Hot Sex

Thor: Astute folk know the rules of the game we're playing, and will, therefore, understand the title of this posting. Meanwhile, let's talk about another difference between the North and the South. We nordic folks have the common sense and decency to freeze our bugs every Winter. This is beneficial in two major ways. First, it keeps the bug population way down (except for mosquitos), and second, it sterilizes many of the microbes which the bugs are carrying about.

Now that I live in the South, I've witnessed some bug-related events which are beyond the grasp of a typical Yankee (I believe "damn Yankee" is the correct spelling around these parts.) The biggest for-instance being that, at times, the bugs can be so thick on the highways that cars lose control and skid off into the ditch. And I'd like to point out to my northern friends that this stands in stark contrast to the equivalent northern event involving ice, in that, there's nothing really gross, creepy or disgusting about standing knee deep in snow and pushing your car back on the road. Not even if the wheels spin and slop some slush on your parka. Just imagine the same scene, but replace "snow" with "bugs" and "slush" with "bug guts". This might be why the favored veHICKle of Johnny
Reb is a 4-wheel-drive, dualey 1-ton pick-up.

Now consider a spider or a wasp. As it lives its life, it picks up a number of germs. In the North, the sensible Winter kills most of those germs, and the next generation of spider/wasp has to start collecting germs all over again. Constrast this, again, to the equivalent situation in the South. Each generation passes on its collection to the next. So that today, if one gets stung or bitten, one gets a dose of every germ that those bugs have managed to collect for thousands of generations. The probability that one has built up antibodies effective against even one percent of those germs is pretty close to zero.

Southern kids know that when you get bit, you go to the doc. I, being a damn yankee, was unaware of that little survival tip. In 1993, I was chatting with someone while standing in their yard in my sandals. I saw a very small spider run across my foot. The little sucker bit me on the run, and by the next day, my foot and ankle were swollen to about twice their volume. And the swelling was working it's way up my leg. I didn't go to the doctor, I just took a handful of Benedryl and expected the giant hive to go away. Eventually it did, but my leg turned black with infection. My allergic reaction had so weakened my immune system that it couldn't stand up to anything. Who knows what was growing in my bloodstream? When I finally went to the doctor, he have me a big shot and sent me away.

A year later, a wasp stung me on my arm, and I pretty much repeated all of the above. ("Live and don't learn" is my motto.) I went to the doctor with a black arm and chills. He was mad at me, but I was too delirious to notice. This time he had the nurse give me a Giga-shot. 1000 milligrams of antibiotic, which took, I swear, a full 1000 seconds to inject into my rear end. Then he made me lay down in an examination room for a couple hours since 1. he wanted to keep an eye on me for a while and 2. I couldn't walk anyway since having that much serum injected into ones right rump effectively paralizes it for a time.

I did ask him if I should come running next time I'm stung and he said "after that dose of antibiotics, you'll probably never get an infection again." He was right. Last Thursday I was stung by a wasp again, and, while I got a dinner-plate-sized welt, there's still not a hint of infection.

Tyr: He calls it a welt, but I'm pretty sure that what really happened was that he saw the wasp on his arm and, in his blind panic (he screamed like a little girl) he hit is own arm with his hammer trying to kill the insect. It was 8 in the morning, so it's a sure bet that he wasn't sober, and probably missed the wasp anyway. We never found it, and he is unable to show me where the stinger went in. I keep telling him that a "yankee" is like a "quickee", but you do it with your own hand.

In summary: Get your shots before you travel.

Tyr and Thor

Hurricane Schmuricane

Thor: My prescription runs out today. Being a responsible sort, I called the pharmacy's automated system and asked for a refill a couple days ago. I've been to the HEB twice now to pick up my drugs, but I can't get to the pharmacy window. Heck, it takes 80 minutes to find a parking spot. Austin is 3 or 4 hours from the coast (when traffic is normal) and by the time Rita gets here, she'll be only a thin shadow of her former self. But let's not let a simple bit of common sense stand in the way of a good panic. The check-out lines run clear back to the meat department, and a bunch of cheaters are using the pharmacy cash register to buy non-drugs.

