Once Bitten, Twice Shy.

Many years ago, as some of you may remember, there was an unfortunate situation in Rhode Island involving the band "Great White", some pyrotechnics, and a bar full of people.  Given my inherent goofiness, I'll forgo making light of that topic as it would be wildly inappropriate.  Luckily this isn't really about that.

The thing happened with the fire, and that was awful, so there was some speculation as to whether the band would continue their tour.  The next gig they were scheduled to play was at a favorite  hangout of mine in Oklahoma City called the Classic Rock Cafe.  That bar is now closed, which isn't my fault as far as I know.   I was not aware of the fact that Great White was supposed to play there until I showed up with a group of friends for a run-of-the-mill night out, and the marquis out front gave it away.

"Holy crap" I said eloquently, "Great White is supposed to play here tomorrow!"
"Holy crap!" said everybody.  Then we all forgot about it and commenced ordering drinks. 

"Everybody" included the following folk:
Me, (colloquially referred to as Gorilla, Lurch, High-Tower, Grape-Ape, Bjorn, or Too-Tall depending on some factor or another that I've never figured out), Taco, Pierre (P), Grump, and Jim.  Jim hadn't been around long enough to acquire a nickname.

Grump put away a few beers and became increasingly excited about rounds of shots.  Tequila happened a few times.  It was at this point that one of us happened to notice that there was some commotion outside.

There was a little deck on the side of the bar facing the street, and the marquis.  We piled out onto the deck, and found to our delight that a news crew had set up and was getting ready to shoot a story with the marquis in the back-drop about the situation regarding the Great White tour.  "Will the Great White be continuing their tour.... etc. etc... "  was what I imagined the story would sound like.

A reporter with too much makeup and a scarf was checking her hair and getting her microphone situated, cameramen fiddled with tripods and lights, and the driver of the van helped as best he could by standing nearby smoking a cigarette.  I quickly realized that the backdrop of the shot included not only the marquis, but the deck of the Classic Rock Cafe as well.  That's where we were.

That gave me an idea.  I turned to Pierre and pitched it to him.

"Dude" I said.  "Let's stage a fight in the backdrop of the camera shot!"
"Alright" said Pierre.

I was thinking about how to go about staging said fight when I noticed P had begun reaching back behind him for something.  I was impressed, he didn't even look... he just reached back and closed his hand, so I figured he'd found it.  Then I noticed that hand coming towards me, and I figured he wanted to show me whatever it was he had there, so I leaned in to get a better look. 

That hand was getting awful close, and I watched it, dumfounded.  Had P forgotten that I no longer wore glasses?  Now, I used to wear glasses, but it had been a while and I certainly didn't have them on at the time, so I wondered quietly to myself as to why he'd think I needed such a close look at what he had there.  Surely I wasn't so near-sighted as that.  

He punched me square in the mouth.  Stars appeared briefly, which soon morphed into penguins in sombreros.   

I reeled around like a lopsided dreidel for a minute, then collected what little wits I had about me and did the only gentlemanly thing I could think to do, which was to administer a bear-paw to the side of P's head as if he'd come between me and my cubs. 

He hit the deck like mortars were incoming, but popped back up as if he'd packed his wallet full of bouncy balls.  Next thing I knew we were scrapping like school-yard kids over a botched game of tiddly-winks. 

Then, suddenly, we weren't scrapping anymore and I found myself sitting inside around the table with a bottom lip bigger than if I'd stuffed an entire pack of Big-League Chew in there.  P was holding his ear, rather tenderly.  We ordered more shots.

Later that night, it became obvious that we should probably go home or die trying.  The waitstaff brought us coffee on the house, which tells you something right there. 

Cell phones existed, but none of us had one.  There was a period of time when not everybody had one... that's how long ago this story took place.  Grump saved the day.  He walked past Taco, who was hitting shamelessly on the oldest woman I've ever seen in my entire life, and blatantly stole some lady's phone that she'd left sitting on the bar.  He called my girlfriend to come and pick us up and slipped the phone back to that lady as smoothly as a career ninja.   

