Petting the Bumblebee

You may have heard of the Butterfly Effect. I have. Admittedly, I thought it was a sarcastic dig at Ashton Kutcher’s acting abilities, or lack thereof. I was half right. There was a movie by that name that starred Kutcher and he did not disappoint as he sucked in it (to his credit, he still managed to look pretty according to some female coworkers). Turns out the movie was based on some far out chaos theory or some such junk science. Still junk, either way you look at it.

So when 12 year old SOTC (Son of The Captain) told me this week that you can pet a Bumblebee, I naturally thought of Kutcher in one of those camera commercials heavy petting a giant black and green bumble bee supermodel. Though this may not truly qualify as a natural thing to think, it is at least a believable reaction given the author. But SOTC insisted that this was not a ruse and that he has in fact himself petted a Bumblebee. His explanation was that Bumblebees are very secure as insects go due to their sturdy, rotund build – the tank of bees he called them. If one were to make a Pixar film, I could definitely imagine a Bumblebee character with tank like qualities; then again, I can imagine myself as President of the United States. Plus, he is my son and a ginger to boot, so he is a questionable character.

I’d like to say that this statement from SOTC was atypical; however, he has baited me in the past to do things for his amusement. I’ll let you be the judge.

• Talking to a Chia Pet will make its hair grow faster. SOTC mentioned something about human carbon dioxide emissions being good for plants and pointed out that my personal emissions levels were off the charts. Four hours of dialogue later, there was no discernible hair growth. SOTC claimed he saw some and encouraged me to continue, but I didn’t want to get blamed for global warming so I stopped; plus, I had to pee something fierce. I did learn one thing, though. Sterling (that was Chia Pet’s Christian name) was a better conversationalist than I’d anticipated, so we agreed to meet regularly to debate the finer points of English Romantic poetry (I’m a Keats man while Sterling fancied Wordsworth) and Hair Club for Men. By the time Christmas rolled around, Sterling did have a little more hair whilst I had a tad less.

• You can make tea from Catnip. IT’S TRUE, IT’S TRUE, YES, YES, YES, IT’S TRUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Catnip is now a staple of my diet and the special secret ingredient in my killer brownie recipe! Thanks SOTC!

• Squirrels like it when you pet them under their chin. Never was able to test this, however, as exhaustion set in after 6 hours futilely chasing the blessed things around the woods in back of my house. SOTC sat comfortably in a lawn chair in the back yard sipping Catnip tea so he could “monitor” my progress.

• Old people who have a problem with flatulence really appreciate it when you point it out to them. They don’t. Especially not the old ladies.

• Children whose Dads buy them the remote control Parrot.AR.Drone Quadricopter will develop healthy, happy, lifelong relationships with their Dads. The jury is still out on this. Haven’t seen SOTC since I shelled out the $300 and bought him the damn thing.

Believe The Captain when he says: Old lady farts are lethal.

Yours waiting for Spring and my first glimpse of a Bee Tank,

The Captain

The Great Halloween Blackout of 2011

The specter of canceling Christmas is always there and not entirely unexpected given that blizzards historically happen in the winter months. Our gnawing subconscious fear of a bare bottomed Christmas tree on Christmas morning is exploited each season by an assortment of claymation TV specials involving a fat man in a red suit, talking animals, little men in tights and pointy ears, and dangerous, defective and deadly toys. But in the end, the relentless flow of crass commercialism sweeps them all away and we wake up on Christmas morning to piles of presents we don’t need, along with a handful of essentials, such as Brandeis blue boxer briefs and neon fuchsia nylons.

But those who reside in the Northeast USA are currently wallowing in a living hell, the Great Halloween Blackout of 2011, a perfect storm of curious and unusual circumstances. A mild autumn keeps the leaves on the trees longer than normal so an aberrant October blizzard can coat them with wet snow, the equivalent of cement shoes for conifers and angiosperms, and tear them apart limb by limb, taking down innocent power lines with them. Conspiracy theorists will point to Jack Frost, whose lowly status among natural villains galled his woody arse and inspired him to plan the “big one,” a frost so destructive that his name will forever after be uttered in the same windy breath as Old Man Winter; others will blame Barack Obama, because they can; still more will lay blame at the foot of the 97% of scientists who falsely prophesy about the golden calf of global warming. And then there are those who believe that God is punishing us for becoming so detached from the world which he created, a world which we have blasphemously replaced with satanic scientific instruments such as computer chips and flat screen technology. Without electricity, what good is that Blackberry or Flat Screen TV beyond being another flat surface to use for illicit purposes?? Constant reminders of our unnatural conditioning taunt us daily as we stumble through the literal and existential darkness. For your salvation, The Captain has compiled a list of common road blocks which serve to direct us back to our “natural” state. Enjoy!

