Short Stories over the decades:

The Swamp-
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

The Journey
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

And,
The Ballad of Turkey

And, added to that list has recently been:
Lights Out.......

As Well as....
The Golden Greek Goes Upstairs and The Thrilling Conclusion to that story!!

Oh and let's add to the list: The Haunted House
Vol. I
Vol. II

New One: *NEW* A Spring Story *NEW*
Vol. II

Thursday, February 14, 2019

The 2019 Twitter Awards!

Alright, so that story went okay. I might come back and fill in parts 3 through 88 one day but I think you can use your imagination and slot in what happened from Manitoba to Vancouver ... with the hints in the last chapter the middle portion seems self-evident enough.

Let's do the Twitter Awards again!

Past Awards on this blog saw the medals doled out as so:

2017

Bronze: George Wallace
Silver: Iron Sheik
Gold: Mr. T

Runner Up (4th place): Jose Canseco


2018

Bronze: Mr. T
Silver: Norm MacDonald
Gold: George Wallace

Runner Up (4th place): Jose Canseco
Life Time Achievement Award: Iron Sheik


I'm instituting a rule this year that if you've already won the Gold then you cannot be eligible for another New Writings on Subjects II Stronger twitter awards tournament (though you are automatically entered into the 2020 Twitter Awards Tournament of Champions). The reasoning behind this is that if I just do Mr. T and George Wallace in the medals again this year ... I might as well just copy and paste the 2017 or 2018 article instead of writing a new one ... and I wanna write a new one today ... so this no repeat Gold Medals law has been written into the books forever and for always.

Since they are still great at twittering, this years co-winners of the Lifetime Achievement Award are George Wallace and Mr. T for their lifetime of entertaining contributions to the 140 and now 280 character world.

Alright so who are this years finalists!? Drum roll please....


Nice drum roll. thank you.

This year's esteemed finalists are (some are grouped up):

Jose Canseco!
The Women of Wrestling!
Dennis Rodman!
Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington!

Alright before we get to the awards lets give a warm applause for this year's runner up ... for the THIRD YEAR STRAIGHT YEAR....

... JOSE CANSECO!


Jose Canseco announced that he is very likely to run for President in 2020 and according to tweets by the former baseball slugger, these are some of his campaign promises:

 1.  Construct a Bullet Train that runs on Solar Energy that will connect the states of California, Nevada, and Arizona to form a bullet-train connected tri-state area where inhabitants can go to Vegas whenever they want ... for FREE.

2. Legalize Time Travel and begin heavily investing in it.

3. Invest heavily in space travel.

4. Officially make aliens and Bigfoot citizens of the United States of America!

5. Put the kibosh on the "wall" and instead invest in lazer-android-robots to walk along the southern boarder to keep it safe from intruders.

 6. Abolish taxes.


There's some good stuff here, I must say. For far too long, we as a society, have cast scorn upon Bigfoot. To offer an official state ammends to him and make him a citizen is far over due. We should even pay reparations to Bigfoot. He's been in hiding for far too long and this revolutionary new approach to him shall finally reconcile our differences with the fabled Man Beast creature of the wilds.

Abolish taxes? Yes, yes, and yes! Oh, and did I mention ... Yes!

The bullet train is a really good idea. I mean say you live in L.A. but you really wanna go gamblin' ... wouldn't a free solar powered bullet train to Vegas really hit your fancy and wiggle your dandy? It would mine.

As for Time Travel, time travel legislation is controversial and has been since Vermin Supreme made it part of his platform in the early 2000s. The quandary that came from Vermin's time travel proposition of going back in time involved the proposed killing of Hitler ... and a debate began of if he would kill baby Hitler. Obviously, logically, the easiest time to stop Hitler in a time travel scenario would be in his infancy. Qualms began to appear if killing a baby who hadn't yet done anything at that point would be moral ... and many suggested he do the honorable thing and fight adult Hitler and his entire army like a man to kill him. I remember even taking part in some of these silly debates online. The topic even somehow managed to be on Jeb Bush's agenda at one point in 2016 ... which was odd. (For the record, I think any excursion into the past to kill Hitler is a great idea but I do prefer the scenario of the killing of adult Hitler as opposed to baby Hitler).

Anyways, Jose Canseco is biting off a can of worms with Time Travel but his other promises make up a pretty great platform in total.

So, I am officially supporting Jose Canseco's 2020 run and hope that he wins the Presidential Title.


Now on to the Medals!



Bronze Medal: Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington!

Entertainment Genre: Comedy and Genuine First-Rate Movie Expertise
Favorite "Feud": w/ each other

I'm really starting to think that these two don't like each other or something. While many think these modern day Siskel and Eberts are like two-peas-in-the-same pod and are close as brothers ... part of me sees behind the facade whilst they review movies at times. Their twitter feeds lead me to believe that tension truly is brewing behind the scenes in the hearts of these two esteemed film buffs.

There's something in Gregg's eyes sometimes that really makes me think he's hiding something ... it's almost as if he doesn't like Tim ... at all ... but maybe I'm just reading into the show too much.

The shoe may have turned to the other foot in recent days as Gregg with the blessing of the mysterious Bruce Delgado (the new owner of the show) ... will be the HOST, not guest, not co-host, but HOST the On Cinema Oscar Special on Adult Swim Live Stream on February 24th of this year. From tweets of Tim lately ... it looks as if he's not the biggest fan of Gregg either. Part of me really thinks these two are not on good terms.

I don't know ... in the end I'm sure the Special will go off without a hitch ... but another part of me thinks that this tension that may or may not exist behind the scenes could just boil over on February 24th. Who am I kidding? There's no way these two don't get along ... they are great friends who both have love for movies in common. When you have movies what else do you need? I'm sure Tim deep down is very very happy that Gregg is the new host of the Oscar Special and wishes his friend luck.

Hmmmm, then again, maybe it's just me, I don't know, but, it's a possibility these two have some sort of issue with one another. Does anyone else suspect this or is it just me?

I guess we'll just have to wait until the Oscar Special to see how this all unfolds.



Silver Medal: The Women of Wrestling
 
Entertainment Genre: Wrestling
Favorite "Feud": w/ each other

I haven't really dug it or watched Wrestling in ... wow ... we're talking well over a decade I'd say ... but it's getting good, and fresh, and new. It's centering more on the women now and it really is something new and interesting. 
I probably couldn't name one male wrestler on today's roster but I could name probably most of the lady wrestlers. A lot of them are second generation too ... like Nattie is Jim Niedhart's daughter and Charlotte is Ric Flair's daughter. They have the wrestling in their blood and their bones.

The twitter feeds of the lady wrestlers are a show in itself these days ... they go at each other ... HARD ... like vicious vicious animals on a daily basis. If you follow the women wrestlers your twitter feed is always being filled with hot feuds and sexy trash talk.

They got funny stuff though too, like I think I remember one dude tweeted at "The Man" (who's a woman) that her nickname wasn't suiting her ... and she replied that she met "Stone Cold" Steve once and his hand, when she shook it, if memory served her right, was only luke warm, not even cold at all ... in which she came to the conclusion that ... sometimes nicknames aren't to be taken like super literally ... as to which I am certain the fellow was downright aghast to learn this.

Unlike esteemed film buffs Gregg Turkington and Tim Heidecker who I think may possibly dislike each other behind the scenes ... I think these ladies have a lot of fun with their angles and probably are pretty close in real life. They play off each other really well and seem to be having a lot of fun with their art form. The feuds in wrestling now are the ones I remember as a kid more so than how crazy they got at one point. I prefer these catty yet fun-natured trash talk feuds to the things they used to do that made me stop watching.

I mean, they did bits on Wrestling with the Big Boss Man (who was like in my top 5 faves in my youthful days) in the 2000s where he ... 1) Ate a guy's dog and 2) Tied a guy's dad's casket to his car and drove away with it at a funeral. I mean, these bits are just dumb. You know? They are stupid, dumb, and bad. It's not Wrestling ... it's another genre of art, things that are more suited for like horror movies or something ... not Wrestling. 

Plus, as we learned from the smash hit TV show Seinfeld in the 90s ... Women fights are always hot n' cool. As Jerry so elegantly put it....

"Men think when women are clawing and grabbing at each other ... there's a chance that they might somehow ... kiss," -Seinfeld, J.

Yes, it's true. Another esteemed quote that comes to mind about Ladies Wrestling comes from the venerable Mojo Nixon who once said...

"I'm in looooooove with a Lady Wresler! (Why?) ... because stinky women ... DO IT BETTER!" -Nixon, M.

Good point, Moj. All kidding aside though, I think Lady Wrestlers of this era are really good role models for young ladies to be honest. The young ladies need like bad-ass role models in their lives too, you know? Growing up in the 80s we boys could look up to a wrestler and learn that we need to say our prayers, and eat our vitamins, and do other stuff like that. Now women have those positive role models in their lives. Which is great. Girls are getting action figures and T shirts for their birthdays of female wrestlers now a days. Which is cool.

On top of it all it seems that all rumors, ruminations, and whatnotery are pointing to the first ever female main event at Wrestle Mania which will be History in the making (or Herstory in this case).

History in the Making. History in the Making .... It will be .... A HAPPENING! IT IS GOING TO BE A HAPPENING!

