Two feet from your ear

Posted on November 14, 2014 by PMcG

No matter how good, caring and friendly a doctor is, one still must negotiate the idiotsyncracies of the doctor’s out front peeps. Often they are as caring as the doc. But often they are as caring as a dead duck on a dock — as in this transcript of secretly recorded greetings from an actual doctor’s automated appointment line.

Hello, you have reached the offices of Doctors Zippidy, Doodah and Day

All of our operators are currently operating on someone. As you hold/continue to hold/hold until turning blue, rest assured that one word sums up how important we view your call: Meh.

To make your endless holding more endless we’re piping in confusion jazz that sounds like a piano, bass, drum and router grooving in a busy machine shop.  It’s really loud so hold your phone about two feet from your ear. Enjoy.

Please listen carefully as some of our prompts have recently been elected to Congress.

Press one to speak to our scheduling Nazi. Have all papers ready. No jokes about the accent. Right now all appointments are running a little behind. We’re almost up to 2013. Please hold your water.

If you are a pharmacy, press two.
• If you are a pharmacy and pressed two, press two again. We don’t just do this to patients. We screw with everybody.

• If you’re a hardware store pretending to be a pharmacy, send over a leaf blower. We’ll add it to the confused jazz feed.

• If you are a pharmacy calling because you can’t read our doctor’s handwriting on a prescription, you can press my plaid shorts.

If you’re calling for a prescription renewal, press three
• Hey. What happened to the prescription we gave you?

• Do you think we have nothing better to do than write you another prescription?

• That’s gonna be extra

If you’re calling to schedule an appointment
• Press four for Dr. Zippidy.

• Press five for Dr. Doodah. 

• Press six for Dr. Day By the way, Dr. Day recently lost his license to practice medicine, but wants to assure his patients that he is looking very hard for it, including down behind the sofa and at the Dead Bed Bug motor cabins. If you are assured, Press 33 and we can get you in to see him right away. He is in cabin 18 at the Bug. Ask for Marla.

If you’re calling because you’re really sick and need to see a doctor right away, press seven.
• If you pressed seven because you’re really sick, press seven again.

• One more time. Press seven, but really hard this time

• If you were really sick, you’d be dead by now. To end this call get the hell off the phone.

If you’re looking for a referral to another doctor press eight
• Let me ask you this: Did you ever stop to consider our feelings? I mean, in case you haven’t noticed, we’re doctors. What–you don’t like our bedside manner? Press nine.

• Oh, boo hoo. Keep pressing. Push if it makes you feel special.

• Ask yourself this: Why would we send you to another doctor who will get the fee we should get? Oh, because you need a specialist? Hey, most of us went to medical school. We can do anything other specialists can and not even cheaper or better. And we have  the entire set of Doctor Dave Does Doctor Stuff, except volume three, Dr. Dave Does the Digit.

• Oh good, you’ve decided to set up an appointment with one of our specialists. Choose from our menu of special specialties on special this week.
o Gored by a bull
o Anal cavity shoe removal
o Sudden Onset Stupidity
o Swallowed pride and prejudice
o Bean(s) in ear(s)
o What was I thinking syndrome
o Finger stuck in nose
o Ate my Odor Eaters

If at any time you wish to speak to a human being, press zero. Please note that some of our human beings have recently undergone a frontal lobotomy to give their voices that nice flat metallic sound lacking any sympathy and hope.

If this is a true emergency hang up and call an ambulance an ambulance.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , | 10 Comments

Behind the mayonnaise

Posted on November 4, 2014 by PMcG

Memo to self:

• Get a Nobel Peace Prize. Use it to attract banjo students.
• Work up an act and go on the road. Leave act behind.
• Become a genius. Tweet the word. Score a MacArthur genius grant.
• Invent some moves, the kind that make people say “He’s got the moves, all right.”
• Study war, then call press conference to announce “Aint gonna study war no more.” (See Nobel Peace Prize above).
• Twist and juke.
• Hire a Search Engine Optimization expert. Find out what that means and practice going “Ah, I see” or “Aha. I see.”
• Come to grips with lack of wealth
• Find podiatrist willing to power sand toenails.
• Invent better moves that show just how cool you are. No cross-dressing this time.
• Start flossing. Dental appointment in two days.
• Change age to 24. Get new jive.
• Buy into gluten-free crap.
• Get into habit of doing good and avoiding evil without getting them mixed up.
• Practice newest moves before actually laying them on humans. Hire a moves coach?
• Come to grips with lack of fame.
• Try at least three bites of asparagus. Swallow at least one.
• Pick a card, any card. Memorize it and put it back into the deck.
• Write a movie script about your life. Think of a good ending.
• Call Daniel Craig and offer him the part when Brad Pitt won’t come to the phone.
• Determine the exact dimensions of the strike zone. Text to all umpires.
• Pay monthly mortgage. For June, 2012.
• Become an icon.
• Figure out what art means. Write it down. Put it in wallet for emergency response to inevitable question at party “Why is that art? My dog could do that.”
• Launch new political party. Get nominated for president. Use publicity to attract banjo students.
• Take up spitting.
• Develop pictures from wedding in time for 47th anniversary.
• Change all passwords to something longer and more secure than “Hi.”
• Plant a radish.
• Get a radish.
• Prepare and rehearse believable denials of involvement in various social blunders, just in case. Hint: Cool moves would help here.
• Come to grips with serious lack of cool moves.
• Work more Pig Latin into daily conversation.
• Text ob-bay ylan-day to ose-lay the ustache-may.
• Cut back on belching.
• Inflate self-worth.
• Chew with mouth closed.
• Talk with mouth closed.
• Change all passwords to something shorter and less secure than kdsjebtpos.ajagf63o43;c-0ayuag.
• Cancel contract on brother-in-law who has now agreed to stop telling you that you’re an idiot (but may still think it.) This will mean paying a kill fee to the hit man. Make sure he understands that the first kill fee was for an actual kill which is now canceled. But this new kill fee doesn’t mean to kill, it actually means to not kill. Blame it on lawyers.
• Come to grips with no beer in fridge
• Stop encroaching into the neutral zone.
• Find out why you can’t always get what you want.
• Practice liking people.
• Remember to breathe.
• Look behind the mayonnaise in the fridge where you may have hidden an emergency beer.
•Find your inner child. Take him for a long walk. Never return.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , | 16 Comments

The wise, hairy man

Posted on October 31, 2014 by PMcG

At weekly meetings of the Big Hairy Man’s Club, I am often asked why I willingly do the grocery shopping in my household instead of using that time on more hairy-manly pursuits like sleeping, eating, watching ESPN or taking the AK-47 out for a walk.

I respond with big hairy confidence: “Man cannot live on bread alone, but women can go at least a year and probably longer without beef jerky, Oreos, sausage, cheeseburgers, Doritos, Klondike bars, beer, etcetera etcetera and so forth, etcetera. And beer.”

You see, at some point in history it dawned on man that women were really, really into bread. A big hairy guy would drag home a deceased hairy mastodon for supper but before he even removed the first tusk, his cave momma would say “That will go perfectly with the zucchini bread I just made. And tomorrow we can have hot roast mastodon sandwiches on the Kaiser rolls I’ve got in the oven. Did you remember to get the poppy seeds?”

The very next day the Big Hairy Man’s club was founded. And the day after, man invented terducken, and a day later he patented the first edible bacon app. On the fourth day, man belched and went upstairs for a nap but not before he announced the first club rule: no zucchini, no how, no way Jose. And Jose was down with it.

Today, men still do most of the manly hunting (for lost socks, car keys, cell phones, wallets, minds) while women drive the majority of the shopping carts in American supermarkets. And while there haven’t been more than four or five million incidents on record of women coming home with nothing but bread and zucchini, the wise hairy man knows that when the good stuff runs low, he needs to saddle up the Prius and hit the Piggly Wiggly sans-a-femme.

In our cave, the system works beautifully. First, I order the little cave lady to prepare a list that is light on bread but heavy on stuff. On shopping day I carefully review the list.

Not being critical here, but sometimes her e’s look like l’s and o’s look like e’s and a’s look like undotted i’s. Over time, with patience and the occasional time out, she has taught me to hold the penmanship lecture until two years after she is dead — which, she humorously predicts, will be twenty-two years after I am dead.

In the meantime, I’ve gotten better at deciphering her handwriting. For instance, I now know that what looks like “office hazmat” is coffee, hazelnut; “can of tony bears” means a can of cannelloni beans, and “TP” means twelve pizzas.

There have been very few problems aside from the occasional, everyday misunderstandings that are bound to develop in the age-old battle of the sexes, supermarket edition.

Take, for instance, a hairy man’s cart crashing into and through a shopping cart jam in a narrow aisle where one female shopper has stopped to chat with another. One would think that a simple “Oops,” would make a tense exchange of insurance information, the dropping of the Whiplash bomb and calling for a Medevac cart a little unneccesary.

