The Profane Drift

When I was a kid... as now... there were words you weren’t supposed to say. Words that, if spoken within hearing of one’s immediate ancestors, would result in unpleasant consequences.

I heard about “getting your mouth washed out with soap.” Never had that happen. Hell, I WISH I’d had that happen; how much worse could it have been than getting smacked upside the head? And when I was a kid, getting smacked upside the head was considered quite mild as far as parental disciplinary techniques went; presumably, my own parents suffered beatings, their parents suffered Spanish Inquisition tortures, and I’m guessing that my great grandparents were subject to loss of extremities and facial features for spilling milk at the dinner table.

So there were words that were not used. Not even to discuss what they meant, much less as an expletive, verb, noun, adjective, or interjection. GROWNUPS could use these words, but kids would suffer a swift consequence if they were so much as to be heard to BREATHE any of these linguistic tidbits. The F word, the S word, the D word, none of these were to be countenanced.

This included the H word, a parental decision that I didn’t much agree with. I mean, the word itself, “Hell,” is pretty mild as swear words go, and was even in the ancient days of my youth. What’s WRONG with it? Admittedly, it’s the final repository of sin and wickedness and the home and prison of Satan, Prince of Darkness, but if “Satan” isn’t a bad word, why was “Hell” unacceptable in schoolyard or driveway?

Didn’t matter. Even discussing the word itself or its acceptability was risky. And so I avoided using this word and the others previously discussed, as my parents wished it, and then I left home and went to college and discovered that I and everyone else I knew could barely get a sentence out without a goddamn fuckin’ sonofabitchin’ cuss word or three in there, goddammit!

Today, I work with elementary children. The word “crap” sometimes is heard on the playground; it is considered an acceptable euphemism for “shit,” and bears no consequence from the Ancient Ones, other than a sharp glance and a snarl of “Language!” from the playground monitor, who might well be me.

And it’s been so long since anyone hit me upside the head for saying, “Aw, hell,” that I’ve long forgotten the reflexive reaction, the whoopsie, the clampdown, the slapping of one’s hand over one’s mouth should such a malediction escape into the free air.

Some words just don’t have the power they used to. Some words aren’t considered cussin’ any more, and haven’t been in a while.

But sometimes, I see something that reminds me that not everyone got it all out of their system back in college.

Nine Pairs Of Slacks

I got issues.

Haircuts are one of them. I was forced to wear John F. Kennedy’s haircut from the time of my first haircut until the day I left home, because JFK was the ultimate human being ever produced, and nothing he ever did could ever go out of style. To this day, haircuts make me irritable and twitchy, despite the fact I’ve been the boss of my hairstyle since I was seventeen.

Shoes are another one. Shoe shopping was an ordeal when I was a kid, because we’d go out to buy me shoes, and then Mom would stop and shop for shoes and I’d be ordered to sit there in standby mode for three hours while she tried on shoes, and when she finally finished, then I’D have to try on shoes for three hours until Mom found something she liked on ME, and six hours is an eternity when you’re eight years old. I STILL don’t like shoe shopping, and tend to rush through it as quickly as possible.

But all of this pales before the issue of polyester.

I grew up in the Age of Polyester, the seventies, a time when man grew proud and insane, because we apparently felt that wearing clothing made of plastic was a good thing. And, naturally, I differed with my kin on this. I liked polyester BLENDS, because 100% cotton jeans weigh a metric ton and take forever to break in, but clothing made entirely out of polyester struck me as much the same as wearing the bags the clothing CAME in.

Dad loved polyester.

He loved polyester because it never needed ironing, and the trousers held a razor sharp crease. You could wash it all in the washing machine, no dry cleaning necessary. You could slap a plate of Italian food in your lap, and it would wash out effortlessly. It was light, it breathed, it was the ultimate form of clothing ever invented since ancient man tried strapping live sheep to his back to stay warm. Polyester was IT!

And I still remember the time in ‘75 or so when he decided I needed a leisure suit.

The picture here shows a typical polyester leisure suit of the era. It is somewhat like the one my father bought me, except that mine was in a rich forest green, and had lapels that were MUCH bigger than those shown... I’d swear that my lapels were roughly the size and shape of the sails on a sloop.

So I was fashionable. For a time. Kind of; rather than the dashing seventies haircut the model in the picture has, I had John F. Kennedy’s haircut, which make me look sort of anachronistic.

“You ought to LOVE that thing,” my father said. “You don’t need to wear a TIE with it. You HATE ties!”

He was right. I hated ties. I also learned that I hated wearing trousers that felt like they were made of heavily starched burlap, and having lapels that when they caught the wind felt like I was about to go airborne like the Flying Nun.

Fortunately, within a year, puberty hit with a vengeance, and within a couple months after that, I couldn’t fit into the thing any more. This pleased me immensely, and irritated my father to no end. “Can’t you just, you know, let it out a little?” Dad wheedled my mom, and was told NO in no uncertain terms because leisure suits were not made with alterations in mind.

Fortunately, my old man had by then fixated on something else: the black polyester suit coat and matching slacks. Shifting trends and fashions had rendered the loose, coarse weave of the polyester leisure suit obsolete; NOW, we had the tight, fine weave of the black polyester office ensemble!

Dad loved it. “You don’t need to iron them! They don’t need dry cleaning! They don’t wrinkle, no matter HOW you treat ‘em! And you can dunk ‘em in tomato sauce, and they clean right up, no stains! Man, clothes just don’t GET any better than this!”

And he believed it. Because I remember him going to work in those black polyester slacks in ‘77. I remember him wearing them at Christmas in ‘83. I remember him wearing them during Thanksgiving in ‘86. And Ghod help me, I remember him trying to talk me into accepting them from him in that horrible holiday season of ‘90.

By 1990, disco was deader than disco, and polyester formal wear was as gone as the Roman chariot races. My father did not care. The fashionistas did not dictate to HIM what was acceptable, and apparently, neither did anyone at his office, and when black polyester work slacks went out of style, well, that just made them easier and cheaper for him to acquire at garage sales and Goodwill stores. And by that holiday season of 1990, he realized that he had way too many pairs of black polyester slacks.

My father was not a salesman, but he might have been. Or perhaps not; you can just walk away from a salesman, or close your door, or threaten to kill him. I couldn’t do that with my old man, and his technique was the “Wear Them Down Until They Give In Or Die” school. He’d done this to me before in my youth, because after he learned that forcing me to do a thing was to teach me to hate it, he decided that simply talking me into it was somehow better. And when he started leaning on you to do a thing, he Would. Not. Stop. Ever.

When I came home for my birthday that year, he started leaning on me about the damn slacks. “They never get wrinkled, ever! And they keep a crease without ironing!”

“Dad, I would sooner go to work naked with barbed wire wrapped around my dangles and a KICK ME sign on my back than wear polyester slacks to work.”

“But you could dump a bowl of gazpacho in your lap, and they’d launder up in one wash! And no dry cleaning!”

I wound up leaving early. But I came back for Thanksgiving.

“They keep a crease, no matter what, no ironing! And you could dump a lasagna in your lap and it machine washes right out!”

“Dad, you have already successfully reproduced. If I started wearing those slacks around, it would pretty much finish any hope I ever had of matching that feat. The time of polyester is over and done. I will not wear your slacks.”

“Aw, what do those fashionistas know? They look great! And they never wrinkle! No ironing!”

I left after breakfast the next day. He’d brought the slacks to the table to demonstrate while I ate my scrambled eggs.

But then there was Christmas. I’d come up a couple of days early to see my grandparents, and my sister was going to be there, and had I known the cruelty of that Christmas, I’d have gone anywhere BUT.

But now he had me where he wanted me. For two days, he could talk about nothing but the glory of the goddamned black polyester slacks. Even Mom was starting to get a little irritated. But while his only son held out, he Could. Not. Stop. “You could dump a whole chocolate mousse in your lap, and it washes right out in the machine! No dry cleaning! And you don’t even have to PAY for ‘em, son! I got ‘em right HERE!”

On and on and on. For two days. What finally tipped me over was the idea that he might sneak off on the 24th and wrap the goddamn things and stick them under the tree with my name on them. And I realized: I don’t have to wear them to work. I don’t have to wear them at ALL. I don’t LIVE here. He will never know. I could pitch the damn things out the car window on the way out of town, and he would never know.

And even then, I held out. Surely, he will realize that I do not want his goddamn polyester trousers. Surely, after three days, he will relent.

And he did not relent. As we opened presents around the tree on Christmas Eve, he continued. “No dry cleaning, ever! You could wad ‘em up and leave ‘em all night, and they won’t wrinkle!”

And finally, after a large glass of heavily spiked eggnog with rum, I snapped. “FINE!” I roared. “FINE! GIVE ME THE SLACKS! GIVE ME THE GODDAMN SLACKS! RIGHT NOW! PLAINLY, THE UNIVERSE WILL COLLAPSE INTO ENTROPY AND SATAN HIMSELF WILL RETURN TO RULE IF I DO NOT ACCEPT THOSE GODDAMN SONOFABITCH BASTARD SLACKS!!!!”

And as the last syllables left my lips, I was regretful.

Mom did a slow facepalm.

My sister goggled like a koi carp who’d suddenly found himself in a pine forest.

My grandparents blinked twice and did a fine synchronized BIG slug of eggnog each.

But my father beamed like sunlight through the storm clouds. “I’ll run gettum right now. You WON’T regret it. Just TRY them!” And he vanished in a twinkling.

And I looked around at my appalled immediate ancestors. “Sorry,” I said.

They said nothing, but my mom nodded and my grandfather grinned sagely. Dad really had made a point of going on about NOTHING else whenever he and I had been in the same room for three... stinkin’ ... days. At least now it would end.

And Dad came running back in with an armload of black polyester slacks.

And after that, Christmas became ... well, tolerable. Periodically, he seemed to forget that I had accepted the damn pants, because he would burst into lyrical melody about the glories of polyester slacks, but these celestial song cues were short lived, and we could get on with the business of tolerating each other’s company.

And when I left, I stuffed them into a plastic garbage bag. Dad didn’t mind. “Just you wait,” he said. “When you get ‘em out, they’ll be as smooth and unwrinkled as if you’d ironed ‘em. Just you wait.” And I stuffed the bag in the trunk of the car, and departed for the land of sanity. Those kids on TV, I thought, THEY got dads like Hugh Beaumont and Danny Thomas. Me, I got a prerecorded sales pitch on eternal loop...

And I forgot about them. They stayed in the trunk for months. Eventually, they found their way into the bathroom closet in my apartment. I kept meaning to donate them to Goodwill or something, but some small part of me was afraid he’d FIND them again, somehow, if I did that.

