I Was Not Advised That I Might Be Lunch

Bear Warning

By Jack Edwards

I recently escaped a harrowing near death experience. Luckily, I did not know about the danger at the time. I thought I was just going for a leisurely hike. No one told me I might end up a chew toy for a cougar (not the good kind) or a hungry bear.

Once every ten to fifteen years, someone slips a pill into my coffee that distorts my judgment (at least that’s what I think happens), and I suggest to my family that we go on a nature hike. This is how I found myself hiking to the top of Spencer’s Butte, located in the creatively named, Spencer’s Butte Park. As we were beginning our daring assent up the groomed trail, I looked over and spotted a poster a few yards away. Because I already questioned my stamina to get the top and back, I decided not to expend the precious energy to go over and read the poster.

After a successful trip, we happened to walk by the poster. It warned: “Be Advised,” with a picture of a bear and a cougar. Oddly, the picture of the bear showed the whole bear, while the picture of the cougar was a head shot. This led me to the obvious conclusion. The cougar had a better publicist.

Leave it to the “glass is always half full” park officials. The advisory began on a positive note: “We are fortunate to have these beautiful creatures living in our natural areas. Please respect these animals and their home.” Hello? Is there really a problem with park visitors failing to give these “beautiful creatures” a wide berth? A berth that could dock something like an aircraft carrier or two?

It’s a really good thing I didn’t run into one of these guys on my hike, because I had not read the Be Advised sign which helpfully listed five pieces of advice under the heading, “If you encounter a bear or a cougar.”

First, “Do not run, scream or turn your back.” See, right there, that would have been the end of me. My last earthly act would have been running and screaming in the opposite direction of the “beautiful creature.” (“Mommy, look! That man is giving a cougar a piggy back ride.”)

Second, “Make yourself look as large as possible.” Ironically, after years of trying to get a foothold on my diet and gaining modest success, this achievement could have caused my demise.

Third, “Put children between adults.” This suggestion is no doubt the result of some startled parent using little Johnny as a getaway distraction.

Fourth, “Speak firmly and back away slowly.” Speak firmly? What do you say to a terrifying beast that’s staring at you like you’re a fresh baked Calzone?

And fifth (and I swear to you I am not making this up), the final piece of advice is, “If attacked, fight back.” Uh…, thanks for that gem.

So, as I previously stated, I survived – this time. But from now on, I’m keeping a better eye on my coffee.

Why You Should Own a Dog

Dog FinalBy Jack Edwards

Dog owners say that one of the best reasons to own a dog is that it motivates you to go out and walk. I finally realized why my wife doesn’t want to own a dog. She doesn’t need one. She walks me.

As similar as I may appear to the average labradoodle, there are a few differences. First, I never tug on the leash. I pace myself. In fact, most evenings it’s all my wife can do to pry me off the couch. Second, I never eat food that’s fallen onto the floor. Unless, of course, I do so within the five-second grace period. And finally, I rarely leave a deposit in the backyard that requires any scooping.

But my wife is not alone. Whenever my wife is out walking me, I see other wives walking their husbands. They are everywhere. Wives dutifully marching their husbands up and down the neighborhood. I am aware that my opinion may come off as “traditionalist,” “sexist,” or some other “ist.” But trust me, when the only people you see out marching around aimlessly are: A. Women tugging their men along, and B. Women walking alone, I think I’ve made my point. The ratio of women versus men suggesting an evening stroll to their spouses, and I may be significantly underestimating here, is north of ten billion to one.

Truth be told, I think that most of us husbands agree that once we lift our sorry selves off the sofa, tie on our shoes and feel the fresh air in our faces, we each have to admit that deep down, if we’re honest with ourselves, we are secretly happy to be that many more steps closer to returning to our sofa.

