Category: Life

In these times jobs remain elusive, and many people are thrust into unemployment. Things are difficult now for working people, and they will be difficult again in the future. We want to find a job now, but we also want to find a job that will be in demand during the next economic crunch. We propose that most of us aren’t thinking far enough ahead. Why train for jobs that will survive the next recession, when we should train for jobs that will survive the coming apocalyptic destruction of society?

The jobs on that list are not those you might expect. For example, Environmentalist is a poor choice. That will become evident when they discover that bears don’t like people and that in order to stay warm you must be willing to burn something you find in nature. Similarly, Survivalists will not experience the joyride they may expect, once a thousand looters beat them to death with rocks and steal all their canned ham and 7.62mm ammunition.

Therefore, to assist in your long-term career planning we present the 10 jobs most likely to survive the coming apocalypse.

Psychic Reader: By surviving the apocalypse, a psychic reader will have demonstrable proof of their abilities. They will find a valuable place in any post-apocalyptic community by providing advice on love, family, money, and zombie blood rituals.

Zookeeper: Since most technology will be trashed, a zookeeper will find expanded opportunities. These will include handling 2-headed mutant draft horses, and husbandry planning for the giant goat-yak cross-breeds raised for food and their silky fur.

Technical Writer: Our entire technical civilization has been documented by technical writers in manuals that no other human has ever read. If we’re to access any of that technology in the post-apocalyptic world, tech writers will be needed to decode those writings.

Weatherman: In today’s world a weatherman exists to provide people the illusion that they can know at least one thing about what will happen tomorrow, so that they aren’t driven insane by existential trauma. The same will be true after the apocalypse. We expect that the accuracy of forecasts will not appreciably diminish.

Emergency Medical Technician: Those who survive the apocalypse are expected to be a hardy lot, but they will be prey to accidents, bio-engineered plague, and mutant chainsaw attacks. EMTs will be highly prized citizens after the apocalypse because they will go where the zombie attack is happening, and they will treat someone without first ordering two x-rays, an MRI, a blood draw, and psychiatric counseling.

Chemistry Professor: After the apocalypse we will need experts like chemistry professors to harness the elements around us in ways most of us have forgotten. We will need fuels, soap, solvents, and antiseptics. But mainly we’ll want these individuals because none of us will remember how to make beer, wine, or sour mash whiskey.

Retired Mechanic: After the apocalypse our access to machinery, fuel, and machine tools may be limited. Mechanics are likely to be of little use in our communities. However, there will always be a place for a retired mechanic who can yank 500 pounds of computers and plastic garbage out of a Silverado and replace them with a Chevy 350 V-8.

Golf Pro: Prior to the apocalypse a golf pro coached a golf enthusiast on swinging a 9-iron to connect with a golf ball. Post-apocalypse he will coach a desperate, under-nourished survivor on swinging a 9-iron to connect with the head of the zombie who just ate his brother. This is a completely transferrable skill set.

Romance Novelist: Post-apocalyptic communities will face a challenge in repopulating the human species. Not only will it be difficult to find some snuggle time between giant irradiated bug attacks, but everyone will suffer from radiation burns, open sores, and malformations of all imaginable kinds. If this isn’t the time for a story about a bare-chested pirate rescuing a naked girl from headhunters and a volcano, I don’t know when that time would be.

Administrative Assistant: In the immediate aftermath of the apocalypse humanity will lynch all the supervisors and managers, and quite rightly too. Into this leadership vacuum will step administrative assistants. They have long employed their powers of influence and coercion to get people to do all manner of stupid things, and they did it without a shred of actual authority. They will be the bedrock upon which the future post-apocalyptic civilization shall stand.

I’d say they could use a romance novel or two around there.

So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and
Demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
Beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and
Its purpose in the service of your people.

Prepare a noble death song for the day when you go over the great divide.
Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend,
Even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and
Bow to none. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the food and
For the joy of living. If you see no reason for giving thanks,
The fault lies only in yourself. Abuse no one and nothing,
For abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of its vision.

