Category: Humor

Thoughts While Counting Ceiling Tiles

~ sanebishop ~ Leave a comment

Last night, I couldn’t fall asleep, so I counted ceiling tiles. That’s when it dawned on me that perhaps the greatest discovery of all time was when a primitive biped, beset with an infinite number of stars to count in an expansive night sky, sought shelter in a cave and found counting stalactites by a dimming fire to be more conducive to falling asleep than counting stars. That is not to belittle the primitive biped; back then numbers didn’t go as high, hardly past twenty-three, so counting to infinity was a tough ask. Counting stalactites was more attainable, and thus mankind advanced to the caveman era. 

After cave dwelling for a few eons, mankind progressed to the agricultural era. It was brought about primarily by the tanned-hide ceilings of tents. With nothing better to stare at than a tanned hide, early tent dwellers realized they could count sheep in their heads in lieu of counting stalactites or stars. Thus, humans started keeping sheep in fields where they lay, staring up at the ceiling of tents while enumerating their herds. 

Eventually, humans wised up and realized they could stop counting and following sheep around and instead built more permanent domiciles with walls made out of sticks and stones and baked mud and ceilings made out of asbestos, both in smooth or popcorn form (I suspect popcorn ceilings arose from a subconscious desire to return to simplicity, specifically the rough ceilings of the stalactite era, when you needn’t need a thirty-year mortgage with a 6% interest rate to live in a cave). 

Since then, ceilings have come and gone. At one point, high ceilings were popular, especially in old farmhouses that depended on airflow through windows as the primary cooling strategy. Then came the era of the ranch house, with low ceilings. Now vaulted ceilings with exposed beams are quite popular, especially old rustic beams with knots, a few termite trails, and wood borer holes–I think this aesthetic has something to do with the post-modern desire to sleep aboard a pirate ship. Maybe soon, we will have barnacled ceilings, with faux barnacles to count. 

Sometimes it is good to remember that, beyond aesthetic considerations, the primary purpose of a ceiling is practical–for counting things when you can’t sleep. Some people still count sheep while trying to fall asleep as a vestige of the agricultural era (and some people actually still keep sheep, which is considered a more serious mental illness), but counting things at night is innately, if not exclusively, human. It is nothing to be ashamed about. It may be the only thing that separates humans from other lifeforms. Well, that–and the ability to laugh.

photo of night sky

The Ebb and Flow of Honeybee Governance

~ sanebishop ~ 8 Comments

Nobody has ever accused me of being an expert in economics or modes of government, or really anything for that matter, but the best I can tell is that, with communism, everybody is miserable, but with capitalism at least 1% are filthy rich (and presumably happy)–and that gives the rest of us 99% hope that we could be the 1%. And hope is a wonderful thing. It could be a little misplaced in scratch off tickets or the dream of becoming filthy rich by beekeeping, but I’m a firm believer that hope is better than no hope. 

Sometimes I wonder if honeybees hope. They do odd things from time to time, like sail over the horizon in October (strangely I caught a swarm a few weeks ago), that make it appear as if they are sometimes influenced by some sort of delusional hope, much like the pilgrims sailing over the horizon in hopes of a new society. What discontent must have been brewing in that hive for those bees to swarm in October, to take their chances on the hope that new environs would be more conducive for their happiness. It is not their genetic instinct to swarm in October. Maybe a rabble rousing and inspiring bee instilled hope in her sisters. Maybe they decided to pack up and go on a voyage to flee an oppressive and tyrannical system of governance. 

People have often been curious about the governing structure of honeybees. Aristotle thought bees were a monarchy ruled by a king bee (Matt Phillpot at Honey Histories has some good posts on the king bee theory). Then other folks came along and said I’m pretty sure that the king bee just laid an egg, at which point, people believed that bees were a monarchy ruled by a queen (and that Aristotle should have stuck to metaphysics). Then Charles Darwin came along and pointed out that the queen is really just a figurehead used for breeding purposes, that the monarchy is just performative, kind of like the current British monarchy (though both get perks like a lot of royal jam and jelly). Darwin basically posited that, underneath the facade of monarchy, bees were communists at heart, made up of individuals who work for the good of the group, not for personal gain. Then Cornell Professor Tom Seeley came along a few years ago and posited that, underneath the facade of monarchy and underneath the sub-facade of communism, bees are actually red-bloodied, freedom loving bugs who prefer democratic self-governance. You’re darn tootin’.

