@8days2Amish tweets of the month!

June ‘14 was one of the worst reader months I’ve ever had as far as blog readership. Where’d you all go? The numbers made it seem like everyone simultaneously just got fed up and quit. Well, everyone, but me. I still kept up the prodigious output, one of the most robust of any real blog in cyberland. But should I gear back this month? Not a chance. Well, not much of a chance. The calendar is filling with recreational activities and what’s the point of being a professional blogger if you can’t behave unprofessionally every once in a good while? Maybe I'll spend more time yapping with my buddy, Dave (above, right). That's always time well spent. As for @8days2Amish tweets this month, I think I’ve settled into a pattern where I’m less prolific, but am producing what I think are better tweets. Lots of thoughtful bits of wit. Hope you like them and that your summer’s off to a roaring start.

• Jesus walked on water. When He comes back, how many think He'll opt for spiffy new Sea Doo?

• Because I can never remember which is which, I propose we rename Vermont "6" and New Hampshire “9."

• Scientists who declare matter cannot be created nor destroyed have never observed a bar of soap in a shower.

• For reasons of justice, environmental improvement & pure symmetry, I think any hedge fund managers convicted of misdeeds should fund hedges.

• I always like the underdog thoroughbred even as I wonder why it's not an underhorse. #KentuckyDerby2015

• I’d like to attend a church where the pastor says, "Spoiler alert!" before even familiar Bible stories like the crucifixion.

• I know truly evil souls go to hell, but what about simple jerks? My heaven will be hell if there are as many jerks there as there are here.

• Because it lasted from 1337 to 1453 I propose we rename the 100 Years War, the Most Inaccurately Named War.

• Being in the presence of friends so good that conversation is unnecessary is calmeraderie.

• Historians devoted to revolutionary study know better than most what goes around comes around.

• After watching HBO's "Montage of Heck," I can only conclude if Kurt Cobain were alive today he'd still be dead. 

• I wonder how many sassy men have died of mortal gunshot wounds seconds after uttering the identical last words, “Ha! Ha! Missed me!”

• ”Nights in White Satin" is a '67 song by Moody Blues. "Knights in White Satin" is a preposterous battle strategy doomed to fail.

• Birds of prey have sharp talons that are incapable of interlocking, just 1 reason why you’ll never see birds of pray.

• People everywhere climb mountains seeking the meaning of life. Don't bother. I looked it up. It's not that big a deal.

• Bedlam is an uproarious situation. Bed lamb is a rural scandal.

• Phone etiquette will improve & and solicitors more circumspect when an app is developed that let's us shock callers.

• I wonder how many white guys named Cliff live within walking distance of the White Cliffs of Dover. 

• New neighbor told me she loves it here. "Everyone is so nice," she gushed. Told her if that's the way she felt she’s yet to meet everyone.

• I wish no ill on any being but I hope for the sake of Earth's collective cool that Paul outlives Ringo.

• Let me get this straight. Taylor Swift was once considered country, but now isn’t. So Taylor Swift is like Steve Earle? 

• Sign all birthday cards, “And may this year you at last be as happy as all your Facebook posts misleadingly seem to indicate you are.”

• If I could go back and re-write "Mad Men," I'd rename the main character Don Drinker.

• One of my problems as a writer is that I'm so well-rounded it's geometrically impossible to ever make ends meet.

• Chickens have breasts. Women have breasts. Women have nipples. Do chicken have nipples? Are chicken nipples some kind of delicacy? 

• World’s greatest sales people must work for Spam. Think of the intrinsic hurdles they must overcome just to get calls/e-mails returned.

• We now have ability to forever preserve things that 10 years ago we would have destroyed as being too stupid for anyone else to ever see.

• It makes me furious that word that's pronounced "Q" is spelled "queue." Someone's messing with Sasquatch.

• Rodell’s Rule of Consumerism: "The crappier/more indifferent the service, the longer the receipt.”

• I’m a liberal who prefers the social company of conservatives as long as they don't talk about conservatism which they can't so that's that.

