Chasing Unicorns

Easter was a month away. My wife always makes an Easter basket for me, and fills it with candy. Including chocolate eggs. Which is a problem.

If I don’t watch my weight, I’ll balloon like a Zeppelin. So I asked my wife to please go light this year. Don’t buy the chocolate eggs.

Her face dropped. I sensed something was wrong. “W-well, I may have already bought them,” she sheepishly admitted.

Well, hell.

“Oh, that’s okay,” I sighed with resignation. “Don’t worry, I’ll eat them.”

Sure enough, on Easter Sunday morning, there waiting for me on the kitchen counter were some Peeps Marshmallow Chicks, a bag of Brach’s Classic Jelly Bird Eggs, and a 10 ounce bag of Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Eggs.

I decided the chocolate eggs must be eaten first, as the weather was getting warm, and they were in danger of becoming a melted, gooey mess. But I must watch my calories. So I announced to my wife that I would only be eating five chocolate eggs per day.

According to the nutritional information on the package, a serving size of five eggs contains 140 calories, and there are 10 servings in the bag. So I calculated that I could safely finish this bag in 10 days, at five eggs per day, without gaining weight.

I ate my first five eggs on April 21st. So I anticipated my last five eggs would be consumed on April 30th. And I very much looked forward to chomping on those Peeps Marshmallow Chicks on May 1st, after the chocolate eggs were conquered.

But along about April 28th, I sensed something was amiss.

My bag of chocolate eggs was still about half full. This was not right. The math didn’t calculate. There should only be 10 eggs left in the bag, but there appeared to be about 25 or 30. Was this bag magical?

On April 30th I put my bag on a food scale. It weighed 4.4 ounces. That meant there were still about 22 eggs left in the bag, when there should be zero. Could the factory have made a mistake, and put too many eggs in the bag?

Or was this bag really magical?

The thought of a magical bag of chocolate eggs captured my imagination. I felt a frisson when I wondered what sort of deity might be favoring me, by spontaneously generating free chocolate eggs and implanting them in my bag. Could there really be an Easter Bunny after all? Or am I favored by some other Cosmic Power? Perhaps a unicorn?

I decided to start eating seven eggs per day, rather than five, to see if that would make the bag decrease in weight. But every day it hovered right around 4.4 ounces. Amazing.

My wife would think I was crazy if I told her about this, so I waited for the right time, and the right way to reveal my supernatural discovery.

One afternoon we were sitting together in quiet, relaxed reverie. It was a tender moment when guards came down and vulnerabilities could be exposed. I was searching my mind for the right words, when she decided to share something with me first.

“Have you noticed anything unusual over the past week or so?” she ventured.

My antennas came up. I felt suspicious. “Like what?” I asked.

“I have something to confess to you. I hate it that you’re so skinny and I’m so fat. So I bought you two bags of chocolate eggs for Easter, not one. The other is Hershey’s Big Bag. 18 ounces. Every day I’ve been sneaking eggs from that Big Bag into your regular size chocolate egg bag.”

“Ohhh? Well I HAVE noticed that my bag stays the same weight. I figured it was you.” Okay, so maybe I fibbed a little, but the possibility of it being her did fleetingly cross my mind. Once.

“I’m sorry, it’s not right for me to do that. This was a bad April Fool’s joke, and I didn’t even fool you. You can get mad at me if you want. But I hope you’ll forgive me.”

We kissed and hugged, and I forgave her.

How could I not forgive her? She stepped up, admitted her crime, and was willing to accept the consequences. This is responsibility. This is maturity. She did the adult thing.

Most importantly, I’m sure glad she came clean when she did, right before I was about to brag about my magic bag of chocolate eggs.

I was fortunate and cursed enough to be around several of my great-grandparents while I was growing up. That’s because my family is blessed and cursed with longevity in our genes. We tend to live a long time, but when we finally expire we die of long, lingering chronic illnesses.

My great-grandma was born in 1889. She drove a crankstart Model T when she was young. It gave her a great scare when it chased her around the yard one day, after she crank-started it while it was in gear.

She made it through two great world wars, struggled through the Great Depression, and survived the Great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. So by the time I met her, she had quite a few great tales to tell.

