Mall Madness

Mall Madness

By Paul Greeley

If you see me at a shopping mall, call the police. 

Because I joke that the only way I’ll go shopping at a mall is at gun-point. 

It’s not the mall’s fault; it’s me. I have trouble resisting their temptations--the sights, the smells, the sounds are capable of driving me into a shopping frenzy. When I walk by the stores that sell music, electronics, sporting goods, food, even fashion, I have to steel myself, put my hand on my wallet, stay the course in the middle of the mall, like Ulysses tied to the mast so he won’t be tempted by the nymph’s singing on Sirens’ Island.

“Your spirit is strong”, I say to myself, “but your Visa is weak.”

On the few occasions I do have to shop for Christmas or someone’s birthday gift, I attack it like a well-planned military assault. Make a detailed plan, then get in and get out alive.

I don’t need anything anyway. I keep shoes forever. And men’s shoes haven’t changed much since the Ice Age. They recently unearthed a neandorthal wearing wing-tips. 

And when they do come out with something new, they look old, like those square-toed dress shoes they’re selling now-- put a buckle on them and you look like a pilgrim! Plus, they ain’t cheap. I saw a pair of shoes on clearance at a well-known, high-end dept store recently that cost more than the gross national product of many small countries!

I see other men like me sitting on those benches in the middle of the mall. They’re not relaxing; they’re resisting. We nod knowingly to each other in passing, silent encouragement to keep it up.

But these days even the middle of the mall has its own temptations. Now they have kiosks, huts, stands, shacks, and tables lined up everywhere you walk displaying everything from hats (lids!) cell phones, computers, sunglasses (shades!), make-up, hand-bags, insurance, carpeting, landscaping, tropical fish, even cars. And of course, jewelry.  

Nothing quite says love like when you buy your girlfriend a bracelet at a jewelry kiosk in the mall. 

Rosetta has a stand so you can practice Italian while you’re shopping and learn to say ‘ciao’ to your money.

By far, the strangest activity I recently witnessed at the mall was something new I’d never seen or heard about. 

A lady is sprawled out on a table while another lady hovers over her face working a long piece like some kind of magic ritual.  It looks like some kind of adolescent rite of passage you might see from Borneo on National Geographic. I watch in amazement wondering what in the world are they doing? I ask another lady who is signing up for the next appointment.

“Oh, it’s called eyebrow threading. It’s a lot less painful than wax.”

If they can have a side-show in public showing ladies getting their eyebrows plucked one by one right in the middle of the mall, what’s next? Plastic surgery?

“Honey, I’ll be back in an hour looking 20 years younger. I’m getting a face-lift at the mall.”

Definitely bring your Visa for that.

A Man’s Home is his Castle

     A man’s home is his castle.

     Until he puts it on the real estate market to sell it.

     Then it’s an open house for total strangers to come in, walk around, peek and probe, ridicule and criticize.

     The internet has dramatically changed how homes are marketed these days. Now, potential buyers can go on-line to a 360-degree camera view of your entire house, room by room, including the outside. The camera lens would make even a closet look like a cavernous gymnasium, every edge rounded and extended. When I first saw our house this way, I thought they shot the wrong house! Add the soothing music that accompanies the video, if you lean in close enough, you can just catch the faintest wisp of a home-made apple pie cooking in the oven.

     But before you even get to the pretty pictures and marketing, you’ll need to remove the clutter in your house. What is clutter? Pretty much anything and everything in your house that you treasure, and make the house feel distinctly like your home. Gone are the precious family photos hanging on the walls. Hide those knick-knacks, candles, and plants. Box up your movies, CDs, and books. And for God’s sake, make your bathrooms spotless---re-caulk every nook and cranny, put the shampoo, conditioner and soap under the sink. No towels should hang anywhere. Kitchens ought to look as sterile as an operating room.

       The barer the house, the better. If your house looks like no one has ever lived there, let alone lives there now, you get the idea.

     Now it’s time for the showings. That’s the time when every realtor who’s ever gotten a license can make an appointment to come to your house any day or night of the week with strangers who may or may not have the money to buy your house. Like the cable company, they make appointments in two or three hour blocks. At first, we’d all high-tail it out of there for two hours. Then as we got more used to the process, we’d wait until they’d ring the doorbell and then rush out the back door, dog in tow, to lurk across the street in the park or park up the street in the car. From both vantage points, we’d watch the front door, waiting for them to leave, so we could go home. If they stayed too long, we were mad, because we were inconvenienced. If they stayed too short, we were insulted because we figured they didn’t like what they saw.

