Category: Life

First you are immortal.

Your life ahead seems infinite. You’ll join the battle and vanquish the fools in your own time.

Then you are invincible. You revel mightily in your victories. Your small defeats are nothing but setbacks. Tomorrow is another day, and you plot to prevail.

Then you are practical. You take what you can get, and you’re cautious to hold what you’ve won. You dream of a better life. You mock the fools behind their backs and you take vacations to beautiful places.

Then you are dependable. You do what is needed, as often as necessary, and you do it promptly and under budget. You long to be free, but there are no more beautiful places.

Eventually, no more is asked of you, and everyone likes you, or pities you. You haven’t vanquished anything. Some of the fools have become your friends, and some of your friends have become fools. You don’t know what you’ve become.

Then again, finally, you are immortal.

All my life I’ve saved stuff and reused it.

From cars all the way down to rubber bands. I’ve owned numerous cars but only one of them was purchased new. All the rest were second hand, recycled from someone else’s life. I still pull the rubber bands off the throwaway newspapers that land in my front yard and put them on the doorknob. When it gets hot and there are a lot of rubber bands on the doorknob, the rubber bands kind of half-melt and get sticky. They gunk up the doorknob so when you go to open the door you think you’ve just grabbed a handful of something awful, which, in fact, you have. But I figure, why buy rubber bands when people deliver them free to your front yard? I’ve never been without a rubber band when I needed one. Not ever.

When I was a young man I bought second hand clothes at thrift stores. I saved money doing that, and I developed my Who cares what you think of my fashion sense attitude, which has served me well. Instead of trying to be stylish I just wear what I want. It gives me a sense of freedom, not having to figure out what’s hip. Of course, there was a time in the sixties when it was hip to wear old clothes, so for a little while there I was cool. But I’ve been around long enough to know that fashion just goes around in circles anyway, and if you keep something in your closet long enough it’ll come back in style.

I do keep things in my closet. A lot of it should be discarded, but I’ve become sentimentally attached to it. I keep things so long that they can’t even be donated to thrift stores, because they’re too shabby. But when I’m walking out to the trash can in the alley, a bag of trashy old clothes in hand, I think I can hear them sobbing, begging for a reprieve, desperate to avoid the landfill. Half the time I turn around and bring them back in the house. This is a sickness, I know. I need help. Somebody help me.

I also need help with old computers, and old computer parts. I started tearing apart and building PC’s 20 years ago. I’d upgrade some component, say, the video card, and then I’d end up with a spare video card, perfectly usable, just not by me. I’d try to find someone who needed one, and failing that I’d put the thing in a box, alongside the 300 baud modem. You never can tell when stuff like that will come in handy. Over the years my box filled up with ever more sophisticated components. At some point I started buying new components that I didn’t need, and putting them in the box. Now I have maybe ten boxes of this stuff. I discovered the rule that you have to get rid of old computer stuff within six months of decommissioning, or else it is hopelessly obsolete. I have suffered the humiliation of being turned down when I was trying to give away perfectly good, working computers, because they were obsolete. But these things contain toxic components. You can’t just put them in the landfills, with all their mercury and lead and battery acid, and who hasn’t seen the 60 Minutes expose about that village in China where all the “recycled” computers go, to be dismantled and sold by the pound by naive villagers who have no other means to support themselves and do the work with no hazmat protection? Best just keep the stuff in the garage.

For decades I have lined my kitchen trash can with plastic grocery bags. It seems proper: You go to the store and get food, carry it home in a plastic bag, open the cans or bags or boxes, prepare meals, then toss out the excess in the same bag you used to bring it into the house. Some people buy trash bags to line their kitchen trash cans. Presumably, they put their grocery store bags into the bags they bought, and throw them away. Why would you do that? Of course, over the years the quality of the free bags at grocery stores has declined. Recently they have been little more than a film of translucent plastic, nothing like the sturdy, built-to-last paper bag replacements they were originally. I had to adjust to these flimsy pieces of crap, but with care I was able to make them work as trash bags.

But now everybody’s all green and the stores are saying they don’t want to use any plastic bags at all anymore. This started with the health food stores first, then spread to places like Trader Joe’s, who actually would prefer if you brought your own bags with you. Then health food supermarkets, like Wild Oats and Whole Foods picked up the idea, and now the regular supermarkets are in on it, too. At first it was kind of like “paper or plastic?” But the evolution has gone rapidly all the way to “we don’t have any bags at all, sucker.” I guess I could get some of these biodegradable trash bags made out of starch, but I kind of like the old groceries in – garbage out symmetry.

