Clockophobia

I reminded myself that alarm clocks are tools to help us, our friends. This thing with its demonic red digits watching us sleep night after night keeps us from being late to work so we can continue paying our mortgages and making large donations to our local gas stations. (I myself am apparently sponsoring Pump #5’s college tuition.) It’s not the clock’s fault we program it to sound off at 6:30 AM -- at a time when the only part of our brain that actually works is the part controlling our ability to chuck that little bastard out the window.

I started pushing buttons hoping to find the kill switch. One button turned up the volume so that the beep-beep-beeping swelled into a horrible blaring that I doubted could be reproduced without attaching a kazoo to a leaf blower. I also managed to start the radio. The scrambled AM station howled, brokenly, like a rabbit someone forcibly taught to gargle. (Do any of them volunteer?) Eventually I found the Alarm Off button inside a secret panel and under a sticker saying, “Removal of this sticker is a violation of Federal Law.”

Silence fell over the house, except the slight rustling of covers. Tonya sat up with the blanket pooled around her, and without a word, she smacked her clock for good measure before thumping back down onto the pillow. Her clock incidentally was not set to go off.

Before she decided to smack me, (because husbands occasionally beep for no reason) I left to begin the morning rituals.

At 4:00 the next morning, my clock decided to start ticking.

My wife rolled over and asked, "Hezzlemumf?"

"It's okay," I said. "Go back to sleep."

"Did you water the sofa?"

"Absolutely."

"Okay, then. And chuck that little bastard out the window."

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Through clenched teeth, I whispered, "You're a digital clock. Digital clocks do not tick."

It ignored me. Which, of course, was highly unusual behavior for an object that might live on one's nightstand.

4:05, tick. 4:09, tock. 4:11, tick again.

Let me make the official announcement that I like repetitive noises in the same way most people like setting their hair on fire. I went through all the obvious defenses: put my pillow over my ears, put my pillow over the clock, unplugged the clock, and even tossed it under the bed. This was all as ineffective as one might predict. That is, it succeeded only in rousing my wife up enough to sing the first verse of "I'm a Little Tea Pot."

I slipped out of bed just about the time my wife began to describe her handle and her spout. I paced through the house, grumbling and getting all steamed up about ticking. Then, I had an idea. An evil idea.

Under the kitchen sink, I found an oddly vast variety of dishwashing soaps and a hell bent for leather camel cricket that seemed intent on going a couple of rounds with my little finger. I also found an empty spray bottle. I filled it with water and then wrote on the side with a Sharpie.

Back in the bedroom, I sat the bottle in front of the clock so that its little demon digits lit up what I had written.

Immediately the ticking stopped.

The next morning my wife and I sat at the table. "You didn't sleep well," she said.

I shook my head.

"I thought so. Me too. I kept dreaming that I was the new spokes model for Lipton."

I shrugged and sipped my coffee.

"Oh, and I have a really stupid question for you," she said. "Why did I find on your nightstand a spray bottle marked 'Tick Spray'?"

I grinned and pled ignorance. My wife agreed with me far too easily.

What the Digital Goblin Made Me Do

In the corner sat our bathroom scale, beguiling me to diet. I removed everything from my person that might artificially increase my weight. Cell phone landed on the counter with my glasses. I shaved, clipped my fingernails, Q-tipped my ears, and grabbed a can of compressed air to guarantee a lint-free belly button.

It's a little known fact that digital scales were once mythical creatures. Not like those unicorns that poop rainbows, these were more akin to eastern European house goblins but have changed over the years. When a maiden from the Middle Ages stepped into Ye Ole Bathroom and onto her digital scale, it would announce, "One! One pound! Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!" (I may be wrong, but I think Sesame Street may have based some of its popular characters on a digital scale.) The creature progressed to two pounds (Ah-ha-ha-ha), three, and so on until the entire weight was calculated. The average small child took approximately three days to weigh.

Technology has progressed since then, however. House goblins now come with the latest and fastest microcircuitry.  But they are still just as mean.

I stepped onto our goblin...er, scale and watched the numbers climb at stopwatch speed. After fifteen or twenty minutes, the readout finally settled down and I stretched my neck forward, eagerly awaiting my score.

“Oh, come on,” I said. “Nobody actually weighs that much. Maybe one of those hybrid cars with the big-giant batteries in the back, but not an actual person.”

The readout increased one pound.

I realized that I had a decision to make. Should I start dieting again, or not? It's not easy. Some studies say a compulsive eater's cravings are equivalent to the cravings of a heroin addict.

"For crying out loud, Mr. Heroin Addict, why don't you just have a salad?"

"I would, but my dealer laughs at me when I order a quarter gram of ranch dressing."

When I was 28 years old, I lost 120 pounds. Yes, that's a whole person or a very small kindergarten class. Things were different back then. I felt good. I had lots of energy. On sunny days, my wife almost never asked me to stand in front of her so she could have some shade.

I pace in the kitchen every night at nine o'clock.  Thirty minutes into my diet I've checked the cabinets six times, hoping a pizza had grown in one of them.

As everybody knows, it's simple. Just don't eat.

So, I consider it.

Just for the Ell of It

My wife Tonya mispronounces certain words, and I take endless pleasure drawing this to her attention. She says she doesn’t know what I am talking about, and besides, I’m wrong.  This was the first lesson Husband School should have taught me:  instead of opening the door and saying, “Hi Honey, I’m home,” I should announce, “Hi Honey, I’m wrong,” thus avoid any painful confusion later. In reality, there is very little difference in the way we talk, just different flavors of a Midwestern accent. 

This is Tonya’s flavor….

Sale, sell, and sail are all pronounced “cell.” 

She looked over the top of her glasses at me. “I’m saying them the same way you are.”

