The Two Towers of Babel

By the time I hit the parking lot of the Hilo branch of Wal-Mart, I was running very late, and the bad news was that I'd either have to arrive even later or forego lunch. I pulled into a nearby lot where a couple of fast food restaurants were located. There was a long line at the Subway counter. The windows of Pizza Hut didn't allow you much of a view, so I had to go inside to find out that it too was packed.

Bad luck. Under the circumstances, I decided to skip lunch, figuring I might be able to pick up something later along the way. And if not, how long could all of this possibly take? I might become hungry, but I felt OK now and figured I could hold out for a late dinner if necessary. Besides which, I had the peanuts. They'd hold me over for a while. They do when you’re at the bar, right?

I hauled ass back to Akiko's place. Unfortunately the traffic had intensified. When I finally pulled up at the bed & breakfast, I was almost an hour late.

I hurried over to the loft, but didn't even make it through the door before Akiko called to me from inside her office.

"Niko was looking for you. Could you go tell him you're here?"

With Akiko's urging, I headed over to the large house and called his name through the screen door. There was no answer.

I knocked loudly on the door. Nothing. I called louder. After a moment, I heard footsteps, and there was Niko. He wasn't especially impatient. In fact, he told me to give him about 10 minutes. He'd just taken a shower.

I headed back over to the loft. Akiko poked her head out and asked me if I'd talked to Niko. I told her that he'd asked me to wait. She thanked me for helping out w/ all of this. I said no problem and went out about lacing up my new boots and loading all the other shit I'd bought into my pack. Then I went and sat in one of the plastic lawn chairs and waited for Niko.

After a long day of travel, everything seemed surreal. I was on the Big Island of Hawaii. The luggage, the rain, being lost on that mountain road—I hadn't even had a real chance to stop and think—or even to just be in Hawaii. All of the visions I’d had of wandering languidly on a beach, maybe walking along paths in well-maintained but nevertheless lush fern growths—those images seemed hazy now, lost in daylight.

And now I had all this other shit to adjust to. I was still trying to process the strangeness (for me) of Akiko's place, not to mention of Hilo. And then there was the afternoon and evening ahead of me. Again, with no time to think, I'd been pulled in by circumstance. Again, I could've said no, but volcanoes? Lava?

I felt a small thrill at the idea. I remembered those 2 dark shapes as I'd seen them from the window of the plane last night. They seemed real, even now. Sure, they were dormant, but I could feel their influence. It was almost physical. Maybe it was my imagination, over-stimulated by a lack of sleep. I'm not one to believe in metaphysical forces, even subtle ones. And yet somehow, everything—every detail—seemed so weirdly appropriate.

Still, even if I was OK w/ where I was and enthusiastic about where I was going, I knew there was still a lot of difficult shit ahead. The drive to the park was going to be a job in itself. The full significance of traveling w/ & being responsible for a 16 year-old kid was beginning to sink in. Even under the best of circumstances, hanging out w/ a teenager was supposed to be difficult. And I didn't know how difficult. I hadn't had any real contact w/ someone that age since I'd been in high school myself. Add to that the facts that I'd just met Niko, he barely spoke English, and I barely spoke German. All in all, I was pretty sure it spelled hijinks.

And pretty soon, there he was, hauling his own pack. I opened the trunk for him and he threw it in. He was smiling, shyly, rarely meeting my eyes. A quiet kid, but easygoing, it seemed. We got in the car, and I headed off toward Hilo.

I had some trouble with the whole Highway 19/Kamehameha split. I hadn't had any trouble with it on my way to Wal-Mart, but I was still adjusting to the geography. I asked Niko to look at the map and to tell me what I should do next. But by the time he'd processed my request, (if he ever did at all,) I'd discovered that it didn't really matter. The street rejoins the highway just before you hit the big turn at the airport.

To get to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park from Hilo, you have to take Highway 11 SSE for about 30 miles. Once you get past Wal-Mart, the buildings quickly disappear, and the traffic dramatically thins. Pretty soon, it's just you and maybe a few other cars—sometimes none at all—and you can open up to a nice pace.

Somewhere in this vicinity, Niko and I struck up a conversation. It was predictably muddled, but not entirely unsuccessful. In some ways, I think it's less frustrating to attempt to communicate w/ someone whose language you don't understand at all, and vice versa, then it is to try to establish some sorta situational pidgin. If, for example, you speak some German, and the other party speaks some English, you find yourself chasing after these elusive, half-remembered pieces, and being lured into various dead-ends by words or phrases that seem equivalent but aren't. Whereas w/ someone who speaks an entirely unknown language—well there you pretty much let any notion of translation go from the outset and look for alternatives to it.

An example: Niko was very interested in the fact that I wrote. He wanted to know what I was writing about, of course. Aside from my blog and some journaling and that sorta horseshit, I also occasionally write fiction. Mind you, I am no good at it. It's something I do out of a love of writing rather than any literary aspirations. Mostly I write short stories, but here and there I work on a novel. It's wholly ridiculous—all about the metaphysical truths discovered in a guy's bowel movements--and I was having some trouble getting this across to Niko.

Part of it had to do w/ my reluctance to use the word "shit" (here Scheisse,) cuz like, you know, some people don't want you using that sorta language w/ their kids. Granted, Niko was a pretty old kid, and there seemed to be a "progressive" upper middle class parenting dynamic here. (E.g. w/o the slightest trace of irony, Niko referred to his dad as "Stefan.") Nevertheless, you never know how other people view some things, and people are often esp. sensitive where their kids are involved.

