Get the picture?

I have satellite TV at my house. We subscribe to the “most expensive possible” package, which means we have about 1,789 channels to choose from.

I sat there on Saturday, flipped through all of them, and declared with disgust, “There’s nothing on TV.”

My children look at me as if I were a space alien when I tell them what watching TV was like when I was a kid – how there were only three channels, unless you lived close enough to Atlanta to pick up Channel 17; how children doubled as remote controls (Mark, go change the channel); how we had to go outside and adjust the antenna so it wouldn’t look like we were watching All In the Family through a snowstorm.

One of the greatest inventions my dad brought home was a device that remotely rotated the antenna, which was normally found on the roof. It was a boxy contraption and had a big dial in the middle, and when you turned the dial, the antenna would also turn. It seemed like magic, at the time, like something from The Jetsons!

This device was necessary because in those pre-cable, pre-satellite days, TV reception could be an iffy thing, and it required a lot of antenna adjustment.

We lived about 40 miles from Atlanta, so most days the reception was fine, but sometimes the picture could get a little snowy. This was especially true on windy days. So somebody – me – would have to go outside and turn the antenna around, while somebody else – my dad - stayed in the house and yelled to indicate when the antenna was in the right place. This could be very frustrating, because sometimes I’d think I had it just right, and I’d sit down and try to watch Sanford and Son, and Lamont’s face would get wavy, and out I would go again.

If you watched TV during the’70s, then you know what rabbit ears are. These were the tiny antennas that you hooked up to a smaller TV that wasn’t worthy of being connected to the giant rooftop antenna. There were all sorts of tricks to make rabbit ears work better, and they were all necessary, because they generally weren’t worth a crap.

You could get a coat hanger and attach it to the rabbit ears to make them longer. You could wrap aluminum foil around them to improve reception. Sometimes, the reception even depended on where you were in the room. I remember thinking that we could put a man on the moon, but I had to stand on my head to watch Welcome Back Kotter.

The main channels – 2, 5, and 11 – were VHF channels. Then you had the UHF channels, and we could only pick up one of those, Channel 17. I loved Channel 17 because it televised Braves’ and Hawks’ games, and reruns of Leave It To Beaver and Gilligan’s Island (man, I loved that Mary Ann). But getting a clear picture on Channel 17 really was in God’s hands. You never knew if you were going to see Mary Ann in a halter top or the visual equivalent of an LSD trip when you turned to that channel.

So, I never had to walk three miles to school barefoot in the snow, and I didn’t get just an orange and a new pair of overalls for Christmas, but I had my share of hardships as a kid. Of course, someday my kids will probably tell their kids, “Can you believe we only had 1,789 TV channels when we were young? You have it too easy!”

Out like a light

I had a little “procedure” done yesterday that required me being put to sleep, which everyone assured me was no big deal, which was easy to say since they weren’t the ones being put to sleep.

I really don’t even like the term “put to sleep,” cause it reminds me of a couple of dogs I’ve had in my day who have had that done. Most recently it was a Chow named B.J. who had been hit by a car. When it happens to dogs, they generally don’t wake back up.

This is the third time I’ve been put to sleep. The first time was when I was 12 and they were checking me for a kidney problem, and I woke up with a tube inserted in the last place a man would EVER want anything inserted.

The second time was when I had my wisdom teeth taken out when I was around 20 or 21. I woke up in the recovery room and asked the nurse to marry me. She declined.

This time, they had to run some sort of contraption down my throat and into my stomach, so I was more than happy to sleep through that. Before knocking me out, they rolled me into a freezing cold room, hooked me up to a few tubes, and left me there for about half-an-hour.

This was a bad thing, because that gave me time to think. I’ve heard of instances where all sorts of things go wrong when people are undergoing medical procedures.

For one thing, there was a movie a while back about people who undergo anesthesia, only it doesn’t have the desired effect, it just paralyzes them. So they can see and feel everything that is going on during the operation. I wasn’t having open-heart surgery, but still, the thought of seeing and feeling this long tube go down my throat filled me with a little panic.

