UPDATED: last and WORST chapter

UPDATED UPDATE! COMMENTS ARE BACK! GO COMMENT! REMEMBER - IF YOU SUPRESS IT,IT WILL ONLY CAUSE PROBLEMS LATER, YOU KNOW.

UPDATE: BEAST, DANATOR, HENDRIX...blogger printed your comments at the end of the previous post. I just changed the settings again and apparently this was too much for the poor thing. but they're there.
now you have to read this aaaaaaaaaall over again.

AERIAL VIEW OF ODDIE'S HOUSE AND PROPERTY, HARRISON HILL:

as god saw it.......


I cut Eldest Brother off the regular stuff around August, and I dropped pretty much all pretense of working on the house regularly in order to find an apartment and a job. Of course, this meant returning every evening to Meadows having a conniption fit but fuck him and the horse he rode in on. I still worked on the place; I just did it when it was convenient for me.

Meadows, the self-designated 'brains of the operation', was used to getting his way in all things without question and took this badly. In August he embarked on a campaign of 'running a tighter ship' . His version of running a tight ship meant showing up at random times for about an hour to micromanage everything without the vaguest clue as to what was going on. It was like having Homer Simpson around, only not handsome or smart like Homer Simpson. We ignored him.
Except when he set things on fire.

Now, Eldest Brother was a marvel-the guy could do anything...automotive, electrical, carpentry, plumbing; you name it - and do it right the first time too.
This was not a hereditary trait.
From the moment Meadows walked through the door he burnt out power tools, fell out windows, put on doors backwards, broke mouldings, dumped paint cans, set wiring on fire, fell partway through the ceiling, poured joint compound down the sink, spilled thinner, collapsed wooden ladders...and then he'd have a cow when you offered to help.

His finest moment came when he plugged an industrial air compressor he'd rented into the household current and set the fusebox in the basement on fire.

Now that's bad enough...but you see, even though the place got upgraded wiring, it was only run upstairs, where the inspectors would see it, or so the sneaky 'brains of the operation' reasoned. Down in the basement he cheaped out. The fusebox was vintage 1945, meaning it still ran on glass fuses.
Except Meadows was also too cheap to buy fuses. So all the contacts were made with pennies.

It was a great fire, too; I mean, he did THAT right. Full on, flames shooting up, cloth wrapped wiring burning along the walls like dynamite fuses, sparks, black smoke boiling up out of the basement stairwell, floating strands of melted crud drifting around. The fire department showed up. Meadows ran up and down the stairs screaming 'Don't use the hose! Don't use the hose! You'll burn the place down!'
They ignored him.

They also slapped a 'stop work' order on the door.

I went full steam ahead on project 'Get The Fuck Out Of Dodge'.
__________________________________________

I'd moved all my everyday things up to the remodel as soon as there were utilities. Right after the stop work order was issued I started finding money missing out of my wallet. Or my wallet missing altogether. My clothes moved. My shoes hidden.

Meadows took me aside one day..."You know, if you leave those boys wont' work on that house at all. I know you've been around...you understand what I mean. We're adults. You're the only reason they go up there . So don't leave until we're done, OK? Is there anything you need? Can I, uh, buy you anything to sweeten the deal? Can I take you out to a nice dinner sometime? Or, har har, drinks maybe?"

Yeah, my little heart was going pitty pat. My pyloric was spasming, too.
Boy 'S'????
You utter fucking ass cabbage. Despite what your diseased imaginings might have suggested...or your diseased son Kelvin for that matter...there was MOST EMPHATICALLY no 'S' going on. Unlike you, dickcheese, I draw the line at sex acts outside my own species.

And how about him throwing his disgusting, married, misogynistic self into the bargain like a cherry on top, huh?

'Lissen-we both know you're a whore, so I'd appreciate it if you'd keep your snatch up here in the abandoned house long enough for the place to get finished, OK? And how bout I buy you a hamburger at the Eagles Lodge? Maybe I'll let ya blow me in the parking lot too! Whaddya say??'

That was August.
_____________________________________________

The first weekend of September was my last one in Milwaukie.
Oh, what a weekend that was, my darlings.

Hang on to something.
____________________________________________

The remodel was nearly finished , and the place was actually looking pretty good, considering Meadows had gone hind tit on all the materials. There was even an actual toilet! It looked so out of place!
There was a lingering ghost of dog that rose whenever it rained, but we figured that a coat of paint and a new floor would take care of that.
Paint? Check. But Fido remained.
Now the only task that remained inside the place was to refinish the floors.

Mr. Meadows handed me a scrub brush, a bucket and a box of Spic and Span.
" You want me to wax the linoleum after it dries or is it coming up?" I asked.
" All the linoleum's gone. You and Eldest already did the kitchen, remember?" he said.
I shrugged and set off.
All throughout the house the floors were a uniform sheet of mottled black and grey with kind of a burnished shine, except where foot traffic had worn a lighter trail. I thought it was an odd choice of linoleum for a house but I'd seen worse and gave it no thought. God knew it was filthy, though, and I was all for getting to work on that.
I set the bucket down and started . The dirt turned into curds under the scrub brush. I worked on that one spot for ages and was beginning to worry that the linoleum itself had deteriorated and I was scrubbing right through it. Better tell Meadows.
I picked up the bucket to go dump it out.
It stuck.
I gave it a yank. It came away with something sticking to the bottom. I went to flick it off and happened to look down at the floor.

Quartersawn oak.
What. The. Fuck.

I washed the bucket off in the sink. The crud on bottom slowly melted away under the blasting hot water. The smell that rose was enough to choke a buzzard. The drain clogged, and the sink filled with hair and rehydrated fragments.
It was dogshit, kids.

_________________________________________

I left the house, walked down to Sonnyboy's place, sat on his couch and cried.
My defences just split from top to bottom. They just collapsed. I'd reached my limit.
I'd been living in that.
And grateful.
__________________________________________

THE ABANDONED HOUSE/THE REMODEL/ODDIE'S HOUSE
NOTE: It's only a floor plan. Please don't cry.



I was sap enough to continue to do household chores and help out, though. That was why I was in the kitchen of the homestead doing dishes that evening when Sunflower came pattering out of the shower in a bathrobe. "Look! It's a miniskirt!' she chirped, twirling around. OK, nutjob, good for you. I kept washing dishes. The boys were still sitting at the table.
She came up behind me and bumped me with her ass.
I kind of chuckled and kept washing dishes.
So she threw me a hipcheck and I dropped a glass, which broke in the dishwater.
As I tried to pick the broken pieces out, she continued to bump me. She bumped me around the kitchen until she bumped me into a corner.
Then she started rubbing her ass on me.
I sidestepped out of the kitchen while she laughed. "Oh Sunflower," said Meadows fondly.

A few minutes later I went to make a slice of toast. I passed her in the dinette, still in her robe, sitting up on the back of a kitchen chair yakking on the phone. She twinkled her fingers at me and grinned. Yeah, hi you fucking basket case. I waved back and looked for the bread.
The next time I turned around she was giggling. I was looking right at her.

And she spread her legs.


Yes she did.
Yes, she did.

__________________________________________

I spent that night at Sonnyboy's. If his mother had come to the door I'd have slapped her across the face. AND spit on her neck.
This was Saturday.
_________________________________________


Why was I at the remodel Sunday morning? Because I'd said I would be.
Because I was a sap. A sap with a bucket of hot ammonia and a paint scraper.

For some reason the whole Meadows gang decided to make an inspection tour that day. In they trooped, still dressed in their church clothes (yes, I know. I know.) Sunflower sashayed through the place peering at things and opening cabinets like she had a clue. Fields and the boys trailed after. They all ended up in my back bedroom, standing around the bed and chatting.
When suddenly Sunflower leaned over, yanked all the covers off the bed and threw them into a corner.
As she was bending down to sniff the bottom sheet I walked out.

Hand this to Eldest, he came after me.
____________________________________________

That evening.
Sonnyboy and I show up to grab Eldest Brother and go party.
As we were leaving, out of nowhere Sunflower suddenly chirps " When are you buying her a ring, Eldest honey?"

