Morning Ablutions (Cigar Smoke 1-24-08)

I bet you are pretty much like me. You have no idea what an ablution is. You think it has something to do with guilt or religion. (No, that’s absolution.) Or you think it’s some kind of growth you get rid of by applying a good ablution cream. Nope.

I first heard the term when I was in college. I was reading Melville or some English dude who referred to someone “performing their morning ablutions.” But instead of looking it up, I decided to go on with the rest of my life and just pretend that I knew what it meant. Kind of like sex.

But one day while I was performing what I thought was a sex act, my helpful partner asked me if I had performed my morning ablutions. I thought it involved bending, so I dumped her. And picked up a dictionary.

I discovered that the word “ablutions” simply means acts of washing yourself. How disappointing. But, once I got past the ordinariness of what ablutions meant, I stopped to consider just how important ablutions are to all of us.

In the old days people would usually just take a bowl of water and start abluting, I guess; just dipped their hands in the bowl and splashed water on their faces. Makes sense. Who wants to be around someone who hasn’t abluted? I realize now that’s what my potential sex partner was trying to tell me: no ablution, no touchy. I was just a splash away from love.

But back then, I think, it was simpler than it is today. Today, performing your morning ablutions is, shall we say, challenging. Maybe “challenging” isn’t exactly the right word. Maybe it’s just more time-consuming. Yeah, that’s it. There is just way more abluting to do nowadays.

In the old days you just washed in the bowl and went to the bathroom and that was it. Today it is more complicated. Let me give you a more modern recap of performing ablutions.

Here’s what I did this morning to get ready for my day: I went into the bathroom and turned on the radio and then I turned on the hot water. Then I waited for the water to heat up. While I was waiting for the water to heat up, I multitasked and brushed my teeth.

When the water was hot, I splashed it on my face. Then I put on my shaving cream. Then I washed the shaving cream off my hands. Then I shaved. Then I looked at myself in the mirror. And winked.

Then I went to the bathroom. I’m not going into too much ablutive detail there. After that I sprayed some Fresh Linen air deodorizer to mask the nonfresh-linen results of my bathroom-going. It kind of smelled like a pile of warm clothes kissing an angel.

Then I got into the shower. I got the soap and washed my left arm with my right hand. Then I switched the soap to my left hand and washed my right arm. Then I washed a few other things I could reach. My feet weren’t one of them. Haven’t washed those guys since the Rams were in LA.

Then, of course, any good abluter has to shampoo his hair. So I had to make the decision to use either my red Strawberry Fields or my green Apple Festival shampoo. I always like to have options when I shampoo. I usually rotate four bottles of shampoo, adding a Peach Mist and an Orange Cascades scent in there for health reasons. Some days I just don’t feel like a strawberry. You know what I mean? You do? Call me, maybe we can ablute together.

Of course, when you get out of the shower you have to dry yourself. Sheesh. Drying has to be considered ablusive, doesn’t it? I hate drying myself. The legs. The arms. The chest. The tummy. Too many body parts. Why hasn’t some guy invented the body blow dryer, dammit! Just step in it and hit the button. Hell, I bought a Kindle, I’m dumb enough to buy a body blower.

Then you obviously have to dry your hair. And when you’re finished with your hair, you have to spritz it, and brush it, and admire it, and then you have to put on underarm deodorant, and then put on some Chaps cologne so you can smell like … a chap, I guess. Damn, it’s ablusive, baby!

And then, because I just may be a little older than some of you stud-muffin abluters out there, I have to perform another somewhat sensitive ablution. Yeah, the doc said I probably needed a little something to perk up my interest in sex. So, although I hate to reveal myself in public, but because I am a truth-seeker, and a truth-teller, I have to inform you (under the Freedom of Too Much Information Act) that I rub this testosterone goop into my arms and chest.

I’m not exactly sure how this relates to ablusiveness, but hell, after rubbing in this gel, now even my hair has hair. My teeth are dating. And I’ve grown six little penises on each of my upper arms. It’s not really a problem, except that when they’re aroused, I can’t get my T-shirt on.

