Mike Taylor's Reality Check

Getting a haircut was more fun when girly pictures were involved

2012-01-31T14:19:00.000-08:00

Brenda cut my hair for nearly 15 years and knew my head the way Bill Clinton knows interns, which is to say, intimately. After a decade-and-a-half she could have probably trimmed my hair in the dark. The place I go to know, it sometimes looks as if they have.

But that’s OK; I don’t stress over a bad haircut. It’s the process of getting my head-fur shortened that bothers me.

When I was a kid, my dad dragged me to a guy named Carl on Grand Rapids’ West Side who for fifty cents would buzz my hair down to a comfortable stubble that lasted a few months between cuts. The cut itself took about 45 seconds and there was no conversation. I was a kid and kid conversation not one of Carl’s priorities. Besides, he had girly centerfolds tacked up around his shop and memorizing those took up most of the mental power I would otherwise have needed to talk about my Little League team.

It wasn’t until years later that I found Brenda; she owned the shop a few blocks from my old house in Lakeview and—at the time—would cut my hair for ten bucks. A huge jump from Carl’s two bits, but still not bad by today’s standards.

As well as Brenda knew my head, she knew my life even better. When she was little more than a kid herself Brenda provided child care for my two progeny, a job known at the time as “baby-sitting.” It was only chance that we both wound up living years later in the same small, northern Michigan town.

Brenda not only knew my kids, she knew the (Former) Lovely Mrs. Taylor, who—it turns out—had been getting her hair cut at Brenda’s shop for some time by the time she first touched scissors to my head. In addition to family, Brenda also knew a lot of the same people I did, a fact of life in any American small town.

We not only had a history, but folks to gossip about. Getting a haircut from Brenda was a chance to catch up on the torrid, tawdry underbelly of my bucolic little hometown; who was doing what to (or with) whom. Brenda was the pre-Facebook Facebook. We rarely ran out of interesting dirt before the haircut was finished.

But Brenda’s an hour away now, which is too far for me to drive just to get my monthly trim. So I’ve been frequenting one of those salon chains with a shop in every neighborhood big enough to merit a McDonald’s. I’ve yet to have the same stylist twice.

The cuts are OK, but I hate trying to make conversation with a stranger; usually a female stranger in her mid-twenties. I have as much in common with these girls as an aardvark has with a Philippine merchant marine. I don’t want to know who Justin Bieber is dating and they couldn’t care less which character I like best on Golden Girls.

So I sit there in uncomfortable silence waiting for the cut to be finished so I can pay my 15 bucks and scram.

I wonder if Carl’s still cutting hair? He’d be about 108 now, but you never know. I wonder if he has any new centerfolds.

Give your iPad or Kindle what it really wants—Mike Taylor’s new eBook, Looking at the Pint Half Full, available at Amazon.com.

Weird things can happen when you insist on kissing a dog

2012-01-26T11:43:00.000-08:00

When I was kid people used to sweat. It's true. I remember seeing guys with shirts sticking to their backs at the Kresge's lunch counter back in the '60s. (Yes, I am that old, though I look about 32. Right?)

Anyway, people used to sweat, and not just the sort of people who drive fork lifts and operate air hammers. On hot August afternoons businessmen would sweat right through their seersucker suits. Sometimes, people got stinky. That's something else I remember from Kresge's lunch counter.

Nobody thought anything about it. You just held your breath until you were clear of the stinky person. It had no lasting adverse affect and built strong lungs for an entire generation.

Sure, people for the most part still bathed regularly. This is

America

, after all, not

France

. (I'm not trying to make friends with the French here.) Your choice of soap was Ivory or Kirk'sCastille, a white bar capable of melting the chrome from the bumper of your Buick in under an hour. It was the choice of real men.

Then some Madison Avenue type decided the world would be a better place if people didn't stink anymore. The Madison Avenue guy conferred with scientists and together they came up with a formula that not only prevented stinking, but cut back on sweating. Antiperspirant was born. Women, who had never been crazy about stinky men to begin with, embraced the idea.

Soon, no stinky man could get a date. Body powders, colognes, shavers with 32 blades that trim whiskers to a sub-microscopic stubble, foot powders, foot sprays, mouthwash, mouth-rinse, pre-brushing mouth rinse, pre-shave lotion, after-shave lotion, body wash, conditioner, facial masks, ear hair trimmers, nose hair trimmers, back hair trimmers, "other area" trimmers, waxing (for those for whom trimming isn't enough), and a million other "indispensable" grooming items and regimens followed.

We no longer sweat. In summer months we move from air conditioned homes to air conditioned cars to air conditioned offices. We sweat only when exercising outdoors and when we do we act like it's a Big Deal and get all self-righteous about it.

None of this really bugs me, despite my condescending tone thus far. I was sick in bed yesterday. I didn't shave, wash my hair, brush my teeth, shower. This morning I saw myself in the mirror and it wasn't pretty. Well, it's never really pretty, but the image staring back at me this a.m. was...let's just say if they ever hold auditions for The Hunchback of Notre Dame or The Elephant Man, my acting career can finally get under way.

At any rate, I wouldn't want to go back to the old "deodorant optional" days.

What has me worried is a commercial I saw recently on TV. In the commercial, an attractive brunette is sitting on a sofa with her shaggy, mixed-breed dog. The woman and dog are face-to-face, nose-to-nose. In Kentucky, contact this close would be cause for a shotgun wedding.

The woman wrinkles her nose and makes a "Euuuuugghhh" sound, presumably because the dog has, well, dog-breath. The commercial goes on to suggest a new line of doggy breath mints. Apparently, there are woman who are going to kiss dogs and in order to make this more pleasurable, doggy breath mints are a must.

Can doggy deodorant be far behind? Doggy shavers? Surely smooching Rover would be more palatable if he didn't have all that face-hair, right?

Maybe I'm worried over nothing. But this feels like a slippery slope to me. Something about it, I dunno, just doesn't smell right.

Mike Taylor's book, Lookingat the Pint Half Full, is available at Amazon.com mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

The future’s a funny thing when seen through the eyes of 1911 prognosticators

2012-01-16T15:57:00.000-08:00

Connie was for several years the most important woman in my life. Depending on whom you asked, she was a) my secretary; b) the office manager; or c) the brains of the operation. (I was the only person to ever refer to her as my secretary, and then only when I was speaking with people I was trying to impress. I thought saying I had a secretary made me look important. I still think that.)

Connie remembered the names of every citizen in the small town I called home and could recite them to me quickly whenever they approached the front door of the newspaper at which we worked. Then I could say things like, “Hey, Bill! How’s the wife and kids?” when they walked in the front door. It made me look like I knew what was going on. I did not. But Connie did.

Constance (she hates it when I call her that) moved down south to Hillbillyville, USA several years ago. I miss her way more than I do any of my ex-wives.

But we’re still Facebook “friends,” so I keep up with what’s going on with her husband, kids and miscellaneous grandchildren. More importantly, I still get to see all the stuff Connie thinks is funny, amusing or interesting, just as if we were still sharing an office.

Earlier today, she posted an article from a 1911edition of The Ladies Home Journal in which the editors predicted what life would be like in the United States by the year 2011. One might expect the predictions would be silly or at the very least far off the mark, but they aren’t. In fact, most are eerily accurate.

For instance, the editors predicted there would be between 350,000,000 to 500,000,000 people living in the United States by 2011. According to the Internet, which never lies, there were actually 312,862,977 U.S. citizens last year. Most of them spent their waking hours driving right in front of me, going ten miles per hour under the speed limit.

Other predictions included hot and cold air coming from spigots. The spigot idea didn’t work out, obviously, but the editors did describe with some accuracy central air and heating systems. Also, “ready cooked” meals that sound suspiciously like something you’d get at McDonald’s were envisaged, though the editors predicted the food would taste good, so points off there.

Automobiles that sold for less than horses were another prediction. I guess this depends on the horse and the car, but I’m guessing my 1994 Ford Taurus would pull in less cash than the offspring of Secretariat, say.

The editors also predicted air-ships, weapons that could decimate entire cities, the growth of the suburbs, subsidized education, automated farming, and the fax machine. Not bad for a bunch of guys who have been dead for at least 50 years (or longer).

They did miss the mark on a few predictions, no shame there. For instance, they foresaw the extinction of horses (by accident) and the extinction of flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches (on purpose). Neither of these prophecies came to pass, though I am hopeful with regard to the mosquito thing.

Other predictions included television (did happen), genetically-altered fruit (happening, despite a lot of whining from hippies and other people afraid of growing extra appendages), submarines (happened), free college educations (happened, provided you can hide from the student loan people until you die), cell phones (happened, according to my most recent bill), and auto air conditioning (happened, provided your car is not a 1994 Taurus, in which case it has been broken for a while).

Anyway, Constance’s article got me thinking about what life will be like in 2111, a century from now. I have some ideas, but I want yours, folks! Email your predictions to mtaylor325@gmail.com and I’ll run the best of ‘em in an upcoming Reality Check column. This is your chance to leave your mark on future generations!

In fact, let’s make a contest out of it. The very best prediction wins a 1994 Ford Taurus* with no air conditioning. Who knows? The old girl may have another 100 years in her.

*I’m kidding about the car. I need it to live in.

Give your Kindle something worth reading: Mike Taylor’s e-book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at Amazon.com and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Check your text messages to find out

2012-01-10T12:16:00.000-08:00

This morning over Cheerios I read yet another article about texting, the smart-phone phenomenon which allows communication via long distance without all the bother involved in using your mouth. Instead, you punch a whole bunch of little keys (either real or virtual) to send messages like “Ill se u ths aftrrrnon aroud 5,” which, allowing for typical texting typos, probably means, “The FBI has your house surrounded and they’re getting ready to toss in the tear gas canisters.”

The article didn’t mention typos, though. And for once it wasn’t another heated diatribe calling for the abolition of A) teenagers texting while driving, B) teenagers texting each other naked pictures, C) teenagers texting each other racy messages, or D) teenagers doing all the other fun stuff adults can’t do because our bodies are shot and we no longer look good naked, even on tiny cell-phone screens.

The article was about a recently-discovered behavior exhibited by some teens called sleep texting. That’s right, sleep texting.

So far Dr. Jason Coles—the “sleep medicine expert” cited in the story—has witnessed this behavior only in teens, but in time it’s sure to spread to older members of society. Sleep texting is exactly what it sounds like; texting in your sleep.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the text messages I receive—mostly from my kids, who don’t realize a phone also can be used for voice communication—are for the most part decipherable, if not exactly typo-free. This is not the case with sleep texting, according to Dr. Coles. Coles says texts created while “half awake, half asleep” can make no sense, some sense or more sense than the sender would likely be comfortable with.

In short, a sleep text may reveal a hidden truth. The same can probably be said of drunken texting, which people do all the time, at least the sort of people I hang out with. I don’t know how many “I love you, man!” texts I’ve received from my buddy Jake over the past three years, all of them sent sometime after 2:30 a.m. He usually goes on to describe how he’s going to kick my (expletive) if I don’t immediately get down to the A) bar, B) VFW Hall, or C) strip club to “hang” with him.

I hope this sleep texting thing doesn’t begin to affect Jake. I do not want to be privy to the abnormal thoughts percolating in his murky subconscious.

In fact, I don’t want to receive sleep texts from anyone. I’m sure my son’s subconscious is still mad at me over the time I smacked him upside the head for lipping off to his stepmother. (I’m not proud of it, but it happened.) And I know my daughter’s subconscious would have a few things to say about the time I yelled at her when she spilled grape juice all over the carpet while I was in the middle of hanging wallpaper. She was only five, but I yelled anyway and made her cry. I’ve felt guilty over that for years, but that doesn’t mean I want to read about it in the first chapter of her tell-all book, written entirely in her sleep.

My Sweet Annie’s phone has no text messaging capability and frankly, I’m glad. We had a quarrel last night and I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know what she was really thinking about me after the lights went out.

I don’t sleep text myself, but now I’m worried I might. I think I’ll leave my phone in the kitchen at night, just to be on the safe side. I have a few things I could say to a certain presidential candidate and I do not want the Secret Service showing up on my front porch at 4 a.m.

Your Kindle desperately wants a copy of Mike Taylor’s e-book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, available at Amazon.com and other online booksellers. If you’re still reading paper, you can buy a “real” copy of the book at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.

Those basketball fans will be the death of me yet

2012-01-05T11:30:00.000-08:00

Times are hard and I’m beginning to think SweetAnnie has taken out a large life insurance policy on me in the hope of making them less hard (at least for herself). I can’t absolutely prove this is the case, but the anecdotal evidence that she’s trying to get me bumped off is overwhelming.

I’m writing this not so much as an attempt to cheat her out of the insurance money should her plan work, but rather as a possible last chapter to my posthumous biography, “I Was Robbed!”

Now Sweet Annie is—while not particularly devious—very intelligent. She’s too smart to simply push me into the Grand Canyon or tie antlers to my head and drop me off in the woods during deer hunting season. She has to make my untimely demise seem like an accident, or if not an accident, then at least a murder she had no part of.

To do this she has been taking advantage of my naiveté with regard to sports. With the exception of boxing, I don’t know diddley when it comes to sports. I can differentiate a baseball from a football (the football’s the one that bounces funny, right?) but that’s about it. As to professional sports teams—who’s playing whom—fuggidaboudit. I know nothing.

How is Sweet Annie using sports to kill me? Well, for the past year or so, she’s been loaning me a sweatshirt. It’s a nice hoodie that on more than one occasion has kept me warm when temperatures dropped suddenly and I had no jacket handy. It’s blue with white lettering, reading in large print: DUKE.

Some of you may already know that Duke is a university somewhere; North Carolina, I believe. Or Saskatchewan. Anyway, it’s a school and Annie’s brother is head of the English department there, which is how she scored the sweatshirt.

Some of you also may know that Duke fields a basketball team, supposedly a good one. And the Duke basketball team has a bitter rival; the University of North Carolina. I don’t know if these guys are with the NBA, NCAA or the NAACP, but the fans there take their basketball very seriously.

So seriously, in fact, that the mere sight of Annie’s Duke sweatshirt gives UNC fans an unquenchable desire to engage in the one sport I understand and enjoy (see boxing, above). On at least three occasions, young guys have sent disparaging comments in my direction while I was wearing the Duke shirt. When I try to explain to them that I don’t give a rat’s hindquarters about Duke, UNC or any other basketball team, Sweet Annie chastises me for being “disloyal” to the Duke spirit.

See? She trying to get me to, um, duke it out over Duke. Though I like boxing, even Muhammad Ali was retired by the time he was my age, and for good reason. He wanted to live. So do I.

So, no more Duke shirt for me. If Annie wants that insurance money, she’s going to have to do better than that.

Make your Kindle happy! But it a copy of Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, available from Amazon and other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Legal or not, I just can’t be trusted with a taser

2011-12-28T13:53:00.000-08:00

I read an article the other day that said Michigan lawmakers are considering a bill to make it legal for regular folks to carry a taser, one of those devices that dispenses a high-voltage charge toward potential attackers, rapists and Republicans with strong opinions, rendering them—temporarily at least—defenseless. I don’t know what your thoughts are on this, but personally, I’m against it.

Not to worry; when it comes to things like gun control, prayer in schools, reproductive rights and teaching creationism vs. evolution my opinions remain unchanged: I believe whatever you believe.

But when it comes to this taser thing…well…I just think they’re too dangerous. Not for you, maybe, or for most sane, rational people; I think they’re too dangerous for me. I could never be trusted with one. I know myself that well.

Oh, I have a couple guns, left over from the days my son was young and I thought it would be fun and manly for the two of us to go “plinking” occasionally. For two summers, Jordan and I had a great time shooting the arms and legs off his sister’s discarded Barbie dolls. Then he outgrew the sport. I felt a little foolish blasting away at fashion dolls by myself, so the guns were disassembled, secured with cable trigger locks and packed away in a cheap gun safe where they will be readily available should the Soviet Union ever get back together and threaten us with mass destruction. Those three .22’s will come in handy in case of a commie nuclear attack.

