A Summer Rerun

Ah, Summer! — the weekend of seasons; time for vacation, sunshine, working your butt off in the blazing heat to do odd jobs around the house, and reruns.

Summer was the season for television reruns when I was a kid. There weren't a great deal of TV choices available to us back then. There were only three major networks and they all basically took the summer off.  Although kids love summer and the break from school, many of us looked forward to the fall season and the new shows.

In fact, when the TV Guide Fall Preview issue came out, it was the third most exciting magazine of the year behind the Sears Christmas catalogue, and, well, any issue of Playboy that I could somehow get my hands on.

Therefore, in honor of television's time-tested tradition (and since in summer I'm about as energetic as a three-toed sloth), I bring to you a rerun — or should I say a repost.

January 2012

My wife and I have started packing for our 10-day Caribbean cruise. I have two medium size suitcases ready for all my needs. My wife will use the largest suitcase in the house as her carry-on. Beyond that she has decided that she may need to rent a 26-foot U-Haul truck.

Among my paltry requirements are three swimming trunks. Two of these are the baggy jams-style variety that I swore I would never wear. Even so, I will be packing my “007“ shorts, as I like to call them (after the one Sean Connery wore in Goldfinger). Unfortunately, I’ve had to retire my Speedo.

Back in Antler River, we had a house with a swimming pool and a hot tub. There isn’t room for any such extravagance in Minikin. Anyway, I used to always wear a Speedo in the pool or tub (if I wore anything at all). I have worn those baggy swim trunks in a hot tub. When the jets are on you get a bubble in your shorts that is so big it lifts your ass off the seat! Then you must push down on this gigantic mound of air and out it comes, “BALOOOP” as it breaks to the surface. Others who might be in the tub give you an annoyed look.

You explain, “It was just some air in my shorts.”
“Yeah, 'air'.That’s what we thought it was”, they complain.

Beans beans are good, say reports
Beans beans put "air" in your shorts
The more you "air", the better you feel
So eat beans at every meal.

As I was saying, I always wore a Speedo in our swimming pool. The first summer that we were able to enjoy our new home, we decided to see how deep the pool was. I volunteered to be the measuring stick, and so I submerged, clad in only a speedo and swim goggles, to the bottom of the pool. While standing in the deepest part, with my hand raised as high as I could get it, I couldn’t touch the surface of the water. I needed something else to extend my reach. We decided to try it again with the leaf skimmer (minus the pole). That did the trick as the skimmer broke the surface by a couple of inches. So now we just needed to measure this length.

As I stood on the surface, dripping wet, in my speedo, and with my goggles still on, I held the leaf skimmer up high and struck a Statue of Liberty-like pose. My wife now had the task of measuring me from toe to skimmer. She got to her knees with a tape measure. Just at that precise moment, the hydro meter-reader walked through the back yard gate. Unfazed, he just said hello, read the meter, and left.

It’s likely that he sees all kinds of things on his job. For all I know I may have been the third or fourth speedo-wearing, begoggled, Statue-of-Liberty-posing, leaf-skimmer-bearing, wife-on-her-knees-measuring man he had seen so far that day.

Incidentally, I believe that France initially used the Statue of Liberty as a sounding instrument to determine water depth in the Mediterranean. Once it became outdated for use in such measurements, it was given to the United States as a gift. The Americans decided to use it as a statue.

 A sounding device for very deep swimming pools

My days of donning a Speedo are done. So are my days of wondering how deep a swimming pool is. The other travelers on our cruise ship can thus relax.

I really am looking forward to this cruise. We’ve never been on one before and by all accounts we should enjoy it — especially the food.

Not that I am any kind of connoisseur. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been gobbling down dinner or lunch when I suddenly look over at my wife who’s picking away at her food.

“What’s the matter?” I’ll ask.
“Don’t you think it tastes and smells kind of funny?” she says.

At this point I’m usually halfway through the meal and am stuck with the dilemma of finishing it and risking a stomach ailment, or just cutting my losses and throwing the rest of it in the garbage (I usually just finish it).

Our dog ate very much like me. She would woof down her food so fast that she couldn't have tasted it. Quite often she’d choke on it.

I remember one instance when an insurance agent called our house around dinner time. I’d already started eating and so had our dog Jessie. Jessie was really going at it as my wife answered the phone (which was in the kitchen directly over the dog’s dinner bowl).

