The Post In Which I Pay Far Too Much Attention To Carrie Underwood.

Last week it seemed a topic kept popping up over and over again. The subject of Carrie Underwood, and her song about the violent destruction of her man's* "pretty little 'souped-up' 4-wheel drive".

*Is he her man? What relationship is this man to her? Boyfriend? Husband? "Baby-daddy"?** "Stalking victim"? One of the places this topic came up was in a video clip I watched the other day in which none other than Grammy-winner and quintuple-nominee John Mayer does a stand up comedy bit about this very subject. Go check it out and come back, I'll wait. [Warning:] bit contains potentially offensive language and subject matter!!

**One of the things I've noticed since moving up here is that a LOT of women I know refer to their "Domestic Partners" or "Common-Law Husbands" as simply "My Old Man". The phrase "My Old Lady" gets used a lot too, when one wants to be intentionally vague about one's marital status. In some parts of the world, the terms "Baby-Daddy" and "Baby-Mama" get used to describe some "non-traditional" relationships, but up here in the mountains of Southeast Tennessee, the term is "My Old Man".

Anyway, with John having mentioned that Carrie here might be a little unsure of her relationship with the recipient of her wrath, I thought "You know what? The song says that she DID do all of that stuff to his truck, but it only says he "probably" was cheating! Nowhere in the song does it say he actually cheated! Just he's "probably" doing this, that and the other.

Well a song's lyrics can't go into to much detail, so I headed on over to YouTube to see the Video of "Before He Cheats". Yeah,I watched a Country Music Video. On Purpose. I Suffer for my Art, people!

Well the first thing that struck me was how pretty you have to make yourself look before you go smash up someone's vehicle. I would have gone with a simple ski-mask, or "pantyhose-over-the-head" ensemble for the occasion, but Ms. Underwood (and no, she's not a Hobbit) thought she would disguise herself by the skillful application of 3 pounds of cosmetic make-up.

Officer: Could you give me a description of the assailant, sir?
Witness: Yessir- She looked kinda like Britney Spears, but.. y'know, back when she used to be pretty.

That was the first thing that struck me about the video. The second thing that struck me is that, while in the video there is verifiable infidelity, she smashes up his truck Before she witnesses the cheatage. Should have seen this coming though, since the title of the song is "Before He Cheats". Kind of a preemptive strike. So, ladies.. if you have reason to believe your man might be unfaithful to you later, just go ape-$#!* on his car now, and get it out of the way. Just nip that crap in the bud; you'll be glad you did. [warning] Do not attempt this if you need to use the vehicle in the near future. Plan your work and work your plan!

The third thing that struck me about the video is that after witnessing the cheatage in the video, Ms. Underwood (still not a Hobbit!) wreaks telekinetic vengeance on all of Bourbon Street like Jean Grey in X-Men, or Drew Barrymore in Firestarter, or... Waitaminute! her name is Carrie!?

As in "Nooo! They're All Gonna Laugh At You!"?

OK. If you know any one named Carrie-- DO NOT MAKE THEM MAD. They may have telekinetic powers with which they can destroy your entire town and everyone in it!

Or they may have a Louisville Slugger, and a set of car keys. Or Both! Either way, they can make things hard on you, so: Do not cheat on a Carrie, do not give a Carrie reason to believe you will cheat on her, and never, EVER dump a bucket of pig's blood on her at the Prom. That is a major no-no, that is!

Tales of Clerkdom: The Lost Dishman

Hello, Blogophiles!

Today I bring you "Tales of Clerkdom", and the Customer of the Week. Enjoy!

One of the things I missed about my job at the Gallon while I was gone was getting to talk to the local cops. While I worked night shift, the cops and newspaper carriers from all the surrounding districts and jurisdictions would be a large portion of the people I would interact with. I was on friendly terms with all of them, and their visits helped pass the time during the long nights.

Well, while I was away, the newspapers all got consolidated, so that the one guy who used to bring me the Nashville Tennessean, now delivers all three of the daily papers. Also while I was away, My Fair City got a New Chief of Police, and the night-shift cops I had known so well got promoted to day-shift, and a couple of new, young, cops got put on nights. The new guys are odd characters, and I am not sure what to think about them. I will probably have more to say about them in a later post, but for we will call them Officer Doug* and Officer Jerry*.

Officer Doug was hanging around the store, talking to me about something or other, when he looked out the window and interrupted me, saying, "I think I'm about to get talked to".

Three people then walked through the door. A young, good looking black couple, and an elderly man who, sure enough, wanted to talk to Officer Doug. He approached with a small card in his hand.