My sister, for example, was upset at a book I'd picked for my 2 year old nephew to read when he came to visit me. Walter the Farting Dog. I thought it was a hilarious, good-natured book. She was appalled by the word "fart." She said she didn't want my nephew using the word at daycare, thus leading the other parents to wonder what sorta person she was. To me this seems, uh, a bit excessive, but hey, he's not my kid.

Nevertheless, I resisted using the word "shit" until I ran out of options. Didn't help that the only other words that I could think of that had anything to do w/ shitting were Arsch, "ass," which you gotta admit, is pretty far removed from shitting, and the more pointed Arshloch, you guessed it, "asshole," which if German expletive coinage was of roughly equal value to that of English, well, asshole, shit... Which one's worse? Standards have changed, and I use both of 'em alla time anyway. Beats me.

Anyway, there we were, driving into increasingly wooded countryside, with the altitude increasing, and never have more fumbling attempts to mention taking a shit w/o the use of the word shit been made—and in some bizarre German/English linguistic hybrid at that. The conversation woulda been hilarious to watch, I'm sure. Belongs in some comedic film, maybe w/ both languages subtitled so that everyone out there could, we hope, know what the fuck is going on. I know I didn't. But so eventually it came down to shit. I just, uh, couldn't eliminate the word.

I think Niko apprehended the whole thing a long time before he made it clear that he did. I suspect that he was thinking he must've been reading me wrong--that some linguistic quirk was at work here, 'cuz like, is this guy telling me he's writing a book that, when you boil things down, is about a guy shitting?

Fact, he thought it was pretty funny, but he wanted to know what, if any, larger significance the excremental focus of the, uh, tale had. If shit had been hard to describe, satirical magical-realist stuff was even harder. He didn't know from Garcia-Marquez or Nabokov or anybody like that. In fact, and I'm not sure about this, the little fucker didn't seem to know who Kafka was! Holy shit! And he calls himself a kraut! Well, actually, I doubt he calls himself a kraut. He never did in my hearing, but you know, he is a kraut, and he didn't seem to know who Kafka was. I think. I could never quite ascertain that.

But so, OK, I mentioned Kafka and friends because just telling him what kinda story it was didn't make any sense to him—or not much anyway. His phrasing of English was so awkward that half the time I thought he was saying something entirely removed from what he meant to say. What's more, his accent was thick—not as thick, I imagine as was mine, when speaking German, but going back & forth, we got bogged down in discussing the story's tone—about which he really wanted to know. That's why I started listing off the names of authors, which largely or entirely he didn't recognize. I had a fuck of a time trying to say that these guys influenced, no, inspired, no, motivated—ah fuck—me. He didn't know any of these words. And it wasn't till about 10 minutes after we'd let the thing go that I remembered the word inspiriert. At which point, I hit myself in the forehead approximately 5714 times.

As if that wasn't bad enough, I asked him what his novel was about. Huh. Well, OK, it was about a party of adventurerers and some orcs and elves and other Tolkienalia. It had a complex narrative of both epic and human scope, as these things tend to. There was betrayal, struggles with the desire for vengeance, battles, quests, an 80 zillion year mythology type back-story etc.

I describe it this way less to belittle the kid, who I gotta say, I both admired for his ambition and imagination and just plain liked. (Plus, I'd be a hypocrite, as in my day, I spun many 20-sided die, as my 18th level paladin hacked off heads w/ his vorpal blade, etc.) (P.S. R.I.P. Gary Gygax. Just gone as of this writing.) Besides which, I'm not sure my story is as good as his. At the very least, he seems more certain about where it's going than I do about mine. I mean, fuck, he could probably give you a 100pp. synopsis on request. He probably has them lying around. And if that seems like a long synopsis, lemme just say that I'd be surprised if he pulled the whole novel off in less than 1200 pages.

Oh yeah, and did I mention that he writes poetry too—on nature subjects and about elves, etc.? He sez he finds the Hawaiian landscape inspiring for the type of story he's telling. I don't doubt it. Some places on the Big Island are at least as fantastic as any thing Tolkien dreamt up after smokin' a bowlful. (Notice how he’s holding a pipe in, like, every photograph that's ever been taken of him? Pot n' hobbits: 2 great tastes that taste great together.)

Anyway, the good news was that we had a common interest: writing, and we could work out a rudimentary sentence or two together, usually. The drive went faster, and I think Niko liked me better than he might some adults. Or maybe I'm wrong. He seemed pretty easy-going anyway, but he seemed interested in me and what I was about.

Fact, I got the sense—and maybe this is just me projecting my own analytical horseshit onto him--that he sorta looked at each of the adults around him while I was there—i.e. Akiko, Stefan and myself—as not exactly role models, but grist for the mill of looming adulthood. Dad was dad. I was a weird hippie artist type—at least that's how Stefan seemed to view me. And Akiko... Well, she definitely had a big influence on him.

When I remarked that I might like to attend morning meditation w/ Akiko, but I couldn't get myself outta bed much before 5 or so, and I always write 3pp longhand straight outta bed, (true,) he told me that meditation focused his mind, and as a result he got way more writing done. In his mind, that made the punishment of a 5 a.m. waking more than worth it. Hafta try it some time. (Unfortunately, I never made it to even 1 session while I was there.) He did seem to be on a roll.

