Road Tripping

Somewhere south of Knoxville, Tennessee, but north of Panama City, Panama, and to make it clear not in the Caribbean Sea, three old men and one old, but not as old as the men, woman, struggled to make sense of the 2014 midterm elections in a borrowed trailer rolling across the American South.

One of the men was called Igor Stravinsky, surprisingly not named after the composer, but in fact named after his father's college roommate's poodle, who was given the name after attacking the composer during a playful puppy moment when Stravinsky was in Hollywood in the 1950s.  Later on, the poodle and Stravinsky became great friends, and over time the two began to resemble one another, with the poodle once traveling to the Soviet Union and taking the maestro's place because Stravinsky himself was afraid of Leonid Brezhnev's eyebrows.

The Igor Stravinsky chain-smoking Camel Noodles in that trailer knew very little of this.  He hadn't even registered to vote except to impress a group of girl scouts who couldn't believe he could read or write.  But like almost every American, Igor Stravinsky had an opinion and his opinion was loud, a little vulgar, worrisome, and astonishingly misinformed.

He turned to one of his traveling partners, a grizzled former law school janitor named Cliff Hardtack, and said, "The trouble with chewing tobacco is that is goes right through you."

"Ya ain't s'posed to eat it, you numbskull," Cliff Hardtack rejoined, and the two laughed the laugh of familiarity, although they had only recently met in the bombed-out husk of a Georgia Stuckey's.

Cliff Hardtack had giant hands, the hands of builder or a clumsy molester of statues, and he spoke about the death of the America Dream as if he himself had killed it.  He used the phrase "unskilled" skillfully, and occasionally would look down at his feet as though he forgot he still had them, especially since he often told people they had been shot off during the Vietnam War documentary he had done some voiceover work for in Ken Burns' jacuzzi.

"Can you believe this guy?" Cliff Hardtack said to the mysterious older gentleman whom they had found squatting in the trailer, although after some questions they discovered that was just the way he liked to sit.  His name was Eversole Finance, and he was named because those were the first words his parents saw when he was born in a taxi in Akron, Ohio.  Interestingly, Eversole Finance was a front for an illegal money laundering scheme, located next door to Al's Laundry, which was constantly raided by the Akron police, who is those days were very literal-minded.

Eversole Finance did not take Cliff Hardtack's bait; he was not in the mood to play with worms, and the last time he took the bait, Cliff Hardtack had left a hook in it, and Eversole Finance's ring finger got an ouchie that he continually sucked on because he was a big baby.

Eversole Finance had sneaked into the trailer because he had seen Nicki Mirage exit with the two old men, ostensibly for a bathroom break at a rest stop, but the three just sat at a park bench and carved the names of their favorite cheese on it.  Nicki Mirage had been a go-go-stop dancer in her youth; Eversole Finance had once, in his youth, seen her dance, and had fallen in love with her after she fell off the stage at a shabbily constructed men's club in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Eversole Finance had not been fast enough to catch her, but he learned that day that one of the reasons that Nicki Mirage could beat her head against the stripper pole with such panache was because she had been born with an extra layer of bone around her skull.

The same layer of skull, as well as the fact that as a child her mother had used her as an ironing board, kept Nicki Mirage from remembering much of anything.  She didn't remember Eversole Finance and the number of marriage proposals he had sent her written on the backs of pigeons and, in desperation, mice; she didn't remember why she was on this trip; and most embarrassingly, she didn't remember voting for David Perdue in Georgia's senate race.

Voting for Nicki Mirage was problematic in any case because Nicki Mirage was not her real name.  She carried around a driver's license, but the name on it was Mike Farrell, and indeed it was the expired 1988 license of the actor who played B.J. Honeycutt on television's "M*A*S*H."  She had no idea how she got that, either, but it did help her create the one actual count of voter fraud in the entire country in 2014.  But whatever her name was, she had thrown in with this lot, and despite Eversole Finance's constant leering and offers of nicotine gum, she felt safe for the first time since - well, she couldn't remember.

