George Lee Cunningham - George Lee Cunningham

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July 30, 2023

GIRL POWER – PRETTY OR PRETTY MEAN?

TIM URBAN HAS A WIFE, WHO HAS A THEORY. WHAT DO YOU THINK?

Tim Urban, a very witty and smart fellow, recently tweeted about his wife’s theory on girl power and dominance. Here’s what he wrote:

“My wife has a theory that when two girls pass each other on the street, the hotter one just kind of has the right of way and everyone mostly abides by that. And that this creates awkward moments when two people think they’re equally hot. Is this true?”

Like so many things in life, I do think there is some truth in it and some important missing nuance. Yes, I think there are women who dominate because of their looks and desirability to men. But no – and this is a huge no – it is not nearly that simple.

In our white-bread, 21^st Century society, a pretty woman may step aside and yield power to a beautiful woman. But there are a lot of exceptions. My wife and her sisters are half Sicilian and half Calabrese – two societies of pretty mean people.

In my wife’s culture – into which I have been welcomed – the meanest woman gets the right-of-way over the less mean woman. And if two woman both think they are the meanest – well it can get pretty ugly, even if the two women may love one another under normal circumstances.

So in my adopted-by-marriage world, the meanest woman has the right-of-way, no matter how pretty or ugly she may be. If a young and beautiful 21^st Century girl thinks otherwise, she will soon learn her place.

Mean beats pretty every single time.

By the way, Tim Urban is a very interesting guy with a sometimes quirky and unconventional view on life. You can find some of Tim’s thoughts on life at http://WaitButWhy.com

– George Lee Cunningham

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July 3, 2023

A GENTLEMAN OUTLAW

JUST BECAUSE YOU BREAK THE LAW, IT DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE BAD – photo by Jack Roth

I don’t think of myself as a outlaw although I suppose I am – at least officially.

It’s not just being anti-social, although sometimes I am. And it’s not being dishonest, although sometimes – officially – I am that as well. It’s like seeing the law as it’s written as being a sort of helpful guideline to how we should all behave.

During the pandemic when most places were shut down, Carmela and I traveled across country more than once, stopping at truck stops for gas and food, and when there was no other choice, doing our business by the side of the road.

There are people we know, many of whom we love and like, who hid at home during the pandemic, obeying authority and wearing masks when they went for a walk down deserted streets and while driving in their cars.

Meanwhile the bums by the side of roads and highways roamed freely because they had no home in which to be confined. And while some people were banned from going to church during the pandemic, other people could riot in the street with no masks, because they were doing important “social justice work.”

It’s silliness. During that crazy time, we drove across the California state line to the relatively free states of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico, and Texas, living life and not bothering anybody else.

When we got to the free state of Florida, masks were not required, although some service people wore them to keep the tourists happy.

So much of wearing masks was a psychological thing. If everybody else was wearing masks, people thought they should wear masks too just so they wouldn’t be outsiders.

It was just the opposite in Florida. When the tourists arrived all masked up and the locals were going around enjoying life without masks, pretty soon the tourists took their masks off as well. There are lessons to be learned there about human nature and the eagerness to fit in.

And then there were the doctor visits.

I hate going to the doctor, but my wife insists that I do. So I go, both to keep peace in the family and because my wife loves me. But during the pandemic, Kaiser only wanted to admit the patient, nobody else – unless the patient was a child or required physical or emotional assistance.

Since Carmela wants to ask the doctor a lot of questions that I would never ask, she wants to go in to see the doctor with me. Fine by me.

So when we checked in, Carmela would take me by the elbow and lead me in, while I gazed absentmindedly at the ceiling and people passing by. No kindly personnel ever spoke to me. They addressed all their questions to my “caretaker.”

Once we were checked in, Carmela would sometimes forget our ruse and walk away, expecting me to walk with her. I would stand there, slack-jawed, until she would sigh and come back and grab me by the arm to take me along. It was sort of a fun pantomime, and we got really good at it during the lock-down.

Maybe I like breaking the rules because I come from the South and there is a rebel spirit still alive there in both the lifestyle and the music. Country songs are often about life outside the rules of polite and lawful society.

It’s not about doing evil things. It’s about living free. About being your own person and not looking to the the government or anybody else to set down arbitrary rules about how you should behave.

To be honest, I have my own rule and I think it’s a good one.

Be nice, be respectful of others, and live a happy life.

– George Lee Cunningham

If you would like to subscribe to our work, you may contact me at george@georgeleecunningham.com and let me know and you will get an email reminder of blog postings. Your name will not be shared and you may cancel at any time.