The last time I saw them was when I was going to entertain a woman in my apartment on short notice. The sink was full of dishes, and I had no time to wash, and I threw the essentials into the dishwasher, and the nonessentials... shit, shit, shit, where to PUT them... and I found a plastic garbage bag in the bathroom closet, and promptly flung all the remaining dirty dishes into the bag and stuck it back in there.

...and forgot about it.

I’d been married for a few months and living in my new home before I remembered about the plastic garbage bag full of dirty dishes and something like nine pairs of black polyester slacks. I immediately felt bad about the poor guy who’d had to clean my apartment after I left.

But hey, I thought crazily, I bet all the dirty dish sludge washed right out, with no dry cleaning!

And I bet they even still had a crease!

A Scene From Public Education

All because Subway's credit card machine was dead.

It wasn't a bad day at work, as days go, but I just wasn't on my game today. Bleh.

So when it finally came time to exit, I decided I was due a treat. Decided to stop at Subway on the way home, get my favorite: teriyaki chicken twelve inch with sweet onion sauce, lots of baby spinach, bell peppers, banana peppers, olives, lettuce, and triple onions. Mmmmm. Like a salad, but in a sandwich! And I knew disappointment when I pulled up in front of the place and saw the hand lettered sign, CREDIT CARD AND DEBIT MACHINE BROKEN CASH ONLY SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE.

Well, bugger. My mouth is set now. Where to eat? I glanced around. Mama's? No, I want something take home. Wendy's? Bleh. Schlotzky's? Neh. Fatso's BBQ?

...mmm... not what I would have thought of... but if I get take out, I can get all the free onions and pickles I want. It's not a salad sandwich, but barbecue's good. And it's cheap! So I swung over and parked.

Ordered a couple of sandwiches and fries. The young lady trotted off to get my order... and left a young black guy standing at the counter staring at me. Weirdly. In a way that kind of weirded me out. Until he noticed my casual day T-shirt and asked, "You worked at Pseudonymous Middle School?"

I looked at his face again. He DID look familiar... I glanced at his ID badge: MICHAEL

...and then it hit me: MICHAL.... pronounced "Michael." I'd first heard that name from years earlier. He was one of my first classes of kids, back when I'd first started working Special Ed, behavior unit. I remembered his name, too. At my first Parent Night, Michal's mom had screamed it in my face.

"His name is MICHAL, and there ain't no damn E in it!" she had snarled loudly, all WAY up in my face. "All them OTHER Michaels have E's. This one DOES NOT, and you better RECOGNIZE!"

I had made no issue of Michal's name. Considering some of the bizarre things parents name their children, Michal was no trouble. Hell, the longer I teach, the more I wonder if some of them specifically do that just to fuck with everyone who will have to deal with their child; we get some with names specifically spelled in such a way as to be unpronounceable on the first bounce... I've had kids who had names like "John," but spelled it "Terhorski." But apparently, Mom has dealt with enough people who tried to tell her how to spell "Michael" that she feels a tad hostile in advance to the likes of me.

I was wrong, of course. That's just how Mike's mom dealt with her fellow human beings. With hate, aggression, and a barely leashed viciousness that led most people to back the hell off because she seethed with hate, aggression, and barely leashed viciousness. Oh, she also didn't like anyone calling him "Mike." His name was MICHAL, damn your eyes!

Found out later that she'd discovered he LIKED being called "Mike," and beat the living shit out of him with a belt for it. His name was MICHAL, damn your eyes! And you better TELL those other boys that your name is MICHAL! WITH NO GODDAMN "E!" AND I BETTER NOT EVER HEAR YOU SAY OTHERWISE!

I did fine with Michal. He wasn't really a behavior kid. He was in there because his MOM wanted him there, because he was SUCH A ROTTEN, MISBEHAVING, BAD LITTLE BOY!

When I worked psych, we had lots of kids like that. "He MUST be bad," the parent would say, "because he is ALWAYS doing things that I have to BEAT him for!" There are a surprising number of parents who simply do not understand your basic child. Even worse, there are a surprising number of parents who simply assume that beating the shit out of the child with a belt or paddle or whatever is the default answer to any factor of the child that one does not like. Like making noise, being goofy, acting like a child, or in some cases, having the wrong father, breathing too heavily, having feelings, or simply existing improperly.

We had fun with Michal's mom his eighth grade year. You see, I have to submit periodic evaluation forms on all my kids. When I worked the Behavior Unit, one of the basic ones was "what's the kid done lately?" How has he misbehaved? Michal's problem was that he almost never acted out. Ever. He was friggin' angelic next to the other kids I had. Furthermore, he had no academic difficulties; he was actually pretty sharp. And that made my job harder. I was geared to stupid, poisonous children, or kids with psych difficulties. Much as I liked Michal, he simply did not belong in my class, and there was no reason he couldn't cut it in the regular ed classes.

So I said so. Finally, the department called a meeting, and we pulled him from the Behavior Unit.

His mother about popped an O-ring.

We went through a month long period where me, the principal, the secretaries, and the campus cop literally evolved a drill every time that woman set foot on campus, and she did so at least twice a week. Procedure called for her to check in at the office and get a visitor badge. Oh, HELL no, Michal's Mom could not be bothered with THAT! No, no, she'd wander in the front door and:

(a) Launch a frontal assault on the principal in her office... regardless of who else might be in there. Michal's Mom did not wait. Or make appointments. Or anything but storm the hell in and begin her strident speech.

(b) Hunt through the building until she found Michal, and then drag him out of class to scream at him in the hallway for whatever transgression she'd discovered since he left the house that morning.

(c) Invade the Special Ed office, regardless of who was in there or what was going on, and howl and froth at the department head, secretary, or anyone handy. Including, once, another parent who did not work for the district and came damn close to decking her.

(d) Stride into my classroom like she owned it, terminating any teaching, education, or anything else until such time as her grievance had been addressed, or I had simply listened to her rant for a while.

All of these eventually resulted in a nearby person running to and hitting the nearest panic button. The intercom would come on, the secretary in the main office would immediately realize that Mrs. Mike had gotten in, and the cop would be summoned and sent to collect her. She'd scream and holler and argue with any administrator, but she would actually OBEY the COP. She wouldn't SHUT UP, but she would at least motivate towards the door or the front office, spouting and foaming the whole time.

One of the more interesting incidents came when she stormed into my room that month to launch into the now-familiar complaint that we COULD NOT simply shuffle her son into any classes we thought appropriate, that SHE WAS THE PARENT AND SHE HAD RIGHTS, and I countered by blocking her way and moving towards the door, maneuvering her into the hall. By now, the kids knew the drill, and Michal got up to go hit the panic button.

"OH YOU WILL NOT!" she screamed at Michal. "I WILL BEAT YOUR WORTHLESS ASS WHEN YOU GET HOME!"

"Ma'am," I said, much more calmly than I felt, "you have just threatened your child in front of a public school teacher. By law, I must now contact Child Protective Services and report this incident."

"YOU CAN'T DO THAT! HE IS MY BOY! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DISCIPLINE MY BOY!"

"The fact remains, ma'am, that I must contact CPS and report this. If I do not, I could go to jail."

"I WILL SUE YOUR WORTHLESS ASS AND THIS WHOLE GODDAMN SCHOOL INTO HELL AND GONE!"

"That is your privilege, ma'am. But now I must call CPS and report this incident. As well as your entering my classroom and screaming profanity."

If looks could kill, I'd have been powder, right then and there. By this time, I had her into the hall, though, and round the corner came the cop and one of the veeps, at a jog.

*************************************

And here he was, working at Fatso's Barbecue. Nineteen years old. We had a nice little chat. He wasn't living at home any more; crashing on a friend's couch, kicking in on the bills, and saving money. He was most of the way through his degree! "That's right, gonna be a twenty year old with a DEGREE!" he crowed. Just making money until he could afford to jump back in and leap through those last few hoops. It was good to see him. I can't take credit for his success. Only thing I ever did that was any good for him was getting him out of my class. But it still felt good.

The girl came back with my food, and we shook hands, and I paid and left. I noticed on the way out that his badge read MICHAEL.

Not MICHAL.

MICHAEL.

And as I write, I wonder: did Fatso's misprint his badge? Or did he finally tell his mother to go to hell? Kind of wish I'd asked....

The Fizzies Challenge

I ponder Fizzies.

Fizzies were basically flavored Alka Seltzer. The IDEA was that you would put some sugar in water, then drop a Fizzies tablet in the water, and a minute or so later, you would have a carbonated fizzy soft drink!

Fizzies kind of sucked. The drink tasted somewhere between Alka Seltzer and Kool Ade that wasn’t really trying. But they were useful for the Fizzies Challenge.

Two kids would meet, with seconds, on the playground. They would face each other, and Fizzies would be handed to each duelist, and a neutral party would count to three. And on three, each duelist would pop the Fizzies into their mouth, and clamp down.

The idea was to be the LAST one to spit it out. The cherry ones in particular were grueling. Imagine extremely sour Pop Rocks that are foaming like mad and WILL NOT STOP! And when your mouth fills with insane fruit sour foam foam FOAAAAAAM, you simply let it dribble down your chin, because spitting at THIS point could contain the foaming tablet, and you could LOSE... or worse, be accused of TRYING TO CHEAT!

So you stood there clenching your teeth and trying not to cry and spewing bloody red foam out of the corners of your mouth and praying that the OTHER bastard would give up FIRST!

More than two could play, and it was a fine way to prove your mettle to your peers without actually having to beat each other up. The grownups did not care for it, though -- they’d see a ring of cheering children, assume a fight had broken out, and break through the crowd to see a couple or three combatants, standing rigid, bug eyed, with tears streaming down their faces and gory red foam leaking from the corners of their mouths, and they were never sure WHAT to think.

My old elementary school eventually outlawed Fizzies for this very reason. It wasn’t fighting, but apparently required SOME sort of adult regulation for ... whatever reason.

And you know what? It might have been weird, but we sure’s hell weren’t eating detergent pods.

The Idiot Apocalypse

Prologue 1. We were ready to go, but we didn’t want to go near the door yet. The child had picked up a boxed toy off the pile near the doors and was screaming his head off. Mama, oblivious to the fact she was standing in the store’s main doorway, was trying to soothe the child, and he wasn’t having any of that. He wanted his TOY! And Mama finally put him down, took the box and headed for the register to buy it for him.

The child, finding himself uncomforted, unheld, and unattended, howled for a moment. And then he realized that Mama had left him with the rest of the boxed toys. He quit howling. And he picked up another one and proceeded to tear it open...

Prologue 2. “How the hell did he even get out of his CAR?” I asked.