So here it is! The Captain’s Road Map Out of Contemporary Darkness Into the Light of Our Natural Past

• Light switches. Despite being without power for 4 days, my hand still habitually reaches for the light switch when I enter a room when it should be reaching for a nice piece of flint and some dry kindling (This should not be confused with other habitual hand behaviors which are indeed quite natural).

• Flashlights. If Prometheus was punished for stealing fire from the gods by being chained to a rocky crag to have his innards picked at by buzzards, what reparation can we expect from our maker for harnessing light and sticking it neatly into a convenient hand held device with an on and off switch and numerous settings? These are the Devil’s firesticks and should be avoided at all costs upon pain of some divine sadistic castigation. Better to light a torch from your flint fire and risk burning down your house than incur God’s wrath.

• Radios. If you haven’t learned this already, you need to know that voices that don’t come out of human mouths are demon projections and not to be trusted. That is not actually the Governor talking on the radio but one of Satan’s minions. The radio is in truth the mouthpiece of Mephistopheles (also known by other names, such as Beelzebub, Lucifer, the Antichrist, and Rush Limbaugh). Smash it on the rocky crag before your soul is lost forever!

• Generators. If electricity is Heroin, then Generators are Methadone. Yes, they may momentarily stay the crash of your electricity detox, but in the end you will inevitably be cast upon the rocks of modernity by the false gods of Facebook and Twitter. The true tonic? Brace yourselves. A book. Light a candle (using flint), open a bottle of wine made from juicy natural fruits, and read. Before long you are on the road back to Eden!

• Blow Dryers. If God had meant for human hair to be dried unnaturally, he would have given women and metrosexuals a special motor in their windpipes. The introduction of the electric blow dryer has interrupted the natural thinning of the herd. The weak who otherwise would have perished of pneumonia after going out into the cold night air with wet hair now thrive and multiply and produce children born with split ends. Abominations!

So Believe The Captain when he says: Take your hand off that switch and place it where it naturally belongs!

Yours with bruised knees and sore shins but my mortal soul in tact,

The Captain

Logophile

I am a logophile. And though I admit to being offensive, you will not find The Captain’s name on any registry for illegal offenders. Of course, The Captain is a pen name and would not be found on any legal documents anyway. But more importantly, it is imperative for you all to know up front that a logophile is a person who loves words. This does not make me a criminal or a deviant, just a bit odd. Some people love animals, so much so they volunteer their time rescuing animals at risk., which is a perfect segway to the topic of this blog: word rescue. There is a marvelous website called Save The Words which is dedicated to saving words teetering on the precipice of verbal extinction (something many have wished for my words, I might add).

Thankfully, unlike animal rescue, which can be smelly and messy and expensive, word rescue is cheap, easy and clean, like my wayward cousin (OK maybe not “clean”). One needs only to use a word in a sentence to keep it alive. And given my obsessive compulsive tendency for lengthy parentheticals, The Captain is a word savior if ever there was one! So time for The Captain to save some word souls.

Word Disciples of The Captain

Panchymagogue: medicine purging body fluids from the body.

Saving sentence – When using beer as a panchymagogue, PBR works best.

Lubency: willingness; pleasure.

Lambition: Act of licking or lapping

Saving sentence – The Captain’s lubency for lambition leads to a need for a panchymagogue.

Obacerate: to stop one’s mouth.

Saving sentence: On average, The Captain receives a dozen daily requests to obacerate.

Pregnatress: female power that generates or gives birth to something.

Gumfiate: to cause to swell.

Saving sentence: Her pregnatress made me gumfiate down below.

Hirquitalliency: strength of voice.

Saving sentence: Mom always said my f*&king hirquitalliency gave her a headache.

