(July 6, 1999)
I have done it. I have taken the plunge into cyberspace.
It may not be the final plunge, but it was the next big step into Cyberbia for an old-fashioned, dinosaur like me.
I have created a World Wide Web page. I am now the proprietor of my own little place on the Internet. In the Internet. Whatever. My mind doesn't really grasp all the fine nuances of cyberspace, so I'm not sure if having a Web page constitutes having a place on the Internet. It's a site, a presence and it seems to be somewhere, but when you open it up on your computer's Internet browser, it's wherever you are, isn't it? It boggles my poor old linear mind, it does.
Where the heck is cyberspace, anyway? Can you actually get there from here? Is it someplace? Beats me.
It was a year or so ago that I swore I wouldn't be creating a Web page. I figure I now have something to put on it. Also, I learned how to do it. That counts for something. It's a universal rule that if you don't know how to do something, you should belittle it and bad mouth it. Fly a plane? Why in the world would I want to know how to fly a plane? Paint portraits? Why? I have a camera. Painting is stupid.
So, now, I learned how to make a Web page, it's not such folly anymore. Call me fickle, what can I say?
There's nothing fancy about my Web site. It's not the huge Web commerce site I was hoping for a couple of weeks ago. It's not going to take off like a rocket and allow me to reap the kind of moolah C. Everett Koop made when he licensed the use of his mug and moniker for an Internet medical site recently. It ain't the Drudge Report. It's not News You Can Use. In fact, not only won't it make me any money, it's probably costing me money.
But, hey! It has a picture of me that I like and my name, a short biography of me and some columns for people to read. When I put it together the other night, I thought it looked pretty simple. No frills, no nothing. Just a white background, some black type and a black-and-white photo. That's it.
Since then, I have added an archive page and a link that lets readers send me e-mail. There's no Java, no Applets, no streaming video - in fact, I'm not sure what any of that is. There are no Quick Time movies, no blinking lights, bouncing balls, dancing babies, twirling circles, scrolling headlines, monster graphics, 3-D buttons, banners or ads for porno sites.
KISS is my motto. Keep It Simple, Six.
I am not opposed to advertising on my Web site, as long as it is of a discrete nature. If anyone wants to pay me for advertising, I will accept it. But I'm afraid this Web site isn't going to be the one that earns me a fortune.
This does not mean that I am not going to keep trying to connive - er, I mean figure out some way to reel in big bucks, cyber-speaking. I don't want cyber bucks, though. I want cold cash.
I belong to an e-mail list for humor writers, aptly called the Humorist List. I e-mailed the list to announce my new Web site and one of the writers, Will Enns, looked at my site and sent me this message: "This is the one that all wise webmasters will pattern their pages after. It's simple, functional and impossible to get lost in. The web gurus at Microsoft could learn something here. Good show."
I was extremely flattered to receive such high praise.
Of course, he is a member of the Humorist List, so maybe he was just kidding.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(from June 29, 1999)
Hey, moms and dads! Tired of seeing your cool cat kids dying their hair the color of grape juice? Fed up with the ones who paint their hair bright green or submarine yellow?
Then get ready for the next newest thing: the new trend for teen-agers is going to be gray hair.
I know, we had to earn ours the hard way. The kids will go gray in the beauty shop, where so many of us have been trying to hide our gray for so many years.
Trendy Japanese teen-agers are coloring their hair gray, except they’re calling it “ash.”
Tokyo is apparently a hot bed of hipness and up-to-the-moment-ness.
The editor of a magazine called “Cawaii,” which translates as “Cute,” said the trend started with surfers. People from 15 to 25 are getting their hair colored gray, or ash. A hair stylist said the whole thing started through word of mouth among high school girls. You may chuckle and think that’s no big deal, but the same verbal grapevine launched the Tamagotchi to international gimmick-dom.
You remember the Tamagotchi. Those little electronic doodads contained graphics of some kind of creature and owners had to feed and nurture the creatures or they — the creatures, not the owners — would die. Unlike real life, the Tamagotchi could be programmed to live again and again.
I’m not sure if the Tamagotchi craze is still around or not. Lots of kids bought Tamagotchi toys during the summer a year or so ago and a friend and I tried to start a Tamagotchi day care center for when the kiddies had to return to school and teachers would ban bringing the little geegaws to school. No one took us up on our idea, so I imagine lots of little Tamagotchis went electronic-belly up and are lying in toy boxes and bureau drawers, unloved, or at least with dead batteries.
