Blurping at the brink

Posted on April 3, 2014 by PMcG

Years ago when the nest emptied, K-Mac and I worked out an equal distribution of duties in the household. She would cook, clean, do the laundry, sheer the sheep, tan the hides, pull all teeth, change all tires and keep the firewood coming. I would supervise and play the banjo to lift her spirits. If I had time, I might also point out things like a crumb on the floor that the vacuum missed or note that I didn’t have any clean underwear and what was up with that.

It worked beautifully until I told her about it. There were discussions, of course. Points given and points taken—sometimes at the end of barbecue skewers. Admittedly, some voices got tall. Some emotions climbed the chimney. Some faces went from no-way-Jose red to condensed-milk white. Windows rattled in that jet-breaking-the-sound-barrier way. TV news trucks sniffed into the neighborhood like bloodhounds on a stink bug.

Ultimately, K-Mac won a mandate to form a new government—by necessity, a coalition government—in which I assumed the role of Loyal Opposition. Translation: as the dust finally settled, I couldn’t help but notice that I was sweeping it up.

Afterward, photos were taken, speeches given, promises made and, on a personal note, tears freely shed. For a new day had dawned, the sun blurping up at the brink of our brave new world in a barfocative nimbus of bismuth pink.

Footnote: For the record, I assumed several new (though completely bogus) titles in the new regime:

Chief of Police (Kitchen)
Duties: clear table after meals; put away, throw away but don’t go away; scrape and load dishes into dishwasher; stop making so much racket out there; wash the big pots by hand; stop whining; wipe down the sink, stove and countertops; stop saying ‘Eeeuwww, gross’; neatly and rationally organize the dishwasher; stop saying ‘If only we had more coffee mugs;’ remove kitchen trash to garbage cans in garage; stop making so much racket out there; stop comparing yourself to a poor, manipulated waif in a Charles Dickens novel.

Director of Food and Beverage Replenishment
Duties: Make grocery list; include items other than beer; like vegetables; and fruit (duh); no humongous (or any) bags of Snickers; no 50 pound cans of mixed nuts; collect all grocery store bags; don’t forget to take grocery bags with you; stop whining that carrying grocery store bags make you look like a girl; an old woman; stupid; completely whipped; check eggs for cracks; put eggs on top in basket; don’t put anything else on top of eggs in basket; like the milk; or the cantaloupe; don’t say you forgot; again; seriously; no Rolling Stone, Fantasy Baseball or Hunky Man Abs magazines; no gallon size tub(s) of ice cream; no National Inquirer (unless Elvis-sighting story); don’t lose grocery list; when you do, don’t use old grocery list in your coat pocket.

First Lord of Sanitation. Remember to take the garbage out the night before garbage-pickup day; Don’t forget to take the garbage out the night before garbage-pickup day; take the garbage out on garbage-pickup day; don’t say I forgot to take the garbage out; don’t forget to take the garbage out; remember to bring in the empty garbage cans; don’t forget the empty garbage cans; make sure our empty garbage cans aren’t two blocks away in the middle of the street; retrieve our garbage cans from the middle of the street two blocks down; don’t say ‘oh we can always get new ones;’ don’t get new ones; take them back and get our empty cans out of the street; don’t run them over.

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

Posted in News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy, Uncategorized | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Tattoos and sweetie pies

Posted on March 27, 2014 by PMcG

So, we’re driving along, going somewhere or coming back from somewhere, when apropos of nothing, K-Mac says “How come you never got a tattoo?”

Wow. After 45 years of marriage, you sort of take for granted that you know everything there is to know about your sweetie pie. Things like tattoo probability are usually dealt with in what lawyers call the discovery phase—race car drivers call it the endurance trials—between falling in love and getting married.

Admit it, we’ve all had or have an invisible checklist with tiny boxes to be checked off sometime between the first date and the moment that first handful of rice hits you in the eye.