I'm pretty sure most Americans deeply resents those self-centered buttheads who act as if they're more important than the rest of us. I mean those people who choose an action from the category of "Things to do, which, if everyone did them, it'd cause a huge mess", and then proceed to commit that action. It's one thing to pay for a bottle of conditioner while you're paying for your pills, but quite another to ease your shopping cart over to that register and tie up the pharmacist (at the expense of, say, me) with scanning and bagging your groceries. Twit.

And a good panic brings twits out of the woodwork. In this case, they're buying cartloads of bottled water and Sprite. (Don't ask me why it's Sprite, I've just noticed that every cart has a couple cases of Sprite.) So I can't get my drugs, and I ran out today. I suppose I'll have to go stand in the infinite line of twits this evening until I'm successful. Of course, without my drugs, I tend toward violence, which, in this situation, is just what the doctor ordered. A'm checking yoo ouut, yoo mooron.

Tyr: In the worst case scenerio, we might have some high winds, which might break off some branches, which might disrupt our power, which might disrupt our water supply. Since we are homebrewers, we have kegs and kegs of emergency back up beer. So there's really no need for water or Sprite. And if we get really hungry, well, I've been pretty pissed at the dog lately.

I tried Sprite once. It has a strange non-alcoholic twang to it that I really didn't like. "Rita" is short for "Marguarita", after all, so I reckon I know how I'll celebrate the latest hurricane.

In summary: We sure wish we knew how to brew gasoline.

Code 46

Thor: So I watched a DVD last night and one of the characters declared that he had great respect for the Normans. Why? Because "they created the English language from nothing except French." I thought "Yeah, it was quite an accomplishment to take French and build a real language on it." But even the Normans had to use a little bit of Latin to complete the task. It left me wondering if it were possible to construct a usable language from French alone. I doubt it, but it's an interesting philosophical question. If a two Frenchmen are speaking alone in a forest, is there any conversation?

English is a wonderful language. Our vocabulary is massive, containg words like "pentasyllabic" (a word which describes itself) and "sequipedalianism" (if you use this word then you've committed the sin it describes.) Many languages borrow words from other languages, but English doesn't just borrow words, it hunts them down in back alleys and beats them into submission. English even steals its own words, borrowing nouns to make verbs. As Calvin said "Verbing weirds language." In what other tongue could you say such a wonderful thing?

You can even make up nonsense words in English and have them make sense (as in Jabberwocky. Just what does "brillig" mean after all?)

Tyr: I bought a bottle of fairly decent tequila (Commemerativo) yesterday which is hard to do in Canada. But since it was Canada, half the language on the bottle had to be in French. So I found it pretty funny that on one side of the bottle about 2/3 of the printing was in Spanish and the other 1/3 in English. On the other side of the bottle both the English and Spanish were translated into French.

These Quebecers are so anal about their language, they rob themselves of the little cultural experiences, like trying to decipher the Spanish on a bottle of tequila. I wonder how one says "anejo" in French?

In summary: English is almost as good as God's original language: German.

Tyr and Thor

Victor Victoria

Thor: A man can't live to be so old as 30 years, without having a certain two accusations lobbed at him. As is well known, a male with a real Y-chromosome can distinguish only 3 to 6 colors. If he can spell "shartroose" or can give advice on fashion or owns more than two pair of shoes, then even most open minded liberal will secretly question his sexual orientation. But what happens? Wife comes home having spent 6 hours and $300 at the beauty parlor getting the color of her hair slightly adjusted (say from "reddish ash blonde" to "copper dishwater blonde") and, after 3 minutes, starts bawling because Husband didn't notice. Or he didn't notice that this pair of heels is 1/2 inch higher than the identical ones in her closet.

Men don't notice stuff. We're always in trouble for not knowing the color of our wives' eyes after 3 decades of marriage. We don't know her favorite color and we never notice when she's made a "significant" change to her appearance. When she asks "Does this make me look fat?" we get in trouble for hesitating before we answer. She thinks we're cooking up a lie. The reality is that we don't have the faintest idea whether her butt will appear larger to her friends if she opts for her mauve capri pants over her cyan pleated skorts. Most of us learn to "just say 'no'" as quickly as possible, but it's a long hard road before we learn that lesson.

