Tweet round-up

So here you go, another occasional "Tweets of the Month" post. In the interest of titular integrity, I'm only doing one a month.

(By the way, that line was only 126 characters long.)

• AMC's discussed Stallone-tribute day means Rocky will be yo!-biquitous.

• Aging Kevin Bacon is starting to look like Kevin bacon.

• My finances have been in dire straits for so long you think by now they'd have played bass for Mark Knopfler.

• Some Latin words have corrupted meanings: Nothing hospitable about hospitals. Should be called either docitals or discomfitals.

• The only time I hope I ever encounter a monkey wrench is when I'm in the presence of a really loose monkey.

• Gnat Levi Johnson seems like such a jerk I hope Ann Coulter falls madly and blindly in love with him.

• Radioactive leaks found at 48 U.S. nuke sites. Goodness me, could this be industrial disease? (I simultaneously posted this on facebook and was surprised none of my friends recognized this as the Dire Straits song, “Industrial Disease,” proving friends can be just as disappointing as family.)

• Perverted farmers spend too much time on the lamb.

• People who start today slavishly filling out calendars for the next five days are week-minded.

• I keep confusing natural light with neon beer signs, not sunshine. It doesn't help whenever I walk into a bar and see "Natural Light" signs.

• Editors said my lead about National Nude Recreation week is too racy. I told them I'd take another crack at it.

• In 1968 the Rolling Stones released 'Jumpin' Jack Flash and gas, gas, gas was .33 cents a gallon, gallon, gallon.

• Sometimes thinking about taking a nap is as refreshing as actual napping. I wish it worked like that with Friday Happy Hours.

• I'd swear off profanity but fear it would be counter-intuitive.

• I'm so pro-organic I get suspicious whenever I see a margarine-colored butterfly.

• It's acceptable to describe even sweet-tempered bakers in pie shop kitchens as either crusty or flaky.

• Will and Kate wrap up California jaunt and return to England. I guess it's time for them to get back to work.

Thanks for reading!

Zombies at The Pond

My first impression was we were three besieged men in a lifeboat adrift amidst a sea swollen with undesirables trying to claw their way to safety.

We were using our oars to beat them back to their doom.

Then I realized my analogy was all wrong.

We were Shaun, Ed and Liz in the Winchester Pub fighting for our lives against the hungry zombie horde.

We were a real-life depiction of the 2004 zom rom com (zombie romantic comedy) “Shaun of the Dead.”

The Pond had been closed for the entire week while Dave and staff took their summer vacation.

The social vacancy turns many of Latrobe’s most devoted inebriates into zombies.

The week just drags.

People know the bar’s closed, but they still walk up to the doors and press their beaks against the glass. They tug at the door handles.

They call me at my office above the bar and ask if he’s open.

“I swear I saw someone moving around in there. You sure he’s closed?”

Oh, I’m sure.

Of course, if he opened on the sly I wouldn’t tell a soul.

I’m too sentimental about the opportunity to have a closed bar open only to me.

Being welcomed to imbibe in a locked bar is the drinker’s equivalent of joining baseball’s 3,000 hit club.

It’s just you, the owner and several soothing walls of free hootch. It’s something only elite bar patrons ever get to experience.

I’ve lost count the number of times it’s happened to me. I guess that makes me the Pete Rose of drinkers.

I’m dependable, play hurt and every three weeks show up sporting another really bad hair cut.

That’s why I started to tingle when Dave said, pssst, stop in if you see my car out front.

It happened on Friday afternoon.

He unlocked the door and waved me in. I imagine I felt like Charlie did when Willy Wonka welcomed him into the chocolate factory.

He locked the door behind me.

The front door commotion drew the first zombies. They’d seen me enter and thought their Friday Happy Hour was back on.

But Dave just shook his head and mouthed, “W-E’-R-E C-L-O-S-E-D.” The two looked confused and staggered away.

Next at the door came Chuck. He’d texted me earlier that Dave’s car was out front (my office faces the back).

I told him I’d text him the instant I knew if Dave was letting a privileged few in. He must not have trusted me because he showed up without waiting to hear back.

Truly, I was about to text him. He’s an enthusiastic reader of my blog and I reserve all my best favors for those of that designation.

It’s something you might want to keep in mind if a zombie outbreak ever occurs.

They were coming now about one every five minutes. Dave was steadfast in his refusals.

We speculated about who we’d let in. It was a short list.

Cheap tippers were ruled out, as were people who like to argue about politics. We split up some families because we liked the husband, but not the wife and in some instances the reverse.

Regulars include about five regular Joes who are all helpfully named Joe. The Joes would each get a pass.

We agreed it would be wise to let Bill the bartender in. Zombie or not, he terrifies us too much to risk his wrath.

By 5 p.m. zombies were filling the parking lot. Chuck, not wanting to overstay his welcome, made a break for it. He hasn’t been heard from since.

His bravery, not to mention his manners, exceed my own. Plus, there was still plenty of booze.

I wasn’t about to budge.

It’s a true pleasure to spend alone buddy time with Dave. He’s usually busy treating every other customer like they mean the world to him.

Some people go through their entire lives never knowing how much they mean to the people in their little orbits.

Dave is beloved enough he could be mayor or even Santa Claus.

Instead he chooses to run a little family bar where maybe 100 or so otherwise strangers feel welcome to visit and share a little bit of their lives.

It’s one of those rare kinds of thinking man’s taverns where one of Dave’s signature jokes involves Mahatma Gandhi and a squeaky clean punchline that concludes: “He’s a super calloused, fragile mystic who’s hexed by halitosis.”

The telling of it is its own sort of field sobriety test.

Of course, it had to end and that was too bad.

I could have spent the night with him as we roared clear through to that stage of drunkenness where two guys get to weeping about their daddies.

The zombies looking in and seeing us with our arms around each other might have even softened their homicidal appetites. It would have been splendid.

See, Dave’s as cuddly as he is cerebral.

You’d have to be a zombie to not love a guy like that.

Special deliveries in space

I had an alarming thought when I read the mission of the Space Shuttle Atlantis was to bring supplies to the International Space Station.

What if they’ve run out of toilet paper?

“Just try and hold it, Mikhail! It’ll just be another day!”

I can only hope they weren’t serving Mexican last night.

Try as I might I have been unable to find a complete manifest of the supplies they’re bringing. I have to imagine toilet paper would be included.

But what kind of toilet paper? And I’m not talking Cottonelle, White Cloud or Charmin. I talking about what’s bound to be hi-tech TP.

How will future toilet paper differ from current earth rolls?

Will there even be rolls at all? Probably not. That will disappoint me.

I’ve for years enforced a custom in our house that whenever a roll is finished the last user must remove the cardboard from the wall holder and toot -- Doo! Da! Da! Doo! Doo! DOOOO!” -- to trumpet the news a fresh roll is required.

It’s a joyful sound and the kids have so much fun with it I feel glad I didn’t decide “Taps,” also fitting, be played instead.

The thought reminded me of the great American poet Carl Sandburg (1878-1964) who during the darkest days of the Cold War was asked by an earnest student at an august symposium what this great thinker would consider foremost for stocking a fall out shelter.

Sandburg paused thoughtfully, leaned forward and said with grave import, “I would be sure . . . to include plenty of containers . . . to secure . . . all the what Norman Mailer . . . calls . . . shit.”

I understand it was an electric moment. Many were outraged. But I’ll bet just as many ran home to their basement bunkers and started swapping out big cans of baked beans for empty containers with really tight lids.

We know hardly anything about what’s going on in the International Space Station, which has been circling our heads 16 times a day since 1998.

I guess they’re busy, but how could you tell?

A busy scientist is a person with his or her right eye slammed shut tight while the left eye squints into a microscope.

But what could be so fascinating or helpful to warrant that kind of devoted space study? Microscopic porn? That would certainly turn the idea of earth porn on its surgically enhanced head.

There’s now been an uninterrupted human presence in space for 10 years and 248 days. In that time, 197 different humans have been on board.

If there’s been any compelling stories stemming from the $100 billion adventure I’ve not heard them.

There’s been no romance, no passion, no feuds, no fun.

The microbes they study seem to have more interesting lives.

Are we sending uniformly dull people into space or is space just making them uniformly dull?

If I were on board I’d be stir crazy and longing for something more vital than freeze dried salisbury steaks, spare parts, and all the sundry supplies we need for our daily doings.

I’d be longing for a goofball.

I’d beg NASA to send me someone who can quote lines from Rodney Dangerfield’s “Back To School,” someone who’d think smuggling cigars on board was neither inappropriate nor dangerous, someone who’d have trouble sharing the plots of the latest “Messin’ with Bigfoot” ads without cracking up.

Send me one guy to liven up the dying space program and let the earthlings know this is an otherworldly adventure that should be captivating the entire planet.

And make sure he brings a pizza. I’m sure I'd be craving one of those, too.

Tell him to be a fool every so often

And to have no shame over having ever been a fool

Yet learning something over every folly

-- Carl Sandburg, 1936

The skinny on bomb implants

News that terrorists will be soon be smuggling bombs surgically implanted in their bodies has me again realizing I have commitment issues.

