World's Loneliest Tailgate

Échantillon LXXV de papier peint

-- Dans la chambre à coucher de Frank Hobbs et Mme Walker.

Reactions and Responses on a Blue Sky Tuesday

• Scene: Lunch counter. TV above blaring the latest news. An older gentleman takes a stool at the counter. It is probably his first time at this establishment. He wears shirtsleeves and a dark bow-tie. His hair is a simple, grey flat-top and he has old horn-rimmed glasses. He looks as if he belongs in a small-town Southern drug store, accustomed to providing scrip to blue-haired ladies with their aches and pains.
But he sits here with a tight jaw, looking up silently at the TV with a rigid spine, perhaps holding in some ache or pain of his own.
He nonchalantly orders a reuben.

• A few seats down is an unkempt college student furiously working on his second Scotch before one o’clock. His eyes burn at the TV overhead as he swears under his breath at the news. Is he angry because he is drinking, or drinking because he is angry? One might suppose the latter.

• Down the street a husky fireman stands on the corner, a fire engine parked haphazardly behind him. He holds out a galvanized tin bucket as he pleads for donations from the melee of passers-by.

The news is a thousand miles away, but every locale has its reactions.

• Here, a mental reaction: The old man’s silent reserve and hardened focus belie the thoughts churning in his head. Is he a vet perhaps, thinking of the past? Or maybe a grandfather thinking of the future?

• Another reaction -- this one verbal: The student with fire on his tongue. Alas, heated words borne of liquid courage.

• And a third reaction: An emergency professional, again, a thousand miles from the news, doing what he can physically, even monetarily, to alleviate the situation.
A reaction and a response.

At this point, any observer can spout platitudes (”Actions speak louder than words”) or pithy quotes (“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it” -- Charles R. Swindoll) that may accurately illustrate the sentiment of an unfolding scene as such.
Instead, may this author offer humble and simple words:
Hats off to the reflexes of mortal men and first responders whose sense of duty transcends the self.

Adult Heresy: Puer Aeternus

Witness the adult who insists on frantically coat-tailing whatever Cultural Yugo comes sputtering down the pike, retroactively clinging to some imaginary vestige of ego-pampered youth, reinventing salad days in which he was only a flavourless vegetable.
The failure of the Societal Superego to temper the Peter-Pan-meets-Pauly-Shore Syndrome in aging men* has resulted in legions of middle-aged, middle management turds grasping for relevance with false nostalgioid opiates (as if real nostagioid opiates weren’t bad enough).

Taken to its gerontological and psychological extreme, what would we have?

Paunchy, pasty putzes toolin’ for tail in the high school parking lot, blasting Creed from their T-top Z-28s? Graying geezers drooling on their GAP Kids™ t-shirts and teddy bears as they relish a future of unfettered infantilism? Depends™.
Yes, it all hinges on what a civil, sane society will allow. Perhaps an end to people just muttering and looking the other way. Pungeoning protocol dictates a “cut to the chase.” “Calling it like you smell it,” if you will.
Which brings us full circle back to a Societal Superego that needs a shot in the arm. A Collective Consciousness with cojones that isn’t afraid to Take the Punge. A no-nonsense potency with the austerity of a drill sergeant, ready to pounce and punge any who dare commit Adult Heresy.

*Do not be mistaken in thinking that this is solely a men’s issue. It is equally pathetic when middle-aged women engage in such questionable self-affirming activities as trolling for boytoy, vain implants, and the wearing of mix-n-match animal prints with one-size-fits-all white stretch pants.

Petrolic Assault Upon Opthalmic Economy

“It’s petrol! It’s in her eyes! Why are you standing there?!”

LXXXIX Gulf Coast summer day
Dry & Dusty Fill’n’Go bakes by the highway
Door flies open with staggering, shrieking woman, clawing at her EYES MY EYES MY EYES MY EYES PETROL MY EYES PETROL MY EYES!!!

Cashier and customers taken aback
Something is seriously Not Right with this unfolding scene
And through the door walks in Miss Shotgun
Traveling chum nonplussed; Shotgun rider unruffled, unmiffed; Standing there standing there...
...in the face of Adjunct Nonchalance.

Labours, Laughs, and the Augean Lodge

Prologue:

‘The Professor’ Jones: “Hey ‘Somber, this friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend just tipped me off to this alumnus guy who pays five bucks an hour to do odd jobs. Seeing as we’re broke-ass university students, we should jump at the chance.”

LordSomber: “Okay.”

Let us posit that a young man’s character can be developed through the crucible of Herculean tasks, most notably the chore of the Augean stables, and tempered with a sense of levity. The more difficult and absurd the task, the more a man must be able to laugh at himself.

The asphalt ends and the dirt road begins. A right turn takes you up a gravelly drive thickly shaded by old oak and pine. The trees clear and there is a secluded bungalow amidst the junk and rusted cars. Near one corner of the building is a wood frame with meat hooks swaying in the lifeless breeze. Probably for dressing deer and game. One might hope.
Upon entering the house, watch your step. Yes, that is dog faeces and it is everywhere. Oh, and ignore all those stacks of men’s magazines -- you’re out here to work. Ol’ Man Willie will assign the tasks.
A bedroom door slowly opens. Perched on the end of a bed is a squat, shirtless, penguinesque little man surrounded by three dogs.
“Don’t be so stingy with your kisses, Lucky Lady!” Willie cackles as he tongue-smooches one of the mutts sitting in his lap.
Welcome to the Lodge.

• In the attic of the Lodge on a steamy July afternoon, the temperature rises to a sweltering 115°F. Trudging through abrasive pink blankets of glass-fibre insulation, a thought occurs to the miserable crew: “What is it we’re up here looking for again, Willie?” From below, muffled snores punctuate the quiet. “Insane,” the crew chuckles.

• In the old Sig Ep house, Willie “orders” volunteers down into the dark, claustrophobic sub-crawlspace beneath the kitchen. Plumber/Philosopher Dan and LordSomber search valiantly for a mysterious clog in the PVC piping in the blackness. Oh, here it is: Bluuurrrrpp-p-p-p! From the plumbing shat out a pitch, viscous goo of month-old rotting food flecked with prawn shells. Lovely. Even those “hard rockin’” Kilkenny Kitties were too wussy to come down and help out. That in itself provided more amusement than the foetid dreck in which we were drenched.
But those lads weren’t without their mischief. One day out at the Lodge they threw an old petrol can onto the Burning Pile. With a gut-wrenching whooomph the can exploded in a ball of flame, the resulting mushroom cloud climbing 20 metres at the least.
“Dammit, you’re gonna wake Ol’ Man Willie!”
Tip-toeing inside expecting to face wrath, the crew instead found the man snoozing upon his bed like some beached whale. The guy could sleep through the apocalypse. An apocalypse the rest of us would probably be cleaning up. With a laugh, of course.

Unfortunately, Willie’s unhealthy lifestyle and penchant for quaffing copious quantities of brew led him into a diabetic state. Not that that deterred him and the self-styled kingly ways in which he lived in his domain of dog dirt.
“When I die, they’re gonna have my body lying in state in the campus chapel for everyone to pay respects,” he would say smugly with a wink.
And when that day came not long after, his funeral was but a modest one in the local Presbyterian church. In the casket he lay, fingers laced, with a wry smirk on his face. Cheeky bugger always did have the last laugh.

India Ink Abstract LXXXVI