Random acts of eat-my-shorts

Posted on July 14, 2015 by PMcG

DO YOU SUPPOSE the Greeks might have done better in their bailout negotiations if they had been wearing ties? They just looked so informal and rascally in their suit jackets, their white business shirts and those open collars. Like Nicolas Cage in a Goodwill leisure suit.

As if begging the world for fifty billion in quarters for the parking meter called for the same level of formality as a guy sitting in a bar after work, tie off, collar open, showing a horrifying glimpse of pale-male cleavage and telling anyone who will listen that he’s ready to play.

On the other hand, American politicians wear ties all of the time, even with their pajamas (no bottoms). That’s because they are always at play, especially in their dreams, which often occur while they are fully awake and playing Let’s Pretend.

As in “Let’s pretend I’m not wearing an absurdly fake toupee,” “Let’s pretend I’m not a complete fool,” and “Let’s pretend I care.” Face it, it’s so much easier to accept a Great Pretender when said wig-flipping, uncaring, nudenicking fool is wearing a tie. Some one should tell the Greeks.

K-MAC AND MOI were watching baseball when the pitcher threw a ball that seemed way outside, but at the last second darted in across the zone. Strike three. The announcer said “Wow, that pitch had a little extra life on it.”

This concept of “a little extra life” intrigued me. If it works on a baseball, can it work on the average, working stiff? Who wouldn’t like a little extra life to check e-mail, to wait an hour after lunch before going swimming, to climb every mountain, ford every stream? Or just to get down and/or get funky. If already funky, then funkier.

Just how much is ‘a little extra life?’ Minutes? Hours? Days? Enough time to grow a Chia pet? Enough time to put in a new bathroom?  Enough time to rise above pettiness and greed and love thy fellow man?

Sadly, the only evidence I found of a little extra life for humans is that toenails supposedly continue to grow several days into the dirt nap. Can’t immediately see how that’s helpful. But as they say “Don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it.”

WE WERE ON THE INTERSTATE in a driving, impenetrable rain. Myself at the wheel. K-Mac on the 50 caliber. A flat-bed semi, hauling a ginormous something or other, passed us on the right—always a welcome, not-just-thinking-about-myself, random act of eat-my-shorts by a trucker with mud flaps for brains.

As it passed, it threw up an ocean of water against our windshield. I caught only a quick look at the banner flapping from the back of the trailer.

To K-Mac I hollered “Did that say ‘Oversized Toad?’”

“No,” she remarked with prejudice. “It said Oversized Load.”

I stared into the rain. The truck, by now, was practically invisible.

“Are you sure?”

It’s a question I like to ask but which K-Mac, for her own reasons, prefers to hate.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

I was pretty sure I heard teeth grinding.

“How big a toad was it?”

“IT SAID LOAD,” she whispered sweetly.

That night, I looked out the window. Clinging to the other side of the glass, defying gravity, sat a toad. It appeared to be an above-average sized toad–although I am no toad expert.

When I pointed it out to K-Mac, she went porcupine, releasing quills in my general direction.

“It said LOAD.”

Well.

Of course, I dreamed that the oversized toad escaped from that truck and hopped to our house where it challenged me to mano a toado combat. Seriously, toad dreams are the worst.

Note: No toads were physically hurt in the writing of this post. As for their feelings, you’d have to ask them.

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

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Designate this

Posted on July 1, 2015 by PMcG

Psychiatrists have finally recognized Baseball Player Personality Disorder–sometimes known as On the Schneid Syndrome. In “The Sabermetrics of Stinking Up The Stadium,” Dr. Ferris Wheeler states that, next to striking out while being intentionally walked, the most painful moment in a washed-up player’s career occurs when he is cut from the team with a bolo knife.

Dr. Wheeler lists urgent questions a therapist must ask to help a worthless player get a grip on himself without bathing in pine tar. These questions, he notes, must be asked with sensitivity and without smirking–unless your face is obscured by a baseball mitt.

Have you ever been sent down to the Pensacola Blue Wahoos?
• Did you ask why or is it usually obvious? (In other words, nobody ever gets sent up to the Blue Wahoos.)

Have you ever been outrighted to Norfolk?
• Is outrighted even a word?

• Is Norfolk a good place to be outrighted to?

• Do Norfolkers mind that you’ve been outrighted to them?

• Do they mind being known as Norfolkers?

• Do they ask questions like “Is there goulash where you’re from?”

