Life's lies CONTAINED

Despite my curmudgeon-y carcass and thrifty vinyl billfold sealed in cellophane, I rarely enjoy deceiving folks or putting on airs to feign that I’m normal and reasonably sane.  Typically I take no pleasure by showing off or seeking out the best that life has to offer by shopping for fancy top-name national brands. On occasion however, when I am alone and free from outsider’s eyes and their equally jaundiced judgment, sadly even I have been lured to a battle bound for the better bottles full of the real stuff.

Since I am a bit of a cheapskate, it takes a lot of willpower to conform to societal prejudices to live large and stretch to buy off the top shelf (it’s ok since I’m tall). I personally am just as happy with a good facsimile as I am with the real thing because as long as the product does the job, what do I care if it’s a fancy brand? Yes any dumb bunny can overspend and buy the best to get beaming results but it takes real skill to buy at the bottom of the barrel yet never let anyone suspect there’s a difference. 

The key to my perfectly balanced fancy dance between boffo branding vs. product quality is to know how the ‘good stuff’ performs since in today’s over-advertised life, almost everything looks right. Often I just prefer the container itself of the name brands rather than the pricey goo inside so the second step is to sample similar products and settle on the least-costly copy, that not only stands up to my toe-low standards but beat’s my wife’s moderate thigh-high ones as well. Then it’s time for the final exam as my drum-tight grip on ‘good enough’ is put to the test and hopefully earns an exclamation point for effort and at least a check mark for smarts.

Yes once I have the fancy schmancy high-brow branded container then I am in real business as my true nature calls and is free to re-assert itself to defile the costly contents with cheaper concoctions of my own choosing. The tall off-brand pancake maple-flavored elixir is first to make the transfusion to the squatty microwave sized bottle, which tastes the same but is a half-priced cheaper squeezer pleaser. Then the dark roasted coffee grind leaves its store brand home and finds solace in a snooty brew bag by a big name – who will know?  Ahh modern society’s Nirvana at last; where life’s little lies are just the same as the truth - as long as nobody ‘let’s go of your Eggo’ early and their syrupy recriminations lead you to turn to the REAL STUFF in the bottle.

Stranger EGG Danger

While many males with an eye for pleasure are self-admitted ‘leg men’, my mind is a bit cracked and hard boiled so I turn towards other femur-free parts of the chicken with an ‘Egg yen’ as an alternative. Yes beyond the insatiable draw of black coffee and bulky robes with my initials on them, I enjoy unfertilized chicken embryos, preferably scrambled, atop buttered white toast points to begin the day. Bacon, gravy soaked biscuits and a pig in a blanket's (like me) perennial favorite – pancakes, are all fine too but nothing feeds my sunrise craving like waiting for a first class egging to ensue. 

As compared to some of the aforementioned diet-busting breakfast selections, you might think that I am an EGG-ficionado for health reasons and concerns about my advancing age and nutritional needs.  While some of this is true (I am indeed getting old), banal n’ bland eggs are not always as safe a choice as one might think. No, lurking beyond the fluffy and apparently harmless geography of white and yellow, is a disturbing reality which all too often haunts me to societal disquiet just as it did to Hyde and that Jekyll fellow.

You see it is not really the fault of the egg alone but it is the combustive combination of adding my own selfish perversions into the perfect breakfast equation. For who among us cannot admit to consuming fried yolk and albumen with the addition of luxurious flavor enhancers such as cheese, salsas, and seasonings to taste?  Indeed I too do not take my flamed-Jane eggs plain as I insist on sullying their sultry surfaces and rep by dotting the pile with a shake o’ salt and a liberal dusting of pep.

Clearly when I’m inside and church has let out, Denny’s and IHOP will never seem stranger-safe, to high society’s gentrified, their table-high progeny, and lost souls of trusting faith. Invariably those who dare proximity to the puffing of pepper over my plated egg faire, are fraught with risk from a collateral mid-bite, egg-raid air-scare. For when atomized pepper takes leave of its senses to swiftly stride through my stuffed sinus peninsula, all bets are off; since in seconds all soups will be egg-dropped and Sunday Seersucker's for sure-a,  will be Pollock-spotted masterpiece canvases - but in tossed EGG-tempera!

Mars and Venus

Fortunately when I was a young pup, my parents taught me the value of reading along with eating so with every Pop Tart consumed, also too was a paragraph on high fructose syrup and preservatives. I soon developed a rather extensive vocabulary in all the ingredients crammed into Lucky Charms beyond the oats to make them ‘magically delicious’.  This early education came in handy later when I finally ventured out on my own in the world by 50 years of age looking for things to read, eat, and eliminate all at the same time.

Naturally at least part of this skill has proven helpful in navigating the ways of the world especially when I travel. No it is not often I find a full place setting in restrooms or an edible morsel that has not already been passed over by vermin, but frequently in foreign lands it is important to read and enter the correct gender door to the toilet. With this in mind, why then is it so difficult to mark doors properly and legibly so that anyone - blind, dumb, or confused (or all three like me), can determine their gender and choose an appropriate loo to lounge in?

