Our fearless band of part-time pirates, the Buccaneers of Lake Charles, descended upon a local bowling alley this evening to compete for some fantastic prizes. That’s right- they all consisted of some sort of alcohol. Sure, go ahead and laugh, but you have to admit. It sure beats some stupid trophy that will sit on the shelf in the den until your wife one day finally tosses it out along with your back issues of Sports Illustrated.

We have two bowling alleys here in Lake Charles, and the fact that we picked the less well maintained of the two is an understatement. The lanes appear not to have been re-waxed since they cancelled M*A*S*H. My lane actually looked like a terrorist parked a car bomb on it at one time. It didn’t really matter, though, the way our group bowls.

The first thing I noticed when I sat down to put my bowling shoes on was that there was a sign posted warning how bowling is a physical sport and that could potentially be hazardous. I know that in this day and age businesses have to warn you about everything, but I never thought I’d see bowling lumped in with other physical pursuits such as bungee jumping and whitewater rafting.

The fact that we were competing for the Grand Prize of a bottle of Crystal Skull vodka brought out the best in us tonight. Some of us actually managed to strike some pins with the ball, particularly as the night wore on and the alcohol loosened us all up.

No, I did not win the Crystal Skull vodka, nor did I win the prize for being the first person to fall on his ass while attempting to deliver the ball. Next time I’ll drink more beer and thus improve my chances.

It pains me whenever my wife goes out and buys any type of new electronic device. This is because she, being probably the most electronically-challenged person on the planet, will be totally dependent on me to figure out how the thing works.

For instance, a few years ago she got a portable DVD player as a Christmas present. My wife has a bit of a streak of independence, so, as she is usually wont to do, she struggled on her own for a whole afternoon trying to figure out how to get the thing to work. Afterwards, she turned to me in despair. I looked at the player for a few seconds and flicked a switch on the side. The device immediately came to life and began playing the disc that was loaded into it. “See this right here,” I showed her. “That’s the ‘on’ button”

“Oh”, she replied, “I didn’t get that part.”

I bring this up because last week she came home with a new contraption to totrure herself with- a small digital camera. This time, however, she had no delusions of being able to figure out how to operate this one on her own.

So I whipped out the quick start guide, showed her the basic controls, being careful to point out the location of the “on” button, and off she went merrily snapping shots of just about everything that even vaguely captured her interest, even down to the stack of last week’s newspapers.

Then, it came time to upload the newly taken images onto the computer, a task which, to her at least, was as daunting as finding proof for the Unified Field Theory.

I showed her the few basic steps for this, which pretty much amounted to drag-and-drop, and off I went to my own business of watching classic episodes of the Hooters Annual Bikini Contest on hulu.com on my own laptop.

I had barely gotten through the opening credits before I herd her call from the other room. “The picture of my ring came out blurry!” she lamented. “Help me!”

Getting a good, sharp picture of such a small object I knew would be somewhat of a challenge with this particular camera. After all, this type of camera was not the equipment of, say, a crime scene investigator. Still, I knew I had to at least make an attempt at solving this problem, and to do this i needed to go beyong the Quick Start guide and into the User’s Manual.

The CD that came with the camera contained versions of the manual in quite a few languages, including some that I’m sure have been dead for centuries. Fortunately, English was one of these- surprising given that it’s the official tongue of the country of purchase. However, I was grieved to discover that the manual for this puny little camera seemed to have more pages than a bill being debated in Congress.

This manual I’m sure covers how to take just about any kind of picture imaginable, that is, except how to photograph small objects so they don’t come out all washed out and blurry.

So, I, the Great Tech Whiz-kid of the house, (by default since no one under the age of fifteen lives with us) was stumped on that particular question.

This did not stop her, however, and about every five minutes or so for the rest of the evening I had to answer one after another desperate plea for help. By the time I was done, I was qualified to tech a college-level course on how to operate this particular model of camera.

I still don’t know how to take a picture of something that remotely resembles my wife’s ring, but someday I will. I have to; I don’t think I’ll get through a single episode of the Hooters’ Bikini Contest until I do.

I read a story in the newspaper recently how researchers at Yale University have developed a car that will actually warn the driver of conditions that might result in an accident.  For instance, if another car moves up into the blind spot on your left, where you can’t see it in the mirrors, a probe comes out from the driver’s side door and gives you a sharp poke in the ribs as a warning.  If a car comes up and starts tailgating you, you get jabbed in the lower part of you back by another probe in the seat back.

This may be a good thing to give warning to a driver of impending accident-causing situations of which he may be otherwise unawares, due to the fact that he is busy chuckling over the latest dirty jokes that were sent to him by text message from his co-workers down at the loading dock.  However, if you routinely drive in rush hour traffic or, say, any school zone, you are bound to emerge from your car following each trip with more bruises than a New Orleans Saints lineman on Monday morning.

