captaincliff

I admit when I was a kid, the Fourth of July was cool. I associated the holiday with colorful fireworks, cold beer, sitting on the lawn with blankets, making out with girlfriends if I had one, or trying to hook-up with someone new and fairly cute if I didn’t. Growing up in a suburb of Chicago in the 1950’s and 60’s it was all about America, Uncle Sam, barbecues, swimming pools and warm but not too steamy summer nights. Somehow I also remember a lot of ice cream, popsicles, and, as a teenager, sneaking away to smoke a joint with friends to really see and “feel” the fireworks. Plain and simple I enjoyed it.

Now, as an adult, and particularly as a Baby Boomer with grown up kids I despise the whole idea and loath the very thought of shlepping to some crowded parking lot in traffic (welcome to Atlanta) in 100 degree heat (hey, it’s cooling down a bit, it’s 98) to watch the same stupid thing all over again. I dont want to seem crabby and overemotional. I’ve got reasons. Here are five good reasons to hate the Fourth of July. Listen up young people. I read all your lame hipster articles and techno nerd digital diatribes. In fact I would respond more often to your self-congratulatory “aren’t we young and hip/fly” acronym infested articles but I always have trouble typing in the CAPTCHA codes correctly. I’m not a fucking cryptographer.  Some of us have mild learning disorders and vision problems you age-ist pricks!   Now it’s my cantankerous turn:

1)  Most of the firework displays suck shit. If you live in Iowa or Idaho or Wyoming or anywhere except three or four big cities, the so called “colorful holiday festivities” are lame. It takes you longer to drive to the show then the shows themselves, which are usually held in large open spaces like state fairgrounds or minor league stadiums with crappy crowded urinals and concrete bunker restrooms that smell exactly how you would expect; like beer, barf and urine. If you are lucky enough to live in a big city that can afford a decent firework display like Chicago, Los Angeles, New York or Boston, the shows are respectable and there might even be good music that seems to accompany the light show (they really dont, it’s all in your head, stupid)  but by the time it’s over in less then an hour,  you still have to file out of some overcrowded place like shell-shocked cowboys caught in a cattle stampede. The chances of getting to your car with the same set of occupants you arrived with is low to nil. Losing a child in a crowd of potential child molesters and teenagers violently high on Spice and cheap gin can really strain a marriage.

2) The whole premise of the Fourth of July is a lie and some kind of government conspiracy. Stop worrying about 9/11, idiot. Those were real terrorists and real planes plowing into real buildings. It really happened. While you are poring over footage of the Apollo Moon Landing looking for “inconsistencies” and watching Oliver Stone’s paranoid fantasies about who really shot JFK (who really cares, he’s completely dead whether it was “down and to the right or not”) there is a yearly historical inaccuracy and blatant mythology called July 4th being sold to you, and you like a dumb shmuck are buying it wholesale like cheap Chinese fabrics for three times the price. Sure some rich white guys signed some Declaration of Independence document on July 4th, 1776, but it took them until 1783 to actually get the British to stop shooting them full of cannonballs and musket shells. More important, only the rich white guys ended up feeling  relatively free or “independent “.  Just go ask any 18th century or even 19th century woman, black person, Native American or anyone who didnt have a hundred slaves around to bake their sour dough bread or pour them a glass of cold beer. Plus, they didnt even have refrigerators to keep it all icy cold until around 1940. Kind of throws a little piss on the parade to think about warm ale and not so happy slaves on let’s say… July 4th, 1830, doesn’t it??

3) Once kids are taken out of the whole Norman Rockwell family picture, the 4th of July is a sensory nightmare and a ecological disgrace. Remember the recent stories about flocks of birds having their senses disrupted by airplanes and fireworks and subsequently flying into barns like a squadron of drunk Kamikazi pilots? Yeah, for some strange reason nature doesn’t exactly see the 4th of July and massive firework displays as “natural” or even something to celebrate. It messes them up like submarine sonar screws up the whales and dolphin’s built in GPS-like sonar. How would you like it if every time you began to turn left in your fancy little sports car your (obnoxious) voice activated video monitor and iphone GPS app kept repeating, “Recalculating…..turn left in 3456.7 miles??” Or, “In 3.2 miles crash directly into large red barn with blinking neon beer sign”…… Yeah, that’s right. You would hate it and especially hate the fact you have to call your dweeb insurance agent at midnight on July 5th when you know he’s doing 151 rum jello shots at his next door neighbors house party. Somehow they are never really like the sweet guys and gals that play them on the State Farm and Progressive Insurance TV commercials. Sorry, that’s not covered Family Guy……By the way, while we’re talking carbon foot print nightmares and eco-Armageddon, did you  ever notice how much paper and garbage and random debris is left after a night of 4th of July revelry?  The tidy subdivision looks more like Baghdad after our “shock and awe” campaign then the safe little suburban enclave you cashed out your 401K to barely afford. It’s not unusual to see a neighbors nice cedar shake roof covered with a tarp because little Tommy the 13 year old kid with ADHD thought it was a great idea to strap all the bottle rockets together and light it with a home-made flame thrower. Which brings me to #4.

