Ponder this: For years now researchers have been telling us we’re getting fatter. Well, if our butts are expanding, why is the toilet paper shrinking?

Let’s all send an email to Charmin and Scott informing them of this incongruity.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Don’t Forget the Advertisers!

Happy November, faithful readers. Enjoy this issue, WHICH IS NOT A TURKEY, nap yourself a good football game, keep your hands out of the way of flying fork tines, and THANKS for GIVING us your unwavering support, except for that time you wavered, which we’ve pretty much forgotten about, although not entirely. And keep Friday night, December 11, 7:00 p.m. open. We’ll be having our very first Foolish Times reading at Café 316. Come listen to some of our local humor writers read their stuff and support Café 316 by purchasing their fine coffee, tea, desserts, and other goodies. Interested in participating in the reading? Email your entry to editor@foolishtimes.net or snail mail it to the address at the bottom left of this page and we’ll be glad to consider it. Space is limited, so send it in!

By Aaron Sean Birk

Working at a tobacco store can mean different things to different people. Your parents frown at you; the mothers of any girl you date instantly fumble for diplomatic words of disapproval. Yet many people are drawn in the door, desiring that rich organic sensation only a good smoke can provide.

The shop I work at—Hellam’s Tobacco on Alvarado Street in Monterey, arguably the oldest business in town (founded in 1893)—provides me intimate joy in my chosen identity as young tobacconist/journalist/socialite. We are more a family than a team of employees; we watch over each other; we help each other out.

In January, Hellam’s sent me to the Jamastrán Valley of Honduras to witness first-hand how tobacco is cured and rolled into small morsels of pleasure that the world either desires to purchase, tax, or ban entirely.

The news came early one afternoon. My boss Gene Palermo (Central Coast local) and store manager Mike Miele (New Yorker) were in a deep discussion at one end of the counter. Their discussions often sound like arguments, and can range from who has the best Chinese food (San Francisco vs. New York) to who will win the World Series (San Francisco vs. New York). In the midst of all this chaos, they took a brief moment to lay out their plans for sending me to Honduras, care of Caribe Imports/Camacho Cigars, a tobacco company Hellam’s deals with on a regular basis.

Camacho is famous for its Baccarat cigar, a mild, slightly sweetened blend of tobacco with a Connecticut or Cameroon wrapper. The company’s other trademarked blends tend toward the medium to full side, which means that if you’re not ready for it, the cigar will leave you dizzy and dangling like a monkey from a nearby pole.

The most interesting part of their plan was that I, the kid, the longhaired romantic with delusions of grandeur, would be flying off into the land of coffee, tobacco, and ripe fruit. It was an adventure just waiting to be plucked, a mystical challenge, and by the gods I wasn’t going to miss out.

A month later I stood in the terminal at Monterey Peninsula Airport waiting to board my American Eagle turbo-prop to Tegucigalpa via LAX and Miami International—a hellish trip at best and one I was pretending to be ready for. I looked like a pasty white version of Indiana Jones with my brown vinyl jacket, white buttoned shirt, and a pair of over-pocketed beige cargo pants I had purchased at Target about 15 minutes earlier.

With my passport and itinerary tucked neatly inside my jacket pocket, and every metallic item on my person stuffed in my carry-on, I charged through security hoping against hope that my dirty brass Zippo lighter wouldn’t be taken away. I had a hunch airport security would only take items that looked shiny and expensive, and maybe I was right, because they would let my darling Zippo pass again and again throughout the trip.

Twelve cups of coffee and two layovers later I was on a 757 leaving Miami and the good old USA, bound for the humid climate of the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa (roll that word around in your mouth). On the plane were the other members of this excursion to the Camacho plantation, as well as missionaries and young military personnel. I was seated beside a lovely young Air Force woman who spent the whole trip talking about the coming nine months she would spend in Honduras, as well as the horrifying landing about to befall the plane.

“You might want to be ready,” she said, mildly amused with herself. “It’s a bit scary for most people.”

I eased back in my seat with a brave smile and gripped the armrest. On the outside I exuded a cold, travel-hardened nonchalance, but on the inside I was whimpering with fear. The plane pitched into a 90-degree roll, the ailerons spun us sideways, the wings tilted into the cleft of what looked like two enormous mountains. I looked out over the wing and swore I could make out every single blade of grass that rushed past the plane at a few hundred miles an hour. One wrong move on the pilot’s part and I’d end up a smear along the Honduran countryside, and all this for a lesson in cigar manufacturing.

Then, as suddenly as it had started banking, the plane straightened, shifted, and slapped onto the hard tarmac of the airport, all brakes on and reversed engines wailing.

Inside the airport was a sea of humanity. A sign proclaimed that it is free to enter Honduras; sadly, however, the sign failed to mention that it costs $27 to leave the country, a fact that almost cost me a flight home a few days later.

I reached into my black leather bag and produced a bright red hat with Camacho Cigars and the company logo woven into the front. Out of some radical sense of fashion, or, perhaps, fear of marking myself as an American fruit ball, I decided against putting it on. The immigration officer asked me what I would be doing in his country. The words “Cuban,” “cigars,” and “rum” seemed to catch his attention, and he immediately stamped my passport and sent me on my merry way.

Baggage claim was massive chaos. Picture a ramp about the length of your driveway, then picture 200 people in front of it all looking for their luggage, which is being hastily thrown off a truck. In the distance I saw the runway, with the enormous plane I just flew in on, and beyond it I saw a DC-10, a rusted old pale-blue icon of air travel.

That DC-10 was being fueled up for flight. Yep, I thought, I’m going to get lost in the jungles of Honduras and become a rum smuggler. This thought drifted out of my mind when I realized I’d probably end up drinking my profit, so I resumed the wait for my suitcase.

I hooked up with an older couple (the husband was wearing the same ugly red hat I had) and we moved on to customs, where a man rushed up to us delivering an onslaught of Romance language that two years of high school Spanish did nothing to help me decipher. He grabbed our bags and stacked them on a dolly, waving us through customs as if it were an annoying gnat. Bright sunlight poured down on our faces as we exited the Tegucigalpa Airport, searching the crowd for a congregation of ugly red hats—the group I would spend the next week with deep in the Jamastrán Valley.

* * *

This was my first real meeting with Camacho sales rep Terry Vincent, whom I’d seen briefly at Hellam’s a few months earlier. Vincent is a bull among the Hondurans. He carries himself like an old boxer behind bold dark-rimmed glasses. His voice slices through the air with tough matter-of-fact salesmanship and his take-charge personality tends to set most people on edge.

“Did you make it okay?” he asked us. We nodded numbly, not understanding a damn thing that was happening. I stared at the restaurants across the street—Church’s Chicken, Pizza Hut. Oh lord, I thought, not here.

We walked across the parking lot and packed ourselves into four huge Chevy trucks, then headed out of the airport in a single-lane convoy. To our dismay, the plantation was a bladder-busting two-hour drive away, almost to the border of Nicaragua. We passed the town of Danli some time later, all of us squirming in our seats, and then swung onto a dirt road and through the entrance to Camp Camacho.

The first thing I noticed was the monkey—not a large one, not even a very cute one, but a wicked long-limbed monkey that ran along the edges of a branch with a leash trailing behind it, the only thing separating us from aerial attack. The gate guard smiled at us and the monkey walked up beside him to grasp his leg lovingly. Carlos, the Camacho rep who ran East Coast sales, must have flinched at that moment. Later we would understand why.

Up a small hill was the bunkhouse where we would be sleeping. “Everyone,” Vincent spoke loudly over the vehicles, “check your shoes for scorpions and always keep your bags closed. They like dark places.”

Soon we were sent off to our rooms, loaded with baggage. I didn’t dare unpack, or take off my shoes. Instead I did a quick once-over for any hidden insects and, satisfied the room was clean, I walked outside and searched for the meeting spot somewhere at the top of a hillside to the north, crossing the path of a few dozen angry iguanas on my way.

The Main House was much nicer than anyone expected. Slightly pink clay walls were accented by lush green foliage and white rock, and a thick wooden door stood open on its iron hinges, beckoning us inside. The interior was a bright off-white with polished tile floors, and outside from the patio we could take in an expansive view of the Jamastrán Valley in all its glory.