June 3, 2023

Spring Has Sprung, Summer’s Coming On

GREETING A NEW SEASON FROM THE TREETOPS

It’s that time of year in Southern California. Trees that were mostly bare during the winter months are now full of leaves and life.

The coyotes are busy teaching their new cubs how to hunt for their dinner. People are keeping a sharp and protective eye on their small dogs and cats, and even their smaller children, as the evening grows near and the nightly hunt begins.

The crows and other feathered predators are busy raiding the nests of smaller birds looking for tender chicks.

The bunnies and rodents, whose main purpose is to provide food for carnivores, are scurrying through the undergrowth in a bid to survive long enough to produce a new generation.

It’s the circle of life and it’s happening all around us.

– George Lee Cunningham

May 26, 2023

MEMORIAL DAY WITHOUT THE SPEECHES

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY FROM MY BROTHER CHUCK AND ME – photo by Carmela Cunningham

It’s strange how all these years I still take pride in my military service.

Vietnam was a stupid war, waged by a stupid and corrupt President, backed by a brain trust of arrogant “intellectuals” who squandered the lives of young American patriots with little regard for the human cost.

It doesn’t matter. I didn’t do it for the politicians or the bureaucrats. I did it for my country and for myself.

War is the most manly of pursuits. It is baked into our genes. Defend and protect the homeland. It has been the story of the world since we climbed down from the trees, lost the tail, and started wearing clothes and making weapons.

I don’t need to go to a Memorial Day observance, with a stage full of politicians all wanting to make a speech and pay lip service to the sacrifices made by young men who died in service to their country.

Most regular Americans will take the occasion to fire up the barbeque, toss on some burgers or hot dogs, and enjoy the company of friends and neighbors. And that’s OK – in fact, that’s just fine. That’s exactly what those young men from years ago fought and died to protect.

I served in Vietnam, and I witnessed some of those young men take their last breaths. That was early in the war and we moved around the country, wherever there was a need to combat the enemy – D-Zone, the Iron Triangle, the Plain of Reeds, the Central Highlands.

My brother, Charles Kenneth Cunningham, was stationed in support of a Special Forces unit in the Mekong Delta region. The Americans were not officially allowed to torture prisoners, so that task was outsourced to the Vietnamese, but my brother, who was eighteen at the time could hear their screams in the night.

So he stole pain pills from the medical supplies and would smuggle them to prisoners. It was a stupid thing to do. Giving prisoners pills for the pain did little to improve their long-term prospects, and he could have been court martialed and punished if he had been caught.

Five years later, he was killed in a construction accident. My mother was presented an American flag all neatly folded at his funeral. I still have the flag. I am not sentimental, but for some reason I cannot give it up.

Military service used to be a common experience shared by most American men, whether they picked up a rifle, flew an airplane, or peeled potatoes in the mess hall.

It’s different now. I went to the funeral of my wife’s uncle at Arlington Cemetery in Riverside a few weeks back and the mourners were directed during the salute to the flag to place their hands over their hearts. Veterans were directed to salute.

There was a time when almost every man in attendance would have saluted. That was then. I only saw two mourners who saluted – an active duty Marine, the husband of my niece, and myself. There may have been others that I didn’t see, but most stood silently, with their right hand over their hearts.

That certainly doesn’t make them bad people. Many are people I love and respect. It’s just different than it used to be.

Service to one’s country changes the way one thinks about what it means to be an American. Sadly, as each day goes by, it seems to mean less and less.

So when you join your friends and family to celebrate the holiday, you are doing exactly that for which those warriors fought and died.

Enjoy your holiday, but if you think about it, take just a moment to say a little thank-you prayer or at least send out a kind thought for those young men and women who would be doing exactly what you are doing if they could.

– George Lee Cunningham

April 27, 2023

Business, Humor and Guts

DON’T FLUSH AWAY YOUR HOPES AND DREAMS OR YOUR PETS

Do you ever feel like we live in dour times, when nothing can be funny because it might offend someone, somewhere?

You see this a lot in big corporations, where they bend over backward not to offend anybody, anywhere because a tiny minority of people are offended by pretty much everything.

Then you see some rare bright spots of businesses just trying to do a good job and make a living without losing their sense of humor. An example is the sign in the bathroom of the auto shop in Huntington Beach where we get our truck serviced.

“Please don’t flush sanitary napkins, paper towels, kittens or puppies, or hopes and dreams down the toilet,” it says. I would never do any of the above, but especially, I would not flush puppies, hopes or dreams. I’m not really a cat person, but I would never dream of flushing a kitten down the toilet either.

My bill for the day, for an oil change, four new tires, and 24 new lug nuts was well over $1,400, but the funny sign in the bathroom made the financial pain a little easier to bear.

