Luddette: Kentucky Colonel

Among my honorifics--which include a Maui downhill coaster bike certificate and a helicopter ride award--I am in fact a Kentucky Colonel, an Honorable one at that (snicker, snicker). Since it's under my maiden name of Duke, maybe I managed to elude this claim on me when I got married.
     It was signed by then-governor Wallace G. Wilkinson and co-signed by his Secretary of State, Braner or Beaner or Bonnie Ehler.  I'm a little hurt that the Assistant Secretary of State couldn't be bothered. Sipping on a julep and gaily fielding calls about the following year's Derby, I suppose.

     I was commissioned on the 24TH day of OCTOBER in the year of our Lord one thousand nine hundred and 88, and was conferred all the rights, privileges and responsibilities thereunto appertaining [of being a Kentucky Colonel].  I was a little irritated the rest of  the day that Frankfort just conferred a bunch of new and unknown responsibilities on me, when all I did was go on a stupid press trip to Louisville. But I had a pretty bad conscience in those days, and suffered habitual negative projection.
     As for the rights and privileges, I already knew about those: the right to get staggering drunk at the Kentucky Derby, the right to get mac and cheese for my side vegetable, the right to go out on a wild-night truck ride to smoke weed and hug trees with a gentle ex-con; the privilege of setting off an all-hotel alarm at three in the morning, and the privilege of being a human on the wrong side of an elephant cage at the Louisville Zoo (a relic of the Dark Ages of urban zoology). It remains one of the most depressing, sordid, hapless, and poignant few days of my drinking career.  If they only had known, they never would have made me a Colonel. Oh, the painful innocence of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. Yet there you are. Such honor--however misplaced--cannot be undone.
    

Press Release: Impractical Earthlings

The following excerpt is from a press release I received when working on Successful Meetings magazine in the 1980s.  I found it so funny, I scrawled the word "cartoon" on the top.  (I was cartooning my takes on press releases in those days.)

"Washington, D.C.--A unique initiative has been announced to collect, categorize, and share the broadest range of PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES. The International Center for Practical Principles now welcomes any type of idea, rule, law, observation, advice, motto, discovery, warning, perspective, theorem, philosophy, and alike, [itals mine] which could in some way help earthlings everywhere achieve desired results in a myriad of human endeavors. The focus of this first-of-a-kind undertaking is to identify sensible tools and relevant strategies which may be harnessed to better deal with the challenges which confront us, and impact our future. ...In our inherently imperfect world, the increasing need to recognize and apply practical principles is obvious."

To me, this visionary stuff seems like the most impractical approach of all, given the inherent imperfection of humanity: Why does Ed--the guy with the fax machine and P.O. box who wrote this--even say that like it's a bad thing? And leaving Ed out of it, what's wrong with being an insensible and impractical earthling, anyway?

Grand Central Sauna

I'm learning that I am handicapped by many judgements about people, places, and things.  I approach situations and relationships with the idea of how they ought to be. Believe it or not, this causes problems because, guess what? People, places, and things are rarely in line with my fixed presumptions and no one follows the script I've written. I should distribute it first.
     Take the sauna--the one at 24 Hour Fitness on Palomar Airport Road in beautiful Carlsbad, CA. I love saunas, any sauna, but not this one.  Why?  It's the fixed idea problem. My idea is that saunas should be hot, clean, dim, and absolutely silent.  I'm in there to forget the world for a while and let that deep, dry heat saturate my bones.  I don't care if six other people join me, as long as they keep their mouths shut.
     This is evidently not the script they're reading from.  This sauna is instead a crossroads, a hook-up, a hang-out, and an alternate workout area when you're bored with the 10,000-square-foot purpose-built exercise kingdom outside this tiny room. In the sauna there are newspapers scattered on the benches.  A man in gym shoes listens to thumping music on his headphones. A couple is engaged in a deep and relational conversation about her automobile engine.  One guy stands coach over his girlfriend who's grunting out guy-type push-ups.
     Is it any wonder I migrate to the steam room, though I feel boiled alive? At least there, it really is too hot and too foggy to talk much.  It's hard enough just to draw breath.  Even so, you can bet some guy will come in and start using the area to stretch his hammies, vocalize, and throw some pine essence on the spigot.  We're following his script whether we like it or not.

Exalted Ruler

If I was the exalted ruler, I would be severely disappointed with this reserved parking space sign. It should be 10 feet tall, carved of of rare exotic wood, inlaid with precious jewels and the words spelled in cursive in gold leaf. There should be two tall and handsome royal guards dressed in purple and gold standing in obedient attendance on either side of it, with staffs to cross if any unworthy should approach it.

