The astronumerology analysis of the abbreviation JDIGB.

OK.  You all know me.  Some of you know me better - now, this is just online -  than others.  Those of you who don't know me as well as the others do should probably give each others big high fives plus 40 ouncers of malt liquor and money because the stuff you don't know about me is all pathetic and whiny and messed up and shit.

But anyway, you all know me.  And you know I bitch about not liking motherhood, and  being glad it's over, and particularly my being pissed off at my daughter because she had this completely unpredictable temper, like "Of course I love cute puppiYOU ARE SATAN AND THE WORLD IS A HEAP OF SUCKyeah, puppies are pretty awesome."

It was really like that.  OK that's an oversimplification but still.  You never knew when her shit would go off like a goddamn bomb, or for how long, or why.
Ever.
And Oh My God, If you asked her "Why are you upset?"
First, she'd deny it.
Then, she'd get pissed off that you'd even askeHISSSSSSSSSSSS 666 HATE RAGE BITCH SHRIEK HEAD SPLITS IN HALF AND FIRE SHOOTS OUT.

None of that happened on this visit.
None of that happened at all on this visit.
Nothing even came close to maybe happening that way on this visit.

Why not?

First of all, she finally got her physical maladies diagnosed, which lead, via co-morbid 'Oh shit I have that' realizations, to her going in to a psychiatrist, who put her on a few pediatric doses of psychiatric stuff, like me, and that was all it took for her to suddenly realize "Oh fuck I am bipolar."

Also, "Oh fuck I have been a rampaging cunt."

 And so, Steely Dan is completely accurate when they attest that "Any 'mount of world that breaks apart falls together again."  It's just that sometimes it takes fuckin' decades of sewage before it falls together again.  And, you know, Steely Dan, I'd have appreciated you throwing that little bit of  information in there.  Walter Becker, I know your ass hears me.

Goading time

Look up.
That's the moon.
Take your forefinger and thumb and make a circle around it.

Who knows that time doesn't stop?  Not you.
That wasn't always true.
No matter how noisy or numerous the the watchers, other animals full of night roamed amid us and what we held, circling, eating, watching, running.  Yours meant nothing to the starving, edging too close, twitching with terror, one moment beyond prudence.

Just wait. Be so, so still.
One buck and five deer with fawns step with deliberate feet through and by.  Look to the right or the left.  They bend their heads to the places your hand has rested, and wait through the heat of the day beneath old apple trees forgotten in your neighbors' back yard, in the clusters of low pine and hemlock all curtained with pincherry nightshade along the alleys, all of the deer soft breathing the day and soft exhaling the smell of crushed grass and sour milk, home where you live.

This is true. Listen.  Animals from the stories your mother read you are asleep deep in tangled gloom,  circle once, circle five times around, sleeping in the softest strands of deep green grass, the kind that grows in the margins between blackberry tangles and the objects their thorns devour. Make your circle around the moon.

When night comes, foxes and bobcats and cougar and coyote and dogs and loping wolves come to break the necks of fool animals who let themselves in too close to you.   Animals with the expectation of of a next day will end their lives in diminishing gasps being carried off to secret places.  Now think of the stars reflected in their eyes or the moonless night. Make a circle around the moon and hold it in one place.

Wild is what cats stare at when you think there's nothing there.  Consider how their claws sheathe in a curl like their kin, who roam in the same ways and hunt in the same ways for blood and meat. They draw dark alongside your garage and stop-
The cat you feed is deliberate and swift making mysteries and unexplained disappearances, peace behind their eyes as they watch you fill the dish.
All cats from all families are one cat gone down ravines, complaining of their love up draws and drawing thin silver v's through the grasses toward the places where they bide. That's cats.

Listen.  This is about dogs. Moon dogs. Calling dogs. Silent dogs listening.  Roaming determined dogs wearing the nonchalance of freedom that look you in the eye with cool minds. These are your fellow citizens, neighbor.
Dogs flow with the wind on their own errands.
Think hard about what dogs mean, in words you won't listen to, the story of generations after generations of shunned dogs, abandoned dogs, lost dogs, tame, gone hungry and semi tame, raised less tame,  noticed by nobody yet walking, nosing, going to and fro in the earth, and walking up and down in it.

Everything is black when a cloud hides the moon.

You should look for where people you forget make homes.  Wise nimble-minded dogs full of luck and worn deep around their throats with old collars and with battered tags that clatter remember.  

 Mice will come. The same mice so dear, the same mice on the grass with broken spines with their small paws folded like praying.
Rats dart and snatch.  Rats are greed and breathe blood.  Their teeth curl downward toward bone.  Break open the roof of their caches and see!  Small gold stones.
Crows cut like scissors.
Ravens tear and sideslink heavily just out of reach.
Others arrive.
Cars drive over a bridge.

More. Listen.
Behind the smile of that dog, those are teeth, and they grab and snatch fast, you see, the wind of their going blowing from when outlier dog-wolves and slinking starved bitches in milk, wolves who ran to save their skins,  circled the dimness and swallowed and swallowed in anticipation.  Smelling, one eye cautious, skittish, maybe toward where a special animal warmth like a moon waits just past the edge of the safe.

We don't own the advantage:  the consensus, the democracy of pheromones.
What we have is height and the predators' face forward sight and the memory we want, of good dogs who lived in homes and obeyed a voice.
Not all memories tell you what you need.

Look at where you don't look. Black bears hide the day away beneath abandoned cars and holes torn jaggedly around the tangled roots of downed trees, half drowsing,  waiting for the night-damp to sharpen the smells of the heaps they prowl around and over and through, rooting and straining with bold black claws for caches of things that are spoiled and soft and fat with grease.  Black bears are stealthy walkers and sliders and whisperers through twigs and crackling frost kill and the grassed brush on the margins of trails meandering through your town, your suburb, your development, eating the food you waste and remembering the taste of your hands and mouth.

Up in the top of a tall tree bark colored owls tear strips from prey held fast in one fist, and their gaze turns to you.  Silence, one hook and eight knives, an owl.
Patient pale owls watching from empty rectangles in city buildings, generations raised in the rising frost of spent feathers and the pin bones of bats, in lath-fallen rooms and stairwells and high in blind tin architraves.  They fly down the narrow hallways white, out into the blizzards of moths and bats around the street lights. 

Did you know that the moon was shining when the imagos split and moths came out of the dirt to fly in confusions and clouds?

These things see.

Cats see, and the smart ones darken away fast, fast between the wheels of cars, fast in front of bicycles, only a fast line moving across a two lane road from one ditch to the next.  Cats see from trees and windows, smart covered corners where they are just another shade of grey on black, a pile of leaves, and they see, and they run fast, climb fast and go quiet.  They see where deer have walked and look over their shoulders, and run from darkness to darkness.

Let go of the moon.
Do nothing and don't wait.  The soil will open.
Do nothing and don't wait.  The three families of dogs circle you and circle you.
Do nothing and don't wait.  The cats will rouse from their cautious sleep and escape before their betters.
Do nothing and don't wait.  Larger presences are just outside the circle and they never learned to heed you.
Do nothing. Don't wait.  The moon goes dark for two days in twenty-nine.

Please Don't Hurt Me Lynda Barry I Will Never Talk Smack About You Again

My best, earliest memory that is longer than a couple of sentences, told with deliberately bad sentence structure because what I said about Lynda Barry totally applies to me as well.

When I was 4 years old my parents dressed me up and took me over to my cousins' house for an important party.  My girl cousin Theresa was turning 'Sweet Sixteen' and her parents were throwing her a big hullabaloo.  Being good Catholic parents, of course, it was teeners in the basement with their jungle music and every guests' parents present,  the daylight basement windows and floor vents open and the basement door ajar.

So there I was at a grown up party, dressed up like a toilet paper dolly, and I was 4.
I was the only person there who was 4.
The closest person to 4 there was my cousin Theresa, and she wanted to put up with me like cats want to put up with dogs. Aunt Lillian said I could go downstairs to the party.  My cousin Theresa right there in front of me actually started crying and begged her mom please don't let her come downstairs and Ruin Her Party.

(Future me:  bad move, ya dumb cow.)

The husbands were outside barbecuing and smoking the cigars Uncle Sonny passed out and drinking Canadian Club.  My boy cousins were in the back playing hula-golf .  The wives were inside, drinking Canadian Club on the rocks with Grenadine and smoking and pretending to eat my aunt Lillians terrible canapes (I've written about this womans' horrifying table elsewhere) and talking about boring things.  I was three feet shorter than the shortest person in the joint.  Everyone was either half-lit or doing the Frug in the basement...so for all intents and purposes,

 I was completely unsupervised.

