Confessions of a.. Space Explorer
I met this alien online – at least she said she was an alien, and she invited me to visit her secret landing place in the Azores for.. well, to be perfectly honest, space exploration.
I was a little concerned: I don’t normally trust people who claim they are aliens, online. I mean, come on: anyone can claim to be anything, online.
But Buzzra –her user name, reassured me of her alienity –if that’s the right word, and sent me some pics of her which, as far as I could tell, were the real McCoy.
To be perfectly frank, from what I could tell she was naked in those pics, though nakedness in alien terms is not nakedness in human terms.
I mean pets are naked, aren’t they?
You can’t get in trouble for looking at pictures of naked pets, can you?
Naked aliens?
Still, to be safe, I sent her pictures of me that weren’t – me that is. In fact, I sent her pictures of my dog Altoona, an Irish Wolfhound/Chihuahua mix (giant body, teeny little head).
She was incredulous.
That’s not you, she wrote (actually, she typed “LOL, pull the other one!”)
Yes it is, I typed back.
How can you type so well, with paws, she asked?
You’d be surprised, I bluffed.
I love your tiny head, she confessed.
So we IMmed back and forth and eventually, made plans to meet. She sent me detailed directions to the landing spot in the Azores and, to make a long story short, it was a sting.
Not your usual DA running for re-election saving the world from aliens make a big splash in the newspaper type of sting, but a real sting.
I mean to say that Buzzra was an actual alien, but not like her picture at all.
She wasn’t harmless mass of fur and chocolate jimmies – but, instead, a giant wasp-like alien that preyed on large animals, sucking the life force from them through their tiny snouts.
From my picture –which was actually Altoona, she thought I was the perfect prey: lots of life force, tiny little snout.
So when I showed at the appointed time and place, though she was angry, she was mainly disappointed.
Without a snout into which she could insert her prehensile sucker apparatus, she had no use for me – so she just left me there, with about a dozen other guys and girls who had pretended to have snouts, and blasted off for an uncharted solar system.
End of story?
Of course not.
When I got there - at the prearranged meeting spot in the Azores, besides the actual humans, there were already dozens of dismembered pets strewn about.
Even in the Azores this attracted a lot of attention.
I was one of seventeen who were arrested and charged with a wide variety of odd offenses.
Of course the press got wind of this too: except from public officials, there is no more appealing subject than one of their own in trouble. Soon my face, and that of my completely innocent (though obviously naked) pet Altoona, were quickly splashed across the front pages of several local newspapers.
My defense? Simple.
There is no law against stupidity – though the fines are very large indeed.
I am in deep doodoo, but I didn’t do anything illegal.
The worst that can be said is that I gave in to the national temptation: personal space exploration.
And it wasn’t as if I went out of my way to find Buzzra: she was online, advertising her alienity, and personally invited me to explore.
It’s a clear case of entrapment.
There isn’t a human I know that doesn’t fantasize about space travel.
If the police came to your door today, can you honestly say that your hard drive wouldn’t have a few pics of glowing nebulae or twin giants?
There are other, personal issues of course.
Why an otherwise regular guy –with a wife and family, and a nice home and three cars, and a self-propelled lawn mower would still feel the need to explore space is a question that needs to be answered.
But I have already paid a high price for my ‘indiscretion’: I have had to turn over my entire collection of Star Trek memorabilia to the local authorities; I have been asked to resign my position with the Immigration and Naturalization Service: I have had to trade in my Ford Explorer for a Subaru Forester, for appearances sake.
In many ways my life –at least my life on earth, has been turned upside down.
And from that perspective I have learned something very important about myself, which was probably obvious to everybody but me: I am attracted to aliens.
Now I am coming out of the ‘hangar’, so to speak: admitting to myself that this is who I am.
I may not have fur, or a spout, or an ounce of common sense, but at least I am at peace with my.. fantasy life.
Sad to say, ever since the Azores, Altoona has never been same.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Expanding the Strike Zone
The Strike Zone Enlargeth
Normally..
No, that’s not right.
There is no normal: leastways not in this vicinity.
Usually, for the most part, during the so-called regular season, the strike zone is from your knees to your armpits: but in the summer it’s suddenly bigger, much bigger, preposterously large.
Purists will complain, but there is a good reason for this change.
Don’t ask me to explain.