Years ago, we owned a dog for about six nanoseconds. But I embraced those six nanoseconds. I squeezed them for all they were worth. They seemed more like seven, or maybe even eight nanoseconds. I even bought a book: Cesar’s Way: The Natural, Everyday Guide to Understanding and Correcting Common Dog Problems. A guy named Cesar Millan wrote it. You may have heard of him. He is known as “The Dog Whisperer.” His book explains how to address everyday discipline issues. Imagine my concern when I recently discovered Cesar’s book missing from the shelf. Yeah. Somebody’s reading up.

My point is this. My future may not hold owning a dog, but it apparently does hold hearing some whispering.

Smells Like Football

Corpse FlowerBy Jack Edwards

People love to test their limits. Some sky dive. Others run marathons. But the real thrill seekers, the truly adventurous, march willingly into the knee-buckling stench of a blooming corpse flower. This explains why hordes of dare devils are currently lined up in eager anticipation outside the Denver Botanic Gardens.

According to a recent article by New York Times journalist Julie Turkewitz, Denver is currently the Ground Zero of stink. The corpse flower smells like rotting flesh, but only when it’s in bloom. So the clock is ticking. According to Turkewitz, these plants take eight to 20 years to bloom, and when they do, they’re only open for 48 hours.

Sadly, I can’t go to Denver right now, but I am confident I could withstand the smelly blast. You see, I’m an Oregon Duck fan.

Football fans around the country produce their share of pregame vomit, but Oregon Ducks fans consistently find a way to raise the bar. This is why I enjoy watching games on television. It don’t mind the stench, I’m just concerned about slipping. “Slipped on vomit” is the number one cause of game day emergency room visits.

Before I continue, let me assure you every word of this story is true.

A few years ago, my wife arranged for us to enjoy a game from premium seats on Autzen Stadium’s 50 yard line. Naturally, I voiced my vomit concern, but my wife ignored me.

When we reached our row, two young men were sitting on the aisle. One looked up at us sheepishly and said, “Sorry.” His companion was hunched forward over a large circle of vomit. A pleasant looking couple was sitting directly next to them, and the woman was leaning in horror toward her companion.

Always the gentleman, I gestured for my wife to enter first. We stepped over the pile and took our seats on the other side of the couple. My wife, who has the olfactory senses of a champion bloodhound, shoved her scarf into her face and stared blankly toward the field. I spotted a concessionaire and ordered a dish of nachos.

I need to slow things down here like we’re studying Zapruder’s Kennedy assassination film, because this is when things turned surreal. As I’m leaning back munching my nachos, I hear a strange noise to my left. I look over and the vomit guy is sitting ramrod straight spewing a projectile stream of vomit like a fire hose directly onto the back the guy in front of him. I’ve seen some amazing things in my life, but this was truly incredible. It seemed like a gallon of liquid was running down the victim’s back.

Here’s my point. Through it all. Through all the chaos and mayhem that ensued, I polished off my nachos. Every last one. They went down smooth.

This is why I am so disappointed to be missing the Denver corpse flower. Because I am an Oregon Duck fan, and there is no stench I cannot conquer.

East Coast Geography for North Westerners

Sea Monkey Shrimp

By Jack Edwards

I just discovered shocking news. Rhode Island is not an island. It’s just another pedestrian piece of the United States. The contiguous United States. Yeah, the whole island thing is a scam.

Before you East Coast people get started, I would strongly recommend you zip it. If you think that we over here on the west coast aren’t well aware that 99.99% of you regularly mix up whether Oregon or Washington sits directly atop California, you are sadly misinformed. So mind your bees wax. This column is for the edification of my fellow North Westerners who have no idea whether Indiana or Illinois sits father to the east, or whether Vermont shares a border with New York. And, hold on to your hat for this, we don’t really care.

Yes, I am aware (after looking at an elementary school map yesterday) that Rhode Island does have a few islands. Let me point out that Washington has about a thousand islands carpeting a little Pacific inlet known as PUGET SOUND, but you don’t see Washington calling itself Washington Island. Even Hawaii, a state famous for being nothing but islands, didn’t name itself Hawaii Island.

