Special Dog For Congress?

      There are people who just do not take a good photo, and I am one of them. I've had three photos over the years under my profile that appears to your right. The first photo, if you remember, was what looked like a wet dog sitting on a wooden bridge over a creek. Unfortunately that was me....I just looked like a wet dog in the photo. The second photo that I tried was me standing on a sandy beach. The face in the photo appeared grainy. It wasn't the camera's fault...my photographed face just tends to look grainy. The third and present photo to your right may look somewhat normal for a sixty-six year old man. I was eighteen when it was taken!
       Many people just do not photograph well. Woody Allen is one. He is a very handsome man in person and resembles Robert Redford a little bit, but look at all the photographs of him! Hillary Clinton is another.....to look at any of her photographs one would think that she just crawled from under a coal truck. Her eyes appear no more human than a Macy's mannequin, her smile as a humanoid robot, her mouth as a bottomless pit, her skin as Vladimir Lenin's in his mausoleum. Every time I see a picture of her I think of Madame Tussuad's Wax Museum...but actually in person she is a very beautiful lady!  This phenomenon works the opposite way also. Some people never take a bad picture. Anthony Weiner for one.
        I've tried very hard to find a decent picture of myself to put on this page. My driver license looks like I was hauled in for drunken driving and faceprinted instead of fingerprinted. I've tried every angle. A side silhouette looks like Alfred Hitchcock with a beard. I don't even take a good portrait! My mother was an accomplished oil painter. I've added her portrait of me below. The only reason I have not run for Congress is that who is going to vote for someone whose photographs look like they should be on America's Most Wanted?  Hmmm, a lot of people are going to vote for Hillary!

We're Not In Kansas Anymore Toto

         I had an interesting experience tonight for I was alone in a relative's living room with a 60" television set six feet in front of me. Interesting in that in our home I have a 21" set sitting 18' away from from my La-Z-Boy. I turned the set on and was reminded of the 1965 New York World's Fair where I, as a fifteen year old, would enter an exhibition hall and be amazed at the what the future promised in technology. The faces on the screen were clearer than I have ever seen of my own in a mirror. (We're not in Kansas anymore Toto!) It was 7:30 in the evening and I thought that I would turn on The Middle, for I have watched this show faithfully for six years and I'm still are not sure what the main characters look like.
         There were three remotes in front of me and the best that I could do was turn the power on and change channels but had no audio. So....not finding The Middle, I settled for Greta on the Fox Channel which we do not get at home. Watching Karl Rove talk without audio is like paging through Humpty Dumpty without any words. An older man with glasses and a kind, sort of-what am I doing here, look... came on the screen and I thought it was Jeb Bush, but it turned out to be an insulin needle commercial. Then someone kept knocking on people's doors giving them a big check and the people would jump around for joy. Could this be an Obama public service message? Turned out to be Publishers Clearing House.
         I began to hit buttons on the remotes trying to get sound and thought that I switched to a sex film. Two people were running around an apartment taking off their clothes. I never did figure out what that commercial was selling. Well, I know what it was selling but I don't know what the product was. I turned off the set and when I came home I turned our little television on. Aah...little indiscernible figures talking in a little box on the other side of the room....back in Kansas again.

Debate.....2011

      

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Debate Coverage...Sort Of

   

Well, I tuned in to the debate tonight, the first time I have done so, and the following might not be exactly verbatim but it's kind of how I saw it:

Pelley: Governor Perry. What would you do if a nuclear weapon came up missing in Pakistan?

Perry: Let me just say that we are winning in Afghanistan.

Pelley: That was the previous question to Governor Romney.

Perry: Oh...I wouldn't give a penny to Red China.

Pelley: That was two questions ago. Time is up. Thank you Governor.

Garrett: Congressman Paul. How would you deal with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

Paul: Have we ever tried sending him flowers?

Santorum: Excuse me. Excuse me! I just want to say that I totally disagree with Congressman Paul.

Garrett: Governor Huntsman: Would it ever be the right thing to do to bomb Iran?

Huntsman: You know, I sat next to a sailor on the flight in and we have the finest navy in the world.

Garrett: Oookaaay. And what about Iran?

Huntsman: What about it?

Garrett: Would it ever be the right thing to do to bomb Iran?

Huntsman: Let me just say that I used to live in a shack in Iran... I know Iran.

Garrett: And...?

Huntsman: And what?

Pelley: Speaker Gingrich. Would you ever use the fiendish, horrid, un-American torture of waterboarding?

Gingrich: Waterboarding isn't torture.