Yeah, this performing ablutions thing is pretty crazy. You know how you always hear about that poor, depressed guy who just can’t quite get it together? And they always say that the first thing to go is the person’s desire to take care of himself? They just won’t wash up or do all that stuff. It’s just too damn much trouble.

Well, I see that ablutions-rejecting rebel in a whole new light now — an admiring light. I say, “Nonablutionists, unite!” I say, “Ablution this!” I say, “Anyone with 12 penises on their arms is clean enough!”

Can You See Me Now? (Cigar Smoke 1-17-08)

Well, gals and gal-ettes (I can’t get more nonsexist pig than that!), how are you all doing in this New Year? I’m doing pretty well, and thanks for asking. I’m sitting here at my computer listening to Bob Dylan on iTunes. Something about mountains with thunder and mystic gardens and crystal falcons. I had ham-hock-and-split-pea soup last night for dinner. Life is good.

Except … (You knew there would be an “except,” didn’t you?) I have discovered that at my semi-advanced age I am hardly ever noticed by anyone under the age of 40. I know this is kind of an old saw and that old guys have always said this, but now that I am walking the walk, I am here to tell you that it’s the damn truth: I am invisible!

Nobody sees me. It’s incredible. I was in the mall the other day returning all the thoughtful gifts my family gave me, and I was bustling along being a good citizen shopper while teenagers walked right at me like they were playing chicken. If I hadn’t moved at the last second, they would have run right into my lanky butt.

At first, I just thought they were being their usual rude-ass selves, but when it kept happening, I had to admit that they didn’t really see me. I think if we had actually run into each other they would have thought they hit a post. OK, a pudgy post that smelled like an ashtray, but a post nonetheless.

It doesn’t bother me that the guys don’t look at me. Hey, they’re guys. They only look at girls and carburetors. But it does bother me that the girls and young women don’t see me. Oh, I’m not completely out of touch with reality; I don’t expect a real look with real eye contact with a possibility, albeit remote, of a possible hookup of even a tame, nonthreatening, platonic kind. (Make a movie out of that, Spielberg.) I just want them to acknowledge in some way that I am really there. Is that too much to ask?

They could even be hostile. That would be fine with me, “Pardon me, sir, but could you get the damn hell out of my way.” God, I would love to hear that. “Sure, Miss, excuse me for even being here on the same sidewalk. I apologize. Hope you find that PCC stud-hunk who’s flunking out of chemistry you’re looking for. Good luck, and thanks for being pissy. I appreciate it.” I am not kidding. I would appreciate that. Just acknowledge me. That’s all I want.

I know this sounds kind of scary, creepy-uncle scary, and I wouldn’t tell this to anybody except you guys, but I would even grope some young thing if I thought she would react. I would. I know I would. I would go up to some woman who was wearing shoes that looked like they would take names and I would ease up behind her and reach my hands around her and — call the cops now — I would cup her young throbbing breasts that were trying to break free from their clothing confinement.

But I don’t do this. Why? Am I afraid of being arrested? No. Am I a nice guy who shouldn’t even have these thoughts? No. I don’t do it because I know she would say to her girlfriend standing there, “Damn, this bra is tight, Tiffany. It’s just pulling into me.” That’s why I don’t do it. Shoot me now.

Now, after saying all this, and exposing my gropieness, I actually did have a pretty neat experience the other day. A beautiful woman in her early 30s actually saw me the other day. Yes, an actual geezer-I-can-see-you-now sighting. She acknowledged me even. I couldn’t believe it.

I was in an office building last week, pretending I still had a job and a reason to live, and I got into an elevator. There was no one else in there. Just me and the buttons. Then as the doors were closing, a nice-looking actual woman got into the elevator with me. I moved to the back and she punched in her floor, and then she turned and said, “Hi, how’s it going?”

I turned and looked behind me, and when I saw the elevator wall, I remembered I was alone. I asked, “Are you talking to me?” And then she did something I never thought I’d ever see again. (No, not that.) She smiled. Oh, God, she smiled — a real smile from a real woman who didn’t know me. Man, it was beautiful. Much better than a grope.

