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It's been over a year since my last post.  The most amusing thing that I have heard in that time is "A woman shopping with her husband is like hunting with the game warden."  Personally I do not see the humor, but those words have Linda rolling on the floor slapping her knees.

A Few Words About Robin

Robin Williams was our Jack-in-the-box.  He'd pop out all energetic to entertain us and we would laugh and laugh.  We never thought about the times between his appearances when he was back in the box all alone in the dark waiting to be called upon.  Reasons behind his death are being guessed.

Rob Schneider claims that Robin recently was diagnosed with Parkinson Disease and the medication to combat it has side effects that include suicide.   I gather Schneider is a pharmaceutical wiz.

My neighbor says that Robin was broke.  The ex-wives took all his money.  That can be depressing.  He must have been down to his last few million.

A few news articles stated that Robin was depressed because he was aging and his TV series was cancelled. It's harder to find work the older you get.

It has also been hinted that the current wife was withholding sex.  She last saw him at ten p.m. the night before his body was found.  Did they not share a bed?  They hadn't been married that long!

The truth is something we will never know.  But I guarantee you that very soon we be besieged by Robin William biographies who's authors will definitively declare Robin's last thoughts and reasons for his taking his life.  For examples of author audacity, try reading "The Lives of John Lennon" by Albert Goldman or "Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi" by Bob Woodward.  I can picture Clifford Irving typing out a tell-all book right this very minute.

If you don't know who Clifford Irving is, I am not going to tell you.  You will have to look him up on Wikipedia for yourself.

Next time, we shall discuss how Humphrey Bogart's death caused Lauren Bacall's fatal stroke.

The New Man

I have nothing to say, and yet, I am fearless enough to say it.

Anybody else wonder why the human race developed arms with hands instead of tentacles with suckers?  With tentacles, you could really wrap your limbs around your sweetie.

Yes, if it were up to me to redesign the human form, I would chose tentacles for arms, and wheels instead of feet.  Also, I would give humans a radar system, like bats have.  I would put a back-up stop in throats, like that on a gas pump, so once you ate a proper portion of food, you could not consume another bite until more energy was needed.  This would rid the planet of the heavy and the obese.  And the females will have four...  No, make that, six... Six breasts that encircle her rib cage.  After all, we men will want to use our long tentacles.  And on top our heads, we will have a propeller, like on a helicopter, so we can have hover and fly anywhere we wish. And inside our lungs we will have flora and fauna, so when we exude carbon dioxide, the flora and fauna will turn it back into oxygen.  Thus, we never will need a breathing tank in outer space or to swim deep underwater.  We can stay in space and underwater forever if we so desire, with our new head apparatus propelling us through the skies and the seas.  And our eye will emit a bright light on demand.  We could control our eyeball flashlights, so we never have to worry about being in the dark again.

Yes.  I would like to redesign the human form.  I would use a strong rubber for our bones.  That way, if we fell out of a tree, or got run over by a bus, we would not break.  We would flatten and bend before snapping back into shape.  And I would make our blood cherry flavored.  That way if you cut your finger, you'll have a tasty refreshment while waiting for the bleeding to stop.

If I could redesign the human form, aging would stop after twenty-five years.  Death would not be mandatory.  It would be merely an option.  The same as reincarnation would be an option.  If you chose, you could die and restart, either in the same body or that of something else.  Any and all past lives will be stored clearly in your memory, so you can learn from past mistakes.

If I redesign the human form, I would have a volume control in our ears.  We could increase the volume of the things we wish to listen to and mute out what we don't.  Both at the same time!  So you can completely mute out the wife while hearing the sportscaster announce that baseball or football game.  Your brain will record her words, so later, you can selectively scan them when she insists on quizzing you.

Yes.  I would like to redesign the human form.  How about you, any ideas for improvements?

