Size does matter.

 

Things I hope you don't hear today.

"You got a letter from the IRS."

"It's an emergency company-wide meeting."

"We have to talk."

THUNK THUNK THUNK [from automobile]

"You should get that looked at."

"HOW COULD YOU FORGET?"

"Ooh, that ain't gonna be cheap."

"Well, we can probably save some of your teeth."

"You have the right to remain silent..."

“They’re going to name a disease after you.”

“In my office. Now."

“I wanted to warn you, but it’s too late anyway.”

"Everybody's mad at you."

"This is NOT A TEST of the Emergency Broadcast System."

"It's the worst case of [FILL IN BLANK] I've ever seen, that's for sure."

"DUCK!"

"So... Remember last Saturday? Well, I just tested positive..."

Any Bon Jovi song.

Oh, Brave New Year, that has such people in it.

Okay, today we play Fun with Doomcasting. 

One of the things conservatives dread is the concept of social credit -- that delightful Chinese Marxist system of ruining the lives of people who do not toe the government line in every way. Disagree with Xi, show interest in Falun Gong, request more pay from your job, and you may find yourself unable to get a decent place to live, a vehicle, a loan, or anything else that ought to be decided by a proper financial credit system.

 

We know there are people who think it would be a good idea here in America. But there are two things we ought to keep in mind: 

1) It is already here unofficially, in the media; 

2) Your social credit score does not start at a baseline and go up or down -- it starts at nothing. You have to earn credit. You actually have to out-earn your fellows.

I've seen it in correspondence among editors and writers when some topic of Sensitivity comes up. Everyone panics a little, and each tries to provide a wokier-than-thou solution. In one story, there was a question about a trans woman whose boyfriend dumped "her" for unknown reasons. Would that make him a transphobe? Because the idea that a man might rather date a woman than a man dressed as a woman would mean he's some kind of evil hater. (Try reversing that -- "So the lesbian doesn't want to date a man dressed as a woman; is she a transphobe?" -- and watch the panic set in.) 

Even worse is medical writing, where we supposedly need to be grown-ups, but we are not. This is because we are no longer men and women, but AMABs and AFABs. 

You remember a few years back when the medical press was having kittens because it turned out that women's heart-attack symptoms were different from men's, and coronary studies always looked at men? It started the American Heart Association's Go Red for Women campaign twenty years ago. Well, now you may Go Red for AFABs, but you'd better drop the "women." 

If we must discuss distasteful subjects like ovarian or prostate cancer -- distasteful because no surgery on earth can give you ovaries or a prostate, yet we have to describe the patient population somehow -- we must refer to Assigned Male at Birth or Assigned Female at Birth. Like the doctor just decided which sex the baby should be. "We're fighting godless commies in Vietnam; better make some more boys today."

But we know that's only a stopgap, because there are campaigners who want to prevent the assignment of sex at birth. A baby should just be registered as "a baby" and it will tell us what it is later. That demand does not come from some lunatic fringe group; it is from the American Medical Association. 

So much for the idea that medical needs are different between boys and girls, and not knowing the difference is dangerous. Better the child should die than be misgendered, or gendered at all. 

What will we do when nothing is assigned at birth? Call them PWOs and PWPs (People With Ovaries/People With Prostates)? 

If you've ever been in a group blamestorm you know how this happens. Everyone is nervous; everyone is scared of being labeled something bad; everyone has to try to top the others, and as fast as they can. Temperance, consideration, sobriety of thought -- these are not considered virtues. We saw that in the wicked Tweetfest following the monstrous October 7 attack on Israel -- after the initial rush to lunacy was over, with its concurrent ratchet effect, the wiser ones silently deleted their Hamas-supporting Tweets. Others doubled down, more frantic than before. This is not adult behavior. 

I don't know where this mania ends, but I suspect it will require a lot of trial lawyers to start suing the ever-loving crap out of the perpetrators of insanity. We're starting to see a little of that, but not enough. Come on, you greedy bastards! There are billions to be made from this. Wise up and get suing! 

P.S.: I guess my social credit is deep in the negatives now. It was bound to happen sometime. It may have happened a long time ago. 

Made it!

Thank God, we survived February this year with nothing horrible happening. Seemed like a close call a few times. We had more ice around than Saskatchewan, but I only took one fall, and it was facing uphill. 

Trust me when I tell you novenas were being said. We had gotten to feel like we could not get through February without illness, death, or injury, so this was a win. I greatly sympathize with all those for whom February has been crueler this year -- I know how you feel. 

