How cold is it?

Posted on October 1, 2013 by PMcG

A friend says to me “What’s the weather like outside?”

I grimace. “It’s hotter than a beanstalk.”

My friend blinks once. Twice. “Did you say beanstalk?”

I sigh. Another beanstalk noob, meaning I have to explain myself out loud and likely reveal a pattern of mental gnashing that could be used against me in a sanity hearing.

So. When the kids were very young and very impressionable and it was very hot or very cold outside I knew I had a very serious responsibility to shield their very pink little ears from the kind of very coarse gutter language that could turn them into very drug dealers.

Back in the B.C. era, (Before Children) I might go outside and experience stifling heat and exclaim “It is hotter than poop out here.” In the winter, with temperatures below freezing  I altered the phrase slightly to say “It’s colder than poop out here.”

Note: poop is not the actual word I used, which is a lot like poop only shading more towards ca-ca or even doo-doo.

An aside. It really makes no metaphorical sense to compare heat or cold to bodily waste, although people always seem to know exactly what it is you’re saying.

I believe that in certain circumstances, such as when it is colder than frostbite on an Eskimo’s buns, or hotter than Buffalo wings in a sweat lodge, the speaker wants there to be no doubt about the seriousness of the message. This is no joke, the hot/cold one is saying, and pardon my French but it calls for some gosh-darn strong language.

But not too strong. Comparing coldness or hotness to poop has a certain naughty but forgivable je ne sais merde about it. On the other hand, to say baldly that it is copulating cold out, well people are likely to cringe and miss the serious weather message. Uninformed, such folk will too easily step outside and freeze/sweat their gazoodles off.

So, back to the beanstalk. In the A.D. era (After Delivery), I realized kids would pick up on any odd word they heard, especially if spoken loudly enough. Utterage of socially incorrect language at home is one thing.

But in the checkout line at the grocery, with youngsters in tow, it can be traumatizing to hear the cashier ask little Chauncey what he thinks of school and hear him use a word that rhymes with duck but neither looks nor quacks like a duck.

Therefore, because “Jack and the Beanstalk” was a story I often read to the kids, it seemed natural for me to eschew poop and instead borrow from that title to spontaneously describe giant shifts in the weather. It worked very well  and none of the kids grew up to become drug dealers.

By the way, at the suggestion of Katherine, I made just one little tweak back then:  “Wow, it’s colder than Jack’s a beanstalk.”

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

Posted in News You Can Use (Sort of), The human comedy | Tagged , , | 6 Comments

Nuggets I picked up from my dog, No. 8

Posted on September 26, 2013 by PMcG

Being bits of wisdom gleaned from daily walks with my dog, Coffee. He left for stars unknown in 2010.

Unwritten Rules

Occasionally while Katherine and I are in the living room watching TV, one of us will say “Look, there’s a large animal lying on the carpet.” We both then stare in mock amazement at the snoring tonnage of Coffee J.Dogg.

We spend a whimsical moment or two wondering aloud that civilized society allows such big honking wildebeests into its living quarters.We have this silly conversation a lot—our attempt to keep from taking the nature of things for granted.

DCF 1.0

Coffee J. Dogg, guarding one of my biggest fans

It’s almost as if we were saying “Holy moley, a mouse just ran across the floor.” Almost. Every now and then when that actually happens, silliness gives way to shrieks and murderous fricking and fracking.

One night when I was a boy, a bat got into our house. The chaos it caused as we scrambled for cover amid weeping and gnashing of teeth couldn’t have been greater had a squadron of Cossacks crashed through the door.

My father went immediately to the front closet, looking, I prayed, for a riot gun. But he emerged from the closet with his business fedora pulled tightly over his ears and in his hands a broom and dustpan.

It took him 45 panicky minutes to corner that dipping, darting bat. All the time my father was egged on by our barking, yipping dog, Rascal Slade. This was a seriously deranged, hyper-active dog, a mixed up Chihuahua-terrier detested through the neighborhood by man and beast.

He growled and barked and nipped at everything. He’d bitten every one of us—except the old man—at least once during our seven-year love-hate relationship. He dragged his butt on the rug, he had fleas, a $20-a-month digitalis habit and the breath of a dead uncle. Yet no one ever went after him with a broom or a dustpan.

In fact, we humans have long drawn a somewhat irrational line between ourselves and the animal kingdom. You see dogs but not squirrels having free roam of a house. Cats, ferrets, rabbits and hamsters, yes; but never pigeon, bear, possum or mole.

