(Bleep) My Brain Says

Stuck

stacy_dean — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 01:57:40 +0000

Today it is optional, but back when I was in high school (after the discovery of fire, but right around the time of the invention of the wheel), we were required to take Driver’s Ed. That it was mandatory didn’t bother me as much as the fact that I never got to drive.

I grew up on a farm, as did the majority of the 19 guys in my class of 36. Which meant that we had been driving since we were old enough to see over the steering wheel of a pickup truck, and driving grain-filled dump trucks to town during harvest since we were big enough for our foot to reach the accelerator (and if we were lucky, also the clutch and the brake). I was doing so when I was 13; yes, I know it was illegal, but no deputy sheriff had the guts to face an irate farmer whose harvest was held up because there was no truck to fill while junior was ticketed and hauled off to the hoosegow.

The Driver’s Ed instructor (Cliff, my football coach) knew this very well, and he knew there wasn’t much I was going to learn. Still, Cliff made me go out on driving excursions while Brenda or Teresa from my class white-knuckled her way along the country roads. On the days where those roads were a little icy and slick, Cliff would occasionally stomp on the instructor-side brake and yank the wheel to the right, nose diving our Pontiac sedan into the snowy ditch. Then after giving a little verbal instruction on the art, he would tell her to rock the car back and forth and get it back on the road.

Obviously, Cliff only had me along for his get-out-and-push emergency backup plan, but he never went to that well. He knew that at some future time when there was no Cliff and no Stacy, Brenda’s well-being depended on her ability to get her own self unstuck.

At the time, I wasn’t thinking that Cliff was teaching me a life lesson, and most likely, he probably wasn’t either. He just knew that Brenda should know how to get a car out of the ditch, and that I was an available strong back that would do whatever he said so as to not risk my starting position next football season.

But looking back on all the various times in my life where, due to circumstances in or out of my control, I had sunk into a malaise and then gotten myself out of it, Cliff’s lesson was dead-on: At those times when un-sticking is called for — you may very well be the only un-stucker.

Which brings me to now. For a variety of reasons, my Pontiac was in the ditch. I don’t think Cliff yanked the wheel, but maybe Dad did. Regardless, it finally occurred to me that nobody was getting out of the back seat and giving me a push. I had to just get busy and rock this sucker out myself. So here I am again.

Unstuck.

Repaid For His Deed

stacy_dean — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 20:22:48 +0000

At about 1:00am Monday, February 11 my Dad left this world while my sister and I sat by his side. If you have followed any of this blog, you know I’ve posted a couple of stories about the past 21 months as Dad struggled through orthopedic surgeries and eventually was resigned to nursing home care. For that whole time, I did everything for him; I fought all his battles. He wanted only a graveside service at best, and I was determined to conduct that for him. Following is the text of that service. I expect to write much more going forward; there’s room in my brain now.

*************************************

Welcome family and friends — friends of Dad, friends of the family, friends of mine – who are here to join us in saying goodbye to our Dad, Dean W. On behalf of my sister Shari W., her husband Claron and their daughter Jordan; my sister Conni R. and her husband Kurt; and my wife Cindy, and my son Steve and his wife Jenn, let me express our gratitude to you all for being here today. Also on behalf of the family, I will be doing this little service today; I told the girls it was something I really wanted to do for Dad.

Dad has three other grandchildren who aren’t with us today. My daughter Jeanie is in Knoxville, TN tending to a husband just getting past a serious food poisoning, and two little boys, 5 and 2, who have been playing tag-team ear infection for the better part of this winter. And Conni and Kurt’s two daughters, Erin and Samantha, are deeply into their PhD and law school programs at Northwestern and Columbia, where travel is tough and missed days are make-or-break issues. I know all three want to be here, and are in spirit.

My Aunt Dolores is here with all of her children–our cousins–and their families. Her husband George, our uncle and Dad’s brother, farmed together with Dad for thirty years. That’s not an easy thing to do, growing up with a brother and then winding up spending another thirty years trying not to get under each other’s skin (and not very successfully at times!) They loved each other, no doubt, but I can imagine it now: Dad is griping at Uncle George about how the roadsides in Heaven still aren’t mowed, and Uncle George is griping at Dad about how he had to walk all the beanfields in Heaven waiting for Dad to show up.

