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Actions Have Consequences, Social Darwinism, and Compassion for the Drunk and Stupid?

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A quick disclaimer: While Jerry is currently sporting a particularly wicked shiner, like this poor gentleman pictured above, I didn’t have the opportunity to snap a pic of the genuine article.  This guy is not Jerry.  I don’t have a clue who the dude in the pic is, but he and Jerry have matching black eyes this morning.  And I am laughing my sorry ass off.

Perhaps that is a bit cold-hearted of me, but I have absolutely no sympathy for illnesses or injuries of the self-inflicted kind.  He got shitfaced last night (no, that’s not usually news) but the humor in this is that somehow, sometime very late last night, he managed to get off the toilet and fall directly into the corner of the towel rack.  His left eye looks like something out of the Rocky movies, and he has a nice goose egg on his left temple to boot.  The cosmic justice lies in the fact that he decided to go to the hell-hole across the road to blow money on gambling tickets and get shitfaced AFTER he assured me that he didn’t mind if I went to my class and that he would stay home and behave.  Yeah, right.  Serves him right.  Even so, it was a bit heartless of me to comment that at least he didn’t injure anything important when he hit his head.

I do find it disturbing, and he should too, that a grown man of his advanced age (53) would engage in behaviors that lead to falling.  The last thing I need is for him to break a hip or something- although that would really cut down on the forays to the hell-hole.  For some reason, the book Misery by Stephen King comes to mind, although Jerry is not a famous author, and I wouldn’t even want to pretend to be a nurse, psychotic or otherwise.

The only thing that sort of concerns me is that he might try to blame me.  Then again I don’t think he’s old enough to claim elder abuse- yet.

I thought Jerry sort of learned his lesson about getting shitfaced at the hell-hole two years ago January when he pissed himself and  then passed out in the men’s room.  Where was Steve-o with his black Sharpie marker to write the word PENIS in reverse on Jerry’s forehead? Maybe waking up to being branded as a PENIS the following morning would have amplified the instructional effect.  I am a big believer in personal responsibility, and the instructional value of natural consequences, but I still have a bit of a moral/ethical problem with liquor-serving establishments who have no common sense regarding when to cut people off.  Jerry blows more money on pull-off tickets when he’s plastered, so they keep on serving him no matter how loud or obnoxious he gets.  That is my main beef with the hell-hole in general, that they take undue advantage of the drunk and stupid.  In spite of the ethical bankruptcy of the bar staff, there was some semblance of human compassion in the hell-hole that night.  Apparently someone noticed Jerry’s bar stool was getting cold, so a couple of guys had enough decency to retrieve his pickled carcass from the men’s, toss him in the back of their truck, drop him off on the front porch, and ring the bell.  Before I could get to the door to drag Jerry in, they were peeling out of the driveway.  I think they were driving an older, distressed F-150, but it was hard to tell because they were so gung-ho to get out of Dodge.  I don’t blame them.

I am thankful they did ring the bell and wake the dogs up- the bell generally won’t wake me up, few things do at 1AM, but the dogs will-  instead of just leaving Jerry on the front porch to die of hypothermia, frozen to the concrete in a puddle of his own pee.  It was only about 15 degrees (F) that night, so I think hypothermia would have come upon him rather quickly had I not dragged him in.  At least there’s linoleum in the foyer and in the kitchen.  That way I only had to mop the foyer and the kitchen floor instead of having to drag out the rug cleaner again.  There’s one for 1,000 Ways to Die.  Here’s your Darwin Award!

I’ve always believed the Lord has a soft spot for stupid people and drunks, which might explain why there are so many of both.

I try to be compassionate, but I don’t have a whole lot of compassion to begin with.  I am not a naturally warm and fuzzy person.  I’m not terribly forgiving by nature either, so it really vexes me to see someone keep on doing the same stupid shit over and over ad nauseam. 

I’d like to think that I hold myself to a higher standard than I hold others.  I usually overlook character flaws or lapses of judgment coming from others that I would not tolerate coming from me.  I don’t like to criticize others until and unless they come to the point of being incorrigible, or just downright stupid.  Drinking to shitfacedness is stupid.  It should have lost its charm for Jerry years ago, but he still hasn’t learned.

I have never bought the hoo-hah that being a drunk is a “disease.”  Cigarettes are far more addicting than alcohol (I stopped binge drinking with relative ease- but the cigarettes…that was quite another ordeal entirely) yet no one is going around calling smokers “Smokeaholics” and granting them “disease” status.   You decide to drink or not, that’s all there is to it.  I think the big difference between drinkers and smokers is that non-smokers absolutely can’t stand the smell of the smoke- so they bitch- and since there are more non-smokers than smokers, the non-smokers usually get their way. (hooray!)  Then again, I’m having a really hard time cleaning up after Mr. Happy Hour when he deposits his beer cans here there and everywhere, and when he loses control of his bladder.  It’s somewhat funny when you’re a college kid, but when you’re almost old enough to qualify for Taco Tuesday, it really loses its charm.

Maybe I’ll have to work him over with the Sharpie marker myself the next time he gets shitfaced and stupid.  That would be funny as hell.

Squirrels in the Family Tree, the Cat Lady, and Everyone Has an Uncle Bob

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Every family has its skeletons in the closet.  This is an encouragement to me, knowing I have ancestors who were crazier than I am.  Then again, heredity explains a lot.