Yes, she smiled and said, “ Yes, I’m talking to you. Who did you think I was talking to?” I said, “I thought there was somebody behind me.” She laughed. Yes, a real laugh from a real woman. And then she did a little woman hair-flick maneuver. Just subtly tossed her hair back a little. Such a small thing. But God, it was great.

So, because I had read a book on body language 20 years ago, I knew her hair flick was just her way of telling me she wanted me, and wanted to dump her lout husband, and wanted to run away with me to Room 432 at the Ritz-Carlton and go to the satin-sheet city of love. I was pretty sure that’s what she meant.

So I sidled up to her — yes, sidled, just a subtle George Clooney sidle — and I raised my eyebrows just a little, and I said, “Hi. How you doing? right back at you.” I tried to sound mysteriously and darkly sexy like a rebel on Vicodin.

Just then the elevator door opened, and she got out on her floor, and she looked back at me, and our eyes met, and I’ll never forget the words she said. I can still hear them like it was just yesterday: “Call security!”

Can You Hear Me Now? (Cigar Smoke 1-10-08)

Well, I hope you had a nice Christmas and a happy and healthy and sane New Years Eve, and boy, those were some bowl games, huh? Yes, I am the Chamber of Commerce.

I had a great Christmas. Only 90 percent of my gift recipients asked me why I didn’t get them what they had put on their Amazon wish lists. And so far, the new year has pretty much started out like I thought it would. I was driving over to Victory Park the other day and traffic was stopped on Altadena Drive because some little pipsqueak dog was in the middle of the street. People were actually trying to help a dog.

Maybe humanity was turning a corner. Then I went into the park and a teenage boy started yelling at me. I was just walking along with my own non-pipsqueak dog, and this kid says something, which apparently was not really what he said. So I say, “Sure, it’s OK to go over there.” He screams back at me, “I know it’s OK to go over there!” I remarked that maybe I hadn’t understood what he had said. He remarked something I didn’t like even though I couldn’t understand it. Then, just when I was returning to hating humanity, this other teenage guy comes along and says, “Hi there. How are you?” Just cheerful and friendly. I thought it was John Boy Walton. Hey, Happy New Year.

So I am now trying to leave the holidays behind. And, in that frame of mind, something that happened a couple of years ago just popped into my head. I was over in Las Vegas with a buddy of mine, Vic Vieira. We were there to see what they call Frozen Fury. This is an annual pre-season hockey game between the LA Kings and the Colorado Avalanche. This is pretty much the highlight of our cultural year.

So we get ensconced in our MGM Grand hotel room, and I tell Vic what ensconced means, and then we go out and have this great steak dinner at some semi-high-end Mexican/Brazilian kind of restaurant that didn’t know what a taco was — but damn they had good steaks. Smothered them in chipotle sauce or something. We sopped up that sauce with our tortillas and waddled out of the place. Life was good.

Then we said to each other, “Other than this stupid hockey game, why the hell are we here?” One of us mentioned the gambling and the drinking and the hot, naked women but the other one quickly mentioned that we always lose at blackjack, drink till we throw up at the bouncer’s feet, and that the last hot, naked woman who had shown any hint of being interested in us was 46 years ago.

So we decided to go check out a timeshare that Vic’s son had wisely purchased for 17 times its real value. We were thinking that maybe the next time we came to Vegas that maybe we could stay there. We were pretty sure that’s where all the hot, naked women and loose slots were. Or was it where the loose women and the hot, naked slots were?

The next morning we went to some coffeehouse dive where we were sure there were hot, naked loose flapjacks and had two lumberjack breakfasts compacted into our bowels. Four pancakes, four eggs, four sausages, four bacon strips, wrapped in four pieces of French toast. In gravy. Naked gravy.

So, after getting our daily nutrition requirements fulfilled, we headed out to find the timeshare. Easier said than done. Vic had some vague-ass idea of where the timeshare resort was, and we drove all over the outskirts of Vegas looking for that sumbitch. I inquired if he might have an address for it. He said he thought it had a four and a six in it. I said, “No Vic, you’re thinking of your IQ.”

