Bow To Big City Dictates

 

The Big City

Part 16 of 28

Once again, the Big City takes us to a dark place. At least it's kind of dark, the shadows creeping everywhere. The barest light is sooner or later extinguished, with what little bit of light that remains flickering with promise, but the promise is next to nothing, then it’s gone. Everything is fairly dark, with moneyed interests and the way they’re forever greasing each other's palms, winking, signalling the separation of groups into those on top and the rest of us. The supposed new day begins, then it’s immediately dark, and that’s all the light we see.

How everything goes to hell like this -- which is my go-to sociological theory no matter where I live -- is a thing both to rue and celebrate, though darkly. Certainly ruing it is warranted, because the response to every injustice ought to be a stand against it. But because this response is never welcome with the powers-that-be, it’s tough to sustain, and is usually met in one of two ways: 1) A passive/aggressive affirming of their stance, then quietly tabling it once you’ve been sidelined; and, 2) An overt rejection, threats, mental/physical harassment, browbeating, criticism both to your face and subversive, or strangulation, or telling you the so-called parable of the Good and Bad Eggs, how the Good Egg sits unmolested in the refrigerator till it’s eventually retired to the dumpster, whereas the Bad Egg is immediately killed and eaten, although not digested but brought again to public shame with heaving and hacking, and all of it with severe prejudice. Ho hum.

But, my friends -- and my expertise in Big City sociology is more or less something I picked up on the fly with minimal experience; I’m a fast learner -- they can’t hide the truth forever. From the great unwashed masses, yes, they can hide it in a sense. Those unwashed masses are happy to live their pathetic unwashed lives constricted like this. It’s the old line about bread and circuses, keep them sedated, docile, and distracted -- mentally stymied, socially sidelined, forever in the vain pursuit of being Top Dog or what have you. Step by step, then -- and there’s lots of baby steps here -- they're finally kept in their place only apparently by force. Once inured, they maintain their station at the bottom rung by a sort of sleepy forgetfulness, knowing next to nothing of their lives. What an objective person would see as constriction, they see as freedom.

Just going over the more cheerful aspects as I have, I also see it as a negative thing. Which is only made worse by our own complicity, failing to keep our minds fresh and free, basically what’s common in the small town setting. There are, however, in the small town the Big City wanna-bes. Cheerful on the outside, but conniving behind the scenes, they want to emulate the Big City, and bit by bit to exercise power toward that end. Example: “Let’s build a spouting fountain in the park!” The unusual unwashed masses think that “sounds good.” In the interest of time, I’ll leave out some of the social progression here. But a couple months later you’ve got your precious fountain, then suddenly the town is the Fourth Reich and in deep. They may as well have moved to the Big City when they had the chance and forgotten the middle man!

It's all so typical, I almost regret boring you with the same old run-of-the-mill details. But the Big City is an octopus with its tentacles around the so-called Master’s legs. And the Master and the others are sooner or later, inevitably, dragged down to their demise.

The Rich Shouldn't Risk Their Life

Part 22 of 30 -- Speaking Ill of The Dead

I had this idea for my Master's thesis: "The richer you are, the less you should risk your life protecting what you have." They said that was a given and the thesis not practical. I tried bullshitting them but they wouldn't budge. So I did some gas-lighting to prove my point, putting a great deal of psychological pressure on some of the top donors.

I was relentless over months with scary faces at their windows, creepy phone calls, and I even broke one guy's leg. The fear was so horrendous there were three or four deaths the first year alone! The university, always begrudging, finally saw the light and the degree's on my wall to prove it! But the families sued and the university lost so much money and prestige it sounds like they're sorry they ever heard of me.

But I hate crime and that's what I'm here for today. I really hate crime. Please don’t tell any criminals that you read this here, because they also seek revenge, but I wish they'd only give criminals “One strike and you’re out!” I know it changes the old adage about three strikes. But with the world's population exploding and crime everywhere, we can’t afford an unlimited number of three strikes. Change the rule: Just one!

