Caveman Meets Cavewoman

Paranoia

Part 23 of 30

I've got it going on a few days with the caveman, today accompanied by a beautiful blonde cavewoman, thrown in to soften up the place and give her the satisfaction of existence, such as it is. No matter what, I'd say just having her around would definitely make the toughness of life easier to handle. She'd be great to share life with, the ups and downs, conversation, and whatever followed from a quality relationship. She's got it going on.

But -- easy come, easy go. Anything you receive something (or someone) you can just as quickly lose them. I mean, I'd never do it to someone else. And full respect to everyone trying to cope. If you had something, unless you took it from me first, I'd leave it with you. But not everyone's so kind. I was just at the grocery store yesterday and someone stole a sack of groceries from me, true story. Which was weird, because she must've thought I had caught her, so she acted like she wanted to help me if I was missing something. I thought it was kind of weird, but figured she was just being friendly. Then I got home and was missing a sack of groceries, the items, and figured out the whole weird story. I'd never do that to anyone.

I want to examine this situation a little closer. Pretty decent curves, huh? The face, a very friendly look, like 'I'd never do you an ounce of harm!" And "I'll be right by your side, come what may, whatever enemies we might face..." And that's just the dinosaur, the woman would probably mean well for me, too, making the three of us a force to be reckoned with. She seems to be pointing, not quite, to the pile of lumber the Creator stacked up for the caveman, to build a cabin or carve out a cave.

The situation then turns a little sour. This has happened to me. If you think there's the slightest security -- smooth sailing from here on out -- you realize, no matter what, security's shaky. One day of happiness quickly overbalanced by three or four years of misery. There's karma, then there's Super Out-of-Balance Karma, the terror of unmerited discipline every time you think you've gotten a foothold on the future. In reality, it's more like a footHOLE, something to trip over, stumble over, and sooner rather than later fall into. If the hurt doesn't kill you, the embarrassment of it will.

Then you get a few neighbors. They see your weakness and move in. "This guy won't mind if I park my carcass a house or two down." Then he sees my hunting and fishing techniques, steals all my patents on things, the Anti-Pterodactyl radar, etc., and finishes off his victory with a brand new relationship, a certain blonde with a fickle heart.

Rodeo Tail-Flip Beats Dinosaurs

Part 8 of 30

The Mam & Pap

Royal Splendid Traveling Rodeo

World records are a lot of fun. Of course they take various forms, the big huge official stuff, like when the first guy ran the 4-minute mile. Which is what a good laxative can do for you. Then the unofficial stuff no one thinks of, and maybe it never happens, like, say, the guy who wore his dentures the longest without taking them out. Someone had to! Just glad it wasn't my dad.

And that record could be beaten by now if we knew all the details. My dad had false teeth and put them in a container at night. So obviously he had no discipline when it came to world records, unless it would be the longest unbroken streak of putting them in a container every night. If he would’ve striven to keep them in his mouth the longest, that might've been something. But he didn't care. If you want the glory you gotta have the guts to put up with a little discomfort. In dad’s case, he was too crabby to try.

I’m probably the world-record holder in something without even knowing it. You can do dubious things and honorable things. For example, I keep my lawnmower in the dining room. I needed a place to keep it so it wouldn't be stolen and my dining room's pretty safe. But how would I find the current world's record? I could even actually push it room to room everyday, with lots of world records attainable. But it's not a great distinction. A bigger distinction would be “The longest a guy’s kept a lawn mower in the Big City without someone stealing it.” And I can’t brag about that because the thieves would show up.

Mam & Pap were always looking for unique aspects of the show to advertise to bring out sightseers to share the glory, but whenever it seemed they had something it turned out to be average. Finally, the perfect rarity jumped its way to immortality, a horse whose tail cleared an extraordinary 9+ feet, the highest such clearance reported since the time of the dinosaurs, which was the distant past. Way back before the Pilgrims, before the Model T, and predating Abraham Lincoln, incidentally my spirit animal, totally ancient compared to me.   

The tale of the tail is a great record, having been scrupulously documented, the documentation now lost. I heard some yammering naysayers were disputing Mam & Pap's claim. To which I say, Give me a break! Mam & Pap lived a good moral life. If they said something about their horse's tail, their word's good enough for me! These people were good as gold, and their word better. But because dinosaurs are no more, obviously there's no way we can show a dinosaur's pathetic vertical leap again. Think about it, though, a dinosaur tale weighed around a ton and a horse's tail is about 12 ounces. Which would be more likely to flip higher with a vertical jump?

Why Aren't There More Natural Disasters?

We have a few tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, forest fires, and volcanoes and we think we have it so bad. Or an occasional asteroid comes within 2 million miles of us and we're concerned. How about crying me a river; that'd be a disaster!

I think we have it pretty good. It could be much worse. I watch some of the science shows and they say we're in the "Goldilocks" area of space -- where it's "just right" -- although I saw something by a guy the other day that disputed that. He had stubbed his toe getting out of the bathtub, probably.

