The Curmudgeonly Professor

The Curmudgeonly Professor Considers the Meaning of Stuff

In between taking and posting zillions of photos of flowers etc., the Curmudgeonly Professor spends his time musing about the meaning of life and the various nooks and crannies and philosophies therein.  He can legitimately do so, since he is a genuine doctor of philosophy, even though he has never taken a course in philosophy and has no idea how to even communicate with a bona fide philosopher.  Have you ever tried to talk to one of those types for more than sixty seconds?  And could you understand even one teensy iota of the verbiage they were articulating and enunciating and emoting?  As if they knew the meaning of life and everything happening in it, past, present, and future.  However, even the illiterate are perfectly competent to ponder deep, dark stuff that happens and wonder why someone hasn't figure out how to do stuff better, behave more civilly, learn what they obviously need to know, etc., etc.  Here is my list for the day.  There may be more lists, hour by hour, day by day, but we have to start some where.

1. Why do some people like the Los Angeles Lakers?  A prime point of worry.
2. Why does Microsoft Internet Explorer stop working every time I get back two or three hours on Twitter posts?
3. What will the Library of Congress discover after they spend zillions of dollars archiving all of the Twitter posts in creation?
4. Can I figure out some way to make some expense money selling photo prints and photo cards?  How?
5. What is the meaning of the U.S. Congress?  What is it supposed to accomplish?
6. Why do I continue to bother posting stuff on the Curmudgeonly Professor blog?  My sisters and three other people are the only ones who seem to care, thus far.
7. Can the Magic pull one more off against the Celtics tonight?  The Vegas line favors the Magic.  Go figure.
8. Can the Suns knock off the lethargic and weary and shell-shocked Lakers in the home comfort of the Staples Center with Jack Nicholson refereeing and a host of has-been "celebrities" choking the first few rows to get their picture on TV a half dozen times and with Coach Jackson continuing to lament the "no-calls" and Kobe looking on in stunned misbelief for five minutes every time a foul is called on him?  Etc.
9. Can the Cleveland Cavaliers win as many games next year with a new coach who presumably will be much loved and respected by all team members and Cav Management?
10. Can the BYU girls softball team beat AZ in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen of women's softball?
11. When will the weather turn warm and quit fooling around?
12. Why do ducks fly so beautifully and waddle so ridiculously?
13. What is the appropriate level of knowledge for proper functioning of a public official or legislator?
14. How many can pass the GOP purity test?

The Curmudgeonly Professor is worried about many other aspects of daily existence.  Meanwhile he is happy to congratulate the Utah Valley University dance team who won the Dancing With the Stars competition last night which I miraculously flipped from the Suns-Lakers game momentarily and just happened to catch it.  Stupendous.  I should mention that, in addition to the above, the Curmudgeonly Professor is a certifiable hypochondriac, catastrophizer, and general pain in the, well, neck.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Shares his Gripes for Friday

The Curmudgeonly Professor has been derelict, indeed, in discussing principles of Curmudgeonliness and in identifying those aspects of daily life that contribute to this specialized  skill.  However, he has been busy taking and editing photos of flowers, and it is difficult, to say the least, to think rotten thoughts, enumerate things to be angry about, and curse the vicissitudes of life while looking at photos of petunias, wildflowers, daisies, sunflowers, and even ducks.  I have taken so many pictures of the gang of ducks in the duck ponds that I practically know at least a half dozen of them by name.

However, I assume that my blog will be criticized for a false and misleading aura if I do not revert to divesting myself of whatever irritations I am currently experiencing.  So here is a list:

• In last night's broadcast on the MTN TV channel of the Utah-Utah State game, it took about five minutes for one of the sportscasters to come forth with one of the most egregious cliches in sportscasting lingo, namely, "I'll tell you what."  What, exactly, is what?
• And then, the other sportscaster, Todd Christensen of former BYU and NFL fame, came forth with the word "cognizant."  Really?  Todd, of course, loves big words and has a huge vocabulary, but "cognizant" during a football game?  I have revised the word "cognizant" to "cogniziant", adding an extra "i" in there.  As in "I was not cogniziant of that, but I'll tell you what."  I have also taught all my grandkids to use the word cogniziant, which they dutifully do, having corrupted their vocabulary and spelling habits in numerous ways.
• Both sportscasters were so proud and enamored of their ability to fetch Urban Meyer, late of the U of Utah and now in the big, big time, on the phone, they neglected to tell us what the heck was going on in the football game, leaving us hanging and never explaining a penalty.
• The Costco eyeglasses lady who helped my wife for a couple of minutes, then walked off and left her and ignored her, when my wife was ready to order a new pair of glasses.
• The dog guy who has run his two big dogs unleashed for at least three years on the Jordan River Trail, and never has been nabbed by the Animal Control folks, formerly known as Dog Catchers, but of course, now must contend with skunks, snakes, bears, deer, moose, cats, and gerbils.  Not to mention jerks.
• Twitter, which has no filter for objectionable content like many other websites has, and where I must delete and block a half dozen Twitters a day that look like handouts on the Las Vegas Strip.
• Conan.  How long?