“It’s say-ull, not cell.”

“Whatever, loser boy,” she said in full-blow Valley Girl.

Sentences like, “A sailor was selling cells on sale aboard his sail boat,” cannot be deciphered without a Tonya to English dictionary.

Imagine my confusion when we were newlyweds, experiencing our first thunderstorm together.

She said, "It's helling outside."

I rushed to the door, expecting the sky had turned black and rained fire and brimstone onto the streets.  I, of course, found little ice balls bouncing in the yard.

"You mean it's hailing?"

"That's what I said, Frecklehead."

I never should have begun teasing her, because I knew I would pay for it.  Dearly.  Tonya now sends me on quests.

She said, "I need you to find me an orange pillar."

Danielle (pronounced "Da-nell," by the way, although she tells you it is said, "Duh-nail") is Tonya's sister. She was sitting at our dining room table.  Immediately, she started giggling into her hands.

"A what?" I said.

"Orange pillar.  I need an orange pillar."

"For what?  Our house is white."

Danielle's laughter exploded into great guffaws that (as a nice reader once told me) LOL failed to describe.

I said, "But...but...I don't know anything about carpentry!"

Danielle wailed:  "Peeler!  Sam, she's making fruit salad.  She needs an orange peeler!"

Since then I have been sent on many more quests....

 I never found the electric Nell gun, because Tonya's sister -- sometimes Nell, for short -- said she didn't own any electric guns.  But she did pat me on "my widdle head."

Driving five miles out into the country to see what I thought was the world's only one-ton hay bell was a big disappointment.

One day around noon, standing in the front yard, I saw the postal carrier approaching and decided to be friendly.  My wife had told me his name.  I said, "Hi, Mr. Mellman!"  I just thought he was Jewish.  Ever since, he has called me "Mr. Current Resident."

And so on.  I am sure this is some obscure form of spousal abuse.

If any of my kind readers out there are fluent in whatever language my wife speaks, please contact me through this blog or leave tips in the comment section.  I'm beginning to feel quite lost and would appreciate some lessons -- especially now that the requests are growing more ridiculous.  For example, I absolutely refuse to drive to the coast just to go well watching. (That would be more boring than watching hair grow.)

Grumpy Tom -- The Conclusion

I saw Grumpy Tom approaching in the dark.  Weeds bent in his wake as if they had been knocked down by something heavy.  And he was making enough noise to embarrass most cats.  None of it was hissing.  In fact, he was crunching so many leaves and breaking over small decorative trees that tomorrow he would probably be impeached as king of the gunslinger cats.

Goon.

I could hear something metallic scraping over the concrete beneath me.  It stopped in front of my driver's side tire and Grumpy Tom flopped down on his side.

"You're panting," I said.

"No I'm not," he panted.  "I'm practicing hissing."

I really, really wanted to roll my eyes at him, but being a car I have only that one expression and it's difficult to read. 

"There," he said.  "Proof."

"You mean that you're a gunslinger?"

He was wearing what humans call a ten-gallon hat.  Scaled down to cat-size, it was probably a couple of tablespoons at best.  It was also bright yellow.  He wore a spiky collar with a name tag on it that said, "Grumpy Judy."  The ensemble also included a vest, white, with a John Travolta picture on the back in his iconic Saturday Night Fever pose.  The chaps looked to be on backward.  And he wore one purple boot, compete with a spur that flashed when he walked, like those lights in kids' sneakers. 

It wasn't until he quit moving and the spur quit flashing that I noticed the gun.  A string tied the massive weapon to his waist.  I thought surely someone had mounted a pistol grip onto a canon.  He tried to shove it toward me.  It moved a little bit.  I could now see that etched into the metal was the Smith & Wesson logo and the words .50 cal magnum. 

"This is how I saved your life tonight," Grumpy Tom said.

I said, "Can you even pick that thing up?  I mean, seriously, doesn't NASA use something like that as a backup for their rockets?"

"I can pick it up, and I will again tonight.  Because one of them got away."

"One of who?"

"Demons," Grumpy Tom said.  "Elephant demons."

It took a moment for that to set in.  I couldn't decide whether he meant demons that plague elephants or jumbo economy-sized demons.

"And the one that eluded me," he said and hissed.  "Was a Jedi."

I'm pretty sure I did roll my eyes that time.  "You've been eating the gun powder, haven't you?" I said.  "There was no one out there, and there certainly was not anything out of Star Wars.  George Lucas wouldn't let any of his Jedi play with you."

I then heard a thump on the roof and the tree next to the carport trembled.

"He's here," Grumpy whispered and pounced onto his pistol. 

Whatever it was moved down the slope of the roof.  I was pretty certain that the ceiling of the carport was going to come crashing down on top of us.  It would have been nice if Grumpy Tom had at least gotten the trigger cocked before that.

The roof didn't fall, but I heard a great impact upon the ground followed by a demonic growl. 

"Stupid trigger!"

Grumpy Tom had managed to move the pistol upright and propped it against my tire so it would not fall.  He was jumping up and down, spur flashing vigorously, and trying to move the hammer back.

Deep, wretched laughter came from behind the wall.  A blob-shaped shadow stretched across the grass in the moonlight and was moving closer.

There was a click at my tire.  Grumpy Tom hopped onto my hood and shouted, "I got it!  I got it!"

"Yes, but you left the gun by my tire!"

He hissed and tumbled back to the concrete.

The shadow shape was within a single step of breaking into view.  It paused, though, and let out the only in-person elephant trumpet that I would ever hear.  Then, finally, it stepped forward.

This pachyderm was eleven feet tall with glowing eyes, crimson like the LEDs in Grumpy Tom's spur.  Parts of its flesh appeared to be missing.  I didn't know whether it had rotten and fell off or whether it was a remnant of its encounter with the gray-striped gunslinger by my tire.