•Do you clip your toenails on a regular basis? Yes□ No□
•Do you make rude noises on a regular basis? Yes□ No□
•Do you park your truck on the front lawn on a regular basis? Yes□ No□
•Do you ever sleep in your clothes on the kitchen floor? Yes□ No□
•Do you ever sleep nude on the kitchen floor? Yes□ No□
•Any other floors? Yes□ No□
•Did that awful sound just come from you? Yes□ No□ Swear to God.□
•Are you a harpy? Yes□ No□
•Do you know how to cook stuff besides raisin bran? Yes□ No□
•Do you know the difference between a really expensive piece of jewelry and a Cracker Jack charm? Yes□ No□
•Do you have or will you ever get a tattoo on visible and/or secret parts of your body? Yes□ No□
•Are they the secret parts I’m thinking of? Yes□ No□
•Has anyone besides you and the tattoo bozo ever seen these secret-parts tattoos? Yes□ No□ Who wants to know? □
•Mind if I take a peek? Yes□ No□

The wrong answer to any of these questions can kill a relationship or at least guarantee that your Christmas and birthday gifts from that moment on will consist of stuff like toe nail clippers, Beano, large bags of grass seed, Rachel Ray’s Cooking With Extra Virgin Pennzoil, and a full color map of Secret Tattoo Placements of the Stars.

So, back to K-Mac’s tattoo question. I have many reservations about tattoos in principle—It would hurt. What if the tattoo guy misspelled banjo? I might be mistaken for Mike Tyson. My body is a temple. I would have to get in fistfights in bars. I’d end up hanging with Ted Nugent. The body part that got tattooed would fall off.

But down deep I always knew that none of those objections outweighed the one indelible truth: I never got a tattoo because my mother would have guilted me into a home. I can hear her saying “You’ve broken my heart. And your father is so disappointed in you. The dog doesn’t even like you anymore.” My father would have cleared his throat and said “Those things don’t come off, you know.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I replied to K-Mac. “Just never felt like a tattoo, I guess.”

But I do know. How could I ever forget? It’s tattooed on my soul.

And yes, it hurt.

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

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Baseball as a second language

Posted on March 26, 2014 by PMcG

K-Mac, the goodwife formerly known as Katherine, has been speaking baseball now for two years. Although not her native tongue, she already grasps concepts that “fluent” baseball speakers find tongue-twisting.

The infield fly rule, for instance: Fewer than two outs; men on first and second—or bases loaded; batter hits an infield pop-up; the umpire points his finger up at God, as if to say “I’ll handle this,” and shouts “Batter is out!”

Even if the fielder drops the ball. Which is the point—beyond God graciously not killing the umpire with 50k volts of lightning. It’s a rule as simple as the Ablative Absolute rule in Latin, except there the umpire is a nun and you’re the one getting the finger, plus the 50k attitude adjustment.

K-Mac’s growing baseball interest not only earned her a cool nickname, but prompted us to fly to Florida last week to watch our home team Orioles prepare for the season ahead. During one game K-Mac posed a question I had not heard before. Why are bases—first, second and third—fat, like pillows while home plate is flat like a tortilla?

The rules say bags must be 15 inches square, three to five inches thick and filled with soft material. No further explanation, but As I patiently explained to K-Mac, fat bases make sense.

Let’s say you’re playing a pickup game in New York City and you’re using the Empire State Building as second base. You hit a scorcher to left center field—somewhere between Herald Square and the New York School of Design. You round first—the McDonald’s near the Fifth Avenue Acupuncture Center—and head for second. You slide feet first into the Empire State Building as the throw comes in from Sixth Avenue Hosiery.

Now, if that had been an empty parking lot instead of a 1,450-foot tall skyscraper, you would have slid clear into the Empire Beauty School. But a thick bag gives you something to slide into, not over.

As for the soft material used, you might think a couple rolls of toilet paper—the extra soft variety that prevents chafing of the shoe. Two problems. One, a roll of TP is too tall. Second, you’d need labels on each base warning players not to flush them down a toilet. Which, of course, means some bonehead will almost immediately try to flush a base down a toilet.

Farfetched? Okay, say a player smashes one deep to the New York Public Library. He rounds second base and notices the warning label. He stops and says “Whaa—?” As he is bent over, his nose practically touching the bag—he’s forgotten his reading glasses—the throw comes in from Frederick’s of Hollywood on 38th street and he is tagged out.

A Donnybrook erupts. Both benches clear and umpires start ejecting players. The manager of the home team is so furious that he uproots second base and takes it back to the clubhouse where he tries to flush it down a toilet. He is suspended without pay and non-chafing TP.

And that, as I explained to K-Mac, is why I’m going with bases stuffed with circus peanuts—the orange and spongy type, not the ones made of Styrofoam. K-Mac saw a problem.

