Bee stung "vet" on Memorial Day

It is said that God never gives us more than we can handle. If that is so, then God must think I’m a sissy.

If He didn’t before, He sure does now.

Because on this Memorial Day weekend I’m seeking a Purple Heart from my golf buddies because of the round-ruining injury I sustained prior to Thursday’s afternoon hookie match.

I have a real spring in my step the days I’ve cleared for golf. I look forward to being out with my buddies in the sunshine, talking sports, drinking a few beers and trying to deploy a disruptive fart timed to coincide with an opponent’s backswing.

But I also want to play well. That’s why I was extra excited on Thursday. I’d played great the last time out. I’d putted well, was crisp around the greens and really stung the ball off the tee.

Now I feel bad for the ball. Because I know how much it hurts to get really stung.

Excepting self-inflicted hangovers, my life is so painfree that my body is confused when it’s surprised by the sensation.

That’s what happened as I was leaving my office to meet Ron in the parking lot. The ceiling light by the door has been broken for months so I couldn’t see the bee on the door knob.

Had I seen it, I doubt it would have registered anyway. I’d have likely dismissed seeing one relaxing on the door knob as an hallucination, and I welcome those breaks in reality’s tedium.

But there in the dark, I grasped the knob and it felt like someone evil took a pain-filled syringe and injected it into the tender webbing between my left thumb and index finger.

Ouch!

It hurt like hell, but mostly I felt stunned disbelief.

How was it part of God’s plan to ruin my round of golf by having my left hand bee stung? It was as confounding to me as why He’s wanted to keep me so poor for so long.

A bee sting made no sense. There in the dark, I thought maybe it was a metal splinter.

Either way, I couldn’t tell my golf buddies and had to freeze out the pain. We’re stoics when it comes to “feelings.” Any complaint is dismissed as a preemptive excuse for all the bad golf that’s bound to come one way or another.

It would be different if I golfed with women. They’d be sympathetic, coddle me and say things like, “There, there, baby. It’ll be all right.”

But golfing with women would radically alter the enjoyment of the day. Profanity would be frowned upon. Instead of sports, I’d have to talk about the kids and pretend I remember things like their names and their interests. As for farts, well, it would be out the window with that noxious mischief.

I encourage women to golf, just not with me.

I come by that chauvinism honestly. It’s the way Dad raised his boys. He said GOLF stood for: Gentleman Only, Ladies Forbidden.

Oddly, in his last year, he completely reversed that sporting misogyny and enjoyed golfing with women. I think the reason was the old man needed someone he could outdrive.

Either way, he must have realized his betrayal and a year after he began golfing with skirts, he did the honorable thing and just up and died.

I can’t say I felt like dying on Thursday, but I was clearly off my game. I hardly sipped a beer. Played lousy and came home early and sober. The pain I’d fought to ignore all day overcame me when I got home and saw the hand -- a golf glove had concealed it all day -- all red and swollen to the size of catcher’s mitt.

I’d found the spent, crunchy bee carcass right below the door know where it inflicted its last fatal act of menace.

When you think about it, the bee differs little from an Islamic terrorist. It gives its life to mindlessly kill something others love, in this case a day of golf and drinking.

And what motivates the worker bee? Maybe some fundamentalist bee cleric tells it a heaven awaits it where instead of it always serving the queen, a hive full of voluptuous virgin queens await to service it in bee paradise.

Odd, isn’t it, that I can take something as simple as a golfer being stung by a bee and equate it to the life-and-death struggle our brave soldiers face every day. On Memorial Day, no less.

Really, guys like me ought to just say thanks and then buzz off.

Thank you, vets.

Bring on the 'canes

I fell in love with the morning show expert the second he opened his mouth. He was talking about killing.

Top killing, that is.

He was someone from someplace in Louisiana and he was giving his opinion of BP’s progress in this great big wretched mess.

And he was giving it with a magnificent baritone drawl that immediately had me wishing his name was Burt and he was my neighbor.

“Hey, honey, Burt’s coming over tonight and we’re going to sip beers on the porch and listen to baseball on the radio.”

“I have to run next door and see if Burt has a wrench that’ll reach that loose engine bolt that keeps rattling.”