(on a side note concerning female wrestling and twitter ... there is a twitter campaign headed by artisanal comedian Potylo, R. to post-humously enshrine Chyna into the WWE Hall of Fame ... which is a campaign worth taking note of if you are a fan of female wrestling).



Gold Medal: Dennis Rodman

Entertainment Genre: Basketball
Favorite "Feud": w/ ????

Wow, Dennis Rodman has had some kind of year. Let's look back at the Worm's 2018...

He brokered a meeting between the President of the United States of America and the Rogue Asian State of North Korea ... and followed it up by giving one of the most emotional and insipiring interviews CNN has ever aired in its history of broadcasting ... even more emotional than back in the 90s when they interviewed that little girl's parents after that little girl got trapped in that well. I mean this interview was emotional, man. Like the GOATest emotional interview ever.

On top of all that, he re-awoke like a phoenix on social media in 2018 ... making his first big splash announcing that he wants to run for President in 2020 while riding a donkey. This reminded me of a bit on SNL (that I might have dreamt because I might have been half awake at the time) ... of like Will Ferrell hosting a political talk show while they all rode donkeys? Was that a thing? Riding my Donkey Political Talk Show? It was, eh?
 
Then he proceeded to basically spam every NBA related post with empty messages which inclined many users to ask how Dennis can tweet absolutely Nothing so often. To tweet nothing you need an Internet Gold Card, guys, and to acquire one is a long process that starts with deleting sys32 in your registry and eating things you're really not supposed to eat, etc, etc.

In between debating if Bron or MJ is the greatest of all time and constantly almost ad-nauseum announcing that he's leaving instagram ... Dennis had time to cook this number up ...

https://twitter.com/dennisrodman/status/1089736134236741634?lang=en

With Dennis, an emotional guy by nature, you thought he was really going to say something like "omg" but lo, it turned out just to be a good ol' fashioned Rick Roll.

The thing about Dennis too is, his potential is sky high, I mean, this guy is totally out-of-synch with everything and is marching to his own marching band.

Will he be the next Secretary of State, will he be the greatest tweeter of all time? Will he be Jose Canseco's running mate in 2020? So many questions, so little answers. The future is bright, gang!


Congratulations to Mr. Rodman for winning this Golden Effigagy. Effigy? What is an effigy? A statuette I think ... like a statue but smaller, is that it? Yeah. Congratulations on winning this years Golden Effigy!

Monday, February 4, 2019

Part 89 of The Journey: The Final Chapter

Ongoing Index:
Part 1
Part 2
(Parts 3 through 88 are Lost to the Sands of Time)

I've hit writers block with "Manitoba" .... I'm not coming up with any ideas ... sooo ... we're gonna do the Ending of the story first and then work backwards from there, today.



The Journey Part 89
 -a short story by D.


I finally arrived in Vancouver and made it to Tathagata Buddha on Vancouver Island's Thunder Monastery. It was a pretty nice temple. We all made it .... me, Wes, and Connecticut.

Let me describe it for you,

The vast peaks of the mountains were dotted with wind-swept trees,
They were magnificent to the eye,
Canyons were painted with rain-soaked forests,
Rivers surrounded the Monastery,
Vancouver was the Pacific Ocean's Pearl,
It looked really great....

Crossing Canada wasn't easy on foot but we made it. I'm glad I befriended Wes, the street urchin, and my old friend Connecticut along the way for they made the Journey less troublesome and lonely.

I met Wes in Cornwall, and after a strange melee with some unword-by hobos who did not live by their word, we learned that he was the re-incarnation of Erlang-Shen ... so we became fast friends. He talks funny ... but that's okay.

I met Connecticut in Manitoba, after having a strange dream about him in Toronto where he was playing video games and making movies. It turned out he was the reincarnated spirit of uhhhh John A. MacDonald or some Prime Minister or something.

I made a vow back in Saskatchewan that I'd visit this Monastery if I ever made it to Vancouver Island and now that we're here and the Journey is over ... I'm sorta sad. It was fun. There was whacky hardships and weird-ass ghosts along the way ... and let's not forget those snake monster women in Alberta ... but in the end .... it was worth it to walk across this great land.

"Say Moister .... are we here?" Asked Wes the urchin.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhh, I think so," answered Connecticut.

"Yeah. We're here. This is Vancouver's Thunder Monastery where the Tathagata Buddha lives..." I said.

We walked past the large doors, they were intimidating doors, but they only seemed that way because those football players back in Moose Cavity Tooth, Alberta built this place up so much. Man, Moose Cavity Tooth, the place right next to Medicine Hat ... what a scene that was.

We asked the attendant if we could meet the big guy ... and he said, "Yes, this way, please."

"Greetings travelers," said the Buddha.

"Hi," we said.

"You seek enlightenment, gentlemen?" He asked.

"Yeah," we replied.

"Cool.... but I'm afraid you can't have it..." he said.

"Why though?" We inquired.

"You only experienced 107 hardships on your Journey.... you are ONE short," he told us.

"Really?," we asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Did you count the time me and Wes saved that city from the zombie beavers?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"What about the time we rescued the ancient artifacts back in Canmore?" I asked.

"Yes," he said.

"Man, Buddha ... what did we miss? What didn't we check off our sufferings check list, man?" I asked.

"Do you recall back in Cornwall ... when you ordered many hamburgers but only ate seven of them?"

"Yeah, the pyramid platter? What about it?" I asked.

"You see, the trial of hamburgers was not completed. You did not complete it...." He said.

"Yeah? Buddha .... come on, man ... like..." I started.

"I can teleport you back there to complete it since you made it so close to completing all 108 trials ... but the trial will be 100 fold more difficult now..." he interjected.

"You can do that? Ok," I said.

I braced myself as he said the incantations and a mist surrounded us and we were zoomed back to Cornwall ... land of Turkeys and of Hobos... thankfully neither would come in to play this time around as the Final Trial of The Journey was the....


Hamburger Eating Contest

"Come one, come all, for the annual Hamburger Eating Contest!" The announcer roared over the PA system.

I entered the contest at the last minute. I didn't even know what the rules were to be honest ... but the announcer helped with that...

"Each contestant will be presented with 25 Hamburgers stacked in a pyramid on a silver platter ... the first to consume all the hamburgers wins!" He said.

What have I gotten myself into now? This sounds dumber than that time we tumbled down the hill and almost lost our lunches! A Hamburger eating contest, eh? What a lark this is.

I like burgers but I can't eat 25 of them. Can I? The alarm sounded and confetti shot out of a cannon ... it had begun. I looked to my left and saw everyone eating like mad ... I looked to my right and saw everyone eating like crazy. I picked up the first burger and took a bite...

.... I had another burger-related epiphany. The world stopped in time, totally in place, I looked around and really realized then and there that Life is Pretty Kooky, guys. Life is pretty whacky, you know? This burger contest might be my only real chance to ever be the Hero of This Story. So I ate....

....and ate, and ate, and ate, and ate. I ate all the burgers while time had stopped. When time re-started again .... no one else was even on their third burger ... yet I was done. It was a real sight.

"..... and the winner is.....!" The announcer said.

.... all eyes turned to me. The burger champion. It was the biggest Moment of Glory in my Entire Journey!!!!

Thinking back on it all. Was it worth it? If I didn't win this burger contest I might have said "No" to that question but something in me changed after the burger contest. I finally understood it all. I finally got it. It all made a bunch of sense.

Hamburgers. It's all about Hamburgers. You thought it was about turkeys? No. You read that whole chapter wrong. I was worried about the dumb turkeys that whole time for no reason and my worry led to so many hardships. There was never any reason to ever have invested that much time and thought into turkeys. I should have invested those resources of thought and of time into hamburgers.

It WASN'T the turkeys that represented unity, grace, and giving. It was the burgers ... this whole time. I even finally understand why that mysterious ghost-hobo was so mad when I offered him the turkey.

Tathagata Buddha teleported us back to Vancouver from Cornwall as soon as he realized I had fulfilled my trials and achieved enlightenment. We got to talking about hamburgers and stuff ... me and him. He knew a lot about 'em but what really struck me is that ... so did I. I knew a LOT about hamburgers.

The buns, the sauce, the beef, the lettuce, the tomatoes ....

Eating one is maybe one of life's most greatest joys. If you can teach yourself to really enjoy a hamburger... and I mean really dig it ... you can learn to enjoy any of life's great mysteries and endeavors.

People seem to think you are born happy and that happiness is taken away from you at some point in your life due to some hardship or suffering. That's not true at all. You are born to a world you don't understand and happiness is another foreign concept just like every other concept. You have to teach yourself "happiness" and learn to be happy like any other skill in life. It takes work. It takes time. It takes effort.

It doesn't have to be hamburgers. Maybe you're a vegetarian... it's just the act of finding a basic means of "enjoyment" and teaching your senses and perceptions to really understand how to enjoy something. It could be a game, a book, a movie, a burger ... something small. Something basic ... and then applying that formula you learned to Everything Else.

When you figure out your happiness formula, keep it basic. The more basic it is... the better. When your formula for enjoyment in life starts getting too complicated or encroaches on other people's formulas for enjoying their lives ... you should go back to the drawing board and re-work your formula. That's all. No big deal.

Tathagata Buddha sat above two pillars. Atop of the first pillar to his left was a silver platter and stacked in a pyramid shape .... was turkeys. To his right atop the other pillar was the same silver platter stacked with another pyramid.... that of burgers.