"Excuse me, do you know how to get to..." He looked down at the card, reading, "..Ool -teh- wah?"

To those of you to whom that sounded like baby talk, Ooltewah is the actual name of an actual city just outside of Chattanooga, which, If you think about it, has just as silly-sounding a name. Anyway the word is Cherokee for "Owl's Nest", but the locals usually pronounce it more like "Ootle-wah", or "oodewa" depending on how strong their accent is.

Officer Doug knew something was wrong. He had been observing the man's approach to the building, and had noticed the man was acting erratically. He decided to answer the question with a question.

"What are you heading to Ootlewah for?" Officer Doug said, giving the word the correct local mispronunciation.

"I live there."

Officer Doug and I shared a look. That was creepy, The man couldn't find or correctly pronounce the name of the place where he lived? I then realized the card in his hand was his Driver's License. He had had to check his own ID to find his address!

His story was, he had gotten off work at midnight, taken a wrong turn, and had been lost for the last two and a half hours. His wife was freaking out, he said, because he was so late, but he just gets lost real easy, and if we could just point him the right direction to Ooltewah, he would be really grateful.

I knew where Ooltewah was. It was just a bit northeast of Chattanooga on interstate 75. I started to help this obviously troubled man, but Officer Doug cut me off with a sharp look, and continued his friendly, conversational, interrogation.

"Where do you work?"

"At the T.G.I. Thursday's*, in Hixson. I'm a Dishman, there." he said, a little too loudly.

Hixson is an area in northern Chattanooga. Ooltewah is, as previously mentioned, just slighty north and east of Chattanooga. He was talking to me about fifty miles west of Chattanooga. He had gotten really, badly, lost. After a few more questions along the lines of"Are you OK?" and "Are you sure everything's all right?" Officer Doug retreated into a calculating silence, and I broke the directions down as simply as I could for this poor guy, who had just turned a 30-minute commute into a five-hour drive by getting on the interstate going the wrong direction. He repeated the directions back to me, making sure he had it, and they seemed to be ringing the right bells, so he left, shuffling back out to his car, which was parked on the far end of the parking lot.

The young couple who had come in at the same time as him approached the counter to pay for their stuff. Officer Doug was still chewing over the situation. He asked the young lady what the old man had asked her in the parking lot. Apparently the man had shared his predicament with her much the same as he had with us, only she was not from the area and had no idea where anything was.

After she paid for her stuff and left, Doug and I were still mulling over the situation. Doug didn't like to just let the guy go, in the state he was in, but didn't feel quite justified in arresting him just for being lost. Because the old-timer had parked so far away, and because he moved so slow, he was just leaving the parking lot after the young couple had already taken off. He turned left out of the parking lot, toward the interstate exit, but as we watched, we noticed that he hadn't crossed the median when he turned and was now headed east in the westbound lanes of the divided highway! Officer Doug let out a curse, jumped out the door into his car, and, with quite a bit more tire squealing than I though was strictly necessary, sped off after the Lost Dishman of Ooltewah.

A couple of days later, I saw Officer Doug again, and asked him what had become of the Lost Dishman. Turns out, he had suffered that night from "Sudden-Onset" Alzheimer's Disease. Before he left work that night, he hadn't had a single syptom, according to his wife. But somewhere on the road it struck, and two hours later he had to check his own ID to find out where he lived.

These are the sorts of things you see, in my line of work, as a gas station clerk.

* This is a true story, only the names have been changed to protect the itinerant.

Thanks, Dave!

Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers was nearly the first place I ever worked. The First was Taco Bell, where I made $4.25/hr, and hated the food. Then one day a manager at the local Wendy's was dining at Taco Bell, and, no doubt impressed with my unflappable manner and smiling face, asked if I would consider putting in an application down the street at Wendy's, where they could use someone like me. I did, and at Wendy's I made $4.50/hr, and I liked the food! This was in the Summer of my Junior year of High School, and my parents forced me to quit when my grades fell, but I still have some really fond memories of the place. Last time I was in McMinnville, it was still there, same as ever. Actually, it had a Salad Bar when I worked there, but other than that, same as ever.

A couple of days ago, I had been working on the blog all morning with no breakfast, and I needed to take my car in for an oil change (I had put 2000 miles on it the previous weekend, on my amazing Texan Adventure).

"On The Mountain", where I live, there are three fast-food places. Subway, Hardee's, and McDonalds. I look forward to eating "Off The Mountain" when I get the chance. I contemplated where I would dine while my belly growled at me for the thirteen mile trek down into the flatlands. I realized I hadn't been to Wendy's in a long time, and whenever I had, I had been noshing off the 99-cent menu, which is not really exemplary of the high quality burgers you can get there. I hadn't had a "Real" Wendy's Burger in a long, long time!

