That’s Right, I Invented Tokémon Woah.

by Roger White

 

It hit me—almost literally—the other day just how pervasive this Pokémon Go craze is when my daughter yelled at me to stop the car (in the middle of the road, mind you) as I was driving in our neighborhood. Panicked, I slammed on the brakes, fearing I’d unknowingly plowed over a squirrel or baby deer or a neighbor kid or two.

 

“Wait! Wait, I almost got him,” Lindsey ordered. She had her cell phone aimed at a stand of trees beyond the curb.

 

“What? What is it?” I cried, scanning the area for a gray fox or some rare albino ocelot or something.

 

“It’s Magmar. There, I got him!”

 

I kept eyeing the trees to our right, hoping for a glimpse of the magmar, whatever the heck a magmar was, until the driver behind me honked at me to get my butt in gear.

 

“Magmar?” I asked, waving apologetically at the driver’s one-finger salute to my traffic faux pas. “What is that? Like a roadrunner or something?”

 

My daughter scoffed at my ignorance. “Magmar, Dad. He’s a Pokémon dude. Looks kinda like an angry duck on fire.”

 

Lord. “You mean I almost got us rear-ended for that silly game?”

 

“Not silly, Dad. Magmar’s very important. He could help me take over a gym.”

 

I shook my head in amazement. I wondered what the most horrifying development of the year was: the prospect of the lunatic Donald Trump becoming the leader of the free world or our country’s absurd obsession with risking life and limb to capture imaginary cartoon characters. I’d heard the stories of people getting hit by trains and walking off sheer cliffs in blind pursuit of these Pokémon creatures, but I presumed they were cautionary myths. Not so, apparently.

 

Lindsey gave me a layman’s tutorial—Pokémon Go for Dummies—whereby she explained that there are three teams of different colors: Team Mystic, Team Valor, and Team Instinct. Players join a team based on whether they think they’re brainy, strong, or intuitive. The object of the game is to capture creatures that pop up on one’s cell phone while one is out and about in the real world, then battle each other at places called Pokémon gyms. I asked Linz if they had a Team Dad, wherein players could capture beers throughout one’s house and battle to take charge of the couch. No response.

This got me thinking, however. What if we came up with a local version of Pokémon Go? Ya know, Austin being Austin, how ’bout something like Tokémon Woah? Think about it. You could have Tribe Willie, otherwise known as Acapulco Gold. Members of Tribe Willie would be guided by music, a somewhat relaxed attitude toward paying one’s taxes, and simple pleasures—like sittin’ ’round in their underwear. Then there’d be Clan Kinky, or the Grandaddy Purple Tribe. Folks drawn to Clan Kinky would be inspired by satire, matzah ball soup, and delusions of living in the governor’s mansion. And then, of course, you’d have Clique McConaughey, or Tribe Redbud. Redbud Tribe members would be moved by such things as UT football and nude bongo-playing. Alright, alright, alright.

 

Now, the object of Tokémon Woah would be to venture about the capital city in search of various Tokémon creatures, such as Budzilla, Panama Red, Buzz Lighthead, Bong Bong, Roachymon, Spliffowak, Ganjasnorf, and the like. Once you capture a Tokémon, you pluck out any wayward seeds and take your Tokémon to the nearest Tokémon CrashPad, where you compare your particular Tokémon with those from other tribes. Once it’s established which tribe has the smoothest Tokémon Woah, that tribe enjoys dominion over the album selection for that CrashPad. No Stairway or Free Bird, however. Any playing of Stairway, Free Bird, or any and all Styx selections is grounds for immediate CrashPad banishment.

 

I got really stoked about this. I went so far as to fax my game proposal to the offices of Mr. Nelson, Mr. Friedman, and Mr. McConaughey. I got two “Cease and Desist” orders and a handwritten response that simply stated, “It’d be a lot cooler if you’d leave me the hell alone.” Hmm.

 

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a morbidly obese dachshund, and a cat with Epstein-Barr Syndrome. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com. Or not.

 

Headlines You May Have Missed Because of All the Shouting

by Roger White

 

I realize you may find it hard to believe that any news anywhere in the world could possibly be weirder than our own little insane asylum of a presidential race, but yes, Virginia, there have been some strange goings-on other than the viral sharing of photos of candidates’ nude spouses, the specter of campaign rally attendees using protesters’ noggins as piñatas, and the petitions for open carry of firearms at the Republican National Convention for “safety reasons.” Shudder.