Over the years I’ve also owned several slingshots, BB guns, water pistols, pea shooters…I once even built a working catapult. I share this so you won’t think I’m some sort of “anti-weapons” nut, despite the Republican comment in paragraph one.

But I am worried about this taser thing. As I said, I know me. Eventually, I would get one, though I haven’t lived in a high-crime area in years. In my current neighborhood parking my rusty Ford outside the garage where people have to look at it is considered a capitol offense. Sweet Annie goes for her nightly walk hours after dark and I don’t worry. The roughest and most rowdy kids in the neighborhood might commit the heinous crime of cutting across your lawn, but if their parents found out, those same kids would be forced to send you a letter of apology accompanied by a coupon for a free cappuccino at the nearest upscale coffee house.

Self defense is not a legitimate excuse for owning a taser, not for me. But man do I want one!

I want one more than that kid in AChristmas Story wanted a BB gun. Part of the reason for this is that I’ve seen ‘em in action, years ago, when the police department in the town I was working purchased a few with money from a Homeland Security grant. They put on a demonstration for the press at which they tasered Cindy, the photographer covering the event with me. She dropped like a sack of potatoes. It made her cry and I felt bad for her, but in the darkest recesses of my heart it was then I began to lust after a taser of my own.

If they do legalize them and if I do get one, who would I use it on? I don’t know…I don’t see my two younger brothers that often and if I ever jolted Sweet Annie I’d never dare sleep again. Various presidential candidates also come to mind, but my guess is this would be frowned upon by the law enforcement community.

In the end, I fear I would try it on myself. I just wouldn’t be able to help it. And so I’m hoping our lawmakers don’t go through with this. People like me just can’t be trusted with this sort of technology.

Give your new Kindle a copy of Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, available at Amazon and most other major online booksellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

You can get into a lot of trouble on New Year’s Eve, especially with a driver’s license

2011-12-21T12:53:00.000-08:00

I have a long history of getting into trouble on New Year’s Eve. I’ve been stranded in snowstorms, drunk too much (which doesn’t happen often, much as it may appear that way in this column), gotten hopelessly lost driving home from gigs or parties…the list goes on. I’m hoping this year will be somehow different.

My weekend band is playing New Year’s Eve at (free plug alert!) Riverbend Bar & Grille in Ada, less than two miles from home, so any snowstorm looking to strand me there would have to be exceedingly formidable. Sweet Annie’s driving, so I needn’t worry about the affects of that extra glass of champagne I don’t really, technically, in all honesty need. And my car now has GPS, so it is—in theory, at least—impossible for me to get lost on the drive home, if I were driving, which again, officer, I am not.

So with any luck I’ll wake up around noon on New Year’s Day, well-rested, un-hung over and with the smell of slowly baking ham and sweet potatoes wafting into the bedroom. God will be in His Heaven and all will be right with the world.

Yup, that’s my hope.

But like I said, the odds aren’t good. The first of my New Year’s Eve misadventures took place the year of my 16^th birthday, two months after I received that Holy Grail of teenager-dom, my driver’s license.

The family car was, as were many in those days, a Ford Country Squire capable of housing an entire Catholic family, one that took the Pope’s admonitions about birth control very seriously. There were seven of us and you could still fit a couple dogs and cousins in there along with enough baggage to survive a cross-country trip. That Country Squire was, in no way whatever, a cool car.

Since my folks had no lives other than the daily wrangling of their herd of recalcitrant progeny, they had no plans for New Year’s Eve. I did. I was going to pick up my girlfriend Debbie and drive. When you’re 16, a destination is optional.

The weather was lousy and my mother didn’t want me to take the car. My dad, understanding he had four other perfectly good kids should something terrible happen to his eldest, overruled her. The last thing he said as I left the house was, “Don’t get stuck on any cow paths.”

I had no idea what a cow path was or why I might get stuck on one, but I was in a hurry to get out of the house before my old man could change his mind about loaning me the car so I promised I wouldn’t.

I did. With Debbie. In the middle of nowhere, next to some farmer’s field. What were we doing out there in the middle of the night in the sleeting rain? That’s the same question my mother and grandmother asked me when they drove out to pick us up. I didn’t give them an honest answer and I don’t feel the need to give you one, either.

This was after Debbie and I had hoofed it over a mile of muddy road to the nearest home with lights on, where Old McDonald let us use his phone to call for help.

It was an hour before the wrecker arrived to pull us out of the mud. The ride home with my mother was not a comfortable one. The encounter with my old man when we arrived home was not particularly pleasant either, though I did live to tell about it so that’s something.

I’m hoping this New Year’s Eve will be less eventful. All the roads between home and Riverbend Bar are paved and well-lighted.

We do have to cross one small bridge, however.

Uh-oh.

Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available online at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or in digital format from Amazon and most other major booksellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

They never give you the cell phone manual you really need

2011-12-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

I just gave my grandson Edison a smart phone for his birthday; no 11-year-old can compete in today’s hectic fifth-grade world without the ability to text, email and play Angry Birds. My granddaughter Rosie—two years younger than her brother—is still using a “dumb” phone, one that has only the ability to text, email, take photos and sort laundry into lights and darks. Somehow, she squeaks by.

My own cell phone boasts the ability to remotely pilot a space shuttle and find the flaws in Einstein’s GeneralTheory of Relativity. The deluxe version of the Relativity ap also allows you to correct Einstein’s flaws and achieve time travel, but that costs 99-cents and there’s no way I’m paying for an ap when I can download Angry Birds for free!

With Christmas just around the corner there are sure to be lots of new cell phones under lots of Christmas trees. Most of these will come with a manual that shows you how to download aps, perform speech recognition functions and—should the need ever arise—make a phone call. To make things easy, these manuals offer instructions in several different languages, one of which might or might not be English.

This may prove frustrating for some users, but it shouldn’t be. Why? Because those manuals don’t tell you anything you really need to know about your new cell phone anyway. I’ve gone through a lot of cell phones since purchasing my first brick-sized, battery sucking Motorola back in the Pleistocene Epoch and over the years I’ve learned what you really need to know about cell phones.

In fact, I’m thinking of coming out with a cell phone manual of my own, a general use kind of thing that applies to all brands and models. Here are some excerpts. If enough people are willing to shell out five bucks for the complete manual, I’ll write the rest.

CHAPTER THREE—SAFETY: Your new cell phone has been coated with a moisture attractant that causes it to gravitate toward water. If you place your phone near any liquid, it will eventually fall in. If you sit your phone on a restaurant table, your beer will tip over and drain into the unit’s most delicate electronic components. If you take your phone with you on a fishing boat so you can pretend you’re working should your editor happen to call, you will fall in the lake. This is especially true if you have been drinking beer and are too lazy to motor toward shore to make room for more. Attempts to “go” over the side of the boat will end in disaster, for both you and your new phone.

CHAPTER SIX—INSURANCE: Insurance for your new phone will seem inexpensive until you factor it out over the life of your phone, at which point you will realize you could have purchased four new phones and Trump Tower for what you’ve paid in premiums. Also, after covering your insurance faithfully for 15 months, your payment will somehow be “misplaced.” This will happen the same day you fall out of your boat, thereby negating your coverage. Oops.

CHAPTER NINE—PROPER PHONE HANDLING: If you hand your new phone to your grandson so he can say hello to his mother, he will drop it, usually on the pavement of a large parking lot or over a bridge and into a river. You will not be allowed to kill him because he is your grandson and you’re supposed to love him.

CHAPTER ELEVEN—OBSOLESCENCE: Your new cell phone is obsolete. Yes, even if you haven’t received your first bill yet. If you waited in line for three days to be the first person on your block to own the latest uber-mega-genius-phone, it will still be an antique by the time you get it home and out of the box. You might as well be using a wall-mounted unit with a crank on the side that only gets Mayberry operator “Sarah,” who will then put your call through to Mount Pilot.

CHAPTER TWELVE—SECURITY: This chapter includes information on choosing a screen protector, a silicon sleeve to protect the screen protector and a hard case to protect the sleeve. A large, steel gun safe usually serves to protect the hard case. This can in some ways negate the unit’s portability factor, but owners of fancy new cell phones like to keep them looking nice right up until the moment they fall out of the boat.

That’s it for now, I guess. I’ll come up with additional “indispensable” information if enough readers agree to shell out five bucks for my omnibus manual.

Buy Mike Taylor’s real book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, at mtrealitycheck.com or download the Kindle edition at Amazon.com.

I’ll have my spam shaken, not stirred, thank you

2011-12-02T13:12:00.000-08:00

This could be my last Reality Check column. By this time next week I fully expect to be embroiled in the exciting world of international espionage. I’ll be driving a cool little British sports car equipped with laser guns, rocket launchers, ejection seats, underwater capabilities and hidden turbo jets that pop out and propel me forward at mach 4 when I push the discreet red button hidden beneath the dashboard.

I’ll be dating a long-legged, scantily clad blonde who makes sneaky-looking facial expressions whenever my back is turned. She won’t know I’m watching her from the sides of my rear-view sunglasses and when it comes down to the wire I’ll shoot her before she gets a chance to shoot me. She will then have the good taste to die beautifully in my arms, whispering that I was only an “assignment” at first, but that she has grown to love me.

I’ll be engaging in hand-to-hand combat with Asian gentlemen who crush golf balls with their bare hands and cut the heads off marble statues with their thrown bowler hats.

I am going to be so cool. I will try to remember all you little people, but it ain’t gonna be easy once they issue me my number; I’m hoping for double-oh-eight, one better than James Bond’s 007. As Special Agent 008, I will routinely rid the world of whatever small pockets of Communism remain, even if that’s just five stoners with a Mao poster hanging on their dorm room wall at a college campus in Berkley.

And I will look good doing it. I already own a black suit. If things get formal, I guess I can rent a tux, at least until Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, or whomever I wind up working for supplies me with one of my own.

You may think I’m just blue-skying it here, but I’m not. I’ve already been contacted via email by a covert group of commie spies, probably former high-ranking members of the former Soviet Union’s Politburo. They’re trying to get me join them and go undercover as a “mole” here in the United States. At least, I think that’s what they want. Since I can’t read Cyrillic, I don’t know for sure.

As some of you regular readers may remember, in addition to this column I also pen a monthly horoscope for an English-speaking newspaper in Moscow. This, I assume, is how I came to the attention of the Russian agents. Because I regularly predict the futures of a couple million Muscovites, the agents suppose I’m sympathetic to their pro-commie agenda.

I’m not. I usually vote Democratic, but that’s about as subversive as I get. But the Russians don’t know this; they trust me. I plan to use this trust to gain inside information into their operation and pass it on to whichever agency is willing to hire me on and provide me with the car, blonde and free tux.

Of course, it’s possible, though unlikely, that the email I received is just some sort of Russian spam. I’m cutting-and-pasting it here in the hope that some bilingual Reality Check reader will be able to interpret it and let me know to which secluded parking garage I’m supposed to report:

Соберем для Вас по сети интернет базу данных потенциальных клиентов для Вашего Бизнеса (название телефон факс e-mail имена рода деятельности товары услуги итд) Узнать подробнее Вы можете по

That’s it. If you also could let me know if I’m supposed to wear a tux to that first meeting, I’d appreciate it.

Do svidanya, comrade. (Don’t call Homeland Security; I’m just practicing.)

Please email your Russian translations and/or plans for world domination to: mtaylor325@gmail.com.

If all you need is Andy and Barney, don't call in the SWAT team

2011-11-30T14:32:00.000-08:00

Until a year or so ago, I lived in a small town. Usually when I write about this town I mention it by name, but not this time. This time I'm likely to say some unkind things and I still have a friend serving on the village council there. I'd like to keep him, because he makes really good home-brewed beer and on occasion gives me some.

Anyway, it's not really the town's elected leaders I want to talk about, but rather some of their appointees; namely, the police.

When I moved to this town, which I will henceforth refer to as "Taylorville" since -- according to assorted ex-wives and girlfriends, I'm a narcissistic egomaniac -- there was one cop. His name was Rupert*, or Chief Addams if you were trying to talk your way out of a ticket.

Chief Addams was hired as the town's lone officer after retiring from the State Police. He spent most of his days in a cubicle down at the village offices. He read a lot of magazines, filed a little paperwork and on occasion drove the town's only police cruiser up and down main street to see if any crimes were being committed. This being Taylorville, none were.

In Taylorville, a "crime spree" consisted of kids TP-ing each others' houses after Homecoming. A "major crime spree" meant those same kids also had vandalized a couple mailboxes out on Youngman Road. About once a year, someone would break into the pizza joint or hardware store in the middle of the night and steal the $27.50 left overnight in the cash register. (I suspect the "perp" in these break-ins was Alvin McDonald, owner of the town's only insurance agency; without the occasional robbery the downtown business owners might cancel their theft policies.)

The only other crime committed with any regularity in Taylorville was the annual kidnapping of Jesus from the Methodist Church Nativity display. Every year on the first of December the Methodists would stick Jesus out there in the manger and every year he would go missing by December 20. Chief Addams would mount an investigation (from the comfort of his heated office) and wait for Jesus to turn up again Christmas Eve, as he always did, often on the bench in front of the village offices.

Then Chief Addams retired. He didn't really need the money and was growing weary of the malcontents calling him at home because their neighbor's pit bull wouldn't shut the hell up, already.

Rather than follow the time honored tradition of hiring another recent State Police retiree, the village council decided it was time to "shake things up." They hired a kid who looked almost old enough to order a beer, but not quite. Kevin Binkey, our new chief, subscribed to the Barney Fife philosophy of peace-keeping: Everyone is a suspect and guilty of something. Binkey wrote more tickets in his first week than Chief Addams had written in his career.

Great-grandfathers who had never received a ticket in their lives got their first from Chief Binkey, sometimes for the heinous crime of driving two miles per hour over the posted 25 mph limit. Others got tickets for turning right out of the grocery store parking lot without first engaging the correct blinker. And that seat belt law -- never popular in rural communities -- became a whole lot less popular under Binkey's Draconian rule.

The village council was amazed by how much revenue this generated. So amazed that they hired on another full time officer. Then a part-timer. Chief Binkey suddenly found himself leader of a police force. You could tell he liked it way too much. He began to strut around town like Darth Vader stalking the hallways of the Death Star.

Kids on skateboards got tickets. Old ladies crossing against the town's only traffic light got tickets. People who parked their cars in their front yards to wash them got tickets. The council used the extra revenue to hire yet another part time officer and buy a second, used cruiser.

Taylorville is now an orderly village. No one drives 26 miles per hour, but always 25. If Taylorville had trains, they would run on time.

And if there ever is a serious crime in Taylorville, you can be sure the law will be there. To pass out tickets to the gawkers and loiterers.

*All names changed in case I'm ever stopped for speeding or coasting through a stop sign within village limits.

Mike Taylor's book, Lookingat the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

If only I had loved Spiderman just a little bit more…

2011-11-10T11:47:00.000-08:00

My younger brother William collects comic books, Star Wars memorabilia and “action figures” (known as “dolls” to people who don’t collect action figures). I used to think he was a nerd, but he’s actually a pretty cool guy. He was married, has a couple kids—who also collect comic books and action figures—and lives a fairly normal life.

I usually only see Bil (that’s not a misspelling, by the way; he dropped the second L several years ago, don’t ask me why) at Christmas or when somebody dies. We don’t live far apart, but it always seems there’s something else going on.

Bil, along with my sisters and most of the rest of the family, still get together every Sunday at my sister’s place for dinner and whatever game is on TV; football this time of year, I think. I’m the artsy-fartsy one in the family, so it’s my job to know nothing about sports, a job I take seriously and perform to the best of my ability.

At any rate, I stopped by a couple Sundays ago, mostly because someone sent me a spam e-mail—which looked like the real thing—indicating my dad had died. Why someone would do something like this is anybody’s guess. I called my sister immediately and she assured me that—though he’s now using a walker—my dad is still kicking. Just the same, I decided to stop by and check for myself.

Sure enough, my old man was alive and well and watching football, though when he’s in his easy chair and fixated on the tube it’s sometimes hard to tell for sure.