Well, I Fixed that. It turns out that Wendy's has a new burger called "The Baconator". Now, I love me some Bacon, and I appreciate a cute name and a good advertising campaign.("Order It, Before It Orders You!" and "Careful, It Can Sense Fear!" were on some of the signage around the store) I quickly determined that I wanted one. It was good. It was exactly as good as you would expect a sandwich called "The Baconator" to be. But as I sat in the dining room stuffing my face full of meat, I realized how nice it was to be in a restaurant that was just like I remembered.

I used to love to go to Pizza Hut as a kid. The building would have the big, familiarly shaped roof, there would be a jukebox and a couple of outdated video games by the entrance, a waiter or waitress would greet you at the sign that said "Please Wait to be Seated", and seat you at a table, or a booth with a stained-glass shaded lamp hanging over the table, and back in the day, they served beer there too, and there would quite frequently be a baseball team or other group of guys with a few pitchers and a few pizzas having a good time after the big game.

That was back when Pizza Hut was directly owned by Pepsico. In the nineties, though, they "Spun Off" their restaurant brands, (Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, at the time) into a company called "Tricon Global Restaurants". Really, Tricon Global, how charming is that? This began the downward spiral of Pizza Hut, as Fast-Food style Pizza Huts started popping up, frequently combined with a KFC or a Taco Bell. I don't want to order a Quesadilla in a Pizza Hut. I don't want my pizza served to me in a paper tray. I don't want your chicken sandwich, either. I don't want a "personal" sized pizza, which is 70% dry crust, with the 2 square inches in the center pre-topped with one of only 3 topping choices, which was delivered to the store frozen, microwaved back to life, and has been sitting under a heat lamp for 20 minutes before I ordered it!

I want a seat in a booth, with a stained-glass lamp over the table, and I want to stick a dollar in the jukebox and pick three songs to listen to while I wait for my pizza to be made for me by a person who lives in the same state as me. I want a friendly server to bring it to me, and I want peppermints delivered with the bill! If I can't have that, then you are not a Pizza Hut! Tricon Global is also the company that decided that Lazy Stupid Americans couldn't handle a big fancy name like "Kentucky Fried Chicken" and changed it to just KFC. So maybe they should change the fake "Pizza Huts" to just PH. Of course Taco Bell Might have problems... "Honey I'm running into town for some TB, you want any?"

Well Tricon Global eventually figured out what anybody could have told them (their name stunk), and changed their name to YUM! Brands (they also changed their stock ticker symbol to YUM). Since March of 2002, they now operate, in addition to PH, TB, and KFC, Long John Silver's which they also initialized for the American 3-second attention span, to "LJS", and A&W All-American Food, which came pre-initialized as A&W. (Does anybody know what the "A" and the "W" used to stand for?)

I can't help it, but when I see YUM! Brands' logo, with its stupid attached exclamation point, which tries to force me to be excited about it, I resist. Can you imagine working in the offices of YUM! and having to type the name of your company in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, with an exclamation point!, every time, in every report, for the rest of your career? And the poor kids working for YUM! restaurants must hate getting visited by corporate flacks who try and rigidly enforce rules about smiling and such, because we are a HAPPY company Dog-gone it, and SMILE while you empty the grease vats! And WHERE is your name tag!? How do I know who to report to the YUMMY SMILE! POLICE if you don't have on your name tag? We don't want people with just the minimum number of pieces of Flair, we want people like Brian, he has on thirty-seven pieces of Flair. Okay?

I mean seriously... The only way a fast food chain could be any more ridiculously cutesy,
would be if they had a full-fledged Clown with big red shoes as their corporate mascot! (YUM! Brands is the second largest fast food chain in the country, by the way. I'll give you one guess who is #1.)

Anyway, Dave Thomas never made anybody wear any pieces of flair. And he didn't remodel his stores into unrecognizability, either. You know what he did do? He did make use of the world's first drive-thru window, and he invented the 99-cent "Super Value" menu. And the restaurant he left behind makes a pretty darn good "Baconator", too. So Thanks, Dave for bringing us your great, low-key style of restaurant, and thank YOU, Wendy's Board of Directors, for not (yet) selling Dave's soul to a giant food Conglomo-Corp.

Customers of the Week - Preggers and ClEtUS

One of the sadder things I've seen -

An abundantly pregnant woman and a very, very slow moving elderly man came in to the Gas Station last night. The old man was coming back from the cooler with a 12 pack of beer, and said to the young Preggers, "Is a twelve pack enough?"

