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Friday, November 22, 2002 The Novel I was sitting in the classroom back in 1963, watching a movie -- 16-mm projector clacking -- when the announcement came over the loudspeaker: President Kennedy had been shot and killed. It seemed that life in the United States changed after that. I don't know if it really did. Seemed that way. I am working on a novel. I figure if I tell you that, then I will have to work on it. And if I give a little preview, then I will have to finish it. So, here we go: Sylvia’s grey eyes twinkled as the rays of the morning sun poured into the kitchen. “Look, Burt. A deer,” she said, as she pointed at the tan and white doe standing at the edge of a wooded area that was to the rear of their property. "Huh,” Burt murmured. “Don’t see that much anymore. Remember when we’d have a whole family out there feeding?” Sylvia was already back to her paper. She didn’t reply – she remembered Burt always wanted to shoot the “fuckers.” She hated that word. But it was true. Burt hated the deer. They ate the lettuce and other vegetables he planted; so, she chuckled to herself as she read the article about the conjoined twins – nobody called them “Siamese” anymore, probably because the cat lovers complained – that were successfully separated at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital after a 21-hour operation. They were joined at the top of their heads. Poor dears – she laughed when she realized she had made a joke. “Oughta shoot the fucker. Look at that damn thing,” he yelled, as the deer munched on a tender lettuce shoot. “Get outta here,” he screamed. He banged on the window, and the doe sprang away into the woods, leaping over the weathered-silver split rail fence Burt built by hand a few years back. Some things just don’t change, thought Sylvia. She wouldn’t dare say such a thing out loud. Burt might get angry with her. Burt stared after the deer, then looked at the dark-colored “B.S. & S.B.” burned into the fence rail. Now, that was a good day – hadn’t had one of those in a couple years. Why the hell did she get rid of that wood-burning set anyway? Burt thought. He shook his head. ........................... I hope you can tell that Burt is very intense -- and a little crazy. He and Sylvia met in a laundomat. Try this on for size. Please be kind. ........................... Burt came back from Nam – hadn’t slept for about three years. Burt slouched in a slippery, orange, molded-fiberglass chair at the all-night laundromat, the Rocky Horror Self-Service Laundry, on Clifton, wondering when he would be able to get more than a cat nap every now and then and whether the detergent he was using could get the blood stains out of his long-sleeve Ohio State sweat shirt. He sliced up his arm with his souvenir Green Beret knife to see if that would help him sleep, and he dripped on his sweat shirt. It didn’t help. Then Sylvia walked into the Rocky Horror Self-Service Laundry and changed his life. She dumped the stuff in her tiny white laundry basket into one of the top-loaders – Burt liked the double-load front loaders that invariably leaked a little. She sat down in one of the yellow molded-fiberglass chairs with the metal legs right across from Burt, then the problems started. Three loud low-lifers, all with scraggly teen-age whiskers growing down the sides of their faces, in leather jackets walked in, slamming the doors, obviously trying to break the glass. They knew Sylvia, calling her name, telling her she wanted them, two of them grabbing their crotches. Burt shot back in time, through the burning flesh, to the first time he met Sylvia. The trips like this took his breath away, being whipped down a narrow hallway – dirty beige walls, uneven concrete floor, blinking flourescent lights overhead. He wished he could remember without making theses trips – being catapulted into the past. It was real. He often wondered if he could change the course of his life, but he felt that he shouldn’t mess with it. So, he tried to play it out the same way. After all, he might end up dead if he did something different; but then again, he noticed that little things were different. Sometimes the clothes were different. The colors were different. So, that’s why he thought maybe it was all in his head. Then he started thinking that maybe everything was in his head – and when he woke up, he would be somewhere else in some different time – like in a Kurt Vonnegut story. But here and now she just wanted to be left alone by the leather-jacketed low lifes. She got up and rushed toward the ladies’ bathroom – the door with the stick figure on it ... a triangle covering where these low-lifers wanted to stick their dicks, he thought. They were touching her, not caressing her, but pawing her, groping and grabbing at her. He had seen the same kind of stuff in Nam – there were these low-lifers all over – couldn’t get away from them. She slammed the door with the lady stick figure on it, but “Butter,” his friends called him, pounded on the door and then pulled the door open. Sylvia got dragged out of the little bathroom, hanging onto the door handle, as he pulled the door. He kicked her twice, then grabbed her by the waist of her pants and dragged her in. Burt knew the type – yep, he thought, same ones as he met in Nam. They’d go to a village after they were high on whatever they could get their hands on, then they would go after whatever they thought they needed, sometimes killing the girl in the process. That was Viet Nam. After that first time, it didn’t happen again; he had caused eight “friendly fire” deaths while over there. No court martial, no discipline, even though one of them was a captain. “Hey,” he