Just in time for Thanksgiving, a little free-floating hostility.
I’ve been thinking about a few things lately that annoy the shit out of me. But I believe that giving them vent will go a long way towards giving me peace. (I should also mention my debt to the late Mr. George Carlin—the greatest comic who ever lived—for inspiring the title of this offering.)
Nirvana
I was listening to the radio the other day and the DJ just went babbling on like the dopiest of brooks extolling the world-changing position Nirvana holds in rock music history. I hear this silly shit all the time. Nirvana was warmed over Neil Young with a splash of ‘70s punk and a few obnoxious guitar effects. I will give Kurt and his gang credit for one thing: they are almost wholly responsible for the incessant goddamn bitching and whimpering you hear in rock music these days. “You lied to me! You don’t like me! I’m a miserable toe-rag! But I just loves me some heroin!” Oh, wah wah wah. Fucking grow up. Here’s the thing: the best thing that happened to rock music in the 1990s was the day Cobain tongue-kissed the business end of that shotgun. Huzzah.
The British Invented Punk Rock
This myth has been running rampant for nearly two decades. The British didn’t have jack to do with the invention of punk. They offered some material to the catalogue, sure. But, aside from perhaps the Clash, the Isles produced not one seminal punk-rock band (and the Clash’s first, and best, album, was nothing more than a ham-fisted rip-off of the Ramones). Most of what Britain provided to the music was cosmetic—goofy-ass mohawks, safety pins, in-concert spittle, and that goddamn stupid “pogoing” they were so fond of, which, incidentally, we brought to its fullest and most perfect expression, in the form of the mosh pit. In a search for punk’s precursors, the Brits can point to a couple of songs by the Kinks, and that’s about it. We have the Velvet Underground. We have the MC5 and the New York Dolls. We have Iggy and the Stooges. And most importantly, we have the Ramones. When Joey, Johnny, Tommy and Dee Dee first toured the UK in the mid-‘70s, members of the Clash and the Sex Pistols were in attendance. Johnny Rotten wanted to get backstage to meet the boys, but was frightened that they might beat the shit out of him. That’s right. Mr. Anarchist Tough Guy cringed like a little girl. Ding-ding! Ding-ding! The Brits lose. We win. Case closed.
Bicycle Pads
I am so tired of seeing kids out on their bikes wearing enough padding to play middle linebacker for the Denver Broncos. Haven’t we taken kid protection about as far as it needs to go? Exactly how long are parents supposed to keep their offspring swaddled in plate mail—both physical and mental—before allowing them a peek at the real world. When I was a kid we rode around barefoot in nothing but swim trunks. (I was much skinnier then so the sight wasn’t quite as horrific as it sounds.) And, yes, sometimes we fell off our bikes and broke our faces. That’s the whole point to being a kid. It’s how we learn. You tried to jump that canal ditch, but shorted it and broke your face? Well, maybe you won’t be in a hurry to try it again, or you’ll build a better ramp…or talk your little brother into doing it. The world is dangerous. Insulating kids from it too stringently is, in my humble opinion, one of the main reasons our young people are, too often, pampered, mewling little shitbags. Let ‘em ride without armor, for God’s sake. Let ‘em break their faces. They’ll heal. They’re tougher than they are generally given credit for being.
Fortune Cookies
Why don’t they make fortune cookies anymore? My most recent cookie contained this: “You are intelligent and people like you.” That’s not a fortune, that’s an aphorism. And sometimes they aren’t even directed at a person. “A smile is a rose on a rainy day.” Really? Fuck you! I want a fortune. Used to be, you got a fortune every time, a pithy little prediction of what your future might hold. Not these days. And I want to know why. Can it be that there is a world-wide fortune shortage that has so far gone unreported by the major news outlets? Shit, if there is I’m here to help. Try this on: “You will find out the hard way that Sarah Palin has teeth in her honey-hole.” Not pretty, but at least it gives you some idea of what might be careening down the highway at you. And besides, who says a fortune should be all sweetness and light? Can’t they just as well be weird and disquieting? For instance: “In the spirit of unalloyed wantonness, you will run over a chicken.” Gives you something to watch out for while motoring. In closing, I’d like to say this: the last honest-to-Nostradamus fortune I can remember finding in my luncheon cookie fucked me up for three goddamn days. I got it on September 12th, 2001. It read: “You will own one of the tallest buildings in New York City.”
Now that’s a motherfucking fortune, man.
Happy Thanksgiving.
Cheers.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Monday, November 15, 2010
Freak Magnet
I have a Freak Magnet. My whole adult life, if there are freaks in the vicinity, they will, according to some fucked up law of nature I can’t even begin to fathom, make a bee-line right at my personal space, and then subject me to a full and uncensored display of their freakishness. And I am continually flabbergasted at the ratio of Freaks to Non-Freaks, here in my little Oklahoma town. They run the gamut from run-of-the-reality-show freaks, to full-on, radioactive psychos, as I hope to demonstrate with the following samples of my recent life, here in Freak Central.
It was a little bit overcast the other day when I decided to go out on the town (procuring the weekly Rolaids supply from Wal-Mart), but I had my shades on anyway, just because…I dunno…that’s how I roll. In any event, I’m walking across the parking lot at Chez Wal and there’s this guy sitting on the hood of his car staring at me. He’s wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, combat pants, a cap advertizing a local mud-logging concern, and smoking a cigarette. As I walk by he says:
“Hey! Don’t’cha think it’s a little dark for sunglasses?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, with a sigh. “Is it?”
“It’s too dark for sunglasses.”
The tone of his voice suggested that he was as sure of this fact as he was that the Earth is flat. I don’t often have smart-assed responses ready to go on the instant, and I didn’t really this time, but I took a crack at it anyhow.
“You know?” I said. “I was hoping the Guy Sitting on his Car at Wal-Mart would bestow upon me each and every one of his clever thoughts concerning my wardrobe. My sleep tonight will be dreamless. Thanks. You SO totally rock.” He looked at me like a dog eye-balling a page of differential equations, and went back to smoking.
OK. Not too freakish, right? Sure, but read on. The freaks are only getting warmed up.
Two nights ago, I damn near got into it with another freaky douchebag, this time at my job. I work as a projectionist at the local movie theatre, and sometimes, on a particularly busy night, I get roped into helping out at the concession stand. I was pouring sodas for a couple, but, since my sketchy past has left me with the attention span of a fruit fly, I’d forgotten what they ordered and needed clarification.
“That was a root beer, and was it a Coke or a Diet Coke?” I asked.
“Coke,” the lady said.
I’d just started pouring the drinks when the male half of the duo says:
“Sounds like somebody’s calling somebody fat.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Sounds like somebody’s calling her fat.”
