Pumpky le PEW

I don’t mind fruit and veggies as long as they know their place in the home. They are supposed to reside in unused decorative kitchen baskets, so duped visitors THINK I eat healthily. Or if our produce has been particularly bad, I hide it in ‘the cooler’ so it doesn’t become even worse before I throw it all away. But recently for the Autumn festivities, I chose a large attractive pumpkin as the centerpiece for our seedy shanty. Even the grocery sack kid noticed that this pumpky was unusually light for its size but who cares, I’m lazy so less heft for me to carry home - right?

So I proudly presented the rotund orange orb to my wife as some kind of Harvest offering, and she immediately proceeded to make a heaping shrine to all things ‘Ween’ smack dab in the middle of the kitchen table. Now this presents a problem for me because ‘El Gourdo’ has broken the first rule of produce by partnering with me at dinner, despite the fact that he is not fried, buttered, boiled, or knifed. But to further my angst, our table is also not all that big, so now where am I supposed to wolf down my trough of chow – off my ‘gut shelf’?

I could probably patiently live with the first two problems until October 31st but little did I know my bulbous cucurbita consort, even in his pre-Bris natural state, SMELLS like it has dirty orange 'farmer feet'. Now I have been buying and defiling pumpkins at Halloween for a long time and I’ve never had one reek worse than me before. If I ever carve the obligatory triangle facial features into this rotto-‘stink-squash’, the only things that will show up on All Hallows Eve will be the flies and even they will have to wear teeny-tiny gas masks.

Every morning before I brush my teeth, my wife already endures a daily eye-watering Sasquatch encounter, so now she gets a double-dutch dose of ‘sasSQUASH’-stench too. Since I am such an environmentalist, I had no choice but to act and prevent this unholy gas giant from adding to the polluted air that we breathe. I pulled out the serrated long box and entombed that big orange melon ball from top to tail in shiny aroma-free clear plastic. I did leave a tiny ‘pew-gap’ in the wrap though, so just a whiff of acrid air remains suspended in our house. Not only does it keep the neighbors away but I didn’t want my method to work TOO WELL, just in case the wife might get some ‘funny’ ideas – and a LOT more Saran wrap!

NOW ‘EAR’ THIS – Be responsible…but do it quietly!

Yeah you may ‘call me irresponsible’ (or even sing it) but I am not a fan of those disaster sirens or just about any noisemaking warning device. Isn’t there already enough barking, Aflac quacking, and ting-ding ringing going on in today’s society to drive most any Grinch over the edge? I’m all for safety but what genius government agency decided that a gentle nudge with a cattle prod was barbaric, but loud excessive auditory stimuli is humane?

What’s worse is now our emergency sirens have been upgraded so they can even TALK to me when frightened public servants decide I need a 3AM wake-up call. I mean c’mon crash somebody else’s REM sleep party - I’m already hosting a platoon of voices in my vacuous skull full of burping Tupperware, so who needs yet another one? Never once in my life have I seen an effective air raid over my hut or worse, a free-range ‘one-too-many’ tipsy Godzilla tearing down my town.

Also now when skulking around the ‘burbs’, every cross-walk I encounter seems to bark some kind of warning chirp & chime. Some even squawk a doomsday countdown clock if I haven’t blazed across 100 feet of tarry roadbed in 3 seconds or less? Geez I don’t even think that Jamaican ‘BOLT’ guy can run that fast much less a dragging leisure-geezer like myself? Believe me I’ve been married a long time so I don’t need a shrill harpy ‘ice-pick in the ear canal’ reminder to know when it’s time to clear out of the way – my wife has been defending our refrigerator for years.

So hey if you are dumb enough to park your bike directly behind a trash truck or semi no amount of high pitched peep-beeping from a ‘back-up alarm’ is going to save you from yourself anyway. I just can’t imagine Daniel Boone, the ‘Abe-inator’, or even those poker playing dogs memorialized in felt, requiring so much ‘hand-holding’ in their era. Unlike today, those folks let the chips 'clink' to the floor as they may and understood, THAT was their one and only auditory warning. Sometimes it's not fair but the tenets of self-reliance, responsibility and yes, even the possibility of death are significant tests in real life. But compared to our current needy and feckless populace, our ancestors just seemed readily able to grasp and MEET their challenges with a little more gusto - and with A LOT LESS NOISE!

Humbling Challenge

Since I have a couple of gunboats that have been apparently mistaken for feet, my wife has decided to kill me with her personal Bataan march towards a goal of one MILLION steps by mid December. While that might be fine if she had informed me a couple of years ago but she must not have noticed they are selling pumpkins in the stores now. So that leaves us with nary two months to complete 8,000 steps per day to help achieve her stupid foot-fungus goal.

Oh sure I applaud my wife’s healthy ambition to pound the pavement and carve off the kilos, but how did I get sucked up into this Dr. Scholl’s delight of daily drudgery? As long as I watch my salt intake and clean up after my slime trail, I kind of like being the resident slug anyway. Street walking in the shadows is fine if you’ve got the legs for the job but it’s my calloused feet and personality that rub people the wrong way. If only somebody could invent a machine to handle the burdens of BIpedal locomotion, I would get on that Midnight express train in a hurry and turn into a ‘BUY’ guy with bells on to seek freedom!