The Womb-on-legs gave her approval, and continued to browse the store. She was wearing shorts, and a brown tank-top shirt which had the word "VINDICTIVE" in relatively small white letters across the chest.

Now, according to Tennessee Code Annotated, section 57-5-301(A)(1), which states that ALL purchasers of alcohol for "off premises" consumption have to present Proof-of-age identification, I had to card this guy, who looked like he needed to be in a nursing home, for his beer. (Actually, since they had indicated that the beer was for her, I should have carded her too, but I had no reason to believe she was under 21, and one ID would be enough to satisfy the State Law.) He wasn't too happy about being carded, and muttered something to that effect. With shaky hands, he reached into his back pocket, s-l-o-w-l-y produced his wallet, and extracted his ID. Born in 1947, Cletus* was exactly 60 years old,which was 10 years younger than he looked, and 40 years younger than he moved.

As I was dealing with him, his Great-With-Child companion was checking out the sunglasses rack. "Ain't anybody got the round sunglasses anymore?", she complained. Drinking while she was 12 months pregnant had already gotten under my skin, and I was growing more irritated with this lady by the second.

"I don't know whether or not anybody has them, but we apparently don't," I called back to her.

She continued searching the rack, not comprehending my witty riposte. "Well, where are they then?" she responded. The word "Apparently" must have thrown her off. Time to try a different approach.

"We ain't got 'em!" I called back in her own language.

She must not have been too disappointed with our lack of "round" sunglasses, because she grabbed a pair of non-round ones and approached the counter. Slowpoke had just finished putting his wallet's contents back together. She told him to get her a pack of Marlboros too, while she plunked the glasses down on the counter. I pulled down the appropriate pack of smokes, and rang everything up.

"That'll be $33.17" I told the old guy, biting back all the comments about cigarettes and pregnancy that were springing to my mind. Geez, Lady, why not shoot up some heroin and snort a few lines of coke while you're at it? Then your kid will will have the coolest looking Dorsal Fin in his whole class!

"Did you already run the card? I just gave you my card."

"No, sir; you gave me your ID."

Back into the pocket for the wallet went , fast as a bullet. Not a bullet that has been fired, but a bullet duct-taped to the back of a turtle, which is trying to climb a steep and slippery hill.

His slothlike movement gave her roving gaze more time to work on spending his money. But not quite enough time, for right as I was swiping his credit card through the machine, finalizing the sale, she said "Gimme two of these, too", and plopped down two 4 dollar cigarette lighters that said "Princess" and "Drama Queen" respectively.

I have never been sure about this trend of advertising your Faults, like being a spoiled, problem-causing gossip, but there are a lot of T-shirts and other products out there that do just that. You don't see me wearing a T-shirt that says "I Fart a lot and have poor Dental Hygiene", do you? I guess I'm just too classy for that.

Anyhow, she was just a second too late to include those lighters on the tab, and I told her so, but I must've used the word "apparently" again, because she was holding them as though she had purchased them, and intended to take them with her when she left. I told her again that the lighters had not been paid for, while "ClEtUS SimPSoN JR"* signed his name in lettering that indicated that his name was the only thing that ClEtUS SR ever "learnt" him how to write.

This time I got through that the lighters hadn't been paid for, and she told me to go ahead and ring them up along with a Pack of Marlboros.

I already rang those, I explained.

"No, Marlboro Lights"

OK, I switched the regulars for lights.

"No, ANOTHER pack of lights"

Did I mention this woman's pregnant belly is about 30% of her body weight? She looks like she's about to give birth to a whole Football team. Everything she has gotten has been Smoking or drinking related, except the sunglasses. Oh well, at least she won't get Eyeball cancer along with her liver cirrhosis and emphysema. Something tells me her little uterine passenger isn't going to have a lot going on in the nature OR nurture department.

Anyway, she also wants to buy a cigarette case, so I point her to the appropriate shelves. She comes back with, not one, but two little cigarette "purses" at 6 bucks a piece. What the hey, she's spending ClEtUS's money anyway, right?

I ring the second purchase up, and in goes ClEtUS for his wallet, a third time. Muttering. It's something along the lines of " Gotta go through this all over again", and the back of my mind is screaming NO, you don't!! You don't have to pull your card out again, just tell this irresponsible woman-child with you that you won't buy her every single thing she comes across so she can amuse herself and poison her child!

I keep it all on the inside, though, and we swipe his card again. all-told, he's spent $59.44 on her beer, smokes, and trinkets.