Part of the fun in genealogy research is finding all the squirrels in the family tree, and I’m discovering I have more than my fair share in mine.  It’s been a bit of an adventure finding out which family members had issues with mental illness and to what degree.  Let’s see, for starters, Mom is bi-polar.  Her biological father was certifiably crazy- most likely he was bi-polar (with an emphasis on bizarre manic episodes) also as well as being an incorrigible alcoholic.  He died at age 53 of cirrhosis of the liver.  Thankfully Mom never had a taste for liquor.   Mom didn’t need alcohol to go off in a frenzy.  Her manic episodes were bad enough without it.

Mom and her biological father are not the only ones by a long shot though.  One of my great-uncles was institutionalized most of his adult life, after he had a severe head injury while working for the railroad. It was really quite tragic.  Oddly enough on his death certificate the cause of death was listed as pneumonia resulting from “Huntington’s Chorea,” or Huntington’s Disease, which is (99% of the time) a genetic disease.  In almost all instances, one of your parents has to have it in order for you to get it.  He was 46  when he died, but neither of his parents had it.  However, the tremors, violent outbursts and general insanity this poor guy suffered from was more than likely connected with brain damage.  I would be curious to find out, but I would guess that rather than Huntington’s Disease, he probably had damage to the frontal lobe of his brain. That wasn’t inherited- which is sort of a relief, but still sad.

Alcoholism is a big character flaw on both sides of my family.  My great-grandfather and another great uncle were notorious for boozing.  Being a drunk isn’t necessarily what I would call mental illness, but way too many drunks drink to drown their depression and despair.  I was enough of a binge drinker in my youth, but thank God the whole binge drinking thing lost its charm for me.  Dad for all practical purposes is a tee-totaler (he likes a very occasional beer) and Mom is a complete tee-totaler, so we never really had to deal with alcohol at home except when my oldest sister came home wasted from time to time in high school.   I was smart enough to crash where I partied when I got wasted.  She is still somewhat of a casual drinker but not a real boozehound.  Of course Mom thinks drinking a social beer now and then will turn you into a lush, but it really depends on the person.  If you’re drinking every night or downright getting stupid with the binge drinking then you need to evaluate your relationship with booze.  I don’t have much use for it other than a very occasional glass of wine.

Then there are the relatives you just don’t want to claim because their behavior makes you really wonder how much DNA you share with them.  I had some really interesting ones.  Aunt Frances, for instance, was a 400# cat lady with a deep disdain for all things foreign (especially my old Subaru,) a loathing of ear piercings and earrings (thankfully she never got to see Steve-0’s 7/8 gauged earrings, or the SS helmet for that matter) and a general distrust of females who insist upon wearing makeup.   I have nothing against cats- I have three of them- but having thirty five of them wandering in and out of your house, eating you out of house and home and breeding uncontrollably is not the proper way to keep cats.  Sending half of your Social Security checks to Jimmy Swaggart probably wasn’t the best decision either, but she just couldn’t resist the televangelists when they appealed for cash.

Uncle Jack was actually one of my great-uncles.  He was a tiny dude, about 5’5″ and slightly built.  He had a withered hand, a taste for whiskey and he chain smoked unfiltered Pall Malls.  Every time I saw him, he always seemed to be either getting ready to go to jail for something or had just got out of jail for something.  He had some really hideous tattoos,  and used language that would make a trucker blush.

I had twin great-aunts- Glenna and Gwendolyn.  I don’t know for sure if they were identical twins or not, but they had the identical horrible bleach-blonde hair do.  I remember when Great-Grandma died (their mother) they got in a fist fight over her stuff, none of it worth a whole lot.  Gwendolyn was married to Uncle Bob- the one with the nudie pics all over his garage- who gave my sister a Budweiser when she was six or seven, and who would look up girls’ dresses if he got the chance.  They had a miniature poodle named Jacques who liked to hump people’s legs and piss on everyone’s hub caps.  Jacques went to the groomer, had his nails painted blue, and always smelled like girly perfume.  Dad always wondered why anyone would prissify a male dog like that, but they were kind of strange.

Everyone has an Uncle Bob- the family pervert.  Thankfully I only got to experience Uncle Bob once a year or less (Dad didn’t want us kids to be around alcohol, especially after the Budweiser Incident) but that was enough.  Everyone wondered why I would not run up and give him a hug.  First of all I am not a hugger by nature.  I am very selective about who I want to hug even today.  As a child I tried to avoid physical contact as much as possible.  So be happy with a handshake- and I was that way with most people I encountered.  I’m not being rude, but I don’t want you looking up my dress or trying to slip me the tongue.  Something about the nudies on the garage walls creeped me out.

This is NOT the Subaru DL I had, but it is the same model.  This one is a 1978, mine was a ’79.  Mine was also red -or at least it was painted red at the factory, before it oxidized, rusted, and ended up covered in fiberglass body filler, primer, duct tape and bumper stickers.  Either not many of them were built, or they just couldn’t handle Rust Belt winters.  It took a lot of duct tape to hold those marker lights in the fenders.

