007 License to Kill Okay, what is 006 then?

The new Bond movie has a new, very hunky Bond and the benefit of special effects. I’m kinda glad. I know Bond is the quintessential misogynist, egocentric, irascible bad boy with a good heart. If he were an actual person in real life, his inability to emotionally connect, commit, or even reliably participate in your life would make you cut the brake lines on his speedy car yourself. Still, there’s a strange existential appeal to a person who lives by their rules and never gets caught. I think that’s why men and women love Bond. For men, it’s the guy they wish they could be. For the women, it’s the one we can’t tame, but it sure is fun to try.

But what about the other “double o’s”? What levels come before 007? Do you have to go through each level like getting a Black Belt?

001 - License to Nag: 001 allows you to nag in any fashion you can create. You might ask the same question over and over in different forms. There’s so many ways to nag, it only takes a little imagination. Nagging allows you to follow people through the house restating your opinions over and over until they capitulate. It takes focus and perseverance to wear the enemy down. In time, they will do anything you ask if you just shut up! Then, they are putty in your hands.

002 - License to Yell Real Loud: 002 seems to work better for men than women. Men have that nice deep voice that can be heard through slammed bathroom doors. A loud yeller can be very intimidating. It makes the victim think they might go over the deep end at any time.

003 - License to Silence: More intimidating than yelling, the silent treatment. As a 003, you can refuse to speak to people for days while giving them hateful looks. Very effective. If you don’t talk, they don’t know what you’re thinking... are you planning to make cookies or torch the house?

004 - License to Smack: This is the first level where you get to hit people. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as a stinging slap. As a 004, you can administer one head twisting smack, or smack back and forth till you see teeth fly, it’s really up to you. What a pleasure to slap people who really need it; like people who cut lines, people who are holding up the drive up banking line; shoppers who are still deciding at the checkout, which color blouse they want. You perform a real public service when you give this person a wake up smack.

005- License to Beat Senseless: The 005 level allows you to beat senseless anyone who is assigned to you for a beating or anyone you see who deserves one. When you see a Porsche park in a Handicapped space and an able bodied male pops out, you can beat him till he IS disabled enough to qualify for the space. When you get your order from a fast-food drive through and the order is wrong, if you go in and they argue with you, as a 005, you can beat them with their french fries basket until they remake your entire order and give it to you for free. Many people choose to stop at the 005 level because they get all the advantages of the 007 level in terms of coercing people, without having to qualify with all those weapons. What's the real advantage of being able to assemble a Baretta handgun, in the dark and underwater and having to kill the person, when a simple beating to within an inch of their life, will get the point across without having to stop what your doing for body disposal? Leave them alive so they can crawl away....

006 License to be Passive Aggressive: Far more powerful than nagging, being silent, smacking or beating people is being passive aggressive. Pouring bleach on someone’s clothes, slashing tires, leaving the seat up, erasing messages...all done anonymously of course. What better way to drive anyone nuts than to act out and not give the other person a clue about what they’ve done to irritate you, or an opportunity to work it out? When they blame other people for the action, you can foment their anger with encouraging gossip. Then sit back and enjoy the satisfaction of them decking an innocent party.

007 License to Kill. Everyone thinks this is the big deal level. But it’s really reserved for those who washed out of 006....

The New Old Fashioned Thanksgiving!

Kennebec Journal, Kennebec, ME 11/11/06
4 p.m., a Wilson Pond Road caller reported his mother’s neighbor, who he has a farm property line dispute with, was standing on his lawn with a rifle in his arms, making turkey noises.

“Joe! What are you doing on the lawn with a gun?”

“Just once Mary, I want to have the whole Thanksgiving experience. I want to hunt my own turkey, kill it myself, dress it and cook it. What’s the benefit of living in the country if you can’t have an authentic Thanksgiving once in awhile?”

“I don’t think sitting in a lawn chair with a gun and calling turkeys over from the neighbor’s farm qualifies as a hunting experience. And what do you mean, dress the turkey?”

“Dressing the meat... cut off the head, gut it, pull out the feathers, you know...”

“No, I don’t know and I’m not doing that when I can buy a Butterball at Fred’s Market.”

“It’s all part of the frontier experience, Mary, geez, have a little adventure. I make the kill, bring home the beast and you dress it. Division of labor.”

“If you insist on doing this, you dress it. I’ll cook it, but that’s it.”

“Right. You'll be too busy digging up potatoes and yams for the feast.”

“What potatoes and yams? We don’t have a garden.”

“And turnips. I love turnips.”

“How much of the Discovery Channel have you been watching, Joe? Where are all these crazy ideas coming from?”

“A man has to test himself. He has to know how to survive in the wild, Mary.”