So, if this tale has made you feel bad, look on the bright side... then tell me what it is.

* This story is true, only the names have been changed to protect the ignorant.

What kind of energy?

The guy who does the "underwriting spots" (because we can't call them "Advertisements") for NPR annoys the heck out of me, not only because he does a commercial every fifteen minutes for an organization that then twice a year asks me for my money to "Keep NPR Commercial Free", but because he can't quite pronounce the letter "N" if it comes in the middle of a multisyllabic word.

You may know the guy I mean, he's the one that tells you that "All Things Considered is made possible by..."

"The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; Committed to achieving surplus understanding in a positive community leadership role in the Third World. On The Web at: Bill And Melinda Sitting in a Tree dot O-R-G."

"The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; committed to motivating Key Contributions to world understanding and combating the leading causes of failing indicators worldwide. On the Web at: J-W-R-F-L-M-N-O-P dot O-R-G"

"The Isaac Asimov Foundation; Committed to preserving knowledge for the Future through the use of Psychohistorical findings and the Encyclopaedia Galactica. On the Web at: Hari Seldon dot com"

Anyway, one or two of these foundations have something in their mission statement about "communities" and he never quite pronounces the "N". Instead it comes out as a "D" sound, so it sounds like he is saying "Commudities". The worst one is the foundation that is "Dedicated to providing Commudities with Job Opportudities" It is annoying, and during a two hour commute you might hear it Four Times or more.

This particular little Speech Impediment had long been a pet peeve of mine, and I had pretty much gotten used to it, but the other day I heard one that made me laugh out loud. Honda Motors is an occasional underwriter of the fine programming on NPR, and they are touting their environmental record, to appeal to the "Green" NPR listener base. One of their environmentally responsible programs is increased research into "Alternative Fuels".

Replace the "N" sound with a "D" sound in that phrase and you will see why I was busting a gut.

Let's Go Fly a Trike!

So....

As I was finishing yesterday's post at the Sewanee Airport, where my wife works, a young man came in to check the weather on the computer next to me. from the fact that he was checking the weather alone, but referring to a "we" who needed to avoid the rainclouds, I assumed he was a charter Pilot. In his musical accent, which I presumed was Indian, the young man told me how he had been flying all the way from Chicago, through some less-than ideal weather, and was headed, ultimately, to Florida.

As I told him a little about our little town, in walked the other half of the "we" he had mentioned. Not what I expected from a charter passenger, the second young man had a bit of a Rock-Star, devil-may-care feel about him. Wearing something on one leg which was either a brace or a prosthetic, with a stylized Skull-and Crossbones logo on it, he was moving like someone who had been sitting in a car for hours, stretching tired muscles and talking a bit too loudly. The guys talked about their plans for a few minutes, getting their bearings on how far they had come, how far they had left, where they could stop along the way. The first guy mentioned thunderstorms that might be in their way.

"That's OK, said the second, "We'll just fly over them!"

As he looked over at me to see what reaction that remark would get, I decided to play along with the joke.

"I sure hope you guys have a pressurized cabin!" I said.

"We don't have any cabin" was the reply. "We're in an open cockpit"

Well, that explained their concern about the weather...

They hung out for a while longer, taking a great interest in the unique local geography and businesses, and I answered their questions as best I could, and eventually offered them the airport's "courtesy car" in case they wanted to go check out the beautiful Sewanee campus while they waited for weather to clear between them and their destination. As I walked out to the front to get a campus map for them I saw the craft they had arrived in, and was completely taken aback. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. "Open Cockpit" was a bit of an understatement; what they had been flying from Chicago in looked, as much as anything, like an expensive Italian motorscooter with a hangglider attached to it. It was one of the coolest looking aircraft I have ever seen.

Seeing my reaction, The first weather-checker, whose name I soon learned was Abid, asked if I would like to go for a ride in it! The part of me that was thinking how awesome this vehicle was said "Yes" before the part of me that knows that I am a complete coward could think about it. As they say, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I missed a lot of what Abid told me about the craft, but the "Trike" was basically just what it had looked like at first glance; a three-wheeled body smaller than some motorcycles I've seen, with a great big two-bladed propeller on the back, and, mounted on a mast several feet above, a large fabric covered wing that looks and acts like a hangglider. The steering is via a Glider-style bar in front of the pilot, which pivots the wing against the weight of the passenger compartment below.

This model had a very high-tech "Glass Cockpit", which is just a fancy aviation term for having your flight instruments display on a monitor instead of a bunch of little dials. The technology has caught on wildly only within the last 3-5 years, to the best of my knowledge, and pretty soon only "old fashioned" planes will have the vacuum-driven instruments that have dominated the aviation world so far.

