What gall

Posted on November 3, 2015 by PMcG

While standing in the prescription line at the pharmacy, I often get restless and fidgety. I tend to buzz or vibrate, even levitate, all while giving off a tuneless whistling sound.

I look desperately around for some distraction to take my mind off the crushing indignity of me, of all people, being forced to stand unnoticed and unvenerated behind people who seem seriously unspecial and who act as if I don’t exist.

Sometimes, if the line is long enough, I am pushed back to the rotating rack of self-help books. Their titles tell me they were written for the very people ahead of me in line who cannot see them because they are not at the back of the line. I believe this is called irony.

Take, for instance Eighteen Crucial Laws of Growth. Flip to the table of contents and you find:

• Law Number One: Avoid standing in holes. Growing will take twice as long.
• Law Number Two: Stand on tip toes whenever growth is being measured.
• Law Number Three: Avoid activities that cause the growth of hair on your palms.
• Law Number Four: We’re not kidding about Law Number Three.

What crap. I’ve been breaking those laws since forever and look how I turned out. (BTW: You can get hand razors delivered to your door in discrete, plain brown wrapping paper marked only with your address and the logo of Hairy Joe’s Naughty Boy Palm Scrapers.)

Tell me these other titles in the rack aren’t for losers.

• Whatever it is you’re doing, God wants you to knock it off

• 12 life strategies for developing 12 life strategies on your own

• The six most effective habits for getting noticed by insects

• How to avoid lower back pain when picking up what life is laying down 

• Five easy steps to wearing your baseball cap frontwards

• Everything you need to know, you will never know, so suck it up and keep the line moving

The last time I was at the pharmacy, an arrogant guy in line behind me shouldered me aside and grabbed a copy of Dude, Mind Your Own Beeswax, Dude.

I was about to say something when he smirked and just pointed to the title. What gall. Some people think their bingo bango don’t bongo.

To be fair, not every book in the rack is worthless. I like to thumb through 7 steps to find alien life in the universe.

• Step 1: Look in the mirror. Ask “Am I an alien?” Meditate on your answer. Or medicate, if you got ‘em.

• Step 2: Get a telescope on e-bay or make one out of a paper towel roll. Aim it at the sky. Zoom in on anything that looks like an alien spaceship. Write down the license number and text to Homeland Security.

• Step 3: Download the app for finding aliens. Warning: make sure you ask for the ‘’Outer Space” alien version, and not the “Invisible, Undocumented Canadian” app.

• Step 4: Look in the mirror again. Ask “How’s it going?” Don’t kid yourself. (Alternate Step: If mallet handy, knock yourself out.)

• Step 5: Start an alien meetup group, but disguise its name so as not to scare off aliens. Example: “Retired UFO conductors interested in Pictionary” meetup; “Spacemen seeking space women” meetup;  “Little green men survivors of Lime Disease” meetup.

• Step 6: Learn to speak an alien language. If no classes are available in your area, send for free booklet “Universal sign language for chatting up aliens and invisible Canadians.”

• Step 7: Borrow your neighbor’s spaceship and boldly go where no neighbor has gone before. (Urgent: Before blasting off, repeat step four.)

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

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Ask a bluesman

Posted on October 27, 2015 by PMcG

Q. I think I have the blues, but my doctor says it’s just irritable bowel syndrome.
A. Is your doctor a bluesman?

Q. He’s a gastroenterologist.
A. You mean an ologist who enters your gastro works?

Q. Not in the Biblical sense. Sort of by remote control.
A. Hmm. What color is he?

Q. Kind of white. Maybe an off white. Like pancake batter.
A. When he sings does he try to sound like an 80-year-old black man with missing teeth and an $8 guitar?

Q. Now that you mention it, no.
A. So what makes you think you have the blues?

Q. I just feel all over bad.
A. You look all over bad. Has your woman done you wrong?

Q. I don’t have a woman. And by the way, can anyone ever really have a woman?
A. Now you’re talking the blues.

Q. So, if you have the blues, and you have a guitar and you start singing, is that singing the blues?
A. That’s like asking “If I had a million dollars and I gave a bum a nickel, could I still call myself a millionaire?”