It looks like the only good luck society ever really has is with the non-criminal population, and we're all dirt poor. We haven’t got anything to steal, so it's no use for criminals to attack us. Yes, they can break into our hovels and take our chewed up old blankets — my dog chews blankets and everything else — but I’m pretty sure there isn’t a pawn shop in the Big City that sells used blankets. My most valuable possession is a half gallon of paint from 10 years ago, but, again, it takes a lot of old paint to make one good gallon. With the colors always ending up potluck.

I'm definitely poor. I don’t take much comfort in things in my life; I can’t afford to. But at least I have some comfort knowing there are poorer people yet. Do I feel badly for them? I actually do. I was bit by the compassion-bug when I was a kid and it's a lifelong infection, because sometimes I feel guilty that my car runs and my backseat isn’t on my porch. But it'd be comfortable and very weather-resistant thanks to the plastic covering I bought with my inheritance after Mom and Dad passed.

Yes, even though crime usually affects people better off, I still hate it. Another reason, I watch the evening news, and I hate hearing about criminals breaking in here or there, robbing places, abducting people, dumping their bodies in the river, and all the rest. I cry out, “Can the police do nothing right?!” It totally screws up the fishing. Still, they speed by all hours day and night with their sirens. How about leaving the sirens off and sneaking up on people. This is one of my peeves. When they hear the sirens they drop the evidence and sneak out the back. What happened to stealth? Even the military has stealth planes. Something to try...

I’m looking at the graphic of Sir Reginald, one of the richest guys in town. He was worth a lot of money, going by how much he gave to every museum in town. But he didn’t keep it quiet either. His attitude was, “I’m filthy rich, jump me in the dark!” He probably took the dark way home just to brag about it at the Admirals Club. But in this case, his luck ran out. He was not only robbed but brutally murdered, bamboo shoots shoved in his hair follicles. Reggie was a rich fool, having every advantage but blowing it for bragging rights.

But he still got the last laugh; his family crypt's about the size of the mall. With lots of legroom, which he deserves, being so rich.

Credo: Strip 'Em Down

No. 9 of 30 - Guidance Counselor series

I don’t know if people hear the same things we used to hear, more or less on a daily basis, that you’re a cog, a gear, or screw somewhere in the ultimate works of society. The days I’m recalling were well before they encouraged big aspirations in every kid. Essentially they helped you focus on your little place as a responsible nut or bolt in the overall works.

I say I don’t know, but on reflection, it appears certain, at least on the surface, that a lot of that has gone by the wayside. In the post-WWII period it was one way, settling into your position, whether by social planning, a divine purpose, or just your natural responsiveness to the obvious underlying drive. The same thought went into the cookie cutter houses they came up with, in haste, in getting society back on a peacetime footing.

Not to be too sociological, there seems to be a natural progression from the helter skelter scene of wartime to fitting into definite channels for peacetime. But they never actually said any of this. So if you’re a kid, you think they’re just against you personally. When it’s really only a macro sense of things and getting you situated in your little slot. And anyone who doesn’t fit precisely, now now now, is like a spare part to be cast aside.

And I suppose, naturally, some of those drives went into giving us a generation of guidance counselors straight from the bowels of hell. There they were, fermenting in the bowels of hell -- like other bowels but smellier -- not even fully aware themselves of the infernal basis of their hellish drives, every bit the same cogs in an unforgiving machine that they expected us to be, working it point by point, sending you up the chute of happiness or driving you down down down like the worm you were. Or pond scum, which to me is nastier than worms. And we grew up afraid of pond scum, not knowing we shared certain sociological qualities with those denizens of the shallow.

So here we have the guidance counselors of that day, assembling in rigid lines, themselves parts in the system, and being sent like demons to their bitter work, marking the quick and privileged for their destiny, then the rest of us to a dim purgatory of fruitless existence. Without even the mercy we might grant worms, the mercy we show when we poke air-holes in their little cup or container.

Is it too harsh to suggest that the Guidance Counselor Credo was “Strip ‘em down, sell them into servitude, etc.”? It’s right up there with Death Row, of course, with the 13 last steps to the gallows and a priest muttering words of comfort, more or less for himself, before they release the trapdoor. It’s a terrible credo, yes, but 100% accurate. And if the guidance counselor worked overtime, the percentage went up several additional points.