 I went downstairs and it looked exactly like this:
http://www.carameloffers.com/img/c8.alamy.com/comp/CMR85J/1950s-1960s-teen-couples-having-party-dancing-in-rec-room-CMR85J.jpg

One of the boys was really nice and came over and actually pretended to dance with me!  He was tall and had a blonde crew cut.  I instantly fell in love with him.

Since it was a record party, everyone had brought their collection of 45's and got to take turns picking songs. Some dumb butt put a stupid slow record on.  It was stupid square Little Surf Girl by the stupid square Beach Boys - which immediately alerted the parents to the possibility of Slow Dancing and Kissing.  From upstairs the moms started hollering threats down the floor vents that there better not be any funny business going on.  Little Surf Girl plus moms yelling "You better not be up to anything down there ELIZABETH AND GREGG I MEAN YOU!" equals Total Uncoolness Party.
  I had standards.  I went back upstairs.

Immediately my mother sprang on me and made me take a shitty canape and say 'Thank you' for it to Aunt Lilian.  It was a pimento olive slice on top of a hot dog slice on top of peanut butter on top of a Ritz cracker with a toothpick stuck in it. Can you imagine the horror?  Luckily I was close to the floor.  Here's why.

Before I had even had a chance to begin snivelling, my Aunt and Uncles' black Lab Tommy, slobberingly overexcited, panting and everywhere at once, ran through the room and grabbed it out of my hand, and his enormous red dog ween was totally showing out.

This was not the kind of party guest any good Catholic mother wants to see.

Aunt Lillian freaked. All the moms went into 'rat in the henhouse' mode and more than a few of them were snickering into their wrists even though what they'd just had seared onto their eyeballs was Not Nice.  The cigarette ashes were falling and canapes by the double handful were sneaked into the trash!  Aunt Lilian, bubble do, cat glasses, dirndle and all took out after Tommy the dog at a sprint.  I followed her because I wanted to see what she'd do.  My mom followed me with another shitty canape to make sure I actually ate one, but I caught sight of her and suddenly jinked left and ran behind the house into the evergreen hedge and hid.

Even though it was very poky, being inside the evergreen hedge was cool to the max.  You could actually stand up in it and not touch (almost.)  It was a perfect hiding place in every way.  It made an arched tunnel all the way around the house.  It was also full of play balls of every description, thanks to Tommy, because he'd go around the neighborhood and steal them from everyone and the secret tunnel inside the hedge was his stashing place.

Tommy and I were both in refugee mode, so he found his way into the hedge and soon thereafter found me.

At 4 I did not like any dogs.  Either they were taller than me and knocked me down, or smaller than me and bitey.  And here Tommy was all up in my grill, needy and overexcited, slobbering and panting and smacking the side of the house with a tail like a baseball bat, wanting me to play fetch.  He kept picking up every ball and bringing it to me like if he found the right one I'd play.  Totally no way Jose, dog. Tommy was gross.  He always had long blops of foamy slobber hanging out of the two flubby parts of the side of his mouth, which also stuck out and flubbered and looked like something washed up on the beach.  Now here he was all a-wag, with his slobber full of hemlock crud stuck in it hanging from his flubby dog lips wabbling and swinging all over the place, and the ball he proffered was all covered with dried slobber that was mixed with wet slobber and ball fragments and Christ knew what,   so I took the ball and threw it as hard as I could out into the street and a car almost ran over him.
Almost.  Sooo close.
I did not like that dog.

The people in the car screeched to a halt and got out and ran into the driveway!  My Uncle Sonny, tall, bald and built like a fullback came hustling out of the garage with his shiny head glistening in the sun to meet them and they all had a screaming argument!   When the people told Uncle Sonny that the dog had been chasing a ball I froze.  I was quiet and waited, but nobody came looking for me because Uncle Sonny immediately blamed it on the boys.  The people finally drove away while my uncle Sonny was still yelling at the boys for throwing balls into the street.  I was safe!  So I hauled down my skivvies and peed and got it all over my little lacy ankle socks.

When you are 4 and a girl, you are way down in the weeds when you squat to pee so it goes everywhere.  And never pee in a hemlock hedge because it will poke the crap out of you and you could hoist ass and get pee on your socks.

Nothing daunted, I crept my way around the foundation of the house, using the natural tunnel the plantings had created, the rock-n-roll music coming from the basement through the open daylight windows, feeling very secret-ey and tuff. There were some good go go music playing and I wanted to dance too.  I got thinking about my mean stupid cousin Theresa and her me only you have to go away party.  Oh yeah, Theresa? Oh yeah?

  I went back to the first open window to the basement, collected as many tore up play balls as I could carry, and threw them into the basement through the window.  Every window I passed I'd grab a few balls off the ground from the hundreds there and throw them into the basement as I went.  It was so great and fun because it made everyone start screaming and the records skip.  Happy Sweet Sixteen, Cousin Turd-resa!

Once I was on the opposite side of the house, in the back yard, I figured I was as safe as I was going to get.  I ran out and WHAMMO  a bummerball (a used golf ball with a red ring of paint around it's equator) smacked into the side of the house right next to me. (It wasn't on purpose.)  While I was marvelling at that, I got caught by my boy cousins and their buddies who thought it was puss to dance with girls and were the ones out in the back yard playing hula golf.  OK.  They said I had to go run around the whole back yard and find all their stupid golf balls or they'd tell on me that I wasn't in the house. Looking back I can't remember there being anything said about me needing to stay in the house.  It worked, though.

My oldest boy cousin Raymond  was 17 and he looked exactly like the oldest boy in the T.V. show My Three Sons and he was sooo handsome.  Mostly he ignored me.  My next older boy cousin was 15 and puggy and snotnosed and mean and looked like a dumb stupid butt and was named Richie.   I was wearing a little polkadot dress that looked like this:   https://witness2fashion.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/mc-5365-and-6384-1960-and-1962.jpg

So ok man, geeze, be cool.  I ran around the edge of their huge back yard and I filled my skirt with stupid bummerballs.  When I couldn't fit any more into the skirt of my little dress I ran over to my cousin Ritchie, the one who looked like a dumb stupid butt and who was dog poop also.  I acted like hey here's your golf balls but instead I flipped my skirt out at him and all the golf balls hit him and rolled everywhere and all the other boys laughed and I ran into the garage where my dad was.

My dad picked me up just because I was there.  My dad smelled good, like gasoline, tobacco, outdoors and booze.  I was so safe.  Cousin Ritchie came in all bluster faced and waa waa waa'd she hit me with golf balls to Uncle Sonny about me. All the dads made fun of Ritchie and Uncle Sonny grabbed him by the arm and kicked him out of the garage and out he went, crying and with snot hanging down.  Which, HA on you, Ritchie.  He never changed either.  He was the exact same when he was older and married.  Ew.

My dad held me for a long time. He was standing in a semicircle around the engine of the car with some of the other dads, smoking a cigar.  It was nice.  I was way up high to where you could look down and see right through parts around the engine to the floor of the garage!  But the cigar smoke was bothering me, and I was getting squirmy and bored, so my dad put me down.

I had an amazing idea!

I crawled under the car so I could surprise them!  And I did!  Lying in a puddle engine oil and metal shavings and dirt I shouted "HI!!!"  Boy, were they surprised!   Suddenly I had a bunch of arms trying to grab me.   I was laughing and scrabbling around on the floor under the car trying to escape.  Someone grabbed my shoe, which looked like this: http://www.thedetoxwarrior.com/image/cache/data/category_139/superior-mary-janes-polo-ralph-lauren-alyssa-mary-jane-little-kid-girls-black-742-800x640_0.jpg

Too slow, gotta go!  One shoe on and one shoe off I ran back into the house and down the stairs into my girl cousins Sweet Sixteen party again.

The boy I was in love with danced with me again and I asked him to be my boyfriend and he said yes.  Then he danced with another girl and I cried.  My cousin Theresa told me to bug out of her party and get lost, but another girl told Theresa she was mean so I got to stay.  I got to take turns dancing with all the boys.  Someone put on 'Do The Twist' and everybody showed me how to do the Twist!  I climbed up onto the ping-pong table and I did the twist like a go-go girl!