"Stupid trigger!" he yelled again.

"Grumpy Tom we need to get out of here!  Good Lord!  My parking brake is still on!"

"The trigger won't move!"

The elephant demon then lifted its head and stretched its trunk straight out.  I expected another trumpet blast.  But what I heard instead was a sizzle of energy, followed by a blinding lightsaber green glow.  It was his trunk.

He raised his trunksaber and clipped several tree branches that fell in a shower of sparks. 

"Stupid, stupid trigger!"

The trunksaber came crashing down.

"I AM A GUNSLINGER!" Grumpy Tom screamed, then let out the longest, loudest hiss yet (and I'm sure an equivalent butt pucker).  I don't know whether he even touched the trigger.  I doubt it.  I think the hiss is what did it.  There was an explosion as the gun went off.

A blazing .50 caliber bullet streaked from under my front bumper.  A yellow cowboy hat followed it and veered off into the grass somewhere.  The bullet struck the elephant demon just above the ankle, and the impact actually lifted the beast from the ground.  Both disintegrated into raven-colored ash.

Grumpy Tom was lying against the opposite wall.  I noticed just above him a roughly cat-sized dent in the bottom of the screen door. 

"You okay?" I said.

"Yep."  Then he hissed at me. 

The blast had actually knocked him out of his boot, which was sitting upright on the concrete and flickering.

The next morning Grumpy Tom was gone.  I missed him.  I guess I finally got rid of him, though.

Damn boot didn't quit flashing for four days.

Grumpy Tom

He calls me, "The Big Blue Thing that lives on a flat rock next to a big box that dumps people out."  Because I guess "Chevrolet" is just too complicated. 

Grumpy Tom sits on my hood, cleans his paws, and hisses at things.  He hisses when people try pet him.  He hisses when Old Man Francis across the road comes out in just his boxers.  I'm pretty sure he once even hissed at his own tail when it wrapped around his feet for warmth, and he decided it had invaded his personal bubble.  Goon.

His butt puckers when he hisses, too.  I'm seriously not comfortable with that, which is why I want to get rid of him.

Okay, that's not the only reason, but it's a good reason.  The other reason is because he lies to me. 

"I'm a gunslinger," he said one day in between licking his paw and vigorously swirling it around his ear.

"You are not," I said.  "You're a cat.  A stray cat with a puckery butt.  Quit it."

His eyes narrowed, and in the distance I thought I heard the wind pick up.  I didn't mention this to him, because, well, you know what it does to him and it's just icky.  His gums pulled back to expose little, feral teeth as he said, "I'm a gunslinger and you need me.  I'll show you why tonight."

Grumpy Tom padded to the edge of my hood and dropped out of sight.  I didn't see him again for three hours.

-- Grumpy Tom Part 2 will be posted tomorrow...

Top Five Mind-Boggingly Stupid Situations - June 22, 2011

In the last week...

1)  After putting away the groceries, I realized I had lost the new bottle of liquid laundry detergent.  My wife found it.  In the freezer.

2)  Recently attended my wife Tonya's family reunion, and even though she and I have been married 10 years, some of her relatives insist on calling me by her ex-husband's name. I was not offended though, because these same people -- her own relatives -- introduced her repeatedly as "Bruce."

3)  It wasn't the fact that I locked my keys in my truck.  It was that I stood in front of it for a good 30 seconds wondering why the engine was running.

4)  Pulled out my iPhone to find out the current temperature, only to realize I was standing in front of a thermometer. I, of course, immediately launched my Google app to find out how many degrees each little black line measured.

5)  Decided to start labeling objects with stickers identifying them by what my 6-year-old son calls them. This is why the ice cream machine at our local Golden Corral now offers flavors in vanilla, chocolate, and chocolate squirrel.

The Tractor Tire Story

At any gathering (of which I am dragged into attending) my wife Tonya will do one of two things. She either gathers up three objects and says, "Do it!"  She means juggle.  Or she will ask me to tell "The Tractor Tire Story."

I was five years old.  (Tonya likes to tell people this actually happened last year, but it's really just more propaganda from her Sam's a Big Doodie-Head campaign.)  This was the mid-1970s, and my mom, dad, and I lived on the 100-Acre Farm, far away from mood rings, Planet of the Apes movies, and other forms of civilization.  Most families at that time, when going for a Sunday drive, all piled into a beaver-whacker station wagon and argued over who got dibs on the backward-facing seat.  Not us.  We piled on top of our red 1955 Farmall tractor and argued about who would not have to stand on the rear axle.  The tractor was designed with one seat, which was a small metal cup with holes in it designed by the Marquis de Sade in 1760 as a cure for people who whined about their hemorrhoids.  Racing like a herd of anesthetized three-toed sloths, we ventured off to circle the entire 100-Acre Farm.

The trip out passed largely uneventful.  Oh sure, the occasional fox squirrel barked long streams of squirrel profanity at us whenever we approached one of his secret nut hiding stashes.  This was okay, because we couldn't hear him. A 1955 Farmall tractor is pretty much a jangling conglomeration of various metal parts accompanied by a constant putt-putt-putt-putt-putt! from the smoke stack.

Dad, bless his heart, did try to mix things up to keep them interesting, especially whenever we found a freshly plowed field and he tried to cut doughnuts at exactly 1.2 miles per hour.

It was on the way back that things got really exciting.

I believe Mom first noticed the slight variation in our family-sized pocket of noise pollution.  It went like this:

Putt-putt-putt-putt-boing!

Putt-putt-putt-putt-boing!

Putt-putt-putt-putt-boing!

Mom said, "What's that?"

Dad replied, "WHAT?"

