I've been scared of gorillas for some time now.

Call it silly but    I am  gorilla-phobic.

Yeah, I know... a silly thing. Gorillas are kind and sweet and love their babies and live as families and can beat Godzilla and are highly misunderstood and their breath stinks and when they growl they rattle bones and they can crush you with one hand and tear you to pieces and ... wait! I am sweating profusely, sobbing emotionally and curling into a fetal position. I am scared of gorillas.

Shows you what bad King Kong and Mighty Joe Young movies can do to a young child's mind. (FYI: There have actually been 18 King Kong movies, counting animation, starting in 1933 to the current King Kong: Skull Island. For fun and comparison, here's that 1933 trailer with a caveat--you may have to watch a 15 second movie promo first) Oh, I'm not nuts about Godzilla either.

Phobias are funny. What terrifies one of us causes others to ask if we are joking. Scared of heights? Who is scared of heights? Snakes? Spiders? Flying? Germs? Birds? Water (unless your feet are set in cement by the mob)? Gorillas?

"Are you kidding me?" you brave ones might say. But an accepted theory says that if you can just face your fears--with help, steely nerve and guts or sometimes even by accident--you have a fighting chance to overcome them.


True story: Years ago, my company had an annual celebration of autumn for employees and their

Obviously fake gorilla

families... 3-legged races, balloon animals (but not gorlllas), snow cones, cotton candy, picnic food, goofy prizes for the kids, etc. It was always a welcomed success. But one year I thought it would be fun to rent an an animated mechanical gorilla holding a sign that said PICNIC, THIS WAY with an arrow pointing toward our picnic area. It was a good sight gag that everyone enjoyed.

After the picnic was over and everyone had gone home, I loaded the life-size faux gorilla in my station wagon and drove it to the office where it would be safe until its return the following Monday.

So I had this misguided brainstorm... what if I positioned the gorilla just inside the entry door so the first person arriving on Monday would see it as soon as he/she walked in. Great gag, right? I thought so at the time.

Immediately after putting the gorilla where it would most scare someone walking in, I proceeded to my car, parked just 50 feet from the office door. Then, remembering something that I left on my desk, I went back to get it.

Not 30-seconds after I placed the gorilla, I opened the door and REALLY, ALMOST SCARED MYSELF TO DEATH. I once reached to tighten a spark plug under the hood of a running car (not recommended) and it literally knocked me backward against the garage wall. Lucky that's all it did. Well, this gorilla thing was worse than that. Honest. Just think how much worse it could have been if I had left it plugged in looking even more menacing.

And yes, lest I be responsible for a heart attack, I moved the monster to my office area, laid it flat and covered it with a rug. I left a second time, still shaking. So now you know my gorilla story.

(An even better ending though, would have been if, on Monday, I noticed the gorilla was gone, the office torn apart,  slippery banana peels laying everywhere and I slipped and fell on my you-know-what just as a custard pie, thrown from the kitchen by a wooley beast hit me in the face. But that didn't happen, ruining what might have been a terrific movie sequence making the Three Stooges and Soupy Sales happy in their graves.)

I do, however, have a tip for you if  you are trying to stop being frightened by certain things. Here is a real How-to-guide for knocking those fears in the head (unless you have a hit-in-the-head-phobia).

Ed Note: Yeah, this is a lame post but when you haven't blogged for a few weeks, you just have to jump back into the pool to jump-start the process in your mind. (Did I say jump back in the pool? I'm really not scared of gorillas except for the one at the office but I do have a respectable fear of the water being an ashamed non--swimmer who has foolishly tried to water ski and have actually dived from a low board mysteriously failing to come up like they do on television. Not much grace in wildly flailing your arms to a cheering crowd. See, it didn't work for me either.)

Gorilla sales skyrocket after latest gorilla attack.

Bad gorilla

OK, this sarcastic humor comes from The Onion... but really, how are we going to stop these gorilla attacks?

Good gorilla

Obvious answer: The only way to prevent gorilla attacks is to have a gorilla in every home.




Q: How many NRA spokesman do you need to change a light bulb?
A: More guns."

Actually, I am pro: second amendment but anti: lack of common sense. In the USA, we almost have a  one person/one gun ratio and we always will have... perhaps forever. But gimme a break. If one of the NRA slogans is "Guns don't kill people. People kill people," then shouldn't we do something about paying attention to the people who buy guns?

One estimate is that as many as 40 percent of all legal gun purchases are made without a background check. A much lower number, say some advocates, is 23 percent. Doesn't really matter which figure is used, either rounded up or rounded down. Fact is, a lot of guns are purchased (or inherited or received as a gift, etc.) without verification of a legal buyer/shooter status.

According to Handdgun Control Inc., an acknowledged anti gun group, a total of 205 people were killed by handguns last year in Japan, Great Britain, Switzerland, Canada, Sweden and West Germany. In the United States, same time frame, 10,728 were killed by handguns.

Dispute the figures if you choose, but LOTS MORE were killed in the USA by every count.

And if only the bad or crazy kill most of the people, then do statistics need to prove this is not acceptable... or is it ok because that is such a small number compared to the whole. But what if it were just one... and that one was yours?

Reminds me of the old starfish story:

Two men were walking on the beach, naturally littered with washed-on-the-shore starfish. Every few steps, one of the men would stop, pick up a starfish and throw it back ito the sea. After this had happened about half-dozen times, the other man chided him. 

