SUDDEN FICTION, A-TO-Z: THE MAGICIAN

[Because I am bored. And because I want to send that "Masturbation" post down the 'pike, a bit.]

"And now," spat the magician, "the rodent shall return from the dark depths of Hades, perfectly intact...not a whisker harmed." Bristling with hubris, the greasy-haired 60s-ish magician swept the threadbare satin away from the hat and beamed out towards us, his straggling "audience."

"Cool," mumbled Betty, staring at the empty hat, obviously bored out of her mind. "Do you think we could, uh, get going, now?" she asked me, pinching at my love handles. Empathy was not Betty's strong suit. Frankly, if she couldn't care less about something, she had absolutely no problem letting that fact be known.

"Girl," I stage-whispered, "this guy's life has got to suck ass; the least we could do is give him a fiver or something and be polite about his show, hon."

He looked into his top hat and, frowning slightly, pulled it closer to his face. "I seemed to have lost Ricardo," he mumbled.

Jiggling the change in my pocket, I held Betty's arm close to my side and waited.

"Killer show, old man!" some teenaged wit hissed to the scattered laughter of his peers.

Let me just say here that I have never seen a more forlorn expression: the old man's eyes glistened with unspent tears, his gray eyebrows furrowed, casting his sky-blue eyes into darkness, and his chin trembled as his lips quivered. My guess was that the old man--"Xerxes the Great"--was going to break down and weep right there, on the corner of Thirteenth and Grant.

Not a very pleasant memory to retain from a vacation, you know? Our original intent--Betty's and my--was to walk the streets of New York and soak in the manic frenetic energy of the city, do some window shopping, maybe enjoy a couple of under-prepared and over-priced deli sandwiches and some beer...you know, just take in the atmosphere. Plopped right in front of the deli had been this Xerxes fellow, resplendent in his tattered magician's cape (that he'd probably found in a Dumpster behind a costume shop) and his dirty blue jeans that were unraveling at the cuff. Quixotic image, that: a street magician practicing his "craft." Really, though, the problem was that this dude sucked, he had no talent for Illusion, and this wasn't 19th-century Paris. Sadly, he was just a bum, down on his luck, hawking for money, making a fool out of himself and it hurt me to see him degrade himself as such, so I tightened my grip on Betty's arm and turned to go.

"Try again, Xerxes," she said softly, boring her beautiful brown eyes into the old man's blue. Usually, Betty had little patience, so this was a welcome (and somewhat heartwarming) about-face for her.

"Very well, young miss," said Xerxes, straightening himself to his full height and regaining what dignity he could. "Watch very closely as I bring Ricardo back from"--he cleared his throat with a rattle--"the darkest depths of Hell."

Xerxes the Great replaced the satin over the mouth of the top hat and, with murmury incantations, swirled his free hand above the whole shebang, his long delicate and dirty fingers plucking imaginary cherubs from the air and gesturing them towards the hat.

Yes, the rodent returned; yes, Ricardo the rat emerged from the hat, gray-brown and whiskery, his black eyes beady, little front paws up on the brim of the hat, his long fat pink tail curling out over the edge; and yes, Xerxes the Great tasted Redemption--the real magic that day, though, was the way in which Betty had been imbued with the all-encompassing warmth of empathy, the way in which she opened her heart to someone less fortunate.

Zonked with the happy chemicals of Altrusim, sex that night was the best ever...and, yes, it always comes back to the sex.

MASTURBATION--IT LOOKS GOOD ON YOU

I found this in the comments section of Fumblings web site. It's called the Slogan Generator, and you can put any word into the little box thing-y and hit "sloganize". I entered "masturbation." Hijinks and hilarity are guaranteed to ensue.

Okay. I'm off to sloganize "Golden Shower." Take care. (And Happy Saturday.)

Here's a good slogan: "You Need a Golden Shower." :-P

TAGGED WITH SMUT

I've been tagged. Nighthawk Nan of underacheivingmommy fame sent this my way and I think it would simply dandy to ruminate on sex. Ponder on sex. Ponderous sex. Hmm. That doan soun' too fun, Loocee! Ponderous, that is...sex in general is an absolute delight.



Rules and Regulations: Tagged or not, feel free to post it on your blog (the more the merrier). Title your post the Smut Meme, outline the rules, and tag two people when you're through. Please link to whoever you've tagged, so we can see just how smutty your readers are.

Okay. Let's see how smutty Adam is.

1. Chocolate or whipped cream? I can't say that I've really ever had either in the Bed O' Love. Once, I was pretty trashed when I was with this girl and I walked naked into the kitchen and brought back a can of Reddi Whip. We never got to the whipped cream and I awoke the next morning with my mouth tasting of ashtrays and stale booze and the girl was on the couch (she said I was snoring too loudly). The Reddi Whip was on the floor, on the side of the bed, leaking white stuff onto the carpet. Hungover and bummed out, I just threw it into the trash.

2. Leather or PVC? Leather. It has more of a sense of natural goodness than PVC, a substance with which I associate much displeasure and sweat. Also, PVC makes me think of work. It's a kind of pipe, too, isn't it?

3. Outdoor sex or indoor sex? For me, it's got to be inside sex. I guess I'm kind of a private person. I don't want to take a risk of having sex outside and someone happening by and noticing my eighteen-inch erection. Leapin' anacondas! They'd be scarred for life!

4. In the jacuzzi or in the bed? I like being comfortable. In bed, all the way.

5. Bad sex or no sex? Considering all that I have to offer is bad sex, I'll have to go with bad sex. Otherwise, there'd be no sex...and that'd be a negative thing. :-P

6. Dominate or be dominated? Spank me, baby. Tie me up and tell me what to do. Make me your sex slave.

7. Thigh highs or body stockings? Oh, shit. Thigh highs all the way. Women wearing high boots are a major turn-on for me. Particularly thigh highs made of chocolate and whipped cream. (Oh. And PVC.)

8. Fast or slow? Eeeeeeeaaaaaaaaasy does it. For me.

9. Rough or gentle? Could there maybe be a happy medium? How about roughly gentle? Naw. Fuck it. I like to do it rough (but pain-free).

10. Bite or suck?! Are you kidding me?! S-s-s-s-s-su-su-su-- I can't even say it, I like it so much. :-P But, of course, a well-timed (and placed...and pressurized) love bite is heavenly, too.

11. Role play or reality? I gotta say, I like a little role-playing. 'Tis fun, is what it is.

12. Dirty talking: coming or going? Coming. I feel like a fool when I mack my dirty talk. It makes me feel self-conscious and, Lord knows, one doesn't need to feel onstage when one is puttin' the biscuit in the basket.

13. Edible panties or no panties at all? I don't want to have to chew through a layer of frustration to get to the Promised Land. Plus, I have to think that they'd leave a sticky residue all over the bed and, thus, all over the bodies. I'm not a fan of feeling sticky. So, in summary, with a choice between no panties or edible panties, I'd have to go with no panties. The best answer, though, is the G-string. Plus! Isn't it fun to disrobe your lover? That's highly underrated.

14. Spanking paddle or bare hand? Definitely bare-handed spanking. If she's been a naughty girl, she'll have to be spanked, but I want her to know that it hurts me as much as it hurts her. Plus, come on. Why the hell would I waste a perfectly nice naked ass on a paddle when I have my hand, um, handy? Exactly.

15. Landing strip or Kojak? Telly south of the border. Who loves ya, baby? The less hair, the better, in my humble opinion. I'm not a fan of tonguing stray hairs out of my molars. (Wow, that sentence was just wrong on so many levels.) ;-)

16. Multiple sessions or one good fuck? Multiple one good fucks. 24 hours of sweaty, steamy, tantric, no holds barred, kinky, loving, transcendental sexual congress. (And then I'll wake up and realize that I am no Lothario. Whoever the fuck Lothario is. Jealous much, Adam?)

17. Moaning or screaming? I am partial to soft, heartfelt moans. It makes me feel that I'm doing a decent job.

18. Three-way or no way? Three-way, for sure. As long as I'm the only cock in the henhouse. Gosh, I get goosebumps just thinking about it. :-D

19. Swing or no swing? Schwing! That's as close as I'll get to that. No swinging for me, thanks. Ever since I traded Ron Guidry (his strike-shortened 1981 season) for Bill Gullickson and Ron Davis in Strat-O-Matic baseball, I've had an aversion to trading. And to trade significant others? That'd be madness. Madness, I say!