We stood there and looked at our car. There was no way Berni was getting into the driver’s seat. The guy in the next space had backed into his spot, and his wheels were right on the line. His driver’s side door was within inches of OUR driver’s side door.

“I can’t see how he got OUT,” I repeated. “What, was he two dimensional? Or did he just park like an idiot and then climbed out of the passenger side? What the hell?”

And with some stoicism, Berni went to the passenger side of OUR car and proceeded to climb across to the driver’s seat.

Prologue 3. Ever see a zombie movie?

There’s a hell of a lot of them. And in most of the best ones, you get some foreshadowing, some clue that something is amiss. The zombies aren’t overrunning the landscape YET... but in an alley, you see this one guy staggering around aimlessly. Or in a graveyard scene, you see an abandoned funeral, left amid overturned chairs and an empty coffin... a clue that SOMETHING is terribly WRONG...

The first one, Night Of The Living Dead, had this. THERE was a movie that shot the sheriff in the first paragraph, yessirree. None of this character development, none of this Getting To Know Doomed Characters, naw, we go straight from Johnny being a jerk to his sister Barbara while this weird man staggers in the background, to suddenly he’s ON them, and he’s a ZOMBIE, and oh, SHIIIIIT--

Main story. ...and so, I ducked out this morning to run a couple errands. I’d forgotten about the idiot mom and her spoiled child the previous night, as well as the fellow who’d been so careful to park backwards in his spot that he apparently didn’t care if he or anyone else could actually get in or out of their cars...

And while I was out, I encountered an old friend: the person who roars past you well above the speed limit... gets in front of you... and slams on the brakes. Because they wanted to go ten miles UNDER the speed limit, they just wanted to do it in front of YOU.

This was actually a good thing. Because since I slowed down, I was nowhere near the guy who decided to change lanes without looking, and clipped the box truck in the lane into which he was veering. The box truck wobbled, and traffic all around him scattered, and I tapped the brakes and decided perhaps the side streets would be better, and took the next exit.

Errands weren’t much better. At one place, I was unable to approach the product I wished to buy because of a little mob of employees dragging around a pallet jack in such a way as to cleverly block the aisles as they carried on their conversation.

As I shopped for groceries, I encountered a man with no cart who apparently needed to block as much of the aisle as he could with his own body, to demonstrate his bigness. I grew frustrated.

....and out of nowhere... I found myself imagining a scene in every zombie movie. The scene where it hasn’t COMPLETELY hit the fan... but all the signs are there...

And it hit me: what if the zombie virus doesn’t turn you into a zombie? What if it just makes you oblivious and stupid?

It was a staggering thought. As the very large spread out man lurched towards me, I said, “ExCUSE me!”

He noticed me for the first time. He brought his arms and legs back into his personal space. “Oh,” he said. “Sorry.” And he walked past me like a normal human. He hadn’t MEANT to be trying to take up the entire aisle. He’d just been... oblivious. Just like the employees with the pallet jack who had turned hardware shopping into a slow motion adventure. Just like the idjit who’d been so concerned with parking, it never occurred to him that he was blocking others.

Oblivious.

And I envisioned that somehow, the Idjit Plague had been released the previous night, and Berni and I had simply been seeing the first cases, the Patient Zeroes, so to speak... and now the pandemic was underway. The March of the Morons. The birth of a generation of perfect voters. Idiocracy. The death of good customer service and awareness of others around you.

And it hit me again: Just like the employees with the pallet jack who had turned hardware shopping into a slow motion adventure. Just like the idjit who’d been so concerned with parking, it never occurred to him that he was blocking others.

Oblivious.

And I envisioned that somehow, the Idjit Plague had been released the previous night, and Berni and I had simply been seeing the first cases, the Patient Zeroes, so to speak... and now the pandemic was underway. The March of the Morons. The birth of a generation of perfect voters. Idiocracy. The death of good customer service and awareness of others around you.

And it hit me again: if I was right... how would we know?

The Horror Of Repetition

I haven't actually seen "Frozen" yet. Movie's been out awhile, but I've been busy.

But I can tell you chapter and verse what HAPPENS, oh yeah. And the snowman is named Olaf. And it's an allegory for bein' gay. Except when it isn't. And it's a feminist fable. Except when it's an allegory for oppression of women. And best of all, you can have "Frozen" cereal for breakfast, "Frozen" Campbell's soup for lunch, and a "Frozen" frozen dinner for dinner, and in between, you can play with enough "Frozen" toys to recreate the entire movie, before finally going to bed on "Frozen" sheets, pillowcases, and comforter!

I am starting to dislike a movie I have never actually seen.

It's happened before, too. I didn't WANT to hate "E.T." It came naturally, though.

The movie came out in 1982, and I went and saw it in a theatre. I thought it was a bit kid flavored for my taste, but not a bad movie at all; rather liked it. And I forgot about it about ten minutes after I walked out of the theatre. "Star Wars," it wasn't.

For about a month, everything was OK. And then, the happy meal toys appeared.

And the collectible set of glasses. And the marketing tie-in with Reese's Pieces. And the coloring books. And the toilet paper. And the sheets. And the windup toys. And the cereal. And... for something over a year to 25 months, I literally could not go out in public without having ET shoved down my throat in some form or fashion.

Staying home didn't help. They attached ET to anything they thought might possibly sell better with a frog-faced alien on it. Reese's Pieces' sales went stratospheric, and everybody else wanted a piece of the action. I literally couldn't watch a half hour sitcom without seeing some commercial with a clip from the movie in which ET was trying to sell me anything from hair conditioner to brake fluid.

And one day, I turned on the radio, and Neil Diamond of all people sang, "Turn on your heart-liiiight..." and I literally jumped back from the radio in horror. No, NO, NOT HERE, TOO! And the [expletive deleted] song went gold, and they played the fraggin' thing every five minutes, and I literally went out and bought my first Sony Walkman so I could listen to music without having ET stuffed into my poor ears. I wondered in calm horror, did they pay Neil Diamond to sing an ET song, or was he so wild about the movie that he wrote and sang the fraggin' thing out of sheer enthusiasm for the Culture God that was ET?

The phenomenon was that saturated in the fraggin' culture. To live in America was to eat, breathe, drink, and sleep ET. And to this day, if the thing comes on TV, I'll change the channel as fast as I can reach the remote. I've only seen the actual movie twice, but after a couple of years of marinating in the cultural phenomenon 30 years ago, I'm marked for life. Pavlov's dogs drooled, and I flee ET.

I mourn "Conan The Barbarian." I didn't want to dislike "Conan." I really liked it when I went to go see it in the theatre. But later, my roommates and I splurged for cable with ALL the premium channels, and that night, we made popcorn and prepared for the SHOW.

And we clicked on HBO. What's on? "Conan The Barbarian," with Arnold Schwarzenegger. How about it, guys? Meh. Seen it. What else?

Showtime! They try harder! What's on? James Earl Jones? No, Thulsa Doom.... in the middle of "Conan the Barbarian." Ah. Well. What else?

Cinemax! Awesome! The Home Nudity Network! What have they got? Ah. "Conan The Barbarian."

A couple of months later, we had the cable company pull the premium channels. And for 25 years, I haven't been able to watch "Conan The Barbarian."

It's especially bad with songs, though. I don't hate "All About The Bass." Not yet. Or "Take Me To Church." I'm getting there, though. But they haven't been ramrodded HARD enough yet. I don't walk into stores and hear it blasting at me through the sound system yet. And they haven't coopted the song for commericials. Yet. So far, I can escape from it by simply twisting a knob.

Not so "Elvira."

Not the erstwhile Mistress Of The Dark, Bad Movies, and Cleavage. Her, I still like. But the song of the same name by the Oak Ridge Boys, I cannot stand.

Because once again, back in the 80s, something went wrong with reality, and the dumbest song ever written became legally mandated to play on every broadcast medium, nonstop. "Ail-VAH-ruh, ah oom poppa, oom poppa mau mau, Ail-VAH-ruh..."There were days I kept the Walkman headphones clamped on my skull nonstop, to keep the earworms OUT. There was no ESCAPING it. At least one radio station in central Texas played the [expletive deleted] thing four times an hour. I heard it leaking from car windows, in sandwich shops, walking down the street... it Would. Not. Stop.

To the point where I finally snapped, and killed that one guy who was walking down the street singing, "...oom poppa mau mau, oom poppa, oom poppa, oom poppa mau mau..." Yup. Snapped. Shrieked like a banshee with kidney stones, and with strength borne of sheer wrath, I uprooted a STOP sign and beat him to death with it, right there on the street corner.

I'm lying, of course. I gritted my teeth and kept walking. But it was a near thing.

Anyone else got a tale of a thing that may or may not have started out as a good thing... until sheer involuntary immersion in it threatened to make you crazy?

Grandma And The Soft Core Porn

When I was a child, my grandmother and I had a weird thing about movies. Specifically, she would see a children's film advertised on TV, and would get it into her head that I needed to go see it.

When I was young, this did not bother me; I liked movies, and my parents seldom attended them; I spent my youth in little bitty towns that did not HAVE theatres, except one, about which the less said the better; when one never cleans a theatre, rats and worse things come to snack out. So when we visited the grandparents, she would make a point of taking me to a movie.

Whether or not I wanted to see the movie was irrelevant. Grandmother had decided that I would like this movie, and therefore, I would be taken to the movies. Saw a lot of the Disney life action films in the early seventies this way. Rather liked Kurt Russell's early Disney stuff...

Eventually, this evolved a little; she did not take me to the movies, but I would be told which movie I would see, and be dropped off at the theatre, with some money for refreshments and a quarter to call home when the movie was over. This worked much better for me, since the theatre in their town, an early megaplex, had three theatres in it, and the odds were good that there was SOME damn thing I wanted to see, and no one paid any attention to what theatre you entered after you paid to get in. It first occurred to me to do this when I was sent to see "Pippi Longstocking," and I realized in the first ten minutes what a wretched film I was watching, and why was I in THIS theatre when "Death Race 2000" was very conveniently showing right next door, and had car chases, boobs, David Carradine, vehicular murder, boobs, cool cars, a very young Sylvester Stallone, and boobs in it?

In retrospect, it occurs to me that my grandmother very significantly contributed to the psychological decay that today makes up most of my personality... all because she thought I should go see "Pippi Longstocking."

The Trouble With X

(X can be ANY problem, from "the plumbing has exploded," to "Donald Trump is running for President.")

"There is a problem with X."

"I see. I will address this problem, and do what I can about it."

"But there is a problem with X."

"Yes, I have been made aware of it, and am doing what I can to correct it."

"But there is a problem with X."

