Our Zealous Devotion to Free Market Principles On Display
Most households revert to an inefficient command-and-control, heavily centralized model of production when it comes to making meals. This takes the form of one person who makes the meals on a routine basis. To us, this is Sovietism at its ugliest, and invites a condescending I-know-what's-best-for-you outlook on the part of the singular cook (or should we say Food Production Bureau, eh comrades?)
With efficiency as our ideal and aim, D and K make dinner the free-market way. First, we each prepare a meal that we consider appetizing, nutritious, and otherwise satisfying. There's no need to detail the squabbles that can arise when two people make distinct meals in the same kitchen, drawing from the same pool of foodstuffs, cooking implements, cookware, and appliances; suffice it to say we manage it more or less peacefully. When both meals are complete, we invite a panel of neighbors to our house who offer their judgment of which meal is best. The focus group's decision is final, and the winning meal becomes the night's dinner. The losing meal goes straight into the dustbin, where it belongs.
Congress shall make no law abridging the use of a picklist of pre-selected phrases
The Limits(?) of Sexual Connotations: Another Exercise in Interactive Personal Enrichment from D & K
It has been suggested that most any phrase, if stated with the proper tone and emphasis, can sound like a sexual reference. Here are a few phrases intended to strain this maxim to its limits. Try them yourself! Think up your own!
Someone should run the dishwasher
Aunt May holed herself up in a trailer and drank herself stupid
I can't find my glasses
These olives seem to have gone bad
Here are your tickets to Baton Rouge
He needs to catch the 3:48 bus
Seeing eye dogs are truly amazing
| A TV Conceit |
| Point of Comparison/Contrast | Dukes of Hazzard | The X-Files |
|---|
| Protagonists | Bo and Luke Duke | Dana Sculley and Fox Mulder |
| Setting | Hazzard County | FBI headquarters and various crime scenes |
| Protagonists' occupation | Righting wrongs in Hazzard county | Investigating crimes with paranormal connections |
| Chief antagonist | Boss Hogg | Cigarette Man |
| Ally and mentor | Uncle Jessie | Assistant Director Skinner |
| Manifestation of antagonist's oral fixation | Fried chicken | Cigarettes |
| Means of transport | The General Lee, a 70's muscle car with Confederate markings | Various last minute flights and rental cars |
| Communication style of protagonists | Down-home homily and metaphor | Terse and dysfunctional |
| Action scenes | Car chases on dirt roads | Foot chases in dark places wearing formal business attire |
| Communications tool | CB radio | Cellular phone |
| Sexual tension between protagonists | Yes | Yes |
| Convenient fiction | Inexhaustible supply of sheriff's patrol cars | Inexhaustible branches of the UFO conspiracy |
| Less tedious than Twin Peaks? | Yes | Usually |
| Fundamental unanswered question | What do they do at night? | Could I get a better look at that? |
Needles? Haystacks? 
This whole "needle in a haystack" thing neglects to consider the power of Murphy's Law. In reality, a needle would be quite readily found in even the largest haystack since you would take one step into the stack and impale your foot on the needle. Also, practically speaking, why search for a needle in a haystack? What would it be doing there? Today's division of labor excludes the possibility that someone would handle hay and needles at the same time. Why search for a needle at all? Why not just buy another one or go without? Who sews their own clothes these days? Besides, a clever person can find a needle in a haystack quite easily without having to impale him/herself on it. For example, you could load the entire haystack into a microwave oven and then turn it on. The part that is emitting dangerous radiation is the metal needle. Simple. Or you could show the hay to several hungry cows; the cow that ends up choking on it's blood is the one that found the needle. Then the task shifts: finding the needle in the cow. For this, the microwave is again the best answer, and as an added bonus, the end result is a found needle and a cooked cow. Mmm mmm good. Beef is a dog's natural food, you know. But I digress.