When the record was over I tried to climb down but one side of the ping pong table collapsed.
I slid down, clanged off the snack table and  dumped over the punch bowl which was almost empty anyway.  Wow!  Humungous Freak-O-Rama!!!!!  With my enraged cousin Theresa close behind, I shot upstairs and scuffed my knee on the stairway (and got a case of gross ringworm later on in the same spot), cousin Theresa with murder in her eyes, in tears, disheveled, trying to catch me and probably eat me.  But she was too slow because she was wearing heel shoes.

Of course she went straight to Aunt Lillian waa waa waa and tattle-babied on me that I was ruining her party.  She got in HUGE trouble!  Aunt Lillian grabbed her by the arm and actually SPANKED HER at her own first grown-up party in the middle of all the moms and my mom started yelling at me and tried to grab ME by the arm but I ran upstairs and sat on the top step and and refused to come down for a really long time and everyone forgot about me.  My cousin Theresas' cheerleading megaphone was on the top step.  I sang 'I Love You Yeah Yeah Yeah' into it, not loud enough for anyone to hear but me.  It sounded pretty good like my voice was coming from a record.  I sang all the Beatles songs I knew, then I got bored and came back downstairs.

It was a very agitated group of women downstairs there in Aunt Lillians front room.  In the wake of the upset, all the moms were cranked into high gear, ice cubes crackling as drinks were freshened,  lighters sparking as they lit up,  and cigarettes sizzling as they were stubbed out angrily into the half-eaten canapes on Aunt Lillians' good saucers.  The smell of Ronson, cheap Maybelline lipstick and tobacco smoke filled the air.  They were all complaining really loudly about their terrible kids and how horrible they were,  and they were comparing punishment techniques (they'd been hitting the Canadian Club pretty hard.)  It was like they turned into monsters!  I just stood in the middle of it all with a little paper cup full of Aunt Lillians crappy diet Koolaid someone had given me and was kind of appalled, as much as a 4 year old kid can get appalled anyway.  And in the middle of all that my mom just swiftly took me outside and then we all got in the car and snuck home.

It wasn't a very long drive.  I got out and my mom finally got a good look at me.  There I was! I had on one shoe and my white tights were tore out on both knees and I was covered in dirt and dog slobber, my socks were wet and I smelled like pee and I had hemlock crud in my hair, my braids were all coming undone, AND I had grease and red koolaid ON MY NEW CHURCH DRESS (Total lie. It was a hand me down from my cousin Theresa.) Plus I had engine oil and grease on my face because it had got on my hands and I kept smelling it because it smelled good.

I could see her cranking herself up into an end of the world as we know it fit, but my dad saved me.  He saved me because when he came around the side of the car it was obvious that he'd been driving Three Sheets To The Wind, as my mom always put it.  So the fit that was meant for me turned into she got angry at him for driving Three Sheets To The Wind and she blew up and it was like an atomic bomb.

I got totally forgotten about AGAIN.  So HA on everybody!  I rule everything!

I deliberately ate glitter one time, but it didn't turn out how you'd think it would.

Told in the style of Lynda Barry and I hope she sees it too.

This has been bugging me and bugging me for 100 YEARS ever since I saw the 'Poodle With a Mohawk' poster plastered all over Hells' half acre in Seattle Washington.  OK well it first started bugging me after seeing her strip in The Stranger, but it changed with the poodle thing ANYWAY.

This is what's been bugging me:

LYNDA BARRY DELIBERATELY DRAWS SHITTY.

But she's completely screwing herself, and here's why.
 
She's so good at drawing fake shitty that every now and then she slips and draws something, just a little corner of something, really well and it TOTALLY gives her away.  She could be drawing so many things acceptably but she's deliberately drawing badly.

Plus!   Her people in the comics have really really bad grammer from the 1960's. But even then!  Every now and then she can't help it maybe but I think she totally is doing it deliberately - she writes a really good passage, and while she thinks 'Whoo, deal with that flash of incredible brilliance!' it's actually so obviously like "See, I have superfucking mad skills when I want to but I just don't want to because you couldn't handle it" but AHA ya mothercluckerbucker, because see, that really, really means "I freak out when I think of actually doing things well all the time because then I'd be held to that standard and no way in blazing hell am I going to be able to bring it 100% of the time so I'll just dole it out in dribs and drabs and people will think Man, this is such an incredible work of urban primitive art/literature".

Also in her mind she's thinking "Everyone can draw a table lamp and make it look like a table lamp, and a few people can draw a table lamp and make it look like a photograph, but nobody cares because it's a table lamp when everythings' said and done.  But when I deliberately shittify a drawing of a table lamp it's because that's my shtick...the shtick I lean on so I don't have to worry about being judged by my artwork because see it's already bad so ha on you.

This having been said, Lynda Barry, you are one of my top 3 favorite writers of all time forever.  But you should quit being all plastic and phony and draw right for a change so people can tell what the fuck they're looking at.  And you should start using regular drawing things like a pencil or a pen instead of a tree branch.  OK.

Noodles, Where Are We Going?

Shortly after we moved into our present home, I began noticing that there was something 'off' about the folks living next door.  It was a combination of things, like the wildly untended yard, or the aerial walkway through the trees and around the house someone had cobbled together for the use of the ten or so white cats that lived there.  In the late gloom of evening, it was an eerie sight; these cats walking slowly about in seeming midair.

Then there was the graveyard.  About thirty or so white crosses jammed into the soil between the house and the garage, moving slowly, death by death, toward my property line.

Relax.  It was an animal graveyard.  Not a Pet Semetary, sorry.  It didn't need to be a Pet Semetary because all the other weird in combination would have overshone it's evil Pet Semetariness.

Like the mysterious guy who started living in their garage.  Just showed up one night.  He'd step out sometimes on a warm summer evening and take a steaming elephant-piss back and forth across the blackberries that covered a good part of the garage and the backyard.  I don't know what this guy ate, but what he baptized stayed dead as fuck.  And this is the mighty Himalayan Blackberry we're talking about - the god-king of all invasives. You could hear this guy from indoors at my place as he cut loose like a fire hose.  I peeked a couple of times, but they were quick peeks.  One day he disappeared.  I did not ask.

The family of five that lived there were not too visually peculiar; you'd see them buying huge sacks of Cheetos and Purina Critter Chow at the store, looking a bit wore out and unwashed, but this is farm country, and we all look like that.

Let's look closer, shall we?  

Mom was a trembling wraith, like a Grey in a wig.  She refused to speak. I know this from the few times I tried to visit...all she did was stare at me until I left her line of vision - then she'd scream for her daughter to go see what the visitor wanted. You could see her in there as you passed when the light shone a certain way, just sitting, wearing a nightgown and a stole made of live rats, serenely pissing in place until you could smell it across the street.  You could see the marks on the floor where they overflow had turned into an amber colored, syrup-ish, fiendish form of adhesive.  The bottom half of the chair didn't come up when they lifted, so they took a hammer, broke it apart and slung it out the door.  

There was another spot just like that in the kitchen, where I'm assuming Dad had his throne, you'll excuse the pun.  The place where his armchair had been was a square of hardened piss-glue and old fecal matter from various sources, sunk an inch or more into the linoleum, which was black and fuzzy and had danger tape around it.  Linoleum did not come in black and fuzzy.  You can look it up.

His chair made it into the side yard in one piece.  One piece that had been tunneled and eaten and rotted black and molded over with blue freakiness, a ghastly pit of tobacco colored horror marking the spot where his Highness sat steeping in his own whiz.

While Dad was still in residence, his only form of daytime entertainment involved an occasional waddle out to the side yard in nothing but his huge, stretched-out, baggy jockey shorts, bringing up faint memories of the cattle ring at the county fair - where he'd poke at the dirt with a rake. Nothing about this was beautiful or appropriate.

There were two separate camps which arose to explain his sudden disappearance:  1.  He abandoned the family and went to Arizona, or 2.  The rats got him .  Once the developer breaks ground, I guess we'll find out.  Either way the guy is going to freak out when all those skeletons are unearthed.  Maybe one will have a gold tooth...? (Fried Green Tomatoes reference. Is so clever!)

The twin brothers would sometimes appear during the daytime, and I'd wave and be a nice neighbor, hand them a beer, you know.  They smelled like an old bookshop full of used hamster shavings, but they were OK.

Sis I have written about.
I wrote about the time she picked a dead cat up off the road and strolled home with it, talking to it and petting it all the while, causing huge swathes of cat fur to slough off marking her trail all the way to the front door. 

