Woody Cavenaugh

Poem 61 by Steven Crane

A man feared that he might find an assassin;
Another that he might find a victim.
One was more wise than the other.

My Riso-Hudson Enneagram Type Indicator scores are as follow.
Type 1, The Reformer: 10
Type 2, The Helper: 15
Type 3, The Achiever: 15
Type 4, The Individualist: 18
Type 5, The Investigator: 19
Type 6, The Loyalist: 24
Type 7, The Enthusiast: 13
Type 8, The Challenger: 8
Type 9, The Peacemaker: 22

That makes me a six "The Loyalist" with a wing of five "The Investigator". Note also my next highest score of type nine "The Peacemaker" as well as my exceptionally low score on type 8 "The Challenger" (at least I won't explode on throttle up.)

My IVQ ( Instinctual Variant Questionnaire Results) are
Self Preservation 62 Social 46 Sexual 42

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:48 PM | Permalink

Recently I saw an ad on TV for a combination body wash and shampoo. Clearly this is marketed only to men because all women know its a dumb idea, and every man knows its brilliance. Men in their very genes are programmed to seek a place of "high speed, low drag". Perfection cannot be achieved by mortal man, but we strive on anyway.

Guys will instantly see the good idea a combination body wash shampoo is. One bottle in the shower in and of itself is a huge win. This is especially true when the rest of the shelves are taken up by her various and sundry hair and body care products. Instead of fighting for a corner of a shelf somewhere that holds his soap and combination shampoo conditioner, he can stand mighty and alone one bottle to rule them all.

Women know of course that this is the height of insanity.

Even the instructions on the bottle are written for the man seeking a place of high speed, low drag. "Apply to rag, sponge, poof, hand, whatever. Lather, rinse, go." They don't try to BS us with that silly repeat step that we aren't going to do anyway. Once is enough, now go and be mighty.

There are, of course some guys who scoff a this. They have known for a long time that having separate soap and shampoo only slows you down. They realized long ago that hair adds both wind resistance and water drag. They choose long ago to shave their heads weekly to ensure a state of high speed, low drag. They have been using one product all this time, one bottle to rule them all, and a brisk three minute shower.

Women realize that these men are complete idiots...even those who look hot with that Mister Clean looking slick and shiny scalp.

But there are men out there who look down their noses at those guys that claim to be high speed, low drag, yet weekly have to take the time out to shave their heads. These men are, of course, blessed by superior genes. As soon as puberty hit, the hair line started receding. By college they were naturally balled, or at the very least sporting a Speed Stripe down the center, or racing strips across the sides. They may touch up here and there to make sure no stubborn tufts of hair remained to diminish their god given drag coefficients.

Women of course can spot the signs of testosterone poisoning and started shying away from these guys the moment they hit puberty.

But guys know the truth. We know that every major battle in history has been won by the side with the shortest haircut. US Calvary vs the Indian Nation. Short back and sides beats hair metal locks. Cavaliers vs Roundheads, one nothing to the Puritans. Viet Nam, crew cuts both sides, ended in a tie. High Speed, Low Drag its more than a way to sell grooming products to men, its a way of life.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I've been something of a voyeur into a different world. Jacques Cousteau had the undersea world, Jane Goodall had the apes. I have the waiting room of a cancer center. They come in twos and threes, a patient and a caregiver or two. Most are older, but not all. All of the faces are poker faces, even those deformed by their afflictions. Everyone is keeping score but no one knows how they stack up to those around them.

They make friends fairly easily. Why not, they all have one thing in common besides the same scheduled radiation appointment time. They all have a reason to be radiated in the first place. The strangers, newbies, eye and are eyed by the veterans warily, as each tries to figure out where the cancer lives on each other. Some aren't as lucky, their cancers are as plain as the nose on their face, others keep theirs hidden deeply within. But are any of them really lucky?