     One Sunday night, 20 minutes after the showing window closed, and just after I opened a cold beer and started the barbecue, a realtor showed up with a whole family including 3 kids. I hate to admit it but as I backed out of the drive-way, I caught the realtor’s eye and tapped my wrist-watch menacingly. By the time I got back, my beer was warm.

     The dog, however, loved the whole process for all the walks he got.

     These days, almost immediately after the showings, you can go on-line to view the potential buyers and realtor comments about your house. But be prepared to be insulted!

      “The yard was too big.”

      “The yard is too small.”

      “Oh, I didn’t like the pre-fab cabinets.”

      “Loved the two-story windows that opened to the backyard.”

      “Hated those high windows—where are the blinds?”

     After failing to sell my house for 6 months, and about 150 showings, and investing about $10,000 in upgrades, I called our realtor up and told him to yank the sign out of the yard. Immediately after that, I grabbed a hammer and hung back the family portrait over the mantle, grabbed a cold beer and fired up the barbecue, because after all, a man’s home is his castle.

 

 

Animals Behaving Badly

I’m convinced animals are out to get us humans. The tipping point for me was the recent story about a hiker in Washington State being killed by a goat, potentially the first fatal attack on a human by a goat ever recorded. How does a goat kill someone? Officials aren’t exactly sure. One theory is the man was bent over smelling flowers when the goat head butted him. Witnesses say the goat stared down people trying to help. Hollywood’s  negotiating for the movie rights.

What more proof do we need that animals are indeed behaving badly, or in this case, behaving very baaadly. What’s next, killer guinea pigs!

Petting zoos should be put on high alert. Goats in petting zoos should be asked nicely to wear padded helmets and moms need to warn the kids not to turn their backs and bend over near the goats.

Animal behaviorists theorize that some animals may resent human’s haughty attitude at being at the top of the evolutionary food chain. They point to the fact that we openly eat animals as part of our diet and that some humans wear animal furs or skins.  They say animals might see this as taunting them. The rumor that the hiker had a lucky rabbit’s foot in his pocket has yet to be confirmed.

Animals killing people is not new of course. In Africa, lions and tigers have been killing and eating people for years. Research reveals these lions and tigers associate humans with the taste of chickens. That’s right; they think we taste like chicken.

Here in the US, animals kill people all the time. Bears, mountain lions, bobcats, alligators, snakes and sharks kill people regularly. I haven’t been in the ocean in years.

I believe that animals are conspiring against us. Even my own dog and cat look at me like they want to kill me if I don’t get them a treat or clean the litter box. It’s common for deer to jump in front of moving cars in suicide attacks against humans. And that airplane that had to land on the Hudson River in New York-- if you think its two engines were snuffed out at the exact same time by two geese was an accident, you’re just in denial.

I mean when bees become killers, the writing’s on the wall people. It’s only a matter of time now fire ants will go from swarming and stinging us to swarming and killing us.

Right now,  packs of bunnies and squirrels are in my yard smoking cigarettes and flashing gangs signs as they eye me menacingly, gesturing how they’re going to take me down with a high/low move—squirrels drop on my neck while bunnies grab me by my pant cuffs.

I’m never going outside again.

Disconnected in a Connected World

No one talks to me anymore. It’s not that I’m not a good conversationalist. I just never get the chance to show that off. If I’m in a public place, no one strikes up a conversation---they’re too busy looking at their device, their I-Phones or Blackberries. Why would anyone want to just talk about the weather when they can get the weather forecast for anywhere in the world, with video if they want, right in the palm of their hand?

“Hey some weather we’re having, huh?”

Stranger does a quick search with his device.

“Not really, the weather is far more weird in Micronesia right now. Here, take a look.”

I once started talking to a guy at a gas station only to realize after a few minutes that he was wearing one of those ear pieces and was on the phone and not listening to a word I said. Who needs to be that connected? Why not just get that thing surgically implanted so you won’t have to go around wearing one on your ear like some kind of alien!

Living in the digital age has made people more connected with each other than at any other time in history. But in the process, some have turned into digital zombies, walking around transfixed, mesmerized and captivated by the screens in their hands or on their desks.

People’s screens seem to hold more fascination that people themselves. And who can blame them, what’s in that I-Phone is far more interesting and endless than what’s in the average person.

And in the rare times when you’re actually talking with someone, you know your end of the conversation isn’t going well when they start stealing furtive glances at their screens while you’re talking. You want to yell, “Hey, look at me, I’m talking here!”

Thanks to Facebook, I know the minutest details of the daily lives of people I hardly know. I know more things about everybody than anyone would ever talk about in person. We post the goings-on of our daily lives as if it’s breaking news. Pat is cleaning the house; Brandon’s having do-nuts for breakfast; and Ken wants you to keep Zsa Zsa Gabor in your prayers as she tries to recover from hip surgery and possible stroke. Zsa Zsa’s still alive? Now that’s news.

