BP = evil/ Old Spice = good

I don’t for a minute believe BP when it says it’s capped the well. I think they have a stage set with a Top Hat rig in a pool about 20-feet deep they’re using to simulate competence.

Look carefully enough at the tape and in the dim background you can glimpse BP men walking around on their way to meetings where they plan wars, famine and the futures of men like LeBron James.

Who knows what kind of menace you’ll see if you look deeply enough into BP?

This is a company of such grandiose evil you have to believe Darth Cheney’s somehow involved.

Now comes the news that BP was behind the release of murderous terrorist Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi -- and I hate him even more now that I had to type and spell check such a long and awful name.

It’s outrageous.

I understand a certain ruthlessness is required to run a global conglomerate that earns obscene profits that number in the billions.

You need to deceive governments, your customers, your stockholders and daily do unethical things that would cause terminally poor men like me to lose sleep at night.

But this deal with Libya goes beyond the pale. What business in the name of profit leans on a government, in this case Scotland, to free a man responsible for the terrorist deaths of 270 innocents?

And what government says, yep, sure, you can go free and live out your years in the comfort of your loved ones where you’re considered a hero for your deadly villainies.

In America, this would be an impeachable offense.

I don’t cast my votes in Scotland and am in one of those all-too-common situations where I want to lash out at a target too nimble to hit.

I don’t drink Scotch, preferring all-American bourbon, so I can’t hit them there.

The boycott BP movement isn’t satisfying either. That’s taking it out on the little guy who runs a mini-mart that just happens to be linked to what is right now is the world’s most damaged brand.

I doubt any mom ‘n’ pop started their franchise by saying, “Pa, what the good people in this neighborhood really need is a place to buy good ol’ BP gas. It’s the best gas. It’s good for their cars and the BP rep gave me his word the company will never do anything to disgrace our affiliation.”

The guy’s probably like me. He couldn’t care less if he sells BP gas, Exxon or some other petroleum product.

Gas isn’t like underarm deodorant, a product that requires some brand loyalty. Like my dad, I’ve always been an Old Spice man, a patronage that’s currently being rewarded by its association with the funniest ads ever seen on TV.

(“Swan dive! Into the best night of your life!”)

I buy gas based on need. When the gauge starts to edge toward “E,” I pull over to the nearest filling station. I don’t feel like I’m being disloyal to Sheetz if I stop at the Get Go. I don’t think the car’s going to run angry if I fill up with Exxon instead of Chevron.

I couldn’t care less.

So there’s nothing a guy like me can do to punish BP for its treachery.

All I can do is hope that one day, and I pray it happens soon, we find a cheap and clean alternative to oil that is at the root of so many environmental and foreign policy problems bedeviling this godforsaken world.

And I don’t want something incremental. I want it to be an overnight sort of sensation.

I’d love to see President Obama break into programming with a stunning announcement that tomorrow at noon every car in America will be fitted for free with glove box converters that will allow vehicles to run in perpetuity on just one slim dispenser of Old Spice High Endurance Deodorant Stick.

Know what I’ll do?

I’ll buy everyone at the bar a shot of good ol’ Kentucky bourbon and together as one we will swan dive into the best night of our lives.

My good deed

It was more a wish than a prayer, more an expression of dissatisfaction that I was unable to have more of an impact on humanity.

I thought, gee, I wish I was in position to do more good deeds.

That’s the kind of thinking I do on my daily strolls around the neighborhood.

I’m not talking about saving cats from trees or diving in front of a bullet intended for an unworthy target. I don’t have an urge to don a cape and save the world.

That sounds like a lot of work to a guy so lazy he’d rather earn community scorn by letting the hedge grow to such unsightly lengths that the neighbor will just cut it himself rather than wait for me to do it.

But I thought it would be nice to help some little old lady across the street so she’ll know the world isn’t as scary as the headlines all hint.

Lo and behold, not a half mile into my walk the opportunity to do a true good deed nearly fell in my lap.

It wasn’t a little old lady. It was a big middle-aged one.