Recineration: second time a thing or place is burned down.

Saving sentence: My probation officer said that incineration was bad, but recineration would get me a date with the judge.

Adimpleate: to fill up.

Saving sentence: Barkeep, adimpleate my mug!

Foppotee: a simple minded person.

Tudiculate: To bruise or pound.

Saving sentence: The bullies would tudiculate me whenever I called them Foppotees.

Diffibulate: to unbutton; to unbuckle.

Saving sentence: My amorous adventures would always begin with diffibulation and invariably end in tudiculation.

Doomed Words

Ovablastic: making eggs burst open in the womb.

Death Knell: Using this word in a sentence would only get me in big trouble.

Urette: dried animal urine absorbed into chalky soil.

Death Knell: So esoteric, even The Captain wouldn’t use this word in a sentence. Perhaps if it referred to the ribald messages we peed on the dirt infield of the Little League field…

Woundikins: mild profanity.

Death Knell: There really is no purpose for mild profanity.

Believe The Captain when he says: I do not suffer boreism (behavior of a boring person!

Yours cloakatively (superficially),

The Captain (time for me to obacerate)

The Miracle of Parenting Teens

The Miracle of Parenting Teens

In medias res, “in the middle of things,” a Latin term for a literary device whereby the author begins his work in the middle of the story he is telling. Having told many a story about the trials and tribulations of controlling adolescents legally in your care, I decided I would start in the middle this time, because when it comes to teenagers, the beginning is always painful and the ending a shocking surprise, which I will not give away here. Is my pretentious application of this obscure literary device misguided and irrelevant?? You betcha. But I can’t resist tossing bouquets of Latin into my blogs because I can…plus, dear mother still wonders out loud at family gatherings why she spent so much of her hard earned money on my hoity toity liberal arts education so I could graduate with a useless degree like English Literature. Duh. So I could bedazzle the world with my Latin allusions!

So after years of writing about behavior management tools such as eviction and handguns, I am ready to share an incredible scientific discovery which has been hiding in plain sight all these centuries. Teenagers have the power to render their parents actually invisible. I’m not kidding. After months of methodical study, I have identified the scientific laws which govern this remarkable phenomenon. So before I lose sight of what I’m trying communicate, or pass out, here it is: The Captains Totally Suweet Scientific Treatise on the Nature of Teenage Witchcraft or How My Teen Makes Me Invisible.

• Certain conditions must be met in the environment for invisibility to occur. The biological parent must be alone in the same room as the teen. It can also work if both biological parents are present; introducing a step parent or still another one of Mom’s abusive boyfriends will render invisibility impossible. Skeptical? Perform the following experiment. Enter a room with your teen and ask about grades. Nothing. Ask what time they will be home tonight. Still nothing. Time to introduce irrefutable evidence. Fart loudly and clearly and tell me that you are not truly invisible when your teen briefly looks up, sniffs, has a look of confusion which rapidly transitions to disgust, and then continues to text more drivel to his or her friends as if you are not there.
• Once the state of parental invisibility is reached, there are only two known conditions which can cause an interruption:
• The teen needs you to chauffeur him or her somewhere;
• The teen has a cash flow problem.

Introduce either scenario individually or in combination, which is quite common, and the cloak of invisibility is instantly lifted and the parent is locked in the frightening tractor beam stare of a teenager who needs a lift and some cash and no means to acquire either without Mom or Dad.

• Much of the skepticism within the scientific community about this topic is the result of common teenage behavior whenever teens and parents are observed together in public. But for the presence of Mom or Dad, the average observer would necessarily conclude that the teen is walking alone, that the parents are invisible to the teen. But the trained observer, upon closer inspection, will see the teens gritted teeth and hear the mumbled instruction, “too close, drop back ten feet please” and notice the ever so slight decrease in the pace of the parent’s gait. Social, not optical, invisibility.

Truly miracles are still performed today, but in the unlikeliest of places!

Believe The Captain when he says: Taking your teen with you to Vegas does not make you invisible, scientifically or legally.