Sometimes somebody will fall in love with a large pig and invite it into full family membership, but they are always the weird family down the street.

When I was a newspaperman in Denver I wrote a story about a young loon who owned a leopard and couldn’t understand why the neighbors were freaked to the max. I’ve written stories about people with exotic snakes.

Somehow, it just wouldn’t be amusing or wondrous if one night I said to Katherine “Look, dear, there’s a boa constrictor lying on the carpet.”

Most civilized people understand the fine line between the wife-eating snake and the slipper-eating dog. Part of it lies rooted in our upbringing—learning which fork to use for the salad, which Hawaiian shirt not to wear to a wedding, what form of gushing white lie to recite when your aunt gives you a savings bond for your birthday instead of a Remco Bulldog tank.

It all derives from a vast body of Unwritten Rules, those carefully calculated social norms handed down through generations. Unwritten Rules are what make it a taboo to keep a barnyard animal as a house pet, or to cheer at a funeral.

But part of it also stems from the DNA. Scientists, I’m sure, would argue that grace is not something that can be measured and therefore doesn’t exist.

Yet even they would most likely agree that deep within the human package, certain of us harbor wiggly amoeba thingies that push and shove and brazenly emit fulminating fumes without begging pardon, thus relegating the person on the outside of the skin and bones to the status of an ignorant bozo.

Unfortunately, some of us are hardwired to be stupid, no matter how many times our mother tells us she thought she was going to die when we broke the sound barrier during the pastor’s sermon.

As a reporter covering the Colorado State House, I remember the legislator who used to talk with his mouth full of food, usually a cheese sandwich.

The fact that he had nothing at all to say made it an even more degrading sight. Once, in a pique over some bill or other he jammed a pen into the electronic voting apparatus at his desk, causing the system to malfunction.

There stands my model of an ignorant man, full of pushy amoebas and blind to the unwritten rules of decorum.

Yet in that same statehouse, you had the genial chief justice of the Colorado Supreme Court, who would not infrequently come to work wearing a black wingtip on one foot and a brown one on the other. Sometimes he would notice it himself and smile to friends “You know I have a pair just like this at home.”

There stood a civilized man, one who received the rules from one generation and passed them along to the next. He ended up with a building named in his honor, while the cheese-eater melted into deserved obscurity.

So when we can, Katherine and I try to appreciate the civilized nature of things, but not lose our sense of wonder at the giant hairbag snoozing at our feet.

We feed him the dog food with the tastiest looking picture on the label, we talk to him as if he understands, we guide him through daily sniffouts of the neighborhood and we make sure he takes his thyroid medicine every night.

For he is a civilized dog and we are his civilized, obedient servants.

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

Posted in Dogs I Have Known, The human comedy | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Haiku, haiku very much

Posted on September 24, 2013 by PMcG

Just thinking. What if poets wrote technical instruction manuals? Take your basic lawn mower foruhzample:

Operating instructions for your Haiku 575® Lawn Mowing Machine

How to assemble
And use with minimal pain
Your happy doodad

Honored grass cutter,
Open manual to learn
Open heart to know

Join Part A to B
Announce to Parts C and D
Their time is at hand

Never light match, please,
To peek in gasoline tank
Before writing Will

Grip cord by handle
Hard yank reaps sound of silence
And humility

Again, mighty pull
But again only bees buzz
Neighbors watch and smile

Adjust choke, jerk cord
Blue smoke and awful racket
Neighbors shut their doors

Or, maybe not.

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

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, Mockery and derision | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Nuggets I picked up from my dog, No. 7

Posted on September 20, 2013 by PMcG

Bash on regardless

While following the hound up the hill in the morning before you’re fully awake, you tend to keep your head down and eyes focused on the current slab of sidewalk coming into view between your two feet.

Coffee J. Dogg and unidentified syncophant

Nuggets are bits of wisdom gleaned from daily walks with my dog, Coffee.
He had a soft, furry head and he never complained. He left for stars unknown in 2010.

You do this because looking into the light to see where you’re going might actually wake you up and force you to confront the day, the life, the whole do-good-avoid-evil imperative.

Each slab of concrete becomes a soothing blank slate–what ancient nuns from the Dobygilliscene epoch called a tabula rasa (Today it refers to a small iPad without wi-fi or a twitter account.)