My description will sound contrived but I swear it is factual.

She was what Dr. Hannibal Lechter described as “roomy.” That was his euphemism for a woman of large proportions. She had stringy hair, was sweating profusely and, as I was about to discover, she had no front teeth.

It may be unkind, but my first impression was that from behind she resembled a pack mule, an observation based on her appearance and her apparent mission. She was carrying six plastic bags strained full with groceries -- three bags in each hand -- and a surf-board sized raft of generic toilet paper.

She and I were both walking in the same direction on this humid, 85-degree day. I was gaining on her fast. She set down one armload of bags to adjust and catch her breath.

Now, understand, I didn’t specify in my wish that the recipient of my good deed resemble a movie star.

That didn’t enter my thoughts. So if this was a test, I passed with flying colors.

“You look like you could use a hand,” I said.

She smiled, a little embarrassed, that toothless smile scary enough to make an orange jack-o-lantern green with envy.

“Oh, no, I’m fine,” she said.

Nonsense, said I. I’m out for a walk. Please let me assist.

It didn’t take too much convincing for Donna to agree. I told her I was happy to help. With sweat drops rolling down both of our noses, we proceeded.

She had about a mile to go, she said. No, she didn’t own a car. She walked about once every two weeks to the grocery store and lugged it all back to her Main Street home.

She was very pleasant and grateful, but I was struck by how much awkward silence is involved in a mile-long walk with a perfect stranger.

She’d certainly seen enough TV to know that lots of no good trouble can come from walking home with a stranger. And, me, I’ve read enough Penthouse Forum letters to know that interesting things can happen when meeting a stranger.

She may have wondered if I was a psychopath (I’m not, at least, not yet). She may have wondered if I was going to ask for money or sex. I wondered if she was going to offer me sex.

It wasn’t easy work and may have been worth a little sex. The bags were heavy.

“You’re making me carry the heavy ones, aren’t you?” I joked.

If she was nervous about me, she gave no hint of it. She smiled pleasantly almost the whole way. I think she was really grateful I came along when I did.

I was glad, too. I wonder if Donna would have gotten into my car if I’d have pulled over to offer her a ride.

Probably not. I doubt I would.

During one of our block-long silences I started hoping my friends and people from church would drive by and recognize me.

The sight of me walking and carrying the groceries of a strange, large woman armed with enough toilet paper to weather a nuclear winter would have made for a great scandal, one I’d have been happy to encourage.

We did look like a couple, I’m sure. She was smiling because someone had stopped by to ease her burden on a miserable day.

I was smiling because my spontaneous urge to do a good deed had been fulfilled. It gave me a soulful sort of happiness to have by chance been in a position to help someone who really needed it.

I got to her door, set the groceries down, said I was glad to have been able to help and enjoyed meeting her.

She smiled a big, toothless grin and spared us both any additional awkwardness by just saying thanks rather than inviting me in for a topless massage.

I felt so good on the long walk home I decided that tomorrow I’m going start my walk by wishing my activity would include the discovery of a million dollars.

I’ll let you know if that works out as good as this did.

Now ear this!

I peered deep into our 9-year-old’s right ear the way germ-detecting scientists peer into microscopes.

I was looking for Michael Phelps.

“I don’t see any swimmers in here,” I said.

Nine is an age when “Dad” becomes a two-syllable word.

“Da-ad! Swimmer’s ear doesn’t mean there’s a swimmer in my ear,” she said. “It’s an infection.”


That’s what the doctors say, but I’m suspicious of the entire medical profession.

In evil collusion with the dastardly pharmaceutical industry, they invent diseases and spend millions on saturation advertising to convince us we suffer from every day symptoms like sleeplessness and agitation, which to me are symptoms of things like parenting and being gainfully employed.

Next thing you know we’re eating pills the way we should be eating vegetables and we’re worried about side effects like suicidal depression, colored urine and three-hour erections.

We’re all being doctored to death.

And I’m even more suspicious of the human ear, God’s worst design.