Me, I’d prefer to have a car that automatically sensed when some sunnavabitch cuts you off on the expressway. It would then automatically shoot a mechanical arm out the window to give him the finger and while at the same time firing off some choice words over a loudspeaker at a volume high enough that it could be heard at the other end of the state.  I’d prefer that option well over a satellite radio.

Hello, I’m still here.

Yeah, I know it seems like the last time I posted was shortly after Al Gore invented the Internet. But, honestly, do you all think I got nothing else to do all day but sit around on my computer coming up with stuff to amuse people who surf the Internet? No, contrary to what my family thinks, I have a life.

“I have a life”- when you think about it, it’s kind of a useless phrase. If you can say it, isn’t that proof that you have one? Our society today is really great at coming up with meaninless phrases like this. Doesn’t anybody these days ever have anything important to say? Like, something along the lines of, “excuse me, sir, but a pile of bricks just fell from the top of that building, and you’re standing right under them.” Now that would be important, but you rarely hear people saying things like that these days.

Of course, it’s entirely possible that I don’t actually have a life. I could just be a computer endowed with artificial intelligence, or, in the case of this column, artificial stupidity.

A corrolary to “I have a life” is “Get a life.” People always seem to be telling each other to get a life. I get that all the time.

What you never hear people tell each other is to “Take a life”. Of course, “taking a life” has an entirely different meaning now than “getting a life”. But that is really odd when you think about it. The difference in meaning between the words “take” and “get” is really quite subtle, isn’t it? So how come there’s such a big difference in meaning when you put the words “a life” after them?  It doesn’t really seem to make sense, does it?

This is why I make it a point to never tell anybody to “get a life”. How do I know that the person that I say that to won’t misinterpret my suggestion and promptly go out and brutally murder some innocent shopkeeper somewhere? This is a real possibility considering the types of people you usually say “get a life” to. They’re usually a little bit shakey to begin with. You never say that to somebody who’s got his shit together.

No, I would not want to have that blood on my hands. Furthermore, it could leagally make me an accessory to the murder. Can you imagine- the cops haul this guy in, who is probably a few deuces short of a full deck in the first place, and when they ask him why he did it he answers, “well, Mike McHugh told me to, that’s why!”

So I get hauled into court, and my only chance at a successful defense is to be able to explain to the judge the grammatical difference between the words “take” and “get”. I don’t think that even Johnny Cochran if he were still alive would be able to get me out of that one.

No, I’d most likely rot in prison, right along there with Charles Manson, just another madman who enticed folks to go around killing people.

We had another eventful week here in the Pelican State. Here’s a summary of the top stories.

• A Justice of the Peace in Tangipahoa Parish has created a whirlwind of attention in the international media when he refused to marry an interracial couple. This story caused reporters from as far away as Russia to temporarily divert thier attention from President Obama and focus their crosshairs on Louisiana. And, although they couldn’t actually see the state from where they sat, it did not stop them from shooting wildly from the hip. The unfortunate result of this volley is that now the rest of the world views Louisiana as a bigoted, redneck state. We all know the truth, though, and that is that any self-respecting redneck would sit down and drink with anybody wh has cold beer, regardless of thier race or nationality.
• And speaking of our Grand Poobah, President Obama visited New Orleans last week to catch up on how things are progressing with the recovery from Hurricane Katrina. He got the predictable response from New Orlenians- that the city would be a veritable Emerald City if only the feds would give them lots more money fast(unless Mayor Nagin had his druthers, in which case the city would be a diferent color).

  The Wiz replied saying that if he could write a check, he would. The arthritis in his writing hand apparently has come on quite suddenly, probably from the city’s humid air. It should pass as soon as he gets back to Washington.

• The Saints further proved themselves a force to be reckoned with in the NFL by totally embarassing the now formerly undefeated New York Giants. Their quarterback, Eli Manning, is the son of Archie Manning of the Saints of yore. This further goes to show that, no matter how talented, a Manning just can’t win in New Orleans.

  Meanwhile, it’s reported from hell that Satan has changed into a long-sleeved shirt.

• Up in Wisconsin, a black bear wandered into a convenience store and made himself at home in the beer cooler. Wildlife officials ended up tranquilizing it, but if they had just waited a few hours that action probably wouln’t have been necessary. Rumors are the bear wandered up from Baton Rouge. I think it was the LSU cap that gave him away.

I don’t know what sort of plague has befallen me of late, but I seem to have suffered here lately from spate of experiences with inferior customer service by several companies that I’ve had the misfortune of choosing to do business with. I don’t understand why this has come on all of a sudden. I really hadn’t experienced such a bad run of poor service before in my life. Maybe it’s because only recently I decided to stop beaing such a cheapskate all the time and actually go buy some stuff.