 ....and for the briefest moment ... and maybe the only time ever, past present or future, Life Made Total Sense To Me.


Life Made Total Sense to Me.

Now I realize that I am what I am. Just a guy who likes Hamburgers.....



Buddha asked me, "Would you like to hear a prognostic poem which foretells your life's course?"

I responded, "You mean like an Animal House sort of ending kinda thing that says what happened to me after the narrative ends?"

Buddha responded, "Yes."

...but I said I didn't wanna know. I'm probably just gonna live to some ripe old age and then one day while eating a hamburger and watching the tides bore in .... maybe I'll just dissipate into dust or something.



Or who knows .... maybe I'll go out in a fit of uncontrollable laughter....




THE END?

The 13th Hobo of Cornwall......

Let's keep going with the short story, gang.

Ongoing Index:
Part 1

(I was re-reading this for typos/errors today and I should note before you read it, that similar to the Swamp short story from last year, where elements of camp spookiness are introduced with little warning to the reader ... that there are some "camp-fire ghost story" moments in this ... so if you're not a fan of like spooky stuff ... you might not like this. The Swamp was more B-movie monster stuff while this one is more ghostella camp-fire stuff).

The Journey
-a short story by D.


Part 2 

......there better not be more than twelve hobos underneath that bridge.

I really hoped there wasn't more than twelve of 'em under there. If there was, then the laws of Even Steven would have to apply. I'd have to make some kind of hobo garbage fire and cook all the turkeys and carve them so I can distribute it all equally amongst the hobos ... whilst if there were exactly twelve hobos ... I could just give them each one turkey. Now, if there's actually less than twelve hobos under there then, in that case-scenario, I could give each a turkey and then we could do trivia or parlor games for the rest of them.

Oooooh, hobo trivia and games sounds fun, I love that. I started to think up my questions for them to win the bonus turkeys ... Jeopardy style questions, you know? Like Carnac style questions like ...

"Hey you hobos ... the answer is: 'O'er a toilet or maybe under a toilet and let it sit for one month..."

And one of the smarter hobos under the bridge would pipe up with bonus turkeys lighting up in his eyes .... "HOW TO MAKE REALLY GOOD PRISON WINE!"

....and I'd say with utmost professionalism, "Bingo, daddy-o, you're as right as rain, here's the last of the extra bonus turkeys."

I would have made a great game show host. Hey, hold up a second, who says there's less than twelve under there? I haven't even got there yet.

Maybe I should do some reconnaissance first to see how many there are before I even go through with this. What if there's like a hundred of them under there? I'm not going under some bridge that has over a hundred hobos under it. I can't feed that many with twelve turkeys anyhow so it'd be a waste of time to begin with. Gee, sometimes you really just can't get rid of an pyramid-armful of replacement turkeys can you?

I made my way to a small nook in the road before the bridge that had a bit of topography that would let me get some height and some line of sight underneath that there bridge. I got a few feet up the nook and put my hand over my eye as a makeshift visor and looked out yonder way. There were quite a few figures under the bridge ... I'm gonna go ahead and assume that they are all hobos but maybe a few of the figures are the hobo's dogs though. Would I have to feed hobo dogs with these turkeys too? I guess, but maybe not as big of portions as for the hobos themselves. Alright, looks as though there's about sixteen individual silhouettes down there ... hopefully four are hobo dogs ... that way I can give one turkey to each of the twelve hobos and be on my merry-enough way. No, I should still cook them all and divide it up equal between the sixteen, these hobo dogs have to eat too. How am I gonna cook these? How do I get myself into situations like this, even? Oh well, let's get these turkeys underneath that bridge to these sixteen silhouettes and figure out how to cook them all later. First things first as they say.

I made my way down and under the bridge right straight deep into the hobo encampment. It didn't smell that bad for a hobo lair, to be frank. There seemed to be no actual hobo dogs just actual human hobos ... which meant I'd need to cook all the turkeys to divide them up evenly and without issue. I started to scan the hobos to see their relative body frames to see how much they'd each probably eat. I did the mental calculations and then made my opening statements to these hobos....

"Hey there hobos," I said.

"Hey," some of them said ... the others just muttered inconsistent and incomprehendable garble towards me.

"So, uh, do any of you hobos like turkey? I got about twelve extras over here!" I said as I motioned my arms full of the turkey pyramid to them.

"We sure do but those are raw turkeys. You need to cook 'em before any of us'll chow down on 'em," said one of the hobos.

"Yeah, I know, I wasn't just like gonna give you raw turkeys. Don't you hobos have like a makeshift stove? Like a, uh, a garbage can fireplace or something like that?" I asked.

"Yeah, we got a garbage can. Yeah. We got one of those under this bridge by the lanai. We have some stuff to burn too."

"Cool, you seem like such sweet hobos. Let's fire up that ol' garbage can!" I said with renewed enthusiasm for this endeavor.

We got it lit up pretty quickly, old brambles and newspapers were burning in the burgundy can like a nice vertical campfire. I fashioned a nice pointy stick into a spit and started working the first turkey over the garbage can fire. It smeeeeeeeeelled soooo gooooood. Wow. All the hobos started gathering around me to smell it and watch it cook. I took this moment, this moment of brief barbeque related social popularity to meet each one of the sixteen hobos. I gave them brief interviews as we watched the turkeys cook. I will relate to you now the important information from each of those sixteen interviews I conducted.

They were cool some of them. One of them told me he used to be the Prime Minister of Canada but I didn't believe him. His name was Salty Sainte Claire and I have never seen that name in any history book of Canadian Prime Ministers. If he was Prime Minister of Canada it must have been pretty recently or more likely he is just making it up.... or is very crazy.

There was this guy, Pancake Jack, who I assumed was named that because he likes pancakes but turns out they started calling him that after he got his foot run over by a truck. Poor guy.

Armstrong, boring hobo, just a standard out-of-his-mind smelly hobo. Nothing interesting about him, really.

Armstrong's wife Brumhilda was pretty cool though. She told me she was a ghost but I didn't believe her.

Some of 'em had super sad stories like Paul, he was a normal guy that went nuts after his family ran away from him. When it's time to divide up the turkey ... I think I'm gonna give Paul a double portion because I feel for the guy, you know?

The rest stunk and I kinda just half-listened to their stories. When I counted them all again ... I was pissed. There was only twelve of them here ... but in my first count ... I remember there being sixteen of 'em.

"There's twelve of you hobos under this bridge?" I asked the hobos.

"No, there's thirteen of us ... but Alton Jackerye don't eat." Pancake Jack told me.

"Why don't Alton Jackerye eat"? I asked Pancake. Damn that's a mysteriously cool name, though.

"He don't eat cause he's dead like Brumhilda...." Pancake informed me.

"He don't eat because he's dead? That's um, that's weird though, man." I said.

"Yeah."

Ok, this was a friggin' bad idea coming down underneath this bridge. These hobos seemed chill and cool but they are starting to wig me out and shake me loose. I debated inwardly if I should skedaddle outta here or go talk to Alton Jackerye. What am I so afraid of? There's no such damn thing as ghosts. I walked over to the slumped over shadowy figure of Alton Jackerye....

"Hey, you don't eat old brother?" I asked the faceless shadow.

"Nah." He said.

"Why?" I asked.

"Cause I'm dead." He said.

"Ohh...."

"You gotta problem with that, man?"

"No....."

"Then scram!"

I was feeling a little annoyed with this mystery hobo. What was his deal? I think I'm gonna prod and poke it out of his shadowy interior ....

"Soooo, uh, what's more fun, man ... bein' alive or bein' dead there Alton Jackerye?" I asked him.

"Hm? Alive."

"Why?"

"I could taste food when I was alive...."

"Food is good. I made a whole mess of turkey ol' friend ... you sure you don't wanna break this dead man gimmick and come eat some?"

I waved a plate of smokin' n' pipin' hot turkey right in front of his nose...... he didn't even flinch an inch. Did not even flinchaninch, Not even a one. What the hell is up with this hobo? I've never met a hobo who regarded a warm meal with such a lackadaisical response ... I'd even describe it as being outright disdain for food.

"I told ya..... I DON'T EAT!"

"Ok, Alton Jackerye, you don't. I believe you. So you're dead?"

"Me? Ya. I died in the big ol' FAG building fire about ten years ago. I accidentally burned it down with a cigar on a carpet one night shift. Burned me up."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yup. Dyin' is bad but I feel guilty too for the damage to the FAG building, which was a company of high regard in Cornwall. Also ... guilt for the Bystander."

"The Bystander?"

"Yuuup. Poor kid. Some poor little urchin kid. Was looking for cans or clams or something by the road side."

I froze. My body could not move. My brain was nailed to my skull and could not even lick an ounce of sense in any direction it tried to. There is no way that it could be the same kid. There's no way....

"Yuuuuuuuuuuup, I met him a coupla times in town. Had a funny way of talkin', you know? Could barely understand his verbiage at times. I feel bad about the FAG building fire. It eats me up.... even in Death."

I'm out of here. I can't. I just can't. That kid ... it can't be. What is going on? This scene, man. This scene, man? It 'aint kosher duuuuuuude. This mysterious shadowy (yet strikingly interesting) hobo is friggin' FREAKING ME OUT!