WHAAAAAAAT?

" Well,' she continued as I stared at her in horror "You're getting married, aren't' you?"
" NO!" I blurted.
" Oh yes you aaaaaare" she sang.
"I can't afford a ring right now, mom" added Eldest Brother.

WHAT?

WHAT??
____________________________________________________


I was gone by Monday noon.

___________________________________________________




I did end up in a shithole and I did end up living on brown rice. In fact the shithole was so shitty they didn't ask for a cleaning deposit and weren't really insistent about first and last months rent either; which was good because I didn't have it. Nor did I find a job right away. By the time I did I was down to returning bottles for change like a wino.
And that was fine.

Recently I tried Googling them, but not a trace exists. The wife had an odd enough name that you'd think it would pop up, but it didn't.
And that's fine too.
I really hope they all went back to their home dimension.
Except for Sunflower, whom I hope is headfirst in a pile of shit in Hell.

Redd Foxx sez: 'You GOTTA Wash Yo Ass!" and here's why!

There's only one more episode after this, and this one's a funny one.
Suck it up.
______________________

Driving professionally takes a certain toll on one's hine, and Mr. Meadows was kind of gimpy after twenty some-odd years behind the wheel of a milk truck. At his best he walked like a sailor in a full diaper. When he got up from a chair, though, it would take him a couple of minutes to straighten out while he hitched around the room, bent over at the waist, knocking over potted plants and endtables with his giant ass.
We were watching this show one evening when Kelvin laughed and said to his brother "Hey, aren't you glad you don't have to squeeze his butt anymore?"

WHAT?
___________________________

I thank God that this happened before I knew these people.

Seems ol' dad had been bothering a zit on his ass for awhile and made it nice and infected. The time he spent loading and unloading his truck each night further aggravated this condition, as did hustling back and forth making deliveries. The additional hours spent behind the wheel seated on vinyl might as well have been spent scooting his bare backside across a patch of shag carpeting for the effect it had on his carbuncle. It grew into a distinct, golfball-sized entity one could detect through the heavy twill of his white uniform pants.

Yes, well. The spreading pinkish stain was also a giveaway that all was not well in assville.

But he carried on, brave soldier. And sure enough, his Spartan regimen of shitty diet, hairy crack, poor hygeine and neglect paid off; the thing subsided and went away. See? Nothing to worry about.
And all was well.

Until he hopped up into the seat of his truck one night and a quart of green pus shot out of his asshole, down his leg and filled his shoe. He screamed, he jumped, his forehead hit the windshield and he passed out.
Dad had given himself an anal fistula.

(Now at this point in our story Mr. Meadows himself jumped in, all smiles, and helped tell the tale. By the end even Sunflower had joined the fun and was giving us unneccessarily detailed descriptions of the laundry involved.)

Dad woke up in the hospital on his stomach with a freshly shaved fundament.
The original carbuncle had moved into the meat of the muscle and migrated downward toward a vestigial gland, which it ruptured and emptied into. Because this gland had an open channel to the rectal passage, all the old pus, infected lymph and necrotic guck met up with some brand new bacterial buddies floating around in the fluid that was already there. The whole stew turned into a horrifically toxic ticking bomb. When he jumped up into the truck, it all burst out through the pore-sized exit of the gland, enlarging it to the size of a dime.
All this had happened right at the ingress to his egress.
Yes.
He'd literally been torn a new asshole.

Now that dime, and the tennis ball sized cavity behind it, were cleaned out and filled with cotton packing. They sent him home and told him he could remove it himself in a couple of days.
Oh by the way. Don't leave rejoicing just yet, Mr. Milkman. If you don't keep your ass clean, the thing will FILL BACK UP.

Skip ahead one week.
It filled back up.
With the packing in place.

The only course of action now was to nut up, remove the packing, express the gland and keep it filled with Neosporin.
Sunflower flat out refused. Of course.

So the task fell to Eldest Brother.

There were several YARDS of surgical gauze up there.
Luckily, once the part that had hardened into a solid, cork-sized plug of green matter had been worked out, the rest of it came slithering out pretty easily.

Don't imagine that this was accomplished without lots of commotion on the part of Satan's Milkman. Eldest finally had to tie him to the bed.
With belts.

So every night for a couple of months thereafter, it was Eldest Brothers' job to tie his father to the bed, pinch his asshole between his thumbs and express the gland into a washcloth until it was empty. No matter how many washcloths it took.
Then he had to poke a tube of goo up there and squeeze until the goop started to squit back out.
Then he'd fold a towel into a square and tuck it between his cheeks, and wrap that in place with an ace bandage.
All done!


I never took a shower in that house again.

White Falcon Great : Eleven Time Mob Crimes!

NOTE: SSA, DON'T READ THE FOOTNOTES.
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.

Update.....
this is part of a series that began last friday. if you have no idea what's going on, that might explain it. so might wearing a drycleaners' bag over your head at night. wearing a drycleaners bag over your head at night is bad for you.
_________________________________________


I needed to move out of Milwaukie fast.
It was also pretty obvious from the 'help wanted' section of the paper that I'd have to move back in to Portland if I wanted to work.

Here's the breakdown:
I'd turned 19 in May. I left the Dishrag and moved back to Milwaukie by the 31st. Two weeks into June I was fired, had been been ousted from Sonnyboy's place, and started living in the house on Harrison. Now finally in July my unemployment had come through.
Now I got about 260$ per month in unemployment back then. Half of every check went into the bank along with everything else I could scrape together (and that wasn't much, with 130.00 and change to hold me for the rest of the month.) I still had a long way to go. In order to move out I'd have to save first, last, cleaning and another couple of hundred dollars over, just in case I didn't find anything right away. And that merely to be able to move in to a shithole and live on brown rice.
The longer I stayed in Milwaukie, though, the better that looked.

No, the Meadows' sideshow didn't get any less weird as time went on. Oh my no. In fact I came to realize that they'd been holding back.

I did my best to spend as much time as I could away from the Meadows' home. I put a permanent bend in the fence between their place and Sonnyboy's house, sneaking over in the middle of the night like a goddamn sixteen-year-old.* (Mommy dearest kept a weather eye on his front door. She'd even gone so far as to ask the Meadows to call her if I showed up at Sonnyboy's. I was getting the distinct impression she didn't like me.) I partied with people I knew around town, I visited Portland regularly looking for work, I even started eating meals out, even though this cut into my bankroll. (Well, that and the cigarettes. Fine; and the Two Fingers tequila. Hey; why drink piss? I may have been living in an abandoned house but I was a good hostess. )

The problem with that was that the weird ramped up exponentially. Each time I tried to sneak back to pick up a jacket or nab a sandwich there was another scene waiting for me. And Kelvin was always there. Maybe asleep. Maybe not.

I was having a sneaky sandwich one afternoon when Eldest Brother blew in, bent down and said 'be quiet and come look at this."
I should have known better at this point.
The door of Kelvin's room was in the utility room entry (see floor plan last post.) Of course, in a high-traffic area such as that, it was hanging wiiiiide open.
In the middle of his bed was a heap of sheets and blankets. It was hitching and bucking like one of those horsie rides at the supermarket.
Eldest brother whispered "Guess what."
"OH MY GOD KELVIN! CLOSE THE FUCKING DOOR!" I shouted in horror.
Kelvin poked his head out of the sheets and grinned. "My God, can't a guy jerk off in peace?"
_______________________________________

For some reason Kelvin seemed to take this for a 'bonding moment', and decided to make me his confidant. Whether I liked it or not. And I did not. So he stalked me.
Now Kelvin had the unfortunate and vastly dysfunctional family role as his mother AND his fathers' confidant; two people with no appropriate boundaries whatsoever. When he in turn confided something in me it was like being smeared with shit. It wasn't only the content of the revelations or the people involved, but also the fact that they dumped this insane, depraved bullshit on their youngest son. And he was so fucked up he lapped up the attention like a dog.