Mom repeated  louder, "What's that?  The boing!"

"The boy is standing on the axle!"

"No!  Boing!  Putt-putt-boing!"

We all began looking for the boing, starting with the obvious sources.  I had not smuggled any illicit noisy toys in my pockets, which Mom claimed were bigger inside like Doctor Who's TARDIS.  Nothing metal and springy flew from the engine.  No fox squirrels were close enough to pelt us with walnuts. 

"There!" Mom said.

A '55 Farmall doesn't really have a driver's side.  The De Sade hemorrhoid cup sits in the middle.  But if it did have a driver's side, then "There" was located on the front driver's side tire.

It was also coolest thing I had ever seen -- in all my five years.  This was better than the haircut I would soon give my nephew.  It was even better than when Mom found the copperhead under the mountain of Mason jars in the backyard and killed it with Dad's 12 gauge shotgun.  Glass went everywhere.  Grandma cackled, "Shoot 'em again!"

The tractor was twenty years old, and the tires were probably original. The Sunday joyrides and slow-motion stunt driving had apparently taken its toll.  A spot about the size of a nickel had worn through the tire -- but not the inner tube.  Inside air pressure pushed the inner tube through the hole so that it resembled a large, black nipple.  With each revolution of the tire, the nipple sprang up.

Putt-putt-putt-putt-boing!

Dad parked the tractor behind the barn when we reached the house.  He faced the nipple up.  Maybe he thought the position offered easier repair access or minimized the damage to the tube.  Regardless, it was also the optimal position to attract five-year-old eyes.  (I keep mentioning my age in an attempt to counter the effects of any Doodie-Head propaganda. Please let me know if it's working.)

Mom and Dad headed back toward the house and I followed.  But I kept looking back over my shoulder at the tractor nipple.  The distance between my parents and me began to increase.  Eventually, I felt brave enough to slip away and go back.

There it stood pointing to the sky, black and gloriously nipplely. I pinched it and twisted it, flipped it and pushed it back in the hole.  I did anything I could think of to make it go boing!  This had the potential for hours of entertainment.  Of course, being five, my attention span lasted slightly less than the length of a single boing.  Boredom set in and my imagination began to plot other fates for the nipple.

So,....

I doubt I'll ever know what possessed me to bite it.

It didn't go boing!

It went BOOM!

Luckily, my five-year-old chest cavity didn't go BOOM! with it. The doctor said I had saved myself by exhaling at exactly the same time, but maybe the jet of air pushed my head away. 

I stood up.  My eyes, I suspect, had grown to the size of those jumbo marshmallows everyone uses for s'mores.  A tiny, very quiet sound left my mouth: 

"Ow."

This was followed by:  "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!"

A long stream of Ahhs! followed me as I ran back to the house.  I felt like I had just swallowed the big Snoopy balloon at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.  This frightened me even more, because I just knew I was floating like a little Snoopy or maybe running like Neil Armstrong on the Moon, covering about a mile-and-a-half between each stride.

Under the above conditions, your Mom probably won't be mad if you rip the screen door as you scurry into the house.  However, if when you step into the kitchen, she asks, "What's wrong?" and you answer by throwing up. . . .  Well, that will earn you a night in the hospital. 

(Oh, and just some friendly advice:  If you are ever hospitalized for biting a tractor tire, and the other bed in your room is occupied by a Missouri State Trooper, do not lean up at some point and loudly say, "Man, look at the chin on that guy!"  I'm sure for six months after that, neither Mom nor Dad drove any faster than 15 mph below the posted speed limit.)

I was fine.  The hospital released me the next day.  Mom and Dad did not let me out of their sight for the next 25 years.

It is my hope that now this story has been released into the wild, my son will read it when he is a little older.  All those pictures his mom made him pose for while standing beside tractors, will finally make sense.

April Fresh Poltergeist

My wife Tonya has become an extreme couponer, and I am convinced that engaging in this movement has opened our house to paranormal activity.  Specifically, the potty is haunted.  In fact, both bathrooms have moved beyond the mortal realm -- all for one low price.

She purchased one of those black five-inch ring binders and filled it with plastic sleeves. Several pockets divided the sleeves, each designed to hold exactly one baseball card or (apparently) ninety-eight identical coupons for items the average household constantly runs out of, like ear wax extraction kits. 

As I came home from work one day, she met me at the door with a grin wide enough to make me momentarily consider calling an exorcist.  At least I thought she was grinning.

"You need to come see them," she said and yanked me into the living room.

We passed through two rooms and a hallway at such velocity that my vinyl lunch box streaked behind me like a blue vapor trail. Occasionally, a left-over olive would spill out, which at that speed could have been considered artillery.  She stopped me in front of the toilet, and immediately I detected the light sent of flowers.

Tonya pointed to one dark corner above the stool and whispered, "Loooook."

"Are those cobwebs?" I said.

"No! There!"

A white plastic brick was mounted to the wall.  Embedded in the plastic was a small, green flashing LED.

At that moment, I would swear I could hear a woman say in a southern evangelist monotone, "Step into the light, Sam. Step into the liiiight." I, of course, did not admit this to my wife, because I did not want her to think I had suddenly taken a side trip into Magic Munchkin Land.

I only knew how bad things were when Tonya picked up the plunger and struck a pose like a cross between Babe Ruth and Conan.  She doesn't touch plungers.  They are nasty, even new, because you never know when someone could have returned it.  She grabbed me then, and said slowly, as if I might misunderstand, "You need...to help me...get rid of them!"

"Of them?  What?"

"Automatic air fresheners."

I assumed this was the white brick on the wall -- the one beckoning me to "take comfort in the liiight, Carol Anne...er, I mean Sam." 

I said, "Right.  Are you telling me you don't know how this automatic air freshener got here?"