In the interests of keeping this blog post relatively succinct, I will not elaborate further today.  But tomorrow will bring a whole host of other irritations, so come back and stay up to date.

Alas, I Could Not Look Like Larry King Even Though I Now Wear Suspenders

I watched Larry King last night for awhile as he was interviewing several Republicans who were repeating the standard comments about how shy, incompetent, and inexperienced the hapless Democrats are. I learned that Demos are simply not capable of being Commander-in-Chief, and that they are big spenders (now there's a good one of the pot calling the kettle black), lovers of big government, etc., etc. Actually, I like the Commander-in-Chief title. I have informed my wife several times over the years that I am the Commander-in-Chief of this household. Somehow, she hasn't gotten the message. So how does a President of the United States become a Commander in Chief if others just sort of think that is a bit much? But knowing the standard comments of Republicans by heart, I didn't hear any new critiques so I turned my attention to Larry King's neat, gray suspenders. Actually, Larry King looks pretty good in suspenders.

I concluded, however, that I am not nearly as good looking as Larry King is, and not nearly as smart. So even though I now wear suspenders part of the time, I just don't have the same effect. I even went to Ace Hardware in St. George the last time I was there and bought a second pair, bright blue, for ten bucks. This pair definitely has spiced up my wardrobe and saved me from any public embarrassment from dropping and sagging drawers. As I mentioned earlier, my neighbor, a builder, informed me these were merely carpenter suspenders. I hadn't thought about it before, but I could quickly see that carpenters carry around 20-30 pounds of tools on their belts so if they didn't wear suspenders, they would be working with their pants and tools down around their ankles. And how would that look?

My current summation of analytical thought viz-a-viz suspenders is that they are still a royal pain. We geezers carry a high cost for not having big wide hips that will hold our drawers up without a horse harness to do so. However, my wife complains less about waiting for me to adjust my apparel every time we get out of the car or go through Wal*Mart or Costco, so that is probably worth something. Wearing suspenders just seems like one more blow to our egos to remind us that the life forces are continuing to wane, or as my son-in-law told me, maybe it's just gas.

I will keep all my world-wide readers who face this same dilemma posted on further revelations and developments in the suspenders department.

The Curmudgeonly Professor Considers How to be a Better Hypochondriac

Class, it is high time we have reassembled, having taken an extended spring break during which I am certain you have all spent your time to good advantage studying for the final exam and writing your term papers. Earlier, the Curmudgeonly Professor resolved the problem of how to remain stubborn and, for that matter, how to be successful at becoming more stubborn tomorrow than you are today. Thus, we can now move on to another subject of great importance in the daily scheme of things. We are going to discuss the principles of how to be a better hypochondriac.

Being an economist and not a physician, you may object to my lack of professional expertise on this matter. In that regard, your objection has merit. I do not even know the dictionary definition of hypochondria, let alone the psychiatric and medical means of diagnosing and treating whatever hypochondria is. On the other hand, I have more experience in being a hypochondriac than all of the physicians and psychiatrists put together.

Physicians are prone to make quick decisions (in only a few seconds, according to the learned analysts) about a patient when the patient sits in front of them and begins to recite their litany of woes, aches, pains, worries, symptoms, and other complaints. Is the patient just making up all of this stuff, or does the patient actually have something wrong with them? Probably the law of averages says that the patient is just fine, thank you. In the patient's mind, however, is this looming and lingering specter of fear and doubt. "What if there is really, really something wrong with me? And, what if that thing that is really, really, wrong with me is really, really serious? And what if that really, really, serious thing that is wrong with me could be ultimately fatal? And, even though the doctor told me I am just fine, what if my doctor just got tired of listening to my whining and needed to get rid of me so he or she could see the next patient on schedule? What if my doctor misdiagnosed me and I really do have something serious? Should I go get a second opinion? And what if my doctor, who has seen me for many years, just mistakenly assumed that, since I have been fine for decades, I am still fine now, when actually the Big Calamity has struck me now and he or she just couldn't see it and didn't believe me when I said I was probably about to croak?"

Thus, we can see that a hypochondriac is never well and will never be well. Otherwise he or she could not be a hypochondriac, whatever a hypochondriac is. I have been a hypochondriac since I was a little boy. Early on, I thought my heart palpitations would kill me and, one time, I stayed awake all night to see if I would still be around the next morning. In high school, our family doctor told me that, if I wasn't careful, I would end up being a lifetime hypochondriac. When I took my physical exam for the infantry during the Korean War, the examining cardiologist said I had "psychoneuroses with a psychogenic cardiovascular reaction." Therefore, I was unfit to be sent to the Korean War where I probably would never have survived, as in the case of too many of my classmates. So I asked the University of Wyoming health service physician what that meant and as near as I can remember she said it meant that my heart was just fine but that I was nuts, or something like that.