Pelley: Yes it is! Yes it is! Yes it is!!!
Garrett: Governor Romney. You're really a handsome man.

Romney: Thank you and I sincerely hope that Putin doesn't think that I'm just another pretty face.

Pelley: Mr. Cain. What hands-on experience do you have with nuclear weaponry?

Cain: Hands-on.....as the CEO of Godfather's Pizza? None.

Pelley: Thank-you sir.

Pelley: Congresswoman Bachmann: I notice that you have your hair pinned back tonight. Have you ever
used a washer board while doing your laundry?

Bachmann: Excuse me!

Pelley: Thank you Congresswoman.

Bachmann: Excuse me again. I have sixty seconds to talk!

Pelley: That was sixty seconds.

Bachmann: Two words? Sixty seconds?

Pelley: We're playing by the rules tonight shorty!

Garrett: Speaker Gingrich. Some people say that you will say anything conservatives want to hear?

Gingrich: I'd bomb Iran, stop abortion, nominate Joe the Plumber for the Supreme Court and add Ronald
Reagan's name to the Pledge of Allegiance.

Garrett: Thank-you sir.

Santorum: Hey, Hey, Hey. What about me over here?

Pelley: Senator Santorum. How would you handle the situation in Syria?

Santorum: Well, I would..

Pelley: Thank you Senator. Times up. Governor Romney. Who is going to be your Vice President?

Cain: What kind of question is that?

Pelley: I'll rephrase it. Governor Romney. Is your Vice President on the stage tonight?

Romney: Let me just say that I'd be honored to have any of the 300 millions Americans as my V.P..

Huntsman: Hey! I'm down here in Siberia you know!

Perry: Did I ever tell you the one about the elephant who forgot where he put his trunk?

Pelley: That's all the time we have for tonight. Thank you gentleman, shorty...and the black guy to the left of
Presi...I mean Governor Romney.

The most difficult thing about watching this was in seeing South Carolina Senator Jim Demint watching from the audience and not one of the candidates for president!

Dining Out

         The following is one of those reflective posts that I write and keep here for only a day at the most before relegating it to obscurity in my 'humor and short story' link:

         Maybe the best thing about going out to eat is observing the fellow diners and praying for them. I guess the same thing goes for automobile trips. It's been many years since I had to hitchhike or take public transportation because we or I did not have an automobile but not long enough to forget the difficulties involved in trying to get somewhere without one. Thus I see someone, anyone, walking along the side of the road and offer up a prayer.
         Back to the restaurant, it has always amazed me how there are over 300 million people in America yet aside from twins, no two look exactly alike. I mean... how many different shapes can you have for a nose or a chin and how many different settings can there be for eyes? How wonderful was God's plan and design!
        Take tonight for instance.....and two different tables at the Middle Eastern restaurant that we ate at. At one was a mother and father, presumably, and their son. The father was quiet while the mother did most of the talking, and the son, of about thirteen or fourteen, was demonstrative with his hands, often adjusting his ball cap and occasionally pulling out an electronic tablet of some kind to play with, with his face about a foot from the screen. It was a pleasant scene but my thoughts always wonder if their home life is a pleasant as it looked. Maybe the father grudgingly took them out to dinner. Maybe the mother nagged him into it.
        One certainly could not tell in a restaurant of our home life when I was eight or nine years old. My father was a wonderful man but his life with us was shared with the local bar. Now it was a wonderful bar, I remember it well. The owners were elderly and everyone laughed while I played the bowling game while eating potato chips and drinking Cokes. When we went out as a family I'm sure it looked much like that family tonight but when at home there was often tension. I thoroughly felt blessed in praying for that family tonight.
       The other table in question was a man and what looked to be his two teenage daughters. They smiled and talked a lot more. Where was the mother? Perhaps there wasn't one or maybe she had a lot of holiday cleaning to do and told the family to help her out and go out for supper. I didn't feel as compelled to pray for them as the first table but I did.
       What else are we here for other than to pray for others in this world? I'm sure that's way too exclusive but at such times it feels to be the case. Of particular concern are those folks who might dress as if they don't have much money, or maybe their car looks to be well past its time, or maybe their expressions are just sad or forlorn? I want to tell them to take heart, that this world is passing, that true joy and even happiness is in Jesus Christ, that money means little to nothing in comparison, that Jesus said that with God it can be done but that...."...it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." But how to tell them this...how even to help them?
       What is a man's life on average. The statistics may show it to be higher but I always refer to it as seventy years.....seventy short...yet in looking back on them....seemingly long and almost endless years. So many questions to be answered. So many wonderful answers ahead when we meet our Savior! And so many wonderful faces to look at at that banquet!