called to the black leathers. The dirty blond, Butter, looked at him, just before disappearing into the bathroom. Sylvia screamed something incoherent, then was muffled. The two other leathers stood there, like guards, waiting for their turns, snickering, looking at Burt. Burt stared. “Fuck you, man!” said the red-haired, pimple-faced leather with brown canvas shoes. There were three stripes yellow-painted on the sleeve of his black leather jacket. “Stay out of this if you know what’s good for you,” showing Burt what the pimple-puss thought was a gun. He held his black leather jacket away from his scrawny white T-shirt so Burt could see the pearl handle sticking out of the black denim pants pimple-puss wore. Burt saw it. Pearl-handled thirty-two – it may as well have been a toy for all the stopping power it had. Burt was tired. He hadn’t slept since Nam. “What did you say?” Burt asked politely. He really didn’t hear what the red-haired, pimple-pussed low-lifer said. “Something about fucking me?” The verb was pronounced in two distinct and slowly-spoken syllables. “Was that it?” The low-lifer said, his face very pale under the flickering fluorescent lights, “Yeah, man. You stay put, man! I’ll fuck you up, man!” Burt rose from the orange molded seat and realized that the flickering fluorescent lights weren’t flickering the last time he was here with the low-lifers. He heard Butter yell, “Bitch,” then skin-on-skin; and Sylvia cried out, “Help!” Then, skin-on-skin and a girl-y yelp. Burt moved toward the bathroom door faster than pimple-puss expected, and Burt’s elbow caught him right below the jaw, sending the boy onto the ground. The other leather jacket ran towards the front door. Burt heard a crash as that one forgot the door opened in. Burt pulled the bathroom door out of the frame. Butter turned, eyes blazing. To Butter, it all moved in slow motion. Burt’s right hand moved toward Butter. Butter backed up, but Sylvia’s legs came up and kicked him in the back. Burt’s hand grabbed Butter’s shirt. Butter thought about the knife in his front pocket, but he flew forward and out of the bathroom before he could move. He sprawled onto the floor, roughly doing a somersault; then he found himself on his feet. The knife – he got it from his pocket and touched the button with his thumb, and he saw the blade sling out slowly into locked position. He thrust it where he thought Burt might be, but connected with nothing helpful. Burt laughed silently, watching the blond-haired, would-be rapist trying to use a switchblade. Butter’s right arm jabbed, but missed. Burt used his flattened left hand, like a knife, and chopped down near Butter’s elbow. The knife clattered to the floor, Butter screaming out in pain. Burt stepped with his right foot toward Butter, all of his weight moving forward toward the target, Burt’s right hand uncoiling with his upper body from below his waist, wrist stiff with his thumb and fingers held in a taut semi-circle. His right arm thrust forward and up while his whole body moved toward Butter, hitting Butter’s neck, silencing him, crushing his windpipe. Butter crumpled. The back of his head hit the linoleum with a crack. The autopsy showed a fractured skull, but it was the severity of the pulverized windpipe that killed him when the oxygen level in his bloodstream couldn’t keep him going. ................................ Having fun. Thursday, November 21, 2002 Duct Tape The good old U. S. Army plans to incinerate thousands of old shells containing nerve gas, mustard gas, and other deadly agents at the Anniston Army Depot. "To help make Anniston residents feel better, local officials said they would pass out gas masks and duct tape to seal homes." That reminds me of these instructions: "And, boys and girls, when you hear the sirens, crouch down under your desks with your arms over your heads and close your eyes." "The Army, which houses 9 percent of the nation's chemical weapon stockpile at the Anniston Army Depot, says that its process of burning chemical weapons at 2,700 degrees is completely safe and that no fumes that could hurt the public will be released." An article in Time stated, "One problem with gas masks is they don't protect the rest of your body, and chemicals can be absorbed through the skin. To protect against that you can get a supplied air respirator with a full body suit. You would need a vapor proof suit, which would run you around $1300. This is the kind of setup used by people who have to go into leaking nuclear power plants. In an emergency you'd probably be dead before you got the suit on, but if you want to feel you're as prepared as humanly possible this is definitely the way to go." Gas masks? Duct tape? Give me a body suit!!! And let me know when the burning will begin!! Tuesday, November 19, 2002 Hockey "I signed him up for hockey." I have cringed any time and every time I have heard that statement from parents. Don't get me wrong. I like the game of hockey, but I don't like what it does to people playing the game. I won't get into the adult behavior that is engendered as the result of having a kid playing hockey, although the behavior has a lot to do with what happens to the kid who plays the game. My older son started playing hockey late in life. He was 12. He played with other kids his age who had been playing since they were 4 or 5. Now, my son had never been in a fight before he started playing hockey. He had never threatened to hurt anyone before he started playing hockey. I would like to say that he never used any foul language before he played hockey, but that wouldn't be true. My peace-loving little boy, who would not have hurt any living thing, was a defenseman and intercepted a pass in his