Signs, Signs, Everywhere There's Signs

I’ve recently noticed the fresh crop of political signs sprouting from the earth – an obvious indication that spring is arriving, I suppose. I could swear that we had finally gotten rid of these “weeds” from last fall’s annoyingly-abundant harvest only recently, but apparently there were some residual roots that failed to get pulled. These are now blooming into only slightly different flowers; “mayor” versus “president”, “Yes” on this issue versus “No” on last fall’s and so on. I did try to help, by the way. I searched the local store shelves for a brand of weed-killer that specifically said it would kill political signs – but apparently such a product is not available.

In thinking about the political weeds, (uh … signs, sorry), I started thinking about signs and their prevalence, (if not importance), in our lives. We live in a country of signs. Signs are everywhere, from billboards to banners; wooden spray-painted to the little corrugated plastic things on wire stands; hand-written paper to posters to the sides of cars, trucks and busses – signs are everywhere you look. That, I think, is one of the biggest differences between us and other countries … the number of signs. Ever look at a photo of a foreign country and without knowing where it was taken, immediately your brain tells you that it’s foreign? You don’t realize it, but I promise you – somewhere in the deepest reaches of your subliminal mind, it is the lack of signs that tells you that it’s not a local photo!

Some of the signs that we have in our lives are meant to entice us. “SALE TODAY!” “SAVE BIG!” “FINANCING AVAILABLE!” These all end in exclamation points so that we know that today’s sale is bigger than yesterdays. A couple of my own companies use exclamation points frequently. The fact is, we respond to excitement. If there is a sale, it’s exciting.

Of course, enticement signs can also be misleading. Imagine if you are an average guy driving down the South Service Road on your way to pick up a Mickey-D’s Sweet Tea and you see a giant sign that says “CHICK DAYS!” Well, it’s very possible that some men would whip into the parking lot and run inside the local Farm & Home store with a handful of dollar bills – only to find a tub-full of baby chickens, of course. “CHICK DAYS!” It’s all in how you interpret the message. I mean, we just got our first stoplight – I guess the possibility of a “Red Light District” isn’t such a stretch.

Speaking of misleading signs, I’m sure that there are a number of weary travelers who cross beneath our new Elmont Road overpass and quickly exit – drawn by the beauty of the rust-covered “SUNRISE MOTEL” Sign. It even promises AAA Membership, by the way. Much to the chagrin of those misled travelers, of course, they’ll find only an empty lot – the Sunrise went off into the Sunset many moons ago. And yet, just to ensure that we don’t suffer a shortage of signs in our lives, the sign remains, kindly implying that Sullivan is a town of beauty and growth, (with our new overpass), but still a good ‘ole down-home kinda’ place. Sort of like an old refrigerator on the front porch of a mansion. We’re like the Beverly Hillbilly’s and pretty soon, they’ll finish up on that new “concrete pond” over off Winsel Creek! (That’d be the new sewage treatment facility for those who aren’t familiar).

Of course, we’re not the only offenders when it comes to out-dated signs. The Stanton FINA – a booming little gas station when I was a kid – has been nothing but a pile of rocky debris for what? 20-years or so … something like that. I’m pretty sure that there is still a sign standing there offering gasoline at 79-cents a gallon. At least, there was at one point not so long ago. You wanna’ talk about getting the attention of Interstate travelers last summer – if THAT didn’t get people to pull off the highway, nothing will. In fact, I wonder if there was an increase in accidents near that exit last year, (people scrambling across the lanes to exit for cheap gas)?

And of course, Meramec Caverns probably has more signs standing on the face of this planet than any other business in history. It’s kind of neat, really. Remember when they used to put them on barn roofs? It seems like no matter where you drive in America, at some point along whatever Interstate you’re traveling, you’ll see a sign advertising Meramec Caverns, Stanton, Missouri. I’ve always thought of that as my personal reminder how far I was from home. To be perfectly honest, I think that at some point in the future, the little NASA Mars Rovers will send back a picture of some Martian farmer’s barn and on the roof will be a giant Meramec Caverns logo with “just another 225.70-Million Miles” underneath. Wouldn’t surprise me one bit.

I guess the most interesting aspect of our sign-addiction, however, is that we’re now accustomed to seeing signs advertising signs. “RENT THIS SPACE”, “GET NOTICED – AD HERE”, “THIS SPACE FOR RENT” … these are all signs advertising signs. Some of these are up forever, too. If you look along the South Service Road near the fairgrounds, you’ll see a couple of billboards that have had a “rent-this-space” message for so long – they date back to when Sullivan was part of the “314” area code! (I’m quite certain I remember them painting over the “314” at some point). You gotta’ feel bad for that guy – sitting by his phone for nearly 30-years, just waiting for someone to call and rent his sign. I’d think that he might want to consider a different line of work at some point. I mean, no ads for 30-years is probably not a good sign.

Wave Profiling

As I’ve mentioned before in this column, I’m a waver. I wave. In fact, there’s something so “down-home”, so friendly and neighborly about waving to another person, that I’ve pretty much made a habit of waving while I drive. I wave to people I know; I wave to people I “think” I know, (usually I turn out to be wrong); I wave to people that I definitely don’t know; I’ve even been known to wave at dogs alongside the road as I’ve driven by. Yes, that’s quite odd, I’d agree. However, there’s no sense in denying it because I know that people have witnessed me doing it before.