“Oh, sorry, hon. Can’t paint today. Burt’s coming over to help me put up that bird feeder we made in his garage last winter.”

A neighbor named Burt who talked like that would be the Superman of neighbors. He could fix things, be companionable company, have all the tools I would ever need and bark out a pitch perfect armpit rendition of “Dixie” when the beers in the cooler started getting into single digits.

So I was thinking of the day my dream Burt would move next door and not paying any attention to the substance of his expertise when something he said penetrated the foggy mists of my mind.

“A big hurricane would be really helpful. That’s what’s needed. A really big hurricane.”

Had Burt lost his mind?

I snapped to attention. Burt was saying the gulf catastrophe could be mitigated by hurricane winds and waves that dispersed all the blobs, tinier blobs of oil being more manageable than the nasty Rhode Island-sized ones. He said the ecosystems can tolerate a little oil, but the thick sludge will turn the gulf into a dead sea.

Leave it to Burt to give me a reason to root out loud for natural disasters. Now, I don’t have to root for them in silence.

See, for the sake of humanity, I’ve always favored a healthy sprinkling of natural disasters and certainly prefer them to the kind we manufacture all on own.

A really great natural disaster shows how much human beings genuinely care for one another. No matter who it is, no matter where in the world it happens, whenever the alarm is sounded, we all stop what we’re doing, say our prayers and think of ways we can pitch in to help.

We donate money, support food drives, we send volunteers skilled on tricky rescue missions.

It’s always heartening to see what we can do that for our fellow man, and how we’d probably do it more if we’d only we’d all set down all our weapons and stop killing each other for just a bit.

It happens with earthquakes in China and Iran, places filled with horrible people we’d all like to kill.

I hope for the sake of irony I’m alive during the time when a trigger happy president decides to bomb the bejesus out of some hapless country for any old reason and the bombing coincides with a terrible earthquake.

I’m sure we’ll halt all the hate to help clean up the devastation, just long enough to rebuild all the targets before resuming hostilities.

Plus, as we’re seeing in the gulf, there’s always fingers to point when it’s a man made disaster. BP’s blaming Halliburton who’s blaming someone else who's blaming Obama who's blaming Cheney and on and on and on.

Those recriminations are absent when what the greedy insurance agencies call “an act of God” strikes

He’s such an easy scapegoat.

Interesting theological supposition: Songwriter Tom Waits sings “there is no devil, it’s just God when He’s drunk.”

So tonight I'll get down on my knees and pray to God, as I always do, “Please, Lord, heal the sick, feed the hungry, stop the wars, care for our little darlings and let the Pirates get hot enough to contend.

“And remember all those times I prayed you’d keep the downtrodden gulf coast safe from any more natural disasters? Well, forget that. I now pray that you send a righteous string of Cat 5 whoppers to blast the crap out of the poor, beleaguered bastards. Amen!"

Given prayers like that, it’d be no wonder that God might need a drink.

Happy 2nd Birthday to this Blog!

The blog turned 2 years old this past weekend. That means it’s still in diapers and still capable of producing great, big, stinky messes that cause discerning adults to run away holding their noses.

Like many 2 year old children, the blog is now capable of forming simple sentences. And again like many 2 year old children, the simple sentence it most often forms is, “I need a dwink!”

It says that a lot. It also seems to be saying it would like to play more golf, it snowed a lot, that numerous high profile men mistreat women and that massive oil spills really, really suck.

By several standards, it’s been a fine year for www.EightDaysToAmish.com.

First of all, it continued to show up for work. It didn’t quit. Hungover or not, it still showed up about three days a week an average of 12 times a month -- and that’s an achievement, evidence of real work.

Not productive work. Not wage-paying work.

But work, by God!

I read a great unattributed quote this year: “Most people give up when they’re about to achieve success...at the last minute of the game, one foot from a winning touchdown.”

I don’t know how far I am from winning any sort of Blog Bowl or if the trophy is even worth kissing, but I’m not quitting.

I hear too many compliments from people whose opinions can not be dismissed.

This year started off with Pittsburgh Magazine selecting my blog as one of the best of the ‘burgh. That was a heady surprise.

I didn’t even know it was among the best of Latrobe.