As the insurance agent was asking my wife if I was available, Jessie was making a god-awful racket with her meal; “CHOMP CHOMP... SMACK CHOKE CHOMP... HACK HOCK... CHOMP SNARF.... COUGH... SMACK SNORF... CHOKE HORK HOCK.... CAAWWWW... CHOMP CHOMP CHOMP... HACK...”

“I’m sorry”, says my wife to the insurance agent, “He can’t come to the phone right now. He’s eating his dinner.”

I think the fellow hung up in horror. I had to set up an appointment with him sometime, but I didn’t think I was going to get him to agree to a dinner meeting.

And speaking of insurance, I think it would be a prudential choice for me to check my wife’s reactions to the food on the cruise before I dig in.

A Blinky Coot Sees Kinky Boots

Recently, my wife and I went to see Kinky Boots at a local theatre. As with any performance, we wanted good seats with an unobstructed view; like the views you would imagine from front row seats at the Colosseum of Rome. 

"Two seats up front, please."

We've had to deal with women seated ahead of us with sky-high beehive hairdos or wearing hats more suited for the Kentucky Derby. Or we have those seated behind us who talk as if they're enjoying an evening with guests in their sound-proof living rooms. Then there are the ones who laugh at the most inappropriate moments:

"O, never shall sun that morrow see!" says Lady MacBeth.
"HA HA HA!" says the guy behind me.

I'm reminded of the time my wife and I went to the movies to see Woody Allen's Interiors; a grim, plodding, Bergman-like drama. However, there was a woman in the crowd who laughed throughout most of the film. She was likely thinking, "Dammit! I paid good money to see a Woody Allen movie, so I'm going to have my chuckles. Funny or not."

Anyway, back to the theatre and Kinky Boots. I ordered our tickets online, and chose seats via a map that showed what was available for a particular performance. I saw two seats in the second row. However, it appeared as if there were no seats in front of them since there was a recessed area I took for the orchestra pit. Great! I called the box office and reserved them.

When we got to the theatre, the ushers asked where we were seated. There was at least one usher every five rows or so, mostly elderly pint-sized women. "Don't bother", I bellowed, "I know where I'm seated. Right up front!" With a swaggering strut, I made my way down to the front row, wearing a look so smug you'd think I owned the damned place. 

My wife, on the other hand, seemed a bit confused. She started making her way back toward the least desirable seats in the house. "What the heck is she doing?" I said to the little old lady usher at my elbow. "Why is she way back there?"

So, I trudged over to my spouse who informed me that our seats were P22 and P23. "Yes," I explained, "right up front, like I chose." Actually, I don't know what the devil I was thinking when I selected seats in row "P". I do recall thinking at the time that it was a strange seating label, like some sort of reverse derriere designator. "P" up front, standing for "Perfect", or at least "Pretty good seats" and "A" as in "Awful" or "Are there binoculars that come with the seats for us laggard losers in the back?"

I looked at our tickets, which were masterfully produced by our HP printer, and then at the row designation, which was clearly marked "P". 

"What? I can't believe it. I distinctly remember selecting front row!" Those little old lady ushers seemed to be much larger now as I could feel myself starting to shrink in stature and self-importance.

Befuddled, baffled and bewildered, I made my way back to the car where I'd left my cell phone to check the email confirming my purchase. "Yup. It sure is row P", I muttered to myself. So, I checked the theatre web site to see what I had done wrong. I found out.

The map of the theatre showing its layout has the diagram oriented as you might expect with the stage at the top of the page and the entrance into the theatre at the bottom. Once you go to buy tickets however, the diagram is flipped over, with the stage at the bottom and the entrance at the top! I thundered, "No wonder I blundered." By the way, that recessed area that I mistook for the orchestra pit was the area for the sound technicians and their soundboard. 

I can just picture me, an old coot sitting there hearing the clicks and clacks of their work while blinking my tired old eyes, straining to see what was going on up there on stage. It appeared as if it was going to be a long miserable night. Fortunately it didn't come to that.

While griping and complaining on my way back to the theatre from my car, a lovely young woman (perhaps the senior seating manager) heard my grumbling. She snatched the tickets from my hand. Then brandishing her senior seating manager pen, changed the seating designations to fifth row, thus saving the day. She likely just did it to shut me up so I wouldn't spoil the evening for the rest of the patrons.

So how was Kinky Boots? Well, there were no big hats or high-rise hairdos in front of us, and we had relatively quiet folks behind us. And the show was good. However, during some of the slow ballads, I was wishing I was seated in the back row to have a good snooze.

Finally, on a different note, I wanted to mention that a blogging and podcast database website known as FeedSpot has the blog of yours truly listed on their Top 100 Humor Blogs for 2023. I must admit, I was somewhat taken aback when I first learned this. 

