Benny-K Has Found A Way To Dress As A Midget

It's a miracle of some sort.

I met him in the hall today. He nodded and walked on by like there was nothing unusual about him. But there was: his legs ended just below the knees, instead of where they used to (down by his feet). He was wearing a pair of large black platform shoes. The platforms were a couple of feet high. I stopped him and pointed.

"Oh, the legs," he said. "Yeah. Sometimes I dress as a little guy, a midget."

I realized that his overall height hadn't changed. Just the impression of height.

"Means I can park in disabled spots and nobody bothers me. You haven't worked it out yet, have you?"

"No."

"Made these myself," he said, reaching down and undoing a tie on the side of one of the platforms. It hinged open along a seam at the back. It was hollow! There it was, his pale white leg, ending in the usual black sock. The platform part of the shoe ended in a black sandal. The hollow pillar was topped by the upper part of a normal shoe, and the shoe was tied around his knee. "These are anti-stilts. As far as I know, this is the only pair of anti-stilts in the world. I made my first pair of these in 1973. There are people I've known for twenty-five years who only know me as Big Ben, a bona-fide pituitary dwarf with a pro-active attitude. A few of those people are dwarves themselves. They're real warm folks, you know, not at all like they're portrayed on TV."

I'm not great with graphics and stuff, but here's a diagram--

                  /    |
                  \  / |
                  |____|
                (88     )
          /''/''' |    ||
         /--------|----||
         |        |    ||
         |        |    ||
         |  _____/   ) ||
         | c_-_-_______)|
         |______________|

He closed the shoe and walked off. At the end of the corridor he turned and winked. "You keep this to yourself or I'll kill you in your sleep. I have a key."

I'm a lucky man, you know. I'm surrounded by genius.

From The World

I'm on my mobile right now. This is a test! I bought it just there now. Just used some of the farm money!

---

Sent from a Sony Ericsson G502

And It Went On

"Tell me," said Galosh/Zintarus, after thinking for a good long while. "Tell me straight. Do you have any money? I need money."

"I sold my farm before I moved here."

"You sold your farm. Beautiful! And you put half in a suitcase? Hundred-dollar bills?"

"Just like you said."

"I'll meet you," said Galosh/Zintarus. "But it'll cost you. My services don't come cheap. Every second I'm away from this phone is a potential disaster on a scale you cannot begin to comprehend. Missing this call has far-reaching karmic implications. This is an interstellar hotline, my friend, and I am expected to answer."

"What are we talking here?"

"I have a one-grand callout fee. That buys you an hour of one-on-one tuition. Then it's five hundred for every hour after that. For that you get class-A advice. I'll make you the writer you want to be. And if you sell a script...I'll want twenty-five percent of any proceeds. And you get the money up front every time, or, and this I swear by the Many-Tentacled Space Jesus, I'll strangle you to death with my bare hands. I'm an old man but I'm not too old to strangle a back-end schmuck."

It sounded fair. It sounded like the Joe Galosh I'd grown to admire, reading by the strange blue-green light of all that crusty old gay porn.

Joe Galosh Is Different Nowadays

First there was a click, then the sound of breathing. Fast, panicked breathing. "Yes? It's ready? I go now?"

"Excuse me," I said. "It sounds like I've called at a bad time. Is this Mister Galosh?"

"Great Jesus," he whispered. "Who is this? How did you find me? Who gave you this number?"

"It's in the book. There's only one J. Galosh."

"Of course," he said. "Of course, the book. All those little numbers. Number sequences are brain poison, they give me night terrors like you wouldn't believe. Spiraling fever dreams. Sixes are the enemy. Sevens, not so bad, but in those dreams you never get sevens. Eights are endless loops of crazy, zeros are oases of perfect calm, but again, you never get zeros."

"I'm sorry to hear that," I said. "Are you Joe Galosh? The writer?"

He wasn't all that interested in my side of the conversation. I get that sometimes. "Remember that number song on Sesame Street? Onetwothreefourfive, sixseveneightnineten, eleven twelve. I first heard that at the height of a three-day wide-spectrum bender in the summer of '87 and it became the soundtrack to my every waking thought until '95, when I met a doctor who specialized in that kind of thing. The doctor used a deprogramming technique he learned in the CIA. It involved dangling my balls in alternate baths of hot and cold water."

"The trick with the balls!"

"Yes," he said. "That's exactly what he called it. So you're a spook. This is new."

"I'm a writer."

"Great Jesus. Another spook writer. You guys have ruined Hollywood, you know that? You have it all tied up. You and the Freemasons. Why are you calling me, spook writer? At this hour?" It was four o'clock in the afternoon. "I need this line free. I'm expecting a call."

"Please...is this Joe Galosh? Do I have the right number?"

"The call I'm expecting is very important. Not just for me."

"Joe Galosh," I begged. "Joe Galosh. Author of Selling Stories For Cash. I'm just looking for Joe Galosh."

"For all humanity, this call. Vitally important."

"Published 1985. Selling Stories For Cash. Joe Galosh also wrote Under All That Weather, His Besmirching Love, and possibly Jurassic Park."

"JURASSIC PARK!" That seemed to grab his attention. "Jurassic Park. Yes, you could say I knew the man who wrote Jurassic Park. Back then, it was called Full-On Dinosaur Frenzy. It was a different movie. A very different movie." He grew wistful.

"I thought it was based on a book."

"No." But it was. It was based on a book by Michael Crichton. The book was called Jurassic Park. "No, it wasn't. Full-On Dinosaur Frenzy came first. George Lucas wanted to make it. But Spielberg read the script and said it stank. But it didn't stink, spook writer. It was sublime. It was channeled, not written. But it was too daring. The world just wasn't ready for dinosaur sex. Spielberg took it and dumbed the whole thing down. Gutted it. Bought the rights to some schmuck's book just so as he could use the name. And instead of paying Joe Galosh the money he deserved...they blackballed him. Now they say it doesn't happen, the blackballing. But it happens. There's a blackballing system at play. It's managed by Freemasons and Jews."

"Freemasons and Jews?"

"Oh yes. They don't often work together. But when they do...dynamite, my friend. But then you know that, don't you, Langley boy?"

"I'm not with the government." Or maybe I was. Sometimes it was hard to know. "And hold on--I'm pretty sure that Selling Stories For Cash was dedicated to all the children of Israel."

"It was. I don't mind the kids. The kids are okay. I...I mean, Joe Galosh...was hoping to win a few over."

"Ah. Listen, I, I just wanted to talk to Joe Galosh. Maybe meet him, buy him lunch. People buy people lunch here, right? I'm new in town, a writer, and his book was a great source of inspiration to me."

Silence on the other end of the line. A full count of ten. Then a long sigh. "The man you're looking for is gone."

"He's dead?"

"Not dead, but gone all the same. Transformed, transposed, transmuted, transpired, transformed, trans everything."

"Oh." It all became clear. Joe Galosh wrote women so well. "He's a woman now."

"Not transsexual, you schmuck. Trans everything but that."

"Will you meet me, Mister Galosh?"

"Buck Zintarus. My name is Buck Zintarus. Galosh was my father's name. Never watched the show. Not once. You know it got picked up for a second season, right? That almost never happened! But it wasn't good enough for Marty Galosh, no sir. And when they passed on the third, there he was, smiling his big fat I told you so smile. Writing plays was for goddamn faeries and chumps and schmucks and he made sure I knew it."

"Oh, okay. Buck."

"Zintarus. Just Zintarus. Where I'm from, Buck is, uh, a prefix. Like Mister. You're not the kind of guy who goes around calling people Mister, are you? That would be rude."

Of course not. That would be rude. "No sir."

