tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-63506788805476872922024-02-26T23:09:47.839-08:00The Wa BlogAward-winning humor columnist George Waters posts his weekly humor column, photos of funny signs, and more.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger413125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-86512386983238270062020-02-09T04:00:00.000-08:002020-02-09T04:00:01.831-08:00Coming out as Californian<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I think it is a sign of a certain maturity when you reach the age where you stop trying to hide the fact you are a walking California stereotype. It's not like you publicize it or anything. But you find yourself mentioning casually to a friend that you recently bought reusable stainless steel drinking straws in order to save the turtles. You keep them in a cloth pouch in your car's glove compartment. You whip them out at fast food establishments, saying to the counter person, "No thanks. I brought my own." You ignore her slight recoil, as she realizes she is Just. Not. As. Californian. As. You.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">You might think the contents of all glove compartments are the same, from sea to shining sea. They are not. Sure, in cars anywhere between California and New York, you will find some commonality; emergency sunglasses, your old scratched ones you keep just in case you forget your good ones. Paper napkins and ketchup packets. Pencil nubs. Seven years of insurance documents because you can't remember which one is current. Three pennies. Expired coupons. Inexplicably, a roll of dental floss, not even in a dispenser. These are universal.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">A Californian's glove compartment, though, might actually contain gloves, because in the morning, steering wheels can dip below 70 degrees to the touch. I am speaking of native Californians, not recent arrivals, the behavior of whom is unpredictable due to the sudden, intoxicating exposure to sunlight. Aside from gloves, though, the glove compartment of a true Californian, by which I mean a SOUTHERN Californian, by which I mean a "woke" Southern Californian, will always have the following items:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Stainless steel drinking straws, kept clean in a hemp drawstring sack made by the indigenous people of Venezuela. (The hemp sacks of Columbia are excellent too, but one cannot verify the "fair trade" aspect of those, and so are to be avoided.) </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Tube socks for the homeless, to be handed out at stop lights. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Travel size, abridged version of "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore, the one with the reflective back cover, which can also be placed under your rear windshield wiper in the event of a breakdown after dark. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Gift card to Whole Foods, and a stamp card from Vegan Vibrations.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Audio CDs of Michelle Obama's "Becoming," aka El Biblio.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">A pair of plastic-free, BPA-free silicone wine glasses, because sharing is caring, and caring is not optional. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">A purple amethyst geode from Sedona, to stabilize your car's chi, a necessity for L.A.'s freeways.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">A lot of people reading this will not be from Southern California, and will think I am joking about the steel straws, but I am not. The only thing a Californian wants to protect more than sea turtles is a hemp farmer's right to unionize. We are not playing. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I admit a steel straw gets awfully cold on the lips when imbibing some iced boba or a milk shake. It takes some getting used to, but better a little discomfort for the cause than sleepless nights over befouling the planet. Plus, there is the satisfaction which comes from knowing you are better than other people, which should not be underestimated. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-46411161934900719662019-11-10T19:00:00.001-08:002019-11-10T19:00:08.758-08:0040th High School Reunion<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">In kindergarten you don't know that your beloved teacher, who cast you as the ferocious lion in the class circus pageant specifically because you were so shy, will one day die of cancer. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">You don't know that the nap time you take for granted during class, where you pull out a beach towel and chill on the floor for 10 minutes, will sound pretty good to you again in your 50s when the afternoon rolls around. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">You don't know that while you spend that kindergarten year watching a bean plant grow in dirt in a clear plastic cup, watch the roots spread down and the sprouts shoot up, more than 3,000 American boys will die in Vietnam, boys who once spread beach towels too.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">In kindergarten, where your two forehead cowlicks still defy gravity, giving you the appearance of a great horned owl, you can't know that 52 years later you will attend a 40th-year high school class reunion. Or that several friends from that same kindergarten will be there, armed with pictures of their kids and even grandkids of their own. Reunions are surreal events, like something out of Poe, where the past shimmers in the same physical space as the present. This is not a criticism.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There are people whose names you recognize on their name tags but not their current faces, and people whose faces have barely changed in 40 years but whose names you cannot possibly dredge up. There is that moment where you have to decide whether it's rude to check the name tag, as if somehow after 40 years, after 14,600 days, you should still be required to remember a name you last heard as you sat in your sweltering seat on that graduation lawn.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There by the bar is the one dude in the whole school who could run faster than I could in sixth grade. By the buffet, wait, is that the girl who was the first in our grade to develop breasts that same year? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There is a guy I remember mostly from P.E. class, taller than I remember, who tells me he spent the last two years caring for his dad at the end of his life. "He was there for me when I needed him, and I promised him I'd be there for him."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I remember the first reunion, 10 years after graduation, having a vibe of "what have you made of yourself?" A kind of posturing. Some of us were still single, some had four kids, some were already divorced. I remember one guy made fun of me for not remembering his name even though we spent years on the same track team. He was a hurdler. Who remembers hurdlers?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">At the 40th there is no such vibe. There is only warmth, a feeling like gratitude, of still being around when quite a few of our class are not. By the entrance is a poster board showing dozens of classmates we have lost, posed in their senior portraits, forever young. Now and then a group will cluster around it. "I didn't know that," one will say. "Oh my God, I just ran into him a couple of years ago."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I visit the buffet table and grab some hors d'oeuvres. I talk to my buddy I remember better from junior high, who just lost his wife a few months ago, the pain still clear in his voice. He played high school football and coaches it now, a mentor to boys just like he was, a halfback whisperer. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">California girls. They make you feel sad for all the other states. I'm sorry, but that song nailed it. Some of these ladies have still got it going on. Gone is the sense of vanity, though. They are comfortable in their skin. It's nice to see.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I chat with one old kindergarten friend, who has recently left his career and moved home to care for his elderly mom. The kindness in his eyes has never changed. It is amazing how we may develop crow's feet or lose our hair, but the eyes stay the same. I notice it again and again.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I spend a minute with a woman who was a ravishing girl in school. She is still lovely and now a successful writer-producer in Hollywood. I would never have said a word to her in high school, but now casually ask her, since mutual friends have posted updates about her career online, how the TV business is. She describes another epic series she is working on. Nice, I say, well good luck, and then it's my turn to order at the bar.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Reunions are full of these moments with people you didn't really know, but with whom you went through something together and feel comfortable. I expect Titanic survivor reunions were much the same. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There is the guy who accepted my friend request on Facebook a few years ago, but I notice we are not currently friends there, and so I guess he was just being polite. There is the person I un-friended because they "liked" a friend's blatantly racist comment about "sending them all back to Africa." Online life makes real life weird, but often only once a decade. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There's my fellow runner who, like me, became a librarian, still hilarious as ever. And my theater friend, who recounts getting kicked out of a show "for good cause," he admits, because the pain of his parents' divorce often caused him to "just check out." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Perhaps the most valuable single thing about aging is the perspective you gain on your younger self, something our friends on the remembrance poster never got to do. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">There are other conversations. There are also people I saw from a distance and recognized but didn't approach. Reunions are inherently weird, and maybe doubly so for us introverts. If you are reading this, and I never talked to you, rest assured I was glad to see you. Genuinely. It's not you, it's me.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Back in the '70's, every graduating class had a slogan based on its year of graduation. Ours was "'79 is fine." It had been preceded by "'78 is great," which is inarguably better, but you can't choose when you were born. I always felt sorry for the class of '80. They ended up, I think, with "8-0 is on the go," which is painfully vague, and should have been reason enough for abolishing the practice altogether.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Do they still do it? Is next year's class slogan "'20 is plenty"? Minty? Flinty? Linty?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I did a lot of plays in high school. In one, at age 16, I played an old man looking back on life. A few of his lines touched me, even then, and I have never forgotten them: "How many of us would settle, when we're young, for what we eventually get? All those plans we make. What happens to them? It's only a handful of the lucky ones who can look back and say that they even came close."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The event was held after dark in a local botanical garden, just across the street from our old high school. The party site was quite a ways from the parking lot, so at the end we were shuttled back to our cars in one of those electric golf carts. Those go pretty fast. Whizzing past the foliage in the dark, it felt like a scene from "Jurassic Park," as if a velociraptor might leap out at us at any moment. Or one of our old teachers, beard down to his knees, sprung from his grave by our merry-making, still waving a protractor in the air. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">For the record, I had only been drinking soda.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">I drove away down the main street and a memory came to me of a spring night 40 years earlier, when the same street had been completely flooded, filled curb to curb from a rainstorm as I drove my date to a formal dance. Or my dad drove us. I don't remember which date or which dance. But I remember the water, and our car like a ship cutting through it. Apocalyptic. There was a drought then too. One's home town, I guess, is full of visions like that. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">We danced to this thing they had back then called rock music. It's not around any more. Kids at our old high school these days have heard of it, no doubt, but probably regard it the way we used to think of ragtime. Half a century from now, hip-hop will likely elicit an eye-roll from teenagers. So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say. So it goes.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">1979. Jimmy Carter was president. He's still around, you know. So are we. And the class of '79 is still fine.</span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-79555763610409986802019-08-25T04:00:00.000-07:002019-08-25T04:00:19.862-07:00A reminder to remember<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">There are two kinds of people in this world; the kind who check their children's pants pockets before doing laundry, and the kind who don't. (All right, there is a third kind, the kind who don't have children, but you are not reading this, because you are golfing.) </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Gandhi</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Mother Teresa</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Julia Louis-Dreyfus (I'm guessing)</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">List of people in the second category:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I have always wanted to coin a term for the kind of person I am, the kind who is simultaneously fastidious AND sloppy. Attentive AND oblivious. I am sure my more literate friends are right now screaming the term which already exists and which I can't think of, which is probably "Man! The word is 'man!'" </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I check pockets for important documents before doing laundry. I have never found a kid's mash note or an early draft of the Magna Carta, but I'd feel sick if I pulled one out after a load, the paper pulverized into a wet cylinder. I am fastidious. I am also sloppy. I am someone who has found a three year old "to do" list buried in a stack of my papers on a table, a list of things never accomplished but now rendered irrelevant by time, which is SWEET, let me tell you. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I write myself notes throughout the day, reminders, things I know I will forget if not committed to paper. These notes pile up at home in several locations, and every couple of months I make a pile of them and transfer all the reminders to a yellow note pad, which I then place on the floor propped against the leg of a coffee table to age like whiskey. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"Why don't you write notes in your phone instead?" my wife asked recently. This was a good idea, but quickly dismissed on spousal grounds. If you start implementing your spouse's advice, it's a slippery slope. Soon you are putting glasses in the dishwasher correctly, and it's all downhill from there. A husband needs to maintain an aura of bemused disinterest in the household. I think Kant said that. Or Dave Barry. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I made an end run around my wife's idea, and googled "best to-do-list apps." I downloaded one and transferred all the tasks from my scraps of paper and yellow pad, both. Now everything I need to remember to do is organized and not littering the house. When I finish a task, I click it and—poof—it disappears. Some of the items involve work that the homestead needs and some are more esoteric; admonitions to do more writing, exercise, taco truck field research. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Having no excuse when you forget something is a daunting new reality for me. Now my reminders can't fall behind the sideboard or get kicked under a chair. We're in 21st Century George territory. I have resolved to check the app once a day to keep up with things. It's foolproof, too, because I've stuck a Post-It note on the fridge to remind me. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Whenever I hear the word "condo," I remember the best use of a condominium reference ever in a movie, in the original "Rocky." Rocky has had success, and a guy is advising him to invest his windfall. "Condominiums," he suggests. Rocky looks left and right, then leans in and, mistaking the word for "condoms," whispers "I never use 'em."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">So in recent years when Kondo became a verb I had to smile. By now you have heard of Marie Kondo, home tidying specialist. Her book and TV show on Netflix have been read and watched by millions. To "Kondo" your house is to rid it of junk, and render it organized, user-friendly and joy-inducing. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Hack! What is that? Oh, a hairball, sorry. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">There has been a predictable backlash by the lazy and the rule-averse, but the truth is, since Kondo-ing I have never had easier access to my underwear. It sits now in a tidy row of little ball shapes like dim sum, next to my little sock balls. These don't take up less room. That would require a shift in physics. But they are easily 80% cuter in there. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">My t-shirts also sit in neat rows on their sides, using the vertical space of the drawer so efficiently I can also fit pants in there now. My previous pants organizing system was to toss them in layers on top of the vinyl-to-digital transfer record player I never used. In the dark, I could find the pants I wanted just by feel. Life was sweet. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Now my pants are in a drawer, folded tightly. Now I have to remember which drawer. Now I have to see that record transfer thing and feel guilty that it's been sitting unopened on my bedroom floor for five years, next to the unplayed guitar. Worst of all, they say vinyl is coming back, so now can I even get my money back by selling the transfer thing online, or did I miss my window?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Kondo's philosophy is to remove from your dwelling anything which does not "bring you joy." This is a tall order, especially since none of my clothes brought me joy even as I tore the tags off them. I am hoping joy has a slightly different definition in Japanese. Like maybe "the satisfaction which comes from not leaving the house naked." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I have not gone full Kondo. I have a plastic tub of clothes in the garage, winter clothes at the moment, which in November will be swapped with my Hawaiian shirts and shorts. I am sure I could release some of what's in there to the larger thrift store-frequenting public, but that requires the will to make decisions (see above—lazy and rule-averse.)</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The garage itself screams out for Kondo-ing. I expect that small emergency tsunami rafts could be built from all the VHS tapes and forgotten Happy Meal toys alone. As someone who has grown up in a consumer society in the great consumer age, I feel simultaneously the guilt and the paralysis which comes from too much stuff to deal with. I think there should be an app to find other people to come to your garage and brutally, indifferently do what needs doing. And you could go do their garage.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Human nature, of course, suggests that a lot of "Ooh, that's cool, I'm taking that home" would go on, so basically your garage would stay just as full, just with other people's stuff. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Marie comes off sweetly on TV, and I am sure she means well. I just hope she's not as perfect as she seems. I hope there is one drawer in her house where earth worms could thrive. She has children. I hope every drawer handle in every room is sticky. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-37387796440806492632019-06-23T22:21:00.001-07:002019-06-23T22:21:24.369-07:00When a chair is a purse<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Over the years in a relationship, you form a shorthand, like since shopping for the perfect purse is arduous and time-consuming, anything else that is also those two things my wife and I now refer to as a purse. We went shopping for a a new arm chair Sunday. An arm chair is a purse. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">A chair is a chair, you say. How hard can it be? Well, let me tell you—some swivel. You are either into that or not. In the furniture store it looks like a normal arm chair. You sit down to test it, and you are now facing a different wall. Into it? No. I like a chair that narrows my options, not one that expands them.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We have an old chair whose upholstery is worn out and shredded by a cat we haven't had for a dozen years. It's nice and wide. "Butt and dog wide," as I say, with room for Skipper and me both to rest. But it looks horrendous. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We went to IKEA, and their stuff is certainly affordable, but they should really stick to things people have to assemble. IKEA selling things which are ready to use as soon as you get them home is an overstep, on a par with that new Orange-Vanilla Coke. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">My wife suggested we go to the expensive furniture store in our town, and I said the chairs over there are $1000, which is a lot, and she said "Not if you prorate it over the life of your butt."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">That quote works on so many levels. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">So we went to the nice furniture store, where we had gotten a large Craftsman style entertainment unit 20 years ago. (I like to keep a store guessing about my loyalty.)</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">They had gorgeous Stickley chairs, leather, the kind with broad wooden arm rests; arms rests which if sold by themselves would cost more than your best suit. If I had a man cave, and a spare $5000, I could see myself in a chair like that. That's real craftsmanship, the kind you don't see any more because you don't make enough.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We were looking for a plush chair with rounded arms. English arms, they are apparently called, and we found a nice one upstairs in the fancy store. The fabric was a dark boring solid, but they had 15 feet of wall space with long hanging fabric samples, which resembled a massive closet for a guy who only ever wears one pant leg. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The fabric the floor model had was very soft, and we just could not find a different fabric we liked and thought would work with our wine-colored couch. We asked the saleswoman if we could buy the floor model, which had been marked down because its fabric was discontinued, probably because it was dark and boring. She said sure. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I asked her if there was a discount since it was a floor model. She actually freaking laughed out loud. I thought since a floor model undergoes the wear and tear of multiple butts, that was worth a break on the price. Years ago I bought a patio table/chair combo floor model at OSH, and the manager agreed to knock 10% off, and I was glad I had the audacity to ask. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The nice furniture store, in business now for more than 80 years, is not OSH. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We arranged to have the floor model delivered in a week or so. It will fit me and the dog, and is the last arm chair I ever expect to buy in this lifetime. Let the prorating begin. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-64912147952873266262019-06-09T15:04:00.000-07:002019-06-09T15:04:03.213-07:00Fuhgeddaboutit<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I've been binge-watching "The Sopranos," which has resulted in the subliminal effect that whenever someone says something I disagree with now, my mind whispers "Fuhgeddaboutit." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">At the risk of eliciting the kind of gapes one gets when confessing they have never seen "Harry Potter," I had never watched "The Sopranos." Didn't have cable. Heard great things. Never caught up with it until streaming, and the HBO Now app. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I am probably 20 years late to a lot of things. If we went down that list, you would most likely un-friend me just on general pop-cultural grounds. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Side note: "Un-friend" is the best compound word since Shakespeare's "Un-sex." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"The Sopranos" is actually very Shakespearean. You have the flawed hero and his lieutenants, his hangers-on, and the women they keep inventing new ways to disappoint. It's like Greek tragedy, even. The hero is pre-destined to destroy himself and all he holds dear. Humans have always loved watching some other schmuck do this. It makes us feel better about ourselves. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Side-note: If you never saw it, and you didn't, go find, at a library or on streaming, the James Gandolfini/Julia Louis-Dreyfus movie "Enough Said." It's that rare thing, an adult comedy for and about middle-aged adults, warts and all. It will make you want to go put flowers on Gandolfini's grave.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The World Trade Center's twin towers appear in "The Sopranos" opening credits. Bill Clinton was president. There are references to the Lewinski scandal. Computers in the show are the size of dorm refrigerators. You have to pull up the antenna on your cell phone to take a call. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Corrupt and violent as they are, the mobsters, raised in the Catholic church, live by very defined rules. In one episode they even take a jab against "moral relativism," against the idea that good and bad can be more than just black and white. Mobsters don't like shades of grey. Audiences love them. Ask Aristophanes. Dig him up. Go ahead, I'll wait. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I love the mob lexicon. You can ice a guy, or burn him, or even clip him, and he's still just as dead. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Butt-legging is bootlegging untaxed cigarettes. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">To "come heavy" is to pack heat. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I had long heard of being "on the lam," but I never knew it was a verb, that you could "lam it," most typically to Boca Raton. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"Spring cleaning" means getting rid of evidence.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">A jamook is a loser, an idiot, who may even be</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Oobatz: crazy.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I am only one season in, and of course I know about the iconic final moment of the series, since that was so widely discussed at the time it even reached a non-viewer like me. Knowing I have 60 more hours to watch, many weeks or months, is daunting. How many bees will have been killed by pesticides in that time? How many glaciers melted? Couldn't I spend that time more productively for the world? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Maybe one season is enough. I got the flavor of the thing. Sixty hours is probably oobatz. Besides, it's summertime, and I never did get around to "Outlander." </span></div>
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SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-53745951879133044912019-05-26T05:00:00.000-07:002019-05-26T05:00:04.326-07:00To George (verb)<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We got new name tags at work recently, and my job title was gone. My last tag said "George Librarian," which allowed my library customers to joke that with a last name like that, what other job could I have possibly ended up in? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Now, due to the ever-unexplained vagaries of city government, it simply says "George." Now I could be anything. Now I could be in Public Works. Code enforcement. Planning. In a way, it is freeing. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Maybe I should consider "George" my job title now. My new job description? To George. So I have resolved that I will George the crap out of any task given to me. Georging will be the new goal from here on out.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"What are you doing?" a coworker will ask as I settle new DVDs into the New DVDs rack.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"Georging the crap out of these DVDs," I will say. "What are you doing?"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">And because she also went from a titled name tag to a name-only one, she will say something along the lines of "I'm about to Jackie the hell out of these periodicals." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">George meant farmer in the old days, but now it can mean anything! Georging has got to be easier than Bobbing, don't you think? That's got to be tough on the neck. Easier than Kenning too. To Ken you have to know stuff. Georging is easier than Billing for sure. And Georging has to seriously beat the heck out of Harrying. I do not think it is even possible to break a sweat Georging. I'll get back to you.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Imagine if Shakespeare had gone a different way:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"To George or not to George. That...well...that is just puffery. When in doubt, by all means George!"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">If George as a name goes in the direction I think it soon will, years from now when they ask schoolboys what they want to be when they grow up, instead of cop or fireman or TV talking-head, they will say "George." And the person asking the question will smile, knowing that all things are possible, and surely a kid should aim high. "Good answer," they will say. "Stay in school."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I have had name tag jobs before, and they never had my job title on them. It was always obvious what my job was because of what I was doing. I was delivering plates of food. I was serving up boxes of popcorn and sodas. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">What customer, upon approaching me and my previous name tag and reading my job title, would smack his forehead and say "Wait, seriously? You're behind a desk on the main floor of a library but you are a LIBRARIAN? I thought maybe you were in custodial. Mind BLOWN."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">So titles on name tags are mostly a perk, a bit of an ego thing, like the chevrons on a sergeant's sleeve. Ideally, we shed ego as we age, so this name tag revision is a good reminder. Accepting change is hard, but I tell you this—I am going to George the living daylights out of it. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-51047000655409025322019-05-19T05:00:00.000-07:002019-05-19T05:00:03.248-07:00Charles is dead. Long live the deer-dog.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjakqVXeuVCKZk3j1lFwgD_tcBRmf2ZIkPX4VcjSQ_QQaYSkCIho6ZWlXIyVUtg3qwGyaSJZJdUVMwNsxTT9b9AJ4CbIALy_OriBh8J9NFZGsxWPtYAk_xiLnNNssMi5FydjuQ8qLVZzlk/s1600/726AD0B9-27CB-4E61-BAEC-46FE977FBD5C.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1067" data-original-width="1600" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjakqVXeuVCKZk3j1lFwgD_tcBRmf2ZIkPX4VcjSQ_QQaYSkCIho6ZWlXIyVUtg3qwGyaSJZJdUVMwNsxTT9b9AJ4CbIALy_OriBh8J9NFZGsxWPtYAk_xiLnNNssMi5FydjuQ8qLVZzlk/s640/726AD0B9-27CB-4E61-BAEC-46FE977FBD5C.jpeg" width="640" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Years ago I went to a writers conference at which the humor columnist for USA Today, Craig Wilson, spoke. Craig said that he got the most reader mail, by far, after he wrote about his beloved dog dying. Knowing we would all love a ton of reader mail ourselves, he said something I have never forgotten: </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"A dead dog is GOLD." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">It was dark, so dark, and so self-aware, and we all laughed and felt guilty, and then laughed some more. It was a moment of unselfconscious truth-telling. Yes, our laughter said, bring on that sweet, sweet reader deluge, whatever the cost.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Three months later our family got a dog. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Our daughter had been begging us for a dog for a long time, but we made her wait until she was 10 years old. Ten, we apparently thought, was the age at which a child is responsible enough to properly watch her parents do all the work a dog requires. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Skipper was a delight from the start, a rat terrier, white with big brown spots and a loving personality. Is a delight. Skipper is fine. He's, like, 14 years old. It's Charles the Chihuahua who took the H train to Poochville this week. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Charles we only had a year. We inherited him last summer when my wife's Aunt Sue passed away; our adoption a final weight off her mind. I've written about him here before, he of the single canine tooth and the wheezing/hairball-hacking cough. He of the fainting spells right in the street or right off the side of the couch. He was probably 16, with a heart which thought pumping was only a part-time job. Many's the day in the last year that my wife went off to work expecting to find him expired on her return. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">But there he would be, yipping excitedly, then keeling over on the carpet because lying still on the couch for hours before a sudden, full-mom-welcoming-happy-dance was not a good call at his age. He would lie on his side on the carpet for about a minute, equalizing his blood pressure, before getting up again. He keeled like that about once a month. Every time we thought he was dead. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Faker. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Sunday, though, I was grocery shopping and my wife was out at an art exhibit, when I got a text from my son. He tried to put it gently. "I'm pretty sure Charles might be dead." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The use of "pretty sure" nicely softening the blow, leaving open at least a chance, and the "might" also keeping possibilities in play. My son should work for the government. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I called him from the produce aisle. "Try pinching him," I said. "He'll respond if he's still alive." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"O.K.," he said, and I could tell that the last thing he wanted to do was pinch a dead dog. I still don't know if he pinched him or not. He reported with fair certainty that Charles was not getting back up this time.