Then I got to thinking, what if something goes wrong and I end up in a coma? I watch House, this can happen. Maybe I won’t wake up until the year 2018, I thought, and I’ll find out that some crazy things have taken place – like the country has been taken over by robots, or the Falcons won the Super Bowl, or my daughter has married a guy named Slash with tattoos from his ankles to his ears. I was about five seconds away from ripping out all those tubes and wires and running down the hall like a crazy man with my hospital gown flapping open.

Then the nurse and doctor came in, put some big contraption in my mouth and told me not to talk. I started to ask them to promise I wouldn’t end up in a coma, but they must have zapped me with the anesthesia, because the next thing I remember is waking up in the recovery room. It was not 2018, it was only 20 minutes after they put me under. So either everything went well, or that was the world’s shortest coma.

The doctor came in, spent an informative 15 seconds or so with me, handed me some nice color photographs of my innards, and walked out. This guy had the bedside manner of Gen. Patton. I changed out of my hospital gown, and stumbled down the hall like Amy Winehouse, not really knowing any more than I did before I went in.

I hope it’s a long time before I get put to sleep again. I don’t want to end up like B.J.

Drama at the auto shop

I had to go get an emissions test on my car today, which is a racket. I had to get the test before I could get my annual car tag from the state, which is another racket. But while I was there, I had an interesting experience.

The name of the place is Junior’s Automotive. It used to be called Shorty’s, but apparently Shorty sold it to Junior. I know, it sounds like a Hee-Haw sketch, but I’m not making this up.

It took me a while to get the attention of the girl behind the counter, because she was engrossed in what appeared to be a fairly serious conversation. The girl, who I later learned is named Brandy, was wearing a T-shirt that read “I’m just a cowgirl.” She finally paused long enough to attend to me, and then resumed her phone conversation while I waited.

In the waiting room, there’s a small sign asking customers to please go outside if they are going to talk on their cell phones. Now there’s a policy I agree with. As I’ve stated before, it makes me insane to be held captive listening to the inane details of somebody else’s life.

But they don’t practice what they preach there at Junior’s, cause Brandy went on and on loudly with her call, and I heard every word. I was the only person in the waiting room, and the magazine selection was terrible, so I had no choice but to listen. And I’ll tell you what, I’m glad I did, because it was pretty entertaining.

Let me see if I can sum it up for you, based on what I gleaned from my five minutes of listening. Brandy knows a man – I’m not sure if it’s a brother, or old boyfriend, or just a friend – who is dating a woman that Brandy, well, just flat-out doesn’t trust.

This woman apparently will “run off” and disappear for a few days, then show back up, declare that she loves the man, wants him back, and ask him if can she have a few hundred dollars. He gives her the money, and sure enough, she takes off again, repeating the cycle.

So Brandy, being very concerned for her male friend (and rightly so, based on what I’d heard), decided to investigate this floozy. Through a background check, she learned that the woman has at least five ex-husbands, and has some convictions for bank fraud, and has some sort of a “pill problem.” I hate to jump to conclusions, but I’m guessing that’s why she needs the frequent stimulus packages from the boyfriend.

The phone call I overheard was between Brandy and one of the ex-husbands. She was calling them to see if her suspicions about the woman were right, and to try and get some ammo to use to convince her male friend he’s making a mistake. When she hung up, though, she was a little disappointed, because that particular ex-husband apparently wanted no part of it.

I’m thinking that if this guy hasn’t seen the problem with this woman yet, nothing is going to get through to him. Did I mention that the woman is 48, and her boyfriend is only 28? She’s currently “on the run,” according to Brandy, but she’s sure she’ll come back, and she just knows her friend will take her back when she does. She’s tried to talk some sense into him, but she said he’s “blindsided.”

Here’s what I was thinking – this gal is 48, has 5 ex-husbands, a drug problem, a criminal history, and a guy 20 years her junior keeps taking her back after she runs off with his money. What in the world is her secret? Is she the best-looking woman who ever lived? Does she cook like Martha Stewart, clean like Hazel and dress like one of the Girls Next Door? Can she rebuild the engine of a ’65 Mustang while wearing a French maid outfit and singing a Lynyrd Skynyrd song? I’m intrigued, to say the least.