The room's colors are faded, it isn't that the colors themselves are faded. Truth is there are brightly colored pictures, quilts, and fliers, but the room, or the people in it just drain all the color away. As pale as the people in the room are, it seems more like the colors themselves flee the room maybe seeking happier climates in daycare centers or McDonald's lobbies. I certainly felt a strong craving for a Starbucks, or anywhere else for that matter.

The veterans of this pale place talk. They talk mostly about the weather. They keep the topics topical and short term. Nobody is talking about their summer vacation plans. Certainly most of them will be there for the summer, but its all about the poker face, not everyone will be there, and no one knows who's going to draw the short straw.

And there I am sitting, waiting, watching, and wondering when I'm going to find myself a patient.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 6:27 PM | Permalink

I recently saw a headline about the Illinois university shooting where they used the term "Unthinkable" to describe it. Not only was the term used incorrectly, it is a dangerous term to be using at all.

Of school shootings in general, one could call Columbine "unthinkable" because it was so large and so successful (for the shooters), but don't think for a moment that the shooters at Columbine were breaking new ground. There have been murders in schools for as long as there have been schools. These guys weren't breaking new ground, they were just trying to beat the old record.

The recent university shootings are no different. They were not "unthinkable" at all, others had thought of it before and acted on the idea, these latest were just better at it (in terms of destruction).

Where people and the media and the government go wrong is all to often they see these acts as "unthinkable" -completely new, unique and unimaginable. Thinking of terrible things as "unthinkable" give too much credit to the perpetrators and take away valuable credit from those there to protect us from these acts.

I heard somewhere that some well meaning git in congress wants to create new legislature to prevent things like school shootings from occurring. Neat trick that, do they plan to change physics so guns won't work on academic ground? Do they intend to add a new commandment to the bible, "Thou shall not open fire in crowded auditoriums"? The first is impossible and the second is unworkable, people have enough trouble with the ten commandments we have already and don't even get me started on all of the other rules and regulations in the good book that we ignore on a daily basis. You know, a pork BBQ sandwich with a cold glass of milk and a side of fried shrimp would go over pretty well right now. But I digress...

What do you think campus security, resource officers, and all this existing policy was put in place for to start with? Were it not for the things already in place because long ago someone thought of it already, the tragedies of our time would be a lot worse and a lot more often. Did you think campus police were there simply to cut down drunken frat boys who have been duct taped naked to trees?

If people keep thinking of things like this as unthinkable they are sticking their heads in the sand and blissfully ignoring the obvious.

"Unthinkable" is discovering that President Bush is a high technology genius android sent from the future to bring us to a new age of enlightenment and velvet thong underwear which we wear anytime we want free steak ice cream from the locally owned and operated independent Starbucks.

A guy with a gun going into a crowded room and opening fire isn't unthinkable at all. Fortunately it is unlikely, but that isn't the same thing as unthinkable by a long shot.

"There is nothing new under the sun", and as long as we don't forget this we won't be caught unawares.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 4:21 PM | Permalink

Tonight we went to Captain George's all you can eat seafood buffet. Though it was the first time I've ever been here, it was a rematch situation for yours truly. The last time I faced an all you can eat seafood buffet I was suffering from severe heat related illness and I don't even remember how I did. In fact all I have to really mark the occasion is a large pilsner glass. I am told it had beer in it. I am also told I drank it.

Now don't get me wrong, since celebrating a birthday on the first of the month I've felt a new maturity about me. I mean for instance I can't even remember the last time I threw a chicken bone over my shoulder. OK, it was last Thursday, but still...

I started strong, a fried chicken thigh in honor of 200 years of southern evolution. A piece of prime rib because beef is what's for dinner. I skipped on the BBQ pork ribs. What! This is Virginia, they may claim the whole of American History, but they can't have pork. I rounded the plate out with fried shrimp, fried scallops, fried clam strips, deviled crab, crab cake, and a stuffed mushroom.

Plate two was more choosy, shrimp, fish, scallop, clam, crab, and macaroni and cheese. The plan was to go to plate three all king crab all the time, but it never happened. It was an act of extreme willpower that got plate two safe and sound down my gullet.