Yours Potens in Adversum,

The Captainicus

6th Grade"Graduation"

Boy, has the world changed since I was a kid! Last night I spent 2 excruciating hours attending something called the 6th Grade Celebration at my son’s Intermediate school (grades 4 -6). Except for the caps and gowns, diplomas, and cigars, this was a graduation ceremony. So please help me understand. Since when did completing 6th grade become such an important milestone? For me, it meant only two things: 1) summer vacation had arrived; and 2) I would never, ever, ever EVER again have to see or smell Riverside School’s evil teacher Killer Kahn or her skunk perfume ever again. And I never did. I heard a rumor that she died some years later, settling a longstanding wager about whether she was human or a mid level demon.

So this is what the world has come to; we throw a party to reward minors for doing what they are expected to do, overlooking the years of hemming and hawing and bitching and moaning about having to do it. And we wonder why so many young people today are so freakin’ entitled!

And then there are the speeches. The Principal, the Chairman of the Board of Education (who sends her kids to private school!!), and the PTO President all feel obliged get up and “say a few words,” which are somehow never few, in spite of the painfully obvious fact that they are all amateur public speakers who would have been better off just letting the kid of the nerdy parents deliver their speeches for them. I only wish a representative from the Guinness Book of World Records was on hand because I’m pretty sure they set a new record for number of clichés littering their butchered attempts at elocution.

Now I’m not a PTO member by choice (all parents are forced to pay “voluntary” dues), but I humbly suggest that members better scrutinize the way the PTO leadership spends its money. Purchasing special T-shirts busy with 150 illegible signatures to give out to the graduates as they pick up their diplo…er, certificate, which the children will wear maybe once but never in public, may not be the most fiscally responsible thing to do with my goddamned dues money. Just sayin’. But in their defense, the shirts did get some use last night. Lacking (thankfully) a cap to toss into the air, the graduates chucked their shirts into the air or at each other at the merciful conclusion of the program. Those shirts left behind were taken home by the school janitors to clothe their children.

And if you think this kind of behavior is just some temporary fad, think again. The two Student Council presidents, dressed like they were attending a Hollywood extravaganza, what with their shiny beads and sequins and excessive makeup and bling, also happened to be the daughters of the PTO officers. Inspired by their mothers, the girls spent student dues money to hire some schmuck to dress up as a giant yellow star and parade around like some sort of mascot from a drug inspired Dali painting. If our children are our future as all of those inspirational speeches suggest, then we all better start dumping as much money as possible into our retirement accounts RIGHT NOW!

In the face of such societal coddling, there remains one consolation in that laws regarding parental rights haven’t changed much. Now that summer is here, I own that kid and have every right to make him work for no pay. My roof, my rules, my servant. Time to stamp out the entitled narcissism nourished in the schools and teach him what a hard day’s labor really feels like. I don’t know about you, but I plan on having a very relaxed summer!

Believe The Captain when he says: Medals are for heroes, not mediocres!

Yours medal-less,

The Captain

A Loitering Mind

You’ve heard the expression “the roads were laid out by the cows,” often referring to the city of Boston, a blatant misapplication if you ask me, as Beantown roads were obviously sketched out by some vengeful Native Americans after a long night breaking in some new peace pipes. No, this phrase works much better as a description of my mind, which meanders like a large, oblivious bovine preoccupied with the large clump of cud in its craw. Chew on that one! (Sorry, sorry, sorry, can’t help myself.) Sometimes I wake up after one of my rambling reveries and lose my equilibrium because the fall back to reality is so violent. Other times, however, I feel like I just enjoyed a movie I’d snuck in to see. This happened to me today in beautiful downtown Worcester, MA, Boston’s ugly step sister. I was there to observe a fellow human being, the subject of some experimental corporate drug testing (OK, that’s not true; she was simply trying out a new computer system for insurance adjusters; now you know why I embellished). Well, my subject flew the coup when I was eating lunch, so I was left to observe some rather self-conscious office furniture.