• Or “What’s that thing crawling up your leg? Just kidding. Haw!”

Have you ever been placed on waivers?
• Was it a gentle placing, like tenderly setting a garden gnome in among the hosta?

• Or was it more like being dangled from a crane onto the back of a wavering water buffalo?

Have you ever been picked up on waivers?
• When you get picked up do they pick up the water buffalo too?

• Is it like being picked up by the cops, or more like getting picked up by a sailor?

• By a hill troll? A tornado? A press gang? A pickup truck? The dog catcher? The dog outfielder? (Just kidding. Haw!)

Have you ever been designated for assignment?
• How does it happen—are you, like, walking out to center field and you hear the bat boy shout “You! With no talent!” And do you turn around and say “Who, me?” And does the bat boy say “Do you see anybody else out here who isn’t playing center field today?” And when you say “Don’t hurt me,” does he kind of chuckle and say “You be designated.”

• Is it understood that you be designated for assignment? Maybe you’ve jumped to conclusions and have been designated for a free elephant ride at the circus. When it comes to town. Which it never has.

• Or will.

• Or do you have to ask? And when you ask what you’ve been designated for, does the bat boy get sarcastic and say “It sure aint the Housewives of New Jersey.”

• And when you look dumbfounded and the bat boy says “You’ve been designated for assignment,” do you say “What does that mean again?”

• And does the bat boy laugh wickedly and say “It sure aint the Housewives of Dannemora. But it might as well be. Haw!”

• Or is it more like playing tag, when somebody slams you in the baseballs with a catcher’s mitt and says “You’re it,” and everybody hides on you and it gets dark and you’re afraid you’re going to miss your favorite show and you feel very sad?

Have you ever been out of options?
This presumes that at one point you had plenty of options, i.e:

• You could have been president.

• You could have sold title insurance.

• You could have been a contender or even a bartender.

• You could have been a calendar tester.

• You could have had just one lousy visit to your dentist where he didn’t give you the “Start flossing or lose your teeth, your mind and your chance of ever being a vampire” lecture.

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

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

The naked astronomer

Posted on June 25, 2015 by PMcG

Have you noticed how time seems to be going faster and faster? I went to bed last week as a promising 32-year-old and when I woke up I was missing my hair, I had an appointment for a colonoscopy and K-Mac was flipping through a brochure for gluten-free tombstones.

“Where did the time go?” I said in shock.

“The big hand went around the little hand,” K-Mac replied glibly.

“And you just sat there and let it?”

(I always try to blame everything I can on K-Mac. She, however, refuses to laugh at any of my jokes unless I take back every false accusation I have made that day, hour, minute or fraction thereof. She leaves me no choice but to shift the full blame for everything to society.)

So I went down to the convention center to guilt the Cosmic Federation of Cosmologists into supporting my two-pronged strategy for reigning in time. The first prong would put limits on the speed of light and equip police with rocket-powered patrol cars so they can pull over scofflaw lightning bolts. The second prong would make it illegal for time to fly, especially when anyone was having fun.

By accident, I walked into the room where the Cosmetic Federation of Cosmetologists was holding its annual Lipstick-on-a-Pig workshop.

I realized my mistake when a woman who looked like Johnny Depp impersonating a cow with too much hoof and mouth mascara, started talking about putting the spring and bounce back into sagging body parts. I found the discussion mesmerizing until someone in the back rudely oinked “What about Lip Plumpers?”

I rushed next door to where the astronomers were talking gobbledygook about their recent discovery of hundreds of new galaxies. You probably saw the headline on The Daily Beast that said “Scientists Find 854 Invisible Galaxies.”*

Not being a scientist myself, the first ignorant thought that came to mind was “What, did they have a seeing eye dog with a telescope?”

Turns out, the astronomers who saw the invisible galaxies were using that fancy new Subaru telescope made by the Japanese. (Apparently, the Toyota telescope was recalled when the airbag in the backseat started shouting things like “Make sure you take off the lens cap, Lenny” and “Lenny, stop looking at those naked women in Paris.”)

FYI: I went out on the deck a few nights later with a six pack of Utica Club and a telescope made from the cardboard tube in a roll of paper towels. By beer number three, I had discovered 1,509 invisible galaxies, plus an entire invisible alien rugby team eating their dead on the side of a road on the invisible planet Elmo.