Another area of my guilt is waving at people who I don’t know. Often, I’ll do this just to be friendly. Just as often, however, I’ll do it because I “think” I know the person, but then realize a second too late that I don’t. (Ever notice how you buy a new car and suddenly it seems like everyone has the same model and color?) Within a mile of my home, there are a total of 5 cars like my wife’s – same color, same style. I’ve waved at all of them, multiple times. I know when it’s my wife – she’s the one who is usually too mad at me to wave back!

As a waver, I find it interesting how many different types of waves there are out there. Being a “wave conessuer of sorts, I’ve mentally cataloged many of these wave-types and noted the demographics of people who mostly use each method. By sharing some of these, I hope to connect to other “wavers” out there, but also to encourage more people to wave when they pass other cars on the road. Let’s face it – waving promotes friendliness; friendliness promotes neighborliness; neighborliness promotes good will and good will is the foundation of a healthy community. (Or some sappy crud like that, anyway).

“The Wave of Uncertainty” When you wave to someone you don’t know, you get one of two responses, depending on the type of person being waved at. The confident types will immediately acknowledge your friendly gesture and return the favor. The timid, however, are fun to watch. They’ll hit you with the “Wave of Uncertainty”. The WoU starts out as a smiling wave, but as you draw nearer, the person immediately drops their hand and furrows their brow. (This is the point at which they realize they do not know you). That, however, is only a retracted wave. To make full, WoU status, the person has to instantly realize that you saw the retracted wave and that they are being rude for not waving back. They’ll then re-apply the waving hand and begin a smile that usually only gets half-achieved by the time you pass; looking more like a grimace of confusion or a sudden need to use the restroom.

“The Twin-Finger Cool Wave” The wave I most often use, the twin-fingered cool wave is a simple lifting of the index and middle (flipper?) fingers from the steering wheel. Cool, in that you’re not waving your hand giddily like a kid watching Mickey at Disney World, but evident-enough to be seen by the passer-by as a respectful salutation and acknowledgement of their gesture. This wave also leaves your non-driving hand free to hold your coffee cup, stick shift or spit cup – whatever your situation may be.

“The Look At Me Wave” This wave is almost always given by the overly friendly, “Miss Congeniality” types. Even though the person does not know you, their overbearing personality and intense love of human kindness thrusts them into an eager, frantic flailing of the hand in front of their grinning face – often honking the horn at the same time. For these people, it’s as though they are so insistent on making sure that you receive their appreciation for your wave, they’ll forego everything else to make sure you see their return wave. Focus on the roadway, hands on the steering wheel, any awareness of roadway dangers or stop signs; it’s all cast aside in the interest of having their wave noticed. Sweet people, these LAMW’s … it’s just a shame that they have so many traffic accidents.

“The Beemer Nose Wave” The rarest of all return waves, the BNW is a slight nodding of the driver’s already-upturned nose in response to your wave. Rare, in that these people will never purposely acknowledge someone lower on the social ladder, (especially those of us driving pickup trucks), and the movement is so slight, it’s often difficult to discern from a simple bump in the road. If you ever get a BNW response … take a picture! (Just don’t use the zoom lens – you don’t want to see up their nostrils).

“The Head Nod” Some people mistake the HN for rudeness, figuring that the driver is too stuck up to really bother “waving back”, so they simply acknowledge your wave as an admiration of their grandeur. This once may have been the case. However, as one who drives, (and waves), frequently, I can tell you that there is a new and very valid reason for the head nod. Think about it – many drivers these days are busy. They have one knee steering the wheel, one hand holding the cell phone, a hot coffee between their legs, a donut/sandwich/slice of pizza hanging from their mouth and one arm stretched back over the seat beating an unruly child in the back. The fact that they were even able to manage a response to your wave is amazing in itself. The fact that they didn’t swerve into you in the process is truly something of awe.

So, the next time you wave at someone on the road – pay attention to the response you get and see if my list is accurate. In fact, e-mail me at wdl@williamdouglaslittle.com and let me know if you find other waves that I’ve neglected to mention. Who knows – maybe there’s a brand new one out there, just waiting to be added to this list! And, for those people who refuse to wave back, avoid them like the plague. After all – a person is only as good as their wave.

It Always Starts With "Watch This!"

Like these things so often do, the whole thing began with the words, “Watch this!” I think back on it now, (hindsight being what it is), and I honestly can’t remember ever uttering those words and having it end well. This time was no exception.

We’d just gotten the seven or so inches of snow that made every kid in the area crazy with “School’s Out Syndrome”, and a fresh layer of awe-inspiring powder covered the small hill in my front yard that would make even an Olympic snowboarder smile. My kids spent the morning staring from the windows, just waiting for “Daddy” to get done with some business stuff so that I could take them out for some sled-riding fun. Truth be told, I was looking forward to it as much as they. Some of us never grow up, after all.