Pardon the hacked-up furballs, I've been licking my cats quite a bit lately. It started out as a new way to clean them -- I'm ever willing to try new things to keep my pets sparkling clean -- but I've developed a taste for it aside from any instrumentalities. But I digress. This really goes back to my childhood when, tipped off to the hallucinogenic properties of the epidermal excretions of certain toads, I began trapping and licking all the toads I could find, in order that I may, in the words of William Blake and Jim Morrison, throw open the "doors of perception" and thus overcome the drudgery of my six-year-old existence. I found that none of Ponca City's toads offered the mind-alteration I sought, so applying a deduction that, in hindsight, is decidedly pre-teen, I concluded that higher animals would surely succeed where the local toads had failed. I began licking every animal that would succumb to the treatment, including snakes, beetles, racoons, otters, lambs, dogs, cats, fish, squirrels, chickens, deer, apes, and cows. The experiment was a success in only this: it opened the doors of my perception such that I began to appreciate the differing flavors of the earth's fauna. My tongue taught me to distinguish the beasts from one another, and like a latter-day Adam, I reclassified the animal kingdom based on the tastes and textures of their bodies. Unfortunately, I lost my notes in the great brush fire of '82. But I digress.
How CHiPs Almost Killed Me: A Vignette from D's Bad-Hair Life
Jeb, my barber, is only a man, so he can be forgiven for getting caught up in the good part of a CHiPs episode. When Ponch and Jon are kicking some ASS, chase music is blaring, sunglasses are beaming in the LA sun, and late model Buicks are overturning, the spectacle is indeed compelling. This was more so for Jeb than for most, because from his chair, Jeb could only watch TV as filtered through an elaborate and geometrically elegant system of mirror reflections, requiring special concentration. Problem is, he forgot he was forcing my shampoo-lathered head under water. You've heard stories of mothers who suddenly gain the strength to lift a truck from their children; well, in the same way, sensing, perhaps, the urgency of the muffled chase music, my tongue spontaneously lengthened, and so was able to snake down and trip the drain trap. I got a mouth full of hair, but the water, once drained, was replaced with life-giving oxygen (something my body needs anyway), so I inhaled just in time. If it's true that whatever doesn't kill me will make me stronger, then I surely must take comfort every time I see Jeb's strong hands, the last ten minutes of an episode of CHiPs, or a sink half clogged with hair clippings.
How I Burn Calories
Living in the wilds of Oregon, I am frequently called upon to repel a grizzly attack, or a bigfoot attack, or a dreaded bigfoot/grizzly team attack. By Oregon law, the most dangerous weapon I can use on a bigfoot is a butter knife, and full-nelson's are strictly forbidden, so it tends to be a hearty workout. And it always happens that some neighbor's barn catches on fire, and I'm always the one they send to the river to start the water bucket chain, just as you've seen on Little House on the Prairie. God only knows how many calories I burn off working on my two monster trucks, especially since they are so high I have to hang from the chassis with one arm while I work on the truck with the other. Throw in all the days I bypass the elevator in favor of the fireman's pole, my 21-acre turnip field which requires my constant hands-on attention, my cartwheel training outreach program for the elder hostel (more on that below), my second job as a very physical street mime, my kabuki dance class, and the fact that I use extremely heavy silverware, and you get the clear impression of a very active, calorie-burning lifestyle. Plus I sprint to the bathroom every time!
How D Was Named
I was named after a well-liked clerk of Miller's grocery store in Ponca
City, Oklahoma. That is, she was well-liked until she hit about 55, then
she became really cranky, senile, and bitter. By then, though, I was
already walking, so a name change was out of the question. She never liked
me much, and I never liked her. She always thought I was shoplifting; I
always thought she was ugly.
How D Proposed to K
I wanted to set it up just right, so I made K think it was just another
trip to the Les Schwab tire center. I did this mainly by having a long
conversation with Cooter, my tire clerk friend, about 4-wheeling and
hockey and prostate glands and other "guy" things. As K was about to
doze off in her usual chair in the waiting room, I got down to bidness.
With a wink of my eye, Cooter disappeared to the back of the store and
returned with our new deluxe tire iron, which cost $53.95, just enough to
qualify us for some free beef. Contrary to custom, I encouraged K to go
to the freezer and pick out our beef selection. Just as Cooter and I had
planned, she picked the heaviest-looking pack in the $7 range, also, not
coincidentally, the one with hearts and teddy bear stickers all over it.