There were millions of Tamagotchi being sold, though, so one cannot underestimate the power of these trend-spotting Japanese high school girls. If they say gray hair is in, who are we to disagree?
Getting hair colored gray in Tokyo is costing those hip kids between $80 and $100.
The overall image is completed with a Hawaiian shirt and a dark tan. For females, silver eye shadow and platform shoes rounds out the image.
Personally, I am elated to learn of this new trend.
I’m just about perfect, in this new hip sense. Brown was apparently the color of choice among Japanese youth until now. In my case, my hair was dark brown before it went gray — I mean, ash. Now, of course, the top of my head is skin toned, since I started shaving it a year ago. My beard, however, is mostly gray, although it’s still technically “salt and pepper.”
Not to worry, though, because one variation on the gray hair theme in Tokyo is a combination of brown and gray. Way cool.
I am wearing lots of Hawaiian shirts these days, too. There IS that dark tan thing to consider, though. I tend to stay in the shade whenever possible and wear sun block with a Sun Protection Factor in excess of 50. Frankly, the sun block I prefer is an air-conditioned building. I’m hoping the tan thing is not mandatory. I know I am going to pass on the silver eye shadow and platform shoes for sure.
I’m stoked to think that, once again, I will be considered hip and trendy. If this thing really catches on in this country, perhaps young people will look at me with new appreciation and interest and stop calling me “Pop” or “Mr. Six.”
What worries me is that no one has mentioned how cool it is to be a FAT gray-haired dude in a Hawaiian shirt.
I’m sure it’s just an oversight.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(from June 28, 1999)
You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I have been blessed — or cursed — with an extremely sensitive nose.
That’s unusual, because I suffer from bad sinuses and have a stuffy nose quite often. In spite of all that, I sometimes smell things mere humans fail to sniff out.
We had some kind of small electrical problem here one day and people followed me as I walked, sniffing furiously, until we pinpointed where the odor was coming from.
If I smell things out of place in my house, I resemble a large, bald bloodhound as I frantically sniff around the place. Sometimes my schnoz leads me outside, even, and I scour the yard around the house until I find the source of the smell or it dissipates in the open air.
In the old days, coal miners used canaries in small cages as early warning systems for noxious, poisonous gases that could spell doom for those who toiled deep in the bowels of the earth. If a canary suddenly keeled over and went belly up, it was time for the miners to beat feet out of the mine shaft and head for fresh air.
I could certainly be a canary. A large, bald canary. (I should make up my mind. Am I a bloodhound or a canary?)
You may think being having an awesome olfactory ability like this is a positive thing, but mostly it’s not that way at all. Chemicals that are most just noisome and annoying to other people are almost debilitating to me.
Bleach. Cleaning products. Gasoline. Solvents. Fingernail polishes and removers. Hair care products. Air fresheners. Perfumes. Detergents. The smells not only cause me a large measure of discomfort but can physically affect me, as well. Some chemicals cause almost immediate breathing problems, upper respiratory ailments that can last for days, not to mention sore throats, post-nasal drip, headache, light-headedness and sore eyes.
Paint? Forget it. If I am in proximity of newly applied paint, I will have a sore throat and the accompanying unpleasantnesses for days, and it takes only minutes to start suffering.
It’s a sort of fragrance terrorism, except that the terrorists in this case don’t usually mean me any harm and don’t even know they are causing such suffering.
My Closest Companion is an extraordinary gardener who likes all sorts of green and growing things. She loves lilacs like you wouldn’t believe. But when she brings them in the house, my throat closes up for days. It’s bad even when we take a small bunch of lilacs in the car!
It must be impossible to live with someone like me. (Yes, I know that’s probably true in a much broader sense, but I’m talking about this specific, sensitive nose thing right now.)
My Closest Companion does a fine imitation of someone trying to live as normal a life as possible while being subjected to someone like me, but imagine how awful it is for her, never knowing when an otherwise innocuous aroma will suddenly become a malodorous menace for me.
There is a bright side to having a sense of smell this highly developed, of course. I do appreciate the delicate smell of some flowers and a freshly bathed baby and the fragrance of laundry that has been hung outdoors.
Oh, and if we come under attack by someone using foul-smelling poison gas, I’ll let you know.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
(from June 22, 1999)
This is truly an auspicious time of year. Not only is today the first full day of summer, it's National Columnist's Day.