Most people missed all that at first, choosing instead to focus on the open bar, the table stacked with the best cigars Camacho could offer: Baccarat, real Corojo, and my love the Camacho Diploma. We had smoked most of these cigars before, but now it held special meaning, for we were in the land of their birth.

As a businessman I usually taste cigars for education and flavor reference, but that day I lounged in a plush leather seat smoking a thick dark Camacho Diploma, letting the heavy, smooth flavor permeate my pallet like a fine wine. Clutched between my fingers was an ice-cold glass of aged rum on the rocks, a rum so smooth that I wouldn’t even think of tainting it with anything but ice.

Christian Eiroa, a young, well-educated man, was the first to introduce himself. He and his father, Julio Eiroa, are the owners of Caribe Imports and Camacho Cigars, overseeing the entire operation from the planting of the seedlings to the production of the wooden boxes that are shipped into the United States.

It was here that I met my posse, the group that would spend late hours of the night and early morning stuck on that very patio. First was Henry Lyell of Jackson, Mississippi, a soft-spoken Southern gentleman who stood off to one side and watched. Little did we know that Henry was a card shark—that would come later.

He and I struck up a conversation about books. “I’m kind of ashamed to say that I’m reading an Anne Rice book my daughter sent me,” he admitted, looking down. His face lit up when I reached into the hip pocket of my cargo pants and produced a paperback copy of Rice’s Blackwood Manor, which I slapped down on the bar with a grin.

The second member of our soon-to-be-inseparable group was Bear Hamilton of Cigar Oasis out of Rancho Santa Margarita. His slightly thuggish look was mixed with a wicked intelligence and the appropriate quick wit every socialite/tobacconist needs to survive a day in the cigar mines.

Beside Bear stood a bold, red-faced young Irishman who for the length of the trip would be referred to as Professor Mark, after his Website dedicated to Cuban cigars—the Professor only smoked Cubans and could talk about them all day. The other interesting fact about him is that he would eat a hot dog without the bun, leaving the bread mangled and divided on his plate.

After a short dinner we shuffled off to bed. I slept in my clothes, preferring to be better prepared to kill anything that crawled within 100 feet of me.

The first day was a riot. Completely sleep deprived, I smoked about three cigars after breakfast. My head full of smoke, I was herded with the group onto the back of a truck bound for the Camacho fields. As we pulled out I got another glimpse of the monkey, and beside me Carlos went pale.

“Last year that monkey bit me in the butt,” he explained. “They had to take me to a vet for stitches because there isn’t a doctor around here for miles.” That made me feel even better about the scorpions.

We arrived at the fields and stopped next to some white tents filled with tiny seedlings. These seedlings are cultivated until their leaves are just ripe enough to be hand-set into the rich soil of the valley. In the fields, different tobacco plants were being grown on all sides: Corojo, Connecticut Shade Grown tobacco, and all manner of organic product that would one day be rolled into a delicious morsel of debauchery.

Once we were back at Camp Camacho, we all headed to the Main House. It was time to dig into some Scotch and enjoy life on the patio. Within minutes, a vicious game of Texas Hold’em poker began. Henry was a master, shuffling with one hand and flipping the cards around like a pro. Bear was a dangerous bluff-master, and the Professor, well, he just sat there and smoked cigar after cigar, 12 total that day. I won occasionally but no one was counting.

It was then that the first Royal Flush I had ever seen in person came up in Henry’s hand. He blinked at it strangely after collecting the stack of dominoes we were using as chips, and we all congratulated him. The odds against getting one are enormous, and the man would have made a fortune in Vegas, but we were playing for nothing but fun.

“So what did you think about the guys with guns?” Bear asked suddenly.

“I didn’t notice any guns,” I said back to him, staring at my cards.

They all started in at once: The drivers with the .45s, the guards with the M-16s and shotguns. Then I remembered the little barrels poking out everywhere from the waistbands and over the shoulders of most of the people who inhabited this portion of Honduras. It was strange to think that just across the valley from us, amid the agricultural fields, was a water tower that marked the presence of a military base which stood guard over the border between Honduras and Nicaragua. In that warm, peaceful environment it was easy to forget that not too long ago, Honduras was torn by violence. The Iran-Contra Affair tore into Central American politics through the late ‘80s, and in 1989 Nicaragua brought suit against Honduras in the International Court of Justice over the US-backed Contras’ use of Honduran territory.

The border has been quiet since 1990, but sitting that close to it even today gave one the feeling that Nicaragua and Honduras maintain only a tentative peace.

That, however, would be left to another, far more anxious person to worry about. At that moment our major concern was that we’d run out of rum.

The next morning, a wicked thing happened.

Carlos was standing over to one side when suddenly he jumped up and grasped his leg in pain. He limped off to the bathroom to search his pants for bugs. It was an ominous sign for Carlos, because the animal kingdom has sort of a vendetta against him. Two years prior he had been kicked off a horse, and then a bat had attacked him one night next to the pool, not to mention the monkey that had bitten him in the ass. Now it seemed that something had crawled up his pants.

But he came back and gave the “all clear” sign with a shrug, so we loaded into the trucks to head into Danli, where Camacho has its rolling and packaging factories.

After a brief tour of the box factory, which looked like a carpenter shop from the late 1940s complete with old saws and ink presses for the labels, we drove to the rolling factory where we were handed a cell phone and our first chance to call home.

“Hey boss, I’m alive,” I said when it was my turn.

“Damn, I thought we’d gotten rid of you,” Mike’s familiar New York accent came over the line.

Then Gene got on the phone to razz me about how much I would be allowed to spend on product. We were looking to order some Baccarat tins, small cigars, but I found out that they wouldn’t be available until the spring.

Christian Eiroa entered the room and parked himself behind a dark wooden desk, initiating a brainstorming session with us on how Camacho could make its cigars better. This was a unique thing for the producer of one of the best cigars in the industry to do, and it strengthened my confidence in their product for certain. Bear sat directly facing him, telling him what he thought with a sly half-smile.

The Professor was as stoic as ever, leaned up against the wall with a contented look on his face. He was smoking perhaps his tenth cigar of the day, so maybe he was just stoned. Henry sat beside me quietly watching the entire affair unfold.

Then it happened.

Carlos yelped in pain and grasped at something near his crotch. We all heard a distinct crunch that jolted even the mighty Terry Vincent a bit. Carlos rushed towards the bathroom with a worried look. We sat around looking at each other grimly until he emerged with a three-inch-long brown scorpion wrapped in tissue paper, crushed, but still twitching between his fingers.

The poor rep from Camacho held up the wicked-looking little bastard and immediately began asking how poisonous it was. Luckily, we learned, the brown scorpions only kind of numb you—it’s the white albino scorpions that mean almost certain death. So, with a limp, Carlos rejoined us for our tour of the Camacho rolling factory.

The first thing one notices in a cigar-rolling factory is the number of women who work there. “Women have a better sense of color, and can sort the tobacco by shade better than men,” Vincent explained, settling an ongoing debate I had been having with my girlfriend. Women have a better sense of color—not that any man will admit that to anyone but himself.

We were then invited to try rolling our own. I was directed toward a booth, and a petite young woman reached over to help me roll my very first Birk-en cigar. I meant it to be a cigar for the ages, a shining example for all to see.

At first my fingers fumbled at folding the wrapper around the long round tuft of filler and binder tobacco. The young woman helped me cut off most of the excess, and with a quick flick of the wrist I dabbed a cap on the end of it.

It was a complete wreck. The cigar I’d constructed looked like some twisted horrible creation, but I loved it anyway. I keep the ugly thing even now in a glass tube behind my desk at home. It is a reminder as to why I should never try to roll another cigar in my life, for the sake of humanity and all things decent.

Henry, on the other hand, strolled over and produced a perfectly formed cigar, which he then compared to mine for the flashing cameras.

The last evening in Honduras left us all a bit melancholy. We had a succulent dinner of fresh stewed goat, with farm-fresh tomatoes and salad, and a deep red wine. When dinner and the inevitable sales pitches by Terry and Carlos were over, the four of us wandered up to the Main House, spilled out the stack of black and green dominos, and reverently played our last round of poker.

I began to understand a deep and underlying truth that riveted me with its sentimentality. It wasn’t the cigars that made those moments of smoking on the patio so great. It was the companionship. This feeling bonds people, as it does in our little shop in Monterey, which is kind of a blip on the map of everything but is still similar in terms of the kinship one feels with the person smoking by one’s side. It is an excuse to let down walls.

