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.

Anyone who has read any of the books in the Rowan Gant Investigations series knows who Detective Benjamin Storm and Special Agent Constance Mandalay are. Furthermore, anyone who has talked to me, or attended one of my writing or Q&A seminars knows that everything is book material in my way of thinking. That includes using various quirks or physical descriptions from the everyday reality to enhance the fictional reality, which is still fiction even if I call it a fictional reality. Make sense? Yeah, it doesn’t to me either…

But, here’s where I’m going with this – I use what I know to write stuff that I make up, but what I make up is exactly that – stuff I make up. It’s not real, and it doesn’t actually reflect a real reality.

Case in point, Ben Storm and Constance Mandalay. I should also say here – SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t read my books, or are only just starting to do so…

Ben is loosely – and when I say loosely I mean LOOSELY based on one of my very best friends of all time, a Metropolitan Saint Louis police officer. Their similarities being that they are both 6 foot 6 and the last person on Earth you would want to see coming through a door at you if you are doing something wrong. Other than that, I get “cop slang” from my friend, and of course, procedure and the like. However, that is where it ends. Ben is NOT my buddy, and my buddy is NOT Ben.

In the first few novels of the series, Ben was married to Allisson. She, in turn was LOOSELY based on my cop buddy’s wife – also a very dear friend. Hell, she took me shopping and acted as my fashion consultant when I was desperately trying to woo E K. She’s like a sister to me. However, once again, the LOOSELY based is just that. My friend worked in the medical field, so I made Allisson a nurse.

Constance Mandalay is a Bride of Frankenstein sort of character. By that I mean she is literally a hodge-podge of personality and physical traits from countless individuals, some of whom I know, some of whom I don’t know, and some of whom are also fictional characters from TV shows and movies. That isn’t to say that the pieces didn’t fit well together, because they did. She’s a great character… After all, she even has her own spin-off series now…

But moving right along…

Somewhere around the fourth novel, Ben and Allisson started having some relationship issues. My cop buddy and his wife were NOT mirroring this. Said issues were between the two fictional characters and only on the page. By the fifth novel, things had ended for them and Ben was moving on with his life. Since the young, pretty, intelligent, Sig Sauer packing FBI agent, Constance Mandalay, had been at odds with Ben on more than one occasion a natural progression took place – Tension turned into sexual tension, and they ended up dating.

Back here in the real world, my cop buddy’s wife was none too pleased about this, and she has been sure to let me know.

Every. Single. Time. I. Talk. To. Her.

And so, just the other night we were all together at Double D’s Pizzeria, which is owned by their son. We were having a bit of a planning meeting about the release party for In The Bleak Midwinter which will be taking place there at Double D’s. I brought them one of the ARCs of ITBM as a gift, and as she started flipping through it I made the preemptive comment, “Yeah, Ben and Constance are still dating.”

She looked across the table at her husband and said, “So you’re still having an affair with Constipated, huh…”

It’s a good thing Mandalay is fictional, because gun or no, I’m thinking she wouldn’t stand a chance against my buddy’s wife, and the nickname would be the least of her worries…

More to come…

Murv