Our Thieving Pals

Everybody's friends are thieves.  Every last one of them.  It's sad but it's true.   Stealers, the lot.  It's enough to make you ashamed to know them, isn't it?

They don't think of it as stealing, of course. But if you take someone's stuff and you never bring it back, that's pretty much the essence of what a thief does.  There's no such thing as permanent borrowing, nor is kidnapping an involuntary visit. You stole it.  And stealing is against the law.  Ergo, our friends are crooks.  We don't hang out with our buddies, we consort with criminals.

I cheerfully lend books knowing I'm not going to get them back, but that's okay.  I mind more with CD's but I can live with it. But I hate lending DVD's.  To me, the entire collection has a gaping abyss in it when even one DVD is absent.  Perhaps I'm all weirdo obsessive-compulsive psycho Rainman about it, but it's the way I feel.  I mourn the missing member.  (Insert own tasteless Lorena Bobbitt joke here.)

And the worst is when, in the borrowers' minds, the thing was theirs in the first place and they act like they've always owned it. So you have to act like you're borrowing it from them and then keep it, finally reclaiming it as your own, vexed at the knowledge that they now think you're the big thieving klepto and not them.  And thus friendships deteriorate in a vicious cycle of resentment and bitterness and hatred and murder.

Some people would give you the shirt off their back and never worry about seeing it again.  Now, there's an odd saying. 'The shirt off their back."  I wonder why it singles out the back?   Why do we neglect the front?  How come no-one is said to give you the shirt off their pecs?  Sounds weird, I guess.  

And how come it's always the giving of a shirt that denotes generosity?  Isn't it just as nice to hand over other garments? "Oh, that Tim.  Heart of gold.  He'd give you the pants off his ass."  

I guess what goes around comes around, and it's all among friends, and other cliches.  And what's a cliche, after all, (like my point today), but an observation that we all steal?  

But it still troubles me that my friends and yours are rascals of such ill character, plunderers that they are.

Bless 'em, they do have a way of stealing your heart, too, though, don't they?

I'll give them that.

Attack Of The Turkey Elbows

As I saunter through middle age, I have no fear of growing old. Aches and pains won't bother me.  I can handle day-long dental work and the heartbreak of liver spots.  My brittle hair can fall in blue cascades.

I just hope I don't get turkey elbows.

Because that's when you know your days are numbered. You look in the mirror one morning and even the skin beneath your elbows hangs down like a turkey's neck.  And then you get a bird feeder and a heating pad and crochet the last rites on all your pillowcases.

So I check my elbows daily with great dread.  The day I see turkey, I'll dodder right out and buy a lifetime supply of prunes (a remaining lifetime supply - probably three or four jars).

Many go to absurd lengths to hide their condition.  Sales of crude mechanical bicep clothespins and sundry other quack slack reducers are up as the turkey-elbow desperate gobble up the can't-fly-by-night hucksters' lotions and potions, scant last-ditch hope for the afflicted. 

Some, like Queen Elizabeth, wear absurdly long gloves up to their armpits and nobody has the heart to tell them, in their majesty, that they look ridiculous.  Or they do have the heart, but would also like to keep the head. 

(Mind you, turkey elbows are not the death sentence they once were. Many continue to lead active, productive lives well into their Butterball years.  Mick Jagger has turkey elbows and look at him!  I mean, eww, sure, but still.)

But nothing works. You can't fool Mother Nature, and you just can't hide your turkey elbows.

Clearly the time has come to lay to rest, as it were, the prejudices about turkey elbows that abound in our soon-to-be geriatric society.  Turkey elbows aren't quite as gag-reflex-inducingly revolting and horrifying and hideous as they were once universally thought, by all right-thinking people, to be.

Yet, one old lady I know, who has turkey elbows so bad that, when she swims, she looks like a manta ray, had to quit doing aquatics at the home because people were stampeding in panic to the deep end and drowning, including the staff and the emergency personnel.

Now, is this fair?  No.  Funny?  More study is required.  And after all, who among us is qualified to judge others just for being sick and disgusting and wrong?

Now, in no way do I wish to come across as insensitive or disrespectful, so before I receive dozens of angry letters from ancient readers, the ink smudged from taking naps between sentences, still cool where their elbows lay spread across the page, let me say that it is precisely this heartless flippancy and ignorance about an important health issue, parlaying a feigned concern for the victims' plight into cheap, heartless laughs, that has got to stop.

So cut it out, okay?

Promise?

Swear on the Queen.

Wanted: A Few Good Imbeciles

You know who doesn't get enough respect?

Imbeciles.  