 

Granted, not much can stack up to the idiotic vitriol produced by this election season in good ol’ Amurka. However, yours truly has dredged up a few nuggets of weird that have nothing at all to do with the four-headed monster known as HillTrumparyBernCruzie.

 

Here’s one, for example. Recently, British scientists at the National Environment Research Council (NERC) were so jazzed about this brand, spanking new $290 million polar research ship they’re constructing, they decided to let the public in on the naming of this terribly important vessel. She’ll be launched as a Royal Research Ship, so the officials at NERC expected glorious nominations such as the “RRS Sir Shackleton” or the “RRS Winston Churchill” or the like. Nope. At last count, more than 27,000 people had voted to name the ship the “RRS Boaty McBoatface.”

 

Expected to set sail in 2019, the 420-foot vessel will “provide the U.K. with the most advanced floating research fleet in the world,” a NERC spokesperson said. He added that although the name “RRS Boaty McBoatface” had about 10 times the amount of votes than any other name, the council is under no legal obligation to give their flagship research vessel a “bloody cartoon moniker.” When contacted by NBC News, a staffer at the research council said no public affairs officials were available to speak because they were all in a “crisis meeting.”

 

There’s more to the story, however. In the wake of such overwhelming voter sentiment, British politicos have proposed renaming historic Big Ben in the Palace of Westminster “Tick Tockety McClockenspiel” and renaming the ancient Stonehenge site “Chunky McBoulder Butt.”

 

Here’s another one: A former security worker at the Brink’s armored car company has been charged with stealing almost $200,000 worth of quarters, justice officials said recently. One Stephen Dennis of Harpersville, Alabama, is accused of taking the coins while working as a money processing manager.

 

“What Mr. Dennis may have thought was a nickel-and-dime theft was, in the end, the equivalent of a major bank heist,” FBI Special Agent Roger C. Stanton said in a news release. An FBI investigation found that Dennis had been replacing coins with beads after an April 2014 audit found several coin bags were considerably short of their expected tally. In total, Dennis stole $196,000 worth of quarters from the Brink’s facility in Birmingham. Investigators concluded that the guy took approximately 784,000 coins.

 

That’s roughly 9,800 pounds of quarters, folks. Ah, but there’s more to the story. My sources tell me that they caught Dennis when he showed up in tremendously baggy trousers at a local emergency room to be treated for a quadruple hernia. The maximum penalty for the poor guy is 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Word is the fine will have to be paid in pennies and nickels.

 

Wait, I got one more. In Florida recently, two trucks, one hauling beer and the other toting potato and tortilla chips, collided on Interstate 95, littering the road with, yeah, chips and beer. The crash between the semi-tractor trailer transporting Busch beer and the box truck filled with Frito-Lay products occurred in Brevard County just after 3:10 a.m., the Florida Highway Patrol said.

 

“Neither driver was hurt, but you had Doritos and Busch beer all over I-95,” said Sergeant Kim Montes, spokeswoman for the Florida Highway Patrol. “That’s like a Super Bowl commercial right there.”

 

What she didn’t tell you was that it took two and a half weeks and 200 fat men in t-shirts and shorts to get rid of all that suds and spuds. Now, apparently, all that’s left are six dozen couches and several big-screen TVs sitting in the middle of I-95.

 

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a mildly obese dachshund, and a middle-aged cat with Esptein Barr Syndrome. For more of “This Old Spouse,” visit www.oldspouse.wordpress.com.

 

 

 

Sorry, Kids: There Ain’t No Betty Crocker

by Roger White

So I was watching “Seinfeld” for the eleventy-millionth time the other night, mainly because there is absolutely nothing on TV worth watching these days other than reruns of “Seinfeld,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” and “The Twilight Zone.” I know, I know, you young whippersnappers will hold forth that there are some great new shows today, like “Murder, She Wrote” and “The Big Band Theorem” or whatever. I’ll stick with the classics, thank you very much. Don’t you love the word eleventy-million?

Anyway, I realized that the shtick Seinfeld was doing was aimed right at me. He was talking about pretentious, faux-authentic-sounding brand names, particularly cars. Names like the Integra or the Impreza. They’re made-up names that are meant to sound like other meaningful words, like integrity and impressive. The punch line: Seinfeld simply hoped he hadn’t bought a Lemona. It hit me that the last three cars I owned before my current little Korean vehicle were just that: an Integra, an Impreza, and a Lemona. All true, I previously owned a 1986 Acura Integra (a great car), a 2003 Subaru Impreza (a fast but frustrating car), and a 1979 Lemona (a VW bug—a true bomb I never should have purchased).  Don’t ask me what I was thinking, buying a 35-year-old POS as my daily commute. Besides, that’s another story. A very sad, long story.

