Munchkins & Mexicans

When my brother was about 3-4 years old, he spoke with what sounded like a French accent and said wacky things. For a while, the things that scared him most were beetle grubs and croutons. These fears were my fault: I was 11 years older than him, and held great sway over his views. I told him that Ronald McDonald killed kids by choking them with croutons, and whenever we dug holes (we dug a lot of holes at our place), grubs turned up and I tossed a few at my brother, which happened to scare screaming hell out of him. I hadn't told him any terrifying things about grubs, but he later said that he thought their reddish heads came from drinking blood.

For a year or so, he also thought "Mexican guys" came into his room to rummage around and steal toys. We originally thought he dreamed this up from scratch, but eventually I deduced that when he said "Mexican guys," he really meant "Munchkin guys," sort of like when he called helicopters "haplicopiters."

Just as the fear of Mexican guys can be outgrown, it can also be grown into. Several years ago, my 80-year-old landlady was convinced that some Mexicans who pulled into her driveway were there to steal her antique doorknobs, and now my mom is convinced that the reason you see fewer horses on local farms is that they're all being taken to Mexico to be tortured for sport--some kind of stabbing with long knives, kind of like bullfighting. I'm hoping that eventually her worries about Mexicans will evolve into a fear of Munchkins who steal toys, thus demonstrating that we return to a form of childhood in old age. Plus, she has too much junk stockpiled at her house, so it would be good if some got secreted away by little humanoids.

On the other hand, my mom's youngest grandchild (my niece) is a dwarf, so this could cause an odd difficulty in the family.

Grimy Snowboy Survives Day of Motoring

I'm proud of my buddy. He was not even expected to make it to the highway, much less across town at 70 mph. He lost a lot of weight in the 30+ hour ride on my wipers, but he never lost his will to live or his pleasing demeanor. His puny stick arms stayed high in glee/terror until the end, and he brought joy to at least one teen, one dad w/ toddler, and my brother. One time he slid over directly in front of my steering wheel and I feared I'd have to wipe him; instead, I just drove ever gentler around corners, to the dismay of the drivers behind me. He even survived my giving a Little Debbie snack to a homeless man on an exit ramp at Battlefield & 65-- I said, "You want a brownie?" and the guy whipped out a paw straight from "The Road" and said, "YES SIR!"

That's a full account of the life of Snowboy. He lived a full life for a guy with dirt for eyes.

Litter Box Update

After a week of paleolithic, Minnesotan, cold-ass Little House winter siege, we’d only had one pipe burst. But now my wife’s two cats seemed to be trying to simulate a haunting of our house--tearing around, spinning, clomping into things, batting magnetized items off the fridge and yowling into paper bags. Cabin fever for cats. In nicer weather, they poop outside. “What the hell are they doing down there?” I said from upstairs. My wife thought maybe the litter box needed to be cleaned. She was feeling puny in a female way, so I said I could do it. She ended up following me to the box anyway because she likes to direct me in simple tasks and to confirm that I don’t proceed idiotically. On the back porch stairs it was probably near freezing, but the chill wasn’t suppressing the stink. I said, “It has been getting pretty stinky back here.” She said she couldn't smell the litter pan and I said, “How can you not smell that? It’s like a cat is shitting directly into my nostril!” “Maybe I smell it a little,” wife said. She must have been pretty congested. She went on elseways and I got down to it. Ha haa, cats, I saw all of your poops that you worked so hard to conceal in grit. Must have been a week’s worth of secrets in there. I sacked up the weight of an extra cat in pure shit. Well, to be fair, a lot of that weight was the litter clumped into pee-clods, but still.

Check Your Woe

I got tired shoveling snow the other day. I thought I felt like shit. Times like this demand that one ask oneself, "Do I really feel terrible? Do I qualify for woe?"

It may be helpful, in such moments, to establish a scale of woe. Here are a few check points:

1. Lightly chapped lips/ bad radio song stuck in head (low woe)
2. You are reminded of when your first pet died many years ago.
3. Flu/ long DMV line (moderate woe)
4. You're a Hollywood agent representing only Sinbad and Pauly Shore.
5. Severe diarrhea fills your pants in a public venue.
6. You just hit your thumb with a hammer in cold weather
7. You just backed a truck over your dog, and it won't stop yelping.
8. You're the dog (see 7).
9. You're a tunnel rat in Vietnam, and the tunnel collapses.
10. Crucifixion with mockery and biting flies (maximum woe, but no need to found a religion)

With these ratings in mind, I give the 10-hour snow shoveling marathon a 3.5, and I don't think I've ever gone past 7.

Stay tuned for our next topic, "What is the opposite of an orgy?"