I never realized the importance of having that kind of moment, the times in our shop when a homeless man comes in and orders a pack of cigarettes, then strikes up a conversation that inspires a wealthy man to add his own thoughts, and both views are equally respected.

We sat on that patio in Honduras and talked, straight off the cuff with no judgment. That moment, as with many moments I have had in Hellam’s, was shared in a fun, casual way. We might as well have been arguing over where to get the best Chinese food.

The next morning at the airport in Tegucigalpa was as crazy as ever. We all tried to stick together at the Duty Free shops but things got a bit wicked around boarding time, when we found out we each owed the Honduran government $27 or we wouldn’t be allowed to flee their country with our wares.

After paying that extortion, Bear, Mark, and I were determined to find a bar. By the gods, there was rum to be had and we were going to find it. We bought round after round, talking as fast as we could before the plane left. We were all seated separately on the flight, and this would be the last time many of us would speak.

The flight out of Honduras was a silent one. I sat at the window staring out at the countryside as the hills over the Jamastrán Valley sailed underneath the plane in slow motion. Bear, the Professor, Henry, Isam Alzio and his wife, and all the others who had taken this grand adventure would be a part of that moment with me forever. My romantic side threatened to get the best of me, and I swear that if I didn’t have such an Irish soul I would’ve cried like a loon.

Customs in Miami was as it always is—a nightmare. I saw a brief glimpse of Bear and some of the others behind the thick glass on the other side of the terminal as I left the airport for my overnight layover. It was a pathetic goodbye to a group of people I had become so close to, but I had their numbers in my pocket.

Sleep came hard at the Red Lion Hotel that night. I sat in my room waiting by the phone for a girlfriend who never called, and finally headed out at 4:30 a.m. to catch a flight to LAX and on to Monterey.

When I strolled into the shop the next day, fresh off the plane, Mike slapped me on the back and put a pack of Dimitrino Botschafters (my preferred brand) on the counter. “Welcome back,” he said with a grin. After a bit of talk I left and went home to sleep, still wearing the cargo pants I’d bought at Target.

We still haven’t figured out who serves the best Chinese Food.

I’m glad I work at home so I can be with my cat. There’s nothing like making a cat happy to give you that extra buzz.

Sugar, my rescued Siamese, loves to lounge on my lap, especially when I’m sitting at the computer. She watches the screen intently except for those times when she’s fidgeting and/or sleeping.

What’s that, you say? “How can I get any work done with her in my lap?” Well, often I don’t, but, you see, that’s the magical power of cats. We’ll do things for them we might not do for our spouses. When cats purr, we listen. They’ve had 9,000 years to perfect the fine art of getting humans to do their bidding, and they’re not about to let up now.

Karen McComb, animal-communication researcher at the University of Sussex in the U.K., has recently confirmed what we might only have told our closest friends: we’re completely at the mercy of our 8-pound fur balls.

According to an article in the July 31, 2009 issue of The Week, Ms. McComb discovered that “when cats were hungry, they altered their purring so that it was eerily similar to the cry of an infant.” When McComb played back these cat cries to human listeners, “people found them almost impossible to ignore.” Indeed. Who among us can ignore our kitties when they approach us with that masterful, manipulative sound?

Cats are not the only ones in the animal kingdom with a gift for problem-solving.

While cats seem to enjoy getting others to take care of them, crows have demonstrated a more self-reliant streak. According to another article in The Week (August 28, 2009), British researchers found that when crows were presented with a small pile of stones sitting alongside an upright tube containing a small amount of water on top of which floated a wax worm, the crows started dropping stones into the tube until the water level rose high enough for them to dip in their beaks and snag the worm. They didn’t come mewling or sniveling to the nearest person to take care of the problem for them. Go, crows!

Dogs, too, have been known to display remarkable independence, at least in Moscow. According to the August 28 issue of The Week, biologist Andrew Poyarkov has been studying a group of stray dogs and discovered that they have taught themselves to use the Moscow subway. He says, “The dogs ride commuter trains every morning into central Moscow, where food is easier to find, then ride back in the evening to the outskirts of the city where they sleep. They seem to have learned how long they need to stay on the train to leave at the right station.” Clever little barkers.

Since they’re all so smart in their own ways, it occurs to me to ask, “How can we harness those skills for our own purposes? To which of our many problems should we dispatch these clever creatures to find a solution?”

I know—how about health care? I mean, if a dog can figure out how to ride a subway, and a crow can solve the worm-retrieval problem, and cats can get pretty much anything they want, maybe they can figure out how we can all have health care?

We could round up a pack of dogs, a murder of crows, a clowder of cats and seat them around a big conference table, upon which we’ve laid out a spread of kibble, worms, and Fancy Feast. We would tell them that they can have their snacks only after they’ve solved this annoying problem. I can see it all now.

“Meow, meow meow,” say the cats in their highest-frequency voice.

“Arf, Arf,” reply the dogs.

“Caw, Caw, Caw, Caw, Caw, Caw,” cackle the crows.

They then turn their heads toward the humans who have been taking careful notes. The humans smile and nod. The creatures devour their snacks, and, presto!

Medicare for all!

* * *

Rosie Sorenson is an award-wining writer whose work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and other publications. Her new photo essay book, They Had Me at Meow: Tails of Love from the Homeless Cats of Buster Hollow, is about her thirteen years of loving and being loved by a colony of smart, funny feral cats. To learn more and to purchase the book, please visit her website: www.theyhadmeatmeow.com.

One of my readers wrote to me the other day and told me to stick to my dating stories and not rant about NASA.

But every once in a while, I think something is more important than dating when someone decides to bomb the moon or someone dies and I have to attend the funeral. And although losing a dear family friend is tragic and heartbreaking, it forces me to take a break from the adventure and insanity of coupulation (my word).

So I was off to Arizona for the funeral that turned out to be more of a celebration and drunkfest which my friend Carl would have wanted.

I could hear the words Carl would be saying in his southern drawl that I always loved hearing. “I’m gonna go run interference for ya’ll.”

While I was in Arizona, I decided to take a short but overdue vacation to Sedona, a New Age mecca for seekers and girls who have dated too much.

I have always been a spiritual person, albeit a bit sacrilegious. I was raised Catholic and was taken to church in my mother’s arms. She couldn’t fault me for saying “Answer da phone, Mommy” when the altar boys kept ringing the bell, but when I was old enough to know better, I was chastised for laughing hysterically with my Dad in the pew. He stuffed his handkerchief in his mouth to stop himself and I got the you-are-going-to-hell look from Mom. I guess that is why I had to write all of my sins down for my first confession, which included three pages of gum-chewing, bad thoughts, disobeying my parents, and more stupid things that kids do.

The priest behind the sliding window heard the papers rustling and my voice shaking and finally asked, “Are you reading this?”

“Yes, because I can’t remember all the bad things I did,” I said.

He laughed too and told me to go and say ten Hail Marys and three Our Fathers. And I felt a little better, and although I left that indoctrination behind, the threat of going to hell (or worse, purgatory) always loomed in the corners of my mind.

So when I got to my gate before my flight and saw the nun sitting in the corner smiling that I-know-who-you-are smile at me, my first thought was, “Oh crap. I’m going to die.”

My second thought was that my cholesterol wasn’t going to kill me after all, but that instead I wouldn’t die clutching a bag of stale pretzels.

I took a deep breath and boarded the plane anyway and I arrived safely. False alarm, I guess.

Sedona was great. I was hoping to see a spaceship, but no cigars (or flying discs). As I got to the gate for my return flight, I looked over and saw a priest. Now, what are the odds? I was hoping that he wouldn’t see me with a very large crystal hanging around my neck. And although I rarely showed cleavage anymore, I was wearing a keyhole shirt that happened to bring a whole lot of focus to it. Great. Hell awaits me for sure.

But I had to come home. So I took another deep breath and boarded again with my Barbie-bag carry-on and found my seat. I watched as the other fliers stuffed their oversized bags into the overhead compartments. What the hell do people put in there? I was sure that there were a few bodies up there.

So, there I was on this big plane with lots of seats and here comes the priest.

Oh, please, don’t sit by me, I prayed. (Yes, I still pray.)

But he did. Right smack next to me. And then another priest came and sat right next to him. So it’s me and two priests and I’m sure I’m going to die.