Raised by Wolves, Culture Shock, and How to Avoid Criticism

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Steve-o can partially be excused for his puerile behavior due to his age.  When you’re a 19 year old kid it’s funny to flip off the camera and moon people, especially blood relatives.  I don’t have too much problem with it when it’s all in fun.

But when you’re almost 54 and still partying like it’s 1975, it’s time to get a clue.  It’s not funny any more when you’re of the Geritol set but still think you can drink a twelve pack a night and blare the stereo.  Yes I have the noise canceling headphones and have been enjoying some 80’s Robert Plant, REM, Journey and other aesthetically pleasing music.  Otherwise I’d have to throttle the old goat.

I know Jerry was raised by wolves (my in-laws came from deep in the hollers of rural WV and have about a fourth grade education between them) and I am no authority on Appalachian culture or the lack thereof, but come on.  Just because your parents grew up having to share a double bed with sixteen of their siblings and/or cousins (let’s hope that there was a bit of diversity in that gene pool) does not mean you necessarily have to become a crude and rude beer swilling, loud music blaring deviant.

I tried to be a good mother.  I know, I failed.  But Steve-o does have an expansive vocabulary when he chooses to communicate with verbal or written language instead of the extended middle finger.  I did something right, I think.

Today I heard a wonderful little axiom that was music to my ears, especially when everyone is so overloaded with so much politically correct touchy-feely mind-numbing swill these days.

How to Avoid Criticism:

Say Nothing.  Do Nothing.  Be Nothing.

Dad’s bit of wisdom on these lines is a similar sentiment, though a bit more pragmatic.

If you aren’t screwing up, you aren’t doing anything.

Well, let’s see.  I get a lot of criticism so I must be saying and doing something.  I screw up a lot too, so if nothing else, I’m busy.

This is a pic of Steve-o when he was a week old.  He weighed over 10# and looked like he was at least three months old.  That was the first and last time he ever wore that outfit.  A word to the wise- when buying baby shower gifts, a few people should bypass the newborn to 12 month sizes (this was a six month outfit and he only fit into it once) and get some of the larger sizes in case the poor woman gives birth to a behemoth child who will never wear newborn sizes.  Just a thought.

Oh, can I wring his fool drunken neck yet…pass out already I’d like to go to bed.

Snowbooger Grey and Oat Opera Torture

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I can’t say that I enjoy near-zero temperatures.  I don’t mind the cold as much as many people do but should I have a temperature preference I’d like high 60’s-low 70’s, which occur naturally in Ohio about twice a year.  The only problem with the partial thaws between deep freeze episodes is that the snow doesn’t completely melt.  It simply turns to this horrid grey scuz consisting of partially melted snow, carbon from vehicle exhaust, and other assorted unidentifiable detritus that could be (and probably is) anything from dog shit to medical waste. 

Of course, a snowbooger is the sticky, nasty build up of partially melted snow, road filth and so forth that accumulates in the wheel wells and splash guards on cars.  It’s getting to that time of year when the whole world will take on that snowbooger pallor.  I think I understand the statistics behind February deaths.  I can understand someone who is terminally ill surrendering the will to live upon viewing the drudge of the landscape.  If I were suicidally minded (no, I’m not, but if  I were) the pervasive snowbooger grey of the entire month of February and most of March usually too, might just be the tipping point. 

I am trying to force myself to do things that I’m not always motivated to do up front, but that I’m glad to do when I’m doing them, or shortly thereafter.  Of course Jerry does not like me doing anything that does not directly involve kissing his ass, and nothing infuriates him more than me forgoing kissing his ass to do something that is actually good for me.  I was looking forward to going to my church group last night and I was sure to go, and was glad I did.  This did not make Jerry happy, so he decided since he was sitting at home alone with no one to run and fetch for him, that he would drink his Natties and crank up his vile collection of completely putrid country music.

When I say country music, Jerry likes  the really awful old-time twangy stuff like Hank Williams and Willie Nelson.   No Wynona Judd or Clint Black for him.  When you hear the stuff Jerry likes, you understand why David Alan Coe wrote his parody song, “You Never Even Call Me By My Name.”  The following excerpt from his lyrics says all I need to say about dreadful country songs:

“…I wrote him back a letter and I told him it was not the
perfect country and western song, because he hadn’t said
anything at all about momma, or trains, or trucks,
or prison or gettin’ drunk. Well, he sat down and
wrote another verse to this song and he sent it to me and
after reading it, I realized that my friend had written the
perfect country and western song. And I felt obliged to include
it on this album. The last verse goes like this here:

Well, I was drunk the day my momma got out of prison,
And I went to pick her up in the rain.
But before I could get to the station in the pick-up truck,
She got runned over by a damned old train.”

I think I will have to wash out my brain with Metallica after last night, just for good measure.  It did help that I had the noise-cancelling headphones and was able to drown out most of the oat opera torture with some old Journey songs.  God bless Neal Schon.

I am not going to let Jerry get away with his manipulative snit-fits.  I know why I got the oat opera torture last night- because I didn’t just stay home, and I didn’t cart him over to Bob’s so he could get drunk and act stupid and waste time rambling on about BS over there. 