On the other hand take the case of the big hairy man who passes by the bakery section and sees they are giving away free, fresh-made cake. Dishing it out  is a bigger hairier man from the club. Halting his cart, our big hairy man tries a free sample and his eyes roll heavenward.

“This is great,” he says, “What is it? Spice cake?”

“It’s my special zucchini bread,” says the hirsute giant. “Goes great with mastodon stew.”

“Zucchini?” Our big and hairy man chokes. He gasps “Bread?”

“It’ll put hair on your chest,” says the significantly bigger, hairier man, a hectare of black steel wool billowing upward from the open neck of his flannel shirt.

“I feel like a…a…beef jerky.”

“It goes great with beef jerky,” says the zucchini bread man. “But you know what it really goes good with?”

A shake of the big hairy confidence.

“The little cave lady.”

So I bought two dozen loaves. So sue me.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Better warn Buzz

Posted on October 24, 2014 by PMcG

Years ago, when I was a mortal man, I was sent to interview Rickey Henderson on the eve of his breaking the record for stolen bases in a single season. A sports writer for a rival paper had the same assignment. We cornered Rickey before a game and started asking questions.

I scribbled very fast. My rival, I noted, occasionally jotted.

In the next day’s papers I was stunned to see in my rival’s story words attributed to Dr. Henderson that, while colorful, weren’t the words I had scribbled down. And they weren’t the words that came out of the fast man’s mouth.

My one-time rival is now rich and famous for being colorful and wise. I toil in obscurity in the basement, my only contact with the outer world a squirrel who taps on my window each morning for the latest ball scores. (I don’t know why I help him, because he won’t even share his nuts.)

But I am not bitter, because bitterness was never in my DNA. I remain proud of adhering to the journalist’s code of never making up quotes. My Henderson story, while bland, colorless and forgotten, was accurate.

However, ever since then I have suffered — largely in silence — from Irritable Bowel Syndrome. Brought on, the doctors say, by repressing a bilious, fulminating outrage at the success of my rival, whose immediate and humiliating loss of his stupid ever-growing wavy hair I pray for daily.

But, as I told the squirrel the other day, if a little IBS is the price you pay for honesty, I can accept that. A lot of IBS and I might want to revisit. I have sworn, however, never to interview Rickey Henderson again.

In the meantime, I find solace in fact-checking famous quotations and noting that most are shamefully inaccurate or cut short. I attribute this to the difference between scribbling and jotting. Below you will find shocking examples, with the supposed, famous quote first, followed, in italics by the actual words spoken. I must go now, for I feel some irritability coming on.

Neil Armstrong
That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
That’s one small step they put on the bottom rung of the lander’s ladder. I almost fell off and broke my astronaut. But I made a giant leap and, man, kind of crazy, isn’t it, given the price of this trip that you have to jump off the lander? I better warn Buzz.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hitch your wagon to a star…
…To be safe, make sure you use a juicy knot.

Benjamin Franklin
Time is money…
…Anybody got change for a noon?

William Wordsworth
The child is father of the man…
…The man asks the child for the keys to the car and the child says ‘Eat my Fruit Loops.’

Alexander Pope
To err is human, to forgive divine.
The air is human and,  forgive me, not so divine. Must have been the chili.

Benjamin Franklin
God helps them that help themselves…
…but if you don’t stop helping yourself to all the gravy, I’m going to pass you the punch.

Alexander Pope
For fools rush in where angels fear to tread…
…Fools then rush out and shout at the angels ‘Thanks for having our backs, you bunch of pansies.’

Friedrich Nietzsche
That which does not kill us makes us stronger…
…that which does kill us, makes us dead.

Charles-Guillaume Étienne
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
If you want some tonight, do it yourself.

Socrates
The unexamined life is not worth living.
The examined, life, however, can get you indicted.

Plato
Necessity is the mother of invention…
The father of invention was a guy named Urgle who argued just before he died that, as a safety measure, arrows should have sharp points on just one end.

Thomas Fuller
It is always darkest just before the dawn.
It is always darkest just before you go to turn on the lights and stumble over the dog.

Benjamin Franklin
A penny saved is a penny earned…
…Big whoop.

Ralph Waldo Emerson
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail…
… so the search party can find your body.

Descartes
I think, therefore I am.
I am, I think. Therefore, don’t quote me.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

F.A.Q. An abundance of caution

Posted on October 21, 2014 by PMcG

Q. I hear people saying we should take an abundance of cotton. What does that mean?
A. You’re hearing it wrong. It’s an abundance of caution.

Q. Is that like saying you want a toss salad, when you really mean a tossed salad?
A. Not exactly, because even though people have misheard or misunderstood the name of the salad, they still want a salad.