February Survives -- I Blame Hugh Hefner

WE CAME THAT CLOSE TO WINNING,
BUT FINISHED THE BATTLE WITH
NEXT TO NO SURVIVORS, ONLY
ME. AND I'M GOING INTO HIDING.

I was up early this morning, looking for signs of success against February. My heroic attempt to destroy February as a month on the calendar, then divvy up most of its days with other months and preserve a "stump month" of 10 February days, hung in the balance. Alone in my prayer citadel -- other than the courthouse the highest point in the county -- I tried to have faith, but reports coming in from around the world painted a dismal picture. There was no popular groundswell, none whatsoever, to do away with February.

I held out hope, biting my fingernails to the quick. Various lieutenants and family members climbed up to check on me. The braver ones warned me to be prepared for bad news. They said reports arriving from other states and countries showed the chances of destroying February as bleak. Legislators were not meeting, Congress pitched pennies instead of working, and the United Nations was closed, ambassadors laid off without pay.

Finally, I realized I had to put on a brave face. And show that everything was fine with me, in spite of my disappointment. I stripped off my outer layers of clothing. (It's a cold day.) Then my thermals. Last, I shed the rest of my clothes and stepped out on my citadel balcony, totally naked, me against the world! In one last expression of defiance, albeit vain, I peed. Reasoning, if I can't destroy February, I can go for the Guinness world record for the longest adhering urine stream. I was stoved up with two pots of freshly ground coffee -- jet black! My stream might still be flowing -- somewhere, somehow -- even as I write this two hours later.

So what happened? It's too early for a complete post mortem. I won't get into the details of my agitating government and the media. I put my heart into it, but it wasn't enough. I would like to mention, as an incriminating aside, that there seems to be a lot of old-time XXX movie houses very close to the Capitol. Could it be our "faithful representatives" are more "hung" up on some "pressing" matters of the flesh than they are "coming" to the aid of their people? 

OK, I did the government thing, but the heart of the campaign had to be this very blog. I put the word out there everyday -- with a worldwide outreach -- and what did people do with it? That's what I'd like to know! I know you'll say this is in bad taste, but frankly I'm shifting much of the blame to my readers, whose personal pleasure was their only real concern. Pretending to be on my side, pretending to do the heavy lifting, but then ... not really. I'd guess most of them are also into XXX entertainment, whether in some rundown smelly/sticky theater, or right there with their iPhones "in hand."

I've suspected all along that I've been dealing with mental cream puffs, halfwits, and the usual run of dim bulbs you meet on the internet. They're spoiled, there's no commitment. You know what, I remember the internet back in the '90s, man. Back in the '90s, man, you'd run a campaign -- destroy February, replace Christmas with Worship a Pine 2 x 4 Day -- and you'd get it done. Then the 2000s came -- 9/11 and people became pansified -- and now we're so soft we've essentially melted. It's 2015 and you couldn't raise an internet volunteer to YAWN on cue; they'd be asleep already before you flashed the sign!

OK, you had your chance. So don't come looking to me next year when February rolls around again. Just suffer. Because I'll still be nursing a grudge -- an eternal grudge -- stewing over how you deserted me, then even went so far as to callously stab me in the back right when I was on the brink of victory. The very worst time for betrayal, because the hurt never leaves. I'll always remember ... this time back in 2015 when I took on this literally thankless task. When my readers were so "into pleasure" they couldn't be bothered to support a brother in his hour of need.

It's a lot different from what I grew up with. I grew up hearing about the Depression, with my relatives' memories being how they stuck together, through thick and thicker. So where did things go so wrong with society? You know what I blame it on? There was strength in World War II, then a huge letdown, and people relaxed. When, guess who, Hugh Hefner comes along and fills the vacuum with Playboy magazine, setting the old mores aside as well as the old values. Look it up in any sociology text. Hugh Hefner gave us the dawn of a hedonism that would've made Caligula blush. And therein is the reason we couldn't destroy February.