On Sunday, November 9, 2014, all four of them found themselves working at a British Petroleum gas station on route 29 somewhere near the Florida/Alabama border.  And they had no way out, no chance to escape, and the reason for that revealed, to anyone paying attention, the shadowy hand of those who continue to wage the War On Sailing.

The Dietary Dilemma

Where do people go when sugar is not a suitable substitute for gluten?  Manufacturer and global two-card monte aficionado Crock Sucrose has been investing lately in a get-sweet-quick scheme that is famous for abjuring even the aspartame compromise.

"Aspartame is lame," says he.  "That booger sugar is harshing my mellow yellow.  So we make the scene right down to the genes.  Call us extreme!"

But food researchers, just back from lunch, caution sanity in practice, if not in style.  "It's all well and good to chew slowly and lean back a little, to aid digestion," says Lexi Throat, one of the co-inventors of acorn butter fat, "but when a mad entrepreneur butts into the cafeteria line and bites off more than he can chew, well - shall we say his eyes are bigger than his admittedly enormous stomach?"

Sucrose is not daunted.  On a hike with alcoholic cherry pickers in the Pyrenees, he met a dainty Moroccan expatriate who introduced him to hashish made with quinoa flour.

"When I woke, I was broke," says he.  "I was a good sport!  It was at the Madrid airport!"

But he returned to his basement apartment in Vallejo, California, with a medical marijuana license and three thousand rupees sewed into his boxer briefs.

San Francisco Chamber Of Commerce stalker Gloria Stuff reports on business for the Bay Area Piffle, a fold out that can often be found surreptitiously hidden in copies of the Auto Trader.  She writes of Sucrose, "Will he save us from our dinner tables?  Will he eventually tip waitstaff more than 3%?  What does he do with all the bubble gum he cajoles from stand-alone machines?  This correspondent wishes she could afford broadband."

Not all of the Golden State possesses Stuff's optimism; State Representative (if not now, one day) Lester Fingers-Toes keeps an eye on the patent process and finds Sucrose's ideas dangerous, and also a little icky.  "The guy rolls cigarettes with his elbows," he complains on a cable access show airing only in his mother's kitchen.  "He has no more good ideas than Oregon does.  His investors must be counseled, then coddled.  All that money and he still hasn't bought that pinball machine he's always talking about!"

As America grapples with food allergies plainly made up by frozen pizza distributors, it's truly visionaries like Crock Sucrose that will create the next level of forwarded email from your mother.  To call his quest tireless would be perhaps hyperbolic, as the thieves left one tire when they stripped his 1978 Honda Civic, but he insists he's close to a meal plan that will satisfy anyone who wishes they could just have a bagel with perhaps a little cream cheese.

"Hold on, hold on," says Sucrose, "before you get told on.  Snitches are bitches!  But candy is dandy.  Try this, buy this, try this, buy this!"

Rapid Television Gender Discourse

Before professionally abandoning his/her chosen trade of headcleaner, Timothy Tabitha Transformer was both a man and a woman and now resides somewhere in-between.  Before is an excerpt from his/her fascinating lecture at the Independence Day Hair Saloon Shoot-Out, in July 2014:

"Thank you for having me here, and me so besotted with rum and spectacle!  It is sweet and creepy, like a valentine from your paroled uncle.  Potted plants for everyone!

Thanks to new media and old mistakes, it's easier than ever to talk about the fluidity - can I say viscosity? - can I say stickiness? - of gender.  It reminds me of my friend Carlton, who, you might say, had his genitals in the wrong place, often at the wrong time, usually at the wrong angle.  How did he fill out his tax forms, those boxes of certainty?  That's a trick question - Carlton was illiterate, and thought licking a sheet of paper was an acceptable form of signature.  But you know what I mean.

We've all heard of the Kinsey Scale, but who wants to weigh themselves on flimsy social science?  Give me rock hard science or a reasonable facsimile!  You know I'm kidding - science has never been our friend, although it has been a friend-of-a-friend and we do think it's cute.  C'mere, science, I'm talking to you!  Oh, you wouldn't think the same creature whose orgasm is an atomic bomb blast would be so coy, but there you are.

