly I processed this scene and came to the only conclusion that seemed to fit the facts: Willie Nelson was for some reason visiting my neighbor Eric. I don't know if Eric actually knows Willie, but Eric is a lawyer and Willie over the years has had ample opportunity to employ just about every lawyer who has ever hung a shingle, so it made sense.

Unbelievably, however, this conclusion was wrong. As it turns out, the bus parked in the middle of my street was not Willie's tour bus, but something even more puzzling: the mobile emergency response headquarters for the Jackson Police Department. Chewing on this fact, I came to the same conclusion that you have: Eric is growing a lot more marijuana than most other lawyers that I know.

But that conclusion too turned out to be incorrect. And as Eric, by this time lurking down the street so as not to lay claim to owning the house with the highest percentage of police guests in the city, stood outside chatting with all of the other voyeurs in the neighborhood, we witnessed the only thing absolutely guaranteed to raise the excitement level to an even higher state of wonder: The SWAT assault vehicle arrived, stopping exactly at my driveway.

Have you ever seen a SWAT team up close? It's intimidating. One, they are huge. Big boys, all dressed in Kevlar outfits that make them appear like contestants in a football death match. Two, they all have guns. Lot's of them. Big guns, small guns, guns that themselves have other guns attached to them. And three, these guys don't talk. They grunt, they whisper, and unless you are doing something that they can kill you for they have absolutely no interest in you. Even the mosquitoes, our constant companions up to this point, cast one beady multi-faceted eye upon these war-painted apparitions and another eye on the big armored van that in giant mosquito-threatening letters read "SWAT" and skedaddled for the night.

According to the very kind police officer that was in charge of all of the police who did not have the balls to be closer to the action, they were all in my driveway because we had a divorced father four doors down as a neighbor who had - on a lark - seized his 88 year-old wheelchair bound landlord and his 7 year old daughter and was holding them hostage at gunpoint. The SWAT team was mobilizing to launch a rescue mission while our local terrorist was calling his former Navy Seal instructor and telling him he was going out in a blaze of fighting glory.

Of course, the entire neighborhood did what all rationale people would do when faced with a potential shootout: We brought out lawn chairs and snacks.

Did you know police no longer use radios to communicate? Reporters monitor police frequencies, you see, and have a distressing habit of showing up with cameras at the precise moment that police are doing something to a criminal that they would rather not have on film. So now police use cell phones to coordinate the fight against crime while media types hunch around police scanners and wonder why crime has dropped so precipitously.

In the interest of brevity, the sequence of events Saturday evening went something like this:

10:20 PM: The SWAT team leader receives a cellular phone call.

10:22 PM: The SWAT team members give high fives, don doo rags and camouflage, and grab short barrel assault rifles.

10:27 PM: The SWAT team gets ready to deploy. Tension mounts.

10:35 PM: The SWAT team leader receives a cellular phone call.

10:41 PM: The SWAT team stands down. Guns are racked.

10:42 PM: The neighborhood forms a common beer supply.

10:57 PM: The SWAT team leader receives a cellular phone call.

11:01 PM: The SWAT team give high fives, don face paint, and grab long-barrel M16's.

11:09 PM: The SWAT team gets ready to deploy. Tension mounts.

11:20 PM: The SWAT team leader receives a cellular phone call.

11:21 PM: The SWAT team stands down. Guns are racked.

11:30 PM: The neighborhood sends out for more beer before the convenience stores close.

11:40 PM: The Paramedics on stand-by begin shopping for a bathroom. Suddenly my home is the pit stop for all on-duty city employees, with the exception of the SWAT team members who apparently do not pee.

12:15 PM: The SWAT team leader receives a cellular phone call.

12:17 PM: The SWAT team gives high fives, don night vision goggles and grab high powered sniper rifles.

12:19 PM: The thought occurs to me that I wish I had bought some firecrackers because this would be a jolly time for an innocent prank.

12:19 PM: The thought occurs to me that I am glad I have no fireworks, because this would be absolutely the worst time for an innocent prank.

12:20 PM: The SWAT team gets ready to deploy. Tension - well, let's face it, by this time it's getting a bit wearing.

12:27 PM: The SWAT team leader receives a cellular phone call.

