tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-77512425630908677722024-03-14T00:49:07.668-05:00Cranial Stomp ComixSTEADFASTLY UNSUCCESSFUL FOR 20 YEARS AND COUNTINGChad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.comBlogger251125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-92015314449184884182016-10-03T23:26:00.001-05:002016-10-03T23:26:56.862-05:00Panhandler Anxiety Parts 1 & 2<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Panhandler Anxiety: Hardluck Lesbian<br /><br />On a quest for picture frames, I parked by Michael’s. Looking up from my iPhone, I saw a couple of yuppie women (now known as soccer moms?) tying up a conversation about dog grooming. Back to the phone. Suddenly the women were gone, rapidly, scattering like prey spotting an oncoming predator. Now I would be the prey. A wobbling female approached me with intermittent teeth and an aura of motivation. Up came that feeling, that fizzy intestinal dread-knot: I would now be panhandled, but with what result?<br /><br />Over my half-open window, I beheld her, and she began. I have been trapped like this before. I hate to be rude, but I also have little patience for bullshit. Not only do these panhandler humans usually get money from me, they leave me feeling conned, ripped off, bamboozled. Not so much because they scored some small amount of cash from me, but because I always sense I’m being lied to, and I think that is part of their game. Sometimes I even assume that, when streetpeople cross paths behind Brown Derby or under laundromat awnings or wherever, they trade strategies—as in, which tales of woe get the best results. Why do I always feel this way? It probably started back when I was just as poor as they were, when their lack of a cigarette seemed no more urgent than my lack of a cold drink. But now that I am much more middle-classy, I still can’t stop parsing the theatricality of the various need-ploys that arise.<br /><br />My mind racing, I rolled up my window. She immediately assumed that this was to shut her down, but it was actually just the current step in normal car-parking procedure. I planned on hearing her out, but now she was walking away, with a bit of piss in her gait. I climbed out of the car and promptly locked my keys inside, instantly realizing my mistake. Simultaneously I was trying to ask her what she needed, while also experiencing potent “aw, shit!” rage that might have gone about 30% of the way toward killing her. But instead of slinging her to the pavement by the shirt and yelling, “I JUST LOCKED MY KEYS IN MY CAR BECAUSE MY PANHANDLER ANXIETY BLEW MY FUCKING MIND,” I said something like, “Hang on, what do you need?” <br /><br />Apparently I had a strong subconscious desire to be five bucks poorer, because I could have just let her keep walking. Some preliminary stammering later, she was asking for money in the most roundabout way possible—a shabby, hard-luck narrative, something involving a bus ticket that would get her child back from another state, or take her back to said other state to find her child, I think. I’ve heard a few variations on the bus ticket theme before. Bus tickets figure heavily in the panhandling universe, which makes perfect sense x2: buses are all about carrying poor people (truthiness), plus the NIMBY bonus—giving this person money sends this person away from me by bus. Some towns even have programs where they round up homeless people and give them bus tickets which must be used to leave town, under threat of jail. So, adding a bus ticket to a panhandling narrative gives you more buck for your bang, in my estimation. <br /><br />This is about the time I remembered, mercifully, that one of my back doors was probably unlocked. Thank fuck, it was! Keys back in fist, I was able to come to grips with the woman. I finally just gave her five bucks. That’s honestly something for me, because I still scold myself for breaking the five dollar mark at lunchtime. However, in the adrenalized afterglow of not quite locking my keys inside my car, five dollars down felt like a goddamn breeze of enfranchised relief. <br /><br />After completing my Michael’s mission, I hit the nearby Walmart by way of the Nursery. Maybe 15-20 minutes had passed, and there by the houseplants and shovels was my sponsored lady-friend, hug-hanging on her lesbian lover. They were buying some stuff that didn’t seem highly conducive to bus travel, such as houseplants. That’s fine, I just think they should have invited me over to see what they’re doing with the decor.<br /><br />Of course I wish I could say “honesty is the best policy” to beggars, but I suppose that wouldn’t be honest. Had she come up and asked for money because she and her girlfriend had a list of housewares they wanted, then I might have just said, “No shit? Cuz at your age, I had an apartment in Florida furnished entirely by dumpster diving!” Except, when my sister found out I was sleeping on the floor-ida (see, it’s easy to write for Bob’s Burgers), she phone-ordered me a futon… so maybe we all need sponsors. <br /><br />But maybe all I really want is for panhandlers to be required to listen to some story of mine before getting my money. I mean, I’m the one with the cash, so they should have to listen to me and pretend I’m smart as any self-help guru, because next to them I’m obviously Suze Orman, with my paid-off automobile and my numerous teeth. If Hardluck Lesbian had any tenacity, I would say, “Hey, I have aloe vera plants and a wandering jew—I don’t know if that’s racist to call a plant that, but that’s what it’s called—I can give you starts from both those plants for free. All you need is, like, two cups of dirt.” But then, Suze Orman doesn’t pay people to listen to her—they pay HER. So I guess I’m no Suze Orman, but I still think beggars should have to listen to me, maybe for a good, long lecture. <br /><br /><br />
Panhandler Anxiety 2: Return of Hardluck Lesbian<br /><br />In another stage of life and in a crappier car, I used to drive many a Sunday evening to buy a $5 pizza at Cheezie’s on S. Kimbrough. It was cheap, but more importantly, it was great pizza, but most importantly, it was cheap. Once, with my pizza upon my hand like a waiter’s tray, I emerged to a lovely sundowny moment, precursor to driving the pizza home in the passenger seat like a tasty date, precursor to devouring this esteemed pizza with my wife during Sunday night cartoons. This was before we had a tiny daughter who ushered in the current stage of life where we buy multiple pizzas for Sunday evening even though she eats shockingly little, and the television is barely audible over her incessant yammering.<br /><br />Halfway to the car, I looked across the street, as if warned by spider-sense or peripheral vision—directly at a heteronormative couple. They were both looking at me, targeting me like a Womp Rat back home in their T16s (cashing in on Star Wars fever). I instantly knew—THEY knew I could afford pizza. Now I would be the prey. I beelined for my car with the exact same gait as before, but with less sincerity since I would have preferred to run. (Fantasy response: Throw my pizza at them like a frisbee, yell, “Take it, then!” and then march right back into Cheezie’s and say, “Okay, make me another goddamn pizza!)<br /><br />Long story short, they caught me as I took the driver’s seat, and started in on some kind of woeful tale about a vehicle breakdown. Being already ten seconds into a mild fight-or-flight quickening and now trapped in my car by whatever awkward hybrid of embarrassment and courtesy that keeps one from public shrieking, I channeled my dad and turned into a dick. I interrupted them with, “I don’t care—just tell me what you need!” I think I ended up giving them a couple of dollars; more importantly, I demonstrated my first ever refusal to submit to panhandle protocol. Part of the issue was the rising discomfort of being trapped in my car with delicious, guilt-scented pizza; part was my ever-growing skepticism over the tales told by panhandlers, and that new guilt forming over my own stingy unwillingness to listen.<br /><br />The whole phenomenon just wrecks my brain. It’s a gordian knot with its own feedback loop: I want to believe people/I know that if they are being honest, panhandler protocol is debasing and demoralizing for them/I don’t mind giving someone some money if they really need it/I suspect they find rather quickly that “grooming” the truth leads to more success in gathering donations/I worry that the enterprise of panhandling is a game best played by the biggest liars/I feel guilt for judging them without actually knowing their circumstances/The only way to discern the truth is to engage this person on a deeper level and risk entangling oneself in their messy life which is very likely an expression of mental illness/etc. <br /><br />Years later, (and now over a year ago), I was trapped again by the nomadic needy. Again I ran aground on my own refusal to submit to panhandler protocol. I was at work, throwing some junk off the back of my pickup and into the nearby dumpster. Lo, there approached a meager little person—a girl of indeterminate age on a bicycle, and not quite a bike for an adult. Just when I realized she was homing in on me rather than passing through, it came back to me that I’d spotted this depressing anthropoid several times over the past few days, from a distance, around the village. Now that she was upon me, I immediately knew what she’d been up to in the neighborhood. Despite my hobo-esque workstyling, which my wife calls “Your Homeless Look,” I would now be out-bummed. <br /><br />She was visiting from out of state—Florida? Someplace south of here—staying at a relative’s house nearby, as indicated by a directional shrug. She should have used dental ambition as a motivating factor, because her opened mouth, while not beyond redemption, was a solid 4 on the scale of orthodontic calamity. A perhaps malnourished, androgynous womanling with very little traction in the American Power Aesthetic. By nature, I should feel sympathy for if not kinship with such a being, at least until that moment when her sales pitch begins.<br /><br />“I hate to ask…” was in there somewhere, then pointing out the tweenish dirtbike she rode was part of her plight/schtick. “I even had to borrow this kid’s bike to get around…” In that hot reflected light from the white gravel driveway, she was fumbling her delivery rather soundly. Whatever necessity she wished to portray floundered in a mostly tongue-tied blather. It just made me impatient. Even accounting for the way I felt a little bit trapped, something in her approach made me irrationally angry. Having paused to listen, I went back to pulling junk off my tailgate to throw it out, maintaining my “busy look” to appear Very Busy instead of the actuality of Moderately Busy. Then the English teacher in me started coming out (I wanted her to understand that she was failing miserably to construct a winning argument)—but was overtaken by my inner Guy Who Just Wants to Take His Pizza Home and Eat It. <br /><br />“God, just shut up and tell me what you need. What are you asking for?” Money, of course. But I don’t think she had gotten so far as to ask for money, almost a minute into her hapless spiel about where she was going and where she had been. <br /><br />I don’t even recall what she said. I had wrecked her momentum, and she never recovered. Finally, I just leveled with her. “I feel like there’s no way for me to know if anything you say is true.”<br /><br />“Yeah, that’s true,” she agreed, maybe too easily. <br /><br />“It’s just goddamn ridiculous, to have to sort through a bunch of bullshit stories and try to figure out why this... person is… I don’t know—bugging me!” <br /><br />“Sorry to bother you,” she said with extra defeat as she walked away, pushing her less-than-adult bicycle, now very much like a whipped dog. At this point she finally seemed more genuine. I felt guilty, coming quite close to calling her back and giving her some money. But I didn’t.<br /><br />After she left, I wondered, Why had I taken such a harsh turn with her? Was I developing an appetite for crushing the weak, like the glee I feel when I smash a mosquito? I hoped not. I had a track record of giving to people—nothing impressive, but enough to disprove sadism. It took me an hour or two to realize: that had been, I believe, the same irksome tragedoid I’d encountered at Michaels so many moons ago. What a twerp, revealing the jerk in me. But I felt justified in some ways, since she continued to misrepresent herself as Less Than a Career Panhandler. <br /><br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-65133330695820900922016-02-20T12:48:00.002-06:002016-02-29T23:33:26.912-06:00Parental Undersight<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeurRS1qVadzO1pIXI_YjIxJezeMd-3wgu0eybSBIHV1bSevGsxUHfYwtqoHK-eufA4FsmdY9tb1YVB2AdAlOaPmvZHVS_7LqrZjNopSI6_h0-Ge7dAyBBqkaD_rpQrjk4p98dZMoFTTe/s1600/IMG_2940.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYeurRS1qVadzO1pIXI_YjIxJezeMd-3wgu0eybSBIHV1bSevGsxUHfYwtqoHK-eufA4FsmdY9tb1YVB2AdAlOaPmvZHVS_7LqrZjNopSI6_h0-Ge7dAyBBqkaD_rpQrjk4p98dZMoFTTe/s400/IMG_2940.jpg" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Another victim of glasses</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Parental Undersight<br /><br />1.<br />In a five-day, four-eye-doctor marathon (counting the school nurse who started it all), my nine-year-old niece learned she has one really bad eye. It dawned like some elaborate hoax on my sister, Kristine, who started off thinking, “Well, the school nurse is kind of an idiot, so maybe it’s nothing.” But it wasn’t the school nurse who identified the problem—it was a visiting county nurse, testing wholesale, one assumes, the many eyeballs of the children of greater Los Angeles one class at a time. At least a lieutenant in the ranks of school nurses, and she did manage to spot the problem that had somehow eluded everyone else.<br /> My sister called me early in the process, probably because I have the worst eyesight in the family, and have worn glasses since I was five. Plus, my daughter Penelope wears glasses now. <br /> “I feel like such a horrible parent now,” Kristine said. “We just went to the eye doctor at Cosco, and they said they’d never seen anything like it. The optometrist shined that light in her eye and said, ‘I can see all the way through her eye!’ And then she said they might not even be able to make glasses that will work for her.”<br /> “Really?” I asked. “Why? Because one lens would be so much thicker than the other? I think they can make glasses for anyone now. And what did she mean, She could see all the way through her eye?” Like, into her brain? Kristine had wondered the same thing.<br /> <br />Raleigh looks just like her dad (in photos, we have referred to her as “Li’l Shane”), but she may have inherited some unfortunate Woody traits—eye trouble for starters. Heritable Woody meanness may have passed her up for her little sister, Georgia, who used to rage against chairs in a knee-high gladiatorial fury, such that curious onlookers would ask, “Why is she so mad?” to which my sister would reply, “I don’t know—she was born a dwarf… you’d probably be mad too, if you were born a dwarf.” After the Cosco visit, Kristine said they would have to try a more expert eye doctor. Georgia complained, “Does that mean I’ll have to sit through ANOTHER long eye appointment?” Nothing can infuriate a Woody like another Woody.<br /> “Are you kidding me?” my sister snapped. “Do you know how many of YOUR appointments we’ve had to sit through, you little shit!” Being a dwarf, Georgia had required many doctor visits, especially for ear problems.<br /> “Isn’t shit a bad word?” Georgia groused.<br /> “Yes,” Kristine said, “You’re being a shit.” Later she told me that she might make sure Georgia attends Raleigh’s eye appointments regardless of babysitting availability.<br /><br />Everyone wondered how Raleigh’s bad eye hadn’t manifested openly if it was so bad—no lazy eye or eye crossing like my daughter Penelope, no apparent trouble seeing chalkboards and such, as I’d had when I was little. But, she does have one perfectly good eye. Apparently her brain just relied on the strong eye and let the bad one sit out, getting even weaker with disuse.<br /> Since they live in California, I barely know the kid, but Kristine reports that she’s kind of like I was in early years—shy at school, bookish, not very socially assertive. I wonder, as I have before, if vision problems in some way precipitate introversion, which in turn may feed the creaky stereotype that glasses signify smarts/social inferiority/general nerdiness. Fortunately for Raleigh, the stereotype has faded enormously in our time. Not only have nerds conquered much of pop culture, but nerd chic has elevated many of them (the attractive ones) to higher social rungs. We 40-somethings grew up watching Christopher Reeve and Lynda Carter downgrade Superman and Wonder Woman into hapless weaklings by putting on glasses*. Sure, Katy Perry still has to ditch them to live a “Teenage Dream,” and superheroes still don’t wear them, but at least it’s been a long time since I heard someone called “four eyes” on a sitcom. My wife (glasses unnecessary) and daughter get crazy compliments on their glasses, so I know it’s a thing.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*There’s even a beauty pageant episode of Wonder Woman where she has to
infiltrate and inevitably win the pageant to stop something nefarious.
At some point, the dopey Major Dimwit/leading man turns to Wonder Woman
after she has spun down into her secretarial “Diana” mode, with her
glasses and pulled-back hair, and says something clueless like, “I wish
you could enter the pageant, Diana… but we need someone who is really
beautiful.” Curious and ironic that comic-book alter-ego formulations
intended, most likely, to give nerdy fans an empowering association with
hidden strength were finally dumbed down to one subtext: eyeglasses can
make even a demigod looked like chopped liver.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilpzfFI89nVU50KbrPko2WvF1QnLuA34IndBfxpLMDcVeGLuovsF3YONSOSj98eqzlkXjn_8TtsazA2td_YYXV9F0SdOd-wsEDHuwIiSj4te-PgrvXP2MWtyQUoWS8Sc56V83DbTsEP5tz/s1600/th.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilpzfFI89nVU50KbrPko2WvF1QnLuA34IndBfxpLMDcVeGLuovsF3YONSOSj98eqzlkXjn_8TtsazA2td_YYXV9F0SdOd-wsEDHuwIiSj4te-PgrvXP2MWtyQUoWS8Sc56V83DbTsEP5tz/s400/th.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"If only these glasses didn't make me look like a leggy bucket of sewage."</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />My sister drove Raleigh into LA to see another eye doctor on Saturday. I think, in Los Angeles fashion, she based the choice largely on location and availability—living in LA is mostly about avoiding as much of LA as possible, after all. Unfortunately, they ended up at another optometrist rather than at a pediatric eye specialist. The ominous prognosis suggested by the earlier examinations meant that the whole family went. Shane and Kristine were both quite worried, and Georgia was of course in tow for make-up empathy points.<br /> At the clinic they were told that only one parent could accompany the patient in the exam room. But that’s not how Kristine and Shane roll. They all wanted to go in, so that’s what they did. When the eye doctor entered, he grumbled about how there were too many of them in there.<br /> “Oh,” Kristine said, “I thought you were joking about that.” She was just trying to defuse his authoritarian impulses, but she later said he stuck slightly to his guns and remained a bit of an asshole. “Shane was really worried, and I wanted him to hear everything—he’d missed the first appointment. That doctor just wasn’t very friendly.”<br /> So Raleigh got another eye exam. This new doctor had similar misgivings about her eyes, and wrote a prescription that was more than 200 points different from the previous one. Fortunately, he also recommended they go to a specialist, providing a doctor’s name and a warning: “Most people don’t like her very much, but she’s a good doctor.”<br /> “Why don’t people like her?” Kristine asked.<br /> “She doesn’t have a very good bedside manner.”<br /> “So,” Kristine told me later, “I was kind of worried, like, if this jerk thinks she’s bad, then HOW BAD is she going to be?” <br /> “Yeah, who knows?” I said. But it did cross my mind that maybe the enemy of your enemy could be your friend. “So, no idea which prescription is right?” I asked. “Those are really far apart.”<br /> “Oh, they’re crazy different.”<br /><br />Once freed from the exam, my sister felt compelled to consult Yelp, the Californian’s handiest, iPhoniest oracle, about the next eye doctor. I don’t know how many reviews she found, but they were predominantly negative. So, they entered Raleigh’s third appointment with considerable apprehension. <br /> After Kristine summed up their story, the doctor tossed the first of several bedside-manner grenades that immediately demonstrated why Yelp is a mouthpiece often hijacked by semi-pro complainers and weak whiners overloading their squeaky-wheeled shopping carts. <br /> “So why” asked the doctor, “did you think that the place where you sample sausages and get your tires rotated would be the best place to have your kid’s eyes examined?”<br /> Ha ha! I don’t know if she told the doctor the same truth she told me in the retelling: “We go to Cosco all the time, we love it… the other night when there was a big storm, Shane decided he really wanted some of their cinnamon rolls. So we were driving around in all this wind, seeing trees broken on the road, but we just had to go eat cinnamon rolls!” I suppose the doc would have asked if they also sampled some sausages and picked up a six-pack of faulty glasses for the whole family!<br /> So the fateful moment arrived. Raleigh got a real eye exam from a real ophthalmologist. Kristine asked her if Raleigh would be able to get glasses. “The other place said maybe they couldn’t even make glasses for her because… they could see all the way through her eye.”<br /> “Because they’re idiots!” said the doctor. “I’ll bet they didn’t go to Stanford and get one of these.” She pointed to her diploma on the wall.<br /> After dilating Raleigh’s eyes and a couple more jokes at the expense of the stupid optometrists of greater LA, they had a prescription for glasses that sounded, in the one lens, not all that far from my own strong lenses.<br /> “So, she said Raleigh could get glasses?” I asked later. “Her eye wasn’t going to be a lost cause anymore, like the others made it sound?”<br /> “Yeah,” Kristine said, “she told us to try the glasses for a couple of months and then see her again. She sounded like it wasn’t that big a deal. I mean, she’ll probably have one weak eye from here on….”<br /> “But at least it’s correctable,” I said. The optometrists had scared us into thinking there was something freaky and calamitous going on.<br /><br />2.<br />One excuse for my sister’s failure to get it right the first time (or the second) is the generalized overuse of the term “eye doctor” for the vaguely similar words “optometrist” and “ophthalmologist.” A bigger excuse is that we Woodies were raised rather carelessly and on the cheap. Even by the more libertarian and free-range standards of that earlier time, we were parented haphazardly. Our parents meant well, I assume. We didn’t get any drunken beatings, exposure to drugs, rapey molestation, or even diddling by untested mom-boyfriends. Just envelope-stretching neglect (more than once in the 5-7 age range, I had sunburns so bad that coin-sized water-filled blisters covered my back, because I suppose I should have known to pack my own sunscreen) punctuated by screaming fights and the occasional rage eruption ending with broken furniture or a horse beaten to death. My dad, as might be expected, was the anger volcano, but I’ve learned over the years that my mom is far from innocent when it comes to keeping the peace. Despite appearances of sweetness, she became a master of turning our lives into a pressure cooker of intolerable conditions—most notably, accumulating animal hoards at the expense of a decent lifestyle. <br /> It also takes a special sort of patience to put up with my mom’s layer cake of mental illness—a cake that self-frosts with blame for others when it comes to the screwball drama of her own life. Unfortunately, she’s become a completely unreliable witness, especially when it comes to reporting her own experiences. A snowballing mass of obsessions, paranoias, and revised memories clouds her judgment in general; in particular, our family history and her own health issues have been distorted by years in the echo chamber of her mind, where she has spent decades hammering away on the anvil of her favorite narratives: being Norwegian (she’s only half, and has never been to Norway), improving people’s lives by selling them purebred dogs (maybe in some cases), blaming my dad for all that’s wrong with her, being “a survivor,” having to figure out her own medical needs because most doctors are bad people if not conspiring against her along with Obama and the government, and a smorgasbord of racist/socioreligious prejudgments, simplifications, and misconceptions. The ice cream on top of the cake is that many years of bipolar thinking and medication have perhaps eaten away at the wall between her objectivity and her subconscious. She literally lets material from dreams—maybe even daydreams—scurry into her record of day-to-day experience, so that she believes firmly in a number of things that never happened. Finally, as if to specifically annoy her family, she has a terrible memory for things that we think matter (such as my wife’s full name or where she works), yet seems to have total recall for the detailed personal histories of her kennel customers. <br /> At the time of Raleigh’s eye trouble discovery, my mom was tangled up, as always, in a new and unnecessary drama. At least this time it wasn’t her fault, but the outcome is always the same—there’s little room made in her life for meaningful interaction with her kids/grandkids. Just the day before, she’d phoned me about my dad having a psycho-rage-fit at the neighbors—their best neighbors, who have helped them with numerous problems—after both parties’ herd bulls knocked down fences to fight each other in the road. Mom was naturally upset; unlike my dad, she prefers not to be friendless. Such emotional messes always launch her back into accounts of the bad old days when she was institutionalized, and how my dad had her put away, and was going to let them kill her by putting her in (the state mental hospital in) Nevada (, Missouri), because if you go to Nevada you never come back (even though I believe she did go there once), and if it hadn’t been for Greg Crouch (their large-animal vet in the ‘80s—large-animal vets are frequently the heroes in my mom’s mythology), she would have been put away forever and probably killed… and my dad didn’t care, he went away to work and didn’t even leave money for food for us kids, all while Family Services was trying to get us kids. <br /> “Well,” I responded, “we did eat… I mean, I remember we weren’t starving.”<br /> To make sense of some of this, you have to know more backstory. Family Services was never TRYING to get us—had they had been trying, it wouldn’t have been hard. I was seven, Kristine was 12, and for weeks at a time we were left alone on a farm with a few dogs, a few dozen cattle, and several horses. My mom spent a few months that year committed to a mental hospital. My dad did month-long stretches, on average, working out of state for other cattle ranches. By today’s standard’s it’s insane. Back then, it was somehow possible to squeak by, by not saying anything to teachers, and with the help of a complicit neighbor or two. As far as I can tell, that would be the neighbor who was also our landlord, so I suppose he wanted his payments to keep coming in. Our closest relatives were near Chicago. That’s really where we should have been sent, but then my dad would have had to pay someone to feed his livestock. Ironically, he never seemed too keen on having kids, but he still thought the two of us were reliable enough to balance the farm on our scanty little shoulders.<br /> “You kids only had money to buy food,” my mom claimed, “because Kristine found the silver dollars from Reno that your dad kept in a drawer.”<br /> Having never heard the silver dollar thing in that context before, I wasn’t prepared to argue. Plus, I had been six years old at the time in question, so those memories are quite spotty. The next day, I spoke to my sister again.