Chicago Hot Dogs

The curmudgeon just received a gift box of Chicago-style hot dogs.


They are very specific - all beef hot dog, poppy seed bun, yellow mustard, sliced tomatoes, a snappy sport pepper, dilll pickles and relish.


My arteries are clogging even as I write this.


I'm rethinking taking it as a gift to my Dad.

Flying Fur

I have never made it a secret that I adore my cats - each with their own personalities :  Scruffy, the heavy purrer, face clawer, breakfast demanding at 5 am, and dropping to the floor when a ray of sunshine appears.


Tiger, the wonder cat, is a hunter killer, and when things might not be going his way, simply flops over and becomes adorable.


I was recently attempting a regular claw clipping and Scruffy went nuts.  She never liked the claw clipping, but this time she really went nuts.  Tiger, ever eager to protect his chief-of-staff, beamed in from his home planet and fur flew.


He is now proudly sleeping at (actually on) my feet.  Where does one go from here?


Kids.

Biking

The curmudgeon was quite the biker in his day - racing along, scaring small children, the whole bit.


His racer was a Raleigh, that I seem to remember, cost a whopping $164.00


But it came with this new thing WD-40.  A wonder lubricant.  After all, it took real scientists 39 tries to get it right. (WD means Water Displacement).


Then I moved to the top of a hill.  The start of the bike ride was fantastic, but after 5 or 10 miles, the ride home was killer.


But WD-40 has become part of my life.  Short of spraying it as a room freshener (a practice that my sainted wife discouraged), it cures squeeks, obstinate doors, and all manner of things that men are apparently expected to manage.  It fixes each one, not unlike duct tape.


Long live WD-40.  Notice there isn't a WD-41.

Jurassic Park

The curmudgeon thinks Steven Spielberg is one of our generation's greatest movie directors.

My toes still curl watching Jaws.

And, there is that famous moment in Jurassic Park when a glass of water foretells the approaching dinosaur.  Fabulous stuff.

Apparently, he never heard the Who at volume, because my cat's water dish does precisely the same thing.

I think I just scared my own self.

Head Butting

Hollywood leads us to believe that there is a winner and a loser when two humans engage in a head butt.  Outside of Seeley Booth, who's head appears to be from another planet,  the only real contest is how many aspirin you have to take the next day, butt-er or buttee.


It turns out that cats are into this head butting bit.  It is apparently an affectionate thing, especially when breakfast is late at 5 am.  A little head butt.  These guys aren't dumb - one butt back and they are today's sushi special, so purring is involved.


With Tiger, the wonder cat, an occasional head butt is enormously pleasant.


Not so with humans.

Black Carpets

30 years ago, the curmudgeon and his sainted wife painted our tv room a dark green, and bought a matching green oriental carpet.  A beautiful room - we decorated it with artwork we bought in England, and I decorated with a huge tv and stereo that can't be beat.


But, it's 2011, and the trendy colors of the 80's have changed.  So we found a brown leather color that is beautiful.  That required a new rug.  Green - gone - brown in.  We found one (the green one was $600, this one $2,000), but as part of the perfect color match, it has a lot of black in it.


Pause.  We have two cats.  I eat cheetos, potato chips, and all manner of junk food watching tv.


A black carpet.


A maintenance nightmare.  Go for beige.

Rome Wasn't Built in a Day

The curmudgeon's sainted father gave him a lifetime lesson with this single phrase.  When home projects, major yard cleanups, boats not getting painted fast enough, etc. weren't going at the furious pace we anticipated, he would simply utter those words.


Genius.  Not being a dummy, I realized I could use it for all manner of household duties I didn't feel like tackling, and IT CANNOT BE REFUTED.


Finally, the Italians come in handy.

Drawing Blood

As you all know, Tiger, the wonder cat, grew up with horseplay with his chief-of-staff.  Claw, bite, gouge, and then lick me. 


I didn't know cats licked their victims.  It is this curmudgeon's humble opinion that, over the course of years, he actually extracted more blood than my annual physicals.


But, I get a lick out of the deal.  Then a purr.  Kind of hard to resist.


I feel a fight coming on.

Tiny Magnets

The curmudgeon recently purchased some very powerful, tiny magnets.  He was getting tired of things slipping down the fridge door because of old-time magnets.


These little marvels use rare earth elements - a great American tradition of mining whatever they can take at will, like oil.


You have to tug the pencil off the fridge to put a new item on the shopping list.  But, it leaps back into position.