The first to hit the “Widow-Maker”, (more of a dwarfed-down version of a bunny slope, but we’ll get to my pet-name in a minute), was my son. Our weapons of choice for this attack on the fresh powder were the round, plastic “saucers” that have been the source of so many hospital visits in the past. Nothing is too good for my kids.

As he sat upon the saucer and pushed off the edge of the slope, the yet-unpacked snow shoveled against the front lip of the disk and his protruding snow boots dug into the snow in front of him creating a set of unintended brakes, constantly applied. I took one look at his disappointed face and knew that I had some work to do.

“Don’t worry, son,” I said. “It just takes some packing down. Here, let Daddy take a couple of runs on it and I’ll get a good groove packed in … then you’ll fly!”

“Are we gonna’ build a jump again this year?” He asked, a smile on his face spreading all the way to the edges of his parka hood. I instantly remembered the crying, the swelling, the getting yelled at by my wife the previous year – (all related to my having built him a “snow-jump”) – and answered in the best way I could … “We’ll see,” I said. Truth be told, I really wanted to. Watching him soar through the air last year was a blast … until the “incident”, that is.

I pushed myself on the saucer, working my way down the hill. After two runs, the snow was cleanly packed and I could tell by the nearly six-inch-deep groove that my kids were going to reach a speed of around Mach-26 when their little behinds got on the saucers. I was excited. I got back to the top of the hill and helped my son get situated for his inaugural descent.

I pushed him off – ever so lightly, since it was the first run – and he made it several yards before his feet dug in and abruptly stopped him. Instantly I realized that I was going to have to teach him a better technique. As he worked his way back to the crest of the tiny hill, I began to sit down upon the second saucer and, folding my legs in front of me “Indian-style”, I said the magic words … “No – you gotta’ sit ‘Indian-style’ … here … ‘WATCH THIS’!”

I shoved with my gloved hands like an Olympic gold medalist leaving the gate, the ground barely creating friction beneath my too-heavily-weighted plastic saucer. Instantly I lurched forward and felt gravity take hold, pulling me down toward the steepest part of the hill and on to an award-winning run never before matched by mortal man. It was an awesome thrill that is hard to put into words. It was like flying … like being shot from a cannon … and, it lasted about ten-feet. Suddenly, something at the right front side of the saucer dug itself into something immoveable – perhaps a frozen piece of dog-dropping, perhaps a protruding stump - I’m really not sure. Regardless, my saucer spun around backward – my view now adjusted to include the faces of my laughing wife and children at the top of the hill – and as to where I was headed, I had no idea.

Things may have been okay at that point. Perhaps, had the next thing not happened, I would have safely descended to the bottom, slowed to a manageable speed and ultimately gotten up without injury. As it was, however, somehow I lost balance and leaned back, the sudden shift in weight digging the lip of the saucer into the snow and tossing me over like a drunken gymnast. I felt myself going over – all six-foot, seven-inches and 250-pounds of me – somehow managing a somewhat graceful somersault. This too, would have been fine, had I made it back to my feet and bounced to a solid landing. My family would likely have held up 10-point score cards, judging such a wonderful display of ability.

Unfortunately, at the apex of the somersault – just when all of my weight was forcing my neck into the ground – a loud “cracking sound” filled the air. Not just a cracking sound like the popping of a finger or a joint that you hear within your own body – this one was loud. Parts of Franklin, Crawford, Washington and Gasconade counties reported hearing the snap and I’ve heard rumor that a seismograph at the University of Missouri – Columbia actually registered some movement. Twenty-years ago, I would have bounced up from such an incident and moved on to the next thing. This year, however, I just sort of lay there for a minute – assessing the damages mentally and wondering if death would be preferable to the pain I was about to feel.

It’s been a couple of weeks now, since which time I’ve had a trip to the Urgent Care doctor who awarded me with news of a broken T7 vertebra. I’ve been to another doctor who sent me to a specialist by way of the pharmacy. The specialist has now also granted me bulging disks in T3 and T4. What a guy. And finally, I’ve just today been shot with some sort of pain killer directly into several locations of my spine – a sensation that I wouldn’t recommend while it’s happening, but now that it’s done, I could swear my back is no longer broken. In fact, right now I feel as though I could do a back flip from this chair and land perfectly on my feet! In fact …

“WATCH THIS …”

WDL's "Best of the Journal, 2008" NOW AVAILABLE!

Columnist William Douglas Little's "Best of the Journal, 2008" is now available in both print and as an e-Book Download! "Best of the Journal, 2008" includes all of Little's weekly columns from the Sullivan Journal since it's inception! Every column, as it was originally published in the paper - all the laughs, all the misfortune and all the fun! Did you miss a week? Forget one of your favorite tales? Have a friend out of the area with whom you'd like to share Little's column? THIS IS THE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY!