Okay. I'm done. This meme has left me in the mood to grab the KY and a napkin and fire up the ole DVD player but, since it is 2:30 in the morning and I am basically the walking dead, I think I'll call it night and dream of kama sutras and breasts.

Tag. Who do I tag? No pressure, play if want to and don't if you don't. Okay, I tag Meegie and Laura from Scotland.

"WHAT? DO I AMUSE YOU?"

So says Joe Pesci in one of the--if not the--greatest gangster flicks ever, Goodfellas.

Do you ever get the feeling that someone is looking at you and silently following a comedic interlude inside their head, in which you are the buffoonish lead act? I do. I don't get that feeling nearly as much as I used to, but I still occasionally want to leap onto the counter (or table, or chair) and burst into my Pesci imitation. "What? Do I fucking amuse you? What am I? A clown? Huh? You seem like you're having a grand old motherfucking time, there, laughing at my expense. No, that's cool. If I amuse you, that's just fucking dandy. But maybe you should pay me for being the clown act. Because I really wanna know: am I just a clown, here, goose-stepping around strictly for your motherfucking amusement?! Answer me, Henry!"

Okay. So I wouldn't call the person Henry...unless, of course, his name really was Henry.

[Henry is Henry for the Henry Hill in the movie Goodfellas, based off of the book Wiseguys, written by Henry Hill, a former member of a New York-based Mafioso Family to which he turned the screws and sang like a yellow parrot.]

I digress.

I bring this up because earlier tonight I went to the late-night liquor store to procure a pack of smokes. It was late, so I just threw on some brown slippers and, wearing my cobalt-blue pajama bottoms and a green sweater (and a knit hat and a brown leather jacket) I stepped carefully into the car and drove the block or three down the road. The kid in the store was sitting over by the cases of beer, talking to his buddy with the heavy eyelids, and when I walked in, he looked up and started towards the counter.

"How you doin'?" he asked, pleasantly enough, as I walked to the counter.

I said, hey, what's up, man, and something in his face changed. He went from open and ready to sell me my cigarettes to, in my opinion, tense and guarded. I asked for a "pack of American Spirits, blue," and he walked over to the cigarette section and grabbed my pack and brought it back to the register.

"That'll be [price redacted], sir," he said, all professional, now. As I gave him the money, I glanced up at him and saw him looking over at his friend and smirking. I've seen the look before. It's annoying. What the fuck about me is so gosh damned amusing, you son-of-a-pup?! Is it the slippers?! Get over it.

Anyway. I'm tired now. It'll be another night of short shitty sleep. I just felt the urge to relay this story to the masses. Why? Who knows. It just bugs the everlovin' shit out of me to be laughed at, or mocked, in any way. I'm pretty sensitive; it's a character flaw. Maybe I need to grow thicker skin. Maybe I need to sprout a duck's ass and just let the slights roll off the back like so much water. Whatever.

Current mood: Annoyed.

:-P

I DO NOT UNDERSTAND HTML...AT ALL

I am a fool when it comes to HTML. I know nothing about it. If you need evidence of this fact, just scroll down a bit and you'll see a free playlist that I slapped onto this weblog. It is red and it hangs out over the side of the, well, sidebar, and it looks like shit and Jimmy cracked corn and I don't give a flying shit. It looks like a 9-year-old was pounding away on the keyboard, but...Jimmy cracked corn, and all of that.

I tend towards perfectionism, so this abhorent display of "tweaking" the web site has my nose hairs curdling. If I looked in the mirror, I'd probably see steam coming out of my ears.

So...am I just a dummy or is this shit actually as difficult as I make it out to be? I think the former, unfortunately.

Maybe I need to change the type of template that I have. It is called a template, right? The screen around which I juggle letters of the alphabet and punctuation marks and sometimes numbers? Does anyone know what I did wrong?

I do have to change the template, don't I? I have to find a template that will accept this somewhat wide "playlist" thing.

Times of Archa, take me away!

Take me back to the time in which dudes with low brows and animal pelts for clothing chiseled shit onto stone tablets. Take me back to the quill and ink. Take me back to ballpoint pens, for Christ's sake (rice wine).

This binary jungle has me flummoxed.

Oh well. I hope that you like Hendrix and Mozart, Mega Death and Clapton.

OHMYGODI'MCOMING!

It's not what you think, really. I'm just saying that sometimes? sometimes it feels really damned good to just lay back down after awakening at a respectable hour and lose consciousness again until the hour is less than respectable. Waking up at 1230 hours? I haven't done that in far too long.

It's like a Beastie Boys sample that I have heard a million times: One guy says to the other, "You're stupid." The other guy says, "Eh-uh?" First guy: "You should sleep late, man. It's just much easier on your constitution."

I happily agree.

I awoke at 0826 and let the boys out and then blearily walked around the house, looking at things that I needed to do. The kitchen counter needs to be straightened up. I need to do a couple of loads of laundry. I need to leave this house and enter the blistering cold of January 19, 2007, Michigan, and venture to the grocery store to fill my Mother Hubbard cupboards that are so bare, I have not even a bone. (Sounds like a personal problem, but it ain't.) I need to...

I walked into the front room and saw Oliver and Louie laying blithely on the couch and I said, "You know? You guys have a good idea." I clambered aboard and leaned back against the arm of the couch, my legs sprawling diagonally across the warm puppies' bodies. Louie cast a baleful eye at me--it's his couch, after all--and Oliver shifted his little sausage body so that his sharp little Beagle nose was buried in the space between my hip and the back of the sofa. I jammed a throw pillow behind my head and--voila!--the Sandman blasted me across the head with a two-by-four of Sleep. I think I was sawing logs in under two minutes.

America! Join me in my laziness! Let us all be sloth-like! Tell Industriousness and Early Birdedness to "talk to the hand, bee-yotches!" Sleep in! It's just much easier on your constitutions!

As a speck of humanity in this vast teeter-totter o' Cyberland, I hereby declare on this, Saturday, January 19, 2008, when the temperature is about 15 degrees here in the Mitten state, "Sleep! Sleep as though your lives depended on it! Get nothing done! Give in to the narcotic of sleep! Relax! It'll only hurt for a second! Put off whatever needs to be done for another day! It'll still be there!"

As Marie Antionette was wont to say, "Let them use pillows!"

[Now, please to excuse me as I hypocritically go to get an oil change for my car.]

FOCUS!

I sit down in front of this damned thing, sometimes, and my mind is a whirl of half-created thoughts and jimmy-jozzins of ideas. Mental burps. Effective blog-writing speed bimps is what they are.

It is 5:59 in the morning. One would think that my brain would be ensnared in a morass of slowly-spinning neurons and confused synapses. Why am I pecking away at this keyboard when it's not even six o'clock on a Sunday morning? Because my bladder is more stubborn than I am.

I was IMing with my sis yesterday. IM time vacuums sure can be funny--and/or misleading--sometimes, eh? You know what IM time vacuums are. It's when you're electronically texting with someone and one of you might be a little quicker, a little more on the toes, than the other, and so answers to entries sometimes are two entries too late and so it ends up being a highly-confusing--and sometimes humorous and sometimes worrisome--conversation. As Billy Crystal might have said on SNL (back when it was watchable): "Oh! I haaaaaaaaate it when that happens."

What in God's name am I doing? It's 6:15 on a Sunday morning. I should be in bed, sawing logs. Not talking to myself in Cyberland. (And let's face it: often blogs are just that. Cerebral self-massage.)

What else? Ah, yes. My dogs came to me yesterday and informed me that they were "on the ticket in Oh-Eight." You can see their election poster here. I know what you're probably thinking. You're probably thinking, "What? No way! We can't have dogs occupying the most important positions" [sorta, if you discount lobbyists] "in the great Ewe Es of Aye! Dogs?!"

I can understand your apprehensions, but, really, is it that much of a stretch to have dogs in office after eight years of corrupt bumbling baboons? Naw. And, in my humble opinion, the further away we get from simians in office, the better. At least dogs have some integrity. Baboons walk around with pink-ass all day long. And they fling shit. And they beat their chests to a jingoistic rat-a-tat. And who needs that?

So vote Dawg in Oh-Eight, wouldja?

I think I may just stay awake now. Why not? People get up before the sun all the time. Hell, farmers make their living before the sun reaches its apex. Plus, I have a meeting on Sundays to which I have a hard time getting. It's at 10:00 and if I went back to sleep now, I'd probably sleep through it again. Yeah. Better just to stay up.

