Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Relo Alert!

The time has come to move the Woundup. I will only say that our current hosting environment crossed one line too many in their desire to micro-manage the web, and that one line was the determining factor.

Look for the Woundup at it's new location: http://woodyswoundup.com

Give it a few weeks and this site will be taken down.

Woody

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Of Dogs and Cars

I don't mind admitting that I'm a tremendous Dave Barry fan. Over the years I particularly enjoyed his columns that dealt with either dogs or cars. These, because of my own memories with such things, always set me chuckling.

I've dealt with a few dogs myself over the years, ranging from a Heinz-57 variety when I was a toddler (known to me only via home movies), an extremely nervous chihuahua named "Twinkle" (for whom my grandmother was nicknamed), and, when I was a teenager, a neurotic whippet named "Splinter."

Her actual name was not Splinter. She was in reality an AKC-bred whippet and a name like Splinter does not sit well with the AKC for purposes of registration. So her registered name, dreamt up by my father (proving once again that his sense of humor extended beyond merely creating five interesting children) was "Fleetfoots Frangere Dubois." This appropriately pretentious-sounding name was, in fact, a loose composite of French and Italian for "splinter of wood," except for the Fleetfoots part, which was the name of the breeding farm where Splinter was dropped off by extra-terrestrials during an emergency.
Loudspeaker on ET's bridge: Warning! Transwarp engines reaching critical mass! Eject the whippet core!
ET would use whippets for their spacecraft because these dogs, bred as miniature greyhounds, are lightning fast. We were never rich or pretentious enough as a family to do anything like turn Splinter into an actual racing dog, so her primary form of physical activity was going to the school yard next door and running around like an antelope on meth. I'd let her off the leash, and she'd leave me behind in a cloud of dust. Only an occasional sonic boom would indicate her approximate position. Her favorite trick was waiting for a larger dog, like a labrador or a shepherd, to wander into the school yard and then - ZOOM - she'd run right underneath the larger dog, sending that animal into paroxysms of barking and howling, begging his owner to let him off the leash so he could hunt her down and turn her into a snack.

Ironically, they wouldn't have had to try very hard if they'd simply wanted to get rid of her. Splinter was a very high strung animal. Her nervousness was such that if our cat happened to wander into the house (on those occasions when she deigned to let us feed her), Splinter would immediately take up residence under our couch and refuse to come out until the cat stopped threatening to shred her like an old credit card.

I've since been told that whippets are, in fact, highly intelligent animals and capable of amazing feats beyond just running faster than our current fleet of F-22s.

Right.

Splinter's main amazing feat was her ability to jump over a given fence or wall, while still chained in our yard, and effectively hang herself in the neighbor's yard. She did this frequently because we spent a lot of time in our neighbor's pool next door during the summer, and Splinter could not bear to hear us having such a good time without her. Since I was a mindless teenager, I usually forgot to shorten her chain and she would easily jump the six-foot fence into the next yard. The chain, however, was only long enough to clear the fence with about three feet of chain left.

Ah, the good times.

This morning I was reading about Dave's experiences with buying a car. This reminded me of my Dad's stories about various cars he'd owned. Our family owned cars that were not what I would call muscle cars. Our cars tended to be technological weaklings that other cars could not resist kicking sand at while on the beach.

The coolest cars we owned were handed down to us by my grandparents who had themselves moved on to muscle cars and gave us what were, when they owned them, perfectly serviceable automobiles, but which became, after our family got hold of them, simpering, blithering shadows of their former selves. Even our Chevy Bel-Air (1955! Baby blue!) could not long withstand our inability to keep any car running without developing some sort of fatal car disease. In the Bel-Air's case, a transmission that somehow or other lost the ability to move in reverse. This meant never parking anywhere that we could not move out of nose-first. If we parked in a driveway, it had to be steep enough to allow us to drift backwards in neutral all the way into the street so we could then move forward.

Once upon a time, Dad told me about a car they bought mostly on the recommendation of my grandfather (my mom's Dad). It was called the "Goliath," and Dad hated this car. Thanks to the internet, I now know that the Goliath was of European design and build and was considered "revolutionary" for its time. However, the words "two cylinder, two stroke engine" helped me understand the vitriol my father felt for this car. Dad would have considered this car a lawn mower with a trunk and a steering wheel.