own end, passing it out to the blue line to a teammate. The team moved the puck toward the goal, but Matt wasn't in the offensive zone -- I looked to center ice, where he was sitting on top of a kid on the other team, punching him repeatedly in the chest near his neck. He then got off of him and skated to his position near the blue line in the offensive zone in time to take a pass and fire one in on the net. The kid on the other team got up, skated after Matt, hit Matt on the back with his stick and was whistled for a penalty. There's justice for you. My son was not only transformed into a goon, but he didn't get caught and the other guy had to pay a price. I could recount many more incidents, including his participation in, one hockey parent said, "the best hockey fight I have ever seen, bar none." He added, "Did anyone get that on tape? We ought to send it to the Penguins. They could use someone like that!" The other kid sat in the locker room, his wrist broken, weeping, with his father screaming at him, "If you're gonna start a fight with someone, you damn well better finish it, you fucking wimp!" I guess it was some consolation that my kid did not start the fight, but did finish it. The broken wrist on the other kid -- he took off his gloves, just like in the pros, and was punching my kid in the head, except that my kid was wearing a helmet and face mask. That brings me to the point of this rant about hockey. It was reported that a 13-year-old kid, Brandon Clark, was arrested and charged with the assault of a referee when Brandon apparently punched the referee in the nose after a heated game between two suburban rec center teams. Listen to this one. The kid said something to the referee, who may have blown quite a few calls (which is ordinarily the case because the league has the worst ice hockey officials that I have seen in my experience watching club and high school hockey in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, and Canada), while he was in line to shake hands with the other team members. One of the kid's own coaches, hearing the remark, grabbed Brandon and started to take him aside. The referee came over and tried to separate them by attempting to pin Brandon's arms behind him. Why did the referee try to intervene when Brandon's own coach was taking care of the situation in his own way? It seems that he provoked Brandon. Brandon said that he thought the referee was choking him while trying to restrain him. Who knows? Ceratinly, the league will back the referee's version of events, even though the coach probably had things under control. We'll never know what might have happened had the referee not gotten in the middle of things after the game. Are organized sports a good thing? I don't remember ever having a fight during a pick-up game on the ice pond next to the fire station. I don't remember ever getting in a fight during a pick-up game on the baseball diamond. I don't remember ever getting in a fight during a pick-up football game on the front lawn of the school. Well, Greg Domek did sucker punch me in the head when he and a bunch of other guys wanted to kick us off the school lawn, but they left after I got up and laughed at him. Of course, we outnumbered them; otherwise, I would have stayed down. I wonder if Greg broke his wrist. Paper Chase I went into Blockbuster yesterday to rent a couple of movies to watch over the weekend. It turns out that for the first time in many moons, I did not owe any “extended viewing fees.” Now, I don’t know about you, but the movies that I turn in after the noon deadline have been sitting there on the counter in the family room waiting to be taken back to Blockbuster. I haven’t extended the viewing of any movies that I turned in late. Heck, I probably didn’t even watch the movie – it sat there for the two days (or a day-and-a-half or however long “two days” is in the parlance of Blockbuster; whatever it is, it is not two days according to the clock or calendar – it sounds like the banking regulations that we used to rely on when we wrote bad checks where it said that there was a midnight deadline after the second day when credit would be issued even though a check hadn’t actually cleared banking channels – come to think of it, I bounced checks right and left when trying to figure that out, too) Blockbuster gave me to watch the movie and then the two days that I chose to extend the viewing of that movie, but didn’t watch the movie. When I took the movie back and said that I hadn’t viewed the movie at all and the “extended viewing fee” should, therefore, not be applied because the movie was not actually viewed, the hard-hearted Blockbuster girl narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips. She shook her head. It didn’t work. You see, Blockbuster wants those “extended viewing fees.” The Blockbuster girls, much like doctors, undergo rigorous training, internships, residencies before they are turned out to practice their craft on the unsuspecting public. That’s not what I am writing about, though. I went to check out the two DVD’s. I forked over the eight dollars and change for the 5-day titles – I wasn’t going to get stuck again by that two-day crap – and the cute, young woman behind the counter asked if I wanted a bag. My wife reminds me that I don’t need a bag to carry those two DVD’s – how cumbersome could they be? That helps the environment – less waste, you know the line. I could never understand that because somebody else would use that bag – there’s only a finite number of bags, so whether I get it or someone else does – well, that’s a different story by itself; and I don’t need to go there now. I might make someone angry – and I don’t need that in my life right