She showed up and we piled into her car, I had blood all over my shirt and looked like I was trying to smuggle a baseball in my lip.  None of us could walk particularly well. 

Jim called the trunk, which made the rest of us jealous because the trunk is by far the best place to sleep on a 30 minute car ride.  We stopped at Whataburger and Grumps pants fell down while he was ordering.  He didn't pull them up, he just shuffled around with his tray full of burgers and got twenty five little cups of ketchup from the condiment pumps like nothing was the matter. 


Then ten or fifteen years passed and I forgot about the entire story until a few days ago when I turned on the radio and that song by the Great White came on, "Once Bitten, Twice Shy", and I simultaneously realized that not only did I have a tale to tell pertaining (vaguely) to that band, but the song isn't even very good. 

I have no idea if the news crew had the cameras rolling when Pierre punched me in the mouth, but I sure like to think they were.  Maybe it's the romantic in me that still believes... somewhere, deep in the archives of some reporter's closet, is that footage. 

It'll resurface when I run for president. 

Get Comfortable.

I had fun writing this so I thought I'd share it.  It's an assignment I had and I may have put too much thought into it.  Get comfortable.  And be warned!  The assignment was supposed to be offensive and test the limits of my sensitivities.  Here's what it was: 

Imagine you are members of a department in Washington  in charge of a nuclear fallout shelter. The Third World War breaks out, and there are threats of worldwide devastation. The 14 people listed on the board are first in line at your door fighting for space in your shelter. Because they cannot reach a decision among themselves as to who shall be left to perish, the decision will be left in your hands. In the short time you have, only a superficial description of each person is available. There are enough provisions and space for seven people, and it is highly possible that you will be the only people to survive the war. Your task is to select which seven people you will save.

1. a 25-year-old black militant who graduated from Harvard
2. a Mexican farmer, illegally in the United States/>/>
3. a homosexual football star
4. a middle-aged religious fanatic, mother of two teenagers
5. an attractive lesbian, occupation M.D.
6. a sorority girl majoring in fashion merchandise
7. a male radical hippie working as an environmental ecologist
8. a 59-year-old female community leader
9. a call girl
10. an obese and balding politician
11. a drug dealer from an upper-class family
12. a mildly retarded male teenager who is a musical genius
13. a handicapped telephone operator
14. a male midget

Choose your seven people and discuss what aspects you used to come to your conclusions. You have to justify the thought patterns and morals you used to make your decisions. Have fun with this and again please be respectful of each other!

This is what I came up with: 

The potential for world-wide obliteration of the entire human race puts a few priorities foremost in the decision of who to bring along.  Survival of the entire species rests in my hands here; to err would be to doom all of mankind to obscurity.  Seven people to carry on mankind’s glorious tradition of careening towards our own doom.  Since the decision has come down to me, and since it’s my shelter that all these mooches will be cowering within, you’d better believe that my name appears atop the passenger list in permanent marker.  I took that as a given, and that there are seven additional  seats that get to witness doomsday with me.  

My addition of myself to this equation is relevant, since my presence throws off the male: female ratio by a significant percentage.  I'll keep the count going so we get an idea of what our population looks like as it's established.  So far:  Count = me.  One man.  Seven seats left.  Engage post-conventional moral reasoning skills.

Priority one, when we open the door to the shelter and witness the devastation wrought by our own inability to cope with our petty differences, will be to stay alive.  It is going to be particularly difficult given that anything which eliminates all human life on earth probably did a number on all the other types of life as well, so food and water will be our most valuable commodity.  With that in mind, the farmer gets the first key.  The ability to farm will be crucial in the coming years.  I’ll infer that the farmer is a tough, able-bodied sort within reasonable breeding age.  We do not know if the farmer is a man or a woman.  Count:  men 1, unknown 1. 