Fun With Special Dog

            Someone could make a comedy film out of some of the situations that I get myself into.  I think that Steve Martin would be perfect to play me. I get this unfortunate trait from my mother of whom the 50s television show I Love Lucy must have been based on. She once super-glued her lips together and another time she attached her fingernail to the wall while hanging a picture, and those are just two instances. As for me I'll give just two examples also. At a very formal benefit event I bought a string of tickets to put in the containers of prizes that I would like to win. It took me forever to just pick one. Time was running out and the announcer said that all tickets had to be placed. I hurried back to a "Beer Basket" with all kinds of beer and snacks and threw my tickets in, only I put them in the wrong container....women's lingerie....and I won..."and the winner of the women's lingerie is....Special Dog!! On another occasion my wife and I were at a very nice wedding reception. As we waited to be served, a friend and I stepped outside, he to smoke a cigar and me my pipe, but we didn't want to be out there when the food came so I peeked through a clear line in a frosted window to see if there was food on the table. No tables....only a women combing her hair at a sink!
            Tonight was another "Fun With Special Dog" evening as I attempted to put a clearer picture of myself on the website in place of the beach picture that is there now. This ought to be easy....just follow directions. Not so! I saved the new picture to my blog and then went to the site on my iPhone to see if it was OK. Specialdogg came up with my face filling the entire screen. Surely anyone visiting would think that this blog was run by an egomaniac! You had to scroll down quite a ways just to get to the title! I hurried back to remove the picture but could not find out how! I literally prayed..."Lord help me get this picture off!" So... to any visitors in that fifteen minute time period... I hope that you had a good laugh because I certainly did.....after the beach photo came back that is.

Special Dog's Typical Saturday

           My wife and I had a wonderful day this past Saturday. We went to an Italian Festival in a local community. They had about ten booths set up selling food such as gyros, wine and biscotti. An older couple led off the entertainment with Dean Martin music.....That's Amore....that type of stuff. The only problem was that it was raining and there was no cover except on the stage. We were the only two people at the festival but the show must go on so we bought a couple of gyros and two wines and sat behind the singers on the stage. A bit surreal...yes...but pretty wonderful too...our own private concert!  They would sing to no one with their backs to us and we would applaud...they would turn and say graze and we would return with prego. On the way home we stopped at two stores in the middle of nowhere that I always wanted to visit. The first was a western store that sold boots, cowboy hats, belts, saddles...anything a horse lover might want. The second store was a biker or leathers store. I had a good time in both and bought two du-rags and a ring that also opens beer bottles! As we drove off I said to my wife "You know these are two types of person that I would like to be...but neither of which I am."
          I'll leave this post up for only a day...probably less...and forever after deny its existence!

Carnival Royal

        