"You asked me what's better bein' dead or bein' alive when you met me ... right before you taunted me with that turkey that you know I can't eat and enjoy. Well, lemme ask you something, man...."

"Okay Alton Jackerye. What is it?"

"Let my hidden-most and never-ending voice of malfeasance call out to you from the endless tests-of-time of never-more, my friend, and ask you...."

"Ask me?"

I looked around again, now there was only six figures around me I could make out. From sixteen, to twelve, to thirteen, and now just six. There was little consistency with the amount of apparitions under this bridge. What did Alton Jackerey want to ask me?

"What do you like better?"

"I like...."

I know where this guy is going with this. He probably paid that kid with the poking stick to hang out on the outskirts of town to give a sob story to travelers to get them to buy turkeys. The kid probably sets them on this course to the bridge where these trickster hobos make people think they are like dead or something .... and then they THROW SALT INTO THEIR EYES AND STEAL THEIR WALLETS!

I'm gonna get it out of him. The truth. I'm gonna accuse him of being a cannibal and then under duress he'll admit that he's just a highwayman who robs travelers. 

"I'm on to you Alton Jackerye. The jig is up. I know you and that kid Wes are in cahoots. You lure unsuspecting travelers under this bridge and even though you pretend you can't eat ... I bet you eat plenty, Alton, I bet you don't flinch in front of turkey meat ... because your evil tongue only craves one kind of food, daddy-o ... and that's .... HUMAN FLESH! You're no hobo! You're just a big stinky man-eating whack job!"

"Nope."

"No?"

"No. Lemme ask you.... you ever laugh too much?"

"What?"

"You ever laugh so much you thought you died, man?"

"......"

"You ever laughed so hard that you gasped for air and you clawed at the floor....?"

"...." My temperature is beginnin' to rise.

"Yeah? Well, it's suffice to say that you died that day....."

"......" My foot was starting to really hurt now.

"Yup. You're one of us. You're a hobo like us.... roaming the streets of life as a ghost...."

"................" My foot hurts so much. It feels swollen. Why is that?

"You ever think that, maybe, you ......"

"?????"



Toronto

"Hey wake up, g-unit." A voice said to me.

"I'm awake, guy." I responded.

"Yo that was pretty cool last night!"

"Yeah? What did we do? Last thing I remember I was like giving these turkeys to these hobos and..."

"Hahaha! What!? You have weird dreams, guy."

I looked around, I was in Ol' Kurtis' apartment in Toronto. I guess most of Cornwall was just a dumb dream or something. What was it about? Turkeys? Crabs? Worms? Who knows with dreams. I sat up from the couch I slept on and saw Ol' Kurtis and Connecticut playin' a hockey video game.

"I HATE THE WAY YOU MOVE!" Connecticut said to Ol' Kurtis.

"Haha! You're winning though still! It's 3-2!" Retorted Ol' Kurtis.

"You guys simming the playoffs? Who's gonna win the cup?" I asked them.

"Uuuuuuuuuuuuh. The Whalers." said ol' Connecticut.

My foot hurts. I took off my sock and it was BLUE and PURPLE. I remember now ... this overweight fellow fell on it when we were playing touch football the other day. It's okay though. Who cares? I've been walking on it for like three towns now so it can't be that bad.

"What's wrong with your foot, guy?" Ol' Kurtis asked me.

"A 350 pound man fell directly on it with all his weight at some party..." I said.

"Haha. That guy? The one from the next door high school to ours back when we were in high school?" He asked.

"Yeah."

"Haha. Remember the time he walked from his high school, the high school right next to ours, to the deli down the street from our high school with his pants down and his big fat ass flopping around in baby-blue underwear?" Kurtis asked.

"Yah guy. Yo, Fleegs told me one time that that-guy got so wasted at some up north party that he chased a llamma around for an hour then passed out......"

"Pffff. Hahahahaha."

I didn't know the other guy playing the video game hockey all that well. Ol' Connecticut. Seemed like a nice enough fellow. He was Cross-eyed and walked with a demonstratably strange gait. Could have been rickets. He was an Ol' cross-eyed ricket-ridden large-set fella is what he was. He began to speak...

"Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Yeah. Whalers are gonna win in six games. Kurt is Red Wings but he's gonna lose." He told me.

"Cool."

"Uuuuuuuuuuummmmmmmmm, you know what my dream is?" He asked me.

"No."

"I'm gonna be a big time hollywood director one day. Wanna hear about my movie?"

"Ok."

"It's about this oil tycoon guy, uuuuuummmmmm, but like his brother doesn't like him." He said.

"Sounds good." I said.

Connecticut put down his hamburger and continued.....

"Yeah, me n' Kurt are about to start making it ... uhhhhh .... you wanna be in it?" He asked me.

"Okay. What's my part?"

"You're the brother and uuuuuuuhhhhhh you hate me because I'm a big oil tycoon and I'm like worse than like even Ebenezer Scrooge and everything. I'm greedy and I'm bad." He said.

"Ok, man. Sounds fun." I said.

Kurtis took out a beat up old 8 millimeter vintage rotary camera and yelled ... "ACTION!"

I wasn't really all that prepared to be in a film that very second but you know how it is. You always sort of have to be ready to be in an ad-hoc movie at any given moment in these highly technological times. Alright, let's get in the zone here, let's get mentally into it, what's my motivation here? I'm a brother to Connecticut... is his name Connecticut in the movie though?

"Yo what's your name in the movie, Connecticut?" I asked.

"Ummmmmmmm. Uhhhhhhh. Oh. My name is Sweet C the oil man. Uuuuuh, and you're Morgan."

"Ya. ok, cool."

He began his lines. He wrote the movie and knew his lines but I guess he just assumed I would know the lines from like divining them outta the ethers of the cosmos or something. We started the scene...

"Ummmmm. Why do you not like me, bro? Just because I'm like an oil tycoon and have like lots of money and everything?" He said whilst in the character of Sweet C the oil tycoon.

I had no idea what any of the lines were to this screen play. So I just made them up.....

"It's just, Sweet C, I never learned to read and am crippled with blue and purple feet ... and I'm not as smart as you. You're a big big oil guy, you know? You have so many oil fields and I don't have like any." I said on whim.

"Ya but I like you though. Uhhhhh, Ummmmm, so why don't you like me? What if I gave you like maybe three or even four of my oil fields? Would you start to like me again, bro?"

"Well, yes, actually I would really like you if just gave me a few rich-guy oil fields of Texas Tea, there Sweet C. That's a very good idea. We could be Oil Brothers together....." I responded.

"Cool. Ok, I'll get my lawyer to write up the contracts Morgan. Just gimme a sec. Okay?"

"Ok."

".....and SCENE," said ol' Kurtis as he put down the camera.

"Wow! That was great! You're a natural!" Connecticut levied praise upon my acting skills.

"Thanks dude. You're amazing too...." I said.

Me, Kurtis, n' Connecticut all high fived. It was wicked and it was good. We were all having a huge blast. Movies really bring out the inner soul of us all don't they? I really hoped Connecticut could achieve his dream of being a big time hollywood director one day. I knew the odds were stacked against him but who knows? The guy has natural artistic abilities, no doubt about it. I hope one day I'll wake up and turn on the Oscars and Connecticut would be there winning the best actor Oscar for Sweet C The Oil Man. That would really be something.

"You think you could get this made and win the Oscar with it Connecticut?" I asked the ricket-hobbled bow-legged cross-eyed actor/director.

"Ya. Uhhhhhh. I just gotta focus right now and learn some more film stuff but come like in five years from now I'm gonna have a BMW and Oscars for sure." He told me.

"I hear ya, Connecticut. I hear ya loud and clear. How does your movie end?"

"That scene was the ending scene. I give my brother Morgan like two or three oil fields and then he likes me. It's a happy ending."

"Oh. What a deeply touching and heart warming film. How could it not get an Oscar?" I openly pondered to anyone who listened.

"Yeah, it's gonna rake the gold up," said Kurtis from behind the kitchen counter.

"What's the name of it?" I asked Connecticut.

"Oil Brothers," he told me.

"Ya. It's called Oil Brothers," said Kurtis.

Oil Brothers, eh? I was honored to be Morgan in Oil Brothers to tell you truth. Man, the next time I'd see Connecticut again in real life was in Pittsburgh and wouldn't ya know ... by then he had a BMW and two Oscars ... but back in those times in Toronto though ... he wasn't a big humongous celebrity yet .... he was just our friend.

I think I'm done in Ontario, gang. It's time to get on my flat feet and huff and shuffle on out of here to the next dopey Province. What's after Ontario? Winnipeg? What's it called? Manitoba? Oh jeeez, that's gonna be a boring one.... or is it?

....Vaya Con Dios, El Connecticut, compadre.

Thursday, January 31, 2019

Great Moments in Literature Five: It's Murray Futterman Time!

We have to take a break from that short story about the turkeys and the hobos because this blog has to hit an old note, today. A classic old favorite genre of article that enlists passion in the soul and of course reverberates the vast intertwining tapestry of human history's greatest artistic moments.

Today, we shall be taking a look at a Great Moment in Literature for the 5th time....