I wrote about the times I'd seen her out mowing the field in a mans' deep-cut sleeveless t-shirt, a  gargantuan boob swinging cheerily out either armhole.

I wrote about the times she'd cut loose at 2am in hair-raising, werewolf howls, screaming and growling incomprehensibly.

I've recounted the episodes when she'd stand at the back window and have vicious screaming arguments with the pear tree.  (When she was capable, that woman could cuss like a bag full of cats.)
When she was in her right mind, her personality was that of a quiet 6 year old girl. Once her father disappeared mysteriously, she began to get normal enough to hold down a job, and she's been doing better and better ever since. 

Another tale I've written already was about the time their tame rats (wild and pet stock; any rat that wandered in was welcome to learn how to take a Cheeto daintily from the lips of Sis....shudder) tried to move into our house, their little ratty minds having learned to associate the human voice with the dinner bell.  They begged prettily, in a semicircle, like little poodles of evil while my husband barbecued steaks on the grill...they ambled in though the dog door whenever they felt the need for a snack, languidly sunned themselves in my front yard, licking their balls, scratching themselves; and the resultant Mad Biker rampage through the house with a broom and a shotgun.

What I never realized that as desolate as things looked outside, what was going on in that house was so very, very much worse.

When the buyer came over to speak with me, he asked me if I wanted to see inside.  I was already halfway to the door, because I have no sense whatsoever.  Old fucked up hazmat house full of filth?  Color me there!

It goes without saying that there were places of lunatic carpentry attempts where the roof, wall and floor had been completely eaten away by rainfall.  A couple had ferns growing out of them.  I'm all for bringing the outside in, so let's move on.

The entire house, with the exception of a few items, was empty. Stopped in time at 1955.  From that time onward, nothing had been touched, cleaned, swept - nothing.  The old wallpaper, once beautiful, was shadowed over and brown with age. This aspect creeped the shit out of me until I realized that it had all been covered with cardboard boxes pushed tight to the wall and towering all the way up to the ceiling.

Anything that could be outlined by horror was outlined with horror. Horror with hairs all stuck in it. And cast snake skins.  And white cat hair. You could tell exactly what had occupied the spot by the perfect outlines left.  And everything that was wide enough for a turd held multitudes of them and dared you to play 'Guess the Poopie'.

The only stink in the place was ammonia.  Like on Jupiter, the underlying single note of ammonia, motherfucker, mingled in various amounts with the signature pee aromas produced by incontinent humans, dogs, cats, snakes, rats, bearded dragons, more cats, way more rats, possums, rabbit pee, rabbit eau du love squit, raccoon pee, more possums and other various creatures created a series of invisible, semi-stationary atmospheric continents of OH GOD FUCK THIS.  Ask anyone from Jupiter.  They'll tell you.  Some spots on Jupiter, you can screw up your resolve and tolerate because fuck, dude, you're on Jupiter right?  But others are...not...vacation territory.

Of course, the smell was only part of the horror.  Let me draw you a little word picture here so you understand what I mean.

Two story house.  Downstairs, you've got people and random creatures pissing where and when they would, ambling around, eating Cheetos and admiring their stacks of cardboard boxes.

Upstairs...upstairs was where the rats lived.

Because rats have no thumbs and cannot play video games, they chew on things.  They are mad bastards for chewing on things.  They don't care what they chew on.  They don't eat half of it anyway, they just leave rat saliva-coated chew-flitters heaped up in random places for whatever ratty reason.  The second story was their kingdom.  They had the run.  The water was left trickling in the bathroom sink in case they wanted a drink, and the toilet was, I don't know, their rat spa or something.  I think they used the tub for some kind of rat initiation ceremony, because why the fuck not.  

A couple times a week the humans would tear open a bag of Purina Vermin Chow and sling it across the floor up there. And thus, the rats were good.  The rats were taken care of.

But since they were rats without video games, they began chewing.  The rug.  The linoleum.  The underlayment.  The baseboards. The insulation.

THE WALLS.

ALL THE WALLS UPSTAIRS HAD BEEN CHEWED AWAY TO THE BARE STUDS. Floor to ceiling.  Gone.  Only the nails left.  Those, and flitters. 

They'd started on the ceiling by the time moving day hit, so there were a few meandering holes...but oddly, the walls and ceiling of the stairs that lead up to their kingdom had been left alone, for the most part.

The paint on the stairs was 1940's Apple Green.  Just one coat.  But bubbled and heaved; almost as though there was gravel beneath it.  There wasn't.

It was caused by what was above the stairs.

The ceiling sloped upward, as stairway ceilings do.  In the center of the wallboard there on the ceiling of the stairway, ran a long, stained, sagging black fissure with black...something...dangling from it.  In that one spot, there on the stairs, was the worst stink I have ever encountered. Ever.

The rats had been enjoying themselves over the years by scrambling up and down the slanted boards that backed the stair ceiling, like an antic game of Let's be Rats and Run Up and Down Slanted Boards.  And remember, as rats go along, like mice, they piddle constantly. Drip drip drip.

Now imagine a person living up there on the second floor.  Every time they walked up that stairway, the paint of which was so saturated by rat pee that it came off in spots and then was glued back on over the years whenever someone trod on it, our stair climber was also being showered every day, every night, by a constant mist of warm rat piss.  Yes.  The weird black dangling crud?  Was made of melting wallboard and rat pee.

The sister lived up there. On a mattress on the floor.  And she didn't sleep alone, either.

No go enjoy your dinner.

Your Face Sounds Familiar Like Soup

     Having just spent four whole days in North Carolina, I think it's safe to say that I have gained a certain expert insight concerning the unique culture of this state.

     My visit took me to the Winston-Salem Greensborough area, which I was given to believe is just as South as South can be, so naturally I was excited to visit a plantation to watch the cotton being harvested as I reclined in  the shade of the veranda, sipping a julep, listening to someone play 'Nearer My God To Thee' on a spinet somewhere in the cool depths of the manor house, my willowy form caressed by a silken gown worn over a corset laced to the 'near death' setting.

     Unfortunately that was not to be the case.  Only very silly persons believe in that outdated stereotype.  What I found was a generic urban culture nuked to the subsoil by Big Tobacco and chain restaurants.  There were evergreen trees,  everyones' speech was perfectly intelligible, no burning crucifixes that I noticed,  and nobody brandishing a straight razor even once chased me for lookin' at her wrong.

     Don't let the signs fool you.  Yes, there are 32,456 Chick-Fil-A's in a 25 mile area, 4,501 Biscuitvilles,  and untold numbers of drive-through variations on the chicken waffle/biscuit/fried catfish/ food groups.  Yes, they are all decorated with delightful pictures of yesteryear and outdated agricultural implements; but once inside you find yourself in the same kind of neutral America that's spread all over the continent like margarine.

-with the following exceptions.

1. You can't get there from here.
     The roads of the Winston Salem - Greensborough area were designed by the famous highway designer Sawyer Cormier, a Canadian acidhead whose medium was cooked spaghetti flicked at the wall until no more would stick. It really is that bad.  Worse than downtown Seattle.  And that's really bad.
 
     For reasons unknown, those who decide decided to take a bowl shaped chunk of played-out tobacco farmland between Winston Salem and Greensborough and pave it over with - no shit -  vast looping 12 - lane highways that don't really go anywhere in a great big hurry.  In this same area are 87,500,986 shopping malls.  Huuuuuuuge shopping malls.  Three story multi-acre shopping malls.  (And you can't find your way around in them either! They have maps...they just don't have the little 'you are here' indicator.  Yay!)  The state mascot is the majestic Traffic Berm. Fuckers are everywhere.

    Now as for malls... Each mall contains the same retail theme, adjusted for budget. Seven giant jewelry stores, 565 womens' clothing stores, 65 shoe stores, 400 mens' clothes and furnishings outlets, and at least one regal Romanian woman selling exfoliant and moisturizer at 175.00 the pop.  (One of these gorgeous women grabbed me by the arm and exfoliated me, in fact. It was a shock and awe exfoliation. Being covered in a fine layer of brick-orange dust as everyone and everything is in this area, I was  7 shades lighter after she'd finished which was kind of embarrassing.  Still, during her spiel, as she scoured my arm to get rid of all the gravel and old tires and loose, dead skin and stale lunch meat, I realized that her magic elixir was merely a mixture of Purel and ground walnut shells.  Talk about brass balls.)
   