I made the mistake, when opening the package, of permitting them to mate - they immediately created a long roll of really, really powerful tiny magnets sort of glued together.


This required immediate action - put them in a drawer and dwell on simpler, less rare earth pleasantries.  I'm not dumb. 

Department of Redundancy Dept.

Firesign Theater has many memorable lines, but this one has stuck with the curmudgeon, working in a large Corporation and all.


It even applies to my little hometown, all 9,000 of us (I'm skipping the 6,000 kids for obvious reasons).  We actually have our own electric company, and, as the curmudgeon's best friend constantly lectures him at diner breakfasts, the smaller the pool, the larger the costs.  Kind of a clue to our taxes.


In comes the Firesign Theater moment: when the power went out all over town because of the recent snowfall on fully-leaved trees, I looked in the phone book for a responsible person to call, rather than the police, who must have had their hands full, and found a person called "emergency management."


Said person wasn't even there - straight to voice mail.


Now that's a Firesign Theater moment.

Spin 'n Grin

Some 20 years ago, the curmudgeon got talked into a new kitchen.  The existing one was working just fine, a kitchen not being all that much - a stove (ours appeared in the original Invasion of the Body Snatchers), a working sink, and of course, the dishwasher that made the floor shake.


Then came the decisions - what color wood finish, what floor, what faucet, what sink, what ogee shape for the counter tops - I think I fainted at least twice.


But the salesman came to my aid - the spin 'n grin.  You see, another decision was the sink strainer/stopper, and I was at the end of my tether.  This clever little device ended that age-old nuisance of jiggling the sink stopper back into place - turn - open, turn - closed.


I still grin on occasion.

The Who

The curmudgeon grew up on good ole, honest R&R.


The Beatles, the Beach Boys, and later far more intense stuff like Jimi Hendrix and Cream.


Then came Tommy, from a group called the Who.  It was apparently their response to the Beatle's superb theme album Sgt. Peppers.


You simply can't play Tommy loud enough.  Trust me on this one.


I now return to the Muppet tv show - I'm not 20 anymore (but I have my Tommy moments).

Kerflooey

When technical, electrica, plumbingl and such go amuck, the curmudgeon's sainted wife will sit in another room railing about things, generally followed by "fix it".


Now, I know we guys are supposed to know how to use outside BBQs and know how much oil is in the engine of our cars, but my expertise is in computer design and software, and really doesn't prepare me for why the toaster oven is afire.


Things go kerflooey in life.  


Get over it.

Couch Potato

In his younger days, many, many years ago, the curmudgeon was quite the athlete - biking all over the place, scuba diving, and whatnot.


Then a work friend broke his wrist rather badly during a tennis game.  The curmudgeon and another Mainer workmate observed, this doesn't happen sitting on the couch.


The couch potato was born.  Yes, one can doze off and find Cheeto residue on one's shirt upon awakening, but certainly no broken bones.


I recommend it highly.

Blue Toilet Bowl Water

The curmudgeon doesn't like to get into matters like these, but as he innocently went about his morning ablutions, he discovered his toilet water was blue.


A quick flush, and perhaps the stuff our cleaning guy, also getting along in years, forgot to rinse out.   But no, it came back blue.  It turns out that my sainted wife had bought one of those products that keeps your toilet bowl looking like a bizarro drink from Star Trek.


I checked the curmudgeon handbook, and they are pretty clear that toilet bowl water should be err, clear.


 I do not embrace wasting water, but I'm sure 1 or 200 flushes will kill the gadget.  Fussing about in the tank for it is not my idea of fun.


Women.

CTA

For those in the know, the curmudgeon being one since he is writing this, the CTA is the Chicago Transit Authority.  It is also the first album from the band Chicago, released in 1969.  


They had very energetic music, and a stunning bass line, something that always gets my attention.


We would all run to Don Loft's room to play Chicago.  He had Wharfdale speakers.  They had sand sandwiched in the speaker walls - the idea apparently was to provide sonic perfection because the walls on mere mortal speakers would vibrate at the volume levels we used in college, and ruin the sonic purity of, say, Jimi Hendrix or Cream.  They also weighed a ton.


And they could really pound out the bass, the CTA album making Don very proud.


Of course, I still have the album and was recently moving the music to my iPod, and as I've steadfastly maintained, you must give it a test run at the volumes it was intended for.


Yeow.  Still thrills 40 years later. 


 And, to my knowledge, I don't have sand in my speaker walls.

Dishwashers

The curmudgeon grew up actually being the dishwasher.