Of course, the annual Summer Solstice was created much earlier than National Columnist's Day, but to me, it's of lesser importance. That's because, as many of you know, I am the creator of National Columnist's Day.
It was long ago, though not far away, that I decided to found an unassuming little holiday of my own. It falls annually on the fourth Tuesday of June.
It had a pretty big start that first year, with notes and letters of good wishes and congratulations from the likes of Erma Bombeck, Jack Anderson, William F. Buckley Jr., Russell Baker, Dr. Joyce Brothers, Abby and even Dave Barry. Of course, those notes and letters were prompted by an audacious letter I'd written to a handful of nationally syndicated columnists, shamelessly begging for them to recognize this new holiday.
The following few years saw National Columnist's Day grow by leaps and bounds. Gov. Tom Kean issued a proclamation setting the fourth Tuesday of June as National Columnist's Day that year and ever hence in the state of New Jersey. Discerning municipal and county officials did likewise. A national magazine for florists recognized the holiday, it got listed in a book called "Chase's Annual Events," which tells you what today is every day - National Frog Appreciation Day, International Save the Dill Pickle Day and things like that.
Journalists started calling me to get more information about National Columnist's Day. I was interviewed by newspaper people and radio broadcasters all over the country and even in Canada over the intervening years.
The major greeting card companies have never seen fit to pick up on this particular holiday, but some bookstores and libraries around the country used the day to set up displays of books written by columnists.
It remained a nice but pretty low-key holiday through it all.
Then a few years back, a national organization of columnists decided they wanted to have a columnist's holiday. Someone mentioned I had already done the leg work, so to speak, but they insisted mine was not good enough and decided to start their own on another date in the Spring.
They tried to lessen the lunacy of their actions by claiming that the fourth Tuesday in June would be Jim Six Day, but this did not sway me. I did not abandon a holiday that already had a history by that time. I stuck with the fourth Tuesday in June. I am loyal.
I don't know how successful this other holiday has been, although it's probably celebrated with wild abandon by the couple of hundred members of the organization.
I hope celebrations of National Columnist's Day don't get out of hand this year.
The other day, I understand, a bunch of New Age people, whatever that means, caused a ruckus at Stonehenge, ruining Summer Solstice celebrations planned by the Druids. Now there's a clash of giants: New Age folks and Druids.
There shouldn't be any physical clashes between those who celebrate the real National Columnist's Day and the other one. Unless one of those other guys comes around and tries to disrupt things around here.
Naw! I'm only kidding. The original, genuine National Columnist's is a pretty peaceful day around here.
It's so laid back, in fact, people at this newspaper tend not to know it's National Columnist's Day until I remind them.
I used to have wild celebrations on the fourth Tuesday of June. Now, I'm content to spend a quiet day recognizing the original, genuine National Columnist's Day.
Accept no substitutes.
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(from June 21, 1999)
Let me make this perfectly clear: I wouldn't mind being filthy, fantastically, fabulously rich.
I would be a really good rich guy. It's true, I have no experience in the field, but I'm sure that, with a little on-the-job training, I could do it. I would remember all the little people who were kind to me on the way up. I would remember everyone at Christmas. I might buy a fleet of expensive cars, but why bother? I think I'd prefer to hire a chauffeur and give up driving altogether. Driving makes me testy.
I would hire a cook and a housekeeper so my Closest Companion would only have to cook when the spirit moved her and so I could forego KP forever. I certainly wouldn't mind having someone to handle all the chores I already try to weasel my way out of - er, I mean, forget to do. Someone to do the chores I do, but grouse about. Oh, wait! I grouse about all of them.
I could have luxurious homes here, there and other places. I could have a big boat. I could have a private jet. I could have -
Well, the thing is, I don't really have the ambition to work at becoming rich. I don't want to work 30 hours every day. I like going to work, doing a job I enjoy, then coming home to relax. If I had to work all the time, I'd be miserable. I mean more miserable.
Luckily for me, that has not been necessary. My income is not remarkable, but neither are my expenses. I have never done better than just getting by, but I have always been pretty happy.
I have a wonderful family. I am partnered with a wonderful woman who thinks I am OK, most of the time. I have a job I enjoy, most of the time. I am able to pay my bills, most of the time.
Now, however, I think getting rich might actually be an option, after all, thanks to the Internet.
