Face It, Technology Gets Me HOT!

*I have been traveling; so once again am doing a re-post from TEN years ago.  When I read this it stunned me how much difference a decade can make.  I now use both of these "new fangled" pains in the ass all day long, but this is how I felt about cell phones and Facebook in 2009.  It did take me another eight years after this post to finally join Facebook.


(September 2009)
I have had several cell phones.  I never answer them.  I do, however, find them fun to carry in my pants.  Always set to vibrate, it is clearly a thrill when someone does attempt to reach me via one of these babies.  I refer to this feature as "pants waiting".  Outside of this "pants waiting" thing I find absolutely nothing to be gained by toting one of these electronic slave bracelets around.  What the hell could be so important that it couldn't be dealt with when I return home?  Answer:  Absolutely nothing!

The biggest bitch I have regarding cell phones is their shape.  Most of them resemble candy bars or mini TVs and answering is like slamming a Snickers bar into your mush.  Fun, until you realize that instead of eating something made of chocolatey goodness, you are required to speak and interact with another human being, a major letdown every time.  Then there is the pesky delay that must be dealt with.  You know, that slight pause that you experience when having a conversation with some nitwit who insists on using the phone's speaker phone option.  It's understandable, but I hate it.  The call must be relayed on multiple cell towers and it's impossible for everything to sinc up when you toss speaker phone mode into the equation.  There is always a delay in the conversation that gets me into trouble.  Too many years of blabbing on the radio has made me sorely afraid of what broadcasters call "dead air".  Any pause in the conversation drives me crazy!  Even a second of silence I find intolerable and I begin to blather in order to drive off angry radio program directors.  If you have ever called my "chump line", (my cell phone number I only give to people I really don't want to speak with like bosses and bookies), and I accidentally answer the damn thing, the conversation will go something like this:

ME: "Hello, hello? (there is a slight pause)

CALLER: "Hey Ken" (slight pause)

ME: (scrambling to fill dead air) "Sixty-six degrees under fair skies in San Diego, just ahead of Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs."

CALLER: "Huh"?

ME:  "I like 'em and use them myself.  You will too."

CALLER:  "%#@*& you, you moron!!!  (click)

Cell phones, I just can't use them.

Then, there's Facebook.  In his new book, "Socialnomics--how social media transforms the way we live and do business", Erik Qualman tells us that today, if Facebook were a country, it would be the world's fourth largest right between the U.S. and Indonesia.  Also noteworthy is the fact that the fastest growing segment of Facebook users is the 55-65 year-old female demographic.  I find both of these facts absolutely amazing.  I also just don't get it!  What compels people to spend hours on-line "friending" folks they never cared enough about to stay in touch with in the first place??

Nearly every day I get an e-mail from someone I barely remember wanting to "friend" me or me to "friend" them.  I can never keep it straight.  Let me just say this:  Where the hell were you old high school and college girlfriends when I wanted "friend" your brains out??!!  I want answers, damn it!  I will not be boarding the Facebook train anytime soon.

Oops, there goes my cell phone.  LOVE that "pants waiting" feature.
This one feels like  L O N G D I S T A N C E.

Dr. Summer Sausage, Ph.D

My brother, Steve, was a really fat baby.  He looked like the love child of Winston Churchill and Sophie Tucker.  Maybe it was the cake.  He did love his angel food with chocolate icing.

Genes are mysterious things because, somewhere around age four or five, Steve got skinny and stayed that way.  On the other hand, I was a skinny child until around age nine.  After noticing that my cousin, Jim, got constant praise from adults for cleaning his plate I decided to do the same.  Soon I found that food was actually GOOD and began packing it away like I was going to "the chair."  Basking in the compliments I received from the BIG people earned me proud membership in the Big Eaters Club, and all was right with the world for a while.

My training regime from age nine to fourteen was comprised of eating, goofing off,  and reading comic books.  Soon I was, as mom would put it, "big-boned." (Shouldn't that be "big intestined?") My old man didn't believe in euphemisms.  He called me FAT.  " Just look at that gut on you!"  "How old are you fatso?  You look fifty!" were often offered as observations.  I just blew it off and went for another sandwich.  Sorry, Dad.

Then, the event that turned me around happened at school on picture day in the Autumn of my eighth-grade year.  Picture day, that annual ritual where a local photographer, who submitted the lowest bid to your school, comes to your lock-up to snap some really horrible shots of your visage to sell to your mom.  You know, the ones where your hair is all messed up, your face is riven with acne, and, oh yeah, YOU BLINKED.  THAT picture day.