When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts
Are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes
They weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again
In a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.

– Tecumseh, 1768 – 1813

We’re never as dangerous as when we think we’re wise. At least I’m not. I’m always full of opinions about people who watch reality TV, or smoke, or wear their pants below their ass crack. I may talk about them, or give them dubious looks. It makes me feel a little better. But sometimes I start thinking I should prevent them from doing these things, and that’s when I fall into dangerous-as-a-panther-dropping-acid territory.

I don’t object to laws against stealing, killing, and other awful behaviors. Those have been thought about and tested by thousands of people over thousands of years. It’s like they’ve been crash tested, and they turned out to be Volvos. But when I think I’m so wise I can build a car in my backyard and let someone drive it into a wall, that’s unlikely to go well.

I get outraged by people who are shitty parents. I defy anyone to argue that some parents are not awful and repugnant in a way that poisons the soul. I think, “Jeez, if I could have stopped them from being parents, I would have.” I also think, “What the hell? People need a license to go out and shoot a deer between the eyes, but they can just have a kid because they think it would be neat?”

Sometimes I bitch to my friends about this. I’m blowing off steam and rockin’ on the injustice of it all. Then I think, “I can fix this. There ought to be a law.” That’s when I walk into the land of the dangerous panther. Until that point I’ve been complaining, but now I think I’m wise enough to make people do things and fix the whole problem. It took a wise fellow like Solomon to suggest cutting a baby in half. How much wisdom does it take to decide which people don’t deserve any baby parts at all?

My problem is that I wouldn’t get to see the parents act like insane baboons with their kid first, and then afterwards decide whether to let them have a kid. They’d already have the kid by then. So I’d have to make a prediction. That’s also known as a guess wearing a suit and tie.

Or, maybe I could look at them with their first kid and then decide whether to let them have any more. But even that’s tricky, because this all deals with who is allowed to exist and who isn’t. If I’m deciding whether other people’s children can exist, I’d better be pretty damned wise. Or, I’d better I hire wise people. And I’d better hope that after I’m dead the people making existence decisions don’t say to hell with being wise, and just tell the people they don’t like to shut up and forget having kids.

But I can be optimistic. Maybe I’m wise, and the people who come along after me will be wise, and everybody and his pet goat ends up being a wise, wise fellow. Maybe I can predict with complete accuracy who will be a whirling natural disaster as a parent. Victory! Let’s get a beer and get laid!

But wait—I see a flatulent hog rooting in my re-ordered garden of existence. Horrible parents don’t always create horrible children, and horrible children don’t always grow into horrible adults. In fact, if someone could have predicted my childhood, they would have almost certainly prohibited my existence, and I wouldn’t be around to comb my wife’s hair and ignore the weeds in my yard because I’m watching Blazing Saddles.

In the end, I haven’t even shown that I’m wise enough to stay away from wallpapering a bathroom. That’s not a good wisdom resume. I might bitch all I want about horrific parents, but as far as deciding who can and can’t exist, I guess I’ll stay out of what people do with their happy parts.

Besides, I may be busy passing other laws. I’m starting to change my mind about those pants-below-the-ass-crack guys.

Should this child have been allowed to exist? We’re still not really sure.

 

I used to think I was a pretty smart guy. That was because I knew what an imaginary number was and I remembered the difference between Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. I didn’t think I was a genius, mind you—just pretty smart. I now realize something though. Yes, I’m fairly smart, but no, it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.

We have this idea that exceptionally smart people are on top of the world, but I think that’s false. We don’t generally embrace the geniuses among us and reward them with charming tidbits. Say on one hand you have a woman who engineers bridges so that they don’t fall down, and on the other hand you have a guy who bats .372 in the playoffs. Which one of them has a fan club and a Lamborghini for each day of the week?