Eh-heh-heh-heh-heh. He said "stay up."

SURPRISING PROGRESS...

Well, I checked out the scale to-day and discovered that I have somehow lost about ten pounds, maybe more. I'm not quite sure how I have done it. I do know that I have been eating less, lately, and that I have been trying to start each day with a bowl of cereal. I've been trying to put at least something in my stomach in the morning. It is a widely-known fact that breakfast is often considered the most importante meal of the day.

Rumor has it that it kick-starts the metabolism.

Oh, and I've also been laying off the ice cream and the wanton sugar bombs such as candy bars and Hershey's syrup straight from the container. I have also eaten more fruits and vegetables than I had been. And the midnight toast snacks have been mightily curtailed. And I also have stopped eating just for the hell of it. Now I wait until I am shaky and can't see straight before I pop some food in my mouth. I'm kidding about that last part...sort of.

There was a study done recently that observed how the laboratory rat--that ole classic standby--did when it was allowed less food per day. If memory serves, the researchers had two groups of rats: one was allowed to eat to its heart's content and the other was fed basically just enough to get by. The first group had higher incidences of diabetes and heart disease and cancer while the second group retained their youthfulness for a longer period of time. What does that mean? I think it means that less food equates, for the most part, to better health.

And that is not a news flash, I know.

But, anyway, after losing around ten pounds, with another ten to fifteen to go, I think I'd like to ally myself with the second group o' rats.

STANDOFF: GOOD AND EVIL AT MIDNIGHT

Leroy was not fully aware of how much power the being had accumulated until he looked at the computer, at a picture of himself, and he noticed the malevolent inky black spread of the being, in binary starkness, from the middle of his back, from just below the shoulderblades. The image had not been there when he had taken the picture, of that he was certain.

Verily, viewed quickly, the Black Spread had reminded him of Fantasia, the part in which El Diablo had unfurled his massive black wings from the top of the mountain and had stretched them across the sky, blotting out the sun, rendering all below in shadow. The theme from the score echoed in his mind as his spine turned to ice: dum-duh-dum-duh-dum-dum-dum-dum dum-duh-dum-duh-dum-dum-dum-dum.... Images of the militant ghostly equestrians galloped across his mind and he wondered when he had gone wrong. Had he not tried to be morally and ethically beyond reproach? Had he not strove to live his life in adherence to the Golden Rule? Had it all been for naught? Had it?

He scratched a wooden ruler down his back, following his spine, and gasped as he ran the implement over the area at which, in the snapshot on the computer screen, the Black Spread originated. It was a singular sensation. The only thing to which Leroy could equate it was a slow melting drip of an ice cube, directly above the bone of his spinal column. That was not to say that it was an unpleasant feeling, though. Actually, quite the contrary. Rubbing the ruler against his back was directly proportional to the waves of pleasure that blossomed from his groin. The harder he scratched, the more powerful the pounds of pleasure.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to pull the ruler from his back and he threw it into the corner, breathing heavily, a heretofore innocuous means of measurement now seen in a different, much more malevolent, light. How was he to combat something that, instinctively, he knew to be evil, but that felt so damned good?

He and the Dark Prince were set to do battle. Back to back, they stood, the clock at high-up midnight, the battle for his spirit about to commence. How does one combat tidal waves of dopamine and seratonin, ill-begotten though they may be? Where does one start?

For the first time in a very long time, Leroy was afraid for his immortal soul.

And, on the computer screen, the Devil silently mocked him, blooming from his back like some inverse poisonous toadstool.

STARTING...NOW!

Resolutions...they're so cute, aren't they? Quaint, almost. I've already zoomed past quite a few of them. In fact, with each key stroke, I am further distancing myself from my dream of being "unhooked" from the wily Internet. I went to bed at three in the morning, maybe three-thirty, and I sit here typing with a cigarette smoldering in the assss-tray next to me. So that's at least three Rezzies to which I have held a silencing palm. On the plus side, last night when I went out, I had a [for the most part] vegetarian pizza. I say "for the most part" because I invited bacon to my half of the pizza pie. And why wouldn't I? Bacon is a cool dude. I didn't want him to feel left out, or anything. So I invited him to the shindig and then I ate him. "Bacon? Hello. I'd like you to meet my teef, I'd like you to meet my shiny white spades."

Bacon stood not a chance.

I am thinking of starting up a Flickr 365 project. You may be familiar with it. During the next 365 days, people involved with the "project" have to post a picture daily with at least a part of their body in the shot. I think I'll start today; maybe the piece of my body that I have in the snapshot will be my crank. Or...probably not. Maybe I'll just start with this one.

The picture that you see is me, sans color, methodically crushing seconds and minutes and hours in front of the Evil Computer as my wattles grow and my dogs take to chewing on things that they shouldn't be chewing. I think it was Timothy Leary who said, "Dude. Cut the cord, man. Release thineself from the 'Puter Politico."

On the plus side, it snowed last night, so there should be sleddin' in store today. Either that or copious--and I mean fucking copious--amounts of college football on the tube today.

Happy Two-Thousand-Eight, my dear partners-in-binary-addiction. May the new year bring color to our faces and strength to our constitutions.

RESOLUTIONS AND NERF HOOPS, NEW ARMCHAIRS AND PATRIOTS

December 30th. It's that time of year again when people commence to look somewhat-objectively at their place in the universe and decide what parts of their life should be examined, what parts should be dove-tailed into moderation and what parts should be excised altogether. Usually, I resolutely refuse to write a list of things that I [need to] should change about myself. Why bother? You know? My resolutions last, on average, about a week, maybe two, and then it is right back on the Locomotive to Self-Destruction.

I am all talk. I know what I need to do to become a happier and healthier and more productive member of society, but, albeit I can talk a mean game, I rarely follow through on what I know would be beneficial to myself and others in my life.

But, as Tom Cruise long-ago said in Risky Business, sometimes you just gotta say what the fuck. So, in 2008 (Oh-Eight?! I can't believe that!), I resolve to do the following:

I plan to eat better. Happiness starts with regularity, I've heard, so I'm thinking about walking the isles of Vegetarianism. Or at least eat a hell of a lot more veggies. And fruit.

I resolve to walk at least a mile a day. With or without the dogs, 30 minutes a day can keep one healthy and help to shed unwanted pounds. I gotta lotta poun's I doan wan', Loocee.

I will more earnestly look into quitting smoking. Basic. Needed. Breath is good. Hacking sucks. Cancer sucks.

I will weight train more. I want to be a more muscular Adam in 2008 and beyond.

I will get better sleep. A good night's sleep is key to the motivation to better myself. Being tired and cranky all the time is not conducive to getting off my ass and getting things done.

I will attend more Meetings of Bill W. I need to remind myself why I have been sober for over a year now.

I will strive for honesty and self-accountability. Deceit and half-truths beget more of the same. Fo' shizzle, said Confuscious.

I will work more overtime, thus enabling myself to double my efforts in combatting my Credit Card Demons. Fucking credit cards. Don't get me started. And to any and all kids out there? You don't get started, either. Debt is a morass that sucks quite a bit of the joy out of life. Be smart from the beginning, y'hear?

I will try to not be so much of a friggin' hermit. I tend to isolate. That is not good for the mental health of ole Adamity Bomb_Bomb.

I will try to disengage the talons of the Internet from my forebrain. The Web is fanrastic, sure, but it's as addicting as brown sugar on oatmeal.

I will watch my fucking spending and buy what I need, not whatever catches my eye like I'm some pea-brained hummingbird, attracted to the shiny and new of life. I need to think before I buy--or charge--"Do I really need this?" More often that not the answer will be "No." I need to think more Buddha-istically. Less is more, baby.

I will be the perfect man. And just what the hell does that even mean? Okay. I'll just be the best guy that I can be. That's, um, a little easier.

Tall orders, huh? And that's specifically why I tend to avoid the Proclamations of a New Year. Many of these damned resolutions are assuredly attainable...the key is to stop the status quo cogs of the mind and to just fucking do it. Talk is cheap and blah blah blah. Okay. Here's one final resolution:

I resolve to be a man of action rather than a man of paralysis by analysis. I'm not talking Steven Segal, here, or Ahnold, I'm just saying that I tend to look at things 15 million different ways before I act. More often that not, it's a waste of time. I need to go with my gut more. I need to leap and then look. I need to more-readily trust my instincts. They're spot-on most of the time.