"No.  I'm telling you that it was on sale and I had dollar off coupons, so I got two of them for free."

"Okay, um, I'm confused here. They were free and you're wanting a refund?"

"No! I want you to help me kill them!"

Before I had a chance to ask her whether she had been cleaning the oven again with that stuff in the blue bottle, the air freshener went off.  I expected a gentle spritz followed by the relaxing scent of lavender, specifically designed to make your more vulnerable bathroom experiences less stressful than, say, giving birth to something the size of an ostrich.

Not even close.  The stupid thing moans!  First it hissed -- similar to my old cat Grumpy Tom when anyone invaded his personal space, which was an invisible bubble with a volume of approximately 6000 cubic feet.  Then, the device finished with a mournful moan:   uhhhhhhhnnnnnnn!

My wife screamed and the plunger went flying. . . .

. . . . right out the window.

Neither of us were sure where it landed, but I am convinced that, even as I write this, NASA officials are questioning former astronauts as to why thousands of skywatchers have begun reporting seeing a bathroom plunger sticking out of the rear driver's side tire of the Apollo Moon Rover.

I looked at her with the most sympathetic expression I could muster and said, "There coming to get you, Tonya."

She didn't feed me for three days.  And I suspect she had coupons for pizza in her ringer binder, which had recently swollen enough that when opened the book resembled the wingspread of a large extinct raptor.

For purely nutritional reasons, I decided I had no other choice than to call my cousin Marvin for help. He prefers to be called my Good Lookin' Cousin Marvin, mainly because of his fashion sense when it comes to coordinating his wardrobe with the seat covers of his 1993 Suzuki Hatchback.  This usually includes wearing a blue t-shirt with a Superman logo on the front that says, "Does this shirt make my 'S' look too big?"  Good Lookin' Cousin Marvin doesn't exactly have any formal paranormal training, but he has ordered from Amazon every season of Ghost Hunters on DVD, including the bonus Stanley Hotel episode.  I agreed to accept this as good credentials, even though none of his three VHS machines will play DVDs.

The first thing Marvin did was pull out an EMF detector.  Marvin is an electronics whiz and had made his own detector out of two old VCR remotes. Slowly he moved it along our bathroom wall and toward the air freshener in question. At first the device began to click. Marvin shushed me and gave an exaggerated nod.  I was sure we were mere minutes from him proclaiming, "This potty is clean!" When the distance between Marvin's outstretched hand and the air freshener narrowed to less than 6 inches, the detector began to squeal. My jaw dropped and I started to pat Marvin on the back for this demonstration of his skill.

 I regret to say that the air freshener picked that exact moment to moan. 

Marvin screamed.

And, as the EMF detector went flying past my face, I realized I had forgotten to close the bathroom window.

On his way out, Marvin explained to me that he was putting a stop to the investigation. He could not proceed without the proper equipment, so we had two options.  The first, and least likely, was that he could list his Stanley Hotel episode on Ebay, hoping to raise enough money to buy another VCR remote.  Or we would just have to wait until the next lunar landing mission returned to Earth.

So, now that you know this tale, I urge you to take heed if you or your spouse one day purchases a black ring binder.  Extreme couponing involves forces that were not meant to be played with!  Because it is only a matter of time before you stumble across a seemingly innocent dollar-off clipping that opens a doorway for automatic air fresheners to enter your home, too.

Tonya and I decided to live with our paranormal automatic air fresheners, even though the moaning seems to increase around 3:00 AM each night, and I'm pretty sure each time we leave, the plunger migrates to the left side of the toilet.  Fortunately, the air freshener manufacturer also sells night lights in the shape of camel crickets.  They even chirp a little bit if you don't get them all the way seated into the electrical outlet.  Tonya is terrified of crickets, but it is an acceptable compromise.  There is no telling what sort of activity will go on -- at least until the air freshener batteries run down.

Extreme Couponing 101 Strategies and Resources

The Day Dad Violated the Deep Freeze

You may not have noticed, but I get myself into some mind-boggingly stupid situations. The good news is there's a slight chance I may have inherited this trait. (Humor me; it's good news.)  As Dad used to say, "He came by it honest."  Then again, if Dad couldn't remember your name, he might refer to you as that Acorn Eating Idiot. Not everything he said was a pearl of wisdom, but he had his moments.

Dad used to be a mechanic. Most days you'd never know it. Although, many people say he could rip down a car engine to the bolts and reassemble it, especially vehicles predating 1980. Anything after that had "Too damn many computer brains in it." Dad thought computers were about as useful as syphilis. I remember once unwittingly handing him a calculator while he was trying to "figger sumthin'."  After that, I put serious effort into trying to convince Mom I was adopted. All electronics had "them computer brains" hidden somewhere and he avoided touching them at all costs. He did eventually master the Channel Up and Down buttons of the TV remote, but as for the rest, Volume Up was the only other button he ever found.

Dad's other talent was pissing off Mom.

He claimed the chainsaw stopped working.  So, one day in August around noon when the outside temperature floated somewhere around the boiling point of cast iron, he decided to bring this loud, wickedly sharp machine that is not even considered safe in the deep forest, far away from civilization, inside the house for some minor surgery. This was a chainsaw full of dirt and sawdust and gasoline and grime and oil, near Mom's shag carpet and white walls and floral print couch that no one ever sat on and weighed as much as a Boeing B-17.

Mom liked dirt in the same way you and I like a relaxing morning gallbladder attack. In fact, I think our little house dog Skeeter learned to play dead just to get out of trouble whenever Mom found a dog hair. (She tried her best to train herself not to shed.)  And I'm not talking about "Good dog. Sit. Roll over. Play dead."  It was more like,

"Mom, I think Skeeter's dead."