A more sinister part of Akiko's influence was the way in which he was absorbing her taste in music. Every morning, right before she'd start in on breakfast, Akiko would put some new age muzak on an overhead speaker system. It had lotsa Chinese type harps n' percussion and that sorta jazz. It was inoffensive, but not esp. something you'd want to listen to. Unfortunately, you were sorta stuck w/ it while it was on, unless you were gonna crank yr. shit up really loud—headphones or otherwise. Like Run-DMC in the video for “Walk this Way. (Which I guess, at the end of this video, would mean you’d end up w/ some unholy union of Iggy Stooge and Yanni, or something like that.)

Anyway, this poor kid said he liked the same music as Akiko. I had a pretty strong feeling he hadn't heard it before coming to stay & that B&B. Again, a real whirlwind convert.

What's worse, aside from the new age shit, the only other music he could think of that he really liked was, gulp—if I was understanding him correctly, & I hope--River Dance! Aggggh!!! All this because I made the simple mistake of asking him if he wanted to turn on the radio. I figured he might force me listen to some crap top 40 stuff, but River Dance? Thank fuck they don't play that on the radio—or so he said. I don't know. We never bothered to turn the thing on & look for it.

See? Deeply frightening...

And I know I'm probably being an ass. I'm told I place way too much emphasis on someone's record collection as a means of getting to know him or her. (It does tell you a lot though.) I guess it's not a crime to like new age plink plunk or... even... (shudder) River Dance. (I guess.) But holy shit am I never asking him to make me a mix tape!

Nuts n' Meat

Wal-Mart. I hate Wal-Mart. But it was the best I could do.

Though I would’ve preferred that it were otherwise, I didn't have time to poke around in the local shops. I was running late and needed one stop shopping—some place that was pretty much guaranteed to have alla yr. standard consumer items. The map the rental car attendant had given me showed several stores and some local attractions. In ballpoint pen, she'd helpfully circled the places she thought I'd might need to know about including some fast food restaurants, grocery stores and Marts both Wal- & K-. K-Mart was downtown. I fumbled around after it for about 10 minutes, along one-way streets, w/ names like Wailuku, Waianuenue, Kalakaua, Kinoole, Keawe, Kilauea, and of course, Kamehameha. Most of them were 1–way. Then I gave up. I didn't have the time, and I was certain I could find Wal-Mart. Sadly.

I'd been to one other Wal-Mart. A few years back, my sister was unexpectedly stuck in Chicago for several days. She needed to pick up some extra clothes to get her through till she could go home, back in Michigan. (I have contact w/ my family about twice a year, at most. It’s a not-particularly-mixed blessing to begin w/, but what’s even worse is that whenever I do see them, I somehow find myself doing something real nice like shopping for women’s underwear. That’s a little disturbing, isn’t it?)

My sister wanted to go to Wal-Mart, because it was more inexpensive than Target or K-Mart. (My family is obsessed w/ paying the lowest amount possible for everything. For some reason—maybe elves swapped me for the real me while my parents were asleep—I’m completely insensible to the idea of a bargain, which, I’ll grant ya, is not esp. practical.) Wal-Mart is cheaper—a little—but aside from that & the sinister presences lurking beneath the surface, it's more or less the same shit, as I'm sure you know.

Except maybe it isn’t. Not entirely.

While it’s true that at Wal-Mart, the only place that’s wide open is the parking lot. In that respect, the store in Hilo was no different. But here, as I walked away from my rental car, I found a people watcher's dream, esp. if you are new to the Big Island. Like any other Wal-Mart lot, there was a fuck-ton of people, most of them, dressed casually in across a middle class spectrum. From the outset, one thing that was apparently different was the ethnic variety of the people.

I live in Chicago—sometimes referred to as the most segregated city in America. 'Tho I've often wondered how one might go about determining that to be true. By the spatial dispersal of populations or some such shit? Are we just talking about where people live? What about where they shop, eat out, watch porn movies or strip shows, eviscerate gargoyles, make rum punch, design occultist objects to instill dread and envy in evil spirits that might otherwise consume them, slip on banana peels, and mail in their Closinghouse Sweepstakes shit to the seemingly deathless but ever gloppin' Ed McMahon? Huh? Whatta 'bout that? I'm really not sure myself.

I will say that while you do encounter an even broader range of ethnicities in Chicago, you really don't much see many of the Pakistani folks who live in the vicinity of Devon & Harlem down in Pilsen, where truthfully, you don't see many people who aren't Mexican. I’ve seen very few (read “none”) African Americans shopping in the enormous Korean & Vietnamese markets up north, and even fewer (read, uh, “negative none?”) fake Euro-trash wannabe spa-visiting young professionals from the Gold Coast hangin’ out by the Robert Taylor Homes.

In the parking lot of Wal-Mart in Hilo, Hawaii, people of various ethnic backgrounds are so intermingled that you pretty much, for once in yr. life, shut off that part of yr. mind that uses the mental shorthand of ethnicity to sketch out someone you've just encountered. (Had a friend who sang the praises of identifying people by race, etc. A lefty 'twas he, & a fierce champion of multiculturalism. He once went into a frenzy when my clumsy mouth did utter the acronym "P.C." Seems my flabby liberalism had been polluted by the right wing media conspiracy.