Where are you?  Overeating again?  Overeating over the sink, overnight?  How can we get over that?  It's not understatement to suggest your oeuvre is overwhelming.  These are compliments, friend, not rings of liquid left to stain your coffee table.  Stop trying to clean the place up, Bartleby!  That dust is sacred human skin sloughed off in determinedly daily activities!  Treat it with kindness.

It is the skin, indeed, which is what we use when we interact with one another, and skin - like other body parts, like balloons, like computer devices, like government implants - skin will understand gender before the mind or cable news will.  Let me demonstrate.  Do you see this tattoo?  No?  You say there's no tattoo?  You are both right and wrong; this is a potential tattoo.  And indeed what we are is partially potential, even if most of us is entrails and blood and aspartame.  Can I get the next slide please?  What?  There's no slide projector?  There have been no pictures of me in compromising positions behind me the entire time?  What sort of operation is this, Operation Dumbo Drop?

I am often asked by the young and gender-serious how one deals with the hostility one faces in the face of this hostile world.  These eager and earnest wolf cubs with their Moleskine notebooks and cell phones with colored lights haven't yet faced the challenges that they must, in order to develop personalities and goals, and yet I am compelled to advise them.  They have a difficult future in spite of themselves, with climate change barbecuing the planet and type II human growth hormone soon available in the drinking water; but I confess my guidance, my encouragement, is terse and a little sarcastic.  What is it that Englebert Humperdink once said?  Ah yes: 'Do I look like I motherfucking role model?'

But, Timmy Tab, I hear you say, you are a role model, to those oppressed by biology and depressed by the failure of online polls to make any difference in the world.  Reluctantly, I concede.  Apprehensively, I recede.  I cannot continue to mislead or impede.  So I say: if you want to succeed, you must proceed!  To exceed you don't misread, you reread!  We are agreed - together we are a stampede - we are freed, we outspeed their greed, and that is how we shall exceed!

[applause]

The youth of our day believe in rhymes, you know."

Advancements Imbroglio

Scientists and their significant others gathered once again in Las Vegas this month for the annual Know-It-All Conference.  The KIAC, as only one unpopular researcher calls it, is open to anyone who calls him- or herself a scientist, or those who play them on television or in the cinema.  As such, people dressed like Lex Luthor or Linus Pauling are not uncommon, but in general, one is grateful that those who make a living in science has not developed a taste for cosplay.

Although there are reports of many backroom deals and sometimes deadly demonstrations of untested technology, the average visitor will get to see only boring workshops, interminable lectures, people with pale, pasty skin getting inebriated on light beer and cheap well drinks, and of course the obligatory condescending stripper.  But this year someone accidentally left a door propped open, ostensibly for the pizza delivery guy, and some attendees got a firsthand glimpse, or more than a glimpse if they hid from security, of the fabled Secret Projects Hall.

Though the conference organizers still deny its existence, and do so sounding weirdly like former United States President John Tyler, some exposés online and in small-circulation magazines like I Told You So! and Mulder Was Right Monthly provide an incomplete but tantalizing look into what people generally smarter than you or I are clandestinely working on, when surely they could at the very least work on something like deodorant or antiperspirant.  Below are a few projects allegedly in planning or in beta-testing by scientists of the world.

The Kitten Implicator.  A dastardly breach of the feline-canine detente that has lasted centuries, the Kitten Implicator either makes dogs more cat-like, or vice versa; the device is said to "eliminate the non-specific difference between the pets."  The name derives from the suburban belief that dogs receive more blame for mishaps around the house than cats.  Worry-warts warn that the Kitten Implicator may bring to end the notion of a "dog person" or a "cat lady" entirely.

Electronic Fanny Tango.  This bizarrely named device purports to control the minds of mosquitoes, although first trials suggest that it mainly affects male mosquitoes, and no one cares a whit about them.

New Touchy Bootlegger.  A fascinating piece of equipment that can download a new movie before it is put online or even released to the theaters.  Its creators will not admit that they are using a miniature black hole to power their machine, nor will they explain why the device cries when you whistle.