Then, thanks to that flattering spotlight, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette began featuring portions of my blog for its Cutting Edge commentary column on the Sunday Forum pages. It’s happened three times in eight weeks and each time gives me the opportunity to revel that something with the word “Amish” in the title is deemed “cutting edge.”

I look back on the past two years and think the opportunity to blog has been a godsend. During the worst stretch of my what for lack of a better word I call my “career,” it’s kept me from going crazy.

It’s been fun building from scratch a feisty little audience, hearing so many great comments and converting some of the blog posts into other stories or book proposals.

Really, it has me convinced that something great is bound to happen for me any day now.

And I’ve been saying that every day since 1992.

I hope it happens simultaneously to you, too. It means the world to me that anyone bothers to read this stuff.

Me and the blog will be grateful if you continue to check in and refer it to friendlies anytime you find it worthy.

The blog will continue to feature stories about extreme weather, my desire to golf more and near weekly updates about anytime I feel like going downstairs for a cold dwink, er, drink.

Nothing’s going to change in this now 2-year-old blog.

And it’s going to be a good long while before anything so obviously immature ever grows up.

In keeping with the randomness of this blog birthday party, here’s a scattering of some of my favorite blogs from the past 12 months:

"I love you, men!": This is about how I overcame my reluctance to tell men how much I love them in front of other men.

Help the economy: Pray for more Hersheys: My friend Bob said this was one of his favorites. I’m still on a first-name basis with most of my readers and it would be rude to ignore a special request. This is about how the world needs more Hersheys.

Reject me, please: This one got a lot of favorable attention among writers. It’s an earnest plea for treating guys like me with decency and respect. Still hasn’t happened.

Lit cars for lit drivers: I'm pleased whenever I can come up with a sensible solution to an intractable problem. Makes me feel like I've earned my blogger money.

Mom and the friendly hooker: This one’s about my Mom’s happy encounter with a friendly hooker. It was a natural since I have a fondness for moms and friendly hookers -- and try not to read too much into that.

In praise of profanity: I try and write my posts in about an hour, but it usually takes about two. This one took 20 minutes. Of course, it’s a favorite.

Justice and John Grisham: Turned out to be one of the most moving evenings of my life. I hate to resort to being serious, but my students compelled me.

Short distance runner: The perfect solution to our exercise mania.

On Easter, let's resurrect the name Judas: Some day you’re going to meet a boy named Judas and you’ll think of this blog.

Costner to the gulf's rescue!

I had one thought when I heard Kevin Costner has $26 million worth of oil separators in his garage:

Man, we’re paying way too much for movies.

Who can afford a hobby like that?

But right now starstruck BP engineers, men and women who’ve devoted their lives to complicated formulas and chemical equations, are asking the man who played John Logan in “Sizzle Beach USA!,” “Uh, now explain again how this is supposed to work?”

For those of you too young to know -- and you haven’t missed a thing -- Costner was a big deal about 20 years ago.

He is a professional actor. And in my opinion he’s been acting like he’s an actor ever since they yelled, “That’s a wrap!” on the set of “Silverado” way back in 1985.

He still has a lot of ardent fans, but I’ve never understood his appeal. His looks to me are oatmeal bland. Even in his prime, he never had the devilish dash of men like Paul Newman or Johnnie Depp, a trait that makes women swoon.

He never had the mischievous edge of someone like Jack Nicholson, which appeals to men.

And he never displayed any of the spastic humor of madcap Robin Williams, which appeals to people who’ve suffered repeated brain trauma.

Plus -- and to me this is a sin -- he took himself way too seriously. At the height of his fame in the early to mid-‘90s, he made a string of big boring movies (“Dances with Wolves,” “The Postman” and “Waterworld”) whose sole purpose seemed to be giving Costner a preening opportunity to celebrate being Costner.

The movies were very PC and larded with sullen messages about our need to treat each other and Mother Earth with greater respect.

He was an actor, for crying out loud. What an ego! His biggest hit was an Iowa pseudo-baseball movie that could be called corny in every sense of the word. What, he thought we needed a guy like him to save the planet?

Well, batter up!

The only way I’d be more surprised was if the potential gulf savior was Pee Wee Herman, another actor now better known for his more unusual hobbies.