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Back to the Pigs and Berries

The world used to be a simple place. Nothing complicated, nothing confusing. People thought about two things: survival and reproduction. (Not always in that order). You see ... we weren’t all that different from the “wild animals” that inhabit our woods today. We hunted and gathered and bred. That was it. No stomach problems, no stocks to crash, no slow business to concern ourselves with, no meetings or quarterly reports to prepare for. Life was what life was intended to be. Life.
In a simple sort of way, life was still like a business … you still had to plan. Let’s say that you’re a “primitive” person living in a cave somewhere. In this cave, you’ve got your little family: a couple of greasy-haired, dirty-knee children running around in coyote skins and some beautiful wife with dirt streaks on her forehead and bad teeth. Life is good and, as the “man of the cave”, you’ve got a responsibility, (though you don’t have a language so you don’t think about it … you just sort of grunt thoughts through your mind). The grunts, however, come together to remind you of the things that you have to do – you have to get food … everyday.
As complex creatures, we likely started out by budgeting. If you stumbled upon a particularly large berry patch on a Tuesday, you likely would have filled whatever pack or skid you had and brought home enough berries to last your family for several days. If you were lucky – and the berries weren’t poisonous – you had enough to feed your family through Saturday. Knowing that, you had no worries for the next several days. You sat in your cave, eating berries with juice staining your beard from sun-up to sundown until maybe Thursday. Then you went out hunting again.
Things really got exciting when you were lucky enough to catch something alive and bring it back to the cave, like a pig, for instance. Once you had the live pig, you had a safety net – a little nest egg to call on if times got tough. This nest egg eased the burden of life and allowed you to hunt and gather more at ease. Much like a salesman today, you sell more with money in your pocket because desperation does not show through. The pig, while not in your pocket, allowed you to hunt more freely and pay attention to the details of sneaking up on things and follow the steps that make you hunt more effectively.
Somewhere along the line, capitalism also worked its way into society. Say, for example, you’ve got a stockpile of nuts, berries, pterodactyl eggs on ice and your pet pig. The guy in the next cave, however, has none of these things, but he’s got two piglets – a male and a female. Well, knowing that you’ve got enough to eat for a while, and that he’s starving, you quickly figure out that you can take advantage of that situation to profit. If you had the piglets, you could eat your other stuff until they were old enough to breed, which would make you more pigs – even less worry for the future. Your neighbor Ugh, however, is starving. He’s considering how much meat might actually be on those piglets. So, one day you go to Ugh’s cave and offer to trade your full-grown pig for his two piglets. Ugh takes the deal, you become a long-term investor for a return and Ugh’s family begins eating your pet pig right away. Everyone is happy, (well, except maybe your original pig).
Now, some tens-of-thousands of years later, we seem to have progressed quite far, indeed. Instead of being able to catch and keep a pig – to trade it for future pigs (plural), and feed your family, we’ve decided to form a government to handle things for us. Each year, the government takes nearly half of the nuts and berries that we collect, they take half of our pigs, and in turn, they give it to Ugh and his family so that they don’t have to trade their piglets, but still get to eat. In fact, they give so much to Ugh, that they are no longer even giving real pigs. They’re giving pretend pigs – borrowed from the Chinese and the middle-eastern countries, which in-turn, want nothing more than to come and take all of our pigs and kick us out of our caves. Somehow, our government figures that they’ll eventually pay back the Chinese and the Middle-Easterners by collecting enough nuts and berries and future pigs from us, and yet we’ll still have enough to eat. The problem is, we don’t manufacture pigs here anymore. We buy all of our pigs and berries from the Chinese and the Middle-Easterners. Which I guess means, that we’ll have to buy the pigs from them with money borrowed from them in order to pay them back for the pigs and berries that we borrowed. Am I missing something here?
Wouldn’t it make more sense for us to encourage our own people to start manufacturing our own pigs and berries – thus creating jobs so that Ugh could afford to supply his own family with pigs and berries from market, thereby providing money to the marketer to supply his family with pigs and berries and still buy more pigs and berries to sell to others? Then, we could pay back the pigs and berries debt owed to the Chinese and the Middle East, without going further into debt.
Of course, it doesn’t seem that we’re real interested in doing that, yet. Instead, we want to build new bridges over which to haul the borrowed pigs and berries, to build new tennis courts and water slides upon which we can occupy our time doing anything other than produce pigs and berries – AND we want to pay pig farmers not to farm pigs; berry farmers not to farm berries and give money to the big cave lenders so that they can afford to kick us all out of our caves.
Personally, I think we were better off with the hunt/gather/pig thing. At least we had less stress back then. (I’m sure the pigs would disagree). However, since we’re obviously not going to go back to the days of old, I think that we should consider evening up the bill with China and the Middle East right away. Pay them off and start fresh. How? Give them California, (all of it – except Disney Land, however). Look, half of the bad ideas in government management come out of that State, (they’ve been on the verge of bankruptcy for the past 9,000-years, it seems), and besides, if we keep Disney Land, the price of admission alone would pay for enough pigs and berries to feed the remaining 49-States for at least another 38,000 generations.

