Spit Shine

As someone who can attest to the virtues of being both double-stuffed and sickening sweet at the same time, you might think that goo-filled food-fun is a big part of my life. While on occasion I’ll munch on a hillbilly brunch featuring the fragrant siren’s song of Pop Tarts, pizza rolls, Rolaids and Mountain Dew, it is not my regular routine. As a rule, especially when eating, whales of my ilk don’t like surprises so naturally I flee from cream-filled krill that squirt up my snout like jelly-filled pastries , cold pies, or candies with concealed liquid centers.

Sure sugar is sugar so I should look forward to titillating my teeth with a few shots of Pop Rocks or plunging my prow into a donut pumped up on puddin’ but that’s not the case. I despise most pastries that have the telltale signs of a powder coating and a diminutive yet wet singular orifice poked in the side. Even Twinkies and Ding Dongs barely make the cut but at least their ‘entry wounds’ are underneath so I don’t have to re-live the thought of them succumbing to a gruesome duff-stuffing.

I seem to do a bit better with hot pot pies, or warmer foods roughed up and puffed but I am still not a fan of un-spooling a gavage to top off a turkey with bread crumbs or plump up the liver of a goose. Heck, I even shy away from canoodling my car’s tank with one of those long n’ greasy, nasty gas nozzle umbilicals, because everyone knows that the ‘E’ on the gauge means ‘ENOUGH’ still to get you there. Yeah, though I take up a lot of space, it’s clear I’ll never work there because black holes, the unknown, and I aren’t friends and don’t get along - plus like most sane people I don’t like vacuums.

I think the REAL problem is that I already have enough trouble keeping my kisser clean without the added worry of secretly squeezed food doo, and mixed moo-goo too from frappe’ filled-foods covering my mug. Please don’t look at me, give me the finger bowl, or pass the napkins since eruptions of this order can only call for a true industrial strength cleaner.  Believe me I KNOW - as unappetizing as it is for others to witness, to get the stuck gunk off completely, it’s a lot worse for me to LICK this!

Trees get a PASS

Sadly when it comes to trees, I can’t tell a Spruce from a Goose or an Oak from a goat but society fawns all over the impolite pollen polluters. Maybe it doesn’t take a sweaty arborist to read ‘tween the rings around my collar, but I sure could use one to take a bead on the leaves and the dirty deeds of my evil trees. I may not know cones, needles or nuts, unless they are with ice cream, sewing, or insane n’ salty mutts like me, but trees should really learn some manners just like the rest of us.

Maybe my problem with trees is because just like the government I think they are all rooted in dirt, thrive on manure, and have too many branches for their own good. Or maybe no matter how hard I have tried to ‘be-FROND’ trees  and win them over with my ever green sleeved advances, I have had to face the fact that ‘mulch’ of their personalities are wooden. I know it can get a little scary out in the elements but at least I don’t turn yellow at the first sign of frost and give everyone around me the silent treatment day in and day out.

Usually the tall and shady will show me their frequent disapproval of social norms by dropping hard hints, sticks, and twigs on my truck top as well as the knock knot on my soft locks. Though it’s probably not a surprise that trees n’ me don’t get along since I have been known to abuse their kinfolk PAPER, in both the bathroom and with penned puns. They’re just envious that I’m not frightened by the flames on my colorfully stylish swim trunks and I can at least take mine off once in awhile to air out when ants are crawling up ‘em.

I know I’m jealous  too since the dumb trees seem to get all the breaks, but I’m still sick of the fact that they lord over me just because they are tall, skinny, and spend all day tanning and avoiding exercise. I want to do that too you know but due to my poor flossing habits, I can’t risk turning into a leathery chunk of quirky jerky where my bark is JUST as bad as my bite.  Double standards STINK – so why don’t trees have to conform to society’s rules just like I do? You see, people are always happy when I LEAVE too; but oddly nobody celebrates after I chug a Double Gulp brimming with carbon dioxide and then exhaust that reprocessed air back into the environment.

Sick Stick Dip

Despite the abundance of bad habits and odd odors which emanate spontaneously from my body, surprisingly I have never smoked. I know the term ‘smoking hot’ is supposed to be a good thing unless of course you are Nascar disc brake or the inside of an overtaxed machine gun barrel. Oh sure I HAVE been ‘smoked’ a few times by smarmy salespeople or from an occasional invite FOR dinner by cannibals, but fortunately I have had few run-ins with classless cigarettes or a gust-fuss from their ruinous fumes.

As a teen I was no stranger to purchasing tobacco though since my first boss often put fire to a Briar while checking my work. So for holiday gifts I would buy the old dude some delightfully fragrant berry blends of the rough-cut stuff for his packing n’ puffing pleasure. Admittedly even I smoked a pipe or two in my life, though I was never proud of it while hidden up in the rafters trying to torch a  poor plumbing job soldering the water lines properly.