While I have accepted the dull lanky stick figure form of the male, and equally uncreative female stick icon in a dress as the representative placard for restrooms in America, it is not necessarily so overseas. Other countries prefer to reflect the fact that people often have tiny heads in comparison to their bloated bodies, and depending on how much spicy curry slurry they’ve consumed they might be in a blurry hurry to find the right water closet fast. So if this is true, why are their icons so confusing to my uncreative mind. Is the restroom for males the ‘fat running blob in a hat’ or is it the ‘jumping blob with a sack’ – and who knows which room is outfitted for babies since by definition all babies look like blobs?

Forget this Mars and Venus stuff since nobody really knows the gender of any planet. I don’t really care what the RIGHT symbols look like as long as if we can just agree on choosing ONE universal standard to read that applies to the appropriate gender in question. I’m not really worried though if I wander into the wrong toilet as I reach advanced age as long as I only travel in Spanish speaking countries. Because at least there nobody’s offended if we geezers misread the signs between the Senor or Senores, because when you gotta’ go any port in a storm is OK, when you have a ‘SENIOR movement' !

Dinner Drop-ins

After years of salsa abuse and my own special brand of blackened anything cooking, I have developed a fairly tough gut for dining. So pick your peppers and dose me with the feisty ghosties or hurry with your spicy curry – it won’t matter ‘cause I can take it. Yes my steel drum of a tum not only weighs a ton but it’s lined with pig iron too so I’m forged from Diet COKE and squeal until filled with grease, but am rarely nauseous.

Now don’t prove me a liar by placing my puffy pink posterior on a tip-toppy yacht in awful sloppy chop. Don’t roll me in coasters that are stead-fast boasters over their belly-churning loops and adrenaline swoops, best fit for gung-ho young souls. No, as long as my bloated bobble-head remains gray-side up, spin-less, and vertigo-free, signs of chyme will never reach the white light of day, pester guests, or decorate unsuspecting shirts with regurgitant leis.

So with this in mind clearly there is little risk in admiring the scenery of my neighbor’s gorgeous greenery. What possibly could turn the tides of my insides while un-canning hot-plate condensed soup or tossing cold-bowls of shivering salad for simple supper sustenance? Logically nothing, except  the bright, green-bladed grassy knoll next door at first blush is not as peaceful as it seems, for secrets hide within its lush brush – the stuff of darkest dreams.

Only two unbridled rhinos roam this land yet clearly freely frequent its open spaces looking for a bank in need of very big high yield deposits. What turned my face of fascination to one of ashen was the horror of my neighbor in tippy-toe terror, repeatedly ringing her yard armed with a fanged feculence trap, mapping unappetizing tubular Gigantor scat.  Suddenly with every weighty skewer of manure showed, my sturdy stomach’s hunger bowed, and soon made an up-turned pitch towards worry, in need of a pink Pepto potation cure in a hurry. Since Christmas is far away a recurring fear of coal stowed in my red n’ green hearth sock should not rank priority today.  But given a possible premonition from my neighbor’s frighteningly saggy baggy collection, my fireplace should shudder in fear, if Santa’s hefty sack is stocked to the top with a year end full from eight regular reindeer!

Toil of the Soil

It always amazes me that as soon as the sun lingers a little longer in the sky and frost turns to dew, me and my fellow suburbanites head for the hardware store for endless buckets of multicolored mulch. Oddly for such a truly ‘green’ product made up of chunks of recycled tree branches, bark, and stumps, the stuff seems to be seen in all colors but GREEN? Who knows, maybe I lichen the look of a mold covered flower bed to match my rotting roof and anyway what’s so wrong with pairing a little red n’ green for a Springtime Christmas scene?

I wonder if this annual obscene dirt-dance offends those of us who struggle for a meal or an occasional hosing off of their darkest nooks and crookiest of crannies? After all vast vats of cash are routinely exchanged in May so my ‘burb-bound milky-skinned ilk can don crisp pairs of button-down blues, farmer tans, and make handsome houses of ‘SILT-repute’. It bothers me that I’m dumb enough also to join-in and waste gas by hauling around big brown bags of musty-have mulches, simply to cover up my slightly ‘less-brown’ mounds of soil in the planters and gulches.

Since my yard’s dandelion and crabgrass needs are always satisfied and not pressing, it’s unclear why society has scorn for the already in-place brown mud and dust made of nature’s fav top-dressing. Most anything already grows in the stuff and its use results in less of a stress-y mess and all the loss from expensive mass distribution and compost-y cost.  I guess there’s good reason, like shy deer won’t try our former glory-plant’s gnawed-off leftover stalk, without the scent of fresh mulched earth nearby with ‘choco’ dye on the top.  

But never fear there is an upside to all of this mind-numbing mulching since my neighbors actually have new-found respect for me and are amazed that I can take on such a big job quickly without outside labor. While I appreciate the kudo-reaping and end results of my solo grounds-keeping, it’s actually no big deal to my better half who could do just the same alone in my stead. Yes the wife and I have similar down-to-earth independent natures and are always up for gritty challenges so she'll not be impressed . . .  since in many times past, she has encouraged me to soil myself fast!