His business partner, John Houghtaling, told the LA Times that while Costner was making “Waterworld” in 1995, he became so troubled by oil spills that he began developing an ingenious system to cruise the surfaces of oil polluted waters.

“The machines are essentially like big vacuum cleaners,” Houghtaling said. “They sit on barges and suck up oily water and spin it around at high speed,” Houghtaling said. “On one side, it spits out pure oil, which can be recovered. The other side spits out 99% pure water.”

It’s all very noble, but I wish he’d have been as troubled at the time about how the distraction was going to eventually ruin one night of my life and cost me about $12 the night I took the missus to see “Waterworld,” to this day a mainstay on all the worst-movie-ever-made lists.

This is exactly the kind of news I’ve been hoping we’d hear. It could change the world for the better in so many ways.

Just imagine, a machine that separates out all the offensive crap and leaves behind only the good and useful.

It’s just too bad he never thought to apply that sort of technology to some of his scripts.

Roll on, Stones

The most important nugget I gleaned during four years of incidental education at Ohio University had more to do with philosophy than journalism.

It was bestowed not by an illustrious professor in an august hall, but by a boisterous bartender in a dingy tavern.

I still repeat it word-for-word to youths who seek my wisdoms about how to navigate this cruel practical joke we all call life.

It is eight words long and I now share it with you to enhance your lives and the lives of the needy. Here goes:

“You can’t have a party without The Stones.”

That’s it. It’s all you need to know.

The Golden Rule, fortune cookie Confuciusisms and myriad self-help books all come up wanting next to that nimble little guidepost.

I’ve been to parties without the Stones and they invariably suck. A really good party needs the Stones.

And so does a really good life.

As the band hits the publicity circuit to celebrate the release of the “Exile on Mainstreet,” I’ve been immersed in the Rolling Stones. But, really, I’ve been immersed in them since I learned how to use my ears.

I love country music, listen to jazz, classical and bluegrass. My playlists are crowded with Dylan, Springsteen, Kinks, Petty, Van Morrison and the sublime Mark Knopfler. I can find something to appreciate in all forms of music -- and I don’t count rap, Celine Dion or anything Ryan Seacrest listens to as music.

So, you see, I’m not a music snob.

But nothing hits me on the testicular level the way The Rolling Stones always have.

One thing that I’ve always loved about the Stones is that they’d be nothing without each other. Mick Jagger would be a banker, Charlie Watts would be a famous jazz drummer (famous to about 400 people), Bill Wyman would be a gynecologist, and Keith Richards would be a bum.

Even as a bum, Keith would still be the most interesting of the bunch and the one I’d sit on the sidewalk to listen to.

In fact, the only member of the original Stones whose life trajectory would not be altered would be Brian Jones who would still have died young.

I love the Beatles but their dynamic was the exact opposite. Each of the Beatles would have become famous without the others. John, Paul and George each had genius that would have led to musical fame and without the others Ringo would have become a dandy game show host.

And this is more complicated than it sounds, but The Stones have always been about the music. They would still be together and making great music if all the fame vanished.

The money, the girls, the excess has always been secondary to the music.

With the exception of guys like Steve Earle, you don’t see that kind of authenticity much anymore.

Mick was on Larry King the other night and, as always, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His every expression is riveting. I was struck by how watching the 76-year-old King interview Jagger, 67, made Jagger seem 35 and King seem about 98.

The men are basically contemporaries.

It’s impossible to think of anything on earth that’s been as consistently outstanding as The Stones have been since 1964.

The Catholic Church? C’mon. Even America, the greatest country on earth, has had to endure Vietnam, Watergate and Kate Gosselin.

Compared to those institutions, the only smudge on the Stones during that same time, “Dirty Work” in 1986, is small potatoes.

“Exile on Main Street” was made in 1972 and it’s hard to argue that it isn’t their best. It came on the heels of “Beggar’s Banquet” ‘(68), “Let it Bleed” (’69) and Sticky Fingers (’71), a rock ‘n’ roll Rushmore that only The Beatles can equal during the same epoch.

Music in general’s been going downhill ever since, but the Stones still move the needle, even if they don’t use it anymore.

