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.