"Is there something specific that you would like me to do, right this moment, to address the problem?"

"There. Is. A. Problem. With. X."

"Yes, as you have now stated, in exactly the same terms, four times now. Is there something specific you would like me to do that I have not yet done about it? Am I not moving fast enough to suit you? Is there some new aspect of the problem you feel that I am unaware of? Do you have any NEW information about this problem to impart? What, precisely, do you want?"

"You don't UNDERSTAND! There is a PROBLEM with X!"

"And that makes five times now that you have told me that, and yet have not outlined what you want me to do about it beyond the obvious steps I have already taken. I regret that I lack telepathy, and cannot read your mind to see exactly what you want done, as you either will not or cannot TELL me, beyond simply repeating the same complaint. I regret that if you have no new information, I must ignore further repeats of the same statement, as this serves no purpose and wastes both our time."

"You're not taking the problem seriously."

"I dispute your statement. I have acknowledged the problem, and taken what steps I can at the moment. Later, as things change, I may do more, but can do no more at this time. Would it make you feel better if I discarded calm and freaked out about it?"

"You're not taking the problem seriously."

"Ah, we are back to repetition, which I had hoped I had made clear is not an effective communication style for problem solving, either for X or for whatever problem it is you are having with ME. I must therefore respectfully request that you cease repeating yourself over and over and instead offer specific insights into the problem and suggest possible solutions, or simply explain in concrete terms what it is that you want me to do about it."

"Now you're insulting me."

****************************************************************************

Don't be like this guy. Effective communications, people. Specifics. Explanations. Use the words. And choose new words and elaborate if the old ones aren't working. And just because you have an issue, please don't assume I'm laughing at you just because I'm not freaking out right along with you....

In retrospect, I kinda wish I’d just said, “I’m on it,” and repeated this every time the complaint was repeated. Wonder if that would have changed the conversation?

The Way The Dice Fell

I think it started somewhere in late '76 or '77, with that copy of Rolling Stone's College Life magazine.

I bought it because it was for COLLEGE guys, of course. I was in junior high at the time, and living out some of the worst years I'd had so far -- ask anyone in education what middle schoolers are like, if you want an earful of that -- and the idea of COLLEGE had great appeal to me. COLLEGE was when you were eighteen, no one could tell you what to do any more, and best of all, you got to go somewhere that WASN'T HERE, a place where no one knew you, a place where things HAPPENED, a place where you didn't have to drive ninety miles to buy a suit of clothes that weren't Western Wear, and where people talked about things other than oil, cattle, and football.

Y'know. Civilization.

And here was this magazine, talking about COLLEGE and what it was like. So I bought it. I HAD to buy it. Because in late '76 and '77, I hated my life, and I hated the place I lived, and I hated my hometown, and wanted nothing more than to go somewhere and start all over in a better place. I came to understand that this isn't far from typical for your basic seventh grader, but I didn't have a lot of perspective yet, y'know?

And I bought the magazine, and there was an article in it... about this thing that college guys did. Apparently, it was a game they played, unlike any other game that had ever been. And it was called "Dungeons and Dragons."

The article was an interesting read. The guys IN the article were unrepentant nerds, but I didn't know that. The GAME looked interesting though -- a sort of swords and sorcery thing that was played on a tabletop with miniature figurines, and didn't seem to have a distinct END, or victory conditions; winning simply meant that your "character" lived another day to have further adventures later.

I didn't know what it was, but it seemed to beat the hell out of Monopoly, and it certainly wasn't football. I began trying to find out more about this Dungeons and Dragons thing. Regrettably, the only sources of information available at the time were newspapers and news magazines, and coverage was spotty; the game wasn't a cultural phenomenon yet, not by far, and it didn't help that I lived WAY out in the boonies in what Robert McCammon referred to as the Great Fried Empty, the south end of the Rio Grande Valley.

But news spread. I ran across a newspaper article, and a short blurb in another magazine. They seemed to line up with what I'd already learned. And, of course, I read that copy of Rolling Stone's College Life to tatters. I honestly don't remember anything else that was in that issue; this weird new game had seized my imagination. I wondered what a "cleric" was. Fighters and wizards and thieves, that I could work out -- I had a working knowledge of "Lord Of The Rings" and the Ace "Conan" paperbacks -- but durned if I could figure out what a Cleric was, and I think it says something about the school system and my distance from any bright light of civilization, that of the three libraries in town (elementary, junior high, and high school), none of them had a dictionary that would EXPLAIN what a Cleric was. Clerks, no sweat, Clerical Work seemed to be what clerks did, and there was a thing called a Clerical Collar, whatever that was, but damned if I could find anything that just explained what a dratted CLERIC was.

I reread Rolling Stone's College Life, and I caught up on my Ace paperbacks with Conan in them. And Thongor the Barbarian; I figured it couldn't hurt. I drew pictures of warriors and dragons in History class, and wondered where one went about getting a copy of this Dungeons and Dragons thing.

And it was that December, finally, that the family took a trip to Laredo. Laredo was the closest major city to where I lived at the time, which ought to tell you something if you look at a map. But there was a mall there, the Mall del Norte, which was the subject of my quest. There were bookstores there...

...and the memory remains with me: seeing a cardboard standup display out front of Spencer Gifts. Stacked in that display were copies of the ancient Holmes Boxed Set, what would be known as the first Dungeons and Dragons Basic Set. Ten bucks. I promptly bought one.

I was disappointed that it contained no dice. It was one of those printed during the interregnum when TSR was having supply problems, and bound into the rules booklet were "Randomizer Chits" that you were supposed to cut out and put in Dixie cups, and draw numbers instead of rolling dice. Disappointment. But the rules themselves... the rules for this game were like nothing I'd ever seen before. I'd been right about my earlier supposition: you created a character -- a fictional character -- a swordsman, a wizard, a dwarf, an elf, a thief, or a hobbit -- and you walked this guy through worlds of adventure, gaining treasure, experience, glory... and possibly an untimely DEATH, meaning you'd have to roll up another character...

I was hooked. I taught a couple of friends how to play, and there was enthusiasm for the game. And the next time we went to the mall in Laredo, I was armed with an entire cashed paycheck from my first job. I can still tell you what I bought with it: A set of dice and a Player's Handbook from B. Dalton's Books, a Dungeon Master's Guide and a Monster Manual from Waldenbooks (they had no Players' Handbooks left), an Atari 2600 video game system at Sears... and I had about enough change left to buy the best Orange Julius I think I have ever had, right there in the main concourse. My old man was quite bent out of shape with me -- "You spent a WHOLE PAYCHECK? NOTHING left to put in the bank? Are you CRAZY?" -- but to this day, I have not even the shadow of a single regret for that glorious day.

My friends and I got started. There were addresses you could send off to for more information in the books -- I became well acquainted with the Dungeon Hobby Shop in Lake Geneva, and did a lot of business with them. I remember visiting Dallas in the summer of 1980, the summer everyone wondered who shot J.R. on "Dallas," and visiting my first real HOBBY SHOP... racks of miniatures, Avalon Hill and SPI wargames, and the White Box D&D sets that I still wish I'd bought, back when they were still cheap enough to afford... but I had the hardbacks, and that's all I thought I needed, back then. Them, and my Holmes Basic.

Through the years of high school, we fought through the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, and through the other giant enclaves, and the Descent into the Depths of the Earth, all the way to the Vault of the Drow and the Demonweb Pits. We visited the Aerie of the Slave Lords, the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, and so many others. I was only in high school for four years... like anyone else... but I remember those adventures as well as I remember anything I did in the real world. And I have continued to hold them dear... and to have more... in the years since, up to today.

...to the point where I run the Dungeons and Dragons Club at the school where I work. Won awards for it, even. It's reading, it's writing, it's creative.

To some folks it isn't much, but to me... and to a few others... it's been entire worlds.

Yes, to this day, I can still taste that Orange Julius. It tastes like triumph.

The Rapture Of The Whipcream

It was the summer of 1978 that I learned about Nitrous Oxide.

My friend Jimmy was the coolest guy on earth, the Fonzie at the center of the world. He had a Chevy van with orange shag carpeting, a waterbed, a disco ball, and a built in eight track tape player, and he was saving up to get a mural airbrushed on the side.

To pay for this glorious excess, he worked as a stockboy at Stanley’s, a small chain of grocery stores down on the Texas coast. I don’t know if HEB has killed them all off yet, but back in 1978, you could still find them everywhere, and at one of them, Jimmy made the amazing discovery that N2O was used as the propellant that ejected the whipped cream out of the spray can.

In addition to his impossibly cool transportation, Jimmy also prided himself on always knowing where to get weed, disco biscuits, amyl nitrate, and other things (y’know, because it was the seventies, and it wasn’t drug abuse, it was a lifestyle), and he pondered how to add nitrous oxide to his repertoire. And Stanley’s provided him with the key to the mystery.

At the time, Reddi Wip and other aerosol whipcreams had upright nozzles; you push the nozzle to one side, and the cream would come out. But Stanley’s store brand, the cans were designed more like shaving cream cans: a button at the top with a nozzle poking out the side. Jimmy discovered that if you jammed a fairly thick pin into the gap between the button and the assembly, the nitrous would leak out and could be inhaled, or collected in a balloon for later use!

Well, this was a discovery of some magnitude for a mob of teenagers in 1978. A dime bag of weed was ten bucks and would quickly vanish, but a can of Stanley’s Whipped Cream Topping was only 59 cents, and was probably on sale on top of that! A great party was organized, and Jimmy was greatly lionized as the Renaissance Man of the Seventh Decade.

Jimmy had many friends, and it got to the point where he was selling a LOT of whipped cream. It was HIM selling it, because Stanley’s had these little customer satisfaction tickets, and if you turned in enough of them with your time card, you could get a cash bonus. And we ALL wanted to help out good ole Jimmy, so many tickets were filled out, singing Jimmy’s praises as the epitome of everything a fine and noble stockboy should BE!

So naturally, trouble followed. Management called him in for a chat.

“What’s the deal with the whipped cream, Jimmy?” asked the manager.

Jimmy, of course, refused to admit to anything; he’d have asked for a lawyer if he thought he could get away with it. “Beg pardon, sir?”

“The whipped cream, Jimmy. What are you doing with the whipped cream?”

“Um... selling it to customers, sir? That IS what I’m supposed to be doing... right?”

The manager sighed. “Jimmy, when you turned in a hundred and fifteen Customer Satisfaction tickets with your last time card, I was sure you were having your friends come in and fill them out so you could steal from the company.”

Jimmy’s stomach dropped about ten floors.