Dr. Electron Halloween Costume Kit For Teenagers.  While this may seem self-explanatory, this is actually a solar-powered collapsible Christmas tree that can be repurposed as a Hanukkah menorah and also as something that says "Happy Good Kwanzaa" on it, available in three self-described "African" colors.

Homebound Dog Collar.  Designed for people who would only like to pretend to be priests, presumably for moral or ethical reasons, this interesting jewelry-like contraption will, much like the "invisible fence" irresponsible dog owners use to torture their charges (no pun intended), deliver a low-level electric shock that increases in intensity the longer you are out among the parishioners.

Red Lightbulb.  A red lightbulb, of a lovely hue.  Most relaxing.  Once it's on, it's on.  When it is turned off, it lingers, like a sad memory, or the odor of someone who only eats bacon.

Condom Spaghetti.  No one had any interest discovering anything about this.

NSA Fan Club Tattoos.  Another bizarre name for a product, this intriguing invention attaches to your skin and encourages governmental spying.  Whether it is designed for military or civilian applications is unknown, although the pranking community has expressed extreme interest.

Red Orgasm Sausage.  While initial reports indicated that this foodstuff was made from the ejaculate of communists, later intelligence suggests it is simply excellent sausage developed from stem cells.

As more reports of the conference trickle out, there will naturally be more to report.  Stay tuned, but not too tuned, as, you know, it does look a little suspicious.

Empty Nest Hatchling Syndrome

Recently overheard in a modern bookstore with windows painted shut:

MAN: Tits.
WOMAN: What's wrong with you?
MAN: Sorry.
OTHER WOMAN: Hello there! Fancy seeing you here.
WOMAN: Yes, no one comes here anymore.
OTHER WOMAN: Can just anyone come here and circle their wagons?
WOMAN: The sign on the door demands it be unlocked during business hours.
OTHER WOMAN: Ah!  The door gives permission.
WOMAN: Can a door, or any inanimate object, even if a human has placed words on it, truly give us permission?
OTHER WOMAN: If we can't give ourselves permission, why do we expect others to give us persimmons?
MAN: Who expects persimmons?
WOMAN: I agree with her, she's got the right idea about fruit.
OTHER WOMAN: You'd love my therapist.
WOMAN: Oh really?
OTHER WOMAN: Yes! She's like if Jeffrey Dahmer and Johnny Cochran had court-ordered the perfect health food menu at a lunch counter in an old-timey pharmacy in Oxnard.
MAN: Tits.
OTHER WOMAN: What did he say?
WOMAN: She said "tits."  It's all she says.
MAN: That's not true.
OTHER WOMAN: Is it like Tourette's?
WOMAN: More like towelettes.
MAN: Tits rhymes with towelettes.
OTHER WOMAN: Anyway, since I've been fleeced I feel so much better.
WOMAN: Really.
OTHER WOMAN: Oh yes.  My ranchers are so gentle with the shears, and afterwards there might be enough for a coat!  Or maybe a small blanket to wrap about yourself when you snuggle up with one another after a hard day of codeine and calisthenics.
WOMAN: I don't believe I have wool.
OTHER MAN: Kafka?
WOMAN: Yes?
OTHER MAN: ...
WOMAN: What did you need?
OTHER MAN: I was looking for Kafka.
WOMAN: Yes?
OTHER MAN: Oh! Is your name Kafka?
WOMAN: No, do I look like a depressed Czech bastard with big ears?
OTHER MAN: Then why wouldn't you just show me where the Kafka is?
OTHER WOMAN: She's just fucking with you.
MAN: Tits.
OTHER WOMAN: She doesn't work here.
OTHER MAN: Oh!  Then who does?
WOMAN: No one.
OTHER MAN: So then I can just take any book I want?  Do I grab a book and pay for it on the honor system?  Is there some kind of safe or box I put the money in at the front?
WOMAN: You're over-thinking this.
OTHER WOMAN: Yes.
OTHER MAN: I am?
WOMAN: Look.
OTHER MAN: What?
WOMAN: You see?  No books!
OTHER MAN: I'll be damned!
MAN: Ti... Oh never mind.
WOMAN: Good girl.