Former U.S. surgeon general C. Everett Koop, at 82, has just earned millions of bucks when a World Wide Web health site using his name and face went public. His take was about $40 million.
A CNN anchorman just quit his multi-million dollar contract to join another Internet venture. You have to believe he thinks it's worth more than what he was doing.
All these off-the-wall Internet ventures seem to be cashing in. "Yahoo!" was started by a couple of college propellor heads and is now worth a fortune. Internet auction sites are worth millions and new ones are popping up every day.
The Internet, it seems, is where the big money is. It stands to reason, then, that if the Internet is where the bucks are, then I should be on the Internet.
I consider myself to be somewhat computer savvy - not a propellor head, by a long shot, but at least a semi-geek. I think being a semi-geek means I can navigate a Web page, download software, send and receive e-mail and stuff like that. To be considered a full-fledged geek, one must have mastered chat room Netiquette, how to make meaningful smiley faces, understand what ROFL means, know how to find the complete text online for "Hitman," "The Anarchist's Cookbook," and the new best seller, "How To Sell National Secrets to China and Other Countries" and have broken enough code to hack into the National Security Agency's WWW site.
I am a long way from any of that. I am not greedy, either. I will settle for a mere $20 million or so from my Internet dealings.
I'm all set, then, ready to license the use of my name and my likeness for use on the Internet. The only thing I'm lacking is an idea that will make me rich. Oh, and the know-how to actually design a Web page and get it online. And of course, the business acumen to sell stock in the venture.
I guess that means I'll need a few partners, but don't worry. I'll take care of everything else.
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( from June 15, 1999)
If the Y2K Bug causes The End Of The World As We Know It when the calendar flips over to 2000, there will be crying and gnashing of teeth, but there might be a bright note to the catastrophic chaos.
Maybe those pesky Census takers won't be bothering us.
I know it's still up in the air whether Y2K will bring no problems, just a few problems or toss all our fat into the fire, but while portions of the world are gearing up to handle whatever comes our way, the Census Bureau is gearing up to poke its nose into our business again.
Ah, the Census. Oh, thrill! Oh, joy!
What's that? You're surprised that I look with some disfavor on the Census? Sure, I know how important the Census is supposed to be. I know it's supposed to be used to determine who gets to feed at the federal trough and how much they get to nosh on. I know it's supposed to be necessary for making all sorts of beneficial federal programs work.
It also tells the Humongous Male Sibling - that's Big Brother, to you - who we are, what we're doing and where we live.
I'm not paranoid, I'm just one of those people who doesn't like being counted. I don't like being forced into telling anyone about my personal life, the particulars of my employment, how many years I've done this or that, stuff like that. I am a bit more private than all that.
You're chuckling now, thinking here's this bozo who spills all this dirt about his private life in a newspaper column on a regular basis and now he's claiming to be a very private person.
Well, there's a difference. I get to choose what I tell you about. The government wants to know things I'd prefer they not know. The government insists it has a right to all this information and makes people believe that, if we don't comply, we're unpatriotic slackers who don't deserve to live in the land of the free and the home of the compliant.
Bull manure! I'm looking at a mock-up of the long Census form that may be used next year. It wants to know my name, telephone number, sex, age and birth date, whether I am Spanish/Hispanic/Latino or not - if I am, it wants to know further if I am Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano, Puerto Rican or Cuban. It wants to know whether I am white, black, African American or Negro or American Indian or Alaska Native (if so, what tribe,) Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Guamanian or Chamorro, Samoan, Other Pacific Islander, Other Asian or some other race.
It wants to know my marital status, whether I am currently attending school, what grade I completed, what my ancestry or ethnic origin was, if I speak a language other than English at home, how well I speak English, where I was born and if I'm a citizen. And this is only on Page 2 of the 12-page long form. It goes on to ask about where I live, if I have any physical or medical problems, if I have problems that make it hard for me to concentrate, dress myself or get around, if I've ever served in the military, if I have a paying job, how I get to work, what time I usually leave home to go to work, who I work for, what I do, how much money I make, where I live, if I have a kitchen, if I have a telephone and what fuel I use to heat my home.
Whew! The questions get real specific. I kept looking for the ones about my weight, my personal hygiene practices and my sex life.
It's estimated that one out of every six people will be asked to complete this long form, while the rest get a shorter version. I still think it's intrusive government and I don't want to tell them this much about myself.