“Whoa, dude,” I said. “You’re gonna get me in trouble for something I didn’t say.”
“Diet Coke? Sounds like somebody thinks she’s fat.”
“Man, that’s not even what I was talking about.” I looked at the lady. “You know that’s not what I meant, right?”
“I know. Don’t listen to him.”
The guy glared at her, little volcanoes in his eyes. “Shut up.”
“Look at me,” I said. “I’m the last guy should be calling anyone fat.”
“Same with him,” the lady said. “If he stepped back from the counter, you’d see.”
The guy snatched one of the sodas and shoved it into the woman’s chest.
“Here,” he said. Then he gave her a little shove toward the auditorium, adding, in a voice that oozed chivalry and good will: “Move your ass.”
It’s not like I want my little town to be invaded by platoons of metrosexuals, stinkin’ the joint up with their CK-1 and their ennui, but come on… Let’s at least try for 1960, huh?
And here’s a tale of freakiness perpetrated not just on me, but on anybody who happened to come into contact with it. Call it anonymous freakiness.
I’m once again in the local Wal-Mart, lookin’ for pants. Find a pair in my size and head for the changing cells. Inside, I kick off my shoes, drop trow, and start unhooking the new pair from the hanger. About that time I glanced over at the mirror. And then glanced again to make sure my first glance hadn’t glanced off something and gotten me confused. But no. No confusion.
There on the glass was a foot-long smear of blood.
A clothes-changing mishap had befallen someone, and the fucking gargoyle had wiped his coppery discharge on the mirror. I mean, what the hell is that?
I decided Wal-Mart could keep their pants and, after checking to make sure I hadn’t sat in anything exciting, handed them over to the dressing room lady. I also mentioned that she might want to get in there with some 405 and a rag, and explained why. She gave me a skeptical look, had a peek for herself, and came out shrugging.
“Huh,” she said, as if commenting on the price of plums, “it is blood.”
And now, to close this missive, here’s a story of freakishness that goes beyond. Way beyond.
I was recently set up on a blind date of sorts. “Of sorts” because I sort of knew the lady and so wasn’t entirely blind to the sitch, if you see what I mean. In any event, we met at a local steak place and had a pretty nice meal, along with a couple of drinks and a bottle of wine.
Now, you’ve all been on dates, yes? And so you know that a moment arrives at some point over the course of any first date—the make-or-break moment, where you think to yourself, “Yes, I could see this person again,” or “No, I’d prefer not to.”
My make-or-break moment arrived just about the same time as the check, when my date demurely turned away from me, removed her upper dentures…
…and proceeded to blow food from them into a napkin.
Then she popped the plate back in, secured it with some solid thumb pressure, and turned back to me.
I was home eleven minutes later. And my dreams, friends, were troubled.
So, can there be any doubt as to the existence of my Freak Magnet? Oh, I think not. See, all of the above proofs happened within a mere eight-day span of time. I shudder to think what next week might have to offer.
Cheers!
It was a little bit overcast the other day when I decided to go out on the town (procuring the weekly Rolaids supply from Wal-Mart), but I had my shades on anyway, just because…I dunno…that’s how I roll. In any event, I’m walking across the parking lot at Chez Wal and there’s this guy sitting on the hood of his car staring at me. He’s wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, combat pants, a cap advertizing a local mud-logging concern, and smoking a cigarette. As I walk by he says:
“Hey! Don’t’cha think it’s a little dark for sunglasses?”
“I don’t know,” I answered, with a sigh. “Is it?”
“It’s too dark for sunglasses.”
The tone of his voice suggested that he was as sure of this fact as he was that the Earth is flat. I don’t often have smart-assed responses ready to go on the instant, and I didn’t really this time, but I took a crack at it anyhow.
“You know?” I said. “I was hoping the Guy Sitting on his Car at Wal-Mart would bestow upon me each and every one of his clever thoughts concerning my wardrobe. My sleep tonight will be dreamless. Thanks. You SO totally rock.” He looked at me like a dog eye-balling a page of differential equations, and went back to smoking.
OK. Not too freakish, right? Sure, but read on. The freaks are only getting warmed up.
Two nights ago, I damn near got into it with another freaky douchebag, this time at my job. I work as a projectionist at the local movie theatre, and sometimes, on a particularly busy night, I get roped into helping out at the concession stand. I was pouring sodas for a couple, but, since my sketchy past has left me with the attention span of a fruit fly, I’d forgotten what they ordered and needed clarification.
“That was a root beer, and was it a Coke or a Diet Coke?” I asked.
“Coke,” the lady said.
I’d just started pouring the drinks when the male half of the duo says:
“Sounds like somebody’s calling somebody fat.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Sounds like somebody’s calling her fat.”
“Whoa, dude,” I said. “You’re gonna get me in trouble for something I didn’t say.”
“Diet Coke? Sounds like somebody thinks she’s fat.”
“Man, that’s not even what I was talking about.” I looked at the lady. “You know that’s not what I meant, right?”
“I know. Don’t listen to him.”
The guy glared at her, little volcanoes in his eyes. “Shut up.”
“Look at me,” I said. “I’m the last guy should be calling anyone fat.”
“Same with him,” the lady said. “If he stepped back from the counter, you’d see.”
The guy snatched one of the sodas and shoved it into the woman’s chest.
“Here,” he said. Then he gave her a little shove toward the auditorium, adding, in a voice that oozed chivalry and good will: “Move your ass.”
It’s not like I want my little town to be invaded by platoons of metrosexuals, stinkin’ the joint up with their CK-1 and their ennui, but come on… Let’s at least try for 1960, huh?
And here’s a tale of freakiness perpetrated not just on me, but on anybody who happened to come into contact with it. Call it anonymous freakiness.
I’m once again in the local Wal-Mart, lookin’ for pants. Find a pair in my size and head for the changing cells. Inside, I kick off my shoes, drop trow, and start unhooking the new pair from the hanger. About that time I glanced over at the mirror. And then glanced again to make sure my first glance hadn’t glanced off something and gotten me confused. But no. No confusion.
There on the glass was a foot-long smear of blood.
A clothes-changing mishap had befallen someone, and the fucking gargoyle had wiped his coppery discharge on the mirror. I mean, what the hell is that?
I decided Wal-Mart could keep their pants and, after checking to make sure I hadn’t sat in anything exciting, handed them over to the dressing room lady. I also mentioned that she might want to get in there with some 405 and a rag, and explained why. She gave me a skeptical look, had a peek for herself, and came out shrugging.
“Huh,” she said, as if commenting on the price of plums, “it is blood.”
And now, to close this missive, here’s a story of freakishness that goes beyond. Way beyond.