When Doors Revolve

While it's certainly true that no one you know has ebola, there's evidence to suggest that everyone you know will contract ebola and die from it in the very near future.  Dr. Guggenheim George from the Centers for Disease Catastrophe (or CDC) (not to be confused with the governmental organization with the same acronym) has sounded the alert on the three websites (not including this one) who pay attention to him:

"I have spent so much or even no time in West Africa, and I can say with utmost civility that rampant, airborne exchanges will characterize the last part of year 2014, and when the new year starts, when the virus finally mutates into something so awful people will be clutching their groins in anticipatory terror, then, and only then, will I change my clothes and remove this mask from my face."

But what of the disease itself?  "It's feeling great!" says Charlene Brass Booth, a specialist in simple molecular organisms and their emotional needs.  "Wouldn't you?  You're allowed to reproduce with very little resistance, thanks to the fearmongering, misinformation, governmental incompetence, and, so far, a fairly decent autumn television season.  Who could ask for more?"

Other viruses could, that's who.  While the common cold (ironically) was out sick, spokescreatures from the family Orthomyxoviridae emphasized the deadliness of their product and their commitment to death and heartbreak for the winter 2014-2015 season.  "Who's better than the flu?" head cheerleader Piece Of RNA chanted, "No ebola, that's for shu!"  Later, insults were hurled at the most recently developed vaccine, threats were delivered at elderly people getting that vaccine at pharmacies, and videos of Jenny McCarthy were played at a high volume, to much cheering.

Representatives of other common diseases were not reached for comment.  In fact, they weren't even asked.  We felt we had enough for this story.  The editors asked for a piece "around three hundred words" and we delivered.  In spades.  Way more than three hundred words.  We're good at this.

Letter From Hitlers

Editor's note: John Hitlers was born with an undeniably awful name but choose to endure humiliation, scorn, beatings, and notoriety (though he is in no way related to Adolph Hitler) rather than change it, which is exactly what his siblings and his parents did.  He is an historian of some note, although he has never worked in academia, and has never had anything published, choosing mainly to correspond with other historians and working nights at Panda Express.  Here, with his kind permission, is a letter received this past week by Your Historian, discussing recent events.  It shows the amazing breadth & scope of his knowledge.

Dear Dr. Chamberlain,

You know that I, John Herbert Hitlers, would never gainsay your immaculate observations but your recent tirade against ISIL must be picked apart and re-created.  You begin with so many misobservations about the group, then cherry-pick from there.  It will behoove you to rein in your ponies and engage in what Transcendental Meditation founder Maharishi Mahesh Yogi referred to as "shutting the hell up."

In the consequence of failed state situations - you'll recall at last June's barbecue we made that undergraduate cry when she attempted to answer the ludicrous "Venezuela Question" - we have good times - the vacuum into which nature's abhorrence throws terrorist groups is not well-sealed.  Indeed, under the "Bush Doctrine," such vacuums are to be populated by middle-of-the-road, fast-food-restaurants-in-disguise, like Olive Garden, or T.G.I. Cheddar's; such fertile ground for Type II Diabetes and Hypertension ought not be overlooked!  No one (except experts on the region) expected a horror show best reserved for a child's nightmare about Chuck E. Cheese in clown make-up!

But to address the points you failed to make, and the solutions you chose not to share with me:

1) Much has been made about ISIL's use of Social Media.  I confess I've asked my granddaughter to explain to me what this means, but she cannot call me, as she has a phone that is not connected, as mine is, to the telephone wires.  I do get her answering machine, but she explains that often forgets to "plug the phone in."  Funny how technology complicates things, yes?

2) Journalists being beheaded may seem novel to the youth of today, but I was there when they lopped Carl Bernstein's noggin off, and at the time, no one batted an eye.  As our culture becomes used to ideas like "respect" and "freedom of the press," I believe that important traditions - including, it must be said, ones that seem now quaint and terrifying - have been lost as we've feminized, then inexplicably re-masculinized, our culture.