Growing up I remember there was always something like a milk carton near the kitchen sink, or an old coffee can, where we put wet garbage. We didn’t always have a garbage disposal, and even if we did, there are some things you can’t put in there, but if you put those things in the paper-lined garbage can in the kitchen, you’d have a slimy mess on the floor as soon as you lifted that bag to take it out. So, as my plastic bag supply dwindled dangerously low, I got a coffee can (from my saved collection in the garage, natch) and put it next to the sink. To make it more or less reusable, I lined it with a small plastic produce bag — they’re still giving those out at markets. Now we put little stuff in the garbage disposal, dry trash in the trash can, and icky wet other stuff in the coffee can, and I take out the kitchen trash every two or three days instead of every day, to save on plastic bags.

This is a big pain in the butt. I’m probably going to start buying trash bags, brand new. It’s wrong, but what else can I do?

Overall, I’m a pretty lucky guy.

I seem to be healthy. I say “seem to be” because I don’t go to doctors unless I break a bone, which hasn’t happened in ten years, so I don’t have a professional evaluation of my health. I just know that a lot of my friends are sick or on medication or have had emergency surgery. I have aches and pains, but nothing compared to what my peers are going through.

I’ve complained a lot in this blog about my crummy job, and it is pretty crummy. But at least I have a job, and as annoying as it may be to get up and go make someone else rich five days a week, I’m really glad I’m not yet among the unemployed. I have a steady paycheck and a few side benefits at a time when most of the money in the United States is being reallocated to the extremely wealthy, the middle class is being converted into The Working Poor, and those working poor are becoming, simply, the poor. This hasn’t happened because I am a highly motivated self-starter: I understand it’s just luck. Because of the random way I have lived my life, I’ll probably need this job until about five years after my death. I know they’ll fire me before then, but for now — still got it.

My marriage has held up for nearly three decades. There’s been good times and bad, but we’ve gotten over. I have to say that it was me who caused the bad times and it was the patience and love and good humor of Mrs. Jones that got us through them. Once again, lucky: I had lots of chances to hook up with women who would have provided a lot more drama, and I might be on my fourth wife by now, or just a bitter bachelor. Instead, Mrs. J. and I found each other.

And even at my age, I get to play in a rock band! What I’m doing these days isn’t exactly the way I’d pictured my musical career ending, but still, there’s nothing quite like the exhilaration of playing rock’n’roll for a live audience, getting them on your side, moving them, and getting your rocks off at the same time. Even the rehearsals are uplifting. For example, I started today lethargic and with a nagging pain in my lower back, and after jamming for three hours I felt invigorated and ready for more. And that’s not to mention hauling a ton of equipment, setting it up, breaking it down and hauling it back again. It may be luck that I’m able to do this, that I have the ability to play my instrument and convince other guys to want to play with me. It may be luck, but I hope it’s more than that, that it’s related a little to my own hard work. But whatever — I still get to play in a rock band!

I’ll get back to the whining soon, of course. I just wanted to remind myself of these things.

I’ve been walking with a swagger for several days now…

…because of a pre-Valentine’s Day Love Segment I saw on the Today Show recently: Talk Show Science tells us that women are attracted to men who move a certain way when they walk. Really, the only way to describe this motion is swagger. You exaggerate the swing of your shoulders as you walk — not so much that you look like Mussolini, but just a little bit. You can read about it in the previous post — there’s a video link there, too, if NBC hasn’t taken it down yet.

I was doing the swagger initially to impress the babes, and guys, I have to tell you I think it works (previous post explains why I think this). But it turns out there’s more to the swagger, a side effect so beneficial it will probably be included in The Secret. I am not a natural swaggerer, so I have to think about it when I walk. I have to remember to move my shoulders, right should forward with my right leg, left shoulder forward with the left leg. The shoulder movement makes me hold my head up, causes my arms to swing more than usual and puts a little extra spring in my step, and the result is, I feel happy when I walk!

