ASSUMPTIONS

I remember Creature Feature. A show that started at 10:30 PM and featured, well creatures in their fright night movies. There was a big appeal back then about shows scaring the socks off you. That, of course, was before the national and even local news reported really scary stuff. Complete with blood and guts that weren't like The Blob or Creature from the Black Lagoon.

But why do creatures have to be ogres? What kind of creature could be beautiful and really scary at the same time? And why couldn't she come out of the water? All we had was the itsy bitsy teeny weenie bikini girl and no one thought of her as a creature.

I guess what I'm intimating is why do creatures take on such a negative connotation? The third definition in Random House Webster's College Edition states...a human being--[ex]a lovely creature. Yet the word is rarely used in that light.

We are to fear creatures. In fact, with the exception of mermaids, I can think of nothing else attractive in legend or lore about a creature. The word itself seems to stem from creation. God made nothing bad in His creation. Not even a lagoon. So go figure.

If I made a movie, my creature would be helpful and kind. A superhero who could leap tall buildings... darn! Too late again. But instead of coming from a planet, he'd come out of the murky swamp and when he shed the algae, he'd be aglow.

WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

The Phoenix Open was once a golf tourney for the ages. The wild 16th hole. The beautiful (well sometimes) weather. Why the parentheses? Some looked forward to it because it almost always rained at least one day and in a water starved community any rain is welcomed.

It, at least to me, lost a bit of luster when it changed sponsors and names when it went to the FBR Open, completely taking Phoenix out of the name. FBR stands for some bank but since they took over the tourney in 2004, I can't tell you the name other than the initials. They opted out and left the Thunderbirds looking for a sponsor of the most well attended PGA golf event in the country. Now who the Thunderbirds are is another story, one that I'm not familiar with. Except to say that they raise a lot of money for charity. Thirty-eight million in the last half decade according to the AZ Repub.

But Waste Management? Oh they re-added Phoenix to the mix. But at what a cost? The Houston-based company is green. There's already an undercurrent for this tournament being about "green on the greens". And who can be against effective waste management?

At the same time, who can be against a lot of things that are generally not mentioned around the old supper table? I also know that sponsorships are tough to come by in this age of the Great Recession. But still.

There will be lots of jokes about it certainly. I wonder if it's going to be a tourney to feature Tiger vs Daly? Tiger's undoubtedly wasted a lot and needs a manager. As for John Daly, he could use some waist management himself.

Come to think of it, if it's truly an open, there would be a lot of us who could qualify on at least one of those grounds.

Ahh, but I long for the day of the FBR. At least they took Phoenix out of it. At least we were anonymous to non-golfers. No longer. And when I tell people I live in the Phoenix area, their thoughts turn to waste. Ugh.

SO WHAT CAN'T YOU GET OUT OF YOUR MIND?

SONGS, THE PAST, WAR, ARGUMENTS I COULD HAVE MADE BACK THEN, A DO-OVER.

At least that's my list. Today it's a song our youngest granddaughter loves, "The Elmo Song". So I'll be do-do-do-do-ing for the rest of the morning. While we shop for something called Elmo's Fingers, I'm sure it will come back and last until early afternoon.

I'm always seeing something that takes me back to the past. When I read on computer and saw a picture of Vernois (nee) Changnon Gym in MTV, I reflected on my time there as announcer. When I just looked closely at the picture, I thought of an eighth grade friend named John Leigh.

Since I was not war-tested, unless you count high school teaching, I don't have that to stay in my head though I may still be the only teacher in the state shot while he was on the picket line. Thankfully, my shooter chose a high powered Chinese air rifle rather than a rifle with more kick which the same lunatic fired at a farmer on a tractor in his field, wounding but not killing him. So I guess I do have a war or battle story.

I'll combine the last two because there are so many instances of arguments I could have made and do-overs that I wish I could that they would be too numerous to mention. But we all have them. Sharing mine would simply make me even more transparent and really serve no purpose. Other than (you knew I couldn't resist) giving someone a hand up is better than a handout and some things you just have to learn the hard way. Or just as the long time poster that hung in the back of my classroom said, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."

Remember that piece of advice, and then go out there with a clear head.

JESUS, LORD AT THY BIRTH



How important, yet how too often overlooked. I can understand the townspeople of Nazareth really having difficulty believing Jesus when He said He was sent from God in Heaven. After all, what their senses told them, what logic dictated was that He was the son of Joseph and Mary.