Tonight I am going to another class at church (this one only lasts three weeks) on understanding the Bible (I need all the help I can get) and I know he won’t like that either, but this class is only an hour.  Hopefully he will be too hungover from last night to want beer and I should have enough money to bribe him with the promise of Chinese takeout when class is over.  He’s worse than a little kid who pouts when Mommy leaves him with the sitter- but he swears up and down he’s not high maintenance.  Yeah, right.  He’d be high maintenance on the separation anxiety factor alone.  One would think a grown man could occupy himself with ESPN or something for an hour or two and not get too bent out of shape.    Too bad there aren’t any NASCAR races on Tuesday nights.  He wouldn’t even realize I was gone if there were a race on or a football game.  He doesn’t like basketball.  If he were a basketball fan he would have had some games to watch last night.

Stuff I Could Care Less About, The Perennial DD, and a Sober Eye on the Festivities

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Ah, the joy of carting the drunk and stupid from one destination to another.  I am so grateful Jerry and his former friend and “drunk and stupid enhancer” Terry had their falling out a couple of years ago. These two guys had the potential to be plenty drunk and stupid by themselves, but get them together and the drunk and stupid and just plain annoying factor increased by a factor of 100.  One night when Terry was staying with us he got incredibly shit-faced, wandered into Steve-o’s room, pulled up the edge of his mattress and proceeded to whiz all over the Christmas presents I had at the end of the bed as well as all over Steve-o and his sheets. I was so pissed I threw Terry out and was rid of him for all of about a month, when Jerry begged me to let him come back over again.  Somehow it just doesn’t seem right to let a “guest” return to your home after pissing all over your kid and your family’s Christmas presents, but what the hey?  When I had to ferry them both back and forth to the campground for Saturday night poker it was occasionally a real nightmare.  One evening they got into a punching match in the car.  Another time, Jerry thought it funny to yank the car out of gear and grab at the steering wheel when he was having a drunk and stupid argument with Terry and Steve-o.   That is not funny at all on the freeway when you’re doing 70 miles an hour.  I do not look forward to shuttling the alcohol impaired, regardless of who is involved. 

Then there is always the potential of the drunk and stupid individual puking in the car.  I remember narrowly avoiding having my 72 Super Beetle spewed in.  Dawne’s sister had been going on with the rot gut whiskey and God only knows what other downers and assorted drugs.  She was notorious for getting drunk and stoned pretty much constantly back then.  I was nice enough to get her a ride home before she ended up getting in a fight, but as we pulled up near Dawne’s apartment, she started to hurl.  Instinctively I reached over her, opened the passenger’s side door from the inside and shoved her out.  Puke smell does not come out of car interiors.  I had to do the same thing to Jerry one night when he got Jagermeister confused with Formula 44.  He narrowly missed spewing all over the inside of my 94 truck.  Of course the Jagermeister Incident should have been more than enough to convince a sane person that drinking to excess is a bad idea, but Jerry isn’t a sane person.

After I had shoved Jerry out of the truck he spewed all over the parking lot and most of the way through the courtyard behind the apartment we lived in at the time.  Somehow I got him up the porch steps and in the door, then he flopped over on the dining room floor, while ranting unintelligibly.  The bathroom of this apartment was upstairs.  The apartment building was built in the late 19th century by German immigrants.  Germans must not have been very tall then, because anyone over 5’9″ would bash their head on the ceiling of the staircase if they failed to duck.  The staircase was also narrow and steep, so much so that the only way to fit a full size bed upstairs would have been to either cut the box spring so it would bend, or to procure two twin-size box springs  and two twin size mattresses and install them on a king size frame.  We put our full size bed in what should have been the living room to avoid this conundrum. 

Anyway, I wanted Jerry upstairs in the spare room (which had a small roll-away bed in it) so he would be close to the bathroom, and so I would be able to try to sleep a little further away from the incoherent moaning, screaming and various noises I knew he would be emitting.  So,  I endeavored to remove his very drunk carcass from the dining room floor and proceeded to more or less drag him up the stairs.  How I got 180# of dead weight up that hideously steep flight of stairs I still wonder, but I do know he ended up with not a little rug burn from the carpet on the stairs.

When Jerry gets to a certain very drunk and very stupid plateau, he doesn’t just pass out like a normal drunk.  That would be too easy.  I got him into the spare room and on to the roll-away bed, only to hear, “Where’sssss my billow, bittcchhhhh?”

I retrieved a pillow from the bed downstairs, opened the door and threw it at his drunk ass and slammed the door.  He had a three day hangover from that little bender. 

I learned my lesson regarding drunk and stupid drinking at age 23.  Waking up in a bathtub full of cold water in a motel room with a half-eaten Domino’s pizza on the ledge has a way of putting one off the liquor.

The New Year’s holiday brings two of my least favorite celebratory activities: drinking (which even if I wanted to, my health really doesn’t permit it) and football, which of course, can be a good babysitter, but it gets old when it seems as if Jerry is going to get bedsores from lounging about in the bed doing nothing but watching football games.  I will find something else to watch or I may take a road trip up to Mom and Dad’s to bring him some beans (gotta love pinto beans and ham) and some pork and kraut.  Perhaps that is not a kind thing to do to senior citizens- bringing them farty food- but I don’t have to stick around long enough to smell it.