• Due to technological advances involving titanium joints, the old “shinbone’s connected to the knee bone,” song is losing validity.

• I wonder if smart alec bacteria ever still introduce themselves with “Spoiler alert!” at fridge parties and still think it’s funny.

• Anyone who aspires to teach the whole world to sing in perfect harmony has never spent a minute at a karaoke bar after 10 p.m.

• Because he's one of our most buoyant and charming celebs, I propose we rename Henry Winkler "Henry TWINKLER!”

• Most people who think they have the world on a string realize too late what they're really holding is a lit fuse.

• It must infuriate accomplished banjo players that the two best known practitioners of the instrument are Steve Martin & Kermit The Frog.

• Xanax? Valium? Neither. Our most addictive painkiller is the tepid rewards of soothing mediocrity.

• Most adults as they become older don't so much solve problems as exchange them.

• Foolish mortals! You think you can tell time. Time tells you!

• I sometimes fear my Odor Eaters will forget their benign mission and begin consuming parts of me I’m casual about washing.

• For the sake of recycling, I dream one day of seeing a cell phone tower made entirely of discarded cell phones.

• I wish in the interests of polite society that people described as lightning rods attracted actual lightning.

• Marijuana smokers who succumb to repeated bouts of the munchies are apt to get pot bellies.

• If man can make a Twinkie whose taste will endure through a nuclear winter how come we can’t make a vegetable that tastes like a Twinkie?

• How come a protest has such negative connotations and a contest the opposite? I'll one day weigh the pros and cons of discrepancy.

• I wonder what they told instead of knock-knock jokes before the advent of doors.

• People say "not a snowball’s chance in hell,” like they know forecast. In my hell, there will be tons of snow. 

• I wonder how many angels regret they weren't more human when they were still human.

• I’d like to see how a proctologist responds when angry patient tells him bill's too high and he knows what he can do with it.

Bark up/Bark down: A neighbor's dog left out in the cold

(1,114 words)

I’ve since last February been wrestling with a question that apparently consumes wood-burning Norwegians: Stack the firewood bark up or bark down?

As you can see from the “Norwegian hit TV” link below, it’s a divisive issue in that quaint and progressive Scandinavian nation. I’ve always intuitively been a bark down guy, but as I was cresting the steps to the stranger’s forbidding door, I began wondering if my last mortal thought might be maybe I’d been wrong.

Maybe it ought to be bark up.

Either way, I was hoping in the next 90 seconds I wouldn’t find out if I was the kind of guy who when riddled with gunfire died face down or face up.

See, on days when the Polar Vortex plunges western Pennsylvania temperatures to minus-12, I think about firewood. Do I have enough? Is it accessible? Will a passing Norwegian ridicule me if he sees mine’s stacked bark down?

My wife and daughters think different thoughts. They think about the angry neighbor dog left exposed in the deadly cold.

And they think I’m just the guy that ought to do something about it.

That’s how after leaving The Pond before dinner I found myself walking up the steps to the front door of the stranger’s house. The property is always well-kept and the couple in their early 30s who live there take evident care of the home and the property.

Just not of the dog.

It’s a ratty old German Shepherd. Not ratty, by choice, I think. I know many Germans and they are refined about their appearance. Of course, I only know German lawyers, German grocers and one German tailor.

Maybe if I knew a German shepherd he’d have matted hair and fleas, too.

What’s particularly galling is the couple have a cutesy-pie little bone-shaped driveway sign that says, “A spoiled rotten dog lives here,” referring apparently to a pampered house dog we’ve never once seen.

The sign means they’re either being ironic or deliberately cruel because if that outdoor dog can read then the sign’s bound to really piss him off.

So this dog is a sore point for us and, I’m sure, many other animal lovers who drive past it and see it in all weather chained across a little creek on the edge of the woods snarling at every passersby from its dilapidated hovel of a dog house. We’re friendly with all the neighbors scattered on our rustic little stretch, but the house with the dog is beyond our realm and there’s never been any reason for us to stop by for even a quick howdy.