The third brother, Tom was the youngest of the three. He was smart enough to avoid working with Uncle George and Dad, but since all three brothers are together again, I have no doubt he’s getting his share of aggravation.

I’m going to talk about some things now that may seem a bit odd and out of place. But there’s a method in my madness, I promise, and if you’ll bear with me I hope it will all come together to an important point about Dad that we all should know. It’s something that has just come to me, almost by revelation, and I hope it will be meaningful for all of you as well.

In the last week or so, I have gotten a lot of phone calls and messages telling me what a great guy Dad was. I’m not saying I dispute it, but I did wonder just what it was about him that made all these people think and say that. All of us offer our condolences to the family of someone who passes, but all these folks made a point of sincerely adding that comment.

Dad possessed a rare quality in that everyone who knew him, liked him. Even more, they all considered him their friend, no matter how long they knew him and no matter how often they saw him. And often, that included total strangers.

I’m not revealing any secrets that Dad spent more than his fair share of time in local taverns. That was true when we were kids, and stories about that don’t need repeating. And yet, when I reached college age, I found myself with him on a good number of occasions. And this is what I saw: People of every walk of life, old and young, rich and poor, stable and down on their luck, gravitated to him. Sometimes, even people he’d never met before. They told him stories of family, stories of life, stories of hard times. And Dad gave each of them something they seemed to know he would give them: his attention.

My whole life, I have been a magnet for people who need someone in their life, even if just for that moment. Complete strangers with a burning need to tell something to someone seem compelled to designate me “someone”.

I’ve had total strangers confiding their biggest secrets and innermost thoughts to me five minutes into a conversation in an airport terminal while we waited for our flight to board. You would think that once the conversation turned personal I would politely smile and turn away. But no; it only seems normal to me.

So thinking back these past few days, it occurred to me — that is a legacy from my father. It has even been passed along to my son. I don’t know if it is spiritual, or genetic, or maybe….just something that I observed in my Dad’s behavior, internalized it, and never acknowledged until now.

Dad willingly gave people what they needed most: someone who cared.

Proverbs 19, verse 17 says, “Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his deed.”

Poor is more than a financial measure. Poor in spirit is often much more profound. But as for money:

I can recall many times when Dad gave paying work that didn’t exist to people with no other recourse, who came to him because they just knew he would care about them. He didn’t let them down. Dad loaned money to a lot of people. He bailed people out of jail; often young men who called him rather than family. Many never paid back for years; some never paid him back at all. Dad was OK with that.

You know, some of those past times as a kid I might have felt left out, even neglected, but I wasn’t. We weren’t. Mom was there. And seeing as a college kid how people’s lives were simply affected and benefited by simple unselfish actions, who knows how many more there were in the times before I observed.

Sometimes, there is more to the picture than what we see. There is more to God’s purpose than just our own intentions.

“Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and He will repay him for his deed.”

Almost two weeks ago to this very moment, I was sitting at Dad’s bedside. I texted Cindy that I had hoped to talk to him but he was still sleeping, just as he had been for much of the prior 48 hours. She replied, “His soul will still hear you.” So with that, hand on his arm, I told him I loved him. And, I promised him that Mom still loved him too, and that he shouldn’t be afraid to go see her.

I know two things in my heart today, as sure as I stand here. First, that Dad had a journey to complete, and now that he has, Mom has welcomed him with open arms.

And second, the Lord has repaid him for his deed.

The Blessing

stacy_dean — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 01:43:57 +0000

It has been a long time between posts. Life has a way of sidetracking you. Job. Family. And the occasional wedding.

I can’t think of a better way to get back into the groove than to post the Blessing that I was privileged to offer during my Son’s wedding ceremony this past weekend. No real funny stuff here; just as big an honor as I’ve ever had in my life.

**************************************************

Hello everyone. My name is Stacy W_________…otherwise known as “Father of the Groom”!

Steve and Jenn gave me the chance to offer some words of wisdom and extend a blessing at this point in the ceremony. It’s not really a homily, but being Roman Catholic, it’s probably the closest chance this Catholic boy will ever get!

I’m counting on all of you not to tell my priest.

Anyway, whatever else we call it, I’ll call it my honor and privilege.

