Exploding wedding birds

This article originally appeared in the Sierra Vista Herald on 18 January 2015.

I was recently invited to a wedding in Tucson, which was nice.  At this point in my life, I’m usually only invited to funerals.  This wedding was held at a nice resort at the base of the Santa Catalina Mountains.  The ceremony was held outdoors in a grove of large mesquite and cottonwood trees decorated with twinkly lights.  The happy couple stood in a white gazebo upon an immense, perfectly manicured lawn, while nearby, ducks quacked blissfully upon a small pond.  It could not have been a more ideal setting.   It rained, of course.    

The couple getting married were military, but were not from the same branch, so there were members of various branches of the armed forces in attendance.  This is always a bad idea.  It is like having a wedding and inviting Wildcat fans and Sun Devil fans.  Come to think of it; they were in attendance as well. It is a wonder that the resort was not destroyed by the end of the evening.  The only reason it survived, I think, is because the owner was there and he was a retired Marine.  He knew how to keep me…I mean, things from getting out of hand. 

I used to really enjoy going to wedding receptions when I was growing up.  Where else could you go and watch adults acting so stupid?  I fit right in.  Even as a child I was way ahead of my time when it came to acting stupid.  At one wedding I attended, the bride tossed her garter to the male guests in the same manner in which the bouquet is thrown to the bridesmaids.  A brawl ensued between some of the more badly behaved boys who tore at the garter like alligators fighting over a live chicken. Some eyes may have been blackened in the process.  Somewhere there is a photo of me wearing the garter around my head like a sweatband—the slightly torn garter tab dangling over my bruised eye.   

At another wedding I attended as a child, the guests had been given some little packages of rice in white muslin bags, bound with a little white ribbon. Very tasteful. This was back in the days before we believed that throwing rice at weddings caused birds to explode.  I was given one of the bags of rice and instructed to throw it at the bride when she came out of the chapel.  I was not told that you were supposed to open the bag before you threw the rice.  I had a great arm as a child and would later in life play pitcher for my Little League team.  I wound up and threw the bag at the bride, catching her square in the left cheek.  The expression on her face will haunt me forever.  It was if I had thrown an exploding bird at her. 

Back in the good-old, exploding birds days, presents were brought to the wedding and placed on a big table.  This is not done now.  Now, you go online and buy gifts through a registry.  This is a much better idea, especially for people who hate shopping and wrapping presents.  For my military friends, I selected a deep fat fryer from their registry.  I had a card included.  It read, “I hope your love for each other burns as hot as the food items placed in this appliance.”  What can I say? I have a way with words. 

Three weeks after the wedding, I found the blessed couple down at the stables (where I know them from) carefully removing the manure from their horse’s pen.  It turns out the new husband had lost his wedding ring while feeding his horse. He believed that the ring had fallen into the hay and had been consumed by the horse.  Although I considered this highly unlikely, I did not want to spoil what was clearly going to be such a romantic scene.  What could possibly be more symbolic than seeing the happy couple working together, carefully sifting through horse manure, looking for the token of their young love?  Perfect.   

They eventually found it, of course.  Not in the manure, but in the grass outside the horse pen.  After all the celebrating and hugging between the couple was over, I sternly assumed my role as their wise mentor and counselor. 

                “And, what have we learned from this?” I asked the relieved husband.

                “Uh, to remove my ring or wear gloves when feeding my horse,” he said thoughtfully.

                “ No,” I said, “It is not to get married.” 

When I recounted this conversation to my wife later, she rewarded my wise mentoring with a new bruised eye to match the one in the garter photo from long ago.  What can I say? I have a way with words.  

Selling my soul for biodynamic food

It is not easy being an ignorant savage in an increasingly progressive world. Even simple tasks like finding an appropriate place to eat food can be extraordinarily complicated if you are saddled with guilt about the environment, animal rights, and not being appropriately progressive. During a recent trip to Tempe, which is a typical college town, I endeavored to find a restaurant that met all the requirements of being socially acceptable to even the most stuck-up hipster nerd.