But fercrynoutloud, I'm sitting in a chair, half asleep wearing a quarter-century-old T-shirt (consisting of exactly 8 T-shirt molecules,) grass-stained sweatpants, mismatched socks, and two days' worth of beard, and suddenly I'm a fashion expert? What could be going on in her head that she thinks my opinion here could be anything but a wild guess? Further, for a man to decide whether something is "bigger" than another thing, he has to get out his measuring tape and measure both of them. This gives us quite a delemma, because in such a case, both things are the same thing: 1. Her butt in the pants and 2. Her butt in the skorts. A man knows darn well that a thing is the same size as itself. Her question can do nothing but confuse him.

Bottom Line Number One: Men don't notice stuff.

Now for the other accusation: "Men have forced women into aspiring to an unattainable body shape." According to this (wild and untenable) theory, it is men who, by lusting after the Victoria's Secret models and Playboy centerfolds, have created a standard for women which virtually no woman can live up to. Right. Wife comes home with her hair color adjusted by one angstrom, and presents Husband with $300 bill. Her response to his fit is "but I do it to look nice for you."

"LIAR!" I say. She knows darned well that he can't tell the difference between her "before" and "after" pictures. And every woman who went to high school knows that most boys want to get into most girls' skirts. Men just aren't that picky. A guy who can discern only 5 colors simply doesn't have the faculties to set any kind of fashion or body shape standard. The variety of shapes and sizes of models used in the Victoria's Secret catalog could be greatly increased, and men 1. would still "read" it just as avidly and 2. wouldn't really notice.

A typical timeline goes as like this: January 1, 1992: Kirstie Alley gets chubby. January 2, 1992: every woman on the planet notices that Kirstie Alley has gotten chubby. January 1, 2002, the first straight male asks himself "Is Kirstie getting a bit chubby?" January 1, 2007, Kirstie Alley achieves her 1981 body weight. Only 6 men in the world noticed that she briefly changed sizes.

Bottom Line Number Two: It's not men, it's women who have set their own unreasonable standard.

That's right, women go shopping, to church, to work, and compare themselves to each other, using their bizarrely overdeveloped fashion skills, and have set up a culture of competition amongst themselves. Their woman's intuition can immediately size up another woman's shape, clothing and primping and deduce "Although our butts are exactly the same size, she beat me, because that dress makes her butt look smaller than mine. However, her nail polish doesn't match her purse and those shoes are last year's design, so I'm up one point."

Contrast this to the man who observes both women and thinks only "I wonder which one I can get in the sack soonest?" The man who can't tell that his wife just had 6 inches of hair lopped off, sure can't tell whether some supermodel put on 10 lbs.

Tyr: Been there, done that. Almost in the same breath, I've gotten "If you really loved me, you'd have noticed my new updo" along with "Do you think she's prettier than me?" Prettier? As if it were a sliding scale? As far as a man is concerned, there are only two kinds of women. Those who'll sleep with him and those who won't. There is no "prettier" or "more fashonably colored in the hair" or "wears clothes that are more slimming." She's either Category A or Category B. Period.

Is it women who chase men all over the playground, the campus or the singles bar begging for sex? Noooooo. So where did the myth come from that says women have to "conform to the unattainable body image" in order to attract men? Men get blamed because women don't have enough sense to eat a decent meal every day or because women spend all their money on clothes and primping, thereby not being able to afford car insurance. But it's clearly not our fault. I've never heard a man say "Honey, I picked up these really sexy jeans for you today at the mall. Please eat nothing but grapefruit until they fit." On the other hand, the times I've heard "Come on Honey...for me?" are plethora.

In summary: It's not Victor, it's Victoria who is Victimizing women.

Tyr and Thor

Idiot Magnet

Thor: I have a certain area of personal space I like to maintain, and if I can clip you with my war hammer while standing flat-footed, then you're in it. As we rub shoulders with society, we should expect to bump elbows occasionally. However, I seem to hold a mysterious attraction for the noisiest, pushiest, most obnoxious elements of said society. When I'm cooling my heels at the airport, I like to kick back with a crossword. I find an uninhabited gate, and take a seat. Within 5 minutes, some oldish couple on their way to Reno comes into my area and, with the choice of 100's of empty seats, opt for the ones right behind me. Then they speak loudly to each other about inane things, like their hopes that the carpeting in the casino won't be as ugly as last year.