<br /> “Mom thought we bought all our food with those silver dollars,” I said, “but there’s no way, I mean, there were only a handful of those… I stole a couple, but I don’t remember riding our bikes up to Willard with our pockets loaded down with silver dollars. Didn’t Dad leave us a twenty or something? I seem to remember getting twenty bucks worth of groceries.”<br /> “Yeah, but Dad didn’t send us anything for food. He was too much of an asshole to do that,” Kristine said. “He would send us a check in the mail to buy feed with, for $100, but it was made out to the feed store, wherever we got our cattle feed.”<br /> “Uh… Tindle Mills.”<br /> “Yes, and then I had to ask them if they would give us money back if we bought less grain, so I’d say, Can we just buy 80 bucks worth of grain, and then get 20 bucks back? And they were cool with it!”<br /> “Ha ha!” I said. “But how did we get up there? We couldn’t drive yet.”<br /> “The neighbors drove us. The Burkses.” I can’t really remember any of that, but I was probably just in the back of the supercab reading a dinosaur book, along for the ride. I don’t even know if we used our truck or theirs. <br /><br />I don’t recall very much from that time. I know my sister told me what to do, and I usually did it, but every once in a while I would get snotty, probably in refusal to do what she deemed my share of the work, and she would clobber me. I remember never brushing my teeth, and not bathing for a week or longer. Either I was too young to stink much, or too young to be conscious of it. I did fine in school, if not quite well. I read a lot. My interests were shifting from dinosaurs to Encyclopedia Brown and nuclear war. <br /> Some years ago, I wrote a poem about those days. I think it remains pretty accurate.<br /><br /> Sympathy for the Mental<br /><br />When they took away our crazy mom,<br />my sister and I survived for a while<br />without her. Days or weeks at a time<br />we were alone. Our dad went to work<br />in other states and told us what to feed<br />the cattle and horses before he left,<br />and knowing him he probably left us<br />a twenty but no real advice on how kids <br />of six and eleven should get groceries.<br />We only knew we had to be careful<br />to seem cared for, so Family Services<br />wouldn’t come take us away, but I<br />rarely bathed or brushed my teeth. My sister<br />looked nice, though, I’m sure, as we rode<br />our bikes to the IGA food store in Willard.<br /><br />We weren’t wise when we shopped—buying<br />junk, our dad would say—but we got bread<br />and some other right things, plus marshmallows<br />and pop. I’ll bet we looked at Lucky Charms<br />and Fruit Roll-Ups, and ruled them out: too high,<br />for the rich, a frightening magic word back then,<br />meaning people who might get us, but also<br />what we wished to be. We bought pickles<br />that day—sweet gherkins, like Gramma would eat—<br />hoping no one there would remember us<br />from when our mom screamed about the Devil<br />and spread-eagled herself in the automatic door<br />so we could escape these people, their store<br />suddenly a trap set just for us.<br /><br />Paper bags wrapped over bike handlebars,<br />we rode home, avoiding cars. Almost there, <br />my sister’s bag split open on the last big hill,<br />pickles smashing on the road, lighter stuff<br />flying into the ditch. I remember thinking<br />all those pickles were really still good, we <br />could just gather them up, pick out the glass.<br />I can’t remember what we did with them, <br />though—my sister was the mom at the time.<br /><br />And we had some fun being by ourselves:<br />me not bathing, warming fish-stick dinners,<br />mixing a ketchup-and-mayo tartar sauce<br />that we thought was the best. Missing<br />our mom wasn’t so bad—I stole silver dollars<br />from my dad’s drawer, as big as my palm,<br />cold silver dollars “from Reno,” and bought<br />candy with them. I read dinosaur books<br />and collected rocks. But I figure our mom<br />had a harder time, locked up with strange<br />strangers in the mental institution, the devil<br />always rooming just around the corner, <br />a hospital like a maze full of “city people”<br />who smoked and ranted and never rode horses—<br />locked away from her life while her kids<br />and her dogs went on without her.<br /><br />
I wore glasses back then, too, so someone must have taken me to the eye doctor at some point. But it was never in a hospital. Back then, Pearl Vision was just about the only game in town. I think we had to go all the way to Battlefield Mall, which meant the south side of Springfield, which meant a 40-minute drive and complaints about how much my glasses cost. I can’t remember prices, but I know I felt guilty about the cost of my glasses—enough that the life of any pair I ever had was stretched out as long as possible. Many months could be added to the useful life of any glasses with a combination of squinting and duct tape. Even if my parents were around, I can’t remember them ever volunteering that I needed new glasses. I think I just played it cool (or, super uncool, with my duct-taped loser glasses) as long as possible so they wouldn’t grouse about how expensive my eyesight habit was getting, every couple of years. Ophthalmologist? None of us knew what the fuck that was. I was lucky to see a damn optometrist—and in the rich-people mall. It was near an Orange Julius!<br /> So, any deprivations suffered by Penelope, Raleigh, or Georgia are rather dinky by comparison. Except of course the part where Raleigh’s eye almost died. I’ll try to tamp down my dickish Woody instincts to remind Penelope how many sacks of Sweet Grain we could have bought with her eyeglasses money, or to call Raleigh a cyclops.<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-987854234037909942016-02-07T12:53:00.000-06:002016-02-07T12:53:52.718-06:00Moment of Terror<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBysDxuUg2oQvRgwaoLe1Ntl_h2SLobcq8V9Q3-G51wznAI23pqKyMaXjWcdCmcySKPKjD6dRCl3DCcA8iraIHssMTomGk_v_5aAC2vkDtrDCUplRogfvCM4sJ_AnfFv4DHQketkb4Bde5/s1600/th-3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBysDxuUg2oQvRgwaoLe1Ntl_h2SLobcq8V9Q3-G51wznAI23pqKyMaXjWcdCmcySKPKjD6dRCl3DCcA8iraIHssMTomGk_v_5aAC2vkDtrDCUplRogfvCM4sJ_AnfFv4DHQketkb4Bde5/s400/th-3.jpg" width="268" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">WHERE'S THE DEVICE?!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Several years ago, it was about 24 minutes before the final episode of 24, and I had just enough time to make it home from work for the sake of Jack Bauer’s inevitable pyrrhic victory. Then, in a plot-twisting complication, I got a phone call from Elizabeth, the 70-something retired secretary from my workplace. It had been a couple of years since we worked together, but I still talked to her sometimes, and helped her with lawn chores ‘n’ whatnot. <br /> “Chad, it’s Elizabeth. I just wondered if you could come by. My refrigerator is making a bad sound, and I’m afraid it’s going to die on me.”<br /> “Oh, uh… Yeah, I’m headed home now, so I can swing by.” Aargh! This would make me late, for sure! I almost made an excuse based on the fact that I don’t really know much about refrigerators anyway, but if Jack Bauer can consistently go 24 hours at a time without eating, drinking, peeing, or defecating, then I can stop by an old woman’s house to listen to her fridge.<br /> Once there, I entered the pantry area, where a few stairs lead to the kitchen. Elizabeth said she just started hearing the noise an hour or two earlier.<br /> “Huh,” I said, “You don’t think it ever made this sound before?”<br /> “No, it really sounds sick.”<br /> Using my youthful-human hearing abilities, I quickly homed in on the buzzing. It wasn’t coming from the refrigerator at all. A few feet from the fridge door, a furious buglike sound came from a beige canvas duffel bag squished beneath some sacks of stuff—probably a wealth of Ritz crackers and Werther’s Originals. Elizabeth’s place is always overstocked with snack foods. If her refrigerator does fail, she can still survive for several weeks on candy, crackers, and cookies.<br /> “Sounds like it’s in here,” I told her, “Kinda sounds like an angry mud-dauber.” I cautiously unzipped the bag. In seconds, I switched from stinging-insect apprehension to a completely unexpected fear. Shifting the contents of the bag, I found the butt-end of a plastic cylinder, the size of a flashlight… was it a “personal massager?” Was I about to pull an old lady’s vibrator out into the light of day? Too late to retreat now.<br /> “I guess it’s this,” I said, lifting the object from the bag. <br /> “Oh, that thing,” Elizabeth said. I turned it to find the OFF switch, and was relieved to see the brand PEDI-PAWS stamped into the rubber grip. “Sophie’s nail-trimming doodad.” Phew, little dog Sophie had her own personal hygiene needs. I turned it off.<br /> “Mystery solved, I guess.”<br /> “It must have gotten turned on,” she guessed, “when I set that other bag on top of it.”<br /> I scooted on home, wondering how many Pedi-Paws are sold to people without pets.<br /><br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-22488267412173537702016-02-04T21:29:00.002-06:002016-02-04T21:29:44.926-06:00Wisdom Derived From Dolphins<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9tZMvQZMbQWrXuKqiCqkqHLoOXPOEmI5DUFgc6NFnF5h7_IVbww8T1IK0_KRRIbuhyu3ff_-4vbm4TG05-6XJmeGG7b7j8bQfWBf_eQlXNHs1nxQJi8vimfj87pMMr6MsXo7sq8VGkong/s1600/th-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9tZMvQZMbQWrXuKqiCqkqHLoOXPOEmI5DUFgc6NFnF5h7_IVbww8T1IK0_KRRIbuhyu3ff_-4vbm4TG05-6XJmeGG7b7j8bQfWBf_eQlXNHs1nxQJi8vimfj87pMMr6MsXo7sq8VGkong/s400/th-1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
How Performing Dolphins Can Predict Your Family’s Future<br />
<br />
1. A Regrettable Pennypinch<br />
<br />
My wife and I were extracting ourselves from the Dolphin Show Pavilion (or whatever it’s called) at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium as the show ended. The audience hesitantly filed out, checking cameras and children, glancing back at the water to catch any unscheduled farewell antics from mankind’s aquatic buddies/captives. This was the main event, in a sense—the pay-extra-for-it ticket option at the entry counter, so I’m sure people wanted to feel very dolphin-saturated and -satiated before they cut loose from the acrobatic geniuses of the sea. I remember feeling less than aglow but basically satisfied, dolphin-wise, and guilty after stealing numerous glances at a nearby woman with a very lovely ear and elegant nose-profile, when I looked at my wife. We decided we were glad that we’d paid the extra ten or twelve bucks apiece to see this part of the aquarium. A stream of kids ran by and I almost started crying then, realizing that, several years earlier, I’d brought my little brother here but passed up the rare chance for farm kids from Missouri to see dolphins. I’d been too cheap.<br />
In the Big Picture this becomes more tragic, if you’re prone to rolling up the Big Picture and beating yourself with it: All of us are born in only one place and one time, with all of human civilization building toward this golden age when marine spectacles are corralled for our edutainment until that fast-approaching day when they—or we—will likely become extinct, not to mention all the minor happenstances governing our own lives that must line up favorably to make such a trip possible: having time, not being tied down by work or school, having gas money, owning a working vehicle, etc. In this case, it was probably the last time my brother and I took a trip together before growing up into separate lives. “You only live once,” as folks would say. At the most.<br />
<br />
2. One’s Own Weaknesses<br />
<br />
But before this becomes a simple “stop and smell the roses” tale, I’ll jump back 25+ years and dig up the earlier episode. When I was about four, I was taken with my sister to the Great America (Six Flags over Great America?) Theme Park, somewhere in Illinois. My sister was five years older than I was (still is, luckily), so she and my mother were calling all the shots I’m sure, pulling me wherever they went, which would inevitably involve animals. This drew us to an amphitheater where dolphins leapt from the water in splashy, crowd-pleasing parabolic curves. I really remember nothing of it, except for the brightness of the outdoors (I wonder if little kids have any special evolutionary eyeball defenses to offset the need to run around looking up at/for adults) and that my fifteen minutes of fame lunged at me too soon, in a belittling forest of human witnesses. <br />
The dolphin trainers went zipping through the crowd for volunteers, and suddenly I was singled out: Would I like to go help a dolphin do a trick? I looked around. What? No, not by myself.... I was too shy. Could my mom or my sister go with me? No? No, not by myself. I must have been cute enough to draw them in, but of course they had to get the show on the road, not stand around while some little boy struggled to overcome innate shyness in the freight-train glare of audience anticipation. So, the moment passed—they moved on, finding some other shrimp to hold a sardine out, leaving me to years of disappointed admonishment from my sister and mom. They both so wanted me in that smidgen of limelight that I think they formed an unspoken agreement to jibe me into sociability with little reminders of how lame I was, like, “Oh, wouldn’t that have been neat if you would have gotten into that dolphin show?” I know they told the story throughout the land, and it always ended with, “But Chad was too shy to go with them, so he didn’t get to do it.” It’s probably my earliest recollection of failure as a social being—the first in a rich and lengthy tradition.*<br />
<br />
<br />
3. The Most Charismatic of All Megafauna<br />
<br />
So maybe the hype about dolphins is true: maybe they do have the power to show us who we are. In my case, not because I give a particular shit about dolphins or believe them to be magical, spiritual creatures (maybe they are; I’m sure they’re very nice and smart), but because each time I’ve ever been around them, my sibling relationships have been summed up instantly** as if the dolphins were shining some psychic flashlight on us:<br />
My sister, the showpiece of the family, who should have been selected from the dolphin audience and would have jumped at the chance if offered, who could have handily starred successfully in a new TV version of Flipper if given a few pointers, clearly had the social chops to cavort with dolphins. Hanging with such popular creatures requires charisma, which requires confidence and a non-crap attitude; I would be lucky to withstand the company of a hermit crab or a newt or a pigeon or a mudskipper, which is a precise summary of the pets I would have in the ensuing years. Allowing most of them to die or escape on their own biological timeline would eventually cure me of the need to claim a pet of any kind. My sister, on the flip side, has long-standing companionship with horses, great danes and colorful birds. She’s just the kind of person you’d expect to see zipped into a wetsuit handing food to marine mammals in a shower of cheers. I, on the other hand, used to let a scrawny anole crawl around in my hair. <br />
It’s easy to see how people came up with the idea that witches had familiars in animal form, or that Native Americans had animal totems, or even lycanthrope forms. People are drawn to other living things that reflect them or sympathize with them. I believe I’ve seen a Warner Brothers cartoon where people walking their dogs look like those dogs: a beefy construction worker led by a bulldog, a snooty old lady tethered to a French poodle, etc. I think it’s a parallel we all get, and we get the joke when the pet doesn’t fit the owner, like a hugely muscled bruiser carrying a shivering teacup Chihuahua. <br />
While dolphins are generally beyond the sphere of pets, they still operate as totems, radiating oceanic romance, acrobatic speed and agility, and smiles seemingly built right into their faces, not to mention legendary intelligence that lets them interact with people on the level of colleagues. They’re animals of the highest order. They’re also assigned, by some commentaries, credit for therapeutic empathy with humans, especially crippled or retarded ones. I think this is constructed by our culture, but built around the naturally pleasing appearance and role of this animal: they swim as well as sharks, but don’t tend toward eating us; they’re smart as chimps, but don’t throw poop or scratch mangy patches of hair; they’re cute as ducks, but less silly; they’re mammals unbound by any of the landlubber rules of mammaldom.***<br />
<br />
4. The Dolphin Crystal Ball has 20/20 Hindsight<br />
<br />
Maybe we think dolphins are smart for the same reason one might think my mom is dumb: they usually seem very pleased with things. The capacity to be pleased probably has little to do with raw intelligence, but it is definitely wise to be pleased with things: if an otter will spend much of its time clutching at glossy edibles while splashing about, it might as well feel good doing so. The Dalai Lama has been squeezed out of his own country and he still has the gumption to seem pleased. When my mom says to my brother, “Bubby, don’t you think that girl would make a nice girlfriend for you?” he’s likely to say, “Shut up, you’re dumb.” This is the sort of response that makes us all marvel at my brother’s harshness, and makes me think I failed him somehow—maybe it was when I didn’t buy us tickets to the dolphin show; maybe it was when I left him in dirty diapers while my friends slept over and he got raging diaper rash; maybe it was when I was teaching him the alphabet by making little letter cards (which are still sticking to the inside of my closet door at my parents’ house 20 years later), and I gave up after the letter “E.” Maybe I screwed him up. Or maybe I made him better. Kids are complex machines, and adults are downright inscrutable. Most people would be easier to kill than to change. We are pretty much who we are. That’s why it’s so impressive when someone loses 400 pounds, or gives away all his possessions and hikes to Alaska. What power, to rewrite one’s own identity.<br />
While writing this, I learned that my sister’s new baby will be a dwarf, according to doctors. Suddenly all previous comments about how fat and Bibendum-like this baby is seemed like clues to her proportion problem. While no one in my family is tall, we have no known history of dwarfism, either. It might be fun to blame the air quality in Los Angeles, or terrorists, or Don Rickles, but I knew right away that my sister would think it was karma balancing some kind of vanity scales. My mom confirmed this later, and I decided then that, while karma is a good belief system for society at large (sort of an inescapable Golden Rule that keeps people on good behavior), it falls far short of the truth. If the scales are made to be balanced, they rarely balance in this lifetime, so what’s the point?<br />
The truth is, chance, physics, and biology do it all, and we imagine patterns shaped by karma, or God’s will, or Satan’s trickery, etc. We imagine the dolphins are smiling when the shape of their mouths is likely just hydrodynamic design. We imagine shapes and names for constellations because we like shapes and names. We imagine this daughter will be sad when she can’t reach a cabinet or eclipse the silhouette that says, “You must be taller than this to ride this ride.” We imagine our own weaknesses through the lives of others—weaknesses they may not have.<br />
<br />
5. However<br />
<br />
My mom frets a lot despite seeming pleased, and dolphins still look like they’re smiling when they’re caught in a fishing net. It took me 29 years just to get my first date despite being genetically normal and arguably satisfactory-looking, while being legally blind has been only a minor inconvenience (unless of course it was the glasses that kept me from getting dates, in which case I’m pretty fucking pissed off about that). When this short baby gets older, she may do a dozen things better than any of us—have a miniature horse rodeo or her own small merry-go-round, and so many friends and accomplishments that we’ll say, man, I’m getting sick of that little hot-shot making us look like chumps! <br />
If dogs can sense fear, what can dolphins sense?<br />
<br />
<br />
*Competing mainly with breaking the grandfather clock my grandfather made, letting my hermit crab die by not watering it, and asking my well-mannered grandma if she farted after hearing her fart, which rather infuriated her.<br />
<br />
**in a way I wouldn’t see until years later, of course<br />
<br />
*** They also have their shitass tendencies, if you pay close enough attention to nature shows. They’ve been caught on film harrassing lesser creatures, even mauling/killing them for fun (or at least, not for food), like cuttlefish, which they often tear to shreds but do not eat, and I think they sometimes commit what appears to be rape.<br />
<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-66711782146529573222015-12-20T20:31:00.000-06:002015-12-20T20:54:32.060-06:00Star Wars & You—Episode I<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRdlciqu243ZjWbRZniAo-hliDw7HVL779y4ZgMvCG8qT1prq3X5-fsg_8h-O-TsamOppUKmsDZdVy8Ff94xOmgs0aLxIR6j4zpE8C9rxFq_vpDqLAkJX2Us4XAVP9G_M6guwkemWmtvXW/s1600/IMG_1980.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRdlciqu243ZjWbRZniAo-hliDw7HVL779y4ZgMvCG8qT1prq3X5-fsg_8h-O-TsamOppUKmsDZdVy8Ff94xOmgs0aLxIR6j4zpE8C9rxFq_vpDqLAkJX2Us4XAVP9G_M6guwkemWmtvXW/s400/IMG_1980.JPG" width="300" /></a><br />
<br />
Even if you have no interest in <i>Star Wars</i>, you’re stuck with it. Not just because people won’t stop talking about it, but because everything is <i>Star Wars</i> now. From the inescapable parallels in 2014's <i>Guardians of the Galaxy</i>*, to the fact that “believe in yourself” became the #1 theme in Hollywood films for the past generation, you’re constantly rewatching <i>Star Wars</i>. That’s no accident. George Lucas deliberately built the story around Joseph Campbell’s comparative mythology ideas, reverse-engineering a new myth from the archetypes of the old ones. Temptation, virgin birth, the hero’s journey, transcendence, prodigal sons, seeking ancient wisdom, betrayal and redemption—it’s all in there. So, in a sense, everything was always <i>Star Wars</i>, just without the merchandising. <br />
<br />
In a Bill Moyers interview, Lucas said that after the first film came out, there were people of all faiths saying, “Hey, there’s our religion up on the screen” (my paraphrase). Of course, Campbell had pointed out examples such as the virgin birth of Osiris out of Isis being a precursor to the Christian nativity, boiling down the archetypes into transparencies. Lucas took the creative next step, rebooting it all in outer space (but, fittingly, LONG AGO) so that he could not only make an entertaining film, but also so he wouldn’t have religious zealots targeting him for blasphemy a la <i>Last Temptation of Christ</i> or <i>The Satanic Verses</i>… although his own take on a virgin birth produced almost as much controversy among movie nerds. In his Bethlehem there was born, not a savior, but the many-layered, often cringeworthy life story of Anakin Skywalker in all its toe-curling, pod-racing, Princess-wooing bravado. This would end in heartbreak for all, starting with Liam Neeson's character, as if punishing him for trying to reduce the previously spiritual Force to blood-borne cells called mitichlorians.<br />
<br />
Some folks work hard to dismiss Lucas from his own creation, especially when it comes to the much-reviled prequels. Since he was more in command with the making of Episodes 1-2-3, backed by the enormous financial and technical wealth of Lucasfilm, and presumably unfettered by any editorial controls, they assume he is probably to blame for their suckitude. I see the prequels as a mixed bag, though—a judgment also fair for <i>Return of the Jedi</i>. Yes, almost all the travails of young Anakin are lame, and the melo-dialogue hits spectacular lows especially in romantic interludes, and Samuel Jackson sadly does not a Jedi make; but I love Ewan MacGregor’s exasperated humanity as Obi Wan Kenobi, the superior martial arts, surprising new applications for lightsabers, and of course the final, brutal, chilling “end” of Anakin Skywalker. There’s much to enjoy, and probably just as much to dismiss, but dismissing Lucas himself? Hm.<br />
<br />
“What’s George Lucas good at?” asked a friend about a week before Episode 7’s release, right after she said she was glad Lucas gave up control of <i>Star Wars</i> (I agreed). He’s not an ace at writing dialogue, or at directing actors. “World-building” was the only answer I could come up with at the time, but even that might not be defensible, since artists like Ralph McQuarrie and Jim Henson’s creature workshop did most of the heavy lifting when the <i>Star Wars</i> universe was populated and engineered. But, just like Stan Lee over in the Marvel universe, with his huge debts to Jack Kirby and other artists, or even Steve Jobs and his legendary “asshole with vision” status, there was still some kind of magic at his command. <br />
<br />
In our own universe, the ability to channel the Force does not, however, necessarily grow with experience and/or wisdom. Sometimes it’s like catching lightning in a bottle. Stan Lee had a hell of a run in the Sixties and Seventies, but it’s fair to say that by the time he got around to creating “Speedball” 20-some years later, he was spent. Lucas did fine co-creating Indiana Jones, but somewhere in there he made <i>Willow</i>, which can safely be called a swing-and-a-miss. <br />
<br />
I’m not film nerd enough to research decades of minutiae about Lucasfilm, but I still think I can elaborate on the “world-building” thing. Lucas was good at big ideas, at naming things, at establishing archetypes, at themes and conflicts, and at commanding convincing, game-changing imagery. He committed terrible but occasionally brilliant dialogue (admit it—for every dumb thing that is said in a <i>Star Wars</i> movie, you can find an equally awesome thing—and it’s not fair raising the bar too high, because these movies are for kids as well as adults, which is also why we must suffer through Ewoks and Gungans), and he created characters who, despite some dumb aspects (I never realized until reading a recent Facebook post just how silly it is that Chewbacca can’t say his own name), lodged themselves quickly into the popular zeitgeist and are now dictionary-level household reference points. <br />
<br />
It’s a testament to this kind of vision to observe that, as Americans, my generation grew up sympathizing with “the Rebellion” despite living in the current dominant imperial power on this planet, where the closest analog to Luke blowing up the Death Star is probably Tim McVeigh blowing up the Oklahoma City government building. Of course, that building didn’t scoot around star systems and obliterate inhabited planets, but it was still filled with plenty of oblivious functionaries of the Empire: storm troopers, janitors, droids, and trash-compactor monsters who were just doing their jobs. I suppose Hollywood helps us all live double lives, thanks in no small measure to George Lucas—convinced deep down that we are rebels all, and harboring some special inborn capacity to channel a hidden power despite our humble origins.<br />
<br />
