For every idea that becomes an essay or column or unhinged rant (take your pick) that I complete and gets posted I probably have three ideas I start, but never finish.
But I don’t want to abandon those partially-completed projects because I never know when I’ll need the germ of an idea so I’ll tuck those unfinished thoughts into a Word document and then totally forget about them until the Word document gets way too big and unwieldy to remember what’s in there, so then I’ll start another Word document. Which means my laptop is like your basement where you stow all the stuff you definitely plan on using someday, but never do, like the skis you haven’t been on this century and baseball glove you haven’t used since you discovered it hurts to run and that pair of two-tone platform shoes you think will eventually come back in fashion around the 31st of Never because the 12th of Never is way too soon.
But this is from a brand new Word document which I promise myself to make use of just like the exercise machine that has eventually become an incredibly sturdy clothes rack or the running shoes that over the years became walking-whenever-it’s-not-too-hot-or-too-cold-and-there’s-nothing-good-on-TV shoes.
And we’ll start things off with…
The Parent-Swapping Program
A friend and I were discussing all the people who are happy to give you advice on how to treat your adult kids and tell you it’s time to get tough and kick them out of your house or demand they get a job or force them to re-shingle your roof or repave your driveway so you don’t have to hire a gang of illegal immigrants to do one of the many jobs us legal immigrants are too lazy to do ourselves.
But those Tough-Love-Advice-Giving Parents often have adult kids of their own homesteading in their basement or borrowing money they never intend to pay back or dropping by for a free meal three times a week and when my friend asked how come these Pushover Parents act so tough when discussing your kids, I said:
“Because they don’t love them.”
It’s easy to tell someone you don’t love to pack his/her/their shit and get out.
A realization that led me to suggest “A Parent-Swapping Program” which we’d all sign up for and then when your kids need to hear things you love them too much to say to their face, you’d call up the program and they’d send a random parent over to your house to give your kids whatever unwelcome news you didn’t want to deliver yourself:
“Bobby, this is Mr. Johnson and he’s got something he wants to tell you.”
Now here’s Motivational Speaker Matt Foley demonstrating how it might work:
The Reign of Terror
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica website, the Reign of Terror – when the French “government” was using the guillotine to punish people with two or more overdue parking tickets – lasted from September 5th, 1793 to July 27th, 1794 which sounds oddly specific and I’d tell you how they came up with those dates except I didn’t actually finish the article because I already had all the information I needed to draw the cartoon you’re about to look at.
True Story:
Apparently, God in Their Wisdom designed people to live comfortably until their mid-forties, but selfish dicks like me refuse to die, so God said, OK, you want to live into your nineties, but joke’s on you because I’ll stop the hair from growing on your head and start it growing out your ears and give you tinnitus in your left ear so it’s like hearing a jet airplane taking off 24 hours a day and while I’m at it enlarge your prostate to the size of Wilson volleyball so you have to get up and go to the bathroom 27 times a night and on one of my many trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night the “Reign of Error” cartoon occurred to me out of the blue.
Which means that’s the kind of crap my subconscious works on when I’m not paying attention.
Another True Story Tucked Inside the First True Story so this is a Trueducken Story:
Paul McCartney woke up with the song Yesterday in his head and lucky for us there was a piano in his room so he could sit down and figure out the chords because if there had been a tuba in his room instead Yesterday would have been performed by the University of Michigan marching band at halftime of the College Bowl Championship game.
None of the Beatles knew how to read or write music and Paul has said a tune had to be memorable or they’d forget it by the time everyone got together to hear what they’d all been working on.
Paul wasn’t convinced that Yesterday was totally 100% original and kept playing the song for the rest of the guys and asking if they’d heard it before and eventually they convinced Paul the tune was his so he recorded it.
So to recap:
Paul McCartney’s sub-consciousness gave him one of the greatest love songs of all time and my sub-consciousness gave me a crappy pun which won’t stop me from using it next time I get stuck for an idea.
Whoever said “A good workman never blames his tools” wasn’t working with a brain that can’t remember anniversaries, birthdays, doctor’s appointments or where he left his car keys, but has retained every word of the Gilligan’s Island theme song and if you’re currently thinking:
“Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale, a tale of a fateful trip…”
You’re in the same leaky tour boat as me so don’t expect your second-class brain to supply you with first-class love songs.