The important thing to remember is that July is slip-sliding away, August is almost upon us, and before you know it you’ll be gassing up the snow-hurler.
So, as the coach says, ‘be up there swinging’.
Are we talking baseball, here?
Well, sort of.
The philosophy of summer can apply to baseball.
Our seven year old son is in a so-called Summer League, and the teams are made up of mixed ages and skill levels. Most of the kids have never pitched before, so genuine by the book, right down the middle, what do you want ‘eggs in your beer’ stee-rikes are few and far between.
Just pick out one you like and give it a ride!
But don’t be too picky.
In fact, you don’t have to like it: just hit the darn thing.
That goes for the adults too.
The coaches in this ‘league’ often have to wear several hats: there’s the official coaches hat, the hat of the father of a player, the umpires little black cap, physician, counselor, field crew and snack bar attendant.
They don’t tell you about these other responsibilities when you sign up to coach at this level. Many of the coaches have never done this before.
“What do I do?” they ask the grizzled little league veteran.
“Have fun”, they are told, with a wink: “It’s a big strike zone.
You’ve got to take your cuts.”
The games go long, very long, and are often called due to darkness.
Or is that the days go long, very long, and are often called due to baseball?
Whatever: when it’s over it’s too late to go home and make dinner – and too easy to give in: so you stop at Gellars for hamburgers and ice cream.
What flavor?
You read them all, out loud.
Choco-Mocha-Java-Banana-Haha-Butter-Crunch.
You never knew they had so many flavors.
Did you ever notice the flavors taste better when you read them out loud?
In the summer flavors you never knew existed, sound mighty tempting.
Then you sit there, in the parking lot, carefully tending to your cone of Mint Cookie Dough Daiquiri, and watch the traffic race by: everybody seems to be in such a hurry.
We spend most of the year chasing time, but when the summer comes around the relationship changes – or should.
Summer time is all about getting a hold of time.
No, that’s too easy: you don’t just get a hold of it; you sit on it, put in a headlock, hit it with a pillow, and make it cry uncle.
My personal approach is flattery.
“Say”, I say to the Summer seconds: “what a beautiful ticking sound you make”.
“Whoa”, I say to the minutes: “sixty is such a sexy number”.
“My my”, I say to the hours: I never noticed how beautiful you ‘hour’, ha ha”.
Most people don’t realize that time has a great sense of humor
We talk, and laugh, and before you know it, time forgets where it was going.
Those cool breezes in the trees – why, that’s time sighing.
Even time needs to take a break, once in a while.
As the coach says, “You have to relax to be ready.”
When you’re in the ‘ready position’ you’re relaxed.
Now where were we?
Oh, right: tending to the cone.
Here’s the windup, here’s the pitch. It’s a soft line drive, lazily arcing toward your mouth…
Eating an ice cream cone can take hours, if it’s done right.
Eventually you finish, get home and, for once, get to bed early and get a good night’s sleep.
For the first time in months you wake up before the alarm, early again, and notice right away – it looks like it’s going to be a nice day: not too humid, partly cloudy.
“Say, why don’t we drive to Sturbridge Village today?”
Or take a ride to nowhere.
Or go to the beach.
A cookout?
More ice cream?
You’re in the zone, the summer zone.
When you’re in the zone everything moves so slowly: the ball looks as big as a grapefruit; the sun is soft and cheery; you’re getting 100 miles to the gallon; the clouds are shaped like untidy French Poodles off their leash.
Somewhere, at the back of your head, you hear your own parents cheering you on, though that hasn’t happened for a very long time.
The car moves down the highway like a soft line drive, arcing toward the horizon, just out of the reach of the shortstop.
It falls into the thick outfield grass.
You round the bases with your tongue hanging out of the side of your mouth, the infield dirt crunching pleasantly under your tires.
You drive into second, go into your slide, and then just lie there, waiting for the call.
You wait so long you forget you’re waiting.
The light fades.
The stands empty out.
The sound of the game, the noise of the day, fades away.
Above you, lightning bugs audition for one another.
Soon you can’t tell the lightning bugs from the stars.
Soon the strike zone is as wide as the Milky Way.
It’s a short season.
Be up there swinging.
Normally..
No, that’s not right.
There is no normal: leastways not in this vicinity.