Q. I did not know that.
A. Try it the next time you get a million bucks. It stings like crazy.

Q. What if I don’t have a guitar, but I do have a banjo?
A. You can’t sing the blues on a banjo. They end up sounding, well, happy. If you got the blues, you aint happy ‘bout it. Ironically, though, you do feel like singing.

Q. But you can have a banjo and also have the blues, right?
A. I suppose. I mean, if you’re talking the “I got a banjo and don’t that suck” blues. But it has to suck really bad.

Q. How about this. I don’t have a million dollars and I don’t have a woman and I traded in my banjo for an $8 dollar guitar, and I start to sing. Would that be singing the blues?
A. It would help if you were blind. And drunk. Not blind drunk. Two separate things, you follow? And you need a good blues name. I think Blind Boy Biwabik is available.

Q. What if I’m feeling just a teeny bit blue? Instead of singing the blues, could I just sing the blue?
A. Have you ever seen a kid with one measle? One mump? Ever heard anyone call a smart ass a smart cheek? Have you ever tried counting your toe? Have you ever blown just one nostril? Ever tried to buy a pair of pant? Have you ever killed just one stink bug?

Q. So I guess that’s why they call it the blues.
A. Right. The other primary colors already had gigs.

Q. What is the difference between having the blues and just whining?
A. Somebody once asked me why I did my baby wrong. I said well, she done me wrong first. Then I done her wrong second and then she done me wrong third. I was just about to do her wrong fourth when she went and done me wrong fourth first and it messed me up. I ended up doing myself wrong fifth which she used as an excuse to do me wrong again.

Q. Is that whining, or is it the Blues?
A. Yes.

Q. What if turns out all I have is irritable bowel syndrome? Can I sing it?
A. There’s a pretty strict rule: You can sing the blues, but you can’t sing the bowels.

Q. Because?
A. It would really irritate people.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Foldos in the wallet

Posted on October 21, 2015 by PMcG

A split second before I hit the mute button, a voice on our flat screen said “Are you asking the right questions about how your wealth is managed?”

I was raised to be polite, so instead of snarling “Go to the mall!” I asked sweetly “Are you talking to me?”

The voice said “Of course I’m talking to you!”

Some background: We recently purchased a Smart Flat Screen. It has twice as many buttons on the remote as our dumb flat screen. They are not only remote, they’re aloof. In fact, before we could buy it, we had to prove we were smart enough, by answering the following question:

“Rosencrantz is on a train that leaves Cleveland at noon doing 60 miles an hour. Guildenstern is on a second train that hasn’t yet left Cheektowaga because it is waiting for Godot. Godot is stuck in traffic and he’s got women, he’s got women on his mind.

“Therefore, how long, in dog years until the Existentialist Movement moves to adjourn?” (Warning: Before you declare this a no-brainer and blurt out “Wednesday,” keep in mind it’s a trick question.)

I avoided the question by spending one of three wishes granted last year by a genii I found trapped in a compromising situation with a johnii in an empty bottle of extra virgin olive oil.

Unlike most people who use wishes immediately, I kept mine in my wallet. Unfortunately, they got stuck together, like when your Mungo Jerry fan club ID gets buttheat molded to your American Bowling Congress card. I had to perform some PRIT-tee delicate wish-peeling.

But I digress. I turned to K-Mac and said “Are we asking the right questions about our wealth?”

She replied “We have wealth?”

I replied “That’s exactly what I was going to say, but I didn’t want to appear broke in front of the Flat Screen.”

Suddenly, we faced one of those nagging questions so prevalent in the iPhonian era: Is wealth absolutely necessary for the management of wealth?

I remembered the old cliché “All that glitters is not radar-blocking aluminum chaff.” It was the perfect counterpoint. For we have the kind of wealth you can’t measure with a spread sheet or an app for counting with your fingers and toes.

You see, our wealth is our love and all its attendant fructose.

We have a roof over our heads and sufficient sheetrock to keep it from squashing us in the night. (Also, an insurance policy in case it does, with only a slightly prohibitive deductible.)

We also have garden plants up the Susquehanna and we got a free vacuum cleaner with our American Express reward points for which we had to spend just $14,000.

We have four working toilets, three working children, two working burners on the stove, one working sump pump, beers in the fridge, and dozens—nay, scores—of coffee cups, even though only one of us, (whose initials are K-M) drinks coffee.