Where do they find these zealots? Where do they find these doctors? Is this sort of procedure covered under the new health care law?

The Republicans will go ballistic if they find out really going ballistic is addressed on page 1,293.

My body is my temple and I’m picky about its desecrations. No matter the cause, I’d never smuggle a subcutaneous explosive device to a public event.

I save my zealotry for screwing millionaire mullahs -- or is it moolahs? -- who charge $8 for warm domestic beer at professional sporting events.

It’s impossible to count the number of times I’ve inserted beers and liquor in my body and surreptitiously sneaked them into various Pittsburgh sports arenas.

Of course, I don’t surgically insert them. I pour them in my stomach before entering the buildings (and, as always, thoughtfully recycle the cans). I’d never dream of going to some back alley quacks to have them zipper full cans in my hip for halftime removal.

Unless they’re talking about a single stick of dynamite, the scheme sounds to me as farfetched as it does impractical.

The whole thing again convinces me jihad recruiters must be diabolically persuasive.

“We want you to join the movement!”

“Yes!”

“We want you to be prepared to sacrifice!”

“Yes!”

“We want you to see Dr. Zawahari tomorrow at 10 a.m. He’s going to remove a kidney and fill the vacancy with TNT. If that doesn’t kill you, we want you to board the red eye to London and detonate your new explosive kidney over the Atlantic. Cool?”

“Uh, couldn’t I start by just firing up the internet chat rooms and work my way up?”

And you thought airport pat downs were already too invasive.

A radio report said specially trained dogs will be deployed to the airports to combat the threat. I heard this and immediately thought of my old dog, Casey. A sweet, aggressively affectionate golden retriever, he’d be perfect.

Then I learned I’d misheard. They were talking about bomb-sniffing dogs.

Casey was a bum-sniffing dog.

Still, a dog like him would be perfect in tedious security lines.

Think about it: any doctor who’d agree to perform this procedure couldn’t possibly have the refined skills of the pros who work at places like the Mayo Clinic.

After all, what they’re doing is a clear violation of what Homer Simpson calls their hippopotamus oath.

So if you’re going to get a dangerous explosive implanted in your torso, timing is key. You’re likely going to go on a beeline in still-tender condition from the operating room straight to the airport.

That’s when you’d say hello to Casey.

I always enjoyed introducing Casey to refined and dignified women (I had that rarified opportunity, I think, twice).

“Oh, what a beautiful doggie!” they’d gush while bending way over to pet his luscious blonde fur.

Then, quick as burglar, Casey was behind them goosing his snoot in places where only the boldest proctologists go.

The effect was similar to what would happen if a surgically implanted explosive device went off in their rear ends. Their arms would flail, their hair would instantly Einstein and they’d scream in equal parts terror and delight.

They’d emerge from the intimacy looking disheveled, but oddly invigorated.

So a dog like Casey would be an extraordinary boon to airport security.

He’d be sure to startle any would-be terrorists into post-surgical heart attacks.

And he’d appease ACLU busybodies by never racially profiling.

Christian, Muslim, Hindu, it wouldn’t matter. We’d all get a vigorous butt snuffling from a dog I’ll always remember with fond affection.

As security dogs go, he’d be what could best be described as a true asset.

I miss that dog.

With him it was just the opposite.

That dog never missed.

Posses, verdicts & vengeance

The abundance of sensational violent crime in America is so vast it’s had me pinball from being pro-death penalty back to being staunchly anti-death penalty in just six days flat.

I’ve been opposed to the death penalty since the latter part of the 19th century.

True, that was about 100 years before I was born, but when it comes to the great moral issues I have a very old soul.

I’m talking about “The Oxbow Incident,” a 1943 Western starring Henry Fonda. It’s about a bloodthirsty lynch mob that hangs three suspicious strangers out of vengeance for the murder of a beloved local rancher.

It’s a very satisfying judicial outcome for the ad hoc prosecutorial team, all bluster, booze and tobaccy spit.

As mobs often do, they head straight to the saloon to celebrate when they meet the local lawman and commence to bragging.

That’s when the stunned sheriff says, boys, there’s been a mistake. That rancher’s not dead. 

Actually, there’d been at least four mistakes.

It’s an odd, somewhat stilted film, but highly compelling.

I tend to think about it whenever the local lynch mob starts getting bloodthirsty. I try and break down every death penalty case as either “Oxbow” or “Not Oxbow.”

Richard Poplawski came down squarely in the “Not Oxbow” category.