But with success, he moved into a house 30 years ago that had one of those automated ones.  It sounded like a Mack truck, but dishes were cleaned and  dried in 40 minutes.  And it wouldn't die.  


30 years later, still sounding like a Mack truck, it was going strong as ever.  I may have had to repaint the door, it starting to rust and all, but remember - 40 minutes and everything was clean and dry.


Enter my sainted wife and her friends who seemed to think we needed a new one.  I'm from Maine - nothing is new - if the boat is leaking, you man up and bail.  But we shopped around, found a nifty Braun that is quiet as a lamb (I don't have personal knowledge in how quiet lambs are), but this thing is virtually silent.


And it takes 2 hours.  Give me a Mack.

Parking Wars

As part of the fraternal order of curmudgeons, we must abhor reality tv.  We don't care who is dancing with who, what is going on some foreign island, what Kim Kardashian might do next...sadly the list is quite endless.


But I have my weak moments, and a really delightful show "Parking Wars" became a must watch.


Set in Philly & Detroit, it follows city employees who are actually doing their job.


It is divided into 3 parts: 1. the folks on foot ticketing idiots parking illegally and confronting the outrage of "Who, me?", 2. the impound yard, where more idiots can't seem to produce things like insurance cards, and 3. the guys who cruise the city streets looking to boot cars with over $700 in parking violations (it takes 2 - one to do the booting, and one to protect him from the morons that surface to try to physically interfere)


These yokomos are on camera, and we're talking bad parking.


Now that's OK reality tv.

King of the Lab

This is a term used by Dr. Jack Hodgins on "Bones" a particular favorite show.


He uses it when one of his scientific crime scene discoveries makes a breakthrough in a case.


The curmudgeon has found it handy to use at home.  When something technical goes amiss, what with Apple tv, cable tv, high-tech phone provider, who are you going to call to start fixing it?  


The curmudgeon, ever focused on saving time, starts to do it himself.  Happily, what I call the South Park fix - just unplug things, plug them back in, and hope for the best (which is pretty much the first step when you call any one of the above-mentioned guys) often works, but, sometimes, there is something lurking deeper that needs fixing.  And when I nail it, arms over the head, I yell "King of the Lab!"


For some odd reason, this sends the cats into hiding.


But, I AM King of the Lab.

Trugs

Trugs are large plastic buckets (or "Bouquets" as Patricia Routledge would insist on "Keeping Up Appearances")


You do your gardening, tossing cut whatnots in them, and when way overloaded, expect your sainted husband to attempt to pick them up and dispose of it all.  Now, men had long ago invented something called a wheelbarrow, but "trugs" are apparently trendy, and invented to make curmudgeon's lives all over the world a living hell.


There's a nifty little thing here - the word "wheel".  It was a thing invented, say, 8,000 years ago and seems to have stood the test of time.


Not so trugs.

Hard Water

The curmudgeon lives in an area that has good 'ole Amurican hard water.  Hard, pipe clogging, plumbing staining, easy showering, hard water.  He has plenty of experience with that soft stuff - you never think your shower is finished.


Hard water has a taste that can't be beat, and the curmudgeon is required, by curmudgeon fraternity code, to be too cheap to install a water softener.  And, dragging 50 pound bags of salt isn't real high on my list of life's pleasures.


I'm so inspired, I think I'll take a shower.

Green Grass and High Tides

In Maine, there are 9-10 foot tides.


So if you want to go for the occasional row or sail, there might be a lot of dinghy dragging for floatability because the tide was out.


The skipper had the solution: wade out in the muck at low tide, drive a 10-foot stake in, pile a few rocks around it, and bring back a clothing line pulley sort of arrangement that permitted one on the shore to bring the dinghy in whatever the tide.


Genius.  Then we got a dock.  Sort of genius phase 2.

When cats yawn

The curmudgeon, being retired, has a certain amount - one could argue a lot - of time on his hands.


Of course, we all yawn, no biggie.  Cats - not so.  Tiger, the wonder cat, has a full face way of yawning.  The ears sit back, the mouth is wide open, and there's a moment of cat dizziness.


Now, THAT'S a yawn.


Sort of like this post.

Hunter Killers

Hunter killers are the Navy's best, deepest diving, fastest, quietest subs that cost a zillion dollars and can pop up to the surface, for political showoff to sink hapless Japanese tour boats.


Tiger, the wonder cat, cost $80, and while still able to fit in the palm of my hand, terrorized the rodent community around Birches.  Today's cats, trained by the Egyptians to bring their findings back to their chief-of-staffs, so he can sweep up whatever parts weren't eaten, happily aren't overly fond of deep diving.