*Is Groot Chewbacca, or is Rocket Chewbacca? Maybe both. Is Star Lord Han Solo or Luke Skywalker? Maybe both. Is the green chick Leia? Pretty much. There's some shuffling of the <i>Star Wars</i> deck, but you get the picture.</div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-13298196166897169412015-11-22T14:35:00.002-06:002015-11-22T14:35:37.233-06:00Intolerance Rant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I’m impressed anew at the shortsighted intolerance, lack of empathy, and transparent political immaturity of our more vociferous “us-mongers.” Phoboholics for Us. I wanted to say, “Phoboholics for America,” but they dislike America, for the most part. They only champion the most comfortable notion of Us.<br /><br />Ironically, Phoboholics everywhere are scrambling to sound tougher than ten-year-olds while being weaker than seven-year-olds, popping flag-boners while eating Chick-Fil-As in the lobbies of Hobby Lobbies and then pooping in those Starbucks cups. I don’t approve. What’s so difficult about simply pooping in one’s pants like the babies of previous generations? Plus, remember, who is the guy who has always refused to go to Chick-Fil-A because the name is too gay? This guy. ME, queerbaits.<br /><br />Test people at the border and admit only Christians? Really? Got telepaths on your team? As an atheist, I can attest, it’s not that hard to fake Christianity. I’ve done it, death row inmates do it—hell, most Christians are doing it right now. <br /><br />If I had my druthers, I’d only admit atheists. I’d send fundies of every stripe on to the godforsaken “holy land”—which is where they ought to want to be anyway—to just crusade and murder and murder the shit out of each other. Burn black churches, puree infidels into spiritually nutritious smoothies, whatever floats your faulty, scripture-addled minds, all ye faithful. Leave the atheists here to measure oceanic acidity or whatever horrible rationality they’re always spitting like venom into the face of God in their fetishistic obsession with looking at nature objectively.<br /><br />Truly though, I’ve learned to live with religious people. I married one. Several Christians take care of my child all the time. It’s not that crazy. I just have to step back and hope they don’t get raptured while driving Penelope to the brainwash! Just kidding. They don’t believe that Star-Trekky “Beam me up, Jesus” bullshit. I hope. I feel like I can count on them to have massive strokes or hemorrhagic seizures while driving my daughter, none of that angel-wings nuttery. With luck, I’m the one in greatest danger of dying for the Christian dream this and every holiday season, by falling off a building while hanging and repairing Christmas lights for the glory of a higher power bill. And if I do go splat, I swear to God, I’ll—do nothing. I’ll be dead.<br /><br />The astonishing thing is that so many people are so excited to kill and to die over a bunch of poorly translated fairy tales, and not even the good ones from decent countries, such as The Little Mermaid. I mean, I swore allegiance to Marvel Comics back in junior high, but even I am not willing to kill a fat man wearing a Batman shirt. I won’t even bludgeon a Muslim woman for reading Aquaman in public without her vulva properly squished for Mohammed, or whatever the faithful are doing these days. I will proudly gouge no one’s eyes out for the gratification of any imaginary supervisors. Hell, I’ll even read a Superman comic, if that’s what it takes. <br /><br />But, you may retort, in your bland stupidity, “Christians are being hunted like gays and gay vampires here in Obamerica!” Why don’t you just come over to my residence so I may beat your fucking ass, pussy? Better yet, read and comprehend the previous and following sentences, guaranteed to set your weak mind on the proper course: the true account of my last Saturday encounter with some of the last few Christians that have not been whipped and Obaminated to tidbits in their pews for their wealth, freedom, and cultural predominance.<br /><br />Two Jehovah’s Witness gentlewomen rang my bell. Penelope, obliviously toddling offspring that she is, refused to look up from her commie-pinko PBS Kids indoctrination cartoons to open the door she isn’t strong enough to open. Even my “Christian” wife shunned them. It fell upon me to answer the door with my godless anatomy. I chose to use my hands, rather than my prehensile atheist unmentionables. Door open, they dared speak to me in their churchy lady clothes, a mere arm’s length from my slumping, moldy jack-o-lantern still waiting to be composted, which will add nutrients back into the soil without my giving any credit to the lord for His creation. Now the clash of civilizations would begin.<br /><br />Would the Jehovah’s Gentlewomen be raped? Would they be hunted like gay dogs? Would I use my diabolical atheism to abort their precious stem cells? I’ll never tell, but I can tell you, I gave a silent, inner groan when I saw what they were. But in my exasperatingly consistent way of conserving dignity, I let them spiel, pretty much. I expected them to say something about ISIS in Paris, but if there’s one thing Jehovah’s Peeps are consistent about, to their credit, it’s international goodwill. They’ll even use and compliment a Jap-made Kubota tractor, if you can get them out of their churchy clothes to do a lick of fucking work.<br /><br />Penelope waddled out to bring the cute, so I had to set a decent example of sociability. I did give them a glimmer of a hard time when their lead gentlewoman spake along the lines of, “It’s a beautiful day, but you know there’s a shortage of good news in the world.” <br /><br />Me: “No! I’m remodeling my bathroom, and it’s looking really good!” to which I wanted to add, “Plus, have you seen all the porn you can punch up for FREE now?” and then to their mortified faces, “Ah, I’m just fuckin’ with ya!” For once, I was thinking of that stuff in time to actually say it, not post-encounter, but holstered my heat. I kneed pajamaed Penelope back inside the door to conserve heat as well as dignity.<br /><br />Fortunately, they agreed that a successful bathroom remodel is a good thing, but stopped short of laying some hands on it, unless that Watchtower they gave me was meant to be bathroom reading. Then I got the fuck back to work. <br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-2143731134208034222015-10-20T23:35:00.000-05:002015-10-20T23:35:13.986-05:00Hard-luck Lesbian—Episode 1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
On a quest for picture frames, I parked by Michael’s. Looking up from my iPhone, I saw a couple of yuppie women (now known as soccer moms?) tying up a conversation about dog grooming. Back to the phone. Suddenly the women were gone, rapidly, scattering like prey spotting an oncoming predator. Now I would be the prey. A wobbling female approached me with intermittent teeth and an aura of motivation. Up came that feeling, that fizzy intestinal dread-knot: I would now be panhandled, but with what result?<br /><br />Over my half-open window, I beheld her, and she began. I have been trapped like this before. I hate to be rude, but I also have little patience for bullshit. Not only do these panhandler humans usually get money from me, they leave me feeling conned, ripped off, bamboozled. Not so much because they scored some small amount of cash from me, but because I always sense I’m being lied to, and I think that is part of their game. Sometimes I even assume that, when streetpeople cross paths behind Brown Derby or under laundromat awnings or wherever, they trade strategies—as in, which tales of woe get the best results. Why do I always feel this way? It probably started back when I was just as poor as they were, when their lack of a cigarette seemed no more urgent than my lack of a cold drink. But now that I am much more middle-classy, I still can’t stop parsing the theatricality of the various need-ploys that arise.<br /><br />My mind racing, I rolled up my window. She immediately assumed that this was to shut her down, but it was actually just the current step in normal car-parking procedure. I planned on hearing her out, but now she was walking away, with a bit of piss in her gait. I climbed out of the car and promptly locked my keys inside, instantly realizing my mistake. Simultaneously I was trying to ask her what she needed, while also experiencing potent “aw, shit!” rage that might have gone about 30% of the way toward killing her. But instead of slinging her to the pavement by the shirt and yelling, “I JUST LOCKED MY KEYS IN MY CAR BECAUSE MY PANHANDLER ANXIETY BLEW MY FUCKING MIND,” I said something like, “Hang on, what do you need?” <br /><br />Apparently I had a strong subconscious desire to be five bucks poorer, because I could have just let her keep walking. Some preliminary stammering later, she was asking for money in the most roundabout way possible—a shabby, hard-luck narrative, something involving a bus ticket that would get her child back from another state, or take her back to said other state to find her child, I think. I’ve heard a few variations on the bus ticket theme before. Bus tickets figure heavily in the panhandling universe, which makes perfect sense x2: buses are all about carrying poor people (truthiness), plus the NIMBY bonus—giving this person money gets this person away from me. Some towns even have programs where they round up homeless people and give them bus tickets which must be used to leave town, under threat of jail. So, adding a bus ticket to a panhandling narrative gives you more buck for your bang, in my estimation. <br /><br />This is about the time I remembered, mercifully, that one of my back doors was probably unlocked. Thank fuck, it was! Keys back in fist, I was able to come to grips with the woman. I finally just gave her five bucks. That’s honestly something for me, because I still scold myself for breaking the five dollar mark at lunchtime. However, in the adrenalized afterglow of not quite locking my keys inside my car, five dollars down felt like a goddamn breeze of enfranchised relief. <br /><br />Completing my Michael’s mission, I hit the nearby Walmart by way of the Nursery. Maybe 15 minutes had passed, and there by the houseplants and shovels was my sponsored lady-friend, hug-hanging on her lesbian lover. They were buying some stuff that didn’t seem conducive to at all to bus travel, such as houseplants. That’s fine, I just think they should have invited me over to see what they’re doing with the decor.<br /><br />Of course I wish I could say “honesty is the best policy” to beggars, but I suppose that wouldn’t be honest. Had she come up and asked for money because she and her girlfriend had a list of housewares they wanted, then I might have just said, “No shit? Cuz at your age, I had an apartment in Florida furnished entirely by dumpster diving!” Except, when my sister found out I was sleeping on the floor-ida (see, it’s easy to write for Bob’s Burgers), she phone-ordered me a futon… so maybe we all need sponsors. <br /><br />But maybe all I really want is for panhandlers to be required to listen to some story of mine before getting my money. I mean, I’m the one with the cash, so they should have to listen to me and pretend I’m smart as any self-help guru, because next to them I’m obviously Suze Orman, with my paid-off automobile and my numerous teeth. If Hardluck Lesbian had any tenacity, I would say, “Hey, I have aloe vera plants and a wandering jew—I don’t know if that’s racist to call a plant that, but that’s what it’s called—I can give you starts from both those plants for free. All you need is, like, two cups of dirt.” But then, Suze Orman doesn’t pay people to listen to her—they pay HER. So I guess I’m not Suze Orman, but I still think beggars should have to listen to me, and listen good. <br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-35272809695955122702015-07-22T00:11:00.000-05:002015-08-19T22:44:07.414-05:00Rock ‘n’ Roll Odyssey, Parts I-IX<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEPQdgObVG-kzOxq09uflVN104gN9Su6FnN7sf_tPwXvgro9LLHnBNx20OQc_waqRbdUSzBX1xruw8kUXoOF6BJfkPUzHz8bY8fnqLb5yG55L_4f7XCErFnQufwVBFZlPlOSmNVV_q1jro/s1600/photo-105.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEPQdgObVG-kzOxq09uflVN104gN9Su6FnN7sf_tPwXvgro9LLHnBNx20OQc_waqRbdUSzBX1xruw8kUXoOF6BJfkPUzHz8bY8fnqLb5yG55L_4f7XCErFnQufwVBFZlPlOSmNVV_q1jro/s1600/photo-105.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just imagine our address is "2112"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
or, I Think I Drove a Meth Head to a Rush Concert<br />
<br />
I was on my way out of a rain-soaked Springfield Thursday afternoon, headed to Kansas City to see Rush for their 40th-year, probably final, tour. I had my Mountain Dew, my Golden Oreos, and two styrofoam flats of hot Chinese food given to me by the cook at Bao Bao for watching his restaurant while he was in Switzerland. I also had my wet socks draped over the dash, trying to dry them with alternating blasts of heat and AC. I had my stack of Rush CDs and had already burned through one album. The rain was breaking up to reveal a nice gray day, perfect for driving. Having left work about two hours early, I was just getting comfortable as the will-someone-from-work-call-me-with-a-problem? danger zone evaporated.<br />
<br />
Somewhere around Clinton, I passed a hitchhiker at a crossroad, holding a little cardboard sign that said, “KC MO, Rush $”. Instantly began the internal war between my serial-killer-obsessed wife’s voice saying I would end up dead and sodomized if I picked him up, and my own Alfred E. Neumann voice saying, “What, me worry?” Of course I felt bad thinking that this guy had no ride to see the show. The “$” meant he might chip in for gas, but I had a full tank, which was enough for the whole round trip, so that was no real concern. I slowed down and U-turned. Even though I was not playing <i>A Farewell to Kings</i>, I had to do what was Closer to the Heart, right? What kind of a dick would I be if I drove on by, playing Rush to the three empty seats in my car? (Four, if you count my toddler’s car seat).<br />
<br />
I pulled up to him, and he was happy. As usual, my car was full of junk, so I hopped out to clear his seat and floor. He was saying thanks, and shook my hand. I said he made the right sign as I stacked CDs and Chinese food into the back seat.<br />
<br />
“I saw the <i>Permanent Waves</i> CD in your seat,” he said, “and I knew this was the right car. We’re gonna see Rush, man!” He tossed his sign into the floor and got in. I smelled alcohol immediately as I buckled in again. He said he had only waited about 10 minutes at that point. I think he said his name was Dean. The first thing you need to know about Dean is, he’s a talker. Also, a repeater of talk. Also, a terrible but unabashed singer, a Rush superfan, a man of low impulse control, and more! <br />
<br />
Dean was 48 going on 12. “My girlfriend (at least he didn’t say “old lady”) wouldn’t let me take the car because I’d had two beers—she said I was drunk—I had two beers!” He remained rather excited for the duration of the trip, which would be about 90 minutes for him. He had no ticket to the concert, but assured me, “Oh, there’s always a way in, man! I’ve got 500 bucks with me, I’ll get in. These shows never really sell out.” <br />
<br />
I gathered the following information in no particular order: Dean had a few teeth missing—luckily none at the front, because his mouth was open a lot. He was from Minnesota, had been living in Missouri for only a few months and said he really liked it, and worked at the Tracker boat factory. He claimed to be part Native American, but said that didn’t mean anything—he brought it up in relation to living near a reservation “way up north.” His girlfriend of several years was depressed and stayed home most of the time. He had seen Rush seven times, which he told me at least five times*, but by the third iteration, he admitted he’d only seen them six times, because once, when he had three great tickets that were around $300 each, he couldn’t go because he was in jail for about a month. He assured me he wasn’t the kind of guy who spends a lot of time in jail.<br />
*so, like 35 times in my mind**<br />
**Thanks for the math, Dan’l<br />
<br />
Suddenly, Dean really had to pee! I guess the two beers had ramrodded their way through his system. We were cresting a hill, looking down at a town rich with shit pertinent to our scenario: bathrooms. It couldn’t have been more than 25 minutes since I plucked his sorry ass from the roadside, said my internal trucker who frowns on stops that do not align with an empty gas tank. But, as Dean was now adjusting his shorts in a way that may have been cover for crotch-crimping, I decided this would be a good place to stop. I honestly didn’t give a shit what he had consumed, as long as he remained lucid, compliant and continent in my vehicle. We had plenty of time.<br />
<br />
I picked a gas station. Dean made it to the john while. I decided to pee while there, and when I came out of the bathroom, Dean was getting money out of an ATM, which he gave to me.<br />
<br />
“Here, man, take this,” he said, handing me two twenties. I told him that was too much, really, but he insisted with a touch of hitchhikerly pride, so I took the money. Back at the car, he angled for a smoke break, which I said was fine. I took a minute to change socks again, moving the dampest ones to the trunk.<br />
<br />
“Sorry about the stinky socks,” I said, “I’m still trying to dry my shoes out.” Dean didn’t care, taking a moment to make fun of some woman’s looks as she exited her car nearby. A couple of young ladies of slutty presentation lounged against the gas station wall. I worried Dean might try impressing them with some inappropriate behaviors, but he played it cool.<br />
<br />
Just a few miles down the highway, my passenger had a coughing fit for about one minute. When he finally seemed recovered, I asked, with a trace of humor, “Did you get a bad cigarette?” Dean said rather seriously, “Don’t say that, man.”<br />
<br />
After the pee & smoke break, Dean really hit his stride. He turned up my radio without asking (to about 38 Toyota volume units, if you’d like to recreate the experience in another Toyota), which wouldn’t have bothered me, except then he kept on talking and expecting me to hear him, between a number of disastrous singalong attempts. He obviously knew the songs, but was rampantly off tune and timing. I tried to just roll with it, with a smirky smile. Maybe my smile wasn’t convincing, because about once per song, he would say, “I’m sorry, man, I’ll stop singing,” but then he’d start again almost immediately. He threw in some air guitar flair when he could, which I countered with diplomatic smatters of steering wheel thumb-drumming, plus the occasional appeal to reason, such as: “Hey, uh, we’re looking for Truman Road, I guess it’s Exit 271,” I’d read the relevant direction from my envelope of mapquesty shorthand. Dean didn’t seem worried. His only feedback was, “I like how you drive, in the fast lane the whole way!” Which was weird, because I think I had been using the full range of lanes. At one point I made myself chuckle by imagining an abrupt pulling off onto the shoulder, where I would stop and tell Dean, in my best Clint Eastwood voice, “GET OUT.”<br />
<br />
At some point, we talked a little about the band, and how it was likely their last tour. I had recently read in Rolling Stone that singer Geddy Lee was more energetic about the band in a ten-years-younger fashion, where Alex Lifeson, the guitarist, had some physical problems dragging him down, and drummer Neil Peart was more mentally sick of it—which had always been the case. Dean said, with some relish, “Yeah, I think Alex parties harder than the other guys, maybe that messed him up,” and then asked me if I’d read Neil’s book (he’s written more than one, though), which I hadn’t. He said I had to read it, and he would give it to me. Then as he paraphrased some stuff from Ghost Rider, I could only think, “How is he going to give me that book?”<br />
<br />
Further highlights: he pointed out an older Cadillac on the highway, saying that it looked just like his car. And some story from his living in California years ago, where a guy he worked with invited a few people over to watch some other dude have sex with his wife. Dean said, “I decided not to go, but I went home with a big hard-on! That guy’s wife was really hot.” <i>Impulse control, Dean</i>—and too much information. Maybe we two were discount versions of the <i>Hemispheres</i> dichotomy: Dean the naked figure, I the suit-wearing dandy.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM13ZZpcwh_yXocNK8S6W4La3szmh8FzaGhBPXFcCagfC8TDpWe-s4Ezf88cKfHkoI0NxWKBkM_LBOFOUzBOBubAH6jOr8ARpnzzzOLgngdQj0kxdNSfnsAWPFVT5cYwVpGNE5xx084dbP/s1600/41Lg9efFtmL._SX425_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="311" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM13ZZpcwh_yXocNK8S6W4La3szmh8FzaGhBPXFcCagfC8TDpWe-s4Ezf88cKfHkoI0NxWKBkM_LBOFOUzBOBubAH6jOr8ARpnzzzOLgngdQj0kxdNSfnsAWPFVT5cYwVpGNE5xx084dbP/s320/41Lg9efFtmL._SX425_.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
As we entered KC proper, Dean displayed some oddly aggressive staring at people in other vehicles, including a police van, which I called a paddywagon. I let the paddywagon in front of me, telling Dean that’s how we keep them on our side. I joked that maybe the cops were going to the concert. Then I decided the joke was true, and followed them all the way to the Sprint Center, which looked like a lovely god-size cut-glass bowl with tour buses parked around it.<br />
<br />
“Hey, this has to be it, right?” I gave myself a mental thumb’s-up: despite my rider’s distractions, I had made zero wrong turns. We had arrived at a crowded area with lots of cops and Rush t-shirts containing humans of every sort. Now we just had to park. Dean rolled down the window. I worried he was going to yell at people, but he just asked an extremely inarticulate man about parking, receiving a flustered arm-spasm in response. I turned down a skyscraper-shadowed street that immediately broke my parking balls, so before getting too sunk, I thrilled Dean with a totally illegal U-turn and bragged on my car’s smallness. Backtracking a couple of blocks put us in much more Springfield-looking territory, where I quickly spotted parking. It was $10, but very close to the arena, and Dean’s $40 made me uncharacteristically decisive in the face of a parking fee that I normally might walk thrifty miles to avoid.<br />
<br />
Out of my back seat, I changed into my <i>Roll the Bones</i> 1991-92 Tour shirt so I could project my Rush-veteran status. Locking the car, I asked the parking attendant the address and punched it into my phone, encouraging Dean to do the same. Even though he had twice said he would like a ride back, he didn’t want to trade phone numbers or take down the address. Yet, he talked about getting dinner or a drink before the show, which was almost an hour off. My phone chimed with about the third text from Tony Gray, who had been in KC all day, was already in the Sprint Center, and had checked in on my progress almost as if thinking I was the sort of fool who would pick up strange people from the roadside.<br />
<br />
“Are you sure you don’t want to trade phone numbers?” I asked Dean. “I mean, I’ll wait for you, but, maybe I won’t know how long to wait.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, don’t worry about me! You’re gonna be seeing the most awesome show, just enjoy it—an evening with Rush, man!” Dean was peering into the fronts of businesses, scouting the eats-n-drinks that I was not keen on sitting down to with him.<br />
<br />
“I know, I’m just thinking ahead.” Maybe I should have explained to Dean that thinking ahead was a cornerstone trait of those of us who can drive ourselves places. As if to illustrate, I stopped right then on the sidewalk. “Oh shit! I forgot my ticket. It’s in the car.” <br />
<br />
“What? Really?" Dean looked a little suspicious, as if I were just making shit up to avoid eating with him. I really had left my ticket in the car, and said, “Sorry, I have to go grab it.” At that instant, we both found the perfect exit from our alliance. I obviously needed my ticket, and Dean obviously lacked the patience to backtrack 500 feet for something. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
“Ok, well, I’ll watch for you after the show,” I said.<br />
<br />
“Don’t worry about me, man, we’re gonna see Rush!”<br />
<br />
“I know.” As I walked back to the car, he ambled energetically away. Then my stomach was punched by my imagination: what if Dean had cunningly yoinked my ticket off the dash when we disembarked, and I was now the one with no seat in the Sprint Center? I walked faster, escaping from Dean but also losing evil-ticket-stealing-Dean forever in the crowd. Fortunately, my ticket was right where I left it, so he wasn’t the master of deception I almost had to mistakenly tackle to (not) get my seat back.<br />
<br />
Joining one out of many lines, I entered the Rush-shirted throng. I was probably one of the commonest types, but the age range was quite wide, including young women and even kids. That makes sense for a 40-year career span, but it was also puzzling—at least for children—until you look closer and realize that kids today actually share interests with their parents. I looked over at an apparently operational box office, and wondered if Dean would be caught dead in the un-rock-n-roll tactic of simply buying a seat there, if any remained.<br />
<br />
That’s when I started hearing little covetous comments about my shirt: it was 24 years old and in good shape, so it must have been a thing of pedestrian wonder. Every several minutes I’d hear “Roll the Bones!” over my shoulder, and one guy said, “I wish I could fit into that Roll the Bones shirt,” suggesting, I guess, that if he could fit, he would get it from me by any means necessary. I suppose it was just an oddity in a sea of much newer shirts. Once inside, I discovered the many expensive souvenir T-shirt options, starting at $40 and going up to $100 (for embroidered jerseys). Maybe that explained the desirous feelings about my shirt. Suddenly immersed in a t-shirt driven economy where the common, entry-level shirt is $40, lord knows what a rare and ancient shirt might be worth. Forty-one dollars? A hundred? A human life?<br />
<br />
I started catching up with Tony Gray by text. My last update had been over an hour earlier, after Tony asked if I was in KC yet: <br />
ME: “Just passed Osceola Cheese.”<br />
TONY: “That’s good cheese.”<br />
Now he wanted to know if I was in the arena yet. I skirted a bunch of food lines and souvenir lines, found my seat, and considered looking for Tony while the seats in my row were mostly empty. He was in a group who had scored a skybox-style suite on the upper level, courtesy of a friend who works for Burlington Northern. Tony said later, sort of jokingly, that he was trying to blend in as some kind of train engineer. Probably didn’t want to get “yard bossed.”<br />
<br />
Then my brother texted from somewhere not far below. He’d never told me that he had a ticket, though I knew he intended to see Rush. I’d sort of assumed he would tell me ahead of time, and we would carpool, but maybe he wanted to smoke pot in the car, or maybe he wanted his own shot at picking up a drunk hitchhiker. (Later my wife asked why we didn’t go together. I said, I didn’t know he was even going for sure. She said, “You guys are weird.”)<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh09DGkjrJJI4Z3idnrguGHRXAGZM_sKXLbiUsEgu_QAgRFxCdtRDO089s8a_E6czBKMMRDugGTm-yMHEHceDomBdULvg7u5vBY89m7tIyZWkNIxrUgQ8qbMcUB3p7hgkrH1IQDKQQf1nPP/s1600/photo-112.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh09DGkjrJJI4Z3idnrguGHRXAGZM_sKXLbiUsEgu_QAgRFxCdtRDO089s8a_E6czBKMMRDugGTm-yMHEHceDomBdULvg7u5vBY89m7tIyZWkNIxrUgQ8qbMcUB3p7hgkrH1IQDKQQf1nPP/s400/photo-112.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Plenty of heads even balder/grayer than mine.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In a few minutes, the seats around me filled. The seat to my left was overfilled by a double-wide of a man; to my right, a guy about my size and age who spoke to his adult son with a gruff veneer of anger, as in:<br />
SON: “Must be getting ready to start—this sounds like Clockwork Angels.” (Classic rock songs on the PA had yielded the clock-alarms opening of “Time” by Pink Floyd) <br />
DAD: “Nooo... this is Pink Floyd.”<br />
SON: “They’re supposed to start with their newest album.” (Clockwork Angels= most recent Rush album)<br />
DAD: “This is fuckin’ Pink Floyd! I’ll bet you a hundred fucking dollars!” Once or twice he kind of cussed all the lit-up phones in the arena, which made me self-conscious when I finally pulled mine out to take a few pictures later on, but oh well.<br />
<br />
Aside from the mad dad’s habitually abusive diction, everybody was well
behaved. I assumed “Time” playing meant that it was showtime—because it
was—but then a few more songs played while the place filled up. Finally
the show began, first with a wacky animated video that ended with the
band arriving in KC, MO, and then with a rather percussive onslaught
which was exactly what we all paid to have thundered through our skulls.