I revel in the grandeur of a beautiful sunset, the forrest in autumn and the sight of a child running with outstretched arms toward a kneeling loved one.

There is so much splendor to savor in this world.

But what happened when God designed the human ear? It looks like it was done by interns eager to dash off to the Happy Hour.

We vainly lavish plastic surgeons with millions to shave fractions of an inch off our noses, we get our lips plumped and the drooping skin on our necks and foreheads tucked back behind our temples.

But no one ever does a thing about the ugliest part of human being north of the disgusting foot.

They hang prominently from our heads like the shutters of old haunted houses. They look like a Google Earth map of the LA freeway system.

They make no sense. They are a confusing tangle of gutters.

Really, the only thing the design is good for is keeping glasses from sliding off our heads and letting us identify society’s biggest jerks by giving them a place to stick their Bluetooths.

Sure, they make great handles if you’re interested in assaulting a bald man, but that only benefits the belligerent.

Sturdy pegs could handle all those simple tasks, although that design might pose additional discomfort for mothers during childbirth and no one who’s ever witnessed that ordeal would favor that solution.

One of my favorite bits of trivia includes another ear flaw. While the rest of the aging us is giving into gravity and getting more diminutive, the ear is always on the march.

It’s true. The eyes with which we’re born remain the same size from birth to death, but the ear and the nose (and I’ve got issues with them, too), never stop growing.

Ever see the ears of a really old person? You see less sizable kites at hang gliding conventions.

We should have ear lids like eye lids. If we want to jump in the water or some punk kid is playing the Lady Gaga too loudly, we just shut our ears the way we shut our eyes when we see Lady Gaga on TV.

And that would seem like a solution to the swimmer’s ear that’s plaguing our darling Josie.

You never hear of a dolphin suffering from swimmer’s ear and the only time they stick their heads out of the water is to nod for the trick reward anchovies at places like Sea World.

Val said the nurse at the Virginia Beach doc in the box told her there’d been 15 other kids with swimmer’s ear there already by that afternoon.

Each of their parents had to shell out $150 for a minuscule quantity of ear drops that is less than what will come vaulting out my nose when the summer allergies soon start me to sneezing.

When Val told me the drops were $150, I couldn’t believe my ears.

But I think the same thing anytime I see them in the mirror.

The TV has become the penis

Readers who enjoy vicarious woe are in for a splendid couple of weeks because a wave of woe is crashing upon me.

First off, car trouble. The very day I sent in the final payment on my 2007 Saturn Vue, I had to spend $783.57 to fix something that sounded vaguely pancreatic to me.

I understand as much about vehicular mechanics as I do human organs like the pancreas. I have no idea what my pancreas does, if I need it or how to fix it when it stops functioning.

So when the mechanic starts talking about degraded idler arms and mevotech drag links, I start nodding like a chicken in the rain and just get out the checkbook, once again wishing Dad had steered me into a garage instead of a golf course when I was growing up.

Then during the hottest week of the year our air conditioner broke. My HVAC guy said it would take $650 to fix it, but he had a better idea.

“You could get a new heat pump that’ll improve the efficiency of the whole system. I can get you a really nice one for $5,900.”

So now I have to hope for extreme winters and summers so we can realize rapid savings on our electric bills. A pleasant mild day when the furnace/AC unit idles will mean the expense is going to waste. I’ll only be happy when it’s Nome cold or Hell hot.

Then -- and this is the only misfortune that caused me to shed tears -- our 3-year-old 50-inch HDTV popped and went black while my wife was home alone watching. The repairman said it would cost $1,235 to repair the $1,500 behemoth, a foolish calculation when new ones could be had for less.

To me, it was like the day I heard John Lennon died.

I couldn’t believe it. I felt anger, denial, remorse. I wanted to lash out at the person I blamed.

That was my wife. She’s always hated the TV for the very reason I’ve always adored it. She thought it was too big.

Can you believe it? A TV that was too big? I try to avoid cliche profanity, but WTF?

