Never Enough Stuff

Why do we need so much stuff?  In fact, much of the stuff we think we need only serves to make us miserable. I’m perfectly happy with my two pairs of shoes and much to my wife’s dismay; I continue to wear only one of them. The other pair must sit idly by in the closet and wonder what they did.

We’ve had this discussion; my wife has about two hundred pairs of shoes. Try as she may, she cannot find a way to wear, two pair at one time. All those shoes sit in the closet and call to her, in the night, her stuff haunts her. She is the only person I know whose stuff has stuff. We moved recently, and much of our stuff was placed in storage.

So being a guy, I only imagined I had stuff to worry about. You know, things like. Is Georgia going to beat South Carolina? Or worse, Georgia lost that game, now the question has to be asked for another whole year. Was that pig’s foot, on the ground, too long to pick it up and eat it? If no one sees me pick it up, did it actually fall, at all? Sorry there are just some foods that are too good to let a little thing like touching the ground or falling on the table stop you from eating them. Peanut M&M’s, for example, macaroni and cheese or BBQ ribs. Is my beer cold enough? Is my steak hot enough and does my wife know about the two hundred bucks stashed in the garage? Does she know about the girl next door who keeps asking to go mud bogging in my truck? Will those tires get me through that mud hole or do I need to buy bigger ones?  What are the two guys names who are running for president and are either, for or against gun control? These are the true questions of life, but for a small, uncommonly cute Peruvian woman, the questions are much more complex.

When we moved, at least 196 pairs of shoes, eighteen hair brushes and dozens of coats were placed, with tons of other stuff, in storage. Poor girl has not had a decent night’s sleep ever since. When we eat dinner out, she gets a little misty, and we then have to pay a visit to the storage unit, which is out of the way, and a little too far to go at ten p.m. She must sit in the unit and console her stuff for a few minutes, trying desperately to make her stuff and herself feel better about the plight they collectively find themselves in. She pets and whispers sweet nothings to the abandoned stuff and upon returning home falls asleep with tears drying on her face. Whimpering in the night is more likely related to visions of abandoned brushes, not horrific scenes caused by too many onions at dinner or too many late night horror movies.

Recently she made a trip to D.C. To prepare for the trip a visit to the storage unit was required. Of course, the mental fall out of that trip will take weeks for her and her poor mistreated stuff to get over. She dug and picked through everything in the unit, to select one coat for the trip. As with each visit, much more than is needed returned to our already packed, little apartment. It’s kind of like going shopping, your wife picks out ten pairs of shoes, you tell her that three will do, she agrees to buy eight, but somehow checks out with twelve. You smile and pretend not to notice, simply so you may live to fight another day.

I was married to a Georgia girl before, picking a coat to make the D.C. trip would have been an easy thing after all a fur lined jean jacket goes with everything. For my wife, it was a life altering decision. She wanted to take five, for a three day trip, but ultimately settled on four. One pair of pajama’s turned into four, and several brushes, a lamp and whatever could be placed in the car, when I wasn’t looking, made the trip home, as well. Here’s the crazy part, she already has six brushes, I have one, every time she leaves the house, mine is the one that goes with her.

Stuff and the worrying over stuff causes too much stress. My poor wife tosses and turns over the mental health of her stuff and as long as some of it is relegated to live in the dungeon at the public storage building, she will continue to have nightmares. We will continue to make visits at odd hours to comfort its contents. I’m not sure her stuff feels any better after our visit, but she does and after all isn’t that what counts?    

 

 

A Porta-John by any other name.

What’s Up With John

Kennesaw

What in the world is up with John? Who did he make mad? I mean, who would want to go through life having every outhouse and more importantly Porta-John named after them?

Why is he the one who receives all break up letters? Some John, somewhere, must have truly made some women, mad.

Have Johns throughout history been more prone to patronizing women who work at the oldest profession in the world? Certainly, for this name to have become synonymous with the customers of such women, it must be so. Maybe this explains the Dear John letter thing. Women are so disgusted with Johns; they undoubtedly are forever in search of new and degrading ways to use the name.

Okay I found some of the answers, but they may be more disturbing than the questions. The toilet was invented in 1596, but not by Thomas Crapper as most believe. It was invented by a Godson to Queen Elizabeth I, Sir John Harington. This was where the name started, however it was further solidified during the time of Robin Hood.  After a long absence, King Richard the Lion Heart returned to find his kingdom in shambles. For his Brother Prince John’s, inept dealing with Robin Hood and his Merry Men, he decreed that the toilet and his brothers name be forever tied together.