One of the stories he told me actually concerned him, though.

Kelvin had a once-in-awhile girlfriend who was Asian. Her parents were desperate for them to get married, but Kelvin was only after the 'tang. "Yeah," he bragged, " I used to have to tell her, 'Get the hell up and wipe your ass! You're disgusting!' before I'd fuck her. But eventually she learned what I liked."

What a silver tongued devil. And picky too!

He'd made the mistake of bringing her home.
Once.
Momma'd run into her room and slammed the door. Dad had made creepy remarks in front of her, asking Kelvin if it were true that Asian women had sideways gints, and wasn't he afraid of getting the Korean crud?

I mean honest to God. Poor girlfriend. Poor Kelvin, too.
________________________________________

Kelvin was a pervert above all things (I would not be surprised in the least if he was sat up in Rocky Butte right now for criminal trespass-window peeping or B and E rape.) He was also a toady, a sneak, a tattletale and one of the most pliant people I have ever met. If you insisted, he would bend.
That gave me an idea. I'd get him out of my face for good. After the first couple of whine-fests, every time he started in with the bullshit I came back with the 'apartments for rent-Milwaukie' section of the newspaper. After all, the guy had a full-time city job, benefits, savings and a car, right? Everything he owned would fit in the back seat. If I could keep the fire lit under his ass he could be gone before momma had a clue.

Obviously, this was doomed to fail. And it did.

I did the legwork. I fished his fricken paystubs out of the trash and drew him up a fricken budget, on paper, in his face for the love of Pete. I even found an apartment for him to look at. I got him as far as an inspection, too.
He panicked so badly that he practically ran out of the place. All the way home he kept repeating "No, my mother needs me. She just needs me, she just does. I can't do that. I can't DO that, Nations, I just CAN'T." By the time we got back to the house he was babbling. He ran into his room crying and slammed the door.
And only about half of it was faked.
_______________________________________________________

Eldest brother lived in a shed in the back yard. But this was no ordinary shed, make no mistake; he'd built it himself. He had a woodstove, skylights, and a loft in there, a rug on the floor, windows, insulation, cedar shake roof...it was tight. It even had a front porch and some steps, all covered with the most amazing array of potted cacti I have ever seen. Some of these things were HUGE...ten years old and older.
Outdoors. In Oregon.
And unlike every other person in Oregon at the time Eldest Brother was NOT growing dope. Much too pedestrian.
Eldest Brother was growing PEYOTE.
Yes I know this is supposed to be impossible. In blithe disregard of which fact he was doing it, without any special equipment, in plastic bowls. He had the plants in various stages of growth, and he had the field identification books to prove it. And I checked because I didn't believe him.
Fucker was also making what he called 'organic Mescaline'- dried peyolotl cut with lactose.
Good stuff, Maynard.
Really, really, REALLY good stuff.

The guy could have made thousands and thousands of dollars out of that shed just off the Native American religious community, let alone the freaks. He could have moved to Humboldt County and bought a house, and settled into a whole community of fellow wackjobs and mad scientists.
Instead he stuffed it all into his head and ran around claiming that he controlled traffic lights with his mind.
_____________________________________





* Sonnyboy and I had this down to a science. He scooted his bed underneath the window and kept the screen barely resting in the frame. Come the darkness I'd come down the street from the opposite direction, slide through the Meadow's side yard, across the back , over the fence and through the window like the Flying Wallendas. Heeeeey-UP!
Tell you what, by the time I left Milwaukie we'd damn near shoved that house off the back foundation.
Why all the cloak and dagger? Why didn't he just go up to the remodel?
1. Sonnyboy worked days. Like he was going to be able to walk back home? Wigga please.
2. Location, location, location. The remodel sat just off the sidewalk on a main street and it had no windows. The one time like maniacs with no religion and tiny motorcycles,scarlet maccaws, frightened elk thundering down a steel chute on the sash weight fell down into the wall. Nuns burst into flame. The neibors all turned on their lights all the way off the box spring with a mild concussion and a large hole in the plaster by naval battles, with explosions, and pterodactyls booked ass out the back window when we saw blue lights flashing on the walls drove up.
3. Eldest brother ( Luxury-fitted Hispano-Suiza to Sonnyboy's Sopwith Stunt biplane) was liable to pop in . If there was going to be a double feature I wanted to keep things in separate auditoriums.

What? I was 19.

Master of Design Fuschia Monkey: Retreat!

Because YOU ASKED FOR IT!
Actually nobody did but here it is anyway; the floorplan of the Meadows' lair:

_________________________________________

As the summer wore on the Meadows started showing up at the abandoned house for work parties more often. This just harshed the fuck out of my mellow. Gone were the hours when it was just me, a broom and a garbage bag, or me, the lawnmower, and Aunt Audrey's charred bone fragments.

By July I had to show up every single morning down at the house for the daily unrealistic remodelling goal/harangue and then off to the hardware store, Eldest Brother driving, Kelvin asleep in the cargo bed.

Kelvin and his father worked nights. This is why they greeted the dawn with a nutritious glass of orange juice and vodka; early morning was their evening.
Nonetheless, Kelvin was expected to spend his days working on the remodel while daddy slept. That he usually didn't wasn't something I held against him; shit, I didn't want him around. And besides, the creepy little pervert genuinely needed his sleep. Between his night terrors and daddy rousting him out of bed every morning at 6am he wasn't getting much. Sleep deprivation was certainly not making him any more normal, that was for sure.

Eldest Brother didn't have a straight job. I have no idea what he usually did with the greater part of his day. Probably worked on his Interociter. But he'd usually roll in to help about late afternoon. We'd get a couple hours worth of the heavier work done together; some linoleum removed or some old tile chipped off.
Then we'd retire to the back room and put some repetitive strain on the floor joists. Wotta demon!

Mom worked days in a clothing store, but she left for her job before anyone else showed up in the mornings and was home late enough in the evening that I seldom saw her. That she actually held a job just amazes me to this day.
She, of course, never did anything except embody Satan and all his dark legions, and eat other peoples' ramen noodles.
And I mean that literally, y'all. She did not cook. Nor did she clean. No laundry; not even her own. She did not shop. She did not garden. She had no hobbies. She watched no television. She did three things: went to work, came home, and acted disgusting.*
___________________________________________________________

There is one member of this sideshow that I have not mentioned previously, and that's because she was an expert at not being noticed.
We'll call her Mysterion.
Remember in The Munsters TV series, how Marylin was the only normal member of an otherwise bizarre family? How she sort of drifted through the cobwebs and dragon crap completely untouched, not a hair of her neat little flip-do out of place, as though her home context was nothing more than a bluescreen image? That describes Mysterion exactly.
I saw her a total of five times and spoke to her maybe three out of the five.

I do know that her room was at the back of the house. And I knew that the door to her room had 1. a handset lock, 2. a key lock, 3. a keyed turning deadbolt and 4. a security chain. And that Kelvin made it a habit of TRYING THE KNOB EVERY TIME HE WENT DOWN THE HALLWAY.
I shit thee not. I saw it.

But one morning Kelvin came down the hallway from the bathroom grinning.
"Hey, Mysterion left her door open! Nations, you want to see something sickening? Come look!"
Before the words were out of his mouth Dad and Eldest Brother were out of their chairs and headed down the hallway. Oh hell yes, I followed. I figured it had to be pretty good if they thought it was worth seeing.

Mysterion's room was light, feminine, with gauze curtains, lavender walls, a frilly white bedspread. Fluffy white rug on the floor. Ruffled shade on the dancing lady bedside lamp.
I stood in the doorway gazing around at an absolutely typical teenaged girls' room.
Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

Menawhile her brothers and father were busily opening the dresser drawers, looking in the closet, checking under the bed and fingering things like monkeys. Here is a map:


"Come look at this, said Kelvin, indicating the closet. "It's just disgusting. Just disgusting."

Inside were.....clothes.

"Look at all the good stuff she gets", he hissed. "We have to dress in crap! Just crap! She gets everything!"

