The making of a sociopath

When I was a kid, it was fashionable to give kids baby chickens or ducks or rabbits or various other sort of doom-destined creature for Easter. None of them survived. It was a cruel tradition, one I'm glad to say, has gone away. But I wanted and got the cutest little Easter chickie when I was about six. He slept with me. I called him Red.

My Dad was overseas, so at the time, we were living with my great-grandparents on a huge, adventure-filled farm in Ohio.

As Red got bigger, he outgrew the house and had to go live with the other chickens in the hen house. Man could that boy crap.

Then one day, my Grandmother called me for dinner. Home fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green beans picked fresh out of the fields. Um-um. It was good.

After the meal, Grandpa let me know it was MY rooster that we had eaten. BAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRFFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!

At that exact moment, I metamorphosized from a mild-manner kid to a rant-raving sociopath... THEY ATE MY PET EASTER CHICKEN. IS NOTHING SACRED?

I hold nothing against my grandparents. They were good, loving farm folks and that's just the way they did things on the farm. The saying, there can only be one rooster in the hen house is not just a saying. I found that out that day.

There's a game on tonight?

Damn, Walmart was busy. Everybody was talking about "the game". Am I missing something here? Really. Nobody ever tells me anything.

I want to have this man's child

Our lights are back on!!!!!!!!!

Damn Ducks

Missing!!! Help me please!!!

I made a snowman today. I named him Bob. We became friends. Good friends. I went inside to fix him a snow cone and when I came back outside, he was GONE! Someone had kidnapped him.

I'm pretty sure the kidnapper has buried him alive. I'm offering my collection of Barry Manilow CD's as a reward (one of them is scratched but it plays OK except for the track "...and I need you today oh, Mandy... oh, Mandy ... oh, Mandy ... oh, Mandy ...").

I just want Bob back. Sniffle.

Don't Eat the Yellow Snow - Frank Zappa

Dreamed I was an Eskimo
Frozen wind began to blow
Under my boots and around my toes
The frost that bit the ground below
It was a hundred degrees below zero...

And my mama cried
And my mama cried
Nanook, a-no-no
Nanook, a-no-no
Don't be a naughty Eskimo
Save your money, don't go to the show

Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said oh, oh oh
Well I turned around and I said ho, ho
And the northern lights commenced to glow
And she said, with a tear in her eye
Watch out where the huskies go, and don't you eat that yellow snow
Watch out where the huskies go, and dont you eat that yellow snow

My Latest Hobby

I was going to take up take up Naked Alligator Wrestling, but changed my mind.

The Time Warp

I remember doing the TIme Warp
Drinking those moments when
The blackness would hit me and the void would be calling
Let's do the time warp again...
Let's do the time warp again!

The last thing I remember was my wife dancing around the ballroom in the opposite direction of everyone else and a Klingon playing one hell of a lead guitar on stage. I mean, this alien was CRANKIN' out the Time Warp! (I HATE that song.) Picture the famous bar scene from Star Wars, only add about 1000 more overweight aliens and now imagine all that in the ballroom of the New Orleans Hilton. Ugly thought, I know, but that's the way it was. Humor me, please.

Then my face turned red and I couldn't breath any more. Ack.

... 2:25 a.m., World Science Fiction Convention, Our Honeymoon, New Orleans, LA

... 2:35 in a cab, on the way to the Tulane E.R.

... 2:50 Tulane E.R. Ack. Ack. Can't breath. Ack. Red as a beet. Ack.

Shot of epinephrine. Shot of adrenaline. OK now.

Moral of story: Ate 8-1/2 dozen raw oysters in 5 days. Discovered am allergic to oysters. At least in LARGE quantities. Didn't know that until now.

Yes, it really was our honeymoon. And yes, there really was a Klingon playing lead guitar. Not a hallucination.

Tip for CAT scan operators...

I had a CAT scan two weeks ago and as I was leaving the room, I glanced into the operator's room and saw one of my images on the screen...

If YOU are an operator of a CAT scanner, here's a handy little tip:

DON'T LEAVE SHIT ON YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN FOR PATIENTS LIKE ME TO SEE!

I have no idea what I saw on the screen because I'm NOT a f**king doctor, but I'm now thoroughly convinced I have malaria, bubonic plague, VD, a telephone pole lodged in my liver, a fatal disorder of the appendix (which I've already had removed), AND cancer of the spleen, whatever the hell a spleen is. And I'm pretty sure I'm pregnant, though I'm a male.