So it's a problem with our government, and a problem with my readers, existing as they do in this reckless XXX world. And apparently there's nowhere to find better ones. Even the most prominent think tanks can't find people. They're all so hopelessly wasted, there's probably no one but me who'd even be smart enough to apply.

Ma & Pa Kettle vs. Transformers

It's my guess that most fans of the Transformers have never heard of Ma & Pa Kettle. Whereas it's just the opposite with fans of the Kettles; they've heard of the Transformers. Meaning, the fans of Ma & Pa Kettle appear to be smarter.

"But," Transformer fans say, "who needs to know about--- Who'd you say?" I politely, patiently repeat the name, "Ma & Pa Kettle," sounding it out as slowly as possible. The first two words rhyme; see if you can get that much first, Ma & Pa. Then think of the old phrase, "A fine kettle of fish," and that'll help you get the rest, Kettle. If we could now move on...

I might be among the last generation to love the Kettles, having grown up watching them on TV. And I attribute many of values I learned to the Kettles. Catch the difference? My values go back to the Kettles, not the Transformers.

But not everyone was as fortunate, as one generation gave way to another, raised instead on the Transformers. As I understand the Transformers, they're involved in all kinds of sci fi, live action fighting, weaponry, and destruction. Their world is filled with enemies to destroy. How things have changed!

In some of the Kettles' films there were folks of the community who didn't approve, or felt they couldn't countenance the Kettles' homespun ways. But no one destroyed them. Instead, the Kettles proved themselves truly wise even though they seemed to be know-nothing hillbillies. Ma was the wisest with lots of smarts, while Pa in his innocence, and more limits, showed a more naive wisdom. You really couldn't go wrong with the Kettles.

As for the Transformers, I only wish they'd held off on that brand of entertainment, to give that generation a surer foothold on the threshold of maturity. But the switch, if it had to come, had to come some time. Still, how unfortunate it was, coinciding with a serious psychological crisis among youth, who suddenly were given to spray painting things and gratuitous destruction. Today's rampant tattoo craze can be traced back to the rise of the Transformers; you're no longer happy with who you are.

The Kettles weren't perfect, though. Pa smoked quite a bit, as was common then. But he and Ma stayed home a lot and found happiness there; they had 15 kids. That's sweet. The Transformers, though, being machines, didn't know the same love of two human beings for each other. And that's communicated in the overall tone of their show. The Kettles had to know each other's feelings, and mature in their outlook, and watch for opportunities along the way to enhance their relationship. Then it was necessary to nurture their kids, and send them forth with the same values.

But the Transformers, what'd they even get out of bed for? You're a machine! If you get up, it's at someone else's instigation. And if you're able to get up "by yourself," you've been programmed to do so. You have no soul, you have no good in mind, no relationships to speak of, except what else you can destroy and lay waste to. It's ridiculous. No wonder society's been coming part at the seams since we went from the Kettles to the Transformers!

The way I recall, at first, the Transformers were supposed to be semi trucks or large motorcycles. Then they opened, or unfolded out to reveal giant robots. Which then took part in destructive behavior and mayhem. At that point I pulled back, never allowing myself to become immersed in it. I do know that over the years they did this, that, and the other thing, with multiple presentations of the overall concept described above. Big whoop!

The Kettles, though, as a family, in all kinds of social settings and through many dilemmas, present a human story, with good lessons to teach that kids could proudly emulate. I remember when they won the dream home of the future. It had lots of gadgets ("transforming" life as they knew it), but, unlike the Transformers proper, their transformation did not change them from the quality folks they had always been.

The Kettles are now part of a bygone era in entertainment. And how much worse the world is for it! The Transformers, on the other hand, have arisen, and dominated entertainment in the last few decades, contributing exactly nothing, to be exact, squat. A lot of malice and the spoiling of our youth.

Note: A couple of you wondered how I know so much about the Transformers if I'm so against them. I'm a social critic. It's my job to know things.

The Road Commandant

I don't live in the most congested area of the country, but it's still pretty damned congested. They've either lowered the driving age to 10 or issued a second car to everyone, because traffic is crazy, terribly bad! I can only imagine how it must be in the worst places -- it takes three hours to get out of your driveway.

