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November 18,
2009
The Snot Pot
I
have been suffering from a cold for over a week
now. My head is stuffy and I have a sinus
headache and a cough. In an effort to alleviate
my suffering, I am prepared to try anything.
So I did.
I bought a Neti Pot.
What's a Neti Pot, some of you might ask? I know
I did, although it turns out I was about the only
person on my floor at work who didn't know what a Neti
Pot was. I have evidently led a sheltered life.
You see, a Neti Pot is a nasal irrigation device, shaped like a
little tea pot, that you fill with warm water and a
pre-mixed packet of sodium chloride and sodium
bicarbonate. You then lean forward, stick the
pot spout in your nostril, and pour. The salt
water is supposed to come out the other nostril.
Man,
I had such a funny story planned about all
this.
It was going to be about me using the Neti Pot to
irrigate my sinuses, which I was sure would result in
a hilarious tale of watery snot dripping all over the
place as I come close to drowning in a kitchen sink
full of mucus. And the $12.99 price for the Neti
Pot was just an investment in a sure-fire humorous
tale of comic misfortune. And snot.
There was no way it couldn't be
hilarious. After all, what's not funny about
sticking a little tea pot spout up your nose and
pouring water into your head? Tell me you're not
grinning at the mental image of me doing that and I'll
call you a liar!
Alas, the actual experience was not that funny.
Not even after I learned that the Neti
Pot is also referred to as the "snot pot".
I warmed my eight ounces of water for a full minute,
but this was too long. I suspected the water was
too hot to stick up my nose when I saw steam rising
from it. I knew the water was too hot to stick
up my nose when I stuck my finger in it and got
burned. So I put the water in the freezer and
figured I'd read the snot pot's instructions.
There are only five steps to using the Neti Pot, so I
only needed one minute to review them.
Comprehending the instructions, however, requires
actual experience. The pictures do not fully
reveal the secret to properly using the snot
pot. The smiling lady in the last picture with a
clear stream of water running out her lower nostril
made it all look so easy.
I checked the water, which was still hot, and added a
little cold water since I was eager to begin.
Not one for pomp and circumstance, I leaned over the
kitchen sink, jammed the spout up my left nostril, and
poured. The salt solution poured down the back
of my throat, almost drowning me! This was
carefully noted in the instructions as a warning that
the solution should not come out of your mouth unless
you're tilting your head too far back.
So I leaned over farther and, like magic, the water poured out my
right nostril like a fresh Irish spring. By that
I do not mean the snot coming out was green.
Just that the flow was steady. And the sensation
was much like drowning. In a fresh Irish spring.
As per the directions, I then blew my nose. All
over the dirty dishes in the sink. And all over
my top lip. And all over my shirt. And
then a long string of snot descended from my left
nostril, swinging perilously over a dirty bowl.
My youngest daughter looked up and laughed as I tried
to coax the snot into dropping. But it held
fast, so I
had to manually extract it, like a villain cutting the
rope as the hero dangles dangerously over a chasm. On a positive
note, it seemed like most of the snot previously in my head was
now down the drain, so the pot must've worked.
I decided to do the other nostril. Only this time I had
my head at the wrong angle and the water poured into
my eye. There was a slight stinging sensation,
but I did not swear. I'm trying to reserve the
use of curse words only for situations where I draw
blood or break bones. And maybe for bad soft
tissue bruises.
Surprisingly, after evacuating the other nostril I found that I could indeed breathe a
little easier. And my head hurt a little
less. Which then begged the question of why
aren't these made with different flavors? Or
maybe different scents?
Wouldn't
having a pleasant peach scent lingering faintly in
your nasal cavity while you're sick help make the
illness more bearable? Or maybe cherry? Or
maybe a strawberry flavor? Instead, I spent the rest of the evening
smelling and tasting sea
water as my sinuses drained. This must be what
it smells and tastes like to drown in the ocean.
And that
is my not-too-funny snot pot tale.
However, in a Jackson Press first, we've decided to
make this a multi-media story! In an effort to
extract some slight form of comedy from this
relatively laugh-less event, we're adding another
dimension to the story and enriching our audience's experience by
providing video of the snot pot exercise!
You may experience this innovation at the Civil
Servitude channel on YouTube by clicking here.
Enjoy!
November 11,
2009
The
Non-Foaming Foam
Dilemma
The kitchenette where I work does not have a
dishwasher and after a year in this building the
generous folks have stopped bringing in small bottles
of dish soap to leave at the sink to share.
So I decided to bring in my own bottle of soap,
all packaged in a nice little foaming pump dispenser.
The problem is that my soap doesn’t exactly foam.
Instead, it just kinda spurts out a pathetic
sploog of clumpy soap, every bit as effective as
regular soap but not nearly as fun or pretty.
Because of this situation I shamefully hide my
pump bottle and skulk about from shadow to shadow when
taking my coffee cup to the kitchenette for cleaning,
carefully hiding the pump bottle behind my back.
The reason I have this ineffective soap dispenser at
work is the result of a failed attempt to prove my
wife wrong, specifically about how dish soap
manufacturers make foaming soap for their foaming pump
bottles.
You see, we used up all the foaming soap in the
original dispenser, so I was sent to the store for a
new bottle. Being
the conservationist and avid recycler I am, I
naturally looked for a refill bottle of the soap to
save from having to buy a whole new pump package,
which just
seemed overly wasteful since the original pump worked
just fine.
Well, I didn’t find a refill bottle for the foam
dispenser, only for the regular soap.
Now this miffed me a bit because I consider it the
retailers responsibility to always keep such things in
stock, to both help me save a buck AND to help save
our natural resources.
Perturbed that I couldn’t find a refill
bottle, I figured the foaming soap was really just
regular dish soap watered down to work as a foam in
the foaming dispenser.
It was the dispenser that made the foam, not
the soap. Plus,
the regular soap refill was cheaper than the missing
foam refill, so I grabbed a regular refill.
When I got home I proceeded to fill the foam dispenser
three-fourths full of regular soap and added a little
water.
This was a bad idea.
Why? It
was a bad idea because adding water to regular dish
soap INSTANTLY caused the soap in the bottle to bubble
up and out of the bottle like a silky white volcano,
oozing all over the sink with tiny little Don Ho
bubbles floating about the kitchen like a crazy
Hawaiian luau.
As the bottle stated (and I ignored), this was the
“Now With More Suds Formula!”, which is evidently
the first time we’ve seen truth in advertising,
because it truly did not take very much water to
create the tons of suds filling up my sink.
After swearing loudly while trying to get all the suds
down the drain, I had to commend the chemical
engineers who came up with this new formula.
I can only speculate that the new formula was
designed as a response to the shifting population
patterns of retired folks moving to the arid southwest
United States to live. And these folks are still
of the mindset that it’s easier to just hand wash
their two plates, two cups and two forks in the
kitchenette sink after every meal rather than wait for
the dishwasher to fill up.
Plus, retirees have all kinds of excess time on
their hands and washing dishes by hand has become a
form of retiree exercise in an effort to relieve
arthritis.
Since there's such a large customer base living in the
arid southwestern desert where water should be a
scarce resource, dish soap manufacturers naturally
realized they needed to create soap products that use
less water. So
today’s products can clean a 12-place dinner
party’s worth of dirty dishes using only a single
drop of water and a single drop of dish soap.
The proof of this amazing scientific
breakthrough was slowly seeping over the edge of my
own sink like a wispy blob monster trying to take over
my kitchen.
So the foaming soap was definitely NOT just a
watered-down version of the regular soap.
That much I deduced.
But it worked just as well, if not as prettily.
Still, the diarrhea-sounding spurt of the
splooging soap out of the foaming dispenser was enough
for the wife to damn the whole bottle to non-use.
She evidently preferred the dainty, airy foam
to the puddled, oozing goober of watered-down soap my
bottle produced. So
my recycling instincts kicked in and I decided to take
the sploogy bottle to work.
But public embarrassment keeps me from sharing this
pathetic concoction with anyone else.
It is proof of yet another failed attempt to
prove my wife wrong, which is evidently impossible to
do, as most husbands would agree.
November 4,
2009
The HR Manager
The HR Manager eyes me suspiciously and asks what’s
in my backpack. It
looks awful heavy.
I suspect he’s thinking that I’m either
stealing office supplies or carrying a gun.
So do I joke with him and say “Oh, I’ve got
a couple handguns in here.”?
I decide that he and I don't have a joking
relationship and stick with the truth.
You don’t joke about carrying a concealed
firearm or stealing company equipment with the HR
manager, as they tend to not find such humor
funny, oddly enough.
Government HR managers tend to be even more
straight-laced than private sector HR managers.
I think all the HR seriousness really started
after the first postal employee went postal and it’s
been downhill from there.
No more casual jokes about blowing the boss’s
head off. No
more snide remarks about firebombing the office.