     The next mall down the line will have the same profile, only it's stores will be genuine upscale brand outlets and not filled with Chinese knockoffs.  And no matter what, there will be at least two beauty supply superstores.  Not outlets.  Not storefronts.  Stores the size of an airport parking lot. In addition there will be 56,709 different kinds of salon and specialty purveyors of things like feather eyelashes, threading parlors, foot spas, and nail artists offering the most exquisitely baroque treatments imaginable; straight, short, long and downcurved, rounded, stilleto sharp, stick-on, ultraviolet - hardened, dangly charms, your kids' pictures, money nails crafted out of actual currency, diamond studding, and other stuff I had no idea people did to their fingernails.

2.  This one fucked with me bad.  Random wads of human hair litter the stores, parks, roadsides and sidewalks.  Scared the crap out of me.

3. A meal is not a meal unless it's a uniform light tan.
     Typical breakfast/lunch/dinner:  a biscuit, a meat, grits, toast, a flubby waffle, 'regular' syrup (maple, but you have a choice of butter pecan, Karo and some kind of mystery berry) over all and your choice of sides which threw me for a loop since didn't you already have three sides going on  there on your plate?  But no.  You have to choose from a list of more grits, another biscuit, hush puppies (breaded and fried witchety grubs as far as I could tell) eggs, bacon, coleslaw, mashed potatoes, baked potatoes with your choice of toppings, white gravy, brown gravy, several variations of the fried potato, and occasionally tomato slices.  This is way too many choices to make when you have low blood sugar.  Tell you what, though, once you've finished this homage to starch, that situation WILL change like a punch to the sternum.

3.  This area is where the video game 'Grand Theft Auto' was rehearsed before it went to the storyboard, which is a lie but should be true.
     There is no speed limit.  I am telling you the Gods' truth. You can drive past a cop on two wheels with gurning children packed in the back package tray and all it merits is a lazy wave.  Naturally it didn't take us long to test this, and it's true as shit:  you can pretty much do whatever you want at whatever speed you want as long as nothing catches fire.  Like stopping in the middle of the road, turning off your engine, putting on your emergency blinkers and proceeding to text at length.  Yes, we really saw this.  Several times.

      The roads themselves are just as awful as those in Oregon, and that's pretty awful. Apparently level macadam is for the weak.  Everyone seems to take this in stride; life is short and cars are made to get from point a. to point b.

     If  the car is making loud blubbadubbaduh noises, or parts of the car are missing, or are held on with zip ties, pop rivets, colored duct tape, nylon rope or clear cargo wrap, drive on.  As far as the police are concerned, as long as said car can move down the road it's all good.

     And yes - people actually do take residential air conditioners and mount them in car windows with butyl caulk and plywood.

4. It is perfectly legal to whip a bitch. State law.
     We took advantage of this every time we went out just because it felt so dirty. For those of you who don't know what whipping a bitch is, it means if the road is wide enough,  you can go ahead and rip that steering wheel 'round like Dukes of Hazzard, at speed, and head back where you came from.  It is a GAS.  (And totally illegal in Washington.)  Traffic berms mean nothing.  Hell, if you find yourself headed in the wrong direction and think you can make it over a traffic berm, godspeed.  If you get high centered, put it in neutral, get out and push until your car drifts into the opposite lane, then run like hell and dive into the front seat.
Yup.  Saw it.

5.  Women driving fully accessorized luxury cars are the queens of the road.
     You give way.  It's simple self-preservation. These ladies do what they want.  They want to drive up onto wide traffic berms, shut off their car and text.  They want to drive as fast as they feel like going, which is usually really really fast. The turning lane is the lane they want to make a turn from. They do NOT want to wait at a stop light because stop lights do not apply to them so they romp on the gas and 4-wheel it through the decorative roadside plantings to go around the line.  Mall parking lots are made deadly by these ladies, many of whom haven't been able to see over the dashboard for 30 years.

6.  The dirt is pumpkin orange.  Honest to snot pumpkin orange.
     All the topsoil got scraped off by the developers, leaving only the red clay substrate, which turns bright orange as it dries out.  I kept wondering where everyone was getting all the colorful bark mulch but no, it was just dirt. And since it is clay dirt...

7.  Nearly everything is built out of brick.  It's like being on a huge military base.

8. Do not expect the bathrooms to have been cleaned below knee level.
     I go to the bathroom a lot.  I'm 57.  It's what I do. I know when shit has been cleaned and this shit hadn't been cleaned.  Anywhere. Anyplace. Like, not even in the Museum of History.  The crud on the bathroom floor was historic but I don't think that's an excuse.

9.  Old Salem Village is awesome.  Read about it's awesomeness here:  http://www.oldsalem.org/
     Yes, people who work there dress in period costume, but you are not required to interact with them as though they were ghosts out of the past.  I even heard one say 'fuck'.  It was cool.

10.  Housing is super inexpensive.
     For what we paid for The Rancho 20 years ago, the kids  were able to purchase a residence in the tony district of town with a full daylight basement, a Wolf gas stove, a marble bath, and pecan hardwood floors.

11.  Most people answer to no standard of taste but their own.
     Roseann Roseannadanna, Cleopatra, Patti Smith, Lady Gaga, Billy Preston, Lil' Mama, Clint Eastwood, Jay Z, Landro Calrissian, that Mexican guy in Men In Black who turned out to be an alien holding a head on a stick - anything you can imagine;  everyone colorful like birds of paradise, all sparkling with diamonds and jangling with 'notice me' jewelry.  The only cultural uniform I saw was worn by older men of a certain political bent: small check shirts with pearl buttons, high waist slacks, pointy boots, and a spankin' new bill cap.

     That's about all I have to say about that.  We were thinking about moving there to be closer to the grandkids, but after having visited we realized that there was no way in hell we wanted to live there.  The flight itself was unpleasant in the extreme (fuck you and your seats of stone, Delta Airlines) much less the thought of hauling all our crap across the continent to live near a woman who, God love her, still goes off like a human stomp rocket because some utterly random thing tickled her crack.
The grandkids are fine.
They are fine.
So be it.

Medical Examiner Dr. Qin

You cannot change channels on your television using a phone.*

I keep trying, and it keeps not working.

One of these days, though, it won't work and I'll forget to give a shit.  Until someone figures out that I finally succumbed to Altzheimers and it's not just one of my usual days, I'll have a nice, long conversation with the charming characters on the Cartoon Network.  And I'll learn valuable lessons too. Like today, for example.  Today I learned that the cartoon Stephen Universe is basically about space lesbians teaching a hippie kid how to fight other space lesbians.

Does anybody get this channel? Has anyone else seen this cartoon series?  Am I the only one to notice this?  It's like when Aerosmith sang 'Walk This Way' during the Superbowl and nobody in America except me realized that it's a song about eating pussy and cousin humping.

I have no problems with space lesbians. I think space lesbians awesome.  But the artists are reeeeealy pushing the envelope.  For example, in one episode, when we went into the heart of the Temple, that wasn't a heart we saw...the Gems were using a poetic euphemism for what was clearly a uterus blooping away overhead with a discreet vagina tucked back amidst all the tubes it was attached to.

Also tacit is the fact that Stephens father  (Gregg Universe) and mother (Rose Quartz) were not married when lil' Stephen was conceived.  Hell, they weren't even from the same planet.  So that's two for two - Stephen is the product of unmarried interplanetary miscegenation.

The Crystal Gems allied with Stephen are Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst.  They are extraordinarily violent, do not sit like ladies,  and live in a huge stone temple with a postmodern beach house built in it's lap.  There is also a pink lion, but I never have been entirely sure of it's role...mostly they use it as a closet, or as a passage into other realities, sort of like the coat closet to Narnia, only a lion.

The reason the Gems are here is that they are protecting the earth from Homeworld, where Diamond-grade alien women rule and all the lesser gem women do all the shit work.  Garnet, Pearl and Amethyst (and Rose Quartz, before she dissolved to become half of Stephen) are all that stand between us and annihilation by some extremely pumped, holier-than-thou space bitches with superior technology.

The lesser Gems are able to fight back, though.  They possess the ability to fuse into beings much stronger than the sum of their parts. Some episodes when this happens there's lots of explosions and violence, which I am all for. Most of the time, though, Fusions occur in episodes that are just weird for weirds' sake, which I am all for.

For example, whenever Garnet, a tall woman with square hair, undergoes an unusually traumatic event, she divides into two separate women...Ruby and Sapphire, whom upon reunion straight up get to suckin' serious face with each other before they re-fuse in order to form Garnet again.  Stephen himself, a half earth - half alien boy, is able to fuse with his best friend Connie, an Earth girl.  When this happens, he/they turn(s) into an adult woman with a pretty decent rack.