If it's not the couple who think a good time means losing their retirement funds, then it's the yuppie dickhead who thinks he can impress everyone by yelling on his cellphone about his great skill in managing his stock portfolio. I know he doesn't have anyone on the line. So does everyone else. But on he goes, orating to his imaginary friend about how "I told that bitch if she didn't produce, I'd fire her ass and I mean right now. Any dumbbutt could see that AT&T was going to tank, that's why I moved my liquid assets into IBM two weeks ago....." Dream on, hotshot. IBM, UBM, we all BM for IBM.

There's always a pack of these doofs following me around. I'm an idiot magnet. I always get the check out girl who can't make change, the day dreaming bus driver, the waitress who has a perfect record of screwing up every order she's ever taken. I eat at Subway quite a bit. At least once a week, and I always get the same thing: 6-inch BMT on cheese bread, no onions, no olives. They have never put onions on. Great. But somehow, they have missed adding olives only three times. My habit has been to sit down, carefully pick off the olives and line them up on the window sill next to my table. Since some poor slob has had to clean up these sun-baked olives at least 47 times now, I would have thought that they'd kind of catch on. Screw 'em. Quiznos is better, even if it's farther away.

Back to the airport. There are many people who just want to read or work a puzzle, which is a darned hard thing to do when someone is yapping in one's ear. The infamous and new Austin-Bergstrom International Airport takes it one step further. The brainless Texans who run the place assume that everyone is as illiterate as they are, and they've installed TV's at every gate. So even if a guy could find a deserted section to hide in, he couldn't concentrate because the boob toob is blaring away. And if that weren't bad enough, we have to have an announcement every 60 seconds about being vigilant and about not parking in the no parking zones.

I don't mind if people want to be stupid, but I do wish they would be stupid quietly and with someone else's time and money.

Tyr: Here's my experience with the Austin airport. Back when 9/11 was still fresh in everyone's minds, the guy running the x-ray machine was being overly anal, deciding to have 9 out of 10 bags searched. In my backpack, I had one of those cheap cigar cutters, the kind that come free in a box of cigars and are meant to be disposable . This genius spotted it on the x-ray and decided that I might take over the plane by threatening to knick off the stew's nose.

My pack was handed to two fat, cud-chewing women who dug out the cutter and said "You can't take that on the plane." I just shrugged and said "Then take it." What could be simpler? Evidently they were on some sort of power kick, and I hadn't given them the satisfaction of letting them win an argument. So they repeated "We just can't let that sort of thing on an aircraft." "Fine," I said, "just take it."

I want to be clear. This story is absolutely true in all it's facts and implications. The cheap, plastic disposable cutter meant nothing to me and had no value. I didn't want it, but rather, wanted them to throw the damn thing away and let me get on the plane. I made no argument or even smart remarks. BUT, they insisted that we repeat the cycle of "You can't have that on the plane" and "Then take the damn thing, I don't want it", seven more times.
I'm not kidding. I told them to take the cutter fully 9 times. Whatever they wanted from me, emotionally, they weren't getting. They finally took it and gave me my pack, upon which I muttered "sic transit gloria mundi."

That's Latin for "so passes the glory of the world." Upon hearing this, which they could not have understood, since these two were far from mastering their mother tongue, they started shouting "Leo! Leo!" An overgrown Oompa-Loompa wearing an orange sport coat waddled over and they informed him that I had threatened them with hiring a terrorist. Honestly, I can't make it work. Did they hear "terrorist" when I said "transit"? But where did the whole scenerio about me hiring a terrorist to wreak my revenge upon them for stealing my worthless cutter come from? It remains a mystery, but it gets worse. Leo hauls me to the side and calls the cops. So one of Austin's finest (which isn't saying much) comes and hauls me even farther off.

Leo told him what the cows said I had threatened to do. I told him several times that I said nothing of the sort. He gave no indication that he heard me, but just kept repeating that we all needed to calm down in the airports nowadays. I added that I was and had been quite calm, and it was the cows who were screaming at the top of their lungs, not me. No avail. Eventually, all he did was "take down my name" and I made my flight. But now, without benefit of appeal, my name must certainly be on some secret list of "persons of interest", which explains why I get "randomly" yanked out of the line for deep-cavity search every single time I fly.

In summary: Within 15 minutes of 9/11, the citizenry of the United States solved our terrorism problem by means of their cellphones and courage. The TSA has accomplished nothing. Well, less than nothing.