Well, it seems that finding this timeshare and finding naked, hot women had an over/under number of 73 years. Things were not looking good, so we called Vic’s son, Jim. At least Jim gave us a phone number for the resort.

So Vic gets on the phone and actually gets in touch with the timeshare people to give us directions. Now you would think that we would be able to use these directions and actually go find the place, wouldn’t you? You would be wrong.

The problem is I forgot to tell you a couple of particularly relevant points that you need to know to know both Vic and me a little better. Yes, we are basically pretty much perfect people. Except that we each have a flaw. Vic is hard of hearing. He is not deafer than a post. But he doesn’t hear as well as, say, a tree stump. And I — I hate to say it — also have a little flaw. I have a little stuttering problem. (Kind of like Dean Martin had a little drinking problem. Kind of like Britney Spears has a little maturity problem.) But I don’t stutter all the time. Only when I talk.

So Vic is on the phone with the timeshare lady trying to get directions and I’m standing next to him listening to him get more and more frustrated. With all the highway noise, and me helpfully stuttering in his ear, he cannot hear her. I know he’s frustrated when his ears turn red and spittle runs down his jowls and he beats his forehead into the phone booth wall embedding hair follicles in the wood. He’s yelling into the phone, his spittle covering the dry spittle of former phone users. He wants to hand me the phone. But he doesn’t.

Finally, he can’t stand it any longer. He is exasperated, completely and fully exasperated. He can’t hear the woman give him the directions. He thinks I am useless. Finally, he loudly proclaims into the phone, “Well, who do you want to talk to, lady? The one who can’t hear or the one who can’t talk?”

Yes, we finally found the place. And we found the naked women. And we won a lot of money gambling. And we bought a boat. Named it “Pinocchio.”

What Could Have Been ( Cigar Smoke 12-27-07)

OK, this is a hectic time of year. I’ll give you that. But, Regalers and Regalettes, I see your hectic and raise you two more hectics, and a damn frenzy.

I am writing this column, the one you are reading right now, on Dec. 21. You are reading it after Christmas. You, like many of my readers, are probably still alive. Me? It’s iffy.

So I sit down to write. I look at the computer. Actually, I look at a computer monitor that is not on. We’ve had a power outage, which I quickly determine is the reason why my computer power is out. I swear in three languages: English, Greek and Navy Sailor. At first, the power does not respond to these requests. So I am considering getting 10 pencils and a legal pad and going 1952 on the column. But then, doggone it, the computer screen leaps to life. Maybe there is a god.

After dodging that hectic-producing bullet, I settle in to write again. I smell something that I know the smell of. It starts with “P” and ends with “P” and has two “Os” in the middle. Yes, Virginia, it is poop. Dog poop. Hadley the Airedale dog poop.
I follow my nose into the bedroom and indeed there are some deposits of love on the rug. Then Marge, following her ears, hears me yelling in Sailor again and she comes into the bedroom. I tell her it was Hadley, not me. She groans and goes to get the dog poop cleaning supplies that we carry with us at all times. And she comes back with a bag and some paper towels and a bottle of odor-killing spray/cleaner stuff and we start to clean up. Then she starts to scoop the oopay up with a spatchula. Yes, a spatchula! She says she will wash it. I say I will be eating my fried eggs at Denny’s.

Marge leaves to shop. I put Hadley outside to, if he had a dog conscience, commit suicide. And again I sit down to write. I’m thinking of you. Always you. Never myself. You, the reader, are king. I, your humble writer, am peasant serf slave to your kingness.

So I type a couple of sentences. Really good sentences. Sentences some other writer would write. And then the doorbell rings. My neighbor says Merry Christmas and then he says did I know that one of his trees fell into my yard last night in the windstorm and broke my fence and my birdbath feeder and hit the side of our house and maybe killed my pets. Thanks for sharing, St. Nick.

