My Cosmic Karma Looney Tune

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Despite the seriously bogus school project involving the teaching of complex economic concepts to my daughter and the rest of her second grade class that I was not taught until high school she and I were having a good time rolling peanut butter balls in the kitchen Wednesday evening. This project has strained my otherwise laid back attitude because the local Conservative acolytes of free market capitalism are doing their best to indoctrinate the young before they might be exposed to any nasty socialistic ideas like there might be something more to life than squeezing the last possible cent of profit from selling the public more crap.

For the last couple of weeks Miss Wiggles was nearly overwhelmed with homework assignments involving such things as filing for a business license, coming up with a business model, and my favorite part of the project so far having to write and record some sort of commercial for her business. My son Darth Spoilboy was able to write some lyrics along with a perky melody, which we recorded on a simple tape player. Unbelievably Wiggles' teacher suggested in the instructions for the commercial that her students could do a video and burn it to a DVD since they had a big projector attached to the class computer. After reading that segment, I am sure some capitalistic computer geek will have a full-fledged, high production value commercial complete with pretty computer graphics this Friday when the parents come to see the class business exhibits.

After much discussion and research, Miss Wiggles and Dragonwife decided on doing a candy business, which was especially pleasing to me since I allowed an array of socialistic tinged thoughts of revenge to dance through my mind about leaving the capitalist pig teacher to deal with her class of sugar-hyped kids for the rest of the day after all the parents leave. That brings me to the sad and tragic events that I guess was the universe teaching be that such sinister thoughts can send my karmic balance sheet into the red.

My daughter and I jumped feet first last evening into the preparation of chocolate covered peanut butter balls long before Dragonwife made it home sending clouds of confectionery sugar into the air as we added it to the already mixed mound of creamy peanut butter smelling of a cup of high fat butter inside the food processor. After mixing thoroughly she and I spent about an hour rolling the goop into inch-wide balls then placing them on a baking sheet which then we then put inside the refrigerator. During this father/daughter time, which I admit was nice, an old Bugs Bunny cartoon somehow drifted to the forefront of my mind. It was the one where Elmer Fudd dresses up in body armor looking for all the world like cast offs from some Star Wars golden R2D2 droid singing "KILL THE WABBIT" to the tune of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries.

Wiggles and I started singing the tune while rolling the peanut butter balls with both of us almost losing all semblance of sanity; so much that when Dragonwife walked in she thought Wiggles had followed me over the edge of sanity and into the silliness abyss. It's a long story but as far as my wife and in-laws are concerned, my sanity has always been in doubt and I revel in the near eternal question they ponder about what dumb thing I will do next.

For the rest of the night my mood, so elated even with the ridiculous project taking so much time, had me singing "Kill the Wabbit" and thinking about old Elmer coming upon some hole and gleefully stabbing his spear into the darkness hoping to nab old Bugs that I made myself take a step back and chill out. Still though I was flying high and actually eager to head on out to work a few hours later. Little did I know that the cosmic karmic bitch had laid a trap for me as I headed out of town that would derail me the rest of the night.

As I was driving past the last of the mega-churches on the way out a little bitty rabbit jumped out of the darkness at the last second and with an oak tree on one side of me and a passing car on the other I was not able to turn enough to avoid the small creature. In fact, the rabbit, caught in the headlights, jumped around enough in confusion to line perfectly up with my right front tire. The result was not quite a bump but more than the feeling of a soft squish as I passed over the creature.

Despite general opinion and some evidence to the contrary I am not some redneck who enjoys running over small animals in the road. Yes, I will eat such small and innocent creatures as Peter Rabbit, Steve the Squirrel, and Bambi but unlike some people I know I do not laugh when such traffic encounters happen and actually feel bad about them. For the rest of my drive to work I was totally bummed out feeling like some slime found on the surface of a dead pond. Yes, I did realize the irony that I was joyfully singing "KILL THE WABBIT, KILL THE WABBIT" just a few hours earlier.

Getting into work I found I had a sterilizer down with a note from the head surgical nurse on the night shift saying she needed it back up and openly wondered why I had not come in earlier. The fact that I am not on-call this week and that the sterilizer guy who is on call told the second shift general maintenance guy to wait for me is just something I did not even try to explain to the head nurse since she would not listen if I tried.

A few hours later and after moving other equipment all packed less than an inch away from the disabled sterilizer I get the nasty beast back up and running then smash the living shit out of right-hand pinky finger moving all the stuff back in place. Once again, my childhood fixations on my Looney Tune pals brought the image of Daffy Duck looking totally disgusted and muttering "You’re despicable" to a very satisfied looking Bugs Bunny standing off to the side munching a carrot. The head nurse who walked away without saying a word played the part of Bugs last night. Truth be told I figure I got off easy, see she was banned from ever wandering into labor and delivery again after being caught rubbing ranch dressing on one of the newborns. The foot-long sub roll and shredded lettuce beside the baby pretty much removed all doubt about her lack of basic humanity.

Of course after that the third-shift general maintenance dude calls on the radio needing help chasing down a set of clogged toilets resulting in us deploying a really nifty but smelly device that runs through the pipes cleaning out anything that might be blocking the flow resulting in an hour of brown liquid fun. After a shower, a new set of scrubs, I retreated into one of the cardiac operating rooms and listened to the Elvis channel on the satellite radio. During the first hour, the King sang old gospel tunes and interspersed between the songs were curious stories that Elvis had not been right in the head for many years before his death. While not a huge Elvis fan and with some basic knowledge that the King did have a few monkeys on his back all his life I was still shaken a little to learn far more than I wanted to know about his skewed view of the world. Nevertheless, I spent the rest of the night in that operating room relaxing to the music and hoping my karmic equation thrown out of balance by thinking commie inspired thoughts and running over the innocent bunny had returned to the plus side over my nightly tribulations.

I was extremely encouraged to that effect this morning as I sat in the cafeteria making love to my onion bagel heavily smothered in artery clogging cream cheese. The biggest thing on my mind during that time was the upcoming final exhibits for my daughter and her classmates of their business projects. The only bad thing is that after my karmic cartoon ride Wednesday night I figure I will now have to be on my best behavior and refrain from any snarky, socialistic comments to the gathered happy capitalists. I can tell Dragonwife to slap me across the back of the head if I should get that nasty gleam in my eye, a sure sign I am about to open my mouth. She always gets a kick whenever she has a pop me aside the head when I am about to do something stupid.

With that covered and as long as I avoid running over any small animals I think I should be okay.