Thanks to Facebook, the social site that keeps us constantly connected with everyone, I feel like the most boring human in cyber space. Going there just reminds me of how unexciting a life I really lead. Everyone’s life seems more interesting than mine on Facebook. Jay’s in Warsaw on business. Wendy’s coming back from France. Chris is hiking in the mountains of Idaho. Paul is home doing nothing except living vicariously through his Facebook connections.  

And wherever I go, I hear beeps, chimes, rings, buzzes, and musical notes that come from people’s devices like a ladies pocketbook or a guy’s pants pocket. What’s the proper etiquette here? Stop the major point you were making about world peace so he can answer his phone?

“Want to get that,” I ask politely.

“No, it’s just a text message. I’ll look at it later in the middle of our conversation.”

Another bell goes off.

“Want to get that,” I ask politely.

“No, it’s an e-mail that I’ll respond to when I lose interest in what you’re saying.”

Some people have assigned musical notes, clips from songs, noises, and sound effects to individual callers like members of their family. I was with a friend when his phone started barking like a dog.

“What’s that,” I asked laughing.

“I got to get this, it’s my wife calling.”

I guess there might be some benefits to living in this digital age after all.

Chrome Domes

Chrome Domes

By Paul Greeley

Whoever is responsible for making the turnaround that bald is beautiful should get the Public Relations of the Year Award. 

I’m sure it must have been a bald guy. I suspect this must be a right wing conspiracy because let’s face it, most right wingers are bald guys.

Talk about turning a negative into a positive! I mean for years, bald guys were disparaged and looked down upon. Less hairy translated into less virile, less sexy, more old.

But now everybody’s going bald--- ball players, actors, no matter the age. The thinking seems to be better to shave it all off before it’s all gone than hang on to the what’s left. I can’t ever see a bald James Bond though.

Hair, especially long hair, used to be revered. Remember the play, Hair? 

“Flowing, showing, long as I can grow it, my hair”! Back in the Age of Aquarius, when I was in college, hair meant something, it identified you politically, it was a sign of where you stood, what you stood for. If you had long hair, you were into sex, drugs, and rock and roll music played real loud. If you had long hair, you probably threw a Frisbee.

If you kept your hair short, you were probably into lifting weights, NASCAR, the Vietnam War, and voted for Nixon. 

There were the freaks who wore their hair long and then there were the straights who cut their hair short. The line was drawn as it were, by the length of your hair. The guys with short hair resented the guys with long hair, and made cracks like, “you look like a girl” or “get a hair-cut”.  I once feel asleep in the barber’s chair only to wake up and find the bald barber had taken liberties and given me a really short hair cut. That was the last time I ever used a barber to cut my hair.

I wanted to grow my hair long like the Beatles. I yearned to be able to toss my long hair back with a jerk of my head. But I had curly hair. Instead of it growing down and long, it grew up and out. My mother’s friends would always say, “Oh Bette, I wish my hair was curly like Paul’s.” I wore hats to bed and used chemicals to try and straighten my hair. The chemicals made my hair sizzle and fry when I applied it. Afterwards, my hair had a slightly burnt smell. But it was straighter!

I admit here publicly that I have an ‘area’ in the back of my head where the hair is especially thinning and in the right light, it appears to be, how do I say it, balding. 

There’s hair there but not enough to cover the skin sufficiently so that you don’t see what appears to be a bald spot. Thankfully, it’s in a location where I can’t see it when I look into a mirror. When I look in the mirror, I see a nice tuft of hair there in the front and on top and plenty on the sides.  And maybe some slight comb-over towards the back.

These days, hair or lack of it doesn’t say anything about you politically. You can’t tell if the bald guy next to you is the most left-wing, tree-hugging liberal there is or if he’s just folliclely-challenged. 

Or maybe he just wants to shave his head. Be natural. I’m bald and I’m proud! There’s even a web site for bald guys called Bald R Us. I’m not kidding; I did the research. Their motto is ‘say no to rugs, drugs and plugs & comb-overs’.  No Rogaine sold here. No pictures of Donald Trump. They have tributes to Bald Man of the Month and Bald Man of the Year. They honor bald men like the actors Ving Rhames and Vin Diesel and other bald guys whose names begins with V. 

Who’s going to tell big, bad, bald guys like Ving Rhames or Vin Diesel that their baldness isn’t beautiful? 

Not me, you can tell by my hair that I’m a pacifist when it comes to violence.

