BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Gunnahdoo… It sort of sounds like a place, right?

You know, kind of like Xanadu. No, not the disco with Muses on roller skates. The other place. The one the disco was named after… “In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn, a stately pleasure dome decree, where Alph the sacred river ran, through caverns measureless to man, down to a sunless sea…” I could go on, but that should give you the idea.

Of course, in the case of Gunnahdoo we’d probably be talking about an industrialized suburb of Xanadu. Something more on the order of, “In Gunnahdoo did James Caan, a giant Rollerdome decree, where ALF the silly alien ran, eating cats and mocking man, on the old TV…”

However, Gunnahdoo isn’t a place. It isn’t a thing. It isn’t a person. So that pretty much makes it NOT a noun, I suppose. In truth, it’s a verb. It’s a big, nasty, commonly used verb that is devoid of any true meaning whatsoever. Allow me to explain…

EVERYONE uses “gunnahdoo.” Even me. For some of us – much like the words ain’t and y’all (which are accepted parts of speech from whence I hail) – it actually does hold meaning. Gunnahdoo, put simply, means, “[I/you] [am/are] going to do something.” What that something is will usually be appended – or pre-pended – to the sentence or paragraph. For example:

“You know what I’m gunnahdoo? I’m gonna go over there and jump in that lake.”

OR

“I’m fixin’ to jump in that lake. Yep… That’s what I’m gunnahdoo…”

So here’s the thing… IF you go ahead and do what you said you were gunnahdoo, then gunnahdoo actually has meaning. However, if you DON’T follow through with the appended, pre-pended, or otherwise verbally attached “doo,” then gunnahdoo just becomes a meaningless, empty promise. Granted, in some cases it’s not the gunnahdooer’s fault that they don’t do what they were gunnahdoo, because they are blocked from doing it by circumstances, or even other gunnahdooers. Of course, IF a gunnahdooer already knows that it is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to follow through with the “doo,” then uttering “Ah’m gunnahdoo” is actually tantamount to telling a big fat lie. Or, to put it in the proper vernacular, a fib. Yes – Liar, Liar, pants on fyh-er… You get the picture.

And that brings us around to politics.

Yep. I’m gunnahdoo it. I’m gonna go there…

Politicians are perfectly happy to stand up in front of the nation and say, “I’m gunnahdoo __________.” Especially when they are running for office. However, being politicians, and hopefully having passed at least a rudimentary high school civics class, they know better than to believe that they can actually “do” anything… I mean other than spout a whole mess of “doo” at us. Especially when it comes to the office of President.

Now, before you get your shorts in a bunch, lemmeedoo this (for those keeping score at home, lemmeedoo is the “present permissive participle” of gunnahdoo)… What I’m gunnahdoo is ‘splain something, and that something is that I’m not being partisan here. I don’t care whether we are talking about Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Libertarians, Tea-Whatevers, Green, Have A, or whatever party. Fact is, I’m none of them. I do vote, but let me tell you it’s not easy. For me it’s a matter of voting for the person who has spouted the least consciously empty gunnahdoos during the campaign.

Unfortunately, it seems our society has become a big ol’ nation of gunnahdooers, and one of the terrible things that comes along with that is believing the gunnahdoos of other gunnahdooers. What that means is that people are more than happy to rally behind the candidate who stands at a podium, waves his or her finger in the air, and proceeds to announce, “Elect me and I’m gunnahdoo this, and I’m gunnahdoo that. Then I’m gunnahdoo this other thing, and if you want me to do that thing, then I’m gunnahdoo that, too. And then I’m gunnahdoo this…”

And the list goes on… and on… and on… But when it comes right down to it, out of the 1289 things Candidate X is gunnahdoo if elected, maybe – and I do mean maybe – he or she will actually be able to do three, none of which have any actual impact on anything of any relevance whatsoever.

So… what do we do?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I know what I’m gunnahdoo… I’m gonna go have a beer, and you can take that promise to the bank.

More to come…

Murv

DISCLAIMER: For the purpose of not disgusting myself to the point of losing my appetite for three days, no photographs of politicians were used in this blog.

