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!

Instructions Not Included

After un-boxing  a common light fixture from the hardware store, I noticed that it came with a small folded booklet full of warnings and ‘instructions’ for  safe usage. To be sure I’m no genius but I am fairly confident, like most folks with a feeble lizard brain, I already know how to turn a single switch on and off to light up my life. What amused me most was that nowhere in the instructions did they tell me how to actually screw the thing in or what to screw it in to, so I wondered around all day holding the unlit bulb over my head until I figured it out.

This got me thinking about the rules of writing RULES for apparently the lowest common dementia denominators of society. If these mental giants are inherently SO confused, is it likely they’ll understand that it’s ok to stick Pop Tarts in the toaster hole, but as a slot to stash your wallet or dry those freshly manicured nails – NOT. Do we now have to rename and explain things like ‘deadbolts’ , ‘hangers’, and ‘curtains’  so our nation’s ‘soft-topped’ population doesn’t mistake common household items with terms of death?

For most guys even regular toilets require a lot of hand-holding to learn to use properly but none of the ones around this dump came with instructions or pictorial guide booklets to study. I all but avoid those new fancy dual flush eco-toilets since I fear making complex water to mass ratio math decisions in a place that used to be called the ‘RESTroom’. Maybe I need a licensed plumber to crack the code and show me what might happen if I push BOTH the number 1 (liquids) and number 2 (solids) buttons simultaneously – (JELLO?).

If instruction pamphlets are so important for mundane things then why didn’t I get an encyclopedia-sized set of caveats, care, and conditions for use with a complex conundrum like when my kid was delivered? Even after over two decades of experience, I still don’t know how she operates exactly or what buttons to push to get her to stop working and do what I want. Maybe the secret is I should master the simple but still important instruction-less stuff first, then work my way up to see the ‘heir in my way’? Admittedly I have a lot of work ahead because I’m still not sure if the toilet paper is supposed to be mounted flap out or flap in – or maybe I should just shinny up to the roll and throw ‘caution to the spin’!