Father-whoever looks over at me and smiles. He has beautiful, liquidy blue eyes that distract me for a minute until I start my avoiding-purgatory-mantra, “He’s a priest, Robyn, he’s a priest.”

I’m not-so-nonchalantly trying to yank up my shirt so that the keyhole is up to my throat and my cleavage disappears, but it isn’t working. And even if it did, my multi-colored crystal is screaming blasphemy.

But he has an iPod and a computer and he has OCD. Seriously. His co-priest is sitting quietly as the plane takes off, but my blue-eyed high-tech buddy is making the sign of the cross after everything he does as I start to shake.

The seatbelt sign goes on and the captain’s voice comes over the loudspeaker.

“Well, folks. We have some turbulence.” Big surprise, I think. Yep, we’re all gonna die. I’ll be up there with Carl soon, running interference.

The stews have to be seated and they aren’t happy about it. No cocktails for me. So I start scribbling notes for my next article to take my mind off crashing.

“Are you a writer?” the blue-eyed priest asks.

“Uh, yes. How could you tell?” I responded. “And I’m a sinner.” No I really didn’t say that, but I thought it.

“You look like one,” he said, grinning. Yeah, right. “What do you write?”

So we started to chat. Priest number two never said a word the entire flight, but my new buddy talked a lot and I found out where he was from and what he did besides pray for our evil souls. And I disclosed that I write a silly column about dating and aging which, if this plane went down, I would never be doing again.

“There are no accidents, you know,” he said, and if my hands weren’t so busy yanking at the keyhole of my shirt, I would have made a few OCD signs of the cross myself. I still remembered how to do it.

It was a white-knuckle flight for sure, but we finally landed safely on the ground. Carl might have been disappointed that I wouldn’t be joining him so soon.

A few months later, I was headed to England to investigate crop circles. A very pleasant passenger sitting next to me started talking about New Age folks who thought that spaceships would come and rescue us in the last days on earth. I was silently hoping that was true. And that if we didn’t go with Jesus, we would all go to hell. But what if Jesus is manning the spaceship?

I need to take out my list of sins from long ago and add to it. I guess I’ll never learn.

* * *

Robyn Justo is a freelance writer who is experienced, but by no means an expert, on the frustrations, triumphs, and general hysteria of single life. “The Expiration Date” addresses the lighter side of living, dating, and just getting through the day. The names have been changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty). Please feel free to contact her directly at: robynjusto@aol.com.

Having never kept an actual journal, Mollen writes these columns in retrospect. For each column, he chooses a different day in his lifetime, and writes about it as though it were today. A particular entry may be about a day last week, or Halloween 1980, or the day he was born. Some of you may be asking, “But how would he have been able to write a journal entry on the day he was born?” To you, Mollen says: “Lighten up. It’s a humor column.”

Car Window Stickers Meet the Demand to Brand

Journal entry: October 2, 2007 (age 38)

Necessity may be the mother of invention, but greed is the father, and boredom is at least one of the godparents.

Necessity explains the fact that in 1968, the United Nations Vienna Convention on Road Traffic updated the rules requiring “country tags” on vehicles crossing international borders. Most of these country tags are oval-shaped, white stickers with a few black letters that represent a particular country.

Greed and boredom, on the other hand, explain the fact that similar tags became popular novelty items in the United States. The U.S., Canada, and Mexico are exempt from the country tag requirement, which means that the tags are completely irrelevant here.

But that didn’t stop American entrepreneurs from selling tags signifying anything from the driver’s favorite vacation destination (LA) to the college they attended (UVA). Some status seekers display stickers for every place they’ve been to in their more-important-than-you travels, creating an SUV-as-steamer-trunk mystique.

I’ve always been one to jump on a bandwagon just as the band is being fired. (For example, I waited until 2001 to get a job with an ill-fated dotcom, and I am currently considering a condo investment in Miami.) Therefore, I am launching my own idea for white, oval car stickers with black letters.

I think the stickers should announce to the world what we like to buy at drive-thru windows. Sure, the guy behind you at a red light might not care that you’ve been to Burkina Faso (BF), but he might think more of you if he knew that you like supreme beef chimichangas (SBC).

The possibilities are bounded only by the public’s appetites. If they’re proud to drive a tank-sized car so that their once-a-year trip to a Christmas tree farm is a little easier, shouldn’t they also be proud to be a regular consumer of super-sized cheeseburger platters (SCHZ)?

In addition to letting everyone know that they are the parent of an honor student, they could also let us know that their kids come first at the drive-thru, with a simple HMZOOSTRAW sticker (Happy Meal with strawberry milkshake and limited-edition Zooey Deschanel as Ms. Edmonds in “Bridge to Terabithia” action figure).

Specialty coffee aficionados could give each other knowing smiles on the highway. “Hey, cool breeze, how’s that shade-grown Mexico decaf (DEFMEX) treating ya?”

The preceding paragraphs provide ample evidence of the boredom component of invention. Now for the greed part. I plan to launch a commercial offering of my services as a drive-thru food acronym-izer.

So, as American consumers happily glom onto what I hope will be the next big fad—namely, vehicular announcements of recent gustatory exploits—I stand ready to make their messages…well, shorter. For the reasonable tag price tag of $8.95, I cannot be expected to provide the stickers themselves.

What I will provide is the assurance that drivers can efficiently tell the drivers they’re passing on the highway that they are on their way to eating yet another Extra Large Medium Ranch Fudge Wrap (ELMRFUD).

* * *

Tim Mollen is a syndicated humor columnist. He is also fond of jam. You can contact him or read more of his work at www.timmollen.com.

I’ve got a nasty mother of a bruise on my neck. Remind me not to fall asleep again on the couch—I woke up lying across a rawhide chew. Of course, explaining how I gave myself the bruise makes me sound one part lazy, and about four parts stupid.

So, I tell people it’s a hickey.

Ever see those “How to Flirt” articles? I don’t normally read them because, no matter what you’ve heard, I am NOT a loser, okay? To be clear, the only reason I spent days at the university’s flirt archives was to gather facts. I was accumulating hard data for, you know…jokes.

I swear on the grave of Rin-Tin-Tin, I am one rockin’ broad who can still dig her hooks into an eligible hunk. Not anywhere I’d have to compete with nubile babes, of course, but certainly at a retirement seminar or prostate screening.

The data suggest that a number of flirting techniques are “sure to make ‘em drool.” I can whip up a dandy drool all by my lonesome, thank you very much. And whether it’s yours or mine, bubba, hanging threads of spit don’t do it for me anymore. But, hey, that’s just me. Turns out, a girl’s best trolling moves include eye contact; hair flips; grooming; footsies; oral antics; and laughing. The usual stuff over at the baboon cage.

As a public service, I took these moves out for a test drive. Not to replay the “come catch me, come take me” games of yesteryear, but to measure their propensity for age-enhanced durability, i.e., DO THEY STILL WORK FOR GEEZERS?? After reading this column, some folks might say I crashed and burned. Man, they are so firetruckin’ judgmental!

First, I tried a hair flip with my unsuspecting mechanic. This maneuver always worked back when I had long, dark hair. But I misjudged the distance to my silver noggin and knocked off my trifocals. While thumbing the lenses back into the frames, I gave my head a sassy shake, like the singers on “American Idol.” Caution: dangle earrings + lacy collar = intersection of Pain Blvd. and Idiot Lane.

While running errands, I nabbed a parking space ahead of another driver. He seemed irked at this, so to show friendliness I gave him a long “smoldering” look. We maintained intense eye contact until I brought it home with a slow-motion kiss. I’m no expert on body language, but that really lit him up! Always keep 911 on speed-dial.

As luck would have it, I attended a high school reunion and ran into an old flame. Actually he was a bald, paunchy version of the flame I remember. Anyway, I fixed him in my crosshairs and began flicking at imaginary lint on the hem of my skirt. No response. So I kicked the grooming routine up a notch, yanked a Bissell Baby from my purse, and vacuumed the dandruff off my shoulders. He yawned and waved to the former prom queen. What the hell?!? After dinner, I even picked my teeth with a bobby pin, yet he never even looked my way. Bastard.

Later I sidled over and dangled a shoe from my toes. Listen up, all you lovebunnies. Dangle only while sitting—do NOT attempt this if standing! And remove your orthotics! In hindsight, high heels would’ve been easier to dangle, and sexier. Take my word, ice skates are cumbersome. And a bit odd in summer.