3) You imply that I don't know a thing about Islam!  I infer that you have implied that.  You infer from my implication that I am some kind of idiot.  Mostly all of these are true.  A young lady who hit me over the head with a pro-Palestine placard this summer while I was trying to get to my local Taco Bell explained to me that peace was possible because we are all "people of the book."  When I suggested to her that perhaps that book was A Young Woman's Guide To Manhandling, she hit me over the head.

4) Having said all that, from the time I've spent in Middle Eastern food restaurants, I can assure you that too much hummus is a good thing, all things considered.  You may say, "Every time I have a falafel, I feel awful" (and you do, every damn time we eat at Ali Baba's), but I say, "No one can be a douche with all this baba ghanoush!"  Which is why the United States must intervene, if not with drones, than with spoons and forks.  No more chopsticks diplomacy, I say!  Remember what happened in Vietnam, and later at the nice Vietnamese place in the square?

Sir, I hope you have taken no offense with the offense I have meant to give.  Indeed, your friendship means the world to me.  In spite of the location of your head so far up your ass you can see outside your eyes two times over (just think about it), you will often let me sleep at your house when I have set fire, once again, to my apartment, and that reminds me: I'll be needing your futon in six days.

As always, yours respectfully,
John H. Hitlers, esq.

Wrestling Assured

You think wrestling is fake, don't you?  Admit it!  Over 90% of wrestling fans who have more than a middle school reading level do.  (That's over 10% of wrestling fans!)  But this fact does not diminish their joy and appreciation of "professional wrestling."

It may surprise you (if anything surprises you anymore, you jaded bastard) that wrestling, in addition to being a delightful diversion from one's health issues, crippling poverty, lack of opportunity, and political powerlessness, is another of the means that the so-called oppressors and their hegemonic forces use to communicate with one another their exploitative plans.  A study at Von Erich University just outside of Denton, Texas, confirms what most ringside hand-wringers always feared.

The study, written by a scientist who wears a scary mask, suggests that the elaborate storylines in wrestling may be used to predict earth-shaking global trends, which are often unleashed upon an unsuspecting world by multinational corporations under the secret name, "larks."  For example, a thinly-veiled homoerotic rivalry may indicate the support or opposition of marriage equality issues in a particular geographical location.  Another example may be that the amount of silicon injected in a hapless female wrestler's bosom might be a signal about buying or stealing mining rights from an indigenous people's area in an upcoming coup d'etat.  A careful study of the world of wrestling may indeed reap tremendous insight from scholars and cranks who pore through journals and television to understand what's really happening in the War On Sailing.

Why hasn't this been explored more enthusiastically?  Says one scholar, "Well, you know.  You'd have to watch wrestling."

History Curves

Guest column today by Victor Lungs, inadvertent world breath-holding champion and retired mouthpiece gumshoe:

In developing a view of history that may take into account various non-historical events and suppositions, one must first reconcile the historians' view of history with more modern attitudes as well as the opposite of fact.  'The Opposite Of Fact' is, of course, the treatise my mentor and eighth grade phys ed teacher, Coach Kuenzi, authored to get himself out of grad school, and it worked.  While the School Board of Lawrence, Kansas, may not have appreciated it, a budding group of cynical - or shall I say skeptical - young anti-historians took note, and in fact wrote so many notes on the treatise itself that its original meaning has been literally obscured.

This afternoon I'd like to not only take advantage of the lovely divan in the back room for a nice, healthy nap, but also to discuss my latest 'anti-theory' of history, which is called, sheepishly, 'History Curves.'  This form of historical research involves a small number of steps to get at not the truth of any historical personage or event, but whatever feels right in the historian's life at the moment, with or without alcohol.  There are three simple steps:

1) Who what where are you studying?
2) Ugh, don't read any books articles papers about it!
3) What do you want to say?  Say it!  Say it loud!


Immediately this should be distanced and utterly separated from the modern conservative 'interpretation' of history that skews to their own political or social agenda.  For example, a textbook at a charter school in San Antonio, Texas, states:

'George Washington hated homosexuals and would never ever let them ruin the sacred institution of marriage.  Also, he didn't own slaves, he owned servants.  Did we mention that he also hated Social Security?  He would be sad to know you don't vote for Tea Party candidates.  Do you really want to make the Father of our country sad?'