Again, anyway. Things then got cosmic as I sat pondering Jerry’s sage words. It struck me as I lifted a spoonful of my Häagen-Dazs Chocolate Peanut Butter flavored ice cream to my mouth. My ice cream brand, too, was a made-up name meant to sound exotic and luxurious. Remember when Häagen-Dazs first hit the market? Ooh, we thought, super rich frozen goodness from some strange Nordic country where they surely make ice cream from virgin glacial streams, from milk of cows that graze only on Alpine truffles, and from melted gold flakes from Icelandic lava flows. Or something. Turns out, Häagen-Dazs is a nonsense word concocted by one Reuben Mattus from the Bronx. The name, which is not Danish or Swedish or anything slightly lederhosen-ish, doesn’t really mean a thing—except that ol’ Reuben was a marketing genius.

Same with Löwenbräu beer. Back in 1975, just about the time I started my prolific and illustrious drinking career, Miller Brewing of the US of A acquired the North American rights to Löwenbräu, which was originally brewed in Munich. Ya know, the real Germany. Well, when Miller got hold of it, they “Americanized” the recipe, and the original German version of Löwenbräu was no longer imported to our fair shores. Basically, the Löwenbräu we got was Miller swill in an umlaut-sprinkled wrapper. Of course, we young and impressionable drinking types had absolutely no knowledge of this. We just saw a new, mysterious foreign beer on the market—in a green bottle, even! The name was obviously German, and if anybody knew their brew, it was the Germans. We was hoodwinked.

Same holds true with so many other brands, like bottled water types. I really never understood the billion-dollar explosion of the bottled water industry. It’s water. In a plastic bottle. Water! H₂O. This is where brand-name marketing gurus have a field day. There’s one out there called, get this, Glaceau Smartwater. I kid you not. And I not you kid. Both parts of that faux moniker evoke good feelings, don’t they? Aah, a pristine glacier. And intelligent liquid. What could be better? An intellectual body of glacial ice—you can’t get more new-age trendy than that. You know who produces Glaceau Smartwater? Coca-Cola. I picture guys in the back of these massive Coke plants running tap water into these oh-so-fashionable containers of Water de Glaceau. And they’re probably smoking, too. Unfiltered Camels. And laughing.

And don’t get me started on Evian. Look at your Evian bottle in a mirror. Yeah.

So. Cogitating on this unsettling realization that so many of the products we consume are purchased under false pretenses, I jogged in a mild panic from the den to the kitchen, where my lovely esposa was making a batch of Betty Crocker pancakes. Paranoia was setting in, so I had to check it out. I ran to the computer and googled “Betty Crocker.” Gads, sure enough. There was no such lady!! Say it ain’t so! I quote from Wiki-whatsis: “The name Betty Crocker was created for the Washburn Crosby Company, later to merge with General Mills, as a way to personalize the company’s products and customer relations. The company picked the name because it sounded warm and friendly.”

I was aghast. Agog. I needed comfort food. “Ah, pancakes. Thanks, dear. Pass the Aunt Jemima.”

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a self-absorbed cat. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.

Dad’s ‘Stairway to Summer’

by Roger White

 

Now that we’re in the dead of winter, and those despicable, horrid, scorching temperatures of mid-July are long gone, I truly miss those despicable, horrid, scorching temperatures of mid-July. This always happens, and I always know it’s going to happen. I am now officially sick of winter. I dreamed of grilling out in the backyard recently. This wondrous dream was even set to music—à la Led Zeppelin. I call this wondrous nocturnal fantasy “Stairway to Summer.”

 

Note: If you can’t play “Stairway” in your head as you read this, this will make no sense to you whatsoever and you will become convinced that my mind has been eaten by worms. The latter may be true, of course, but read on if you will:

 

“Stairway to Summer”

There’s a daddy who’s sure all that sizzles is gold,

And he’s grilling five pounds of heaven.

 

When he gets there he knows if the propane is low,

With a card he can get more at Walgreen’s.

 

Oooh, oooo-oooh, and he’s grilling five pounds of heaven.

 

On his grill there’s some mush, but with his handy wire brush

He scrapes and, oops, he just lost one patty.

 

In a tree by the grill, there’s a songbird who sings,

And, uh oh, the bird just soiled another patty.

 

Oooh, oooo-ooh, and dad’s grilling three pounds of heaven.