But some things need to be analyzed and--see?! Already--the ink ain't even cold yet--and already I am trying to soften things to my liking and loading up the Half-Measures catapault. Don't think. Do.

Onto more pleasurable things. The Nerf Hoop with which Meegie so graciously presented me for Christmas is finally assembled. Nothing like taking two weeks to get a child's toy put together, eh?! I couldn't do it. My sister couldn't do it. My brother-in-law couldn't do it. Meeg couldn't do it. We are all educated and intelligent adults, but we all looked at the Nerf basketball hoop and basically scratched our heads and looked for bananas. It was that complicated! Well, actually, it wasn't that complicated. We all just overlooked the most basic premise of the assembly: The two pieces of plastic to be used for mounting the hoop were not intended to be hooked together in some way. No. Rather, the first, bigger piece of plastic, was to go through the hole cut out in the cardboard backboard, and the second, smaller, piece of plastic was to be used to hang the top of the backboard from the top of the door. Seperate. Effective. Not a flaw in engineering. Rather, a flaw in the child-proof assembly instructions; cunt-fusing, they were. I had to go on the Internet to see a picture of the Nerf hoop before it dawned on me what I had been doing wrong. So. Anyway, it pleases me to no end to have the Nerf Hoop up and functioning. I feel like a 13-year-old again. (Except the acne has passed and my voice in a much lower register. Oh, and I make more money and I can drive a car. And vote.)

Yesterday, Saturday, my sisters and brothers-in-law and I went to my late uncle's beautiful 10-year-old house in rural Hamburg, Michigan, to look at things that were left in his house after his premature passing and, perhaps, make them our own. I felt vulture-ish, to tell you the truth. It felt almost voyeurisitc to go through his house, after his death, and claim his things as my own. But I thought about it longer: I think--no, I know--that he'd have wanted us to have his things if he were unable to use them. Better that family got his material goods instead of strangers at an auction...or whatever. So I rented a trailer and used said trailer to obtain a basically brand-new couch and an insanely-soft (and also brand-new) leather recliner that feels like butter when you sit in it. I already tested it today: I fell asleep in it for a two-hour nap. It's a keeper. I also fit in to a bunch of his shoes, so I took those, too. I still feel like a vulture, but, thank you, Uncle Rod. May you and Dean continue to catch up in peace.

[I love the couch and I love the chair--unfortunately, Oliver and Lou do, too. I just walked into the living room to see Oliver reclining on the sofa with a tiny checkerboarded swatch of a throw pillow ergonomically located next to his sharp little snout. I'll have to disabuse him of that mindset. Posthaste.]

One final note: congratulations to the New England Patriots. I've been pulling for them to remain unbeaten for a couple of reasons. One, Tom Brady is a former Wolverine and one of my favorite NFL players and, two, maybe this will finally shut the mouths of the 1972 Miami Dolphins, the last team to go undefeated and a yearly storyline with their sideline gathering in hopes that the record remained theirs. It's over, guys. See ya later, dudes. Your time has passed. You go now.

SHRINKING THE CLAUS-MEISTER

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Oh! But!

I heard recently that there was a more-concerted effort to portray Santa Claus, good ole Saint Nick, in a more health-conscious way. I'm serious. I heard that the general consensus was that Kris Kringle was too fucking fat and that the little kiddies who look up to him may become unduly influenced towards an unhealthy lifestyle. Instead of milk and cookies, some do-gooders are pushing the celery-on-a-plate-approach.

[screeech]

Stop the phonograph, please. I'd like to get off. And maybe perhaps bang my head against a brick wall.

We are talking about the big elf from the North Pole, here, right? From at least 1863, when a German immigrant named Thomas Nast illustrated A Visit From Saint Nicholas, Santa has been seen as being jolly and fat. Why turn him into a porn star now?

Why do we as a nation need to slice away the fat and wrinkles and brandish him with a six-pack stomach and a penchant for eating raw vegetables? If we do that, I think we're also going to have to get rid of the pipe, man. Smoking stinks! Yuck!

I don't think that children are making life decisions based upon the portrayal of a gift-bearing elf, but if they are? Perhaps their parents should step in and es'splain to them that what other people do with their lives (read: eating milk and cookies) is just fine and dandy but "in this house, we do it this way."

This country has gotten far too protective of its children. From the ubiquitous bicycle helmet to receiving a trophy regardless of where they finish in a given competition, the kids here are getting bubblicized.

Bubblicized: [bub-bul '-i-sized] verb *The over-insulation of a seemingly-weaker member of the species, so as to protect from harm and/or the slightest adversity. So named for the bubble wrap that is packaged with electronics to protect units from damage during transit.

FOUR YEARS AGO TODAY....

Four years ago today, my boy Lou was born. I was living with a friend, renting a room from him for a paltry $400 a month (why the hell didn't I save more money?!) and so I was there--a first responder, so to speak--to see Lou's entry into this world.

My friend Pablo owns a pedigree Boxer named Roxy and one morning, while I was groggily chewing my breakfast cereal, I saw Pablo swing open the back door wall and shout, "Get outta here! Go away!" I got up and sipped some orange juice and walked to the door to see what the hell was happening. Directly behind Pablo's house, there lived a dog--ostensibly a Pit Bull--and this dog had a penchant for leaping the fence when the mood struck. The mood had struck, apparently, because, as I reached the door and looked out, I saw said dog and Roxy engaged in a sort of reverse cowgirl-reverse cowboy lovemaking position. Roxy was facing towards the north and the other dog--the amorous interloper--was facing south. At the junction of their, well, junk, I imagine that fireworks were bursting.

And so little Roxy, plumb and pure, had had her innocence ripped away.

I'm not sure of the gestation period of dogs. I think it must be around five or six months. Anyway, Lou and his brothers and sisters showed up as Christmas babies, blind and furless, eight pups in all.

It truly was an amazing thing to see. The birth of the pups. The first one was the biggest. He was the one I had wanted originally. He'd had a white "mask" and, though Roxy--and the other dog for that matter--was of a brindle coloration, this first pup had had a lot of fawn characteristics. I'd named him Buddha, in respect to his deeply meditative, almost bovine, personality. Over time, in the whelping box, my attention had drifted from Buddha (he seemed almost too slow, as if he might have been a little oxygen-deprived) to Louie and another big boy, a dog that my sister would later adopt (along with Pete) and name Willy.

Whenever I would walk down the basement, Lou and Willy would run to the side of the makeshift whelping box and stand up against the side, their little puppy tails wagging furiously. There became really no other choice: Louie would be my boy. Seeing as how I lived there (and actually did more in the care of the puppies than the owner of the house) I would have the first pick of the litter.

And so Lou was a first round draft pick, first overall. And I have not looked back.

Sure, Willy grew to be the bigger dog. The dude is a friggin' monster, man. He's about 80 pounds and it is all muscle. Lou looks like a whippet in comparison. And, sure, Will is a sweet boy...so too his brother Petey. But I made a choice that I have lived with for all these 1460 days, and I could not be happier.

As all you dog-owners out there know, there is a special bond between a dog and its "master." The dog is always there. The dog is replete with unconditional love and acceptance. The dog is there on good days and the dog is there, curled up on the edge of the bed, on those bad days in which one just wants to slide into bed and pull up the covers and let the world churn by.

I remember Louie as a puppy, all long ears and black gimlet eyes, looking up at me from the floor, stamping me as his daddy. Louie has been an incredible dog throughout. Rarely have I had to raise my voice to him and rarely has he felt the need to, say, tear up a shit-talking pillow, or poop his name out onto the kitchen floor. And, with the addition of Oliver, Lou has done nothing but cement his legacy even more as the Greatest Dog Evah. He's not had a discouraging snip, an impatient snarl, since Oliver has set up shop as the Food-Eater. Lou has been, if dogs can be, a perfect gentleman, making Oliver's transition that much easier. As you can see by the picture, they kinda like each other.

He was pretty much a Christmas baby: December 23rd, 2003. And he is--and I know it--a gift every day that he is here with me.

Happy birthday, Lou. And you two, too, Pete and Willy. You have all brought us more joy and laughs than we could have ever hoped for. Here is to eight more years, kids. Peace.

WINKING MEN

What is it with those guys who wink? You may know the kind of men I'm talking about: the kind who will "good-naturedly" aim a verbal jab at someone and then look over at you and smile slantedly and drop a wink.