I sit back down to write. I am going to spit hectic out and stomp on its little lima bean green ass. Yes, hectic is lima bean green. Sumbitch. And just then the phone rings. I do something I never do. I pick it up. It’s the Discover Card fraud unit checking to see if I really am using my credit card to buy Sharper Image crap. I tell them, “No, I’m not that dumb, hah hah. You think I’m that dumb. I haven’t used the card. At Sharper Image. Hah hah. Not me.” But because I am a law-abiding citizen, and part George Washington, I cannot tell a lie, so I say to the fraud guy, “Uh, I think it was my wife. She falls for that Sharper Image junk all the time.”

I sit back down at the computer. My stomach is grinding pretty good. Old hectic may be getting in his licks. In fact, I have created some intestinal pebbles and they have moved out of my stomach down through the bowels and out my urethra and into my shorts and slipped down my pants leg and have fallen on the floor. They are small, and round, and black, and shiny. I decide to sell them on E-Bay as marble antiques. Aggies.

Just then I remember I have some Christmas errands I have to do — right now. So I drive down to South Lake and actually find a parking spot on Lake Ave. (The last time this has happened was before World War II.) I get out of my car and go in and pick up a gift that I had ordered. And then I stop in to browse at William Sonoma and I just happen to stumble onto the exact gift I have been looking for and I buy it. However, I have to wait an hour for them to wrap it. So I rearrange the remaining incubating intestinal pebbles in my intestines and I shop for a few other items. Hectic is laughing openly at me.

In an hour I go out to the car. I have a parking ticket on the windshield. Hectic is falling on his butt, rolling around. He’s slapping his big, hectic thighs. I had to avert my eyes.

I drive home. I sit down at the you-know-what. The monitor has a note saying I have an email. I look at the email. It’s from Amazon. “We are sorry to inform you that, because of unusually high demand and our lack of competence, the really hard-to-find present you bought from us, and the one we promised you would be there by Christmas, is currently out of stock, and our new inventory of this valued item will not arrive until Feb. 12, if’en.” Mr. Hectic was pee-laughing.

Then Marge got back from shopping and said, “How’s your column coming, Honey? Oh, did you remember you have to get the Honey Baked Ham today?” Mr. Hectic looked at me. He tried to hold back a smile. He let out a little fart chortle. “Go get the damn ham. Nobody gives a shit about your column anyway.”

So I’m sorry. I apologize. I never got the chance to write this column. I’m pretty sure it would have been my best one. Wanna a slice of ham?

Get Your Bells Jingled (Cigar Smoke 12-20-07)

Well, it’s that time of year again. I was walking in the Santa Anita Mall the other day and I smiled my holiday smile of charming cheer and goodwill and said to someone I thought was a nice lady, “Merry Christmas.” She did not answer me. What she did was cover her kid’s ears.

So I said, “Uh, Happy Holidays?” Nothing. So I said, “Sure hope you have some traditional tidings. I hear those are pretty nice.” Still nothing. So I pulled the kid’s hands off his ears and I said, “Your mommy is really your daddy.”

No, none of that actually happened. It was all in my psychotic paranoid fantasy world.

What really happened is some guy said, “Hi, how you doing?” and I said, “So’s your old man, buddy!”

After that friendly exchange, I walked over to the store that I associate with Christmas: Sharper Image. Every December I say to myself, “Jim, you wish-monger, where do you think you can find really incredibly cheap crap that has no recognizable use and is way, way overpriced?” and then I go to Sharper Image.

And sometimes when I go to Sharper Image and can’t find anything really laughably dumb and expensive, I amble up the way to Brookstone. I’ve never been disappointed there. Like, this year, some lucky person on my Christmas list will be receiving his own personal “Remote Control Barbecue Grill Temperature Gauge.” You probably think I’m making this up as an attempt at humor. Well, if you read my column regularly, (Then congratulations, you’re the one!) you know I don’t believe in humor.
I swear on a stack of Christmas coupons that this is a real item. It is dumb. It is useless. It is overpriced. It is real, dammit. I guess there is a real need for this item. How many times have you been barbecuing and you go into the house and sit down to watch a football game and say, “Man, I sure wish I had a remote control temperature gauge so I wouldn’t have to stand up and go all the way back out to the patio which is 18 feet away to check on how hot my meat is.”