Previous entries in this time-honored series:

1. Bob Backlund
2. Stan Gable
3. Piccolo
4. Washington

Great Moments actually started tongue in cheekingly as a joke to stuffy people who don't consider certain mediums as art. I remember hearing Roger Ebert claim that no video game will ever be as art-like as a movie... and thinking ... well, why not?

Art is art. You know? Video games can be as good as movies, wrestling can be as good as classical literature, Japanese cartoons can invoke the deepest passions of the human experience, B-movies can be as memorable as A-movies.

Today's article will focus on a great character from movie history ... Murray Futterman.

As you may know the fellow who portrayed Murray, Dick Miller, passed away yesterday at the age of ninety.


Murray Futterman

Kingston Falls, an idealistic town, full of word-by people who live honest and by their word, is the setting for Gremlins One. Peaceful, serene ... American as apple pie and as vintage cars. Happy families living the American way. My my, what a beautiful and hospitable place.

Unfortunately looming like a curse upon this quaint hamlet is a scourge of miniature and almost-loveable monsters who will turn Kingston Falls into a nightmarish wave of violence. No one saw it coming ... no one. Except for Murray Futterman.

Murray is a grumpy old man who thinks foreigners are putting "gremlins" in his car. He is seen as a whacky but likeable old fool. No one takes him seriously. His warnings of dire situations are passed off as the ramblings of an old soul who's brain isn't what it used to be.

His foretellings of Gremlins are not heeded ... and Kingston Falls pays the price as the foretold Gremlins come to be and wreck havoc amongst the citizenry. Hoy Axton (this guy wrote songs for ELVIS!), his son, and that super-super-super hot chick from Fast Times at Ridgemont High now have to spend the rest of this family Christmas film ... fighting monsters!

Why did they not heed Murray's sagely advice and expect this and lock themselves away in their homes and barricade themselves in pillow forts made from couch cushions? Nobody knows.

To add injury (and death?) to insult ... Murray Futterman is mangled in the teeth of a snow plow driven by the aforementioned Gremlins. The good always die young, n'est ce pas?

Luckily, Billy (Hoyt Axton's son) and Phoebe Cates (who's also in Drop Dead Fred with the late/great Rik Mayall) ... manage to expose them to sunlight and all the Gremlins melt into some green sludge which is very cool.

At the end of Gremlins 1 it is assumed the heroic Futterman died in battle against the Gremlin horde ... but could a Gremlin operated snow plow really spell the end for someone as great as Murray Futterman? The audience is left to ponder this for six entire years as they feverishly awaited the release of....


Gremlins 2: The New Batch

Billy Peltzer, the so-called protagonist of the Gremlins films, has moved from the idyllic confines of beautiful Kingston Falls to the hustly and bustly Big City to get a metropolitan job in a great big sky scraper of a concrete tower in the downtown core.

The times? The times they are a changin'. The Big City 'aint Kingston Falls, Billy. You better acclimate yourself quickly to concepts such as "Take Home Pay" and "Amortization" and "Metro Sexuality" ... how is a small town kid to cope with such concepts? Not only that ... but lest we not forget that Billy's office building is ... INFESTED WITH GREMLINS! Oh no!

Poor Billy... he already survived one dance with a Gremlin horde and now they are back for round two. Is there any hope at all? How much more can they pound on top of this poor soul? How much more can he take? He moved away from his hometown, he's homesick, he's trying to acclimate his small town self to the Big City ... trying to make a living ... and now ... he's gotta do a second tango with a mess of Gremlins!

There's a knock-knock-knock on Billy's apartment door, he has a visitor. But who? Who could it be....

.....It's Murray Futterman! 

The snow plow didn't get 'im! He's as fit as a fiddle! He's rip, rap, and ready to rock! You think something like getting mashed up by a industrial snow plow is gonna stop Murray Futterman? He survived World War II! You think he's gonna be done in by a plow? I don't think so!

This time it's personal between Murray and these stinky, idiotic, gross, slimy Gremlins! In one Futterman scene, a Gremlin tries to scratch up his face, but Murray 'aint foolin' around. He sends that monster in a free fall for a slow ride down a long elevator shaft and lets that slimy Gremlin know something that the audience already has figured out ...

"Don't mess with Murray Futterman!!"
-M. Futterman, Gremlins 2 (1990)

Play time? Play time is over ya Gremlins. Play time is Over. Next time the camera shines on our Hero he is kicking ass and taking names ... and the name of his next opponent? Bat Gremlin.

The highly respected Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies, an educational foundation devoted to research into Gremlins 2, describes this scene, the Bat Gremlin scene, as:

"The only Gremlin capable of surviving in sunlight, the Bat Gremlin ends up encased in cement, hardening into a gargoyle. This fate is a parable for the futility of individual rebellion. It is not destroyed but neutralized: captured and transformed into an aesthetic fixture." -IG2S (Sept, 2018)

To the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies, the Gremlin brood are always seen as victims of some mass injustice and they are heroes who's futility should be viewed as honorable (if not pedantic).

I gotta disagree here. These Gremlins are a buncha jerks. They are. They are not the good guys. Sorry, but we all know who the Protagonist of Gremlins 2 is ... we all know this in our hearts ... even the Gremlins 2 Institute ... but won't admit it. We won't admit that Murray Futterman is the HERO of Gremlins 2 even though we all know it!

Now, to truly understand this scene, you need to familiarize yourself with Dick Miller's work. This scene is a big shout out to Bucket of Blood which is one of the funniest movies ever created. In Bucket of Blood, Dick portrays the klutzy cafe busboy Walter Paisley ...

Bucket of Blood

Bucket is a film from 1959 which satirizes the "beat" or "beatniks" of the era. The greatest thing about this movie ... is it STILL works to this day.

Last article I was making fun of the "beatniks" who "dig" this and "dig" that ... and even in 2019, I can't come up with as funny lines to parody beatniks than this 1959 film does. It has lines that not only work today but make MORE sense today, I remember a line where like all these beats are gathered around and making breakfast and one of the beats is all like ... "yo, cousin, I have some flax seed oil, daddy-o, and some organic gluten-free wheat germ flour ... let's cook up a mess of organic pancakes!"

The beat poetry they do in the Cafe scenes is thick, man. They lay it on THICK, dude. Wow. It's funny because Walter Paisley loves the beat poets diatribes and commits it to memory ... echolaliacally repeating it ad nauseum throughout the entire film.

Walter Paisley is a bus boy at the Beatnik cafe that wants to be part of the "scene, man" but he's just too much of a klutz and too much of a slob to be in the In crowd, daddy-o.

Yet, one day he accidentally kills his cat while trying to save it from being stuck in wall by stabbing at the wall with a butter knife ... and freaks ... so he dumps a bunch of clay all over the cat and the knife.

Ironically enough, the "sculpture" is viewed as a genuine masterpiece by the beat community and Walter is crowned King of the Beats and is pressured to continue his sculpting career ... fame, avarice, and lust for the ladies leads him to create more and more larger-scale and ever-more heinous "sculptures" ... is anyone safe?


Let's Get Back to the Futterman....

Murray grabs the horrible bat Gremlin monster, choke slams 'em into a cement mixer, and pours cement all over the hideous fiend! The Bat Gremlin slinks free and on broken wings flies high atop a building where the cementation process finishes its due course .. and Bat Gremlin is encased in stone high upon a mountain-esque tower ... an urban sky scraper ... modern man's tower ... modern humanity's minaret .... to sit like a Gargoyle-Gremlin for centuries to come.

Yeah.....

That Bat Gremlin got what was coming to it. He didn't die for some hokey-honorable cause as the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies would have you believe. Bat Gremlin got what was coming ... that Bat Gremlin got PAISELIED! BAM! HE GOT WALTER PAISELIED! WHAM BAM!



Gremlins 2 Institute

Everyone is familiar with the Institute for Gremlins 2 Studies by now, I as far back as a year ago or more, have been trying to call attention to the outright lack of resources allotted for Murray Futterman related studies by the institute.

The Institute is bogged down in their Myth of Sisyphus ways and nihilistic tendencies. They refuse to acknowledge any form of light at the end of the Gremlins 2 tunnel. They would rather bathe in nihilism than to even give one ounce of thought that possibly this Brave New Gremlins 2 World they fear of is not written in stone and is easily debunked and rebuked if they only invested six seconds of thought into the glorious actions of Murray Futterman.

The Brave New Gremlins 2 World they preach of is but a cautionary tale and nothing more... for there will always be Murray Futtermans who will always be there to bail humanity out of even its most dire circumstances.

I will leave this question to you....

Were the Gremlins honorable creatures who's actions against the futile plight of their existence nothing more than pedantic fooleries .... or were they big jerks who deserved to be turned to stone by the greatest action hero of our times?


Murray Futterman, Walter Paisley, Dick Miller ... we salute you.


Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Let's Practice Some More

My book that I was writing is not any good. I'm done with my novel, I think. I'm gonna do some more practice in this training canvas. I'm putting this back up but am 100% moving away from politicky stuff. This blog is more fun and humorful these days. I took out about 50 old essays ... some are really good and I like them but I don't want to taint this humor blog with hornet nest topics anymore. I used to dive right into veritable hornets nests of topics and swim around in them until we weeded out some common ground. That's a big headache doing that, it really is. When it came to satire, I hit some big nests too, national ones, religious ones, economic ones. I went for high hanging fruit in the old days with "dig out" essays and "hornet kicker" essays ... not low hangin' fruit.