The manager continued. “So I noticed a lot of these tickets talked about whipped cream. So I ran the numbers. In the past month, this store has sold FIVE TIMES as much whipped cream as any other Stanley’s! We’ve sold almost TWICE as much whipped cream -- in the middle of summer -- as we normally sell in NOVEMBER, when there’s THANKSGIVING! You’re NOT cheating the system. You’re selling whipped cream like it was going out of style! What in God’s name are you doing to sell all this whipped cream?”

Jimmy remained outwardly calm. Between his ears, the wheels spun at a frightful rate. He didn’t DARE tell the truth -- he didn’t want to be the guy who derailed the party train -- so he decided to bounce it back. “Um... well, it’s because of YOU, sir.”

“Wha?”

(A while back, the manager had made a big noise about how everyone should be a salesman, even the stockboys, pestering customers to buy more and other things than what they had. Everyone had ignored the manager, but Jimmy pounced on this and made this amazing story about how he’d taken it to heart, and how now when ANYONE walked through the bakery section, Jimmy would pounce on them with a lyrical pitch about how Stanley’s Whipped Cream Topping turns a cake into a FESTIVAL, only 59 cents, AND it’s on SALE, and you’d be amazed how many people just say, whatthehell, and drop a can into the cart...)

Well, it turned out that the appeal to ego was exactly the right move. It turned out that upper administration hadn’t thought much of THIS manager’s motivational program with the tickets (too easy for employees to cheat) and they’d thought his point of sale program where you got stockboys and cashiers to push product was just dumb. But THIS fine, motivated young man had taken it to HEART and earned himself a fine bonus, AND quintupled the sales of a given product! VINDICATION!

And Jimmy was off the hook, and a great party was held to lionize this Renaissance man of the seventh decade.

Until the following week when the manager told Jimmy he’d be attending a management conference and giving a speech.

Jimmy said “Wha?”

The manager explained that he wanted Jimmy to give a longer, fruitier version of the speech given in the Manager’s office, to vindicate the man’s programs.

Jimmy began to explain that he had plans that weekend--

Management offered a $200 cash bonus if he did, on TOP of the ticket bonus and his regular paycheck. Plus, there would be a champagne buffet afterwards.

Jimmy promptly agreed that this was a speech that needed to be given! Between the two bonuses, he’d have enough to pay off the airbrush artist to do that Star Wars mural on BOTH sides of the van...

And Jimmy stood at a podium at the Hilton and gave a speech in front of a roomful of grocery managers and assistant managers and spun a line of absolute crap about how to sell whipped cream to housewives. And there was much applause. Jimmy pondered whether the van’s port side would have a head and shoulders bust of Darth Vader or portray the lightsaber battle between Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. And then, everyone broke for lunch and headed for the champagne buffet, where sparkling wine was served in plastic glasses...

...and the Assistant Manager For Bakery clapped a hand on Jimmy’s shoulder. “All right, Jimmy, cut the crap. What’s REALLY going on?”

“Wha?”

“The old man’s being going on about how you’re the hottest thing in the store because you know how to sell. Everybody should sell like Jimmy! So I’ve been WATCHING you.”

Jimmy’s stomach dropped about ten floors, and he nervously gulped the rest of the champagne.

“Last week, I didn’t see you talking to any housewives. What I DID see was a whole damn biker gang walk in and ask if you were working, and where you were. I kept an eye open in case I had to call the cops. But they talked to you for five minutes, signed your ticket, and bought ten cases of beer and two cases of WHIPPED CREAM! Now what the hell is going on?”

Jimmy gulped. “Well... okay, you got me... I couldn’t tell the old man what was REALLY going on...”

Asst. Manager Of Bakery grinned. “Now we’re getting somewhere. Keep talking.”

Jimmy closed his eyes. “Y’see... they’re buying it for sex.”

AMOB boggled. “Wha?”

“Y’start with some guy, right? You have a can of whip cream, and you test him by asking “Hey, I bet you’re popular with the ladies, right?” and if you think he’s the right customer, you say something like “You know that thing that they don’t wanna do? They’ll do it if you put a TOPPING on it!” and you hold up the can of whip cream, right?”

AMOB boggled some more.

“Fifty nine cents. And it’s on sale!”

AMOB looked skeptical. Jimmy shoveled onwards.

“And you see some pretty lady, hot pants, big hair, spangled tube top, right? You let her know that they’ll kiss her where she’s never been kissed before if she puts a TOPPING on it! Liven things up! Fifty-nine cents! And it’s on sale!”

AMOB looked stunned. Jimmy went for broke.

“And the beauty of it? REPEAT CUSTOMERS! Once it WORKS, they’ll be back and buying the stuff EVERY WEEK! That’s why the BIKERS came in! They KNEW about this stuff, because I sold it to them WEEKS ago! That’s why my numbers are so high! Once you get the ball ROLLING it don’t STOP! FIFTY-NINE CENTS A CAN, BABY! AND IT’S ON SALE!”

And in the roomful of drunk grocery managers, the two of them stood in silence.

“Wow.” AMOB stood, pondering. “Okay. That’s amazing. All right. Enjoy your lunch.” And he walked off.

And Jimmy promptly knocked back another glass of champagne as the tension drained out of him. Dodged a bullet AGAIN! Although he noted that AMOB seemed to be chatting with a group of junior management... and several of the people he was talking with glanced sharply at Jimmy...

And that night after the conference, we held yet another grand party to lionize this Renaissance man of the seventh decade, and to celebrate the beginning of the artwork on his van of vans.

And then, three weeks later, Jimmy threw yet ANOTHER party of parties... partly to celebrate the completion of the airbrush work... but also to celebrate his promotion to Assistant Manager Of Bakery, a thing unheard of at Jimmy’s tender age of eighteen! Promotion! Raise! Prospects!

Turns out there were more than a few assistant management slots opening up at Stanley’s grocery stores, all of a sudden. It actually made the papers at one point that a great many assistant managers seemed to be getting arrested (and subsequently fired) for some sort of vague sex offenses that the paper wouldn’t go into details about......

The Book Of Dead Names

Going to get on the soapbox for a minnit. Going to be loud and profane and opinionated. Them what don't want to hear it, consider yourselves notified.

For those of you who care: You have a right to determine your feckin' name.

I have that right. You have that right. We all gots that right, every one of us.

I'm gonna pick on Michael Peters, 'cuz he's a sport with a sense of humor. He, like everyone else, has a right to determine what people call him. I know he does not like "Mike." Perhaps he wants you to call him "Mr. Peters." He prefers that I call him "Michael." And all of that's perfectly okay.

Someday, he might want people to call him "Dark Overlord Michael O'Kittensquisher, ravener of the night and eviscerator of the gods, dark overlord of Hell." And on that day, I might well tell him to go there and wait. But he has the right to at least determine what people will call him, even if it's goofy as hell.

I have strong feelings about this, because I grew up with people making fun of my name. It's bad enough when the first thing someone does upon meeting you is to make a joke out of your damn NAME, but I've met plenty who decided that I was an unpleasant person because I didn't like the joke, didn't want to participate in the joke, didn't find the joke funny after several thousand iterations, and most certainly didn't want to participate in the mockery of basic courtesy that occurs when you MAKE A FECKIN' JOKE OUT OF MY DAMN NAME!

Remember that, folks. I introduce myself, and the first thing you do is horselaugh about my hilarious name and mock me to my face about it? You might as well just hock up a loogie and spit in my eyes. As far as courtesy, manners, and first impressions go, it's essentially the same thing, and I don't care what your so-called intentions were.

Don't insist it was a joke. Don't try to softpedal it or laugh it off. You chose to be an ass to a person you just met, and you can damn well carry the consequences of that. And I've played this unpleasant game enough times that I WILL call you out on it.

All of you who just said, "Hey, pleased to meetcha," please consider yourselves exempt from this rant.

This brings us to "deadnames."

Like I said, you got rights. You can call yourself "Firstname," or "Lastname," or "Mr. Lastname," or even "Mr. Firstname;" I do just that at work. You can call yourself whatever the hell you want. It's your call, NOT MINE. Or anyone else's.

But it seems to me that if your name was Adolf, and you got tired of Hitler jokes, and you changed your name to Bob, and I kept following you around and making Hitler jokes and calling you a name you had discarded, this is essentially spitting in your face again. "You don't GET to be Bob! I demand that you are ADOLF! ADOLF FOREVER, because I SAID SO!"

And this is a thing you have no right to do. These are the words of someone who has chosen to be a major dick.

Trans folks often change their names. They take on new names to match the new identities and self-images they build, because they're tired of conforming to someone else's expectations. They want to make their OWN call, dammit. And it seems to me that the freedom to decide who you are is the most basic of all freedoms.

If you or a politician or some rando on the street gets to decide who I am, how free AM I? So if I'm not going to be a hypocrite, I need to give that same freedom to you and Bob Who Was Formerly Adolf, and John Wayne Who Was Formerly Marion Morrison, and every single trans person on the planet. It's all of us or none of us.

Speaking of trans folks, the picture below is of Jennell Jaquays, who was trans and out and proud. I never met her IRL, but we talked on Facebook quite a bit; I am privileged in that she was accessible as all hell and willing to be talkative and even chummy with some rando on the internet who happened to be me. I was and am a big fan of her work.

She died on the tenth of January, this year. I miss her. I miss our conversations on Facebook about her old work and whatever was going on with her at home and blah blah blah. I never met her, but I felt like I knew her, at least a little. Enough to feel the gut punch of knowing that the circle is smaller by one. Enough to miss her.

And it burns my biscuits to no damn end that she's gone, and that there seem to be no shortage of people out there who will acknowledge all the cool stuff she did and created and made... while deadnaming her to the dogs and back... either not understanding what that means... or just not caring.

I have a difficult time with people who spit in your face while saying, "I really admire your work, but I spit on you as a person." Because that's what it feels like. This post is too long already. I'm going to shut it off now. But before I do... just... don't be a sonofabitch, okay? Give folks the freedom to decide who they are, and what they're called, and don't show us all your ass by deadnaming someone who's gone, and can't call you out on it.

Okay? Because you're not deciding who they are. You're not deciding or declaring or forcing anything. All you're doing is showing us all what a prick you are.

Miss you, Jennell. I'm sorry I couldn't do better.

Just Say No: A Tale Of Retail

I'm a bad person.

That being said, I used to work at a convenience store. Spent several months working there until a serial robber/murderer who was working his way south out of Austin finally made me nervous enough to quit the job before he came far enough south to notice my little mom and pop gas station in north San Marcos.

Usually, when I think about the place, I think about the Beer People. Texas, at the time, had blue laws forbidding the sale of booze before noon on Sunday, and as the low guy on the totem pole, I worked EVERY Sunday morning. And dealt with loud, confrontational idjits who simply could not see why I wouldn't risk jail and being fired just so they could have a twelve pack for breakfast. EVERY Sunday.