4) Have you figured out that July 4th is dangerous?  How fun is it to take your 9 year old son or daughter, now missing half their thumb to the local hospital emergency room which doubles as a homeless shelter for the 365 days a year drunks and drug addicts that live around you? The chances of getting quality medical treatment in the middle of the night at the ER and leaving the next morning with money and WITHOUT  a newly acquired MERSA infection is, well, impossible to calculate. Plus, I’d like to see all you tech wizards out there text each other without a thumb!  Dont blame me if you think its fun to shoot off home=made fireworks you acquired on your last road trip to Alabama at a place called “Annies Arsenal”. If you see them in the back of the barn eating barbecue with one hand and stuffing gunpowder and fuses into spray painted cardboard toilet paper rolls with the other, I’d say it’s a bad sign. All in all, cant we agree that fire, explosions, drought, famine, napalm and rampant forest fires currently consuming half of the nation’s National Parks suggest we might want to curb the stunning light shows sponsored by Big Pharma? You want to see a light show right now? Fly to Colorado. Watch Colorado Springs burn down as we speak. Also, if the bears in Yellowstone are in fact learning to carry barbecue skewers and lighter fluid as recently reported, this suggests dangerous conditions for all species involved.

5) Of course I could give you 10 reasons but apparently the attention span of the average reader is now 3 nano seconds, so I’ll just do one more. Be honest. Be real. What we need in this world right now is NOT more noise, more air pollution, more screaming and yelling, but rather more calm and something you twits have completely forgotten, silence. The older I get, the more I just want everyone, including the TV announcers, politicians and every bipedal mammal on the planet  to shut the hell up. When Americans think to celebrate and show reverence, they just get louder, not quieter. Have you ever heard people talking during the Star Spangled Banner at the ballgame? Sure you have, at least a quarter of you morons wont ever turn off your iPhones, stop texting or shut the fuck up…ever.  Allow me to repeat. We dont need another loud, booming, ear splitting holiday. We dont need to be blinded by intense phosphorus shells with toxic colored plumes of acrid smoke and ash. Our kids dont need any more stimulation any more then you need to go order a triple expresso at Starbucks after chugging a jumbo sized Monster energy drink or two. Most of you young people walk around like Red Bull, crack-Adderall addicts with a 24/7 Jones for heavy metal and sensory motor stimulation.  Honestly, I want to blow up the cars with loud rap music playing at red lights. You all need to mellow the fuck out and teach the kids to do the same. Instead of July 4th, take a yoga class, listen to a relaxation tape, and stay away from low flying flocks of birds. Your kids will thank you someday and as for Uncle Sam, I really think he is way more into April 15th anyway.

Cliff Mazer Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist and humorist who lives and works in Sandy Springs, Georgia. He has a thing  for Pirates and other people with ADD. He blogs fairly anonymously on Facebook and WordPress at https://captaincliff.wordpress.com/     Contact:  404-932-7193

Isn’t Facebook the weirdest trip of all? People of my generation who weren’t Lieutenant Colonels in the ROTC like that douche Neidermeyer in the movie Animal House, all pretty much remember doing drugs including hallucinogens like LSD and smoking pot, of course. Of course back then the drugs were purely recreational and not some refined hybrid species of monster chemicals and brain altering substances like today. Generally, we would just have these loooong slow “trips” of interesting feelings and unusual sensations that would (at best) expand our minds temporarily and occasionally open our hearts. At worst, they would just make us hungry and in IMMEDIATE need of strawberry ice cream. Now unfortunately everything I take, including aspirin, just makes me hungry. While I do remember a few people having “bad trips” and “bummer” experiences on drugs in high school and college (ie. “dont take the purple acid, man” at Woodstock, etc.) there was no rash of cannabalistic face-eating zombie attacks, or synthetic blends of chemical marijuana that led to someone stabbing someone else 234 times with a carving knife. At least I dont remember anything like that. Really psycho crazy people like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy always existed but we luckily never saw them and they certainly didn’t become our Facebook friends.