I like to feel happy, so that makes me want to walk more, which means more swaggering, which makes me happy again, and so on. So I’m walking and swaggering and grinning, and being positive (because I’m happy) and I’m thinking things are starting to go my way, and why shouldn’t they? I’m smart, I have medium-sized feet (again, see previous post), women are checking out my walk, I’m looking and feeling great.

But before I got too high on life, Saturday morning my computer crashed. Just inexplicably wouldn’t boot. I don’t think it’s a hardware issue, but some file in the operating system that got corrupted. The technical term is farkled, I think, as in “My computer is farkled.” I won’t know for sure until tomorrow.

In the mean time I am using another computer on the home network, because, yes, I am that geek who has a home network. But I am not comfortable on this computer, and I don’t have all my addresses and bookmarks and saved passwords and applications, so I will be spending the next few days, not swaggering, but trying to get the main machine up and running again.

I’ll be reading all of you from work during this time, so please feel free to be witty, thought-provoking, swaggering and entertaining in your blogs.

As always, I walk only for you.

I was watching The Today Show this morning, and they had a segment on what physical traits look attractive to the opposite sex, and why.

I think this was timed as part of a lead-up to Valentine’s Day, but I missed that reference, if indeed there was one. Hasn’t Valentine’s Day gotten out of hand? I mean, really, don’t kill yourself if you don’t have a date on Valentine’s Day, or if your boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse doesn’t bring you chocolate or lingerie, or belly dance or do a striptease for you, or give you a back rub or take you out to a dark restaurant, a place so romantic that you can’t even see the food. I know, you’re thinking When will it happen for me? When will it be my turn to be happy? I have no advice for you except to say that you’re not a loser, and Valentine’s Day has nothing to do with True Love. It’s a Hallmark holiday, designed to boost corporate profits. You don’t have to play, and I will always love you no matter what. I know it’s not much, but it’s from these tiny trickles of affection that spring extravagant flowing fountains of fondness.

Anyway, they had like a four-minute segment featuring several scientists and researchers who told us the various paleo-bio-anthropological evolutionary bases of attraction between people. Men want women with small feet, they said, while women the world over prefer men with medium-sized feet. Possible explanations? The woman with small feet is probably of child-bearing age, while the man with not-too-small, not-too-big feet is likely to be better adapted to his environment and more likely to be able to provide for a family.

Pretty flimsy if you ask me, but I guess that’s what passes for science on the morning shows. If you’ve ever read anything about the theory of evolution you know why men would be attracted to women who seem ready and able to make a lot of babies. That’s basic continuation of the species stuff, but I couldn’t help wondering why small feet would indicate child-bearing years. They probably couldn’t come right out with it on The Today Show, but obviously the “scientists” think that very young girls (i.e., women with small feet) were prized as baby-makers. I doubt if cave men bothered to make sure their mates were old enough to commit to a relationship, so that makes some sort of (slightly perverted) sense. But the “men with medium-sized feet” — WTF? It’s hard to imagine cave women — or anyone else — making that particular leap of logic.

One that might make some sense is the shape of men’s heads. Women want a dude with a wide, symmetrical head, and really, they should have one. After all, a symmetrical head has probably not been bashed in, indicating a cave man smart enough to avoid fighting with other, possibly club-wielding cave men. Smart=survival=good. And those high, sloping foreheads? Not very evolved. Good-looking head shapes belong to Will Smith, Justin Timberlake and Brad Pitt, so ladies, that’s why you find those guys irresistible.

Also, it turns out that men are always attracted to women who sway their hips when they walk. Who knew? They had no explanation for this, so the science kind of broke down there for a moment while they showed a bunch of closeup clips of deliciously swaying hips. It was enough proof for me, but does anyone know exactly why such motion would be so provocative? The morning show scientists offered nothing. Conversely, women are attracted to men who walk with a slightly exaggerated back and forth motion of the shoulders — in other words, a swagger. As an example of this walk they showed the opening sequence of “Saturday Night Fever,” with John Travolta strutting down the street to the BeeGee’s “Stayin’ Alive.”