At our school, the local picture yokel would try to make you smile by teasing you with a nickname or two.  It usually didn't work, but it was his "act."  When my turn before the camera came he got me to smile by referring to me as "Mr. Summer Sausage", which I found amusing.  (I don't know, it just sounded funny.)  It wasn't until I had returned to class that I realized the dude had basically called me FAT.  That son of a bitch!

I worried about being "Mr. Summer Sausage" for days.  At first, I sought solace in food but soon came to think that maybe playing a little more ball and eating a lot less food might do wonders for my corpulent physique.  It did.  A year later I was looking better, you know, NORMAL.  Best of all, the girls in my class were now speaking to me.  AMAZING!  I've kept the weight off ever since.

Last Monday I picked up the paper to discover that I have wasted my life in denial.  San Diego State University, SDSU, now offers a major in FAT STUDIES.  According to the university, fat studies is an emerging academic field that explores the social and political consequences of being overweight.  The fact that 67 percent of American adults are overweight or obese has prompted the university to take up their cause.  Here is an excerpt from "The Fat Studies Reader": "Overweight is inherently anti-fat.  It implies an extreme goal:  Instead of a bell curve distribution of human weights, it calls for a lone, towering, unlikely bar graph with everyone occupying the same (thin) weights."  Huh????

San Diego State professor Esther Rothblum, a major porker, who is considered a leading scholar in blubber studies says "It's a field that believes all people should be treated with respect, regardless of body size."  Does this remind anybody else of the old "My mother, drunk or sober" argument we heard so often during the war in Vietnam?  The good professor notes that she may be considered fat but that she is healthy.  She went on to say that she has been playing racquetball for 30 years and recently placed third in her division at the Gay Games.  She is 5 feet 4 and weighs 230 pounds.  I'll leave to you the speculation as to where she may have finished if she had trimmed down to a mere 180 pounds.  Now that I think about it, WHO CARES??  I'M GOING BACK TO COLLEGE!!
It's the new FAT STUDIES major for me.  Pass the pie and the Ph.D.!  Mr. Summer Sausage is HUNGRY!

(This post was originally offered on September 18, 2009.  Mr, Summer Sausage wonders if San Diego State is still offering a Fat Studies major?  How many circus fat ladies can any country need?)

Chefs Gone Gonzo!

I'm sorry, it SUCKS!  Having watched the stock of Beyond Meat soar following its initial public stock offering, I decided to see what all the excitement from the "let's not eat cows anymore" crowd was all about.  Uh....frankly, I am dumbfounded.  The stuff tastes more like spiced up Alpo than a hamburger.  The fact that I know exactly what spiced Alpo tastes like is a story from my distant past that involves being single, hungry, and under the affluence of inkohol.  Trust me, dogs would drop kick this yellow pea-based insult to animal and human taste buds quicker than Trump put Stormy Daniels through the uprights.  It's simply inedible.

What's up with all this plant-based meat substitution anyway?  It's a given that cows, pigs, and chickens are methane machines who let fly noxious ass grenades pretty much round the clock.  Who cares??!!  They are tasty ever so delicious critters loaded with the protein we more cunning mammals need to keep our engines purring.

The latest insult to our intelligence and good old non-vegan, non-commie American cuisine involves one of God's most perfect gifts, the watermelon.  Yep, some clown named Rocco DiSpirito who runs the Standard Grill in New York City has created something called watermelon ham.  No, really.  This $39 disaster involves "curing" the fruit in a salt solution, stuffing it back into the hollowed-out rind  and  then smoking it until it takes on a--I'm not kidding here--a "meaty jiggle."  It sounds hideous.    Mr. DiSpirito isn't the only restaurateur messing with this perfect red fruit.    There is a hotel in Miami Beach now offering a watermelon sandwich and another establishment brags of watermelon pizza and cake.  Each of these is an abomination for a couple of reasons.  First of all, there is NO protein in watermelon.  NONE!  It is a delicious fruit consisting of sugar, water and a few vitamins.  Leave it alone!  Real Americans love watermelon all by its yummy lonesome.  It is low in calories and the seeds contained in each green surprise package provide cardio and coordination benefits via your vigorous and enthusiastic expectoration.  Name anything more American than a good old fashioned watermelon seed spitting contest at your local county fair.  I'm fairly certain that there is something about that in the constitution.