Suppose an elephant comes up to bat? Wouldn’t he start sniffing the infield with his trunk and say “Circus peanuts! Yumbo for Jumbo.”

I chuckled at K-Mac’s enthusiastic but noob mistake. As seasoned veterans of the game know very well, there may be a few jackasses out there, and one or two preening peacocks, but elephants in baseball? It just doesn’t fly.

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

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Tickling the grizzly. Briefly. Very briefly.

Posted on March 20, 2014 by PMcG

How long should a story be? Did someone say “Just long enough?” Well, maybe in the old days, when attention spans were measured in furlongs. But somewhere along the space-time continuum, our attention spans shrunk down to the length of a banjo encore.

We can blame flashing screens and finger-seducing buttons for diverting us from things sublime–like time spent reading a story. Too boring, too much like thinking, too long, ripostes tweeters with their 140 well thought out characters. Ironic, perhaps, that once upon a time the term characters referred to people found in stories and not glyphs on a screen.

Yet, pressed for time, readers around the globe loved the short story form when it first appeared. It’s length–anywhere from 3,000 to 7,000 words seemed just right. As time squeezed even harder, however, the short story gave way to the short-short story, at something like 1,500 words. When that became just a lifetime, flash fiction exploded, offering drive-by stories at 500-700 words or so.

Today the question of how long a story should be has been reversed: How short should a story be? The short answer: six words.

What?

Yes, stories of six words–maximum and minimum–are now held up by clever dwarves as the standard for get-out-of-town fiction.

But what, a faithful reader asks, can you possibly say in six words, when it took Fyodor Dostoyevsky 340,000 of them to say it in “The Brothers Karamazov?”

Welcome to the Ernest Hemingway answer. Uncle Ernie– extremely dead now these past six decades–established his distinctive style with short, tight sentences. He once wrote a six-word story that some believe said it all: “For sale: baby shoes; never worn.”

Of course, it didn’t say it all at all. But it does seem easier to try to beat Papa at his own game with 6 words than 60,000.

So, in case you have an extra 3.7 seconds–and who does anymore?–please browse my considerable library of “Get to the point, I’m getting bored” fiction. Look for them soon on the New York Times bestseller list. 

  1. Tickling that grizzly changed Stosh forever.
  2. When Raoul died, we wept. Briefly.
  3. Killer’s motive? Victim’s poems never rhymed.
  4. Stupid? Granted. But only while breathing.
  5. LuAnn regretted nothing. We regretted LuAnn.
  6. Running in place got Harold nowhere.
  7. Dang him, hang him. Poetic justice.
  8. Whenever Adolph came out, we ran.
  9. Leo pleaded innocent once too often.
  10. Raining arrows caught him, sans umbrella.
  11. He tried kindness. Kind of. Disaster.
  12. Unluckily, stampeding turtles slowly trampled Lucky.
  13. Blah, blah, blah. Needs more blah.
  14. Unexpectedly, his boomerang came back Republican.
  15. Turns out his dog doo’d it.
  16. Trouble: One-armed man, three eyes.
  17. Dawn. Swords. Blood. Honor. Eulogy. Forgotten.
  18. Suddenly, teeth, hair and eyeballs everywhere.
  19. He had money. She had he.
  20. Found Timmy in well. Barked. Left.
  21. Inevitably, his ticking bomb went tock
  22. Closing scene: banjo bouncing down stairs.
  23. Rags. Luck. Riches. Sex. Greed. Glock-in-his-ear
  24. Carefully, they handed him his ass.
  25. You saved me! Ironically, you’re fired.
  26. Oddly, a monster Danish killed everyone.

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

 

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FAQ: Limbo

Posted on March 11, 2014 by PMcG

Q. What is limbo?
A. Limbo is a state where the recently gone go when the lines at heaven, hell and purgatory are backed up more than a mile. Think of it as spiritual overflow parking.

Q. So which state is it? North Dakota?
A. Limbo isn’t a real state like those with indicted and/or imprisoned governors, or a governor who thinks global warming is a communist plot and tells critics “If there’s global warming how come there are no beaches in Antarctica? ‘Splain that Vladimir.”

Q. Is limbo like a city?
A. Limbo is like a giant flea market. You spend hours wandering the aisles, never finding anything that snaps your sheets. You’re vaguely looking for a belt buckle that says Baltimore Catechism, or an out of print book of magic tricks by Bullwinkle J. Moose.