No, we may not be able to afford a lawyer in case a neighbor wanders into K-Mac’s garden and is never seen again. Neither can we afford a nice set of dueling swords or pay the neighbor (presuming he’s not missing) to act as my second, in case I am challenged to a duel.

Our wealth simply does not equate to foldos in the wallet. But really, we’ve got everything we need.

Except, maybe, some advice: Are we asking the right questions about how we can manage to fit all those coffee cups into the dishwasher at once?

And don’t tell me to go to the mall.

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Blecchh!

Posted on October 14, 2015 by PMcG

I don’t usually write about mayonnaise. It’s a serious failing and probably what’s kept me from winning a MacArthur genius grant, or the prestigious “I’m more humble than you” competition.

But a lot of people just don’t like mayonnaise. Many describe it with rude words like Blecchh and Are you Blecchhing Me?

Some say it looks like you’re spreading Elmer’s wood glue on your sandwich. Others say mayo is easily confused with shampoo, the insides of a squashed locust and belly button remover.

The dislike of mayonnaise goes back to the day God appeared before Moses in the form of a burning bush (BB). Ever the skeptic, Moses demanded to see a government-issued ID. Ever the Alpha and the Omega, God set Moses’s beard on fire.

Then BB told him to lead the Israelites out of Egypt into the land of the Hittites, Amorites, Hivites, Gezundheits and Insectbites. God pitched it as The Promised Land of milk and honey and–this week only–mayonnaise.

“Blecchh,” said Moses.

In the New Testament, we see where Jesus attracted a crowd of 5,000–who mistakenly believed the event was being catered. His disciples had five loaves of bread, two fishes and one jar of mayonnaise to feed them. Raut Ro.

Miraculously, (not to be confused with Miracle Whip ) when Jesus told the disciples to hand out the food there was more than enough. Later, they found the jar of mayo, unopened, with a note: “Couldn’t get the blecchhing top off, so I’m stuck with my outie.”

Anyway, last week I knocked on the door of The Mayo Clinic (not to be confused with The Mayo Clinic). I told the door flunky I needed to speak to the Mayo Man. He said the mayo hadn’t come yet and he had no idea where the mayo man was. “Did you try the post office?”

I held a jar to his face. “I bought this 36-ounce jar of mayo under false pretenses.”

Normally, I buy the 30-ounce jar. Last week, while rolling my cart down the condiment aisle, the label on a 36-ounce jar jumped out from the shelf, grabbed me and screamed in my face:

BONUS! 20% MORE Than 30 oz jar

During my long life of cowering behind people with large bottoms, I learned that when a jar of mayonnaise screams in your face, you listen. Only later, when I looked at the receipt, did I realize I’d paid 20 per cent more for the 36 ounce jar, not less.

“Uh oh,” said the flunky. “I’m afraid that was my idea.”

Until three weeks ago he’d been vice-president for marketing at The Mayo Clinic (not to be confused with De Mayo Qwinnick). He told the head Mayo Man that switching to a 36-ounce jar would attract new business and award loyal customers. It would cost the same as the 30-ounce jar.

“Cost the same?” The head Mayo Man buzzed his secretary. “Get security in here.”

When the door flunky finished, I wept unashamedly. Then bitterly. Then as if I were peeling onions. And then as if my vacuum cleaner wouldn’t suck up that last piece of lint and I had to bend over to pick it up and accidentally broke wind. The good wind. Been in the family for years. (Nobody knows the trouble I seen.)

I handed the door dude my 36-ouncer and turned to go.

“Wait,” he said. “What do I do with this?”

I gave him a Donald Trump laugh: full of breakable wind, fruit salad suspended in Jell-O, and hair cement.

“As Moses told the burning bush,” I said, “Hold the mayo.”

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Smelling the end zone

Posted on October 6, 2015 by PMcG

Baseball season has ended with a melancholy whiff, and football season is upon us like a grand piano falling eight floors onto a poodle. Let’s see that again Bob. Ooh. That’s gonna leave a stain. Let’s see that again, Bob…

A lot of people don’t like baseball. Too little action, too much thinking, plus the beer prices are outrageous. Actually the beer prices are outrageous at football games as well. But whereas, in baseball you’re always waiting for the big hit, in football, hitting of the people by the people for the people, so help you lard butt is where the nachos are at.