No parking here, buddy. Can't you read?

     What kind of sign is this? It's just some ordinary reserved parking space sign, not even planted square to the curb, not even a circle of rocks around the post to play up its distinction. Its utter lack of specialness--apart from the words, which might just as well say "BIG SILLY"--actually invites ironically spurious parking.
     I suppose that among the Moose, it serves its purpose and earns its respect. But non-Moose go to their lodges, too, whether for metal concerts or memorials. You would think that like the mom and dad expecting formal company, who suddenly see uncouth seediness in every corner of their home, some Moose would peel himself away from the bar, take a stroll around the property, then come back and announce, "I'm thinking that sign looks pretty un-exalted, you guys."
     Just take a page from Disneyland's playbook for some great ideas on how to stick a notice in the ground. They manage to make every sign look like it was carved by royal elves.

Golden Things

My eye always catches golden things: gold dust in cats' eyes, hair turned gold in sunlight, paintings ocher and photographs old. My ear tunes to golden sounds in gardens, I feel gold in warmth and safety, in gold-rimmed embraces and watchful golden cats. Dogs wag gold, loving voices vibrate gold, God's heaven is paved with gold. Everything love touches turns to gold. Even green leaves turn gold when cold comes to let trees sleep. 

Phone Covers

Luddette was walking in Best Buy the other day looking for pens. The large preoccupied boy in a blue shirt at the front door said they didn't sell pens, but I wanted to prove him wrong. I have this thing about beating sales clerks at their own jobs, showing them up to myself. It's petty, but satisfyingly petty, since I often win this one-sided game. In this case, the boy was right, so I chalked up the tour of the store to experience. My experience was that there are too many phone covers available, and all of them look silly.

Self-expression or too ridiculous for words?

     I will support any American's right to get rich in the free market and die of complications due to obesity, but that short wall of phone covers just bugged me in its excessive novelty. I may have the term "phone covers" wrong--I sort of perversely hope I do--but what I mean are those rubber or plastic things that snap onto the very big phones all the people are gazing into like mirror-mirror these days.
     Why do we need all that variety of nonsense? It just represented, in one poorly designed display, all the specially-colored crackerjack that we dangle to define ourselves--protracted childhoods and childhood junk. Of course, if I like something cute and nonsensical, it just expresses a lighthearted side of my well-balanced adult personality. Needless to say.
     I eventually found pens at Fry's, and they were really cute little ones, which perfectly match the cute little notebooks I got for the Mister. I thought they'd be cute for him to carry around in his chest pocket. Their being cute and little are inherently necessary qualities of the items, geared for a purpose, and not marketing choices calculated to excite my childish desire for novelty.
     
    

I Don't Want To Feel This Way

Sad Bear Represents Ludette

Whether he was placed here by a humorous employee or left by a distracted mother will never be known. Ludette came upon this poignant sight at a local (now defunct) Big Lots! Why Ludette would shop such a lowbrow merchant is no secret: I'm cheap, but I'm not heartless, and Sad Bear moved me.
     I identify with Sad Bear, especially when it comes to work. Can't you just feel his sense of being overwhelmed, outnumbered, wholly inadequate to the task? His forehead to the cool surface of the cardboard is the best thing that happened to him that day. (In Dialectical Behavior Therapy it's called "soothing touch.")
     Yesterday was a case in point. We received a list from Merchandising that had something like 99 new price markdowns on various shoe styles. I write "99" but it might have been 999. What this means to you, Dear Reader and Consumer, is that if you came in our store yesterday, you would have seen four women between the ages of 22 and 50 peering at shoe box labels and scratching numbers on peel-and-stick flags with Sharpies, which flags were to be put on said boxes.
     This scenario repeated for hours on end, while cruel fate, in the same spirit of whimsy that drove Sad Bear into a depression, decided to send us five running children; four needy women; three crying babies; two sullen husbands; and a busload of yelling families. Per hour, it seemed.
     I am sorry to report that I did not use Wise Mind. In fact, I was limping pretty heavily in Emotion Mind most of the day, and "snarling" was the verb I used to describe my customer service approach--or close to snarling.  I don't want to feel this way today. It's a new morning, and I have a right, as God's creature, endued with intelligence, wisdom, and spirit, to feel OK, and see things in a better light. And that's my call on myself.  I wish myself a Good, Calm, and Happy Day. (First, I'm going to write "How To Be a Polite Customer" and post it in Leaves From the Brain Book.)