Did you hear what I said? There was no Facebook. Yes, young-ins, can you imagine a world devoid of Twitter, Zynga, laptops, cellphones and Netflix? Could you even survive in a digital wasteland without Wikipedia and Pinterest and Words With Friends? My point, before you and your attention deficit disorder comrades lose interest (I know, too many words and not enough good graphics) is that I do still like Facebook, even tho I doubt I’ll ever like Timeline or Mark Zuckerberg. I like Facebook because it is a tremendous forum for my kind of narcissistic self-disclosure, sometimes called humor and wit, and because it put me back in touch with lots of people from my past. Facebook is a constant, albeit paradoxical reminder of a long and winding trip I’ve taken called life. It reminds me of my childhood in Highland Park, Illinois, of my college days at UC Boulder, and of my glory days in Hawaii and San Francisco. Thanks to the magic of Facebook stalking it also reminds me how many of the people who I once thought were dweebs and dorks actually grew up to be rich, powerful, confident and successful human beings….and as a result they take actual trips to the Galapagos Islands, Istanbul, Paris, St. Kitts and Florence. I know this because I see all the pictures they post and I drool while they use their iPhones to take close up pictures of their breakfast, lunch and dinner.  They do this while I type away (in bed) in my unfinished partially renovated home in Atlanta where it is currently 106 degrees. Not that I am complaining or jealous in any way. I’m just saying having Facebook has both pluses and minuses, and when the mood strikes me I can either see what my high school classmates, circa 1971 are doing, notice how flabby and old my recent photos of myself appear, or use a convenient app to call the Publix pharmacy to see if my Simvastatin and blood pressure medicine is ready. Those drugs are ok I guess, but there really isn’t any kind of high or consciousness raising to be gained from either of them. Now my Viagra….that’s a whole different story.

Everyone pretty much knows that to be a teenager is to be at least partially insane. It’s often difficult to diagnose a mental or emotional disorder in someone under 18 years old because well, most of them behave at times like they are either bipolar, psychotic, or under the influence of some powerful mind and hormone altering drug. Normally they are and its called “puberty” followed by the social disease known as peer pressure. Disclaimer: Some kids really are in need of psychiatric help and have real life psychological problems. A lot of other times, we, their parents are their big problem, or so they like to remind us…on a regular basis. We similarly reminded our square, straight annoying parents the same thing as we yelled, “leave me alone!” often followed by the slamming of a door. I think the only difference is we may have used the word “please!” in a command tense either at the beginning or end of our crying screaming teen-aged rant. Kids today go right to the f-word and other unmentionables.

All things considered there are still a number of  more recent adolescent trends that most people would still consider absolutely insane and worthy of the spanking of a lifetime. I’m not even counting as one of these trends the verbal harassment and humiliation of older lady school bus monitors until they cry and are eventually compensated hundreds of thousands of dollars by sympathetic well-wishers. Nor does the list include the “Salt and Ice” challenge which leaves participants with scars, lacerations and burns to the backside worthy of a Mel Gibson Passion of the Christ remake. The following list of sick twisted and stupid ideas is not theoretical but well documented (see web story below) as the various “things” that kids come up with to be cool, to fit in, to get high, or just to push the envelope of unhealthy reaches unheard of levels. Sort of like the weather. Hot enough for ya?? Smoking Smarties? WTF?
http://www.ivillage.com/dangerous-teen-fads-you-should-know-about/6-b-141376

Finally, after many years of disappointment and high expectations thanks to sci-fi movies like Total Recall, Blade Runner, and Spielberg’s brilliant film, Artificial Intelligence (AI), there is a Facebook app and Zynga.com inspired social “game” that is an approximation of virtual sex. I say approximation because in the game called The Ville (yeah, as in Farmville)  it STILL looks to me like lego characters who get to go to the “advanced level” allowing them to shed their clothes and hop into a bed and “do it”. From what I read the actual sex act is concealed under a blanket of hearts or rose petals or some such animated fig leaf. That means, essentially and especially to us guys, that we are back to square one. As far as we’re concerned, we see more realistic whoopee in movies like Team America:World Police in which the puppets copulate.