I thought, "Wait a minute. Your ass works and you're 22, Kelvin. Ever thought about buying your own clothes?"

To be fair, what I didn't know at the time is that his mother bought all his clothes. The one time Kelvin had shown up in things he'd bought for himself she'd thrown a screaming, crying, hysterical fit, made herself sick and made everyone's life a living hell UNTIL HE RETURNED THEM TO THE STORE.**

I noticed some boxes on the top shelf. Boxes for shoes? Boxes for dresses?

No.

Bisquick, Instant Quaker Oats, and Jiffy mixes.
The whole top shelf of her closet was filled with boxed food.

"Oh, that's nothing!" Eldest flipped up the duvet and indicated the space beneath the bed.
The entire space was cutdown flats full of canned food. Campbells soups, Dinty Moore stew, Chef Boy Ar Dee, Armour Devilled Ham, tuna fish.

Mr. Meadows decided it was time to leave. He set about tidying up.
Eldest left with a can of chicken noodle soup in each hand.
Kelvin snagged a box of Hamburger Helper.
"Go ahead, grab something", said eldest.
I declined.
____________________________________________________

I came into the house one afternoon to hit the bathroom, and as I entered the back door I was met with the most extraordinary sound.
Oh no.
Was it the refrigerator motor malfunctioning? No...
Was there something caught in the agitator of the washing machine sloshing around? No.....
After the hibbity bibbity incident I was pretty leery of repetitive moist noises in the Meadow's house, so I advanced cautiously.
Peeked around the corner.
From where I was I could see the crown of Mr. Meadows uniform hat just peeping above the edge of the couch. the noise continued, but now I could hear him too.
He was grunting. Huh Huh Huh Huh. Kind of....under his breath.
I heard a faint jingle.
Aw SHIT.
I had to go past him to use the bathroom, so what the fuck; away I went. What I saw when I got halfway through the living room just stopped me, stopped me absolutely dead in my tracks. Just thinking about it now makes my stomach feel wierd.
They had a Sheltie dog. Named Darla.
Darla was down at the end of the couch.

Licking Mr. Meadows bare feet.
Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap. Lap.
He laid there with his eyes closed, grunting in time with each stroke.






Have a nice day.

________________________________________

I'm sorry to say that yes, it does continue. The question is:
IS IT SAFE YET?
....actually no. There's a couple footnotes.

*Here's your first REAL EXAMPLE of what I mean when I describe Mrs. Meadows as a tapeworm segment stuck to Satans ass.
This woman took the nastiest, bowl-filling Doberman dumps it has ever been my misfortune to be in the same state with.
And didn't flush.
On purpose.
Let me repeat that. She was fully aware of what she was, or in this case WAS NOT doing.
On purpose.
To her, this kind of thing represented lighthearted family hijinks. Ha ha! Whoops, I guess I forgot to flush!
But it didn't stop there.

...Shall I continue?

Whoops! I harked up a big ol' yellow wad of snot into the sink and all over the vanity and the mirror! Gosh darn me!

Whoops! Guess I'm having my period!

And....?

Whoops! There must have been a REALLY BIG SNAIL using the toilet last night!

Yes.

FOOTNOTE 2...........
**And here's your second example of the evil which was Sunflower Meadows.
I witnessed this.
It was my fault, too. I was the one who'd convinced Kelvin go shopping for new clothes.
His mother took one look at the bag in his arms, snatched it away, upended it on the sofa and promptly began hyperventilating and freaking. "Is this yours? Are these for you? Don't you love me? I don't understand! I don't understaaaaaaaaaaaaand!" And off she went. Crying, screaming, throwing herself against the walls, into her husbands arms, stomping off to the bedroom, screaming in there, coming back out, crying, stomping off the the bathroom, slamming the door, pretending to throw up, coming back out, pretending to throw up in the kitchen sink... Poor Kelvin kept following her all over the house frantically trying to reassure her that it was all going back to the store but she'd shove him away and scream some more.
Finally Mr. Meadows looked at me with genuine embarrassment in his face, and said " I know you were just trying to be nice. I think you better leave now."

Good plan.

plaid chameleon cucumber party!

......Continued from yesterdays' thrilling tales of yesteryear....

Life in the abandoned house on Harrison Hill was pleasant. Nobody bothered me, I had construction projects to keep me busy and, as I've pointed out previously, there was a marked absence of crying drug addicts.
The house was in a beautiful neighborhood, surrounded with old-fashioned bourbon roses. The minute the dew began to fall in the evening the roses would release clouds of the most incredible fragrance, a fragrance which instantly filled the entire house. Mainly because there were no windows.

In the backyard was an overgrown pillar rosebush about ten feet across at the top. It produced a nondescript blossom, but one which released fragrance so heavily you could literally taste it. You could smell the heavy, luxurious scent even over the cut grass while you mowed the lawn. I took blossoms and put them in next to my bed, and even in the cold of the morning my room smelled of them when I woke up.

Then I'd throw on a jacket and walk down to the sideshow.

On a typical morning I'd open the back door and be met with the sound of Kelvin thrashing and screaming in his sleep. I'd go into the bathroom, check all the surfaces for unpleasant bodily souvenirs, make it quick, then hit the kitchen. Mr. Meadows would be there by then. I'd have to sidle around him like a hypochondriac at a leper rave, since he was one of those guys who liked to 'pretend' to bump into you and turn it into a full-body grind as you went by.

Once everyone was awake we would all pour a screwdriver and Mr.Meadows would start in on his latest grandiose remodelling project for the day, which we ignored. This would lapse into a story about the prostitute he'd been banging the night before, vivid descriptions of how she smelled, how he had to threaten her in order to cop a shower so he wouldn't come home with dried pussy all over his dick, then segue into his speech about raising useless lazy children who never lifted a finger and had to be supervised and blah blah blah. Which we ignored.

I am proud to say that I initiated the trick of sneaking extra booze into his drink so that he'd get too shitfaced to stay awake, and so shut the fuck up and go to bed. It worked beautifully. One day he even stopped midsentance, toppled foreward and fell asleep on the table. Splat. We left him there. Comparing notes on the way to the hardware store we realized that each one of us had been tipping the bottle into his glass, which probably dissolved...just like his liver. One hopes.

We had a credit account at the hardware store. This was one of those fantastic old bare-wood places that smell of hay bedding, malt feed, gasoline and zinc... full of amazing crap that you hardly ever see anymore. Choker hooks, peaveys. Team rigging. Kerosene lamps. I loved that place. Because Elder son was too friendly and Kelvin was too timid, dealing with the staff fell to me. I learned how to order, fill out account information, deal with suppliers and salespeople, all kinds of things. It was great.

We'd go back to the house, unload the days' supplies, and start working. Meaning me and Brother the Eldest worked; Kelvin wandered around and usually ended up hiding in the basement, which is where I had to go fetch him from every evening.
Brother the eldest refused to go into the basement; he claimed it was a lesser gateway to the Underworld. And inasmuch as the Gollumesque Kelvin was usually lurking down there in the dark, flogging his first mate, he had a point.

You think I am kidding.

As we worked, Eldest Brother would ramble on happily for hours about Christ knows what...the Navy, being able to see auras, a book called 'Etidorpha' which he claimed held the true secrets of science.* Carlos Castenada was also a favorite subject. As I reapplied trim, taped off details and glued sheets of panelling he'd fill me in on the god of the San Pedro cactus and Mescaline and peyolotl and teleportation, how to cap up dried cactus pulp...when I got sick of that I'd switch him off on the paint stripper detail and he'd straighten up for an hour or so.

Then he'd come sidling back over and getting in the way, and I'd swap him back, and in no time he'd have his head right back over the can, a wavering figure through the rising chemical fumes, tripping on about the true appearance of God and pranic breathing and how he had developed the ability to fly.

Once again, you are thinking 'Nations, you lie like an eggsuck dog'.
Would that I were.