Bad Words

I guess because I now write for a living, (whereas several years ago, I did not), I’m more in tune to the goofiness of our language than I used to be. In fact, I guess I can somewhat understand why immigrants to this great country of ours aren’t always eager to learn English. Of course, there was a time when learning the language was a requirement – apparently those days are long-gone. But, for those who want to become productive citizens and communicate among us – well, they’ve got their work cut out for them.
The biggest thing with the English language is, there seems to be no common sense involved. It’s like the same people who design roadwork detours were also in charge of coming up with the words we use – must’ve been their ancestors. Plurals, for example, have no consistency whatsoever. Take the word “Mouse”. If you have more than one mouse, you get mice. Why then, if you own more than one “house” do you not have “hice”? You don’t. You have “houses”. A goose is a nice bird. Find a flock of them and you’ll see “geese”. A herd of “moose”, however, is not meese, but moose. Like “fish”, the plural of moose is moose. (If you’re a fan of the Godfather movies, you may accept “swimming with the fishes”, but for the rest of us, it’s still fish). Why, then, does a genie grant you three “wishes” when you rub his lamp? Wouldn’t it make more sense if he granted you three wish?
Numbers are another problem. Who ever decided that we’d have something totally out of whack between ten and twenty? 21 is pronounced “twenty-one”. A direct conversion of the words “two” and “ten” … “TW-EN-ty” Thirty is the same way, as is forty, (which should be spelled “fourty”), and so-on. So why the word “eleven” instead of onety-one? Twelve is really messed up as it specifies that the “two” should come first, followed apparently by an elf. Who thought that up? Shouldn’t it be “onety-two”? When you get to 100, you pronounce it “one-hundred”, not “eleventy-zero”. Somebody was really drunk when they came up with this stuff.
Another obvious error is the apparent laziness – or lack of creativity – of whomever was in charge of coming up with the Queen’s English. We have entirely too many words that are spelled the exact same, but mean totally different things. You really have to look at the word within it’s intended context to guess which version the writer is implying – which can be quite confusing. “Lead”, for example, can be a metal taken from the ground and used in the standard #2 pencil, among other things. Probably causes cancer, too. (What doesn’t). However, if you’re in front of other people, you are in the “lead”. Hmm. So, let’s use the same word for being the fastest as the word for a heavy, inanimate object. Makes good sense there. Why not use the word “leed”? You have a “head” on your shoulders, but you “heed” someone’s warning. Pronunciation is the same – spelling is different. They went to the trouble of spelling “whale” with a silent “h”, but made an annoying cry a wail. No confusion there. “Weather” is outside, but “whether” you spell it right is up to you. And, speaking of weather, (not whether), why are meteorologists weathermen and not weatherologists? Do meteors affect our weather? What do you call a guy who studies meteors? Not a meteorologist, and considering they could be asteroids, you can’t have that because an astrologist studies stars. What’s a starologist do? Maybe they’re the ones selling maps on Hollywood street corners?
Some words are also spelled the same, but mean different things based on whether they are nouns, verbs, pronouns or adjectives. The aforementioned “goose”, as a noun, is a bird. “Goose” as a verb, however, is a real pain in the … well, you know. And whoever thought to “duck” to avoid something? I’ve never seen a “duck” “duck”. They fly, they swim, they flip upside down in the water, which is kind of a “duck ducking”, I suppose, but still – couldn’t we have called it something more descriptive. Like “bend down?” And what does it “mean” if someone is “mean”? Are they “mean” as in yell at everyone, climb the water-tower with a rifle “mean”, or do they have a sense of meaning, therefore making them a “mean” person? Compound that with “time” and you get “meantime”, which basically is the interim time between two events – now and later. What the heck does that mean? Meanwhile, everyone is confused.
Of course, one could ponder for hours why baby cows are calves but baby crows are not cralves. Or why a “crow” is pronounced “oh” instead of “ow” in the first place. We could wonder why “heart” is pronounced like “cart” instead of “hear”. Why when you “die”, you’ve “died”, yet when you “fly”, you’ve “flown”, (or flew – not to be confused with flu, which could be an ailment or part of your chimney, but is spelled differently than “shoe”). Had we the time and space, I’d also ask you why a nail-gun shoots nails, a staple-gun shoots staples, a shotgun (not hyphenated) shoots shot, but a gun is a gun, not a bullet-gun. And perhaps we’d get into the drive on the parkway and park on the driveway thing, as well. That’s always been a popular discussion.
Fortunately, however, we’ve got to end this column here since we’re out of space, (as in “room”, not “space” as in the final frontier … which should be spelled “frontear”, except then people might pronounce it “frontare” like ripping paper rather than “fronteer” like crying). Well, I think you get my point, (as in my meaning, not “pointing” at something … and not the sharp edge of a pencil).