Through an exhaustive search which consisted of me Googling the phrase hipster-nerd restaurants, I managed to find a café that promised to be biodynamic, organic, and artisan. Wow! Jackpot! It was like winning the pretentious foody trifecta in one go. Of course, I wasn’t sure what any of these terms meant, but they sounded annoyingly socially conscious. Perfect.

I think I understand what organic means. That means the food is grown by people with bare feet who use their dog’s feces to fertilize it and then sell the produce for ridiculously high prices. I am vaguely aware of the term, “artisanal.” I think it means you will pay a lot more for it and it because it comes in a glass jar with hand-drawn labels.

However, I had no idea what biodynamic meant. It doesn’t sound healthy. I immediately thought of that scene in the movie, “Alien,” when that creature jumped out of John Hurt’s chest. OK, maybe that was an extreme example of biodynamic. Maybe the term just meant you’d get a tapeworm from the food. 

I asked the receptionist at the restaurant what biodynamic meant. She said she didn’t know because she was just a receptionist. “Perfect answer,” I said. She thought about it some more and came back to me eager to provide a better answer. She told me it meant that no pesticides were used on the food, blah, blah, blah. “That sounds like organic farming,” I said. She admitted that they were similar.

So, I turned to the ultimate source of all human knowledge—Google.

It turns out that biodynamic doesn’t mean that a body-snatcher plant will duplicate your human form and then consume your body husk. It means something completely different and somewhat more unbelievable. It is a type of farming that combines organic farming techniques with spiritualism and lunar and astrological influences.

You will be surprised to know that biodynamic farmer wasn’t invented by a Millennial. It was invented by this guy from Austria named Rudolf Steiner who got into spiritualism after he saw the ghost of his aunt on a train in 1870. He invented his holistic approach to agriculture in 1924 in response to requests from farmers who were concerned about the future of agriculture. Steiner laid down the techniques for natural farming that became the basis for organic farming today.

But, Steiner took it a bit further. He required that farmers put manure compost in cow horns and bury them in the ground through the winter to prepare the soil. Next, powdered quartz was put in the cow horns and buried in the spring. Then, things get a little weird. The biodynamic farmer must bury various combinations of herbs, cow guts, peat, flowers, and the skull of a domestic animal stuffed with bark at precise points in the astrological calendar to properly prepare the soil for the intended crop.

At least there was no mention of demon blood being sprinkled on the ground or people dancing naked around the cow horns in the moonlight.

By the way, the food was excellent. I just hope they didn’t steal my soul in the process. 

Urine trouble, pardner

There are some common-sense cowboy sayings that every man or woman should be familiar with even if they don’t wear a big hat and castrate cattle for a living. Although most of these sayings were practical observations that only made sense on the open range, we can apply some of them to life in general.

One example of a saying that makes sense out West but has application to city life would be, “Never drop your gun to hug a grizzly.” Now, I can’t think of any logical reason for a cowboy to hug a grizzly, but I suppose it gets lonely out on the prairie and a cowpoke must look for affection wherever he can find it. In any case, the application to urban life is that you should never let your guard down when dealing with potentially dangerous people—like a mother-in-law, for instance.

Another example of a good cowboy saying is, “Always drink upstream from the herd.” To a city dweller, I think this translates to, “Never open your mouth when swimming in a public pool.” However, based on a recent story I read in the news, I may have been wrong about this.  It might really mean, “Never use a microwave oven in a convenience store.”

According to numerous news reports, last week a woman was cited for putting her urine in a microwave oven at a 7-Eleven store in Aurora, Colorado. The woman, whose name is Angelique Sanchez, was seen by a store employee putting something into a microwave oven. Seconds later the employee heard a loud bang and then saw Sanchez take a white plastic bottle out of the oven.

The clerk saw a yellow, urine-smelling liquid dripping out of the oven and demanded that Sanchez clean it up. Sanchez grabbed a handful of napkins and wiped the liquid out of the oven onto the floor and left. The Aurora police were summoned and tracked down Sanchez a half mile away at a local health clinic where she was taking a urinalysis test as part of a job application.