I was recently set up on a blind date of sorts. “Of sorts” because I sort of knew the lady and so wasn’t entirely blind to the sitch, if you see what I mean. In any event, we met at a local steak place and had a pretty nice meal, along with a couple of drinks and a bottle of wine.
Now, you’ve all been on dates, yes? And so you know that a moment arrives at some point over the course of any first date—the make-or-break moment, where you think to yourself, “Yes, I could see this person again,” or “No, I’d prefer not to.”
My make-or-break moment arrived just about the same time as the check, when my date demurely turned away from me, removed her upper dentures…
…and proceeded to blow food from them into a napkin.
Then she popped the plate back in, secured it with some solid thumb pressure, and turned back to me.
I was home eleven minutes later. And my dreams, friends, were troubled.
So, can there be any doubt as to the existence of my Freak Magnet? Oh, I think not. See, all of the above proofs happened within a mere eight-day span of time. I shudder to think what next week might have to offer.
Cheers!
Friday, October 29, 2010
Tea Bag Tuesday!
It’s time to set a few things straight. We have a big ol election coming up in a few days, and I want to do my part to get my good friends in the Tea Party elected to every office where they have a dog in the fightin’ pit.
Here’s a just a sample of why I believe it’s time for all those good, God-fearin’, Tea Partiers to get up from the card table in the den and join the grown-ups at the big table in the dining room.
Taxes
Why in all the heavens do we keep paying these gosh darned things? I, for one, think we have all the roads we need. Don’t you? Somebody’s got a pothole out front of their store, let ‘em grab a shovel and get to work! And emergency workers? C’mon, people! My grand pappy’s corral caught fire once, and did he wait around waitin’ for 911 to show up? Heck no! He put that fire out with hand-pumped well water and a quart of his own all-American urine! And I’ll tell you somethin’ else, friends and neighbors. I don’t know about the air you breath and the water you drink, but mine’s just A-OK. Didn’t y’all watch Fox and Friends? That story they did ‘about all them folks who overdosed at that oxygen bar in California? My Tea Party chums are the only ones who understand that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.
Education
Can you even help your son do his homework anymore? If our kids aren’t learning about pagan demons, or all kinds of algebra an’ bunkum like that, they're getting’ force-fed a lotta bull-hockey about how rotten America is. Whine, whine, whine! That’s all these teachers teach our boys to do! Teachers: what they are is—and you’ll pardon my language—is tenure whores! My neighbor’s boy, as fine a young man as you’ll ever wanna meet, came home t’other day talking ‘bout how his teacher (a woman, I found out, who makes $26,000 a YEAR, if you can believe it) told him that the Middle Ages were a time of pain and poverty and superstition. Well, I thought I’d walked into an episode of The Midnight Zone! Superstition?! Is it superstition to root out practitioners of the Occult and give them a little American what-for? Is it superstition to gather up a bunch of your friends and ride to the Holy Land to defend your kin against the Arab Hordes? Is it superstition for the wealthiest members of the community to set the standards for that community? I say: no, No and NO! Get my dear friends elected to office. And you won’t have to listen to any more of that kind of Liberal brainwashing!
God
“In God We Trust.” It says so right there on the almighty American green-back. Too much more Liberal nonsense, and we’ll have to hide our Bibles under our floor-boards to keep ‘em from the clutches of Hussein Obama’s anti-Christian crusade! Him and his rag-head relatives will make reading the Koran mandatory! But not with my friends running things. No siree! Once the Tea Party is in charge the only religion we’re gonna need around here is the Christian religion. And when every American receives the word of the Christian God at compulsory Sunday services, why, you’re gonna see our streets improving pretty gosh darned quick! Say good-bye forever to drugs and pornography and prostitution. Not to mention all them homeless leaches and child-killing homos and evolutionists doing the Devil’s work.
I could go on and on listing reasons to elect Tea Party candidates. I am sure y’all could too. But why bother? We’re in terrible trouble, and that’s all there is to it.
It’s time to take America back, friends and neighbors! Vote Tea Party!
(Cuz if ya don’t, you’re no better than an Al Qaeda.)
God bless the United (Red) States of America!
Here’s a just a sample of why I believe it’s time for all those good, God-fearin’, Tea Partiers to get up from the card table in the den and join the grown-ups at the big table in the dining room.
Taxes
Why in all the heavens do we keep paying these gosh darned things? I, for one, think we have all the roads we need. Don’t you? Somebody’s got a pothole out front of their store, let ‘em grab a shovel and get to work! And emergency workers? C’mon, people! My grand pappy’s corral caught fire once, and did he wait around waitin’ for 911 to show up? Heck no! He put that fire out with hand-pumped well water and a quart of his own all-American urine! And I’ll tell you somethin’ else, friends and neighbors. I don’t know about the air you breath and the water you drink, but mine’s just A-OK. Didn’t y’all watch Fox and Friends? That story they did ‘about all them folks who overdosed at that oxygen bar in California? My Tea Party chums are the only ones who understand that it’s possible to have too much of a good thing.
Education
Can you even help your son do his homework anymore? If our kids aren’t learning about pagan demons, or all kinds of algebra an’ bunkum like that, they're getting’ force-fed a lotta bull-hockey about how rotten America is. Whine, whine, whine! That’s all these teachers teach our boys to do! Teachers: what they are is—and you’ll pardon my language—is tenure whores! My neighbor’s boy, as fine a young man as you’ll ever wanna meet, came home t’other day talking ‘bout how his teacher (a woman, I found out, who makes $26,000 a YEAR, if you can believe it) told him that the Middle Ages were a time of pain and poverty and superstition. Well, I thought I’d walked into an episode of The Midnight Zone! Superstition?! Is it superstition to root out practitioners of the Occult and give them a little American what-for? Is it superstition to gather up a bunch of your friends and ride to the Holy Land to defend your kin against the Arab Hordes? Is it superstition for the wealthiest members of the community to set the standards for that community? I say: no, No and NO! Get my dear friends elected to office. And you won’t have to listen to any more of that kind of Liberal brainwashing!
God
“In God We Trust.” It says so right there on the almighty American green-back. Too much more Liberal nonsense, and we’ll have to hide our Bibles under our floor-boards to keep ‘em from the clutches of Hussein Obama’s anti-Christian crusade! Him and his rag-head relatives will make reading the Koran mandatory! But not with my friends running things. No siree! Once the Tea Party is in charge the only religion we’re gonna need around here is the Christian religion. And when every American receives the word of the Christian God at compulsory Sunday services, why, you’re gonna see our streets improving pretty gosh darned quick! Say good-bye forever to drugs and pornography and prostitution. Not to mention all them homeless leaches and child-killing homos and evolutionists doing the Devil’s work.