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I got home 15 minutes later and picked up Charles first thing. He always freaked at being picked up, went completely rigid, as if he was sure I was about to juggle him. This time, limp as a noodle. I shook him, because that has worked for my wife's cousin's dog, has brought him magically back to life several times. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Nothing. I checked his neck for a pulse. I guess that's where you check. Nothing.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">His tongue was lolling out the side of his mouth, no teeth to keep it in. I fitted it back inside; it was one of those weird unconscious impulses, like Jackie crawling onto the back of the limo for that piece of JFK's head. I wanted the little velvety-furred, deerlike pup to have his dignity. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I put him in his doggie bed, the one he rarely tolerated. Waited for my wife, his "Mom," to get home. She was his queen, pawing at her hand whenever her petting paused. Growling if Skipper even considered jumping in her lap when Charles already was. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Knowing an ancient pet will die soon does not make it any easier, especially if that pet was a fellow witness to your aunt's and mother's deaths in the last year, a little bony, seven-pound fellow traveler. He was a link to them both, and for my wife, letting him go is hard. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Charles's ashes will mingle with Aunt Sue's soon. Perhaps in Valhalla she is already feeding him bananas, his favorite. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Sorry, Craig. A dead dog is not gold. But our memories of him will be, as soon as enough time has passed that we forget how he peed on every possible surface within reach. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">. . .</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">My three previous columns about the dear little deer dog are here:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.thewablog.com/2018/06/a-new-dog-new-normal.html">http://www.thewablog.com/2018/06/a-new-dog-new-normal.html</a></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.thewablog.com/2018/11/charles-legend.html">http://www.thewablog.com/2018/11/charles-legend.html</a></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.thewablog.com/2019/01/charles-chihuahuas-continued-shenanigans.html">http://www.thewablog.com/2019/01/charles-chihuahuas-continued-shenanigans.html</a></span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-42178635969798140992019-05-15T08:40:00.000-07:002019-05-15T08:40:04.185-07:00Wednesday Wa Pic - Smartly?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFtardx_bL1n9lPZNgFGCsund4oO1O1DxO7rQNq5VHQJtJrhwsdnqxYDEFWiTjcwIAnvLPDUXoqZdIjuD4Z3Aia1zK8CNfEiNmYgVQRtjvvHtB0vgXMSgGVLfuQ367M8sLOcgE_S7sCJc/s1600/IMG_1406.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFtardx_bL1n9lPZNgFGCsund4oO1O1DxO7rQNq5VHQJtJrhwsdnqxYDEFWiTjcwIAnvLPDUXoqZdIjuD4Z3Aia1zK8CNfEiNmYgVQRtjvvHtB0vgXMSgGVLfuQ367M8sLOcgE_S7sCJc/s640/IMG_1406.JPG" width="480" /></a></div>
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If I knew how to do it reliably, I could make a fortune on stage.</div>
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Thanks to daughter Emily for the pic. lol.</div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-39870992757163750352019-05-12T05:00:00.000-07:002019-05-12T08:55:40.542-07:00How "Game of Thrones" will end<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Many of my readers watch "Game of Thrones," and many don't, because they hate America. It's fine. It's a free country. You can totally boycott popular culture and look good doing it, because the founders only allowed attractive people in. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">For those of you who DID watch all seven seasons and are only awaiting the final episodes of number eight, this is for you. You have proven you will put up with a LOT of nonsense. Good thing, because I am backing up a truckload of it. I'm going to lay out, based on seven years of subtle clues, how this whole wolf-and-zombie show will end:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Thor and Wonder Woman will appear out of the mist, along with Spider-man and Bitchslap, a new character Marvel is hoping to spin off. They will immediately be slain by those giant dragon-killer harpoons. We will hear the ghostly, schadenfreude-tinged laughter of Ned Stark in the distance. Black Panther and Captain America will arrive and begin to fight Tony Soprano and Big Pussy, as clearly a rift in time/space has opened. Paulie and Silvio, inexplicably wearing matching gymnast outfits, will join the fray. At this point, things will begin to get weird. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Cersei will lock herself in a tower with the Mountain as insurance. If you never watched the show, trust me, that last sentence makes sense. Arya will show her allies secret sewer tunnels into Kings Landing, sewer tunnels she accidentally found in Season Two while deciding whether or not to fire her agent. Jaime Lannister will arrive at the castle and finally, after making us wait for eight seasons, rearrange the freaking letters in his first name so that they're right. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Fighting inside the ramparts will ensue, with things looking grim for the northmen until Archie Bunker, Hoss Cartwright and Little Joe arrive to show Cersei's paid armies how to "boost the ratings, old school." At this point, the castle will run out of ravens to send, and will resort to renting owls from Hogwarts. This cross-pollination of studios will render everything very hard to see on screen, unless you bought the glasses from either the Warner Bros. or the HBO store online.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The Hound will show up to kill his sadistic brother, only to lose the stomach for it entirely when he spies Hoss making out with Arya, who is evidently going through a seriously experimental phase. An epic level of bloodletting will occur when Sam, Norm and most of the gang from "Cheers" arrives to challenge Gary's Olde Town Tavern to a game of darts, realizing, too late, the whole time rift thing. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Jamie (see, it's so much nicer) and Tyrion will somehow fight or bribe their way into the chamber outside Cersei's room at the exact same moment. They will argue so loudly over who gets to kill her that she will escape out a window on the Mountain's back, riding him down rooftops and downspouts like something from a very naughty nursery rhyme. They will open a Bed & Breakfast in Dorn. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">With nobody to kill, Tyrion and Jamie and Aegon will rule the Seven Kingdoms together, alternating on the Iron Throne like city councils do. The series will end with a shot from Winterfell, as Bran, in his wheelchair, his face frosted with falling snow, sees a vision of Westeros thousands of years earlier, the very first Long Night, White Walkers wreaking havoc, and above it all, hovering, hard to make out, three letters...H...B...O. Through the blizzard he will see studio executives standing in front of a firehose of money. All will finally become clear. </span></div>
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SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-29969030053567509642019-04-21T09:47:00.002-07:002019-04-21T09:47:26.563-07:00Singing and (wheeze) dancing over 50<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I wrote recently about rehearsing a play, something I recommend for any man over 50 who feels his opportunities to wear makeup have waned since The Cure stopped touring. Applying full base, rouge and powder feels funny after a year off the stage. In high school and college doing shows constantly I got used to it. Now it feels like I'm a geisha but in a double-breasted suit.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The show went very well. I did not have a panic attack. I did not forget lines or trip over furniture, although I did find one chair briefly uncooperative. Not that anybody noticed. "Auntie Mame" is a fairly light, fluffy show, unlike the one I did last year, "Gatsby," which ends as bloodily as "Hamlet." My characters in that, which included a waiter and a cop, made it through unscathed, and a society dude I played had a beautiful suit. In middle age, a great suit, even one you only get to wear for five nights, is a pleasure.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Before Auntie was even done, I began rehearsing the musical "Big Fish," as a member of the ensemble. Ensemble is French for "take an Ibuprofin before trying to dance, you coot." It occurred to me only after saying yes that I had not sung and danced on stage in 40 years. The singing is O.K., I have a good ear and no solos, but dancing?</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Friends, if I could show you a video of Day One, you would laugh so hard you would need to see a specialist for the gut you busted. The choreographer, after teaching us the roughly one-minute routine, a combo of fast knee-slapping, chest-thumping, heel-whacking and soft shoe, gently guided me to the back row of the ensemble, where I have remained. She is a humanitarian. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">It is disheartening to be bad at something. People my age do not generally go looking for new tasks, new challenges, new ways to fail. It's a shame. Getting better at something is a real pleasure. Notice I did not say getting good at something. See previous: back row. But I have mastered that dance, the one whose fast moves and transitions made me feel initially like offstage might have been more merciful than back row.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I can dance it now, practically without thinking. Add in the singing, though, and yeah. Not pretty. I just watched those Korean boy band heartthrobs BTS on TV going through their paces, and my first thought was "How can they breathe?" It was like serious calisthenics, too, fast stuff, and not one of them was wheezing. That was me, I thought to myself, back in 1978. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Thankfully, most of this show if I'm singing I only just have to sway slightly, raise an arm, do a simple kick-ball-change, stuff I can sing through. There is just that one wacky dance. My head mic will be live to catch the singing, but I'd prefer it not catch the gasping. I need to review the song and find the moments when I can breathe. You take breathing for granted until you are slapping your thighs at high speed and doing elbows-high spins. Trust me on this.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">There is no "I" in ensemble. But there is me in the back row. Look closely. I'm the one smiling and hiding behind my taller castmates to mask my panting. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.666666984558105px;">Here is a sample of <a href="https://youtu.be/mVZ-RbVMXCQ" target="_blank">another theater's rehearsal of the fast dance</a>. Ours is different, each choreographer puts her own spin on it, but it has some similar moves. That first day I just could not remember what part came when. It took me repeated viewings of the recording of our own rehearsal to finally get all of it down.</span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-32013764925161118452019-04-07T21:37:00.000-07:002019-04-07T21:37:31.749-07:00Libraries have gone to the dogs<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I like dogs, but not in my salad. More and more you see dogs in restaurants these days and nobody says anything. In libraries. In coffee shops. It is as if the hippie era has come back, and traditional societal boundaries are being blatantly challenged, but only at shin height. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">In the library where I work, dog-bringers fall into two categories. They either try to pass their dog off as a service animal or they hide the dog somewhere. One lady almost got away with a covered baby stroller full of dogs, but made the fatal mistake of trying to check out books. Her baby's yapping sounded suspiciously canine. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Another lady tried to hide a chihuahua in her cleavage. Yes, you read that right. The cleavage was ample, and the dog tiny, but still. Dogs, like people, are rarely quiet in a library. When discovered, she didn't even seem that embarrassed, as if bra dogs are just another 21st Century advance society can finally relish.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Often people will bring a dog into the library on a leash, with no trace of a service harness or vest. They use the same technique which we are taught will deter muggers—walking with confidence. Enter as if your dog is the head of the library board of trustees, come to oversee his dominion. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Because of the Americans With Disabilities Act, service animals are allowed a lot of latitude. For example, legally I am only allowed to ask a lady with a dog in her bra two questions:</span></div>
