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.

As promised, I am throwing together a few blogs about our adventures on vacation. Please make note that they won’t necessarily be in chronological order as far as the vacation itself went. They are actually in “transcribed jotted down note order,” which makes sense to me, but not really everyone else. At any rate, this is number three in the series…

A Yellow Headed Blackbird... Native to the Tetons

So there we were… Grand Tetons… Jackson Lake… Signal Mountain.

Beautiful scenery, wild “thangs” running around all over the place, and I’m not just talking about E K, mind you. Yes… She is the quintessential “Redheaded Wild Thang,” but there were other furry, feathered, scaled, and otherwise armored critters running about the land of desert, prairie, mountain, whatever…

Seriously. There are pictures. One of them is over there to the left. We saw that crazy little bastage running around at one of the scenic pullouts that overlooked a prairie-like tableau, complete with the Teton mountain range in the background. Just for the record, I can show you the pics of the critters, but not of The Redhead being all wild. There are laws…

So… Again… There we were, coming down off yet another mountain. Or maybe we were cruising about on the two lane highway betwixt point A and point B. Or maybe it was a combination thereof. I’m here to tell ya’, it tends to get mixed up after a bit… The thing is, we were in the rental Jeep, with E K behind the wheel – Why? Because we were on our way somewhere and because E K has to be in control at all times. Y’all should know that by now.

Something else I’ve mentioned about The Redhead Who Shall Be Obeyed, is that she has some sort of organic GPS built into her brain. That, or a lodestone. Probably both. The only problem she will run into with it is, of course, construction that she wasn’t warned about, and the unfortunate occasions when she neglects to download the map updates to her brainpain – she has a Firewire socket on the back of her head, ya’know… This was one of those incidents.

The Tetons hiding in the clouds...

Where was I? Oh yeah… We were traveling and The Evil One hadn’t updated her Grey Matter 2000 GPS. Not to worry… Liz was in the back seat with a map, and she was feeding coordinates to the redhead, so all was good. In fact, Liz not only had a map, she also had a book that contained all manner of info about various attractions in the area – a tourist guide of sorts. We not only used this to figure out what we WANTED to see, but also what we should probably avoid – as in, too many tourists. Now, during all of this map deciphering, Liz enlisted the aid of the O-spring to read some of the smaller print.

“Why?” the child wanted to know.

“Because I’m blind as a bat,” Liz replied.

And so, all was still good. The o-spring read the small print, and together she and her Aunt Liz provided targeting coordinates to the Redheaded Tank Commander behind the wheel.

At one point, after offering up some pretty spectacular information and directions – much like the folks on the Bing commercials who spit out a whole list of things – we all mentioned how great it was that Liz had the book along with her.

Liz replied, “I just love books and maps.”

This prompted a comment from the tween, “If you’re blind as a bat then why do you love books and maps so much?”

“What do you mean?” Liz asked.

O-spring rephrased her question. “Well, if you’re blind as a bat you can’t see, so how can you read them?”

Instant logic. Just add gifted tween.

We all chuckled. Well, all of us grups did, anyway.

Liz, being quick with a comeback herself, explained, “I just use my bat sonar.”

I'm A Bison... Moooo

Again, we all laughed. Except the o-spring. She puzzled over the comment for a moment, remaining silent as we drove along. After a few moments, our chuckling and chittering died down, and all that was left to fill the void was the sound of the tires against Wyoming pavement.

Then, without warning, child-o-mine spoke up again, deadpan serious as she explained,  “I don’t think you can use echolocation to read maps and books…”

Good thing E K didn’t wrap the Jeep around a Bison on that one. The damn things were everywhere. As it was, we had to clean Cherry Coke off the inside of the windshield and driver’s side dash. You know how those rental car outfits are about the extra cleaning charges…

More to come…

Murv