A blog on bloggin' and other things

• I’ve been doing this blog fairly steadily for six months now and seemed to have settled on a pattern of one every two or three days. Doing 15 a month as I did in June is a bit taxing, but doing fewer than 10 is too skimpy. I’m doing a round-up of items here on the last day of October because it’ll give me 13 for the month. I could do one a day if I did round-ups of little items, but that feels like cheating. I believe someone who considers themselves a writer should be able to dash off a 700-word or so essay every couple of days or so. And besides as you four or five regular readers of this blog know, I’ve got nothing better to do. I’m not kidding.

• I was operating the video cam the other day when it began malfunctioning. Last night the fancy remote for the big HDTV began acting funny. Today, the screen on the iBook I rely on to do most of my work went black (this is being written on my reliable back up iMac while I try and find salvation). But it’s a nasty string of difficulties that has me wondering if I’m in the midst of some sort of curse. I know that’s silly superstition, but just to be on the safe side, I’m not going to change the baby’s dirty diapers for another two months or so.

• Not that it matters to anyone but me, but I’m proud that I’ve done most of these blogs in less than an hour and usually in 30 minutes. Being able to write fast is a gift I’m proud to have. Of course, if I took maybe just a wee bit more time, it would make more sense and I’d be more successful, but I’d have less time to play with the kids and joke around. I have my priorities.

• Halloween is rapidly ascending my long list of least favorite holidays (the only three flawless holidays revolve around eating (Thanksgiving), drinking (St. Patrick’s Day) and joking (April Fool’s Day). I’ve never liked dressing up and never will again. Adults dressing up is another example of adults stealing a holiday from the kids. As for the kids, it’s gotten way too excessive. It’s become a veritable Mardi Gras of teeth-rotting redundancy. Just this week, we’ve had four Halloween celebrations that cut into my bar time and once more cast me in the uncomfortable yet familiar role of bad daddy. Let’s make this clear: Halloween should be for children under 14. It should be one night a year. That night should be on Halloween. And any father who would rather watch a World Series game with his buddies in the local tavern than go trick or treating for the third time isn’t being a bad guy. He’s just being a throwback good guy.

• I thought the Barack Obama infomercial was well crafted. If anyone is still sitting on the fence it should have swayed them to his side. But, really, if anyone is still sitting on the fence four days before this two-year election’s about to end, then partisans from both sides should be able to whip apples and rocks at them until we knock them off. If a McCain partisan knocks them onto the Obama side, the dithering victim’s vote goes to the Arizonan and vice versa.

• I’m eager for the election to come and go, not because of the robo-calls, the political commercials or because there’s always a possibility a shouting match will break out if I wind up in a political conversation with someone as stubborn as myself. No, I’m looking for it to end so I’ll stop rushing home to watch “The View” at 11 a.m. To my everlasting shame, I’ve been hooked ever since the gang started beating up on uptight conservative Elizabeth Hasselbeck. She’s the most obnoxious TV personality since Kathy Lee Gifford. I’m still chagrined Regis never slammed her in the face with a grapefruit. I didn’t like Hasselbeck when she was on Survivor and I don’t like her now. Every time, she opens her mouth, I wish Jeff Probst would walk onto the stage, whack her with an immunity idol and say it was time for her to go, “The tribe has spoken. And they want you to shut the hell up."

• My wife is the bravest woman I know because I’ve seen her defiantly enjoy a glass of wine or two when we were out to dinner and she was heavy with child. She smiled through all the withering scowls of those who are convinced that even a sip of alcohol will scramble the newly formed brains of the fetus. I’d point out that most of our mothers drank and smoked to excess while pregnant with us, but I doubt that would strengthen my argument. But both our daughters turned out fine, and Val enjoyed the meal more. Now, there’s a few studies out that say pregnant woman drinking in moderation doesn’t hurt the child and may, in fact, help its development. Me, I drank like a fiend both times she was pregnant.

• It's come to my attention that some regular readers of this blog -- thanks to each of you! -- have never seen the home page the boys at Apollo Design in Latrobe came up with for me. It's great. Check it out at www.EightDaysToAmish.com.