Gone is the lunchtime dark humor about sitting in the
parking lot in your car with a trunk full of automatic
weapons and waiting for all those co-worker bastards
that have ever called you “Nerd Boy” and “Sissy
Girl” and “Flatulent Four-Eyes” to stream out of
the office at five o’clock, when you’ll let loose
with a full auto blast from the Uzi you’re casually
stroking in the driver’s seat.
No one has a sense of humor anymore.
It got even worse when the new Security Manager was
hired. He’s
a former military type who appears to live, eat, and
poop security protocols.
He once commented that every time he saw me
wearing my backpack he thought I was really wearing a
shoulder holster.
Evidently the shoulder straps on my backpack
look just like the straps to a shoulder holster when
you’re borderline paranoid.
I also evidently fit the security risk profile
of a potential shooter who might wear such a rig to
work and would use it without hesitation.
All the HR Manager says is, “Your backpack sure looks
heavy, Mr. Jackson.”
It’s a calculated statement.
It’s a probing statement.
It’s an open-ended statement, an invitation
to spill one’s guts and come clean, like someone
confessing sins to their priest.
I never took the HR Manager
for
being that shrewd, so it throws me for a second as I
contemplate possible responses.
Better to be honest than to crack a smarmy joke that
could land me in a conference room with a single bulb
lamp dangling ominously overhead and jumper cables
clamped to my bare nipples, attached to a battery
sparking angrily in the dark corner.
One does not want to offend or frighten the man
who ultimately decides your value for future pay
raises.
You
see, the HR Manager is the guard dog of office
productivity, always lurking
about, quietly cruising the hallways and cubicle
farms, offering a half-hearted “Hello” if he
happens to get caught sneaking by your doorway.
I know he’s really taking stock of who’s in
and who’s doing what, who’s apparently working
diligently and who’s chatting about their weekend
with their neighbor.
But shouldn’t the HR Manager be a personable,
amicable, and friendly person?
Shouldn’t an HR Manager
know
a little something nice about each and every person
under their organization?
Or does being friendly to the employees mean that an
HR Manager
can’t
be the guard dog? And
how does all this unfriendliness affect an HR Manager?
How does a life lived in self-imposed
isolation, under a holier-than-thou attitude, alone
amidst all others, what does that do to a person?
I’d say it probably puts them at the top of the list
of employees most likely to bring a gun into work!
October 28,
2009
Not Living To
100!
From a recent online article from Prevention magazine (click
here) which lists “Surprising signs why you’ll live to 100”. Except, in my case, most of these signs are
indicators for why I won’t live to 100.
Below are the 12 signs to becoming a centenarian.
1) You Have a (Relatively) Flat Belly After Menopause
– This will never apply to me because I am a man, so
I will never get to experience the thrills and joys
that are the female menopause experience.
Subtract 4 years from my expected life span.
2) You Embrace Techie Trends - My alter-ego, Mayor Percy, has embraced the
phenomena known as Twitter (click here if you don’t know what Twitter is). This
certainly does keep me engaged with several hundred
online strangers who follow Mayor Percy’s inane
tweets. But I have also realized, through this new social media
that has introduced me to a whole new world of virtual
social interaction, just how much I hate social
interaction in this new social media. I prefer my socialness with a pint of beer in a
nice pub somewhere with good friends. Subtract another 6 years from my expected life
span.
3) You Skip Cola (Even Diet) – I drink an average of one Pepsi a day, so subtract
another 5 years from my expected life span. I don’t like Coke so much, but it’s
probably not any better. And,
as this step suggests, I have probably been
conditioned since childhood to crave sweeter foods
because I’ve been drinking soda pop for the past
thirty years. So I will die earlier. And as for the sparkling water with a splash of
juice that is given as an alternative for the
“fizz” craving? I prefer my sparkling water as a splash in a
cocktail just before dinner.
4) You Eat Purple Food – I get my purple food content
from the jelly that is on the peanut butter and jelly
sandwiches I eat every day for lunch. And even after smearing the jelly generously,
much like my children did when they first learned to
make their own PB&Js, which were really just jelly
sandwiches with a dash of peanut butter, I doubt my
sandwiches have more than a couple of tablespoon’s
worth. Maybe
I should just start eating the jelly right out of the
jar, like a pint of ice cream? And I hate beets, because that shade of purple
is just too unnatural. Alien, even. Subtract another 7 years from my expected life
span.
5) You Don't Like Burgers – I like burgers. I like pork. This craving became even more pronounced after
my wife turned partial vegan. Maybe I should eat my meat raw, since
carcinogens are cited as a culprit? But at least I don’t like hotdogs. I don’t trust them. They’re even more unnatural than beets! Still, hotdog avoidance aside, subtract another
3 years from my expected life span.
6) You Run for 40 Minutes a Day – Who has this kind of time to waste every day,
besides street-corner drug dealers and Olympic
hopefuls? I
barely have time to walk, let alone forty minutes
dedicated to running! Besides, even if I did have forty minutes a day
to go running, could I really run for forty minutes
straight without a heart attack?! Only if being chased by a vicious, rabid dog. Subtract 5 more years from my expected life
span.
7) You'd Rather Walk Than Drive – Obviously stated for urban dwellers who can do a
surprising amount of their business by walking a few
blocks. I
live in the sticks. The nearest place of business I can walk to is
a landscaping company two miles away. They're
also located out here in the sticks so they have room
to grow their acres of trees and shrubs. And walking during my lunch hour in the
neighborhood where I work is an invitation to get
robbed, which could dramatically diminish my expected
lifespan after my would-be robber realizes I have no
more than three dollars in my wallet. Take 3 more years from my expected life span.
8) You Don't Have a Housekeeper – No, I don’t have a housekeeper at Jackson Acre,
despite what my wife thinks I think of her. So most of our housework gets done in a flurry
of activity over an hour every other month or so. Sometimes. If we could hire a housekeeper, I’m
sure we’d keep her busy enough that she’d live to
be 200! Go
ahead and knock 4 more years off my expected life
span.
9) You're a Flourisher – I don’t do flourish, so
count me among the 87 percent of Americans who also
don’t do flourish. But I’m also not a “languisher”, which
accounts for another 10 percent of Americans. I’m somewhere safely in the middle 73 percent
of Americans who neither flourish nor languish. We're safely dull. And, no, I don’t
think all flourishers are gay. Only take 1 year from my expected life span.
10) You're In a Drama-Free Marriage or Relationship – Yes, I am in a drama-free
marriage! Have been for the last seventeen years! In fact, we’re not even sure what drama
really is – we have to watch TV to understand it. Those people are nuts! So while my kids will never become famous
Hollywood movie stars because of our lack of drama, I
just avoided losing 4 to 8 more years off my expected
life span!
11) Your Friends are Healthy – What if I don’t have that many friends, let alone
healthy ones? How
bad does that hurt my chances? We’ll only take 1 year off my expected life
span for this. Let me know if you're one of my friends
and if you consider yourself healthy. I need the
points!
12) You Were a Healthy Weight Teen – I’m forty-one years old! Do things I did in my youth almost thirty years
ago still count against me? I was actually something of a scrawny teen. Is that considered healthy now?
How about we just call this a wash and not
subtract any years off, although I think I should be
credited a couple years for being such a skinny teen.
So what’s the final total?
Based entirely on a non-scientific method, after
adding up all the factors against me using my
completely made-up penalties for NOT following the
above steps, I came up with a total of 39 years
knocked off the end of my life.
I’m 41 now. I might have an expected lifespan
of maybe 80 years. You do the math. Me, I’ll be out back digging my own grave.
Can I get a bonus year for still being able to dig my
own grave?!
October
21,
2009
Wrong
Number!
Voicemail on my work phone Friday night, July 31, at
9:04PM.
It sounded like a teenage girl, although it could've
been a
pre-pubescent boy.
It’s hard to say from the tone of the voice,
in the midst of those awkward years when boys and
girls all sound the same as their bodies mutate into
unidentifiable beasts that no longer listen to their
wise parents.
I think the caller said her name was Charlotte
and that she was calling for someone named Brandon.
My name's not Brandon, in case you didn't know.
It was kind of hard to tell what the girl said because Charlotte
spoke too
quickly and had lazy enunciation, like it was a few
hours past her bedtime curfew and she was really
tired. She probably knew she shouldn’t be on the
phone, but she was making this call because she
promised someone she would make the call and she tried
to keep her promises.
The message went something like this –
“Hey, Brandon. It’s
Charlotte. Um,
Kayla told me to call you to tell you to call her.
Well, I guess I’ll talk to you tomorrow.
Love ya. Bye.”
The girl had a southern Appalachian hillbilly accent
and some of her words were hard to understand, like the
name of who she was calling for and her name and the
day she said she’d talk to Brandon.
But the “love ya” was clear and sounded as
heartfelt as any thirteen-year-old could muster for
someone who may be the object of her teenie-bop
desires that month.
Now all of this had me wondering what kind of drama
ensued when Charlotte found out that Brandon never
called Kayla because Brandon never got Charlotte’s
message, because Charlotte called my number and not
Brandon’s!