At the convention center I learned that all those new galaxies aren’t actually invisible. More like hidden. They’re what scientists call “ultra diffuse galaxies,” meaning they “have very little gas” which makes them hard to spot with the naked astronomer.

Easy to confuse an invisible galaxy with one that is hidden. Let’s say you’re a small galaxy. You don’t have much gas because you swallowed a Milky Way-sized Beano tablet. You’re playing hide and seek with Pluto and, because Pluto is such a dope, you cleverly hide in plain sight. But you close your eyes so nobody, especially sixteen clowns in a Subaru, can see you.

The hard to avoid implication is that galaxies gassed up and ready to let rip, are essentially pull-my-finger night club acts. Makes me wonder about those citizens back in the Dark Ages who claimed the earth was flat. Maybe they were just saying earth was flatulent. And not just during Lent.

* http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/22/scientists-discover-hundreds-of-hidden-galaxies.html?via=ios

©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

Don’t do that, you idiot

Posted on June 16, 2015 by PMcG

Just as those with whooping cough tend to whoop it up a lot, and those with erectile dysfunction cannot whoop it up one little bit, those who suffer from the angst of anxiety are often very anxious. But while the first two groups generally stop whooping and party pooping during sleep, only the anxious—for reasons that have baffled scientists for decades—have anxiety dreams.

Good news. I have written a New York Times best seller called “The Five Anxiety Dreams of The Very Tightly Wrapped: Decoding subtle messages your mind sends because just coming right out and saying ‘Don’t do that, you idiot,’ might hurt your feelings.”

For a free copy, send me $28.95 in cash or gold doubloons. In the meantime, here’s a brief summary of those five dreams.(Order now and we’ll send you absolutely free, Dr. Phil’s “Uh oh, I’m In A Rubber Room.”)

The gun dream:

You go to a gun store. You want a gun for hanging with friends and shooting the breeze. The clerk says “Breezes aren’t in season yet. Have you considered just shooting the bull?”

You say “We shot the bull last week. In fact I got a bull’s eye.”

“Aha,” says the clerk. “That explains the bull with the eye patch who came in yesterday. Bought a Gatling gun. Big box of ammo. But I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“What about me? Should I worry about it?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

Nuns-in-the-boys-room dream:

You’re back in seventh grade and the nun comes charging into the Boys Room waving a sin-be-gone stick (three sawed-off yardsticks taped together). She whomps anyone she suspects of emptying their bladders while thinking less than charitable thoughts about the Medici popes of the sixteenth century. She suspects everybody.

The hotel dream:

You check into a posh hotel. You open the door to your room and Mel Gibson comes out of the bathroom. He bends over and moons you. You call the front desk. You say “I distinctly asked for a room without Mel Gibson.” The clerk apologizes and reassigns you to a Frank Sinatra room. You say “Isn’t he dead?” The clerk says “Yes, but the summer wind came blowing in from across the sea.” As you leave, Mel Gibson seems upset. “Was it something I said?”

The final exam dream:

You’re in line to pick up your cap and gown five days before graduation. You realize in a panic that you’ve forgotten to go to your Epistemology class the entire semester. The final exam is today. If you hurry you can make it and still graduate.

You turn to the guy behind you and say “Quick, what’s epistemology again?” But the guy turns out to be a one-eyed bull and he’s carrying an e-pistol loaded with hollow point mologies.

The dating-your-mother dream:

Your friend sets you up with a blind date. You sense something is wrong when you drive to your date’s house and it’s your house. You hesitate at the front door. Ring the bell or just go inside? You don’t want the date to get off on the wrong foot.

Your father opens the door and pulls you aside and tells you which of your arms he will break off if you try any funny stuff with your mother. When you ask him to define funny stuff he pokes you in the eye, squeezes your nose, yanks your ear and bops you on the head.

Then your Mom comes down the stairs wearing a lovely prom dress that is modern but modest. She’s also carrying a laundry basket full of dirty clothes. She says “Gimme your underpants.”

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

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

F.A.Q. The epiglottis

Posted on June 10, 2015 by PMcG

Q. What is an epiglottis?
A. Excuse me, but did you not see the signs?

Q. You mean the signs that say the end of the world is at hand and/or foot?
A. No, the signs that say this line is for Frequently Asked Questions. How frequently do you think people come up here and ask what is an epiglocktapus?