I tried the Stayin’ Alive Swagger on my way out to the car this morning, and I must say it felt good. Masculine. When I walked like that I felt I had the wherewithal to provide for a large family of little cave-children, borne of my lovely 12-year-old cave-babe. I may have kind of a long face, but oh, I can swagger. So all day I practiced my swagger. I’m not really all that macho, of course, since I had to consciously think about it every time I walked anywhere all day, but I think it was working on the women at the office. The company Controller walked by my office door, stopped, backed up and came in to give me Valentine cookies! In the past I have barely been able to get her to say hello to me. And I was just sitting at my desk, not swaggering at all. Such is the power of the swagger — you don’t even have to be doing it for it to work. You just have to be able to do it. Seriously, try this, guys.

I swaggered around all day. The one time I forgot to do it, I was walking toward the reception desk and I was preoccupied reading some stupid memo that someone had just handed me, and when I looked up I realized that the cute little receptionist who starts at 4 o’clock was there, and she was watching me. Watching me walk like a dork, not swaggering, and with dismay I saw my chance to make many, many babies with her go swirling down the drain of evolutionary dead ends. Sure, she’s 21, a little too old to totally ensure the preservation of my line, but she’s got small little feet and she’s so cute I would have risked it, and I might have had a shot, if only I’d remembered to swagger.

When will it be my turn for happiness, damnit?

In the spring of 2006 we had a visiting cat at our house.

You can read what I wrote at the time, but the synopsis is this: I discovered Tigger and his brother Bootsie along with an unnamed friend frolicking in our backyard, to the disgust of Molly the Cat, the only one who actually lived here. Over a period of a couple of months, Tigger decided he liked our yard better than his own, which was only two houses down the block. The other two would go home for meals or whatever, and Tigger would be there at my back door when I closed it at night, and still there sleeping on the stoop when I looked out in the morning. He disappeared occasionally for a day or two, presumably back to where he “lived,” but he was spending more and more time in our yard.

He seemed kind of stupid and he looked frail and vulnerable. His bigger, more aggressive brother would push him out of the way and eat any food they happened to find. In fact, Tigger had a habit of filling up his mouth with any food he could find, stepping a few feet away, spitting it out and then eating it off the ground, bit by bit, leaving the bigger pile for Bootsie, since he knew Bootsie would take it anyway. I estimate he weighed less than six pounds.

We found out his name (and his brother’s) and where they lived when he accidentally got trapped inside the house while he was snooping around and the door blew shut. I caught him, read his tag and called the phone number on it. We had started to think that maybe he and Bootsie had been abandoned, and we were relieved to find that they had a home just down the street from us.

But that’s when things started to get difficult.

• Mona (the “owner”) asked us not to feed her cats. This we couldn’t do, because we had to leave food out for Molly, an indoor/outdoor cat. She told us they were a year old. We were shocked: Six pounds at one year? What was wrong? Of course we made sure Tigger would “find” some crunchies every day at our house.
• In a later chat with Mona, she told us that she didn’t really know what Tigger and Bootsie ate. Just “…whatever’s on sale at the supermarket.” Not even Friskies. Generic.
• Spring drifted into Summer, which gave way to Fall. By November, it was cold and damp at night. Molly slept in the house. Bootsie went home each night. Tigger slept in the yard. He rarely went home.
• Mona told us that her husband blamed Tigger and Bootsie for the death of the third cat, who, distraught over some perceived slight by the others, had run out in the street and got run over by a car. As a result, he and she had a bad attitude about both remaining cats. We were stunned. These two were grownups?
• One day, Mona stopped by to ask us if we’d seen Tigger, as he hadn’t been home in two weeks. We didn’t know he wasn’t putting in regular appearances at Mona’s, but two weeks? Not three hours or even a day. She let two weeks go by before looking for her lost animal. I think it was at this point that we decided she was not a fit pet owner. We started thinking up different names for Tigger.
• Tigger and Bootsie both managed to lose their collars and their tags. Molly the Cat loses hers a couple of times a year, but she gets a new one within 24 hours. Bootsie’s and Tigger’s were not replaced, further evidence of bad stewardship.
• Bootsie disappeared. (Warning: This part is horrible, folks.) Mona came to us looking for him, but we hadn’t seen him in a few days. We talked for a while. I told her I’d keep an eye out, ask the neighbors, etc. Mona said she would check the city pound. I asked her to call and let me know when he came back. She called a week later. She had just checked the pound. They recognized Bootsie from her description. A neighbor had trapped him and turned him in, but she had waited too long. The city had put him down the day before. She seemed mildly pissed off at the anonymous neighbor, but not distraught about Bootsie. We were sickened.
• I went out and got a collar and a tag for Tigger. He started sleeping in the house that night. We felt cheesy about it, but what would you have done?
• Tigger grieved for Bootsie. He was confused and withdrawn. Bootsie had stolen all his food and beat him up every day, but they clearly had a bond, and Tigger was adrift without his big brother to wrestle and explore with.
• I started calling him Way Out Willie, after the first line of “Hand Jive”: I know a cat named Way Out Willie.
• His tag still has Mona’s phone number on it, but we’re pretty sure he never goes there anymore. Moreover, she never comes to see us any more. They’ve abandoned each other.