Rather than argue the merits of mind over splatter, I like to pause at this time of year, as one sport gives way to another, and assess a completely different aspect of each.

I speak of the art of calling a game by TV announcers. Many of them, graduates of broadcasting school, have never played football or baseball but do have a passing familiarity with Duck, Duck, Goose and One potato, two potato. Some are retired jocks who have never spoken a complete sentence but have necks so thick they still have bark on them.

What the two are supposed to have in common is a facility with the English language such that they may explain to viewers complicated plays or rulings. These range from the subtle distinction between baseball’s infield fly rule and the outfield giant rat of Sumatra rule, to football’s difference between the shotgun, the pistol and the AK 47 formations–and which ones require an FBI background check before use.

While I enjoy both sports, I like to think baseball offers more opportunities for an announcer to make a fool of himself. Football, on the other elbow, contains a certain Je ne sais pas ce que la baise il parle quality. For some reason it inspires announcers to utter profundities that cause fans to turn to the fans on the couch beside them and remark “WHAT THE FRAMPTON???”

This past year I stalked and snared pronouncements, ejaculations and holy moleys from various baseball and football announcers. (I like to solder my Smarty Pants Phone to my hand for usage 24/7/365. I tap in whatever I hear and immediately text myself messages—to which I always respond promptly.)

Strictly for your edification, here are verbatim quotes by men paid lots of money to attend games, sit in the best seats, get free stuff, ogle the happenings on the field and then open their mouths to expel questionably nuanced carbon dioxide.* (The perfect grounding for a seat in Congress).

Baseball announcers:

  • That pitcher has his legs underneath him.
  • The ball comes out of the back of his head and explodes.
  • It must be tough for young pitchers, not knowing what their balls do.
  • They had a great night cutting balls off.
  • (He is good) with whatever is in his hands. Usually it’s his magic wand.
  • He has an elastic groin.
  • They’re looking to see if the toe stayed on.
  • He’s keeping his body nice and quiet.
  • Certain guys respond really well to rest.

Football announcers:

  • I talked to him about his tight end.
  • It gives him a place to go with the ball.
  • That groin is still with him.
  • He’s a great physical runner.
  • He knows how to smell the end zone.
  • He has great explosion.
  • The tackle needs to break the midline of the center’s rear-end.

*Apologies to articulate and thoughtful broadcasters such as Gary Thorn, Jon Miller, Chris Collinsworth and Steve Young.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Canasta on Mars

Posted on September 30, 2015 by PMcG

Yo, they’ve discovered water on Mars. I know. You may not give a hoot (in spite of our moral obligation to give hoots when hootful events occur. “Water discovered on Mars” is just a step above “Meteor bounces off Trump’s hair, squashes Congress ” on the most current, hoot surrender list.)

You may not care about a suddenly squishy Mars. Your life is too busy, what with unbelievable discounts at Costco; wars breaking out everywhere and none remotely as interesting as an episode of Umpire or Son-of-a-bitching Executioner or Fear the Walking Alive.

Maybe you’ve got movies to catch up on, ants in your pantry and/or the Spanish Inquisition at your front door. How about a pound of wet spaghetti thrown down your garbage hole and now clogging your plumbing?

Almost as if you’d swallowed the entire plate of spaghetti and meat-a-balls last night and are anxiously dialing Plumb Bob’s emergency tunnel boring service and/or sending hubby out for Extra Strength Intest-o-reamer, now with Acela Express.

Perhaps I misjudge. Perhaps I misjudge a lot. Perhaps everyday, sometimes every hour. Frankly or even Pope Frankly, I, perhaps, don’t give a poop. But I always give a hoot its due.

So, here’s what water on Mars means.

Soon there will be lawns on Mars, which means soon we will see crews in Mars Rovers hauling trailers of enormous ride-on mowers with bump-out living rooms and little laminated tables for playing Canasta.

Which means soon there will be gardens on Mars which will require husbands, on hands and knees and aching backs, to do the weeding on Saturdays.

Which means there will be leaf blowers on Mars, which means there will be losers on Mars. Not sure if there will be leaves, or trees, but there’s always something or someone who needs blowing. Besides, leaf blowers are just music to my rear.