As you can see from the logo above... this is a NEW blog. It's more good and more better and way more Strongaaa/Stronger than the last blog. This is no longer "Writing on Subjects" or even "Writings on Subjects 2.0" ... this is now .... "New Writings On Subjects II Stronger."

I really get worried that if I don't write stuff that I will just forget how to do it. So let's write stuff. I am really just re-opening this for the sake of Writing and there's not really any sort of incredible goal or format to this blog any longer. I'm openly Writing for practice and Writing for the sake of understanding it as an art.

I re-read an essay by Edgar Allan Poe last month,

The Philosophy of Composition by Edgar Allan Poe

.... and I found it to be really fascinating. You think that he was just some emo-guy churning out greasy kid stuff but he had a severely logical approach to his poems. He really knew what to work with writing. All the things he did were done with reason and rhyme. Writing about Writing.

So, the Writings in here are going to be experimental exercises from here on for the most part. Many of the old ones were that too but it was never really stated that that's what I was going for. In the sense of Poe's Philosophy of Composition, I want to try and be more literal with the experiments I'm trying out in here. Instead of just doing them, I am going to spell out to the audience what I'm going for so there's less room for misinterpretation.

In the old days, if I tried some whacky character as a base setting for the narration of the essay and it didn't work ... then it just looks stupid. Or, if I buried myself deep for a "dig out" and didn't successfully dig out then I just come across as being a terrible person. Or, if I tried whacking around a hornets nest and a bunch of hornets just flew out and stung me then that ended in a failure too.

One essay I still like is "Bees" from this blog ... which is a Hornet Nester in an almost literal sense.  You probably now in 2019 wouldn't believe it was a "hornets nest" topic but Bees was a big whacky deal for a while with adherents claiming that we are killing them and that humans couldn't survive without bees and this and that. It was funny to me that a hornet nester topic was just so literal there ... a hornetter about bees.

Okay, anyways, so, what's today's Writing experiment you ask?

Well, over the last 3ish or so months that this blog was under Deep Hiatus ... I traveled the entirety of Canada for the second time in my life. Now that I am back I will engage in a very Jack Kerouacian form of Writing training which is pretty unstructured and free form. "On The Road" by Kerouac was written by Jack after he returned from traveling and just punched keys on his type writer onto an almost endlessly long sheet of paper. He called his texts "scrolls" I think because they were long sheets of paper that he just shredded keys on his type writer to and never had to think of changing the paper. Of course, anyone under a certain age will not know what a type writer was and not understand a word of that but that's okay.

I used a type writer when I was a kid. I was very young too. I was probably three or four when I would use a type writer. I used to try to emulate the baseball boxscores from the newspaper and try to make my own where my favorite players got more Hs and Rs and RBIs. Even typing on a keyboard to this day .... I swear I smell ink. I do. It's just in my brain from when I was a little kid and punching keys on something like this you'd get ink on your hands from touching parts of the type writer that you weren't supposed to touch. My computer keyboard as I punch keys even now smells like ink! It's wild.

I worked with a Kerouac style VERY briefly in this blog at one point. The experiment was 40% Kerouac and 60% Mojo Nixon. Mojo has stated on many occasions that one of his main influences was Jack Kerouac so it felt like a fitting mix. It was not a long piece and I doubt anyone would've picked up the Kerouac style from it but the punctuation is definitely Kerouacian in that one.

Kerouac is only 1/3 of the influencees of this following exercise however. Another of the beat generation will be incorporated. Not Ginsberg or what's-the-other-guy though. To be honest, I'm not a fan of beat writing and not even a big fan of Kerouac (even though today's exercise is 33% based on his style). I really feel that the beat generation of "diggers" who "dig everything" fall into familiar patterns of over description of every little thing around them (even wrote 'bout it once). I understand that hippies can find a way to "dig" everything but does "digging" the "vibe" of some "scene, man" really make for good writing all the time? Not really. The other beat generation fellow being channeled in the following story is Jean Shepherd (and putting him in the beat generation is done loosely, that is not really his main category).

Shep does appear as a character in On the Road by Kerouac under a different name so he was part of that scene, man. For sure. He's a big Writer to me. A Writer's Writer. Most people just know him from the Christmas Story but over the last two decades I've on-and-off listened to archived radio broadcasts of his and read his books. The Christmas Story is actually pieced together from various chapters of his "In God We Trust - All Others Must Pay Cash" book. I gave more than a hint that Shep was an influence to this blog in "Stayin' Up All Night? Oh That's All Right" which was an essay trying to prove that staying up all night is all right.

One thing I liked about Jean's radio show was the bouncing from topic to topic weekly without care. One night's show could be about how to make some french cocktail and then next night's show would be about how he spilt oil on someone's car as a kid but blamed it on someone else. It really seemed like it had no structure even though it was actually a very concise composition of very structured words each week. It was real Yin Yang stuff, man.

The third style that we will incorporate into today's exercise is the surreal stylings of The Stone (free online novella) by late Residents composer Hardy Fox which is a very surreal journey through a dreamscape setting where the only structure to the piece is that it is tethered to a Buddhist quote about this bird who thinks this Stone is just a piece of liver.

Alright, so, what have we got? We're gonna do a short story today ... and it is 33% Jack Kerouac, 33% Jean Shepherd, and 33% Hardy Fox.

In the sense that....

It is a free form scroll churned out without pause written by a person who's just returned from a journey and is trying to remember everything that happened in a flurry of words (Kerouac).

It is also a reminiscent piece about childhood memories ... some true, some half-true, and some totally made up (Shepherd).

It is lastly a piece that is barely tethered to reality and seems almost dream-like in nature (Fox).

Okay... I really don't friggin' know how this short story is gonna turn out. I'm not gonna write it all in one sitting. I think like "The Swamp" one I wrote last year it'll be done in a trilogy. Let's start the first part right now before I realize that this is a bad idea and not do it.

Look, I'm gonna jam this down now, and if you follow me on this Journey so be it ... but I'm not promising that these styles will mix up well AT ALL, okay? I mean this is down right experimental stuff here now.



Okay, Let's go:

The Journey - Part 1 (of 3?)
-A short story by D. 


As you know I have been traveling, I have journeyed deep up north into the wilds of Northern Canada. It is a pretty Human Journey that I embarked on and it is cold and difficult in many ways, it is. My goal is to mediate upon a coupla mountains in hopes of coming to some deepest-most understanding of the World.

As of this moment, I am currently in Lac des Deux Montagnes, Quebec (Lake of Two Mountains) ... which is pretty Up North but not like super-duper Up North. I just started my journey yester-week so you can't expect me to be like in the Tundra yet, you know? I just finished an interesting conversation with one of the locals in this here Tea House....

"Ca va?" the aged gentleman asked of me.

"Oui, ca va monsieur." I replied.

"Tu écris quelque chose"? He asked.

"Moi? Oui, j'écris dans mon blog sur l'internet," I told him.

"Ecriture est une chose merveilleuse, n'est-ce pas? De quoi écrit tu?" He wondered.

"Je marche vers le nord et j'écris à ce sujet," I replied.

"Hmmmmmmm. Que fais-tu là-bas? Au nord?" He then asked.

"Oh, je vais juste grimper des montagnes et regarder autour de moi quand j'arrive au sommet des montagnes," is what I told 'em.

"Wow, ça a l'air amusant ça," He said sarcastically.

"J'ai déjà commencé ici à Lac des Deux Montagnes," I said.

"Pourquoi?" He asked.

"Eh bien, une montagne? C'est pas assez pour moi. J'ai besoin deux..." I began before he cut me off.

"DEUX? Pourquoi vous besoin DEUX montagnes??" He asked.

"Bien, Je peux avoir plus de réflexion avec deux ..." I started but he cut me off again.

"Plus de réflexion avec deux montagnes?" He said.

"Oui, comme, je grimpe l'un des d'eux ... regarde autour de moi et réfléchis à quelque chose ... quand je réalise quelque chose ... je redescends ... grimpe l'autre ... réalise quelque chose d'autre ... et puis redescendre encore." I explained.

"Hmmm. Logique. Oui. C'est logique là, bien oui....."

I wasn't joking, that's what I did yesterday. I climbed up the first of the two of the Lake of Two Mountains's mountains and then just looked around until I came to one of life's most amazing conclusions and then I walked back down again, took a little breath, and then climbed up the adjascent mountain, came to a second of one of life's most amazing conclusions and then came right back on down again.

On the second mountain's descent, about half way down, I actually even came to a third of life's most amazing conclusions which was cool because that mountain (the second of Lake of Two Mountains's mountains) was like a two-for-one special is what it was. The third wicked life conclusion I came to half way down the mountain was a biggie too ... it wasn't like just an average one. It was a real shaker-upper. The third one shook me up real good.

After three big time Life Conclusions I felt it was time to move on from Lac Des Deux Montagnes so I did. I think I'm gonna log on out of this here Tea House and start walking more Norther and pretty Westwardly too I might add. North West ... that's where I'm off to.