Willie has regular meals of high quality cat food every day now, plus, we suspect, whatever he can find in his travels around the neighborhood. His coat is glossy and he is thriving, at over thirteen pounds. We’re trying to figure out if we can stabilize his weight before he turns into a big Fat Cat.

He is gentle and curious, gradually exploring all the nooks in the house. He’s shy, but he likes to have company, so wherever you are in the house or the yard he’s likely to be nearby, licking himself.

He is endearingly stupid. He pushes on doors that open toward him, and he never seems to figure that out. He treats every meal not as an entitlement but as the gift that it is, looking quizzically from the dish to his benefactor until you say “It’s for you, Willie”

In deference to Molly, Queen of the House, he sleeps alone on a towel on the couch in the living room, which is like a different country from the bedroom or kitchen or office, where M. sleeps. M. won’t accept him, or any strangers, human or animal. We love her, but she is a cranky old lady at nine years old.

We know there is a confrontation looming with Mona. We don’t know what we’re going to do or say. Will she demand him back? Will she forgive our transgression? Will she call the cops? (Can she do that? I don’t know.) Will she and her husband move away, taking Willie with them — or leaving him behind? I have judged Mona and found her wanting, but Tigger/Willie belongs to her, and we both know it. For his part, he has clearly moved on from Mona, and he’s not looking back.

So that’s the update. I’m planning more updates in the future at revision99, okay?

Way Out Willie gave ’em all a treat

When he did that hand jive with his feet.

Hand jive, hand jive. Doin’ that crazy hand jive.

There’s a persimmon tree in my back yard.

1. (April) Oh look, the persimmon tree is starting to get some leaves! I thought it was dead.
2. (May) Wouldja look at that? Little persimmon blossoms!
3. (June) The miracle of life, honey: Baby persimmons, the size of marbles. Wow, it looks like it might be a good crop this year after all.
4. (July) The leaves are turning yellow. That’s not right, is it? Maybe we should feed it some of that iron supplement.
5. (Later in July) Holy shit! There are a lot of persimmons on this tree. I can hardly wait until they’re ripe.
6. (October) Ewww! This tastes awful!
7. (November) Finally! Sweet, sweet fruit. I’m gonna have one for breakfast every day. And lunch, too. And we’d better give some away. Don’t want to waste nature’s bounty.
8. (Later in November) Who else wants persimmons? Anybody? What are we going to do with all these shopping bags full of persimmons?
9. (December) I can’t pick any more. My arms are tired, and the ladder won’t go high enough and I almost fell out of the damned tree twice yesterday. No, I don’t want another persimmon smoothie. Can we sneak a couple of bags onto that guy’s porch across the alley?
10. (Christmas) They are too ripe! They’re all over the house, and they’re squishy!
11. (New Year’s Day) OK, I found the recipe. Just throw away the ones with the birdshit on them, and puree the rest. King Arthur flour? Check. Baking soda? Check. Vegetable oil, eggs, lemon juice, cinnamon, sugar, salt? Check. Raisins? Check. Chopped pecans? Check. A couple of tons of really soft persimmons? Double check. Fire up the oven, Mother!
12. Mmmmmmmm…. Aaaahhh….

I slipped out of the office to run some errands this past Tuesday.

I take my crummy job all too seriously, and as a result I can get kind of surly with my coworkers. I don’t want to be that way, the guy everybody tries to avoid in the hall. I just resent having to work for a living, all the more because I think my company is stupid, so I’m a little crotchety sometimes.