A Digital World

I’m guessing that by now pretty much everyone knows that we’re all going digital sometime in the near future … at least in a television sense. Maybe most of us don’t care. I know that as a satellite subscriber, I’m not affected. Likewise, those of you living within the confines of societal harmony with access to modern amenities such as cable also won’t notice a difference. Maybe the picture will be clearer, but I think you’ve actually been watching digital TV for some time now. (Who would really know?)
However, I feel really bad for those in the far reaches – the kind of places that I really like to inhabit. There are those among us who still rely on a 14-inch black and white television for news and connection to the rest of the world. Sure, they’ve seen the commercials warning of the government-enforced changes. It’s appeared on their screens amidst the blizzard of white static that I recall accompanying such sets. The problem is – I’m guessing – that there are many who cannot afford to go out and drop money on a new set. How, I ask you, will they get their news? How will they know if a storm is approaching; if an eminent threat lies in our future; if the Meramec is going to suddenly swell with thirty-foot tsunami’s and wash the Redhorse Suckers downstream to Fenton? The answer is simply, they won’t.
It’s not often that I climb aboard the proverbial soapbox – at least not publicly. I’m not even sure that this qualifies as said soapbox, per se’. However, I find it hard to determine what exactly the threat of the analog television signal really was, and why it was so important that our bloated government step in and demand a disruption in American lives? Was analog causing cancer? Stupidity? Didn’t have enough Washington lobbyists to keep it viable? Wouldn’t their time, (and our tax dollars), have been better spent mandating what’s on the tube, rather than how it’s broadcast?
Now, let’s not get heated on the matter. I’m not saying that I’m a proponent of censorship. I believe that everything has its place. However, little kids watch things like football as much as we grown kids do … maybe we should consider what commercials air during those games more than whether or not the signal is 40-gazillion pixels per square centimeter? Maybe that way parents wouldn’t have to change channels during commercial breaks, lest they find themselves explaining Viagra to a six-year-old.
I understand that, (from some pretty respected local experts on the matter), places like Steelville, Cuba and the majority of Washington County are going to lose their ability to pick up local broadcast channels – even after spending several hundred bucks on equipment to convert. Why? Digital signal is weaker than analog. What? Is it just me, or are we taking a step backward here? I sure feel good about paying those taxes last year. I mean, thank goodness our government is keeping shows like Desperate Housewives and American Idol off the sets of those living somewhat away from the grid. Well, perhaps a little less Hollywood influence would be good for all of us? Maybe they should just shut down the whole thing? We could always go back to courier pigeons for our news … that way we’d have something to eat if we got hungry enough.
Look, I’m not saying it’s the end of the world here. I mean, I’d rather like to see more people turn off the television and pick up a good book. (I could recommend one). Maybe the absence of a television signal will actually allow people the time to read or, perhaps even listen to the radio – both are things that exercise our imaginations. But, how long is it going to be before Big Brother steps in and tells us that KTUI has to go digital – thereby turning our trusty old transistor radios into worthless landfill-fillers? (One could argue that Bob Cosgrove’s voice would carry the broadcast area without any radio transmitter, but Little John might have to shout). And, with all of this digital technology, what happens when Martians come to invade us and jam the digital signals? Maybe they’re too advanced to know about analog … just maybe we’re putting our national security at risk? Maybe the government is working with the Martians for just that reason? It’s a conspiracy, man.
Unfortunately I also have to tell you that all newspapers are going to be printed in digital ink as of February 17th. Yeah, I know – it just keeps getting worse. So, without stopping into the Journal office and purchasing a pair of $400 digital decipher glasses with an Orphan Annie decoder ring built into the stems, you’re no longer going to be able to see the paper’s ink. It’ll just be a bunch of blank, white sheets. Good for wallpaper or birdcage liners maybe, but not much else. Of course, with the glasses, the new, vivid newsprint will stand out like Ted Kennedy at an AA meeting. There’s that, I guess.
I guess we should just remember, silly things like common sense can never be allowed to stand in the way of progress …

Mental Notes

I’m big on mental notes; just one of the “mental” things commonly associated with me. Mental notes are those little post-its of brain energy that you store for later use – in case anyone is not familiar with the term. When a child burns his hand on the stove burner, a mental note is posted; “DON’T TOUCH THAT!” it says. (Yes, in all CAPS just like I wrote it). You see, at some point in my life I realized that failure is not to be feared – failing the same way twice, however, is shameful.
So, in the spirit of good will toward men and all that joyful stuff left over from the Holidays, I thought I’d share some of the little lessons that I’ve learned along the way. Those that have been mentally posted in bold, headline type, as well as those that I’ve learned to shake from my head and chalk up to my own stupidity. My thought here is that if I can save just one person a trip to the ER, I’ve done my good deed for the day. And after all, (now pay attention, this is going to be a great quote), “A smart person learns from his mistakes – a wise person learns from the mistakes of others.” Yep, that’s mine. Just made it up. Impressive, huh?

These are in no specific order. Just random samplings among the first 10,000 Mental Notes that exist in my brain …