now. So, I tell the young woman, “No, I don’t need a bag“ (or “sack,” as some of you in other parts of the country call bags). And I walk towards the door between the two things that detect the anti-theft strips to get the movies that she will hand to me. I have wondered how the two things you walk through that detect the anti-theft strips work. A guy I knew said it was some kind of magnetic thing. He worked for a Blockbuster competitor; so, maybe he was someone with a little knowledge about the subject. We all know, though, about what a little knowledge is. And if that was true about the magnetic thing, you could just walk out with the DVD’s held overhead – well, the hard-hearted clerks would see that – or concealed in your hat and the alarm wouldn’t sound. I just can’t believe that Blockbuster would let something like that happen. So, I believe the other guy I know who said that all Blockbuster DVD’s are radioactive and the two things at the exit are Geiger counters or something akin to Geiger counters. He’s an engineer and knows about that type of equipment. It would also explain why a lot of the videotapes are messed up when you try to play them. The cute, young woman in the Blockbuster blue-and-yellow uniform handed me the two DVD cases. She also handed me my receipt and four other strips of paper. Five pieces of documentation to rent two five-day movies. One of them told me I could win $10,000; another one told me that I could earn 1,000 extra points to buy things on the Internet; one of them told me I could get a free game rental when I rent two games on my next visit; and I don’t remember what the other one told me, but it must have been important; and then the last one was the receipt. Talk about waste – this was almost like getting the envelopes in the mail that you never ask for filled with coupons for vinyl siding and windows and stuff you would never think of buying in a million years – more trash than you know what to do with. I could have used one of those damn bags to carry all that stuff. The problem for me was that I was using my wife’s Volkswagen New Beetle; and, of course, at least one of those strips of paper, and probably more, would get away from me and end up on the floor or the back seat or, worse, down there near the accelerator pedal. And then I would be in BIG trouble, having to clean out the car, when it really wasn’t my fault. It was Blockbuster’s fault. Monday, November 18, 2002 Hand Job Exciting news from the Great White North comes to us about the Rock-Paper-Scissors World Championship. A world champion was crowned from about 250 contestants. I know that controversy will eventually raise its ugly head over the rules for the matches because, for the most part, competitions consist of only three sets. It seems that the championship match was extended to five sets, the organizers bowing to the major advertisers and creating more commercial time. And this did cause a problem in the competition -- it was obvious to all that Moe -- ahead 2 sets to 1 -- was greatly fatigued in the fourth and fifth sets, dropping the fourth in two throws and dropping the fifth with poor strategy caused by the fatigue. We must congratulate Pete, though, for his perseverance -- he obviously trained long and hard for the gruelling competition; and there were only a few complaints about possible blood-doping. You will recall that Ulrike Meinhof's brain was taken from her body at her autopsy in 1977 and kept for testing. It turns out that her buddy, Andreas Baader, and two of his Red Army Faction terrorist co-horts, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe, unwillingly donated their brains to science, also. Their brains are missing and could have been stolen. A demented and cruel hunchback was seen leaving the laboratory where they were kept. He was actually looking for Einstein's brain, but couldn't find it. Sunday, November 17, 2002 DEER I am a city boy. My wife and I went to visit our friend, who is a country boy, and his wife. We went to a dinner-dance at the local country club in Mount Vernon. On the way back, we were driving on country roads in the middle of the night -- the cloudy, black night. There were no lights, except the headlights that illuminated a brief stretch of the two-lane road ahead of us. But Don says, "Look over there, three of 'em right over there." He's motioning out the passenger-side window. I look. I see blackness. "There's three more. "Oh, yeah," I said with some hesitation because I thought I saw something in the blackness where he was pointing. Maybe it was something, like out of a Stephen King novel or something. "I see 'em," I said. Country boys have night vision -- city boys do not. Earlier, we were watching the Ohio State-Illinois game. It was still daylight. Don said, "Look, a doe. And there's a big buck with her." He was pointing out the sliding-glass door of his living room that overlooks the rolling countryside forming part of his 110-acre Knox County farm. I look. I cannot see a damn thing, except for the beautiful, hilly countryside that takes my breath away. His wife, Lee, says, "Right out there by the ridge line." Now, about the only ridge lines I know about are Center Ridge Road, Middle Ridge Road, and a couple other roads, including just plain old Ridge Road. Don looks through the binoculars he gets from the closet and hands them to me, telling me where to look. By golly, there they are. A doe eating, and a big buck standing in the field looking and listening. Country boys can see stuff that city boys can't. And we had the best corn chowder I have ever tasted in my life when we got there Friday night. And the visit just got better.
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