WHO PUT THE HANDY IN HANDYMAN

One thing I am not, is a handyman. My stepfather could fix everything from my bike to the plumbing in the wall of our bathroom. He rarely had to call anyone to fix anything that broke in our house. My father-in-law is the same way. When he fixes things they stay fixed. He was an engineer for Rocketdyne, so he knows how to put things together. As for me, I don't know which end of a wrench is up. Oh I've tried in the past to fix things, but the end result is always the same, call an expert. I figure there are two kinds of people in this world when it comes to fixing things, thems that can, and thems that can't. Then there are those who fit in between. They have the determination to fix things, but just won't quite go the distance. They are the "Hacks", the "Jerryiggers". They are the ones that won't go to the hardware or the auto parts store. They are the clowns of ingenuity, and use whatever is handy or available, as long as they don't have to leave their property. Beer and chewing tobacco fuel their determination; duct tape and string are their tools. These are the people who put the trash in trailertrash, and looser in - um - well - looser! Here are a few pictures to illustrate my point. My favorite is the guy who wanted to save on heat or electricity in the winter months. Instead of using his heater, or installing one, he hooked up a series of aire ducts to his chimney. A fan was installed in the side of the duct near where the duct and the chimney met. When the fire was lit, he would turn on the fan, which allowed the heated air to travel through the ducts to each room. A couple of filters were installed to minimize the smoke. Another fave is the guy who, instead of fixing his leaky roof, decided to allow the leaking to continue, but rigged up a piping system to redirect the water through the attic and out to the backyard. The entire apparatus looked like somehting from the game MOUSETRAP. The "Most Lazy" handyman award goes to the guy who built a cement wall in the front yard of his house. He just stacked the bags of unopened cement in the form of a wall (with an entry) in front of his house and left it at that. I guess he was just waiting for it to rain, which would help his wall "settle". BRILLIANT! I'm sure we all know at least one of these strange breeds of people. Perhaps the best well known is the guy you see in the mirror every morning.

FROM THE X-FILES!

I WANT TO BELIEVE! That's the title of the new X-FILES movie, and also the wording on a UFO poster in my office. Yesterday, Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut from the Apollo 11 mission, revealed that UFO's and their occupants have indeed been visiting this planet, and that the United States government has covered this up for the last 60 years. He went on to say that the events that took place in Roswell New Mexico involving the retreavel of a flying disc and alien occupants in July of 1947, actually happened. I have always believed this to be true, as my brother and I both saw a UFO back in the summer of 1971. At that time we were living in Washington State where my parents had bought a cafe on the Hood Canal. The Hood Canal isn't really a canal, but a large body of water that snakes its way inland from the Pacific Ocean, and ends just outside of Washington's Capitol, Olympia. The canal is about a mile wide. My brother and I were spending the night outside and laying in our sleeping bags, when I noticed an orange/yellow glowing sphere hovering just above and beyond the tree line across the canal. I pointed it out to my brother who saw it as well. It made no sound, nor did it have any strobe lights that may have told us it was plane or a helicopter. It made a number of odd manuevers and then it suddenly shot off to the north and was gone. Of course no body beleived us, but we didn't care; we knew what we had seen. Since then I have read almost every book on the subject, and it facinates me still. I think it's foolish to think that of all the planets that exist in that vast starlit area we call space, that we are the only intelligent beings that exist. This of course brings up a lot of religious issues, none of which I will go into here, but one day we'll all know the truth. We may have to die to get that truth, but we'll get it none the less. Hopefully, this intergallactic mystery will be solved in our lifetime. But in the meantime, I'll be patiently waiting, and looking up into the sky.