I could go through and nitpick all the Easter eggs and 'gotta be an adult to get it' details I've caught while watching this show, but what we need to bear in mind here is that I spend entirely too much time watching Cartoon Network.

____________________________
*Likewise, you cannot make phone calls on your remote.

Super Talk Show / 超级访问 !!!!!

Because I hate the cold, and the weather here has been in the 20f range with hurricane-worthy wind gusts, I've spent the better part of the last two months indoors, going nowhere but the pharmacy and the local grocery store.  After the gardening hyperactivity of March to early November, it's actually been quite nice to just sit here on my dead ass, reading Lovecraft, listening to obscure music, and watching demented shit on Syfy.  In fact, I didn't realize how much I needed an extended period of simple inactivity until I realized that I was recovering from an injury I didn't know I'd had until I regained full range of movement in my left arm.

_________________________

Let's go back....back in time....

Year before last, I had a job.  It was incredibly physically demanding, but I was up. Hell yeah!  

Unfortunately, not all my internal organs agreed with that decision.  

This is why I passed out briefly behind the wheel, just an instant, only to come to a moment later to find myself clanging off the drivers side door as I ran off the road and down a steep bank smack into a drainage ditch. Instead of screaming  - I don't even thing I said 'fuck' once - I started repeating "No barbed wire, please, no barbed wire, please, no barbed wire.."

Don't ask me where my sudden presence of mind came from; it's a rare enough occurrence anyway without finding myself in the middle of a car accident, but I floored it and steered into the slides as I rocketed through wet, mucky corn fields followed by a ten-foot rooster tail of mud,  dodged my way through a stand of alder, shot down a creek bed, blew straight through a brush pile - I actually caught air a couple of times as I flew up and over a couple of hay lanes - until finally I found a driveway in good enough shape to get me back onto the road.  Pedal still mashed to the floor, I drifted into a hard left and went screaming back up onto the road, hitting a car as I passed over the center line, and ended up parked in a farmers' turn-around on the opposite side of the road wondering what the fuck had just happened.

I have to admit; danger aside, it was a blast.  So yes, I was very confused at that point.  Confused yet exhilarated.  I got out of my car and looked at the front....hallelujia!  No barbed wire!!

A Polish gentleman pulled up alongside me as I stood leaning in woozy relief against my car.   Turns out he was the man driving the car I'd hit.

"Have you been drinking?" he asked.  I looked at him in amazement.  There was a long pause while I searched for the speech center in my brain.  

"Who are you?"  I asked, finally.

"That don't matter.  You hit my car. Not be worries.  My car is piece of shit.  Are you drinking? Are you feel ok?"

I finally processed this.  "Oh!  No!  I think I fell asleep or something...I've been up since 4 am.  I think I'm OK...are you?"

He reassured me.  "No worry then. My car drives. It's just piece of shit, don't even worried.  I don't smell no alcohol on you.  Just as long as you not been drinking the alcohol OK. And can drive?  Then I leaved  Don't worries my car, ok?  Is just a piece of shit."

Now, I hadn't just tapped his car.  I'd pleated the whole thing right down the drivers side.

It took a few moments to realize that, because he hadn't been lying - his car truly was a piece of shit.  It lacked any recognizable paint as well as a passengers' side front quarter panel, and he was using red duct tape in place of lenses over the backup lights.  

He was more worried about the insurance angle than I was!

It turns out I was able to drive home.  My car had no damage WHATSOEVER...just a lot of mud swept up and over the roof, some brush up in the wheel wells and a big willow branch caught in the front bumper that I swept the street with all the way home.  I had just chucked it into the compost when the Biker drove in.  The only thing he noticed was the mud, and I told him - truthfully! - that I'd gone through a couple of big puddles.

I got away with this like a BOSS.

The Biker never had a clue.  The next morning bright and early I pressure washed the undercarriage and engine compartment, checked the radiator, oil and gas - no leaks, no ponks, no scratches, no nothing. The only shred of evidence that I'd gone on Mr. Toads wild ride is that the hard rubber bumper guard on the passengers' side was shiny instead of coated in filth like my car usually is.
Friends and neighbors, I highly recommend the 1989 Buick Regal. It is a BEAST.

I quit my job that night.  I drove the car for a couple more months until the Biker decided to sell it.  We made 200.00 over the original price.

I went to the doctors and found out why I'd passed out.  Turns out I was near kidney failure for lack of hydration and over-work *snif*.  Fainting is one of the symptoms. I started hydrating like a mad bastard, and that took care of that.  But my shoulder?

I had been unconscious just long enough to realize that when I'd first gone off the road and smacked myself against the drivers' door I'd bruised the shit out of my left rotator cuff.

At least, not until, after the past few months of inactivity, it got better!

HOW TO DEAL WITH THE SUPERNATURAL, PART  B   

Have  you been worried by the following?  

FirstNations will clear that shit up like salicylic acid.

1.  Do you believe that you have been (supernaturally) cursed?
-No, you haven't.

2.  Do you visit fortune tellers?
-You're a credulous moron, aren't you.

3.  Are Ouija Boards for real?
-Absolutely.

4. While driving through the woods one night I saw Bigfoot.
-No, you didn't.  You saw a bear. A bear, a bear, a bear. A.  Bear.

5. While eating dirt in the woods one night I heard Bigfoot.
-No, you didn't.  You heard an elk.  If you do not live in elk country, it was a hobo.
  

6. Is the Tarot real?
-Absolutely.  

7.  Is astrology real?
-Fuck no; are you kidding, hippie?    No.

8. Is telepathy real?
-No.  Sadly.

9. What about geomancy?  I paid good money to have my house feng shui'd.
- You can just steep in that for awhile you sad crystal-gazing doofus...you did what?

10.  Clairaudience? Distant viewing? ESP in general?
-No.

11.  Are ghosts real?
-No.  Probably.

12.  What about demons.
-Absolutely no.  Probably.

13.  Psychic vampires?
-Only 12-year-old girls believe in psychic vampires.

14.  I am a psychic vampire.  
-No, you're a 12-year-old girl.

15.  Are any vampires real?
-No.

16.  But what about the vampires living in Forks, Washington?
 -Shit, what about the werewolves living in Forks, Washington?  You hardly ever hear about them.  They are all Native American and ruggedly handsome.    

17.  Can people have visions of the future?
-No.

18.  Can people have visions of the past?
-Yes.  This is commonly known as 'memory'.

19.  I know somebody who was bit by a werewolf and can change into a werewolf.
-Answer a question for me...do werewolves do it doggie style?  It seems like they would.  

21.  My great uncle was one of the guys who helped open King Tuts' tomb and he died of a cobra bite six months later.  Was this an example of The Curse Of Tuts' Tomb at work?
-No. It is an example of why you shouldn't dick with cobras.

22.  My great grandfather attended the first public showing of the Hope Diamond and died six months later of septicemia.  Was this an example of  
-No. 

23.  I keep finding dead chickens and goat blood on my front porch every morning.  Should I worry?
-I'm not seeing the problem here.

24. Satan worshippers are everywhere and they can cast spells and do other magic things.
-Satan worshippers are everywhere, and they think they can cast spells and do other magic things.     

25.  I hear cows at night.
-I do too.

26.  My cousin totally saw the Jersey Devil.
-I'm so sorry.

27.  My other cousin totally saw the Bunnyman eating a dead guy near Bunnyman Bridge.
-I bet this cousin is married to your cousin who totally saw the Jersey Devil, huh.

28.  My grandma's mobile home is haunted by a little girl who giggles at night.
-No, your grandmother giggles at night because after grandpa died she took a much younger lover.  Sorry to break it to you like this.  I know it's awkward.

29. In a former life I was    
-No.

30.  The Band KISS were    
-NO.

31.  Led Zeppelin   
-NO.   -wait, yes.  That and the shark thing.  

32.  Can you really fish out of your bedroom window at the Edgewater Inn?  
-Not anymore you can't.  Guess why.

33.  I live in an old Victorian Era house and   
-Yes. 

34.  Are there such things as aliens and UFO's?
-Absolutely without a doubt.  

35.  Seriously?  Aliens and UFO's are real?
-No. I was messing with you. What you're seeing is the planet Venus, or perhaps a patch of luminous swamp gas. 