"What makes you say that?"

"Well, the last time I saw her take a breath was about thirty-five minutes ago."

"Tell her the couch doesn't have any hair on it."

Skeeter's tail would immediately start thumping.

I'm sure Dad thought he was showing Mom consideration by not repairing the chainsaw on her dining room table.  Because to him that would have been far more convenient. It is, however, a little known fact that the top of  a Whirlpool, 22-cubic-foot, chest-style freezer makes an excellent workbench substitute.

He started with the hand guard and a couple of housing plates. Apparently the problem began to run and hide -- similar to Skeeter when she forgot she wasn't supposed to pee in the basket that kept all Mom's Fingerhut catalogs.  Dad removed the chain catcher, flywheel, clutch, muffler, spark plug, throttle, and eventually every ounce of oil and otherwise unidentifiable goo from deep in the small engine's bowels.  From across the room, I noticed what used to be a chainsaw now vaguely resembled a Hubble photograph of the Omega Centauri galaxy.  I'm pretty sure that some of the parts were actually chainsaw molecules.

No, he didn't remember to lay down a protective cloth first.

Mom walked into the room and immediately Skeeter ran to Dad with a look that pleaded for him to play dead. Dad smiled down at the dog gently, as if to say, "It's okay. There's nothing to worry about. I'm bald."

Mom said, "Do you really think my kitchen and my formerly snow-white freezer is the right place to be tearing up your Weed Eater?"

"It, um, was a chainsaw."

"It stinks! My whole house smells like Havoline 10w40."

"Can't you just squirt a little Febreze around...?"

At that point, the dog left.

Mom said, "How am I supposed to fix supper when I can't even get to the meat? This mess better be gone before four o'clock."  Then, she walked back to the laundry room -- I'm sure to beat the dryer for allowing lint to collect on its filter.

Did I mention Dad was ornery?

That evening, we ended up ordering cheeseburgers from a little cafe on the edge of town. 

Three days later, we found Dad standing at the freezer again.  All the same parts still lay strewn on the lid, but by now the mass could only be identified as a chainsaw from dental records.  In addition to this, next to Dad's right foot was the lawn mower.  I'm not sure whether his idea was to put the two together and make one good one, or maybe he just thought Mom's shag carpet was getting a little tall. 

In the weeks ahead, he got tired of the project and carried the machines back to the shed. They had been reduced to two small, jangling boxes.  My brother and I used try to guess which box was which, until we dug deep into them and started finding things like speakers, small tires, and what appeared to be part of the casing to a multi-stage rocket booster.

I miss him.

How would you describe your dad?

"Here, Kitty-Kitty!" -- Easy PC Maintenance

I promise -- this will be the only entry I post this week  that contains any useful information. The rest will be as useless as I can possibly make them. 

Okay everyone, hold onto something.  I am about to go full-tilt nerd....

How do you know if you need to run Microsoft Defrag? The primary symptom is that you have begun to refer to your computer as, "That twenty-pound paperweight on my desk."  (Or, five pounds, if it's your laptop.) You say this because the Internet runs slowly and just about everything else does too. When you click a Desktop icon, sometime later you click it again just to make sure the first one took. Nothing actually "runs"; it all crawls.

Who is immune? No one with a PC. The hard drive can still fragment even if your computer is so beefy that beside the Intel Inside logo shines a "Nearly NASA Awesome" sticker. You are in no way protected even if your liquid-cooled, artificially intelligent, super desktop gaming monster is so proactive that when you get close to a speaker, it says, "Good morning, Dave." You've always wondered who Dave is, but that's okay. It says the same thing to the cat.

Regardless, the idea is that all hard drives eventually fragment.

How Did This Fragging Thing Happen?

Okay, let me qualify that last statement a bit. If your hard drive is just sitting around, unused, it is not going to fragment spontaneously. Dave, I have a surprise for you! Fragmentation happens over time as old files are deleted and new ones saved. A deleted file is not really gone. Well, at first, anyway. The computer marks the file so that it later knows the space is available as if it were empty. It's almost like a sticky note to itself that says, "If I erase this part and put something new in its place, there is very little chance my owner will take me to the nearest bridge and say, 'So, thought you would lose the first sixteen chapters of my novel, did you?'"

However, the new file might not fit into the old space, so the leftover bits get merrily chucked into the next available one. Who cares which one! Organization is far more important to humans than to computers. The time necessary to shovel through all those gigabytes of hard drive real estate is what slows things down and makes you want to replace your "Nearly NASA Awesome" sticker with "Beyond this point there be turtles."

Defrag De PC

A defrag is not something you want to do every day. It stresses the hard drive, shortens its life, and encourages your friends to start sending you links to addiction therapy websites. Then again, excessive fragmentation also stresses the drive. The good news is that Windows can analyze it for you and suggest whether the procedure is necessary.

Note that, depending on the size of the drive, analyzing and defragging can be a slow process. Of course, a slow computer is sort of the whole point, so you're probably used to it by now.

Running a defrag is relatively easy. On an XP box you click Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Disk Defragmenter. On Vista/Windows 7, type "Disk Defragmenter" into the search box under the Start button menu. Once Windows offers you a list of its best guesses, right-click Disk Defragmenter and choose Run As Administrator from the menu.

Done Defragging

Okay, what just happened and why do I feel like I need to bench press something to bring down my nerd levels?  Defragmenting causes file parts that belong together to move as close as possible to each other, which minimizes the time and effort the computer needs to look for them. The computer can find all the parts faster, so as a result the system runs faster. Or in other words, like separating laundry, your World of Warcraft Death Knight data is no longer mixed in with your Lady Gaga MP3s and the first sixteen chapters of your post-apocalyptic novel about a seven-foot, two-inch tall zombie named Bubbles.

