BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

It’s still painful to talk about. I know it has been a whole week now, but it seems like it was only yesterday. The horror of it all is still fresh in my mind, and I find myself waking up in a cold sweat as the nightmares plague my slumber. I guess that’s what I get for surviving…

It was cold. Especially for Florida. Of course, it was also early November and George Bush had stopped denying global climate change, so those were just the dice Momma au Naturale dealt us. The Sunshine State caught in the grip of a cold snap of epic proportions. Unbelievable as it may seem, when the sun dipped below the horizon the mercury would plummet into the danger zone. Yes… the 50’s. I actually had to wear my hoodie.

EK, John, and Murv - Prior to the ill-fated Trick or Drunking Expedition

Earlier in the day, provisions had been running low. That’s how it is with Corona and lime when you are at a festival in Florida. One minute there’s enough, the next, not so much. We scraped together a twenty from my wallet and handed it off to the provisions maven. We never saw her again. Who knew a Jackson could take you that far…

Well… Not far enough, because that’s about the time the trolley broke down. Any seasoned Festival-goer knows that when the Trolley breaks down you’re as good as dead – but we weren’t ready to give up. Steeling our resolve, we grabbed our plastic cups and set out down the pass to go “Trick or Drunking.” We’d heard a rumor that Pirates had set up camp below, and if we could make it there, perhaps they would share their rum with us. Or not. One never knows about Pirates, but we had to try.

The trip was arduous. We lost three on the way, not sure if they succumbed to the cold, were eaten by the rogue bear, or simply turned back. Eventually, however, we made it to our destination. After much parlay, the assignation of Piratey names, and selling off E K to the “Feral Cathouse” run by the Buccaneers, we were accepted into the fold and beaten severely about the head and shoulders – and livers – with rum that had been shown a picture of fruit punch. But it wasn’t allowed to look for very long, as it was only supposed to pick up a hint of the fruity punchiness…

Sometime during the darkness, a roving band of strange women, each dressed in black and adorned with bright red lipstick, descended upon the Pirate camp. Even the Pirates cowered, powerless against their overwhelming osculation. And yes, they scurried about like little pixies, kissing all of the male types and leaving gihugic Angelina Jolie lip prints on our faces.

We were sore afraid, and a bit titillated as well, but that’s a different story.

Eventually, seeing as we had brought the strange women upon them, the Pirates made us walk the plank. Being on land already it wasn’t much of a plank, however, there was the mountain, for we eventually had to return to our base camp at the summit.

John – as in John Gramling… Yes. THE John Gramling – downed what was left of his punch drunk rum and pointed at the distant lights in the sky. He burped, hiccuped, and then said, “I ain’t climbin’ that mountain.”

E K, who had been kicked out of the “Feral Cathouse” for torturing the clientele looked ahead and replied, “Psshaw! It’s just a gentle incline.”

“It’s a damn mountain,” John repeated.

And so we braved the cold, the wind, and the bear, stalking off into the early morning darkness (it was after midnight) and climbed the Altoona Mountains there in Florida. Just her worship THE E K, and me…

We never saw John again. Rumor has it RD ate him when the Pirates finally ran out of rum, but then, RD is like that. (You’d understand if you’d ever met RD…)

And there you have the true story of The Gramling Party. I’m sure that mountainside is haunted now… By John and a case of Corona. Maybe I’ll go back and look for him some day. I’m pretty sure he forgot to take the lime with him…

More to come…

Murv

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.