I could go on and on listing reasons to elect Tea Party candidates. I am sure y’all could too. But why bother? We’re in terrible trouble, and that’s all there is to it.
It’s time to take America back, friends and neighbors! Vote Tea Party!
(Cuz if ya don’t, you’re no better than an Al Qaeda.)
God bless the United (Red) States of America!
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Adventures with Nature, Part 1
One interesting thing about living in a tiny town out in the middle of the Great Wide Open, as opposed to a big urban center, is you get to roll with so many more representatives of the Animal Kingdom. Sometimes these encounters are a Disney movie, sometimes they are Nature Red in Tooth and Claw. Mine? For some reason mine tend to be Dali Does Warner Bros.—surreal life, with sarcastic plants and smartass bunnies.
Rattlesnake Fencing
My favorite uncle has a ranch about an hour’s drive from my little town. There’s a small spring-fed lake on his land that he has been stocking with largemouth bass and channel cat for twenty years or more. Excellent fishing.
I’m over there late one afternoon, casting for bass with a silver spinner. It’s a bit too far in front of dusk for the bass to be very hungry, so I decide to wander down to the far end of the lake, where there’s more shade, and where the fish might be more peckish. The move entails my climbing up a slight incline, motoring several hundred yards along a sort of mesa, and then making my way back down to the water, by way of an even steeper incline, where deep run-off trenches scar the rock-hard, red Oklahoma dirt.
Down I go, carrying two poles in one hand, a collapsible camp chair in the other, and my tackle box slung over one shoulder. My eyes worked busily, scouting for a good spot to throw a lure. Which is all well and good, but they really ought to have been engaging in a larger mission: making sure I got one foot in front of the other without mishap. Couldn’t tell you what I tripped over, but trip I did. (Maybe the several beers I’d consumed played a part?) And the fall was a doozy, too. I flailed for a second with my over-full arms, but alas, I still went ass-over-tea-kettle down the hill, and all of its jagged little ravines. Stuff literally flew all over the place—an indecorous cloud of fishing tackle, fiberglass rods, folding furniture, and one fat white guy.
After bouncing, skidding and rolling about twenty feet, I finally came to an abrupt stop against a fallen cottonwood log, and simply sprawled there panting like a stranded beluga whale.
So many parts of my body hurt that I had, for a few minutes, trouble concentrating on any one particular pain, while entertaining the entertaining notion that I had simply broken my entire body. Soon, though, the myriad agonies settled into three fire centers: the right side of my head, my left rib cage, and the better part of my lower right leg. Some finger-tip explorations yielded a small amount of blood on my head, an inflamed blotch on my side, but probably no broken ribs, and a whole chum bucket of blood on my leg, where a four-inch by eight-inch swatch of my skin had been flayed off, like something out of Hannibal Lecter’s notions box.
After a few minutes, I lurched to my feet and set about collecting my scattered gear, stopping for a moment to wipe blood off my leg (it was filling my shoe) with a handful of leaves. Stuff reassembled (and the urge for further fishing now gone the way of the mastodon) I started back up the rutted incline. It hurt like shit, and I was reduced to a sort of inept crawl. But I made it, by God, my head cresting the top very near my trusty Toyota—
—and even nearer to a rattlesnake.
The scaly bastard was tightly coiled, with its head up high in that super-snarky, get-the-fuck-away-from-me-with-that-stick-Steve-Irwin, pose. Don’t know what I did to piss the fucker off, but pissed he was.
So, I’m in pain, my shoe is full of blood, and I’m eye-ball to slit-pupiled eye-ball with a cantankerous reptile. And I did what so many of us out-doorsey types do in such perilous situations:
I said, “Shoo.”
And I meant it.
The snake didn’t care. He just rattled at me. His rattle had around six segments on it, making him approximately three feet long. Not exactly an anaconda, sure, but easily long enough to puncture me if he got up the urge to do some puncturin'. I needed him out of my way and not just in retreat under the car, but since my heartfelt “shoo” hadn’t exactly sent him into slithers of apoplexy, I was forced to roll with Plan B.
Moving slowly, I let go of the tackle box and folding chair, and got a grip on my fishing pole. I turned around, aiming the tip at the snake, and gave him a poke. He raised his head even higher and really got to working his rattle, but he didn’t launch an attack. So, I poked him again. And again. And a fourth time. And still he refused to either bite me or fuck off. He just kept rattling, in a way that was fast becoming wearisome.
“C’mon,” I said, stabbing at him now. “Move your narrow ass or it’s wallet time.”
Rattle, rattle, rattle…
“Jesus Christ!” I hollered. “Move!” I hauled off and gave him a really solid thwack with the fishing pole. And finally! He flung himself sideways and took off through the grass like he had a herd of Pentecostals on his tail.
Quick as possible, I hauled myself and my cumbersome stuff up onto flat ground, loaded my car, and got inside, cranking the AC all the way to HIGH. Cooling off, I blotted at my leg with some old newspaper, and fumed about my decision making skills.
See, that very morning, while cleaning out my tackle box, I had, after almost no humming and hawing at all, removed my little .22 revolver and hidden it away in the garage. Not that I wish death upon all serpents, or anything, but a pistol is simply a better deterrent than a fishing pole. Right?
Cheers.
Rattlesnake Fencing
My favorite uncle has a ranch about an hour’s drive from my little town. There’s a small spring-fed lake on his land that he has been stocking with largemouth bass and channel cat for twenty years or more. Excellent fishing.
I’m over there late one afternoon, casting for bass with a silver spinner. It’s a bit too far in front of dusk for the bass to be very hungry, so I decide to wander down to the far end of the lake, where there’s more shade, and where the fish might be more peckish. The move entails my climbing up a slight incline, motoring several hundred yards along a sort of mesa, and then making my way back down to the water, by way of an even steeper incline, where deep run-off trenches scar the rock-hard, red Oklahoma dirt.
Down I go, carrying two poles in one hand, a collapsible camp chair in the other, and my tackle box slung over one shoulder. My eyes worked busily, scouting for a good spot to throw a lure. Which is all well and good, but they really ought to have been engaging in a larger mission: making sure I got one foot in front of the other without mishap. Couldn’t tell you what I tripped over, but trip I did. (Maybe the several beers I’d consumed played a part?) And the fall was a doozy, too. I flailed for a second with my over-full arms, but alas, I still went ass-over-tea-kettle down the hill, and all of its jagged little ravines. Stuff literally flew all over the place—an indecorous cloud of fishing tackle, fiberglass rods, folding furniture, and one fat white guy.
After bouncing, skidding and rolling about twenty feet, I finally came to an abrupt stop against a fallen cottonwood log, and simply sprawled there panting like a stranded beluga whale.