She’d come visit us about once a year, when I was a kid, and stay several weeks, all the while reminiscing about the past. I found her stories fascinating. I learned a lot of history from her, and for that I’m great-ful. I sure wish now I could remember all of those stories.

One day I asked Great-Grandma if they told dirty jokes back in the old days. And with that she surprised me by relating a few she had committed to memory. I immediately recognized this as an historic discovery, and surmised that these jokes must be preserved for posterity.

I hardly remember a damn thing about most of the historical accounts I heard from Great-Grandma. But I made it my duty-bound pledge to memorize her antiquarian dirty jokes, so that one day I could pass them on to newer generations.

And so, for your edification and academic study, here are Great-Grandma’s dirty jokes:

ELECTRICITY

Back in the early days of electric utilities, when a storm knocked down power lines, electricity would be out for long periods of time before those lines could be repaired. That’s exactly what happened to a little old lady who lived way out in the boondocks.

Finally she managed to call the electric company and alert them to her problem. But her message left them kind of confused. She told the dispatcher, “I need you to send a man to my house right away! I’ve had to use a candle now for two weeks.”

PERIOD

A young schoolgirl and her classmates were being instructed by their teacher on proper use of punctuation. She seemed a little distracted, as if she wasn’t paying attention. So the teacher pointed at her and said, “Young lady, what can you tell me about the period?”

She answered, “Well teacher, I know that periods are dangerous.”

The teacher thought she was being a smart aleck, so he decided to put her on the spot.

“That’s nonsense!” he scolded. “Young lady, I want you to stand up in front of the whole class and explain why periods are dangerous.”

The schoolgirl did as she was told. She stood up, faced her classmates, and said, “This morning my big sister came down the stairs and announced, ‘I haven’t had my period in two months.’ My mother fainted, my father had a stroke, and the boy next door shot himself.”

SUPERNATURAL

One evening at a prayer meeting the topic turned to the supernatural. The preacher was lecturing about the dangers of the occult, and especially the evils of attending séances and intercoursing with the dead. At one point he asked, “Has anyone here ever had intercourse with a ghost?”

A little old lady in the back raised her hand. “I have!” her crackly voice declared.

“You have?!” the preacher replied with astonishment. “You . . . you’ve had intercourse with a GHOST?!”

The lady quickly lowered her hand. “Oh,” she corrected, “I thought you said GOAT.”

Most home repair jobs can be handled without hiring professional help. All it requires is a certain attitude. First you have to believe in your ability to accomplish a somewhat complex task. You must also be willing to risk making a problem worse rather than better, because that will occasionally happen. Though it’s rare. And you must maintain a level head, so that you can assess the repair situation, and any contingencies that may arise, in a logical, common sense manner.

For example, our bathroom had a minor plumbing issue. Water would leak out the faucet handles of the shower whenever the faucets were opened. No big deal, but after a while I got tired of it and decided to fix this problem.

I logically and correctly assessed that the compression washers and valve seats in the faucet valve stems required replacement. Pretty easy job. And I’d done this before, so I knew how to fix it.

I started with the hot water side, on the left. I got the old faucet seat out with a bit of a yank (it was in there pretty tight). Then I put the pipe dope on the new one, and confidently inserted it into the pipe head and turned the nifty little seat wrench I had just purchased from Home Depot.

But it wouldn’t thread into place. I tried and tried for about 15 minutes, but I just couldn’t seem to get it onto the pipe threads in the exact proper position, so that it would start to screw in.

It’s a must to remain level-headed and logical in these situations. So I attempted to keep my cool while assessing the situation.

The shower wall on the left, and the cold water faucet handle on the right were complicating things, because they were getting in the way of my seat wrench, forcing me to go about a third of a turn, then pull the seat wrench out, reposition it, and put it back in.

This short turning radius was frustrating. But after I calmed down and my hands stopped trembling, I decided I’d have to pull the cold water faucet out, so that I could get close to a full 360 degree revolving bite on the seat wrench, and get that dilly of a faucet seat threaded into place.

But the screw on the faucet handle was frozen. I struggled with it, while a few feelings of apoplexy kind of popped through my skull. Finally, after several cerebral hemorrages, I stripped the head of the fucking screw. So then I had to spend the next goddamned hour drilling the asshole screw out, and ruining the friggin’ valve stem in the process.