This reminds me of when I was a kid and some cockroach of a company was marketing a miniature species of shrimp as Sea Monkeys. They came in a box with a plastic “tank” where the sea monkeys would live. The colorful box was plastered with illustrations of all these little sea monkeys with happy little human faces frolicking with one another. Except after you finally wore your tired parents down to the point that they actually bought you the box of sea monkeys, and you added water, you realized that you’d been duped. They weren’t the creatures displayed on the box. They didn’t have little human faces. They were shrimp. Insect-like shrimp at that. The whole thing was a sham. You were suddenly the reluctant owner of a bait shop.

What I’m saying is this. Rhode Island should gather what’s left of its dignity and change its name to Rhode. True, the name Rhode looks somewhat naked and insecure, and its director of tourism might collapse under the pressure of trying to convince people to spend their money in a place that sounds more like an industrial equipment manufacturer than a state, but honesty comes with a cost. On the flip side, in the event that Rhode Island chooses to retain its (misleading) name, I have another suggestion. It should change its state motto to, “Rhode Island, The Sea Monkey State.”

My Stupid Column

Micro Final

By Jack Edwards

This week’s Jocularious.com column takes on a very sensitive subject. A subject that many readers may lack the emotional fortitude to digest. No, the subject is not obesity. (I felt the need to point this out because I was concerned the word digest might mislead you in a gastrological direction.) This week’s topic is far more serious than obesity. This week’s column takes on a new epidemic that threatens our nation’s security: Stupid people.

Now, before you go getting all Oprah on me, consider this. Formal psychological IQ classifications before 1970 included, in increasing levels of intelligence: idiots, imbeciles and morons (to clarify, prior to 1970, if you called an idiot a moron, you were paying him a compliment). Nowhere on this list was the classification of “stupid.” Anyone can be stupid. You can be a genius and be stupid. Case in point, 43% of all Ivy League professors purchased the “Protection Plan” the last time they bought a television at Best Buy.

To protect you, the reader, from the danger of being traumatized, I have devised a simple test to determine whether you should read this week’s column.

A few months ago, I mentioned that the nutritional wave of the future might be roadkill. This may not have been exactly what I said, but please don’t expect me to keep track of all the intellectual gems I shower on you each week. Anyway, in my roadkill column, I mentioned a bumper sticker I plan to market. (My patent is still pending.) It reads: “I brake for small animals,” and then immediately beneath that line in smaller print it reads, “taller than my bumper.” Here’s the test. Ask yourself this question: If you came across this bumper sticker and considered buying it (not buy – just considered buying it), then you may safely proceed.

[Official beginning of this week’s column – PROCEED WITH CAUTION!]

We have all found ourselves sitting in a classroom or in meeting of some sort when the speaker ends his presentation by asking if anyone has a question. This is immediately followed up with, “Remember, there is no such thing as a stupid question.” And you immediately think, ‘Of course there is. And I think we’re about to hear a few.” This is obviously intended to encourage questions from the audience. Side note: You’d think the speaker would want to discourage questions. Wouldn’t a lack of questions mean that he had given a full and complete presentation? Covered all the bases so to speak? It should be a goal – an aspiration even – to give a presentation where no one in the audience had a single stupid question. But I digress.

My wife will tell you that I have dubbed this portion of any meeting: “Stupid Question Time.” She will say this in a mildly irritated voice. And she might also tell you that if you are unfortunate enough to be sitting next to me, I will feel the need to lean over and whisper, “Stupid Question Time.”

You can only imagine how I then feel when I inevitably ask a question during stupid question time. In my defense, my question is often prompted by a previous stupid question.

This is why I am leading a revolution to ban all meetings. Meetings became obsolete the day they invented the mimeograph machine. Remember mimeographs? Remember strapping the original to the drum and then hand cranking copies while getting high off that chemical it used? (Note to self – look up the name of that chemical and buy a bottle.) Now we have email. We even have group emails allowing people to ask stupid questions to their hearts galore. It’s a regular “reply all” nirvana.