Well, like, I do think it's wise & good to preserve the cultural features of various ethnicities, both to keep those of you who have a heritage in touch w/ it, (I am whiter than the purest ground cocaine-- n' twice as stimulatin', but no heritage have I,) and to bring richness n' wisdom 'n alla that to the greater multicultural stew, as we can all only benefit from that, right? Except for that here's potential prob. #1 w/ taking this thing a little too far. If we're all off identifying w/ our own culture, how the fuck are we gonna even make cultural stew? Not only are you way across the kitchen from this Italian American guy who is, of course, superbad when it comes to alla that pizza/pasta jazz, (prob. #2--isn't this getting dangerously close to stereotyping, but more about that in a sec.?) asserting your meekrob, but he's committed to makin' the same damn food he's always made--being proud of it and therefore a purist n' therefore not wanting to throw any curry powder into his lasagna, ‘cuz like dude, are you saying it's not perfect already? No stew in the works here, 'cuz you don't even care what's in his lasagna, since yr. shit is already more perfect.

(And I, exactly middle-of-the-road white person, got nothin' to bring to it 'cept for a year's supply of Wonder Bread. When it comes to ethnic food, even Spam's been taken.)

Then there's that prob. #2 we bumped up against back there a minute ago. (Hawahawhaw! "#2!!!!") The thing heeeerrrreeee is that yer reducin' everybody to a type. Not an individual, which is sorta creepy & dehumanizing, in my opinion, & cuts me off from around 75% of what I like about people: their unique, personal perspectives, personalities, etc. as individuals. Sure you can learn from other cultures, but outside of a pretty generalized inkling, how the fuck are you 'sposed to identify w/ 'em? Isn't that an important part of what makes us understand each other? And isn't that the reason you read a novel, say, is to connect w/ characters, who are, by definition, I'm afraid, individuals? You might be fascinated by their cultural traditions, but you see these traditions through these characters' eyes. You see how they feel about them, how they've been uplifted & hurt by them, etc.

When I talked about the poet Ema Saiko way the fuck back there, that was sorta the whole point, how empathy's kept me sane—seeing how ol' Ema was able to express things I'd felt but also to elaborate on them. And part of why that was important to me was because of our different cultural traditions, but it was also meaningful because she was a different individual than I am! I think!?!

(I think Jim Jarmusch agrees w/ me: his films are populated w/ inner city gangstas who are deeply devoted to Japanese Budo, Japanese guys who worship Elvis, Italian mobsters who love Flavor Flav & a Native American who speaks reverently and passionately about William Blake. That's just 1 reason I dig his movies. But it's a big 1.)

Anyway... The Wal-Mart parking lot in Hilo, Hawaii. Man would that place put my old friend to the test. It's nothin' but stew. Well, I'm sure that's not entirely true, but holy shit, try neatly separating and categorizing the different ethnicities on display & then isolating their cultural traditions! Ha! You'd blow a gasket!

And maybe that's Hawaiian culture--which I know there are indigenous traditions, and I don't mean to belittle them. But I did get the feeling that a big part of Hawaii--outside of the rich resort n' winter home-buildin' crowd--was cultural synthesis. The cool thing about Wal-Mart in Hilo is that within this lively confluence, everyone feels like an individual. Frequently an eccentric individual--it's damn near overwhelming taking it all in. But I met an assortment of people in Hawaii who were fuckin’ remarkable as individuals. And they were often biologically or just socially intertwined in terms of culture and ethnicity.

One thing all Targets, K-Marts, Wal-Marts have in common (as well as all their monstrous brethren—w/ names both hyphenated and not) is the fact that they're fucking crowded--usually w/ young families, it seems. Unsupervised kids hurtle about. Like shoppin’ arteries, the aisles are clogged up w/ oblivious slothful cart bearing adults. The words, "Excuse me" draw no reaction whatsoever. To get through, you have to contort your body and when it comes down to it, push a little. It's aggravating, it's sad, it's claustrophobic.

I found everything on the hastily scrawled list I'd brought w/ me from Akiko's. Sort of. I had a pair of 1-liter water bottles, band-aids, antibacterial cream, and an extra flashlight to go w/ the one I'd brought w/ me. I didn’t do as well w/ food. I was in a hurry, and so maybe I wasn't being creative enough. I needed food that traveled well and would stay good for a while. I was rushing through the aisles, not even seeing things. I grabbed an enormous can of peanuts (a stake-out fave) and then found my second food group: cured meat.

I'd had Slim Jims when I was a kid & seemed to remember that they both chewed and tasted like shoe leather. People always say that. Aside from starving characters in the movies—most notably, Charlie Chaplin, who may’ve come up w/ the whole gag—has anyone ever actually tasted shoe leather? Probably. I'm gonna try it. Later. I swear. I'd do it now, but I'm wearing canvas sneakers.

But it was portable and would last until Judgment Day. Wasn’t that its whole raison de teat? So really hoping I didn't get lost and had to turn to it, I grabbed 1 pack of beef jerky. Jerky. Spam. Hawaii: The Land of Mystery Meats.

I fared better in my search for boots. There were many, many options to be had in a staggeringly large section of the footwear area. And most of these were quite affordable. I went with a sturdy set of insulated boots. For around $10 more, I could've had the same model with the addition of a steel toe. Later, after stumbling into a lotta hunks of rock, I realized that I should've spent the extra money--much as I later understood that I should've rented a vehicle with 4-wheel drive. Live & learn, I guess.