However, it should be noted that the good people at FeedSpot apparently really know a good blog when they read one. But seriously, it is an unexpected honor. Thank you FeedSpot.

Flamin' Flamens! Ye Gods!

Great Zeus! Jumping Jupiter! 

I, for one, could never keep straight in my mind all the different Greek and Roman gods. I mean, there are so many of them. And aside from the sheer volume, it's hard to remember which ones are Greek and which are Roman. 

Therefore, I felt I should set the record straight on a few of those dizzying deities.

What a better way to start than with the obscure god Falacer. According to Wikipedia, "he was assigned a minor flamen" which is a lesser priest.

I thought perhaps flamen (especially a minor one), was someone who put out insignificant flames like a barbecue flare-up. In contrast would be a major fireman, who puts out conflagrations like the one started by that Roman bastard Nero. Forgive my use of the term fireman. Back in the Roman days, women did not have the right to be the heroes they are today. That has thankfully changed.

Nero: Neither god nor flamen, just a flamin' fiddler

Further about the obscure god, Wikipedia states, "Falacer, or more fully dīvus pater falacer, was an ancient Italic god, according to Varro."

An Italic god? What, are we supposed to always italicize his name? Go ahead and unitalicize it if you wish.  He was only an obscure god assigned a lesser priest. What's he gonna do? Curse you with some goofy Roman phrase like, "Ad hominus, max ominous, ineffectus, non erectus"?

Wikipedia goes on, "Hartung (no clarification from Wikipedia on who the heck that is) is inclined to consider him an epithet of Jupiter, since falandum, according to Festus, was the Etruscan name for 'heaven.'"

Which brought me to another Wikipedia article about "epithets" which states, "An epithet (from Ancient Greek epítheton 'adjective', from epíthetos 'additional'), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage."

Also, "The word epithet can also refer to an abusive, defamatory, or derogatory phrase. This use as a euphemism is criticized by Martin Manser and other proponents of linguistic prescription. H. W. Fowler complained that "epithet is suffering a vulgarization that is giving it an abusive imputation."

Oh yeah? Just try calling "Jupiter" "Falacer", if you dare, and see if he doesn't consider it an abusive imputation. I wouldn't want to have to answer to that roar from the heavens, "Are you calling me an obscure god, assigned to a minor flamon?"

Here is more, I regret, from Wikipedia: "The etymology of flamen remains obscure, and perhaps undecidable. The term is traditionally connected with the Proto-Germanic verb blōtanan ("to sacrifice"), by positing a Proto-Indo-European stem blehdmen (or blehgmen), which could have originally meant "sacrifice". However, the link remains uncertain since it is impossible to decide whether the Latin form reflects an earlier flă-men, flăd-men or flăg-smen."

Which brings us to our next diety; Amphigory, the Greek goddess of gobbledygook. 

Then there is Palatua; an obscure goddess who guarded the Palatine Hill. As opposed to being assigned a minor flamen, according to Wikipedia, "she was assigned a flamen minor." That, I guess, would be a religious leader under the legal age for priesthood.

Here are a few more Roman gods listed on Wikipedia. I didn't read the entire article on each, but I've provided what I am sure is an apt description or comment for each:

Disciplina
The goddess of dominatrices.

Fecunditas
Personification of fertility. Fecund always sounded too close to fecal for my liking. Hardly what might come to mind when thinking "fruitful". Then again, what personifies fertility better than, well, you know what.

Latona
Goddess of light. I thought that would have been Daytona.

Eos, Portunus, and Artemis
These were later re-envisioned as the Three Musketeers.

Scotus
God of darkness. Ain't that the truth!

Verminus
God of cattle worms. There's a god for that?

Caca
There's a god for that?

As comprehensive as Wikipedia's lists are, we here at Snow Shoveling In Canada thought our readers should be aware of a few more obscure gods (assigned to negligible flamens).

Angina  - Greek goddess of chest pain.
Angora  - Greek goddess of goat hair.
Avunculus -  Roman god of uncles.
Cerumen  - Roman god of earwax.

Finally, we have Vulcan, the Roman god of emotionless extraterrestrials.

By the way, why are beings from the planet Vulcan referred to as Vulcans? After all, we don't refer to people from Jordan as Jordans, do we? Shouldn't the demonym for someone from Vulcan be Vulcanite, or Vulcaner, or Vulcanian? 

There really should be a god or goddess of demonyms. Perhaps Demonyma? I sure could use her help sometimes.