Are we getting stupider?
When I worked for the Kansas City Star, over the years my office was occasionally relocated (eventually it was relocated in my dining room) and my fifth and final Star building office was in the newspaper library and I would sometimes go exploring while I waited for ink to dry because the Star seemed to employ the same interior designers that constructed the Winchester Mystery House.
Just in case you don’t know about that:
The Winchester Mystery House is located in San Jose, California and the heir to the Winchester rifle fortune believed she would never die as long as they were working on her mansion. (I’m guessing some persuasive contractor convinced her of that and the same the contractor is currently working on my mother’s bathrooms.)
So they worked on the Winchester Mansion day and night and night and day without much of a plan – kind of like the Vietnam War – which resulted in stairs that lead nowhere and rooms that have no doors and even after working at the Star for decades I’d still run across some weird office tucked away in a corner and if the occupant had died I’m guessing they’d still be in there and we’d all be asking if anyone had seen Phil recently and what that funny smell was.
Another True Story:
I came into one of my many offices and it was raining inside my office and it turned out a pigeon had died and got stuck in a drainpipe and the water backed up and flooded the roof of my office so everything was coated with Dead Pigeon Rainwater which sounds like a Grand Funk Railroad album from the late 1970s.
Anyway…
While exploring the back rooms of the Star library I came across some City Directories that listed every business in Kansas City and back in the past there were an extraordinary number of piano stores, piano tuners and piano repairmen.
So I looked into that and it turns out pianos used to be our home entertainment centers because we had yet to invent TV, radio or online pornography which they now give away for free which pisses me off because when I grew up you had to be a Real Man and walk right up to the store counter proudly carrying the current copy of Juggs magazine along with a selection of cheap items you didn’t really need and would throw away once you left the premises, but you had to buy those unwanted items to prove you weren’t just interested in naked women; you also chewed gum and combed your hair.
It was just that kind of character-building exercise that taught you to proudly admit you were kind of a pervert or do what 99.9% of young men did instead, hide your perverted desires from your friends and family and put that Juggs magazine between your bed’s mattress and the box springs.
BTW:
If you took a poll and people were honest (obviously this is a fantasy) I’m guessing the people who have some kind of “weird” sexual interest would easily outnumber the people who think sex is solely for procreation and should be performed in the dark as quickly as possible and then never talked about again. So if you happen to get turned on by women and/or men wearing French maid outfits and speaking in a Pepe Le Pew accent or dressing like a chipmunk or a sexy nun, don’t worry about it because even though uptight people don’t like to admit it, you’re in the majority.
Bottom line: I’m pretty sure EVERYBODY’S weird in one way or another, but some people just won’t admit it.
Anyway…
With so few entertainment options available, pianos were a big deal and some family member would learn to bang out a tune on a piano and everybody would gather ‘round to sing off-key versions of My Darling Clementine or She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain or In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida because that’s about as entertaining as things got in the late 1800s unless you were lucky enough to have a Shootout at the OK Corral or Liberty Valance came to town to terrify the local citizenry and liven up a Saturday night.
Another BTW:
Pretty sure it was western writer Louis L’Amour who made this observation; but those movies where a lone gunman comes to town and has everyone scared shitless are pretty much BS because by the late 1800s your average male citizen of a Western town had fought in the Civil War, owned firearms and knew how to use them and after surviving The Battle of Gettysburg weren’t going to be intimidated by Lee Marvin or his evil sidekicks Strother Martin and Lee Van Cleef.
And now at long last, back to those pianos…
Add learning to play a musical instrument to the fact that it was considered entertaining to drop by the local saloon while someone read the latest speeches from Congress and you gotta wonder if we’re getting stupider.
Yes, we’re definitely getting stupider
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, searches for phrases like “my eyes hurt” and “I looked at the eclipse without glasses” spiked after the semi-recent eclipse and you gotta wonder just who are the idiots that ignored all the “don’t stare at the sun” advice from just about everybody and we can identify at least one of them because, yes, that’s National Dumbbell Donald Trump staring at the eclipse.
Today’s Lesson
Get someone else to say the stuff you don’t want to, Paul McCartney’s subconscious is more creative than yours or mine, don’t try to terrorize a town populated by Civil War veterans, if at all possible learn to play the piano and don’t stare directly at the sun unless you’re a Trump supporter.
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