Is It Safe?

There have been stories for many years about people whose dental fillings have become tiny radio transmitters in their mouths. The effect reported ranges from a low buzz or high pitched squeal to a full-on broadcast from deep inside one's head. This cold prove most maddening, but since the signals that set off such wacky occurrences were caused by proximity to high-powered antennae, the folks who were affected were primarily limited to those on the outskirts of town. You know. In trailer parks. The ones with foil on the windows. How were they to discern the voices in their head form the radio waves?
Nonetheless, any sort of dental oddity is difficult, if not impossible, to ignore. This may be why I have made it my mission to keep my own teeth and gums as free and clear of debris and communications satellites as possible. Which is precisely how I found myself on the horns of a mighty flossing dilemma. Before bed, I was breaking up the plaque matrix in my usual methodical way when suddenly the slender strand of unwaxed floss frayed and broke off, stranding a tiny piece wedged between my lower right molars. I sighed, pulled another piece of floss form the spool and set about retrieving the knot of thread wedged in that tiny crack. Numerous attempts to go back between those two teeth merely sawed the floss neatly in two, much in the way those grinding plates were intended.
All the while, the bit of thread lodged in the corner of my mouth seemed to expand. Each method of removal became more frantic and distressed as I enlisted my wife's help to dig around in there. Maybe she could see that chunk of debris and bring my suffering to an end. Finally, after numerous assaults, we gave up. I went to a fitful night's sleep with the persistent pressure of something stuck between my teeth.
When I awoke the next morning, I felt some relief, but it only took a few minutes for my tongue to find the tattered ends, reminding me that there was still work to do. Before I could set about the rest of my day, I needed some relief. This time, we went in with the superior technology of waxed dental tape. Sparing you all the details of home dental surgery, I was able with the help of my loving wife to remove what had begun to feel like a fist-sized knot of rope from the corner of my jaw. I breathed a sigh of relief, and from somewhere far away I heard the voices in my head more clearly: "Buy more unwaxed floss."

We Can Be Heroes

Dave Sanders. That's the name that has been rolling about my head over the past week as the story of yet another school shooting has been splashed across the twenty-four hour news cycle. Dave was a teacher at Columbine High School who was shot and killed on that day back in another century. He was trying to save students at his school from bad guys who were shooting up his school.
Frank Hall chased a kid out of his school who was shooting "indiscriminately" in the cafeteria. He doesn't feel that he was a hero, perhaps because he couldn't do anything about the four kids who were shot. Three of them died. If he hadn't confronted this kid with a gun, it is unclear how many more might have been wounded or killed. He's a hero.
Mark Foster "wanted to reveal that internal dialogue of a kid who doesn't have anywhere to turn." The result was "Pumped Up Kicks," a song that may be the tipping point of youth gone wild. It's hard to imagine such a ditty would reflect the despair that existed in Eric Harris or T.J. Lane. It's hard to imagine that any of the songs that attempt to reflect the mindset of a killer could make the top of the charts. Is Mark Foster a hero?
On my playground, when I see little boys chasing after each other with their fingers pointed, making sounds informed by plenty of movies and video games, I call them over to me. "Hand over the guns," I tell them. One by one, they step forward and pantomime disarming. "Now we're going to toss the guns into the ocean." A few of them holler their disapproval. Most of them are resigned to their fate. I make a big show of hurling the arsenal over my shoulder and watching it land with a splash, far out to sea somewhere across the blacktop. Some of them will re-arm themselves after I walk away. I'm not a hero. But there are a few who get the message: They admonish their friends, "Mister Caven said 'No guns!'" They're the heroes.