But, before I buy it, I decide to go back to Sharper Image and do some comparison-shopping. I say to the Sharper Image clerk, “You got anything more stupid than this here remote control bullshit?”

He looks at me, pauses, rubs his chin, and says, “We sure do. Come over here. We just got these in. Don’t forget your wallet, sir.” And he shows me this “Projection Video iPod Attachment Console Double Amp Speaker Alarm Clock.” He tells me it will project the time on the ceiling in two-foot high letters. I am not overwhelmed. I am just whelmed. So, he adds, “It lets you hook up your iPod directly to the console base, and then you can wake up to Mötley Crüe yelling in the morning and see giant letters on your ceiling spelling out 6:30.” And he said, “It’s only $125.” I said, “I already did that back in the ‘60s for free, without a clock, and my giant letters had hair on them and were on fire.”

Well, before the guy could show me the “Elvis Gorilla Robotic Keyboard” for only $299, I thought I should eat lunch. So I go over to one of my favorite places, Johnny Rockets. I love the simplicity of that place: just a short menu, great hamburgers, good prices, the checkerboard floors and tables and shorts. And onion rings you can squeeze the oil out of and use for your car. I love that place.

So I order my Original Hamburger with everything on it and some fries and my Diet Coke (I don’t know who that Diet Coke fools anymore). And I’m feeling kind of Christmassed out. I’m just sitting there waiting for both my food and for the other shopping foot to drop, and this young guy brings me my burger and then he puts down the fries and bless his big ol’ pea-picking heart, he takes a paper plate and he takes a squeeze-bottle of ketchup and he squeeze-draws a little happy-face Santa with the ketchup on my plate. It was very moving. Really. I actually waited until I had eaten more than half of my hamburger before I destroyed his artwork with my first French fry.

Well, since I was feeling so good — yes, maybe even jolly — with my new happy face mood, I decided I would not spoil it by doing any more shopping. So I went out into the parking lot to cuss out some fellow sorry excuses-for-parkers. By the way, to keep in the holiday spirit, I did cuss them out to the tune of “Jingle Bells.”

Then I went home. And I told Marge about my happy face Santa ketchup moment, and she lovingly said, “Hmm? I didn’t think you were gay.” And then I told her about the Brookstone and Sharper Image episodes, and I couldn’t believe what she said next. My sometimes-loving wife was about to Charlie Brown my Christmas butt.

She said, “I hope you didn’t buy that Remote Control Thermometer thing.”

I said, “Yes, I bought it. I humiliated myself. I have it. Right here!”

And she said, “Well, Honey Pumpkin Poo Poo, I didn’t think you would really get it, so I bought one, too.”

I could not believe it. She had pulled a Lucy on me. Just when I was kicking that barbecued football remote, she pulled it back. She told me to go buy it. I bought it. Then she buys it herself. And I’m left holding the thermometer. Charlie and I are going to go get loaded.

Well, Merry Christmas everybody! I would just like to leave you with my new favorite Christmas hymn. I can hear it now. The soft female chorus voices. The haunting organ music in the background. “Give a, give a, give a, give a, give a Garmin. Garmin dot com. Garmin dot com.”

A Room With a Different View (Cigar Smoke 12-13-07)

As you probably would guess by my being just to the right of Newt Gingrich politically, I am generally opposed to socialized medicine in the United States. Basically, that’s because I am opposed to socialism period. It’s been proven to fail everywhere it’s been tried, and I just don’t like the idea of people who don’t work getting the benefits of people who do.

But this isn’t a column on socialism, per se. This is a column about one semi-creaky old turkey’s actual real-life experience with socialized medicine. And you might just be surprised at my conclusions.

In a recent column I told you about my being taken off a cruise ship in New Zealand with some heart problems. (I had the heart problems. New Zealand’s heart is fine.) And, although I know you want to hear even more about my medical condition, I am not going to go there. Children may be reading this column.