YOU SAY OSAMA, I SAY OBAMA

This poor sap just isn't going to catch a break this election year. I was very surpirsed to see that "The New Yorker" published this extrmemly satirical, and possibly politically damaging cartoon of Obama and his wife in the oval office of the White House. The two are seen wearing terrorist garb and doing their famous "fist bump". On the wall over the fireplace is a picture of Osama Bin Laden, and burning IN the firepalce is the American Flag. I don't read "The New Yorker", so I can't honestly say which way their editorial politics sway, but traditionally the media has been very liberal, especially the editorial media. That's why I was shocked to see this kind of satire on the cover of such a very prominant magazine. What the backlash from this has yet to be seen, but with this appearing just after his "...your children need to learn Spanish" speech, this bitter pill will go down like an Ostrich egg. McCain isn't much better, but at least his name doesn't rhyme with THE most wanted man in the world. I bet after seeing this magazine cover he's thankful his name isn't John Mitler.

WHERE'S THE BEEF! (Used sparingly of course)

I just read where LDS Church leaders excommunicated a guy from the church for producing a calender featuring returned Mormon missionaries flaunting their pecs and six paks. When asked what he thought about the dicsiplinary council's decision, Chad Hardy stated, "I felt like I spoke my truth; Bottom line, they still felt the calender is inappropriate and not the image the Church wants to have." (No kidding) He went on to say, "I have no ill feelings to any of those people. They did what they believed was right and I believe that it was the best decision for both of us." Sounds like ol' Chad was ready to be "released" anyway as I didn't detect a whole lot of remorse on his part. At first I felt that excommunication was a bit steep, but then I thought about the upcomig fight I'm sure we're going to have with gay marriage, and if something like this was mildly tolerated by Church leadership, it would definatley be used against us and put us in a defensive posture rather than an offensive one. Still, I feel a bit left out. Why wasn't I asked to pose for this calender? I've worked hard over the last year or so to look the way I do. All the cookies and candy's I passed up so I could wear a size 32 in pants and medium sized T-shirts. I can flex with the best of them, farmer tan and all.

GETTING OLD REEEEEEALLY SUCKS!

I just realized that this September I'm going to be 47 years old. I'm rounding third and ready to slide into fifty. Holy crap, where did the time go? I never envisioned myself as a fifty year old, yet soon, I WILL be a fifty year old.
I've been noticing that all those actors I saw in movies or on TV always looked the same for years, and then all of a sudden you see a recent picture of them, and they've finally caught up with their age, which in turn makes you feel 100 years older than you already are. You would think that with all the money they've made over the years they would put aside some money to have a little face work done so that all our illusions about them aren't crushed with one single snapshot.
Elke Sommer was once a very hot babe. The first movie I saw her in was at a drive-in movie theatre. I was seven years old and wearing my PJ's with the football players all over them. My parents put myself and my brother and sister in the back of the family station wagon, and off we went to the drive-in. We had one of those Ford jobs, which was painted green with the faux wood panel across the middle of both sides and the back drop door of the car. I can't remember the name of the movie, but it was a flick starring Bob Hope and Phillys Diller. I remember the scene where Elke Sommer had shown up at Bob Hope's cabin and proceeded to get drunk. Somehow she ended up just wearing one of his white dress shirts, and he was running all over the house trying to hide her before his wife showed up. She had a great pair of legs. Even at age seven I thought she was pretty good look'in. Today Phyllis looks better than she does.
Another hot babe was Bridget Bardot. The first time I ever saw her was on a late night TV movie in San Francisco. It was a French flick with English sub-titles. We were traveling up north for a family vacation and we stopped off at this little motel for the night. It was sort of a mini suite with a small living area in front and an enclosed bedroom. Being only the children, we got to sleep on the couches while my parents took the bedroom. I was 12 years old and the movie was called "Content". Know why after all these years I remember the title of the movie? Because in severel scenes they showed Bridget Bardot's bare bottom; and this was before cable! Talk about making an impression! My parents had left us kids behind in the motel room while they went next door for a night cap. I couldn't sleep, so I turned on the TV while my siblings slept. When they came back my mother told me to go to bed, and after they were asleep I quietly turned on the TV to catch the rest of the peep show, but by that time the highlights had already occurred. Miss Bardot is now a professioanl animal lover and rescuer of cats. Seeing her latest photo made me want to cry.
Then there's those gals who refuse to let us think they've grown older. I don't know what destroys our image of a female celebrity more, their natural old age, or their face pulled back so tightly you could bounce a half dollar off their cheeks and forehead. Cher and Joan Rivers are probably the worst offenders. I thought the idea of getting plastic surgery was to look younger, not look like you put your face in a taffey puller.
For some reason men seem to age more gracefuly than women. That seems fair. After all, we're the ones who have to bear the major responsibilities of life. We're the ones who have to work most of our lives to support the wife and kids. We're the ones who have to make sure the plumbing works, the cars run and the roof doesn't leak. We're the ones who have to make sure we make enough money to pay for college, weddings and missions, and still have enough to retire. And after all that, statistically speaking, we get to die first, so it only seems fair that we get to check out with a look of distinction.
So remember folks, it's not Mother Nature you have to fool, but Father time you have to look out for. Time marches on, but hopefully it won't march up and down your face.

