Oh, why hello. I didn’t see you there but I must say that it is certainly nice to see you. How do you find yourself? Well? Are things okay? Yes? Family? How is Stuart doing now that he’s on his own? Yeah? Well, that’s just terrific. No, I mean it, that’s really swell. Now, if you don’t mind, please indulge me for a moment while I heap some misdirected abuse. You see my dear reader I just feel the urgent need to clear the air before you decide to bail on this column and pretend that everything’s cool; that everything is swell; that everything is as good as it gets. You see, I had a birthday a few days ago. Yes, that’s right. You forgot. I know. How do I know you forgot? Because I waited by the phone. I waited in the dark in my big fat faux leather ‘waiting-by-the-phone’ chair that I bought at the Brick six years ago and still have yet to begin paying for. This is precisely how I know that you didn’t call with your well-wishes. No, hang on, let me finish. I will actually go one further and suggest that not only did you not call, but that you didn’t even try to call. There. I said it. Pow! Blam! I bet you didn’t see that coming did you? No. You didn’t. I guess you were all too busy googling and carrying on with all that new-age stuff. No, wait, I know, maybe you were all too busy watching the leaves change? Hum? Eh? Chasing full-on double rainbows and unicorn dreams, yeah? Never mind. You can put all your sorrys in a sack and bury it out behind the barn or way back in the pet cemetery. Yikes. Sorry. I seem to have turned into a grumpy old bastard, which I must admit does hold within it certain perks. Now I can park on sidewalks and scream at punks on skateboards. I can pretend I’m deaf when it suits me and may be eligible for one of those fancy walk-in tubs with the little doors and jets and such. Soon I will receive some type of pension that pays pennies for every dollar funneled into it over the years, trusting the Canadian Government to take real good care of everything.
I turned 42 on this the day of my birth which is still celebrated in many countries. It is a national holiday in Chile, where they really know how to throw a birthday party. Sadly, this year my birth was overshadowed by those glory-hogging rock star miners. Sure, it was a good news story and all, but you would think they could have just stayed in that crypt for another few weeks or something.
Refer back to the Farmer’s Almanac for 1968 and you will find that the day of my birth was a glorious one indeed. It was smack dab in the middle of a King’s Harvest. I was born with a serpent in each fist, smoking a big-shot cigar and cursing while distant fires glowed in the smoky autumn night, and so forth and so on. He who is not busy being born is a busy dying. So, there have been 42 King harvests that have come and gone, and let’s just say that since my birth there has been some cool shit that has gone down which I can’t help but take full credit for.
Before I was born it was not unheard of for some quack doctor to drive into your town with a little black bag containing a hammer and a spike, and then proceed to give quickie trans-orbital lobotomies. Dr. Walter Freedman pegged mental illness to overactive emotions and was thusly easily cured by cutting away the capacity to feel any emotions, which was apparently a win-win scene that everyone could dig. Dig? Freeman performed over 2,500 ‘ice pick’ lobotomies all over them there United States of America before his death in 1972, which was four years after the year of my birth. Ice, ice, baby! Hum. So, I like to think that my birth somehow had something to do with the halting of this barbaric sideshow practice.
Let’s see, what else? Oh, since my birth, there were a handful of advances made in space exploration. Then there was the whole thing about most people having their teeth fixed by dentists instead of making their own out of lead. I would suggest strongly that this is a good thing and deserves at least a cheap card from Mac’s? No? Well, there has to be other stuff as well. I think I may have eradicated demonic possessions somehow, or at the very least, reduced the instances significantly, but only on the Western Hemisphere and north of the watershed, whatever the hell that means. Since my birth someone invented shrink wrap. Enough said. Oh, and time travel is now something people have begun to take seriously, thanks to Michael J Fox.
YOU ARE NOT EVICTING TIME
This year (being 2010 AD) I thought I was turning 43, which is incidentally the second time in my 42 years on planet earth that I overshot my age by a balls-out 365 days. This is the second occasion for on which I have successfully manipulated time. My own Event Horizon. Now, that is some quantum shit right there friends. The first time was when I turned 39 fully thinking that I was turning 40. Stephen Hawking is a punk wannabe! Wormholes my ass! On that birthday, as with this one that just passed, my wife waited to tell me the difference a full 24 hours after the blessed day. Anyway, you all should really wish me a happy birthday or something. That's what normal people do. I read this somewhere in a book written by a doctor who drives from town to town with a black bag containing a hammer and an ice pick. So, bake me a cake. Send me a card. Buy me some type of garment. I'm not picky. Just make sure it's expensive, elegant and impractical.
Let’s use the word SEGUE to jump into a totally
unrelated anecdote. If there’s time maybe I’ll get around to something about books or maybe not.
SEGUE
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| The Waltons moments before the riots. Notice how happy everyone is. Grandpa always said there was no way to delay that trouble comin' everyday. Then again, he was always paranoid when liquored up. |
Thanksgiving on Waltons Mountain was always a special time for the Waltons down on Waltons Mountain and so forth and so on. Don’t believe me? Watch the reruns on Vision TV. This year for thanksgiving my dad buried the turkey gravy. The gravy now rests about three feet under ground way down the beaten path in the heart of the pet cemetery. Why did he bury the turkey gravy? Was it some type of strange Mattawa tradition like hiding the egg on Christmas morning in Leutonia? Or did my father bury the turkey gravy in an open act of social defiance or spite? Perhaps he has gone completely demented? He does have those crazy eyebrows that grow up like horns. But, no. It’s simple. He buried the turkey gravy because my mother asked him to get rid of the excess grease and goo left from the fully cooked turkey. Follow? My dad buried the turkey gravy which was in a pot thinking it was the pot containing the turkey grease and such. See? But, why then go to the extraordinary effort of actually breaking ground? Easy; because of the bears that congregates in a somewhat menacing fashion. They smoke cigarettes, roll dice, talk about subversive things while whistling at all the chicks, and eat garbage. My dad buried the turkey gravy, thinking it was turkey drippings, in a hole dug in the backyard as to not attract bears.
“Mom, where’s the gravy?”
“Your father buried it in the back yard.”
“Oh, okay. Where’s the cranberry sauce?
Tied up in the basement?”
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