But we still chase chipmunks snuck into the house when too many doors are open.


I think the Navy is missing something.

Chicago Beef Sandwiches

The curmudgeon grew up on a New England diet - beans & franks every saturday night, great cole slaw, and always overcooked roast beef.  My sainted Mother decided to try Italian cooking when he was 14.  The red stuff wasn't supposed to be ketchup.


But this is about Chicago beef sandwiches.  Unlike Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches, where the cheese, in the curmudgeon's mind, cures all, Chicago went for garlic and very, very fatty gravy.  


Heaven.

The Muppet Show

The curmudgeon has been slowly acquiring - and slowly is the key in the curmudgeon fraternity, being cheap and all, some favorite tv shows.


The Muppet Show just appeared on my doorstep.  Simply genius.


I am currently in negotiations to be the third curmudgeon in the balcony, but the studio thinks they are way better looking, so we'll see.


Jim Henson - a genius we all should miss.

Cookery

The curmudgeon often puts function before form - the engineer in him.


So when his sainted wife bought a set of cookware because of its beauty, rather than its design (a metal handle - are we kidding?)  Dime store teflon pans with plastic handles would have been way more intelligent, but we somehow needed  designer Chantal enamel pans that look beautiful, and burn your hands every time your dinner is finished.


And, unlike teflon, are a bitch to clean.


Women.

Sailing Backwards

The curmudgeon is, after a lifetime of training from the skipper, quite the skilled sailor.  After all, our boats didn't even have engines, so taking off from the mooring required some heavy pulling on the mooring line until the rudder kicked in and the sails would fill.  Stopping on a dime on the return to the mooring was the magic the skipper had.  We're talking a 40 foot racing sloop.  Stop on a dime.


The curmudgeon once agreed to take his Mom on a sundown cruise.  Dad was back at work, it was just the three of us (little sister was aboard) so the manly pulling off the mooring wasn't an option.


Simple: drop the line and sail backwards.  Hold the tiller over and the boat would eventually turn enough to let the sails fill, and we were off.


What fun!  The curmudgeon will never forget the look of fear on the owner of the overnighting yacht just behind us as we started, but we pulled it off.  Off and running.  Enjoying a rare evening sail. 


Then there was that stopping on a dime bit.  On the way back in to the harbor - remember, a 40-foot racing sloop with no engine - we calmly considered our options.  More precisely, we were in full panic mode.  My plan was simply to sail the thing onto shore.  That would more or less stop it, and you wouldn't have that long row home in the dinghy.


Saner heads prevailed.  I, too, stopped on a dime.


Good training.

Cat Alarm Clocks

The curmudgeon had a recent Eureka moment.  Scruffy, all 16 pounds of her, was sitting on his chest at 5 am, purring loud enough to wake the dead (moi), and clawing my face just to make sure the message "breakfast" was adequately transmitted.


At my age, sitting up at the side of the bed at 5 am requires a few moments for the dizziness to subside, followed by standing up that also requires some dizziness to subside.


Not so hungry cats.  And during all this, Tiger beams back from his planet and joins the fun.


Scruffy has been within a 5-minute window every day.


Electric alarm clocks?  I think not.

Carving

Summering in Maine as a kid, the curmudgeon noticed that it could be really, really boring. By the way, it could have been way worse - my Dad had to do a tour of the relatives each year, and there being, like 3,000 or so, I don't understand why he just never bought a gun.  After all, each year, there would be a few less for the familial tour


But, in those days, kids found something to do.  The curmudgeon, Boy Scout training firmly in hand, decided to carve itty-bitty (1") replicas of his favorite wooden lobster buoys.


This involved cutting down an alder - carefully selected to be 1" around, cutting it up into the required 1 or 2 inch pieces, carving the thing, adding the buoy's handle (really tricky carving), painting it, and actually gluing on an even itty-bittier piece of rubber for the part that real buoys had that tied them to the warp down to the trap.


The curmudgeon is a saver - still has each.  And quite proud of himself. 

"You got that right"

Being a premier member of the couch potato fraternity, the curmudgeon has a keen eye on important matters.


"You got that right" - it is a trademark line of Gus, in Psych, perhaps one of the cleverest shows on tv.


But it came before - Big Trouble - a movie with a stunning cast, written by Dave Barry, perhaps one of the funniest men alive, and the combination of hapless gangsters from NYC in a foreign country called Miami produced that line repeatedly.


You got that right.