34.  I  saw a UFO land in the graveyard so my boyfriend and I snuck in and nine months later I had a funny looking baby.  How did this happen?
-Ball lightening.

35.  My cat died but one night I felt it jump up on the bed.  
-Wrong.  It was a hobo.


Questions?  Comments?  Let me know.   I'll give your input my sincere attention and do my best to help with your stupid fucked up issues.  Thanks for reading!

How To Tell If There's Nothing Going On In Your House 
That A Swift Kick And A Couple Of Prozac Won't Fix  

Firstly, do you live in a mobile home?  Congratulations!  You are not haunted! Not even if there is blood streaming down the mail slot in the front door and you are sited atop a Victorian Era grave full of  deformed infants and grimoires.  

1.  Do you hear a baby crying and you don't have a baby?  Congratulations!  You are not being haunted by a baby!  If you live in the Pacific Northwest, what you have is a opossum. 

2.  Do you hear what sounds like cinderblocks or stones being whipped super hard at the walls or any other part of the house?   
My Advice:  Check the neighborhood for unsupervised boys between the ages of 5 and 20. If you actually find objects -rocks, fruit, cinderblocks, etc. you have an infestation of unsupervised boys

3. Does your cat stare at one spot for an hour or more, hissing and yowling, with it's fur standing up?
My Advice:  Ignore. Cats are insane.

4. Does your dog stare at one spot for an hour or more, whimpering or growling, with it's fur standing up?
My Advice:   Your dog hangs around with your cat too much.

5. Have you lost a beloved pet recently, and are now having experiences that seem as though that pet still resides with you in ghost form?
My Advice:  This is not happening.  Let go already. I know this will garner cries of bereaved outrage and denial, to which I say buck the fuck up.  Fluffy is a' mouldering in her grave.

POINT TO PONDER  

Ever wonder why hauntings are limited to people, dolls, the occasional horse, dog, or cat, and Victorian homes?  Why don't you get haunted by the cows that gave their lives for your Happy Meal? And why are ghosts always (post)mammalian?  What about canaries, or tilapia, or road machinery?  Ever wonder why you aren't hip deep in the ghosts of cavemen?  Why don't the animals you run over with your car return to torment your nights with unexplained 'splut' noises?  I have no idea.  Neither do Penn and Teller, from whom I totally ripped this off.  

6. Do you see 'shadow people' darting past?  You don't.  You see shadows, period.  This is an artifact of peripheral vision.  You might have a bat in the house, though.  Or a large moth.  EW.

7.  Do you see small shadows darting past?  Congratulations!  Your house is infested with rats!

8.  Do you wake up choking with a hideous old woman sitting on your chest?  Hooray!  This is a sleep disorder called 'Old Hag Syndrome'.  Go see a sleep specialist.  Problem solved.

8. Do you wake up in the middle of the night with somebody breathing heavily near your face, and you sleep alone?   Hooray!  You have a mild case of sleep paralysis.  Your brain wakes up just an instant before your body gets the message; creating a sensory dissonance, and guess what?  You snore.  Yes you do.

9. Digging up a lot of bones (non-human) when you garden?  Ignore. For some reason people think nothing of chunking bones out in the yard.

10.  Old houses only: hearing loud banging noises indoors, infrequently and at any hour?  There are two answers to this.  1. You have steam heat.  2. You're losing fire stops ( short boards jammed between the wall studs), lumps of dried-out plaster, or forgotten sashweights. These objects have been subject to decades of  rodent nibbling, leaks, and temperature fluctuations.  Usually at the worst possible moment one or the other of these objects will suddenly cut loose and clatter and bang down inside the wall. Yeah, that'll make you pee yourself.

11.  Do non-Victorian Era toys change locations unexpectedly?  You have children.

12.  Does your baby laugh and giggle as though it were interacting with someone, but nobody is there?   You have a baby.   Babies do weird shit.

13.  Do you see mysterious figures outside at night which seem to gaze intently at your house as though they were waiting?  These are unsupervised boys, and you have a teenage daughter.

14.  Do you hear whispering, voices, screaming or growling that nobody else hears?  You have schizophrenia.

15.  Are you possessed by an evil entity? No you are not.  You are mentally ill.  The right  combination of therapy and drugs make this shit stop dead, pun intended.  Note:  If you have fugue states during which you barf up lobsters and speak grammatically correct Latin?  Now we call Father McGillicuddy and grab a tarp.

16.  Do you look out the window at night and upon occasion see a nasty fucked-up face mashed up against the other side of the glass going GUUUUUUUUUH UK BLUH PBBBBTH?  My Advice:  No matter what the explanation, the memory alone will ruin your homeowner experience at that address forever.  Pack and move.

Don't forget to remember to tune in in a couple days for the final installment of the 'Dealing With The Supernatural' series!!  I'll be covering issues like non-stick cookware, herpes zoster and the deadly consequences of stuff that is deadly!

What To Do If You Ignored My Advice  Like A Dipshit
And Now Find Yourself Living With Unwanted Guests    

   

1. Was the house built in the Victorian Era?
Move.

2.  Have you found a Victorian Era doll anywhere on the property, particularly if it was under the attic floorboards, or worse - inside the wall?
My advice:   DO NOT KEEP IT.  It is not a charming relic of yesterday.  It is home to a homicidal demon!  Did you touch it?  OH GOD GO WASH YOUR HANDS IN RUBBING ALCOHOL!!! AW CRAP!!  RUN GO GET THE LAWNMOWER GAS CAN!!! OH SHIT!! OH FUCK!!  KILL IT WITH FIRE AND PUT IT OUT WITH HOLY WATER!!!

3.  Have you found a Victorian-Era picture of a porcelain doll under the attic floorboards? Or parts of one? Or a Victorian Era dolls' shoes, or clothes, or furniture, or anything having to do with a Victorian Era doll?  Worst of all, have you come across a portrait of a child holding a Victorian Era doll?  GAH!!! See  #1.

4.  Did a Victorian-Era child younger than ten years old die mysteriously in the house? Victorian-Era dead children go from mischievous to aggressively creepy really fast. A generic 'go toward the light' exorcism usually gets them to move on.

5.  Do you see transparent figures that speak, hiss, growl, have eyes, touch you or drip blood?
My Advice:  Reciprocate by utilizing the Kerosene and a Match solution.

6.  Did a woman from the Victorian Era die mysteriously in the house?
My Advice:  Unless you enjoy the prospect of seeing her transparent form on the stairs, sobbing in the basement,  looking out the second-story window, at the foot of your bed every night, or bugging your toddler, MOVE NOW.
     Note:  Some dead Victorian-Era women are amenable to a 'go toward the light' type exorcism.  Do not call in a priest.  If the wraith in question was not Catholic in life, the exorcism will only piss her off. This is never good.

7.  Did a nice yet reclusive Victorian Era farmer die in the house?  No worries.
7a. Did a mean farmer from the Victorian Era live as a recluse in the house until he passed?
My Advice:  Even in the absence of phenomena, you have a ghost, and he is still mean, and you will soon have phenomena.  That's just how it works.  Mean Victorian-Era farmer-recluses are also the source of sudden, inexplicable, well-defined areas of hot monkey butt aromas, as they probably were in life come to think of it.  A stern, non-denominational exorcism is occasionally effective. Fire is more effective.

8. Did a mean, reclusive farmer from the Victorian Era die in the house only to be found months or even years later?
My Advice:  Go to the gas station and fill an appropriate container with kerosene, pour it liberally about the structure, and toss in a lit match.  Victorian-era mean farmers that died and didn't get found for awhile cannot be reasoned with and cannot be exorcised.  They can only be cleansed from this our mortal realm with flame.

Note on mean Victorian Era farmers:  If the dead gentleman in question can be proven beyond any doubt to have been Catholic in life, devout or no, he can be permanently expelled by a mega-hardcore, big guns Catholic exorcism.  Mean Irish Priests are particularly effective officiants.  

9. Have you found statues, relief decorations, dolls, old newspapers, photographs or paintings with gouged-out eyes?   My Advice:  These are not creepy things that you keep to show to people how fucked up your judgment is to be living in a house made of pure evil.  See #6.  The sooner the better with this kind of demented shit.

10.  Have you found ineradicable evidence on your floor of multiple, evenly-spaced candles having been placed in a circle?
My Advice:  Hold an 'exorcism lite' and then put a rug over the spot.