My wife has often said she should have been a doctor and that she is not my nurse so, if I have a complaint, go see a doctor. Do not ask her how life has been while living with a hypochondriac for centuries. I have asked her if she would have married me anyway if she knew what a hopeless jangled case I was, and her answer is not reassuring.

The bell is about to ring, so we will continue this discussion during a later class period. Meanwhile, focus on each tiny ache, pang, ping, pain, hallucination, or other manifestation of your approaching entry into immortality and see how far you can blow them up into a wholly irrational fear. You may even want to visit your physician in the meantime to make sure you will be around for the next class period. Class dismissed.

How Can One Tell if One is Truly a Curmudgeon? (Or only a Fake)

While remaining in never-never land without a computer and internet for an extended period, the Curmudgeonly Professor had ample time to reflect on deep and weighty subjects of philosophy, Molly's rusty lawn chair, whether I wanted to just quit this blog while the quitting was there for the quitting, why I hauled five boxes of books to St. George and then hauled them back to SLC, why we left the summer sunshine for the winter miseries, and whether the Utah Jazz would resuscitate themselves from defunctness and knock off the Houston Rockets so they can advance to the second round and likely be annihilated by my least favorite player of all time, the one and only Kobe Bryant. But among the weighty topics crossing my mind, one came to the forefront: How can one tell if one is a curmudgeon?

I became concerned as to whether it is just arrogant presumption to call ones self a curmudgeon when, in fact, one is kindly, generous, non-grouchy, cheerful, and currently involved in a twelve-step personal improvement program. No matter that the self-improvement program may have hung around for a few decades and be a tad rusty, but hey, intentions are still critical to the process. On the other hand, once one has named one's self a curmudgeon, and has bounced to the top or near the top of a dozen or so Google crawler categories, does one want to admit that one is not a curmudgeon? What if the professor renamed his blog the Kindly and Cheerful Professor? Would anyone look at it? Would Google have me listed at 389,787th instead of first?

To my knowledge, no scientific standards exist to evaluate curmudgeonliness. The old Monkey Ward catalogues used to classify everything as "Good", "Better", and "Best." Presumably "good" meant that something would last until you wore it a couple of times; "good" would last a couple more times; and "best" might last for a millennium, since Monkey Ward would croak after awhile anyways and one would never be able to reorder. Therefore, let us address the topic, "What constitutes a truly genuine and outstanding curmudgeon?"

First of all, anyone who taught school for forty plus years is not going to be a glowing bundle of sunshine. Students who hacked the professor off 40 years ago are still fresh in his mind, and forgiveness or forgetting about them are not options. Second, trying to keep a computer going will test the limits of one's decency. Third, wondering why my kids all became Republicans and did not follow the wisdom of their parents is a troubling element of life, contributing to curmudgeonliness and doubts about our educational system. Fourth, the Utah Jazz and the Utah Legislature are both sources of worry and aggravation. Fifth, the morons on I-15 who perform dazzling feats of crossing five lanes, just missing five bumpers, two semi trailers, three RVs, and the right front fender of my car should all be segregated in a separate county and be required to drive horses and buggies the rest of their lives. Sixth, my mean cardiologist forced me to have an angiogram even though it turned out I didn't, necessitating that I lie flat on my back for 36 hours. I told her I didn't need one, but no, she thought she knew more than I did although I am clearly a doctor also.

Apparently the nurses at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center have been studying my post on angiograms according to my niece so they will know how to do one in the future. Critical to the process is this: Do not tell the patient they will be flat on their back for a zillion hours ahead of time. Then my mean cardiologist gave me some pills that make me have a stuffy nose, even though she claims other doctors who claim that her pills cause my stuffy nose are nuts and don't know what they are talking about, so half the time I can scarcely breathe. You can see what pitiful shape I am in.

To top it off, Molly, in her comment, says something that sounds Zennish or something about needing to find our inner voice if we want to qualify as a curmudgeon. Really? What is my inner voice? If I have an inner voice, at what age did I acquire it? And if we just clammed up our inner voice, would we have to cease blogging and other trivial activities? As an economist, I feel terrible that my time spent blogging contributes nothing to the Gross Domestic Product, the value of the dollar, the unemployment rate, setting the Fed's discount rate, the trade deficit, or to lead-infested imports from China. Although the chair I am sitting on has a "made in China" label which I did not notice until my Chinese chair broke a caster and I had to turn it over and bang away at it awhile and offer a few threats and words of encouragement to install the new caster. I wonder how much lead was in the dust from the crushed caster? Point to ponder.

Well, my exercise in self-administered therapy has not contributed one whit to my understanding and belief that I am a curmudgeon. Actually, the solution to the problem is simple: With nearly 500 posts under the banner of the Curmudgeonly Professor, all of them would have to be reentered if I changed my name to the Kindly Professor. So I guess that settles it. Only my readers can assess whether I am sufficiently grouchy, complain creatively enough, and spread enough gloom and doom to be a genuine Curmudgeon. If not, I will just have to continue faking it.