Had I ever seen either of them out getting the mail when I was passing, I’d always meant to stop and ask, hey, what’s with the dog? Clean him up and I’m sure he’d be a fine looking fellow, big and sturdy as he is.

But is it any of my business? I’m not sure. These people drive decent cars and have a satellite dish on top of their house. Certainly, they’re sentient enough to know it’s cruel to leave a dog all alone, especially on a night of record lows.

Guaranteed, nothing I say is going to have them responding, “You know, what you’re telling me is a revelation. It never dawned on me that a dog might freeze to death on a night when the wind chills are minus-28. Honey, get the tub and some scrub gloves. We’re gonna give ol’ Baxter a bath. Tonight he’s sleepin’ in the big bed with us!”

Val tried the Humane Society, but they’re swamped. They said if the dog house has straw, he’ll be fine. We doubt it does.

I cited with futility all these rational arguments for doing nothing, but doing nothing was unacceptable and I get that.

Val said she’d go with me.

No chance.

I couldn’t risk her getting emotional in a high-ground moral argument with strangers, a situation I actually relish. I’m the kind of guy who loves to argue even when he’s, as I mostly am, just dead wrong in both substance and fact.

So I left the bar, headed toward home and pulled into the driveway of the split-level ranch house.

It was dark and the dog was making his usual annoying racket. He has nothing to do but bark and snarl so that’s just what he does. I know if he breaks his chain, he’ll tear me limb from limb.

I really was thinking about the bark up/bark down argument as I climbed the snow-covered steps.

But I was also thinking this: People get killed everyday in America for doing exactly what I was doing -- and I don’t mean scolding a neighbor over mistreating a neglected animal.

I mean knocking on a stranger’s door.

It was dark. It was frigid. It was a night when no one in their right mind would be out knocking on doors. I had a beard and I’d been drinking.

True, it’d just been three beers, but remember: all Trayvon Martin had was some Skittles and a puff of pot.

I was practically fair game.

I instinctively knew if I was shot dead, Wayne LaPierre would in 48 hours be holding a press conference saying I’d had it coming. This is Pennsylvania where so many of us famously cling to our Bibles and our guns.

It’s just that none of us ever respond to a friendly knock on the door with a handy bit of Scripture, preferring, instead, to just start blazing.

So it was not without some honest trepidation that I gave a long, loud knock.

Then another.

No answer.

Part of me was relieved that what I understood was a no-win situation was averted, but I needed to do something so my girls knew I didn’t chicken out. I couldn’t leave a note, at least not one written on paper.

But the parked Toyota Camry had about an inch of snow on it. So with my gloved finger, I traced on the car windshields, “DOG! DOG! DOG!”

They’d have have to know what the crude message meant.

I feared I’d drive by this morning and see the winds had drifted the snow so it looked like “OOOI OOOI OOOI” But they did not.

“DOG! DOG! DOG!” was still legible.

Val reported she drove by later and noticed the dog house was empty, leaving us to assume they got the message and did the responsible thing.

I hope so.

And I hope right now that noisy dog is in their garage where he can in sheltered safety bark up his usual annoying storm.

Or should it be bark down?

Related . . .

Norwegian hit TV up in smoke

Gunnin’ for good neighbors

My neighbor, my Deere

Our adopted cat finds a home

Someone keyed my car! Suspects abound

(1,051 words)

I’ve been reluctant to share the news for fear it might upset your feelings. I know a few of you might be under the impression that I’m absolutely beloved here in Latrobe.

You might feel this way because of my propensity to embellish even minor achievement -- flattering profiles in the local paper, TV & radio appearances -- while blithely ignoring contrary vibes.

So brace yourself because here comes some disturbing info: 

Somebody keyed my car!

Can you believe it? In Latrobe, that’s like TPing Arnold Palmer’s house.

Me! Who would do such a thing?

Well, in fact, the list of suspects is long and lengthening.