So many parts of my body hurt that I had, for a few minutes, trouble concentrating on any one particular pain, while entertaining the entertaining notion that I had simply broken my entire body. Soon, though, the myriad agonies settled into three fire centers: the right side of my head, my left rib cage, and the better part of my lower right leg. Some finger-tip explorations yielded a small amount of blood on my head, an inflamed blotch on my side, but probably no broken ribs, and a whole chum bucket of blood on my leg, where a four-inch by eight-inch swatch of my skin had been flayed off, like something out of Hannibal Lecter’s notions box.
After a few minutes, I lurched to my feet and set about collecting my scattered gear, stopping for a moment to wipe blood off my leg (it was filling my shoe) with a handful of leaves. Stuff reassembled (and the urge for further fishing now gone the way of the mastodon) I started back up the rutted incline. It hurt like shit, and I was reduced to a sort of inept crawl. But I made it, by God, my head cresting the top very near my trusty Toyota—
—and even nearer to a rattlesnake.
The scaly bastard was tightly coiled, with its head up high in that super-snarky, get-the-fuck-away-from-me-with-that-stick-Steve-Irwin, pose. Don’t know what I did to piss the fucker off, but pissed he was.
So, I’m in pain, my shoe is full of blood, and I’m eye-ball to slit-pupiled eye-ball with a cantankerous reptile. And I did what so many of us out-doorsey types do in such perilous situations:
I said, “Shoo.”
And I meant it.
The snake didn’t care. He just rattled at me. His rattle had around six segments on it, making him approximately three feet long. Not exactly an anaconda, sure, but easily long enough to puncture me if he got up the urge to do some puncturin'. I needed him out of my way and not just in retreat under the car, but since my heartfelt “shoo” hadn’t exactly sent him into slithers of apoplexy, I was forced to roll with Plan B.
Moving slowly, I let go of the tackle box and folding chair, and got a grip on my fishing pole. I turned around, aiming the tip at the snake, and gave him a poke. He raised his head even higher and really got to working his rattle, but he didn’t launch an attack. So, I poked him again. And again. And a fourth time. And still he refused to either bite me or fuck off. He just kept rattling, in a way that was fast becoming wearisome.
“C’mon,” I said, stabbing at him now. “Move your narrow ass or it’s wallet time.”
Rattle, rattle, rattle…
“Jesus Christ!” I hollered. “Move!” I hauled off and gave him a really solid thwack with the fishing pole. And finally! He flung himself sideways and took off through the grass like he had a herd of Pentecostals on his tail.
Quick as possible, I hauled myself and my cumbersome stuff up onto flat ground, loaded my car, and got inside, cranking the AC all the way to HIGH. Cooling off, I blotted at my leg with some old newspaper, and fumed about my decision making skills.
See, that very morning, while cleaning out my tackle box, I had, after almost no humming and hawing at all, removed my little .22 revolver and hidden it away in the garage. Not that I wish death upon all serpents, or anything, but a pistol is simply a better deterrent than a fishing pole. Right?
Cheers.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
A Drunkard's Baptism
A week or so ago I encountered a woman here in my little town (in the parking lot of the Wal-Mart, to be exact) who informed me that she was a life-long teetotaler, and gosh-darn proud of it. Nothing good, she claimed—absolutely nothing—had ever or would ever come of booze. She was an elderly woman, sporting the pinched-up expression of the professional Baptist.
Responding to her dopey assertion would have taken more energy than I had, and besides that, the odds that she would have listened to one word of what I had to say were about the same as James Dobson grand marshalling a LAMBDA parade, so I simply walked away. But for the rest of the afternoon Miss Pinchy’s words clung to my mind—just like the foam rings in a glass of properly poured Guinness—until they eventually called up a memory…
Middle of last summer was a bleak time in the life of your friendly neighborhood Wine God. I’m not going to get specific. Suffice it to say that the sky above my head was darkened by the Great Cloaca, and She was a-gushin’.
I used to collect beer cans (that’s not a non sequitur; just roll with me). Started when I was 9 and living in Milwaukee. When I ceased serious acquisition maybe fifteen years ago, I had near to 1,800 different cans from all over the world. Some of them were worth over a hundred bucks a piece. I didn’t want to, but seeing as I was forcibly rooted in the flood plain of the Great Cloaca, it had become clear that I had no other recourse but to sell my collection.
Now, in the can-collecting world (a small and pot-bellied, yet genial, subset of society) a beer can is worth more coin if it is full. However, since I was going to entertain bids from far and wide, I felt I needed to empty my full cans, if only to facilitate less costly shipping. However, a third of my collection—something like 700 cans—were still sloshing with twenty- to thirty-five-year-old beer, and decanting the stuff was a task I looked forward to with approximately the same level of enthusiasm as tongue bathing Margaret Thatcher.
But I felt I had to be done. And so, at about four o’clock one sunny afternoon last June, I dragged the old door I use as a work table into the back yard, laid it across a couple of saw horses, and commenced hauling boxes of beer cans from the storage shed, arranging the full ones on the door. When it was covered with standing cans I went back to the garage and retrieved a smallish phillips-head screwdriver and a two-pound sledge hammer. (Another thing about maintaining the highest value of a collectable can is this: if you must empty it don’t pop its top. Instead, punch a pair of small holes in its bottom and drain the contents that way. Now you know. Try to contain yourself.) I flipped a can upside down, positioned the screwdriver near the edge of its concave base and raised the sledge.
I paused before striking, however, wondering what would happen when twelve to fourteen ounces of stale thirty-year-old beer was suddenly reintroduced to the world. The cans hadn’t been shaken, I knew, which was a plus, and they had been designed to be airtight, but still. A whole wallop of additional fermentation must’ve taken place over the years, which would have caused a heightening in internal pressure. Upon puncturing the can’s metal hide, would I be rewarded with a sloppy spray or but a lackluster foosh? Well, the only way of discovering the answer was to do the deed. And so I did.
And got my answer. It came in the form of a dark brown, yeast-scented geyser; a geriatric suds slurry; an Old Milwaukee Faithful of beer from yesteryear.
The stuff went up my nose. It went in my eyes. It squirted all over my shirt, and clots of foamy gunk clung to my hair like a spider’s egg sacks. And since you need two holes for the fluid to drain effectively, I whacked a second one in the can. This time the beer came out, not in a splash, but in a thick, arterial gush. It didn’t violate my face, either. Instead it ran off the table and soaked my sneakers, right on through to my socks.
Well, I thought, squelching in my shoes and spluttering stale beer off my tongue. This is gonna suck more ass than a porn star.
As it turned out, though, it didn’t.
It didn’t at all.