We all had a big dinner courtesy of my sister Carol and then sat around talking until the kickoff for the Big Game (the one they’d been watching earlier was a Little Game, apparently). It was during this pre-game conversation that I learned Bil had recently opened a comic book store in Grand Rapids.

I was impressed. Imagine, one of my wayward clan operating a legitimate business rather than engaging in the drug-running and off-track betting parlors which have supported the Taylor family for so many generations.

Bil, who in “real life” is a nurse, said it was something he’d always wanted to do. I thought about it and realized it really was the culmination of a lifelong dream for my bro.

From the time we were little kids, William and I both read and collected comics with the ravenous appetite of a starving weasel set loose in a henhouse full of portly pullets. Superman, Batman, The Hulk, Captain America, Thor, Dr. Strange…we read ‘em all.

My collection was carefully arranged in a large, dusty pile beneath my bed. I kept my comics there for two reasons: 1) I didn’t care what happened to them, and 2) they excelled as camouflage for the torn-out pages I had purloined from my old man’s “Playboy” magazines.

Bil’s comics were read once, tucked into cellophane bags and placed—carefully—in a dresser drawer, later to be transferred to acid-free boxes and stored in whichever room in the house had the closest thing to a humidity-free atmosphere. Even back then, he was planning for the future.

My brother William was the ant and I was the grasshopper.

He continued collecting through the decades until he had hundreds, thousands of every type of comic imaginable. I, meanwhile, got rid of my comics as soon as I was old enough to no longer need a place to hide my girlie mags.

And now he is the proprietor of Bil’s Used Books and I’m eking out a living as a freelance writer and eating a lot of Ramen noodles.

If I were Aesop, I could find a moral here somewhere.

Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

My career as a judge was short, though not especially sweet

2011-11-03T14:03:00.000-07:00

In last week's column I made a disparaging remark about judges and now I want to take it back. No, I did not receive a threatening letter from some personal injury attorney and no, nobody has suddenly "discovered" an old bench warrant for my unpaid parking tickets (though I'm guessing there's probably one out there somewhere).

The reason I feel compelled to retract my previous derogatory remark (it's available online if you're really interested) is this: I was recently called upon to serve as a judge myself. Happily, I wasn't asked to send anyone to prison or the electric chair; all I had to do was decide who had the best Halloween costume.

This may not sound like a job requiring much wisdom, fortitude or legal acumen, but first prize was $75. There were party-goers at the Riverbend Bar & Grille who really wanted that cash. This despite the manic pace of the waitstaff, which suggested $75 would not have covered the bar tab of most of the patrons present.

My band was playing Halloween weekend, so I was tagged to "supervise" the costume judging contest. Theoretically, the winner is determined by audience applause, but as anyone who has ever officiated at one of these things can tell you, this is like trying to organize a can of earthworms. Earthworms who really like margaritas. Still, taking my responsibilities seriously (for a change) I downloaded a sound-level meter ap for my Android (there really is an ap for everything). I even tested it on my girlfriend's snoring, which registered roughly the same sound pressure levels as a 767 taking off from JFK. (For rebuttals to this comment, please see Sweet Annie's Facebook page.)

I thought I was ready. I was wrong.

First off, there were far more costumed contestants than I had expected. To make matters worse, many of the costumes were really good. In addition to the usual barroom assortment of sexy kittens, naughty nurses and Blues Brothers clones, there were hippies, disco kings and queens, Mother Nature, Indian princesses. I myself came disguised as my band's lead guitar player, Nelson, who looks just like Otto, the bus driver from the TV show The Simpsons. Nelson also came as Nelson, since he's too cool to wear a costume.

In addition to the good costumes there were plenty of lousy ones, mostly worn by younger guys who were more interested in meeting girls than in winning contests.

It wasn't until I announced the contest and called for the contestants to gather on the dance floor that I fully realized just how many contestants we had. It was a crowd.

With the help of our sax player, Rocky, we introduced each contestant in turn and asked the audience to show its appreciation with applause. It was at this point I realized that--although there is an ap for everything--not all of them work. My sound meter was going off the charts and proving to be more or less useless.

So I was forced to keep track, in my head, of which contestant garnered the loudest applause. Also, second and third place had to be accounted for. I did my best, but at contest's end I could tell there was some dissension amongst the multitude as to the veracity of my judgments. I think it was the shouted epithets and thrown beer bottles that tipped me off. I felt a sudden affinity for major league umpires.

I managed to get to my car and make good my escape at the end of the night. I haven't received any death threats from losing contestants. But I'm pretty sure my career as a judge is over.

And to all you judges I offended last week: I really am sorry. Turns out that job is tougher than it looks.

Mike Taylor's book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border's Books and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Time to experience the latest, greatest shopping experience. Again

2011-10-25T09:01:00.000-07:00

The mall is dead.

I couldn't believe I was reading those words. But there they were in the newspaper, a quote from the developer who owns the mall in question. Apparently, the developer plans to close off much of the mall, add "open spaces" and make other changes that will allow shoppers to get in and out in a hurry.

They want to make the experience less mall-like, and more like shopping at the old stores that used to be downtown, before the malls drove them all out of business.

All I can say is, I wish they would make up their minds, especially with Christmas right around the corner.

When I was a kid, Christmas shopping meant one thing: downtown. It was a major family event. My dad would put on a suit, my mom a dress; even we kids were wrestled into our Sunday best. We'd all pile in the Ford and make the 10 minute drive downtown, followed by the 20 minute search for an open parking space.

The stroll along snowy, downtown streets was nothing short of magical. Kids choirs sang on street corners, Salvation Army quartets blatted out-of-tune Christmas carols on dented trombones and coronets, the frosted windows of stores with august names like Steketee's and Wurzburg's glimmered and glowed with the promise of Christmas presents yet to come. Yes, kiddies, it really was just like A Christmas Story or "The PolarExpress."

At some point in the evening, we'd visit Santa, ride the monorail around Herpolsheimer's basement, and drink hot chocolate with marshmallows. By the time we arrived back home, we were tired, filled with the avarice only a child at Christmas can really understand, and ready to begin counting down the days until Santa's arrival.

Then, sometime around my 13th birthday, the first mall appeared. It grew like a mushroom on the outskirts of town, far from downtown, farther from our house. "It'll never fly," my old man predicted. "Nobody's going to drive all the way out there in the middle of nowhere."

But parking was free. The family could shop in December without coats, hats, mittens. It was enclosed. Warm. Comfortable. Convenient. Seductive.

Over the course of a few years, the mall's Muzak siren song lured my family--and the families of so many others--away from downtown, away from the venerable stores that had stood as bastions of consumerism for generations. Despite the best efforts of planners, pundits and politicians, downtown died a slow and tedious death, one from which it has only begun in recent years to resurrect itself.

As the decades passed and I grew older, I couldn't help but feel a melancholy nostalgia for those downtown shopping trips with the folks and siblings. But change happens with or without our permission. I grew accustomed to the malls, the crowds, the cheesy Christmas decorations that were but a poor, inexpensive imitation of downtown's former glorious offerings.

And now, now at this late date, I read that the mall is dead. That the developer wants to "de-mall-ify" what was the area's first mall. The developer wants to appeal to the "modern" shopper.

I don't know if it's too late to put in my two cents, Mr. Developer, but here's an idea: Gather all those stores and put them in separate buildings, but within a similar geographical location, someplace like--oh, I don't know--downtown, say. Give them all big, picture windows facing the sidewalk. Hire a couple children's choirs and maybe give the Salvation Army Band a place to play.

It's a radical idea, I know. But it just might work.

Mike Taylor's book Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com or in digital format from Barnes & Nobles, Amazon and other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

I’m not sure how I feel about the big store’s new liquor policy

2011-10-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back I got off on a rant about the robo-tellers employed at a few of the larger retail grocery chains in the area. You know—the beep beep beep UPC code reader thingies that force you to ring up your own stuff? I hate ‘em.

Turns out a lot of other folks do, too, based on my reader mail. If anyone ever holds a profanity contest, I am now ready, having learned several new and interesting curse words while perusing the letters I received from readers who share my loathing for robo-tellers.

Though I didn’t mention the particular store I was referencing by name, most everybody figured it out anyway. Hopefully, that store’s lawyers will not, though I’m pretty sure if they did I’d be saved by the First Amendment (freedom to hide under the table when lawyers come knocking).

At any rate, though I may be a rabble rouser, I stink when it comes to following through on my threats to boycott anything. Like most Americans, my bark is worse than my baaah. Like a good sheep, I still shop at the store with the hated robo-tellers at least once or twice a week.

And after my experiences of the past few days, I’m kinda glad I do. Because the store in question has a new policy I really like: They card you if you’re trying to buy alcohol while appearing to be under 40. I found this out the other day while picking up a bottle of Cabernet. I’m camping again, trying to fit in as many outdoor days as I can before the snow flies, and I was shopping an unfamiliar branch of the all-too-familiar store.

When I beeped the bottle (Only six bucks for a liter! Is it any wonder I drink too much?) the robo-teller informed me I’d need to have my booze purchase approved. One of the girls who watches the robo-tellers work came over, beeped in a bunch of numbers, passed a magic card in front of the Mystery Reader, and—to my amazement—asked for my ID.

“My ID?” I asked. “Really?” It has been a while.

“We have to ask if you look under 40,” she replied. “Sorry.”

Overcome with emotion, I swept the girl into my arms, kissed her deeply on the lips and, on bended knee, proposed marriage. OK, I didn’t really do that, but I wanted to.

Modesty prevents me from mentioning my real age here (that, and the ever-present hope I’ll someday be able to attract a much younger woman) other than to say it remains in the realm of two digits. But just barely. That this girl thought I looked under 40…well!

The same thing happened again a couple days later when I was back replenishing my wine supply (camping is thirsty work!). And then again this afternoon.

I think I’ll start buying wine on a daily basis. I can’t drink it that fast, but I can give it to friends or use it to water the roses…something. It’ll be worth the expense just to hear those young girls ask for my ID.

If nothing else, this store’s policy is almost sure to bring in a whole new customer base: inebriated geezers with image problems.

Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

99-percent of Reality Check readers won’t have the guts to repost this column!

2011-10-04T13:23:00.000-07:00

- If you love dogs, you’ll repost this!

- If you’re a REAL American, you’ll make this your profile message for one hour!

- Most people won’t have the guts to repost this message!

- If you agree that Obama is a space alien, you’ll repost this NOW!!

- Ninety-nine percent of the people here will be AFRAID to repost this IMPORTANT message!!

If you’re a Facebook user, you’ve seen these idiotic statements—and a million more just like ‘em—many times before. Your “friends”—all 600,000 of them—have an opinion, and if you don’t share that opinion, loudly and with feeling, there must be something wrong with you.

If you won’t repost their “important” message, you are obviously morally bankrupt, afraid of your own shadow, and part of the problem not the solution.

I know my “friends” feel this way, because they “challenge” me with world-shaking topics at least 35 times a day. If I support veterans, I must repost their post, the same one they reposted because someone challenged them to repost it. If I don’t have the “guts” to repost, it’s because I’m (obviously) a communist bent on the overthrow of the

U.S.

government.

If I don’t have the raw courage required to repost the cute puppy pictures it’s because I’m in favor of forced euthanasia for all things that travel on four legs.

Every time I fail to repost a prayer request, it’s further proof that I am a vile heathen bound for the hell fires.

Well, my friends…my dear, dear, close, personal friends, please allow me to respond to each and every reposting request now: SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT THE #@%$ UP!

(Please multiply the above paragraph by 10,000 and repeat it until the message sinks in. No, I do not care how long that takes.)

If your original post is worth reposting, rest assured I WILL repost it. I don’t need you to tell me how “courageous” the people who repost it are.

Speaking of which, let’s, for just a moment, take a Reality Check (patent pending, copyright 2011, etc.): IT TAKES NO—I REPEAT, NO—COURAGE TO REPOST SOMETHING ON FACEBOOK! If you honestly believe posting something online is courageous, you have obviously never done a truly brave thing in your life.

The firefighter entering a burning building is brave. The soldier going into occupied territory is brave. The cop who approaches a home knowing an armed gunman may be inside is brave.

The guy who makes the observation that “republicans are greedy” is not brave, he is opinionated. There is a difference, folks.

At what point did spreading uninformed, moronic gossip become an admirable trait in this country? You could train a chimp to do as much, assuming you could train a chimp to type.

Of course, all this is just my opinion. If it’s yours, too, repost this on your Facebook page! Unless you’re a gutless communist who hates puppies.

Contact Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

I knew this would happen; I’m starting to repeat myself repeat myself

2011-09-27T10:32:00.000-07:00

It’s what every aging columnist fears. The day he begins to repeat himself repeat himself.

It happened to me while writing last week’s column. That column dealt with a kid I met on a drive-in movie playground back when I was only nine. Months earlier the kid had been shot in the leg and bore the cool scar to prove it.

I thought the column was kind of clever; not Pulitzer material, but a cute enough story. Turns out it was a story I’ve told before and less than a year ago. I wasn’t plagiarizing myself. I just forgot.

This faux pas was pointed out to me by Sweet Annie, whom I’m seeing again, at least until she wises up. Again. Unlike the Former Lovely Mrs. Taylor, Annie not only reads my column religiously, she remembers what she reads and can recite it back to me months later, long after I’ve forgotten even the topic, much less the content.

I feel I should be forgiven this lapse in memory, however. I’ve been writing this column for over 20 years, every week, rain or shine. That comes to well over 1,000 columns. At approximately 700 words each, that’s over 700,000 words written. How can I be expected to remember them all, and in order?

And this column is only one of many things I write each week. I also write four different horoscopes for an English-speaking newspaper in Russia, news articles for an insurance company website, press releases for a place that sells athletic supplements online, a novel (though not in its entirety), occasional short stories, bad poetry no one will ever see until after I’m dead, return letters to readers of this column, and text messages to my grandson, Edison.

That’s a lot of words. Is it any wonder I can’t remember one column from nearly a year ago?

I know, I know…they do pay me a fair wage for this turkey and—in theory, at least—I should be putting so much thought and effort into each and every entry that there’s no way I could forget one. That’s rarely the way it works in real life, though. In real life, I simply sit down in front of the laptop once a week, usually at a nearby coffee shop, where I am frequently distracted by the cute office girls coming in and out to purchase their daily mocha-frappa-chino-latte-whatevers.

What was I saying?

Oh, yeah. I sit here and write about the first thing that comes into my mind. It takes about an hour and even then I usually write more words than my editor, Mike, really wants to see in any given week. Mike likes about 500 words because they fit into more places throughout the newspaper. I can rarely articulate my admittedly jumbled thoughts in less than 700.

In fact, I just checked and I’m about to pass the 500 mark right now. Or right now. No, now. Now. Yup, that last “now” was it. And I still haven’t figured out whether this column is about my poor memory, my ability to write fewer than 700 words at a time, or the fact I’m dating Annie again. You see my problem.

I probably should have just gone with my first idea; this story about a kid I once met who had been shot in the leg…

Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Be careful what you ask for, you just might get it

2011-09-23T08:10:00.000-07:00

Boys, I've noticed, often want foolish things. Your average nine-year-old, for instance, has no practical use for a flame-thrower. But I've never met a boy who didn't want one.

When I was nine, there was nothing in the world I longed for more than to be shot. With a gun. Preferably in the leg.

I knew it would hurt, probably a lot, but I didn't care. I gladly would have paid someone my allowance for a month to shoot me just above the knee. If I'd known anything about calibers, I would probably have chosen a .22 with a low-yield round, maybe bird-shot. The point was to get myself an awesome scar, but live to brag about it.

Just like the kid I met on the drive-in movie playground. It was summertime and the playground was crowded with the noisy progeny of middle-class parents waiting for the sun to set so the projectionist could cue up the latest James Bond thriller. I saw the kid's scar while we were spinning on the merry-go-round.

Nine-year-old boys don't know from social graces, so I blurted it out: "What's that?" I asked, pointing to his truly impressive wound; a shiny, round hole, healed over and surrounded by scar tissue radiating outward. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen in my life.

"My dad shot me," he answered without preamble or explanation.