Benny-K

I asked my neighbor Benny-K if I could use his phonebook to look up Joe Galosh. Sure, he said.

Benny's a skinny old guy who seems to wear the same loose black stuff all the time--black sweater, black pants, black socks, black shoes, black Casio watch, black scarf. He must dye his hair black every day; it's the most unhealthy, unreflective shade of black you've ever seen. No human shade, this. It's like looking at the the inside of a coalshed on a moonless night, only it's spread over this old guy's head (and eyebrows). (When I met Benny-K for the first time I asked him (respectfully) who he was mourning and he said, "a pretty girl in the background of a movie I saw when I was eleven." He didn't elaborate. "I don't elaborate," he says. "Nobody understands.")

So Benny goes into his little black apartment and brings out his phonebook, which is in bits. It's a well-used phonebook. A mature phonebook, with the front cover hanging off, and the corners all dog-eared. I was impressed by this: most people these days don't use phonebooks; they use the internet. It's more convenient and it doesn't take up as much room. If you want to look up a specific thing, you use the internet. Like a lot of old guys, Joe Galosh doesn't show up on the internet (just on this blog) so the phonebook is the only option. Benny's phonebook is all worn out. He's drawn little faces beside all the women's names right up to the letter R. Sad faces, mainly, with the occasional smiley devil face.

He says the smiley devil face means that if you call that woman up, she might be willing to talk dirty.

The Road To Hollywood

Hello world!

I guess you're wondering where I've been.

Well, a whole lot has changed since I last had an internet connection. We had that storm back home--it more or less ripped up the whole house and in doing so unearthed all the dirty books that Uncle had stashed in the walls, sending pictures of buff sailors and soulful-looking firemen flying all over the property. It also left me homeless.

I was sleeping in a tent beside the remains of the house for a few weeks there, and let me tell you: sleeping in a tent beside the remains of a house is not a long-term survival solution. My back was always aching (even though I was sleeping on a mattress of super-soft Manitary Towels), I was cold, and I was troubled at night by dogs. Harrowed by dogs.

I didn't have much to do in the tent. I was living off the land, a diet of mainly tubers and shoots. When I wasn't looking for tubers or shoots or staving off the dogs I was reading and re-reading the few books that survived the storm. I would gather Uncle's magazines from the fields and ditches to make a fire, and I would spend my nights reading by the light of engorged 1970's penises. I had a cookbook, a self-help book about owning and cultivating your vital essence, a book on scriptwriting by the guy who wrote a critically-acclaimed sitcom called Under All That Weather that ran for two seasons in 1964-65, and an old fantasy paperback called When The Bloodwinds Blow Again (sequel to the far superior When The Bloodwinds Blow, which was sadly lost in the storm.)

The scriptwriting book soon became my favorite. There was a chapter on pitching a story that talked about all the important points--how to dress, the best place to get a shoe shine, how to talk clearly to get your points across, how you should masturbate twenty-five minutes before the meeting so as not to seem too eager, the disorder to fake in order to get a prescription for amphetamines, etc. Anyway--I was reading this chapter (burning my way through six crinkled, love-encrusted copies of Ass Monthly) what should blow into the tent but THE TATTERED COVER PAGE FOR MY ZOMBIE JESUS SCREENPLAY, FISHER OF BRAINS!

It was a sign.

Joe Galosh (writer of Under All That Weather, His Besmirching Love, Selling Stories For Cash and apparently an early treatment of Jurassic Park) wanted me to head West (and slightly South). He wanted me to follow in his footsteps. It's like he says in the book: once you have some kind of a story, all you need is a rich schmuck producer. You present yourself right, you keep yourself sharp but not too eager, you'll get your rich schmuck producer sooner or later. And remember--that talk of back-end pay is for schmucks and George goddamn too-good-to take-your-calls Lucas. You're neither, so get the money up front.

He says schmuck a lot, Joe Galosh. His book is padded out with scripts for all the episodes of Under All That Weather, and the people in that say schmuck a lot too. He also makes numerous allusions to George Lucas and how he's not taking his calls. Also Spielberg.

So I did it. I sold the land to our neighbor (the good people of the Tast-E-Feed corn syrup consortium.) I put half the money in a suitcase--more sage advice from Joe Galosh. I packed my tent and books and a bundle of nutritious tubers and I got on the next bus heading for a place where I might catch a bus that would take me to a bigger place where I could catch the bus for Los Angeles. Yes--I was going to Hollywood!

And here I am in LA with nothing but the clothes on my back and an astonishing aptitude for plot and characterization (also: a bundle of money, a new computer and an unsecured wireless network called 'default' in the apartment above). The place is okay but not very big, or clean, or secure, or close to any of the studios, or close to any of the places where other writers like to hang out. On the upside, it's not a tent, so I don't have to worry about the dogs and their endless circling.

Tomorrow I track down my mentor, my savior, my earthbound Christ, Joe Galosh.

Manitary Towels 2: Airline Security

Again, hammering out the details of the ad campaign. This is for the experimental "Airline Security" Manitary towel and Manitary towel attachment apparatus. I wanted to do something about men "earning their wings" but it turns out that's biker slang for a vile sexual act. It's a strange and terrible world out there.

FADE IN:

INT. AIRPORT TERMINAL - DAY

Bright sunlight beams through the tall glass windows of the terminal. We see the dashing PILOT making his way through the crowd. His pace is quick but his gait exudes calm confidence: he's late for his flight, but he's done this a thousand times before. He's carrying a small leather briefcase. Two attractive STEWARDESSES follow a few steps behind, wearing the uniform of the same airline.

PILOT (v.o.)

Sometimes I wonder just what it is
that makes a man a man. Is it the
women he takes to bed? The quality
and the quantity?

The PILOT turns and flashes a smile at the STEWARDESSES. They look at each other and giggle. One fans herself and the other smiles devilishly.

CUT TO:

INT. AIRPORT SECURITY - DAY

The pilot makes his way through security, skipping the lines. He puts his briefcase on the conveyor and a large black SECURITY GUY waves him through the scanners. The scanner goes off. The SECURITY GUY smiles and waves him aside, then pats him down. He goes straight for the jacket pocket and removes a STEEL HIP-FLASK with a BLUE BOW tied around it.

PILOT (v.o.)

Maybe it's the company he keeps.

SECURITY GUY

Now you know you can't take that on board.

PILOT
(laughs)

Nothing gets past airline security, right?

SECURITY GUY

That's right.

PILOT

Well, that's for you, Tom. Happy birthday.

The SECURITY GUY smiles, nods his head, and slips the hip flask into his own pocket.

SECURITY GUY

Man oh man. You have a good flight, Jim.

PILOT

You have a good day, Tom.

The PILOT collects his briefcase and walks on. The SECURITY GUARD pauses to pat his pocket, smiles again, then waves a STEWARDESS through the scanner.

CUT TO:

INT. BOARDING CORRIDOR - DAY

We follow the PILOT as he walks alone down a long, empty corridor. Outside we see planes taking off and being refueled, trolleys of luggage being pulled around, herds of passengers being shifted to and from their planes.

PILOT (v.o.)

Those things are important. But I always
come to the same conclusion, and it's this:
a man does whatever he feels is right.

He comes to a door with PRIVATE written on it, and flows through it into...

CUT TO:

INT. PILOT'S PRIVATE BATHROOM

...The pilot's private bathroom. Spartan but clean. White tiles lit by a bright white light. We see a large mirror, a sink, a urinal and a single cubicle. The pilot sets his briefcase by the sink and pops the latches with his thumbs. In the briefcase we see: a pack of TEN SHAKES MANITARY TOWELS and a pack of AIRLINE SECURITY MANITARY TOWELS.