Speaking of eccentric individuals (and of the general friendliness of the Big Island,) I found one while I was waiting in the checkout line. There was a woman in front of me, shoveling a heterogeneous mixture of domestic items onto the belt in front of her. She was short and thin with brown hair that had been bleached blond in places by the sun. Her face was a deep bronze tone you can't get at any tanning salon. It was also kinda tough looking--leathery, you might say, 'tho that word has connotations of ugliness that I wouldn't apply here. (Leather again, and no B&D in sight. Fuck.) She could've been anywhere from 30-50. It was impossible to say.

She looked like she had just come from working in a garage. She had dirt under her nails and calloused hands. Her clothes looked as worn as she did. I don't mean used up--she was very much alive, not to mention unselfconsciously happy. She had shitty teeth--crooked, probably, to begin, but also showing signs of serious neglect. She radiated goodwill and good health.

Somehow, we got to talking. For the life of me, I don't remember how. Anyway, one of the things she was buying was a thermometer--the kind you use to take a person's temperature, not the climate's. She mentioned that it was the first thermometer she'd ever bought.

She had two kids, she said. "When I want to know if they have a fever, I feel their forehead." Seemed sensible enough.

She told me that she lived in a trailer on a large parcel of land nearby, and that she raised a lot of animals.

"This is for my mule," she said, neither blinking, nor showing any indication that she thought I might blink. Matter-of-factly put forward w/ the assumption it would be matter-of-factly received. It was. Almost. I'll admit I was surprised.

She seemed amused by the situation herself. But she wasn't trying to freak me out in a "I'm so weird, you're not" sorta way. Nor to come across as a standup comedienne. She was just making conversation. And when she'd been rung up, she very genuinely wished me a good day, and we said goodbye. Very nice lady. Very cool.

Still, if you ran into her in a Wal-Mart in Chicago, (actually it's in the burbs, but I can't think of which one,) or a Wal-Mart in Grand Rapids or wherever fuck you live (unless it's somewhere more off the beaten track,) you'd probably think she was weird. I did find her to be unusual, but only because I'd never met anyone like her. Not because she seemed out of place.

Twosies Beats Onesies

Well well well. Gee wizz. Look at how much time has passed. It’s really hard to believe it’s time again, isn’t it? Time for the Randomly Occurring at No Particular Time ForceBlog™ Awards. (In this case, it’s been 1 year, 5 mos.!!!) This time ‘tho, we’re gonna do something different—mostly since the last go-around rambled on endlessly in an unfocused way, & no one needs more of that shit, am I right?

I mean, the world’s already so rambling and unfocused. I couldn’t make heads nor tails outta the episode of The Munsters I was watching last nite. I think it had something to do w/ Hermann betting Grandpa that he could earn more money between ‘em if each of ’em started a new job—necessitating that Hermann, of course, take on a 2^nd job, since he had 1 to begin w/ and didn’t want to lose what had been up to that point a stable source of livelihood for his family and himself, including that argumentative coot standing in front of him at that very moment. And I think Hermann had to get a job as a hooker, for which he hadda wear a silly, wavy blond wig, cuzz it hadda be a nite job so he could keep his day job. And Grandpa got a much better job as a breakdancer in a major Hollywood pitcher. And in the end, Lily has to intervene, of course—‘cuzz she’s the only 1 w/ 1 lick (unnhhh) uv commen cents—and make ‘em cancel the wager becuzz Hermann’s dying from exhaustion from werkin' the 2 jobs, pluss he keeps bloodying the sheets w/ his overused rectum, which actually he kinda enjoys—again, of course—and Grandpa’s job really isn’t going so well, anyway, ‘cuz bein’ a breakdancin’ movie, they keep shooting all these daylight exteriors in high school parking lots or basketball courts, and he’s a vampire and keeps igniting like a human briquette, and then turning into a pile of dust, and then Lily has to reconstitute him from the blood of virgins w/ super-nice racks who run around in those 18^th century dresses that have those shoelace things right by a nest of exposed cleavage—and so he’s actually relieved to quit and so is Hermann. (‘Tho he’d rather have kept the night job and lost the day 1, Lily insists otherwise, cuzz her bein’ a vamp n’ all means she’d suffer a fate similar to Grandpa’s occupational foibles, and like then somebuddy’d hafta keep resurrecting her, and the whole thing woulda just gotten really old.)

That was really hard to keep track of. To be fair, I don’t think it helped that I was drinking. Heavily. I’ll admit it. Nor do I think it helped that I kept flipping back and forth between The Munsters and this LifeTime original movie about this girl who runs away and has to dye her hair blond and change her name to Marilyn and become really boring so she can hide out in crack house where she falls in love w/ this hirsute crackhead who’s obsessed, in a self-hating way that leads him to use drugs, w/ his mixed parentage—his dad’s an alien and his mom’s a robot and somehow he ended up being sea monster (w/ hair) and of course that doesn’t make any sense, but there was this really touching moment in the 3^rd act, where he decides to go clean, and they both start running around in fast motion w/ wacky music and a laff track goin’. It was pretty great.

But I didn’t understand that either, not a bit. And alla it went on too long. So I’m not gonna do that to you this time. No awards. No nothing. Except a fun but educational test of how much you know about this blog. We’re gonna commemorate the however many years we’ve been doin’ this (don’t remember, sorry) by quizzing you in a wacky sorta way. Just answer the questions below. Then we’ll check your answers at the end and use your score to see what a good reader you’ve been.