Her hatred stems from my cunning subterfuge the day we bought it in 2007. We agreed on a nifty 42-inch set. Then the second she was out the door (conflicting schedules meant we’d taken two cars) I said to the salesman, “Okay, now I want you to give me eight more inches.”

It’s become impossible for a man to talk about TVs without it sounding sexual. That’s because televisions have usurped the penis as the way for men to prove their masculinity.

We boast about our inches. We talk about how it throbs with 2M 1080i pixel resolution and 100,000:1 lagoon contrast.

A big TV has become the true measure of a man.

It’s true. Right up until the moment he unveiled his breathtaking 56-inch HD monster, we all made fun of our one buddy behind his back for being such a nerdy poindexter (shout out to Ron Shannon, Latrobe, Pa.!)

So it’s not a metaphoric stretch to say the TV’s blindside destruction felt to me like a real kick in the nuts.

Call it Val’s revenge. When she insisted the new TV be no greater than 42-inches, my emasculation was complete.

I argued in vain that I was going to advance all the furniture three feet to compensate for the TV’s shortcomings.

So you see, it’s been a season of unrelenting dreariness for me.

Then on Thursday, finally, some really great news that makes up for all the despair.

My wife and kids left me.

Hallelujah!

Not for good, that would devastate me. I’m pretty sure.

I’m home alone while she’s taken the kids to spend four days with her sister and her five kids.

Talk about a two-fer for me!

I’m truly overjoyed by their absence and again left to wonder how the three people I love more than any others can make me so happy by leaving me all by myself.

So it’s beer for breakfast and donuts for dinner and I’m taking the new TV to Daddy Boot Camp.

I’m going to watch all the violent and profane things I can’t enjoy when the girls are around. That means “Hot Fuzz,” “Shaun of the Dead,” “Midnight Run,” “The Big Lebowski,” and the four-disc best of from the HBO classic, “The Larry Sanders Show.”

And I think I’ll give the nudist thing a try. Yeah, it’s a pleasant day. I’ll shuck the duds and watch TV in the buff.

Of course, I’m sure I’m in for some poignancy amidst my revelry.

I’ll be longing for those eight inches that aren’t ever coming back.

And, to be clear, I’m talking about the old TV, the only measure that matters.

x x x

Tweet of the Week @8days2amish: "There is no punishment too severe for the llama farmer who names any of his livestock Dolly."

Daughter, 4, thinks dad works too much

Conflicting reports from my observant daughters mean I’m either the hardest working man in America or the laziest.

Either way, the gig doesn’t pay squat.

I’ve based much of my identity on a sunny summer afternoon from 2006 when our oldest daughter, then 5, presented me with a Hallmark moment I’ll never forget.

She and her little trio of chums were busily cluttering the kitchen table with colorful scraps of construction paper. Nearby, I was cluttering the counter top with discarded bread crusts that would have rendered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches inedible to the quartet of 5 year olds.

It’s a conversation all children get around to and I was standing right there when the redheaded neighbor girl brought it up.

“What’s your daddy do? Mine helps sick people,” she said with estimable pride.

They went right around in a little circle.

“Mine fixes cars.”

“He builds homes.”

Then, in a matter-of-fact voice, my beloved Josie drove a stake through my self-image as a freelance writer who tried to appear professional. What does her daddy do?

“He plays with me.”

My first thought was, man, that’s not going to look good on the loan applications.

No one’s ever said on their death bed that they wished they’d have put in more hours down at the tire store or spent more time keeping the hedge trimmed.

Nope, it’s always, “Wish I’d have spent more time with the kids.”

I knew then that was one poignant lament I’d never need to utter.

Then our current 4 year old turned my world upside down after I told her I wouldn’t be there at the pool to toss her up in the air because I had to work.

She burst into tears and wailed, “Daddy, you always have to work!”

If on Monday at precisely 12:53 p.m. you were confused by a jarring sound that startled all the neighborhood dogs into howling, it wasn’t a sonic boom.