Usually, for the most part, during the so-called regular season, the strike zone is from your knees to your armpits: but in the summer it’s suddenly bigger, much bigger, preposterously large.
Purists will complain, but there is a good reason for this change.
Don’t ask me to explain.
The important thing to remember is that July is slip-sliding away, August is almost upon us, and before you know it you’ll be gassing up the snow-hurler.
So, as the coach says, ‘be up there swinging’.
Are we talking baseball, here?
Well, sort of.
The philosophy of summer can apply to baseball.
Our seven year old son is in a so-called Summer League, and the teams are made up of mixed ages and skill levels. Most of the kids have never pitched before, so genuine by the book, right down the middle, what do you want ‘eggs in your beer’ stee-rikes are few and far between.
Just pick out one you like and give it a ride!
But don’t be too picky.
In fact, you don’t have to like it: just hit the darn thing.
That goes for the adults too.
The coaches in this ‘league’ often have to wear several hats: there’s the official coaches hat, the hat of the father of a player, the umpires little black cap, physician, counselor, field crew and snack bar attendant.
They don’t tell you about these other responsibilities when you sign up to coach at this level. Many of the coaches have never done this before.
“What do I do?” they ask the grizzled little league veteran.
“Have fun”, they are told, with a wink: “It’s a big strike zone.
You’ve got to take your cuts.”
The games go long, very long, and are often called due to darkness.
Or is that the days go long, very long, and are often called due to baseball?
Whatever: when it’s over it’s too late to go home and make dinner – and too easy to give in: so you stop at Gellars for hamburgers and ice cream.
What flavor?
You read them all, out loud.
Choco-Mocha-Java-Banana-Haha-Butter-Crunch.
You never knew they had so many flavors.
Did you ever notice the flavors taste better when you read them out loud?
In the summer flavors you never knew existed, sound mighty tempting.
Then you sit there, in the parking lot, carefully tending to your cone of Mint Cookie Dough Daiquiri, and watch the traffic race by: everybody seems to be in such a hurry.
We spend most of the year chasing time, but when the summer comes around the relationship changes – or should.
Summer time is all about getting a hold of time.
No, that’s too easy: you don’t just get a hold of it; you sit on it, put in a headlock, hit it with a pillow, and make it cry uncle.
My personal approach is flattery.
“Say”, I say to the Summer seconds: “what a beautiful ticking sound you make”.
“Whoa”, I say to the minutes: “sixty is such a sexy number”.
“My my”, I say to the hours: I never noticed how beautiful you ‘hour’, ha ha”.
Most people don’t realize that time has a great sense of humor
We talk, and laugh, and before you know it, time forgets where it was going.
Those cool breezes in the trees – why, that’s time sighing.
Even time needs to take a break, once in a while.
As the coach says, “You have to relax to be ready.”
When you’re in the ‘ready position’ you’re relaxed.
Now where were we?
Oh, right: tending to the cone.
Here’s the windup, here’s the pitch. It’s a soft line drive, lazily arcing toward your mouth…
Eating an ice cream cone can take hours, if it’s done right.
Eventually you finish, get home and, for once, get to bed early and get a good night’s sleep.
For the first time in months you wake up before the alarm, early again, and notice right away – it looks like it’s going to be a nice day: not too humid, partly cloudy.
“Say, why don’t we drive to Sturbridge Village today?”
Or take a ride to nowhere.
Or go to the beach.
A cookout?
More ice cream?
You’re in the zone, the summer zone.
When you’re in the zone everything moves so slowly: the ball looks as big as a grapefruit; the sun is soft and cheery; you’re getting 100 miles to the gallon; the clouds are shaped like untidy French Poodles off their leash.
Somewhere, at the back of your head, you hear your own parents cheering you on, though that hasn’t happened for a very long time.
The car moves down the highway like a soft line drive, arcing toward the horizon, just out of the reach of the shortstop.
It falls into the thick outfield grass.
You round the bases with your tongue hanging out of the side of your mouth, the infield dirt crunching pleasantly under your tires.
You drive into second, go into your slide, and then just lie there, waiting for the call.
You wait so long you forget you’re waiting.
The light fades.
The stands empty out.
The sound of the game, the noise of the day, fades away.
Above you, lightning bugs audition for one another.
Soon you can’t tell the lightning bugs from the stars.