But after much drilling and swearing I finally got the muther-fucking stubborn, shithead, ass-wad valve stem out, and at last had a nearly full circular muther-fucking swing available for installing the goddamned, muther-ass, stupid, pissy-assed-bastard hot water side faucet seat.

With this near full-freedom swing, blazing eyes, and a breath of desperate hope in my flaring nostrils, I attempted to thread this shitty-ass faucet seat one more fucking time. But wouldn’t you know? I still couldn’t get the cocksucking, ballbusting, jackass, stupid, damned son-of-a-bitch to go in!!!

I stormed away. Stomped into my bedroom. Closed (slammed) the door. Slapped my head a bunch of times. Called every plumber who ever invented plumbing a dumb-assed mother-fucking son-of-a-bitch.

But after a bit I finally calmed down. And then an idea occurred to me. What would happen if I tried turning the seat wrench clockwise, rather than counter-clockwise?

So I gave that little ingenious trick a try.

Instant success.

And so you see, I can handle home repair jobs. I don’t need professional help.

Have you noticed lately that every time you do business with someone, they ask you to complete a customer satisfaction survey, or write some sort of review? At one time, not too long ago, I encountered this only occasionally. Once in a while I’d get a survey in the mail to rate my family physician. Or I’d be asked to write a review of a product I bought online. But only once in a while.

Now it seems to happen every friggin’ time.

It seems survey mania has crept over us, and now the solicitation of a survey after every transaction or interaction has become standard business practice.

Back in the day, when this only happened once in a while, I had no problem completing surveys. In fact I felt delighted at the chance to rate someone like my doctor. Until he sent me a letter begging me to always rate him with 10’s on every category.

That’s when I became cynical about surveys. It seems that if you give someone anything less than a 10, even if it’s a nice generous 9, it jeopardizes their job security, and puts them under heavy scrutiny from their superiors.

So I just stopped doing them. I chuck them in the trash. I close their pop-up boxes online. Fuck all those bastards who expect their employees to be perfect.

Besides, I just don’t have time to fill out all the goddamned surveys everyone wants me to complete.

Now that I’m finished with this rant, I need your feedback. How good was this rant? Did I express my complaint clearly? Did you feel my passion? Were my writing skills up to par? Please rate me on a scale of 1 to 10 in the following categories. But remember, any rating less than a 10 could result in my suspension from WordPress and banishment from social media altogether. And you wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?

Overall ranting effectiveness (1-10):
Clarity of this rant (1-10):
How moved were you into joining this rant? (1-10):
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Rating Equivalents:

1=Completely insincere or incompetent.
2=I’ve got better things to do than read this crap.
3=Such feeble effort. You sound like Don Knotts.
4=You whine like my 3-year-old grandchild.
5=Okay, so you’ve made your point. Yawn.
6=I’m gonna write my Congressman! Just as soon as I . . . zzzzzz.
7=Wow, you rant like a grumpy old man!
8=Where’s a straitjacket? You insane, man!
9=You’re Hitler incarnate!
10=You’re a Trump-Tweeting Tyrant!

Thank you for taking the time to complete this godawful long survey.

The internet seems to thrive commercially through Big Brother tactics. Everything you browse or click on is recorded and digested by commercial websites, whose sole purpose is to figure out who you are.

This leaves me feeling nervous. Hell, I myself don’t even know who I am. So how dare someone else nose into my business and try to figure me out.

But I’ve come up with a way to fool them. A way to hide my identity, and keep Big Brother off my track.

My method is based on the theory that we are all enigmas. And we are enigmas not by how we hide ourselves, but by what we show about ourselves. When I observe other people, they all seem crazy to me. And I’ll bet when others observe me, they think the same thing. So it seems we’re all crazy by everyone’s perspective.

Except for Big Brother’s perspective. With all of Big Brother’s algorithms and data-crunching programs, he’s knows us much better than we know ourselves. We’re not crazy, to Big Brother. We each fit neatly into patterns that only a computer can understand.

So if you want to hide on the internet, you must find a way to confuse Big Brother’s computer. Here’s what I do to accomplish that goal:

I don’t want BB to know I’m retired, so sometimes I pretend I’m a manager of a Del Taco who moonlights at Sea World cleaning shark tanks. I do this with internet searches such as, “how to hire hard workers for low pay,” and “safe ways to fire underpaid disgruntled employees.” Also, “workers comp for shark bites,” and “how to secretly free a killer whale.”