OK????? Ready??? Here goes! (And please note that all excerpts below were actually drawn from past installments of this blog.)

1) “…sick, crawling with parasites, freezing, hungry and unable to write a sentence, (which at the time, didn't seem like a very valuable ability anyway). He could hate. He had viscera, and therefore, he had feelings. It was beginning to seem that I did not."

True of False: This excerpt refers to a raccoon

a) false

b) true

c) misguided

d) there are no objective truths or falsehoods; all is but an illusion

e) I thought this was supposed to be a true or false question.

2) Which one of the following excerpts does not refer to Elizabeth Elmore?

a) “In her lyrics, Liz has never been about the other schlub, who’s usually a two-dimensional (one hopes) sketch of a lover. She’s about self –and generally self-pity at that—though she will hit an occasional rest stop for some self-aggrandizement.”

b) “True to form, Elizabeth pulls out all the stops here, as she lets her trembling but stalwart voice cut through crashing piano chords. Man, she works those dynamics till yr. guts are wrenched up like Silly Putty in the hands of a three year old. It’s only later, after you’ve recovered your breath, that you realize that the lyrics are the same old mish-mashed myopia that Elizabeth always ladles out…”

c) “…an exquisite and exquisitely gifted fox who spun excellent pop songs out to her public like so much (admittedly bittersweet) candied floss.”

d) “Let’s face it: I have no standard of comparison for what I see fermenting in Liz’s eyes. In all of my experiences, I’ve encountered nothing like it. Not even at the movies. It’s not an absence. It’s not even an absolute darkness. It’s not exactly feral or dead. It’s alien, but not in any imaginable extraterrestrial way.”

e) “What they miss—and I told 'em this—is yr. sensitive side. Vindictive as those songs may seem, they come from a deep personal pain.”

Who said it?!? (In this blog)

3) Handyman Titus

4) Movie star Charlie Sheen

5) Former Mayor of Chicago Harold Washington

6) Rock star Frank Zappa

7) Lame rock band The 8^th Grade.

a) “…my 8^th grade English teacher was all into prepositional phrases, obviously. I bet he even fucked ‘em. Yep. Fucked a phrase. That’s what I bet. ‘Tho my shrink has told me on numerous occasions that that is not only physically impossible, but kinda a pathologically weird notion.”

b) "In marsh I do lurk, sometimes it is true, but at least I have a real job, unlike you..."

c) “In the case of the Project/Object, you may find a little poodle over here, a little blow job over there, etc., etc. I am not obsessed by poodles or blow jobs, however…”

d) “…like Christopher Lee, who has everyone fooled into thinking he's still alive, but he really is a vamp since some pissed off vamps came and vamped him. The reason they were pissed, these real vamps, (dude, I mean, the other vamps, not Christopher Lee, who is also a real vamp, but wasn't yet at that point. Am I, like, making sense?) Oh yeah-- the reason these real vamps were pissed... (Do you think real vamps piss blood, I mean from all that blood they drink? Dude, that is so sick! I should ask one of 'em.) "Oh yeah... well these real vamps, (not including Christopher Lee, who wasn't a real vamp yet. Did I already say that?) These real vamps were pissed about the way that Chris, in those old Hammer movies, (man, those things are so cheesy, but you know, kinda cool,) was trivializing vamps in the eyes of the living and thereby setting the cause of Undead rights back, like, 50 years…”

e) “Fuck…”

8) In the entry “Bloggy Mountin’ Breakdown, Part 1” former Cubs a skipper Dusty Baker is fetishistically violated through the use of a cardboard cutout. Which of the following insults is visited on the figure representing him?

a) Darts are thrown at him

b) He gets pissed on

c) African army ants chew on him till he becomes a pasty pulp that is then used to caulk a leaky fluid-expelling dildo

d) He is smashed by a bottle of whiskey

e) a & d

9) Former Cubs catcher Michael Barrett, who is now barely clinging to a backup role as a San Diego Padre, personally acted out a cycle that made it pretty hard not to believe in instant karma. Which of the following did not really happen to Barrett but did happen to him in this blog?

a) He punched White Sox catcher AJ Pierzynski, who’d just slid into home

b) He hit a batboy w/ his face mask

c) He was hit in the nuts by a bad pitch that necessitated scrotal surgery

d) He had the living shit kicked out of him by hulking Cubs starter Carlos Zambrano

e) He got into a near-slap fight w/ squeaky kleen Cubs starter Rich Hill

10) “Her chaste legs guard dried, powdery loins that will never know my passion.” Each of the women listed below appeared in this blog. To which one of them does this passage refer?

a) Betty White

b) Bea Arthur

c) Andy Griffith’s Aunt Bea

d) Princess Lintguard

e) Mrs. Olsen from Little House on the Prairie

Match the celebrity w/ the manner in which she/he was tormented &/or killed:

11) Movie star Patrick Swayze

12) Alf, star of TV’s Alf

13) Jeff Foxworthy, star of TV’s The Jeff Foxworthy Show (et. al.)