That's about all I have to say, except, in tribute to frequent commenter PL Woodstock, I wrote the following:

The great actor Frederic March was known to drop into Maguire's Saloon now and then. One evening a few patrons noticed him enter, looking quite tired after a long day on the set. 

"The usual, Mr. March?" asked Maguire, behind the stick. 

"No, Mags, I need something to give me some pick-me-up," said March. "Goldwyn's got a party later and I have almost no energy at all."

"I got you, sir. Hang on." 

Maguire quickly mixed up his Electric City Special, named for his hometown of Schenectady -- cold black coffee with two shots of rye and a twist of lemon, on the rocks. "Just drink this down quick."

March did, and sat straight up on his stool. "Wow, that was terrific!" he said, but the drink went right to his head. He slumped onto the bar, out cold. 

"Didn't work, huh, Mags?" said Gig Young from down the bar. 

"Oh, you know March," said Maguire. "In like an ion, out like a lamp."

🥁

the warning sign of lowercase letters.

 I see that Target has changed its logo now. I think the company may be in trouble. 

Old

New

I've noticed that companies go to the lowercase letters when they are getting a rapacious image and want to look friendly again. Uppercase letters look dynamic and effective, but when your reputation turns from dynamic and effective to vicious and ruthless, it's time to break out the wee little letters.

we're your friend! we're here to help!

A few years back Walmart (then WAL*MART) was getting all kinds of bad press, for poor treatment of employees, ruining downtowns and mom & pop shops, killing U.S. manufacturing with a flood of cheap stuff from China, etc. They deployed a smiley face in their commercials, but it didn't help. Then they did this, and you hardly hear a complaint anymore. 

Citibank has been the home of many scandals over the years, but one that got a lot of press was when the bank was "involved in one of the biggest corporate scandals in United States history when it was accused of helping Enron disguise debt and agreed to pay $101 million to settle charges relating to the Enron fraud case," as HuffPost reported. And what did Citibank do about it? 

Yahoo! went from being a hotshot Internet stock to barely holding on for dear life. A series of terrible data breaches in the '10s was end of Marissa Mayer's career as CEO. What little rep Yahoo! had since its days as Chat Room King (remember those?) was swirling in the toilet. But don't worry; everything's under control!

I have to note that the lowercase rule does not apply to companies that have used lowercase from their founding, like Amazon and Google. They were early responders to the modern age of infantilization of consumers. Plus, they wanted to pillage from the get-go.

Has Target had any big scandals? Not lately that I know of, but for some data breaches and their expensive failure to launch in Canada. Maybe something is waiting in the wings and the logo change was preemptive. If your bank or investment company goes to a lowercase logo without warning, beware! 

I'm not sure how well this lowercase thing will work in the case of Yahoo! or Target, but it seems to have done fine for Citi and Walmart. Then again, in the case of some companies, nothing really seems to help....

The Bible and broccoli.

I suspect most husbands find themselves cast into the outer darkness (i.e., the guest room or equivalent) from time to time, due to the unpleasant experience of -- dare I say it? -- gas. 

Why do broccoli and similar vegetables call forth Maria? VeryWell Health says "The fiber in them is not completely digested in the small intestine. When the good bacteria in the large intestine go to work digesting it, gas is created as a result." Lying down on the job again, eh, small intestine? This will come up on your review. 

Of course, it all could be much worse. We could be Antiochus.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes was a typically arrogant Hellenistic king, enemy of the Jews, just the sort of schmuck destined for a bad end in the Old Testament. According to 2 Maccabees 9, he found himself being attacked on many sides, and having been chased out of Persia at one point, decided to take it out on Jerusalem. He said, “I will make Jerusalem the common graveyard of Jews as soon as I arrive there.”

Spoiler alert: This did not happen.

So the all-seeing Lord, the God of Israel, struck him down with an incurable and invisible blow; for scarcely had he uttered those words when he was seized with excruciating pains in his bowels and sharp internal torment, a fit punishment for him who had tortured the bowels of others with many barbarous torments.

It's important to keep Antiochus's cruelty in mind as the chapter continues, because his punishment is one of the nastiest in the Bible:

The body of this impious man swarmed with worms, and while he was still alive in hideous torments, his flesh rotted off, so that the entire army was sickened by the stench of his corruption. Shortly before, he had thought that he could reach the stars of heaven, and now, no one could endure to transport the man because of this intolerable stench. At last, broken in spirit, he began to give up his excessive arrogance, and to gain some understanding, under the scourge of God, for he was racked with pain unceasingly. When he could no longer bear his own stench, he said, “It is right to be subject to God, and not to think one’s mortal self equal to God.”