(Shockingly, this is from a high school textbook.)

An historian writing with the view of history called 'History Curves' would instead write about George Washington thus:

'All I can think about is his teeth.  It would be weird talking to someone with wooden teeth.  I think he would be a commanding presence, but only if you were in his army.  Then he'd just be bossy.  They drank a lot back then, I think, so I'd probably fill up on rum and challenge the dude to an arm wrestling contest and try to make his teeth pop out while we were struggling.  I wouldn't care that it would embarrass the office of the Presidency.  I'll challenge anyone anywhere to arm wrestling.  Have you seen my biceps?  Damn right.'

I understand that this theory needs a lot of work.  Information and entertainment are difficult bedfellows but some of us are uncomfortable working in bed.  Some of us, in fact, hate sleeping in bed, and prefer city buses or, if in Europe, trains.

Already the 'History Curves' school - it's more like a pre-school - has a few adherents, and hopes, once it makes enough noise, to have many more detractors.  It's an exciting time to be a theorist, because there's virtually no oversight, and there's less and less money for academia, which means you can shop yourself to corporations, which I am of course doing.

Thank you for this soapbox on which to expound, and I hope someday you will be my friends and not just people I stalk without you ever finding out.

Holy Frack!

The scene: Nebraska.  The dilemma: a radioactive tar sands field on fire.  The actors: unfortunate amateur thespians whose bus overheated on the way from Minneapolis to the Missoula Barn Theater.

Traveling in the bustling oil-spoiled area can be dangerous to anyone but drug dealers & pimps, but seventeen intrepid reporters, armed only with fully-charged iPhones, attempted one day last winter to set the record straight or at the very least set a record for straight men.

Fracking, or, as it is commonly known in the oil industry, "anal earth rape," continues to promote the economies of the areas in which it is used, as well as enriching the pocketbooks of the thirteen white men who own the World Oil Cabal, while also hastening the imminent demise of all life on earth.  Professor of Fracking at the University of North Dakota, Fracksburg, told the Associated Press in a strangely drooly manner that "This is the answer to all our prayers.  Have you been to North Dakota?  Now we're getting wi-fi!  & it's all thanks to fracking!  Frack you, tar sands!"

Meanwhile, the sixteen journalists, after mourning the loss of one of their own to a spectacular parked RV accident, decide to walk the length of the proposed Keystone Pipeline because it is the shortest way to get to their motel.  Environmentalists accompany them, &, in a surprising turn, mug them near the railyard & steal all their microphones.  One camera operator who is there recalls, "So much graffiti...  All that graffiti on the trains...  I used to love trains, I used to love graffiti...  But there's just so much.  Also, hobo prostitutes.  So many hobo prostitutes with prosthetics!"

It's far too early to say when it's far too late for people who once wished to watch the glacier in Glacier National Park melt away to reveal lots & lots of oil, but for this fiercely independent state, which will never suck as much as South Dakota, the attention it is now getting, from the media, from oil company moguls, from Alexander Payne, from a couple of attractive teenage tourists driving through Kearney, is ensuring that for the near-future, the entire state will, for once, have something to talk about.

UPDATE: the Minneapolis "Corny Shakespeare Players" hitched a ride with a trucker named Louise, who frankly believed that Christopher Marlowe wrote all Shakespeare's plays, & made it to Missoula in time to perform their "mash-up" All's Well That Ends Hamlet to a drowsy Tuesday night audience of seventeen, with only twelve of them being volunteers at the Barn Theater.

Somebody Done Somebody Wrong Sonnet

Methinks it's time to visit the dentist;
My teeth feel odd & in need of a clean.
Too long cavities my mouth have menaced -
My teeth should have a mien of glean & sheen.
What's this? Oh no! The doc's office has closed!
I must now look up my insurance plan -
This is not something to which I'm disposed:
Visiting dentists to find the best man
Or woman - I know, there's plenty of them;
But my hygienist I think I'll miss most.
Her hands treated me like jeweler does gem,
In her work she was happily engrossed.
My teeth feel weird, enamel to socket -
I'd hate to have to pay out of pocket!