Rush To Judgement

The definition of "news" is that the item in question should be deemed noteworthy, in some way a departure from the status quo. By this reckoning, Rush Limbaugh's most recent outburst aimed at Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke hardly meets this criteria. His rambling associations about the relative costs of birth control and taxpayer's responsibility to fund such services are nothing out of the ordinary. He leaped abruptly from the health care concern to the character of the woman who chose to testify before congress in support of their national health care policy that would compel her college to offer health plans that cover her birth control. It should surprise no one that he called Ms. Fluke a "prostitute" and a "slut." By his reasoning: "What does it say about the college coed ... who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex." A day later he expanded on this theme: "If we're going to have to pay for this, then we want something in return, Ms. Fluke. And that would be the videos of all this sex posted online so we can see what we're getting for our money." That was Wednesday and Thursday. By Saturday, six advertisers had pulled sponsorship of Limbaugh's show and Republicans distanced themselves from the comments. That's when the news happened.
"For over twenty years, I have illustrated the absurd with absurdity, three hours a day, five days a week," Limbaugh said in his statement. "In this instance, I chose the wrong words in my analogy of the situation. I did not mean a personal attack on Ms. Fluke." Rush apologized. If there were presses anymore, they would be stopped. Of course, the apology stopped immediately after the poor word choice. His opinion on the matter of government subsidized contraception remains unswayed. "I personally do not agree that American citizens should pay for these social activities," he said. "What happened to personal responsibility and accountability? Where do we draw the line? If this is accepted as the norm, what will follow? Will we be debating if taxpayers should pay for new sneakers for all students that are interested in running to keep fit?" Of course, not everyone can afford addiction to prescription pain killers and subsequent rehab. Personal responsibility and accountability on Rush's part? That would be news indeed.

This Monkee's Gone To Heaven

If you have listened to me opine for more than fifteen minutes about my torturous youth, you've probably heard me moaning about how my older brother got first pick of everything: He got Hot Wheels. I got Johnny Lightning. He got Quisp. I got Quake. He got the Beatles. I got the Monkees. You can't get Quake anymore. You can order Quisp online. You can pick up a new Hot Wheels car at Target. Good luck finding a Johnny Lighting car, even at suggested retailers.
But I got lucky with the Monkees. They kept recording after the Fab Four went their separate ways. They also did something the Beatles never even threatened to do: reunited. Sure, Mike didn't show up for most of these get-togethers, but there was still Monkee music to be had. In various permutations, Peter, Micky, Mike and Davy could be found somewhere on a stage off and on over the past forty-plus years.
Now, the "pre-fab four" are down to a trio. Davy Jones took his final bow this week at the age of sixty-six. His passing came as a surprise, and was met with a flurry of kind words and reminiscences. As a guy, I can confess that Davy was never my favorite primarily because he was the cute one, and I found this threatening. You wouldn't catch Mike holding still for a Tiger Beat cover shoot. That was Mickey and Davy's territory. Being cute can take its toll on a person, but Davy always wore it well, from his appearance on the Brady Bunch TV show to his return to glory in the Brady Bunch movie, decades later. The years weren't quite as nice to Micky Dolenz, and Peter Tork has been even a little harder to find between reunion gigs.
And now, there will be no more Monkees shows. Davy shuffled off to Buffalo and left me with pleasant memories of Saturday morning reruns in the sixties, and MTV marathons in the eighties. I guess second pick wasn't so bad after all. Aloha, Davy.

Everything's Fine

The Dow finished the day above thirteen thousand for the first time since 2008. Back in the dark times, before the Clone Wars. At last, we as a nation can finally breathe easy, knowing that the troubles are over. The Conference Board, a private research group, said its consumer confidence jumped to 70.8 in February, up from 61.5 in January. Who could doubt that our country is on its way back to the top.
Yes? You in the back with your hand up?
"What about the rest of us who are watching gas prices creep toward five dollars a gallon..."
Nothing to worry about. Just unrest in the Middle East. If it gets any worse, we'll send in some Navy Seals to take care of it.
"But what about the millions of dollars that people lost in the crash of the banks? People whose entire retirement portfolios were reduced to just pennies on the dollar?"
Well, now is the time to get back in the game! Look at all the confidence you have! It's more than seventy!
"What does that mean, though? I want to be able to send my kids to college -"
College? That's for snobs.
"I want to be able to buy a home."
Yeah, well, there are some very nice foreclosures coming on the market right about now.
"I don't have time to play the market. I've got to go to work. All my investments have to survive the long haul, not these periodic leaps and bounds."
That's okay. Didn't you see the latest Transformers movie, "Money Never Sleeps?" You could be doing after hours trading on foreign markets.
"You mean like Greece? Have they got all the fires out yet?"
Did I mention that the Dow topped thirteen thousand this week?