PILOT (v.o.)

And like a lot of other men, one thing
I feel strongly about is men's hygiene.

He lifts the AIRLINE SECURITY pack from the briefcase. He removes the airplane-shaped apparatus and one of the circular towel refills.

PILOT (v.o.)

Usually, I use TEN SHAKES Manitary towels for
the long-lasting comfort they offer. But when
I'm working, or when I'm at the gym, or when
I just feel like a change, I use AIRLINE SECURITY
Manitary towels.

The PILOT enters the cubicle.

PILOT (v.o.)

One-hundred percent absorption. One-hundred
percent security. I like those odds.

SFX
The SNAP of elastic on skin.
The sound of FLUSHING.

CUT TO:

INT. BOARDING CORRIDOR - DAY

The PILOT leaves the private bathroom with his briefcase in hand. The STEWARDESSES walk past just in time. He gives his briefcase to one, then steps between them. He strides towards his plane with a STEWARDESS on each arm. They interlock their arms behind his back, stroking.

STEWARDESS:

Oh wow, are you wearing Airline Security?

PILOT:

Why, yes! How did you know?

OTHER STEWARDESS:

The fresh, fresh smell of no piss. We like that.

PILOT:

Everybody likes the smell of no piss! And you
know what? Nothing gets past airline security.

STEWARDESSES:
(feminine giggling)

FADE OUT.

Manitary Towels: The Movie

Just ironing out the fine details of the ad campaign.

"TEN SHAKES"

By

Nick Mystery

FADE IN:

INT. BAR - EVENING

Six young and vibrant people--TWO GUYS and FOUR ATTRACTIVE GIRLS--sit drinking in a booth. The girls LAUGH and FLIRT with the guys. One of the guys is dressed in a gray suit with his two top buttons open and his tie halfway undone. The other guy looks like a regular Joe in jeans and an old checked shirt. They have just finished their drinks.

SUIT GUY
(loudly)

More drinks!

(to REGULAR JOE)

Damn man, I gotta take a whizz!

REGULAR JOE
(to SUIT GUY)

Me too. Come on, it's time we discussed strategy.

SUIT GUY

We'll be back in two shakes, ladies.

The guys leave the booth. The girls wave. We follow the guys around the bar and towards the men's bathroom. We overhear their conversation.

SUIT GUY

God, they're so hot for us.

REGULAR JOE

Got that right. Listen man, what are
your thoughts on orgies? Good, bad?

SUIT GUY

Orgies?

REGULAR JOE

Yeah, man. A double threesome.

That's like a six-some. I think anything

over a foursome is just called an orgy.

SUIT GUY

A six-some. God, that would be...
that would be great.
Yeah, I'm all for that.

They arrive at the men's bathroom and make their way to the urinals. They stand side by side and look dead ahead. We're fixed on their faces, watching from the wall somewhere between them. We see their reflection in the large mirror behind them. We hear the sound of LOUD PEEING.

SUIT GUY

I like Mandy.

REGULAR JOE

Oh yeah, Mandy's a beaut.
The redhead though...

SUIT GUY

Uh, Carla.

REGULAR JOE

Yeah, Carla. She's a real wild thing.
You can tell by the eyes. She's dangerous,
like you know she could just pull a knife
on you any minute. And she knows you know.
Will she? Won't she? It's such a turn-on.

SUIT GUY

You really think this is going to happen?

REGULAR JOE

Sure, it happens all the time.

Let's roll!

REGULAR JOE stops peeing and backs away from the urinal, putting himself away in one smooth movement. There is a fraction of a second between the peeing stopping and the sound of the zipper. He's straight over to wash his hands, then he's out the door.

SUIT GUY (v.o.)

God, that was quick. I wish I could
be more like him. Carefree and smooth.
More of a man, I guess. Damn it, I am
going to be more like him!

SUIT GUY stops peeing and backs away from the urinal, copying REGULAR JOE'S smooth movement. He walks over to wash his hands, but stops halfway, looking down at his crotch.

SUIT GUY (v.o.)

Oh God no!

CUT TO the booth. REGULAR JOE has bought drinks for the table. He sucks on a beer and LAUGHS with the girls. They drink cocktails and fawn over him.

Then the booth falls quiet.

SUIT GUY shuffles into view, eyes down, shoulders slumped. He has a large dark circle on the front of his pants.

MANDY
(points)

Hey, have you...

CARLA

(laughing)

He has! He's wet himself!

Oh God!

MANDY
(to REGULAR JOE)

Is your friend some kind of retard?

REGULAR JOE smiles and shakes his head.

REGULAR JOE
(to MANDY)

No.

(to camera)

He's not retarded; just misinformed. He
thinks bathroom hygiene is just for the
ladies. But here's the thing, guys:
we face an ever-more challenging dating
scene. Thanks to books and TV, women's
expectations have never been higher. And
with today's runaway rates of immigration
and lesbianism, women have all kinds of
exciting new race and gender options. A
man needs to bring his A-game. That's why
I'm wearing my TEN SHAKES MANITARY TOWEL
right now. TEN SHAKES MANITARY TOWELS--

They give me the confidence I need to be
an all-American man.

(to the women)

So, back to my place, girls?

ALL FOUR GIRLS

Yeah!

FADE OUT

AD-SPOT PART 2.
FADE IN:

INT. BARE BEDROOM, EVENING

SUIT GUY sits on the floor of his bedroom, leaning against the wall. Moonlight spills through his bedroom window. In his hands we see A REVOLVER. He lovingly snaps the swing-out cylinder into place, then raises the gun to his temple. His hand shakes. A single tear beads in the corner of his eye.

A KNOCK on the door.

SUIT GUY

Who...who is it?

REGULAR JOE

It's me! I've got something for you!

SUIT GUY goes over and opens his bedroom door. In the brightly-lit hall, REGULAR JOE stands in a state of post-coital relaxedness, wearing a towel and a dressing gown, a pack of TEN SHAKES in his hand. He sees the gun and smiles.

REGULAR JOE

You gotta holster that weapon, man!
And put the gun away too!

They both LAUGH LOUDLY. SUIT GUY playfully puts the gun to his head and makes a "PCHOOW" sound. Then he puts it in his breast pocket and takes the pack of TEN SHAKES instead.

CUT TO: A BLACK BACKGROUND, THE MANITARY TOWELS LOGO, AND LARGE TEXT.

TEN SHAKES...
HOLSTER THAT WEAPON

FADE OUT

My Idea For "Dragon's Den"

I don't know if you've heard of this new show. It's called "The Dragon's Den". At first I thought it was some fantasy thing but it wasn't; it's a reality show where 'inventors' go to beg for money from 'investors'. The idea is that the 'inventors' are all idiots who imagine that there is a niche market out there for their endless parade of absolutely useless things, and the 'investors' pick them apart like a pack of buzzards sharing some week-old roadkill. This, apparently, is entertainment in 2008.

Here's the thing though: I've come up with something that they just COULD NOT PICK APART. They would throw their money at me and I would be like, "no way. I don't need it. See this invention is FREE for everybody." Subversive. I invented this a long time ago. Here's the story behind it.

I hate women sometimes.

You know, for some things it's like there's one set of rules for women, and another far stricter set of rules for men. Bathroom etiquette is one such thing. Here's something you may not know about women: they use things called "sanitary towels". They just fit right in their panties and they prevent "feminine odor." I went out and bought a pack just so as I could experiment with them. Imagine, if you will, a white fabric pop-tart with fins like you'd get on your granddaddy's car. This pop-tart can absorb FIFTY TIMES its own weight in moisture. And when it's absorbed, that's it--it doesn't leak back out. It's some kind of miracle material, asbestos or something.