It was ever-changing sensory overload, with big screens, lasers, a dash
of pyrotechnics, and the usual comedic touches. Back in the ‘90s, I
remembered that Alex and/or Geddy had done a bit of stage cleanup with
vacuum cleaners during gaps in their guitar sequences. Dean had
mentioned that one of the more recent tours had featured giant
rotisserie chickens turning on stage. This time the gag was stagehands
dollying out a row of front-load clothes dryers on spin cycle. There was
also a song from Counterparts, “Animate,” where giant words were
projected in a way that looked like sharp holograms. Maybe my eyes just
weren’t good enough to see the screens. I don’t know how the fuck they
did it. <br />
<br />
After about an hour, the first set ended, winding back
the song clock to about the mid-1980s, with “Subdivisions.” Since I’m
half-bald now, I no longer look like the kid in the Subdivisions video,
but I still go, “Hey, that’s me!” when it is played. <br />
<br />
During
intermission, I changed my mind about six times and finally bought a
blue R40 tour shirt. It seemed like the most popular of the choices, but
I decided it looked like the most wearable. The $40 seemed almost
painless considering that was what Dean had given me. I wondered where
the sorry bastard was.<br />
<br />
I squeezed back in between Mad Dad and
King Beefy for the second half, Mid-'70s-early '80s, where the real heat of the Rush catalog
dwells. No words. Mind blown.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_6U7i5k5Waz5BPq-2iyx6srOIBYrEHf5Ibuf3KijtwIAQyQh_LUYUvkJZ19R9vwSWDaJO_4C_HAbzkY6Zyhrn4pqBYD7duIG7tSrMLZc5Lk_0p_XOgbkNeCaJORB5UkUxwvdu_9hIBQJt/s1600/photo-111.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_6U7i5k5Waz5BPq-2iyx6srOIBYrEHf5Ibuf3KijtwIAQyQh_LUYUvkJZ19R9vwSWDaJO_4C_HAbzkY6Zyhrn4pqBYD7duIG7tSrMLZc5Lk_0p_XOgbkNeCaJORB5UkUxwvdu_9hIBQJt/s400/photo-111.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Unfortunately, my phone's mind was also blown.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihdEAdxB6RXwToPryK0MYZh0Ka0CqAnSO6psBJ8tVcldh1jzxUtJYJ-bIM0GMaKEK8YNEAG2zNqwNn0p0PnIWvhDypFHy-4qwZ318c6MTsJfeBQWj0peBZEyjgTPo9af9-IdxU6-GMoQp2/s1600/photo-110.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihdEAdxB6RXwToPryK0MYZh0Ka0CqAnSO6psBJ8tVcldh1jzxUtJYJ-bIM0GMaKEK8YNEAG2zNqwNn0p0PnIWvhDypFHy-4qwZ318c6MTsJfeBQWj0peBZEyjgTPo9af9-IdxU6-GMoQp2/s400/photo-110.JPG" width="400" /> </a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW5mVx4rnjZubCw3PpEdXSGJdC0q-_Fld1RPK35fb5tSnnN9je2d2S7VxDK9uF5VND8hi1goCNk9xWDJh5mbXKieFMYuV9XZyfB1_WbKNSYTv4wcDVCPKvM1QEbEhG4cM_6ItKP35JG8tm/s1600/photo-109.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW5mVx4rnjZubCw3PpEdXSGJdC0q-_Fld1RPK35fb5tSnnN9je2d2S7VxDK9uF5VND8hi1goCNk9xWDJh5mbXKieFMYuV9XZyfB1_WbKNSYTv4wcDVCPKvM1QEbEhG4cM_6ItKP35JG8tm/s400/photo-109.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yay, they played "The Camera Eye"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhETzDy5oCR47Xq7o9qrmIB_VyeokuWqBnWMPtR47LfC31hk8L1GPWyh1bm1KAgCEI2PFKz9q8lBbvv-0PaUkaAiYSLdC5OGEhz-XMDBvUq3cjixwOnagRrfeeQ5Hrw4M7qu88IbN6AdqWk/s1600/photo-108.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhETzDy5oCR47Xq7o9qrmIB_VyeokuWqBnWMPtR47LfC31hk8L1GPWyh1bm1KAgCEI2PFKz9q8lBbvv-0PaUkaAiYSLdC5OGEhz-XMDBvUq3cjixwOnagRrfeeQ5Hrw4M7qu88IbN6AdqWk/s400/photo-108.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Something with guitars</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMo6Q9eCXpuZTyXQVM38inV6EeYIzOpQr2J0g5QkIU7Ag2aD1H5Wo5fMoHS9zNUrdy2I8HiyJE_0PlC5OcLFI2aAGEl7JTOqhcrFH3FFEN7ogLsmjG3zxBgAv20YbtnHU-UUKKiX_FhTX/s1600/photo-107.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMo6Q9eCXpuZTyXQVM38inV6EeYIzOpQr2J0g5QkIU7Ag2aD1H5Wo5fMoHS9zNUrdy2I8HiyJE_0PlC5OcLFI2aAGEl7JTOqhcrFH3FFEN7ogLsmjG3zxBgAv20YbtnHU-UUKKiX_FhTX/s400/photo-107.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Xanadu" w/o Olivia Newton-John</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
In the ear-sizzled, brain-fried
aftermath of the show, I shook off my post-2112 ennui and joined the
human millipede that funneled into the surprisingly orderly urination
zone, breaking my rule against organized bathrooming. Driving home would
be interrupted soon if I didn't go now. I hoped Dean was doing the
same. Just to make sure he had time for due diligences, I revisited the
souvenir-industrial complex, trying to figure out what the hell was in
the $20 programs. Kinda wanted one… Nah, the shirt would be enough.<br />
After
the five-minute walk back to my car, Dean was not there. I think it was
almost 11:00. I called my wife for a quick check-in while I waited, but
I didn’t tell her I was hauling a hitcher, because she would freak out
and maybe lose sleep. We talked for several minutes, but still no
passenger. I scarfed down the remainder of my cold lo mien, ate some
cookies and hit the road.<br />
<br />
In a few minutes I retraced my path and
found a ramp onto 71 South. Just as I got that cozy feeling of settling
onto the right highway for many miles to come, I shit you not, there
was Dean with his thumb in the air!<br />
“Whaaaaaaat?” I cried out as I
looked over my shoulder at him shrinking into the past. “You dumb son
of a fucker!” I was laughing, but also feeling bad, like I’d abandoned a
kindergartner or dumped a puppy. But there were two cars right behind
me, and no easy turnarounds, so I just drove for about a mile in a state
of cackling dismay, shaking my head, saying “shit” every ten seconds
until I decided Dean was someone else’s problem. I wondered if he had
seen me. I kind of wanted to go back just so he couldn’t say I
doublecrossed him or whatever, and I kind of wanted to go back so I’d
have someone to help keep me awake, and so I could find out if he really
would have loaned me Neil Peart’s book, which would have been an
odyssey in itself, requiring a visit to his house, and maybe waking up
his depressed, probably medicated wife.<br />
<br />
I still had my Mountain
Dew and my Rush albums, and Dean's cardboard sign… I guess I should have slowed down back on that
ramp and yelled out the window, “You can miss a stride/ but nobody gets a
free ride!” But then he might have gotten in again and started singing. </div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-21905595217662429172015-05-03T21:52:00.000-05:002015-05-03T21:55:21.250-05:00Bathroom Anxiety Runs Deep<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
or, The Bathroom as Enduring Misbehavior Zone<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRKGJu6wc7s1yYxfxx0emizQBwmTx9FNJqmLefOdOi4lZS6AijkC0M3uh9snf30xHO_WH4sYvpGrUPVFcZrCS2Z3pE88RL3T_fG0vJXkGRph1vF7ZbiK-8AJNwpM2R_nf6Y0-5FRbjdear/s1600/020515-12097-bathroomscares2-480x360.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRKGJu6wc7s1yYxfxx0emizQBwmTx9FNJqmLefOdOi4lZS6AijkC0M3uh9snf30xHO_WH4sYvpGrUPVFcZrCS2Z3pE88RL3T_fG0vJXkGRph1vF7ZbiK-8AJNwpM2R_nf6Y0-5FRbjdear/s1600/020515-12097-bathroomscares2-480x360.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
1. Never have I relished the idea of pooping, or even peeing, in a public place—even a private public place like a public restroom. Now, as an adult (ostensibly), I have no real anxiety* about it, but as a kid I had deep misgivings about the stalls and urinals of the realm. For obvious reasons, grade-school restrooms had no door locks, and were designed as communal spaces. (For kids, there is a fine line between communal, tribal, and primal.) The stall dividers didn’t go down to the floor, so the feet of occupants could be seen unless lifted off the floor into evasive position. We were, as a rule, herded to the restrooms en masse at opportune times—between lunch and music, or after recess, or between drinking and pants-wetting. I even recall a trough-style, wall-spanning urinal for an undetermined number of (ab)users. All in all, no shortage of features bent toward the elimination of privacy.<br />
<br />
For these reasons and likely others I’ve forgotten, some of my early memories revolve around strategic avoidance of school bathrooms. Well, of actually having to use them for relief of bladder or bowels. As mentioned, teachers used to corral us all and send us in, but I did not partake unless the need was dire. I know now they were saving themselves the later hassle of little bozos asking, one at a time, asynchronously, “Can I go to the bathroom?”, which would amount to the death of productive class time by a thousand small cuts. <br />
<br />
On rare occasion, I would get permission to slip out of class for an excretory necessity, but my main strategy in the early years was 1) Hold it all day, then 2) Take the bus home, then 3) Run the last half mile to the toilet because our bus didn’t go all the way to my house in grades 1-2. This quickly evolved into an evasive maneuver where I could urinate a little sooner if I timed it properly: About six kids were dropped to distribute themselves along the last 3/4 mile of our dead-end road, but there were two hills in the middle of that stretch. I found that I could casually break away from the pack, pretend I was in a rush to watch cartoons, trot ahead, then break into a run once I got over the second hill. All the bigger kids were talking and too cool/empty-bladdered to care what I was up to. If I got ahead by the right amount, there was almost a minute where I was out of sight because they were in the trough between hills. Then I’d drop my bookbag and pee with enough force to hit the barbed wire fence from the paved road. I always felt like I was really keeping a secret, but who knows. If they had me figured out, I’m surprised none of them ever pursued and embarrassed me. Then again, flirting with my sister probably already had higher cache than calling out a small child on his self-imposed bladder challenges.<br />
<br />
Why go through so much discomfort? Well, I was a poorly socialized freak. But I also have vague, early-‘80s memories of witnessing these bizarre restroom dignity-removal sessions—all the helplessness of lynchings, with none of the bloody mess. Some other kid would make the mistake of being found on the toilet in his greatest moment of need, and an unsympathetic posse would kick the stall door open, point at the hapless pooper, laugh at his strained face as if it was some sort of uncommon sin he was committing, and then move on to kick the other stall doors open. I don’t think they even looked for feet; they just kicked all the stalls open. Such privacy-busting may have happened only once, or many times, but I know I saw it, and I lived in fear of it from that day on.<br />
<br />
2. Leap forward about 35 years, to 2015. Springfield holds an election that proves, once and for all, that bathroom anxiety still runs the show, still trumps rationality, even in our politics and public life.<br />
<br />
Proposition 1 was framed such that those voting NO (myself included) were opposing a citywide repeal of an earlier law that banned discrimination against LGBT people in business, housing, etc. Those voting YES were supporting the repeal, supposedly to protect the religious beliefs of those business owners and landlords who don’t want to hire or house queers, or whatever you like to call them. This is just one episode in a widespread revival to reassert religious freedom over the rights of others, even though we’ve been through this before and made clear in this country that one’s religious beliefs, while protected, don’t really trump the civil rights of other people. In general, you can think whatever you like, but your notions shall not trump the material well-being of others: If you believe hot-dogs are intolerable, you may forswear them, but you may not forbid others to eat hot dogs, nor take jobs or shelter away from eaters of hot dogs. <br />
<br />
Springfield’s Bible-belty geography made this cultural showdown all the more zesty. A local megachurch or two got involved, adding dollars and pulpits to the fight. No surprise— normal Culture Wars material. But both sides got revved up pretty hot, and then came the classic/weird/predictable/nonsensical fearmonger tactic that probably decided the race (YES votes won by less than 1% in the final tally). Billboards appeared, asserting, basically, that cross-dressing perverts and gay creeps couldn’t wait to totally diddle your children in public restrooms.<br />
<br />
This is brilliant politics, because no one wants their kids molested in bathrooms. Ask anybody with kids. And the second you bring up the idea, the human mind races ahead to the grossest assumptions about the horrible people who might corner children in the slightly stinky corners of our bathroom anxieties. And racing ahead to the grimy urinal underbelly of human anxiety keeps one from asking, Is this fear realistic?<br />
<br />
Well, sure. Anything can happen in a bathroom. I’ve seen Jimmy Barnes lay a brown paper towel over a sink drain to make a blinking “fish-eye” of the escaping water. I’ve had wet paperwad fights with Chris DeLozier in a bathroom, have seen graffiti in Sharpie, ballpoint pen, and poop. I’ve heard of high-school students having consensual sex in bathrooms. I watched as Doug Ackerman called under a stall divider, “Hey, what’s that on the floor?” and then pissed on the shoes of that person. I even saw a drawing of a fabulous sasquatch-like creature called “Dick-Tit,” as well as many phone numbers attached to mysterious, illicit promises (Unfortunately, no phone number was provided for Dick-Tit). The stuff people have gotten away with in bathrooms is pretty nutty, and gross, and sundry, and sometimes bad.<br />
<br />
Somewhere, I’m sure, a child has been molested in a public restroom. But I don’t know of any, and if it happened, it was likely done by a non-LGBT molester who was using the gender-appropriate facility. Actually, all the molestations I have ever heard of were committed by the victims’ family members, or clergy, or family friends, probably in totally private places where nobody can just dodge in for a piss or a nose-blow. In our most famous local case, a trusted, career-long school employee abducted his victim in broad daylight, took her to a private residence, and finished her off after unspeakable acts, without ever using the other gender’s bathroom.<br />
<br />
Ironically, the same source of anxiety—that anyone could barge in on you at any time—serves as a sort of barrier to extreme deviant behavior, just as it prevents real comfort. Extra ironically, some of the people who supported the YES vote are the same social conservatives who pump the ostensibly libertarian idea that conceal-and-carry gun-toting will reduce crime because criminals are scared you might whip it out on them. Death by lightning is probably more common than being a real-life gun hero, as is accidental gun discharge. But until we have security guards who frisk all who enter bathrooms, who is supposed to enforce any of this anyway? Who knows what some people are toting around in their underwear? Did we learn nothing from <i>SNL</i>’s “Pat,” or <i>The Crying Game</i>, or Jerry Springer? And I doubt anyone will propose that restrooms be filled with cameras to catch people sneaking a ding-dong into the wrong room. So, the whole thing falls apart, until you realize that it was all for shock, to stoke the outrage of the people most likely to ride a wave of fear to the polls. <br />
<br />
Public restrooms may be the ideal laboratory for true libertarianism: get in there, do your business, stay out of mine, and it should all work out fine. Here in America, we should be steered to the toilet by pragmatism, not politics. Or maybe I should say, “Just because American politics belong in the toilet doesn’t mean they should come in there with us.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*Of course, I still have some anxiety on the laughable level. A life-long problem for many, and one that still affects me on occasion, is “Fraidy Pee,” a term I borrow from Josh Trotter. It is of course that hesitation to pee when one finds oneself next to a stranger in a bathroom. It’s a universal enough problem that Trotter and a friend of his had worked out, in graduate school at the University of Florida (as a pastime, not as an academic project), a quiz on which urinal/stall you will choose, depending on which ones are open at the time. While not as impressive or influential, their predictions for human behavior were in the vein of Game Theory, and of similar reliability. Basically all of the rules were reliant on human susceptibility to Fraidy Pee. </span><br />
<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-14312021558985840742015-02-15T15:38:00.001-06:002015-02-15T15:38:05.541-06:00Price-Man’s Bathroom : “Ideas for the Ages” #1<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGs7qpmUZfgogmB7DioFehbpNLkQRh6gTBARHrDVd4dPro5U9GtYe34NXvSFp5cbNp7tOJmv1kSA8fiDHxS82AQ-G2VFhvSZ1UTk_Y8lM3SD36Ie2PnZMvoS14Cv9MyYHSz6demmWhZmtF/s1600/-29.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGs7qpmUZfgogmB7DioFehbpNLkQRh6gTBARHrDVd4dPro5U9GtYe34NXvSFp5cbNp7tOJmv1kSA8fiDHxS82AQ-G2VFhvSZ1UTk_Y8lM3SD36Ie2PnZMvoS14Cv9MyYHSz6demmWhZmtF/s1600/-29.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This supreme cat tower is the most remarkable feature of Jeff's bathroom. Even decapitated, could it be the source of unidentified cosmic power?</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
About two years ago, I went to visit my friend Jeff Price on Long Island for the occasion of an art show, but also just to go. I’d never been there—the island, or Jeff’s home. Just months before, Matt Wittmer, a mutual friend, had stayed there for a few days. In his usual abundance of sharing, Matt had numerous recommendations, which in his adamance can seem like spirited wake-up calls or even demands.<br />
<br />
Something about taking the train from the airport to a place called Ronkonkoma, and Jeff’s wife making tea—those were things not to miss. Matt spent time checking out the not-too-distant Amityville house of paranormal fame, and although he knows I’m not especially interested, those places that lodge into his imagination are generally presented with the feeling of “you should check it out” recommendation. But above all else, Price’s bathroom was touted as a peak experience. Matt raved about it in a vaguely hallucinatory, almost spiritual sense. Perhaps not a Shangri-La, but it was endorsed iwth mind-bending awe/wonder, with the gumption—if not the diction—of a Coleridge writing phantasmagoric ad-copy for Xanadu. Of course I was intrigued. On the other hand, I’m not exactly a connoisseur of bathrooms, and I knew in advance that Matt is prone to obsessive flights of fancy.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEcVom1DKGEPpeo5QuilGiFqRtk5EQaSaOC-EbZnIaN-H5klRY7_pgXVbkQ3sD77Us8fe9kpTEI0C0YYUk7k6X4MggFF5ayM4z9JM5SUsjb6vjzBCBpd7I8Mo3mn_N3fmbSnSld5FJKWi-/s1600/-30.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEcVom1DKGEPpeo5QuilGiFqRtk5EQaSaOC-EbZnIaN-H5klRY7_pgXVbkQ3sD77Us8fe9kpTEI0C0YYUk7k6X4MggFF5ayM4z9JM5SUsjb6vjzBCBpd7I8Mo3mn_N3fmbSnSld5FJKWi-/s1600/-30.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sink of minor delights.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
To compress a long story, I made it to Jeff’s bathroom and had no idea what made it so special in Wittmer’s mind. It seemed pretty normal. Was it constructed with subtle Golden Ratios tuned specifically to Wittmer’s aesthetic cortex? I couldn’t see any. This was an all-around decent bathroom—far superior to, say, Robert McCann’s St. Louis bachelor pad bath, which had almost blown an OCD fuse in my wife’s brain years earlier—but I wasn’t seeing greatness. I looked out the window for a special view, but came up clueless. I even took on some projects there, mostly out of my own lightweight compulsions toward home repair, but perhaps because Matt had planted in me the seed of this bathroom’s ponderability.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9eSRrIaG512RuM7n1ZQ_wyv2fFEiDjUBBPlcQKP_oRO1-D6G_4x_aLzXMBadF4K0wfFtt3_8XRZ1BrEFTwWHHvJBZVFXl2-jEV-MMlUlEHGmLGMvQk67s0Y5EsM3xLzxUk2NZlYSikD5n/s1600/-31.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh9eSRrIaG512RuM7n1ZQ_wyv2fFEiDjUBBPlcQKP_oRO1-D6G_4x_aLzXMBadF4K0wfFtt3_8XRZ1BrEFTwWHHvJBZVFXl2-jEV-MMlUlEHGmLGMvQk67s0Y5EsM3xLzxUk2NZlYSikD5n/s1600/-31.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pyramid of Abundant Wiping oriented toward Ring of Lofty Towel Utility. While this configuration mimics structures such as pyramids, ziggurats and observatories that orient on the cosmic, powers greater than successful flushing did not manifest.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After my toothbrushing runoff failed to scoot promptly down the drain, I opened the sink plumbing to remove a clog. It was caused mostly by a shred of duct tape inside a pipe elbow, damming a fine paste of iridescent makeup particles. I re-caulked the leaky shower stall after spotting some post-shower floor-water. Even with my small improvements, Price’s bathroom was, to me, merely a mortal bathroom.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFOtXrqzX2pKUbkFGRqGI1QxOsfUkufl1I7_Yr6RZsjZ6gnITdFvghfQlafXBBI52w0C6mzw03biCVLZJb25jVz8fTXsHsFhyphenhyphenZgwtqBlwNR2zqr0lgmxsmUlQBZQBgDNppm3ipiKbSropt/s1600/-32.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFOtXrqzX2pKUbkFGRqGI1QxOsfUkufl1I7_Yr6RZsjZ6gnITdFvghfQlafXBBI52w0C6mzw03biCVLZJb25jVz8fTXsHsFhyphenhyphenZgwtqBlwNR2zqr0lgmxsmUlQBZQBgDNppm3ipiKbSropt/s1600/-32.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cat refreshment is sanctioned. This zone of intrigue is so intriguing that cats monitor other cats.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
When I revealed my findings, Matt’s enthusiasm was undiminished. Whatever had enchanted him was still in effect. I had to wonder—did he lay too long, on the inflated guest mattress, in need of urination, and then transfer his eventual bladder relief to the experience of the room? Did he have a mini-mini stroke there, or inadvertently soak up a few psychoactive molecules of Price’s purported marijuana residues? No, when it comes to Matt Wittmer’s mental landscaping, extraordinary incursions are not required. The terrain as a whole is naturally psychoactive, contoured meticulously over a solid bedrock containing countless deposits of rich silly putty. Whatever made Price’s bathroom magical to Wittmer remains locked in that singular nervous system.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8nK5rFzQQmnkSZredhE_U2qzzm8lDMFD634QW_ekSppWd3nI5nDuzPvUO6oFBM2kc3js95bE_4iPfvrJjvUWUjawYuH0EfytgTei4PYt_2UqWl4abYPMU3sXqr487eONiTPOt-ei_R9f5/s1600/-33.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8nK5rFzQQmnkSZredhE_U2qzzm8lDMFD634QW_ekSppWd3nI5nDuzPvUO6oFBM2kc3js95bE_4iPfvrJjvUWUjawYuH0EfytgTei4PYt_2UqWl4abYPMU3sXqr487eONiTPOt-ei_R9f5/s1600/-33.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pentagon of Contemplation. Not a litter pan. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Some time later, I bought and moved into a new house, with three bathrooms. In trying to describe one of them, I realized one of my “Ideas for the Ages,” which I’ll define as ideas that, despite being good, will probably never come to fruition. Since Matt has a history of making fine, detailed models of numerous buildings of consequence (Alcatraz, the Waco Davidian compound, the Psycho house, Amityville house, etc), I thought it would be cool if I could cultivate his fascination with Jeff’s bathroom to the point where he would make a model of it, which I would then hang in one of my bathrooms. Even better, if all three of us had tiny replicas of each other’s bathrooms, one each, on display in bathrooms thousands of miles apart—New York, Missouri, California. It’s the sort of totally pointless concept art that I tend to steer clear of, but in this case it has a special, poetic sort of dada weirdness that I like. But, I suppose I don’t like it enough to put in the work and execute it, much like the works of Kilgore Trout in Vonnegut fictions. To paraphrase local painting professor Hugh Yorty, “That may be the sort of idea best left as an idea.”</div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-40622118333900199792015-01-31T22:28:00.000-06:002015-01-31T22:31:49.067-06:00The Customer Service Spectrum<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2AhHCyzgjaEiOuDOBD7PkGfpoQaDqQeFE-cZ7yhgXGIVMGHyf0Fh-OdAjrBHHZiKOP1pzlIkUkdX0DK0YLlAzkN3_tqDVJc2U7OEz1UJhtpYoXzB1V6hcpG5T8IgeoFBd0JGmGskheN0o/s1600/th-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2AhHCyzgjaEiOuDOBD7PkGfpoQaDqQeFE-cZ7yhgXGIVMGHyf0Fh-OdAjrBHHZiKOP1pzlIkUkdX0DK0YLlAzkN3_tqDVJc2U7OEz1UJhtpYoXzB1V6hcpG5T8IgeoFBd0JGmGskheN0o/s1600/th-1.jpg" height="290" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, there's something wrong with these people.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Lately I’ve found myself pulled between the gravity of two equally undesirable planets. One is the Earth of Unservice, or F.U. Earth, whose capital is Shitsville. The other, which occurred in Newtonian counter-reaction to F.U. Earth, is UberEarth, the world of over-the-top customer service. <span style="font-size: x-small;">This overwrought analogy brought to you by Blogorrhea! The thought process that arduously replaces actual wit with something like overdoing it immaturely.</span><this actual="" analogy="" arduously="" blogorrhea="" brought="" by="" immaturely.="" it="" like="" overdoing="" overwrought="" process="" replaces="" something="" that="" the="" thought="" to="" wit="" with="" you=""></this><br />