Soon the strike zone is as wide as the Milky Way.
It’s a short season.
Be up there swinging.
Bum Steer Seer
BumSteerClearSeer.com
Would you be surprised to learn that –besides my many obvious talents and skills, I also possess a certain ‘sixth sense’?
Yep, I’m a psychic.
That’s ‘ic’, not ‘o’.
Or are you surprised that every one you know doesn’t claim psychic abilities?
It certainly does seem that psychic power is on the rise.
Downtown Plymouth is awash in psychic tours.
The local cable access channel offers regular shows on the spiritual side of town: you know, the two or three blocks from Cherry Street south, to Savery Avenue.
My spiritual talents are however, limited: or perhaps I should say focused, in one particular area.
I can’t predict the future.
I can’t talk to the dead.
But when I go out to eat I know, long before I order, that the meal I am going to get is going to be a big disappointment.
Call me a ‘spiritual waiter’.
“Hello, my name is Frank, and I am going to be your spiritual server tonight. Especially bad this evening is the Papi Lopez Shrimp: a pathetic chorus line of previously frozen, miniature Chilean shrimp that have been bathed in cheap tequila before being steamed into submission and then dunked into an indeterminate amount of spice.”
It never fails: as soon as I get within ten yards of one of Plymouth’s plethora of post-modernist shoebox chain restaurants I begin receiving visions, accompanied by disturbing aromas, culminating in a painful throbbing emanating from my wallet.
It happened again, last Friday night, when I foolishly accompanied a group of friends to one of the newest of the town’s poor excuses for a night out: The Blue Elvis.
The décor said ‘fifties nostalgia’, but the menu said ‘the Over-priced Eighties’.
I was with friends though, so I tried to shut my inner voice down with a 32 ounce glass of Heffenreffer Lager Especiale: I may be a psychic, but that doesn’t mean I’m no fun.
So I grinned and swallowed, though I knew what was coming: a ten dollar Big Mac with all the fries you can eat.
And it’s not just these new chains that are haunted by bad food.
Some of the town’s older, more established restaurants have to overcome not only their own frightening menus, but the ghosts of thousands of bad meals that came before them.
It’s not always their fault: almost every downtown restaurant today occupies a building that dozens of restaurants have used over the centuries. So what you are often served is not just the result of the present-day cook’s incompetence, but the residue of particularly horrendous meals cooked centuries before.
That is probably the case at Maya Mayo’s – the town’s favorite Italian restaurant.
Most town residents will swear by Maya Mayo’s food, but I can’t walk by their front door without being assailed by the vision of a giant plate of pasta that was left in the pot for days: each noodle bloated to the width of an octopus’ tentacle.
Is there anything more frightening than waterlogged pasta?
Then there’s the sad story of the Crustacean Shack.
Years ago the building where the ‘Crust’ - as locals refer to it, now sits, was the dockside berth of the Augosta family’s two lobster boats: the Claw and the Tentacle.
The two boats were family owned, and captained by the family’s two oldest boys – Giuseppe and Guido. The boys were always fighting about the business, threatening to go their separate ways.
One day, after a particularly vicious argument between the two captains, as the Claw set out to sea Guido cried out, cursing his brother, saying he would never sell another lobster in Plymouth.
Giuseppe and the crew of The Claw disappeared that day, and for the rest of the year the lobster catch went down and down, the prices up and up. Many lobstermen lost their boats to the bank that season, and the Augosta family sold out to a developer with plans for a big seafood restaurant.
And that explains why, when you order a lobster roll at ‘The Crust’ today, it often arrives at your table with almost no trace of lobster at all: it’s spooky!
Yes, I have the power, but it’s a burden too: every weekend I wrestle with the All-American urge to go out to eat, knowing, in advance, just how disappointed I am going to feel in the end.
I don’t even get to enjoy the illusion, or share in the innocent excitement that everyone feels before they decide what to order.
My only solace is in the pre-meal gratuities I receive from grateful diners who consult me – by phone or on the web, before heading out with their own families for that obligatory weekend restaurant meal.
The usual rate is 5%, and whether you deduct that from the tip you normally give to your actual waiter, or add it to the total cost of your meal, if I help you avoid a piece of scary sushi, or advise you to stay clear of a bum steer steak (or is that ‘steer clear of a bum steer’?), I know you will find it was money well spent.
