Finally, Golf is in the Air

As Makai and I left the house this morning to take our walk, we were shadowed by one of our cats, a red tabby named Timmy Twos. Timmy walked better than the dog since he actually strolled next to me and didn’t have to check out every tree and cornstalk to see who had left a secret message in the last 24 hours.

The significance of Timmy walking with me was that it indicated that the weather was nice enough for a lazy home body to step outside. No, I am not talking about me, I am talking about Timmy Twos. And the significance of nicer weather is that the golfing season is fast approaching. In years past, the end of the football season (the Ravens were recently eliminated from the playoffs) meant the approach of the baseball season but since we have The Baltimore Orioles to root for this does not give us much hope. Twelve consecutive years of losing has wearied me of getting excited about Spring Training, so, today immediately after March Madness I have the golfing season. In fact, our season starts as soon as Daylight Savings Time kicks in. 

Last week I received an email from a Chapter of the Bad Golfers Association in Florida that stumbled across our BGA website. While they were very complimentary about the quality of our website, they completely mocked the quality of our golf. Well, if we had golfing weather all year ‘round we could play better bad golf, too! Actually this year I am looking forward to playing mediocre golf and winning the coveted Race for the Cheeseburger, 2010 edition. For those of you who have not visited our website and are not familiar with The Race for the Cheeseburger, let me explain.

For almost twenty years The Bad Golfers Association has been playing a weekly twilight round of golf. In the beginning we played “Skins” for 25 cents a hole. As our games evolved we realized that we were more interested in bragging rights than in winning money so a few years ago we came up with our “Ultimate Golf Game.” Now, every week the four of us play for a single beer. Full handicaps are used (these range from 6 to 17 for 9 holes, we truly are The BGA!) and the player with the lowest net score wins a beer from the player with the highest net score. The two players in the middle neither win nor lose and come away with just a little more experience. In one round last year a single stroke separated the winner from the three losers so three beers were won. To us these beers are precious as we keep detailed Beer Statistics with current standings of beers won and beers lost. But the supreme prize is saved for the winner of the yearlong “Race for the Cheeseburger.”

In order to win this most coveted prize four statistics are tracked. Since even within the BGA our abilities are widely separated we needed to have a completely fair competition. Once again, The Commish in his infinite wisdom came up with the perfect game. We track the percentage of fairways hit, greens hit in regulation, pars, and birdies. These are totaled and the player who has improved the most from the previous season wins a cheeseburger and fries at our local watering hole. Sadly, in 2008 no one won as everyone’s statistics backslid. The Snowman won in 2005, Mr. Fifteen won the next year, 2007 was the year of The Commish, and last season Mr. FourSkin won his first Cheeseburger Award. The fairness of this seems to show itself in the fact that no one has won back to back seasons. 

Now that the choice of games is settled, we just need to see who records the first double digit score in 2010 and who will be the first to not clear the road on the First Hole tee shot at Mt. Pleasant. Last year, for the first time, the BGA proudly cleared this obstacle in all 30 rounds (it is, after all, at least 20 yards). Don’t take this to mean that our drives were good, as many ended up closer to the ninth green than the first fairway; but, the important thing is we all cleared the road. Mission accomplished.

C’mon Spring, I am ready for all that you bring.

The Great White Way (or Let’s Have a Sexcise Tax)

As Makai and I took our walk this morning down our lengthy driveway, I saw in front of me a great white way, again. I have walked through way too much of the “white death” so far this winter to be concerned about global warming. In fact I could do with about twenty-five more degrees of the global warming stuff right about now!

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ve been green since before green was cool and as has oft been said, “it ain’t easy being green.” Mrs. Commish and I have farmed organically since we were married just after the little ice age ended. You remember that one don’t you? Remember back in the 70’s when we were warned about the threat of global cooling and the real possibility of once again becoming snowball earth? I remember because we were building our home then and were advised to put in one of those new-fangled gadgets called a heat pump. It ran on electricity and “took heat right out of the air” to save money and the environment. Besides with the coming ice age we could be sure that an oil delivery truck would not get up our driveway in the winter, propane would work but the same delivery problem existed, and natural gas was not available. So a clean, cheap heat pump was the answer. It has been such a great answer that if I was a landlord I would be put in prison for keeping the house so cold. How does 52 sound? Well our thermostat is set there and our bill is still $250 or more each month, so you better believe that I really would appreciate a little global warming right about now.

I know I am being overly simplistic. Climate trends take centuries to play out. I wonder if a simple goat herder like myself realizes this then why don’t our Elected Betters and their scientific brain trusts realize this? Could it be that there is money (more “green”) to be made if we rush to sell carbon credits and alternative technologies to the sheepeople? Carbon credits sure sound similar to those collateralized sub-prime instruments that our financial whiz bangs and our Elected Betters made fortunes on as all of my goat herder friends lost their portfolios. So I admit that I am just a bit skeptical of Big People telling me what is best for me.

Big People now tell me to recycle. As I said before, this is nothing new to me. I collected and returned aluminum cans and every year or two Mrs. Commish, Gwaltney and I would cash them in. We enjoyed the process since we always were paid in $2 bills. Mrs. Commish and Gwaltney would pocket their new-found wealth (maybe $8 or $10 each) and take mine and a little extra to some local café and we would enjoy a nice lunch. Save the earth and have lunch. Perfect. Then my Elected Betters tell me that my two trash pickups are going to be one for recycling and one for trash. One week for paper and the next week for bottles and cans. Oh yeah, the items to be recycled must be put in blue plastic bags. The first week I put my cans and bottles out in blue bags and animals got to it and I had to pick up my recyclable stuff from the woods and put it out again in two weeks. The next week my paper was neatly tied and stacked at the bottom of my hill. It was not picked up because of some reason that I can no longer recall but I do remember having to once again pick up a lot of the trash scattered in my woods. The following week is once again cans. This time I put them in blue bags and put the blue bags in a trash can for “protection.” WRONG. Recyclables are to be picked up in blue bags, not blue bags in trash cans. The end result of my Elected Betters solution for recycling is that now I put out everything in my once a week trash pickup and on recyle day I sleep in.

As I see it, all of these Big People ideas stem from a belief in a Malthusian catastrophe. (For those of you who went to public school – like me—google Robert Malthus yourself.) So in order to avoid regressing to a subsistence level we must do all of these silly thing, even if they don’t work, and do them now. All of these “solutions” really do not address the problem – there are too many people. There I’ve said it. Now we need a solution for too many people and the rest of our problems would self-correct naturally (and what could be more green than something happening  “naturally”). The solution you ask, well The Commish recommends a new tax, something I never thought I would advocate. Using the proven principle that subsidizing something gets you more of it and taxing something produces less of it, then, simply put, in order to get less people let’s tax sex!

As a side benefit to producing fewer people – remember if you tax something you get less of it – our Elected Betters should realize a bonanza in this new revenue stream. This new revenue source may be enough to lower our other taxes. Right. As I see it there could be a real “marriage tax” and we could fill out forms like Census Data and then we would get a Coupling Tax Bill in the mail. Or, we could do it like withholding taxes and pay in advance. Our Elected Betters would honestly be pimps and no longer could we complain about them “pimping for Wall Street” or “being a pimp for Big Pharma.” Since enough is never really enough for Big People, future adjustments to the Sex Tax Code could include a Value Added Tax for prostitutes and maybe an excise (Sexcise?) tax on massages. 

No need to thank me, The Commish is glad to help with his solutions for a greener world.