My point?  Watermelon is a delicious fruit, but it's no meat substitute. Any chef who tells you differently has ground chuck for brains.
Which reminds me, please pass the mustard and relish.  The burgers are almost ready.  Hold the melon, for dessert!

Random Thoughts...

Though I've never had to use it, I keep a shotgun under my bed.  I'm no fan of guns and have never been a hunter, but you never know when a larcenous raccoon might invade a North Idaho bedroom. Looking back fifty years I can still recall most of the weapons I was required to qualify on in the Army.  They even gave me a marksmanship medal for the M-16 which, knowing the Army, was undoubtedly a paperwork mistake or just dumb luck.

There are lots of guys, and gals, who know their way around weapons and, unlike me, many enjoy target practice and hunting.  It's the crazies who are the problem.  Shooting up malls, bars and other places law-abiding folks gather these vermin are behind the seemingly never-ending hideous acts of horror and death that have now become commonplace in America.  Politicians and TV blowhards prattle on about gun control and background checks yet no magic wand can un-invent guns and no lunatic with murder and mayhem on his mind is going to worry about breaking the law to snag a weapon.  If a criminal wants a gun there will always be someone there to provide one for a price.

In our national discussion of this problem, I'm struck by what I feel plays no small part in this tragic situation.  In 1960 there were approximately 180,000,000 citizens in the United States, today there are roughly 330,000,000 souls within our borders.  Let's say--and I think this is a low ball estimate--that one out of one-hundred of us has serious mental derangement issues and is capable of killing other human beings.  Doesn't it stand to reason that we have more murder and mayhem?  Do the math.  Once we institutionalized the criminally insane.  Now, we have state hospitals sitting empty and our mentally impaired off their meds and living on the streets.

Obviously, I bring no expertise to this growing problem, but we sure as hell can't un-invent guns nor can we keep them out of the hands of those wishing to harm others.  Can't we please begin to consider that perhaps getting the ever-growing numbers of the mentally unbalanced off the streets and back into the hospitals where they can be supervised and compelled to take prescribed medications? It may be a good place to start.

Huh??

This is a re-post from August of 2014.  I remain stubborn.


For at least the last twenty years of her life my mother was hard of hearing.  To suggest that it might be time to invest in a hearing aid was to tread on very dangerous ground.  She would adamantly refuse to even consider that her hearing wasn't 100% and was insulted her children would promote her use of a device that was "strictly for OLD people."  Always true to herself and her stubborn German temperament, she exited the planet at age 89 sans one of "those contraptions."

In our thirties my wife and I began to notice how loud the TV was at Mom and Dad's house.  Our kids also grew frustrated at having to repeat themselves for Grandma and Grandpa.  Complaints of "actors who mumble" and the lack of proper enunciation by younger Coppers in ordinary conversation was a constant battle.  When asked to repeat something--and doing so with a loud and distinct delivery--garnered a retort of, "there's no need to shout."  It was the quintessential no win situation.  Even my argument comparing hearing aids and eye glasses was unwelcome.  Stony silence and a withering glare was the reward for: "You wear glasses to help you see.  Why not employ a device that helps you hear?"

Like so many things in life, lately Linda and I find ourselves in deja vu mode.  We seem to be saying "What?" and "Huh?"just as our parents did.  She accuses me of mumbling under my breath which, to be fair, is a skill honed in snarky adolescence that  still serves me well when dealing with authority figures.  "Good morning boss!"... (you fat putz).  However, these days she is calling me on it even when I'm on my best behavior.  To be fair, many times she too sounds like she is mumbling.  I'm fairly certain I heard "my mother was right" directed my way just last week.  A couple of months ago, I almost missed a flight because I thought she told me the plane was leaving at 6:50 AM instead of the actual departure time of 6:15.  (Maybe if I'd looked at the ticket?)

Several years back parties became a challenge.  Lip reading is a necessity if I'm to catch much of what anyone has to say in a crowded room.  Nodding my head and imagining what the person talking to me looks like naked goes a long way toward making a social event enjoyable.  Also, about a year ago we noticed that hitting the Closed Caption button on the TV remote makes many of the actors less mumbly. It's a Godsend when viewing all those limey epics on PBS.  Neither of us would have a clue about Masterpiece Classic without the wonderful CC option.

Perhaps it's time to make an appointment to see a doctor about one of those smaller than ever hearing aids.  Or, maybe you could just pipe down and toss me the remote so that I can turn the volume up to mach 10.  I'll be hitting the CC button too.  The damn actors are mumbling again and hearing aids are for OLD PEOPLE!

(Five years later I'm still a holdout.)