And nobody seems to be doing anything about it, such as tearing out houses and businesses and widening roads, at least not enough to make a difference. I frankly think our city parks would make pretty good holding stations for cars waiting to get on the road, if they'd pave them and put in some roundabouts for easy entrance and departure.

Until then, it looks like we're just going to have to make do. There would, however, be another way to handle things. Such as only allowing driving for everyone every other day, going by your last name. A through H one day, I through Z the next. There's not that many X Y Z names, so it's not exactly split in half. Or assign us all a rank and let the higher ranks have some privileges.

I feel I'm mature enough (61) and healthy enough that I'd make a very decent civilian commandant. That'd be a simple system for the roads, a commandant/peon social system. With higher/lower commandants and higher/lower peons. Keeping it simple. The peons would all have gray cars, the commandants gold, with red stripes showing their ranks.

So traffic stops at an intersection, the commandants go first, then the peons. If there's varying ranks of commandants or peons present, they respect the stripes. That's simple. If there's more than one commandant of the same rank, the first one to salute the other goes first. If both salute at the same time, they keep saluting till one's salute appears superior. The peons hash it out between themselves as well, as best they can, having the incentive to hash it out quickly lest another commandant appears.

I think that's pretty good. And it would work in other areas of life. I honestly can't think of any areas it wouldn't work in, except, probably, in peon adoption cases. As a commandant, I'd be open to adopting another commandant child -- like in a case where a commandant was killed in a crash by a peon. The peons would want probably get up in arms if too many commandants tried to adopt their children. But we could always do it at night or in secret.

It'd definitely be a plus in pet adoptions. Still, you can see there might be problems. Say you've just about chosen your pet when a peon family -- more prone to snap decisions -- takes it out from under your nose. But let's say we have a common sense commandant/peon system in place. The peons are making snap decisions, yet they're held up by too many peons doing it. A commandant enters and all snap decisions are officially put on hold. The commandants can now browse in comfort and silence and make their decisions in peace.

A certain amount of cruelty would be allowed, although a commandant could be merciful if he so chose -- tough to imagine but theoretically possible. I can picture a case like this. A peon family has just lost a pet, and the pet place has one close enough to it to be a DNA match. The peons are just about to make their snap decision when the commandant enters. The commandant chooses that very pet. The peons are left crying. He could show mercy, although you can see the clear downside. Why give them false hope, since that's just going back to the old failed system? There's more than one dog ... Wait your turn!

Lest you think it sounds kind of Gestapo, let this word go forth, to friend and foe: I don't mind Gestapo, just so I get mine.

Everything I Know I Learned in Motel Lobbies

You know how I'm always working to expand my knowledge, particularly having to do with the human race. It helps me keep my keen edge in understanding, which translates into bigger bucks in my field, the group dynamics racket. More and more I'm getting the recognition I deserve as the "King of Group Dynamics," which, you might easily guess, isn't automatic. You forever have to prove yourself more insightful than the next idiot.

Recently a sociology professor friend of mine -- himself scratching and clawing his way to the top, and hoping to stay there -- told me, "Everything I know I learned in motel lobbies." Of course I knew better than to take that literally. No doubt you can learn a lot in motel lobbies, but it has to be an exaggeration, right? Or did he mean it? He didn't learn anything somewhere else? I had to test it for myself.

So the other day I took up residence on one of the couches in a motel lobby. Right away I learned a thing or two about motel staff and their suspicions. These couches are sat on about five minutes a week, when some weary traveler is arriving to check in or after they've carried their bags back out. No one sits on them for hours at a time. But there I was, holding a newspaper, peering over and around it.

I was focused on their everyday demeanor. Motel staff, in addition to being suspicious, are passive/aggressive to the max. They checked on me a few times, trying to discern why I was there, all the while calling me "Sir" and going through various superficial bowing and scraping. Maybe I owned the whole chain, like on Undercover Boss. They didn't know. Their bowing and scraping would've been sufficient to afford them plausible deniability if they were accused of being rude to a guest.

Getting past that, I took in some people-watching, as I said, wanting to learn about the human race. One of the biggest reasons I didn't major in sociology myself was I'm no fan of scientific rigor; the dean said my admission paper showed I was too anecdotal. Hence this extraneous anecdote about the dean in an article on motel lobbies.