Well, to make a long story short, when we got home and unwrapped the beef -- yes, I mean that literally --
K alertly noticed that the wax paper which cradled our free beef also held
a note written in familiar hand. She had to brush away the gristle
and grease that had accumulated on it, and let it dry for a few minutes
before she could tell what it said: Marry Me! (not "Narky Mex" as she at first suspected.) We threw the beef out because of the ink stains, and because it fell on the floor in all the commotion, but the proposal
fared better . . .
Rabbit Tracks as Religious Texts: A Snippet from D's Troubled Boyhood
As a boy growing up amidst the squalor and poor hygiene of North Central Oklahoma's trailer parks, I turned to nature and my own mean-spirited inclinations to answer life's deeper questions. In the winter, it was common practice to concentrate on the Big Question while chasing a rabbit through the snow. Whatever words were traced out by the terrified rabbit's footprints would be taken as The Answer. Mama made me stop doing this when one of the messages turned out to be "worship Conoco." 
Under the proposed flag protection Constitutional Amendment:
- if we add a state and change the number of stars, am I then free to burn my old flags?
- if I don't rescue my flag from my burning house, am I a criminal?
- may I wear my flag pajamas when I'm cremated?
- if lightning strikes a flag, is Thor a criminal? Is God?
- may I allow a dog to slobber on and bite a flag frisbee?
- will the owners of factories that emit pollution be held accountable for flags that have been fouled by acid rain?
- may I digest a flag I've accidentally swallowed?
- may I wear flag undies, and if so, what about skid marks?
- if I submit suggestions for improvements to the aesthetic design of the flag, will judges have to rule on whether my recommendations constitute "desecration?" Supposing they do, and I am convicted, but a minority of the judges rule in my favor, are those judges guilty of flag desecration?
Reality "Versus" Nintendo
with a foreword by Karl Marx
All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice. One has to "leave philosophy aside," one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there also exists a tremendous amount of literary material, unknown, of course, to the philosophers. Philosophy and the study of the actual world have the same relation to one another as masturbation and sexual love.
-Karl Marx
We have thrown barrels at bees, jumped on the heads of upright-walking lizards, and bounced from dragonfly to dragonfly onto the relative safety of the cliffs above the lava. Are we confusing day to day life with Nintendo? This is a trite academic distinction best left to professional pud wrestlers.
Top Sixteen Reasons I Probably Won't Be
Going to Ponca City Any Time Soon
16. Wentz and Bogan pools still one part water, one part chlorine, two parts adolescent urine
15. Hicks-Nida chain fights now available on pay-per-view
14. It's just like watching Twister except with a less believable plot and worse acting
13. The scenic cow pastures of my youth have been replaced with touristy "pasturettes" dotted with espresso bars
12. My key to the city no longer redeemable for Pickle-O's at Sonic
11. Unsettled scores with area prairie dogs best left alone
10. Crazy Days darkened by spectacle of open-mic poetry reading for beleaguered white men
9. Bachman Turner Overdrive's return to Hutchins' still years away
8. Town morale low since Conoco's failure to add "Hottest Brand Going" to pledge of allegiance
7. Buster, the bowling alley attendant, has had the same hairdo since 1962
6. Grandpa's insider account of Hee-Haw never available at the library
5. Local theatres still playing Flintstones movie and Rambo IV
4. Stonings, lynchings, and book burnings have become commercialized
3. Snake Handler Baptist sect will expect my tolerance for venom to be stronger than it is
2. Conoco-produced sex education films still an odd mix of family values rhetoric and gratuitous oil drilling metaphors
1. Deer Woman is after my ass
The Story of the Chain-Smoking, Morbidly-Obese Man with a Family History of Heart Disease and Cancer Who Made a Living as a Stunt Pilot
He died.
fin
Don't speak to me of blasphemy, man; I'd strike the sun if it insulted me. Take the cow back home.
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During a routine patrol of the neighborhood on our dirtbikes, K and I became separated. The weather had turned rainy, and while I headed for home, she wanted to make one last pass over a section of the playground with the metal detector (she was sure she had seen the flash of something shiny there). I was well inside and settled before one of those annoying 'do you know where your children are?' commercials reminded me that K hadn't yet returned. Frantic, despite the nightfall and the weather report scrolling across the bottom of the weather channel, I remounted my dirtbike and headed out to find her.
Of all the major re-releases featuring 