Disbelief is suspended as a variety of dream apps populate each concrete slate with images, some of them in thrilling 3-D. For instance, suddenly, there on your blank sidewalk slate stands a lowly garbage can which, as you’re still only half awake, you’ve now blundered into.

Is there a sorrier sight or sound than a grown man knocking into a garbage can in the broad daylight of a clear morning, then tumbling to the earth, up over down, with profane humiliation?

This can is one of those 64-gallon plastic behemoths wheeled out of a garage the night before and parked smack in the middle of the walking lane.

Who relaxed the perfectly sensible rule about placing the garbage can on the curb, or at least on that patch of grass between sidewalk and road? You would like to see that person in your office tomorrow at 9 a.m., sharp.

Another entertaining facet of garbage-canology, and this one, surely, exhausts the list, is the way some owners mark their cans with their own distinctive brand. Most common is the Sharpie-applied street number, marking both can and lid.

Sometimes the numbers are neatly and even artfully applied. Every now and then you can see that someone has made a stencil to trace the numbers to anal perfection, sometimes in one font for the can and another for the lid.

Other attempts are woefully inadequate. Too many owners resort to the paint brush, or worse, a can of spray paint. They spray large, wide, usually unreadable letters and numbers, sometimes an entire home address with zip code.

The hideous evidence of slowly dripping paint sliding down the rounded sides of the can gives the numbers and letters a Freddy Kruger look.

This suggests a lack of close attention paid during the formative years with the finger paints. Other times, illegible numbers scrawled almost angrily on the side of a can suggest troubling personal issues at play.

Still, you live in a time where a man without a brand is quite obviously a man without a can. Who can shoulder such a burden? After all, even a badly painted can is proof that you’ve come to this table to play and not simply to observe.

These are the kinds of thoughts that sustain/torture you in stumbling transition from sleep to semi-wakefulness. Yet sometimes when you shuffle past a can with a really sloppy lettering job, you wonder if this owner may have left himself open to the potential of a “troubling neighborhood incident.” 

For example, take the knuckle-headed neighbor up the street, the one with the motorcycle and the really high handlebars. That has to cause some stiffness during a ride because when he rolls into his driveway and gets off the bike, he walks into his house with his hands seemingly raised in surrender.

He is the type who doesn’t mark his trash receptacle. In fact, he doesn’t even have a lid to keep the empty beer bottles and ammunition boxes from spilling into the street.

Let’s say that, inadvertently one day, this knucklehead grabbed the lid to your personal can thinking it was his. What other recourse would you have but to knock on his door and ask pleasantly, but firmly for the immediate, unconditional surrender of the lid to your can?

Oh? Your lid? Can you prove that?

You confidently point to your name, applied in haste to the lid sometime back. Although you have to admit now that the dripped paint is just a bit illegible. Now what do you do?

You run across the street and paw through your receipts and find the one from the day you brought that spanking new member of the family home last summer from Home Depot.  And when the numb knuckle sneers “That doesn’t prove anything!” then what?

Risk a jail term by punching him out? Undoubtedly it’s been done. The issue of garbage can rage is woefully under reported in our national media.

If you don’t punch the guy out, then what? A lawsuit? Over a garbage can lid? Without doubt it’s an area of legal practice that some lawyer is using even now to pay off the insurance on his sullen teen’s Hummer.

Maddening issues such as these lay on your sleepy dream-susceptible mind like a hippo on mud. Any moment now you will wake up and smell the dog.

In the meantime, as you approach the house of the neighbor directly across the street from said knucklehead, you can almost see him in his pajamas skulking behind the pear tree on his front lawn. With a high whining of breaks, the truck bearing the garbage gendarmes arrives at his curbside display.

You can almost hear the neighbor gasp as the trash tosser carelessly chucks the plastic boysenberry lid to his very own plastic boysenberry can into the driveway of the dorknuckle across the street.

   It comes to a rolling stop against the knucklenuck’s celery colored can, a distinct violation of the international rules of color-coordination but perfectly fine for a daydream.

As the garbage truck grumbles from the scene, the neighbor makes a dash across the street, silent except for the telltale flapping on the pavement of his large bare feet. (You picture a seal repeatedly slapping the face of a captured seal-hunter.)

The neighbor grabs his boysenberry lid with a triumphant smirk and is halfway back across the street with it. The sweet, cool succor of his own garage beckons just a few steps away.

And then the morning stillness is shattered by a loud report. You immediately identify the sound as either a Ruger M77 MkII VT varmint rifle or the stubbing of your toe on a sidewalk slab followed by your scream.