Please don’t misunderstand me, I think that raw intelligence is a wonderful thing. If I need open heart surgery, I don’t want a surgeon who’s sitting around watching Jackass II before the operation. And smart people have helped us a lot throughout history. Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein didn’t exactly spend their time counting on their toes and eating paste.

On the other hand, just last month I met the dumbest guy with a 160 IQ I ever ran across. Have you met this guy? He’s obviously brilliant, but he understands so little about the world he lives in that he’s unable to accomplish a single damned thing. If he wore barbed wire briefs to dampen his intellectual prowess, he might be better off.

Raw intellectual power is like a keyhole saw. If you need to cut a hole for a doorknob, a keyhole saw is invaluable. For a slew of specialized jobs, if you don’t have a keyhole saw you are practically paralyzed. If you don’t have a keyhole saw and instead use a different tool, like a rubber mallet, things are not going to go well.

But the great majority of jobs in your garage are not keyhole saw jobs. For example, if you try to re-wire a chandelier with your keyhole saw, no fun will be involved in the process. If you are lucky enough to have a keyhole saw, by all means keep it in your toolbox, but realize that you’ll only need it for special jobs. As any handyman knows, most of your jobs in life are best handled with duct tape and WD-40. With them you can do just about anything (doorknob installation notwithstanding).

So if raw intellect is like a keyhole saw, then what qualities are like duct tape and WD-40? Well, I’m sure everybody has their own theories about that. I personally try to understand them in terms of our distant ancestors. Considering those ancestors, I think that duct tape is the skill of working nicely with the rest of the clan so that they don’t throw you out of the cave into the snow to die. And WD-40 is paying close enough attention to the world around you so that you can hide from the saber-tooth tiger before it eats your ass.

This kind of thing is useful every day. How often do you need to conjugate a verb or interpolate a logarithmic function? (painting and photo by Cyn McCurry)

 

 

 

I am less important than a piece of plastic. Actually, I’m less important than an electrified hunk of plastic that lets you text, tweet, play music, web surf, play Angry Birds, and replicate noises made by the human anus. My 16-year-old niece, Wendy, made sure I understood this last week as she sat on the other end of my couch communing with her smart phone as if it were an iBuddha. Her ear buds protected her in case I wanted to talk about the weather, or the horrible old days when we found things by using maps and the Yellow Pages. She had merged her eyes with that tiny screen, and as far as she was concerned I could have been another sunflower-print couch cushion.

At one point I thought she might reenter the world of human beings when she lowered her phone, but I heard her ear buds still blaring something that might be music, or it might be someone building shelves with a variable speed drill. She snaked one hand into her messenger bag and pulled out a Kindle. I’d given it to her for Christmas, hoping she’d read something more complex than a description of a YouTube video. Indeed, she now began reading, her head twitching in time with the music.

Feeling a bit frustrated and whiny, I snatched my own smart phone and fired off a text to her:  I’m sitting right here. WTF? A moment later she raised her phone to read my subtle hint, and then she pulled out the ear buds and smiled at me. “Sorry, I got distracted. What’s up?”

I suggested that blinders might solve her distraction problem, and she shrugged. Then all of my ideas for conversation evaporated. Now that I had Wendy’s attention I had nothing to say. Looking around like a dope, I spotted the Kindle and asked how she liked it.

“It’s great! I read all the Twilight books on it.”

I should have just nodded, but being less important than a piece of plastic had worn down my self-esteem and patience. I said a couple of bad things about Twilight. I might have used the words “puerile” and “skank.”

Wendy said, “Come on, it’s not that bad, you know, just lighten up a little. I mean, it was nice of you to give me those other books like Moby Dick and The Age of Reason, but, well… at least I’m using it, you know?”

This had been my second greatest fear. The greatest fear was that she’d never read anything more sophisticated than one-sentence tweets and blog posts about shopping for lip gloss. But my second fear was that she was just going to read the literary equivalent of Pop Tarts, and that’s meager fare with which to feed your soul.