Meanwhile, Sara took her dear sweet time on her second plate. She went with all of the activity foods on her second plate. She mocked me. She mocked me plain and simple and there wasn't a thing I could do about it- up to and including dessert. I was defeated. The goal wasn't to eat more than Sara. The goal was to simply eat the $30.00 that the meal cost per person. I couldn't have possibly eaten more than $25 to $28 worth tops.

All I can do now, is to wallow in the hot tub in my shame, drinking wine and planning for next year. Maybe I should train or something, I'm not as young as I used to be.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 8:41 PM | Permalink

We called security at 2:30 in the morning because we couldn't sleep for the noise. It had been constant since we arrive at 10pm. The security person got the noise down to a dull roar which allowed us to sleep until about 6:30am when it all began again. We tried to be good neighbors while still not killing each other or them. It worked until about 10:30am when we had simply had more than any person could possibly take. The chandelier was swinging, and my coffee on the deck had been ruined by bread crumbs and crackers the heathens were throwing to the ducks and geese from the floor above. Signs everywhere read "do not feed the birds".

I was beyond words, so Sara called and begged for relief. They sent security again who was stunned to find out just how many of them there were on the floor above. He wrote it up and told us the management would be VERY unhappy with the numbers in each space above. I gathered this went beyond management preference and deep into fire code violation.
By 2:30 we were on the third floor of an entirely different building. At this point we were loopy from lack of sleep and lack of food. We were too tired for restaurants so we went to the grocery store and bought cooked food to eat in our room. Since then the only other noises I have heard are those damned kids, and then only when I go outside. I can live very happily with that.

Let the vacation begin...again.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 7:37 PM | Permalink

I'm going to break the writer's strike picket line. I know that if I try to sell a script now, it will be sold. This film is important and it needs to be shot. Its a horror.

It is a story about a homicidal maniac who gleefully slaughters a large church group. The protagonist is the maniac who was driven to this homicidal state by the fact that the church group has the entire floor above him in his condo and keep him from sleeping because of their constant and flagrant noise and chaos.

I promise you, you'll cheer every murder because it is clearly the right thing to do. Some folks just need killin'.

Now pray for me that we can get some sort of relief before this fiction becomes our reality.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:42 PM | Permalink

We were fortunate enough to be offered some time in a coastal Virginia condo as a second anniversary present. We've been married eight years now, and we needed a vacation. On the way we stopped by Henry and David to spend a gift card and pick up some treats for our stay. We brought all of our non-refrigerated goods from home so as to save money. We figure, if it is a historic tourist destination there might be a markup on the necessities of life.

The road was good to us and we traveled well across it. The car's odometer hit 200,000 miles, and yes, there was cake. We stopped at a Western Sizzling steak house. Sara's don't do Golden Coral or buffets in general, I would do them exclusively if I could. Woody's love wondrous variety.

I have a rule of restaurants that states that if you want decent simple food at a good price, just follow the old people and eat where they eat. We were among the youngest customers in the place and it was amazing. Sara ordered from the menu and I had the buffet.

After I got my plate I discovered I was trapped between a culinary Cilla and Charybdis. On my left stacked two and a half feet high in a warming pan was a ziggurat of fried chicken. On my right an equally sized and shaped pile of barbecued ribs. What to do... What to do? It is at times like this I think on the advice given by Mae West; "When choosing between two evils, choose the one you've never tried before." So I filled my plate with both and headed back to my table. The rest of the meal was something of a blur. I have heard on TV people describe what it is to be high on drugs. This was just like that, only legal, socially acceptable, and less expensive. Plus I could drive legally afterwards.

We arrived at our destination an hour and a half later, and I was still full. Good times.

Upon check in we were scheduled to a voluntary free breakfast where we would be offered a "no high pressure" presentation on why we should be an owner and not a guest at their fine chain of resort destinations. Not sure I'll make that, loath though I am to miss a free meal. Any possibility of giving into temptation is gone, and below you'll find out why.