Editor's note: This is my normal cutoff length for a post, so I'm going long. If you haven't got time to read the whole thing, I advise that you only read the second half. It's more on-topic than the above.

My learnings in the motel lobby:

-- People live forever in the motel. I've been here for hours and there hasn't been one fatality. But the pool's still empty.

-- About 2/3 of the men here are with women not their wives. I have nothing to base this on except my nature is even more suspicious than that of the motel staff. There's no doubt in my mind that adultery's been rampant ever since they got rid of the paper registry book. But can infidelity be that high? Of course it can, if my hunch is right.

-- All types of men are here. Big men, little, long hair, short hair, greasers, regular guys, professional men, amateurs. But all the women are clean-looking and nice, indicating hanky panky, married couples tending to resemble one another.

-- People take full advantage of free continental breakfasts. But they're quite patient when they're waiting for the waffle griddle. At an early hour feeding frenzies just aren't cool. I know around 2 p.m. the same creatures will be red hot with road rage, which might be why the griddles aren't out afternoons.

-- People multitask. I've seen several guys walk by carrying four or five suitcases. Their own, and likely their illicit girlfriend's.

-- The average motel guest seems to plan well. With four suitcases, that's a no-brainer. That said, some marketing genius put in a vending machine for toothpaste at $4 an ounce tube. I haven't seen anyone using it, so I'd say it's losing money. I say sell it for a buck and make it up on volume.

-- I'm really noticing that motel staff over-thank and over-Sir and over-Ma'am the guests. They really are worried about Undercover Boss! Come on, staff, we're not convinced you're such extremely nice people. We know you're punching holes in the wall as soon as we leave. Then charging our card.

-- The Number 1 thing motels are suspicious of is non-guests sneaking in the pool. Probably mostly driven by insurance and liability issues. Then because they'd have to stay working long after their shift if someone drowned. From the inquests I've been part of, they're usually quite lengthy.

-- As an aside, I've learned that if you wear a light blue smock under your shirt, then switch, you can meet guests in the hall as they're departing and ask them to leave the door open for cleaning. Then you can shower and sleep for three or four hours before the actual cleaning folks get here.

-- Some guy just drowned, quite the commotion, a great time for me to sneak out of this room unseen.

And so I proved it true. I didn't know anything before. Like my friend, literally everything I know I learned in motel lobbies.

The Older Generation -- Over 90

I'm 60. That means I'm only 30 years off 90. If I'm somehow able to live another 30 years, and I come from a family where barely anyone does, I will be 90. That sounds ancient, but the last 30 years went by pretty fast, so all I have to do is trip over that family birthdays again!

When I think of old people, one little truth keeps creeping in. Old people are changing all the time. They're not consistently the same. The average person at Woodstock was older than me. So they're creeping up there now. But the average person as old as them at the time of Woodstock was a completely different person. Different background pretty much completely.

They were practically people of my grandparents' generation. Let's see, at the time of Woodstock, 1969, my Grandma was only 65, almost 66. That sounds youngish, even though she was from a generation of people, at least from my kid perspective, who were definitely old when they were 65. Grandpa was six years older, so he was already over 70. He seemed ancient. Neither of them made it to 90, by the way.

I remember them laughing, of course. But they didn't have that kind of constant sense of humor people have now. Which is actually annoying, because we've seen too many crappy sitcoms, I'm convinced that's what it is. (You ever notice people on sitcoms are constantly cracking jokes, but the other characters aren't laughing?) But it does tend to give people a more youthful attitude. My grandparents weren't humorless, as I said, but they had a serious quality that I don't see much of today. It made them seem older.

I've been watching the old episodes of the Lawrence Welk show on PBS, whenever I think of it. I might watch one, then forget it for three weeks, then I watch another. These are generally from 1964-1970, I'm estimating. I love watching them, even though I wasn't a fan of the show at all when it was first on. But now, the very square quality of it gives me a constant sense of the way old folks were then.