This concludes my presentation for the week. If any of you have a question, I’d be happy to answer it. Just click on the “comment” button and send it to me. Remember, there’s no such thing….

The Guy’s Guide to the Perfect Wedding

Wedding

By Jack Edwards

The wedding season is rapidly approaching, and as I’m sure you ladies have noticed, all us guys are DEFCON 5 excited. This is, of course, because it signals the beginning of trout season. Recent Harvard studies show that 97% of guys would rather spend a Saturday trout fishing than going within 100 miles of a wedding – including their own. (The last three percent want to play the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops.”)

Let’s put it this way. The circulation of Wedding Style magazine is roughly ONE BILLION. While this number may be off by a copy or two, I am confident of this: No guy has ever voluntarily opened a cover of Wedding Style magazine. A copy of Wedding Style magazine could be sitting in the barbershop surrounded by nothing but Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets. Guys will leave the shop with a fresh haircut and a little wiser in the area of Jehovah’s Witness theology.

Ladies, here are a few tips-

1. A new wedding ritual is in order. It’s called a “Pre-Wedding.” If you’ve ever attended a college football game, it’s similar to a tailgater. A Pre-Wedding can be held in the church parking lot, or in the reception hall. The actual location will be, by new tradition, “bride’s choice” (remember, it is her special day).

2. A full forty-three percent of guys have gotten engaged, married, and finished their honeymoons without knowing there was such a thing as “wedding colors.” The other fifty-seven percent consider those guys lucky. This is because they had the subject of wedding colors beat into them like a Russian Babushka beats a rug. New tradition: The bride keeps the groom “in suspense” of her wedding colors until they are revealed at the Pre-Wedding.

3. Halfway through the wedding, the minister will blow a whistle, and everyone will march back out to the Pre-Wedding for a few stale pizza bites and cold drinks. At the thirty minute mark, the minister will blow his whistle to signal a five minute warning to the start of the second half. The second half will always begin with a song. This allows stragglers to get back to their seats before anything important happens, like the “Does anybody object?” part. Guys love this part because we get to glance around the room and pray that just this once someone will stand up and make a huge scene – really blow it out – maybe march up and physically intervene. I’ve been to my share of tailgaters, so trust me on this, a good Pre-Wedding will dramatically increase the odds of this happening.

4. Speaking of the post-halftime song, let’s pick up the tempo a beat or two. Look folks, it’s not a funeral…. (Hummm. Editor: Please cut #4 from the column. This line of humor appears to be heading toward a punchline that might endanger my marital bliss.)

5. Following the happy “You may kiss the bride” conclusion, it’s back out to the Pre-Wedding area, only, Big Surprise. New tradition: The groom then officially lifts the lid on the smoker and reveals his choice of BBQ which has been slow cooking for a minimum of 36 hours.

It is with this advice in mind that I now announce my new business partnership with Wedding Style magazine.

Drum-roll please!

It’s called Pre-Wedding Style magazine. The first copies hit the shelves next week, and the inaugural issue will include the following articles:

1. “Lobster Bibs: The Key to Avoiding Pizza Stains on Your Tuxedo.”

2. “Ambiance: Selecting the Right Portable Lawn Furniture for your Parking Lot Pre-Wedding.”

3. “Wedding Smokers: Size vs. Portability.”

4. “How to a Defuse a Police Response to Your Pre-Wedding.”

I will, of course, write a column for each issue. The name of it will be: “Call of Duty: Pre-Wedding Ops.”

No Alibi

Alibi

By Jack Edwards

If I ever rob a bank, I’m not sure how I’ll go about it, but I am sure of one thing. After my getaway, I will not be stopping by the Alibi Tavern for a cold one.

Recently, I was away on a business trip. I drove by a joint called the Alibi Tavern. This caught my attention because there is also an “Alibi Tavern” in my home town. I am quite confident this is not a franchise. Unless the franchise model is to build a chain of questionable looking establishments bearing no resemblance to one another, other than the name, the Alibi Tavern. (Point of unnecessary clarification: I am not sure if the word “the” is part of the name. My Google search of Alibi Taverns leads me to believe the “the” is optional. And FYI, there is an epidemic of Alibi Taverns littering the western hemisphere.)