But I thought I’d try to soften my image a little, so I went to a store and bought a 25 dollar tray of assorted holiday-themed cookies, red and green decorated sweets, laden with butter and sugar. I got it at one of those big box stores that also sell refrigerators, designer jeans, power tools and huge pallets of toilet paper, so I got to rub elbows with a lot of Christmas shoppers while I was at it. I noticed one of the popular toys this year seems to be an actual house. Kid-sized, but big enough to go inside, little three-room pads, complete with furniture, and built-ins in the kitchen. I saw a few of these rolling past the checkstands, unassembled in their huge cartons, illustrations on the outside of the finished product. I wondered if they came with kid-sized adjustable rate mortgages. That would be an educational toy.

I took my cookie tray out to the car and put it in the trunk. Midday traffic was heavy. Los Angeles was built for cars, but no one could have foreseen how many of us would be trying to use these streets and highways. Most of the roadways maxed out about ten years ago, so normal driving can be a challenge, but during those special times — Christmas shopping season, tsunami evacuations — you find out what “gridlock” means. I wanted to stop at the bank on my way back to work, and by the time I got there I was frazzled and getting surly again.

I was the only person at the counter at first, but while I was doing my banking and bantering with the teller another customer walked briskly up to the window next to mine. She was a skinny woman in her forties, wearing a pea coat and jeans that were designed to be tight, but which hung limply on her thin frame. Her jeans looked as if they’d been worn out the old fashioned way, not bought that way in a store. She had glossy auburn hair done in an improbable 1940’s style, ringlets down both sides of her face, which was pleasant, plain and bony. She wore a small holiday corsage made of fake green holly and festive red berries. She carried no purse or shopping bag.

“OK,” she said brightly, “the first thing I need to do is check my balance.”

Normally they won’t answer that question out loud. I don’t know why, but they just won’t. They always write it down and show it to you. But this guy punched a few keys on his terminal, squinted at his screen and said, in a voice that I could not help hearing, “You have twenty five dollars and eighty-three cents.”

She gave this only a second’s thought, then said “In that case I’ll take twenty-five dollars.” While the teller was getting that together, punching keys, sticking slips of paper into little printers, opening and closing drawers, the woman struck up a conversation with a bank officer seated well back from the teller windows. They apparently knew each other, in the way customers are led to think they “know” bank officers.

They exchanged the usual December pleasantries, about the weather, about the traffic, about not being ready for Christmas. They were talking loudly across a great distance — the distance from where the customers stand to the place where bank managers sit. Then the bank officer asked her how she’d been doing.

“Doing great! Well, except I’ve only had three job interviews this month. You know me — I really need like a hundred and fifty. But I’m fine. I feel good. I see so many people with such problems — no food, no friends, no place to sleep. I just feel so blessed. I’m sure I’ll find something someday. You know, there are worse things than just not having a job.”

The bank officer’s smile had started to coagulate on her face. The woman’s money had been counted and placed before her, five 5-dollar bills. My own transaction was finished. I picked up my stuff, went back to my office and made sure everybody got some Christmas cookies.

Larry Jones is not a crackpot.

He is a responsible citizen who holds a job. He is a voter who never fails to perform that particular civic duty. He once even worked in a presidential campaign, where he learned that honesty and personal integrity won’t help you at all in such contests.

Larry Jones maintains his yard, both front and back. He is on friendly terms with many of his neighbors, even the retired lady who feeds the pigeons in the alley between their houses, making it a no-man’s land of bird droppings every afternoon at four o’clock. Larry Jones is fond of animals, and feeds strays that wander into his yard, sometimes becoming so involved with them that they move in and stay indefinitely.

He is concerned about the environment and is replacing his incandescent lights with compact fluorescent bulbs, even though the CFL’s give off a weird, inadequate light. He drives a little Honda that would fit in the back of some SUV’s, but he doesn’t think these small actions will reverse global warming.

Larry Jones is pretty smart — he went to college and earned a degree in Semantics (of all things) — but he nevertheless is not climbing the corporate ladder at his job, because he doesn’t know how to suck up. Larry Jones feels that being reliable and doing superior work ought to be enough, so he knows he will never be promoted, and he’s OK with that, even if he kind of wishes he had the money that goes with a fancy title.

In his spare time, Larry Jones plays in a rock’n’roll band, a group that he started because he loves music, but also to keep from feeling like a great big zero (see “job,” above). He is proud of his band, almost as proud as he is of the fact that he has managed to stay married to the same (beautiful, intelligent) woman for 27 years.