“You wanna test yourself? You wanna survive in the wild? Get in the car, Joe.”

“Where are we going?”

“It’s Wednesday morning, Joe. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. I’ll show you danger that will make your heart race, thrills that will chill you to the bone, and endurance tests the likes of which you cannot imagine.”
(one half hour later, the parking lot of Fred’s Market)

“Joe...run... grab that last cart! Push that woman down if you have to!”

“I got it!”

“Run for the door, Joe!”

“Oh my gosh, Mary.. I drowning in a sea of people, where are you?”

“I’m here darling! Reach up, grab my hand! Pull me in!”

“Got cha!”

“Push the cart, Joe! Push through the throngs of people to the fresh turkey bins!”

“Hooray, we made it!”

“Reach in the bin, Joe, grab anything you can hold onto and yank it out. Once it’s in the cart, it’s ours!”

“I got one!”

“Onto the stuffing and cranberry sauce, follow me, Joe!”

“I don’t know if I can make it, Mary! You go on without me..”

“No, Joe! We’re in this together. All the way to the checkout line and beyond to the parking lot! Come on, me bucko!”

“Mary, oh Mary....I had no idea. I never appreciated you like I should have. I just want you to know that you’re the best wife....”

“No time for that now, Joe! We’ve got to get to the stuffing and the cranberry sauce. The potatoes are on the way to the Pumpkin pies. We can do it Joe, We can make it if we work together.”

“Not the Pumpkin pies, Mary. We’ll never make it to the Bakery section. Let’s be thankful for what we have and go for the checkout.”

“Chickening out on me Joe? Haven’t got the guts? Where’s the man I married? The man for faces turkeys alone in his yard armed only with a rifle and a lawn chair? Where’s that man?”

“He’s right here baby... with you all the way. Now where’s that Bakery?”

“That way Joe, see the sign?”

“I see it, sweet cheeks. You just get behind me and grab my belt.”

“Oh....Joe....”

“We’re here, Mary, reach out and grab the pies!”

“I got ‘em, Joe! I got two! Head for the checkout!”

“My heart is pounding, Mary. I feel so alive! It’s the thrill of the hunt. I knew I was born to it.”

“Now comes the hard part, Joe. We’re in line. We must survive for two hours while guarding everything in the basket. We can trade with the others for things we missed. I’ll throw my body over the basket, Joe. Watch my back.”

“I got you covered, darlin’, I brought my gun.”

“Oh Joe, you were right. There’s nothing like the thrill of the hunt together!”

Weight ...Wait a Minute...

“Judge ye not...”

If you’re thin, don’t bother reading this column, just keep turning the pages till you hit some wine tasting section because you’re not going to understand any of this. Today’s column is just for those of us who battle the bulge.

Okay, gang, here we are again. Facing the holidaze. We just spent a lot of money at IGA to give away candy and get the same candy back. How dumb are we?

Now, what to do with the candy? We can’t throw it out because that would be wasteful. But if we keep it, it will call to us all day ....”Stop vacuuming... come to me.. come to me.. .”. I can hear a Snickers bar call me through six feet of concrete. I mean, it’s just a minibar... three Weight Watcher points. How bad could it be? We begin to rationalize... “I could eat five minibars and still have enough points for a skinless chicken breast and a huge salad”.

Oscar Wilde said, “The best way to dissipate temptation is to give into it.” That logic works perfectly this time of year. My trick is to limit the temptation. Throw out the second tier candy now. We all know the first tier is all the chocolate candies, then there’s the second tier stuff, Sweet Tarts, DumDums, and such. We only eat that because we’re out of the other. So, toss out the second tier stuff as soon as you can. The first tier candies only last a week at most. That leaves two weeks of sensible eating before Thanksgiving strikes. If you don’t throw out the second tier candies now, the candy will last till Thanksgiving.

Do your best till Thanksgiving and then just relax and enjoy the day. Try to eat your Thanksgiving dinner with other heavy people instead of family members. That way you can eat in peace without your family monitoring every morsel you put on your plate. What kills the joy of a feast faster than a relative pointing out that you’d save 16 calories with butter sprinkles instead of butter? And don’t you love the way they say it - like you didn’t know that? It always puts us on the defensive, which moves them into attack mode. They launch into a lecture of whatever they did for four whole days that allowed them to shake off five pounds. Then they say the stupidest thing, “You know, five pounds to me is like fifty pounds to you.” That’s like equating a stolen kiss to a rape. Thin people are as cruel as they are clueless. We know the difference between five and fifty pounds, two pant sizes. Fat does not mean stupid.