• When people ask what it’s like to be working all by myself I tell them it’s like being all alone in a life raft miles from the nearest shore. The only thing worse is when technological problems come up. For me, that’s like being all alone in that life raft and hearing a sudden, urgent hiss. It really sucks and if you don’t find the leak, you’re sunk.

• Besides being a fast writer, another skill of which I’m excessively proud is my ability to know precisely when to quit.

A flatulent discussion about unfair gas prices

Now, let me get this straight. When oil was trading for $140 a barrel about three months ago, the gas prices were averaging $4 a gallon.

Today, oil’s down below half that and gas is about $2.69 a gallon.

Now that oil’s down to half of what it was six months ago, wouldn’t it stand to reason that a gallon of gas would cost an equivalent $2? Can anyone explain that so it’ll make sense to me? It looks like we’ve been getting screwed on both the up and the down.

And can anyone explain why we’re so happy about it? Why people are skipping around with more spring in their step when, if the market and common sense are any indication, we’re still being overcharged by nearly $10 for every fill up?

No, of course you can’t. No one can. Even the best experts, the people we rely on to ensure the engines of commerce run smoothly, have no clue what they’re talking about.

For heaven’s sake, if even a steady, experienced hand like George W. Bush, a man who earned a master’s degree in business from Yale, one of the most elite and prestigious business schools in the world, a man of steely resolve, looks confused and frightened by what’s happening on Wall Street, then what are common simpletons like the rest of us supposed to think?

Okay, bad example. But you get the picture. Economics has been made so deliberately complicated in the pursuit of an easy buck that the system’s broken. No one can understand it.

It’s one of the reasons why I’m defiantly proud to have earned an F in Economics 101 at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, a place one popular T-shirt declared to be “The Fountain of Knowledge Where We’ve All Come to Drink.”

And drink we did. We drank until we ran out of money. Then we called home for more. And it didn’t stop us from drinking when even that was gone. It was all thanks to a then-groundbreaking new business model.

Yes, those were the days of the magical Blue Key Card. It was the early 1980s before they were so reckless about giving credit cards to drunken unemployed students. That’s where the promoters of Blue Key Card saw their opening.

The Blue Key Card was offered for free to fiscally casual college students around the midwest. It could only be used at bars and restaurants.

So when you ran out of your money and Dad got wise to what you were doing with his, you simply, hallelujah, deployed the Blue Key Card. I still remember the euphoria that would erupt at the bar when me or one of my buddies decided to extend the inebriation by pulling out the BKC and brandishing it at the surly bartender the way gallant King Arthur unsheathed Excalibur in defense of some fair maiden.

“Pour us goblets of your finest brandy, you drink-schlepping scoundrel! Our night has just begun! Bring us your finest meats and cheeses! Tonight we live like noblemen! It’s not costing any of us a dime! And if your mood improves toward our drunken revelries, we might even toss in an extra farthing for you, so step lively!”

Of course, as we knew from bitter experience the next day would bring the inevitable hangover. What we didn’t foresee was the mailman bringing us an inevitable bill. Who knows how many of these transient students simply skipped on the bills before they folded? (I’m still kicking myself for having responsibly paid mine off, damn it.)

That’s when I learned all I ever needed to know about economics. Talk all you want about supply, demand and things like decreasing elasticity. None of it matters. I learned it’s better to pay as you go. The good times will eventually result in a bill, not to mention a skull-popping hangover.

And what happened to the enterprising gang who ran Blue Key Card? You’d think they would have wound up bankrupt and disgraced, but who knows? Perhaps they went on to run mega-billion dollar companies with sterling reputations. You know, places like Enron, Bear Stearns or Freddie Mac.

Which brings us back to the artificially inflated gasoline prices. Just today, Exxon reported a $15 billion quarterly profit.

It’s clear they’re screwing us. I don’t know how they’re getting away with it, but I know this much.

If they keep it up, I’m going to start looking around for a mini-mart that accepts the Blue Key Card.

Exposing myself to high school students

I exposed myself to about 30 high school communications students yesterday. I was there to answer their questions about how I earn my living.

I told them you need to be provocative -- that’s what I tried to do here with that first sentence. So there’s no need to alert the authorities.