It happened to me a few days ago when I was at the garage getting a new used tire for my shuddering Ford Focus. It's been a couple of days, but I'll try to get the exchange right. I was in the back of the garage, watching the guy jack up my car and take off the tire, when the front door bell chimed and a guy walked in and ambled to the back. Apparently he had been there more than a few times in the past, because he called the owner by his first name (Ray) and seemed wholly at ease among the piles of tires and haphazardly-placed tools and the wreck of a bathroom.

I can't really remember the words, but it was something along the lines of...well, hell, I really can't remember a damned bit of the exchange. Maybe that should tell me something. Maybe that should tell me that what the guy said wasn't even remotely funny and that the three or four winks that he tipped in my direction were poorly placed.

Why am I that guy's buddy? Why am I the recipient of the winks? Are we a team, ganging up on Ray and the mechanic? Does he expect me to oafishly guffaw and run over and slap him on the shoulder and say, "AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! That was a good one, Roger!" It wasn't a good one--it wasn't a bad one, either, it was just stupid--I was just there to get my tire fixed, and I was neither his tagteam joke buddy nor was I interested in his "I-know-this-guy-we-go-way-back" banter.

I really could not have cared less. So Roger knows Ray and vice-versa. So what?

I'm reviewing this as I write it and it seems to me that I may be walking around with a stick up my ass. That must be the case, because who the hell writes about two or three innocuous winks thrown in his or her direction after a "funny" was made three days previously? Me. A tired cranky motherfucker, I reckon.

But back to the practice of good-ole-boy twitch-winking at strangers: I'm not your friend. I don't know you. Don't wink your playfully-digging banter in my direction, sir.

I know, I know, it's all a big joke and we're mildly "having it on" at Ray's expense. Here's how it is, Winker: I don't know Ray, either. I mean, shit, I've just gone to his garage to get my tires fixed two or three times in the past. And I've only gone there because I can get a used tire--in my Focus's small size--balanced and out the door for thirty bones.

Truth be told, the only reason I know Ray is Ray is because there is a big sign painted on the side of the brown building that chippingly says "Ray's Discount Tires." In fact, I am not really a fan of Ray's place. It depresses me whenever I walk through the door.

Talk about a lack of overhead!

The place is a fucking dump. It's dirty, there are tires stacked--seemingly--to the ceiling, filthy hubcaps and rims line the floor behind the counter, five or six folding chairs serve as the waiting area, outdated Parks and Recreation maps are taped to the wall, there's an old dusty Zenith that has a new life as a telephone book table, Ray himself is rather dusty and grim, unsmiling and of an indeterminate age, and it just depresses me because whenever I walk in there I think to myself, This is where Ray and the other guy work. This is where they spend a majority of their time. This is what they are paid to look at. How the hell do they find anything here? What do they do for food? Why the hell is the telephone still a rotary dial? Has Ray failed to keep up with the times? Does Ray go home every night to his flea-bitten tabby cat and nuke a microwave Salisbury steak dinner and watch the tube? Is Ray depressed? Why does he seem so fucking morose, man? Life is good. Look out the window, Ray, and watch the joyous masses motorvate up and down John R. Road, man.

The place screams Boring Utilitarianism.

The place reeks of lonliness.

And so when some cowboy in his personalized blue work jacket strolls in, tipping winks to strangers after regurgitating some sorry old line...I guess I just fail to see the humor in it.

And I'm not a part of his team, tagging up and dropping a Flying Tsunami Elbow on Dirty Ray, lying prostrate on the canvas.

THE STOAM DINT MISS US

We got hit by the stoam

I say widda smile

And the doagz sholey lub it

As they frolic sans guile

There is seven inches

On the ground, out da window

And the stoam nebber flinches

The levels will grow

I'd better scram

I think to myself

The doags are in a jam

They turnin' blue, they look like an elf

IT'S 1:22 IN THE MORNING...

And the neighbor's dog has been out there in their backyard barking for the last--oh, I don't know--20 minutes straight. It is a fluffy white dog, and it kinda looks like the fake Oliver in this picture to the right. (I need my killing Oliver to death ray the son-of-a-bitch to, well, sleep.)

It barks.

It barks.

It fucking barks! Wake up, lady! Let your fucking dog inside, damn it!

Sorry that I lost my head. I feel like Elaine from that Seinfeld epsiode in which the little ragamuffin dog the next apartment over barks at all hours of the night and Elaine suffers and suffers and suffers until finally she can take it no longer and hires Newman to "off" the dog.

Maybe the lady next door died. Or maybe she's drunk off her ass on Wild Turkey, or addicted to Valium or Vicodin or Percocet or some other kind of mind-altering chemical. Maybe she's trying to get the neighboring neighbors to think that The Barker is one of my pups. No. Uh-uh. Not mine. If they--let's just put it this way: the only way that they'd be outside at 1:30 in the morning, barking their fool heads off would be if I were in the bathroom, shitting out a lung. (That analogy? It works. Work with me, here. I'm friggin' tired.)

And the dog doesn't even string together a good volley of barks. It's almost like Chinese Doggy Torture: one bark, pause, one bark, pause--oh, wait! It just barked twice in rapid succession. Saaaaaaaa-weet!

Hopefully the lady wakes up soon.

Maybe I'll bring it up nicely to her the next time that I see her. "Hey! Trampy Jane! When your dog barks at 1:40 in the friggin' aye-em?! Let his ass in!"

>:-+

CRUMBLING BOREDOM

In the continuing quest to inform Cyberland of the insufferable minutia of my life, I must disclose that I went bowling on Sunday. My first game I bowled a 170. Then I bowled a 190. Basic arithmetic would hold that I was in line to bowl a 210. Nope. I bowled a 104 in my final game.

In my defense, my knee was beginning to act up in the last game.

And our team lost the bowling "match" by a total of 3 pins. Ouch.

MOVIE REVIEW SUNDAY

I saw The Mist last night. It's a 127-minute movie written for the screen as an adaptation of Stephen King's short story of the same name. I highly recommend--if you've not read the "Skeleton Crew" collection of short stories--dragging up a chair and exploring King's fertile imagination.

I had hesitations about the movie, seeing as how King's writings have often not passed muster on the silver screen. The movies that are based on his work have often been splashed across the screens as hokey gore-fests that elicted more laughs than shrieks. I don't blame the master for that; I blame the moviemakers and the fact that King's books are more of a character-driven than plot-driven. It is what it is. Now, for sure, there have been some King masterpieces. The Shining and Misery and Stand By Me and Carrie come immediately to mind, but, for the most part, the movies have sucked. Think Dolores Claiborne and Pet Semetary. And the abortions that were Rose Madder and The Perfect Storm, made-for-TV shit-taculars that should have stayed on the cutting room fli-zoor.

So I was pleasantly surprised by The Mist. It held true to the short story--save for the ending, which had more than a few moviegoers grumbling--and they did a really good of creating the creatures of the mist.

One scene with which I was particularly pleased was the one in which the battle-weary characters creep along the highway in the 4X4, slowly traversing the mist. In the book, King describes a mottled gray creature of Lovecraftian proportion--the characters, peering up through the window into the mist can not even see the underside of the beast. That's one huge motherfucking beast, y'know? I'd been wondering just how in the hell the moviemakers were going to convey the surreal size. Enter computer graphics. 'Twas sweet. Basically, imagine a walking skyscraper--50 stories high if it's one--slowly thudding by, dwarfing all in its wake, dangling tentacles like some kind of giant mutant udders. Tres bien, tres bien.

That is what--in my opinion--has held King movies back, in the past. There has just not been a way to convey to the screen the vibrant imagination of the writer. But, whatever...I was entertained. That's enough for me. I'm easy, that way.

365

365 days. Thirty-one-and-a-half million seconds. That's a hell of a lot of "one-one-thousands." I am somewhat pleased.

It is amazing how much has changed in one year.

I feel like I should be happier about meeting this milestone, but, truly, I'm not. It is what it is. A year without an alcoholic drink, a year without a mind-altering hiatus from everyday humdrum-ity. It is but another day. Another step in the journey, and all that happy shit.

Do I miss the drinking lifestyle? In a way, yes. Hell yeah, I do. I miss the pleasing warmth of "checking out." I miss the social sliiiiiiiide of the spirits. I miss the first crisp swallow of a cold Guiness after a long day at work. But, who am I kidding? It was never just one swallow. One swallow begat a hundred more.