I was only kidding about the Y2K thing, though. I bet you that, no matter what, those pesky Census takers will be knocking at the door of our homes, underground Y2K shelters or backwoods campsites. The Census Bureau probably has figured out ways to handle Armageddon and make sure those Census takers will be out there in full force, no matter what.
Maybe they'll all look like characters from a Road Warrior movie, with leather chaps, feather stuck in recycled catchers' masks, leather football shoulder pads and souped-up Dune buggies. Just make sure they're wearing one of those nifty official U.S. government I.D. badges. Wouldn't want all that information about you falling into unauthorized hands.
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(from April, 1999)
They say English is the hardest language to learn. Well, I suppose it is, although I learned it myself at a relatively early age and have been using it somewhat successfully for many years.
I must acknowledge, though, that English can be pretty confusing. I have in the past become quite concerned about the rampant misuse of the apostrophe in our language. Many people, it seems, do not know how to use the apostrophe, especially when it comes to possessives. People put apostrophes where none are needed and omit them when they should be there. It can be quite maddening. Even I make these mistakes now and then, since they often come not as the result of ignorance but as kind of typographical errors of the brain.
Perhaps the solution simply is to do away with this particular punctuation mark altogether. I think we could understand what was being said just by the way the words are used, don't you?
We could write that "Bobbys wagon wont run because its broken." We'd all understand that we were not referring to a pluralism of Bobbys, wouldn't we? Another thing I'd like to work on is getting rid of letters we don't really need anymore. Like "C." Think about it.
When we refer to an electrocardiogram, we use the abbreviation EKG. When geologists talk about the line in the earth's surface that delineates between a period when dinosaurs roamed the earth and the period when dinosaurs suddenly left no traces at all, known as the Creataceous-Tertiary Boundary, they refer to it as the KT Boundary.
Most, if not all, of the soft "C" sounds could be handled by the letter "S." To explain how the letter sounds, we write "see." See? Hard "C" sounds are pretty much taken care of by the letter "K."
You might notice that we need the letter "C" only as part of the "CH" sound, and you'd be right. So maybe we need a new letter that represents that sound.
The letter "C" covers pages 193 through 346 in my Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition. That's 153 pages. "K," on the other hand, covers only pages 735 through 753, a paltry 17 pages. Obviously "K" is being underworked.
Words that begin with "CH" cover only pages 231 through 252.
These dictionary listings are only for the words that begin with these letters. None of this takes into consideration all the uses of those letters inside words. That's where we would really need to make a lot of changes.
You may find this to be a very bold and outrageous idea, but I think it would improve our language while making it a whole lot easier to learn and comprehend. Hey, we may have thousands of Albanian refugees headed this way.
We should be thinking about making their lives easier, don't you think?
Oh, sure, the changes would foul up what we now refer to as our ABCs, but we are nothing if not a resilient people and I am sertain we would be able to kope with this trauma adequately.
Whoa! Did you notice that "Q" in there? Now there's a letter we don't really need. I'm kwite sertain we kan eliminate that one immediately.
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©1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.
Tuesday, Aug. 20, 1996
Establishing a working connection with members of the opposite sex (or perhaps merely the appropriate gender — this is the 1990s, after all) has never been easy. Meeting people, starting a friendship, dating, courtship, relationship. Nope, not easy at all.
It wasn’t easy even back during the 1970s, when we men pursued with desire anything that moved and some things that didn’t.
Relationships have always been under attack. Peer pressure. Cultural differences. Prenuptial agreements.
And that was before the advent of sexually transmitted diseases than can kill you, and the necessary arrival of safe sex. Now it’s even more difficult for two people to find each other and perhaps launch a relationship. (It has been learned in recent years that ships launched with champagne work much better than relationships launched by champagne.)
But what if we were required to be truthful in courtship?
Oh, geez!
‘‘Hi. You’re quite lovely and I would really like to go out with you, but I think you should consider the following first: We may like each other more than just a little. We may actually fall in love. If we do fall in love, we may decide to make a commitment to each other. We may spend many years together. If we do spend many years together, I may someday be fat and bald and have hair growing on my ears. And there is a great possibility I may someday ask you to look at a big fat ugly boil on my butt.’’
Whew! Wouldn’t THAT change courtship and dating as we know it?
When I first saw my Closest Companion’s incredible dark eyes across a dance floor and we smiled at each other, she took my breath away but I had no idea we would spend so many years together.