Q. In other words, you don’t know.
A. I might. And I might not. That is not the point. See that guy down the road next to the kid selling lemonade and cemetery plots? Notice that his signs say Infrequently Asked Questions? Go bother him.

Q. Cemetery plots? You don’t suppose he also sells Great American Novel plots? You see, I have writer’s block.
A. You should see a block and tackle specialist. You probably need repeated tackling.

Q. Why are you so rude?
A. I was adopted by rude llamas. And I don’t mean Fernando Lamas.

Q. What exactly is a llama?
A. It’s pretty much a short, hairy camel without any hump.

Q. No hump at all? How did your…I mean, is that why they had to adopt?
A. My llama daddy liked to wear spandex shorts while riding his bike in the Tour de Frankie and Johnny. It was Johnny—no wait, Frankie had already shot Johnny right through that hardwood door, ‘cause he was doing her wrong. A yodelayhee hi hee yodelayhee.

Q. Yoda lay who?
A. So Frankie warned him that tight undies could turn certain delicate body do-dads into hermits who never come out to play.

Q. You just don’t hear people saying “do-dads” anymore. Or “do-hickey’s.” Or “whatchamacallits.”
A. Or epigladysknightandthepips.

Q. Don’t you think that’s sad?
A. You want sad? Johnny—this was before he was doin’ Frankie wrong. Or wait, maybe while he was doin’ her wrong. (He was ambidextrous.) A yodelayhee ho. He told my old llama man to switch to boxers. But my father had never boxed before and said he was too old to start. So he got that syndrome that killed Bob Dole’s chances for president of Atlantis. He called it E.D.

Q. You don’t mean Exploding Davenportitis?
A. No. It’s llama for Extremely Dead. That’s when they got me from the pound.

Q. They got you from a dog pound?
A. It was between me, a Golden Retriever who kept retrieving silver, and a Mexican Hairless with a Fu Manchu. They adopted the hairless but returned him because he smoked and kept barking in Chinese.

Q. Did you know that ground-up bark from a Chinese chestnut tree, mixed with Mazola oil, makes a great chest rub for any occasion? Also, you can rub it on your head, in case you’re a nut boy. And get this: It’s great on smoked salmon.
A. And here I took you for just another lunatic.

Q. Don’t worry about it.
A. Much too late.

Q. So anyway, speaking of dogs, I just got a dog and haven’t named him yet. I need to know if epiglottis is a boy’s name or a girl’s name.
A. You want to name a dog epiglobadust?

Q. Right.
A. None of my business, but what’s wrong with Rover or Spot or Jimmy the huckster?

Q. My brother’s name is Rover and my sister is named Spot. And my father is Jimmy the huckster.
A. Your father is a huckster? What does he huck?

Q. Fins.
A. Why was I afraid you were going to say that?

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

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, F.A.Q., News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Boom, boom, boom

Posted on June 2, 2015 by PMcG

Fell asleep last night with my iPod on and my earbuds in. Three thousand songs from the past thirty years crowded my brain and trampled all the grass on the hippocampus. When I woke up I began to speak in tongues:

I’m just a singer in a rock and roll band. I’m just a poor boy a long way from an octopus’s garden. I’m still punchin’ cattle in the pay of Diamond Joe. I wrote a poem on a dog biscuit and your dog refused to look at it. All I wanna do when I wake up in the morning is amend my carnivorous habits.

I can’t get no satisfaction.

Its been coming on for some time. I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain. In 1984 I was hospitalized for approaching a werewolf with a Chinese menu. He just grinned and shook my hand. All he said: “Today’s the day I’m gonna grab my trombone and blow.” We had a few drinks but all we kept talking about was heading for Boston to find my bloody leg.

I asked my family doctor just what I had and he said “Don’t bring me down, Grroosss. You belong on a boat out at sea.”

Things got bad and things got worse. Doctor, my eyes have seen my fair share of brown bottles and aluminum cans. I’m not a perfect person. There’s many things I wish I didn’t do. Whatever happened that Tuesday, I was only joking when I said I’d like to smash every tooth in your head. They were all yellow.

It’s a mixed up muddled up, shook up world. When your rooster crows at the break of dawn, rooster hits the washboard, and I keep hittin’ repeat-peat-peat-peat. Eight days a week are not enough to show I’m friends with the monster under my bed.

And no matter what you say, Folsom prison aint the kind place to shake your booty. Or get a blister on your little finger. I’m not the man they think I am at home. Oh no no no. I’m a robot, not a power ranger.