 

There’s a feeling he gets when meat falls through the slats,

And his spirit is crying and bereaving.

 

In his thoughts he has seen the grill smoke through the trees,

And the voices of those who stand drooling.

 

Oooh, oooo-ooh, and dad’s grilling two pounds of heaven.

 

And it’s whispered that soon, if you use a big spoon,

You can salvage those patties in the fire.

 

And a new day will dawn for those on the lawn,

And the backyard will echo with laughter.

 

Did anyone remember ketchup?

 

Oooh, oooo-ooh, and he’s grilling a half-pound of heaven.

 

(picking up the tempo now)

 

If there’s some gristle in your ground chuck,

Don’t be a dumb schmuck,

It’s just a sprinkling of tendon.

 

Yes, there are two paths you can go by,

But to use care,

Well done’s safer than rare.

 

Oooooh, but it makes him wonder.

 

His head is humming on his fifth beer,

But have no fear,

The wifey’s calling him to slow down.

 

Dear Daddy can you smell the gas now?

You’ve burned a whole cow,

Your burgers are lost on the whispering wind.

 

(kicking it in!)

 

And as we settle down to eat,

Everything’s ready but the meat,

 

There sweats dear Daddy in the heat,

Who shines bright red in drunk defeat.

 

Did all that sizzle turn to ash

In a propane-fueled flash?

The answer comes to him, behold!

There’s fried chicken on the stove,

So let’s have that last Michelooooob!

 

Ooooh, and dad’s scraping the burnt remnants of heaven.

 

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a self-absorbed cat. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.

 

 

Falling Off My Very Own Personal Fiscal Cliff

by Roger White

 

Pardon me while I faint. KLOMP!

 

Whew. Okay, I’m back. You see, I just checked my bank balance after the deposit of my first paycheck of 2013. I was anxious—fretting is the better word—over what sorts of new and exotic deductions would further erode my take-home income this fine year. But I had no idea it would be this bad.

 

Well, my Social Security deductions went through the roof; health insurance coverage for my family soared like a Roman candle (ooh, ahh); and we just added our oldest daughter to our automobile insurance coverage because she’s of that age so new and terrifying to all parents. Lindsey’s actually a good driver, but try telling that to a car insurance company. To car insurance companies, teenage drivers are like the proverbial golden geese, except with braces and acne and blue jeans full of holes.

 

Holy smokes. Counting federal income tax, Medicare tax, dental insurance, life insurance, anti-insurance insurance, death insurance, dismemberment insurance, dismemberment cleanup insurance, disability other than dismemberment insurance, retirement, retirement insurance, and, of course, insurance against not having enough insurance insurance, I’m practically taking home less actual money than if I wasn’t working. Counting cost of gas, car upkeep, work clothes, lunches, the imposition of regular hygiene, etcetera, I do believe I’m virtually paying for the privilege to go to work.

 

Wha? Wha happen? How did it get to be like this? I thought that after about 30 years of the daily grind, I was supposed to be doing at least okay, relatively speaking. And speaking of relatively speaking, I’m certainly glad my relatives are speaking to me, because I may very well have to hit them all up for some low-interest loans. These be hard times, people. And the weird part is, my family’s not extravagant. We really don’t have any corners to cut to re-mash our household budget because all of our cuttable corners have already been trimmed long ago. We’ve cut so many corners that every piece of furniture in the house is circular. We’re so bent on cutting corners that we switched from Saltines to Ritz crackers. (Get it? No corners. Bah-doom boom.) We’re saving coupons, taking cold showers, eating at home, bundling services—you name it. We’ve bundled so many services that AT&T provides our cable, phone, internet, water, electricity, sewage, and even medical and pharmaceutical needs, I think. The last time I was on the phone to the AT&T technician in India about a cable outage, he reminded me that I needed my regular allergy shot. That’s how bundled we are. I eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch just about every day, and I’ve worn the same dress shoes since Bush was president—the first Bush, that is.

 

Yes, if this first measly paycheck of the new year is any indication, my little family has barreled over our own personal fiscal cliff. All we’re waiting for is the big thud. I’ve actually sought out assistance to soften the thud. I’ve been to many an online “cost savings” site. They all say about the same thing. Buy store brands. Duh. We’ve been doing that forever. And I must say, “Everything’s a Dollar” brand beer is quite the sacrifice. They say to use up your leftovers and freezer foods. We’ve done that. Just last week, we used up our last can of Manwich and our final jars of Tang powdered orange juice and Taster’s Choice instant coffee, all circa 1972, I believe. Another savings tip from these online cost-cutting gurus is to buy only what’s on sale. Well, we tried that one, but now we’re stuck with 30 jars of gefilte fish, 10 pounds of leeks, and two dozen turkey necks.