Let’s face it gentlemen, most of us have since our childhoods in the 50’s or 60’s dreamed of only two or three technological innovations: space travel that somehow involves sex, the microwave oven, and virtual sex without emotional, financial or romantic “strings” attached. It is a sad commentary that today in Stardate 2012 we only have one of the three basic Man-dreams fulfilled. I do admit that the first time my high school girlfriend, Ellen Friedman cooked a large barbecued beef rib in a futuristic microwave in 1970 (her dad sold them) I did feel something like love in my heart and a noticeable sensation in my stomach that signaled a new era in male-female relations and gastronomy.  However, such a brave new world that would finally include the following: 1) sex in space 2) sex with life-like robots (who always tell us how great we are) and 3) pornographic holograms in which we can engage in multi-dimensional sex with attractive alien species has turned out to be one big black hole of nada-nothing. The whole Farmville, Simville, buy and sell marital bliss and feathering of ones “domestic nest” version of virtual existence is well, a pale imitation of what we already have…..and would like to escape via a rocket ship with warp drive, a transporter or the Enterprise holodeck where anything is possible, like sex without puppet strings and barbecued ribs without calories or cholesterol.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57460883/new-zynga-game-the-ville-allows-virtual-sex/?tag=re1.channel

Folks, I don’t know if I can keep doing any more “sex news” blogging. The whole thing has gotten so weird and out of control that I fear a Noah-sized flood or Yahweh-inspired Sodom and Gomorrah fiery inferno at any time. I dont even have to go looking for sick twisted stories online about sexual deviation among mankind and well, most other species and/or unusual household products. Most of it is daily news on HuffPost. The worst part of it is that it’s no longer even strange to read such stories which would have sent my maternal grandfather reaching for his nitroglycerin tablets and my grandmother for her shoebox of anti-psychotic medications. I dont feel like embellishing or explaining this particular news item today. I just want to pose a simple question or two such as: 1) Why would a Florida man need to engage in oral sex with his girlfriend’s three-legged dog? 2) Why did this same individual feel it necessary to download images of said behavior to his cellphone? 3) Finally, where in hell did he locate an attorney able to find a loophole in Florida’s penal code (get it?) and bestiality law stating that kissing or licking Fido’s boner is ok, but penetrating it with anything even vaguely humanoid is not? I would probably also wonder: how much do you think lawyers in Florida charge by the hour to defend such precedent setting cases? Probably just a tad bit more than Jose Baez charged Casey Anthony and the state of Florida for getting her acquitted and certified as a lifeguard at Typhoon Lagoon near Disneyworld ….just kidding.

I guess the point is attorneys will defend any case or demented defendant no matter how weird and wacked out they might be. It’s apparently vital to our form of government and legal system. Everyone, even completely guilty totally in-denial child molesters and serial showerers like Jerry Sandusky are presumed innocent until 53845 former victims show up in court and testify against you. In the Sandusky case the guy went through more soap and shower suds then all the car washes in Western Pennsylvania. It should have been an obvious, albeit slippery forensic clue, don’t you agree?  Anyway, dont worry about the dog kisser-molester guy. Apparently he had alot of kiddie porn on his computer and they can still nab him for that, but then who’s computer nowadays doesnt? Hey, by the way, how DO you get rid of a hard drive? Just kidding…not. I can always blame it on my kids, my kids friends and applied sex research. Somehow I dont think the doggy dude is going to be able to get off scot free (especially by his gf) by explaining, “Hey, I saw Cesar Milan suggest it on the Dog Whisperer”.  Ewww.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/23/florida-bestiality-law-oral-sex-loophole_n_1621001.html

Disclaimer: The following blog was just written under the influence of Benedryl, antihistamine gel, 800 mgs of Ibuprofen and possibly a Viagra pill I mistakenly thought was for allergy relief. I took them all after being stung twice by Yellow Jackets in my front yard. They are vicious little stinging/flying insects that show no mercy. Maybe I should check on the three Mexican guys I hired to spread the mulch with me. I dont hear any more screaming or cursing in Spanish outside. I guess I’ll know in less then four hours if I took the wrong toxic medicine for the wrong problem. No big deal, so to speak……My typing is DEFINITELY off as I’m having to go back and forth with the DELETE, SHIFT and BACK keys. Wait, there is no BACK key…..is there??