And so in a thousand and one more substantial ways, I don't miss the drinking lifestyle. I've said it before: addiction to mind-altering substances affects facets of one's life in a myriad of ways. Here are some of them: physical, mental, emotional, financial, spiritual, legal.

When I wake up these days, I do so without that tight knot in my gut and the haze of Dread across my being. The feeling that I got from not remembering just exactly what had gone down the night before. Even if I spent the night alone in my apartment, methodically cracking and draining aluminum containers of "nectar," I would still wake up with that son-of-a-bitching feeling of Dread. It wasn't a pleasant way to exist.

12 months. 8760 hours.

Later tonight, I'll go to a meeting with my sponsor and he'll stand up in front of the hundred or so people and he'll present me with a one-year token. Tangible proof to myself that I accomplished something that I had thought was virtually impossible a year ago. Believe me, I was in pretty rotten shape.

A tradition upon receiving one of these coins is for other members to ask the "birthday" boy or girl how they did it. "How'd you do it?" they'll ask. Often, people will say things like they let go of their will and let God take over. "Thy will be done, not mine," they'll say. And that's great. But I don't believe that that's all of it.

It's a fascianting phenomenon, really. The cumpulsion to poison myself with toxic (to me) beverages seems to have lifted. I get urges, of course, but it's almost as though I have a truss on my Id, now. It doesn't control me like it once did. I, with the help of the program, control it.

The key is, though, to not get cocky. There is a saying that, while one "recovers," the addiction is in the basement doing pushups, biding its time, waiting to spring at the "afflicted" when he or she least expects it. I buy that. Always in the past, when I went back to the Debbil after a time off, it was--whoosh!--right back on the rocket ship. Fuck that. I have too much to lose.

So, anyway, tonight, when people ask me how I did it, I say that I did it with the help of my sponsor and the belief in a Higher Power. And one day at a time. And I'll add that I was just fed up with the self-mutilation. That self-flagellation was so yesterday, man. That I had to stop dying in order to live.

O! Cliche! How I have come to love you!

A PROMISE KEPT

Yesterday, after the vulgarity-laden tirade against all things Patriot, I ended the post with the assurances that I would write about puppies and rainbows. I am a man of my word.

Puppies and Rainbows

awwwww, look! the puppies!

golden-brown, they scream, shriek as

the rainbow smashes

You're welcome. ;-)

PATRIOTS REMAIN UNDEFEATED*

Yes, I put an asterik there. Because it should be there. Because the Patriots should not have won the motherfucking game and Tom Brady should not have thrown the ball to Jabar-motherfucking-Gaffney and Jabar-motherfucking-Gaffney should not have had the chance to not score the game-winning touchdown, preserving the Patriots undefeated season and all but relegating my Fantasy team, the Monkeys, to playoff spectators.

Because the Baltimore coach--mind you, not even the head coach!--on the sidelines SHOULD NOT HAVE CALLED A TIMEOUT A SPLIT-SECOND BEFORE THE PATRIOTS HIKED THE BALL ON THAT FOURTH-AND-ONE AT WHICH TIME THE RAVENS STOPPED THE PATRIOTS AND ALL BUT WON THE GAME!

And Jabar-motherfucking-Gaffney? He did not have full control of the ball before he went out of bounds. For what in God's name do we have instant replay--booth replay or otherwise--if they're going to fuck up the calls when they replay them?! He did not have full possession of the ball! I could see that! Anyone could see that! He was juggling the blasted pigskin on his way out of bounds, two feet in or not! How much did the owner of the Pats, Someone-or-other Kraft pay the officials, both on the field and in the booth?!

I am completely pissed off. I want to break something, I want to juggle my dogs, I want to destroy...I'd tear my hair out, but I am as smooth as a baby seal, having just shaved my noggin earlier tonight.

Fantasy football...harmless pastime, joy-filled hobby...or life-altering obsession? Um. Next question.

Now excuse me as I savagely swallow a melatonin tablet and hit the hay.

Here is where a beer would taste mighty fine...it'd help me to forget. And that's true.

By the way, on the non-drinking front? A guy from work came over today, bringing a 10-by-8 dog pen that he wasn't using, which I ended up buying for $40.00. (It's in my basement, and I think it's going to work out just fine. The dogs'll have more room to move, when I'm at work, and they'll have the option of having "accidents" on the easily-cleaned cement basement floor. So...hopefully it works out.)

The guy brought the pen and he also brought a six-pack of Budweiser. Down we went into the basement to set up the pen and along came the sixer. "Go ahead," he said. "Help yourself."

I grimaced. "I'd sure like one," I said, "but I'm gonna have to pass. I'm, like, four days from a year without drinking and I really don't want to fuck up at this point."

"Oh," he said, "no problem." And so he drank his beer and I drank my beer-flavored water and all was good with the world.

Until tonight. And Jabar-motherfucking-Gaffney.

ARGH!

(By the way; one last thing: Jabar? Act like you've been there before, you cocky fourth-tier son-of-a-bitch. You should be thanking the crooked booth officials, not nodding your head, wildly gesticulating your skinny-ass arms on the gosh-damned sideline. Show some humilty; show some class, Wannamakah. You were lucky, you retread son-of-a-pup. Remember that when you cash your game check, bitch. In fact, why don't you donate your game check to some charity? Here's a good one: The Adam Bomb/ Louie Pit Bull/ Ollie Beagle Relief Fund. Nonsequential 100s would be fab.

Dick.)

--soreloserrantcomplete/backtopuppiesandrainbowstomorrow--

BREAKING THE CYCLE OF NONBLOGGING

I need to write something. Anything. I suppose the six words I have just written constitute writing "anything," but...you know what I mean. This once-a-week blogging is shit.

***

crickets chirp the taffy

stretch of brutal writers' block

how much for a muse?

***

Andrew Jennings stumble-slouched along the sidewalk, his checkered fedora lying limp against his skull. The first Outbreak of Winter--hear all about it on the eleven o'clock news!--had hit and the small town of Yerkers, Maine, had ground to a stop. Spin-outs and fender-benders. Pedestrians, bundled up like five-and-a-half foot toddlers, trudged like ants through the whiteout world. Jennings wasn't dressed for the inclement weather. Three sheets to the wind, the truth was that he couldn't even really feel the cold. His internal thermostat was all fucked up.

In his drunken state, he had been staring blearily at the kitchen TV, not-focussing on a Disneyworld commercial, when Jiminy Cricket, of Pinnochio fame, had rapped with his umbrella against the inside of the screen and said, "Drew? Getcho ass outside and find you a muse, you drunk motherfuck."

Oddly enough, this had not surprised Jennings. A cartoon cricket was talking to him from inside the television set? So? And Jiminy had the voice of Samuel L. Jackson? So what? What was odd about that? Miracles happened every day, his dear old mother had once told him. If a hallucination constituted a miracle, well, so be it. He had simply nodded sagely at the screen, tipped a wink to good ole Jiminy, and, in his slippers and his ratty bathrobe and his checkered fedora, had set off down the slippery streets of Yerkers, intent upon finding his muse.

"Are you a muse?" he asked now, sidling up to a snow-woman, waiting scarved and puffy-coated at the bus stop.

She turned stiffly and regarded him with blue-eyed New England pragmatism. "Do you know that you're wearing a bathrobe?" she asked. Her eyes slid down. "And that it ain't exactly tied shut?"

Jennings glanced down. His boxer shorts had slid a bit, during his commute, and now his pal Mr. Friendly was wagging in the icy wind. He tucked himself back in and tied his bathrobe tight and looked down the street. The bus was slowly winding its way around the snowed-in cars and drifts of snow. It reminded him of a huge white beetle, its windshield wipers eyebrows. "The bus is coming," he said.

"Ayup," she said, looking past him. "It surely is."

They stood for a silent moment, and then Jennings spoke. "Well, I guess I'll be going now. There's gotta be a muse around here, somewhere."

"Ayup."

And so Andrew Jennings slouched off, his fedora plastered to his head like an upside-down buttercup, his knees purple with the cold.

HARD-BOILED EGGS

I just boiled the fuck out of nine eggs. I had set them in the pot on the stove and racheted up the burner and then I came in here and got...distracted. Damn computer! Damn internet!