As a consumer, I see no benefit in stepping through the door of a business called the Alibi Tavern.  Consider this scenario-

Prosecutor: “Mr. Edwards, at 3:45 p.m. on the day the First Security Bank of Usurious ATM Fees was robbed, where were you?”

Me (Shaking in the witness chair, and very possibly peeing myself a little, answer with a quivering voice): “At the Alibi Tavern.”

You walk into the Alibi Tavern, and you’re taking your chances:

Example 1. Your nitwit uncle drowns under mysterious circumstances, and your wife is the beneficiary of his $1,000,000 life insurance policy. While attempting to fain sympathy for your wife while controlling your inner jubilation, police detectives show up to question you. The police ask where you were the afternoon of the tragic accident. You cringe and reply, “At the Alibi Tavern.”

Example 2. Your failing business burns to the ground netting you insurance proceeds which allow you to finally retire comfortably in Boca Raton. After investigators become suspicious of the fire’s origin, they ask you where you were the night of the fire. You hesitate and answer, “At the Alibi Tavern.”

Example 3. Your wife notices something that appears to be a strange lipstick stain on your shirt collar and asks you where you spent the evening. You pause in deciding whether to tell her the truth, “At the Alibi Tavern.”

Yes, I am well aware that this name would put your business up near the front of the yellow pages. But here’s some free business advice: No one uses the yellow pages anymore. And when I say “no one,” what I mean is “no one.” There is a reason that the typical yellow page sale’s agent is driving a 1997 Yugo. Yellow page companies are now in the business of producing pre-landfill-filler. (It’s such a waste of resources that I had to invent a new term just to describe it.)

But I digress.

Naming a bar the Alibi Tavern is entrepreneurial suicide. Customers can’t frequent it if they’re guilty, and they can’t go there if they’re innocent.

I can only envision one scenario where I would visit a place called the Alibi Tavern:

I had just committed the perfect crime. My neighbor’s cat, for the one millionth time, had marched across the hood of my freshly washed car leaving its filthy little paw prints. After dark, I slip quietly over to the cat owner’s driveway and use my homemade sponge dinosaur footprints dipped in pink tapioca pudding to decorate the hood of his Cadillac Escalade. No witnesses. No security footage. No physical evidence tying me to the scene of the crime. (The sponges have gone the way of the yellow page books.) When my neighbor storms over to confront me about the karma on his hood, and demands to know where I was the night before, I’ll smile and answer, “At the Alibi Tavern.”

Rent a Chicken

By Jack Edwards

I’ve heard of rented mules. In fact, rented mules are quite famous. We’ve all heard the old adage, “Beat it like a rented mule.” I have never, however, heard of a rented chicken…until now.

Kathy Matheson, with the Associated Press (an organization heralded for its cutting-edge investigative reporting in the field of poultry science), wrote an article titled, “Entrepreneurs hatch hen-rental idea for fans of fresh eggs.” This urban chicken rental concept is taking off faster than a Saturn 5 rocket.

Pennsylvania-based Rent-the-Chicken has branched out into several states. According to Matheson’s article, everyone (so far, no exceptions have been identified) wants to rent a chicken.

Urban farming is booming. In my city, the council recently passed an ordinance permitting people to keep a combination of up to six chickens, six rabbits, three miniature goats, one miniature pig and up to three bee hives. (No. I don’t know how the miniature pigs got the short end of the stick.) If Rent-the-Chicken moves to town, I have no doubt our city council will immediately schedule 28 meetings to begin drafting regulations to provide proper oversight of the new chicken rental program. There will be a tremendous amount of work to do. Rental licensing fees must be assessed. Urban chicken inspectors must be hired. A chicken registry must be created (complete with the name and photograph of each chicken).

The article cites a source saying that chickens can live seven to 10 years. One theory for the success of the business is that people have difficulty making that type of commitment. This leads me to ask, “Haven’t these people heard of chicken soup?”