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<li style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">What service was this animal specifically trained to help you with? </span></li>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I do not want Mrs. Bra Pup to answer that second one.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">If the answer to #1 is yes, whether true or not, there is apparently no wrong answer for #2. I am not allowed to ask about the person's disability. So here are some possible answers to #2 which do not result in getting ejected from the library:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"Possum detection."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"His nose always points toward nonfiction."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"I can't pronounce it, but it is vital."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"She can carry two Nicholas Sparks or one Stephen King in her mouth without damaging them."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The law does not give a checklist of acceptable answers, so basically all answers are valid if you can deliver them with a straight face. I am not allowed to say "Ma'am, no disrespect, but that's not a service animal. That's a pet. An evidently incontinent one."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">You can be fined $1000 if convicted of trying to pass off a pet as a service animal. You can spend six months in jail. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"What are you in for?"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"Capital murder. You?"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"Trying to pass Fluffy off as one of my breasts."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I can't imagine a case ever being brought. Libraries and restaurants and coffee shops want to be welcoming, not alienating, to their customers. People know this, so a person who brings an animal in is basically daring you.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I generally ignore them. The ice caps are melting. Dogs in libraries are not really a big problem in comparison, more of a symbolic one. Another standard of society, lowered. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">People my age and older sometimes complain about the noise in libraries these days, and people snacking and drinking. One lady was loudly talking to another on the main floor the other day, and an old guy sitting at a table just held out his arm, silently pointing her out to me. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I predict in 20 years the big problem will not be dogs, but people bringing in their robots. How are you supposed to shush something that can bore holes in you with its laser eyes? Thankfully, I will be retired. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-4924277133212477092019-03-17T05:00:00.000-07:002019-03-17T07:25:29.401-07:00Another opening, another show<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I have acted in plays since I was 15, when I was too shy to interact with most people, or at least girls. Scripted words were a godsend. Sometimes it even said, right in the script, I had to kiss them. So I kissed them. I mean, it said so right there. "They kiss," was one memorable stage direction. My first kiss, in fact, was not romantic but in service to a musical. I paused. I looked out at the director for confirmation. "Kiss her," he said. So I did. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I'm rehearsing a play now. Although I do not live in my hometown, the play's there and our rehearsals too. This has caused past and present to sort of shimmer for me, blend together, fade in and out of each other.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We rehearse in a hall where, 41 years ago, I slow-danced in the dark with my junior year sweetheart at the Girls League Formal. It was a girl-ask-guy dance they apparently don't even have any more. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I practice our scenes now mere feet away from where Michelle and I swayed all those years ago in the humid, teen-scented dark...can it be?...almost 15,000 days ago. I remember the spot, because I kissed her while we danced, something I had never done before in public, a bold move, even in the dark. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Sometimes at rehearsal my eye lingers there under the bright fluorescent lights. In daylight, there is no magic to the place. The ancient window curtains have collected the dust of decades and the wooden stage on the far end has some spongy boards. But, like any place out of memory, it retains a certain romance.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I think she broke up with me later that night. I can't remember. If not, it was pretty soon after. I couldn't tell you why. She probably still could. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Near a '60's looking sculpture in the foyer I eye a wall where I remember tossing my cream-colored tuxedo jacket and salmon bow tie onto a pile of the same. A hundred teens dancing in one room can generate a lot of heat. I did the rest of my dancing in my ruffle-fronted shirt, sleeves rolled up. Was there a disco ball or does memory play tricks? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Today in the spot of the tux pile is a clothes rack hung with all our show costumes. My tux is black this time, the tie, grey.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Every time I pull into the parking lot outside I remember the same lot, 40 years ago. I disembarked from a public school bus one final time, the bleary morning after Grad Night. Our parents drove us to the party alone, but a bus brought all us graduates home together. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Grad Night sucked. It was not at Disneyland, as is customary now, but in a ballroom at the Disneyland Hotel across the street. I guess they figured if it had the name Disneyland in it, we would be placated. It was lame. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I had to wear a suit and tie. There was a hypnotist at about 2 a.m. who made my classmates cluck like chickens or become stiff as a board. There was dancing. I don't remember getting on the bus, but I remember getting off in this very parking lot, the sun too bright after an all-nighter. Parents waiting in their cars to take us home, like kindergartners. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I pull up to rehearsal and the bus shimmers in the morning sun 40 years ago. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">This is roughly show #30 or so for me, lifetime. There have been many other tuxes, and suits, prayer shawls, jockey silks, tights. I am not as shy as that teen, but I still appreciate someone providing me the words. So often the right ones are nowhere to be found. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-91257695593875377322019-03-10T05:00:00.000-07:002019-03-10T05:00:02.092-07:00To some, we are dead ringers<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I work at a public library desk and I have a coworker who patrons constantly think is me. He looks nothing like me, but he IS the other middle-aged balding, graying white guy. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">So when we have a shift change at the top of the hour, often a patron he helped earlier will come back by the desk and thank me. I usually just smile and nod. "You're welcome." Often a patron will walk in the front doors and say "Remember me from last week? You were right. I went home and tried rebooting and it worked!" I have never seen them before. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">It's O.K. We all look alike. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">We have a young Latina who also works the desk, and a middle aged lady. They don't get mistaken for each other by the public, understandably. But for Gaetano and me, it happens constantly, almost daily. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">His name is Gaetano, so even our names look similar at a glance on our nametags. He is Italian-American. One time a woman walked up to me, clearly having had a previous conversation with him, and she opened with "So are you FLUENT in Italian or just speak a little?" I said I was George and the only Italian I know is fuhgeddaboutit. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">People are generally embarrassed to get us wrong. If I'm being honest, it's kind of entertaining.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Recently when I relieved Gaetano from desk duty, within five minutes of each other, an old guy thanked me for giving him extra computer time and a woman happily held up a book and said "I found it. The title was just a little different than I thought." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I never saw them before.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">It happens to him after I leave the desk just as often. Even our fellow staff, if they have just come on shift and only see one of us out of the corner of their eye, will call us by the other's name. They are apologetic, always, since they know it's a "thing." They even have a nickname for us. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">They call us "Georgetano." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Turns out we both went to the same high school, although a dozen years apart. We're both dads. We both deliver a wry punch line quietly, with a straight face. We often wear the same library logo polo shirts. How can we blame the public? Some people couldn't tell Redford and Newman apart.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">That is why it occurred to me that I could totally commit the perfect crime, as long as it occurred in the library. A whole string of witnesses would swear they saw Gaetano do it. I have to figure out the details still. We have worked together for 14 years, all of them leading up to this moment. The doppelgänger denouement! It is destiny. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Or, to borrow a library phrase, it is way overdue.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Except I just wrote about it. Crap. Or did Gaetano just write about it? Ha! That would really show premeditation on his part. Oh, he is totally going down. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-13125020251282911592019-03-03T12:55:00.000-08:002019-03-03T12:55:08.053-08:00Patreon supporter week - The History of Sleep<span style="font-family: inherit;">My column this week goes out exclusively to my Patreon supporters. For a buck a month you can access the full column, "<span style="font-family: inherit;">The</span> Hi<span style="font-family: inherit;">story of Sleep," </span>the first paragraph of which goes like this:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: 12pt;">We spend a third of our lives asleep, and that does not even count the time during the Masters Tournament. How we sleep has undergone drastic changes over the millennia. Evolution suggests that first, like The Godfather's Luca Brasi, we slept with the fishes. Then as we developed limbs, we probably slept under a bush, because predators would never think of looking there. Then in trees. It wasn't until some brainiac discovered that caves keep rain off that our sleep customs advanced..."</span></span><br />