New Jersey

New Jersey is not all that unusual as a state - a pile of politicians that have ran it down the financial drain, double dipping by industrious state officials for personal gain, completely incompetent state workers.  But line all the states up and we're way better than states like  Illinois and Rhode Island.


But NJ has acquired a certain reputation that is the endless butt of jokes, and tv has always used Jersey accents and the refineries along the turnpike as a sort of proof.


The curmudgeon lives in one of the more refined (joke intended) part of NJ.  We have nature preserves (called Reservations) and are adjacent to horse country where fox hunts still occur and old money still exists.


We simply keep it a secret.

Tuning Forks

Sometime ago, under mysterious college-related circumstances, the curmudgeon came to possess a tuning fork."G" -  384 Hz.  


A little beauty, always strike it on something soft - never the edge of something like a table.  The curmudgeon knows these things, but has no idea how.


Out comes a G.  A single tone in all it's perfection.


No electrics, no fancy iSomething, just a beautiful, perfect G.


Who knew heavy R&R could translate into such a simple pleasure?

Paintball Guns

Some 10 years ago, the curmudgeon bought a paintball gun. 


The plan was to scare the deer away from eating his sainted wife's plants, that she would freak about if deer invaded the property (the curmudgeon saw nothing more than green stuff, so the lesson was kind of lost).


So, shoot the invading deer with the paintball gun. 


Gun?  Rather a reach.  I did hit my neighbor's house, seeing how it was a much bigger target than the offending deer. 


After many years of trying, I finally hit one.  Instead of fleeing, it did that "deers in the headlights" bit - it froze.


The curmudgeon resorted to Plan B - he shouted, threw a few rocks at it, and it was gone.


I'm currently after squirrels.

Cats

The curmudgeon is still convinced Tiger is from a different planet.  And, in the dark of night, I suspect he beams back up for some play time with his other-worldly buds.


When he took his playful (and quite inadvertent) jump into the pool last year, he licked himself dry.


Pause.  Spit and whatnot, he licked himself dry.


We need to find that planet.

Lobster Buoys

The curmudgeon grew up learning sailing.  The skipper - his Dad - had little vacation time, so when he was on vacation, the sailing schedule was very specific - first sail at 10 am (you had to wait until the wind came up), the second around 2 when lunch had settled.


At 8 or so, this sailing thing was a real test of patience, and ADD hadn't been invented yet. 


So we made up our own game - look for loose lobster buoys.  The indicators were clear - not floating into the wind, being not where any others were, etc.


Trying to avoid a mutiny, the skipper would humor his crew, and loose buoys would be scooped up.


This is how many sails we have under our belt - we currently have over 100 wooden lobster buoys.  Part of the whole project included repainting each one, hanging around the Red Cottage porch.


This is how great Dads and energetic kids once got along.

Purses

The curmudgeon, in order to keep in the curmudgeon fraternity, must adhere to strict rules: wallet in back left pocket, iPhone front left, and keys front right.  Period.


Women are all over the map.  Purse much match each day's outfit.  Hence, the purse changeout.  And there are way more than 3 things in there.  The inevitable ensues  "Where are my keys?"  "Will you call me so I can find my phone?"


This is not in the curmudgeon manual.

Curmudgeon Training

As part of becoming a curmudgeon, I had to invest a lot of time in watching Matlocks and Murder She Wrotes.


The latter, set in Maine had endless appeal - the California coast never looked so good.


One would never expect a take-to-the-grave clever moment to appear, but it did.  Sheriff Amos Tupper (the famous Tom Bosley attempting a Maine accent) was trying to solve a murder on his own and Dr. Seth Haslett (William Windom - who had the accent nailed, and was a model curmudgeon) observed "Amos, you're going to break an ankle jumping to conclusions."


When Hollywood is good, it is very, very good.

1971

When the curmudgeon first went to work, there were the engineers, and the girls - secretaries, clerks and stuff.  In certain departments, when the female clerk would climb up a step stool to retrieve a file, pencils would hit the floor magically so the men could bend down to pick them up with hopes of looking up her dress.  No joke.


The curmudgeon's sainted wife, in a job interview, actually witnessed her potential boss slowly push his pencil holder off his desk, waiting for a view (quite worthy, I must point out), of her bending down to pick it up.

Then there was payday.  The curmudgeon had immediately signed up for electronic payments.  These guys, no.  The Wells Fargo guys, armed to the teeth, would roll in a thingie filled with cash and take checks and give out cash.


Here's my point - there were guys who would proudly go home that night, hand their wives the household budget money, and simply pocket the rest.  She needn't be troubled by what he actually earned.