I do like the pork and kraut tradition.  I was lucky to find a lovely pork roast (not always easy because there are a lot of people of German ancestry in Central Ohio who do the pork and kraut thing for New Year’s)  so that roast will be wafting its tantalizing aroma throughout my kitchen tomorrow.  The bad thing about pork and kraut is that as far as fart-worthiness, it’s every bit as explosive as pinto beans or White Castles or boiled eggs and beer.

Mmmmm, pork and kraut.  With mashed potatoes and Bean-o.

Next week we return to normal.

God Gave Us Neal Schon, Sanity is Relative, and We the Unwilling Doing the Impossible for the Ungrateful (Again)

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No, I did not mean my commentary on Neal Schon being God’s gift in a blaspheming sort of way.  The guy has an incredible gift, OK, and for some reason I mellow out pretty good when I’m listening to old Journey stuff.  I needed a LOT of mellowing out this week- so I’ve been zoning out to old faves such as “Now You’re On Your Own,” “Of a Lifetime,” “Karma,” and so on.  There is something way therapeutic about that grandiose funky fusion rock of the 70’s.  It’s one of those clandestine pleasures that rates up right there with showering in the middle of the day when you can- for no logical reason, but just because you can.

I am trying not to succumb to the yearly holiday depression that coincides with Jerry’s bleak holiday despair.  It hasn’t been easy this year, especially with money being so stinking tight.  That is depressing even without drunk and stupid meanderings, but add that into the mix and even I get lonely and truly start wondering why I am still being permitted to suck up valuable oxygen.  It’s been so long since I’ve had a meaningful conversation with another adult that it’s almost pitiful.  To make things even worse, now that it’s winter, Jerry doesn’t go to the campground on the weekends, so he gets drunk and stupid at home and I have to deal with him.  One would think that in my loneliness I would appreciate the company, but there are few things more dreary and lonely than catering to a drunk all weekend.  The only conversation that comes from Jerry most of the time is his whining about what I’ve done wrong,  what I haven’t done, or what I can’t afford to do.  I don’t want to fix him breakfast and serve it to him in bed only to hear his dissatisfaction with normal breakfast fare and his lingering desire for Porterhouse steak.  I might be able to get the Porterhouse from time to time if you cut back on the beer and smokes and quit blowing your money on bullshit, but I dare not bring that up.   Logic does not generally compute with Jerry unless he can conform it to his point of view.  In his mind I should (somehow??) make more money to pay for him.

Perhaps I have vestiges of normal female desires to feel cherished and wanted by a member of the opposite gender, even though I know that for me that doesn’t happen save in my own imagination.  I don’t have any illusions regarding my awkwardness and plainness and just plain lack of any sort of carnal appeal. I’m thankful to have three hots and a cot as it were, and to expect anything more than bare necessity and survival is asking too much.  I was taught from my earliest memory that I am only as loved as I am useful, and here lately I haven’t felt terribly useful. Even so there are times when I would so enjoy an evening with a friend, conversation that doesn’t focus on everything I’ve done wrong, or everything someone else expects me to do for him.  When Jerry does speak coherently, I usually can’t wait for him to shut up and stop whining.

This morning he was whining about Sheena.  Sheena knows when the girls are supposed to go out in the morning.  She gets excited and starts woofing and whining to be let out.  I’m grateful that she is good about letting us know when she needs out.  So Jerry starts in with, “Spray that dog so she shuts her mouth,” and so on, but I have to admit I ignored him after that.  I’m getting good at tuning out the whining.  After I let the dogs out, I wandered back in with the spray bottle, pointed it at him, and replied, “I want to see.  Maybe if I spray you, you’ll stop your whining.”

I can handle canine vocalizations, but Jerry’s incessant whining- mostly regarding things I have no ability to change or improve- has already gotten on my last nerve.  Sheena is a headstrong dog, but she’s infinitely more trainable than Jerry. Sheena also whines a lot less.  Sort of on the same subject are some old 70’s movies for “trainables.”  This one is long, but from today’s point of view horribly politically incorrect, and therefore, hilarious.  I almost forgot there were so many different slang terms for the male member.

We the unwilling, doing the impossible, for the ungrateful.  This is my life in synopsis, the extreme Cliff’s Notes version. If I were to opt for traditional burial I would insist this be inscribed on my tombstone, but since I am going to be cremated I guess it doesn’t matter. 

I am thankful for the Prozac, believe that.

I Need a Video Camera (if only for my own entertainment) and Why Dogs are Better Than Men

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I have a very rude pic of Jerry experiencing the aftermath of a particularly stupid drunk and stupid episode, but I have enough decency to keep that in my own private collection.  I thought about posting it for a moment, but that’s a little worse than my usual passive-aggressive revenge.  That borders on aggressive-aggressive revenge, which I’m a little too soft hearted to engage in even when I know there is little chance of getting caught. There is no actual nudity involved, but he is down to his whitey tighties, and I figure nobody needs that visual.  Nor do they need to see the reason why I spend so much time getting intimately acquainted with the rug shampooer.  Suffice to say that the dogs are housebroken, so unless they have an attack of Montezuma’s Revenge, it’s not the dogs.