Coffee dog and you have reached the top of the hill and your eyes have come almost regretfully to their full and upright locked position.

You suck in a breath, step around the dead man blocking your way and proceed to proceed. For the rude fact remains: eventually you have to open your eyes and bash on, regardless.

 

Note: For more about Coffee J. Dogg and the origins of these essays, click on the menu bar “Nuggets I Picked Up From My Dog”

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

Posted in Dogs I Have Known, The human comedy | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

St. Paul’s e-Pistle to Bob

Posted on September 17, 2013 by PMcG

Bobster,

I thought it kind of impersonal to be writing an e-Pistle addressed simply to Galoshes.com, so I’ve decided to address each Galosh in a separate post. (This may be the dumbest idea I’ve ever had.)

So Bob, did you know it’s easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a camel than to get into heaven?  That tune has been getting some heavy play in the blogs up here, but look, if you don’t own a camel, I wouldn’t sweat it. In fact, try this less complicated parable.

In the days before I was St. Paul, I was just another dude named Saul going nowhere on an outdated donkey at two miles a day. I decided to apply for a job as a scribe.

Well, instead of becoming Saul the Scribe they wanted to make me Saul the  Content Provider. I said hello? Is anyone home? No. So I went across the street and joined the Pharisees. They gave me a late model donkey, some nice cuff links and a tee shirt that said “I’m a Pharisee and you’re not.”

I admit I threw my weight around like a sumo wrestler in a hula hoop. If there was a neck, I stepped on it. If there was a heart I broke it. If there was lasagna I snorked every bit of it like a vacuum cleaner.

One day I’m out on my donkey, Pontius, and it starts to rain. The next thing I know there’s a bright light and a voice crying out in the wilderness. I tumble off my ass onto my ass, recognizing the crying voice as my own.

Then a new voice says “Paulie, Paulie, Paulie. I mean, what is up with you dog?”

 I say “Uh, my name’s Saul…”

 “Your name is Paulie,” says the voice. “Get used to it. And tell me why I shouldn’t throw you into a burning bush for the way you’ve been treating people.”

 I thought fast. “Because it’s raining?”

 “Nice try. Burning bushes are waterproof.”

Before I can reply the voice says “Lemme ask you, Paulie. How would you feel if you’d spent six days building a very fancy sailing ship with your Legos and you put in all the rigging and sails and poop decks it’s supposed to have. But then on the seventh day your friend floats the boat in his bathtub where it sinks like a rock.”

“Wow. I’d feel like my friend really harshed my mellow.”

A long pause. I’m getting nervous. And very wet. “Can you stop the rain for a sec?”

 “Paulie,” says the voice. “I’m not sure you’re getting the concept. So here’s the deal. For starters, stop standing on people’s necks. Stop breaking hearts. Start chewing with your mouth closed. And BE NICE!

“I am nice. In my own way. Sort of.”

 “And tell people to stop sinking my boat. Because it burns my buzzer, if you’re smelling my after shave.”

“Um,” I said thoughtfully. “Can I keep the cuff links?”

Well, Bob, I quit the Pharisees and spent years spreading the “Be nice” message. I did it so many times that even I became nice. I mean, you know, nicer than I was. I’m a Saint now. It’s a good gig. They have a nice shuffleboard table here, a little wobbly, but nice.

So what does it mean to be nice? Start with a smile, even if it’s just gas. Share your lasagna. There’s enough for everyone, trust me. Laugh at other people’s jokes. Pass the salt and pepper every now and then. Think pleasant thoughts that aren’t always about women. Listen to people. With both ears. Pick up the tab for a pizza once in a while.

Avoid bathtubs (if you’re smelling me). Stay out of the fast lane and if you ever ask yourself “What Would Paulie Do?” whatever answer you get, don’t do that.

One last word of advice, Bob. Don’t overdo it. Nobody likes a show off. And remember, to be a saint—and this is what they don’t tell you—you have to be dead.

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

Posted in News You Can Use (Sort of), Scribe v. Pharisees | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Nuggets I picked up from my dog, No. 6

Posted on September 12, 2013 by PMcG

 Hmmm

Katherine asks “Why is it funny to see a dog in the front seat, looking out the window?”

We are in the car. No dog with us. I am driving and at the moment, Katherine is the one sitting in the front seat looking out the window. Not a funny sight. But not an unfunny sight.  Just a sight.