But who the heck really knows. My theory is that bees’ form of government ebbs and flows over time. Maybe at the time when Aristotle was writing about king bees, the bees really were governed by a series of kings, many of which were named Henry, who turned out to be pretty murderous fellas, so they decided to let a couple of queens have a go at governing, only to find them slightly less murderous, so they tried a new system of government led by bolshevik bees, only to find that job opportunities were pretty limited in scope: you were either an abdomen-licking attendant bee to the Supreme Leader, a peasant worker bee, or a drone who got murdered in the winter. Then the bees experimented with democracy for about 250 years, only to find its great strength–hope–was also its ultimate downfall. A huckster drone, peddling authoritarianism disguised as hope, coalesced a large following of bees, disillusioned by the price of eggs, to vote for him again, at which point he started doing a lot of fun authoritarian things, like rounding up non-native bees, deploying national guard bees on the citizenry, and accepting lots of untraceable foreign honey for meme crypto tokens.

Of course, this pretty much brings us to the present day, so time will only tell what happens next–but here’s hoping the bees can get their act together, before they go back to square one and replace hope and freedom with a system of oppressive and tyrannical king bees.

Is it a king, queen, president, or orange authoritarian? Time will only tell.

Gossip and Gravy Biscuits

~ sanebishop ~ Leave a comment

There is a saying in the country, “Put on clean underwear in case you’re in a car wreck.” The idea behind this saying is that it might be embarrassing if first responders caught you wearing dirty drawers. 

I suppose the other idea implicit in this saying is that first responders are, well, are prone to gossip and might spread that tidbit of information throughout the countryside, which may be why Congress passed the HIPAA privacy law. First responders are now legally bound not to divulge information about your dirty underpants, unless you consent for them to do so–so be careful what forms you sign. 

Some first responders circumvent this law by also being farmers. It is a gray area to be sure, but it has generally been understood in this country that farmers are allowed to gossip with impunity, especially if the gossip takes place at a gas station grill in the morning, while all the farmers are strategizing and coordinating their daily movements and activities. Thus, if I ever need to know what is going on in the county, I always call one of my neighbors, Jimmy, who happens to be a first responder, farmer, and daily patron of Beam’s Country Corner, the best place for a breakfast biscuit in the whole county. Beam’s also carries 100% non-ethanol gas, so you don’t have to worry about clogging up a carburetor, though clogging an artery might still be a concern, especially if you’re fond of gravy biscuits. 

 You will always hear Jimmy, before you see him–he usually sits in the rickety booth at the back of Beam’s Country Corner, the booth closest to the coffee pot. Some farmers at Beam’s refer to Jimmy endearingly as the Mouth of the South (a throwback to Jimmy Hart, who coined the moniker as Hulk Hogan’s ring manager), but I consider that an insult since Jimmy is an important source of information beyond just a local and regional reach.

I’ve never met a man who knows as many people (their families and family histories and family secrets) or as many politicians (their benefactors and supporters and political secrets) or as many cattle (their sires and pedigrees and possibly their secrets, though cows tend to hold their cards pretty close to the vest). He knows everybody, two-legged and four-legged in the county. 

In my opinion, every community needs someone like Jimmy. For one, with phonebooks now a thing of the past, if you need a cell phone number for someone, you just call Jimmy and he will give it to you. He will also give you a treatise on that person’s life, so if you’re in a hurry, it’s better to text him. Second, if you need to know if your cows are on the loose and roaming the roadside, you can call Jimmy and he’ll confirm whether it’s your cows, plus he will give you the latest information on their movements and whereabouts. 

In short, Jimmy is an invaluable resource. Hopefully, you know someone like Jimmy, but even if you don’t, you can rest assured he knows you.

A Fair in Foul Weather

~ sanebishop ~ 10 Comments

It has been a year since Helene. The storm came up from the gulf and stalled over western North Carolina. It rained and the wind blew, harder than any of us expected. In our county, it was mostly a generational windstorm that snapped trees and downed power lines, but further west it was a biblical rainstorm, washing away life and mountainsides. We were without power for seven days, which is not a long time unless you’re a modern American without power, at which point it feels like seven years. 

One place in the county that did not lose power, or at least regained it quickly, was the Cleveland County Fair, which was ongoing at the time. While the countryside looked apocalyptic, people somehow navigated obstructed roadways and went to the fair, lots and lots of people. Having lived here now for nearly fifteen years, I believe going to the fair in late September is an innate migratory instinct for longtime residents of the county. 