Yet those same senses didn't reveal that in His lifetime He never sinned. It wouldn't take close scrutiny to see that, yet His own brothers didn't.

It wouldn't take much investigation to unearth the facts that He knew so much about religion at such a young age. Without formal training. Without the years of intense biblical study that the Pharisees had subjected themselves to.

So it was about the physical versus the spiritual. It always is. They were in the physical world in their focus. Thy knew about God: they didn't know God. Not in the personal relationship that He desires for His followers.

Even more, Jesus was Lord at His birth. He didn't have to prove Himself (my goodness, He was there at Creation), He didn't have to earn any accolades, He didn't have to elected--He was/is Lord of all.

As St. Louis Cardinal great Albert Pujols says, "Christmas is about Jesus." Let's follow his words and announce it to all in our greetings this season. I never tire of saying "Merry Christmas".

AN INTERROBANG



Yep, that's all we need. A new mark of punctuation. This innovation combines the question mark with the exclamation point and looks an awfully lot like a capital P with a period under it.



Some techy must have come up with it. Perhaps it looks ok on a computer screen, but handwritten, it would be a nightmare to distinguish. Do we really need it anyhow? It reminds me of teenage girls who used to write for me and end almost every sentence with the exclamation point. "But it was so important," they would counter.

Does the proposed interrobang really alter the meaning that much!? What!? Sorry, it doesn't work for me. Even switched around it doesn't work. W/ for with or w/out I can live with. Even LOL, IMHO, BFF--all work for me. I mean all you have to do is look to the military for abbrevs that don't, for the most part, hinder communication. But trying to discern an interrobang from a misprint from a capital P to sloppiness, just slows down the communication process.

So to those who change things in grammar (I'm sure by now Mr. Wariner and Mr. McCrimmon are passe), I plead "Don't!?!!

FIRST READ

I like the idea of reading the Bible first thing in the morning. Even before reading the paper. I also like praying before getting out of bed and starting the day. One friend literally rolls out of bed and gets on his knees to pray first thing.

As I said, I like it. But I don't do it. Usually I will say a prayer before reading that newspaper.(Not about the newspaper I'm about to read.) But with coffee in hand, I have my first read of the day in the morning paper. I'm of that generation.

You know: the one that doesn't feel burdened by paper The younger, electronic or technologic generation seems to shy away from any kind of paper. They almost act as if it will bite. But give them an earphone a headphone a bug or beetle, and they're right at home Who needs paper when the internet and Kindel II are within reach?

So why do I need my paper? Habit. And information Just last week I found that Canadians don't tip as much as Americans. That our Prez. thinks sharing war strategy with our enemies is the best way to go. That Jon Voight's daughter and Brad Pitt are having difficulties. That Jennifer Aniston still can't get pregnant. And that a fish from Malaysia feeds on people's feet.

He's not pictured above. I suppose I could have Googled a garra rufa fish that spa owners import to nibble away dead skin on their customers' feet. But then I would have felt hypocritical to paper lovers. Oh, the AZ Republic had a picture, but the fish was kind of non-discriminate anyhow.

Personally, I couldn't stand it. I remember when fish at Rend Lake would nibble or nip at moles on my legs while I was swimming. I didn't like that very much back then. I guess I'm too ticklish. Also too cheap to pay $30 for twenty minutes of fish feeding on me, even if the skin is dead.

DON'T, I REPEAT DON'T LOOK AT THAT PICTURE



Unless you want your eyes to start running.



Every time I look at Marty Feldman and those eyes, my own start to tear. Not because I have an overwhelming sympathy for anyone who looks like that, but it just hurts me. You know, I don't even have to look at the picture: I just have to think of him and the juices run.



I'm sure he made a good living with his baby browns, but at what cost? I used to think it was some kind of special effect or some kind of distorted thing he could do bugging them out like that. But, no, they were there, that way, all the time.

The closest to Feldman's eyes I ever saw were on a guy I used to work with. He had normal to large size eyes but when he put on his bifocals, his eyes became huge. Scary. They looked dilated to me.

One day in the Teacher's Lounge, he sat at a table facing the crowd seated on each side of the walls. His wife walked in and stood behind him. A teacher asked him to repeat how he was able to spend the money they had saved up for a new car for her on a new sprayer for his peach orchard instead.

He pontificated on how cagey and in charge he was and his wife never knew that's where her car money had gone. Then he turned and as The Beatles sang "He saw her standing there."

Even his pseudo-Feldman eyes couldn't save him. Within one week, she was driving a new car.