<this actual="" analogy="" arduously="" blogorrhea="" brought="" by="" immaturely.="" it="" like="" overdoing="" overwrought="" process="" replaces="" something="" that="" the="" thought="" to="" wit="" with="" you=""><br />For some years now, F.U. Earth has been accreting greater mass, as many menial jobs have been taken on by young folks who know just enough to realize that crappy jobs are not only barely worth clocking in for, they may be so crappy that the only way to do them is by personifying crappiness. More likely, the kids just don’t care. So you’ll encounter cashiers who joke with a co-worker for a while before they realize you’ve been standing there for 30 seconds… and if they keep flirting, you might just go to another register and not bother them.<br /><br />But lo, and behold, it’s not only young people manning the stations of F.U. Earth. There are also some older folks. Maybe they have been paired with a computing device they don’t really understand, or maybe they can’t hear your moans of frustration when the self checkout thinks your can of hossenfeffer weighs too much, or maybe they just care as little about your shopping experience as the flirting teens do. <br /><br />I’ve developed a handy, 3-tiered Goldilocks-inspired ratings system for navigating today’s unpredictable customer service matrix. (Because it's a pleasure to write for you.)<br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;">TOO HOT:</span></this><br />
SONIC<br />
I live quite close to a Sonic, so for much of the past two summers (both have been Summers of Shakes, btw), I’ve been a customer. As a bonus, I no longer live near the Grant Beach Sonic, rumored to have had a meth-cookery found somewhere on the roof. Now I live by the Sunshine & Lone Pine Sonic, which remains meth-free. But, my wife and I both agreed that the drive-through voice saying “It’s been an honor to serve you!” is a bit much. That just makes me feel as if the youngster at the mic has been force-fed an unnatural canned phrase. To make things worse, they really sound like they mean it. That just makes me sad. I’m not saying that drive-through communications is a field that lacks honor. I’m just saying that handing me a shake or a big-ass limeade is nothing to get excited about.<br />
<br />
FedEx/KINKO’S<br />
There’s a lady running that joint who’s just too much. She’s been too much for a long time now. It seems like she is unavoidable, almost always there. I really should know her name by now...Wanda or something. She is fundamentally helpful, but I get the idea that she would forego all of her pee breaks if it meant that she could catch someone copying copyrighted material. I feel that, if challenged, she would be ready with her résumé, which would show how she trained extensively at a Kinko's boot camp in Kansas, after being genetically enhanced with DNA from school librarians and Southern Baptist women. She makes me nervous.<br />
<br />
HOME DEPOT<br />
Too many people asking if they can help me, even when I'm briskly en route to my item. About a year ago, after three different employees asked me that in one visit, I told the third, "Yeah, don't ask me that." Of course, when you do need help finding something, no way will any employees be handy. On the other unhandy hand, I think it was a Home Depot employee (one of the Home Depot “peopo,” as I like to call them) who tried to make me feel like a chump for buying a $15 light bulb. Suck it, bastard, I love LEDs, and now I’m gonna kick back and let the energy savings trickle in while soaking up the warm glow of my mercury free 2700 kelvin warm white 9.9 watt 25,000 hour light bulb of the gods. It seems like the excessive employee helpfulness dropped off a bit after their credit card biz got hacked last year. Maybe the hackers were sick of it, too.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;">TOO COLD:</span><br />
LOWE’S<br />
Most of the time, Lowe’s is just right, but the one in Republic has an irksome old woman who runs the self-checkout array. By “runs” I mean “doesn’t run.” She stands there staring, offering nothing, when for three visits in a row the checkout screen locks up on me for no reason. Poke the screen all you want, she won’t have anything helpful for you. “Unexpected item in bagging area,” the screen would claim, while showing that exact item on the screen. That scale is out of whack, or programmed wrong. The old woman is either oblivious, or taking perverse pleasure in my techno-fail, so I just abandon ship and take my stuff to a human cashier.<br />
<br />
BARNES & NOBLE<br />
The checkout line at Barnes & Noble gets wound off to the side with an implied “velvet rope” scheme, where you stand in a maze of gifty crap and magazines. It’s arranged more like a permeable buffer zone than a line--more like “Plinko” than Glenstone Ave. Some customers approach the serpentine mess from different directions, so the bottleneck can be confusing. I was rebuffed by a middle-aged cashier who, after beckoning to a couple who had arrived 1-2 minutes AFTER me (but they NOBLy gestured that I should be first) she seemed to resent me a little. I said something like, “Sorry, I thought the line used to turn by the magazines.” Instead of just letting me be right, she said, “No, it’s always been this way.” Thanks for not only making me feel stupid, but then bugging me for the umpteenth time to join the fucking Book Club. No thanks. I should have said, in a fake British accent, “You must be Barnes, because you certainly are not noble.”<br />
<br />
MARIA’S<br />
Notoriously ungracious, hasty waitresses from a cabal of attractive college-age gals, but they sling some of the best food downtown, so what can you do?<br />
<br />
McDONALD’S<br />
McDonald’s is normally fine, but they failed me at a critical juncture. Last year I was heading, after work, to MSU to see George Saunders read. I was super hungry, but only had time for a drive-through. McDonald’s didn’t even appear busy, but my McChicken and 3 cookies apparently created some kind of logjam in the system. I sat at the window for a few minutes. A really cute girl handed me cookies, but no sandwich. Another long delay, her back to me as she leaned on the window as a chat platform. “Sorry, I have to leave,” I said, abandoning a paid-for McChicken to the ages.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-large;">JUST RIGHT:</span><br />
BRAUM’S (v. SUBWAY)<br />
I don’t go to Braum’s very often, but the last time I was there, the counter girl was helpful and understanding about my chronic bewilderment over the too-numerous ice cream/shake flavors. I have the same problem at Subway—too many choices, and when I see something that looks good, I still don’t know what it’s called, and then I start to feel like I’m holding up progress. In fact, a more apt name for Subway, in my mind, would be Agoraphobic Sandwich. I guess verbally steering another person through the steps of sandwich making is not my idea of a good time. Braum’s has ice cream tubs arrayed similarly to Subway’s many toppings tubs, but the pressure is off because I don’t even have to get ice cream. I did want a shake, though. I just defaulted to Strawberry after the girl subtly steered me away from some kind of low-cal sludge. Braum’s is no place to take a diet. Then I had to decide on a size. A boy behind the counter fired me up about the medium size: “Get the medium. It’s the best value,” he proclaimed with mathematical certainty. “Give it to me,” I agreed, riding his wave of decisiveness.<br />
<br />
VILLAGE INN<br />
I can’t recall any good anecdotes, but my alignment with this level of service apparently makes me some sort of geezer, considering that the average age of Braum’s and Village Inn customers is around 70. Probably no coincidence that they specialize in epic, delicious pies.<br />
<br />
DILLONS (RIP)<br />
Dillons was never really my favorite place, but it was a Springfield staple that I took for granted. Just when I started warming up to the one near my new residence, the whole chain went under. I wasn’t crazy about their Shopper’s Card doodad, or the relentlessly stupid pricing schemes, such as 10 for $10, or 5 for $4, etc. I was always wondering if I really had to buy 10 yogurts to get them for $1 each. I usually don’t want 10 of anything. If I can buy fewer for a buck each, why test my resolve? Are they just drilling us with remedial math? Feeble math challenges are a bonus for those with a Shopper’s Card?<br />
<br />
The only customer service memory I have of Dillons, I offer now in memoriam. It’s neither too hot, nor too cold. It’s probably not even “just right,” but more like “haplessly entertaining.” A few months back, a strikingly rotund cashier opened his register just as I arrived at the checkouts with my three items. “Jackpot” was my first assessment—but I was wrong. He tried for about a minute to key in some kind of code, so he could access the register and do his job. By the third attempt, his joviality was fading. His eyes rolled. He muttered, “Good god!” He called to a Jessica. Someone who was not Jessica came over and gave him a different code. He tried that one twice, failing twice. Not-Jessica was gone, so he called her back again. I think she finally keyed it in herself, with some kind of secret final keystroke, so he could work, maybe under her identity so she would get all his hours or something. Whatever the hell the problem was, he kept his cool throughout the five-minute crisis, which is longer than I could have held back from throwing the register through a candy bar display. I hope his patience was rewarded in the Dillons afterlife, which came to pass about a month ago.<br />
<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-68685496539436813312015-01-04T13:03:00.002-06:002015-01-04T13:27:23.547-06:00When Cat Fancying Goes Wrong<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfccgj2dDTk363BuEE6uUMxWnF0daqJH9NbUSkHjI_7_yr0k8PkK_Xxvk964d_L4lqf2J13vaXG1X-JjR-ffok91-DpGtvCku63m0_ds7DN5FkGqUvbFXkQ-vnUd9AEOl55uKRWBQZt2_x/s1600/Cat-Show-England2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfccgj2dDTk363BuEE6uUMxWnF0daqJH9NbUSkHjI_7_yr0k8PkK_Xxvk964d_L4lqf2J13vaXG1X-JjR-ffok91-DpGtvCku63m0_ds7DN5FkGqUvbFXkQ-vnUd9AEOl55uKRWBQZt2_x/s1600/Cat-Show-England2.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
2014’s Only Pedigreed Cat Names Rejected by the Cat Fanciers Association<br />
<br />
1. Whoremaster’s Kitten Dispenser<br />
2. Mayflower’s Li’l Tortie Brothel Mop<br />
3. Dennis’s Warm Milk on Tender Buttons<br />
4. Black Market Smack Satchel of Pajamalove<br />
5. Ball or Pee-pee Meat, Purrbaby?<br />
6. Brutality’s Seal Point Dung Stain<br />
7. Moist, Tender, Shaved Pussy<br />
8. Harlequin Romance Kitty Kitty Bang Bang<br />
9. Madison’s Dingleberry Brouhaha of Jasmine Larue<br />
10. Mork & Mindy’s Torn Uterine Wall<br />
11. Pandabear’s “Tail Amputations Bring Manx Prices”<br />
12. “Cat”hy<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbPgPQSyac4EsppVYkc5Gzz9D14Pq1SpPsClJu_YXj5Hlw6oT8ctOgRLnXog8r3yxMxdmVEHQCB9Z1BWuDNBrq2oQTyxeGjSiFr20ukaFVLZtAb7BJFSCOs0Jb8AMFC6MZQ7NF1KOOFocA/s1600/BIS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbPgPQSyac4EsppVYkc5Gzz9D14Pq1SpPsClJu_YXj5Hlw6oT8ctOgRLnXog8r3yxMxdmVEHQCB9Z1BWuDNBrq2oQTyxeGjSiFr20ukaFVLZtAb7BJFSCOs0Jb8AMFC6MZQ7NF1KOOFocA/s1600/BIS.jpg" height="280" width="320" /></a></div>
</div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-14172181895404245792014-12-22T21:31:00.000-06:002014-12-22T21:31:01.809-06:00List Week 2 rolls on!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Wonky Apocalypse Mechanisms that Would Disprove Long-Held Notions About God<br /><br />
1. Logs rapidly falling from clouds<br />2. Toxic opossum horde (must be eaten to be toxic)<br />3. Dynamite hot dogs<br />4. Ozone layer becomes pudding<br />5. Everyone morphs into Michael Landon, everyone dies a Landonesque death<br />
6. Blood becomes Kool-Aid, Kool-Aid Man wrings everybody out into himself<br />7. Lists become deadly to behold<br />8. Every vehicle on the planet merges to become Devastator<br />9. Suffocating pies to the face surprise all people<br />
10. Pissed-off raccoons<br />11. Malfunctioning chainsaws under every pillow<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-23439665966444051962014-12-20T11:31:00.000-06:002014-12-20T11:31:07.451-06:00List Week 2: The Second-Ditch Attempt<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Because one person seemed a tad bit amused by the original List Week, we now present a new collection of lists in something resembling a 5-in-one-week arrangement. Remember, the enumeration makes the comedy go down easy, like jello cubes.<br />
<br />
Alternate Names for Bigfoot, as Used by Various Organizations<br /><br />
1. The Shaggy Rustler (Cattlemen’s Association)<br />2. Primitive Pete (Civil War Re-Enactors of America)<br />3. Undocumented Sumbitch (The NRA)<br />4. Ol’ Jack Dingleberry (AARP)<br />5. Sasquatch American (The Census Bureau)<br />6. The Eternal Fall-risk (OSHA)<br />7. That Blasted Skunk Ape (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)<br />8. The Hirsute Galoot (International Association of Youth Hypnotists)<br />9. Shy Primate Hazard (PGA)<br />10. El Gringo Grande (Chupacabras de Estados Mexicanos)<br />11. Adolph Murderbear (Boy Scouts of America)<br />12. The Homeliest English (Amish folk)<br />13. The Lord, Our Savior (Church of the Holy Sasquatch)<br />14. “Some guy” (Planned Parenthood)<br />15. Deep Woods Buddy (National Association for Pet Loss and Bereavement)<br /><br />coming soon...<br />The Only Pedigreed Cat Names Ever Rejected by the Cat Fanciers Association!<br /><br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-31208491802894725142014-11-15T13:02:00.002-06:002014-11-15T13:02:33.983-06:00Not Again, Jehovah!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxSziTzoRUZi5RtZ_03XxnEZjQngOc9tIaCDpC2d0GKYYCF2ap1Vk6ZM2h_l7jdEaSaN9z1C5qKe21xOeR00rZa9ea65OfTpIF0m7oW1VVBNdwuJGPi0XXGnJfXrMIQL0yqb77h3T240Rs/s1600/kermit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxSziTzoRUZi5RtZ_03XxnEZjQngOc9tIaCDpC2d0GKYYCF2ap1Vk6ZM2h_l7jdEaSaN9z1C5qKe21xOeR00rZa9ea65OfTpIF0m7oW1VVBNdwuJGPi0XXGnJfXrMIQL0yqb77h3T240Rs/s1600/kermit.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Shall I never be free of Carl, the nattily attired Jehovah’s Witness who corners me at work annually with his unsophisticated theological redux? He’s been sticking me with his extra copies of <i>Awake!</i> and <i>The Watchtower</i> for more than ten years now. After the first several years, I let slip that I’m a “nonbeliever” (he inevitably says “atheist,” which isn’t quite on the money, but I usually give a Costanza-esque “ehh,” as a sub-verbal surrender to imperfect terminology), so he comes back about once a year, always on a beautiful day, to see if he can convert me with his puny rhetoric.<br /><br />That way, Carl can hold up his hand at the sky and say, “God created all this beauty, and gave us eyes to enjoy it, and all the senses….” He can also keep his suit dry, and not feel too bad about leaving hapless passengers fermenting in the minivan. There’s always someone in there, cracking the window to get some air, or worse, coming out to join the Lord’s gentle mugging of my sensibilities. But this year, the minivan has become a much loftier, pearlier contraption, while Carl and I both have more nostril hair than in previous meetings. The Lord giveth and the Lord giveth.<br /><br />I understand that there’s a thing, based apparently in scripture, compelling Christians to proselytize, so I try not to be too mean. Early this summer I even bought a lame cookbook from two college girls selling icky fundraiser (insert Hellraiser parody horror pic here: “FUNDRAISER”) illiterature to fund their own educations, even though I wanted to say something like, “I prefer not to give money to stuff that detracts from human progress.” They wanted to sell me overtly Christian children’s books at the outset, but I went ahead and broke them the news that I was unholy, and frowned on Christ in my storybooks. The cookbook was pitched as some sort of soft-core consolation item, but on later inspection, it was peppered with little doxological snippets alongside spiritually intrusive dingbats. Why did I buy it? Because, you know, they seemed sweet. <br /><br />A couple of years ago I told Carl that there was a certain assumption (condescension would be more accurate) in casually trying to convert people. It sort of implies that they haven’t given life— or at least metaphysics—much thought. So, from that point on, I was going to try converting him. I wasn’t really joking, but I knew it would be taken as a joke. That’s part of the assumption: that this discussion will take place on a one-way street. Of course you should talk to God, but don’t talk back.<br /><br />After some awkward small-talk about real estate or whatever, Carl gets down to brass flim-flam. He asks if my wife goes to church.<br /><br />“Yeah, out in Billings.”<br /><br />“What church?”<br /><br />“Oh, I always forget. Disciples of Christ, I think. They’re pretty easy to get along with. They let women be ministers, so they’re pretty liberal… they’re, oh,” I say with a smile, “They’re the same denomination that Jim Jones was, the guy who killed with Kool-Aid!” A joking truth.<br /><br />“Ah, no wonder you don’t want to go!” I think he’s kidding.<br /><br />“So, they’re one of the more liberal denominations in all of... Christendom, I guess.” An unusual word choice, but I think it works.<br /><br />A sort of lightbulb flashes above Carl. He says “Christendom” is a word they like to use at his church. I feel a tic of vocabulary pride, but simultaneously, I feel I may have unexpectedly stepped in something worrisome. Nothing really comes of it. <br /><br />Carl wants to know if I will change my mind about God if I’m ever about to die.<br /><br />“I don’t think so, ‘cause I don’t want to be a coward about it. I don’t know if you know the writer Christopher Hitchens, but people asked him the same thing when he was dying of cancer. It just made him mad, because he said that would be the most cowardly way to go, changing your mind at the end just because it’s comforting and easy… there was some philosopher who had a term for this, Kierkegaard maybe, Kierkegaard’s Gambit?” <br /><br />I couldn’t think of it then, of course, but with the aid of Wikipedia, I remember it’s Pascal’s Wager. It's simply a formulation showing the economical wisdom in choosing to believe, based on having everything (eternal salvation) to gain and nothing to lose (plain old inevitable death). It’s logically true and shrewd, but still kind of cheap, reducing transcendent truths to monkey-grabs-banana self-interest. To me, Hitchens's stance is more heroic.<br /><br />Carl also whipped out that same old scammy thought experiment about an intelligently designed universe being too beautiful and finely tuned to be a “random occurrence.” Everything works together like a fine timepiece. “So, if you break apart a watch into a bunch of pieces and toss them into a bucket, evolution should make them come together into a watch again?” He uses this one every time, but never gets better at it. Last time, I think he pulverized a hypothetical jet airplane.<br /><br />“No, but that analogy doesn’t mean anything,” I say, “it just demonstrates a poor understanding of science.” I never think on my feet well enough to assemble a really good counter for this one, because it shorts out my brain slightly on the conceptual level. With hindsight’s advantages, I can say: <br /><br />
• For starters, there’s nothing “random” about natural laws; to the contrary, physics is much less random than the irrational outcries of religion. That said, it’s just as easy to refine one’s definition of God to recast natural laws as “His” thought processes. This would at least put Carl and I on common ground in a “book of creation” model, where we would be separated only by metaphorical interpretation. <br /><br /> • Further, a watch is clearly a man-made thing. Sure, it evokes the “watchmaker” metaphor for intelligent design, but to paint a complete picture, it should be partnered with a hypothetical guy who can fix watches. Of course we know watches don’t magically reassemble. Magic is for irrational people like Carl. If it worked, you wouldn’t need a watch for the analogy. I could turn around and say, “Carl, if only God can make a tree, why can’t I just put a bunch of firewood in a tumbler, pray over it, and pull out an intact tree later?” Hopefully he would answer, “Because that’s crazy, that’s not how things work,” so I could say, “Exactly. It’s a stupid scenario, huh?”<br /><br />
• Unfortunately, the only valuable refutation of Carl’s clunky misinterpretations would be to bonk his head clear and then make him take a long regimen of science classes.<br /><br />At some point, speaking about the language of the Bible, Carl mentioned that “some translations of the Bible were tampered with.” Ha! Yes.<br /><br />“The original writing of the Bible WAS the tampering!” I said.<br /><br />“I don’t know about that…”<br /><br />“Yeah, because how can you convey infinite wisdom and ultimate truth in some limited human language? Just translating it into another language changes some of the meaning.”<br /><br />Just when I was getting somewhere, Carl had to leave. Some old ladies in his car were getting antsy; one had popped the back door open, presumably to get some air or stretch her legs, since they’d been waiting for 20-30 minutes. He’d had something of a hot daughter with him one time, pretty, dressed like a Little House on the Prairie character, but today it was only old ladies. Carl encouraged me to read <i>The Watchtower</i>. The next day, I did. Thanks to a sophisticated form of print-based hypnotism and aerosolized LSD in the ink, I’m now a Jehovah’s Witness.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtdgUmGkgLfs14fgR47W6Ai5ZYjvZCmiS4L5mVznVZEknbnB_WqyMgmC8GQEsRfvHYVyzIrjmYVNrPP3twyp_O0hemELKKBqAspWRZftCb9Ll2P4ydA1wI17LDhu_snkYpqnpyfg7CaGVt/s1600/watchtower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtdgUmGkgLfs14fgR47W6Ai5ZYjvZCmiS4L5mVznVZEknbnB_WqyMgmC8GQEsRfvHYVyzIrjmYVNrPP3twyp_O0hemELKKBqAspWRZftCb9Ll2P4ydA1wI17LDhu_snkYpqnpyfg7CaGVt/s1600/watchtower.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />
Joking. What would I do with all of my kick-ass Halloween stuff? Not get rid of it!<br />
<br />
But the same week, in a parking lot, I walked by a table with a sign reading, “WHAT DOES THE BIBLE TEACH?” I wanted to stop and say, “I suspect it teaches nothing very well. If it did, wouldn’t all Christians agree on what it says? Wouldn’t it make this table unnecessary?”<br /> </div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-14187232022827984842014-10-28T23:00:00.002-05:002014-10-28T23:00:39.561-05:00xtranormal megafail<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPvvJxnsKY1Ekv1IYLBUpe1rMeVmo7iZy2hsJrm41_Rt2MhpfkP4vdyKUgMnEFiNmkharUc7fSgpgybw5Q41qrE1RE0Ydi7pchoTpga0nv6UIxvz1LaJ8oCrNvAVqu3SvjieYLcQw55S0n/s1600/make-your-own-funny-movies-online-with-xtranormal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPvvJxnsKY1Ekv1IYLBUpe1rMeVmo7iZy2hsJrm41_Rt2MhpfkP4vdyKUgMnEFiNmkharUc7fSgpgybw5Q41qrE1RE0Ydi7pchoTpga0nv6UIxvz1LaJ8oCrNvAVqu3SvjieYLcQw55S0n/s1600/make-your-own-funny-movies-online-with-xtranormal.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Damn it, bring this shit back, internet!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Something bad happened to the website "xtranormal," where you could make cool animated movies with your own dialogue in the mouths of little cartoon characters. I made one a few years ago, but it's gone, and the idiots who bought out the site not only lost all the videos, but the editing program is defunct, so I can't remake it. At least I still have the script, which is a conversation between my mom and me. It's kind of a "greatest hits" of my mom's best lunacy from around 2009-2010, all rolled into one dialogue, with my exasperation as a bonus. <br />
<br />
(Unfortunately I can't recreate the clunky, Siri-style voices and the little gestures the characters made, not to mention the zooming and "camerawork," which made it more fun to watch.) <br />
<br />