I spend a lot of time among members of the species canis lupus familiaris, and even though I trust my dogs more than I trust any fellow humans, it’s good to remember that as far as taxonomy goes (the naming and classification of species) the domestic dog is a subspecies of canis lupus– the grey wolf.   Dogs can be dangerous if they are ill-treated and/or one fails to respect their strength (a 65# dog can easily take down a 250# man, for example) and the potential lethality of their bites.  More humans die as a result of dog attacks than from snake bites.  Even so, I believe the trust I have in my own dogs is warranted.  There is no love more sincere than the love of a good dog.

It’s fascinating that one species can have so many differences in its members.  I am not the reigning expert in scientific matters by a long shot, but the current theory is that dogs have such a high rate of mutations due to what are called tandem repeats– sequences of DNA that repeat themselves multiple times.  Of course we humans have made some genetic diseases in dogs worse by limiting the gene pools (i.e. line breeding.)  I don’t have any purebred dogs at this time- but both of our now departed purebred GSDs, Kayla and Heidi, ended up having to be put down due to rear limb ataxia that progressed to near paralysis due to probable degenerative myelopathy.  This is a genetic disease in GSDs and I am sure that it is more prevalent than is reported.  Since DM doesn’t show up until a dog is 7-14 years old, no one would know if a breeding pair are carriers until they have already reached the end of their reproductive life.  Today there is a genetic test, but not all individuals who carry the gene develop full blown DM.    Even Lilo and Sheena, who are crossbreeds, have hip dysplasia, which is primarily a genetic disease as well.  Most dogs, purebred or crossbreed, carry at least one genetic defect.  Lovely Clara, who is an ideal canine specimen in many ways- and actually has good hips- was born with an umbilical hernia, which would have automatically made her unsuitable for breeding (though she would have been unsuitable for breeding anyway as she is a crossbreed.)

Despite the capricious nature of canine inheritance, and the potential that dogs have to be dangerous if ill-handled, I prefer the company of dogs to humans.  Maybe that’s a bad thing to admit, but dogs are better than men for a number of reasons.

Dogs (generally) don’t drink beer.

Dogs don’t smoke.

Dogs generally don’t dirty up laundry.

Dogs will eat what they are served.

Dogs are always happy to see me.

Dogs don’t care what I look like.

Dogs are always great listeners.

After this morning I am tempted to embark on a bit of aggressive-aggressive revenge on Jerry.  I have threatened for years to video record his drunk and stupid incidents for his review (also for sharing with friends and pretty much most of the free world via You Tube) but I haven’t wanted to come off of the $$ for a video camera.  If I have any tax money left over (yeah right) I may contemplate planting a couple of Jerry-cams in strategic areas.  I will have to have audio too because the comments, as well as the thuds and crashes of drunk and stupid fallings down, are half of the fun.

I am not one of those people who buys the common wisdom of  “alcoholism is a disease.”  What a crock of shit.  I used to be a binge drinker myself.  Drunkenness is a decision.  You either decide to suck down those beers (or in my instance, liquor and/or wine- I never could stand beer) or you decide you are going to stay sober.  If habitual drunkenness is a “disease” then why isn’t smoking considered a “disease?”  Nobody feels sorry for smokers (nor should they- even though smoking is a LOT harder to get free of than drinking) and society makes no provision for the smoker to indulge his/her habit.  Why don’t we treat drunkenness like smoking and just stop tolerating it and making excuses for it?   In my world, as I was growing up, bad behavior carried consequences.  You make a bad choice you pay the consequences.  Get shitfaced and act stupid, then end up as a worldwide laughing stock on You Tube.  I’m thinking about it but will probably be too tender hearted to carry it out.

Ah, the Bouquet of a Fine Whine, Canine Conditioning, and Some Pragmatic Coping Strategies

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Ok, the illustration is in French, but even with my very limited knowledge of francais from high school, I get the Alcohol Tree just fine.  Excessive use of alcohol screws one up royally and does a good bit of collateral damage at the same time.   Yeah, here’s my public service announcement for the day.  I haven’t gotten shitfaced since that legendary episode in 1993 when I found myself in a motel room bathtub- alone-  immersed in freezing cold water with a half-eaten Domino’s Pizza on the ledge.  Something about realizing what a total loser I was and that I’d have to go to work in a few hours wearing no makeup and yesterday’s clothes really put the damper on my drinking excursions. That’s probably a good thing because I was always a “forget it all” drunk, as in “how the hell did I get home last night?” or worse, “did I sleep with so-and-so?”   To my knowledge my conquest record while drunk is pretty much as lame as when I’m sober, which reassures me that I didn’t get any action I don’t remember.  Good thing I’m consistently pathetic in that pursuit as I would hated to have missed anything.  My drinking these days is limited to maybe a glass of wine every six months or so.  It lost its charm for me years ago.

Jerry, on the other hand, drinks enough for a freaking army all by himself.  This was my plight Thursday night into Friday morning (when I had to go in to work at 6:30, of course) – listening to him bouncing off the walls (literally) and blaring the local death metal station until 1AM or thereabouts.  At least it wasn’t the old-time country station, or I’d had to have sneaked downstairs to cut the breaker.  As long as I left the breaker for the furnace blower on it would have been OK.   I can tolerate death metal a lot better than Hank Williams Jr. or Willie Nelson, believe that.  I need to rig a kill switch for the stereo which I will do one of these days.   Saturday night was a most unnecessary drunk and stupid encore, though I got lucky in that he got too drunk to remember how to turn the stereo on.  I wish his so-called buddies would stop buying him twelve packs of beer, because he sees it as a challenge if there is more than one twelve pack in the house. 