What's So Funny?

Along with a good portion of the rest of the planet, I watched the Academy Awards this past weekend. For me, it rounds out the winter must-see spectacle season, kind of a shadow of the Super Bowl just a few weeks before. I can remember when Johnny Carson hosted the Oscars. He was funny. I can remember when Jon Stewart hosted. He was funnier than David Letterman, but I knew that they were both out of their comfort zone, and I have remained fans of their appearances when the rest of the world has been happy to let these one-timers slide into history. I also remember Billy Crystal. He was funny.
Was. There was a time back in the nineties when he was funny everywhere.
Okay, maybe there's a problem here. Maybe we don't all agree on what "funny" is. "Causing laughter or amusement." This is a dictionary definition, but it does provide a little insight. E.B. White once said, "Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind." In the case of Billy's 2012 Oscar gig, with apologies to Woody Allen, what we have here is a dead frog.
One of the things that causes something to be found humorous is a sudden change in abstraction levels. Simply put, if you're expecting it, it's not funny. There is still comedy to be mined out of repetition, just ask David Letterman, but appearing in black face doing a passable Sammy Davis Jr. after twenty-plus years goes beyond beating a dead horse. In my mind, I could hear the grand old man, Bob Hope, warming up in the bullpen: "Hey, I gotta tellya..."
Bill Murray turned down a big paycheck to do "Ghostbusters 3." He didn't figure anyone wanted to watch a bunch of old guys chasing computer generated ghosts around. That's a young man's game. And so, it would appear, is hosting the Oscars.

It's What's Inside

I saw a broken toy out in the street this morning. My first reaction was that of a parent: "How sad that a child's toy was left in the street to be crushed underneath the wheels of passing cars." That sadness was quickly mitigated by the memory of being a child. I remembered the fate of a number of toys that lived past their love and fascination stage. Many of these simply found a spot in the bottom of a box or drawer where they became the stuff of "Toy Story" legend. I wondered if the blue box that had been splintered in a dozen small pieces wasn't part of a larger experiment. "What would happen if..."
I remember how well Major Matt Mason stood up to being placed inside a coffee can full of water, then left in our freezer for a couple of days. I remember road testing our GI Joes by dragging them behind my friend's parents' pickup truck. How high could you throw something made of "high impact plastic" before it surrendered to less space age physics? And I remembered being very intrigued by the inner workings of the voice mechanism of my older brother's Chester O'Chimp doll. When my younger brother got a smaller, orange puppet version of the same toy, I saw my opening.
"When you pull the string," I queried my naive sibling, "what do you think happens?"
Eager to be a part of the experiment, or less eager to be bullied into it, he gave up his lightly used toy. Using rudimentary tools (a pair of scissors) he watched as I hacked and cut the voice box out of the back of the ape's head. The grey plastic case still held a mystery. Jamming the scissors into a seam, I began to pry. I paid no attention to my brother's reaction. Was he as intrigued as I was, or was he squirming in tormented empathy for his puppet pal? I paid him no heed.
When at last there was a snap and then a crack, I was able to see what was happening inside the speech center: It looked like a tiny record player wired to a speaker about the size of a silver dollar. I held this mess up to my brother, who gave me the happy gift of curiosity. "Cool," he said as he stared at the remains of his talking chimp puppet.
Then there was the mess. We stuffed the brainless puppet back into his toy box, and the shards of our lobotomy into the back of his closet. I'm sure that at some point I intended to try and find some use for the pieces, but there was to be no restoration. I'm guessing that might have been the story behind the bright blue box I found in the street. Perhaps my sinister motives are merely a projection. I left them behind as well.