But today, I remembered the Four High Guys.

The bars closed in San Marcos at two, which was when it became illegal to sell beer on Sunday morning. I had a graveyard shift this particular occasion, so I sold a hell of a lot of beer and cigarettes, up until about two, after which business utterly died. And so, I sat and read a paperback and occasionally looked around for something to do.

Around three... the car pulled up. And pulled up and pulled up and pulled up. Slooooowly. There were four young men in it, two of which were looking out each window, apparently at the stripes painted to mark the parking spots. They stopped, pulled back out, and sloooowly began pulling up again. As near as I could tell, they were trying to position the car EXACTLY between the yellow lines.This went on for a while. Finally, the car was positioned precisely where they wanted it, and the driver killed the engine. And then they all looked at me.

I did not look back at them. I watched 'em out of the corner of my eye, in the mirror. I already had an idea about these guys.

Upon verifying I wasn't watching, an animated discussion broke out. There was much gesturing. I noted that these gestures weren't the sloppy, fluid gestures of drunks. No. These were the rapid, precise, sharp gestures of people who were not in the least bit drunk, and had adopted their altered state from other chemicals entirely, some of which may not be found in nature.

After a few minutes, a heated four way game of rock-paper-scissors broke out. It took a bit, because one of the contestants had apparently forgotten how to play.

Finally, it was determined that the passenger side front seat guy had lost. He looked disappointed. Then he looked at me and looked a bit frightened. And he got out of the car and entered the store.

I paid him no mind. That's what the mirrors are for. He looked around, hypnotized and dazzled by the fluorescents. He looked like what sinners must look like when they pass the pearly gates and see the face of God. Mm-hm. We were dealing with the Clear White Light, here, or perhaps mushrooms.

He began carefully wandering up and down the aisles. I watched him in the mirrors while looking utterly disinterested. At one point, he stopped and began carefully examining the motor oil display. After a moment, he began rearranging it, making sure the brands were segregated and the cans were properly spaced.

HONK!

He jumped out of his shoes, just about, and then IMMEDIATELY proceeded to the cold case. Whoopsie. He'd lost focus, and his homies were unhappy. Time to fix that. He reached the cold case, dipped into his pocket, and came out with a piece of paper. He unfolded it... and unfolded it, and unfolded it, and unfolded it, and then peered carefully at it... and began selecting items from the case.

I looked up at him with mild interest as he approached the counter, as if I had just now noticed him. On the counter, he put a bottle of water, and four bottles of orange juice. Yup. Urban legend says that when you begin to come down, a jolt of vitamin C will kick you back up for a little while. The Clear White Light, for sure.

He looked at me. I looked at him.

I said nothing. I stood there and stared at him blankly. He began to look nervous.

In truth, within my skull, a battle royal was raging to see who would win: my good twin or my evil twin. My good twin wanted to ring the guy up, take his money, make change, and send him on his way. My evil twin had other ideas.

As the stare and the silence became more and more uncomfortable, the poor guy giggled nervously, and then forced the grin down. He took the piece of paper out again, unfolded it and unfolded it and unfolded it and unfolded it, and peered at it carefully.

"Um," he said. (giggle). (pause). (forced blank face). "Hello. Good morning. I... (snicker)(blank face)... would like... two packs of... (glance at paper again)... Mar'boro Lights 100s." (Look of relief. He'd managed to get through the sentence, and begin human interaction with a non high person. Now, if he could just hold it together...)

And my evil side won by a landslide.

"Heigh-ho," I said, adopting a professional attitude and a VERY slight Eastern European accent. "Burwati. Do-bizzo hoksu mitto? Gormuloi boltagon."

He stared at me. He tried to interpret what I was saying. He failed utterly, and a slow look of horror began to spread across his face.

"Arrowshirt clearasil," I added. "Ngaio marsh. Meow?"

The "meow," I think, finally tipped him over. His face and emotions were fighting as fiercely as my good and evil side had been a second earlier, except that part of him seemed convinced that he'd forgotten how to understand English, and was horrified, and the other part just wanted to laugh hysterically. He slowly sank to his knees, giggling hysterically AND looking horrified, like a hero in a Lovecraft story who's seen too much, TOO MUCH, and madness is taking its toll...

And as he sank to his knees, giggling like a horrified machine gun, his friends realized he was in trouble, and all three of them exited the car, and stormed in the doors......and then stood there, dazzled by the fluorescents.

"Is this guy with you?" I said, ringing up the OJ and cigarettes. "He's weird. Is he high or something?" Their friend by now was on his knees in front of the counter, giggling like a hypercaffeinated Uzi, utterly oblivious to all around him.

They all stopped cold and looked at each other in a way that would have had any reasonably experienced cop doing a facepalm.

"Uh," one of them said. "Yuh. Nuh. Uh, no. He's just drunk. I'll pay for the stuff."

"Dang," I said. "I hope he ain't drivin'." I bagged the stuff and handed it over to Mr. Natural, who thrust a ten at me, handed the bag to one of his sidekicks, and he and the other guy carefully hooked arms under our hero's armpits and began hoisting him to his feet, still giggling in horror.

"Thank you, come again!" I called after them as they hustled him into the car and did a fast fade.

No, I'm not a good person at all.

Another Memory, Early Childhood

A memory crystallized in my head today.

The year is 1968, or ‘69, or maybe even 1970. I would have been five years old, give or take a year.

Mommy has sent me to the store. In my pocket is fifty cents. The little mom and pop grocery where we normally shop is some three blocks away, and the town is quite small; no one thinks anything of a five year old wandering around the neighborhood, if he stays out of traffic and out of trouble; it’s even odds that everyone who sees me knows who I am and who my parents are.

I have an errand to run. I don’t mind; the payoff is a generous one for twenty minutes of time and a three block walk, even if my little legs make it feel like a long walk indeed. I walk into the store; one of the ladies at the checkout recognizes me and says hello. I wave back, and head for the comic book rack. Which comic will it be? My tastes at the time ran towards Casper The Friendly Ghost, or perhaps Richie Rich, but Archie was usually pretty good, or perhaps Hot Stuff The Little Devil, a comic that was considered acceptable for children’s consumption at the time (no worse than Casper, really), but would be screamingly assaulted by parent and religious groups today, at the mere sight of its red, horned, pitchfork bearing protagonist.

I choose a comic that suits me, and head for the checkout, and put it on the counter, well over my head and almost out of reach. The nice blonde lady is there; at the time, I remembered her name, but now it’s long lost. She asks me, “Is there anything else today?”

“Yes’m,” I reply. I am being a good boy today, and remember my manners. “Need cigarettes.”

“Winstons, right?” says the blonde lady.

“Yes, ma’am”

She takes a red pack of Winston shorts down from the rack, and rings up the smokes and comic on a manual register; the change comes to something like six cents. We thank each other for the transaction, and I trot back to the house, eager to begin reading my comic.

Mom is in the kitchen. I hand her the smokes and the change, and find a place to begin reading...

Yeah, that happened. And I think I remember it so well because I seem to remember that it happened once or twice a week...

Uncle Telly's Cat

My Uncle Telemachus was a storyteller. Dunno if he ever wrote them down, but he could tell a story with the best of them, and I have been compared to him more than once, to neither of our irritation or insult.

Uncle Telly had a wife and family, but today I will talk about his cat. The cat wasn't anything unusual as cats go; Telly's cat was, in fact, very typical of cats.

And I never would have known Uncle Telly had a cat until he told me about the day his friend Salvatore came over, and they got to chatting and watching the football game and drinking beers one Sunday afternoon, the way men do. Note that I was not there; this is Uncle Telemachus' story, and this is all HIM.

... and apparently, this particular game wasn't as exciting as it might be. Or maybe there were too many beers involved. This may well have been the case; Uncle Telly had a liver like leather, and could drink most anybody under the table.

...but, as it was, at one point, Sal dozed off on the couch. Uncle Telly didn't mind; he sat and sipped his beer and watched the game.

After a while, Sal's head sort of fell back a bit onto the back of the couch. He did not wake up.

After a while longer, Sal began to buzz a little, the way some of us do in our sleep.

And after a bit longer, Sal began to outright snore. Loudly. The way your spouse does when she's imitating you and complaining that you snore, or some character on a sitcom does, shortly before someone throws a lamp at him.

Now, Uncle Telly didn't much mind; he just turned the sound up on the TV. But Telly's cat apparently got interested. What was THIS?

And Telly's Cat jumped up on the armrest of the couch and began to examine Sal in some detail. What was that NOISE?

Telly paid no attention, until the cat crept a little closer, cautiously... and then doubled back, got on the armrest, jumped up on the back of the couch, and slowly began to approach Sal's head, which was lying full back on the cushions, now, roaring away like a small chainsaw.

...well, apparently, the game wasn't all that interesting after all, because Uncle Telly noticed the cat, very cautiously sneaking up on Sal's head, and began watching the tableau on the couch more closely than the game. Hey, he never told any stories about the GAME, but I must have heard THIS one like six times, now.

... and Telly's Cat finally got very close to Sal's head. He peered into Sal's mouth with some interest, and much curiosity. Where the hell was that NOISE coming from?

About then, Uncle Telly glanced at the coffee table, where there sat an unabridged dictionary.

He glanced back. The cat was now staring raptly into Sal's mouth. Craning his neck a bit. His muzzle was now in Sal's wide open mouth. Where was that NOISE coming from?

Now, I will tell you, I don't believe that there was an unabridged dictionary sitting on Uncle Telly's coffee table. This is exactly the sort of exaggeration I would expect from Uncle Telly. I am in fact, fairly sure that it was a copy of MOUNTAIN BEAUTY OF COLORADO: A PHOTO COLLECTION or some other coffee table book of the sort you'd find in a nicely arranged living room.

But Uncle Telly wouldn't settle for that. No, he had to have an Unabridged Dictionary, sitting there on the coffee table for no reason.

In fact, the first time I heard this story, I think it WAS a coffee table book, and then a few years later, it was a dictionary, and I'm sure if he was here now, he'd tell me with a straight face that it was the entire collected Oxford English Dictionary, in fourteen volumes, in a neat stack, sitting right there on the coffee table.

At any rate, the cat now had his entire face, up to the ears, in Sal's wide open mouth, engaged in close and focused examination of Sal's rattling tonsils.

Sal had not noticed, and was still dead asleep and snoring like a bomber on its way back to England on one engine and many prayers.

So Uncle Telly calmly reached out, picked up the book, whatever it was... carefully positioned his arm so's not to hold the book over the coffee table, but a section of floor, about three feet off the ground... and then turned his head to face Sal and the cat...

...and dropped the book.



Did I mention the living room had hardwood floors? And that this was all thirty-two volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica?

This, of course, woke Sal up and startled both him AND the cat, and I leave it to your imagination what their respective reactions were. I assure you that your imagined mental picture is probably not exaggerated nor far off.

I do not remember the exact words Uncle Telly used, but there were few of them, and I remember that he somehow found a way to distill "explosive sudden pandemonium" into a six syllable adjective. Uncle Telly was GOOD with words.

And this is how I found out that my Uncle Telemachus had a cat. And a friend named Sal. I could not tell you if he still does, after THAT, but that's the version he told ME.

UPDATE: My cousin informs me that in the original version of this tale, she thinks that it might have been his father in law, not a friend. In which case, I am here to tell you that Uncle Telemachus was a braver man than I, because there’s no way in hell I EVER would have pulled anything like that on MY father in law....

Mind Control

While back, I read this series of books: Wild Cards, edited (and partially written by) George R. R. Martin, back before his Game Of Thrones was a thing.

Spoilers for a book that’s old enough to drink: Our heroes discover that the man who will likely be our next President has used his psychic powers to manipulate his way all along the electoral process... and that rather than being the moral upstanding family man he presents, he is in fact, a twisted, evil, homicidal maniac who uses those same psychic powers to feed on other people’s suffering. It gets him off.

God knows what he will do as President.

So one of our heroes has to make a moral choice. And he takes psychic possession of the guy at the Convention, where he’s about to accept his party’s nomination... and forces the candidate to say some horrible things, and act like a twisted loony, right there in front of all the delegates. The entire convention is horrified, and the speech makes front page news... and the bad guy does NOT get the nomination.

Now, I’m not sayin’ that Donald Trump is evil. Or twisted. Or insane. And I’m pretty sure he’s not psychic.

It just occurred to me that if that book was written today? And a candidate went fruity-gumballs, right there on the podium, and started spouting crazy talk?

There’d be a substantial portion of the American public who’d say, “Right! THERE’s a man who’s not afraid to speak his mind, and I AGREE WITH HIM!” And some news agencies would point out the crazy... and other news agencies would call it a rousing success. And while some of us would be shocked and horrified...

...others would eat it up. To be on the winning team. To stick it to those OTHER people, who have it COMING!

So take a look at that title, up there, again. Wonder if we’ll see more of that? And how much? And how soon?

Up On The Bedsheet

I think it would have been the summer of ‘84 that I lived in Wimberley, Texas.

Wimberley’s a little tiny town nestled in the Texas hill country, but still within easy driving distance of where I was going to college. It’s not too terribly far from Austin. And back then, it really was a tiny little community.

There were these three little houses in a cleared area of the woods, and my two chums and I shared one of them. We could walk less than a hundred yards down the street and fling ourselves in the river, and sometimes did.

Across the street from our little clearing was the town’s sole burger joint (there were a couple of trendy restaurants, but you wanted a cheap burger and fries, you went to Fatso’s.) On Wednesday nights, the old couple who owned the joint would hang a bedsheet on the back of the place, and set up a projector, and show an old movie. They literally rented old films from an outfit that serviced art theaters and suchlike, and the lady who ran Fatso’s would set up a card table with a cigar box of cash, and that was the Box Office, and for two bucks, you could walk into their back yard and watch whatever they were showing that week. Since we lived across the street, we brought our own lawnchairs and sodas and often popcorn.

Saw Psycho there, and Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and True Grit, among others. The back of the burger joint was a wide, grassy area, and the whole community would show up, to some extent. Or at least, all the locals.

It wasn’t a place for film buffs. Kids ran riot, for one thing, and there were often side conversations going on here and there on picnic blankets and clusters of lawn chairs. More than anything, it was a little like watching TV with your entire neighborhood in the living room with you. And no commercials.

But it wasn’t crowded, nor was it squalid. Plenty of private space, clusters of lawn chairs and camp stools, blankets spread out, and occasional air mattresses with clusters of people on them.

I still remember how, before True Grit started, some guy dragged a little portable barbecue out to the back of the field and roasted up about ten bucks worth of hot dogs and put them on slices of bread and gave them to anyone who asked (a pack of cheap hot dogs was about eighty cents back then, and a loaf of Wonder Bread was a little more than half that, and apparently, he was feeling generous.) Even brought a bottle of French’s mustard. For no reason at all.

Tourists didn’t know about this. It was a thing the locals did for the other locals. We wouldn’t have known about it, except we lived right across the street, and even then, two dollars for a night’s entertainment was a good deal.

At summer’s end, we all packed up and moved back to San Marcos for the fall semester, and I never lived in Wimberley again. It’s a very different town, now, where real estate goes for insane money, and the locals have mostly sold out and moved on, and it’s a burgeoning little town that sort of SELLS itself as a bucolic small hill community... but it’s not... full of big new houses with tiny little yards, and very little forest is left. Fatso’s closed down years ago, and even the building is gone now.

And I write this now with wistful feelings, because I wish I could go back and pony up a couple of bucks and watch an old movie in black and white or Technicolor, projected on a bedsheet in the gloaming of the evening, with smoke pots keeping the mosquitoes away and someone’s kids running back and forth before the movie starts.

And I know I will never be able to do that again.

Studying Art

This one is for the miniatures painters.

The painting below is Frank Frazetta’s “Death Dealer.” It’s one of Frazetta’s more famous paintings, not counting the stuff he did for Ace Books’ Conan series paperback covers. He originally did it for himself, but later licensed it for use on a paperback fantasy anthology. But he retained the rights, so it also turned up years later on another fantasy novel, and later, a heavy metal album cover, and ENDLESS calendars. Frazetta got a lot of mileage out of it. He also did several other paintings of the same character, but this is the one where the Death Dealer was sitting on a horse.

It’s an iconic artwork, so I was most interested when I heard that a minis manufacturer had produced a 3D version, a 28mm miniature of the character sitting on his horse. And yeah, I bought one. And when it arrived, I lovingly washed and prepped it... and got my paints ready...

...and realized I was stymied.

Y’see... I’ve been doing this for a while. I’ve literally been painting miniatures for something over forty years. And in that time, I have learned something about color... and light... and shadow... and the way these factors behave and interact on a three dee object.

And when I began to paint the figure? I realized that it was wrong.

Light, and therefore color, are strongest at the point where the light is COMING from. If a light is over your head, the highlights, the brightest spots in your coloring, will be on top of your head and the prominent spots facing the light source... bridge of your nose, tops of your cheeks, upper surfaces of your shoulders, and so on. Colors work differently below that, all the way to the areas where light is WEAKEST, in shadow, where colors are muted or nonexistent, depending on how deep the shadows are.

I realized that Death Dealer’s face, back, and shoulders are in shadow, despite the fact that the light source is overhead. This should not be. It’s against all the rules. The side of the HORSE facing the viewer has REFLECTIONS, indicating that light is coming from THAT SIDE. And if the HORSE is lit, the RIDER should be lit. You SHOULD be able to see Death Dealer’s FACE. And yet... you cannot. It’s in shadow.

And I repainted Death Dealer something like five times before I just said the hell with it and repainted him exactly the way he appears in the painting above. It was the only way he looked RIGHT.

And I finished him, and put him in a shadow box... and stopped to marvel at the unnatural talent of Frank Frazetta, who could heighten the mood of a painting by BREAKING ALL THE DAMN RULES, and he was STILL so good, you wouldn’t notice!

Here's to you, Frank Frazetta. We shall not see your kind of talent again. In addition to the fact that you got paid something like twenty times for the same painting!

My Favorite Politician

“I have a black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple. And we have talent.”

What James Watt meant to say was “My staff has great diversity, and they’re a great bunch of people, totally qualified for their jobs.” But Watt was not a terribly tactful man. He was, in fact, kind of the exact opposite: a living example of the Peter Principle, a competent executive for timber corporations who was WAY over his head in government work.

James Watt, first Secretary of the Interior under President Ronald Reagan, starting in 1980, was my all time favorite politician. He was appointed, not elected, but he came in and made it clear that this whole “national parks” and “national resources” thing was up for sale to the highest bidder, and a lot of people weren’t happy about coal and drilling leases being offered on public land.

A politician would have soothed the media, or misdirected them. Watt poured gasoline on a forest fire, so to speak, with the arrogant gleefulness of one whose guvvamint power makes him untouchable by mortals... and he had a knack for gaffes not seen until the early years of the Bush presidency.

“They kill good trees to put out bad newspapers.”

“If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.”

"I never use the words Democrats and Republicans. It's liberals and Americans."

"My responsibility is to follow the Scriptures which call upon us to occupy the land until Jesus returns."

There was also a delightful international incident when Watt informed Israel that support for Israel could be endangered if American Jews didn’t get behind his energy program... and, finally, and tremendously weirdly, he banned the Beach Boys from using public land in Washington for a concert... due to their “unwholesomeness” and that of their fans. Satanic rock and roll? He never explained. Nancy Reagan, of all people, invited the Beach Boys back later.

I love James Watt because he actually got the Great Conservative Dinosaur, the patron saint of the Republican party, Ronald Reagan himself, to stand up and say, “Dude, you have got to stand down. You cannot keep saying this insane crazy shit. You are making us all look bad.” And Watt resigned his office in 1983, only two years after he accepted the post.

I thought about Watt in 2011, when Sen. Jon Kyl made his remark about how 90% of Planned Parenthood funding went to pay for abortions... and when the world called bullshit on him, he, uh, well, fumfuh, muh, duh... “...not intended to be a factual statement.”

James Watt ought to be the Patron Saint of “Authority Figures Who Say Stupid Shit On An Open Mike.”

And I miss the days when being that idiotic in public meant your political career was over.

The Uncle Meat Project

Submitted for your approval: an actual project I turned in for one of the more useless college classes I have ever taken, and it explains in and of itself why I did it, and how.

Only one thing wrong with it: it's largely bullshit.

No one in my family ever told stories about "Uncle Meat." But… my grandfather, my parents, and several other relatives had a wicked sense of humor, and a knack for storytelling, and a near-total disregard of the truth when in search of a laugh.

So I guess you could say I could blame it on my family. In truth, I guess you could say that the culture of my family is based around humorous bullshit, and attempting to get each other to believe it, but somehow, I didn’t think the TA teaching the course would much like to hear about THAT.

So I framed it a little better for her, and stole “Uncle Meat” from an obscure Frank Zappa project. At any rate, here's the story of how it all began, kind of. The version below is pretty much the exact version I turned in to my teacher. She loved it. Got an A in the course.