Apparently, she planned to heat up the urine in the white bottle until it was body-temperature and then submit it as her own sample. I guess if the sample was below body temperature the clinic people would know that it was not from her. I guess she has a close friend willing to donate their urine to her or maybe she mugged a hobo earlier in the day.

When the police officer questioned Sanchez about leaving urine in an oven that people were using to cook their food in, she allegedly told the officer that it wasn’t real urine. Oh, that changes everything. I’m sure most people wouldn’t be bothered by cooking their food in an oven soaked in a yellow liquid that only smells like urine.

Whatever was in that plastic bottle, Sanchez was ultimately cited for destruction of a $500 appliance, and she wasn’t allowed to complete her drug test. The news articles didn’t say what job she was applying for. Since marijuana is legal in Colorado, it must have been a job that permits smoking dope, but not crack or meth—a marijuana-friendly job like airline pilot, school teacher, or Navy SEAL. Whatever.

 The important lesson here is to never, never, never under any circumstances eat anything that comes out of a convenience store microwave--or as a cowboy would say, “Always take a good look at what you’re about to eat. It’s not so important to know what it is, but it is critical to know what it was.”

Designer nipples

Entertainment world celebrities have long driven fashion trends in America. Whether it’s a style of hair, dress, or fitness, people will spend lots of their hard-earned cash to ape their favorite cultural icon. Celebrities themselves are not immune to this desire to appropriate the style of other celebrities. Witness Michael Jackson who had himself physically modified with specific attributes he admired in others. Of course, we all understood that Jackson was nuts.

Now, it seems that ordinary people are paying big bucks to plastic surgeons to copy a specific physical characteristic of a specific celebrity.  In this recent fashion trend, people are asking doctors to give them Kendall Jenner’s nipples.

Not being in tune with the Hollywood fashion world, I wasn’t sure who Kendall Jenner was. I recognized the last name as belonging to the Kardashian-Jenner clan of people with no obvious talent other than self-promotion but wasn’t clear on how she fits into it or what she did that was so important that people wanted her nipples. After I did a little research, I discovered that Kendall Jenner’s contributions to the entertainment world were stunningly uninspiring. She is a model and has appeared in many of her clan’s reality TV shows. 

I’m still not sure what the deal is with Kendall’s nipples. Apparently, they are often visible through her clothing. Reportedly, some women admire their pointiness and wish to achieve a similar look. Indeed. It just goes to show how little I know about this subject. I thought all nipples were pointy. Now I know better. I have now learned that some women suffer from underperforming nipples and that they get nipple envy.

Fortunately, there are plenty of plastic surgeons out there who are willing to help women overcome this serious social stigma. Surgeons can provide several different modifications to your pointy bits to meet your personal goals. They can change the shape, color, size, and pointiness of your nipples and areolas. The modifications aren’t permanent but last a couple of years which is way better than your standard BOTOX treatment that only lasts about four months. The cost depends on what you want done but starts at about $700.

Wow, that seems like a lot of money for something that a couple of ice cubes could do.

However, if you don’t want to shell out $700 every couple of years to stay abreast (get it?) of current fashions, you can go with a cheaper option. A company called, “Just Nips” will sell you a pair of nipples for $24.99. They can be used up to ten times, and they come in two sizes—cold and freezing. They have an adhesive backing that allows you to position them where needed.

I’m not sure how Kendall Jenner became the poster child for designer nipples. It seems to me lots of other celebrities frequently appear in public with visible headlamps. I’m wondering if there is a catalog that people can use. Categories could include regular, celebrity, and porn star. Maybe Kendall’s half-sister, Kim Kardashian should give up on the perfume business and launch a designer nipple line.

There is also the possibility someone will design a nipple that can be adjusted as needed. Settings would include lingerie, bikini, t-shirt, wool sweater, arctic parka, and fembot (for NRA activists). Nipple color could also be adjusted between pink, cocoa, and Rudolph. Settings could be changed by twisting the control nipple installed on either the right or left, depending on preferences.

Well, I suppose it could be worse. Instead of Kendall nipples, people could be trying to get Caitlyn nipples.