Well. That's the gist of it. I went back to bed at 2:00 AM, joining my dogs who had lost interest as soon as they realized that none of these people had any food. When I awoke, everyone was gone. The neighborhood was quiet and harmonious. The gentleman in question peacefully surrendered, and while I do not have all of the details somehow this is being characterized as one great big misunderstanding. Go figure.

I ended my holiday on the porch overlooking an empty street, sipping a beer and swatting mosquitoes. And thinking that despite all of our problems, America is still the most entertaining place on the planet, despite the fact that we all have a gestating case of Malarial Nile Fever.

Ahoy!

That's right. I am a boat owner.

That sounds a bit impressive, doesn't it? But in truth, I merely obtained a really cheap kayak at the evil anti-American Sam's outlet store and fat people display, admittedly because I would rather see America flushed down the giant toilet than pay an extra $150 to buy this boat from someone (read: Outfitter. Now, I am all for outfitters. I buy loads from my local outfitter. But this kayak thing smacks of being a fad, and I am not going to pay top dollar for one of my whimsical fads!) who knew what they were talking about. So, $300 got me a starter kayak, the paddle and the skirt. For the record, I haven't had a skirt as part of my attire since the early parts of my Appalachian Trail hike, where I was freeballing with my kilt and loving it. But the boat came with a skirt of some kind, so now I have one again. So now all I need is a life vest and a beer holder and I will become Captain Ahab, Columbus of the waterways, a modern day Desoto gliding through the Mississippi bayous like an unbearably proud Cortez, only taller. Monsieurs Balboa and Magellan will be gazing down at me from the Big Ship in the Sky where the Navigational Gods reside and saying to each other "He's going to want a corner office".


I already have a vision of me crawling in this thing above some mighty rapid, all other kayakers fearfully abandoning the quest for adventure whilst I smirk dismissively, pop the top of a cheap American beer and sling myself into the turbulent void, music from Meatloaf's first album bouncing loudly off the walls of the surrounding canyon as my kayak lunges pell-mell into the wet frothy vortex of Hell.

I find that I have a rather inexplicable desire to put all kinds of outdoorsy-styled manly bumper stickers all over it. Stuff like "Kayakers Do It Upside Down" and "If God didn't want me to hunt animals He Wouldn't have made them out of Meat!" and "Pabst Blue Ribbon". I very much want a helmet, preferably a used one that already has a nasty dent in it. I want really cool wrap-around sunglasses with those nerdy little rope ties that keep the shades on your head during those knarly runs through - well, in this case through the Pearl River. But let's be honest here: some of those fishing boats can kick up a surprisingly large wake!

So now I am kayak man, and I have scheduled my first outing for the Fourth of July. Beers, tents, fireworks and neophyte boaters stuffed into floating cigars. Now THERE will be something to write home about.

And in the meantime, if you hear the sound of crashing splashing waters in YOUR dreams, well, it's just me flushing America down the toilet by shopping at Sam's again.

Farts.

Since I referenced it in the last meandering:

My dog farted last night.

I should have taken more notice other than to throw a pillow at him in a vain attempt to get him to leave the room. Because 10 minutes later he was vomiting on my rug. Bear in mind, I have hardwood floors. I have only one rug in the house, an 8x4 effort that is there because I am too lazy to drag it into the attic. My dog nailed it. Go figure.

So it is now 2 in the morning, and I cannot sleep. But in pondering the actions of my dog, one thought occured to me.

Gas is pretty amazing.

Think about it. What would life be like if you had somebody telling you the same joke day after day for the rest of your life? "Yeah, I know, you left your Injun running. ha ha." Ground Hog Day without Bill Murray.

But watch an infant when they cut one. They smile. Big. And when they are four and they fart, they laugh. Now watch your Dad.

It's amazing. Farts stay funny your whole life. How many farts do you reckon that you've passed in your life? You think it would be passé'. Now work a really good one up, and step into something like an elevator. Let it rip. Doesn't matter whether it is really loud or a stanky silent one. No difference. Once you've launched the mustard, try not to smile. I dare you. You won't be able to do it.

Farts. Funny for Eternity. At the end of the Apocalypse, when the cacophony of destruction fades into the silence of eternal night, one lingering soul will fart and the Universe will end on a smile.

