Category: Uncategorized

During January, I fell twice without the aid of a single malt.  When you get to be my age the balance and knees aren’t what they used to be. The first fall was my wife’s fault. She asked me before coffee to retrieve one of her items stored in my shop. Even though it is my shop, her items tend to overflow from her space into mine. My space is full of plastic totes full of fabric, her cloths that will fit her again sometime in the future, Christmas decorations, and other miscellaneous items that do not belong in the fortress of do it yourself.  I could say no but as we are approaching 52 years of marital bliss, I know when to keep my mouth shut most of the time.  Besides, I take a bit of revenge from her having to clean the sawdust off the things she requests me to fetch.

Like I said, my first fall was her fault.  First no coffee. What little balance I have left in the old body requires daylight and coffee.  Next in line is proper foot ware. Crocks don’t cut it. I have to wear crocks as I am not allowed to stretch out on the sofa in shoes.  This means I spend most of my time in the house in stocking feet. Problem is my shop requires a short walk on outside to get there.  I just can’t bring myself to do this is socks. Nothing worse that walking around in wet sock all day and I get ass thumped if caught on the sofa in wet socks. I just don’t understand this as she lets the dog on the sofa after she comes in from the yard with muddy feet and a wet body.  I guess I know where I rate in the pecking order. So rather than putting on real shoes I am stuck with crocks. I like crocks, but with type II diabetes I cannot feel my feet and the crocks tend to slip off my feet a bit, a situation to which I am often unaware of, especially without my morning coffee.  The result was a nasty fall onto the concrete, bruising my hip and scraping my elbow.

Why I can feel my feet is a condition called neuropathy.  Judy has trouble with this word often calling it necropsy which is a term that has something to do with the examination of dead tissue.  Or she will call it necromancy which has something to do with communicating with the dead.  To which I commented,

“at least in my favor you didn’t call it necrophilia”

“What’s that?” she responded.

“Having sex with a corps” I foolishly said.

“Does rigor mortis last that long?”

Yes, she really said that. I had no idea that a 72-year-old who I have known for almost my entire life could be that kinky.

Two days later I fell again. This on was all my fault. We had company and I had promised the Katie, our 13-year-old great niece, a fossil hunting trip. The Oregon Coast is fantastic fossil and agate hunting area, especially in winter as the sand washes off some of the beaches to expose Miocene mudstones filled with clam, crab, mussel, and petrified driftwood fossils. With the sand off the beach, you simply walk around staring down at the mostly flat rocks, looking for telltale shapes which are easily removed from the soft mudstone even with a flat head screwdriver.  There are also abundant marine mammal fossils here, but as these creatures were rapidly evolving during that epoch, they should be left alone for the experts to remove and study.  Fossil hunting during the winter is like walking on an asphalt paved parking lot looking for embedded bottle caps. Surprisingly it does not rain everyday nor does a gale wind blow all the time on the coast. No hiking for miles in rough terrain in the middle of the Gobi Desert in the blazing sun or hanging from a cliff by ropes for me.  If the tide is right, the sun is out, even I am up for a leisurely stroll on a rocky beach.  This going to be fun, or so I thought.

Only problem was the beach with fifteen feet below the parking lot down a wet, muddy, and cobble strewn path. Got halfway down, lost my footing, and landed on my shoulder on the flat beach below.  Lucky for me I missed the big rocks. And yes, I was wearing real shoes, not crocks.  I am not that stupid. But the fall knocked the wind out of me and exposed my skinny ass to the tourists who had navigated the path with more skill than I.  One of the tourists ran over to help me up as it knocked the wind out of me.  Being helped up by a tourist was bad enough but my plumber’s ass was hanging out of my pants making it doubly embarrassing, with the emphasis on the bare ass.  She even assisted me with pulling up my pants, telling me it was okay as she was a nurse.  With all that has gone on in the last couple of years, I can relate to the fact that nurses are real life heroes, as they can perform their duties in the most disgusting of circumstances. More than my pride was injured in that fall. I hurt my ribs and right shoulder.  Took a month for the ribs to recover and the shoulder is slowing getting better.  Needless to say, my fossil hunting on the beach is over till next year as the sand is already covering up the treasures. Only plus to me be a tottering old fool is I got to take it easy on the couch for a couple of weeks and play videogames.  Any fetching in the shop was done by Judy and she didn’t bitch about it even once. Every time I offered to get off my ass, she patted me on the head, told me she loved me, and noted how good I was getting at killing Nazis. Damn, I married well.  