Time was running out so I mounted a full-court press with the lip thing. Flapped the old lipperoos in a frenzy of licking, sucking, biting. I won’t bore you with details, except to say I’m considering a stronger denture adhesive.

Victory hung in the air, so I figured “What the hell, gimme ‘Mating Rituals’ for $1,000, please, Alex”…and I unbuttoned my blouse.

If laughter is flirting, then he was doubled over with the hots for me.

Copyright © 2009 by Mary Tompsett

* * *

Mary Tompsett is a self-syndicated humorist who lives with her dog and cats on the far east side of Santa Cruz (okay, Racine, Wisconsin). Her horse left the family for a more stable environment. Read more at www.marytompsett.com.

Like Goldilocks and the three bears, we tried out all the chairs for size. This one was too big, this one too small, this one too stiff, this one too hard. Finally, we found a chair that was “just right.” The way my luck usually runs, I figured it would be out of stock, but, no, they had one left in the back—unassembled.

Yesterday was my honey’s birthday. I wanted to get him a new leather computer chair since his old one was getting pretty shabby. I thought he should help pick it out since he would be the one using it. We went to the local computer superstore where they have all kinds of fancy computer accessories and furniture.

There was nothing really wrong with his old chair except the leather had holes in the elbows where he had banged it against the desk. I got my chair at the same time he bought his and it is still good. Go figure.

I was going to get the old chair reupholstered, but the upholstery guy said leather is $200 a yard. “Are you sure you want real leather? What kind of chair is it, anyhow? Why don’t you just get a new one? Can you come back Monday? I don’t feel very good today.”

I couldn’t deal with it, so I decided to take his advice and get a new one.

I noticed the box seemed awfully small when they brought it out from the back of the store. They would assemble the chair for only $7.99. But how hard could it be to put a chair together? Stick the top in the base and that’s it. I wanted it now and did not want to wait.

“Easy Assembly,” said the box. We could do it ourselves.

The instructions were so simple there were no words, only pictures: step 1, step 2, step 3, etc. In the box were a base, a back, a seat, casters, arms, the swivel thing, and a metal bracket for the bottom. They even had all the bolts prepackaged and marked for each step.

Men are better at this kind of thing. Honey could put it together. My 10-year-old grandson could help.

“Where is the Allen wrench?” said honey. That should have been my clue.

My grandson found the wrench in the package with the bolts, and things went along pretty smoothly for a while. Then I heard panic. “There’s a part missing! See the picture? This metal thing sticking out isn’t there.”

A part missing? Didn’t he check for parts first? Apparently not.

“But there are two holes on the bottom bracket and two holes on the back. They have to go together.” Finally, I convinced him to try the bolts. They fit… nothing missing after all.

After the back and seat were together, we had to attach the arms. By then honey was getting fed up with the whole thing. After taking the arms off that were backwards and putting them back on the right way, we finally managed to get everything tight enough not to wobble.

By then I was beating myself over the head for not paying $7.99 to get it assembled. What was I thinking? For a lousy eight bucks I could have had them do it.

We sat the chair right-side up and honey sat down. The casters came off and flew in all directions. Back to the assembly line. I should have known there is no such thing as “easy assembly” regardless of what the manufacturer says.

It does look great now that it is finished, and honey loves it. We are still trying to figure out what to do with all these extra bolts, though.

* * *

Copyright 2009 Sheila Moss

www.humorcolumnist.com

Is it just me, or are TVs taking over the universe? They’re popping up in gas stations, waiting rooms, supermarkets, banks, beauty salons, HOTEL BATHROOMS. I myself don’t need a bathroom TV because I keep one in my underwear.

“For those of you who owned a Walkman and were at least mildly aware of the Watchman, Sony brings you … The Crotchman.”

The locker room at 24-Hour Fitness plays two TVs at the same time, which is kind of like being raped in the ears. Last week it was Fox versus ETV…

“Oprah lost 16 pounds to Al Qeada, who destroyed the Grammy chances of our nation’s leaders in their incestuous love triangle. Call now!”

One night I got trapped with “The Biggest Loser,” a reality show named after the people who watch it. The important thing is that we are never, for one second, without a talking head.

One day you’ll go to leave a room and the TV will stand up tall like Julius Caesar and say, “Don’t you give your back to ME!”

At Friday’s, I saw a husband and wife watching TV over one another’s heads. Makes you wonder how they got together in the first place.

“Well, I stretched my neck to see American Idol; she thought I was looking at her; and uh, the rest is history.”

My cousin placed his baby’s crib beside the TV because the baby found it comforting. We all look forward to junior’s first word: “Toyotathon!”

We can’t even sit down to Thanksgiving without a football game in the background. FYI, remote control goes INSIDE the soup spoon.

Even when you mute the TV, it types out a transcript like a tyrant refusing to be gagged. “Don’t … you give … your back … to ME.”

On the bright side, people are reading again. So it goes.

Albertson’s supermarket plays tabloid TV above the magazine rack, and I, for one, am embarrassed to know what Jennifer thinks of Angelina. High school never ends.

And commercials. Sigh. They say TV is free, but we pay for it every time we hum a jingle. Somewhere in the distance, the Dalai Lama is in the lotus position trying to not think about what he’d do for a Klondike bar.

In concert, John Mellencamp began the song “Cherry Bomb” by saying, “I hope this one’s good enough to someday be on a Pop Tarts commercial.”

And let me tell you, it takes a big man to admit that he paid to see John Cougar Mellencamp.

Have you ever walked in on children who’ve stayed up all night watching TV? Their eyes gloss over with that soulless, homogenized look of certain congressmen. Finally they pass out, remote control in hand, while their clicker finger amazingly keeps changing channels.

At least they’re not watching daytime TV, pork rinds for the brain.

“Yes, yer honor, he did gone slap me in fronta his ho’ girlfriend.”

On “General Hospital,” I saw a doctor being played by someone like Keanu Reeves, only stoned-er.

“Don’t make me compromise the ethicality of this hospital, dude.”

That’s why we call them soap operas: Because afterward you need to shower. And if you ever find yourself bleeding to death in the ER, it’s because your doctor is groping a candy striper with whose sister he is unwittingly having a baby.

I turn off the gym’s locker room TVs every time I go and feel sorry for the guy who ever tries to stop me, because that will be a long, emotional conversation. I fantasize about smashing the TV, but then I remember Gandhi and Martin Luther King and the cost of bail.

When I can’t reach the TVs, I dress as quickly as possible to minimize the damage:

“Local militia extend money-back guarantees to cheating housewives for their overtime victory in prescription coverage. Call now!”

Then I go home and shower for a long, long time.

* * *

Jason Love is an award-winning humor columnist, stand-up comedian, and author of “Snapshots: The Big Picture,” available at Amazon.com. Check out more of his work at www.jasonlove.com.

Editor’s note: The Limerick Wars of 2009 continue to wind down, along with the baseball season. Kiri Kiri the Limerick Deary submits the following in response to last month’s submissions, saying, “OK, I must submit one last baseball-related limerick to Gene Gene The Limerick Machine, Birdman, and Village Sky”:

I have to admit I felt slighted

when last month Limerick Deary wasn’t sighted

Though I wrote not last month

being down in the dumps

Cuz the Giants’ good efforts were blighted.

However there’s always next year—

And the Dodgers we needn’t to fear

They’ll not win the Series

and my spirits won’t weary

For my Giants I always will cheer.

(And now for my feeble attempt at Haiku… it’s a 5-7-5 syllabic, right??):

No matter who wins

when the ball sails toward the Cove

it’s a flight of grace.

From Mutual Admiration for Baseball Member,

Kiri Kiri the Limerick Deary

November birthdays: Remember, change is inevitable. Unless you use a credit card.

ARIES (3/21-4/19): Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. You know what will make him even bigger? You, standing there trying to calm your fears with ancient sayings instead of running like hell.

TAURUS (4/20-5/20): Not only can water float a boat, it can sink it also. Also it can wash it. Also it can be used as a metaphor to mean something far beyond the interpretive abilities of one such as yourself.

GEMINI (5/21-6/21): If the roots are not removed during weeding, the weeds will grow again when the winds of Spring blow. Considering the winds we got in early October, however, I think it’s safe to say the roots are somewhere in the Pacific right about now.

