Stray Voltage III

Every Saturday, when the Sunday supplement paper arrives, I am reminded once again that JC Penney has the best female underwear photos. When I was a kid it was the same. Sears was far too white, too cotton, too high on the hip, just not there for what we called Polish pornography. These days Macy's, Hecht's and the others just aren't there. Compared to Victoria's Secret and the luscious bawdiness of Frederick's, Penney is pretty tame, sure, but I'll take what marginal little jollies I can as I'm forced to sit through yet another 6-hour Spongebob marathon as I read the paper in the family room.

On a similar note, I love that bus ad I'm seeing in town with the grouping of "average size" women in their white undies. Very nice shapes, all. The undies are pretty tame, but again, I'll take what I can get.

I love the English term "git," although the opportunities to use it for devastating effect here in the US are few and far between, as are the opportunities to use my favorite Aussie, Kiwi, and other British terms of invective, exclamation, and derision. I love "stonking," "plonk," "chuffed," "whinging," "sussed," and the like, but just don't get the chances to use them.

Hot and spicy food: gotta love it. It's truly hard to make good hot food. It's easy to make wickedly hot and spicy food. Just go to any schlocky restaurant and ask for really spicy, and what you'll find is they just dump more red peppers into the same thing they're serving everyone else. So what you get is the standard, just with more heat. That's lazy, and it's sad, and it's the default in most places. But truly hot food, where you get the taste of your dish first and foremost, and then the building glow of that spicy heat, now that's artistry. I've experienced it in a Chinese restaurant in Fuerstenfeldbruck, Germany in the late 1980s, in what is one of the best Chinese meals I've ever had. Absolutely masterful blending of the food, the spices, and the peppers. I've had it in an Indian place in Scotland, with a green curry so hot I couldn't finish it. Yeah, it was pretty wicked-hot, but it also was expertly cooked and made, and I told the chef just that, and thanked him.

Is it just me, or does that rush of dry, consumer-goods-scented air that exhales out of the Big Store when you enter conjure all kinds of childhood memories? I get hit with that popcorn-tires-plastics-clothes smell as I move inside, and I'm transported back to the late 1960s, going shopping for tools and tires with my dad at the Sears Roebuck, and always with the stop at the free popcorn place. I remember electric outboard motors in clear acrylic tanks so you could watch the prop action. I remember the same clear fronts on dishwashers and washing machines, how fascinating that was, and asking if we could get one just like that at home. My dad was so tall, so smart, so sure, and so strong. Man, what a guy.

Once found a drowned man in a tree after a Mississippi flood.

Once shook hands with both Rosalyn and Amy Carter--neato!

Highly intolerant of the stupid, ignorant, and intolerant, and woefully aware that there are more of them than there are of us.

Big on punctuation and spelling.

Open to new experiences in all things, but confident enough to state there are some things I just can't stand, like liver and theme park rides that spin.

Awed by the feminine magnificence of Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigourney Weaver, Jill St. John, Raquel Welch, and sickened by cookie-cutter blondes who can't seem to get enough to eat.

On the constant lookout for the danger in life created by the stupidly selfish and the selfishly stupid, especially on the road.

Secretly afraid of being eaten alive by an animal, like a bear or a shark or an alligator.

Absolutely love that burst of flavor when biting into the perfect hamburger, meat, mustard, onion and pickle all at once. Fantastic.

If a Supreme Being is up there/out there, running things and keeping general tabs on All Of Existence, what exactly is the celestial purpose of serial murderers?

I haven't placed down the little grocery separator thingy at the supermarket in at least 15 years. Invariably it's the neurotic sheep to my front or rear who do it for me, so keen to make sure none of their mass-produced consumer goods, just exactly the same as mine, gets mixed in with the items I'm purchasing. Fascinating little social study, to watch this play out. Try it yourself, tonight, at the Safeway! Fun!

Why is it a man always gives a better men's haircut than a woman?

I have never fired a weapon at a person, nor have had one fired at me. I did, however, have to dodge grenade shrapnel at an Army range once, when an idiot female soldier threw her hand grenade completely out of the impact area. I got a half-dime sized piece of grenade steel through my tunic and lodged in my t-shirt, and a bruise the size of a saucer for two weeks.

As a sixth grader I witnessed two people plunge to their deaths while skydiving. Neither of their chutes opened. No trauma, no tears, no nightmares. It's just something that happened. And whaddaya know, at age 23 I jumped out of an aircraft myself, intentionally, five times out the door of US Air Force aircraft as an Army Airborne student. Loved it.

I'm not quite sure I believe in ghosts, but have had two distinct experiences in which sounds in an otherwise empty house just can't be explained. I'm still not sure what's gone on there.

I can't take chili dogs, not at all. It's been almost 30 years since that fateful summer day in 7th grade when any number of factors intersected in space-time to make me violently ill immediately after a lunch of chili dogs, but man, I still can't go anywhere near them.

I think Larry King is a hollow, preening dipshit.