As I puttered around it was hard not to notice a trail of cleaner swaths on the floor, like a strange, looping design. They didn't seem to follow any logical traffic pattern from room to room, but it was clear that they were trails worn by foot passage. The rest of the floor was a uniform, shiny dull black...crusted thick with filth that came up in flakes, where it came up at all.

As the days passed and the laquer stripper held out, I began finding out more and more about the last resident of the house we were working on.

Apparently Mr. Meadows' sister had been the previous tenant.
As she'd advanced into senility she'd filled the house up to the ceiling with piles of mail and newspapers, boxes of old clothes and magazines tied with string, arranged in a mazelike pattern, something she claimed would foil robbers. She'd also taped entire Sunday editions of the newspaper over her windows until they bulged out into the room.
Her sole companion had been a small dog, who, noting that Mom was rapidly sliding into a condition where she didn't give a hoot in hell anymore, promptly stopped going outside to crap and pee.
At the very end she had lived entirely within the confines of the house, sucking water out of the kitchen tap, eating sugar out of the bag in handfuls and sharing a dish of raw hamburger at the table with her dog.

Eldest Brother also claimed that she'd been in possession of advanced psionic abilities; that once in his boyhood he'd come into the kitchen to find her suspended in midair, pedalling away on a cosmic wheel made of blue light. I don't know what eating raw hamburger had to do with this phenomena, if anything.
__________________________________

Even though there was a perfectly good hole in the floor in the bathroom, whenever one of the guys had to get rid of some beer, being guys, they went outside. Unlike most guys over the age of six, however, this was usually accompanied by lots of smirking and giggles. Visiting the great outdoors was referred to as 'watering an oddie', snork, fnar.
I ignored this. Acting like dill-holes is what they did.
But when other male acquaintances of theirs did the same thing when there and did it nowhere else BUT there, I figured some kind of private joke was going on.
I'd mowed the back yard. It was overgrown, but aside from the human population of the property at any given time there wasn't anything out there that looked like 'an oddie' to me.

One day I was outside, enjoying the weather, mowing, pausing to take the occasional smoke-and-asthma inhalation break. One of the guys looked out the window and shouted at me "Be careful! Don't hit an oddie!"

A few minutes later Eldest Brother came out onto the back stoop, grinned and called "Be careful! don't run over an oddie!" and went to whiz in the roses.

This happened a few more times that day. Even Mr. Meadows made a point of saying it to me that evening while I was pouring gas into the mower. "Didja run into an oddie under the rosebush?"

I gave in and asked Eldest Brother what the 'oddie' bullshit was all about,
fully expecting to hear a story about lawn gnomes that came to life at night and robbed graves or something.

What I heard was something entirely different.

It wasn't 'an oddie'.

What they were all saying was 'Aunt Audrey'.

Don't hit Aunt Audrey.

Under the rose bush.

"You named the rosebush Aunt Audrey?" I asked. Considering the source this was a perfectly reasonable question.

"No no no. Aunt Audrey is under the rose bush," explained Eldest Brother, enunciating.

I waited. In the Meadows-zone, you learned not to take any statements of fact that came out of their mouths at face value, because what was clear and apparent to a Meadows was often the product of Zippy the Pinhead reasoning processes.

Turns out, Aunt Audrey had been cremated.

Her cremains had been scattered under the rosebush.

Where her nephews, their friends, and her brother had been going out of their way to urinate for years.

I went in the bedroom and threw the roses out the window.
___________________________________


Goodness yes, this shit be continued. What'd you think?



*etidorpha (which is 'aphrodite' backwards! oo!) is about faceless underground mushroom people who can prove that water doesn't always seek it's own level and who will explain the process at the drop of a hat, at excruciating length, with diagrams.
no, really.
you're sitting in front of a computer; look it up.

part one in a series

Lets take a trip down memory lane, shall we?
(note: this a.m. i spellchecked and changed the family names. oops!)

Waaay back in the late 'Seventies, after I left The Dishrag, I found myself temporarily homeless. I moved back to Milwaukie where I stayed for awhile at a former boyfriends house until that arrangement upset his mother.
Now mommy dearest lived in a separate house, and sonny boy was 22; still, she ruled the roost. But rather than simply ask me to leave, she did a very strange and rather creepy thing... she started following me to the bus stop every morning and pointedly ignoring me. And by this I mean following me at a distance of about five steps, up a number of blocks to the top of the street and standing nearly shoulder to shoulder with me, waiting for the bus...with her back turned the whole time. Making sure she sat in a seat near me. Looking away whenever I glanced in her direction.
She had no idea how badly this backfired. That is, if her object was to keep me off sonny boy.

Fortunately (or not, read on and you decide) the people next door to where I was staying were in the process of remodelling a nearby house. They offered it to me as a place to stay, free of charge, so that they could continue to claim it as occupied and keep the fire insurance rates low.
I was happy to take them up on this. I moved into the abandoned house, set up a mattress on the floor and a little bedside table for my tequila, ashtray, lighter and asthma inhaler, and I was all set. I had my unemployment check (my boss fired me after he found out that I'd left my boyfriend and wasn't looking like giving him nexties) so I could buy sandwiches. It was June and the weather was fine. The place had a roof, some clean places on the floor where the previous resident's appliances had been, no electricity and no heat.
There was no toilet; but there was a hole in the floor where the toilet had been. Not a problem unless I had to get rid of some beer in the middle of the night. After splashing my feet a couple times I soon became an expert markswoman, and remain so to this day.
Everyone has hidden talents. Sometimes it takes a certain set of circumstances to bring them to the fore.

And life was actually pretty good for awhile. At least, I wasn't living with a junkie and being threatened with corkscrews anymore. So yeah.

But that couldn't last, of course. I was expected to help with the remodel,and that meant having contact with the family.
The family themselves were named Meadows. Remember that name, kids. (or not because I just changed it. woops.)

Mr. Meadows was a milkman. He delivered for Dairygold in North Portland, where he spent a good part of his shift committing acts of commercial miscegenation and eating pork feet. Every morning I would meet with him and his sons around their breakfast table, where he'd pour us a pitcher of screwdrivers and line out what the remodelling project was for the day, and brag about hookers competing with each other for his business, and berate his sons for being lazy and useless and not worth feeding, and question me, leering like a chimp, about my recent past as a 'shack-up job' as he termed it, and other warm family subjects like that.
Because he was Satan. Satan the Milkman.

Son the youngest was named, and I kid thee not, Kelvin.
Kelvin.
Kelvin was exactly what you'd expect with a name like Kelvin... a 22 year old bachelor who lived at home and worked nights as a janitor in a grade school (eew). His bedroom was in the garage. The front portion of the garage, partitioned off with some plywood. (still had the garage door; when it would rain the water would wash a puddle full of earthworms underneath it) His room was exactly what you'd expect, too; tinfoil on the windows, black mold growing up the walls, full of unwashed wads of laundry, science fiction paperbacks, and old t-shirts stuck to the floor with jizz.

Kelvin had the worst case of night terrors I have ever seen, and I've seen quite a bit in my time. He could fall asleep almost instantly, anywhere he was, and in a matter of minutes he would be screaming and fighting ghosts. One morning, as we were sitting around the breakfast table discussing panelling and passing a bottle of Midori, Kelvin wandered off to sleep on the couch. Five minutes later he was bucking some couple of feet off the cushions in full arching convulsions, , eyes bugged out, screaming, punching himself and yelling "Motherfucker!' He ended on the floor and rolled halfway across the room. Never woke up.
I didn't know whether to shit or fly south. Everyone else ignored him. Ignored him COMPLETELY.

One night in particular I recall him tearfully begging me to go out with him. His endgame very nearly melted my resolve, too..when he said, with utter sincerity, in a hurt puppy tone "Well, you're doing it with everyone else on the block, I don't understand why you won't let me go too!"
Kelvin...how you say...lacked game.

So finally, one night he tried to 'kidnap' me, presumably to have his evil way with my tender flesh. He was supposed to be giving me a ride into Portland when he suddenly turned off the man road, smiled at me and started to head out into the county. I burnt him on the wrist with my cigarette and told him to quit screwing around and take me into town.
And he did. Happy as a clam.

