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!

FOOD POLICE

What kind of world is this which chooses to limit food choices only to certain arbitrary time periods of the day. So what if I want chocolate cherries with my Cheerios or O.J. with my mayonnaise? As long as I don’t 'spew' on you, what do you care what I eat or when I eat it? Well apparently the ‘food police’ are in full force and spreading rumors that cookies are NOT a food group and candy should not be consumed PRIOR to dental exams?

Hey I know I have been accused of being a little cracked but it’s no ‘YOLK’ that I love scrambled ‘chicken droppings’ more than most folks. I can eat those little ‘Mork’-orb eggs most any time of day, though my wife insists that they are strictly ‘Breakfast’ food. Who wants to live with tyranny like this and under the repression of a some cluck’s hindquarters? Just because chickens lay eggs in the morning doesn’t mean they have also squeezed out an IRON-CLAD ‘ipso facto’ fair-use contract too (‘cause that would be painful)!

I recently ventured into a highly recommended Thai food joint to experience the eye-watering joy of the ‘Bhut Jolokia’ ghost pepper. Now trust me these blistering ‘Pepps’ are one of the top three hottest peppers grown and they are extremely spicy but I use Capsaicin as cologne so why worry right? In any case I had to endure the restaurant owner’s 10 minute liability lecture and sign a written release BEFORE I could eat my lunch. Now society is policing my food so what’s next important stuff like socks that match, toilet rings, or heaven forbid, my GUNS too?

Needless to say I finished my ‘hot’ lunch and am proud that, ‘Yes’ I avoided the $20 ‘clean-up puke‘ provision in my lucrative, yet gassy, contract. Who knew that we have evolved into a 'regurgitation-nation' where a dude’s intestinal fortitude must be reviewed, to keep YOU, from being sued? All these weird fuddy-duddy foodie rules have gone too far. Who needs this police state - as long as I am willing to pay for the gunk in my trunk then just leave me alone already. By the way in the END, I did pay for my extra-spicy Thai food, but don’t tell the ‘privy-patrol’ - the stuff was twice as costly six hours later!

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!