Why Do We Do It?

Two related articles caught my eye this week, and they are both related to sex. I know it's surprising that a guy would be interested in articles about sex. I'll bet someone somewhere did a study to find out that articles on sex would at least get men to think about reading. Whether they did or not, I don't know. What I do know is that someone did a study on why we have sex.

http://www.nbc5i.com/health/13796065/detail.html?rss=dfw&psp=news

Amazingly, the researchers discovered that the top reasons for both men and women included words like "pleasure," "feels good," and "horny." I thought it was really surprising that there are basically no people having sex for the sake of making babies. I guess that tells us something about how far we've come as a society.

In the old days, Ma and Pa were getting it on because Pa was tired of having to walk behind that "dadburn mule" all day long and Ma was sick and tired of doing all the "warshin" on her own. Sure it took more food to feed the hungry little buggers, but that was a small price to pay for being able to rest your feet every once in a while. And when I look at some of the pictures of the old days, I can't imagine any of the words used to describe sex today would come into play.

I think it must really take commitment to the species to get frisky with someone that doesn't have running water (translation = no bath in a month, and no idea how to use a razor). Really, I think the overarching reason that so many people are having sex now is the invention of indoor plumbing and shaving cream. Without that, the species may well have died out with the wagon train.

Of course, there's no accounting for taste, which brings us to the second article.

http://www.nbc5i.com/news/13813001/detail.html?rss=dfw&psp=nationalnews

Apparently, not everyone was surveyed in the article on why people have sex, and animal torture must have just missed the list. This couple, since they obviously can't be content to keep their privates private, have been arrested for torturing animals during sex. I'm not going to be real picky about the details here, because let's face it, animals, sex and torture is not a combination that I really want to hear a lot of details about. I did, though, pick up a few phrases, so I know that a video camera was involved and that the animals ended up dead.

I imagine that forcing animals to watch crazy people hump like wild animals may have driven the frog, chameleon, and parakeet involved in this crazy little game to commit the first animal mass suicide. That just seems so much more likely to me than the accusation that this couple killed them while having sex. I mean, doesn't everyone want to do the nasty in front of their pets?

Seriously, the bigger question is, what are the odds? What are the odds that two people that are both into sex, torture, and animals happened to meet and get married? I don't even know how you would bring that up in conversation. Were they both at a crazy, animal sex/funky torture, singles bar when they met? It's just wrong on so many levels as to defy my comprehension.

Just so everyone knows, I'm not into torture, but I do enjoy animals (as pets, not sex toys) and of course, I like to do "it" every once in a while for many of the same reasons as the rest of you. And if it were any different, there's no way I'd tell you.

What the Crap?

There are dirty jobs, like they show on TV with Mike Rowe, and then there are crappy jobs that you don't even want to admit you have. How would you like to be the guy that designed toilets for a living?

http://www.livescience.com/history/070730_flushing_toilets.html

Apparently, there's a market for it. According to a sociologist named Quitzau (which sounds to me like something I heard while sitting on the toilet once right before I said, "Thank you, Jesus, for handrails."), we are at a crossroads in terms of dealing with other people's crap.

Amazingly, he discovered that a hole in the ground is still prevalent in parts of Asia, Europe, and Africa. I didn't even have to do study to imagine that. How could they have it any other way when they don't have running water? So, right off the bat, I know that we've got a crack team on this.

So, who really wants the job of telling the Western world that flushing toilets is bad because there are huge parts of the world with no drinking water? Personally, I don't know why anyone would want to drink out of a toilet, but I guess if you're thirsty enough….

The real problem, Quitzau reveals, is that currently toilet technology is focused on convenience, comfort, and design. Why would we want it to not be focused on that? If I'm going to be in there reading a chapter or two of my latest novel, about the only thing on my mind is convenience, comfort, and design.

I don't care what happens to all that crap after it leaves my house just as long as it leaves.

Pigeon Problems

What will we think of next? Hollywood, the city not the industry, has a pigeon problem, and they believe that they've come up with a solution. Of course, being on the far left coast, they had to come up with the most insane and yet humane method of dealing with the issue, and that led to the creation of the Pigeon Pill.

http://www.myfoxdfw.com/myfox/pages/Home/Detail?contentId=3930341&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=1.1.1

Given that too many Hollywood residents have been feeding the birds, there is an extremely large population of pigeons in and around Hollywood. This, of course, leads to all kinds of mess not the least of which is, surprisingly, pigeon mess. Rather than poison the birds, have hunters shoot the birds, install spikes on rooftops, or put in electric shock gates, the city has elected to continue feeding the birds with food laced with a Pigeon Birth Control Pill. I'm sure that this is going to cost millions more than a couple of boxes of shotgun shells and will definitely take a much longer time, but at least everyone can feel good about themselves while they sit on pigeon poop covered park benches watching the birds amorously hump each other to death with no hope of ever having offspring. Just take a look at the picture associated with this article to see what I mean.

The plan, while a little questionable in my mind, projects the pigeon population will be cut in half by 2012. I expect that the pigeons will figure out the game before then and either we'll see a dramatic increase in pigeon promiscuity ("Mommy, what's that gang of pigeons doing to the little one?") translating into out-of-town pigeons visiting just to party (much like Hollywood for adults), or the birds will start eating elsewhere. Either way, I think the pigeon pooper scoopers will be in business for a long time.

Weekend in Sachse

Starting last Thursday night, Aunt Sis and I embarked a weekend for the ages. Grandmother and Granddaddy (her parents) were planning to come over for a visit to see her new place. This would be their first time in town since Aunt Sis moved back from Oregon, and their first time to Sachse. At first, we thought it would be okay to send them a map and wait for their arrival on Friday morning, but as I started drawing the map I realized the obvious dilemma: there are a lot of turns involved.

On the one hand, I could send them into Dallas, keep them on freeway most of the way here, and probably get a call sometime Friday afternoon from Mineral Wells (the other side of Fort Worth) asking us to help them find the 635 exit. Or, on the other hand, I could send them up the shorter route down a couple of state highways and farm roads and still get a call Friday afternoon from somewhere near the Oklahoma border asking whether they've missed the Hwy. 78 turn off. Neither scenario seemed very pleasant, so Aunt Sis and I decided that we would just meet them in Longview on Friday morning. Aunt Sis would drive their car, I would drive my truck, and we would all arrive safely.

Since Caci is moving, she had already offered to let Aunt Sis have her couch, and my truck would be needed to move it anyway, so we could just pick that up as a part of our trip and kill two birds with one stone. It was a brilliant plan, and after my softball game Thursday night we set off to put everything in motion. We left Dallas about 9pm, and we made good time to Kilgore. We decided to go ahead and pick up the couch on the way in because we also needed to stop by Mom's to get a bed for Reagan.

I just knew that I would have something way more interesting to write here when I pictured us moving a couch out of Caci's house in the middle of the night with her out of town. I figured this story would involve spotlights, police officers, and handcuffs, but apparently Caci's neighborhood watch is not all that active. We moved out a couch and a loveseat in the middle of the night, made a terrible racket, and no one even looked twice at us. The couch wasn't all that bad, thankfully, because I told Aunt Sis that if it was a sleeper sofa, then it was going to have to stay there. The real pain came when we tried to move the loveseat. I figured it couldn't be that bad. It's just a loveseat…..that reclines…..and apparently has the frame and suspension of a small Volkswagon hidden under the upholstery. My back is still sore, and Aunt Sis is going to have to hire movers to get that thing out of her duplex. I'm not touching it again.

We made it to Mom's a little before 1am, and I planned to park under the awning at Uncle Danny's trailer because the sky had been threatening to rain. Honestly, we had driven in rain all the way from Dallas to Kilgore and were blessed to not be rained on between Kilgore and Mom's. Anyway, knowing that Aunt Sis is afraid of dogs, I warned her that there has been a dog hanging around the property the last several months and that if she sees him, she should not freak out. I was just trying to be helpful. She didn't really see it that way.

When we pulled around the drive, I saw that Uncle Danny had a bunch of tools and things out under the awning, so I was going to need some guidance to get the truck backed in safely. Of course, I asked Aunt Sis to hop out and guide me back. She's thinking, "Yeah, right. You just want me to test the waters and make sure the hell hound isn't on the loose." And she probably threw in a memory or two of Mom telling her that the snakes come out at night. Aunt Sis didn't want to have anything to do with helping me back up under that awning, but she hopped out and we got things done.

The next morning, we got up early, loaded the bed in the truck, and set off for Longview to meet Grandmother and Granddaddy. Grandmother said that they would leave their house at "8am, SHARP!" So I planned to also leave Mother's at 8am figuring that would put us in Longview a few minutes ahead of them. We were going to meet at the McDonald's at Estes Parkway. I told them to look for the Estes Parkway exit. I told them that if they didn't see that, they should just know that it would be the third exit in Longview. I told them that if both of those ideas failed, just get off at exit 595. You can't even mess that up. Write it backward. It's still 595. How could this plan possibly go wrong?

As we got in the truck, Aunt Sis realized that she had missed a call while in the shower. She listened to her voicemail. Grandmother and Granddaddy had left Shreveport at 7:30am. They should be in Longview about half an hour ahead of us. Quickly, we called Grandmother on her cell. I don't think she uses it much, so we did have fun picturing her in the car when it starting ringing:

"Merwin, what's that noise?"

"What noise, honey?"

"There it goes again. Merwin, is the car okay?"

"I still don't hear anything."

"Merwin, it sounds just like a phone ringing."

"You brought that cell phone, I'll bet that's it."

"Oh my. Silly me. Of course it is……..'lo. Asthma Allergy Clinic. I mean, hello?"

Well, we did get her on the phone, and after about five minutes of Aunt Sis listening to her go on and on about how amazing it is to be able to talk to each other while we were in two different cars – "Why didn't anyone think of this sooner?" she asked; I thought they did and called them CBs – we found out where they were. They were nearing Waskom, so our timing was not too far off.

About ten minutes before we got to Longview, we called them again. I'm sure it was a replay of the first call as Grandmother tried to find the phone again, but we found that they had just, "shot right past that exit." What??? How could you shoot right past the exit with all the instruction that we gave???

At this point, we're really glad that we didn't just send a map. Our worst fears would certainly have been realized. Aunt Sis instructed them to tell her the exact exit number coming up, pull over, and wait for us. They were only one exit past where they were supposed to be, so it wasn't too bad. Granddaddy came to ride with me in the truck while Aunt Sis went to drive Grandmother's car, and then we were back on the road.

We pulled over in Lindale to get drinks and fuel, and Granddaddy hopped out of the truck alongside me so he could, "see how these Texas gas pumps work." Huh? "Don't they have gas pumps in Louisiana, Granddad?" I asked. He said that they sure did, but that he always paid the attendant inside the service station. Okay. I generally do the same, but this time I didn't have cash, so I used my card. I guess they don't have pay-at-the-pump wherever he's shopping because that was about the most amazing thing in the world to him. But nothing beat his reaction when I stopped pumping at $45. That's all I wanted to spend.

He said, "Do you have to use this little keypad for that?"

"For what?" I asked.

"So it'll know to stop at $45."

"No, I don't think you can do that. At least, I don't know how to if you can," I said.

"Well, then how did you get it to stop right at $45?"

"Ummm…..I let go of the handle."

Some things change. Some things remain the same.

As we were getting ready to go, I heard that Grandmother had noticed someone inside the store. I can only imagine how she classifies me, because she figured the fellow in the store was "tall and thin like a lawyer." If that's not motivation to put on a few pounds, then I don't know what is.

Continuing on toward Sachse, Granddad and I had some good conversation and it was soon time to exit I-20 in Terrell. He asked what we were doing because he wanted to keep up with where were going, so I told him. Unbelievably, a few minutes later he looks out the window and says, "I'll declare. Those houses must be new. I don't remember them being there." Odd, I thought. I had no idea Granddaddy had ever been to Terrell before. So I asked him about that. He thought for a second and said, "Well, I can't say that I ever recall going to Terrell. I guess that's probably why I don't remember those houses." Okay. Got me there, Granddad. I can't argue with that logic.

Finally, we made it to Sachse. Leah brought some lunch over to Aunt Sis's house and we all enjoyed some food before unloading those couches. Thankfully, that love seat didn't bump into any kids and kill them. With that thing opening and closing at random, it's about like trying to move wet concrete…..without a bucket.

Getting that done, though, just gave me a chance to take a bit of a break. Granddad and I went fishing. He brought some of his own gear and tackle, but it looked a bit out of shape, so I just let him use mine. After a few tries, he was able to remember how to work a rod and reel and we both had a good time catching some bluegill and perch up in Allen before dinner. We got to go to a friend of mine's pond the next day and spent a little bit of time catching some bass out there.

All in all, I think Granddad really enjoyed himself. I know I did, and Grandmother, I'm sure, just loved spending time with Aunt Sis and the kids. They got to see a couple of after dinner shows that my kids put on (they think up skits, songs, and commercials to perform in the living room) and spend time visiting and playing games with us. It was a really good time.