Will whoever was NOT molested by Jerry Sandusky please stand up…

In a stunning new development Jerry Sandusky’s own attorney, Joe Amendola as well as LeBron James, Dennis Rodman, Joe Namath, Rodney King, King Frederic the Great and the entire Swedish royal family have come forward to say that the assistant coach at Penn State had molested them in the past. Karen Klein, the so called “bus lady” in the viral video denied that anything physical or sexual occurred, but did add that, “he (Jerry) has a really foul mouth when no one is around”. Apparently all of the incidents occurred in the basement of  Sandusky’s modest split level home while his wife slept through it and was completely unaware of what was going on.

“I thought he was just going down to the kitchen to eat crackers, cheese and Chinese leftovers late at nite. I really didn’t think the blood curling screams and cries for help were anything that serious.”, Sandusky’s wife, Dottie told reporters outside the Centre county courthouse only minutes after the guilty verdict was reached.

Two male jurors have also threatened to file civil charges against the defendant saying that Mr. Sandusky repeatedly attempted to enter their hotel room at the Holiday Inn through a second story window while the jury was sequestered during the three week trial.  One of the jurors, now a graduate student at Penn State added that Jerry Sandusky “begged us to please cuddle” while reading aloud his autobiography entitled, “Touched”. The unnamed jurors post-trial statements were independently corroborated by  a hotel maid who says she recognized the man lurking outside the lobby as the former Penn State coach because, “His picture is all over the internet and he’s got really weird old man teeth”. The district attorney’s office had no comment on the most recent allegations but a spokesman for Bellefonte county where the court house is located did casually admit, “Why doesn’t somebody just put this fool out of his misery and save the taxpayers money? I mean this is a difficult time economically and we all have to come up with practical ways to trim state and county costs. We just plain cant afford all these trials and related legal fees. Plus, this guy is a total douchebag”.

Have you watched the viral video of the poor (submissive) school monitor lady on the bus taking heaps of verbal abuse from jerky little preteen boys? How long could you have put up with that before you said to yourself, “This is no longer worth the crappy paycheck. I would rather strangle these kids and do the Arnold Schwarzenegger Commando “neck twist” thing on the kid with the camera rather than just sit here and take it. First I will systematically beat the crap out of all of them and then nicely and calmly resign”. Of course the sweet older lady, Karen Klein didn’t have much choice because in today’s society the corporal punishment of asinine, ill-tempered 8th graders comes with a lawsuit and a short jail sentence. Except in Texas and parts of South Carolina, where it is still legal to marry your own children and tie them to your dilapidated trailer. I’m sorry. I’m still a little worked up right now after watching the full 10 minute phone cam video of the delightful, well-mannered kids they raise in Greek, or Greece or Grease, New York. I take back what I said about Texas. They have capital punishment (the death sentence) in Texas and are willing to impose it on toddlers, particularly killer toddlers who lack remorse and cant afford a good criminal defense attorney…and are black or Hispanic.

Dont get me wrong, I am very glad the nice lady is now being warmly supported by email and via the internet they have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for her to take a dream vacation and possibly early retirement. Hey, wait a minute. I would like hundreds of thousands of dollars and a dream vacation……and my kids were pretty shitty to me at that age…..and then again at around 17 too!!  I would be willing to invite 5 or 6 really obnoxious 12 or 13 year olds to verbally abuse me for 10 minutes. In fact, if the parents are interested they can pay me directly for having their brats yell and curse and foam at the mouth in my general direction. If they let me take a swing at them when its all over I’d even be willing to take 10% off the final tab. I would say that’s only fair. Argh!
http://www.indiegogo.com/loveforkarenhklein

Have you ever taken Ambien, the popular sleeping pill and gotten a relatively decent nights sleep only to wake up to garlic bread crumbs, a stop watch, an empty carton of orange sherbet and one of your neighbors you never met before in your bed?  Ok, I was exaggerating about the neighbor but the rest is the gods honest truth.