• MN0001: When loading a dishwasher, don’t point the knife-blades upward from the basket.
o MN0001A: A knife-wound at the base of your thumb can bleed until you feel dizzy.
• MN0864: Don’t pet things until you see if they bite someone else first.
• MN0249: If you pass blame to someone else, make sure you’re not holding the evidence.
• MN0631: If the ladder looks wobbly, it probably is.
• MN9131: If you dial 4-1-1 with a question about poker, the operator will usually laugh and try to answer it. Dialing 9-1-1 with the same question does not end well.
• MN2333: Truck engines do not run beneath the water.
• MN2334: If it looks too deep to drive through, it probably is.
• MN4444: The phrase, “when in doubt, gas it!” does NOT apply to ALL situations.
• MN7369: The phrase, “Watch this!” can often end in surgery.
• MN7730: Dinner plate sets are ridiculously expensive.
• MN0661: Not transferring laundry to the dryer for two-days results in stinky-jeans.
• MN1212: Because something will fit in your nostril, does not mean that it will also come out.
• MN9926: Accidentally swallowing a quarter is painful.
• MN0841: Putting Icy-Hot in a classmate’s gym shorts can be funny. Someone putting Icy-Hot in your gym shorts is not.
• MN1678: If the policeman pulled you over, he’s NOT in the mood for jokes.
• MN9999: Old people do not bounce.
• MN0048: Cats do not have a sense of humor, but they do have claws.
• MN8881: It is entirely possible for a knee to fold in the wrong direction.
• MN6148: Chainsaws are not toys.
• MN3488: Because you have checks does not mean that you have money.
• MN9000: Showing disrespect brings disrespect.
• MN8112: The drop is as far as it looks.
• MN0099: I will not make sounds in class. I will not make sounds in class. I will not make sounds in class. I will not make sounds in class. I will not …
• MN9889: Do NOT leave a GPS on the dash in downtown St. Louis.
• MN0911: If you don’t know what it is … don’t eat it.

Where've The Armadillos Gone?

It wasn’t so long ago – five years, maybe – that I started noticing an increasing number of armadillo’s smooshed along the highway. In fact, there was about a year’s time when I’d point them out to my wife and she’d argue that it was a possum or some other animal. “There are no armadillo’s here,” she’d say. It got to the point that I was ready to pull over and scrape one up. (I even carried a small shovel in my pickup for awhile, though I never disclosed that to her. Unfortunately there is no triumphant ending to that tale … she simply began acknowledging their existence one day, as though it had never been a source of debate at all.
For a few years, the armadillo population of Missouri seemed to thrive – at least for the ones hit by cars. Armadillo had become the new possum. Sometime the summer-before-last, however, I noted that there were fewer instances of armadillo-cide along the Interstate. In fact, by late in the fall of 2007, I was well aware that I’d not seen a single one in quite some time. This summer past, I kept the odd little mammal at the forefront of my mind and held a vigilant watch for the critters. Unfortunately, (not so unfortunate for them, I suppose), I only saw a few deceased ‘dillos during the entire year of ‘08.
Now, many will say that the long-term infatuation with counting dead armadillos makes me, well … weird. I’d agree. However, there is a bigger picture here and I’d like to enlighten you all in the hopes that it somewhat blurs that weirdness to a dull oddity. When something intrigues me, I like to find the answer – so, I placed a call to a conservationist friend of mine …
RING-RING:
“Hello?”
“How come there aren’t any dead armadillo’s?” I asked.
“Who is this?”
“Bill”
“Bill who?”
“Never mind. Wrong number.”
I then redialed.
“Hello?”
“How come there aren’t any dead armadillos?” I asked.
“Look! I don’t know why you think this is funny, but if you call me again, I’m calling the Sheriff!”
Dang iPhone buttons … so much for that method.
In talking with a rather liberal friend of mine, he explained that the armadillo’s had come North due to the climactic changes caused by the ever-increasing release of greenhouse gasses. Something he likes to preach about called “Global Warming”. He said that the shifting of animal habitat was just one of many signs that we are killing the planet through our careless over-use of fossil fuels and destruction of the rain forests.
“Yeah,” I said, “but wouldn’t the fact that the armadillos are now disappearing support the theory that the entire issue of global warming is merely a farce that was illogically and maliciously forced down our throats by a liberal media during a naturally recurring period of Earth’s surface temperature warming? I mean, that side claims that we’re now in the second year of a 17-year cooling cycle, and I would think that the armadillos vanishing would most likely mean that they’ve returned to their natural climate, right?” My friend turned somewhat red-faced and soon concocted an excuse to leave. I also find it funny that he drives a Hummer. Hypocrite. I do so enjoy ticking him off.
Personally, I’m guessing that the recent decline in armadillo populous is simply an evolution thing … survival of the fittest and all that. You see, science would totally disagree with this theory but to me it makes sense. You take the armadillo (family Dasypodidae) and the opossum (Didelphis virginiana) and you find that they look very much alike in some ways. (Forget for a moment that one is a mammal and the other a marsupial. Logic has no place in this.)
I figure, somewhere along the line they were the same animal all living in the Southern U.S. At some point, two of the families got into an argument that became quite heated. The braver of the two stayed put and defended its ground, while the cowardly family ran North to make their home among the trees, where they could hide from threats. (Stay with me … I’m going somewhere with this.)
The family that stayed in the South procreated and as they evolved among the spiny thorns of cacti, they eventually developed a hard shell. The cowardly family that went North – into the colder climate, of course – grew a thick coat of fur and got really ugly from falling off of tree branches.
So, as millions of years went by, the descendants of the brave family finally got tired of burrowing in the sand and scrounging food. They decided that maybe the cowardly family in the North might have more to eat and a better life, so a band of them left the South sometime about the turn of the millennium to check it out.
When they got here, they watched the cowardly family, (who had also evolved to be quite stupid – probably from all the tree branch falls), and tried to figure out how they lived. They noticed that a vast number of the Northern cousins would walk into the roadways and try to attack the fast, giant beasts with lighted eyes – assumedly for food. So, for a few years, the brave Southern cousins stayed and also tried to catch the big, juicy beasts, figuring that if they could catch just one, they’d eat for a lifetime. After a while, however, they realized that the Northern rats weren’t trying to catch the cars, they simply froze with fear each time one came along.
Being the smarter of the two families, the Southern cousins shook their heads in disgust and headed back home to tell the others how dumb their Northern cousins were. And that, my dear friends, is where the armadillos have gone.