Ever read 'Myra Breckenridge?'

Years later I realized that I gave him a moment right then that he's probably spent the rest of his life trying to recreate.

To be perfectly honest, I was not screwing everyone else in the neighborhood. Just his older brother and two other guys.

Now his older brother was an interesting kind of guy. Interesting, friendly, kind, sociable, extremely intelligent and a stone fucking lunatic.
He quit a job working at a meat cutting plant 'because there was too much blue light'. He quit a job in a refrigeration manufacturing plant because there was 'too much emr and it was giving him epilepsy.' He quit his job with the Navy by dumping a bucket full of sand into the ships' engine and then reporting himself to the officer on watch, still holding the bucket, because 'he knew it was time.' He claimed to have been handed the reins of the universe by God while walking over a bridge in Singapore. Explains a lot, doesn't it? The universe is presently run by a man in Oregon whom I had to teach to wear suspenders so his pants didn't fall down around his ankles every time he got up from a chair. Because he wouldn't wear a belt; it cut off his chi.
I wish I was lying.
And yes, I was bonking him. Enjoyed every minute, too. Guy was nuttier than a tree full of squirrels, but he had a great 'can-do' attitude.
He firmly believed that he had to protect me from the evil forces wielded by his mother, who was trying to 'posses' me and 'vampirize my aura'. He caught her fingering a pair of earrings I had left on the table one morning, and when I went looking for them he presented them to me in a cup of salt water. In order to 'purge the bad vibes' from them before I put them back on, as he explained. Hell, I thanked him. I'd met momma.

Her name was Sunflower. I cannot adequately describe this woman and I've had years to think about it, too. I'm gonna try.
Imagine Betty White, playing the character Sue-Ann Nivens on the Mary Tyler Moore show. Cheerful to the point of mania, syrup-sweet, smarmy, utterly insincere. Now blow her up like a big, red, manic balloon and feed her a bunch of LSD and caffeine. Dress her in a flowered dirndl, rolled hose, and a pair of harlequin glasses and give her lines like "You kids don't know what I have to go through! Your father makes me take my teeth out for him!" and have her interject them into casual conversation.

The woman would say and do whatever came into her head, like a two year old. she had no boundaries and no sense of what was or wasn't appropriate.
One evening I walked into the kitchen and caught her eating out of a pot of ramen soup I had made for myself. Dip, slurp, spoon back in the pot, slurp, drip, back in the soup. No 'may I' no nothing. I put it in a bowl for her, and made myself another pot.
And dumped a third of a bottle of Tabasco sauce into it.
And went to the bathroom.
About a minute later I heard a screech from the kitchen and the pot hit the sink.
'You shouldn't do that! she scolded, ramen everywhere. 'That much Tabasco isn't good for you!'
Yeah, you either, huh? After that everything I made in that kitchen had Tabasco in it. And it's a good thing because I'd catch her huffing whatever I had on the stove just to check and wrinkling her nose. I learned to keep the bottle of Tabasco out on the table where she could see it and told her I was part Mexican.

Then she decided she didn't like my hat-a nice grey cashmere flatcap I kept my hair up under. One morning I came into the living room to see the last of the bill crumbling away in the fireplace. 'Oh, I threw it in the fire. I didn't like it on you,' she cheerfully said. A 20 dollar hat. In 1970's dollars, too.
Well, alrighty, then.
I decided I didn't like her mail.
For the rest of the time I associated with them, she never received another piece of mail. As long as it had her name on it, into the fire it went, flick, flick, flick. Birthday cards, bank statements, magazines, paychecks-oh yes. You bet. Up the chimney like Good Saint Nick.

She had a repulsive and bizarre habit of grabbing you by the arm suddenly and talking to you, for no apparent reason. Her grip would get tighter, she would pull you in closer, and whatever she was talking about would gradually turn into some kind of strange, confidential rambling story about God knows what, as anything like logic or subject was completely overtaken by whining, or weird, sexualized free-association. It sounded like it was about something. The intonation was there in the right places. But you'd wrest yourself away and think about what you'd just heard and it was just...freaky weird.

But now and then I would catch her looking at me with the oddest-for her- expression of calculation on her face; her usual look being one of utter simpering vacancy, like a drunk person at closing time. That's what convinced me that there was probably a really good reason why her son thought she had demons that did her bidding. Not that she did, but that she was way less sick than she acted, and she played it because she plain got a kick out of being disgusting and weird.

One night I came in to take a shower. Took the shower. Turned off the shower.
Gracious, what was that odd sound?
The Mr. and Mrs. were doing the hibbity-bibbity.
And not just the hibbity bibbity.
The pounding the walls, bouncing the bed frame off the floor, slapping, squitting, grunting hibbity bibbity.
Now the fact that those two had...relations...at ALL was wrong. Wrong, and sick. That the two of them kept up a steady commentary throughout in what honestly sounded like character voices...Like Edward G. Robinson fucking the daylights out of Billie Burke to be specific, I swear to God. THAT was Blue Velvet times Videodrome.
Little Caesar banging away on Glinda the Witch. Squit, smack, thump, yip, Oh daddy.
This went on forEVER.
And I was trapped.
The bathroom opened right across from their bedroom, and their door was hanging WIDE OPEN.
I turned on the shower again. I flushed the toilet about six or seven times. I ran the water in the sink. I put my fingers in my ears and put a bathmat over my head.
Finally I just decided fuck it; I pried the screen out and climbed out the bathroom window with my hair still in a towel.

Middle of the night. Teenage girl with a towel on her head wandering around town barefoot. Walked back to the abandoned house, sat on the stoop and drank tequila. And smoked. I coundn't quite bring myself to laugh, but I couldn't quite keep from laughing. I'd get chuckling, and then gross out and stop. And then do it all over again.
Middle of the night, sitting there with a pink flowered towel on my head, slashing booze straight out of the bottle, chain smoking and giggling to myself.

I didn't realize it at the time, but I was beginning to fit in.
__________________________



Oh yes, there's more.

Book Meme!

book wishlist meme, janked from Billy

1. The White Goddess
It made my brain hurt. What a book! There were simply too many new ideas and theories to digest before I had to return it! (are they good ideas and theories? that I don't know; I could never finish it.) I need to own it - in paperback, used- so I can stick it full of postits and spill shit on it.

2. The DreamQuest of Unknown Kadath, Arkham hardcover edition
I have it in paperback and I've just read it to death. I forget how many copies that makes now.
Arkham House puts out a beautiful edition, and how perfect and appropriate that I own my favorite Lovecraft under the marque that was started in his honor! I already own three early Arkham editions of Lovecraft, and every move I've ever made they travelled on my lap wrapped in a cloth.

3. The Notebooks of Leonardo DaVinci
I've read the quatrecentennial set five times. Because they're library books, so have lots people who smoke, eat jelly sandwiches, own cats and have small children with crayons. I no longer feel like sharing.

4. Albrecht Durer, His Complete Works
Because I heart Albrecht Durer.

5. The Bauhaus and Early Modernism
Has a good beat; you can dance to it.

6. Ancient Textiles, Methods of Construction, Design and Embellishment
I just need it, ok? I do.

7. Annotated Margery Kempe
I have the commentary 'Life of a Medieval Woman' but that's not the same as owning the origional, is it? Margery Kempe was a nutjob. Her writing is referenced all over the place by people I suspect didn't realize that they were taking the words of a woman with a severe mental illness as gospel. I need this.

8. " " Hildegaard of Bingen
Nutjob lite, with purdy pichers.

9. The Story of Alchemy and Early Chemistry
Fantastic book. Superior book. The last time I checked it out, the thing fell apart in my hands; the binding just crumbled. I killed it. I need one of my own to mistreat.


Tag yourself; I'm out of pinecones. Stupid ducks.

chasing babies

As the Stainless Steel Amazon's fiance, the Poor Bastard, has taken on more responsibilities (YAY FOR HIM!) I see the Goonybird less. I had him 24/7 in his infancy, and during the days after that, then two days a week, and now one evening each week. The less I see him, the faster he grows up.