I started to ask Brandy if she wanted to talk about it, as I’m pretty good at giving advice, but I decided against it. You don’t want to get sucked into trailer-park drama, anyway. It’s like a swirling eddy that draws you in, and there’s no escaping.

I hope Brandy gets her friend out of this mess. I need to take my daughter’s car in soon for an emissions test, so maybe when I’m there I’ll get an update. I can get out my cellphone, violating Junior’s policy, and have a fake conversation about a woman I know who’s had a bunch of husbands and is addicted to Oxycontin, and that might prompt her to tell me what’s going on. Misery loves company, you know.

Growing up

There’s not much doubt that kids are growing up too fast these days.

I have seen and read about this new phenomenon amongst the younger people in society known as “sexting.” Apparently, teenagers use their phones and computers now to arrange “hookups,” and girls are sending pictures of themselves in their birthday suits to boys.

You know, when I was a kid and I thought about the future, I thought there would be flying cars and robots and people living on the moon by the year 2009. It never occurred me that, instead, we’d have girls freely showing off their naughty bits electronically.

When I was in high school, if a girl’s bra strap was showing it nearly caused a riot. The thought of actually seeing a girl naked was more than I could even consider. And I was a little scared of it, to be honest with you. I went to church and I knew the Adam and Eve story. I was aware that nekkidness led to wickedness.

I suppose I was a pretty sheltered and innocent kid. I remember thinking how awesome it was going to be to grow up. I longingly dreamed of the days when I’d have freedom – a job so I could make money to spend on whatever I pleased; a cool car to take me wherever I wanted to go; my own house, where I could do what I want and watch anything I wanted on TV and stay up as late as I wanted to; and I could eat whatever my heart desired, with nobody to tell me “that will make you sick.”

Well, let’s take a case-by-case look at how that all turned out.

Job and money - I do have a job, and I make a decent amount of money, but I do NOT spend it wherever I please. Pretty much every dime is accounted for before it even hits my bank account. And as far as the job goes, the woman in the cube next to me has gotten a new adding machine that sounds like a machine gun, and she uses that thing all day long. Either she gets rid of it, or I’m going to have to take an anger-management class.

Cool car – Well, for the longest time, I drove a 1999 Plymouth minivan, until the engine gasket sprung a leak. Now I’ve switched to a sporty brown 2000 Chevy Impala. I’m not saying these cars are mostly driven by old people, but they come standard with a handicapped parking sticker and a tube of Polident. And as far as going wherever I want to go, approximately 99 percent of my driving is to and from work, or dropping off/picking up teenagers. The other 1 percent of the time, I’m going to Home Depot.

My own house – Thanks to a recent toilet overflow disaster, the entire downstairs of my house is undergoing major renovation. That means all of the furniture has been moved out, the ceilings and carpets are being removed, and there are huge holes in the drywall. It’s like I live in Beirut in the 80s. The value of my house has dropped faster than Britney Spears’ britches in the past year, and three of my neighbors were burglarized a year ago. Yes, owning a home is the American dream.

Eating what I want – Sure, I can eat anything I want. As long as it doesn’t have fat, grease, sugar, or flavor. My triglycerides are higher than The Grateful Dead, which has led to pancreatitis. Nobody warns you as a kid that these sorts of things are lurking.

I shudder to think what the future holds in store for my kids (who, by the way, have been warned explicitly they’ll be beaten severely about the head and shoulders if they’re ever caught “sexting.”). I just give them the standard advice – do well in school, work hard, treat people right, and life should turn out just fine for you.

Oh, and watch those triglycerides. Whatever they are.

You're fired!

I was in a meeting with a guy the other day and he said somebody had been “outplaced.” I asked him what the hell that meant, and he said, “Well, there was a re-organization, and she was impacted.”

I said, “Are you saying she was fired?” He looked at me for a moment, then said with some discomfort, “Yes. She’s no longer with us.”