"No way," I said. A small crowd of boys had begun to gather around the kid and his scar. He was enjoying the attention and who could blame him.

"My dad was cleaning his gun and it went off," the kid explained.

This was followed by a chorus of "Cool!" and "Wow!" and "Did it hurt?"

It was cool and it was wow and—according to the kid—it did hurt.

I didn't care. From that point on I wanted a cool scar of my own. Oh, I had a couple by then; one on the forehead from a car accident and one on my right hand, from the time I tripped while carrying a glass jar filled with caterpillars. But I had nothing to compare with this kid's bullet hole. Compared to that, my scars were stubbed toes, the sniffles, hiccups.

A couple years later I was hit by a car and had to walk around on crutches for a few months. That was OK, but still, nowhere near as cool as a bullet hole.

Considering the end-of-the-relationship moments I’ve had with at least a couple of my ex-wives, it’s a miracle I haven’t been shot by now. I still think it would be cool to have a bullet scar, but I’m no longer so sure I’m willing to live through the pain involved in getting one.

Who says I never grew up?

Mike Taylor’s book Looking at the Pint Half Full is available in eBook format from Borders, Barnes & Noble, and other online booksellers or in paperback from mtrealitycheck.com.

No matter where you go, chances are you’ll wind up living in a small town

2011-09-15T13:49:00.000-07:00

When I moved two years ago from the tiny burg of Lakeview to the bustling metropolis of Detroit, I was worried. I had been living in Lakeview for nearly 15 years and had grown accustomed to life in a community where the sidewalks roll up promptly every night at seven. I knew not only my neighbors, but most of the folks who lived on the next block over, and the block after that. After the third block it was mostly cornfields as far as the eye can see.

How would I fare in the big city? I wondered. I was a country mouse, coming from a world in which the biggest traffic hazards were Amish buggies, combines and the occasional deer. In my new neighborhood, traffic hazards are…well…traffic. Hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of cars blast past my front door on a daily basis, all driven by people in a big hurry to get where they’re going, which—judging by the number who text while they drive—is the afterlife. I wouldn’t mind so much were it not for the fact they seem determined to take me with ‘em.

The thing I liked least about life in “The D” was the anonymity. I knew no one and no one knew me. Every face belonged to a stranger. Detroit seemed a place of monumental disconnection; I could have been living on the moon.

But we human beings (I consider myself to be one despite the disparaging comments of various ex-wives) are a resilient species. We adapt to our surroundings and over the past two years or so, I’ve adapted to mine. And I’ve done so in much the same was as the rest of the folks living there: I built a small town right in the heart of the big city.

It began with my basement apartment. That by itself was a little too small, even for me. So I annexed the upstairs apartment and granted my daughter and grandkids citizenship. The guy living next door joined up next, mostly because he likes to drink beer and I usually have some in the fridge.

I needed groceries, so I invaded Aven’s convenience store a couple blocks away and claimed aisles two (Ramen noodles) and three (pistachio nuts) in the name of Taylorville. Aven, who hails from Baghdad and is used to regime changes, didn’t mind, so long as I paid for the stuff I plundered.

Man cannot live by Ramen alone, however, so I was forced to conquer a couple nearby restaurants, Moose Winooski’s and Zorba’s. I tried to annex the Albanian coffee shop, but the Albanians hate me for some reason; mostly, I’m guessing, because I am not Albanian. (One of the first things you learn in the big city is that not all bigots are white.) Anyway, it was obvious they were going to put up a fight, so I adopted the Caribou Coffee place down the street instead. The coffee’s not as good, and I hate the fact they always try and up-sell me a bagel every morning, but they do have fast wifi and don’t hate me because I can’t speak Albanian.

I’m now on a first-name basis with maybe 100 Taylorville residents and the list grows every day. Not all my subjects recognize, or even acknowledge the fact they’re living in Taylorville. They think I’m living in Smithtown, Johnsonville or even Avenburg.

It doesn’t really matter what you call it. The point is, working together, we’ve managed to carve out our own small town, one in which we can all feel comfortable and at home. If I could only annex a couple Amish, I’d be all set.

Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

I’m not sure I’m ready to lead the robo-teller revolution, but I’ll be happy to delegate

2011-09-08T14:28:00.000-07:00

Last week’s column hit a nerve. Boy, did it ever. In the past few days I have been deluged with letters from readers who feel much the same as I do about the robot tellers now found in some major retail outlets; retail outlets which shall remain nameless because I fear lawyers even more than I fear a beer shortage and that’s saying a lot.

In fact, several readers obviously hate robo-tellers far more than I do. For me, they’re an annoyance and further proof, should any be needed, that some stores couldn’t care less if I live or die, so long as my money keeps flowing through their greedy, little corporate hands. The braniacs making recommendations to the stores’ boards of directors no doubt assume we’ve all been thoroughly acclimated (brainwashed) into accepting ever-decreasing levels of personal service and customer care and will barely notice this latest outrage.

Well, guess what, braniacs; you’re wrong. Based on my mail over the past week, shoppers are mad as you-know-what and many of them are showing their displeasure by switching to other, smaller stores; stores that don’t expect you to scan your own groceries, bag ‘em, and then return after midnight to mop the floors and stock the shelves.

Let me share a few reader letter excerpts with you here. These folks said it better than I ever could:

LINDA: I, for one, feel that if I am spending my time and money in a store I should get my groceries rung up, bagged and put in the cart for me. Even a "thank you" would be a great addition to the customer service. Now, I walk in the store, maybe get greeted, maybe find what I would like, maybe find someone to help me and then have to scan and bag my own groceries and have a machine to say thank you!

VALERIE: (I) remember when grocery stores were friendly places. They provided starter jobs for high school kids and flexible hours for moms. The parking lots were clean and you never had to walk to your car alone. The cashiers were quick to point out if you'd missed a coupon because they actually cared. I used to love going to (store name deleted because of my fear of attorneys—see above). Not any more. Greed is their new business model. It's no longer enough for the (deleted, again) clan to be well off - they must be wealthy. Their cost-costing, their hostility toward their employees (and customers) shows in every aspect of their store.

STEPHEN: Once they have found a way to eliminate every employee and replace them with machines, who do they think is going to buy their goods? Here is a word of advice for you, Mr. (deleted…lawyers, lawyers, lawyers!), robots don’t need produce. I’m clipping your article out and sending it to the (deleted) manager.

BONNIE: I do not mind the automated tellers at all. They don’t bother me. As soon as they put them in, I started shopping somewhere else. The store I go to now not only bags my groceries, they carry them out to the car for me, too. It makes me wonder why I didn’t make the change years ago.

There were plenty more, but many were too profanity-laden to edit down for inclusion in a family newspaper. You think I’m kidding, but I’m not.

Personally, I don’t like the robo-tellers, but I’m not nearly as vehemently opposed to them as some folks out there. I thought I was writing on a fairly innocuous topic last week, but uh-uh. I could not have generated more righteous anger from the public had I suggested we lower the drinking age to 9, but only for illegal immigrants, all of whom should be given executive positions at General Motors as soon as they cross the border into Michigan.

If I were a politician (shoot me first, please!) I would run on an anti-robo-teller platform. There are only about seven guys in the state who wouldn’t vote for me, and they’re all on (deleted deleted deleted deleted)’s board of directors.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available in eBook format at most online booksellers, but will likely never be found at (deleted); not after this column.

The sound a disappearing job makes is ‘beep’

2011-09-01T12:41:00.000-07:00

Beep. That’s the sound of a half-gallon of two-percent milk. Beep. That’s a pint of blueberries. Beep. There goes a can of mosquito repellent. Beep, beep, beep. A pack of Big Red chewing gum, some shaving soap, a liter of Diet Coke.

Beep. Red, flashing light. Robot voice: APPROVAL NEEDED! APPROVAL NEEDED! Several minutes spent waiting for one of the three girls lounging around the “master register” to finish explaining to the other two exactly why Shawna is no longer speaking to Darnell.

Beep. Boop, beep, boop. Click. Beep. Boop, boop, boop, boop. Bing. Etc. The sound of the two-hundred keystrokes it takes for the store girl to let the robot know that I am at least 21 and won’t hurt myself if it allows me to buy a six pack of Sam Adams.

Boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-BING! The sound of me trying to get the robot to give me the price of two apricots.

Beep. Beep. Beep-beep-beep-beep-beep. The sound of me telling the robot that I would like to pay with a credit card.

Beep. Beep. Boop-boop-boop-bing. PLEASE WAIT FOR ASSISTANCE. Red, flashing light. Several minutes spent waiting for the three girls lounging around the “master register” to finish discussing a recent “big win” one of them had at the casino near St. Ignace.

Boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-boop-BING! The sound of the store girl manually punching in the numbers from my credit card.

“Something’s wrong with the reader,” she tells me, handing back my card. “It hasn’t been working all day.”

“Why should it be different?” I ask. The store girl doesn’t get it, but rightly interprets my comment as rude and stalks away. She and her friends near the master register give me the ol’ stink-eye as I wait for my receipt to print.

THANK YOU FOR SHOPPING AT ----- says the robot. I, like the thousands of people who have come through this repellent gauntlet of a checkout before me, tell the robot to get bent. The robot does not care. The robot is not insulted. The robot does not require a paycheck, medical insurance, sick days, or holiday pay.

The store’s stockholders love the robot. The eight humans whose jobs were lost when the robot was brought in do not, I’m guessing. I don’t love it, either, in large part because the robot is an idiot with no more common sense than a pocket calculator. And yet it’s being asked to perform the job of eight humans. Well, it’s not, exactly; I’m being asked to perform the duties formerly handled by a check-out girl, a bag boy and the kid who pushed the cart to your car and loaded your groceries into it. (Yes, such exotic services were once commonplace, kiddies! Google it if you don’t believe me.)

But that’s OK, I can adjust. It’s a bad situation, but I can live with it, since I have no choice. My concern is for future generations. How bad will it be by the time my grandson is my age? Will he have to trudge out to a field, till the soil, plant some corn seeds, water them daily for months, harvest the corn, deliver it to the store, price it, then take it to the checkout, ring it up, bag it, and finally, pay for it? It’s the ultimate in self-service and I can’t believe the store’s stockholders haven’t been considering ways to achieve exactly this sort of business model.

Beep. Beep. Beep-beep-boop-beep-flush. That, folks, is the sound of civilization slowly circling the drain.

Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available online at mtrealitycheck.com. E-mail Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

When it comes to dating, that’s just false advertising sister

2011-08-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

It’s been well over two years since the Former Lovely Mrs. Taylor boogied into the night and I’m still not entirely accustomed to single life. Though I’ll admit most days I’m grateful I no longer have to answer to a higher power (wife) and that my time is my own to spend as I please, unfettered from the frequent reminders that the hedge needs trimming and the faucet is leaking.

All I need worry about these days is that the bicycle needs riding and the beer needs drinking. You’d be amazed how quickly a man’s priorities can change when he is allowed to decide for himself what they are, exactly.

I’m trying to make the most of it because I know in my heart that I will, eventually, be married again. It’s human nature; my nature, at any rate. In fact, I’m a little surprised I’m still unattached after all this time. Maybe it’s because I spend all my free time riding bikes and drinking beer, rather than hanging out in singles bars; I don’t know.

But the other night I was in a single’s bar, for the first time in years. I was there with a friend from out of town who, unlike me, is very into the “singles scene,” whatever that is. He dates a lot and spends most of his waking hours devising new and ever more devious ways to meet girls.

The bar was his idea. To his credit, the place was filled with women and not just the nubile, 20-somethings that always make me feel like I should be filling out paperwork at the sex offender registry. There were actually women present close to my age (106), which was a welcome change of pace.

My friend—I’ll call him Bob—pointed out a nearby table around which sat four attractive women, all done up nicely and looking pretty, happy and successful; not my type at all if past experience means anything. Bob, who makes more money than I do and can afford to be stupid, sent over a round of drinks.

When they were delivered, the girls smiled, waved and said thanks. Bob moseyed over in an attempt to close the deal. I remained at the table watching the band. I’m not good at this sort of thing. I’m not shy; I just don’t enjoy the whole “hunt” thing. If I meet a girl, I do. If I don’t, well, that’s fine too.

After a bit Bob, who was apparently making headway, waved me over. One of the girls offered me a seat, which I accepted. We began making small talk and—miracle of miracles!—the girl was not only pretty, but interesting; not the sort I’d expect to meet in a singles bar.

We talked for over two hours and I was enthralled the entire time. She read Kurt Vonnegut, she preferred beer to wine, she was an avid bicyclist; she was witty, charming and intelligent. After only two hours I was ready to propose.

Then she mentioned what I later thought should have been the first thing out her mouth, rather than the last: she’s a nun.

When I attended St. Isadore Elementary School, nuns were dark engines of terror that stalked the hallways, rosary beads slapping one massive thigh, yardstick slapping the other. They dressed in long, black robes and there was no possibility that anyone, ever, could mistake one for a real woman.

To say I felt conflicted that the woman who now held me in a deep and abiding infatuation was of the same breed as Sister Sulpischa, the nun who in 1965 put more fear into my soul than The Wolfman, The Mummy or The Book of Revelation combined is an understatement.

My friend Bob left the bar alone that night. So did I, but at least I had a good excuse.

Mike Taylor’s book, “Looking at the Pint Half Full,” is available from Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon.com, and other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

I miss Dave, but maybe I can find him in Winnipeg

2011-08-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

I miss Dave. Dave was my neighbor for two days, but he’s gone now. In his place is Larry, and Larry is—not to put to fine a point on it—a pig. Seriously, he makes Wilbur, Porky and Babe seem positively fastidious.

I should probably mention I’m on the second leg of this summer’s Geezer-thon, my futile attempt to visit every county in Michigan via bicycle. I’m not going to make it; I’m old and summer’s not going to last long enough for me to peddle that far. But it’s fun to try.

Geezer-thon Part One took me from Grand Rapids to Traverse City. Geezer-thon Part Two has me just north of Port Huron, on the east side of the state. There’s a Part Three coming in September, but it’ll be getting cold and rainy by then and chances are I’ll spend most of my time in a tent playing Angry Birds on my iPad. Though not as healthy to my cardiovascular system as peddling a bike through country back roads, Angry Birds is still fun and only slightly more addictive than crack cocaine.

Anyway…my neighbors: At a state park, where I’ve been staying for the past few days, neighbors come and go. But when I moved in last Monday, Dave was my neighbor. Dave is from Canada, so he’s been specially trained to be friendly and social, even to guys who look the way I do after coming in from 50 dusty miles on a bicycle.

Dave shook my hand anyway and said, “Howdy neighbor” ten seconds after I rolled in.

“Howdy,” I replied, sweating profusely and smelling like something found dead by the side of the road. Something that has been there a while.

Dave introduced himself, his wife and his four kids, all of whom had blond hair, blue eyes and perfect teeth. Canadian dental care. It’s a wonder.

Dave told me where he was from, I told him where I was from. He told me what he did for a living, I shared the same info. He asked where my wife was and I told him I hadn’t seen her for a couple years and couldn’t say for sure. Dave was embarrassed, leading me to believe Canadians are a little like the British; they embarrass easily.

As I set about unpacking and making camp, Dave offered me a beer. I knew we were destined to be best friends. That night he invited me to his family’s campfire, even though I already had mine going strong. (At $5 per bundle of state-approved wood, a merrily-blazing campfire attests to one’s fiscal potency. A Lexus parked in front of the tent couldn’t boast more loudly.)

Dave’s kids were cute and polite, his wife offered me S’mores. By camper standards, we were practically engaged.

Then yesterday I came home (to my tent) from a ride into nearby Lexington. Dave was gone. His wife was gone. The kids were gone. Their tidy little pop-up camper with Canadian plates was gone.

In their place arrived (shudder) Larry. Larry rumbled in behind the wheel of an RV the size of Wisconsin. He rolled over my tent stakes. Backing in, his RV knocked branches from the trees. One landed on my tent, punching a hole through the rain-fly. Eventually, Larry’s diesel-belching freeway whale managed to insinuate itself into the space previously occupied by Dave and company.