It was the collective jaws of my wife, my mother, my in-laws, my extended family, my banker, the IRS, all my friends and the wobbly multitudes who’ve ever shared more than one beer with me simultaneously crashing to the ground.

The kid’s wrong, honest. Even when I’m doing what I consider work, it’s really more make-believe work that I hope will one day lead to real work and, hallelujah, a really elusive paycheck.

My wife asks me if I’ve had a good day. I tell her I won’t know for six months.

During some recent e-mail banter, a buddy of mine responded to one of my barbs by sniping, “Why don’t you just go back to pretending you have a job?”

Just last week, my Mom had some friends over. “They asked me what you’ve been doing the last few years. I thought about it and said I didn’t really know. Just what do you do?”

Wish I could tell you, Mom.

I can’t apply for unemployment because I’ve never been employed. I’ve only had three real jobs in my entire adult life and one of them’s been at the Pizza Hut.

I guess I’m in some kind of occupational puberty. My “work” time is spent doing strange things that are disconcerting to grown ups, but I hope will one day grow into something productive.

It is, I admit, an awkward phase.

I’m getting gangbuster feedback from top publishers and agents on my novel and on another couple of non-fiction projects -- and these are real people with real jobs. I swear.

But telling people that just sounds like more evidence that I’m spending too much time in Fantasyland with my make-believe friends.

My real life buddies are always after me to golf more and to splurge on a golf trip with them to Myrtle Beach.

I tell them I’m really close to something good happening and I’m convinced it could happen any day now.

They’ve heard me say that about once a week since 1992.

Really, I believe in my heart I’m onto something and all the voices inside my head are in full agreement with me (I love those guys).

The good news is that now I have at least one person, a 4 year old, who thinks her old man is the hardest working daddy in the whole wide world.

And now it’s my job to prove her wrong.

Put some clothes on, America!

I passed up an opportunity to frolic with the family at the local water park this weekend and it was all because of one stranger’s big toe.

The offender’s neighboring toes weren’t about to win any beauty contests. They looked like witch teeth.

But it was the big toe on his right foot that has me avoiding water parks the way “Jaws” had us all avoiding oceans.

The cracked, yellowish purple nail extended from the foot the way departure planks extend from pirate ships. It seemed to stab out in menace at unassuming passersby. I saw it nearly harpoon a pudgy toddler mesmerized by his fudgesickle

You’d think a toe that dangerous would be banned from water parks for fear it would rupture inflatable rafts by the hundreds.

I know nothing of podiatry, but even a layman could see this damaged toe needed amputating.

I’d recommend from just above the waist.

Yet the owner of this toe bounded about without shame or care that the toe was disgusting to refined gents like myself, if anyone who stands in line to slide down into a pool filled with the urine of 9 year olds can be considered refined.

Understand, I love human beings and I love being human, but our level of over-exposure is verging on toxic.

I recently spent two days at a wonderful midwestern water park and concluded the water park is man’s most delightful non-alcoholic diversion since the advent of the bicycle. On a hot day, it simply can’t be beat.

Yet, the recreation’s rise has coincided with a time when our wanton exhibitionism (reality TV, YouTube . . . self-absorbed blogging!) has never been higher while we as a race have never been been en masse more visually repellent.

First of all, we are well beyond what the art critics used to call Rubenesque. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions. I’m surprised the earth still manages to revolve in just 24 hours. It’s got to be working harder than ever.

If we keep supersizing at the rate we’re going, the earth is going to have a heart attack before even we do.

I remember 10 years ago doing a story about the disappearance of the great American freak show and hearing legendary side show impresario Ward Hall lament that side shows have disappeared because people can see freakish behavior -- extreme body art, piercings, etc. -- at any mall in America.

“Thirty years ago I had a 300-pound Howard Huge that people gawked at for his enormity,” he said, “now the guy selling kettle corn three stick joints down from me weighs 400 pounds.”

We’ve lost our collective modesty and think nothing of letting it all hang out.

Tattoos were something exotic when Ishmael encountered Queequeg in “Moby Dick.”

Now they are so ubiquitous I believe it’s time they be regulated -- not for sanitary reasons, but artistic ones.