Whoa, wait a second. She’s dead? No, no, he said. She has moved on to another opportunity. Oh, I said, so she quit. Well, he said, not voluntarily. How can you quit if it’s not voluntarily?

Bottom line, she was fired. A lot of people are getting fired these days. I’ve been fired a few times in life, and it’s not a pleasant thing.

Why is it so hard for people to say, “You’re fired”? In sports, when a coach is fired, they always say, “We decided to go in a different direction.” In business, it’s often “Your services are no longer needed.” At least they don’t add, “But I’d still like to be friends.”

People can fire you in different ways. When I got fired from this great big bank with a red-white-and-blue logo, my boss came into my office, sat down and said, “Mark, there is no longer a place for you in public relations.”

Well, OK, I said, that’s cool. So where do I work now? Can I be one of the people who counts the money? Can I be a security guard? I always wanted to have a job where I could carry a gun and shoot people.

It turns out, she wasn’t really there to tell me that I was getting a cool new job, because she just sat there and repeated impassively that there was no place for me and refused to make eye contact. Then we had the following conversation:

Me: So what does this mean?
Soulless Corporate Idiot: You know what it means.
Me: No, I don’t.
Soulless Corporate Idiot: I believe you do.
Me (feigning shock): Are you saying that I’ve been fired?
Soulless Corporate Idiot: There’s no place for you in the organization.
Me: Come on, I’m getting fired. You can say it.
Soulless Corporate Idiot: I have to go.

It felt more like being dumped by a girlfriend than being fired. You know, how they tell you that it’s just not working out, and it’s not you, it’s them, and they think you’re a great guy, when what they really mean is, “I’ve started seeing a guy who drives a nicer car than you do.” Not that this ever happened to me.

Anyway, that particular bank has gone in the crapper ever since they fired me, so there’s a lesson learned. I was also fired by a grocery store chain once, and it’s since gone out of business. I was also let go by a PR agency that is also no longer in operation. I hope my current employer thinks long and hard about this if they ever decide I need to be outplaced.

An inconvenient store

I walked into a questionable-looking convenience store the other day because I had to get gas, and since I was dying of thirst, I decided to go inside and get something to drink.

I don’t like these places because they always smell like a cheap car air-freshener, and I don’t enjoy dealing with people through bulletproof glass who barely speak English and call me “boss.”

But sometimes, even if I’m in a sketchy part of town, the lure of a canned soft drink and delicious Little Debbie snack cake is impossible to ignore, so I pull into the parking lot, tell the urban campers that I don’t have any change, and step inside.

This particular convenience store was especially seedy. Right by the cash register there was a magazine rack, carrying some interesting titles. The one that caught my eye was “Big Black Butts.” I have to tell you, I had no idea there was such a publication before this.

I began to wonder what you found inside such a magazine. Pictures of big black butts, I suppose. But what else? Are there articles, advice columns, workout routines? Is there a “Big White Butts” magazine? I have a lot of questions about this.

But I wasn’t curious enough to actually buy a copy. I’m surprised, in this era of DVDs and the Internet, that there is actually still a market for dirty magazines. Who exactly would buy “Big Black Butts,” other than maybe Sir Mix-a-Lot?

There’s a Kangaroo store near my house, but I try not to go in there if I can help it. A clerk got shot and killed there one night a few years ago by two sub-humans from a neighboring county. There’s a woman who works there now who is at least 60 years old, and both of her arms are covered with tattoos. Think about this, young people, when you decide to go get yourself all tatted up. You’re going to get old one day, and nobody wants to see a grandma who looks like she just got out of prison.

Don’t you hate getting stuck in line at the convenience store behind a degenerate buying a fistful of lottery tickets? Listen, Cletus. You’re not going to win. And even if you do, within two years you’ll be broke again and asking me for money in the parking lot so you can go buy a dirty magazine. Do us all a favor and spend that $10 on a toothbrush and some floss.

I guess I have a love-hate relationship with convenience stores. As unpleasant as it can be, I am right now feeling the urge to pull over somewhere on the way home and go spend $5 unnecessarily, just because I can. I like Little Debbies, and I cannot lie....