For three hours I kept knocking holes in cans, and the beer rain kept falling. Before long I was standing almost ankle deep in a frothy puddle. My hair was pasted to my head, and I was soaked through to the skin. As the sun dropped lower, its light angling across my yard, each new fountain of beer created a little rainbow in the air around me. My dogs, Sadie and Sam, who had been completely perplexed by my actions (all that noisy whacking), slowly warmed to the situation, until they were dancing and yipping around beneath the now flooded and dripping table trying to score a few rounds for themselves. All three of us were laughing—Canis lupis familiaris and Homo sapiens sapiens sharing an intoxicated and totally sober giggle. And the wetter I got, and the more I laughed, the more my mood lightened. All the hateful, tedious shit that had been assaulting my person and my world was washed away; my soul scrubbed free of fear and worry in a baptism of beer.
As it finally grew too dark to continue working, I wiped my face, smoothed back my hair, and looked upon what I had wrought.
A good hundred beer cans lay atop the door-table, their contents dribbling onto the sodden grass, and at least two hundred more stood like cylindrical metal soldiers all about the yard. Sam and Sadie were positively marinated in beer, but seemed no more or less tipsy than they ordinarily do, seeing as they are of the border collie and terrier persuasions, respectively. I was thoroughly saturated, quite tired, and I smelled like bread, but…
…but.
But I felt better than I had in months. Glorious, in fact. The Great Cloaca was still loitering about up there, of course, but I felt ready to take Her best shitty shot.
Beer had once again worked its singular magic and I hadn’t taken even a single sip.
So…that’s the story I wish I would’ve told Miss Pinchy. Would she have listened? Would she have seen that booze is good, even when taken externally? Would my tale have cracked through her rigid Baptist shell? I seriously doubt it, but here’s the thing:
Who cares.
Her life is hers, and mine is mine. And mine is better.
Cheers.
Responding to her dopey assertion would have taken more energy than I had, and besides that, the odds that she would have listened to one word of what I had to say were about the same as James Dobson grand marshalling a LAMBDA parade, so I simply walked away. But for the rest of the afternoon Miss Pinchy’s words clung to my mind—just like the foam rings in a glass of properly poured Guinness—until they eventually called up a memory…
Middle of last summer was a bleak time in the life of your friendly neighborhood Wine God. I’m not going to get specific. Suffice it to say that the sky above my head was darkened by the Great Cloaca, and She was a-gushin’.
I used to collect beer cans (that’s not a non sequitur; just roll with me). Started when I was 9 and living in Milwaukee. When I ceased serious acquisition maybe fifteen years ago, I had near to 1,800 different cans from all over the world. Some of them were worth over a hundred bucks a piece. I didn’t want to, but seeing as I was forcibly rooted in the flood plain of the Great Cloaca, it had become clear that I had no other recourse but to sell my collection.
Now, in the can-collecting world (a small and pot-bellied, yet genial, subset of society) a beer can is worth more coin if it is full. However, since I was going to entertain bids from far and wide, I felt I needed to empty my full cans, if only to facilitate less costly shipping. However, a third of my collection—something like 700 cans—were still sloshing with twenty- to thirty-five-year-old beer, and decanting the stuff was a task I looked forward to with approximately the same level of enthusiasm as tongue bathing Margaret Thatcher.
But I felt I had to be done. And so, at about four o’clock one sunny afternoon last June, I dragged the old door I use as a work table into the back yard, laid it across a couple of saw horses, and commenced hauling boxes of beer cans from the storage shed, arranging the full ones on the door. When it was covered with standing cans I went back to the garage and retrieved a smallish phillips-head screwdriver and a two-pound sledge hammer. (Another thing about maintaining the highest value of a collectable can is this: if you must empty it don’t pop its top. Instead, punch a pair of small holes in its bottom and drain the contents that way. Now you know. Try to contain yourself.) I flipped a can upside down, positioned the screwdriver near the edge of its concave base and raised the sledge.
I paused before striking, however, wondering what would happen when twelve to fourteen ounces of stale thirty-year-old beer was suddenly reintroduced to the world. The cans hadn’t been shaken, I knew, which was a plus, and they had been designed to be airtight, but still. A whole wallop of additional fermentation must’ve taken place over the years, which would have caused a heightening in internal pressure. Upon puncturing the can’s metal hide, would I be rewarded with a sloppy spray or but a lackluster foosh? Well, the only way of discovering the answer was to do the deed. And so I did.
And got my answer. It came in the form of a dark brown, yeast-scented geyser; a geriatric suds slurry; an Old Milwaukee Faithful of beer from yesteryear.
The stuff went up my nose. It went in my eyes. It squirted all over my shirt, and clots of foamy gunk clung to my hair like a spider’s egg sacks. And since you need two holes for the fluid to drain effectively, I whacked a second one in the can. This time the beer came out, not in a splash, but in a thick, arterial gush. It didn’t violate my face, either. Instead it ran off the table and soaked my sneakers, right on through to my socks.
Well, I thought, squelching in my shoes and spluttering stale beer off my tongue. This is gonna suck more ass than a porn star.
As it turned out, though, it didn’t.
It didn’t at all.
For three hours I kept knocking holes in cans, and the beer rain kept falling. Before long I was standing almost ankle deep in a frothy puddle. My hair was pasted to my head, and I was soaked through to the skin. As the sun dropped lower, its light angling across my yard, each new fountain of beer created a little rainbow in the air around me. My dogs, Sadie and Sam, who had been completely perplexed by my actions (all that noisy whacking), slowly warmed to the situation, until they were dancing and yipping around beneath the now flooded and dripping table trying to score a few rounds for themselves. All three of us were laughing—Canis lupis familiaris and Homo sapiens sapiens sharing an intoxicated and totally sober giggle. And the wetter I got, and the more I laughed, the more my mood lightened. All the hateful, tedious shit that had been assaulting my person and my world was washed away; my soul scrubbed free of fear and worry in a baptism of beer.
As it finally grew too dark to continue working, I wiped my face, smoothed back my hair, and looked upon what I had wrought.
A good hundred beer cans lay atop the door-table, their contents dribbling onto the sodden grass, and at least two hundred more stood like cylindrical metal soldiers all about the yard. Sam and Sadie were positively marinated in beer, but seemed no more or less tipsy than they ordinarily do, seeing as they are of the border collie and terrier persuasions, respectively. I was thoroughly saturated, quite tired, and I smelled like bread, but…
…but.
But I felt better than I had in months. Glorious, in fact. The Great Cloaca was still loitering about up there, of course, but I felt ready to take Her best shitty shot.
Beer had once again worked its singular magic and I hadn’t taken even a single sip.