I thought about Tecumseh’s magnificent observation, “When the legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness.” Then, like I had Tourette’s or something, I blurted out old Tecumseh’s sliver of wisdom and preened as if I’d just delivered the Sermon on the Mount.

She stared at me for an uncomfortable time before saying, “Huh?”

I looked down at the Cheese Whiz stain on the couch cushion and sighed.

“Well, I read other stuff too,” she said. “Everybody who was reading Twilight was talking about The Hunger Games too, so I read those books. The movie was good, even though they left out some stuff.”

Gazing at her like a dog that hoped she had a beef rib in her pocket, I asked if she’d read anything else.

“Yeah, I figured that was a sci-fi game thing with kids, so I found this book called Ender’s Game. It was really cool.”

My head popped up, and I peered at her to see if she was kidding. She didn’t look like she was yanking me around. In fact, she looked like she’d forgotten me again as her phone buzzed and she read the incoming text. I dared to ask her what she was reading now.

She rolled her eyes at the text and said, “I liked the Ender thing, so there’s this website that says what books are like other books. It said that Huckleberry Finn was kind of like Ender, so I’m reading that now.”

I tried not to let my mouth drop open. Instead I asked her whether she liked it.

“It’s pretty good,” she said. “It’s better than the creaky old books they make us read at school. It’s pretty funny.”

I told Wendy that I thought it was funny too, and I said some other stuff that was probably stupid. I don’t remember because I was marveling that she’d gone from Twilight to Huckleberry Finn in six months. It struck me that reading is reading, no matter what you read, and for some kids Twilight must be like a gateway drug, except that it leads to Brave New World instead of shooting up smack.

Swimming in hope and satisfaction, I asked Wendy if she planned to read Tom Sawyer next.

“Nah, I think I’ll read a couple of those racy romances. Mom reads them all the time.”

I dug my fingernails into my leg, smiled, and nodded. After a few seconds she went back to her Kindle, apparently assuming from my glassy silence that the conversation was over. I kept telling myself that reading is reading, even if the book’s cover features a bare-chested pirate with no body hair and de-emphasized nipples.

So what if tomorrow she’s reading a romance like Pirate’s Raging Passion? Six months from now it could be a romance like Wuthering Heights.

Pirate’s Raging Passion – a hurricane of lust. (photo by Courtney Martin)

I’m participating in Six Sentence Sunday, a cool effort that invites authors to post six sentences from one of their works on Sunday morning. Six Sentence Sunday will then link the post on their site. It’s a slick concept, and I encourage everyone to check it out. This post is six sentences from my essay “I Hate My Brain,” which is available in my book Bring Us The Head Of The Velveteen Rabbit.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand that brains get a little weird when your body produces a smidge too much of something or other, or when things get out of whack in the lobes, or sometimes really for no reason at all. But there’s only so long you can go with your brain making you act like a crazy man before you say a dignified, “Enough.” I’m not positive what my brain has to say at this point, because we’ve only been communicating through my thyroid. For example, I’ll say to my thyroid, “Hey, ask my brain how to calculate the distribution of a chi square test,” and the thyroid will come back a little later and say, “Your brain answered, but it was just a bunch of squiggly symbols I don’t understand. How about some extra hormones instead?” That’s not as helpful as I might wish.

Again, please check out some of the other authors linked at Six Sentence Sunday.

Yesterday I almost beat my barber to death with a blow dryer. I held myself back because there’s no beer in prison, and because I suspected in some vague way that it might be wrong. I’ve known the fellow for years, and we’ve spent a lot of time talking about movies, and his kids, and the weather, and semi-automatic pistols while he gave me a severe buzz-cut. I could have paid a chimp and gotten the same haircut, but he’s a good guy who reminds me of the guys I grew up with.

As my buddy trimmed my sideburns yesterday, he decided to talk politics. He further decided to expound about a jagged rainbow of social problems, and he did it with such malice that I felt sick. I might have yelled at him, or even punched him if he wasn’t holding a pair of scissors an inch from my jugular. Please note that I’m not saying which side of the debate he stood upon. I don’t want to talk about the issues. I want to talk about murder.