Obama to Model 2nd Term on Cormac McCarthy's "The Road"

Once we weed out those wheezing geriatrics and take their Medicare dollars for spry young commies, that's when the real fun begins. Jobless Mexican welfare cheats and black cannibals will be given priority at the Social Security administration, and of course Islam will be mandatory, except of course for the atheists who are pulling the real strings. Toothpaste will be in short supply, available only to the elites in academia. The dental suffering alone will be mind-boggling. All the voices of dissent that once rang free on our airwaves, from Vincent David Jericho to the great Michael Savage, will be long silenced and entombed, crushed for their disgusting honesty, unable to fight the onslaught of the trial lawyers because they never made enough money to protect themselves. Health care? HA! Internment camps for those Jesus-loving capitalist swine. Our great leader rewards only his mindless minions with emergency room privileges. Also, horses and anyone caught wearing cowboy hats will be sent to Mexico to be tortured with long knives and cooked over piles of burning copies of Sarah Palin's book. Get ready to eat stewed abortions with your new same-sex spouse, which you'll be whipped for eating because you're supposed to be vegan now, queer.

How, you may ask, can Obama achieve all this occult upheaval in his first term and expect to be re-elected? Clever verbal tricks such as complete sentences, Harlem-Globetrotter-like sleight of hand, and of course The Power of Oprah. Also, American-flag diapers.

Tune in to my radio show on KWTO am, where I'll tell you how to cure cancer with emu oil and get you stocking up on Christmas trees and Bibles, because next year they're all being replaced with 100-gallon Piss-Christ displays and Korans as thick as OEDs.

Red Rogue at Olan Mills

Some bits of my face were used as ingredients for this fine portrait.

'Tis Penis Claus

We remember you fondle-y.

—er, fondly.

Highlights from the Ash Grove Christmas parade

For some reason, my wife loves parades. She would go to parades all the time if possible. She recently realized she might want her ashy mortal remains spread at a parade, so now I'll REALLY feel guilty if I don't go with her at parade time. At least there are some good photo ops.

Drunkish Yulebilly

Evil incarnate

Mobile Tree Display

Family dog hates impostor

Parade finale

A Very Special Norma and Patty Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, Norma hears something from Patty that sounds lonely, so she tries to invite her over.
“Patty, I have some nice thin-sliced ham, why don’t you come over for a sandwich or something?”
“Oh, no, I could never do that, I don’t want to impose.”
“Oh, Patty.”
Then Patty’s family stops over, punches her in the stomach and takes her wallet.
By nightfall, Norma has one end of the kennel clean.

Tragic Immigrants vs. Ravenous Rodents

China Max, my favorite source for Chinese food, constantly struggles to survive: Just one Chinese family with marginal English in a battle to make ends meet. They close for one hour a day to pick up their kids from school, then come back to continue their 12-hour day of working for less than minimum wage. They’ve tried many strategies to raise profits, including menu changes (at one point buying a $1000 grill to make American burgers and ribs, which no one ordered), being open 7 days a week, lucky Chinese decorations, etc. Their kids stay in a little storage zone in the back doing their homework, playing with the same pile of toys and watching the same 2 or 3 videos on a tiny TV. They’ve hired register girls a few times, but never for long, because they can barely pay them.

They have a garden at home, and the wife (“Maxine,” let’s say) has shared a few vegetables with me, and I have given her some seeds and plants. This year, a groundhog set up shop there, eating well from their garden bounty. They said they bought a little gun and were trying to shoot it, but he’s “too fast and smart.” So I said I would loan them a trap, which I already had. I brought it over the next day.

For a week or two, they had it set up wrong. They said nothing would go in the trap, and I could tell from their description that they didn’t put it together right. “Max” brought it back and, on the back step of the restaurant, I reviewed the instructions and showed him how to set it. I kept thinking, “Great, now everybody who sees us thinks we’re trapping cats or something for the restaurant, as in the local “cashew kitty” joke. That turned out to be the wrong problem to anticipate.

Within a week or so, they caught a possum. At first they didn’t know what to call it, nor did they know what to do with it. I said, “Just pull it out and throw it in the ditch somewhere--it will act dead, so it’s not dangerous.” Then it was back to never catching the groundhog, who just polished off the freshly sprouted snow peas Maxine planted, among other things. “Groundhog is very smart,” they said more than once. My new advice was to cover the trap with some sticks and leaves to camouflage it, which they did.

Finally, after two more weeks, another beast was captured. Max went over to check the trap before taking his kids to school. He kicked the branches aside and received a full-frontal blast of skunk spunk. Staggering back to the car, he opened the door and the kids went running out, yelling, “It stinks, it stinks!” He changed his clothes but still smelled like skunk for a couple of days. I think he ended up letting the skunk starve to death in the cage, because there was no way to get it out without being sprayed again.

My wife said, “God, when is he going to just give up and die?” China Max, when will the tide of woe turn away from that shore where you have been buried up to the neck? Like Leslie Nielson in Creepshow, you will have to hold your breath for a long, long time.