1971 was one really weird learning experience.

V8s

The curmudgeon has made no secret of his enjoyment of high-performance cars.  When BMW introduced their 300hp V8 in 1994, the money couldn't fall out of his wallet fast enough.


A mid-sized sedan that not only did 0-60 in six seconds, but 60 to 80 in pretty much the same amount of time.


The V8 had a certain roar, and eagerly encouraged its use.


Fast forward to 2009: his new BMW has exactly the same horsepower, with a twin-turbo 6-cylinder engine.  Same zoom, but no roar.


The curmudgeon weeps for the past.

Hyphenated Americans

The curmudgeon grew up simply thinking he was an American.  Somehow, over time, Americans decided to hyphenate their country of origin with American.


Let's pause and get this straight - we all fled our country of origin to join the only country on earth that blends cultures.  Check your history - Europe is still in tribal warfare.


But for "political correctness" (a term that has its own built-in stupidity), there are actually Americans who feel they can't simply be "Americans."


Yet we persevere.

Inspector Clouseau

The curmudgeon is a great fan of Peter Sellers, as recently noted.  His suffering boss in the Pink Panther movies, Herbert Lom, was the greatly more talented actor.  Whether inadvertently being hit by Clouseau and falling into a river, or shooting off his nose, he was brilliant.


Imagine the curmudgeon's surprise that he turned up on a Hawaii 5-0.  Half-way around the world. 


Still as brilliant as ever.

SPAM - the wonder meat

A bit of history - SPAM nurtured our boys in WW2 and currently, its biggest users are Hawaii & England, a result of GI largess.  Monty Python even did a routine about it.  The french, a hapless military country, spat at it and starved for years.


The curmudgeon is proud to say he is quite fond of it.  Properly prepared - a brown sugar glaze & cloves, macaroni & cheese as a side, and he is in culinary heaven.  And, the next day, there are scrambled eggs & SPAM and SPAM sandwiches.


A wonder meat indeed.

Very stupid people

Did anyone see the recent TIME magazine cover story on the "plight" of college graduates without jobs?


The article used 8 student stories as the proof of this awful economic situation.  Upon closer inspection, their degrees ranged from "documental filming" to "historical philosophy".


Not a single math graduate, not a single engineering graduate.


And we should care they don't have jobs?

Too much tv

The curmudgeon is not apologetic about watching a lot of tv.  With streaming Netflix, he is catching up on a lot of favorite shows.


Recently, watching a Star Trek, he noticed as they landed on some far away planet and started to explore on foot what startlingly looked like southern Calif, he noticed it looked exactly like a ranch that he has seen on a Rockford files.


Think of the mind-boggling Universal coincidence.

Religious Observations From Overseas

The curmudgeon knows better than to enter into any religion-based froo-ha-ha.


An old work companion, who retired to Paris yikes 15 years ago or so, has always stayed in touch.  Our basic balance was that I was quite logical, and he was creative - he did brochure artwork, really twisted other stuff, and beats this curmudgeon by a mile in the curmudgeon dept.


This year's Christmas card, for example, shows a woman using a straw to inflate a frog.


He always includes a letter tirade on global politics and pictures he has patched together.  Here's this year's jewel: "God took 6 days to create the mess we live in, and then had the gall to give himself a day off".


As I said, twisted.

Great Friends

The curmudgeon is blessed with some true, life-long friends.


One suggested the following: Why don't we do a Mystery Science 3000 thing ourselves on the Republican debates?


Followed closely by "we may not know where we are going, but we are making great time"


Another, an economics genius (our periodic diner breakfasts always include economics lessons  that, let's face it, sail over the curmudgeon's head)


His line: "conservatives are liberals who were mugged by reality"


You have to admit, politics are endlessly entertaining.

BMWs & snow

BMWs were, before 4-wheel traction control and such, pretty lousy on snow-covered streets.  And yet, they came from Bavaria.


The curmudgeon's first, a little 320, with it's perfect 50-50 weight distribution, delight in leaping into turns, combined with the curmudgeon's perhaps not driving at the proper speed for the road conditions, would inevitably leap into a roadside snowbank.


This got old  real quick.  The curmudgeon hit upon two solutions: a 20-pound bag of cat litter in the trunk for a tad more traction, and the best part, a couple of short logs.


Next face plant in a roadside snowbank, throw the logs under the rear wheels, and voila!, you were back on the road, eagerly looking for yet another snowbank.  And, they were reusable!  Never accuse me of not being committed to conserving Mother Earth's resources.


