Frame n’ Complain

Though many would class me as a square by nature I have never been fond of foyers or family rooms full of framed photographs featuring my offsprang and extended hillbilly relatives. I have precious little hanging space as it is in this canary cage so why would I want to mess up my cell’s perfect white padding with a bunch of nail holes to show off moles, trolls, and lost souls? Anyway it is important not to scare away unprepared guests with sickening crime scene photos of cracks ON the wall before they are juiced with a jug of Visine and at least a sleeve or three of Dramamine.

As a matter of fact I hate oval frames or memorialized montage photo collections too especially if they are of ME, captured and preserved under glass mounted conspicuously for all to see. Who needs hallways filled with unrealistic representations of their kids when they smelled almost good and their faces were crease-less and mostly grease-free. No outsider really wants to suffer through anyone’s shrine to a perfect wedding where all of your friends look thin and the only crows feet to be found were actually on the rows of crows in the background as a Hitchcock omen of things to come.

I don’t think it’s that I am camera shy since even now as a graying ghost, I’m still willing to mug freely and be even more transparent and unappealing than I already am. Yes I admit it, I purposely tousle my tresses with intentions to impress-less, and cleverly forever-ly, never look my best-est. It’s probably just my subconscious defenses fending off the photogenically insane, from infecting me with desire for dull glossies to frame of irrelevant relatives and faces mundane.

So stuff your soft-filtered Lifetouch and uppity Olan Mills, ‘cause grouchy gazers of my ilk have had all their frames filled. Keep portraits hidden under fat flaps and between covers of books; cram them in locked albums, dark recesses, crannies and nooks. And please . . . extra caution from fast slaps is well advised; as an indignity penalty for any lasting, nasty snap framing, of pink baby backsides!

Containing burps

Given my transparent need to keep stuff, it probably comes as no surprise that I  love a clear tub with a lid as long as it’s not a coffin and makes a satisfying belch when expelling air. Who cares what the contents is or what the packaging was originally meant for as long as I can see and slosh around the bloated stuff inside. Too bad nobody makes a completely transparent car because I would be the first to sign up for one, though I would be too cheap to buy the sunroof option.

Tupperware branded bins are dandy indeed but typically too fancy for my plebeian need or the way I feed. I buy highly processed and pasteurized red tagged deli meats that usually live in the clearance corners of Costco for my hill-people hunger. Of course the skinny limp lids don’t Frisbee fly as well as the heavy duty stuff for real or clay pigeon practice, but they are fine to keep nails in or anything else that drops out of my toe clippers.

Anyway terrific ‘T-ware’ comes in too many colors for my pale tailed palette and sorely poorly achromatic attitude. Last month’s leftovers stashed in the back of our furry fridge are typically molded-over in green, red, and blue so why do I need the outside of the containers decorated in rainbow colors too? On the off chance I ever have a pyramid marketing party at this ant hill, I want see-through stuff to view the age of the victual kibble n’ bits that grabsters take home as parting gifts in their top-notched ‘Tupp’.

Though I have to admit that I do miss the pleasure of goosing a burp out of those fancy brand tubbies stacked high in the cubbies. Next to the joy from my whole tank-topped clan joined arm and pit around fire and spit belching planks from the Bill of Rights, in the end nothing’s more fun than forcing air out of a small flexible container. Just ask any lucky lug who dare hugged my young swaddled spud after I made her into a double bubble dose of a sinner by downing an organic broccoli and green bean milkshake dinner!

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' !

Animal HABITS

While every Target or WalMart has seemingly endless bins and boxes of stuffed animals to ‘hawk’, I wondered if REAL animals ever get jealous of all the attention stores pay to the fake brightly colored fur they wear?  The only real respect animals get in most stores is in the pet food aisles and even there the dirty little secret is that the protein derived from kibble and bits is made up of their ACTUAL brethren’s kibbles and bits. How would you like to wander down the canned food section of the grocery and have to choose between packed human varietals like ‘prisoner’ (a little tough but plentiful), ‘gardener’ (for you Vegans), or ‘politician’ (pickled in lard but still often spoiled).

Bovine leather is fairly well represented in stores especially in the shoe aisle, but except for boots few items reference ‘cow hide’ as the source – which makes sense because who really wants to know they are walking around in cow stuff all day. Oh sure gators and snakes have their trademark luxury bags and boots to show off in country western bars and Florida souvenir shops. However the only real ‘rattlers’ and commonly available slime-covered consumer goods are in the ‘baby’ and toy sections of stores where I shop.