When he’d finished I said nothing. My dad always told me that no one ever changed somebody else’s mind about politics or religion by talking to them, so save your breath. I hurled a venomous glare at my former friend and hoped my 20 dollar bill gave him paper cuts. I took a distracted left out of the parking lot and cut off a dump truck. Then I drove around without a destination for an hour, wondering how someone I’d liked for so long could turn out to be such a spiteful, terrible person.

I don’t have a priest or minister to turn to when the universe has turned to crap and I don’t know how I’ll ever again relate to my fellow man, not even when I’m miserable because the universe is busy hiding cruelty from me like putrid Easter eggs. In these cases I turn to the wisest man I know, Fat Mike, the owner of Fat Mike’s Rib Shack. Seven blocks later I pulled into Fat Mike’s parking lot, right between a Christian bookstore and a head shop.

I found Mike preparing for the dinner rush, which meant he was sitting in a duct-taped executive chair with his bare feet up on the counter, a paper plate piled with ribs balanced on his round belly, and a red plastic cup of sweet tea in his hand. He waved the tea at me as I walked over, dribbling some barbeque sauce on his purple Hawaiian shirt, and he said, “Hey Bubba. Cheer up—you ain’t making decisions where people might die today, and nobody’s shooting at you. It’s a good day.”

That failed to cheer me up. I explained about my friend the barber and about my existential crisis, while Mike peeled a rib with his teeth. When I was done, he swallowed and said, “That’s a tough one, Bubba. I don’t have a great answer, but here’s what I do. Actually, what I do depends on how good I feel at the time. Now if I feel really bad, say I’m hung over, or doing my taxes, or my wife has locked me out of the house, I just say to hell with the bastards. I go ahead and hate them worse than diarrhea and just accept that there’s people in the world more useless than a monkey fart. Then I go on about my business.”

Mike pitched a denuded rib bone at a gray trash bin and missed. As the bone skidded into the corner, a yellow mongrel dog charged out from under the counter, snatched the bone, and trotted back under the counter out of sight. Mike said, “When I’m feeling better and everything’s all right, my car’s washed and my grass is mowed, I look at it different. I figure this is the world I’ve got and these are the people I’ve got, and I can’t change any of them. I might as well try to make something good out of sharing the planet with the miserable toe-suckers. I don’t let them stomp all over me, but lots of misery in my life has come from trying to change shit I can’t do anything about. Rib?” He held out a dripping beef rib, and I said no thanks.

Shrugging, Mike gnawed off some rib meat and chewed while he said, “When I’m feeling really good, like when I win a $50 scratch-off or find a station with real cheap gas, I figure that I don’t know what some vile turd’s life’s been like or how he got that way. Hell, I’ve got a nephew who’s a tumor of a man, a real cast iron ass-crack, but I remember him being a toddler, playing in my lap, a sweet kid. And I know how he got to be a louse. If I met some horrible asshole and knew him the way I know my nephew, I might look at him a little different—maybe.”

Mike stood and dumped the plate of rib bones in the trash, and I heard a whine from under the counter. Using a paper towel to wipe off each finger, Mike said, “When I feel great—I mean fantastic—like I’m headed to Disney World tomorrow, or my wife bought me a table saw for Christmas, I remind myself that I don’t know what that rancid piece of crap is thinking. For all I know, he may think I’m the nasty jerk, because he’s ignorant of stuff I know. And he knows things I don’t know. Hell, maybe I am the nasty jerk, and I don’t know it. Probably not, but it makes me stop and think before I condemn the guy to shovel shit in hell.”

“So there you go, Bubba. That’s how I handle it, from nasty to not quite as nasty,” Mike said as he strolled around the counter and put a hand on my shoulder. It almost felt fatherly until I realized he was steering me towards the door and out of his hair. As he pushed open the screen door for me he said, “And one last thing I guess. When I’m feeling honest, as opposed to feeling good, I have to admit that no matter what lousy crap that person has done, I’ve probably done just as bad at some point, if not the same dang thing.”