This means there will be proctologists on Mars and golf courses for them to use instead of healing your proc. Which means there will be weekends and football and wide screen TVs and snacks like deflated hot dogs, beer nuts, beer zwieback, circus peanuts, cheesy commercials and billions of Mars bucks in somebody’s wallet.

That means there will be banks on Mars and bankers and lawyers and stockbrokers and day trading, night trading and horse trading. Yes, there will be horses on Mars, but only for the bankers, billionaires and horses asses.

No planet worth its water can survive without skylines and slums and depleted forests and plutonium and plastic hair. So Mars will welcome developers, oil drillers, ice cream trucks that play Christmas music in July, the slick and the sleazy, to carve up the soil and build palaces, shopping malls, casinos, machine gun works and a school or two where proper machine gun handling can be taught at an early age.

Because, with or without water there will be Native Martians with ray guns and three to seven eyes who will steal our women and eat us and then try to figure out what the leaf blower is for.

Which means soon there will be crime on Mars and 18 different kinds of cops, each with its own SWAT team and armored division. Also, one or two brooding, suicidal, Stockholm homicide detectives and novels called “The Martian girl with the Swedish meatball tattoo.”

And before you know it, Mars will go to hell. But hey, it’s only Mars. We’ve still got good old reliable earth with plenty of water, and decades of useful life yet to burn.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

To shove a pretzel rod

Posted on September 23, 2015 by PMcG

Recently, a psychologist-to-be-named later published excerpts from diaries kept by teens into their adulthood. His point: with a little love and/or support people can change their destiny. Here are two of the most interesting excerpts:

Diary entry page of teen #173
Looked out the window today and felt a tremendous need to blow something up. In the Captain’s chest in the attic, next to the dead ferret, I found a box of balloons from my eleventh birthday party. Remembered when I tried to blow one up and exploded my left eyeball. Felt light headed. Had to sit down.

Eleventh birthday was bad. Coke instead of Pepsi. Candles on the pizza, melted wax on the pepperoni. Big gift: A crappy pogo stick. Bawled out for saying crappy.

I dreamed last night that I strangled Rocco my stuffed amoeba. I’m sick of him never saying anything, just staring at me with that dumb look on his face.

Checked the mail. Still no sniper scope. Guess I’ll work on my manifesto. It needs some darkening up.

Diary entry of teen #12
Looked out the window today and felt a tremendous need to shout what a wonderful world this is. In the back of the closet I found my old pogo stick. What fun. I hopped all the way to the bookstore to get a copy of “Lives of the Saints.”

And to think I got the pogo stick in trade for my boring chemistry set from the screwball kid across the street. Very weird kid. Still wears the eye-patch from the accident at his eleventh birthday party. I had a great time. Plenty of Coke and the pizza had pepperoni flavored wax. Yum.

I dreamed last night I ate a large, maple sugar statue of Sister Rotunda. Whoa, where did that come from? Checked the mail. Still no word on my seminary application. Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day. Think I’ll work on my Facebook profile. It needs even more cheery and unrealistic optimism about the world’s desperate problems.

At this point, writes Dr. Artillery O’Sclerosis (psychologist to be re-named later) teen #173 was on track for Madman of the Year. Teen #12 had a bright future as a suck-up weasel. Then, with a little love and a winning $100 million power ball ticket, they both turned it around. Can you guess who got stuck with the love?

Diary entry of adult #12
Looked out the window today and felt a tremendous need to blow something up. Told Buley to shut down the pretzel rod plant and start up the peanut butter and pickle chip operation.

Had to fire the pretzel people because they wouldn’t know a pickle from a piccolo. Got rid of them all. God, that felt good.

Mom called. Hung up on her. Still burned about that Christmas when all I got was a plenary indulgence and socks. That was the moment I mentally fired my parents. I was sick of being the goody goody. I wanted to be like the one-eyed kid across the street. That kid had marbles.

Diary entry of adult #173
Looked out the window today and felt a tremendous need to explode in laughter. Taking my new helicopter out later to survey the ranch. Moving next week to my new mansion in Hollywood.

Saw an ambulance taking the guy across the street to the hospital. Weird guy. Apparently one of the people laid off from his pretzel plant tried to shove a pretzel rod…I’m back. Had to answer the doorbell. It was the delivery guy with my new glass eye. Looks just like a marble. Cool beans.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2015, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments