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The night I met Dorf, aka the Gorilla, sticks out in my mind.
I'd met his roommate, Max, at the place I worked at the time, and Max had suggested we all get together for dinner. He mentioned that his roommate would make dinner, and since everyone had heard about my insane videotape collection, perhaps I could bring some videos?
It sounded good to me. About then... the phone rang.
I picked it up. A crazy high pitched voice screamed and jibbered at me. I recognized Max's name though. "It's for you... I think," I said, handing Max the phone.
Max looked at me funny, and took the phone. He listened for a minute, and his face showed shock. "Holy CRAP!" he cried. "That was Gorilla! My house is on fire! We've got to get over there, NOW!"
And Max ran out the door.
I followed, stopping to lock the front door, and to ponder why Max had a gorilla, and how it had gotten my phone number. No one had bothered to inform me, yet, about Dorf's nickname.
We ran through the darkened evening streets. In the distance, I heard sirens, of fire engines to come. Max was a skinny little bugger, and I had to run hard to keep him in sight. Fortunately, he didn't live more than a few blocks from my place. He ran into a complex of apartment buildings, and into a little breezeway between two buildings... and stopped cold.
When I caught up with him, I saw why. The pavement was covered with broken glass. This one apartment faced into the breezeway, and the two large windows flanking the front door had blown out. Max stood there in shock. Plainly, this was his apartment. Cautiously, I stepped into the breezeway. The front door was standing wide open, which may have saved it from being blasted off the hinges.
About then, a hairy man wearing a towel ran out into the breezeway. "Max!" he cried. "It's okay! It's all right! I-- YEAAARGH!"
Seizing his foot, he hopped backwards into the apartment. He was barefoot. I guess he hadn't noticed all the broken glass.
Max and I cautiously stepped forward, and peered into the open window. The apartment did not appear to be on fire. Nothing was burning. There were no soot marks or black smears, or anything to indicate that it had been on fire. I noticed the aquarium sitting on the breakfast bar was shattered, though. I also didn't see any gorilla. I did smell a strong odor of burnt hair, though. Was that it? Had they been meaning to serve the gorilla for dinner, and it had somehow managed to escape? That still didn't explain how it had gotten my phone number, though...
Meanwhile, the hairy man continued to hop around the living room holding his foot. His towel fell off. He was naked. He fell down behind the couch, and I saw him no longer.
About then, the fire department showed up. It seems someone had reported a fire. Did we know anything about it?
Max and I couldn't tell them anything.
About then, the hairy man emerged from behind the couch, firmly wrapped in his towel again, and limping slightly. Yes, he was the one who'd reported the fire. He was also the one who'd called my house.
Meanwhile, the firemen, in full firefighting gear, had spread through the apartment, looking for signs of fire. One noticed that one wall of the kitchen had scorch marks on it. He also noticed a twisted cylindrical thing on the kitchen floor. It looked like an exploded bombshell to me. What the %$#@ HAD these crazy people been meaning to serve me for supper?
About then, the hairy man began to explain himself... and the story fell into place:
*************************************************************
Gorilla had set up a dinner date with his girlfriend and his roommate that evening. His roommate had mentioned that he worked with this guy who had every videotape ever released, and what say we invite him, and ask him to bring some videos? Gorilla was agreeable, and Max had set out on foot to my place. Meanwhile, Gorilla had showered, and begun dinner.
Dinner was a sort of open faced sandwich thing with chicken breasts and molten mozzerella that Gorilla called "Atomic Chicken". It involved careful baking at medium temperatures. Gorilla was running back and forth between the kitchen and the bathroom, dressed only in his Fruit Of The Looms, trying to get cleaned and shaved and coiffed and make dinner at the same time. At one point, he was shaving himself by the reflection in the chrome parts of the stove. Kitchen utensils and hygiene supplies were scattered throughout the kitchen. He put on a pot of green beans to cook, and then went back to the bathroom to find his toothbrush.
While he was in there, he heard an explosion in the kitchen.
He ran back in... to find the kitchen in flames.
The entire north wall was ablaze. The stove was wrapped in flame. The kitchen was an inferno.
Dorf stood there, goggling at it. What the fuck? He'd only been gone two seconds. How the hell does a fire this huge start in two seconds?
About then, a tiny part of his mind interrupted his ponderings to point out that his house was on fire, and to suggest that he do something about it.
Um... okay. How does one put a fire out? Water! You put water on it!
Dorf ran to the sink, and turned on the water. It ran ineffectually out of the faucet into the sink. Dorf began grabbing handfuls of it and throwing it at the burning wall. It didn't seem to do much good. Was the fire SPREADING? Man, this wasn't WORKING! How ELSE did one put out a fire?
Um... well... you BEAT it out!
Dorf ran to the wall and began slapping at it. VERY briefly. He then jerked back sharply to blow on his newly hairless knuckles to cool them. Plainly, barehanded wasn't going to work. What else was there to beat the fire out with? He cast around him for a dishtowel, a blanket, SOMETHING--
Nothing.
Desperate, he yanked off his underwear and frantically began trying to beat the fire out with them. He whacked the fire three or four times without much visible affect. On the fifth swing, he realized that his Fruit Of The Looms were on fire, and let go of them to keep from getting burned.
After that, he decided to just stop doing anything and stand there and scream for a while. After several good screams, he felt a little better, but his house was still on fire, and now he was naked.
What else did one do when the house was on fire?
CALL THE FIRE DEPARTMENT!
He ran into the living room, grabbed the phone, and dialed 911, and yammered his address into it, adding "FIRE! FIRE! HAAAALLLPPP!!! before he slammed the phone down again. About then, it occurred to him that perhaps he should tell his roommate about this. He saw, on the notepad next to the phone, "Am at Doc's, 555-6431", so he called my place, and screamed at Max that the house was on fire.
Oddly enough, having successfully DONE something about it, he felt better, and lit a cigarette, and waited for the fire department to arrive. He took a drag, and glanced into the burning kitchen.
...and realized that he was sitting on his butt, naked, in a burning house. He was in actual physical danger.
His mouth dropped open, and his cigarette fell out of it.
Into his crotch.
I should probably point out that Dorf was so rattled he hadn't hung up the phone. Max was still standing there, listening to nothing. Suddenly, Dorf began screaming, and Max was convinced that his roommate and bosom buddy was burning to death, and that's when Max shouted at me and pelted out my front door.
Well, yeah, Dorf WAS burning alive, just not quite the way Max thought.
Meanwhile, Dorf had retrieved his smoke, and ran again into the burning kitchen. What the hell? What to do? It would take the fire department too LONG, what was he going to DO--
...and his eyes fell upon the fire extinguisher hanging in its little bracket, next to the stove.
I wasn't there, of course. I can only imagine the look on Dorf's face. It must have looked exactly like in the movie Army Of Darkness, where Ash is facing the horrible undead monster in the pit... and suddenly, someone throws him his chainsaw.
Dorf seized the fire extinguisher with alacrity... and burned himself on the hot metal. It hadn't been IN the fire, but close enough long enough to heat up significantly. He dropped it. It landed on his toe. He hopped around screaming for a few seconds, all the time he could afford, and then grabbed the thing again. It was still too hot, but by Ghod, he was going to put the fire out. He grabbed the handle, aimed it at the fire, and squeezed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He squeezed again. Nothing.
After that, he went a little nuts, and began beating the extinguisher against the burning wall, weeping and crying and screaming and cursing the evil rotten appliance that had so failed him and refused to put out the fire.
About then, he noticed that there was a tag hanging on the extinguisher. Of COURSE! Read the INSTRUCTIONS! He quickly backed away from the fire, and took the tag in hand to read it.
The tag was on fire.
Screaming and howling, he tore the tag away and slapped out the flames. Too late. It was unreadable.
At that point, he jumped up and down screaming, ready to break the damn extinguisher over SOMETHING--
--when he noticed the little ring/pin thingy sticking out of the trigger assembly. It was intended to prevent accidental discharge. Bob immediately slipped a finger through the ring and yanked--
--and it stopped. It was held onto the extinguisher by a little plastic loop, the same one the tag had been hanging on.
Dorf yanked again, HARD. Nothing. It was too tough. It wouldn't give or break.
Screaming and shrieking and howling like the damned, Dorf PULLED--
--and the cord broke. The ring came free. Dorf flung it across the room. The extinguisher was in hand now. The pin was gone. NOTHING would stop him from raining foamy death upon the enemy flames! And Dorf spun around to face the burning wall and squeezed the trigger--
...the wall wasn't on fire.
Dorf let go of the trigger. He stood there and goggled.
The wall was not on fire.
Dorf stood there some more. He stared. The wall was not on fire. The wall HAD BEEN on fire, but now was NOT. What the hell was this? How does a fire go from nothing to Firestorm in two seconds, and then from Inferno to nonexistence in two seconds? The wall wasn't charred. Nothing seemed damaged.
Had... had there actually BEEN any fire? Was Dorf losing his MIND?
He stepped forward ... cautiously... and put his hand on the wall.
The wall was hot, hotter than it should have been, but not so hot that you'd think it had been burning. Hey, there were scorch marks, up near the ceiling? Dorf felt the stove, and promptly burned himself on the hot metal.
Plainly, the wall HAD BEEN on fire... but now ... was NOT.
A flicker of flame caught his attention! Dammit, the evil sneaky rotten fire had MOVED! It had OUTFLANKED HIM! He spun around, extinguisher at the ready!
A thin tailing of smoke and the stench of burnt vinyl flooring rose from a little white mound. Dorf's underwear was still on fire, where he had dropped them. Dorf pointed the extinguisher, squeezed the trigger. The extinguisher worked fine, and killed the little flame immediately.
About then, he heard sirens, and someone screaming his name, nearby. Dorf abruptly remembered that he was naked. He ran into the bathroom, to get a towel...
...and that was where we came in.
The firemen were mystified. The wall did have scorch marks, and SOMETHING, some sort of sudden thermal effect, had blown out the windows and shattered the aquarium... but what the heck was it? The firemen knew any NUMBER of things that would cause a wall to burst into flames suddenly... but NONE that would suddenly vanish, leaving only traces of scorch instead of total destruction. What the hell?
About then, one of the firemen picked up the exploded bombshell looking thing. He looked it over, and then called Dorf over.
It was a can of hair spray. "Where did you leave this last, before the explosion?" the fire chief asked.
Turned out he'd been doing his hair and shaving, all at the same time, right there on the stove, in the reflection off the chrome. He'd left the hairspray right on top of the stove. It had heated up and exploded, hosing the entire stove and the wall with wet hairspray, which had then ignited off the heat from the burner with the saucepan on it.
Fortunately, hairspray doesn't burn real hot. It hadn't ignited the ceiling (although it had scorched it pretty well) or the drywall. The only things it really COULD ignite were flammables like clothing and paper... and when the fuel had burned out, the fire had simply vanished. Luckily for Dorf.
The fire marshal gave Dorf a nasty lecture about flammables and kitchen appliances. Dorf stood there, head bobbing, yes-sir-no-sir-three-bags-full-sir, and took it. Max and I examined the rest of the apartment. Max mourned the loss of his beloved fish. Finally, the firemen left.
Dorf staggered to the couch and lit another cigarette, to steady his shattered nerves. Max and I sat down with him. Man, what a night...
About then, a sort of thin, distant grinding shrieking noise was heard from the kitchen.
Dorf about had a conniption fit, right there. WHAT THE HELL NOW?!?!
I leaped to my feet, ready to flee. This place was DANGEROUS!!!
Max leaped to his feet, too... but then walked into the kitchen, toward the source of the sound.
It was the somewhat melted, damaged but still functional, kitchen timer.
Dinner was ready.
(This story originally included Dorf’s toasted chicken sandwich recipe, but it has been lost. Perhaps this is for the best.)
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Showing posts with label college. Show all posts
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The Phantom Shuffler
It was a dark and stormy Halloween night...
Well, no. It was actually a week to Christmas, and clear as a bell. It was night, though.
It woulda been around 1982. I was home from college. It was kind of comforting -- I hadn't been home since the previous May, and I'd never been away that long before. Anyway, it was a week to Christmas, and I was back in my little tiny hometown out in the middle of nowhere without a thing to do. My sister was out catting around somewhere with her boyfriend, my parents had gone to a Christmas party at his job... and I was alone in the house. Bored. I dug around in my bedroom until I came up with something to do... a copy of The Shining, by Stephen King. I'd read it before, but I was bored...
So I sat down in the back sitting room and began to read. I skipped a lot of stuff, got to the good parts in the middle where Jack Torrance meets the bartender and little Danny is almost killed by the bathtub monster...
...and I heard a noise outside.
...
...
I heard a noise outside. Specifically, I heard someone walking up to the back door.
My first thought was "What's Dad doing home so early, and what's he coming in through the back door for?"
He did not come in.
I waited.
He did not come in.
I shrugged and went back to my book. The dead fat lady crawled out of the tub and moved toward little Danny...
I heard a couple more footsteps.
I stopped reading. I waited.
I got up and walked to the back door and looked out the little window. "Dad?"
There didn't seem to be anyone there. I went and sat back down.
I'd barely gotten my butt on the cushion before I heard the footsteps again. This time, they were walking away from the back door... towards the laundry room. Following my movement on the other side of the wall, almost.
I stood up again in a hurry. The footsteps stopped.
I looked at my own feet. I was barefoot, like I usually am indoors. The footsteps were not mine, or echoes of mine; they sounded like my father's, or some big man wearing leather-soled shoes, shuffling his feet a bit, like he didn't want to pick up his feet when he walked... a sort of shhht, shhht, shhht sound.
I walked over to the back door again, and this time, I flicked on the porch light. I glanced around out the window without opening the door. I especially looked hard to my right... toward the laundry room. There didn't seem to be anyone there... but couldn't he have run behind the laundry room? Maybe. Wouldn't I have heard him, running across the grass? Maybe...
A digression: the wall wasn't much of a wall. The wall of the back sitting room had originally been a screened-in porch. When my old man bought the place, we'd converted it into an extra room, just by putting up wood siding on the outside, and cheap paneling on the inside. This had the side effect of making the wall acoustically transparent... you could clearly hear what was happening in the back yard...
I sat down again to read my book. The dead fat lady's hands closed around Danny's throat...
shht, shht, shht... shht, shht, shht, shht...
I jumped upright, threw the book down, and ran to my room. I got my old baseball bat, ran to the back door, and threw it open. Flicked on the porch light. Looked around.
There was no one in sight.
Yeah, well, peachy. I stormed out the back door, and strolled around behind the laundry room. No one there. No sign that anyone had been.
On the way back, I glanced at the laundry room door. Could he be in there? Not likely -- the sliding door tended to stick, required some muscle to open properly, and was noisy. Surely I'd have heard the racket if my phantom stranger were trying to hide in there.
I walked back in, and closed the door. Turned out the porch light... and this time, I locked the door.
...shhht, shhht, shht....shht-shht-sht-sht-sht-sht......
I leaped to my feet, grabbed the bat, ran to the door, unlocked it, yanked it open, hit the porch light, and ran into the back yard. I was sick of this. If one of my old buddies was screwing around, he was going to get hurt. I hoped he thought the lumps were funny.
There was no one in the back yard.
I checked behind the laundry room, behind and inside the hot tub. No one.
I faced the laundry room.
"If anyone's in there, show yourself," I said. "I'm coming in there in a minute, and if you surprise me, I'm gonna bash your fucking head in."
No one answered. I kept the bat in my right hand... approached the door... and, lefthanded, yanked it open. It made a hell of a racket, but opened. I leaped into the laundry room, ready to kill anything that moved.
The washing machine looked stupidly at me. The dryer agreed with it. Nobody in here but us appliances, boss...
I didn't get it. I KNEW I was hearing footsteps. Where the hell were they coming from? The roof? Why would anyone be on the friggin' roof?
...about then, it occurred to me I'd left the back door standing wide open.
I rushed back out of the laundry room, leaving the door open, and back into the house. No one was there. I closed the door, locked it... and left the porch light on, this time. I searched the entire house, top to bottom, closets, under beds, cabinets... everything. Nobody here but us college students, boss.
I went into the kitchen and made a cuba libre and drank it. After a minute, I made another one, but this time I left out the lemon and Coke, and I drank it, too.
...and then I went and sat down in my chair, ball bat at my side. I did not pick up the book. I waited. After a moment, I got up and got Dad's 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun off the rack, and loaded it, and put it near the chair. Yes, I know, alcohol and shotguns aren't a good combination, but I was eighteen, okay? Teeners aren't known for their judgement.
...and I waited.
Was I scared? Yeah. I was more angry than scared, though. I figured I knew exactly what was happening: someone was playing games with me. When I caught 'em, I would hurt them.
I even figured I knew who it was: my old high school buddy, Lightning (so named for an experiment he had performed at a Sonic Drive In; he became angry with the waitress and had demonstrated his contempt by peeing in the speaker/microphone doohickey. We hadn't known they had an open circuit in there, but all of us found out, him in particular. He'd been "Lightning" ever since...) ...and this was just his kind of stunt. Scare the hell out of someone, then roll on the ground laughing about it.
I grinned. I'd give him something to laugh about. He could giggle all the way to Intensive Care.
...I sat, and I waited. It occurred to me I hadn't checked in the washing machine or dryer. Lightning was a skinny little guy; he could well have hidden in either of the two, with a little effort. I listened to hear if he came out again.
Ten minutes later: nothing. Could be he'd been hiding in the trees, I thought... and got scared when he saw me tearing around with that ball bat. He could be a dick on occasion, but he wasn't stupid. Well, okay, not very stupid.
Ten minutes after that, it seemed clear: Lightning had jumped the fence and gone home, having no interest in paying for his joke with a concussion and/or gunshot wound. I was alone again. I put down the bat and picked up the book.
I read for a long time. I'd gotten as far as the part where Jack goes back to the bar and has the long talk with the bartender, and then goes to get the roque mallet... when I heard it again.
shhhhhhht......shhhhhhhhht....... shhhhhhht...... very slowly. Downright Frankensteinian, in fact. I grabbed the bat and yanked the door open.
The door wouldn't cooperate. It was locked. I struggled with it a minute, got it open, and ran out, then ran back in, turned on the porch light, and ran out.
Nothing.
...but the laundry room door was only partly open.
Had I done that? Or had someone been screwing with it? It occurred to me if you were strong enough, you could lift it off its rollers... and open and close it totally silently that way.
I stormed over and yanked the entire laundry room door off its sliding rollers, and tossed it into the back yard. No way he could fix that without making some noise. I walked into the laundry room, checked inside the washing machine and dryer. Nothing. I walked out and into the fruit trees, looking for signs someone had been there. I poked my ball bat into the foliage. Nothing.
There was no one in the yard.
No one but me.
I walked back toward the back door. I glanced behind the hot tub, and in it, in the interests of thoroughness. Nothing. I walked back towards the laundry room---
---and right behind me: shht-shht-shht-shht-shht....
I screamed, and spun around with the ball bat, putting everything I had into that swing—
---there was a bright flash of light---
---a sound like a gunshot---
---I felt the bat hit something solid --- and then go THROUGH it---
...and I spun around twice and fell on my ass.
WHAT THE FUCK HAD THAT BEEN?
I was blind; all I could see was that flashbulb burst, glowing on my retinas. I couldn't hear anything because I was yelling at the top of my lungs. I didn't dare get up; in the time that took, whatever I'd hit might recover and go for my throat... I HAD hit it, but what the hell was it? It'd felt like my bat hit something solid, and then gone through it...
...so I settled for scooching around in a little circle on my butt, in the grass, howling frantically, and waving my bat around trying to hit something.
Suddenly, I saw something right ahead of me move. I promptly whacked the hell out of it with the bat.
I screamed. It had been my foot.
I staggered to my feet, hopped onefooted into the big pale thing that I hoped was the doorway (it was) and slammed the door. I stood there hopping up and down cursing myself for an idiot, and waiting for my vision to clear.
When I could see something that wasn't a big purple blob, I looked out the window. It was pitch dark. I flicked the light switch off and on. The light did not go on.
I ran and got a flashlight, and the shotgun. Flicking the light on, I carefully opened the door and looked out.
There was no body. There was shattered glass everywhere, and a horribly twisted wrought-iron thing on the pavement. Bare wires hung from the wall near the door.
I'd panicked and bludgeoned the porch light to death.
I stood there in the doorway, looking down at the mangled wrought-iron coach-lamp-style porch light fixture. Mom had bought that thing in Mexico. It would be all kinds of fun explaining this one.
I felt like a prize fool.
I felt like the Great Chump Of Western Civilization.
I heard a few stupid noises in the yard, I destroyed the friggin' porch light, and now I stood there with a belly full of booze and a loaded shotgun. Yup, that's problem-solving at its best...
I locked the door, turned the switch off to prevent a short or something, unloaded the shotgun, and sat down. I had checked the entire back yard. There was no one there. There could not have been anyone there, unless they could jump over a nine-foot fence, or the house, or they were invisible.
Disgusted with myself, I put the shotgun back on the rack, put the shells away, and sat down to check my foot. I'd hit myself on the ankle, but not broken anything. No doubt I'd be limping in the morning.
I picked up my book, determined to ignore any more phantom noises.
It was a good forty-five minutes before I heard the next ones.
These were different footsteps, though...
...shht*....shht*....****...shht**....SHHHT**...shht*...
The shuffling footsteps were back... and this time... I could hear the tiny tinkle of broken glass, gently kicked aside by the feet making them...
I stood up, as carefully and quietly as I could.
shht...shht**...shht*.. I could hear it plainly. It wasn't my imagination.
I picked up the flashlight. I tiptoed to the back door and glanced out the window. I couldn't see anything without the porch light.
shht...shht...shht****... I could hear it clearly. It was about three feet away from me, through the door and to my right, a little closer to the laundry room than I was.
I shone the flashlight out the door.
The shuffling stopped immediately... but I didn't hear anything else.
There was no one there.
I shone the light beam around. I could see a little pushed-aside pile of broken safety glass, where a foot had shuffled, and pushed them.
...and the shuffling started again, this time while I was looking directly at the spot where the person should be.
I jumped, in spite of myself, and flashed the light around. The shuffling stopped.
I can't describe how I felt. Well, sure I can -- I wasn't angry any more. I was pretty sure Lightning couldn't turn invisible, or he wouldn't have had to bug the older guys to buy him his beer.
This wasn't some chum playing a prank.
This was something else entirely.
My heart felt like someone had dropped it in ice-cold sulfuric acid.
I think this was where I really discovered the border line between scared and terrified. Scared is when you've got the football team mad at you, but you understand why you're scared -- as in, they're going to pound you to a pulp.
Terrified is something else entirely. Terrified is when you see something that should not be, and your mind finally gives up and says, I don't know WHAT the fuck is going on, because this is impossible... but it's still happenin', man.
I discovered that hair really could stand on end, if you were terrified. I suddenly really had to pee, despite the fact that my genitals had suddenly withdrawn into my pelvis.
I turned the light off. I picked up the phone. I dialed the sheriff's office, and when they answered, it occurred to me that I had no idea what to tell them. I had a ghost in my back yard? Yeah, right. I told them I thought I had an intruder in the back yard... and then it hit me. I asked him to send someone to do a drive by, and the dispatcher agreed, and when I hung up, I ran into the kitchen and hit the master flood switch.
Dad loved to barbecue and he liked to hold parties in the back yard. He'd installed floodlights, big ol' 200 watt monsters that lit up the whole back yard. Furthermore, the kitchen had a bay window; I'd be able to see most of the back yard without having to open the back door.
...but from the kitchen, I couldn't hear anything. I had a fine view of the walkway and laundry room, but it was too far to hear if my visitor was still doing the Undead Tim Conway Shuffle.
I was scared green. I didn't like it. I wasn't used to it. I was fairly sure I could handle any local yo-yo who wanted to play games... but this was nothing I had ever seen before.
I called the neighbors whose back yard butted against ours, and told them the intruder story. I asked them to turn their floods on, too. They did.
I called the party where my parents were, and told them the intruder story, too. They agreed to come home.
They arrived at the same time as the cops. The cops did a sweep of the neighborhood. Nobody out and around. My folks asked what I'd seen and heard, and what happened to the back porch light?
Against my better judgment, I told them.
They didn't believe me at first, but eventually, they came to conclude that their only son had in fact heard SOMETHING... he didn't normally attack wrought iron light fixtures with enough wrath to make them unrepairable. But, come on, a ghost in the back yard?
I went to bed, feeling rotten.
Over breakfast, Dad had an odd look on his face. He mentioned he'd heard something outside the back door, right before he went to bed. He'd checked it... it was nothing... but he'd locked the door and loaded the shotgun.
It had sounded to him like some guy shuffling around in leather-soled shoes...
***********************************************************
Christmas came and went, and we heard no more of the Phantom Shuffler. I went back to school for the spring semester. I eventually forgot about it.
Until my mother called one afternoon. She wanted to tell me that she'd finally heard the Shuffler, too. She'd been out doing laundry, and heard someone shuffling around on the back walkway... in broad daylight.
As she walked back and forth, transferring loads of laundry around, she heard him twice more. She was beginning to get freaky...
Finally, she shut herself up in the laundry room, but left the crack of the door open a little. She sat down on the floor and stared at that segment of cement walkway... and waited.
About ten minutes later, a horned toad scuttled out of one of the oleander bushes. A moment after that, another one came out, too.
...shht-shht... shht...shht...shht... went their rough, leathery bellies on the cement as they did their courtship dance thing.
...shht-shht-shht-shht-shht, went the pavement, as the male hopped onto the female and began boinking away...
Well, no. It was actually a week to Christmas, and clear as a bell. It was night, though.
It woulda been around 1982. I was home from college. It was kind of comforting -- I hadn't been home since the previous May, and I'd never been away that long before. Anyway, it was a week to Christmas, and I was back in my little tiny hometown out in the middle of nowhere without a thing to do. My sister was out catting around somewhere with her boyfriend, my parents had gone to a Christmas party at his job... and I was alone in the house. Bored. I dug around in my bedroom until I came up with something to do... a copy of The Shining, by Stephen King. I'd read it before, but I was bored...
So I sat down in the back sitting room and began to read. I skipped a lot of stuff, got to the good parts in the middle where Jack Torrance meets the bartender and little Danny is almost killed by the bathtub monster...
...and I heard a noise outside.
...
...
I heard a noise outside. Specifically, I heard someone walking up to the back door.
My first thought was "What's Dad doing home so early, and what's he coming in through the back door for?"
He did not come in.
I waited.
He did not come in.
I shrugged and went back to my book. The dead fat lady crawled out of the tub and moved toward little Danny...
I heard a couple more footsteps.
I stopped reading. I waited.
I got up and walked to the back door and looked out the little window. "Dad?"
There didn't seem to be anyone there. I went and sat back down.
I'd barely gotten my butt on the cushion before I heard the footsteps again. This time, they were walking away from the back door... towards the laundry room. Following my movement on the other side of the wall, almost.
I stood up again in a hurry. The footsteps stopped.
I looked at my own feet. I was barefoot, like I usually am indoors. The footsteps were not mine, or echoes of mine; they sounded like my father's, or some big man wearing leather-soled shoes, shuffling his feet a bit, like he didn't want to pick up his feet when he walked... a sort of shhht, shhht, shhht sound.
I walked over to the back door again, and this time, I flicked on the porch light. I glanced around out the window without opening the door. I especially looked hard to my right... toward the laundry room. There didn't seem to be anyone there... but couldn't he have run behind the laundry room? Maybe. Wouldn't I have heard him, running across the grass? Maybe...
A digression: the wall wasn't much of a wall. The wall of the back sitting room had originally been a screened-in porch. When my old man bought the place, we'd converted it into an extra room, just by putting up wood siding on the outside, and cheap paneling on the inside. This had the side effect of making the wall acoustically transparent... you could clearly hear what was happening in the back yard...
I sat down again to read my book. The dead fat lady's hands closed around Danny's throat...
shht, shht, shht... shht, shht, shht, shht...
I jumped upright, threw the book down, and ran to my room. I got my old baseball bat, ran to the back door, and threw it open. Flicked on the porch light. Looked around.
There was no one in sight.
Yeah, well, peachy. I stormed out the back door, and strolled around behind the laundry room. No one there. No sign that anyone had been.
On the way back, I glanced at the laundry room door. Could he be in there? Not likely -- the sliding door tended to stick, required some muscle to open properly, and was noisy. Surely I'd have heard the racket if my phantom stranger were trying to hide in there.
I walked back in, and closed the door. Turned out the porch light... and this time, I locked the door.
...shhht, shhht, shht....shht-shht-sht-sht-sht-sht......
I leaped to my feet, grabbed the bat, ran to the door, unlocked it, yanked it open, hit the porch light, and ran into the back yard. I was sick of this. If one of my old buddies was screwing around, he was going to get hurt. I hoped he thought the lumps were funny.
There was no one in the back yard.
I checked behind the laundry room, behind and inside the hot tub. No one.
I faced the laundry room.
"If anyone's in there, show yourself," I said. "I'm coming in there in a minute, and if you surprise me, I'm gonna bash your fucking head in."
No one answered. I kept the bat in my right hand... approached the door... and, lefthanded, yanked it open. It made a hell of a racket, but opened. I leaped into the laundry room, ready to kill anything that moved.
The washing machine looked stupidly at me. The dryer agreed with it. Nobody in here but us appliances, boss...
I didn't get it. I KNEW I was hearing footsteps. Where the hell were they coming from? The roof? Why would anyone be on the friggin' roof?
...about then, it occurred to me I'd left the back door standing wide open.
I rushed back out of the laundry room, leaving the door open, and back into the house. No one was there. I closed the door, locked it... and left the porch light on, this time. I searched the entire house, top to bottom, closets, under beds, cabinets... everything. Nobody here but us college students, boss.
I went into the kitchen and made a cuba libre and drank it. After a minute, I made another one, but this time I left out the lemon and Coke, and I drank it, too.
...and then I went and sat down in my chair, ball bat at my side. I did not pick up the book. I waited. After a moment, I got up and got Dad's 12-gauge double-barreled shotgun off the rack, and loaded it, and put it near the chair. Yes, I know, alcohol and shotguns aren't a good combination, but I was eighteen, okay? Teeners aren't known for their judgement.
...and I waited.
Was I scared? Yeah. I was more angry than scared, though. I figured I knew exactly what was happening: someone was playing games with me. When I caught 'em, I would hurt them.
I even figured I knew who it was: my old high school buddy, Lightning (so named for an experiment he had performed at a Sonic Drive In; he became angry with the waitress and had demonstrated his contempt by peeing in the speaker/microphone doohickey. We hadn't known they had an open circuit in there, but all of us found out, him in particular. He'd been "Lightning" ever since...) ...and this was just his kind of stunt. Scare the hell out of someone, then roll on the ground laughing about it.
I grinned. I'd give him something to laugh about. He could giggle all the way to Intensive Care.
...I sat, and I waited. It occurred to me I hadn't checked in the washing machine or dryer. Lightning was a skinny little guy; he could well have hidden in either of the two, with a little effort. I listened to hear if he came out again.
Ten minutes later: nothing. Could be he'd been hiding in the trees, I thought... and got scared when he saw me tearing around with that ball bat. He could be a dick on occasion, but he wasn't stupid. Well, okay, not very stupid.
Ten minutes after that, it seemed clear: Lightning had jumped the fence and gone home, having no interest in paying for his joke with a concussion and/or gunshot wound. I was alone again. I put down the bat and picked up the book.
I read for a long time. I'd gotten as far as the part where Jack goes back to the bar and has the long talk with the bartender, and then goes to get the roque mallet... when I heard it again.
shhhhhhht......shhhhhhhhht....... shhhhhhht...... very slowly. Downright Frankensteinian, in fact. I grabbed the bat and yanked the door open.
The door wouldn't cooperate. It was locked. I struggled with it a minute, got it open, and ran out, then ran back in, turned on the porch light, and ran out.
Nothing.
...but the laundry room door was only partly open.
Had I done that? Or had someone been screwing with it? It occurred to me if you were strong enough, you could lift it off its rollers... and open and close it totally silently that way.
I stormed over and yanked the entire laundry room door off its sliding rollers, and tossed it into the back yard. No way he could fix that without making some noise. I walked into the laundry room, checked inside the washing machine and dryer. Nothing. I walked out and into the fruit trees, looking for signs someone had been there. I poked my ball bat into the foliage. Nothing.
There was no one in the yard.
No one but me.
I walked back toward the back door. I glanced behind the hot tub, and in it, in the interests of thoroughness. Nothing. I walked back towards the laundry room---
---and right behind me: shht-shht-shht-shht-shht....
I screamed, and spun around with the ball bat, putting everything I had into that swing—
---there was a bright flash of light---
---a sound like a gunshot---
---I felt the bat hit something solid --- and then go THROUGH it---
...and I spun around twice and fell on my ass.
WHAT THE FUCK HAD THAT BEEN?
I was blind; all I could see was that flashbulb burst, glowing on my retinas. I couldn't hear anything because I was yelling at the top of my lungs. I didn't dare get up; in the time that took, whatever I'd hit might recover and go for my throat... I HAD hit it, but what the hell was it? It'd felt like my bat hit something solid, and then gone through it...
...so I settled for scooching around in a little circle on my butt, in the grass, howling frantically, and waving my bat around trying to hit something.
Suddenly, I saw something right ahead of me move. I promptly whacked the hell out of it with the bat.
I screamed. It had been my foot.
I staggered to my feet, hopped onefooted into the big pale thing that I hoped was the doorway (it was) and slammed the door. I stood there hopping up and down cursing myself for an idiot, and waiting for my vision to clear.
When I could see something that wasn't a big purple blob, I looked out the window. It was pitch dark. I flicked the light switch off and on. The light did not go on.
I ran and got a flashlight, and the shotgun. Flicking the light on, I carefully opened the door and looked out.
There was no body. There was shattered glass everywhere, and a horribly twisted wrought-iron thing on the pavement. Bare wires hung from the wall near the door.
I'd panicked and bludgeoned the porch light to death.
I stood there in the doorway, looking down at the mangled wrought-iron coach-lamp-style porch light fixture. Mom had bought that thing in Mexico. It would be all kinds of fun explaining this one.
I felt like a prize fool.
I felt like the Great Chump Of Western Civilization.
I heard a few stupid noises in the yard, I destroyed the friggin' porch light, and now I stood there with a belly full of booze and a loaded shotgun. Yup, that's problem-solving at its best...
I locked the door, turned the switch off to prevent a short or something, unloaded the shotgun, and sat down. I had checked the entire back yard. There was no one there. There could not have been anyone there, unless they could jump over a nine-foot fence, or the house, or they were invisible.
Disgusted with myself, I put the shotgun back on the rack, put the shells away, and sat down to check my foot. I'd hit myself on the ankle, but not broken anything. No doubt I'd be limping in the morning.
I picked up my book, determined to ignore any more phantom noises.
It was a good forty-five minutes before I heard the next ones.
These were different footsteps, though...
...shht*....shht*....****...shht**....SHHHT**...shht*...
The shuffling footsteps were back... and this time... I could hear the tiny tinkle of broken glass, gently kicked aside by the feet making them...
I stood up, as carefully and quietly as I could.
shht...shht**...shht*.. I could hear it plainly. It wasn't my imagination.
I picked up the flashlight. I tiptoed to the back door and glanced out the window. I couldn't see anything without the porch light.
shht...shht...shht****... I could hear it clearly. It was about three feet away from me, through the door and to my right, a little closer to the laundry room than I was.
I shone the flashlight out the door.
The shuffling stopped immediately... but I didn't hear anything else.
There was no one there.
I shone the light beam around. I could see a little pushed-aside pile of broken safety glass, where a foot had shuffled, and pushed them.
...and the shuffling started again, this time while I was looking directly at the spot where the person should be.
I jumped, in spite of myself, and flashed the light around. The shuffling stopped.
I can't describe how I felt. Well, sure I can -- I wasn't angry any more. I was pretty sure Lightning couldn't turn invisible, or he wouldn't have had to bug the older guys to buy him his beer.
This wasn't some chum playing a prank.
This was something else entirely.
My heart felt like someone had dropped it in ice-cold sulfuric acid.
I think this was where I really discovered the border line between scared and terrified. Scared is when you've got the football team mad at you, but you understand why you're scared -- as in, they're going to pound you to a pulp.
Terrified is something else entirely. Terrified is when you see something that should not be, and your mind finally gives up and says, I don't know WHAT the fuck is going on, because this is impossible... but it's still happenin', man.
I discovered that hair really could stand on end, if you were terrified. I suddenly really had to pee, despite the fact that my genitals had suddenly withdrawn into my pelvis.
I turned the light off. I picked up the phone. I dialed the sheriff's office, and when they answered, it occurred to me that I had no idea what to tell them. I had a ghost in my back yard? Yeah, right. I told them I thought I had an intruder in the back yard... and then it hit me. I asked him to send someone to do a drive by, and the dispatcher agreed, and when I hung up, I ran into the kitchen and hit the master flood switch.
Dad loved to barbecue and he liked to hold parties in the back yard. He'd installed floodlights, big ol' 200 watt monsters that lit up the whole back yard. Furthermore, the kitchen had a bay window; I'd be able to see most of the back yard without having to open the back door.
...but from the kitchen, I couldn't hear anything. I had a fine view of the walkway and laundry room, but it was too far to hear if my visitor was still doing the Undead Tim Conway Shuffle.
I was scared green. I didn't like it. I wasn't used to it. I was fairly sure I could handle any local yo-yo who wanted to play games... but this was nothing I had ever seen before.
I called the neighbors whose back yard butted against ours, and told them the intruder story. I asked them to turn their floods on, too. They did.
I called the party where my parents were, and told them the intruder story, too. They agreed to come home.
They arrived at the same time as the cops. The cops did a sweep of the neighborhood. Nobody out and around. My folks asked what I'd seen and heard, and what happened to the back porch light?
Against my better judgment, I told them.
They didn't believe me at first, but eventually, they came to conclude that their only son had in fact heard SOMETHING... he didn't normally attack wrought iron light fixtures with enough wrath to make them unrepairable. But, come on, a ghost in the back yard?
I went to bed, feeling rotten.
Over breakfast, Dad had an odd look on his face. He mentioned he'd heard something outside the back door, right before he went to bed. He'd checked it... it was nothing... but he'd locked the door and loaded the shotgun.
It had sounded to him like some guy shuffling around in leather-soled shoes...
***********************************************************
Christmas came and went, and we heard no more of the Phantom Shuffler. I went back to school for the spring semester. I eventually forgot about it.
Until my mother called one afternoon. She wanted to tell me that she'd finally heard the Shuffler, too. She'd been out doing laundry, and heard someone shuffling around on the back walkway... in broad daylight.
As she walked back and forth, transferring loads of laundry around, she heard him twice more. She was beginning to get freaky...
Finally, she shut herself up in the laundry room, but left the crack of the door open a little. She sat down on the floor and stared at that segment of cement walkway... and waited.
About ten minutes later, a horned toad scuttled out of one of the oleander bushes. A moment after that, another one came out, too.
...shht-shht... shht...shht...shht... went their rough, leathery bellies on the cement as they did their courtship dance thing.
...shht-shht-shht-shht-shht, went the pavement, as the male hopped onto the female and began boinking away...
Monday, January 18, 2010
Recipes: 2
This dish has its roots in Mom's Tuna Salad. Mom taught me how to make it, and it worked out just fine in college, provided I could keep it refrigerated -- it'll go bad overnight if you don't.
Something most college guys have to figure out for themselves is that proper nutrition can't be maintained by standardized consumption of beer and pizza (when times are good) or beer and macaroni and cheese (when times are poor). You have to eat some greens and veggies occasionally. This salad is loaded with them, tastes great, and you can adjust the makings to suit your desired calorie count.
Thing is, sometimes I wanted to make the stuff but didn't have the necessary ingredients; I had to improvise. Lo and behold, you can improvise any number of ways with this salad, and it's still quite good. I recommend it for sandwiches or just scooping straight out of the bowl with crackers.
It got its current name due to a cat I used to have named Faust; my roommates at the time nicknamed him Professor Doktor Faustus because he learned how to open interior doors by jumping up and grabbing the handle with his front paws, twisting it, and kicking the doorjamb with his hind legs until the door swung open. If the door swung inward, it usually took him a little longer.
Once a week or so, he'd wear himself out trying to open the front door, which was too heavy for him to move.
Anyway, he was a chow hound extraordinaire -- if he had you pegged for a sucker, you couldn't eat around him until he'd inspected the meal and received his tribute. Part of that was my fault -- he and I had an agreement that if he'd keep his distance while I ate, I'd save him a nibble at the end. For some reason, though, Faust had no respect whatsoever for one of my roommates at the time, a guy named Max.
One day, I decided to make tuna salad. I diced up some celery first, and while opening the cans, Faust of course raised hell about wanting what was in them, and I drained the water and let him have it, and he raised hell about wanting the REST of what was in the cans, and I ignored him and he swatted my leg, and I ignored him and he bit my ankle and I ignored him... and then I heard the crunching sounds behind me.
I turned around. He had leaped up on the other counter, and was eating the celery. Apparently, he meant to have SOME of what I was doing, whether I liked it or not.
Max came home from work later and asked if there was anything to eat. I told him there was tuna salad. He went and fixed a sandwich and sat down on the couch to watch the news with me. Faust promptly hopped up on the coffee table and yauped for his share.
Max ignored him.
Faust looked irritated, and leaned over the edge of the table, reaching out a paw to hook the sandwich and bring it closer for inspection.
Max moved the sandwich where Faust couldn't reach it, and bipped him gently on the nose with a finger by way of chastisement.
This was the fatal error; you could swat Faust or yell at him, but to patronize him was a grave mistake. Faust responded by suddenly leaning way forward, winding up with one paw, and firmly clouting the sandwich out of Max's hand.
Max squawked.
I goggled.
The sandwich arced gracefully through the air.
Faust cocked his head, calculated the feast's flight path, sprang off the coffee table, and positioned himself about where the sandwich would land on the floor, all in about three-quarters of a second.
I goggled.
Max recovered, leaped to his feet, hurdled the coffee table with a mighty bound, and fielded the sandwich out of the air about a foot above Faust's waiting hungry paws.
They looked at each other like that for a minute -- Max's face filled with unbelieving outrage, Faust's face creased with mild irritation.
Max roared.
Faust bolted.
I goggled.
Max launched himself after the cat, squishing the sandwich in a deathgrip, waving it around as if he meant to bludgeon the cat to death with it.
I sprained a latissimus, laughing.
Required:
a good-sized tupperware-style bowl with sealing lid
Ingredients: use only one from Column A, at least three from Column B, and at least one from Column C.
COLUMN A:
Miracle Whip salad dressing (1 1/2 cup or so); the new Miracle Whip Lite tastes just as good and has lots less fat, if you're into that sort of thing
Mayonnaise (1 1/2 cup or so)
Tartar Sauce (1 1/2 cups or so, or about 40 of those little packets they have at Long John Silver's)
COLUMN B:
one or two pickles, chopped up fine or run through a grater; whether they're sweet or sour depends on your taste. Pickle relish also works fine.
one good sized stick of celery, chopped up fine
a small onion, chopped up fine (about 1 cup chopped onion)
1 can sliced water chestnuts (not much flavor, but they do add crunch)
l small apple, cored and chopped up fine (mind the seeds!)
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/8 cup chopped chives
1 cup cooked pasta (I always liked those multicolored corkscrew noodles or green spinach noodles, but nearly any pasta will do as long as it's in small pieces), boiled or steamed to be tender and slightly springy; drain and let cool before adding to salad; do not overcook!
COLUMN C:
3-6 entire hardboiled eggs, chopped or run through a grater (Put a pot of water on. Bring to a rolling boil. Put the eggs in it, and set the timer for ten minutes. This recipe works at all altitudes and at sea level.)
1-2 cans tuna (I prefer packed-in-water to packed-in-oil, and always be sure it's dolphin-safe; there's no telling what those fishermen may try to pack in a can and sell you...)
1 package of artificial king crab legs or lobster bites, chopped fine (these taste great, and can be found at the grocery store near the seafood; you can use real crab or lobster if you want, but this is cheaper)
1 can Spam, ground or grated (this is one of the few ways you can totally disguise the taste of the stuff)
1 cup bacon bits (Use real bacon bits. The artificial kind work okay, and they taste fine, but they get soggy and don't crunch, and what's worse, the artificial red color tends to bleed off the bacon bits into the surrounding salad and makes it look like you're eating a Bowl-O-Roadkill.)
Throw everything into the bowl and mix well. Note that it's not a good idea to use more than one from Column A; they don't mix well. Likewise with Column C; use seafood or Spam-and-bacon, not both (eggs work equally well with either one, and make your meat stretch much farther).
Something most college guys have to figure out for themselves is that proper nutrition can't be maintained by standardized consumption of beer and pizza (when times are good) or beer and macaroni and cheese (when times are poor). You have to eat some greens and veggies occasionally. This salad is loaded with them, tastes great, and you can adjust the makings to suit your desired calorie count.
Thing is, sometimes I wanted to make the stuff but didn't have the necessary ingredients; I had to improvise. Lo and behold, you can improvise any number of ways with this salad, and it's still quite good. I recommend it for sandwiches or just scooping straight out of the bowl with crackers.
It got its current name due to a cat I used to have named Faust; my roommates at the time nicknamed him Professor Doktor Faustus because he learned how to open interior doors by jumping up and grabbing the handle with his front paws, twisting it, and kicking the doorjamb with his hind legs until the door swung open. If the door swung inward, it usually took him a little longer.
Once a week or so, he'd wear himself out trying to open the front door, which was too heavy for him to move.
Anyway, he was a chow hound extraordinaire -- if he had you pegged for a sucker, you couldn't eat around him until he'd inspected the meal and received his tribute. Part of that was my fault -- he and I had an agreement that if he'd keep his distance while I ate, I'd save him a nibble at the end. For some reason, though, Faust had no respect whatsoever for one of my roommates at the time, a guy named Max.
One day, I decided to make tuna salad. I diced up some celery first, and while opening the cans, Faust of course raised hell about wanting what was in them, and I drained the water and let him have it, and he raised hell about wanting the REST of what was in the cans, and I ignored him and he swatted my leg, and I ignored him and he bit my ankle and I ignored him... and then I heard the crunching sounds behind me.
I turned around. He had leaped up on the other counter, and was eating the celery. Apparently, he meant to have SOME of what I was doing, whether I liked it or not.
Max came home from work later and asked if there was anything to eat. I told him there was tuna salad. He went and fixed a sandwich and sat down on the couch to watch the news with me. Faust promptly hopped up on the coffee table and yauped for his share.
Max ignored him.
Faust looked irritated, and leaned over the edge of the table, reaching out a paw to hook the sandwich and bring it closer for inspection.
Max moved the sandwich where Faust couldn't reach it, and bipped him gently on the nose with a finger by way of chastisement.
This was the fatal error; you could swat Faust or yell at him, but to patronize him was a grave mistake. Faust responded by suddenly leaning way forward, winding up with one paw, and firmly clouting the sandwich out of Max's hand.
Max squawked.
I goggled.
The sandwich arced gracefully through the air.
Faust cocked his head, calculated the feast's flight path, sprang off the coffee table, and positioned himself about where the sandwich would land on the floor, all in about three-quarters of a second.
I goggled.
Max recovered, leaped to his feet, hurdled the coffee table with a mighty bound, and fielded the sandwich out of the air about a foot above Faust's waiting hungry paws.
They looked at each other like that for a minute -- Max's face filled with unbelieving outrage, Faust's face creased with mild irritation.
Max roared.
Faust bolted.
I goggled.
Max launched himself after the cat, squishing the sandwich in a deathgrip, waving it around as if he meant to bludgeon the cat to death with it.
I sprained a latissimus, laughing.
*****************
Required:
a good-sized tupperware-style bowl with sealing lid
Ingredients: use only one from Column A, at least three from Column B, and at least one from Column C.
COLUMN A:
Miracle Whip salad dressing (1 1/2 cup or so); the new Miracle Whip Lite tastes just as good and has lots less fat, if you're into that sort of thing
Mayonnaise (1 1/2 cup or so)
Tartar Sauce (1 1/2 cups or so, or about 40 of those little packets they have at Long John Silver's)
COLUMN B:
one or two pickles, chopped up fine or run through a grater; whether they're sweet or sour depends on your taste. Pickle relish also works fine.
one good sized stick of celery, chopped up fine
a small onion, chopped up fine (about 1 cup chopped onion)
1 can sliced water chestnuts (not much flavor, but they do add crunch)
l small apple, cored and chopped up fine (mind the seeds!)
1/4 cup chopped parsley
1/8 cup chopped chives
1 cup cooked pasta (I always liked those multicolored corkscrew noodles or green spinach noodles, but nearly any pasta will do as long as it's in small pieces), boiled or steamed to be tender and slightly springy; drain and let cool before adding to salad; do not overcook!
COLUMN C:
3-6 entire hardboiled eggs, chopped or run through a grater (Put a pot of water on. Bring to a rolling boil. Put the eggs in it, and set the timer for ten minutes. This recipe works at all altitudes and at sea level.)
1-2 cans tuna (I prefer packed-in-water to packed-in-oil, and always be sure it's dolphin-safe; there's no telling what those fishermen may try to pack in a can and sell you...)
1 package of artificial king crab legs or lobster bites, chopped fine (these taste great, and can be found at the grocery store near the seafood; you can use real crab or lobster if you want, but this is cheaper)
1 can Spam, ground or grated (this is one of the few ways you can totally disguise the taste of the stuff)
1 cup bacon bits (Use real bacon bits. The artificial kind work okay, and they taste fine, but they get soggy and don't crunch, and what's worse, the artificial red color tends to bleed off the bacon bits into the surrounding salad and makes it look like you're eating a Bowl-O-Roadkill.)
Throw everything into the bowl and mix well. Note that it's not a good idea to use more than one from Column A; they don't mix well. Likewise with Column C; use seafood or Spam-and-bacon, not both (eggs work equally well with either one, and make your meat stretch much farther).
Recipes: 1
For some reason, University of Texas students seem to have a tough time of it.
I knew two guys who fought like hell to move out of the dorms, got their own place, then realized they'd bitten off more than they could chew; in order to balance their budget for the semester, they had to pretty much eliminate their food budget.
They did so by surviving on nothing but macaroni and cheese (generic, four boxes for a buck) for most of the semester -- rather stoically, I thought. I say most of the semester because they didn't quite make it; they wound up hospitalized with scurvy and general malnutrition around the beginning of May, and wound up punting their final exams. Some say they wouldn't have lasted that long, but for the nutrition inherent in beer.
Another fellow I knew -- a UT student -- got himself into a similar situation, but being smarter than that, he bound himself into consumption of variations on a single foodstuff, thus rounding out his nutritional needs. The single foodstuff was toast -- fried toast, garlic toast, roast toast, cheese toast, toast crouton salad, tuna melt on toast, open-face bacon and cheese on toast, chocolate toast, toast a la mode... (I'm told his vitamin C and D came from pills and sunshine...)
It got pretty big. His off-campus digs became known among his friends and neighbors as "Toast Terrace", and at one time hosted a rather odd internet bulletin board which carried, among other things, some rather odd toast recipes. He and his equally broke friends would get together and hold toast parties, compete as to who could best wax lyrical about toast, sing toast chanteys, and of course, drink toasts to each other's health. Altogether, this guy knew (and probably invented) more ways to make toast than most people could imagine, and he could probably write a book on nothing else but.
Anyway, this recipe I got from him. I got a reputation among my roommates as a terrific guy because of this stuff; they'd wake up in the morning and find this amazing breakfast laid out and waiting for them. Truth to tell, I like the stuff, it's quick, cheap, and simple, and it's about as easy to make a lot as it is to make a little.
Required:
1 quart fresh strawberries
1 pint whipping cream or 1 tub Cool Whip
1/4 cup sugar
butter or margarine
8 - 12 slices whole wheat bread (it works with white bread, too, but this apparently violated some sort of taboo at Toast Terrace; I was told that the last unworthy one who had served the Strawberry Toast on Wonder Bread had been flung off the balcony into the pool as a sacrifice to the Mighty Spirit Of The Heating Element)
eggbeater or blender
skillet or toaster
bowl
OPTIONAL: banana, sliced into little discs
Clean, dry, and mash the berries in the bowl with the eggbeater, or reduce them to a pulp in the blender. Gradually add about 1/4 cup of sugar and the whipping cream to the mix (if you're using Cool Whip, forget the sugar unless you're really in need of a sugar rush). You should eventually wind up with a pinkish whipped cream substance with chunks of strawberry embedded in it. Put this in the fridge.
Heat up the skillet, toss in a pat of butter, and fry a slice of bread on one side; when it's ready, scoop it out, add another pat of butter, and do the other side. Do this until you run out of bread. You can also just toast the bread normally, if you want to be quick about it. Top each slice of bread with a couple of spoonfuls of berry mixture and serve. Toss on a few banana slices if you want.
This stuff is best when the whipped mix is cold and the toast is still hot. It also works well with all kinds of berries, and even peaches and applesauce. The Toast Terrace mob tended to take things a little too far, however, and I don't recommend the watermelon, Rumplemintz, or Hershey's Chocolate Syrup variations...
I knew two guys who fought like hell to move out of the dorms, got their own place, then realized they'd bitten off more than they could chew; in order to balance their budget for the semester, they had to pretty much eliminate their food budget.
They did so by surviving on nothing but macaroni and cheese (generic, four boxes for a buck) for most of the semester -- rather stoically, I thought. I say most of the semester because they didn't quite make it; they wound up hospitalized with scurvy and general malnutrition around the beginning of May, and wound up punting their final exams. Some say they wouldn't have lasted that long, but for the nutrition inherent in beer.
Another fellow I knew -- a UT student -- got himself into a similar situation, but being smarter than that, he bound himself into consumption of variations on a single foodstuff, thus rounding out his nutritional needs. The single foodstuff was toast -- fried toast, garlic toast, roast toast, cheese toast, toast crouton salad, tuna melt on toast, open-face bacon and cheese on toast, chocolate toast, toast a la mode... (I'm told his vitamin C and D came from pills and sunshine...)
It got pretty big. His off-campus digs became known among his friends and neighbors as "Toast Terrace", and at one time hosted a rather odd internet bulletin board which carried, among other things, some rather odd toast recipes. He and his equally broke friends would get together and hold toast parties, compete as to who could best wax lyrical about toast, sing toast chanteys, and of course, drink toasts to each other's health. Altogether, this guy knew (and probably invented) more ways to make toast than most people could imagine, and he could probably write a book on nothing else but.
Anyway, this recipe I got from him. I got a reputation among my roommates as a terrific guy because of this stuff; they'd wake up in the morning and find this amazing breakfast laid out and waiting for them. Truth to tell, I like the stuff, it's quick, cheap, and simple, and it's about as easy to make a lot as it is to make a little.
Required:
1 quart fresh strawberries
1 pint whipping cream or 1 tub Cool Whip
1/4 cup sugar
butter or margarine
8 - 12 slices whole wheat bread (it works with white bread, too, but this apparently violated some sort of taboo at Toast Terrace; I was told that the last unworthy one who had served the Strawberry Toast on Wonder Bread had been flung off the balcony into the pool as a sacrifice to the Mighty Spirit Of The Heating Element)
eggbeater or blender
skillet or toaster
bowl
OPTIONAL: banana, sliced into little discs
Clean, dry, and mash the berries in the bowl with the eggbeater, or reduce them to a pulp in the blender. Gradually add about 1/4 cup of sugar and the whipping cream to the mix (if you're using Cool Whip, forget the sugar unless you're really in need of a sugar rush). You should eventually wind up with a pinkish whipped cream substance with chunks of strawberry embedded in it. Put this in the fridge.
Heat up the skillet, toss in a pat of butter, and fry a slice of bread on one side; when it's ready, scoop it out, add another pat of butter, and do the other side. Do this until you run out of bread. You can also just toast the bread normally, if you want to be quick about it. Top each slice of bread with a couple of spoonfuls of berry mixture and serve. Toss on a few banana slices if you want.
This stuff is best when the whipped mix is cold and the toast is still hot. It also works well with all kinds of berries, and even peaches and applesauce. The Toast Terrace mob tended to take things a little too far, however, and I don't recommend the watermelon, Rumplemintz, or Hershey's Chocolate Syrup variations...
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Sins of the Farter
Once upon a time, not that long after I’d moved out of the dorms, a friend of mine -- call him Bob -- guy with no shame at all, got a bunch of flak once because of his stinkies. In the process of ranking him out about it, someone -- it might have been me -- said, "Light a match, man! (waves hand to disperse odor) Jeez!"
He looked at me quizzically. Someone else explained to him the flammable nature of flatulence.
His face showed shock ... and glee. "No way!" he exclaimed. Feeling another one coming on, he rolled backwards, flung his ankles about his ears, pointed his ass skyward, snatched out a Bic lighter, lit it, and held it ready.
It cost him the hair on his knuckles, but he was... ENLIGHTENED.
So to speak.
For months after that, you never knew when he'd suddenly fling himself on his back and let loose the torch of liberty... It cost him a bit with the chicks, but he was the life of any party. Anyone can throw up or take their top off, but Bob was the only one anyone ever heard of who brought his own light show.
With a little experimentation, he even found that he could vary the flames' colors, depending on what he'd eaten that day. The most common colors were blue and yellow, but he found that various foods, in addition to increasing his flatulence, produced blue and green, blue and orange, pure blue, orange and yellow, and there was one thing that even produced sparks. I don't know what it was. I frankly didn't wanna know, mad science notwithstanding....
It all came to an end one September day, at my place. I don't remember what we were all doing there. Bob was on the couch, Bobo and Troll were sitting next to him, and I was sitting on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. We were talking or something, and suddenly, Bob's eyes lit with an inner ...fire... we'd all come to recognize.
"Fire alarm!" said, Troll, realizing what was about to happen. Troll and Bobo immediately scooched away to give him room to work. I obligingly grabbed the coffee table and pulled it back.
Bob flung his ankles about his ears, rolled onto his back, and lit up.
Something went terribly, terribly wrong.
We're still not sure what.
Bobo thinks that the gas coming out the leg of his shorts ignited, and traveled inwards, causing an explosion in the seat of his pants.
Troll thought it was Bob's new synthetic-fiber parachute-material shorts -- they must've been flammable or something.
I don't agree with Bobo -- I saw the initial fire blossom right over the middle of his butt, right before the nine-foot tongue of pink fire shot out of his ass, right at my face.
I threw myself backwards, flat on the floor, just in time to save my eyebrows. For days afterwards, my mustache smelled like burnt hair.
All I could see was blazing pink Armageddon. It took a minute for my eyes to focus. For one horrible moment, I thought the curtains were on fire. I heard screams.
I sat up, figuring no fart ever blown could last more than a few seconds. Fortunately, I was right. My eyes focused. The screams continued.
Bob was face down, bent over the couch. His ass was on fire. Troll had a death-grip around his waist, and he and Bobo were beating the shit out of him, trying to put the fire out. I leaped up and began beating the shit out of him, too.
The fire went out quickly enough, but the material continued to smolder, and we wound up tearing his shorts off of him and running them into the kitchen, into the sink. Bob rolled on the floor, moaning. His poor ass was bald as an egg, and red as a lobster. He wasn't badly hurt -- not even any blisters -- and he later told us that it wasn't the fire that hurt him, it was Troll's huge hands whacking him on the ass -- Troll was a pretty big guy, and Bob was … well… small for his age… and several blows had fallen a bit further south than they'd been intended, and Troll had in fact fetched him several nasty blows to the 'nads.
There was a burnt, fused hole in Bob's shorts big enough to put a man's fist through without touching the edges.
We posted the shorts on the wall of the stairwell as a trophy to our cleverness ... and as a warning, for generations to come.…
He looked at me quizzically. Someone else explained to him the flammable nature of flatulence.
His face showed shock ... and glee. "No way!" he exclaimed. Feeling another one coming on, he rolled backwards, flung his ankles about his ears, pointed his ass skyward, snatched out a Bic lighter, lit it, and held it ready.
It cost him the hair on his knuckles, but he was... ENLIGHTENED.
So to speak.
For months after that, you never knew when he'd suddenly fling himself on his back and let loose the torch of liberty... It cost him a bit with the chicks, but he was the life of any party. Anyone can throw up or take their top off, but Bob was the only one anyone ever heard of who brought his own light show.
With a little experimentation, he even found that he could vary the flames' colors, depending on what he'd eaten that day. The most common colors were blue and yellow, but he found that various foods, in addition to increasing his flatulence, produced blue and green, blue and orange, pure blue, orange and yellow, and there was one thing that even produced sparks. I don't know what it was. I frankly didn't wanna know, mad science notwithstanding....
It all came to an end one September day, at my place. I don't remember what we were all doing there. Bob was on the couch, Bobo and Troll were sitting next to him, and I was sitting on the floor on the other side of the coffee table. We were talking or something, and suddenly, Bob's eyes lit with an inner ...fire... we'd all come to recognize.
"Fire alarm!" said, Troll, realizing what was about to happen. Troll and Bobo immediately scooched away to give him room to work. I obligingly grabbed the coffee table and pulled it back.
Bob flung his ankles about his ears, rolled onto his back, and lit up.
Something went terribly, terribly wrong.
We're still not sure what.
Bobo thinks that the gas coming out the leg of his shorts ignited, and traveled inwards, causing an explosion in the seat of his pants.
Troll thought it was Bob's new synthetic-fiber parachute-material shorts -- they must've been flammable or something.
I don't agree with Bobo -- I saw the initial fire blossom right over the middle of his butt, right before the nine-foot tongue of pink fire shot out of his ass, right at my face.
I threw myself backwards, flat on the floor, just in time to save my eyebrows. For days afterwards, my mustache smelled like burnt hair.
All I could see was blazing pink Armageddon. It took a minute for my eyes to focus. For one horrible moment, I thought the curtains were on fire. I heard screams.
I sat up, figuring no fart ever blown could last more than a few seconds. Fortunately, I was right. My eyes focused. The screams continued.
Bob was face down, bent over the couch. His ass was on fire. Troll had a death-grip around his waist, and he and Bobo were beating the shit out of him, trying to put the fire out. I leaped up and began beating the shit out of him, too.
The fire went out quickly enough, but the material continued to smolder, and we wound up tearing his shorts off of him and running them into the kitchen, into the sink. Bob rolled on the floor, moaning. His poor ass was bald as an egg, and red as a lobster. He wasn't badly hurt -- not even any blisters -- and he later told us that it wasn't the fire that hurt him, it was Troll's huge hands whacking him on the ass -- Troll was a pretty big guy, and Bob was … well… small for his age… and several blows had fallen a bit further south than they'd been intended, and Troll had in fact fetched him several nasty blows to the 'nads.
There was a burnt, fused hole in Bob's shorts big enough to put a man's fist through without touching the edges.
We posted the shorts on the wall of the stairwell as a trophy to our cleverness ... and as a warning, for generations to come.…
Sunday, January 10, 2010
A waste of your time, and an intrusion on mine!
I closed the door and locked it, having been extremely rude to a couple of strangers. They didn't really deserve it, but DAMN! How much of this shit do I have to TAKE?
People who know me know that I tend to be impatient with people who turn up on my doorstep with something I don't want. People who don't know me well say, "How can you do the job you do -- a job that requires infinite patience -- and yet be impatient with Girl Scouts, band students selling candy, and Jehovah's Witnesses?"
Well, I'm not impatient with Girl Scouts and band students. In fact, I could do with more of those. They actually sell something I am interested in, although my waistline could do with less of it. No, my ire is reserved almost entirely for two things: proselytizers of some religion or other, and magazine salesmen.
In the past three days, I have been pestered twice by magazine salesmen. The first realized right away that I wasn't going to yield a profit, and thanked me, and left. The second, this afternoon, didn't know when to quit, and got snapped at for his trouble. Part of me wanted to admire his persistence -- I've been a salesman myself -- but a much larger part of me wanted to start with "This is a waste of your time and an intrusion on mine," and end with a foaming stream of profanities and gunfire intended to scare the bastard into the street, down the block, and out of my neighborhood forever. I don't WANT your fraggin' magazines, I don't CARE about your fraggin' scholarship, and I don't give a rat's bahonkus about your points, your competition, or your vacation to the friggin' Bahamas! You are part and parcel of a scam to sell me magazines, we both know it, I don't want your magazines, I will not give you money, and standing here on my front porch blowing sunshine up my ass is a POINTLESS ENDEAVOR THAT SERVES NO PURPOSE OTHER THAN MAKING ME ANGRY, ASSHOLE!!!!
I said none of these things. I cut him off; he tried to make a joke; I looked him in the eye and said, "Goodbye." He looked hurt, but he took the hint.
Less than an hour later, the Mormons showed up. Becca thought it was funny. I should have thought it was funny, too. Instead, I was livid. I answered the door, and if I recall, I said something to the effect of "Jesus, what is this? Are the assholes out in FORCE today? CAN'T YOU READ THE SIGN?" And I slammed the door in their rather shocked faces.
I do have a "no proselytizing" sign next to the front door. Perhaps the next one needs words. In three or four languages. And perhaps some neon.
At any rate, this story is largely why I don't much like people who pester me at the front door...
Years ago, I was much younger, and didn't live here. I lived in a part of a certain town, far from here, that seemed infested with Jehovah's Witnesses.
At the time, I didn't have a thing against any religious group, creed, belief system, or much of anyone else.
I still don't.
Except Jehovah's Witnesses.
You see, these Jehovah's Witnesses used to Witness the hell out of this one neighborhood. Once or twice a month, I could count on one or two of them knocking on my door, wanting to come in and discuss "The Watchtower" with me.
This wouldn't have been so bad, except that they INVARIABLY showed up around eight a.m. or so... on a Saturday or Sunday morning.
I was in college at the time, unemployed, and independently wealthy from the royalties on my patents on various evil rubber sex toys, and the idea of being awake and ambulatory at eight a.m. on ANY day for ANY reason was durn near against MY religion.
...so like a sucker, I'd shrug into a bathrobe, stagger blindly into the living room, and open the door, expecting to find my old man there, telling me to get dressed, your grandfather's had a stroke...
...and instead be confronted by two clean-cut young men in white shirts and ties who want to give me literature and can they come in and discuss The Watchtower with me?
Now, I'm not fond of a lot of churchy folks to begin with, and I'm especially suspicious of the ones that come HUNTING ME DOWN. Nearly all religions preach humility, and for a quality so highly valued, you sure don't see a lot of it in many of these folks, and I don't much like being treated high-handedly or looked down the nose at, on the off chance that I don't happen to subscribe to a particular godfest, okay? And what kind of insane mindset holds the idea that if you PESTER someone long enough, they’ll join your church?
...and in time, I came to resent these people. I quit being polite. I got rather curt with them. "No thank you, I already have a religion," followed by closing the door in their faces because if you DON'T close the door in their faces, they'll KEEP TALKING, they won't LET you get away gracefully and politely...
In fact, some of them seem to THRIVE on being verbally abused, cursed at, sprayed down with garden hoses, and generally badly treated. Years later, my wife told me that this is PART of Witnessing -- being kicked in the butt by the Infidels. This is part of how Witnesses earn their way into Heaven! The more dirt you throw at them, the more exalted they'll be when they get there... the sweeter it is when they manage to CONVERT someone... the jollier it is, altogether. In short, being spat upon is PART OF THEIR RELIGION.
And it didn't stop them. They kept coming back.
...and this culminated in an ugly incident one Saturday morning.
You see, the previous Friday night, we'd been into Coca-Cola... and Civilization.
Civilization, the old Avalon Hill board game. Seven players. Each player takes the part of a Stone Age tribe, and you have to build a Classical Civilization, based on trade, warfare, and individual achievements like music, architecture, metalworking, agriculture, and so on. Ever played it? It's a kick, and educational, too...
...but a seven-player game rarely takes less than eight hours.
We'd just finished up. We'd been rolling dice and moving mice for about fifteen hours... and that sonofabitch Bobo had done his usual trick of cornering the goddamn salt market, ALL over the Mediterreanean, and the other players LET HIM DO IT, every damn game, and I'd had HELL keeping the Minoans out of Thrace, and Troll had been spreading plagues, iconoclasm, and heresy left and right -- he'd managed to delay the Greeks' entry into the Late Iron Age for two whole turns... and the Creature kept wanting to expand up out of Egypt (he stomped on the Egyptian player early -- he'd started out in Africa and, as Zimbabwe, had squeezed the Egyptian player out of the game singlehanded, but was still dumb enough to trade Bobo salt for ochre)...
...we were WEIRD. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and we were stonkered on caffeine, nicotine, ancient history, and fatigue poisons -- an ugly mix. One by one, we began getting up, putting away the board and tokens, and clearing away the mess.
Since it was my house, I decided to go to bed. I stripped down to my skivvies, and dived into the Legendary Waterbed, about which there's another story around here somewhere.
I'd been there maybe fifteen minutes... just enough time to get REALLY comfortable... when there was a knock on the door. Troll and Bobo were still there, but at that time, we weren't living together, and they weren't comfortable answering my door... so I got up, still dressed in nothing but Fruit-Of-The-Looms, and answered the door, fully expecting that it was the Creature or someone, having forgotten his keys or some durn thing...
...and, in the pale morning light, I found myself face to face with a fat lady in a flowered dress and her two small children. They all seemed quite surprised to be confronted with a sudden hairy near-naked man who stank of old cigarettes and the dust of ancient history. Precisely what they DID expect to find at my house at eight a.m. on a Saturday morning, I couldn't tell you.
We all stood there and stared at each other for a moment.
And then my eyes focused. I saw what it was she was clutching to her breast.
PAMPHLETS. And copies of THE WATCHTOWER.
I screamed. Well, perhaps howled is a better term. I wasn't afraid, of course... I wasn't even really angry... but I'd been comfortable, dammit, and about to drift off to sleep, and I'd taken THIRD place in the dratted game, thanks to Troll's carefully timed plague and Bobo's goddamn salt-based economy, and I'd been on the VERY EDGE of drifting off to dreamland, and it was EIGHT goddamn A.M. on a SATURDAY morning, and HERE THE BASTARDS WERE, ALL OVER AGAIN!
So I screamed. Loud. Guttural. Absolutely berserk.
Troll and Bobo looked up.
The woman screamed, too.
Her children turned tail and ran.
She stood there, mouth hanging open, brain locked up on her from sheer shock.
It occurred to me that it would be nice if she would run away, too. It would certainly be convenient. How could I make this happen? Perhaps if I did something that seemed threatening...
I glanced at the umbrella holder next to the door.
In it were two umbrellas, a cane, a large rubber double-ended dildo, and a sword. A real sword, genuine Toledo steel, left over from RenFaire. I grabbed it, waved it around, and screamed again.
She screamed again, too, spun around, and took off running across my front yard.
.......
...now I don't really know why I did what I did next. I was still kind of asleep, you'll remember, or at the very least not really awake, and I'd been up all night, and I sure as anything wasn't really thinking straight.
I do know, though, that I decided that she might stop running. I didn't want her to stop running. I wanted her to keep running clear to Oklahoma, if at all possible. The only way I could think of to make her keep running was the thing I had done to make her start running in the first place.
So I took off running, too. I screamed some more, and began waving the sword, like a loony about to make Viking salad out of some luckless soul.
The children had stopped running at the sidewalk. When the mostly naked hairy man erupted from the bushes in pursuit of Mama, waving a sword and shrieking like a banshee with kidney stones, they took OFF, with Mama right behind, and the crazy hairy man in hot pursuit.
I screamed again.
Mama screamed again.
The kids, not to be left out, screamed REAL loud.
Well, I didn't want the cycle to stop anytime soon. I screamed again. Mama screamed again, and the kids screamed again, and we all ran across the street at the end of the block.
Well, as you'll imagine, this was kind of noisy.
Some people poked their heads out of windows. A few front doors opened. People were looking to see what was happening.
...and it occurred to me that this particular course of action might have consequences that I had not foreseen.
I stopped running.
By now, the kids had reached a car, and were tugging at the handle and crying and screaming for Mama, Mama, the car is locked!
Mama hadn't looked over her shoulder, and was still booking, all three hundred pounds of her. They all leaped into the car, all in a twinkling.
I roared at them and waved my sword, as they peeled out and drove away.
I stood there in the middle of someone's front yard in my underwear, holding a broadsword.
People looked at me.
Fortunately, at the time, I was well equipped to save face -- I had hair down past my shoulders, and a beard out to here. I scowled around me. A couple of people closed their front doors.
Feeling dangerous and foolish, I walked back to my house. Troll and Bobo solemnly applauded as I stuck the sword back in the umbrella stand and went to bed.
I understand the cops drove up and down the street a few minutes later, but nothing ever came of it.
...and for the rest of the time I lived at that address... the Jehovah's Witnesses NEVER bothered us again.
People who know me know that I tend to be impatient with people who turn up on my doorstep with something I don't want. People who don't know me well say, "How can you do the job you do -- a job that requires infinite patience -- and yet be impatient with Girl Scouts, band students selling candy, and Jehovah's Witnesses?"
Well, I'm not impatient with Girl Scouts and band students. In fact, I could do with more of those. They actually sell something I am interested in, although my waistline could do with less of it. No, my ire is reserved almost entirely for two things: proselytizers of some religion or other, and magazine salesmen.
In the past three days, I have been pestered twice by magazine salesmen. The first realized right away that I wasn't going to yield a profit, and thanked me, and left. The second, this afternoon, didn't know when to quit, and got snapped at for his trouble. Part of me wanted to admire his persistence -- I've been a salesman myself -- but a much larger part of me wanted to start with "This is a waste of your time and an intrusion on mine," and end with a foaming stream of profanities and gunfire intended to scare the bastard into the street, down the block, and out of my neighborhood forever. I don't WANT your fraggin' magazines, I don't CARE about your fraggin' scholarship, and I don't give a rat's bahonkus about your points, your competition, or your vacation to the friggin' Bahamas! You are part and parcel of a scam to sell me magazines, we both know it, I don't want your magazines, I will not give you money, and standing here on my front porch blowing sunshine up my ass is a POINTLESS ENDEAVOR THAT SERVES NO PURPOSE OTHER THAN MAKING ME ANGRY, ASSHOLE!!!!
I said none of these things. I cut him off; he tried to make a joke; I looked him in the eye and said, "Goodbye." He looked hurt, but he took the hint.
Less than an hour later, the Mormons showed up. Becca thought it was funny. I should have thought it was funny, too. Instead, I was livid. I answered the door, and if I recall, I said something to the effect of "Jesus, what is this? Are the assholes out in FORCE today? CAN'T YOU READ THE SIGN?" And I slammed the door in their rather shocked faces.
I do have a "no proselytizing" sign next to the front door. Perhaps the next one needs words. In three or four languages. And perhaps some neon.
At any rate, this story is largely why I don't much like people who pester me at the front door...
Years ago, I was much younger, and didn't live here. I lived in a part of a certain town, far from here, that seemed infested with Jehovah's Witnesses.
At the time, I didn't have a thing against any religious group, creed, belief system, or much of anyone else.
I still don't.
Except Jehovah's Witnesses.
You see, these Jehovah's Witnesses used to Witness the hell out of this one neighborhood. Once or twice a month, I could count on one or two of them knocking on my door, wanting to come in and discuss "The Watchtower" with me.
This wouldn't have been so bad, except that they INVARIABLY showed up around eight a.m. or so... on a Saturday or Sunday morning.
I was in college at the time, unemployed, and independently wealthy from the royalties on my patents on various evil rubber sex toys, and the idea of being awake and ambulatory at eight a.m. on ANY day for ANY reason was durn near against MY religion.
...so like a sucker, I'd shrug into a bathrobe, stagger blindly into the living room, and open the door, expecting to find my old man there, telling me to get dressed, your grandfather's had a stroke...
...and instead be confronted by two clean-cut young men in white shirts and ties who want to give me literature and can they come in and discuss The Watchtower with me?
Now, I'm not fond of a lot of churchy folks to begin with, and I'm especially suspicious of the ones that come HUNTING ME DOWN. Nearly all religions preach humility, and for a quality so highly valued, you sure don't see a lot of it in many of these folks, and I don't much like being treated high-handedly or looked down the nose at, on the off chance that I don't happen to subscribe to a particular godfest, okay? And what kind of insane mindset holds the idea that if you PESTER someone long enough, they’ll join your church?
...and in time, I came to resent these people. I quit being polite. I got rather curt with them. "No thank you, I already have a religion," followed by closing the door in their faces because if you DON'T close the door in their faces, they'll KEEP TALKING, they won't LET you get away gracefully and politely...
In fact, some of them seem to THRIVE on being verbally abused, cursed at, sprayed down with garden hoses, and generally badly treated. Years later, my wife told me that this is PART of Witnessing -- being kicked in the butt by the Infidels. This is part of how Witnesses earn their way into Heaven! The more dirt you throw at them, the more exalted they'll be when they get there... the sweeter it is when they manage to CONVERT someone... the jollier it is, altogether. In short, being spat upon is PART OF THEIR RELIGION.
And it didn't stop them. They kept coming back.
...and this culminated in an ugly incident one Saturday morning.
You see, the previous Friday night, we'd been into Coca-Cola... and Civilization.
Civilization, the old Avalon Hill board game. Seven players. Each player takes the part of a Stone Age tribe, and you have to build a Classical Civilization, based on trade, warfare, and individual achievements like music, architecture, metalworking, agriculture, and so on. Ever played it? It's a kick, and educational, too...
...but a seven-player game rarely takes less than eight hours.
We'd just finished up. We'd been rolling dice and moving mice for about fifteen hours... and that sonofabitch Bobo had done his usual trick of cornering the goddamn salt market, ALL over the Mediterreanean, and the other players LET HIM DO IT, every damn game, and I'd had HELL keeping the Minoans out of Thrace, and Troll had been spreading plagues, iconoclasm, and heresy left and right -- he'd managed to delay the Greeks' entry into the Late Iron Age for two whole turns... and the Creature kept wanting to expand up out of Egypt (he stomped on the Egyptian player early -- he'd started out in Africa and, as Zimbabwe, had squeezed the Egyptian player out of the game singlehanded, but was still dumb enough to trade Bobo salt for ochre)...
...we were WEIRD. It was seven-thirty in the morning, and we were stonkered on caffeine, nicotine, ancient history, and fatigue poisons -- an ugly mix. One by one, we began getting up, putting away the board and tokens, and clearing away the mess.
Since it was my house, I decided to go to bed. I stripped down to my skivvies, and dived into the Legendary Waterbed, about which there's another story around here somewhere.
I'd been there maybe fifteen minutes... just enough time to get REALLY comfortable... when there was a knock on the door. Troll and Bobo were still there, but at that time, we weren't living together, and they weren't comfortable answering my door... so I got up, still dressed in nothing but Fruit-Of-The-Looms, and answered the door, fully expecting that it was the Creature or someone, having forgotten his keys or some durn thing...
...and, in the pale morning light, I found myself face to face with a fat lady in a flowered dress and her two small children. They all seemed quite surprised to be confronted with a sudden hairy near-naked man who stank of old cigarettes and the dust of ancient history. Precisely what they DID expect to find at my house at eight a.m. on a Saturday morning, I couldn't tell you.
We all stood there and stared at each other for a moment.
And then my eyes focused. I saw what it was she was clutching to her breast.
PAMPHLETS. And copies of THE WATCHTOWER.
I screamed. Well, perhaps howled is a better term. I wasn't afraid, of course... I wasn't even really angry... but I'd been comfortable, dammit, and about to drift off to sleep, and I'd taken THIRD place in the dratted game, thanks to Troll's carefully timed plague and Bobo's goddamn salt-based economy, and I'd been on the VERY EDGE of drifting off to dreamland, and it was EIGHT goddamn A.M. on a SATURDAY morning, and HERE THE BASTARDS WERE, ALL OVER AGAIN!
So I screamed. Loud. Guttural. Absolutely berserk.
Troll and Bobo looked up.
The woman screamed, too.
Her children turned tail and ran.
She stood there, mouth hanging open, brain locked up on her from sheer shock.
It occurred to me that it would be nice if she would run away, too. It would certainly be convenient. How could I make this happen? Perhaps if I did something that seemed threatening...
I glanced at the umbrella holder next to the door.
In it were two umbrellas, a cane, a large rubber double-ended dildo, and a sword. A real sword, genuine Toledo steel, left over from RenFaire. I grabbed it, waved it around, and screamed again.
She screamed again, too, spun around, and took off running across my front yard.
.......
...now I don't really know why I did what I did next. I was still kind of asleep, you'll remember, or at the very least not really awake, and I'd been up all night, and I sure as anything wasn't really thinking straight.
I do know, though, that I decided that she might stop running. I didn't want her to stop running. I wanted her to keep running clear to Oklahoma, if at all possible. The only way I could think of to make her keep running was the thing I had done to make her start running in the first place.
So I took off running, too. I screamed some more, and began waving the sword, like a loony about to make Viking salad out of some luckless soul.
The children had stopped running at the sidewalk. When the mostly naked hairy man erupted from the bushes in pursuit of Mama, waving a sword and shrieking like a banshee with kidney stones, they took OFF, with Mama right behind, and the crazy hairy man in hot pursuit.
I screamed again.
Mama screamed again.
The kids, not to be left out, screamed REAL loud.
Well, I didn't want the cycle to stop anytime soon. I screamed again. Mama screamed again, and the kids screamed again, and we all ran across the street at the end of the block.
Well, as you'll imagine, this was kind of noisy.
Some people poked their heads out of windows. A few front doors opened. People were looking to see what was happening.
...and it occurred to me that this particular course of action might have consequences that I had not foreseen.
I stopped running.
By now, the kids had reached a car, and were tugging at the handle and crying and screaming for Mama, Mama, the car is locked!
Mama hadn't looked over her shoulder, and was still booking, all three hundred pounds of her. They all leaped into the car, all in a twinkling.
I roared at them and waved my sword, as they peeled out and drove away.
I stood there in the middle of someone's front yard in my underwear, holding a broadsword.
People looked at me.
Fortunately, at the time, I was well equipped to save face -- I had hair down past my shoulders, and a beard out to here. I scowled around me. A couple of people closed their front doors.
Feeling dangerous and foolish, I walked back to my house. Troll and Bobo solemnly applauded as I stuck the sword back in the umbrella stand and went to bed.
I understand the cops drove up and down the street a few minutes later, but nothing ever came of it.
...and for the rest of the time I lived at that address... the Jehovah's Witnesses NEVER bothered us again.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
The Tale of the Cloak 9/20/09
I’ve told this tale a great many times over the years, but never wrote it down. I should. I’d hate to see it lost.
I don’t remember the exact year or time of the Cloak. I remember the incident. I remember it was in the fall, I think, of ’84 or ’85, when I was still in college at San Marcos, and I had classes in the Theatre Arts Building, a great brick cake-shaped thing at the edge where campus met town.
I don’t remember who told me that the costume shop was clearing out and cleaning house. I heard it in the hall, though, and after class, I ducked on down to the Green Room, and through there to the understage.
The costume shop was literally emptying EVERYTHING out, everything they had, it seemed. The costumes, the clothes, the hats, the shoes, all wound up dumped in a heap on stage, and had been dumped through the stage traps into the great Understage room down below, a great round fluorescent-lit room. I’d had a class there once.
And when I looked in the understage room, there was a great mass of clothing. I remember it being quite large, the size of a VW microbus, the size of a Chevy van.
Really? Yeah, really.
Perhaps my memory makes it larger than it was, but I remember people literally leaping into the great colorful pile and burrowing around like gophers. People sat down and tried on sandals and boots and incredible buttonable shoes. Girls in their bras and panties giggled and tried on gowns and togas and crinolines like the place was a great dressing room and there was no one around. There was, of course – a lot of us – but some people felt like they had to try stuff on before they took it…
I jumped in and burrowed around, too. It was amazing. People simply dumped their backpacks where they lay, and attacked the pile in earnest. In time, it developed into two great piles, because people would attack one pile, and fling the clothes on the other pile, while other people attacked the second pile and threw their rejects back on the FIRST pile, and…
It was magical.
It lasted for days.
The first visit to the pile, I found a pair of heavy leather sandals worn by Roman centurions in some production or other. I found a real chain mail vest (you know… chain mail’s very heavy, and less comfortable than you’d think). I found this amazing satin cape that looked like something Evel Knievel would have worn during the seventies, striped in red, white, blue, and gold, streaming out from a high collar. I found a serviceable three-piece suit, just my size.
The second visit, I found a couple of shirts, a decent pair of jeans, a pair of battered shoes, another suit, a medieval knight’s helmet (molded resin, not metal, but looked remarkably cool), a suit of pajamas… and the Cloak.
It’s not much of a cloak, of course. More of a … well, a gown or something. It was a long tunic of heavy black cotton, with sleeves and a hood of lighter fabric. The sleeves and hood were too long, intended to cover the wearer’s head and hands.
It looked like something the Grim Reaper would wear.
It suited me just fine. I had no idea what I’d use it for, but I knew I’d find some event, some party, SOME durn thing, and I took it home.
Over the days, the piles grew smaller and smaller, and on the third day, they finally disappeared completely. Apparently, the rejected stuff had finally gone to Goodwill or a dumpster or something.
That same year, I went to Texas RenFaire, up near Houston, and I wore the Cloak. Wore the leather sandals, too. I had a fine time that year. I also wore it on a camping trip; it blended well with the dark and was handy for sneaking up on people. Comfortable, too. Room for two in a pinch, even. Woo!
The following year, I wore it to a costume contest; just the Cloak and some black greasepaint around my eyes. Won a prize, too; apparently, a drunken apparition all in black struck the judges’ fancy.
Over time, the other items I’d found in the big pile at the theatre department went the way of all things. I gave the colorful satin cape away. I lost the helmet. The sandals wore out, as did the shirts and the jeans. The suits got garage-saled away. The chainmail rusted. One by one, the items I’d found left my life. But not the Cloak.
I won another costume contest, this time with a latex skull mask glued to my face. I wore it on a drunken spring break, and etched into my mind forever is the image of Matt Pinseanneault staggering around the beach at Padre Island, bombed out of his skull, wearing the Cloak with the sea wind billowing it around his six-foot-nine-inch frame as he screamed REPENT! at passersby. He was quite a sight.
I remember when I married Becca, and took Ellen out trick-or-treating while I wore the Cloak. I was pushing thirty at the time, Ellen was, I think, eleven, and for the first time, it occurred to me that wandering around after dark in a black garment wasn’t the safest thing I could have done. So, instead of doing something safe, Ellen and I stole a cardboard Elvira stand-up from the beer display at Sac & Pac. We were, after all, in disguise. This was, perhaps, not the best show of role-modeling I could have done for my new stepdaughter, but it sure was fun.
I wore it to Kim and Michael’s wedding; it was a Renaissance affair, and it made sense to have the guy handling the music machinery dressed like a Fransciscan friar, I guess.
I wore it to RenFaire again, after twenty years. It made me feel young again.
And next month, I’ll be wearing it to my daughter’s wedding. Will it make me feel young again?
Probably not.
But how many garments have this kind of a history?
I’ve told this tale a great many times over the years, but never wrote it down. I should. I’d hate to see it lost.
I don’t remember the exact year or time of the Cloak. I remember the incident. I remember it was in the fall, I think, of ’84 or ’85, when I was still in college at San Marcos, and I had classes in the Theatre Arts Building, a great brick cake-shaped thing at the edge where campus met town.
I don’t remember who told me that the costume shop was clearing out and cleaning house. I heard it in the hall, though, and after class, I ducked on down to the Green Room, and through there to the understage.
The costume shop was literally emptying EVERYTHING out, everything they had, it seemed. The costumes, the clothes, the hats, the shoes, all wound up dumped in a heap on stage, and had been dumped through the stage traps into the great Understage room down below, a great round fluorescent-lit room. I’d had a class there once.
And when I looked in the understage room, there was a great mass of clothing. I remember it being quite large, the size of a VW microbus, the size of a Chevy van.
Really? Yeah, really.
Perhaps my memory makes it larger than it was, but I remember people literally leaping into the great colorful pile and burrowing around like gophers. People sat down and tried on sandals and boots and incredible buttonable shoes. Girls in their bras and panties giggled and tried on gowns and togas and crinolines like the place was a great dressing room and there was no one around. There was, of course – a lot of us – but some people felt like they had to try stuff on before they took it…
I jumped in and burrowed around, too. It was amazing. People simply dumped their backpacks where they lay, and attacked the pile in earnest. In time, it developed into two great piles, because people would attack one pile, and fling the clothes on the other pile, while other people attacked the second pile and threw their rejects back on the FIRST pile, and…
It was magical.
It lasted for days.
The first visit to the pile, I found a pair of heavy leather sandals worn by Roman centurions in some production or other. I found a real chain mail vest (you know… chain mail’s very heavy, and less comfortable than you’d think). I found this amazing satin cape that looked like something Evel Knievel would have worn during the seventies, striped in red, white, blue, and gold, streaming out from a high collar. I found a serviceable three-piece suit, just my size.
The second visit, I found a couple of shirts, a decent pair of jeans, a pair of battered shoes, another suit, a medieval knight’s helmet (molded resin, not metal, but looked remarkably cool), a suit of pajamas… and the Cloak.
It’s not much of a cloak, of course. More of a … well, a gown or something. It was a long tunic of heavy black cotton, with sleeves and a hood of lighter fabric. The sleeves and hood were too long, intended to cover the wearer’s head and hands.
It looked like something the Grim Reaper would wear.
It suited me just fine. I had no idea what I’d use it for, but I knew I’d find some event, some party, SOME durn thing, and I took it home.
Over the days, the piles grew smaller and smaller, and on the third day, they finally disappeared completely. Apparently, the rejected stuff had finally gone to Goodwill or a dumpster or something.
That same year, I went to Texas RenFaire, up near Houston, and I wore the Cloak. Wore the leather sandals, too. I had a fine time that year. I also wore it on a camping trip; it blended well with the dark and was handy for sneaking up on people. Comfortable, too. Room for two in a pinch, even. Woo!
The following year, I wore it to a costume contest; just the Cloak and some black greasepaint around my eyes. Won a prize, too; apparently, a drunken apparition all in black struck the judges’ fancy.
Over time, the other items I’d found in the big pile at the theatre department went the way of all things. I gave the colorful satin cape away. I lost the helmet. The sandals wore out, as did the shirts and the jeans. The suits got garage-saled away. The chainmail rusted. One by one, the items I’d found left my life. But not the Cloak.
I won another costume contest, this time with a latex skull mask glued to my face. I wore it on a drunken spring break, and etched into my mind forever is the image of Matt Pinseanneault staggering around the beach at Padre Island, bombed out of his skull, wearing the Cloak with the sea wind billowing it around his six-foot-nine-inch frame as he screamed REPENT! at passersby. He was quite a sight.
I remember when I married Becca, and took Ellen out trick-or-treating while I wore the Cloak. I was pushing thirty at the time, Ellen was, I think, eleven, and for the first time, it occurred to me that wandering around after dark in a black garment wasn’t the safest thing I could have done. So, instead of doing something safe, Ellen and I stole a cardboard Elvira stand-up from the beer display at Sac & Pac. We were, after all, in disguise. This was, perhaps, not the best show of role-modeling I could have done for my new stepdaughter, but it sure was fun.
I wore it to Kim and Michael’s wedding; it was a Renaissance affair, and it made sense to have the guy handling the music machinery dressed like a Fransciscan friar, I guess.
I wore it to RenFaire again, after twenty years. It made me feel young again.
And next month, I’ll be wearing it to my daughter’s wedding. Will it make me feel young again?
Probably not.
But how many garments have this kind of a history?
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