Hope you weren't eating! 

Antiochus sets his affairs in order by naming his son successor, and then, "this murderer and blasphemer, after extreme sufferings, such as he had inflicted on others, died a miserable death in the mountains of a foreign land," stinkin' all the way. 

Now, perhaps it is a bit extreme to compare someone who has been ingesting broccoli, or White Castle sliders, or huge amounts of garlic, or beer, or anything pungent to the vile, diseased doom of a vile regent. That all depends on how the people you live with react. 

It's probably best to go outside and let the breeze blow away the eau de ugh, then take a shower. It beats a miserable death in the mountains of a foreign land -- or sleeping on the sofa every night.

Two kinds.

I've often agreed with the statement that there are morning people and night people, and I've added that they tend to marry each other. Certainly that's the case at the House of the Keys. I'm the lark, she's the owl. And I've gone on to say that this is probably the only case where evolutionary psychology could make a point, that it's useful for larks and owls to marry because it means someone is always watching out for the saber-toothed tiger attack.

Another way to divide people -- which is what the Internet is all about -- is into food reactions to crises. Some people can't eat anything at all when there's a terrible crisis looming in the family. Others can't get enough calories. Both are reasonable reactions to a dangerous situation. Don't eat, move! Or: Eat fast for energy! And again, I think these kinds of people marry each other. Not sure if larks tend to be the eaters, but that fits us. Up early! Breakfast! Most important meal! When someone dies or is very sick or something, my wife can go for days on coffee and a single granola bar.

Of course, there may be other types, like people who ignore disasters, but they don't work into my analysis. 

"This is fine."

When the looming disaster strikes, though, I lose my appetite and she slowly starts to regain hers. 

I'll be working these observations into my biblical analysis, "Running on a Flat Bread: Fleeing Egypt on an Empty Stomach," to be run in the Journal of Unhelpful Historical Studies. 

All this is leading up to an announcement: I must take a short break from the blog, just over the weekend, to deal with a serious issue that has popped up. You can tell it's serious because I'm eating like a pig and my wife has had one granola bar. 

I'll fill you in on the details then, but we're just praying for the best possible outcome at this point. Wish us luck, as we wish for you always. See you Monday.

I'd believe him.

 

Blow up.

I'm sorry, my friends, but I have nothing to offer today. I spent an awful lot of time yesterday dealing with technical difficulties related to a computer system I use for one of my clients. When the IT department -- the second IT department, because the local guys were perplexed -- was able to resolve it, the file I was working on had to be reverted to an earlier draft, which meant re-reading and re-inputting the work I had done on Wednesday. Well, as the lawyers say, it's all billable hours.

And then Roomba tried to strange me!

So I hope to be back tomorrow with one of my jolly japes or therious think pieces. In the meantime, I thank you, and wish you a better day than I had yesterday.

Who ordered the cicadas?

The running joke that Anno Domini 2020 has an endless supply of crappy things has been running for half a year or more, but in truth it does seem to be a little extra crappy on top of the better-known crappiness. For example, we now have a hurricane creeping toward us here in New York, there was a particularly bad cloud of flying ants over England, a giant UFO has been seen near the sun, dust from the Sahara blew all the way to Puerto Rico, five asteroids are coming our way, and Africa has seen a terrible outbreak of locusts.

And look what I got!

Giant cicadas are not supposed to be on the menu in New York this year, and yet this one popped up at my house. Granted, he was dead, but that's beside the point. What's he doing aboveground? Was he kicked out of the hole by disgruntled roommates? Did he die of Chinese Death Virus? Are the others all going to burst out ahead of schedule for no other reason than everything is going to hell? Oy vey, what a year.

On a more personal note, I was lost in thoughts yesterday morning on the way back from taking up the trash, and I managed to put only half of my foot on the paver. The other half went sideways off the paver, and I fell like a sack o' crap. Fittingly, I was on my way to put a new trash liner in the backyard bucket in which I keep the dog crap between pickups.

So I twisted my right ankle, and skinned my left knee. Fortunately I rolled when I hit the turf, so I didn't crash on my previously injured back. But come on -- the way I've been falling these past couple of years, this is terrible training for my old age. Should I just get myself the Life Alert now?