People who mock them and say they should have hung it up after “Some Girls” in 1978 just must not like music.

“What do they expect us to do?” Keith’s asked. “Set down our guitars and sign up for plumbing school? We’re musicians. This is what we do.”

And nobody’s ever done it better. Still. I could make raging rock fans out of primitive tribesmen by shoving earbuds into their heads and playing overlooked gems “Steel Wheels” (’89) and “Voodoo Lounge” (’94).

And it’ll sound sacrilegious even to many other Stones fans, but “A Bigger Bang” from 2005 ranks among their very best, including the revered “Exile.”

I defy anyone to listen to the songs, “Rough Justice,” “Driving Too Fast,” “Biggest Mistake” and the sublime Keith song, “This Place is Empty” and not be as moved as they are by the rock, country and balladry from their hallowed years.

I once, just for the fun of it, tried to compose the most depressing true statement about this riddle of life. Here’s what I came up with:

“Life is an endless series of disappointments, each one greater than the last, leading inexorably to the grave.”

Ha!

Of course, I don’t believe anything of the sort. But life is short and life is hard. You need to crowd it up with all the love and laughter you can find before it’s all taken away.

Really, life is a party.

And you just can’t have a party without The Stones.

Teach fish to eat oil

It’s becoming clear that the only sensible solution to the crisis in the Gulf is to teach fish to eat and enjoy crude oil.

Really, can it be more difficult than teaching a 4 year old to eat vegetables?

I respect and admire the vegan mindset and could probably go without juicy red meat for long stretches and when I was sure no one was looking.

But I’d perish without seafood.

And probably so will the rest of us in the year 2050, according to a new study released today by the United Nations. They said overfishing is on-track to deplete the oceans of fish within forty years.

My wife and many other people I know are just fine with that. They could take or leave seafood and they hate going in the ocean because of what lurks beneath the surface.

And a fishless ocean, I concede, is not without its appeal. It gives even a seafood lover like me the creeps to be standing in the surf and feel something slimy brush up against my leg.

Blame Steven Spielberg. His 1975 classic, “Jaws” remains one of the scariest movies of all time. And a great buddy movie, too. I stop whatever I’m doing any time I happen upon the scene where Quint, Chief Brody and Hooper are getting drunk and swapping stories about their scars.

I respect all God’s creations, but if someone said we were going to get rid of all the sharks I’d be hard pressed to come up with an opposing argument.

They’re dangerous and contribute nothing useful to the planet.

Same goes for things like mosquitos and Ashton Kutcher.

Every time I read news that a shark has eaten a hapless swimmer or chomped a limb off some surfer dude, I always go to the seafood counter at my local grocer and order a pound of shark meat for lunch on the grill.

I figure it’s the least I can do. I put some seasoning on it, maybe a little butter, flip it after four minutes over the glowing coals, repeat. Then I say a little grace and take a bite.

“How do you like it, you man-eating son of a bitch?”

The thing is, shark isn’t even that tasty.

Neither, I suppose, is unseasoned surfer dude.

It’s not like that with lobsters, Neptune’s most heavenly offering. I steam one at home whenever my wife takes my daughters away. I don’t like to hear the girls shriek about my inhumanity when I plunge live lobster into the steaming brine.

It distracts from my ability to hear the doomed lobster shriek.

Kidding! I don’t like the act of it either, but if any of us were at all ethical about food consumption then none of us would, as Lisa Simpson advises, ever eat anything that casts a shadow.

I’ve been conditioned by culture and security measures at my local grocer to think dining on lobster is the epitome of class. It’s served at only the finest restaurants and is the only item in my entire grocery store that is under 24-hour lockdown.

It’s true. Whenever I order a lobster, the guy in the seafood department has to go fetch a set of keys and unfasten two fist-sized locks bolted to a metal bar securing the tank.

I understand their potential value, but I can’t image surging levels of desperation and sophistication so unrestrained that anyone would be moved to shove a live lobster down his or her pants.

I’ve wondered if maybe I had it backwards. Maybe it wasn’t to keep thieves out, but to keep crafty crustaceans in.