If leaves had value

If leaves had value

By Paul Greeley

Somewhere, we hope teams of experts are working on solutions to problems that will  benefit mankind-an end to cancer, a cure for the common cold, and why cars seem to fall apart the day after the warranty expires.

I’d like to add one more item to that list—find a way to make leaves valuable.

Think of how that would change the world!

More tress will get planted not so much for shade or beauty, but for the revenue source they’ve become.

Instead of blowing your leaves onto your neighbor’s yard when he’s not looking, you’ll be secretly sucking his over to your yard.

People will chase leaves blowing in the wind with the same fervor they might chase dollar bills down the street.

They’ll be more room in land fills for worthy trash like outdated cell phones, record players, election signs, film cameras, encyclopedias, cassette players, bell bottoms, and landline phones. 

People will find secret ways to make their trees produce more leaves like insider traders on Wall Street. 

Busloads of tourists would trek to New England to see piles of leaves with the same fascination as people now go to Ft Knox or the US Mint to see mounds of money.

Lighting your cigar with a big leaf will replace lighting cigars with hundred bills as the ultimate expression of wealth.

If you’re falling behind in your bills, you’ll tell the bill collector that it’s almost fall and you’re expecting a bumper crop of leaves this year.

Nobody will burn leaves any more. That aroma associated with fall will disappear into folklore—remember when people burned leaves?

People will hold signs that say, ‘will work for leaves’.

Banks will look to take advantage---deposit your leaves and get a new toaster.

People will give trees names like cash-cow, money-maker, or bark o’ bucks.

When people mow leaves with mulching mowers, they’ll think of it as changing leaves into smaller denominations. 

And if leaves had value, when your kids ask you for money and you say, ‘you think money grows on trees’, they’ll say, ‘well yeah, dad’. 

Deciphering advertising mumbo jumbo

Deciphering advertising mumbo jumbo

By Paul Greeley

I wish advertisements were more plainly written.

Instead, ads often resort to techno mumbo jumbo in the hopes of getting us to buy. Like the more technical information they can throw at us, the more confused we’ll become until we just give up and fork over the money. And sometimes the ad copy gets so complex, it’s hard to know what the product is.

Can you guess what this is selling: Split technology allows for stability and alignment while providing the best shock absorption. The latest Italian roadster? Or a new Mercedes sedan? Try men’s dress shoes.

Or this one: Developed to exceed all ISO and Ansi Z87-1 high impact test standards and exceed the 622 Ballistics test. Body armor, right, or some sort of bullet-proof vest? Try sunglasses. Good to know if someone goes to shoot you while you’re wearing these, you can yell, “Hey shoot me in the eyes, my sunglasses passed the 622 Ballistics test!”

Close your eyes and imagine what this is describing: Medium to full in body and strength with deep spicy undertones, rich complexity and balance from beginning to end. A fine California sauvignon perhaps? Or an exotic dish of some kind? Try a cigar. Yeah, that’s exactly what a woman would think when a guy fires up a big stogie.  Not gonna happen. More like, “Put that thing out, it stinks.” Or, ”You ain’t kissing me after smoking that!” And this cigar is supposedly so good, it advertises that it’s the result of a collaborative effort between a master blender, a master grower, a master of tobacco, and the cigar composer! A cigar composer? Really! What do you do, lead an orchestra using a cigar!

What do think this product does?  Complex of patented PHA bionics and NeoGlucosamine, Retinal, Peptides, alpha hydroxy acids, and high-potency antioxidants. Is it something you eat, smear on, inject, or the ingredients for a suppository? I’m not telling.

Some ads aimed at women vie to be politically correct. A deodorant promises prescription strength wetness protection. If a woman sweats that much, maybe a deodorant is the least of her problems.

Ads for watches really have to get creative since the time is not exactly a secret. We can all pretty much go through life knowing what time it is every minute of the day without needing a watch.  

One well-known watch company ad boasts its patented chronograph mechanism and bezel with tachometric scale allows race-car drivers to perfectly measure elapsed circuit time and calculate average speed.

Yeah, when was the last time you saw a Formula 1 driver use his watch to gauge his speed? When you’re going 200 miles per hour, the last thing you need to be doing is fiddling with your watch. At 200 miles per hour, I would imagine times moves pretty fast. And when was the last time you saw a race-car driver roaring around the track yell to another, “Hey man, what time you got?”

Another ad for the same watch company bragged that its diver's watch is capable of withstanding depths to 1000 feet.

Wow, it’s nice to know that at 1000 feet your watch will still be ticking, even if you won't be. But hey, at least as you're being crushed by the weight a 1000 feet of water can put on you, you’ll know what time it is.