So…that’s the story I wish I would’ve told Miss Pinchy. Would she have listened? Would she have seen that booze is good, even when taken externally? Would my tale have cracked through her rigid Baptist shell? I seriously doubt it, but here’s the thing:
Who cares.
Her life is hers, and mine is mine. And mine is better.
Cheers.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
The Piece of Oklahoma That Surpasseth All Understanding
This one isn’t for the faint of heart. Really.
One day I will write something blithe and Wobegonian about the “joys” of hamlet life, but this is not that day. Today I have other fish to fry.
See, I’ve been here close to a year and still find the place —specifically the people and their behavior— mystifying. There is a certain predilection among the locals to consciously, even blissfully, engage in activities which are demonstrably stupid and which generally result in harm—mental, physical, even metaphysical—to their persons.
By way of illustration: a true story.
I managed a now-defunct retail concern here in town. Early one weekday morning my phone rings. It’s one of my employees, asking if I can cover her shift.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“It’s hard to explain,” she says. “I’ll come by the store later and talk to you.”
“Wait,” I say. “You can’t come to work, but you can come by work to tell me why?”
“Uh-huh. You’ll understand when you see.”
“Oh. OK. Whatever. I’ll cover your shift. Come see me soon as you can.”
“I will.”
So, I head to the store, auto-pilot my way through the morning routine, blah-blah-blah, and at around eleven, in she rolls.
I’m not drawn up short often, but that’s exactly what happens when I get an eyeful of her.
Someone has kicked the living crap out of the woman. Two black eyes. Broken nose. Small cuts on her face. And best of all, bruises on her neck shaped like fingers.
“What the fuck?” I shout “What happened?”
“My Ex. We got in a fight.”
And me thinking: Yeah, no fucking shit.
She’s told me stories about this asshole. He’s violent, paranoid, and subject to fits of irrational jealousy, all side effects of his ongoing crystal-meth pastime. He spent three years in the can for repeatedly abusing a woman, and choke-slamming her four-year-old son through a coffee table. I don't pester my employee for any details about her adventure, though she does divulge that the cocksucker had broken her nose via the delightful expedient of hitting it with a propane tank.
“You go to the hospital?” I ask.
“No,” she answers, with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“Call the cops?”
The question makes her mad. “Fuck no! Why?”
“Why?!” I holler, stopping myself just short of adding: Why the fuck do you think?!
“It wouldn’t do anything. Most’a the cops in this town would take his side.”
“Oh, horseshit!”
To which she responds by changing directions. “So… I don’t really want to be out in public for a few days.”
“Sure. Of course. I’ll help cover your shifts for the rest of the week. Is that long enough?”
“Hopefully. Thanks.”
“Of course.” I wasn’t done, though, trying to spark some glimmer of survival knowledge in the woman. “You know, the more women report shit like this, eventually the cops will have to react.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t want to talk about it, OK?”
“OK.”
And off she goes.
Flash forward about six weeks.
I’m working the day shift, and she’s closing. She bops through the door all grins and giggles, practically vibrating with some giddy inner energy.
“What’s with you?” I ask. “You look like Sylvester with a mouthful of Tweety’s ass.”
Her response comes in pantomime. She waggles her finger at me. Her ring finger. It’s sporting a fair sized rock set in a white gold band.
“I’m engaged!” she hoots.
Yes. Engaged. Docketed to exchange vows with the same dipshit who’d pulped her face not two months ago.
“What?” she asks, perplexed, perhaps wondering why I’m not flailing around in paroxysms of delight.
“Frankly?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
And she stares at me, genuinely, nakedly surprised that I’d say such a horrible thing. Then, after an inward-looking pause —a brief inward-looking pause— she defends her plans by saying, in a tone that indicates both my profound ignorance and overall assholery: “He’s off meth.”
As I understand it, they stood up in front of a clergyman ten days ago.
Do I feel for this woman? Of course I do, but only up to a point. My sympathies went south about a nanosecond after she announced her impending nuptials. I mean, what the fuck? It’s not like she’s some dopy kid, or anything. She’s in her thirties, for fuck’s sake. No one forced her to do a half-gainer into what will certainly turn out to be a matrimonial cesspool. No, her own surreal decisions got her there, and if she’s too needy, or weak, or —let’s face it— stupid, to suss out the big-ass-fuckin’-neon writing on the wall, then ya know what?
Fuck her.
I’m sure I’ll hear all too soon that they’ve procreated. And thus will the Great Wheel of Stupidity will keep right on turning.
Jesus Christ…
One day I will write something blithe and Wobegonian about the “joys” of hamlet life, but this is not that day. Today I have other fish to fry.
See, I’ve been here close to a year and still find the place —specifically the people and their behavior— mystifying. There is a certain predilection among the locals to consciously, even blissfully, engage in activities which are demonstrably stupid and which generally result in harm—mental, physical, even metaphysical—to their persons.
By way of illustration: a true story.
I managed a now-defunct retail concern here in town. Early one weekday morning my phone rings. It’s one of my employees, asking if I can cover her shift.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“It’s hard to explain,” she says. “I’ll come by the store later and talk to you.”
“Wait,” I say. “You can’t come to work, but you can come by work to tell me why?”
“Uh-huh. You’ll understand when you see.”
“Oh. OK. Whatever. I’ll cover your shift. Come see me soon as you can.”
“I will.”
So, I head to the store, auto-pilot my way through the morning routine, blah-blah-blah, and at around eleven, in she rolls.
I’m not drawn up short often, but that’s exactly what happens when I get an eyeful of her.
Someone has kicked the living crap out of the woman. Two black eyes. Broken nose. Small cuts on her face. And best of all, bruises on her neck shaped like fingers.
“What the fuck?” I shout “What happened?”
“My Ex. We got in a fight.”
And me thinking: Yeah, no fucking shit.
She’s told me stories about this asshole. He’s violent, paranoid, and subject to fits of irrational jealousy, all side effects of his ongoing crystal-meth pastime. He spent three years in the can for repeatedly abusing a woman, and choke-slamming her four-year-old son through a coffee table. I don't pester my employee for any details about her adventure, though she does divulge that the cocksucker had broken her nose via the delightful expedient of hitting it with a propane tank.
“You go to the hospital?” I ask.
“No,” she answers, with a dismissive wave of her hand.
“Call the cops?”
The question makes her mad. “Fuck no! Why?”
“Why?!” I holler, stopping myself just short of adding: Why the fuck do you think?!
“It wouldn’t do anything. Most’a the cops in this town would take his side.”
“Oh, horseshit!”
To which she responds by changing directions. “So… I don’t really want to be out in public for a few days.”
“Sure. Of course. I’ll help cover your shifts for the rest of the week. Is that long enough?”
“Hopefully. Thanks.”