Sometimes I still feel kind of guilty about that… but it does prove one of my eternal maxims.

“Good bullshit will get you out of any situation.”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

THE UNCLE MEAT PROJECT: AN INFORMAL ANALYSIS

Project for RDG 1310, Multiculturalism In The Classroom

T.O. Bedlam

11/19/01

Our family began with Dolan. Dolan, first name unknown, came across from Ireland following the Potato Famine, and came to New York to find his brother. He was a country boy, and New York confused him. Unable to find his brother, he wound up moving south in search of work, until he reached West Virginia, where he married a local widow. They had children, hers and theirs, all of whom were daughters; there is no one in the family now named Dolan....

This is what I'd come up with for my Multiculturalism project, and I wasn't pleased with it. It sounded like a million other geneaologies I'd read, a dozen other dramatizations of someone else's family tree. It wasn't what I wanted to do.

Create a presentation based on your culture, your family, your traditions. Include written and visual elements. Be creative. This was the assignment. Bleh. How to be creative? I'm Scots-Irish, but we've been in this country since the Civil War, and some of us go back even further. We don't have any Old World traditions. I grew up living Generic White People culture, the same as everyone else in LIFE magazine. What was I supposed to do, include photos of genuine Generic White People Cuisine? Wonder Bread, tuna salad, and California Dip? Include photos of Christmas With The Bedlams? The only thing that was really traditional at Christmas was my grandmother, running around with the Instamatic, insisting that we pose, pose, pose, and hold that pose.... and even that, I find, isn't all that unique a childhood memory.

I wanted to do something different. I wanted to provide some measure of the flavor of my family, and its uniqueness... while still pointing out its cultural connections within the larger society. I wanted to be creative. But what to do?

We had two days to do our presentations. On day one, I still hadn't started, and had no idea what I was going to do.

Kelly Flores had a nice, memorable presentation. She's from Laredo, a total blend of Hispanic and Anglo culture if ever there was one, and made this the focus of her presentation. I really liked the Collector's Mexican Barbie Doll, complete with correct hair and skin tone, and a cute flamenco dancer's outfit. Talk about blending of cultures! She also had handouts Xeroxed, with the tale of La Llorona, the Crying Woman, both in English and Spanish, a tale firmly rooted in local folklore--

Local folklore.

Folklore.

And then I remembered Uncle Meat.

I was saved.

After class, I sped home, fired up Microsoft Word, and began thinking hard about Uncle Meat, and everything I'd ever been told about him. I called my sister that evening -- one of my few surviving relatives -- and asked what she remembered... and the memories came back.

I would make my presentation about Uncle Meat.

**************

My mother's father was the first person to mention Uncle Meat in my presence. My grandfather was a big, bluff, Irishman, built like a Maytag, and in many ways was the stereotypical Irishman. He didn't drink, but he could spin a tale in such a way as to stop halfway through and grin in such a way as to have the whole room ready to pass the hat for their pocket change to get him to finish the story.

And one day -- I think I might have been four or five -- he told me about Uncle Meat. That wasn't his real name, of course -- his first name was actually Aloysius, and he had six or seven middle names, one of which was Meatigan -- but his friends and family called him Meat, because he was certainly eager to please, but certainly not the sharpest knife in the drawer, if you know what I mean.

I was curious as to who Uncle Meat was, and why I'd never met him before, and said so. Was he dead? Gran'ther assured me that he was not, but he was not fond of large family gatherings, because someone always seemed to be bringing up something silly he'd done, and he'd get embarrassed. He did a lot of silly things, for some reason.

I don't really remember all of that first Uncle Meat story -- it had to do with how, when the family moved to Texas around the turn of the century, they had sent Uncle Meat down to secure a house for them. He'd done so, but then the worst blizzard in years had struck.

(I interrupted at this point to ask how often blizzards occurred in the lower Rio Grande valley. Gran'ther assured me they weren't common these days, but back around the turn of the century, they happened all the time, even in summer.)

Well, Uncle Meat had shut himself in the house, but it was cold, and he knew he needed to get a fire going, He put the wood in the old iron stove, but he couldn't get the fire lit because it was so cold the matches were frozen! This was bad news. Fortunately, Uncle Meat had a plan. He had bought some food earlier, including some hot peppers, and it occurred to him that if those peppers were really hot, he might be able to use them to get a fire going.

Unfortunately, as he held the frozen peppers over the fire and struck them together briskly, he revealed his ignorance about real Mexican hot peppers. The sparks they struck ignited the wood, but then, those peppers were so hot, the stove began to melt! The molten iron ignited that old timber house! And poor Uncle Meat had to flee outside in his long johns! If not for the warmth from the burning house, poor Uncle Meat might well have frozen solid before daybreak!

I was fascinated. I was amazed. My grandfather had a knack for storytelling, and the limited version I recite here is a small and pathetic thing compared to the original. I believed for quite some time after that that it was possible to ignite fires by striking chilies together, if you knew how... and if they were real Mexican chili peppers.

Interestingly enough, my grandfather was not the only person to have knowledge of Uncle Meat. Around that same time, my mother's brother admitted that he had lived with Uncle Meat for a while during his college years, and proceeded to tell a hilarious story of how Uncle Meat had gotten into the bakery business, but had not known how to leaven bread, and had wound up with an angry mob outside his doors, threatening to beat him to death with his own stony loaves.

My mother was familiar with Uncle Meat, but had not met him personally. She did, however, relate several exploits that her father and brother and a couple of uncles had related to her.

I became fascinated with this amazing, hilarious person, whose sole factor of certainty was his habit of messing around in areas he didn't understand and therefore getting into trouble in some form or fashion. I determined that he had no children, but that he had been married several times -- his wives invariably left him, although TWA had lost one of them (she'd been packed in with the luggage to save the price of a ticket, and they'd lost the suitcase), and another had last been seen clutching the tail of a large kite over Cuero, Texas, during a hurricane. His age was uncertain; although he had been an adult around the turn of the century, he was still alive and quite active during the early 1970s.

When I was seven, I decided that I would very much like to meet Uncle Meat, although by then I knew better than to loan him money or help him build anything. My grandfather laughed, and said he would introduce us if Uncle Meat ever turned up for Christmas, but he couldn't guarantee anything -- Uncle Meat came and went as he pleased, and there was just no telling when or where he'd turn up.

That was the year my sister (who may well have been quicker on the draw than I was) asked precisely how Uncle Meat was related to us. Was he Mom's brother? Or Grandpa's? Just who WAS Uncle Meat? Gran'ther laughed and explained that he was actually a distant cousin on Gramma's side of the family, but he had been around so long, everyone just called him "uncle", although at one point, he had been "Uncle Aloysius", instead of "Uncle Meat".

I later discovered that this was to be one of Uncle Meat's distinguishing characteristics -- he was NEVER from YOUR side of the family, always your spouse's.

Uncle Meat was the last of childhood's illusions I shed. I'd quit believing in the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus, and the Tooth Fairy, but I'm pretty sure I held some faith that Uncle Meat still existed all the way up to age eight or nine. After that, I still enjoyed the stories, though. We all did. We claimed that we just told them to amuse the children, but for a time, before I reached adulthood, there really weren't any "children"… but still, a Christmas never passed without someone sharing an Uncle Meat story, old or new, or most likely, both.

I left home, and got on with my life. When we got together, though, Uncle Meat was still very much in evidence -- and one day, much to my surprise, I found myself telling one of Gran'ther's old stories to some of my cousins, who were maybe six or so. They sat there, enthralled, as I related the story of how Uncle Meat had accidentally burned the house down by striking frozen chili peppers together… and I realized why Grandpa so enjoyed telling the stories. I also realized that he'd been right -- that I would meet Uncle Meat someday -- because, after the story was told, I realized that I just HAD.

Before my grandfather died, we spoke about Uncle Meat at one point. He told me that he had renamed the character "Uncle Meat" during the late sixties, to avoid confusion with a real fellow who had married into the family… but that "Uncle Aloysius" had been a fixture in stories HIS grandfather had told HIM, and his grandfather had come over from Ireland shortly before the Civil War… and that it made him feel good to know that the tradition (such as it was) would continue.

As I grew older, and as I studied, I came to realize some things about Uncle Meat. I realized that he was folklore, an oral tradition handed down from generation to generation within my family. Uncle Meat was a rite of passage, as well -- only you can determine when and if you will ever pull someone's leg with an Uncle Meat story. Uncle Meat stories were usually humorous anecdotes or longish jokes, but there were more than a few cautionary tales thrown in there as well -- usually involving what happened to Uncle Meat's youngest the time he decided to play with matches, or got separated from his folks at the County Fair. Uncle Meat was no less a teacher of the young than the Brothers Grimm.

Any number of things could give birth to an Uncle Meat story. At least one is a rehashed version of a story originally found in Reader's Digest. Any number of jokes have become Uncle Meat stories.

…And then there was the day my father blew up the pot roast. I was home at the time, and lying in bed reading, when I heard a KAPOW noise from the kitchen. I ran into the kitchen to find my father sitting spraddle-legged in the middle of the kitchen floor with a pot roast in his lap. He was covered with gravy, and looked kind of stunned. He'd tried to check and see if it was done without bleeding off the pressure from the pressure cooker first, and it had exploded, sending the pot roast ricocheting off the ceiling, whereupon it had smacked him in the face on the way down. For days afterwards, he nursed a "sunburn" that had been caused by the hot gravy.

Imagine my surprise when that same story was told -- by my father -- in slightly altered form the following Thanksgiving, as a new Uncle Meat story.

Gran'ther in particular was often inspired by gag postcards of cowboys riding giant jackrabbits and so forth. I still have a postcard he got in Florida, showing a photo of a lovely bikini girl about to get her behind bitten by an alligator (presumably stuffed). He told me that this was the last photo ever taken of Aunt Clofullia in one piece, because Uncle Meat was so busy fiddling with the camera, he hadn't noticed the alligator until it was too late… I remember dozens of odd postcards and strange pictures he showed me over the years, swearing up and down that Uncle Meat had made the papers again…

In time, I had a family of my own, and one night I found myself telling a story about this crazy relative I had to my new daughter. She was skeptical, but willing to listen to the story. Even after hearing two or three other stories, she wasn't entirely convinced I wasn't a liar… until we went to visit my folks for that first Christmas… and she heard my Uncle Ken telling an all-new Uncle Meat story.

It took her a long time after that to decide whether Uncle Meat was real or not -- I refused to admit that he wasn't -- and now, she's twenty years old, and still, from time to time, asks to hear one of her old favorites.

So long as we are family, Uncle Meat will never die.