11. Was the wax red or black?
HOLY FUCKBALLS you have been infested with demons from the moment you signed the deed.  These are the 'float up off the bed, head spinning around, vomiting blenders' type demon. They dig in like ticks and will follow you from house to house playing this shit until you get a straight-up standard Catholic exorcism.  Yes it has to be Catholic.  It generally isn't a very pretty process.  Lay down a tarp first.

12.  Have you found a puzzling amount of salt all over the place, oil stains in the shape of crosses over all the doorways, hearths and windows, crucifixes nailed in unlikely places (like over the foundation vents or behind the washing machine)?  Although these can be gateway objects for demonic shit, sometimes all they are is evidence that an exorcism took place and was successful.  My Advice:   Leave this stuff the fuck alone.  Don't touch it.  Not even with a sock over your hand or a long stick or a Swiffer Sweeper.  Wait for signs of haunting.  If you experience signs of haunting, then act as in #11.

...and yes, I really have walked into an empty house where all this shit was present.

13. Do you own lots of dolls and display them proudly?
My advice:  Out they go AT ONCE.    Burning is strongly advised.
Please grab a clue. Dolls are icky. Even though your friends tell you how cute they are, none of them like your dolls. Nobody human wants to walk into a home and find themselves surrounded in every room by haystacks of cobwebby frou-frou  from which 456,000 little shiny eyeballs are glaring.  Furthermore, all of your friends think you have some kind of an emotional issue  because you choose to decorate with dollies.  Please; are you six?
-And remember:  dolls are the #1 preferred dwelling place for ghosts and demons.  Particularly if the dolls in question are from the Victorian Era.

14. Strangely, taxidermy are immune to supernatural habitation. Yes I am using taxidermy as a collective noun.  There's nothing you can do about it. I think it's because taxidermy are just creepy from the get-go.  In past times it was de rigueur to greet guests with a hearty "Here, Aloysius, do let me show you my collection of embalmed animals posed in a lifelike manner!" But not any more. Dried frogs dressed like mariachis or mice in period dress serving tea are not creepy.  They are awesome.

15.  Are you a devout Catholic with all the trimmings displayed prominently and en masse?   Cut your collection down to a plain crucifix and maybe a tasteful statue of Mary stomping on a snake.  You do not need a holy water stoup in the bathroom.  (and yes, I've seen this.)  A whole gang of Catholic trappings can become a portal to hell in an instant.  If you aren't haunted, you will be soon.  Don't court trouble.

16.  Has a cryptic object appeared from nowhere in a very prominent place, like the middle of your bed, and you don't have a cat and it isn't a hairball?  Don't touch it.  Drape a couple squares of toilet paper over the object in question and then pick it up with a spatula and sling it across the street into the neighbors yard.  It works with slugs; it'll work with a tarnished silver pig penis with Latin inscriptions all over it.

17.  Do Victorian-Era toys mysteriously change locations?  
My Advice:  It doesn't matter if you found them and kept them, or bought them off EBay; either way you brought this on yourself.  Your ass is so haunted.  See my advice about child ghosts at #3. and also review #1, particularly if the toys in question start bleeding or speaking.



Can't move out right away?

18.  Take the closet doors off in all the bedrooms. The Supernatural just loves to dick around with doors in general and bedroom closet doors in particular. If this is too much trouble, at least WD40 the hinges so that when a closet door does open in the middle of the night, the phenomena is robbed of it's signature scary creaking;  thus you stand a 50/50 chance of sleeping through the whole 'terrifying thing in the closet' scenario, although experts agree you still only stand a 25% chance of sleeping through a full-on nocturnal door slamming episode.

19.  Never leave an unattended glass filled with liquid in the kitchen. The supernatural cannot resist the urge to backhand glasses full of liquid left sitting in the kitchen.

20.  Baby-lock all the cabinet and appliance doors in the kitchen.  The supernatural likes slamming doors in the kitchen as much as it likes slinging glasses of water and slamming closet doors.

21.  Have you been silently beckoned by a ghostly figure?
My Advice:  Go ahead.  Go right ahead and follow a ghostly figure who knows where and end up impaled on a hay rake, ya dipshit.  Go ahead.  Seriously, though, you don't want to see whatever it is.  Really.  You don't.

22.  Victorian Era house:  Do you have a basement door? Remove the doorknob.  Stuff the hole with paper towels or a cork. Use a hasp lock on the outside of the door when the basement is not in use. Keep the key with you at all times. When you go downstairs, carry the lock and key in your hand. Do not set them down.  Just do it.  Even if there's nothing weird happening.  Just take my word for it.

23.  Hear someone screaming in torment every night up in the attic/basement/garage/outbuilding/back bedroom?  Don't go see what it is, and definitely do not open any goddamn doors.  If it is in the same room as you are?  Well shit.  All you can do is save up your dimes and nickles until you can afford to move and in the meantime stock up on adult diapers or maybe sleep in another room.

20.  Find a hidden cavity in the wall just big enough to stick your hand in?  Yeah.  You go ahead and do that and see what you pull back.  Situations like this are why Baby Jesus invented the long stick, doofus.

21.  Do you feel as though a Victorian-era trunk you've found in the house or an outbuilding holds a great secret?  Do not open it.  Take the fucker to the dump immediately. I can tell you what's in it. A dessicated infant.  It's always a dessicated infant.  Or a canary wrapped in a handkerchief.

22.  Hear someone in the dirt-floored basement calling your name and  you are alone in the house?  Make sure the lock is secure and ignore that shit.  The certain way to let a horrifying psychotic killer demon into your life is to open the goddamn basement door when you hear shit down there while you're alone in the house.

23.  Electrical objects turning themselves on all by themselves? You may have a poltergeist, in which case make all the people you live with who are going through puberty live with someone else until their butt hair comes in.  (Even if you are not experiencing any untoward phenomena you should probably do this anyway.) For safetys' sake, unplug any miscreant appliances or power tools, but take the chainsaw and leave that in the middle of the living room floor.  If you have just realized you have a poltergeist, think of how it will totally screw with the carrier-adolescent if they see a chainsaw in the middle of the floor one night and it suddenly turns itself on.  Serves the little bastard right!

24.  Does thumping, knocking and banging seem to happen outdoors and indoors, frequently, at all hours, and without cause? You have an untethered poltergeist.  But guess what? You can make this stop.  Turn up the hip hop and ignore your neighbors' complaints.  Poltergeists hate anything recorded after 1951, including musicals and Sing Along With Mitch.

Puttering about the yard:

1. Have you found a 'Crown of Thorns' bush?  Dig it up and burn it.  Crown of Thorn bushes are just....louche.

2. Have you found a doll burial or burials?  Stab them onto a pitchfork and huck them into the neighbors' yard.

2. Have you found a grave, or even a small graveyard on the property?  Leave it the fuck alone. I mean stand right up the instant you figure out what you've got and start piling leaves over it.  And brush.  Maybe put a derelict car on top.  Put up a fence on the side facing your house and pretend that it's the property line.  Never look in that direction at night.

2. Have you found unusual items in an existing tool shed, like crucifixes drawn all over the walls or a trocar?  Kerosene and a match.  Now.

....and yes, I have walked onto a property where one of the outbuildings was covered from floor to ceiling with crucifixes.

3. Dig up a recently buried corpse?
My Advice:  Notify the authorities.  Spontaneous vomiting, loss of consciousness and panic urination are OK. Move.

4.  Digging up skeletonized human remains?
My Advice:  Notify the authorities.  Sudden wooziness or total loss of consciousness and panic urination are OK. Move.

5.  Dig up a human skull?
My Advice:  Keep it.  Skulls are cool. Panic urination is OK as long as it is minimal. You have a 50/50 chance of sparking off a haunting by choosing to keep the skull, but if it were me I'd say it was a fair price to pay to have an actual human skull that you dug up. Clean thoroughly, then use it as a centerpiece on Thanksgiving.  Explain to your guests that it symbolizes how thankful we all should be to have the gift of life.  Try to make this sound as plausible as possible.

6.  Dig up multiple human skulls?
My advice:  Piss yourself forthwith, shit up your drawers, have a total mental breakdown on the spot and get somebody else to contact the authorities.  Then move.

7.  Chop down any scary trees that touch the house.  You can be certain that somebody either hung themselves from that tree or dropped house pets down inside the hollow trunk or something fucked up along those lines.   Burn the wood OUTSIDE, not in your fireplace.

__________________________________________   

  I hope you are learning from these helpful hints.  At the very least, what you should take away from this is please get rid of your skanky embarrassing doll collection that smells like old pancakes and grease.  This will make everyones life better.