******

I’m an accountant by profession, but I write a humor/personal interest blog as a diversion. I don’t pray for my blog (though maybe I ought to!) — usually the ideas just “come to me”. But this occasion is a lot more important than my blog, so after a prayer or two it became pretty clear to me that I should talk about CHANGE.

All of us here spent most of our developing lives waiting on…hoping for…counting on…CHANGE.

We waited for the day we’d be big enough to reach the monkey bars.

We wanted the day to come when we’d be old enough to get to stay up later and watch TV shows after 8pm like our big brothers/sisters.

We were excited about the day when we could get out of the grade school and go to the Jr. High.

When we became aware of our bodies, we couldn’t wait for the day when we’d finally start growing…..well, you get the idea!

Driver’s license. Going to college. Getting our first job.

Waiting on CHANGE.

For those here who are parents, you know same goes with our kids. We can’t wait for them to walk. To get to two so they’ll be able to start communicating with us. Then when that communication is “NO!” or crying tantrums, we can’t wait for them to grow out of the Terrible Twos! Oh my Lord God, will they ever grow out of them? Right?

Then they become teenagers and we can’t wait for them to mature past that so we can stop being the stupidest people on the planet.

Then we can’t wait to see the kind of young adults they’ll become.

All of it – ours, or our kids – involves developing, maturing, growing.

CHANGING.

So why is it that after people get married, they so often consider it sign of impending failure if one or both of them change?

“You’re just not the same person I married!”

Well I should hope NOT!

A lot of you are Steve and Jenn’s age, but for those of you who have a few more years under your belt, do you remember the person you were at 25-26 years old? Do you really wish you were that same person now?

Most of you…and for sure, ME…no, not really.

Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I believe God does have a plan for each of us. And I truly believe, as sure as we are all sitting here, that for most of us, we are not yet completely the person God needs us to be.

In other words, without change, we can’t possibly fulfill God’s plan for us.

So, Steve and Jenn, my words of wisdom to you…and my blessing…is to not fear change in yourselves and each other. Expect it. Embrace it. It’s part of the plan.

And may you both continue to change, individually and together, loving the people you’re becoming, so you can receive the blessings and become everything God intends you to be.

Thank you again, kids, for allowing me to share in your joy today.

Five Reasons I Know Hell Exists

stacy_dean — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 22:05:29 +0000

Even for those who believe in God, there is no consensus on the existence of Hell. Fundamentalists see it as an absolute destination of eternal punishment for a life of sin, run by Satan and administered by a host of evil spirits. Sort of like your job, only with flamethrowers. Step too far out of line, and you should probably start checking Amazon for special deals on asbestos underwear.

More liberal denominations see Hell as more of a concept…a state of remorse. So for them, Hell is where you eventually feel really, really bad about all the titillating stuff you’re enjoying that you’re never going to be punished for doing. I suppose this is possible at times when….well, quick, check out your window. See any pigs flying by?

There’s a third school of thought that I subscribe to, namely: Hell exists, but rather than becoming a human barbeque, you’re subjected to all kinds of miserable conditions that never resolve and go on eternally.

I also believe Hell is so oversaturated — kind of like real estate agents and lawyers in my town — that they couldn’t hold it all and a good amount of nasty oozed out into this world. But then rather than try and stuff it back in, the Red Guy realized he could use it as kind of a test market to see which things were the most miserable to us.

Here’s five test-market winners that I think prove my theory.

Number 5: Shrink Wrap

If I was the Prince of Darkness, I’d want to devise something that could punish the most humans possible. Something seemingly innocent that they would encounter every day, unsuspectingly subjecting themselves to the most insidious torture device ever experienced by Man.

When I was a kid, everything came in cardboard. Buy it, bring it home, open the cardboard and voila! Today, even potatoes come in shrink wrap.

And just what is this stuff made of, if not something spawned in the underworld? It looks so thin, but forget about a fingernail; I’ve seen shrink wrap you needed a hacksaw to penetrate. You’d think there would be a seam where the stuff was folded over and you could slip a knife under, but I’ve never been able to find one. You expect me to believe that’s not supernatural?

The Army and the FBI should just give up on kevlar and build vests out of shrink wrap.

I think eternal damnation might include sitting in a room with a dull pair of round-nosed scissors, receiving gift after gift of everything you ever wanted…packaged in shrink wrap.