“Of course.” I wasn’t done, though, trying to spark some glimmer of survival knowledge in the woman. “You know, the more women report shit like this, eventually the cops will have to react.”
“Yeah,” she says. “I don’t want to talk about it, OK?”
“OK.”
And off she goes.
Flash forward about six weeks.
I’m working the day shift, and she’s closing. She bops through the door all grins and giggles, practically vibrating with some giddy inner energy.
“What’s with you?” I ask. “You look like Sylvester with a mouthful of Tweety’s ass.”
Her response comes in pantomime. She waggles her finger at me. Her ring finger. It’s sporting a fair sized rock set in a white gold band.
“I’m engaged!” she hoots.
Yes. Engaged. Docketed to exchange vows with the same dipshit who’d pulped her face not two months ago.
“What?” she asks, perplexed, perhaps wondering why I’m not flailing around in paroxysms of delight.
“Frankly?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Are you out of your fucking mind?”
And she stares at me, genuinely, nakedly surprised that I’d say such a horrible thing. Then, after an inward-looking pause —a brief inward-looking pause— she defends her plans by saying, in a tone that indicates both my profound ignorance and overall assholery: “He’s off meth.”
As I understand it, they stood up in front of a clergyman ten days ago.
Do I feel for this woman? Of course I do, but only up to a point. My sympathies went south about a nanosecond after she announced her impending nuptials. I mean, what the fuck? It’s not like she’s some dopy kid, or anything. She’s in her thirties, for fuck’s sake. No one forced her to do a half-gainer into what will certainly turn out to be a matrimonial cesspool. No, her own surreal decisions got her there, and if she’s too needy, or weak, or —let’s face it— stupid, to suss out the big-ass-fuckin’-neon writing on the wall, then ya know what?
Fuck her.
I’m sure I’ll hear all too soon that they’ve procreated. And thus will the Great Wheel of Stupidity will keep right on turning.
Jesus Christ…
Sunday, September 5, 2010
The Wilds of Oklahoma--Update!
Here’s a short update from the Wilds of Oklahoma.
Small town weirdness comes in forms both funny and horrifying. I’m interested in the funny bits, most of the time. Sure, my little puddle of Americana is colonized by its share of mouth-breathing, semi-literate crackers blithering on about “Obama Care,” but you can experience run-of-the-uterus witlessness like that every afternoon on Fox News, and it’s generally more tedious than it is entertaining. So…
First up, a tale of homelessness and deprivation.
I’m sitting in one of my local watering holes, enjoying a frosty mug of beer and a few shots of Wild Turkey. A guy wanders in, settles himself on a stool a couple down from mine. He’s maybe 50, thin, graying. He orders a beer, pays for it from a roll of quarters, then asks the bartender if she has a small box.
“What for?” says she.
“Nothin’. Just…do you have a box?” He holds his hands about a foot apart. “A small one.”
The bartender chuckles, then a look of dawning awareness pops into her eyes. “Oh yeah. Oh shit. I heard she threw you out. Sorry. You want me to check if we have some bigger ones back there? For your stuff?”
“No. Just a small one. Like this:” He holds up his hands again.
The bartender appears confused, so the guy finally rolls his eyes, and reaches in the side pocket of his coat—from which he extracts a gray and white guinea pig.
“He’s been living in there three days, and it’s making him mad. He bites me.”
Jesus!
His lady gives him the ol’ heave-ho and all he’s got left is a pocketful of cranky rodent.
Poor, sad bastard...
So, then, on to Part II of today’s news update.
It’s a tale so mind-numbingly bizarre, shocking, and unsettling, I still can’t decide whether to cry, laugh, or laugh really, really hard.
Just the other evening I found myself in a round of chit-chat with a local high-school kid. He is, I think, 16. He’s all happy with himself, having spent the last few days undertaking a bit of genealogical research vis-à-vis his forebears. There are, he informs me, both “good parts” and “bad parts” to his ancestry. I ask about the bad parts. It turns out he’s some kind of distant cousin to Jesse James, who, the kid says, with complete accuracy, “was kind of a scumbag.” And the good parts? Well, the kid says, preening, “my great-great grandfather, was a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”
Kind of puts a whole new slant on the concepts of “Good” and “Bad,” don’t it?
Fuck me…
And that’s the news from the Wilds of Oklahoma, where the men are toothless, the women are potbellied, and the children are beyond freakish.
Small town weirdness comes in forms both funny and horrifying. I’m interested in the funny bits, most of the time. Sure, my little puddle of Americana is colonized by its share of mouth-breathing, semi-literate crackers blithering on about “Obama Care,” but you can experience run-of-the-uterus witlessness like that every afternoon on Fox News, and it’s generally more tedious than it is entertaining. So…
First up, a tale of homelessness and deprivation.
I’m sitting in one of my local watering holes, enjoying a frosty mug of beer and a few shots of Wild Turkey. A guy wanders in, settles himself on a stool a couple down from mine. He’s maybe 50, thin, graying. He orders a beer, pays for it from a roll of quarters, then asks the bartender if she has a small box.
“What for?” says she.
“Nothin’. Just…do you have a box?” He holds his hands about a foot apart. “A small one.”
The bartender chuckles, then a look of dawning awareness pops into her eyes. “Oh yeah. Oh shit. I heard she threw you out. Sorry. You want me to check if we have some bigger ones back there? For your stuff?”
“No. Just a small one. Like this:” He holds up his hands again.
The bartender appears confused, so the guy finally rolls his eyes, and reaches in the side pocket of his coat—from which he extracts a gray and white guinea pig.
“He’s been living in there three days, and it’s making him mad. He bites me.”
Jesus!
His lady gives him the ol’ heave-ho and all he’s got left is a pocketful of cranky rodent.
Poor, sad bastard...
So, then, on to Part II of today’s news update.
It’s a tale so mind-numbingly bizarre, shocking, and unsettling, I still can’t decide whether to cry, laugh, or laugh really, really hard.
Just the other evening I found myself in a round of chit-chat with a local high-school kid. He is, I think, 16. He’s all happy with himself, having spent the last few days undertaking a bit of genealogical research vis-à-vis his forebears. There are, he informs me, both “good parts” and “bad parts” to his ancestry. I ask about the bad parts. It turns out he’s some kind of distant cousin to Jesse James, who, the kid says, with complete accuracy, “was kind of a scumbag.” And the good parts? Well, the kid says, preening, “my great-great grandfather, was a Grand Dragon in the Klan.”
Kind of puts a whole new slant on the concepts of “Good” and “Bad,” don’t it?
Fuck me…
And that’s the news from the Wilds of Oklahoma, where the men are toothless, the women are potbellied, and the children are beyond freakish.
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