Note that not all files can be moved.  (Zombies are irritable.)

Defrag's done and you've rebooted. Clicked icons respond in less time than it would take a turtle to walk across your office floor and develop rudimentary language skills. Generally, the system runs like it did when it was new.

But what if it doesn't? Many other things can slow down a computer besides a fragmented hard drive. Viruses and spyware can consume system resources. Too many programs in the Startup folder can do the same thing. Even the hardware, such as RAM or the hard drive itself, could be outdated and unable to keep up with the demands of modern software.

So, okay, defragmenting doesn't fix everything. The computer has stopped calling the cat "Dave" and now refers to him as "Gloria." But at least it does it faster now.

How to Use Lubricant Inappropriately

My wife couldn't believe it. Or that I would even think to do something like it.

My old DVD player in the bedroom had been misbehaving for a week. Randomly, the movie stopped, usually at the height of a crucial scene, freezing on a close-up of an actor with her eyes drooping and lips extended as if she were experiencing difficulty in saying the letter J. The movie remained frozen somewhere between 10 minutes and a month, then jumped to the ending credits. The player also skipped scenes without warning. I didn't always notice, because, let's face it, many of the movies I watch will never win the Oscar for Best Film. In fact, they probably won't win for Best Script, Editing, Acting, Sound, Use of the Dramatic Pause, or even Best Speed with Which It Went Straight to Video. So, an occasional skipped scene rarely interrupted the semblance of plot continuity.

Yesterday, I was watching a rented flick about either zombies, or Kung Fu fighters, or maybe Kung Fu zombies. I can't remember which. Anyway, just as the movie started, the DVD player went vrrrrrr-ROOOOOMMMMMM!

I didn't expect a DVD player to make that kind of noise. A Ferrari maybe but not a DVD player.

Then it made a different noise a little louder. Space Shuttle loud. A Space Shuttle equipped with glass packs.

So, I thought, "You're a computer guy, right? A DVD player has computer-like parts in it, right? You can fix this."

I assumed it probably needed cleaned, especially since I don't remember cleaning it anytime after "the Information Super Highway" was still a neato-burrito phrase.

I grabbed my toolbox and a can of air. As I returned to the bedroom and passed my wife, she laid her novel in her lap and gave me one of those looks that is full of suspicion and "when was the last time you took out the garbage?" I'm pretty sure she saw me fiddling with the DVD player (and I know she heard the stream of profanity when the movie paused), so as I often do, I took advantage of the situation for my own nefarious pleasure.

I said, "I'm going to build a time machine," and jangled my toolbox off to the bedroom, without another word.

She went back to her novel. After living with me for this long, it would not have shocked her whether or not I was serious. "Just remember that there are still electronics in that room that were working before you touched them."

"Yes, dear."

Back in the bedroom, I removed the case from the DVD player. It was absolutely spotless inside. The circuit boards were an annoying shade of vibrant green. No dust bunnies huddled in fear around any of the vents. It was all quite distressing.

I shot some air at it just to make myself feel better, and -- of course -- a wire popped off. It looked important, too. And it didn't just unplug. It actually fell off the plastic thingy that plugged it into the circuit board. I stuck it back into the plastic thingy and it seemed to stay.

But, without something to fix or at least intimidate with my can of air, I was heartbroken. Then, I noticed some abrasions on part of the DVD carriage. That meant something was rubbing it and maybe vibrating or even VROOM-ing! It needed -- oh yes! -- lubricant. In fact, there were shafts that seemed to have things sliding along them and gears with interlocking teeth! I needed some sort of grease.

Except, I didn't have any grease. I didn't have even anything slippery. No marine grease, no 3-in-1 oil, no WD-40. Nothing. I needed a substitute.

I padded back up the hallway. I had a plan. I sneaked past my wife and into the kitchen.

Just as the cabinet door over the stove snicked! open, my wife said, "You don't need cooking oil to build a time machine."

I quickly shut the door. How does she know these things?

Again, down the hall I went, like my son when he is caught "just looking at the candy." I went into the bathroom, feeling nauseous over the whole matter, and stared pitifully at my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. Mumbling something about "a stupid time machine," I opened the medicine cabinet door for some Tums . . . and there it was. The solution sat on the shelf. In my memory, Heavenly Hosts began singing and golden light streamed in through the window. I doubt however it happened exactly that way since it was 10:30 at night. I picked up the toothpaste-shaped tube that did not contain toothpaste. As I read the ingredients, my eyebrows began to raise. One of the main ingredients was grease.

A few minutes later, I had the DVD player put back together. I was happy. Because in all likelihood I now own the only DVD player whose VROOM! was fixed with a tube of anti-itch cream.

Department Store Adventures in a White Miniskirt

I wandered into the Nintendo section and found myself staring up at the demo monitor that flashed "Soul Bringer" . . . or "Soul Muncher"? . . . or . . . . Okay, I can't remember the actual name, but I know it was Soul Something-or-Other Part 2, which I'm assuming is the sequel to Soul Something-or-Other Part 1

With its uncomfortably low joystick thrust out at me, the machine beguiled me to press Start, and I did press.

The monitor flashed and swirled, blinked and blipped until finally displaying a stone arena encircling a man in a red shirt and a woman scantily dressed in white. They faced each other, panting heavily. I realized they were not happy to see each other when I saw they both carried swords, poised for attack.

An announcer yelled: "OKAY! FIGHT!"

The man with Fabio hair and Fabio pecs marched forward and looked at the woman with  an odd mix of menace and boredom. In one slow, robotic, distracted movement, he raised his arm and whopped the woman in the head with a sword that was bigger than his leg. She offered no resistance. In fact, she crumpled to the floor as if a small steel factory had landed on her.