The door to the RV opened and three—not one, not two, but three—pit bulls piled out, sans leashes. I was grilling steak on the campfire and the three dogs immediately descended on my makeshift kitchen.

Larry, all 400 pounds and no I am not exaggerating of him, squeezed through the RV door, screaming in a wet voice to “get the #$@% back over here.” Reluctantly, the dogs complied. Larry tossed a carton of raw eggs—and no, I am again not exaggerating—onto the ground. The dogs broke the shells and dug in.

Within a half-hour of getting the freeway whale situated, Larry had transformed the previously pristine Canadian campsite into the equivalent of the city dump, circa 1957. Trash was everywhere. When I say trash, I mean paper litter, half-eaten hamburgers, scraps of toilet paper, paper plates…if I had seen a spent nuclear fuel cell lying in the vicinity I would not have been surprised.

My only regret is that none of my ex-wives, most of whom have at one time or another accused me of being a pig, were in attendance. If nothing else, Larry makes me look like Felix Unger by comparison.

After being repeatedly scolded by the park rangers, Larry did tie up his three pit bulls, which immediately set about barking their damn fool heads off. Larry seemed not to notice.

I slept badly last night, for the first time since arriving here. But in the morning I’m back on the road, so I guess I can live with it for a while longer.

You know, instead of trying to hit the remaining Michigan counties for Phase Three of Geezer-thon 2011, I may cross the bridge and see what Canada is like.

If I’m found by the side of the road dead, the first suspect should be my bike seat

2011-07-21T07:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve sweat off half my body mass in the past week and have developed a tan to rival James Brown’s, but I’m loving every minute of it. In addition to playing with my new bike, I’m training for the second annual Geezer-thon Cross-State Bike Tour, coming up the first part of August.Last week I told you about my new Wonder-Bike, normally a crazy expensive road bicycle I purchased off Craigslist.com for $95 from a woman determined to give her ex-husband (the bike was his) an apoplectic fit. Since then, I’ve put nearly 300 miles on the thing, despite the fact temperatures have been in the high 90s nearly every day.

Last year, I pedaled from Port Huron to Stony Lake, near Lake Michigan. This year I’ve planned a slightly more modest route, from Grand Rapids to Traverse City and back, about 300 miles as the bike rolls.

I’m not sure how many days it will take me. Originally, I thought about doing four 75 mile days back-to-back. Then last Saturday I did a 70 mile ride and it nearly killed me. Seriously, it took me about 20 minutes to extricate myself from the car when I got back home. My knees were stiffer than the Tin Man’s prior to Dorothy’s application of oil. My butt felt like it’d gone 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali in his prime.

The problem is the seat that came with my new Wonder-Bike. Like the rest of the bike, it’s a miracle of modern technology and French engineering; part carbon fiber, part titanium alloy…if the Space Shuttle came with bicycle seats, they would look like this thing.

And because my Wonder-Bike was designed to be raced by guys like Lance Armstrong, the seat is about the size of a postage stamp. It weighs next to nothing. In fact, if detached from the bike, it must be tied to a string to prevent it floating away like a helium balloon.

Plus, it looks really cool! So cool, in fact, that I left it on there during my recent 70 mile ride. I could have achieved similar results by sitting on a rabid porcupine.

Since my butt looks more like Homer Simpson’s than Lance Armstrong’s, the cool seat and I are not precisely simpatico. The seat is small. My bootie is big. It’s as simple as that. One good bump in the road and I’m off to the proctologist’s office. I’ve heard the outpatient procedure for bicycle seat extraction is not pleasant.

So I broke down and bought a new seat. Like my own backside, it is somewhat wide and somewhat padded. It doesn’t look as cool as the old seat, but I can perch on it for hours without whimpering like a wet kitten.

And when I get to Traverse City sometime early next month, there’s a good chance I’ll still be able to walk.

Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available online at mtrealitycheck.com or in eBook format from Barnes & Noble, Borders and other major booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylore325@gmail.com.

For once, I got the deal of a lifetime and I’m not going to feel guilty about it

2011-07-14T12:31:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I bought the bicycle of my dreams. It’s a Motobecane, a carbon fiber/titanium/aluminum alloy beauty that retails for exactly twice what I make in a year. I’ve had dreams about a bike like this, the sort of dreams which, back in high school featured cheerleaders and Swedish flight attendants. I’ll admit it; I have, in my heart, lusted after this bike. I’ve put nearly 100 miles on it already, and I still can’t believe it’s mine.

How did a lowly doofus like me come into possession of this two-wheeled miracle of French engineering and cutting edge science, you may ask. Go ahead, ask. I’m dying to tell somebody.

I found it yesterday morning, around 6 a.m. As is all too usual, I was suffering from insomnia. To pass the time until the sun came up, I opened my laptop and began paging through the Craigslist classifieds. I like to peruse the high-end bikes listed there. I knew (or thought I knew) I’d never be able to afford one. I like to look at ‘em anyway, in much the same way guys who are never going to date Irina Shayk like the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue--it’s fun to dream.

I pulled up ads for Specialized, Trek and similar upscale two-wheelers, marveling at the four-figure price tags and wondering how anyone besides Lance Armstrong could justify paying $6,000 for a bicycle when my first Schwinn—purchased for five bucks at a garage sale back in 1965—served me just fine for nearly a decade. In 1976, I replaced the Schwinn with a used Fuji for the then unheard-of price of $300 and rode that for the next 30 years. So, yeah, six large seems kinda pricey to me.

But like I said, I like to look, to ogle, to…well…drool a little bit.

Then suddenly, there it was, right at the top of the listings; my dream Motobecane, one of the company’s top end models, priced at $95. Being a rational man and not given to flights of fancy, I assumed the price was a typo and the ad should have read $950, which still would have been a steal. Since the ad had posted just seconds earlier, I called the listed number, even though the sun had been up for only a few minutes. A woman answered.

“Hello,” I said. “Sorry about the early hour, but I’m calling about the bike you just listed? I was just double-checking the price. It says $95.”

“Yes, that’s right,” said the woman. “But if that’s too high, I might be willing to entertain an offer.”

Twenty minutes later I was driving up to a prearranged meeting place. She had the bike, a thing of exquisite beauty and in like-new condition; I had 95 bucks. We made the exchange. Once the bike had been transferred to my car rack, and locked securely in place (touch black! no trades back!) I couldn’t resist asking her the question.

“Why are you selling this bike so cheap?”

“Am I?” she asked. “Is it worth more?” I told her it was. “Well, I guess I knew it was an expensive bike,” she said. “It belonged to my (expletive deleted) ex-husband. He left it at the house when he moved in with his girlfriend. He called yesterday and said to get what I could for it and send him the money. How much is it worth, exactly?”

I told her.

“Whooooo,” she whistled. “He is not going to be happy.”

She didn’t sound too concerned about Mr. Expletive Deleted’s happiness. As I drove off with my dream bike, I realized that I wasn’t either.

Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com or in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Borders and most other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

I’m afraid of what I may be doing to international relations and Boise, Idaho

2011-07-06T09:22:00.000-07:00

A couple weeks ago I told you about my new job, writing horoscopes for an English language newspaper in Moscow,

Russia

. Yes, really. Turns out the editor there liked my work so well he asked me if I’d also be willing to write horoscopes geared toward romance and business, along with a monthly “overview” horoscope. He represents several publishing concerns, apparently, all of which have readers who can’t make life decisions without a little help from the stars (not Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, but Neptune, Mars and so on, though they’re not stars, but planets—even I know that much, but I digress).

After stressing to the editor yet again that I know absolutely nothing about astrology other than that there are twelve months in the year and a sign to accompany each, I agreed to take on the job.

How? you may ask. How can someone who knows nothing about astrology accurately predict the future of 10 million Muscovites? The short answer is: I make stuff up.

Are you a Pisces? Romance will blossom in August! Aquarius? Keep your eye on financial matters and expect a long trip in your near future. Leo? Too late, you will regret a recent, really, really bad decision. (My ex-girlfriend is a Leo, so I’m afraid all news is bad for the poor suckers in Moscow born under that sign, at least for a while.)

When I first started writing these things, I took it pretty lightly. I mean, I don’t believe in all this astrology hoo-hah, surely others don’t either, right?

Wrong.

Turns out some folks believe in astrology the way I believe in beer and Mexican food; it’s a religion. I discovered this fact recently after telling my favorite waitress, Crystal, about my new gig.

“You really write horoscopes?” Crystal enthused. Crystal is cute, half my age, and was obviously impressed, so I pretended it was a big deal.

“Oh, yeah,” I said, the picture of nonchalance. “For a big publishing concern in Moscow.” Now, I have no idea if any of those Moscow papers for which I’m writing has a million readers or seven. Point is, neither does Crystal.

“I’m a Virgo,” Crystal said, pushing her long, blond hair behind one ear. “What’s going to happen to me next week?”

“Um,” I said, “I dunno.”

“C’mon,” Crystal said. “You can tell me.”

“No. I mean, I really don’t know. I make it all up.”

“Ri-ight,” Crystal said. “You’re not supposed to say anything until it’s been published, is that it?”

“No, I mean I really make it up. It’s all fake.”

Crystal looked suddenly worried. “Do they all do that?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I’m the only astrologer I’ve ever met.”

Crystal took my order, but her heart wasn’t in it. She was thinking about the plans she’d made for the upcoming weeks; plans predicated on the alleged accuracy of whichever horoscope she peruses every night.

And so, like Crystal, I’m worried, but for a different reason. Somewhere in Moscow, there is somebody reading the nonsense I’m spewing forth each month and imbuing it with a validity and accuracy it does not in any way, shape or form possess. Someone is making life decisions based on my off the cuff BS!

Someone is leaving his wife. Someone is buying stock in K-Mart. Someone is selling everything he owns and embarking on a cross-country bicycle trip (a Sagittarius, like me. Seemed like a good idea when I was writing the prediction, but I was drinking beer and eating Mexican food at the time).

What really scares me is that somewhere, somewhere in the Russian countryside, a lone soldier, a Leo like my ex-girlfriend, is sitting in a near-defunct, Cold War era missile silo, reading a newspaper. He’s sitting on 300 megatons of radioactive death, targeted at Boise, Idaho. His horoscope reads, “Now’s the time to just go ahead and do it! Your life stinks anyway. What have you got to lose?”

I’m really hoping he’s not a true believer.

Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com or in ebook format from Barnes and Noble, Borders and other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

I’m gonna miss ya brother, I really am

2011-06-27T12:49:00.000-07:00

Mache always had a fine ride. Cadillacs, Buicks, Mercedes; Mache drove ‘em all.

I have no idea how he managed to afford them. He blew saxophone and did occasional contracting jobs. That’s it.

He was a monster horn man and had performed with B.B. King, Sam Cooke and a host of other luminaries from the worlds of blues, soul and jazz. By the time he started working with my band, The Guinness Brothers, his glory days were long behind him.

Some guys might begrudge trading stadium audiences for roadhouse bars, but not Mache. He played every gig as if it were Carnegie Hall.

In addition to driving nice cars, Mache always dressed to the nines. Whether in a three-piece sharkskin suit or a silk dashiki, Mache looked like he’d stepped off the pages of Essence magazine.

And he didn’t just look cool; Mache was cool. He was the cat we all wanted to be when we grew up.

He wasn’t perfect. He was late to every other show and no amount of yelling, pleading, or docking of his paycheck would change that. After a few years I gave up and hired a second horn player so we’d have at least some brass on stage for the first set.

But back to the cars. Mache drove like a maniac. How he managed to be late for so many gigs when he never drove under 100 mph is a mystery. He must have been doing at least that the night he flew off the road, down a culvert and into somebody’s front yard.

I was driving home from a lakeshore show. Sleet fell from a turbulent sky turning the roads slicker than a hockey rink.

I was putzing along at 25 when Mache’s black Mercedes blew by me in a blur of chrome, his car disappearing into the gloom ahead. I arrived at the next intersection and there was Mache, slumping in the yard by his car, looking for all the world as if he was surprised by its current location.

I pulled over and got out.

“Need some help?” I asked.

“My car went off the road,” he said. “This intersection needs better lighting.”

“Or you need to stop driving like a fighter pilot on crack,” I said.

The car was thoroughly stuck in the damp earth and we were anxious to extract it before police arrived. Mache and police were not a good mix at the best of times.

Just then, three pickup trucks thundered up. Bright lights flooded the area as a dozen good ‘ol boys piled out. They were all at various stages of inebriation and hoping for a cute damsel in distress whom they could rescue and subsequently ply with warm Budweiser.

They were not happy when Mache stepped into the light. In case you didn’t get the message from the Essence and dashiki references, Mache was African American.

But it was too late. They had stopped. They had winches. And it was after all the ‘90s, and even rednecks weren’t entirely immune to the social changes of the 1960s. Grumbling good-naturedly, they hooked the Mercedes to a winch and proceeded to pull the Mercedes’ bumper off. It was at this point Mache began giving the boys holy hell in no uncertain terms.

Now, these guys were big. They were drunk. They were standing in the sleet, getting far more sober than they wanted to be. And they did not appear to be overly affectionate toward people of color, especially people of color who kept calling them impolite names. I considered slipping quietly away while they erected the burning cross on the front lawn, but knew my liberal white guilt would haunt me forever if I did.

Instead, I did my best to shut Mache up and get between him and the local chapter of the David Allan Coe fan club. Eventually, they pulled his Mercedes back onto the pavement and threw the broken bumper in his truck.

They drove off in a cloud of diesel fumes and I felt glad to be alive. Mache took it all in stride. I hopped in my own car and rolled away at a snail’s pace. A minute later the Mercedes shot past me, doing 75 and fish-tailing like mad. Mache lived life on his own terms, terms that didn’t always make sense to everybody else. I guess I can honestly say I loved him.

Mache died Sunday. He played a show in Grand Rapids Saturday night, went home and passed in his sleep. He was a good man, a good friend. I won’t see his like again in my lifetime.

Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com

I can see the future and it has me in it, making a quick buck

2011-06-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

I found another part-time job. Since I haven’t been able to track down a full-time job, a bunch of part-time gigs is what I’m left with. But that’s OK; this particular job is actually fun.

I am now—brace yourself—an astrologer. Or astrologist? Astrologian? Since it’s turning a paycheck, I should probably at least research the topic enough that I know what I’m called.

Other than “fraud,” I mean.

Now, if you’re one of those folks who can’t get out of bed in the morning without first checking your horoscope, don’t panic; you’re never going to read my dubious astrological predictions. Not unless you go to Moscow, as in

Russia

. That’s where my horoscope column is running.

That’s right, I can’t find a writing gig in the

United States

, but I’m about to become the Next Big Thing in the former Soviet Union. And to think I was once worried these folks were going to drop atomic bombs on me!

I got the job online, by sending in a writing sample to a Russian guy with the cool name of Vladmir Aleksander. In addition to sharing a name with the infamous Balkan ruler credited with starting the Dracula myth, Vlad also publishes an English language newspaper in Moscow. And he’s decided to add an astrological forecast to the paper’s lineup.

I explained to Vlad up front that I know diddly about astrology. I don’t know if Pices is compatible with Leo or whether either does well when paired off with Taurus. The little I do know about astrology I learned from that Fifth Dimension song Aquarius/Let the Sun Shine In, and they don’t really go into too much detail there.

Vlad said he didn’t care.

“But comrade,” I responded, trying to get into the spirit of international relations but coming off like an extra in an old James Bond movie. “How will I be able to write horoscope predictions when I know nothing about astrology?”

“Make something up,” Vlad said. “Pretend you’re writing for Pravda.” (Pravda was the “official” newspaper of the Soviet Union and according to Vladmir, was almost wholly fictional during that time.)

So I made something up. I warned Sagittarians to avoid fried foods, told Capricorns that romance was in store for the evening, admonished Leos to stop being selfish and manipulative (my ex-girlfriend is a Leo and I’m still bitter!), and suggested to Cancers that this might be a good time to quit smoking. (I mean, just consider the name of their astrological sign! Duh!)

Oh, I plan to bone up on astrology, if for no other reason than that my columns will seem more plausible to people who buy into this hooey. But at best, it’s like hiring an atheist to write for the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology.