What I am going to tell you about is my treatment in a hospital in Christchurch, New Zealand. And obviously, New Zealand is a socialized medicine country. Nobody pays for medical care over there. It is free to everyone. You just go in, get your appendix snipped out, and you leave. No invoice. No itemization. No wallet-whining. No nothing.

So I get hauled into the hospital and they drop me off at the emergency place. The care was great. A doctor and nurses were right there. They were terrific. Very attentive and friendly and fast, and more importantly, seemed to be very competent and professional. And there was no paperwork for insurance or any of that. Couldn’t have been better.

Then, because I had been on the cruise ship, they took me to their anti-contagion unit. I am not kidding. If you come from a foreign country, they stick you here first. Not that it was a bad place. Au contraire (that’s French for something commie), it was a great room. And it was a private room. No other socialist sucking people to bother me. Even had a nice view. I had no complaints. I wanted to complain. I enjoy complaining. But I couldn’t. So I didn’t.

I stayed in this private room for five days. I guess I had a particularly scary brand of cooties. I didn’t feel contagious. I don’t think I looked contagious. And, as far as I know, they never specifically looked for evidence of my contagion. But it did take them five days to not find anything. But hey, I had a private room, so me and my heart weren’t in any hurry to move.

And because I am a journalist, I want to report to you that the rooms in this socialistic country were pretty good. They weren’t all high-teched out with modern equipment, and there were no TVs. But they were very homey. Homey is the right word, I think. I thought I was back in the 1950s. The room just had a nice warm feeling about it. Very comfortable, country pictures on the walls, other pictures drawn with crayons by kids. They had none of that overly clean and antiseptic look that we have over here.

And the nurses were just fabulous. They were friendly and they joked with me about my hairy chest (oh, the fun we had). They thought I was trying to smuggle in chimpanzees under the covers. They were kidders (the nurses, not the damn chimps). And one of the nurses helped me get extra food to maintain my lanky body requirements. OK, it was just some kind of pissy yogurt or a box of corn flakes, but I appreciated the collusion. One time I got two desserts and tried to jump out of bed to hug my nurse and I pulled all my heart wires out. She said, “Oh, just lie down. I’ll put the wires back in the chimpanzee.” And we laughed. Oh, how we laughed.

And while I was there for the five days I got all the modern tests — I had an MRI and EKGs and this procedure where they put this mini camera up a vein in your thigh and it takes little photos of your heart and puts them on You Tube or something, and all the other tests that heart guys get. The doctor came by twice a day. I thought I had great care. What can I say? I wanted to not like the socialistic system of medical care, but I liked it. I’m not saying I’m voting for Hillary, but the system worked pretty well, I have to admit.

Then after five days, they determined I was contagion-free, so they shipped me off to the riff raff room. I was now in the kind of room that the regular Kiwi people had. It was an OK room, but it had eight guys in there. All heart patients. And I asked them all how they liked their medical system, and they basically said it was pretty good. Except that they had to wait for long periods of time to have operations. Months. And then they would have to come into the hospital early and stay, maybe three weeks, before the actual operation. If they left, they would lose their place. That didn’t sound good to this old non-commie cowboy.

And, of course, New Zealand only has four million people. That’s like the population of the city of Los Angeles. What’s our population now in the US? More than 300 million? So, maybe their system is a little more workable, eh? (I thought I’d add a little Canadian socialized medical commentary.)

And finally, although the care was great for me, it was not free for me. Because I was a foreigner, and not a Kiwi, I had to pay the full, excuse the expression, boat. Yes, they would not pay for any alien medical care — legal or illegal.

My conclusion: I’m just grateful they didn’t find any cooties. I hear the wait for cooties removal is three months.

On the Horns of a Double-Fandango Dilemma (Cigar Smoke 12-6-07)

I was in my doctor’s office the other day reading the April 1972 issue of Popular Mechanics in which they predicted we would all be flying around in our own little personal flying machines by the year 2000. Very interesting article. The same issue had the global-cooling prediction story. Those guys were dead on, huh?