14) Shellie Long, co-star of TV’s Cheers

15) William Katt, star of TV’s The Greatest American Hero

a) melted

b) burnt

c) cooked

d) smothered w/ a newspaper

e) castrated

16) Kleef doodle flikflak dirgle sirk deggdorp. Vlilmug fuck asserg plap blap, hzxxjkftr hbdewew rdfiuk klepp bknrugrug. Blip blop?

a) gfhiklcv

b) hjdxdx

c) Meridian, MS.

d) fdsytqq

e) Elizabeth Elmore

Match each of the following critical blurbs to the writer to whom it refers:

17) Breeze through Bamboo, collected poems of Ema Saiko

18) Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

19) The Nuclear Age by Tim O'Brien

20) The Stand by Stephen King

21) Feeling Good: the New Mood Therapy by Dr. David Burns.

a) "the book is less hip now..."

b) "sprawling but deeply flawed but not quite sucky..."

c) "bloated, sucky... it makes me kinda queasy..."

d) "a literary hunk of dog shit I had the misfortune to step in..."

e) "I have managed to remain corporeal since I read this book..."

Match the phrase to the object, person, or concept it describes:

22) Actor/comedian Adam Sandler.

23) The Joy of Cooking by Julia Child.

24) Niko, my friend from Hawaii.

25) This blog.

26) Contemporary Hollywood movies.

1. a) “…pretty tracers and blobs of light, but when you stop to consider them, they've already disappeared. They have little real, lasting significance."
2. b) "...furiously spewing out Teutonic consonants, as though he were a living Howitzer.”
   
3. c) "...he opens his mouth really wide and stares at you in a way you imagine a walleye might open its mouth really wide and stare at you."
4. d) "...a lotta dumb fantasies of a scatological and/or sexual nature."
5. e) "...a veritable duck-fuckin' Kama Sutra..."

27) Elizabeth Elmore leaves a singles bar on Chicago’s Division Street. She’s aggravated by yet another unsuccessful date, (the result of contemporary alienation, of course,) and so is moving quite quickly, (if circuitously due to the influence of recreational spirits). Elizabeth is traveling at approximately 3.15 MPH due northwest toward O’Hare International Airport, from which she will be embarking on a 4:15 AM CST flight to Augusta, ME. to join in an EstroJam on Toast… and the Road “mini-tour.”

At the same time, Sonic Boom leaves a shitty pub, at which he has been both shooting heroin and guzzling bitters in the exclusive backroom, where a bunch of aging Spacemen 3 fans, often fawn on him. Due to the soporific chemistry cooked up through the alcohol and opiates, he is moving very slowly, approximately 4 KMH, in a very circuitous route, w/ frequent stops to stare at a brick wall and/or puke in the London mud. His flight from Heathrow Airport to Chicago, whereat he will be appearing in a Sweaty Pale English Bands of the Late 1980s/Early 1990s Reunion gig, leaves at 7:38 GMT.

Elizabeth is traveling economy class on a crappy 20-seat “puddle jumper” prop plane, which is delayed on the runway for 42 minutes, and the plane is traveling at an average speed of 312 MPH. During the flight, she writes several scathing commentaries on her date—including considerations of his genital measurements and brand of underarm deodorant and the theoretical orientation of his therapist. She writes 1 song every 21 minutes.

Sonic Boom has boarded a classic Boeing 747, which takes off on time, unfortunately serves drinks, which causes Sonic Boom to puke repeatedly, (thus motivating his neighbors to seek new seats,) and travels at a mean speed of 672 MPH.

If, following 18 minutes in the air, Sonic Boom’s episodes of heaving occur every 1.47 hours, and he is barfing for the 7^th time at the exact moment their planes pass one another in the air, how many songs will Elizabeth have finished by that time?

Show all your work.

28) Use one of the blog excerpts below to fill in the blank: “…if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 37 years on this earth, it’s [to/that] ________________”

a) “popular entertainment venerates assholes.”

b) “srgtse”

c) “Even Valhalla must be unpacked.”

d) “Avoid subjects like gerbling or necrophilia unless I have something constructive to say about them.”

e) “Avoid looking at, fantasizing about, making sculptures and/or other artistic renderings of, smelling, licking, devouring, fucking, pissing on, picking my nose and wiping it on, fondling, kissing, writing sonnets and/or light or heavy operas concerning, producing video games or reality TV shows or music videos or documentaries about George Clooney’s ass. Oh yeah—and Western culture also refuses to provide adequate care for its sick and elderly.”

Wasn’t that just the funnest??? Huh!!?!!

OOOOOOOKKKKKKKK…… Let’s get to scorin’!!!! First, here are the correct answers:

1) b

2) d (Gotcha! You thought it was ‘c’ or ‘e’ ‘cuz they didn’t name names! The “Liz” here refers to Liz Phair! Shoulda studied!)

3) b

4) a

5) d

6) c

7) e

8) e

9) b

10) d

11) a

12) b

13) c

14) e

15) d

16) e

17) e

18) b

19) d

20) c

21) a

22) c

23) e

24) b

25) d

26) a

27) 110.369

28) c

‘Kay… So howdja doo? Whazzat? You got 14 & 15 wrong, but you think there was some sorta mistake? Hey, y’know, I’m really disappointed that you’d stoop to that level just to get yourself a better grade. Why do you think Shellie Long is so feminine?

Anyway, now come the fun part. Add up your total number of correct responses.

Now divide that by 69.

Now add this value to yr. IQ. (Don’t know yr. IQ??? Whatta ya, stoopid? OK, well go out & take an IQ test, and when you are done, come back here and we’ll finish scoring this test.)