CANCER (6/22-7/22): The mountains are high and the emperor is far away. This would be a good time to climb that mountain, without that pesky emperor telling you every single move to make.

LEO (7/23-8/22): Kissing is like drinking salted water: you drink and your thirst increases. It is also like eating a deep-fried turkey. You’ll need to serve a lot of water with that deep-fried turkey you’re planning to impress your Thanksgiving dinner guests with, American chef.

VIRGO (8/23-9/22): Nature gives us nuts, but does not crack them. This is your month to crack your nuts.

LIBRA (9/23-10/22): A prudent question is one-half of wisdom. Ah, but what does “prudent” mean? That is your task this month. To buy a dictionary and look up the meaning of “prudent.” Ah, but what is a “dictionary”? More half-wisdom to ponder!

SCORPIO (10/23-11/21): Remember, froth is not beer. If you want froth, visit the ocean. If you want beer, you’ll find a wonderful selection at the Crown and Anchor British Pub and Restaurant, 150 W. Franklin Street.

SAGITTARIUS (11/22-12/21): Be not afraid of growing slowly, be afraid only of standing still. Be not too afraid, however. Standing still enables you to take root. Taking root allows you to grow slowly. And you should never be afraid of growing slowly. Only of standing still.

CAPRICORN (12/22-1/19): He who lies down with dogs gets up fleas. Let sleeping dogs lie. Love me, love my dog. I don’t know; something about dogs this month, Capricorn. Let me know when you find out.

AQUARIUS (1/20-2/18): Life is like the moon, now full, now dark. Now white, now red. Now halved, now quartered. Now lovely, now craggy. Now being blasted with rockets from NASA at taxpayer expense. Yep. Good old Life.

PISCES (2/19-3/20): Lost time is never found again. So be sure to visit Gasper’s Jewelers to purchase a replacement timepiece for the one you lost. Mention the ad in this issue and get 20% off! Wish Gasper’s a “Happy Anniversary” and receive an additional 10% off! But hurry—offer is only good through December 31!

It’s not every day a guy gets to talk to an old friend he hasn’t heard from in over fifteen years. At least it didn’t used to be. I guess Facebook is changing that pretty quickly. It probably won’t be long before people never even lose touch in the first place. But for me, Internet or not, it’s still a pretty great day when something like this occurs. And that’s exactly what happened to me this afternoon.

Through a strange online version of the Kevin Bacon game, my old high school buddy Luis found me on this gigantic social network. Now I already knew Facebook was huge. But I had no idea just how huge. It turns out that my old friend relocated to Colombia some fifteen years ago and has been living there ever since. I realize that’s not exactly a stone’s throw from Georgia, but at least it’s still within driving distance. So it can’t be all that bad. Besides, I’ve heard South Carolina is a beautiful state.

After a few quick digital exchanges, I came to understand that my pal had actually left the United States completely. Right after graduation he packed up his stuff and took off for the cocaine-exporting capital of the world (as I remember he was incredibly ambitious). It seems “The Colombian Connection,” as we called him jokingly back in school, was finally earning his reputation.

If this had taken place say, a generation ago, there is very little chance we would have ever been reunited. But now thanks to Facebook (and of course Al Gore—father of the Internet), it appeared our destinies were intertwined once again. Believe it or not, he didn’t stumble onto the website during a weekend excursion back to the States. It seems the image on their homepage depicting the entire world being connected wasn’t such a stretch after all. After speaking with Luis further I came to realize that Colombia is a much nicer place than we tend to give it credit for.

“So why in the world did you ever leave the South, man?” I asked him, wondering why anyone would do such a thing.

“Might want to check your map, buddy. I’m a bit farther south than you are,” he replied.

“You know what I mean,” I said, determined to get to the bottom of this perplexing mystery.

“Well, I must admit I do sometimes miss that good ol’ Southern cooking. Your mom made a mean raccoon meatloaf,” he replied, reminiscently.

“I know. It’s to die for.”

“But I finally just got tired of all the B.S. living stateside. Heck, I hear it’s gotten so bad up there lately that Obama is considering renaming it the B.S. of A. if it doesn’t get better soon. I hope he gets free boots as a perk for being the president. There’s no doubt he’s knee deep in you-know-what right now.”

“Yeah, I see your point.” My friend was right. Our country, the same one many in my family served for so proudly, was now on the brink of total disaster. He obviously saw this coming a long time ago and hightailed it out of here. It’s amazing, you think you know someone and never even realize they have psychic ability.

“So I moved down here. People think it’s so dangerous. But I’ve lived here for fifteen years and haven’t even been mugged once,” he said emphatically.

This was indeed something to be proud of. During that time I’ve lived in the U.S. and actually have been held at gunpoint. Granted, I don’t carry a shotgun strapped across my back for a trip to the local grocery store, but I’m not against it. There’s something to be said for preemptive measures.

Logically speaking, my buddy was making quite a case for his decision. Creeping into my own mind was the possibility of packing up the family and moving down there myself. Sure there’s the drug smuggling, blazing equatorial heat, and guerrillas waging war in the streets to contend with. But my son has been training to be a Ninja since he could walk. He just turned four and between the two of us I’m sure we could keep his mother and sister safe.

“Ya’ll got any jobs down there?” I inquired, figuring even if Shannon wouldn’t make the move I might still be able to commute somehow.

“A few. That is, if you don’t mind packing up ‘cargo’ planes. Why, do you want to move down here or something?”

Then I remembered. My dang red hair was a problem. Not the hair itself but rather the pasty white complexion that comes with it. I get a third-degree burn from mowing the grass with my shirt off. There’s no way I could handle Columbia.

“It did cross my mind. Unfortunately, I’m afraid it’s just not realistic. But I have to say it was great hearing from you, man.”

“Same here. If you ever change your mind, let me know. By the way, I see that you’re now doing well as a writer. Congratulations. I see that sarcasm of yours is finally paying off.”

“Well, I am a writer, but as far as the ‘doing well’ part and it ‘paying off,’ I’m still working on it. But I would love to send you a copy of the new book when it comes out.”

“That would be great! You might have to pay a pretty penny, though. Getting stuff from the States to Columbia is usually not very easy (funny how they seem to have no trouble at all getting stuff out).”

“I’ll see what I can do. It was great talking to you, Luis. Take care, buddy.”

“You too. Stay in touch.”

What a great day. I was reconnected with a long-lost friend and now have a viable option should things get worse for us here. That reminds me, I need to get a passport. I should probably ask my brother if I could borrow his jet ski. And it might be a good idea to hit the shooting range a couple times this summer. It’s better to be prepared for the worst and hope for the best, I always say.

* * *

“Got a Minute?”

An eclectic collection of humor articles, this masterpiece of southern writing is widely used as the perfectly-portable-potty-partner.

Visit www.brentbasham.com. (Free autograph for a limited time!)

Rex and I were out for a walk around the block. We came upon my neighbor, Jay Throckmorton, walking across his front yard. He had a coil of wire slung over his shoulder and under his arm. He appeared to be on a mission.

“Mornin’, Jay.”

“Mornin’, Tom. Mornin’, Rexie.”

“Ah, Jay, what you up to?”

“Gophers.”

“Gophers?”

“Yep. Gophers. Making my life miserable for years. Tryin’ something new.”

As Rex and I walked over to a gopher mound in Jay’s front yard, Jay unslung his wire bandoleer.

Rex sniffed the gopher mound, and Jay squatted down and explained to Rex his latest endeavor to rid the

yard of gophers, not unlike Sheriff Andy Taylor of Mayberry explaining to Opie how to put a worm on a fishing hook.

“And that, Rexie, is how I’m going to kill that dad-gum gopher.” Jay’s plan was to fill the hole with acetylene gas and attach an electric match to the gopher’s bunker and blow him to smithereens. Rex sniffed the hole again and looked up to me. I could see the wheels turning in little Rexie’s golf-ball-sized brain.

As Jay unrolled the copper wire and stuck one end at the mouth of the gopher hole, he explained his past failures. “Tried the garden hose several times. Soil’s too sandy, and they build a very deep hole in their burrows that let water escape the tunnel, which it does. Great engineers. Tried Map gas—welder’s gas—but that dissipated too quickly. Tried mothballs. That didn’t work. Supposed to, you know. Doesn’t work. Nope.”