Farming takes a substantial amount of time, and a more immediate source of food will be needed.  With any luck, the wake of WWIII didn’t contaminate the soil.  It’s probably a safe bet that it left some cockroaches we can munch on.  That’ll be fun.  Either way, hunting and gathering will rapidly become the most marketable skills on the planet, next to fertility and adaptability.  The football player comes to mind as the agile and healthy sort of hunter/gatherer type we might need.  I’m inferring from the list that the football star is a man based on the word “homosexual” verses “lesbian” used later on to describe the doctor.  The fact that he’s a homosexual throws a wrench into his value in a society hell-bent on reproduction, but I’ll put him on the short list as a potential passenger.  He may wind up having to take a few for the team in the name of procreation.  Count:  men 1, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man. 

Since every person represents 12.5% of the entire world population, it becomes vitally important that everyone survive.  As such, the Dr. gets a key.  We don’t know what sort of a doctor she is, but I’ll have to roll the dice and hope she didn’t get her doctorate in Revolutionary War history.  She’s a lesbian, which puts her in the same boat as the football player as far as how excited she’ll be about procreation.  It will probably be necessary for one of us to pack a couple of bricks in our carry-on luggage, code named “foreplay” and “pillow talk”.  She’s attractive, which doesn’t really matter but it's a nice little perk.  Count:  men 1, women 1, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man. 

We’ve got a 25 year old militant Harvard graduate.  This could be a man or a woman, we don’t know, but I think it’s probably safe to downplay the “militant” descriptor thanks to the fact that there will be very few causes left to fight for and the odds are that whatever was worth fighting over before isn’t worth fighting over now.  Graduating from Harvard is no small thing, so we’ve got a smart, spirited person of breeding age and unknown gender.  We'll be fighting for our lives.  We’ll need all the breeding we can get, and it helps to have intelligent people around, so this person gets on the short list.  Count:  men 1, women 1, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man, 1 unknown. 

The sorority girl is a shoe in just for her sheer breeding potential.  Fashion merchandise expertise will probably not be highly sought after, but she may be able to make clothes and she's educated at least to a partial college level.  From a strict survival-of-the-species standpoint she’s a must-have.  She’ll be revered like the ancient fertility goddesses of old, and we will make lady-Venus statues of her whenever she’s pregnant.   We’ll issue her a sack full of nickels, code named “cuddle-time” in case she goes after the football player and he doesn’t want to play starting line-up in the Sugar Bowl, if you know what I mean.  We’ll stash some designer tequila in the capsule to help things along.  Count:  men 1, women 2, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man, 1 unknown.

I think it will be very difficult for the politician to convince me to give up a key.  I don’t know if the politician is a man or a woman, let’s say it’s a man for the sake of argument.  I can’t think of a practical use for politics in a community of eight.  There’s a good chance politics are the reason we went to war, so maybe we can bring him along just so we can occasionally hit him in the head with a brick in order to bolster morale.  Worst case scenario we can eat the bastard if times get tough.  No… the politician is doomed to stand on the docks waving a handkerchief as this ship sails.  

I'll have to leave the call-girl on the docks too.  Who knows what sort of a person she is.  She may be able to crank-out children, but her specific skill-set is only useful once every nine months or so and we need people who are useful in a much broader sense.  She's riding on what appears to be a lifetime of bad decisions, so her credit is pretty well shot.  At least she'll be with the politician; there's a good chance they're already acquaintances, so they can console each other as they're being vaporized. 

The middle-aged mother of two teenagers seems like a good candidate, if we assume that she knows how to raise children.  Those skills will be extremely valuable, so I wish we knew whether or not she actually raised her own kids, and if she did whether or not they turned out okay.  She could be a violent crack-head for all we know, but from what little data we have I’d say we’ll need some matronly wisdom and  she makes the short list.  I'm nervous about the fact that she's a religious fanatic, since I'm not sure what that actually means.  She’d be pretty bummed about her kids getting vaporized in the war, but then again we all recently suffered the loss of the entire human race, so she’d have to suck it up and jog on like the rest of us.  She might not be excited about having more kids, but if she could pull that off it would be huge.  Count:  men 1, women 2, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man, 1 woman, 1 unknown.