She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I was a 30-ish cowboy. Not pretty, but not all that bad looking. Not a skinny fellow, but not a farm animal, either.
Now, all these years later, my Closest Companion is still the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen and she still takes my breath away. I, on the other hand, am Jabba the Hutt. Balding, graying, ballooning to dirigible size. And susceptible to all the infirmities of the male species: wax in my ears, boils in unsightly places, stuff like that.
Who knew that when we started our wonderful relationship I would be augmenting sweet nothings with things like, ‘‘Would you look at this big fat ugly boil on my ...’’ Well, you get the picture.
It might be more terrible for women to endure. Men certainly don’t have a lock on developing gross things that need looking at by another person, but guys do generally approach it differently.
``Wow! This is the most DISGUSTING thing I’ve ever seen! Ooooeeee!! Honey, c’mere and take a gander at THIS!’’ is something a man would say. Men seem to be proud of their big fat ugly boils and other physical oddities, as if they’d earned them through hard work and years of study and practice.
There’s nothing in even the old-fashioned, traditional wedding ceremony that even remotely sounds like ``I promise to love, honor and cherish and look at big fat ugly boils.’’
Of course, when you were a kid, you had your mother to handle this kind of dirty work. Mom’s start out changing your diapers, so it’s a pretty easy transition to doctoring you through various ailments, taking your temperature, feeding you broth and toast or looking at big fat ugly boils.
But as you grow up and older, you don’t have your mother to handle things like big fat ugly boils on your body, although I’m certain most mothers would be willing, if not thrilled, to handle the chore, no matter how old you are or how big, fat and ugly you and/or your boil is.
Perhaps we men are hoping for the perfect woman. Love me, love my hairy ears.
The truth is, you never do know what you’re getting into when you enter into a long-term relationship. Men may have gross growths, but the tender sex is not without its curious traits.
It has been suggested that women eventually grow to resemble their mothers, so perhaps you should spend more quality time around her mom, observing and carefully considering your choice. She may wind up looking just like her mother. This would usually be preferable to her looking like her father, but I remember a couple of old girlfriends for whom it wouldn’t matter either way.
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Tuesday, Nov. 21, 1995
It came to my attention the other day — I am sometimes so wrapped up in local news that I miss what is happening in The Big Picture — that some guy somewhere was suing the Hooters restaurant chain because they wouldn’t hire him. The guy, as I’m sure you have heard, wanted to be a waiter or waitperson or something and was turned down, since the restaurant’s entire claim to fame is its beautiful, well-endowed female waitpersons. That’s pretty much like me applying to be the spokesperson for Gillette razors and insisting I shouldn’t have to shave to do their commercials. Discrimination against the hirsute or some such nonsense.
Well, this whole discrimination thing got me thinking, and you all know how dangerous that can be sometimes.
I had to go to court the other day to cover something, and it’s not one of my favorite things to do. First of all, normal men and women who are lawyers — well, as normal as lawyers can be — suddenly start talking like, well, like judges as soon as they put those black graduation-choir robes on. It’s amazing how they talk around something without nailing it down sometimes.
Anyway, while court is not my favorite place to be, the courtrooms are downright uncomfortable, thanks to the chairs. They are bolted to the floor so hoodlums and crooks don’t steal them. They have short backs so you either have to slouch or sit up without using the chair back for support. But the seats are just not wide enough for me. I barely managed to squeeze in, but there was room enough only for me and my trousers, not the jacket I was wearing. My coat tails had to hang over the arms of the chair because the chairs are designed for slim folks, not people like me who have ABBS or Acute Big Butt Syndrome. (Only my being afflicted with this malady and the use of purely scientific thought processes would allow anyone to conceivably think I had Acute Big Butt.)
It’s pure discrimination, I tell you.
Been to the movies lately? I am big, yes, but I am not the biggest person I have ever seen, but if my behind can barely squeeze into the ultra-narrow movie theater seats, what do those really big folks do? I shudder to think.
In restaurants, I tend to look for chairs without arms rather than sit on the edge of the seat with my jacket or vest billowing out to the sides, making me look like some bizarre behemoth preparing to spread its wings and take flight.
I was waxing wide, bemoaning the fate of the broad beamed, when some friends challenged me. If you are so concerned about the plight of the plentiful, they said, why not make a place where they will feel comfortable?