Harington only produced two toilets before his death. The first was installed in his castle and the second in Queen Elizabeth’s. That one was only ordered because he was her Godson. I guess leaves, and the cold night air remained in fashion for centuries to come. Go ahead just try not to imagine the Queen with poison ivy on her backside.

Thomas Crapper was a plumber who would do much to bring the toilet in from the outdoors. While he did not invent it, he figured out a way to turn the John into a money making apparatus. Most people were concerned with the delivery of food to one end of the process; Thomas made his fortune taking care of the other.

Dear John and wait, there are Dear Jane letters too, seemed to have originated during World War II. At that time, John was the most common name in America. Also, all letters sent to servicemen overseas were always started with the names used between love ones. Dear Johnny, Davie, Sammy, when the one sent to end a relationship was addressed it changed to a curt form of the given name. Therefore, Johnny became John and so on. The popularity of the name John would also go on to create other uses for it in our culture. For example, John smith as an alias, and John or Jane Doe for unidentified bodies. The letters sent home to inform the family of the death of a loved one during World War II became known as John Doe letters. The last contributor to the forming of a Dear John letter was a popular Soap Opera which ran in America, on the radio from 1933 to 1944.

John: An anonymous, obscure or unknown person. We all know that men would never lie. I say this as I dodge rotten lettuce and tomatoes. The practice of calling prostitutes customers John which is used by prostitutes and Law Enforcement personnel, alike, originated because so many men introduced themselves as John regardless of their real names. Imagine that. John has now become generic for man.

If we are to discuss this further, we must investigate those Joneses. My grandmother was a Jones, and while she was the proud owner of not one, but three outhouses at the same time, she was not particularly wealthy. In fact, most of her family could have been kept up with, using only a broken down wagon or a bicycle with loose spokes.

Turns out the Joneses were one of the wealthiest families in New York at the turn of the century.  The Astors, Vanderbilts and many others, built their wealth simply by trying to catch up with the Joneses. There was also a popular comic strip, which was started in 1913 by Pop Momand, it ran for 26 years and eventually became popularized in books, radio and movies. In it, the Joneses were never actually seen, but were annoying, pretentious neighbors of the comic strips heroes.

It appears the use of the word Jonesing: craving or strong desire is directly related to the act of keeping up with the Jones. However, it became associated with heroin addiction during the sixties, it and a similar word tripping have now become part of our everyday speech.

I think I should close with two additional definitions.

Idiomatic expression:  an expression whose meanings cannot be inferred from the meanings of the words that make it up.

Idiotic Expression:  any word or phrase, written or verbally communicated by Kennesaw Taylor.