The article includes the following: “Prices depend on the company, location and lease duration but start around $150 month. Most basic packages include two hens, a coop, feed and phone availability to answer questions.”

Three things:

1. I just checked Craigslist, and you can buy a basic chicken coop for $150. This would allow your chicken to be a homeowner. And I think that both Republicans and Democrats can get behind that. In fact, they might be willing to provide these chickens with low interest loans.

2. How much could these chickens possibly eat? Haven’t these people heard of term, “That’s chicken feed?”

3. I’m not sure of what type of emergency response questions these people need to ask about their chickens, but I’m sure that the answers provided in response to questions posed to Google beginning with, “My chicken keeps…” will suffice. If it doesn’t, please refer to my earlier comment, and type in the question, “What is the best recipe for chicken soup?”

What is not included in the rental package is a calculator. This is because Ms. Matheson’s article (which I almost read in its entirely), says, “Two chickens collectively produce about a dozen eggs each week.” I do not profess to have a Nobel Prize in the field of mathematics, but there are roughly four weeks in a month. So my Rent-the-Two-Chickens is costing me $37.50 per week, or $37.50 per dozen of eggs. I am aware that the people who are renting these chickens are doing so because they are concerned about the source of their food, but paying three dollars per egg is best described by one word. And that word is INSANE. For that price, I can hire an armored car to deliver a dozen eggs from Old MacDonald’s Certifiable Organic Free-range Chicken Paradise. And as bonus, I don’t have shovel organic chicken poop.

My analysis:
There is only one phrase that describes the business model of Rent-the-Chicken. And it’s this: Rent-the-Chicken is beating their customers like a rental mule.

A Billion Here, A Billion There

By Jack Edwards

I hate it when I misplace my keys, so imagine how the Pentagon must have felt when it misplaced $1.3 billion. As in, “Hey guys, where in the heck did we put that $1.3 billion?” You know how you put 20 bucks in your wallet, and then a few days later you look in it and all that’s staring back at you is a lonely dollar bill, and then you start trying to remember where you spent it? That’s what the Pentagon did – except for $1.3 billion.

My reaction was less shock and more “there they go again,” when I read the headline, “Report: Pentagon can’t account for $1.3 billion.” The article was written by James Rosen for the McClatchy Washington Bureau. Mr. Rosen’s article included the following: “A yearlong investigation by John Sopko, the U.S. special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, found that the Pentagon couldn’t — or wouldn’t — provide basic information about what happened to 6 in 10 dollars of $2.26 billion it had spent over the course of a decade on the Commander’s Emergency Response Program.”

There are roughly 60 million families in the United States who pay federal income tax. Each family coughed up about $22 of the $1.3 billion that the Pentagon turned around and lost at the craps table in Kandahar. I think I can say with confidence that each of these families would much rather have enjoyed that popular 2 for $20 deal at Applebee’s. (Who can resist that boneless chicken wing appetizer?)

Sadly, in a country where tycoons light cigars with $100 bills to celebrate another round of federal subsidy checks for their backbreaking work of NOT growing soybeans, it is unlikely that such a modest accounting error is going to cause any crazed disbelief within the upper echelon of Washington’s political circles.  They are focused on far more important issues, like how to expand the tycoon subsidy program to include paying them to Not grow Applebee’s boneless chicken wings.

But back to the Pentagon’s $1.3 billion, or more accurately, what used to be the Pentagon’s $1.3 billion. Unfortunately, I must speak for all of us who are currently Not being paid to Not work (yes, this is a very awkward phrase. That’s because it includes what we call a “double negative,” another example is “sugar-free, fat-free ice cream”). Back to the Pentagon, I have a suggestion. It’s a popular computer program called QuickBooks. It keeps track of all your income and expenditures. Customers love it. It only costs about $139. But because the Pentagon’s budget is several times larger than most families of four, it might want to consider paying a little extra for the QuickBooks Pro version. And good news for the Pentagon, QuickBooks Pro is on sale right now for only $199.95 (but they need to buy it right away – I don’t know how long this sale is going to last).