The Cleveland County Fair is the largest county fair in North Carolina. It has been since its inception in 1924. I won’t bore you with the details of its illustrious history, but it is not a rinky dink carnival in a parking lot. It is a proper agricultural fair, with livestock shows and blue-ribbon pumpkins, with vinegar fries and funnel cakes and roasted corn and endless avenues of transportable and purportedly safe thrill rides–and pig races, my favorite part. It is, in short, just the place you want to be when the world around you is falling down, literally or figuratively. 

Last year, we didn’t know quite how badly the world had fallen down, or washed down the mountain. With the power out and roads impassable, reports of the cataclysmic damage further west were slow to reach us, so people did what they had been doing for generations and went to the fair, almost as an act of defiance against Mother Nature. Also, since the power was out everywhere else in the county, there was nothing better to do.

In a matter of days, our fairgrounds as well as other fairgrounds across western North Carolina would transform into staging grounds for volunteers and supplies, as the reality of the devastation came to light. There was something better to do, and the outpouring of community support that descended on our region was truly remarkable. For many, the recovery is still ongoing; for others, what was lost will never truly be recovered. 

A year later, the Cleveland County Fair is back again for its 101st year. I am happy to report that residents are once again flocking to the fairgrounds on their annual migration. No matter how foul the weather is, over us or the nation or the world itself, it’s comforting to have a fair. Here’s hoping you have a fair in your neck of the woods.

Thomas’s first trip to fair in 2022.

The Family that Pays Together

~ sanebishop ~ 10 Comments

One of the certainties that I am now firmly entrenched in middle age is my ever increasing familiarity with our healthcare system. Granted, system is a generous word for what I have encountered so far. I doubt a madman could have created a more convoluted and confusing system of offices and facilities, referrals and specialists, deductibles and co-insurance, cryptic codes and mysterious charges. If our system doesn’t heal us, it will likely drive us to madness–so in that regard, despite all the major advancements in medical technology, we might as well be downing swigs of mercury like folks did in the olden days.

If there is any design to our system, or any designing principle to our system, it seems to be to extract the most money possible from patients who are in too much pain to object to the absurdity of what they’re about to be billed. Take, for instance, my most recent foray into the dizzying land of healthcare–kidney stones. An x-ray taken at the hospital, when I was in the throes of abdominal discomfort which I ranked as a red-angry face on the smiley-face chart at the emergency room (I couldn’t get a timely appointment at my primary care physician), cost me $597. An x-ray taken at the same hospital, on the same x-ray machine, of the same kidneys, but this time ordered six weeks later by a urologist as a precursor to an office visit, was $111. Why one set of x-ray costs roughly $400 dollars more is beyond my capability to understand.  

I suppose I can’t complain too much because this year I had the foresight to select the “high option” insurance plan. The “high option” means that I pay a little more per month and, if we meet our deductible, the insurance company pays a higher rate of co-insurance. 

In the past, we have never met our deductible, so I suppose it’s been a good deal for the insurance company. Not this year. Not to be outdone by dear old dad, Thomas fractured his arm last week on the playground at kindergarten. We haven’t got all the bills yet for this accident, in part because the earliest appointment available at our local orthopedic clinic was a full week after the accident actually happened, which meant Thomas had to dangle his limp fractured arm in a sling for a week before he finally got his blue protective cast. 

The good news, I suppose, is I also had the foresight to opt into the supplemental “accident plan” offered by my employer (I’m a sucker for insurance I don’t understand). As best I can tell now, the accident plan–and I suppose all insurance–is just a form of gambling, except there is really no winning, but merely a limiting of loss. I pay $20 a month extra for the accident plan. On the roulette wheel of accidents you can choose from, arm fractures provide a $1000 payout, which is even better than lacerations and dislocations. Rest assured, the $1000 will be going straight back to healthcare providers–and be counted toward our health insurance deductible. 

All this is to say, I’m pretty sure we’re going to meet our deductible this year for the first time as a family, an achievement we could do without. All the people–the doctors, the nurses, the radiologists–have been great, at least once you can actually get an appointment to see them. Half the battle seems to be getting in to see the right people when you need them. Unfortunately, despite all the wonderful advancements in medical technology, the system itself seems like an overloaded, convoluted, inefficient, and expensive mess. Surely, there has got to be a better system, one that doesn’t require people to gamble with their health.