Still, a paycheck is a paycheck. And if my Russian brethren are willing to fork over the rubles, I’ll don a turban once a week and predict the future.

Don’t blame me. As a Sagittarian, my sense of ethics is somewhat underdeveloped.

Mike Taylor’s book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com or in eBook format from Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon, and other online booksellers.

If this keeps up, I'll know everything or work construction

2011-06-08T11:32:00.000-07:00

This is a weird time to be a writer. For one thing, there are only seven people left in the world who remember how to read (if you're reading this you're one of ‘em). Because of this sad fact, most print media from newspapers to books to magazines are being forced to make painful cuts, and by painful cuts, I mean the jobs of schmucks like me.

Granted, this is really only painful to schmucks like me, but still...have a little empathy, man! Do you have any idea how hard it is to find work on a construction crew when your job skills are fast typing and good spelling? These are abilities not necessarily held in high regard by the sort of guys who pound nails for a living.

And those are the guys who are making a living. Some of them, at least. This is the era of the manly man, the man who is good with his hands, the man who can turn a pile of logs into beautiful kitchen cabinets, then break for lunch before putting up the pole barn.

This economy simply won't support guys like me--artsy fartsy types accustomed to putting in their “hard day's work” from the confines of a cushy, air-conditioned office while complaining about things like ergonomically incorrect office chairs and the horrors of carpal tunnel syndrome. We're useful when everyone has a pocketful of disposable income and time on their hands. People (despite what I said about the seven folks in paragraph one) like to read and be entertained. But let’s be real; when times get hard we’re easy enough to live without.

Now, I know there are unemployed construction workers out there who are just about ready to crush my skull like a Faberge egg (in part, because I'm a man who knows what a Faberge egg is). My buddy Calvin works construction and is pretty good at it, from what I've heard. Even he has been forced to take work that is, for lack of a better term, beneath his skill set.

In other words, things are tough all over. I know this. But I'm a writer, so if it's all the same to you, I'll whine about what I know.

Not that I'm really whining this week. Really. Because I've discovered an untapped market for writers. Really, again. My daughter turned me on to it; it's an online clearing house for writers and people who need writers. Mostly, they need writers to put together lame-o fake blog entries on teen angst and positive reviews of movies nobody would ever want to see. Even I am not desperate enough to take part in that debacle. Unless the money was really good, which it is not.

But I did manage to land an ongoing gig writing 500-word essays on a variety of topics. It ain’t tough. They must be well-written, accurate and—here’s the part I have trouble with--well-researched. However, since my “boss” is in

Sri Lanka

somewhere and by all indications speaks English only haltingly, I figure the occasional error (like saying a town in Idaho has 4,000 residents instead of 400,000) may go unnoticed. That's my hope anyway, because frankly, research is a drag and takes a lot of time away from my X-Files marathon on Netflix.

In the past week I've written essays on globalization, vacationing in Hawaii, kung-fu, Peruvian exports (more than flute bands and llama wool mittens, as it turns out), the differences between adjectives and adverbs, the Republican Party, technology used in WWII communications, and a piece titled “Whatever Happened to Annette Funicello?”

If this keeps up, in a couple years I'll possess more useless information than Wikipedia. This I plan to parley into a fortune on the game show Jeopardy. If that doesn't work out, maybe I can land a job doing construction with my buddy Calvin.

Mike's new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available online at mtrealitycheck.com. The ebook version is available at Barnes & Noble, Borders, Amazon and other online booksellers. Email Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Don't be afraid to stand up to insulting forms!

2011-05-23T05:13:00.000-07:00

Filling out forms has become increasingly difficult these past few years. Difficult, and insulting.

Oh, the insult is subtle and easily deniable should anyone call the form-makers to task on the matter, but make no mistake, the insult is there.

Most folks encounter their first form in elementary school. These forms are simple: name, age, names of parents, maybe address and phone number. At age eight or nine, that's all you're expected to know.

Forms don't start getting really ugly until your freshman year of high school. That's when they start asking questions about your hopes, dreams, goals and aspirations. They still want your parents' names and phone numbers, but they're digging deeper now, trying to get to the "real you." They do this so the school's guidance counselor can help you choose the right classes, career, girlfriend and so on.

College forms are worse still, especially those pertaining to financial aid. Mine were, at least. They were so complex I never realized I could have purchased a nice home in Beverly Hills for less money than I borrowed on my student loans. This fact became apparent about six months after graduation, when the student loan people showed up at my front door wearing brass knuckles and carrying a bucket full of wet cement.

Fortunately, my brilliant academic career landed me a job as a janitor, so I was able to pay off those loans in no time...about two months before my youngest child graduated high school.

The forms I filled out in the Air Force also were confusing, especially the one I filled out at the recruitment office. Turns out they can fit quite a bit of stuff in that small print at the end of the 20-page document, stuff they would really rather you not read.

But I'm digressing here, as I usually do. The point I was trying to make somewhere six or seven paragraphs back is this: the forms I filled out in the past, though sometimes arcane and complicated, were at least not insulting. The forms I've filled out lately, all online now, are. Insulting, I mean.

How are the insulting? Well, like I said, it's subtle. The questions they're asking, I no longer like to answer. For instance, when I was 26, back during the Renaissance, I didn't mind listing my age. These days I do.

I'm not ashamed of my geriatric predilection, but online forms always use those pull-down menus. A lot of time can pass between the instant I click on the "year" box and the moment it scrolls down to my birth year. Along the way, the font generally changes from a clean sans serif to Olde English; a font the form-makers think will be more familiar to folks of a certain age. The typeface also gets larger, ostensibly to make it easier for geezers to see.

See? Insulting, right?

I recently filled out a form on which they asked not only if I was divorced, but how many times I had been married. Since the form offered room for only a single digit, I was forced to fudge the facts a bit here.

Now I'm flying solo (yes, again), so I recently filled out a couple forms at social networking sites in a half-hearted attempt to find Miss Right. These sites require information I usually don't share with a woman until after our fifth anniversary. The form-makers think I should spill my guts before the first date.

I didn't. Sometimes a blank space is infinitely preferable to anything one might fill it with. I refuse to be bossed around by an insulting form.

Mike Taylor's new book Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eReader format at Barnes & Noble, Borders, and other online booksellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

There has always been a 'Facebook'

2011-05-23T05:07:00.000-07:00

I read another article yesterday about how the world is going to h-e-double-toothpicks because of Facebook. Facebook, the writer implied, is slowly sapping today's youth of the ability to think critically, maintain a modicum of decorum, and tell the difference between good writing and terrible.

It's doing the same thing to old people, but at a slower pace and we're a lost cause anyway; best to focus on the youth. They're the ones who must finish the job we started, that of mucking up the planet and getting aged Hollywood actors elected to high governmental office.

At any rate, aside from all that other stuff, the writer's main concern was privacy, or rather the lack of it. Facebook, he said, is filled with posts containing information most people should probably keep to themselves; everything from personal banking information to the addresses of teenage daughters.

He also complained briefly about the sort of people who leave posts like, "Just had roast beef for supper! Yum, yum!" but we all complain about that. Well, everybody but the roast beef posters. You know who you are.

The point is (I'm sure there was one here somewhere) every article I read comes at the issue as if this is a new phenomenon, something intrinsically tied to the 21st Century, high-speed wifi and computerized data collection techniques. It's not. The problem is as old as communication itself.

From the moment a caveman first slapped two rocks together to warn his buddy on the other side of the valley about the presence of a nearby sabertooth tiger, somebody has been listening in.

When I was a kid, just shortly after the above-mentioned Paleolithic epoch, the most modern device in any American home, aside from the television, was the telephone. It was big, black, rotary-dialed, built like a tank and almost as attractive. Not everyone in the neighborhood had one; they were still considered by some to be a pricey luxury.

The neighbors who didn't have a phone would frequently borrow the phone of a neighbor who did; in these cases, privacy was neither expected nor granted.

My family's phone was serviced by something called a "party line," the Facebook of its day. The phrase party line was entirely appropriate because as soon as you picked up the phone, you could be sure Mrs. Kowalski, the little old lady from down the street who shared the same party line, would quietly lift her receiver and join the party, albeit surreptitiously.

If you discussed anything remotely personal, like, say, the fact you had roast beef for supper and it was yum yum, you could be certain Mrs. Kowalski would gleefully spread the news to the whole neighborhood before sundown.

During my rare phone calls, I would confess to friends regarding gruesome murders I had not committed just to add a little spice to Mrs. Kowalski's otherwise humdrum life. I sometimes claimed to have buried the bodies next to the begonias in her garden.

I'm not singling Mrs. Kowalski out here; both my sisters also listened in on our neighbor's conversations. There were four or five families on our party line and none of us had secrets from any of the others. Just like with Facebook, everybody knew everybody else's business.

So do I worry when I post marginally personal stuff on Facebook? Not really. I grew up without privacy and have learned to get along without it.

I'm just sorry Mrs. Kowalski passed years before the first Commodore 64 rolled off the assembly line and decades before anyone had heard of a social network. She would have loved this stuff. She was a woman who cared deeply about your roast beef supper.

Mike Taylor's new paperback, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Borders Books and most major online booksellers. Email the author at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Say it loud, I play tennis and I’m proud

2011-05-05T14:48:00.000-07:00

It drove me crazy all last summer that James Brown, the Godfather of Soul and one of my personal heroes, is playing tennis on the side of my optometrist’s office. Even in his younger days, when he could dance rings around Baryshnikov while screaming “Say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud!” in a voice that could startle Helen Keller, I never imagined James on a tennis court. He did not seem the sort of man who would be comfortable saying, “That’s love-16 Muffy!”

Not my hero.

But there he was, larger than life, featured prominently in the House of Optical mural, right between Elvis and Elton. John Belushi, Larry King, Buddy Holly and several other glasses-wearing celebrities also are pictured there.

Elvis and Elton are both holding microphones, John Belushi a case containing (presumably) Elwood’s harmonicas, Benny Goodman sports his clarinet and George Burns a cigar. Everybody, everybody except my hero, is shown doing the thing they do, or did, best; the thing most people think of first when considering the aforementioned celebrities.

But not James. James is depicted playing tennis. They might as well have painted him with a spatula in one hand and a copy of “A Brief History of Time” in the other. It made less sense than a Dali painting. And like I said, it made me crazy all last summer.

Part of the reason it got on my nerves is that I rode past there on my bicycle three, sometimes four times a day. I had a lot of time to kill and I spent much of it riding bike. The terrain is mostly flat around Clawson so a four-hour ride isn’t especially taxing and it kept me from thinking about how brutally unkind fate had been to me during the previous year. (Yes, I am a whiner of epic, and often dramatic, proportions.)

At any rate, in addition to losing my wife, house and job, I was slowly losing my mind, in large part because of that damnable mural! I did a little research (five minutes online), checking to see if James had ever made a name for himself on the tennis court, but could find nothing.

The mystery haunted me. James would appear in my dreams hoisting a tennis racket and drinking a glass of carrot juice at an expensive country club. When he spoke he sounded like Dick Cavett and I would wake up screaming.

Then summer faded to fall and winter, bike season ended and the problem slowly faded from my mind. It wasn’t until mid-winter, while being examined for new contact lenses at House of Optical, that I thought to ask about it.

“James Brown’s not in that mural,” the doctor said.

“Yes he is,” I said. “But he’s holding a tennis racket, so most people probably don’t recognize him.”

At this point the doctor gave me a look indicating poor eyesight was likely the least of my problems. “That’s Billie Jean King,” he said.

I checked the mural again before driving away. The doctor was right, it is Billie Jean King, though to be fair, she is sporting a tan that would make George Hamilton jealous. And she does look a little like James Brown! Google it, or check out the photos on my blog, then tell me I’m wrong.

Say it loud! It’s love-16 and I’m proud.

Mike Taylor’s new paperback, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com. The eBook version can be found online at Barnes & Noble, Border’s, and other major booksellers. More Reality Check online at mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com.

Just how much safety can one small, blonde head handle?

2011-04-28T15:53:00.000-07:00

Nobody has ever accused me of taking the safe road. In my youth, I was the rotten kid from down the block who always managed to talk your otherwise rational son into doing something a) dangerous, b) stupid, or c) mildly illegal. I wasn’t a bad kid, not really; I was just sort of...careless.

For instance, I once convinced my buddy Dale that we should, on the spur of the moment, hitchhike to Chicago. We were 17. We had no money, no parental permission and no idea what we were going to do once we arrived in the Windy City. And yet, one summer’s night we found ourselves on US 131 with our thumbs out, waiting for a ride from someone we fervently hoped would not be a serial killer.

Another time my friends and I hiked across the Anne Street Bridge; we crossed beneath the bridge, actually, by clinging precariously to the latticework of girders 50 feet above the Grand River, which at that time of year (January) was nearly frozen over. A fall would have proved fatal. But there we were, risking life and limb simply because it seemed to me a good idea at the time.

My lack of self-preservation skills followed me into adulthood. Over the years (and against the advice of experts) I frequented tanning salons, drank too much beer, ate too much salt, avoided doctors, alternately worked out too hard and not hard enough, rode motorcycles in the rain and snow, piloted a small plane in bad weather, and occasionally argued strenuously with guys who could crush my head like a paper cup.

And whenever possible, I talked my friends into doing it all with me. Craziness, like misery, loves company.

This is why I have a problem with my girlfriend Anne. My Sweet Annie has a big personality; full of life, vitality, energy and enthusiasm. But all that is tempered with a healthy dose of common sense, and it is here we part ways.

Anne warms up before exercising. She puts her headlights on at the first sign of dusk. She refuses to eat food that’s past its expiration date, even if nothing’s growing on it! I know, crazy right?

But craziest of all is her fear of direct sunlight. Next to Anne, Count Dracula is a beach bum. Sure, the sun is in fact a huge ball of constantly-erupting, highly radioactive material, but Anne acts as if it were hanging in our back yard. She wears sunscreen; not your garden-variety sun block, but some sort of zinc oxide coating applied with a roller and with a SPF factor of 200. A house has a rating of about 19, I think, by way of comparison.

She tops this off by donning a hat with a brim larger than the one Sally Field sported in The Flying Nun. In dim light this hat is easily mistaken for a low-flying UFO. In case of emergency, a family of four could set up temporary shelter beneath this hat and not feel particularly cramped.

If it is a fashion statement, as Anne sometimes claims, that statement is: I don’t care how crazy I look. She had another, smaller hat last year; still large and goofy-looking, but smaller than this one.

I’m concerned where things will lead if this trend toward ever more expansive hats continues. Anne is not a large woman. I fear she will one day be getting ready for a walk and be crushed beneath her headgear.

All in the name of safety.

Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eBook format at Barnes & Noble, Border’s Books and other online book sellers. Email Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

How can feeling bad feel so good?

2011-04-18T14:01:00.000-07:00

I’m starting to feel better. Dammit. For the past four weeks, I’ve had the mother of all colds. There were moments I was sure I was “patient zero” for some new shifting antigen super-virus engineered by the military, one that would eventually wipe out 99-percent of all life on the planet. If that’s true, those scientists better head back to the lab, because—like I said—I’m finally starting to kick this sucker.

I just wish that were a good thing.

The problem, see, is it turns out my girlfriend Annie is the best nurse since Florence Nightingale. Despite its ferocious tenacity, my cold never stood a chance against her gentle, healing ministrations.

From my first sniffle, Anne was there, orange juice in one hand, vitamin C in the other.

“You should drink plenty of fluids,” she said. “Get lots of rest.”

Now, being a manly man, and not a particularly bright one, I only drank fluids or rested when she was standing there monitoring my behavior. The moment she was out of the room, I dug out my iPad to watch hour after hour of Twilight Zone and Mystery Science Theater 3000 on Netflix. I stayed up late. I ate too much dairy. I ignored every message my body was—in an effort to stay alive—sending me. So naturally, I got sicker.

Eventually, I got really sick. The kind of sick that not only suggests bed rest, but demands it. My first choice at times like this is to curl into a fetal ball, pull the covers over my head, and wait patiently to die.