So low and behold at an estate sale last week, the ‘Big Wheel’ himself must have heard my incessant whining and prayed to shut me up. Yes, opportunity rolled over my toes that morning, in the form of a drop dead price on a stealthy, 2+2 on the floor, black electric wheelchair with a seatbelt and cool joystick to match. Now this is what I call living – why didn’t somebody tell us new-age upright primate gladiators about these horse-less chariots before? Once I clean the dirt off between all of its ‘moto-toes’, even I can glide through a million steps in the next couple of months. Better still as a bonus, with this ride I can circle the wagons and DO donuts in the parking lot while I eat glazed ones too!

I mean honestly, chasing the mail truck and the neighborhood wolf pack down the street has never been so much fun, though now climbing stairs and reaching for the choco peanuts on the top shelf is an unbelievably sweaty pain. Currently I’m perfectly healthy, but whenever I ROLL in that chair, my TOOTSIES literally look and feel powerless and it’s very humbling. Unlike the truly challenged who need these wheelies to move-on with their lives, when I tire of complaining about my insignificant toil, I can simply CHOOSE to get up whenever I want. So my choice now is to WALK HAPPILY with my wife, however long she needs, and wherever she wants to go while I still have the chance. Oh and don’t worry about my milk chocolate covered ‘Robo-Rolo’ - I promise we’ll find it a good home with a much less whiney and far more worthy CHAIRity in need!

Everybody ‘NOSE’ it’S NOT syrup

Rarely I wake up in the morning without a jump start from licking a 9 volt battery, but even then I don’t spring to life with limitless pink-bunny energy. Like most loony baboons, I ‘doo’ what I have to do, but little else so I won’t unduly embarrass myself in front of the troop and my homeless alley-mates. Of course I brush, blow, & baste like all good zombies, but I should not be expected to be witty, scratch-free, or even understand ‘Ghoul-ean algebra’ until at least 15 minutes after sunrise.

So the last thing I have energy for in the first of the morning, is to fend off a thick gelatinous ring of gooey ‘Food Boogies’ from the sticky snout of my syrup ‘ba-ba’! Oh don’t act so uppity - yeah I said it and how many times must I warn you not to read my tripe while eating anyway? I can’t help it if your gag reflex has not yet been battle-hardened to the horrors of a seeping head-wound from Aunt Jemima’s nasty noz-noggin.

Yes, around here, we seem to have a growing epidemic of coagulated condiments in that handy-dandy ‘flexi-squeeze’ packaging. I mean who doesn’t relish the fun in popping a top on a ‘gunkified’ ketchup bottle or fondling a dilated and crowning upside-down squirter, with a crusty mustard-pustule tip of Grey Poupon? The only thing worse for me then hanging those scabby ‘goo-cocoons’ over my burgers n’ brats is having to clean and blow-free their snotty little spouts into a wet-nap-wipey without weeping woefully.

I don’t know when those ‘easy to knife’ cavernous jars with lids suddenly became so out of fashion? My ‘wide-mouth’ still seems to be working just fine and has remained relatively paste-less and tasteless, even after shoving salsa pablum in and out of it for a half century now. Oh sure the sinuses suffer and that spicy stuff can make my rosy nose-y unruly and occasionally ‘run away’ by my flagrant use of abrasive Puff-less off-brand Kleenix. But never fear I’m a mystified ‘drip’ with a nasal irrigation plan ‘cause my nose knows just what it needs – an easy-squeezy sinus-schnozzle!

Rocky Road Recipe

Despite the advent of those little GPS travel boxes, I still love the romance of maps. I can stare at them for hours and run my fingers along roads, rivers, and CREASES imagining the countless places I can go when people tell me to ‘Get Lost’. I love seeing rare oddities in mirrors and discovering unusual places like a ‘full serve’ GAS station or a Polish hot dog shop, which apparently in some communities, is the exact SAME PLACE!

I have no need for my usual ‘puddy tat’ toys, fancy entertainment or complex puzzles whenever a map needs re-folding. I can literally spend hours trying to get a 4 X 5 foot map back into its flattened glove-box ready state. More often than not, un-folded maps will never again escape the size equivalency of a crumpled basketball and therefore are more suited to be recycled as a lumbar support, or for those really long road trips – ultra absorbent seat pads.

For some odd reason the street signs in the Midwest U.S. all have the same standard street names like First, State, and Main. The only difference is that each sign will have a varied suffix tacked on the end of the name like Road, Circle, Drive, or Way, though I always seem to end up in COURT? To make matters worse, even neighboring communities in short proximity to different U.S. States will have the EXACT SAME named cities in addition to those common stock street names as well. What is the problem - along with steel, cars, and VCR’s, are we now so lazy and incapable that we can’t even invent original names for our own streets and cities either?

Now this map clap-trap is clearly an untenable recipe for taxi hacks, street-people and perpetually confused kettle-heads like myself. Why is it so hard to mix up a few random Romanic letters with a dash of hyphen and add some flavorful expressions to make-up an easily memorable, half-baked yet original street name? My family happily looks forward to the day when I will be able to sanely drive my pickled brain to the intersection of ‘FIRST light’ & ‘STATE-of-mind’ without the need for a wrinkled map or a straight jacket. The goal of course is to eventually navigate, and hopefully legally parallel park, with NORMAL people, along a very busy but narrow ROCKY road called ‘MAINstream’.