Of course, I didn’t expose myself in the criminal manner. But whenever I talk to students or people who sincerely desire to write for a living, a big encouraging part of me gets naked.

I’m usually self-effacing to the point of belittling about what I do for a living. I think that has to do with where I call home. Latrobe isn’t bohemian Chelsea or some dippy art enclave perched on the unstable cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

This is western Pennsylvania, a land populated by good hearted men and women with a reputation for rolling up their sleeves and going to work. They punch clocks in steel mills, on police beats and in the blue collar jobs that invariably lead to sore feet, aching backs and clocks in basement bars that count down the years, months and days until retirement brings relief.

How on earth can I compare what I do for a living with what they do? Even a rare day that’s bottom-line productive means having a pleasant chat with someone, sitting down in my cozy little office, selecting an inspiring iPod playlist for the stereo and then trying to conjure up a compelling tale. And there’s usually some brainstorming juggling involved.

I’m a storyteller. I had it put on my business cards -- Storyteller -- in places where other people put things like accountant, attorney or podiatrist.

So I go out of my way to deprecate how I make my money. In the great scheme of things, it’s like going to work in a sandbox full of bright little Tinker toys. It’s an endless recess.

I always wonder later if it’s right to tell students it’s possible to earn a living -- not necessarily a good one -- by skating through life the way I do. But I’ll never flinch in that situation.

How could I? It’s just so flattering to sit there and have so many bright eyes and raised hands ask you questions about how I got where I am, a place that clearly many of them think they’d like to be.

I was pleased that so many of them had read and seemingly enjoyed many of the offbeat stories from the obscure part of my website I call “The Orphanage,” a section of unpublished stories that are available for love or professional adoption. They wanted to know if the how much heart I put into satirical stories about the possibilities of golf in heaven and how, just maybe, God would be grateful if for just one week nobody prayed for anything.

They wanted to know where my inspiration for fiction and essays comes from. I fumbled around, but told them I really don’t know. If I did, I’d hunt the bastard down and flog the crap out of it for the many days when it spends avoiding me.

It went so well I’m probably going to keep the raft of e-mails from students who went out of their way to thank me and tell me I’m great. I may re-read them on the days when mounting rejections sinisterly try to convince me otherwise.

After the bell rang and I was getting read to leave, one friendly, lanky kid asked if I was famous. I felt like whistling the whole bunch of them back into their seats for a schedule-disrupting discourse on the answer:

“No,” I laughed, “I’m not famous. And I won’t consider myself so until editors and publishers call me and beg for fresh stories. I’m not the kind of writer who wants Spielberg or Eastwood to turn his novel into a movie. I’m the kind of writer that hopes someone -- anyone -- will publish his novel so it won’t sit there like a nagging reminder that it was just a colossal waste of time . So, no, I’m not famous.”

It was the only fib I told the whole day.

Because, truly, I am famous. I’m famous in places like that classroom and anyplace where someone struggling aspires to live solely by his or her wits. I’m famous to people who want to create something out of nothing and get paid, no matter how meager, for the proud little result.

Several of the students have said they were going to start reading this journalistic equivalent of a lemonade-stand for inspiration. And you know what that means.

It means I’ll have to strive to be even more ruthlessly honest. I can’t be caught in some rhetorical mischief because it’s likely someone’s going to call me on it and expose me as a fraud.

And I wouldn’t want to get caught with my pants down.

Pokin' along in cars that can't fly

It’s time for auto manufacturing giant GM to chuck its tired 100-year-old game plan and ignite the future by mass producing sleek fleets of flying cars.

I’m sick and tired of opening the newspaper -- and, yes, I recognize the irony of learning about one dying industry by foolheartedly supporting another -- and reading that GM is shedding another 5,000 jobs in some godforsaken blue collar part of what Sarah Palin calls “real America.”

I’ve long argued about the silliness of building an entire industry around the 160-year-old technology that is the internal combustion engine.

Our best computers become obsolete in five years tops. But we still rely on the same earth polluting, fossil fuel consuming technology to propel our lives that was a brandspanking new innovation when James K. Polk was president.