So we’re going to open some restaurants and clubs that cater to people like me.
We’re going to open a place like Hooters, but not quite. We’re going to call it Chunkers. No shapely waitresses, though. All the waitpersons will be men my size and bigger wearing Speedos. (WARNING: Do NOT try to imagine what this would look like. Ignoring this caution could result in blindness or permanent brain damage. A cop I know ignored my warning the other day, tried to conjure up this image and lost the hearing in his left ear for several hours. He was lucky. Think about something else for your own safety.)
But if I’m going to cater to the Avoirdupois Advantaged — I’m thinking about starting an organization, as well, called the American Association of Avoirdupois Advantaged Humans, or AAAAH — I should open some really, you should excuse the expression, hip establishments.
Planet Hollywood? The Fashion Cafe? The Hard Rock Cafe? They may be the haunts of the Beautiful People, but the Bountiful People will be hanging out at my places — Planet Jellygut. The Full-Fashioned Cafe. The Lard Butt Cafe.
Low-fat food? Light beer? Are you kidding? These places will serve high-fat meals and beers like Brew Heavy. You’ll gain a few pounds just walking past these places on the street.
You can scoff if you want to, but this is serious business. Three of us came up with this idea, Phil, Glenn and me. Together we weight almost 800 pounds. That’s not necessarily meant to be an actually accurate number. It’s more of a symbolic number, meant to illustrate the weightiness of our plan. We’re men who are tired of shopping at places called ``Sporty Male Fat and Beefy’’ and we don’t feel comfortable getting stuck in skinny-guy chairs after being forced to eat tuna casseroles in restaurants called ``Mr. Healthy’s Fashion Cuisine Center.’’
Watch for the Grand Opening of Chunkers. And remember, when the man comes up and says, ``Hi. I’m Tiny. I’ll be your server,’’ don’t stare at his Speedos.
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Tuesday, March 26, 1996
Many of you think I forgot to mention last time that men drivers never, ever ask for directions. Let me assure you, I did not forget. I simply ran out of space. You can’t list everything, sometimes.
Yes, I know men drivers will drive around in circles for hours rather than consult a map or stop and ask the way. It is, of course, a male pride thing. I told you about how driving is a male pride thing all around.
Yes, I know that little old men in caps are perhaps among the worst drivers in the world, but so are those little old ladies you cannot see over the steering wheel. These traits have nothing to do with male pride, as far as I can tell.
I was informed by some colleagues of the female persuasion that some women drivers operate under the same set of prideful constraints as men drivers. There is no known scientific explanation for that, it just happens. Perhaps it’s some chemical imbalance that robs those women of their common sense and imbues them with this male malady. Maybe medical science will someday come up with a cure for “Guy-itis” as the experts call it.
Many people believe the handling of the television remote control device (otherwise known as the “zapper” or, more commonly, as the “clicker,” although most of them do not make a clicking noise or any sound at all) is a symptom of “Guy-itis.”
This is not so.When a man suffers from Acute Remote Grabby Hands, known as ARGH, he sometimes is, indeed, engaged in a male control thing. “I am the man and I know what is best for this household. You, my family, mere inferior beings that you are, should not interfere with such weighty, intellectual and obviously masculine matters. I am the boss here and after lengthy and information-intensive reflection, I have decided we should watch ‘Wheel of Fortune.’ ”
Obviously, that guy is a prime ‘‘Guy-itis’’ sufferer. ARGH is, in his case, just a symptom.
There are others, however, who seem to suffer from ARGH for other reasons. Needing something to do with your hands is one thing. (We suggest those people take up needlepoint or knitting while watching TV.) Another possibility is that the person’s intellect is not being stimulated enough by what is on, so, to increase the challenge, they flick through the channels either looking for something more stimulating or to force their brain to pay attention to several things at one time. ( If you’re looking for the challenge of handling more than one mental-physical task at a time, perhaps chewing gum and reading a book while watching TV is the answer. Be careful. Don’t hurt yourself.)
Flicking through 36 or so channels faster than the speed of light can be fun — for the person holding the remote control. For the rest of us it’s a psychedelic light show of eye-goggling and mind-boggling proportions. The eyes try desperately to focus on what is being zoomed in front of them, but fail miserably and send out painful little messages to the brain. The messages usually say ‘‘Help!’’ but wind up being translated erroneously into ‘‘Migraine!’’ for some unexplained reason. (Medicine is SUCH an incomplete science.)
