HillBILLY 'Grinchmas'

Hey just because I’m always scratching, walking around with spinach in my teeth, and usually hairy doesn’t mean that I am some hillbilly Christmas Grinch. The only issue is that as I get older I would prefer if all the holiday ‘Hul-la-ba-WHO’ would just get over with a tad quicker, that’s all. Far beyond the gallons of Nyquil I brew n’ consume from the still daily; effectively from one second after Halloween through New Years day, life compresses and besieges me as one big, bimonthly burr-blur.

Oh sure it’s easy to act all high & jolly and kiss random elves & animals when mistletoe, rum-laced nog and choco treats race to the brain to free my inner ‘DOPE-amine’. But I really don’t need any more excuses to do LESS work or accost my remaining un-institutionalized friends or their laundry, with good CHEER and random acts of Christmas. Anyway, who wants Santa’s stinking perpetual pine scent all over my trusty rust-bucket and bounty of hoarded stuff for one sixth of my entire life? As long as my wife, a.k.a. ‘Mrs. Claws’, gives me permission to goof off and keep intravenously beefing up my already well powdered and sugar-coated ‘gut-muffin’, every day IS MY holiday Right?!

Yeah I grouse and whine but it’s all in good ‘ol bum-country fun. Actually my inner ‘Grinch’ is rather endearing when I start to pass ou..t - uh sorry?, … the roast beast feast to my cousin, mother, and step-daughter - who all happen to be the SAME person. While city-folk rage over the age-old quandary of ham OR turkey, ‘round here, at our ‘Road-Kill rally’ we can score BOTH, cooked over a roaring Firestone tire fire by the ‘up-chuck wagon’. Usually by Christmas though, not only has my ‘Grinch-initesimal ‘ heart abruptly enlarged, but my beltline and the pan full of cat litter under my Lazy Boy has swelled thrice its size as well.

So you coastal dwellers and holiday snobs can keep all of your fancy long drawn-out traditions, seasonally-lighted houses with the wreath adorned doors, and fake snow on your window panes. In the Midwest we NEVER take down our lights without a court order and we drive around with REAL deer and bloody antlers stuck to our pick-ups. Yes, in the ‘Zarks, we can count on the pleasure of genuine snow and frigidity to brighten our toothless smiles far beyond just the months of November and December. Gee I guess around here every day must be Christmas and I am just an old ‘inbred Grinch’ after all!

Forget gyms just EXERCISE!

Just because I don’t belong to a gym doesn’t mean I’m averse to exercise, it just means that in MY typical mental state I am not allowed to operate HEAVY machinery. No to stay fit, I want to get my ‘juice’ the old fashioned way by skulking back and forth between the refrigerator, recliner, and the litter box near the roach motel. I used to be in a lot better shape when I was young but once they invented zippers, TV remotes and the devil’s utensil – the ‘spork’, I got a little lazy and a tad flabby.

Oh sure since I type a lot and know my way around a can of aerosol cheese, you probably have guessed that I’m a world class athlete from wrists to fingerprints. Sadly it’s just the rest of my flesh that flaps and flags furiously in a stiff wind which makes me pause, not with concern, but to catch my breath. Apparently my wife worries about my cold, stiff, body too, since she routinely tells me where to ‘go’ to warm up, and she wants me to get off my coffin to increase my activity level and exercise routine.

Even during frigid times of the year I try to appease the spouse with a brisk walk together over the dark and cold Midwest tundra to Taco Bell for dinner. I don’t mind following carrots as long as they taste like tacos, and anyway you’ve never lived until you boot your way through recently thawed permafrost into a two inch layer of muddy ‘Mr. Ma-GOO’! Who needs a hot, expensive & sweaty gym when the great outdoors will suck off your shoes and offer-up 10 pound ankle anchors for free? After all bulky Hulks like me need all the help I can get, to lift and separate my Frankenstein gate, and enhance my already cartoon-creature image.

Like satanic thoughts, most of my daily fitness routine is thrust upon me involuntarily anyway, as I try to keep up with the stuff that makes trouble, breaks double, or takes a fall on top of my ‘un-loved’ Amityville shack. Inside this cavern, there is always a cold darkness stalking me, but that might be because I’m just ‘bats’ by pulling the shades and setting the thermostat too low? When it comes to graveYARD work I am taunted by millions of demon leaves and howling, windy, tree-things which need bunching, crunching, and perpetual decomposition. Now you can see I don’t really need to be banished to a gym to get in shape - I just need to be regularly EXORCISED!

Turkey Envy

Being a fan of all things ‘foul’, you can probably guess that I sincerely love a golden turkey on Thanksgiving. As a butterball myself, I have a ‘pop-out’ soft spot for sharing a pleasant holiday meal with my dandy-fam and nothing but ol’ ‘tasty Tom’ will literally fit THIS Bill! Despite that, I honestly still feel uncomfortable when around naked tawny turkeys with their prickled skin and in their pre-basted state of undress. I’m clearly no ‘Freudo’ psych-pro but this apprehension most likely speaks to my repressed childhood where I would avoid the high school showers after P.E. for the EXACT same reason.

Hey I know my ancient ancestors were ‘real men’ who had to run down and dance with anything they could get their ‘grubbies’ on just to avoid starvation. But even the most ardent and skilled ancient hunters probably didn’t shower either, before dragging a ‘kill’ back for others in the camp-clan to stuff n’ slather to the turkey tango. So ergo in modern times, I have technically already ‘done my share’ of the Thanksgiving prep. by picking-up the poultry in all its royal plumpness from the market and packing it home, right?