"Why are you doing that? There are thousands of starfish on the beach. You can't really make a difference."

First man flipped the starfish he was holding back into the ocean. "I can to that one."

Sadly, we lead in school shootings too, which is a poor school category to boast leadership.

So how about background checks for everyone who buys, receives as a gift or inherits a legal lethal weapon? This, I say without addressing any other gun issue... and there are others.

Maybe I'm a dreamer, but I wish mental health care was as easy to get as, say, a gun.

PS: This is the 4th time in almost 400 blog posts that I have used this Starfish Story. It is a story I/we should live by. Everything starts with one.

It's a ridiculous world out there... and it's nuts too.

Not him but an actor playing the role

A nine-month-old was recently charged with attempted murder of a police officer in Pakistan. So the most logical question is: will authorities try him as an adult?

The police officer made the collar after the boy's father and grandfather reportedly tried and failed to kill him... and since the child was there too, the officer must have figured the infant was the "brains" of the group.

Happy ending, a diaper was changed and the "brains' was released to poop in freedom.

The San Antonio Spurs of the NBA will not be staying at a certain California hotel any more. Ghosts! Several players have experienced the spirit and to make matters worse, Harold Ramis, the man who wrote and starred in Ghostbusters isn't around to save them anymore... he recently died... and may now be part of the problem. Great movie though.

Science marches on: Recent actual and expensive medical studies have revealed that 1) drinking too much alcohol and/or excessive use of cocaine makes it really hard to drive an 18-wheeler; 2) there is a connection between stress and premature aging... stress doesn't help; 3) men like to look at curvaceous women but not necessarily face first; 4) athletes rarely are as smart as brain surgeons; 5) though more people are killed by bee stings than shark bites, most would still prefer to be stung by a bee. All of this raises the question: would you rather have a poke in the eye with a stick or a broken leg? I dunno, surprise me.

Wrigley Field, the home of the Cubs, just turned 100. And even better, the Cubs are ONLY 10 games out of first place on their march to another yet another World Series championship. The Cubbies are anxious to have someone who saw them win their last title--a mere five years after the Wright brothers' first flight--throw out the first pitch in their next championship, but no one living today was born yet... except some really old guy in Italy, and his arm is gone. Just you wait til Next Year!

     A first grade teacher admits to her class that she is a die-hard Cub fan. She asks her students to raise their hands if they 
      are Cub fans too. Not really knowing what a Cub fan is but wanting to be like their teacher, their hands explode 
      into the air.

     There is, however, one exception. One girl has not gone along with the crowd. The teacher asks why. "Because I'm 
     not a Cub fan," she says.

     "Then,"  asks the teacher, "what are you?"

     "I'm a Chicago White Sox fan."

     The teacher, a little perturbed, asks why she is a White Sox fan.

     "Well, My Dad and Mom are White Sox fans, and I am too."

     The teacher, somewhat upset, says, "That's no reason, What if your Mom was a moron and your dad 
     was a moron. What would you be then?"

     "Then," says the girl, "I'd be a Cub fan."
 

It is against the law in Liberty, NY to be annoying. Really! So a lead-footed hot-head, mad about a speeding ticket, sent his fine in with a note: "Bleep YOUR bleeping TOWN!" The town rejected the payment and charged him saying his note was "likely to cause annoyance or alarm."

I want one of those laws for my town too... but I'd amend it to include being a jerk too.

Chicago, in a NYTimes poll, was found to be the funniest city in the United States. No contest... Chicago has the Cubs so a sense of humor is essential. Boston, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Portland OR, New York, Los Angeles, Denver, San Francisco and Seattle were the top 10.

If you live in Virginia Beach, get a life. You were the least funny in all of America. Jacksonville, Miami, Tulsa, Arlington TX, El Paso, Ft. Worth and San Antonio are at the dourest bottom. Hmm, Texas has four. Wonder if that means anything?

You sourpusses better get with it. Monkeys have a better sense of humor than you do. Primates don't just laugh, they crack jokes. Koko, a gorilla, knows more than 2,000 words and and signs 1,000. She was recently asked, "What can you think of that's hard?" She signed "Rock" and "Work." She once tied her trainer's shoelaces together and signed "Chase."

Why do waiters like gorillas better than flies? Have you ever heard a customer complain "Waiter, there's a gorilla in my soup?"

One more Cub joke:

     Einstein invented a machine to reduce intelligence of the super smart so they could better fit 
     in with society.

     He strapped the apparatus on the head of his first genius volunteer test subject and turned 
     the machine on low, not sure of its power. After 30 seconds, he turned it off and anxiously asked 
     a test question: "What is the numerical equivalent of pi?"

     "3.14159 to infinity," the genius said.

     "Hmm," mused Einstein. Needs more power. So he set the machine to medium and tried again.

     "Now, he asked, Who was the 16th president of the United States?"

     "Lincoln, of course. Followed by Andrew Johnson and Ulysses S. Grant."

     Getting impatient, Einstein set the machine on high and let it rip. Strangely though, the machine 
     did not shut off automatically. As Einstein frantically tried everything, he finally had to smash the machine with a 
     hammer to make it stop. It had run on and on and on for more than five minutes.

     "Oh my God," he said concerned as he shook his subject., "Say something to me... say anything."

     The man shook his head and finally opened his eyes. Looking at an anxious Einstein, he hollered "HOW 'BOUT
     THEM  CUBS"

Confession: Don't tell anyone... I'm a Cub fan.