I'll tell you something about walking. It's hard, but I've done it so much that it is very natural to me. Walking is the way to travel for this old goat. One day maybe my legs will be worser for wear and I won't be able to do a whole lotta walking ... but for now? I just huff offa one flat foot and on to the other, brother. Offa one and onta the otha. A one, a two, a one, a two, a one, a two .... 1- 2-1-2-1 -2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 -1-2-1-2. Walking has a beat n' a rythym that hits naturally once you get a stride and a bounce brewin' and then it's auto-pilot from there. Well, until you hit an intersection then you gotta break rythym and look both ways and try not to get runned over. Your stride can get broken here and there but once you look ahead and it's just a straight old line on the foreseeable horizon you can brew up your stride again......

One. Two. One. Two. One.... and Two.....

....and think 'bout stuff. Will we win? Will we lose? Will we learn something? Will we get runned over? What about all that stuff about the guy with the........

One. Two. One. Two. One.... and Two.....

You can't just walk aimlessly though. You need to have at least some idea of where you're headed. "North West" is almost enough of a goal post to march towards but it's good to check the map and circle a town that sounds interesting. It's pretty random the locations I circle as goal posts. Why did I walk to Lake of Two Mountains as my first mark? Just because I thought it was cool that this lake had two mountains ... that's all. No real big reason.

Hmmmm... what's next? Let's see here ... how about ... Cornwall, Ontario? Sounds good. Why? Because Cornwall is a goofy name that's why.

I remember being in Cornwall a coupla times in my life. When I was a kid I was there with my parents and sister. We asked some local Cornwallian for directions (this was the 80s before like phones and googles and pip-boys and whatnot). Back then you met local people on these journeys because travel was just you and maybe a paper road map. The kid had a pretty whacky way of speaking and when we were done and drove off we all kind of laughed ... even my mother. We used to bug my mother for many years after that for laughing at that poor poor boy with the speech impediment. It was just one of those things we knew we could bug her with. Even though we all laughed we would always say things like "Remember when YOU laughed at that kid in Cornwall with the speech impediment? That poor soul of a boy? How could you?" Haha.

Whenever you drove from Quebec to Ontario in the old days there was a LANDMARK that was unmissible for any kid. This literal Landmark was half-way or so and you know what it was? It was the FAG building. Just a building with three big reddish letters on it for the world to see. It maybe stood for some corporate thing like Federal Alliance Group or maybe Freelance Armortization Guild ... but they abbreviated their name to FAG and put it in HUGE letters on their building. You always knew when it was coming too and you'd be like "I think the FAG buidling is coming up, guys!" Hahaha, little things like this made me laugh so much.

Another time, me n' my friend, Ol' Fleegs, went down there and we sat in a bar that was pretty empty. As to why he wanted to just drive to Cornwall for, which everyone knows is not the party capital of Canada, is something I don't remember. It was just like me, him, and the two people that worked there ... and then some dude walked in and sat right next to my friend in this tiny bar ... and this dude was WEIRD. Like, you could just encapsulate the weird aura around him ... there's people like that in the world, there really is. This dude talked about pretty normal stuff but the whole time me, my friend (who was like elbow-to-elbow with him) and the two people who worked there were looking at each others eyes and our eyes were saying to all eyes that weren't our own eyes ...

"Yo, this dude is SO WEIRD."

It was so obvious a mutual feeling that it was pretty close to being actual telepathy between us. We all just like connected with our eyes, four people, in unison of, "THIS GUY IS WEIRD!" it was really something. The weirdest thing the dude did was near the end of his time in this empty bar, he asked to take the rest of his burger with him in a take-out styrofoam, and when he got it he JAMMED it into the inside of his jacket in a flash and then looked suspiciously at all four people in the bar like we were all gonna try and steal his half eaten hamburger from him. It was almost cartoony like Snidely Whiplash just acquired a half eaten hamburger and was looking at us all "THIS IS MINE! SEE! ALL MINE!" ... hahahaha .... when he finally left I said "I think that guy like just got out of like jail ... because no one protects half eaten hamburgers like their pilfered diamonds" ... and one of the people who worked there told me ... "yup, that's so-and-so and he just got out yesterday"....

The only other time I experienced the feeling of looking into other people's eyes and KNOWING exactly what they were thinking ... and in turn their eyes telling me that they knew exactly what I was thinking ... was the "Auditorium of Laughs." To this day if even bring up the term "Auditorium of Laughs" with Ol' Fleegs or Ol' Kurtis they will just start laughing and remembering it. It was a moment of life that is just totally encrusted and encapsulated in our brains. The humor of why it was so funny is hard to describe and probably can't be captured in this medium.

The "Why" as to why it was so funny was similar to the above anecdote where just by looking at someone you could feel and know exactly what they were thinking about and in turn knew that they knew exactly what you were thinking about ... that is the essence of why the "Auditorium of Laughs" was what it was. Me, n' Ol' Fleegs n' Ol' Kurtis and another fellow were hanging out in an abandoned burned down house up near Ol' Kurtis's place. That's the sort of things you did as kids ... you hanged out in burned down houses and climbed up to the roof to look off it and come to life conclusions. Anyways, the four of us were just chilling in this burned out building and the other fellow we were with was proned to making us laugh with the silly anecdotes that would come out of him. He had a sort of hang-up or what would you call it? A fascination with a certain pornography star named Ron and his vast array of x-rated films.... and he'd just out of nowhere bring up this fascination with this aged over-weight porno star at whim and without warning.

So there we were... Me, n' Fleegs n' Kurtis n' this nice young fellow who had a pretty big respect for the artistic work of a famous porno celebrity ... sitting in an abondoned building ... Fleegs had on this basketball t-shirt about some squirrel that was just lookin' for a nut (which I couldn't grasp what the statement had to do with Basketball) ... and we were just talking  and we notice that our fourth friend hasn't been in the conversation for a while and we stop and all three of us turn to him ... and he's just smiling .... a real grin .... a real smiler's smile .... and then all three of us, we all turn and look at each other .. and ALL THREE OF US ... while we looked at each others faces and into each others eyes KNEW EXACTLY what two words were gonna exit this fellow's mouth within the next few seconds...

... and sure enough, this young man opens his two lips and before it's even fully out of his person and the statement has time to gestate into the air ... while it was only half way out into the open ... while me and my two friends were still locked in a mental connection so strong that we were almost like three men with the same brain ... he says it ...

"Ron .... Jer....."

... and before the words even had time to be considered Alive in the audible real world of waves of noise ... almost before he even said this .... within the milisecond of the first sounding of the "J" syllable being audible to our six
collective ears ....

...we LOST it.

All three of us. Me, n' Fleegs, n' Kurtis .... just lost ... IT.

We lost it like something we never have or maybe never will experience ever again. We LOST LOST LOST LOST .... It. Just lost it and lost it and lost it. Completely and utterly lost it. I'm sure everyone's lost it in laughter before but this was a Losing It so intense and prolonged that for a good minute I actually thought I was gonna die laughing. I'm not exagerating. After the first minute of uncontrollable laughter between three people ... the second minute stops being funny and starts being scary. You're laughing and can't stop. You're laughing and you can't breathe because you're laughing so hard. I remember clawing at wood on the floor and hanging on to my two friends clothing ... clawing and hanging on to people because I thought I was gonna asphixiate, have a heart attack and actually DIE from laughing. It was scary. After like 5 full minutes, after it all died down, and all three of us just stopped laughing ... I was in awe ... I didn't know a person could just start laughing to a point where you could gasp, choke, and claw around trying to stay alive. It was something else. Something I will never forget even if I live to be like 150 years old.

I read a book once, Outlaws of the Marsh, where one of the lead characters at the end of the book dies of laughter. The end of Outlaws is sort of an Animal House style ending where everyone gets a "what happened to this person" afterward paragraph or two before the narrative ends. I always liked Lu Da's ending paragraph where he reads a prognostic poem about himself and then whilst watching the tide bore in and splash around at Qiang River ... he just dissipates into dust and disappears.

Another character, Wu Song, lived 'til he was 80 and then just one day started laughing and couldn't stop. He laughed until he passed on. As a person who can honestly say, without exaggeration, that I did almost die of laughter once ... I can really relate to a guy like Wu Song, you know?

Tide bores are nice......

Anyways gang, I'm gonna head out of 'ol Lac de Deux Montagnes and this dusty old Tea House with Wi Fi right about now and head down to ol' Cornwall town. You can follow me down there if it suits ya, old friend.....




Cornwall

Hunker down, that's what I'm doin'. Just plunkerin' on down. Cornwall town, that's where I am now. That is where I Be. I'm just sitting here in an empty bar, just me and the two people that work here. Thankfully there's no weirdoes here this time. I still can't believe that guy thought any of us would have stolen his half eaten mangly burger from him. I don't think I'll ever forget that.

Gettin' here was fun. I walked the whooooooole entire way. It was pretty cold and bad but what can I say? I came to three or four more deep conclusions about Life along the way, which is to say, I changed somewhat as a person over that walk. The cold and the thinking really shook things up for this rusty clanky noggin on top of my neck. I passed the FAG building along the way and took about 10 minutes to stop and really take it in. My gosh, the building of my youth that brought me much laughter. The one and only FAG building. There it was in all of its amazing glory. Truth be told, the joke doesn't work that well anymore. In the early 90s all young people knew this word and it was very popular. Maybe some older types didn't know about it and that's why a FAG building could sit along the highway in all its Majesty. It's a window in time, very small mind you, where a FAG building could stand in Majesty like this. The term cannot be used now and it was fresh enough then for not everyone to be keen to it ... that's the criteria for a window in time. A fleeting moment. And this? Well, this building was now a fleeting FAG moment. So fleeting that right before my own eyes the building vanished. Maybe my memory imagined it.