An environmental ecologist seems like something we might be able to use, depending on the nature of the apocalypse.  Assuming there's enough to salvage, having a guy around who specializes in existing in perpetual symbiosis with nature seems like a pretty good idea.  The fact that he's a radical hippie suggests that at least the shelter will smell like patchouli for the duration of our hunker, which is fine as long as nobody attempts to leave the bunker in search of potato chips while the 500 kiloton nuclear device plummets towards Earth.  I'm taking for granted that he is capable of reproduction, since we don’t know his age, or his sperm count after a lifetime of bong hits.  Count:  men 2, women 2, unknown 1.  Short-list:  1 man, 1 woman, 1 unknown.

I would love to bring the 59 year old female community leader for her leadership prowess, but we don't have the luxury of filling a slot with someone who can't take an active part in the reproductive process.  We've got to keep our little tribe strong and fertile, or else we curse future generations with whatever genetic weaknesses are associated with prolonged inbreeding.  Her wisdom will be missed, but we'll figure it out. 

The drug dealer from an upper-class family doesn't have a very heavy resume.  The mention of the upper-class family only makes me believe that this person probably doesn't know how to do anything useful in a survival situation.  We won't be needing a drug dealer while we're repopulating the world.  One dock-pass for the rich kid with the kilo. 

Another for the musically gifted, yet mildly retarded teenage boy.  It's tragic, since he's already had a rough time of it, but unfortunately fine music is a luxury that comes after civilization and culture have taken root.  His gift isn't compatible with our mission.  We'll have to do the best we can to remember what songs we knew and pass them on from generation to generation by word of mouth.  New world folk songs will include "The Humpty Dance" and "Brass Monkey". 

I know very little about the telephone operator aside from the fact that there's some sort of handicap involved.  While I don't know what it is, I do know that we won't be making a lot of calls after the nationwide telephone infrastructure fuses itself into a 607 ton ball of copper somewhere in Oklahoma.  Since the seats are at a premium, and since we don't have any more information, I'm afraid this person will be vaporized. 

Had there been a situation after the final tally that suggested we needed another male for breeding purposes, I'd have taken the midget.  When I weighed in the possible evolutionary advantages of fathering small people in a post-apocalyptic world, I had to give him extra points.  Small people require fewer resources, so that could have been a bonus.  As it stands, we don't know what he's good at other than being small, so he's on the docks. 

The final count works out to be exactly eight, so it looks like everybody who made the short list will be coming along.  Here's the final crew:  Me, a farmer, a doctor, a football star, a Harvard graduate, a sorority girl, a middle aged mother, and an environmental ecologist.  That's 3 men, 3 women and 2 unknown.  With any luck, the farmer and the Harvard graduate will turn out to be a man and a woman, and we'll have a good balance of people/skills/procreation potential in our little community.  With enough well-placed bricks and sacks full of nickels, the species may well survive.  I would probably be willing to trade the middle aged mother for the call girl if it turns out the call girl isn't a lost cause, and the middle aged mother was a sandwich-sign wearer who yells "SINNER!" at everyone.  The rest of the landing party and I would probably agree to look a little harder at the virtues of prostitution in that case.  

Nothing brings people together like the threat of an impending apocalypse.  In our brave new world, where bricks replace chocolate as the most effective aphrodisiac, everyone needs to step up and work hard.  Hardship strips away all the extraneous noise and make us focus on what’s really important, like not dying while babies are being made.  Think of the children, man.  Think of the children.

image: unknowingly courtesy of this web address, where I found it.  https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&authuser=0&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1173&bih=807&q=armageddon&oq=armageddon&gs_l=img.3..0l10.548.5360.0.5587.10.10.0.0.0.0.334.1923.2j3j0j4.9.0....0...1ac.1.29.img..3.7.1426.5aAxMi-SCdU#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=zgs6GA9v_kMEPM%3A%3Bgeqr_w1L3Nv6hM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.opinion-maker.org%252Fwp-content%252Fuploads%252F2012%252F03%252Farmageddon.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.opinion-maker.org%252F2012%252F03%252Farmageddon%252F%3B400%3B300

Porta Potty of Doom: True Tales of Horror and Suspense

The year was 2006.  Summertime, Balad Air Base, Iraq.  I'd been living there for about a year and a half, working as a radar contractor for Lockheed Martin, and was beginning to feel like a permanent fixture.  It was about hot enough to fry an egg on my forehead. 