Anne would have none of that. She pushed the fluids, she made repeated trips to and from the kitchen, taking away empty bowls and glasses, returning with steaming bouillon and chicken soup. She trekked to the store for orange juice, cranberry juice, cold medicine, cough drops...anything she could think of that might, in my time of great distress, afford some small relief.

She laid cool washcloths across my fevered brow. She oohed. She awwed. In short, she babied me in ways I’ve not been babied since the days when I still wore diapers and became nervous if my “binky” was out of sight for more than a few seconds. (And no, this has not been recently.)

At first, I railed against Anne’s efforts, assuring her I would eventually get well, or that nature would take its course, I’d die, and Darwinists would be have one more talking point. But Anne kept at it anyway.

And in a surpassingly short time, I got used to the babying, grew to like it, even. I lay in bed, hour after hour, reading, watching TV, dorking around on Facebook, as all the while a beautiful blonde woman waited on me hand and foot. I’m guessing my male readers will have no problem understanding how this could become addictive in a hurry.

Now I’m feeling better. At first, I tried to hide this fact from Anne. I didn’t want the party to end. But she figured it out. Some elusive, insincere quality in my manufactured moans and groans gave me away, I guess. The orange juice dried up, the leftover chicken soup was packed away in the fridge. I was encouraged to bathe, dress myself, return to the land of the living.

It’s good to feel better, I suppose. But I have to admit, I’m kind of looking forward to flu season.

Mike Taylor’s new paperback, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com and in eReader format at Border’s, Barnes & Noble, and other online book sellers. Email the author at mtaylore325@gmail.com.

Will ‘Big Mother’ ever just leave well enough alone?

2011-04-04T15:33:00.000-07:00

I can’t stand it. I’m sorry, I just can’t. The government won’t stop trying to fill in for my mom.

First legislators wanted us to know, beyond all question, that smoking is not healthy. There were, apparently, smokers somewhere who still believed they were doing their bodies a favor by lighting up 30 or 40 times a day. OK. Then they wanted us to wear seat belts. Most of us did anyway, because most folks aren’t idiots and have no desire to spend their last few seconds on Earth sailing over the hood of a Buick while thinking, “What the s...?”

But Big Mother couldn’t trust us to do the smart thing. So she passed a seat belt law, then a stricter law. I have little doubt that, ten years from now, driving without a seat belt, smoking indoors, drinking more than two beers in a single week, or saying unkind things about the sort of people who create these laws will be punishable by public stoning. (Sadly, you’ll need a permit and special headgear to be among those throwing the rocks.)

My girlfriend Anne says I tend to talk in extremes, but honestly, if Thomas “That government is best that governs least” Jefferson could see the current state of this Republic, he would hop the next boat back to

England

carrying a sincere letter of apology to the King.

OK, I’m ranting here. I know, I know. Sorry.

It’s just that this morning I read an article saying the FDA is pushing for legislation that would force restaurants to list the calorie count of each entree on their menus next to the price. Why? Because we’re too stupid to know a Quadruple Bypass Two-Pounder Burger at McDoofles has more calories than, say, a thin slice of watercress.

According to the head FDA mucky-muck, Americans eat more healthy foods if they have the caloric information right there in front of them. All I can say in response to this piece of unadulterated insight is, well, d-uh!

High school kids tend to spend less time on lover’s lanes if their pastor is in the backseat of the car, too, but that doesn’t mean the kids want him there! Hell, no! They want him back at the church where he belongs, passing out collection envelopes and planning the following Sunday’s sermon.

In like manner, if I plan to eat three pounds of greasy ground beef stuffed between two slices of white, pasty bread slathered with mayonnaise, I under no circumstances want the FDA leaning over the Formica table whispering in my ear that I’m committing suicide by cheeseburger. I know that and I’m doing it anyway!

I also sometimes drive too fast, I never get enough sleep, I sit really close to the TV, I listen to loud music without the aid of earplugs, I only wear my bicycle helmet when riding in heavy traffic, I rarely get a flu shot, I tend to argue with guys bigger than me in bars, I put salt on everything, I sometimes tackle household electrical problems on my own, I smoke five, even six cigarettes in a year’s time, I run with scissors, and—though I should have had three by this age—I’ve only experienced one colonoscopy.

I am the FDA’s worst nightmare. What are they gonna do about it?!

Oh, yeah, pass another law.

I’m guessing that at this point, some legislator in Washington has donned his headgear and begun to gather stones.

Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full, is available at mtrealitycheck.com. Email the author at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

There's just ssssomething about the way I talk

2011-03-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

I talk funny. Everybody who knows me knows this is true, but most are too polite to say anything about it. It's not my fault; I have a space between my two front teeth--nothing huge and David Lettermen-esque, nothing a child might accidentally fall into--but a space nonetheless. And because of that space, I say my S's funny.

I sound like steam escaping, like Satan in the Garden of Eden, trying to convince Adam's girlfriend that God is being completely unreasonable over that whole apple issue. It's the sort of voice that, when I speak earnestly and with incorruptible integrity, people tend to assume I'm lying. It's a shyster's voice, the voice of a carnival barker asserting that everybody wins, the voice of the soon-to-be ex-wife telling her husband she worked up this sweat at the gym, the voice of Nixon assuring the American public he is not a crook, so there!

And that's a shame, because I am, for the most part, honest. No, really. Oh, I suppose I occasionally massage the truth just a bit here and there to make a good story better, or to spare someone's feelings, but just plain lie? Never. Well, almost never. OK, sometimes.

The point is, many times when I am being entirely truthful I'm thought of as a Big Fat Fibber anyway. All because of those darn S's.

My girlfriend, Anne, claims my slight lisp is "cute." Yet I can't help notice she seems dubious when I relate the tale of the time I single-handedly rescued several hostages from a prison camp in

Cambodia

. (I'll admit it's possible I'm confused on this one and that's just something I saw in a Sylvester Stallone movie. Regardless, my S's make me sound like I'm lying, even when my statements have nothing at all to do with Cambodian prison camps or super-human feats of courage.)

My lisp isn't so pronounced that everyone notices it straight away. I mean, I don't sound like the Grand Marshall in a gay pride parade or anything. But it's there just hissing away for those who take the time to really listen.

Because of this, I drive speech therapists nuts. They can't stand to be around me for more than a few minutes at a time. If I'm at a party and a lady who otherwise seems to be having a great time leaves early after having conversed with me, it's a sure bet she's a speech therapist. They just can't handle the white noise that accompanies my every utterance.

Back in elementary school, the speech therapist would each Thursday pull me from class and drag me down to the broom closet that served as her office. There she would diligently teach me to press my tongue tightly to the top of my gums and repeat lines like, "Suzy sells sea shells by the sea shore" and "Sad sammy sees something silly." Every week I would try my best--mostly because speech therapy, embarrassing though it could be--was still better than arithmetic, which is what all my classmates who could pronounce the word "Swiss" without attracting the attention of nearby rattlesnakes were doing while I tortured my poor speech therapist with unrelenting waves of sibilance.

In the end her only success was teaching me to say "house" instead of "howsh," which is how I pronounced the word prior to her intervention. For that, I owe her a debt of gratitude.

Properly pronouncing "house" may not seem like much of an accomplishment, but at least it's ssssssomething.

Mike Taylor's recent paperback, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at www.mtrealitycheck.com and as an ebook at Borders, Barnes & Noble and other online book sellers. Contact Mike at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

It’s official, I’m a genius

2011-03-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

I’m a genius. The Internet said so, and the Internet would never tell a lie. (There really are planet-sized spaceships orbiting the sun, President Obama really is a space alien, the Aztecs did accurately predict the end of the world, and Nostradamus was not just a “lucky guesser.” You get the idea.)

Until recently I was unaware of my genius status, owing in large part to the fact I barely made it through ninth grade Algebra class and that was only because Mr. Paepke couldn’t stand the idea of seeing me yet again the following year.

Though I did fairly well in college, I had to study really, really hard for my grades.

I learned to talk good (“speak well,” my English major girlfriend would no doubt say) in an effort to disguise my somewhat limited cognitive abilities (psst: my dumbness).

As an elementary school student, my younger brothers and sisters—all of them, even my brother Bobby who will never be mistaken for a genius—could kick my butt at flash cards, a fact my old man pointed out at every conceivable opportunity.

So you can see why I hadn’t previously recognized my genius-ness.

In fact, I might have gone my entire life without realizing how smart I truly am had it not been for an online IQ test. According to the IQ website the test would measure my intelligence in several areas; math, language, spatial relationships, problem solving, ability to walk and chew gum at the same time, and so on.

Since the test was free and I had a ton of work waiting for me that I did not want to do, I took the test. It wasn’t particularly hard, even the math portion, but it did take significantly longer than I was expecting. Minutes turned into a half-hour, and then an hour…finally I clicked in my final answer and pushed the “submit” button.

My laptop hummed away contentedly while my test responses wafted over the coffee house’s wifi signal to IQ Central, which tallied up my score and returned my results.

“Congratulations!” came the reply. “Your IQ is 142!”

According to the IQ website, this put me somewhere between “gifted” and “highly gifted.” I immediately felt smarter than I have in years. If my old man had been on hand, I would have printed out the results and stapled them to his forehead!

Even the people at the IQ website were excited by my apparent brilliance. So much so, in fact, that they were willing to let me into their exclusive genius club! All I had to do—now that I was a certified genius—was give them my credit card information and sign up for my first month’s membership.

Hmm…OK, maybe I’m not a genius after all. But I am smarter than that.

Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Psst…ya wanna know my secrets? All my secrets?

2011-03-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

I’ve lost my entire life. Everything from my gym locker combination to my credit card numbers to my Facebook password; it’s all gone, and I have no one to blame but myself.

Also gone: my banking info, the access code to my home wireless Internet connection, the weekly tally of people who have visited my blog, the correct meanings of the words “affect” and “effect,” the complete manuscript of my recent book, all my newspaper columns from the past 15 years, the birth dates of my children, my entire iTunes catalog, my Paypal, Amazon and Gmail account numbers and passwords, and a personal journal I’ve kept since 1989 containing entries that—if read by anyone else—would undoubtedly lead to my compulsory institutionalization followed by a lengthy regimen of shock therapy.

And it’s all just laying somewhere, clinging magnetically to a tiny USB “thumb drive.” A thumb drive which used to be attached securely to my key chain, where it safely (and I use the word loosely) backed up all the important data located on my laptop’s hard drive.

I noticed it was missing last Thursday as I was gassing up the car on the first leg of a trip from Detroit to Grand Rapids. How can I describe the feeling? It was similar to strolling through a crowded shopping mall and suddenly realizing you’re buck naked. I felt exposed, vulnerable.

My laptop is password protected, meaning it would take a clever third-grader with a half-hour’s spare time to get to my personal information. My USB drive has no such password. Anyone who picks that thing up and plugs it into a computer is going to know more about me than does my girlfriend, my kids or my priest.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t confess to any murders in my journal, but I might have. I’m almost certain I didn’t save the Google Map showing where the bodies are hidden, but man, it has been so long…I just can’t sure.

Anyone finding that USB drive could easily steal my identity, though at this particular point in my life, the thief would undoubtedly be willing to pay good money to get me to take it back.

Suddenly, I can understand how Nixon felt when prosecutors started rooting trough those White House tapes.

The drive may have fallen off my keychain and gone straight down a sewer grate, lost for ages like the One Ring to Rule Them All. Or it may be laying beneath a table at the public library, just waiting to be discovered by a kid who would consider it the height of hilarity to post the drive’s entire contents on the Internet.

Worst case scenario: see previous paragraph. Best case: the damn thing remains lost for 100 years or more, only to be discovered by future archaeologists who plug it in and say, “Mike Taylor? Oh my stars! Do you know what this means? We have in our possession previously unpublished works by the brilliant author who outsold Stephen King ten-to-one and single-handedly saved the publishing industry from extinction!”

Yeah, I think I’ll hope for that one. Meanwhile, I have about a hundred passwords to change.

Mike Taylor’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Toilet paper shouldn’t have to be this embarrassing

2011-03-03T12:17:00.000-08:00

I’ve embarrassed myself hundreds, maybe thousands of times over the years. From the afternoon I forgot to wear pants while washing the car to the time I sat on a playground swing moments before the chain broke and hit me on the head, my life has been one long litany of red-faced vignettes, executed to the delight of nearby friends and family.

You might think this much practice at looking foolish would somehow have inured me to the condition, but nope, every time I do something stupid—depending on who you ask, this takes place on a daily/hourly/ongoing basis—I feel like a doofus.

It doesn’t have to be some supremely dorky moment, even everyday circumstances conspire to make me look a fool. This notion was played out recently in a Detroit area mall.

I was going out to pick up a few sundry household items and my daughter, with whom I was staying at the time, asked if I’d also grab a package of toilet paper.

Now, as far as I know, everyone in the civilized world uses toilet paper. But it’s one of those things “polite” folks (I’m not one myself, but I’ve heard they exist) don’t talk about in mixed company. Considering its intended purpose, I suppose I can understand that.

I mean, every time I see that TP commercial featuring the bear family (that does you-know-what in the woods) I die a little inside. I’m not particularly squeamish, but really. Bears?

At any rate, unlike in my married days, when I was occasionally forced to pick up euphemistically-named “feminine hygiene products,” buying toilet paper doesn’t—as a rule—cause me any embarrassment.

This trip was different.

The mall at which I was shopping is very upscale. Though anchored by two mega-retailers selling discount items, the rest of the mall is crowded with snooty little jewelry stores, designer boutiques and chic salons. My first stop was the discount store, where I found a great deal on toilet paper, a giant-sized block of “southern cleansing enhancer” as big as a Buick.

There was no bag large enough to contain this monstrous slab of tissue, so I lugged it into the mall balanced precariously on my shoulder, hopeful I would not be bumped, thereby causing me to drop the cube and crush any nearby children or little old ladies.

By the time I had tracked down all the items on my own shopping list, I had been sniggered at by zit-faced teens at Spencer’s Gifts, the skinny 20-somethings stationed just inside the Gap and perhaps worst of all, the gorgeous sweeties hawking male fantasies at Victoria’s Secret. A little old lady checking out orthopedic shoes shook her head and smiled at my plight. (I considered dropping the cube and crushing her, but that seemed a little drastic.)

Everyone uses toilet paper! But you can bet I won’t again be advertising that fact at the mall.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com. Mike’s new book, Looking at the Pint Half Full is available at mtrealitycheck.com.

A self-serving press release is no easier to write than a dating site profile

2011-02-21T12:08:00.000-08:00

A couple years ago my wife left me. I liked her a lot and it was no picnic. But the most uncomfortable aspect of the entire experience took place months later when I tried to create a “profile” for an online dating site.

It didn’t take me long to figure out it’s impossible to write about oneself while sounding simultaneously A) confident, B) desirable, C) intelligent, and D) humble. It’s easy to accomplish one, maybe even two of these things at the same time. But all four? Not so easy.

I settled for B and D. Then I discovered online dating is the work of the Devil, designed to empty my wallet while introducing me to escaped mental patients.

Now I find myself in a similar situation. My book has shipped. And as a relatively unknown author (OK, completely unknown) the burden of promotion falls squarely on my delicate, birdlike shoulders. A big part of the whole “promotion” thing is writing a press release.

I sat down to do so this morning—three hours ago now—and have got no further than the headline: “Local author publishes humor collection.” Doesn’t exactly snag your attention, does it?

“Elvis dances naked at Princess Di memorial!” would garner more eyes, for sure, but that doesn’t really convey the message I’m trying to get across here, which is: “Buy my book!”

Maybe I should see what other, more successful, authors have done to promote their books. Gimme a sec to Google some stuff…

OK, I’m back. Turns out every author has his or her own approach to promotion. Stephen King, for instance, gazes spookily into the camera and says, “I have written a new book. It is about a possessed tree frog.” In Stephen King’s case, that’s all he has to do. People buy his new book if it’s about cement drying on a newly-poured sidewalk in Schenectady.