So this is a Blog. Which button turns it on? 

A Test: Revisiting an old thought

This is an old ramble that I am posting because I need something here to see if this "Blog" thing works and I am too lazy to write something new.

In fact, for the next few weeks I foresee much reliance on old content. Primarily because I am unemployed, and as such have no time for frivolous dalliances like writing.

So...In memory of Allison:

Wet Ones


A good friend of mine has asked that I write about a topic that interests her.

This is the first time I have taken a request, and it is a bit weird. I am used to making ramblings based on left-handed turns caused by the faulty wiring of my own brain. I am not very used to making ramblings based on the faulty wiring of other people's brain. But there you go. My friend - who we will refer to as "Allison" to protect her identity - wants me to write about wet ones.


I thought the same thing! Not another romanticized flashback of sorority girl fantasies! Fortunately for us, as it turns out, Wet Ones is a new kind of toilette paper, devised by those astoundingly creative folks at a firm called Cottonelle. At first I thought they had devised a cute name for a recycled product (ugh), but actually they have created a breakthrough in toilet paper design by engineering a "moistened towelette", and "Allison" has turned to me to help her formulate an opinion on this wildly exciting new product.


Now, I don't know about any of you, but the only time I have had anything moistened or lubricated in that area has been in a doctor's office, and I didn't like it. Out of interest, why do physicians make you cough while they are violating the zone that should suffer no violation? My breath is already quick and sharp, and every muscle I have is uncomfortably tense. This isn't enough already? I have to hack as well? I am in a doctor's office, I am naked, bent over and lubed, and I am hoping I have enough money in my bank account to pay for these pleasantries. And now I have to worry about coughing in a realistic fashion? This is a situation that I do not practice for. And these physicians, men who have been stellar academicians, men who have passed the MCAT, men who have studied medicine all of their adult lives, wonder why my blood pressure is high. I am half convinced that most physicians eat lunch in their sample closet.


Not that I blame them. I mean, picture the scene for a new resident. He walks into an office with a couple of attending physicians, a handful of other residents, and a rotund guy in a white smock sitting in a corner with eyes that are getting bigger with each new person squeezing into the examination room. One of the physicians hands our resident a glove and instructs this resident to insert a digit into the patient's rectum while the physicians critique and the other residents take extensive notes on the procedure. What is the resident thinking on his first probe into the nether regions of another man's prostate? I'll tell you what he is thinking. He's thinking he's fucking glad he's not the rotund guy in the white smock.


Of course, he cannot show that, because they weed out all residents that demonstrate any normal human emotion. So with the self-assurance of wealth yet to come, he will extract his finger, hold it in the air as evidence and with an air of detached professionalism announce "His blood pressure is high.".


It's a hell of a welcome to your new career. And for those of you who read my previous comments on farts always being funny - This is one time where it would NOT be funny at all. Cut one here, and you will be told that you have to take these pills for the next three weeks or die, and you will become permanently attached to your toilet. Physicians are a spiteful bunch. Also, now is a good time for you men to make a mental note to yourselves: When you get older and the pipes start acting up, DO NOT go to a teaching hospital.You will be greeted by a hundred young residents, all of whom are wondering what a hardened prostate feels like. You'll end up doing more waist bends than Richard Simmons, and enjoying it a lot less.


Anyway, the best thing to do to advise "Allison" was to test this product, but I decided that I did not feel like it. One, it's wet. The point of the whole process it to get dry. And two, they suggest you use regular toilet paper to finish up. I shop at Sam's. Sam's only sells in quantities. The prospect of going through the checkout line with two palettes of toilet paper - one of which was refreshingly moistened - was not appealing to me. I was afraid I would be seen by someone that knew me, and would have to develop some sort of reasonable explanation for this toilet paper purchasing bonanza. ("We're having a party!").


So "Allison", while I did not field test this product, I did develop one overriding conclusion: As long as you have to use both wet and dry paper, it can make for a great advertising campaign. I haven't yet seen the current commercial that got you so juiced, but let me propose a Cottonelle/Charmin cross-marketing campaign: "Please don't squeeze the Wet Ones!".


Rumbler