Mike let the door slam behind me, and he said through the rusty screen, “Or maybe I’ve done stuff even worse. How do you think I can stand to put up with you?”

“So, where do you stand on immigration reform and capital gains taxes?”

When something says, “All Guys Need to Read This,” I pay attention. I figure it may be critical information about prostate health, or maybe a TV show where they blow stuff up. So when I read a post titled “All Guys Need to Read This” and found it full of advice on dealing with women, I felt perplexed. I was pretty sure that guys who prefer other guys don’t need to read it. But beyond that, it’s full of lousy advice written by some well meaning fool.

The post laid down 14 points regarding manly devotion to a woman, and I am not making any of them up. I don’t want to dismiss all of them. A few seem solid, whether you’re dealing with a woman or a man. Some even seem solid when you’re dealing with a child, or a cocker spaniel. The solid ones include:

  • “When she says that she loves you she really does mean it”
  • “When she tells you a secret keep it safe and untold”
  • “When you see her start crying just hold her and don’t say a word”
  • “Kiss her in the pouring rain”
  • “When she steals your favorite hoodie let her wear it”

I support every one of these. For example, if she says she loves you, and you think she’s lying about it, why are you even talking to her? Send her to the movies and change the locks while she’s gone. If you intend to share someone else’s secrets, you’re just a jerk. When someone you love starts crying, don’t try talking them out of it. That’s like walking into a fire and tossing around a few nuclear bombs. Kissing in the rain is always good in movies, so we know it has to be good in real life. And if someone you love wants to wear your hoodie, are you going to fight her for it? Hit her in the knee with a golf club?

The problem with all of that wisdom is that the only advice here worth uttering is the warning about shutting up when someone cries. I wasted 15 seconds of my life reading the others, and that’s time I could have used to eat one of those little bags of potato chips.

Let’s look at the rest of this instruction manual for people with penises.

  • “When she pulls away pull her back”

Maybe this guy intends to express his love, but he’s expressing assault in my book. When a woman pulls back, she probably wants to get away from your annoying words, behavior, or smell. Let go already.

  • “When you see her walking sneak up and hug her waist from behind”

This one seems problematic. I can see it being romantic under certain circumstances, like walking around the house with nothing much going on. But if she’s doing something interesting or important to her, snatching her around the waist is kind of like saying that what she’s doing doesn’t mean crap compared to your interest in a quick grope. Use with discretion.

  • “When she’s scared protect her”

What are you protecting her from—a jaguar that jumped through your living room window all of a sudden? You may get disemboweled in a pretty snappy fashion then, but okay. However, fear can be good. It tells us we’d better do something, and that thing is usually good for us. Don’t prevent her from doing that good stuff for herself because you were protecting the hell out of her.

  • “When she grabs at your hands hold hers and play with her fingers”

If that’s what she likes, sure, but as general advice this is just weird.

  • “When she looks at you in your eyes don’t look away until she does”

Maybe this is supposed to be romantic, but it sounds like a prelude to a gunfight to me. So you hung in there and stared her down until she looked away first. Is that a good thing, or is it like trying to establish dominance with a Rottweiler?

  • “When she’s mad hug her tight and don’t let go”

I’m sorry, but this is the stupidest advice ever. When she gets mad, it’s for a reason, and being restrained like that guy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest will solve the problem in only a tiny percentage of the cases. I don’t advocate doing this unless you want to get bitten on the face.

  • “When she says she’s ok don’t believe it”

I was wrong, this is the stupidest advice ever. If you both want to go insane trying to figure who’s sending what secret signals and who’s playing what game today, this is the ideal thing to do. If you’d prefer not to sit in divorce court arguing over who gets the chipped plates from JC Penny, then cut this crap out.

