This past Christmas my wife gave me a supremely "guy" toy. She did this because, after twenty-two years of marriage, she's given up any hope of ever curing me of my essential guyness. Early in our relationship she thought she had an outside chance of knocking the rough edges off me. She thought this because I wasn't exactly a fan of organized sports; football had more rules than any one game needed, baseball was less interesting than its scandals, and basketball and soccer seemed like too much work. Despite my lack of the sports-appreciation gene, my wife found she couldn't really civilize me. Her one attempt to help me get in touch with my feminine side resulted in a restraining order which requires me to stay at least fifty yards away from my feminine side at all times. So I'm a guy and to honor that fact my wife gave me a guy toy for Christmas; a self-taught course in miniature helicopter repair. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Want to get the rest of this funny story or others like it? Check out the whole story and related links at www.ShortCummingsAudio.com. NOTES: The helicopters I mentioned in this essay really do exist and they really are very cool. They are the Spinmaster Air Hogs Battling Havoc R/C Helicopters available from fine retailers everywhere including at Amazon-dot-com by following the link in this note.As proof of my thesis that these little copters are guy toys, check out the YouTube video at:http://tinyurl.com/2hqxydFor the real scoop on THX, check out the Wikipedia entry at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THX Tags: humor essay | funny story | rc helicopter | guy | toys | comedy

There comes a time in every dad's life when he realizes he's no longer the competitor he used to be. Somewhere along the line he's lost the skills and reflexes of his youth and his kids can beat him. It's the day when he passes the video game crown to the next generation. I grew up in the late seventies and early eighties; the golden age of arcades. No ghost was safe from me in Pac Man. If Ms. Pac Man had been willing to trade round and yellow for skinny and adolescent, I'd have gone out with her. Figuring out how to get that last Space Invader seemed far more important to me than the national debt, the state of Soviet/U.S. relations, or personal hygiene. If you squinted a lot and used your imagination, the graphics vaguely resembled real figures the way Jackson Pollock's paintings vaguely resemble actual art. The in-game sound consisted of annoyingly simplistic bouncy music (long before boy-bands made such tunes popular). The games were eight-bit, darn it, and I loved them. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Want to get the rest of this funny story or others like it? Check out the whole story and related links at www.ShortCummingsAudio.com. NOTES: Special thanks to professional storyteller Harvey Heilbrun for his review of the show on iTunes. You can find Harvey (and book him for a performance) at:http://hdhstory.net/Lots of people make fun of artist Jackson Pollock and I'm no different. If you'd like a slightly more respectful look at his work, check out his Wikipedia entry:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_PollockFor a fun stroll down memory lane (if you're old enough) check out the on-line Video Game Museum at:http://www.vgmuseum.com/Fortunately, there are video games for us older folks. One of my favorite new games on the Wii system is Endless Ocean. Follow the link to learn more. Tags: humor essay | funny story | video games | dad | kids | comedy

If I'm the master of my household pets, why was I the one standing in line at the pet supply superstore shepherding two carts through the check-out line? The answer is simple; I'm a pawn of the pet-tech-industrial complex. In case you missed it, pet supplies have become big business in this country. The mom-and-pop pet shop of yesteryear is gone, crushed under the weight of warehouse-sized megastores which, if they weren't full of pet supplies, could be used to store a spare fleet of 747s, the Astrodome, or one month's worth of redundant and contradictory government memos. These stores require this much space because they must contain the thousands of mutant varieties of pet food available now. This is food which has been carefully produced in controlled laboratory conditions to appeal to even the most finicky pet owner. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Want to get the rest of this funny story or others like it? Check out the whole story and related links at www.ShortCummingsAudio.com. NOTES: As far as I can tell, the good folks at Purina don't actually make Baby Chow. However, I was surprised to find out they do make pet-oriented podcasts. Check them out at this link:http://tinyurl.com/2yhdaxSadly Sony's Aibo is no longer available. You can read about this valiant attempt at robo-pet at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIBOIf you like fish, but don't want to maintain an aquarium of your own, follow the link to the Wakiki Aquarium. It's a cool website that even has some webcams!http://www.waquarium.org/ Tags: humor essay | funny story | pets | cat | dog | hamster | comedy

The real problem with television isnât violence, or inappropriate content, or news stories which appear to have been invented just before the cameras rolled. The real problem is that kids are imitating the stuff they see between the commercials. Kids grow up watching ER (now airing its fifty-first âepisode that changes everythingâ) and theyâre just dying to become nurses and doctors. By the time they discover the practice of medicine isnât all trauma and drama, theyâre so buried in education loans theyâll be healthcare wage-slaves for the rest of their lives. The only steamy romance theyâll see is if they get off shift in time to catch the newest ER (which will be the two-hundred-and-twenty-third âepisode that changes everything.â) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Want to get the rest of this essay or others like it? Check out the whole audio essay and related links at www.ShortCummingsAudio.com. NOTES: The title of this essay is a meme that originated in a cough syrup ad in the mid-eighties. It stared a very serious Peter Bergman who stared into the camera, and declared "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." For some strange reason this was supposed to give us confidence in his pronouncements. You can judge his success for yourself by watching the ad on YouTube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM9ziBfuGvMI tortured the English language in the "Eric Blair, Action Essayist" bit of this episode. So, it's only fair that I do something nice for my mother tongue. If you're not already a fan of the incomparable Grammar Girl, check out her show (and all the fine Quick and Dirty Tips podcasts at:http://www.QuickAndDirtyTips.com.Finally, if you're curious about the real Eric Blair, check out his Wikipedia entry:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Blair. Tags: humor essay | humor column | tv | career | csi | er | television | comedy

Sometimes I feel like my life is really a movie; you know the kind where there's some kind of cipher and everyone else is in on the secret but me ... The DUH-Vinci Code. It'd probably be a lot easier if people stopped trying to communicate and just talked. Part of the problem is that words aren't generally reliable in the picking-a-meaning-and-sticking-to-it department. Take the good-old standby âloveâ. This little tramp of a word never met a meaning it didn't like. You'll find it promiscuously applied to everything from the intertwining of two lives (âI love my new puppyâ) to devotion to a favored sports team (âI love the Jazz when they winâ) to favored foods (âI love a good mutton sandwich, especially when the crusts are trimmed offâ.) Next thing you know it'll be snuggled up against a government policy description -- âOoh! I love the penalty-free deferment of survivor benefits for capital gains in designated enterprise zones.â How can you trust a word like that? -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Want to get the rest of this essay or others like it? Check out the whole audio essay and related links at www.ShortCummingsAudio.com. NOTES: Tip of the hat (more like bowing and chanting "I'm not worthy") to Wm. Shakespeare's Hamlet for the title of this episode. If you want to read Hamlet or any of Shakespeare's works, try Open Source Shakespeare at:http://www.opensourceshakespeare.org/Alert listeners among my generation might have caught the reference to the Dustim Hoffman/Terri Garr classic TootsieIf you'd like to improve your communications skills -- particularly at work -- you might enjoy reading some tips provided by Inc. magazine:http://tinyurl.com/ya5egq Tags: humor essay | humor column | words | communication | honesty | comedy

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