The Rest of Rest

James Garner is dead.  This saddens me.  Not because I will miss him, I rarely think about him unless an old episode of Rockford Files or Maverick happens to be showing on TV.  It saddens me because an era is at its end.  The golden age of television.  Within the last few years, the stars of the TV shows I watched as a youngster have been relocated several feet below soil.  All of the Nelsons are gone, Ozzie, Harriet, Ricky and David.  Every actor and actress of I Love Lucy has succumbed to oxygen depletion.  The entire Bonanza family is all gone.  So are other western heroes such as Gunsmoke's James Arness and Dennis Weaver.  Have Gun no longer Travels after the mortal departure of Richard Boone.  Although Wagon Train only lost half of its acting staff, the ones left alive are in their mid-eighties. Both of the Beaver's parents are pushing daisies (and Lumpy and his dad are right there with them).   Jethro and Ellie May may still be kicking but Jed, Granny, Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale and Miss Jane are kickless.  Gilligan's Island is now a cemetary being tended by the Ginger and Mary-Jane.  (Anyone else ever wonder why Ginger brought so many changes of clothes for a three hour trip?)

Basically, I cannot think of single show I watched as a child that still has the entire cast above ground.  I shall list many of my old favorites and tell me if I am wrong.  These are the comedies: Green Acres, Petticoat Junction, Beverly Hillbillies, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, Get Smart, Hogan's Heroes, Gomer Pyle, The Andy Griffith Show, Laugh-In, The Smother Brothers, Red Skelton, Dick Van Dyke, Jackie Gleason,The Odd Couple.  These are the dramas: Perry Mason, Route 66, Alias Smith and Jones, Wild Wild West, 77 Sunset Strip, Star Trek, Laramie, Rawhide, Alfred Hitchcock, Twilight Zone, The Man From Uncle, The Fugitive...   and Maverick.

James Garner is dead and this saddens me.  The reason is because I am now closer to that age group which this planet refuses continued habitation.  The weekly episodes of Rockford feels as if it were not that long ago. Today, I am older than when Garner portrayed him.  This brings to mind one of my favorite adages; Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer to the end, the faster it goes.

I have taken this writing in a complete different direction than I originally intended.  The idea that was in my head when I began, was to question the phrase "Rest In Peace."  James Garner is dead and countless condolences contain the words "Rest In Peace" or simple "RIP".  What puzzles me is the meaning of the word rest. Rest can mean a period of respite, which in turn implies that Jimmy Garner, after an indeterminate period of rest, will resume the stage and entertain us again.  Or rest may refer to the remainder, such as the rest of time.  Do people want James Garner's corpse to go undisturbed until the end of eternity.  This is highly unlikely.  Decay will occur.  And what if he's cremated?  Being transformed into a pile of ash does seem a very peaceful way to rest for the rest of evermore.

I understand the phrase "Rest In Peace" seems a proper way to bid farewell.  But only if you're planning a nights sleep.  "Hey, I'm going to bed now."  "Okay, rest in peace."  This is correct because I am only taking a temporary leave from my rigorous active life.  From rest will I return.  If I was dead, people wishing for me to rest in peace are wasting their wishes.  I will not rise from dead in the future and say, "Now that was a nice little rest."

Okay, I'm done writing for now.  Until my next endeavor being a wordsmith, I shall rest in peace.

The Greater Escape

Fifty-one years ago today, "The Great Escape" debuted.  In the following weeks, since none of us were old enough to own a motorcycle, the boys of Center Line were busy digging tunnels in every vacant lot and field available.  At first the tunnels would collapse because they were barely under the surface, then we children smartened up and became human moles by digging deeper before burrowing off perpendicular.  We used scraps of lumber to sheer up the walls and ceilings.  The lumber was acquired from local construction sites.  When the adults caught on and we were warned off the sites, we resorted to dismantling our tree forts for the much needed wood.

There is a lot of work that goes into digging a tunnel, but when you have a dozen determined boys devoting all their free time to labor, then the improbable becomes inevitable.  At first, the boys were groups of two or three, each working on their individual tunnels, but when one group failed, they would latch on to another group that was succeeding.  And there was failures.  Looking back, it is amazing that no one was buried alive.  The worst injuries were blisters from using shovels.  So as tunnel after tunnel collapsed, there was one tunnel that remained strong.  It was located about a half block from my home, on a corner lot.  There were trees on the lot, and it's my belief the roots of the trees is what kept the tunnel from collapse.