Number 4: The Dan Ryan Expressway

The Dan Ryan is 11.47 miles of expressway that starts on the south side of Chicago where Interstate 57 from the southwest and the Bishop Ford expressway from the southeast merge…and continues to the Circle Interchange on the west edge of the Chicago Loop. More simply, it starts about 95th street and continues to the very gates of Hell.

Almost any day, and at any time of day you can be whizzing northbound along the Ryan with all traffic flowing perfectly, grooving to tunes and all is right with the world. Then suddenly two miles from the Circle, with no warning, you find yourself sitting in the World’s Largest Parking Lot.

The real torture comes when finally forty-five minutes later, after travelling the next mile and three quarters at approximately the speed of an arthritic snail, traffic simply starts back at normal speed. No accident, no lane closure, no freakin’ clue why. Ever.

Hell will feature a daily drive on a seemingly wide open Ryan, where you’ll be told that the Exit Out Of Hell is at the other end…but it closes in forty minutes.

Number 3: Idiots

The man who waits until you are 100 feet from him and then pulls out onto the street in front of you. The neighbor who lights his fire pit on a breezy Spring evening when the smoke heads straight for your open windows. The woman who leaves her shopping cart on one side of the grocery aisle and then stands on the other side while deciding what she wants from the shelves. The people in the crowded movie you attend with your date, who sit with one empty seat between themselves and the next people over, so there’s only one seat left on the aisle. The guy with the full shopping cart who cuts in front of you at the self-checkout lane. Every person ever interviewed by the local news at the scene of an incident that occurred in the middle of the day.

C’mon. You think GOD did that?

Number 2: People over 30 on Facebook

Once upon a time, Facebook was created by college guys for college-aged people. If you can even find a college-aged person on Facebook these days, it’d be a miracle.

Why? Because people over 30 have turned it into a never-ending parade of Your eCards, cheesy motivational posters and “Do You Remember These?” photos.

Yes, I am well over 30, and I am on Facebook. But in my defense, I only originally got on Facebook because my then college-aged son declared, “I will die if I ever see you on Facebook.” So of course, I immediately got an account, added a number of his friends as FB friends and waited for the inevitable “friend suggestion” to appear on his screen.

If I ever wind up in Hell, I expect Satan to make us all add him as a FB friend. Then he’ll post to his timeline, “If for just one hour you’ll change your status to…[whatever]…I’ll know who my true friends are and I’ll let them out of Hell.”

I’ll never get out.

And the Number 1 reason I know Hell exists and has leaked out into this dimension: Rachel from Cardholder Services

If you are one of the 17 people on Planet Earth who have not gotten one of these estimated 2.6 billion calls, this is how it goes:

“Hello. This is Rachel from cardholder services. There are no problems currently with your credit card account but it’s important that you act fast in order to reduce your interest rates. Please consider this your final notice. Press 1 to talk to a representative about lowering your interest rates or press 2 to receive no further calls.”

If you press 2, you will in fact receive no further calls. That day.

If you press 1, in earnest, a nice person on the other end will proceed to extract information that will not, in fact, reduce your credit card interest rate, but will set you up for electronic financial intercourse. With no cigarette after, thank you.

If you press 1 with the intent of telling the nice person on the other end to take you off their call list, chances are 9 in 10 that person will again make a suggestion to you which involves intercourse.

The Federal Trade Commission thought they had eradicated Rachel in 2010, but like a cockroach, Rachel couldn’t be killed. Homeland security blocks terrorists every day. The Navy Seals parachuted in and killed Osama. Why can’t we sic the Seals on Rachel?

Or might it be that Rachel can’t be killed because Rachel is already dead? Or more accurately……….UNdead. Hmm?

*****************

I don’t know about you, but this stuff scares me straight. If I stray out of line too bad, I just know that I’ll wind up in Hell, trapped on a bus full of idiots driven by my Facebook friend Rachel on a Dan Ryan Expressway made of shrink wrap.

Bondage Haiku

stacy_dean — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 22:43:34 +0000

My wife said don’t you *
try that stuff or I’ll choke you *
fifty shades of gray

Pigs Don’t Know Pigs Talk Funny

stacy_dean — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 04:38:59 +0000

or, Stacy Gets Lost In Translation

No matter where you live in the United States, the people around you speak English with a dialect unique to your region. Nobody ever considers their regional speech patterns a dialect; to them it’s just normal speech. It’s the same way that pigs don’t know pigs stink.