It had been a relatively uneventful standard 12 hour work day at the radar shop, and all I wanted to do was get back to my room so I could watch.... documentaries... and go to sleep.  We loaded into the truck and, since the shop was located between two runways on the airfield, radioed the air traffic control tower for permission to cross.  It sounded like this:  

"Ground, radar 1"
"Radar 1 ground"
"Ground, radar 1 is at the ATCALS site, we'd like to enter delta eastbound, cross 1-4 and bravo and exit south of the tower."
"Radar 1 hold short runway 1-4."
"Roger, radar 1 will hold short runway 1-4 on delta."

And we held short.  It was at this point that I realized I had to pee.

Nothing happened for a really long time.  No planes landed, no planes took off.  We sat there in the truck and waited for the tower to contact us.  Finally, after about 40 minutes or so, most of which I spent doing the seated pee-pee dance in the back of the truck and contemplating power-washing a section of the flightline, a drone came buzzing in at about 4 miles per hour.  It landed well short of us and turned off the runway.

"Radar 1, ground.  Proceed as requested, report off."
"Radar 1 copies, proceeding across 1-4 and bravo.  Will report when off."   

It always happened that way with a new batch of air traffic controllers.  It takes a while to get used to a new airfield I guess.  At the time, however, I found it hard to be forgiving since my eyeballs were floating and whatever muscle it is that keeps people from peeing themselves was just about strained to the point of failure.

We parked the truck and I bolted. 


The room where I lived was in a compound surrounded by a chain link fence; cypher-lock, big concrete barricades and all that.  It was towards the middle of the compound, so there were a few hundred yards between the gate where we'd park the work truck and the small island of comfort that my little window-mounted air conditioner struggled so valiantly to maintain.

I ran ahead, got through the gate and made a bee-line for the nearest porta potty.  It was only about 25 yards away and I reached it in about five strides.

The second I opened the door to that 120 degree torture chamber I knew I was in trouble.  The blast of rancid heat that greeted me was enough to simultaneously cook and gag a maggot.  I toughed it out and stepped in.  On the left wall hung the little urinal thing.  It was filled absolutely to the brim with foulness.  When I say full to the brim, I mean if someone with an eyedropper had administered one more single drop of liquid, the surface tension would have given way and created a new Lake Nasty on the floor, populated with chunks of urinal mints and chewing gum.

I turned to the main bowl and began decompressing at maximum capacity.  As I regained some modicum of relaxation, I glanced to my left and peeked out of the little vent that all porta potties have around the top.  I can do that, because I'm 6'8".  It's a little known perk.

There, coming toward me at full speed was Mike, our radio maintenance guy.  Mike was 5'4" or so, and  fairly round.  He had his head down, his shoulder up, and was stampeding purposefully towards that left wall of the porta potty upon which hung that grotesque receptacle of evil and bad things.  I looked down at it in terror as each of Mikes thundering strides sent concentric circles vibrating like a nervous chihuahua across the surface of the dark and vile pool of filth.

Mike didn't know.  He couldn't have known.

He might have known.  

I bailed in mid-stream, scrambled backwards for the door, fumbled behind me for the latch, and barely had the door open when every pound of Mike slammed into the side of the porta potty like a wrecking ball.

The world slowed down.  A Mike-sized dent in the wall pressed in towards me, carrying the now mobile instrument of death mounted there along with it.  The liquid within became a living thing; coiling, poising, angrily gathering its strength even as I fell in slow-motion backwards through the door.  The structure shuddered.  My soul shuddered.  Indeed the entire world seemed to shudder as that resilient plastic reached its limit, paused for effect, and snapped itself back into shape like a rubber band.