Oh sure you think I’m a ‘wuss’ and feel all high and mighty just because you fancy yourself as a master at buttering up and stroking cold, dead flesh per age old traditions. Remember morticians are pretty good at that too and even with their big high-brow Cadillacs, nobody EVER says they’re the life of the party. Besides, my tribe keeps me around for the NORMAL Ozark side dishes and immoral support. You haven’t really lived until you’ve feasted upon red Jello with buckets of fridge leftovers in translucent suspended animation, or my famous ‘hillbilly’ fresh greens overflowing with classy cheese-doodle croutons.

Still I wish I had the right stuff to shove a cuff up a big bird when called upon. Maybe it’s just a matter of practice so I need to stop being a chicken by ducking the plucking and start small to work my way up through the aviary food chain? I figure a finch is a cinch and a goose should boost my ‘hands-up’ experience with the egg-layers & cavity union. I am a bit skeptical though, because even if I triumph over my turkey touching trauma I still have to come face to fowl with the business end of an ostrich, ten pounds of Oleo and a toaster oven. I still don’t know how I’ll do it but like blogging, the best way is to NOT think about it and just ‘WING’ it!

Happy Thanksgiving!

The SNUGGIE clause

Well it may be my repressed n’ all-wet, Brawny paper towel guy talking, but if there is one thing in life that my wife loves for the holidays, it’s big, bulky, plain-jane, oversized flannel jammies. Who can resist the soft downy touch of a pile of (preferably washed) perky plaid lumberjack duds? Despite the occasionally dicey run-ins with Paul’s bunions and other hairy guys in knitted caps with axes to grind, who doesn’t want to know what’s TRULY BEHIND the ‘trapdoor hatch’ in oh-so- cozy ‘onesie’ pajamas?

Let’s face it though, anything flannel should never be in close proximity to normal department store silky lingerie. Do you really think foot-draggers like myself, have any desire to slink through the lacy & racy store aisles unless we’re yelling for ‘Sanctuary’ and being hunted by ‘clip-on tie clerks’ with torches? Those underwear enclaves with their nasty hooks, wires, and strings are the things of tortured dreams. I’m threatened by garments which won’t rack right and their intentions protrude unnaturally into the path of my cart’s personal space. In these ‘cess-dens’ of black satin & nude-colored hosiery, women’s burning eyes will just stare at me with revulsion and fear - but I almost always leave their stupid louvered changing rooms when asked politely.

With winter upon us I recently decided to surprise the wife with a brand new set of flannel jams to brighten her smile and warm up all of her other dark parts. Searching for new heavyweight matching P.J.’s is a big responsibility and believe me I don’t take the task lightly. The only beaten dead horse around here is me, so there’s no way I’m going to saddle my best half’s flesh with just any old flannel from Bangladesh – she’s deserves the BEST thread count that 3rd world child labor can loom.

Little did I know that my minor ‘mission probable’ would turn into a major pain in the impossible. What retail marketing genius decided that this Christmas, everyone wants NON-matching, ‘licensed icon’, half-calf, sleep separates anyway? In between the floods, famine, and random wildlife wandering the streets, did all of Asia run out of the same NORMAL ‘flan-jam’ palette of muted pastel tints, lints, and twine? Geez for $40 bucks the spouse shouldn’t have to grouse about jams with flying Tabasco bottles, Daffy rocket ducks, or even Santa’s own sugar plum fairies dancing anywhere near her happy-lap. Anyway she’s already CONTRACTED with ME if she wants a hulking , plain, & furry softy to keep her warm . . . all she has to do is enforce the holiday flannel provision known as, the ‘SNUGGIE CLAUS’!

Stinking Credit Card Colors

You’d think one of the great joys in my life is to look in my wallet and see lots of pictures of Green dead Presidents. Yes, stacks of cash are a step above the obligatory lint balls, expired McDonalds Monopoly pieces, and torn n’ tattered school pix from when my kid was half her current age. But the real highlight of my low-life, faux-leather ’billy-fold’, is my true-blue credit card, used to plump up my ‘piggy’ with pennies from every purchase.

Oh sure, I conceal and carry the Crayola collection of ‘CRUDit’ cards in every conceivable shade of the rainbow. However, most of that collective credit patina simply props up my pocket, and evens-out the lopsided cellulite bulges when I frequently ‘turn the other cheek’. Who knows what any of these credit colors mean anymore anyway? When I was a mere pup, if you were lucky enough to have a ‘free’ credit card, it was a utilitarian, dirty gray short & fat springy plastic bookmark. If the banking gods deemed you and your big ‘snob-shot’ salary worthy, you might also get to possess that other card – the enviable holy grail of true credit worthiness . . . a glistening GOLD-COLORED slab o’ plastic.

But these days everybody gets offers for Platinum, Emerald, Sapphire, and Slate colored credit cards which up until now, I had always thought were just geological structures rather than actual colors. I even recently saw a politically incorrect ‘Black-faced’ credit card, tap-dancing around premium exclusivity, rather than the more realistic ‘black hole’ VACUUM of debt, which drains your veins faster than ‘Drac’ if you’re careless. Unless he’s kissing his own glossy promo headshot, NOBODY - not even that irritating, diminutively-domed Dyson inventor-dude, wants to face THAT KIND of a sickening sucking sound.

Regardless of your favorite tint, whatever color these cards start out as, they can all bleed gallons of red ink if used indiscriminately. That’s why I always wondered why can’t somebody make credit cards out something REALLY practical like beef jerky or thin-sliced Velveeta cheese? Then at least when you get in a little over your ‘credit –head’, you can still ‘eat ‘em up’ BEFORE your creditors bestow the same favor upon you. Hmmm, maybe not such a great idea to fill my hot wallet with perishable cheesy credit cards though? I clearly don’t need additional reasons to be the ‘butt’ of my family’s hairy, old n’ moldy ‘STINK’ jokes!