You find yourself in front of a black velvet painting of the Young Elvis firing a gun into a television set in a Las Vegas hotel. You feel an overwhelming need not to be there anymore.

A clerk, asks “What are you looking for?” You say “Do you have any Bullwinkle magic books?” The clerk points to a far corner, perhaps a mile distant. “Bullwinkle that-a-way,” he says. “Next to the Baltimore Catechism belt buckles.”

You set off. Four days later you’re back in front of Elvis shooting the TV. You feel an overwhelming need not to be in this place anymore. A clerk asks “What are you looking for?” You say “The Exit.” He points to a corner, perhaps a mile away. “Behind Bullwinkle. Next to the Baltimore Catechism belt buckles. You can’t miss it.”

But you can and do. And do. And doodle-y do.

Eventually you buy the Elvis painting. The vendor, vaguely familiar, hands it to you, saying “Thank you. Thank you, very much.”

Now you’re wandering the aisles with an Elvis painting under your arm. You take a closer look at it and you begin to wonder. That young vendor guy…

Q. My grandmother says limbo is a dance invented by Chubby Checker.
A. There was a schism in those days. Some believed Limbo was a place but others, like Mr. Checker, believed it was a dance. Some reasoned it could be both—a place for dancing. Others, unable to define, pronounce or spell schism, asked for a new question.

Q. So, if you’re good you go to Heaven. If you’re bad you go to Hell. If you were kind of good and kind of bad you end up in Purgatory until O.J.’s lawyer can see you. So who’s in Limbo?
A. According to Chubby, it’s where Jack B. Nimble and Jack B. Quick hang. BTW: they’re the only two dudes who know how to “jump under limbo stick.” That’s important, because getting out of Limbo all depends on your answer to the question “How low can you go?” And speaking of low, did I mention? It’s also, where O.J’s* lawyer lives.

*For those too young to know who O.J. is, Google “running through airports,” “ex-football players who murdered
and got away with it,” and “dumb as a box of hula hoops.”**

**For those too young to know what a hula hoop is, Google “plastic hoop spun around the waist for no apparent reason,” and “Ex-football players with the I.Q. of a box of big plastic zeroes.”***

***For those too young to know what Google is, that’s really young. Please do not neglect your studies.

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

Posted in F.A.Q., News You Can Use (Sort of) | Tagged , , | 3 Comments

A mind is a terrible thing

Posted on March 6, 2014 by PMcG

The Pepperoncini Sessions
SESSION ONE
Patient X: Doc, I’m afraid I’m losing my mind.
Dr. Pepperoncini: Fear is a common symptom of many phobias. The good news is that you don’t need to fear losing your mind. You’ve already lost it. Well, I see our time is up for today.

SESSION TWO
Patient X: I still haven’t found my mind and I’ve looked everywhere you said it might be.
Dr. Pepperoncini: Did you look in the refrigerator?
Patient X: Yes
Dr. Pepperoncini: Behind the cottage cheese?
Patient X: No, but I looked behind the left-over broccoli. You didn’t say anything about cottage cheese.
Dr. Pepperoncini: Actually, I did say cottage cheese.
Patient X: No, and I’ll tell you why I remember. See, my wife is allergic. If she eats cottage cheese she breaks out in song. And that’s a very painful condition.
Dr. Pepperoncini: Everybody has cottage cheese in the fridge. Look on the narrow shelf just below the ketchup. Well, I see our time is up for today.

SESSION THREE
Patient X: So doc, I took everything out of the refrigerator, and I mean everything—
Dr. Pepperoncini: Including the cottage cheese?
Patient X: No, and I’ll tell you why. Because there wasn’t any cottage cheese in there. Never was, in fact. Never will be.
Dr. Pepperoncini: Are you sure?
Patient X: Well, let me think. Hmm. Okeydoke, I thought. And I’m as sure about it as a man with a lost mind can be.
Dr. Pepperoncini: So if your mind wasn’t hiding behind the cottage cheese, what was?
Patient X: Nada. Which is Swedish for nothing behind the cottage cheese. And I’ll tell you how I know. Because there was no cottage cheese in the first place, second place and up through 88th place, which was the fur-covered pickles.
Dr. Pepperoncini: Well, I see our time is up.