In between the trees on a corner lot was our tunnel.  It went from a hole about four feet deep, under the ground for around twelve feet, and exited into another hole.  There was an offshoot in the middle of the tunnel that had been abandoned.  Once the tunnel was complete, the beginning of the offshoot was widened and deepened into a three by three box.  The tunnel itself was a tube that was less than two foot across and even less from top to bottom, barely enough room to crawl through.  But it was a working tunnel with a small room in the middle.  Two boys could enter the tunnel at one end.  Boy 1 could cuddle up in the middle room allowing boy 2 to pass and thus exit the tunnel in reverse order from their entrance.  We could re-enact the Bugs Bunny cartoon where Elmer Fudd chases Bugs through a hollow log only to have bi-passed Bugs somewhere in the tight quarters.

And for a short while the tunnel was our secret!  Only us boys who dug it, knew about it.  Then one day Ronny showed his little sister, trying to impress her I suppose, and she ran right to their father and snitched us out.  Ronny's father collapsed our tunnel that same afternoon.  He had us watch and claimed it was for our own safety and welfare.  I thought back then, and I still do, that some adults just do not want to see kids have fun.

So that is how I spent the last summer of John Kennedy's presidency.  In case you're quizzed later.

Investments

I'm the type of person who would invest in a horse leasing business a week before Henry Ford started mass production of the Model T.

I have about thousand DVDs, which I had bought at 15 to 20 bucks each.  I would buy two or three a week, every week for about 4 or 5 years.  Most of them I only watched once.  I quit buying them in 2007, so I don't have any current releases.  I had thought they may have depreciated, so I figured if I sold them, I should get 2 or 3 dollars a piece.  The other day I saw an ad for an online site that bought DVDs, so I thought I would check it out and see what my collection would be worth.  I grabbed a handful and entered the information.  Only about half was wanted, and for those they would pay 25 cents each.  There goes my retirement fund.  The discs, which I had spent 15 to 20 thousand dollars, will bring back a hefty 125 bucks. And that value will lower as time goes on.  Damn you, Blu-Ray!

Coca-Cola Memory

I was telling Linda a story from my youth about a Coca-Cola vending machine. She had no idea the machine I was describing, so I had to go online and find a picture of it.  Here is the picture:

...and here is the story.
The year the St. Louis Gateway Arch was completed, my parents and I took a vacation to Missouri.  I had fake relatives there.  I had fake relatives everywhere.  I was raised to call the friends of my parents "aunt" or "uncle" depending on their gender.  And those old enough, I was instructed to call "gramma" or "grampa."  I could fill a cemetery with all the fake relatives I had.  That's if I were so inclined to dig them all up and rebury them in one place.

So in 1965, I found myself being introduced to another aunt and uncle who lived on the outskirts of St. Louis.  They owned a bottle factory.  They specialized in making brown glass bottles, the kind you find beer and certain whiskeys inside.  (I still have a couple of the half-gallon size bottles taking up room somewhere in my basement.)  I must admit, it was fascinating to watch molten glass being turned into bottles.  Then again, at that age, I was fascinated watching a swarm of ants devour a rotten apple.

Almost fifty years later, I cannot remember the names of that aunt and uncle, yet I remember their son, Ricky, who was a couple years older than I was.  Ricky taught me how to masturbate, but that's another story.  The story I was telling Linda was about Ricky taking me to the local gas station for a pop.  The gas station was down the street from the bottle factory.  My mother had given me a couple dimes to get pop for Ricky and myself.  So Ricky and I walked down to the gas station.  When we got there, on the side of the station was the pop machine.  It looked like the one pictured above.  Ricky asked me for the dimes and I gave them to him.  He put them in his pocket and asked what flavor pop I wanted.  I said Coke, naturally.  Ricky opened the top of the vending machine, took a bottle opener from his pocket, uncorked a Coca-Cola, and handed me a straw.

I leaned into the vending box and drank my coke through the straw, never once thinking I was doing anything wrong.  How was I to know Ricky never paid and intended on keeping the dimes for himself?  To this day I look back and wish that sneaky bastard would have split the loot with me.