But different pigs have different stinks. And when you have Yorkshires from one region trying to talk with Durocs from another, it’s not squeal vs. squeal so much as chickens trying to talk to goats.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Northeast/Southern or Northwoods/Desert thing. I’ve been a life-long Midwesterner (more specifically, east central Illinois) and the same applies here. But unlike many regions where the linguistics are fairly consistent throughout the state, Illinois has three distinct accents.

First, there’s Chicago, including many of its nearer suburbs. Oops, sorry. I meant Chicaaago. Home of da Bearsss. If you’ve ever watched a TV sitcom supposedly set in Chicago and think the actors are exaggerating the accent, think again. I have yet to see an actor do it justice, unless they hail from Chicago. And usually even they don’t, since those shows are taped in Hollywood. There is some cosmic dynamic that for every 200 miles from Chicaaago, aaa’s and essssses get shorter.

The next accent is really more of a non-accent. It’s the bland, non-descript speech pattern associated with TV newscasters — which when listening to them speak, you have no clue what part of the country they come from. That plain vanilla dialect is often associated with the Midwest.

But in southern Illinois (which to a Chicagoan is anywhere in the state south of 183rd Street), plain vanilla is really only spoken by about 20% of the occupants. As for the other 80%, they go out fer coffee, they warsh their clothes and other things like that there. You would think their junior high english teachers were mediums channeling Larry The Cable Guy.

Still, as a member of the 20%, I really don’t have any trouble understanding the 80% because I grew up among them. But just like knowing knowing Japanese won’t do diddly for you when visiting Korea, neither does my fluency in Hick provide any help at all when I’m in the south for a visit to The Land of Grandsons.

Traveling home from a recent visit, we stopped at a McDonald’s in Corbin, Kentucky to grab some lunch.

Have you ever been dining in an authentic Chinese restaurant and suddenly realized that everyone in the place is happily chatting, but you don’t understand a thing being said?

Well, standing in line in Corbin, Kentucky, I was very certain I was a stranger in a strange land. I strained to follow the conversation in line ahead of me, but I understood more of my seven month old grandson’s goo goos earlier in the day, than I did what those people were saying. The difference is, in that Chinese restaurant, there’s a 50-50 chance my waiter would be able to take my order in english we both could understand. But those chances were plummeting to near zero as we stepped up to the counter girl at the Corbin, KY McDonald’s.

“Hahyallwutcannahgitferyewtuhdaie?”

“Um, I, excuse me, what?”

“Cannahtakeyerorderareyallredee?”

At this moment, I would have paid anything for a set of those United Nations headphones.

“Is it OK to order? We’d like two bacon ranch salads.”

“Baconranchsammichs? Yallwannemcrispyorgrilled?Anwhuhkinadressinyewwantwithem?”

“Um, you got salad, right? [Honey, did she say grilled?] Yeah, grilled please. And those come with ranch dressing, right?”

“Mphewlekwenu.” (or something like that) ”Yallwantdrinkswitthatandisthistuhgoerferhere?”

”Oh, and two medium drinks. And this is for here.”

At this point, I just shoved a twenty on the counter, answered “Yes” to anything she said, and hoped there was a remote chance I wouldn’t get two Big Macs smothered in ranch dressing.

Luckily, we got two salads with grilled chicken and ranch dressing. And I didn’t even want to count the change. If it was wrong, I considered it an offering to the translation gods who obviously intervened on our behalf.

My wife and I picked a remote table and ate quietly, enjoying our 20% conversation and the fact that at least we could understand each other. Then we headed for the car, and hearing no banjos playing in the distance, beat a path for home.

Where we happily warshed the car, went fer ice cream, unpacked, and all that there.

Hey….You

stacy_dean — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 02:38:39 +0000

If nothing else, the past year with Dad in the nursing home has taught me a level of patience that I’d never before believed was in me.

To say that patience is not my strong suit is kind of like saying that Lady Gaga is occasionally unreserved.

We’re not talking Gandhi patience…Mother Teresa patience. I’m not bucking for sainthood or waiting for Ben Kingsley to play me in a movie. No, more like think twice before yelling and/or choking the daylights out of someone patience. And it didn’t come to me right away; in fact, if you read The Donut Nazi you know my pot bubbled over and burned on the stove more than once.