Still with me? It’s
a teenage soap opera, so keep up.
So maybe there
was a fight between Kayla and Charlotte.
Maybe the fight was because Kayla thought Charlotte
didn’t
call Brandon to call K.
So
then K thought C was trying to get between B
and K because C really wanted B for herself.
Is that what the little “Love Ya” at the
end of her message was about?
Maybe C and B used to go out, but broke up and decided
to be "just friends" and now C’s best friend K likes B
and asked C to call B to call K.
And maybe C isn’t really over B, so it’s
some kind of weird sophomoric love triangle drama full
of tangled adolescent emotions and crying and spatting
because everyone knows that teenagers wear their
emotions close to the skin, seething and inflamed like
zits on a thirteen year old's face,
always ready to erupt like immature Hawaiian
volcanoes.
I imagined C and K squabbling over the fact that B
never called K, and C had to show K that, yes, she did
really call B. See,
it’s right there in C’s “Calls” list on her
phone. And
then K pointed out that that wasn’t B’s number.
Then both girls shared a laugh and a hug, secure
once again in their tenuous friendship as they both called B to
share an hours-long conversation about music or
clothes or high school gossip or cool movies or
whatever it is that teenage boys talk to teenage girls
about these days.
Or perhaps B gave C a wrong number on purpose!
Maybe B doesn’t like C or
K and was trying to blow them both
off! And
both girls were too dumb to know it!
Now I’m making a HUGE character assumption of C
based solely on her young sounding voice and hillbilly accent.
I know it’s not right of me to cast aspersions,
to judge based on a vocal racial profile, but doing so
certainly makes for a better story, doesn’t it?
The funniest part of the story is the fact that my voicemail
greeting is sort of long and, I like to think, very
clear. I
say that you’ve reached Chris Jackson with the City
of Columbus Department of Technology.
I go on to say that I can’t take your call
right now but if this is urgent you can reach me on my
cell phone and then I give the number.
It’s a fairly straight forward message, if
one takes the time to fully listen to it.
This teenager evidently did not take the time.
I find that I’m also making another general
character stereotype here about teenagers when I
rationalize that C, like all teenagers that have ever
existed and will probably ever exist, doesn’t
actually listen to anyone or anything. Otherwise
she would have known she had a wrong number before she
even left her message.
But we’ll never know the truth to this little
drama because my caller ID lists C’s number as
"Unknown". Still, I have another
"Unknown" call
logged at 11:38AM on Saturday morning (the next day), which makes me wonder if C or K
didn’t try calling B again when they didn’t hear
from him.
Were I a much younger man, I might answer C’s next
call and either pretend to be B or make up some crazy
story about something tragic happening to B.
Maybe I'd say he was in a horrendous motorcycle
accident whilst running from the police and regale C with a horrific
tale of guns and drugs and money and mobsters that ends in B becoming a quadriplegic vegetable.
Terrible sounding tragedies are the perfect
fuel for the fire of teenaged angst, are they
not? Oh
the crazy drama that would introduce into our little
high school love triangle!
It’s the stuff of Hollywood teenage slasher movies
are made of!
Or The Jerry Springer Show!
October
14,
2009
Would-Be Gazillionaire!
As of this moment, the Powerball Lottery is up to
$170M.
Yes, that's one hundred and seventy MILLION
dollars. A drop in the bucket as far as federal
government bailout spending goes, but more than enough
to successfully bailout Jackson Enterprises here at Jackson
Acre.
Heck, you could bail us out with just a mere
$17M. Our debts are really pretty humble when
compared to those idiots at AIG, who formerly had my
car insurance before they imploded.
But back to the lottery.
I'm usually not a lottery player. The odds are
too astronomical to be realistic. My odds
playing blackjack at the casinos outside of Ohio
(another story there) are much better than
playing the lottery, although the payouts are MUCH
smaller. I'm lucky to come home with an extra
$50.
Yes, just fifty bucks. No bailout happening
there.
So throwing away four bucks on a couple of lottery
tickets with Kickers buys me something more than just
a chance at millions -- it buys me several hours of
hope and dreams, more so than the basic noisy
distraction of a dimly lit, smoky casino.
What do I mean, you ask?
Well, what's
the first thing everybody does after they buy their
lottery tickets?
They start spending their money. In their
minds. Waaaayyyy before they even remotely have
a chance at winning.
Some people are generous with their new fortunes and
they plan which charities they'll donate money
to. Many of us are greedy with our new windfall
and in our corrupt little brains we start buying
expensive cars and gigantic mansions and wall-size TVs
and custom-made pinball machines. Then we plan
exotic vacations to places like Dubai or the Jules
Undersea Lodge or Kilimanjaro or maybe we'll hop a
Russian rocket to the International Space
Station.
A trip into space only costs about $30M. Chump
change, really (except to the Russians).
Yes, four bucks buys a lot of daydreaming. And a
lot of imagined generousness. And a little bit
of hope.
We tell ourselves and our God all the good ways we'll
use the money. We pray for the money and list
off all the foreign charities we'd donate to and all
the foreign children we'd feed and all the rainforest
trees we'd save. Our philanthropic tendencies
would rival Bill Gates, if we only had that $170M!
Four bucks buys a lot of hope and dreams.
I suspect there are a lot of folks out there right now
daydreaming about their new millions, pinning
recession beaten hopes to a couple of worn out bucks
and imagining future family fights over fresh
fortunes. I'll bet more dreams, prayers, and
hopes are born, flourished, and dead in the twelve
hours before lottery numbers are finally drawn.
Hoping to increase my odds, I drove to the nearest gas
station dressed in my old tan Carhart work coat and
dirty work pants. I wore my beat-up steel-toed
boots and a ball cap. I smelled like grass and
gas after cutting the lawn. I looked as blue
collar as one could get. I smelled as blue
collar as one could get.
Did you know that a Carhart coat and work boots is the
standard uniform for people who win the lottery?
It is, really. It's the clothing of real working
people, people who work hard for a living. Those
people win the lottery. You never hear about a
well dressed suit and tie business executive winning
the lottery. I wore my blue collar costume in
hopes it would be enough.
I handed my four bucks over to the cashier and she
gave me my tickets, my little bits of
possibility. She wished me good luck and I
thanked her. Even if I didn't win tonight I
would be a millionaire in my head for the next few
hours. There's a small measure of joy in that.
And if you don't see any new essays or cartoons here
at Civil Servitude this week, you'll know we won the
lottery. But I promise I'll eventually get back
to Civil Servitude -- once I settle into my own
private island off the coast of Dubai!
And if YOU win?
Remember, we only need $17M here. Chump change.
Epilogue
(9/15/2009) -
No
lottery winners here. Not even close. Not
even in the same lottery. Literally! Allow
me to explain. And let this be a
lesson.
You see, I decided to get two lottery tickets for the
Powerball. When I asked the clerk for two
Powerball tickets, she asked if I wanted Kickers with
that.
Now I play enough occasional lottery to know what a
Kicker is (click here
if you don't know), so I said sure. I figured if
I missed out on the Powerball I'd still have a shot at
winning something on the Kicker. More chances
are always good.
So I gave the girl my four bucks (two Powerballs and
two Kickers) and she handed me my lottery
ticket. Being slightly superstitious, I didn't
look at my numbers. I prefer to wait until the
next day before looking. It gives me more time
to bask in the aura of potential millionaireness
before the eventual downfall.
The next day the wife asked me about the ticket.
I told her I hadn't checked it, so she snatched the
ticket from my hand and hopped on the computer.
I knew something was wrong when I saw she was on the
Ohio lottery website and not the Powerball site
"That's the wrong lottery," I informed her.
"No, it's right there on your ticket," she
replied.
This time I snatched the ticket from her hand and
stared in disbelief. Sure enough, it was for the
Ohio Mega-Millions lottery. Two sets of lottery
numbers and a Kicker. The cost at the bottom of
the ticket was $3.
"She gave me the wrong lottery," I sputtered
incredulously.
"How is it the wrong lottery?" the wife asked.
"I asked for two Powerball tickets. With
Kickers. It was supposed to be four bucks.
This is for two Mega-Millions and one Kicker.
For three bucks. She ripped me off for a dollar!
And she may have
ripped me off for millions!"
The wife rolled her eyes slightly.
"Think about it," I practically
hollered. "She stole our chance at winning
last night's Powerball. We could've been
millionaires! And now we'll never know!"
So the lesson here?
Always check your ticket after buying it,
superstitions be damned!
And remember that the Powerball DOESN'T have a
Kicker.
October
7,
2009
Middling Management 101
As a middle manager, my job is to
motivate people to do the jobs they should already be
self-motivated to do.
Sounds simple, right?
It
should be. After all, we’re
paying these people, usually grown adults, to do their
jobs. Shouldn't this be
motivation enough? Shouldn't a steady
paycheck be sufficient to get these people to do whatever
it is they signed up to do? Doesn't money equal
motivation?