This was my first clue that I was the chick in the white miniskirt.

She sprang back to her feet with a speed strictly forbidden in Earth-like gravity, especially when wearing high-heeled, knee-high boots. I was impressed with her agility and held hope for her fighting skills. A white bolero jacket complemented her miniskirt. In her right hand, she brandished a petite sword with lots of pretty curlicues, and in her left, an itty-bitty blue shield. I'm sure all of these items she picked up at her local Lane Bryant.

Now keep in mind that I was disadvantaged using the game controller. Not only were my hands full with items I intended to purchase, but the controller contained a right-hand joystick, a left-hand joystick, and about 300 buttons -- none of which I knew what did.

I started pushing buttons frantically.

Fabio-dude advanced again and yelled, "I'm going to kick your Lane-Bryant-credit-card packing ass! Then I will grab that little chickie ponytail and slam you up against the wall! And while you lie there twitching, I will steal your boots because they are to die for!"

I'm translating here, of course. What he actually said was, "Yah!"

He ran after me.

So, obviously, I ran the other way as fast as my miniskirt permitted. As Chickie clip-clopped around the arena, I pushed buttons frantically again.

Without warning, Chickie stopped, knelt, and brought both forearms together in front of her face like, "Nyeh! You can't get me." I assumed this was some sort of block.

Fabio-dude walked up and politely whopped her in the head just like before. But this time he also got an attitude. He picked her up and crunched her back over his knee, ... then threw her against the wall.

He left the boots.

I waited for Chickie to perform one of her dynamically rapid recoveries. It did not happen.

The announcer yelled: "KNOCK-OUT!"

I blamed everything on the game controller.

Apparently Chickie shook off the crunched back, because suddenly we were in Round 2.

I thought, I've got to figure out these buttons. Even though my left thumb could barely touch the left joystick, I moved it. Simultaneously, Chickie's sword wiggled and appeared to be turning green.

Fabio Dude stomped forward again and yelled, "Yah!" (We all know what that means.)

When he got near her, I released the left joystick. Chickie's green wiggling sword arced through the air in slow motion Whuuuummmm! and blasted Fabio Dude like an ICBM in the left rib cage. BOOM!

Flames shot out of his ribs.

And he fell to the floor.

Dude wasn't happy with me when he recovered. I knew this because he wasn't looking at my white miniskirt anymore.

"Yah!" he yelled.

So, I wiggled Chickie's sword again. Whuuuummmm!

And he fell to the floor again.

The announcer yelled: "KNOCK OUT!"

Round 3. The tiebreaker. It basically went:

"Yah!"

Whuuuummmm!

Whuuuummmm!

"KNOCK OUT!"

I thought, "Yeah. I'm good."

The game paused to load the second match. The screen faded in from black and Chickie popped back onto the arena. She was yipping, now. I was unsure why. To be honest, though, she sounded like Xena -- after taking a couple of hits from a helium tank.

I thought, "It doesn't matter. I'm bad, now."

New Dude appeared.

He stood about 11 feet tall and his arms bulged with twice the girth of Chickie's whole body. It's unlikely he bench pressed anything lighter than Clydesdales. Two great big horns curved out of the back of his helmet. The blade of his axe stretched as long as a Lincoln Town Car.

And he was dressed in purple. All purple.

From deep within his bellows of a chest he roared: GrrrrrrAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

I assume this translated to, "I'm going to kick your Lane-Bryant-credit-card packing ass!"

I believed him.

So, Chickie wiggled her sword.

Purple-dude raised his axe high enough over head it incited atmospheric disturbances before thundering down. Ka-THOOM!

And missed Chickie by about two feet.

Under the blessing of Purple Dude's obvious near-sightedness, Chickie's sword had time to grow green and wiggle. I let go of the ICBM launch button, Chickie responded with a great swing of her gamma-ray blade of death, and it went tink! against Great Big Purple Dude's side. No flames. He didn't fall down. Just, tink!

Chickie looked up at him and said, "You're going to kill me now, aren't you?"

GrrrrrrAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

The axe thundered down again. It missed again, but Chickie fell anyway. Apparently, Purple Dude and his weapon were so powerful that he didn't need to hit her specifically. The shockwave caused enough collateral damage.

I punched buttons until my hands began to sweat.

All the while, Chickie decided to start rolling on the floor as Dude gave chase and whacked at her repeatedly with the axe. THOOM-THOOM-THOOM!

I guess I hit the right button, or maybe she just started ignoring me. Regardless, Chickie stood up as Great Big Purple Dude raised his axe.

This axe should have been foremost on my mind. Instead, though, I contemplated the design of the controller. I remembered there were triggers hidden (hidden from me, at least) on the front. I wondered what would happen if I pulled one of those.

I pulled a trigger.

Chickie walked forward and climbed up Purple Dude's body. There was a peculiar casualness in how she scaled him, as if she were merely hopping up on a counter to retrieve a top-shelf box of coco-munchies during a commercial break. I think he was just as surprised as I was. She continued to climb until she reached the top of his head, where she grabbed his horns.

Now keep in mind, Chickie on a bloated day might weigh a hundred pounds, including the sword and miniskirt. Great Big Purple Dude weighed as much as one of those big yellow bulldozers with ominous names like Earth Mover or Planet Flattener.

Chickie locked her grip onto Purple Dude's horns, yipped like Xena on helium, and threw him over her head. He flew about ninety-five feet through the air and smacked down on the floor.

"KNOCK OUT!"

I was done then. I had seen it all.

As I left the store, I was stopped.

"Sir, sir! Are you going to pay for that miniskirt?"

"What? Um, this? Um, I ... honestly, it's just for emergencies," I said.

He scowled. I could swear his uniform was shaded slightly purple.