First a little background.

My 2007 Saturn Vue is not the first vehicle to have been keyed in The Pond parking lot.

John is one of the other two tenants above the tavern. He has no job, no stability and no prospects -- give the guy a pointless blog and a hefty bar tab and in some ways we could be twins.

His is becoming a complicated story. He moved in with previous tenants and when they moved out he stayed behind to pay his meager rent from his monthly disability checks. Dave, the landlord, is too nice a guy to tell him to vamoose, but John’s apartment is beginning to attract an undesirable element.

John drives a dilapidated 1992 Chevy Blazer. Well, that’s not accurate. He owns one. Like its owner, the vehicle is disabled. It hasn’t moved an inch in four years. It just sits there by the dumpsters, a space-devouring eyesore, again much like its owner.

Recently Dave told John he had to move it. And John did. Vertically. One foot. He put it up on blocks.

Maybe John should think about becoming an attorney.

It was last year somebody keyed his vehicle with a gouging two-word profanity -- both words were misspelled -- across the driver’s side door. He has many enemies.

Compared to his, mine is a mere doodle, difficult to even detect. I may have gone a month or two before it even registered.

It’s like some bored artist was walking past and just tried to trace the outline of the rear wheel well with their key.

For a moment I thought it could have been one of my daughters -- and talk about suspects with obvious motives.

But if your own daughters did something like that, the offense would go from criminal vandalism to charming folk art in an instant. I logically concluded, however, my darling daughters could not have keyed Daddy’s car.

How do I know?

They don’t have keys!

Case dismissed.

So these days I’m a little more vigilant about gazing out the window into the parking lot.

It was there last week I first laid eyes on the man who screamed he wants to kill me.

It was about 3 p.m. He is a friend of John’s. The big guy was nearly falling down drunk from over-consuming elsewhere (John and his friends aren’t allowed to drink in The Pond).

He was standing in broad daylight urinating in the parking lot!

I probably should have thought about it first, but instinct took over. I often prank unsuspecting restaurant customers by remotely deploying the horn alarm on my car fob the instant someone shuts their own car door.

It’s very childish, I know, but it’s hilarious to watch from behind drawn curtains as confused strangers begin fumbling with their own keys trying to stop my car horn from obnoxiously beeping, often setting off their own in the process.

It’s very funny (read the “trash man” link below).

So without pausing to consider the consequences, I reflexively hit the fob’s red button triggering my horn not 20 feet from the offending urinator.

“Honk! Honk! Honk!”

He shrieked and for a mere instant I was overcome with joy. His shrill reaction seemed to indicate he’d peed his pants.

But I had no time to revel in the moment because he went instantly insane. He began screaming he was going to kill whoever did it.

It was all profane and frightening. Luckily for me, he was too drunk to puzzle out what had happened. I’m convinced if he’d have found me he would have ripped me apart with his bare hands.

There cowering on the floor, I thought, “Oh, this is going to be very embarrassing if any of this makes the newspaper.”

But he never found me. After about 20 harrowing minutes his driver appeared and spirited the still-ranting inebriate off.

So now I have to keep a weary eye out for old pee pants everywhere I go.

But it wasn’t until yesterday that I realized how many people I once thought were friends think of me as someone worthy of cruel contempt.

It was Happy Hour. Dave was passing around a $10 FedEx Cup golf pool. Fill out the names of 10 golfers and the sheet with the best overall result wins the pot.

I spent about 10 minutes on my sheet and turned it in. One problem: So absorbed was I that I forgot to include the one name that matters most.

My own.

I told Bill, the bartender, of my oversight. I’d need my sheet back so I could scribble my name.

An evil grin slid over Bill’s face. “Oh, no problem,” he said. “I’ll fix it for you.”

He retrieved my sheet from the file and dashed to the other end of the bar where he commenced to cackling. After about a minute, he took the sheet and with a flourish handed it to my buddy about 10 stools away.

And there my friend began to roar with laughter. He was still laughing as he passed the sheet to the next guy.