After some time, the furniture became suspicious, so I abandoned my task and moved to a cubicle by the window with a view of the cityscape below, which was depressingly quiet, but for two smokers, standing randomly on the sidewalk. I thought nothing of this scene, which is repeated all day long on city streets across the country. But…then my mind left the pen. And suddenly I pictured the smokers sans cigarettes, idly standing there, empty handed, just talking to each other. And the questions were now flying in the maelstrom in my gray matter. What could they be doing? Drug deal? Pedophile rendezvous? Two lonely gamers who both thought they were meeting hotgirl16 for a good time? Whatever it was they were doing, it couldn’t possibly be legitimate. For a fleeting moment I could swear one was Huggy Bear from Starsky and Hutch, an image even my imagination can only bear for a second or two. But then the scene slowly shifted back into focus. Amazing. Just give ‘em back their cigarettes and our two mystery smokers are transformed back into regular, perhaps even cool, characters. But then the cowbell rang, calling me for a 4 o’clock teleconference and back into my pen.

After reflecting on my dream vision, I asked a trusted confidante if there was a word for the equivalent behavior of two non smokers. Came the brilliant reply: loitering. I laughed. But on another level I also chuckled to myself. The only entity guilty of loitering in this case was my mind! Time to call it home to the wet bar!!!

Believe The Captain when he says: sometimes the safest thing to do is smoke a cigarette.

Yours wondering what might have been had things gone differently on that fateful afternoon many years ago when a somewhat innocent 12 year old boy from the West Torrington ghetto took a hit on a Camel and turned green, flicking the lit fire stick into the tall dry grass, whose burning blades beckoned the Torrington FD as he hauled ass down the street,

The Captain


Which guy would you rather meet in a dark alley????

Life is like...cooking a frog??

Life is like…cooking a frog??

I was recently in a business meeting about creating ways to assist insurance actuaries in assessing the profitability of something called the agribusiness market. And I must say, it’s surprising what you learn at such meetings. I learned that you can buy insurance for pig birthing barns; I learned that pig birthing barns are real and not something my drunk friends made up to taunt me for working for an insurance company; I learned that Purgatory does indeed exist because I am in it; and finally, I learned a new metaphor that seemingly can be applied to nearly every facet of life: life is like cooking a frog. In the interest of fair-mindedness, I feel it necessary to mention that the attendee who shared this nifty analogy was a marketing person and not an actuary. I wouldn’t want to insult any actuaries, real or imagined, with accusations of creativity.

Apparently, it takes patience to cook a frog according to our marketing friend. You just can’t toss it into a pot of boiling water because it doesn’t fancy such a thing and jumps out. No, the proper method is to drop it gently into a pot of cool, refreshing water, and heat it slowly over a low flame, thus making the temperature change imperceptible to the unsuspecting amphibian. This lulls it into a false sense of security which must somehow scramble its sense perception because it voluntarily stays in the boiling water until it expires and becomes French culinary fare. The subtlety of the parable was initially wasted on me, however, as I responded with “why the f*&k don’t you just boil the sucker in a larger pot that it can’t jump out of?”

But with help from marketing guy, I got there eventually. He explained that taking over a nation state was just like cooking a frog. Responding to the blank stares, he said that you don’t come in guns a blazing. This makes the local frogs jump in fright and resist. Better to quietly send in spies to foment an insurrection from within over time. You destroy a state without its even knowing! Lesson learned: some things in life require time and patience, like revolutions and boiling frogs.

Amazingly, this is not the first folk fable I’ve heard involving a frog. It turns out that frogs, like the people who boil them, can teach us all a thing or two about patience and perseverance. If you’ve heard this story before, pretend you haven’t and lend me your ear. Two frogs are thrown into a large pot filled with cream. Both attempt to jump out but soon realize that the sides are too high (this is the kind of pot I’d boil a frog in, by the way. You don’t want to be known as the dumbass guy who let the frog get away.). One frog looks up the walls of the pot and despairs. Depressed and defeated, he dives into the cream and drowns. The other frog begins to swim around the pot methodically in circles with no apparent plan. As time goes by the cream begins to expand and thicken. Eventually, it is churned into butter. The frog then rests on the hard surface to recover his energy and uses it as a springboard to leap out of the pot and to freedom. Lesson learned: avoid getting your ass tossed into a giant vat of cream. If this is unavoidable, swim around and make butter. Your patience and effort will be rewarded.