Chad, are you going to cowboy church with us?<br /><br />No, Mom. I mean, you know if I go, it will just be to make fun of people and look for whoever tells you all those lies about Obama.<br /><br />There are some really nice people at cowboy church. They play good music and there’s such good food, and there’s hardly any church. Even Sam likes to go, because they don’t really preach.<br /><br />Well, I might go someday. Not this week.<br /><br />Don’t you like country music?<br /><br />You know I don’t. Johnny Cash is the only country guy I like.<br /><br />Maybe if you go, you’ll get to meet Doctor Mosier, the vet from Ash Grove. He’s so nice. Did you know that Al Gore lied about all that global warming? Do you think he just made it all up? I thought he used to really be an honest fella. He’s the son of a cattleman, you know.<br /><br />What? No, Al Gore didn’t lie. I mean, we can’t prove any of it yet, because it takes years just to measure what’s happening in the atmosphere. Is Doctor Mosier the one who tells you all this crap? What a jerk.<br /><br />No, he’s a very nice man. His daughter died about fifteen years ago. That was so sad, and he is just the nicest man. He was a large animal vet, so you know what kind of great person he is.<br /><br />Okay. Well, I don’t know if that really makes you any sort of person, but I’m sure you like him.<br /><br />He keeps track of all the bad things Obama is doing to America. Here in just a couple of years they’re going to take the flag down from the White House and take away all our bibles and make everyone become Muslim.<br /><br />Oh Jesus. Quit listening to this shit. Two years ago you thought Obama was going to take everybody’s guns away, but that never happened, did it?<br /><br />Well, not yet, but it still might.<br /><br />That doesn’t make any sense! You know Obama is running for re-election, right? How is he going to get any votes if he forces everybody to change their religion and steals their guns? He’s not going to do anything like that. He’s just a middle of the road politician. He’s not a socialist or a Muslim, he’s just a boring president who’s black, so old people in Ash Grove don’t like him.<br /><br />When I listen to my teevee preacher on Sunday morning, he says Christians are going to be rounded up by the government.<br /><br />Which one is saying that? It sounds like that evil creep from Texas, what’s his name? John Hagee.<br /><br />Oh, I believe everything he says.<br /><br />OH GOD! You like John Hagee? He’s probably the WORST ONE.<br /><br />I love listening to him. He’s so smart.<br /><br />Oh man, he’s such a gross, fat, city slicker bastard. He’s just a disgusting hatemonger.<br /><br />He’s wonderful. I need him to help me get into Heaven.<br /><br />No you don’t! He just wants you to think that so you’ll send him money. He doesn’t have any direct line to God any more than I do. He does sermons against education because he wants people to be stupid.<br /><br />He preaches against Muslims because they’re trying to take over the country, just like they’re taking over Sweden. I talked to a man from Sweden, and he said the Muslims just have to reach fifteen percent of the population, and then they can take over.<br /><br />I’ll bet that’s what Sarah Palin says, too.<br /><br />Sarah Palin wants to save the world. If Saturday Night Live would just stop picking on her, she could sell more books and become president, and then we could get prayer back in schools.<br /><br />God damn. What else is on your mind, Mom?<br /><br />You know they’re sending all the horses to Mexico to be tortured, and soon there won’t be any animals left in the United States. They want to get rid of all the farmers.<br /><br />Who are “THEY”? Who is doing this? <br /><br />Obama and the animal rights people. The PETA people. Now that they passed Proposition B, all the good dogs are going to be euthanized, and only the rescue dogs will be left. All the best dogs that breeders have been working with for years will be gone.<br /><br />You know that your pure bred dogs all came from wolves, right? All that selective breeding proves Darwin’s theories, because Darwin just said that evolution is just the accumulation of traits favored by the environment.<br /><br />Oh, I don’t believe in evolution. I believe in Adam and Eve.<br /><br />God dammit. <br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-23293915496855425982014-10-19T23:04:00.000-05:002014-10-27T00:28:47.561-05:00Review of Pythian Castle<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3fAaWNfWHb81TQrxCk4djn_qHah5n3_4esjiPJh1Xh_KShTbwSX_O-RSiSQ5T9u7NAzw7mkhiM6ZABhNvLLVSDgjzdrbF1i11ypXsI7edp4cAUthtk_pCaNDFzexJfekOBTKfNjL3CAZ/s1600/pythiancastle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW3fAaWNfWHb81TQrxCk4djn_qHah5n3_4esjiPJh1Xh_KShTbwSX_O-RSiSQ5T9u7NAzw7mkhiM6ZABhNvLLVSDgjzdrbF1i11ypXsI7edp4cAUthtk_pCaNDFzexJfekOBTKfNjL3CAZ/s1600/pythiancastle.jpg" height="238" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pythian Castle, in Springfield, MO, designated a haunted site by people who see dead people</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
No matter where one's supernatural sensitivity may fall (I for one am fully ghost-blind and ectoplasmically neutral), I believe everyone enjoys a nice portal to another reality. Stargates and Narnian wardrobes being in short supply here in Missouri, one must settle for the old standbys: weird caves, haunted houses, and surprisingly enough, a century-old castle built by a mostly forgotten fraternal order called the Knights of Pythias, or the Pythians. <br />
<br />
Although Springfield’s Pythian Castle is only 100 years old (much newer than some of the houses in the area), its architectural hubris, ancient decor, and sheer heft give the impression that one has stepped into another age, or at least discovered a living stage for obscure local history. The building's thermal mass alone helps transport one backward in time: the three-foot-thick stone walls held a bridle on the sunny warming of the mid-March Saturday when I was there. The proprietors even ran two kerosene heaters in the grand dining room for the benefit of our party, but jackets stayed on and only the sunlit windowsills were warm. We speculated that the structure might retain summer heat well into autumn.<br />
<br />
The castle also has the added magic of seeming much larger on the inside than the exterior would suggest. The front entry is only mansion-esque, but the deeper one delves within, the more castle-like it becomes. There are several huge rooms, including a theater on the top floor. However, most of the castle’s creepiness points are scored on the lower levels, where there are dungeon-like chambers once used to hold German and Japanese prisoners of war, plus a dark, somewhat claustrophobia-inducing tunnel leading underground to a boiler facility. Now lit by a rope of LED lights, it was once, apparently, traversed by children who carried laundry to the far-back boiler facility—in the dark, or maybe with candles.<br />
<br />
The castle is owned by two women, a mother and a daughter who bought the castle at auction about 20 years ago, saving it from demolition. They spent some years fixing it up, restoring it (one assumes) to something resembling former glory. Since the building served multiple functions over the years—meeting hall, retirement home, military infirmary, tourist attraction—there is no way to make it "accurate" or "frozen in time," as the owners explain in response to one negative Google reviewer who wished it were more "authentic." But the entry area, with its grand fireplace/sitting room, foyer, and dining rooms, feels more like an historic hotel. Slightly spooky old photographs and paintings of distinguished people and dogs dominate the entry hall, along with some Halloweenish decorations such as unconvincing suits of armor, placards of coats-of-arms, and big fake tomes that are not books at all, just decor objects.<br />
<br />
A tour of the castle begins as visitors gather in the foyer at the appointed time. If it is a “ghost tour,” it will be after dark, probably on a weekend, and it will take longer. A guide appears and begins stabbing people to establish the atmosphere. No—but that might be cool, if well acted. A guide appears, and it might be one of the owners, or it might be Tim, a theatrical and rotund man likely in his thirties. Tim is the way to go. He has a knack for the history surrounding the castle, and for zestfully communicating stories about hauntings. At key moments, he will warn the group, turn off lights, and attempt to contact the dead. Nothing happened when I was there, but whatever the true track record of the paranormal, Tim is good at expressing how commonly and recently there was a weird response from The Other Side, and how somebody lost their shit, or how he himself almost lost his shit when a ghost yelled in his ear or licked him or burned out a light bulb, etc.<br />
<br />
If it’s a ghost tour, before you enter the castle proper, visitors have a chance to rent EMF detectors for five bucks. Whatever kind of electronic device they actually are, they appear as a small plastic box with a row of LEDs, much like a stud-finder. Supposedly, they will detect electromagnetic fields created by specters or dancing skeletons or masturbating kobolds. I declined to rent one, but two in our group got them, and thank Zuul, because the presence of EMF detectors gives Tim additional material for his routine. This helps differentiate a “ghost tour” from a regular tour. In certain areas, Tim urges the EMFers to hold their detectors aloft, or bring them together. Sometimes they blink randomly, or in unison. Are they detecting a ghost? A miswired electrical conduit? A hidden transmitter? Tim’s cell phone? You’ll never know!<br />
<br />
In a large dance hall, you are encouraged to sit and listen, classroom-style, to Tim’s intro to Pythians. It turns out they were not creepy or even mysterious, just a society of mostly rich guys who made a group similar to the freemasons, but less famous and less storied. They made a castle as a sort of retirement home for their widows, orphans, or other needy family members of Pythians who died or became disabled. Before social security, there were members-only castles. After a few decades, the military bought the castle and used it for medical quarantines and WW2-related operations. Numerous people died here over the years, mostly soldiers, most notably POWs but also ailing children, so you have your pick of odd and potentially resentful spirits to imagine. <br /><br />
Tim gives a few warnings, both practical and spooky, because he doesn’t want you falling down over the castle’s numerous pre-code hazards, and I think he’s also planting little power-of-suggestion seeds to get everyone primed for paranormal sensitivity. Then he walks the group around. The ground-floor rooms are generally beautiful in their finish but not especially suggestive or storied. There are stories of barracks, infirmary beds, and dances. As you might expect, the basement level is where the action is. Down the stairs you go.<br /><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEituNZjNm6MfUXlyigNkS33v5NT0LLmSwXcLfyQkVsLGfgMdUoFnSbUur7PJ99OSxb8MlxZ8oSvaaCvVUDpW3z7D2-4suprBeUh4crtfKxPMuPLam3q1o9RiuLXEbYVrNdkCPwOI3Q_C-l-/s1600/kitch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEituNZjNm6MfUXlyigNkS33v5NT0LLmSwXcLfyQkVsLGfgMdUoFnSbUur7PJ99OSxb8MlxZ8oSvaaCvVUDpW3z7D2-4suprBeUh4crtfKxPMuPLam3q1o9RiuLXEbYVrNdkCPwOI3Q_C-l-/s1600/kitch.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
After winding through a couple of bending stone/concrete stairs, our group squeezed into a kitchen-like area with large, defunct boiler equipment. Tim talked, but I was distracted by a Cheerio on the otherwise clean concrete floor. I looked all around for more cereal, but there was just the one piece. How old was it? When we moved on to the next area, my wife’s uncle Stan told his wife, Margaret, that he saw a little boy run through, but there were no children in our group. I did not see the boy. Should I have eaten the Cheerio to gain a connection to the errant spirit? Did losing the Cheerio cause the boy to be stuck in this basement lo these many years after dying? Did anyone else see the Cheerio? Did Stan only tell Margaret he saw the boy because he knows that’s the sort of spooky thing she likes?<br /><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0xuEcDn-gIJWjol3186siSDvHdkD-rn4hA4VUo9gsj9aC-zLBvNNNXYoKFtNp6wq28WDXNQfO5YCYy7uTAjoGLNXUkPwNYIl5Zv6yFNlJCr8EJOJvvj3Tm4hhiImV1utxpqctqwG0Ml_6/s1600/tunnel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0xuEcDn-gIJWjol3186siSDvHdkD-rn4hA4VUo9gsj9aC-zLBvNNNXYoKFtNp6wq28WDXNQfO5YCYy7uTAjoGLNXUkPwNYIl5Zv6yFNlJCr8EJOJvvj3Tm4hhiImV1utxpqctqwG0Ml_6/s1600/tunnel.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If you can't see the far end, whatever is there can't see you.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The creepiness peaks, thanks to claustrophobic architecture, when Tim lets everyone go through a rickety door. We go single file into a tight tunnel, probably 40-50 yards. He tells us that it goes underground to the boiler facility, which is a separate building behind the castle, so there is a long steel pipe running the length of the passage. It would have been pitch black in Pythian times, when children, Tim says, used to carry laundry through there, or maybe they just had to go stoke the boilers in winter. Now, a string of blue rope lights has been attached to the boiler pipe. For the most part, going downstairs has removed all sunlight, but there are exceptions. One is a six-inch concrete vent, halfway along the tunnel, where dim daylight weeps out, along with a puff of outside air. It’s just enough to make you say, “If Tim decides this is the ideal time to lock the whole group in the tunnel, I will claw my way past the others to this drainlike hole so at least I can breathe until Tim kills us.” Granted, Tim lets everyone out, which is nice of him.<br /><br />
<br />
The basement becomes huge. There is a big chamber with high ceilings. Off to the left, smaller rooms are said to have been used as prison cells for German prisoners of war. They have cool textures and rusty stains on the walls. Tim states that the Germans there were pretty bad, angry guys, and at least one of them died here. He also says this area is the best for the EMF detectors; they often register “activity” here. In one of the prison chambers, the two in our group with devices use them. They move slowly around the room, raising the detectors, lowering them here and there. Tito Godfrey, my wife’s cousin’s husband, has downloaded an EMF detector phone app since we arrived, and he seems to be getting something, but not really sure. He also takes a couple of photos, and one of them has some glowing rods or spheres in it. This area is also oddly drafty, for a basement with no windows. Tim mentions something about feeling chills here. I spend a few moments looking around for sources of moving air, and have to admit, I can’t see any. We’re quite far away, at this point, from the stairs, or from the vent-hole in the tunnel. The two EMF detectors have some slight blips on them. The room has primitive wiring in some visible steel conduit; I don’t know if this could affect the devices by way of electrical interference, since I don’t even know what the devices are. They could just be walkie talkies with LEDs in lieu of speakers, so anyone (Tim!) with a device on the same frequency could signal them. Or we could be wading through a pissed-off Nazi’s spectral porridge just now.<br />Then there is a cool room where a Japanese POW painted stuff on the wall. Too dark for me to get a decent photo, but interesting to look at. <br /><br />
The group enters a stone chamber straight out of Dungeons and Dragons, but with a single light bulb hanging in the center. This will be Tim’s greatest paranormal gambit. He gets everyone in the room, lined up all around, backs to the walls. He says this was once an interrogation room for grilling German soldiers. Tim says he has been accosted by spirits here more than once, with some disturbed entity yelling right in his ear. He turns off the light and loudly asks a few questions—first in English, then in what seems like convincing German: “Why are you here?” “What do you want?” and maybe “Are you angry?” There is no response from beyond, but I can’t fault Tim for lack of dramatization. Tim turns the light back on. <br /><br />
As we file out of the room, an older woman who knows my mother-in-law trips over the door threshold and falls like a felled tree, face first. Maybe the German spirit shoved her. She must have caught the brunt of it on her arms, because they peel her off the floor and she seems shaken but basically fine. (Except of course that she can now only speak German and begins killing all Americans!) <br />
<br />
Back out the way we came, we worm up to the ground floor, then to the grand staircase. Tim suggests that our group divide by gender, so that men and women go up different sides of the stairs, as was the old-timey custom. Even though we just went to real effort to get a rise out of a resentful ghost in the basement, I guess we are now pussyfooting around the sensibilities of the dead. We arrive, two gender parades, on both sides of a theater that can seat several dozen. Tim gives a little history as usual, then fires up the room’s rather powerful speakers to play audio from a group gathering where a phantom yelled a rather vague distortion into the microphone. It might be “I’ll kill you” or “I’ll get you,” or who knows. Just like the “white noise” phenomenon, unless you are the one who made the recording, it’s another thing that could obviously be a hoax. But with Tim’s endorsement of authenticity, you at least pay attention. Especially since he plays it at about 120 decibels.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTUEQpph9KA1aIf9zpeQOlmjcY9lFC8NyckwO6NZGsbu0ZGH24IFEZTe0T4i6wFTsPv2qhvIO0An4Wh3MD5sDBqN0-60c9zPsD8OMLOV1vXWQ669a6G7sa7hC5uF-qEGOOgQDXkabH19tl/s1600/theater.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTUEQpph9KA1aIf9zpeQOlmjcY9lFC8NyckwO6NZGsbu0ZGH24IFEZTe0T4i6wFTsPv2qhvIO0An4Wh3MD5sDBqN0-60c9zPsD8OMLOV1vXWQ669a6G7sa7hC5uF-qEGOOgQDXkabH19tl/s1600/theater.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Finally, there is an unfinished room upstairs, with raw walls and lots of windows. A dead boy named Peter is said to play with a ball here, and in the nearby halls and stairs. The description of Peter could actually fit the errant boy Stan saw in the basement, near the abandoned Cheerio. Tim gives us some silent time in the room, then directs a few questions at whatever restless spirit may loiter there. Nothing presents, other than a cat that sits on a covered couch. It looks like it can’t believe another stupid group of humans is chumping up the room again.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbXpryQz-6WtyVNXDinSw7o91jJgh0Oter46qk1DOpUSJs4b57swStt1UZHIcWz97DKvapJbHxxsq2OpslVIaUl2PDce5_wGZhg8NnVy8QprdmYsrNWR-UsZF8v6t2CO9nkFS_VVKeEPj/s1600/cat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFbXpryQz-6WtyVNXDinSw7o91jJgh0Oter46qk1DOpUSJs4b57swStt1UZHIcWz97DKvapJbHxxsq2OpslVIaUl2PDce5_wGZhg8NnVy8QprdmYsrNWR-UsZF8v6t2CO9nkFS_VVKeEPj/s1600/cat.jpg" height="400" width="301" /></a></div>
<br />
In the final tally, I saw nothing that made me feel haunted, but I admit there were a few puzzling moments. The place is impressive, and Tim fills it with interesting talk. This is supposed to be one of the most haunted places in Missouri, but if nothing manifests, at least there’s Tim. And let me know if that Cheerio is still there.<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-46969159871135050582014-09-28T11:33:00.003-05:002014-09-28T11:36:21.074-05:00Nontraditional Students, cont'd<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmHru8n5ObUqC6oZ6FZjMw2VbDCP6FGRBdX7pOnnQvOTqGB93zc77rcKOvFLd2-vIolzLnCittXe9FCmehFBiWog7Fqlw9_DlOVlnbL180QqkYcmL2DYQ1AibDRmGxM7FPZtftvlLJKj9S/s1600/community-nbc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmHru8n5ObUqC6oZ6FZjMw2VbDCP6FGRBdX7pOnnQvOTqGB93zc77rcKOvFLd2-vIolzLnCittXe9FCmehFBiWog7Fqlw9_DlOVlnbL180QqkYcmL2DYQ1AibDRmGxM7FPZtftvlLJKj9S/s1600/community-nbc.jpg" height="400" width="266" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<b>The Narcoleptic Newspaperman</b><br />
I can’t recall his name. Something like Bob. I’d guess he was about 50, and nearing 400 pounds. He was a knowledgeable sort when conscious, but he would literally fall asleep moments after arrival, and stay that way for quite some time. He often wore one of those classic reporter hats, as I think he had been some kind of reporter. I probably wouldn’t remember him at all, but for the insane class context: a small graduate seminar in a cramped room, maybe ten students sitting around a long table, taught by Debora Greger. On the street, Debora would pass for harmless if not insubstantial, but in a class setting, she could be deadly. Her cutting remarks happened mostly on paper, but even in workshop she could stab you in the neck with a look or an icy phrase. “I can’t believe you wasted my time with that,” was frequently her subtext. She wasn’t 100% venom, but she kept her fangs primed. Yet Bob seemed immune. Debora never gave him any grief that I know.<br />
The course itself could have been part of Bob’s problem. Debora was never a livewire as a teacher, and the subject was Literary Letters (correspondence written by poets, playwrights, etc). It turned out pretty okay, but I had the active ingredient of William Bowers nearby. Bowers tended toward being the opposite of Debora as a presence. It was no small task staving off his smirks and mirth-vibes, for which Debora was a perfect background: two parts librarian, one part dominatrix, one part storybook witch… sitting right next to, as Bowers put it, “a huge, liquid man” on the verge of snoring. Then we would all write fake letters to dead people, hand them to a woman who apparently couldn’t stand us, and discuss. Bob woke up semi-regularly, adding surprisingly relevant comments from the outskirts of Slumberland. <br />
<br />
<b>Nirmal T.</b><br />
Now back in Missouri, around 2006, I was teaching Poetry Writing 1. My wife knew this Asian hipster guy, from the library or computer lab? Nirmal was in his mid-to-late twenties. His parents were originally from India, I think, but more recently from Bahrain. He was a business student, but I guess he needed an elective, and ended up in my class after getting my permission to add.<br />
Heather had already warned me of Nirmal’s bad study habits. The semester previous, he would ask her to help him edit papers, then try to get her to do much of the writing while he goofed around. He might work on moonwalking or another dance move. He was obsessed with Michael Jackson, becoming even more so after Jacko died. He believed Jacko was killed by the government or some other powerful people. He also wanted to go shopping a lot. Heather went to some downtown stores with him once, to help him pick out hipster clothes. He was so into dressing up, going out, and discussing Michael Jackson, that Heather decided Nirmal was probably gay, but since he would soon return to the middle east, had to remain in the closet. Or maybe he was just half half mad with American brain worms.<br />
Nirmal had good conversational English, but little of the English language depth one might need for great writing. But as I told him, that can be faked/edited out in Poetry 1. Most semesters I had one person who didn’t get what syllables were; that semester, it was Nirmal. Still, after some false starts, he wrote one really interesting poem—right before dropping the course. <br />
<br />
<b>Brian B.</b><br />
Brian was only around 30, but he had a son around 4 or 5 at the time. His dad-ness came through in some of his work, which accentuated his non-traditional nature. But he was an English/journalism guy, and had no troubles with any of the coursework. In fact, he nailed most of the assignments with clairvoyant ease, which may only go to show that we were on the same wavelength regarding humor or literary agenda. He was even emotionally stable, socially levelheaded, and blessed with the constitution of someone capable of attending class without moaning about it. He didn’t freak out even once, and turned in a superior stack of final poems. It comes as no surprise that Brian just won a couple of Missouri Press Awards. He may have even had my back in a moral-support way, when it came to enduring Charles, the vaguely passive-aggressive dude in the same room. It’s also possible that Charles was just much less funny than he believed himself to be, which, when accentuated by questionable physiognomy, produced the effect of passive aggression. In any case, Brian was a soothing antidote for Charles.<br />
<br />
<b>Ben J. and John M., Army dudes</b><br />
Ex-military guys always carry a certain gravitas, especially in creative writing classes. Not only are they a few years older, but workshops are traditionally inhabited by mostly wussies who suckle at the teat of expressing life experience, and the grimmer the better. Having been in the shit can really lend credibility. It helps if a soldier can write a decent sentence. The two guys that come to mind were actually pretty good writers. Ben lent a beer-and-Metallica edge to a poetry class, while John showed up in the one fiction workshop I taught, providing a mixed vibe of survivalist/deer hunter/prison guard. I seemed to recall him writing a first-person shooter account of a guy watching his ex through a rifle scope. I think they were both pretty upright guys, although I suspected burgeoning Republicanism.<br />
<br />
<b>The Blockhead</b><br />
The one time I taught an evening class at MSU, there were a few 30+ women enrolled. Two of them were just fine, if not commendable. But one was the second part of a duo I called “The Genius & the Blockhead.” Boy, were they a pain. I guess they were roommates, and after a few weeks, they began tag-teaming my class—one would come so the other wouldn’t have to. This became especially insulting the time I saw them both in the hall before class, but then The Genius, wearing a giant Cat-in-the-Hat hat, skipped class. When I tried to tell them they were missing too many meetings to avoid some kind of penalty, The Genius (apparently well versed in the technicalities of attendance) informed me that I had to have DATED documentation of each absence to make it stick. I had only been making little tally marks beside someone’s name in the roster, not creating a signed & dated log. Lesson learned.<br />
<br />