There are 44 college bowl games in 2021. Everybody has heard of the Orange, Cotton, Sugar, and Rose bowls. But how about the Duke’s Mayo, the Tony the Tiger, the Cheez-It, and the Famous Idaho Potato Bowls. Then there is a whole group of bowl games that are not longer being played. These include such winners as the Bean, Boot Hill, Little Caesars Pizza, Oil, and Cigar Bowls.  But my absolute favorite is the defunct Optimist Bowl.  I think that one should be revived and that my beloved Beavers be allowed to permanently be invited to it for that sums up my feelings for every Beavers season that I can remember. There is hope at the beginning but then along comes the USC Trojans, the Stanford Tree, the WSU tobacco spitting Cougars, and the evil and vile slug eating Ducks.  Seasons over and I am confined to football purgatory for another year. On a side note, when a Duck fan makes the “O” symbol with their hands are they aware that if they turn their hands over and put them down by their waists that is the American Sign Language symbol for vagina.  Also, there is a rumor that the Ducks are the only major program that has a recruiter located at San Quentin.  I can now totally dispel that as false as the Huskies have one there as well.

But enough of my Beaver football depression. Who comes up with these terrible bowl names? Some are obvious as they are named after their corporate sponsors in an effort to get their name before the public. I have to wonder if the sponsors had their heads up their collective asses when they thought of tacking their name to football games.  For example, the Poulan Weed Eater Independence Bowl or worse yet, the Cheribundi Tart Cherry Boca Raton Bowl. Why??? But I think I would record those games just so I could hear those tongue twister names repeated again and again during the broadcast, especially if the sponsors force it to be said by football play by play announcers who I can’t stand.  For example, Chris Collensworth, “Back in the day when I played in the Poulan Weed Eater Bowl, we only had those leather helmets, and it was really rough as targeting was not a foul.”  Well Chris I guess that would explain the weird shape of your head.  My final word on bad corporate sponsorship choices is that at least some corporate CEOs have half a brain cause you we don’t have an American Standard Toilet or a Masengall Douche bowl.

Not only do corporations sponsor bowl games, they pay big bucks to do it. Big bowl game sponsorships can be greater than cost more than 25 million. Chick-fil-A sponsors the Orange Bowl and pays many of its employees minimum wage.  While 25 million split among 140 thousand employees is a drop in the bucket, its still a Christmas bonus of about $200 each. Or spend it on health benefits or scholarships, or anything other that the stupidity of naming a bowl game.  Is there really a benefit to a company’s bottom line by bastardizing the name of a bowl game. 

I am old enough to remember the glory days of the Rose Bowl.  It wasn’t the Capital One Rose Bowl, it was the Rose Bowl.  First, we had the Tournament of Roses Parade with all the wonderful floats, marching bands and Miss America waving her best royalty waves to the cheering crowds.  Then the game itself, which featured the winners of the Pac-8 and Big 10 conferences held in the Rose Bowl, a huge and wonderful stadium located in Pasadena.  This game was the ultimate prize for these two conferences forever. It was a perfect day for a which a die hard Beaver fan like myself could dream about during the off season even though we had no chance of ever going to that game as the road led though USC, Washington, U of O, and some team from rural Wyoming that no one ever heard of before or since.  Then along came the national championship series and the 2020 Rose Bowl was played in fucking Texas. You know the state where the Lord gave the earth an enema. And did a Pac-12 or Big-10 team play in it. No, it as Notre Dame and Alabama.  A team representing the SEC and the one without a conference. SACRILEGE!!

I had thought that this was the low point in my college football experience. Then this year we had the Jimmy Kimmel LA Bowl.  My beloved Beavers got invited to that one and actually show up to play for about 58 seconds.  After that it was all Utah State. I am not sure how Jimmy Kimmel rates a bowl game of his own.  He is not a big corporation.  And even if he had to fork out money for a lessor bowl game, the minimum for this could be 500 thousand.  Maybe he got a break by playing his clarinet in the marching bad. Now I don’t have anything against Jimmy Kimmel. I hear he is very funny.  I have never watched his late-night show as at my age, bedtime is 9:30 at the latest.  Besides after Carson, Leno and Letterman, anyone, no matter how talented would be a letdown. I just don’t understand how he got to sponsor a bowl game. I have never heard Jimmy Kimmel and football mentioned by any play-by-play jock in the same breath in my entire and long football watching life.  And did I mention he plays the CLARINET! Football players are large people.  They can play the drums or tubas but not a girly woodwind with those little keys.  Their fingers would be too fat or swollen from years of being abused in the pursuit of their chosen profession.  Only thing I could come up with was COVID. Perhaps there is some obscure rule that requires that at least one bowl game be sponsored by an individual and that all of the first stringers were in the Covid protocols, so that they had to go with a third string Clarinet player like Kimmel.  I guess it could have been worse. My Beavers could have been invited to the Bad Boy Mowers Gasparilla Bowl and lose badly. 

On a brighter note I just read that the pope does not consider masturbation to be a sin. Whew! Dodged a bullet on that one.  Then Judy pointed out to me that this was a quote from a satirical site.  Such is the luck of a Beaver fan, and I can’teven play the clarinet either.