I think--I'm not entirely sure--but I think that I had the eggs in the boiling water for about 15 minutes longer than they should have been in the boiling water. I have the eggs on simmer, now. Kinda like whistling up at the sky and kicking at some dust, I am hoping that my brain-fart will be overlooked and that the eggs will not be ruined. That would be horrific.

I'll check in later with the results.

It's a wild and kah-RAY-zee Saturday night, here, in Adamland. Cooking eggs (badly). I have to beat the paprazzi of with a stick, I tell ya.

DEAR MR. WILLIAM CLAY FORD,

Dear Sir,

I am a long-suffering Detroit Lions fan and, I have to say, I am pleasantly surprised with the Lions' recent success. If you'll allow me the vulgarity, it's about fucking time...Sir.

However, I have an issue with the team that I would hope that you, a savvy businessman, would have the good grace to address. I am dismayed by the fact that a professional football team--one which sells out every damned game--has no cheerleaders. Is it too much to ask, Sir, to plop a team of scantily-clad women, dressed in the beloved Honolulu-blue-and-silver, on the sidelines so that the fans--men and women alike--can goggle and appreciate the beauty and atheletic purity of cartwheels and pantomimed bumps-and-grinds?

I must congratulate you on the omission of the 13-year-olds with batons in recent years--that's just wrong--but I must, again, plead with you to get some T-and-A on the sidelines.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this important matter.

Yours in Sheepdom,

Adam [last name redacted]

HINDENBURGUS: THE DOGGY DISASTER

Simply put, today was a disaster. A canine disaster. Like the Hindenburgus Caninus, but on a smaller scale. Okay. Much smaller. Like two-dog small.

Last night, Louie was asleep on the La-Z-Boy in the computer room. Ollie was sleeping with me. Before I acknowledged the Sandman, I was aware of Oliver bouncing off the bed and trotting out to the kitchen. Before I fell asleep, he was back, nestled at my feet, breathing deeply, an unconscious dog-log. I thought nothing of it--perhaps he wet his whistle?--and succumbed to the night.

I woke blearily this morning and slammed off the Superman alarm clock. After the Morning Porcelain Ritual, I staggered to the kitchen and let the dogs out. As I walked to their food dishes, I was assaulted by the ripe smell of dog feces. "Shit," I said.

Exactly.

A nice smooth soft pile of dog shit lay, in all its Stank glory, about a foot from the empty food bowl. A smaller "tip" of dog excrement lay a few inches away. Shaped like an arrowhead, it pointed to the larger pile. Two seperate piles, one of which seemed an almost-afterthought? [Or forethought?] Oliver! That sumanabit....

Paper towel in hand, I crouched to scoop the interloping fecal matter and, what to my wondering eyes should appear? But a puddle of moisture, 'neath the table, oh dear. Okay. So...to recap. While I slept--or slightly before--Oliver had sprung from the bed to see what was the matter and had said, ah, fuggit, here's good.

I cleaned up the offenses and bid the dogs a good day. I left Oliver, the cute shitting chewer, ensconsced in his small cage and I left the door to Lou's cage slightly ajar. His choice. He could stay in the cage or he could wander about the house as I worked in the dirt.

At work, we did some tractor-trailer training. In the cab of the truck, my nostrils flared at the unwieldy odor of feces. Like the malaise from the morning was trailing me, following me, white gossamer tendrils of Stoonky-Stank adhering to my nose-holes, giving me not a moment's peace. I crinkled my nose. "Damn," I said to Robert, "smells like someone took a dump in here. Jesus." He told me that he had a cold and that he could not smell it. I told him that he was probably lucky. After he had practiced a bit, I got back into the cab and right away I was struck with the smell of manure. And it seemed stronger. I figured someone must have stepped in a pile last night and smeared a bit on the floorboards on accident.

Rob wrinkled his nose the next time he got in the cab. "Yeah, I smell it now," he told me. "Pretty bad." I agreed and sat on an adjacent trailer to watch as he practiced his reverse 90-degree angle alley dock. The smell was insistent. A lightbulb must have shone above my head as I did the obvious thing: I looked at the bottom of my boot. Yup. There it was in all its glory: Poop. It must have been hiding in the tall grass and I must have stepped in it. Laughing to myself and at the alacrity at which I had passed the Shit-On-The-Shoe buck, I scraped it off with a crumpled Gatorade bottle. And the day continued.

I ended up working late. There was a gas meter relocation that ended up being a bit more involved than had previously been thought and so I got back to the shop at 6:30 and back to my home at 7:00. The smell assaulted me as soon as I opened the door. Lou was bouncing around like a maniac and Oliver, the cute shitting chewer, was howling/baying from his crate. Oliver! I thought to myself with Seinfeldian angst, my fist clenched, my mouth a slash. Yes. 'Twas true. Oliver had pooped in his crate and, unfortuantely, had scampered (or slid) about in it, leaving little shit footprints. I was running late to meet my sister at the coney island restaurant, so, with little fanfare, I released Oliver, the cute shitting chewer, and Lou to the Great Outdoors, whereupon they could, ostensibly, empty their bladders and jettison their intestinal fortitiude. While they were outside, I took the foul-smelling floor of the crate down to the washtubs in the basement and--quite literally--scoured the shit outta it. Satisfied, I walked back upstairs and walked towards the computer room to survey my Fantasy stats.

On the way to the room, I noticed/smelled a nice splotch of spit-up in the hallway, on the carpet, next to the kitchen doorway. Louie? I asked myself. What the fuck? Grimacing, I crouched and cleaned the puke out of the carpet.

Nice, I thought, poop in the morning, poop in the afternoon and vomit for a nightcap. And then I got into the computer room.

The smell was heavy. It didn't make sense. Why would the smell be stronger in the computer room, three rooms and a hallway, from the pile of poop? 'Twas nonsensical, 'twas. And then there it was: Another pile of shit. This one was arranged nicely on the corner of the Oriental rug, almost symmetrical to the designs of the floor covering. Louie! The good dog?

It isn't often that one can truly say that they are flabbergasted but, there I was, leaning in to scoop another pile of soft-serve shit, flabbered to the motherfucking gasted. I cleaned up that pile, let the boys in, scooped Oliver up immediately, swept down the basement stairs, with him at arm's length, and lathered the fuck out of him in the aforementioned basement washtubs.

And then I went to eat coney island hot dogs. The stuff on the plate looked suspiciously familiar to...something.

So the final tally: Twenty-four hours, two dogs, one explusion of odor-ific vomit and three piles of soft brown-cream-cheesy dog shit. And one extremely exasperated owner.

[And that's not taking into account the shitpile in which I stepped when I was at work.]

But I learned a good lesson today. I really did. And that lesson is this: If one has slices of corned beef, and one doesn't feel good about eating it oneself--due to the fact that it doesn't smell particularly right--one should not feed said corned beef to the dogs, thinking that they will appreciate the Kindness of Meat. If it smells funny, toss it.

Or suffer the consequences.

NEBULA

that river in

africa that river in

africa that river in

africa

dam it

break the dam

send waters--salt--streaming

down the convexities of my face

that fucking river in africa

that fucking river in africa

denial

break the dam

send waters streaming

--salt--

to the corners of my mouth

i raise a cotton-candy

fist

earth shakes

dam breaks

my fist is melted plastic

dry dusty tawny hides

feline grace

be lion-hearted

fight the sorrow

fuck it

let it come

let the tears purge

let it come

GO FOR FOOD, FIND A MUSE

Hollywood grocery stores seem to me to be fertile ground for blog topics. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Fall of the Middle-Aged Woman, and, today, from a different location, Hollywood Market came through for me again. It all started because I was being conservation-conscious.....

I had picked up one of those fabric bags from the grocery store down the street from me. You know the kind of bag I'm talking about: Made of canvas, the bag is meant to decrease the use of plastics and papers by being reused every time one goes to the grocery store. I bought it for about two bucks and I'm sure all the little chipmunks and owls thank me for saving their homes. Anyway, I went to the store today to purchase some eggs and some shoelaces, some toilet paper (for pooping) and some shaving cream. I took my green bag with me, and filled it with my soon-to-be-purchases. I felt like I was doing my part for the Earth.

After blearily wandering around the store and sticking to my list--but substituting a chocolate cream pie for the unlocatable shoelaces--I wandered towards the front door, thinking that the ATM was probably located around the entrance.

I heard a sharp whistle from behind me. I ignored it and continued to the Chase ATM in front of me, right next to the entrance. Again, the whistle came and I had the sensation of a large mass of a person quickly closing the distance behind me.