Nah, can’t be. I’ve been to lobster-rich Maine many times and I’ve never seen loose lobsters on the lam -- and wouldn’t that make for a dandy surf ‘n’ turf!

For all it’s succulence, lobster isn’t one of the healthiest seafoods, certainly not like salmon, mackerel or sardines.

These are among the fish that are described as “oily” and provide us with a rich source of omega 3 polyunsaturated fatty acids which help reduce the risks of heart disease. Amazingly, food described with words like polyunsaturated, fatty and acid is actually healthy.

Who’d have guessed?

And that brings me back to teaching fish about the benefits of consuming all the oil that is right now threatening to kill them.

Gulf fish supercharged on pure oil has the potential to be the healthiest fish ever produced.

I can hear the slogans now: “Eat Oil-Enriched Gulf Fish! Crude enough to put in your engine, refined enough to put on your plate!”

Random screen thoughts about random screens

The other day I realized I was spending so much time staring at or out various screened things that I needed extra eyeballs to give them all their due. Somehow when none of us was looking, screen became one of our most nimble words.
We’re all awash in screens.

Here’s a sampler:

• I’m torn about putting up screens in all our windows. We paid huge bucks for snazzy new windows last year and they’re impressive. But the new screens are so thick and dark that sometimes it feels like I’m in minimum-security prison for sissy bankers. There’s a joy to sticking your head out an open window to shout hello to the kids and critters playing the yard.

• Advance screenings and publicity for the new movie “Letters to Juliet” have me fearing for the career trajectory of the lovely Amanda Seyfried. I fell deeply in love with her during the several hundred times my wife and daughters played the joyful “Mamma Mia” on the big screen in our living room. I don’t want her doing anything to soil my pristine image of her. Too bad because apparently, she, like countless other ingenues, is determined to break my heart. I was devastated to see that she had the British vulgarity “minge,” Cockney slang a most intimate female body part, tattooed on her right foot. Now, why would she go and do that? Clearly, she knows more about acting than anatomy. The only way that’s going to make any sense is if she gets “foot” tattooed on a delicate place that will one day confuse future lovers.

• Pittsburgh’s still shaken from the favored Penguins loss to the Montreal Canadians in the NHL playoffs. Much of the blame is falling on goalie Marc-Andre-Fleury. Sure, big defensemen obscured his view on several goals, but not all the goals can be blamed on clumsy screens.

• Our 9-year-old, The Outlaw Josie Rodell, asked us the other morning if “punk” was a bad word. My general rule is, “There are no bad words, there are only bad times to say some words.” But I realize she needs to understand the boundaries of what she can shout if the preacher goes too long during the Sunday sermon, so I must maintain some conventions. No, I said, punk is not a bad word. It’s not polite, but you won’t get in trouble for using it. I could tell she was disappointed. So to cheer her up, I pulled out my laptop and called up “Dirty Harry” on YouTube. Together we stared at the laptop computer screen and watched the classic clip of where Clint Eastwood, as Det. Harry Callahan, lays waste to a San Francisco city block while munching a hot dog. As the scene winds down, the wounded outlaw wonders if the long-barreled widow maker’s in reach. It provokes one of the most memorable lines in the history of the silver screen.

I paraphrase: “I know what your thinking. Did he fire five shots or six? Well, in all this commotion, I’m lost count myself. But this being a 44-calibre Magnum, the biggest handgun made, and capable of blowing your head clean off, you have to ask yourself a question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do you . . . PUNK?”

Josie was riveted. The bleeding gunman asks as Eastwood walks away, “I gots to know.” Clint turns, aims and pulls the trigger. Click. He grins.

Then the chagrined gunman shouts, “Son of a bitch!” For Josie, it was the frosting on the cake. She got to hear one really great profanity before the school bus came to take her to third grade where, doubtless, the alert teacher heard her challenging all her punk little classmates if they felt lucky.

I probably should have screened the clip before showing it to a 9 year old.

• Me, I enjoyed it so much that I’ve been telling everyone the story and reliving in my mind that classic bit of screen history. I think I’ll search for a screen print t-shirt of that classic phrase and wear it all over town.

So there you go. That covers all eight definitions of “screen” usage.

And now I can add “America’s Greatest Screen Writer” to my illustrious credits.