After explaining every feature of the aircraft, as if he expected to sell me one, Abid said "OK, we'll go get Matt, and see if he'll take you up". Matt was, of course, Guy number two, the Rock Star, who had made some comments about liking to fly upside down, in addition to the comment about flying over thunderstorms, that caused me to worry a little. They *were* just jokes, right?

I was given additional cause for fear when we walked back in to see Matt,and Abid said;

"Matt, Frank here thinks he's got big enough balls to go up in the trike."

Soon, Matt the Rock-Star was giving me instructions on how to get in the darn thing, adjusting my flight helmet, and then... we were off! I was amazed. It was a completely different sensation than anything I had ever felt before. I had an opportunity to go hanggliding last October, But I missed it. I am sure that a glider on your back is the closest parallel to what we did, but we had the added element of POWER.

True to my suspicions, Matt was not at all meek once in the air, but flew like an adrenaline junkie who desperately needed his next fix. We stayed very near the runway, looping and reeling like a bird, waving at people fishing in the pond below, doing maneuvers that the best rollercoasters in the world are a pale imitation of, before Rock Star Matt decided to really show me what the trike would do. What it would do, it turned out, was around 100 Miles Per Hour, in a dive that felt exactly like I have always imagined the last few moments before a deadly crash would feel like. It felt like being strapped to a falcon which had just spotted a particularly yummy looking mouse in the forest below. To my great relief, we managed to avoid the part of the crash where you actually hit the trees and die, before bringing the trike down on the runway in a much gentler landing than I would have thought possible in such a lightweight thing.

You can check out more about these crazy "Airborne Jet-Skis" here

We didn't have a real camera handy, but We got a few pictures with my wife's dinky little six-year old Camera phone.


Here is a better Picture of the "Delta Jet". It isn't the exact one I went up in, but it is the same model, and the same color.

Card Tricks

Ok "Sports" fans...

Welcome to the Daily(blog of the day) Sports Programming Network's...

Ridiculously wide world of "Sports"

For this, the 4th week of July, in honor of Comic-con San Diego, where my brother has been this week (I'm insanely jealous, by the way) DSPN will be taking a look at competitive Magic of two types. Magic:The Gathering, the Collectible Card Game (aka M:TG the CCG), and actual illusionist, stage magician, sleight-of-hand, type magic.

Everyone in my immediate family has some experience with one or the other of these two "Magics". My Father has recently become a National Champion Magician, (Here's his Magical Resume), and My Mother has taken up Magic too, now that her kids are out of the house. My Siblings an I stuck to the Card Game, but now that I think about it, I am the only one to have competed at both types.

Many Many Moons Ago, when I was ...oh, let's say 8 years old (between 7 and 10, for sure), I won first prize in the Youth Close-up category, at the Winter Carnival of Magic in Gatlinburg Tennessee. I did a trick called "The Matrix" in which I made quarters disappear from beneath a napkin, and a trick called "The Whispering Queen" which is a slightly theatrical take on the oldest "pick a card, any card, sir" trick in the book. I did these tricks so well, I won First Prize in my category, did I mention that already?

oh, by the way, I was the only person entered in that category....

I still have the trophy to this day. It is about a foot tall, and is topped with a hand holding a fanned-out display of cards. It sits next to my Spelling-Bee trophy from a few years later,on my mantel at home. I am a bit more proud of the spelling bee trophy, For reasons that are obvious to those of you with good eyesight.

Several years later, in high school, I became acquainted with some friends of my brothers (Hello, Mr. Lorrance!) who were collecting Star Trek: The Next Generation Collectible Card Game Cards. (aka ST:TNG CCG cards...see how handy these initials are?) I was not a big time trekkie, but the cards were kinda fun, and once I had the concept of a Collectible Card Game explained to me, I was hooked.

Collectible Card Games, (CCG's, even) are like narcotics in a number of important ways:

1. You start because your friends are doing it
2. You sometimes have to buy your own paraphernalia from a friend, a "specialty shop", or an ad in the back of a magazine devoted to your "hobby"
3. You gather with your friends to indulge the habit
4. You spend all your money on the stuff
5. The more you do it the more you need
6. A "harmless" CCG like Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokemon (yes, they are targeting CHILDREN with this stuff) can be a "Gateway Game" to the hard stuff, like Magic:The Gathering.