Q. And nobody wants a lot of cotton?
A. Not in their toss salad.

Q. What happens if we don’t take an abundance of cotton?
A. When you say “take an abundance of cotton,” what you’re really talking about is picking an abundance of cotton or, to be precise, cotton balls.

Q. What if we don’t pick an abundance of cotton balls?
A. The cotton balls get rotten.

Q. And when them cotton balls get rotten…
A. You can’t pick very much cotton.

Q. Like in them old cotton fields back home?
A. Depends on where home is.

Q. It was down in Louisiana.
A. Just about a mile from Texarkana?

Q. Yes. When I was a little bitty baby
A. Did your mama ever rock you in the cradle?

Q. We were too poor to have a cradle.
A. Where did she rock you?

Q. It was down in Louisiana
A. Right. Look, we’ve gotten off topic. I’m talking about caution.

Q. So why should I take an abundance of caution?
A. Let’s say you live in the mountains. You get up one day and find a bear asleep in your car. What would you do?

Q. I’d rap on the window and tell him to get the hell out of my car.
A. To do that you’d have to go right up to the car. What if the bear has an accomplice, hiding behind a tree. And he jumps out and eats you?

Q. I didn’t think about an accomplice bear.
A. Most people don’t. Their first instinct is to throw their abundance of caution into the wind.

Q. What should I have done?
A. First, when you wake up in the morning, always assume there is a bear in your car and behind every tree.

Q. Isn’t that a little extreme?
A. Imagine your obituary saying “We tried to warn him, but he walked past a tree humming “Zippiddy Do Dah.” A bear jumped out and ate him. He wouldn’t listen. It was like he had an abundance of cotton in his ears.”

Q. Can you use just a tiny bit of caution? Is it like bagpipe music–a little goes a long way?
A. With caution, it’s just the opposite. Let’s say your town has an outbreak of viral plantar warts.

Q. Because people were planting rotten cotton balls?
A. And let’s say an infected neighbor knocks on your door to return a pair of socks he borrowed.

Q. Wouldn’t they have wart sauce all over them?
A. Exactly. Highly contagious. If you used only a tiny bit of caution you’d tell him to keep the socks and you’d quickly close the door.

Q. With both of us inside? Both of us outside? Me inside and him outside? Vicey versey?
A. Right. Now what would you do if you used an abundance of caution?

Q. Give him a clean pair of socks?
A. No. You’d tell him to go over to your car and knock on the driver’s side window and tell the bear to get the hell out of your car.

Q. But wouldn’t an accomplice bear jump out from behind a tree and eat him?
A. Not just him, but the wart-sauced socks.

Q. Wouldn’t the bear get sick?
A. That’s his problem. If he’d been using an abundance of caution he would have eaten nuts and berries. Or a toss salad.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

 

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, F.A.Q., News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Giraffe me

Posted on October 16, 2014 by PMcG

Saw this special about giraffes on the golf channel. In Africa a lot of your golf courses are built on savannas where most giraffes are taught very early in life how to caddy. Either that or they have to pay savanna roaming charges.

Giraffes are, shamefully, still restricted from joining a golf club so they have to give four weeks notice to reserve a tee time. Plus, a lot of your golf club manufacturers have completely ignored the giraffe market. Most pro shops stock only one or two 18-foot putters and seldom have any extra-and-I-do-mean-extra-tall sweat shirts in stock. Caddying is much less of a hassle.

So, anyway, the special focused on a giraffe who’d grown tired of the whole giraffe gig. Tired of the “tallest guy on the Serengeti” deal. Tired of hyenas saying “How’s the weather up there?” and then laughing like a hyena. Tired of getting those big neck ties at Christmas. Never once an electric train. Or an Alamo set with a miniature Davy Crockett and a little Santa Ana and teeny cannons and tiny dudes in coonskin caps.

Speaking of a big neck, they showed this giraffe at his brother-in-law’s weekly poker night. The game was jungle poker, where all cards are wild. (As you’d imagine, once the cards are dealt, it’s a zoo.) Afterwards, the brother-in-law showed a home-made stag movie called Long Neck. Very low class stuff. Fake special effects using cheap blow-up giraffe girls with too much lipstick and a brass giraffe the brother-in-law got at the Zimbabwe Mall.

On a real giraffe, by the way, a long neck just means it takes food longer to get down to the stomach. And on the topic of food, this one giraffe said if he saw one more acacia leaf he was going to barf. Which, as the documentary showed, takes forever to come up. Oh, and whenever a giraffe gets a sore throat, just opening up and saying “Ahhh” at the doctor’s office hurts “like an out-of-wedlock wildebeest.”