But it’s probably not as much resignation to my Dad’s plight as much as repeated exposure to the occupants of the nursing home that has brought me around.

Not just exposure to the workers there, although that alone is an eye opener, because perhaps those people really do deserve Ben Kingsley or Meryl Streep one day playing their character on the big screen.

Imagine working in a business where you see your customers not just once or twice a month, but every day, and they never leave. Customers who are often confused, irritable and argumentative. Customers who seldom realize how hard you are working for them, and even more seldom acknowledge it. And yet for the most part, these workers accept all this with loving patience.

No, it’s exposure to the residents themselves that really taught me what is important and the patience to appreciate it.

You see, most of these people find themselves bound at least part-time to wheelchairs, or at very best, walkers. Many (including my Dad) are not aware of the day of the week, the name of their roommate or sometimes even where they are. Yet deep down, there is still this innate awareness that wherever, whenever, whoever…it is OK so long as they can have human interaction. Even if that human interaction makes no sense to us who occupy this “other” world.

Take, for example, this exchange I witnessed Saturday in just the time it took me to walk past an open doorway in a central lounge at Dad’s nursing home. Two little white haired ladies were sitting two feet from each other, walkers by their sides, leaned toward one another and holding hands. I don’t know their names, but it just seems like they should be Mildred and Alice.

Mildred: ”You tell ME.”
Alice: ”Tell you what?”
Mildred: ”I don’t know.”
Alice: ”What is your name?”
Mildred: ”What?”
Alice (patting her on the knee): ”It’s alright dear, I love you anyway.”

“I love you anyway.” And that is the point. What mattered was not the content or the understanding. What mattered was that Mildred was there for Alice, and Alice was there for Mildred.

Which brings me to yesterday’s visit with my Dad. We chatted a seemingly “with it” conversation while playing our usual game of gin rummy. I was getting all the cards and walloped him in the first game. (I know what you’re thinking, but nursing home or not, the last time I just let someone win was playing Chutes and Ladders with my son, and it bothered me then, too.)

A couple hands into the second game, I needed a bathroom break and told Dad I would be back in a couple minutes. When I returned, he looked me square in the eyes with a smile and said, “Are you going to get all the cards and beat my butt like Stacy did?”

I was stunned for a moment. There was a time last year when I would have reacted poorly. When I would have indignantly asked, how could you not know who I was? Or I would have rushed out of the room to find a nurse and demand to know if his meds had been changed without my knowledge. But that was before I witnessed the daily patience of the saints in the facility.

That was before Mildred and Alice.

No, this Stacy knew that the understanding, the what, the where, the who…none of that was important. Only the being there.

I quizzed in reply, “What did you say, Dad?” He repeated calmly, still smiling, “Are you going to get all the cards like Stacy did earlier?”

I smiled back. ”Well, let’s find out.” And shuffled the cards.

Because…Boobs!

stacy_dean — Mon, 28 May 2012 01:59:38 +0000

If there’s a sure-fire way for a man to get in trouble, it is by making “Women Are From Venus” sweeping generalizations. Out loud. In front of women.

For the men reading this, you know that’s hard not to do. It’s not that we’re intentionally beligerent, mind you. Not at all! It’s really just that we’re perpetually confused at the rules and are really only throwing a statement our there to see if we guessed right. In this Jeopardy © of the Sexes game, we men would be a lot better off giving our answers in the form of a question.

So when a female friend of mine (who often reminds me that she does not take kindly to being lumped in with other women) explained her recent behavior by saying, “Girls are like that” — I challenged why it was OK for her to use such generalizations while I was not allowed.

Without missing a beat she pronounced: ”Because…boobs!”

At first I thought she was just pointing out the obvious by association –

Women exercise their prerogative.
Women have boobs.
Therefore, boobs = prerogative.

I thought I had already a pretty good grasp on women/men dynamics when I wrote about how they really were the boss of us.

But then I started wondering if she unwittingly let slip some secret? Like, do boobs have some uncanny power that we mere men have thus far been cluelessly unaware?

Men have been infatuated with boobs for centuries upon centuries; give a man a roomful of boobs to look at and he will stare at them all day, or at least until a basketball game comes on. But a dog will also sit all day and gaze at a steak left on the counter out of his reach — that doesn’t mean the steak has mystical powers.