I guess I'll survive. This is the first knee scrape I've had in decades, and they're as much fun as they were when I was a kid, only now it's me causing the pain and not Mom. I took a palmful of hand sanitizer and warned myself, "This is gonna hurt," and it did. Then I gauzed it and taped it, saying, "No more Evel Knievel stuff on your Krazy Kar, young man!" The sprained ankle could be walked on and got the usual RICE treatment all day Friday -- rest, ice, compression, elevation. Much better today.

Part of my problem is I get absentminded. I ought to have invented Flubber by now. But what was I thinking about, you may wonder, when I failed to pay attention to where I was stepping?

I was thinking, "What fresh hell is August going to bring?"

UPDATE: Hey, guess what? ZOMBIE CICADAS!

Furlough.

I got the sack. Partially. It's a semi-sack. A temporary semi-sack.

One of my clients is the small publishing wing of a big media company. How big? Mid-level vice presidents get paid more for the time they spend farting in the office than I get paid to work for them. And yet I'm too expensive.

I'm not really down about it, since it's only one of my regular clients, and the layoff is supposed to end (maybe) when the current crisis is over. But it comes at a bad time. Another client can't send out the money they owe freelancers because they are not allowed to enter the building to sign and mail the checks, lest their accountant stagger in reeking with COVID-19. They've also pushed back their publishing schedule a few months because no one can go to bookstores and no authors can go on book tours, which means all current projects have ground to a halt. Book printers, who usually work around the clock, are going to be in trouble.

(The irony is that the big media company's kiddie books, which require bright colors and even toy-like attachments, will probably continue to go to press, because they're sold in places like Walmart, and the vast majority of those are printed in... Can you guess? Yep, you're right.)

All of which is made worse by the fact that I have to cough up money for New York State's clutching tax barons next week. I owe nothing to the Feds but have to pay the state this year. I think New York needs my cash to pay for Andy "Evil-Eyes" Cuomo's nipple ring polish. I think that's why Sandra Lee dumped him -- tarnished nipple rings. But never mind all that.

Actually, I am not so bad off as many others, even other affected by this very same furlough. A number of people who got the heave-ho work full-time for this outfit. Of course, they'll be able to go on unemployment, but if they never get hired back it could be a problem. Virtually no one is hiring right now.

Publishing is a sucktational business to be in. I always quote a late friend of mine, who said that it's got all the ego of the movie business with none of the money. Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be editors. If this situation doesn't bother me more than it ought to, it's because I have been laid off or otherwise turned loose (companies closing under me, for example) six times. I can smell the bloody ax coming from two hundred yards away.

Still, a furlough is a furlough; if they wanted to sack us they could have straight-up sacked us. What will happen next? No one really knows.

So here's the deal.

From Saturday evening takeout.

Let me state up front, since no one seemed to understand at the hospital, that I was not hurt because I fell on the floor. I fell on the floor because I was hurt.

I tried to explain the story at least eight times.

If you've hung around this joint at all, you may know that I've been diagnosed with sciatica and have been battling it through physical therapy since January. It was taking a turn for the worse last week; Friday was bad; Saturday was awful.

Then, Sunday, at 4:30 in the morning, it was unbelievable.

I can hardly describe the pain, but to say that everything I'd felt up to that point was virtually nothing by comparison -- and it had not been nothing. Blinding, burning, crushing pain. Somehow I got to the toilet, wolfed down Advil and Tylenol while using it, but then had one thought -- get to my chair.

Every guy has his chair, and mine was a lifesaver on Saturday. It was the only place I found any relief from the pain, pain that made my wife cancel our dinner plans (a friend's birthday gathering). If it had been a little worse, I would have gone to the urgicare. But, since it wasn't, and since on Friday I had made an appointment to see a pain specialist on Tuesday (earliest available), I didn't. I figured I could stick it out until Tuesday.

And then it was Sunday, and sitting in my chair was burning agony. So, I fell forward onto the floor.

This put my head by Tralfaz's dog bed. Fazzy got up and made for the hall, which I appreciated; I was able to tug his bed over and rest my head on it. And that was about the limit of my ability to move. I was on my side, knees pulled up, not quite a fetal position because that would have hurt more. Really, even though I was the beach for waves of pain to wash over, every move beyond my right arm was horrendous. You've heard the expression "writhing in agony" -- now I know that it is quite a literal description.

Fortunately, I had my phone. Unfortunately, no one was up.

I could have called 911. That would have meant them breaking down the door, setting off the electronic as well as the canine alarms, and scaring the ever-lovin' snot out of my wife. Or I could do what I did, when I finally conceded that it wasn't getting any better on its own, and started calling and texting my wife.

It took until about 5:20. Then she got right to it. Although she was freaking out a little, she kept a cool head and took care of business. She corralled the dogs, called 911, and checked if she could do anything else for me. But nothing could be done for me. All I could do was be a lump of agony on the floor, praying that when the ambulance arrived that for mercy's sake they'd bring with them an enormous cartoon-size hypo marked PAINKILLER and jam it right into me. Because I was thinking, there are two kinds of people in war movies who get grave injuries and don't die -- the kind that somehow summon the guts to get up and move, and the kind that ask a buddy for a bullet in the head, and I was so far into #2 camp that I couldn't believe #1 really existed. Not if he felt like this.

The gentlemen who arrived more than half an hour after the call (I grumbled to my wife that she should have lied and said there was blood everywhere) were friendly, professional, and completely powerless to give me anything to stop the torment. In fact, when I told them I could not roll over -- because sometimes you really can't force your muscles to do things -- and that to be rolled over would make the pain even worse (Spinal Tap style, the 10 on the pain chart would go to 11), I was regretfully informed that it would be necessary in order to get me into the chair lift to get down the stairs and onto the stretcher and into the meat wagon. This turned out to be the case, and as the men heroically moved my bulk hither and yon, I screamed like I was giving birth.

I often exaggerate for comic effect, but all of this is just as I'm telling you.

Once strapped in we waited on my driveway an abysmally long time while the driver got the okay to proceed to the hospital, 17 miles away. The pain was indeed worse on my back, which is why I had been on my side, and I was trying to hold my left side up as much as I could with the force of arms, because my left side was the very worst spot. Finally we were given clearance for liftoff.

"I'm sorry," said my medic in the back. "This isn't a Cadillac, it's a truck, so it's gonna be a little bumpy."

"Yeah, I figured," I said, while he took my blood pressure, which was so high I thought the cuff would burst like a balloon.

To be continued....

I blame the AFL-CRTN.

And how was your day?

Did you have a lousy Monday? I hope not. Mine was just okay. I was busier than a cramped-up blogger at a metaphor-writin' contest, but the Sisyphean tasks I'm on at the moment didn't show any significant progress. I wish I worked in Hollywood, where you don't have to work to get paid. In fact, they seem to pay you more.

But I shall complain no longer, for a story from 2017 was brought to my attention recently, about an officer in Minnesota who had a bad night on the beat. It seems that Brad Browning and another officer got into a scuffle with a knucklehead named Hietala who had outstanding warrants. Browning's fellow officer pulled out the ol' Taser, aimed... and shot Browning by mistake.

It got worse:

Hietala immediately fled, running through the neighborhood with Browning in pursuit. By the time Hietala hid between two garages in an alley, a Clay County sheriff’s deputy had arrived with a police dog. The dog was cut loose, but instead of biting Hietala, it bit Browning, the police report said.

It's not a good thing when your life turns into a Looney Tune. I wonder if they call him Brad E. Coyote now. Good thing for him that the Piano & Anvil Squad didn't show up to help with the collar.

My other new hero is Tsutomu Yamaguchi, an engineer for Mitsubishi. Perhaps you've heard of him. He accomplished an amazing feat -- by showing up for work twice.

The first time he was on a business trip, just about to leave the city and head home. It was August 6, 1945. He was in Hiroshima.

Yamaguchi was thrown through the air by the shock wave by the freaking atom bomb that fell on the city, and got burned and pretty roughed up, but all things considered, and compared to most of his countrymen in the city, he was in good shape. He spent the night in a shelter and managed to get to the train station the next day, having heard that some trains were running.

This guy, who'd just had the first atomic bomb used in war dropped on him, was going back to his home office to go to work. So remember that next time you call in with the sniffles.

Oh, and the home office? In Nagasaki.

Yes, Tsutomu Yamaguchi was the only human being confirmed by the Japanese government to have survived both atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Not only that, he lived to the age of 93. Hell, if two A-bombs can't stop you, you deserve to live a long time. I'm almost surprised anything could kill him.

So remind me of these guys the next time I complain about work. I'm on velvet here. No one seems to want to drop a nuke on me at the moment, nor sic the K-9s on me, nor friendly-fire a Taser at my behind.

But I'm watching out for the Piano & Anvil Squad. Don't trust those guys a bit.

Against fun.

I don't know about you, but I've already been invited to a couple of office holiday parties. And I work at home!

No, I don't mean that the dogs have invited me to our annual office Christmas party, although you'd think they should. Really, after all I do for them.

The fact is, some of my clients, especially the ones that for legal or tax purposes like to pretend I am an employee, have included me on their invite lists, and I'm touched that they did. I'm not going to go, but it's always nice to be asked. Office parties are a drag when you're an outsider, even if you are an employee that happens to work outside the office. You wind up pestering the handful of people you deal with professionally; everyone else wonders who the hell you are. So I'll skip the long schlep to get there and just celebrate with the dogs.

Office parties probably should be avoided anyway. We are in an anti-fun era, and there's almost nothing good that can happen at an office party. Whatever you do, someone's going to get mad, and that's even if you don't see the party invitation as a glowing neon sign that says FREE BOOZE and behave like it's shore leave.

Although if you do, you might have a spectacular story to tell your intake agent at the unemployment office.

Best case scenario

So here are ten things you can do that will cause no end of trouble -- a list that is definitely not all-inclusive:

1) You may get drunk.
Even if you think you're excellent at holding your liquor, that may be when you are either A) paying for drinks and watching your wallet or B) pouring your drinks and watching the liquor content. This could be a whole different ball game. If you drink enough for it to affect your behavior, it will be noticed. The next day your drunken mispronunciation of the name of your head of HR (a man named Chidambaram) will be all over the office. They'll wonder why someone didn't take your car keys, even if you walk to work. It's not like the old days, Charlie.

2) You may insult someone.
You don't have to intend to insult someone. You don't even have to do it by mistake. These days you can insult someone and not even know you did it. You can microagress someone by winking because you got dust in your eye. If you ask Miguel if he brought the enchiladas to the potluck, guess what? You insulted him -- even if he did bring the enchiladas, you still insulted him. And God forbid you ask Jean if her boy is still in college, and she tells you that he is not because she is now identifying as an eight-year-old girl tortoise named Suzie QZ. You’d better have the poker face of Daniel Negreanu or else you insulted her and her boy/girl/reptile. Which brings us to:

3) You may insult something someone likes.
This may be a little more obvious, but the office party is no place to start a "Yankees suck!" or "Star Trek rules! Star Wars drools!" chant. It's easy to get carried away and think everyone just wants to fool around like you do with your old pals. Unlike your old pals, these folks A) don't, and B) are keeping score. You'd better believe they're keeping score.

4) You may hit on the wrong person.
Oh, this is a bad one, and usually is combined with the alcohol thing. Maybe the marijuana thing, if you live in a state where it's legal. Don't hit on your boss, or your boss's boss, or anyone over you. Definitely don't hit on your subordinate or anyone on that level or lower. But what if it's someone on the same level in a different department?

5) You may hit on the right person who later will turn out to be the very wrong person.
Scene: You are not drunk. You dressed nice. You aren't married. You hit it off with someone at your rung on the ladder in a totally different department. No problem, right? WRONG. Aside from the potential for the gossip mill to grind you up, if you hit it off this well one of you if going to be thinking long-term stuff... and odds are, the other will not. Then you have to go to work with this person on the premises. Just don't dip your pen in the company inkwell. It's safer that way.

6) You may hit a person.
Not on purpose. Could be an accident. Could jostle that red wine onto the boss's white blouse. Could whack the senior VP in the nose during a game of charades. Or you might just straight-up punch someone. If you're not there, it can't happen.

7) You may jokingly say something to start an argument.
Similar to #3, but it could be something as simple as, "Boy, these enchiladas sure go a long way toward Making Parties Great Again, huh?" Then someone makes a full-fledged Trump crack, and it's Game On.

8) You may joke about what you do to the wrong person.
"Workin' hard or hardly workin'? Ha ha!" That's funny (okay, not really) when you say it to your coworker. When a manager hears you say that, he or she may smile and pretend to laugh, but remember what I said: You'd better believe they're keeping score.

9) You may look like a pig.
Do you like to eat? Like, you'll have two cookies while everyone else is picking at the fruit salad? Pig. Depends on the workplace, but in a lot of them, three Ferrero Rochers mean you might as well have your face in the trough. What, did you think the food was there to be enjoyed? Don't be silly.