A wave of raucous laughter swept the bar as my sheet was handed down from one to another.

When it finally arrived to me, I saw what was so funny.

On the line next to where it said “NAME,” Bill had drawn a crude two-inch penis and hairy testicles.

How humiliating.

Day by day I’m learning I’m not as beloved as I once believed, that, in fact, many people consider me an object of scornful ridicule.

That I can at least live with.

But there’s one thing I’ll never forgive.

Bill got the scale all wrong.

Related . . .

I pranked the trash man today

Arnold Palmer and Old Mail Day in Hooterville

A tale of turtles, pranks and Manti Te’o

Whining over postal liquor prohibitions

(684 words)

Sometime in the next four hours I will break a federal law. I admit this brazen act here because the outlaw thrill makes me tingle.

The crime I intend to perpetrate?

I’m going to lie to my mail lady.

Out of the way, Capone! Here comes Chris Rodell!

Yes, later this afternoon our friendly USPS rep will accept a wine-bottle shaped package from me and suspiciously ask if it contains any alcohol, firearms, or perishables.

And I’ll say, “Why, no! No, it does not. In fact, I’m sending a friend in Chicago a new bottle of laundry detergent that just happens to be shaped liked a bottle of wine. It’s from 2007, a very fine vintage for boutique laundry detergents.”

The whole time my eyes will be doing that sinister back-and-forth shifty thing they reflexively do whenever I’m engaged in telling a real whopper.

My buddy took me on a golf/party weekend to Penn State earlier this summer and I’ve wanted to express my gratitude by sending him a bottle of Arnold Palmer cabernet sauvignon wine.

And you thought Palmer just made that hip tea.

I’ve been giving the AP wines as gifts to golfing friends who do me favors. Along with a Palmer autographed bag tag it makes a perfect gift. So I stopped by the state store and picked up a bottle.

But I was stymied when I casually asked our postmistress for a package to mail some hootch.

“Oh, no,” she said. “You can’t do that. It’s against federal regulations. It’s illegal to mail wine.”

Even good wine?

“Yes.”

I asked how wine made in California gets here to Latrobe. I was hoping maybe she’d say mule train.

“The distribution and transportation of alcohol has been highly regulated ever since Prohibition.”

Thanks a million, Andrew Volstead!

UPS told me they might ship it if I’d drive it to the New Stanton distribution center. Too inconvenient, certainly, and she sounded doubtful.

FedEx was so adamant it couldn’t be done I began considering consulting MapQuest about I-80 construction projects in case I had to drive the wine to Chicago myself.

(How’s this for coincidence: Just heard a noon news report that said changing the law would earn the USPS $50 million a year).

I asked a friend of mine, a restauranteur and wine wholesaler, just how on earth an everyday Pennsylvanian can ship a bottle of wine.

“Put it in a box,” he said. “Address the box. Stick a stamp on the box.”

But mailing wine is against the law, I said.

His eyes rolled back in his head so extravagantly for a second I thought my remark had triggered an out-of-body experience.

“Just lie, you idiot!”

The trade off of being blessed with such sweet, simple innocence is that it often leads to bitter bouts of cruel ridicule just like that.

I was still nervous. I needed re-assurance.

I needed to talk to drunken mailman.

Happily, I know two of them. If one or two more drunken mail carriers start hanging out at The Pond, it’ll be a certifiable trend and I’ll write about it the instant  they do.

Right now, we’re up to two. And one of them is, of course, named Joe. 

He told me lying to a postal clerk was a low-risk crime.

To test his contention, I told said he was a gracious bar companion welcome to drink with me anytime and that he was a one handsome fellow, to boot.

He smiled and said thanks, so I’m learning that fibbing to postal folks is a cinch.

So today I’ll be heading to the post office with wine on my mind and lies on my lips, but first things first: I need to stop by the state store and snag another bottle of AP wine.

I got thirsty the other night listening to the Pirate game and guzzled the whole bottle.