The curmudgeon isn't stupid - he perhaps liked to drive a little too fast.

Clean Underwear

The curmudgeon's sainted mother, like so many others from that era, always counseled "Wear clean underwear, in case you are in an accident" 


Having had his share of 911 rides to the hospital, the curmudgeon has come to realize that if the accident is bad enough, clean underwear is pretty much at the bottom of the list.


Another myth down the drain.

Hollywood

Hollywood is like FM radio - when it's good, it is very good, but when it's bad, it's awful. (A lesson at Brown in engineering)


Awful 1:  An attempt to remake Kolchak.  The curmudgeon fully realized that the original has laughable guys running around in lizard suits as the demons, but it had Darren McGavin - an actor virtually impossible to top.  The remake lasted all of a week or two.


Awful 2: The remake of Hawaii 5-0.  Now, the curmudgeon agrees that Jack Lord was over-the-top intense, but at least he shaved and wore a suit.  The new one has tattoos.  And we're supposed to believe he reports directly to the governor?  I think not.


I now return to my balcony seat with my peers on the Muppet show.

McSorley's Old Ale House

The curmudgeon spent many a night with his best friends at McSorley's - an ancient place on E. 7th street in NY - Motto "We were here before you were born"


There were burly waiters who could carry 10 or 20 mugs of ale in one hand to the table - it was very good ale.


Perhaps the quaintest part of McSorley's was they allowed only men in.  That's right - no women.


There are perhaps a zillion bars in NYC that eagerly court women, but McSorley's was just this Irish transplant from the past.


Along comes the mid-70s, and some arrogant feminist - apparently with more money than brains - filed a lawsuit to force them to admit women.  I suspect the judge, with tears in his eyes, knew he had to issue that order.


So McSorley's was forced to admit women.  But they are a clever bunch - there was nothing in the order that said they had to add a women's rest room.


Revenge can be sweet.

Pussy Galore

Back in ought '64, the curmudgeon's sainted father took him to the movies - some action thriller called "Goldfinger" or some such.


At one point, the hero - James, or something, was introduced to a Pussy Galore.


There was quite the ripple of laughter in the theater, so the 14-year old curmudgeon-to-be leaned over to his Dad and asked "why all the laughter?"


"Oh, just a play on words" was the response.


The curmudgeon's sex training was complete.

The Greatest Generation

The curmudgeon just realized that a very important date, December 7 came and went.


That, of course, is Pearl Harbor day.  The Japanese were, and are, a horrible people.  Essentially why the curmudgeon, to this day, refuses to buy their cars.


The curmudgeon's dad and his identical twin went through an accelerated ROTC program at Brown so that they could join the effort to thwart these horrible, horrible people.  Unfortunately, they were quite crafty, and found a pile of idiots who would simply fly their explosive-laden planes into ships.


One was dad's brother's.


These are horrible people.

Herman Cainastanistan

The curmudgeon has no intention of turning to politics.


He would be up night & day, as would be necessary to curmudgeon political things to death.


He will make this one observation, guided by the genius of Lewis Black: if you are a Republican, you are an idiot.  If you are a Democrat, you are an idiot.  It is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in the mirror.


We are done with our lesson in politics.

Ralph & Kacoos

When the curmudgeon's sainted wife was fixing the business telephone business, she had to fly down to some awful place in Louisiana where, bizarrely, the factory was.


Business having been conducted, 10 of them would pile into the rented car and go to R&K for dinner.


R&K even had hats - with crawfish, claws extended, on them.  Of course, the curmudgeon still has one ("trash is the last resort" is a motto - and practice - in the Curmudgeon household).


But, this post is about eat head and suck tail - apparently a ghoulish crawfish practice in Louisiana.


Tiger, the wonder cat, knows all about the eating the head part when munching on a freshly found mouse, leaving his chief of staff to fling the tail part over the back fence.

Tiger Does Email

The curmudgeon thinks he just inadvertently mailed the President some message of some sort.


Tiger likes to help out a lot, and manages to leap onto the pc while I'm creating another brilliant blog post and push keys that nobody knew existed.  He then proceeds to sit on the keyboard and purr.


I hope the President likes the message.

Tock tick

The curmudgeon has always been drawn to classic wind-up clocks.  Regrettably, living in a cramped cape, rather than a stately floor standing one, these were their close cousins, very large wall mounted ones.