I’ll discuss the least distressful one first, and after you read this and realize that the others must be worse, you’ll wonder how I haven’t found myself a semi-automatic and gone postal at some company’s customer service center by now.

This first episode involved a prescription that I had purchased at the pharmacy of a major discount store which shall remain nameless but rhymes with “fart”. Upon my arrival home with said prescription, I quickly noticed that it had come with no instructions as to the dosage. I looked all over the package, and all it said were “refer to enclosed dosage instructions”, of which there were none.

So, I called the main number of this major discount store, and explained my issue to the person who answered. She put me on hold and then transferred me to the automotive department. I explained to the person who answered how I had been misconnected, and he said he would transfer me back to the operator. In the transition, the line went dead.

Following this slightly aggrivating incident, I came up with what I thought to be a clever ploy to circumvent this harrowing system. I called back, this time explaining to the operator that I had a problem with the tires I had just purchased. Surely this would get me connected to the pharmacy so that I could obtain the vital instructions that could very well prevent my death by a drug overdose had I tried to guess how much of the medicine to take. No such luck- my call was transferred to sporting goods.

Now, this was starting to become a game for me, and I was bound and determined to reach the end of this telecommunications maze and claim my prize- “Take twice daily with water before meals”, or something like that. So, in my next call, I explained that I had a problem with my new fishing pole. Off to hardware.

Called back to say they mixed the wrong color paint- off to lawn and garden.

This pattern repeated itself for a few more rounds until it all came to an abrupt end with a transfer to lingerie. I simply could not bring myself to calling back with the explanation that I had a problem with my bra strap.

I was beaten!

As for the prescription? A few minutes on the good’ ol Internet and I find what I need at the pharmacutical company’s web site.

Some say that computers are no substitiute for people. It appears that, at times, the opposite is also true.

Stay tuned for more hair-curling customer dis-service stories!

I’ve got to apologize to you, dear readers, for not having posted for the past week or so. Not wanting to go on public assistance and thus add to the already-burgeoning National Debt, I had to take some time to attend to my other career- the one that actually pays me money. After all, I do consider myself to be a patriotic sort, and so I couldn’t bear having the sole responsibility of having thrown our tenuous economic recovery completely off-track.

What has happened is that I’ve been assigned to a new project “team” at work.

“Ok, so what’s the big deal?” you might ask. Well, in the corporate world, “teams” are considered to be a very big deal indeed, and thus it becomes important to invest the time to build the quality relationships that are essential to the team’s functioning as a cohesive unit. Otherwise, open hostilities of the magnitude seen in congressional hearings or on episodes of “Survivior” are bound to erupt.

In order to build an effective “team”, it is necessary to invest countless hours in “team building” activities. These activities have to be held after regular working hours, outside of the office setting. This way, so the theory goes, you can get to know what everybody is like when they’re not engaged in the details of conducting actual business. In practice, though, you sometimes become exposed to too much information, if you know what I mean.

In order to do effective “team building”, the first thing you have to do is find some common interest shared by most, if not all, team members. It does no good, for instance, to go on a hunting trip when half the members have never hunted for anything more than the morning paper after the delivery boy had lodged it into a tree limb.

Now, ours is a multi-cultural “team”, representing countries as diverse as The United States, South Africa, and Texas. Thus, finding something in common was a particular challenge in our case. However, after much deliberation, we were able to find one activity that we all equally enjoyed- that of drinking beer.

So, as you see, with all of this time I have had to invest at the Fox and Hound Tavern downing pints of Shiner Bock so that our new team can become a harmonious entity, it has cut into my time for writing. It’s tough sometimes, but one is forced to make these types of personal sacrifices for the greater good.

Now that things have pretty much gelled into some sort of amorphous blob, I can now turn my attention back towards posting those articles that keep you, dear readers, informed of the important news items from around the state. I realize that you all have been in a complete state of bewilderment during this lapse, but don’t worry. I promise you, things in the state haven’t gotten any less bizarre since my last post.

Dear Readers,

Today, I got another communication from my pen-pal from the planet Laggah. It seems that the poor chap is quite confused about the climate change debate here on our planet:

Dear Mike,

I have noticed from your news transmissions that there have been many stories voicing concern about climate change on your planet. As I write this, many of your diplomats are meeting to determine how to stop your global temperature from increasing. They all express concern over the melting of water ice, I suppose because they require it to chill their bottles of champagne. I don’t know why this necessitates such a large international conclave. Can they not just switch to drinking hot sake?

Much of the terminology that is used in this debate deeply confuses me, and so I was hoping you could straighten this out for me. For one, there is all this talk about “Green House Gas”. I had not heard of a Green House. Is it similar to your “White House”? If I were you, I would be more concerned about the gas that has been emanating from that dwelling.

