Eight Feet Deep

Charles the Christmas Tiger says: “Remember only you can prevent smoky bears.”
A few regular readers of this blog are long-time friends: Sally (what 30 years?) and Suzie (25 years). Just the fact that they have put up with me for that long are pure indicators of deep friendship. Anyway, I have already extended private Christmas wishes to those long-time friends.

I want to extend my holiday wishes to those new (mostly virtual but not all)friends who check in from time-to-time just to see what kind of bulls**t I’m spouting today. I really am grateful for StatCounter because it lets me see that people from all over the world sneak a peek at EFD. Why? I don’t know. I really don’t. Just in the last 24 hours I have had visitors from South Africa, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Portugal, Egypt and Canada, Oh Canada! To whomever that stops by, my best wishes for a great holiday season and a great 2006.

I also want to extend greetings to those who have linked me to their blogs: Nate at Common Sense, Karl from the UK who writes the cheerfully-named It’s All About Waiting to Die, and to Ben at The Benquirer. The Benquirer, by the way, is absolutely hilarious. It’s left-of-center satire and very, very funny.

With all this worldly love I’m sending out here I’m about to break out in a verse of the O’Jays “Love Train” and you certainly don’t want to hear me do that. So run along now, go and open your presents!

“Let the feats of strength begin!”
Yesterday I was in too much of a funk to celebrate let alone blog greetings for Festivus. I’m also really ashamed of myself because with all the storm debris that has been on the streets for the last three months since Hurricane Rita, I never picked up a Festivus pole. If you are unfamiliar with Festivus, the holiday created by Frank Costanza on “Seinfeld,” read here.(I think you can trust Wikipedia on this one!)

Rather than air specific grievances of why I was in a funk yesterday I thought I would air my list of grievances for the year in true Festivus fashion. Here goes:

The U.S. Government. It’s not just the president or vice president or Rummy that continually disappoint, aggravate and annoy me. Congress also gets a strong thumbs down. As does FEMA. And while the Department of Veterans Affairs has its share of caring and helpful people, the VA seems as if it is being run by a hamster on downers.

Certain people. Certain people have more than disappointed me, they made my life more complicated. That is all I am allowed to say due to a written agreement.

Grocery stores. I shop at a Market Basket store, part of a local chain. By and large it’s a pretty good store. It’s people are usually helpful. It has a good selection of items. I wish the aisles were not always blocked by people stocking shelves, but I guess that’s how they keep such a good selection. But I have had numerous run-ins at the Kroger across the street. It seems its employees look for ways to piss you off. I can be mentally abused practically anywhere I go so I don’t need to pay money for that abuse. But it’s not just local stores where you find employees who think the term “customer service” does not apply to them. It’s a nationwide epidemic. If you work for a grocery store and you do a great job, I’m sorry, but maybe you should give some of your less stellar co-workers a talking to. Or a blanket party.

The petroleum industry. I think you all know why they are on my list.

Tom Cruise. What an obnoxious ass.

Right-wing talk show hosts and their guests. Rush, Bill O’Reilly, John Gibson, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Bill Bennett, Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan, Bob Novak, my God, they are just too many to name.

Right-wing and left-wing bloggers full of hate. If you blog with a thoughtful political point of view, I don’t care where you fall on the political spectrum. If all you want to do is just preach hate then go the hell away.

Religious fanatics of all types. If you are a Muslim jihadist, right-wing fundamentalist or any religion that you try to push down my throat then go the hell away.

People who left their pets behind during the hurricane. Maybe you thought you’d be back in a day or two. Surprise!! Now Fido is either dead or roaming the streets in a pack. And I’ve encountered those packs of dogs that got loose and have been accosted. It can be scary if not sometimes downright dangerous. If you are going to keep a pet, use your brain if at all possible.

I’m sure I have more grievances than that but writing this has left me too tired for the feats of strength. So I’ll just say: A belated happy Festivus!

“And Herod exclaimed: ‘These are not the wise men I ordered. Send them back.'”

All singing in low tones: Oooohhhh, what do you call someone as pretty as me?
Damn, I love mannequins. I guess it’s because boys aren’t supposed to play with dolls (action figures are okay) that I’ve always been fascinated with mannequins.

One time when I worked as a firefighter I had to take an emergency medical technician refresher course which went on for several weeks. The instructor of those classes asked me, if when I came to class, I would bring the fire department’s ResusiAnne training doll for CPR practice.

Annie came in her own box but each time I loaded the doll in the car, I thought about how it would be funny to have the doll sitting in the seat next to me. Then, perhaps with other motorists watching I could come to a rolling stop, start screaming and push Annie out the door. I am sure I would have been fired for that. I may also have been arrested. I’m glad I’m not THAT impulsive.

It would be nice though to have my own mannequin or even a, family?flock?bunch? of them. They could be used for all types of practical jokes. Maybe I could even dress one up as a sentry and station it outside my door so it would look like I have a 24-hour guard. That’s not going to happen, of course, unless I somehow become fabulously wealthy. For as you know, people who are so wacky are known as eccentric when they are rich. The rest of us would be viewed as just weird.

When I worked full-time as a newspaper reporter it was always difficult to come up with really unique ideas during recurring events each year such as the county fair or July 4th or Christmas. Sometimes we would come up with something that was a real winner and other times it would be a real turkey of a story.

At one paper my editor had a very good Christmas story idea. However, he wanted ME to do the story which was spending several hours as Santa Claus at the local mall. I wasn’t too keen on the idea at first and it didn’t get any better putting on that hot and scratchy Santa suit. But it turned out okay. Kids thought I was the real thing and a couple of attractive women jumped up in my lap for a picture. Try getting the latter to happen at a steer show at the county fair and you may just get gored, or worse.

The whole Santa Claus myth is really strange once you get older and think about it. It is not a story for those steeped in logic and science. Santa and his deer fly around the world on Christmas night delivering presents and there are how many time zones and there are how many homes? And flying deer?

But the good thing about being a kid is you can suspend belief for a little while. I suppose you can fantasize as an adult — sometimes with even better fantasies than Santa bringing you a Sponge Bob Square Pants action figure — but I mean the Santa fantasy is something that you can only imagine because the math, science, logic and a whole lot of other disciplines don’t work out. Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt or even Angelina and Brad might not ever crawl into your bed in the middle of the night. But it theoretically could happen. It most likely, hell no, never, won’t happen for most of us, nor would some of us want them in our beds (Sorry, Brad’s not welcome here). But even such a wild fantasy as that has the possibility of reality even though it has probability of jack.

That is why I found Jesus as such a good being to pretend when I was as a little kid. The guy was a magician, a superhero, immortal. And no one I knew back then could ever do the things JC did. That’s part of the reason I find as so disgusting those so-called religious people who purport to know what Jesus would do and telling everyone else they must do it or else. Hey, I was a childhood Jesus! Or at least I played one.

So ho, ho, ho, for Santa Claus. Even if you’ve outgrown believing in him take a minute and remember how rich the fantasy was. And then you can go back to fantasizing about Angelina and/or Brad.