Anyway, I finished that magazine and noticed a current copy of Newsweek in the magazine rack. I don’t know how a 2007 magazine got into a doctor’s office. I think a senile patient brought it in and forgot it. (Hey, there’s nothing wrong with being senile. I’m senile. All my friends are senile. We like being senile. At least, we think we like being senile. We forgot what it means.)

This is where my double-fandango dilemma started. The first horn of my dilemma was that I had canceled my subscription to Newsweek when it published that phony, hyped-up story about our Guantanamo guys peeing on the Koran. (By the way, my cancelation rocked Newsweek’s financial world.) If a person cancels a subscription to a magazine, should that person read that magazine in a doctor’s waiting room? It is a dilemma.

Somehow, it just seems wrong to me to read a free article that you used to pay for. If you have lost respect for a publication and have stopped buying that magazine, why should you read one of its articles just because you have the opportunity to do it and it won’t cost you anything? What are you going to say to yourself? “Self, that sure was a thoughtful, well-written story from a publication I have lost respect for. I got a lot out of it only because I didn’t have to pay for it. Ha, ha. I showed them.” Is that what you say to yourself? I don’t know. I think my self just might pee on me for that.

So what did I do? I read the article. Not because it was free, but because it was something I was interested in. And I have no standards or moral consistency and I’m weak. I think my fly’s open too.

The story was about Amazon’s new digital reading wonder-gadget called the Kindle. I happen to be interested in buying a Kindle. It’s the first wireless book-reading gizmo that allows you to instantly download books for $9.99, and Amazon has supposedly perfected the screen so it mimics an actual page of type in a book. They say you can read it at the beach with no glare. That’s pretty impressive. If those bullies would only stop kicking sand in my face, it would be perfect.

So I read half the article and found out some semi-cool stuff that the Kindle can do. It has a built-in dictionary and you can subscribe to magazines online and it doesn’t need to be synched to a computer, and it has little bitty legs and can walk to the store and pick up some Bud Light. It’s pretty neat.

But just at that exact halfway article-reading point, my doctor called me in. It was a checkup. He wanted to check to see if my wallet was still in good condition. So, in a split damn second, I jumped onto the other horn of my dilemma. (It hurt. I still have dilemma horn scars.) What should I do with the magazine? Should I just leave it and forget the rest of the Kindle article, or take it home?

My mind was racing. (My body turned that over to my mind years ago.) Would “taking home” the magazine mean I was stealing the magazine? Should I ask the receptionist if I could take it home? Should I rip out only the pages I need? Should I go poo-poo in my pants from indecision?

I cleverly avoided my final decision by placing (hiding) the Newsweek in question between two health magazines that probably will never be read. In fact, people hope those magazines will be stolen. They hire people to steal them. It was the perfect place to just keep it hidden for half an hour until my appointment was over, and then I could make a reasoned and considered decision as to whether I would steal it.

I went in for my examination. My wallet was in top shape, so the doctor let me out. Told me to keep it full of hundreds and to see him as often as possible. “Thanks, doc. You ever fix dilemma scars?”

So I went back to the waiting room, and I looked both ways — I’m not sure why, maybe there were IRS agents or FBI guys — and I went over to the magazine rack and sneakily sorted through the pile and found my hidden copy of Newsweek still there. I had it in my hand; I had to make my final decision. Was I going to steal this magazine from the doctor’s office? Was I going to steal a magazine I had stopped subscribing to? What kind of person am I?

So I made my decision. Holding the magazine in my hand, as I got to the door I said to another guy sitting in the waiting room, “It’s my magazine. I brought it with me.” I couldn’t believe I said it, but I did. And I said it loud enough that everyone in the waiting room could hear me. The guy by the door didn’t say anything. Nobody said anything. Nobody even nodded or smiled weakly. Nothing.

So, my sometime loyal readers and readerettes, what have we learned from this pissy little parable? We have learned that when you are on the horns of a double-fandango dilemma about stealing something, it is clearly best if you lie as well.