Coffee J. Dogg and unidentified syncophant

“Nuggets I picked up from my dog” are bits of wisdom gleaned from daily walks with my dog, Coffee. He had a soft, furry head and he never complained. Coffee left for stars unknown in 2010.

To be on the safe side, not even a sight because one could mistakenly think that I was saying “Oh, she’s a sight,” as in a sight for sore eyes. So. Just trying to avoid the landmines. In this case—as in all cases—Katherine is not a sight. She is just a Katherine, sitting in the front seat asking a ridiculous question as is her legal right.

And so I consider the question. I say “Hmmm.”

Although without a doubt, it’s a question of the rhetorical variety, meaning she doesn’t really expect me—or anyone—to answer it. More like a silent question one asks oneself. Like when you’re driving along and you think “I wonder if when you’re dead you know it or if someone has to tell you.” Sometimes, if you’re not careful, those little silent questions—let’s not tell anyone we’re thinking this—can slip through the teeth and out into the general oxygen supply. Getting them back can be very tricky.

Now, if Katherine does expect me to answer her question, I’m not sure what to say. Is it funny because when someone looks at our car going by they don’t expect to see a big, black, hairy dog thrusting his snout through the open window, taking the breeze like the king’s Alsatian, wondering what all the common dogs are doing?

Maybe. Although when Coffee J. Dogg rides, he rides mostly in back. The king doesn’t sit next to the chauffeur, right? Typically, whenever Coffee climbs into the front seat, he doesn’t turn himself around to face the side window. He sits facing me, the chauffeur, who gets just a little rattled to be buzzing along with his Master’s Voice giving him the hairy eyeball.

His Master’s Voice? I can still see the elaborate RCA Victor logo on the inside lid of our old wind-up Victrola record player, circa 1950. A dog sits beside an old gramophone speaker which looks like a witch’s pointy black hat lying on its side. The dog is looking into the part of the hat where the witch’s green head should be, but isn’t. He shows a look of curiosity and just a hint of terror as, presumably, a voice emerges from the hat. In case we don’t get the connection to the high fidelity sound of an RCA Victrola, the logo puts it into words we can understand: “His master’s voice.”

To the poor dog who can’t read, the understanding is slightly different. ‘That sounds like the guy who feeds me every night. But how is he going to feed me if he’s stuck inside that witch’s hat? Should I call the fire department? If only I knew their number.’

Anyway, when he’s in the front seat and I’m driving along, Coffee just stares at me.

Occasionally he’ll  paw my arm for a biscuit. I tell him to turn his butt around and stick his head out the window for some fresh air. I say the word “Breezes.” I say it many times, and very slowly and with volume, thinking this will help him understand. He doesn’t. I push the button that lowers the passenger side window. He turns and looks at it. I jump at my chance to look ahead, to make sure I’m still on the road. I’m sort of not.

“Breezes!” I scream, pulling back into my lane.

Finally, he’s sniffing at the rushing wind. His back feet and butt have moved but only slightly. They are pointing now at the glove compartment. Meanwhile, Coffee is straining his neck hard to the right in an impossible acrobatic move. His snout just barely protrudes from the window. He’s catching the breezes in one wet nostril and at any minute he’s going to snap back at me like a broken rubber band.

“I just think it’s a funny sight,” says Katherine, back in the current waking moment.  She gives me an inquisitive glance. “Don’t you?”

And so I consider the question. I say “Hmmm.”

Note: For more about Coffee J. Dogg and the origins of these essays, click on the menu bar “Nuggets I Picked Up From My Dog”

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

Posted in Dogs I Have Known, The human comedy | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

F.A.Q. The N.S.A.

Posted on September 10, 2013 by PMcG

Q. What does N.A.S.A stand for?

A.  It’s N.S.A. You’re thinking of astronauts.

Q. How do you know what I’m thinking?

A. Well, ironically, that’s what the NSA is all about.

Q. So what is the NSA? Why is it in the news?

A. Seriously? Do you live on Mars?

Q. Tralfamador. Come on, shoot the poop, gimme the scoop.

A. The best way to explain the National Security Agency is through the metaphor of The John Doe saloon.

Q. I’ve been there. The food was awful.

A. It’s not real. It’s a pretend place in a metaphor. We’re pretending that the United States is a place called the John Doe saloon.

Q. The salad bar was okay except for the anchovies.

A. So, in the United States we have a president—that would be John Doe. We have an Attorney General—the bartender. We have the FBI—the bouncer at the door.