The fact is, so far, the Earth's had it cream puff easy. Somehow, even when an asteroid did hit the planet, it made it better, clearing out the dinosaurs so we could evolve in relative peace. As much as I like watching dinosaurs on TV, the idea of one crunching my body the first thing in the morning is unappealing. Look at my scrawny little physique ... How desperate could a dinosaur be?

All we have to do is compare the Earth to other planets to see we have it good. There are storms on Jupiter that last thousands of years. Imagine that. The nightly news, "The storm continues yet another day." There's planets that have no atmosphere but pure methane. We catch one whiff of methane on Earth and we think we have it bad. There's planets where the oceans are 5,000 miles deep. I can't picture that. If the Titanic sank, that's the last we'd see of it. Saturn pulls on its moons so forcefully, they're literally reshaped everyday. Is your yard in a different place everyday?

As far as I'm concerned, all this is good and proper, especially since we can't do anything about it anyway. But were we there, it'd be bad. We can literally thank our lucky stars that Oklahoma only gets wiped out by tornadoes three or four times a year. Because comparatively, that's nothing. The only thing we want to avoid is messing up the balance and making things worse. We can do something about that.

Then there's hurricanes. They come around at a particular time of year, when the air and water temp are just so, along with the spinning of the Earth, and, according to the crazies, whatever God's mad about. It's funny that God's supposed anger happens at a particular season of the year that can be explained by natural forces. But there's no disputing them. According to Pat Robertson and others, God might be mad about a gay pride parade in Louisiana, therefore this perfectly natural force partially destroys a city.

But assuming that's so, what about all the planets -- out of hundreds of billions, there have to be a few -- where it's hurricanes all day everyday? And no one lives there, except maybe one lone weatherman crying in the tumult. The truth is: Since there's only 26 hurricanes possible on Earth a year, so we don't run out of alphabet to name them, God can't be that mad. The whole theory is crap.

The same thing goes for plagues, diseases, infections, and sitcoms. At times, we're besieged by them, but in the whole context of things, it's nothing. We enjoy a certain balance of what seems good and what seems bad. I personally hate mosquitoes, but in the whole scheme of things, they're food for something else. So who am I to complain? I'm outside five minutes a day, try to bite me ... If you must.

Our Feathered Friends -- All Flights Grounded

Everyone knows I've been feeding our feathered friends outside here in my back yard. So far, I have accrued many good experiences and memories; it seems I'm constantly pumping my fist and shouting, "Yeah!" They come swooping in from everywhere, all the cardinal directions. They stay a while, then they're off. Our feathered friends are a very skittish breed. I have my doubts that they're truly evolved from the dinosaurs, unless dinosaurs were the biggest cowards on four legs!

It's been a lot of fun. I mean, I feel like shouting "Yeah!" right now, because, if truth be told, I've really gotten off on watching them. The dinosaurs somehow got the gift of flight, and they're not afraid to use it. Seriously, they can make a hairpin turn in midair without batting an eye. And the ability to hover -- literally to hover -- in one spot near the feeder is nothing but phenomenal. I can barely stand next to it without getting tipsy and falling over!

I buy feed in 40 pound bags. When I'm carrying it home, necessitating many sit-down breaks on the way, I keep thinking the same awesome truth: What is so extraordinarily hard for me to carry a few miles will be nothing for them, because they're carrying only one grain at a time. They've really taught me an interesting lesson on carrying things. It takes me forever to carry 40 pounds of it, but they rip through it in no time (a month) only carrying the one grain.

Now, though, today, my fun is on a brief hiatus; I hope it's brief. And it's not through anything I did, or attempted to do; it's through the weather, or from the weather. The weather turned off bad. We got literally dumped on with snow. It's everywhere, clinging to the trees, scattered and piled up all over the yard, as far as the eye can see. The branches were drooping ponderously. It reminded me of that magazine Al Bundy used to read, Big-Uns. In fact, the branch that the feeder was hooked to was drooping so far down, thanks to the weight of the snow, that the feeder was literally on the ground! I have since disconnected it till I get it cleaned.

But obviously it hasn't made any difference to our feathered friends, because they have not made an appearance today. I have looked out probably six times and haven't seen hide nor hair of them. They've totally vacated. My first thought, They flew farther south. Then I thought, No, they're just staying cooped up in their nests. Perhaps in their little world all flights have been grounded. All feet on deck, to clean snow out of nests. We ate yesterday, today we work.

It's amazing how similar we are. I had to go out today and clear out the driveway of all this crap. So I know how much work it is. You haven't got time for flying. You haven't even got time for eating. But pretty soon I will get the feeder cleaned out and replenished, because I'm expecting they'll be doubly hungry tomorrow.

I really have this weird feeling, What did our feathered friends do before I started feeding them? How did they ever survive?