Then, there is all this discussion about the element carbon. For example, many of you humans seem to be concerned about “carbon footprints”. I do not know why this is, but if it is so controversial, can your people simply discontinue the practice of wearing shoes made of coal? I do not know what kind of feet your species has, but on our world we would find such shoes to be quite uncomfortable.

Truly it seems that discrimination against carbon is deep-seated among many of your people. I know that prejudice is problem among Earthlings, but it must be worse than I thought for Earthlings to extend this to the periodic table. You seem to love gold, hate carbon, and detest uranium, except for the Iranians, who can’t seem to get enough of it.

Take the human Al Gore, for one. He is always bragging about being “carbon neutral”, yet his words reveal his true feelings about the element. And what is this talk about “carbon caps”? That’s a worse idea than the shoes.

The last thing that perplexes me about your climate change discussions is this obsession that your species seems to have over the color green. Everyone seems to be high on the idea of “green energy”. I don’t understand. Doesn’t burning things while they are still green create a lot of smoke? Perhaps combustion works differently on Earth.

By the way, if you Earthlings love green so much, you will really get a kick out of the cheerleaders here on our planet.

Regards,

Wannah Chuggah Brooski

I’m not sure of the best way to answer this. Any ideas?

More insanity around the state in the week just passed:

• A lot of people are up in arms about a closed door meeting that a grop of state legislators have scheduled in Alexandria on the subject of redistricting based on the results of the 2010 census. Organizers defend the move as legal, claiming that it is “educational” in nature.

  Okay, so they’re going to get some schooling. But what are they afraid of having us, their tuition payers, monitor the class? That we’ll see them as a bunch of dunces? Hell, we already know that.

• A minister in Plaquemines parish was arrested for stealing money from a fund he established for members of his flock to acquire FEMA trailers for them following Hurricane Katrina.

  Before you rush to judgment on this guy, consider. Maybe he’d gotten some divine enlightenment about the heatlh hazards that would eventually be discovered with those trailers, and so he was really tring to defend his parishoners from danger. OK, so what if he did spend the money he took on the drugs the cops found? Perhaps he was only killing two birds with one stone and buying it all up himself to deliver them from temptation, as well.

• A modular home contractor was extradited to Louisiana from Florida on charges that he defrauded Road Home Grant recipients of money. He promised them modular homes that never got delivered. My question is why these victims had to turn to a Florida man to get ripped off when there’s plenty of contractors in this state who are perfectly capable of doing the same thing?
• The LSU Data Center released a report that reveals, although Louisiana is gaining population, it is losing college graduates and replacing them with people of lower educational levels. At this rate, before you know it, anybody with one of those new dumbed-down Career High School Diplomas will be considered a bonafide genius.

  It’s just like solving your weight problem by hanging around with only fat people. What’s wrong with that?

• The Saints are now 3-0. Was that a hint of a cool Brees that was felt down there in Hades?
• LSU is 4-0 and 4th in the polls. A win is a win, they say. And a $2 scratch-off prize is a also a winning lottery ticket.

Yesterday morning, I followed my normal ritual of pouring a cup of coffee and going to the driveway to fetch the morning paper. Usually, I turn straight to the crossword puzzle, ignoring the rest of the paper, but on this morning, I had a little bit of extra time. So, I decided this time to scan the front page to see if anything noteworthy has happened lately, like maybe the state has moved up from 50th to 49th in one of those national surveys they always seem to be doing.

What I saw on the front page were five stories. Three were about murders that had occurred, all in the local area. In another, I noticed that people were buying up ammunition faster than plywood during a hurricane warning. In the last story, it was reported that teenagers are having a hard time finding jobs in the current economic downturn. The reason for that, so said the story, is because adults are coming to the opinionthese days that delivering pizzas can be a rewarding career path.

Let’s see. Teens with too much time on their hands. Murders in the local community. People buying up ammo like they’re going to stop making it tomorrow. Does anyone besides me see a connection between these stories?

I could react to this in one of two ways. On the one hand, I could put up bars on all my windows and lock myself securely in my house. I wouldn’t even go out to buy groceries. I’d just order out for Domino’s Pizza all the time, hoping to high heaven that the delivery boy, or should I say “man”, is not a serial killer.

Or, I could just go back to my normal habit of going straight to the crossword puzzle in the mornings. After all, I don’t need to refer to the front page to solve it. Never is there a clue for 46-across that reads, “Latest person in Calcasieu Parish to be convicted of second-degree murder.”

Which way do you think I should go?

For those of you who were born after, say, 1970, the title of this article reflects a line from a song by a band called “The Beatles”. Have you heard of them?