Glorious Monstrosities

This readily obscured update from the National Foundation for "Science" (their quotes, not ours) brings oblique insights to those of us who follow the genetic mutilation of the human species with mild interest and/or on Instagram.

It seems a fellow of the Foundation named Irene Bean (who isn't a fellow at all, it turns out) has discovered a machine that splices genes in a keen, clean way, using a marine-animal based vaccine (it's from a gelatine substance excreted by the baleen whale), which, when injected into one's spleen will screen any so-called "queen" genes and regress them toward the mean, usually the lean, green state they were when the subject was a teen.  While this unforeseen treatment has been called obscene, its supporters say they don't intend to demean; the say this routine may help intervene with genetic worst-case-scenes.  What does it all mean?  We must wait until they reconvene.

Creditable geneticists have dismissed the report as gobbledygook, while a minority in the field insist it is simply poppycock.  But conspiracy theorists and the mentally bored have allowed it to capture their imaginations and to insist, as we have long suspected, that hospitals are intent on turning our senior citizens into monsters.  Prominent kook Adrian Pisser explains:

"We know that old people are often cannibals, eating their grandchildren kiss by kiss.  We also know they pretend to be frail, the better to sneak into your room and punch you very hard on the chest late at night while you are dreaming of sex.  Further, they complain often about being a drain on our resources and consequently following through.  If I were a scientist, or even a high school graduate, I'd gladly turn these human monsters into inhuman monsters if only for protection from the coming alien outside-invasion."

Calls and emails to the National Foundation for "Science" resulted in a visit from a social worker, who, after eating all of the cookies, promised not to say anything else if we just left them alone.

2013: The Year In Review (Part Seven)

Gender Roadblock, the genuflecting Head Cheese at the Normal Studies Corporation, contends that once a year has passed, it, like many things that are past, can no longer exist, not even in memory.  He/she cites as his/her main evidence for this confusing argument (which, if true, one shouldn't be able to recite it at all, since one can only have heard it in the past) the album Darkness On The Edge Of Town by Bruce Springsteen, which, of course, Gender Roadblock claims to not have any recollection of, since he/she first heard it as a teen in 1978.

However, in the interest of academic tomfoolery, the prankster-professor Jennifer "Physical Therapy" McGoo has spent long minutes listening to that album, long held to be a rock masterpiece by people who would rather have spent the time listening to Van Halen's debut record, also released that year.  Meanwhile, extremely snobby people with virtually no friends in common suggest that everyone should be listening instead to Kraftwerk's The Man-Machine, although of course the original German version & not the one with English lyrics translated by the band as a form of commercial abdication.

McGoo has concluded that she is strangely attracted to Gender Roadblock, although both ironically & therefore intellectually, rather than physically, which is understandable, since Roadblock has had so many gender reassignment surgeries (to be fair, some people gave him/her some of those assignments) that people fear she'll end up like an Alan Moore character in a comic book space tale.  McGoo's main fear is that Roadblock may forget the sex after they've had it, which would frustrate McGoo, as she requires her partners to blog about their experiences with her once they've had them, although she has in the past few months settled for a tweet or even a retweet.

At the newsdesk of the former Washington Flim-Flam, now the West Virginia Gotchernose, where the alleged coupling might take place, newshound Mary "Shelly" Shelley explains that all of this is in lieu of a standard year-end series of lists & pictures of celebrity nudity.  "Indeed," says Shelley, "I am so tired of getting things for free so that I can say nice things about them at the end of the year that I feel marginalized & not even middle-class anymore."  A lightbulb appeared over her head at this point, & she began pitching that particular story to major magazines, although she concedes it will probably end up on Salon.

So why then does Gender Roadblock feel the need to write column after column extolling the virtues of the past year?  He/she says it her/himself in his/her most recent column, guest-ghosted by her/his mother/father: "Those people who wear crowns & hold scepters just seem so nice, don't you think?"