The way I see it, we’re lucky. With the way those Southern ones evolved, a million years from now, that shell would be hard enough to total our cars. Good riddance.

Sullivan's Sweet Side

Well, I’m a junkie. At first I was in denial but I’ve later come to realize that it’s true what they say; admission is the first step to recovery. And, it’s not like I didn’t see it coming. The advertisements last summer, the price drop on the larger – more addicting sizes. These things all lent a hand in drawing me in and like a hungry wolf spider the overwhelming temptation raced down and wrapped me in a cocoon of bliss before I had even the slightest chance to escape. My addiction? McDonald’s Sweet Tea. The Extra-Large, (they don’t say Supersize anymore as it’s associated with fat – they’ll even correct you if you say the dreaded “S-word”), now just 99-cents plus tax, of course.
Oh sure … many of you are going to bash me for referring to my meaningless Sweet Tea “situation” as an addiction. Some will even think that I’m disrespecting those who have “viable addictions” to things like nicotine, alcohol and drugs. Well, before you even get your little fingers flying on the hate-mail-spewing keyboards, let me just fill you in on a little something. With the volume of McDonald’s Sweet Tea that I consume and the sheer power of the cravings that I suffer for the stuff, it IS an addiction. I’m helpless. I can’t control myself. I’d strip off my clothing and dive into a pool of it so long as I were allowed to drink my way out. You think I feel good about that? I’m lowering my self-esteem and my bank account $1.06 at a time. (That’s the local tax total, by the way. I know it well).

Like most addicts, I don’t blame myself – yet, not totally anyway. I’m sure that through counseling and some additional group support, maybe someday I can take full responsibility. However, there are some extenuating circumstances that suspiciously hint toward a conspiracy. I feel it’s only in the interest of public safety that I bring this to your attention. Namely, the recipe for the satisfying, sweetly delectable juice of the gods served at our local McDonald’s is vastly different from the other McDonalds locations; it is much sweeter. Test me on this – you’ll see what I mean. Sullivan McDonald’s has the sweetest Sweet Tea on the face of the planet! Now, I’m not saying that this is a marketing ploy to sell more Sweet Tea, but to those of us with an insatiable sweet tooth, this stuff is like CRACK! (Woops, there goes another $1.06).
I’m afraid that when I run out of money, I’m going to have to start robbing children’s piggy banks and selling off my rare thimble collection just to support my habit. And then what? (Okay, I don’t really have a rare thimble collection. I made that up).
Some of you will look at me with a condescending eye of emotion after reading this. It’s a common reaction to running across a known addict. Yeah, you’ll feel sorry for me with regards to the inward fight that I’m battling and that sympathetic look of concern is the emotion that you’ll display outwardly. Beneath that, however, you’ll likely be hiding a feeling of enhanced self worth as the back of your mind will be telling you that you are better than me. You could have become a Sweet Tea addict, but you have willpower and I – the weakling junkie – do not. You might even feel guilty about that emotion, but it will be there.
And, of course there will be that look of suspicion in your eyes that you won’t completely be able to camouflage. I’ll see it – if only a fleeting sparkle for a moment – and I’ll know that you won’t invite me to your house without first locking away the Lipton Tea Bags and C&H Sugar. I can’t blame you. After all, I’m the one with the Sweet Tea addiction.
Well, it’s important that you know that I’m trying to beat the addiction through several methods. The hypnotist I met on the corner of 4th and Washington in St. Louis didn’t solve my problem, but I do crow like a rooster when a bell sounds and he took my wallet. (Yeah, the guy was actually “on” the corner, not in an office. That should have been my first clue). The Iced Tea Patch doesn’t seem to work, either. I’ve eaten a whole box of them with nothing but a stomachache. And the 12-step, group therapy program was a total bust. It’s hard to stand up and admit your addiction and serious commitment to recovery when you’re in a room with a clown, some purple guy named Grimace, several odd-looking trolls calling themselves the Fry Guys and a big-nosed fellow with a mask who has an addiction to hamburgers. They somewhat kill the mood.
So, for now I’m stuck as a slave to my Sweet Tea addiction – unable to find a way out. I’ve researched all of the bad things that such abuse can bestow on a person, and aside from the typical health risks associated with high sugar/high caffeine intake, I have determined that there is an upside to this whole mess. You see, I figure it this way … I drink about 10, 32-ounce Sweet Teas per week - normally while driving. I drive about 40,000-miles per year. Based on those numbers, I’m netting about 307.69 miles per gallon of Sweet Tea. (That’s about 1.4-cents per mile). Based on that, I’d say that I’m probably the most fuel-efficient addict out there. That’s gotta’ count for something.