I think the narrator of the documentary, a retired spotted golfer, went too far in saying giraffes are pretty much just like us. It’s true, I will admit, that like the giraffe we often get tired of the same old same old after awhile. But look at the differences in how we and the giraffe react to ennui.

We tend to spend mucho dinero flying down to Disney World, or spend nada and knock over a snow cone stand. In other words we go thrill seeking because ordinary life is so unthrilling.

At Disney World we ride the water slide and go “Weeeeeee!” Or Goofy jumps out at us from behind a Mary Poppins statue and goes “Boogaloogalulu!” and we have to wee, so its back to the water slide. Then there are the nightmares about dogs ruling the world. To summarize: we are talking thrillingness up the yingo.

Or, if you knock over a snow cone stand, the snow melts before you get it home and the cops follow the trail of cherry syrup to your door and you get three to six in the can. Thrilling a-mundo barely covers it. To summarize: goodbye boredom.

But have you ever seen a single giraffe on a flight to Disney World? Have you ever seen a masked giraffe waiting in line at a snow cone stand? Do giraffes even know that if you’re robbing the place you get to go right up to the front of the line?

Of course not. You know what a bored giraffe finds thrilling? Heading out to the Serengeti plain to kick some lion butt. Hello? The last time I tried to kick a lion I ended up in a foreign emergency room with my butt seriously unbuttoned. Who wants to do that again? I mean, not only did they diagnose me with a sinus infection, they were out of network!

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

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

Playing the sincerity card (jouer le joker)

Posted on October 10, 2014 by PMcG

•To my tens of thousands of fans I would like to say I am so sorry. This will never happen again.

•I want to thank my huge fan base for their prayers and tweets. I was stupid and my actions were unacceptable. This will never happen again.

•I know I said this will never happen again, and then it happened. What is with me? I’m an idiot. Although, thousands of you have tweeted that I’m not an idiot, just a lovable scamp who made a mistake, as we all do from time to time. I am really sorry. I will try much harder.

•I tried so hard to never do that thing again and I just keep doing it. To the many, many hundreds of adoring fans who have responded, I can only say I am going to seek outside help. In the meantime I’m sorry, sorry, sorry. I won’t do it again and I mean that.

•I asked the big famous richer-than-me star in the tract mansion across the street why I can’t seem to quit doing these unacceptable things. He said it’s because I’m a jerk. That really hurt. I don’t want to be a jerk and I appreciate all the supportive tweets from scores of my fans. I bought a book on how to stop acting like a jerk, written by a famously wealthy reformed jerk who once met Dr. Phil. To my fans: You probably won’t believe me when I say this, but I am really sorry. Really.

•I read the book on how to stop acting like a jerk. But the big shot across the street said the reformed jerk who wrote it is still a jerk. He just doesn’t act like a jerk anymore in public. I didn’t realize there was a difference between being and acting. I got confused and feel like a jerk because I went and did that unacceptable thing again. The guy across the street thinks I need industrial strength drugs.

•Look, I am as surprised as you are not, to be here again, apologizing for such egregious behavior. I even sought professional help. The doc said I was acting out a deep-seated anger I had toward my parents, my teachers, my boss, my accountant and my thousands of bonehead former fans. I asked him what my condition was called and he said “It’s called being a jerk.” I appreciate those dozens of fans who suggested I beg God’s forgiveness and, by the way, stop doing drugs and drinking at the same time.

•God, I’m sorry to be sorry again. And I do mean God. Fans, I had nowhere else to turn so I followed your advice and went to a wealthy, television pastor. He said that God still loved me. I said “God loves jerks?” And he said “Did I say that? Wow. Must have been a senior moment. What I should have said is that God loves jerks who don’t act like jerks when he’s around.” It sounded to me like the acting and being thing again. To my many fans—although not as many as last time (thanks a pantload)—I can only say that because I was confused, I got farouked out of my mind, went out and tipped over a cow. Which, as luck would have it, God had just created and milked.

•Good morning. I know some of you expect to hear me apologize for my role in the incident in question. But on advice of my lawyer, Trent Wabash of Wabash and Cannonball—the stout gentleman in the corner with the cowboy hat, toothpick and zombie eyes—I will have no comment. The issue is going through the legal process and until I am exonerated, I cannot say anything. But when this is over, you can bet your underpants I will tell my tens of fans why I did it and I’ll be apologizing big time. Count on it.

©Patrick A. McGuire and A Hint of Light 2013-2014, all rights reserved.

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