Q. They looked like stepped on worms that had been pried off a sidewalk.

A. The Supreme Court is in the kitchen–the chief justice being the head chef. The news media is played stereotypically by the drunk at the bar. The patrons in the saloon are everyday citizens. Of course, we also have that element representing chaos, uncertainty, and the tendency to track mud into a room.

Q. Congress?

A. No. The bluegrass band playing at the back of the saloon.

Q. I want a table down there.

A. We need one other element to complete our metaphor. Any guesses?

Q. Has to be Congress.

A. Close. In the metaphor, Congress is represented by the rest rooms. Their role is to flush John Doe’s plan for just about anything, but especially for keeping everyone in the saloon safe.

Q. Do they ever come out of the restrooms?

A. Only for re-election campaigns and press conferences where they call people names or apologize for calling people names by calling them different names. Or to say they’re proud they called somebody a name and now that they think of it, they wouldn’t apologize in a million years. Then they say Nanny nanny boo boo, stick your head in doo doo.  What’s still missing is a way John Doe can guarantee his patrons’ safety.

Q. In case Frankie comes in and shoots Johnnie?

A. No, the bouncer handles that. John Doe needs to find out which patrons are up to no good.

Q. Everybody in a saloon is up to no good.

A. Not everyday no good. I’m talking Holy Guacamole no good.

Q. Something in a Class I felony?

A. Think terrorists. How can John Doe tell who may be plotting a nefarious deed and who is just there to unwind?

Q. Start with the banjo player. They’re always wound pretty tight.

A. Remember, the saloon is the United States of America. We don’t discriminate against people because of the ridiculous instrument they play.

Q. Then how the heck do we discriminate?

A. The point is, we don’t discriminate against anyone. We discriminate against everyone. It’s the only fair way.

Q. Brilliant. But how?

A. Here’s a clue. What does every saloon have on its walls every ten feet or so?

Q. Roaches?

A. Flat screen TV’s. And here is the role in our metaphor played by NSA.

Q. They’re the exterminators?

A. No. The NSA operates the satellite feed and special two-way TVs. A perfect way to poke into our privacy.

Q. That’s bad, right?

 A. If anyone else did it, yes. But the NSA does it for one reason only: to root out terrorists. That’s it. Nothing else. Nada. If you’re not a terrorist you have no worries. Unless, of course, you say something you shouldn’t say.

Q. Like ‘I wonder if that woman is wearing underwear?’

A. I mean like “I wish the American flag had a little more red in it.” Or “Let’s change the fourth of July to the fifth of July.”

Q. Who decides what’s right and what’s wrong to say?

A. Usually Congress and the Supreme Court. But they can’t hear anything over the sound of flushing toilets and the espresso machine. So it defaults to the boss of NSA who is the head waiter at the John Doe saloon. His waiters have multiple opportunities to eavesdrop and spy.

Q. So who could object to a system as, um, as sort of fair as that?

A. Some people in the saloon feel that being spied on violates their right to privacy. In fact they point to a large stone block outside the saloon. Back in 1776, the original owners chiseled a list of 10 ideas we can’t live without in a democracy.

Q. I’d have the bouncer blow up the rock

A. John Doe and the waiters wouldn’t let him.

Q. Hmm. How about getting John Doe to fire the waiters.

A. The head chef would close down the kitchen.

Q. Wow. Sounds like we’re on the horns of a limo. Maybe burn the place down? Make it look like an accident?

A. You can’t destroy the United States to save it.

Q. How about this. You send the bluegrass band into the restroom and they play “The Wreck of the Old ‘97” nonstop. Congress will come stumbling out of there in 48 seconds.

A. Would never work. Congress is The Wreck of the Old ’97.

Q. Maybe get a different metaphor?

A. We have one option. The bartender unplugs the TVs, and the drunk staggers into the rest room groaning loudly like he might be sick.

Q. Oooh. And he clears the room. That’s just sick enough to work. But how do you get rid of the waiters?

A. Easy. John Doe posts a “No tipping” policy.

 Attention: This report is classified Really, Really Secret so Shutup  and may be read only by people with a Really Really security classification. If you do not have such clearance and you have already read this, please present yourself at the Leavenworth federal penitentiary at your earliest convenience. Bring a toothbrush and a 144 month calendar.

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

Posted in Absurd and/or zany, F.A.Q., Mockery and derision | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments