Crabby Scrabby Scribbles

As my daughter drove away I found myself alone in her house, seated firmly on the couch, facing the day with great trepidation. It’s not that she was leaving me alone with the children. I’m perfectly okay with that. It’s that she was leaving me alone with her television set, and the corresponding remote control. Actually, make that three remote controls. To me there is no greater mystery in life than how the heck, exactly, does her television set work. And why, oh why, should it take three remote controls to operate it?!

Yes of course, she had written it all down for me. Unfortunately she’d left the paper on the coffee table and my fifteen month-old grandson ripped it all to smithereens and flushed it down the toilet. That was before my daughter had even gotten out of the driveway. This event was followed immediately by my four year old grand-daughter requesting ever so cutely to watch the Disney Channel. And then she asked again. And then again. And, …you get the picture. I had no earthly idea how to do that. I’d walk over hot coals to bring happiness to that little girl, but I wasn’t too sure I could get her the Disney Channel.

I had passed the CPA exam on the first try, studied mechanical engineering for fun, and graduated valedictorian of my high school class (of 40 people)(in 1969). I knew I could master one more mighty mental milestone. My inevitable success would throw down a new marker in the epistemology of logic. Rounding up the three remotes, I brilliantly matched up the trade name on each with the trade name on the corresponding pertinent device. I was talking to myself as I went. I find that always makes things easier. The TV itself was a Vizio, so I found the Vizio remote. The DVD/Blueray player (how is a Blueray different from a DVD anyway?) was an LG. I dutifully laid the LG remote next to the Vizio remote on the couch. The third remote carried the trade name Charter/Spectrum. That of course, was for the cable box. (Why don’t they just roll all the cable TV/broadband services into one gigantic company and allow us a lifetime subscription in exchange for our firstborn child? They’re almost there already anyway.)

First, I reasoned, I needed the TV set on. I pushed the power button on the Vizio remote. A blue screen appeared with the message ‘No Signal’ bouncing around on it every few seconds. I wanted the Disney Channel, and wasn’t going to play a DVD, so I ignored the LG remote. But of course, I reasoned, I needed the cable, so I grabbed the Spectrum remote and pushed the power button on it. Nothing happened. I pushed the button again, and nothing happened again. I will confess that my next move was consistent with my entire lifestyle. I grabbed the two remotes of interest and erupted in a veritable flurry of button pushing. I thumbed every button in sight as fast as I possibly could, at random. That didn’t work.

My grand-daughter, being a very wise four year-old, gave up on the Disney. She wandered off to play video poker on my cell phone. Then she downloaded a $59 game app and charged it to my account.

Forty-five minutes later I was sweaty and exhausted. I had tried everything. I figure with the same amount of effort I could have hacked Hillary’s emails myself, and we wouldn’t have needed the Russians. Nevertheless, there was no Disney Channel. There was also no Weather Channel, no South Park, and no Kardashians. Worst of all, I was deprived of watching a forty-nine-and-a-half year old woman with head to toe tattoos pick out a $50,000 wedding dress for her fourth marriage.

I swallowed my pride (which isn’t so bad, since I have very little left) and called my daughter. She wasn’t surprised, having received the same call from me a half-dozen times before. She is a nurse and I am proud of her and she cares for people in the most dire of circumstances. And that is good, because when I find myself in the same room with her TV, well, you’re looking at a man in dire circumstances. She sighed and reminded me it wasn’t just a matter of turning the TV on. I had to select the proper signal source, which I could do by pushing this little button at the bottom of the Vizio device and then toggle that little button at the top until it said HDMI2. Then I should recall that although they had cable into their house they had limited cable channels and I had to get Disney (or just about anything else) from a streaming service, which came through the DVD player. Why on earth do I need the DVD player if I’m not playing a DVD, I ask. Because, she reminds me, their DVD player also has the built-in wireless receiver for her home Wi-Fi. At any rate, it turns out I needed that third remote control after all, and I dutifully picked it up and did as I was told.

Finally, after truly heroic effort, I had connected with NatGeo and spent 58 minutes watching a couple of fools living above the Arctic Circle in an old refrigerator box they’d had flown in and parachuted to the frozen ground. I’d been transfixed by their brilliance as they covered the old crate with sphagnum moss for insulation and learned to operate the tiny heater which burned congealed animal fat. They purported to spend countless hours tromping across the tundra in search of Caribou and ground squirrels which might fall prey to their 357 Magnum Winchester lever action rifle. (They claimed to be living off the land, so I guess they found that firearm just lying about on the ground?) Despite all the hunting scenes, they seemed to eat mostly dried nuts and granola bars. Not sure where they got those. Maybe they were supplied by the camera crew.

Suddenly, in one morning scene, upon emerging from the tiny wooden living space and intent on answering the call of nature (I’m not referring to Jack London here) Fool #1 was grabbed by a gigantic polar bear, while Fool #2 grabbed the rifle and ran as fast as he could in the opposite direction. Just at that very moment my little grandson grabbed one of the three remote controls for the TV system and pushed a button. Which button, I will never know. What I do know is that everything went dark. Instantaneously. Noooo!!! I want to know if that polar bear enjoyed his breakfast!!!

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I was reading about events in Alabama of this past year or two. Wow! Let me try to summarize:

Governor of Alabama is having an affair. He enlists staff and State Police to help try to cover it up. State Attorney General Luther Strange (you can’t make these names up) gets wind of that and launches investigation of Gov for abuse of power. Senator Jeff Sessions is offered position of U.S. Attorney General, and resigns his seat to take the position. Alabama law calls for special election to replace Sessions, but Gov says no that’s too expensive and announces he will appoint the new Senator. And guess what? The result is Strange. No really, he picks none other than State Attorney General Luther Strange. Despite state law, Strange is seated as U.S. Senator from Alabama. Investigation of governor ends, but governor is impeached. New governor announces there will be a special election for Senator after all. Not to worry, Luther Strange is allowed to remain in Senate, reliably voting to Make America Great Again.

Meanwhile, twice defrocked Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore announces he will run against Strange for the nomination. Moore’s past flouting of law got him removed from elected position of Alabama Chief Justice. That was in 2003. He ran for the seat again. Alabama elected him again. He flouted law again. He was removed again. That was in 2016. Roy Moore feels eminently qualified to run for U.S. Senate in this state, and apparently he is. He defeats Luther Strange, and rides into the general election on his horse Sassy, head held high, pistol in his pocket, and Bible in his hand.

Whoops! It turns out there is another political party in Alabama. It’s called the Democrat Party. (There is no Democratic Party in Red State America, only the Democrat Party.) The nominee from that other party had a distinguished career in law, having prosecuted two members of the KKK and perpetrators of the horrific Birmingham church bombing which killed four little African American girls in 1963. (The wheels of justice turn slowly in Alabama, for some unknown reason.) But Roy Moore is not to be outdone in characteristics of tolerance and the struggle for equality, as his smirking wife loudly and proudly proclaimed. After all, one of their attorneys is a Jew! So there! Take that!

Yes, in terms of character, and respect for the law, and tolerance for disparate points of view amongst his fellow men, one candidate stood out. But he decided to run in Alabama anyway, despite zero chance of victory. Then we all learned that while in his thirties and while an assistant attorney general, Moore had trolled for teen-aged girls at local shopping malls and high school sock hops. Well in Alabama they’ll vote for a guy who flouts the law, is an icon of intolerance, and has been criticized for poor horsemanship. But vote for a creepy? Actually yes, 650,436 people of Alabama did vote for a creepy. But for 671,151 voters that was a bridge too far. The Democrat won! At least we thought he had won. Roy Moore refused to concede. He claimed voter fraud. He filed lawsuit to get the election overturned. Unfortunately the court ruled it had no jurisdiction. Moore, former Chief Justice of Alabama, had filed suit in the wrong court. That’s what you call a bad week.

Thus ends this tale of the great state of Alabama. Well, at least for now. Moore has announced that because the new governor had the audacity to agree the Democrat should be certified the winner of this election, he is considering running against her next time around. Stay tuned.

And in case you’re feeling all smug and schadenfreude-y about this, remember, Alabama is part of America. In fact, in so many ways, Alabama is America.

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I was on the bed pan when it all started going south. No, it wasn’t that going south. I was facing east at the time I do believe. It was my blood pressure going south. I was in pain. I was lightheaded. I was dizzy. Then I was passing out I guess. It gets a little fuzzy here because, well, I was passing out. They brought in the crash cart. Three or four sets of hands transferred me unceremoniously from hospital bed to wheeled gurney, bed pan and all. Not quite sure how they managed that. I was on my way back to the emergency room, at high speed, some nurse grabbing at my flimsy hospital gown as it fluttered back in the breeze, displaying for all the world to see my sweaty naked blubber and private parts. Blood pressure still dropping, somebody said. Raise his feet, somebody else said. Unseen hands turned a crank or pushed a button or did whatever to make the gurney tilt down on the head end and up on the feet end. Suddenly I was being wheeled down the hallways of the hospital feet over head on a gurney, crash cart rolling right on alongside, tubes trailing from my arms looping back to the bags of blood and sustenance. Somebody had snatched those from the tall chrome coat-rack looking things and hung them on the gurney. The bed pan was painfully bending my bottom and there was a tube the size of a fire hose stuck into that other critical piece of my bodily plumbing. You know the place that I mean. I had a tube stuck in my dick. That’s a long story.

The point of all this is that sometimes when you think things are really bad in your life, you should just always remember that they could get a lot worse. Well, maybe putting it that way didn’t cheer you up. What I mean is, when I was on that cart in the hospital, I wasn’t blowing my stack about the fact that my local congressman had embarrassed himself claiming the First Lady of this United States had a fat rear-end. That was just his way of making conversation at a church social. And anyway let’s face it, that congressman has a butt twice as wide as that First Lady did. Believe me, I’ve seen it, and it ain’t pretty.

When I was on that cart in the hospital I also wasn’t worrying about who won the last election, or why the boss does that neck-stretch and twitch thing when he’s stretching the truth to his investors, or how did I manage to add up 59 and 40 and get 109, thusly putting my employer into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. (That didn’t actually happen, I only wish it had). Suddenly, those things just didn’t seem all that important. Yes I know that fat little dude in North Korea is developing nuclear weapons, but doesn’t anybody remember the Cuban Missile Crisis? That was scary too, and we lived through that. The Soviet Union had nuclear weapons for decades, as the Russians still do. So does China, India, Pakistan, and Israel. So does Great Britain. Yes they are supposed to be our ally, but based on what’s trending on Twitter, they might want to launch them at us. Who could blame them? And who knows, probably the Principality of Liechenstein has nukes by now. They might need them, you know, to fend off a resurgent and belligerent monarchy in Monaco. You get the drift. They’ve all had them for years. There is nothing you can do about it. And there is nothing you can do about North Korea either, other than vote for a president that you hope will take care of it, although it would help if you voted for a president who is not crazy.

Yes, there are other thoughts that should give you comfort in hard times, not just the realization you might die tomorrow. There is also history. Look what this country has been through. I already mentioned the Cuban Missile Crisis. And after that was over our CIA kept failing to assassinate Castro. There were poisoned pistachios. There were exploding cigars. Funny how that explosive-filled conch shell on the bottom of the sea where Castro might maybe scuba dive never worked. It’s a big ocean out there, fellas. Richard Nixon, in those disturbing days of Watergate, got so drunk and depressed that his Secretary of Defense told the generals to check with him before launching any nukes on the president’s order. It could have been just another Nixon scheme to avoid impeachment. Under President Ronald Reagan we fought for our very lives against the mighty island nation of Grenada, population 100,000. And what about Saddam Hussein, threatening us with his weapons of mass destruction from the high-tech command and control center inside his little hidey-hole in the ground. How well I remember when Saddam’s Press Secretary, Baghdad Bob, reported the crushing defeat the Iraqi Army was dealing at that very moment to our own military forces. So silly he was; so much fun. Nevertheless, I am so glad we don’t have such silly press secretaries serving this great nation of ours.

When I feel stressed out, like the walls are closing in on me, like I can’t stand that dumb stupid job one more day (or worrying that I’ll lose that dumb stupid job someday), like the world is coming to an end, I feel like stuffing my face with pizza and guzzling chocolate milk all day long. At times like that I try to remember that hey, my little daily problems are not really that important. They’re only minor annoyances in the big picture of life. And when I see people running around waving their arms and jabbering and screeching like their hair is on fire, worrying about work or politics or the fact that their favorite football team just lost to the Chicago Bears of all the unbelievable teams they could possibly lose to, I want to counsel them. I want to advise them. I want to encourage them to relax a little, take a breath, and calm down. I want to tell them it really isn’t so bad. Well, losing to the Bears really is pretty bad. But it isn’t that bad. Look at what other people deal with. Look at what this country has been through. And don’t panic yet. It certainly isn’t as bad as finding yourself rolling through the halls of a hospital while in excruciating pain and suffering personal humiliation, head below feet on the gurney, still on that bed pan, trying oh so desperately to poop uphill.

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