If you’ve never used QuickBooks, it’s really simple. It comes with preset categories of expenditures, and all you do is enter things as you go. The best part for the Pentagon, is that you can add specialized categories. So, for example, you can add a category for cash payments to Afghan warlords to cut off the heads of the bad guys instead of our guys (both of whom appear to be pretty interchangeable to your average warlord). This category might be titled, “Warlord Cash Bribes.” As an aside, I don’t have many travel rules that I always follow, but I do have one: Any time I stumble into a country where the term “Warlord” is still part of the common lexicon, I IMMEDIATELY get the H-E-double-toothpicks out of there pronto.

But I digress… Oh yeah, $1.3 billion. Look, it’s the Pentagon. We’re probably making too big a deal out of this. I think that we can all agree that they’ll find it soon.

My Reoccurring Lawnmare

By Jack Edwards

It’s Baaack!

And it’s bigger and uglier than any monster you’ll ever find lurking in a “B” grade horror flick. The mere thought of confronting this beast sends chills down your spine. Its name is “Lawn.” And this soulless creature raises its hideous head each spring to scream my name. It is my reoccurring lawnmare.

When I was in college, my roommates and I simply ignored its looming presence. Our front yard was a blend of Tarzan jungle and Iowa wheat field. Yes, the neighbors complained. And, as you can imagine, as responsible college students, we were deeply sensitive concerning neighborhood relations. We would even go so far as to occasionally answer the front door and tell an enraged neighbor that we would “get right on it.” Then there were the official looking letters from the city. These letters were very stern and included captions like “Important Notice” and “Final Warning.” We’d eventually get around to knocking our crop down once or twice a year to avoid paying the much-ballyhooed municipal fine. We didn’t do what you might consider much edging. Or much mulching. We were wholly unqualified to mulch.

I now live in a respectable neighborhood with respectable people. Many of these people use lawncare services, which as you can image, cost actual money. So, obviously, that is not an option.

This spring, a thought dawned on me. As I was pulling the cord on my lawnmower for the bazillionth time trying to start it, I thought: “The only person who ever goes into my backyard is me. And I only go back there to mow the yard.” Adding to this madness is a little something called, “dragging the giant trampoline that no one uses and never did.” You see, part of the joy of your wife buying a trampoline that you begged her not to buy is dragging it around so you can mow what is left of the grass dying beneath it. This is especially fun in the early wet spring when you get the added benefit of tearing up your yard in the process.

So, this year, I am considering my options:

1. AstroTurf. Solves the watering problem. Solves the weeding problem. And solves the, “What should I do with my life savings?” problem.

2. Moss. I’ve battled moss forever. (Refer to the picture above showing my actual moss infested lawn.) Year after year, I have spread, sprayed, and sprinkled every form of moss killer up to and including Agent Orange in quest of a moss free lawn. Then it dawned on me. Why not a moss lawn? Let it go. Encourage it. Kind of like Kung Foo fighting where you use your enemy’s own force against him. David Carradine would love this idea.

3. I could visit a tattoo studio (didn’t they used to call them tattoo parlors?) and ask one of the artists/felons to ink a picture of a mule’s behind on my back. Thus allowing me to continue to mow my lawn each week sans shirt. Truly owning fate.

I remember when I was a teenager amazed at how old people (really old, like 35 or 40) cared about their lawns.  Occasionally, one would have the audacity to wake me from deep REM sleep by starting his mower at the crack of dawn – sometimes as early as 10 a.m. And I’d think to myself, Wow, what a sad existence. I was yet unaware that just outside my bedroom window a war was raging. I was yet unaware that a soulless, hideous beast awaited destruction, and that one day I would carry my sword and shield into battle. Of course, little did I know that my sword would be a gas-powered weed-eater, and my shield would be insulated ear protection. Same thing. Because its name is “Lawn,” and it calls me into battle.