Ambien (Zolpidem) is some good stuff for many of us who cant just do as Samuel L. Jackson has eloquently put it in his rendition of the popular childrens book, “Go The Fuck To Sleep!” There are a million reasons people cant fall asleep or stay asleep. The older you get the harder it seems to turn off the mental computer and go into “sleep mode”. I’m sure the 56 different electronic and digital devices in the room all blinking and lighting up and beckoning ones attention dont help. Wait, it’s 3:25 AM, I better check my Facebook status to see if anyone else “liked” it…….or hey, I wonder if anyone has linked to my blog (otherwise known as my post-mortem memoirs) in the middle of the night unnoticed.  How sick is it that I’ve had daydreams about dying and then having people read my blog and murmur to themselves, “Wow, he was so witty…I should have spent more of my busy day (as a full-time neurosurgeon and mother of three toddlers) reading it and commenting”. Clearly this is the modern day version of Huckleberry Finn where Tom Sawyer attends his own funeral to hear what people say about him.

Anyway, back to insomnia and Ambien. If you are one of the 23 million people who take it (thats right, we are all in some kind of bizarre sleeping pill cult) it can have some unusual side effects for a certain zombified minority. Instead of eating peoples brains we apparently sleepwalk, often to the kitchen where we collect and consume an assortment of foodstuff and odd utensils. One morning I found a Ginsu knife and and a plastic ice cream scoop in my room that I had no memory of. Maybe the scooper went with the orange sherbet. I cant say. The point is that weird things happen once the Undead arise and Ambien is the prime suspect for many of us. Some people like my 25 year old son Eli have more obvious so called “paradoxical side effects” like refusal to sleep and having long conversations with items in the refrigerator, including the fresh produce. I’m not kidding or exaggerating. It really happened. Also, Eli is a personal trainer with huge muscles and intervening in his intimate exchange with the carrots and broccoli was not easy. He didnt get belligerent or anything. He just didn’t want to be interrupted. Apparently I dont either when I am under the effects of Ambien, a so called non-benzo hypnotic and then wake up and start shuffling around… without even realizing it. The only funny part about it is my initial reaction of surprise to the seemingly random things strewn around the next morning. I now have a predictable pre-set exclamation that I say aloud for full effect, “Hey, how did THAT get there??” Of course when “that” involves a neighbor’s cat hanging from a ceiling fan or three empty bags of Doritos (big ones) on the floor next to the bed it’s a little hard to deny who was responsible, especially when the car is later found in the driveway with the motor running………If this gets any worse I’m either going to call my shrink or at the very least start checking the car trunk each morning for bodies.

P.S.  Riiight, here’s what kept me up last nite writing this. Is it more correct to say awoke, awaken, awoken, or ewok (out of frustration) in the first sentence? The online arguments on the subject are endless and inconclusive. I gave up and said “wake up to”. Meanwhile, I couldn’t go the fuck to sleep…..

My kids got me one of those Keurig auto-make coffee machines for Fathers Day. The coffee tastes good and there are many choices, ie. Starbucks dark roast, expresso, Caribou breakfast blend, high grade heroin, morning methadone, etc. Apparently anything can be compressed into those little plastic “portion pack” k-cups and then marketed to and from the now exceedingly rich Jewish entrepreneur who probably invented and patented the machine. This time I dont think it was Ron Popiel or by Ronco. The Owners manual and “Welcome to Keurig” literature is longer and more detailed then what I got with my Lexus. They also throw in some French on the box like, “Goutez a la variete” to make it sound European and therefore more gourmet.  Apparently I am no longer just making coffee. According to the manual, I am now a sophisticated “brewer” engaged in the fresh brewing of coffee. It’s still hard for me to adjust to NOT thinking of an automatic coffee maker as something I would use at the gas station (by pushing multiple buttons to make a bizarre concoction) along with a Snickers bar and a pint of motor oil. I went to a store in Miami a few years ago that exclusively sold these high-end coffee machines like they were selling time-share condos and Maseratis. The glistening products lined the walls. Specially trained baristas (all very good looking and perky) ushered us into small groups of wealthy and wealthier people willing to listen to a shtick trying to sell you on buying into a $900 machine and lifetime contract that makes one cup of coffee at a time, but oh what a cup it is……..Anyway, my kids just went to WalMart and bought me the smaller one that was on sale.

As usual I felt a little sad and guilty “putting away” my well worn Mr. Coffee machine. I stuck it under one of my kitchen drawers, “just in case”. Now I have to figure out different places to steal the various compressed k-cups of liquid gold, er I mean coffee……and probably a small (ok huge) handful of Splendas. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sign up for some special “club” that ships me my private blend of futuristic java.