Not really.
Ever since the banishment of sixteen hour work days
and overseers with bullwhips, middle management has
had to step into the void, using whatever meager
motivational mumbo jumbo, psychological hogwash, political capital, or plain old-fashioned
parenting skills they could muster up to coerce normally
lazy people into doing something - anything - that
resembles work.
Thanks to the Industrial Revolution for ruining a perfectly good
employee/employer relationship based on intimidation
and fear!
Nowadays, if we’re lucky, we’ll have a few go-getters in our
span of control who fall into the fabled 20%, a
minority of people who derive a warped sense of
accomplishment from their day to day drudgery.
These fabulous employees are the converse to the other
80%,
who hate their jobs and do only what they
must using 20% of their personal effort.
I call it "The 80% Giving 20%" rule™.
So a good middle manager will ride his productive twenty-percenter
like a cowboy trying to break a wild horse, flogging
it and spurring it on, hanging on for dear life as the
beast bucks and kicks and snorts, giving a 125% effort
to get the job done!
Do this to an eighty-percenter and their whole effort
lies in just getting their supervisor off their
back!
A good manager recognizes that his twenty-percenter is
like a fine German
motorcycle, produced with manufacturing tolerances so
tight, with quality control so high, that you cold ride
the damn thing from Anchorage to Buenos Aires without
oil in the motor and it would still happily carry you steadily onward
until it’s
dying breath, somewhere around Campo De
Mayo.
But what if one does not have a twenty-percenter?
Well, first off, you're screwed.
Forget performance bonuses for your operating
unit. Forget exceeding expectations.
Forget easy success and invest in a good bullwhip.
And be prepared to have
your car keyed, your coffee cup violated,
and your cubicle chair vandalized. Then they'll
sully your sterling reputation with unfounded allegations of petting zoo sodomy.
Those eighty-percenters are a devious, vengeful lot.
If you’re lucky, upper management will give
you an office with a locking door. They do that for the ones they really like. And if you’re
real lucky, they’ll give you
an office with a working window. This means that they
really, REALLY like you and want to make sure you'll
be around for awhile. They give you a working
window because they want you to have a means to escape when the natives
go from restless to riotous to murderous.
It's the ultimate management test – how to escape an
angry blue-collar mob who just found out they won't be
getting cost-of-living raises this year or next!
Middle managers who can’t find a way out before the rank and
file zombies break thru their drywall (since the door
is still locked) are considered fodder for organizational nature’s version
of Survival of the Fittest. There's no need for
pink slips after the zombies break through and rip the
manager's limbs from his torso while he screams clever management
witticisms.
Yes, the lot of a middle manager is a difficult one. All
of the responsibility and little of the
authority; all the accountability and none of the
accolades; all the risk and little reward.
But many successful middle managers overcome this
adversity by developing a personalized set of soft
skills that almost guarantees a minimal, meager
measure of success. Their skill set usually
consists of a carefully measured combination of charisma and threats of bodily harm.
One or the other usually works in most
(80%) situations. Try charisma first and save
the bullwhip for really bad days.
I hear public floggings are great for morale.
September 30,
2009
Down With The Elbow Pit™!
Nowadays, in today’s modern society, with the fatal
threat of Swine Flu looming large, it is no longer
acceptable to simply cover your mouth with your hand
when you cough or sneeze.
This is because of the inevitable spread of
germs from the hand you just blew snot into, which is
now teeming with infectious bacteria and general nasal
filth.
And with this hand you will now do one (or all) of the
following:
- go to the water fountain for a drink,
- grasp door handles as you wander about seeking a
tissue,
- shake hands with someone after they give you a
tissue,
- handle a piece of paper you will eventually give
to somebody,
- pass
the ketchup to somebody at lunch,
- turn on a faucet to
finally wash the snot off your
hand.
Hopefully you get the general picture, as ugly as it
is. Your
hand is a veritable petri dish of potentially deadly
germs and you’re touching stuff all over the place,
sharing your snot!
Nasty!!
Nowadays, the accepted way to cover one’s orifices
when coughing or sneezing is to stuff the offending
openings – usually mouth and nose, occasionally eye – into the crook of your
elbow. We
call this the Elbow Pit™.
And once you’ve lodged your face into your
Elbow Pit™ – and only after you’ve lodged
your face into your Elbow Pit™ – then you may violently
expel those bodily fluids from your face holes.
The choice of Elbow Pit™ as snot receptacle is an
obvious one, since it is a body part you're unlikely
to touch anyone else with, unlike your hands.
Think about it, it’s practically impossible
to casually touch someone with your Elbow Pit™.
You would have to awkwardly extend your arm out as if
trying to hug someone. And since unsolicited
hugs are rude, if not downright creepy (think groping
pervert), this puts the intended recipient of the
Elbow Pit™ hug on alert, thus saving them from Swine
Flu snot exposure.
But now we have all these people parading about town
with germs festering in their Elbow Pits™, amid the dried crud and caked snot from
countless sneezes and coughs that were caught and
contained by our loyal Elbow Pits™.
Yes, that was the desired objective, the
capture and containment of communicable contaminants
in our Elbow Pits™, but now a secondary
dilemma arises.
Now we have to deal with the social stigma of
displaying all the crusty, cruddy, snotty, boogery
stuff stuck in our Elbow Pits™. We walk around with
our sleeves slimed and spattered, glistening from the
snot and phlegm forcefully ejected from our faces!
It’s all there for the world to see,
shimmering like a summertime snail on a dewy morning
leaf, in our Elbow Pits™.
How do we deal with that?
What does Ms. Manners suggest we do about our
snotty Elbow Pits™?
We need a simple, yet refined solution.
Re-Enter the time honored hanky!
You know what I’m talking about: the handkerchief,
that classic pocket square of practical fabric, often
atrociously patterned, that served as a catch-all for
any type of fluid, from blood to sweat to saliva to
motor oil to phlegm.
This was the hanky carried by our grandfathers,
who used it to wipe up everything before folding it
back into a little square and tucking it quietly into their
handiest
pocket.
Hanky’s are a symbol of good old days, when
Americans were still rugged, still independent, still
self-sufficient, still responsible enough to contain
their own sneezes. This
was way before the days of frivolous lawsuits and
Jerry Springer-style retribution.
This was back when people still worked hard for
a living and the iconic hanky was still carried by
people tied to the land, an emblem of farmers and
ranchers, cowboys and hobos.
Especially hobos!
Handkerchiefs. Hankys.
Bandannas.
Quite possibly the most versatile piece of
fabric ever invented by man!
Every hanky has a thousand and one uses and
long ago every good man carried one, even hobos.
It was as normal as carrying a wallet, or a pen
knife, or a gun. This
was well before the days of the TSA, when proper gentlemen
still had hankys to offer beautiful sobbing
woman, the assumption being that the hankys were
unsoiled. But
people were tougher back then, so the sobbing woman
might've just overlooked the grease and blood stains
on the fine gentleman's hanky.
Now hankys are a lost relic, replaced by the shirt
sleeve and Elbow Pit™.
The Elbow Pit™ is a lot less glamorous.
And infinitely less practical.
A handkerchief is the perfect tool for unexpected
situations, like binding a wound or securing a loose
load, hiding a bad hair day or
dabbing a sweaty brow, bundling firewood or wiping a
baby’s bottom, tying up a bad guy (or loved one) or
just to contain a wayward sneeze.
And then
there is the classic hanky role: using it to fasten
one’s earthly possessions onto the end of a stick
just before hopping a freight train out of
town.
But nobody carries a handkerchief anymore, except the
rare hobo and myself.
You can still find me with a hanky from time to
time, when situations dictate I have one handy, beyond
being sick. This
is usually when I’m going backpacking or camping,
fishing or hunting, or perhaps in case I unexpectedly
have to deliver a baby. These are scenarios
where a hanky is well beyond just blowing snot into; it
is a necessary tool, as critical as pliers or forceps
or axes! These are situations where
the Elbow Pit™ is downright useless and maybe even a
little bit dangerous.
After all, can you deliver a baby with an Elbow Pit™?!
The Handkerchief defense rests its case. And
dabs its sweaty brow with a hanky.
September 23, 2009
Cursed By Indignity!
I’ve been cursed by Ebay for my evil ways.
And evidently because I am an a$$hole!
No comments, please.
Some of you may have noticed only one comic last week.
If you didn’t notice then you’re why
we’re shaking things up by posting comics on Mondays
and Fridays and Jackson Press News on Wednesdays.
Now you have three excuses to stop by and screw
off! Just
bring the coffee and donuts with you!
But last week we did not post a Friday cartoon.
This was because we were deathly ill. On Death's
door. Bit by an obnoxious bug.
Tenacious, even.
Killer. It
still afflicts me with a hacking, yet soothingly
productive cough.
I sound like a four-pack-a-day smoker, only
without enjoying the sin.
Had I caught this bug later in the flu season I
can only surmise it would kill me.