He gunned down three Pittsburgh police officers in a brutal 2009 ambush. He confessed to it. Bragged about it.

It devastated the community.

My skin crawled every time I read a news story that included the dainty modifier “alleged” cop killer.

He was sentenced to death last Wednesday and my first reaction was, well, what took you so long?

He’s more likely to die of old age than lethal injection and his death row incarceration and innumerable appeals will cost more millions.

And every time I read about his miserable existence, I’ll think this all could have been settled long ago by a boozed up posse of local hotheads.

Now we have the Casey Anthony verdict. People are outraged. They want vengeance.

Me, I’m playing catch up. I only watch celebrity crime news when it involves actual celebrities.

Anthony’s a manufactured celebrity. She’s created by media that need hot young women/men to kill/rob/neglect angelic innocents to compete in the ratings with popular network crime shows about hot young women/men who kill/rob/neglect angelic innocents.

So I wasn’t invested in this one the way so much of America is.

But despite all the sensational evidence, there was something about the hoopla that had me thinking, “Oxbow.”

In this case, I have to put my faith in a unanimous jury verdict.

Getting 12 strangers in polarized America to agree on anything is newsworthy. To get 12 of them to agree on a death penalty murder trial is stupendous.

Heck, I can’t get four people in my house to agree on what kind of toppings to put on the pizza.

So now after a brief fling with frontier justice, I’ve returned to my bedrock conviction that the death penalty in America is all wrong.

It doesn’t deter. It’s too expensive. It clogs the courts. And if you judge by the number of convictions overturned by DNA evidence or sloppy police work, it’s too often wrong.

Dead wrong.

I’m once again content leaving god-like life and death decisions to the one who most fits the description God like.

I understand the outrage over the Anthony verdict. I pray one day we’ll all recognize justice.

But this posse can ride without me.

Happy National Nude Recreation Week!

A game of 8 ball played between two naked men is still called 8 ball.

That’s just one of the things I learned during the month it took me to exhaustively research my just-posted msnbc.com story heralding National Nude Recreation Week.

It’s an evergreen kind of story I’m going to relentlessly pitch each and every year until I find a publication that’ll agree to headline it, “Hams Across America!”

I found talking to nudists over the phone is a lot like talking to fundamentalist Christians in that both are reluctant to admit any of their members might enjoy sex.

It’s an understandable reaction from starchy fundamentalists. They’ve been taught ever since Adam sex means trouble. It might explain their ardor for immaculate conception.

A deity waving a magic wand -- Bibidi! Bobidi! Boo! -- just seems so much tidier than the nuts and bolts of biological sex -- and I’m not speaking metaphorically when I’m referring to hardware. Many popular genital piercings historically involve actual bolts.

As for nuts, well, maybe I’m speaking a bit metaphorically.

The nudists went out of their way to differentiate themselves from swingers and swappers and, really, anyone that enjoyed sex.

Rules at a typical nudist resort are explicit: They don’t want anyone’s magic wands waving around.

Rules stipulate if a naked man finds himself becoming aroused he needs to cover himself with a towel, lay down on his stomach or depart the premises.

The only thing today’s nudists are interested in raising is awareness.

Almost every nudist I interviewed asked me if I were one of them. I had to say, sorry, no. I don’t share their beliefs, their values, and I wouldn’t begin to speculate on what kind of secret handshakes nudists exchange.

It was a lie.

You see, I do consider myself a nudist.

Well, let’s say I’m a situational nudist.

I’m naked whenever I think I can get away with it.

I guess in that way I’m like Bugs Bunny. He’d start out every episode naked and perfectly at peace. But as the world came crashing in on him, he’d don costumes like opera gowns or doctor’s scrubs depending on what bone-headed choices Elmer Fudd made at the time.

I’m like that. I’ve slept naked since college and still wake up everyday in the buff. I can’t recall now what motivated the choice. I wish I could say it involved dusk-to-dawn passions, but I don’t think that was it.

More than likely it involved the over-consumption of Ouzo, a powerful Greek liquor that imparted the unusual side effect of me scattering my clothes all over Athens, Ohio.

But nudity seemed to suit me or, more accurately, it seemed to birthday suit me.

I was soon naked in my dorm room, in the halls, in the laundry room and once on a dare through the length of the packed dining hall at Ohio University’s South Green in just 1 minute and 12 seconds breaking a record that had stood for 3 years.

And I was rarely near a body of water when my naked body wasn’t frolicking in the water. I loved to skinny dip.

Times change. Now the only time I’m naked is in the dark with my wife.