Please, please, please, take the damn images OFF THE SCREEN before hypochondriacs like me leave the room! Armed with ZERO medical knowledge and a 10 second glance at a CAT scan, I'm now searching the internet to determine what rare and insidious diseases I have before I get my results THREE weeks from now! AAARGGGHHHHH!

It's probably nothing ... you know, it DID kind of look like Pac-Man.

Back again

Out of my funk.

Not sure what that was all about.

Yes I am. Life moves on.

It's never too early to start shopping for a Derby hat

And I think I may have found it.

When Pugs Don't Pay the Phone Bill ......... Part Duex

Sorry, had to pull this one out of archive for a repeat. Our pugs Shimpaku, Jiang Wei, and Tokoname.

New Year's Resolution

Clean the cat crap off the weight bench in the basement.

The Racing Roaches Story

I was pretty bored in High School. Except in art class. That makes sense. I'm an artist.

My friend, Duke, and I, caught a couple of good sized cockroaches in art class one day and not content to leave well enough alone, painted them in racing colors. You know, like stock cars. If we'd have small enough paint brushes, we'd probably have put sponsors on them too. And when we were done, we carefully packed them into the barrel of a Bic pen (after removing the pen cartridge).

And off to Geometry class we went.

We didn't much care for our Geometry instructor. Or maybe it was Algebra, don't remember. It was Mr. Martin, whichever one he was.

Duke and I sat in the back of class.

Let the races begin.

We let the cockroaches go. They scurried up the class aisles. Being neon yellow and magenta, one with polka dots, the other with a racing stripe, they were hard to miss. A girl sitting in front of us, we shall call her Kathy ... because that's her name ... screamed and stomped on our damned racing roaches. End of race. Two little mushy yellow and magenta blobs on the floor.

Crap-ola.

All that art gone up in flames.

I'm going to hell for this one...

When I was in art school, I had to take a few academic classes, not many, but a few. They were a real pain in the butt. Things like English, Psych, that kind of stuff. We also had to take a few "electives". I whimped-out and took an adult-education painting class. Considering I was an art major, I'm surprised they let me get away with that, but it slipped through the system somehow.

Basically, it was an evening class attended by Indianapolis senior citizens that wanted to learn how to paint. I didn't really know how to paint, still don't, I'm a graphic artist and work with a computer. Anyway, I never went to class and took it pass/fail which meant all I had to do was get a D and it was the same as getting an A, I got full credit for the class. So I showed up for the first class and the last one.

So long story short, it was the night before "finals" for the class and I hadn't started on my project. I'd done a 3-dimensional painting for another legitimate class earlier in which I'd stretched canvas over wooden shapes. The resulting canvas looked kind of like a snail-azoidish-thingy. It got me a B in 3-D class, so why not rehash it for this class? Okee-dokee. I spray-painted it metallic silver. I also spray painted my platform clog shoes silver to match (gotta' have matching shoes and painting, right?). I then took two light reflectors and inserted a blue bulb in one of them and a red one in the other. I popped the lenses out of my cheap sunglasses and replaced the lenses with heavy blue and red gels in each of the eyeglass holders. And prepared my speech.

Off to class I went wearing my metallic silver, platform clogs. They were SO cool.

I carefully measured off 10 feet from the canvas on the floor and placed a strip of tape on the floor. This was the "observation line". I placed the blue light on one side of the canvas and the red one on the other side. When it was my turn to present my painting, I turned on the colored lights and had the instructor put on the colored glasses and stand on the "observation line" which I explained had been carefully calculated to produce the optimum three-dimensional effect.

There stood this poor instructor wearing these stupid looking red and blue glasses. The glasses and lights actually did nothing. Nothing at all. The canvas looked only slightly dimensional from any distance with or without the glasses and lights.

But after a few moments pause, she studiously stated, "I see it, I can see what you've done now. I can see the dimensional effect." She declared it fine art.

And it was at that point. I knew I was going to hell.

Everyone in the class took turns putting on the glasses and taking turns saying, "OOOOOO" and "AAAAHHHH". Some of them muttered that they couldn't see what everyone was talking about - I scoffed at them.

A couple of the REAL painting students were hanging around that night slumming and I remember being ashamed. So ashamed. They just gave me the knowing Evil Eye.

And Mam', if you're out there reading this now, I APOLOGIZE from the bottom of my heart. I'm truly sorry. What a jerk I was.