Tyr and Thor

Marathons

Thor: There are some things that just need to be said, and I have two things to say about runners. Remarkably, both things I have to say are negative. Actually, necessarily, both things are negative. Runners operate under the delusion that running 1. is noble, 2. is interesting, 3. is interesting to watch, 4. makes one into an icon. None of these things are true. Mankind has invented all sorts of sports which involve coordination, practice and skill. Tennis, archery, football, even skeet. Who are today's runners? They are the inept clods who couldn't make 3rd string in any high school sport. Any doofus with two legs can run (although many of them look pretty dorky while doing it.) Notice a couple things. First, all of these guys are long distance runners. Sprinting takes coordination. Second, notice that the majority of most running clubs consists of math professors and engineers. Heck, half of marathon runners have pocket protectors on their jerseys. Runners are not athletes. Anymore than someone who majors in "shop" is an academic.

Runners are also not all that bright, despite their inherent nerdy-ness. I tried running once, and after the 10th step, I was pretty bored with how things were going. I calculate that a runner takes about 45,000 steps, all identical, during the course of a single marathon. And these guys practice every day. It is likely that anyone who's concentration can be held by such mind-numbing repetition is also very fascinated my small shiny objects.

Bottom line: Running is the very dregs of sport and exercise, and runners are the very dregs of the intelligensia.

The second negative thing concerns runners' egos. If running were really a sport or exercise, then these puffed up morons could hold their events out in the country somewhere, instead of insisting that an entire city shut down while they block off every major street so that a handful of the lowest ranks of society can parade their sorry asses through town. Several million people, who have worthwhile things to do, can't achieve a simple thing like driving to church or the mall or the post office, because as soon as these dolts spot a well-travelled route, they move their circuit to block it. "That way, more people can see us." Yep, it's not about running, it's about visibility.

Tyr: I used to live along a popular marathon route. At some obnoxious hour in the early morning, I'd get woke up by the tiny handful of rooters, consisting of a few family members, who think it helps the runners if they whoop and clap as they go by. (And, in fact, as Thor said, it's not about the running, it's about the whooping.)

But I think the worst thing is the mess they leave behind. Our church is right along the main marathon route, and they always set up a drink station right there. The next day, we have to have a work day to pick up all the empty paper cups. These guys seem to have the ability to snatch a drink on the run without spilling too much, but can't be bothered to pitch the empty cup into a barrel. I guess they're just way too important to have to clean up after themselves.

My dad's pastor, in Des Moines, was being prevented from getting to his church one Sunday morning because of a marathon. Even though there was no one coming, the cop wouldn't let him drive across the intersection. Finally the rather elderly cleric declared, "This is America; you can't stop me from going to church!" and gunned it across the street. We should all send that church a large donation.

In summary: If you can't play racket ball, then get a treadmill and commit your running in the privacy of your own home.

Tyr and Thor

Fish Poop in Elevators

Thor: Another word for "fish poop" is "bass turd". I work on the 13th floor, yet it's tempting to sprint up the stairs rather than deal with a typical morning's elevator experience. I arrive. All the elevators are on the 17th floor and each one stops at every floor on the way down. They all go to the basement. One elevator beats the others to the ground floor on the way up. So the other elevators feel no need to stop but go racing back up to the 17th floor. There are, of course, 4 carloads of people waiting to get onto the one car that stopped. People jostle for position, but to no avail. Why? Because the last two people off the elevator got just outside the door and then had to have a discussion about whether to go left or right. No one could get past the oblivious fish poops, and so the doors closed and the car went, empty, to join his friends on the 17th floor. This is the main reason we have the death penaly in Texas.

Finally, a car arrives and many of us manage to get in it. Look, folks, the car is full of people and not so full of air. So the two garlic and curry eating fish poops in the back who chatter away at Warp 6 use up all the useful oxygen before we get to the 4th floor. Shut up. Shuttup. Shuttup. Shuttup. Same goes for the oral hygene challenged oaf babbling into his cell phone. Shut up. We need the air to last another 10 floors.

Tyr: I suppose you want your own private elevator? Or maybe a Batpole? I've always suspected that you've had a penchant for wearing tights. George Carlin suggested (3 decades ago, when he used to be funny) that a person in your situation should put raisins up his nose. Then when obnoxious people on the elevator (or trolley) see you pick them out and eat them, they will stop whatever they are doing and gape, which makes them very quiet.

In summary: An elevator is no place to meet women.

Tyr and Thor