So, do men get to use sanitary towels? Of course not. OF COURSE NOT. A man gets two shakes and if it's not dry by then, it goes back in the pants regardless. Men get "masculine odor" and it's not as good as it sounds. Uncomfortable dampness too. Or maybe it's just me.

( It's funny how "masculine odor" sounds so much better than "feminine odor". Is that misogynistic social programming? I think maybe so. Truth is you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference in a blind scent test. Except maybe if you were a bear. I hear that bears can tell the difference. )

I've done some research and I've found it takes an average of TEN SHAKES to get it totally dry. Ten, not two. But if you're out at a bar and you start shaking your Jack Johnston like that, you're going to get beaten up, or arrested, or approached in a unwelcome romantic manner.

So maybe, I thought, maybe we need some kind of MALE SANITARY TOWEL. There's only one name that could possibly have.

The Manitary Towel (tm).

So I started wearing Manitary Towels and to be honest, I haven't looked back since. I have two varieties. The first is the Ten Shakes (R) Manitary Towel (tm). This adheres to your dominant leg and to the inside of your pants to form a kind of snug sling for your thing. When you're out peeing in public you can just tuck it away in its sling, secure in the knowledge that all that moisture and masculine odor will be absorbed. Other guys will look at you and think "not even two shakes! He's a hell of a man!" In reality you're getting like ten shakes. If they try to copy you, well, they end up with wet patches. Then you can tell them about the Ten Shakes (R) Manitary Towel (tm).

That's how the ad will go if this thing ever gets off the ground.

The second type is still in the experimental stages but it's a very exciting development. Sometimes you just can't wear your Ten Shakes (R) Manitary Towel (tm). Like if you go to the gym. The gym is a perfect example: you're exerting yourself so there's even more potential for what I call 'afterspill'. For this I have created the Airline Security (R) Manitary Towel (tm). It's basically a loose-fitting condom painted white and packed with the absorbent Manitary Towel material. It has a long elastic band to keep it attached. The idea is, nothing gets past Airline Security. I guess in the ad I will show pilots using it, but I'm not sure yet.

So that's my Dragon's Den idea.

Amazing Things

I'll get straight to it.

1. MY COUSINS JAY AND DERMOT ARE NOT ACTUALLY IDENTICAL TWINS

It's crazy. They were born of the same woman (my Aunt) at the same time (sometime in the late 1970's) but they are NOT identical twins. I think everybody just assumed that they were. I mean, if you have two baby boys with the same hair colour, you have to assume they're identical, don't you? All babies look more or less the same. So they dressed the same all their lives, and when Dermot grew his beard, Jay did too. They would always go on about their strange and embarrassing 'psychic bond'--if one of them reached 'climax' (either alone or with a woman) the other would too, wherever he was, whatever he was doing. So I don't know what the hell that's about because they both signed up for some kind of medical testing downtown today and they were rejected because they weren't actually twins. They're still brothers, I THINK, but not twins.

So Jay has shaved his beard and started wearing different clothes. He announced that it was time for him to discover his own identity. Upon hearing this, Dermot pointed at himself and said, "hold on, I thought this was your identity." Jay was like, "no, it's yours. I've been copying you."

Turns out they've both been copying each other, like some sort of weird feedback loop of men's fashion. There you go. Such things can happen. Amazing Things.

I wonder if they'll stop dirtying each other now.

Dr. Kavorkian

So the doctor from headquarters came to see me today.

He's one of those doctors who looks like he was born in about 1890, like he keeps himself alive through some ungodly process he's discovered involving the spinal fluid of bonobo monkeys and the distilled tears of children. He has those big wrinkly ears you see on old guys who hang out in barber shops. His name is Dr. Kavorkian. I figure it's safe enough to use his name as I doubt he ever googles himself with much success; that's what happens when you have a famous cousin.

That's the first thing he said. He said, "Let me reassure you; I'm not him. I'm not my cousin."

I asked him why he felt he had to say that and he was kinda surprised that I'd never heard his name before. He said something about his cousin promoting youth in Asia, so I guess he works high up in some company, Sony or something like that. But here's the thing, he said it like it was the worst thing in the world, like he was a traitor to America for employing all those Asians. I guess some old guys are still sore after Pearl Harbor and all.

So I tried to put him at ease; that's one of the social skills that Uncle taught me. Putting someone at ease is the way to win ANY conversation, and agreeing with whatever someone says is a good way to put them at ease. So I said to him, "yeah, he should be working with American kids. They're just sitting around, no jobs, no hope, getting into drugs and crime and stuff like that. Unemployment ruins lives, you know? He needs to set up a big factory or something around here. Factories all over America. No more kids on the streets."

After that the doc just sat down in Dr. Burrito's big seat, looked at me dead in the eyes and said, "how long have you felt like that, son?"

He took a clipboard from his case and started scribbling on it. I told him I'd started thinking about that kind of thing recently. It's like you can't go downtown these days without getting raped by a beggar. Beggar buggery is at an all time high, I said.

So he scribbled away and I undid my pants. He saw me looking around for the bowl and he stopped writing.

It turns out that Dr. Burrito's trick with the balls is NOT standard medical practice. There is no such thing as a "testicle bath." This explains why none of the other guys would look me in the eye when I talked to them about it. It seems that our friendly company doctor was getting some kind of kick out of it.

Kavorkian then explained that even if there WAS such thing as a testicle bath, he would certainly not be giving me one unless the bathing of the testicles was discovered to have some extraordinary new ability to prevent psychosis. As it turns out, it's his job to assess me MENTALLY! He's only interested in what the chemicals I work with might have done to my brain.

I now have a one-hour session with Dr. Kavorkian every week.

Saint Patrick

I've been thinking about Ireland and Saint Patrick. As you may already know, yesterday was "Saint Patrick's Day". It celebrates the day that Saint Patrick chased the last of the snakes out of Ireland. This was important to the Irish as they were finally safe from snake attacks; it meant they could harvest their potatoes in peace. This gave them more time to go to church, so attendance went up, and the Vactican made "Patrick The Snake Chaser" into "Saint Patrick".

( On that subject: a new bar opened recently in town, "Snake Chasers." My cousin Jay and I thought it was an Irish bar so we went along on the opening night. Boy, were we in for a shock! It was full of men in leather caps and assless chaps. They were all chasing a different kind of snake. We had to pretend we were a couple. We haven't really talked since. )

But I've been thinking. Snakes? In Ireland? It doesn't seem likely. I doubt the Irish climate is suitable for cold blooded creatures. Snakes would freeze or drown. So here's my theory: Patrick lied. He spent a few years goofing off in Ireland and when he went back to the Vatican, they asked him to give an account of his time. So he was like, "yeah, I converted some of the locals."

And they said, "but you were there for twenty years. No miracles?"

He was under pressure. "Oh yeah, loads of miracles. Twenty years? Loads of miracles."

"Name one," they said.

I imagine he paused for a while, looked at his feet, and then said "I chased the snakes out of Ireland. Every last one."

"Fantastic! Can you prove this?"

"Of course." He was in the swing of it now. "If you go to Ireland today, you won't find a single snake."

"That's amazing. Hey listen, we have a bit of a snake problem out in Sicily...millions of the deadly little bastards..."

But he was already gone. BACK TO IRELAND to make sure they got their stories straight. So he said to the Irish, "listen. If anyone asks, I need you to say I chased all the snakes away."

"All the snakes, Paddy?"

"That's right. If you don't say it, they'll send more missionaries."

"Aw no. Alright, okay. If it means no more missionaries, you did a grand job on those snakes."