I am happy to say I am not afflicted with ‘‘Guy-itis” when it comes to the TV remote control . I am happy to allow my Closest Companion complete use of the clicker. She can zip through all the channels in something less than .1546794 of a nanosecond, I believe.
To be fair, I am no slacker when it comes to zapping, either. I rival my Closest Companion’s land speed record with the clicker when I have it.
On the whole, I suppose control of the remote control is a shared thing here. We are a truly unique couple, in so many ways.
I, of course, do indeed suffer from certain symptoms of ‘‘Guy-itis.’’ Things like making the bed. Picking up dirty clothes. Oh, yes, and cleaning the bathroom.
Which, I believe, just about brings this discussion full circle.
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Tuesday, Feb. 6, 1996
It must have been really tough to live in the years marked B.C., Before Christ. Just think, every year you’d have to remember to DEDUCT a year when you wrote checks to pay your bills.
``I was finally getting used to writing ‘400’ on my checks, and now it’s 399 already,’’ Plato once said when paying his toga cleaning bill.
Plato was an Ancient Greek Philosopher, considered to be among the most important and creative thinkers of the Ancient World. Of course, the people of the Ancient World generally thought the Earth was flat, that dragons swam in the sea, that leeches cured everything that trephining didn’t, that men turned into wolves, leopards and bats during a full moon and that there were gods who could turn into monkeys and snakes and such for amusement. Being a creative and important thinker was nothing much for these dreamers; being accurate in your thinking? Well, that was something else again.
If you have ever dabbled in philosophy, you know that most of these philosophers were nuttier than fruitcakes. Still, Plato was pretty important. My Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia says his work ``set forth most of the important problems and concepts of Western philosophy, psychology, logic and politics and his influence has remained profound from ancient to modern times.’’ Wow!
Perhaps Plato’s enduring importance is why otherwise level-headed people in this Modern Age are still looking for the Lost Continent of Atlantis. That’s the island home of highly advanced people which supposedly sank into the ocean way before Plato was born (making it a high-number year in the B.C. manner, remember.)
Plato wrote about the Lost Continent of Atlantis quite a few years before English folk singer Donovan did. Atlantis was supposed to have been in the Atlantic Ocean just west of Gibraltar, although in about 400 B.C., the most accurate statement of that fact was probably ``Atlantis was way, way, way over there in the big water.’’
Nobody knows just where it was supposed to be. Or if it really WAS, at all. There was a program on TV the other night that said some people think it was somewhere near Bimini, which would make it way west of Gibraltar. If Atlantis was in that area, it’s probably responsible for the mysteries of the Bermuda Triangle and could explain why Michael Jackson is a the way he is, among other things.
Others believe Atlantis was in the vicinity of Greece itself, which would have been less west of Gibraltar, geographically speaking. (Again, the boys in 400 were just beginning to understand the concepts of up and down, so you couldn't expect them to be all that accurate in other things.)
The reason Plato could expound so well on this Lost Continent of Atlantis is that it was supposed to have existed 9,000 years before his time. (That would be about 9,400 B.C., don’t forget.)
There has been some exploration near Thera in the Aegean Sea that supposedly shows some evidence of a culture advanced enough to make pots and three-story houses. Wow! That’s advanced! There are, however, no signs of bodies, skeletons, nothing like that. Which means, if this was Atlantis, the Atlantans moved.
Speculative history is an imperfect science, filled with educated guesses, but guesses all the same. It’s like dinosaurs. All the dinosaur scientists are guessing. They don’t really know what the dinosaurs looked like, how the walked and what happened to them.
Even back in Plato’s time, he was probably guessing about what he wrote about. Maybe the Atlantans and the Mayas and that smart-alecky kid I went to high school with who got all As WERE from an advanced civilization or from outer space or under the ocean.
World history and legend is filled with mysterious peoples. We need heroes, so it’s common for us to attribute legendary abilities to people who have disappeared or died before they were expected to, such as the Atlantans, the Mayas, Buddy Holly, James Dean or Jim Croce.
Personally, I don’t know what to think. It’s fun to believe there really was an Atlantis somewhere, filled with golden streets and the most creative thinkers of the Ancient Age, but who knows for sure? We’re talking about a place that may have existed 11,000 years ago — I think. Have I got my figures right?
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© 1999 South Jersey Newspapers Co.