I turned around.

A big man stood there, older, paunchy, with receding reddish-blonde hair slicked back from his forhead. "You can't be doing that with the bag," he said, standing about six inches from me. "You gotta use a cart. Take the items out of the bag and flatten it and use a cart. Or a basket."

His proximity annoyed me. I like my space. "Oh," I said, and stepped back. "I see."

I gathered that he was the Loss Controls Ossifer, or whatever the hell they're called: Big, invading my personal space, sweating Authority. In retrospect, I reckon I might have looked a little nefarious and a little guilty, the way I was walking towards the door with my bag filled with items, looking around, over my shoulder, looking for the ATM. I guess I was sweating Guilt.

"People gotta use baskets," he said, his voice a gravelly mess. [He might have had a cold. Thought and prayers to him and his family.] His eyes were baggy and it looked like he had high blood pressure, all squinty eyes and red florid face.

"I...understand, man. No problem," I said. I set my bag down on the ground, next to a caramel apple display and wandered over to the ATM. "I just had to get some money," I added.

"Or use these," he said, striding bowleggedly over to the baskets near the front door. He grabbed one and walked over towards me. I met him halfway and took the proffered metal handbasket.

"I wasn't going to steal this stuff, you know," I said.

"Yeah, well, we just gotta keep everything under control."

"I...understand, man."

I walked around the bananas and oranges and slid the basket across the floor, where it came to a rest next to my illicit green recyclable bag. That was my nonverbal smack-talk, as if to say, All right, dude. I got your fucking point. Now can I please use the ATM so that I can buy this shit?

Rebel roar.

TEST, TEMPTATION OR A TIGHTROPE?

I was driving home from work today, anticipating the unbridled joy of a three-day weekend. Friday. Fun-day. And, in the past, "Time-to-Crack-the-Unending-Beer" day. This is the phenomenon in which one cracks a cervesca upon opening one's front door on Friday afternoon and not stopping the beverage-fest until around 11:00 on Sunday (or, in this case, Monday) night. Suffice it to say, one feels a bit woozy and sick by the end of the "party." So one cracks a hair of the dog on Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday and--whee!--we're right back to Friday again. It's a viscious cycle, and it is a cycle that I am pretty happy to have broken. On the 7th of December, I will have not drank a truely alcoholic beverage for 365 days, also known as 8760 hours or 525,600 minutes. Or, for all you Minutians out there, thirty-one-and-a-half million seconds. So, yes, I am glad that I have a lot of clean time behind me.

But I still get cravings. Obviously, I still get cravings. Be it because I am happy or because I am sad or because the day ends in a "Y," I still get cravings. Like today, for instance.

I was driving home and I was listening to the radio and I was feeling pretty good, driving along Woodward Avenue with my arm out the window and I thought to myself just how damn good a beer would taste. And then I realized I needed cigarettes, so I pulled over at a liquor store and went inside. When I was drinking, this store would have been heaven. They carry all kinds of beer: microbrews, imports, domestics...you name it, there's a good chance that they have it. The beer didn't really interest me, though, as I walked past the coolers to the small freezer section and selected a frozen burrito that goes by the name "The Bomb." I walked up to the counter, behind which there were oodles of different types of liquor and I bought my burrito and a pack of smokes and I got my change and I left the pit of snakes.

When I was walking to my car, I noticed a blink of blue out of the corner of my eye. Damn, I said to myself, that looks amazingly like a tall-boy of Labatt Blue. And something seems strange about it.

So I executed a picture-perfect double-take and my suspiscions were confirmed: It was indeed a big ole can of Blue and there was something different about it. It was unopened. I looked up and down the sidewalk. There was no one around. No cars, no pedestrians, just the can o' Blue, unopened and dripping with cold heavenly condensation. I would like to say that I said, "Oh, fiddlesticks," and returned the beer to the man behind the counter with the explantion that someone must have left it outside when they got into there car. That would have been the logical thing to do, sure, but when the hell have I ever been logical? I am an alcoholic in recovery and I have just passed my eleventh month of sobriety. It's not always easy to be black and white about some things. So I pocketed the beer and got in the car and slid it in next to the frozen burrito.

[Let me pause here to say that if that is not a delicious slice of irony--putting a virtual life bomb next to a foodstuff entitled The Bomb--I am not a bald man who wears his pants too high on occasion.]

Bombs in place, I pointed the car towards home.

The drive from that liquor store to my house takes about ten minutes. It seemed much longer. What're you doing, Adam? I asked myself. You're not going to drink that, are you? You've got eleven fucking months, man. Don't be a fool. You know what happens. You know how you get. Do you really want to start all over at the beginning? Will it be worth it?!

Of course it wouldn't be worth it. But.... But, come on, one fucking beer? 22 ounces of water and barley and hops? What the hell could it hurt? I am not a dummy. I knew what it could hurt. It could hurt all the progress that I had going for me and, even if I stopped after drinking that one beer, it would pave the way to future weaknesses. It would--yes! just having that one beer!--it would make it so much easier to rationalize relapse on a later date.

"Then why the hell is that beer in there?" I asked the brown paper bag. "Because you want it," I answered.

And the fulcrum teetered.

I got home and put the burrito in the freezer and lit a cigarette and looked at the can of beer. The angel and the devil were fighting on my shoulders, pointing sharp little fingers at each other from around my bald pate. In the end, the angel won.

I took a picture of the beer, snapped in an ominous light, and I walked the Labatt to the bathroom and cracked the top and--after inhaling deeply of the ambrosic odor--dumped the motherfucker into the toilet. That seemed fitting, to me. I know without a doubt that going down the Drinking Path will only lead me and my life into the toilet. So what more fitting grave could there be for the delightful beverage than a commode?

But--holy catfish!--that was a close one.

OLIVER HASKELL: "WHO? ME??"

So I was in the kitchen, laying out my wallet and cell phone and keys for the bleary-eyed morning, when I heard the rapid light bass of approaching beagle footsteps. I set down my wallet and turned from the counter and reached the doorway just as Oliver was skittering around the stove and into the kitchen.

His tail wagging furiously, Oliver skidded to a stop and simultaneously dropped at my feet the snack-sized bag of M&M's that heretofore had been mocking him from the living room table. With that declaration of his omnipotence, Oliver turned on a dime and trotted back into the front room, whereupon he hopped up onto the chair and curled into a beagle-ball.

The kid is Eddie Haskell. Had I not been in the kitchen, I'm sure that I would have found little brown pieces of an M&M's wrapper scattered about the floor and Oliver would have had chocolate candy chips in his chaw. But I was there. And so Oliver improvised. He shifted plans in mid-skitter and laid the offensive delicacy at my feet, my fearless beagle knight.

[And I'm sure that Lou watched the goings-on from the living room, thinking to himself, Okay. It's been fun. But when does this buzzkill leave?]

FOOD OF THE PAST

I was thinking, today, about some of the food choices I made in my youth. We three kids were brought up on unfailingly healthy and nutritional food, so it's the food that I snuck that I was remembering.

I used to make myself peanut butter-and-butter "sandwiches"...when my mom and dad weren't looking, that is. What I would do is cut off a couple of pats of butter and use those as the "bread" of the sandwich. Then I would take a spoonful of the all-natural (just peanuts and salt) chunky peanut butter and spoon it in between the two slices of butter. Voila! A cholesterol sammich was never better.

I also liked sweets. I still do. But now I have all kinds of money to go to the store and buy Reese's peanut butter cups or Heath bars (to dip in peanut butter) or Three Musketeers, or whatever. Back then (when candy bars were twenty-five cents) I had only my allowance to satiate my sweet tooth. My sisters and I would walk the quarter-mile to Sav-On Drugs and load up the small paper bags with contraband like Coca-Cola and candy bars and Doritos. I was partial to Mallo Cups, too. If you've never had them, they come in a yellow wrapper and they're like whipped coconut cream in a chocolate cup. Just like a Reese's, but with coconut chips. Ambrosia.

I also remember secreting away the Minute Maid frozen concentrates of lemonade and orange juice. I would take a grapefruit spoon (with the serated tip) and I would scrape at the tangy sweetness (um, not that tangy sweetness) until it was melted enough to squeeze out into my mouth. And then there was that container of frozen strawberry pie filling that I, over the course of a month or two, surreptitiously scraped at until all that was left was a sort of frozen sweet red backwash.

Ah...good times.