 

Who’s up for pot luck?

 

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a self-absorbed cat. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.

Color Me Amazed. No, Bored. No, Intrigued. Oh, Never Mind.

by Roger White

I’ve been chiding us humans pretty regularly lately for our failure to live up to the technological potential we held out for ourselves in our hopeful and not-so-distant past. Ah, we were dreamers, weren’t we?

Specifically, I was pretty ticked for a good long while there about not having (a) a Jetsons’ spacecar, (b) X-ray goggles that actually work, and (3) a cloaking device that renders me invisible. In retrospect, I admit my disappointment was not one bit altruistic. I mean, the only reasons I wanted (b) and (3) were to get a glimpse of women in various stages of undress. (Don’t start writing nasty letters; I was 13 when I first came up with these reasons, OK?) And the Jetsons’ car was merely to beat the hellish morning traffic. The thinking there is pretty nonsensical, too, if you figure that if everybody had a Jetsons’ spacecar, we’d still have hellish morning traffic—it would simply be 197 feet in the air instead of on the ground. Who needs a fender-bender 197 feet in the air? And if you get caught speeding, what do you do, pull over to the side of the sky? So here we are back to square one.

However, I have determined, my fellow life travelers, that I should ease up on us. We actually have come a long way. How have we come a long way, you ask? I’ll tell you. One terrific example is beer technology. We are not drinking our grandfather’s beer anymore, fellahs. No, thanks to the forward-thinking ingenuity of minds such as those at Miller Lite, we now have our brew poured via the wonders of Vortex^® technology. Huzzah! This paradigm-shifting development basically involves the cutting of tiny, little grooves inside the neck of Miller Lite bottles, which makes the beer come out in a swirling motion. Let me just interrupt myself here and say how proud I am to insert the word “paradigm” into this missive. Please continue. It’s the same old swill, mind you; it just comes out in a waterspout now. But just think, the folks at Miller Brewing probably created hundreds more jobs: picture a room full of little old ladies with skinny fingers etching tiny, little grooves into a giant mound of Miller Lite bottles, one by one. New jobs, new jobs!

And look at your Coors Light cans. If not for the genius thinking at Adolph Coors, we would be running the risk of imbibing lukewarm suds. We’ve been saved, however, by the blue, blue mountains. Only when the Rockies turn blue on your can are you sure of ice cold inebriation. God bless America.

[Tangent warning!]

Taking the cue from Adolph & Co. (and those groovy mood rings from the ’60s), other crafty entrepreneurs are, as we inhale, running with this chameleon construct. Soon, my sources tell me, we will have such exotic items as cars and trucks that can change color with a press of a button (no vans, though—a color-changing van is just too creepy), faucets that can turn your water red or blue (or various shades thereof) depending on temperature so you won’t be shocked out of your skin, house paint that will change colors with the seasons, and a wondrous array of other hue-changing goodies that will forever transform everything as we know it and end world hunger and all that stuff.

The house-paint-changing-color-with-the-seasons bit, however, might not fly here in Texas. Every single cotton-picking dwelling in this entire state would be hothouse red 363 days of the year, if this god-forsaken year is any indication.

Anyhow, I got to thinking how we our own selves could apply this brainchild to our daily living. For example, we could douse our milk in these color-changing chemicals, thereby ending the mystery. If the cowjuice is green, don’t drink it. She’s turned, laddie.

How about the dog? They’ve studied chameleons, ya know, and scientist types figured that these little guys change color not only for camouflage but for other reasons, like combat, courtship, and temperature regulation. When Clem Chameleon is black, he’s mad. When he’s bright and patterned, he’s feeling a bit randy—and when he’s gray, he needs a cold one. What if we could develop a pill you give the dog, so we could tell when he needs to do his business?

“Honey, Ralph’s blue. It’s your turn.”

“Unh, uh. I took him out last time.”

Perhaps we could even apply this to our own bods. Would make the singles scene so much simpler.

“Hey, Bob, look. In the corner there. She is cute.”

“Not purple, though. She’s not in the mood.”

“Well, you could get her purple, man. Go on.”

OK, I’m sorry. Got a little too far out there. Color me chided.

Roger White is a freelance writer living in Austin, Texas, with his lovely wife, two precocious daughters, a very fat dachshund, and a self-absorbed cat. For further adventures, visit oldspouse.wordpress.com.