Visit me at BumSteerClearSeer.com
Would you be surprised to learn that –besides my many obvious talents and skills, I also possess a certain ‘sixth sense’?
Yep, I’m a psychic.
That’s ‘ic’, not ‘o’.
Or are you surprised that every one you know doesn’t claim psychic abilities?
It certainly does seem that psychic power is on the rise.
Downtown Plymouth is awash in psychic tours.
The local cable access channel offers regular shows on the spiritual side of town: you know, the two or three blocks from Cherry Street south, to Savery Avenue.
My spiritual talents are however, limited: or perhaps I should say focused, in one particular area.
I can’t predict the future.
I can’t talk to the dead.
But when I go out to eat I know, long before I order, that the meal I am going to get is going to be a big disappointment.
Call me a ‘spiritual waiter’.
“Hello, my name is Frank, and I am going to be your spiritual server tonight. Especially bad this evening is the Papi Lopez Shrimp: a pathetic chorus line of previously frozen, miniature Chilean shrimp that have been bathed in cheap tequila before being steamed into submission and then dunked into an indeterminate amount of spice.”
It never fails: as soon as I get within ten yards of one of Plymouth’s plethora of post-modernist shoebox chain restaurants I begin receiving visions, accompanied by disturbing aromas, culminating in a painful throbbing emanating from my wallet.
It happened again, last Friday night, when I foolishly accompanied a group of friends to one of the newest of the town’s poor excuses for a night out: The Blue Elvis.
The décor said ‘fifties nostalgia’, but the menu said ‘the Over-priced Eighties’.
I was with friends though, so I tried to shut my inner voice down with a 32 ounce glass of Heffenreffer Lager Especiale: I may be a psychic, but that doesn’t mean I’m no fun.
So I grinned and swallowed, though I knew what was coming: a ten dollar Big Mac with all the fries you can eat.
And it’s not just these new chains that are haunted by bad food.
Some of the town’s older, more established restaurants have to overcome not only their own frightening menus, but the ghosts of thousands of bad meals that came before them.
It’s not always their fault: almost every downtown restaurant today occupies a building that dozens of restaurants have used over the centuries. So what you are often served is not just the result of the present-day cook’s incompetence, but the residue of particularly horrendous meals cooked centuries before.
That is probably the case at Maya Mayo’s – the town’s favorite Italian restaurant.
Most town residents will swear by Maya Mayo’s food, but I can’t walk by their front door without being assailed by the vision of a giant plate of pasta that was left in the pot for days: each noodle bloated to the width of an octopus’ tentacle.
Is there anything more frightening than waterlogged pasta?
Then there’s the sad story of the Crustacean Shack.
Years ago the building where the ‘Crust’ - as locals refer to it, now sits, was the dockside berth of the Augosta family’s two lobster boats: the Claw and the Tentacle.
The two boats were family owned, and captained by the family’s two oldest boys – Giuseppe and Guido. The boys were always fighting about the business, threatening to go their separate ways.
One day, after a particularly vicious argument between the two captains, as the Claw set out to sea Guido cried out, cursing his brother, saying he would never sell another lobster in Plymouth.
Giuseppe and the crew of The Claw disappeared that day, and for the rest of the year the lobster catch went down and down, the prices up and up. Many lobstermen lost their boats to the bank that season, and the Augosta family sold out to a developer with plans for a big seafood restaurant.
And that explains why, when you order a lobster roll at ‘The Crust’ today, it often arrives at your table with almost no trace of lobster at all: it’s spooky!
Yes, I have the power, but it’s a burden too: every weekend I wrestle with the All-American urge to go out to eat, knowing, in advance, just how disappointed I am going to feel in the end.
I don’t even get to enjoy the illusion, or share in the innocent excitement that everyone feels before they decide what to order.
My only solace is in the pre-meal gratuities I receive from grateful diners who consult me – by phone or on the web, before heading out with their own families for that obligatory weekend restaurant meal.
The usual rate is 5%, and whether you deduct that from the tip you normally give to your actual waiter, or add it to the total cost of your meal, if I help you avoid a piece of scary sushi, or advise you to stay clear of a bum steer steak (or is that ‘steer clear of a bum steer’?), I know you will find it was money well spent.
Visit me at BumSteerClearSeer.com
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