As it was, I was a snotty, sneezy, stuffy,
hacking, aching, feverish mess that actually missed
two days of work so I could stay home hallucinating in
a feverish haze!
I originally blamed my illness on a coworker who was
sick a few days before.
Despite repeated warnings that anyone feeling
ill should stay at home lest the rest of the office
come down with swine flu, my coworker felt the need to
come in and infect others!
I was the first to fall, being located next to
Patient Zero in our cube farm with lousy air
circulation and poor acoustics.
I miss my old office.
It may have smelled funny and was probably full
of asbestos and lead paint, but as long as I didn’t
eat the paint the only germs floating around were my
own.
Now I sit in a communal cesspool breeding ground of
illness, apathy, and disease.
And despite being armed with a carton of Cold-Eze
and a gallon jug of hand sanitizer, I still succumbed!
But I was wrong about Patient Zero.
I did not catch my deathly illness from my coworker.
No germs deviously found their way into my
system. This
illness was brought about by more sinister powers, the
result of irrational hatred, ancient witchcraft,
invoked by tribal trickery.
This illness was caused by an Ebay curse!
Who knew someone could be cursed into illness?!
Well, besides Haitians, who else knew
this?! But I digress.
A few months ago I was looking for an 8mm movie
projector. Yes,
as in film, as in reels of old home movies shot
sometime in the middle half of the last century.
Archaic technology, I know, but I was curious
what these ancient tomes held of my familial history.
However, not knowing what I had on my hands I
was loathe to part with too much money for an old
movie projector. Especially
for a projector that was as old as my movies!
Try finding a NEW 8mm movie projector!
Hint – nobody makes one anymore!
So, like anyone else questing for an ancient piece of
obsolete but functional technology, I turned to Ebay,
that bastion of virtual garage sale madness that has
spawned thousands of thousandaires (and only a handful
of millionaires).
And those people, selling off the contents of
their crawlspaces and attics at dizzying rates, will
save our nation’s economy.
Sure enough, there were dozens of old 8mm
movie projectors for sale.
I lucked upon a decent model that included a
working light bulb, critical for watching movies and
the most expensive part of an old projector.
Incandescent bulbs are going the way of the
dinosaur -- fifty year old light bulbs are even rarer!
So I placed my bid and won a still-working forty year
old Bell & Howell 8mm movie projector for the
princely sum of $28.46, including shipping.
I received the projector about a week later.
It showed up on the front porch in a big box
with the side punched in and crumpled newspaper
spilling out. Removing
the projector, I was NOT surprised to find one of the
reel arms had a broken spindle.
Given the lousy packing job the previous owner
did, it was obvious the spindle got broken during
transit.
However, as I so often do with many things in my life,
I fixed the projector and made it usable again.
No harm, no foul.
Such is my gift – fixing things.
Part of the whole Ebay process allows buyers and
sellers an opportunity to leave “feedback,” a
record for the rest of the world on how the
transaction transpired.
Over time, one develops a reputation for
trustworthiness, important in both the online and real
worlds. Being
the gracious gentleman I am, I emailed the seller to
let him know I’d received the projector damaged but
managed to make it workable.
I also advised him to consider packing things a
little better in the future, since a handful of
crumpled up newspaper is not nearly enough to secure a
heavy, steel-bodied movie projector from knocking
around in a huge box.
We’re talking about the postal service here.
I then informed the seller I'd be leaving a Neutral
feedback rating, which wouldn’t quite ding his
selling record, but also didn’t reward him for
irresponsible shipping.
This was fair, right?
Dignity and fairness – are these forgotten
concepts? Foreign,
maybe?
So I left the neutral rating with the following
comments – “Item
as described, but poorly packed for shipping. Reel
spindle broke in transit.” There’s
an eighty character limit to what you can write, so
being honest, succinct, and clear is key.
Most people aren’t.
Here was the response I received a month later:
Dear Asshole,
Thanks for the neutral but at this time I cannot give
you a positive feedback. It is my nightly prayer that
you should drop dead so a feedback would mean very
little. If you get sick very soon you will know why
your evil ways have come back to haunt you. Good luck,
not really.
Jerry
And, lo and behold, I got sick!
My evil way of responding honestly did
come back to haunt me!
Jerry's prayers came true! Voodoo!
And now I pray I don’t drop dead, because if I do
… well, that would pretty much prove there is no
God, wouldn’t it?
Or that whatever god answered Jerry’s
malevolent prayer is a spiteful, vengeful,
mean-spirited, old testament kind of deity.
And that doesn’t bode well for us assholes,
does it?
I immediately mulled over what florid and vivacious
combination of swear words I could string together to
respond to Jerry.
And then I remembered that foreign little concept -- “dignity”
-- which Jerry had knocked to the
dust at my feet. I
quietly picked it up, wiped it off, and placed it
gently back where it belonged, next to fairness and well above the mind of
a moron and loser like Jerry.
Now please excuse me as I resume my trek on the High
Road.
September 16, 2009
Bittersweet September
September is my favorite month.
Why? Because
September, although bittersweet, is the best
month, especially when compared to crappy months like
January and February, which have nothing good to offer
besides New Years Day, MLK Day, or Valentine’s Day.
And Valentine’s Day is really just a well
executed marketing ploy masterminded by the greeting
card and floral industries to boost sales
during the dead of winter, when normal people don’t
usually buy flowers or cards except for birthdays and
funerals.
Why is September the best?
Because September is the most pleasant part of summer.
The days are still warm and sunny, maybe even
sunnier, and the nights are cool.
This ideal weather is a perfect extension of summer,
a reprieve from August's humidity and swelter.
The shift in relationship between earth and sun
becomes more apparent in September as the days get
shorter and the sunlight gets sharper, more golden
somehow. The
skies are bluer, a cloudless beautiful azure. It's
a reminder of an identical September day when planes
stopped flying and it took us a long time to not feel
fear or sadness when planes started flying again.
Bittersweet.
September is a refreshing pause before fall, our last
chance to enjoy summer before it goes away again, like
yet another Rolling Stones farewell tour.
It’s our last chance to finish up those
summer-only projects still outstanding, like sealing
the driveway or staining the deck or painting the
house. Maybe
even take a summer vacation.
Some call this time Indian Summer, surely a
politically incorrect term, but it’s a glorious
addendum to summer and I should take advantage of it.
I should submit a leave request for two weeks,
pull the kids out of school, throw the wife and kids
and dogs into the mini-van and head to the ocean.
Hope for no hurricanes – September is the
peak of hurricane season.
Bittersweet.
But I won’t do that.
As much as I would like to take advantage of
this glorious clemency and lounge by the sea basking
in the waning golden days of September, I can’t.
There’s too much going on in everyone’s
lives between school and work and home.
I’ve still got a driveway to seal.
And September is harvest time at Jackson Acre
Orchard, when apples start to fall, plump and golden.
Except Jackson Acre Orchard only has two trees
and our apples rot under those trees, fallen and run
over and mulched by my lawn mower because they were in
the way. Then
the spoiled apples start stinking like dog poop, which
explains why Daisy’s been rolling in them and why
the wife yelled at me to rake the whole mess up.
So I fight off hungry yellowjackets and hold my
breath as I rake the foul smelling apples into piles
and shovel them into the trash can.
They’re a golden delicious variety and very
tasty, but I only get one good apple for every twenty
the bugs eat.
Bittersweet.
It's bittersweet because September is a time of
endings, a realization that summer’s almost over,
the pools are closing, the kids are back in school,
and the leaves are beginning to fall.
September is summer’s last gift as winter
closes fast. It’s
time to put up my shorts and sandals, stack the
firewood, and kill the creepy crawlies sneaking into
my bathroom to escape the chilly nights. September
is like the young guy I saw driving an old, restored
Mustang. The
car looked like it had just rolled out of a 1967
showroom, a perfect classic.
And in the backseat was a child seat!
In these days of mini-vans and SUVs, a '67
Mustang is about as impractical a family car as you
can get! But
the young man was trying to make it work, trying to
extend his Mustang summer.
Still, it’s just a matter of time before the Mustang
gives way to the mini-van, yielding to the frigid
winter of practicality.
The snow sweeps in and memories of September
fade.
Bittersweet.
September’s place in my life is best summed up by
one of my all-time favorite Calvin & Hobbes
cartoons.

Inevitably, though mostly unspoken, September carries
with it our regret, that most human of
conditions. It is a realization of opportunities
without time or time without opportunities. Too
rarely are we given both in this bittersweet
existence. Ultimately, September is summer’s last
chance to rectify this.
It is not a second chance: it is a last
chance.
Heed the child and go goof off!
September 7, 2009
Quest
for the proverbial Lawn Jockey.
Have you ever played “I Spy”?
What’s “I Spy”, you ask?
Well, I Spy is a game invented by clever parents to
keep bored children entertained on long car trips.
The rules are relatively simple, as they must
be so that little children may understand them.