"Thanks, fellas."

He Hung Up

The Reverend Keith hung up.

My Aunt Worshipped A Minion Of Hell

My Aunt wrote many, many letters to God. She said they were better than spoken prayers because you didn't forget what you'd asked for a few nights before, so you could check the results, and thus be truly thankful. She said that God answered most prayers in some fashion but that people weren't thankful enough because they'd forgotten what they'd asked for in the first place. A written letter is less demanding of the Lord's attention; he can read them when he has time. The Lord appreciates that kind of thoughtfulness.

She kept her prayers in a chest at the foot of her bed. Now and then I go to Aunt's old room and flick through the chest. I found this today, written in her unique looping scrawl:

"Dear Saint Judas Iscariot,

How are you? Oh I'm fine. I was wondering if you would intercede on my behalf on a small matter. My twice-nephew Nick (by blood and marriage) seems to be having more and more trouble getting along with the kids at his school. Nick is a delicate child with a strange temperment, much like his father at his age. I fear that unless he finds acceptance amongst his peers, he will go the same way as my poor cousin. I worry especially because his mother, bless her soul, was something of a free spirit, and not possessed of the strongest of characters or the most stable of natures. (In fact, with her dancing and her rough language, I often thought she might be possessed of some kind of demon. I warned my cousin about her many times, but there you go. I hope her soul is at peace now, or at least showing the the correct amount of repentance if it has ended up in the other place.) The boy is a combination of bad sorts. If it's at all possible, I do not want to see him gunned down like a mad dog before he's thirty.

I know you have some experience in this area. You yourself have done wrong; but you were forgiven and made into the Saint of Lost Causes. Right? Saint Jude? Like Nick, you were a lost cause. But you found acceptance amongst your peers even after betraying OUR LORD INCARNATE. Perhaps you could guide our boy Nick on the right path.

That's all I wanted to ask. My thanks and praise go to you."

She's mixed up Judas Iscariot with Saint Jude. There are hundreds of letters just like this, asking "Saint Judas Iscariot" to help her family in one way or another, often referring to me as her "little lost cause."

Is that why we've had such bad luck over the years? Has my life been shaped by a Minion of Hell? What did this history of devil worship mean for my Aunt's immortal soul, I mean did she go North or South? I'm going to have to talk to the Reverend Keith about this. Rev. K. helps me out with these kinds of questions.

On another note: it also seems that Aunt knew my father. That's interesting too. Uncle always said nobody knew who my father was, not even my mother.

Puzzling

I heard a new song on the radio today. It went a bit like this:

You're so vain
I bet you think this song is about you
You're so vain (so vain!)
I bet you think this song is about you
Don't you
Don't you

Ok, explain how this song is not about the person she's singing the song to. She expressly addresses them as 'you' and 'you're', and then she claims the song is not about them. It's a confusing song.

To be honest, it sounds like she's still REALLY hung up on whoever she's singing to. If she was singing this to me, I'd be like "yeah, it is about me, don't you know it, glad I had such an impact on you."

Clubber Lang Is My New Supervisor

He's been promoted to supervisor of shift E.

I tried to congratulate him on his promotion but he won't talk to me after what happened yesterday, it seems I have hurt his feelings by calling him Clubber Lang. I thought Mr. T was popular amongst his people but there you go. How do you gain someone's trust after hurting their feelings? I know how I gain Rambo's trust when I hurt his feelings ( like if I trip over him ), I offer him food from my plate. And I know that I would like a guy more if he offered me food from his plate. So maybe tomorrow I'll offer Clubber Lang some food. He's a big guy and he always looks hungry, so I'm sure he'll accept.

YES! I have a full tub of goat yogurt in the chiller! I'll add some apple, the apple helps when you eat goat yogurt for the first time.

My Scriptwriting

I have a dream. That dream is to write scripts for Hollywood. To date I have written two movies. You will not have heard of them as they were both rejected by the big studios for different reasons--Hollywood makes it hard for an outsider to break in. If you go to the trouble of finding a guy's home number and you call him a few times just to see what he thinks of your script--which is a reasonable, civil inquiry--suddenly everyone thinks you're some sort of crazy. Hollywood insiders are all connected, cousins of cousins, and they all talk.

Any future scripts will be submitted under the name Juan Miguel Estradas. Look out for him! I've noticed a lot of Mexican writers and directors making it big lately. That's immigration for you I guess.

Ok. Here is a synopsis of each.

1. FISHER OF BRAINS

I wrote Fisher Of Brains back in '94 when I was just eighteen years old. I had to write in secret because it is blasphemous (I was experimenting with blasphemy back then, I'm with the Christian Spiritualists now so I try to stay away from blasphemy these days). It its a reinterpretation of the story of Jesus but with zombies. The resurrection of Lazarus creates the first zombie, and this leads to a zombie plague that spreads across the Roman empire. Jesus himself is infected but never fully 'turns' due to his restorative powers, He of course is the protagonist, fighting to undo the terror he has brought upon the world.

Judas is the first one that Zombie Lazarus attacks and because of his natural aptitude for evil, he becomes his second in command.

In the end Jesus kills Judas with thirty sharpened pieces of silver. Lazarus gets away as I wanted to leave it open for a sequel. I present a short extract of that pivotal final scene:

JESUS
End of the road, Jude.

JUDAS
GRR! Get back! You can't be allowed to interfere!

JESUS
Put the head down and walk away. Just walk away.

JUDAS
GRAGGHH! We've had enough of you! Enough! TIME TO TASTE THE BLOOD OF THE LAMB!

Judas vomits over his shirt in anger. He brandishes his clawed hands with a 'shiiing!' sound. It's important that you get this sound right. If you get this wrong it will ruin the whole movie and I SWEAR I will wash my hands of this whole thing. Judas drops the Lazarus head in the dust. It blinks awake.

SFX
Shiiiing!

JESUS
It didn't have to be like this, Jude. Remember that.

JUDAS
Judas LEAP!

Judas leaps into the air, like 20 feet. You can do this in slow motion if you like. But what's that in Jesus's hand? The SHARPENED SILVER COINS from earlier! He's fashioned them into NINJA STARS! His throwing arm becomes a blur EVEN IN SLOW MOTION.

SFX
Thwap! Thwap! Thwap! Thwap!

Judas EXPLODES in mid-air. Pieces fly everywhere. A shower of blood and sharpened coins lands on Jesus. He spits the matchstick from his mouth. ( Please refer to the diagram I have attached. )

JESUS
Go in pieces, you traitorous bastard.

Jesus sees the Lazarus head. He walks over, takes a long swing, and kicks it flying into the air. It BOUNCES down a hill and lands among SOME JAGGED ROCKS. We PAN OUT to see him turn slowly and shuffle away.

FADE OUT.

After five seconds, we hear the sound of BACKWARDS WAILING.

EXT. Desert outside Galilee, night.

FADE IN.

We PAN down to see the head. The earth is broken by tongues of flame in a wide circle around the head. The WAILING increases. And now it is DEMONIC LAUGHTER.

THE DEVIL (O.S.)
(cackles)

The head sprouts long red spider legs from the stump of the neck, rights itself, and scuttles off into the night.

FADE OUT. FIN.

2. JOYLESS WHORISH CITY WOMEN

I wrote this two years ago after my breakup with a woman who shall FOREVER remain nameless. I was feeling pretty bad at the time. Angry I guess. So at the start of the movie I treat the characters pretty harshly (hence the title) but I soften up towards the end to give them a happy ending.