(Pointless aside: Polk, the 11th president, made his name as a lawyer and legislator in Nashville, where I worked for three years in the late 1980s. Whenever I, a real history buff, come across his name I’m reminded of the still existing Polk Motel and think it would be fun to spend an illicit afternoon there just so you could always say you enjoyed a “Poke at the Polk.” Printing something like that on promotional T-shirts would be a cheeky fun way to boost business.)

“But if we all of a sudden stop using the internal combustion engine, industries will crumble,” fret many business experts.

Hallelujah. They are businesses that already failing and they used to say the same thing about steamboats and the railroads. Time marches on.

We need to seize on the best of American innovation and dramatically vault over existing technologies. That means it’s finally time for the flying cars.

I remember a conversation with a buddy who lamented that 2008 is still essentially a horse ‘n’ buggy age.

“Really, there’s been no true, world changing innovations,” he said. “I remember growing up and thinking that by now we’d all be zooming around in jet packs. And I want my jet pack!”

He’s absolutely right. I find it hard to believe that GM engineers aren’t every bit as imaginative and talented as those employed by Apple, the gold standard of American innovation and the reason why there’s never been a better time for those who enjoy vapid distractions to be alive and stumbling mindlessly down sidewalks.

Of course, if we all had flying cars these innocents would be spared the unsightly obliteration that comes from cocooning themselves from realties like on-rushing traffic at the approaching crosswalks.

And a venerable company like GM announcing it was pursuing inexpensive, green and popular flying cars would inspire the nation in a way not seen since the dawn of the U.S. space program. The best young minds in the world would line up to participate.

The enormous federal deficit could be slashed as expensive road building and maintenance projects could be shelved. Who needs asphalt roads when cars are little more than relics of nostalgia?

And, perhaps best of all, the advent of the flying car would help eliminate another ailing industry that ought to be put out of our mutual misery: airlines. I’m convinced that someday soon our children will look back and wonder how we as a people ever allowed ourselves to be treated the way we do simply for having the need to travel.

So bring on the flying cars. It took us fewer than 10 years to put a man on the moon from the day President Kennedy boldly challenged America to strive to do so. Putting a man and his minivan in the air shouldn’t take nearly as difficult.

I expect to have mine in the garage by the year 2015. Then you know what I’m going to do next?

I think I’ll celebrate the achievement by flying my wife down to Nashville for a visit to the ol’ Polk Motel.

She's a bit of a history buff, too.

It's a wonder-full life

The hot water was pouring down all over my body as I stood in the shower in deep contemplation about that day’s shampoo.

Should I use a splash of Val’s good stuff? Or should I go with the industrial stuff I use near daily? Or given that I’d be getting my monthly hair cut in about an hour, should I just scrub it with a bar of soap?

So what’d I do?

I grabbed the good stuff and poured out a healthy palm full. I felt honor bound to give the hairs that had served me so well a kind of last meal before I dutifully took them off to their scissored demise.

I wonder how much further along what for lack of a better word I call my “career” would be if I devoted such strategic thinking to my livelihood. I’d doubtless be overscheduled with award dinners and gala parties held on my behalf.

Of course, that would mean I’d be missing multiple reruns of things like M*A*S*H, Seinfeld and Green Acres and I have to wonder if it’d be worth it.

I wonder about a lot of things.

For instance, years ago, I began to wonder about my lazy good-for-nothing left hand. It never did a damn thing.

Sure, I’m right handed, but that didn’t mean the left hand couldn’t, well, lend a hand once in while. I wouldn’t trust it to toss a dart if a pregnant woman was standing within eight feet of the cork, but it could pick up a beer mug once in a while.

Ever since, I’ve made a concerted effort to drink lefthanded, to brush my teeth left handed and operate the computer mouse with the southerly paw. Think about it. It all makes perfect sense.

If you’re brushing your teeth with your right hand exclusively, you’re probably neglecting some of the back teeth on your left side. And if you’re grinding away with the computer mouse with only your right hand, think about what you’re doing to your overall posture -- that upraised right arm jittering all over the place while your left side remains dormant.

I’m convinced that many of the aches and infirmities that afflict the elderly aren’t from some long ago acute injury but rather from the accumulation of daily habits we never bother to change.