I was getting pretty hungry after witnessing the mysterious vanishing of the memories of my youth in front of my own eyes. I stopped in a little town and asked this kid where I can find a coupla burgers. He told me in a very strange accent ... he couldn't have been english but it certainly wasn't a french accent. What was it? He was a white kid ... probably born here ... but I could barely even understand what he was telling me.

"Boiyards? Ya want a couplo boiyards?" He squeeked out like a small wounded bird.

"Ya, I just want a couple of uhhhh Boy Yards. Yeah." I said to him.

"If yoo neeeed yooo a few boiyards just head ons along up this rohod, there charlie-jim!"

"Ok thanks kid. I mean thanks charlie jim. Say, what are you doing all by your lonesome here on the road side charlie-jim?"

"My noims not charlie jim, there charlie-jim! My name is Wessey, and and and ... I'm lookin' for clams n' cans!"

"Clams n' cans eh? What for?"

"Ya see I sell dem for munny. I get nickels fer cans and a dollar fer clams!!!!"

"Okay. Cool. That's good. You saving up for something? A video game maybe?" I asked him.

"Noooo, sweet chuck! I'm soiving up for a TOIKEE!"

"Turkey?"

"YA charlie-jim! A TOIKEE for my FAMILEEEEE!"

This young boy child was mighty strange. He seemed familiar to me though. Maybe I met him before. I don't know. I felt bad for him though. What kind of kid in this age looks for garbage and molluscs along the road side? I ventured further into this person's life for I found him interesting.

"Say Wes, what do you need a turkey for anyhow," I asked of him.

"Waddya think fer!? I neeeed it for Canoidian Thanksgoiving!" He told me.

"Canadian Thanksgiving was quite a few months ago, Wes." I said.

"Ob coooorse I knoi that! But my famileee didn't celebroite it at all! We couldn't boiy a toikeeee soooo we couldn't do Canoidian Thank Goiving!!!"

"Wes, I'm gonna give you what you need to buy a turkey, ok?"

"REEELY! IT"S A CANOIDIAN THANKS GOIVING MIROICOIL!!!!!

"That's exactly what it is Wes .... it is a Canadian Thanksgiving Miracle is what it is..." I said.

He took the funds and skipped off into the dry sunlight, swinging his can-poking stick like a happy little clam. Some kid, that Wes. Good kid. I continued walking up the road to the eatery. I bought a couple of burgers and ate 'em up good. I can see the future sometimes and my brain paused for a minute while I ate those burgers. They were so good that I had a burger-related epiphany and briefly got to see the future....

I saw a kid, a kid who could very well have been Wes, dropping a turkey onto the road. Why was my brain showing me this now for? I had more hamburgers to eat up and did not want to be bothered with powerful visions of the Human Future at this time in my life. Eating hamburgers is literally, no joke, one of if not my most favorite of human activities. Why would Wes drop the turkey for? Maybe I'm just worrying for no reason. I am constantly stricken by bouts of worry. I chewed and chewed ... and worried and worried. Don't drop the turkey, Wes. You need it. It's a Canadian Thanksgiving Miracle that turkey not just some regular turkey. It like represents something. It represents unity and grace .... and giving. It also represents a point in my life where I did something nice ... so don't drop it, Wes!

I couldn't enjoy these hamburgers any longer. I only ate like seven of them and left the rest on the platter. It was a pyramid platter of stacked burgers and I only got to the first seven. The pyramid was still standing for I took the first burgers from the top so it wouldn't fall down. I told the burger guy at the burger thing that I couldn't eat any more of them.

"Why not, old timer?" He asked me.

"I gotta go buy some turkeys. You know where I can get some, old brother?" I answered and then counter-asked him.

"Yah, sure do feller, ya just gotta keep huffing up that road there, you'll see the super market soon enough, ya old goat."

"Thanks old brother. Thanks a lot." I said gratefully and took my leave of the Cornwall burger stand.

I kept on a huffin' step by step up the street like he suggested. I got a good walking rythym going. A one-two, one-two, and couple more one-twos (and a three and a four) and I got there. It was a pretty nice super market for a small town. It was well-lit enough and had a decent selection. I found the turkeys without even asking nobody where the aisle for them was. They had a lot of them. I just needed a regular old turkey. I didn't need like one with stuffing in it already or anything ... just a normal one.

I paused. I started to worry. I wondered what if that kid, Wes, gets so happy and go lucky after getting a second turkey after dropping the first one that with nothing more than a hop, a skip, and a jump ... he swings his can-poking stick a little too hard and the second turkey pops out from under his arm and falls into a dirty puddle or maybe down a sewer....

I better buy a few more back-up turkeys while I'm at the grocery store, I guess. Just in case. In case that kid drops them all in puddles. I bought about twelve of them. I paid for all the turkeys and then stacked them in my arms like a pyramid and started re-huffin up the main Cornwall street.

But ... how am I gonna get the kid the turkeys after he drops them without making him feel bad for dropping so many turkeys and constantly getting them replaced by me? After like the first few he's gonna feel like a big klutz, this kid. He will. He's gonna feel like a big slob. Hmmmm, maybe I should buy a fishing rod at the hardware store. Yeah. Then I can like put a hook in a turkey and cast it out with the rod from like 20 feet behind the kid after he drops the turkeys into the puddles .... and then when they fall down into his arms from the cast out fishing line ... he can just unhook them and think like some angel or deity sent them to him. Yeah, that'll work out quite well.

I stopped at the hardware store and purchased a fishing rod. I proceeded now to walk up the street with a pyramid of twelve turkeys and a fishing rod strung to my back. I was a like a real Kwai Chang Caine. A real Kwai Changer. A big banger. Just walking around the roads of life with turkeys and fishing poles ... helpin' people. It felt good inside of my body and everything.

I finally caught up to the kid, and got ready to cast out turkeys from my turkey pyramid with my trusty fishing pole. Yet, much to my own surprise and amazement ... young Wes turned on a 90 degree heel-kick on his worned out sneakers and starting walking towards an abode ... I reckon it was his family's home. Well waddya know? He didn't drop a single turkey into a puddle let alone a baker's dozen of turkeys into a baker's dozen of puddles after I replaced them for him by casting them off from my fishing line and into his innocent yet grubby hands.

Hm. I walked up the window to see him present the turkey, or "toikee", to his family. I stood at the window with the other turkeys in my arms in a pyramid shape. I wasn't very incognito at all suffice to say. They didn't notice me standing there lookin' at 'em though for they were over joyed at the sight of little Wes and the turkey in his paws.

Their home was very beautiful. It reminded me of Canadian Thanksgiving's of my own past. The whole family gathered 'round the table eating all kinds of wonderful food while autumn leaves fell off the trees. Wonderful days those were. What in the world am I gonna do with all these turkeys though? I don't wanna throw them in the garbage can and make them a meal for some wordly raccoons. Heavens no.... I sat there in front of the window of Wes's house just a thinkin' and a lookin'. I was so proud of that kid that he made it home with the first turkey, when even deep in my gut, I just KNEW for sure he would need many replacement ones. I guess I'm just... like ... wrong about things sometimes.

I'm a flawed and deeply worrisome old badger is what I am. Worry. That's my middle name. It's better to be safe than sorry though when you really get into it....

"Hey moister..."
"Ya? What is it? Oh it's you Wes, you saw me in the window?"
"Yea I soire doid moister! Saaaaay .... waddya gunna doooo with all thoise toikees!?"
"You can have 'em. Freeze 'em for the future, you know? In the freezer."
"Oh, it's okay. I don't neeeyeeed 'em, there charlie-jim!."
"Alright."
"Saaaaaay, why dontcha jes givem all to those hobos underneef da broidge?" He suggested.
"Hobos? Under the bridge? Where's that?"
"Just up yonder way ol' jimmy chuck charlie sam jam!"
"Well, you don't want 'em and I don't wanna throw 'em away soooo... ya, ok."

I parted ways with the filthy yet loveable urchin and made my way to the bridge that he suggested I take these turkeys. Hobos eh? Can't say I really trust most hobos to be humanly honest but I sure as all heck 'aint gonna throw all these darned turkeys into some dumpster for squirrels to gnaw at. I trust hobos way more than I trust squirrels. How many hobos can there be under there anyways? It's a small town it's not like there can be millions of hobos under this bridge. I hope there's only like 12 hobos ... that way I can give each hobo one turkey each. If there's 20 hobos we'd have to cook all the turkeys and cut them up and everything so they all got equal amounts of the turkey. What a chore. There better not be any more than twelve hobos underneath this bridge, let me tell you.


There better not be more than twelve hobos underneath that bridge. Let me tell you.....

 (to be continued.....)

Wow, this is fun. Yo, I think I'm just gonna do like one of these a month or one of these every two months for 2019 as my writing hobby. A full story that takes a year to write. Maybe. How many cities are in Canada? A lot? Yeah we can get a lot of meat out of this.

Man, hobos on the horizon. There's only two kinds... really fun ones and horribly bad ones. Stay tuned next month!

Same New Writings on Subjects II Stronger Time and same New Writings on Subjects II Stronger Channel!