A little boy is entirely new territory for me. I had no brothers, I raised no sons. The only little boys I knew about were two young cousins, who were not entirely human so I don't think that counts. Unfortunately, they made a very deep impression on me. Consequently I always search my grandson for developing feral traits, which is both unfair and stupid. But I still do it.

Following the instructions to the letter, my cousin's parents had money, owned a house, car and boat, and mom stayed home to raise her kids (that last probably a large part of why they ended up being psychotic, rabid weasels.)

The Goonybird's mommy rents, works outside the home and attends college...and sometimes other people watch her child. The Goonybird is not a rabid weasel. In fact he does not resemble any member of the mustelid family. He is a sunny, happy little guy. He still eats stuff off the carpet, but now he avoids things that obviously aren't food, like tacks and paper.

The difference is, the Goonybird has an excellent mommy who loves him. The weasels had a couple of raving drunks who didn't even like themselves.
____________________________

Now that the Goonybird is three years old the baby traits are fading away. I admit; I miss that. He was such a cute little chuckle duck, and way more portable too. He is becoming an independent little person of his own now, and he's heavier and kicks harder. But like his mother before him, he is becoming a very strange little person. Just in a different way.

His mommy liked to play with lettuce. I could crack off a leaf of iceberg lettuce, hand it to her and she'd derive hours of entertainment from it. Wear it on her head, lie on the floor with it on her face, sticking it to the TV screen, slap herself on the tummy with it, stick it down the back of her diaper; she was a happy camper. The Goonybird is not interested in lettuce. The Goonybird would rather cook firetrucks in his Teflon frying pan with pepper and water.

His mommy was mildly intrigued by the contents of her potty but was content to slosh them around and sing them songs.
The Goonybird went through an intense 'brown period' , during which he explored feces as an expressive medium. He developed a preference for vinyl flooring as a support, having experimented variously with the carpet, the television screen, and the inside of the tub.

His mommy was perfectly content to wander around crusted with drool, partially masticated carrot, fuzz, hair, lint, stray candy bar wrappers and bits of string. She had distinct adhesive qualities, in fact. Instead of vacuuming you could just roll her across the rug.

The Goonybird has an absolute COW if he makes an accidental mess. His entire world falls apart; he starts screaming for a towel. Not that he won't paint his head green in art class; he is his mothers son in that respect. But that's intentional. That's different.

His mommy was born with an Imelda Marcos gene. She and her father got along like cats and dogs a lot of the time, but send the two of them shoe shopping and they were of one heart and one purpose.
The Goonybird loves his barn boots. Them, and only them. He will take a fit if he cannot wear his barn boots. There is no other footwear in his world than the barn boots.
The last time I gave him a bath he went right to the barn boots, grabbed the towel for a cape and marched around the house naked announcing "Flying man! Flying man!'
Apparently you cannot fight crime without barn boots.

bitch bitch bitch.

I'm here...just kinda burnt out. Been chasing around after old men and babies.

Sometimes being the Playboy of the Western Worlds' gal Friday is a pain in the ass.Mainly because I have to drive all over hells half acre when I run errands for him in addition to the sixty mile round trip, and the man always has an 'Oh, by the way'. Then there's the doctors' appointments that are never, never running on time, and the getting in and out of the car whang dang doodle... open his door, get him in, fold up the walker, carry it around to the trunk, open the trunk, rassle the walker into the trunk, close the trunk, close his door, run around and open the drivers side door. Lordy, it gets old. And when I have to dodge traffic, weather and winos it's even more fun.

Most of the time I'm happy to do this because I like to get out of the house too, and the man's simply good company. We have a blast together. But sometimes, dammit, I simply do not feel like leaving the house or socializing. When I'm in this mood, dealing with a man who says 'Huh?' or 'Excuse me?' every SINGLE time you say something because he doesn't feel like getting a hearing aid makes me want to put him in the trunk and drive down ten miles of rough road. Him and his goddamn walker. And his 'oh by the way.'

I know I am blessed in so many ways by knowing him. He's someone that I would have been buddies with anyway, and that he's my husband's father is icing on the cake.

I think the reason I'm mad is because all his doctors just wrote him off. After all those tests and all that horseshit, every single apointment I've taken him to lately is another doctor telling him 'There's nothing else we can do. Go home and die.'

His neurologist showed him the results of his catscan, showing progressive narrowing of the nerve channels to the brain. Told him 'You're too old to operate on. Bye now!'

His heart specialist handed him a printout of his cardiogram, which shows every artery blocked to a greater or lesser degree, and some of them in several locations. All near the heart. The guy told him 'You could have a stroke at any time. You might have ten years, you might go five minutes from now. Well, bye now!'

He's at peace with it. I'm not. It's not the death part. I know from what I went through when my grandmother died that he's getting off easy. Really easy. It's that I feel like I just got to know him and he's not going to get better.

shit.

Lady Red Eland Plot For Robbery Wealthy!

The noble bald eagle! Proud symbol of the United States!
Essentially a carnivorous chicken.

Ever spent much time around chickens?

Nobility is not one of their attributes.

If you live in these parts, it isn't 'bald eagle', it's 'ball-headed eagle'. This is not only an example of poor enunciation, but a strange meeting of vernacular and inner wisdom. Your common eagle has about as much sense as a cue ball. Shits quite a lot more than the average cue ball though. In venery terms this is called 'slicing'. What it is in reality is nine gallons of partially digested road kill ejected at high velocity. (The only other creature that produces biohazardous wastes in excess of intake and body mass aside from the human infant.)

Favored eagle roosting sites are heavily coated, Jackson Pollock style, with this substance. The ground below them is...crunchy.

What eagles do, mainly, is stand around.

...9:30 am

And stand, and stand, and stand.

....9:45 am

And stand some more.

...2:35pm. yes, all the same day.

They stand in fields, they stand on trees. They stand on dead cows. They stand on light poles. They stand in ponds.
Around here, any pond extant is a stagnant stew of rotting vegetation and cow by-products, which seems to bother the eagle not one whit. They'll wade in tit deep and....stand.
For hours.
Literally hours.

Very occasionally they have minor altercations, which vigorous event entails some flapping at one another and then one flying off a few feet.
Where they stand.

They will cooperate in breaking up kill. A family group will patiently deploy around, trudging through the mud like grumpy toddlers, tugging and twisting until everyone has a leg or a head.
After which they drag their lunch-chunk off, and stand.

It is a stirring and inspiring sight to see one of these great birds in flight.

It is somewhat less inspiring to see one with its head buried to the shoulders up a dead cow's ass, making the entire carcass shudder and jump.

This is a regrettably common sight around here, too. Farmers set down cows out next to the road so that the dairy service can haul them off for incineration. What is convenient placement for the Morgans' truck becomes a traffic- slowing sideshow for tourists.
Welcome to Sumas! Ignore the eagle backing down the side of the road pulling the intestinal tract out of that dead cow there. Nature is beautiful.

They wonder why we still have ten empty businesses on Main Street.

BEARMEAT SWAP

This years' ABATE motorcycle swap meet was held in the substantially warmer and more civilized Exhibition Pavillion at the Monroe Fairgrounds. The bastards usually cheap out and put it in one of the unheated 'small animal' buildings, which is hardly appropriate, OR suited to March weather conditions, but I digress, y'all.

This year the clubs were out in full force! I can say with confidence that at least 75% of the people in the picture below are affiliated. That's why most of my people pictures didn't turn out; I had to be stealthy. 'One little muk : giant room full of large psychos with prison records' is not a safe muk- to-psycho ratio.

Same politics as last year...despite the colors, most of the clubs are HAngel affiliates, with the Bandidos representing out front. Nice guys individually, morons in groups.

Now I'm going to stop here and explain something.
There are bikers, there is a lifestyle.
Some bikers belong to clubs.
Most do not.

WE DO NOT.