About the best part of it, what I really like, is when they show the old folks in the audience, with some of them dancing. I always have to think, now they're a'moldering in their graves, for the most part, but there they were at the time, exactly the generation I'm talking about. There aren't too many film sources for the average everyday person of that time, at least that I know of. But Lawrence Welk had them! You can see them laughing in happiness at the music, the dancing, and being together with others. And for the most part, it looks exactly like the very conventional (and only occasional) humor I saw in old people at the time. The show's a time capsule.

Old folks of that generation went through a lot. Such as the Great Depression, so bad we capitalize it. And of course there were those minor skirmishes, World Wars I and II, so bad we Roman numeral them. I don't agree with the common labeling, thanks to Tom Brokaw, that these folks were in any sense "The Greatest Generation." I think they just made it through their times like anyone would, given the circumstances. You deal with what you get. But it really might have given them that serious outlook, the more business-like approach to life they had.

OK, I didn't mean to get sociological on you. But how else can you mess around with a subject like this?

Nursing homes are full of folks over 90, and I suppose I could go over and visit a few of them. Anyone's allowed, I guess, although it's better if you have some legitimate reason for dropping in, other than the fact that you write a blog and are interested in 90-year-olds. They might frown on that! Who knows? But if there's people from your church there, you could drop in legitimately. Then get to know some of the others. But, like I said, 90's different all the time.

The 90-year-old in the nursing home today is quite a bit different from what my grandparents would've been. If you're 90, you were only in your mid-40s at the time of Woodstock. So very young. But they're still plenty old in certain ways, having accrued the things of age since then, no doubt ... they need to be met and known!

Happy Horny Bastard's Day

I was walking downtown today with my old friend, The Imaginary Stud, .... [pause for his links]

The Imaginary Stud
The Imaginary Stud -- Something So Precious
The Imaginary Stud -- Johnny Peopleseed
The Imaginary Stud -- Your Biological Clock
The Imaginary Stud -- What's In A Name?

... when we saw a young woman lugging a big laundry basket of baby clothes up the sidewalk. He ducked in a doorway till she was out of sight. Then he says to me, "I haven't seen her for nine or ten months. I didn't even know she was expecting!"

I thought, "You horny bastard! That's all you're good for, eyeing all the ladies, then coming on to them, offering them drinks and a friendly smile, then it's off to your place or, more likely, the cheap motel on the north side of town! Love 'em and leave 'em, yep, that's your one goal in life!"

And really, when you think about it, that mostly what fathers are, or what they start out as, horny bastards. Which I say in the nicest way possible. Because they can't help it. The good Lord put it in our mind, thanks to His great system of evolution and natural selection, involving sexual reproduction, to scatter our seed far and wide, and wherever it lands, there it stays!

Life is the same all over, this planet anyway and probably the others. If you want to populate the place you could have 40 women and one man. That's why during hunting season you can shoot buck deer and cock pheasants, but not does or hens. Because deer and pheasants only need a few males, but a bunch of females. The same thing goes for bulls and boars, which is probably why these animals are so potent and heavy in the sack, because their lot in life is to be very busy.

Along with eating and killing enemies, horniness is the man's biggest drive. He can be 14, which means he's underage, although of course that's a socially-determined thing, or 90 and in the nursing home, and he will think he's gotta find a woman. Before the other guy! Whom he just might kill! Which might be why we have homosexual men. Nature's way of preserving someone thought to be non-threatening in case all the other men of the tribe get killed. Then he would step up to the task ... I know, I'm digging myself a big hole here, LOL.

It's hard to believe that evolution and the whole natural selection thing is still behind everything we do, but we're as primitive as ever, primitive meaning the same as nature made us. So dear old Dad, that balding guy with the pipe in his mouth, sitting on the easy chair, now with something of an old man's slump and a very bitter look, is still a horny bastard. He was a horny bastard when he was looking at Mom, all those years ago. And he'll be a horny bastard maybe to the day he dies, depending on certain things, like unless he completely loses his mind, or somehow he gets testicular cancer and has to have them removed, God forbid. At that point I don't know what happens next, and I hope I never find out...