It follows the story of three friends in a big city (Atlanta) who are looking for love and maybe some kind of peace in their lives but HAVE NO IDEA what that would look like because of their city upbringing and ridiculous expectations. All three are whorish and/or joyless in different ways. One is well beyond childbearing age but sleeps exclusively with younger men. She kind of advises the other two on sexual matters but secretly she has no feeling left below the waist. One is a failing writer, and she writes mainly about her torrid encounters with various heartless businessmen, but nobody reads what she writes because it is published exclusively online. The other is a frigid and vaguely religious waif who complains about being unhappy but honestly wouldn't know happiness if it was DANGLING RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER FACE.

Over an elegant breakfast at an outdoors cafe, the three joyless and/or whorish women all agree to help each other on one last ditch attempt to find love (or marriage, which in their world amounts to the same thing.) They each take a separate newspaper (The Atlanta Journal, The Atlanta Express, and the Atlanta Post) and choose a singles ad.

BUT HERE'S THE TWIST...they all answer the same ad! The guy has posted the same ad to all three newspapers!

They all fall for the guy because: 1) he is young and lean, which attracts the old one, 2) he is rich, which attracts the unemployed writer, and 3) he is deeply religious and traditional in some unspecified manner, which attracts the frigid waif.

A kind of hilarity that women might appreciate ensues for some sixty minutes. I honestly didn't like writing this one but I kept going as I thought it might make a few bucks. It sags a bit in the middle as I ran out of anger. An extract follows.

( A note on the names. It gets to me sometimes how everyone in a movie has to have a different name. In real life names are reused more often than not. I know no less than three Daves and I think the Bob count is up around eight. So let's be realistic. I explained this in my cover letter. That is what a cover letter is for. )

EXT. THE PARK, day.

FADE IN.

The girls meet in THE PARK as agreed.

BRITTANY (the old one)
Well ladies, I've done it!
Are you ready for the big reveal?
(whispers)
By the way...where are your guys?

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
Oh, my guy is hiding nearby.

ANNE
(giggles inanely)
So is mine!

BRITTANY (the old one)
Okay guys! On three! One...

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
...two...!

ANNE
...three!

JOHN SMITH emerges from behind the tree. The girls all look at him, wave, and then look around expecting to see the other guys. A pause. None appear.

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
Didn't your guys hear us?
(shouts)
Three!
Guys! Come on, let me get a look at you!

ANNE and BRITTANY (the old one) look at each other, confused. JOHN SMITH folds his arms and leans against his tree. He smiles and waves.

ANNE and BRITTANY (the old one)
(together)
...but that's my...
...so he's your...
...but he's...

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
No, no, no! He's mine!
John? Tell them!

JOHN SMITH walks over to the ladies. He puts an arm around BRITTANY (the old one). She smiles. He puts an arm around ANNE. She looks confused. BRITTANY looks confused. BRITNEY (the unemployed one) looks confused.

JOHN SMITH
The truth is...Britney, Brittany, Anne...
I'm all of your guys rolled into one.
Britney: I'm rich. I can buy you dresses
and shoes with bows.
Brittany: I'm young. Really young. Like twenty three.
You won't have to feel decrepit around me.
And Anne, dear sweet Anne. I'm a Mormon.
There's only like two more notches on the sexual repression scale after Mormon.
But when we're married, it won't matter! We'll be able to do all the crazy shit you read about in those books you keep under your mattress!

BRITNEY (the unemployed one)
Hold on, back up.
When WHO is married?

JOHN SMITH
Why, all four of us!
You don't think I was just leading you on, do you?

JOHN SMITH reaches into his pockets and withdraws a single velvet box. He lifts the lid.

ALL THREE GIRLS
Wow!

In the box are THREE ENGAGEMENT RINGS with THREE SUFFICIENTLY VULGAR DIAMONDS.

JOHN SMITH
Will you girls do me the honor...
...of being my lawfully wedded wives?
In Utah, I mean? Oh yeah we have to move to Utah.

It ends with them all living happily ever after. I decided to go for a sequence of still shots with writing over them like in movies from the 80's. I don't know why people don't do that anymore, that was great.

So why have I brought this up, you ask? Well, working in the plant isn't going so well and I still dream of that Hollywood lifestyle. I recently received an unsolicited email from the NaNoWriMo guy talking about something called 'Script Frenzy', where you write a movie in a month. I could do that. I figure I could be out of here before summer.

It gets awful sticky here in the summer.

That's IT

I am not talking to anyone at work any more.

I was at the plant this morning for E shift. I don't really know the E shift guys so I thought I'd start a conversation. First I tried talking to one of the guys (we'll call him Curtis) about the rotation of the Earth. He made it clear that he didn't want to talk about that to me but it turns out he was perfectly happy to tell the other guys what I had said, and now apparently I am some sort of 'dumbass'. Well Curtis, we don't all have 'High School Diplomas' like you, but I am not a dumbass. Far from it, I am probably the most intelligent person working at the plant.

And you are probably the most ignorant, Curtis.

So then we were having our coffee in the dining hall and I tried another tack. I haven't mentioned this before but I LOVE Rocky I to IV. So I started talking about Rocky and the other guys responded well. So I put a question to the table:

"Okay, which Rocky character do you look most like?"

To which NOBODY answered. They just looked at each other. After a few seconds Curtis said "why don't you tell us?"

So I did. I look like Ivan Drago because of my German and Slovenian roots. Except I have Irish eyes and a nose of unknown origin, maybe Cherokee. Curtis looks like Rocky because he's Italian and he has a busted nose (he was happy about this.) The old guy Billy looks like Adrian's brother Paulie because he's fat and has curly hair. Then I looked around the rest of the table and realised that Curtis had LAID A TRAP.

The other guys were like "come on Ivan, who do we look like?"

Uncle always said it's honesty makes a man a man. So I said, ok. "Apollo Creed, Apollo Creed, Apollo Creed, Apollo Creed, Clubber Lang, Apollo Creed."

All the Apollo Creeds laughed at the guy who looked like Clubber Lang, and he just fixed me with this dead stare like I'd said something about his mother.

So I don't know. That's NOT RACIST. My options were limited. I'm hardly going to say that a big black guy looks like Rocky's trainer Mickey, am I? Two of them even have moustaches. And if a guy is kind of short but really wide, and I think that out of all the Rocky characters he looks most like Clubber Lang, then what am I supposed to say?

Amazing Things

They've put me on E shift and so I have some time to kill. Today I killed it by making goat yogurt. My goat yogurt is delicious and nutritious but the stores around here won't stock it, they always say "we're not buying new products at this time" or "can I see your health certification?"

If they don't want to buy local, that's their loss.

I make two varieties, plain and apple. It's just fine plain but the apple adds a cooling crunch for those long summer evenings. Today I just made plain.

I don't actually keep goats, but there are some running feral in the back woods; the elder female is my main source of goat yogurt as she has a bad knee and is pathetically easy to catch.

Nomatter. I am here to discuss amazing things. Well just one amazing thing really, my hands are tired after a long day's yogurting.

1. THE EARTH TURNS JUST SIXTY FEET PER DAY, I HAVE MEASURED IT, YOU CAN TOO

I was doing my best to relax with some fresh plain goat yogurt this afternoon but a square patch of sunlight was shining through the kitchen window and right into my eyes. I moved my chair back a little to get out of the way of the beam, but each time I did, it caught up with me to blind me again, at a steady and very irritating rate. Eventually my chair was too far from the table for the table to be of any practical use.

I realised that this was caused by the rotation of the Earth.

I realised something else: by measuring how far the beam moved along the wall every minute, I could measure the speed that the Earth turns! I waited until the ticker hand on the kitchen clock had reached 12 and then I took tiny amount of leftover yogurt and dabbed it on the wall, right on the edge of the sunlight. When it reached 12 again I made another mark, and another, and another. I continued with this until the sun went behind a cloud, about thirty marks later.