The Yummy One has been asked to prospect for several but has turned them down because his idea of individuality does not include things like hanging out in a group wearing identical clothing. We've done high school already.
...because freedom's what it's aaaaaaaaaall about.


Then too, there's the whole 'catch a wild animal and fuck it, beer stein full of piss' thing and, just, no.

On a whim, because we are biker assholes after all, we went around back, sauntered in through the cop entrance, past the cops, past the Banditos, and strolled around all day long. When we gate hop, we don't fuck around. (Don't start with me. It was a Red and Gold event. It doesn't count.)

...a little drag never hurt anyone.

Our buddy with the Ferengi-head had his usual hooch full of the usual stuff, and just to fuck with him while he was off visiting, I sat down and sold a bunch of it for him. Albert is a trip-he doesn't really need or want to sell anything. He's just there for the event, socializing away happily while people try to shove money in his face. He finds this distracting, so he avoids his booth.

I ended up with 200$ of his cash in my pocket by the time he finally came back. I handed him the money and he stood there and looked at me like he'd been hit with a brick. 'What's this for?' he said.
I pointed out all the empty space in his booth.
No clue.
I know, I know; I should have booked ass.
...same shit, different day. about 10,000$ of the same shit in this corner right here.



At first I thought this chick's cutoff was stupid, but then I took another look at it and realized that it was true folk art, utterly sincere. This is all beadwork, all hand done.
It knocked me out.





Don't you wish you owned this?
...rule brittania! lotta 1970's going on here. paughco front end, smoothed frame.



That's a 'Monster' series Ducati, kids. I just wanted to lick it all over.
...grandma needs this motorcycle now.



Here is a stone stock Harley Whizzer. It's a runner, too!

...a museum piece.


The acoustical tiles above each throne in the ladies' room had suspicious holes poked in them, each one positioned directly over the bowls. All the way down the line, too...I checked. But hey, it was indoors.
...expect to see my smiling...um, smile...on a paysite soon.



You ever looked in the mirror and asked yourself this question?

...if you were wearing this sluttay lil' number, the answer was '49$ worth of cheap'.

...no I will not buy it for you Mr. C; quit buggin me.


Ha! And conservatives claim to be against abortions.

...its a car! its a bike! its a train! its a blender! it's a printing press! its a...

Pink Velociraptor Wave of Vengeance: Seize Have!

It has been a busy week and it ain't over yet, except it is. The Yummy Biker just went back to working days, after having spent last week working nights, and my pineal gland is really really upset about the whole thing.

The Stainless Steel Amazon took me to an art show at the Frye exhibit hall in Seattle!!
I was ready to take The Leaker, but The Yummy Biker insisted we take the Park Avenue, an automobile which is essentially a geriatric care facility with a big block.
Yes, my pimp hand was showing strong.
Still, it looks exactly like one of the big unmarked sedans the sherrif's office uses, which means it's really fun to pull up behind a carfull of teenagers and tailgate them for a couple of miles and watch them throwing shit out the windows and checking the mirrors. There are always compensating factors if you just take the time to look for them.


You can just tell that that is a building filled with interesting, priceless and important works of art, can't you? Unfortunately for you it was and unfortunately for you again, they were real buttheads about the whole 'no photographs' thing.
Review:
Mr. and Mrs. Art Collectors went over to France a lot. France was getting tired of Realism. Paintings where you could tell what they wuz were going for firesale prices to make room for the Impresionists. Mr. and Mrs. Art Collectors had cash. They came home with a geeeet big pile of paintings. Unfortunately, Mrs. Art Collector seems to have been the one who did the picking (while Mr. Art Collector stood in the background, signing checks and rolling his eyes one assumes). The collection on display is mainly pretty girls, pretty children, pretty saints, pretty landscapes, pretty buildings and pretty groups of farm animals.
Life sized farm animals.
Duckies, goosies, chickies, piggies, sheepies.
Horsies.
Cowsies.
Life sized.
Imagine that in your dining room: this bigass wall - cow looking at you with it's cow eyeballs while you tuck into your standing crown roast.

There were a couple of Hoch landscapes that I thought were very fine. Early Impressionist, standard fare, but rendered very poignant by contrast.

Part of the permanent collection on display, an interesting Nouveau 'evocation of lust', after Edvard Munch, but with some odd Manet-style brushwork thrown in for good measure...set into the most ridiculous frame I have ever seen.
What were people thinking? It was the size and shape of a Rumford fireplace, all in gold leaf. Poor Ms. Lust in her green, dusty cave with her carnival prize anaconda peeps out at us from under the mantlepiece, utterly cowed by her frame. I imagine the men of the period found her very stirring nonetheless but I felt kind of sorry for her, stuck in the fireplace with her goofyass snake.

Oh, and there were some ok Dutch Modernists from the 'Giant Enormous Fucking Canvas' school. I liked one called 'Film' but had nowhere to hang it.

Here are some pigeons that tried to mug us on the way out:

The fattest, sleekest, roundest pigeons I have ever seen. You could actually hear their feet pattering as they surrounded the car and started to rock it.

Later the Stainless Steel Amazon and I got lost looking for La Conner and ended up on Camano island. Here is a picture of the exclusive supper club we dined at:


Mainly, it was a nice 'girls day out', no boys allowed. We drove around and discussed things like how buouyant are ducks really, and if one went over a waterfall would it sink or bob back up and if it mattered how big a waterfall it was.
Yeah.
_________________

The DaVinci Code: Fiction or Documentary?

Anyone who has read 'The DaVinci Code' knows that religious art is teeming with secret symbols and messages only meant to be interpreted by the initiate. In fact, these truths were consciously withheld from the greater part of mankind by a jealous Papacy and the universal, unswerving complicity of Catholicisms' innumerable adherents.

As a small child I was initiated into the basic secrets of the Roman Church. Ritually married to the Godhead in my sixth year, each new year built new levels of esoteric knowledge onto that primary foundation, each stage of indoctrination capped off by rituals and oaths administered by black clad virginal acolytes of the inner circle.

By the time I had reached adulthood I was privy, as each Catholic is, to all the occult knowledge. All the hidden agendas. I was ready to go forth and fulfill my role in the Popes great army of world domination.
My orders: Seize control.
My rank: Uterus with legs.

It is only after years of sorrow and indecision that I have come to the conclusion that to continue to hide these secret teachings from the rest of mankind is to do my fellow man a grave disservice.

Let me begin with the revelation of a despicable incident known as The Suppression of J. M. Barrie:








...'We simply do not see the blessed mother battling pirates' says Rome.

The first version of 'Peter Pan' was banned by Pope Pius X.



A surveillance device familiar in all Catholic homes, placed there to ensure silence and to report all lapses of faith to the nearest Parish authority:
The Icon.
"The saints are very, very disappointed in you.
The saints are ALWAYS very, very disappointed in you."



The tentacles of the Pope remain a strong yet invisible presence in modern popular culture. Here is the proposed cover art for 'Hallelujia Kid Hitz volume 14' featuring Sir Mix A Lot:


"...I like big butts but I can't deny...that horse is gonna smush that guy!"
Oh yes. The Church is 'Down' with the 'Street'.



The true message of many paintings has long been a subject of debate among scholars. Know them now.

The flying babies failed to arouse St. John's enthusiasm at the prospect of being martyred in boiling oil.


You cannot escape the possibility of uninvited company when you have a glowing baby.


If Mary had owned one of those really big bug zappers history would be different.



Not even matters of the most basic household management or personal life were exempt from the mandates of the Church:


"...Yes I know you're the King of the Beasts and I know you have wings but as long as you live in this house you'll crap in that box."

When the hallucinations get shitty about your spelling it's time to go to bed.


Things you leave outside during a tornado will get blown away.
Know where your grandpa is.

Before you demand that miracle, balance how much you really miss the deceased with 1. how dead he is, and 2. how comprehensively freaked out you'll be when he comes back to life in the middle of August.



In some instances, a spray-on repellent like DEET simply isn't enough to keep away flying babyheads. Sometimes you need a steel-tipped flail and a grenade.