Another plus of dining with other heavy people is you can have dessert without feeling eyes on you from all corners of the room. If you dine with relatives, you can only have one sliced of pie. It has to be pumpkin, because everyone knows that’s the lowest calorie pie and therefore you are allowed one criticism-free slice. Then you get to watch everyone else enjoy the pecan pie, fruitcake and rum balls. I have an Aunt I haven’t seen in years. I avoid her because she feels perfectly comfortable demanding to know my clothing sizes. She, who has always been thin, eats more in one sitting than I do in a whole day. That seems to be the case with most thin people. Just once, I’d love to sit on one of them and squash them, as a kind of perverted poetic justice. Well... it’s the thought that counts...

Do your level best between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Then enjoy Christmas dinner guilt free if you can. Thin people usually give us a break on Christmas day, but only if they get to say, “Don’t worry, you can start dieting after New Year’s.” So we take the one day pass and surprisingly to those who watch us, we don’t really eat more than anyone else does. It just stays on us longer and piles up. My goal isn’t to lose any weight over the holidaze, my goal is not to gain more. If I can just hold the line till January, I will consider it a successful holiday.

So, my dear fellow weebles (weebles wobble but we don’t fall down), do your best and don’t feel bad if you have to body slam a skinny person now and then. It provides us an emotional release and might keep us from emotional eating - which is what the skinnies warn us against anyway...

Man Laws

Man Laws for the Holidaze

There’s a funny commercial series running now featuring Burt Reynolds and other men sitting around a table creating “Manlaws”, like “no fruit slices in beer”. I write a lot of columns from the women’s perspective, but I know men have a perspective too, however incorrect and misguided. I consulted with a few of my brothers and got their opinions on some holiday issues that surface this time of year. I have removed the obscenities, corrected the grammar and I’ll share these Holiday Manlaws with you now.

If you want me to carve the pumpkin, you can’t supervise or criticize. Also, two teeth are the limit I will cut out for a pumpkin’s smile, live with it.

Don’t show me a picture from a magazine expect me to be able to carve a designer pumpkin that looks like the picture. I cannot carve the Mona Lisa into a pumpkin!

Don’t tell me to take the kids Trick or Treating and then tell me not to let them eat too much candy! They are collecting a sack of candy! They will have a Hersey’s hangover by morning.

Just get accept it now - mittens WILL be lost tonight! I can’t keep track of two goblins, a ballerina, a zombie, and eight mittens all at the same time!

It wasn’t my idea to schedule a football game on Thanksgiving Day. You’re right, it breaks up family time. You’re right it’s horrible background noise for those conversing in the other room after dinner. You’re right I should have enough interest in my family to turn off the TV. You’re right about everything, okay? Now can I watch the game?

They say, everyone is entitled to fifteen minutes of fame. Let me have fifteen minutes as Head of the Household. Let me stand at the head of the table and carve the turkey without one word from anyone as to how it should be done, how they do it, how it was done by their father. It’s a dead bird and I have a large knife, I think I can take him.

Don’t make low calorie gravy or anything suggested by the American Heart Assc as Thanksgiving substitutes. There are no calories or cholesterol in a Thanksgiving dinner.

Give me three days to digest my Thanksgiving meal before you start telling me your Christmas decoration plans and how easy it will be for me to add a new wing by Christmas.

If you buy a Christmas decoration that has to be mounted on the roof, you mount it. Don’t buy anything that can’t be mounted from halfway up a ladder or lower.

If you want me to untangle Christmas lights, you and the children must leave the house. Untangling lights is one of the oldest forms of torture dating back to the Middle Ages. It comes in right after a root canal with no anesthetic and terrible rash in a place that can’t be reached. I am not responsible for anything I say or throw while untangling Christmas lights.

Clear an area for a tree and practice the art of silence. A tree will appear in the designated spot soon. As soon as I have the money, time, energy and rope. Nagging clogs up the area of a man’s brain where the To Do list is.

I don’t care how long it takes. The tree has to be plum. If it’s not straight, it will drive me crazy. You can’t obscure it with bulbs and tinsel... I’ll know it’s not straight. Just get behind the tree and turn it the way I tell you till I’m happy. For all the stuff you do that drives me nuts, you owe me this....

Please don’t buy any toys that need assembly. If you buy a toy that needs assembly, look at the directions. If you can’t read Japanese, neither can I. If you bring home a wagon that needs assembly and the directions are in Japanese, but you got it anyway because it was ‘on sale’ and you assumed I can figure it out myself, stop and pick up a bottle of Henessey’s as well. I may or may not be able to put the wagon together, but at least I’ll pass out before I try to kill you.

I can’t say it, because I know how much you love being a martyr, but I do like it when you decorate the house. I do love all the little things you do for the holidaze, but you didn’t hear it from me.