I drove my Chevy to the levy but the devil caught me there. Took my zucchini fetuccini, bulgar wheat, tambourines and elephants. I said give my stomach to Milwaukee. He said “Vamoose, Jose’s on his way.” I caught a horse, he looked like he could run. Hopin’ for Raleigh where they drink champagne and it tastes like plastic wire and elastic. But I went to Hollywood, got a tattoo and a cold draft beer.

In a noisy bar in Avalon, I met a man, Bojangles, and he said “Don’t touch me. Hey Ray. Hey sugar. Tell ‘em who we are.” While Lenin read a book on Marx, Jumpin’ Jack Flash said “I’ve seen your face before my friend. Come on tell me who are you? Some kid named Jason in a Honda station wagon? You play the guitar on the MTV? That aint workin’.”

Then I heard the guitar player say “Ooga, ooga, ooga chukka.” Oh what a feeling. Doctor, my eyes have seen the barracuda. I’m back in the high life again.

I be tossin’, enforcin’, my style is awesome. Everyday I’m shuffling. I went down to the Chelsea drugstore to get a leather jacket with chains that would jingle. Just to hear you say “I want your whiskey mouth all over my dinosaur Victrola.”

Down behind the stadium, I gave her my heart but she wanted my 50-amp fuse. I mean, m-m-m-my heart going boom, boom, boom. I know. It’s only rock and roll. But I like it.

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

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Blowing Uncle Bob

Posted on May 27, 2015 by PMcG

A loud crashing noise from the kitchen. Something on the level of a rusted VW microbus hurled against the side of the house by a Visigoth catapult. I rush to the bottom of the stairway and holler “Anyone hurt up there? We have a large deductible, so the right answer would be no.”

The hard-bitten-off answer: “Toaster. Oven. Fell. Over.”

Measuring the tone and disgust in the answerer’s voice (K-Mac prefers not to be identified), I whisper a mousy “Oh” and scuttle quickly back to my lair.

By design and policy, most loud noises—except for the damnable 80,000 horsepower leaf blower in the hands of the low-self-esteemer next door—never reach me down in the womb room. I have few demands in life but I insist on being comfortably sheltered from reality 24/7.

By the way, what did those poor, dead, once colorful leaves do to deserve being blown into the road by a blowviator trying to convince the neighborhood he doesn’t have erectile dysfunction? Isn’t being raked into a bag humiliating enough? Imagine if every time somebody’s uncle went up, a funeral home guy came out and blew Uncle Bob dead-ass over dead-teakettle into the gutter?

Maybe they do things like that in countries where anarchy and anchovies thrive and the president rides around half naked on a naked horse and sits naked in an empty bathtub in the middle of the backyard waiting for that rare naked woman with a supply of E.D. Begone to pass by and note the empty tub next to him. But not in America. (Except, doggone it, the God of Broken Wind next door is an American. Should I write my congressman?)

Anyway, I got to thinking “Hmm. How does a toaster oven fall over, anyway?”

A toaster oven doesn’t just make some gasping sound and fall over. Those babies are built pretty close to the ground—or the countertop. Like sidewalks. Never saw a sidewalk fall over. Of course, they are cemented into the ground.

I thought of going upstairs to suggest gluing the toaster oven to the granite countertop. Heh, heh. I guess that was a none too subtle hint that we are indeed affluent and successful and special enough in life to have granite countertops.

Think of all the poor slobs who have laminated plywood. I mean, where is your pride, people? Is it the cost? Maybe you need to cut down on luxuries like ice cream and pepperoni and vegetables and water. That’s what we did because we were tired of people coming over and setting fire to our countertops and laughing and then rushing off to a party where the kitchen wasn’t always crowded with firefighters and their hoses. You can only take that for so long.

When we decided to go all granite, my only hesitation was the bedroom. I like a firm mattress, but the granite just seemed a little unyielding. That was before I learned about Granite Number mattresses. It works this way. You pick a number—any number—and they install a granite mattress with that exact number on it. Wow, what a nice engraving job.

Friends who come over for parties now stay longer and set fire to fewer things. And by the way, good-bye morning back ache. (A lot of that has to do with the plywood laminate we laid on top and the shag carpet we laid on top of that and then sleeping in the guest bedroom.)

Hmm. You know what? I bet a granite toaster oven would be a lot less likely to fall over. Or burn toast.

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

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