SESSION FOUR
Patient X: So Doc, I think I’m going to quit coming. I still haven’t found my mind and my wife says she doesn’t notice a whole lot of difference between me now and when I still had my mind.
Dr. Pepperoncini: Here, you might want to open this bag.
Patient X: What is it? A birthday present? What—well I’ll be dipped in honey mustard dipping sauce. It looks like my lost mind.
Dr. Pepperoncini: It is your lost mind. I found it in the fridge. Behind the cottage cheese. Right where I said it would be.
Patient X: You mean you went to my house and–
Dr. Pepperoncini: It was in my fridge. Behind my cottage cheese.
Patient X: My lost mind was in your refrigerator? How’d it get there?
Dr. Pepperoncini: How it got there isn’t important. What is important is that I’ve cured you.
Patient X: Um, I think it might be important, Doc. I know I have a wandering mind, but–
Dr. Pepperoncini: Look, it was probably just static cling. Your mind jumped onto my back the same way underpants, right out a dryer, jump onto the back of a sweater. It’s what we call transfer. It’s in the literature. From there to the cottage cheese, well, a simple matter of physics.
Patient X: Doc, I flunked physics, but still–
Dr. Pepperoncini: Google psychotherapy and cottage cheese. It’s all there.
Patient X: Doc? I think you’ve got somebody’s underpants stuck on your sweater.
Dr. Pepperoncini: And your point?
Patient X: Just sayin.’
Dr. Pepperoncini Well, I see our time is up.

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

Posted in The human comedy | Tagged , | 3 Comments

The six telltale signs of a whiner

Posted on March 4, 2014 by PMcG

Are you at the end of your rope because your mewling loved one causes such mental burping that you consider putting your head in the microwave oven on the burnt popcorn setting? But you don’t because you can’t close the door?

After another edgy day with your bellyaching loved one, do you find yourself dusting off the Clue game and sorting through the murder weapons? Just to see if you’ve got what it takes in case of an emergency?

Does your nattering nabob of negativism cause such prickly heat that you make plans to run off and join the circus–until you remember that’s where you met Gripe-o, The Carping Clown in the first place?

If any of this sounds familiar, take comfort in knowing you’re not alone. The fact is, you may be in love with a whiner.

To be sure, take this quick test on The six telltale signs of a whiner.

1. Does the person you love whine?
• A.) Oh, yeah
• B.) Sometimes
• C.) Never
• D.) Never, my rosy red rump.

2. How often does your whining loved one whine each day?
• A.) Always
• B.) Always
• C.) Always

3. Even after getting what he/she/Gripe-o whined for, do you ever hear any of these squawks:
• A.) Now that I’ve got it I don’t want it anymore, which never would have happened if I’d gotten it when I wanted it.
• B.) Plus it’s the wrong color because nobody ever listens to me.
• C.) Sometimes I see people wearing ear plugs when I’m around. How do you think that makes me feel? I said HOW DO YOU THINK THAT MAKES ME FEEL?

4. Does the yawping yip you love react to getting a surprise gift by grumbling:
• A.) Eewwwww, gross. There’s a hair on it.
• B.) Yeah, what else ya got?
• C.) What’s for dinner, I’m starving?

5. Does the kvetching, turkey-sub-hold-the-mayo-I said-hold-the-(fricking, fracking, farouking)-mayo ever promise to adopt a new attitude by:
• A.) Substituting whimpering for whining—which sounds exactly like whining but in a higher key.
• B.) Buying you an expensive set of golf clubs. When you remind him/her/the (fricking, fracking, farouking)narcissist that you hate golf, you hear the strains of Whimper-For-Police-Whistle in C major.
• C.) Pledging never to whine again and then whining that you don’t believe it.

6. Your loved one:
• A.) Whines while snoring
• B.) Whines about your snoring.
• C.) Whines while whining

What can you do? Send for our free catalog of self-help books, including our New York Times* bestsellers “Love the Whiner, Hate the Whining,” “Quit Your Damn Whining,” and our newest title “Is It Possible I’m The Whiner?”

Act now and we’ll send you, absolutely free, our new collection “Best Historical Whines,” including this one from Pope Murray, IV: “I just thought the hat would be bigger.”

*Not to be confused with the New York Times.

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

Posted in News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , | 4 Comments