Well-known humorist David Sedaris has a web page even uglier than mine, but he’s a much better writer, in terms of both style and substance. Also, his essays appear from time to time in the New Yorker, which undoubtedly boosts book sales, at least among the sort of people who read the New Yorker (Psst: liberal Democrats and Woody Allen).

Dean Koontz has an awesome website, even better than Stephen King’s. And he suffers from none of that “false humility-itis” which seems to plague me. To read Mr. Koontz’s online press release, you’d think he had cured cancer, rather than written a bunch of mostly-scary books with remarkably similar plots (scary monster, helpless victim, 500 pages of chase scene, dead monster).

I’m pretty sure all the authors I checked out have people to write press releases for them. If my mom were still alive, I’d make her write mine; she always had good things to say about me, even if those things weren’t altogether true.

Instead, I think I’ll amend my headline to “Local author writes book about Elvis dancing naked at Princess Di memorial.” It’s a lie, but look man, I have all these books to unload.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Public education; maybe it’s time to suspend Socrates

2011-02-17T09:55:00.000-08:00

Have you read about Natalie Munroe, the Philadelphia high school teacher suspended for posting unflattering blogs about her students? Ms. Munroe identifies neither herself nor her school in her blog, but a couple students recognized themselves and went whining to school administrators, who did as school administrators always do: they wilted like salt-covered garden slugs.

According to Munroe, she was only telling it like it is.

“My students are out of control,” Munroe wrote. “They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying.”

How dare Ms. Munroe say such dreadful (and undoubtedly accurate and applicable) things about the blameless angels she must contend with every day?

And how typical that the school’s administrators should penalize her for her words, rather than consider the possibility she’s right and that it is virtually impossible to actually teach in many modern classrooms, owing in large part to the fact that students really are “rude, disengaged, lazy whiners.”

It’s so much easier to simply shoot the messenger.

Besides, shooting the messenger makes parents happy, the same parents who created and coddled the rude, disengaged, lazy whiners in the first place.

If the ‘80s really were the “Me Generation,” today’s youth are the “Me Me Me Now Now Now and Nobody Else, Ever!” crowd. The chimps are in charge of the zoo.

I blame it on the death of Sister Sulpischia, about whom I’ve written before, and other teachers like her. Sister Sulpischia (known to her students and fellow faculty members as “The Moose”) was 200 pounds of black-robed, rosary-thumping fury who ruled over her fourth-grade charges with a ferocity rarely seen outside rabid wolverine attacks.

I was one of her students and like most kids my age, I was by nature a rude, disengaged, lazy whiner. But not in the Moose’s class. Sitting only two rows from the good sister’s watchful eye, I was attentive, polite, engaged and determined to live to see fifth grade.

Sure, there were some kids, even back then, who had the guts to smart off to Sister Sulpischia. We all missed them during their protracted convalescences.

Do I really wish teachers were still allowed to clobber students? Well, no, I guess not. I mean, I do still remember the perve-o gym teacher I had in ninth grade who should have been in A) therapy, B) prison, or C) the Ninth Circle of Hell.

But I do wish there were at least a few administrators willing to back their teachers, stand up to the sort of parents who think their innocent babies can do no wrong, and insist that students who prevent other kids from learning be sent packing.

One of the greatest teachers of all time, Socrates, is credited with saying, “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority, they show disrespect to their elders. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and are tyrants over their teachers.”

Good thing he didn’t post this on his blog; he’d have been suspended.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com. BUY MY BOOK!! at www.mtrealitycheck.com.

Lousy parents (like me) can scare their kids to death

2011-02-09T09:38:00.000-08:00

Just when I thought I couldn’t feel any more guilty about the lousy job I did raising my kids, along comes the news that children can actually be startled to death. I don’t know whether this is really true; I read it in someone else’s column and columnists are notorious liars.

But even if it might be true, this news is going to put a big crimp in millions of games of peek-a-boo.

If it is true, well, all I can say is it’s a miracle my son lived into adulthood.

I didn’t really do a “lousy job” of raising my kids, but I was for the most part a young, single parent and I made my share of mistakes. The worst of these was teasing

Jorda n

—the most “believing” kid who ever lived—whenever the opportunity presented itself.

By the time he was seven years old, Jordan believed the following things: 1) round bales of hay lying in fields are actually giant rabbit pellets, left there for the benefit of giant rabbits residing in nearby woods; 2) a fierce gorilla lived in a locked garage near the restaurant where we dined every Friday evening; 3) fried chicken was made in a factory and definitely not in any way related to the cute, little birds; 4) Care Bears were real and watched over us daily from their vantage points on fluffy, cumulous clouds.

He believed all these things because his father (me) told him so. For all I know, he believes them still.

Jordan

was a smart kid, but he definitely put the “bull” in gullible.

Anyway, as a natural born prankster, I delighted in playing little tricks on my trusting son.

The best (or worst) of these took place one night at my dad’s restaurant, an older building requiring a lot of after-hours cleanup.

Jordan

often accompanied me to do the floors; he liked racing donuts with his remote-controlled car on the just-washed tiles.

The old furnace there made creepy ticking sounds for a couple minutes prior to firing up. During the day these were barely noticeable, but at night, echoing around the big, empty dining room, they were scary-sounding, even to me.

While

Jordan

happily raced his RC hotrod between table legs, I set a loud kitchen timer for three minutes.

“I’ll be back in the office for a sec,” I told

Jordan

. “If you hear an alarm, come get me right away, because that means the furnace is about to blow. The whole place could go!”

Jordan

responded as he always did: “Really?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It should be OK, though, so long as you tell me as soon as you hear the alarm go off.”

I retreated to the office and watched through the one-way glass looking out over the dining room.

Jordan

continued to pilot his car, but now kept glancing nervously at the heating vent, from which the ticking sound ominously emanated. This went on for a few minutes, with

Jordan

becoming increasingly uneasy.

The timer went off with a loud beep.

Jordan

jumped and began edging backward toward the office door, his eyes never leaving the heating vent.

Four feet, three feet, two…just as he reached the door I leapt out, yelling KAPOW! at full volume.

My seven-year-old son burst into tears.

We stopped at the ice cream shop on the way home and

Jordan

was allowed to order whatever he wanted, up to and including the entire store and the vehicles of each and every employee. This did nothing to assuage my much-deserved guilt, but it did help slow

Jordan

’s quivering lower lip.

OK, maybe I was a lousy parent after all. I’m just glad I didn’t kill the kid.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

‘Snowzilla’ failed to crush the Midwest, dammit!

2011-02-03T11:24:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s the day after the snowstorm that was supposed to herald the end of life as we know it, at least for those residing in the Midwest and most of the rest of the country.

The frothing, manic meteorologists predicted we would be buried beneath acres of frozen precipitation the likes of which haven’t been seen since the dinosaurs were wiped out, virtually overnight! The frozen bodies of those too weak to turn up their thermostats would provide food for the few ragtag survivors remaining when the storm finally passed. If it passed.

Polar bears would roam downtown streets, picking off any survivors crazy enough to venture out in search of chicken and waffles.

Madness! Chaos! Anarchy!

I was really hopeful.

As I mentioned last week, the only thing that’s going to save me financially at this point is the complete and utter dissolution of anything resembling civilization. The “storm of the century” seemed as good a way as any to bring about society’s downfall. And snow has the added benefit of not leaving behind A) radioactivity, B) exotic pathogens, or C) zombies, the way so many other apocalyptic scenarios do.

But nope. Snowzilla didn’t come close to wreaking the sort of havoc I’ll need in order to start over with a clean slate and assumed name (I’m thinking Demitri Papageorgio).

Oh, sure, it snowed, and pretty hard, too. The wind howled, the flakes piled up. But by noon of “the morning after” most of the main streets were clear and it was back to business as usual.

The sort of folks who tape black plastic over their windows every time Homeland Security raises the government’s National Threat Level (remember that?) from green to blue came up from their cellars and began phoning friends and family to make sure nobody had resorted to cannibalism.

In short, no Armageddon. Again.

It really ticks me off, being teased this way by meteorologists. I’ve been preparing for the end of the world for decades and these near misses are getting frustrating!

When I say “preparing for the end,” I don’t mean I run around the woods wearing camouflage clothing and carrying a paintball gun with a bunch of like-minded nuts. My preparation is of a slightly more passive variety; namely, watching all three Mad Max movies (none of which cover snow-related disasters, by the way).

Actually, I’m kind of glad the world didn’t end, even though it’s darn inconvenient for yours truly. When it does happen (any day now, I’m sure), I’m hoping for the sort of end that leaves behind some zombies.

Maybe I’ll be able to train ‘em to shovel all this snow.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

The end of the world figures prominently in my financial planning

2011-01-27T12:11:00.000-08:00

I watch the History Channel a lot, a sure sign I’m getting old. When the past starts to seem more interesting than the future, you know you’ve entered that slippery slide into geezer-hood.

In recent months I’ve become an expert on World War II, the Great Depression, the Nixon administration and the theory that ancient astronauts visited Earth thousands of years ago to give us astronomy, math, the electric light bulb (nope, I’m not kidding), and reruns of Law & Order.

Much of the stuff on the history channel is of the Could this mean? variety—as in, Could this circle, carved into the pyramid of Giza, be the Mayan representation of an interstellar space ship? Well, sure it could be that, but it probably ain’t.

At any rate, I was watching a show of this latter type earlier this week and got a bit of good news: The world is going to end next year.

I know this theory’s been floating around in cyberspace for months now, but seeing it on broadcast television somehow made it more real. It goes like this: The Mayan calendar, developed thousands of years ago, comes to an abrupt halt on Dec. 21, 2012. Nobody seems to know why. But when taken in tandem with a prophecy by Nostradamus (the John Edwards of his day), it seems to forecast the End of Days.

That prophecy reads, in part, Yeah, and in those times, the snow shall fall from the sky and the seas will be filled with liquid, maybe water. A great commotion shall be heard in the east and many birds of a feather will fly south for the winter. Other vague things that could be interpreted pretty much any way you want also will come to pass, verily and forsooth!

Throw in a few scary quotes from the books of Daniel and Revelations, add an Internet rumor concerning the possibility of an approaching comet, and voila, it’s the end of the world as we know it.

Now, I know that for some of you, this is going to be a real inconvenience, especially for those who had family coming for the holidays. It’s disconcerting to know the world’s going to end just four days before Christmas. Even if the relatives arrive before the A) comet, B) poison rain, C) nuclear attack, D) spaceships, E) angry deities or F) Betty White Clone Army, the knowledge that we all have only a few days to live is sure to put a damper on the festivities.

So, why do I think the end of the world is such a good thing? Well, it just so happens that—as I was watching the History Channel special—I was also planning my finances for the upcoming year. These days, this is mostly a hypothetical exercise; I do it from force of habit, a throwback to the days when I had a “real” job, money, and the hope—remote though it may have been—that I would someday enjoy a comfortable retirement.

According to my figures, at this point in my estate planning, the best I can hope for is a catastrophic, extinction level event. How lucky for me that one is coming in just under two years. I think I may have enough stashed away to last that long.

Sure, I feel bad for those of you doing well; if you’ve just won the lottery, landed a big promotion, stuff like that. But it’s not my fault. I just read the signs and accept the inevitable.

All I know for sure is, if we’re all still here the morning of Dec. 22, 2012, I’m in big trouble.

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Zombies make for one strange book signing

2011-01-20T07:58:00.000-08:00

I had the dream again last night. The one where I’m standing in front of a roomful of people, 30 or so, all of them gazing at me with the silvery, shimmering eyes of corn worshippers in a Stephen King novel. They’re expecting me to say something; something funny.

I open my mouth to speak, but my throat is stuffed with cotton; I can barely breathe, much less articulate.

“Mpfhhhh,” I say. “Mumpfhh itthit wuhmpah.”

Thirty sets of silvery eyes continue to stare. No one smiles. No one laughs. One man in a grey business suit glances impatiently at his watch. In the crazy clarity that dreams sometimes bring, I see it’s a Rolex, with a blue face and ostentatious diamond marking the 12 o’clock hour.

Great pools of sweat accumulate beneath my armpits. I realize I’m sporting a tan sports coat and slacks, a great improvement over the buck naked I usually wear to this dream. Both items of clothing are soaked through, the jacket from perspiration, the pants…well, I don’t want to think about why the pants are wet.

I am scared.

I take a sip of water from the plastic cup that magically materializes on the podium, which also has just appeared before me. The cotton inches down my throat like a sandpaper-coated slug, until finally I can speak.

“Um, I’m sorry,” I gasp. “This may have been a mistake.”

As one, the silvery-eyed group stands and, zombie-like, arms outstretched, shambles toward me.

I wake up screaming. Or dreaming of screaming.

And that’s why it has taken me so long to get my book finished. Because once you write a book (which is fun) and get the book published (which is cool) and see your first copy (which, I’m sure, will be exciting)…after all that, you have to promote your book.

You have to talk to real, live people. You have to make them believe you have something on which they should spend their $7.95. You have to do readings, and signings, and tap dance recitals for all I know.

I’ve been told by people who should know, people who’ve been there done that.

I don’t wanna. I want people to just buy my book without any encouragement from me. It’s a pretty good book; not James Thurber, but better than some stuff I’ve read, and there are very few typos. That should count for something.

Oh, OK, OK. I’ll talk to the book clubs. I’ll address elementary school classrooms and tell ‘em to not do drugs. I’ll shamelessly hawk my book at any store willing to give me 60 minutes and a card table. I’ll get out of bed at 5 a.m. to chat with the host of a local access AM radio program.

I will do whatever it takes.

But I swear, if I see just one pair of silvery eyes, the whole deal’s off!

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.

Memories, may seem beautiful…if they’re not televised

2011-01-10T13:50:00.000-08:00

Saw myself on television the other night. Or rather; saw the me that existed 25 years ago. In grey leather pants and a shirt that had been lifted (apparently) from Michael Jackson’s back, I looked like a reject from the “Thriller” video auditions.

My carefully-feathered haircut, reminiscent of a CHiPs-era Erik Astrada, only made matters worse. Watching my younger self onscreen I thanked the gods of video that the camera never panned down; I’m almost sure I was wearing white snakeskin platform shoes.

I was lying in a hotel room following a recent live performance with my weekend band when my historically accurate but altogether ridiculous self came on TV. I couldn’t believe they were airing the footage, a half-hour musical “special” that ran for the first time on Christmas Eve, 1985.

It was filmed back in the days when public television was so frantic for original programming they’d let anyone with the ability to point a camera produce a show. My buddy Bob was one such camera-pointer, and he talked me into bringing my band down to the TV studio to “star” in two live performances.

Bob was a better camera-pointer than most of them and the production values for the show were actually pretty good. My band, sadly, was not. Oh, I’ve been in worse, but I’ve been in better, too. The point is, Bob did his best, but there’s only so much you can do to make a coyote caught in barbed wire sound like Freddie Mercury.

And there’s absolutely nothing you can do to make me—even a young me—look good in leather pants and a Michael Jackson shirt.

It was surreal, old me watching young me singing on TV.

Why the public TV station was airing a lame-o half-hour music show from 25 years earlier is anyone’s guess. I’m sure it had nothing to do with “popular demand.” I can only assume they’re still desperate for programming; a test pattern would have been more entertaining, aside from the possible (no, make that probable) comedic value.

At any rate, watching that old footage served as a harsh reminder of just how much time has passed. I sing better these days. But I look older. And if anything, my guitar playing has actually gotten worse, which is difficult to understand, but I can’t deny the evidence of my own eyes and ears. On the plus side, I now have enough sense to not try to cover my expansive rear-end in gray leather.

Not that it matters much; I have as much in common with that skinny kid on the television as I have with Michael Jackson (which, other than the shirt, is nothing).

But I’m not embarrassed by the tape; I’ve lived long enough to know that everybody was a nerd once upon a time. We all have memories best left unexamined. I just wish mine weren’t captured on a piece of videotape sitting in a TV studio storage locker somewhere.

I’d like to get my hands on that tape, to save for, um, posterity. And by “save for posterity” I mean “bury in the back yard.”

More Reality Check online at http://mtrealitycheck.blogspot.com or www.mlive.com. Email Mike Taylor at mtaylor325@gmail.com.