Someone picks something to look for out the car
window – a cow, a barn, a McDonald’s – and
everyone playing the game stares vacantly out the
window hoping desperately to be the first to see
whatever it is they’re looking for.
Sounds like fun, eh?
We started playing this game on our way home from our
camping trip at Shawnee State Park a few weekends
back. Yes,
this was the trip of the infamous tire ordeal.
And in an effort to keep themselves entertained
while I worried about a tire blowing out and killing
us all in a fiery camper/minner-van crash, the girls
decided to play I Spy, albeit the Jackson version of
the game.
So our eldest child picked a cow.
You’d be surprised at how few cows one might find
along US Route 23 north of Portsmouth, Ohio.
In fact, I can tell you exactly how many cows there are along that stretch of highway.
None! Zero!
Zilch! And
after what felt like six desperate hours of looking
(but was more like twenty minutes), we finally gave
Haley, our oldest, credit for seeing a cow when she
said she saw a feed store sign that had what looked
like a bovine symbol on it.
Now, as per Jackson rules, any indicated I Spy
announcement must immediately be corroborated by
another family member.
Otherwise one might be tempted to lie in an
effort to keep the game moving at a sane pace.
And
while I didn’t actually get a good look
at the sign, I saw enough of it to believe there was
something faintly animalistic on it. It
was enough proof to keep the game moving.
Heck, the sign might’ve had a goat or a sheep
on it, but after twenty minutes of finding nothing
even loosely resembling a cow I wasn’t going to be
picky!
Since Hay found the “cow” she got to pick the next
challenge, as per general I Spy rules.
“We’re looking for a lawn jockey,” she stated.
We all nodded in acknowledgement.
I figured this would be easy enough.
We were in southern Ohio, for criminy’s sake.
Surely every good old boy farmhouse had a
politically incorrect lawn jockey displayed
prominently on their lawn, right next to the clunkers
on blocks and the sofas on the porch.
Now, according to the Jackson rules of the game, the
game of I Spy must continue ad naseum on any and ALL
future family road trips until the stated object is
finally found. And
there must be at least two family members in the
vehicle to officially confirm any potential sightings.
It is this unique Jackson rule that makes a
once enjoyable game go on and on and on and on until
the stated item has either been located or all family
members have died of old age.
The Jackson rules have no contingency damning
one’s offspring to carry on the game should their
parents pass away before the object is finally found.
This is to save younger generations from our
self-inflicted Hell.
After brief contemplation of the Jackson rules, I
realize that our version of I Spy is a lot like the
fictional game “Jumanji,” from the motion picture
(and book) of the same name.
Jumanji, for those of you unfamiliar with that
peak in Robin Williams’ career, is about two kids who play an old magic board-game found in an attic,
inadvertently releasing a man (Williams) who was
magically trapped for decades in the game while
playing it as a child himself.
Once the game is resumed by the new kids, a
host of exotic dangers are magically released from the
game, which is only over after someone wins.
A plot summary of the movie may be found here.
Or you could just check it out from the library
and watch with your own children.
It’s worth it if only to see the crazy
monkeys driving the sheriff’s car!
Now I give you all this useless information because you’d
be surprised how few lawn jockey statues can be found
along US Route 23 in southern Ohio.
Zilch, to be exact.
And this is despite Hannah confusing lawn
jockeys with lawn gnomes (thanks Travelocity!) and
repeatedly calling out that she’d seen a lawn gnome
every five miles, none of which were corroborated.
The sad fact is that neither of my children
have ever actually seen a real live lawn jockey statue
in the wild; only in picture books like “Weird
Ohio”. Haley
evidently thought they were more prevalent than they
really are. So did I.
But, as per the Jackson rules, the game goes on.
And it must continue on any future family road
trips, which means we’re in for a long game since it
seems the lawn jockey statue has fallen out of favor,
replaced by those cute and annoying concrete goose
statues. You
know the ones I’m talking about, that people feel
obligated to dress up in funny outfits and silly hats
because the goose might get cold or wet while standing
around in the front yard.
Weird Ohio, indeed!
So now I’m forced to drive slower as the rest of the
family gawks out their windows searching for lawn
jockeys. They
complain if I drive too fast, claiming they can’t
get a good look at the passing yards.
With furrowed brows, they concentrate their
gaze on run-down homes where other lawn ornaments are
prominently displayed, hoping desperately to see a
weathered lawn jockey (or gnome) hidden amongst the
cars on blocks and chicken coops and waist high dead
grass, surrounded by a dozen or so feral dogs chained
about the front yard who continually mark their
territory by repeatedly whizzing all over the poor
jockey.
Yes, the lawn jockey has fallen to the bottom of the
lawn ornament pecking order.
But one company, Lawnjockey.com,
is working hard to fix that dilemma, proudly supplying
people all over the world with the most
authentic, highest quality lawn jockeys anywhere.
And they also offer Mystic Lawn Gnomes!
August 31, 2009
When
Good Tires Go Bad!
The Jackson's went camping again this past weekend.
And, as is the norm for a Jackson family camping trip,
there was no shortage of dull moments!
This weekend's particular excitement involved tires,
as in those round things, as in where the rubber meets
the road. The
specific culprit for the first fiasco was the front
left tire; that tire found the need to pick up a screw
somewhere fifty miles north of where we were camping
in Shawnee State Park.
But I didn’t know the tire had a screw in it
until the tire pressure light lit up on the dashboard
like an accusing preacher’s eyes.
Thank God for technology!
I pulled into a gas station to check the tire pressure
and, hopping out of the minner-van, I saw the front
left tire was almost flat.
Leaning closer, I could hear the air escaping
from it like a blown hatch seal on a Russian space
module. I
caught the shiny glint of metal and saw a sheet metal
screw sticking boldly into the tire tread.
I thought about removing it, then remembered
all those Hollywood cowboy movies where the hero gets
shot by arrows and the old town doc decides to leave
them until he can treat the hero in because they help
slow down the blood loss.
Then I said, “Crap!”
Only I didn’t really say “crap” and I
didn’t really say “crap” far more than once.
A plethora of choice words flew from my lips as
I retrieved the decade old can of Fix-A-Flat from the
back of the van and proceeded to use it to fix the
flat. As
per directions, I attached the can and the tire
re-inflated. Something
appeared to be working. Maybe we were safe.
As per directions, the can said to drive three
to five miles to fully coat the inside of the tire
with the Fix-A-Flat goop, thus plugging the hole.
Just to be safe, I drove ten miles.
When I pulled over again the hole was still
leaking air like a windbag politician trying to sell a
half-baked health care plan to constituents who
aren’t as dumb as they seem!
By now we were outside Portsmouth, Ohio and still at
least twenty miles from camp.
We limped into town and I vainly searched for
an auto parts store, thinking I’d try another can of
Fix-A-Flat. Preferably
of a fresher vintage than the one I’d used which
didn’t work. I
decided to blame the failure on age, rather than on
formula, preferring to believe in the marketing hype
that claims “Just connect, inflate, and go!”
Perhaps I just needed to connect, inflate, and
go again!
Now one would think that Portsmouth, Ohio – being in
the southern climes of the state and not having an
especially robust economy – would have no shortage
of auto parts stores lining its highways.
I say this because a vast majority of the cars
on the roads there were less than new, which means
constant upkeep, which means auto parts stores.
In fact, many of these vehicles looked like
they were only one blown head gasket away from sitting
in the front yard on blocks, giving the dogs and the
chickens somewhere to get out of the rain.
Alas, I found no Auto Zone or Advanced Auto Parts or
Napa stores awaiting me at the city limits.
So I pulled into the first gas station I saw,
hoping to fill the tire with enough air to get us a
mile down the road to the next gas station for more
air while we searched for an auto parts store.
At seventy-five cents for each air fill-up, I
figured we had about three fill-ups worth of quarters
in the van’s ash tray, so we had to find something
soon! That
was when Divine Intervention occurred and I noticed
the “We Know Tires!” sign on a small, run-down
building a block away.
It appeared to be a small, second-hand tire
shop, manned by dirty men slapping used tires onto
American-made cars that were obviously what the
government had in mind when the “Cash For
Clunkers” idea was conceived.
I limped the van around the block and pulled up in the
alley next to the dirty building.
After confirming that the place did indeed plug
tires, the kindly, greasy gentleman who appeared to be
the boss told me to pull into the small, grubby
asphalt lot next to the building.
Realizing that there was no way to pull the
minner-van into their lot with the camper attached,
because that would require backing the camper into
four lanes of traffic on US Route 23, I desperately
looked for somewhere to park the camper.
On the other side of US 23 was a large, empty parking
lot belonging to the local electric company.
Again, Divine Intervention.
I whipped the van across four lanes of traffic and
screeched to a stop in the empty lot, unhooking the
camper in a record 127 seconds.
With a sporty tire screech, which was
really the sound of a flat tire protesting harsh
treatment, I re-crossed the four lanes and squealed to
a stop in the tire shop’s lot.