10) You may accidentally tell the truth.
If you divulge something your boss would rather that a rival boss didn't know, the truth will be no defense. In fact, it makes it worse; if it was a lie, it would be you bloviating; if it's the truth, your boss's rival will be using it. And your boss won't forget it.

The office environment has never really been chummy, but these days it is a total minefield, fraught with peril. Even if you're the boss, unless you completely own the company, you can blow yourself to bits. And if you do own the company, it's easy to say something innocuous that will bring a Twitter mob on your head to ruin the company's reputation with lies.

Take my advice: Pretend you're socked in with work. Pretend there's a crisis with a client. Come down with the flu and go home. Just don't go to the office party. Sure, some workplaces really resent when an employee doesn't put in some face time at social events, but will you get fired for missing the party? Probably not. Will you get fired for something you do there? Possibly not, unless you actually hurt someone or, worse, violate the rules of political correctness -- but you may put yourself on notice. I don't want to make anyone paranoid, but now I'm thinking I ought to stay away from the dogs' holiday party.

Remember: There's no such thing as fun anymore. And they're always keeping score, brother.

Big production number.

Yesterday I jokingly joshed in a jocular way about the useless of dogs. But there was something to the topic. A friend of ours does not understand the idea of pets, and asked why we would even have one. That was before we got the second one, so I guess we're twice as confusing now.

Weeks like this make me wonder, too.

Not that the dogs were getting into trouble. For the most part they have been very good. Little dog has been his usual fun-loving self. The problem was that the big dog, Tralfaz, hurt himself by accident last week and had to be rushed to the vet. (Pro tip: Call the vet's office and tell them you're coming. I had read that tip just the week before and it was a lifesaver.) He was bleeding like crazy. There was blood everywhere, on the floor, on the path to the car, in the car, on a trail to the office and into the exam room and all over the exam room floor. I was surprised he hadn't passed out.

It reminded me of the scene in Twenty Years After, Alexandre Dumas's sequel to The Three Musketeers, in which Mordaunt executes Charles I while Athos is concealed under the scaffold. When the royal head is severed, Athos is deluged by a "crimson cataract" (some translations are more vivid). There was a lot of blood.

Fazzy will recover, I trust, but our return visit had the vet go "Ick!" when looking at the wound -- never a good sign -- and prescribe a huge bottle of big-capsuled antibiotics for him. Three pills, twice a day with food. It is very hard to give a dog a medication that he can't chew. Fazzy behaved poorly at the vet on this follow-up, and even worse with his first dose of pills. This is going to be another long week.

So the question emerged: Why the dogs? They offer protection, sure, but we have an alarm system for that, plus we don't have a whole lot of valuables anyway. And the dogs really have no other purpose.

What it comes down to are the things I heard so often growing up. "I can't be bothered" was a common one from the older members of my tribe, when asked why they didn't do something, or why we didn't do things other families did. "I can't be bothered." "Too much trouble." "You know how much work that is?" "Everything with that is a big production number."

Do people still know what that phrase means? Members of my family who grew up during Hollywood's golden age knew a big production number as a large set piece in musical films where a cast of thousands danced and sung their hearts out on elaborate sets. A big production number was a lot of trouble to film and cost a huge amount of money.

Dogs are not a big production number, but they are a continual source of duty. Are they worth the trouble? For that matter, are children? Some will grow up to support their parents, but will most of them do that these days? It seems the goal of children now is to run as far and fast from home as they can, spurning their folks' beliefs and values, or, on the opposite end, to stay in the cellar like a mushroom and continue to be a drain on the family forever.

Everything is a pain in the ass. Fish? Gotta clean the tank. Pool? Gotta clean the pool. Car? Don't get me started. House? Kill me now. What isn't a load of trouble in life? Is the only path to happiness that of a monk? Or of Diogenes, who was thrilled when he threw away his cup because he realized he could cup his hands, and so didn't even need that sole possession?

This is one of those thread questions, a little thing that you tug on and next thing you know everything starts to unravel. But I think I can snip it, at least to my own satisfaction.

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is popular because it makes sense to us, as many things in psychology don't. When we get above the bottom two categories, for basic necessities and security, we enter into those needs that have to do with love. And that's the answer. 

I don't mean "love" in the two senses that it's often bandied about these days -- political love, which is a flag meant to express hate for others, or love solely related to the disposition of one's genitalia. I mean love from the highest (agape) to the lowest (sub-human), as C. S. Lewis discusses at length in his brief and wonderful book The Four Loves. Note that the sub-human love here doesn't refer to Cro-Magnon man love, but love for that which is not itself human -- which would include trivial things like model trains or movies, or great things like one's country. He addresses this love in his book but it is not one of the four, those being affection, friendship, romantic love, and love of God. But for the sake of my point today, it's all love, and it all takes us out of our purely selfish state.