Larry Jones is a regular guy. He is not holed up in a primitive cabin with an assault rifle, two years’ supply of canned goods and a portable Smith-Corona, feverishly pounding out 800-page manifestos (manifestoes? manifestum? manifestae?) and paranoiac conspiracy theories.

You might want to take Larry Jones with a grain of salt. After all, he’s been politically liberal since the first time he gave that sort of thing any serious thought. He understands that not everyone shares his world view, and he can live with that. But Larry Jones has been around a long time, he’s lived through various wars, natural disasters, economic ups and downs and multiple swings of the political pendulum, and he’s not kidding when he tells you that things are getting vewy vewy scwewy.

He’s trying not to panic, but chunks of ice the size of Rhode Island are breaking off from the ice caps, hundreds of kilos of plutonium are missing, the United States government is torturing people, the world’s banks are trying to keep the lid on a collapse that will make the Great Depression look like fun, and when he looks around everybody is buying 42-inch flat panel high-definition TV’s and acting as if nothing’s the matter.

So Larry Jones tries to maintain, and asks your forgiveness if he sometimes seems a little jumpy.

I’m a big fan of digging holes.

You need a hole for some reason — maybe to plant a tree, or put in a post, bury some incriminating evidence, or any old reason — grab a shovel and get diggin’. Burn off some calories, build a little upper body strength, relieve some of those unsavory antisocial aggressive tendencies, and when you’re done, look! There’s a hole. You don’t have to allow three weeks for delivery, you don’t have to wait for the check to clear. It’s more or less instant gratification. You wanted a hole, you got a hole. Toss in that recently fired .45 and cover it up. Satisfying.

Same with doing the dishes, or mopping the kitchen floor. These are tasks with clearly defined goals that you can achieve in a known amount of time, and when they’re done, they’re done. I’m not saying it’s fun doing these things. I’m saying it’s satisfying, actually being able to complete something in this world that’s grown so complex. Now that I’ve made these counterintuitive statements, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to find out that I also consider ironing a satisfying enterprise.

Which brings us, inexorably, to women’s clothes.

Most of the time I wear low-maintenance clothes. Zero-maintenance, even. T-shirts and Levi’s, mostly, but my work shirts must be ironed. I’m probably the only guy at HugeCorp who irons his own shirts, and as soon as they start paying me The Big Bucks I’ll start sending my shirts out for cleaning and pressing, light starch in the collars, please. In the meantime I have the pleasure of a weekly task that has a clearly defined and totally attainable goal: flat shirts. Instant gratification. Until Mrs. Jones brings me a few of her things to iron.

What is the deal with these blouses? Ruffles, pleats, darts, plackets, stays, lining, appliqués, facings, lacy decorations… The care instructions always tell you to “…use warm iron, if necessary…” (emphasis mine — I’m sure they mean that ironically). And the fabrics: rayon, satin, acrylic, polyester, microfiber — what is microfiber, anyway? Of course, everything has a little dollop of spandex in it, too.

First of all, I need broad expanses of wrinkled cotton in front of my iron. Wrinkled, perhaps, but, you know, simple. Ironable. These little ladies’ tops rarely have enough acreage anywhere on them even to accommodate the footprint of the iron, much less room to move it around. As soon as I move it I run into a flap of something on a different plane of existence, something that gets wrinkled even as the original surface is getting unwrinkled. And how do you iron a ruffle? Answer: One square millimeter at a time.

So I mince around on these dainty little patches of fabric with my big East German steam iron. Have you ever ironed anything with a “warm” iron? I use steam on my work shirts, show ’em who’s boss. They start to flatten out as soon as they so much as hear the big Rowenta snarling and hissing. But on the “warm” setting there can be no steam, and I am defeated by the delicate little things. No matter how many times I go over the same space, and no matter how hard I press down, I can’t get that crisp, like-new look and feel. I believe this is proof that designers don’t iron.

When I’m done with Mrs. Jones’ blouses, I hang them up in the doorway and look at them, and they just don’t look very good. I don’t mind doing the work, but I don’t get much satisfaction. Well, that’s not entirely true, because eventually I’ll get to see one of them on the beautiful Mrs. Jones, and then I remember that not all gratification is instant.

In the meantime I think I’ll go plant a tree.