Once we found our room/suite/apartment we wandered around noticing that this place has more square footage than our own humble hovel in the woods. However, we couldn't dwell on it, as we had to get to the grocery store for that all important half and half. I won't drink my coffee black if there is anyway around it, I don't care how good the coffee is. In this case it is a bag of Mahogany from Caribou Coffee. On the way there and back, we talked about what we saw we liked and wondered how we were going to recreate it on our salaries.

We were back in the apartment at about 10pm. (It is over 1100 sq ft, what would YOU call it) We got in, put the groceries away and became aware that there was a stampede going on on the floor above us. There were children. There were a LOT of children. They were running the sidewalk above us back and forth, they were in the room above us, jumping up and down. There was yelling and other happy "army of screaming kid" noises. By about midnight the screaming died down to a dull roar and the troops were brought into the room where they all fifty or so of them began jumping up and down. It sounded like a morter barrage and we tolerated up until we could no longer stand it. We had to sleep sometime and they were simply not going to allow this to happen. It was 1:30 in the morning. We called security and asked them to quiet the horde. I pondered offering to duct tape the offenders to the ceiling or something, but I dismissed the idea because I didn't have enough duct tape for all of them.

Security arrived in less than five minutes. We invited him inside and over the din we asked if he could maybe help us with our problem. He was up there for five minutes and when he returned, the noise was cut by half. He said there were way more people (children and adults) than we could imagine and he was going to write a report, that may lead to their being asked to go. So here it is 2:14am as I type these words and the barrage has become nothing more than sporadic bombardments. I could sleep through that I suppose.

I just have to click "publish" and try.

Oh yeah, the street name? "Rochambeau"

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 1:40 AM | Permalink

Sure, it was a storm that killed 48, and I don't want to make light of that fact, but the weather brought me a good feeling. The air was warm and full of energy. It reminded me that it is time to put garden peas in the ground and maybe plant a black walnut or six.

It was a day for rolling down the windows and letting the warm breeze clear the cobwebs of stagnation and despair. It stirred up the dust and the emotions of the people around me. Just like lose paper on a desk in a breeze, I was surrounded by people who blew in the wind as I did. It was like flying.

Yes, the clouds were dark and ominous. Yes, the news carried death and destruction, but in the space of my arms it was a tiny paradise and I was glad for the distraction. It allowed me to see things about my self I had never noticed before. It made me think of the future and how I intend to shape it. It blew out some bad and hopefully some good. It also blew in contact from friends too far and too long out of contact.

It was a good day.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:22 AM | Permalink

Chasing, running, attacking, defending, fighting, hiding, these are my dreams. Every night is a new adventure and if I'm lucky I awake long enough to recognize that it has happened. Otherwise I awake with that odd sense that I ought to be chasing, running, attacking, defending, fighting, or hiding.

I would describe myself in my waking life as content. I have everything I need, and some of what I want, and that isn't a bad way to be. In most bad situations I can find a way to become content with it. It usually involves distraction, a book, a seat that faces the room without being an active part of the action in it, chicken, Cheerwine, a good cup of coffee, conversation with someone I both like and trust. Content is an easy state to attain, and its always enough.

My dreams last night were different and I awoke in time to realize it. In my dream I had everything I needed to the point that I didn't have to consider it. I had everything I wanted to the point that I couldn't think of anything I might want that I didn't have. (At the very least, I didn't think of anything I wanted that I didn't have.) I don't know how I came to be in this position, in my dream everything simply worked out that way. It was a natural series of events that lead me to be where I was. There was a feeling that went with it. I think it may have been pure joy. It was kinda cool. I've spent the morning wondering if anyone out there feels pure joy in real life. I hope so. I would like to think that such a thing was possible if events lined up just right for someone.

Weird thing is I still feel the urge to chase, run, attack, defend, fight or hide, only now the goal is to acquire joy.

Posted by Woody Cavenaugh at 9:39 AM | Permalink