The Sardinian Occupation of a Buick

I don’t know who Murphy was, but his laws are more inescapable than any passed by the Supreme Court and require no gargantuan army to enforce them. As we prepared to leave on Jan. 16th the car, big enough for the trip, succumbed and decided, at the last minute to have problems. A much smaller Buick appeared to do its part in the newest American Revolution, what’s more American than a slightly small, Buick?
It took a shoe horn and grease to load five young idealists, enough ideals to stock Wal-Mart, if Wal-Mart carried such things, the gear required to be homeless for two days and an overweight journalist, into it. Undaunted the Buick smiled and departed on its journey to deliver a heaping, overflowing dose of Americans and their stuff, to the streets of the most important political, capital of the world.
The small Buick and the overflowing amounts of patriotism it contained defied the laws of physics for almost 600 miles, 950 pounds of, insert smelly word here, in an 800 pound sack. Murphy could not fit inside, but was content to ride atop the car, kind of like the dog of a certain candidate who wishes to be the next prince of Pennsylvania Avenue. As the miles passed below, the rain and cold descended from above.
The train ride into the city of Washington DC. was enlightening as people jockeyed to avoid Americans who would dare come to the nation’s capital to exercise their American rights and the signs they carried. The dash across the city, through the rain, intended to dodge the drops falling into the freezing temperatures was doomed. By the time the tent was up, the rain’s victory was nearly complete; except the spirits of the group gleamed through the cold, rainy, predawn, unimpeded.
The march to occupy Congress started at nine and several hundred protesters shouted their way down Pennsylvania Avenue, surrounded by bicycle cops, motorcycle cops, cops in cars, cops on foot, cops on horses and cops driving vans and buses.
As the morning moved along some were arrested, but their reason for being there was not diminished nor denied. Several hundred turned into 1500 by lunch, of course by then most of the media had returned to their rooms to write unflattering pieces about the protesters and their numbers, while drinking martini’s and eating Grey Poupon on imported salmon sandwiches.
At 6:30 the number had risen to over 3000 and with great purpose and a verbal power, adequate for changing the world, they marched to the Supreme Court. The media sipped their drinks and told stories of the wars they almost died in as thousands of average Americans owned the streets of our Capital, “Who’s streets, our streets?” echoed between the high-rise symbols of our freedom and might, as they marched toward the Whitehouse.
Thousands of Citizens arrived at the Whitehouse accompanied by hundreds of police officers and a generous amount of riot gear which waited in the wings, in the end it was not needed. The only thing missing from this, the most important and decidedly, possible volatile time of the day, was the media. I’m sure the Hotels along Pennsylvania Avenue loaded up expense accounts with designer beer and expensive food, as the reporters prepared stories about what had happened instead of what was happening. I guess it isn’t true, that you get what you pay for, or maybe the news industry got exactly what they wanted and not one word more.
After someone was spotted peeking from a window of the Whitehouse, the protest, hoping it was the president, retook the streets and moved back toward Congress for an occu-party, complete with pizza and dancing. The march had taken all day and had controlled over six miles of streets in the most influential city of the world.
If I have a war story to tell, it’ll be of a return trip, in an occupied Buick, containing a young, Afghanistan, war veteran with a tear on his cheek, who after laying his life at the altar of freedom has now lay his tears below the symbols of that freedom, containing a soft spoken Christian from the mountains of Georgia, on a quest to decide his level of commitment, containing a slightly psychotic, conservative, hippy, struggling to find his place in this world, containing an understated, bookseller with no delusions of, but a firm possession of grandeur and an ingrained ability to lead, containing the Buick’s master, a unassuming Massachusettsian who has the capability of being one of the future princes of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
This slightly overweight journalist with bad knees, who struggled to keep up, has always been proud to be an American, but never more proud than he is today. I salute and will always be proud to be counted among the Sardinians.

Pecans, Vegans, Runners and Other Nuts

As I write this my bags are packed, I’ll need to move and change my name as I expect a visit from the Animals liberation Army. While they may not advocate the eating or using of any animals products, they have no such reservations about shooting a meat chomping, Redneck.
I ran five miles a day for over five years, all the while smoking three packs a day; it really toasted the other runner’s shorts. One day while running I realized no one was chasing me. I decided I would never run again, unless someone was.
Later when overseas and involved in Martial Arts, someone convinced me that Buddha, Mohammad, Bruce Lee and Jesus were not only pals but cousins or brothers. It was during that time I became a vegetarian. I spent a year abstaining from meat, but noticed the other vegetarians I encountered were playing with less than a full basket of mixed nuts. It only took one cheeseburger to cure myself of that foolishness.
If vegetarians are mixed nuts then Vegans are a nut roll. A vegan is simply a vegetarian with an attitude, a gun and a little religious fanaticism mixed in. They walk around carrying m-sixteen’s wearing those robes made famous by Moammar Gadhafi and Yasser Arafat. They carry signs saying “Kill the Killers” while yelling “Death to all those who kill”.
If I ever step into the voting booth and see the choices Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent and Vegan on the ticket I’ll know the end is near. If a Vegan becomes president I’m thinking Cuba might become much more attractive. Talk about getting wrapped up in a bunch of wars, the animals of the planet would be safe, but it would be open season on the 97% of us who are not Vegans. If all living things have a soul, that means plants have them too. No one can survive on rocks and dirt, so if the vegans really believe their own words they will become extinct, quickly. Good lord, if no one or nothing can eat anything else, the world will end within a week, making the whole earth experiment pointless.
I know we are all different; it’s what our country is about. I’ll try not to shove a pizza in your mouth, but you best not try to rip one from mine, you might lose a finger. Our country has room for all manner of foolishness and it’s proven every day.
Then you got the work out wacko’s. Try drinking a ton of protein shakes, taking a fist full of vitamins, working out for several hours a day, running for several miles a day, eating expensive organic foods and drinking those eight full glasses of water they recommend. It makes me tired thinking about it and it makes me need to pee. Add to this that soy milk makes you sterile and I’m simply not getting wrapped up in it. How about steroids? Let’s take shots, do what? Not me, why would I want to use a drug that not only doesn’t create euphoria, but may cause you to be so irritable that you kill someone, while suffering from roid rage?
All of us will die of something, someday. I can image sharing my final hospital room with people like these. I’ll be relaxed, probably still sneaking out to smoke. The runners will be paranoid, wondering who might be catching them since they can no longer run and worrying about the seven ounces they’ve gained in the last week, which raised their total weight to that of an anorexic feather. Visions of BBQ riblets and McRib sandwiches, which may or may not contain meat, will be dancing through the vegetarian’s dreams. The vegans will be plotting to kill us all using weapons containing no animal products, while suffering from cheeseburger envy. Secretly they will be cursing themselves for never eating meat and once they give up on the idea, will get really upset upon realizing the only cheeseburger available to them will come from the hospital kitchen and will contain everything, but taste.
We’ll all die, but I’ll do it eating the Big Mac, snuck into the hospital by my overweight grandson. As the vegetarian, the vegan and the runner who is contemplating a new diet so he can die at his optimum weight, look on, I’ll chomp on a fat juicy cheeseburger. I’ll die with a greasy smile on my face rather than the look of shock that will be on theirs. Dying from nothing will be the toughest thing they’ve had to face in life. The only people who will die with a carrot in their mouths will be Bugs Bunny and Vegans. What do pecans, pistachios, vegans, runners, roid riders Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck have in common? They’re all nuts.