The Blockhead was older than the Genius, but seemed to worship her. When I gave the Genius’s first poem a B+, they both waited after class, until everyone else left, and informed me that I must have miscalculated, because The Genius was, after all, a published writer already. They didn’t say where she was published, but their tone implied that I really wasn’t qualified to judge such a brilliant young superstar.* I kind of wish I would have said, “Tough shit, titty baby. Why don’t you quit grade grubbing, go back to your weird domicile and commence with the creepy co-dependency in private?” Instead, I said they should just look at it like my only way to apply pressure for final portfolio revisions, as revision is an important part of the writing process. They kept hanging around. They just couldn’t get on board with my inappropriately harsh grade. I think The Genius was one breath away from saying that THE POEM IN QUESTION had been published somewhere already, which would have been awesome, because submitting recycled work violates the Academic Honor Code. That’s a “multiple submission.” Anyway, I had to put up with their buttered horseshit all semester. Neither of them was much good, but at least The Blockhead was lesser in a way that I could deduct for. The Genius, on the other hand, was technically proficient—just brimming over with bogus assertions, clichés, archaic noodling, painful thesaurus language, etc. “Lost in purloined sadness accrued…” began one of her leaden lumps of meteoric language. Reading her poems became almost pure misery for me. To spare myself further encounters, I became passive aggressive. I gave the Blockhead the ‘B’s she barely deserved; I gave The Genius ‘A’s, but loaded her poems with divisive comments that could have come from William Logan or Debora Greger. “Chicken Soup for the Vampire’s Soul” is the only thing I can remember writing in one of my various critiques. At least The Blockhead had the decency to sign her own name to her work; The Genius already had a nom de plume. Mercifully, I have forgotten it.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">*Genius/Blockhead bonus round: I knew I was in for it when, from the first week’s warm-up assignment, I picked a few student haikus (anonymously) to write on the board and discuss. One happened to be from The Genius, and included the phrase “the white snow.” Circling the adjective “white,” I advised that poems, especially very short poems with only 17 syllables, should really conserve words. Since “white” is something we normally assume snow to be, I said one could probably find a better modifier—a more surprising word that would transform or add metaphorical dimension to the idea of snow. For the next couple of minutes, the Blockhead (knowing that was her friend’s poem) led a charge to defend the word “white” as THE PERFECT word choice. No, there could be no better word, ever. Groan.</span> <br />
<br />
<b>Paul J.</b><br />
Paul was a cool old Santa Claus guy, probably 60, physically sturdy and with a solid presence. He was a veteran of English classes, so he had all his shit together and tended to slam-dunk the assignments. Plus, he was a go-to guy for workshop critiques—not a workshop hog at all, but always prepared to give a good, honest response. He listened to critiques of his own work with good grace rather than defensiveness, and accepted some little gag prize for an off-the-cuff workshop award with humor, saying his grandson would like it. At the end of the semester, he told me it was the best writing class he’d ever had. That obviously rang sweet to me, but credit goes to that unfathomable mystery of “workshop chemistry,” over which Paul had almost as much control as I had. Paul had lucked into and helped build one of the best groups I ever ran—several strong writers, no insurmountable egos or super-sensitive basket-cases, good humor as well as smarts and good attendance, plus some interesting, good-natured personalities. I knew, because the other group I had that same semester was brought to a crashing halt when a super-sensitive basket-case had a crying meltdown and almost came to blows with another student. Had he been sitting next to Paul instead, perhaps his loony rat’s nest of a brain could have been detangled.</div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-3133514906638317472014-09-23T00:08:00.000-05:002014-09-23T00:08:12.578-05:00Nontraditional Students<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Whether I was student or teacher, odds were that any given class would be blessed or afflicted with roughly one nontraditional student. Once I was teaching, the first day of class always came with that breath-holding moment when an older student appeared, and I had to wait for him or her to reveal the character attributes I would have to enjoy/endure. Because nontraditional students are there for a reason. And they will likely let you in on it. Rather than drift anonymously through a course as many an undergrad may, the nontraditional will get their money’s worth. Personalize the course. Become an unofficial teaching assistant. Hijack the vibe of the room. Spin off into a flurry of divorce-induced absences and legal documentation. Or disappear entirely.<br /><br />
Of course, traditional students have their ups and downs, quirks and failings, but the nontraditionals tend toward personality-to-burn assertive histrionics that cement their places in the room and the mind. Sometimes you know what’s coming by way of a shot-across-the-bow email on the eve of class: “Dear Professor (sic) Woody, I am enrolled in your class and want you to know in advance that I have two children and (insert special problem here)…” Once or twice, I responded with preemptive sternness to such emails and deflected the person away entirely. Maybe that’s mean, but when someone is predicting putting a drag on your whole operation before day 1, you want to send the message: Buck up, or jump ship. Especially if you’re like me—a total wash-up at being authoritarian in person.<br />
<br />
<b>Jon G.</b><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
This guy was a grinning, friendly, very tan, short-but-mighty dude of about 45, who used to sit in the back of poetry workshop with his leg(s) up on the radiator or next desk. He always joined discussions, but not to toxic levels. He liked to say something was “pretty good” when he liked it. Projecting a very outgoing and happy-go-lucky nature, he talked about taking his son to Little League games, etc. Jon blew my mind ten years after poetry workshop when I found him working at Kinko’s, telling me that he had divorced, and, now in his fifties, was living with a 19-year-old girlfriend. I suppose that is a form of “winning,” but somehow it contaminated my feelings about this old champ.<br /><br /><b>Lori S.</b></div>
She became an MSU teacher later, but all I can remember is how she was kind of a socially dominant, hot, mature adult woman in a room full of barely-more-than-kids. This made her the apple of the teacher’s eye, and it seemed like she frequently talked to him before and after class. On occasion, she wore tight black pleather pants that, you know, made you look. I find it fitting that she is teaching now and I am not. It’s all about the networking.<br /><br /><b>Joe R.</b>— or, “Joe-Man,” was the all-time Godzilla of nontraditional students. A long-time fixture at (Southwest) Missouri State, Joe appeared in one of my poetry workshops circa 1994. I won’t bother trying to capture him in euphemistic language. The guy was— and still is— a tragic wreck of a man-child with just enough determination to keep inflicting himself on others. Driving his motorized wheelchair with his withered T-Rex arms, sometimes gasping for air, sometimes showing up with food in his beard and down his shirt, Joe arrived on his shockwave of resentful need. Naturally, he was astute enough to zero in on me from the start, intuiting, perhaps, that I would have perfect attendance and enough conscience that I would always help him get his drink out of its holder, set up his tape recorder, collect his assignments, etc.<br />
<br />
Then the fun really hit the fan. Joe could barely talk for lack of breath, but he had a lot to say, often unintelligibly. His poems were also long, rambling, repetitive, obvious, and tiresomely loaded with abstractions and the undisguised pain of his life. I think after only a few classes it became clear: Joe was not there to learn; he was there to teach us about him, and about how shitty the world is when you are super fucked-up.<br />
<br />
Mike Burns, the professor, had a pretty even hand with Joe, but it was no secret that Joe tested his patience. He frequently, with decreasing diplomacy, prompted Joe to tie off his comments, or finished reading Joe’s work for him. This was necessary, because Joe’s voice was painfully, haltingly slow. One day, Joe violated workshop protocol by seemingly defensive retort. Someone had asked something I can’t recall...<br /><br />
“It’s why I WROTE… the DAMN… POEM!” Joe gasped. Burns rocked my world by sternly rebuking Joe.<br /><br />
“Joe, you know you don’t get defensive in here! I’ll roll your ass right out of here if you can’t follow the rules!”<br /><br />
Joe said he was sorry, and everything proceeded apace, except that I couldn’t stop thinking about Burns literally rolling Joe’s wheelchair out into the hall like a mad dad.<br /><br />
Another problem with Joe was that he was grandiose, a perfect counterpoint to his omnidirectional misery. He might praise a classmate’s work by comparing it to Wordsworth, or calling it a masterpiece, etc. Even if my own ego got the boost, it wasn’t long before the exaggerated praise proved tiresome.<br /><br />
I soon learned that Joe had completed at least one previous degree, in something like sociology or political science. My friend Aaron told me that his older brother Clay had once had a class with Joe. Aaron and Clay passed Joe in the dining hall one day, and immediately after Joe greeted Clay in passing, Clay turned to Aaron and said, “I hate that son of a bitch!” So, Joe apparently wore out his welcome all over. Another friend who worked at the campus library said Joe would ram his chair into the counter to protest slow service, even if it had nothing to do with ignoring the handicapped, as Joe assumed. Yet another buddy’s girlfriend reported a similar incidence from the financial aid desk, etc. <br /><br />
If there exists a milk of human kindness, Joe had a gift for souring it.<br />
<br />
(Many years later, I would reunite with Joe, in his element: at a comic/gaming/sci-fi convention. Vonnegut-like, I have always been a reluctant member of the same karass. <a href="http://cranialstomp.blogspot.com/2010/10/certain-lamentable-splendor.html">Review the further adventures of Joe-Man and Chad-Man here.</a>)<br /><br /><b>Barb Gunderson</b><br /> Barb was a middle-aged woman who took the first poetry workshop I ever taught. I believe she looked like her name. After one of the first few class meetings, she took me aside for a long sit-down talk at the Student Union. She was fired up, which was cool, but she was obviously looking for too much from the course. She raved about being inspired by Andre Codrescu, among others. She wanted a life-changing experience, and I tried to agree, but I also tried to defuse the bomb of her hopes. She wanted an experience between “Dead Poets Society” and an affair with me. I was like, “I have to follow the course outline, and it’s a “Gordon Rule” course (6000-word minimum of critical writing), but we’ll have some fun.” It turned out to be a relatively lackluster workshop group, which happens about 50% of the time. She reported to me about once per month how disappointed she was. I’m sure at the time I wished she was pretty and nearer to my age, maybe I could have struck up an unethically sexual relationship with her, or at least walked with her in moonlight while reading Rimbaud and Rumi to one another and then licking absinthe off one another’s wrists… but no, she hadn’t the power to break my 26-year drought with the opposite sex, and I was powerless to give her the poetry mind-blow she so desired.<br /><br />Stay tuned for part 2, when we meet some nontraditional students who are actually excellent, as well as more who are nuts.<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-38646746236709591652014-09-01T23:55:00.001-05:002014-09-01T23:55:26.263-05:00FLEAS!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pFBayXBvhEJQeyWD0kFx7un7NwrVBashQ40TQnFNNmomzAdd2gCe_-xoOV_5-QKfW8TTR8erU6opx1yMG4kIP1ipyUG_EKdehMvmXYDq90DIXmwFxwmlOoMA32zHQyuman-l3uWVuLjo/s1600/rhcp-flea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pFBayXBvhEJQeyWD0kFx7un7NwrVBashQ40TQnFNNmomzAdd2gCe_-xoOV_5-QKfW8TTR8erU6opx1yMG4kIP1ipyUG_EKdehMvmXYDq90DIXmwFxwmlOoMA32zHQyuman-l3uWVuLjo/s1600/rhcp-flea.jpg" height="200" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pretty sure I'd rather have this guy in my house, over his namesake.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Around 1979, my mom started raising dogs. Not long after that, cats. Somewhere in there, I’m sure she began raising fleas. I don’t know how many times I went to the sink as a kid to see the post-catwash dish of soaped-and-tweezed fleas. And one time when I slept over at Chris DeLozier’s mom’s house in Branson, she had some cat-fed fleas… that was, I think, when I discovered that you can kill them not by squeezing them, but by pinching AND grinding them between the fingers, with concentrated hot friction that just about makes your fingertips raw.<br /><br />Just twice in my life, I’ve encountered fleas of a different magnitude. Vengeful fleas, with demonic, leg-prickling zest and horror-movie impact (although they are still too small to be filmed, unless you count the impressive flea POV shot in City of Lost Children). Fleas in such obscene numbers that they go from being the least significant things in the room to being the only thing that matters.<br /><br />The first time, I was probably around 14. My mom and sister dabbled briefly in the world of ferrets. Having hitched my wagon to one of my mom’s trips into town (likely hoping to set foot in a Wal-Mart or some other sampler of civilization), I ended up at the home of some old lady in Springfield. She may have had cats as well, but what she really had, to the dismay of whatever gods hold sway over decency, was a concrete basement full of caged ferrets. It must have been hot out, because I was wearing shorts, which I did not wear often. As we reached the basement floor, my pale legs took on a tickling, pepper-like sandstorm of fleas. I think for 30 seconds or so, I tried to keep my cool, but it was not to be endured. We got the hell out of there, but we never forgot.<br /><br />The second time was last month. This August, I became the owner of pestilential fleas. I would like to say Biblical fleas, but the Bible foolishly overlooks fleas as a plagueworthy nuisance*, opting instead for frogs, lice, and child mortality. My old house, now my rental property, was vacated at July’s end. As I helped the renters move their last stuff out, I realized there were fleas. No big surprise—we had had fleas there several times over the decade we lived there with two cats—but I figured, now that the house was empty, I’d set off a fogger or two and be done with it. Two weeks and six foggers later (including two of the highly touted “Knockout” brand), along with powder, some other spray, and a bag of outdoor granules, I’d spent about 80 bucks and the fleas were only getting worse. I had what one seller of insecticide referred to as a “flea nest.”<br /><br />Aside from having no carpet in the house, the scenario couldn’t have been engineered any better for fleas. Their cat had been allowed in and out of the house, providing the fleas a convenient shuttle service. Their dog had been mainly kept inside, so became flea HQ. Humans were non-essential bonus meals.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKNkUFKfQnykR5CjFONapyLHb-kKnok9iG1cKl7Q50Gf8uT31KdUP_fP-ipw8cs3VqvAICL60nQb0oessEokv4oaoMo9iNxMLVALyGXHkdTpluguvFprl8B-8GjK2iS0IlQW6pUmwFf5ex/s1600/fleas.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKNkUFKfQnykR5CjFONapyLHb-kKnok9iG1cKl7Q50Gf8uT31KdUP_fP-ipw8cs3VqvAICL60nQb0oessEokv4oaoMo9iNxMLVALyGXHkdTpluguvFprl8B-8GjK2iS0IlQW6pUmwFf5ex/s1600/fleas.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Going the extra mile for the blogosphere.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Every time I went back to do some work, all I would do was fight fleas and cuss the renters, calling for the death of their dog, their cat, etc. I wondered how they could stand to live there at all, but of course, they couldn’t—they left. Plus, it was better when their pets were there—the dog and cat had been the fleas’ main chuckwagon. Now, I was their only dining experience, and the buffet opened wide when I stepped in. <br /><br />At the apex of fleas, before I finally called an exterminator, I walked over to a sunbeam from a window, knowing fleas love warmth. In that 20-inch square, I saw a couple of fleas per square inch of hardwood floor. I sprayed it all with windex and wiped about 500 into a paper towel. By that point, I already had richly peppered socks, and a ring of 15 or so already biting me around the top of each sock. I retreated to the porch, where I used strips of blue masking tape to trap them. The tape is only sticky enough to hold a flea for about 3 seconds tops, so you just have to pick a good spot, slap fresh tape over it, then fold it over for solid entombment. My better runs with the tape would grab at least a dozen in each 2-3 inch strip. Then I’d spend 10 minutes on the front step, letting the last ones climb my socks so I could take them out individually. The bonus comes when every part of your body starts sending false itch-sensations, but you must look, because every once in a while, a hot-shot flea manages to get above the knee level. Inevitably one or two would make it into the car with me—probably in the seams of my shoes, which were always good cover—and I’d catch those on the drive.<br /><br />After several days of my own attempts, the situation was not only not better, it was increasingly foul, dismal and desperate. I was beginning to think I was at ground zero for the rise of a new strain of superflea. Their skeezy leaping already puts them on the verge of being nature’s teleporters; what the fudge do you do if they grow resistant to all chemicals? I called an exterminator, who came the following Monday morning. I actually left the front door unlocked for him all weekend, thinking there was nothing in there to steal, and if anyone went in to do any mischief, the fleas would make them sorry. <br /><br />After the exterminator, the flea population took a big dive, and it became possible to work in the house again. I’d still catch and kill a dozen or more on arrival, followed by a few per hour. One week later, they were gradually declining but still worrisome. I called the exterminator to see if they ought to come again. Their phone lady said I could expect to see lingering fleas for at least another week, because the eggs would still be hatching, and only after they hatch will the chemical residue work on them. I guess I knew that from internet fleasearch… I would just have to wait, and refrain from mopping the poison off the floors. For the same reason of retaining chemicals, I also decided to leave the house closed up, despite my strong desire to air out the crappy stale mix of dog, pee, cigarettes and flea death.<br /><br />One month into the challenge, the fleas are finally on the ropes. I killed fewer than 20 during a 3-hour tour today. According to the chemical literature, “no new populations will develop.” Pray on that shit, friend, for I say the flea is the worst of nature’s common parasites. No, I’ve never had bedbugs, intestinal worms, or any of that African horror-show crap like eyeball-drillers or waterborne butt noodles, catfish-heads-for-tits, etc. Let’s keep it that way, future renters. Quit scuzzing up the place, ya gross-asses!<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">*Just one more reason the Bible is a poor guide to living: One of the great plagues visited on Egypt is… FROGS? Who cares? Frogs never hurt anyone. Bring on the frogs, man. Frogs are cool, soft, clawless… I mean, wading through a roomful of poison dart frogs sounds pretty daunting, but I don’t think Egypt had those. What a lame threat. Here’s a plague for you: FLEAS. Fleas are the worst of creatures. Chiggers come close, mosquitoes suck but at least you can net them out, ticks are gross… but fleas, man, fucking FLEAS. Worst thing about the frog plague is that I’d feel bad killing them accidentally while walking.</span><br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-65822774679255836042014-08-24T22:48:00.003-05:002014-08-24T22:48:53.994-05:00Renter Rant<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPpdkKfUVeIhE5OGq3kxFLhBPQcrpHF66MXyZj_qacAvwcqPmoFwZM-59CAGyDOIgyZezwXhH_ybPESe4dCNfePUdCAtwfmiLOwZZHCExsJIImuqsscCEBp-Rgw1zlKnOBaXir2LGDgF4h/s1600/Collapsed_House.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPpdkKfUVeIhE5OGq3kxFLhBPQcrpHF66MXyZj_qacAvwcqPmoFwZM-59CAGyDOIgyZezwXhH_ybPESe4dCNfePUdCAtwfmiLOwZZHCExsJIImuqsscCEBp-Rgw1zlKnOBaXir2LGDgF4h/s1600/Collapsed_House.jpg" height="283" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just kidding, it's not this bad.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I declare this day, August whatever, Judgment Day, the day I climb upon my high horse which has been shod with soapboxes, and I judge the living daylights out of all chumps I deem hoseriffic. There will be no mercy, no fairness, and none of my usual hemming, hawing, or judicious wobbling.<br /><br />Alas, I must declare my former renters TURDS. Slackaholics, pantywaists, wee-wees, numbskulls. I now see their lameness as emblematic of their generation’s primary shortcoming, which I will now diagnose: insensate ignorance, the opposite of alertness. Also, a lack of resourcefulness. Lazy? Well, they both had jobs and paid all their rent. Are they stupid? Maybe a little, but not to the core. It’s just, this: wake the fuck up, schmucks! <br /><br />Two 21/22-year-old girls, with boyfriends, one of whom probably lived there most of the time, could not avoid the following problems:<br /><br />
List of Lame<br />• Every time I went over there (about 5 times in the past year) there was a smoke alarm chirping. 9V batteries ain’t that expensive, kids.<br />• Sometime this spring, they stopped mowing the back yard. I left them my old mower, and I even replaced it when it broke down, but that still made mowing a whole yard too tough. At least they mowed the front yard, so anytime I drove by, I wrongly assumed they were on top of shit.<br />• Did not pull weeds or trim vinery anywhere. (Always expected I’d have to catch this up myself)<br />• Never trimmed the hedge. Well, maybe once, poorly? Not sure.<br />• Any time I was there, I would notice they had a TV to watch videos on, but no reception, cable or otherwise. I told them how I made an antenna for free TV, and even offered to make them one. They would just have to get a digital converter box. They just said they were trying to get internet/Netflix. But they seemed to have no sources for news/weather...<br />• Thank god I stopped over 2 days before we hit -8F last winter, to shut off the water to the outside spigots. Their dog bit me, and I had to avoid piles of dog shit in the basement to reach the shutoff, but at least I prevented a broken pipe.<br />• Porch door handle came loose. Rather than tighten it with a screwdriver, they put a lot of masking tape over the latch so it wouldn’t keep them out. (+1 point for being inventive, -2 points for overlooking the obvious problem)<br />• Tree fell over in the back yard. No one told me. I don’t think they realized it fell.<br />• On my second afternoon of reclaiming the back yard, I noticed the attic fan running while both air conditioners were on. This is a bit like opening, say, five windows while using air conditioning.<br />• Almost the entire year they lived there, one or both of them had a defunct little car blocking the garage. First a PT Cruiser, then an older Honda that wouldn’t have bugged me half as much, but it had a fucking BUSH/CHENEY bumper sticker.<br />• They had a garage sale, left sign on fence for 10 days after the sale was over, until I took it down. Also left several unsold items scattered around the yard, including glass tabletop that killed a big rectangle of grass.<br />• Dog pissed repeatedly in one room upstairs, one room downstairs, ruining carpet in upper room, section of hardwood floor in lower room. Curtains nearby also ruined, but different stench. My nose suggests to me that their cat was trying to get a urinary word in edgewise.<br />• Broke window out of back door. Supposedly it was the dog.<br />• I sent them both a text in April: “Once you are sure you won’t need heat, turn the pilot lights off in the floor furnaces. This will keep the house cooler in summer.” Reply from one girl, “OK, will do.” As I scraped a thick layer of dog hair off the furnaces in August, I find warmth, o joyous warmth! Pilot lights still piping hot. Wish I would have shown this to Miranda on her last day there, right after she complained how hot it was in the house.<br />• Smoking. At least they kept it on the porch. But, as my wife pointed out, smoking dulls your sense of smell. That explains their ability to live with the smell of dog and cat piss. It does nothing to explain their ability to live with...<br />• Fleas! Good grief, the fleas! Fleas will have their own rant, coming up.<br /><br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-72200178908216223792014-07-12T00:18:00.004-05:002014-07-13T13:02:29.430-05:00Michiganders<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQyrWsrNVq-ma5e3L1Ezuz0X22VEhviJLn4ODwHdmaaHqWynr2-A7FMruYwVCprOuVp1h_MbtlrVSIwpHs_gnpjuZa_7wAboGvDxzuQaq1gJXahPJOb9AI-yGb9i3fbbZokCzEtRDEY4Cx/s1600/farm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQyrWsrNVq-ma5e3L1Ezuz0X22VEhviJLn4ODwHdmaaHqWynr2-A7FMruYwVCprOuVp1h_MbtlrVSIwpHs_gnpjuZa_7wAboGvDxzuQaq1gJXahPJOb9AI-yGb9i3fbbZokCzEtRDEY4Cx/s1600/farm.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