The main reasons I’m rarely ever naked anymore is, of course, my daughters.

Children are where I draw the line regarding nudity -- and I draw it thick in broad strokes from my hips to just above the knees.

Yet nudism still has its appeal. It sounds contradictory, but having to wear pants bums me out.

This was never more apparent than last month when we enjoyed three days at a private residence on the banks of the Chesapeake.

The magnificent house and pool were a nudist paradise, at least for the girls who enjoyed their first skinny dip. And I now have pictures that’ll refute anyone who dares call my wife a prude.

And there I was, a veteran nudist unable to shuck my preposterous baggy swimsuit.

I wondered in frustration if I’ll ever get to enjoy a real skinny dip again.

Of course, according to the obesity charts prepared by the Centers for Disease Control, the point may be moot.

I’d have to drop about 20 pounds to even qualify as a skinny dipper.

2,487

I revealed the snazzy new business card to Josie, 10, with all the flair of a Vegas magician removing a hippo from a hat.

What did she think?

“BOR-ing.”

I told her she’s confusing BOR-ing with ENIG-matic, and I’d have explained just what enigmatic meant if she hadn’t instinctively turned back to the hi-def broadcast of the Disney Channel that is everything my new cards are not.

I wonder if my daughter’s creative sensibilities would be more refined if I spent half as much time fathering as I devoted to the blog.

It’s pure speculation because I’ll not turn my back on the blog.

Unlike my offspring, the blog’s never said I'm boring, smell bad or embarrass it around its prissy blog friends.

If the blog could just run out and play catch with me, it’d be the son I never had.

Alas, it was only the second blog-related disappointment in so many days.

See, June was a milestone month for www.EightDaysToAmish.com.

Regular readers -- and your numbers are growing -- realize the blog output has dramatically increased.

I gauged from the enthusiasm I hear that readers would welcome more.

So starting in late May, I began producing more while maintaining the same rough format. The word count for each item is still about 650 words.

The difference between my blog and so much other internet content is I’m seeking readers who actually read.

I’ve never posted a video and the pictures are like postage stamps that may or may not illustrate what’s actually going on.

I see some very successful blogs that that simply post pictures of their dogs with clever captions.

If it were up to me, I’d petition the Greater Blog Counsel to revoke their blogging licenses.

Of all my writing enterprises, the one that pays the least -- this blog -- provides the most satisfaction. And now I’m becoming convinced this will be one of the breakout blogs that actually starts earning money.

I just don’t know when.

But the numbers are starting to impress.

I’ve noted before how unreliable the Google “stats” page is. There are often times when stats registers three distinct page views, but the stats audience section shows there are 10 readers in America, four in Denmark and two in Iran.

Iran! Can you believe it?

It’s true. I have a small but steady constituency of readers in Iran.

I can only dream one of them is Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and that one day he institutes sweeping liberal reforms and says he was moved to do so by the wisdoms he read at www.EightDaysToAmish.com.

I have to think that would move the meter.

But that’s just one reason why June was such an interesting month.

As you can see to the right, stats tallies the number of page views since 10/10/10 (I opted for calendar cool to commence the tally).

What you can’t see is the page views are broken down into all-time, monthly, daily and current categories.

It tells me that January had 1,718 page views. The number was approached but not exceeded throughout 2011.

Until June.

June page views smashed that number at about Day 20. As the month wound down, I aspired to a nice, round number: 2,500.

On the morning of June 29, I needed just 79 page views.

For a blog that had been averaging 85 a day and with two lively topics on deck, it seemed a cinch.

It was not to be. The next two days I became like the guest of honor at a surprise party no one bothered to attend.

Was it the holiday? Topic selection? Had my evil daughter used Facebook to poison my readership?

I don’t know. But as the clock ticked down on June, my page views for the month froze at 2,487.

It seemed to me as if the great Roberto Clemente had gone on his 1972 mercy mission and greater glory with 2,999 career hits.

My ludicrous analogies make up in color for what my black and white business cards lack.

I vow it won’t happen again.

I’m going to do something that goes against the ethos of a blog deliberately named to hearken plain living.

I’m going to start promoting.

I have 1,000 new business cards. If you’re a fan of the blog and are so disposed, please e-mail me (storyteller@chrisrodell.com) and I’ll send you a score or so you can distribute to like-minded friends who might enjoy these musings.

I’ll be grateful.

And if the blog ever starts earning real money I’ll send you something snazzier than an envelope full of the world’s most BOR-ring business cards.*

* Offer applies to all general readers and clerical leaders of repressive fundamentalist Middle Eastern nations that begin with the letter “I.”