Dad bought the Goliath and before long developed the kind of relationship with it that was similar to Ralph and Alice Kramden in "The Honeymooners." Except that Dad's language when dealing with Alice (the Goliath) was much more colorful than anything Jackie Gleason ever came up with.

My favorite story about the Goliath, however, was one which always caused my mother to shrink back into the couch and try, if possible, to disappear. This is because she was actually with Dad when this happened, and she tried the same trick in the front seat of the car.

Dad had pulled up to a red light and - only because the law required it - stopped. The car, sensing an opportunity to get some well deserved rest, expired. Being Los Angeles (the Big City!), some gracious lady pulled up behind Dad at the light. When the light turned green and Dad was frantically trying to get the Goliath resuscitated, the lady began honking her horn. Those of us who knew and loved my Dad could just envision Dad's reaction to this lady's helpful horn blowing. After a moment or two (I reckoned Dad's legendary patience would have been strained after precisely two honks, but that may be a slight exaggeration) Dad got out of the car, walked back to the helpful lady and said something to the effect of, "Look, lady. I'll make a deal with you. You come start my car, and I'LL SIT HERE AND HONK YOUR #$&*%! HORN!" Mom, at this point, was attempting to phase into an entirely different dimension.

I'd tell you about the joys of being a two-Volkswagen family when I was a teenager, but I think Dad's patience has had all it can stand for one post.

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

Gotcha? Not Really...

Interesting article in Yahoo! News today. Perhaps not so much for the incident itself, which is telling, but rather for the reaction and bias placed on it by the reporter.

 A young man named Bret Hatch brought what appeared to be a "gotcha" question to a town hall meeting that Mitt Romney was hosting in Wisconsin today. He had been culling through the Book of Mormon looking, no doubt, for some "controversial" doctrine with which he could trip the candidate up, and immediately placed a backward spin on Romney's response that would actually make Jay Carney turn green with envy.

The headline screams "Mormon Question Sparks Tense Moment During Mitt Romney Town Hall."

No big deal, really. This sort of thing is par for the political course these days. Certainly we were treated to all sorts of "gotcha" questions back when Sarah Palin was tossed into the meat grinder and Katie Couric threw down her "which newspapers do you read" IED. There was probably no correct answer to that question. Her honest response won no small amount of scorn in the press, while any other answer would have been torn apart as "phony" or "pretentious."

Today's question was a ham-handed attempt to make Romney admit that because he believes the Book of Mormon to be inspired scripture, then he must be racist because the book refers to a "skin of darkness" as part of a curse for extreme sinfulness.
"I guess my question is do you believe it's a sin for a white man to marry and procreate with a black?" asked Hatch.
"No," Romney responded sternly, before turning to face the other side of the room.
Mr. Hatch later tells the reporter that Romney's answer means he "just denounced his faith up there."

Simply stated: No, he didn't.

What he ignores - conveniently - is the fact that the rest of the book speaks of continuous attempts over the centuries to spiritually reclaim those very people and help them accept the gospel, regardless of the color of their skin. This, after all, is the true message of the Gospel: that the blessings of the Lord are available to any and all who will humble themselves and receive them, irrespective of their skin tone or nationality.

Here's the interesting part of this entire incident. When interviewed after the Town Hall, Mr. Hatch was all too willing to throw out the screed that if Romney believes the Book of Mormon, then it becomes (wait for it) a racial issue. Get that? It has nothing to do with how successful President Obama may or may not have been during his first term. No, if Romney is the nominee this November, then it boils down to race and little more. At least for Mr. Hatch.

Here's the thing: as a life-long member of the Church and believer in the Book of Mormon, Obama's presidency (or the man himself, for that matter) has never been about race for me. It has always been (and will always be, I might add) about his radical socialist policies that have kept this country in a state of continuous economic ruin since the day he took office. That's not racism. That's anti-socialist prejudice, and I will freely stipulate to that particular prejudice for the rest of my natural life. His policies and those of the Democrats currently infesting Congress are ruinous, plain and simple.

If that makes me a racist, then someone needs to contact the various purveyors of dictionaries and get the definition changed. Pronto.

In the meantime, I have to go. My anti-anthropogenic-global-warming re-education sessions begin tonight.