Nobody should be allowed to tattoo anything until they’ve mastered drawing on paper the little smiling pony the mail order art schools used to require for entry.

The country is rife with quack doctors, shyster lawyers and hack journalists, but one weekend at the water park convinces me no occupation is as poorly staffed as the one relied upon to decorate our nation’s hillbillies, rednecks and urban posers with replica tattoos to ensure their individuality.

The time in my life when even very drunk women were eager to see any part of me without clothing are now in the rear view mirror. And it’s taking a bigger and bigger mirror to for me to view my rear.

But what I can see ain’t pretty. There are fatty deposits, moles, ragged old hockey scars and unsightly patches of hair that make my back look like it belongs to a mange-ravaged gorilla.

It’s not something you want to see in a Speedo.

Then again in these days when we’re all just three stick joints from a garishly tattooed Howard Huge, what is?

A dog gone celebration

This weekend we’ll be shooting off fireworks, waving sparklers and saying solemn prayers of thanks that we’ve survived so much deadly tumult.

Coincidentally, it is the Fourth of July.

The 234th birthday of the greatest nation in history is secondary to the reason we’re celebrating. This is bigger than that.

On Saturday, Stella goes home. She’s my second cousin’s 6-month old black lab. We’ve been dog sitting her since Monday.

Ken Burns ought to do a documentary.

America’s survived presidential assassinations, Vietnam, Watergate, Kate Gosselin and the multitudes who get their hair cut to look like her.

We’ve survived Stella.

Precocious is a word a lot of people use to describe a puppy like this.

I use crime spree.

The keystones of character I treasure in all canine companions are sweetness and stupidity.

Stella is wild and disobedient. And she’s cunning. If dogs like Stella ever develop opposable thumbs and figure out how to open refrigerator doors, the human race is finished.

“She’s just young and needs attention,” my wife says.

No, I say, she’s incorrigible and needs tased.

I think I could break her, but my daughters restrain me from dispensing the profane discipline I’d so like to deliver.

I try and carry a dish of spaghetti to the dinner table and she jumps on me. I hiss a string of barely printable invective at the dog. The 9 year old bursts into tears.

“Daddy! Stop being mean to Stella!” she cries.

I told her she deserves meanness.

“But it makes me worry you’re going to be mean to me if I’m ever bad.”

I say nothing.

Of course, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. When our youngest gets too big to cuddle, I’m going to inform the girls I’m pioneering an innovative parenting technique I’m calling “Conditional Love.” I’m only going to love the daughter that’s nicest to me.

But for now I’m saddled by parenting convention so I can’t be as mean to the dog as I’d like to be. Thus hamstrung, she’s turned me into a BP executive in the face of a natural disaster I’m impotent to contain.

This is never more evident than when she eludes our incarcerations and breaks out into the wild.

Really, any grown man chasing a disobedient dog must feel like Tony Hayward did in the early days of the endless gulf spill

There’s nothing you can really do. You look feckless even trying and your biggest concern is trying to appear like you care when all you’d really like to do is go back inside and let someone else deal with all the messy chaos.

But Stella broke loose yesterday on my watch. I had to fetch her.

I was in the neighbor’s spacious yard for 15 minutes running in circles after her -- “Stella! Stella!” -- and shouting threats even a dog understands are empty.

I began to realize just how stupid I looked when I saw the neighbors bring out lawn chairs and a cooler full of beer.

They know, too, this show is far from over.

See the girls want a dog. So does my wife (sort of). But we want them to understand just how difficult it is to be responsible for an animal that’s really as big a burden as a new baby.

I don’t want another dog.

So in order to inoculate ourselves against that eventuality, the only solution is to expose the girls to a dog so bad that they’re bound to have second thoughts.

That means more Stella.

And more me chasing after the dog named after the girl that drove Marlon Brando’s character insane in “Streetcar Named Desire.”

“Stell-a! Hey, Stell-ahhh! Hey, Stell-ahhhhhhh!!!”