Rex went around to Jay’s side yard. I called out to Rex, “Hey, we’re going to have some heavy-duty blasting here in a minute, Rex. Get back here.” I heard Rex barking soft little “woofs.” “Rex, get back here.” No Rex.

Jay continued his history of gopher assaults as I envisioned a scene from Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner. “Then I tried a guillotine device that showed promise but didn’t deliver a victory; the gophers won that time, too.”

Jay’s wife Ellen came out on the front porch with a tray of lemonade, wearing a pensive smile. “He never gives up.”

“Mornin’, Ellen.”

“Mornin’, Tom. I thought I saw Rexie out here a minute ago. Have some lemonade.”

“He’s around in the side yard.”

I went to the side yard and saw Rex digging furiously. “Rex! What the hell are you doing?” He shot me an indignant look for distracting him.

I was about to reprimand him again, but stopped as I noticed the gopher poke his head up out of the bottom of Rex’s crater. The gopher pulled himself up and out into the open as Rex bent down and picked the gopher up in his mouth. Rex, gopher in mouth, walked over to the side fence, shimmied under it, and returned to Jay’s yard in a second—without the gopher.

“Hey, Tom,” yelled Jay. “Come back over here; don’t want you to get hurt when this baby goes off. Bring Rex, too.”

I picked up Rex and returned to ground zero. I sipped lemonade and held Rex under my other arm.

Jay’s eyes flashed with maniacal evil as he set the electric match just inside the gopher hole and sealed it shut.

We all stood at attention as he did a theatrical countdown. “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . ONE!”

Kabbbbbbooooooooooommmm!

Jay smiled, sensing final victory. “No gopher could live through that! Ha ha ha!”

I ran to the side yard, and, seeing the crater Rex had made, said, “Holy smokes Jay! Come look at this crater. Must have been a gas pocket. Must a’ blown that critter sky-high!”

Jay and Ellen ran over to witness the huge, gaping hole. I sat Rex down and he sniffed the hole and shimmied under the fence.

He returned in a moment, wagging his tail. I knew why he was wagging his tail. He knew why he was wagging his tail. Jay? He thought his gopher troubles were over.

* * *

Tom and / or Rex can be reached at burns100@earthlink.net.

Women Don’t Know Anything About Guys

I knew something was wrong when I walked into the bedroom.

Men don’t sense much, like emotions, subtlety, or the passage of time after high school, but we do realize when something un-guy has happened. And it happened to me.

A free video rental card, a dollar I’d found on the street, and scraps of paper that, at one point may have been movie tickets to “The Empire Strikes Back” sat on my dresser (guys don’t clean out their wallets—ever). Someone, I’ll call her my wife, had violated something more private to me than childhood memories, my fear of clowns, or my prostate. She’d gone through my wallet, a genuine cowhide wallet with real money in it. (While devalued to the point I couldn’t use it to buy a tamale in a poor mountain village, but the last time I checked, a dollar still counts as “real” money.)

“Uh, honey,” I began, words dropping out of my head like rocks. “Why are my ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ tickets on the dresser?”

“I went through your wallet,” she said, like Jeffrey Dahmer confessing to police, but not realizing killing people and eating them was wrong. But she knew. Oh, she knew.

Did her parents teach her nothing?

“Let’s use this money to (insert something I didn’t want to do),” she said picking up my dollar, oblivious to the fact that I was in shock. She had broken Guy Rule Number One: never go through a guy’s wallet.

After I regained consciousness, I wondered what other manformation she wasn’t privy to.

10 things women don’t want to know about guys:

1. A guy’s wallet is more personal to him than the first time he did anything. It’s a sacred place, home to an insurance card, 42 cents, a football schedule from 1997, and a Hooter’s receipt we don’t want you to know about. Stay away from the wallet, don’t touch the wallet, the wallet doesn’t really inhabit your reality.

2. Football games, even Pop Warner football games played by kids we don’t know, are more important to us than birthdays, anniversaries, open houses, Pampered Chef parties, your family, and weddings—unless there’s an open bar; and then there’d better be a TV and it had better be on.

3. Men don’t like romantic comedies, floral patterns, shopping, or window treatments. If your man likes any of these, or actually uses the term “window treatment” when he means “curtains,” don’t expect children.

4. We lie to you more than we tell the truth. If you ask, “Do you mind going to my parent’s house for dinner?” the answer “yes” is a lie. If you ask, “While my sister’s staying with us, would you please not mention her divorce? You know how much that upsets her,” the answer “yes” is a lie. “Did you see that trashy blonde in the halter top?” will also demand a lie.

5. We don’t like meals that don’t include meat. The perfect man meal is beef and alligator wrapped in an entire pig.

6. We don’t like to talk about our day because it’s over. We’re ready to talk about something else, preferably in one-syllable words while holding at least one beer.

7. We don’t like the same music as you (see No. 3).

8. We don’t really enjoy having people in our house. Frankly, having people in our house makes us unhappy because we can’t walk around in our underwear.

9. Clint Eastwood is a religious figure. Don’t speak badly of Clint Eastwood and don’t look directly at Clint Eastwood. It’s a scientific fact men are incapable of moving off the couch during a “Dirty Harry” movie. Please subscribe to TV Guide to plan our social calendar.

10. We don’t remember things not related to our daily routine. The fact that you’re claustrophobic might push out some vital piece of manformation, such as how to run a band saw or who has the right-of-way at a four-way stop. And, yes, sports trivia is vital information. That’s how guys establish the social pecking order.

* * *

You can order Jason’s books on the paranormal, “Darkness Walks: The Shadow People Among Us,” and “Haunted Missouri: A Ghostly Guide to Missouri’s Most Spirited Spots,” at jasonoffuttbooks.blogspot.com.

Police Call

This is the true story of George Phillips of Meridian, Mississippi, who was going to bed when his wife told him that he’d left the light on in the shed. George opened the door to go turn off the light but saw there were people in the shed in the process of stealing things.

He immediately phoned the police, who asked, “Is someone in your house?” George said no and explained the situation. Then they explained that all patrols were busy, and that he should simply lock his door and an officer would be there when available.

George said, “Okay,” hung up, counted to 30, and phoned the police again.

“Hello, I just called you a few seconds ago because there were people in my shed. Well, you don’t have to worry about them now because I’ve just shot them all.”

Then he hung up. Within five minutes three squad cars, an Armed Response unit, and an ambulance showed up. Of course, the police caught the burglars red-handed.

One of the policemen said to George, “I thought you said that you’d shot them!”

George said, “I thought you said there was nobody available!”

Church Bulletin Bloopers

Bertha Belch, a missionary, will be speaking tonight at Calvary Methodist. Come hear Bertha Belch, all the way from Africa.

The sermon this morning: “Jesus Walks on Water.” The sermon tonight: “Searching for Jesus.”

Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don’t forget your husbands.

The peacemaking meeting scheduled for today has been cancelled due to a conflict.

Remember in prayer the many who are sick of our community.

Smile at someone who is hard to love. Say “Hell” to someone who doesn’t care much about you.

Don’t let worry kill you off. Let the Church help.

Miss Charlene Mason sang “I Will Not Pass This Way Again,” giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.

For those of you who have children and don’t know it, we have a nursery downstairs.

Barbara remains in the hospital and needs blood donors for more transfusions. She is also having trouble sleeping and requests tapes of Pastor Jack’s sermons.

Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October in the church. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

A bean supper will be held on Tuesday evening in the church hall. Music will follow.

At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be “What Is Hell?” Come early and listen to our choir practice.

Eight new choir robes are currently needed due to the addition of several new members and to the deterioration of some older ones.

Scouts are saving aluminum cans, bottles, and other items to be recycled. Proceeds will be used to cripple children.

Please place your donation in the envelope along with the deceased person you want remembered.

The church will host an evening of fine dining, super entertainment, and gracious hostility.

The ladies of the Church have cast off clothing of every kind. They may be seen in the basement on Friday afternoon.

This evening there will be a hymn singing in the park across from the Church. Bring a blanket and come prepared to sin.

Ladies Bible Study will be held Thursday morning. All ladies are invited to lunch in the Fellowship Hall after the B.S. is done.

The pastor would appreciate it if the ladies of the congregation would lend him their electric girdles for the pancake breakfast next Sunday.

Low Self-Esteem Support Group will meet Thursday night. Please use the back door.

The eighth-graders will be presenting Shakespeare’s Hamlet in the Church basement Friday night. The congregation is invited to attend this tragedy.