Good stuff.

Funny, isn’t it? A bottle of wine that’s been the subject of so many postal considerations can really deliver without ever leaving my back porch.

Related . . .

Goin’ postal over USPS decline

Fraudulent address labels paying off for Rev. Rodell

Fiscal Cliff Claven!

"Cheers!" to sudsy beer drinking innovation

(725 words)

I lied in yesterday’s post. I said my friends and I were going to Altoona. In fact, Altoona was not our ultimate destination.

Instead, we went to the future!

And we discovered it has a great big hole in the bottom of it.

I’m one of those guys who is frustrated by mankind’s lack of innovation. We are awash in problems that seem indubitably solvable.

Climate change. Highway gridlock. Runaway health care costs. Air travel that is at once chaotic, inconvenient and uncomfortable, and inefficient 19th century internal combustion engine technologies powering 21st century vehicles.

But yesterday we stumbled into a bastion of innovation at the last place I’d ever expected it: the beer stand at the Double A minor league ballpark for the Altoona Curve.

As mentioned previously, yesterday was Thirsty Thursday, where The Curve sell 16-ounce Yuengling lagers for $2 each. First pitch was at the unusual starting time of 10:30 a.m.

It promised to be a splendid day and we were alive with anticipation as we walked into the concourse on our way to our seats.

But first stop: brunch beers.

“We’ll take three, please,” said my buddy to the pretty college-age beer tender.

We were too busy taking in the scenery of the ball park to notice something was amiss. The stand had no beer taps.

The beer tap is a standard feature of every single bar and draught beer vending place in which I’ve ever set foot -- and I’ve been drinking beer since the fourth grade.

Here’s how it works. You put the glass or mug under the spigot and give the tap a tug, and I’m explaining this in case anyone reading today has never had a beer and is feeling crushed by a lifetime of sobriety.

That’s all it takes and then, hooray, beer!

I saw it first.

The girl took three plastic cups and slammed them down on silver mushroom-like pegs submerged just below the otherwise flat metallic surface.

Beer began gushing up from the bottom of the glass.

I was dumbfounded. It took a second for my buddies to notice. When they did, I thought they were going to vault over the stand and do something heroic to rescue the beer that was certainly in danger of spilling everywhere.

It did not. After about four seconds, the beer filled clear to the top, the girl removed the glass and handed them over. All three were perfect pours.

You could have knocked us over with a feather, well, if that feather was the size of a telephone pole being wielded by a Hercules intent on knocking over three beer-bellied middle aged men.

What just happened?

“It’s a new system called The Bottoms Up,” she said. “Each glass has a hole in it covered by a magnetized little souvenir disc. When I put the glass on it, the disc pops up while the beer goes in. Then it fills up automatically and the disc re-attaches to the magnet ring when I lift the glass.”

We took them in later for Happy Hour Show ‘n’ Tell when we got back to The Pond, our home bar in Latrobe.

It was the first time we’d ever had Happy Hour Show ‘n’ Tell and it was so much fun I’m hoping we can do it every Thursday. It’s just a fun way to share and learn about things certain to accelerate our inebriation.

Dave had heard about them. Turns out, the beer system we’ve been enjoying for more than 100 years is incredibly inefficient. You see it all the time.

Beer dispensation may be poorly regulated resulting in excessive foam that requires the bartender to waste a lot of beer to get the perfect pour. Or maybe it’s so slow that the bartender has to stand there while it dribbles out and his or her thirsty customers get agitated.

I checked out the Bottoms Up website that boasts it’s the most efficient beer-pouring system ever. It set the Guinness World Record by having one bartender pour 62 pints in one minute.

The stat makes venerable beer bongs look slow pokey.

And now today I’m changing my mind about the pace of innovation. The Bottoms Up Beer delivery system means all is right in the world.

With enough beer, who’ll give a crap about all the rest of the other problems?

Related . . .

The Great American Beer Fridge

A convivial man stricken with “beer sickness”

Steve Jobs: American iCon