That being said, there are some important differences:

1. Drugs are actually consumed in the process of using them, whereas the Card-Flopper ends up with cratefuls of the things all over his bedroom. (And, Yeah, the masculine pronoun there was intentional, folks)
   
2. Drug Users don't have to be literate.
3. Drugs make you cool, CCG's just the opposite. (ok, just kidding... Drugs DON'T make you cool, kids. (They're BAD, m'kay?) But still... kids think that drugs will make them cool, whereas they harbor no such illusions about their Star Trek Cards. Lindsay Lohan and Robert Downey, Jr. never went in to Card Game Rehab, is what I'm tryin' to say, here.)
4. Also, there are no tournaments where people compete at their ability to do drugs (except for Major League Baseball, and The Tour De France)
   

And Sure Enough, the Star Trek Cards "Gatewayed" into Guardians cards, which in turn, "Gatewayed" into the Granddaddy of 'em All, Magic: The Gathering. Now I pretty much knew that CCG's were addictive by this point, but M:TG was supposed to be satanic as well. Just like Dungeons and Dragons! Turns out, it is no more satanic than bridge! (insert your own joke about your least favorite bridge player here) Well maybe a little more, but still, the reason it is the Granddaddy of all CCG's is that it is FUN!

Anyway, My brother and I entered a Magic tournament ourselves. I didn't bring home a trophy, (I was put out in the first round, as was my Bro), but I did become a Registered Tournament-level Player (which is kinda like having the word DORK branded into your skin, only less painful). I haven't played in years, and my cards have been stolen (unless I lent them out to someone and forgot) But every now and again I still want to pick it back up. Or maybe I should just try Heroin, instead.

Hey, at least I don't play the Trombone, too!

On Cats and Catflaps

Yesterday's Post was about Doggies, so in the interest of equal time, today will be about Kitties. I am not inclined to be nice about it, however, since I spent a chunk of my afternoon for the second time this month cleaning dead (or in this case, not-quite-dead) bird out of my house.

You see, my wife and I have two kitties. There's PC, a big gray male who's getting on in years, and the new kitty, Marbles. Marbles is a girl kitty, black and white, and young and frisky.

Our history with these kitties goes back to about 1999 or so, when my girlfriend (now my wife) and her roommate, Q, moved into a house in a VERY bad neighborhood. The houses in front of, behind, and to one side of theirs were Crack-houses, with shady characters rolling by constantly. This situation was just beginning to sink in to these girls at about nightfall on the day they were moving in. I was there helping them move, and so it was me and two girls in the house when all of a sudden there was a BANGING sound on the kitchen window!

I was quickly elected "Man of the House", and dragged all of my frightened, unarmed, 160-lb. self into the kitchen "to see what was the matter", as the poet says. There was a young gray cat perched on the windowsill, clawing furiously at the aluminum screen window, causing the frame to make more noise than I thought possible. Apparently, the girls had moved into HIS house, because when we opened the door (after re-swallowing our hearts), he waltzed right on in like he owned the place, a little curious about his new roommates, but apparently ok with sharing his pad with these new humans, provided they keep the food coming, and open the door for him whenever he demanded. Becca noticed that his jaw had been broken at some point in his young life (it WAS a rough neighborhood after all), giving him a lopsided, slack-jawed look (his tongue occasionally lolls out to the side making him truly ridiculous looking) So they named him Prince Charming, with a hearty sense of Irony about it, and called him "PC" for short.

Opening the door on demand became the theme for our relationship with this cat for the next 8 years. about 18 months or so after meeting PC, Becca and I were married, and moved into the tiny 3-room apartment I call "The Monkey Cage". We paid a big, fat, Pet Deposit in order to bring PC with us. We let PC out when he wanted, and back in when he clawed at the aluminum screen, making a sound like a barfight in full swing. Then one of the other tenants in our apartment complex, who drove a shiny black pickup truck complained that our cat was leaving footprints on it. We received a note from the Management informing us of the complaint and asking us to please keep our pet indoors.

We tried, honestly, we did try. For a whole week, almost, we tried. At the end of that week we had almost as many shreds of sanity as we had shreds of mini-blinds on our windows. Even the blinds on the back door located nearly five feet off the ground were not spared. Very soon the decision was made that we would rather risk eviction than imprison that whirlwind of destruction in our apartment against his will one more day. And so, painfully aware of the consequences of not doing so, we opened the doors on demand for the next several years, at three different addresses, regardless of the time of night or day, or whether we were busy or sleeping.

And then we got Marbles, a skinny little black and white kitten who showed up at the Airport where Becca works. Things were touch-and-go for a little while, with the frisky little kitten terrorizing the now at least 8-year-old established King of the household, but they co-exist peacefully enough now.