Weight Watchers will meet at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use large double door at the side entrance.

The Associate Minister unveiled the church’s new tithing campaign slogan last Sunday: “I upped my pledge! Up yours!”

Terms Other Than “Boyfriend”

#1. Partner

The Good: There’s no doubt that everyone’s equal in this relationship.

The Bad: Are you dating or starting up a limited liability company?

#2. Lover

The Good: It’s sophisticated, it leaves nothing to the imagination, and it’s dramatic.

The Bad: We’ve got four words for you: “Granny, meet my lover…”

#3. Paramour

The Good: It’s French, and they seem to know a little bit about how to make love last (hello, kisses).

The Bad: Trying to explain to your family that this doesn’t mean he has a wife and 2.5 kids at home.

#4. Life Hostage

The Good: No need to grip his sleeve at parties; you’ve staked your claim.

The Bad: Possessive much?

#5. Manfriend

The Good: You’re finally dating a grown-up, good for you.

The Bad: He’s retreating to his man cave right about… now.

#6. Honey

The Good: It’s sweet enough to eat, and doubles as a nickname appropriate in the bedroom and out.

The Bad: Mariah Carey called. You stole her line.

#7. Flame

The Good: Hot, hot, hot.

The Bad: All that’s missing is a set of gold chains and a bad perm, and you’re back in the seventies.

#8. Beau

The Good: It’s old-fashioned romance at its best.

The Bad: Other than the fact that you sound like old Aunt Agnes, not much.

#9. Escort

The Good: No need to have “the talk” if you’re not sure how into monogamy he is.

The Bad: Explaining you didn’t pay this guy to sit at your table at your best friend’s wedding.

#10. Companion

The Good: Wherever you go, he goes, and he’s happy to be along for the ride.

The Bad: You know who makes a good companion? Your dog.

The Three Little Pigs

Three Little Pigs went out to dinner one night. The waiter came and took their drink order.

“I would like a Sprite,” said the first little piggy.

“I would like a Coke,” said the second little piggy.

“I want beer, lots and lots of beer,” said the third little piggy.

The drinks were brought out and the waiter took their orders for dinner.

“I want a nice big steak,” said the first little piggy.

“I would like the salad plate,” said the second little piggy.

“I want beer, lots and lots of beer,” said the third little piggy.

The meals were brought out and a while later the waiter approached the table and asked if the piggies would like any dessert.

“I want a banana split,” said the first little piggy.

“I want a cheesecake,” said the second little piggy.

“I want beer, lots and lots of beer,” exclaimed the third little piggy.

“Pardon me for asking,” said the waiter to the third little piggy, “but why have you only ordered beer all evening?”

The third little piggy says, “Well, somebody has to go ‘Wee, wee, wee, all the way home’!”

This Month’s Blonde Joke

One day a blonde office worker comes out to the warehouse to walk around. As she is walking she looks up and sees a coworker hanging upside down from an I-Beam in the ceiling.

She asks, “What ARE you doing”?

The coworker says, “I need a few days off, but the boss won’t let me have them, so I’m hanging upside down from this I-Beam acting crazy. The boss will see me, think I need rest, and send me home for a few days.”

The blonde says, “That won’t work. Uh-oh, here comes the boss now. You’re in for it.”

The boss spots the blonde looking up and sees the man hanging there. “Just WHAT do you think you are DOING?!!” he asks.

The man says, in a “crazy” voice, “I’m a light bulb…I’m a light bulb…”

The boss says, “Buddy, you need some rest. Take the rest of today and tomorrow off and get some sleep.”

As he is climbing down he winks at the blonde, showing her it worked.

The blonde starts to follow the man out the door.

The boss asks her, “Where do you think YOU’RE going?”

The blonde says, “I can’t work in the dark.”

The Date

A man is dining in a fancy restaurant and there is a gorgeous redhead sitting at the next table. He has been checking her out since he sat down, but lacks the nerve to talk with her.

Suddenly she sneezes, and her glass eye comes flying out of its socket towards the man.

He snatches it out of the air and hands it back.

“Oh, my, I am so sorry, “ the woman says as she pops the eye back in place. “Let me buy your dinner to make it up to you.”

They enjoy a wonderful dinner together, and afterwards they go to the theater, followed by drinks. They talk, they laugh, she shares her deepest dreams and he shares his.

After paying for everything, she asks him if he would like to come to her place for a nightcap and stay for breakfast.

The next morning, she cooks a gourmet meal with all the trimmings. The guy is amazed! Everything had been so wonderful!

“You know, “ he said, “you are the perfect woman. Are you this nice to every guy you meet? “

“No,” she replies. “You just happened to catch my eye.”

What is golf? You take a metal rod with a head on it, and hit a little white ball towards a hole in the ground.

Golf symbolizes for a lot of pot-bellied, balding middle-aged men success. Why? They can traipse around the clubhouse and act the big guy in their expensive golf clothes and say to themselves, “I’m a success. You have to work. But I can hang around the golf club.”

Golf is the most un-sport of all sports, the reason why pot-bellied bald men with heart murmurs can play it.

You don’t have to do anything, except walk short distances, and swing at a little white ball. Supposedly, if you’re doing it right, the ball gets closer to the hole with each swing. After you swing, you get back into a toy car powered by a battery and drive to where you hit the ball. Then you get out and do it again. Get back in the toy car, and drive again.

This is a sport?

It involves neither courage nor stamina.

Sometimes, people who are recognized as being the best at swinging at the little ball, are followed around the course by hordes of strangers whose lives are so meaningless, they have nothing better to do than follow someone who is hitting a tiny ball closer to a hole in the ground and driving a toy car.

Sometimes television broadcasts it so you can see them hit the ball at a hole. Millions of dollars are awarded to the one who gets the ball in the hole in fewer tries than the other guy.

He says, “Oh look at me, I’m getting the ball closer to the hole. Aren’t I great? Oh I’m important. I sent the ball right at the hole that time.”

Everybody whispers in the crowd, as though something really important is going on. At boxing matches and baseball games they scream. But not golf. A sport that has no noise except the whirring of the toy cars?

Most who play golf are neither famous for it, nor particularly good at it, nor successful, though they want to pretend they are. After spending very little energy swinging perhaps an average 93 times at a tiny ball and then driving a toy car, they come back to the clubhouse and have a calorie-laden steak and a double scotch on the rocks.

Not only do they fanaticize that they’re rich in their overpriced golf clothes, made by a slave laborer in China, but they also think of themselves as sportsmen. Golf, with the possible remote exception of bowling, is the only sport you can play if you’re an out-of-shape slob.

You see, if you were to climb into a boxing ring and box, everybody would see you’re out of shape and laugh at you when you clumsily collapsed into a corner from exhaustion after only the first round. That wouldn’t stroke your ego, would it?

No. Mainly, golf is to take erratic swings at a tiny white ball, drive a toy car after it, then come back and parade around and act the big guy. Despite the fact that your house, your car, and your boat, are not owned by you, but by a bank from which you borrowed money to acquire those things, and to which you now make payments that you probably can’t meet.

Like borrowing, golf is somehow psychologically a way a person can deceive themselves. Look at me. I’m important. I’ve made it. What “it” is we don’t know, but that’s beside the point for our purposes.

Millions of gallons of water are expended each year on watering golf courses that produce neither crops nor oxygen-giving trees.

But you can tell yourself, Oh look at me, that was a good shot, I’m closer now to the hole than I was before. Oh boy! Let’s get in the toy car and drive over there. See? My ball almost rolled onto that really thin grass (the green), where that minimum-wage immigrant worker mowed it real, real close.

Fore!

Why do you yell “Fore” when you hit the ball at someone’s head? Why not yell “Five,” or “Twenty-five?” Why not yell, “Hey, look out, there’s a ball speeding toward your head?” Golf would be more interesting and more of a sport if the person whose head you almost took off with your errant shot and then yelled “Fore” at, as part of the game, the rules, was then allowed to come over and engage you in bare-knuckle fisticuffs.

Beat the crap out of you. The fight winner gets 20 strokes taken off their score.

You wouldn’t come back to the clubhouse to show off with a bloody nose. The overpriced steak at the clubhouse you’d have to put over your eye instead of ingesting it and swelling your already dangerously bulging waistline.

Then fewer people might play the ridiculous game of golf.

Copyright 2009 SammonSays.com