I got ruminating today about imbeciles.  Not any particular imbeciles - my friends, for example - just imbeciles in general. And I've come to a few imbecilic conclusions of the sort that one always feels compelled to share.

In the comic books, if someone is calling you an imbecile, he's always the villain. The good guy never uses that term.  You never hear Superman say to Lex Luther, "Your evil plan for world domination will never succeed, you imbecile."  You must be villainous to use that word or you just sound rude.

But he isn't talking to the good guy. Because neither will you hear Doc Octopus say to Spiderman, "Victory is mine, you imbecile."  He'd call him Webbed Will-O'-The-Wisp or something. Standard name-calling doesn't cut it with an arch-nemesis; you have to make that extra creative effort.

No, if the villain is calling anyone an imbecile, it's his henchmen.

"How could you let him get away, you imbeciles?" is the sort of thing you'll hear a villain say. 

A villain's staff is comprised primarily of imbeciles.  The 'Henchmen Wanted' ad says 'Only Imbeciles Need Apply'. 

So it's not like they don't already know they're imbeciles.  It's just that, being imbeciles, they need reminding.

But it's hard to get good imbeciles anymore.

You would think it would be easy, because they're everywhere.  

Every time I'm in line at the supermarket, there's some imbecile ahead of me who wants to pay by cheque, and waited until her purchases were rung up before commencing the lengthy search for the chequebook, and then, as a brilliant afterthought,  for a pen, rather than rooting around for them earlier when she was still in line.  

And if you drive, you know that virtually everyone else on the road is in your way or a hazard.  Everywhere you look, it's tortoises and maniacs.  The only one operating a motor vehicle correctly is you. 

The reason?  They're all imbeciles.

But nowadays, any villain will tell you they don't make imbeciles like they used to.  All you can get now is screw-ups.  And that's just not the same. 

Besides, "After him, you screw-ups!" doesn't sound nearly as good as "After him, you imbeciles!"

Mind you, not all imbeciles are out in the open.  Sometimes it's not so obvious right away. Many women fall for men who seem utterly charming and later turn out to be imbeciles. 

And there are few things in life as disappointing as the surprise imbecile.

Now, at this point, I can hear my many disappointed readers clamouring pleadingly, "Wrap it up, you imbecile!"  

Very well.  It would be evil of me to torment you further. Villainous, even.

But if you come across any good imbeciles, send them my way, will you?  

I grow short of henchmen.

Trace Got (No) Back

(I'm sorry I was away for so long.  Contemplation temporarily took the place of creativity.  But I'm back and I intend to post much more frequently.  I know I've said this before, but I was lying back then.  Get off my back.)

My girlfriend Diane and I played host a while back to our friends Paul and Jessica who revealed, in the course of the evening, a startling secret:

There's no back.

I know.  You're shocked.  Amazed.  You can't believe it. 

You don't get it.

They were waxing nostalgic about their days in various retail outlets, serving customers, and how everybody always asked:

"Are there any in the back?"

We all make this inquiry.   We're convinced that, just out of sight in the rear, there's an endless cornucopia of merchandise that we want but that they won't put out.  The store employees are trained not to show it to us unless we're smart enough to ask to see it.  We pride ourselves on our canny shopping talents when we ask if it's in the back. 

It's back there.  We just know it is.  

But what we know is so often wrong, and Paul and Jess broke the news:

There's no back. 

I was taken aback to learn this. 

Apparently there's just this vast, barren wilderness back there, with a howling wind chasing the tumbleweeds around, like the Australian Outback.

No, the clerks patiently explain when you demand green slippers and all they have is grey.  There aren't any green slippers in the back.  We tend to place product on the sales floor so as to facilitate its sale.  If there were a backlog of stuff in the back, that would constitute some pretty shoddy ordering practises, now, wouldn't it? 

They don't say this last part, of course.  They just grit their back teeth till sparks fly, hoping one will land in your hair and ignite you in a blazing backdraft of fury.

But consumers live on hope.  If there just might, possibly, conceivably be some green slippers in the back, it can't hurt to ask, can it?

Yes, it can.  By the end of their shifts, the sales help are prepared to seize the next nimrod who asks by the back of the neck, slay him, and bury him out back. 

Particularly if you ask the Dreaded Dork Follow-Up Question: "Well, could you check?" 

Check?  Okay, check, I gotcha.  Check out my finger pointing to the check-out.

(Note it's not the index one.)

I could quit asking if it's in the back.  But I'd be haunted eternally, always wondering, in the back of my mind:

"What if it WAS in the back, if only I'd asked? Maybe they had it on back order.  I wish I could go back in time." 

So we're left with a horrible choice: 

Talk back and be a dork or back off and be a loser.  

I pick dork.

What do you say, loser?