Then in the fall of 2006 we replaced our front door as part of an overall thermal-efficiency remodel. A lot of really cold air can come in the door when you open it in at 3AM to let the cat out, so I thought to my self, "Self, why don't you see if you can get a door with a pre-installed cat-flap?" As it turns out, my Father-in-Law had a better idea. If we put the cat flap in a window, rather than the door, then cats can get in (because they can jump), but skunks (and possums and probably racoons) can't!

Birds can, though. Especially if a frisky black and white kitten brings them in, crippled, so she can "Play" with them. Mice, Voles, Moles, Shrews, Chipmunks, and Rats can get in the same way. Being awakened at 3AM to let a cat in or out is actually rather nice compared to being awakened at 3AM by the cries of wildlife being eviscerated at the foot of your bed! Sunday night it was a rodent of some variety, and yesterday it was a Red-Breasted Robin. Holy Crippled Bird, Batman!

This is the THIRD robin that my cat has smuggled in through the cat-flap. The first one woke my wife and me up with its cries of pain and terror at about 5:30 AM. The second, just earlier this month, was a Mostly-eaten Carcass by the time we discovered it lying on the carpet in my Feather-strewn den. Yesterday I came home in the afternoon to find feathers in my den, AND dining room, AND bedroom, and the bird, alive and completely ignored, lying on my bedroom floor.

------ Daily Haiku of the Day™ -------
Okay, I get it.
You're A Sadistic Killer.
But Do That OUTSIDE!
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Ah, cats... ya' hafta' love 'em!

No, really, you have to, or they'll kill you in your sleep.

I posted puppy pictures yesterday, so I better post kitty pictures today. The only problem is I don't have any good ones, and I don't have any of Marbles at all.

Anyway here is our battle scarred warrior cat, PC

And Here He is, Ahem, taking care of some Feline Hygiene.

HeHe.. Catch you on the flipside, Blogophiles!

Contranyms

Happy Monday, Blogophiles!

I've gathered you here today to talk to you about the word "Literally"

It grates on the nerves of my inner Grammar-Nazi to hear people misuse the word "literally" so blatantly. (It does NOT, however, literally grate on my nerves, which might literally be torture.) I will start compiling some of the worst cases of "literally" abuse, and I will make sure to post them as I come across them, but there is a doozy of an example in the movie "Man of The Year", starring Robin Williams (tune in for the full Haiku Movie Review tomorrow!)

I regret that I don't have the larger quote in context, but the line was placed on the lips of a television newswoman telling us that Robin Williams' character (A Comedian-turned-politician) had appeared before a joint session of congress where he "Literally brought the house down with laughter" If anyone in the U.S. Capitol building literally "brought the house down" it would be a national tragedy.

People frequently use the word literally for emphasis, in place of the word "really" or "very" or, as the surfers say, "totally"

So if your friend has just frightened you terribly, you might say,

"You scared me to death!"

or, if you want to be more truthful,

"You nearly scared me to death!"

but please don't say,

"You literally scared me to death!"

That last sentence can never be truthfully uttered. Think about it.

But people misuse it this way all the time. As a Matter of Fact, what people quite often mean when using the word "Literally" is its opposite, "Metaphorically", or often "Proverbially". You might be proverbially or metaphorically "up a creek without a paddle", but if someone is telling you that you are literally up a creek without a paddle, you are almost definitely not. Unless the person telling you this is in a creek with you.

While literally is often misused to mean its opposite, there is a class of words that are, in some context, their own opposite. These are usually multi-purpose words that can be used as nouns or verbs, like the word "seed". The word "Seed", used as a verb, means, in the context of "Seeding a lemon" means "to take seeds OUT". However in the context of "Seeding a lawn", the word "Seed" distinctly means "To put seeds IN"

Some folks gathered a list of words that have this peculiar characteristic, and labeled them "contranyms" - words that are their own opposite.

As my wife and I discussed this the other night, I pondered deeply. I thought, this sort of raises the question of what "Opposite" means. Not everything has an opposite. For instance what is the opposite of "Animal"? Is it "Vegetable"? "Mineral"? "Spirit"? "Man"?. We think of Black and white as the quintessential opposites, but what about Red?

On The color wheel, The "opposite" of red is green, and the same applies to stoplights. but on a brightness scale, Bright Red is the opposite of Black, which is not the opposite of Red, But White, as we all know... "So" I wondered aloud, "What is the opposite of "Red"?

To which my slightly-sleepy wife said, "deR"

It took me a minute. Think about it. My wife is a genius.

---------------daily haiku of the day-------------------

I'm All For Free Speech,
But I do expect you to
Follow Grammar Rules.

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