FYI: the 24 lug nuts were not a rip-off. The bitter experience of having been stranded by the freeway in Tucson in the June heat with a blown tire and stubborn lug nuts that were almost impossible to get off made me a believer. One of the not-so-pleasant realities of the Ford F-150 are the notoriously cheap and hard-to-remove lug nuts.

Another example of corporate humor in this virtually humorless age, is a flyer we got in the mail from Al Moses, a carpet cleaner in Glendale, who begins his pitch by warning would-be customers not to invest in saltwater fish tanks or chickens – both things, he says, are “instruments of death.”

“Saltwater fish just drop dead for no reason,” he warns. Consider your tank death row.”

Chickens aren’t much better.

“We started with 10 chicks a year ago, six turned out to be roosters,” his ad reads.

If you get roosters, everybody in your neighborhood will hate you for waking them up at 4 a.m. every morning and might even kill your chickens. And even if the neighbors don’t do it, the alpha rooster will eventually kill off his competition.

One of the four hens got sick and died, and although the surviving three became family pets, the cost of food, shelter and various other chicken paraphernalia, not to mention the personal labor involved, meant the hens would have to live to three times their life expectancy for us to break even in fresh eggs, he said.

On the other hand, if you want your carpets cleaned, Mr. Moses is your man.

We don’t need our carpets cleaned, we recently had it done by another company, but next time, I will call Al.

The point of all this is, I don’t want to flush away my sense of humor or my dog, I certainly don’t want to raise saltwater fish. And even though I would be tempted to raise chickens if I lived someplace where they could be free-range happy creatures, I do understand the risks.

The good news is that out there in the real world, people still have a sense of humor and that alone is enough to brighten my day.

– George Lee Cunningham

News

July 30, 2023

Ego Tripping

Everybody may have a story to tell, but not everyone needs to tell it. The story for most folks is they were born, they lived, they worked, they loved, and they will at some point die. That’s nice, but by itself, it’s not a story that has a point. Just saying.

Work And Play

I’m going to die – just like everybody else – but I’m not going to stop living in the meantime. When folks retire, spending their golden years going on cruises and playing golf is fine, but if that’s all they do, it’s like having nothing but dessert. Work, however you define it, is and always has been, the main course.

July 3, 2023

Might vs. Bright

My wife says women are smarter than men. As evidence, she points out how men will strain their backs and struggle mightily to pick up everything they see into one big load and start walking without even considering where they’re going to unload their burden. Women, she says, will assess the situation, decide where they want to put things, make a space for the items, divide the items into two or three easy-to-carry loads, and maybe even grab a dolly to help. She still doesn’t get it. It’s simple. Men, young and old, pick up heavy loads and hold them for long periods of time to show that they are strong and that they can do it – to the rest of the world, including women – and to themselves.

June 3, 2023

My Sex is Male

I don’t want to be an ass, but in an age when we all want to respect everybody’s language differences, I want to say as a 20^th Century man, my sex is male. There are two sexes – male and female. My dog and I are males. My wife is female. In my native 20^th Century tongue, words have gender, people don’t. Trying to assign people a gender is just 21^st Century nonsense. Every single time somebody wants me to tell them my gender, it pisses me off. Not a lot. Just a little bit. Every single time.

Hard to Read

I know this is a new age and I have to respect that the new people who inhabit this new age have their own ways of doing stuff. But I don’t have to like it. For one thing, labels on bottles are hard to read. The shampoo and conditioner that my wife buys come in an identical bottles – both a light brown bottle with a slightly darker shade of brown printing in small letters. I never use them, because I can’t tell which is the conditioner and which is the shampoo without putting on my specs, which is difficult to do in the shower. So I use Dove. Not because it’s better shampoo, but because it comes in a white bottle with a easy-to-read label. What an old fuddy-duddy concept.

May 26, 2023

Southern Redux

When I left Florida and moved to California in 1969, I vowed never to return. California was the place to be. Friends would warn me that people in California were crazy, but that just made me want to go more, because I was crazy too. That was then. Since that time, California has become the most locked-down, up-tight state in the union. It’s still a beautiful place, and I still live there, but more-and-more I find myself missing the down-home, community feeling that still exists in the South.

Stupidity Reigns

I’ve done a lot of stupid things in my life, but I tried to make each one a learning experience. My blunders were a lesson not to repeat the same mistake. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way with everybody. I see men and women, who separate from mates that treat them poorly, then go out and hook up with somebody with exactly the same personality. Or they go to Vegas and lose their shirt, then want to go back as soon as possible to repeat the experience. Such people are not victims. They’re just stupid.