        Walking into the dark trailer from the bright sunlight temporarily blinded me. The man in the black sport jacket tightly hugging a turtle neck in 85 degree weather, who had his hand firmly clasped around my wrist, had no problem, for the dark sunglasses helped him make the transition easily. The character of Oddjob flashed through my mind as he fit the description complete with a bowler hat on top of his head.
         I was a little bit disoriented and tried to focus on where I was. There were small television monitors across the one wall and a man sitting in front of them who motioned for me to sit down on a wooden chair directly below the glare of a floor lamp with a flexible goose neck. At least it was cool in the trailer so I took a couple of deep breaths before complaining, "Whats all this about?" He ignored my question and said "Tell me, are you a very good gambler...or just a very lucky one. Or is it maybe something else?" "I hardly call it gambling" I said, and he responded "Well, I guess that I shouldn't either for you seem to win all the time, not much gambling in that." "So that's why you brought me here. I win a lot?" "That's right," he glanced over at my winnings which the apparent security detective laid on the table in front of me and continued. "Is it mathematical equations? Nah, it can't be that, or are you some sort of magician?" "Look" I said brusquely, getting increasingly angry, "My wife must be out there looking for me." I paused to catch my breath and continued, "I pulled five bucks out of my pocket and if I had lost that I would be home by now." "Five bucks? You expect me to believe that you raked in that haul from five bucks?" "Yeah! I'm not going to waste more than five bucks in a dump like this!"
         With this Oddjob pushed me back into my seat and his friend said "We take a lot of pride in our work. We run a first class operation. A lot of people have a good time, we make a small profit, that is until someone like you comes around." "I have to find my wife." I said. "She must be getting worried by now." My interrogator was heavy set and bald. He began scanning the monitors on the wall. "Look at these screens. do you see her anywhere?" I pulled up closer to the monitors. She wasn't by the merry-go-round, or the caterpillar....or the french fry stand. "There she is. Look...she's looking all around....by the cotton candy booth" Curly, for lack of a better name, looked at Oddjob and said "Go get her. Tell her that we just have few questions for her husband."
         He looked at me "OK now?" I settled down "Make it fast." He got up from the desk and walked over and picked up Snoopy. It was a good three feet tall, white and fluffy, with a perfect likeness of Charlie Brown's dog. I fidgeted, for the tips of his fingers had nicotine stains. "Please keep your hands of my Snoopy." He set it down and pointed to each one of the stuffed Snoopys "One, two, three, four, five...and six...six huggable, squeezable Snoopys...all won on a game that, mathematically speaking, shouldn't give a winner more than once every other day..." I was getting more irritated and stood up "Look...I tossed the ball and it rolled into the red cup..." He met me face to face "Six Snoopys on five bucks... three balls a buck, that's 16 balls." Oddjob, who had returned, interrupted, "15 balls boss." "Fifteen balls... do you think I was born yesterday?" I didn't back down and shouted myself, in spite of the aroma of sauerkraut...very bad sauerkraut, coming from his flaming nostrils. "Look, there's 576 cups on that board...thirty of them are yellow, 16 are blue and one, in the center, is red! I just happened to toss fifteen wiffle balls and six of them rolled into the red cup!" He backed away "And I suppose you think that a jury will believe that?" "A jury?" I gasped. "This is a travelling street fair...and I won six Snoopy dolls....are you crazy?" "Crazy? Each one of those Snoopy dolls are worth thirty bucks! You walk off with a hundred and fifty bucks of my merchandise and..." Oddjob interrupted "A hundred and eighty bucks boss" "I don't care, a hundred and fifty bucks, a hundred and eighty bucks. I want to know how you did it?" "I told you....I rolled the little white wiffle balls and..." He interrupted again and grabbed a cellphone from his shirt pocket...putting it right into my face "You want me to call homicide?" Oddjob looked at him "Homicide...boss?" "Homicide, Vice, Immigration...whatever. You come into my house and rattle off how may blue and yellow cups.... I don't even know those numbers! You cased this place and I want answers!"
         I grabbed the phone out of his hand "I'll call the police! You can't pull me in here and give me the fifth degree because I rolled six little white wiffle balls into a red cup!" "One red cup" he shouted "out of six hundred and fifty two cups." Oddjob corrected him "576 boss" "I don't care how many cups are out there. What did you do...guide that wiffle ball into the red cup with some kind of remote control or satellite?" He stopped abruptly and his eyes widened. "Do you have an iPhone? You do, you have an iPhone!" he demanded. "Its an app...isn't it? You guided those balls with an iPhone app!" "Yes I do have an iPhone. Oh Look! Here it is" I said as I took it off my belt. " Lets see.... nine...one...one..." He grabbed the phone out of my hand and began jabbing on the screen all over with his finger, hoping to stop the phone call. Oddjob took it and tapped once to end the call. 
         Curly ran his fingers over his scalp as if expecting to find hair and paced around for a minute or two. "Look. OK. You got me on this one. Tell you what...I'll give you three hundred smackers just to tell me how you did it." "I told you already. I just rolled the little wiffle..." He had had enough of my explanation and pushed me aside as he opened the door of the trailer. The bright sunlight invaded our space and I covered my eyes but not before I could see that he had no hair at all...absolutely none, and a very reddish complexion. "You can leave now...mister. But I'm warning you. By dawn I'll have your picture spread to every carnival...five counties wide... each direction! You stay away from Roll The Ball!"
         I didn't say anything. I just grabbed my Snoopys one by one and walked out. My wife threw her arms around me and helped me by carrying three Snoopys. As we were walking out of the street carnival, I turned and walked back over to the Roll A Ball. There were half a dozen kids and their parents standing by the rail, waiting to buy balls. I hoped Curly, or should I call him Goldfinger, was watching on his monitors. I started giving away the Snoopys to the kids. They were excited beyond belief and they and their families walked away, holding their prize for the night. I looked up and saw a camera pointing at me from a pole. I saluted into it and my wife and I walked off hand in hand.

         There is only a grain of truth in this story. I did go to our local street carnival and bought a peanut covered caramel apple and spent a little bit of time at the Roll A Ball. Watching the kids faces is the real joy, especially since it seems that it was not that long ago that our son was rolling the ball. Today he's a lawyer who could have been called if this scenario had taken place. I did count the colored cups and spent some time trying to figure out just how to land that wiffle ball in the center cup.