Yet the notion haunted me. What if boobs really did possess special powers? Powers that gave the wearer the ability to make any decision or take any action with impunity. Could they be like two small (or sometimes, not so small) satellite dishes, channeling cosmic energy? Could Mary Kay conventions really be some sinister N.O.W. lab experiment, testing the collective power of 10,000 boobs focused into a deadly death-ray?

It’s a plausible premise. After all, she rolled out the phrase, “Because…boobs” and I went, “hmm” and basically accepted that the boob card had been played.

It sure wouldn’t work the other way around. Imagine if someone challenged MY behavior and my defense was, “Because…penis!” My best hope would be for derisive laughter, and not stunned silence and a restraining order.

Dismiss it if you want, but I’m not taking any chances. I am on alert.

Be advised, you women out there: The next time you see me looking your direction, I am NOT just staring at your boobs. I’m waiting for them to make one false move.

Everything Old Is New Again

stacy_dean — Sun, 13 May 2012 20:41:45 +0000

When I first started writing this blog, I named it (Bleep) because anything and everything was likely to pop into my brain and onto these pages.

I also started writing in hopes my work would draw attention, gain a following and I would become wildly popular, just like Melysa Schmitt, Shauna Glenn and The Bloggess. People would love me, I would write books, and we would live happily ever after!

Unfortunately, I overlooked one obvious thing and one not-so-obvious thing that hindered my success.

The Obvious Thing: Those three blog writers owned vaginas, and people naturally gravitate to funny people with vaginas more than to than people without vaginas who are trying to be funny.

The Not-So-Obvious Thing: Vaginas aside, those three identified and filled a niche, and their writing is consistently focused on that niche.

Short of a lot of spare cash I didn’t have, and a trip to Thailand, there wasn’t much I could do about The Obvious Thing. As for the Not-So-Obvious Thing, I not only didn’t identify a niche, my blog became a virtual Big Lots of the blogosphere.

I know it’s called (Bleep) My Brain Says. And truly, that IS how my brain works. Still, it’s hard to attract readers when they have no idea what to expect from post to post. And in the past few months, my blog has been on more tangents than a Geometry midterm.

Boiling it down, my blog contains three main categories of bleep:

Witty observations and stories from my ongoing life. The stuff upon which (Bleep) was founded.
Anecdotes from my past. Hopefully witty, occasionally profound, and somehow trying to impart life lessons in a “I’m an older guy and I’ve already been through the minefield” sort of way. And recently….
Poetry. Quite a bit of it. Which, I might add, it seems I’m rather good at.

I thought the (Bleep) designation would allow me to cram all of this into one blog and keep a readership. I was wrong. I was far, far from niche-land.

So, effective today, I have three blogs. Yes, THREE. Each with a life, and hopefully a following, aligned to their niche.

(Bleep) returns to its roots. That puts me much more in line with those bloggers I admired earlier in this post….although I still am kinda stuck with regard to that vagina thing.

My anecdotal stories are now in Follow Someone. There, I hope people who are struggling with their own issues, be it raising kids or trying to find their way through the world, will find some value in my stories.

Your Feet Show It has the poetry.

The pertinent stuff has already been moved, and each of the two new blogs will get more “prettified” as time goes along.

Hopefully this will make a dedicated following for the new blogs and make (Bleep) a popular stopping place.

And if not, I can blame it on the vagina.

Forever And Then Forever Again

stacy_dean — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 05:52:15 +0000

When life has dealt you a series of blows.
When all of your friends say, “That’s just how it goes.”
How long should you stay in the fight, you suppose?
Forever and then forever again.

If a friend is in need at the end of his rope,
In despair and anguish, unable to cope
What lengths should you go to bring comfort and hope?
Forever and then forever again.

As sure as men fight and confront one another
They’ll seek their redemption as well from the other.
How long must you go on forgiving your brother?
Forever and then forever again.

If you have been blessed by the stars to secure
A soulmate and partner whose strong love you are sure,
It’s destined that love will stand firm and endure
Forever and then forever again.

No generation is ever estranged.
The verses above can’t be altered or changed.
The truths of this life have been all prearranged.
Forever and then forever again.