With portable storage enthusiasts and survivalists in mind (since they have biologically cornered the market) you would think marsupials might have challenged ‘cargo’ pocket pants for major retailer placements. Instead, those dumb waltzing Matilda’s end up focusing their efforts WAY too far down under on lowly Underoos to pack in who knows what for who knows how long. Nobody should strive to store stuff in their skivvies so let’s just leave the undergarment biz to the silk worms since they don’t crave exposure to the light and everything slides off of them anyway.  

I guess it’s no wonder rabbit’s don’t make great garments since Angora sounds like a war-torn country and nobody buy’s brand new ripped up clothing  - except oh yeah,  denim teens hopped up on Trix and designer envy. Clearly too geese are still surly about being in the closet, since their feathers are always crammed into pillows and whenever I try to grab one to take a nap, they just duck down and try to bite me. At least the turtles have made it to the mainstream stores and clothing sections because my wife often enjoys their sweaters - but it’s too bad that they can’t make proper fitting clothes for anything below the NECK.

I could 'Carrot' Less!

My wife and I recently discovered that those little pinkie sized carrots at the market don’t grow that way but are actually carved from their big orange brethren into the mini ‘nary- a-carrot’ versions. Sadly I am all thumbs so to cut up skinny carrots in my own image is impossible so no matter how hard I try, they will end up too fat. Fortunately I am not a quitter so inadvertently whenever I get hold of a peeler now, even if the carrot starts out as long as a leg and as thick as a tree, in the end, it will always give me the finger.  

I know it would be a lot cheaper to just buy the banded bunched carrots instead of paying for the cello bag full of of washed midgets. But the problem is to this day I can’t eat a cleaned raw carrot while the stalk is still on for fear of being shot as a fat gassy rabbit raiding the root cellar. Of course that means just like most folks, I resort to the store cut packaged variety and must always entertain myself with a temporary orifice insertion or two before eating.

Honestly other than an occasional yam around the holidays, I can’t think of any other orange food I would shove in my face without serious second thoughts. Oh sure you marmalade fans will disagree but I gag just at the sight of those disposer chunks of rind and whatnot floating around in some translucent synaptic gelatin.  Also lets all acknowledge right now that slimy ‘punkin’ guts’ might make for a good pie with enough sugar and spice but they won’t win any beauty or smell tests right out of the gourd’s raw craw.

Though good for me, fresh carrots are a bit of a pain to snack on since I can’t hear the television over the sound of the carotene-crushing reverberation through my skull.  I know they can cut them down to size but can’t they grow these things in the image of lettuce or something equally feckless and flaccid so I can eat in peace? Oh well,  It seems like other babies don’t mind glass jars full of orange n’ messy goo so maybe if I stew a few, bear down and coo,  I DOO TOO!

Robot Fever

I dream of a future where robots will pick ticks off my hide better than that lazy service monkey I put up with, even though he works for peanuts. However I’m a bit concerned that machines will never be up to basic tasks especially given my negative experiences with that painful Epilady I shave with everyday. Lately even my rug Roomba has rejected my advances since its battery has become weaker and meeker as the dirt on my carpet becomes bleaker and streakier. 

It’s true that I’m no ‘shoe-in’ and a little out-of step with tomorrow’s high tech trinkets. Even easy remotes spook my simple skull and don’t work all that great when covered in grime and fist-foods that I ate. I also  can’t understand why those motion sensing lights refuse to react if my elephant carcass lumbers under one, but when a runt of a rodent dashes past, the thing lights up like an immolating monk? Though I have figured out how to turn off most digital clocks with a hammer, I am still perplexed as to why my microwave needs to know the date before giving me one to heat meat and eat freely. 

I’m probably just in a bad mood since I found out that my electronic coffee pot has a really high fever and feels hot to the touch. Actually I am pretty sure it has worsening Alzheimer’s since its brain regularly forgets what it is doing and just stops brewing in the middle of a cycle. Just my dumb luck – why couldn’t my Pyrex pot be just nuts or have Parkinson’s disease because then at least I might be able to start the day with a delicious protein ‘shake’. 

I just wish today’s pocket robots required a little less babysitting  as compared to real babies which actually protest even more loudly when you almost sit on them. It just seems I spend too much time buying bricks of specialized batteries, software, cables, and compatibility accessories to keep all of these needy new-age gizmos from getting sick and becoming a burden to me and the rest of society. Luckily humans are so much less demanding - all they want is the basics like free healthcare paid for by somebody else, a wing, a prayer, and a Diet Coke with a Mentos chaser that DOESN’T blow up in your face.