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From there it goes into the history of early mattresses, which I will just say involved small animals.<br />
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Do you have a buck this month? And next? <a href="https://www.patreon.com/George_Waters" target="_blank">Then join the fun here</a>. <br />
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-77434459061312481402019-02-18T10:32:00.000-08:002019-02-18T10:32:22.810-08:00Subject line: You have been hacked!<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13.8px;">
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">I recently received a threatening extortion email; yet more proof that what the email scammers around the world really need more than money is English language instruction. Dear extortionists, here are some tips, using your own email as an example:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Hi There,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[This is an inexplicably folksy start. I would have gone with "Achtung" or maybe at least "Dear Sir or Madam."]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">As you can see from the subject of this mail we have hacked your system. To demonstrate you we have COMPLETE access we have emailed you this e-mail from YOUR very own acccount. Look into the "From" mail address.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[Thank you. I would have never thought to look in the "From" mail address.]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">We have downloaded all your social media friends, your files and your data to our server. We have COMPLETE access to your system for a few months now, </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">["We have HAD complete access." This is a common mistake.]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">this is because you check out mature internet sites </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[Mature! This is a great word choice. You figured out that if you use the word "porn," your email will go straight into my Junk folder. I have to give this one to you.]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">and one of these websites was corrupted with a virus that mounted itself on your system, opening a backdoor to our server. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[Amazingly, "Backdoor To Our Server" was one of the titles I was watching when you caught me. What are the odds?]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">You can alter your password but it isn't going to help, our backdoor will always allow us FULL access. Don't stress, we will inform you what to do.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[Whew. Thank you. Not stressing. Inform me.]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Once in a while we activated your video camera and recorded some very exposing clips of you while you "satisfied" yourself (you know what we mean) enjoying mature content. We can forward those exposing videos to all your contacts (we posses them on our server) and basically destroy your social life and the relationship with your nearest and dearest. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">["Nearest and dearest." You have been reading Amish romance, haven't you?]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Consider the disgrace! I don't believe you want us to do that so we will give you a way out, a way that you can go on to live your life like this never took place.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[This never took place.]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">When you opened this e-mail a disguised . pixel initiated a timer on our server, from now on you have six hrs (yes, only six so you better start without delay after browsing the instructions) to do the following below:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">["Six hours" is good. First rule of sales, right? Create urgency. But a "disguised pixel"? You are sending me an email extorting money. Why pretend to disguise a pixel? It sounds like an idea from, like, the fifth guy in your hierarchy who you decided to humor because it's not as bad as his usual bad ideas, so why not throw him a bone?]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Below you will find our bitcoin address (copy/paste it with no spaces, it is case sensitive). We want you to transfer $575 in bitcoins to this address.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[A specific number is good when you are lying on a first date about how much is in your bank account. When demanding money, though, round numbers are best. $500 would have been a lot cleaner. Also, you DO understand that the current price of one bitcoin is $3,588, so I, what, I buy 1/6th of a bitcoin to send you?]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">If you don't know how to make use of bitcoins you can use Google and search "How to buy bitcoins", it is quite simple and you can purchase them instantly.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[You might want to avoid putting Google in my head, because I might then naturally Google "bitcoin email hack scam."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">If you do this inside of the given timeframe our server will notice the transaction to that address and the timer will quit counting. We will remove all the data we posses of you, </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[This is the second time you have spelled it "posses." Just for future reference, "posses" are groups of lawmen tracking down bad guys. Strunk & White, in their definitive writing book "The Elements of Style" would probably suggest the following alternative: </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">"We will remove all the data we have of yours." </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">Please consider the edit.]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">terminate the backdoor on your system, and you will without doubt never ever hear from us again. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[Again with the "backdoor." I sense a fixation.]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">No one will ever know this occurred and you can proceed with your life. If you don't do this..... you are aware what is going to occur and you know what impact it will have on your life.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Our btc address: 1BKSFvjb46DZCw9AWibBzLjKPjsdubWmEt</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[Wait wait wait. You guys used my password to hotgrandmas.com for your bitcoin address?!]</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Good-luck!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: bold;">[A final word of advice. "Good luck" is never hyphenated. Never. Even if I had believed you owned embarrassing footage of me, I would not have paid you just on general principle. I bet you think it's a "doggy dog world" too. Sir or madam, I bid you adieu and wish you well in your future endeavors, which you can hopefully find in a less hit-and-miss line of work that matches your skill set, like lobbying.]</span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-67438155861159706812019-02-02T17:57:00.002-08:002019-02-02T17:57:22.471-08:00Column this week, "Person, Place Or Thing?" Is for supportersMy column is available this week to <a href="http://www.patreon.com/george_waters" target="_blank">Patreon subscribers. Thank you for your support!</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">-
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-48877812955488178702019-01-20T10:28:00.003-08:002019-01-20T10:28:48.084-08:00Sick With The Epic Ick<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">There is sick, and then there is SICK, and I have been both this week. When I am sick I feel as if I have never been well and that I will never be well. As you can imagine, this attitude is fun to be around. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I started sneezing an unusual number of times two weeks ago, my usual indicator of oncoming sickness, but I brushed it off to allergies. This is like a coal miner who, seeing the canary dead, says to himself ehh, he was probably old. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I should have started sucking my customary Cold-Eze, which promises to "lessen the severity and shorten the duration" of your suffering. I lost two days' battle prep to my wishful thinking.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">When on that Wednesday I got the irrefutable scratchy throat of doom, the enemy had already entrenched. Thursday I missed work, a rare thing. Friday I came back, with a low Lou Rawls rumble of a voice and a stuffy nose, prompting a coworker to ask, reasonably, "What are you doing here?" </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">It was then I realized I had the Epic Ick. Not your usual cold, but the one you've heard about in low murmurs from friends this season. "Oh, I had that for three weeks," one will say. "Never had one hang on so long," another will say. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Googling "flu season" I get a lot of results saying last winter's was a horrific one, which I had not known. Dodged it somehow. Thousands of people died, mostly elderly, but not all. This year's impact is not legendary, except to me. I missed two more days of work, unprecedented.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">In the drug store cold remedy aisle I met another guy one night. "You got the cough?" I asked. He nodded in commiseration, like another lifer in the prison yard. I grabbed some goop. He said "Good luck." Fellow sufferers are instant friends. It is a wonder this country has not healed its political wounds on that truth alone.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The symptoms have not been worse than ever, except the tickle, just endless. The 8:00 tickle, which comes on as reliably as a "Rocky" sequel, and causes fits of coughing which leaves my stomach muscles aching. Perhaps I will finally get those six pack abs. I cough so hard the pressure in my head causes blue flashes behind my eyes, as they are squashed up against my skull. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I take to sleeping in the living room in a chair, so my sinuses can drain the tickle. Lying down is impossible. So I bundle up and try to sleep sitting up, rain sounds from a white noise app coursing through my earbuds, drowning out last week's actual rain sounds, which were not loud enough on their own to cover the dog's nighttime hacking cough.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Reaching the two week mark I can tell I have finally turned the corner, just a week later than usual. I slept lying down, the first time in five nights. My stomach muscles have returned to their pre-illness lethargy. The tickle has retreated. Still, I can tell it will be most of a week before all symptoms are entirely gone, a personal record. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I used to think Dennys and flu shots were for old people, forgetting that according to Dennys and doctors I now AM old people. I will be getting the shot from here on, because while it was fun to get a ton of movies watched, they haven't made a movie yet which was worth the demon tickle. Although "Rocky" comes close. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-76386876284388324902019-01-13T05:00:00.000-08:002019-01-13T05:00:09.343-08:00Unforgettable<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I was 22 when she kissed me for the first, and last, time. She was 39, maybe 40, gorgeous, a total stranger. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">This is a true story. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I had just graduated college with a theatre degree and was spending six weeks at a prominent professional theatre which had a summer acting conservatory. (Folks, I could not GET enough theatre.) So each day I would drive most of an hour, don my tights and recite Shakespeare sonnets in the tiny black box theatre or from the rolling grass hillocks outside the complex.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">One day a staffer I had never seen before poked her head in the rehearsal room and called me out of class. Twenty heads went up to watch me go. I did not know what was happening. A death in the family? Egads, and me in tights? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">She explained that actors were auditioning down on the mainstage for the upcoming season's Chekhov play and the guy who normally "read" scenes with the actors was unavailable, so Martin suggested they use me.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Martin.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">He was one of the two co-founders of this famous theatre, and the year before he had actually come to my college a few miles up the road to direct us in a classic piece of Irish drama. Our professor and he were old pals. I played a great part, and got to work with this esteemed professional director.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">He kicked our butts. Our young ivory tower-dwelling butts. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"I didn't believe you. Start over" was something I had never heard before from a director. He made us better. Exponentially better. See above: butt-kicking.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"You're a good actor, George" he said to me once. I was 21, and coming from him, it was heady stuff. That sentence continued with a "but..." but there is no need to elaborate. You and I are busy people, dear reader.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">So a year later in Martin's own theater, he had tapped me to help with auditions, something he knew I could learn from, something I would appreciate. Let's be clear—I wasn't auditioning for this professional show, just reading scenes with the "real" actors. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I played a young man my own age. I acted one scene with ingenues my own age, vivacious and gushing. And I played another scene with middle-aged actresses, auditioning for the part of my mother.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">That's when she walked in. I'll call her Emery. Emery Eldridge. Her name was all alliteration, and her long, wavy blonde hair framed a Hollywood-perfect face, which is why I never forgot either. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">It was a scene in which my hand is injured, and the mother is doting, cooing and leaning close and being over-attentive. I had played the scene a few times already. It was a little disturbing, kind of incestuous. Then Emery took it up a notch. She fawned on me, caressed my hand, then leaned in and kissed me right on the lips. Mama!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I was not expecting that.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The director was not expecting that.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I have to think she got the part right on the spot.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">See, auditioning requires a different set of techniques than performing the final product. One key goal of an audition, when you are up against so many other talented, beautiful people, is to be </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">memorable</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">. You may do things in an audition you would never do in performance, just for effect. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Emery had an effect.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">My first thought was oh wow, I am getting kissed. She is kissing me. She is effing kissing me right here! This is a good kiss. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">My second thought was, oh crap, she's blocking my script. Do I have the next line? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I hated to break the moment, but I wanted to be a pro. Didn't want to miss a cue. So I found my place and we finished the scene.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">There was small talk between her and the director, the other founder of the theatre, who I had never met before. Another heady moment. Then I did it. I waited for a lull and then went for the laugh.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"Um," I said, "You know...that wasn't quite right for me. Could we do it again?"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I was 22. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">The balls. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Cracked everybody up. Eventually I went back upstairs to my fellow students with quite a story to tell. Emery did get the part. I never saw the show, so I don't know if they used the kiss. I doubt it. It would have been a bit much, even for Chekhov.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I have thought about her over the years, her memorable name. A few days ago, I went a-googling. I was saddened to see she had died in her late 50s, about 20 years after our moment. No details were given, except that a few years after our scene she had left acting and become a humanitarian, working to help the underprivileged around the world, and the planet itself. Her obit said that her college major, at an Ivy League school, was a double—theatre, yes, but also political science. In the end, she wanted to make a difference.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I checked her acting credits on the Internet Movie Database, and she was in </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">everything</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;"> in the '70s and '80s, cop shows and mysteries and comedies, in shows which can still be found all over YouTube. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I watched a scene or two. The writing was not exactly Chekhov. Nobody kissed anybody. Elegantly alliterative names were not noted by impressionable young actors. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">There is a theory of the universe that all things which have ever happened or will happen are still going on, just in a different dimension. That right now, somewhere, Emery is leaning in to kiss me. Right now she is kissing me. Right now her blonde hair is brushing my cheek. Right now I am never forgetting her name.</span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-41859673866276859542019-01-06T19:11:00.001-08:002019-01-06T19:11:51.499-08:00Charles the Chihuahua's continued shenanigans<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Our Charles, the chihuahua, is like most dogs, in that he will eat whatever even remotely </span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt; font-style: italic;">appears</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;"> to be food. I often use soft foam ear plugs at night, then set them on my bedside table. Suddenly they began disappearing. On day one I figured I had knocked one under the bed, as I have done many times. On day two I got suspicious, but not so suspicious that it stuck in my mind, the next morning, to secure the ear plugs after getting out of bed. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">On day three it was clear we have a dog who thinks of the world as his own personal foam mini-marshmallow dispenser. Right about then my wife took off for a few days in San Diego and took Charles with her. Not long after I got the following text: "Good morning! Charles just pooped out three of your earplugs, FYI." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">FYI? lol. TMI. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">She also reported that he barfed one up. I am not sure that is all of them, frankly, but if there is still one swirling around undigested in his stomach or gut, we will likely never know. He is already ancient, and his heart doesn't work right, so he undergoes hourly wheeze sessions which, to a visitor, would give the impression that he was going to keel on the spot. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Charles does not keel. He and his velvet fur may outlive us all. An earplug will not be his end.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Here is my best guess at Charles' thought process on a given day:</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">"Oy with the coughing again. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Where are my mini marshmallows? </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Oh good. My harness and leash for walking. I will circle and circle so George can't get them on me. He is so serious all the time. Somebody needs to lighten him up and it might as well be me. I need to impart my excitement to this good man through circling. He doesn't seem to be getting it. I will circle a few more times. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">This patch of grass is not poop-worthy. Walk on, George. Walk on. I said walk...that's it. Good boy. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">This grass smells like pizza. I do not understand the world.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">This dirt. Stop here. This is perfect for pooping. I will circle 700 times until my foot placement is exactly right for hunching. You hunch wrong, the Earth spins off its axis, and it's all on me. One circle, two circles, three...</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Why does he pick up my poop with a plastic bag? The spot was perfect. We're just going to have to hit it again tomorrow, George, until you get this right.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">You know those soft rubber finger-rests they have now on ball point pens. They are delicious. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">SQUIRREL! KILL SQUIRREL! REND! TEAR! DISMEMBER! Oh, this tree DEFINITELY needs peeing on.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Aaaand we're back on my favorite chair. What is that? A fire engine siren? Wolves activate! Aroooooooooooooooooooooo!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Aaaand everybody's at work now. Let's just see what kind of crumbs are on the computer keyboard. Oh yeah. Oh yes. Thank you, universe. Oh crap, George is coming back in! To the chair!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Close one. Seems like he came back for his lunch bag. O.K. we're golden now. Hey Skipper, I'm gonna need that prime spot in the patch of sunshine. Out!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">A little snooze? Don't mind if I do."</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">I will never understand why dogs find their feet so tasty or why each other's butts are so enticing. And they will, I expect, never understand why a person would stick foam inside himself. There is much yet to learn, people, and so so much to sniff. </span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-26212830649377395742018-12-30T10:52:00.002-08:002018-12-30T10:52:35.719-08:00Patreon weekMy column, about New Year's Eves I recall, is available this week to <a href="http://www.patreon.com/george_waters" target="_blank">Patreon subscribers. Thank you for your support!</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">-
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-92178864832326846262018-12-24T09:59:00.000-08:002018-12-24T09:59:03.528-08:00New Christmas Carols For These Times<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">There was a time when having a dark sense of humor just made you seem negative, and a little weird. I think a dark sense of humor has, in recent years, become a necessary coping superpower. </span><br />