ROAD KILL

I absolutely love living in Camarillo Heights. It's a very weird mixture of the old and new, the hicks, the "upper crust", and the "regualr folk". Where else can you find a 1500 square foot house built in 1933 standing next to 5000 square foot home built in 2007. Since this is part of the County of Ventura and not the City of Camarillo, people can have exotic animals on their properties. Some animals I've seen up here over the years are - horses, sheep, goats, chickens, Llamas, alpacas and peacocks. There's lots of wild critters up here as well - Racoons, skunks, possums, the occasional pack of coyetes, hawks, mice, and my personal favorite, (yuck) rats. When my grandfather lived up here they would occaisionally see a bear. With all those wild critters come the fairly freaquent sightings of road kill, mostly possums. Cars zoom up and down the hills here in the Heights and the possums are probably the slowest creatures ever to cross the street. I know people run over them on purpose just because they're ugly. So the next time you're driving on Las Posas Road somewhere between Mission Drive and East Loop, come on up and see what the kill du jour is up here. Maybe you'll see a side dish of Bear.

PHOTO-BOMBS AWAY!

Have you ever stumbled across something that's new, yet not quite so new. Such was the case with me this morning when I went onto my AOL web news page. On this site is a window with both the heavy and light news of the day, some very funny. This is where I discovered PHOTOBOMBS. Photobombs aren't a what - they're a who, namely people who somehow make it into your precious family photos and muck up what otherwise would have been the picture of the year by making some horrible face, or worse, by making an obscene gesture or exposing that certain part of the body. I'm not talking about the family members who make faces, jump in the middle of the shot or give their neighbor bunny ears just before the clicking of the shutter. They're a form of Photobomber, but not a true Photobomber. A true Photobomber is that slightly deranged person or people that you've never met, who somehow make it into the shot unknowingly or knowingly, usually the latter.
You could be at the beach taking a snapshot of your kids burying each other in the sand when that person who was jogging in the background by the seashore decides to stick out their tongue and flap their arms. One of my favorites, not shown for obvious reasons, is a shot of three girls mugging for the camera in front of the window of some small shop, only to have some photobomber press his bare rear end against the glass from the inside. Yet some Photobombers bomb your picture by accident. The little child who walks into the shot at the last moment, or the dog that decides to "dump a load" at the last second (believe it or not I've seen two pictures like that).
Usually we don't even know what's happened until we get home and see the pictures on the computer, or when we get them back from the drugstore. We're so busy making sure everyone is in the shot, or focusing in on one particular person, that we just don't notice these smug little bombers popping in and out. They're like elves. They come in when we don't expect them, and leave just as quickly, leaving their grimacing mug or disgusting body part tattooed on our photos.
Who are these people anyway? Why would somebody purposfully walk by, or lean in on what could be a perfectly good shot, or that magical moment that's captured on film only once in a lifetime, and soil it. Are they drunk? Are they mean spirited? Are they insane? Yes, yes, and yes!
Personally, I think it's pretty funny, and I'd like to think that I'm capable of doing that. But I just don't have enough guts to do that to someone I don't know. You've got to have a funny bone to be a photobomber; a broken funny bone.