So given all my free time devoted to wondering silently about these health issues, I began to proselytize aloud about this sort of wisdom.

It’s a fun pastime to see the expressions on people’s faces when you suggest to them that, really, for their own good and the good of their teeth they should switch hands.

Most people will simply try to ignore you. Some will stare at you like slack-jawed sheep. But once in a while, you can actually make an impression.

That happened with one of my regular bartenders -- and, yes, feel free to wonder what one person needs with more than one bartender. Sure he thought I was crazy to devote even a minute to thinking about it, but putting that aside he saw a kernel of wisdom in the idea.

He was the first guy I thought about a couple of months ago after I’d left an appointment to get a new suit tailored. The tailor was doing his mundane measurements when he abruptly stopped.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” he said. “That’s something you don’t see too often.”

Something wrong?

“Not at all. But your arms are exactly the same length. I measured twice to be sure. Most people have right arms that are much longer if they’re right handed, and longer left arms if they’re left handed. Yours are exactly the same length.”

I dashed straight to the bar to tell Keith, who couldn’t have been more effusive in his gushing support.

“Hey, man, it’s paying off! That’s great! Guess what, everybody -- Rodell’s arms are both the same length!”

At least I think he was being supportive. It could have been mocking ridicule. I often confuse the two.

But is it paying off? Am I making a difference? Will it matter years from now when everyone else is walking around lopsided that I am pointing straight up? Am I doing something that will be beneficial to my health or am I just wasting my time thinking about so many possibly trivial matters?

I wonder.

When church is hell

I went to church Sunday for the first time since Satan first possessed my 2-year-old daughter. The last time had been exactly like the chilling scene in “The Omen” from 1976 when devil-spawn Damien screamed as if he was being flayed by invisible whips at the mere site of the holy church.

I used to wonder if it was hubris that made me think our first daughter, Josie, was the perfect child. I wondered if I was one of those obnoxious parents who could find no flaws in a daughter that everyone else secretly thought was spoiled.

But she’d sleep peacefully through the night and would wake up smiling. With her, laughter was a habit. She was cuddly, well-behaved and blessed with a sunny disposition that drew smiles from strangers in places like grocery stores. What’s not to love?

That she is the perfect child led to the obvious egotistical conclusion: That, I, her father, am the perfect father and Val the perfect mother.

I’ve managed to stay awake in church long enough to learn that spiritual correction always follows excess.

It was two years ago in June that God gave us with the heavenly antidote to our foolish pride. Conveniently, we named her Lucinda Grace, a name that easily morphs into Lucy-fer, one of the top a.k.a.s employed by the Prince of Darkness.

I’m talking here like I’m possessed with a Talmudic wisdom in the ways of religion. That’s untrue. It’s an endlessly baffling topic to me. I want to believe in God and try to lead a good life that’ll ensure I’ll get to heaven.

But who really knows what that’ll be like? Some believe it’ll be reincarnation. Others say it’ll be an eternity of sitting around worshipping God, kind of like one of those obscure religious cable channels I breeze right past.

I have a friend who says that if heaven isn’t hottubs full of horny, naked harp-strumming supermodels he’s going to start looking around for the suggestion box.

Josie’s trying to get out of going to Sunday school because she says it’s more boring than staying home and playing in the leaves. And who am I to argue?

I really enjoy going to church, but must confess I spend more time thinking about God when I’m golfing in the sunshine (or deep, deep, in the luscious woods where I shank my drives) than I do in church.

In church I spend a lot of time thinking about screwing the sultry church organist. Now, she’s my wife and it was in that very Lutheran church that we were married so it’s all on the up-and-up, but I could see there might be a gray area in the lusty distractions.

Lucy has a similar sort of problem. She sees her mother sitting up there and wants to go play. She doesn’t understand why I won’t let her march down the aisle, around the pastor preaching in the pulpit and up onto the bench so she can start making a racket by banging the keys the way she does at home when Mommy’s trying to practice.

I respect our church, the people who are there to worship, and our wonderful pastor too much for that. So I drag her the hell out of there, her unholy screams nearly cracking the stained glass depictions of the heavenly saints performing their Biblical miracles.