Now multiply this by the solution to question #27. (Thought you were gonna slip by on that one, eh?)

Now go jerk off. Measure the volume of whatever sorta extrusion you come up w/ in milliliters. Add this to yr. prior total.

You should have a number between 7.1 and 8.4. This is the pH of your neighbor’s saltwater aquarium, wherein he/she keeps 2 Moray Eels named Shithead and Mr. Boogumbuggums. Go knock on his door. If he he/she doesn’t answer, use a crowbar to pry his door open. If he/she does answer, whack him/her w/ the crowbar.

Now piss in the tank. You’ll prob. have to stand on one of his/her green velvet upholstered barstools to do so. Be careful. The floors kinda warped from the weight of the aquarium and the corrosive action of the saltwater.

Now use one of your neighbor’s marine test kits to determine the new pH value and add this to your score. Now throw a toaster in the aquarium. (Your neighbor keeps one on top of the fridge. It’s kinda hard to see.) Don’t forget to plug it in first. If you do so after you toss it in, you might electrocute yourself.

Watch the eels thrash around for a second or 2 before you start to feel bad and yank ‘em out. (You have the presence of mind to use yr. neighbor’s wooden salad tongs that you can find in the dry sink drawer. Otherwise, you and the eels’d be havin’ a ménage a boil.) Throw the eels in the tub.

Now give ‘em mouth-to-mouth, one at a time. (Kinda awkward otherwise ‘Cuz w/ eels, you gotta put their whole snout in yr. mouth, like w/ a baby, and you gotta suck on it a lot, and if you do too much of that, you’ll get turned on and start whacking off (or worse—use yr. imagination here) and you don’t have the time for that at the moment—not if you’re gonna save those eels you harmed, you sadistic asshole!)

Now watch the first eel start to breathe uneasily. Gonna have to wait to toss him in some water—if you can find any that is both salty and relatively un-defiled/polluted/whatever. You gotta resuscitate that 2^nd eel 1^st.

Ho-kay, get to it! Suck! Oops! Wope! Shit. Kinda hurts the way that eel is hangin’ from your lip like a trailer of drool, don’t it. And worse, he’s piscivorous—the sorta eel that eats fish, primarily, rather than crustaceans. They got real pointy teeth. He could prob. hang there all day, if his teeth hadn’t impaled yr. lip. He couldn’t get loose if he wanted.

Now fall onto the edge of the tub, cracking your skull. Lose consciousness.

Wake up in the back of an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Your driver’s name will be Ernie tonight, and he just ate a liverwurst sandwich, and (of course) he has gas. Ah well…

Your neighbor called the ambulance, saving your life, as your head is ripped open really, really badly. (Not to mention yr. lip, which is not doubt suffering from tertiary infections at least. Eel bites, like the one on yr. now freakishly enlarged and purpled lip, are notoriously prone to infection. All fish bites are bad, but eels gotta really septic thang goin’ on.) Why your neighbor has decided to be so kind is anyone’s guess. If I was him/her, I woulda pissed on you and beaten you w/ yr. own crowbar. How do you like that?

Now, take the number of stitches needed to join the frayed flaps of yr. scalp into some loose knitting, (which still prob. leaves a sliver of yr. skull exposed BTW, that’ll getcha all sortsa prom dates,) multiply it by the number of vomit-inducing horse-pills you will be forced to take over the next month to fight the infection of your lip. (All worth it ‘tho… I hear that Shithead and Mr. Boogumbuggums are expected to live. ‘Tho they will prob. never entirely recover from the misery you have inflicted upon them, eels are particularly resilient as marine fish go. Frequently, they are idiotic/ingenious enough to squeeze outta even tightly aquarium sealed aquariums, causing their owners to wake to the sight of “reef jerky,” i.e., a dried-out eel, which will, nevertheless, quickly recover when returned to the water and allowed to shed skin for a day or so!)

Now take this value and add it to your previous total.

If you do not have a neighbor who owns an aquarium, add 1 to your previous total.

This is your score.

But what do these numbers mean? Gladja asked:

-2 – 0 You are a good but stupid person. You will prob. go to heaven, but everyone there will laugh at you for your lack of intelligence, breeding and good looks. You should read this blog more.

+1-57 You have very discerning nature. Yr. sharp intellect is admired by everyone else around you. Unfortunately, nothing else is. I’m not gonna pull any punches, as I can see how smart you are. I have a feeling that if you moved to Trondheim, you’d be happier. On the other hand, no one else who lives there would be. You prob. read my blog enough, but, you know, a little insurance never hurts.

+58-69 You’re perfect. Brains. Bodies—I mean, body. “Native intelligence.” (What the hell does that mean anyway?) Taste. Pure heart. (‘Tho not too pure for a little spring action, right?) Ooooooooonly thing you don’t have is a life! Wow, that sucks… You should maybe, like, find something else to do w/ yer time than, like, huddling in some dark room reading this. Too much of a good thing is not a good thing. I mean, look at junkies. Or Trekkies. So while you’re perfect, I wanted to offer that advice. It’s hard not to want to take care of you—to love you. I hope you don’t mind my opening up to you like that.

Even if you don’t exist.

See ya next time we do these random anniversary type things! Well, maybe sooner. I do intend to write before then. But who knows? For all I can say, this shit’ll happen again tomorrow? Fuckin’ random anniversaries…