The resulting explosion blasted disgusting in every direction with the force of a hellfire missile.  My ponderous bulk was in a state of free fall, through the door and out onto the rocks.  Everything from my knees down was still at ground zero.  Just as the top half of my body hit the ground, my unfortunate shins and shoes were struck by the excrement detonation and were rendered instantly unworthy of ever being worn again.

I scrambled like a frightened squirrel trying to get out of a dryer.  My pants and shoes were off and in a pile on the ground even before the blowout had finished happening.  I knelt on the blisteringly hot walkway retching miserably as Mike and a number of other spectators doubled over in laughter at my expense, thinking only that I had been interrupted in the middle of taking a leak.

When the door to the chamber slowly swung open and the full impact of the devastation became apparent, that bastard Mike laughed even harder. 

I walked in my underwear the remaining few hundred yards to my room, on hot rocks in my bare feet, past dozens of armed military personnel, none of whom said so much as a word.  What was there to say?  I got back to my room, got my things and hopped in the shower for so long Lockheed Martin forgot I worked for them and put out a job listing for my position.

Good times.

Insanity Camouflage

Earlier today I saw someone alone in a car talking excitedly.  I didn't think twice about it until later, when I thought twice about it. 

Remember back in the dark ages before cell phones, when if you saw a guy walking around talking to himself you automatically thought he was a nut-bar?  I know I did, but not anymore.  Now I automatically assume he's on the phone and is enjoying the convenience of some sort of hands-free device. 

The thing that gets me is that the original nut-bars are still out there wandering around talking to themselves, but nobody notices.  Our culture has developed in such a way that certain crazy behavior no longer appears crazy.  We've camouflaged ourselves to more closely resemble the mentally unstable.   

Another example:  There were six or eight people in a waiting room the other day, including me, and every single one of us was sitting motionlessly staring at the small square of plastic in each of our hands.  Fifteen years ago that sort of behavior would have seemed decidedly odd. 

Today, if a genuinely insane person was sitting in that waiting room talking to himself, or staring intently at a piece of plastic in his hand for long periods of time, nobody would even notice. 

That's lucky for him. 

Communications Breakdown (Not the song)

                                      Our faces are touching, and it's hilarious. 

There's a gap in my ability to effectively communicate, and it bugs me.  

I need a new way to express my delight via text.  People send me funny things or post them to various social media platforms or whatever all the time.  Sometimes I really get to laughing about whatever it is, and want to let whomever sent it know how much it made me laugh, but there isn't a great way to do that...

All the usual ways are overused, lol, rofl, lmfao, roflmao, bwaahahaha, teehee, etc. etc... I don't know about you, but I've used all of these while remaining completely expressionless.  They're used so much that when I see those expressions posted I don't believe them at face value even a little bit.  You know what I mean? 

I need something that actually means I'm laughing, not that I find something somewhat amusing.  If I just say it, like "That actually made me laugh!" it comes off as a little conceited, as if I'm saying "It's unusual for something to make me laugh and I'm surprised that the thing you sent me was able to penetrate my defenses", which is in no way true.

Maybe "That actually made me laugh!" will become "tamml".  I hope not, or it will eventually go the way of "lol" which used to mean "I'm laughing out loud" but which now basically means "I am amused" without sounding so uppity.  "lol" is punctuation now.  That's not what I need here. 

There must be a simple solution.  Here are a few ideas:

IJSMPLSH = "I just shit my pants laughing so hard"
ETIAIBICSL = "Everyone thinks I'm an idiot because I can't stop laughing"
HCIPM = "Holy crap I peed myself"
MFHN = "My face hurts now"
YBYJMCSOMN = "You bastard you just made coffee shoot out my nose"

 That makes me wonder if there shouldn't be similar little abbreviations for expressing the fact that something wasn't funny at all, for example:

TWFAA = "That wasn't funny at all"
YAI = "You're an idiot"
IDTWCBFA = "I don't think we can be friends anymore"
GOMOE = "Gouging out my own eyes" (I rather like this one)

It's up to you, go forth and spread the word!