Yesterday, she made it the whole way through without one Satanic episode. She sat beside me and Josie, colored and made playful babbling sounds that charmed without disrupting. In fact, you could say Lucy-fer was angelic.

Afterward, as they always do, everyone assured me she’s not a problem and that it’s important for children to receive a good religious foundation, the implication being that I’m failing her whenever she’s not there -- and that’s a lot.

I don’t know whether I’m doing the right thing or not. I’m just trying to be a good father and a good member of our little church.

I just know if I wind up in the afterlife and somebody sends me heavenly “Wish You Were Here!” postcard featuring a picture of a hot tub full of horny, naked harp-strumming supermodels, well, there will be hell to pay.

Ringo tired of being a Starr?

Ringo Starr posted a bizarre rant indicating he’s done signing autographs in, gadzooks, four days. “I won’t be signing anything mailed after October 20,” he says. “Don’t send it. It’s going to be tossed. I’m warning you with peace and love, I have too much to do. So no more fan mail!”

I saw this in the news and immediately had two thoughts: Ringo Starr’s busy? And he still has fans?

If a Starr like Ringo’s busy it must mean the Hollywood Squares is back on the air. He’s devolved into that kind of celebrity. And he’s not even center square worthy. Save that for someone like Ashton Kutcher or Danny Bonaduce.

Has anyone thought of asking Pete Best what he thought about poor Ringo?

Best was behind the drum kit for two years before Ringo took over. He lost out to Ringo on one of history’s most golden tickets. He could have been a Beatle. In fact, he was a Beatle. But Ringo snaked his way in doing what Ringo did best -- and I don’t mean keeping a tidy beat.

No, he was glib and charming, enough so that John, Paul and George invited him to tag along on their magical mystery tour to fabulous fame and fortune. And poor Pete went on to be the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question.

Too busy? I know he doesn’t golf, the time-consuming pastime that I’d devote my entire time to if I was wealthy and the last significant piece of work -- if you can call swinging the drumsticks work -- I’d done had been in 1969.

He may not golf, but I know a rich and famous guy who does. He’s Arnold Palmer. You want his autograph? Just ask. Ever since he became famous -- about 10 years before Richard Starkey became Ringo Starr -- he’s felt a gentlemanly obligation to devote about an hour every day to carefully signing autographs.

If you or someone you know wants his autographed picture, just send a note requesting one to him at PO Box 52, Youngstown, Pa. 15696. He’ll even pay for the return postage. Or if that’s too much trouble, just e-mail me and I’ll forward your note. Really, you ought to do it for a friend or loved one this Christmas. They’ll get a real kick out of it. The man’s a classic.

I asked Doc Giffin, Palmer’s affable assistant for 40 years, if Mr. Palmer, the CEO of an enormous business empire, is too busy to sign autographs. “Not at all. He still gets about 20 to 25 requests every day and he signs and returns every one of them.”

Palmer considers it a privilege to sign autographs for the people who’ve so ardently supported him for more than 50 years of fame that rivals and in many cases exceeds Ringo’s. And check it out (www.ArnoldPalmer.com). It’s immaculate. Surgeons who leave scars on supermodels aren’t as careful with scalpels as he is with a pen.

Palmer’s bragged that his name is nearly worthless on eBay because of the glut of autographs and pieces of memorabilia he’s signed.

I’m guessing Ringo Starr doesn’t have a Doc Giffin working for him. If he did, he would have told him something like, “Look, you’re a Beatle, but you’ll never be more than the fourth most popular Beatle out of four -- and that includes the two who’ve already died. In fact, most people consider you like the Beatle mascot. They want to meet the others. You, they’d like to dangle from their rearview mirrors.

“You’re lucky you’re rich and famous because, let’s face it, you never had the talent to make it on your own. Now, it’s not going to kill you to take maybe two hours a week to sign your name for people who’ve given you your magnificent homes around the world, your lavish lifestyle and your still-georgous Bond-girl wife.

“Now go back to your tanning bed, your cricket matches or whatever the hell else it is you do in your supposedly busy life. And here, sign this: it’s my bill for $5,000. Consider it a bargain for all the ridicule I’m saving you for not putting up that silly message.”