Imagine how horny of a bastard he was back in the day. Mom was a teenage girl, a fox, and Dad was a teenage boy, a stud. Enough said. Then they had all the advantages you read about in sociology books: A mobile society, kids with cars, places to go to be away from the family, increased disposable income, an easier access to prophylactics, social upheaval after two world wars and the Depression, the questioning of religious strictures, and reading the racy Scarlet Letter in high school. It's a combustible mix, with the spark that sets it off being Dad's raging hormones, a seething and smoldering in his pants, and next thing you know Mom is lugging baby clothes out of the laundromat. (Editor's note: We will save an account of Mom's raging horniness for Mother's Day.)

The fact is, however, that a lot of men, unlike The Imaginary Stud, stick around and fulfill their responsibilities to the mother and his growing gang of rugrats. For that, we honor them on this greatest holiday in recognition of paternity, of horny bastards everywhere, Father's Day. Natural selection honors them, too. Their staying around protects their offspring, so they'll grow up and continue his line with horniness of their own.

NOTE: I notice a lot of my Facebook friends are wishing a Happy Father's Day to their horny old dads in Heaven. I'm afraid you are suffering from a little bit of ignorance, however innocent you may be. Father's Day in Heaven is not till October. Everything's pushed forward like that because Easter's a three-month long holiday in heaven. Jesus takes His Resurrection very seriously. Christmas is about the same, but with that at least we on Earth are catching up, starting in September.

Hell Is Other People (Tweets)

I've learned the secret about meeting other people. It's simply never worth it. The butterfly is not your friend. Stay in your cocoon!

Like in the Tao Te Ching 80: Neighbor lands are juxtaposed. Each hears the barking dogs. Folks grow old and die and never once exchange a call.

It's why I like to hang out at my blog at Blogger. There's no lonelier place on the internet than Blogger. You never see a single soul.

But I'm also something of an evangelist for everyone going to their respective corners and staring blankly at the wall. Or possibly reading.

So remember, don't write, don't call, don't drop by, don't leave your home, and you'll be happy. Maybe get a dog. Dogs are OK.

Mode-A-Day Mowed Away

They tore down the shopping center. It's a lamentable thing to drive by the place that was the center of so much of our activities as a family.

But the days of shopping centers and malls, it appears, are over. Now everything's online -- no more bricks and mortar -- they're tearing it all down. Maybe the bad economy has something to do with it too. Construction has come to a halt. 1) Because there's nothing to build; 2) Even if they wanted to there's no money; 3) Customers are busy shopping online.

That's not the way it was 50 years ago, which is about the time, I think, when they built the shopping center. Back then we didn't buy everything online. A good brick and mortar store was what we preferred. People who worked there greeted us. We walked in, looked over their wares, maybe ate a pickle if it was a place that sold them, and bought what we wanted.

The shopping center was like a godsend. Finally we could go to one place and stay inside. No more traipsing around downtown into a warm store, then out into the cold weather. It was about 10 years later the stores started closing downtown. But we had the shopping center. Then they got rid of the parking meters downtown and we were torn about where to shop. But since the stores were closed anyway there wasn't any point to the free parking.

I personally preferred the shopping center. Grandma liked it. It sounds weird to say it these days -- when bricks and mortar stores have entirely gone out of favor, and online shopping is all the rage -- but we were even proud of the shopping center. I was. We had cousins come to town from Denver and we took them there and hung out. It was a cool place. A bowling alley that smelled like stale beer. A nice dime store. A restaurant that had you actually phone your order back to the kitchen. And the Mode-A-Day store, a place for women that Grandma got some nice dresses at. She never liked sack dresses, I might add.

I don't know precisely what happened to devastate the shopping center. Of course, I suppose online shopping had something to do with it. Plus the fact that bricks and mortar stores are generally out of favor. I'm thinking it just got old. We weren't overly proud of it, say, after 40 years had passed. By then we took it for granted, thinking it was just always going to be there.

Then, slowly but surely, shops started closing. Pretty soon the customers were home with their computers. Fewer crowds meant more stores closing. That meant less revenues and more dilapidation. A local gang painted some graffiti on the wall. And that did it. The place closed up. The bulldozers came in.