Watching The Mosquito Bite Me For Hours

Do you have the discipline to sit unperturbed by anything? A child throwing bricks at you? A nearby train jumps the tracks? A lightning strike so close it burns your shoes off? I suppose you do, although it's possible you don't, like one-in-a-million.

As I write this, the house next door is going down the hill in a mudslide. And yet here I sit, trying to think of the next sentence. There's a tiny bit of curiosity -- I won't deny it -- about what it might mean for my own house's foundation, but I'm not going to let it worry me. There! I've put it ...completely ... out of mind.

Let's think of it in the context of the long term: If it had happened 100 million years ago, I wouldn't have been concerned about it. Even though a lot of crazy stuff did happen 100 million years ago. The dinosaurs were wiped out by either an asteroid or overzealous NRA members, and I didn't bat an eye. Then, too, if it happens 100 million years from now, I don't see myself really caring. So why should I care today? Just because I'm here? I need a better reason.

No, just like you, I choose to focus my thoughts on essential Oneness, and the well being that comes from that. A dance of glad hearts, whether in obvious joy or in so-called suffering. Nothing can disturb us! Not even a mosquito!

I have a twinge of something rattling around my mind as I mention mosquitoes. Because usually I don't care for them. Them or any kind of bug. Especially the kind that crawl or land on us and start biting and/or sucking. Look at the picture. It's creepy. Like an alien spaceship. Then there's the reason for its visit, that little straw going from its mouth to its host. It's piercing the skin, going down into the muscle, into a vein, and drinking its fill of our precious lifeblood. It's hard to ignore!

But if you're going to rise above all distractions, ignore it you must! There it is, in my focus, not disturbing me all that much. I'll just watch as it bites. If it persists beyond what seems a normal length of time, I will glance down and see how long it can go. If it persists indefinitely, I will reward its persistence by allowing it to hang on. It's merely tending to its own needs, just like I'd do if I were in its shoes.

As time drags pleasantly on, the creature gets bigger. Then bigger yet. Then the biggest of all, completely plum full, like a tick but not quite that round. I don't see how it can suck any more! And finally, as if reading my thoughts, with my thinking a little unsteady from the loss of blood, it withdraws, wipes off its straw, and flies away.

How about this? After it leaves, I put a toothpick in the hole to keep its place for later. A little less wear and tear on its stinger that way. Very admirable of me.

It's so great not being disturbed by things. This is truly the path to complete bliss.

He Had His Wisdom Nuts Removed

This guy I knew had to have the worst operation a man can imagine. It's what a lot of us fear but have never dealt with, the removal of the wisdom nuts.

They're always up there, like wisdom teeth, but they're usually in a state of quiescence, more or less twiddling their thumbs. The theory is, if there's nothing to trigger them, they're simply dormant your whole life. That's what usually happens. But if triggered, God forbid, their descent means nothing less than certain death, or in milder cases, excruciating pain and embarrassment.

What triggers the wisdom nuts to descend? Most men have nothing to fear, since the basic trigger is the fairly uncommon practice of masturbation. Thanks to the discipline of self-control, begun in our teen years, most of us are completely safe. But there's always that foolish few... And they are in even greater danger if they happen to be fantasizing about larger women or dinosaurs. That's not a slam against larger women, because it's an evolutionary fact that a man will psychologically feel less capable of satisfying a bigger gal, hence the triggering of the extra nuts.

As for dinosaurs, many of our ancestors were the victims of dinosaur attacks. They'd be climbing a tree to escape and a dinosaur would bite off their nuts. Then, if they somehow made it to safety, their wisdom nuts would descend, of course not knowing there was no sac to hold them, as nature had somehow neglected to create a wisdom version of the scrotum.

So what happened to my friend? He told me not to tell anyone, but since no one reads my blog anyway, I guess I can say it. He was fired from his job about six months ago, and he's been scraping by with barely any cash. So he had to move back in with his mom. It's a bad situation. OK, here's the thing: He got his old room back, OK? Which just happened to have his old dinosaur wallpaper from the '90s. And his mom's a rather large woman, so I'll leave it to you to figure out his fantasy life...

Anyway, he noticed some uncomfortable shifting, some painful movement of a tectonic nature down there, and next thing he knew he was writhing in agony. They got him to the hospital, and the tests showed he had a serious problem, his wisdom nuts had to come out!

(Plus, I'm not a doctor by any stretch of the imagination, but looking at the picture, it looks like he's having trouble passing a Mitt Romney-shaped turd. The Republicans have the same complaint, but they're looking on the bright side: "He may be a turd, but at least he's white!")

So what's the main problem with wisdom nuts? There's not really a good place for them to be in the human anatomy as it's presently arranged. And they don't have a dedicated path down. So they just plow through whatever tissue happens to be in the way, causing terrific pain. Again, look at the picture. That's three lines of radiating pain on each side, extremely hard to endure.

Let my friend's trouble serve as a lesson for you: Mom and Barney don't mix.