A recent road trip to Lansing and Detroit took me right to the outskirts of my long-ago childhood home, a farm in Howell, Michigan. On the drive into Detroit, my wife, Heather, and I saw the signs: “Howell, Next Three Exits,” still halfway between Lansing and Detroit (as I’d always repeated since being four or five years old). I was surprised to see Howell was big enough to have three exits. After spending the day in Detroit, we were passing Howell again in early evening, and decided it might be worth pulling off, to see if we could find the old farm. If not, maybe we would find somewhere to eat, or something interesting. Among the top three Google results for Howell, MI was a story about the KKK, but that didn’t really get us anywhere. <br />
<br />
Before leaving Missouri, the idea of finding my old house had popped up, but I’d shrugged it off. Now we needed the address, but no one remembered it. Heather texted my sister and my mom, both notoriously bad at texting responses quickly. “Norton Road,” lurked as a fuzzy recollection, but then I second-guessed it and said “Drury Lane,” which I think had something to do with the address in Illinois where I was born. Heather did find a Norton Road on GPS maps, and it wasn’t far. She called my mom, who launched into a ramble of mostly unhelpful associations, like how I should try to find the lady who used to babysit me. <br />
<br />
“What was her name?” my mom asked.<br />
<br />
“Who, the babysitter?” I said, “Mary Franks?”<br />
<br />
“Yes! Don’t you think it would be neat if you saw her? Wouldn’t she be surprised?”<br />
<br />
“Wouldn’t she be dead? I mean, she was older than you, right?”<br />
<br />
“Oh, maybe she would be dead by now… I guess everyone gets old, just like me.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, I think she would be at least in her eighties by now.”<br />
<br />
My mom asked my dad. He said something like 2118 Norton Road, which my mom said couldn’t be right. Then we asked if she knew a relevant crossroad, and she came up with Amos Road, then talked about how her painting teacher, Lillian van Houten, used to say that the row of trees on our road was the prettiest scenery IN THE WORLD, or something. Once Heather let my mom go, she searched for Norton & Amos Roads together. I had a good feeling about those two names, and I knew it should take us out to the edge of town, which it soon did.<br />
<br />
I have only a scarce handful of memories from that place, but one assumes there is a formative sea of static churning beneath them, since I spent ages 2-6 there. I remembered nothing of the house’s interior, but there was a willow tree behind the house that was a big deal to me. I knew there should be a big barn, and the house had been white in 1979 when we left, but obviously that could change.<br />
As things took a turn for the rural, we turned toward Amos Road, went through some huge trees that might have been the prettiest woods according to some lady, then saw some fields that were what I expected. I told Heather that this was looking right, and there was a row of metal barns in the distance that looked like where my dad used to work. Another quarter mile, and the road came to a T near a little house in front of a willow tree, across the road from a big weathered barn. I parked in front of the barn.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8VjjjNDKUbgwaVbvDcGNzqMbXbOcE6Ybh1eeQEBqeeWsAa22eMNpCgke4h3y7DUtZqwcd03aM9WRSP5XW6Jwi6hF3VgU9OSgprifB-6WUBzDFmMPwCqLob1i3oqF9-CISNVgKPfG-LKX/s1600/barn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8VjjjNDKUbgwaVbvDcGNzqMbXbOcE6Ybh1eeQEBqeeWsAa22eMNpCgke4h3y7DUtZqwcd03aM9WRSP5XW6Jwi6hF3VgU9OSgprifB-6WUBzDFmMPwCqLob1i3oqF9-CISNVgKPfG-LKX/s1600/barn.jpg" height="300" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Sitting out in the front yard of the house was a burly man. At first glance, Heather thought he looked a bit like trouble, maybe still thinking of the KKK thing. I got out and walked toward him with a wave. When he stood up, I asked, “Did this farm used to be called Premier?” That’s what it was called when my dad worked here decades before.<br />
<br />
“Yep, it was Premier,” he said with a surprising friendliness.<br />
<br />
“Aha! I lived here when I was a really little kid, about... 35 years ago. My dad took care of Angus cattle here. Then we moved to Missouri in 1979.”<br />
<br />
“Was your dad one of the Cottons?”<br />
<br />
“No, but he worked for Larry Cotton… are they still around here?”<br />
<br />
“No, but you can find them on Facebook.” He appeared incongruous with Facebook, but apparently that is a faulty snap judgment. “...I’d still like to get down to see Missouri someday,” he said. The guy had a slightly wacky, almost Canadian accent.<br />
<br />
A nine- or ten-year-old boy popped up wearing a jack-o-lantern shirt and started chatting with my wife. I pointed out the willow tree, and we walked over by the barn. I told them how I fell out of the hay loft once, and threw pebbles at cars from the barn door one time, and thought there used to be frogs in a scummy drainage ditch near the road. My mom had said to ask to look in the house, but that seemed pushy unless we were invited in. Heather took our picture in the front yard.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiOk30V9D-nSVjoRG-Hltvh-MaL1nbrU37l_D9RWKmR2eDp08nKVRauDNM5j0nj1_m31ZWjVy6WyPkRlKhCh8RY4t4MvPb1p5f78An2GU75xzovBYKj9cNQgXzH7C8lcQrf7M5el6XwmXC/s1600/guys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiOk30V9D-nSVjoRG-Hltvh-MaL1nbrU37l_D9RWKmR2eDp08nKVRauDNM5j0nj1_m31ZWjVy6WyPkRlKhCh8RY4t4MvPb1p5f78An2GU75xzovBYKj9cNQgXzH7C8lcQrf7M5el6XwmXC/s1600/guys.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></div>
<br />
We walked around a little more. The little boy told us (mostly Heather, since I was talking to the dad) about how he grows pumpkins. Heather said later that it was like talking to a chatty old man. He went on in detail about how people like to buy his pumpkins and corn stalks for Halloween, and Fall, and Thanksgiving… <br />
<br />
“So, you’re the pumpkin man around here?” I asked.<br />
<br />
“Yeah, but there’s a big place down (somewhere in town) that has a whole lot of pumpkins.”<br />
<br />
“They’re pretty hard to compete with?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah,” he admitted. His dad laughed. The pale gold field we passed coming in was knee-high wheat. The deep green field across the intersection grew soybeans. He’d been renting there about 15 years.<br />
<br />
We went back to the car. I said, “Thanks for your time, good to meet you guys.”<br />
<br />
The farmer said, “Well, it’s good you stopped here now, they’re getting ready to build a few hundred homes out here, so this will all be gone in a year, maybe less. They got it all platted out, the company that owns it in Illinois told us they sold it a while back.”<br />
<br />
That sounded disappointing, as it was a pretty place. Pumpkin Kid and his dad would have to find land somewhere else, if they wanted to keep growing wheat and soybeans and pumpkins. It was already hard to imagine them doing anything else, though I hadn’t known them more than ten minutes.<br />
<br />
We left without ever saying our names or asking for theirs. Later we kind of wished we had, so we could look them up… but then, sometimes I think it is good to toss some stuff back into that inaccessible ocean of static, to lighten the data load and allow wild spaces to exist, even if only in the soon-to-be bulldozed backroads of Michigan. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOdmCBfP7bPd6VwzRRMvSgHuiMhWadWpGNjFghAuX2Wt26yFMPdBiaoPk1jJzj7hZaZbqKAOh48HwmoV_eIMPr2RdW8Zh-MjOyw_mm_QaxOz8W5tTJDC2fwlx-TE47y1s_j1-yH-KPGWTh/s1600/weathervane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOdmCBfP7bPd6VwzRRMvSgHuiMhWadWpGNjFghAuX2Wt26yFMPdBiaoPk1jJzj7hZaZbqKAOh48HwmoV_eIMPr2RdW8Zh-MjOyw_mm_QaxOz8W5tTJDC2fwlx-TE47y1s_j1-yH-KPGWTh/s1600/weathervane.jpg" height="400" width="298" /></a></div>
<br />
<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-34563528578475090762014-05-08T00:14:00.000-05:002014-06-01T21:43:44.294-05:00Sweet Rewards<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8biMbr0y_EPQ7cMjcD_LHjrq_pJU9AIZu_R09qhN_kqClv6QVNctPXB6B-cHVWkV0V699-r0AdagXZz-v4OIzMMd99VP49U-9WZ6TI73_E0Ggkaf4aNuVggXUTbaH6WjAdBczgLleMYMP/s1600/-45.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi01f1GXSO1aGN_3bQ6r0u_Bl3jyzroPT31G-U0sT6OR87rUYEYyhiQbMo91NYU2ih9hEqCfxasOuNeLjNh3SHAVGHgL-ZCP_SRwzF0TBgDOqsnFjPnVZYsu9TXgqKCuXXTTCUjvfXzhTlj/s1600/-47.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi01f1GXSO1aGN_3bQ6r0u_Bl3jyzroPT31G-U0sT6OR87rUYEYyhiQbMo91NYU2ih9hEqCfxasOuNeLjNh3SHAVGHgL-ZCP_SRwzF0TBgDOqsnFjPnVZYsu9TXgqKCuXXTTCUjvfXzhTlj/s1600/-47.jpg" height="400" width="273" /></a></div>
<a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/birdcagebottombooks/cringe-an-anthology-of-embarrassment">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/birdcagebottombooks/cringe-an-anthology-of-embarrassment</a><br />
After a long time in the making, the comic anthology CRINGE! is near. It's full of stories such as mine, where people (generally the authors themselves) fess up to embarrassing things. Like that one episode of Buck Rogers when they pulled his shirt off and futuristic women bid on his bod, it must now suffer the glorious public auctioneering of the Kickstarter campaign. I saw some sample pages, and it's looking pretty cool. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbXxbNUtQgSSX-6tZfTh2sV9ELh5Rl17FXlHEsx1jLwnUSRnuUbG9wDjeHI_L0_M6KvH3tU_P42wGmPfRMUYa19wI-C-s7akWcRjLnWZn8JEk-EFP2u_i8Yhyyv6tla_Arh8v0xaF9UtNY/s1600/-48.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbXxbNUtQgSSX-6tZfTh2sV9ELh5Rl17FXlHEsx1jLwnUSRnuUbG9wDjeHI_L0_M6KvH3tU_P42wGmPfRMUYa19wI-C-s7akWcRjLnWZn8JEk-EFP2u_i8Yhyyv6tla_Arh8v0xaF9UtNY/s1600/-48.jpg" height="320" width="218" /></a></div>
<br />
I offered some of my recent goods as Kickstarter incentives. Because nothing says "Buy me" like quasi-related other products lingering in my garage... I don't know what the price of the book is yet, or what the donation levels will be.<br />
<br />
<h4 style="text-align: center;">
Basic Level: PDF Comic Books</h4>
<div style="text-align: center;">
For the non-lords&ladies who buy whatever. Read them on your devices, if you can figure that shit out.</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlc2HS3XKUoYZx7AcOSyOnrVWWjHJrKSkcMEfPsBGRnsyB3jmf4Q49XiTcjYP-wAm6mdJnjq56NgPwB2jGV-uGrjHZarsKlpjAmQBNhU3jEvQcbjzWCiSWylxfu04uay12iaGtBQZVVPfg/s1600/-46.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlc2HS3XKUoYZx7AcOSyOnrVWWjHJrKSkcMEfPsBGRnsyB3jmf4Q49XiTcjYP-wAm6mdJnjq56NgPwB2jGV-uGrjHZarsKlpjAmQBNhU3jEvQcbjzWCiSWylxfu04uay12iaGtBQZVVPfg/s1600/-46.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">40-page mini where you choose your own adventure. What a pain!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-fNrMiJ8cePnnmWmOseG0osZk3MS7rMEEm8c7eieXyoyVnbkbjEmZhYlI7CEK6_O8IZh6noSlB5I8rQhufkgUGT4JHwXHe3qEIii3CWlgE2nGLVNTcQ2IX3ttX0pMFXDQKgmjP0ULvid/s1600/MonkeyCC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja-fNrMiJ8cePnnmWmOseG0osZk3MS7rMEEm8c7eieXyoyVnbkbjEmZhYlI7CEK6_O8IZh6noSlB5I8rQhufkgUGT4JHwXHe3qEIii3CWlgE2nGLVNTcQ2IX3ttX0pMFXDQKgmjP0ULvid/s1600/MonkeyCC.jpg" height="400" width="271" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">20-page comic with idiosyncratic pirates. Chad Woody & Edward Bolman. Moderately triumphant.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Bigshot Level: Fish-with-a-Gun Hats</h3>
Actual real-world, non-digital object, has the value of a hat. These will still be around, likely in my closet, long after we die or delete our cloud, unless they get thrown away. Screw your digital head—Protect your actual head!<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8biMbr0y_EPQ7cMjcD_LHjrq_pJU9AIZu_R09qhN_kqClv6QVNctPXB6B-cHVWkV0V699-r0AdagXZz-v4OIzMMd99VP49U-9WZ6TI73_E0Ggkaf4aNuVggXUTbaH6WjAdBczgLleMYMP/s1600/-45.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8biMbr0y_EPQ7cMjcD_LHjrq_pJU9AIZu_R09qhN_kqClv6QVNctPXB6B-cHVWkV0V699-r0AdagXZz-v4OIzMMd99VP49U-9WZ6TI73_E0Ggkaf4aNuVggXUTbaH6WjAdBczgLleMYMP/s1600/-45.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, it's a hat with a fish holding a nonlethal gun.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixB0WnUSljcEeuhg_7X6P9uP9sddoeyO4mRG1STmmtV0qVPg1xP_Uw4qoOtViyswqcCObwuXoEXUYC0vSGxZ2HQZT3MsSYKGSrPaHQ2Y78GKJITG9bWGysAKpfPwT6dBvDZxx80ogsZbZh/s1600/-44.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixB0WnUSljcEeuhg_7X6P9uP9sddoeyO4mRG1STmmtV0qVPg1xP_Uw4qoOtViyswqcCObwuXoEXUYC0vSGxZ2HQZT3MsSYKGSrPaHQ2Y78GKJITG9bWGysAKpfPwT6dBvDZxx80ogsZbZh/s1600/-44.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hats are adjustable, but too big for a tiny child with hot-dog arms.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<h3 style="text-align: center;">
Godly Level: Make It Happen</h3>
Give more to the Kickstarter campaign than any sensible person would, and you can come over to my house. I will swing you in my hammock swing and serve you a beverage. Tour my shed, take a cutting from any of my houseplants. Within two hours, you must depart. </div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-45779912546381323402014-04-27T23:08:00.000-05:002014-05-21T23:35:19.332-05:00The C of Heartbreak<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPENel15rN9jDqztoKA6H1EMpcRPs2ZMcdX7CLMKahETWJOcLrxCX99b6kOZC8Cv7eB-0QdG_of5fCHtHsf-mwtumZC7bYoDwitbWcp9Iob3Rs-H8auDdgFMoTzkuxhrI_HhPx1ZI9Vuy9/s1600/Sea+Of+Heartbreak+Front.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPENel15rN9jDqztoKA6H1EMpcRPs2ZMcdX7CLMKahETWJOcLrxCX99b6kOZC8Cv7eB-0QdG_of5fCHtHsf-mwtumZC7bYoDwitbWcp9Iob3Rs-H8auDdgFMoTzkuxhrI_HhPx1ZI9Vuy9/s1600/Sea+Of+Heartbreak+Front.jpg" height="320" width="314" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Yes, it's also a song, sung by lots of people.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
1. Cancer vs Friend<br />
<br />
I’ve been lucky. Cancer has barely crossed my path in 40 years alive. There’s never been much cancer in my family (none, actually, that I can think of), and growing up, most cancer news breezed by. The only story I can even think of is of this screwball woman who used to help my mom with farm work and claimed several times to have cancer. As far as we could tell, she just said that when she didn’t want to work. Then she would go back to stripping for a while, and then she would do some farm work again. She never lost any hair, never lost weight, never seemed sick. Either she had the easiest of all cancers to cope with, or she was full of shit. I’m sure at some point, my family of mostly smartasses reduced her hoaxy cancer to a joke. “She didn’t show up today? Probably got cancer again.”<br />
<br />
Maybe that was example #1 in the realm of “Cancer brings out the worst in people.” Another example would be Steve, a college roommate, always invoking the concept of “dick cancer.” Sometimes he was gonna get it; other times he was condemning someone else to getting it. Does dick cancer even exist? Lance Armstrong had testicular cancer, and I suppose skin cancer could pop up on a penis, but I’ve never heard of “dick cancer” per se actually being a thing. Possibly just another of Steve’s obsessions. To steal another guy’s phrase, “Your dick’s too short to fuck with cancer.” <br />
<br />
Other manifestations of cancer over the years still tended toward affecting folks at some distance from me, often people who smoked or featured this or that unhealthy characteristic. Although I’ve always known that no one is exempt, I think I became guilty of the presumably universal hubris of thinking cancer was not in my cards. We’re all gamblers in this sense—problems are abstract until they are yours, or at least a friend’s. That makes sense, since a person only has time for a short list of shit in life. I mean, wouldn’t it be weird if Michael J. Fox had dedicated himself to finding a Parkinson’s cure long before getting the disease?<br />
<br />
Well, the run of good luck ran down, as it must with age. Several years ago, cancer killed my mom’s long-time friend, Sheila. Then it almost got my friend’s wife, Stacy, who lets me read demented stories to her 4th graders. A few years later, my grade-school buddy’s dad went down. Still pretty lucky, none in my immediate family… oops, then my mother-in-law got a bit of melanoma. Getting closer to home, but still for some reason, not threatening to me directly. There’s always a reason why it ain’t me: he’s much older than I am, she’s got family history, etc.<br />
<br />
The point being, maybe I have a hearty dose of mortality denial, or at least a touch of dickheaded noncompliance about getting onboard the Good Ship “We’re All in this Together.” Maybe it’s a healthy hubris: if we each ran around in true empathy for the deaths of our fellow folks, we’d die a thousand sympathetic deaths and likely never accomplish anything, favoring worry, holding back the doom. But still, jerk-ass soul contents.<br />
<br />
So, if I were a more superstitious person, more inclined to see cosmic targets on my back, I might think the cancer dice have been loading themselves the past 40 years for a big hit in my vicinity, because the friend now afflicted is certainly an unlikely choice. Aaron has always been a bit of a superman, or at least solidly outside the main columns in that ledger where we tick off the carcinogenic odds: strong guy, smart guy, clean livin’, upstanding citizen, not a prick, not a cosmic target in either the obvious way (no Evel Kneivel stuff) or the ironic way (no pumping of wheat-grass colonic smoothies from yoga positions). Mr. Solid. Mr. 435 lbs Bench Press. Mr. Reads the Books I Should Be Reading. But also not pompous. Good for jokes, pranks, foolishness. Mr. Biology Degree who hoarsely reports on the state of his organs with informed medical clarity just moments before laughing when my two-year-old quietly delivers the line, “Chickenbutt… boogernose.”<br />
<br />
As I told him right after the bad news was delivered, “I think we all run our mortality through little scenarios, but they don’t take on much weight until you consider your kids.” At least, that’s what I think now that I’m a dad. I know it goes double for Aaron, who not only has two girls, but is the only guy I know who has always (well, since having kids) been vocally pro-fatherhood. That’s not to say he’s the only good dad around; he’s just been the opposite of the predictably dissatisfied American stereotype dad). So this paragraph’s thesis is, Should Aaron be taken by cancer, he will be sorely missed—not only by dreary old adults, but by kids who aren’t even halfway done knowing how Mr. King Dad he is.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-QM_HBLyI6Ss7374P0iYFf0tb7SCk8mO16qntk7DQx-yNkk9bfzccylC30bVMhlYTj-O02dlEYtgdYMwThzLj0_tIifBSkk0nyjyh4QEXk3dOv3HcEz2VU6Mhh84055lGgZoZdC042tEI/s1600/pancreatic-cancer-l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-QM_HBLyI6Ss7374P0iYFf0tb7SCk8mO16qntk7DQx-yNkk9bfzccylC30bVMhlYTj-O02dlEYtgdYMwThzLj0_tIifBSkk0nyjyh4QEXk3dOv3HcEz2VU6Mhh84055lGgZoZdC042tEI/s1600/pancreatic-cancer-l.jpg" height="212" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
Part 2: The Great Debates, or, When the Cure is More Disease<br />
<br />
Tragedy strikes, and people always have to ask Why? Why us? Who did this? How can we fix it? It’s right to question, but only useful if you ask the right questions. <br />
<br />
The “Shit Happens” theory covers much of it. Most of these questions hit the fan a couple years ago when my daughter came on the scene with her guts unpacked. The WHYs lead mostly into the cosmic maze where televangelists point fingers at hurricanes, earthquakes, and gay people. Does application of a vengeful God to irrational existential fear actually fix anything? Anyone who answers ‘Yes’ has my groans of weary exasperation, and adds to my theory that maybe people should not learn religious thinking as children for risk of having a Sunday-school worldview “that gets stuck that way.” I mean, if gods have been throwing lightning bolts, floods, and tumors for millennia, why hasn’t their aim improved any? I tend to look at things the opposite way: we all swim in a stew of bacteria, radiation, and chemical runoff on our best days. Maybe we’re all damn lucky everything works as well as it does.<br />
<br />
“Who did this?” is a great question if you’re Erin Brockovich or your well was poisoned by big coal, or if you live in the Marvel Universe or a CSI episode, but most of the time, forget about finding the answer. I had to wonder if my daughter’s liver fell out because I handled the wrong pesticide or solvent, but the doctors gave us “no known risk factors” to choose from. Aaron’s esophageal cancer resulted, almost undoubtedly, from airborne crud ingested during 10+ years as a firefighter, but even so, there’s no tracing it. There’s no ballistics test for sabotage on the cellular level.<br />
<br />
“How can we fix it?” would seem to be the key question. Easier asked than answered. Unfortunately, whole schools of Cancer Lore have sprouted up in the garden of doubt surrounding medical science’s failure to find a cure. It’s made worse by the brutality of the treatments: your best chance is in chemo, surgery, and radiation—three things guaranteed to make you feel awful for what may be your last days. It’s no wonder so many people reach outside the mainstream for some other cure, or at least hope. “Cancer Centers of America” comes to mind, with its long-running commercial starring Peggy, the woman whose regular doctor told her to “Go to the store” (Whatever the hell that meant). She even showed up in a sequel, riding a horse, which of course means she went to Heaven. But if you squint at those Peggy commercials, somewhere are the tiny words, “results not typical.” Plus, the sheer number of times I saw that on TV either means I am in prime cancer demographic, or that Cancer Centers is making a porky profit on desperate sick people.<br />
<br />
Then there is prayer, which in my opinion is equivalent to speaking into a disconnected phone, but at least it’s free (as long as you’re not sending any “love gifts” to Pat Billy Jack), and it helps one gather one’s thoughts. Plus, there’s always that outside chance of activating some sort of subtle brain-centered healing razzmatazz.<br />
<br />
Then comes the rising tide of alternative medicine. Good fuckin’ luck. On one hand, there’s my brother, ambassador from the world of marijuana miracles and herbal cure-alls. When I mentioned Aaron’s cancer, he automatically rattled off several cures that sounded hot from the voodoo store: “black waggo root” or something… maybe I would know it as the weed, Kingsfoil, Mr Frodo! I know I’m a jerk for making fun of stuff I know nothing about, but my line of reasoning goes like this: Even if Big Pharma were suppressing nature’s cures, there are plenty of doctors out there who have gotten cancer, or watched a loved one die of it. If there was a leaf or root that really mattered, doctors would know about it, or at least Chinese herbalists would. And if such natural cures begin to gather your confidence, along comes the counter-testimonial, via Marcus Howell: “My friend’s wife had cancer. She tried all that stuff—everything BUT chemotherapy. Her husband begged her to do chemo. Dead in six months!” —Dwayne Crigger For me, that one anecdote is enough to make all the natural cures sound anecdotal.<br />
<br />
The web, guaranteed, is loaded with rich arguments from every angle on the topic of Cancer. I’m not even gonna wade in. I spent an hour one night just scratching the surface of the question: “Should a long-haired dog be shaved in hot weather?” I don’t even have a dog, but I THINK I learned a lot about shaving one.<br />
<br />
Life-threatening illness may be the ultimate wake-up call. It's just a Brutality Bonus that it tempts people to burn big hunks of their precious little time chasing wild medicinal geese. Maybe that's why Peggy's doctor just told her to go to the store. </div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7751242563090867772.post-6404671655580218532014-04-06T22:12:00.003-05:002014-04-06T22:12:35.712-05:00Donate Your Digits to this Potato Amputee<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
As a bonus for the 4th graders I read to last month for Read Across America, I made this cheapskate's potato action figure. You may print it out and use it however you like. I stole everything cool about it from Brad Jones's Red Rogue Action Figure, anyway.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik6KK7FmUANPKhBoP-rSE7PHK_If5o-AcdaiqGQ2PYM3qGa93tdnhE8BLFhyphenhyphenANanAEycVz0XEez4RaJP0-UT-q_eVp24uup0Ov0RLS0aa4J6dzSUEQiVMaheu_rlyKknvWgFdl-4MOKi8Z/s1600/tateraction.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik6KK7FmUANPKhBoP-rSE7PHK_If5o-AcdaiqGQ2PYM3qGa93tdnhE8BLFhyphenhyphenANanAEycVz0XEez4RaJP0-UT-q_eVp24uup0Ov0RLS0aa4J6dzSUEQiVMaheu_rlyKknvWgFdl-4MOKi8Z/s1600/tateraction.jpg" height="640" width="412" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Print me out approximately 5" x 8" unless your fingers are ridiculous in size.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br /></div>
Chad Woodyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08852674870506731426noreply@blogger.com2