Ten minutes later the stand-up guys who run the
place had our wounded tire plugged, charging me $5.35.
As luck would have it, that was the last $5 in
my wallet. And
I would've easily paid ten times that, as long as they
took credit cards!
They didn’t: Cash Only!
An hour later we arrived safely at Shawnee State Park
and spent a wonderful twenty-two hours with family as
we relaxed and recreated.
Before heading home on Sunday I decided to check the
tires, just in case.
The tire plugged by “We Know Tires!” was
still holding air, proof that they did indeed know
their tires! But
checking the back left tire I suddenly noticed
something odd. I
say odd because I’ve never actually seen the steel
belts within a tire.
But I can tell you they’re more like steel
mesh than steel belts.
I know this because those little bits of steel
mesh were sticking out of the rubber of our rear left
tire! Upon
further examination I realized the rear tire had
almost no
rubber left on the inside tread, which was why these
tiny steel strands were visible when they should never
be!
So I prayed for more of that Divine Intervention!
It was only 130 miles to home.
Surely we could make it if I obeyed the speed
limit and drove more sedately than normal.
And received blessings from on high.
It would mean driving more like a NASCAR race
car driver than, say, a Formula One race car driver
(Formula One is faster than NASCAR).
I could do that.
It’d be tough, but I could do it.
Clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles and
set jaw, I gingerly started us toward home.
I quickly became painfully aware of both the
road conditions ahead - to avoid potholes that could
blow up my tires – and the sound of the tires on the
pavement. The
tires hummed along quietly, but I was ready for that
gut wrenching sound of steel belt and rubber slapping
violently against the underside of the wheel well.
That’s how I’d know when the tire finally
died, stranding us Northerners somewhere in the wilds
of southern Ohio.
But it was not to be.
Divine Intervention was again given and we somehow
made it safely home, 130 miles from Shawnee State Park
to Jackson Acre. And
while I grumbled incessantly about our tires all the
way home, badmouthing the manufacturer and their
shoddy production methods and crappy quality control,
I should probably be grateful at the tire’s
phenomenal engineering.
Despite tread separation and exposed belts, it
got us home. With
a vanful of kids and dogs and camping junk.
While towing a 2,000 pound camper.
For that I am grateful, although new tires (different
brand!) were on the minner-van within forty-eight
hours!
August 24, 2009
Take turns and share.
These are the instructions given to me in the
performance training session I am attending, writing in
my journal as I desperately try to stay awake and
feign attention.
Take turns and share.
There aren't enough computers for everyone in the
session to have their own, so some of us have to team-up together on one computer. Hence the
instructions to take turns and share. The statement is
delivered more as a command than a suggestion.
Take turns and share.
These are concepts we learned - or should have learned
- by the age of five.
They are basic
concepts necessary for human survival, concepts
our Cro-Magnon ancestors eventually figured out with
their limited mental capacity. They should not
be difficult concepts to master in a modern society.
Take turns and share.
Most people learn this early in life, especially if
forced to share toys with siblings.
The concept is
necessary for harmonious family life when multiple
children under the age of ten all live under the same
roof in climates where the winters are long and
harsh. Learning this
concept keeps parents from killing their children by
mid-winter. This is a good concept for children
to master.
Take turns and share.
However, there are some people who don't learn
this concept until college. That's when college
counselors recommend the "Take Turns & Share
101" class as a general elective course, to help
these young people keep from being murdered by their
roommates for not sharing their toothpaste or beer
during the long and harsh winters. If you
haven't learned this concept by the time you graduate college
then you're pretty much screwed. Or stingy.
Take turns and share.
The message is delivered by our presenter in the same
way I imagine he would present it to his own children,
although his delivery to us is low-keyed and
professional. I’ll
bet the same delivery to his children would be just a little
more lively, probably even enraged.
The typical parent does not just quietly tell
their kids to do something like this – there is
usually a reason for telling them this.
Such a message is generally delivered to the children after
some incursion by one child results in another child
crying loudly in a public place or small car on a long
trip. It is within situations like this that the parent
generally snaps, a helpless victim of
circumstance. The parent turns to their children, face red with aggravation, and yells -
“TAKE TURNS AND SHARE, DAMMIT!”
Then all children within earshot start crying loudly,
even those not related to the squabbling
youngsters. And the parent further degenerates
in exasperation as a powerful human-relations concept
quietly sinks in to childish, traumatized brains.
August 17, 2009
Candyland Gauntlet
From Hell!
Or how the
most expensive (and mediocre) candy I ever bought was
at the Ohio State Fair!
My daughters had never been to the great Ohio State
Fair. My wife and I hadn’t been
since we were kids. As we walked
onto the Midway I explained to the kids that the state
fair was pretty much just like the county fair, only
bigger. More rides, more fried
food, more FFA exhibits, more animals, more animal
poop.
There were also lots of vendor exhibits. We
stumbled upon one and I decided to check it out.
That was my first mistake.
It was a great marketing idea. Bulk
candy at the state fair, for only $3.59 a half pound.
It sounded like a good price. Only
the secret to getting out with less than $20 in candy
is to survive the dreaded candy gauntlet!
It’s a meandering route of candy-laden tables and
there’s only one way in and one way out. They hand you a basket at the entrance and
you’re off. The goal is to get
out spending as little as possible. The
chances of successfully reaching this goal are
directly related to the number of children who
accompany you into the gauntlet, decreasing by 33.7% for
each child tagging along.
The set-up of this candy cornucopia is sheer genius,
of course.
First off, there’s the tunnel aspect to the layout – you have to go from
here to there to get out. There is
no other way. And then they
put the bulk candies at the front, with huge boxes
full of thousands of single wrapped goodies. And so you stroll by and casually grab a couple
pieces of chocolate taffy here and a couple pieces of
oregano taffy there, and then you’re into the
Tootsie rolls, then the bubblegum (Bazooka Joe) and
the Dum-Dum pops.
You keep strolling along, grabbing a few pieces here
and a few pieces there. You glance
at your basket, meagerly loaded with maybe twenty
pieces of candy. Hell, you think to
yourself, that can’t weigh but a couple ounces.
We’re still good to go. And
so you encourage your youngest child to grab a few
more pieces of this or that, making sure she grabs
enough to share with the whole family.
Sure, grab eight more Bit ‘O Honey’s, your mom
might like one. Sure, grab six more
licorice sticks, your sister might like one.
And then you realize your only maybe a third of the way
through the gauntlet!
And suddenly you realize that there aren’t any
scales hanging up anywhere in the gauntlet, so you can't
check the weight of the candy already in your basket.
So you kind of hold the basket in one hand and
slowly raise it and lower it, trying to guesstimate
how much it weighs. You think maybe
a pound and keep going.
Now you start seeing the bigger bags of candy, like
chocolate covered peanuts and chocolate fudge and
peanut brittle and caramel turtles. You know,
the good stuff! And you realize
that these packages probably weigh 10 or 12 ounces
each, so you pass them by because they weigh too much and
you tell yourself you
don’t really need that much chocolate.
But then, at the three-fifths marker, you’re
suddenly in the bulk fruits and there are bags of
dried fruit everywhere, from apples and apricots to
the weird and exotic, like kiwi and star-fruit. And, feeling especially daring and worldly and
generous, happy because you’re spending quality time
with the family and everyone’s having fun, satisfied
that you've only got maybe, maybe, a pound of
candy so far, you decide to treat everyone to a
delicious and healthy treat of dried pineapple bits
and papaya slices and avocado.
Surely these bags don’t weigh more than 8 or 10
ounces each.
So you and your youngest child (-33.7% chance of escaping inexpensively!) finally make it through to
the checkout, both of you smiling dreamily at the
thought of all these goodies, practically salivating
in expectation. And you hand the
cashier your basket and reach for your wallet as the
cashier dumps the contents onto a scale. You
smile lovingly at the child next to you.
You casually pull a twenty out of your wallet as the
scale reads 5.506 pounds. The cashier says
“$19.76, please” and you absently hand him the
twenty, still smiling lovingly at the child next to
you, now almost drooling at the thought of dried avocados.
Then it gradually begins to dawns on you, somewhere
way back in the dusty cash math portion of your mind, that you’re
NOT going to get very much change back. And the
cashier hands you two dimes and four pennies and your
big bag of candy and dried fruit and wishes you a nice
day.
And that’s when it hits you that all this crap
really costs over seven bucks a pound!
And
as you and your child tear into the bag, chomping down
pineapples bits and taffy pieces, you have the most
depressing realization that you have just greatly overpaid
for what you’re now discovering is the most stale
and tasteless dried fruit you've probably ever
had. And you think it's from China, to boot!
You’ve just been had by the Candyman!
So I quickly told my youngest NOT to tell her
mother how much the candy cost. “Why,”
she asked. I replied with
“Because she’ll think I spent too much.” And the
child replied with “So how much was it?” and I
told her twenty bucks and she did a double-take on
the bag she’s holding.