  • “Treat her like she’s all that matters to you”

She’s the only thing that matters to you, huh? I guess that means she’s responsible for your entire happiness then. That’s no pressure on her, though. After a few years she’ll leave you or stab you in your sleep.

  • “When she runs up to you crying, the first thing you say is, ‘Whose butt am I kicking baby?’”

Because when she’s upset the most important thing to do is threaten violence. That will make her feel better right away. Bonus points for using the word “baby” in the context of a felony.

Thanks for hearing me out on this. These are just my opinions, but I think there’s a chance that I’m right, and the possibility of it approaches 100%. Now I’m going to spend the evening with my wife, without assuming that she doesn’t mean what she’s saying, without treating her like a kid I need to take care of, and without the risk of my nose being bitten off.

This young lady is practicing the facial expression that precedes leaving a man forever, or possibly stabbing him in his sleep. You were warned. Photo from photobucket.com.

 

I used to have some pretty cool retirement plans. They would have required a whole lot of strenuous not doing much. I figured I’d go to movies with my wife, ride my bike around the neighborhood, play a video game or two, cruise the Danube River, and all that kind of stuff. Take it easy and appreciate life. But I was kidding myself, just like some movie producer who’s out there planning to make money on Highlander V – in 3D.

Life rubbed my face in this fact recently. A while back happened to have some time on my hands. My regular work scaled down for a while, so I found myself in a mini-retirement. I thought to myself, this will be cool. I’ll kick back and have some fun. It’s been a tough year, so look out world—the fun train is rolling!

Since nobody cared whether I accomplished anything or succeeded in any way, I gathered up my high spirits and took on a small, fun project. That was so much fun that I moved right into a big project. And while that was going on I tacked on a huge project, which was also fun but really damned huge. By now I’ve given up all the leisure activities I had before my mini-retirement started, and it’s common in the evenings to hear me say, “Sorry sweetie, I can’t watch that movie with you tonight. I need to get some work done.”

So, you can see that mini-retirement didn’t work out for me. My retirement plans were as solid as the prediction that the Lost City of Atlantis will rise, and that UFOs will tow it to Disney World while Godzilla rides a unicycle through its streets.

My dad is retired. I’m pretty close to my dad, but something has gradually separated us. When I was younger we worked closely together for thousands of hours, and we did it comfortably and with a like mind. My dad made his living in the construction business most of his life. Before construction, he climbed out of helicopters and shinnied down ropes for a living. Before that he shot at young Chinese men for a living, and their friends shot back at him, as you might expect.

My dad lived his life in a world of things, of doing things and of making things. A very smart guy, but he didn’t graduate with the rest of his high school class because he failed English. He wouldn’t read the fiction books because he hated reading about things that weren’t true. But he unofficially attended graduation so he could receive all of the sports awards. Like I said, he’s a “doing things” guy. And as I’ve gotten older I’ve dealt more with “non-things” like numbers and words, and my life has moved gradually farther away from his.

Circumstances forced my dad to retire pretty young. A bunch of broken bones from his days of jumping out of helicopters caught up with him. His ability to do things and make things dropped to almost nothing. He never displayed much emotion—when his mom died he didn’t show much grief. One day not long after he stopped working, the city was repairing streets in his neighborhood. You could hear the construction equipment moving earth around. My dad walked outside, and he stood in his front yard and wept.

I don’t understand much. But I’m getting a sliver of understanding of what my dad’s world became once the doing of things and the making of things were taken away. I hope that separates us a bit less. Also, I guess I’d better get my shit together in case the things that my life is about disappear for me someday.

My planned career in retirement – selling sites on which to build bowling alleys.

Just to let you know, this funky piece is pulled from my e-book Bring Us The Head Of The Velveteen Rabbit. All the other essays in the book are far better than this one. You’ll be shocked. I chose this one because I didn’t want to build your expectations up too much. You might particularly like”The Least Romantic Man in America,” and “Days of Wine and Mammoths.” Check it out at either Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Now I’m going to take my unapologetic, grasping, mercantile ass home and mow the yard.

Good morning. I am your cat, and as you know I rarely speak. My vocabulary is poor. I cannot make myself understood by you and your human friends. Trust me, if it were otherwise I would be on the phone right now ordering Finding Nemo on Pay per View. But today God has granted me five minutes of articulate speech so that I can clear up a thing or two with you, my owner.

First let us crush some misconceptions. I do not own you. You have the ability to remove my genitals and my claws. So, let us not be ridiculous by talking about me owning you. Also, I am not all that independent. I like you. You give me food, and you do funny things like sit on the toilet. When you are gone I miss you, and when you come home I stick to you like a fuzzy, dignified rash. Sure, if you dropped dead I would happily eat your corpse, but I am not going to drag you down like a gazelle on the veldt.

Now that we have resolved that, let us get specific. You complain because I scratch up your couch. You gave me a charming scratching post, and I ignore it like it was the ghost of Lassie. You yell and squirt water at me, which makes me sad because you are missing the point. Your couch is as ugly as moose crotch. I mean really, sunflowers? I never scratch the ottoman, because it is a lovely piece of furniture. I am doing you a favor by pointing out an appalling item in our shared home, so please desist squirting me with that bottle. I think it has bacteria in it.

You often laugh at me when I play. I am happy to provide you amusement. Please consider how much amusement I provide for such a small investment. All I need is a crumpled piece of paper to entertain you. And yet, when you play it is in fact quite boring for me. I do not want to hurt your feelings, but seven hours of twitching your thumb in front of your computer or X-Box is hardly a laugh riot for me. Please consider my enjoyment when choosing your leisure activities. Play your Wii more often. When you are Wii bowling I laugh so hard I think I am going to pee.

Let me raise another sore point. Sometimes I meow a lot, and sometimes I whine. Yes, I admit that on occasion I howl at 3:00 a.m. when you have an important meeting with a real jerk in only four hours. Sometimes when you are asleep I lie on your face, lick your eyelids, and pull out your hair with my teeth. All of this behavior must puzzle you and even anger you. I want you to understand that I do these things because you gave me a stupid name. You named me Snowball, and my brother is named Macaroni. I know cats named Oatcake, Loki, Tigger, and Dammit. Come on. Would you name your son “Schmoo”? How about “Sassafras”? Stop naming us like we were roadies on a Def Leppard tour and you will have a lot more peace at home.

When I roll on catnip while gripped by a profound euphoria, I sometimes sense that you are mocking me. I suspect that you are saying, “Look at the silly cat! He’s going crazy for that catnip. That’s just so wild!” I may be wrong about your comments, and if so I apologize, but just allow me to say this. You drink martinis and smoke dope. I roll in catnip and chase laser pointers. No one has cause to throw stones here.

Sometimes I feel we have lost sight of our respective roles in the home. My role is to be cute, play, eat your food, sleep, keep you company, and throw up in your shoe. Your role is to feed me, provide a lap for me on demand, clean my litter box, give me toys, keep me company, and leave your shoes lying around. When we both know our job, everything runs smoothly. My job may seem menial or even boring. Yet I remind you that I have never had to explain a return policy to an angry customer.

I hope we now better understand one another. This was certainly cathartic for me, and I expect it was illuminating for you. Now we can achieve a more harmonious life together, one that is genteel and even generous. We may yet create a world where I walk into the kitchen to find a can of tuna by my bowl, and you walk into the bedroom to find a dead bird on your pillow.

“You call it a cabinet. I call it Mount Olympus. Cough up a can of tuna before I pop a thunderbolt in your ass.”

Pimping begins: I yanked this out of my e-book Bring Us The Head Of The Velveteen Rabbit, which is full of profound essays like “A Kick In The Shin Is Better Than Sex,” “The Iron Fist of Youth,” and “Read This, or My Goldfish Will Kick Your Ass.” It’s available at both Amazon and Barnes and Noble. I now be done pimping.