Amongst The Hedges

I really intended to write a story about every Georgia game this year. Other than two of our players were eaten by hedges, there just isn’t much to tell. I don’t mean they played between the hedges, I mean they we all up in the hedges. They were amongst the hedges; it took several people to get them out. Turns out our hedges were the best players on their team. It was a win and that’s all Forrest and I got to say about that. Making fun of them would be like kicking sand in the face of a blind guy at the beach. There is no way to feel good about talking trash about this game.

The Other Tennesseans!!

I was again unable to watch the entire game Saturday night due to scheduling conflicts. I really need to make enough money to ensure nothing interferes with my watching Georgia football. I did continue to sneak out of the other thing I was attending, to catch up on the game and see a few plays. Luckily both were happening at the Tate Student Center, on campus. There was a group of students watching the game whom brought me up to speed every time I returned. Thanks to that group of young, enthusiastic, female fans for all their help.
I’ve said it before, but it warrants repeating. If you’ve never been in Athens on a Saturday night, as a Georgia fan, then you haven’t lived. I arrived in the student lounge in time to watch most of the fourth quarter; it was packed and charged with excitement. Granted I nearly had a heart attack with 7 seconds to go and another with 1 to go. Why did Vandy decide to play its best game in two decades, last night and why did it have to be against us? I’ve got nothing but love for James Franklin and his Dores, what a game. With what happened in Tennessee over the last two weeks, it appears the SEC is about to get tougher.
Now for the fun stuff, the Commodores or the Dores as they’re called, got their name from a nickname given to the schools namesake. So their mascot is a hundred-fifty year old crusty, navy dude, complete with sideburns. I think he had the audacity to chase Uga around the field last night with his cutlass. In the end Uga had the opportunity to chew a little, old navy dude, rear end then came home with a chunk of it and little bits of black cloth, in his teeth.
This is twice now we’ve watched Tennessee teams pull out some crazy stuff, but it appears many teams are using unorthodox plays these days. Where is Vandy getting these plays? Did you see that half@&&, sorry halfback pass? Are their plays coming out of Cracker Jack boxes or coming wrapped around bubble gum?
Georgia is having a great season and it shows. Every week the crowd grows at the Tate Center and every week the atmosphere is more electrically charged, it’s a beautiful thing to watch. Different players continue to catch the fever and step up to make big plays, all of the team seems to be invested in this season.
Now we must prepare for Florida, for me the most important game of the year. Florida is a lame Gazelle, running blindly across the Savannah, on three legs, we are the lead Lion, it don’t suck. Still, we learned last night, anyone can surprise you, you better be payin attention. I’m proud of our boys. Goooooo Dawgs.
“At Vandy we’re going to compete with class and play with class. We lost to a good football team.” James Franklin 10/16/11