Love is worth a big production number. Love is worth going through trouble that you don't have to go through. Even in my family, which seemed dedicated to the idea of not being bothered with stuff, you'd hear plenty of things like "It's different when it's blood" and "Charity begins at home" and "You do things for your children." Not the noblest, most Christian sentiments, but they express the point that when you love, you do. You accept the responsibility. You go to the trouble.

And that means even on days when it's no fun, and they do nothing that makes me happy, the dogs are worth the trouble. If I threw them out when they stopped being cute, or started costing me more money that I'd expected, then it was never love. And that's one of two dangers that pop out right away, that I may misjudge my motives, and that I may be led captive by my possessions. I may think I love fish until I get so tired of cleaning the tank that I let it stay until the little punks are floating upside down. I may love my big house but spend all my time slaving to pay for it and keep it up, ignoring more important things.

I like to say that if it can't drive you nuts, it isn't love. But not everything that makes me nuts is love. I must know what I love and not abandon it. Then I might be happy.

Meanwhile, in cartoon land...

After surviving the shipwreck and the shark-infested waters just to step
directly into the quicksand, Dave remembered that it was Monday. 

Week from heck.

Longtime readers may know that yesterday's hilarious tomato gag was in fact a holdover from the old defunct blog. They may not know that I grew all those tomatoes in pots on my porch. That goes back to the days B.D. (before dogs), when pots full of dirt on the porch could be safely unmolested.

Anyway, that was yesterday, and it was not the entry I would have wanted to run on Fiction Friday!, but this was the week from heck. My life isn't so bad that I have really had weeks from hell, although some have come close. My idea of a real Week from Hell might be June 28-July 4, 1863, for the people of the United States in the vicinity of Gettysburg.

Some of my issues are luxury problems. I have a lawn. It was long and wet because it's been raining like God is mildly sore at us but not quite furious. I asked a service to cut the lawn and they could only come Friday. (My electric mower could in no way handle this mess.) Sure, I said. Then, the driveway guys I originally contacted last fall finally said it was dry enough to come... Friday. I got the lawn guys to come Thursday with a tip and some mild begging. And the very big dog got sick and had to go to the vet Thursday, where he becomes a very loud, very whiny pain in the butt. A very big dog pain in the butt is a YUGE pain in the butt. And at that exact moment my wife had to go to the doctor for an unexplained injury. We're awaiting the result of X-rays. (I blame Paul Manafort, because everyone else is for everything.)

Meanwhile, back in heck....

I have been working all week on jobs I wanted to get out of but couldn't. I think my clients thought I was playing hard-to-get, but I really needed time for all the things that were going on. I did avoid some work, despite being desperate for money to pay all these doctors and service professionals, but had to work on a total bloody Mary Sue novel. It was the kind of book where people are made to seem much more cruel and murderous than anyone the writer has ever known, so she can hold up a mirror to her twisted characters and say "See how evil people are?" (Yes, they are, in your books. And hey, nice anti-Trump wish fulfillment.) Plus the characters in the book were all so clueless that I hoped the villains would kill everybody in the last scene, but alas, the villains were stupid too.

People may say that Harry Potter turned kids on to witchcraft, and Twilight made girls want to bompf the undead, but the Hunger Games has made idiot children even dumber than they were before.

Workwise it was a long week.

And that doesn't even get to my own health issues.

They claved me, man.

But that's a story for another time.

While driving home I was listening to the Larry Miller podcast, and he was talking about how hot it had been that week in Los Angeles, and how when his father was a poor kid in Brooklyn they had no air conditioning, no one did; they had to sleep on the fire escape to get a break from the city heat. And it reminded me that, if nothing else, my family went in one generation from sleeping in the park to escape the heat of the city at night to full-time central air conditioning.

So whatever else is going on in my life, it's not that bad. If this is heck, I can live with it.

John, Hurt.

Vigilance required.

I hate to complain (har har) but our mild winter last year seems to have led to an overabundance of ticks this year -- and since my pups are particularly attracted to rotten wood, piles of leaves, and anything else that can harbor bugs (or otherwise lead to canine harm), I've just gotten a liiiiittle frustrated with it all.