I went upstairs and found my old school ruler, then I measured the distance between the marks. It was an even half-inch every time! I knew I was on to something.

That means that the Earth turns at a half-inch per minute. And that is a fact, you can't tell me otherwise. So explain this to me, SCIENTISTS.

A half inch per minute, multiplied by sixty, that's sixty half-inches per hour, or FIVE HALF-FEET. Two and a half full feet.

Two and a half feet times twenty-four hours, that's sixty feet per day!

THE EARTH TURNS AT A RATE OF SIXTY FEET PER DAY. That's not even the distance between my desk and yonder fence. I googled it and NASA say the Earth is 131480184 feet all the way round. Divided by sixty that's 2191336.4 days for a full rotation.

HERE'S THE SPOOKY PART. 2191336.4 days is 5999 YEARS!

And how long has the Earth been around? According to at least three guys at work, the Earth has been around for 6000 years, give or take.

You can click your clicking arrow here for proof.

Now tell me, is that just COINCEDENCE? Or is that an Amazing Thing? And what happens when the Earth completes its first full rotation...is that the End of DAY(s)?

Why does science never answer my questions?

Wow

You fall asleep for a few hours and when you wake up, they've invented something else.

Please use your clicking arrow follow this link.

Today it's the talking turtleneck. You can use this special turtleneck to talk to people without having to breathe out. The French will love this. They love turtlenecks and they have notorious garlic breath.

Eyebrow Loss

I fell asleep last night at my computer. When I woke this morning the keyboard was covered in these little golden hairs. I didn't know what they were until I looked in the mirror and saw that my left eyebrow was missing.

The men of my family tend to have kinda light eyebrows anyway; they are little more than pale whisps above the eyes. So any eyebrow loss is going to affect how I look. They're going to laugh at me at work, I know they are.

QUESTION: What could have caused this? Now I kinda wish I hadn't done those things that I'm accused of doing to the doctor.

I've reattached some of the hairs but it still doesn't look right. The epoxy has taken a crust.

Amazing Things

It's been a rough day. It's time to lighten the mood with some Amazing Things. It's an amazing world.

1. NOBODY KNOWS HOW THE INTERNET WORKS

They have 'computer scientists' now and it's their job to figure it out. But the Internet is growing every day, faster than they can keep track. This will lead to a thing called a Singularity: when everything merges into one giant website that does everything for you.

2. LIQUID NITROGEN

We are now trained to handle liquid nitrogen at the plant. ( We use it to make sulphuric dithorazine-3-aminonitrate, the red colorant in both axle grease and Red Bull. ) It's crazy cold. Did you know that if you fall into the tank, they won't be able to thaw you out for a hundred years? Sometimes I like to pop the lid and just stare into the mist and the bleak darkness. It smells like the future.

3. CHIMERIC BABIES

Did you know that it's possible for two or three babies to merge into one in the womb? It happens to women who ride on airplanes, it has something to do with the pressure. The result is a chimera. A chimera is just like a normal baby but it has two or three souls. I think it's important that these chimeras are identified early so that the souls can be baptized separately, but nobody else seems to be bothered by it.

( I sometimes wonder if I am a chimera as the fingerprints on my left and right hands don't match. If I ever commit a crime I will do everything with my right hand. Then if they want to fingerprint me, I'll be a good citizen and let them, but I'll only let them do my left hand. The perfect crime. I bet if you did a survey of all criminals who have never been caught, they would mostly be chimeras. )

4. DUNSTABLE'S DARKSIDE KUNG-FU

That guy can fight. He learned his darkside Kung-Fu in the marines. He can't float like the Chinese but on the other hand, he can kill a man with a single punch. He says his fists would build up a kind of blood thirst. After a while his hands would start shaking uncontrollably: this would let him know that his death punch was ready. I asked him if his fists were still thirsty: he said no, not so much now that he was 'back in the world', but that if they ever were, I would definitely be the first guy he would call.

I guess Dunstable's okay that way. He knows I'd love to see a death punch.

Dr. Burrito's Punishment

Question: is it still punishment if the guy doesn't know who is punishing him? I want to punish him secretly as I really need this job. He can't know he's being punished either as he'll just figure out who's doing it. So it's like double-secret punishment.

Now that I think about it, if someone hurts him before all this blows over, they're going to think it was me, because I have a fresh beef with him. If he was the victim of some sort of hit and run thing tomorrow I would be the lead suspect.

Maybe I should follow him and make sure he's ok. Just until the beef loses its freshness. I'll keep the beef fresh...inside me...but as far as Dunstable or HR or the cops are concerned, I'll have let it go.

I once held a beef against a guy for a full five years before getting even. Five years. One of my cousins. I let him think I was his best friend, then WHAM! I sometimes think my prison nickname would be "The Freezer." Why's he called the freezer? they would ask. His beefs stay fresh forever, that's why.

It's Ok

Dunstable just called. He was in a meeting with Dr. Burrito and one of the company's HR guys. They had me on speakerphone.

I hate talking to the HR guys on speakerphone. You never know who else is listening in. But then I suppose you never really do, even without speakerphone. Have you heard of Echelon? They monitor everything using psychic spies. My friend Dave said they have a psychic watching you twenty-four hours a day. I had a bad few days before I realised that couldn't be true! They would need a psychic for every person! Half the population would need to have the gift! I'd say only one out of every eight people I've met is a psychic. So that's seven normal people per psychic. Those Echelon guys can only monitor you some of the time. It's basic math. So I don't worry about it so much anymore.

Ok. So here's the deal, I can go back to work in the plant (hah, they know they can't replace me so easily, I'm one of only three guys qualified to operate the Anodizing Growler) but I had to fake an apology to Dr. Burrito over the phone and now I have to talk to some other doctor from headquarters next week.

I wonder if this other doctor will know the trick with the balls?

This Morning

So the sun was right in my eyes and you know how that can be. Especially with the steam.

We have this Mexican doctor at work, he checks us out once every four months. It’s some kind of law because of the stuff we have to handle. So once every four months we full-time guys get to spend half our shift with Dr. Burrito. ( That’s not his real name. He’s the kind of guy who would google himself so I’ll just call him Dr. Burrito. And this is not racist: the man loves burritos. Eats them every day. You could call me Dr. Potato And Leek Chowder and I wouldn’t mind. I love Potato And Leek Chowder and if I’m honest, I’ve always wanted to be a doctor. Maybe not for the sick people but the respect would be great. Dr. Po-Lee-Chow. "Oh, good morning Dr. Po-Lee-Chow, your award from the President has arrived. The King of England is on the phone as well, there's something wrong with his knee." "Thanks Anne, I'll take this in my office, and might I add that I don't find your made-up name for me racist in any way, and I am part Irish and part German and part Slovenian and part Unknown.")

Ok. Dr. Burrito has this big trailer on the edge of the plant, and this is where he spends his days, apart from lunchtimes when he eats his burritos in the canteen. The trailer has this big south-east facing window at one end, and his table backs on to this, so the sun is always on his back. I was sitting across the table from him so the sun was right in my eyes. He was just a steamy shadow. I'll explain the steam in a minute.

I've been to see the company doctor a few times before and it's generally alright. He takes all kinds of measurements, takes hair and nail samples (you have to grow your nails out before you go see him, that's no problem for me as mine grow at twice the rate of normal men.) He takes urine, blood, spit and semen. If you have any goo in the corners of your eyes he'll take that as well. One of the solvents we work with can cause the testicles to swell up so he has to have a feel of those. He makes us sit them in a miniature bath of hot water first. I can't say I enjoy being felt up by a man so soon after giving a semen sample but the bath is nice, makes me feel better for the rest of the day.