Dogs on the other hand are far easier to condition.  As much as I hate to take a hard line with Sheena the water bottle is most effective.  Usually just the sight of the water bottle is enough to help her remember to choose to be a good dog.  It works really well to keep her out of the kitchen when I’m fixing food.  I know she has to learn better- hence the constant douching-  because having a dog trying to get her snoot into everything just isn’t conducive to being able to prepare meals.  I wish I had something like that for Jerry.  Maybe I should try the spray bottle on him and douche him a good one every time he picks up a damned beer can.  It’s a thought. I think Jerry would need something a bit stronger than water though- say vinegar, or Dave’s Insanity Sauce.  Yes, the dogs learn faster and with less effort.

Most of my dealing with drunk and stupid would fit into the “avoidance” category.  Usually out of sight with Jerry means out of mind, so if I hide in the corner of my room with the door closed and the light off he usually won’t go out of his way to pester me.  If he persists in annoying me then I have to ramp it up to “passive aggressive” repercussions.  One I’ve been toying with trying lately involves duct taping his ankles together.  I hate it when I think he’s passed out only to have him jump up and start raving and wandering again.  He usually does this after a quiet lull – and just when I think it’s safe to go to the bathroom he starts in because he sees me and then something deep in the reptilian part of his brain remembers he’s not annoying me so he needs to start in again.  I don’t mind being around Jerry when he’s sober, but it seems he only wants to hang on me like some twisted clingy alien when he’s drunk.  I absolutely detest that which is probably why he does it.

In his defense, Jerry has his good points, but they are nowhere to be found or even imagined when he’s shitfaced.  I know I have my vices so I probably shouldn’t be so critical.  But a word of advice for the drinking set- if you drink to excess, be assured that when you’re drunk you’re a dumb ass, and no one wants to be around you when you’re shitfaced.  Take it from someone who knows.

The Thankfulness of Lists, I Buy Premium Cable for This? Timing is Everything

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I know, I’m writing about lists of things to be thankful for and I begin by waxing cynical.  I’m thankful that God has a sense of humor and I sincerely hope that He understands where I get mine.  Comedy is the flipside of tragedy, and there is certainly no shortage of tragedy in this world.  So why not laugh at what you can?  One need only try a little bit to find something worthy of a giggle, and if you have a particularly fertile imagination, the whole world is chock full of comedic fodder.

I’m thankful for stupidity.

It sounds weird to give thanks for the stupid, but we lose sight of the humor in stupidity simply because stupidity is so abundant.  I’ve said it often- the two most common elements in the universe are shit and stupidity. This being said, if you could harness these two ignoble elements and transform them into energy, there would never be a need for petroleum fuels or coal or anything else used to generate power or fuel combustion.

1. Stupid People.

I’m thankful for stupid people for one reason.  They make me look smarter.  It’s sort of the same logic that is behind choosing fat, ugly friends.  If all of my friends are fat and ugly, by comparison I look thin and pretty even though at my very best I am plain and frumpy.  I’m not the brightest light bulb in the hallway, but compared to 95% of the population I might as well be a rocket scientist.  It’s scary, but it makes me glad my parents were two of the very few who didn’t do drugs back in the ’60’s.  Another thing to be thankful for!

2. Stupid procedures, processes, ideologies, etc.

I hate redundancy.  Fewer things piss me off more than having to repeat myself.  I am reasonably skilled at the use of the English language, and the last time I checked, I don’t stutter.  So if I’m taking the time to explain something, pay freaking attention.  Take notes if you must.

I really hate it when I have to fabricate detailed and completely inane explanations for others who aren’t going to be doing what I have to do anyway.  I have a philosophy about that.  If you want me to do something, tell me what you want.  Give me the authority to do the task at hand and the necessary tools to carry it out, then leave me alone and let me get it done. Explaining it to a non-participant is a waste of time since the one requesting me to do the task isn’t the one doing it anyway, and frankly, incessant micromanagement gets on my nerves.  I care about results.  The process of getting results is negotiable as long as it is efficient, legal, ethical, moral and cost-effective.

I like being the only person with certain abilities. It makes me feel important, wanted, loved, valuable, etc.  It makes me all the more thankful for being blessed with the ability to suck up oxygen, and convinces me that I might just have been created for some purpose above and beyond respiration, mastication and defecation.   Having cryptic wisdom or unique abilities can be a double edged sword, however, especially when I seem to be the only one who can reset the cable box at 12 midnight or when I am the only one capable of coherent speech and rational thought.  Sometimes it would be pleasant to hold intelligent conversation with members of my own species.  It happens, but hasn’t for a very long time.

Which brings me to the crowning glory of stupid, which is Drunk and Stupid.

I am not a tee-totaler by nature and don’t really have a problem with social drinking.  I have a problem with shitfaced drinking, but I am thankful that shitfaced drunks have the potential to be funny, at least when I’m not cleaning up after them.  Again, comedy is the flipside of tragedy, as the following true story will illustrate.