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"><br /></span>
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">"Zuckerberg Is Doubling Down" </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">(To the tune of "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town")</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">You better log out, you better comply</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">better bail out, I'm telling you why—</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Zuckerberg is not backing down...</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">He's checking your history and it's nice</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">to sell it to Amazon for a price</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Zuckerberg is doubling down</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">You might think that it's creepin'</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Your IP address to take</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">He knows better than hackers could</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">all your pics of that beefcake</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Oh! You could do without that Jeff Bezos guy</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">He and the Zuck don't need private eyes</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Your priv'cy is gettin' shook down</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">"Awake In The White House"</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">(To the tune of "Away In A Manger")</span></div>
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<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(60, 64, 67); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; color: #3c4043; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Awake in the White House</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">No need to feel dread</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The president (Jesus!)</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">won't worry his head</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The stars from the movies</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Can say what they say</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The president (Jesus!!)</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Is tweeting away</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">The blowhard is blowing</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">No spell-check he makes</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">As belly laughs seize us</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">He airs bellyaches</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">I love it when (Jesus!!!)</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Crap flows from this guy</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Please let me preside</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">When they declassify</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Be near me, if (Jesus!!!!)</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">They let this putz stay</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">I'll hold forth forever</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">With wry play-by-play</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Bless all the brown children</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Encaged in despair</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">But don't judge me, Heaven,</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">I sent Trumpy Bears</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">"Frosty the Puddle</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">(To the tune of "Frosty the Snowman")</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Frosty the Puddle</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Melted down into a hole</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Thanks to climate change, well now we all know</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">You can blame a lot on coal</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;"></span><br /></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Frosty the Puddle</span></div>
<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; background-color: white; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Couldn't keep that heat at bay</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">So then Frosty cried when</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">He realized</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">He'd be mist by Christmas Day</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">His melting down was graphic</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">As his carrot hit the ground</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">We knew that he was almost dead</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">By the awful gurgling sound</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Frosty the Puddle</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Was as wet as he could be</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">And his dank bouquet</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Kept the kids away</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Plus his fate they could foresee</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Frosty the Puddle</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Tried to make his thoughts array</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">But his smarts had run</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Like the setting sun</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">And his limbs had gone astray</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">So vast was the spillage</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Drinking up, a thirsty band</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Of some birds, a bear and a little hare</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Then kersplash! a moving van</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">He looked around as the sun beat down</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">On that forlorn blacktop</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Then a basset hound jumped into him—</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">a perfect belly flop!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Frosty the Puddle</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Saw his doom as plain as day</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">He'd have waved goodbye</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">But his wet was dry</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 12pt;">Raise a glass to him today</span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-36229832574557732592018-12-16T12:19:00.003-08:002018-12-16T12:19:20.776-08:00Things too hard to toss<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">There are two things people are unable to bring themselves to throw away—old keys and National Geographic magazines. Well, three. Books. Most books. At my library, people donate to our used book store all manner of unsaleable gems. Computer textbooks from 1985, religious pamphlets, microwave oven manuals. This comes from the ancient human impulse which goes all the way back to when a caveman first set a meatless elk skeleton at a crossroads "just in case somebody can use it." </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Humans collect keys. They pile up in empty peanut cans in the garage or gather on key-rings hung in the kitchen cupboard. Why? BECAUSE THEY "GO TO" SOMETHING. How will I ever unlock the things these keys go to if I throw them away? Yet once the collection gets past five keys, no human on Earth has ever had the will to methodically take them around to items with keyholes and test them. We intend to. Some day, when there's time. We intend to see the Northern Lights some day too.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">National Geographic magazines are the most beautifully produced things humans have managed to achieve thus far, plus they are ringed with a golden border. You can't just throw something ringed with a golden border in the trash! Each issue contains fascinating, surprising insights about our world which, before Facebook, could only be found within. And the pictures! They are art and science in one. A horde of very bright people put together each issue. And every human on Earth bought one, even in outer Mongolia, and then stored it in his garage or tool yurt. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Once we have learned, from a golden-bordered copy, all there is to learn about, say, the radioactive reindeer of Chernobyl, we store it, and store the next issue and the next, until we have what is known, in scientific terms, as a "sh*t-ton." Then, in a rare fit of non-procrastination, we take this in boxes to the library, where maybe somebody can use them. People who have never seen them can use them, absolutely. These people do not exist on Earth. </span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Everyone who has ever lived has dropped off three cases of pristine, golden-bordered beauties at the library, but the library already has bound copies, collected by year, going back to 1934. So that leaves the used book store, but they receive roughly four sh*t-tons every week, so they become your surrogate. They do the dirty deed. They toss them in the trash for you. You don't have to witness the discarding of a fellow human's hard intellectual efforts. I am not judging. I absolve you. It is a difficult thing to see. A lot of people, from the slaughterhouse to Congress, do things we need done but don't want to behold.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">Come January 1st, a new show on Netflix debuts, starring Marie Kondo. She is the author of the wild best-seller from a few years ago, "The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up." Her clutter-reducing philosophy is basically hey, if it's not a functional item, a pot or steam iron or bath towel, and it doesn't bring you joy, toss it. Seriously. Joy. That is a high bar to get over. Kondo would toss your clump of old keys so fast. Sayonara, radioactive reindeer!</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-size: 11pt;">In the preview, she appears at people's doors like a tiny Japanese Mary Poppins, and commences kicking clutter's ass. I will be all over that show. What's more fun than watching other people make hard, mature decisions without making them yourself? Is "clutter porn" a term? There's a lot to unpack here. I wonder where I left those keys.</span></div>
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
SHARE THIS ON FACEBOOK. Click link below.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6350678880547687292.post-26558436528840556592018-12-02T19:18:00.001-08:002018-12-02T19:18:37.027-08:00Letters to Santa in this political climate / exclusive this weekMy column this week, letters to Santa which reveal the toxic political climate we are living in, is available only to my <a href="https://www.patreon.com/George_Waters" target="_blank">Patreon subscribers</a>. Also a vintage column about the things, in middle age, that I have in common with my dog Skipper, and sound recordings of my columns from the last month. Thanks again for your support.<br />
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George<div class="blogger-post-footer">-
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© George Waters - Contact George at <a href="mailto:george@thewablog.com">george@thewablog.com</a>
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