I’m a big fan of Twinkies. I actually consider them comfort food, even though I’m not entirely certain that they qualify as actual food. Odds are they are more along the lines of chemicals bonded together by other chemicals filled with more chemicals, none of which are actually compounds that we were meant to put into our bodies…But they taste so good. Truth is, I don’t get to have Twinkies very often, which is a good thing. If I had them on a regular basis I’d be even fatter than I am right now, and let’s face it, I’m a fat guy.

But, as usual, this blog really isn’t about Twinkies, nor is it about raccoons. It’s actually about walnuts and coffee. However, there really is a Twinkie – Raccoon connection, believe it or not.

I don’t actually watch that much TV (Got subject whiplash yet? Good… Just put on this neck brace and sit back…)

Like I said, I don’t watch much TV, but I do turn on the idiot box from time to time in order to catch the news, and a couple of programs that we regularly watch. Of course, whenever positioned in front of the glowing toob you will be bombarded by radiation, but that is beside the point. You will also be bombarded by commercials. Some of them funny, some of them not, some of them that just plain resonate with certain individuals. Case in point, the Twinkie commercial with the raccoon that sees a snack cake falling out of the sky toward him – in the end it’s actually a snowboard, and that leads us into the line “where’s the cream filling?”

But back to the walnuts…

There I was at Meeman-Shelby State Park in Tennessee. I was a guest speaker at FoS (Festival of Souls). I had showered (so that I wouldn’t stink) and made myself relatively pretty (so that I wouldn’t scare children and small animals) and then made my way up to the dining hall for a cup of coffee. Breakfast proper was still an hour or so off yet, so I sat out on the back “patio area” with the other early risers. We drank our coffee, grunted at one another, told stories that none of us can remember now (it was early), and just generally did the morning thing. All around us, Autumn was happening – and when I say happening, I mean it was in full swing. Now, one would think I mean leaves turning, leaves falling, chill in the air, all that sort of stuff, and actually, I do. However, there was more. You see, that area is populated by a large number of Oak and Walnut trees, therefore we were surrounded by the constant – and I do mean constant – clatter, rattle, thud, and thump of falling acorns and walnuts. So much so, that it went on all day and all night. Around the clock. And, it made walking the paths to the cabins an exercise in dodging nature’s attempt at carpet bombing the invaders (the invaders being us).

As we sat swilling caffeinated brew, a distant thunk, clatter, tink, clomp, ping, thud sort of noise met our ears. This was followed by a skitter that grew louder with each passing millisecond. Now, something I should probably mention is that the dining hall has a vaulted ceiling, which means that the roof is EXTREMELY high. Moreover, this expanse of asphalt shingles is sloped at a pitch resembling an Alpine Ski Jump ramp. No, I am not exaggerating (this time).

At any rate, I was downing some coffee as the skittery noise echoed louder and louder. Suddenly, it ended with a sort of “tick, thunk, swoosh” all mashed together. The bizarre noise was followed by a voice next to me that calmly stated, “Incoming…”

I looked up in time to see a walnut. At first it was sort of walnut sized, maybe even a little smaller, however the problem with it seemed to be that it was growing in size at an alarming rate. Initially I had one of those Sheriff Carter (Eureka) moments, wondering what manner of Global Dynamics experiment had gone awry and was causing this walnut to grow – or perhaps the rest of us to shrink. Fortunately, my first cup of coffee for the morning elected to kick in at right about that very moment. I ducked as much as a fat guy straddling the bench of a picnic table can duck in the split second I had left. The walnut, that at this point had blotted out the sun, parted my hair.

Yes… It grazed right across my scalp with plastic comb-like precision. In less time than it took for me to blink, it hit the bench immediately to my rear with a loud crack-thump! But it wasn’t finished yet. Ricocheting at warp speed, the new trajectory launched nature’s smart bomb back into the air. A sonic boom exploded behind us as it broke the sound barrier, and that was followed by the clang, clatter, and crash of a #10 can –  that had heretofore been used as an ashtray – being picked off the back picnic table.

And, much like the raccoon from the commercial, I didn’t even get a Twinkie for breakfast.

More to come…

Murv