A few years ago, Jerry got a fifth of Wild Turkey as a gift from the aluminum scrap guy.  We had brought him plenty of nice loads of clean aluminum scrap from the body shop, and in his gracious spate of Christmas giving the scrap guy was passing out fifths of Wild Turkey.  Jerry is a stupid enough drunk when he gets drunk on beer, but when liquor is involved the stupidity factor increases exponentially with each sip.

Jerry had taken the fifth of Wild Turkey as a challenge, as in “how fast can I down this fifth?”  By the time he had polished it off he was “Weekend at Bernie’s” drunk- flopping all over the house and pissing all over the bathroom floor, toilet seat, sink, etc. and by rights should have passed out, but he just wouldn’t shut up and pass out.  This really sucked.

When Jerry’s drunk he doesn’t just get happy and sleepy like a normal drunk.  He gets hyper and usually along with the hyperness comes an inexplicable urge to embark on pointless home improvement projects which he will completely screw up and that I will have to clean up later. (which reminds me I still have to clean up the bathroom from his attempt to re-glue the tiles last night…arrgh!)  This unfortunate Wild Turkey bender had awakened in him an inexplicable urge to light a fire in the fireplace- with a log, a square of toilet paper (???) and a Bic.  Usually Jerry is scared shitless of all things fire-related and won’t let me use the fireplace (which pisses me off, because I like a nice roaring fire in the winter) so this really boggled my mind that he would even be near the fireplace.

Anyone who knows anything about lighting a fire in a fireplace (and I do, because my parents have had a working fireplace in their house for years, and I’ve built many fires in it) knows that you aren’t going to do jack without some tinder (i.e. pine needles, small sticks and newspaper, etc.) under the grate and some kindling (a little bit larger sticks) strategically placed under the big logs.

So Jerry’s efforts at fire starting were not terribly effective.  In a flash of whiskey-powered enlightenment he decides that the log will ignite should he pour a little gasoline on it.  Then, somehow, through the Wild Turkey fog, he remembers there is still gasoline for the lawnmower out in the garage!  He starts bellowing for me to go and get the gas can.  I was sober at the time and had rather horrific visions of the entire house going up in a blaze of glory, should I honor that request, so I replied that if he wanted to get the gas can he would have to do it himself.   I went back to bed and prayed he would pass out soon.

Usually telling Jerry to do anything himself means it won’t get done, but  I should have known- drunk and stupid trumps “lazy” every time.  About five minutes later I hear what sounds to be a sonic boom followed by mooing noises coming from the living room.  Jerry apparently has never played with VW carbureators and has never experienced the lovely phenomenon known as “flashback.”  Flashback occurs when accumulated fuel vapors in a small space ignite, such as when one is spraying ether down a carbureator and the engine backfires, causing the little bit of vapor present in the carb barrel to go “poof.”   Back in 1980-whatever I once lost a few inches of big hair and (alas, temporarily) both eyebrows, trying to help adjust the carb on my sister’s ’68 Bug.  (Another reason why I love fuel injection.)   It is a very brief but hot fire that generally will not burn skin but is really efficient at removing body hair.

Jerry lost about two inches of hair off the top of his head, most of both eyebrows and pretty much all of his nose hair.  He also smelled like upholstery that’s been in a car fire which is a most distinct, and quite unpleasant smell.  The only other collateral damage was one of the Wise Men from my Nativity that was on the mantle- he fell and shattered.  Of course I always wondered about the three wise men thing to begin with.  Finding three wise men to begin with is hard enough without trying to get them together all in the same place.  So my Nativity only has two Wise Men now which probably makes it more realistic.

The moral of the story?  If someone gives Jerry a fifth of whiskey or any other hard liquor for Christmas it’s getting regifted with the quickness.  He’s enough of an asshole with a 12 pack of Natties.

I’m thankful for Late Night TV. Sometimes.

One of the reasons I spring for premium cable is that I am an occasional insomniac.  The logic goes like this.  If I wake up at 2:30 AM and can’t go back to sleep, then I want to watch something interesting.  Sometimes it happens that there’s something good on, like underwater exploration, a historical documentary, anything featuring Mike Rowe, or the investigative forensic shows I like to watch.  Other times it seems like there’s nothing on but those damned infomercials- but even those can have some comic value depending on the pathetic product being hawked.

I’m thankful that I know no matter how many skin care systems, exercise machines and other self improvement type products there are, none of them will make me look like Cindy Crawford.  Of course I have no way of knowing how many other plain and frumpy aging cougars out there will fall for the line and buy that crap, but at least I know that “three easy payments of $79.95” will only serve to thin out my wallet.   Mom has bought an entire gym’s worth of that crap on QVC and I can attest she hasn’t lost an ounce.  I don’t think Dad has the heart to tell her that in order for exercise equipment to work you have to a.) assemble it and b.) use it.

The absolute worst infomercial out there is for a device that for lack of a better term appears to be a pecker pump.  Worse yet, it’s being marketed toward impotent old geezers, and apparently they can be reimbursed by Medicare.  Our tax dollars at work.  No wonder the government is going broke.

There is a certain angst that I get from all the infomercials on TV, even late at night.  I pay big money for premium cable.  I should be able to watch the good stuff 24/7.  But then again, I have to admit I did really laugh it up on the pump commercial.  It used to be the only place one would see such devices advertised were in porno mags.  You gotta love the power of creative marketing.

I guess timing is everything.

Well, spelling counts too.