( The testicle thing happened to a guy we work with. It's not as funny as you'd think. It all happened real fast. In the morning he was fine, but by the end of his shift he was a vastly inflated cripple. I saw them wheel him out, he had a towel over his waist but it didn't cover anything really. His sack was like a big bag of walnuts and purple gummi snakes and the skin holding it all together looked all stretched and transparent like it was ready to burst. It gave me nightmares. )

( He's better now but he can never have children. Oh yeah he's also blind. )

So I'm sitting with my pants around my ankles and my manhood submerged and Dr. Burrito starts asking questions. Normally he just talks about the weather or the football but this time was different, he was filling out some kind of form. I did my best to answer until he got to this one:

"Do you have a family eestory of cancer or heart disease?"

Now questions like that really get to me. There's this big implication around these parts that everybody knows everybody in their family for, like, a hundred generations back. For most people that's just not the case. I have the man I called Uncle, and he was my mother's brother, but we never knew my father so I guess that only made him my half-uncle. For the last three generations of my half-uncle's family, the men have died of shooting related incidents. That means, what, I have a 50:50 chance of accidentally shooting myself in the face before 60? So I tell this to Dr. Burrito and he starts laughing at me. Not just a chuckle. He brays like a stud donkey for a full count of twenty. With that, and like, the sun right in my eyes, and all the steam...

Now I'm a calm kind of guy. At school I was the calmest of all the kids. Some of the other kids got wind of my unshakable nature and spent a whole year trying to break me by calling me names and stealing my clothes but I never gave in to it. Instead I would go home, go to my room, and just punch myself on the legs until they went numb. I would imagine that one leg was Bobby and the other was his friend Anthony and I'd just hit and hit and hit. It meant I could feel what it was like to punch flesh AND feel just how hard those punches were. Best of both worlds.

( If you have kids who are having trouble at school you can tell them to give it a go. )

I guess I don't like being laughed at. So I do my best to explain this to Dr. Burrito. In all the excitement I knock over the little kidney bowl between my legs, and the hot water goes everywhere, all over my pants, and this makes me just more and more angry, and Dr. Burrito is totally unprofessional about the whole thing. He calls me a 'whack job'. Then the sun catches me right in the corner of my eye, and I see this crazy flash of red. That's mostly what I remember, just the red, and the little veins everywhere.

The next thing I know I'm in the yard outside the doctor's trailer, pants still around my ankles, and Dunstable has me pushed up against the fence in some kind of kung-fu lock. I tried telling him what had happened, about how unprofessional the doc had been, about how he just kept laughing, and then how the sun was just so bright...but Dunstable just called me a 'whack job' again and told two of the other guys to pull up my pants. Apparently Dr. Burrito had tripped and fallen or something, managed to hurt himself in the commotion, and because of all the yelling I was doing this made me look bad, made it look like I'd done something to him.

So Dunstable made me go home (that's half a day without pay!) until he could 'fix things'. I guess he's not the bad guy here. The bad guy is definitely that Dr. Burrito.

He will be punished.

Strike Three

I've been sent home from work for the rest of the day to "cool off".

YET AGAIN my supervisor (we'll call him Dunstable) chooses the WRONG SIDE.

Bad move, Dunstable.

The Raccoon Dog

This is for the guys over at struthersneil.blogspot.com.

It will serve as as good an introduction as anything else.

(As as, is that grammar? Can you have 'as' after 'as'? I've seen books where they have 'had' after 'had'. An example: Harry had had enough of his HAZMAT suit, it itched him all day and it didn't even work like it should.)

Ok.

I think I was nine years old when Humper ran away.

Humper was our Newfoundland dog. He had fur like baling wire, his mouth smelled like an ass and his ass also smelled like an ass, but if you didn't touch him with your bare skin and focused your attention mainly on his middle he was a good dog. An outside dog, not like Rambo (Rambo is my terrier, I found him on a building site, he is afraid of everything.) His real name was Happy, but only my Aunt called him that. Everyone else called him Humper. Now his name is what my friend Joe calls 'an incongruent item of fact'. Incongruent means that it doesn't make sense. Back then we weren't bade to say things like that. We would be disciplined. So why was he called Humper? Why were we bade to say it and shout it? I don't know. Well, I know why he was called Humper: because he would do the deed with anything. I mean anything.

( I think we were allowed to say it because it made Uncle laugh to hear us shout it, especially that time when old Humper got at our pillows. We shouted it then! )

( Aunt never liked the name. She was always closer to the Lord than Uncle. If it's possible to be jealous of the Creator I think Uncle maybe was, though he never said it outright. Except maybe once. After she passed on, I told Uncle not to fret because she was with the Lord, and Uncle just squinted up at the ceiling and said "whore." I've never told anyone this. )

( BOY it feels GOOD to BLOG! )

None of this is relevant to the story. Well, it might be, here's the thing, I'm not sure and I've never been sure. When I was nine, Humper ran away, out into the back woods. Uncle left food out and my cousins searched for him, but we never found him. Now there's something else you get in the back woods: you get raccoons.

( I've known what a raccoon was for as long as I can recall. One of my earliest memories is of a raccoon that would come at night to scratch at the window of my bedroom when I was very little. It never got in but it always looked like it really wanted to. The look in its eyes made me cry. With fear. That raccoon definitely wanted to bite me. Nearly chewed the wood from around the glass to get at me. So I would never just go out and befriend a raccoon in the woods, okay? )

I think it was two years later, I was home from school for the summer, and one day I found a dog at the edge of the woods. It was a real weird dog. Wide-set eyes and a real flat head. It couldn't walk properly and there was something wrong with its snout, like it was all folded over on the inside. I guess it's hard to describe, but it's like the lower jaw was in a fight with the upper jaw that it could never win, and the tongue just didn't fit right anywhere. I fed it a chicken leg just to see how it ate, and it ended up following me back to the house.

( My cousin Sarah was about fifteen at the time. She cried when she saw it! She's still a crier though. I should remember to mention this to her sometime. She gets these 'shocks' that come from the inside of her own head, bad memories and stuff. Actually, I shouldn't mention it. )

The dog would never come into the house. I fed it leftovers for a week. It would come scratching for food and then just shuffle back into the woods after it was fed.

Ok. So Sarah told Uncle about it. He waited with me until it came out of the woods for dinner one night, and then he went crazy. He said I'd been feeding an abomination of nature. And worst of all, something that was probably meant to be a raccoon in the Lord's plan.

I couldn't see it myself. It still looked like a dog to me.

He explained to me that there was a raccoon's mortal soul caught up in that funny dog's body, and that it was only right to let it go.

( Do animals have souls? There's a question for science. But sometimes it's like science doesn't even try to answer the questions I have. I'll talk about science later maybe. )

We gave it a last meal. While it was eating, Uncle handed me the spade. My first blow wasn't clean (I was only eleven) but my second put its lights out for good.

When we were rolling it into the hole, we saw the raccoon-dog's penis for the first time (it was a boy raccoon-dog). And here's the thing (pardon the pun!) It was exactly like Humper's penis. A double. And Humper had a thing like no other dog, it always kind of hung out and it had a funny split at the end. When he was still around you saw it on average about ten times a day. You couldn't mistake it for another dog's thing. But here it was on something that was apparently a raccoon.

I told Uncle what I thought had happened and he told me never to repeat it to anyone. So I won't. You can draw your own conclusions.

Ok. I think the abomination was the son of Humper and some floozie raccoon.

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