Hey just because I admired MacArthur’s stoic prow doesn't  mean I want anything to do with that nasty corncob sprouting out of it – who knows where that thing’s been? Unless somebody’s ribs are on fire and covered in Sweet Baby Ray’s then you can keep your peace-pipe smoke to yourself. Occasionally I will take a drag on a Pretzel Rod since they have all the benefits of fine Cuban cigars except for a few salt bump lesions and the fact that they fracture unpredictably when I cut off the cap.

Yes there’s nothing like taking a satisfying suck on a stick of hard tack in the back of a big car with dark tinted windows, to make you feel really important.  When I gum that wet-ended salty log it quickly inflates my ego without risk of any second-hand hot air escaping into the environment and making my clothes stink a lot more than usual. Hmmm, maybe that’s why I have an insatiable urge to play poker with dogs or call for a ‘hit’ on a mafia rival – I've clearly become addicted and a two-pack per day chain pretzel DIP! 

Stud Free Zone

Given my potato-truck style, even when wearing a tux I have never been mistaken for a suave James Bond with his rumple-free charms and oh so cool sweat-less n’ wet-less dry demeanor. Heck, even if I fake a British accent and don a dashing green ‘ensemb’ you can be INsured I still won’t strut enough stuff to make the swimsuit edition of Gecko’s Quarterly. Nope you’ll never catch me with a  “Pierced Brosnan” or any other body part since obviously studs and I don’t mix and I already have enough holes in my head.

I know closet space around here is at a premium to hang stuff up, but even with my oversized Dumbo ears as prime real-estate who needs more air vents adding to the wind noise and voices already beating on my brain? Clearly this new trend of unnecessarily perforating ones flesh-sack flaps is some kind of dental healthcare conspiracy. Call me provincial and CRESTfallen, but honestly I think these days it is ‘un-holey’ to encourage our youth to have more cavities and make them even larger.

I thought greasy teens in acne commercials are always complaining about having poor pock-marked complexions so why now are they so eager to add even more pores to it? I guess all that pent-up angst and Redbull-headed energy needs a few extra blowholes to ease societal pressures huh?  Forget cratering faces, today’s youth should VENT their passions and plaints like the rest of us do, by sticking pins in voodoo dolls, not using a Bedazzler to bang bling to their beans.

Sadly I’ll never be ‘cool’ by today’s standards since those drafty windows into my soul searching and self-realization are willingly painted shut. Yes by design the only ‘pokers’ and ’studs’ to cross my future path will  be confined to stoking a fire, building a wall, or an occasional game of cards. You see, unlike the young and dumb of today, thin-skinned old coots like myself know better than to abruptly punch pinholes in our hides without care – lest an ill-timed ‘whoopie’ leak might embarrass the air.

Green Scene Legacy

Given that the world has glommed on to the green scene now, surprisingly even I am trying to pass-on a legacy of recycling and re-purposing resources before I become the main course at the worm buffet. Like my mentor Kermit, whenever I can I enjoy being green, or at least sharing a shade a smidge south of a drunk monk’s shot of Chartreuse. If saving our precious planet means double-dripping through my underwear coffee filters before a good power washing at a public fountain then count me in because I’m always game-Y!

Even a blow-hole like me wants to protect the environment, so after a trash-bath I never let folks at the bus-stop preen downstream even if I’m seen shaking off with gleeful GUSTo. Those windy restroom dryers have a bad habit of flapping my fat and shooting my scent towards innocent bystanders. Anyway the bums who beat the drums in my ears can’t take the high pressure in confined spaces, especially if by an un-thinking tool that expels hot air faster than I do after a Taco Bell burrito. 

Since I am a bit of a pack-rat by nature anyway, recycling my leavings is more of a luxury for me than a chore though my wife perspective might not agree. Where most folks simply throw away their clothes with holes, I knows those ‘olds’ have a lot of life still left in them as dirt shirts, paint pants, rags, or in a pinch - drapes for the guest room. Though I’m always proud that I have a better plan than the ‘can’ for my ‘DUDS-ly long-gones’, I do admit, in the light of day (particularly strong sunlight) I’m not a fan of my inadvertent spotted n’ tanned ‘gams’.

From toilets to toasters, until my digits have stripped every switch, nut, or gasket no tired ol’ technology will find itself crossed off and tossed toward a meaningless end in a cold cloistered casket. No that hot, fiery, and very final R.I.P. parking space up front is reserved just for an old vulture like me since I’m too toxic for trash and too dried up for glue. But alas my lasting legacy can slouch tall since good fortune befalls all the recycled riches and ‘green’ goods I have diligently scavenged and ‘saved’. You see, regardless of my own final dark fate, the scraps and stuff I leave behind will forever serve as a shining light of hope, values, and a renewed productive life as a ‘plastic bin full of junk’.