His first, a beauty, had a 30-day movement, rang on the half hour as well as the hour, was bought in 1974 at the princely sum of $39.99 and still works beautifully, despite Maine winters (It's in Birches)


It's replacement was a beautiful one, bought at the princely sum of $700, but a  real beaut.  However, rather than tick tocking, it inevitably reverts to tock ticking.


I suspect this is why I drink.

Happy Christmas

The curmudgeon is not immune to emotion, he simply cannot let others know it...sort of messes with the curmudgeon bit.


Seriously, really seriously, he hopes he has brought you some happiness 


Have a nice Christmas

Flap footing

The curmudgeon broke his ankle some 20 years ago.


"Broke" is general term - he shattered it - tiny bits of bone the doctors were concerned would float around and lodge in some godforsaken part of the human anatomy.


Happily, 7 screws and 10 weeks on crutches later, all was well.


But it flaps.  Right foot, precise stepping, left foot, flap.


Due to the remarkable skills of the surgeon, there is no pain, no noticeable impairment, but in the quiet of the night, seeking a Dagwood sandwich, there is a haunting step, flap,step thing going on that reminds the curmudgeon of movies where Captains with peg legs would pretty much make the same noise.


Watch your step.

Warehouse 13

The curmudgeon has never attempted to hide his enjoyment of SF.  His brother, his mother, both readers, went through piles of SF stuff.  To this day, it is still eery how much of that stuff has actually come to pass..


Enter Star Trek.  A remarkable mind-bending show, what with zipping through space at 1,2,6 times the speed of light.  The curmudgeon was spellbound.  And even undeterred when he found out that hidden people were making the doors open and close.


Along comes the Scifi channel.  Unable to trademark that term (and the curmudgeon knows all about such things, as his checkered career included teaching people about creating and protecting trademarks), the Scyfy channel was born.


Not unlike USA, they hatched some rather creative new shows - Eureka being a game-changer.


Warehouse 13 is his current favorite - give it a try.

It's Bouquet, not Bucket

Outside of Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas, and Monty Python, the Brits aren't especially associated with humour.


Enter Rowan Atkinson: Mr. Bean.  Tightly followed up by "Keeping up Appearances", the curmudgeon gives two thumbs up to each of them


If there were any more thumbs, Monty Python would get them, but the curmudgeon is a lot scared what exactly they would DO with them.

Sculling

Summering in Maine, the curmudgeon and his sainted brother were pretty adept in boat matters.  


Yes, the rowboat broke free on occasion and ended up on the shore at the head of the harbor, but we knew our bowlines.


But to sculling: that's when you stand in a very small boat and furiously scull, for reasons to this day, the curmudgeon cannot fathom, in front of said boat.


Being an energetic, and apparently quite stupid, youngster, the punt (VERY small boat) would actually catch up with the oar. It being an oar and all, it merely put the brakes on the forward motion. You either did a very delicate balancing dance, or pitched forward into 50 degree water.


Us crazy kids.


The harbor lobstermen sculled from behind, thus negating the danger. 

Tiger, the wonder cat

7 years ago, when the then-developing curmudgeon found Tiger at a midcoast Maine animal shelter, he was looking at a pile of 6-week old kittens, the curmudgeon selected Tiger, because of his stunning good looks and the half white nose bit.


Then I picked him up.  The purring set in.  My heart melted.


Fast forward 7 years.  At the vet for his annual checkup, where most pets freak, the vet made the fatal mistake of holding onto him to listen to his heart.  The purring set in.  But she knew a trick - run the water in the sink, and normal cats would quiet.  Sure enough, Tiger stopped purring for, oh, easily 5 seconds.


We decided the heart was sound.

The don't hurt me guys

Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan created such a wonderfull pair of brothers on SNL, that an entire movie was spun off.


Night at the Roxbury.  If you haven't seen it, do so.


Their trademark was to jerk their heads to the Haddaway song, "What is love?"


Here's the moment to look for: Will was driving, Chris in the death seat, and their song came on, so heads got to jerking.  Chris jerked to the right and broke his window.  A funny moment, but "I did it again" pretty much made it a memory forever.

More fraternity hijinks

At Brown, each fraternity had its own dining room, away from the hoi polloi out in the main dining area.  Food fights would inevitably ensue..perhaps every week or so - see Jeeves & Wooster for visuals.


There were mashed potatoes, meatloaf flying all over the place.  And, regrettably, the occasional vegetable.  Peas were included in the free-for-all, but once a pea - a pea - lodged into the ear of one of the participants.  Way into the ear.  The probability, logistics still stun the curmudgeon.


The movie "Animal house" only wished it could capture this stuff.


Again, one of the top colleges in America.