“Wow, that was too much,” she exclaimed.
And that's when I knew I paid too
much, because my ten-year-old just told me it was
too much and she really doesn't yet have a solid grasp on
the value of money.
Okay, sure, I said. It probably
was too much. But your mother
doesn’t need to know. Okay? And my youngest agreed to keep this a secret,
but I was pretty sure our conspiracy had a weak
link and she was it.
So we met up with my wife and oldest daughter and I
proudly held up the big bag of goodies. “How
much did it cost?” the wife asked.
Before I even opened my mouth I
could feel the plan rapidly beginning to fail. I
started to sweat.
“Uh, not much,” I replied. “Under
twenty?” she asked. I confirmed
with a nod, eyeing my conspiring compatriot closely.
“It was almost twenty bucks!” my youngest child
blurted out. The wife looked at me
incredulously. The weakest link had
just shattered. It was time to hang the chief
conspirator.
“Well, I certainly hope it’s good candy, because
that’s the last candy you’re buying for a
while.” In Wife-Speak this really means that
it will be the last ANYTHING I'll be buying for a long
time. Which means any upcoming
Man-Toy purchases I had planned, like new
firearms or motorcycles, would
have to go on hold until she forgets about this little
"mistake".
And, in Wife-Think, that means it will be a very long,
loooong time. Only elephants have
longer memories.
And that’s when I vowed to never, never, NEVER
get taken like that EVER again!
At least until the next fair.

August 10, 2009
Camping
Travel Travails & Tales!
This
weekend’s camping trip really started Friday morning
at 6:45AM when I hitched the camper to the minner-van
and dragged it onto the driveway to set up for
packing. After
several bleary-eyed, pre-caffeinated moments of
backing and forwarding, backing and forwarding, backing and
backing, forwarding and backing, forwarding and forwarding,
I
finally found the right parking spot where I could
open the camper up and still get the car out of the
driveway without driving over my weed-infested lawn.
Sweating profusely at this point, I cranked the top up
and pulled out both beds.
There. The
Good Ship JAXN was ready for packing.
Peering in to make sure everything was in place, I
noticed two small piles of something on each bed.
What the what?
Closer examination revealed a little pile of white
looking curiously like what can only be called a
“nest” of obvious rodent destruction. Mixed in
with what I can only guess was shredded paper towels
were the chocolate-sprinkle poo droppings of the
common mouse, or perhaps mice.
I couldn’t tell, since I don’t know how
much poo one mouse can generate, let alone multiple
mice. Definitely
more than enough!
The big question is how did the mice gain entry to our
little poop-up camper?
And why now, in the middle of summer?
Why not last fall, when the camper
over-wintered in the driveway and survived unmolested?
And where?
Behind the house when the camper was parked out
next to the shed?
Are the mice living in the woods behind the
house more daring and industrious than the “city”
mice living in the flower garden next to the driveway
next to the house?
Because we all know that mice are, in general,
conspiring to take over the world, starting with key
tactical points like basements, garages, and sheds.
Evidently the mice in my yard are planning to start their take-over by occupying my camper!
Needless
to say, this was not a good start to our camping trip!
It was bad enough that we still had lots of
packing to do; now the wife and children had to clean
up all traces of mouse excrement from our fair little
camper.
And thus was the tone set for the rest of our trip!
Friday evening found us in our campsite at Kokosing
Valley Camp & Canoe, personally attended to by our
own concierge, Savannah, the campground owner’s
nine-year-old daughter who knowledgeably informed us
of all the goings-on in the campground and acted as a
general fountain of campground knowledge for every
question we asked.
However,
at some point during the weekend Savannah's concierge
role morphed into that of campground stray, like
the stray cat that you keep feeding and it keeps
hanging around, cute and playful at first but then
becoming more and more of a pest as it demands more
and more attention even though you have your own cats
that also need fed and attended to and you sometimes
just wish the stray would go away and every now and
then it does go away with your own cats giving you a
little well deserved Me-Time.
Savannah was sorta like that, hanging out at
various camp sites, mooching food and tagging along
with the kids on various outdoor adventures.
Saturday saw our first adventure in the rain,
although calling it “rain” is perhaps giving the
precipitation a bit too much credit.
There was barely enough moisture from the sky
to stir the dust on the minner-van’s filthy
windshield, but it did get the grass wet.
And it was while kneeling in the wet grass next
to the camper to drain the water line that was
suddenly leaking all over the camper floor that I
first experienced the electric shock.
Yes, I said electric shock.
I must have grasped the aluminum side of the camper to
steady myself when that odd yet familiar sensation of
tingling and uncontrollable muscle spasm occurred in
my arm. The
reason for WHY I am familiar with that sensation will
be divulged in some future dispatch. Needless to
say, the shock
was a strong enough that I jerked my hand away in
surprise, startled enough by the sensation to examin my hand for burn marks or smoldering flesh.
Finding neither, I touched the camper again to confirm
what I experienced the first time.
This is a typical Man-Reaction™, when a male
of the species uncontrollably repeats a painful and/or
potentially lethal action to confirm what he already knew from the
first incident.
I believe Mr. Darwin referred to this as "Natural
Selection."
Sure enough, I got shocked again.
Not an unpleasant experience, but definitely a
slight cause for concern, since this obviously
indicated that the camper was now electrified because
of some unlocatable open electrical connection
grounding to metal, probably as a result of the
camper’s electric water pump spraying water all over
the electric connections that power the water pump!
Strangely enough, the camper stayed electrified for
the rest of the weekend, even after the water leak was
fixed and all standing water was cleaned up and the
rain ceased. Fortunately,
no one died of electrocution.
The event, however, did allow me to teach the
children a rudimentary lesson in the concept of electrical
“ground.” And
even though neither the girls nor myself really
understood the concept of “ground”, we were all
smart enough to know that one only got shocked if standing
on the ground barefoot while also grasping the metal
door. Sandals
and flip-flops appeared to act as suitable insulators.
Sadly the dogs did not have the luxury of wearing
suitable insulators and the canines quickly learned
the concept of ground the hard way, through the ends
of their wet noses.
It only took one "Yipe" from each dog for them to
learn NOT to touch the camper.
And Savannah, our concierge, claimed that the
camper was giving her a “huge shock,” even though
she kept touching the metal door over and over while
loudly chanting that “The camper door can see into
my soul!”
Other camping incidents of note include my twenty
minute adventure “tubing” down the Kokosing River,
which was exceptionally low and barely ankle deep in
most parts, causing my inner-tube to bump and drag
along the bottom, which caused my bottom to bump and
drag along the bottom.
This resulted in the back of my t-shirt getting
so muddy that it looked like I had pooped my pants,
like a four-month old baby might do when they fill up
their diaper and the excess flows out over the top in
back.
Another incident also involved poop, strangely
enough. The dogs, free of their leashes for the
first time Sunday afternoon after an entire weekend of
restrained leather control, ran wildly around the
rocky riverbank, chasing each other and splashing in
the water. All
this crazy running about evidently caused Daisy’s bowels to
finally move and so she squatted in the shallows of
the river, dumping her load and otherwise fouling the
pristine water of the Kokosing River.
I never heard any of the teenagers splashing about
downstream scream about poop in the water, so I think
it went unnoticed. Hopefully nobody drank the
water.
But all in all it was a very nice weekend.
The dogs were (mostly) good and the kids were
(mostly) good and the campground was (mostly) nice.
Kokosing Valley Camp & Canoe was nice
enough, in fact, that I’m sure we’ll be back.
And hopefully not electrified!
Although I can safely say that a shocking good time
was had by all!

July 26, 2009
Spending Summer Relaxing - you know, that thing they
used to do in the old days!
Wow, it has almost been a month
since we last updated The News From Jackson Press? Man, time
sure flies when you spend your summer relaxing!
Yes, I have reached a point here at Jackson Acre where the number of major projects is finally
fewer than the number of weekends available over the
summer. So that means I now have weekends available
where I won't have to tear out a
wall or install new cabinets or rewire the back side
of the house or trench drain tile across the back half
of our acreage!
It means that I actually have leisure time
again! And it only took about four years to get
to this point!!
And, so, I've been relaxing. It's a foreign
concept, one that took lots of time and practice to
refamiliarize myself with. It also meant
taking a break from Civil Servitude and The News From
Jackson Press.
But it's time to get back to work. It's time
blow the cobwebs out of the comedy locker, sharpen a
pencil or two, and start drawing cartoons and writing
clever quips.
The cartoon we've done. The clever quips we're
still working on (if we ever really ever wrote any clever
quips to begin with!).
But rest assured we're coming back from holiday, as
they like to say in the old world. We
might even get two strips published in the same week!
How's that for a goal?!
Epilogue (8/12/2009) - Robert Fulghum, one of my favorite
writers and author of "All I Really Need To Know
I Learned In Kindergarten", summed up my summer
malaise best in this dispatch from his web site.
Click
here to read it.

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