As you can see, the cooking a frog analogy can be applied to any situation in life that requires patience. You might even say that boiling a frog is a virtuous act, though the frog might disagree with you. So the next time your significant other, or offspring, or neighbor is testing your patience, grab your net and head for the pond to catch a frog. Bring it home, give it a little pet, throw it in a pot of cold water and set it to simmer on the stove at the lowest setting. That way, when the source of your irritation can’t stand it any more and asks you, “what in god’s name are you doing?!” you are ready with your reply: “L
earning to live with you!“

Believe The Captain when says: if you ever find yourself stuck in a giant vat of skim milk, say your prayers.

Yours heading for the pond!

The Captain

Life Is Too Short

Life Is Too Short to Live without Poetry

As hard as it may be to believe, The Captain’s legitimates are polite, well behaved human beings and have consistently been recognized for their behavior on their school report cards: “A pleasure to have in class!” was the constant refrain. The only issue for the two older legits was homework – my son developed a severe allergy to it and my daughter just can’t seem to stop doing it. But Eldest Son of The Captain is now in college and Eldest Daughter of The Captain is on summer vacation and slowly getting re-acclimated to the outside world. Between the two, however, not a single call from the Principal’s office. Youngest Son of The Captain (YSOTC), a delightful ginger with a propensity for mischief to match his father’s, has generated two calls. The first was in 2nd grade, when the Principal wanted to discuss the definition of “appropriate” lunch room behavior. With a sincerity and gravity befitting the topic, our “pal” was concerned about reports of YSOTC telling off color jokes at the lunch table at great risk to the impressionable minds present, and none more so than the wet noodle of the lunch lady who registered the complaint on behalf of the innocent babes obliviously constructing food sculptures with their uneaten lunches. After I stopped laughi…er, coughing, I asked Mr. Pal for examples of off color jokes so that I could go straight home and congratu…uh, use them in a lecture I’d prepare especially for YSOTC to articulate the potential dangers of humor, the primary being that it makes people laugh. He said that he could not repeat the jokes because he can’t tell a jo…um, remember the exact wording. But he did refer to the offending words as “Irish jokes.” I thanked him for his valuable feedback and went straight home to have YSOTC reenact the lunch room interactions, with yours truly playing the part of the kid making dinosaur figures out of baloney, using real processed sandwich meat for verisimilitude. He could only recall telling one Irish joke, to no effect, as it flew over the tender heads of his lunch buddies like a stealth bomber. In the interest of clinical research, I will share the joke.

“Two Irish guys walk out of a bar…”

For that, I took time out of my busy day to visit the Principal at CBPS. Trust me on this one, the kid has a far more potent arsenal of jokes than this one; I’m sure he was just warming up.

But the boy took direction and learned to tell jokes where no adult could eavesdrop and made it all the way to 6th grade before I got my second call. This time the culprit was a poem he’d written as part of a class assignment. According to his teacher, it was dark and like nothing she’d ever seen from a 6th grader. She clearly knew nothing about the boy’s father. So once again I was called into the Principal’s office to meet with his teacher. This time they brought in the school counselor as well, concerned with the creative yet “disturbing” death imagery in the poem about a Boston Cream doughnut (this is not a typo). Read it yourself and draw your own conclusions.

DOUGHNUT

His father beat him when he was a child;

But in a kindly way,

A way that formed his circular shape.

He went to fry-oven college,

But was sadly murdered when he got out,

Stabbed by a friend of his father.

Prior to the funeral, he was stuffed with an embalming cream

That apparently came from Boston,

And fitted with rich brown clothes.

For the funeral, he was laid on a cold steel rack with others like him

And given away to be buried

6 inches down

In someone’s stomach.

A doughnut.

If you were offended by this poem, please let me know the precise nature of your wound to help me understand. For my part, I chuckled when I read it and thought: “I’m suddenly hungry for a Boston Cream doughnut.” Alas, I have little hope that I will understand the offense. The maker of the universe made me the way I am, defects and all, and I find irony and humor in all things. Apparently YSOTC has inherited this trait. He can no more change his personality than he can a woman’s mind. But I will leave you with some wise words from the venerable George Bernard Shaw.

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."

Believe The Captain when he says: The only steel rack I want to see is the one inside the doughnut shop!!

Yours squeezing the cream out of my doughnut into my coffee,

The Captain

Ps: The blog title was lifted from a (great) song by the inestimable Frank Turner, English country folk singer. Check him out here.