I want BB to think I’m a woman. So I sometimes search for best buys on bras. I’ve bookmarked overstock.com. And I click on ads for pregnancy test kits.

I sometimes shop on Amazon for random items I have no intention of purchasing. Then later I delight in watching ads for these unwanted items pop up on various websites I visit.

I’m skinny, but BB doesn’t need to know my body size. So I search for fat farms, and peruse dieting websites such as nutrisystem.com and jennycraig.com.

BB doesn’t need to know my real name either. So sometimes I fill out online forms using the name “Laura Knotreely.”

I’m an atheist. But as far as BB is concerned I’m a First Southern Baptist who googles Bible verses like a Sunday School teacher preparing a big lesson.

And I don’t belong to any political party. Which is why I make sure to check in with nationalreview.com at least once a week.

So as far as BB is concerned, my name is Laura Knotreely, and I manage a Del Taco while moonlighting at Sea World. I have eclectic tastes when shopping. And I’m also fat, religious, and very conservative.

Now you know none of this is true about me. But please don’t tell Big Brother.

I’m no electrician, but I once learned about electrons and protons in high school science. I’ve also had a bit of “hands-on” experience with electricity, and learned a few rather shocking lessons. My concern for humanity has overcome my embarrassment, and leads me to warn others not make the same mistakes I’ve made. So here are a few safety tips concerning electricity. Please read them carefully. They could just save your ass:

1. Always use a wood-handled knife when making toast.
2. “Ground” isn’t just dirt, it’s also water. And it even includes your bare feet standing in the water.
3. Never clean your breaker box with a garden hose.
4. Aluminum conducts electricity. Who would’ve thought? Never set your soda can on top of exposed wires.
5. Never, I repeat, never, use copper wire for kite string.
6. Always drain the swimming pool before trying to change a burned-out pool light.
7. When taking a bath, always set the Boom Box on the floor and not on the tub ledge.
8. You can’t escape lightning by climbing a tree.
9. If a toddler shoves a nail into an electrical outlet, put on a leather glove before pulling it out.
10. Some house wire insulation is colored black. This denotes power. It also symbolizes loss of consciousness.

BE AWARE & BE SAFE!

How did this get so complicated? All we wanted was a contractor to run a gas line to our kitchen, so we could replace the electric range with a gas range. But I suspect that’s how many home remodels begin.

A home remodel is like cancer. It starts out tiny, just one little thing, then spreads to every nook and corner of your humble abode. Now we’ve remodeled the kitchen, the den, the hallway, and a bathroom, and it’s starting to metastasize into another bathroom, the bedrooms, and our living room.

Maybe I could have stopped this if only I knew from the start, how to understand contractor language. I’m learning though. The more I deal with this class of business person, the more I find myself picking up their patois.

I wrote this post to protect you from what has happened to me. I want you to learn their language, too, so that you can effectively deal with the next unintelligible contractor who shows up at your door.

What follows are ten common phrases spoken in contractor language, followed by a translation in layman’s language. If you let this be your Rosetta Stone, you could save a truckload of money:

Contractor: I don’t like written contracts.
Translation: I prefer to argue over who has the best memory.

Contractor: I thought that’s what we agreed on.
Translation: You should have insisted on a written contract.

Contractor: I’ve been doing this for many years now.
Translation: But I can’t say the same for those I hire.

Contractor: As long as you’re doing this much, you may as well spend a little extra and do that, too.
Translation: As long as I’m making a little money on this, I may as well be making a lot more on that.

Contractor: It won’t cost much more if you do it like this.
Translation: Just multiply by 2 or 3.

Contractor: This is a rough estimate.
Translation: Expect to pay no less than this.

Contractor: I have some bad news.
Translation: I have great news for my wallet!

Contractor: You don’t have to pay me now.
Translation: We’ll put your house back together some other day.

Contractor: We should be finished by next week.
Translation: We won’t be, though.

Contractor: This should last forever.
Translation: I’m pretty sure in a year or two you’ll be sick of it, and asking for another remodel.

And now for a slide show. Here’s some of what my unintelligible contractor has been up to . . .